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[Nightwriter]

Phaedon wrote...
In my opinion, saying that ME2's story was poor compared to ME1's is wrong based on this:

The formula used in ME1's plot was reused in ME2. You don't see it? Well, let's see.
-Find some squaddies
-Do some story-based missions
-Kill the bad guy

This is really simplifying things, Phaedon. A story's quality is not determined by so bare a skeleton or so simple a checklist. Concerning your points:

I agree there's no comparison, because ME1 wasn't a recruitment game. I liked it better for this.

I also prefer ME1's plot missions, and was not aware ME2 had more story-based missions than ME1. However, if it did, it would appear these story focused missions did little work in drawing focus to the story.

I respect that you found the suicide mission enjoyable. I personally liked ME1's because I felt like I had gone on more of a journey to get there.

[Badpie]

Nightwriter wrote...

Inspired by Casey Hudson’s statement that people who speak of ME2’s lack of story do not understand that the characters are the story. I think this deserves some thought and respect. Actual quote I paraphrased is here.

To fans, I ask:

Did you feel that the characters constituted the story, like Casey says, or did the characters feel separate from the story? If they did feel separate to you, why did they feel separate? Why didn't you experience the story-character fusion Casey describes? Were the characters enough to carry the game to your satisfaction?

ME2 gets a lot of criticism for lack of story. If Casey's suggestion is right (and I think it at least deserves consideration), and the characters are the story, a lot of that criticism becomes unfair. So... is it unfair?

I think criticism is perfectly fair.  Because if you're claiming that the characters are the story, then you need fully rounded, well developed characters.  And I thought some of the characters had potential to be really interesting, but they never fully reached it, probably because there were so many of them.  It was disappointing.  

And as interesting as characters are, you still have to write a great plot.  So that's a total cop out.  The whole "the characters drive the story thing" is complete BS.  No, the writer drives the story by actually writing one.  And in my opinion the story of ME2 was inferior to the story of ME1.

[ReiSilver]

I agree with adam_grif, the characters were the whole point of ME2 to be sure, but they didn't replace the need for a strong plot. Sure you had great characters, who had nice isolated stories. Emphasis on the isolated. I think this is what makes the loyalty missions feel more like side quests then 'main story quests.'

Take ME1's example of Liara and Wrex. Take Liara with you to confront Benezia and you get some unique dialogue that makes Liara seem more real, more integrated into the universe. With Wrex on Virmire he's faced with a possible cure for his people, extending off the conversations you've had with him up to this point and you cannot advance the story until you have dealt with Wrex.

In ME2 the characters are in bubbles with only a few glimpses of interaction that should have been more prominent. When I got Legion on board I headed straight down to Tali to talk with her because I knew her character would have something to say about this and I wanted to straighten that out. But no, there's no dialogue there until the argument scene. We take characters along like third wheels on loyalty missions where they're nothing but a silent gun and powers even when they should have something to say. I'm supposed to believe Tali or Thane have nothing to say on Garrus' quest for revenge, that Grunt has nothing to contribute to Mordin's quest, that Tali would stand by without significant input when you're on Legions loyalty mission?

We finally get to the endgame and we have so many specialists that you can end up with characters hanging around in the background like wallpaper. It's great to have so many characters but it leaves them being too interchangeable for them to feel connected to the main plot, let alone carry the game in the place of plot.

[marshalleck]

ME2 was clearly an experiment that I think Bioware will not be likely to repeat in the future. I do applaud them for trying to grow beyond the Bioware RPG Cliche Chart though. Hopefully DA2 will be a bit more successful.

Modifié par marshalleck, 09 janvier 2011 - 02:57 .

[Nightwriter]

kregano wrote...

Yeah, I definitely believe that ME1's story is massively overrated on this forum. The overall plot was pretty weak and generic, and while the characters and the main quest planets were well done, they couldn't make up for the deficiencies in the plot. Honestly, by the end of ME1 you just about everything you need to know about the Reapers- how they do things, what they do, and where they are. The only questions are why they do what they do and if they have a backup plan, which are things that ME2 can only partially answer because it's the second part of the trilogy. ME1 casually chucked the potential mystery of the Reapers out the window that they had to create the Collectors as a mysterious force because they gave us practically everything in the Reaper playbook.

Then you have to add in the Karpyshn factor, since he came up with the overall plot of the trilogy and it's not that surprising that the plot kinda sucks in both games.

The middle class, in the presence of the poor and hungry, are rich men. So too is ME1's story a rich man in the presence of ME2's.

And I disagree that everything about the Reapers is revealed in ME1 and there's nothing more to learn.

[Barquiel]

Badpie wrote...

And as interesting as characters are, you still have to write a great plot.  So that's a total cop out.  The whole "the characters drive the story thing" is complete BS.  No, the writer drives the story by actually writing one.  And in my opinion the story of ME2 was inferior to the story of ME1.

I agree.

Every character has his/her 15 minutes of fame

and then...
You can forget the squaddie (unless he/she is your LI)

I think that's not really character-driven (Planescape: Torment or KOTOR 2 were good character-driven stories...imo)

[Phaedon]

Nightwriter wrote...
This is really simplifying things, Phaedon. A story's quality is not determined by so bare a skeleton or so simple a checklist. Concerning your points:

I agree there's no comparison, because ME1 wasn't a recruitment game. I liked it better for this.

I also prefer ME1's plot missions, and was not aware ME2 had more story-based missions than ME1. However, if it did, it would appear these story focused missions did little work in drawing focus to the story.

I respect that you found the suicide mission enjoyable. I personally liked ME1's because I felt like I had gone on more of a journey to get there.

I can't really argue anything, because this is your opinion, but saying that I am oversimplifying things while calling ME2 a recruitment game is wrong. 

[Jonathan Shepard]

TMA LIVE wrote...

The characters are the story simply because you're going through all their stories. And based on how things end, the suicide mission could be the end of them. You recruit them, you talk to them, and get involved in a personal moment of their lives. You get about 12 of these, as if you're playing an anthology, where the Shepard is the only connection between them.

The only problem is, the characters aren't connected to each other. If it was about them, you'd be exploring how they interact as a team and apart of your crew. Like any TV show, or Star Trek to be more specific, there's more then just the relationship between the main character and his crew. It's suppose to be about the crew itself being a family, or not.

Exactly. You'd think Mordin and Grunt would've had a fight of some sort. I expected more Wrex-on-Virmire like situations for them. Honestly, it's a great game, no doubt about it. But it wasn't a sequel. All of these characters are most likely going to be side-lined in ME3. So, it pretty much IS an anthology.

[Nightwriter]

Phaedon wrote...

I can't really argue anything, because this is your opinion, but saying that I am oversimplifying things while calling ME2 a recruitment game is wrong. 

... Everyone I have spoken to, the positive and negative alike, the defenders and the critics, have stated that ME2 is a recruitment game.

You, with your... confusing thingy, that you do.

[ISpeakTheTruth]

You know people all this hate toward ME2's story sort of makes me smile because if you look at ME1's story there is a plot hole in it so massive that you have to suspend all belief in order to enjoy it.



The Plot Hole: What was Saren doing wasting time for? All Saren, Soverign, and the Heritic Geth had to do was attack the Citadel. Instead of cutting out all the random running around the galaxy doing rather random things they could have just attacked the Citadel and the game would have been over.



The story in ME1 makes no sense. Why would Saren need a Krogan army? Once Soverign had activated the Citadel the war would have been over there's no need for an army of Krogan. What was the purpose of trying to enlist the Rachni or that evil plant monster? Again all they had to do was attack the Citadel and no one else would have mattered.



At least ME2 had a story that didn't have this massive hole in the logic of the story.

[Vaenier]

ISpeakTheTruth wrote...

You know people all this hate toward ME2's story sort of makes me smile because if you look at ME1's story there is a plot hole in it so massive that you have to suspend all belief in order to enjoy it.

The Plot Hole: What was Saren doing wasting time for? All Saren, Soverign, and the Heritic Geth had to do was attack the Citadel. Instead of cutting out all the random running around the galaxy doing rather random things they could have just attacked the Citadel and the game would have been over.

The story in ME1 makes no sense. Why would Saren need a Krogan army? Once Soverign had activated the Citadel the war would have been over there's no need for an army of Krogan. What was the purpose of trying to enlist the Rachni or that evil plant monster? Again all they had to do was attack the Citadel and no one else would have mattered.

At least ME2 had a story that didn't have this massive hole in the logic of the story.

I like to believe that they required more than just the conduit from Ilos. They also needed the program virgil had to access the citadel systems. They were completely locked out, and would have taken weeks of hacking to regain control for sovreign. I got no proof, but it makes sense.

Krogan army is useless. Rachni were pointless. plant monster was a lose end he was trying to kill.

[lazuli]

Barquiel wrote...
Every character has his/her 15 minutes of fame

and then...
You can forget the squaddie (unless he/she is your LI)

I think that's not really character-driven (Planescape: Torment or KOTOR 2 were good character-driven stories...imo)

I disagree.  Most characters have the potential to play a pivotal role in the Suicide Mission.  Could this have been emphasized more?  Certainly.  And it probably should have.  As it is, I think the Suicide Mission is deep enough.  You have a lot of gaming work cut out for you if you want everyone to live.  Many of us don't view it as a challenge, but a lot of us have completed it half a dozen times or more.  How was it the first time through?  Did everyone live?  There are other threads to discuss these points, though.

When defending ME2's plot, I like to explain it as following a decidedly different structure than what we usually find in RPG's.  To me, its structure is like a TV series, with different episodes filling in the details and making us care about the characters between season finales like Horizon and the Disabled Collector Vessel.  This is something that I haven't encountered in any other RPG's before.  I think it worked well.

[Bourne Endeavor]

Frankly, I perceive that as an excuse to avoid conceding the main plot was lackluster and riddled with plot-holes and inconsistencies. The stories are entirely divorced from the Collector plot, some having absolutely nothing even remotely relative to the overall development. This is all the more prominent when the main plot resurfaces, the characters that are supposedly the story, are entirely nonexistent. In actuality, they remain nonexistent in virtually every aspect of the game that is not their individual bubble arc.

The Suicide Mission is arguably the only portion of the game when the characters display momentary individualization. When Shepard or EDI mention a plausible means to break through the doors. Jacob is quick to voice his opinion and likewise, Miranda with hers. When Miranda voices her opinion of her being the ideal choice for a leader, Jack and Garrus are vocal in their disagreement; well not Garrus, who only nods along unless Jack is dead.

Unfortunately that is the extent of the exchanges. You have partial dialogue whilst you traverse the Collector Base in regards to the dangers the squad is facing but little else. Due to the nature of this mission, one could theoretically conclude ample discussion is unnecessary but that is frankly the most vocal the squad is with one another devoid of the brief conflict scenes.

In a Mass Effect synopsis I watched, using Ash in the proceeding example. Should you have been involved with her. Shepard is provided the option of saying he could never leave her, to which she responds, "I know, and I'm grateful but... Kaidan died because of me. Because of us." Shepard can than chastise her for being a martyr or comfort her, citing she has nothing to prove.

This is a fantastic demonstration of attaching a separate story arc to the main plot and both characters grow because of it. Once again on the SM. If you chose Tali as a squad leader Miranda mentions how she got her entire team killed on Haestrom and thus brought Tali's recruitment mission arc into the main plot. Why this was such a rarity is absolutely baffling. It is the definition of plot development and not only acknowledges each character is aware of one another but offers their opinion of that character.

As it is Mass Effect 2 is a collection of individualized stories that exist in their own little bubble with the minimalist of exceptions. Garrus' qualms with Sidonis has about as much to do with the Collectors or the Reapers as Final Fantasy VII does with Final Fantasy VIII. (Read: Absolutely nothing)

A character driven story would acknowledge the characters, would attach their plights and blunders to the overarching plot. In spite of Tali's failure as a leader. She is no less able than Miranda according to the game. The death of your Tech Expect is due to a stray rocket, which has no bearing whatsoever on her leader capabilities.There was once again no individualism, no separation.

While I cannot be certain since you admittedly paraphrased, TC. If Casey insinuated we simply did not understand the story. That is partially insulting. I understood everything and thoroughly enjoyed most of the recruitment and loyalty missions. It does not change that in my understanding. I found your main story weak.

Modifié par Bourne Endeavor, 09 janvier 2011 - 03:29 .

[Phaedon]

ME1's story was pretty poor as a concept, anyway. Hunt down a rogue spectre who manages to escape from you all the time and find out that he is working with the geth in order to ensure the return of the Reapers. And the oh so great Conduit that you have been looking for all the time was a simple mini-mass relay. Well, duh. Sovereign could have just attacked the Citadel anyway.

[Nightwriter]

Dionkey wrote...

They weren't really getting in the way but it is sure convienent way to fix the mystery behind them while providing the enemy. For the story/gameplay, it can't be handled any other way. While some people don't agree with having all the squad members thats not really up for debate at this point, but to say the plot is bad is kind of missing the point on how they created the game. They point out they wanted it centered around characters and its a little too soon to judge how its handled in ME3.

So you are basically in agreement with what Casey said. Fair enough. I want to see it that way myself.

I guess my problem is that... I wanted a game that didn't need to wait until ME3 to prove its worth. But I am willing to wait.

[AntiChri5]

The story in ME1 makes no sense. Why would Saren need a Krogan army? Once Soverign had activated the Citadel the war would have been over there's no need for an army of Krogan. What was the purpose of trying to enlist the Rachni or that evil plant monster? Again all they had to do was attack the Citadel and no one else would have mattered.

Who doesn't need a Krogan army? Always useful. They couldn't simply walk into the Citadel. They needed the Rachni to find the Mu relay to get to Ilos and they needes the Thorian to make sense of the beacon. Soveriegn lost, even with his very best bypassing all of the Citadels defenses.

[Badpie]

Bourne Endeavor wrote...

Frankly, I perceive that as an excuse to avoid conceding the main plot was lackluster and riddled with plot-holes and inconsistencies. The stories are entirely divorced from the Collector plot, some having absolutely nothing even remotely relative to the overall development. This is all the more prominent when the main resurfaces, the characters that are supposedly the story, are entirely nonexistent. In actuality, they remain nonexistent is virtually every aspect of the game that is not their individual bubble arc.

The Suicide Mission is arguably the only portion of the game when the characters display momentary individualization. When Shepard or EDI mention a plausible means to break through the doors. Jacob is quick to voice his opinion and likelwise, Miranda with hers. When Miranda voices her opinion of her being the ideal choice for a leader, Jack and Garrus are vocal in their disagreement; well not, Garrus nods along unless Jack is dead.

Unfortunately that is the extent of the exchanges. You have partial dialogue whilst you traverse the Collector Base in regards to the dangers the squad is facing but little else. Due to the nature of this mission, one could theoretically conclude ample discussion is unnecessary but that is frankly the most vocal the squad is with one another devoid of the brief conflict scenes.

In a Mass Effect synopsis I watched, using Ash in the proceeding example. Should you have been involved with her. Shepard is provided the option of saying he could never leave her, to which she responds, "I know, and I'm grateful but... Kaidan died because of me. Because of us." Shepard can than chastise her for being a martyr or comfort her, citing she has nothing to prove.

This is a fantastic demonstration of attaching a separate story arc to the main plot and both characters growing because of it. Once again on the SM. If you chose Tali as a squad leader Miranda mentions how she got her entire team killed on Haestrom and thus brought Tali's recruitment mission arc into the main plot. Why this was such a rarity is absolutely baffling. It is the definition of plot development and not only acknowledges each character is aware of one another but offers their opinion of that character.

As it is Mass Effect 2 is a collection of individualized stories that exist in their own little bubble with the minimalist of exceptions. Garrus' qualms with Sidonis has about as much to do with the Collectors or the Reapers as Final Fantasy VII does with Final Fantasy VIII. (Read: Absolutely nothing)

A character driven story would acknowledge the characters, would attach their plights and blunders to the overarching plot. In spite of Tali's failure as a leader. She is no less able than Miranda according to the game. The death of your Tech Expect is due to a stray rocket, which has no bearing whatsoever on her leader capabilities.There was once again no individualism, no separation.

While I cannot be certain since you admittedly paraphrased, TC. If Casey insinuated we simply did not understand the story. That is partially insulting. I understood everything and thoroughly enjoyed most of the recruitment and loyalty missions. It does not change that in my understanding. I found your main story weak.

I could add to this but you summed it up perfectly.  Bravo.

[Moiaussi]

ISpeakTheTruth wrote...

You know people all this hate toward ME2's story sort of makes me smile because if you look at ME1's story there is a plot hole in it so massive that you have to suspend all belief in order to enjoy it.

The Plot Hole: What was Saren doing wasting time for? All Saren, Soverign, and the Heritic Geth had to do was attack the Citadel. Instead of cutting out all the random running around the galaxy doing rather random things they could have just attacked the Citadel and the game would have been over.

The story in ME1 makes no sense. Why would Saren need a Krogan army? Once Soverign had activated the Citadel the war would have been over there's no need for an army of Krogan. What was the purpose of trying to enlist the Rachni or that evil plant monster? Again all they had to do was attack the Citadel and no one else would have mattered.

At least ME2 had a story that didn't have this massive hole in the logic of the story.

They were looking for it because they knew the Protheans reprogrammed the keepers and they weren't sure what else they might have done, or what the conduit was, exactly. We as players know that they could have simply  attacked the citadel, and by the end so did Saren, but until Saren made it to Ilos, neither he nor Sovereign knew. So rather than simply hit the citadel and maybe fall into a cunning trap, they hedged their bets with various backup plans.

As for the Rachni, we don't really know. Saren wasn't an agent of the reapers yet though, so they wouldn't have had the other options yet, and the Council could have simply closed the Citadel and locked Sovereign out.

As for the Thorian, Saren needed the same info Shepard got, namely the translation key for the beacons so he could find the conduit.

There is also the possibility that Saren was trying to pull a 'Saruman', develop a defence against indoctrination before he succumbed, as well as his own, independant army.

At any rate, that isn't that big a hole, if one at all.

[glacier1701]

Nightwriter wrote...

Inspired by Casey Hudson’s statement that people who speak of ME2’s lack of story do not understand that the characters are the story. I think this deserves some thought and respect. Actual quote I paraphrased is here.

To fans, I ask:

Did you feel that the characters constituted the story, like Casey says, or did the characters feel separate from the story? If they did feel separate to you, why did they feel separate? Why didn't you experience the story-character fusion Casey describes? Were the characters enough to carry the game to your satisfaction?

ME2 gets a lot of criticism for lack of story. If Casey's suggestion is right (and I think it at least deserves consideration), and the characters are the story, a lot of that criticism becomes unfair. So... is it unfair?

 The main problem here is that while trying to make ME2 a character driven story they forgot about the importance of the MAIN character. After all the one mantra that BioWare (including Casey) has thrown at us time and time again is that the whole trilogy is SHEPARD's story - the story of the first Human Specter. Yet in ME2 we get nothing that explores or expands on any of Shepard's character. By now we've said all we have to on how its possible to have had the background of losing a unit on Akuze due to Cerberus but not being able to say anything about it, how you've been dead for 2 years and so that means you couldnt contact people yet cant tell the VS on Horizon that or even discuss the whole concept of being dead and now alive. ME2 basically threw out Shepard and tried to substitute all these other characters. That is where the critism about no story comes from in that the MOST IMPORTANT CHARACTER in ME2 was ignored. And since this is the PLAYER you've immediately relegated the player to someone along for the ride and not the primary instigator for the story and thus alienated them from the game. Is it any wonder that there is that critisism about there being no story? 

 We know that Casey is really the master of doubletalk and we've had many examples of this from his interviews. The one trait that any good game developer should have is to be able to see things from the PLAYER POINT OF VIEW. Casey seems incapable of doing that and thus has tried to turn critisism of ME2 by the players as being the players fault and not that of those working on the game. Mistakes can be made and admitting to them would not make us unhappy. In other words he seems incapable of admitting to problems. Personally I would almost say that for anyone who was thinking about getting into the game developing business Casey could be the example of the person you would NOT want as your boss. NOTE: I am saying ALMOST - lets see what comes up in the next few months from Casey before making any final determination on that side.

 In summary while using a character driven story is not a bad idea it was flawed as it was shown in ME2 as the most important character, Shepard, was completely left out. Casey seems not to recognise that and how players feel about how that leads to them being pushed off to the side. He compounds that by blaming players for a mistake made by BioWare whereas admitting to a mistake would have given us all much greater hope of seeing an absolutely fantastic game in ME3.

[MarchWaltz]

Phaedon wrote...
The formula used in ME1's plot was reused in ME2. You don't see it? Well, let's see.
-Find some squaddies
-Do some story-based missions
-Kill the bad guy

Friend, thats every bioware game.

[Nightwriter]

Bourne Endeavor wrote...

awesome wall of text

Very good post, Bourne. Fully expresses my problem.

And if anyone is interested in Casey's exact words, they were: 

"The funny thing is that people will say 'other than gathering your crew and building your team and getting ready for this mission, there's not much story there.' But that is the story."

It is clearly not meant as insulting. In fact, it sounds like they went in this direction because of our feedback:

"Part of what's great about a roleplaying game is that you have the choice of going off and doing other side stories, but that can be a problem, and that was one of the pieces of feedback we had about Mass Effect 1, that because the core story had so much intensity and pressure around it, when you would go off and do a side mission, it didn't have that kind of intensity and it wasn't directly linked as part of the story. That's where that Dirty Dozen team building structure addressed a lot of that on a fundamental level."

[Badpie]

glacier1701 wrote...




 The main problem here is that while trying to make ME2 a character driven story they forgot about the importance of the MAIN character. After all the one mantra that BioWare (including Casey) has thrown at us time and time again is that the whole trilogy is SHEPARD's story - the story of the first Human Specter. Yet in ME2 we get nothing that explores or expands on any of Shepard's character. By now we've said all we have to on how its possible to have had the background of losing a unit on Akuze due to Cerberus but not being able to say anything about it, how you've been dead for 2 years and so that means you couldnt contact people yet cant tell the VS on Horizon that or even discuss the whole concept of being dead and now alive. ME2 basically threw out Shepard and tried to substitute all these other characters. That is where the critism about no story comes from in that the MOST IMPORTANT CHARACTER in ME2 was ignored. And since this is the PLAYER you've immediately relegated the player to someone along for the ride and not the primary instigator for the story and thus alienated them from the game. Is it any wonder that there is that critisism about there being no story? 

*snip*

 In summary while using a character driven story is not a bad idea it was flawed as it was shown in ME2 as the most important character, Shepard, was completely left out. Casey seems not to recognise that and how players feel about how that leads to them being pushed off to the side. He compounds that by blaming players for a mistake made by BioWare whereas admitting to a mistake would have given us all much greater hope of seeing an absolutely fantastic game in ME3.

I agree 100%.  I felt like Shepard was a hollow shell of nothingness in ME2.  There was no character development.  He was a robot, and like you said I felt "along for the ride" instead of actively driving the story.  

Modifié par Badpie, 09 janvier 2011 - 03:40 .

[Ahriman]

glacier1701 wrote...

  In summary while using a character driven story is not a bad idea it was flawed as it was shown in ME2 as the most important character, Shepard, was completely left out. Casey seems not to recognise that and how players feel about how that leads to them being pushed off to the side. He compounds that by blaming players for a mistake made by BioWare whereas admitting to a mistake would have given us all much greater hope of seeing an absolutely fantastic game in ME3.

Unfortunately we cannot know Bioware admitted those problems or not, because admitting mistakes is not Casey's work. That's why I don't like to read his interviews, they are just advertisment and cannot be taken serious.  "Squadmates look disconnected from the plot? No, characters are plot." "Planet scanning is boring? No, it's new age of exploration" etc.

[Pwner1323]

Badpie wrote...

I agree 100%.  I felt like Shepard was a hollow shell of nothingness in ME2.  There was no character development.  He was a robot, and like you said I felt "along for the ride" instead of actively driving the story.  

Maybe YOUR Shepard was a robot with no development because mine was aweasome. Shepard came out in ME2 way better then in ME1. It goes deeper into his personal thoughts on the galaxy and the decision to join Cerberus or go solo was one that is placed throught the entire game on his dialog and not as a one time decision wich I enjoyed very much. Im sorry, but I bonded with my Shepard/Creation much more then in ME1.

[ISpeakTheTruth]

Moiaussi wrote...

ISpeakTheTruth wrote...

You know people all this hate toward ME2's story sort of makes me smile because if you look at ME1's story there is a plot hole in it so massive that you have to suspend all belief in order to enjoy it.

The Plot Hole: What was Saren doing wasting time for? All Saren, Soverign, and the Heritic Geth had to do was attack the Citadel. Instead of cutting out all the random running around the galaxy doing rather random things they could have just attacked the Citadel and the game would have been over.

The story in ME1 makes no sense. Why would Saren need a Krogan army? Once Soverign had activated the Citadel the war would have been over there's no need for an army of Krogan. What was the purpose of trying to enlist the Rachni or that evil plant monster? Again all they had to do was attack the Citadel and no one else would have mattered.

At least ME2 had a story that didn't have this massive hole in the logic of the story.

They were looking for it because they knew the Protheans reprogrammed the keepers and they weren't sure what else they might have done, or what the conduit was, exactly. We as players know that they could have simply  attacked the citadel, and by the end so did Saren, but until Saren made it to Ilos, neither he nor Sovereign knew. So rather than simply hit the citadel and maybe fall into a cunning trap, they hedged their bets with various backup plans.

As for the Rachni, we don't really know. Saren wasn't an agent of the reapers yet though, so they wouldn't have had the other options yet, and the Council could have simply closed the Citadel and locked Sovereign out.

As for the Thorian, Saren needed the same info Shepard got, namely the translation key for the beacons so he could find the conduit.

There is also the possibility that Saren was trying to pull a 'Saruman', develop a defence against indoctrination before he succumbed, as well as his own, independant army.

At any rate, that isn't that big a hole, if one at all.

Here's another pretty obvious hole in that logic.... He could have looked for all that information covertly as a Spectre and avoid the attack on Eden Prime that allerted everyone in the galaxy! Or better yet he could have spent his time looking for al of that information after the Reapers were released and the galaxy was being defeated again. Then he could go to Eden Prime when there's no one left and then go on his scavenger hunt because after the galaxy's be purged guess what Saren and the Reapers would have all the time in the world to look for what the Protheans did.

As for any possible traps on the Citadel again Saren is the most famous decorated Spectre ever he could have gone searching/scanning the Citadel fo anything else. Instead of going around blowing up bases and having Geth fly around the galaxy making everyone in the galaxy aware that something bad is going down.

@ Vaenier Seeing that the Reaers made every inch of the Citadel I think they'd be able to manually operate it will little to no problem. 

ME1's amazing story that everyone seems to loves at the end of the day makes no sense at all because it asks you to go along with a lot of rather large holes in the logic.

ME2's story made complete sense. Its story was better because it was believable and the character were better. As far as I'm concerned everything about ME2 as better. Graphics, Combat, Characters, Story everything.