Taritu wrote...
Mac can write a good character. Whether he can write a good story is up in the air. ME1 was a good story, but it wasn't his. ME2, forgive me, is not a good overarching story. There are lots of good stories in it, but when you put it all together it's less than the sum of its parts. Perhaps that was unavoidable with the whole structure of "roundup badasses" but, well, that structure was a choice, wasn't it.
As for Liara, I sure hope they realize they screwed it up and why. What I hate most isn't even what she says, it's what Shep can't say, that he would say "hey, to me it's only been a few weeks since we became lovers, and, well, I'm still in love with you" (if you see your Shep's feelings that way, which I do, and I think Liara in ME1 intimates it's not just a fling for her either.)
Ah well, we'll see. As others have said, non-story considerations may have messed that and other things up despite Mac's best intentions and writing. Certainly the hints of early story seem to be better than what we got.
To be fair, Drew K wrote the ME2 story before he left to work on the Star Wars MMO, I think.
Although, as a whole, I agree with this. ME2 suffers from the same issue as Dragon Age: it's a collection of interesting character pieces that are somewhat loosely connected. I think ME2 is far more coherent and interesting since you at least have a major 'plot' dungeon every couple of character missions.
My biggest problem with ME2 is that it's likely to be irrelevant once ME3 is released. Really, there isn't much that happens in that is ABSOLUTELY necessary for ME3 to occur. Since you wipe out the Collectors, they become somewhat irrelevant. You learn the geth aren't a true collective, which I assume will be important. If you save the base, you may have technology that helps against the invasion. But Shepard does not make any major strides against the Reaper threat. There's also a pretty major plot hole: if the Collectors have been around since the last invasion, why didn't they help Sovereign? Also, the baby Reaper made me think Contra 3.