The GARDIAN system was installed in reaction to the collectors. It was a disproportionately huge defense investment to defend a tiny colony. it would be difficult and expensive to outfit every tiny colony with GARDIANS and even bigger defense systems for larger colonies.
And also if you watch Paragon Lost, if you don't actually have enough juice in the gun, it won't even break their barriers, they do have Reaper tech after all and their ships can shrug off a lot of conventional fire.
I am extremely puzzeled that anyone would actually say the main plot of ME2 was "good". It was little more than excuse to fly around and shoot up all the mercenary bands in the termius systems just to recruit and prepare your team of badass misfits for a nebolous final attack on the collectors.
Which in itself is stupid because the characters apparently just know that the collectors can be taken out in one single attack even before they realize that their home is just a single space staion as opposed to multiple of those or even some sort of planet/multiple planets.
I am extremely puzzeled that anyone would actually say the main plot of ME2 was "good". It was little more than excuse to fly around and shoot up all the mercenary bands in the termius systems just to recruit and prepare your team of badass misfits for a nebolous final attack on the collectors.
Which in itself is stupid because the characters apparently just know that the collectors can be taken out in one single attack even before they realize that their home is just a single space staion as opposed to multiple of those or even some sort of planet/multiple planets.
Truth be told, thinking too hard about the main plot of any Bioware game is not a good idea.
I am extremely puzzeled that anyone would actually say the main plot of ME2 was "good". It was little more than excuse to fly around and shoot up all the mercenary bands in the termius systems just to recruit and prepare your team of badass misfits for a nebolous final attack on the collectors.
Which in itself is stupid because the characters apparently just know that the collectors can be taken out in one single attack even before they realize that their home is just a single space staion as opposed to multiple of those or even some sort of planet/multiple planets.
It's good enough within the context of videogamey standards. No one is comparing it with Oscar films here
It's good enough within the context of videogamey standards. No one is comparing it with Oscar films here
I'd hope it would at least rise above "Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the President from ninjas"...
I'd hope it would at least rise above "Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the President from ninjas"...
*slams fist on table* It's NOT that bad!!!
*slams fist on table* It's NOT that bad!!!
It's apparently a story about stopping the Reapers and their Collector allies by slaughtering hundreds of random mercenaries and solving assorted personal crises, largely parenting-related...
Liara shouldn't be fighting out in the field since she's an archaeologist??
Indiana Jones, Lara Croft, Rick and Evelyn O'Connell... archaeologists being able to hold their own and kick ass aren't totally out of the realm of possibility. I do agree though, that at least in ME1, Liara being a squadmate was a tad of a stretch. Her biotics were ok, but other than that, not really. But in ME2 and ME3 her character is improved on (IMO) and her role as a squadmate doesn't feel out of place (I should just say her I like Liara, and have discovered that at least on this forum, I am in the minority in that regard lol).
Collectors I liked. I thought they were a good enemy, and Jack Wall's music that accomapnied them generally ratcheted up the effect they evoked. I'd also argue that the Collectors must have been popular enough for BioWare to implement them as an enemy in Multiplayer, IIRC.
And for ME2, its story was never what made it stood out for me. I would argue (aware it may be controversial) that ME1 and ME3 had the better stories in the trilogy. I would also argue that as a trilogy, Mass Effect has a pretty good story, and it stands out from other video game stories that I have played. Its all subjective though, and BioWare's rep is built on the fact that there games tell (or arguably used to tell) good stories with interesting and memorable characters. It's said characters that make ME2 for me, and the trilogy as a whole.
That said, I hope that ME:A can get the best of both. A great story, and even greater characters. If the gameplay is good, that's a bonus for me.
It's apparently a story about stopping the Reapers and their Collector allies by slaughtering hundreds of random mercenaries and solving assorted personal crises, largely parenting-related...
Think of it in terms of DAO, which is all about stopping the Blight... except you barely fight darkspawn throughout the game and you spend most of it dealing with a bunch of entirely unrelated issues. And to be fair, would DAO be better if it focused on fighting the generic evil horde of evilness? Will the ME series be better if it focused entirely on fighting the Reapers?
Because just like ME2 had the Collectors as a flimsy excuse to show us bits and pieces of the universe, ME3 had the Reapers and Cerberus as a flimsy excuse to make us solve centuries or millennia old conflicts that had nothing to do with our mission statement. ME1 did somewhat better in that regard, but we're still visiting a bunch of random places with no connection the one to the other just because Saren happened to be there at some point.
So yeah, Bioware sucks at main plots, and they usually try to make up for it through characters and with more interesting subplots. Whether they succeed there or not depends on who you ask.
It's good enough within the context of videogamey standards. No one is comparing it with Oscar films here
It's also about the same plot as The seven samurai which is an awesome movie. =)
And yet, not one BioWare game is listed there.Truth be told, thinking too hard about the main plot of any Bioware game is not a good idea.
Naw, I feel the same as you (having played each game within minutes of their release time). The resurrection was a 'normal' scifi plot to explain 2 years out of the loop and to make more plot threads. I don't think the Lazarus Project was the best thing they could've done, but at the time (and now) I had no issue with it. ME3 is really where the issues with story telling in ME became a problem, ME2's issues were mostly a completely different combat system and complete lack of character and weapon progression compared to ME1 (this is all imo of course).
In some ways yes, in others not so much. Garrus for example became much more fleshed out as a character in 2. Even if he was calibrating most of the time on the ship. Joker became more fleshed out with the introduction of Edi etc. Even the Doc became more fleshed out as a character. In the original I think she had about 3 dialogue options the whole game and one of them was about Kaidan. Liara was better in the shadow broker dlc than she was in the original. I just played through the entire series again so my memory of them are a bit fresh. It seems like Tali did most of the talking in the original.
Ash yeah, you know the girl everyone loves to hate. Now that i've gone back to the original she actually gave us more about her background than either Wrex or Garrus did. It seemed as though those two in particular had the least to say. The dlc characters in 2 (Kasumi mostly) were more fleshed out than they were in ME1.
Unless by character progression you meant the mechanics.
Biggest things I missed from the original going into 2 were all mechanics. I missed the loot, upgrading amps, armors and all that. The physics in the original were also great. You felt awesome playing as a biotic making an entire room of people and all nearby objects float. 2 got rid of this and kinda nerfed the biotics a bit.
My biggest issues about ME3 other than the ambiguous end of Shep and crew story, is the fact that besides Tuchanka a lot of the levels felt rushed. Also the fetch quest spam every time you'd walk near someone. I hated it, hated it in DAI and hope to god they don't have it in Andromeda. Also the scraping of more intimate conversations, and just having characters blurt out dialogue until you exhaust them.
It's apparently a story about stopping the Reapers and their Collector allies by slaughtering hundreds of random mercenaries and solving assorted personal crises, largely parenting-related...
You pretty much do that in all 3 games. Except the personal crisis in this one were handeled better while those in the original ME were not developed enough. You take Wrex to a base that looks no different than any of the other bases you explored to get his family (armor?) was it. He thanks you, and that's pretty much that.
I am very aware of the fact that that video game plots in general are some of the worst examples of writing in general. However ME2s main plot to me personally stands out as a hilariously bad plot in a company that usually delivers at least okayish to somewhat decent main stories.
It's good enough within the context of videogamey standards. No one is comparing it with Oscar films here
I agree. It is more than good enough for the video game standards, which are abysmally low anyways. As said it's even one of my favourite games. All I'm saying is that as far as I'm concerned it has the worst main storyline of the entire Mass effect franchise, and probaby the worst main storyline Bioware ever produced.
Funny really, stepping away from Mass Effect and trying to actually analyse it (i..e not be drawn in by the feels, or the nostalgic feeling of meeting old characters) does tend to make you see how shallow and contrived things are, and often just how plain dumb people have to be to make it work. Even high spots like LotSB bring their own problems (for example the fact that the Shadow Broker successfully sent probes through the Omega 4 relay..).
I'm currently on a bit of a DS9 nostalgia trip (also known as avoiding Tali's loyalty mission), and seeing things like this really make me realise how far behind Bioware can be when it comes to plots and characters:
And yes, DS9 is Best Star Trek.
A story about stopping the Reapers and their Collector allies by slaughtering hundreds of random mercenaries and solving assorted personal crises, largely parenting-related...
This here is so spot on they should actually write it just like that on the Origins-store page of ME2.
And yet, not one BioWare game is listed there.
It doesn't surprise me. Main plot doesn't equal story. Bioware rarely puts any effort into the former, but they do better with other aspects of the latter (or at least they try better).
Think of it in terms of DAO, which is all about stopping the Blight... except you barely fight darkspawn throughout the game and you spend most of it dealing with a bunch of entirely unrelated issues. And to be fair, would DAO be better if it focused on fighting the generic evil horde of evilness? Will the ME series be better if it focused entirely on fighting the Reapers?
Because just like ME2 had the Collectors as a flimsy excuse to show us bits and pieces of the universe, ME3 had the Reapers and Cerberus as a flimsy excuse to make us solve centuries or millennia old conflicts that had nothing to do with our mission statement. ME1 did somewhat better in that regard, but we're still visiting a bunch of random places with no connection the one to the other just because Saren happened to be there at some point.
So yeah, Bioware sucks at main plots, and they usually try to make up for it through characters and with more interesting subplots. Whether they succeed there or not depends on who you ask.
Barely fight darkspawn? Darkspawn are fought in virtually every major area! They may not be the main antagonist of each arc, but there presence is felt. Which is appropriate given you are trying to build an army to stop them!
Barely fight darkspawn? Darkspawn are fought in virtually every major area! They may not be the main antagonist of each arc, but there presence is felt. Which is appropriate given you are trying to build an army to stop them!
It's been a while since I last played DAO, but I seem to remember that, the beginning and end of the game aside, you rarely fight dark-spawn outside of the Deep Roads? I seem to recall there was a random encounter with them, and maybe one fight against them in Lothering, but not much beyond that. Nature of the Beast was mostly werewolves and forest spirits, Broken Circle was all demons, The Arl of Redcliffe was all about undead, in The Urn of the Sacred Ashes you only fought cultists, and in Denerim it was all regular killers. I don't even think I got any of the darkspawn slaying achievements until the Deep Roads.
Hopefully they figure out a way to make exploration rewarding and meaningful without it feeling grindy. Quality over quantity. I'd rather have fewer but more fleshed out and interested planets to explore than a large number of empty ones with grindy repetitive content.
There's one random encounter with darkspawn for each of the factions you recruit (after you recruit them), there's another in Wynne's companion quest, there are darkspawn in multiple areas in the Brecilian forest, there's the encounter where you find the dog, there's the random encounter with the field full of traps, two of the origin stories (dwarf noble and dalish elf), the RtO and SP DLC are both filled with darkspawn, and there's at least one other randon encounter I'm forgetting.It's been a while since I last played DAO, but I seem to remember that, the beginning and end of the game aside, you rarely fight dark-spawn outside of the Deep Roads? I seem to recall there was a random encounter with them, and maybe one fight against them in Lothering, but not much beyond that. Nature of the Beast was mostly werewolves and forest spirits, Broken Circle was all demons, The Arl of Redcliffe was all about undead, in The Urn of the Sacred Ashes you only fought cultists, and in Denerim it was all regular killers. I don't even think I got any of the darkspawn slaying achievements until the Deep Roads.
The cookies were people.
The reapers couldn't "speed up" to arrive at the galaxy. What, you want Shepard and TIM to just sit around and let the creepy humanoid insects gobble up humans and build a reaper until the main reapers arrive? And Cerberus and Shepard have no clue how important or unimportant they are. They have no clue about the harvesters that came later. You and I do - they didn't. It makes sense that the reapers would've been EVEN MORE successful at ROFLstomping earth, with even greater efficiency, had the collectors remained in full strength. And I'm not sure what the Mars cache has to do with it.
I think you're missing the point.
What's the point of the creepy humanoid insects gobbling up humans and building a reaper in the first place?
Building a reaper won't speed up the Reaper arrival. Building a reaper can't even be completed until the Reapers arrive, because the Reaper conquest of earth is necessary to get the sheer number of people needed for the Reaper to be finished.
So why bother starting? The Collectors would have remained at full strength and enabled the curbstomping of earth with greater efficiency had they not started the harvest early, because starting the abductions is the only reason the Collectors were identified as a threat in the first place. They wouldn't have exposed themselves to destruction, or let their technology leak out, had they not over-extended themselves.
And even if Cerberus and Shepard sat around and let the creepy humanoid insects gobble up humans and build a Reaper... so what? What actually changes? The Mars Cache still gets ignored by the Reapers as they focus on Earth. The biggest difference is, without Collector tech, the Illusive Man doesn't get the means to be an enemy... which would be a net gain for the galaxy.
But how does one more Reaper a year or two early, let alone half of one, actually benefit the Reapers in their goal in any significant way?
The multiplayer collector addition was kind of dumb, honestly, in many ways, but one thing I can say is that recruiting some stragglers in MP doesn't cancel out the fact 1. Their main base is gone and 2. Harbinger released them and they're no longer controlled by reapers.
What do the Reapers need the main base for in the first place? What tactical advantage did it actually provide in the first place, besides a research lab for research already conducted?'
Once the Collectors conduct the proof of viability tests to see if a species is compatible for reaperdom, their role in the harvesting is pretty much over.
Which is important... why, exactly? What does it change? What does it matter going forward?
The Collectors aren't a species in terms of being, well, an identity group. They're puppets, and basically high-functioning husks. High-functioning husks were new, but didn't require the Collectors to demonstrate.
What the Collectors showed was the Reaper's preservationist tendencies... but those were already demonstrated by the reveal of the Reapers as species-boxes. That would apply even if the Geth were the builders of the human Reaper.
Considering that the only reasons the Protheans weren't made into a Reaper was an aribitrary hand-wave, the Protheans could have been just as preserved if Bioware got rid of the arbitrary limitation and just preserving them like the rest.
Why is anything important? One of the big mysteries in ME1 was who the Protheans were and what happened to them. It was assumed that they were destroyed, but in fact they were changed. It was an answer to a mystery.
I'm pretty sure we didn't get the reveal of Reapers as a "species-box" until after we had met the collectors. Vigil on Illos had no idea of their motivations and no idea where they came from. My memory might be faulty on this, it has been a while.
The "arbitrary handwave" showed that not all species were suitable. Given that the Protheans, Turians, Asari, Quarians, Salarians etc were not, gives even more gravitas to how long they have been around and how many species they must have wiped out.
Also it is relatively easy to control a bunch of robots. Their thinking is controlled by code, and however complicated is relatively, extremely easy to replicate and adjust. With an organic species it is much, much more difficult, and the Collectors did show much more intelligence than the human husks we had seen.
So could the story have been written with Geth instead of collectors? Sure. But it would have been a weaker story. Having a new species gave a level of mystery and the unknown to the second game. If it had been Geth again we would already know pretty much everything about them.
It's been a while since I last played DAO, but I seem to remember that, the beginning and end of the game aside, you rarely fight dark-spawn outside of the Deep Roads? I seem to recall there was a random encounter with them, and maybe one fight against them in Lothering, but not much beyond that. Nature of the Beast was mostly werewolves and forest spirits, Broken Circle was all demons, The Arl of Redcliffe was all about undead, in The Urn of the Sacred Ashes you only fought cultists, and in Denerim it was all regular killers. I don't even think I got any of the darkspawn slaying achievements until the Deep Roads.
There are darkspawn in Brecilian forest (though there are more after Nature of the Beast is resolved).
And Broken Circle had "darkspawn" during the nightmare portion of the Fade sequence
Why is anything important? One of the big mysteries in ME1 was who the Protheans were and what happened to them. It was assumed that they were destroyed, but in fact they were changed. It was an answer to a mystery.
Well, the Protheans weren't Collectors, any more than husks are humans. And Prothean civilization certainly was destroyed- though that was established back in ME1.
I'm pretty sure we didn't get the reveal of Reapers as a "species-box" until after we had met the collectors. Vigil on Illos had no idea of their motivations and no idea where they came from. My memory might be faulty on this, it has been a while.
But the reveal that Reapers are made of people doesn't really require the Collectors. If, say, Geth were processing human prisoners, the reveal would be just as valid.
The "arbitrary handwave" showed that not all species were suitable. Given that the Protheans, Turians, Asari, Quarians, Salarians etc were not, gives even more gravitas to how long they have been around and how many species they must have wiped out.
Except ME3 walked back even that. ME2's 'you are not suitable' got cast aside for ME3's 'only one dreadnaught, but lots of lesser Reapers from other species.'
The fact that not all species get made into Reapers doesn't really add any more gravitas than some of the planet scans or Leviathan of Dis in my view... but that, to, doesn't require the Collectors to demonstrate.
After all, Heretic Geth- who really, really want to be Real God-machines, won't be able to become Reapers. Yet another role the Geth could fulfill, even as any other genetic unworthiness could be communicated by the Reaper proxy.
Also it is relatively easy to control a bunch of robots. Their thinking is controlled by code, and however complicated is relatively, extremely easy to replicate and adjust. With an organic species it is much, much more difficult, and the Collectors did show much more intelligence than the human husks we had seen.
The Collectors didn't show any more intelligence than the Geth we saw in ME1, and far less than most of the VI/AI characters we dealt with. The only Collector that showed any intelligence was the Collector General, and that was because he was a Reaper puppet 99% of the time.
So could the story have been written with Geth instead of collectors? Sure. But it would have been a weaker story. Having a new species gave a level of mystery and the unknown to the second game. If it had been Geth again we would already know pretty much everything about them.
What did we actually know about Geth after ME1? The closest they had to a major reveal after showing up at all was that they had vague religious motives.
Indeed while ME2 is a great game on its own you can jump into ME3 without playing ME2 and there wouldn't be much of a difference.
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