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[Alex C]

Also, every time someone says that this game is the first fully realized story-shooter I mentally light li'l candle for Deus Ex (and to a lesser extent, System Shock).


That's not to denigrate anything Bioware has accomplished, mind, but it occurs to me all the same.

[Melodic]

Am I the only one that really, really wants a System Shock remake?

[JD]

oh god the new female outfit is so much better than the male. The male outfit is just a recolor. :[

[KvP]

Am I the only one that really, really wants a System Shock remake?

The rumor was that Dead Space was originally a SS sequel / reboot (EA holds the rights) but they decided to make a fresh IP of it instead.

I'm one of those guys who thinks that the only SS game worth seeing is a "hardcore" sort akin to the first two games. A Bioshock-esque conventional shooter seems less appealing, but it's the sort of game that would get made today.

[Storm Rider]

There was also a rumor that the Starbreeze developed 'Project RedLime' was going to be a System Shock reboot too, although that was later supplanted by speculation that it was a new Syndicate game, and then recently the project got canned anyway after EA went through restructuring so I guess it's all kind of moot.

[Melodic]

Don't get me wrong, I really liked System Shock (and really, really liked System Shock 2!). But I can't help but think that it is one of the few games that has ever been truly limited by the technology it premiered on.

[Alex C]

Agreed. That kinda ambition doesn't really match up well with 640x480 max resolution. Plus, there's some niggling control issues here and there that could be cleaned up with some hindsight and revisions. I can't fault them for the final product though. Amazing game. Glad I searched it out back in high school before I got too spoiled by modern standards. I remember reading about it at release but considering I was 12 at the time I wasn't really in a position to insist that my parents get me a PC capable of really playing it in its full glory.

[Johnny C]

those control issues are probably intentionally to make the game more punishing

i hate punishing games

[Johnny C]

Also, every time someone says that this game is the first fully realized story-shooter I mentally light li'l candle for Deus Ex (and to a lesser extent, System Shock).

has anyone said this

[Alex C]

Not in here. There's articles like this though, and while I assume that the writer is likely familiar with games such as Deus Ex and System Shock, many of their readers won't be, or at least many of them will only be passingly familiar with their existence via the success of Bioshock. You definitely run into forums and conversations where people are divided into camps that believe Mass Effect 2 to be a somewhat logical extension of steps developers were already experimenting with and those who view the whole thing as akin to a virgin birth. Granted, I'm biased, because a lot of the people in my WoW guild fall into the latter camp and my guild is primarily made up of idiots,*  so perhaps I'm overestimating the prevalence of that sort of thinking.

*I love them anyway, and they put up with my stupid bullshit, but we're still all idiots in there.

[Alex C]

I guess what I'm saying is that even Deus Ex is really fuckin' old for a video game these days, and so it has led to some alarming conversations for me lately.

[KvP]

i hate punishing games

EVERYONE SHUT THE HELL UP AND PLAY THIS GAME

[Johnny C]

in the interests of full disclosure i kept getting my ass kicked in dr. wily's fortress and stopped trying but up until that point it was a very fun and not actually all that trying experience, and the game isn't as sadistically difficult as system shock 2 is from like fifteen minutes in. basically the first second you encounter a robot firing rockets and silently hoping for your death you are fucked mister, fucked to death

Not in here. There's articles like this though, and while I assume that the writer is likely familiar with games such as Deus Ex and System Shock, many of their readers won't be, or at least many of them will only be passingly familiar with their existence via the success of Bioshock. You definitely run into forums and conversations where people are divided into camps that believe Mass Effect 2 to be a somewhat logical extension of steps developers were already experimenting with and those who view the whole thing as akin to a virgin birth.

well outside of the really broad definition of "shooty game with talky bits" they are really different games, and certainly ME2 doesn't have a lot of similar stuff in its idiom. even previous action-y bioware games are in a different category - outside of "shooty game with talky bits starring commander shepard and featuring the storyline wheel" there's honestly not even that much in common between the first and second games in the ME series.

deus ex did things in its idiom that were audacious, thrilling and new, and mass effect 2 is doing the same thing. it's not the first fully-realized shooty-talky but its particular kind of shooty-talky hasn't really seen a game quite like it.

[JD]

Help me something is wrong with my Kasumi

[Felrender]

Help me something is wrong with my Kasumi

Marty Feldman, get out of Mass Effect 2!

[Buttfranklin]

I drew a comic illustrating what it's like to fight Harbinger as an Engineer.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v114/Xegar/harbingerhateddrones.jpg?t=1272652781

Pretty much, no matter how much an enemy hates you, no matter how sworn that enemy is to defeating you, no matter how much damage you have dealt that enemy, and no matter how long you charge your Cain at them, the enemy will always always always hate the Combat Drone you summon more.  Always.

Makes the game a piece of cake on Insanity.

[LTK]

Been having a lot of fun with this game. Started playing on Veteran with an imported character, went to play Infiltrator. Veteran in ME2 is much, much easier than Veteran in ME1, but you do have to use powers or you're toast. I like how the Paragon/Renegade scores are only dependent on what choices you make instead of how many points you put into those skills. I've mostly been playing Paragon but my Renegade bar is always half as full as Paragon is, so I can still threaten to rip the balls off people I don't like. Renegade options have started to get greyed out on the latest missions after I got off the Collector ship, so I've got to go kick some ass on the other missions so I can play bad cop again. Also, I've only just found out where to get my DLC from. Yaay, Blood Dragon Armor.

[Tom]

Bioware releases so much DLC that I've just stopped paying for it.

[LTK]

Oh, I didn't actually buy the DLC. I got the armor from Dragon Age, and the rest of the stuff just came with the Cerberus Network. Beats me how the Network is supposed to help me other than by showing news reports.

Planet scanning, the most tedious part of the whole game, is surprisingly enough starting to grow on me. At least it's better than the Mako. It actually feels good if you hit a major deposit of element zero somewhere on a small island. Although it's a shame you can't do all the research there is by stockpiling minerals and then upgrading everything in one go. There are a lot of upgrades that you can only get in shops, and those are expensive. It's really hard to make a lot of money in this game, you really need to get out and do a lot of missions in order to get some decent funds. Not many games can strike a good balance between money sources and money sinks. It seems like you really have to make choices about what to buy and what to leave.

It's similar with the powers the different characters have. It's all very minimalistic, where you only have a handful of powers and points to upgrade them are rare. It's a step forward from ME1, where you really had too many powers and too many points to spend on them. But they still haven't struck the perfect balance. Leveling up powers doesn't really give you a feel for character progression.

I'm spending way too much time on this game.

[Blue Kitty]

I didn't find it was hard to make money.  Heck, I bought every piece of armor the shops gave me to see how they would look.

In my current play through I had the Cain before I even got Garrus, then again I decided to mix it up and get Grunt first.

[Alex C]

Well, actually, upgrades cost more money than missions alone provide by a pretty healthy margin. If you don't have the Long Service Medal AND the Rich Achievement then it can definitely be tedious to get everything on the first play through since I think the only real source of infinite income out there is gambling on varren. You can get the majority easily enough though, particularly if you're concentrating on upgrading only stuff you and a few favorite squaddies use.

[Blue Kitty]

The next Mass Effect 2 adventure

[JD]

This thread is amazing

[Scandanavian War Machine]

so that's what an aneurism feels like

thanks!

[Blue Kitty]

Here's a question based on this article, did you leave the helmet on or take it off?

[Alex C]

Sentry Visor all the way.

[LTK]

Sometimes I put on the Death Mask to get over that tiny little Renegade dialogue requirement, but that didn't work. Visor for +10% headshot damage? Easy choice for an Infiltrator.

I watched some youtube videos on ME2, you know, the standard fare 'Shepard being an asshole' compilations and in one of them I saw Shepard wearing a pair of creepy blue goggles. I haven't come across those in my first game, is it from a DLC pack?

Also, what parts and colors did you put on your armor? In the first game I used the Capacitor Chestplate a lot because I was careless about being shot a few times, which didn't really matter on Veteran. Amplifier Plates on shoulders, Heavy Damping Gauntlets on arms, and Life Support Webbing on legs. I colored the suit red with dark red stripes and white joints. For the second game I switched it up and went with white armor with a gray camo pattern.

[Blue Kitty]

In the beginning I really wanted to see Shepard emote, but I loved the Death Mask way too much and ended up using that.  In my second play through I used the Recon Hood cause my renegade Shepard was starting to get all kraggly in the face.

I mostly use dark colors with my Shepards.  My current run I have a red, white, and blue theme going on.

[kemon]

I watched some youtube videos on ME2, you know, the standard fare 'Shepard being an asshole' compilations and in one of them I saw Shepard wearing a pair of creepy blue goggles. I haven't come across those in my first game, is it from a DLC pack?

these maybe?

list of all dlc armors here.

[LTK]

That's the one, thanks. I hadn't found pictures of it because I only looked on the wiki page on Armor instead of N7 Armor. The Dr. Pepper items don't have much better stats than you can get from other armor pieces... Wait, these are still available? To everyone? For free? Well, forget I said anything, let's have it!

[Alex C]

Considering they ain't no thang to get I didn't really care much if the stats weren't great, just that I wasn't missing out on stats at all. Besides, I thought the Sentry Visor looked sorta cool in a cheesey sci-fi sorta way as I sauntered around in the Afterlife's lighting. Besides, you don't get the goofy muffled effect or look like an idiot when you order a drink.

[LTK]

Hm, looks like the codes did expire by now. Too bad.

Hey, you know what? Insanity is really hard! When I played on Veteran, enemies' health regenerating was hardly noticable. Now, I shoot a Vorcha in the head with my Widow rifle and take his health down to a sliver. And by the time I reloaded my gun, he's already back to full health! That's harsh. I don't regret my decision of choosing Neural Shock instead of Dominate as my bonus talent yet, though. Krogan are a bit of a problem now that they can crush me beneath one foot, and Neural Shock is just as good as Concussive Shot or Pull for quickly stunning an enemy that gets too close. Plus, using a biotic power as an Infiltrator feels a bit like cheating to me.

So is it just me, or is the whole 'bad guys are actually good guys' a bit too overplayed here? First it was the Rachni in ME1, who 'lacked decent upbringing'. Then Cerberus, with "They did not have permission to do evil experiments!" Then it's the Geth, with "An equation with a result of 1.33382 returns as 1.33381, which makes them want to kill all organics." So, was everything I killed not really evil after all?

[ackblom12]

Well, it's all slightly more complicated than that to be fair. The Rachni in the first game went insane, and the old brood basically had one massive misunderstanding with the rest of the races. Think Ender's Game misunderstanding with the Buggers. The Geth are simply much more interesting if there is an actual split in the base (and it makes a lot more sense considering the lack of reasoning and the religious undertones the geth had displayed thus far in pushing their goals) and Cerberus is... complicated.

I mean, the Geth haven't really proved themselves as good guys as this point, they just happen to share a common goal, and Cerberus is working only in what they see as the best interest of humanity. This on many occasions ends up as something not very good at all.

The Mass Effect universe has, for the most part, done a pretty good job of painting all of the major factions you actually deal with a pretty good grey moral brush, with the Reapers as the one demoniacally evil entity.

[Johnny C]

The Geth stuff was foreshadowed in the first game, with the terminal at the end of the Geth Incursion side mission.

[LTK]

Yeah, that was the simplified version of every bad guy we fought in ME1. You have to admit, there's a pattern. I remember that the Rachni that were bred on Noveria went psycho by being isolated from the queen, but I forgot what the whole deal with the Rachni wars was. I don't know anything about Ender's Game, though.

I think Cerberus' infamy is a result of them being a victim of their own success. They're a very idealistic organization with the best intentions for humanity and they refuse to acknowledge other authorities. This is prone to attract zealots with similar ideals but slightly more blurry moral boundaries. So they join an organization where they are told they're fighting the good fight and they make a difference, other than those bureaucrats who are blind to how things really are. Next thing that happens, your agents are feeding soldiers to Thresher Maws, still believing that this is the right thing to do, honest!

From what we know about the Geth, they seem to be quite indifferent about other races as long as they stay out of each other's business. Before Legion came along, I never really thought about the Geth as just another galactic race, trying to make it as they go along. That doesn't make them the good guys, only self-preserving. Like Cerberus, you might say. When on Tali's mission, I faced the choice of handing over the evidence and get her father erased from history, or withholding it from them when they might need it. But I never realised what implications it might have for the Geth. They won't like it if the Quarians just come waltzing in one day being all "Hi thar we'd like our planet and our robot workforce back now." Thinking back to how it all started, it really is conflicting for both sides. If you had a robot army as a workforce and a military force, and they became intelligent, would it be immoral to continue to use them for hard labor, that which they've been made to do and have been doing all their existence?

You're right about the grey morals between the races. I think they've executed it a lot better than Bioware did in Dragon Age, which was advertised to be morally ambiguous. The backstory seems much less forced and artificial in Mass Effect than it does in Dragon Age.

[Ozymandias]

The Rachni Wars were strongly implied to be, in both ME1 and ME2, the fault of the Reapers. Their "song was soured" by a "tone from space" that turned them bloody and violent against the races of the Citadel. The Reapers just didn't count on the Krogan in their utilization of the Rachni to reconquer the galaxy.

But yeah, the story of the Rachni is basically fully lifted from Ender's Game, like much of the Mass Effect universe is heavily taken from other sci-fi works (most notably Battlestar Galactica and Babylon 5).

[Blue Kitty]

After using it quite a bit, I love the special ability Charge

[LTK]

The story up to the start of ME3 will be told via a continued stream of DLC. Hmm. The words 'episodic content' spring to mind. I don't know how long the bridge story is going to be, but I'm getting the impression of something like HL2ME2: Episodes one to six, all of which require ME2 to play. That's gonna be a big cash-in. Unless it all comes with Cerberus Network, in which case I have nothing to complain about.

[Alex C]

Charge is pretty alright. My problem with a lot of the weaker powers in the game comes down to managing what is effectively a global cool down. Between that and the leveling process the system tends to favor using one well developed power all the time provided you have valid targets. Not too big of an issue at Veteran or above with Adepts, Engineers and Sentinels-- the system's pretty nice about rewarding you for using more than a single ability there. It just falls apart with Soldiers since Adrenaline Rush is really powerful and as a self-buff it's always available. Thus Concussive Shot isn't all that bad on paper, but in practice I never use it. I mean, hey, it's nice that Concussive Shot apparently mauls barriers, but so does an Adrenaline Rush fueled Revenant on full auto.

[Buttfranklin]

Yeah, most classes have pretty much one super-power and everything else is just flavor.

Except for the Engineer.  Since Combat Drone has only a three (!) second cooldown you have more than enough time and room for all of your other abilities.  All of them very useful - I was very surprised with how much I was using Cryo Blast effectively and frequently on Insanity.

[LTK]

I barely ever use Concussive Shot on the offensive anyway. As an Infiltrator, it's useful for forcing a break in enemy fire so I can line up a shot with my sniper rifle. And because I'm frequently sneaking behind enemy lines with the cloak, I can use it to floor an enemy and then melee or gun them down at close range.

[Alex C]

I thought I'd point out for posterity that my complaints are mostly immaterial because I love the shit out of this game.

[Johnny C]

The story up to the start of ME3 will be told via a continued stream of DLC. Hmm. The words 'episodic content' spring to mind. I don't know how long the bridge story is going to be, but I'm getting the impression of something like HL2ME2: Episodes one to six, all of which require ME2 to play. That's gonna be a big cash-in. Unless it all comes with Cerberus Network, in which case I have nothing to complain about.

fuck it, i'll live

[Johnny C]

if these episodes are as good as the rest of the game then you can basically sign me up right now

[KvP]

A Mass Effect movie is now in the works. Heavy Rain was also announced last week. We'll see if they hold up - aside from the long list of shitty game-to-film adaptations, there's an equally long list of game-to-film adaptations that were aborted before they took off (Deus Ex, Bioshock and Splinter Cell were all canceled in pre-production).

[David_Dovey]

What the fuck, Heavy Rain already IS a movie

[Storm Rider]

No, it's a high-res Dragon's Lair. Big difference.

As for the Mass Effect movie, I'm apprehensive but really they couldn't hope for anyone better to option the rights than Legendary. They do big budget productions and they do good adaptations, so I think they provide the best chance at this being an actually good movie. Obviously, it won't have the big-ticket creatove chops of someone like Christopher Nolan, but here's to hoping.

[KvP]

OMG ME No RPG

[Johnny C]

 

[Storm Rider]

Honestly, it depends on how the implement it. If they're really going to try to put deathmatch-style multiplayer in ME3, then that will probably be terrible. If they are just putting in co-op and letting human players control your squad members, that could be pretty rad, although I think players 2 and 3 miss out on the best elements of the ME experience. Then again, maybe the 'far-reaching' project for the ME universe EA was talking about was a multiplayer focused game that isn't part of the trilogy at all. The real challenge that I can see with making Mass Effect multiplayer is the powers. Biotics and tech powers will be a nightmare from a multiplayer balance perspective, and if the response is to take them out, then why bother making Mass Effect multiplayer in the first place?

I'm not fully willing to write it off just yet, but it seems like they're going to have their work cut out for them.