Mass Effect Legendary Edition remaster trilogy

[Lacrymas]

Femshep always looks the same (i.e. has the same bone structure) regardless of your input (or lack thereof). Very strange. The only way to make her different is to use the preset that uses her appearance from ME3's marketing. Maleshep doesn't have this problem as far as I remember.

 

[Yosharian]

I decided to input my 12 year old face code into ME:LE character creator and this was the result. Behold Codexa Shepard. (yeah, it doesn't work at all)

And this how she is suppose to look like. (This is a screenshot from 2010.) I had to re-do her since the code was not working.

No, the code is working, LE is just shit.

 

[Lemming42]

Just beat ME1: LE and went on to ME2. I know this has all been said a hundred times before, but:

I forgot how fucking stupid this sequel is. Everything remotely engaging about the original is thrown out the window. The original wasn't an exemplar of C&C or roleplaying but at least you got some control over what you said sometimes. In ME2 you always say the dumbest fucking shit imaginable every time, your only option being to say it in a boring way (Paragon) or an idiotic way (Renegade).

We're working with Cerberus. A couple weeks ago (from Shepard's perspective, since I'm guessing from her viewpoint she just woke up right after dying) I was raiding a Cerberus facility that was experimenting on humans, and another that was experimenting on Rachni. I don't want to work with Cerberus. But what are my options?
I can be rude to Jacob (which gets me Renegade, lol). That's my anti-Cerberus option. I can say "REMEMBER WHO YOU'RE WORKING FOR, JABOB" like a petulant child. That's it. Otherwise I'll bend over, part my cheeks and take the Illusive Man's cock right up my ass. I can't even bring up the fact I've killed about fifty Cerberus scumbags and seen their secret facilities. I can't even bring it up. The most I can do is snap at Jacob and say braindead whiny shit to the Ilusive Man, while agreeing to his every demand anyway. Insanity.

Also, Joker and Chakwas are here. Joker wears a little Cerberus hat. Seeing either of these people here (on an exact recreation of the Normandy?!?!) is very unlikely, but the most I can do is neutrally comment "you don't seem like the Cerberus type, Doctor". Pure shit.

Then I meet Garrus, who is now the world's most boring Batman knockoff. My every interaction with him in ME1 was focused around getting him to stop being a violent unstable lunatic and start being a better law enforcement agent. Doesn't matter because he's Batman now. What does Shepard do? She says some gay shit like "let's kick ass Garrus!!! just like old times!!!" even though this is the exact lifestyle I firmly warned him against in the first game. Saw Zaeed or whatever on the way in too. He's beating a prisoner. I stand there and say "Welcome to the team" while he shoots the prisoner in the leg. I cannot intervene. I cannot refuse him access to my team (even ME1 let you turn down Wrex and, I think, Tali).

I've only done two recruitment missions and I'm about ready to just give up. The game is stupid. It's like any writers who actually cared about what they were writing were somehow spirited away and replaced by a gaggle of retards between the two games. Marvel-tier shit. Everything replaced by "cool" shit except it's what an American 13 year old kid considers to be cool.

 

[Ravielsk]

Marvel-tier shit. Everything replaced by "cool" shit except it's what an American 13 year old kid considers to be cool.

They replaced the original writer with some failed comic book guy who could not be bothered to continue the story of the first game and so decided to make a soft-reboot of a game. That is why Shepard dies in the first five seconds only to be revived literary minutes after. That is why characters act so... out of character. They only share names and general design with the characters from the first game. Its not really made as a sequel but as a first game in a new trilogy.
Incidentally they did the same thing with ME3 except they made the final game of a trilogy without making the previous two games. Its a clusterfuck that mostly lives off of "baby's first RPG" syndrome more than off of any genuine qualities it might have had.

 

[Lemming42]

Yeah, feels very comic book like, in the worst way possible. Every character on the team so far is either boring, actively insufferable, or both, and every big quest has been fanfic-tier shit that usually relies on Shepard acting like a clueless dolt who just wanders into traps, and everyone else in the entire world being chaotic evil. The only crewmember I'm kind of liking is Kasumi, who I've never played with before because I didn't have any of the DLC, and even she seems to just be a "gentleman thief" archetype played completely straight, the kind of character we've seen a hundred times before.

Not surprised to hear that the new writer envisioned the game as a soft reboot - the lack of connection with the first game is almost laugh-out-loud funny at times. We have to hunt the Collectors because they're working with the Reapers!!!! (allegedly, based on nothing). The Council continues to disbelieve us about the Reaper threat even though they actually saw a Reaper fly into the Citadel. Every plot point from ME1 just pitifully handwaved aside out so that we can focus on this absurd new plot about Cerberus and Collectors.

It's actually bewildering how little control the player has over any given situation - every quest so far has been completely linear, without even ME1's token nonlinearity/multiple choices. Every bit of dialogue typically funnels Shepard into expressing a single opinion in order to move the plot forward, I genuinely don't think I've seen a single conversation so far where I've been made to choose between various notably different responses.

The amount of combat is ludicrous too, far too much considering the weak mechanics. Actually preferred Legendary Edition 1's combat, felt a lot less clunky than the original ME1 but made sure you could really feel the benefits of investing your points in the right skills and upgrading your equipment.

 

[Nano]

Saw Zaeed or whatever on the way in too. He's beating a prisoner. I stand there and say "Welcome to the team" while he shoots the prisoner in the leg.

This is the character who says in a banter later on that he "never thought torture was worth the price". Character writing in this game is really inconsistent.

 

[Lacrymas]

I wouldn't say that's inconsistent. He already paid the price, he just realized it wasn't worth it after the fact. You really, really don't want a team member who enjoys torturing people.

 

[Nano]

You really, really don't want a team member who enjoys torturing people.

His intro cutscene suggests he does.

Also, why wouldn't I? It's good to have teammates who're willing to get their hands dirty.

 

[Lacrymas]

Willing to get your hands dirty =/= enjoying it. If they enjoy it, the best thing that could happen is you can never trust them because you don't know what they are capable of. The other alternatives are significantly worse. And that's only if you are willing to cooperate with a psycho and sidestep the huge moral issues.

 

[Lemming42]

It feels like most of the crew are psychos anyway due to a desire on behalf of the writers to make everything "cool", which to these writers means Netflix-tier edgy shit. Zaeed introduces himself by beating and shooting an unarmed prisoner, Samara introduces herself by beating and killing a yielding enemy, Miranda and Jacob are both active participants in a terrorist organisation known for mass murder and torturous medical experimentation on sentient life, Thane introduces himself by shooting someone in the back or something, Mordin is introduced in dialogue by someone saying that he incapacitated and then methodically executed a group of people and then later you find out he worked on the genophage, Jack has killed 99999 trillion people and used to be a pirate/slaver, etc. Even the token "good" teammates are arseholes, like Garrus. Shepard is forced to either approve of all of this, not comment on it at all, or give a single line of dialogue saying "you just killed in cold blood!!!" before being railroaded into the rest of the conversation as normal.

The big inconsistency in writing seems to be in the worldbuilding. Shepard is a revered icon and beacon of hope for humanity, but also a complete unknown who can walk into various nightclubs and not be recognised*, but is also apparently widely regarded as a dangerous idiot by people who do recognise her. Cerberus are considered so evil that any kind of association with them is regarded as unconscionable, but they're also a wacky youth club who'll take hapless retards like Chambers and Joker on board. Shepard has been pressganged into service with them and hates that fact, but will also rush to defend them and her involvement with them in any given conversation, and can't be bothered to call out any of the Cerberus staff under her command for the Cerberus atrocities she has first-hand knowledge of. Shepard's resurrection is said to be a mere rumour, even after she walks into major cities and announces her presence, but everyone in the galaxy has her secret Cerberus email address.

*massive laugh in Kasumi's mission, where Shepard walks into a party with her entire "disguise" consisting of a fake name and an ugly dress. This is a party of well-connected criminal masterminds, the kind of people who keep an eye on galactic affairs, yet none of them have any idea who she is, to the point of cluelessly referring to her by her cover name even after it all goes to shit and turns into the usual bloodbath

I like how the galaxy is now run by like three merc groups as well.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Reminder that torture works if you know they have what you want.

 

[Nano]

and can't be bothered to call out any of the Cerberus staff under her command for the Cerberus atrocities she has first-hand knowledge of.

This isn't entirely true.



You only reach this conversation after several hours in the game... but it's there.

I like how the galaxy is now run by like three merc groups as well.

The Terminus Systems are. The part of the galaxy you didn't visit in ME1.

 

[Lemming42]

^ Interesting. I wonder why they didn't put that conversation at the start of the game, when most players will surely be needing a lot of convincing to go along with the Cerberus plot. I was hoping you'd get to grill Joker and Chakwas, but the best Shepard can say in either case is essentially "I don't trust Cerberus, but I think we should do everything they tell us without question anyway", and then get drunk with Chakwas. What's weird is that, judging by that video, the game actually keeps track of whether or not you did the Cerberus quests in ME1, but doesn't let you bring them up outside that conversation. At the start of the game when Jacob reveals who they are, it even gives you the option to say you've never heard of Cerberus.

As long as I'm complaining about everything in ME2, I have to give special mention to the Horizon mission. First we meet "THE HARBINGER", a total flop of a character that says Skeletor-tier lines like "RECOVER SHEPARD'S BODY... INTACT!!" and yells "THIS CHANGES NOTHING!!" every time it gets the shit kicked out of it, which happens every five minutes. It's the first time you meet the Collectors in the whole game and they're immediately rendered a joke, all their potential mystique is stripped away and replaced by a guy doing a bad Sauron impression. It would be more threatening if they sent Jessie and James from Pokemon after you.

Then there's the scene with Ash, what the hell was that. Features the hardest fight in the whole game: the player vs the dialogue wheel. Desperately try to guess what the devs intended with each option (twist: every option is equally as dumb as the others). Ashley calls me out for working with Cerberus, and my best response is "they rebuilt me, Ash!!" There's an option that says "I'm not working with Cerberus", and when you click it Shepard immediately says that she is working with Cerberus and accuses Ash of failing to see "the big picture".

Then Ash says that's not good enough and this is the choice I'm given:

What am I even saying here?! "You're too emotional, Ash" and "So you won't listen?". Both are just going to say the same thing but it's a desperate challenge to try and predict which one will be slightly less retarded. I picked the second option and it made me say "I can see you won't listen to reason", which got me another smackdown from Ash. The biggest joke of all of course is that I assume Ash's responses don't actually change based on what you pick. Also lmao @ Garrus backing me up by saying the stupidest shit in the world.

This is so fucking bad, I'm guessing many players will broadly agree with Ash (even though she's written as an erratic basket case who has wild mood swings while talking to you, presumably in an attempt to make her seem unreasonable and make Shepard's non-arguments seem better in comparison). You can't take her side, you're forced to disagree with her, but you can't even do that properly because everything Shepard says is fucking stupid. Shepard can't justify anything, even using the really shoddy arguments that were given to us at the start of the game (namely, the Alliance/Council refuses to investigate the Collector attacks), instead she just says a bunch of empty PR talk and then accuses Ash of being hysterical.

Anyway at least that mission's over, now it's time for much less stupid things, like uhhh a hover-car chase with Liara.

 

[Lambach]

It feels like most of the crew are psychos anyway due to a desire on behalf of the writers to make everything "cool", which to these writers means Netflix-tier edgy shit. Zaeed introduces himself by beating and shooting an unarmed prisoner, Samara introduces herself by beating and killing a yielding enemy, Miranda and Jacob are both active participants in a terrorist organisation known for mass murder and torturous medical experimentation on sentient life, Thane introduces himself by shooting someone in the back or something, Mordin is introduced in dialogue by someone saying that he incapacitated and then methodically executed a group of people and then later you find out he worked on the genophage, Jack has killed 99999 trillion people and used to be a pirate/slaver, etc.

Which type of personality other than a violent psycho would accept or even be of any use to the kind of likely suicide mission Shepard was proposing? Who was he supposed to recruit to go into unknown dark space and face off against a murderous allien race, a bunch of suburban housewives with kids?

Remember, at this point the Reapers are still not around, so the mission Shepard is proposing isn't "We need to save the Galaxy from life-ending robots", it's "We need to help a known terrorist organization advance their agenda".

 

[Lemming42]

I have objections to the way the characters are written (again, "comic-book-like" is the best phrase I can come up with) but even putting that aside, it's Shepard's lack of control over or resistance to any of this that makes it so hard to swallow. You could have a game in which a Paragon Shepard tries to whip a bunch of lunatics into fighting shape for an impossible mission, or have a Renegade Shepard trying to work a bunch of unstable people up into a frenzy so they're prepared to rush to their deaths against the Collectors, but you very rarely seem to get to express any kind of view on your crewmembers. Shepard just keeps dumbly adding people to the crew after watching them demonstrate their insanity/amorality, and she either just gives a neutral "welcome aboard" line or spends precisely one line whining that killing people is bad before dropping the topic and welcoming another maniac onto the ship.

Typically, you don't subsequently really have any control at all over your interactions with these people, most of the conversations on the Normandy are Shepard blandly saying "tell me about yourself" and then the squadmate you're talking to going off about how they once blew up a planet full of kittens or some shit. If you're lucky, you'll then get the choice between saying "blowing up planets is good" or "blowing up planets is bad" with no further impact on anything beyond giving you +2 Paragon or +2 Renegade.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Best part of ME2 is the DLC, base game is the weakest in the series.
in addition to everything else that has been said, it got hit by far the hardest by consolization. You can't even use the mousewheel to scroll through scrollable UI areas, idk if they changed it in the LE.

 

[ADULF HITLOR FAN KLUB]

ME2 is the weakest in the series.

lol no.

Mass Effect 3 is trash.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

ME2 is the weakest in the series.

lol no.

Mass Effect 3 is trash.

The story definitely suffered in ME3. Graphics somehow seemed like a downgrade too. They did improve the combat a bit more. It reminded me a bit more of ME1. I will agree though, that ME3 was definitely weak.

 

[Lambach]

ME3 has by far the best combat, to the point it's actually a pretty competent third-person shooter with some RPG-like elements in the mix. Given that combat is where you'll spend a solid majority of your time in all 3 games, ME2's stiff, dumbed-down even by Bioware standards, painful popamole slog makes it the weakest. At least the biotics were p. cool in the first one.

 

[ADULF HITLOR FAN KLUB]

The story definitely suffered in ME3.

It is completely irredeemable trash.

The combat and gun play in ME3 were improved, but it doesn't mean much, because most of the encounter design in ME3 is also pretty lame.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

only people who think ME3 has bad combat are people who don't play on insane

 

[Lemming42]

Can someone tell me what the hell's going on with the main plot now. The Illusive Man says he "floated rumours" that Shepard was alive, even though Shepard has been seen in public several times in major cities and met with various high-profile figures. These rumours, he says, prompted the Collectors to attack Horizon, because the Collectors are looking for Shepard (why? she hasn't done anything to them) or people associated with her, and they launched the attack on Horizon specifically to get Ashley, who they failed to get.

Why do the Collectors a) know about Shepard, and b) hate Shepard? Why do they try and lure her to Horizon? Are they trying to kill her or just aggro her into going after them, which is what she's already doing?

How did The Illusive Man manage to get the rumours to the Collectors? They said near the start of the game that the Collectors engage in people trafficking via intermediaries, but that's another pile of bullshit, because we never see them unless they're attacking a colony, and we're also told that they leave no trace after an attack (despite this, Jacob recognises them on sight from Veetor's grainy-ass footage). Do the Collectors have people hanging around on the Citadel or something? Or like, Omega? Can they even speak, unless possessed by the Harbinger?

And then their best hope of getting Shepard (who they really want to kill even though they've never met her) is to launch an attack on a colony specifically to get Ashley, fail to get Ashley, and then try to kill Shepard when she arrives to intervene? Absolutely lost at this point.

By the way I like how nobody gives a shit about the Collectors until there's an attack actually in progress. I hired all these psychos for one reason - stop the Collectors - but everyone's too busy asking me to check up on their dead dads or whatever.



Here's the conversation. I genuinely cannot make head nor fucking tail of this. Bonus laugh: Shepard suspected that The Illusive Man was behind the attack because "Kaidan said the Alliance got a tip about me and Cerberus". What? Kaidan/Ashley heard that Shepard was working for Cerberus, and that means that the Illusive Man was behind the attack on Horizon?! I love how Shepard just says abject nonsense and the script presents such gibberish as an expert forensic probing of the situation.

 

[Falksi]

ME3 has by far the best combat, to the point it's actually a pretty competent third-person shooter with some RPG-like elements in the mix. Given that combat is where you'll spend a solid majority of your time in all 3 games, ME2's stiff, dumbed-down even by Bioware standards, painful popamole slog makes it the weakest. At least the biotics were p. cool in the first one.

It always makes me laugh when ME2 gets hailed as the best of the series. It just strips away all the fun RPG-lite and exploration elements from ME1 which broke up the shit gameplay, and then puts that shit gameplay front and center with a worse balance too.

 

[Mikeal]

Huh I didn't know that Shamus Young had an account on Codex.

 

[Padzi]

ME > ME2 > ME3

And that's a fact.