As I mentioned in the first part of this brief retrospective, Mass Effect shouldn't even really qualify as the first game of a trilogy anymore, but rather the prologue to a great series. If it seems harsh, it is actually rare praise from where I'm standing; far too often I find games so ridiculously popular and yet so absolutely underwhelming that they make me pity the state of the industry and its audience (case in point, "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare", an average military shooter the aftermath of which tainted the last generation of gaming).
Bonus points if verbally abusing these games pisses off "the fans".
Mass Effect, the series, is the anomaly. The first game was a lore-wealthy, timid RPG/Shooter-hybrid that got too big for no good reason and I'm aware of the outrage over the third game (which I haven't played yet at the time of writing this), but "Mass Effect 2" is nothing short of a masterpiece. It's not just a game that improved on almost every aspect of its predecessor, it's a game that can stand on its own and do so gloriously, a sci-fi epic that offers countless hours of enjoyment and reminds one why video-games are a valid entertainment form worth defending to its most poisonous and ignorant detractors.
So where to start? Mass Effect 2 boots in the middle of the action, with a very satisfying and beautiful cinematic opening; "cinematic" is not a guarantee of success and it's sometimes a distraction (like Mass Effect knows very well), but the game instantly involves the player, cutting out the sight-seeing approach that burdened the first game.
The opening slaughters everything familiar from the first game; the Normandy blows up, companions are lost or reassigned and Shepard herself gets killed. Two years later, she's resurrected by the radical organization for human interests, Cerberus and promptly thrown back in action.
I imported my save from Mass Effect, which meant same face, but different skill-set. I decided that after being blown up and abandoned by the military Alliance, my Shepard should leave all the tech skills she picked up while an orphan on the streets of Earth and instead focus on the stealth and marksmanship that helped her survive on Akuze all those years ago.
What? I like role-playing!
One of the major things that dragged the first game down was that the gameplay was a mixed back. Mass Effect 2 realizes that despite the best of intentions and hard work, merging pure RPG with shooters doesn't work all that well when the design is split in the middle to accommodate both styles. The firefights are far more engaging this time around, skills remain and can make the difference between life and death and upgrades to armour, weapons and the Normandy itself are prominent.
Cover-based-shooting is the name of the game; not exactly an original thought for a game that spawned in the same generation as Gears of War, but definitely one that pays off in the end. Switching between weapons depending on enemies and assigning skills on a "paper-rock-scissors" fashion works very well.
Even the mini-games have been improved. One of the most baffling decisions in the first game was have a single Frogger-style mini-game for hacking, bypassing locks etc. Mass Effect 2 remains true to the spirit, but changes the form. The hacking mini-game of matching code segments is infinitely more interesting, as is matching nodes to unlock doors. Both are mind exercises, one of observation and one of memory and both are far more interesting to do than fucking about with a jittery mouse cursor.
I found the changes in space exploration more than welcome as well. No more unstable, hard to navigate Mako dropping on samey deserted space rocks for questionable rewards; having the Normandy fly around the mini-map for resources essential for upgrades and occasionally running into a side-quest is less of a painstaking task and encouraged me to explore the game's content.
Another interesting change was the way inventory is handled. The first game approached inventory in the traditional RPG fashion: talk to vendors and buy better material. The problem was that not only were you bound to find better equipment during your missions instead of buying it for ridiculous amounts of credits, but also that reviewing the available weapons and armour in your possession or in stores was an exercise in patience.
Mass Effect 2 cuts out the middle man; buy upgrades from stores or find them in missions, gather the resources and then have your ship-mates apply them. Easier to do, easier to review, easier to equip your preferred party without much micromanagement faffing about.
In terms of story and characters, I found almost everything is a step-up as well. The narrative is paced better, it expands on its lore, allows for more diverse environments and their native lifeforms and the cast of characters is greatly expanded.
Not counting DLC (which I didn't play), Shepard can have up to 10 companions on the ship and all of them are far more interesting characters than almost everyone in the first game-- that's not even counting non-essential secondary characters, like the Illusive Man, Joker, the AI EDI and random encounters while on missions.
The party characters were a major beef of mine with the original game, mainly because my point of reference for a good RPG in this day and age is interesting party members that interact well with the player character. Dragon Age Origins is my go-to title for this and now Mass Effect 2 is up there as well. It bothered me in the ME1 that interacting with most of Normandy's crew served as exposition for their respective races (like Tali and Wrex, who were likeable, but got very little development). Even characters that I found originally stock and underwhelming in the second game turned out to be hidden gems (like the complex and extremely endearing Mordin Solus).
There are many characters in Mass Effect 2 that are literally more than meets the eye, coming off stereotypical and cartoony at first, until they provide a line of dialogue or an emotional response (usually relayed via their respective "loyalty" quest missions) and all of a sudden, everyone's your favourite.
This is a major accomplishment, not just because it makes the journey more enjoyable, but also because the ending of Mass Effect 2 features a suicide mission; which, depending on choices made throughout the game, can cost anywhere from one party member to all of them and even Shepard. Yes, fuck up too much and everyone, including Shepard, dies.
I ended up losing Dr. Solus and half the crew (Kelly Chambers included) and believe me, it hurt. This is in stark contrast to the hasty and borderline senseless sacrifice of Kaiden or Ashley in the first game's mid-point on Virmire, when the Reapers are introduced.
For some reason, I absolutely adore the visuals of the game. The first game looked good as well, but character models animated a bit stiff and looked just a little bit off. Mass Effect 2 is a four-year-old game, but I'd take it over a lot more graphically demanding games of today. Facial expressions are still stiff at times, but the game is colourful enough, characters animate very well and the engine's capabilities of handling heavy action sequences and special-effect-heavy situations is impressive. It's not the technical mastery, but rather the attention to detail that makes the world of Mass Effect seem like a living, breathing universe that can immerse the player.
The sound is top-notch as well. The acting is among the best I've witnessed in a game; I thought Jennifer Hale as Shepard was good in the first game, but it turns out she was merely testing the waters. She really grows into the character in this installment, selling every aspect (Paragon and especially Renegade) with ease. If there has ever been an argument (a bad one, at that) about male players not being able to identify with a female protagonist, Hale's Shepard is the deafening response.
Lest I forget, the soundtrack quickly became one of my favourites, up there with the likes of The Elder Scrolls and Metal Gear Solid ; some music is recycled from the first game, but what isn't is better, fitting to each situation and working perfectly with the actors and the writing. The final mission's "theme" (Suicide Mission) is one I've listened to about a hundred times since finishing the game, partly because it's great on its own and party because it reminds me a bit of Doctor Who's "The Majestic Tale of a Madman In A Box".
I said in opening this piece that "Mass Effect 2" is a masterpiece and I will staunchly defend that statement as it's one I haven't made lightly; however, that statement in no way means that I consider it a flawless game. Some of the strengths of the first game I find missing in this installment, while a lot of the improvements themselves came with their downsides.
Refining the gameplay mechanics and focusing on a shooter core with RPG elements was ultimately a good idea, but depth had to be sacrificed to achieve combat flow. I rarely used more than three or four skills regularly, while passing orders on to my squad members seemed even less necessary than before. As a Marksman, my Shepard had a nice tactical cloak ability, that I only ended up using to remove myself from open fire in near-death situations.
This was a pity, because the tactical cloak is a great ability for flanking enemies and delivering critical strikes on bosses. The game never discouraged me from doing any of that, but firefights got so heavy and automated, downright basic in fact, that I never needed to "think outside the box" so to speak. Even the final boss, an armoured enemy that my sniper rifle + tactical cloak gained significant bonus against I took out with a pistol behind cover.
I was also unimpressed with the enemies. No matter what race or rank they are, they use the same tactics and come equipped the same way; some have regenerating health, some are biotics, some shielded, some armoured and some melee (especially those annoying little Husk fuckers that swarm around you). It's a long game (clocked around 26 hours with little exploration and non-essential questing) and from some point on, the enemies started feeling like interchangeable targets for practice. There's so little variety and so many firefights that I admit past the mid-point combat got just a little repetitive.
This is one of the two reasons I didn't do much in terms of non-essential questing. The other is that while I prefer the new space exploration interface to the first game's, aimless exploration is still not an attractive concept. Unlike sandbox games and open-world RPGs, there is no reward in exploration itself as it's basically clicking around on a map.
The last issue I have with the game is that while I enjoyed the writing more, mainly dialogue and characters, the main plot is still a bit on the weak side. The structural problems are eerily similar to those of the first Mass Effect; once again there is no single clear antagonist, except some dude named Harbinger that's never introduced and barely shown until the end of the game. Shepard and her crew are, once again, up against an undetermined evil that works once again for an even bigger evil; the Reapers.
The choice to shake up the entire foundation set in the first game is an odd one as well; while sound in its reasoning, it comes off like a desperate attempt to rewrite the ending of ME1, because they didn't know they would do another at the time and hadn't planned ahead.
There is not much happening in the story itself either; outside of the great introduction and the masterful ending, nothing of note happens in the middle outside the party member quests. Shepard travels to many planets and engages in many different societies during her mission, but few get fleshed out. The lore is expanded, but there are no moments of grandeur like navigating around Ilios from the first game.
This was the point that the original was saved thanks to the Protheans and the twist about Reaper technology. Unfortunately, Mass Effect 2 doesn't even feature that much. Cerberus dominates the narrative in thematic terms and sadly, despite their morally questionable methods, the focus on humanity's perseverance is far too one-sided to resonate. There is a potential villain in the face of the Illusive Man, but outside of setting the character up for the sequel, Shepard never actively disobeys an order and even if she protests to his requests, ultimately she treats him like the boss-- which in the context of the narrative also means identifying him as a good guy.
All in all, if Mass Effect was written as a trilogy from the get-go, it's obvious that the second installment is the middle of the story and thus impossible to make a point on its own.
But here's the odd thing; it's also a game that can stand on its own. The plot is weak, but there's little focus on it; the entire story regarding the Collectors feels like killing time, hunting for a MacGuffin of sorts in the face of an entire species. The characters and the dialogue are what steal the show and because of the game's intro setting the stage anew and its ending likely resulting in the protagonist's death, it's a story and a game that can be self-contained, even if just barely, without a trilogy backing them up.
So, ironically, the plot being focused around Cerberus and human interests helps in that regard, as it cuts out a lot of baggage and streamlines the experience. It's a double-edged knife, sacrificing the majestic space opera aspect in favour of a focused experience reliant on the characters.
This is where I have to go back on calling ME1 a "prologue". As I have no knowledge of the third game at the moment, cutting some stuff from the first game and including them in ME2 would produce the defining Mass Effect game. Reducing the first game on its essential lore and necessary missions would easily serve as the first act of what is now called ME2 (not much unlike the Tanker Chapters or Virtuous Mission in Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3 respectively) and would result in the ultimate Mass Effect experience.
Having said that, Mass Effect 2 is one of the most enjoyable games I've played, not without its flaws, but not without its meaning either; a nearly-complete experience that makes me overjoyed as a gamer and one that will make me soon revisit not just this installment, but the series in general as well.
Next time, we take a deep breath and swim underneath the tidal wave that is Mass Effect 3, the latest installment in the series, the finale to the Shepard trilogy; one of the most anticipated titles of the last generation and one that raised massive controversy that got its very developers go back to the drawing board and redo the ending AFTER the game was released.
Bonus points if verbally abusing these games pisses off "the fans".
Mass Effect, the series, is the anomaly. The first game was a lore-wealthy, timid RPG/Shooter-hybrid that got too big for no good reason and I'm aware of the outrage over the third game (which I haven't played yet at the time of writing this), but "Mass Effect 2" is nothing short of a masterpiece. It's not just a game that improved on almost every aspect of its predecessor, it's a game that can stand on its own and do so gloriously, a sci-fi epic that offers countless hours of enjoyment and reminds one why video-games are a valid entertainment form worth defending to its most poisonous and ignorant detractors.
So where to start? Mass Effect 2 boots in the middle of the action, with a very satisfying and beautiful cinematic opening; "cinematic" is not a guarantee of success and it's sometimes a distraction (like Mass Effect knows very well), but the game instantly involves the player, cutting out the sight-seeing approach that burdened the first game.
The opening slaughters everything familiar from the first game; the Normandy blows up, companions are lost or reassigned and Shepard herself gets killed. Two years later, she's resurrected by the radical organization for human interests, Cerberus and promptly thrown back in action.
I imported my save from Mass Effect, which meant same face, but different skill-set. I decided that after being blown up and abandoned by the military Alliance, my Shepard should leave all the tech skills she picked up while an orphan on the streets of Earth and instead focus on the stealth and marksmanship that helped her survive on Akuze all those years ago.
What? I like role-playing!
 |
| Amelia Shepard is back in action. The face import from ME1 is actually very accurate. |
One of the major things that dragged the first game down was that the gameplay was a mixed back. Mass Effect 2 realizes that despite the best of intentions and hard work, merging pure RPG with shooters doesn't work all that well when the design is split in the middle to accommodate both styles. The firefights are far more engaging this time around, skills remain and can make the difference between life and death and upgrades to armour, weapons and the Normandy itself are prominent.
Cover-based-shooting is the name of the game; not exactly an original thought for a game that spawned in the same generation as Gears of War, but definitely one that pays off in the end. Switching between weapons depending on enemies and assigning skills on a "paper-rock-scissors" fashion works very well.
Even the mini-games have been improved. One of the most baffling decisions in the first game was have a single Frogger-style mini-game for hacking, bypassing locks etc. Mass Effect 2 remains true to the spirit, but changes the form. The hacking mini-game of matching code segments is infinitely more interesting, as is matching nodes to unlock doors. Both are mind exercises, one of observation and one of memory and both are far more interesting to do than fucking about with a jittery mouse cursor.
I found the changes in space exploration more than welcome as well. No more unstable, hard to navigate Mako dropping on samey deserted space rocks for questionable rewards; having the Normandy fly around the mini-map for resources essential for upgrades and occasionally running into a side-quest is less of a painstaking task and encouraged me to explore the game's content.
 |
| Need better guns and armour? Mine planets for resources. |
Another interesting change was the way inventory is handled. The first game approached inventory in the traditional RPG fashion: talk to vendors and buy better material. The problem was that not only were you bound to find better equipment during your missions instead of buying it for ridiculous amounts of credits, but also that reviewing the available weapons and armour in your possession or in stores was an exercise in patience.
Mass Effect 2 cuts out the middle man; buy upgrades from stores or find them in missions, gather the resources and then have your ship-mates apply them. Easier to do, easier to review, easier to equip your preferred party without much micromanagement faffing about.
In terms of story and characters, I found almost everything is a step-up as well. The narrative is paced better, it expands on its lore, allows for more diverse environments and their native lifeforms and the cast of characters is greatly expanded.
Not counting DLC (which I didn't play), Shepard can have up to 10 companions on the ship and all of them are far more interesting characters than almost everyone in the first game-- that's not even counting non-essential secondary characters, like the Illusive Man, Joker, the AI EDI and random encounters while on missions.
The party characters were a major beef of mine with the original game, mainly because my point of reference for a good RPG in this day and age is interesting party members that interact well with the player character. Dragon Age Origins is my go-to title for this and now Mass Effect 2 is up there as well. It bothered me in the ME1 that interacting with most of Normandy's crew served as exposition for their respective races (like Tali and Wrex, who were likeable, but got very little development). Even characters that I found originally stock and underwhelming in the second game turned out to be hidden gems (like the complex and extremely endearing Mordin Solus).
 |
| I see you're exploring space! Would you like help? |
There are many characters in Mass Effect 2 that are literally more than meets the eye, coming off stereotypical and cartoony at first, until they provide a line of dialogue or an emotional response (usually relayed via their respective "loyalty" quest missions) and all of a sudden, everyone's your favourite.
This is a major accomplishment, not just because it makes the journey more enjoyable, but also because the ending of Mass Effect 2 features a suicide mission; which, depending on choices made throughout the game, can cost anywhere from one party member to all of them and even Shepard. Yes, fuck up too much and everyone, including Shepard, dies.
I ended up losing Dr. Solus and half the crew (Kelly Chambers included) and believe me, it hurt. This is in stark contrast to the hasty and borderline senseless sacrifice of Kaiden or Ashley in the first game's mid-point on Virmire, when the Reapers are introduced.
For some reason, I absolutely adore the visuals of the game. The first game looked good as well, but character models animated a bit stiff and looked just a little bit off. Mass Effect 2 is a four-year-old game, but I'd take it over a lot more graphically demanding games of today. Facial expressions are still stiff at times, but the game is colourful enough, characters animate very well and the engine's capabilities of handling heavy action sequences and special-effect-heavy situations is impressive. It's not the technical mastery, but rather the attention to detail that makes the world of Mass Effect seem like a living, breathing universe that can immerse the player.
The sound is top-notch as well. The acting is among the best I've witnessed in a game; I thought Jennifer Hale as Shepard was good in the first game, but it turns out she was merely testing the waters. She really grows into the character in this installment, selling every aspect (Paragon and especially Renegade) with ease. If there has ever been an argument (a bad one, at that) about male players not being able to identify with a female protagonist, Hale's Shepard is the deafening response.
Lest I forget, the soundtrack quickly became one of my favourites, up there with the likes of The Elder Scrolls and Metal Gear Solid ; some music is recycled from the first game, but what isn't is better, fitting to each situation and working perfectly with the actors and the writing. The final mission's "theme" (Suicide Mission) is one I've listened to about a hundred times since finishing the game, partly because it's great on its own and party because it reminds me a bit of Doctor Who's "The Majestic Tale of a Madman In A Box".
I said in opening this piece that "Mass Effect 2" is a masterpiece and I will staunchly defend that statement as it's one I haven't made lightly; however, that statement in no way means that I consider it a flawless game. Some of the strengths of the first game I find missing in this installment, while a lot of the improvements themselves came with their downsides.
Refining the gameplay mechanics and focusing on a shooter core with RPG elements was ultimately a good idea, but depth had to be sacrificed to achieve combat flow. I rarely used more than three or four skills regularly, while passing orders on to my squad members seemed even less necessary than before. As a Marksman, my Shepard had a nice tactical cloak ability, that I only ended up using to remove myself from open fire in near-death situations.
 |
| Great final act opening. Major "Serenity" flashbacks. Dammit Wash! |
This was a pity, because the tactical cloak is a great ability for flanking enemies and delivering critical strikes on bosses. The game never discouraged me from doing any of that, but firefights got so heavy and automated, downright basic in fact, that I never needed to "think outside the box" so to speak. Even the final boss, an armoured enemy that my sniper rifle + tactical cloak gained significant bonus against I took out with a pistol behind cover.
I was also unimpressed with the enemies. No matter what race or rank they are, they use the same tactics and come equipped the same way; some have regenerating health, some are biotics, some shielded, some armoured and some melee (especially those annoying little Husk fuckers that swarm around you). It's a long game (clocked around 26 hours with little exploration and non-essential questing) and from some point on, the enemies started feeling like interchangeable targets for practice. There's so little variety and so many firefights that I admit past the mid-point combat got just a little repetitive.
This is one of the two reasons I didn't do much in terms of non-essential questing. The other is that while I prefer the new space exploration interface to the first game's, aimless exploration is still not an attractive concept. Unlike sandbox games and open-world RPGs, there is no reward in exploration itself as it's basically clicking around on a map.
The last issue I have with the game is that while I enjoyed the writing more, mainly dialogue and characters, the main plot is still a bit on the weak side. The structural problems are eerily similar to those of the first Mass Effect; once again there is no single clear antagonist, except some dude named Harbinger that's never introduced and barely shown until the end of the game. Shepard and her crew are, once again, up against an undetermined evil that works once again for an even bigger evil; the Reapers.
The choice to shake up the entire foundation set in the first game is an odd one as well; while sound in its reasoning, it comes off like a desperate attempt to rewrite the ending of ME1, because they didn't know they would do another at the time and hadn't planned ahead.
There is not much happening in the story itself either; outside of the great introduction and the masterful ending, nothing of note happens in the middle outside the party member quests. Shepard travels to many planets and engages in many different societies during her mission, but few get fleshed out. The lore is expanded, but there are no moments of grandeur like navigating around Ilios from the first game.
This was the point that the original was saved thanks to the Protheans and the twist about Reaper technology. Unfortunately, Mass Effect 2 doesn't even feature that much. Cerberus dominates the narrative in thematic terms and sadly, despite their morally questionable methods, the focus on humanity's perseverance is far too one-sided to resonate. There is a potential villain in the face of the Illusive Man, but outside of setting the character up for the sequel, Shepard never actively disobeys an order and even if she protests to his requests, ultimately she treats him like the boss-- which in the context of the narrative also means identifying him as a good guy.
All in all, if Mass Effect was written as a trilogy from the get-go, it's obvious that the second installment is the middle of the story and thus impossible to make a point on its own.
But here's the odd thing; it's also a game that can stand on its own. The plot is weak, but there's little focus on it; the entire story regarding the Collectors feels like killing time, hunting for a MacGuffin of sorts in the face of an entire species. The characters and the dialogue are what steal the show and because of the game's intro setting the stage anew and its ending likely resulting in the protagonist's death, it's a story and a game that can be self-contained, even if just barely, without a trilogy backing them up.
So, ironically, the plot being focused around Cerberus and human interests helps in that regard, as it cuts out a lot of baggage and streamlines the experience. It's a double-edged knife, sacrificing the majestic space opera aspect in favour of a focused experience reliant on the characters.
This is where I have to go back on calling ME1 a "prologue". As I have no knowledge of the third game at the moment, cutting some stuff from the first game and including them in ME2 would produce the defining Mass Effect game. Reducing the first game on its essential lore and necessary missions would easily serve as the first act of what is now called ME2 (not much unlike the Tanker Chapters or Virtuous Mission in Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3 respectively) and would result in the ultimate Mass Effect experience.
Having said that, Mass Effect 2 is one of the most enjoyable games I've played, not without its flaws, but not without its meaning either; a nearly-complete experience that makes me overjoyed as a gamer and one that will make me soon revisit not just this installment, but the series in general as well.
Next time, we take a deep breath and swim underneath the tidal wave that is Mass Effect 3, the latest installment in the series, the finale to the Shepard trilogy; one of the most anticipated titles of the last generation and one that raised massive controversy that got its very developers go back to the drawing board and redo the ending AFTER the game was released.
 |
| "The fuck you lookin' at?" Renegade +3 |
Mass Effect was never about the characters. It was about Shepard stopping the Reaper threat. Not sure what game you were playing. The ending does put an end to the Reaper threat. You just don't like that the game doesn't give you the option to end the game on your own terms, instead picking one of the options presented to you by the Catalyst.
ReplyDeleteIf you had it your way, you would destroy the Reapers, Shepard lives, and everything else goes back to normal. Lack of choice? Um, there wasn't going to be 16 ways to defeat the Reapers. There was 16 outcomes in the orignal game, perhaps not 16 buttons to push (only 3 major choices). That's where the illusion of choice comes in. Sad, it took you a better part of 3 games to realize that you were Bioware's puppet, and they were the ones pulling the strings and guiding your narrative the whole time. Which it was never really your story, and you never had any ownerhship of it in the first place. You could only pick and choose from the pre-selected options the game gives you. Don't like this option at the end? Tough. Have to deal the hand you've been dealt, even if it is a bad one.
You think you know how to write a better conclusion than a company with a long track record to prove it? Pure ego on your part. No one wants to listen to your input if you're going to put it like that.
It's not ego on my part to want enjoy the product I'm consuming, that's how these transactions work.
DeleteIt is also naive to cite that Mass Effect was never about the characters; all stories are about the characters that exist within them, otherwise they're not stories; they are textbooks.
Particularly in a role-playing game, the narrative is my own; the framework isn't. The story is crafted by the story-teller, but my character belongs to me. That's the point of such a game, be it table-top, pen and paper, or video-game.
Lastly, I had absolutely no desire to end the game on my own terms. My problem with the conclusion of the series was that it was anti-climactic. This isn't an issue of lack of choice. There could be only one, definitive ending to the story and it would be quite alright, if it felt satisfying in some way. The ending to Mass Effect 2 was satisfying.
Incidentally, I did not force anyone to listen to my input.