Mass Effect 2

Thu Mar 18, 2010 4:03 am

Lt. Morke

That was objectionable!

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Almost 2 months since this has been out and no one has started a thread about it? :udgy:

Easily understandable, considering how awesome the game is. I working on what will be my 4th play through after I import it. I've wasted I don't know how may grenades and accidentally put my weapons away cause I tried to melee something because of the control schemes. I just wish the character recruitment wasn't so linear...

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Re: Mass Effect 2

Sun Mar 21, 2010 11:34 am

Harry Miste

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Liara turned into a bitch, therefore I shall cheat on her with Thane. Garrus is too busy with calibrations, I'm already dating Kelly since she doesn't interfere with twoo wuv, and I hate Space Aussie.

Re: Mass Effect 2

Sun Mar 21, 2010 3:15 pm

Katana

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It seems like every forum I go to people had this preference for Tali, me included. But enough about sex.

It was definitely a weird twist to remove so much, and put things to straight shooting. It definitely made the game more fun, but a lot of me wishes that rather than cut out the complexity, they would have redesigned it to make more sense and actually be fun. Still, one of the problems that arises for reviewers and gamers is that it doesn't fit into any specific genre (shooter, RPG, etc) I think that's a good thing; we're doing our best to blur the lines.
Also, weird and pointless ending reminds me of Halo 2. You don't really accomplish anything, you only open more questions, and there's only one big reveal.

I'm gone for so long, and the colors got all psychedelic! Woohoo!

Re: Mass Effect 2

Sun Mar 21, 2010 3:52 pm

Vagrant

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I think ME2 is probably one of the best games evaaaar. So gripping and oddly hilarious.

Random notes:
I also went with Tali.
Mordin probably has the closest moral code to my own in the game. One of the reasons he was such a good character, in my view.
Joker is awesome.
"Suicide mission" is a ridiculously epic tune.
The third game cannot possibly live up to it.

Harry Miste wrote:

Liara turned into a bitch, therefore I shall cheat on her with Thane. Garrus is too busy with calibrations, I'm already dating Kelly since she doesn't interfere with twoo wuv, and I hate Space Aussie.

I wish I could have broken up with Liara. Or do something to make up for the whole thing about how she's in that mess because she hearts you so much.
But I just like Tali so much more. D:

Katana wrote:

Still, one of the problems that arises for reviewers and gamers is that it doesn't fit into any specific genre (shooter, RPG, etc) I think that's a good thing; we're doing our best to blur the lines.

Yeah, the whole idea of "genre" in games has been stupid for years.

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Re: Mass Effect 2

Mon Mar 22, 2010 7:19 am

Lt. Morke

That was objectionable!

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This reminded me a lot of, oddly enough, Skies of Arcadia. There were a lot of points were Bioware could have taken inspiration from it, namely anything having to do with the ship.

Skies of Arcadia

Go from Little Jack (fishing boat) to the Delphinus (prototype warship)
Provide upgrades to enhance your ship (in this case, it actually has an effect in battle)
Recruit 22 crew members for your ship
Crew gets captured; you rescue them (early in the game)
Ship's main gun, the Moonstone Cannon, comes out from under the bow
Customize your HQ (flag, barracks, shops, etc.)
Ultimate goal: Stop the planet from cleansed of all life (by the Rains of Destruction)

Mass Effect 2

Go from SR1 Normandy to SR2 Normandy (bigger, badder, better)
Research upgrades for your ship (in this case, its to keep your crew alive)
Recruit 12 team members for your mission (also have a purpose on your ship)
Again, crew gets captured; you rescue them (although, its late in the game here)
Ship's main gun, Thanix Cannon, comes out from the underbelly (main point here is both have a gun that basically take out anything and they both get the Calling Your Attacks treatment (sort of)
Customize your armor
Ultimate goal: Stop the Collectors from wiping out Humanity

I'm probably looking too much into this (this happens when you come across two RPGs being worthy of being called the best ever, and Sega has been avoid the fan outcry for Skies of Arcadia 2), but if I'm onto something, we just might have ship/space battles in ME3.

OK, real reason I came to post:

Spoiler: To save space

While wondering why Legion wasn't made available to recruit earlier, I stumbled across this:

I seem to remember that there was originally a full fledged mission in between the SR1 biting the dust and Shepard reawakening, in case anyone has wondered where the extra voice acting comes from. I'm not spoilering anything here since none of it made it into the game and it doesn't actually delve into any late game plot.

You started off as Legion, unfolding from a cargo box that you had sneaked into aboard the Shadowthrone, the Shadow Broker courier frigate with your body on board. After a few minutes of sneaking, you start hearing gunshots and reports of an intruder over the intercom. Eventually you met Liara, who was on her own mission to steal the corpse. After a heated mexican stand, Liara and Legion teamed up to steal the corpse on agreement that she got to take it where she wanted(Cerberus). Over the course of the mission, you played as Legion and inquired about Shepard's decisions based on your investigations. In this manner, it was originally set up to allow you to customize an ME1 game's choices through your dialogs with Liara.

After a few short gunfights, they were to finally get to Liara's small infiltration ship, but not before having to take of Shepard's armor off order to get him/her into Liara's containment field to keep the body from falling apart. On his way into the ship, Legion was to be shot and disabled as well as given his iconic wound. It was then to shift into first person and you see Liara close the door and launch her small ship from the airlock. A -NO FEED- was to come up on the screen in red and then fade from view, followed by Shepard fading in and out and seeing Miranda. The game then continued as normal until you got to the first missions.

On your way to Omega for the first recruitment, you picked up a distress signal from the Shadowthrone. Miranda was to recognize it as the ship that your corpse had been stolen off of. It's beacon suggested that it had been adrift for nearly two years. Knowing that agent that had bought you from had left the ship functional and suspecting that it had something to do with the disappearances, she suggests boarding the ship to investigate. Once on board, you discover that Legion had reactivated and repaired himself with the armor that had been pulled off of you. He had then hunted down and killed the entire crew but had accidentally caused irreparable damage to its drives. To save energy in the powerless ship, he went into a hibernation mode. You find the hibernating Legion in the engine room and remove him, leaving you with the choice of whether or not to activate him.

In the end it was scrapped because it was seen as too confusing for players new to the series. It was also redundant to have Legion tell his unique story to Liara in the beginning and then to Shepard again less than two gameplay hours later. Additionally, it was seen as too different from ME1 to have the player's first shooting battles be as a Geth against humans. The comics were given an OK instead to fill the gap and some friend for Liara was created to take the place of Legion.

A lot of assets, like Legion's Shepard Armor repair or much of the unused dialog, were left in game with little or no explanation. In the case of the former, it went from causing a long conversation about how he stalked the crew of the Shadowthrone to "No Data Found." Much of the lost dialog, like his lines before he can be acquired, were just left since he would never be there to trigger them. Other dialogs, for instance he had a long dialog with Liara if you brought him to Illium, never even made it off the paper. Most of the assets were retooled though, like the SR2 Cargo bay that was originally Legion's starting point in the mission. The Crashing Ship mission is almost a direct usage of most of the Shadowthrone's assets, complete with the engine room where you were supposed to find him in up where you now turn the engines on.

Additionally, Veetor was a relatively late addition to the game. Originally you met Tali on Freedom's progress and she joined you from there, but that was scrapped for reasons I don't know. Similarly though, many of her lost dialogs were just left in since she would never be there to trigger them without hacking the game.

I don't know where this originated from (probably around here), but from the sounds of it, I really like this opening better. Looks like ME2 may have gotten the KOTOR 2 treatment...

This further supports the fact that recruitment has to be non-linear (which I think would have drastically increased the replay value).

Liara also has a right to be a bitch. A lot of stuff happened to her in the comic... :larry:

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Re: Mass Effect 2

Mon Mar 22, 2010 7:29 am

Vagrant

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I've never heard any of that stuff at all. O_o
Shadowthrone and everything sounds like fanfiction to me.

The only extra dialogue that character has is in missions you have to do before you can recruit him. So obviously he was meant to be recruitable earlier, but they merged him with this late mission, likely due to space (hah) problems.
All they mention in early dev diaries is that he was meant to be tracking Shepard, which is only discussed in dialogue, so people felt they cut a little bit out there as well.

Also, the armour was explained in the game. It was found on Eden Prime.

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Re: Mass Effect 2

Sun Mar 28, 2010 9:54 pm

Durgey

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Lt. Morke wrote:

Almost 2 months since this has been out and no one has started a thread about it?

I did, the day it came out in Europe... but it just got swept under the rug....

Re: Mass Effect 2

Tue Mar 30, 2010 11:05 pm

Home32

Let's do this!

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Great game, haven't gotten too far into it yet though. =/

Winning is all that matters!

Re: Mass Effect 2

Wed Apr 07, 2010 10:57 pm

Lt. Morke

That was objectionable!

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I got the Kasumi (lol almost called her Misty) DLC last night. While $7 was a little steep for it, I'm glad I purchased it. Her loyalty mission is by far the best one out of the whole crew. The new SMG is a beast. I won't say what happens in it but there was one part that I found funny:

:think:

"Ha!"

"What? Did you find some DNA?"
:edgy:

"No, a credit chit!"

*+1 credits*

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Re: Mass Effect 2

Thu Apr 08, 2010 2:12 am

Vagrant

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It really bothers me that they're charging for it.

I appreciate all the free DLC, but that missing character slot on my party select screen is going to drive me insane. It's, like, make that part free and keep your stupid weapons and tank!

By the way, can you actually talk to her on the ship or is it like Zaeed?

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Re: Mass Effect 2

Sat Apr 10, 2010 12:03 am

Lt. Morke

That was objectionable!

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Abit of both, actually. She's like Zaeed in the fact that she lacks a dialog wheel, but she says different things everytime you "talk" to her. She even makes comments on how your love life is going. :hotti:

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