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[Mondo47]

JohnnyDollar wrote...

Did you read any of that thread?  How do you feel about the plot and storyline of ME2? 

Also there is constant bickering and debating going on in the forum about the RPG and Shooter aspect of it.  How ME1 was a better RPG, and ME2 was ruined by taking away the RPG elements and turning it into more of a shooter.  Blah bla bla
What are your thoughts on all of that?

I think a lot of that thread was regularly capsized by pseudo-intellectual attempts at re-enacting Godzilla vs. Megalon that descended into clumsy sumo bashos where victory was based on who could accuse the other of using ad hominems instead of actual constructed argument. Watching two basement-dwellers having a sweaty look-how-book-smart-we-are slapping fight does not impress me or make me wet; it makes me thank the Gods on high that some male geeks aren't such advertisements for abstinence.

I'm not going to get into the dumbed-down RPG argument at all; it's pointless. The people that whine the loudest about it bemoan the loss of an inventory that allows them to carry more weapons and armour in some bizzaro pocket universe than an entire platoon can use and not being able to stick dozens of experience points into their ability to make with a curly-lipped smile that makes imaginary women swoon or imaginary bad guys douse their drawers at the sound of the player-character's dulcet tones. Yes, I'm being sexist, but find a girl gamer that argues about that kind of ephemoral stuff. The game was streamlined, but it still works as an RPG because you go on an adventure. A +9 Bag of Unlimited Crap-Carrying doth not make a roleplaying game, and if you think it does, go play Warcraft.

As for the story... the common argument is that the epic storyline of the original (which you have to admit was hardly original in the first place) was not followed up upon in the second episode. Ok, I can understand some folk being a little thrown by Shep getting offed in the first five minutes and then coming back from the dead to fight some bad guys we've never heard of before that only seem tangenitally attached to the plot of the first game. Stories do not have to be straight lines, though; there can be a solid beginning and a solid ending, but what is inbetween may span enough time to allow the characters to meander through other adventures before the whole tale is drawn back to a single thread. If an epic story has to be strictly linear, then it's a bit of a sorry state of affairs for storytelling if you ask me at least.

A lot of the arguments I hear about the story of ME2 seem to bemoan the loss of a prominant leading villian like Saren... who I thought at least was a pretty damn pathetic lead villain; he was wishy-washy and non-threatening and any big bad guy that can be talked into offing himself really lacks conviction (if he had so many easily-exploited doubts in the beginning, why did he even start working for the Reapers). The Reapers themselves seem a little childish too (Shepard sasses them, so Sovereign signs off its communications stream by smashing every window in the room... bravo, my superior beings, for acting like petulant teenagers slamming every door in the house because you got grounded). I'm not saying the Collector General is any better (and the 'twist' origins of the Collectors were as obvious as a column in Heat magazine), but once again, does the villain have to be some English-accented berk twirling his moustache and explaining all his plans to us? Besides, we had TIM for that.

When push comes to shove, a lot of the arguments about weakness in ME2's plotting and storyline come from it just not following the outline of the first, which if you ask me would have ended up with some people arguing that it was just reapeating itself if it had done. Some folk are just plain disappointed that it wasn't continuing their epic Mass Effect straight away, which is fine; they wanted to be sticking it to the Reapers, and they didn't really get what they wanted. What they got was a lot of new characters to meet and get to know and help out before rushing off to blow up a space station and watching the credits roll. It didn't feel to them like part of the big picture. I can see why they were pissed at what they got, and there's nothing wrong with that at all, but I see it as being a very relevant part of the story.

To me, ME2 is about laying ground for the final showdown with the Reapers. Shep, Wrex, Garrus, Tali and co. are not enough to do the job; not even they can fight an army of thousands of honking great mechano-bug-squids from the outer darkness of the cosmic infinate. Shep needs an army or three to watch his back, and an army of his own for the final battle. So we get a setup where Shep roams around the galaxy putting together his little Dirty Dozen, while involving himself in the political struggles of several groups who may or may not be able to assist in any final battle that might appear in the final part of the story. Since the mechanics of the Suicide Mission allow us to get through the entire battle without losing a single life (meaning no death is forced upon us by the game - if we do the prior missions and make the right choices no-one need bite the bullet... no death is arbitrary or locked-in), I assume at least that we need these people for something. They wouldn't be the undoubted focus of the story if they were faceless hired guns to throw at the Collectors. ME2 is thus to me a character study; an entire game devoted to creating a posse for us to care about enough to want to see them with our Shep in the final cataclysmic battle to come - because without them...

It's a pit-stop. An Auberge. A tale on the way back to the tale. Sure, Shep need not have died and come back as the cyber-messiah, but I guess that was just to wrap Cerberus in there as they have some role to play in the final episode. Sure, the story has its clumsy parts, and a few things that you can poke holes in if you really want to (and you can do that with almost any story, if not every story ever told, etched in stone or typed on a page - it's all down to the reader and the reader alone, no-one else is wrong or right), but the thing that most critics of the story seem to aim their Blackstorms at is the fact it has more to do with Jacob, Jack, Miri, Thane, Samara and everyone else than saving the universe... the way I see it, you can't save the universe without them, so it's better we come to love or loathe them now, otherwise, we won't care when the time comes for Shep and his trusty crew to sell their souls dear to save the galaxy from Mecha-Cthulhu. And if we don't care... why spend our fifty bucks in the first place?

Just my thoughts on it, 'tis all. And as for all the peeps complaining about their missing bottomless bags...

[Mondo47]

And just to get things back on Jack...



Jack Approves - +12

[royceclemens]

Mondo, did you spend the entire hour writing that? Because that's just ace and sums up my thoughts without a couple of spare parts, which follow...



ME2 functions purely as a reason to care. Given the reality of the story a galaxy that doesn't have any faces to put on its myriad ways of life is not a galaxy worth saving. It's a concept, a statistic, an oversimplified ideal and not a collection of races doing the best they can just like we are. We see the places and meet the people on whose behalf we are acting. And as we shake hands and say hi, the realization sinks in that if we screw up, these people will be killed or enslaved and these places burned to cinder.



Could we have gotten these realizations and these characters in a more streamlined narrative? It's possible. But the margin of error verges on the apocalyptic. A mess of subplots that threaten to drown whatever storyline they may have endeavored upon. So in addition to being the emotional move, the decision to craft ME2 as a series of vignettes was the prudent move. I find it odd that the people who accuse ME2 of wasting time will, if pressed, admit to liking Lost and Battlestar Galactica. Both of which employed holding patterns and diversionary tactics so numerous that they make ME2 look about as linear as, well, a line.



But even on top of this, ME2 crafted a series of moments. Yes, they were each about themselves, but they were each perfect. Thane saving his son. Grunt declaring Shepard his battlemaster. Tali mourning her father. Mordin's moral crisis. Jack's... everything. Even Miranda, who I can't stand, got her moment with her little half-smile at the prospect of meeting her sister. Would I trade these moments for a more narratively streamlined game that may have omitted them? No. A thousand times no. And the people who would aren't worth talking to. They got no swagger and they got no soul.



As for the whole RPG thing? Basically folks are arguing that they don't spend enough time in a menu screen. So if my logic holds up, they want to spend sixty bucks on a game that they don't want to play. Whatever. It takes all kinds to make a world, as they say.

[LiquidGrape]

I never bothered with the criticism aimed at the reduced micromanaging. The more direct and streamlined those mechanics are, the happier I am. I can't stand browsing through mounting inventory lists, comparing weapons with arbitrary numbers attached to them. It breaks immersion, and it breaks my attention. In this respect, I think Mass Effect 2 did brilliantly.

What I do take issue with, and I know I'm not making any friends by saying this, is what I perceive to be the emotional detachment of both installments.
Jack is easily the closest I've gotten to an empathic moment so far, but I must admit I've found little reason for personal investment in any of the characters; regardless of how interesting I may find them. This is probably a fault on my part, but I can't help but think it might have something to do with the disembodied way in which they've been woven into the narrative.

I thought Mass Effect 2 very grating in this aspect, especially as I found the reunions with the old crew to be absolutely horrendously put together. Wrex being the exception, as he was perhaps the one person to seem genuinely surprised, and pleased, at seeing Shepard alive. Otherwise, I got the strange feeling that I had merely been gone for the weekend and returned prematurely, rather than been dead for two years. There's absolutely no catharsis involved; no reward for having experienced the previous installment and now coming face to face with old friends. It's a wasted opportunity, as it likely would've won me over in an instant.

As it is, each character exists almost exclusively on the plane of their relationship to Shepard, or lack thereof. Jack might throw some expletives in the face of Miranda and Tali threaten to embellish Legion with another hole, but it's so static, and so unconvincing, and so irrelevant to the grand scheme of things that I can't help but think these moments were merely included as an effort to disrupt the plodding of traversing the narrow, efficient corridors of the cold, cold galaxy.

I'm well aware that each character represents a faction and culture which will likely have a great influence in ME3, and that in itself is an interesting idea.
So while I don't necessarily blame BioWare for shifting focus to a greater canvas, I believe they bit off more than they could chew; and lost the nuance of flavour in the process.

Modifié par LiquidGrape, 19 juin 2010 - 02:11 .

[Jackal904]

JohnnyDollar wrote...

royceclemens wrote...
And as for the chances of what I've described happening, york? Slim... But not impossible. Because I remember reading somewhere that a thousand decisons would be ported from ME2 to ME3 and therein lies the rub. If we take away all the decisions you made that weren't directly tied to character development, how many are we left with? If the goal is to create DLC to bridge the two games, the characters have to factor in somewhere. Because why bother bridging the two games if you're just gonna hit the reset button anyway? The characters HAVE to be dealt with some more to meet the objective.

A thousand decisions ported to ME3 is a LOT.  Especially considering there are only about 20 transfered into ME2 from ME.

You have probably talked about it already, but what is your opinion on the ME2 plot and storyline?  Is is satisfactory to you?  Smudboy did a little video review of the game and started a thread about it.  He was real nitpicky, but he did make a few good points.  One of the points that he made was that the protagonist (Shepard), is not really tied to the plot.  He/She had the prothean cipher in ME1, but he/she is just a ship commander in ME2.  TIM may as well be the protagonist in ME2.  He discussed quite a few other things about the plot and storyline.  I would have to look up the thread to remind myself of what else he talked about.

I hate smudboy. He is just an angry troll who is butthurt over the streamlining of ME2.

But how the f*ck is Shepard not tied to the plot? Last time I checked he's the one doing all the dirty work to stop the Reapers and the Collectors. So what if he's not like the ring bearer. He is the only one who can stop the Reapers, I think that ties him to the plot pretty damn well. Smudboy just pulls sh*t out of his ass in desperate attempts to bash ME2. It's pathetic.

[Mondo47]

JohnnyDollar wrote...

Jackal904 wrote...
I hate smudboy. He is just an angry troll who is butthurt over the streamlining of ME2.

But how the f*ck is Shepard not tied to the plot? Last time I checked he's the one doing all the dirty work to stop the Reapers and the Collectors. So what if he's not like the ring bearer. He is the only one who can stop the Reapers, I think that ties him to the plot pretty damn well. Smudboy just pulls sh*t out of his ass in desperate attempts to bash ME2. It's pathetic.

I did watch most of that video series and read a little of that thread.  I am a little familiar with Smudboy, but never really paid much attention to his threads in the past, except for that video plot analysis thread.  I thought he brought up a few good points from his critisim.  The presentation wasn't anything professional, and from what Pacifien said, he basically mimicked a red letter (?) review of "The Phantom Menace", or something similar to that.  He lost whatever credibilty he had with me, which wasn't much, when he started up that thread about ME2 false advertising.  

He didn't get the game he wanted. It happens. I didn't get the movie I wanted in Terminator: Salvation (I wanted two hours of the first five minutes of Saving Private Ryan meets all Reese's flashbacks from the first Terminator movie: robots and death and more robots... instead I got, well, you know the rest). I got over it though. All it took was a few drinks and a little ice cream. There's more to life than hanging in a forum b*tching endlessly about what might have been. If Smuddy wants to do that, fine. I for one though am not going to listen anymore. I've got better things to do than make damn YouTube movies about it in the hope I'll be seen as some monumental guru on storycrafting; like play other games, read other books, write other stories of my own, soak up a few other movies and have a somewhat-kinky sex life

Lowblow, I know. It's nice to punch people in the nuts occasionally though - ask any woman

Just going back to Grapey's thoughts on emotional detachment in the game... I do agree there to some degrees. I mean, there were aspects of Jacob's final confrontation with his father I can identify with on a certain level; it came close enough to home to make walking away to leave his absentee father at the mercy of the savages something difficult to do in the extreme. I don't have to say anything about Jack, really, do I? And Wrex barging through his guards to greet me gives me little tears in my eyes every damn time it plays out. A lot of the characters had a bit, but could have had so much more. Everyone could have been Jack and Wrex. Just to get to my main point though, even Thane, one of the most measured and reasonable characters in the game in personality, seems to have more strong feeling in him than the one person that matters the most: Shepard.

I want to hear Shepard laugh. I want to see Shepard angry. I want to see him\\her genuinely lose it for a moment. I want to see him\\her conflicted. I want to see Shepard cry. I want to feel their frustration, their loss. It would make Shep so much more real to know that underneath that all-business soldier's exterior there is a heart. Making Shepard more like us will only make us, the gamers, feel close to him\\her all the more.

Modifié par Mondo47, 19 juin 2010 - 02:02 .

[Jackal904]

royceclemens wrote...

Mondo, did you spend the entire hour writing that? Because that's just ace and sums up my thoughts without a couple of spare parts, which follow...

ME2 functions purely as a reason to care. Given the reality of the story a galaxy that doesn't have any faces to put on its myriad ways of life is not a galaxy worth saving. It's a concept, a statistic, an oversimplified ideal and not a collection of races doing the best they can just like we are. We see the places and meet the people on whose behalf we are acting. And as we shake hands and say hi, the realization sinks in that if we screw up, these people will be killed or enslaved and these places burned to cinder.

Could we have gotten these realizations and these characters in a more streamlined narrative? It's possible. But the margin of error verges on the apocalyptic. A mess of subplots that threaten to drown whatever storyline they may have endeavored upon. So in addition to being the emotional move, the decision to craft ME2 as a series of vignettes was the prudent move. I find it odd that the people who accuse ME2 of wasting time will, if pressed, admit to liking Lost and Battlestar Galactica. Both of which employed holding patterns and diversionary tactics so numerous that they make ME2 look about as linear as, well, a line.

But even on top of this, ME2 crafted a series of moments. Yes, they were each about themselves, but they were each perfect. Thane saving his son. Grunt declaring Shepard his battlemaster. Tali mourning her father. Mordin's moral crisis. Jack's... everything. Even Miranda, who I can't stand, got her moment with her little half-smile at the prospect of meeting her sister. Would I trade these moments for a more narratively streamlined game that may have omitted them? No. A thousand times no. And the people who would aren't worth talking to. They got no swagger and they got no soul.

As for the whole RPG thing? Basically folks are arguing that they don't spend enough time in a menu screen. So if my logic holds up, they want to spend sixty bucks on a game that they don't want to play. Whatever. It takes all kinds to make a world, as they say.

Oh my god somebody gets it! (and Mondo) I agree with you 100% royce. I think the people who argue that ME2's plot was divergent don't even know that they prefer how ME2 turned out, versus a more story driven game. If you were to take a bunch of the character development away in ME2 (loyalty missions, some conversations), and make it more story driven, they would change their arguement in a heartbeat. They would miss all the deep character development and interactions, and they would want the original character driven ME2 back.

Say a Miranda fan is complaining that the plot of ME2 diverges from the main storyline. Ask them if they would be willing to sacrifice Miranda's loyalty mission and half of her dialogue for a ME2 that's more focused on the main plot. I garauntee you they would say, "Hell no!"

And like you said royce, ME2 gives you a reason to care about the risks going into ME3. And that's what's so great about Mass Effect. There are so few games where you actually care about the characters. So many developers try so hard to make you care about the characters but end up failing miserably (Infamous, Fable).

And I 100% agree with you on the rpg elements. I do not understand the people who prefered the "rpg elements" of ME1. It boggles my mind.

@Mondo

Great (and huge) post. I agree on 99% of it. I think the Mass Effect storyline is more original that people give it credit for. If you break the storyline down to it's fundamental concept, a powerful force that destroys everything every certain amount of years, then yeah it does sound unoriginal. But it's much more than that. It's like applying a tvtrope to Jack. Sure the trope has some accuracies, but we all know there is much more to Jack than that.

Modifié par Jackal904, 19 juin 2010 - 02:08 .

[Jackal904]

Mondo47 wrote...

I want to hear Shepard laugh. I want to see Shepard angry. I want to see him\\\\\\\\her genuinely lose it for a moment. I want to see him\\\\\\\\her conflicted. I want to see Shepard cry. I want to feel their frustration, their loss. It would make Shep so much more real to know that underneath that all-business soldier's exterior there is a heart. Making Shepard more like us will only make us, the gamers, feel close to him\\\\\\\\her all the more.

I very much support this . One of my favorite scenes in ME1 is right after the Normandy gets grounded on the Citadel, and Shepard is going through his locker and he just collapses from hopelessness. That was a very humanizing moment. I would like to see Shepard show some faults. He always does everything right and he's always the perfect model soldier. It would be nice to see Shepard break that mold once in a while.

The one good thing about Jacob's romance is that he asks femShep how she is feeling. You see Shepard admitting some emotional stress. And after having helped every other person in the galaxy with their personal problems and their emotional stress, it was nice to see Shepard show some of her own.

Modifié par Jackal904, 19 juin 2010 - 02:22 .

[LiquidGrape]

JohnnyDollar wrote...
One thing that people tend to forget about ME2, is the loss of the emotional initial impact that it has on you after you're first playthrough.  That first playthrough is the most emotional.  At least it was for me.  The loyalty missions were powerful to me in that first playthrough.  So it's only natural to not feel this after succesive playthroughs, and become desensitized.  That doesn't detract from the game though.  A lot of people tend to forget about this, and start finding faults where there are none, and the initial impact that the game had is forgotten.

That's the funny thing, my first playthrough was the most underwhelming for me. With time I've been able to scrutinise my impressions and recognise some of the great improvements, but what I thought of as great flaws during that first run remain.
It's too quick. Lacking focus. The variation of environments and their polish is definitely an improvement, but the scale and awe is somehow gone. Ironic, considering you cover a far greater distance in ME2 than you ever did in the original.

And I hadn't considered that, Mondo, but I think you may be right. It's not necessarily the casts fault that I find myself an outsider looking in; but Shepards inability to express any kind of profound emotion.

Modifié par LiquidGrape, 19 juin 2010 - 03:02 .

[Christmas Ape]

yorkj86 wrote...
Yes, Jack's beauty is stunning.  Unfortunately, Jack's ink and clothes are to her face what Samara's "man-jaw" is to the rest of her body.  Some people focus in on only one thing, and miss the rest.  Their loss, though, because there's certainly a lot to miss with Samara if you only see her jaw.

I never even noticed Samara's jaw, to be honest. No, I don't mean "way too high up to notice" - there was more "how does that crap stay on her forehead?" than that - just that she looked like an older asari to me.

Jack spent a lot of mission time napping so she didn't get a lot of play - and, well, FemShep player - so that's the first time I've gotten a good look at the character model. And daaaaaamn.

To buy a PC and mod or to MaleShep....the decisions...

[NICKjnp]

@Mondo...


That was great post.  The problem I have with the people you described in it is that they think that only their opinion matters.  It's great that they have one but the way in which they present it makes them seem as if they believe themselves to be the most superior individuals in the world.  They can save that for some class on comparative existential beliefs on religion if they want that attitude.  On an internet forum, where everyone is faceless, they don't need to project themselves as being the ultimate authority of the bioware social network forums.  Ok... now I've gotten myself all worked up and need to go eat breakfast.

[Mondo47]

JohnnyDollar wrote...

I have always felt that Shepard lacked emotion.  Not enough humor or sadness is displayed.  Overall, both Hale and Meer project monotone bland voices to me.  With some exceptions of course.

"I'm more interested in just talking for a bit." And we all know what 'talking' means, don't we, kids?

I think we should remember Shepard is a character, not a blank slate we play like Gordon Freeman... BioWare maybe should too

[LiquidGrape]

Oh, I don't know; I think Hale is a great voice artiste, and she has several moments to shine in.
It's just a shame that those moments are almost exclusively renegade options I often would be hard-pressed to choose.

Modifié par LiquidGrape, 19 juin 2010 - 03:56 .

[zvbxrpl]

@ Mondo. Wow. I go to sleep and something brilliant gets posted. I agree that micromanagement is not the essential feature of an RPG--choice and character building (in the sense of character development, not stat management and leveling up) are, Also, the best analogy I've found for the difference in plot construction between ME1 and ME2 would be that ME1 is like a movie, while ME2 is like a season of TV. I mean that ME1 has a continuing plot arc pretty much all the way through, while ME2's missions are like episodes of a TV show, some of which advance the plot arc, others of which are self-contained and advance character arcs.



I'd also like to defend the most maligned aspect of ME2: The cameos by ME1 characters. The problem with these was not that they were wrongheaded in concept, but that they were treated as perfunctory mission hooks. I'm leaving Wrex out, because every other reunion (including the ones with squad members like Tali and Garrus) fits with Mass Effect 2 being the 'downer middle volume' of the trilogy. If you strip away the flawed execution, here's what you get. Kaidan/Ashley thinks you've betrayed the alliance (which, from the perspective of a sole survivor Shep, has enough truth to hurt), and has been relegated to obscurity when the galaxy truly needs their experience fighting Reapers. If they were an LI, they are furthermore deeply hurt by your working with an organization they revile, and in fact feel betrayed on a personal and not just a political level. Liara has turned from a scientist with a sense of wonder and idealism into a cold, hardened covert manipulator. In fact, the sweet idealist of the first game has made the deal with the devil (giving you over to Cerberus) that sets up an integral part of the second games dark tone She is obsessed with stamping out her own personal villain and is blind to the negative change in her personality. Furthermore, since you were the one who made her into a soldier, there is a sense in which you bear some of the responsibility for this change. If she was an LI, you can tell that she still cares for you, and that that may be one of the reasons she went to morally dubious lengths to bring you back. However, she's so wrapped up in her own battles that she can't allow herself to love you like some part of her still wants to. Even Garrus, behind all the badass fun, has undergone a real shift. His internal conflicts in the first game over ethics, justice, and his own freedom have been resolved, but they have led him to a place where he embraces a truly brutal and merciless brand of justice. Tali has changed the most subtly, but even she is more of a businesslike soldier for the Flotilla and less of a fascinated young researcher than in the first game. We see this rarely, but when she interacts with Legion, for example, you can tell that she's got a bit of a harder center. All of this has the potential to be really emotionally powerful. It didn't work so well, frankly, but the core ideas were sound.



In general, the fact that ME2 was a darker game that left more loose ends than ME1 is entirely fitting for its status as the middle volume of the trilogy. That sort of thing is a successful strategy--Just look at "The Empire Strikes Back," "The Two Towers," or "The Dark Knight." I predict that once ME3 comes out, the opinion of ME2's story will generally go up, as it did with "The Empire Strikes Back." And this will be exactly the right reaction.

[axl99]

I just see a bunch of missed opportunities due to time, money and game resource constraints. And thanks to that some corners had to be cut on the story and retooled in a way the average joe gamer of 12-15 can get what's going on while they're shooting enemies behind and around cover.

Who knows just how much content was really cut from the game, if the guys at Wall of Sound who worked on the soundtrack are any indication.

Modifié par axl99, 19 juin 2010 - 04:18 .

[Jackal904]

LiquidGrape wrote...


Oh, I don't know; I think Hale is a great voice artiste, and she has several moments to shine in.
It's just a shame that those moments are almost exclusively renegade options I often would be hard-pressed to choose.
[video]

Oh man that was hilarious. Some of the lines are just so evil that they're funny. Like telling Joker they should just get rid of him since the ship has EDI. That's probably the most **** line in the game.