Mass Effect 2: 1/2 the management, twice the consequences
I'm going to blather about Mass Effect 2 - and i'm going to discuss gameplay elements and plot points, as well as strategery, so SPOILER WARNING- if you haven't played Mass Effect, or Mass Effect 2 and don't want to be spoiled - turn back here.
Mass Effect is a paradigm shift in video games - no, not video games - in interactive story telling. I say Mass Effect because it is now a two chapter Science Fiction Saga, with a looming third chapter that has incredible potential.
Mass Effect was a fairly by-the-numbers RPG, with a handful of shooter elements tossed in - you had to aim, you had to react (not turn based) - and most importantly, but not most apparently in chapter 1, you made choices - do i save this guy? do i pull the gun? do i keep those aliens alive? Who do I put on the council? Mass Effect had a nice fly, drive, fight rhythm, though the driving elements largely SUCKED - the environments were repetitive and the graphics fell down on occasion. Like most RPGs, it had a Shoot, Loot and Scoot system - and you spent a lot of time futzing with armor and gear and skills.
Mass Effect 2 did away with virtually all of that - gone is the Mako (YAY!), gone is inventory management (hmmm), gone is looting (boo!) - skill trees are flattened (but reprogrammable even late in the game). The lauded conversation wheel is preserved, and a tasty 'interrupt' feature is stuck in, allowing you to interrupt and redirect cut-scenes. This makes the game feel much faster - you spend a lot more time doing stuff than dinking around with stuff. Of my 70 hr dragon age playthrough, probably at least 1/3 was managing gear, people and loadouts.
This streamlined RPG is more shooter than before - MUCH more - and it is much better - and the 'normal' mode is far easier (indeed it might be a bit too easy) Instead of finding gear, you upgrade what you have. This is done by either collecting minerals from planet scans and probe drops, or by finding random boxes of precious metals (like you do, you know, randomly in the street or whatever...) Here's where consequences start to matter - upgrading your armor, weapons and ship are CRUCIAL to success - your team upgrades with you...along with other key elements.
So - to the story - you proceed along an elegant path - to 'reboot' the game you start the adventure by dying. your ship disintegrates around you and your beloved comrades flee - you die. Good times. This scene is spectacular, cinematic and aurally amazing.
Then you are resurrected - and here you have the option to start the game with the look and attributes of your previous Mass Effect 1 save, or you can reshuffle - and you can keep or discard features from your previous save. All of this matters - if you pitch your save, you follow a generic plot - if you import, the dead stay dead, the survivors might email you, and the entire story is altered in myriad of ways.
As is the way of the universe, some big nasty is threatening all of creation, and of course only you can stop it. Indeed, a squillion credits were spent to bring you back and give you a big shiny new ship - and she's a beaut - now with your own quarters, and other fun features missing from the Normandy rev 1 - like bathrooms. She comes with a sardonic AI named EDI, voiced by tricia helfer, who banters with joker (voiced by seth green) - indeed she's annoying and hilarious - default converations about the purpose of sections of the ship linger late in the game - yet if you fly to the Sol System and try to launch a probe to Uranus, she will ask "really commander?" and if you insist she will sadly state "probing...your...(pause) anus..."
your mission is to find the bad guys and the tech to stop them, recruit a team (cue a-team theme) of misfits and geniuses, and save the universe. Two years have passed and your squad from Mass Effect 1 has scattered, and two can be recruited, some have been turned to new lives - again consequences.
This is all done with serious intent and high caliber voice acting - but the game is full of clever and geek and funny - shout outs to scientists and sci fi - big voices in tiny roles - Michael Dorn, Claudia Black, Adam Baldwin - starships named Hugo Gernsback, planets named Watson or Crick. Delicious.
Each squad member you recruit has a personal mission - which, if completed to THEIR satisfaction, triggers 'loyalty' and new abilities - which is crucial at the end of the game. This is where the meat of the game lies - Jacob's father, Miranda's genetic Twin, Jack's torturers - and many more - all these personal daemons need service before you confront the big bad. This takes you out and about the galaxy, and you see old friends and loves, buy stuff - shoot the heck outta the endless bad guys - you can dance, get drunk, hook up or even start a romance with a new crewmember. But, with the regular contact from people from the first game, it all feels a bit different - like what are the consequences of what you do?
Big things come in small conversations, confrontations spill over into the demeanor of your team, and you begin to wonder does every decision matter? I daresay...pretty much yes. Did you upgrade your ship? If not, in the final battle, you'll get spanked and crewmembers will die. Did you complete the loyalty mission? Did it end well for the crewmember? If no or if not they might get distracted and take a bullet, or get fried hacking a computer. You get a sense of the team - and some of them are, well, overconfident - follow the advice of your capable but less experienced new team member - and people will die. They'll dissolve in a biosludge mess, or take a steel beam through the torso as your ship is ripped apart.
My first trip through the Omega 5 relay to the final battle was both delayed and hasty - I wasn't fully equipped - the shocking attrition on my team led me to move back to a much earlier save and fix all that - I couldn't take it when Mordin took a bullet for me or when Tali was vaporized and Thane was impaled.
Now I wonder - i think about the game, the unfurling of the plot - was I right to reintegrate the geth? will the rachnai really help me? Is Liara lost to me forever? Should i have...
This is great storytelling - interesting interactive fiction of the first order. Is it perfect? No. The combat environments, while far more varied than Mass Effect 1, are too similar - broad fields of waste high boxes, with balconies and stairs are a little to repetitive. The hacking and rewiring minigames are rudimentary - the planet scanning is relaxing at first, then kinda dull. it's easy to fall into a cycle - load map, scan planets, do mission, talk to each crew member, feed fish (damn fish kept dying) - rinse, repeat. The squad balance is odd - it was difficult to get an ideal team - though having ten options and a few hints about missions made things a bit more straight forward than say Dragon Age where it's possible to waltz into the final throwdown with the wrong team, wrong gear.
my boys at eat-sleep-game.com did a spectacular recap show - and gob smacked me - the first thirty minutes of their deconstruction focused on something that I completely missed - they first and foremost wondered why there were no gay relationships possible - and only one lesbian one. Dang. With all the attention and drama the seXbox controversy of mass effect 1 caused, maybe EA and Msoft decided to play it safe - yet Dragon Age, their new and terrific IP, has sex a plenty - LGB characters, sex workers of a startling variety. Points lost by BioWare for leaving this very relevant part of the story out - and props to RebelFM for calling them out - who knew a bunch of straight (i assume) gaming journalists had such a strong sense of equality and fair play.
it seems a strange omission, given the presence of a variety of romances possible in games like Jade Empire and Dragon age - to be honest, i may not of noticed because i've tended to 'play' as my character - making choices as if i were in the environment - and i game a bit differently than i live my actual life. I wonder that it didn't come up in the game storyboarding...there are for sure some gay folks involved - if only for a Gilbert and Sullivan shout out in the post-battle conversations
If you made it this far, i'll tell you i loved this game - Dragon Age and Star Trek: Online have really captured me, but nothing could keep me off the Normandy. I can't wait for chapter three.
Mass Effect is a paradigm shift in video games - no, not video games - in interactive story telling. I say Mass Effect because it is now a two chapter Science Fiction Saga, with a looming third chapter that has incredible potential.
Mass Effect was a fairly by-the-numbers RPG, with a handful of shooter elements tossed in - you had to aim, you had to react (not turn based) - and most importantly, but not most apparently in chapter 1, you made choices - do i save this guy? do i pull the gun? do i keep those aliens alive? Who do I put on the council? Mass Effect had a nice fly, drive, fight rhythm, though the driving elements largely SUCKED - the environments were repetitive and the graphics fell down on occasion. Like most RPGs, it had a Shoot, Loot and Scoot system - and you spent a lot of time futzing with armor and gear and skills.
Mass Effect 2 did away with virtually all of that - gone is the Mako (YAY!), gone is inventory management (hmmm), gone is looting (boo!) - skill trees are flattened (but reprogrammable even late in the game). The lauded conversation wheel is preserved, and a tasty 'interrupt' feature is stuck in, allowing you to interrupt and redirect cut-scenes. This makes the game feel much faster - you spend a lot more time doing stuff than dinking around with stuff. Of my 70 hr dragon age playthrough, probably at least 1/3 was managing gear, people and loadouts.
This streamlined RPG is more shooter than before - MUCH more - and it is much better - and the 'normal' mode is far easier (indeed it might be a bit too easy) Instead of finding gear, you upgrade what you have. This is done by either collecting minerals from planet scans and probe drops, or by finding random boxes of precious metals (like you do, you know, randomly in the street or whatever...) Here's where consequences start to matter - upgrading your armor, weapons and ship are CRUCIAL to success - your team upgrades with you...along with other key elements.
So - to the story - you proceed along an elegant path - to 'reboot' the game you start the adventure by dying. your ship disintegrates around you and your beloved comrades flee - you die. Good times. This scene is spectacular, cinematic and aurally amazing.
Then you are resurrected - and here you have the option to start the game with the look and attributes of your previous Mass Effect 1 save, or you can reshuffle - and you can keep or discard features from your previous save. All of this matters - if you pitch your save, you follow a generic plot - if you import, the dead stay dead, the survivors might email you, and the entire story is altered in myriad of ways.
As is the way of the universe, some big nasty is threatening all of creation, and of course only you can stop it. Indeed, a squillion credits were spent to bring you back and give you a big shiny new ship - and she's a beaut - now with your own quarters, and other fun features missing from the Normandy rev 1 - like bathrooms. She comes with a sardonic AI named EDI, voiced by tricia helfer, who banters with joker (voiced by seth green) - indeed she's annoying and hilarious - default converations about the purpose of sections of the ship linger late in the game - yet if you fly to the Sol System and try to launch a probe to Uranus, she will ask "really commander?" and if you insist she will sadly state "probing...your...(pause) anus..."
your mission is to find the bad guys and the tech to stop them, recruit a team (cue a-team theme) of misfits and geniuses, and save the universe. Two years have passed and your squad from Mass Effect 1 has scattered, and two can be recruited, some have been turned to new lives - again consequences.
This is all done with serious intent and high caliber voice acting - but the game is full of clever and geek and funny - shout outs to scientists and sci fi - big voices in tiny roles - Michael Dorn, Claudia Black, Adam Baldwin - starships named Hugo Gernsback, planets named Watson or Crick. Delicious.
Each squad member you recruit has a personal mission - which, if completed to THEIR satisfaction, triggers 'loyalty' and new abilities - which is crucial at the end of the game. This is where the meat of the game lies - Jacob's father, Miranda's genetic Twin, Jack's torturers - and many more - all these personal daemons need service before you confront the big bad. This takes you out and about the galaxy, and you see old friends and loves, buy stuff - shoot the heck outta the endless bad guys - you can dance, get drunk, hook up or even start a romance with a new crewmember. But, with the regular contact from people from the first game, it all feels a bit different - like what are the consequences of what you do?
Big things come in small conversations, confrontations spill over into the demeanor of your team, and you begin to wonder does every decision matter? I daresay...pretty much yes. Did you upgrade your ship? If not, in the final battle, you'll get spanked and crewmembers will die. Did you complete the loyalty mission? Did it end well for the crewmember? If no or if not they might get distracted and take a bullet, or get fried hacking a computer. You get a sense of the team - and some of them are, well, overconfident - follow the advice of your capable but less experienced new team member - and people will die. They'll dissolve in a biosludge mess, or take a steel beam through the torso as your ship is ripped apart.
My first trip through the Omega 5 relay to the final battle was both delayed and hasty - I wasn't fully equipped - the shocking attrition on my team led me to move back to a much earlier save and fix all that - I couldn't take it when Mordin took a bullet for me or when Tali was vaporized and Thane was impaled.
Now I wonder - i think about the game, the unfurling of the plot - was I right to reintegrate the geth? will the rachnai really help me? Is Liara lost to me forever? Should i have...
This is great storytelling - interesting interactive fiction of the first order. Is it perfect? No. The combat environments, while far more varied than Mass Effect 1, are too similar - broad fields of waste high boxes, with balconies and stairs are a little to repetitive. The hacking and rewiring minigames are rudimentary - the planet scanning is relaxing at first, then kinda dull. it's easy to fall into a cycle - load map, scan planets, do mission, talk to each crew member, feed fish (damn fish kept dying) - rinse, repeat. The squad balance is odd - it was difficult to get an ideal team - though having ten options and a few hints about missions made things a bit more straight forward than say Dragon Age where it's possible to waltz into the final throwdown with the wrong team, wrong gear.
my boys at eat-sleep-game.com did a spectacular recap show - and gob smacked me - the first thirty minutes of their deconstruction focused on something that I completely missed - they first and foremost wondered why there were no gay relationships possible - and only one lesbian one. Dang. With all the attention and drama the seXbox controversy of mass effect 1 caused, maybe EA and Msoft decided to play it safe - yet Dragon Age, their new and terrific IP, has sex a plenty - LGB characters, sex workers of a startling variety. Points lost by BioWare for leaving this very relevant part of the story out - and props to RebelFM for calling them out - who knew a bunch of straight (i assume) gaming journalists had such a strong sense of equality and fair play.
it seems a strange omission, given the presence of a variety of romances possible in games like Jade Empire and Dragon age - to be honest, i may not of noticed because i've tended to 'play' as my character - making choices as if i were in the environment - and i game a bit differently than i live my actual life. I wonder that it didn't come up in the game storyboarding...there are for sure some gay folks involved - if only for a Gilbert and Sullivan shout out in the post-battle conversations
Click to viewIf you made it this far, i'll tell you i loved this game - Dragon Age and Star Trek: Online have really captured me, but nothing could keep me off the Normandy. I can't wait for chapter three.