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Manifesto » Post Revolution: Mass Effect
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Post Revolution: Mass Effect
Posted on Tuesday, September 28 @ 23:22:37 Eastern by danielrbischoff
This week's Post Revolution looks at Mass Effect. How the hell am I going to play this after Mass Effect 2?
I was a little late to the Mass Effect bandwagon, I'll be honest. It wasn't until Mass Effect 2 was about to release that I was even remotely interested in playing the first installment of Bioware's sci-fi action series (notice how I classified it?). Still, with the focus on narrative and story in the ME series, I knew I had to start off on the first born.
I made my way through Mass Effect once as a paragon, male Shepherd. The story was cool, combat was a little frustrating, but largely manageable. The end boss was ridiculous. Once I put ME2 in my console, I was very happy I played through and made my own decisions. Having that kind of control over the way ME2 turned out was really satisfying, and meeting up with old friends like Wrex was awesome.
I've since beaten Mass Effect 2. Now I'm going back for my second playthrough of Mass Effect. I am beating my head against the desk right now.
I'm honestly a little ashamed to say it. The "hardcore" gamer in me wants to favor the technicality of the first Mass Effect. I want to prefer the density and challenge that goes into picking weapons, ammo types, suits, and party members.
The rest of me is just so goddam frustrated. Those of you in the know are probably nodding your head knowingly.
For those of you who haven't played Mass Effect, won't spoil any of the story, and I HAVE TO recommend you play the first game first, but please get all you want out of it before moving on. Mass Effect 2 revolutionizes a lot of the gameplay for the better(?).
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Whats worst, ME2 doesn't expand on the narrative established in ME1, aside from some revelations about Protheans. It's simply gather your team for a big showdown. The act of building your team comprises the whole story. The game feels like an EA game, not Bioware. (how many Bioware games have re-spawning enemies who continually run out of doors until you kill X number of enemies? Army of Two does.)
Also, maybe its the difficulty I was playing on, but I didn't notice continually respawning enemies. Whatever.
My point is, a lot of ME1's RPG-ier elements were actually weaknesses. Those large levels you're referencing were WAY too easy to get lost in. The customization was a lot of clutter. You had way too much to select and in the end, you were lucky if you really saw a difference in weapon or character performance.
Lastly, the story: Just because the character stories weren't dealing heavy handed in the reapers or their impending invasion doesn't mean that there wasn't expansion of narrative. If you think about it, ME1's greatest contribution to humans vs reapers was just even ****ing establishing that there was a conflict. If you start with nothing, and you build something, its going to seem like a lot more than when you're building off of something. Furthermore, the strongest areas of narrative for ME1 were the relationships with other characters and the way you interacted with the universe. ME2 continues that strength in spades.
OK, getting a little long in the tooth. Done.
As far as the story is concerned, I bet you could play ME1 then ME3 and barely miss a beat. There is no STORY in ME2, character interaction, yes. Character development is what drives any good story, but can you watch A New Hope and then jump to Return of the Jedi? ME2 brings nothing new to the story dude.