Poll: Mass Effect vs. Mass Effect 2? Seriously. I'm lost.

[Irridium]

-I don't consider any villains faceless. The husks are literally human beings who have been transformed into baying maniacs, the scions are even worse considering they are made from the combined biomass of many Biotics. The Collectors aren't just tools they are the grim truth of what was whating for those who chose to serve the Reapers and Saren was well on his way to becoming... whatever a turian would be called after being Collector'd. They are all hugely tragic revenants, horrors that tell of our (potential) fate if Shepard doesn't win. Wailing grist for that terrible mill.

-And Shepard is the catalyst for it all. If Shepard isn't there nothing else could happen. Kaiden/Ashley is killed by the beacon, Tali is killed by Fisk's henchmen, Saren is never exposed, etc.

-I still don't get why people have a hard time accepting Shepard working with Cerberus. If my options were "Work with terrorists or allow a Genocide so immense it would take generations to complete (not to mention a whole new word)" then I already know my pick. Don't forget Shepard comes into contact with the beacon, a device that should've killed a human, and you're running around telling people to worry about the Reapers. People would classify him/her as a tinfoil hat wearing psycho and the council has basically declared you deranged in the interim.

The Illusive man has the things you need to fight your enemy and the last thing Shepard says in ME1 is that he's going to stop the Reapers, no matter what.

-Yes, but fighting against just them gets boring after a while, and without a strong leader to lead them, they're just annoying cannon-fodder. For example, the Geth weren't really that interesting. They only got ineresting in ME2 when you figured out there were different sects of Geth. Only reason they seemed interesting(to me) in the first game was because of Saren. Yes the husks are a constant reminder of what could happen, but if your just fighting them and what used to be Protheans, without a strong leader to tie it all together, it just isn't that fun to fight against them.

-There's nothing to suggest that the beacon would kill someone. At worst it would drive them insane. Still, I see your point.

-Cerberus is a horrid terrorist organization with a horrible track record. Almost everything they do usually ends with a team dieing, or going rouge.

Akuse - Colony fed to Thresher Maw to see what would happen. Caused by rouge cell.

Killed Alliance Admiral, experimented with Rachni, Thorian Creepers, Husks and spread the Rachni around to see how they'd fare - done by quite a few rouge cells.

Rebuilding you - TIM let in a Shadow Broker agent for no apparent reason which resulted in everyone on the station(save for you, Miranda, and Jacob) dieing.

Pragia - Horrific experiments on children. Evidently went rouge, then everyone died.

Hammerhead - Everyone died.

Overlord - Everyone died.

The only successful missions they did was re-building the Normandy, and saving the Council from being killed by terrorists. But they have an awful track record, and depending on your background, are responsible for what could be the single most traumatic moment in Shepard's life. I'm not exactly against working for Cerberus(although I'll hate it no matter what), but Bioware could have handled it a lot better.

 

[Agayek]

-snip-

ME2 had by far the better combat and gameplay.

ME1 had by far the better story.

Deciding which one is "better" really comes down to which one you prefer in your games.

I personally prefer ME1, because I vastly prefer a well told story over deep gameplay. As long as the controls are functional and I can accomplish my objectives, I don't really care how the game plays. That combined with the fact that the central plot for ME2 made no fucking sense means I will always pick ME1 as the better game.

Why there's so much rage over it I can't say. Fact of the matter is, both games exist and both will have fans that prefer it over the other. Doesn't seem like something to get your knickers in a twist over.

 

[DazBurger]

Mass Effect: Better story.
Mass Effect 2: Better mechanics.

But why choose? Play both!

 

[Agayek]

-I still don't get why people have a hard time accepting Shepard working with Cerberus. If my options were "Work with terrorists or allow a Genocide so immense it would take generations to complete (not to mention a whole new word)" then I already know my pick. Don't forget Shepard comes into contact with the beacon, a device that should've killed a human, and you're running around telling people to worry about the Reapers. People would classify him/her as a tinfoil hat wearing psycho and the council has basically declared you deranged in the interim.

The Illusive man has the things you need to fight your enemy and the last thing Shepard says in ME1 is that he's going to stop the Reapers, no matter what.

Except those are not your only options. Any sane individual in that situation would go "Oh hey, then I guess it's time to go cash in on all that shit I did for the Alliance, pick up some ships and blow the fuck out of whoever's doing it."

I mean really, Shepard is an Alliance soldier and has been for years. Suddenly, he's expected to completely abdicate that in favor of a terrorist organization known to him to be responsible for the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of people, and possibly responsible for the single most traumatic event of his life?

What fucking bizarro logic lets that make sense? The reasonable thing to do in that situation is tell TIM to fuck off, go steal a ship and make tracks for Alliance space and get them involved.

 

[Prof. Monkeypox]

I liked both, but both also had serious flaws.
If I want action- I lean to ME2, if I want RPG- ME1.

If only the marriage between the two could be smoother.

 

[GraegoriHauss]

I hated all the running around you had to do in the first Mass Effect to get anywhere. I love Mass Effect 2 unequivocally for doing away with all this, but then I found I kinda missed the occasional exploration bit with the Mako. You have to hand it to the developers, they did a bloody fantastic job designing some of those uncharted worlds (planets like Agebinium, for example, made me think of what Earth will look like when the Sun goes red-giant).

Ultimately though, I think it's a matter of taste. As for your poll, I picked "apples and oranges," because that's what the two games really are.

 

[manythings]

-I still don't get why people have a hard time accepting Shepard working with Cerberus. If my options were "Work with terrorists or allow a Genocide so immense it would take generations to complete (not to mention a whole new word)" then I already know my pick. Don't forget Shepard comes into contact with the beacon, a device that should've killed a human, and you're running around telling people to worry about the Reapers. People would classify him/her as a tinfoil hat wearing psycho and the council has basically declared you deranged in the interim.

The Illusive man has the things you need to fight your enemy and the last thing Shepard says in ME1 is that he's going to stop the Reapers, no matter what.

Except those are not your only options. Any sane individual in that situation would go "Oh hey, then I guess it's time to go cash in on all that shit I did for the Alliance, pick up some ships and blow the fuck out of whoever's doing it."

I mean really, Shepard is an Alliance soldier and has been for years. Suddenly, he's expected to completely abdicate that in favor of a terrorist organization known to him to be responsible for the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of people, and possibly responsible for the single most traumatic event of his life?

What fucking bizarro logic lets that make sense? The reasonable thing to do in that situation is tell TIM to fuck off, go steal a ship and make tracks for Alliance space and get them involved.

But the politicos who run the alliance don't want anything to do with Shepard. Why do you think you can't even get a meeting with the council if you didn't save them? Shepard's a problem for them now and anyone who listened would probably lose their commission. No one else even believe's the Reapers exist.

You have funny notions about how militaries work if you think they can just up and abandon their given jobs to run off and do something else.

 

[manythings]

-Cerberus is a horrid terrorist organization with a horrible track record. Almost everything they do usually ends with a team dieing, or going rouge.

Akuse - Colony fed to Thresher Maw to see what would happen. Caused by rouge cell.

Killed Alliance Admiral, experimented with Rachni, Thorian Creepers, Husks and spread the Rachni around to see how they'd fare - done by quite a few rouge cells.

Rebuilding you - TIM let in a Shadow Broker agent for no apparent reason which resulted in everyone on the station(save for you, Miranda, and Jacob) dieing.

Pragia - Horrific experiments on children. Evidently went rouge, then everyone died.

Hammerhead - Everyone died.

Overlord - Everyone died.

The only successful missions they did was re-building the Normandy, and saving the Council from being killed by terrorists. But they have an awful track record, and depending on your background, are responsible for what could be the single most traumatic moment in Shepard's life. I'm not exactly against working for Cerberus(although I'll hate it no matter what), but Bioware could have handled it a lot better.

Yes but Shepard doesn't go where things are ok, Shepard goes where someone needs to be shot in the face. He's N7 and a (former) Spectre, his job is to neutralise lethal situations. People will hear about when things go terribly, terribly wrong but if everything goes right then no one is any the wiser.

It's like the Star Trek thing. 99% of the time Captain Picard is sitting in a chair following a designated patrol path and giving whatever plain old orders have to be given on a daily basis. Imagine that show and you get why the episodes are when something is actually going on. He doesn't go where he isn't doing something worthwhile and the second he has fulfilled his objective the enterprise continues on it's previous course.

Covert Organisations, like the CIA or what have you, are basically run like big time criminal enterprises. What they do is illegal, immoral and often astonishingly lucrative. They are sitting on the Bleeding Edge of technological advancement and TIM knows that being in first place means cutting out all the stops. How many times do labs with the worst kinds of diseases suffer breaches? Do you know? Would you hear if they did? Do you think the CIA wouldn't let an agent in if they knew it was a double agent? What better oppurtunity to feed false information and to find enemy contacts while learning about your own weaknesses? Letting the Shadow Brokers operative in lets TIM control the game. The best kind of Strenght is hidden and the best kind of Weakness is false.

 

[Agayek]

But the politicos who run the alliance don't want anything to do with Shepard. Why do you think you can't even get a meeting with the council if you didn't save them? Shepard's a problem for them now and anyone who listened would probably lose their commission. No one else even believe's the Reapers exist.

You have funny notions about how militaries work if you think they can just up and abandon their given jobs to run off and do something else.

Possible, I haven't done a playthrough where the Council died in ME1. And I would also argue that the sheer fact that the people present at the end of ME1 still don't believe Reapers exist is laughably idiotic.

Even with people refusing to believe the Reapers exist, you can make a viable claim to the Alliance (or possibly the Council) along the lines of "Hey, bad shit's happening over there. We should check it out before it spreads into our neighborhood." I can practically guarantee someone with Shepard's reputation and skillset can convince at least one significant officer that the disappearing colonies is worth investigating, if not outright involving themselves in.

Especially since that's exactly what the Alliance does on Horizon.

The choice between "work for Cerberus" and "doom millions" is a false binary. It's a stupid decision forced on the player that doesn't even attempt to explain itself. Instead they just handwave it in favor of more explosions.

There's a number of similar choices all throughout ME2. ME1 was not immune to this, but it was both less common and less obvious.

 

[DarkhoIlow]

I liked both equally.

Can say that I threw quite a lot of playthroughs when I played both of them.

 

[manythings]

But the politicos who run the alliance don't want anything to do with Shepard. Why do you think you can't even get a meeting with the council if you didn't save them? Shepard's a problem for them now and anyone who listened would probably lose their commission. No one else even believe's the Reapers exist.

You have funny notions about how militaries work if you think they can just up and abandon their given jobs to run off and do something else.

Possible, I haven't done a playthrough where the Council died in ME1. And I would also argue that the sheer fact that the people present at the end of ME1 still don't believe Reapers exist is laughably idiotic.

Even with people refusing to believe the Reapers exist, you can make a viable claim to the Alliance (or possibly the Council) along the lines of "Hey, bad shit's happening over there. We should check it out before it spreads into our neighborhood." I can practically guarantee someone with Shepard's reputation and skillset can convince at least one significant officer that the disappearing colonies is worth investigating, if not outright involving themselves in.

Especially since that's exactly what the Alliance does on Horizon.

The choice between "work for Cerberus" and "doom millions" is a false binary. It's a stupid decision forced on the player that doesn't even attempt to explain itself. Instead they just handwave it in favor of more explosions.

There's a number of similar choices all throughout ME2. ME1 was not immune to this, but it was both less common and less obvious.

But Shepard's reputation has been eroded by the council. They've been working hard to make sure that people think Shepard was crazy and this whole Reaper thing was just the ravings of person deeply affected by malfunctioning alien technology. The Engineer, Donnelly, says as much if you talk to him. Jacob tells you that your face was actually replaced with a composite of focus tested features on the recruitment ads.

The Alliance wants Shepard the Symbol because it's useful but they want Shepard the person buried as deep as possible because, according to them, you've lost your mind. Lawrence of Arabia is a pretty similar real life occurence of this. He was lauded when he was useful and told to fuck right off the second he wasn't needed.

 

[Agayek]

But Shepard's reputation has been eroded by the council. They've been working hard to make sure that people think Shepard was crazy and this whole Reaper thing was just the ravings of person deeply affected by malfunctioning alien technology. The Engineer, Donnelly, says as much if you talk to him. Jacob tells you that your face was actually replaced with a composite of focus tested features on the recruitment ads.

The Alliance wants Shepard the Symbol because it's useful but they want Shepard the person buried as deep as possible because, according to them, you've lost your mind. Lawrence of Arabia is a pretty similar real life occurence of this. He was lauded when he was useful and told to fuck right off the second he wasn't needed.

That's all well and good, but even past the reputation and without everything else, there's still the simple fact that dozens of human colonies have been vanishing, without a trace. Shepard has clout in the Alliance, even with the Council making him out to be crazy. He's worked directly with Admiral Hackett and has a direct line to him.

All it would take is a call to Hackett going "Hey, uhh, you might want to start investigating the shit going down in the Terminus systems. I've got some plausible intel that people are disappearing and it won't stop in the Terminus."

Hackett would most likely send out a scout ship to verify the report, as he knows Shepard personally and is unlikely to believe random rumors over personal experience. Once the scout reports back that humans are indeed vanishing, then he'll most likely take a larger response.

The simple fact of the matter is, regardless of anything else, Shepard has personal connections with several important people, and in any realistic scenario using them is an option.

We could argue hypothetical scenarios all day, and it really wouldn't resolve anything. The fact of the matter is, even if the Alliance would do nothing, Shepard (and the player) don't know that. Thus, having the option to return to the Alliance is a perfectly viable and the most logical choice. Not having that is simply Bioware forcing a direction onto the player for no readily discernible reason.

 

[humpty334]

I liked Mass effect 2 better but it was dumbed down compared to Mass Effect 1 but still a good game

 

[Mikeyfell]

Mass Effect 2 is better

The biggest point of difference that I see is RPG-shooter vs. shooter-RPG.

That's not exactly true.
In Mass Effect 1 the RPG elements were cluttered and mostly arbitrary.
You had all your guns that had to be leveled up individually,
Your healing skill,
Your door hacking skill,
Your lock picking skill, (It's also weird that those were too different skills)
Your biotic or tech powers that all had to be leveled individually,
And your class abilities that all had to be leveled up individually.
And they all required (I think it was 20 points each)
Because each skill has 20 levels there's no discernible difference between a warp skill with 7 points and a warp skill with 8 points.
So the only way to feel like your powers have gotten any better is to save up points for a while and dump them into a skill.

In Mass Effect 2 they made all your guns shoot strait from the start. (Which makes sense. You're a Commander in the military! You should be able to use a damn gun.)
The healing skill was replaced with Medigell.
The lock picking and door hacking skills were replaced with minigames.
They tidied up a little.
So now you're left with your powers and class skills which have 10 levels each. (Which also makes sense because in ME 1 you went up to level 60 and you go to level 30 in ME 2)
And they built the save up and dump strategy into the game as a mechanic by making there be 4 levels that require 1 through 4 points to acquire.

The planet scanning in ME 2 is boring as crap.
Driving the bouncy car around mountainous terrain is frustrating as crap.
Take your pick. (For the record I choose bouncy car)

Now the part where Mass Effect 1 really shines is that there are only like 5 missions, and after every mission you can talk to all your team mates and have a fun little conversation with them. there was a pattern: Go on mission, chat with team mates, Go on mission, chat with team mates.

Mass Effect 2 has like 25 missions and only like 7 or 8 conversations per team mate so you'll get really used to hearing "Can this wait? I'm in the middle of some calibrations." And there's Kasumi and Zeade who don't talk to you at all.


I'm extremely nervous for ME 3 because Bioware has said that they want it to appeal to a "wider audience" which basically means dumb it down and make the combat slower and more repetitive. But they've also said that they're cutting down the size of the team and focusing more on the relationships which (hopefully) means they're will be more opportunity to talk to each team mate.

 

[Irridium]

-Cerberus is a horrid terrorist organization with a horrible track record. Almost everything they do usually ends with a team dieing, or going rouge.

Akuse - Colony fed to Thresher Maw to see what would happen. Caused by rouge cell.

Killed Alliance Admiral, experimented with Rachni, Thorian Creepers, Husks and spread the Rachni around to see how they'd fare - done by quite a few rouge cells.

Rebuilding you - TIM let in a Shadow Broker agent for no apparent reason which resulted in everyone on the station(save for you, Miranda, and Jacob) dieing.

Pragia - Horrific experiments on children. Evidently went rouge, then everyone died.

Hammerhead - Everyone died.

Overlord - Everyone died.

The only successful missions they did was re-building the Normandy, and saving the Council from being killed by terrorists. But they have an awful track record, and depending on your background, are responsible for what could be the single most traumatic moment in Shepard's life. I'm not exactly against working for Cerberus(although I'll hate it no matter what), but Bioware could have handled it a lot better.

Yes but Shepard doesn't go where things are ok, Shepard goes where someone needs to be shot in the face. He's N7 and a (former) Spectre, his job is to neutralise lethal situations. People will hear about when things go terribly, terribly wrong but if everything goes right then no one is any the wiser.

It's like the Star Trek thing. 99% of the time Captain Picard is sitting in a chair following a designated patrol path and giving whatever plain old orders have to be given on a daily basis. Imagine that show and you get why the episodes are when something is actually going on. He doesn't go where he isn't doing something worthwhile and the second he has fulfilled his objective the enterprise continues on it's previous course.

Covert Organisations, like the CIA or what have you, are basically run like big time criminal enterprises. What they do is illegal, immoral and often astonishingly lucrative. They are sitting on the Bleeding Edge of technological advancement and TIM knows that being in first place means cutting out all the stops. How many times do labs with the worst kinds of diseases suffer breaches? Do you know? Would you hear if they did? Do you think the CIA wouldn't let an agent in if they knew it was a double agent? What better oppurtunity to feed false information and to find enemy contacts while learning about your own weaknesses? Letting the Shadow Brokers operative in lets TIM control the game. The best kind of Strenght is hidden and the best kind of Weakness is false.

But what gets accomplished by letting Wilson in? Nothing, except having everyone die. What good could have come from letting a spy into where you, the galaxy's last, best hope, are being rebuilt? I saw no attempt of TIM or anyone to try anything clever with Wilson. They just seem to let him do what he wants. And let him do it all for two years. No interrogating him, no keeping an eye on what he's doing(otherwise he wouldn't have taken control of security), no nothing.

Its stupid, and the fact that TIM let it happen is just unbelievable.

 

[nokori3byo]

About the only respect in which I prefered the first game to the sequel was its (notionally) broader scope. It's often said that Sheperd et. al's fight to save abducted humans in ME2 is a big step down from fighting to save all organic lifeforms in ME. In terms of how ME is experienced on the first playthrough though, its huge scope is something the player only becomes aware of late in the game. Anyway, what we know about ME3 suggests that there will be a very strong sense of continuity between the last two games in the trilogy.

Apart from that, ME2 all the way. Great characters. Thrilling combat. All killer, no filler. The lack of inventory irked me at first, but I soon got used to it.