The Tragedy of Mass Effect // HeavyEyed - General

Its funny because the combat was a dumpster fire in the first game but it had great world building and a fun story. Then they figured out how to combat good and forgot everything else. The combat in ME3 was amazing, on insanity it really shows its brilliance, and it didn't feel unfair or stupid.

Citadel was good, Leviathan was good (and should have been part of the base game), and everything to do with Tuchanga was outstanding. The rest was varying degrees of good to awful, imo. Grabbing one of my oldpunch posts: I'm not sure that's fair; each entry in the series succeeded in ways that the other two did not, as well as failed in ways that the other two didn't. With respect to your opinion, I look at the facets of each entry in the series as follows: Mass Effect 1 + Strongest overall narrative, even if Noveria and Feros had the tendency to wander a little. + Arguably the strongest ending in narrative, though Mass Effect 2 is a healthy contender. + Strongest sense of immense scale (in regards to the galaxy itself) + Arguably the most compelling and consistent atmosphere (though I'd argue all three games have their own merits, even if the tone is different in each). -/+ The character writing was hit and miss. Ashley, Kaiden, and Wrex were fairly well-written, but Garrus, Tali, and Liara felt two-dimensional with the latter two being largely codex entries to their respective races. Joker, Chakwas, and Pressley were also severely lacking. - Weakest/least polished gameplay with clunky shooting mechanics, a poorly designed inventory, and some very stupid AI. - Certain sidequests, especially the mineral collection ones, were completely pointless and served only to pad time. - Weakest engine utilization on a technical level. Mass Effect 2 + Strongest and most well-realized art style. + Strongest overall character writing. + Arguably the strongest ending, especially in representing the outcome of your choices. + Best and most story-relevant DLC, especially with 'Lair of the Shadow Broker'. + Best conversation system, thanks to an increased amount of dialogue, introduction of interrupts, and a healthy amount of neutral options. + Best sidequests, not necessarily from a narrative standpoint but definitely in terms of design thanks to each one being strongly unique, with many being very memorable. - Most inconsistent main narrative thanks to the Collectors coming completely out of left field and 80% of the game being devoted entirely to recruiting and getting to know your squadmates. - Weakest RPG elements with respect to combat and leveling up; not quite "Gears of War in space" but certainly the closest to it that the series got. Mass Effect 3 + Strongest subplot writing, with respect to Tuchanga and Rannoch, the former of which is arguably some of the best writing in the series. + Strongest character interaction, thanks to a huge amount of context-sensitive dialogue on every single mission and, for the first time in the series, NPCs actually changing positions and interacting with each other in a significant way. + Strongest and most polished gameplay. + Shepard actually gets to become a fleshed out character, though this has a negative (below). + Best utilization of RPG elements in leveling and combat, with each upgrade having a significant and visible improvement, and an inventory that felt polished and useful. + Best technical utilization of the game engine. +/- Both the weakest and strongest representation of your prior choices. - Weakest overall narrative thanks to a lackluster introduction and a thematically inconsistent and disappointing ending, despite an otherwise strong 'meat' of the game. - Weakest art style, with some very bland imagery. - Weakest side quests by miles, given more than half of them are fetch quests. - Weakest dialogue options in regards to Shepard, with far too much of a reliance on auto-dialogue. - Some characters (Miranda, Grunt, Samara, Kasumi, Zaeed, Kelly, Jack) were sidelined pretty heavily, even with the Citadel DLC taken into consideration. - Abrupt change in themes in regards to the narrative (since when is 'synthetic vs organic' ACTUALLY the most important theme?) and certain characters (looking at you, Legion).

You forgot how fucking boring planet scanning was in ME2 and yet they doubled down on it in ME3.

I will always be mad about Mass Effect 3. I can't even completely blame EA for this like this Dragon Age 2. Casey Hudson throwing out what Drew Kapyrshyn built to write his own piece of shit complete with a deus ex machina fucked everything up. Mass Effect 3 does have good parts and it's every part that doesn't have anything to do with the crucible. I don't care if every game since Anthem will be GOTY tier, I refuse to play anything they make out of hatred and spite for them. I saw ME:A for $0.69 from a key site and I still wouldn't even be worth the harddrive space or having it in my library even if it were free or they paid me.

ME 1 may be clunky and look not so great now, but I find myself revisiting it almost yearly just because of how brilliant it was at world building, design of architecture and the alien races, and making you feel very small. I'm honestly glad it can be considered self-contained because ME 3 is piss and I'm still mad at every decision made in that game. I am most mad at how little control you had over Shepherd's dialogue compared to 1. From almost every reply to suddenly having the next paragraph of text decided by a one word option, and half the time it would have the completely wrong tone or meaning. Man, fuck everything about ME 3. Apart for hanging with Garrus, that was rad.

I honestly prefer Mass Effect 3 because of that. At least the combat is good in Mass Effect 3, there's nothing redeeming in 2 besides character scenes on the Normandy.

even tho me2 dumbed down the rpg elements and didn't progress the story much it still holds a special place in my heart. i always try to do a playthrough of it every year

ME1 is to Star Trek as ME2 and ME3 are to Star Wars

Bioware is the quintessential example of a company that could have genuinely been one of the great legends of its generation, but ended up becoming too overworked to function and turned into a shadow of its former self, due to none other than the great and all-terrible power that is EA.

2 and 3 have too much existential horror to be Star Wars.

It's such a damn shame after all that mess with ME3, Andromeda was just completely lost potential. I always tend to disagree that Andromeda is a 100% bad game, it's just a game that unfortunately failed to really capitalize on so many of its own elements, and was plagued by a lack of polish that gamers stuck onto. The game was just callously abandoned so quickly, and some of its own critical plotlines were relegated to a NOVEL instead of something sensible like a DLC expansion. Andromeda might not have been the game everybody wanted, but I feel like it at the very least was a landmark in the gameplay department. Mass Effect 3's combat flows good for sure, but the flow of Andromeda just feels great to me with how loose you can move, and the way weapons feel with modding and attributes for those weapons and armor. There was a lot of choice and variety for weapons, and the only disappointing part is that the game needed a bit more enemy variety, since there are only ever 3 factions of enemies you'll ever fight, and they all kind of follow the same template. Let me just say as far as combat goes, I feel like Mass Effect 2, while it set the stage for the type of combat the series would be known for, I also think it also did the most harm. I'm still upset Mass Effect 2 basically introduced 'ammo' despite already have an acceptable established mechanic , and it was something we'd have to wait until Andromeda came out to actually become an optional aspect because overheating returned as a weapon mod. But the single biggest "fuck you" in Mass Effect I'll absolutely never forgive Bioware for regarding combat is the way Mass Effect 2 basically invalidated everything awesome about biotics from the first game because of the way damage works. Oh, you want to throw that guy? Gotta get rid of his shield first, oh he's got armor too, gotta get rid of that too. Now you can throw him. Just fuck off, I can't believe they did that. Completely nerfed Adept into something almost useless because almost every single fucking enemy has shields, or armor, and you can't use a majority of your powers because of that. The first game is an absolute blast playing as a biotic because you can quite literally just your powers and throw people into the vacuum of space, or splatter them against walls, but every subsequent game basically mandates you have to shoot enemies first to a certain point before your powers can affect them. Mass Effect 3 and Andromedas refinement of combos at least allowed you to deal damage to protected enemies with the right power combinations, but as far as I'm concerned, the overall problem still persisted since there would still be enemies that had armor as a lifebar, so you couldn't manipulate those at all for despite not making any sense

I feel like ME2's decision not to dwell on the overarching plot was its strongest narrative decision since it allowed the story to be mostly about your crew, which is the best part of the series by far. It made the final push to the reaper base feel a lot more genuine and like an actual group effort even though the actual situation was frankly ridiculous. Oh and the ME3 Citadel DLC is incredible too.

I disagree since, at least to me, it was mostly completely pointless to the overall plot. Then when you factor in all the characters who were in ME2 who get completely sidelined in ME3 it also makes the fact it focused on the characters pointless as well. I'm in the minority but i find the combat in ME1 the most fun out of all of them because even though it could be clunky it was engaging and somewhat unique.

The combat of ME1 reminded me way too much of a bad Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter. And while ME2 was mostly pointless to the overall plot I just straight up did not like the overall plot so I just didn't care. It felt closest to a star trek episode where the crew just goes on an adventure. It's how Andromeda should have felt if they had any sense, instead of tackling that crap plot about big galactic empires trashing each other.

You want a hot fucking Bioware take? Dragon Age 2 was a good game. Yes, the re-use of dungeons was a sin and it loosened the RPG ties, but DA2 knocked it out of the park in terms of character and story. Every time I go back to that game, I like it more and more. I love that it tells a story of you and your compadres doing absolutely everything to stabilize the situation and Kirkwall and ultimately failing due to powers and tensions outside of your control. After all the putzing around in DA:O to stop the Blight and save Ferelden, DA2 did a good job providing a transition from the Blight to the brewing tensions between Mages and Templars that weren't fully explored in DA:O. Funnily enough, I recall Mass Effect 2 received some similar criticism after it launched. People complained that it dumbed down the franchise and that it wasn't really advancing the plot in any meaningful way. And now ME2 is regarded by most as the best in the franchise.

I couldn't disagree more. Mass Effect 2 ignoring the overall story of the series was massively detrimental to the series. It made it so no matter what they did in Mass Effect 3 the oncoming of the Reapers would be rushed. Also the Collectors are a shit enemy with no personality and are a significantly less important threat than the Reapers. "Shepard, drop your mission to stop the Reapers and instead try to stop these mindless aliens from abducting the members of a few colonies." This would be a side quest in the first game. Oh no, they come from the Omega-4 relay that we can't go through! So why not just bring a small fleet to meet the Collectors the next time they come out and take them by surprise? They only have one ship apparently. If they wanted a focus on characters they could easily have tied it into the overall narrative. Make it so recruiting new squad members is a part of collecting allies to fight the Reapers, instead of relegating that to the next game where it's already too late. Miranda could exist as the representative of the Human colonies outside of the Alliance's territory, she could even stay a member of Cerberus (though Cerberus is a whole other problem). Jack could be a part of getting Omega ot some other criminal group on board because we need as many guns as we can to fight the Reapers. We already have Wrex as a leader who knows about the Reapers so he's on side. Also the "Ah yes 'Reapers', we have dismissed that claim." bullshit should never have made it into the game. Mass Effect ended with the Council supporting you and encouraging you to find a way to stop the Reapers, but ME2 has them blow you off and play dumb because the writers needed a reason for you to be forced to work with Cerberus.

See, that's my fly in the ointment with ME2 and ME3. They did a really, really good job building up the party in ME2 and then tossed them by the wayside in ME3. We don't even get any as party members so we can get the band back together (aside from Mr. DLC and Caprica Six). You could've done something with these people aside from just having them pop up for a quest here and there.

The problem I have with that is that there is a world ending scenario that is discussed in ME1 and that the characters KNOW is going to happen and that when it does they're screwed if they don't do anything. So to have the next game in the series be 'Captain Shepard's Bizarre Adventure' throws a fucking huge wet blanket on everything.

No see, that's not enough. Let's also kill Shepard so we can make the time crunch even greater.

The Reapers were presented as such a staggering force that even if ME2 had been entirely about them, there simply would not have been enough time to realistically present a way to beat them that didn't rely on rushed mcguffins and skipping several beats. And seeing as ME3 wanted to initially be all about dark matter and whatnot, ME2 would have had to introduce that shit anyway which would have been an equally massive shift in narrative. Except the reapers literally fucking disappeared for two years, and as far as everyone is concerned, the only reaper known to exist at that point is a floating husk, which everyone believes was just a big ass ship. The point is that people are still convinced the Geth were the real enemy all this time. The collectors are introduced essentially in the same way the Geth are introduced; as a buffer enemy for you to fight until the Reapers can make a dramatic narrative comeback. Straight up starting ME2 with a reaper showing out of nowhere to tear your ship a new asshole would have made no sense and invalidated the entire point of the finale of ME1 where you fight tooth and nail to stop any more reapers from entering. But that's already what the game does ? You learn the Collectors are allied with the Reapers relatively quickly in the story and it's obvious the Illusive Man had his doubts from the very beginning, seeing as he was one of the few to know that Sovereign couldn't possibly have been the only one: he fucking tells you right as you meet him that there has to be some sort of connection between the collectors attacking people in the terminus systems and the reapers, and he's right. While the whole "authority is in denial to the real threat" trope has been played out to death, ME1 and ME2 do a good job of establishing how and why exactly the council is so doubtful of you. In ME1, you're basing your entire thesis on a fucking vision and the superstitious ramblings of a race of sapient machines, with very little to go on as far as actual hard evidence goes. You show up out of nowhere and tell them their best agent has gone rogue because the magical (blown-up) space fiddledidoo told you so. Keep in mind that at this point in ME1 Shepard did not even see Saren shoot Nihlus and is going off accusations by other blokes for quite a while. And in ME2, two years went through, with zero evidence of more "reapers" existing than the one that got killed. Without even counting on the fact the council may simply know things and refuse to acknowledge them to prevent mass hysteria, it makes sense that they would be very doubtful of reapers even existing when, at that point in the story, little evidence exists to support them: the only person they could directly talk to who actively spoke with Sovereign dies real fucking hard real fucking quick in the span of the series narrative and then is forced to defect to a terrorist cell. They also acknowledge your efforts by the end of ME1 and it basically boils down to "yeah, you pulled us out of shit, doesn't mean we can't say no", and they're right. It is fucking hilarious how often Shepard goes on a complete hunch with zero hard evidence besides visions and hear-say.

"not enough time" Well, they would have had 2 years worth of time in the game world but instead they spent that time killing Shepard only to revive him so we could introduce "Generic Shadowy Organisation™" who ends up being a big wet fart.

Dragon Age 2 was a fucking shit game because it was rushed out. The fact that the plot was good makes it even worse because they could have had something that tops the first game but instead it's like you're eating a burger made of shit but it has onion rings.. The whole "save the world" shit gets old which is why the sideplots of DAO were more interesting than anything to do with the Blight and Archdemon which is why DA2 had a much more interesting story but DA2 dropped the ball nearly everywhere else. I actually preferred that DA2 made combat faster, reworked classes, and streamlined skill trees instead of being DnD but a video game. I liked that DA2 took place in one city and the surrounding wilderness, but the execution was shit. There are only 4 types of dungeons which makes the Deep Roads the most refreshing part of the game because finally, you get something to break up the monotony. What happened to trap making and alchemy? What happened to all the unique spell combos? The reason ME2 is considered great and DA2 is rightfully considered complete shit is because ME2 is streamlined, DA2 is incomplete and obviously rushed. DA2 having a good story and trying new things that work when it comes to storytelling does not make it a good game, it just makes it a shit game with a good writing. The Witcher is another RPG that is carried by the story but it's not shit on like DA2 because it's a complete game whose only flaws are uninteresting combat, subpar graphics, and a lack of polish in some areas. Had DA2 had another 2 years of development(assuming EA didn't stick their dicks in it more and they didn't scrap and restart development like what happens with most games) I probably would have considered a better game than DAO but instead the game was so shit that I didn't even bother with the sequel or DLC. I don't know how you enjoyed the game more with repeated playthroughs because the flaws become even more obvious and inexcusable, and it makes the game harder to get through, in fact, I don't even think I finished my 3rd playthrough of the game. I actually enjoyed my first playthrough of the game but that was because I still riding the hype since I preordered it.

Not enough time as in not enough development time. The reapers are meant to be a fucking galaxy-crushing force, you can't properly represent that in two or even three games. The actual scope of the destruction they were meant to represent means that the spanning narrative would have needed a lot more. I think this is best emphasized by the way Javik discusses the previous cycle in ME3; the genocide took generations to be done. Literally longer than Shepard could have ever lived. Even though compressing the events of a story is understandable for the sake of narration, it is not very favorable to the plot when you juxtapose the slow burn that the Reaper galactic genocide is meant to be with the flash that it ends up being throughout the whole trilogy. They fucked themselves into a corner from spot one by introducing a threat so unbelievably massive that it could not be portrayed in only three games.

Which is hilarious then considering how fast everything happens in ME3.

Yeah, that too. ME3 has to deal with a story kicking into overdrive because the story literally fucking forgets that the reapers destroying the galaxy is meant to be a slow burn. Since ME1 ends with you cockblocking the Reapers, and ME2 shows that they decided to simply haul ass on their own, the fact they manage to get there in like two or three years time is ridiculous, because they wrote themselves into a corner from the very first game. You're so efficient at blocking out the Reaper invasion in ME1 that it would make absolutely no sense for them to appear again within Shepard's lifetime, but they make it happen anyway and it's just as nonsensical as you'd expect. The reapers should have stayed in ME1 as this incomprehensible stygian threat that you delay by some couple thousand years and literally becomes not your fucking problem™ and ME2 onward should have switched to a different threat, instead of trying to wrap it all up within a stupidly short span of time with too few games to cover the scope of their own ambitions.

I still believe they could have pulled it off had they not wasted the second game in the series on bullshit. Think about it. They could have made the plot on ME2 about, i dunno, maybe uniting everyone and solving some of the issue that were in ME3. They could have had ME2 take place over a period of years with Shepard doing shit to get everyone prepared. Could that idea be terrible? Yeah, but I don't think it's any more dumb than the shit that actually happened in ME2. I hope I'm not the only one who found it a little silly that we solve the Geth War and the Krogan Issue all while the galaxy is being destroyed.

I honestly think Mass effect would have been so much better if the Reapers weren't a thing and the games focused on smaller scale problems. Like the Geth, Quarians, Krogans etc. Rather than the big evil squid robots from beyond the galaxy coming to destroy you.

remember when an evil wizard cut your mom's head off to sow onto a zombie sex doll or when you fought a super saiyan grandma as the last boss

I dunno, I always thought a major element of the story was working to make all these discordant factions get on the same page and learn to work together despite their differences, breaking the cycle of violence that the Reapers claimed they were solving to a degree. Which is why the synthesis ending is FUCKING BULLSHIT and anyone who says it's the best one is an IDIOT.

One suggestion I've heard about the Mass Effect series is that the plot makes a lot more sense if you just swap ME1 and ME2 around. You would spend the first game hunting down the collectors and gathering a party and get a nice cliffhanger by the end that there's something more going on here. Then the second game would have you discovering the Reapers and their evil plans. It makes for a much nicer story arc.