11 réponses à ce sujet

[Mr0TYuH]

The more I think of the trilogy as a whole, the more I'm starting to feel like ME2 was a complete waste of time.  What did we do in ME2?  We spent the vast majority of the game gathering the cast and gaining their loyalty.  The major choice at the end was whether or not to keep the Collector base or destroy it.  What were the effects in ME3.  Nothing really.

All the teammates that were introduced in ME2 were reduced to cameos or easter eggs in ME3.  In most cases, if they died in the suicide mission, they were replaced by someone else that did exactly the same thing.  All the decision regarding the Collector base did was make either the Control or the Destroy ending easier.

In ME2, we were told that Cerberus was a much nicer group than ME lead us to believe.  In ME3, they're back to being the same evil organization they were originally.  The Illusive Man was introduced in the novels, and even "The General" was introduced in ME, so there was really no effect there.  The decision whether to rewrite the heretics ends up having no significant value.  The geth end up united no matter what, it just modifies war assets a bit.

There is the case of Mordin, but even he can easily be retconned out.  If he died during the suicide mission, he is replaced by Padok.  In the first game, there was the news story about how Binary Helix had settled out of court after their research into a cure for the genophage returned no usable results.  Who was a major investor in Binary Helix?  Saren.  Who developed a cure to the genophage on Virmire?  Saren.  The implication is that Saren appropriated the research, and Binary Helix prefered to screw their customers than risk losing such a major investor.  Maelon's data could have easily been replaced with Binary Helix's data.  If you told Vargas that the asari was trying to bug their systems, he could have forwarded Binary Helix's data to you.  If not, he wouldn't.

In ME2, Shepard neither gained any weapons to fight the Reapers nor any insight into how to defeat them.  Learning that the Reapers want to use us to make more doesn't advance the plot in the slightest.  Nothing in the game advances the overall plot.

About the only thing I think ME2 introduced that played a large role in ME3 was EDI.  Now, this is my personal opinion, but I hated EDI.  I found her slightly annoying in ME2, but I came to loathe her in ME3.  I found her entire character arc to be cliche and boring.

It feels, to me, that you can lift ME2 out of the trilogy and it will have no effect.  It basically ends with everything exactly the same as the first game, and it does not introduce anything that was essential to ME3.  Am I the only one that feels this way?

[Thetri]

Mr0TYuH wrote...

The more I think of the trilogy as a whole, the more I'm starting to feel like ME2 was a complete waste of time.  What did we do in ME2?  We spent the vast majority of the game gathering the cast and gaining their loyalty.  The major choice at the end was whether or not to keep the Collector base or destroy it.  What were the effects in ME3.  Nothing really.

All the teammates that were introduced in ME2 were reduced to cameos or easter eggs in ME3.  In most cases, if they died in the suicide mission, they were replaced by someone else that did exactly the same thing.  All the decision regarding the Collector base did was make either the Control or the Destroy ending easier.

In ME2, we were told that Cerberus was a much nicer group than ME lead us to believe.  In ME3, they're back to being the same evil organization they were originally.  The Illusive Man was introduced in the novels, and even "The General" was introduced in ME, so there was really no effect there.  The decision whether to rewrite the heretics ends up having no significant value.  The geth end up united no matter what, it just modifies war assets a bit.

There is the case of Mordin, but even he can easily be retconned out.  If he died during the suicide mission, he is replaced by Padok.  In the first game, there was the news story about how Binary Helix had settled out of court after their research into a cure for the genophage returned no usable results.  Who was a major investor in Binary Helix?  Saren.  Who developed a cure to the genophage on Virmire?  Saren.  The implication is that Saren appropriated the research, and Binary Helix prefered to screw their customers than risk losing such a major investor.  Maelon's data could have easily been replaced with Binary Helix's data.  If you told Vargas that the asari was trying to bug their systems, he could have forwarded Binary Helix's data to you.  If not, he wouldn't.

In ME2, Shepard neither gained any weapons to fight the Reapers nor any insight into how to defeat them.  Learning that the Reapers want to use us to make more doesn't advance the plot in the slightest.  Nothing in the game advances the overall plot.

About the only thing I think ME2 introduced that played a large role in ME3 was EDI.  Now, this is my personal opinion, but I hated EDI.  I found her slightly annoying in ME2, but I came to loathe her in ME3.  I found her entire character arc to be cliche and boring.

It feels, to me, that you can lift ME2 out of the trilogy and it will have no effect.  It basically ends with everything exactly the same as the first game, and it does not introduce anything that was essential to ME3.  Am I the only one that feels this way?

ME2 was made pointless by ME3. I don't really get why Harbinger was pushed so much, if we dont get to interact with him in ME3 at all.

[grey_wind]

ME2 set up the major Genophage and Rannoch War arcs. Without the in-depth look that ME2 gives into the components of these arcs (Mordin's guilt, Legion's revelation of the true geth, the Quarians' desperation, Krogan culture) each of these arcs fall flat on their face with little to no emotional impact and no adequate set-up.
ME2 also answers why reapers reap and why they attack earth first. Had these explanations been left for ME3, everyone would have groaned contrivance.
Finally, it also introduces us to the Illusive Man (and Cerberus as a whole), who's more or less the primary antagonist that you interact with in ME3.
And finally, a lot of ME2 plot points are just dropped completely for some reason in ME3, like Arrival and the Collector Base, probably coz the writers were too lazy to give us real consequences. So not really ME2's fault.

[Alamar2078]

Silly me posted a nearly identical thread [yesterday] but in the wrong forum ... grrr

Modifié par Alamar2078, 10 avril 2012 - 04:19 .

[Alamar2078]

Repost from other forum / thread:

It's been around a month since I beat ME3 and in retrospect I'm disappointed by what I see as wasted opportunities. I really enjoyed ME2 but think that some of its characters were wasted and now I wonder if it was worth it ....

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In terms of characters I see some critical characters were introduced ... Specifically Mordin & Legion. A lot of the other ME2-only characters really feel like they were there to take up space though.

-- Morinth -- She doesn't appear in ME3 at all and is just a banshee at the end of the game. Well I guess this means letting her live was the wrong choice to make Heck she couldn't even impersonate "mom" to get you out of a sticky situation.

-- Samara -- She had the potential to help Shepard to influence the Asari to get onboard against the Reapers much sooner / easier. However her role in ME3 was reduced to a throwaway cameo [in terms of progressing the plot vs. the Reapers]

-- Kasumi -- Her graybox data could have been interesting depending on exact contents but it was pretty much a big fat nothing. Her appearance was at least mildly more impactful than Samara's

-- Zaeed -- Instead of moving in on the Blue Suns and helping us gather Mercs he just kind of stood around for a lot of the game.

-- Grunt -- Throw away cameo. I was kinda hoping he would be the resident meathead as opposed to Vega.

-- Thane -- He was dieing so I can't really say that I expected more. At least he got to go out well and showed Kai Leng what real skill is. Note: I wish Thane had slipped the tracer on Kai Leng. I think that would have been contribution enough ...

-- Jacob -- Well I hope nobody romanced him in ME2 and wanted to carry on anything meaningful. His cameo was sort of a throwaway but at least it used his Cerberus ties somewhat. Needless to say I would have thought that he could get you the location of a Cerberus location or two??

-- Jack -- It was nice to see that she's not crazy and is doing something useful with her life. I sure would have loved having some "biotic shields" or help during the retake Earth missions.

-- Miranda -- She managed to do one thing useful [offscreen] which was to put a tracer on Kai Leng. In terms of helping more directly against Cerberus .. locations .. breaking encryption ... finding other Cerberus folks on the run .. nothing


Out of all of the newly introduced characters only Legion and Mordin seemed to have an impact on the plot of ME3 that I would consider "worthy" of their potential.


***********************************************

In terms of plot the most relevant missions seem to be the threat of the Collectors. The decision of what to do with the Collector Base can be argued to be the big decision for the entire game. As far as I can tell whether Shep keeps or destroys the base it basically has little effect on how ME3 plays out. No new tech to use against the Reapers ... No magic bullet. The main plot points of ME2 seem to be a "big fat whoopity do"

***********************************************

Given the above items I'd have rather not been killed & rebuilt by Cerberus to start with. If the Council or Alliance didn't believe Shep I can see him taking covert help from Cerberus. This gets TIM in the mix and serves most of the purpose of having TIM. If the events of LotSB are in the main game then if you don't like where TIM is going then perhaps Liara / Shadow Broker would be an alternate patron.

Instead of some of the wasted recruitment & loyalty missions maybe we could have had more missions investigating Prothean ruins. Heck maybe some of ME3 could have been pulled into ME2. How powerful could Javik's reaction have been seeing the "collectors"?

************************************************

Summary: If they're going to waste the potential of the characters they introduced earlier then I don't see the point of ME2 at all and why BW didn't architect it more effectively.

[Alamar2078]

Note: I'm not saying we scrap all of ME2. There were tons of great moments. Items, in hindsight, that could be used for setup ... like Genophage, Geth vs. Quarians, etc.

What I'm saying is that some of the more "throwaway" missions, in hindsight, could have been sustituted with missions with more plot relevance.

Summary: ME2 && 3 had wasted opportunities that in hindsight I wish could be fixed or at least that the trilogy was predesigned to start with.

[Nuchy]

I hate when people say this, Mass Effect 2 is essential to the story! We get to see all the background story of all the races. We get to know the mass effect universe better. We are introduced to the illusive man and cerberus. Overall, it set the stage for Mass Effect 3 quite well.  

Not to mention, it was fun!

Dont talk about it like it was a burden, you know it was fun.

[DeathScepter]

I do think that railroading Cerberus into a meaningless evil organization is upsets me the most. I preferred having sleeper agents in all levels of each of the governments we interact with would be interesting. Also Miranda Lawson's Father, Mr. Henry Lawson, would be an interesting villain and rival to T.I.M. And Shepard.

Kai Leng should have been more interesting.

[Alamar2078]

Nuchy wrote...

I hate when people say this, Mass Effect 2 is essential to the story! We get to see all the background story of all the races. We get to know the mass effect universe better. We are introduced to the illusive man and cerberus. Overall, it set the stage for Mass Effect 3 quite well.  

Not to mention, it was fun!

Dont talk about it like it was a burden, you know it was fun.

I did not intend to say that it wasn't fun.  I think the gameplay was a blast.  The new romances were cool.  There were some great moments in ME2.

In hindsight don't you think a lot of things in ME2 were wasted and not followed up in ME3??   The ME2-specific characters could all have done so much more and been more relevant to the plot IMHO.

Edit:  I guess my disappointment lies mostly with wasted opportunities.  If you're going to have ME2 set up characters & background for ME3 then it's a shame that more wasn't done with that in ME3 -- thus making some of ME2 seem like a waste.

Modifié par Alamar2078, 10 avril 2012 - 11:58 .

[0x30A88]

ME2 was 30 hours of enjoyment and interesting characters. Even though how little it mattered for ME3 apart from cameos, it was still not wasted. ME3 wasted it though.

[Jackal13th]

Was ME2 pointless?

Well i don't think so there was a Lott of good parts the adding of the dlc was good .loved the astroids part  .

Modifié par Jackal13th, 13 avril 2012 - 09:45 .

[sfam]

The whole part of the collector base was rendered completely pointless by Bioware in Mass Effect 3. At best it has a completely minor effect on the ending score.

But then again, ME3 also rendered the Rachni decision completely meaningless, and whether you saved the council or not, and pretty much every other major decision you made.