Mass Effect 2

[Atomic Fiend]

For what? The outcome is different for everyone, what exactly am I spoiling?

 

[Moiety]

For what? The outcome is different for everyone, what exactly am I spoiling?

Well the fact that it happens in the first place. Sure, something similar happened in the first game, but it still a pretty significant plot element. I personally would prefer not to know.


I got an alien gay crush on Mordin.

 

[Atomic Fiend]

Well the fact that it happens in the first place. Sure, something similar happened in the first game, but it still a pretty significant plot element. I personally would prefer not to know.


I got an alien gay crush on Mordin.

Except, depending on how you play it may not happen at all.

 

[Moiety]

Except, depending on how you play it may not happen at all.

Really? Well, I haven't read that much about the game pre-release. That's pretty cool, though. I know I could replay and get a different result but...



no casualties at all?

 

[Atomic Fiend]

No causalities. If you play through perfectly.

 

[Doppleganger]

I beat it with no casualties and I believe you missed Zaeed.

 

[Atomic Fiend]

What makes you say that? I downloaded him yesterday morning. I didn't miss anything.

Also to maximize your fun with the ending, you can play through the final mission sans the actual trip in the ship, which is an adventure all to itself, as many times as you want in as many variations as you can manage. As long as you've already completed it, it should be a reply option on the loading screen. And if you manage not to die, you can just continue your game and story post credits.

 

[The Outsider]

No one left behind.

Amazing game. Time to fix my sleep pattern now, more or less.

 

[Feops]

I'm still playing through the game, but I think it was fairly public knowledge that your teammates and shepard can get killed.

One of the features that interested me was the talk on adjusting how difficulties worked in ME2 vs ME1. I've decided to make my first playthrough on insanity and I'm fairly happy how it's worked out. You die fast in a crossfire but heavy weapons don't instagib you anymore. It's really important to strip enemies of defenses quickly.. and everyone has defenses. Worse still, those defenses block a lot of powers, so a number of control abilities become substantially less useful. For example, a shielded krogen rushes me - I can't use push to kick him away, but I could have an ally strip his shields and then push him away. It requires more setup and team coordination.

As a bonus, the difficulty has slowed my progress and stretched out the gameplay length.

The AI seems smarter about taking cover but I'm a little disappointed that they fail to adjust to their own health.. as a player I'm more aggressive at full health/shields and become more defensive as I take damage. I'd expect my squad do to likewise. Pathing is mostly good and my allies are usually smart enough to take cover, but there are still trouble spots where they'd prefer to do a lap of the battlefield rather than go in a straight line.

The story seems solid to me. Without giving away spoilers, I found the "enemy" to be a bit less focused and "allied" relations to be more strained, leading to about roughly the same driving force in the story as a whole. Character development is decent. I found the salarian doctor (mordin? I'm bad with names) to be the greatest surprise in terms of character depth and enjoy the interactions with him greatly.

I like not having to manage an inventory. Collecting dozens upon dozens of useless guns and armor just to sell them off was a chore. The new upgrade system with the research and materials gathering feels more meaningful. It makes finds more exciting. I'm kind of meh about flying the normandy around manually - I'm just going point to point anyway.

 

[Eruca]

No one left behind.

Amazing game. Time to fix my sleep pattern now, more or less.

For the last three days Mass Effect 2 has been my life. I have finished it now, and I should really move on, maybe come back to it later. I feel depressed though. Im sad thats it's ended + I'm guilty for not working those three days. Bad times.

 

[freedom geek]

Yeah, I played it. It was awesome. I look forward to further downloadable content. Played through from paragon council dead first game.

I only lost the guy who was going to die anyway. I captured not destroyed. Mostly paragon (not an asshole) but I did what needed to be done and was fairly loyal to Cerberus. I brainwashed not destroyed the heretics.

 

[JocktheMotie]

So, since my brother up and stole my 360 copy I bought ME2 during Steam's wallet-raping summer sale. First of all, I have to stop deluding myself that 360 games will somehow offer me a more comfortable experience. There's nothing more comfortable than burning my retinas out on 1920x1080 Mass Effect.

The thing about this game, is that it's largely a character driven story. The main antagonist, well...doesn't really exist. You interact with them maybe 3 times and he doesn't really have a face or a presence like Saren and Sovereign did. The main story almost felt like a side mission.

That being said, I do think that structurally, ME2 was a better game experience than ME1. And the characters are much more interesting. I love Legion, and Mordin. It's weird that I always find the human characters to be extremely dull in comparison to the others.

 

[Feops]

The thing about this game, is that it's largely a character driven story. The main antagonist, well...doesn't really exist. You interact with them maybe 3 times and he doesn't really have a face or a presence like Saren and Sovereign did. The main story almost felt like a side mission.

Yeah. You get the end objective pretty early on, but the enemy is distant for most of the game. I think this is a common curse of trilogies - the second installment acts as a bridge between the momentum of the first and third. The collectors are a threat for sure but they're very obviously a roadblock to the greater problem.

In other words I have high hopes for the third. Bioware has also come out to say that while they're pretty happy with the revised powers, classes, and combat mechanics, they feel the storytelling aspects of the game suffered some, so they're going to work to improve those. Makes me happy.

That being said, I do think that structurally, ME2 was a better game experience than ME1. And the characters are much more interesting. I love Legion, and Mordin. It's weird that I always find the human characters to be extremely dull in comparison to the others.

I think humans got a little shafted in Mass Effect, but I'm also of the belief that Ashley gets too little credit. Her perspective is easy to dismiss as xenophobic but has far more depth.

 

[entropie]

ME 2, I want it, I want it !!

 

[Pixelholic]

I'm planning on doing another ME run to create a renegade shep who saves the council, and then run her thorugh ME2 and have her be kind of a mix as her inner niceness sort of kicks in when she sees how fucked up the galaxy really can be.

It'll be like my.. tenth playthrough or something.

 

[Serge]

Yeah. You get the end objective pretty early on, but the enemy is distant for most of the game. I think this is a common curse of trilogies - the second installment acts as a bridge between the momentum of the first and third. The collectors are a threat for sure but they're very obviously a roadblock to the greater problem.

In other words I have high hopes for the third. Bioware has also come out to say that while they're pretty happy with the revised powers, classes, and combat mechanics, they feel the storytelling aspects of the game suffered some, so they're going to work to improve those. Makes me happy.



I think humans got a little shafted in Mass Effect, but I'm also of the belief that Ashley gets too little credit. Her perspective is easy to dismiss as xenophobic but has far more depth.

I had a feeling that all the character development in Mass Effect 2 is basically saving time for Mass Effect 3. I don't mean to say that there characters won't be developed in Mass Effect 3 but I think the story and Shepard him/herself will be much more important and more focused on than the characters that you've known for one or two games. I liked the new battle system though. (I'm a bit perturbed about biotics though, they shouldn't be 'god' like in the first game but they were significantly difficult to use in this game. Not possible. Just more difficult)


I also agree about Ashley. I actually see some of the same perceptions in real life.

 

[JocktheMotie]

I had a feeling that all the character development in Mass Effect 2 is basically saving time for Mass Effect 3. I don't mean to say that there characters won't be developed in Mass Effect 3 but I think the story and Shepard him/herself will be much more important and more focused on than the characters that you've known for one or two games. I liked the new battle system though. (I'm a bit perturbed about biotics though, they shouldn't be 'god' like in the first game but they were significantly difficult to use in this game. Not possible. Just more difficult)


I also agree about Ashley. I actually see some of the same perceptions in real life.

See, all along during ME2 I kept thinking, "Okay...doing all these sweet loyalty missions...but will I even see these characters in ME3? Will ME3's conclusion make the entire concept of ME2 [character based story, essentially] entirely irrelevant when ME3 gives me new players? If I'm investing a whole game into these guys, shouldn't they be with me for the long haul?" I was a bit confused.

I'm also with you on Biotics. As a Biotic main player, it was OP as hell in ME [maxed out singularity could clear rooms] but in ME2 the fact they can't be used against armor/shields made most of them a bit useless and the playstyle of the class completely boils down to Warp spam. Once you chip away enemy defenses they die pretty quickly anyways so you might as well not even bother with a Lift+throw or whatever when you could just pop off a couple rounds with the hand cannon.

 

[Serge]

See, all along during ME2 I kept thinking, "Okay...doing all these sweet loyalty missions...but will I even see these characters in ME3? Will ME3's conclusion make the entire concept of ME2 [character based story, essentially] entirely irrelevant when ME3 gives me new players? If I'm investing a whole game into these guys, shouldn't they be with me for the long haul?" I was a bit confused.

I suspect they will be with you for the long haul. It's extremely hard, EXTREMELY HARD, to kill off one of your characters during the final mission, you practically had to not play the game to lose everyone which makes me think that you really weren't supposed to lose any characters for maximum possibilities for the next game. Sure, you could lose one, to make it all dramatic, but if you had played the game pretty decently, you kept a majority of your team mates. Basically, I see ME2 story as canon filler.

I'm also with you on Biotics. As a Biotic main player, it was OP as hell in ME [maxed out singularity could clear rooms] but in ME2 the fact they can't be used against armor/shields made most of them a bit useless and the playstyle of the class completely boils down to Warp spam. Once you chip away enemy defenses they die pretty quickly anyways so you might as well not even bother with a Lift+throw or whatever when you could just pop off a couple rounds with the hand cannon.

Yep. If you wanted to have fun as a adept, you had to basically play on the lowest difficulty. It doesn't even make sense that some powers didn't work on shields, I can understand them not doing as much damage, but practically no effect? That's ridiculous. For a game as in depth as Mass Effect which even goes out of its way to tell you how much force a 'throw' does, I don't think it's logical for a shield to make it so that the character will not even trip over something when a 'throw' is thrown at it.

 

[Feops]

Losing everyone (and then Shep) is pretty much an exercise in how badly you can mess things up, but losing a couple people isn't that hard, so any squadmate from ME2 may or may not be dead.

So this makes me wonder, because if everyone in ME2 can die, how much plot weight can ME3 really give to them? You can make them mostly empty characters like Zaeed, with just little comments here and there, but that isn't terribly good character development, and I doubt they'll do the character missions again.

My prediction is that Bioware will strike a balance and bring back some of the characters either more likely to survive or with stronger personal motivation to stick around. So, Liara, Kaidan/Ashley (whichever survived Virmire), Garrus, and Miranda seem likely. Others with greater obligations to their own respective peoples will part ways, like Wrex, Grunt, Legion, Mordin, Tali. Others with little motivation to stick around will just wander off, like Jack, Kasumi, Morinth/Samara, Zaeed, Jacob. Plus a few new people.

 

[Pixelholic]

They may do something like what they did with Wrex. If Miranda died for example, then in ME3 Miranda isn't in your party, but you DON'T get a replacement new recruit. You're just stuck with one less party member. So if you screwed up a lot you may not have the best choice of companions or it may fundamentally change the sense of helplessness in the game or something.