Why I Didn't Like Mass Effect 2

[LebbyLegs]

Please do not mistake me for a troll, this is all purely my opinion, and I don't expect everyone to accept what I say as fact. I write this article because many many reviewers and gamers keep declaring Mass Effect as the GOTY and in fact the most definitive role playing game of this generation. And I keep wondering whether everyone else played the same game I did. I look back at my experience with Mass Effect 2 and remember a deep, yet also exhausting and in some places flat out dull RPG.

I loved Mass Effect 1, and listed below are reasons why the sequel simply didn't do it for me;

CHARACTERS
Mass Effect 1 had fewer characters, but in my opinion most of them were better developed than those in Mass Effect 2 (if less 'out there') and none of them annoyed the tits off me. Many people didn't like Ashley Williams, saying she was stupid and racist, but those were part of the reasons that I liked her (not that I condone racism at all). Ash was a flawed, human character. She got angry, jealous, but also had a softer goofy side that her family bought out, and she felt true affection for Shepard throughout the game. And after her character was developed, you find out her racism towards aliens is the sort of shallow racism that dissipitates when you really get to know someone. Her and Kaiden Alenko who was also human and likeable formed a very big contrast to the two main human companions in Mass Effect 2; Jacob and Miranda.
JACOB: The main problem with Jacob is that he's dull. Really dull. It's not that he's dull coz he doesn't have a SUPER AWESOME LOL OMG HES A MURDERER backstory, like say Jack, because a good character doesn't have to have really weird stuff happen to them as long as they are humanised. Jacob wasn't. He had one emotion, a sort of cold professionalism that was only broken through once when he meets his father and gets angry. I'm fairly sure when they were working out the character ideas for ME2 they wrote next to Jacobs name 'He's Black.' There was just no depth to him, no dimensions, just that stupid handshake him and Shepard do when you exhaust all his dialogue, (that still makes me laugh).
MIRANDA: Miranda was deeper than Jacob. She had a well developed backstory, more than one emotion, it's just unfortunate that whenever she showed her emotions she pissed me off. Basically all she did was whine about how she was perfect... I know girls like that in real life, and their just as annoying in video games. Bioware could have done a better job of making Miranda conflicted without being a whiner. But instead whenever she wasn't pulling her cold tough gal 'I don't need men' act, she was complaining.

This isn't to say I didn't like all the characters in ME2, I liked how Garrus (who was probably the most cliched character in ME1) was made more unpredictable and conflicted. And yes like everyone else, I thought Thane was a badass

GAMEPLAY
I know everyones already harped on that resource collecting thing so i won't go into depth, but needless to say, it sucked.
And while the combat was refined, it seemed to replace many of the diplomatic encounters in the original game. In ME2 Most of the Planets with main missions, and all the NE7 side missions just decsended into mindless shooting galleries with little to no room for exploration or dialogue. In the original ME1 a traditional scenario would be to break into an enemy base, shoot up some bad guys, find a group of survivors, talk, help them out or ignore them or kill them etc. ME2 gets up to teh shooting bad guys, but completely omits the survivors, talking and characterisation. This really just wore the game away to its bare bones for me, and made it more reminiscent of a repeptitive third person shooter than a RPG.

TONE
This is probably the pettiest of all my complaints, but I never like it when an epic game dripping with discovery and new begginings takes a turn down the angsty highway. Surely a company as talented as Bioware can think of another tone for the game.

CHOICES
There just weren't as many to make, and none of the choices from the first game felt weighty. Ok i chose Kaiden to die! I wonder how that'll affect the game! Oh Ash just appears for five minutes calls me a dick and walks away... I wonder what happens if I choose Ash to die! Oh Kaiden just appears for five minutes calls me a dick and walks away... Hey at least I managed to save Wrex! Oh he just appears for five minutes and has almost identical dialogue to the Krogan who appears if Wrex died...
And since most of the game is just shooting, there were fewer meaningful choices to make outside of the final mission (which I did actually quite enjoy). And even then the choices I made in the final mission will only effect the 3rd game, rather than ME2

So there are my reasons that I didn't like ME2. Please comment enlightening me as to why you thought the game was an orgasmic experience of jesus proportions, or why you were underwhelmed, or engage in a healthy debate about my points
Thank you, and remember this is all my opinion

 

[Infinatex]

So if I hated ME 1 does that mean I might like this?

 

[Mcface]

After playing ME1 and then ME2 right after, hours apart, ME2 is by far a superior game when not looking through nostalgia goggles.

More characters, much better side quests, and much MUCH better combat.

So, i disagree.. but its my opinion of course.

 

[Alanosborn1991]

My only hate with ME2 was that Garrus would never finish his dang calibrations!

I mean seriously he only has 2 times when he actually talks to you! the rest is Sidonis and calibrations!

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

 

[Bek359]

So if I hated ME 1 does that mean I might like this?

Depends. What did you hate about it?

 

[Irridium]

Honestly, the only thing I really liked about ME2 were your companions and their loyalty missions. Those were great.

I found the main plot to be shit, it moves nowhere. The combat is boring, and more of a step sideways then forward. It feels more rail-road-y(this is more noticable during missions dealing with the main plot/collectors), and it feels like it turned into Gears of War: In space.

Spoiler: I'll let this post by somebody else on the internet shine. It explains what I want to, and does a far better job of it.

The setup and story of Mass Effect, more than the optimistic tone that was referenced before, was mainly a very classic science-fiction setting. Space here was protrayed as the infinite frontier, with our knowledge of discrete parts of it clashed with a large mass of unknown in between the main branches of the mass effect grid. In general it is an almost perfect copy of the themes at the core of a space opera, the eddification of it as a new time for discovery similar to the naval discoveries of the 15th century for Europe, the main conflict not visible but as a quest for truth or discovery instead; for that same reason, the full story of the Reapers was kept under wraps until the climax as well, for that is the main drawn of the science fiction epic, the mistery itself.

The Reapers part in this was thus rightfully fit. The fact that their motives were an unknow was the classical Lovecraftian edification of what horror should be and that fits greatly into the exploration theme. At their core, the Reapers were edifications of the danger of the unknown; they were the concept of pure evil as seen built from motives and logic beyond our human concepts, they were the ?hole in things? and the dragon of Saint Jorge all along. When faced with an enemy such as this, born out of the unknown, the proper way to battle it, can be nothing other than the search for knowledge, and the edification of Mass Effect was just that; you(as the player and as a human) contained no special skills of your own, and your quest in the end was nothing more than a long search for answers with those answers edificated in the presence of your various companions. It?s an hard task for game designers to impair the sense of intelectual accomplishment to the player when you?re supposed to achieve it as a character, but here by shifting that task upon your own work as the game progresses, the discoveries and companionships you form as direct opposition to the Reaper menace fulfill that role.

Of course even after all of that, as this was a videogame we needed a boss battle. The de facto ending of the game?s climax was the meeting with Virgil and the subconsequent jump through the mass relay into the citadel. Here, for all we care Sovereign had lost; its plans were know and we had managed to put ourselves into the pivotal point of it, so intellectually we had already won the fight. Thus the existence of Saren as an opponent. Saren?s edification as an anti-you, and the end game revelation of his cybernetic enhancements brings once more the theme of a confrotnation of intellectual merit to the table; except here the intellectual component has turned into the concept of a battle between transhumans. While Saren represents the transhumanist who seeks his betterment without any regard towards his old humanity, with his body changed by edifications by the part of the Reapers(again edifications of the unknow, of what lies beyond the horizon, of the dark fringes beyond which lovecraftian horrors lurk), we as Shepard represent the transhuman with his roots still firmly set upon our past; our strength and power comes not from drastic enhancements to ourselves, but through the work of a lifetime and through alliances with teammates that complement ourselves; this was also a big aspect as to why the suicide we force on Saren was so important from a storytelling point of view, it served as the most direct and just battleground where two transhuman might met, dialogue versus teh brawn. In the end, even after this the physical boss battle served was best confrontation so as to end the game, the old tale of intelect vs brawn when faced with unsourmauntable odds; in here we had already achieved victory and this was nothing more than a formality, we here David versus Goliath, Batman versus Joker, the Man with No Name versus the Bad, Luke and Vader versus the Emperor and the measly insignificant human against the vast and unknow universe and we came out triumphant.

This seems to be where Mass Effect 2 most diverged from the first. Despite the darkening of the mood, which all by itself could not justify a change of theme(after all so did Empire Strikes Back and it still mantained many of the same aspects of episode IV), the 2nd game showed us a shift towards the use of force for an estabilished goal. The fatc that pretty much from the beggining we have as an objective the Omega Relay somwhat lessens here our task, because the torch then has passed from triumphant discoverers who find the path by themselves, to measly taskmasters who do what they are told so as to achieve a preset goal. Even our ultimate inspection past the Omega Relay and into the climax, even though it is supposed to be a journey of discovery, turns into a simple reaction to teh thing we are confronted with. Here, the mistery that is discovered is done such with little or no effort by our part and we lose the sense of uniqueness that makes us believe that only us Shepard(the player) could have done this and assembled this team. Even beyond that, the only confrontation we have with this monster(because if before it was only the concept of a monster, now it fully takes the form of a monster and surprise! there is a giant coakroach behind the door and now despite opening it again and again it is not scary anymore) is purely physical. We lose all aspects of the intellectual growth towards the role of Homo Galactus and we just unload ammo upon ammo towards the problem. We have regressed towards the Homo Sapiens of ago, whose accomplishment could be defined by ?USE rock ON bug?.

Unfortunately, the teaser for Mass Effect 3, only seems to create a greater feeling of this. Here the cat is out of teh bag pleanly, and the immense presence of the Reapers on Earth seems to tie us ever closer to the roots that we were trying to shake. While before the confrotnation was towards the unknow and our exploration of it was the pathway towards a solution and steps which made us abandon our lesser feats to elevate us an example of the species, here we have to come back to our home, not to solve the problem as a transhuman but to use the above appointed rock on the bug. In the end, it seems that our role here has been relegated towards the application of brute force, which has always been the anti-thesis of the space opera. While there might be a physical confrontation, when dealing with the concepts of science-fiction, we are directly tied to the fact that we reached beyond our planetary orbit by using our intellect, and as such that would be the tool that we would refine towards the world of tomorrow and upon which our betterment relied. The obsession upon a strictly physical confrotnation might fit with purely macho-militaristic concepts such as Halo, but here we are trying to portray the post-Sapiens human, and clear-cutting the way towards only a physical confrontation as the teaser seems to indicate is quite wrongly built upon the initial story.

Once again, sorry for any errors or ortographical mistakes. Just my two cents any way.

Also, what kind of secret terrorist organization paints its logo on everything? Its on the Normandy, at the Lazerous(or however its spelled) station, at the station where you first meet the "Illusive" Man, on the Hammerhead and other bases in the Firewalker DLC, its all over the place in Project Overlord... its just fucking everywhere!

I'm not an expert on being hidden and secretive, but I don't think putting your logo on everything helps you be "hidden".

 

[MetaMop]

Wrex was the only good character in ME1, Garrus had too little screen time and had yet to become Dirty Harry in Space. Liara was depressingly boring, Kaiden was stale bread, Ashley was both an ignorant racist yet also someone who believed that everything had a place in the universe because of some God being. Not a clever dichotomy, mind you, just contradictory characterization.

I agree on gameplay, too much of ME2 was shooting gallerys and mining.

ME2 was just another game that tried this whole 'dark' trend and failed. I liked ME2, but it failed, the same way Dragon Age was not a 'dark' fantasy rpg. Changing the colour scheme and making the theme music more threatening doesn't make a more haunting atmosphere.

To be honest, I never expected much to come of the choices. The crew members that survived my ME1 play did exactly what I expected: showed up, delivered 5 minutes of dialogue and said bye.
That's what'll happen with all the crew members from ME2 in ME3, because they aren't going to bring in a voice actor to record an entire game of dialogue when there's a chance some will never hear it. I don't think all the choices I made in the last two games to drastically alter the game's outcome.

 

[Infinatex]

So if I hated ME 1 does that mean I might like this?

Depends. What did you hate about it?

Annoying combat (oh GOD the combat sucked!) and the story was a bit vague as to where to go. Found myself cluelessly wandering around not knowing where to go next.

 

[TerranReaper]

Inb4 someone accuses OP of being a troll.


OT: Ya, I'll be inclined to agree with the gameplay points that it went down the route of putting in more shooting parts and somewhat neglecting the RPG aspects. I actually thought it was more of TPS than a RPG.

 

[WanderingFool]

I agree with OP, I found that they streamlined ME2 far to much, as I liked the RPG elements in ME1 and the inventory system. Also, I felt that there were way to many teammates, I hardley used Morden and Miranda, except when doing their loyalty missions. Finally, I actually felt that doing all the missions and side missions, ME2 was shorter than ME1.

There are better things though. The powers, like Charge and Tech armor were awesome. And the heavy weapons were a hoot. But in all I feel ME1 was better.

*looks around*

Hmm, nope. No nostalgia here.

 

[Something Amyss]

Summed up my problems. Streamlined the "interesting" out of combat, and characters I didn't give a damn about.

 

[bl4ckh4wk64]

THANK YOU! You're one of the few people that realize that Ashley is a dynamic character. She gets deeper and more human the more you talk to her, and she was frankly my favorite character in ME 1. Next to Joker of course.

So if I hated ME 1 does that mean I might like this?

Depends. What did you hate about it?

Annoying combat (oh GOD the combat sucked!) and the story was a bit vague as to where to go. Found myself cluelessly wandering around not knowing where to go next.

Yeah, they have little waypoints showing you where to go. However, you do realize that there is a map in the menu, right? Once I showed that to my friend he really started to enjoy the game.

 

[Macheteswordgun]

My only hate with ME2 was that Garrus would never finish his dang calibrations!

I mean seriously he only has 2 times when he actually talks to you! the rest is Sidonis and calibrations!

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

I laughed so hard when i saw this

 

[Captain Ninja]

My only hate with ME2 was that Garrus would never finish his dang calibrations!

I mean seriously he only has 2 times when he actually talks to you! the rest is Sidonis and calibrations!

You Sir, have made my day

OT: i really liked both mass effect games but i do think they did make ME2 feel way to small.

 

[Animyr]

It wasn't perfect. End of story.

 

[numbersix1979]

As much as I like ME2, I think you've made some really terrific points. Although I did enjoy most of the characters in the game, I agree they feel somewhat cut short when compared to the previous installment. There's a more diverse group with more world views (er, universe views), yet there's a criminally shallow amount of dialogue, along with a comparable decline in quality. Speaking of Garrus and Jacob, it seems like Bioware put Garrus into the game to continue his storyline, but didn't really have much for him to do in the sequel. He's there, but even in the female Shepard version where you romance him, the whole affair seems somewhat insubstantial. Jacob appears to be the new 'buddy' character, and although I did enjoy his personality and back-and-forth with Miranda, I felt like his character existed less to have an evolving and original story behind it and more to have someone for Shepard to pal around with. Not to mention the fact the female Shepard - Jacob romance is also pretty bland. It just doesn't feel right. With Kaiden, Ashley, and Liara, we actually learned a lot about them as characters. Learned not only a backstory, and how they operate, but why they do what they do. This element of Bioware storytelling feels wasted on most of the characters of Mass Effect 2. Although I know its supposed to have a different tone than its predecessor (shifting from Star Trek to the Magnificent Seven without a good enough clutch), there still could have been emotional connections made with the characters. Not only that, but the characters you DO know all about are either annoying as all hell, psychopathic killers, or the comic relief. Of course, characters in ME1 had these same traits (Liara, Wrex and Joker respectively) but it wasn't different because of the expansion of their characters. These traits felt more like actual component parts of real people, rather than bland tropes and stereotypes. Although ME2 does manage to hold on to some of the brilliant story-telling and character development that made the original great (Jacob's loyalty mission, the Normandy dogfighting right out of the Relay, the Tali romance storyline, the character of Thane, and the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC are all fantastic points in my personal gaming highlight reel), the quality is spread thin over so many characters. Seeing as only X amount of them will probably play major roles in 3, maybe Bioware will get back to doing what it did best in the original and giving us a great story with a few excellently developed characters instead of an epic populated with a lot of stereotypes. Then again, minimizing the involvement of the cast that made up 2, and certainly had its high points, to a level of non-involvement to bring in yet another new cast both would suck and is probably what Bioware will have to do to get the sequel going, so let's just wait and see xp

 

[Super Toast]

To each his own. I preferred ME2 for two reasons; I thought the characters were more interesting, and the gameplay was ten million times better. I did prefer the story in the first one though. I'm not sure why.

 

[IBlackKiteI]

It wasn't perfect. End of story.

A seemingly extraordinarily huge group of fanatics say it is though, which is my main dislike of it.

I find the fanboy community of Mass Effect so damn annoying that it eventually turned me off the series, which is quite bizarre seeing as its a single player game.

Although the game itself was flawed in the ways the OP described, along with the most repetitive, boring, simplistic and in many cases easy combat of any game I've ever played. I love how fanatics often counter this by saying "Its not a shooter! It doesn't matter!"
Its got guns, its a shooter.
Shooting is a huge part of it, its a problem.

 

[IBlackKiteI]

As much as I like ME2, I think you've made some really terrific points. Although I did enjoy most of the characters in the game, I agree they feel somewhat cut short when compared to the previous installment. There's a more diverse group with more world views (er, universe views), yet there's a criminally shallow amount of dialogue, along with a comparable decline in quality. Speaking of Garrus and Jacob, it seems like Bioware put Garrus into the game to continue his storyline, but didn't really have much for him to do in the sequel. He's there, but even in the female Shepard version where you romance him, the whole affair seems somewhat insubstantial. Jacob appears to be the new 'buddy' character, and although I did enjoy his personality and back-and-forth with Miranda, I felt like his character existed less to have an evolving and original story behind it and more to have someone for Shepard to pal around with. Not to mention the fact the female Shepard - Jacob romance is also pretty bland. It just doesn't feel right. With Kaiden, Ashley, and Liara, we actually learned a lot about them as characters. Learned not only a backstory, and how they operate, but why they do what they do. This element of Bioware storytelling feels wasted on most of the characters of Mass Effect 2. Although I know its supposed to have a different tone than its predecessor (shifting from Star Trek to the Magnificent Seven without a good enough clutch), there still could have been emotional connections made with the characters. Not only that, but the characters you DO know all about are either annoying as all hell, psychopathic killers, or the comic relief. Of course, characters in ME1 had these same traits (Liara, Wrex and Joker respectively) but it wasn't different because of the expansion of their characters. These traits felt more like actual component parts of real people, rather than bland tropes and stereotypes. Although ME2 does manage to hold on to some of the brilliant story-telling and character development that made the original great (Jacob's loyalty mission, the Normandy dogfighting right out of the Relay, the Tali romance storyline, the character of Thane, and the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC are all fantastic points in my personal gaming highlight reel), the quality is spread thin over so many characters. Seeing as only X amount of them will probably play major roles in 3, maybe Bioware will get back to doing what it did best in the original and giving us a great story with a few excellently developed characters instead of an epic populated with a lot of stereotypes. Then again, minimizing the involvement of the cast that made up 2, and certainly had its high points, to a level of non-involvement to bring in yet another new cast both would suck and is probably what Bioware will have to do to get the sequel going, so let's just wait and see xp

Good points, though ya may wanna space epic text walls of death out in the future, makes 'em easier to read. : D

 

[numbersix1979]

Good points, though ya may wanna space epic text walls of death out in the future, makes 'em easier to read. : D

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind. When I'm forum posting I usually just smash out a rant like that and treat the 'post' button like an extra special period key xp