Mass Effect 3 and general Mass Effectiveness
Bad-Mr-Frosty
Member
So I recently got done beating ME2. Kinda had mixed feelings about it. Some parts were pretty good. Fixed a lot of stuff, but also over fixed a lot of stuff. I wouldn't say I didn't enjoy playing it, but when I beat it I didn't feel as satisfied as when I beat ME1. I also didn't really like the characters as much, even though they was more variety in their personalities.
I played as a female adept in both games. Just interested in what everyone's experiences are with this game.
As for ME3, looking forward to it, but a little worried that they're getting a little too focused on combat. Co-op sounds cool, curious how they're going to let you decide where the plot goes.
I played as a female adept in both games. Just interested in what everyone's experiences are with this game.
As for ME3, looking forward to it, but a little worried that they're getting a little too focused on combat. Co-op sounds cool, curious how they're going to let you decide where the plot goes.
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ME2 was not so good. It felt literally like a half-finished game. I didn't spend half the time with ME2 that I did with the original ME. I just breezed through all the quests and plot lines in no time at all, and was left going "... so where's the rest of the game?" (Answer: DLC, I guess?)
I'm hoping ME3 is more like ME. It needs to be. ME2 sold purely on the ME brand and the experience of the first. If ME3 is another ME2 where it feels half-finished, people are not going to come back again. But if they go back to ME, where it's a truly massive world, with so many facets to explore other than chat wheel options, it will truly be awesome.
Multiplayer coop, well. OH GODS YES. The whole obsession with deathmatch and adversarial play just.. makes people nasty, inconsiderate assholes. TF2 is the least bad, but try playing Halo online some time. You'll get a 12 year old cussing you out with language that would make a sailor go "WTF is WRONG with these people?" Coop attracts and breeds a very different player and attitude. We're the people who take the time to coordinate, communicate, and will help you get things done. The rewards of coop come from being a Nice Guy, not from being the "BEST SNIPER EVER U SUX NOOB!!"
So. Much. Hope.
I doubt Bioware could screw ME3 up badly enough for me not to get some entertainment from it, my only concern is how many pieces EA will chop it into for DLC and pre-order bonuses.
I keep hearing people say the ME2 world wasn't as large as the ME1 world and there were a lot more missions and exploration. Am I the only person who noticed that damn near all the side/optional missions in ME1 consisted of the same 2-3 rooms copy/pasted over and over and over?
Definitely agreed there. I hated the complex bits, and LOVED how ME2 simplified the system WITHOUT dumbing it down. Your goodies were still there, it just was... usable. Things were manageable.
Yeah, that's my concern. EA is all about the profiteering and not the pleasure. Meaning: I'm betting it's ME2 all over again where it feels like it's half-finished at best, and they expect you to pay another $60 in DLC after pre-ordering the game. Even though they built it all at the same time.
Nope, you are not. But let me tell you, the stories that went with them, is what made it feel massive. That's why I liked ME and why I hate CoX. They do roughly the same thing but with ME, there was a well crafted story attached. There was a reason. With CoX it's just "go here, kill bad guys. Story? Who cares." In a game like ME, it's all about the writing, and they really hit it out of the park.
I'm not saying that ME2 didn't have it's problems but it was still a really great game and still had an interesting enough story and characters for most people to play through several times.
As for ME3 it appears that Bioware is focusing a lot on combat which isn't a terrible thing if the story is still good. I haven't seen to much in the way of what they've done for story or new / old characters. It'll will certainly be one of the most highly anticipated games that is for certain.
aka sexy times with Liara
I'll post some serious discussion later
As for it having a weaker story, I don't think being the second of a trilogy should be an excuse for that. I'm sure a lot of people who feel the story was weaker is because we're comparing it to the first game, so we look at it specifically as a sequel.
I think the biggest problem of the story is really, when it's all done, you're kind of right back where you started. I mean they introduce the collectors, then at the end you kill them all. What has changed? Your crew, that's about it, unless you die. The majority of the game was spent gathering crew members and doing their missions.
As for a shit ton of outcomes, now I know I'm speaking too soon since everything I'm about to say can totally be proven wrong when ME3 comes out. But coming from ME1 into ME2, the things you decided in that game didn't actually change much. I'm sure they can make the results of all our actions clear in ME3 and I'll be like "OH MAN I REMEMBER WHEN I DID THAT IN THE FIRST GAME". But in ME2, none of your decisions changed the plot too much. Sure you'd go on a mission and go oh hey there's Wrex, he's king here now because I didn't kill him, that's cool. And then you'd leave and never see him again.
I'm not surprised of course that the choices in ME1 didn't change the story of ME2 that much. That would cause ME3 to have wildly different outcomes which, while amazing, would be extremely hard to pull off.
The reason I say all that is because it makes me wonder, how much will your decisions matter in ME3 coming from ME2? I might be forgetting some stuff, but I feel like the only important decisions you made in ME2 were at the very end. I can see the decisions in ME1 coming up in ME3 and changing the game up, but the decisions made in 2? There was nothing too big. Probably the only thing from 2 that will affect the plot is the very last choice of what you want to do with the Collector ship.
Of course who knows? Keeping Jacob alive could've been the key to defeating the Reapers.
+1
Exactly. I liked the writing in ME2; it was definitely a match for ME. It was a compelling story. The game engine was improved. The play was improved. There wasn't anything to specifically hate, other than that it was too short. It felt like they released half a story in the end, then expected us to pay for the rest of it as DLC. Not so with the first one - it felt very complete.
I absolutely concur; there is no excuse for it. Would you have accepted a weaker story from Douglas Adams? Hell no. That isn't to say it was a weaker story in any specific way, other than it was significantly shorter, with much larger gaps. It just.. didn't feel right. It felt like they were told to cut large parts of it, just so it could be sold to us as 'DLC.' That's a legitimate complaint to put it mildly; selling us one thing, then telling us if we want the 'complete' experience we have to pay even more when they already jacked up the price of AAA titles like ME2 to $60 and up.. no.
Exactly. There was a lot of the story that was left out, cut, or just not told for whatever reason. I didn't check out the DLC, but I'm told, no surprise, that it includes (gasp) a crew member and a huge fill-in for part of the universe's lore. An entirely optional crew member, okay. $5, no big. But a huge chunk of the story? Not cool.
Exactly going back to my leaving parts out thing. There's an OBVIOUS story behind things, and an OBVIOUS story that goes with the outcomes, but it just isn't told. It's dangled in front of you, and then, nothing. That's it. It's not even available as DLC. It's just.. "LOOK! Oh wait, DON'T LOOK." It was disappointing in the extreme when you look at how well they did the storytelling in ME.
I wish I could say I had high hopes there, but I think ME3 may end up a lot more like your typical pathetically linear "GO DOWN HALL CAN ONLY TURN LEFT INTO NEXT HALL" with a lot less possible outcomes. Even though ALL of that is actually scripted in advance and literally can be generated in less than five minutes. It's all developer tools. They can take a decision you made in ME, and literally, create every single possible outcome in terms of game actions, in a few seconds. (The writing and art may take a bit longer for obvious reasons.) So there's no reason not to continue ME->ME2->ME3. The problem is: what about folks who haven't touched ME or ME2? In addition to that, ME2's limited choices means if you go ME2->ME3 your possible outcomes are much more limited.
Wrex was in ME2? I wonder how I missed tha....oh wait I SHOT HIM IN THE FACE.
I think what you choose to do about the cure for the Krogan genophage and Geth "heretics" will have a large impact as well.
Jacob? Oh right, the most uninteresting character in the whole series. I hear he won't be a squad member and may not show up at all because no one liked him.
FTFY
This is a whole different discussion entirely but that's going to be a recurring business practice from game developers so long as people keep paying for it. Sadly I don't see any effective way for (informed) consumers to fight against releasing half a game or 3/4ths of a game and charging more for the rest of it. Too many people don't know and/or don't care that this is bullshit and will pay for it out of ignorance and apathy. I refer to the ad for BF3 which says something like, "Pre-order BF3 and receive the return to Karkand expansion at no extra charge!" Which translates to, "Pre-order the game and you can have ALL of it!"
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Hello, I killed Saren, defeated Sovereign, am a motherfuckin Spectre, and I can't say no to Martin Sheen.
Well, he did give me Miranda's ass to look at.
The Council pretty much said fuck off the entire first two games.
"You must understand we make the decisions for trillions of people....blah blah"
I'm gonna replay ME1 and let them die. I know Anderson and Hackett got my back
Oh right, now I remember why I left them to die at the end of ME1. Actually, come to think of it, I've killed off pretty much everyone and everything I could over the course of the series so far.
Rachael Shepard - Terror of the galaxy.
Don't read them if you plan on playing them. Well I'll at least tell you if I thought they were worth it before I start spoiling it.
are there spoiler tags? I'll just say SPOILERS in bold when there are spoilers lol
Lair of the Shadowbroker: Arguably the best dlc for this game. If you have to buy one you should probably get this one. It's got the most content and the most fun. It's a Liara-centric mission, so you meet up with her again. She wasn't much other than a hot piece of alien ass in ME1, but I liked her. She became a badass in ME2, further shown in this dlc. SPOILERS It starts off with Liara telling you to meet her at her apartment. You go there but uh oh! Crime scene! Don't worry Liara's not dead, she's just hiding somewhere because someone attempted to snipe her in her apartment. There you meet up with some other asari chick whose name escapes me. She's a spectre and she's investigating the case. After you and her do some snooping in Liara's apartment, you discover clues that Liara left behind for you. Turns out (MORE SPOILERS), the spectre who was investigating the apartment with you was actually the one who attempted to assassinate her! You and liara team up and get into a moderately fun car chase. Pretty wacky right? Anyway you track her down and confront her and kill her. She reveals she attempted to kill Liara because Liara was getting awfully close to the Shadow Broker. Blah blah you find the coordinates of the Shadow Broker's ship. You guys land on the outside of the ship and have to fight your way around and into it. It's pretty awesome, especially if you have biotic powers or just Lift. You get inside and make your way to the Shadow Broker, he's big and freaky looking but pretty cool. (FINAL SPOILER) You and Liara (+1) beat him and then it becomes clear that there are so many secrets or something and someone has to be the shadow broker. Liara takes the responsibility and becomes the new shadow broker. Kind of obvious ending, but still pretty cool.
Arrival: This one is probably the only one that is actually related to the main plot in an obvious way. The Lair of the Shadow Broker was kind of important, just like to the universe of Mass Effect, but this one is more directly related. It takes place after you beat the game and is kind of a bridge between ME2 & 3. I accidentally played this at the beginning of the game and was incredibly confused lol. Personally though I found it not that great or interesting so I wouldn't recommend buying it. You don't really learn anything new from it. At least nothing I remember... but anyway SPOILERS Somebody reports like an imminent Reaper invasion to their superior and then goes missing, so their superior asks you to go find them. You go to the planet (by yourself for some reason) and you find her and she's like grateful and shit. She shows you what they're researching in the facility, it's like this Reaper artifact or something (sorry this is so vague and doesn't make sense). They've calculated the Reaper invasion to start in... A FEW DAYS?! So they've rigged the planet (might've just been a big asteroid) with rockets to smash it into the local mass relay. They've had it set up for a while but they haven't crashed it yet because it'll kill all life in the cluster or small galaxy or whatever and there are Batarian colonies and stuff. So after telling you all this they... KNOCK YOU OUT?! Yeah and keep you sedated for a couple of days, until you wake up out of SHEER WILL POWER. Oh man how long have you been out? How much time is left before... OH GOD THE REAPERS ARE COMING TODAY. You start moving through the facility and listening to audio logs and find out that the lady was slowly indoctrinated and now wants to help the Reapers "arrive" (heh). So it's up to you to stop her. You set the planet to crash, but she tries to blow up the core and stop it all, then you stop her from doing that. The planet crashes into the Mass Relay but you're able to get off of it (Joker picks you up). Hooray! Looks like the Reapers have to wait until March 6 2012 before they try THAT one again. You just go back to your ship.
Zaeed - Prince of Revenge: Meh, I felt like there were enough characters as it is, these DLC ones don't bring much to the table. Zaeed is a mercenary with a rich and violent history. It's rich with violence. He occupies the opposite side of Grunt's cabin. He's got lots of stories. You don't actually "talk" to him. There's no dialogue trees or whatever, it's just like when you "examine" stuff and you can still walk around. You can go up to him and click on him, and he'll tell you a story about one of his adventures. You can examine the various stuff in his room and he'll tell you about how he got it. Not much else to it. His voice actor is pretty good though. As for his loyalty mission uh SPOILERS I guess. He founded the blue suns or something and then someone screwed him over and you help him get revenge by killing that guy the end. That's all I really remember about it. Oh he kills him in a cool way I guess. He flicks his discarded heat sink ammo thing onto the pool of gas he's standing on and burns him. Then it explodes as he walks away without looking lol.
Kasumi - Stolen Memory: Kinda the same as Zaeed really. I just didn't find them that interesting. You interact with her the same way as Zaeed, except she comments about the crew instead of telling stories. She tells stories too though. Overall her DLC is better than Zaeed's. Her going invisible is a useful move (she pretty much teleports and hits the guy, idk how she does it) and her Loyalty mission is a little more interesting. Plus you get a snazzy new casual outfit afterward. SPOILERS You have to help Kasumi get her mentor/lover's (I forget which but I know he was also a theif) memory box or some shit back. The mission is ok, you have to sneak into some fancy guys vault during his fancy party and get the box thingy. He's got cool stuff down there like the Statue of Liberty's head. Then you get the box and fight your way out. You get a dress if you're a girl. I guess a suit if you're a guy. BUT WHAT IS UP WITH THE DUDE'S ACCENT http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6WJrvlO5N4 IT'S TERRIBLE.
Overlord: This is the second best of the DLC, not much of a compliment because the other stuff isn't that great. Still, this one is pretty good. I enjoyed it much more than Arrival. This one seems pretty self contained and I don't think it could possibly show up in ME3 or anything. A lot of this DLC reminded me of Dead Space. There's nothing like creepy monsters coming at you, but there's a sense of mystery and slight creepiness. There's some freaky psychological stuff too. It's pretty cool. SPOILERS so you show up in this facility place (shocking I know) and almost everyone is dead. Also, there's this weird super close up face that keeps popping up on monitors and stuff screaming incomprehensible noise. So the only guy alive at the place is telling you it's like a super virus running amok and it's trying to send itself through their satellite dish into space. YOU GOTTA STOP IT. You do, by blowing up the dish. Good job. But it ain't over. You gotta kill this virus thing once and for all. So you're making your way to the core reading audio dialogues and learning the history. Something about the last living guy's brother being autistic. While you make your way through the facility the VI thing keeps screaming at you and making weird shit happen. Like opening a door opens a different door instead. Or examining a laptop calls the elevator. Shit happens when OH SHIT YOU JUST GOT HACKED. The VI somehow hacked YOU. This is where I was really impressed. The visuals take an awesome new look. It's like Tron/Matrix or something. So the VI is bringing you closer to the core while showing you virtual memories. Kinda like the ghost memory things in Bioshock. He shows you that scientist guy with his autistic brother, who's also a math savant. He discovers that his brother can actually communicate with geth and command them, because they speak some kind of math language which he can replicate. So the scientist and other scientists began conducting experiments on him. Then you reach the core and find out that it's just the autistic brother hooked up to a bunch of cables (freaky looking, they like go in his mouth and shit). You boss fight him and decide what happens to him. Live or die, make your choice.
So yeah, if you have to get DLC, get Lair of the Shadow Broker and then Overlord.
Oh right right I remember those now.
I couldn't find myself liking Jacob or Miranda. I thought I would like Miranda cuz it was that chick from Chuck and she's hot. I think it was the black hair that killed it. Also anybody else notice the considerable up boobs got in this game? Miranda, Morinth, Asara. Not Jack though, I think they knew it would be a little too outrageous.
I hope that's not true. I don't think it is though, I feel like I definitely would've heard that or heard a bunch of people planning on boycotting 3
Not true.
When playing Mass Effect 3, importing from ME2 or not, ME3 storyline assumes you played Arrival and gives a default scenario if you didn't play the DLC
For what I understand
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I didn't need to be a ruthless bitch AND ugly. I bought the face fix with the money you get for importing a character from ME1.
You run in to the Illusive Man again, but he slips away (Kill him in DLC)
You run in to Jacob and Miranda and try to convince them to leave Cerberus. Jacobs joins you but Miranda is hesitant, and just when you think you got her, Liara shoots her in the back.
Mortin cures the genophage.
Wrex and Grunt show up, but Wrex dies and Grunt becomes leader of the Krogan.
Garrus becomes commander of C-Sec and makes his father proud.
Ashely/Kaiden replace Anderson on the council when Anderson dies in one final glorious battle on Earth
Joker brags about his iEDI
Tali is known as the hero of the Quarian for finally eliminating all the Geth with the help from Legion (DLC)
A cure for Thane is found, but he dies saving Jack from Cerberus
You and Liara make blue alien babies and cruise the galaxy in the Normandy (there is also a three-way with Kelly)
heh, I'll think of some other things for the other squad mates sometime
Actually sod that, so long as I get Ash and Garrus everyone else can DIAF.