Quests, particularly sidequests of the UNC/N7 variety, were meaningful in ME1 and mindless combat in ME2.
I've seen this sentiment around. To some extent, I share it myself. Which is interesting, because it's demonstrably false. Without getting too spoilery, excluding the collection quests (since I don't think anyone's actually thinking of them when they make this complaint), there are zero noncombat UNC missions. Excluding DLC, I can think of four or five noncombat N7 missions off the top of my head (DLC adds quite a bit more). And since there are about half as many N7 quests as UNC quests, once you're looking at ratios it's even more in ME2's favor. "No story" is even sillier, every N7 mission has a clear background of what happened there and why, and several are part of interesting, progressive quest chains.
So where is this "ME1 had more story, ME2 is all combat" sentiment coming from? I don't think you can say it's anything as facile and easily dismissed as "just ME2 haters grasping at straws." Human perception is anywhere between frequently and usually inaccurate; that doesn't make it any less real. In fact, any professional advertiser could tell you that it's more real than actual fact when you're trying to sell a product. So I think it's worth trying to figure out why people are getting this impression.
I have a theory that it comes down to the ability to respond, both by the player and by the game itself. To elaborate: In ME1, most UNC quests started not on the planet, but at the Galaxy Map, with Joker relaying a distress signal or Hackett giving you a brief. Some even started at hub worlds as conversations with an NPC. You could ask questions and interact with someone as you learned about your objective, and had someone to report back to and talk about how you felt about the outcome once you were done. Several quests had long, involved conversations with NPCs before the combat or once it was over, sometimes with persuade checks and paragon/renegade choices. The majority of quests had some mission-specific squadmate dialog or commentary, allowing you to learn their opinions on your actions and the world around you. Several quests changed based on your character's personal history, reflecting the differences between different Shepards and how they impacted the ME universe.
ME2 has none of this. N7 missions often have very interesting storylines, but the player absorbs them in a completely passive way, reading notes and emails or hearing recorded messages without any opportunity to make choices* or express opinions. Squadmates are silent, or worse yet, interject random, generic lines that are sometimes jarringly inappropriate for the scenario (I can't get over Garrus' "do you think anyone's here" on the Strontium Mule. I don't know, Garrus, those guys we shot on the way in might be). There's no opportunity to gain insight on their worldviews or to define Shepard's, nothing to tie these side-missions together with the rest of the game. None of the quests change from playthrough to playthrough or reflect Shepard's actions or history in any way (even if they're intentionally downplaying Shepard's background and psych profile, things like the Council and rachni decisions could change sidequests as well). It leaves a false impression that these varied, interesting and well-designed sidequests are less so than the (in many ways much more generic) ME1 assignments, because the most important element of quest variety, the interactive one, is missing.
So now that I've wall-of-texted at you all, what do you guys think? Is this really the core of the complaint, or is it something else? How were ME2 quests better, how were they worse, what would you like to see done with sidequests in ME3?
* There is one exception. Naturally it's the one with the bugged journal entry and the poorly presented interface that had lots of people making a choice they didn't want. Still, I gather that it's one of the favorites, and I'm willing to hazard a guess as to why.
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) What if my Shepard would have solved this problem differently than the solution that was forced on her by the game?"
