Mass Effect New Mass Effect confirmed

[Ash]

Only the first ME was (somewhat) good. Same with Dragon Age.

Nope. Even the first ME was a shitty retard cover shooter with no level design just meaningless coridoors, shitty combat and RPG systems, is all merely an excuse for the devs to swing their lame storyfag dicks around and live out virgin virtual sex fantasies without seeing beyond that narrow, pathetic ambition. even disregarding the god awful gameplay for brainlets it has almost no element of respectable artistry, music is completely forgettable, almost zero sense of atmosphere or immersion results from the overall low effort experience, and while sure there is some interesting dialogue bits it literally can't tell a story with any level of mastery.

The game has neither style nor substance. It's utterly unremarkable in every way.

Low standards games for low standards cucks.

I see someone rate them anything above mediocre, I know never to value their opinion.

 

[Camel]

In ME1 Ashley doesn't like or trust aliens and she's religious, and she isn't made out to be bad or dumb because of it. You can agree, disagree, or say nothing on her views. Female Shepard can question Liara coming onto her because they're both women and turn her down.

True. Casey Hudson ordered to sexualize Ashley in ME3 so someone at BioWare was sensible in catering to their main audience. Miranda, Liara, Samara, the whole Asari race were made for male gamers.

True, but that's that small (but vocal) minority. At least I hope so.

But the western devs cater to them instead of people, you know, buying their games. One BioWare dev, forgot his name, was lecturing men on BSN how they want to be "inclusionary" and sell games to all people.

In DAO there's more sexism than there was in D&D even back then and there's a manly crossdressing dwarf prostitute played for laughs.

Their games definitely had a liberal gloss to them but I don't think they got PC until Incishetquisition. That's when they rewrote a whole game's world to be as agreeable to leftist sensibilities as possible and followed that trend with Andromeda and Anthem.

BioWare games weren't woke until 2012 or 2014 if you discount ME3 and retconning Kaidan into a fag and adding STEEEVE.

Gay romances in BioWare was not a Mass Effect thing (until the third).

Mass Effect 1: Liara & Female Shep is the only "same sex" option available. There are no options for flings.

Mass Effect 2: There are no full same sex romances but they do add lesbian flings with Liara DLC, Kelly and Samara/ Morinth

Mass Effect 3: First Mass Effect with actual gay romance. Kaiden is ret conned into being a faggot and I still remember him sitting Shepard down and confessing his feelings. 12 year old me was not happy. There's also STEEEVE because 1 fag was not enough.

Jade Empire has the first fag romance with a "bisexual" male character and you can romance Silk Fox as a woman.

Dragon Age is what had gay romances, although it wasn't woke, fetish shit until DA2. DA:O gay romance with Zevran is actually good, but I don't think the fag Gaider meant it that way. A broken man, Living a hedonistic lifestyle which eats away at him his entire life. He prefers women, but his poisoned brain still continues.

DA:O was probably the last progressive but not woke game from them. It has protowoke crap here and there but still portrays medieval sexism and traditional sex roles for men and women. Hamburger Hepler included lesbian Branka and her lover. Also the last game with decent if single player MMORPG-like combat.

Leliana, the other gay romance option. Another hedonist living a life of sin, pretending to be a changed woman. Future games show this was never the case anyways.

Leliana is a born-again Andrastian and a true believer, she only becomes a hedonist if you "harden" her.

To be fair their combat design took a nosedive after BG2 and has only gotten worse with every subsequent game.
NWN was a shit game throughout, its single character combat was painfully slow and boring.
KotoR was better but the encounter design was mostly mediocre.
And later, it went from mediocre to outright terrible.

Right, BG1-2 are the only games with great combat, imaginative encounter design and a huge variety of enemies(thanks to D&D). First consolization was what hurt their games and then becoming woke and general decline. JE is a dumb button-masher with several I-win buttons like literal bullet-time etc.

Dragon Age Origins was a game I finished back when it came out because we were in a CRPG draught. It was decent overall, but holy shit, it gave me trash mob PTSD. I felt drained at the end of it. My completionist attitude of the time might be to blame because I explored every room of every dungeon, and 90% of these rooms contained the exact same copypasted encounter. Same fucking trash mobs over and over and over and over and over again. And they don't even serve the traditional role of trash mobs. In Baldur's Gate, Wizardry, Might & Magic, pretty much every classic RPG, trash mobs serve the purpose of draining your resourcs before the big boss fights. In DA, they don't, because you automatically recover all your health and mana after combat. So the trash mobs serve no purpose other than wasting your time. An endless slog through boring, unimaginative encounters.

I dread a slog through the Deep Roads because of trash mobs and the Fade forced me to download the most popular mod to skip it, these two locations hurt it's replayability. I think they added so much trash combat to pad the game and make it way longer. DA:O still has some interesting encounters like ambushes with Zevran and the darkspawn, the boss fight with the pride demon in the Mage Tower. Orzammar is great from the lore point, plot and dialogues and Hamburger Hepler wrote it, pity they never returned to the dwarves after DA:O.

DA2 was even worse. They retained the trash mob spam of DA:O, but added waves to make it suck even harder. Defeat a group of 5 enemies and 5 more will spawn at the edge of the screen! Utterly fucking atrocious. I pirated DA2 back in the day, played for half an hour, and immediately quit because I didn't want to subject myself to this virtual form of Chinese water torture.

DA2 combat on insanity was a chore alright with waves of enemies and some teleported from walls.

If all you play is post-BG2 Bioware RPGs, then it's only natural that you would come to hate combat.

Touche.

 

[Alienman]

Been a while since I played now, but didn't the removal of Miranda's ass-shot ruin the dynamic of the cutscene? Something about how she was talked about being genetically engineered to be perfect in every way like her good looks and body - to be used to gain an advantage. Have a faint memory that the camera focused on her ass at that moment.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

The ass shot happens when you have to make a dialogue decision. So the ass shot lingers there. It's not related to the thing being discussed in any way (iirc).

 

[9ted6]

DA:O was probably the last progressive but not woke game from them. It has protowoke crap here and there but still portrays medieval sexism and traditional sex roles for men and women. Hamburger Hepler included lesbian Branka and her lover.

Worth remembering that Branka's not shown as being any kind of empowering or pandering character though. She cheats on her whipped and devoted husband who the game is sympathetic to while she's one of the most blatantly evil characters in the game.

ME and DA had a few things like that but I don't even think they were protowoke. A woke game wouldn't allow a gay character to ever be villainous and it would treat a pathetic guy getting cucked as something really funny and empowering for women. Even Helper wasn't woke at one point.

 

[BosanskiSeljak]

while she's one of the most blatantly evil characters in the game.

Branka and Howe are the two most evil characters in the game, but Branka edges it out.

Loghain is a nationalist schizo overwhelmed by paranoia due to his past and really cares about the country on a plane higher than anyone else. He wasn't doing this as a power grab, as far as he's concerned he is able to defeat the Arch Demon without Wardens. Most misinterpreted character in the franchise.

Darkspawn are just animals following their instincts (and that of the Old God).

Howe and Branka on the other hand have nothing backing up their evil actions except pure selfishness and glory. The only reason Branka takes the top spot is by having access to inhumane practices, something inconceivable in Howe's world, and uses it without hesitation. I'd go as far as saying there is no one more vile in the entire franchise.

As you said, nuBioware would never write such a character (unless, ofcourse, they were one specific race and gender). Her going lesbian is a footnote in her entire arch.

 

[911 Jumper]

I remember hearing that Casey Hudson regretted leaving same-sex romance options out of ME2, it was left out because of the “Fox News-led” criticism directed at ME1, so to make up for it BioWare went all in with the gay romance options in ME3.

Edit: Hudson isn't referred to specifically, but he did direct ME2, so...
Mass Effect 2 Censored Jack's Sexuality

Mass Effect 2 may have been released over a decade ago, but it seems there's more to learn about the sci-fi action RPG. An interview with ex-BioWare writer Brian Kindregan revealed details about the studio's original plans for the character Jack. He shared that Jack was originally written to "essentially" be a pansexual in Mass Effect 2, however BioWare ultimately changed those plans in response to media criticism.

In an interview with TheGamer, Kindregan provides a deeper context surrounding the situation in Mass Effect 2. He explains how he was the lead writer for notorious, romanceable outlaw Jack, as well as Samara and other parts of Mass Effect 2. Jack was written to be pansexual for most of Mass Effect 2's development, he said, in other words she was open to sexual relationships regardless of biological sex, gender, or gender identity.

As Mass Effect 2 players know, Jack is not pansexual or bisexual in the final game. She can only be romanced by a male John Shepard player character, implying that she's straight despite quite a bit of dialogue from Jack which implies she's pansexual, or at least open to relationships with both men and women. The plan to make her pansexual, or at least open to a relationship with fem-Shep, was rewritten sometime further into development.

The reason for the change, according to Kindregan, was to avoid the threat of a controversy started by Fox News. Kindregan explains how the original Mass Effect was a target of Fox News, since the game featured a same-sex relationship romance option between fem-Shep and Liara T'Soni. At least, it was an implied same-sex relationship, as T'Soni is from a mono-gender alien species in the game's canon. Regardless, this was at the height of conversations in the media about same-sex marriage, and Fox News was targeting potential depictions of queer love.

Kindregan said that while the Mass Effect 2 development team was "pretty progression" and "open-minded," developers at the high levels of BioWare were wary. He goes on to say that he doesn't know the final reason for Jack not being written as a pansexual, but believes possibilities come down to a budget constraint or that Jack being queer was "too obvious." Regardless, Kindregan said, "My sense was always that she was [pansexual] and it just didn't get followed through."

"A lot of us were asked pretty late to focus the relationships on a more traditional kind of vector," Kindregan said. He still views Jack as pansexual, however, and said that he hopes "someday Jack will be portrayed as pan." For the time being, BioWare's apparent self-censorship of queer relationships in Mass Effect 2 may be seen as representative of the views of the time.

 

[Lodis]

The Jack thing feels like a cope, by the time ME2 came out they already had several bisexual romances in their games so I seriously don't buy the whole "we were scared of Fox News" shit. Her sexuality feels like a conscious decision that they made in development at the time and now some former writer pops up with this excuse a decade later because places like twitter and reddit literally won't stop crying about the fact that Jack isn't available for Femshep.

 

[Caim]

Jack is damaged goods and should not be fucked at all.

 

[Space Satan]

 

[jackofshadows]

Just wtf they're doing up there in BioWare?

 

[Tyrr]

Just wtf they're doing up there in BioWare?

I still can't believe EA's patience with them.
They killed studios for much less in the past.

 

[Abu Antar]

Just wtf they're doing up there in BioWare?

Like I told my boss, today.

You don't give a shit as long as people work, or at least make themselves seem busy and working.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Just wtf they're doing up there in BioWare?

Like I told my boss, today.

You don't give a shit as long as people work, or at least make themselves seem busy and working.

Yeah I hate that attitude. I'm more: deliver or we've got problems.

 

[Chippy]

Liara will do Lazarus procedure. They will rebuild mass relays. Shepard is coming back baby.

Insert typical joke of how Liara is gonna rebuild Shephard. "Shephard I brought you back, but couldn't help giving you a craving for women with something a little extra".

Once upon a time that was a lukewarm joke, now it'll probably make it into the game.

 

[9ted6]

The Jack thing feels like a cope, by the time ME2 came out they already had several bisexual romances in their games so I seriously don't buy the whole "we were scared of Fox News" shit. Her sexuality feels like a conscious decision that they made in development at the time and now some former writer pops up with this excuse a decade later because places like twitter and reddit literally won't stop crying about the fact that Jack isn't available for Femshep.

Bioware's done a lot of that the last few years. So they say everyone in ME and DAO was supposed to be a flamboyantly gay gender of color all along but they just couldn't do it because they were afraid of backlash. Couldn't possibly be because they only started getting brainrot in the past decade and/or saw a growing trend to exploit for profit of course.

 

[Tyranicon]

Yeah I hate that attitude. I'm more: deliver or we've got problems.

With that kind of attitude, the next thing you'll be asking for is hiring competent people.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Yeah I hate that attitude. I'm more: deliver or we've got problems.

With that kind of attitude, the next thing you'll be asking for is hiring competent people.

Heeey... let's not get crazy now!

(Shut the fuck up, man, you're going to get me fired!)

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Only the first ME was (somewhat) good. Same with Dragon Age.

Nope. Even the first ME was a shitty retard cover shooter with no level design just meaningless coridoors, shitty combat and RPG systems, is all merely an excuse for the devs to swing their lame storyfag dicks around and live out virgin virtual sex fantasies without seeing beyond that narrow, pathetic ambition. even disregarding the god awful gameplay for brainlets it has almost no element of respectable artistry, music is completely forgettable, almost zero sense of atmosphere or immersion results from the overall low effort experience, and while sure there is some interesting dialogue bits it literally can't tell a story with any level of mastery.

The game has neither style nor substance. It's utterly unremarkable in every way.

Low standards games for low standards cucks.

I see someone rate them anything above mediocre, I know never to value their opinion.

Yep. Its only value was either in being able to larp your own (bad) sci fi movie, or for kids to amuse themselves pointlessly riding around in the mako for hours on end.

I did like ME2 because of some of the characters (Zaeed - who was basically edgy Canderous/Mandelore, and Mordin). And because of some of the reactive elements, like being able to fail and get your crew killed at several points.

But really, it was just an interactive cutscene and the gameplay itself was almost nonexistent.

 

[BosanskiSeljak]

Mass Effect 2 does nothing better than ME1 apart from cinematics. Everything else is at most a sidegrade.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Mass Effect 2 does nothing better than ME1 apart from cinematics.

Could you fail in ME1? The only failure was the forced failure choice with Kaiden/Ashley. It was plot on rails, with a few, mostly meaningless, choices along the way.

For the multiple *earned* failure options alone, I give ME2 credit.

That and the story it tried to present just felt more complex than whatever was going on in ME1. The idea that the reapers were some kind of galactic preservers who foresaw the Dark Energy death of the galaxy and just came around harvesting all sentient life, grinding it down and sticking it into reaper bodies was decent, if poorly executed. (The human reaper you fight at the end was dumb. Big, dumb boss fight is not how you end a sci fi game - though I guess ME1 set that precedent.)

The Collectors were a good extrapolation from the mind control stuff in the previous game, and made for a much more interesting enemy than the Geth.

Also, the entire plot of some Section 31-like secret agency bringing Shep back to life and bankrolling your Ocean's 11 adventure, including a cigarette smoking man, was very entertaining. ME1 took itself very seriously in spite of there being very little substance, but ME2 knew to dial up the B-movie elements and give you plenty of Miranda fanservice shots along the way.

Companions were also more detailed and varied. Rex was loved in ME1 mostly because he wasn't as banal as all the other companions. Your choices were: faggot fuckboy, space racist whose dialog constantly revolves around her being a soldier, space cop lizard, big toad klingon, and latex fetish jailbait. It's no wonder ME2 opted to refresh the crew and either dump existing crew off or give them an edgy upgrade.

I felt like I was playing a videogame version of Farscape instead of whatever ME1 was supposed to be. All the characters had something wrong with them, and this made them worth paying attention to. (The black guy was a bit annoying, but his sidequest was kind of amusing. His long lost father turned out to be a rapist cult leader.)

The only thing I felt was inferior was that the racist subplot was mostly dropped, and completely gone by the (far worse) ME3.

 

[BosanskiSeljak]

Could you fail in ME1? The only failure was the forced failure choice with Kaiden/Ashley. It was plot on rails, with a few, mostly meaningless, choices along the way.

For the multiple *earned* failure options alone, I give ME2 credit.

If C&C is done poorly, it's better to keep everything on rails (which ME2 basically was). Simply completing a checklist of missions that are impossible to fail if you have an IQ over 70 is not a point in favour of ME2 (Now that I think about it, it would be a fun experiment to see how SDG would do in this game, if he manages to play it properly without a guide, I'll concede the point).

The impacts of "choices" were also portrayed terribly, making absolutely no sense at all. Since all of them are in the final hour of the game, one after the other, it's jarring. Can't even trick the player thinking it's doing something good.

That and the story it tried to present just felt more complex than whatever was going on in ME1. The idea that the reapers were some kind of galactic preservers who foresaw the Dark Energy death of the galaxy and just came around harvesting all sentient life, grinding it down and sticking it into reaper bodies was decent, if poorly executed. (The human reaper you fight at the end was dumb. Big, dumb boss fight is not how you end a sci fi game - though I guess ME1 set that precedent.)

The dark energy theory was not "poorly executed" because they didn't even try to do it, there was no attempt at execution. It was essentially completely scrapped, with only one mission in ME2 referencing it. Drew Karpyshyn was not the lead wirter of ME2, that's when Mac Walters came in, which is not ME1s fault. Because of this, ME2 is an amalgamation of 20+ unrelated side quests.

The Collectors were a good extrapolation from the mind control stuff in the previous game, and made for a much more interesting enemy than the Geth.

The collectors are not at all connected to indoctrination presented in ME1.

In ME1, indoctrination slowly changes your thought process, but if it becomes too much you lose any semblance of being a conscious being which is why you become a mindless husk who eventually dies without reapers. We saw 3 different levels of this with the Salarian prisoners on Virmire on top of Vigil telling the player what happened to the extremely indoctrinated Protheans once the Reapers left (succumbed to the elements because they couldn't think or act on their own).

Collectors on the other hand are examples of the Reapers changing the biology of species, something that really only started in ME2 (+ the retcon into saying Reapers are some dumb bio-synthetic hybrid with the entire memories of a species in them) and continued in ME3. Our only examples of this in ME1 is the Geth using spikes to turn humans into husks (these husks are different than ones we see in later games) which we can assume was reaper tech, and the theory by Vigil that Keepers were a race of beings the Reapers changed into being servants.

The connection you made between these two is really a stretch. If they were trying to make it a connection, there needed to be a lot more exposition because the only time they ever tried explaining indoctrination in the trilogy was ME1 yet it became just a convenient plot excuse explaining any type of behaviour.

Also, the entire plot of some Section 31-like secret agency bringing Shep back to life and bankrolling your Ocean's 11 adventure, including a cigarette smoking man, was very entertaining. ME1 took itself very seriously in spite of there being very little substance, but ME2 knew to dial up the B-movie elements and give you plenty of Miranda fanservice shots along the way.

Retcons are stupid, especially when you have shit writers at Bioware who can't provide a semi-believable explanation, on games that were planned to be a connected trilogy.

ME2 dialed up B-movie elements while trying to present itself as a Hollywood blockbuster with deep character stories, which is why the atmosphere falls flat. Even ME1 had better impacting scenes, like the first time coming to the Citadel, and Sovereign attacking with the backdrop of the wards. You don't have to look deep to find an actual great B-movie tier game around the same time period. The Witcher, lots of those elements, with very specific focus on things that make it feel like a labour of love, exactly what makes those same movies feel charming. ME2 is like a pretentious failed college student making action movie slop, spending 95% of his budget on cinematics, then trying to present it as a timeless classic.

Companions were also more detailed and varied. Rex was loved in ME1 mostly because he wasn't as banal as all the other companions. Your choices were: faggot fuckboy, space racist whose dialog constantly revolves around her being a soldier, space cop lizard, big toad klingon, and latex fetish jailbait. It's no wonder ME2 opted to refresh the crew and either dump existing crew off or give them an edgy upgrade.

Characters, the most overrated aspect of ME2. 12 companions, each with their own "loyalty mission" completely separated from eachother. The absolute easiest writing you could possibly do. Take a character and do whatever you want with them with absolutely no regard for if they make sense or not. For a game that's 80% about its characters, they should've tried a bit harder. Only 4 of the companions make sense joining you (2 friends from the first game so can let that slide, and 2 that make sense with the story/plot). You can add Zaeed but considering you can't talk to him he doesn't really count as a companion in a game ALL about companions. Even with all of that, a lot of the companion missions fall flat. They made 2 half ass attempts to connect anything, Jack vs. Miranda & Tali vs. Legion, which were 2 minute scenes immediately solved through a paragon/renegade check. I can't give points to characters in a game that writes 12 disconnected short daddy issue missions. Full sidegrade at best.

ME1s characters are lacking for sure, but it's not a character piece so I can let it slide. Although if all the characters were like Wrex that would've been a lot better. Also, Ashley is not racist, and although I didn't like her as a character, she was still written well, she's the second best companion after Wrex in terms of content and nuance.



A lot of the things you pointed out about ME1 are a fault of the direction ME2 took. You have to remember ME1 is not like DA:O, it was designed and written to be the first game in a trilogy, closely connected. ME2 going off rails into something completely different hampers a lot of the aspects of ME1.

 

[DY050503]

They should hire writers and character designers of the classic Mass Effect games.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

If C&C is done poorly, it's better to keep everything on rails (which ME2 basically was). Simply completing a checklist of missions that are impossible to fail if you have an IQ over 70 is not a point in favour of ME2 (Now that I think about it, it would be a fun experiment to see how SDG would do in this game, if he manages to play it properly without a guide, I'll concede the point).

The risk with failures is that if they're too difficult, someone will pigeonhole themselves into a TPK even when they were actually trying.

If you play the game drunk or not paying attention, chances are you will mess up. If you try to rush the end and don't upgrade your ship, you will mess up. If you don't do your companion quests, they'll probably die in the final battle. If you pick the wrong team member for a job during the suicide mission, they'll probably die. If you slack off and wait too long to rescue your crew, they'll die.

It's not genius-level stuff, but it's enough to reward someone who was paying attention and slap casuals who thought nothing mattered. That level of reactivity makes your choices seem a little more valuable than a plot on rails.

The dark energy theory was not "poorly executed" because they didn't even try to do it, there was no attempt at execution. It was essentially completely scrapped, with only one mission in ME2 referencing it.

Bro, it was a whole planet's worth of quest that revolved around its research.

It felt like they were setting up for a larger "reveal" (for those that hadn't figured it out) in ME3, but then scrapped it for the stupid "machines vs sentients" rehash of the Geth plot.

I keep seeing people say ME2 scrapped it, but ME2 was were they introduced the possible problem related to it in that quest. There was nothing before that, and if they had wanted to drop it, they could have cut it entirely. ME1 just had it as a Star Wars Force knock-off with zero downsides unless you were unlucky with your biotic implants.

https://www.pcgamer.com/mass-effect-3-series-former-lead-writer-reveals-original-ending-ideas/

Talking to VGS , Karpyshyn details the ending, which he admits wasn't "super fleshed out". The plot would have revolved around Dark Energy: something that was mentioned in Mass Effect 2, but never expanded upon.

"Dark Energy was something that only organics could access because of various techno-science magic reasons we hadn't decided on yet," Karpyshyn said. "Maybe using this Dark Energy was having a ripple effect on the space-time continuum.

"Maybe the Reapers kept wiping out organic life because organics keep evolving to the state where they would use biotics and dark energy and that caused an entropic effect that would hasten the end of the universe. Being immortal beings, that's something they wouldn't want to see.

"Then we thought, let's take it to the next level. Maybe the Reapers are looking at a way to stop this. Maybe there's an inevitable descent into the opposite of the Big Bang (the Big Crunch) and the Reapers realise that the only way they can stop it is by using biotics, but since they can't use biotics they have to keep rebuilding society - as they try and find the perfect group to use biotics for this purpose. The Asari were close but they weren't quite right, the Protheans were close as well.

"Again it's very vague and not fleshed out, it was something we considered but we ended up going in a different direction."

Karpyshyn left BioWare shortly before the conclusion of Mass Effect 2, with Mac Walters taking over as lead writer for Mass Effect 3. Even so, Karpyshyn defended series' real ending, pointing out that his planned version was just as likely to disappoint.

See? And it wasn't just him. Notice the "we"?

I'm not blaming ME3 entirely, but it was in the game in ME2 and the whole story was clearly hinting at something more for the reapers than man v machine BS even apart from it.

The collectors are not at all connected to indoctrination presented in ME1.

I realize they're different concepts, but it's still mind control. The Collectors are engineered to be completely controlled, but the concept of mind control in general is still there. Concept-wise, not a lore similarity.

ME2 dialed up B-movie elements while trying to present itself as a Hollywood blockbuster with deep character stories, which is why the atmosphere falls flat. Even ME1 had better impacting scenes, like the first time coming to the Citadel, and Sovereign attacking with the backdrop of the wards. You don't have to look deep to find an actual great B-movie tier game around the same time period. The Witcher, lots of those elements, with very specific focus on things that make it feel like a labour of love, exactly what makes those same movies feel charming. ME2 is like a pretentious failed college student making action movie slop, spending 95% of his budget on cinematics, then trying to present it as a timeless classic.

Yeah, I don't think ME2 was going for "timeless classic" with camera shots of Miranda's ass. I think you're seeing pretension where little if any exists.

The only blockbuster elements are in the better graphics etc.

Characters, the most overrated aspect of ME2. 12 companions, each with their own "loyalty mission" completely separated from eachother. The absolute easiest writing you could possibly do.

And ME1 did better? The only time characters interacted with each other was Ashley shooting Wrex (which was irrelevant because you could kill him yourself) or love triangle issues (which ME2 also has).

That's less complexity than Baldur's Gate 1, which had companions that would fight and kill each other without the player telling them to - along with various quests for them and possible interactions.

ME1s characters are lacking for sure, but it's not a character piece so I can let it slide.

A lot of the things you pointed out about ME1 are a fault of the direction ME2 took. You have to remember ME1 is not like DA:O, it was designed and written to be the first game in a trilogy, closely connected. ME2 going off rails into something completely different hampers a lot of the aspects of ME1.

I can understand being pissed off that a sequel departs from its predecessor to some degree. ME2 completely dumped the space politics and turned the player from a military officer into almost a renegade privateer.

But the thing about the original is that it wasn't terribly unique or interesting. Like you said, "it's not about the characters". So, what was it about? The story? Paper thin. The gameplay? Simplistic, with a bunch of procedural filler. The setting? What a bland universe. The only interesting things happening outside of the geth/reaper stuff was some corporate black ops and the mysterious Cerberus, which only got any interaction in unvoiced text side quests (and got completely killed off in ME3).

ME1 was a skeleton. ME2 tried to add some meat to its bones. You may not like it, but like, that's just your opinion, man.

 

[BosanskiSeljak]

The risk with failures is that if they're too difficult, someone will pigeonhole themselves into a TPK even when they were actually trying.

If you play the game drunk or not paying attention, chances are you will mess up. If you try to rush the end and don't upgrade your ship, you will mess up. If you don't do your companion quests, they'll probably die in the final battle. If you pick the wrong team member for a job during the suicide mission, they'll probably die. If you slack off and wait too long to rescue your crew, they'll die.

It's not genius-level stuff, but it's enough to reward someone who was paying attention and slap casuals who thought nothing mattered. That level of reactivity makes your choices seem a little more valuable than a plot on rails.

I'm not talking from a casuals point of view so I don't care if there is some "choice" from that perspective. You've used a lot of words to say "Complete a checklist of everything you're able to do in the game". That's the choice, which then renders the saving the crew quickly consequence moot because it's all you have to do anyways except 1 mission.

The choices during the Suicide Mission could've been great if they made any sense. Don't help someone with their daddy issues? Dead, but completely unrelated to not being loyal. Picked the wrong specialist? In some cases, not all, the scene where they die makes no sense. Picking the right specialists is extremely easy. Then for the hidden "strength" number for the final choice (when you go fight the reaper), unlike all other times, not a single character speaks up about what you might need there, when it's the only choice that wasn't 100% obvious.

Failing at portraying meaningful choices is worse than a smoother, more linear experience (But it's laughable to suggest ME1 is more linear than ME2).

Bro, it was a whole planet's worth of quest that revolved around its research.

"Whole planet's worth"

You need to stop exaggerating. It was a couple of lines in a short recruitment mission and then one more mention of it after that when you're on the flotilla. That does not feel at all like setting up for a larger reveal. If they were, like you're saying, that makes ME2 worse than even I'm making it out to be.

I realize they're different concepts, but it's still mind control. The Collectors are engineered to be completely controlled, but the concept of mind control in general is still there. Concept-wise, not a lore similarity.

And unlike ME1, they don't explore the "how", and the "why" is ridiculous (turning humans into grey goo to create a human bio-synthetic reaper. Oh, btw, Humans are special all of a sudden. ME1 didn't flesh out indoctrination much, but somehow still did more than ME2. ME2s concept of "mind control" was there to give us new mooks to fight and retcon reapers, that's it.

Yeah, I don't think ME2 was going for "timeless classic" with camera shots of Miranda's ass. I think you're seeing pretension where little if any exists.

The only blockbuster elements are in the better graphics etc.

Those changes were made to sell more, that's it. Consequently, I have people talking to me about ME2 when they hear I play RPGs. Fuck this game.

And ME1 did better? The only time characters interacted with each other was Ashley shooting Wrex (which was irrelevant because you could kill him yourself) or love triangle issues (which ME2 also has).

That's less complexity than Baldur's Gate 1, which had companions that would fight and kill each other without the player telling them to - along with various quests for them and possible interactions.

ME1 did not have 80%+ of the game focusing purely on characters, so the issue is not as impactful.

Like I said, downgrade or sidegrade in almost every aspect.

You have Ashley & Pressley talking about new crewmates, elevator banter, etc. Such a small % of the game was focused on them, less characters, and has the same (if not more believability) that the characters actually interact with each other off and on screen. ME2 has 2 extremely short scenes solved by a paragon/renegade check. So yes, ME1 did better (not that it's a high bar to beat).

But the thing about the original is that it wasn't terribly unique or interesting. Like you said, "it's not about the characters". So, what was it about? The story? Paper thin. The gameplay? Simplistic, with a bunch of procedural filler. The setting? What a bland universe. The only interesting things happening outside of the geth/reaper stuff was some corporate black ops and the mysterious Cerberus, which only got any interaction in unvoiced text side quests - and got completely killed off in ME3.

ME1 is the start of an adventure with a pretty good set up,. It also has great worldbuilding and your "bland universe" comment doesn't do anything to back up your point because it's the same universe as ME2.

ME1 is about discovering the threat and buying time, ME2 should have been learning about HOW to stop the threat, and ME3 should have been actually stopping it.

ME2 had a lot of stuff to bounce off of and improve on ME1 in everything from story to gameplay, but it started from ground 0 and failed to do anything with that.

ME1 was a skeleton. ME2 tried to add some meat to its bones. You may not like it, but like, that's just your opinion, man.

"tried"

Makes my point for me.