The story
Besides the excellent characters, ME1’s main attraction was its storyline. The beauty of it was not necessarily the story in and of itself (even though that was top-notch too), but more the way it unfolded. You started the game thinking you were fighting off a random geth attack, but soon you find out it isn’t as random as you thought it was; Saren seems to be leading them.
Okay, you think, we’ll have to find out why Saren is doing this, take him down, and be done with it. Right at the moment you think you’ve got it all figured out, it turns out there’s something way more sinister and grander going on: you learn about Sovereign, this massive sentient ship that’s controlling Saren against his will.
Okay, you think, so we take down Saren, then Sovereign, and be done with it. Just when you think you’ve got it all figured out – again – you talk to Sovereign himself, and Vigil, the Prothean VI, who explains what’s really going on – and suddenly you realise you’re in way over your head. Sovereign is but one of many, a race billions of years old that has been eradicating civilised life in the milky way every 50000 years for millions and millions of years – they’re the Reapers.
The technology of space travel, the mass relays, the Citadel; all built by the Reapers to ensure that civilised life will evolve along the paths set out by the Reapers. Sure, you destroy both Saren and Sovereign at the end of ME1 in one of gaming’s most epic battles, but you know it’s only the beginning. The Reapers will come, and you have to be ready. You still don’t know why the Reapers do what they do.
Mass Effect 2 suffers from being the middle child, I suppose. It doesn’t have either a real beginning or a real end, and the story itself pales into insignificance compared to ME1. There are no big reveals here that have you shaking in your boots, there’s no equivalent of the mind-blowing talks with Sovereign and Virgil. There’s this tiny reveal of the Collectors being repurposed Protheans, but that’s about it. If you blink, you’ll miss it.
In ME1, you started out with a lot of questions, and every time these questions were answered, you only ended up with more questions. This is what kept you playing, and this is what kept me jumping up and down in anticipation while waiting for part two. Mass Effect 2, however, gives you a number of questions at the beginning, but it doesn’t answer them, nor does it provide any new questions throughout the game. I kept on hoping for big reveals, answers to questions leading to more questions, losing myself in a story far grander than myself – but it just didn’t happen.
Before I knew it, I was staring at the end credits.
I do it out of love
I commend you if you’re still with me after me going all philosophical about a game franchise. It might seem as if I hated ME2, as if I’d never recommend it to anyone, as if I had a really, really bad time while playing it. That I want my 64 EUR back.
This is decidedly not true. ME2 is a great game, and it’ll be hard for anyone to top this in 2010. It’s a great experience to go through, well-designed, and a number of key aspects of Mass Effect 1 have been greatly improved. Sadly, there’s also a lot that suffered.
I’m writing this not because I want to tear the game apart, or because I want to disparage the insane amount of time, work, and love BioWare employees have put into it – no, I write this because I love Mass Effect. I write this because I love BioWare. I write this because the reviews I’ve seen so far seem to be, as usual in modern-day gaming media, shallow, void of details, soft, filled to the brim with default adjectives like “compelling”.
I’m the Mass Effect equivalent of the Trekkie, and the franchise has a very special place in my heart, right next to Fiona Apple, coffee, the Gilmore Girls, and the colour red. As such, I’m also incredibly demanding, and while I know it’s impossible to please fans, I do feel compelled to put my critique out there – not to be a jerk, but to make sure that BioWare will make Mass Effect 3 even better.
I can’t wait.
…when it is built up by a bombardment of outside influences or by your own thoughts over time, it often ruins the event when it occurs. :/
If I see a movie that looks good, I try to avoid external input regarding that movie… but people did that to me with Avatar and now I just don’t even want to go and see it because I am sure it won’t live up to all the hype.
For games, I follow some gaming blogs and see what they say. ME2 was met with some luke warm reviews… so I know that is $49 I won’t spend… When the price drops $10 or $20 I’ll buy it. I hope BioShock 2 lives up to its hype.
I had the same vibe, that this games story was missing something. I haven’t played Mass Effect 1 in a while, but I can remember it was more interesting, having more twists and turns and well being a better game. This game is no KOTOR, nor is is NWN, its just a good game.
Because it is more polished and the action is way better.
It is alot more fun to play. ME1 was annoying at times, ME2 wasn’t.
The story is not as epic and new, but that is really hard to accomplish in part deux.
I will pay ME2 again before ME3 is released. I won’t do that with ME1. That alone makes it the better game. It is just more fun to play. That for me is what games should be all about.
I remember the good ol’ days—when this site was worth something and discussed the future of computing. Now, video game reviews? Wow.
I remember the good ole days when I could ignore things I don’t find appealing… wait…
Just to note, Ars Technica — which I’d hold up as the shining example of tech journalism on the Web — also does game reviews. I don’t really see what’s so objectionable about it. Many technical professionals — at least, in my generation, I suspect — are also avid gamers, so this is content that’s of interest to what I’d guess is the primary demographic the site’s going after.
Unfortunately. I guess everybody assumes that just because you’re interested in tech, then you must, by extension, be interested in video games as well. Maybe they should also do porn reviews here too …
By Keelah, are we going to go through this EVERY FRAKKING TIME?
If you don’t like a story, you can *shock gasp horror* SKIP IT. Just try it, just one time. Just, see how it fits you. See if it works for you. See if it floats your boat. See if you can resist that compulsive urge to whine about EVERY story that is slightly off the beaten track.
I promise you, the feeling will be rewarding. You’ll feel liberated. I’m talking Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets kind of liberated, people.
Just without Helen Hunt’s tits.
Very good review of it, I like the tough honesty about the game, this will definitely be loading from steam soon (not an xboxer, got a ps3)
I’m a shooter player, not an RPG player: this game was enough like the shooters I love to get me to buy and play it – and I have enjoyed and, and I do think it’s a very good game – but as a shooter, it’s not nearly as good as TF2 or Unreal 3. Or Gears or Halo, for that matter.
I have some issues with the setting. ME1’s depiction of space combat was much different from the SPACE RAY GUNS AT TWO HUNDRED METERS type settings you usually see, in a good way. Heavily shielded starships slugging it out with more-or-less rail guns at extreme range, stealth based on constraining emitted radiation signature (esp. heat signature), heat build-up being the limiting factor in combat, “most naval battles being a draw,” as ships build up way to much heat before they fight each other’s shields down… Then, how does ME2 open? With a giant alien starship showing up right on top of the Normandy out of nowhere and tearing it to shreds with a GIANT SPACE LAYZOR. Not an auspicious start.
“Semi-real physics” is also used spottily: at one point, Shepherd jokes about idiots asking “why the ship is turning around when we’re only half-way there.” That would be funny if ships in the game actually turned around for deceleration burns! ME2 features the same friction-in-space, “ships move while the engines are on and coast to a stop when they’re not” unrealistic model of space that the joke was mocking! And the game adds Sci-Fi Lay-Zar Beam Rifles, which… I did not find amusing. And the Normandy’s quantum radio… I will get banned if I type my response to that thing. I was screaming. Or was I crying? Can’t remember.
My reaction to Jack wasn’t much better, altho that was more laughter than nerd-rage. She’s just so… comically ridiculous, exagerated, and unconvincing as a character. Had I known was I was getting before-hand, I’d never have bothered to go retrieve her: as it is, she’ll be spending most of the game on the Normandy II, and I may never bother to go visit her down at the bottom of whatever hole in the bowels of the ship she finds to crawl in to. I am ambivalent towards Grunt: he’s not poorly done, but neither is he very well done or interesting. Garrus and Morden I do actually like. (Simple-minded hick that I am, I find it highly amusing to have my enemies suddenly burst into flames in the middle of a fire-fight. Thanks, Morden!) And that’s about all of the team-mates I’ve retrieved so far (I, ah, haven’t come near finishing the game.)
Just to note, I think it’s a pretty solid game, and I am enjoying it, it’s just… very far short of “one of the best games I’ve ever played,” and probably not even “game of the year.” It is merely a “pretty good game, that’s fun and worth the price.” Which isn’t bad.
Edited 2010-02-02 17:21 UTC
I happen to be both an RPG and an FPS nut, so I get to be frustrated by the oversimplification while still enjoying the combat.
I had the same complains as you. Dumbed down skill system, dumbed down inventory system, lack of character depth (mind you I’m still in the middle of the game and I didn’t read part 3 of the article). But what I found most frustrating was that there isn’t a lot of combat (yet?) compared to the overhead. I don’t know if it’s because I’m on the PC version, but the loading times were huge. So, after 10 minutes of fighting, I would go back to the ship and spend half an hour looking at loading screens and bland conversation. Add to this the planet scanning and it just feels that the actual game is so small compared to the overhead. I normally consider skill/item management and character development part of the game and not of the overhead, but sadly they are too dumbed down in ME2 to do so.
Still an enjoyable game, but I was expecting so much more, especially from Bioware.
I got that same feeling from Dragon Age initially; far more watching rendered discussions then actually doing anything let alone roaming about hitting things. It did open up into more of a roaming game but still with the feeling of NWN2 Storm of Zher without the walking on the world map.
If they where going for a similar development with ME2, it will hopefully become less of an A to B to C guided game.
I find them to be a more satisfying break from working with computers all day.
I’m currently playing Darksiders which is a perfect mix of Zelda and Devil May Cry.
I tried getting into the original Mass Effect but I thought the moon buggy missions were lame. I’ll give ME2 a try when it is in the bargain bin.
I believe you’ve missed the point of the loyalty system. I will compare it to the system in Dragon Age.
In Dragon Age, getting the esteem of one of your companions is for its own sake – if you don’t get along with X, you only miss out on X’s story. The system for getting a relationship going is complicated because it is one of the game’s main foci.
In Mass Effect 2 however, the “loyalty flags” are simply ten of the many choices that have non-immediate consequences;
I’d argue that these choices is what Mass Effect 2 is about – and, as the middle child, it can both show the consequences of earlier choices and propose choices that will have unknown (for now) repercussions.
In short: in Dragon Age, companions have a complex game system because that’s one of the game’s objectives – in Mass Effect 2, companion relationships are simple because these relationships are only one of the factors that track the player’s actions and determine the game’s outcome.
Aside from that, I suspect that the relationship with the characters in ME1 is “special” only because they were part of ME1, not because they are objectively better. Among the newcomers, I loved Mordin and Thane quite a lot, though I liked Garrus better – but I am prejudiced, just as everyone is.
I wish more video game reviewers were as thorough and honest as you were. Reviews these days are so flowery, they almost always need to be taken with a grain of salt. We could use game reviews like this more often.
Speaking of games, I’m curious, have you ever tried Demon’s Souls, and if so, what did you think of it?
We’ve got our own ME2 review up at http://www.zoopy.com/video/36vr/mass-effect-2-game-review?hd=1 , though our conclusions are a little different.