In short, I think the game is satisfying from beginning to end: a masterpiece that rivals Final Fantasy 6 in my love for a cast of characters. I think it’s better than Halo. There, I said it.
Anyway, I’ll be discussing the game in three sections: one without spoilers, two with minor spoilers (nothing plot related), and one with major, mind-breaking, snape-kills-dumbledore spoilers you don’t want to read. Each section will have an obvious header so you don’t stumble onto anything you don’t want to see.
NB: I played through the game as a soldier on hardcore difficulty. I clocked about 38.5 hours, trying to do everything I could.
Note Well-er: I’ll be mentioning a couple things my girlfriend has said while I played through it. Not because I HAVE A GF AMG LOOK LOOK (I’m lookin’ at you, xkcd) but because I feel her outsider commentary was very close to the mark at times.
Preface (for those who haven’t experience the joys of having their mass affected yet)
Go get Mass Effect 1 and play it. Then go get Mass Effect 2.
Section 1 - The Basics. Terror Threat Level: Green
1) Putting the Sci back into “SyFy”. Hands down my favourite part of Mass Effect: near-Avatar levels of science (with allowances made for element zero and evolution, as it’s a popular vidjagame. We can’t have everything). The planet descriptions in the first game made it clear that they let people with real knowledge go wild with their imaginations, and they’ve taken it even further in ME2. The depth of the setting itself is as engrossing as it is impressive. A lot of thought, research and creativity went into creating their version of the Milky Way and it paid off.
Quantum entanglement used for communication? Geth weapon firing rates following a sine curve? Beautiful in its execution.
2) For our first PA reference of the evening - Environments. Tycho at PA mentioned that most of the environments lack life (aka anything outside the Normandy). I agree, with some exceptions. Combat environments are as he says - shit is strewn everywhere, rock takes unnatural forms…all for the obvious purpose of acting as your cover. As well, once, when I was running through Ilium, the gf noted that “all these places look the same!”. The cities (excepting Omega, which is incredible and seems a bit like a nod to Titan A.E.), while neat, are fairly standard, sometimes small, and not very compelling. However, this never seemed to be a big issue for me in the main plot missions. There were points that I was so thankful to have cover that I didn’t care and my disbelief was suspended by my tension. As well, the plot/characters were so great that they coloured the setting, rather than the other way around. Masterfully done.
3) What Star Trek, Star Wars and James Bond have in common. Mass Effect 2 seems to have perfected what destroyed Duke Nukem forever - the “We HAVE to have that!” reflex when the developer sees something cool in another game or a movie. It can be obvious at times, but it’s always so awesome you can’t help but love that they did it.
It is fairly obvious that Bioware intended/intends to make Shepard the lovechild of James Bond and James T. Kirk. Practically every woman you encounter loves you: even Moneypenny - sorry, your personal assistant Kelly - hits on you. The intro has notes of Star Trek (the latest movie), as do various other scenes, especially later in the game. The bad guy music is also very similar at times (Girlfriend: “Wasn’t that the bad guy music in Star Trek?). Additionally, I challenge anyone to listen to the first two notes of the start screen music and not think “Dark Knight motha fuckaaaa”.
4) Game Mechanics. I was iffy about the changes at first (I’d just finished getting my ME1 Shepard to 60), but they made for a much better game. Weapon proficiencies opened up almost all weapons to my soldier, allowing me to be a real master at arms; I’ve never loved the sniper rifle before, but cripes did I love it here.
The changes to health and medigel (namely, medigel is only used to revive teammates; Shepard regenerates shields on his own after a few seconds) made for a more intense experience, especially earlier on when you’re fairly impoverished in the upgrades department. The screen setup seems much more spartan than the original, more along the lines of Uncharted (but not 100% clear).
The elimination of the item screen and items in general has no doubt been met with love and joy by ME fans everywhere, with no more useless item looting/clogging.
The new skill system is decent but leaves a bit to be desired…it is a rather closed system (i.e. lots of skill overlap between characters, skill specialization = a lot to one target or a moderate amount to many targets for every skill in the game) that seems to leave all characters rather similar. I chalk the fact that they are not at all similar up to Bioware writers being gods of story.
The higher difficulty settings are, inna final analysis, well tuned. You are rewarded for being a good tactician/being good at the game. If you fuck up, though…the bad guys land on you like a sumo wrestler. Insanity should be called “THIS IS SPARTA”.
The planet scanning/exploration is still super god damned boring. Protip: you don’t have to scan every planet…you don’t even have to scan most of them. Scan only rich planets, and bail when you get to Good or Moderate.
Lastly, the Ally AI sucks at times, and especially seemed to with any frail character with a shotgun. They’d just switch to the shotgun, jump up on a box and get shit kicked. Groan. Didn’t happen often, though.
5) Fun Things. There are tons of little jokes and references (”Let’s go be Big Goddamn Heroes”, anyone?) that let ME fans know that the people who made this game are geeks in more ways than one - one of the characters even does a wonderfully witty version of a musical number. I do wish Adam Baldwin (Jayne Cobb, mind you) had a bigger speaking role, though…
6) Choice Imports. Every character, no matter how small, gets their due. References to Feros, Noveria, Virmire (if you hated the HOLD THE LINE speech, there’s something in there for you). You even run into Fist in a bar… if you let him live.
7) Characters. I’ll be discussing this in-depth in the next section. For now, I will say that each character has something to offer, in interaction, in story and in combat.
Section 2 - Character Development/Personal Opinions and Big Choices. Terror Threat Level: Yellow
1) The ending sequence to this game will melt your face. It can span from everyone dies to no one dies - a lot of self-determination. Personally, I lost two. Also, my girlfriend’s reaction to the final boss: “What the FUCK is that? You’re dead, Scott.” I peed myself, feeling equal parts fear, joy and shame (because I peed myself).
2) Character Interaction and Development. This isn’t really a spoiler, but I wish the characters talked to each other out of conversation sequences. Like, yknow, in Dragon Age, or in the elevators (I liked them SO THERE) from ME1. Added depth a feeling of autonomy to the other characters that I liked. As for character development, here are some notes on the personalities of each one:
Miranda: Didn’t like her at first, but she definitely grew on me. The loyalty mission and the ship conversations really add a depth to her that I enjoyed quite a bit. A winning, three-dimensional character.
Jacob: Liked him at first and later found him boring. Also, later on in the game in a ship conversation, he breaks out into gangster talk out of nowhere, then goes back to normal. He even does a g-hug with Shepard. Question mark?
Garrus: What a badass. He’s gotten darker since the first one, like a batman that’s lost his temper. I don’t think he ever appropriately deals with it. I was disappointed with his development, as it felt a little bare-bones.
Grunt: Genetically engineered to be perfect, like Miranda…but they never talk about it and it’s never raised as a common point. Otherwise, Grunt was a pleasant surprise. He was presented as two-dimensional in the ads but turned out to be a well-rounded, thoughtful character.
Jack: Meh character, both on and off the battlefield (in my opinion). Pretty obvious add for the hero complex relationship types.
Samara: Found her boring, but she was decent overall. Didn’t really use her, but she had a cool RP loyalty quest.
Mordin: MONEY. Love this guy. Funny, good presentation, fantasic representative of “think fast, move fast, talk fast” salarians. Excellent asset in combat; I used him a lot for the first half of the game. His character also gives great insight into the moral gray area of the genophage, which is presented not unlike Nagasaki/Hiroshima: devastate a people, but end a costly war.
Tali: As she was in ME1, but better. If you liked her in the first game, she gets more screen time than any other ME1 character. I had trouble getting much out of her in combat.
Zaeed: A cool guy who doesn’t look at explosions. Some might like him, but I thought he was a bore. Great in combat.
Thane: Assassin’s Creed…a dark assassin that is an artist that is mysterious and is really good at killing mysteriously. His ship talks were irritating to me : / I’m sure he will be popular with many people, though. He is cool and has a good character, but it just didn’t resound with me.
Legion: I liked him a lot. This was very science-fictiony for me, as his character not only adds depth to the two-dimensional experience pinatas that were once the geth, but also explores AI and possible cultural/technological growth. Highly interesting, and also transforms the conflict against the geth into a moral problem. Bravo, bioware. Bravo.
3) Big Choices. I alluded to them in the above character section, so there isn’t much to say here other than: these are galaxy-altered decisions. You make several of them, and I can’t wait to see how my set of choices turns out.
Section 3 - The section where I give name- and plot point-less tips on how to make sure everyone survives the suicide mission. TERROR THREAT LEVEL: AMBER
1) Loyalty/morale is important
2) Weapon upgrades and equipping the best weapons is important.
3) Sometimes people will have to go it alone as “specialists”. Take the heavy hint and use a specialist/someone who can handle it.
4) Use people with leadership qualities to lead second teams.
5) Don’t press your luck by sending someone into the line of fire twice.
Section 4 - The section where I spoil everything and talk about how my endgame ended up. TERROR THREAT LEVEL: RED
(there is space here to make sure people don’t read it if they don’t want to)
1) Big Choices.
- Destroyed genophage data. No cure for the Krogan.
- Destroyed the geth base. No new recruits for them.
- Destroyed the Collector base. No new tech for Cerberus. Seeing a trend? Cool guys don’t look at explosions.
- Destroyed the refinery in Zaeed’s loyalty mission, killed the Blue Suns boss.
- Lost Thane and Zaeed.
- Did Miranda. Tada!
- Didn’t send the Quarians to war…didn’t suggest anything actually. Got a really angry email from one of the Admirals though. Oops?
- Shooting a giant god damned terminator in its angry orange eye - with a particle beam, no less - gave me goosebumps all over. Ohhhh baby. Some people thought the boss fight was cheesy, I thought I jizzed in my pants. It was kind of easy, though. No real threat of death.
- Shat my pants at the ending when the Reapers are advancing on the Milky Way. FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-
It occurs to me that my pants must have been a very messy place after the final mission. Gross.
–Scott
Last week’s comic: based on actual travel anxieties flying to and from Las Vegas.