Mass Effect 2 Plot Issues **Spoilers**

[Terkaal]

**MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD**

Don't read ahead if you haven't finished ME2/don't care

Anyway, I felt that the plot in ME2 didn't really go anywhere. What I mean is, by the end of ME1 you've stopped the Reapers' indoctrination of the Geth/Saren, and the issue (presumably left for ME2) becomes what to do about the Reapers specifically.

But, in ME2 the Reapers indoctrinate a new species (The Collectors via the Protheans) and basically the entire game is spent stopping that problem without really advancing the more important (and IMO more interesting) issue of the Reapers. Of course, you learn that the Reapers were using the Collectors to harvest humans so they can build a Human-Reaper (lolwut?). But I don't remember it being answered why they built a Human-Reaper( maybe someone else does).

Basically, I think the Human-Reaper was supposed to be the big plot-draw of the game, but I thought it was kinda silly and unsatisfying. And, at the end of ME2 you're essentially in the same place you were at the end of ME1: prevented a Reaper-indoctrination threat and developing a plan for the Reapers themselves.

I know this is a trilogy and I wasn't expecting an all-out war with the Reapers, but I would have liked a little bit more development of the Reapers and the overall senteient-life threatening issues presented in the 1st game.

Anyway, did anyone else feel similarly afterwards, or did they like the plot, or whatever?

and,it's more than likely that I missed some important developments too.

This is the typical "Second in a Trilogy" phenomenon. The second in a trilogy suffers for not being as new as the first, and lacking the punchy conclusiveness of the last.

Doesn't necessarily mean the second in a trilogy will always suck, it just has to work much harder to be special compared to the first and third.

One game did VERY well at beating that though. Diablo 2.

Sure you may argue that we didn't know there was to be a trilogy back then but lets be honest, the final cutscene at the end of D2:LoD, tyreal's whole "Shattering the worldstone will have unforeseeable consequences on your world, mortal". After the worldstone had been setup all through Act 5 as all that kept the world of mortals and hell from converging.

No way you can tell me that game did not have a punch to it Not to mention it is still considered better than Diablo 1.

 

[Spoonius]

Also, how the hell did Sheperd's body survive atmospheric entry?

And if only miniscule scraps of him/her remained, then how did Cerberus find his/her location?

 

[Fenolio]

It actually fits together quite nicely once you think about it a bit (read: A lot.)

...Screw ME2 for a second.
Remember the beginning of ME1?
When we first see saren?
Who looks like A FREAKIN CYBORG and the other turian isnt at all perturbed by this fact?
Even though there's a butt load of geth and husks wandering the place?
No alarm bells at all?
Still haven't found an answer for this yet ;_;

Saren doesn't become a cyborg till after you beat him on Virmire, as a way for Soveriegn to maintain control over him and his "faith".
He is a spectre, and they are known for doing things in an unorthadox manner and don't tell anyone else about their motives and where they are. So Nilhus (thats the other i think) assumed that he was sent on the same mission from the council.

I realise that. But....
Watch the cutscene again, look at saren. He has frikkin pipes going through him, those weird things on the side of his face.
No idea how to embed sooo.. Heres the cutscene
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnR9p1WHVyY&feature=related

Also, how the hell did Sheperd's body survive atmospheric entry?

And if only miniscule scraps of him/her remained, then how did Cerberus find his/her location?

Talk to liara a lot, she eventually reveals that she searched for shepards remains with a partner (who died) because cerberus said they could bring him back. THe reason she isnt in your squad is that she's getting revenge on the shadow broker (who wanted to give his remains to the collectors, and killed her partner) <--- I think. Dont quote me on that.

 

[Matt King]

the reason they were building a reaper is a) thats how they reproduce and b) (only guessing) they built the human reaper to try to do what sovrien did and open the citidal relay

 

[Matt King]

Browsing through this thread did give me some kind of idea what ME3 will be about.
In ME2 you recruit specialists; in ME3 you'll recruit armies (/species).

"only together shall we survive the reapers", kind of thing.

Hm, sort of reminds me of dragon age, actually..

i think the ending for me3 will be simaler to me1 but instead of people to do the task species will do it and you will have more depending on e.g whether u spared the rachni or council or if in the third game how u resolve the quarian thing and the genophage

 

[Notthatbright]

My issue with the mass effect storyline was that the whole storyline was getting people to help you defeat the big bad threat. MOST of the story didn't involve the collectors at all, just getting your crew together. While in ME1 everything tied to the greater plot, and helped you remember what you were doing.

 

[EchetusXe]

I realise that. But....
Watch the cutscene again, look at saren. He has frikkin pipes going through him, those weird things on the side of his face.
No idea how to embed sooo..

Oh come on. As if you would notice that your best friend had suddenly become half robot. *cough*

Also, how the hell did Sheperd's body survive atmospheric entry?

And if only miniscule scraps of him/her remained, then how did Cerberus find his/her location?

Talk to liara a lot, she eventually reveals that she searched for shepards remains with a partner (who died) because cerberus said they could bring him back. THe reason she isnt in your squad is that she's getting revenge on the shadow broker (who wanted to give his remains to the collectors, and killed her partner) <--- I think. Dont quote me on that.

I assume Shepard's body was intact because it went into orbit around the planet. Don't know how realistic that is, but the blast from the ship could have sent him on a orbital course until Cerberus picked him up. Also I am assuming someone at Cerberus has fucking good eyesight to spot a bloke floating in orbit around a planet.

Also it is borderline retarded for the Illusive Man to even attempt to revive Shepard's corpse. Mainly because:

a) You could buy a small army with the amount of credits necessary. Not to mention the work put into it by his operatives.
b) Shepard is a sworn enemy is Cerberus. There was never any guarantee he would even listen to the Illusive Man.
c) Any sane person would think that the revival would never work.
d) The Reapers are abducting human colonies. I know! Let us fight back by undertaking a lengthy research project in reviving one man.
e) Why even think it was the Reapers/collectors in the first place with no evidence whatsoever? The Council admitted they hadn't even considered the possibility!
f) Send 60 gigtonnes of nuclear explosives into the Omega 4 relay, sit back and see what happens!

 

[Altorin]

It's implied that all of the Reapers were created by harvesting races.. so the idea of a "human reaper" isn't that silly when put into context.. Every reaper is basically a "*Some Race* Reaper"

how would it fly? It looked like it would take the form of a fully developed human........

This is actual concept art from the collectors edition artbook of what the human reaper would look like fully developed. frin the back, from the front it would look just like a reaper.

 

[DustyDrB]

Also it is borderline retarded for the Illusive Man to even attempt to revive Shepard's corpse. Mainly because:

a) You could buy a small army with the amount of credits necessary. Not to mention the work put into it by his operatives.
b) Shepard is a sworn enemy is Cerberus. There was never any guarantee he would even listen to the Illusive Man.
c) Any sane person would think that the revival would never work.
d) The Reapers are abducting human colonies. I know! Let us fight back by undertaking a lengthy research project in reviving one man.
e) Why even think it was the Reapers/collectors in the first place with no evidence whatsoever? The Council admitted they hadn't even considered the possibility!
f) Send 60 gigtonnes of nuclear explosives into the Omega 4 relay, sit back and see what happens!

One of the great values of Shepard is his knowledge and first hand experience with Prothean/Collector and Reaper technology. Remember, the Illusive Man values information and Shepard is the only being in the galaxy with that info.

 

[zfactor]

Also it is borderline retarded for the Illusive Man to even attempt to revive Shepard's corpse. Mainly because:

a) You could buy a small army with the amount of credits necessary. Not to mention the work put into it by his operatives.
b) Shepard is a sworn enemy is Cerberus. There was never any guarantee he would even listen to the Illusive Man.
c) Any sane person would think that the revival would never work.
d) The Reapers are abducting human colonies. I know! Let us fight back by undertaking a lengthy research project in reviving one man.
e) Why even think it was the Reapers/collectors in the first place with no evidence whatsoever? The Council admitted they hadn't even considered the possibility!
f) Send 60 gigtonnes of nuclear explosives into the Omega 4 relay, sit back and see what happens!

a) True, but I think the Illusive Man's intention was to unite humanity by using Shepard as a hero for everyone to follow. It is sort of useless to have a single army attack the reapers, you need the entire galaxy aligned against them.
b) He never actually swore to destroy Cerberus, he just stumbled on a few rogue (and I stress rogue) operations and got a bad impression.
c) Yeah, that was a necessary risk because he needed some icon to unite the galaxy.
d) At the start of ME2, the Illusive Man only suspected the reapers were involved, he doesn't actually find out they are until Shepard starts investigating.
e) They are the olny race with access to more advanced technology (like the ability to steal an entire colony) than enyone else. They are the logical suspect and the council does not believe they exist, so they would deny anything involving them.
f) And what would that do? Blow up whatever is on the other side of the relay? The reapers are suspected to be on the other side and one reaper had enough shields to take the entire alliance fleet's attacks for a good twenty minutes and only dropped shields because Shepard killed it's conscienceness (or whatever it transfered into Saren). Besides, they (again) only suspected the reapers and collectors of being based on the other side, and (as you find out) that was in the freaking galactic core surrounded by black holes that would have immediatly engulfed the explosion. (You and the reapers can get in because they have the advanced ID system that purposefully directs you into a "safe zone" on the other side, rather than a black hole.) So in other words it wouldn't have done anything.

 

[EchetusXe]

One of the great values of Shepard is his knowledge and first hand experience with Prothean/Collector and Reaper technology. Remember, the Illusive Man values information and Shepard is the only being in the galaxy with that info.

I just don't buy it. I suppose Shepard might not have been the first creature to be revived like that. Maybe the Salarians don't see the point in it because they die so quickly, the Asari and Krogan live so long that by the end they embrace death, and the Turians and others too primitive. But I just think why hasn't this happened lots more times when some eccentric wealthy individuals die they surely would have left a large fortune in their will to anyone who brought them back to life? I mean people today can have themselves frozen when they die for future generations to revive.

I suppose the Council could have outlawed such a practice. But then they would have no say on such experiments in the Terminus Systems. And outlawing in the first place would indicate to others that it was indeed possible to revive someone.

Shepard can't have been the first. Else why would the illusive man have even tried it in the first place? As far as I can see it there is only possible one source for such a technology - and they are the enemy. Plus Miranda headed the operation and as a member of the team she won't be shown to have been a part of such shady goings on in the next game.

Maybe this is relatively common but nobody talks about it. I just think that death is final, as it is in the game except for this brief plot point.

They are the logical suspect and the council does not believe they exist, so they would deny anything involving them.

I don't think the Council ever said they doubted the existence of the Collectors.


I supposssssssssssssssee that if Shepard just asphyxiated then they could have cheated death for him by patching up his body and getting his vital organs going again. People die on the operating table today and are then brought back round but as far as I know that 'death' lasts only a few minutes. He ain't Krogan but he is a tough son of a *****.

And also thinking about it there were Codex entries about some Earth President who died and transferred his memories and stuff onto a computer and carried out his presidency.

 

[WitherVoice]

(snip) I sure hope they'll answer the "why would they build a human reaper?" question in ME3, and please, no cheap cop-out like "oh they were so impressed by you killing one of their own that they wanted to imitate you.It's obvious that they have nothing but disdain for any other race than their own.

It is heavily (28 metric tonnes or so) implied that the generic recipe for a reaper is:
- 1 hugely advanced artificial intelligence technology thing
- 1 large percentage of the bodies and minds of some sentient race
- whisk the sentient beings until smooth, then pour over the hugely advanced artificial intelligence thingymajig
- bake for however long (we never really got to that part)

It seems that what is for everyone EXCEPT the reapers a "cycle of omnicidal extinction" is for the reapers "one reproductive cycle". It is very strongly indicated that the "Human Reaper", or the construction of a reaper, is in no way a NEW way of creating one, it's simply never been seen before by anyone who's written history books (or created art). It's likely that their previous "harvests" of all sentient life every what, 10k years or so, result each time in a reaper being built, and that this is indeed the entire purpose of the exercise. Possibly this time was different since this time, the reaper fleet's return had been thwarted, and thus it had to improvise to get itself built. Likely the Collectors are not the bulk of the Protheans, but rather the few that were left after a "Prothean Reaper" was built from the bulk of them. There's nothing saying that there was not a remnant of some OTHER race "collecting" Protheans 10k years ago, before the war began, since so few records of those days survived.

All in all, while SOME of my suppositions are rather long leaps, the idea that harvesting a race to create a new Reaper is their standard form of reproduction is all but confirmed by the storyline. There is another reason to believe so as well, which is (ironically) the fact that there aren't MORE Reapers. Yeah, there are a fair few, but if they could create more simply by building more, then there's nothing stopping them from consuming all usable materials in the galaxy, and no reason for them to ever allow life to flourish to begin with. If they can't create more, then there would be only a single one. If they require the collective memories, thoughts, dreams and ideas of one interstellar civilization to serve as some integral part in the Reaper mind, then all of a sudden it makes an abundance of sense.

As for the reaper looking human? There's nothing to suggest that there isn't a huge metallic Prothean skeleton surrounded by Prothean-slush inside the sleek starship-hull exterior of another Reaper somewhere. And other races long since extinct in yet others.

So no, I don't see a plot hole there, it's all fairly well explained.

What saddened me about ME2 was the incredibly lackluster, linear and boring level design, the (lack of an) inventory management system (ME1's inventory management was crap, but ME2's complete lack of an inventory was far worse), and the complete and total lack of exploration. Probing doesn't count unless Minesweeper is an "epic game of exploration". And the level design.

Seriously, the level design was so bad it made the rest of the game look worse than it was. "Take one long tube of playable area, litter with things to hide behind, add X amounts of bends and a character to talk to along the way somewhere", this is NOT PROPER LEVEL DESIGN! Whoever was responsible for this atrocity should be strangled in front of their loved ones. The surface exploration in ME1 may have needed some tweaking to make it less tedious, but at least in that you felt like you were DOING something! GOING somewhere, seeing what was beyond the hill, all that jazz. ME2 offered a bunch of areas, each the home of exactly ONE quest, and each of them re-skinned versions of the same basic level. How could they have screwed that up so bad after such a stellar performance on character design, dialogue scripting, the GORGEOUS visuals (let's not deny it), and solid gameplay design? It boggles the mind.

 

[Fenolio]

Budget?
Poor time management?

In all honesty i play MassEffect for the story so im not too bothered by the lackluster level design

I have other games for mindless violence (Tf2 etc.)

 

[imaloony]

Humans have a very unique gene set, in that each human is very diverse from the other. So I believe they're either making this Reaper as an experiment, or they need a reaper to open the portal to bring back the other reapers, and humans were the best candidates to create this reaper.

Commander Shepard also severed another Reaper's (Harbringer) contact in the universe, as well as destroying most, if not all of the Collectors.
I'd say it was a pretty productive game.

 

[Blizzarded Soul]

Dear lord, I thought we were done with these...

*Sigh* FINE! It's the Empire Strikes Back of Mass Effect. It just sets stuff up for the Grand Finale...

But hopefully Shepard won't have too seek out furry midgets as his allies.

 

[Kelorin]

I suspect that BioWare will set up ME3 like they did with Dragon Age. Here is the pool of potential allies. Go to mission, and decide who to side with. Quarians or Geth? Systems Alliance or Cerberus? Council or Omega and the Terminus Systems? Perform a loyalty mission to secure the Rachni alliance. Hand over the cure for Genophage to secure the Krogan alliance.
Personally, I'd like to put Admiral Hackett in command of the Destiny Ascension...

 

[Leftylol]

Personally I think the whole Human/Reaper "thing" was is like what some people have said, likely to reopen the mass relay.

But why create a human version, how would that benefit?

Think along a Reapers mind-set, they believe themselves to be all superior, they're cycle has never been broken and when its time to get ready and fuck up a new set of galactic beings. This human comes along and with a small team of different races, warns the occupiers of the mass relay so that they can properly defend themselves and ultimately cuts off the rest of the Reapers leaving them in the far reaches of the galaxy... F*%£! Who is this being and how did he accomplish such a feat.

Then how better to learn about him by studying who he is, his species, how they learn, adapt fight, these humans look pretty cool and are able to do many incredible things, what if we make ourselves like them then maybe we can adapt, fight and learn like these do. Upgrade.

Well that's just my theory anyway.

To be OT seen as though I got into that little thing a bit too much, Mass Effect 2 did progress through its story, the Mass Relay was the Reapers main way of getting into the galaxy, but they will surely have contacts, ways of communicating to get back in, thus the Collectors.

I thought the ending was quite climactic, the Reapers are still on their way but they're running out of ideas, panicked and desperate. What will these mysterious beings do now? Rather than be waiting on Shepard's next move we'll be waiting on the Reapers, and that makes it more exciting for me. But personally I just want to to the true origins of the Reapers, why they do what they do.

(Personally I think they were made from another galaxy, but i'll save that for a more relevant topic)

 

[Woodsey]

I think much more of the point of the game was to focus on getting your crew; unless almost everyone died, I can't see them either:

a) Making us recruit a load of people again

or

b) Giving us a team in the same way as ME1

It also set up much of the underlying plots, such as the Krogan issues and whatnot. Second stories within a trilogy are generally the hardest to do, as they have a basis from which they're forced to continue and a back-end which they're forced to lead up to.