Just finished my first playthrough and holy christ it was good. Best ending of a game I've ever seen, and I think I understand why.
Partly it's the characters--a lot of them have become very fleshed-out here, like Garrus and Tali, Joker, Chakwas, etc. Shepard still has no real personality but the crew comes off as very human. I don't think I've invested as much in characters as some of the ones in ME2. But this is all weirdly compounded by one thing.
Character deaths
When I first heard about this, and all the way up to the ending, I wasn't sure I really liked it. It seemed like a really potentially gloomy way to end a game (as well as frustrating my inner nerd who desperately wants to know "what REALLY, OFFICIALLY happened, CANONICALLY").
But when Shepard jumped across back into the Normandy and flew away I realized how much that dynamic changed how I experienced the ending. Instead of the disconnected, fatalistic "some of these characters might probably die but I can't do anything about it so I'll just focus on beating this level" attitude you necessarily take with a more scripted game, like Call of Duty, there was an anticipation and tension.
I was afraid to lose videogame characters.
Pretty weird, but the payoff is if you DO succeed in saving the characters (if not all of them, then the ones you particularly care about) the reward is that much more intense. I don't usually get an adrenaline rush just by watching an ending cutscene, but I did.
This is hard for me to articulate, but the idea that you don't just have to win the game, but win it to your own satisfaction is both bizarre and pretty incredible. Although Bioware has been criticized for making games too much like movies, they've tapped into a potential for games here that is like nothing else. If this isn't the future of games, it should be.
Conversation
As I said, the characters come off as very human (even, or maybe even especially the alien ones). The writing is sharp, and most of the voice acting is excellent. In fact, the characters were so alive in ME2 that I think Bioware's traditional conversation mechanic (once lauded) is finally starting to fail it.
Such a simple interface no longer quite WORKS with characters this realistic. In real life, asking someone a personal question and then saying "I should go" immediately after they answer is, by turns, creepy, awkward, and maybe even offensive. I had to keep reminding myself that it was okay to do **** like that in Mass Effect 2 because they weren't real. But my social-interaction instincts were telling me not to offend people.
It works the other way, too--I was annoyed at the limited range of conversation Liara offered on Illium, given she practically worshipped Shepard in the first game. She did say "It's good to see you again" and I got the impression Bioware meant me to take that at face value, but I was like "ffs let me buy you lunch or something throw me a frickin bone here." Ultimately this encounter with a major character (unlike the very definitive and straightforward one with Ashley) came off as inarticulate and confusing.
To summarize, the character animation, writing, and voice acting have brought a degree of life to the characters that the crude conversation system no longer quite works with. That's a minor complaint, though, and I think it says more about the realization of the characters than it does about the competence of Bioware's coders.
Scanning
****ing scanning. I still can't decide whether I like it or hate it. In small doses it's pretty fun. I didn't bother to figure out how it worked until late in the game, so I ended up sitting around scanning planets for hours at a time so I could buy upgrades. Maybe it's more fun otherwise?
****ing scanning, man.
Other ****
Mass Effect 1 was awkward to play. I loved it for a lot of things--story, well-realized universe, hours of dialogue, etc. But for every great aspect there was something I hated--torturous elevator rides, giant maps that required you to spend 75% of gameplay time slowly jogging back and forth in them, hours of dialogue, etc. Mass Effect 2 goes above and beyond the call of duty, for the most part, in fixing these.
Yes, the thermal clips completely change the way combat is handled, for the better. No, it makes absolutely no sense compared with Mass Effect 1 (even the official explanation is pretty lame). It probably should have just been retconned as the way all the guns work. But it was a great improvement over the awkward heatsink system--I know it can be frustrating to run out of ammo, but reloading and tossing clips just felt way more badass, and helped pace the gunplay as well.
The worst holdover from ME1 is the way you end up running up and down the huge levels trying to find someone's lost cell phone or some ****. But thankfully that's been toned down. And the levels are way more alive with dialogue and nice visuals, so it's not quite as horrible an experience. At least, until the dialogue starts to loop.
Anyway
I give it a nine point something, or something
Very good game
How do I change this?
Originally Posted by FastGamerr
