And now for my own mega post:
I apologize to those who actually read through the whole post as it is insanely long, I know this and apologize. However I did try to make it as compact and precise as possible. Also included a table of contents to make it easier to read. This is my opinions of the game and while I know some will agree with me, I am sure not all will. All I ask is that we can keep it civil and please, don't feed the trolls
This is my feedback and suggestions/ideas. As always it is up to the developers in this case, to choose if I am making any sense whatsoever and if so which parts are interesting and which are not. This is written as much for them in terms of feedback and for myself in terms of an outlet for my thoughts about this great game, so take it for what it is
Feedback:
01. Mission Complete Screen
02. Ah yes, "side quests".
03. Romances in ME2.
03.1 Romance or Romance not, there is no friend.
03.2 Kelly Chambers
03.3 Tali'Zora nar/vas Rayya/Neema/Normandy
04. Cerberus
05. Renegade, Bad-Ass or ****
06. Achievements
07. New Game+
08. Mini games
09. Combat
10. Insanity
10.1 Combat
10.2 Squad AI
10.3 Spikes in difficulty
Suggestions:
01. DLC that take place "after the game"
01.1 Bridging ME2 and ME3
02. Trading one resource for another
Feedback:
01. Mission Complete Screen
This feature of the game has it's purpose and serves that purpose well. One problem with the MCS however is that it takes me, as the player, away from the game as it doesn't fit within the game but is rather a meta-screen. There are versions of mission screens that feels more in-game rather then meta, but this one isn't one of them. It also makes the game feel more mission-based and while the game is built on missions there is no need for the narrative to feel episodic when you have a clear overarching story. This I feel was handled better in ME1 with the debriefings that occurred after a mission. The debriefing part is still present in ME2, though sadly with a limited cast of characters present. Here I feel it would have worked better if you had put the debriefings directly after finishing a mission, and had another tab on Shepard's private console dedicated for these mission reports. To tie the two together you could have simply have EDI state that the mission report had been filed. While a minor aspect of the game, and a minor annoyance of mine, I still feel that even the small things should not be considered too minor for improvement.
02. Ah yes, "side quests".
While there are side quests in the game, that would be the N7 missions and a limited amount of quests on the quest hub worlds. This makes the galaxy seem far more empty in ME2 then ME1. This is not to say that ME1 had the best side quests ever made - we all remember trying to conquer the dreaded randomly generated heightmaps with the Mako in Me1. To be fair, I never had a problem with the Mako, it handled like it should - more or less, the problem was that it wasn't the best suited to traverse the worlds you had to explore. But I digress. The biggest problem with ME1 in terms of side quest in my view wasn't the quests themselves but rather the fact that the environments you where running around in were recycled into tedious repetition. Though I suppose you could argue that the bases where built with a modular concept in mind and that's why everything looked alike. ME1 did however do somethings right when it came to the side quests that appears forgotten in ME2. Admiral Hacket did a good job at supplying you with the side quests - though at times even I was wondering if the alliance actually did anything. I did however find the writing in the side quests of ME1 to be quite good - from missions like the AI on the moon to helping Toombs to negotiating with the L2 biotics. ME2 lacks the same story involvement when it comes to its side missions, you just happen to scan a planet or find a random trinket while doing something else with no real commitment from your character. There are of course exceptions to this, the CSec-Volus-Quarian mini-side quest to name one. Hopefully this will be addressed with DLC in the future as the epic story that is the main plot is now finished and done so the writers will have more time on the side quests.
03. Romances in ME2.
I will split this into three parts as they cover various aspects of romances in the game.
03.1 Romance or Romance not, there is no friend.
I got the feeling that the potential love interests where only there for the romance dialogue-wise and once you chose a dialogue option that ended the romance possibilities you just got stuck in either a weird loop or the characters default "i don't have time right now"-speech. It would have been fun to see some more options rather then just have it end there though this is just a minor thing and is completely understandable as by the time any romance would come into play or said loop would appear you would be ready for the final mission and the end of the game. Would just be fun with another dialogue branch.
03.2 Kelly Chambers
While this subsection has her name what I'm getting at here is not directly related to her as a character but rather what she represents - also I am well aware that the character Kelly Chambers does not count as a romance. Here I think you where about to do something I have been talking about with friends for a long time now: Romance with a non-party-member. I say "where about to" because she doesn't count as a romance. All the same I find this as a refreshing wind. While you spend a lot of time with the party members so it is logical that feeling might grow for a squad member the peripheral characters that you travel with might also be a potential target for the main characters affection. They might not aid you with their combat prowess but with other things so it would make since you speak to them as well. This is something I feel you have done right in the whole of the game, a lot of crew members now have dialogue and a personality. Sadly it just left me craving more dialogue options for all of them - something I personally think shows what a good job your writers have done with the crew.
03.3 Tali'Zora nar/vas Rayya/Neema/Normandy
Again as with the previous subsection I am not really referring to the character but in this case how her romance is handled. While I feel that her romance as well as Garrus feels a bit of a fan service I have nothing bad to say about the way at least Tali's romance was handled - wouldn't know about Garrus as I haven't played through as a female Shepard. What I like about how it was handled is that it was built up over the course of the two games. Sure this might have been done retroactively but even if it where I find that irrelevant to the subject at hand. Where as 99.9% of romances happens during the course of the game this romance - and possibly Garrus romance as well - started out on her side during the first game and built itself up to the point where she became a love interest in ME2. This gives a certain depth to the romance which is something I appreciate.
What I would find even more interesting would be a combination of the none-squad-member romance and the evolution of the Tali romance. Perhaps we will see this done in ME3.
04. Cerberus
While on the topic of writing I must again give praise to the writers for making this dark and ruthless organization feel much more human. While sure it is easy to hate a faceless group it quickly becomes less black and white when you happen to be in the middle of it all.
And while I still don't like Cerberus by the end of the game I have saved my crew 4/4 times and will continue to do so for any consecutive play through. Sadly I wish I could have taken a stronger stance against Cerberus then what I was allowed through the dialogue options. For instance we have the fact the Toombs quest in ME1 and the sole-survivor background – which “cannon”-Shepard happens to have – that would have been quite solid grounds for a more active stance against Cerberus. Someone on the forums also suggested that if you get to talk to the council – this being a “non-canonical” part of the game – the council could have asked you to “spy” on Cerberus for them. This would in my opinion, along with the privately admission of the reapers but publicly covering it up, would have let the player feel like given more nuance to the council rather then just looking like morons, as well as giving us as players a chance to make it “publicly” clear that we are not with Cerberus and that we have not forgiven them. That being said, the end game makes up for part of this, with even Miranda resigning. Sadly something that isn't addressed upon choosing to continue playing after the Collector base is blown up nor can we tell EDI to cut all surveillance for Cerberus post-collectors. But that is after the end game so at the moment no impact on the story.
05. Renegade, Bad-Ass or ****
Again I will have to tip my hat to the writers. While the majority of the renegade choices in ME1 made you out like the galaxy's number one **** this is not the case in ME2. I found myself using a lot more renegade options through out the game and by the end of the game had filled roughly half my renegade bar while still having maxed out my paragon one. That being said, there are still a lot of renegade options that still make you out to be an **** and sadly still have to be an **** to get the more bad-ass choices - like the shortest interrogation ever. Speaking of the shortest interrogation ever, why isn't there a equivalent line for paragons I mean I am a specter after all, or a lower renegade requirement, but I digress.
06. Achievements
There is a big difference in how the two games handles achievements, and here I will have to say that this is one aspect where ME1 did it better then ME2. ME2 has less achievements then its predecessor. At least in terms of achievements you had to work to get, as you get most of the achievements by simply doing the main quest. Another big difference is that in ME1 the player was also rewarded for unlocking an achievement which I felt to be a good thing. The achievements actually had an impact on the game rather then just being a badge that you unlock after spending enough time doing one singular thing. There is as far as I know only one achievement that grands you any reward in ME2 and that is the one you automatically get by completing the game. Would have been more fun to see rewards for your work rather then just the unlocked achievement icon.
07. New Game+
This is the one part of the game that I really feel you dropped the ball. While you allow the player to keep the weapons, weapon training and levels from their previous game you reset the upgrades and paragon/renegade points for the character. While you can look at this and say that the character is given a boost to combat for the cost of being socially put back to 0, this isn't entirely true. The higher the level you are the harder the game becomes. This is most likely done to make sure that the game still has a measure of challenge even when I replay through the game starting at level 30. The effect of this is however that the combat aspects balance out. Now if you compare this with importing a character from ME1 however you will find it much less appealing. Fist of all if you have an ME2 character you can choose to replay the game with you get a bonus from clearing the game. This bonus grants you faster experience gain and additional starting resources. This bonus however also applies to any ME1 character you import. The difference then is that the ME1 character gains additional bonuses to starting resources as well as a bonus to your paragon and renegade scores. And as I personally play this game for story rather then combat - even if the combat happens to be good - I like the bonus to my social skills more then bonuses to my combat skills. This aspect could easily be solved by giving a bonus similar to the ME1 characters to the character in New Game+, perhaps as part of the finished the game achievement. This in my opinion would make New Game+ more tempting of a choice then simply importing my ME1 character again.
08. Mini games
My first impression was that you guys had hit a home run here, that's to say until I actually started needing to scan planets for minerals. All the mini games feels relevant to their tasks. Scanning a planet for resources and once you find them you send a probe - makes sense, sadly it does suffer from repetition. On the same note it would make more sense to let EDI handle the scanning rather then have me doing it manually. The added aspect of micromanaging probes and fuel - while logical adds more to the frustration of already repetitive task of scanning the planets. One way to address this might be to take away all the minor deposits and just have a few rich deposits per planet. Another way would be to have the location indicator that is used for finding side quests on planets indicate the direction of the deposits when you get close to a deposit of a certain size. Hacking a terminal by selecting the right code sequence - while perhaps not fully logical in and of itself it is relevant to the task at hand. On a side note I so hope that the code the floats by is the code for that mini game or something similar, please tell me it is so. To get back on track lets talk about the final mini game, while I know there are more mini games in the game like the target practice one on Tuchanka I will focus just focus on the three most common once here. By passing a terminal by connecting dots on a circuit board is also relevant. Of course not fully logical to connect dots that are already connected in order to bypass a system but at least I gave another dimension to the game. At the start of my first play through this game was simply a thinly veiled memory game, but by the end I just "read" the board and could skip half the memory and only check the the points when needed. With the exception of the repetitive nature of the probing game I have to say I like these games better then the frogger game in ME1. So all in all good game.
09. Combat
Have to say that at first the new combat system with its ammo and no more instant medigel felt strange. Once I got used to the system however it gave more flavor to the combat then the combat system in ME1 did. Sure ammo can be an annoyance and definitely adds to the difficulty while playing the game on insane it was never bothersome to the point that it became a problem. The lack of medigel was the same. Sure there where times where I would have loved to administer some medigel so I could stop hiding behind some random cover and join the fight once more. Minor annoyances came to light while playing on Insanity and I will go over these in the section below that is dedicated to that difficulty-setting.
10. Insane
All in all I felt that the insane difficulty setting was a challenge, not insanely hard or impossible but a good measure of challenge. More akin to the Hard difficulty settings of old then say the European Extreme setting of the MGS-series. It was at times frustrating but it was a challenge and I am happy that the option was there and actually equally happy to have unlocked the achievement.
10.1 Combat
As mentioned above I found certain aspects of the combat system slightly annoying on this difficulty then I did on normal. The primary annoyance here where the pacing of the game. The game became fully dependent on cover - which isn't necessarily a bad thing. The annoying part here however is that at time this forced the game pacing down to a crawl. That being said this is the hardest difficulty setting the game has to offer so while annoying it didn't effect the game outside of this difficulty. Another minor thing would be the reliance on specific party setups to get through the missions. While I like the fact that I have to think more about who to bring and how to engage the enemies it does take away from the story part of the game as some characters became very underused. This again can be attributed to the challenging nature of the setting and that the game becomes more combat centric as the real challenge of the game can be found there. So while annoyances, they are both acceptable as well as understandable.
10.2 Squad AI
As you become more reliant on your companions for their powers and extra damage it becomes more apparent that they all suffer from extreme suicidal behavior. Standing in front of a cover but unable to grasp that they can actually take cover, or thinking it is an opportune moment to charge at an opponent when their shield is down. This happens even when I have given orders to them. Which is another problem that I found on insane that wasn't there on the lower difficulties. You have a context sensitive command function. To truly express what you want your squad to do it would have been more helpful to have the option to specificity state what you wanted them to do. Giving them a "bunker down" command close to a cover would prompt them to take cover at the side your order-marker is placed. where as a simple move action could still end up with them jumping on top of the cover because you ordered them too close to the cover. Again this is a minor gripe with the squad command system that only affects insanity as you can handle yourself a lot better on lower difficulties but it is still something to think about for the future.
10.3 Spikes in difficulty
Though not as apparent as in Dragon Age where even on normal you would find massive spikes in difficulty, ME2 still has a few such spikes. As with the squad AI it only really becomes apparent on insanity. The places I can think of, of the top of my head, would be the first wave at the end of Horizon, the first wave after you learn you have been caught in a trap on the collector ship and the part of the long walk on the collector base where you face a lot of husks and a scion. I can imagine the end fight on the derelict reaper also would be a real spike in difficulty though I got lucky there and hit the core with a "nuke" before I got swarmed. Not sure if these spikes are due to Bioware being primary a role playing company and not used to balancing the difficulty to a more coherent experience or due to a design choice. Either way ME2 handled it a lot better then Dragon Age as in ME2 I only really noticed it on the hardest difficulty, and to be honest I chose my difficulty and I did get what I expected.
That is it for the feedback. And now onto suggestions - this section is more straight up ideas of things that aren't in the game but could, I feel, add to the game.
Suggestions:
01. DLC that take place "after the game"
As you give us, the players the option to continue playing the game after destroying the collector base, I personally think that this presents an interesting option for new quest and content. You now have the option to create content that only appears after the destruction of the collector base - reactions to the events of the end game could be added in various places as well.
01.1 Bridging ME2 and ME3
The option to release DLC that abridge the two games is also a possibility, if the story events at the beginning of ME3 would allow for this of course. This would of course only become interesting when we near the release of the third and final game in the series but all the same I think this could give a new nuance to the game and for some aspects of it even a new layer to the narrative of role playing games on a whole.
02. Trading one resource for another
This is just as it sounds. I have 50,000 Iridium and 0 Element Zero, sadly I need 10,000 Element Zero for something. So I trade 30,000 Iridium for 10,000 Element Zero. In theory this could work for credits as well, buying and selling minerals. A minor thing but would be nice to have
For all those who actually read through the whole post, let me once more apologize for its length and I hope that you found it a good and hopefully at least partially thought provoking read.
/TSD
Modifié par Sad Dragon, 02 mars 2010 - 11:02 .
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