283 réponses à ce sujet

[PG420]

Yeah, i agree, main story was definitely lacking. Nothing like Mass Effect 1, no magic to the story.

[Kreid]

I don't think the story itself is lacking, as a concept it makes sense and has potential, however the strange pacing, lack of a tangible nemesis, absence of a sense of danger and lack of answers about some major plot elements affect the experience as a whole.

Mass Effect 2 lives pretty much of the basis ME1 set in the first place and focuses on establishing character that will presumably have a big role in the finale (I hope so at least) yet again each of those characters could die at the end so in a sense I'm afraid all the characterization won't be going anywhere.

I think ME2 is a better game overall than it's predecessor but got a little too much character driven, most trilogies' second parts are usually the weakest, I think that even though ME2 lack the sense of grandeur of the original but still comes as a better game is a sign of the greatness of the series, and gives ME3 the potential to be an even better game which is a very pleasant thought.

[NoShtSherlock]

I agree with the OP on the lacking of a story in ME 2. In my personal opinion it was padding and fluff with a shopping list of criminals and some alcohol for the Normandy Doctor. some extra food for the Normandy Cook to add that salt and pepper flavour of the dish.



ME 2 is a game you either like, love or hate just like ME 1. I loved ME 1 but there was alot to make you hate ME 2. I hated ME 2, but that's just my opinion.



Also for the OP, if the Bioware Bully Fan Boys try to harass you as they do with anyone with even one negative thing to say about ME 2, ignore them.

[Myrmedus]

Xandurpein wrote...

tertium organum wrote...

Literature and role-playing are not exclusive so this sort of thinking is flawed. If Bioware actually adhered to these simplistic oppositions they would not write the excellent stories they have. The medium of literature obviously affects the RPG -storytelling is universal and can be weak or great in any medium.  No one can complain about the plot and development of film because it's not literature? Obviously not, all these mediums employ common tropes. You don't feel like Shepard has developed because his story, the main mission, is not told very well - this distinction you've made just serves no purpose. I'm not confusing literature and roleplaying when I fel empty as Shepard. Or when I think the main story arc is underwhelming. This is needless excuse making. I contrast the  ME1 plot with ME2 and I felt more not because I didn't confuse RPG and literature in ME1 but  because the original story was better told enabling me to identify with, or at the very least, enjoy the main story and character.

I never said I thought the main plot is strong in ME2. In fact I can agree that it is weak in many ways. I simply say that as far I'm concerned this does NOT equate to me feeling that the character of Shepard is badly developed. I do not base this on any knowledge of litterary writing formulas as should be abundantly clear by now. I just write what I felt when I played.

I felt that the fact that the moral choices as well as the interaction with the diverse characters in ME2 together made me feel a that my Shepard got to be a lot deeper character, than the Shepard in ME1, where the choices were relaitvly simple. As far as I'm concerned it's the choices you make and the justifications for the choices you use, not the plot, that defines the character you play. I'm not telling you that my way of thinking is right, merely that this is how I feel.

What you seem to be forgetting though is that you can do both in a single game, and that's what ME1 did. You can make choices for your character and involve the player in that way but you can still produce 'growth' for the character through the main plot, which is what ME1 and DA:O did.

ME2 ONLY had the character choice part of the equation which is why it lacked in this department.

[.primus]

Seeing as how this is a trilogy and that not everyone is coming over from the first game. The narrative was very well done. Remember it's a SUICIDE MISSION!!! The whole idea of the game was to make this like if no one was to come back. So there is your whole deal regarding what does the main missions have to do with the main storyline? First game is discovering some sort of threat to the galaxy. This one is around going into a SUICIDE MISSION due to a new galactic threat. "only" human colonies are disappearing hence a pro-human group is fit for setting this one up hence teaming up with Cerberus.



Collectors? What is their motive?! Uhm, they were indoctrinated by the reapers and have become agents of the Reapers?! while not as a good characters as Saren. How could you ask for their motive?! Oh about abducting colonies... uhm, so they can liquify them to create ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER!!! All we can do is theorize why oh why did they want a human reaper. EDI already theorize how the reapers seem to reaperize certain biological lifeforms.

[Ozymandias23]

The story is poor, unbelievably so. I felt a total disconnect from it and the characters. By the end I couldn't have cared if they all died.

[CarolSephard]

First of all, i have to say i loved this game. The idea on this second part was really good in my opinion, the entire trilogy is about Shepard's adventures against the reapers, but in this game the reapers are in a "second stance" because now the problem are the collectors, and that's a good point because we don't need to see the reapers everywhere and everytime. Anyway the OP said some things i agree and some others i don't:

mjack234 wrote...

In Mass Effect 1, there was a mystery surrounding Saren and what his plan was.  I was curious about the questions the characters uncovered as they dug deeper into his treachery, and felt compelled to unravel the mystery.  In ME2, they tried to make a mystery out of who the Collectors were and why they were kidnapping humans, but you spent 90% of your game time doing quests that had absolutely nothing to do with that mystery!  At its core, ME2 is 3 missions worth of plot and 30 missions worth of character development.  And even though I liked the characters, there were some I just don't find interesting enough to care all that much about doing a 60 minute long loyalty quest for.

So that "propulsion system" of a building tension & drama which ME1 had in spades was nowhere to be seen, and it made ME2 a weaker game in my opinion.

I completely agree with this. I loved some of the loyalty missions (specially Tali's) but, even if i had a great time playing ME2, i felt like the main plot was too short. In ME1 you met the squad members while the main plot was advancing, if you wanted to do some other things, they were all secondary, but here all those secondary objectives are now primary. I would take those loyalty quests inside the main plot, something like being in the citadel looking for information and Garrus sees Sidonis, gets crazy and starts pursuing him so you have to do something about it.

Also, the lack of a major nemesis for Shepherd was a big drawback.  In ME1, we had Saren as Shepherd's nemesis.  Yes, Sovreign was the major bad guy, but Saren was the one Shepherd had to fight.  He was a real, tangible threat, and an enemy to rival Shepherd's heroics.  In ME2, Shepherd had no one to really fight against.  he had the main Prothean Overseer who took over bodies of his minions, but Shepherd never had any face-to-face time with the guy, and he was never able to mock or harm Shepherd in any way that was credible like Saren did.  This lack of a central nemesis for Shepherd to rage against made the over-all story kinda boring because I never felt anything was really at stake.  A good hero needs a good villain, and though the Collectors as a whole were a good enough "big baddie," there was nothing personalized about them to make me want to root for their defeat like I did with Saren.

I'm not fully aggre at this point, it's true Saren was great Shepard's nemesis in ME1 but, in my opinion, i think that doesn't mean you always need one person for a final confrontation. The real threat were the reapers, in ME1 you stopped Sovereign and his puppet Saren, now you stop Harbinger and his puppets ( the collectors), future will say what happends in ME3. About this, the only thing i would add to ME2 is another conversation with the reaper itself, in ME1 you talked with sovereign, you faced the real bad guy, something like that would fulfill the lack of major nemesis you said.

But because we never really understand what the Collector's motivation is, why they need humans, and what's at stake for the galaxy, it all falls flat, at least until its time to rescue your crew.  Then, finally, there's some sense of urgency, but until that point, the Collector threat doesn't seem very far reaching or urgent.

Which brings me to my next story nit-pick, which was I never felt there was really anything at stake for the characters or the universe as a whole.  In ME1, Sovreign was trying to usher in a fleet of reapers to destroy all life in the galaxy.  So the stakes were pretty high.  In ME2, some human colonies were disappearing, and it was suspected it has something to do with the reapers.  That's it!

Even when you finally get on the Reaper base, and you find the big human reaper that's only partially finished, you wonder to yourself: What's the big deal?  What's the big threat to the universe here?  Will this reaper try and usher in the others like Sovreign did?  It just wasn't as big a revelation as what we got in ME1.  It was small in comparison, with no real build up or payoff.  In ME1, we needed the entire human fleet to take out 1 reaper, while desperately fighting his proxy inside the Citadel, with the fate of the Galactic Council and all life in the universe in the balance.  Here, we got three guys in a remote starbase fighting a giant robot that's being pumped full of human goo for some reason.  Again, I felt like nothing big was really at stake.

I think this is not true. I agree that there is no sense of urgency but the collectors are only the initial clue, they have no motivation, they are only puppets. In ME1 you don't know what the conduit is until the end, the same thing happends in ME2: you don't know why the collectors are kidnapping humans until the end of the game. The plan is simple, make an human reaper to try the same thing Sovereign tried in ME1. So it's exactly the same threat to the universe you experienced in the first game with only one difference: you are at time to stop it before it is complete.

The suicide mission is epic, great music, great cinematics and some decissions to be made but it have one problem in my opinion: is too short. You are inside a massive collector's base and it's supposed to be thousands of collectors, but there is no sense of that. For example, there's no need to retreat because there isn't too much collectors attacking the team at the same time.

In ME2, however, there were just too many things that didn't add up.  Why were the Protheans making a human reaper?  I got the fact that each reaper is modeled after the race it conquored, but why was it necessary to make a human one?  It was never made clear why the Protheans were doing this other than they had been "enslaved by evil."  But what was the endgame?  What would the human reaper accomplish?  And why did the Reaper require vast amounts of Human genetic material?  And if the Human Reaper was completed, what was the consequence for the galaxy?  None of these were made absolutely clear in the game.

How'd Shepherd and his team leave Omega-4?  I thought you needed a Mass Relay to get out of there, but they just seemed to shoot off using their own drive somehow, even though they were surrounded by black holes.  It might have been cooler if they were "stuck" in Omega 4 as the Reaper threat closed in from Dark Space and were unable to warn others about them coming.  But as it stands, not even Shepherd knows the Reapers are on their way.

Protheans have no reason to make a human reaper, the collectors, as i said, are only puppets. The reapers have the reason: they saw humans killing Soverign, they saw humans are a powerful race so they would like to make a new reaper using human DNA. And about leaving Omega-4 i think it's simple: one relay does nothing, it's only the "start of the travel", you need another relay to set up the finish and that works on both directions. In the ending cinematic, it's true the Normandy doesn't use the relay to come back (at least i didn't see it), but the theory of the relay network is there.

This is only my opinion, I'm not trying to say somebody is wrong or right, i wanted to get this clear.
Have a nice day and sorry if my post is too long!!

[bjdbwea]

.primus wrote...

Seeing as how this is a trilogy and that not everyone is coming over from the first game. The narrative was very well done. Remember it's a SUICIDE MISSION!!! The whole idea of the game was to make this like if no one was to come back. So there is your whole deal regarding what does the main missions have to do with the main storyline? First game is discovering some sort of threat to the galaxy. This one is around going into a SUICIDE MISSION due to a new galactic threat. "only" human colonies are disappearing hence a pro-human group is fit for setting this one up hence teaming up with Cerberus.

Yeah, but the so-called suicide mission, which indeed is hyped throughout the game, doesn't really deliver either. Way too short, way too easy, way too predictable. The game basically even takes your hand and shows you whom to pick for which job. I really expected this big finale to last at least 2, better around 5 hours. If you make so much of the story about recruiting companions and gaining their loyalty, this should matter much more. As I said, this last mission should've been much longer, and throughout it every companion should play their part at some point, where their skill matters as well as their loyalty. Could've been really epic, but isn't. Not to speak of the final enemy, which I consider funny more than anything else. Compare that to the memorable scene with Saren, whom you could speak to, even convince to end it himself, and then... you know the rest. No movie could've done it better. It's scenes such as that which you remember. ME 2 tried to be bigger, but it's just not convincing, and lacks that kind of emotion and depth.

[Balek-Vriege]

For everyone that has played the game to the finish remember that the Collectors are not seperate from the Reapers in motive and aren't really even agents/indoctrinated anymore. Unknown to even the characters in-game, the Collector Harbinger was not an individual entity but instead a Reaper that used the Harbinger husk to control and command the rest of the Collector husks. Based on that it's actually quite interesting because it seems the Reapers actually think highly of Commander Shepard if not respect him/her as a foe. At the very least I would guess Reapers are intrigued with humanity. That's why they're making a human Reaper so soon before they have even conquered the galaxy. It seems they know they're infected by the "one individual human hero who cannot die who foils their plans at every turn where entire and countless other races failed before" syndrome.



Throughout the game when fighting the Harbinger/Reaper it says things like "If we have to kill you Shepard, we will" or "We are your final evolution, do not resist." The last thing it says is something along the lines of Shepard avoiding perfection and lastly "We will find another way, releasing control." It almost seemed like a negotiation attempt with Shepard rather than the absolutism of destruction that Sovereign seemed to suggest in his dialog. The Harbinger and thus the Reapers seem a bit more respectful and concerned as much as a race trying to wipe out the galaxy and previously wiping out countless civilizations and trillions upon trillions of lives in the past can be. Combined with Legion's dialog that gives us insights to AI thought processes and how Reapers are very similar to Geth in design, seems to suggest that Reapers think by assimilating the species that has done the most damage to their plans next to Protheans (who they couldn't turn into a Reapers for some reason and instead made Collectors), they would be nearing the perfection they think they already have but would never admit they don't.



Mass Effect 2 is not only a character development of Shepard/Squad members (although definately that as well), but the development of Reapers becoming an actual race if not tragic along with the Protheans with real movitations, instead of just being the mysterious big bad guys. Again pointing to Legion dialog, Sovereign actually made a lot of sense and his motives are now less mysterious. It seems the Reapers have an identity crisis with their place in a galaxy and the universe.



Unfortunately it kind of feels more than ever that the Reapers are Mass Effect's version of Star Trek's Borg on steroids. It's almost as if they're the Borg post conquering the galaxy who achieved the perfect sybiosis between organics and synthetics. Except they ran out of species to assimilate and now wait 50 thousand years or so until they can do it all over again.

[PatT2]

kraidy1117 wrote...

I am a writer and I have have to disaggre with you on this. For one scanining planets was quick and easy. I scaned a planet in under a minute and the planet was bare. Also how did you get bored in ME2? Everything from the action, to the places to the characters where alot more intresting then it was in ME.

In ME the places where realy dead. There was some talking and stuff, but realy dead. In ME2 the world is alive. People are walking, dancing, conversations and even drinking. I just don't see how you could have gotten bored in ME2 but not in ME.

As for the story, as a writer I know the trilogy rules. ME2 followed the rule for part 2 and IMO it is the best game Bioware has made. The main story while might not have been that original was still well done. There was alot of good twist and the big twist reminded me when Darth Vadar told Luke he was his father. ME2 is the empire strikes back of video games. Also the thing that ME failed at and what ME2 did fantastic was making it emotional(spelling?) When Miranda had tears, my eyes got watery. When I was doing the sucide mission I was sweating because of fear someone would die. The main story was good, but what made the game the best was it's characters.

That's my thought on it, though I still can't se how you found ME2 boring.

in your professional opinion as a writer this is the best story Bioware has ever written? Um... and you got to be a writer with your spelling? Before people flame me, I'm saying...it goes to credibility.

Modifié par PatT2, 06 février 2010 - 01:37 .

[PatT2]

The problem with this story from my perspective is this.

The writers took the attention off the reapers when they added the collectors, which distracted everyone from the one true threat. And making the collectors into the nemesis for this one, when we had already been introduced to the reapers, feels a bit like a bait and switch.

To turn the protheans into some kind of harvesting machines, removes the mystery of whatever happened to the protheans, but it eliminates some of the tension/suspense of the story.

It's like they threw a second ball on the field, and then players went after the 2nd ball and the first ball got left on the sideline until someone noticed it right before the end of the game, and decided that they couldn't just toss all the play with the illegal ball, so they fudged a way to work it back for the last two plays. The fake ball is the new threat that isn't really the threat.

It's like someone introduced these collectors, and the story got unworkable, but they had already done so much construction on the game, that they had to find a way to use what they'd done. The collectors suck the suspense right out of the game. They shouldn't ever have been introduced.

Me2 should have played more like a mystery novel, trying to get clues as to what the reapers are, where they are, how many they are, how to fight them, etc. So finding, for instance, a defunct reaper ship would work...keep it in. Geth. Evolving. Good keep it. Reapers as incredibly powerful foe on the horizon...keep it. Don't throw a new mega foe at us? And turning humans into goo? What? From A-story to bad B-movie?

The protheans were a proud race, and accomplished people. Much more advanced than we are. So why neuter them by turning them into collectors? And a human reaper? That's a different story. It minimizes and trivializes the big bad boss we're supposed to fear. It takes the buildup from ME1 and dumps it into the toilet.

Maybe they thought they were doing an ME2/collectors = battle of helms deep and ME3/reapers = battle for all mankind at ..forgot the name of the city....

BUT

Lord of the Rings was not designed to be a trilogy. It was written as one long book. The publisher is the one who decided to make it a trilogy. Even the director of the moves (and screenplay writers, Philipa Boyens and Peter Jackson and Jackson's wife) say that the 2nd movie was a nightmare. In the book it was done more like a serial of 3 parts. And it was strictly a financial decision. It certainly wasn't an artistic one.

And while sauron seemed like the enemy in the 2nd episode, neither the writer nor the screenplay ever lose sight of the fact that it is the ring, it is Sauron who is the real enemy, the greater evil, always there and stronger than Sauroman.

They didn't dilute Sauromans power because Sauron and Sauroman were nearly the same age, both having existed since before the first page, along with Gandalf and Elrond. They have history.

In this story, you never hear about the collectors in ME1 so they should never have been created or introduced in the series.

That and there are too many characters and you never get to know most of them. Three lines each. Wow. Deep. I know they did this because people kept saying they should, but since when does the storyteller delegate his craft to the listener?

By adding too many crew/squad members, many with opposing viewpoints that create conflict (adding back some of the tension that they eliminated when they diluted the main enemy)...they never would have needed that tension if they hadn't sucked it out of the story in the first place.

There are good books out there that never get finished because they just don't compel you to pick them up again after you put them down. They don't have any mystery, any "what next?" This game is like that. I have had a hard time continuing on with it because it just hasn't drawn me in. A few quests have been great. The mechanics are great. But heck, it reminds me of my past failed marriage. The mechanics...there was no problem with the mechanics, but there just wasn't anything to do the rest of the time. No story. Nothing in common. No common cause.

Bioware introduced too many boogiemen and too many heros, left a lot of them undefined, and totally misdirected us for the entirety of ME2, only ending it with a complete collapse of the scary-ness of the final boss, by turning a reaper into something we can get our head around, instead of leaving it as something we have no idea how to fight.

We should hbave been working on weapons that could make trenches in Klendagon, rather than running around fighting with little machine guns. Ridiculous. They derailed the story with the book Ascension and never got it back.

Well, that's my 2cents worth.

Modifié par PatT2, 06 février 2010 - 02:14 .

[Jonathan Shepard]

I 100% agree.



And here's MY main gripe about the whole main-villain thing.

It should have been Legion. He's a geth, so it's perfect to continue from the first game. We were repeatedly told he's stalking us. But Shepard has no idea-- none!-- that this Geth even EXISTS until it SAVES Shepard.

And what was Casey's quote?

"He's hunting you. He's stalking you. You have to track him down, and find out why."

...um, that's a blatant LIE. That pissed me off SO much. He wasn't even known about until you're almost done with the game! He could have been the coolest villain, always lurking in the shadows, always taking shots at you in key locations, even nearly killing some of your possible recruitments. Heck, a great level would have been where you went to recruit someone, Legion's there, and when he takes a shot at you, he JUST misses, and it kills whoever you just got there to recruit. And then you'd have to fight this great assassin as he revealed himself.

So THEN, when on the derelict reaper, when he shoots the husks behind you, he could've said more than just your name, and said something like:

"Shepard Commander. You are not my target at the moment. A complication."

and then you have to race to the core before he kills you or takes what you assume might be the Reaper IFF, and then it could continue... and then you two WOULD have met, and to have the great villain join you (or you kill him) just before the suicide mission?



THAT would have seriously strengthened the plot of this game.

[CarolSephard]

PatT2 wrote...

The problem with this story from my perspective is this.

The writers took the attention off the reapers when they added the collectors, which distracted everyone from the one true threat. And making the collectors into the nemesis for this one, when we had already been introduced to the reapers, feels a bit like a bait and switch.

To turn the protheans into some kind of harvesting machines, removes the mystery of whatever happened to the protheans, but it eliminates some of the tension/suspense of the story.

It's like they threw a second ball on the field, and then players went after the 2nd ball and the first ball got left on the sideline until someone noticed it right before the end of the game, and decided that they couldn't just toss all the play with the illegal ball, so they fudged a way to work it back for the last two plays. The fake ball is the new threat that isn't really the threat.

It's like someone introduced these collectors, and the story got unworkable, but they had already done so much construction on the game, that they had to find a way to use what they'd done. The collectors suck the suspense right out of the game. They shouldn't ever have been introduced.

Me2 should have played more like a mystery novel, trying to get clues as to what the reapers are, where they are, how many they are, how to fight them, etc. So finding, for instance, a defunct reaper ship would work...keep it in. Geth. Evolving. Good keep it. Reapers as incredibly powerful foe on the horizon...keep it. Don't throw a new mega foe at us? And turning humans into goo? What? From A-story to bad B-movie?

The protheans were a proud race, and accomplished people. Much more advanced than we are. So why neuter them by turning them into collectors? And a human reaper? That's a different story. It minimizes and trivializes the big bad boss we're supposed to fear. It takes the buildup from ME1 and dumps it into the toilet.

Maybe they thought they were doing an ME2/collectors = battle of helms deep and ME3/reapers = battle for all mankind at ..forgot the name of the city....

BUT

Lord of the Rings was not designed to be a trilogy. It was written as one long book. The publisher is the one who decided to make it a trilogy. Even the director of the moves (and screenplay writers, Philipa Boyens and Peter Jackson and Jackson's wife) say that the 2nd movie was a nightmare. In the book it was done more like a serial of 3 parts. And it was strictly a financial decision. It certainly wasn't an artistic one.

And while sauron seemed like the enemy in the 2nd episode, neither the writer nor the screenplay ever lose sight of the fact that it is the ring, it is Sauron who is the real enemy, the greater evil, always there and stronger than Sauroman.

They didn't dilute Sauromans power because Sauron and Sauroman were nearly the same age, both having existed since before the first page, along with Gandalf and Elrond. They have history.

In this story, you never hear about the collectors in ME1 so they should never have been created or introduced in the series.

That and there are too many characters and you never get to know most of them. Three lines each. Wow. Deep. I know they did this because people kept saying they should, but since when does the storyteller delegate his craft to the listener?

By adding too many crew/squad members, many with opposing viewpoints that create conflict (adding back some of the tension that they eliminated when they diluted the main enemy)...they never would have needed that tension if they hadn't sucked it out of the story in the first place.

There are good books out there that never get finished because they just don't compel you to pick them up again after you put them down. They don't have any mystery, any "what next?" This game is like that. I have had a hard time continuing on with it because it just hasn't drawn me in. A few quests have been great. The mechanics are great. But heck, it reminds me of my past failed marriage. The mechanics...there was no problem with the mechanics, but there just wasn't anything to do the rest of the time. No story. Nothing in common. No common cause.

Bioware introduced too many boogiemen and too many heros, left a lot of them undefined, and totally misdirected us for the entirety of ME2, only ending it with a complete collapse of the scary-ness of the final boss, by turning a reaper into something we can get our head around, instead of leaving it as something we have no idea how to fight.

We should hbave been working on weapons that could make trenches in Klendagon, rather than running around fighting with little machine guns. Ridiculous. They derailed the story with the book Ascension and never got it back.

Well, that's my 2cents worth.

There's N7 assingment where you find a prothean beacon, when you use it you will see the same visions you had on ME1, but this time the vision stops for a moment and you see a collector there. What I'm trying to say is that I don't know if Bioware had planned the whole story before making ME1, but it seems to me that, at least, they had the trilogy main concept in mind (that's what i think).

You used the Lord of the rings as an example, and I think this: Sauron had his minions, the reapers had the collectors and even the geth; Sauron used Saruman, the reapers used Saren; Sauron wants his ring to "rule them all", the reapers want to activate the citadel for the same reason plus "procreation". It's not the same history but it fits in some important points, so why are the collectors that bad? I personally liked them, when you discover that Protheans were transformed into collectors... it was a shock, a proof of how cruel the reapers could be. Ok, you don't see reapers in this game (only in the ending vid), but all of this is part of the fight against them.

As I said before, the problem i see with ME2 history is about the time (% of the game) you spend recruiting the team and doing their loyalty quests. ME2 was supposed to be Shepard's suicide mission, but it's only a 10% (maximum) of the game.

[Nozybidaj]

Ozymandias23 wrote...

The story is poor, unbelievably so. I felt a total disconnect from it and the characters. By the end I couldn't have cared if they all died.

Yeah I was actually kinda sad they didn't.  Every freakin one of them lived, I was disappointed.

[PatT2]

You start out by going to the Citadel and arguing with the council and Anderson (or whoever) about the reapers being the real enemy. and then you spend nearly the rest of the game chasing down some other enemy.



If they were going to introduce a new enemy that was an "agent" or slave of the reapers, they should have introduced them in ME1. They didn't.



I don't know what they did here, but it's the largest bungle I've seen in a game. I'm here, not playing it. Think i'll go play through the rest of my DA:O or some other game. This is a blow it.

[Badpie]

mjack234 wrote...

 After playing all the way through Mass Effect 2, I figured I'd share my opinion with the masses (not that any of you really care, but what the hey? I got some free time.  :-) )

First of all, I was a ginormous fan of Mass Effect 1.  It's my favorite XBox game of all time.  I'm a casual gamer because of my job, but when I popped the first Mass Effect into my XBox, I spent an entire three day weekend doing nothing but play that game until I beat it.  I was obsessed with it, and engrossed in the story.  In fact, the final battle with Saren and Sovreign sent chills up my spine, and I felt like I was in my very own space opera.  It was truly a magical experience.

I did have a few gripes with ME1 that I think everyone else had.  The Inventory system and the Mako missions drove me a bit mad, and who can forget the never ending elevator rides?  But I was willing to look past those flaws in what was, in my mind at least, an otherwise perfect game.

So I was super pumped when ME2 came out.  I bought it the first day, and didn't stop playing until I'd explored every planet, done every side quest, and defeated the Collectors once and for all.

However, though I think ME2 is a good game, it in no way lived up to the standard of ME1.  Maybe I was expecting more than just a "Dirty Dozen in Outer Space" deal, but regardless, by hour 27 I was getting really bored with the game, whereas I never experienced that feeling in ME1.

So here's my ultimate breakdown of Mass Effect 2 (again, for those who care):

What I Liked

First of all, combat was much more improved in this game.  I found it to be a huge improvement over the first game and it actually played like Gears of War, which is one of my favorite shooters, so the combat was really more intuitive than the first game.

I also thought the side quests were much better than in the first game.  Exploring the different worlds gave you a great feeling of variety in terms of the quests you found than the first one did, and none of those annoying Thresher Maws to blast your Mako cannon at!

I loved the design of the new Normandy, and the characters were all great.  Each one was unique and had his or her own character arc which I enjoyed playing through.  I also enjoyed the new elevator system.  Sure, it wasn't seamless like the first one, but the loading screens were better than the slow elevator ride.  lol.

I also thought the design work was much better.  The levels were all different, the characters were all unique, and the whole game just looked beautiful.

I also liked the Shield/Heal system here better.  Getting rid of the medigels was a great move.  Made things much more fast paced and easier on the whole than micromanaging healing.

Also, the hacking minigames were FAR better than the first Mass Effect.  I really hated those twitch based button pushing things you had to do in ME1.  I guess my fingers just aren't that fast.

Finally, getting to play as Joker for a level!  It was really fun to step outside of Shepherd's skin for a bit and play as a different character.  I was kinda hoping I'd get to play as every one of my team during the suicide mission because it was refreshing to have a different POV in the Mass Effect Universe.

What I Didn't Like

Even though I enjoyed the game as a whole and would still recommend it to friends, there was a lot of stuff in it that I did not like - more than what I did, unfortunately.

First, my biggest gripe was scanning planets for minerals.  I think from reading the boards here there's a consensus for that.  It was just tedious, mind numbing work.  I wouldn't have minded it if there was a reticle pointing me in the direction of a mineral deposit, or simply a quick planet-wide scan function that automatically collected all the minerals for you.  But in order to get all the upgrades (which, for a dumb RPGer like me is an obsession) I really had to waste valuable time sitting there, bored, while scanning planet after planet.  It might have even have been nice to have some function that told you the minerals present on the planet, because I always ended up needing more Platinum than I had, compared to all the other minerals.

Second, I really hated that I had to buy fuel for my ship to travel around a star system.  Did this really add anything to the game other than as a way to waste money?  Fuel was cheap, so it wasn't like you really had to work to explore the galaxy and find all the side quests.  And if you ran out of fuel, you just automatically went back to a system with a fuel station, so it wasn't a big deal if you used it all up!  I could understand having a fuel gage if you really had to manage your exploration, and if you had to find a planet that had fuel on it when you ran out, but as of now, it just seems like an annoying gimmick that never really served any use.

Third, I was very disappointed in the type of loot you could find in ME2.  Part of exploring is finding sweet stuff to outfit your character with.  There weren't enough weapons, and the weapons had no upgrades you could mix-and-match like you could in ME1, and the armor options were very boring looking compared to the armor you could get in the first game.  But I always took time to explore every level fully and never found anything worth getting for the most part.  Maybe a couple cases of elements that didn't really contain anything substantial enough to be worth the effort of finding it.  (Speaking of weapons, not being able to change to different types of heavy weapons on the fly in the game was really frustrating at times!  Made me miss the old inventory system.)

Fourth, the lack of exploring really kinda got me down.  I can remember spending hours running around the Citadel in the first game.  I thought the levels in ME2 were a little too straight forward, and the lack of a map really irked me on some missions.  Not because I'd get lost, but just because I like to see what the level looks like.  (Yes, it's a geeky complaint, but that's how I am darn it!)  I would have liked more areas to explore without having to blast my way through generic mercenary bad guys constantly.  Also, having a radar that I didn't have to hold RB down to see would have been nice too.

Then there was the new ammo system.  The thermal clips really got annoying, especially to a casual gamer like me who can't aim to save his life.  I kept running out of "ammo" and would have to switch weapons.  I understand this can add a layer of strategy to the game for the hard core shooter fans out there, but I thought the heat system of the weapons in the first game worked just fine and wasn't too easy or challenging to manage in the big gunfights.  Not sure why this system was changed in favor of ammo clips, but I didn't think it was a smart choice.

Then there was the level up system.  i thought the system of leveling in the first Mass Effect was far better, because it was more robust.  The streamlined version in ME2 didn't make me feel like I could really tailor my characters as much as I would have liked.  This could be a small gripe to some, but I felt the dumbed-down RPG aspects kinda hurt the overall experience of playing through and leveling up.

But probably the biggest problem I had with Mass Effect 2 is the story.  Gameplay overall was great, and I really enjoyed it, but the magic of Mass Effect 1 was its layered and compelling narrative, which this game really lacked.  I know there are lots of people here who probably think the story was great, and I'm glad they enjoyed it, but I don't think it lived up to the standard the first game set and I'll tell you why...

Whew!  Good.  I was hoping you would get to story so I could get the writer perspective.  I'm also a writer so I'm very interested in what follows.

Problems With The Story

I'm a writer by trade and have worked in the movie industry, so I'm a sucker for a great narrative.  Mass Effect 2 is basically a character drama that wants to be an Epic Space Opera.  I think they were going for more "Empire Strikes Back" which was a very character-centric movie, but they fell short in the epic-ness that made the first game so fantastic.

In Mass Effect 1, there was a mystery surrounding Saren and what his plan was.  I was curious about the questions the characters uncovered as they dug deeper into his treachery, and felt compelled to unravel the mystery.  In ME2, they tried to make a mystery out of who the Collectors were and why they were kidnapping humans, but you spent 90% of your game time doing quests that had absolutely nothing to do with that mystery!  At its core, ME2 is 3 missions worth of plot and 30 missions worth of character development.  And even though I liked the characters, there were some I just don't find interesting enough to care all that much about doing a 60 minute long loyalty quest for.

So that "propulsion system" of a building tension & drama which ME1 had in spades was nowhere to be seen, and it made ME2 a weaker game in my opinion.

I write mostly scripts so I have an idea of where you're coming from.  I agree that the story was ambitious.  I also agree that the character development like what Empire had didn't happen.  But, had ME2 been a film there would have been significant flaws in the narrative as well as the character development.  Unfortunately they are writing a narrative that is not completely set in stone.  And I don't mean from the plotline point of view.  I mean character.  Every player expects their own story to be told, which is very different from films.  In a film it's a one way street.  You are presented with this character, told exactly who this character is (and the characters around him) and the viewer just has to accept that.

While I love love love a great story I'm also admittedly a huge sucker for character development.  I want to know what makes even a minor character tick.  I'm the psychoanalyst of the writer world always wanting to get to that deeper level, ferret out those tiny things that can only ever be implied but not blatantly shown.  I love layers.  Characters are always my favorite part of any narrative.  So I thoroughly enjoyed the loyalty missions and felt like the really delved deep into the characters as far as a game would allow.

Also, the lack of a major nemesis for Shepherd was a big drawback.  In ME1, we had Saren as Shepherd's nemesis.  Yes, Sovreign was the major bad guy, but Saren was the one Shepherd had to fight.  He was a real, tangible threat, and an enemy to rival Shepherd's heroics.  In ME2, Shepherd had no one to really fight against.  he had the main Prothean Overseer who took over bodies of his minions, but Shepherd never had any face-to-face time with the guy, and he was never able to mock or harm Shepherd in any way that was credible like Saren did.  This lack of a central nemesis for Shepherd to rage against made the over-all story kinda boring because I never felt anything was really at stake.  A good hero needs a good villain, and though the Collectors as a whole were a good enough "big baddie," there was nothing personalized about them to make me want to root for their defeat like I did with Saren.

I also wanted a nemesis.  Harbinger was pretty peripheral, and the closest thing to this.  He assumed direct control of the collectors, but it wasn't the same as a face to face conflict.  I suppose this is something to be remedied in ME3, but I guess that's difficult when you're nemesis is a giant buglike ship from dark space rather than an antagonist of equal skill and stature.  It felt a little abstract.  I still enjoyed it immensely (just tried to immerse myself as much as possible on my first playthrough) but I agree with you here.  Harbinger needed to be an actual bad guy, one that Shepard could have defeated or one that could have gotten away with the promise that Shepard would defeat him later.

Another big story gripe was that there was no clearly defined Rising Action to the main storyline.  In ME1, Saren is constantly 1-upping his plans to usher in the Reaper threat, and Shepherd is constantly racing to stop him, eventually leading to the revelations on Ios and culminating in the Battle for the Citadel.  There was a clear sense of rising action in that game.  In ME2, the rising action goes something like this:

You're told you have to go on a suicide mission.
You find out the Collectors are Protheans
You Steal an IFF from a conveniently found dead Reaper ship
Your crew is kidnapped
You go on suicide mission that you were gonna go on in the first place.

But because we never really understand what the Collector's motivation is, why they need humans, and what's at stake for the galaxy, it all falls flat, at least until its time to rescue your crew.  Then, finally, there's some sense of urgency, but until that point, the Collector threat doesn't seem very far reaching or urgent.

Agreed.  I'm trying to think  of this from a game developer point of view.  Admittedly I am not a game developer.    But when I played ME, while I enjoyed all the side assignments and everything there was always a sense of "BUT I HAVE MORE IMPORTANT THINGS TO DO!"  This is a direct result of really good writing, but it also compels  the player to finish quicker rather than later.  ME2 kind of wanted you to take your time.  There was less of a sense of urgency on the whole.  I loved and hated this.

Which brings me to my next story nit-pick, which was I never felt there was really anything at stake for the characters or the universe as a whole.  In ME1, Sovreign was trying to usher in a fleet of reapers to destroy all life in the galaxy.  So the stakes were pretty high.  In ME2, some human colonies were disappearing, and it was suspected it has something to do with the reapers.  That's it!

Even when you finally get on the Reaper base, and you find the big human reaper that's only partially finished, you wonder to yourself: What's the big deal?  What's the big threat to the universe here?  Will this reaper try and usher in the others like Sovreign did?  It just wasn't as big a revelation as what we got in ME1.  It was small in comparison, with no real build up or payoff.  In ME1, we needed the entire human fleet to take out 1 reaper, while desperately fighting his proxy inside the Citadel, with the fate of the Galactic Council and all life in the universe in the balance.  Here, we got three guys in a remote starbase fighting a giant robot that's being pumped full of human goo for some reason.  Again, I felt like nothing big was really at stake.

I feel like the second part of this is about feeling alone.  In ME1, by the end Shepard was a hero.  People were listening to him.  He had done something amazing and there was momentum to at the very least finally take him seriously.  Then the red tape started and he was sent out in the galaxy to hunt rogue pockets of Geth.  Hardly a hero's job, especially considering the percieved threat.  By the time Shepard was killed, politics had already played a huge role in sweeping everything under the rug.  The "threat" had been ignored, regardless of how you played or imported.  So in a way I feel like ME2 is it's own story.  It's a singular in that basically Shepard is starting over with whatever resources he can find.  A lot can and has changed in two years.  He's starting from scratch and the threat is bigger, but less pinpointed.  And his allies are sparse.  It is bleak for our hero.  And it is personal.  That is the point.  HUMAN colonies.  HUMAN reaper.  Being a pawn for a human interest group.  ME2 is very isolated, a human story.  I enjoyed that.  

There were also massive plot holes in ME2 which never got fleshed out.  I felt the story in ME1 was really tight and well written.  It gave you all you needed to know and left enough questions unanswered to get you to want to find out more.

In ME2, however, there were just too many things that didn't add up.  Why were the Protheans making a human reaper?  I got the fact that each reaper is modeled after the race it conquored, but why was it necessary to make a human one?  It was never made clear why the Protheans were doing this other than they had been "enslaved by evil."  But what was the endgame?  What would the human reaper accomplish?  And why did the Reaper require vast amounts of Human genetic material?  And if the Human Reaper was completed, what was the consequence for the galaxy?  None of these were made absolutely clear in the game.

I think they suggest that the Protheans are abducting humans in large part because of Shepard's role in the defeat of Sovereign.  It is possible that they view Shepard and now consequently humans as a strong resource that will make a strong Reaper - all the better to enslave and harvest the rest of the galaxy with.  Also, they mention that human genetic material is very diverse, which makes it good for experimentation.  The consequences of a human Reaper, I think, would simply be another addition to the Reapers' vast and nearly undefeatable fleet of synthetic/organic ships. 

How'd Shepherd and his team leave Omega-4?  I thought you needed a Mass Relay to get out of there, but they just seemed to shoot off using their own drive somehow, even though they were surrounded by black holes.  It might have been cooler if they were "stuck" in Omega 4 as the Reaper threat closed in from Dark Space and were unable to warn others about them coming.  But as it stands, not even Shepherd knows the Reapers are on their way.

At the end of ME1, we had a clear set up for a sequel which was dramatic, personal, and made me wanting more.  At the end of ME2, we got a cool shot of tons of Reapers heading for the galaxy, but nothing that made me go "Holy Crap I Need To Find Out What Happens Next!"  In short, the cliffhanger, while decent, wasn't as good as it could have been.

Over-all, I'd give the story of Mass Effect 2 a C+ compared to Mass Effect 1's A+.  Each mission in ME2 was, in and of itself, a good story, but I never felt like I was part of an epic galactic struggle like I did in the first one.  The more character-centric stories were good, but they weren't properly balanced with the over-all story of the Reapers and their threat to the universe.  Maybe if each story has somehow tied into the Collector's plot, it would have been better, but as it stands, it was all too episodic and disjointed.  It felt like a bunch of side-quests strung together that had no real payoff beyond character development. 

I really hope in ME3, Bioware gives us an epic conclusion to this amazing game franchise with a story that rivals or surpasses both the first and second Mass Effect.

Sorry for the long rant, but I just wanted to share my gripes with the faceless masses.  :-)

Thanks for all your insights.  I agree with mostly everything you have to say.  I would give Mass Effect 2 a B+ as opposed to ME1's A+, but again I chock that up to Sequel Syndrome.  I think the writers at Bioware have their work cut out for them (and I know if I was sitting at the table my head I would be saying "okay....huh....where to go from here...") but I have faith in their talent.  I expect - and I UPHOLD the writers to a very high standard now.  I don't think they'll disappoint for ME3.  

[Nautica773]

PatT2 wrote...
in your professional opinion as a writer this is the best story Bioware has ever written? Um... and you got to be a writer with your spelling? Before people flame me, I'm saying...it goes to credibility.

You don't have to be a professional writer to realize there isn't any real story. It was a noble effort on BioWare's front but it flopped. Hopefully next game they'll have things more in order.

Badpie wrote...
I write mostly scripts so I have an idea of where you're coming from.  I agree that the story was ambitious.  I also agree that the character development like what Empire had didn't happen.  But, had ME2 been a film there would have been significant flaws in the narrative as well as the character development.  Unfortunately they are writing a narrative that is not completely set in stone.  And I don't mean from the plotline point of view.  I mean character.  Every player expects their own story to be told, which is very different from films.  In a film it's a one way street.  You are presented with this character, told exactly who this character is (and the characters around him) and the viewer just has to accept that.

KotOR 2 had better character development while still being an interactive narrative. Part of the problem was a lack of tying the character's personal stories into the overarching plot as well as a lack of a clear focus.

Modifié par Nautica773, 06 février 2010 - 04:07 .

[MagicianCamille]

Nautica773 wrote...
You don't have to be a professional writer to realize there isn't any real story. It was a noble effort on BioWare's front but it flopped. Hopefully next game they'll have things more in order.

Yeah being pretensious as a consumer is pretty cool huh?

[Conway044]

From a writer's perspective, a faceless villain always needs a character to embody it so the emotional pull of the story can take hold.  In Star Wars, you have Darth Vader.  In Lord of The Rings, you have Gollum.  You need a nemesis to humanize the enemy.  It just makes the story more powerful.

I disagree with most of your first post and your odd view of the plot of ESB.  However this jumps out at me even more.  You think Gollum is the face of the Villain in the Lord of the Rings?  Seriously?  You're going to skip over Saruman, whose fall mirrors that of Sauron, and choose Gollum?  Have you read Tolkien?   Gollum is portrayed as a tragic figure in LotR, not as a villain. The Witch King and Saruman are the face of the enemy (Sauron).

[Nautica773]

MagicianCamille wrote...
Yeah being pretensious as a consumer is pretty cool huh?

I don't know, you'll have to tell me about it.
Honestly, there isn't a main plot to ME2. You could argue that the recruitment missions and loyalty quests are the main plot, but nothing ties them together save that Shepard is in them. Though well told character backgrounds, and providing more rounded individuals than the first, it doesn't change the fact that there's almost no narrative in this game. I don't see anything wrong with critiquing the game for the developers and pointing out areas that could be improved. I suppose we could just sit around and give blind fanboy praise instead of offering suggestions to the people that are selling us a product. 

[Lucy Glitter]

/agree with OP about the story. It fell flat on so many levels. None of the "plot twists" shocked me any which way, and in the end, I felt the only good points story-wise were the exploration of your companion's history and personality.



At the end, I didn't feel anything. I didn't get the bang I wanted. There wasn't enough focus on the Collector's. They served as a very flat enemy that didn't have any depth. They should have explored the Collector's more. We didn't do anything but destroy another threat to humans, we didn't start tackling the Reapers. We should have.



If there was any saving grace, I would say right at the end, where the Reaper disconnects his powers from Harbinger. Afterwards Harbinger was blank, almost... real. Then only a few seconds after it dies. It was a bitter end.

[The Black Ghost]

On the story, I agree completely. The ending was total ****. The final missions of Mass Effect were thrilling and amazing.



I felt nothing throughout virtually the entire end sequence. It was just...bleh...

[mjack234]

Conway044 wrote...

From a writer's perspective, a faceless villain always needs a character to embody it so the emotional pull of the story can take hold.  In Star Wars, you have Darth Vader.  In Lord of The Rings, you have Gollum.  You need a nemesis to humanize the enemy.  It just makes the story more powerful.

I disagree with most of your first post and your odd view of the plot of ESB.  However this jumps out at me even more.  You think Gollum is the face of the Villain in the Lord of the Rings?  Seriously?  You're going to skip over Saruman, whose fall mirrors that of Sauron, and choose Gollum?  Have you read Tolkien?   Gollum is portrayed as a tragic figure in LotR, not as a villain. The Witch King and Saruman are the face of the enemy (Sauron).

Gollum was Frodo's nemesis.  He was constantly struggling against him throughout their journey and was a reflection of what Frodo could become, so in that way, he was the stories "villain" because his goals were in direct opposition to Frodo's.  Sauron was a good nemesis too, but he was more for Gandalf/Aragorn.

[hwf]

Just to chime in since I think most folks miss this.

The Reaper armada is not heading towards our galaxy.
It's definately moving towards a galaxy, but not ours.

For reference, an ending of ME2, one minute long.
This shows the galaxy I'm referring to:

The galaxy you see the armada moving to is a "class SBc" galaxy - a so called "barred" one.
Whereas the Milky Way, our galaxy, is a spiral one; a "class Sa" galaxy.

[Myrmedus]

hwf wrote...

Just to chime in since I think most folks miss this.

The Reaper armada is not heading towards our galaxy.
It's definately moving towards a galaxy, but not ours.

For reference, an ending of ME2, one minute long.
This shows the galaxy I'm referring to:

The galaxy you see the armada moving to is a "class SBc" galaxy - a so called "barred" one.
Whereas the Milky Way, our galaxy, is a spiral one; a "class Sa" galaxy.

That's the Milky Way, mate. Sorry to ****** on your parade but the Milky Way is a barred galaxy:

"The mass distribution within the galaxy closely resembles the Sbc Hubble classification, which is a spiral galaxy with relatively loosely-wound arms.[20] Astronomers first began to suspect that the Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy, rather than an ordinary spiral galaxy, in the 1990s[21]. Their suspicions were confirmed by the Spitzer Space Telescope observations in 2005[22] which showed the galaxy's central bar to be larger than previously suspected

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_Way - "Composition and Structure" section

Modifié par Myrmedus, 07 février 2010 - 12:11 .