I was surprised seeing the Hackett message pop up. I've been playing with a mod that messes around with some of the mission triggers so they make much more sense. Rather than "Hey, I know you're on an important mission that might be tied to the Reapers and all, but also here's another thing about a REAPER INVASION?".
@dan_citi: When Alex said "The Presidium is just Anderson's office?". That kind of sums up my feelings on this game. You spend 80% of the game recruiting and doing loyalty missions for companions that all turn into corridor shooter type levels. None of them have any through-line tying them together to the main plot (which isn't great and there's so little of it). This makes them feel... I dunno... empty and isolated? Don't get me wrong though, I still love the rest of this trilogy (now that I think about it I might like ME3 more the 2...) and think the character work in this game is great. I just much preferred the story/design style and the more RPG-ness of the first one.
I guess we just have a different impression on what makes a game "more alive and fleshed out". :D
@vinny Now that you've started the Firewalker DLC, here's a loose guideline for playing the rest of the DLC in a way that makes sense in the story:
Start Firewalker before Overlord (you've done that)
Overlord before going into the Omega-4 Relay
It's hotly debated on when you should do Lair of the Shadow Broker-- If mid-game or post-game. I would say don't start it until you've done everything else on Ilium.
Definitely save Arrival 'till the end end, main story included
I don't remember Zaeed's mission being this dull. Like, I remember loving the possibility of having him not be loyal after it being really cool and unique, but the actual story is just such... nothing? Hopefully the rest of them aren't this disappointing. Surprised that there's bits of the game that aren't as I remember, I beat it at least six times (one for each class) on the highest difficulty alone. You'd think that after that much time spent it'd be deeply ingrained in my memory (especially considering the game's not even thaaaat old), but I guess the human brain is even more fallible than I give it credit for.
They're all kinda like this... ME2 is not what Vinny makes it out to be; ME1 is way better.
At what point does he start trying full runs? I don't think I can watch him do this bit by bit thing that's going on. It's not going to help him much if he doesn't know the flow of a full run.
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