198 réponses à ce sujet

[Zulmoka531]

We can handwave everything away in the first game in similar fashion.  What difference did it make that there was this ancient, sentient plant that was controlling people and creating zombie-like monsters to fling at you? 

I always kinda thought the Thorian looked like a Reaper..or what we've seen of them. Anyways, enough derailment from me.

[Arijharn]

But the Thorian was needed in relation to the plot, it's how you understood (in part) the Prothean Cipher. If the Thorian didn't exist, well honestly we wouldn't be any closer to stopping Saren (remember; Saren knew the Conduit existed, just not exactly where.

[Merlin 47]

Disappointed in ME 2's story? No....but I agree with the idea that the whole Collector plot had potential, but was poorly executed.



Cover in ME 2 was WAAAAAY better and made more sense. To me, ME 1 was all just run-n-gun, point and shoot. And I started with ME 1 and really enjoyed it. But, ME 2 was better in just about every way.



My biggest gripes are with how you're automatically forced to work with Cerberus. WTF?!? Uhhh....you mean that I'm not ALLOWED to contact someone like say.....the Alliance? Or the Council? Work with them again like I did in ME 1? No, you're just automatically assumed to be working with Cerberus. I got tired when having a conversation with someone, they'd say "Oh, you're with Cerberus now?" I'd just roll my eyes and reply, "No; I'm not. They just brought me back and made me aware of this problem. I don't work with terrorists."



The other one being I would have liked more "non-romance" conversations with my squadmates. I mean, really? I've known Garrus since ME 1; you're telling me that calibrations are THAT important that he can't spend a few minutes asking me things, or reminiscing about past missions....or just generally "catching up?"

[betd2]

Merlin 47 wrote...


My biggest gripes are with how you're automatically forced to work with Cerberus. WTF?!? Uhhh....you mean that I'm not ALLOWED to contact someone like say.....the Alliance? Or the Council? Work with them again like I did in ME 1? No, you're just automatically assumed to be working with Cerberus. I got tired when having a conversation with someone, they'd say "Oh, you're with Cerberus now?" I'd just roll my eyes and reply, "No; I'm not. They just brought me back and made me aware of this problem. I don't work with terrorists."

No, they're GODAMM terroirsts say it right.

Merlin 47 also wrote...


The other one being I would have liked more "non-romance" conversations with my squadmates. I mean, really? I've known Garrus since ME 1; you're telling me that calibrations are THAT important that he can't spend a few minutes asking me things, or reminiscing about past missions....or just generally "catching up?"

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.

[Nightwriter]

kaimanaMM wrote...

And I love the characters and their stories but one of my biggest gripes about ME2 is that each character is an island.  For a game that was advertised as having all sorts of different personalities (think the Loyalist, Savage, Assassin, Genius campaign) it never delivered.  Yes, Miranda and Jack get into a two line fight.  Yes, Tali and Legion get into a two line fight.  But  That.  Is.  It.  Where is Grunt trying to recruit people for UKFC - Ultimate Krogan Fight Club?  Where is Mordin looking superior over morning coffee verbally dissecting the human body with Doc Chak?  Why is Garrus not checking up on Jacob's work in the armory or can he only calibrate the big guns?

I don't think I would have cared if the plot was weak, the enemy boring, or the story disappointing, if they had just entertained me with a team with deep and well written character interactions and relationships that evolved over the course of the game.

[Arijharn]

Nightwriter wrote...
I don't think I would have cared if the plot was weak, the enemy boring, or the story disappointing, if they had just entertained me with a team with deep and well written character interactions and relationships that evolved over the course of the game.

I would, as it is though I don't think there was enough talk between yourself and potential LI's if they aren't actually your LI.

Mordin had a great deal of substance I felt, talking about the moral ambiguity of the genophage all the way talking about why the Collector's need to be stopped and even him thinking about his favourite nephew (or it wasn't 'a lot' but was to me 'well paced'). However, because I don't ever romance Garrus (well, short of the awesome bromance) I feel as if he would much rather talk to the Normandy fire control console than to me... and I'm the one who saved his sorry ass!

All of this I would have to say is secondary to the story and while I believe it was engaging, there were problems that are apparent with it.

[Nightwriter]

Good character-to-character interaction can actually replace the story for me. If they keep me moved and engaged by what's going on between characters I sometimes won't notice if the story goes nowhere, because what's going on between these characters is going somewhere.

[xlavaina]

I'm not at all disappointed with ME2's story. This is because I realize that the story of ME2 was not to further the story about the Reapers, but rather to develop the characters. ME1 set the stage with the story, ME2 set the stage with the characters. Now everything is in place for one hell of a bang in ME3.

[Nightwriter]

Now, I didn't see it that way. I don't expect the sequel to end the story, but I expect it to do something.

At the end of ME2 I didn't feel like I did at the end of the Two Towers after the defeat of Saruman. Probably because defeating Saruman cut Sauron's forces in half and actually made an impact, Saruman was an enemy with a face as opposed to the Collectors who were faceless, and fighting Saruman felt big and important because Saruman was an enemy who gave you a feeling of great threat.

[Arijharn]

I thought Saruman was more effective not necessarily because he had a face, but because he was closer to home. Sauron was some floating eye on pretty much the 'other side of the world.'



I thought that if ME2 was to 'develop the characters' then it would have been handy to know about these characters in some way prior to their introduction, especially in regards to the Reaper menace.

[Nightwriter]

If we're encountering characters randomly then they don't need to have some huge connection to the plot, but if we're intentionally tracking them down for plot purposes then they need to have more connection. I would have preferred if at least some of the characters weren't recruited for professional reasons, but actually had some connection or involvement with the Collector plot.

[Arijharn]

Nightwriter wrote...

If we're encountering characters randomly then they don't need to have some huge connection to the plot, but if we're intentionally tracking them down for plot purposes then they need to have more connection. I would have preferred if at least some of the characters weren't recruited for professional reasons, but actually had some connection or involvement with the Collector plot.

Basically more like Legion's recruitment then? A sort of happy coincidence that we recruited him (it) when we were busy doing something else?

I thought that was pretty awesome, I just wish we had more clues that maybe something that wasn't the Collector's was searching for us (like what the various interviews with the game developers mentioned in advance of ME2's release)

[Therion942]

Nightwriter wrote...

If we're encountering characters randomly then they don't need to have some huge connection to the plot, but if we're intentionally tracking them down for plot purposes then they need to have more connection. I would have preferred if at least some of the characters weren't recruited for professional reasons, but actually had some connection or involvement with the Collector plot.

While I understand it's really critical to weave characters in to the plot, having everyone and their uncle have some sort of relation with the collectors is really lame - of course so is finding Conrad, Gianna, Shiala, Liara, and Liara's Dad on one random planet hint hint BW. However, what we got was hardly sufficient, if they have nothing to do with the opposing force, then have the characters voice their justification for sticking around instead of letting us speculate on it.

Simple things like adding one or two lines or half lines of dialogue without Shepard having to prompt them for it
Or hell maybe even not sticking around because they don't like the way Shepard operates, y'know sorta like Dragon Age?

Modifié par Therion942, 26 septembre 2010 - 05:45 .

[Mecha Tengu]

1. not enough missions fighting collectors

2. no real antagonist

3. story was running around the galaxy dealing with squaddies' daddy issues

[Greatwoof]

I can't keep track of every thing I saw in the thread even though I wanted to respond to some things, so this is will be my general take.

First I'd like to say I'm a little tired of the Illuminati.  Not only did I find that the Shadow Broker is an information collector, but an sovereign empire unto himself.  He not only gathers information, but has his own standing field army.  He's right up next to Cerebus.  I mean, space is big and it would be fairly simple to hide things, but Cerebus is another sovereign nation with as many, if not more, connections as the Shadow Broker.  Shoot, they seem to be better than any of the intel devisions than most of the governments.   I guess I should chalk this up as what I see as a a plot whole though.

Next,  I'll mention that disconnect I felt toward the Collectors.  I thought the Collectors were intended as the main story point.  They appeared, what 3 times?  They had zero impact on the game.  They are snatching people up and doing horrible things.  What did their attacks do?  What is the real horror of it?  I guess I won't mention the Alliance not getting worried about entire colonies going missing?  There were tens of thousands of people snatched.  This didn't raise and eyebrows?

As for the game though, how did this story affect me?  Did I lose resources, crew, ship maintenance, or any game play from losing colonies?  They didn't portray the horror or desparation through any game play I felt.  I guess I am supposed to just feel empathy for them simply because BW says I should?  Sure, I don't like seeing people abducted and tortured, but it meant nothing to my game experience besides seeing it in 3 missions.  Even then, it's pretty brief.  As has been pointed out, it seems I am fighting mercs in a series of disconnected events with 3 main story points that kick off 1 act, one filler story, and 1 placed in at the ending as a final story climax.  They impact is hinted at by crew conversation, but that's it.  Did the loss of all these people affect the characters in any way? 

Side Note:  Why in blazes didn't the Normandy hit the Collector vessel on the ground along with the batteries?  I had upgraded the guns by then, and the freaking thing was parked, defenseless on the ground.  When the batteries opened up, the Normandy should have been hammering at it.  I guess it's better to get the colonists kidnapped to who knows what fate and where then possibly disabling or maybe destroying the thing and letting it continue to reek havoc.

By the way, are there supposed to be 5 acts or 3?  I get TV and games mixed up some times.  As you can see, for me at least, things are so disconnected that I don't even identify the story acts.  I have no idea where they really began or ended. 

I don't count the opening video of the Collector attack as part of the game since I could play at that point nor even skip it.  I guess they killed Sheperd off so they could have start your character as a blank slate, change appearance, etc. but then your trapped into being part of one of your arch nemeses, and your pretty much hunky dory with it.  It brings back that one person's post about getting sick of always mentioning, "working for Cerebus."  They also want us to be thankful for being brougth back to life?  He was dead, what do I care (and don't get me started about rescusitating a corpse)?  They only brought Sheperd back to exploit his abilities any way.
The writers didn't even cover the thought of the character being dead and then brought back.  Is the character the same or a different person?  Is there any identity crisis?  Maybe a little to deep for a game, but oh well.  I have this terrible thought that to create a blank slate again, they Illusive man has a kill switch in the cyborg Sheperd.  How are they going to handle character development again when they've elevated Sheperd to super hero status now?  "My God, it's Sheperd!  Nothing gets to him/her!  Super, Mental Fortress of Solitude!  We all saved!  My hero..."  I all for a hero but they pushed him way over the edge in my opinion.  He's like a Captian Kirk * 10.  I guess I feel there's no humanity in the character.

More to the point though, I found myself spending the majority of my time placating the various personal needs of the troops to win some form of loyalty.  It didn't matter much what I did.  As long as I did they loyalty mission, things were golden.  There are only a couple points, Jack versus Miranda or Tali versus Legion, that you could break a loyalty that I was aware of.  Beyond this, I soon learned that beyond talking to Miranda, every one else is optional.  No matter the course I took on the field, how I treated people, whether I stood up for the little guy (which was sorely lacking), or never abandoning a teammate (also sorely lacking).  Take Zaeed.  All I did was a loyalty mission and done.  I mean, Zaeed was betrayed and left to die.  He seems to have some issues with this, but my working hard with my squad, fighting for them (what little opportunity there was) or any one didn't have any affect on him?  Sure, he's hard, but he's also practical and to the point.  Maybe he's more sociopath than normal so actions mean little, but it would have been nice to gain allegiance by example and action than just a single mission.  Did I ever have to aid a squadmate on the battlefield, come to their aid, rescue them, cover for them with Cerebus, or any thing?  Nope, just need a mission.  As some one pointed out, the characters are just mobile guns on the battlefield.  Of course, I'm not sure any game has actually done any thing different, but it would be nice if one did.  The battle should be it's own story.  Let's take Miranda.

I always woo her.  I did Tali once just to see if I could see what she looked like, but we all know how that turned out.  I guess she's just too professional, but she never complains about my character taking unnecessary risks, darn near getting his head blown off, or doing general stupid (heroic I guess since I survived them) actions.  Shoot, Tali I'd expect to say some thing even more so, even though I don't court her, since she's not military.  I mean Miranda even makes you promise to not get killed.  The promise doesn't seem to have any meaning in combat when I'm doing some thing stupid again, like pushing my health as far as it goes to get that last shot in or getting hammered so I can take out the shooters attacking my squadmates.  I don't even bother with medigel.  I normally finish all fights myself if they get taken out since I save a 100 creds.  I'm surprised this doesn't ****** off the people under my command.  Aren't I supposed to care about them?  Of course who needs a corpsman or doctor when you snap back wash, after wash.

People use The Dirty Dozen, the Seven Samurai, etc, as examples.  The thing is, you learn about these guys through the story and they are directly tied to the story.  I don't feel that in ME2.  It's like the game tried the Collector part, then tried the character part, but didn't deliver on either.  To fit both, they cut out a great deal of story building for either.  It's like an anthology.  There's a bunch of stories in them but they only connection is the theme of the book.  How did the characters connect to the story?  Did I meet any one during a colony search?  Did I see a promising idividual on Omega?  Did one of them come up to me, after recognizing Sheperd's name, and want to serve with Sheperd (the character was portrayed as a super hero)?  Nope.  By the nature of handing out dossiers, they almost immediately alienated the characters from the story and fit them into bubble universes.  Building the team was no longers Sheperds problem.  All he had to do was collect the complete set to gain the online promotional prize!  Skippy. 

Of course the Illuminati knows all so Sheperd was second placed any way.  TIM had it all lined out.  Instead of answering with generalities and telling Sheperd it's his problem to assemble a team, he hands him his selection, which weren't even Cerebus.  Almost a garuntee that Sheperd will act against Cerebus.  Instead of making it a pressure point, and saying, "get the team together," or here are my recommendation, then Sheperd running into various sorts and actually hiring them instead in the course of finding TIM's recommendations, you're stuck.  I think that would have been better considering my characters view of Cerebus.

Then there are the Collectors.  Folks talk about Big Reveals.  Well my impression is that there were few and the ones there, like the Collector ship set as a trap one.  It was brief then over.  Were there others?  Did any one get the collectors edition?  If, so, let's look at the Scion.  It's supposed to be another example of the evil Collector experimentation.  Was this used or introduced in any way?  Could they not have worked this as part of the story?  Instead, all I got was one pile of discarded corpses followed the Prometheon are Collectors, less than 5 minutes apart, in one mission.  Why weren't there autopsies on the Collectors I took out?  They needed the ship for the to find out about their genetics for the big OMG?  Then all Sheperd really says about it was, "Well spiffy, let's go kick some more butts." 

Finally, one of my biggest beefs, any military response is considered a renegade response.  Let's take Haestrom as an example.  You come across the dead Quarian marine's radio with Kal'Reegar talking.  He's almost asking for a sitrep, but can't quite find the dialogue for it.  Then you pick of the radio and use the, "they're dead response," you get renegade.  It's not like a commanders responsibility is to keep track the disposition of his men or show conern for them.  It's not like he needs to care or look after them.  Sure, he sends them into harms way, but it is abosulely irresponsible, if not court martial material, to not learn about what happened to your men.  Some guy, whom calls himself Sheperd, picks up your men's radio and start to speak on it, tells you the sitrep from hiswhere he is or the what happened the marines is considered a renegade,  Reegar doesn't even enquire about his people and Sheperd can't even be honest and tell him they are KIA or give a brief run down of what appeared to have happened?  Reegar doesn't even question this stranger on the mike?  He even assumes it's THE Sheperd and he's here to kick buttocks.  He doesn't even bat an eye why any one would be on the God forsaken rock and probably fightign Geth?  Nope, you try and do any thing militarily responsible and you are renegade.  I'm surprised Sheperd doesn't wear fluffy, bunny slippers to combat and fling pillows instead of live munitions.  I even have the Ruthless rep from the first game (the job was to save people, and that Sheperd did it, probably at great personal cost by losing his people to save others).  I'm surprised one's rep doesn't influence the paragon/renegade points.  Okay, a little off topic, but I had to get that off my chest.  Really bugs me.

At any rate, I am fortunately running out of steam.  I hope I made some sense.

[Nightwriter]

Therion942 wrote...

While I understand it's really critical to weave characters in to the plot, having everyone and their uncle have some sort of relation with the collectors is really lame - of course so is finding Conrad, Gianna, Shiala, Liara, and Liara's Dad on one random planet hint hint BW. However, what we got was hardly sufficient, if they have nothing to do with the opposing force, then have the characters voice their justification for sticking around instead of letting us speculate on it.

Simple things like adding one or two lines or half lines of dialogue without Shepard having to prompt them for it
Or hell maybe even not sticking around because they don't like the way Shepard operates, y'know sorta like Dragon Age?

Well it's not lame.

That's like saying "You need to recruit Mordin Solus because he's the only one who can provide you with anti Collector swarm technology" is lame. See what I mean?

I am saying all the other characters need good reasons like this. Example:

"We need to be able to counter Collector biotics. A rogue Cerberus cell once developed a single prototype biotic amp based on Collector technology and used it on a single child test subject. Name's Jack. Go get her."

[Arijharn]

I think his point was that it's nice not to actually have everything connected to everything else... that sometimes bits of randomness is refreshing. I think he has a point tbh, if everyone is somehow connected to the Collector's then the universe would just seem to be a bit smaller, especially since the Collector's are supposed to be nigh mythological creatures.

[Nightwriter]

Randomness is quite refreshing. Like I said, I would've liked more of it. Unfortunately, none of the ME2 characters besides Legion are random.

[Turin_4]

Smudboy,

Hmm?

--------

When you talk to Sovereign on Virmire - THAT is a revelation.  In
contrast, when the Big Reveal that the Collectors are OMGProtheans,
there's a shrug and a nod and a let's get this show on the road.  And
like I said, if you'd played ME1 and talked it over with anyone else who
had you both had to at some point say, 'I wonder what happened to the
Protheans.  Sure the Reapers reaped, but what did they do with them, did they just fire a big laser?  What happened, really.'

*shrug*  Personally, that was my experience having played ME1.  I did wonder that about the Protheans, and did despise the Reapers for having wiped out the Protheans.  I really got into the Codex, and all the things the Protheans were supposed to have done, and when it turned out it was all a hoax and then the Reapers actually enslaved them to boot, it was even worse.  Just my experience.

---------

At the end of ME2 I didn't feel like I did at the end of the Two
Towers after the defeat of Saruman. Probably because defeating Saruman
cut Sauron's forces in half and actually made an impact, Saruman was an
enemy with a face as opposed to the Collectors who were faceless, and
fighting Saruman felt big and important because Saruman was an enemy who
gave you a feeling of great threat.

Wait a second, now from ME2 you're expecting 1/3 of LotR?  Jesus, man.  And of course, hey, defeating Saruman didn't remotely 'cut Sauron's forces in half', all it actually did was free up the good guys to face the next challenge as were roughly Gandalf's words on the subject if I remember correctly.  They had to defeat Saruman because if they didn't, they'd be wiped out, not because Saruman was working for Sauron.  Saruman was betraying Sauron by that point in the story, remember?  Anyway, you can't actually expect a dang video game to have the story oomph of a hundreds-of-pages long epic one-of-the-best ever stories written.

And, by the way, if you trawl the Internet long enough, you'll find another thread somewhere...just like this.  Somewhere, in fact, there will be someone very, very much like smudboy, probably with a youtube video series of his own, talking about how poorly written it is, how much better he could have done, but strangely lacking any offerings of his own in the field.

I wonder, posters in this thread, how many times have y'all played ME2?

Modifié par Turin_4, 26 septembre 2010 - 02:04 .

[kaimanaMM]

Did I feel for the Protheans? I certainly did.  I wanted to shake my fist!  But Miranda just shrugged at me and Jacob was oddly silent, so all I was left with was reloading my SMG and continuing on my way.

The point : That moment should have been a powerful moment of dawning realization about the horrible fate of a once great race now brought so low followed by an uppercut of 'this is the price humanity will pay if I fail'.  Maybe if we'd encountered the Collectors more often.  Maybe if we had been made to feel some sort of connection to the colonists being abducted.  Maybe if our team mates had done something other than act relatively unimpressed with the whole thing.

I've played ME2 about 6 times now.  I love ME2.  I love the characters and I like the story.  I enjoy the combat, the music, the atmosphere. But there are glaring (to me) areas where the game fell short of what it was advertised to be and what I had been looking forward to.

[Merlin 47]

betd2 wrote...

Merlin 47 wrote...


My biggest gripes are with how you're automatically forced to work with Cerberus. WTF?!? Uhhh....you mean that I'm not ALLOWED to contact someone like say.....the Alliance? Or the Council? Work with them again like I did in ME 1? No, you're just automatically assumed to be working with Cerberus. I got tired when having a conversation with someone, they'd say "Oh, you're with Cerberus now?" I'd just roll my eyes and reply, "No; I'm not. They just brought me back and made me aware of this problem. I don't work with terrorists."

No, they're GODAMM terroirsts say it right.

Oh, sorry.....GODAMM terrorists....satisfied? lol
But I do agree; they ARE terrorists!  Pretty it up however you want, they're terrorists.

[smudboy]

Turin_4 wrote...

And, by the way, if you trawl the Internet long enough, you'll find another thread somewhere...just like this.  Somewhere, in fact, there will be someone very, very much like smudboy, probably with a youtube video series of his own, talking about how poorly written it is, how much better he could have done, but strangely lacking any offerings of his own in the field.

I wonder, posters in this thread, how many times have y'all played ME2?

High schoolers could come up with a better plot.  Shepard fights the Collectors out of revenge and duty.  There.  A better plot.  It tells a tale of self-discovery through one-sided vengeance in the journey to stop the slaves of the Big Bad, where the player can see squadmates as cannon-fodder stepping stones to their goal, or intricate friends along their tale of reclaiming their lost humanity, or becoming a fiery hand of vengeance.

It's not so much the story that's bad, it's how it's executed that's bad.

[Pacifien]

Okay, so I'm closing this thread in favor of this one. The topics being covered are so broad, however, that if you want to discuss one specific plotline, I highly recommend starting a new thread that is focused on each different topic.