Mass Effect 2 Replayed (Spoilers)

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Continuing with Mass Effect week…

I’m writing this Mass Effect 2 “review” on Tuesday, March 28th. I finished ME2 on Saturday. It took 31 hours, according to ManicTime, which is actually a lot less than I expected. I thought ME2 was huge compared to the first one and would take at least twice as long, but apparently it only felt bigger. There were definitely more cut scenes to watch in ME2.

Mass Effect 2 is a far better game than Mass Effect 1 (an action game rather than an RPG, though). However, I think the Mass Effect 1 story is better, and that’s what I’m most interested in. Again, I would have preferred to consume this content as a movie or television series. My patience for getting through the game parts was very limited: Anything that got in the way of reaching the next cut scene (ie. getting lost or hurt or dying) was an annoyance.

Interrupting the cut scenes to play the game was sort of like having to interrupt a show to watch commercials. :)

I saw that @Braxwolf started ME2 without playing ME1. That makes me want to cry. I saw so many callbacks to ME1 throughout the course of the game. So many times you run into a character from the first game who says, “Oh hi, remember me? You did such and such and now I’m here.” Also, most of the major plot decisions that carry through the series are made in the first game (Ashley vs. Kaiden, Wrex, the Rachni). I only remember one big decision at the end of ME2.

Granted, those ME1 decisions didn’t impact ME2 very much. Kaiden was only in the game for a couple of cut scenes on Horizon (I assume Ashley would have had the same role). The Rachni were only mentioned with one NPC encounter on Illium.

Wrex, on the other hand, had a significant role in ME2. I wonder who the Urdnot clan leader would have been if Wrex had died at Virmire? A whole new person? Or that other Krogan who obviously had Michael Dorn’s voice (Worf from ST:TNG)? Would the genophage plotline have been any different? It probably would have all come out even in the end somehow.

In my last ME2 post I had just reached the Justicar and the Assassin (who I now know as Samara and Thane). I didn’t care for Samara too much, but Thane is a decent character. (The perfect memory thing seemed like an unnecessary gimmick, though.) Tali joins the team as well, and she’s still one of my favorites in the series (I like her more than Garrus). I wish I hadn’t waited until the end to get her.

Legion was the last person (“thing”) I picked up, but I wasn’t around it long enough to form any attachment. It didn’t have much of a personality to like anyway. (The name “Legion” made me roll my eyes.) I probably missed some interplay between Legion and Tali because I picked them up so late.

I faithfully went through the loyalty mission for every one of the characters. Of the new characters, I liked Mordin, Jack, and Thane the best. And EDI, now that I think about it. The interplay between Joker and EDI was really funny. Mordin had the best loyalty mission with the genephage. I didn’t think much of Jacob but his loyalty mission was pretty heavy.

As for the overall Mass Effect 2 story arc, I thought it was much weaker than the first. The problem was that it got really bogged down with “assembling the team.” I’d guess that at least 75% of the game involved character sub-plots that had nothing to do with saving the galaxy, not to mention the entire concept of the “Collectors” seemed like a really weak leak with the first game. As I’m writing this I’ve played about 10 hours of ME3, and it seems that ME2 has that classic “middle book” problem in trilogys: It was essentially just “filler.” Frankly you could skip from ME1 to ME3 and not miss anything but character development.

There was no urgency about stopping the Collectors at all. You could take all the time in the world to wander around the galaxy and assemble your motley crew, then take your time running errands for them to earn their friendship. Only the extras on the Normandy seemed to be aware that the Collectors were still out there raiding human colonies for hostages.

In my last ME2 post I wondered if all of the team members were really needed to complete the story. As it turned out, most of them weren’t, story-wise. After the team is assembled, there is only one other thing to do in the game: Assault the Collector ship. (I wasn’t aware that going on that mission was the last thing in the game, but it was.) You need one tech specialist, one biotic specialist, one “leader” for the second squad, one volunteer to take the crew back to the Normandy (maybe optional?), and two squad-mates for three or four different missions. I suppose on harder difficulties it would matter who you choose, but not on casual.

I gritted my teeth and sent Tali as the tech specialist through the vents, terrified that she would die on what was described as a suicide mission. Despite playing on casual difficulty, I came close to being unable to open the vents in time for her. Garrus led the secondary team both times, and whatever drama happened there was entirely off stage. Mordin led the captured Normandy crew back to the ship. Jack held the biotic sphere against the bugs. Nobody died.

I couldn’t help but notice that the music at the end of the game sounded a lot like the saving-the-day music from the days of the Tenth Doctor.

The sound design was much better in Mass Effect 2. I’ve recorded almost all of my play time* and chopped them up into videos and MP3s, so I’ve gotten to see and compare the levels between the two games. The first game had horrible problems with inaudible background voices and mismatched volumes (like on The Citadel), but the second game fixed most of that. (Sadly ME3 appears to have backslid into terrible audio problems.)

All games should have more fine control over their audio mixes. Voice volume, music volume, sound effects volume are absolute minimum controls. I would like to see voice volume broken into “main actors” and “background voices.” I would also like to see sound effects broken into combat sounds and environment sounds. And I always want a volume control for footsteps.

Failing that, a way to route game sound channels to different output devices so I could remix it all myself. :)

One last thing: The end credits weren’t as good in ME2. The music over the end credits in ME1 was a masterpiece.

So that’s ME2 in a nutshell. Much better game, but worse story. Some good characters and side missions, but lacking in overall plot advancement.

* Videos now gone due to a hard drive crash. :(