Out of Sight Out of Mind (Mass Effect 2)

[Starke]

I'm pretty sure you don't know about everything in our galaxy. Why would you know everything about Mass Effects? With a game that literally spans the galaxy it would be wierd to NOT find new species/things/planets/etc.

I'm going out on a limb here and assuming you mean me. If not, you can disregard this post.

Edit: As per the whole "ME 2 was made up on the spot argument" certain people are making in this thread, frankly you don't know what you're talking about.

I actually, kinda do, sorry to burst your bubble there.

Mass Effect was designed as a trilogy from the get go and the main story arcs were set in place before the first game was even finished.

Given that Bioware was incredibly vocal about this, yeah, more or less. Obviously they didn't show their hand to what their grand plan was... until now...

Like most developers do with large stories and big titles, Bioware has a "Mass Effect Bible" that contains the direction for all their main story arcs and which they refer back to constantly to make sure the story makes sense and fits it's intended direction.

Bibles are actually an increddibly common technique in large franchises. ANY large franchise. I've read parts of the Fallout and Escape Velocity Bibles for one reason or another over the years. In point of fact the existence of a bible doesn't prove that a sequel was even intended (which, they were). For example, the Fallout bible was initially written by Tim Cain while the game was still in early development.

In other words, Bioware already knew the direciton the story is going to head in ME 3 before ME 1 was even complete.

I'm going to loop back to a previous bit of snark. David Lynch, Chris Carter and J.J. Abrahms all "had a plan" for their respective metaplots. Their plans didn't exist. You can see this in the way these plots start to fall apart over time. What you can see in Mass 2 is the early stages of this kind of metaplot deterioration.

Contrast this to Strazinsky's Babylon 5, where the plot becomes more coherant over time, and most of the minor story points are revealed to have a major role in the metaplot.

By the way: I'm using TV examples because, to their credit, there isn't a good comparison in videogames. If you consider that a slight based on the poor level of American TV, I invite you to review the quality of Bioware's writing.

It, of course, doesn't contain exact specific details for every little thing, but the gist of main story is completely there.

Depending on how vague you want to go this is basically an unassailable assertion. If the bible entry for Mass Effect 2 was "The reapers try messing with the galaxy through agents. Shepard fucks their shit up." Then they're on target. The issue is how much material was already articulated before 1 went to press. And I can't tell with absolute certainty, but if pressed, I'd wager that the plot for ME2 was a loose in June 2007.

Don't believe me?

I know I'm being hard on you, but, more or less, yes. I do. The problem is I don't believe what Bioware says.

Go back and watch the extras that came in the special edition ME 1's and hear all that directly from the devs.

I'd love to. Except: two problems. 1, I'm a PC gamer. I didn't get Mass Effect until six months after the 360 version hit the street, and 2, I missed out on a CE entirely.

Spoiler: Wall of text/soapbox. Enter at your own peril. TL;DR Bioware's spin department is possessed of full egos.

Now, what I will say is, Bioware has gotten exceptionally good at being full of shit, especially in the last 3 years or so. I can't hold up KOTOR as a paragon of what a RPG should be, but it was a very good game, on par with, if not better than anything else released to date in the SW franchise. Jade Empire is also a damn fine RPG, with often hillarious dialog, it's campy, but it fits what it's supposed to be, and the plot holds up to a fairly detailed analysis (there's some issues with the closed fist route, but whatever). Mass Effect 1 is actually quite good, it's campy 1970s Battlestar Galactica/Star Wars Space Opera, and it's fun, hell it's hillarious at times.

And then Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2. Bioware were talking about how great narrative was, but the story just didn't live up to it. It's not as dark as Lord of the Rings, the standard bearer for the genre. It's not as dark as Mass Effect. What it is is bloody, and even then in a very PG sort of way.

I'm going to break format for a moment, and explain how in one fell swoop I realized Dragon Age wasn't dark. I was playing Fallout 3. I shot a supermutant in the head, his head goes flying off spinning in slow motion, painting a spray of blood across the ceiling, and somehow, in a very Fallout kind of way, it was all hillarious. This is dark. Deciding if you're going to kill a woman (whose ego has just cost the lives of hundreds of people) or her child, or taking a third option, isn't dark. If you could kill her son, and then tell her that you did it to punish her? That might be dark.

In the runup to Mass Effect 2, one of the devs in an interview was going on about how progressive their material was, and all I could do was laugh at them. Someplace in the last 10 years, Bioware's writing has degraded (maybe only slightly), but their opinion of themselves has inflated massivly.

What I'm saying here is simply this. I trust you, but, Bioware's developers aren't an impartial source. (Sorry about rabbit tracking here.)

It's pretty common for developers to plan all that stuff years in advance. It helps to ensure sequels make sense and have continuity.

Some of this simply comes out of necessity. Bioware started work on Mass Effect back in, what? 2003 or so. So planning out a sequel then is a briliant idea. Mass Effect would theoretically stand as a single game, but, given it's sales they can afford to go on and do the other two (and now they're saying more). What's strange is how clunky the shift between 1 and 2 is.

Spoiler: Wall of Text 2: the Wallening. TL;DR I have a theory about what ME2 might have been.

I can kinda guess what's going on here though. But, this is a guess. Basically there was an original plan for ME2, probably something along the lines of an unknown race, (maybe genetically modified keepers) abducting human colonies, and Shepard going in the SSV Normandy to investigate. I'm guessing that beyond this the actual gameplay wouldn't have changed at all, you probably would have started someplace around level 40-60, and added new skills, and new levels, the way you get new skills when you become a council spectre. (The other thing is ME1 scales it's encounters really well, so a level 60 character won't usually blow through an area unless the difficulty's been turned down. So this does make sense.)

Now, and this is the big guess. Somewhere around the time Bioware started getting the hell praised out of them in the press for ME1, they decided to tinker with the format. This included tinkering with the plot, and moving it in dirrections they hadn't anticipated. Blowing up the SSV Normandy at the begining of the game, for instance, is ONLY there so that you can recieve the upgraded and upgradable Normandy from Cerberus. And by recasting Cerberus to fit their new needs, they started mucking up the story.

I don't know when the collectors got added, but, this can't have been part of the original plan, or there would have been hints at it in the beacon vision in 1. Come to think of it, the beacon vision shows synthetics killing people, was this the original plan for the collectors?

Anyway, I'm not trying to be hard on you, I'm being hard on Bioware. I don't hate ME2, I'm trying to critique exactly what worked and what didn't, and answer the original post.

 

[Starke]

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.

Me! I care about realism.

That word you two are using. I do not think it means what you think it does. Realism is an art style...

The word has multiple meanings. Futurism and surrealism are art styles, too, but they refer to other things.

Yeah, none of them sync up with the way you're using realism. Consistancy or logic would be better terms. That and I never get to use that Princess Bride line... so... uh... hi there?

 

[BlindChance]

Spoiler: Wall of Text 2: the Wallening. TL;DR I have a theory about what ME2 might have been.

I can kinda guess what's going on here though. But, this is a guess. Basically there was an original plan for ME2, probably something along the lines of an unknown race, (maybe genetically modified keepers) abducting human colonies, and Shepard going in the SSV Normandy to investigate. I'm guessing that beyond this the actual gameplay wouldn't have changed at all, you probably would have started someplace around level 40-60, and added new skills, and new levels, the way you get new skills when you become a council spectre. (The other thing is ME1 scales it's encounters really well, so a level 60 character won't usually blow through an area unless the difficulty's been turned down. So this does make sense.)

Now, and this is the big guess. Somewhere around the time Bioware started getting the hell praised out of them in the press for ME1, they decided to tinker with the format. This included tinkering with the plot, and moving it in dirrections they hadn't anticipated. Blowing up the SSV Normandy at the begining of the game, for instance, is ONLY there so that you can recieve the upgraded and upgradable Normandy from Cerberus. And by recasting Cerberus to fit their new needs, they started mucking up the story.

I don't know when the collectors got added, but, this can't have been part of the original plan, or there would have been hints at it in the beacon vision in 1. Come to think of it, the beacon vision shows synthetics killing people, was this the original plan for the collectors?

I have a different theory.

This smells of too many cooks.

My guess is that somewhere early on, it was declared there needed to be more characters. More characters is a great selling point, and so the push was on. The writers were told to come up with them. And they did! They came up with great characters. I really like Jack, Mordin, and co. The loyalty quests were probably also put in here, and hey, they're also great!

The problem is that it started from there and not the plot.

Notice how separate the plot missions and the character missions are. How little interaction between the various crew members there is. (Granted, there was little in ME1 as well, but...)

Thus the Dirty Dozen plot. Thus the sudden injection of a new species. The plot was secondary in concern during development, and hoo boy it shows.

 

[Deviltongue]

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?

Cerberus Was in ME1. Justicars are never seen outside of Asari space(Samara was only there cuz she was hunting you-know-who). Omega is in the Terminus systems which wasn't talked about much in ME1 but Wrex may have mentioned it. The Blue Suns were in the ME1 book(How often do you hear about mercenary groups anyway?). The Illusive Man isn't common knowledge, very few people in the galaxy know about him. Any questions?

 

[Starke]

Spoiler: Wall of Text 2: the Wallening. TL;DR I have a theory about what ME2 might have been.

I can kinda guess what's going on here though. But, this is a guess. Basically there was an original plan for ME2, probably something along the lines of an unknown race, (maybe genetically modified keepers) abducting human colonies, and Shepard going in the SSV Normandy to investigate. I'm guessing that beyond this the actual gameplay wouldn't have changed at all, you probably would have started someplace around level 40-60, and added new skills, and new levels, the way you get new skills when you become a council spectre. (The other thing is ME1 scales it's encounters really well, so a level 60 character won't usually blow through an area unless the difficulty's been turned down. So this does make sense.)

Now, and this is the big guess. Somewhere around the time Bioware started getting the hell praised out of them in the press for ME1, they decided to tinker with the format. This included tinkering with the plot, and moving it in dirrections they hadn't anticipated. Blowing up the SSV Normandy at the begining of the game, for instance, is ONLY there so that you can recieve the upgraded and upgradable Normandy from Cerberus. And by recasting Cerberus to fit their new needs, they started mucking up the story.

I don't know when the collectors got added, but, this can't have been part of the original plan, or there would have been hints at it in the beacon vision in 1. Come to think of it, the beacon vision shows synthetics killing people, was this the original plan for the collectors?

I have a different theory.

This smells of too many cooks.

My guess is that somewhere early on, it was declared there needed to be more characters. More characters is a great selling point, and so the push was on. The writers were told to come up with them. And they did! They came up with great characters. I really like Jack, Mordin, and co. The loyalty quests were probably also put in here, and hey, they're also great!

The problem is that it started from there and not the plot.

Notice how separate the plot missions and the character missions are. How little interaction between the various crew members there is. (Granted, there was little in ME1 as well, but...)

Thus the Dirty Dozen plot. Thus the sudden injection of a new species. The plot was secondary in concern during development, and hoo boy it shows.

I figured the shorter missions were because they wanted a more episodic feel to things. Ever notice that it takes roughly 45 minutes to an hour to play through most of them? (You can do it in under 30, but taking your time...) Mirroring an episode of some TV series? But you are right, more or less.

As someone who has had professional experience dealing with people who were abused as children, Jack comes across as hillariously/tragicly fake. Though, I guess to the average player that isn't the case.

The too many cooks thing is also probably dead on. I figured that more party members were part of the plan from the begining, but you could be right.

 

[FoAmY99]

It seems everyone who's posted in this thread has forgotten about Mass Effect: Ascension. You know that little book that sort of bridges the gap between ME 1 and ME 2. It introduces the Illusive Man and I assume would probably talk a lot more about Cerberus. Not everything is explained in the games, thats why you check out the expanded universe. Christ, just look at Star Wars. There's like 10 different books that bridges the story between each movie. Why can't Mass Effect do the same?

 

[TheDoctor455]

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?

1. Cerberus was in the first game. Talk to Admiral Kohuku at the Citadel, he'll give you a quest-line that will eventually lead you to several Cerberus bases. And if you picked the "sole survivor" background, you'll eventually get an aditional side-quest that involves Cerberus. As for the Illusive Man... well... I think he was in the comics. (I didn't read them, so I'm just guessing here)

2. As for all of the mercenary gangs, you'll notice that they all operate EXCLUSIVELY in the Terminus Systems, an area of space that you couldn't go to in the first game (with the obvious exception of Ilos), therefore, it is reasonable enough that you wouldn't have had much to do with them in the past.

3. Same goes for Omega: its in the Terminus Systems, an area you couldn't go to before, and therefore was not relevant in Mass Effect 1.

4. As for Asari Justicars... well... in the first game, Bioware was more focused on establishing the Asari's unique biology, and their place in galactic society as mediators and such. The Justicars are also pretty rare (as Samara, and pretty much every other relevant NPC on Illium will tell you), and again, its a big freacking galaxy, so the odds of you coming across one of them without either A)You looking for one of them, or B) Them hunting you down for some reason, are pretty slim... even if those conditions are met, it would still be pretty unlikely... unless you had access to a powerful and highly influential organization's resources... like say... The Citadel Council or Cerberus.

 

[BlindChance]

It seems everyone who's posted in this thread has forgotten about Mass Effect: Ascension. You know that little book that sort of bridges the gap between ME 1 and ME 2. It introduces the Illusive Man and I assume would probably talk a lot more about Cerberus. Not everything is explained in the games, thats why you check out the expanded universe. Christ, just look at Star Wars. There's like 10 different books that bridges the story between each movie. Why can't Mass Effect do the same?

Because, and this is a key point, all the Star Wars films stand up on their own. You can watch only them, and still it all holds together.

The same is not true of Mass Effect.

I'm fine with expanded universes, but the condensed universe has to be able to stand alone.

 

[BlindChance]

As someone who has had professional experience dealing with people who were abused as children, Jack comes across as hilariously/tragically fake. Though, I guess to the average player that isn't the case.

Meh. Much as to what the others comment, realism isn't really a big point here. It's massive space opera stuff. Hitting the realities of childhood abuse wasn't as big an issue as getting the lovely visual design on Jack down.

The too many cooks thing is also probably dead on. I figured that more party members were part of the plan from the beginning, but you could be right.

I just get the feeling that each character was a writer's creation along the way, except for Jacob and Miranda. There wasn't much thought given to how they'd all fit in, with a few exceptions.

And yeah, I admit, I'm still annoyed. Six characters was perfect. Why'd they have to muck that up?

 

[Always_Remain]

Mass Effect 2 has many problems in plot and some continuity problems but a lot of it isn't very noticeable until you pick apart the whole damn game also know as being a critic. At least there isn't THAT many awkward dialogue situations unlike ME1.

Shepard: I better not ever see you again.
Fist: You won't ever see me again.

Did Fist really need to repeat Shepard?

 

[Starke]

It seems everyone who's posted in this thread has forgotten about Mass Effect: Ascension. You know that little book that sort of bridges the gap between ME 1 and ME 2. It introduces the Illusive Man and I assume would probably talk a lot more about Cerberus. Not everything is explained in the games, thats why you check out the expanded universe. Christ, just look at Star Wars. There's like 10 different books that bridges the story between each movie. Why can't Mass Effect do the same?

Oh, right, that little book that made Eragon look like goddamn Shakespeare? That little book that is quite litterally so bad it cannot be read, and not in a hillarious way, just a pants on head kind of way? Yeah. No. Bad example.

As someone who has had professional experience dealing with people who were abused as children, Jack comes across as hilariously/tragically fake. Though, I guess to the average player that isn't the case.

Meh. Much as to what the others comment, realism isn't really a big point here. It's massive space opera stuff. Hitting the realities of childhood abuse wasn't as big an issue as getting the lovely visual design on Jack down.

You're right more or less. Except it's not "realism", but that's my girlfriend's crusade. In general though her visual asthetic kinda kicks me too. She's great on paper, but on screen it kinda all bleeds together, it's worse on the 360 on a normal TV (I've seen), but even at 1920x1600 her tattoos are kinda too busy. That and the Shinade O'Connor look really doesn't do it for me. Accounting for personal taste and experience I guess?

The too many cooks thing is also probably dead on. I figured that more party members were part of the plan from the beginning, but you could be right.

I just get the feeling that each character was a writer's creation along the way, except for Jacob and Miranda. There wasn't much thought given to how they'd all fit in, with a few exceptions.

And yeah, I admit, I'm still annoyed. Six characters was perfect. Why'd they have to muck that up?

Well, six characters + Shepard gets you that classic 7 member team thing. On top of that, each of the six characters had a really clearly defined gameplay role, which just isn't the case in 2.

 

[Mother Yeti]

As someone who has had professional experience dealing with people who were abused as children, Jack comes across as hillariously/tragicly fake. Though, I guess to the average player that isn't the case.

She does, but as her loyalty mission shows, she's also an unreliable narrator of her own life. Who knows what actually happened in that facility? It might be that Jack is just naturally a colossal asshole.

 

[Starke]

As someone who has had professional experience dealing with people who were abused as children, Jack comes across as hillariously/tragicly fake. Though, I guess to the average player that isn't the case.

She does, but as her loyalty mission shows, she's also an unreliable narrator of her own life. Who knows what actually happened in that facility? It might be that Jack is just naturally a colossal asshole.

Fair point. Jack isn't an abused test subject. And we know that Cerberus took care of her and for the most part treated her carefully, they obviously didn't want her unstable, which would make her nearly worthless. This stands at odds with her stories about them tormenting her in isolation the way her cell is set up... Hell, it even casts doubt onto the story about the fight pits. More likely her biotic enhancements distorted her memory and lead to some kind of psychotic breakdown. Yeah, I really did put my foot in my mouth that time, didn't I?

 

[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.

Me! I care about realism.

In Mass Effect 2? psshhh

 

[GloatingSwine]

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.

Or they're still pure evil and the Illusive Man is a very persuasive liar.

 

[TPiddy]

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.

They didn't mention them by name but the actual look of the collectors was shown in those flashbacks and memories that you get imprinted with in the first game. You can literally see what they looked like in ME 1, you just didn't know what they were.

In ME 2,

Spoiler

They reveal this fact and then go on to reveal that the Protheans themselves became Collectors and the Collectors mostly remained in the deep space with the Reapers until they had to do work for them... explaining their absence.

 

[Volafortis]

Mass Effect is in Citadel Space
Mass Effect 2 is in the Terminus Systems

and Cerberus was in ME1, just not part of the main quest line.

Also, the collectors are mentioned in ME1, just not by name. Instead:

Spoiler

You see them for a split second in the beacon vision, because they are Protheans

 

[Starke]

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.

They didn't mention them by name but the actual look of the collectors was shown in those flashbacks and memories that you get imprinted with in the first game. You can literally see what they looked like in ME 1, you just didn't know what they were.

In ME 2,

Spoiler

They reveal this fact and then go on to reveal that the Protheans themselves became Collectors and the Collectors mostly remained in the deep space with the Reapers until they had to do work for them... explaining their absence.

Well... sort of.

Spoiler: The Collectors in ME1 and The Beacon Video

After the beacon on Eden Prime you get a line about synthetics, killing people. Shepard speculates that maybe he/she saw the geth. It comes off of the dialog with Anderson in the Normandy's med bay. What this kind of suggests is that the reapers have a client race of synthetics, or at least had one when the protheans were being wiped out.

As for actually showing the design of the collectors? I don't think it does, but, I'll admit, I'd need to watch the image spray in 1 again to be absolutly sure. 2 lets you find a very clear shot of a collector in the midst of that video, which messes up my memory of the entire thing.

We can draw two inferances off of this. First, when the reapers harvested the protheans they were using a synthetic client race to do so. Second (and more shakily), that this synthetic race was intended to be the collectors originally.

What that beacon video does show you is the integration of biomass with electronics that you see the payoff for at the end of ME2, so the video is important, I'm just not sure it hints at the appearance of the protheans. (I'll need to check again, when I have the time.) I suspect that in light of ME2, the beacon warning is a lot more detailed than we thought (intentionally or otherwise).

 

[squid5580]

There si a 2 year gap inbetween the first and the second. Not to mention the time inbetween the accident and the end of 1. Lots of time for new factions to rise and fall

 

[Frenger]

Blue Suns are mentioned in the books, so is the Illusive Man, Cerberus and a bunch of others, that were released before ME2. The first novel was released before the first game, even. Written by the lead writer of the game. There you have it.

One other thing, you never see the Terminus systems in the first game, afaik.

Also, try moving to a foreign country, and see if you learn about ALL companies and organizations in 3 hours... fuck if I know of everything where I live, I don't.

And Cerberus. They are a LAAAAAAAAAA







No real spoilers here.








AAAARGE group with tons of operatives. Hell, not even the Illusive Man knew what was happening on the complex Jack was held... or so he say anyway. And no, they are not heroes, infact - stuff that are suggested as you play the game tell a different story. Not to mention the books, where the Illusive Man assassinate political figures in the Terra Firma party.