Really? Thought the Turians had invested a lot of their military power to protect the Citadel from Saren and the Geth, so I assumed at least one of their dreadnoughts should've been there... :|
There were other Dreadnoughts at the battle, but Sovereign did not actually engage them. It flew past the fleets, rammed a ship or two, then attached itself to the Citadel tower. Now that I think about it, I don't think it actually even did anything to Destiny Ascension. The Alliance Navy went after Sovereign when they arrived, but the Citadel fleet was basically duking it out with the Geth the whole time. If it wasn't possible for Sovereign to be destroyed under sustained fire from the defense fleets, then there would be no reason to include the Geth in this plan at all. It seems like he needed them to keep the defenses occupied while he did his thing.
If 'story' refers only to things that have to do with the central conflict of Shepard Versus Reapers, then yes, Mass Effect 2 had a much worse story than Mass Effect 1. If 'story' refers to all of the writing and everything that happens in the game, though, Mass Effect 2 had a better story than Mass Effect 1. The kind of more intimate, localized issues you dealt with for most of ME2 were just more interesting than yet another ancient evil is awakening, and only you can epic stop it!! video game plot.
It wasn't great or anything, even by video game standards, and nothing stood out as much as the three or four dialogue/cutscene sequences that pretty much define everything that went right with ME1's story, but it's a lot more consistent, and I thought it was overall more fun to watch.
Except it wasn't a 'only you can stop it' plotline, not in the same sense as with most jRPG's anyway. The entire galaxy is involved, even if the player is anchored to only one character. Essentially the third game does follow up on that initial premise: either species work together to stand some chance of survival, or they all die separately from one another. The player / central character is only a facilitator in getting people to work together.
Just because a story anchors itself in one character, doesn't mean it's instantly 'that genre'.
I could give a more complicated description, but I think that would go over most people's head. (Aristotelian worldview versus Hegelian worldview... yeah)
There were other Dreadnoughts at the battle, but Sovereign did not actually engage them. It flew past the fleets, rammed a ship or two, then attached itself to the Citadel tower. Now that I think about it, I don't think it actually even did anything to Destiny Ascension. The Alliance Navy went after when they arrived, but the Citadel fleet was basically duking it out with the Geth the whole time.
That was also my impression / memory of the endgame. The choice to save the council comes from focusing on Sovereign or on Sov. and the Geth, allowing the council to survive. If you save them, there will be reports of the Destiny's 'memory tour' being completed when you visit the Citadel in ME2.
You mean rebuttals like this one which don't actually rebut anything?
ME2's turrible retconned mess of a plot is not mutually exclusive with my enjoyment of the game. I've been posting in the GAF Plays Mass Effect thread the past few weeks afterall.
Most of smudboy's "analysis" are not even facts, just nitpicking about issues that he in his opinion has problems with, and arrogantly writes off as fact. Like saying Shepard dying was one of the worst decisions they could make, you DON'T DO THAT! Really? So what? Who gives a shit. And who said there is a monopoly on what a story can and can't do? People enjoyed that, and people didn't.
There are people who enjoyed the ME2 story, and people that didn't. Simple as that.
My God, the pc version is light years away better than the terrible ps3 demo. Smoother and better looking in every aspect and the improved combat makes kb/m the best way to play imo. I felt good after the ps3 demo but not super excited. Now I need to stop myself from plopping down $60 for it.
To those who hated the storyline for the story arch that is in the ME games ME 2 did exactly what it needed to do, make you care about the characters heading into the upcoming war.
Finally got around to trying the demo on PC. I've been on the fence with ME3 and the demo only left more mixed feelings.
The textures are generally pretty bad.
The lip sync/animations are laughable at times.
The intro is essentially one long cutscene where you're doing a whole lot of nothing.
The FOV is waaaaay too close.
I laughed out loud when Ash came into the frame wearing her all blue skin tight catsuit. What the hell happened to her whole soldier persona!?
The sound mix seemed off- stuff I'd expect to be loud was quiet/ quiet was loud.
The dialogue in general was pretty generic and Michael Bay level.
It annoyed me how almost every shot in the opening cutscenes barely lasted for more than 5 seconds before cutting away. Try it- its like the cinematic designers had ADD. Coupled with the over use of the close ups and smash zooms and I was getting a headache.
The overly scripted, "Follow me!" stuff in the intro reminded me of a poorly scripted Call of Duty.
The intro was equally as bad as Dragon Age 2's where it cuts to the action way too quickly, such that you can't get a feel for whats at stake or why you should give a damn. An actual trial recounting past events could have been awesome
But more than any of that, the controls. OH GOD the controls. Granted, I haven't played ME in a while, but I had far more difficulty trying to accurately maneuver Shepard than I ever recall in ME1 or ME2. Just getting stuck on cover or flipping to cover instead of getting out of cover or vaulting. The whole spacebar= everything button is a disaster. It sucked in ME2 and yet they didn't fix it for ME3.
On the plus side, the music is nice. The backdrop in the intro is snazzy. The combat and leveling in the second part seemed solid, especially compared to ME2. The subtlety of the visuals and sound effects of the headshots are great.
I was leaning on not getting this at launch and the demo basically confirmed that. Its not terrible, but the clunky controls and generally underwhelming, generic Michael Bay vibe is really off putting to me.
In the Revelation Space series the reason the machines harvested all intelligent life was pretty cool, although not really understandable by humans due to the timespan of the reason. From wikipedia:
That is sort of how I envisioned the Reapers in the first place. Sort of like the main villains in Gurren Langan and those floating sphere floppy disc guys in Xenogears.
Whole wish to live forever and continue being the top of society by any means necessary. So they mush themselves into giant space robot fish
This would require a lot more than some minor tweaks. Firstly Cerberus would have to be entirely reworked or simply removed altogether since without the knowledge of the Reapers from ME1 and those actions Shepard has no reason to work with a human supremacist group.
I somewhat disagree. Shepard could have worked for Cerberus before they went "rogue" or whatever. This would easily allow their shift into madness that represents them in ME1 and ME3. I mean Shepard, Jacob, and Miranda (if she chooses) all dip at the end of 2 anyway.
I somewhat disagree. Shepard could have worked for Cerberus before they went "rogue" or whatever. This would easily allow their shift into madness that represents them in ME1 and ME3. I mean Shepard, Jacob, and Miranda (if she chooses) all dip at the end of 2 anyway.
Ok lets say that worked, Cerberus is still a covert group within the Alliance and Shepard goes to work for them, but what about the other 4 or so major issues I laid out? Why would Shepard go work for Cerberus at all, why wouldnt this just be an Alliance task force looking into missing human colonies, why would she get the brand new Alliance/Turian stealth frigate to go on said mission, would Anderson still remain captain of the vessel since Shepard would never become a Spectre and thus have no need for the vessel as her own? Why would Liara, Garrus, Wrex or Tali come to work with her, let alone any of recruited ME2 squadmates, what about Jack? Would her story have to be totally rewritten or would that be used as some kind of reveal that Cerberus isnt on the up and up. What about Legion? He now has no reason to find Shepard, let alone help him and seek his assistance in pacifying or killing the Heretics and if he did that would completely ruin the events in ME"2" with Saren and his Geth lackies. What about Grunt, would we still go to Tuchanka, would Wrex be there, no that would screw up ME"2" so what would be the deal there? Why would Shepard then go back to work for the Alliance in alternative ME2 and be nominated as a Spectre by the Citadel Council when she would have just stopped working for a now rogue Alliance agency that is an anti alien group who conducts extremely unethical experiments. Again what reason would there be for Shepard to interact with the Citadel species at all when she is only looking into a purely human crisis. How would such a plot allow the player to be adequately introduced to the ME universe and races when the whole focus would be on human colonies and the Collectors who are wholly removed from the rest of the galaxy. Again why would the Collectors be at all interested in humanity without Shepard giving them a reason to by defeating Sovereign.
I could go on and on and on. This in no way would have been a simple fix up of shifting some plot points around, such a change in events would have resulted and required the entire plot of ME series to be completely and utterly different from what know and generally love today. Its a silly idea.
Ugh... I really hated to demo. Completely fell flat for me and killed my enthusiasm. Like others have said the black crush is really bad, especially on the 360 version. It really looks like they didn't compensate for the systems really fucked up gamma curve.
The dialogue is hysterical, fan fiction levels of bad and so are the animations and lip syncing. The intro was god awful at setting the game and the way it's looking the overall plot is going to be a complete mess. Also since when in the hell is the omnitool corporeal? Wasn't it well established in the fiction that these are just holograms? The second half of it was really poorly set up, the cool down on powers made it such a chore to play. I tried playing vanguard but really, the penalty for the wait time on charging made it basically not worth using in that load out.
With some minor tweaks I believe Mass Effect 1 and 2 should just switch places. Missing Colonies -> Collectors -> Hint of Reaper -> Prothean Beacons -> Ilos -> Citadel -> Mass Effect 3.
I'll jump on board saying this is an awesome idea. With lots of tweaks of course.
Start out ME1 (actually ME2) working for cerberus and we all come to know them as the good guys fighting for humanities rights. The collectors are collecting vast quantities of races, including humans as well. You do what you do in ME2, realize near the end that Cerberus is not that good of a group and present the evidence to the council, you fight back against cerberus and they become weak. Causing you to be a strong leader in the alliance forces and Anderson recruits you on a mission (start the real ME1), ending with the destruction of Soverign. Although Saren set up an alternate way for the reapers to arrive. And then ME3 starts and while ME"1" was happening, cerberus regrouped and became stronger and Shepard is their main threat for what he did.
don't you vault right over cover if you double tap A going into it?
I can totally see the endgame of ME3 being one huge QTE, except the only button you have to press is A
No. I read this a lot but I don't actually see what the logical alternative to how it is currently would be. Automatically vaulting coming in from a sprint is a far more absurd design choice.
Most of smudboy's "analysis" are not even facts, just nitpicking about issues that he in his opinion has problems with, and arrogantly writes off as fact. Like saying Shepard dying was one of the worst decisions they could make, you DON'T DO THAT! Really? So what? Who gives a shit. And who said there is a monopoly on what a story can and can't do? People enjoyed that, and people didn't.
There are people who enjoyed the ME2 story, and people that didn't. Simple as that.
The only problem i have with Mass Effect 2 was the way it handled the reaper/collector threat. Every other side plot was satisfying to play through imo.
The ending itself was especially bad... that boss fight against a terminator, way to fuck up all the reaper "mystique" bioware
I really enjoyed the demo, and I have been pretty displeased with the recent Bioware. I've only ever played through ME2 once, so I think I'll give it another spin. Can anyone suggest the better DLCs, if any?
I'm not sure if they're stupid but I had the habit of spamming the button when I get close to a door, needless to say I need to change that habit so I don't keep rolling :lol
I'm getting mega lag in Australia, and I can't find a way for the game to report the ping of either myself or others. Text chat doesn't work, even though I'm pressing T as per the keybinds.
PS3 - yikes! Characters popping into view in cutscenes, jerky animation, FOV feels way too tight, frame rate seems a little suspicious here and there. Seems rougher than ME2 on PS3 so I truly hope this is not final code - I mean it's playable enough, so it's not that bad, but it's nowhere near as smooth as it should be compared to other games on the platform.
360 - bit better. Far less pop-in glitches, frame rate seems smoother. Still a bit jerky though here and there and FOV is again too tight. Plays somewhat better than PS3 code but not miles better.
PC - best version. Smoothest frame rate and looks best (no surprise I suppose). FOV still feels tight though.
Overall - as with every ME game I like it but not as much as most I get the feeling. Combat is better than ME1, a tad better than ME2 and still behind most other big TPS shooters IMHO so combat still feels poor. Graphics are okay but still not great. In the big open battle in the first level it really felt Bioware couldn't optimize the engine enough - or had to hold back for console - to really deliver the scene.
Skills seem improved. Dialogue is the usual mix of decent to naff. Animation remains an odd mix of effective and terrible. Graphics also veer from good to average. Thinking about it the demo felt pretty bi-polar for me - the game did not feel consistent and polished... but it is a demo so I'll wait and see how the final code looks.
TBH I think the franchise would have been better on a different engine or with a different core design for movement and combat. With each release they seem to be pushing combat more and the idea that you leap cover and generally tear around in exciting combat - but the actual combat is always stiff for me. The best way I can describe it is to compare with say Uncharted. Trailers for ME show Shepard jumping around like Drake, but actually gameplay is much weaker than the promise - whereas in Uncharted I feel I'm jumping over and around stuff and tearing around in line with how the character is portrayed in trailers, cutscenes, etc.
Final thought - still feels like a title progressing towards a full on TPS shooter with RPG bits tacked on and a "serious SF business" tone.
Plotwise all I'll say is I always struggle with the third act of stories like this - when despite the overwhelming and undeafeatable odds a bunch of people with hand guns save the galaxy. I know it's a party pooper angle but I just can never suspend belief enough when the odds are stacked too high to seem believable to push back against.
I don't know if it's just me, but the servers for the multi-player are pretty spotty right now. If it's like this in the retail version, I'll be disappointed since the multiplayer is actually pretty good.
Most of smudboy's "analysis" are not even facts, just nitpicking about issues that he in his opinion has problems with, and arrogantly writes off as fact. Like saying Shepard dying was one of the worst decisions they could make, you DON'T DO THAT! Really? So what? Who gives a shit. And who said there is a monopoly on what a story can and can't do? People enjoyed that, and people didn't.
Well, some people like to see the things that happen in the game actually matter be it choices the player makes or whatever Bioware chooses to make canon. Typically, when your protagonist dies in stories and they go to whatever magical place, they learn a bit about themselves. What did Shepard learn from dying? Nothing. Usually when people die and are then resurrected a couple of years later, it is a huge deal. Did NPCs react realistically when Shepard was brought back to life? Nope. She died for their sins and no one cared.
There isn't a monopoly on what stories can and cannot do. If there was, things would be pretty boring. It's always nice to break the mold, but it can take a skilled writer to do such a thing. The handling of Shepard's death was bad. It had no weight to it, no impact. It was unimportant and was put into the game just because they thought it would be cool. If they moved his death to the end of the game and the Reaper invasion beginning, then it would have been important. It would have had impact. More importantly, it would make people want to get the next game just to see what happens.
But the way ME2 was present, her death was inconsequential. The events of the Arrival are rendered unimportant as well save for the status of Shep at the beginning of the third game. Even if you didn't play the Arrival, your Shep stilled killed 300,000 batarians. Your punishment was disproportionate to your crime and it comes off as a slap on the wrist and it just becomes unimportant.
Smudboy's analysis can be nitpicking at times, but he is correct on others. If you don't want a clumsy story, you shouldn't start the second entry off by killing your protagonist unless you have a thematic plan for them. Bioware doesn't have the skill to pull it off, just like with the kid in the intro. We are meant to connect to him. But why? Because we saw him playing with a toy? Because we spoke a couple of lines to him before he disappears? If our interaction with the kid was more substantial, then watching his shuttle get blown to bits would've had more weight to it. In fact, they could've had an escort mission where you try to get him to a shuttle on foot and death and destruction literally all around you. Then you finally reach a shuttle, put him on there, but you stay so you can meet up with the Normandy and then as you watch it fly away, then it gets destroyed. But, ME3 spoilers ahead
the kid has a much bigger part than we think
. If that's true, then everything is moot.
There is a reason why people who like ME2's story is a minority. The overall plot goes no where. The decisions you made in the previous games don't seem to matter. It's episodic nature doesn't help the main plot much. Bioware's decisions about Shep don't make sense or have little impact. Characters' reactions to Space Jesus don't seem to be... realistic, especially if said Space Jesus looks like a decaying zombie for a bit. And shots of asses that take up half the screen.
I enjoyed ME2 and I liked that they wanted to develop the characters more, but there were better ways to go about all of it.
Its really silly to write multiple paragraphs about the story of ME3 based on a really limited and admittedly poorly executed demo and a leaked script from which we do not know how much ends up in the game.
Wow, yeah, that FOV is pretty ridiculous. I just played through the 360 version and felt disoriented pretty much the whole time - it kills any sense of the surrounding area for me. I'm downloading the PC version to see if it's any better, but it's definitely something I hope they fix and/or give the player some control over.
Anyone have any problems with thumbstick deadzones on the 360? Found myself sliding to the left in cover quite a bit when my thumb was off the stick. It's annoying in multiplayer when I'm trying be a good neighbour
Its really silly to write multiple paragraphs about the story of ME3 based on a really limited and admittedly poorly executed demo and a leaked script from which we do not know how much ends up in the game.
I don't know if it's just me, but the servers for the multi-player are pretty spotty right now. If it's like this in the retail version, I'll be disappointed since the multiplayer is actually pretty good.
Let's hope the combat in MP is NOT representative, because it is terrible (at least with low level characters).
I am not usually a big FOV guy, but the MP is nearly unplayable with the choices that bioware made.
Enemies should not use grenades as that is completely broken.
Where is my radar? The limited FOV means you get constantly flanked and have no idea what is happening. Flanking is evidence of good AI in general, but it isn't fun when you can't counter act it.
Enemies have too much health on bronze for a power-based character, haven't tried higher levels yet.
Combat speed needs to be slowed down tremendously, as you can't have fast twitch shooter play with wireless controllers as the input lag is just too much.
And of course, the number 1 issue with the MP, is that it impacts the SP game and isn't soloable with the issues listed above. Simple solution is to pull a diablo and scale the waves and timing based on number of players.
I really enjoyed the demo, and I have been pretty displeased with the recent Bioware. I've only ever played through ME2 once, so I think I'll give it another spin. Can anyone suggest the better DLCs, if any?
Lair of the Shadow Broker is really really great, my favourite thing about ME2 probably. Arrival's ok, and if you want to understand some ofthe plot points of ME3 better then it's worth a play. Other than that, Zaeed's loyalty mission that you get when you download him is very cool, and he's one of the best characters in the game imo
And of course, the number 1 issue with the MP, is that it impacts the SP game and isn't soloable with the issues listed above. Simple solution is to pull a diablo and scale the waves and timing based on number of players.
I was pretty underwhelmed by that demo. It was mainly technical stuff that just seems dumb. Like the POV. Everything looked saturated, and wtf is up with the lip syncing?
