The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Okay, that sounded bad.

This is my spoilarful discussion of Mass Effect 2 day. If you want a non-spoilar, mechanical review, you’re looking for yesterday’s post.

Okay? All ready for Spoilarz? Neat.

It’s kind of amazing the amount of time Bioware invested in making your decisions from last game carry over to this one. I mean, I’m not going to replay the game four times just to see how things change. I’m not that kind of person. But it’s really neat knowing that things I did years ago in the original Mass Effect actually are impacting the world. A lot of times, it’s only little tricks, like getting an e-mail if you completed one of the side missions, but it’s really effective in making you feel like your game is continuing. I liked it a lot.

The overall plot, though, was only okay. I agree with some of the podcasts I’ve been listening to. I feel like the game lacked something by not having a real face to the threat you were trying to fight off. There was a “collector threat” for the whole game, but in reality, the focus was completely on building your team and making them happy. You looked inward, not outward to the “suicide mission” you were supposed to be undertaking.
This is only emphasized when you face down the last boss, which is really just kind of stupid. I really don’t know why I was fighting a giant terminator. I mean, Brer went on and on trying to explain it and blah blah blah, but no, it was just lame. You can explain it, sure, but they didn’t in the game, and so it leaves you with a weird feeling. The basic concept that Reapers are part machine and part flesh, and need to harvest flesh to reproduce? That’s a great, great concept. That makes them scarier, and puts forth the idea that they may have motives and aren’t just this deadly force. The idea that the reaper has to look like the flesh it’s harvesting? Makes no sense whatsoever. Annoyed me. Didn’t ruin the game in any respect, though. Just seems like they could have done better.

The characters in this game, I think, were very well done. Having very unique missions to help out every single one of them really helps to flesh them out. I connected with all of them in some respect, I think. Even characters that you worry won’t be interest, like, say, a certain Badass Biotic Bitch, are really well written. You may not end up liking them, but you can at least understand why they are they way they are. They aren’t caricatures for the most part, which is really wonderful, especially when they have so many characters to choose from.
The downside, though, is that you really go through what they have to tell you pretty fast. Any time I did anything in Mass Effect 1, I felt like everyone on my ship had a new conversation to have with me. In this one, each character only has so many. Once you’ve gone through them, they no longer want to talk to you, or just say the same things over and over. It makes it so after you have their loyalty, you’re kind of told just to ignore them, and frankly, I don’t like that, especially with Garrus. I wanted to have sex with him (which I will get to in a second) and I wanted to keep talking to him, hear what he had to say, but eventually he kept cycling through this same conversation where I could let him down about the sex if I wanted to have some of the intercourse with someone else, and so I stopped going to see him.

In any case, as far as favorite characters go, Garrus is definitely up there. He was one of my favorites from the first game, all confused about justice in a world where following the rules often gets you less justice. I loved that he was back, and I loved that he was fuckable. He’s been through a lot since the last game. He’s lightened up in some ways, and also found the huge burden that Shepard is carrying around as the leader. He’s made mistakes, and he wants to stop making them and do some good, and this character arc plays into his romance arc. He never thought about having sex with a human, and has no idea how to do it, but he wants to connect with you and make you happy, because he trusts you so much. So he is incredibly nervous, and tries way too hard, because he doesn’t want to ruin yet another thing. And then you tell him that it’s not a big deal, he isn’t going to ruin this. Then the sex. It… actually means something. The sex in the other game didn’t really mean anything. This was a sensible end to Garrus’s character arc, and it was completely awesome because of it.

The other character I really took to, and probably would have romanced if Garrus wasn’t there, was Kelly. I loved Kelly. She was flirty in a fun, not obnoxious way, and she had a personal philosophy that I agreed with. She had a quote that could have word for word come from my mouth, which was something like “Gender, Race, Species, anything like that doesn’t matter. It’s their consciousness that matters.” That was the moment where I knew I was right to like her. Heh. But yeah, not only did I find her an interesting person, and a nice change from the more military-style people on the ship (not that that doesn’t make sense, but you know) but she also served an extremely useful purpose in game and served to make your crew being captured really hit home, because she was no longer there to connect with. She was pretty well the perfect character. I loved it.

Anyway, I’ve written tons about Mass Effect 2 now. It’s safe to say I like it, right? Because I liked it.