Youknow wrote...
Yep. The thing with Mass Effect 2, is that it's dialogue is surprisingly decent at moments. That's what make people really see it as a good story when they are playing. It's when you go back the 2nd time or stop and think about the story that you're like ... "eh."
The scenarios of Mass Effect 2 themselves are pretty awful.
I think a lot of people have rose-colored glasses regarding ME1 a bit. ME, being the first in the trilogy and all and still adhering more strongly to the RPG side of the action-RPG equation, was mostly exposition and establishment. It had some dialog moments that were outstanding (Virmire, the pure renegade epilogue, just to name two), but outside that the dialog was pretty much all for the singular purpose of establishing setting, character and theme. It was absolutely frought with its own writing problems as well that people tend to overlook, like for example the biggest plothole in the trilogy thus far being the
one that raised the dramatic question and kicked off the entire plot.
ME2 didn't have to deal with exposition remotely as much, and could focus more on developing the overarching plot and keeping the dramatic question alive, relationships, and the player's attachment to the game world through it. You can argue whether ME2 was ultimately successful in that until the cows come home, all I'm doing is bringing up that from a storytelling position, that was its role -- it was the middle part in a trilogy, after all. Sure, it dispensed with a lot of the RPG aspects, but let's be frank many of those aspects they ditched were clunky, tiresome messes, and brought in its own that were terrible in their own way. It was much more of an action game that happened to have an interactive plot; there's nothing wrong with that, but on the other hand it was a deliberate but very subtle genre shift nevertheless (and it happens to be my opinion that shift was one in the right direction).
I personally thought the dialog with
established characters in ME2 was overall pretty good -- it developed Shepard's relationship to those characters, added new twists and turns, and deepened the meaning and impact of those characters overall. Some of it was just straight-up wallbanger territory, especially the stuff with some of the new characters, but let's face it some of it was deliberate and had a definite point ("Ah yes, 'Reapers'").
But anyhow, I digress. Looking back at ME1 is not going to have much weight of objectivity. There's nothing
wrong with that since we're discussing opinions of the games and the trilogy and that's always subjective, but let's not fool ourselves into thinking it's objective analysis.
And, a word about "realistic consequences" and "realism" that came up ten or so pages ago. Let's be frank, this
is science fiction and nobody's suggesting or expecting ME to hold up to a scrutiny of "realism" that something like BF3 or MW should be held to. What "realism" means in this case, at least to me, is whether the subject of discussion stays true to the universe, remains consistent and logical, adheres reasonably to the expectations raised by previous installments in the series, and doesn't break suspension of disbelief.
For example, let's say that at the end of RotJ, Han had gotten into the shield generator and reversed the polarity of the generator's emitter dish, bounced a chronoton particle beam out of it which opened a quantum foam disruption in the Death Star's reactor core, thereby crushing it into an itty-bitty chunk of metal. Basically, I just duct taped a generalized TNG or Voyager ending onto the Star Wars trilogy. Is it "realistic" in the strictest sense (that meaning reflecting actual reality opposed to in-universe reality)? of course not. It's a freaking space opera! But on the other hand, it
does violate the rules of the universe as presented, is out of character, doesn't adhere to the viewers' expectations, isn't reasonable and doesn't logically flow from previous plot developments, and thereby breaks the suspension of disbelief and can't be said to be "realistic" relative to the universe and story we're presented.
Seriously, "it's science fiction! it's not meant to be realistic!"
isn't a "get out of plot, characterization, and logic consistency free" card.
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