There’s a short answer: like EA boss John Riccitiello, I too was once a huge believer in the IP but, unlike him, I was excited about its potential as a science fiction CRPG franchise, not as a generic third-person shooter. I’m not convinced that actual, round, conventional grenades represent a huge advancement in the field of futuristic role-playing.
There’s also a longer answer and it involves Mass Effect 2. The rest of this article contains spoilers, so if you haven’t played ME2 yet keep reading to find out why you shouldn’t.
I got to Mass Effect a little late but loved it. The first game had enough flaws to keep it from being truly great but it was still a damned good game, and the franchise had tremendous promise. I was ready and willing to love ME2. Mass Effect had already done the hard work of making me care about the world, the characters and the story. It would take actual effort to destroy my immersion and my willing suspension of disbelief.
Turns out the folk at Bioware were up to the task. To show you what I mean I would like to share with you, my intelligent and attractive reader, my experience of Mass Effect 2.
This isn’t the universe you saved
One of the things I liked about Mass Effect was that it was that rare game which was SF in more than name only, and consequently took its world-building seriously. Sure, Bioware used recycled material with serial numbers filed off to varying degrees, but all in all I think ME was fairly successful in building a coherent future world where things mostly made sense. It was a world I was excited to learn more of, a world I could care about.
ME2 doesn’t give a toss about world-building. Much of the drain on my WSoD was caused by ME2‘s habit of pointlessly changing things established in ME. Another major offender was the appallingly lazy writing. The writers simply did not care whether things made sense or not. All they cared about was setting up the next scene of cool bad-assery.
Examples began early. At the start of the tutorial sequence, Shepard woke up and picked up a gun. It was different. Now this was no big deal: they had changed the combat mechanic so naturally the game world needed to change accordingly. My WSoD didn’t even hiccup. This one was a gimme.
Or it would have been had Bioware simply pretended this was how things had always been, but in the codex there was an explanation for how we went from ME‘s guns to those of ME2. Apparently the moronic thermal clips were based on Geth technology even though, having shot a few hundred Geths in ME and captured some rifles in the process, I knew perfectly well the Geth didn’t use them. This imaginary technology was then not only successfully reverse-engineered and several arms manufacturers, having first agreed on standardisation, developed and manufactured weapons based on it, but every armed party in the entire galaxy, from armies to mercenaries to bandits to miners, then switched to using them. All this took place in a span of roughly two years. And the early adopters didn’t wait that long: Shepard, freshly woken from two years’ death, was familiar with the technology.
For the sake of justifying something that didn’t need justifying Bioware needlessly strained my WSoD by asking me to swallow something obviously ludicrous and by pointlessly retconning the first game. Still, it was just the guns and at least they didn’t feel the need to explain why medi-gel or biotics worked differently now. I did not yet realize that casual continuity changes and mind-boggling stupidity would be the hallmarks of the game.
Soon afterwards I met the all-new, all-retcon Cerberus, and here the fun really started. These days Cerberus was not only an Alliance black-ops team that went rogue around the year 2183, as it was in ME, but also a human-first splinter group supported by individual contributions and established by the Illusive Man sometime around year 2157. I was getting a little less willing to suspend my disbelief.
Cerberus asked Shepard to help investigate human colonies vanishing. I thought this one was easy: the only party I knew with a history of destroying entire human colonies was Cerberus. Apparently it was someone else this time, and Cerberus were understandably annoyed at others muscling in on their act.
As a side note: in ME humanity had a dozen full-fledged colonies with the oldest, largest and most prosperous, like Eden Prime and Terra Nova, possessing populations around four million, because ME was a SF game and the writers recognised that interstellar colonisation would be bloody hard. ME2, exhibiting already familiar disregard for anything established in ME, invented dozens of new colonies – some with populations in the hundreds of millions – presumably to try to justify a few hundred thousand colonists disappearing representing a mere drop in a bucket. This rather drastically alters the universe the story takes place in, but compared to turning the Alliance into corrupt amoral heartless ineffectual bureaucrats in order to set up human supremacists as the good guys it hardly even registers.
—
Nothing makes sense
This is the awesome grimdark premise of ME2: Shepard must team up with Cerberus! He must do so because humanity faces a threat so terrible he must work with his former enemies to stop it. The reason he can’t turn to his more natural allies, the Citadel Council and Systems Alliance, is that the threat humanity faces is so insignificant they don’t take it seriously. Seriously.
“But that’s because Shepard and the Illusive Man know something they don’t,†you might say, were you an idiot. “All they know is that some minor human colonies are vanishing. They think its just some pirates.â€
I’d like to dwell on this a little because it is the central premise of the plot. Extrasolar human colonies are vanishing. The Systems Alliance’s military, as established in ME, exists for the specific purpose of protecting humanity’s extrasolar colonies. So, naturally, they do nothing.
I cannot suspend my disbelief on this. It is, quite simply, beyond belief. The Systems Alliance might fail to respond fast enough the first time a colony suddenly goes silent. But the second time? Third? We are told, and shown in ME, that Alliance strategy is not to try to defend every colony and outpost, but hold the fleet ready to respond when scouts report trouble. On this basis what should have happened was that the Fifth Fleet dropped on the Collector cruiser like a gigaton of bricks and blew it out of the sky. This didn’t happen because the heroic racists had to be the ones to save the day, even if the writers couldn’t be bothered to come up with any sort of justification for Alliance repeatedly failing to act. Shrugging their shoulders was not the Alliance’s original response to attacks on its colonies. War Hero Shepard made their name protecting Elysium from pirates during the Skyllian Blitz, and Ruthless Shepard became known as the “Butcher of Torfan†during retaliatory action for the same. The Geth assault on Eden Prime lead to the Alliance fleet being placed on alert, which is why it was available to save the day at the Battle of Citadel.
With a heroic effort I tried to ignore the gaping vortex of stupidity and contradiction right at the heart of the story, gathered the tatters of my WSoD and soldiered on.
I wasn’t as comfortable working with Cerberus as Shepard apparently was, but happily Shepard could voice some concerns to Miranda. Mentioned were the Cerberus experiments with Rachni, Creepers and Husks. Miranda explained that the Rachni were a mistake, Creepers were not sentient and the Huskified colonists were already dead.
Sure, perhaps they didn’t intend the Rachni to wipe out Alliance outposts and nearly overrun several human settlements, but dismissing it with a shrug still seemed a little cavalier. This response was not available. Fair enough with Creepers, however; they were indeed non-sentient and, as far as I know, only Cerberus personnel were killed when the project blew up. Were I allowed to role-play Shepard I wouldn’t have even brought it up.
The 150 colonists of Chasca were indeed dead by the time they were turned into Husks, but Miranda made it sound like Cerberus just happened to stumble upon 150 corpses and decided that they could still serve science. As opposed to the self-appointed protectors of humanity engineering an attack that destroyed an entire pioneer colony and left every last man, woman and child in it dead. I couldn’t call her out on that.
Also, for some reason, I couldn’t bring up Akuze. Cerberus luring Thresher Maws to attack this pioneer colony may or may not have completely wiped it out, but it did kill my Sole Survivor Shepard’s entire unit apart from Shepard himself and Corporal Toombs, whom Cerberus subsequently tortured for five years. And this one really was a stickler. The revelation that Cerberus was behind that, in addition to their general murdering ways, pretty much set, back when ME was a CRPG franchise, my Shepard’s attitude towards them to shoot-on-sight. Now I can’t even bring it up? Did it even happen in this new continuity? Does this game, the organizations and characters in it have anything at all to do with the first one? My poor WSoD was barely hanging on.
—
These aren’t the people you used to know
As the game progressed I got to meet some old friends. I’d already met Tali and, well, actually, I had no complaint there. She seemed quite believably the same character; a couple of years older.
Next I met Joker, the wise-cracking ace pilot. He had also decided to join Cerberus. This meeting considerably altered my opinion of him: I came to regard him as worthless human garbage, an amoral egocentric arsehole I would sooner see dead than at the controls of my ship.
If that reaction seems harsh, let me recreate a key part of the conversation between Joker and Shepard, transposed to our real world to make it easier to relate to:
“So, Joker, I heard you left the USAF?â€
“Yeah, they grounded me, stuck me behind a desk. Then al-Qaeda contacted me and promised me I’d get to fly an aeroplane. Damn straight I joined up!â€
Joker knew precisely what Cerberus were. He had no excuses: he was with Shepard all the way through ME. But none of their atrocities mattered to him, as long as they let him fly. I’m not saying Bioware changed his character; perhaps he always was scum, but it just never came up in ME. All I’m saying is that I was a little less comfortable listening to his jokes from that point on.
Doctor Chakwas, another old acquaintance from the original Normandy, had also joined Cerberus. Here’s the conversation I didn’t get to have with her:
“Remember how you said ‘there is something special about working on soldiers’, and how you’d feel like you’d betrayed them if you quit? Well, now that you have not only quit but joined the guys who have a history of killing the soldiers you used to treat, how are you doing? Any feelings of betrayal? No?â€
“How about splitting this bottle with me? Reminiscing on the good old days?â€
“Uh, I’ll take a rain check on that, Doctor.â€
I also made some new friends on the Normandy: a couple of bright young engineers who had been so angry with the way Shepard was treated by the authorities that they had decided to honor his memory by joining the terrorist organisation responsible for the second greatest trauma of his life; the organisation he had spent his last year fighting. Cheers, guys.
Soon enough I met Garrus. I didn’t really have a huge problem with the new Garrus, as such. I could sort of see how that character development could happen. What I had a problem with was that the franchise sells itself with Big Choices, and in ME you got to influence Garrus’s future plans: you could encourage his Renegade side and push him to applying for Spectre training; or persuade him to return to C-Sec, to be one of the good guys. The only consequence of these choices in ME2 was that he either said: “I came here and became Punisherâ€, or “I went back to C-Sec for a while but then I came here and became Punisher.†I’m not sure I can put into words just how rewarding that felt.
And then there was Liara. The socially awkward young archaeologist had in two years transformed herself into a hard-boiled private dick. Or possibly a crime boss; I wasn’t sure. Now I knew Bioware were just fucking with me. There was no way they could seriously expect anyone to buy that. This was just pure parody, right?
In short the characters I had cared about in ME were no longer the characters I had cared about in ME2. And Shepard? Well, since the Shepard I played in ME would never have put on the Cerberus uniform, for a while I thought that Cerberus was protesting a little too hard when they maintained they had not tinkered with Shepard’s loyalties. Unfortunately the events of the game didn’t support that notion. Shepard in ME2 just wasn’t the same Shepard as the hero of ME, much like how the universe of ME2 was not the universe of ME.
I never expected that giving a damn would be a handicap, but the more you cared about ME, the harder ME2 punched you in the nuts.
So, what am I trying to say here? Even if ME3 hadn’t completed the franchise’s transformation from CRPG to third-person shooter, from space opera epic to Hollywood action movie, I’d still be done with the series. I don’t care any more. The world I once found so immersive doesn’t exist any more. Mass Effect 2 actually managed to kill all my interest in the franchise I once loved.
I will remember Mass Effect fondly as the almost great game with a promise that was never fulfilled. Mass Effect 3, meanwhile, will probably outsell its predecessors, causing me to die a little inside.
Comments
61 responses to “Why I’m not interested in Mass Effect 3”
It is funny to read a piece so heavily focused on the intricacies of a game's plot… On Arcadian Rhythms of all places! Having played through Mass Effect twice (wanted a compatible save to see what effect it had on the ME2 playthrough) and ME2 once (entirely in French) I am at a loss whether as to whether I ever cared about the Mass Effect universe. Whether the plot makes any sense is in anyway coherent was utterly irrelevant to me. It was interesting to find out that there were potentially so many holes in the story and I would love to read from someone who could defend this and argue why the ME2 stuff actually does make sense. For me where ME2 fell down was mechanically, as I don't really play games for any kind of coherency (afterall Plot is Gameplay's bitch). ME1 felt like a squad based shooter with some light RPG elements, a futuristic Full Spectrum Warrior but nice and easy so that I could actually get past the 1st level. ME2 was just a generic and, in many places, utterly dull shooter. To call it Gears of Mass Effect is a little unfair on Gears as the combat in ME2 just isn't well setup and the set pieces are hardly inspiring. So, removing one of the things I most enjoyed (asking me teammate to levitate an enemy while I fill him full of lead) and stripping down the mechanics to the point that I ignored my compatriots almost entirely had a knock on effect. I stopped caring about who was in my party (until the end) and the side and main missions became a long, hard slog for more cutscenes as a reward rather than any tangible advancement in tech as the other thing that I had liked – the levelling system – had also been streamlined to the point that I didn't feel like I was making any meaningful progress.I still finished it even though I really couldn't tell you why and I will probably play ME3 in about a year's time when it has dropped in price.
Also, your sentiments on ME2 almost match my feelings about Dead Rising 2.
It's funny to have written such a piece, as I'm generally in the 'gameplay is king' camp, but I do seem to make an exception for CRPGs. If I am to play a role, it must mean something.
Big difference between ME and ME2 was that, as I see it, ME was a CRPG first with shooter combat as a fun sideshow, for which role it was plenty good enough, while ME2 promoted combat to main event status (while streamlining the CRPG elements to oblivion) and it just wasn't good enough to carry the game. It was utterly perplexing to read all the reviews that maintained that ME2's combat could hold its own with dedicated shooters.
The combat in ME was not brilliantly executed, but it was fun and much more interesting than in ME2. The physics-based biotic powers gave it a very distinctive feel, and it could handle much more varied situations than the one in ME2 (like a dropship deploying troops all around you, or enemies flying to flank you). ME2 removed most of the flavor by nerfing the biotics to irrelevance (and introducing 'heat clips' to make it just a little more generic), and reduced the variety of encounters basically to crouching behind one set of boxes shooting at enemies behind another set. So, yeah, boring.
And I agree the lack of skill progress hurt, too. In ME you constantly unlocked new abilities as you progressed, which combined with upgrades made you ever more versatile; while in ME2 you'd likely unlocked all the skills after the first two missions and from that point on you only got incrementally better at doing the same things while your enemies got incrementally more powerful, which meant the experience remained pretty much the same throughout the game and developing your character didn't really feel very rewarding.
So EA's decision to move away from the CRPG aspects I enjoyed towards generic combat that's just not good enough doesn't exactly thrill me.
So, basically, you are as baffled as I am as to why anyone still likes Mass Effect then? Man, I was at least hoping you might stick up for the combat system.
I kid, I kid.
I found it was fun enough, but since playing it I've experienced far more interesting gameplay along similar lines in stuff like Lost Planet 2 so… yeah.
Mass Effect's combat was more varied and it had actual exploration too, which was jolly.
Basically, what I'm saying is, bring back Star Control already.
I really have to disagree about the gameplay complaint here. Not only were Biotic powers worthless in ME1 but the abilities of your squad utterly pointless and unimportant. My 2 playthroughs as a vanguard can basically be described as 'activate marksmanship, hold down fire button on pistol' and relegated the use of anything else to irrelevance. There was no challenge in ME1's combat (aside from the krogan battlemaster fight) and for all the seemingly massive list of abilties everyone boasted there was miniscle depth.
In ME2 on normal I was actually using the abilties or mordin and garrus regularly, specifically because they filled holes in my vanguard shepard (hurr durr geddit). The importance of switching weapons to take down different kinds of protection on enemies and the inclusion of heat-clips also ensured not only that I was switching weapons but also that I was kept mobile. The in-game explanation for the heat clips was certainly uneccessary and makes no sense I agree, but it improves how the game plays. Adding to this I actually used more than abilty; charge, pull and shockwave providing a nice varied skillset.
As for the stuff about the story I have to agree. I did enjoy ME2 and I still like it, but that's mainly because of the individual character interactions and their personal storylines (well and the gameplay obviously). I have to wonder why Bioware chose the direction they did in ME2, specifically working with cerberus and hand waving most of the potential issues away. It was a flaw of the writing in ME1 that the game, and shepard, continually acted as if the council was so unreasonable as to not believe the stuff about reapers when they're given very little real incentive to and in that respect the central plot hook in Me2 just seems like an extension of that.
Speaking of which ME3's plot suffers the same problem. Why should Earth be the priority over everything else and why are we meant to get mad at the Turians for not immediately helping when Palaven is literally suffering far worse?
Did you play the games on higher difficulties? On normal both games are easy enough that you can just shoot everybody in the head and ignore the powers. But the old lift+throw combo is just too fun for words.
On higher difficulties powers become more important in ME, but pointless in ME2. In ME powers are always usable, while in ME2 most biotic powers don't work on shielded enemies, and pretty much everyone you fight will be shielded. And when Overload is enough to take down about 10% of shield strength it's not quite worth the effort, especially with the global cooldowns.
Ditto. People praised ME2 as some sort of perfect, exact medium between shooter and RPG. To me, it was like mixing an acid and a base: they just sort of canceled each other out.
Developers who make "lite" RPGs seem to forget that the RPG mechanics aren't just some sort of difficulty-adjusting code laid bare for the player to see. They're the key part of the gameplay.
Take away the RPG mechanics from, say, Baldur's Gate – have everything level up automatically, no choice, no XP to worry about, samey weapons – and it's just a few sprites auto-whacking some other sprites. Occasionally you might swig a potion.
Granted, if the game has plenty of other options – exploration, interesting characters – it's possible to view it as a well-design action game, but if it don't, like ME2, well…you've got a nothing game. And that's what ME2 was for me. Boring combat, zero RPG mechanics.
My experience with Mass Effect nearly mirrors badgers exactly (I did not play ME2 in French) and my sentiments are nearly the same as well. Though I could appreciate the world building of the game and the idea of continuity between games, the actual mechanics of playing it and the overall tone of the Mass Effect universe simply bored the shit out of me. I'm sorry, I could put it no other way.
It just feels so stale to me.
I believe we talked about it at the time and I remember you saying that you were playing it and you weren't sure why. When I got round to ME2 I really did have that problem. Nice to see you back and commenting Gordo!
You played it through entirely in French? Brilliant idea! I'm guessing you are French / are learning French / already speak French?
My French is passable, I studied the language for many years and am fluent in Portuguese with a working knowledge of Spanish. I wrote about my encounter with ME1/ME2 a long ways back:
http://badgercommander.net/mange-tout-couldnt-eat…
I don't really have much to say as I've spent the past, uh, twelve months or something discussing ME2 with Juho (read: arguing over email) and I've basically come to the conclusion that I pretty much agree with him. All the counter arguments I presented just didn't really stand up. I stand by my early excitement (see the posts I wrote over on Nostalgia For Infinity) but it is not a coherent partner to the first game, it has some really uneasy thematic parallels, and the narrative and gameplay do not mesh well (e.g. Jack only being a "cutscene badass").
I think that the game did present some well-drawn characters if you were prepared to explore them and engage with the fiction, but again they were not convincingly integrated into a team or the game's setting (the Justicar being perhaps the most glaring example).
I still think fondly of ME2 and found it an enjoyable experience albeit not, in retrospect, as good a game as ME… although it did at least avoid the interminable Citadel sidequest saga at the start of the game that has resulted in almost every replay ending almost as soon as it had begun. Sigh.
I will definitely play ME3 at some point because I am invested in the series as well as "my" Shepard, but it won't be for a while as my excitement about the series has waned and there are, frankly, other titles I would rather support (such as Catherine, which got its European release just a few weeks ago).
[…] Not everyone is interested in Mass Effect 3: “I cannot suspend my disbelief on this. It is, quite simply, beyond belief. The Systems Alliance might fail to respond fast enough the first time a colony suddenly goes silent. But the second time? Third? We are told, and shown in ME, that Alliance strategy is not to try to defend every colony and outpost, but hold the fleet ready to respond when scouts report trouble. On this basis what should have happened was that the Fifth Fleet dropped on the Collector cruiser like a gigaton of bricks and blew it out of the sky.” […]
am i the only one who played through me1 then came to me2 and didn’t even remember a mention of cerberus in me1? i thought they were invented for me2 frankly. couldnt give a monkeys about all this.
They turned some colonists into husks and got their own men killed in the process didn’t they? That was about it as far as I was concerned.
Had no idea they were behind the Thresher Maw attack that left my Shepherd wetting the bed most nights.
Nailed it. Right down to the Coalition/al-Qaeda analogy I myself used to described ME2's premise, except for the even more unbelievable situation when Traitor Shepard just mosied into her ol' Admiral's office (Of course, the goddamn hero of the universe, who supposedly died in the line of duty, gets no more than a "'Sup?" when she confronts her old boss). I described it in modern terms like this:
Shepard walks into the Pentagon…
"Hey, Shepard. Thought you were dead."
"Yup."
"Got taken out in Tora Bora."
"Nup. Taliban captured me. Tended to my wounds. They made some valid points. Decided to join them."
"Oh, so you're working for the enemy now?"
"Yup."
"And you thought you'd just wander back into the heart of the US military, the Pentagon, have a few words, and leave without a fuss?"
"Yup."
"All right then. See ya."
Personally I'd gotten the impression that the Citadel didn't care as it was in the Terminus Systems and the Alliance… I'll concede (although if you want to speculate – bogged down with politics and lack of public appetite for military losses?).
As far as the crew go, would you be surprised that in the real world people also make morally dubious choices and then post-rationalise them? Joker was in love with the Normandy and flying so would've jumped at the chance to pilot it again, and Doctor Chakwas implies she's there because having to treat Joker gives her the only stability in her life. The rest of the crew were seemingly unhappy at being messed around by the Alliance or felt they weren't doing enough (with Jacob stating he's uneasy about working for Cerberus but feels it's the only way – which is why I imagine people join freedom fighters/terrorist groups). Liara probably had many connections, seeing as her mother was a major figure in Asari society, and certain dialogue hints at why she's become so bitter/hard so quickly.
Regarding Cerberus, it could be argued that the group encountered in ME was simply one of the many cells that are deliberately kept unaware of each other. Shepard's just been saved from death, so he'd probably feel as though he owes Cerberus something… and the Paragon options make it clear he still distrusts Cerberus. The Citadel are hardly going to make it public that Shepard's now nominally with Cerberus and are possibly hoping they can get intel from him at a later date (no idea how this pans out in ME3).
I'm speculating on vaguely-defined motives of fictional characters here, ffs.
I didn't intend to defend ME2 at all (as it's in no way perfect and that's not even mentioning the combat), but I feel there's some selectiveness and over-thinking of certain points in the article which has irked me a little. Ignorance is bliss?
Ignorance truly is bliss.
If you fail to read all codex entries in ME1 and jump into ME2 after the interval between their releases without reading any comics or books from the universe you really just enter ME2 in a daze of confusion along the lines of "I don't remember that being that way, but I guess two years is a long time?" and most of the plot inconsistencies and holes are more easily forgiven. However having played through again recently to get a save for ME3 after reading some more codex entries and additional material the entire premise really does start to fall apart.
As for the teammate character development, one instance of it is better described in some of the DLC (which is kind of a poor thing to do to your players) Specifically Liara's personality transformation in the Shadow Broker DLC. I liked it and I genuinely like the character more for it.
Regardless I just ended up playing my last play through as if Shepard were a cranky old man, mad at the world for suddenly changing while he took a nap. who is then subsequently forced to voice himself with a wheel of opinions that rarely manages convey what is on his mind, only making him crankier.
I'm still about to buy ME3 despite the very real possibility that it has followed many AAA game franchises and watered itself down for mass appeal and consumption, but I feel I am somewhat of a special case as this is my first actual purchase of the games as the past two installments have been hand-me-downs from someone far less interested in CRPG and SciFi games.
It's established in ME1 that sending ships or troops into the terminus system means war with the batarians — that's why shepard is confirmed as a spectre and sent after Saren. The alliance response to colony disappearances in the terminus systems is to beef up colony defenses — that's why ashley is there with the big guns for the colony defense mission. The guns aren't fully automated which is why shepard has to fight his way through the colony, push a button, then defend the button while the guns target the Collector cruiser. (It gives shepard something to do). And that's the end of the colony disappearances, btw.
wrt to Cerberus, the ME1 lore hints that they are really a deniable ops group with support from the highest levels of alliance government. When they get caught, the legend is in place, "rogue", despite having plenty of money, resources, and their goals are always to make the alliance more powerful than competing governments. If you watch throughout ME2, the people who make a big deal about Cerberus are political outsiders — the government types couldn't care less.
Established is a bit strong: Council uses the risk of war as an excuse not to commit military strength to the cause of a distrusted non-Council species. Humanity had already engaged in fleet actions in those parts without it leading to open warfare, and since the human colonies near the Terminus Systems are constantly being raided by Batarian-backed pirates and slavers, they already have garrisons and defenses. Or did, in ME.
In ME2 Anderson, as high a government type as they get, tells you Alliance suspects Cerberus might be behind the colony disappearances. Both Council and Alliance consider it a terrorist organization. (Of course that doesn't mean you can't park a Cerberus ship on Citadel and waltz right through customs in Cerberus uniforms.)
I thought I was the only one who saw. I liked Mass Effect for the simple reason that it was *tidy*. The universe is coherent, well thought out, and never violates its own rules, which makes it very believeable. Sure, the combat was repetitive, the writing good at times, cringeworthy at others, but all said, it was a very solid sci-fi universe.
And then ME2 came out, and suddenly nothing made sense. Entire sections of universe are never heard from again, politics dont make sense, the Alliance is suddenly inept (despite the fact that they KILLED A REAPER), the council (WHO FOUGHT A REAPER FIRSTHAND) gives me the "Ah yes, 'Reapers'" runaround, and the whole universe had rearmed, in 2 years. Don't even get me started on the heel/face turn of Cerberus.
It's nice to know it wasn't just me who liked that about ME.
Mass Effect 1, a CRPG?
Is that a joke?
Surely, that's a joke.
If Mass Effect 1 wasn't a CRPG, then what is? I've seen a whole bunch of these snooty "CRPG LOL" comments, and they don't make any sense to me.
What's a CRPG? A computer RPG, you doofus.
It was released on a computer, by your definition, doesn't that make it a Computer RPG?
Or is your post and point not worth arguing with?
Well done I think this sums up my views nicely.
I really enjoyed ME and despite its flaws played it through twice pretty much back to back and was looking forward to part 2 so I could get more of the same.
when ME2 came out I installed it played for maybe 2 hours and stopped for a couple of days trying to work out why I didn't like it. Then I went back and had more or less the exact same thoughts you describe here. By the time I met up with Garrus I knew I didn't enjoy the gameplay (combat mechanics were not to my taste at all) and the story was a twisted mess that I didn't care about.
All in all my desire to experiacne ME ended a (probably) tiny way in to ME2 and theres is simply no going back. I doubt I will even play ME3 even if EA give it to me free and a new computer to play it on and Bioware took a masive hit in my repsect tables for can do almost no wrong down to meh there new game will probably be technically aceptable but not for me, and thats a big dip. for a more captialist (EA this is for you) ME2 took me from 'I will buy biowares games because they are bioware and will likely pay a good amount for them' to 'I will not buy a game by bioware until I have a really good reason to and even then not at full price'. Good job
Yeah, ME2 and DA2 dropped Bioware from my eagerly-anticipate-their-next-game list, too.
As others have said, when I played ME2, I did not have the entire goddamn rapsheet on Cerebus memorized, and I had exhausted the sidequests in the original. Cerebus merited, what, a sidequest or two in that game? I vaguely remembered them. So the writers were absolutely correct that they could get away with that plot twist. For what it's worth, part 3 makes it clear you were part of a cell(i.e. you don't know what everyone else is up to), whose members were recruited specifically to put forward a sympathetic face to the hero. It also makes abundantly clear that Cerebus sucks big time. As for the colonies, I don't even remember that much, just that they were going after small fry, the fleet wasn't able to cover everyone, colonies were in violation of treaties, blah blah. Anything with Interstellar travel is silly anyways(it shouldn't be called the science fiction/fantasy genre, just the 'fantasy genre', period), I think they covered their asses sufficiently as far as internal logic goes.
Either way, Cerberus being re-portrayed as dicks in the third game still doesn't account for why Shepard would work for them, not after being exposed to all their prior actions when s/he was a soldier.
"Well, yeah, I heard they'd killed a bunch of people and will shoot anyone who's not human, and do some ethically unsound science stuff, but the guy smoking a cigar in a pure oxygen environment seems nice, so let's work with 'em!"
Dear Walker,
While making for an interesting read, I cannot but disagree with your many of of your arguments. The things that made ME1 a 'CRPG' were the things that were the most poorly executed. Far too many (unbalanced) armors, weapons and mods, further hampered by a worthless inventory. ME2 and especially ME3 show that cutting down on the number of items and simplifying the inventory works much more intuitive. Vast (and empty) hubs that result in you hopping from signpost to signpost. The worlds of ME and ME3 feel much more real, more lively. A lot of useless biotic powers. Where I rarely touch the biotics in ME1, in ME3 I'm constantly pausing my game, looking at the tactical situation and deciding which tactic I'll use now.
I sort of agree with your gripes about the thermal clips but to me this is overlookable. That Shepard doesn't comment on the changed system takes me out of the universe far less compared to his/her tone during the exposition (what are Krogans, etc.) dialogue in the early part of the game. He sounds as unaware as a sixth-grader during these conversations.
I definately don't agree with you on Cerberus. One, the whole ME1 Cerberus is explained in four poorly written and designed side missions. They can retcon stuff that took place on the Generic Planets all they want. They could've come up with a completely new organisation but then you'd have two organisations that are mostly the same.
And the absent ability for Shepard to go completely berserk when he/she sees the first Cerberus employee in ME2 can be easily reasoned away by the fact that the facility was under attack and he/she needed their help to get out and when he/she later learned of their objective he/she decided to play along, to help humanity and undermine Cerberus from within. That is if you constantly bash Cerberus in dialogue. I've played a xenophobic Shephard in ME1 once and it'd make sense to like Cerberus over the the Alliance sell-outs.
As mentioned by someone else, the Fifth Fleet can't just barge into the Terminus Systems because that would mean war. Perhaps they went a bit overboard with the number of abductions but that could've been Illusive Man propaganda.
The Alliance personel gone Cerberus makes sense when you take into account what the asari Consort said about Shephard, that his/her strength draws people toward him/her and makes them follow without question. Chakwas and Joker didn't see Cerberus is calling but Shepard is calling.
Garrus and Liara's evolutions feel very natural to me. ME1's quest and Shephard's death toughened them up. And the evolution makes sense in the light of ME3's war, as it innocence is the first casualty of war.
Thank you for this (even if you didn't even tap on the idiocy of the main plot aside from Thou-Must-Join-The-Terrorists-Because-Thou-Must, or how ME2 didn't advance the plot from ME). After playing the ME3 demo I can assure you all this nonsense it still there: nothing the Systems Alliance does nor anything its officials say makes any sense (and this is all from just the first ten minutes of the game!). It's very sad how they destroyed the quite good ME universe.
It's weird about the terrorist thing: there's simply no reason given for Shepard hanging around with Cerberus. Nada. Zilch. Zip. Not even a bad reason, like Cerberus implanting a bomb in Shep's noggin that could be remotely detonated should s/he go astray. Shep just says ok, like it perfectly normal to turn traitor. The relationship with Cerberus is hardly discussed at all. It's just a MacGuffin.
Shep's got the means (a ship and crew) and the opportunity (free agency across the universe, even back to Alliance HQ), to escape, but no. Then again, that would raise more questions and require decent writers, whose skill extends beyond "Make cut scene with Hollywood actor and fulfill the shattered dream of working in movies."
Exactly, there's no reason nor choice. And the ending exemplifies that: the OBVIOUS third option should have been to give the Collectors ship to the Alliance. It's like the plot writers from ME1 were replaced with kids that just accepted stuff off the first draft. In ME1 there was care to build a coherent universe and an innocent embracing of some silly but classic sci-fi tropes (like blue space babes, proud warrior race, the "Federation"…) and making them work into a "serious" framework.
And the sad part is that it wasn't even that difficult to change this! I mean if you want to go Cerberus that's fine, but adding the option to return to the Alliance should have been there. They didn't even need to change the plot, it would have been the same but instead of answering to IllusiveMan you would have been answering to the Admiral, and he would be giving you more or less the same missions. It was just adding the dialog for Anderson and coding some scripts, it's not like they couldn't spare a few hundred-thousands in cash to accomplish that.
My Shepard was a lone survivor, he hated Cerberus. Working with some Cerberus crewmembers if they are useful? Yeah. But joining? Answering directly? Wearing their uniform? No way, Jose. I even got chewed by people (like the survivor from ME1 or that guy that also survived Akuze) and there was no option to even explain shat to them (how can you explain the unexplainable, anyway? After all they were acting coherently, while Shepard wasn't).
Some people say: the "Al-Qaeda comparison is wrong". They are missing the point, because in ME1 they were Al-Qaeda! They were evil terrorists that didn't want the Alliance to prosper and were ready to sabotage and kill any and all Alliance personnel, all the while being run by mad scientists. It was only in ME2 they were retconned into "we are just kinda human supremacists but we are rather nice and share the same goals with the Alliance".
Others say: "Meh, I didn't even register there was some Cerberus organization after finishing ME1, so whatever". That's really asinine. Bioware DID know what Cerberus was, and they are all on how awesome it is to have this lore and universe and how you can import ME1 events. So you can't forgive this simply because you missed those missions or forgot about them. I mean, next time they will do it with some plot threads that you DID notice and care about.
Aye. And it's not like Bioware didn't have any warning: they stated from the get-go it was going to be a trilogy. So they should've plotted the whole thing out in advanced. Nope. Cerberus are old mates of your.
Dunno how that slipped by anyone in the first game – perhaps you were too busy razing their outposts like the criminals are- er, were, as the you were ordered, and forgot about that time you and Illusive, man, got wrecked in that bar on Tau Ceti and picked up those space sluts, and he had to explain to the space-cab driver you weren't space-drunk enough to space-vomit all of the space-upholstery of his space-rear seat?
I thought Cerberus were just flavour. A bit of scene-building. Expand the universe – no, not all of humanity is now one homogenous mass that shares identical goals (side note: was it just me, or were there way fewer human characters from outside North America in the second game?) In that respect, that was a good bit of story telling, a nice mature touch. Nope! Surprise! THEY'RE JUST SLIGHTLY MISUNDERSTOOD! It's the same casual regard that the Alliance has for terrorist traitors, I suppose.
Glad you liked it. This wasn't a critique of ME2's plot, specifically: I stopped caring before I got very far along. Were I to write a proper review I would mention the way the plot of ME2 doesn't organically follow from ME, how it isn't in any real sense a middle part of a trilogy and how Bioware could do as many similar monster-of-the-week episodes as they wanted, how the inconstancies make it feel like ME universe was hammered to accommodate somebody's cool idea for a story from an unrelated universe.
[…] Something has happened here that I think will effect the rest of the video game industry. It is a loss of trust. Well founded and once well-kept trust. There were plenty of signs that things could/were bad, but the majority of these issues were ignored because of trust. “You may not like x, but surely you’ll get a good y, right? You remember how much you liked y!”. […]
Boy, if you couldn't deal with the WSoD for ME2, then *do not* play through the ending to ME3. Just don't. The rest of ME3 is actually a bit better than ME2 in terms of matching the cannon from ME1; at least Cerberus is the bad guys again, and no one is trying to tell you that the Reapers are imaginary (it's hard to ignore a full frontal assault by an enemy that's clearly beating your pants off).
Personally, one of the things that always struck me as odd about all the Mass Effect games (including ME1) was how the Codex had a really well thought-out, fairly hard-scifi (with the addition of Handwavium, known in universe as Element Zero). Stuff like kinetic anti-ship weapons, heat dissipation being a problem for starships; heck, they even have droplet radiators! Granted, they never deal with the "FTL violates causality" issue, but still, it's pretty coherent as such things go (see http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/spacewarintro.ph….
It's just too bad that no one else who made the game actually took the time to read the codex. Even in ME1, there are serious problems with writers ignoring the established laws of physics. The Normandy kills Sovreign? Really? I thought that the power of a ships guns was determined by it's length (longer axial railgun = more kinetic energy), and the Normandy is a tiny little scout frigate. But it's more dramatic to have Normandy deliver the killing blow, and Plot beats Physics.
Well, it's not like the kinda of guys who can put together a scientific document would know much about sex, which Bioware considers more important to write about.
Yeah, it's not like ME didn't require WSoD, it had its rough patches too. It just didn't ask me to swallow nearly as much stupidity as ME2, and provided better incentives to do so.
I just read the plot synopsis for ME3, and I'm now less likely to ever play it. The very fact that I read it when I usually don't like to be spoiled indicates how little I care anymore.
Why is an image of the Contra 3 level 3 boss on this article's presentation?
To make you come here, and post that comment? Or is it a subtle reference to the fact that ME3 went a bit Dudebros or that ME3 is like contra 3?
You would have to ask Walker.
I'm insulted that you would make any sort of connection between ME3 and the masterpiece Contra 3. They're nothing in common! NOTHING!!! Now let me cry in the corner and leave me alone!
but as far a to making come here with the image, that worked.
Well, not really wanting to spoil anything here but… let's just say the final boss of Mass Effect 2 was a bit ill-advised.
I can fully imagine the scene at EA HQ:
Slick EA Prick: "Wow, that Mass Effect thing really took off. Knew it would."
Guy From Bioware: "Er, you said that no one expects non-fantasy RPGs and thus it's an unknown quantity and has 'no pre-proven guarantee in our core market demographics, and will not provide sufficient key outcomes for our investors."
SEAP: "Like I said: knew it'd work."
Guy: "Um…"
SEAP: "KNEW. IT. WOULD. WORK. But, y'see, Bob-"
Guy: "My name is Mike-"
SEAP: See? There you go again, Bob – it's things like that, your lack of teampersonship, and your constant cynicism and lack of faith in our IP that led me, the board, and a team of heartless marketing guys and soulless, dead-eyed accountants to seek outside assistance in the continuation of one of EA's core franchises. We're bringing someone else in. To write the next two."
Guy: "Wait – what? I wrote it! I laid out the universe, the plot, the backstory, the-"
SEAP: "Makin' it real hard to trust you, lack of vision like that, Bob. No vision."
Guy: "I HAVE a vision! For all three!"
SEAP: "Yeeeeeup, that's the thing. Your first game was a fluke, but it was successful. And, naturally, I want to be part of that success – and hey, I know you want me to be part of that success, even though I wasn't quite there the first time-"
Guy: "I have an email saying you wanted nothing to do with ME1, that it was doomed to fail!"
SEAP: "-and now, I know – because you're a team player, Bob – you want to share that success with your colleagues. Including Lynne."
Guy: "Who the fuck is Lynne?"
Lynne: "'Lynne' is what the stupid SOCIETY and GOVERNMENT call me, because they JUDGE the true name I've chosen for myself – LYNDARNIA'RAK-CHA!"
SEAP: "This is Lynne. One of the dudes in accounting has an acount on fanfiction.net, and pointed out that Lynne here has the top five Star Trek fan fiction slash erotica scripts on fanfiction.net. So, yeah, I'd say she's pretty creative. And cheap."
Lynne: "I'm just happy to be published! Anywhere!"
SEAP: "We're still cool on the $11 an hour, right, Lynne? Anyway, she's got some great ideas. Look at her – she's died her hair blue! She's gotta be creative!"
Lynne: "I have several unique ideas. I would think Captain Kirk could be anally raped by a snarling tentacle beast and at first he, like, hates it, but then really gets into it, and eventually, like, he realises he totally loves it, and wants to marry the tentacle beast, and society's all like 'No!' and he's like 'Yeah!' and-"
SEAP: "Ok, Lynne, maybe save that for the DLC. See, that's what the kids want!"
Guy: "First of all: There's no Captain Kirk. Second of all: WHAT THE FUCK?"
SEAP: "See? See? You've got a dialogue going – great! I'm sure you'll be happy working under her."
Guy: "What- UNDER HER?"
SEAP: "Yeah, we thought you need some more guidance. Not literally, of course – hah, you old dog – because HR would tear you a new snarling tentacle beast hole and secondly, she's currently married in World of Warcraft to a guy who's an eightieth level Paladin."
Guy: "Really?"
Lynne: "Freaky interspecies is totally hot. Not that stupid science crap, UGH! My genitals are liquefying as we speak."
SEAP: "Ok, Lynne, well, you can use my private washroom to go take care of that. See, the kids are gonna eat this up."
Guy: "Mother of god. I…I…don't think I want to live anymore."
SEAP: "Well, don't kill yourself till fourth quarter, 2015. That's when your contract's up."
*a loud moan emanates from the washroom*
SEAP: "And give Lynne a chance. Shake her hand when she c comes back."
Beautiful.
Unsettling.
But probably true, although I don't really think the guy from Bioware would've put up that much of a defence.
I'll clarify, that piece made me a little uncomfortable because of this:
http://kotaku.com/5887064/biowares-boss-defends-h…
It is hard to find that comment funny when viewed from that perspective
Well, that's sad, but nothing to do with me. You can't lump all critics of Bioware in with the trolls.
Sorry, didn't mean to imply that you had a hand in it, merely that the humour took on a much darker bent for me with the new writer being a woman and that being so close to some of the things that the real life Jennifer Hepler said (albeit distorted out of recognition).
Otherwise it might have given me a giggle.
Huh? What in that comment was in any way "close" to what Hepler said? It never occurred to me to connect the two.
Her comments about not being able to play games and that she struggled to play games unless they had an engaging story. From another person the engaging story could be warped to mean what was described in that comment. It is the first thing that occurred to me as I was reading it. Brain is wired funny I guess.
The reason I put a chick in that piece was because there were two dudes in it already (would've gotten confusing), and there's nothing wrong or unusual about females writers in gaming (Rhianna Pratchett – Mirror's Edge FTW; *that's* how you write a game).
If it makes anyone feel any better, the EA Prick's a dude.
Badger, you're brains not wired wrong, but it does highlight why those trolls are arseholes: they clouds and crowds out legitimate, considered criticism (like this article) with crass sensationalism which media sites'll thrive on, and do more harm than good for their cause.
But it doesn't do anyone, male or female, any favours if you try to ameliorate discrimination against a gender with rank favouritism, either – ie, feeling that any criticism unrelated to gender is automatically sexist because the person criticised is female, drawing unrelated conclusions, doesn't help equality. In fact, it sets it back in making everyone think that women must be treated with kid gloves. It in itself is kind of sexist.
I suppose, in short, I'd like to say that gender is no barrier to crap writing ;).
Man, I am pleased that the people who have come over from RPS to chat with us are the good people! (Okay, so they mostly are good people anyway, but as with any big site there are a bunch of dicks too. ;)
hehehe, fair points one and all. I think it was not so much the content that made me cringe (at another point I might not have drawn any comparison) but just happened at the wrong time. Thanks for taking the time to respond to the comments and make a reasoned response. It is refreshing to see someone bother.
In gameplay terms it was fun enough, but in every other conceivable way it was really, really ridiculous.
It would've been more convincing if Unicron had shown up. Or the original Galactus.
[…] way here via RPS and chose to stick around (or who is just catching up on the Sunday Papers now). Walker’s Mass Effect 3 article is already our most popular piece in Arcadian Rhythms history and it’s all thanks to you; […]
[…] https://www.arcadianrhythms.com/2012/03/why-im-not-interested-in-mass-effect-3-2/ […]