@Titus said:
@DonChipotle said:
@Titus said:
@DonChipotle said:
@Titus said:
@DonChipotle: Yeah, sure, the first one had an alien that turned cyborg that hated humanity. That's totally on par with a giant Human/Reaper hybrid made up of human guck and steel. Totally.
1: It was the culmination of the entire plot within the game, what with the whole 'WHy are they taking humans?' thing and it made sense given the context of everything the crew discovered
2: The makeup of the ending villain has nothing at all to do with you comparing the ending to a Michael Bay movie. My point is that both games ended like a Michael Bay movie. Not that one final boss was better or worse than the other, which has nothing at all to do with anything I've been saying.
3: Both last bosses are equally dumb, Saren only gets a pass from people because he was a central antagonist throughout the game.
Yeah, but no. "Why are they taking humans?" was a pretty good idea, though they fucked it up at the end, big time. Locust taking humans in Gears of War was done much better. The makeup of the ending villain? Are you nuts? Comparing a badass villain like Saren to an idiotic robot without legs is pretty damn stupid.
Nowadays everything with explosions is called "in the vein of Michael Bay", but that's not it. Michael Bay just makes stupid movies with explosions. Mass Effect was a great game with a great story whereas the second one is just stupid.
They didn't 'fuck it up' it was in line with how they took over other species in the past. It was a direct result of Shepard taking care of Sovereign. They figured the best way to stop Shepard, a human, was by copying as much as they could about humanity and turning it against him. When the Collecters, agents of the Reapers, failed, Harbinger basically said "Fuck it" and decided to attack. Saren was hardly a 'badass' considering he wasn't even in control of his actions until the very end. Sovereign was the real villain, Saren was a puppet and didn't even have a presence in the story until the last act. He was just this vague threat that you had to stop by following his trail like a detective and then picking up after his mess.
The story in the Mass Effect games were never 'great', hell I liked them better when it was called Babylon 5, but again you seem to miss the point I made initially. You brought up how the ending, SPECIFICALLY THE ENDING, was 'straight out of a Michael Bay movie', you didn't argue about the whole game being a Bay film, just the ending. I merely said that both endings were like something out of a Michael Bay movie. I get it, you liked the first one way more. Cool. I think both games are dumb. But that doesn't change the fact that both games ended like a fucking Michael Bay movie. So if you harp on one ending like that you have to harp on the other for doing the same.
Sovereign was actually better than Saren, you're right about that. But just because it's in line with what the story created it doesn't make it any good. That's what's been my main thing in this thread. How Bioware's games have dwindled in quality over the past years. That's what I've been trying to convey, albeit I've been doing it rather poorly. Now I'd just like to explain how I feel about the series in general, this isn't some retort based solely on your comments.In Mass Effect we got a great sci-fi game, but admittedly with flaws. We got some of the worst texture problems I've ever seen (the same thing is in SWTOR), weird delays in dialogue, and we got a weird aiming system that wasn't terrible but, really, wasn't that much fun either. However, we also got to play in an extensive universe that wasn't too free or too linear. Bioware's "choices" have always been bad, and though they might have been fun to act out, well, they had little impact in the overall story. When the second Mass Effect was released we got all the things you expect from a sequel: better graphics, tighter scripted story and they even improved that aiming system! But we also were deprived of the RPG elements that were such a fun part of the game. We basically got a load of pickup missions and in top of that, just as many loyalty missions. On top of that, most of the characters we recruited were boring and plain. The best thing they did with the characters in Mass Effect 2 was that they told us more about Tali and Garrus. Miranda was weird, and made to attract thirteen year olds. Her accent (which is Yvonne Strahovski's real accent) didn't click with me. Jacob was so void of anything interesting that I'm beginning to think he's the predecessor to the Nexus Six. Grunt was just a bad version of the coolest character Bioware has ever made - Wrex. Thane started out pretty well, but he ended up being just as depressed as the game made me. The only good addition was Jack, which I really liked. As far as the story goes, aside from those pickup/loyalty-missions, it was okay. Being inside Sovereign was fun. I just didn't find the Collectors interesting at all with their bugs that paralyze people. It'd be more fun if they started the Reaper invasion in the second game and that was the main focus of the story for both the second and third game, seeing as they are the big threat.
Considering the quality of characters in the first game, I'm not so sure that 'plain' should be applied so easily to the second game. Sure there was Jacob and his lack of any real personality, but compared to the crew of the first game, I'll take him. For the record, in the first game we had Liara who, when she wasn't talking about her latent mother issues, was inexplicably falling head over heels for Shepard because of vague bullshit. Then there was Tali who only existed to be a verbal codex for the Quarian people. Wrex rarely had anything to say that wasn't about the genophage unless he was talking about war stories, of which he had about three. Garrus had the most 'arc' out of the entire crew and that was largely because his personality was influenced by your actions. Kaiden was boring and Ashley was the only character that had any sort of depth and growth by the end of it. Now in the second one, Tali is an actual character and Garrus just got turned up to 11 as far as I'm concerned. But the characters in the second seemed a bit more fleshed out in most cases. With the exception of Jacob, the DLC crew, and Samara. They felt like they changed as the story went on, which is something I can't say about the crew of the first. Liara was still the same at the end of ME1 as she was at the start. The same with Kaiden. And Tali. Wrex had a single moment. It was a great moment, but after that moment he was still exactly the same. In the second, for example, Jack started off as a total bitch who was clashing with everyone, Shepard included, but by the end of it she was willing to throw her life on the line to help these people. Granted the possibility exists that she wouldn't be willing to do that, but she still undergoes an arc. She's developed. She's not the same as when you first get her. She's a round character.
The character development was stronger in the second than it was in the first. A lot of things in the second were stronger than the first. What the first had was better storytelling. It wove a better narrative but it suffered from an introductory curse. Namely it wanted to set up the different races and culture. Except they chose to do it by having alien characters talk at length about alien life, instead of fleshing out those aliens. Personally I think that Mass Effect 2 is the better game, and it is largely thanks to the personalities that exist when I am onboard the Normandy. I didn't get that from the first one. I'm not gonna debate on the RPG mechanics of the game or whatnot, at the end of the day it boils down to personal preference. I can see why some would prefer the first Mass Effect to the second. I think the first ME is severely flawed which makes me enjoy it far less. ME2, even with all its flaws, was a better game as far as I'm concerned. I'd sooner take the recruitment and loyalty missions than the three planet structure we got in the first. But then, pretty much every modern BioWare game has had the same exact formula. The main problem with Mass Effect 2 is that it doesn't tell a good story. It instead details a series of tenuously connected subplots.
But I still feel it is the better game.
Much of what you describe is true, now that I think about it many of the characters in the first game were very static. Liara did fall head over heels for Shepard, because "I find you interesting". Both Kaiden and Ashley are just there for the sake of filling out some space. Ashley did have that xenophobia, but it felt unwarranted. She just came of as a unpleasant. I didn't feel that her romance with Shepard was very cleverly done either, but at least it was a bit better than Liara's "I LIEK YU". Wrex is mainly driven by, and talks about, the genophage - that's true. But it feels like it's a big enough of a thing to only go on that. But we also get to talk about his origins, and how he came to kill his father. Then we even got to get that personal artifact. I feel like Wrex's story should have been fleshed out in Mass Effect 2 when Shepard goes to Tuchanka. It shouldn't just have been a rite for Grunt. I get it that Tali and her damn face is something they're going to wait to unveil in the third, but damn come on! 
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