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The Mass Effect 2 Après Jeu Game Discussion Thread (with spoilers!!!)

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Dimmukane:
Just chiming in to say some of the vistas in that game were fucking gorgeous.  They need to keep doing that.  I may have just spent the last 10 minutes collecting a bunch of dog tags, but when I get to the last one near the edge of an icy chasm as solar flares are railing against the atmosphere of the moon I'm on, I don't give two shits about whatever it is I just did. 

I think I'm gonna go look at pictures now.

Johnny C:
well, the meat of the game really isn't the collectors thing, it is the work of gathering your team and doing their loyalty missions. in that sense i'm actually quite enamoured with what bioware did. the space opera stuff didn't pan out as well in this game (except i actually quite enjoyed a bunch of the environments, with the grandiose sequence in the heart of the collector ship and the bit where you're running around on a derelict reaper, the port side of which is exposed to space, being standouts) but where they did succeed is that they made the universe concrete, tangible, and interesting in a way it previously wasn't. the characters you collect are meant not as stereotypes of their species but individuals who codify and exemplify certain traits, and "earning their loyalty" inevitably means learning something about their culture which was hitherto fascinating/unrevealed/unexplored.

i think that's what makes the idea of shephard's relationships with them as kind of "friendship through therapy" work – the situations they're anxious to achieve closure with largely reflect their culture. with grunt, it's krogan infighting and a fear of a culture dying. with mordrin, it's serious doubts about how his species uses its gifts for science. with miranda, it's grave concerns about fate, genetics and personal ownership of the two. &c. bioware reveal these anxieties by having you blast/talk/blast-talk your way through them, and while there might be disagreements over how effective that can possibly be (full disclosure: i dig blasting dudes and chatting with dudes as primary gameplay modes so i found it basically effective) the point is more that it's something they try to do, and that as both an exercise in storytelling and a narrative hook it's at the very least super interesting.

i'm a bit bummed about how you aren't primarily a galactic superhero anymore (and i'm incidentally still bummed about how straight-up evil some of the renegade options are!) but if that's the tradeoff i have to make in order to make shephard feel like one character in a smartly-populated universe, it's one i'm willing to make.

Johnny C:
the other thing i'll say, which will probably make me seem condescending but i'm going to say it anyways, is that bioware makes it clear on the back cover that the vast, vast majority of the game isn't the collectors missions, and that staffing your ship is going to take up a significant chunk of your time. so i mean i don't think the "three main missions" point is an especially valid one to make; there's three that the game forces you on, but the main missions are patently the "side missions" of gathering your team. the collectors stuff is a macguffin; it's a way to get you out into the game world to start doing what they really want you to do and to make your choices within those "side missions" have, in some cases, consequences. and while it's a macguffin with a bit of payoff (creepy post-fetal death robot... MADE FROM HUMAN ATOMS!) it's a macguffin all the same.

Cartilage Head:
I just have to say, this series is the only reason I regret choosing a PS3.

Alex C:
My problem with ME1 is that it had a few good primary missions and then everything else kinda sucked. Maybe the events in ME1 were more important on some kind of galactic scale, but I was dealing with more throwaway NPCs and my sidekicks didn't really give a shit about any of the missions we went on, so it didn't really feel very important. You save the universe so damned often in video games that I don't really see "Space Super Hero" as a big hook at this point, particularly if it turns out Bioware can keep delivering neat set pieces even when touching upon "smaller" stories, which is something I think they accomplished in ME2.

It also helps that I found the ME2 party members far more interesting than in the first game. It's not a matter of which group of personalities I liked better so much as it comes down to the simple fact that the characters had so much more to work in this one when it came to making an impression. I liked some of ME1's party members, but aside from a few big events and ship conversations things were always pretty impersonal, whereas ME2 is manifestly about the characters to a much large degree. My favorite characters in Mass Effect 2 are probably Mordin, Garrus and Tali, yet despite 2 of those characters being in the first game as well I feel as if the gap between the two games is much wider than that. It's because in the first game Garrus and Tali are basically there to play good soldier. They stick by you, they all agree stopping Saren is the most important thing, and everything else takes a back seat. In ME2 they play their parts willingly but their own problems are simultaneously more personal and more important than in the first game.

 As Johnny said, the themes involved are deeply rooted in the cultural identity of the characters. Garrus keeps trying to help the galaxy like a good Turian but in both games now taking down a Turian who once had good intentions becomes a primary focus, and it's pretty clear the stress is getting to him. His wounded pride makes him a less malleable character than in the first game and helps him make a stronger impression. Likewise Tali is a full-on adult by Quarian standards and her responsibilities to the flotilla require more sacrifice than coming back with some cube.

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