Mass Effect 2 (ME1 spoiler warning!)

[Mr_Cyberpunk]

http://au.xbox360.ign.com/articles/955/955984p1.html

I hope that KIA bit is a lie- Else I suspect Bioware got lazy and decided (Oh hey! lets just kill off the main character rather than continue the sotry in a non-linear way).

Sounds way too similar to what they did with KOTOR2 in killing off Revan. Why are we holding onto our save games again? They never explained that correctly.

[metzger44]

if the killed in action is true...
anyways, they wanted to keep our save games because everything we did in mass effect affects things in mass effect 2, however... i'm not so sure about it anymore. thanks for the teaser anyways... although it just killed my day

[Jonas]

Sounds way too similar to what they did with KOTOR2 in killing off Revan. Why are we holding onto our save games again? They never explained that correctly.

First of all, KOTOR2 was made by Obsidian, not BioWare.

Secondly, Revan was not killed, she left known space to seek out the true sith (which will inevitably appear in SWTOR).

Thirdly, BioWare have repeatedly ensured us that we can take our Mass Effect 1 characters into Mass Effect 2 and continue to play, so it's safe to say Shepard will not in fact die at the beginning of the game. BioWare have stated that ME2 will be "darker" in tone than its predecessor, so this is doubtlessly a ploy of some kind - perhaps Shepard will merely be believed dead or even proclaimed dead for some dubious political purpose.

Worst case scenario, they're going to pull some ill-advised insomnia stunt to justify punting us right back to level 1. But clearly that would be lame.

[Dead-eye]

Yeah I spent way too much time making my female shepherd modal look uber hot for them to do this to me...

[Jonas]

I was originally a blonde male paragon. Second time through, I went with a redhead female renegade. She is infinitely more awesome than my first guy, so I know who I'll be carrying over.

[Dead-eye]

I was originally a blonde male paragon. Second time through, I went with a redhead female renegade. She is infinitely more awesome than my first guy, so I know who I'll be carrying over.

Funny I played as a redhead male solder then played as a female blond adept. I like my adept better, but your second character is always better because you can have an extra skill. (I.E. assault rifles.)

[DDL]

Playing this now, actually. Tis fun. My character has a face that's somewhere between 'hollow skull' and 'angry duck', because the face generator for the PC is really badly coded. Looks funny as hell when you choose to threaten people, though ("angry duck wants a discount").

Anyone else found it really distracting how after a while, essentially out of the blue, almost everyone on your team starts hitting on you?

"Well, uh..shepard, I kinda felt like we were getting to.."

"COMMANDING OFFICER. THAT MEANS NO."

I mean, christ, even kirk didn't sleep with his own crew, right?

[Jonas]

I thought it was done alright. Was fun having to turn down the blue alien on account of already being all over the human lady.

Turning down women is not something I do a lot of in real life

[DDL]

What, 'OMG I R SO RELIGIOUS' Ashley Williams? She's terrible.

I did wonder if it was possible to turn her gay, but my efforts, at least, were rebuffed. Alenko is creepy psychic damaged goods plus looks like a burns victim, and blue woman has THE WIDEST FACE ever. Plus COMMANDING OFFICER, PEOPLE. BACK IN FUCKING LINE. HAVE SOME DAMN PROFESSIONALISM.

....and the combat is clunky and most interiors are the most shameless C&P jobs I've ever seen, but the dialogue and story is gold. Being sent to 'negotiate' with an alliance-funded pirate, killing said pirate, and then being told that "the alliance would never condone assassination. Oh no, not us. So we're really mad at you, honest. How convenient for all concerned that you're above the law now." was a genius moment. You can be as powerful as you want but you're still being exploited.

Also, shooting helpless floating people with a shotgun is hilarious.

[Jonas]

What, 'OMG I R SO RELIGIOUS' Ashley Williams? She's terrible.

But that's what makes her romance arc so interesting, because she's not just The Perfect Girl, she has some problematic traits (I would say her racism is worse than her religiousness, but to each his own!). The thing that really brought Ashley's story arc home for me was that I got her to open up and then actually got her to change, to drop her racist opinions and admit that they were really just the result of some family shit she'd experienced when she was younger.

That's what makes a good romance in my opinion, when there are some differences to be overcome, be they internal or external.

And no, you can't make her gay

As for the combat, I thought it was great, but then I'm comparing it to KOTOR, not Gears of War. And I did play it on X-Box 360, where the interface may work better.

[DDL]

Yeah, a lot of the UI screams "this was designed for a joypad, and we couldn't be fucked to change it", and it's got that weird 'over Shepard's right shoulder' view which makes it harder to tackle (or even see) targets approaching from your left hand side, meaning if you're the sort of person that likes to shoot at targets from a long way away (with a pistol*) while hidden behind a hill, you have to find a hill that has a decent fire arc on the right hand side, because the left is no bloody use.

*I picked fucking vanguard, so no sniper rifles for me.

I do like all the character backstories, though (including Ashley's..though technically she's specist -specieist? Speciesist?- rather than racist, though yeah, replace 'blue and silver aliens' with 'the evil white man', and 'Quarian' with 'Gypsy' and so on, and the prejudices shamelessly C&P themselves across. Perhaps a tad too easily, admittedly). Not sure if it's necessary to actually seduce peeps to get them to unburden themselves, though.

Also amused by the interactions with the former C-Sec turian dude.

"Commander, I'm thinking..when we find the big bad, it might be best if we made sure he didn't stand trial..."

"What? Oh, right. "Stand trial"...Hahahahahahha, he's getting killed fer sure. FUCK yes. God, have you even been watching my behaviour AT ALL, recently? Jesus."

In fact, as far as I can tell, the only actual difference in attitude between the big bad and Shepard is that he wants to kill the entire galaxy in one go, rather than person by person.


Also, the attempts at using actual physics(TM) to try and explain stuff is laudable, if ultimately hilarious.

[Dead-eye]

I always played the diplomatic chill guy Shepard rather then the reckless "if your not on my side your dead" Shepard. Maybe it's because I lived through Bush.

[Jonas]

Bush-Shepard is a lot more fun than Obama-Shepard though. Especially if you're female - her delivery is impeccable, and she has all the best lines.

[Mr_Cyberpunk]

Bush-Shepard is a lot more fun than Obama-Shepard though. Especially if you're female - her delivery is impeccable, and she has all the best lines.

That and she's WAY WAY more playful I notice she's got some kind of smirk on her face when she does something hell funny . (Such as punching the guy on Eden Prime or cutting the citadel off mid-transmission lol always gets a good laugh.)

I too put too much effort into my character for them to just screw this up, I realize that yeah it was Obsidian BUT Mass Effect borrows soo much from KOTOR that its logical to think that what they applied to KOTOR was the same as what they can apply to Mass Effect 2 if they got lazy (and since this is an EA game its a high probability that yes that is the case).

My suspicion is that firstly Shepard will be written out- or will become a background character. You'll play as the "NEW" captain of the Normandy starting at level 0, and have to go on some bullshit quest to find Shepard ala the crappy Revan story in Kotor2 where by you can make things up about Revan- though I'm suspecting this is the point of having the save games- since it takes that choice away.

That's the slack way of doing it. The Professional way of doing it would be pulling what you guys did with TNM where you branch the story into two separate story lines that exist within the same world. Ideally that would be Paragon and Renegade since the universe is WAY WAY different in either story.

The Renegade ending is far darker than the Paragon one, the Renegade on is also the better because it results in Shepard showing his/her true character either as an opportunist racist- or as a realist who tried their best despite the obvious cost- the Paragon ending is way too DeepSpace 9 or StarGate Atlantis clone lol (I mean hell the Main Character's name is a direct plagiarism.) Whereas the Renegade ending is just so damn OMFG! reminded me much of my fav Star Trek Enterprise Episode where they go into the reverse reality where by the Federation are totally evil and psychotic best episode EVAR! And I was really hoping to replicate that in Mass Effect 2.

One thing that HAS to be fixed in this game which IMO is a huge design flaw, THAT GOD AWFUL INVENTORY SYSTEM! DIE DIE DIE.. Mass Effect 2 has by far the worst I have ever seen often resulting in having to sell or destroy all the items in your inventory. Who ever decided that a hard cap of 150 items was a good idea should be shot!.

They also need to fix the driving levels as well- Personally I don't think they should even be in the game lol as I found the game to be MASSIVE when playing those levels on foot.

Also the Sub Quest planets definitely need to be redone, no more of that copy and paste crap as after the 30th planet it does tend to get a bit boring- I mean NOT every planet is barren guys! lol I'd hope there was more than just the occasional mining or research facility on these planets. The DLC though IMO was an EXCELLENT addition to the game and I do hope that Mass Effect 2 has more of those kinds of sub quests.

[Jonas]

I agree with most of what you said (though I thought the Paragon ending was fine), but I don't think it's accurate to say what we did with TNM is the professional thing to do. In fact the professional thing to do is what BioWare did, using Paragon and Renegade instead of Good and Evil to give you room for moral choices within the same overall goal structure so they could accomodate different types of characters within the same storyline.

What TNM did is the unprofessional thing to do because it's not really commercially viable - unless you're developing for a large enough niche of really dedicated players to turn a profit. If your lead designer gets away with a game where most players can't be expected to see more than 70% of the content, your producer is either incompetent, crazy, or he's just stopped caring