Wishbone: This. ME1 was a brilliant, if flawed, game. However, after seeing what they did with ME2, I never had the urge to pick up ME3.
Emob78: You, sir, are one of the smartest humans on planet Earth. The Council should have made you a Spectre. If I had only finished ME2 and let my imagination drift towards what happened next. It would have been so much better than what we got.
That seems to be the best approach to trilogies. The first movie/game/album/book will be good, it will introduce new concepts and ideas, then the second will up the tension and the drama, then the third will bring everything crashing down to its Wagnerian finale... which will usually suck and fail to live up to expectations. So stop at 2. Never listen to that 3rd album, never finish playing the 3rd game, and never believe that the 3rd movie in a trilogy will be worth 2 shits, let alone 3.
Enebias: If you didn't like ME2, you
don't want to pick up the third. Trust me. Bioware built the game on the worst basis of the second one, the storyline is imo ridiculous and
very badly written - and I'm not just refering to the ending, unforgiveable sin for a game that calls itself "story-driven"; the combat is even more shallow, as the three or four kinds of enemies behave like zombie hordes and you're basically an invincible soldier even at higher difficulties; the quest system (along with the journal) is disastrous: you literally have to *eavesdrop* to obtain quests, and all of the times they are just delivery-boy chores.
Somtimes I ask myself if the "great old" Bioware everyone is talking about was not only Black Isle in disguise.
In my opinion, Mass Effect is unsalvageable.
Mr.Caine: This.The selling point of ME was always the "strong writting" but they fucked that up beyond human comprehension.
I feel like I should clarify my point here. People seem to have interpreted my post as being about the way the story developed in ME2. That wasn't my point. I didn't mind the overall story of ME2, I thought that was fine. What I did mind was the following things:
1. Planet scanning The Mako gameplay was not flawless, no. The primary thing wrong with it was that the height maps were too steep. If they had just divided the Z axis of all the height maps by 2, it would have been excellent. So, they had a game mechanic which was flawed. What was their solution? Not to fix it, but to get rid of it entirely and replace it with something that was much,
much,
MUCH worse! Whoever was responsible for the decision to add the planet scanning "feature" to ME2 should no longer have a career in game development, because they are certainly incompetent at their job.
2. Heat sink clips So you regretted the decision to use weapons without ammunition. So own up to it. Find an explanation for why ammunition has been re-introduced into modern weapons in the intervening years. Don't try to camouflage it as an adaptation of the old cooldown mechanic with a pseudo-scientific explanation that anyone who has had high school physics can see is utter bullshit.
3. Enough with the "romance" already In ME1, a romance was an option you could choose to go for, if you so wished. If you didn't, the game accepted that and didn't shove it in your face every five minutes. In ME2 however, the conversation options for
every conversation with
most of your shipmates seemed to look something like this:
A: So tell me about yourself.
B: I'd like to fuck you.
C: You're quite annoying.
D: I'd really,
really like to fuck you.
I'm not a prude. I enjoy sex, and don't mind admitting it. It's just that it's not what I'm after when I'm playing an epic sci-fi adventure, at least not as more than an option, as it was in ME1. In ME2 it's like the game is
constantly trying to tell you "Hey, did you know you can have sex with your shipmates?" Yes, I know. Now can I please just play the game without trying to get into the pants of everyone around me?
4. Stupid moral choices Moral choices in games are often questionable, but ME2 had a gem of a stupid moral choice. The game gives you paragon points for publically endorsing several different stores in the Citadel as "your favorite store in the Citadel". So apparently Bioware thinks that bullshitting consumers for a quick buck is the ethical thing to do. Admittedly, this would explain a lot of things about Bioware.
5. Removing important story parts in order to sell them as DLC Lair of the Shadow Broker. What the hell?
In ME1, I pursued the romance with Liara. I assume many others did the same for the same reason as me, namely out of curiosity because she was the most exotic option available. The romance was handled very tastefully in ME1, and when I met her again in ME2, I looked forward to exploring it further. So what happened? Well, she said "I'm sorry, but I'm much too preoccupied with my current mission to even talk to you about personal matters, but if you buy this DLC, we could probably have an actual meaningful conversation". Fuck you, Bioware.
