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The Mass Effect 2 Après Jeu Game Discussion Thread (with spoilers!!!)
KvP:
--- Quote from: Cartilage Head on 06 Nov 2010, 12:27 ---I just have to say, this series is the only reason I regret choosing a PS3.
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If you'd just be superhumanly patient, you'd get to play it too! It's coming out for the PS3... sometime in 2011, I think?
--- Quote from: Johnny C on 06 Nov 2010, 10:09 ---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.
...
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.
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I think that's a really valid point, but at the same time I don't think Bioware really came through on the consequences bit, in that they've still painted Shepard into a heroic corner by simple virtue of the narrative (which is something most developers do, but still) - They pulled off renegade options much better in ME2 than they did with ME1, but at the end of the day being a renegade still doesn't make any goddamn sense, and the game reinforces this notion by having you outright fail unless you ingratiate yourself to the crew, whereas the first game every backstory built up Shepard as a person who was perfectly capable of getting shit done without anyone else's help, as a paragon or renegade.
That in itself is not much of a problem, since there can be odds that even Shepard can't overcome and it won't break the setting, but more than that there is an obviously optimal choice to make instead of several choices that would make a game decision difficult - the writers are too enamoured of their characters and will essentially punish the player for ignoring at least the few of them from which you purchase Normandy upgrades. This is reflected in choices from the first game as well - the Rachni Queen decision, for example, clearly shows how a paragon character essentially gains while a renegade character essentially loses. That could be rectified in the third game, but I'm not holding my breath. If anything I'll expect the overall narrative of the trilogy to show how togetherness and tolerance and goodwill are the only real way to succeed. Certainly not a bad sentiment, but a boring one for an RPG. One wonders why they put in an alternative mode of playing when they so obviously are uncomfortable with developing for it. Was it just to allow Shepard to look like a Terminator?
Tom:
The post-fetal death robot made of human atoms was so fucking cool.
David_Dovey:
--- Quote from: KvP on 06 Nov 2010, 13:14 ---Was it just to allow Shepard to look like a Terminator?
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I get the feeling that you are questioning the validity of this decision but obviously that can't be right. Obviously.
Blue Kitty:
--- Quote from: Alex C on 06 Nov 2010, 12:55 ---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.
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For me the only reason to play with the different characters in ME1 was to get the achievements. In ME2 I wanted to keep changing characters just to see how they reacted/their dialogue on different things.
Also Dark Horse is continuing their Mass Effect series with a back story about the Illusive Man.
look out! Ninjas!:
I understand that Bioware was trying to get to the motivations and all that of the characters rather than a big Space Opera save the princess plot, I guess I just disagree with them. The problem that seems to crop up with all RPGs is that the abundance of sidequests makes everything in the main story seem less urgent because you can take your time to rescue a puppy; developers can get around it by dedicating the first act to exploration and having the plot come up slowly, e.g. Torment had very little plot exposition occur the first time you saw Sigil, but I get the feeling Bioware has been trying to avoid doing that for a while now.
Also, you can still win the game by recruiting a bare minimum of characters and not doing loyalty missions, which goes against that a bit; you'll all die but the day is still saved right.
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