198 réponses à ce sujet

[DanielJr]

I'm telling you the Enkindlers are making a come back!

[Foune]

I found the missions where you recruit your members and make them loyal much more funnier and interesting than when the collectors came into the picture.

[Bebbe777]

ME1 had Geth and Saren



ME2 had Collectors but no real leader Shepard could take on.



Sovereign were a danger to the Citadel and life as we know it directly



The Collectors were only a threat to humanity and in effect a danger to life as we know it but it wasnt focused on.



The sense of ultimate danger, fear and urgency felt lost in ME2

[kaimanaMM]

I actually don't see anyone trashing the game at all in this thread.  Most of the posts seem to be in agreement that the Collector plot, as it is in ME2, isn't what it could have been.  As a player you never feel connected to the Collectors, I personally never felt compelled to say, 'I'm gonna go get those guys!'.  As a player you never feel connected to the colonists the Collectors are abducting, I personally never felt compelled to say, 'I'm gonna go save those guys!'.

iakus wrote...

Indeed.  The Collectors were every bit as much a victim of the Reapers as the colonists they abducted.  They were truly a sad, wretched lot who's fate should send chills up the spine. This is the price of failure.  This must never happen again  Killing them should be sad, yet merciful.  If Bioware wanted a "dark second act" then this could easily have fit the bill.  Yet after EDI's revelation, you get one statement from Mordin and the whole topic is dropped as fast as Shepard's death and ressurection.

Wasted opportunity.

I want to think that this is where the story was intended to go.  That would have been one helluva story with some real moments that make you push back from your desk  and just take a breather.  ME2 had such moments, don't get me wrong, but I do agree with the sentiment of wasted opportunity.  The Collectors and the Collector plot could have been so much more, the potential is just never realized.

[J4N3_M3]

JohnnyBeGood2 wrote...

ahem, dear posters with femshep avatars... in the story of "the man from snowy river": the man from snowy river captures the colt from old regret (the priiiize in ME lingo) not the wild bush horses (the equivalent of a vorcha).

Long story short: would you mind prettying up those femsheps a little?
(watch out for the Cross-eye bug when screen capping)

and your point is?

[Mox Ruuga]

The sad thing is, that the overall plot arc didn't advance on jot during ME2.

The end of ME1: "The Reapers are still out there, and I'm going to find some way to stop them!"

The end of ME2: "The Reapers are still out there, and I'm going to find some way to stop them!"

Who really cares that Collectors turned out to be the last Protheans? We already knew the Reapers used indoctrinated as their thralls, and had most likely genetically engineered "harvested" species into new slave forms (Keepers).

The entire plot arc went into a holding pattern for the middle act of a three act story. My worry is, that Bioware will now have to rush things through too quickly, and what we end up getting with ME3 is either implausible or lame. Or both.

[JockBuster]

Who is in YOUR Krant, your allies willing to die for you? Which squadmates make your team stronger? Which alien races (Krogan, Rachni, Salarian, Geth, Quarian etc) are going to join you? Is the Alliance and Council finally going to believe you?

I think that most people are missing the point of ME2, "Building a loyal TEAM" to fight for Shepard and who is going to lead them into the final battle against the reapers. My team is 8 or 9 (and yes I do have one save where all 12 are alive) loyal, trustworthy companions. ME2 IS a suicide mission, everyone is NOT expected to survive. Watch any soap opera, tv series, and at some point some one gets written out of the script by getting killed off. BW has made 12 squadmate slots available, and I assUme that we will have 12 (or fewer) in ME3. The VS survivor IS coming back (like it or not, and some want Liara, but I doubt that because she IS the SB now, it is her "dream job!" giving Shepard reliable info), so you need one empty slot; therefore, someone is going to die, either by your decision or BW writing them out of ME3 (Jack wants to go on a Cerbrus killing spree, Thane is dying, Samara wants to continue her Justicar quest). There is no right team nor wrong team there is only YOUR team. Choose wisely and ME3 will have a good outcome for you, choose badly and good luck.

The "bridge DLCs" (maybe 3 or 4 more?) will fill in the blanks. I expect one every 4 months, judging from what BW has been releasing, until ME3 arrives. There will be NO DLCs after ME3 is released because it IS the END of Shepard's story, the end of Mass Effect as we have come to know it. There is a UK web site that "says" pre-order Mass Effect 4 by Drew Kaplsyn for Aug 2011, is it true or not, who knows. I am NOT going to get all worked up over it. When he writes his next novel and BW makes the next Mass Effect {enter your title here}, then we can start the cycle all over again. In the REAL world of Mass Effect only 2 things really matter (other than $$$), Drew's writing and BW Casey Hudson's vision and neither is sharing what the future holds for us and Mass Effect.

Modifié par JockBuster, 24 septembre 2010 - 03:24 .

[Getorex]

I don't have a problem with ME2 at all (except perhaps the abrupt disconnect from ME1) but I do not think it had to make some huge story advance. If you expect and try to get some "Big Story" and plot advancement in each installment you simply make the next in the series (ME3 in this case) that much harder to make. People start to expect the next one to on up the previous one but if the story is fairly simple then it is hard to repeatedly beat the previous installment.



You learned about the Reapers at near the end of ME1. ME2 was devoted to trying to learn a bit more about them and getting together the ability to deal with the Reapers in ME3. I like the character missions of ME2, it made it more personal and personable. I liked the characters.



It's almost like some of ya'll are wanting or expecting an enemy to be revealed at the end of ME2 that was even bigger than the Reapers, and maybe pulling THEIR strings...like one of those Russian nested dolls. Bioware couldn't know beforehand that ME1 would do as well as it did so I can see how they might have wanted to hedge bets a bit and come to SOME sort of conclusion at the end of ME1 (just in case). ME1 did well so ME2 was born and quickly advanced (and now there's word that maybe ME3 is being accelerated for possible early to mid-2011 release). I actually fear an early release for ME3 because, as much as I want ME3 to play, I want it to really be fan-damn-tastic to the nth degree and I see rushing to get it out the door as a threat to its potential greatness.



ME2 was fine to me and an incremental bridge between ME1 and ME3 and a nice improvement in the control system and look. ME1 was way-cool as an intro to the universe of the game and so had some inherent requirements to meet that didn't apply to ME2.

[Gibb_Shepard]

Getorex wrote...

 ME1 did well so ME2 was born and quickly advanced (and now there's word that maybe ME3 is being accelerated for possible early to mid-2011 release)..

No way they'll be releasing ME3 in early 2011. The best you can hope for (And i hope for) is a late 2011 release.

[Getorex]

Gibb_Shepard wrote...

Getorex wrote...

 ME1 did well so ME2 was born and quickly advanced (and now there's word that maybe ME3 is being accelerated for possible early to mid-2011 release)..

No way they'll be releasing ME3 in early 2011. The best you can hope for (And i hope for) is a late 2011 release.

That was a bit I stumbled upon on youtube (Machinima).  The host/commenter said that EA Games was pushing for an earlier release than expected and he mentioned first half of 2011 as possible (NOOOO!).  I want more DLCs in ME2 and NO rush on ME3.  Give us more reason to play ME2 for a while and get ME3 absolutely right rather than grabbing for the cash as fast as possible. 

[forgivingrud]

Honestly, I dont mind which path bioware decides to take its story in, Its their story to tell. The problem I do see most (including myself) having, is how it was explained in the first place. I dont mind that they concentrated on characters instead of plot, its just the plot holes themselves that bug me. Theres the VS somehow being the only person able to ignore the effects of the seeker swarms, the collectors themselves never leaving a trace even though they blasted off with their ship after every abduction (wheres the crater?), and the super secretive omega 4 relay being colored red (they dont want attention, but they color it red so that absolutely no one will question where it leads?).



So really, I would have had no problem with the changes in their story if it werent for the vague and illogical explanations given for some of them. If you dont buy a detective story because you dont like the genre, then dont buy it. But if you do like the genre but dont like it because the detective somehow always finds the criminal without any evidence, then yes, there is a basis for criticizing the plot itself.

[Getorex]

Another thing to consider vis a vis ME2 and the overall advancement of the story. While the CORE story (Reapers) was not advanced all that much, the universe of ME was. 1) If you weren't an a-hole in ME1 then you left Wrex alive, which comes back in ME2 with Wrex working at uniting the Krogan. From Mordin's loyalty mission, you learn that the possible end of the genophage and the freeing of the Krogan is at hand. Mordin was in favor of united Krogans and he has the basis for developing a cure now. 2) Humans either ARE the Council or have a seat on the Council depending on what you did in ME1. 3) The Geth problem has largely been solved and not only peace, but partnership/friendship with the Geth is possible. 4) The end of the Geth problem leads to an end to the problems for the Quarians.  5) If you weren't an a-hole in ME1 then you let the Rachni Queen go protecting a thought-extinct alien race, undoing an injustice from before ME1 AND gained a new ally (and yet another partner/friend race among the others). 

The universe/backstory going on all around in ME is setup to resolve favorably in ME2. I don't care for single-minded FPS-like focus on ONE item (Reapers) while the developers blow off anything else. No thanks. This is not an FPS and is richer for wider and broader content. The game is the thing, not ONLY the resolution of the Reaper issue.

I keep seeing this story/game as a rough parallel to The Lord of the Rings:  a small band of heros is out against impossible odds to defeat a great evil.  There is virtually no chance of rescue or aid.  The first story of the Rings trilogy setup the whole thing (ala ME1).  The second story of the trilogy didn't advance the story very much and is much like ME2  (How many here complain about the lack of core story advancement in "Fellowship of the Ring" and thus state that you should have skipped it and gone right to the 3rd?).  The third in the trilogy resolves everything ala the coming ME3 (though I wouldn't mind wiggle room for more beyond ME3...I hate to see the entire thing go away - I consider it one of the absolute best games I've ever played).

Modifié par Getorex, 24 septembre 2010 - 05:18 .

[Getorex]

J4N3_M3 wrote...

JohnnyBeGood2 wrote...

ahem, dear posters with femshep avatars... in the story of "the man from snowy river": the man from snowy river captures the colt from old regret (the priiiize in ME lingo) not the wild bush horses (the equivalent of a vorcha).

Long story short: would you mind prettying up those femsheps a little?
(watch out for the Cross-eye bug when screen capping)

and your point is?

The point is...which image do you aim at when firing your weapons?  The one on the right or the one on the left?

[Getorex]

Bebbe777 wrote...

ME1 had Geth and Saren

ME2 had Collectors but no real leader Shepard could take on.

Sovereign were a danger to the Citadel and life as we know it directly

The Collectors were only a threat to humanity and in effect a danger to life as we know it but it wasnt focused on.

The sense of ultimate danger, fear and urgency felt lost in ME2

What is the more difficult enemy to deal with?  The one with a clear and acessible leader or the more diffuse enemy?  We all know the answer to that.  In any case, what you did was defeat the Reaper's prime guard, the once-mighty Protheans.  This sets you up as a particular badass and a special problem for the Reapers.

Oh, and you solved the mystery of the Omega relay - and opened the core of the galaxy for exploration and salvage of, literally, historic proportions.

Modifié par Getorex, 24 septembre 2010 - 05:35 .

[MrnDvlDg161]

The search of plot holes will be endless and some of the other legions of fans who even go so far as to quote book sources are going to be the really pissed as the game lives on its own program.



As for the 2011 ish release.... so what. What happens if they do and its a good game, what does time duration have anything to do with it? There is enough DLC for ME2 don't you think? More so than many games. Why not just put what ever you felt was going to bridge something into ME3 and boom. There you go. You have a full game to replay 100,000 times.



Have some confidence in this here dev team my fellow fans, they've carried the game this far.

[Getorex]

MrnDvlDg161 wrote...

The search of plot holes will be endless and some of the other legions of fans who even go so far as to quote book sources are going to be the really pissed as the game lives on its own program.

As for the 2011 ish release.... so what. What happens if they do and its a good game, what does time duration have anything to do with it? There is enough DLC for ME2 don't you think? More so than many games. Why not just put what ever you felt was going to bridge something into ME3 and boom. There you go. You have a full game to replay 100,000 times.

Have some confidence in this here dev team my fellow fans, they've carried the game this far.

Rushing is always a mistake, leads to bugs, undesireable shortcuts, and a bad resulting taste in the mouth of players.  Just don't go there, take your time, and do it careful, thoughtfully, and thoroughly.

[Fhaileas]

Personally, what I'd really like to see is a return to a tighter, smaller focus of critical characters in ME3. The antagonist needs to be close and personal, not that puppet-master who has a penchant for taking control and comically-ill-advised boasts about ass kicking. I think in ME1 one of the key dynamics - and it worked well - was that Shep had Saren as her Moriarty. The Reapers formed the backdrop for that drama: in the story, they were (almost) all of the epic arc. They provided the spectacle, the discovery, the unfolding, the plot twists. But you never really engaged with them. Saren was a great enemy, because he didn't keep ****ing up (like Harbi's minions), he wasn't faceless or characterless (like Harbi's minion's). The Reaper fight itself was a battle that took place outside your direct control: it was a (brilliant) series of cinematic cutaways, and far more dramatic, and epic, than a punch-up or gunfight. ME1's biggest **** up only happened when - you guessed it - the Reaper took ****ing control of Saren's reanimated corpse. In ME2 all you were fighting was, essentially, reanimations, and then only of beings who had no personality, no history with you.

I think the best thing they could do with ME3 would be to make the fight personal again, and leave all the bigger-scale stuff outside of direct gameplay: i.e. have those strategic moments back, where other people take actions based on your decisions rather than have you duke it out directly with massive robots. Your own fight should be with a real bête noir, and preferably someone with whom you already have a history. (You know who always seemed a bit maverick to me, who always seemed he could step out of your shadow and make a play for control himself? Yeah, I'm looking at you, Garrus, natural successor to Saren.)

Anyway, I don't want to get back to the ME1/ME2 comparisons again, had enough of those already (Thank God the disappointment thread is now locked...repetitions upon repetitions of the same old arguments). As far as future DLC is concerned, I hope they leave the game at the point where that Reaper fleet were approaching, don't add on any more characters or complexities in DLC, and get crafting a tighter set of parameters for ME3, where hopefully there'll be more focus in the personal conflict and less of an attempt to throw everything but the kitchen sink at the story. I'd rather there were a ****load of loose ends and unresolved situations than they keep adding more, then try to tie them all up and fail at delivering the central drama.

Modifié par Fhaileas, 25 septembre 2010 - 09:46 .

[MrnDvlDg161]

Getorex wrote...

MrnDvlDg161 wrote...

The search of plot holes will be endless and some of the other legions of fans who even go so far as to quote book sources are going to be the really pissed as the game lives on its own program.

As for the 2011 ish release.... so what. What happens if they do and its a good game, what does time duration have anything to do with it? There is enough DLC for ME2 don't you think? More so than many games. Why not just put what ever you felt was going to bridge something into ME3 and boom. There you go. You have a full game to replay 100,000 times.

Have some confidence in this here dev team my fellow fans, they've carried the game this far.

Rushing is always a mistake, leads to bugs, undesireable shortcuts, and a bad resulting taste in the mouth of players.  Just don't go there, take your time, and do it careful, thoughtfully, and thoroughly.

And what I'm saying is --- yes take your time... but if your confident that the time itself is something most people would consider a rush?

You can do all of these things at the pace your comfortable with, I'm just saying that if it happens to be faster than what people would like to believe, then let it be so.

Of course never kill quality because of it....but if your team is able to do so...then I say let them do it.

[Kavadas]

JockBuster wrote...
...the point of ME2, "Building a loyal TEAM" to fight for Shepard...

Yup, that's the part of ME2's "plot" which sucks.  You have eight recruiting missions and twelve loyalty missions.  None of the recruiting missions share any common threads or relation to one another.  Ditto for the loyalty missions.

And on top of that, none of the recruiting missions have any common threads or relation to any of the loyalty missions.

And on top of that, the entire "loyalty" concept boiled down to nothing but a few RNG modifiers for the SM.

Ooh, great basis for the game <_<

Modifié par Kavadas, 24 septembre 2010 - 07:08 .

[Iakus]

Getorex wrote...

I don't have a problem with ME2 at all (except perhaps the abrupt disconnect from ME1) but I do not think it had to make some huge story advance. If you expect and try to get some "Big Story" and plot advancement in each installment you simply make the next in the series (ME3 in this case) that much harder to make. People start to expect the next one to on up the previous one but if the story is fairly simple then it is hard to repeatedly beat the previous installment.

But the story needs to be advanced somehow.  Otherwise, ME 2 is essentially an expansion pack to ME 1 (Mass Effect:  Tales of the Sword Coast?).  I had held out some hope at first that somehow there was a Master Plan behind everything that happened in ME 2.  Events were happening "off screen" that Shepard was not privy to, and all will come together in ME 3.  Now it turns out that the team is pretty much winging it, plot-wise.  There is no Script or Master Plan.  This makes ME 2 feel like a colossal waste of time, story-wise.

You learned about the Reapers at near the end of ME1. ME2 was devoted to trying to learn a bit more about them and getting together the ability to deal with the Reapers in ME3. I like the character missions of ME2, it made it more personal and personable. I liked the characters.

I liked them too, generally speaking.  But they were completely flat and two dimensional outside their personal missions.  They didn't interact with each other, they were virtual mutes as the third squadmates on each other's loyalty missions, they rarely commented on the choices you make or the places you are in.   A lot more could have been done with them. A LOT more.  ME 2 felt like a bundle of DLCs all tied together rather than a single cohesive game.

As to the Reapers, what exactly did we learn about them?  Besides they need some sort of organic component to reproduce? (and theat was presented in a laughably silly way)

It's almost like some of ya'll are wanting or expecting an enemy to be revealed at the end of ME2 that was even bigger than the Reapers, and maybe pulling THEIR strings...like one of those Russian nested dolls. Bioware couldn't know beforehand that ME1 would do as well as it did so I can see how they might have wanted to hedge bets a bit and come to SOME sort of conclusion at the end of ME1 (just in case). ME1 did well so ME2 was born and quickly advanced (and now there's word that maybe ME3 is being accelerated for possible early to mid-2011 release). I actually fear an early release for ME3 because, as much as I want ME3 to play, I want it to really be fan-damn-tastic to the nth degree and I see rushing to get it out the door as a threat to its potential greatness.

What I wanted, hoped for, really, was for the Reapers to prove to be even more insidious than expected.  (the Collectors could have been the route to that)  I would have liked for them to have a "plan B" to reenter the galaxy, that the time Shepard bought was much less than expected.  This may be the case anyway, but we sure weren't shown it. 

For a "dark second act" you typically have the villains on the cusp of winning.  ME 2 ended with pretty much no change between ME 1 and ME 2.

After ME 2 I honestly have no idea what to expect from ME 3.  ME 2 was such a radical departure from ME 1 that I have no clue where the story is going.

ME2 was fine to me and an incremental bridge between ME1 and ME3 and a nice improvement in the control system and look. ME1 was way-cool as an intro to the universe of the game and so had some inherent requirements to meet that didn't apply to ME2.

As a standalone game, perhaps starring someone other than Shepard, it might have been...okay.   As the second act to Shepard's story, I found it ugh!

Modifié par iakus, 24 septembre 2010 - 08:30 .

[aguellid]

I won't go through the whole topic to say this but I'm sure some smart people already pointed these critical reasons for the HUGE disapointment ME2 was:

ME was a great game, one of the most
original ever made, a precursor to a great trend no doubt.
ME2 was a hell of a waste of admirable developping skill and franchise potential for marketing and monetary gains.
It must have sold better than the first one but at what cost!
9
silly adolescent characters is what we were given. No personalities, only
empty shells with sex drives.
Shepard is either a coward morale stuck up or a bully, he spends the whole game judging other species cultures'
IF not for the Justicar and the Assassin, Samara and Jade respectively, the game would have been entirely pointless.
No suspense at all about the irrelevant discoveries we made.
Bad job EA. Uncompelling story line,
waaayy to easy game, loss of features for gain of lesser features.
I have the feeling the devs did not want this.

There were some good points to the game of course but I won't highlight them as they do not even remotely start to compensate the poopoo this game is.

Of course I'll buy the third installement, because the first one was so good. But I won't deceive myself, it's most probably going to be more like the second one than the first.

BTW the funniest moment of the game was seeing silly Jacob take a bullet in the forhead. Miranda wouldn't die unfortunately. The Illusive man is EVIL IT IS OBVIOUS!

[joeymtl]

ME2 was a great game, and a bad sequel.

[VanguardtoDestruction]

Nightwriter wrote...

The story was unsatisfying for so many reasons. Can we really narrow it down to just one?

- It fails to create feelings of threat.
- They never get you mentally or emotionally onboard with the story.
- The game doesn’t know whether it’s supposed to be about the characters or the Collectors, and in confusion makes a grab at both and fails.
- The plot is not terribly interactive; you move through the story as if on a conveyor belt.
- The plot restart is handled sloppily enough that you feel like the whole thread of the story has been lost.
- The story itself goes nowhere and achieves nothing. You wonder why it’s there.
- The necessity of working with Cerberus is never illustrated and feels impotent.
- They try to create drama about working with the "darker" side, but the drama feels impotent.
- Shepard focuses so much on other characters in this game that he/she no longer feels like an actual person.

Let me go ahead and disagree with you on most points.  I'll start at the beginning.

1. Maybe it's just me, but millions of colonists being abducted made me feel threatened.  And once we knew the Collectors were working with the Reapers, my feelings only grew.

2. The game is a crescendo, all leading up to the suicide run.  If you did everything and put time in your teamates stories you will feel very emotionally invovled in the final sequences.  I admit at times some loyalty missions felt out of place in the bigger picture, especially in that void where you have 4 or 5 loyalty missions left and only one more story mission (Reaper IFF). 

3. It's a game about the characters, with the end goal being the destruction of the Collectors.  I think they did a great job of letting you get your team together and making you feel like you were walking into hell once you went through the Omega 4 Relay. 

4. Maybe to you, but I felt like I had a lot of choices once I hit Illium.  

5. I thought the destruction of the Normandy was a great start to the game, one that I had no clue about when I popped the disc in.  It tied the thread between ME1 and ME2 for me.  

6.  What do you mean it achieves nothing?  I know people don't like the Human Reaper or what not, but everything in the game leads up to that moment.  Everything you do in the game essentially is being done so that you can save it from a threat equal to Sovereign.  Sure, ME2 didn't have a "lead villain" but if you did not stop the Collectors the result would have been the same as letting Sovereign waltz into the Citadel and activating it.

7.  They rebuilt you, they have the intel, they believe in the Reapers.  If Paragon, you joined because you have no other options.  If Renegade, you gladly join in order to take advantage of resources etc.

8.  I agree on this somewhat that there wasn't really a feeling of you being on the "darkside" (there really shouldnt though, as you are already a Spectre). 

9.  I felt I learned more about my Shepard through his interactions with other characters.  The character interactions made him seem more human.  

[Getorex]

VanguardtoDestruction wrote...

Nightwriter wrote...

The story was unsatisfying for so many reasons. Can we really narrow it down to just one?

- It fails to create feelings of threat.
- They never get you mentally or emotionally onboard with the story.
- The game doesn’t know whether it’s supposed to be about the characters or the Collectors, and in confusion makes a grab at both and fails.
- The plot is not terribly interactive; you move through the story as if on a conveyor belt.
- The plot restart is handled sloppily enough that you feel like the whole thread of the story has been lost.
- The story itself goes nowhere and achieves nothing. You wonder why it’s there.
- The necessity of working with Cerberus is never illustrated and feels impotent.
- They try to create drama about working with the "darker" side, but the drama feels impotent.
- Shepard focuses so much on other characters in this game that he/she no longer feels like an actual person.

Let me go ahead and disagree with you on most points.  I'll start at the beginning.

1. Maybe it's just me, but millions of colonists being abducted made me feel threatened.  And once we knew the Collectors were working with the Reapers, my feelings only grew.

2. The game is a crescendo, all leading up to the suicide run.  If you did everything and put time in your teamates stories you will feel very emotionally invovled in the final sequences.  I admit at times some loyalty missions felt out of place in the bigger picture, especially in that void where you have 4 or 5 loyalty missions left and only one more story mission (Reaper IFF). 

3. It's a game about the characters, with the end goal being the destruction of the Collectors.  I think they did a great job of letting you get your team together and making you feel like you were walking into hell once you went through the Omega 4 Relay. 

4. Maybe to you, but I felt like I had a lot of choices once I hit Illium.  

5. I thought the destruction of the Normandy was a great start to the game, one that I had no clue about when I popped the disc in.  It tied the thread between ME1 and ME2 for me.  

6.  What do you mean it achieves nothing?  I know people don't like the Human Reaper or what not, but everything in the game leads up to that moment.  Everything you do in the game essentially is being done so that you can save it from a threat equal to Sovereign.  Sure, ME2 didn't have a "lead villain" but if you did not stop the Collectors the result would have been the same as letting Sovereign waltz into the Citadel and activating it.

7.  They rebuilt you, they have the intel, they believe in the Reapers.  If Paragon, you joined because you have no other options.  If Renegade, you gladly join in order to take advantage of resources etc.

8.  I agree on this somewhat that there wasn't really a feeling of you being on the "darkside" (there really shouldnt though, as you are already a Spectre). 

9.  I felt I learned more about my Shepard through his interactions with other characters.  The character interactions made him seem more human.  

i stand with VtoD here.  My going through all the trouble of recruiting and then doing their loyalty missions tied me to my peeps - to the point that I found it unacceptable to lose a single one during the final mission so I kept playing/replaying until I got through without a soul lost.  Multiple times.  I had invested in the squad and I wasn't going to just let any of them go down unless I REALLY couldn't get around it (hard code in the game ala Kaiden vs Ash in ME1 - always choose to save the babe).

Now it may have been better if Harbinger had shown up rarely and only briefly, merely enough to show himself to be a major threat that you would dread REALLY going against, but oh well...I liked that game anyway and was very into it (still am with DLC). 

[Dionkey]

IMO the feeling of coming to a climax (Your mom joke inc >_>) is gone unlike ME1. ME2 when you jumped the relay it was epic and the whole suicide mission was great but ME1 did it so much better. In ME2 you felt you were alone and no one else in the galaxy cared, its like playing by yourself at a park. The battle for the citadel had everyone giving 110% to fight off Sovereign and the geth fleet. There was that suspense and the question of how they were going to do it.