No, you're given specific choices. You can choose whether or not to upgrade the defenses and weapons. Choose whether to wait to rescue your crew. Choose whom to send to what job. It's your choice how to resolve their backstories, if at all.
Those are choices with reactivity. It's also a lot more than ME1 gives you, and that's the bar we're judging by, not any other game.
You can do every upgrade 3 times over and have more to spare if you just play the game, the only choice there is how much time you're willing to waste to mine resources.
As for the other choices, that only matters if it adds anything. The only good, impactful choice you get from characters is killing Wrex in ME1, because the Krogan who becomes leader without Wrex in the picture is more stupid and you can trick him into thinking you cured the Genophage. Literally the best, most impactful character choice in the trilogy comes in ME1. As for the others (how their backstories are resolved), it's either pass a paragon/renegade check for happy ending or they die from an unrelated reason. There's no reason to try something different. How is shit, wannabe reactivity an upgrade over a consistently written, less reactive story?
Explain that to The Witcher 3 devs, who give the same choice with Ciri.
Maybe they weren't concentrating. I forget how the Illusive Man puts it, but you're supposed to make sure everyone is resolved before the end.
I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's better than nothing, and better than ME1, which gives you nothing.
Ahh, Witcher 3, some more shit that tricks the casual crowd into thinking it's the best thing ever.
So all you have is some speculation about some throwaway line, that is the most lazy explanation they could possibly give. That is not better than nothing. Scripted events with a long cinematic would've been better for the game than "oh, yea, for some reason related to not resolving a personal issue, timing was off by 1second and they got shot by a stray bullet while trying to close a door". Not that I would've liked a scripted cinematic either, but that lazy explanation coupled with the portrayal of deaths is not an upgrade, it's at most a sidegrade. Reactivity is not inherently better than scripted events, especially when the reactivity is thrown in for the sake of it without any thought,
I meant that the quest wasn't small. You have to fight through the planet to get to Tali, and she explains it. Why she's there and what she's researching is kind of a big question.
If they'd completely axed the idea or it meant nothing, they could have just changed those few lines of dialog you mentioned, as well as the notes you find on the planet.
What was abandoned was the subplot being the end of ME3. But when exactly it was abandoned isn't clear. The reapers were still grinding people up to put into reaper bodies. Why? Who knows. But this was th
But like I said, if that was the plan, that's a knock against ME2. If they were really setting it up then the 3-4 sentences total talking about it is an extremely weak set up. Everything this game tries just falls flat.
Of course they're special. Shepard is human and defeated a reaper, thwarting their 50,000 year plan to conquer the galaxy again.
Shepard is not special. He is a very skilled soldier and leader at the highest rank of special forces for one of the weaker races in the galaxy. By pure coincidence he got hold of information only him and Saren had access to, and because the beacon exploded, there was no way to give it to anyone else. But even that wasn't enough, he needed Tali, Liara, Shiala & Vigil to put together the rest of the pieces. The information Shepard got, having Spectre access, allies, etc. was enough for him to spearhead the fight against Sovereign, but he himself did not defeat a Reaper. That's a ME2+ mindset of Shepard being an almighty God, discarding any of the reasons he was able to actually do what he did.
They go into the how of the Collectors quite a bit though, so I'm not sure what you're talking about there.
The why isn't actually explained though. Turning humans into paste is a means to the end they don't fully explore. The setup for this is in ME1, when Sovereign says that each reaper is a civilization of its own. Maybe this was something they came up with based on that, or maybe it was planned even then. I don't know. They don't explicitly spell it out though.
Let me rephrase what I meant:
Mind Control "How" and "Why" in ME1: Sovereign emits a frequency you can't hear which slowly changes the conclusions you come to. It's so subtle that you believe you've come to said conclusions yourself, until it's too late to go back. Nobody knows how it works, but the recipient of it, Saren, understands it's there and is using captured enemies as test subjects. We see the varying levels of indoctrination on these test subjects. Mindless husks too far gone, hysterical people too far gone in the propaganda but can still act (basically muslims), and then the most dangerous in someone like Saren, used to infiltrate the highest levels of society. That's an interesting premise right there, and the portrayal of it never makes it too powerful/OP while leaving the player with a little mystery.
Mind Control "How" and "Why" in ME2: The above premise is never expanded upon again, it's static and only used as a convenient excuse for why someone is acting crazy until it gets to ridiculous levels by ME3. ME2 focuses on this new mind control through biological experiments, which is never explained. Sovereign was only able to directly control Saren due to something that was implanted. Okay, we can assume that the Collector leader was implanted as well and that's why Harbinger can control him, but he can also control random collector mooks at will? Can any reaper do this with any of the biological constructs they make? If so, why don't they? Or was every collector somehow implanted the same way as Saren?
Then we have the "How" which you said was shown with the turning humans into paste. But that's all we get. Take a look at how ME1 did it, we never knew the "How", it remained a mystery, but it was still being explored making it a lot more "believable" (I don't have a better word for this). The "Why" is known already however, it's just how Reapers reproduce now apparently.
And 80% of the "gameplay" of ME1 was unvoiced fetch/kill quests on square procedural "planets".
Like I said before, the games are interactive cutscenes. I don't like it, but it is what it is. At least ME2's cutscenes are interesting.
Those planets were not the main focus of ME1. The main story planets are dense with content.
"ME2 cutscenes are interesting"
Arriving at the Citadel for the first time and Citadel Attack in ME1 are better cutscenes than any in ME2. Unless you're just a fanboy for strong independent woman Aria and like watching Miranda's ass then I forgive you for thinking ME2 cutscenes are interesting.
Except ME2 goes deeper into things like the genophage, Cerberus and every other interesting element introduced in ME1. Everything is expanded upon in an interesting way.
E.g., the concept of biotics research with Jack: In ME1, Kaiden gets headaches. In ME2, you board a prison transport and oh shit some freak biotic escapes! (Pretty lame btw how they intodruce her as a monstrously strong biotic, but she plays fairly normally - Bioware fail.) You're not just told about it either, but you get to go to the facility where she was brought up.
Mordin is a saving grace in that game, too bad ME3 ruined any nuance of the Genophage, changed Mordin and even in ME2 you're forced to act all righteous with Mordin when he explains what the Genophage really is.
But for that they did right, they fucked with others. One of the only good pieces of sci-fi writing in the trilogy, the Geth, got changed in ME2 (because it was "funny") then full on Pinocchio in ME3. Cerberus was a stupid change as well considering everything surrounding them is extremely inconsistent and the amount of money they have is stupid.
Trying = bad. Delivering a bland, boring game with shiny graphics and weak gameplay = good. That's your point.
If ME2 came out and were an exact clone of ME1, would you really have been satisfied with it?
I wouldn't have. ME1 didn't even reach Dragon Age: Origins levels of complexity. Not even close.
You're misrepresenting how I feel about ME1.
For all its faults, it set up so much and made it easy for ME2 to take that and run with it, while improving gameplay and continuing the plot/expanding on the amazing world building. It failed at that. It started over. I wouldn't be satisfied with ME2 being an ME1 clone but i would still prefer it over what I was actually done with ME2.
