Out of Sight Out of Mind (Mass Effect 2)

[Celtic Predator]

In my opinion there's only a certain amount of new content a sequel to a game could possibly introduce realistically. Like in Mass Effect 1, how come we never heard of Asari Justicars? Or Omega? Or the Bloodpack or either crime syndicates? Or Cerberus and the Illusive man? Being a fan of both games, I'm surprised no one asked this before. Comments?

 

[CuddlyCombine]

Cerberus played quite a role in Mass Effect, but only in side missions.

Also, do you know how big one single galaxy is? Hundreds of thousands of solar systems. Trillions upon trillions of lifeforms.

Think about yourself in real life. How much do you know about the Democratic Republic of the Congo? Their governmental system, their economic status? Or how about the World Bank? We live on a tiny, tiny, tiny piece of space, have only 7 billion people to keep track of, and it's still very hard to. Now multiply that by a million.

 

[Baby Tea]

Cerberus was totally in ME1.
Admiral Kohoku (Or however you spell his name) was a big series of side quests in ME1 that let you really get to know Cerberus as the bad guy.
As for the Justicars, you never encountered them, so why hear of them?
Aren't they considered a tad on the rare side?

Beyond that, I don't know. I'm sure there are tons of peoples, places, and cultures I know nothing about, and I've been living in this world for near 26 years. Sometimes it's just right place, right time.

EDIT: Wow, super ninja'd on all points.
Dang.

 

[TimbukTurnip]

People have asked this beofre, and the answer is simple - Mass Effect 2 hadn't been made yet.
Games designed to have sequels don't plan every small part of the entire storyline and all the games at once, they work on a game at a time. Everything you mentioned wasn't in the first game because Bioware hadn't created yet. If you make sequels to a game with nothing new added, it's boring. Sure the story might be good, but the gameplay will be the same, and it will be boring.

Also, cerberus was very much mentioned - theres quite a few side missions to do with cerberus. And everything else had no bearing in the first game, so even if it was already made, there was no need for it to be mentioned.


Also, welcome to The Escapist =]

 

[Celtic Predator]

I consider all of your points, but isn't it unrealistic to encounter them all at once?

 

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

Asari Justicars are specifically mentioned to not leave asari space. They play no importance in your mission, so why should you be told? Also, you are told specifically in ME1 that you stay away from the Terminus Systems, because of the various syndicates. Could be that they were reffering to the Blood Pack. Also, it's been two years since ME1, who says the Bloodpack even existed in ME1's timeline?

As said, Cerberus had a massive part to play in ME1's sidequests, and no one knows anything about them, so it stands to reason you wouldn't know who the Illusive Man was until you joined his organisation.

And again, I'll echo that the galaxy is huge There's probably even more stuff you'd never have heard of.

 

[Thaius]

2 years between games can produce a lot.

And sure, we didn't know about some of it beforehand, but it can be accepted in that it's a HUGE galaxy, with tons of species, tons of customs, etc. We never got a substantial look into Asari culture anyway, and as for the three gangs, all we ever went to that they may have a presence at in 1 was the citadel, and I doubt they were rampant in the thriving center of government.

But we did hear about Cerberus, plenty of times. But we didn't know much about them, thus why we never heard of the Illusive Man. Not een Shepard knew about him, remember?

 

[GBlair88]

Since you play as a human, you wouldn't know much about Asari traditions and culture. Apart from what you learn from Liara (Codex entries aside). The blood pack et al were generally in the Terminus systems which is an area you don't venture into in the first game. Omega was in the same area so you wouldn't hear about that as well.

You can learn quite a bit about Cerberus in the first game, but info on the Illusive man and other details wouldn't be known due to Cerberus being so secretive.

Or I don't know, it's just a game?

 

[CuddlyCombine]

I consider all of your points, but isn't it unrealistic to encounter them all at once?

Not at all. Go to the bank, take out all of your money, get on a plane and fly to sub-Saharan Africa. Try living there for a day without running into a hundred things you've never seen before.

Again, the galaxy is an immense place. If we lived in the Mass Effect universe, I guarantee that it would be impossible to know about even one-millionth of the total combined cultural material there.

Spoiler: For example...

In the second game, think of the derelict Reaper found in orbit around Mnemosyne. You visit Hawking Eta in the first game, but no civilization has yet discovered the Reaper, despite its size. They've had space-faring technology for thousands of years longer than us. The galaxy is just that vast.

 

[VincentX3]

I consider all of your points, but isn't it unrealistic to encounter them all at once?

Who cares about realism? It's a game.

You could ask you're own question to just about anything in Mass Effect 1\2.


I personally think everything is fine, if they "we're" to mention everything in the first game, nothing would be new or a surprise in the second.

So yep.

 

[BlindChance]

That being said, there's a bigger problem here: The inconsistent portrayal of Cerberus.

In game one, Cerberus were, and I'm hesitant to use this phrase, but... were pure evil. Nothing they did seemed to be morally ambiguous. It was all horrific scientific experiments and murder.

Then, suddenly, in game two, they're a mostly heroic organization lead by a somewhat dubious leader.

What the?

I appreciate that we're now getting an inside perspective, but it's a jarring shift. More work could have been done to try and smooth that over.

 

[CuddlyCombine]

That being said, there's a bigger problem here: The inconsistent portrayal of Cerberus.

In game one, Cerberus were, and I'm hesitant to use this phrase, but... were pure evil. Nothing they did seemed to be morally ambiguous. It was all horrific scientific experiments and murder.

Then, suddenly, in game two, they're a mostly heroic organization lead by a somewhat dubious leader.

What the?

I appreciate that we're now getting an inside perspective, but it's a jarring shift. More work could have been done to try and smooth that over.

Maybe I'm far too cynical for this world, but this portrayal is wholly realistic. If you know anything of American culture, you'll know that the CIA is shown as, largely, a heroic organization populated by people who ooze sexiness and chew bullets. If you worked for them and had anything more than secretary-level clearance, I'm sure you'd have a much different perspective when you find out you work for an organization who effectively exists to envision Saw-style deaths for important people. "But," Johnny Patriotic says, "they're just protecting Americans at home!" Well, Cerberus is just protecting humanity's interests.

TL;DR version: I think it's realistic.

 

[BlindChance]

TL;DR version: I think it's realistic.

Sure, but realism bows to narrative, especially in the less than realistic genre of space opera. It still feels like a massive disconnect, and more needed to be done to bridge that gap.

 

[GBlair88]

That being said, there's a bigger problem here: The inconsistent portrayal of Cerberus.

In game one, Cerberus were, and I'm hesitant to use this phrase, but... were pure evil. Nothing they did seemed to be morally ambiguous. It was all horrific scientific experiments and murder.

Then, suddenly, in game two, they're a mostly heroic organization lead by a somewhat dubious leader.

What the?

I appreciate that we're now getting an inside perspective, but it's a jarring shift. More work could have been done to try and smooth that over.

It could be argued that since Cerberus is broken up into smaller semi-independant cells, some sections -such as the biological weapons you encounter in the first game- could be seen to be evil while other operatives were slightly more law abiding.

But, I have to agree that it's a giant leap from them being refered to as a secret Alliance division that went rogue in the first game, to being a privately owned corporation in the second game.

 

[CuddlyCombine]

TL;DR version: I think it's realistic.

Sure, but realism bows to narrative, especially in the less than realistic genre of space opera. It still feels like a massive disconnect, and more needed to be done to bridge that gap.

Exposition can't take priority over gameplay, though, and no amount can ever create immersion unless you draw realistic parallels, cut them short and let the imagination do the rest (which is what Mass Effect does, I think). Star Wars has had 30 years of development and, personally, I think that Mass Effect has done a much better job. Then again, it's all personal opinion.

As an afterthought, Mass Effect has received a lot of flak for being wordy anyway. Think of what would happen if the writers had done more?

 

[BlindChance]

It could be argued that since Cerberus is broken up into smaller semi-independent cells, some sections -such as the biological weapons you encounter in the first game- could be seen to be evil while other operatives were slightly more law abiding.[/quote]

Sure, and that's exactly the kind of thing that (if they really were planning all this as a planned trilogy) should have been done: We should have met some Cerberus operatives who were shady but decent, and other cells that were pure evil. Make us feel ambiguous about them.

But that never happened.

And I can see them being both an Alliance division gone rogue AND an independent corporation easily enough. Their origins are in the Alliance, but once the Alliance disowned them, they found private backing. That's believable enough to me.

 

[Mother Yeti]

In my opinion there's only a certain amount of new content a sequel to a game could possibly introduce realistically. Like in Mass Effect 1, how come we never heard of Asari Justicars? Or Omega? Or the Bloodpack or either crime syndicates? Or Cerberus and the Illusive man? Being a fan of both games, I'm surprised no one asked this before. Comments?

For the same reason we had never heard of Cloud City or Yoda prior to Empire Strikes Back. They hadn't been written yet.

If you want an in-universe explanation, it's because the galaxy is fucking big. Also, Justicars rarely leave Asari territory and the specifics of the Terminus systems aren't discussed at all in ME1.

 

[Starke]

In my opinion there's only a certain amount of new content a sequel to a game could possibly introduce realistically. Like in Mass Effect 1, how come we never heard of Asari Justicars? Or Omega? Or the Bloodpack or either crime syndicates? Or Cerberus and the Illusive man? Being a fan of both games, I'm surprised no one asked this before. Comments?

Bioware lied to us. They said they had a full story arc planned, but ME2 really does prove that their grand plan is the Chris Carter Effect in full motion.

As everyone else has mentioned the Justicars aren't relevant to the story of the first game, so that's fine. Also, given that there's very few, and they don't leave asari space, and the only ones who really seem to know what they are are the other asari, this lapse is really pretty justified, except: why do they exist at all? We don't really have enough data on assari culture to know if there's a legitimate reason for their existance as a faction. The knight errant and samuri both had very strictly defined roles in their respective feudal systems. If the assari have some kind of feudal government we're not privy to their existance makes sense, if not, then they are a peculiar addition.

Omega is a very strange omission. You would think it would have been mentioned someplace, hell Wrex explicitly mentions Aria (IIRC), but there's no mention of the station she's running.

I could swear that the blood pack got mentioned in 1 someplace, but, what's strange here isn't that we run into these three merc groups, its that we only run into these three merc groups. There shouldn't be a shortage of merc groups in the Terminus systems. The Blue Suns have only been around for 20 years, so why aren't there more mercs? More freelance mercs? More pirate groups? ect. These aren't the kinds of markets where you generate a big three. And where are the council merc groups? I seem to remember the codex explicitly stated one of the weapons manufacturers (Elkoss Combine I think) ran a mercenary branch. I do have to credit bioware though, at least it's not a single criminal faction, like the Exchange in KOTOR, that they're so fond of doing.

Everyone remembers Cerberus from 1. Except, you're right, ME2's Cerberus is nowhere to be seen. This gets waved off by having Jacob or EDI say something about how you've only run into one branch of Cerberus before, and this is a seperate branch of the organization, but, seriously? This is not even remotly similar. Mass Effect 1's Cerberus is a throwback to B5's Thirteen or Star Trek's Section 31, a small unofficial covert ops unit with limited resources, and a psychotically pro-earth stance. Mass Effect 2's Cerberus is more in line with B5's Psi Corps, a large, extragovernmental organization with staggering resources, and a much less pronounced pro-Earth stance. But, you've hit on a very very good point here...

Why don't we ever see or hear about the Illusive Man in ME1? Because Bioware fucked up. Cerberus doesn't line up between the two games, at all. The reason is we have to sympathize with them in 2 or we won't do what they're asking, so Bioware had to "redesign" the organization. Which means, if there was a plan for ME2 originally, this isn't it.

The other piece that supports that ME2 is off reservation, is the collectors. Absolutly no mentione of them whatsoever in 1. They're a fresh addition that bioware didn't plan for in the first game. This could have been done with litterally two lines of dialog, but they hadn't thought them up, because they weren't part of the plan. Certainly not the reveal about them. That was all Bioware BSing out their ass.

I consider all of your points, but isn't it unrealistic to encounter them all at once?

Nope, that's actually not that unrealistic, it's unrealistic that you're not running into more organizations this time out.

 

[GBlair88]

And I can see them being both an Alliance division gone rogue AND an independent corporation easily enough. Their origins are in the Alliance, but once the Alliance disowned them, they found private backing. That's believable enough to me.

If it happened like that then I can see your point. I just got the impression from the Illusive man that Cerberus was created as a private corporation for the advancement and protection of humanity. Similar to a mercenary corporation without the fee. But in the first game it seemed to be more of an Alliance SPECTRE group that went rogue the same way Saren did.

But that's just my impressions and perhaps it'll all be explained in the next game or a future DLC.

The real problem is I feel like even more of a geek for knowing what everyone is talking about in this thread.

 

[GLo Jones]

it's unrealistic that you're not running into more organizations this time out.

Definitely. Think about how long you had in ME1, and you were learning everything for the first time. It's going to take a long time to know everything there is to know about the ME universe, and you certainly weren't expecting to know it all in the first game did you?

Granted, a fair few things didn't line up properly, but considering the amount of different concepts/races/cultures in the game, I think Bioware did a fantastic job of continuity.

You can't have everything thrown in your face in the first game, because then it would've been too complex, too long, and wouldn't have left much room for development in the sequels. Therefore, they had you running round discovering Citadel space in the first ME, then discovering all new things in the Terminus systems.