Why Mass Effect 2 was, and is, the superior out of the Mass Effect trilogy. [No Spoilers]

[-Dragmire-]

There's a piece of lore I don't remember, how did Sovereign know the Conduit was involved/exists?

Just remembered, beacon's can't be used by machines so the sensitive data was there for anyone to take and the Reapers just needed an organic pawn to use it.

.... I suppose, at that point, the writers hadn't come up with the 'Reapers are made of organic sludge' thing yet.


Just thinking about Saren finding out the Conduit is just a back door to the Citadel and saying, "Fuuuuck, I've wasted a lot of time on this...." is pretty damn funny.

Seriously. It's a kinda awesome mental image.

And I figure Saren found out about the Conduit's existence from the records left behind by those last handful of Protheans that locked down the Citadel. One of them probably left one of those memory stones or a datapad or some other journal equivalent behind when they died and Saren somehow got his hands on it. From there, he learned that the Conduit existed and was fundamental to their efforts to stop the Reapers forever, but not what it truly was.

Well, he did have the beacon on Virmire(his first half of the vision) which he had before the events at Eden Prime though I don't know where he got it from.

 

[Seracen]

The main problem with ME2 is that it contributed almost nothing to the overall plot of the trilogy. Honestly, the great deus ex machina to destroy the Reapers should have been found at the Collector Base (preferably some universe destroying dark energy weapon).

However, barring this, I'd say ME2 was the best structured of the 3. The story was tight, the mechanics were a decent blend of RPG and action. My only gripe would be that the openness of exploring worlds in ME1 was never really replaced properly.

Even though I can't defend the Mako segments, one can't deny the sense of vastness it engendered. Of course, this was immediately countered by the cookie cutter "prefab" buildings.

As far as ME3 is concerned...we're ignoring the ending for obvious reasons. Beyond this, however, the manner in which "sidequests" were handled were somewhat disappointing.

I would have liked a more organic way to receive them (like NPC's coming to Shep in a cutscene and begging for help, or a cutscene where he gets the request via SPECTRE terminal).

As for the actual side missions, I'd have liked the option either: 1) a MP style randomly generated battle, or 2) a Wing Commander style sequence (like in Halo Reach) where we protect the ground forces while piloting a snub fighter.

And for those who preferred the probes, would could CHOOSE to do those as well, providing benefits during the skirmish (supply drops, or bombing raids to reduce enemy count/difficulty).

Option 1 would hardly have utilized extra resources. Furthermore, it would also tout the MP, encouraging SP-only players to give it a shot. It's difficult to imagine why nobody at BW thought of this, I am assuming time constraints.


EDIT: thinking back on it, I find it amazing that the storyline had never been ironed out to the point that we got the inconsistencies we did. I mean, I can understand skipping over the character points and side missions. However, the Reaper War main quest should have been fully formed from the beginning, if there were going to make a trilogy out of the darn thing.

Despite all this griping, here we are, talking about a game that is over a year old, so that's something.

 

[bug_of_war]

Racing to a specific goal against an opponent gives far more drama than waiting for npcs to do all the racing for info and just telling you where to go when the time comes.

ME2 had you collecting team mates for no logical in game reason except Mordin(where all the strongest writing is).

In ME1, you had the beacon connection that made you important, ME2 drops that for the most part.

Saren gave you a personal focus and goal. He had things that he wanted to do and he was willing to go to any length to do them, just like Shep, that's interesting. Collectors are empty husks with no redeeming features. No one cares when they fight them.

I HATE the fact they magically got a bug for Mordin to study after all the build up of, "They leave no trace".

Oh, and they leave no trace from a giant rocket that's seen creating craters when it takes off.

Most of ME2's writing were acts of lazy convenience and self defeating plot holes.

Until you saw the collector base(thankfully it wasn't a home planet or something else that would have made the team building pointless), you had no idea what to expect making the need of grunts over combat cruisers questionable to say the least.

Loyalty missions had no connection to the suicide mission and can't be seen as buildup. Loyal flagged characters are just given plot armor of +10 dodge face seeking missile.


There is a tonne of stuff ME2 did poorly even without bringing in overarching themes and plots into the picture.



Combat was more fluid and I enjoyed it more than ME1 but getting rid of ammo-less weapons and Biotic abilities no longer being stackable was not a step forward.


-------------

Me1 also had it's plot holes but they were no where near as numerous or blatant.

Before I go on I need to adress these 2 words: "plot holes"

Too often people are throwing things into the "plot hole" category just because they don't understand it, this isn't wrong, but it isn't right either. A plot hole is when something happens where in which at no point in the narrative structure that thing COULD have or WOULD have occurred. For example, if in a narrative a person NEVER says, writes down, or at any point gives any indication that their name is Joe, but then a complete stranger whom walks up to them on the street and then says, "Hey Joe!" then THAT is a plot hole. Why? Because at no point has the character had any interaction with the stranger NOR has the character done anything to allow their name to be heard by strangers. NOW, lets look at your points.

ME2 had you collecting team mates for no logical in game reason except Mordin(where all the strongest writing is).

FALSE. ME2 has us fighting a species that has an unknown superiority over us, therefor the reason as to WHY we are collecting a team is to prepare for the worst. Jacob and Miranda are Cerberus operatives keeping a close eye on Shepard, Grunt (or rather his "father") is needed due to him being an excellent soldier, Jack is needed for her powerful biotics, Garrus and Tali are needed to make Shepard feel more comfortable and (though it can fail depending on your choice at the end) more malleable for the Illusive Man, Thane is an expert assassin (nuff said really), Mordin is a scientist (you already seem fine with his reason for being there so...), Samara/Morinth are extremely powerful Asari whom can match/exceed Jack (hence why they were recruited after Jack, their option was not initially present until later in the story). As for Legion, he was never actually made a candidate by the Illusive Man, he just happened to be on the Reaper when Shepard was.

In ME1, you had the beacon connection that made you important, ME2 drops that for the most part.

ME2 dropped the whole beacon thing because it was no longer relevant to the story. It served it's purpose as it was nothing much more than a warning. Warning headed, now move on to phase two, don't recycle an old story unless you have good reason to.

Saren gave you a personal focus and goal. He had things that he wanted to do and he was willing to go to any length to do them, just like Shep, that's interesting. Collectors are empty husks with no redeeming features. No one cares when they fight them.

You seem to forget the many a Geth, Krogan and Rachnai that were fought in ME1, whom were all led by Saren. Kinda similar to how the Collectors are all being led by Harbinger. Also the Collectors killed Shepard under Harbinger's orders and began taking human colonies, how is that NOT personal?

I HATE the fact they magically got a bug for Mordin to study after all the build up of, "They leave no trace".

Illusive Man does state that he has many teams searching for evidence/useful items that can be used to help further research, it's not illogical to think that a man as powerful as the Illusive Man could get his hand on a Seeker.

Oh, and they leave no trace from a giant rocket that's seen creating craters when it takes off.

They leave no trace of WHAT they are, a crater made from a spaceship does not give much indication to what species was there, only that there WAS a space fairing species there.

Most of ME2's writing were acts of lazy convenience and self defeating plot holes.

Please explain.

Until you saw the collector base(thankfully it wasn't a home planet or something else that would have made the team building pointless), you had no idea what to expect making the need of grunts over combat cruisers questionable to say the least.

Again, it was a matter of, "All we know is this species is VASTLY superior to us, we need to prepare for EVERYTHING".

Loyalty missions had no connection to the suicide mission and can't be seen as buildup. Loyal flagged characters are just given plot armor of +10 dodge face seeking missile.

Someone whom is unfocused is MUCH more likely to fuck up then someone whom is at peace with themselves and dedicated to the mission. That's why people whom get divorced tend to take days off of work, or sports players whom have low morale play worse. Jacob learnt that his father might be alive, Miranda learnt that her sister was being targeted by her father (a man whom will do anything to gain everything), Mordin believed that a student of his was being forced against his will to create a cure to the genophage, Jack found the location of the facility that basically tortured her and psychologically scarred her, Grunt was going through puberty and didn't know why, Garrus found the guy whom was responsible for murdering his squad, Tali was about to be exiled by her people, Thane wanted to rekindle some form of a relationship with his son (whom was about to follow down the same path that his father did(which also was the reason as to why Thane's wife was murdered)), Samara wants to stop her daughter (a literal succubus) from killing more people, and Legion wants to unite his people. These are all very personal problems that cause people to be unfocused and hence more likely to die. Also, nearly all of the loyalty missions come back to be useful in the story in ME3 (Miranda's father, Krogan cure, Tali's status with the Quarians etc).

Combat was more fluid and I enjoyed it more than ME1 but getting rid of ammo-less weapons and Biotic abilities no longer being stackable was not a step forward.

It wasn't a step backwards. Gameplay wise and story wise it made sense to stop a biotic from pushing, pulling, warping, singularitying a single target in such a quick succession as: a)It requires players to be more strategic. b)Biotics (Humans especially) tire from using their biotics, doesn't matter how much you train, bodies have limits (see any Biotic during the suicide mission Seeker Swarm section). The ammoless weapons also made sense, they explained that using heat sinks meant that they could continue rapid and prolonged fire without having to wait for the gun to cool down. It also meant that the shots a player took had to be more precise, thus weapons like the Sniper Rifle could be more powerful without having ridiculous sway when aiming down the sights.

Seriously, you've really got no evidence of any plot holes what so ever, but this is just a video game, something that you are entitled to have an opinion on.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

...Of course, this was immediately countered by the cookie cutter "prefab" buildings...

I don't want to burst your bubble, but on the other hand I have to comment about this.

Spoiler

That was the most-plausible thing about Mass Effect, when and if mankind ever does figure out a way to colonize other worlds.

 

[thunderbug]

imma jump in here, IMO Mass Effect 2 war superior but only by the smallest amount. "but why oh mighty Thunderbug" i hear u ask well ill tell u.

I honestly think that the story on both was really good and i do mean really good and this for me is the hardest thing to split them on. The first game for me here is the better but not by much at all, i only say this as ME2 has a lot of the personnel recruitment woven into the story and while this isnt a bad thing the first game had more flowing story as well as being self contained story and would have been fine if another game was never made. But ill say again for the ragers who cant read IMO THEY ARE BOTH REALLY GOOD.

Gameplay is another area thats tricky, i liked ME2 combat etc etc and the fact that the guns performed in very different ways is again a nice touch. The thermal clips were a nice idea to "mainstream" the gun combat but it didnt add to or take away from the experience in any way. I did like however on ME1 if u spent the time to go round get the skills and the best weapons Spectre X or w.e they were called u felt like a fucking monster even on the final missions. "Sheppard a geth Armature" "np ill just wreck him with my MASSIVE SPRECTRE XXXXX GUN COS I GOTS SKILLZ" so its nice to see the progression from "SHIT A GETH ARMATURE BETTER GET THE MAKO" to "oh a geth armature i needed some target practice with the pistol". Overall i think ME2 takes it just for the streamlining it did however i wasnt averse to the inventory in ME1 i just think Me2 was a smoother experience as far as gameplay goes. BUT i prefer ME1 points into paragone or renegade, that way i could play sheppard who i want to be and still be able to busy some chops or make people kiss and makeup with smooth smooth words i.e the morinth situation or the on ship fights between legion/tali and miranda/jack. It was the only bad gameplay in Me2 having to make sure u have enough para or renegade points to solve the issues. Whereas it stands u had to play the game fully renegade or fully paragon to be able to sorts out the aforementioned issues.

Characters, this is the only area i find i can easily decide and its an easy decision in favor of ME2, when i heard they were getting rid of ashley and wrex from the squad for ME2 i was ready to kill people but the characters in ME2 are just leagues ahead i mean Thane, Mordin, LEGION , even Kasumi from the limited dialogue, I even liked Miranda more than Ashley as Miranda had more depth with her sister, her hard on the outside soft in the middle (Armadillo) like personality, where as for me ashley was sorta like "im tough but i like god deal with it" sure she had some softer moments i.e love mekkin. So in short my 2 faves from ME1 were in ME2 squad and the new additions were FUCKING AWESOME. Also to note is i think ME2 made better use of ancillary or extra chars, i also feel they were presented a bit better interwoven with the story. I also had a soft spot for the Diana Troi of ME2 Kelly Chambers, oh and EDI was awesome. Ill cut my self off here before i go through the entire cast but the new additions great.

Missions in ME2 tended to be more varied with more environments owing to ME1's reused prefab structures but this also gave the galaxy a sense of size when u were landing on all these random worlds. But i enjoyed ME1's story missions just as much. I also rate omega and the reworked citadel as improvements over the original. plus the SR2 is just soooooo much cooler than the first Normandy.

To sum up cos i want some tea, the games are so close and soooo amazing i rank them as my No1 and No2 best games ever respectively and i think its a DAMN FUCKING SHAME THAT ME3 FUCKED IT UP. But they are so close and Me2 only clinches it cos of the characters.

Also i think arguing about which one is better of the 2 is irrelevant as they are both master classes in space RPG games. And instead of arguing which one of these is better we should be lynching everyone who was involved in the ME3 endings. Which came very close to making me never play ME1 or 2 again due to how the trilogy ends. Lucky for me i inserted my own memories and story to end the series and ME3 never existed as far as im concerned and between DA2 ME3 and TOR BIOWARE CAN KISS MY ASS IF THEY THINK IM BUYING ANOTHER GAME OF THEIRS but thats for another thread somewhere.

Ciao

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

Story: ME1 wins hands down. ME2 didn't continue the story at all. It was just a side-story. And ME3 started great but went downhill the further you went and ended with pure crap.

Roleplay: ME1 again, it had the most conversations and choices within those.

Combat: ME3. Combat was very polished and the multiplayer options were kinda nice for a while.

Level up system: All three had their faults, though I think ME3 did it best. ME1 most skillpoints had no tangible effects, and the inventory system for 'leveling up' your guns was very cluttered. In ME2 the skill system was very narrow and shallow. Guns the same.

Replayability: This is...debatable. But I've personally played ME1 the most. Thinking of doing it again actually.

Environment: ME2 did this the best. Most ME1 worlds were barren, most ME3 worlds were narrow hallways. ME2 had narrow hallways too but made them feel less so.

So for me it's a toss-up between ME1 and ME3. The ending of ME3 gives it a minus point for me though, so I consider ME1 the best game out of the three. Even if, yes, it had it's faults.

basically word for word what i would say, so thank you for breaking it down all nice for me to quote

I "appreciate" (use that word loosely) each game for what it tries, but for being a trilogy, it did quite awful being consistent in design choices, and ME1 is in the lead for me because I enjoyed it the most as an rpg, which is what I originally played the games for.

 

[Professor Uzzy]

Quite simply: just how DID you expect to win the war with the Reapers? Three full fleets were required to take down one Reaper escorted by the Geth armada, and those three fleets still got their asses kicked in the process. Even if you united every fleet in the galaxy and went for just one gigantic space battle, it's established in the first game that there's no WAY you're going to win against the might of the Reaper fleet. Quite literally: a giant space-magic deus ex machina doomsday device is the only chance you'd have at defeating the Reapers. So again I ask just how DID you expect to win the war?

Well, personally, I didn't expect to win the war with the Reapers. Given how they had been described in Mass Effect 1, I imagined that they were a true existential threat to the entirety of galactic civilisation, an out of context problem that simply could not be solved by military might. I imagined that the main point of the games would be to prevent the Reapers entering the galaxy, even if all Shepard did was to give galactic civilisation another ten thousand years (as the Reapers could always take the long way into the galaxy)

The lack of a 'Reapers Win' ending in ME3 really annoyed me too, by the way.

Now, given that the Reapers did enter the galaxy, I expected that the only way to win the war would be a diplomatic resolution. Somehow, Shepard would have to resolve the core motivation of the Reapers, and that could only be done by finding out what that motivation was, then somehow getting the Reapers to listen to a solution. That would require the Reapers to have a coherent core motivation though, so we could never have that.

 

[Ruzinus]

Not at all, I don't expect you to have a better plot, I'm just saying that if you thought there was going to be anything BESIDES a giant magical dooms-day device then you were just deluded and apparently not paying attention to the story. Now, on the other hand...

Now you are simply arguing that I should have expected weak writing. While I might have had I understood the changes that occurred in the writing teams between the games (at the time I did not), expecting weak writing does not excuse weak writing. I guess its great for you that you expected a bad story and so were satisfied with what you got, but I do find it very curious that you chose to partake in the story with your foreknowledge that it was bad, and very curious that you see that foreknowledge as reason not to criticize said bad story.

To Ruzinus:
Now if I misunderstood your response that I originally quoted and you were upset mostly with the handling then I apologize for even bringing it up, but it seemed to me you were more upset with the mere existence of the Crucible than the handling of it.

Both were poor. McGuffins are weak, but if handled well can be merely nonoffensive and allow the other parts of the story to be more present to the viewer/player/reader, and thus allow the story to not suck. If handled badly, they can crash ANYTHING (and crashing mass effect was indeed a feat).



Y'know what else is funny? You're arguing theres no way other than sudden magical mcguffin I couldve expected anyone to fight the reapers, but c'mon, that's not true. In "The Arrival," we learned that it's absolutely possible to cause a mass relay to explode and take out a solar system. Wouldn't that have been a hell of an interesting way to fight the Reapers? Having to turn entire solar systems into suicide bombers. Being forced to make decisions about blowing up systems. Imagine say, managing to get like a third of the Reaper fleet to attack the Asari or Turian homeworld... and then having the option to detonate the relay and destroy the system to destroy the reapers. Going through ME3 making choices like that, with the very real chance of the ending of the game being "You lose to the Reapers," if you don't sacrifice enough.

Yeah, that would've been a good way to handle an Elder God style war in a series where one of the most touted mechanics is about choosing if the lead character is willing to make the hard choices to accomplish the mission.

 

[CloudAtlas]

The guy just detailed it and it didn't take him hours to do so, so I don't see what your point is there.

Yea, and I just reads like a lecture by Michael Sandel...

It would take a bit longer to do it properly though. There's a bit more to it than "I'm an Asshat LOLOL". But since that's apparently the level of discourse, I don't feel very inclined to give a detailed, differentiated response.

 

[-Dragmire-]

Spoiler

Racing to a specific goal against an opponent gives far more drama than waiting for npcs to do all the racing for info and just telling you where to go when the time comes.

ME2 had you collecting team mates for no logical in game reason except Mordin(where all the strongest writing is).

In ME1, you had the beacon connection that made you important, ME2 drops that for the most part.

Saren gave you a personal focus and goal. He had things that he wanted to do and he was willing to go to any length to do them, just like Shep, that's interesting. Collectors are empty husks with no redeeming features. No one cares when they fight them.

I HATE the fact they magically got a bug for Mordin to study after all the build up of, "They leave no trace".

Oh, and they leave no trace from a giant rocket that's seen creating craters when it takes off.

Most of ME2's writing were acts of lazy convenience and self defeating plot holes.

Until you saw the collector base(thankfully it wasn't a home planet or something else that would have made the team building pointless), you had no idea what to expect making the need of grunts over combat cruisers questionable to say the least.

Loyalty missions had no connection to the suicide mission and can't be seen as buildup. Loyal flagged characters are just given plot armor of +10 dodge face seeking missile.


There is a tonne of stuff ME2 did poorly even without bringing in overarching themes and plots into the picture.



Combat was more fluid and I enjoyed it more than ME1 but getting rid of ammo-less weapons and Biotic abilities no longer being stackable was not a step forward.


-------------

Me1 also had it's plot holes but they were no where near as numerous or blatant.

Before I go on I need to adress these 2 words: "plot holes"

Too often people are throwing things into the "plot hole" category just because they don't understand it, this isn't wrong, but it isn't right either. A plot hole is when something happens where in which at no point in the narrative structure that thing COULD have or WOULD have occurred. For example, if in a narrative a person NEVER says, writes down, or at any point gives any indication that their name is Joe, but then a complete stranger whom walks up to them on the street and then says, "Hey Joe!" then THAT is a plot hole. Why? Because at no point has the character had any interaction with the stranger NOR has the character done anything to allow their name to be heard by strangers. NOW, lets look at your points.

I concede that my use of the term plot hole is probably flawed but I still feel the ME2 narrative is weak.

ME2 had you collecting team mates for no logical in game reason except Mordin(where all the strongest writing is).

FALSE. ME2 has us fighting a species that has an unknown superiority over us, therefor the reason as to WHY we are collecting a team is to prepare for the worst. Jacob and Miranda are Cerberus operatives keeping a close eye on Shepard, Grunt (or rather his "father") is needed due to him being an excellent soldier, Jack is needed for her powerful biotics, Garrus and Tali are needed to make Shepard feel more comfortable and (though it can fail depending on your choice at the end) more malleable for the Illusive Man, Thane is an expert assassin (nuff said really), Mordin is a scientist (you already seem fine with his reason for being there so...), Samara/Morinth are extremely powerful Asari whom can match/exceed Jack (hence why they were recruited after Jack, their option was not initially present until later in the story). As for Legion, he was never actually made a candidate by the Illusive Man, he just happened to be on the Reaper when Shepard was.

We find out at the beginning of the game that our enemy is numerous and have paralyzing insects.

We could be potentially fighting an entire civilization, how is a well trained team supposed to help? The game puts us into a position where we are doing very important things but are not given all the known info to make sound decisions.

--
Jacob / Miranda are Cerberus personnel, them coming along is understandable.

Mordin is a top notch scientist who can figure out a counter measure. It works well.

Okeer had dealings with the Collectors so finding him for info was an understandable decision and it also marks a point where we are the proactive ones in data collection. Good in my books. The stupidity of waking grunt is 100% on the player so I don't consider it a knock against the game.

Jack Shouldn't have been a candidate, the mission(or any mission for that matter) is too sensitive to allow a biotic murderer who's history is hating Cerberus on board. I like Jack once I got to know her but she's on board for stupid reasons.

Archangel is a vigilante that specializes in hit and run tactics against corrupt mercs. No great reason to search him out as he doesn't fill a needed roll other than being another gunhand.

Tali is on the list as someone Shepard can trust, not much beyond that. She indicates she'd be willing to team up again once she's done her mission, I guess we went to Haestrom because we lost patience and didn't want to wait for her to contact us. A distress signal from her would have given a reason to seek her out.

Samara is a powerful biotic who is more stable than Jack until her code tells her to kill things... I'm not being fair, she's not bad but her reasons for recruitment are not great. If the biotic bubble was the solution to every fight against collectors because they always had Seeker Swarms with them then I could see the need for as many powerful biotics as possible.

Thane specializes in small scale combat and taking out priority targets(from a lore standpoint anyway), this doesn't mesh well with large scale combat. He does have amazing cutscene sneak powers going for him, though this is counteracted by the biggest reason to not bring him... He's dying, his health is declining and doctors are no longer able to predict how long he'll last. He's a liability to the team and we only have his word on it that he he'll last the mission. (It was pretty funny, I skipped his loyalty mission and he died in the ship getting hit in the head with a metal beam or something. Had all ship upgrades too... )

Legion was salvaged from the derelict reaper ship so finding him lined up with Shepard advancing the plot, so I like it. The decision to activate him is, like Grunt, completely on the player. Still don't know why they put him in the AI core room, proximity to that room shouldn't make it any easier for EDI to isolate him. It seems more like a silly decision than anything else.

Once we find out they have a giant ship, that stops the need for infantry. Especially when you don't know how many ships the enemy has. I would have been far more lenient with the story if we got a probe through the Omega 4 relay and had some idea of what to do before hand.

In ME1, you had the beacon connection that made you important, ME2 drops that for the most part.

ME2 dropped the whole beacon thing because it was no longer relevant to the story. It served it's purpose as it was nothing much more than a warning. Warning headed, now move on to phase two, don't recycle an old story unless you have good reason to.

At the end of ME1, Shep could completely understand the Prothean language. It seemed logical to me for Shepard to use this ability to decipher more Prothean tech to help against the Reapers. Since Shepard is our character, it's nice to have our character have agency in getting more info rather than a constant passive listener.

Saren gave you a personal focus and goal. He had things that he wanted to do and he was willing to go to any length to do them, just like Shep, that's interesting. Collectors are empty husks with no redeeming features. No one cares when they fight them.

You seem to forget the many a Geth, Krogan and Rachnai that were fought in ME1, whom were all led by Saren. Kinda similar to how the Collectors are all being led by Harbinger. Also the Collectors killed Shepard under Harbinger's orders and began taking human colonies, how is that NOT personal?

Saren gave us a perspective that, while flawed, we could empathize with. We both struggled to reach our goals, making the triumph far more personal.



Shepard's death has no bearing on his/her character until Mass Effect 3. It's hard to care about a character's death and rebirth when they themselves don't care about it.

I HATE the fact they magically got a bug for Mordin to study after all the build up of, "They leave no trace".

Illusive Man does state that he has many teams searching for evidence/useful items that can be used to help further research, it's not illogical to think that a man as powerful as the Illusive Man could get his hand on a Seeker.

For all we know, Seekers are built by the Collectors and they are apparently very careful never to leave a trace of themselves. Personal influence doesn't mean much to husks controlled by reapers.

While it's nice to know other people in the galaxy are helping, I feel out of touch when our team is given info at the last possible moment. I'm pretty sure we could get at least alliance support when showing them the derelict Reaper.

Having Shepard find things out would be a more proactive roll, as things stand we are very passive as we wait for more info from the Illusive Man rather than trying our own investigation.

Oh, and they leave no trace from a giant rocket that's seen creating craters when it takes off.

They leave no trace of WHAT they are, a crater made from a spaceship does not give much indication to what species was there, only that there WAS a space fairing species there.

Examining the crater would at least indicate the scale of ship they use and be another reason to invest in more large scale ships and munitions rather than more infantry.

Most of ME2's writing were acts of lazy convenience and self defeating plot holes.

Please explain.

Until you saw the collector base(thankfully it wasn't a home planet or something else that would have made the team building pointless), you had no idea what to expect making the need of grunts over combat cruisers questionable to say the least.

Again, it was a matter of, "All we know is this species is VASTLY superior to us, we need to prepare for EVERYTHING".

~10 specialized foot soldiers hardly accounts for much when fighting on such a large scale.

Loyalty missions had no connection to the suicide mission and can't be seen as buildup. Loyal flagged characters are just given plot armor of +10 dodge face seeking missile.

Someone whom is unfocused is MUCH more likely to fuck up then someone whom is at peace with themselves and dedicated to the mission. That's why people whom get divorced tend to take days off of work, or sports players whom have low morale play worse. Jacob learnt that his father might be alive, Miranda learnt that her sister was being targeted by her father (a man whom will do anything to gain everything), Mordin believed that a student of his was being forced against his will to create a cure to the genophage, Jack found the location of the facility that basically tortured her and psychologically scarred her, Grunt was going through puberty and didn't know why, Garrus found the guy whom was responsible for murdering his squad, Tali was about to be exiled by her people, Thane wanted to rekindle some form of a relationship with his son (whom was about to follow down the same path that his father did(which also was the reason as to why Thane's wife was murdered)), Samara wants to stop her daughter (a literal succubus) from killing more people, and Legion wants to unite his people. These are all very personal problems that cause people to be unfocused and hence more likely to die. Also, nearly all of the loyalty missions come back to be useful in the story in ME3 (Miranda's father, Krogan cure, Tali's status with the Quarians etc).

Ok yes, I can agree with you there, I just don't like how it was implemented in the game.

Combat was more fluid and I enjoyed it more than ME1 but getting rid of ammo-less weapons and Biotic abilities no longer being stackable was not a step forward.

It wasn't a step backwards. Gameplay wise and story wise it made sense to stop a biotic from pushing, pulling, warping, singularitying a single target in such a quick succession as: a)It requires players to be more strategic. b)Biotics (Humans especially) tire from using their biotics, doesn't matter how much you train, bodies have limits (see any Biotic during the suicide mission Seeker Swarm section). The ammoless weapons also made sense, they explained that using heat sinks meant that they could continue rapid and prolonged fire without having to wait for the gun to cool down. It also meant that the shots a player took had to be more precise, thus weapons like the Sniper Rifle could be more powerful without having ridiculous sway when aiming down the sights.

Seriously, you've really got no evidence of any plot holes what so ever, but this is just a video game, something that you are entitled to have an opinion on.

I understand the lore behind the heat sinks but I don't like it from a gameplay perspective and from the uniqueness lost by making the game an ammo dependent system. Also stacking biotic abilities was fun, while the game might explain why that can't be done anymore, it hurt my enjoyment of it. Vanguard Charge was an excellent addition though.

 

[Mikeyfell]

Just because there are only two or three alternative courses of action presented, just Shepard isn't explicitly talking about the moral ambiguity of the problem, just because she isn't explaining her reasoning for why she made this or that choice, all that doesn't mean that the moral ambiguity of the problem magically evaporates. In a way, the reasoning behind each decision are your, and her, own.

What are you talking about?
The problem in Mass Effect 3 is that the player choice has "Shepard's reasoning" behind it.

If Shepard's motivation was left vague that would be better, but Shep always spouts off some retarded ass explanation of why her choice is right.
So they take a morally ambiguous situation (Like undoing a millennium old war crime against a species that values fighting above all else) then on top of that throw in the added complexity of external pressures (Personal relationships, political pressure, blackmail) and reducing it to two very specific possible outcomes (The Krogans are good and I trust them, or NOPE! *Evil laugh*)

There isn't player agency because Shepard can't leave anything up to interpretation, when you give the player less choice you have to at the very least let them justify the choice they made for themselves.

What you seem to want here is simply impossible for any game to deliver. All of the major choices in Mass Effect touch upon deep philosophical or moral questions. Now I have studied moral philosophy a bit, and any justification for this or that choice that wants to intellectually satisfy me would have to be pretty differentiated, and pretty long. And of course several lines of reasoning would have to be included for every alternative in every choice problem. Now, even if that was possible, would it be desirable? Would I want to listen to Shepard to muse about moral philosophy and such for hours? Hell no! Right now, I want to kick some Reaper's ass; about the complexity of the issue, I can think later.

So then leave it vague, or just do 4 instead of 2.
Paragon yes
Paragon no
Renegade yes
Renegade no
*You know, like what they did in Mass Effect 2... FOR THE SAME CHOICE!

It's not practical to take into account every possible outcome and justification.
Especially if you try to squeeze them into the P/R system
but think about this. The ONLY way to cure the genophage is make Shepard naive as hell and ignorant to what Wrex told you in the first game. (How did Wrex become leader of Urdnot clan? He killed the former leader. What's stopping some other Krogan from killing Wrex? Nothing.) with the genophage cured the Krogans are one slip of the knife away from war with (And probably the extinction of) the Salarians and Turinas

and the only way to stop Mordin from curing the genophage is by renegade shooting him.
(Or you can renegade talk him down if Wrex and Eve are dead. but that's just another bullshit Paragon Renegade flip)

It isn't possible to fit a complex situation into a binary moral compass (Which is what I mean about ME 3 being fundamentally flawed on every conceivable level) And the Tuchanka part is the best mission of the game, so it's literally all down hill from there.

 

[Seracen]

...Of course, this was immediately countered by the cookie cutter "prefab" buildings...

I don't want to burst your bubble, but on the other hand I have to comment about this.

Spoiler

That was the most-plausible thing about Mass Effect, when and if mankind ever does figure out a way to colonize other worlds.

Oh I agree with you. Also, I acknowledge that this particular method of saving on budget was extremely well explained.

However, it STILL took me out of the game a bit. Furthermore, though I know that one Corp got the primary contract on prefabs, I would still think that there'd be a few alt's around. After all, the prefab contracts might change from species to species.

I was thinking the exact thing you posted, but we are dealing with personal taste here. Personally speaking, the sense of wide wonder and exploration was hampered by the cookie cutter prefabs, however well explained they were.

Also, lol at the picture

 

[bug_of_war]

we are doing very important things but are not given all the known info to make sound decisions.

Jack Shouldn't have been a candidate, the mission(or any mission for that matter) is too sensitive to allow a biotic murderer who's history is hating Cerberus on board. I like Jack once I got to know her but she's on board for stupid reasons.

Archangel is a vigilante that specializes in hit and run tactics against corrupt mercs. No great reason to search him out as he doesn't fill a needed roll other than being another gunhand.

Samara is a powerful biotic who is more stable than Jack until her code tells her to kill things... I'm not being fair, she's not bad but her reasons for recruitment are not great. If the biotic bubble was the solution to every fight against collectors because they always had Seeker Swarms with them then I could see the need for as many powerful biotics as possible.

Thane specializes in small scale combat and taking out priority targets(from a lore standpoint anyway), this doesn't mesh well with large scale combat. He does have amazing cutscene sneak powers going for him, though this is counteracted by the biggest reason to not bring him... He's dying, his health is declining and doctors are no longer able to predict how long he'll last. He's a liability to the team and we only have his word on it that he he'll last the mission. (It was pretty funny, I skipped his loyalty mission and he died in the ship getting hit in the head with a metal beam or something. Had all ship upgrades too... )


Once we find out they have a giant ship, that stops the need for infantry. Especially when you don't know how many ships the enemy has. I would have been far more lenient with the story if we got a probe through the Omega 4 relay and had some idea of what to do before hand.

The Illusive Man holds out on information so that he is always in control, hence why decisions in hindsight seem to be more sporadic rather than carefully planned. Remember, the Illusive Man doesn't want to destroy the Reapers, he wants to control them, Shepard on the other hand is damn well determined to get rid of the threat permanently, hence why he is kept mostly in the dark.

While Jack is quite unstable, it comes down to the simple fact that at the time you recruit her there was no better option. It was either get a powerful yet unstable biotic and hope that Shepard can somehow guide her or go into the unknown with relatively weak biotics such as Jacob and Miranda. Archangel is Garrus and the Illusive Man knows that and uses this to, as with Tali, someone from Shepard's past of whom he can trust. Samara is recruited to be more like back up for Jack. She's a better biotic, and more stable, and the reason they didn't recruit an army of biotics is due to the base line fact that they literally have no idea on what they're getting into. They don't know what's on the other side of the Omega Relay, they don't know what strength they'll need most and they don't have the luxury of time. Thane is recruited for similar reasons, they have little idea of what they're up for and have little time to figure out, thus it's build a very powerful, multi-talented team that is prepared for almost anything.

Yes, we find out that there's a massive space ship, but until then we're fighting many foot soldiers, hence why you recruit most of your infantry members in the first third of the game. You keep them afterwards because you still require stepping on the ground and exploring potentially dangerous terrain, hence why you still have infantry members on you side.

At the end of ME1, Shep could completely understand the Prothean language. It seemed logical to me for Shepard to use this ability to decipher more Prothean tech to help against the Reapers. Since Shepard is our character, it's nice to have our character have agency in getting more info rather than a constant passive listener.

Yes, that does make sense, however Shepard is a Spectre, and does what the council tell him to do. They told him to look for signs of Reaper activity, he did, he died, 2 and a bit years later he's alive again and working for a group whom tells him that humans are being taken. It's not so much as he just up and forgets about the beacon as it is he's become preoccupied with other crap.

Saren gave us a perspective that, while flawed, we could empathize with. We both struggled to reach our goals, making the triumph far more personal.
Shepard's death has no bearing on his/her character until Mass Effect 3. It's hard to care about a character's death and rebirth when they themselves don't care about it.

I agree, Saren was a very well written tragic villain, but the triumph still doesn't seem as personal as being killed by a species that then goes on to take large proportions of your own species for reasons yet unknown (at least that's how I see it). Is Harbinger 1 dimensional? Yeah, he's also a robot that was programmed to do one thing, so I'm cool with that.

For all we know, Seekers are built by the Collectors and they are apparently very careful never to leave a trace of themselves. Personal influence doesn't mean much to husks controlled by reapers.

While it's nice to know other people in the galaxy are helping, I feel out of touch when our team is given info at the last possible moment. I'm pretty sure we could get at least alliance support when showing them the derelict Reaper.

Having Shepard find things out would be a more proactive roll, as things stand we are very passive as we wait for more info from the Illusive Man rather than trying our own investigation.

Everyone is fallible, even husks controlled by giant machines. there's always a chance that a Seeker got trapped in doors, or left behind, or just plain left behind. It's stupid on the Collectors end, and it can be seen as lazy writing, or even a Deus ex Machina to a degree, but it's still a possibility that could occur and just so happened to.

As for Shepard always being the last to know things this is because knowledge is power. Illusive Man is withholding information so as that he is always in control.

Examining the crater would at least indicate the scale of ship they use and be another reason to invest in more large scale ships and munitions rather than more infantry.

Yes, but there seems to be only one crater left behind as there is only one ship. The Alliance can't do much since the colonies are out of Council space, and Cerberus, while not lacking in resource, don't have the time to engineer multiple ships, hell as far as we've been led to know it took the 2 years to rebuild the Normandy. As for infantry, they aren't investing much resources in them, seeing as how no one on your team seems to be getting paid.

Until you saw the collector base(thankfully it wasn't a home planet or something else that would have made the team building pointless), you had no idea what to expect making the need of grunts over combat cruisers questionable to say the least.

~10 specialized foot soldiers hardly accounts for much when fighting on such a large scale.

We do establish though that the Collector home-world is past the Omega relay, a relay that destroys all ships that pass through it. The only reason the Normandy past through the ship unharmed is because they had the Collector signal thingamajig that they got during the mission you acquire Legion. That's one signal that works for 1 ship, and fighting in a ship stops you from rescuing survivors. How the hell was Shepard suppose to save Chakwas if he was in the Normandy and just fired away at the base?

Ok yes, I can agree with you there, I just don't like how it was implemented in the game.

Fair enough.

I understand the lore behind the heat sinks but I don't like it from a gameplay perspective and from the uniqueness lost by making the game an ammo dependent system. Also stacking biotic abilities was fun, while the game might explain why that can't be done anymore, it hurt my enjoyment of it. Vanguard Charge was an excellent addition though.

Again, fair call on your half.

 

[Joccaren]

You make some good points, and I was going to engage you in proper discussion for a moment, but of all the potential words in the english language you could have used to describe the story of the ME trilogy the one you ended on was lazy. I can't speak with someone whose definition of lazy can include the boldest experiment our medium has ever known. Good day.

Actually I called the method ME3 used whereby it would decide to stop being what Mass Effect has always been, a cinematic experience, and become a "Just figure it out for yourself" experience. A lot of this is during the ending. Pre-extended cut, you tell me what happened in the ending. Its headcanon. Rather than telling you the story, it tells you to make it up.
I'm sorry, but that comes across as lazy. If you've been telling the story the whole time, you don't get to just sit down near the end and tell your audience to imagine their own ending, but it has to end like this. Its like getting to the suicide mission, blowing up the human Reaper, and just seeing the Normandy jump away from the Collector Base. It skips too much, and is lazy.
Majority of the Mass Effect series is good in that regard, and tells you the story. It shows you the fights. It shows you the results of your choices, your squadmates hacking doors, getting shot, and dying or surviving, holding the line against Collector forces. Pre EC, 3 showed you colours flowing over London, and that was it. Post EC... Largely the same.
The rest of 3 isn't so much lazy as terrible fan fiction. It starts off alright, but very rapidly descends to crap. There are a couple of good points - The main Tuchanka Mission being the big one - but outside of that... It was a cross between Sunday Morning Anime, Sunday Morning Cartoons, Fan Fiction, a HP Lovecraft story, Battlestar Galactica and AI, and it really didn't blend well together.
I'd also struggle to call it an experiment, let alone the boldest gaming has ever undergone. It was a pre-sculpted experience just like any other linear game. It merely added in the ability to pick between 3 lines for your character to say, and even that largely disappeared in 3. If you're talking about the choices and such then Witcher 2 easily did that better, and I'm waiting to see how Witcher 3 handles things and hoping it does it right. Mass Effect could have been a bold experiment, but it was held back by Bioware's "Nobody replays so everybody should experience everything the same way in one play through" design philosophy, which really does seem counter intuitive when making a choice based game.

I just wanna touch on the "deus ex machina" notion as it seems to be a problem a lot of people have with the Crucible.

Quite simply: just how DID you expect to win the war with the Reapers? Three full fleets were required to take down one Reaper escorted by the Geth armada, and those three fleets still got their asses kicked in the process. Even if you united every fleet in the galaxy and went for just one gigantic space battle, it's established in the first game that there's no WAY you're going to win against the might of the Reaper fleet. Quite literally: a giant space-magic deus ex machina doomsday device is the only chance you'd have at defeating the Reapers. So again I ask just how DID you expect to win the war?

I expected the galaxy to have been preparing during ME2, rebuilding the fleets and outfitting everyone with Thanix cannons - I.E: The guns the Reapers use - as well as having damaged them in arrival, and caused a large energy drain on them by forcing them to travel conventionally not only through dark space, but through a fair portion of the galaxy too to get to a point where they could attack.
In ME1 it was established that the Reapers always won because they surprise attacked the Citadel and locked all transport in the galaxy down, then spent the next few millennia taking down worlds and fleets almost one by one to ensure minimal losses. In a straight up fight against a prepared enemy the Reapers were strong, but nowhere near unbeatable. Mathematically victory could not be proven either way in previous arguments. Too little information is known. However, the Reapers are only invincible in 3 because the writers wanted an excuse for the Crucible. Throughout 1 and 2 they had been building them up as something the united galaxy could take on. In 3 this changed.

 

[Sir Shockwave]

The only reason people here are calling ME2 pointless in because ME3 failed to build upon the foundations of its predecessor. A lot of the arcs brought up in ME2 were aborted in ME3. I feel that if ME3 continued the story from ME2 such as the dark energy plot point. In addition, I felt disappointed in ME3 for the lack of characters introduced in ME2 as squad mates.

This. ME3 really did drop the ball hard. Gameplay wise it works fine, minus the removal of a lot of RPG Elements (Case and point, for most of it you got two dialog options - meaning unlike every situation in ME1 and most situations in ME2, you were shoehorned into playing either Patrick Stewart Shepard or Clint Eastwood Shepard with no middle ground), however most of the writers walking out I do think really hurt the final product.

ME3 COULD have been the best one, but because of the scrapping and complete alteration of virtually the entire product, well we got the problems that it had, including rendering much of ME2 pointless. Which is really bad writing in terms of the entire trilogy.

And ME1? Boring and laborious to play though. Plus there was a certain game breaking bug that happened on Noveria even with patches...

 

[RJ 17]

Not at all, I don't expect you to have a better plot, I'm just saying that if you thought there was going to be anything BESIDES a giant magical dooms-day device then you were just deluded and apparently not paying attention to the story. Now, on the other hand...

Now you are simply arguing that I should have expected weak writing. While I might have had I understood the changes that occurred in the writing teams between the games (at the time I did not), expecting weak writing does not excuse weak writing. I guess its great for you that you expected a bad story and so were satisfied with what you got, but I do find it very curious that you chose to partake in the story with your foreknowledge that it was bad, and very curious that you see that foreknowledge as reason not to criticize said bad story.

That being the case, I find it very curious that you stuck with the story, or that you lacked said foreknowledge to realize by the end of the first game that it was going to require deus ex machina MacGuffin in order to defeat the Reapers. As I already mentioned: the writing was on the wall with the battle against Sovereign: conventional warfare was not going to defeat the Reapers. Nothing but a giant doomsday device capable of affecting the entire galaxy would defeat them because you're certainly not going to beat them by squaring off in a giant space battle.

So yeah, I guess I am indeed arguing that you should have expected "weak" writing, as the foreshadowing was present from the very beginning. And if you couldn't see it then you've no one to blame but yourself for your own disappointment.

I just wanna touch on the "deus ex machina" notion as it seems to be a problem a lot of people have with the Crucible.

Quite simply: just how DID you expect to win the war with the Reapers? Three full fleets were required to take down one Reaper escorted by the Geth armada, and those three fleets still got their asses kicked in the process. Even if you united every fleet in the galaxy and went for just one gigantic space battle, it's established in the first game that there's no WAY you're going to win against the might of the Reaper fleet. Quite literally: a giant space-magic deus ex machina doomsday device is the only chance you'd have at defeating the Reapers. So again I ask just how DID you expect to win the war?

I expected the galaxy to have been preparing during ME2, rebuilding the fleets and outfitting everyone with Thanix cannons - I.E: The guns the Reapers use - as well as having damaged them in arrival, and caused a large energy drain on them by forcing them to travel conventionally not only through dark space, but through a fair portion of the galaxy too to get to a point where they could attack.
In ME1 it was established that the Reapers always won because they surprise attacked the Citadel and locked all transport in the galaxy down, then spent the next few millennia taking down worlds and fleets almost one by one to ensure minimal losses. In a straight up fight against a prepared enemy the Reapers were strong, but nowhere near unbeatable. Mathematically victory could not be proven either way in previous arguments. Too little information is known. However, the Reapers are only invincible in 3 because the writers wanted an excuse for the Crucible. Throughout 1 and 2 they had been building them up as something the united galaxy could take on. In 3 this changed.

Actually it's established in ME1 that a single Reaper with a fleet of Geth was capable of tearing apart the Citadel's fleet and absolutely decimated 3 full armadas (the asari, turians - who have the strongest armada in the galaxy - and the Alliance, which had 3 of it's fleets get their asses kicked)...and the only reason they killed Sovereign was because it had uploaded it's consciousness fully into Saren in an attempt to kill Shepard. When Saren died, it stunned Sovereign for a moment, providing the opening needed for the death blow. As for ME2...when is it established that a united galaxy could handle the Reapers? I don't recall there being any talk whatsoever about the chances a united galactic fleet would have against the Reapers, seeing as how ME2 is specifically about "Gotta stop the Collectors because they're harvesting humans."

Change in writing or not, one Reaper was nigh invincible in ME1. An armada of thousands of them is unstoppable. The Reapers are fully capable of winning without their Citadel Surprise Attack, that just happens to be the most efficient and effective way for them to win. Vigil even points this out at the end of ME1, explaining that the Reapers likely have numerous contingencies to cover possibilities of their plans going wrong. The only reason Sovereign went for plan 1.2 was because it believed it could still take control of the Citadel (thus allowing for the most effective and efficient plan of attack to be carried out)...and would have, were it not for Shepard.

Just like Ruzinus, if you thought the races of the galaxy could band together and square off against the Reapers in a giant space battle and come out on top, you simply failed to see the foreshadowing as presented in the first game.

So getting back to my original point: you can complain about how the Crucible was handled, how it just conveniently pops up at the beginning of ME3 as the solution to the Reaper threat while it hadn't been mentioned before. You can argue that it's lame to assume that the Alliance hadn't discovered the plans for it before the very last minute, but to complain about it's existence as a deus ex machina device to win the war is just being blind, as it was quite clear that something along the lines of a Crucible device was going to be necessary to beat the Reapers from the very beginning.

 

[Ruzinus]

So yeah, I guess I am indeed arguing that you should have expected "weak" writing, as the foreshadowing was present from the very beginning. And if you couldn't see it then you've no one to blame but yourself for your own disappointment.

Okay, I'm going to ignore the idea that the fans are to blame for the quality of the piece, and ignore the fact that you still insist that "theres no other way it could have gone" when so many have been posted in this topic at this point, including one in my previous post that you just quoted (and including the fact that there are many alternatives to conventional warfare other than atom bomb mcguffins), as both of these things are absolutely ridiculous.

You are agreeing that the writing is bad. What, then, is your argument? Rhetorical. Your argument is that people who didn't predict the McGuffin plotline are stupid.

That has nothing to do with the actual criticism.

Thus the criticism stands.

If you have any actual responses to it then I'll debate with you.

To the actual argument, being that I am stupid, sure. I have no desire to debate my intelligence on the internet or persuade you otherwise. I plead no contest.