Mass Effect 2 gameplay thread

[frogbeastegg]

The game is now officially out in America so it's time for the gameplay thread. As requested by arena patrons, it's a zero spoiler tolerance thread. After precisely one month the thread will relax to the standard spoiler policy. Until that time:


All spoilers must go into spoiler tags!
However small you think the spoiler is, show consideration for your fellow org members and use the tags!
Mark the spoiler with a brief spoiler free description so people can tell whether they have seen that part of the game yet! Example below.

Spoiler for Mass Effect's setting:
It's an intentional pastiche of 80's scifi

[Mailman653]

Ah, I was waiting for this thread. I've been glued to the game since I bought it, time sure flys. Still getting used to the controls a bit but so far it's all good. Saw some familiar faces, found out things that made me go wow.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

Apparently there are massive issues with the Cerberus Network at each stage of registration, meaning DLC is unavailable for use. The main game is still playable, though.

[Wishazu]

Hopefully cerberus will be working by Friday. The game isn't out over here untill then. :thumbsdown:

[Monk]

Ahh ME2, how I longed to get this game and how I hated waiting every single day until it was released. It's been a long wait and thanks to the internet hype machine I don't think my expectations could have been any higher going in. Nothing short of being blown away would have satisfied me. I managed to get the game and have played through a sizable portion of it. I will not be discussing plot details, instead i'll be tackling structure, gameplay mechanics and feel. Bear in mind I am going to be generalizing a lot, as this is by and large a first impression

First off the structure of not only the story but the game. Bioware has been following the same formulea for years. Prologue, 4 plot missions, shock mission, final marathon stretch that reveals a huge surprise and leads you to your dramatic ending. That's present in ME2, but it feels as if its been expanded and improved upon somewhat. Yeah you read right - Bioware is actually begining refining the structure of the game. You will see familiarities between this game's mission set up and games like Dragon Age, Kotor, ect, but it was nice to reach what I thought was the end of the game only to find out it was the middle.

The combat in the first game was just terrible. I loved the first and yet I consider its combat to be horribly clunky and near broken. You couldn't depend on your squad mates to do anything so it lead to a lot of micro-managing, and the birth of my much talked about biotic jugglers.

Along comes ME2 and suddenly everything is different. Instead of being based around powers, the combat is now largely focused on cover mechanics.In the first it felt like cover was an after-thought but here it feels wonderfully implemented, cover combat feels very fluid but takes a LOT of getting used to. Once you do, though, don't be surprised if you're itching to get back into the action once you get to a story section. I read an interview that said Bioware spent all of the two years since ME1 working on the combat, and that's exactly what this feels like. The combat in ME2 is a huge plus but that doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement. It still needs a few more steps before it's perfect like the GoW series (yes i just compared ME2's combat system to Gears of War. That is a good thing.)

Mini-games are still a bust in the ME series. The first one introduced a "simon says" decoder with your controller to unlock something. That's gone and instead you get games where the goal is to find matches (match 2 of a kind to unlock a door, ect). It's still painfully simple and doesn't engage you. I felt that I was just having my time wasted by those games Planetary scanning is rather annoying at first. The resource gathering is actually relatively well developed but it can get rather tedious to literally grind out the amounts you need for upgrades. Thankfully most upgrades need reasonable amounts of resource, but some of the later ones take ungodly amounts. I think with a little refinement (less planets with only resources and more with special goodies hidden on them) the scanning could a top notch feature.

Finally the story. I was really worried about halfway through that this game was about to pull a MW2 and go bananas (B-A-N-A-N-A-S :help: ) but, thankfully, merficully, it did not. However ! The talk that this game can stand on its own plotwise is a rather hurtful lie told by ME2's marketing. If you did not play the first your enjoyment will be seriously impacted here, the amount of character added from importing a save versus not is rather ridiculous. Not to mention the game assumes you know some things right off the bat that you might not if you never played the first. To use an analogy I'm sure will soon be overused, it's like popping in Empire Strikes Back without having ever seen A New Hope. Sure it's still a great movie, but you're gonna be lost on a lot of the smaller things.

If you import a save an amazing thing happens. The more you play with your Shepard the more invested you get. The further and further I got into the game with my canonical ME1 shep, the more this felt like my universe. Like I was the one shaping this galaxy and turning it toward prosperity or mere survival. That was an amazing feeling and why I highly recommend importing. Not only will it serve to help you with the smaller plot threads, but it gives the game a whole new feel.

Those are my first impressions of ME2. Summerized:

Structure: We've seen it before, but it's got a few shiny new twists and turns!
Combat: Vastly improved and fun to take part in.
Mini-games: Hit and miss. Scanning is okay, everything else is juvenile.
Story: It's a second act of a three act play, it can't hide it no matter how much it tries. But still very enjoyable.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

Users reporting that the Cerberus Network is fixed. All DLC now available.

[LeftEyeNine]

Is it true that the game itself feels like a form of cinematic art indeed ?

[Crazed Rabbit]

This may fit in the other thread as well, but here's a link to a large repository of saved games from ME1 that allow you to change what decisions you want your Shepard in ME2 to have made in ME1 by choosing different saved game files;
http://www.masseffectsaves.com/

CR

[Mailman653]

Well, I have the 360 version and I saw some threads on the xbox forum about the network not working properly. I suppose I am lucky when I saw that everything worked fine for me. Although I just started up the game and not only was there an update but a new piece of DLC which should of been there yesterday I think; guess they fixed whatever was wrong.

Any one catch those Star Trek references? I had a drink on Omega and Shep said "its...green" ha ha ha. Plus what are the chances you're engineer has that accent? And how about those bathrooms? I guess no one can complain that it's not "realistic" anymore.

[frogbeastegg]

Can someone with the xbox version tell me if achievements still give gameplay bonuses?

I don't expect to be playing this until the middle or end of next week. ~:( Nowhere beat amazon.co.uk's low price and their free postage tends to be slow. With a house to furnish I couldn't justify paying anything more than the lowest possible. Can't wait; I loved the original.

[Beskar]

Any one catch those Star Trek references? I had a drink on Omega and Shep said "its...green" ha ha ha. Plus what are the chances you're engineer has that accent? And how about those bathrooms? I guess no one can complain that it's not "realistic" anymore.

I always thought the suits were like the ones from Dune. Hence no need for bathrooms.

[Samurai Waki]

So far I'm VERY Impressed. I agree with pretty much everything Monk has said, unfortunately my old ME1 Save was long gone by the time I got this :thumbsdown:

[Mailman653]

Well, save your ME2 save this time, I'm more than certain you'll be able to port it onto ME3.

[Wishazu]

I can't wait, just another 31.5 hours before I can pick it up at my local Game. I think the first tough decision I'm going to have to make is which one of my 9 characters from ME1 I'm going to use first.

[Monk]

I already am regretting this but I completely marathoned ME2. Very close to the ending and expect to finish it when I get some time in the next couple days. Stepping away from this game can be tough at times, especially when there's tons to do! Done all the companion quests, love how they feel as integrated into the narrative as the story-missions. The Exploration quests feel a lot better but they could still use work.

It's interesting to see how your relationship with your crew can evolve over the course of the game, even though the loyalty system is a little shallow. If you talk to your crew each will eventually reveal a companion quest, some sooner than others. If you do this quest they become loyal, however, you also have the opportunity to lose loyalty with them by siding against them in a crisis. Various crew members are polar opposites of each other, and after you gain the loyalty of those opposites they will enter a situation where it's up to you to resolve it. You can side with one of them, or with enough charm/intimidate you can convince them to kill each other after the mission. The later of which is the only way to keep them both happy, as siding against someone means you lose their loyalty.

It reminds me of the way they treated Wrex in the first game, a great way to manage your party but I can't help but feel its simple in comparison to the approval system of Dragon Age.

I like the interrupt system in conversations and I think going forward this could be a lot of fun. It really lets the darker (or empathic, if you're paragon) side of your character shine through.

There is nothing like pulling a gun on a doom saying krogan and blowing him up with a shot to a gas canister, quipping "You talk too much."


Well, save your ME2 save this time, I'm more than certain you'll be able to port it onto ME3.

The loading screen tooltips lead me to believe you're right.


The only thing I have not liked, aside from mini-games and other minor annoyances...

Romance plot spoilers
The game practically threw my Female Shep at Jacob Taylor. I was flirting with him before I even realized what was going on, and i was having to mash "NO! I DONT WANT IT! NO!" soon after. I guess the designers expect my shep to have some kinda connection with him. Well she doesn't, thank you.

Other than that subplots went as I intended.



Now I should probably get back to working on those various projects due :book: :help:

[Mailman653]

So who heard about the specter who...

Was the first Hanar spectre? ha ha ha, "enkindle this".

@Monk

It is hard to put down indeed, its easy to spend two hours on it and not even realize it. I'm already on the 2nd disk, 360 version. I thinking I should of played on the difficulty that comes after normal, oh well, there's next time....and plenty more, I know I'll be playing it over a few times between now and ME3.

[Monk]

@Monk

It is hard to put down indeed, its easy to spend two hours on it and not even realize it. I'm already on the 2nd disk, 360 version. I thinking I should of played on the difficulty that comes after normal, oh well, there's next time....and plenty more, I know I'll be playing it over a few times between now and ME3.

The biggest strength of the game is how much there is to do, I think. There's exploration and resource mining for when you want something light. Companion quests for when you want something as engaging as the main line (but dont want to advance it) and the main story when you're ready to tackle another major story element. They all feel like they are part of a greater whole, and doing one doesn't make you sigh - wishing you were doing another instead. Resource mining is a great start, but I still think we need more planets with hidden goodies and less planets devoted purely to raw materials.

As for difficulty, Veteran is not tough enough for me, I am hitting the Hardcore setting as soon as I can. I suspect that for many veterans of third person shooters (and those who ever completed insanity on the first game) will feel nothing short of Veteran+ will challenge them.

More on the combat - i like the hard counters introduced to the system. Certain powers are ineffective against shields, otehrs against armor. It makes you think about what to throw at who, and makes you panic a bit when you're getting charged by a krogan with full armor - but your ace in the hole power is ineffective against him. It makes load-outs like my biotic juggling team a lot harder to run. Kudos to Bioware for balancing out combat and keeping guys like me from air-juggling entire rooms at once! :laugh4:

[al Roumi]

Thanks for the info Monk and Mailman, my disk is in the post from amazon.co.uk, due to arrive tomorrow -on UK release day. Not going to get much time on it this weekend though, which is going to be hard for everyone around me probably :D

[Krusader]

Been playing ME2 for a bit and my thoughts.

I am disappointed in Bioware when it comes to the PC edition. There are no mappable keys for weapons, and the spacebar is used for 3 actions when it could have been split up among 3 different keys instead. Plus mousewheel support for menu scrolling and doubleclicking to open things (like messages, codex entries).

Also, the galaxy map thing...maybe it's just me, but I can't understand a damn thing and have absolutely no idea what my fuel consumption is, how much fuel I have and what the percentage indicator in upper left is for. There is no tutorial entries in the Codex either (Codex is also sloppy. No double-click to open and mousewheel can't be used to scroll down or up).
Can't see the value of the "fuel aspect".

The game is fun otherwise, but as I bought it on Steam I actually did not get a manual. I actually like manuals, because I can read them if there is something I don't understand.
I will echo Monk's statements though that combat is more tactical. I have to take cover whenever I get in a gunfight, as otherwise I'll take too much damage and early on you learn to switch between weapons and powers to take out enemies (what to use versus shields, barriers, armor and vorcha/krogan). I also like how squadmates take cover and having autouse of powers enabled, it seems they use them well enough.

[Beskar]

You could use a controller with it, if it is a keyboard problem. They are very comfortable to use. I recommend a xbox360 styled one.

Edit: They included no controller support, even though it is a port?!?! asofhkjshkjsdjkhjksahjhkjsdhfjkdhgkjh

[Wishazu]

Buy a 360 and play it on that. :laugh4:

[Mailman653]

There seems to be less character interaction than there used to be. Rarely have I seen two of Shep's team just randomly chat to each other while you're just doing whatever. As a matter of fact, one of the few times, maybe the only time, I heard two teamates talk was in regards to the elevators.

Still an awesome game though!

[Beskar]

Buy a 360 and play it on that. :laugh4:

No.

[Monk]

Been playing ME2 for a bit and my thoughts.

I am disappointed in Bioware when it comes to the PC edition. There are no mappable keys for weapons, and the spacebar is used for 3 actions when it could have been split up among 3 different keys instead. Plus mousewheel support for menu scrolling and doubleclicking to open things (like messages, codex entries).

Also, the galaxy map thing...maybe it's just me, but I can't understand a damn thing and have absolutely no idea what my fuel consumption is, how much fuel I have and what the percentage indicator in upper left is for. There is no tutorial entries in the Codex either (Codex is also sloppy. No double-click to open and mousewheel can't be used to scroll down or up).
Can't see the value of the "fuel aspect".

Traveling between stars will pop up your fuel gauge and use it up, using Mass Relays and traveling inside a star-system doesn't require fuel. The % is the extent to which you've explored that star system.

There are some tutorials on your private terminal onboard your ship but there's only 3 of them and they largely focus on combat and squad control.

[Kekvit Irae]

For me, the game SUCKS, and here's why:
(copied and modified from my own post on Bioware's forum)

1. Unable to map the Backspace and Delete keys. I use the arrow keys for movement (I hate WASD), and I used Backspace for the tactical HUD and Delete for holstering my weapon in ME1. Why can't I do that here?

2. Unable to remap certain functions. More specifically, during hacking, the Spacebar is still used to select the codes when hacking a bank terminal or similar item, and there is no way to map that function elsewhere. The control scheme makes me wish I bought the 360 version instead.

3. No manual crouch. I don't like using cover just to crouch.

4. Scanning worlds is slower than two Elcor doing the rumpy pumpy. I have to reposition my mouse several times when moving from pole to pole. At the very least, you could have made it only SLIGHTLY slower than moving the mouse when not scanning.

5. Storm uses the same key as Use and Cover. No, I don't want to accidentally go into cover when running. Keep those two keys seperate.

6. Miranda needs to lay off the Botox. There's only so much of that perpetual smirk I can take before I start shooting.

7. I like being able to Storm outside of combat. I don't like being restricted to fatigue outside of combat.

8. Speaking of fatigue, give us the visual indicator back! I don't like having to rely solely on "burst firing" Storm to get across a station quicker just because the only way I can tell if I'm fatigued is a very subtle audio cue. It also doesn't help the deaf ME gamers (of which my roommate is one of).

9. The new health system. Wow, health that regenerates after a few seconds if you don't get shot. I haven't seen this before! Oh wait, I have. In a hundred other games produced this decade.

10. Medigel is worthless now unless you find upgrades or if your squad dies.

11. The cover system is too overused.

12. The lack of an inventory system and weapon/armor mods no longer makes collecting a tactical decision; it removes collecting all-together.

13. The Day One DLC cant hold a candle to the Day One DLC of Dragon Age (the Normandy Crash pack would have made more of an emotional impact if it unlocked half-way through the game, not at the very beginning when the original Normandy was still fresh in our minds).

14. The DLC armor give you no option to remove the helmets. If you want to wear it, you're stuck looking like a crab, a medieval reject, or someone who got lost on his or her way to Red Faction.

15. The human embassy room is the only place on the Presidium you can go to? Lame.

16. This isn't Mass Effect. This is Gears of War.


Love the story and interactions, hate the game.

[rajpoot]

So err, what happens if you let the council die in the first game? Or if they're kept alive? I mean I'm asking for spoilers here, hope that's OK.....I'd be grateful if someone who's already playing could oblige, with tags of course.... :juggle2:

[Beskar]

I got Xpadder to work well with the game, which is good. However, still need KB+M for the hacking options.

The skill selection has been completely simplified.

Armour selection has been completely simplified.

Weapon selection has been completely simplified.

You now require Ammo? :inquisitive:


Not impressed with that.

[johnhughthom]

You now require Ammo? :inquisitive:


Umm, doesn't that go against the lore of the original?

[Krusader]

Been doing the planetary/mineral scan minigame and I'd gladly have the Mako back. It felt boring and I'm probably doing it wrong when I usually use 30 probes per planet.

Mass Effect 2 is still a good game, but I think I won't be looking that forward to Mass Effect 3.

[Beskar]

Umm, doesn't that go against the lore of the original?

Yes. In the original, ammo was basically grains of sand, thus you pretty much had unlimited. The only issue was the overheating of weapons.

They decided now, to add "thermal clips", which they argue keeps the weapon cool enough for a certain amount of shots, which basically means, you got ammo.

[Greyblades]

Huh, It would make more sense, in-universe anyway, if they were energy cells, unlimited bullets dont mean squat if you dont have energy to propel them.

[Kekvit Irae]

So err, what happens if you let the council die in the first game? Or if they're kept alive? I mean I'm asking for spoilers here, hope that's OK.....I'd be grateful if someone who's already playing could oblige, with tags of course.... :juggle2:

Nothing major. Whether or not the Council lives or dies has no effect on the game. I haven't played through with an "evil" character on Mass Effect 1 and exported it to Mass Effect 2 yet, so I only know of the "good" playthrough. Making a pre-generated character instead of an imported character will always result in the Council dying.

Council lives: Minor dialogue throughout the game, and you get to briefly speak with the Council and Ambassador Udina/Anderson (again, depending on who you choose in ME1) about reinstatement to the Spectres once you arrive on the Presidium. They become so arrogant, it's almost worth killing them in ME1, as they outright refuse to acknowledge everything about the Reapers. They believe Sovereign was a highly-advanced Geth ship rather than a Reaper. Choosing to be reinstated into the Spectres has no effect on gameplay either.

[Mailman653]

I finished the game earlier today, it was awesome! I'm gonna totally go through it again soon. I could of sworn ME1 was longer eventhough this game has two disks, I couldn't put either game down yet I recall ME1 lasting longer, I don't know.

I don't like how you get notified for side missions though, in ME1 if you were in a system you'd get a distress call or get a com signal from the Alliance about something they want you to check out. In ME2, if you don't go out looking for it, you'll never find it cause hardly anyone tells you, hey this is going on in that planet or something, check it out. Although I suppose it goes back to the theme of the game, mission first, everyone else second.

[Kekvit Irae]

Apparently not EVERYTHING in ME1 transfers over smoothly in ME2. When I met Conrad the fan in Illium, he told me I shoved a gun in his face (the Renegade option in ME1) two years ago. My character is pure Paragon, and certainly didn't choose the Renegade choice, so maybe the writers got sloppy about him.

[rajpoot]

@ Kekvit Irae
Thank you. ~:) I was going to download a ME1 save file you know, so I thought might as well as download the one which gives the best paragon results in ME2.

[frogbeastegg]

The game arrived yesterday, by some miracle of postal competence. I'm 5 hours in. The things I like are all to be expected because they're obvious. Things like how closely it ties in to the original game, the cinematic conversations, the little touches such as my Shepard having a picture of Kaiden in her quarters, etc.

The things I'm not liking, oh boy.

I hate the new interface. Tiny, hard to see, missing information that I relied on in the first game.

The new style area map. Again, tiny. It takes up less than 1/4 of my screen and can't be zoomed in on.

My squad seems to be hyperactive and loves to run off leaving me alone in combat while they stand behind a pillar on the far side of the area doing nothing.

I hate, hate, hate the new ammo system! It adds nothing and cramps my gameplay quite badly. "Oh look, a perfect situation for me to go sniper and support my team as they close in with biotics and tech powers. Oh look, 5 shots later and I'm out of ammo. Back to plugging away with the pistol it is, then. Weee!"

Gun balance so far is even worse than the first game. Sniper and pistol are useful, everything else either does fractional damage or is inaccurate as heck. The assault rifle takes an entire clip to drop a single weak enemy, assuming you burst fire and aim carefully. I used to rely on my assault rifle.

I miss customising my weapons.

[Oliver Twist] Please, sir, I want some loot.[/Oliver Twist]

What's with the waves of individual enemies coming out of a 'locked' door in the combat area to replace ones which died?

I despise the new galaxy map. it's rubbish, confusing, needless, and horrible to deal with.

The new mini games can get deleted now, please, All rubbish, all a pain to play, and all completely needless. I was sick to death of planet scanning before I'd finished my first one, and the other two aren't any better.

Can I turn the tutorial off now please? How about Now? Now? Please, shut up and stop spamming me with messages about how to breathe!

But they wont tell me about the things which could have used explanation. Like how the crappy new mini games work.

Speaking of messages, some flash up on screen for less than a second. These are the ones I want to read. Others in the same type of box sit there for ages. These are the ones I do not want to read.

No in-party banter while travelling.

I don't like any of the party members I've found so far. I've got 4.

Oh goodie, I have some levels to spend at the beginning because I ported my game over. Let's see what we've got. Four abilities?! FOUR!? Each with four levels!? That's IT!? And some of those levels cost more points than I gain per level up so it appears that I'm going to spend a lot of time with the interface flashing and nagging at me to spend points when I can't because I need to save up.

Paragon and renegade points shower down on Shepard like confetti. My paragon bar is nearly 1/3 full already! Aligned dialogue options are everywhere and are always guaranteed and easy to get. Blergh. I got a discount in every single shop in that first major area simply by walking around and using the paragon option, and then waltzed around successfully charming people in situations where it made no sense whatsoever. Those options used to be a bit special, and had requirements before you could use them.

Why does Shepard still move so slowly?

Observation: sticking several zeroes on the price of every item does not make the start of th game epic or high level. It makes it a pain to keep track of how much money you have because someone chose to use microfont 2.0 so my resource pool requires a magnifying glass to be readable.

What was the point of that dramatic beginning? Everything which is lost is handed right back 5 minutes later.

And the big hairy deal which is destroying my enjoyment of the plot thus far: who I'm working with and how it was done. Shepard basically shrugs her shoulders and says "Ok." and that's it, I'm working for one of the major enemies in the first game. A corp which killed people Shepard liked, tried to kill her, which committed a bunch of completely hideous experiments, and was the space going equivalent to the nazis. I'm blaming it on brain damage during the reconstruction. :yes:

Which reminds me, the whole lazerus concept is ludicrous even for space opera.

Thought for the day: Why does the game wait until I put the controller down to relax during a cutscene before offering an interrupt? Does it have a sensor which checks if Im still holding the controller before triggering them?

Where are the side quests? I've been to and scoured the citadel, my ship and the first real planet/asteroid base thingy and I've turned up a bare handful.

Why is Shepard and crew obsessed with drawing their weapons in certain designated areas? I'll clear all of the enemies out and then each time I talk to someone or interact with something they draw their weapons again. So I have to put them away again. For no reason.

No mako? But some of the coolest moments from the first game involved the mako. :(

And why is barely anyone surprised or pleased to see Shepard? They act like she was tagged with week long quarantine for a cold instead of KIA.

[White_eyes:D]

And the big hairy deal which is destroying my enjoyment of the plot thus far: who I'm working with and how it was done. Shepard basically shrugs her shoulders and says "Ok." and that's it, I'm working for one of the major enemies in the first game. A corp which killed people Shepard liked, tried to kill her, which committed a bunch of completely hideous experiments, and was the space going equivalent to the nazis. I'm blaming it on brain damage during the reconstruction. :yes:

Which reminds me, the whole lazerus concept is ludicrous even for space opera.

And why is barely anyone surprised or pleased to see Shepard? They act like she was tagged with week long quarantine for a cold instead of KIA. I am guessing you didn't talk to about 90% of the Crew.:laugh4:Most of them were thrown away by the "Alliance and Council" because they supported Shepard's opinion about the "Reapers returning". As you play though the game you will see that "Cerberus" is the only one willing to do anything about them.(As far as I could see:shrug:)

About the KIA thing...:juggle2: I am guessing they didn't see your corpse or something. I recall Joker or someone mentioned that the "Alliance" tried to sweep the "Reaper threat" under the rug(By saying Shepard was KIA right away:inquisitive:)."Much easier to blame pirates and slavers" -The Illusive man

[Kekvit Irae]

The new mini games can get deleted now, please, All rubbish, all a pain to play, and all completely needless. I was sick to death of planet scanning before I'd finished my first one, and the other two aren't any better.

They are annoying, but are certainly more logical than playing Simon (360) or Frogger (PC).


No in-party banter while travelling.

It depends on where you're at and who you're with. Garrus and Tali have a really amusing conversation at the Citadel when walking up/down the stairs.

Garrus: Don't you miss our conversations in the elevators?
Tali: No.
Garrus: I could ask about your immunity, or what's under your mask.
Tali: I have a shotgun.
Garrus: Maybe some other time.


Oh goodie, I have some levels to spend at the beginning because I ported my game over. Let's see what we've got. Four abilities?! FOUR!? Each with four levels!? That's IT!? And some of those levels cost more points than I gain per level up so it appears that I'm going to spend a lot of time with the interface flashing and nagging at me to spend points when I can't because I need to save up.

Another thing I hated. I liked having a lot of skills, even if they were mostly weapons. It gave me a choice. You CAN, however, research a fifth skill of your choice once you get the research data, and you're not stuck with that skill if you don't like it.


Paragon and renegade points shower down on Shepard like confetti. My paragon bar is nearly 1/3 full already! Aligned dialogue options are everywhere and are always guaranteed and easy to get. Blergh. I got a discount in every single shop in that first major area simply by walking around and using the paragon option, and then waltzed around successfully charming people in situations where it made no sense whatsoever. Those options used to be a bit special, and had requirements before you could use them.

To be fair, the new Paragon/Renegade QTEs are pretty nice. But... you don't need any points to do them, and they will always work regardless of your Paragon/Renegade status.


What was the point of that dramatic beginning? Everything which is lost is handed right back 5 minutes later.

Convenient plot point to get rid of all the characters we loved and bring in others we don't. At least Tali is back.


Where are the side quests? I've been to and scoured the citadel, my ship and the first real planet/asteroid base thingy and I've turned up a bare handful.

There are actually quite a few sidequests in the game. Just not a lot in the first area. You can also find them by visiting uncharted worlds. You'll need to scan them to find them, but if EDI doesn't say anything about "Anomoly Detected", there's no sidequest there.


No mako? But some of the coolest moments from the first game involved the mako. :(

I enjoy the lack of the M35 "Drunken Monkey" Mako. I don't like how it was replaced by the new galaxy travel system.


EDIT: Oh, and another thing I'll add to the list of things I don't like about the game. The damn fish! You have to go up to your cabin to feed them every five minutes or they die. At least Kelly will feed them for you if you get her in the sack, but that's midway through the game. Fortunately, my hamster doesn't require feeding. I'm going to make a new ME2 character based off of Minsc and do nothing but look at my new space hamster.

[Mailman653]

Convenient plot point to get rid of all the characters we loved and bring in others we don't. At least Tali is back.


Yeah, this is really significant with who ever you rommanced in the old game. I think it would be awesome if in ME3, you can pick anyone from the first two games to join the team.

I just started a new game on Insane.....it really is insane. I died more times on the second level then I died in the 30+ hrs of the normal difficulty. I think I picked the wrong upgrade when I started a new game.

[frogbeastegg]

Blergh. Got another 2 party members. The biotic I already dislike after her generic angry tattoo girl intro, and the other is a more boo-hoo version of a character I previously liked. From the things he’s saying I now expect him to be a romance candidate for a female Shepard; Bioware do think angst is the main attractive trait a man can have.


I am guessing you didn't talk to about 90% of the Crew.:laugh4:Most of them were thrown away by the "Alliance and Council" because they supported Shepard's opinion about the "Reapers returning". As you play though the game you will see that "Cerberus" is the only one willing to do anything about them.(As far as I could see:shrug:)
I talked to them as far as the game will let me, which right now is 2-3 conversations each. I stand by my comment: Shepard must be brain damaged. As for the crew, most of them are complaining about how they don't like the organisation, its politics or its methods. It's like joining the Space Nazis(TM) because Space Winston Churchill didn't offer you a cigar and ooh look shiny toys!


About the KIA thing...:juggle2: I am guessing they didn't see your corpse or something. I recall Joker or someone mentioned that the "Alliance" tried to sweep the "Reaper threat" under the rug(By saying Shepard was KIA right away:inquisitive:)."Much easier to blame pirates and slavers" -The Illusive man
You’d still expect your dear old friends and allies to say something like, “It’s good to see you again!” or “It’s been a while and by the way, I heard you were dead?” They act like you have been gone for 2 days on an out of town shopping trip.


It depends on where you're at and who you're with. Garrus and Tali have a really amusing conversation at the Citadel when walking up/down the stairs.
So far I've mainly been using Miranda and what's-his-name the generic soldier you get at the beginning. Not a whisper passed between them. I used the DLC mercenary for a bit, found his powers to be a bit crap and his personality grating, so I sidelined him. Not a word from him other than those scripted into the mission.

No Tali yet, and to be honest her earlier intro has completely cheesed me off. It's like they used the relationship from my xenophobic renegade Shepard playthrough instead of my original sweetness-and-light character.


There are actually quite a few sidequests in the game. Just not a lot in the first area. You can also find them by visiting uncharted worlds. You'll need to scan them to find them, but if EDI doesn't say anything about "Anomoly Detected", there's no sidequest there.
Oh good. Nice to know I might get something other than repetitive strain injury out of the planet scans.


I enjoy the lack of the M35 "Drunken Monkey" Mako.
I liked the mako when it tied into full missions, such as storming by way along the beach to the cloning facility. Made for a change of pace. In fact I wasn't that impressed with the original game until the section where you rescued Liara; then I started to fall for the game.

[White_eyes:D]

You’d still expect your dear old friends and allies to say something like, “It’s good to see you again!” or “It’s been a while and by the way, I heard you were dead?” They act like you have been gone for 2 days on an out of town shopping trip.
Most people might already know about it....
If you didn't kill Wrex in the last game, he is the only guy who acted like that and the only one; who I was really glad to see(in a non-party member way).:laugh4:

I talked to them as far as the game will let me, which right now is 2-3 conversations each. I stand by my comment: Shepard must be brain damaged. As for the crew, most of them are complaining about how they don't like the organisation, its politics or its methods. It's like joining the Space Nazis(TM) because Space Winston Churchill didn't offer you a cigar and ooh look shiny toys! It's more like going from "Military forces" to "CIA or some other black ops agency".:juggle2:

And why not? If there was a threat that BIG(Everyone dies from a genocidal race) and politics were getting in the way because its more of a "Bogeyman issue" I would jump sides too.:book:

[Beskar]

I am still wondering how they vacuum sealed Miranda's outfit while she was wearing it. If there is a romanace option, I think Shepard will have to brush up on his surgey skills to remove it.

[Mailman653]

It's because she is perfect so even her suit hugs everything perfectly? ha ha ha.

[Kekvit Irae]

Most people might already know about it....
If you didn't kill Wrex in the last game, he is the only guy who acted like that and the only one; who I was really glad to see(in a non-party member way).:laugh4:

What pissed me off SO BADLY about the game wasn't the Gears of War ripoff, wasn't the Call of Duty health system, wasn't the stupidification of the inventory... no. What really got me was Liara going from a sweet and innocent girl to a cold-blooded and ruthless killer with only a professional interest in Shepard (even though the game DOES acknowledge the previous game's romance). WHAT THE HELL, BIOWARE?


I liked the mako when it tied into full missions, such as storming by way along the beach to the cloning facility. Made for a change of pace. In fact I wasn't that impressed with the original game until the section where you rescued Liara; then I started to fall for the game.

The Mako isn't THAT bad on the 360, but god help you if you ever play the PC version like I do. The simple task of staying on the road during Ilos is a test of skill itself.

[Greyblades]

Liara going from a sweet and innocent girl to a cold-blooded and ruthless killer with only a professional interest in Shepard (even though the game DOES acknowledge the previous game's romance).
Have you tried confronting her on it?

[Krusader]

I've been playing the game for almost 12 hours straight and I'm enjoying it. Is it perfect? Far from it...the planetary scan minigame is utterly boring and tedious and even on official forums it is difficult to find people who enjoy it. The other two minigames are okay. Personally I prefer them than the frogger minigame in ME1.

I will echo frog's statement that the reunion scenes...could have been better.
Although Kaidan Alenko's seemed good enough. Him being wary of showing up as he expected a Cerberus attack. Wrex's greeting though was good and I enjoyed that.

I couldn't help but be reminded of what Yahtzee said about Tabula Rasa when he reviewed (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/9-Tabula-Rasa) it over two years ago. Watch from 02:20. While it is about online games, ignore the MMO and online prefixes. This is Bioware going after the shooter-audience and thus simplyfing/dumbing down (whatever you prefer) so they won't be put off.

I enjoy the game, but I miss the RPG-feel. Putting points into abilities and building my own and teammates' characters was fun and I also enjoyed switching and swapping weapons, weapon mods, armor etc. And while I have no problems keeping my ammo supply up, I'd prefer the old system with overheating.

Regarding planetary scans...seeing some threads on official forums there are quite a few who have stated they'd gladly pay 5-10 $ for a DLC that revamps the planetary scan minigame so it goes faster and is more fun. I myself would gladly pay 5 $ actually to do so, because scanning planets is incredibly dull.

[Kekvit Irae]

Ok, after playing and winning the game, I will disregard whatever bad things I've said about Mass Effect 2 ONLY because of the conversations with Legion and his loyalty quest (Paragon side).

Perhaps we can see the Quarians making nice to the newly-reformed Geth on the Quarian homeworld in Mass Effect 3?


EDIT: Also, here's a little information to get the no squad death ending...

ALL SQUADMATES MUST BE LOYAL!
SAVE BEFORE YOU GO TO THE OMEGA-4 RELAY!
Use Tali or Legion for the ventilation shaft specialist. Anyone else dies.
Samara or Jack must be the biotics.
Use Miranda, Garrus, or Jacob for leading either of your fireteams. I did this with Garrus on the second fireteam and he was shot, but casually brushed it off. I'm guessing it's because of the loyalty.

I used Samara for the first fireteam and Mordin for the ventilation shaft. Mordin died, so I'm guessing Samara in fireteam = good, Mordin in the shafts = bad.

[Mailman653]

I'll have to try that, I had one squad member die when I finished the game. And Legion is something else, I really look forward to how they will expand his story in ME3.

[Kekvit Irae]

Also, regarding Kelly...

It is possible to save her. You need to immediately go to the Omega-4 Relay after the crew is abducted. If you choose to do side-missions before going, she dies.

[frogbeastegg]

Finally! 15 hours on and it's picking up. I have enough upgrades that the combat is a little less bad, Ilium is loaded with absolutely brilliant interactions and dialogue (I want that bartender in my party, now!) and the 'gone for shopping effect' may have finally ended. Miranda's personal quest made her more bearable.

I have decided that I also dislike the global power cooldown which replaces the individual power cooldown of the first game. It seems like I am always waiting for my squad to let 12 seconds pass so I can get them to try again (they keep hitting walls instead of targets) or that the opportunity created by using one power goes unexploited because I can't follow it up with a different power for a long time. Or the AI uses a power and I have to wait for 12 seconds to pass before I can ask for the one I need them to use. It also makes power combos next to impossible. I miss hitting big nasties with overload -> warp. No way to influence cooldown times either.

spoilers for a meeting on Horizon
Kaiden was delighted to see Shepard instead of the usual "Meh" reaction. Then he realised who she was working for and there was a nicely done argument about it, with him saying all the things I have been. Cue massive falling out and him leaving. He sent an email later, apologising and asking for time to get used to the idea of Shepard being alive. AND this when he already knew I might be alive!

spoilers for a person you meet on Ilium
Liara was also very happy to see me, and didn't act as though I'd been off shopping for a weekend.




It's more like going from "Military forces" to "CIA or some other black ops agency".:juggle2:
Cerberus are a completely independent, self funded political and paramilitary organisation which likes to perform terrorist attacks, illegal experiments, torture people, assassinate, murder, blackmail, intimidate, and has a political ideology which says "This one tiny group which is the same as us is fine, everyone else is so much rubbish lying in our way and needs to be removed."

It's like going from the army to the IRA, Nazis, Al Quaeda or similar extreme group.

It's also a group which spent a lot of the last game trying to kill my Shepard and crew, and which killed people she knew and liked. And she joins up because the man in charge of the organisation claims they are doing good against an unsubstantiated threat. She doesn't question much, she doesn't demand proof, she doesn't try to join any alternate group, and she doesn't even question their improbable story about the Lazerus project. No, she just nods her little head and goes "Ok." Brain damaged.



What is this frogger mini game people keep mentioning? The only mini game I remember in ME1 is Simon says to hack or open locks. Is it something they added for the PC port?

[Kekvit Irae]

What is this frogger mini game people keep mentioning? The only mini game I remember in ME1 is Simon says to hack or open locks. Is it something they added for the PC port?

http://www.robotparty.us/mass-effect-decryption.JPG

The yellow blocks are stationary and simply block your path with no further disadvantage. The red blocks circle around and will take you to the outer ring if hit. The objective is to get the curser to the inner ring. Harder difficulty locks have more blocks of both colors.


And there's already a mod out for the ammo. It turns the ammo into the pre-release version, which regenerates on its own.

http://www.annakie.com/me/mods.htm


SUMMARY:
This mod restores Mass Effect 2 to the hybrid ammo system seen in some of the earlier preview videos: you can fire until you run out of ammo and eject your clip like in this game, but you can also sit and have it recover with time.

Note that in this version there is no longer a way to manually reload your weapon, but there is still tactical benefit in that you can choose to either reload a clip or wait a bit for it to reload. Even with no clips in your weapon, the slow reload will still work - but will still be less effective than simply finding a new clip.

INSTALLATION:
- Drop this in your Mass Effect 2 install folder and it should work from there

UNINSTALLATION:
- Head to Mass Effect 2\BioGame\Config\Pc\Cooked and delete Coalesced.ini, then rename the included backup to Coalesced.ini, and you're golden.

FUTURE PLANS/CONTACT:
- This mod makes many weapons reaaaally unbalanced, especially those with high ammo capacities like the SMG - it simply replenishes ammo too fast, and that can't be slowed down without crippling other guns. Possible workarounds would be to lower SMG ammo capacity or to increase it for other guns. Tell me what you think.

[Beskar]

Frogbeastegg was the frogger champion in High School and won a few national awards for her abilities.

[frogbeastegg]

I see. Huh, glad that wasn't in the console version.


Frogbeastegg was the frogger champion in High School and won a few national awards for her abilities.
I doubt I've played more than 20 minutes of Frogger if you added up all its various incarnations. Arcade games aren't my thing; too simple, too repetitive, and I don't care about high scores. Not fond of falling block puzzles or match 3 games either. Drives me crazy when games shoehorn in obligatory mini games based on these styles.

Besides, I get enough of the 'frog attempts to cross busy road without dying' thing on my walk to work and back. :gring:



I've done a few more hours and I have to say that ME2 is on a definite upward curve. The second tier of party members are thus far more interesting than the first, the personal missions reveal some juicy stuff about the first tier of party members, and the game overall is that little bit more enjoyable. The illogical is being shoved into the background more, and people are finally asking the questions I'd expected to see in the first hours. Scary thought: I completed my Insanity run of ME1 in 8 hours. It's taken twice that time for ME2 to get good.

[Mailman653]

If you talk to Joker after a mission, you can ask him what he thinks of the crew, and he will give you an opinion of the two people you went on the mission with. Speaking of Joker, I think him and EDI go well together.

[Krusader]

If you talk to Joker after a mission, you can ask him what he thinks of the crew, and he will give you an opinion of the two people you went on the mission with. Speaking of Joker, I think him and EDI go well together.

Aye. But also occasionally run past the two engineers. They will have comments on new squadmates, ship upgrades and such.

[Kekvit Irae]

Aye. But also occasionally run past the two engineers. They will have comments on new squadmates, ship upgrades and such.

Gabby: Did you know that there's a woman down in the engine?
Kenneth: If she touches anything, I'm going to go down there and kick her off the ship!
Gabby: She's also wearing nothing from the waist up but tattoos.
Kenneth: Oh, well then, I might have to go down there and greet her.
Gabby: Did I mention she can rip you in two with her biotics?
Kenneth: Damn it, woman! Stop teasing me!

I love those two.



EDIT: Also, I am sad that the achievements do absolutely nothing in the game anymore. I miss all the little benefits they gave you in ME1.

[Krusader]

I hoped Mass Effect 2 would have a similar system to Dragon Age with player profile, achivement lists and so on, on the Bioware Social site, but nope, nothing.

Also, what I've forgotten to write which annoys the hell out of me is that there are very few weapons in the game and you can only obtain new ones by finding them when doing Dossier missions. If I have the credits to spare, I would have loved to buy a new weapon, but nope, not allowed.

[Mailman653]

Has anyone successfully fired the Cain? I've read that you have to hold down the button and wait for it to charge up. I don't know.....I'm playing on Insanity right now and I don't have the luxury of sticking my head out from behind cover to aim something that may or may not fire.

Speaking of Cain, I wonder if it's a Robocop reference or just coincidence.

M920 Cain (http://masseffect.bioware.com/resources/assets/universe/weapons/m920.jpg)

Cain, Robocop 2 (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ryan.coombes/Myworld/cain1.JPG)

[Kekvit Irae]

Has anyone successfully fired the Cain? I've read that you have to hold down the button and wait for it to charge up. I don't know.....I'm playing on Insanity right now and I don't have the luxury of sticking my head out from behind cover to aim something that may or may not fire.

Speaking of Cain, I wonder if it's a Robocop reference or just coincidence.

M920 Cain (http://masseffect.bioware.com/resources/assets/universe/weapons/m920.jpg)

Cain, Robocop 2 (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ryan.coombes/Myworld/cain1.JPG)

The Cain is a WONDERFUL tool to use against bosses. Just don't use it in close quarters or against multiple enemies firing at you.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Wow, just wrote a whole essay, then went into go advanced, got signed out somehow and lost everything. I will reply again tomorrow. Suffice to say, I only think a few complaints made by others are actually legitimate.

[al Roumi]

I've played a few hours, completed Omega and a couple of nearby systems, visited the Citadel, got Grunt and just completed Zaeed's loyalty quest.

I agree that planetary scanning is a low point of the game. For me, it simply takes too long. It also seems so menial, manually scanning for mineral deposits - if you move the mouse too quickly, you miss things. Strange choice by Bioware to put it in!

Don't really miss the Mako, bouncing around in that was always a bit dull. I also prefered to fight on foot as you got less xp for kills using the Mako. Not sure when the DLC hovertank will be used or usefull - whenever it is released.

I'd never played GoW or a "cover shooter" before, so i'm not aware of the plagiarism others report. I am more used to fps' though and frankly i prefer them to what seems to me to be cheesy "Time crisis" style gameplay - why do you have to 'lock' into cover? Surely crouching and positioning yourself behind something is fine? It just reminds me of naff Western's where people trade fire from behind wagons in the most haphazard of ways... and while I'm at it, who in their right mind litters their barricades and HQ with flamable and explosive materials (also present in ME1 I know but...)?

The coolant clips: why is it that you can pick up universal clips to replenish any depleted weapon's munitions, but can only cary a particular quantity of ammo for each weapon? I'm playing as a soldier, so have access to a fair range of weapons, but why must I use all of them in a long fire-fight? Why do I have to use my pistol if i run out of clips for the assault rifle -especialy if the pistiol clips would also have fitted my assault rifle when i picked them up??? Frustrating and implausible.

I am enjoying the game though, and more than DAO -I think. DAO was engrossing but started to drag out with interminable quests. Those in ME2 seem shorter so far. I probably prefer more short tasks/missions than few long ones.

I'm actually ok with the Renegade/paragon choices, amused that i can march up to a shop keeper and immediately get a discount though - if it's so easy/simple, why make it neccessary for the player? There are enough other Renegade/Paragon choices to make elsewhere... Some of the dialogue is fun though.
Like accusing the gift shop on the citadel of being classist, then shouting about it!

I'm not far into the main plot so I'm not feeling the same angst as other on the Cerberus = eugh thing; I'm not quite clear that Shephard has much choice!
there is that mission early on, to recover a captured Cerberus agent. What you do with the intel presumably comes back later to you on? I chose to keep it for myself, for potential leverage, we will see...

Miranda and Jacob can go service the garbage ejector as far as I care, insipid fools. She looks like bugs bunny with those teeth, and he makes me feel like I'd need a crow-bar to leverage him out of shep's butt.

[Krusader]

I love Legion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sa-Ont6rOGQ

[White_eyes:D]

Legion is awesome...:beam:

And you don't have much choice but to work for "Cerberus"....I have a feeling it will come back to bite me in Mass effect 3 though..:embarassed:

Edit:I gave them too much help...:juggle2:

[a completely inoffensive name]

Ok so basically, I'm not really the kind of person to make a big long dissertation over a video game so here is here what i think in short sentences.

I like all the new characters and I like that they kept the two best (Tali and Garrus) from the first one.
I like the combat system now, however they did go a bit extreme in removing all choice from inventory regarding companion armor and weapons. I just thought they were going to allow similar items to stack in stead of having everything take up a spot requiring you to go through each one.
Story is amazing, better then the first in my opinion and sets it up nicely for the final game.
I'm glad they got rid of the Mako, it sucked. Seriously, no offense but anyone who enjoyed that friggen thing is crazy.
Element scanning on planets is tedious, but (http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/103/index/825862/1) a BioWare developer posted in a forum that you really shouldnt be trying to get every last element on every last planet. Totals for all the upgrades with the exception of the med bay upgrades are this:
Iridium- 200,000
Palladium- 195,000
Platinum- 205,000
Element Zero- 42,250

Basically they did what I think was needed, a drastic shift in priorities in terms of gameplay to see what worked and what didnt, because when people usually look back on a trilogy they remember the beginning and finale more then they do the middle child. I trust that they will have a satisfying story for the third game so all you guys should be pushing for in ME3 is to reincorporate the inventory with stacking allowed, and greater customization of all characters armor. I think that will give the perfect GoW cover/RPG blend that will satisfy the actioner's and the RPGer's, because I think we can see that FPS people enjoy having a nice inventory of various options for their character and gun as well (MW2).

I am up in the air when it comes to points. Personally I preferred having each skill advancement be just 1 point in ME1, but I also enjoyed the evolution part in ME2 and the removal of weapon skills in exchange for various bullet types. I guess I would say take the ME1 system, swap out the gun classes with bullet types, add in an evolution to the tenth/final point upgrade to a skill and I will be happy.

[Krusader]

Just finished the game.

And everyone survived. Huzzah! And I told Illusive Man to fudge off.

The combat is better than in ME1. I'd prefer the overheating system in ME1 to the ammo one, as you still need to change weapons to take out barriers, shields, armor etc. But never had problems with ammo supply. I do hope however that the Infilitrator gets larger sniper rifle capacity (haven't tested Infiltrator yet). Played Vanguard and love the Force Charge...but only used it against 1-2 mobs along with Cryo ammo...that said, force charging a freezed enemy is just very very fun. Charge against 3+ mobs and you get toasted quick.

Planetary scanning is tedious. Luckily there are way more resources out there than what you need. I do quick scans and only watch for spikes and it works like a charm.

The hacking & bypassing minigames are okayish on the PC, at least compared to the "frogger minigame" we had in ME1. Still, part of me misses taking Garrus or Tali along in ME1 because of their Electronics/Decryption skills.

Too few weapons and NO stats it seems. I'd love to see some more variety.

Like the mix&match armor for standard armor, shame there is no for the other armor types. Miss equipping squadmates with armor.

Feels like there are too few sidequests. Have a feeling Bioware might have done it intentionally to add more with DLCs.

I really really would want there to be more squadmate banter/talk as in Dragon Age (walking by certain areas).

Hope all characters return for ME3. Characters are fun, but I feel that in ME1 and other Bioware games there was much more background info and such you could talk to them about. Think I only had 4 "chat sessions" with Garrus, before he didn't want to talk to me..

I actually think that in ME3 you might have to choose which species will survive or not. Quarians and Geth missions have some pointers indicating they will be needed for the fight to come.

[Mailman653]

Just finished the game.

I actually think that in ME3 you might have to choose which species will survive or not. Quarians and Geth missions have some pointers indicating they will be needed for the fight to come.

Don't forget the Krogan....keep the research, destroy it, what to do....? And the Rachni if you let them live in the first game, it would be cool to get their support too assuming the rest of the galaxy is willing to accept them as allies.

I think I might give up on Insanity, it's too much for me. Getting owned by Vorcha and Krogan over and over isn't fun anymore, especially when all I really wanna do is enjoy the game and make different choices from my first playthrough.

[Ironside]

It's also a group which spent a lot of the last game trying to kill my Shepard and crew, and which killed people she knew and liked. And she joins up because the man in charge of the organisation claims they are doing good against an unsubstantiated threat. She doesn't question much, she doesn't demand proof, she doesn't try to join any alternate group, and she doesn't even question their improbable story about the Lazerus project. No, she just nods her little head and goes "Ok." Brain damaged.


I think that you end up with plenty (I suspect more than two) of your old crew members, makes the transition a bit more easy. If plenty of your old crew joins a faction that tried to kill them earlier, they probably had a good reason. And they can comfirm that the Lazerous project is what they say it is.
If you remeber passing out due to suffication and add that no mysterious vessel picked you up moments after (which you can confirm by the people in the life pods), you can conclude that you were dead, really dead.
And you get the idea that the council wouldn't help you with any more resources than what you already got (spectre status+ ship with crew+ better intel).
You can be quite clear that it's an alliance of convenience (well rather desperation) during several conversations if you want to as well.
So stretching, but not brain damaged.

[rajpoot]

When I tried the planetary scanning mini game, the first thought I had was that the chaps over at Bioware had done it out of spite, to make all the critics of ME1's Mako relent their comments. Then I remembered that it was Bioware and they're a decent lot who make nice games, so they must have had other reasons....
Anyway,
Likes -
The story.
The larger number of companions.
The way ME1's small decisions actually matter (I wish I had my own save games....)
It was a great fuzzy feeling to get a message from the Rachni queen and see Shiala on Illium....
Dislikes -
New combat system.
Ammo system.
The new mini games.....give me the old one any day.
Lack of inventory.

Mass Effect wasn't about the combat, it was about the nice story and the characters......they shouldn't have changed that....I mean the characters are still pretty engaging, but the combat has become rather complicated for my tastes....

[Kekvit Irae]

I do hope however that the Infilitrator gets larger sniper rifle capacity (haven't tested Infiltrator yet).

You are going to be very disappointed. Infiltrators only get a few seconds of invisibility.

[Greyblades]

Yeah but afew seconds of invisibility can make the difference between death and full shields as the enemy stops shooting at you the second you activate it. Also it gives you a boost to damage while your invisible, all in all its pretty good for snipers.

[frogbeastegg]

The best tip for the planetry scan mini game is to tap the scan button instead of holding it while moving the cursor about. Makes it all go much faster. Also check the research console after recruiting the assassin ...



To be clear, I dislike the Cerberus thing at the start because Shepard does not have good motivation at the time when she signs up, not because I don't want to play along. It's an idea that has a lot of potential, and I hate the fact it starts out with a great big "DUR!" and then has to spend hours recovering from that.


I think that you end up with plenty (I suspect more than two) of your old crew members, makes the transition a bit more easy. If plenty of your old crew joins a faction that tried to kill them earlier, they probably had a good reason.
If anything I find that makes it worse. None of my crew have given me a truly sound reason for joining. I hear a lot of "I'm here because you're here." and "Didn't get to run off and hunt reapers, and this untrustworthy organisation said that they would so I swapped sides because everyone knows liars can be believed." or "Cerberus has cool toys, wee!" She doesn't get to meet them until after she's signed the dotted line, either.

From Shepard's POV at the start of the game, she's got nothing to work on other than the word of a guy she should not trust, and the fact she's being kept - or held - in a medical facility by an organisation that does nasty experiments on living people. If anything it would be natural for her to assume she was a prisoner and had been tortured or experimented on. Especially with that first wake up scene, which she remembers when she wakes up the second time. And the logical, immediate source of a pick up ship is the only other ship she knew to be in the area at the time. That would be her attacker. Shepard is eager and happy to take Cerberus' word for everything. She isn't given proof of anything at this point; the Illusive Man could be doing the old "[lie]Yes, we fight to save the galaxy!" dialogue option for all she knows.

She has absolutely no reason to trust the Illusive Man, and no reason to roll over and play ball so quickly. But the dialogue choices are "Ok!" and "Ok, cool!" No option for even a token refusal.


And you get the idea that the council wouldn't help you with any more resources than what you already got (spectre status+ ship with crew+ better intel).
For a paragon Shepard that's all the more reason to baulk at joining. Besides, it's the Illusive Man who tells her that. Would he say otherwise at that time?


ou can be quite clear that it's an alliance of convenience (well rather desperation) during several conversations if you want to as well.
Only after I'd joined up and done some missions. At the start, when it would have made the most sense, I couldn't question at all. I got to be more sceptical about joining the Spectres in the first game than I did about signing up with Cerberus.

[Crazed Rabbit]

Is there any way to remove those vastly moronic red veins that infest your screen whenever you get critically injured?!

I just quit w/o saving because I absolutely could not stand them.

EDIT: Oh, SON OF A *#@)($&@(%)*&(. Apparently there's no way to remove it and fanboys and devs just say "Don't get shot".

Were I a violent man and they in the same room, I'd shoot them in the kneecaps.

SECOND EDIT: And then I'd say, "Oh, don't like it? Don't get shot."

CR

[Mailman653]

If you have the PC version, maybe you can find a mod for it?

[Crazed Rabbit]

If you have the PC version, maybe you can find a mod for it?

I'm looking, haven't found anything yet. I'm still hoping there's just some file I can delete and make the horribleness go away.

Seriously, I'm not playing again until I fix this. I didn't get a 1960x1080 2ms monitor just to see it covered with chicken entrails.

CR

[Beskar]

I'm looking, haven't found anything yet. I'm still hoping there's just some file I can delete and make the horribleness go away.

Seriously, I'm not playing again until I fix this. I didn't get a 1960x1080 2ms monitor just to see it covered with chicken entrails.

CR

Could be worse, you could get shot once then have to wait around in the medical ward for a few hours for some stitches, etc, then get charged $500 or so for the service. Could be an expensive line of work.

[Crazed Rabbit]

Could be worse, you could get shot once then have to wait around in the medical ward for a few hours for some stitches, etc, then get charged $500 or so for the service. Could be an expensive line of work.

Well thanks for that tremendously insightful remark. Yes, of course, getting shot in real life would be painful.

That's why I do those things in video games, where it is not painful. If the devs make it painful, then I. Don't. Want. To. Play.

I haven't found anything about removing that bile spewed on my screen, so I'm putting the game away and coming back in a week to see if a mod that will make it bearable for me to play has been released.

CR

[Beskar]

I saw this person and I instantly recognised them as some one else, quite worrying.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yvonne_Strahovski

[a completely inoffensive name]

Is there any way to remove those vastly moronic red veins that infest your screen whenever you get critically injured?!

I just quit w/o saving because I absolutely could not stand them.

EDIT: Oh, SON OF A *#@)($&@(%)*&(. Apparently there's no way to remove it and fanboys and devs just say "Don't get shot".

Were I a violent man and they in the same room, I'd shoot them in the kneecaps.

SECOND EDIT: And then I'd say, "Oh, don't like it? Don't get shot."

CR

How did you survive playing Gears of War and Call of Duty?

[Krusader]

I saw this person and I instantly recognised them as some one else, quite worrying.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yvonne_Strahovski

Bioware based Miranda Lawson's likeness on Yvonne Strahovski in addition to her providing the voice.

[al Roumi]

I saw this person and I instantly recognised them as some one else, quite worrying.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yvonne_Strahovski


Bioware based Miranda Lawson's likeness on Yvonne Strahovski in addition to her providing the voice.

Who is doing the cameo as Miranda's teeth then? They seem pretty stiff (ahah).

[al Roumi]

Well thanks for that tremendously insightful remark. Yes, of course, getting shot in real life would be painful.

That's why I do those things in video games, where it is not painful. If the devs make it painful, then I. Don't. Want. To. Play.

I haven't found anything about removing that bile spewed on my screen, so I'm putting the game away and coming back in a week to see if a mod that will make it bearable for me to play has been released.

CR

Is this really going to make you put the game away? Amazing.

[frogbeastegg]

Found a plot segment which really caught me last night.

If you haven't been on a fleshy ship, or don't know what I mean by fleshy ship, don't read the following
That's what happened to the Protheans!? Argh! The Enkindlers, the forebears, the mighty and advanced race of legend became the Collectors?!

So while Ilos watched the lights of their civilisation blink out one by one, and dwindled away into dust trapped in cold sleep, others were collected up and turned into mutated freaks with the sole purpose of enslaving whatever intelligent life might come next.

Vigil's story was one of my favourite parts of ME1. Cliche, yes, but touching, and I did love the execution of it. A single half broken VI was all that remained of a race considered to be gods by many in the current world.This carried that tale on in a way that was hinted at during the first game (the Keepers being remnants of a former race tamed by the Reapers). I should have seen it coming. I did not.

You know, I think this barely told, fragmentory story is one of the saddest tales I have seen told in an RPG.

More than anything else that one little segment demonstrated what's at stake.

[Crazed Rabbit]

How did you survive playing Gears of War and Call of Duty?

I didn't play either. Which may be why I loathe this so much; I haven't seen one of the less stupid predecessors. I'm peeved at the whole idea; how does getting shot in the torso spray blood onto your eyes, which you can't blink off?

I so very, very, very much preferred how Crysis did it; where ambient sound was dampened and you heard yourself breath hard, and the screen got a little blurry to simulate tunnel vision.


Is this really going to make you put the game away? Amazing.

I like to play games on harder difficulties, I find being on the edge on death makes it more challenging and fun. So I do not want to play a game where I'm often seeing a bunch of grotesque veins spread out on my computer. It'll **** me off whenever combat is getting exciting. So I'm going to wait until playing the game isn't going to throw the opposite of eye candy on my screen.

CR

[Mailman653]

Found a plot segment which really caught me last night.

More than anything else that one little segment demonstrated what's at stake.

Yeah that was quite a shock wasn't it? Good luck convincing the Council of it though, ha ha ha. Has anyone here have a game where they didn't save the council? Who's in charge and are they still stubborn?

[Kekvit Irae]

I'm playing again through the game now with my level 49 Renegade from ME1. It feels SO satisfying giving Miss Al-Jilani a fist across the face.

[Krusader]

I'm playing again through the game now with my level 49 Renegade from ME1. It feels SO satisfying giving Miss Al-Jilani a fist across the face.

I wish I could do Renegade interrupt on Udina...would be worth it!

Also, started a second playthrough as Engineer (using ME1 import of my Vanguard) and boy you won't need to do much planetary scanning. I got 55000 of each resource and 330.000 credits to start with (plus apparently 25% extra XP since I played through ME2). My character btw looks like Locke from Lost.
Using this face with just added hair. (https://img35.imageshack.us/img35/387/johnlocke.jpg)

Although only doing initial missions. Gonna wait for the Hammerhead DLC.

[Mailman653]

I read that the new dlc might include a hoover tank of some sort and a new female character, a "thief".

[Scienter]

Bioware based Miranda Lawson's likeness on Yvonne Strahovski in addition to her providing the voice.

I watch Yvonne's show Chuck, so having Miranda in my party is a little weird. I keep expecting her to sound like Yvonne's character, Sarah Walker.

I've only played for about an hour. Apparently my heat sink on my new processor is not good enough to keep my CPU from frying itself, so I can't play till my new one arrives. That said, I don't find the ammo system annoying. I thought I would hate having to use ammo, but for the short time I've played, it hasn't bothered me.

I definitely miss looting! I hated ME1's inventory system, but I wish Bioware hadn't fixed it by eliminating inventory and looting entirely. I also don't like that they reduced the number of skills I can add to when I level up.

Overall, I think it will be a fun game. I enjoyed the first mission enough to be annoyed that I can't play until my new heatsink arrives.

[Kekvit Irae]

Has anyone here have a game where they didn't save the council? Who's in charge and are they still stubborn?

So far, the major change is that there's a new council, but they refuse to see you. Spectre reinstatement is done through Anderson (haven't tried Udina as Councilor, I hate him). The only other major change in the Citadel is the extreme change in attitude of the big game shopkeeper. He, like the new Council, thinks you're lower than pond scum and calls humans (specifically Admiral Hackett) kinslayers for abandoning the Destiny Ascension.
Minor changes here and there, including the advertisement for the film "Citadel" on one of the blue advertisement kiosks, where a badly-cast Shepard utters his famous words to the 5th Fleet to hold position until the Citadel doors open.

[johnhughthom]

Hmm, I'm sure I'm missing something obvious here, but how do I import my ME1 Shep? Nothing comes up when I select Import and I can't find a save folder to put the save into. Apologies if it has been covered here, didn't want to read through in case I came across a spoiler. I have Steam ME1 & 2.

edit: Figured it out, just created save folder in my ME2 folder and copied the save over.

[rajpoot]

Right. Finished one play-through. Going to lay off for a week or two now.
I wonder how they'll continue the story.....I mean ME1's plot was quite good, and yup, the Vigil bit was done very well....then along comes ME2, nice characters and all that but the ending turned out to be, well....gah :juggle2:

Human reaper? And the Protheans became the Collecters? What happened to the 'indoctrined die due to radiation' theory....
And not once did they actually show the Rachni.....just a message on Illium...after getting that I was hoping to actually be aided by the Rachni in the course of the story missions somewhere....And in ME1 this was supposed to be one of the biggest decisions you could take...


All in all, just slightly disappointed that ME1's actions don't actually have any really groundbreaking outcomes.....I mean I understand that it might be hard development-wise, but still it would've been more fun if the decisions would have made a greater impact....

All that said, ME3 just can't come soon enough for me......

[Krusader]

Hmm, I'm sure I'm missing something obvious here, but how do I import my ME1 Shep? Nothing comes up when I select Import and I can't find a save folder to put the save into. Apologies if it has been covered here, didn't want to read through in case I came across a spoiler. I have Steam ME1 & 2.

edit: Figured it out, just created save folder in my ME2 folder and copied the save over.

Actually you have to use the Import utility through Launcher. Although you have found another workaround

[Crazed Rabbit]

BOOYAH!!

I have rid my game of the scourge of the red veins!

FYI for those interested:
I downloaded texmod (http://www.bigdownload.com/games/texmod/pc/texmod/)and used this tutorial as guidance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8p2f3EXmuY&feature=related

Some notes;
Use the MassEffect.exe in the binaries folder, not the launcher.exe.

I saved the texture as a bmp, transparency was black, so I just paintbucket'd the whole image black.
I was playing very near the beginning, right after the security chief tells you that Cerberus brought you back from the dead.

I note this only because when I paused the amount of textures that in texmod were 1974. The red vein texture was about number 1600 or so (+/- 100). It's pretty obvious.

Also, you need to run texmod every time you run Mass Effect. It's a small program though.

I can email the file I made for use with texmod to anyone interested.

CR

[Mailman653]

Hopefully you can enjoy the game now.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Heaven forbid you just stay in cover and wait for natural breaks in the shooting.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Also, I am planning on playing with a imported ME1 perfect paragon character that I downloaded from an awesome website that hosts different versions of ME1 shepard, gonna see what the difference is between import and starting brand new. I hear it's night and day.

[al Roumi]

Also, I am planning on playing with a imported ME1 perfect paragon character that I downloaded from an awesome website that hosts different versions of ME1 shepard, gonna see what the difference is between import and starting brand new. I hear it's night and day.

Well being still-mid way through my first game, with an imported Renegade Shep (who had enough "moral" points left to save the council), I can't make a compariosn, but I can give you an inkling:


A fair bit of work seems to have gone in to linking the two episodes -this you've probably already seen even with a new Shep. I have to say, I think almost every quest you completed in ME1 is at least footnoted in ME2. This comes out in the game on the lightest side with an email of thanks, through minor encounters to mini quests (e.g. Conrad V and the investigator from Noveria). Some characters from ME1 are built right in to the main plot (e.g. Nassana, Harkin).

I'm sure you'll get the same kinds of spam email and quests irrespective of importing or not, but the difference between an import or new Shep are in the dialogue and relationships you have with these people. I do find it more satisfying to note what I've done, and have at times felt a pang of guilt at being a hard-ass :daisy: in ME1.


Then again, there are more opportunities to be blunt and rude in ME2. The interrupts are a good idea and fun, the only one I haven't used so far is...


When Miranda shoots Nikahl (sp?) on Illium, he had it coming.

[Ironside]

Right. Finished one play-through. Going to lay off for a week or two now.
I wonder how they'll continue the story.....I mean ME1's plot was quite good, and yup, the Vigil bit was done very well....then along comes ME2, nice characters and all that but the ending turned out to be, well....gah :juggle2:

Human reaper? And the Protheans became the Collecters? What happened to the 'indoctrined die due to radiation' theory....
And not once did they actually show the Rachni.....just a message on Illium...after getting that I was hoping to actually be aided by the Rachni in the course of the story missions somewhere....And in ME1 this was supposed to be one of the biggest decisions you could take...



Indoctrinated humans ends up as husks somehow, so going cybernetic seem to keep the indoctrinated alive. And the reapers had to have a reason for that cyclic destruction (and humans got a huge "we're special!" treatment in this game).

The rachni is probably more important in the third game, that is heavily hinting on being gather an army to defeat the reapers coming in full force story. Pure speculation would be that they're destabilising the galaxy before moving in. Since every lost reaper is the loss of a reaper condensed civilization (it's likely more than just genetic material in those ships), they're wimpy about losses. The predictable ending would be preventing a full scale attack on earth with the gathered fleet, while bording a reaper ship to place some virus to stop the whole fleet. Or how to stop a fleet with a ground specialist team. It's a bit too predictable so I doubt I'll get it fully correct, but they have painted themself a bit in a corner.

[Crazed Rabbit]

Heaven forbid you just stay in cover and wait for natural breaks in the shooting.

Yes, because removing the red veins now means I'm invincible and don't have to do that. :rolleyes:

Well I played a fair bit last night and here's my impressions (not much in the way of spoilers, just didn't want to take up too much space);
I really like the new squad ordering system. Easy to order your 'henchmen' around in real time. I'm liking the new characters as well.

Overall, they have simplified the interesting stuff and added complexity to the boring stuff. The last game had too many different brands of armor; one was usually the best and the rest just got in the way of collecting that good armor. Same with the weapons. So now they've done away with inventory completely, instead of just reducing the different brands of armor.

I also like being able to significantly change how weapons worked with the mods you could add. Now you can't, though you are provided with weapons that are actually different, instead of just reskinned versions, in terms of rate of fire and damage.

As was mentioned, this is now a cover shooter. I don't think I like it as much. In ME1 I'd run around dodging enemy attacks and crouching behind cover while using the various powers. Here, because of the mechanics you get killed quickly if you're caught by a couple mooks in the open. So the order of the day is to go to a new planet, get behind cover, shoot at the enemy when they pop up from the cover they're behind, get shot a couple times, duck back behind cover, repeat until all enemies dead then go to another planet. Because you're really only using the mouse to attack, and not any keys to move, it's less exciting.

Why can't games just provide crouch and lean options and let you use cover more freely, instead of this 'sticky' sort of cover? Not being able to crouch if you're not right behind cover in this game is perplexing. And now we have ammo, which is odd. The first game had the neat overheating concept, and fun ways to manipulate it with mods. But reloading isn't as bad as the limits to how much ammo you can carry. It's a shame.

And then we have the added complexity in areas like moving around the galaxy and planet scanning. I have to ask why. The old system functioned fine, and I don't see any improvements offered by having to pilot the Normandy around, only added time. And then we've got planet scanning, which is like a mini-game, except boring and tedious. Why would they force Shepard, on a ship with a full crew, to personally scan a planet and direct probes? I guess they felt they couldn't simply reward clicking on one survey button with a heap of resoruces, so they added the price of tedium.

The whole fuel system is annoying; for one when you run out, you simply jump FTL to the nearest fuel store. Why can't you just FTL to other star systems? Fuel and lame scanning simply act as a disincentive to explore.

Oh well, I should've known not to expect great combat. I did get the game mainly for the story.


Question about planet-scanning; is it necessary to get enough resources, or are the resources you gather not completely necessary to getting enough upgrades? I don't want to spend a bunch of time having to do an ensign's job.

CR

[frogbeastegg]

India, regarding your spoiler comment, did you speak to Mordan on your ship after that revelation? He had lots of info on that matter when I spoke to him ... say one or two squad missions later. Basically

The Collectors were heavily modified. As organs and biological systems failed they were replaced with Reaper friendly versions. As generations passed intelligence dropped severely, as did related aspects like autonomy, and the Collectors became little better than drones. The Collectors are truly a pale shadow of the original Protheans.

Speaking of Mordan, everyone needs to ask him about art when chatting on the ship, then pick the new option which chases on off-hand comment he made during that dialogue. You will need to do his personal quest first. Loved it.

[Krusader]

Indoctrinated humans ends up as husks somehow, so going cybernetic seem to keep the indoctrinated alive. And the reapers had to have a reason for that cyclic destruction (and humans got a huge "we're special!" treatment in this game).

The rachni is probably more important in the third game, that is heavily hinting on being gather an army to defeat the reapers coming in full force story. Pure speculation would be that they're destabilising the galaxy before moving in. Since every lost reaper is the loss of a reaper condensed civilization (it's likely more than just genetic material in those ships), they're wimpy about losses. The predictable ending would be preventing a full scale attack on earth with the gathered fleet, while bording a reaper ship to place some virus to stop the whole fleet. Or how to stop a fleet with a ground specialist team. It's a bit too predictable so I doubt I'll get it fully correct, but they have painted themself a bit in a corner.

Mass Independence Day Effect!!


India, regarding your spoiler comment, did you speak to Mordan on your ship after that revelation? He had lots of info on that matter when I spoke to him ... say one or two squad missions later. Basically

The Collectors were heavily modified. As organs and biological systems failed they were replaced with Reaper friendly versions. As generations passed intelligence dropped severely, as did related aspects like autonomy, and the Collectors became little better than drones. The Collectors are truly a pale shadow of the original Protheans.

Speaking of Mordan, everyone needs to ask him about art when chatting on the ship, then pick the new option which chases on off-hand comment he made during that dialogue. You will need to do his personal quest first. Loved it.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXRHDNW_yj8

[Mailman653]

The Collectors were heavily modified. As organs and biological systems failed they were replaced with Reaper friendly versions. As generations passed intelligence dropped severely, as did related aspects like autonomy, and the Collectors became little better than drones. The Collectors are truly a pale shadow of the original Protheans.



Kind of like the Keeper's.

[Crazed Rabbit]

Playing some more, and loving it. They've added different types of armor with different weapons effective against them. Makes the different types useful, which is nice.

Also, went to the citadel, and I'm very amused by all the ambiance and newscasts.

CR

[tibilicus]

I'm playing through Mass Effect one right now and plan on picking this up sometime next week.

I plan on doing more than one play through but only one of my play throughs will be with an imported save. Does any one know what the "default" settings are if you don't play from an imported save?

For example which decisions stand i.e Wrex for example.

[Kekvit Irae]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXRHDNW_yj8


Pfft. Here's the full version:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NalJzNcorJQ

[frogbeastegg]

And done. 29 hours, got the best ending. I was somewhat disappointed at how easy it was to do that; I suspect the ending would have had more punch if I'd been less successful.

The short summary of my feelings on it would be this: the game shines when it is tying in to the first, and it does that in a lot of ways and frequently. Plot, writing and presentation wise, I really enjoyed it. If not for the poor presentation of joining Cerberus at the start it'd fare much better and sit on a par with the first game. Instead it's slightly below it. Gameplay wise, not so hot, and I much preferred the first game. This is clearly the middle act of a trilogy and so spent a lot of time bring things forward and setting things up.

I was surprised at how short the plot chain of missions is. Most of the play time comes from doing optional stuff like the loyalty missions.

The incidental material is some of the best. The adverts and conversations you hear as you wander can be hilarius. Humour was on an overall up compared to other Bioware efforts, I felt. Lots of excellent lines throughout the game, and some outstanding conversations.

Elcor Hamlet is awesome. Also, the game needed more Elcor.

My comment earlier on someone being a romance option because they started complaining about dead people was accurate. Amazingly, said romance was quite well done. One of Bioware's better efforts.

Despite its problems and lows, ME2 shows why I called Dragon Age: Origins static, bland and boring in its storytelling and conversations. ME1 was doing all of this, and years ago. ME2 only continues the effort and adds a new trick, the interrupt. In conversations people walk around, sit down, stand up, gesture, have decently animated faces, and do all of the other motions which happen in real life. You can select your next option while the other side are talking, you don't pick word for word what you will say, and it's voice acted so it feels like a proper conversation instead of half of one. Can't the two Bioware teams talk to each other? It's going to be even harder to finish my replay of Dragon Age now.

On the ending specifically:
So the Collectors were liquidising humans and using the mush to build a giant metallic human skeleton that was somehow going to be a Reaper. O ... k. Maybe it's the fact I saw that near midnight, but I'm really having trouble seeing how this was supposed to work. How would it get around? Flying like Superman?! And aren't the Reapers meant to be machine intelligence? And how does pulped human result in metal? If the Reapers were built out of pulped species, what about the original Reapers which went wild and killed the civilisation which made them? And just ... why?! The whole thing was a complete what the heck moment.

I had pictured the Reapers to be ships with powerful AIs, much like the ships in Ian M Bank's Culture books or in Neal Asher's Polity.

Getting the team through alive was very easy. I got everyone's loyalty, used paragon dialogue to resolve the two personality clashes, and chased after my crew immediately. Then it was a simple case of picking people who were the best at the job. Legion for the door, Samara for the bubble, Jacob to escort, Garrus to lead the distraction, and Miranda to lead the second team.

Some achievements do give in-game bonuses. There's a 25% XP bonus for future characters after completing the game, and you're supposed to be able to pick a squad mate's power when building your next character provided you have their loyalty achievement.

Hmm, yes. Mostly good but the bad annoys me enough to hold it back.

I shall play again with one of my other Shepards. I want to do insanity and reach level 30; not sure that latter is possible without the XP bonus and/or replaying a ME2 character, as I only managed level 26 after porting over my cannon Shepard and doing as much content as I could find.

[rajpoot]

Reaching level 29 at-least is entirely possible without the xp bonus, with a ported Shepard. I'd used a save file with a level 60 Shepard from ME1 and that gave a XP bonus in the start. After the end game, I was level 29. I did use the wiki to find the side quests though, so that I don't miss out on any of them.
The interrupt system is quite nice :yes: and I do hope they keep it for future games.

[frogbeastegg]

I wonder if you get more starting levels if your ME1 Shepard is a higher level? I used the level 51 Shepard I had from my original ME1 playthrough as that's the one with what I regard as my 'true' storyline. I was level 4 when I could first access the squad screen in ME2. I scoured the galaxy for things to do, and did everything I found. I think I was level 26 at the end, I'll have to check.

[Kekvit Irae]

I was surprised at how short the plot chain of missions is. Most of the play time comes from doing optional stuff like the loyalty missions.

Well, you gotta admit, the loyalty missions (at least some of them) give plenty of emotional moments, such as Mordin and the dead female krogan. Mordin and Legion's are both my favorite, since they have far reaching consequences in Mass Effect 3 (presumably).

I cant wait to see how the Geth will turn out now that I've freed them from the Reapers' control!

I also like Samara's loyalty mission as well. Not only because there's no combat whatsoever, but also because
you can choose to kill Samara and recruit Morinth instead.


The incidental material is some of the best. The adverts and conversations you hear as you wander can be hilarius. Humour was on an overall up compared to other Bioware efforts, I felt. Lots of excellent lines throughout the game, and some outstanding conversations.

From my current playthrough:
(spoiler tag to avoid clutter, not plot point)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQjz3Mz56mo
I must be the only one who's curious about the Shin Akiba Asari/Hanar porn games. Can't be as bad as Japanese school girl/naughty tentacles.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDxDzpbtBQo
I love how Shepard just casually says "Charge." That garnered more than a few giggles from me.



Some achievements do give in-game bonuses. There's a 25% XP bonus for future characters after completing the game, and you're supposed to be able to pick a squad mate's power when building your next character provided you have their loyalty achievement.

I only noticed this on my second playthrough. Long Service gives you 200k credits and 50k of each resource (you never need to mine for Eezo ever again). I do miss the little bonuses, like getting a 25% bonus to the duration of Marksman for 150 pistol kills, or improving Barrier and Statis recharge time by 10% by completing 15 missions and 35 assignments with Liara.

[frogbeastegg]

Well, you gotta admit, the loyalty missions (at least some of them) give plenty of emotional moments, such as Mordin and the dead female krogan. Mordin and Legion's are both my favorite, since they have far reaching consequences in Mass Effect 3 (presumably).
Yes, some of the best parts of the game came from the loyalty missions. I appreciated how they changed my views on some of the characters by fleshing them out and revealing them to be more than the shallow surface encountered through recruitment and pre-loyalty conversations. Mordin's was probably the best; it posed good questions and was exceptionally well written. He gets loads of good Normandy dialogue after that mission. I did find Jacob's and the DLC merc's to be disappointing. They didn't add much to the characters, and were basic run and gun affairs.

For the plot, I'd expected there to be more involved in getting where I did and doing what I did. The plot itself, minus all character related stuff, is something like 6 missions including the beginning.

Escape at the start, visit the colony, go to the Collector ship, visit the other colony, get the IFF, go through the relay and blow stuff up.


I also like Samara's loyalty mission as well.
The sound cut out during the most important cutscene in that mission and I didn't have subtitles on. I had to choose without hearing the argument.

[rajpoot]

Well, you gotta admit, the loyalty missions (at least some of them) give plenty of emotional moments, such as Mordin and the dead female krogan. Mordin and Legion's are both my favorite, since they have far reaching consequences in Mass Effect 3 (presumably).

I cant wait to see how the Geth will turn out now that I've freed them from the Reapers' control!


The Geth, and another bit.

I'll wager that we see a Geth fleet taking on the Reapers in ME3. But I believe for that one will have to be nice to the Quarians too during the Tali loyalty mission and press for peace.
Anyway you do good, you get good....that is one thing that the game will always stick to I'm sure......
Lol, when during 'Recruit Samara' mission you release the asari in the locked room and later realise that she was the killer, that is the only time you feel as though you were kicked in the *** for doing good.

[Kekvit Irae]

For anyone else who played the N7: Abandoned Research Station (http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/N7:_Abandoned_Research_Station) mission (obtained by completing N7: Wrecked Merchant Freighter (http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/N7:_Wrecked_Merchant_Freighter) mission, Neith/Amun/Eagle Nebula), did that mission remind you of System Shock as well, or is it just me?

[frogbeastegg]

For anyone else who played the N7: Abandoned Research Station (http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/N7:_Abandoned_Research_Station) mission (obtained by completing N7: Wrecked Merchant Freighter (http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/N7:_Wrecked_Merchant_Freighter) mission, Neith/Amun/Eagle Nebula), did that mission remind you of System Shock as well, or is it just me?
There were several spots in the game with a faint System Shock vibe. That one was the strongest echo thanks to its special resident.

Heh, and now I realise how many 'something has gone horribly wrong, featuring clinical corridors, audio logs, and dead bodies' sections there were in ME2.

[Beskar]

froggy, what is your opinion on the Jack character?

[tibilicus]

Can someone explain how the ME2 import actually works?

My last save game was just before beating Seren in ME so I'm presuming that there is a save hidden somewhere?

[rajpoot]

In the ME2 configuration utility there is a option 'save games' under which you'll find a button 'copy mass effect 1 save games'...this'll open aother window and let you browse for and select the folder containing your ME1 save games.

The save which is actually imported is a post end game save which I don't think is visible in the ME1 'load/save' menu. You can see it when you check the save folder in 'My Documents' though.

http://www.examiner.com/x-892-PC-Game-Examiner~y2010m1d27-Mass-Effect-2-How-to-import-your-ME1-save-games (http://www.examiner.com/x-892-PC-Game-Examiner%7Ey2010m1d27-Mass-Effect-2-How-to-import-your-ME1-save-games)

[naut]

In regard to that Miranda woman, I dislike Australian's used as voice actors. As an Aussie myself, in a game it just feels, awkward. Somewhat cringe-worthy.

[Ironside]

Mass Independence Day Effect!!


Aye, why I thought it was predictable. It did occur to me that the "dark energy getting stars to age fast (going nova)" plot should have a reason, so I'll say that the bulk of the reapers will die due to that. That means somewhere else than earth for obvious reasons. Likely to be a reaper weapon turned against them.


I was surprised at how short the plot chain of missions is. Most of the play time comes from doing optional stuff like the loyalty missions.

Some of those are semi-optinional. You'll need to to do at least a bit of recruiting to continue the main plot chain.


On the ending specifically:
So the Collectors were liquidising humans and using the mush to build a giant metallic human skeleton that was somehow going to be a Reaper. O ... k. Maybe it's the fact I saw that near midnight, but I'm really having trouble seeing how this was supposed to work. How would it get around? Flying like Superman?! And aren't the Reapers meant to be machine intelligence? And how does pulped human result in metal? If the Reapers were built out of pulped species, what about the original Reapers which went wild and killed the civilisation which made them? And just ... why?! The whole thing was a complete what the heck moment.

I had pictured the Reapers to be ships with powerful AIs, much like the ships in Ian M Bank's Culture books or in Neal Asher's Polity.


They are cybernetic AI:s, so they mix that genetic goo with metal. For that human thingy, it'll probably end up as a part of the reaper ship, as they all look the same on the outside. It's too small to be a full ship anyway, even when done. The big question is why it got weapons installed.

I got no idea if they'll ever explain the original reapers, but if they do, I suspect it is connected to that "your salvation can only be reached by you destruction" rethoric the harbringer spouts. They are a sort of preservation of the species they wiped out (and made a reaper of).

[Kekvit Irae]

In regard to that Miranda woman, I dislike Australian's used as voice actors. As an Aussie myself, in a game it just feels, awkward. Somewhat cringe-worthy.

The only problem with the voice of Miranda is that she sounds monotone and is generally uninterested in everything.
Shepard: "The Collectors are kidnapping colonists. We must stop them at any cost!"
Miranda: *shrugs* "Yeah, ok. Whatever."

Now if you want cringe-worthy, listen to Engineer Gabby and her Brooklyn accent.

[frogbeastegg]

froggy, what is your opinion on the Jack character?
As a party member, a total disappointment. She's one of the few who gets a power cooldown bonus and she didn't have any powers that I wanted. Gah!

As a character
Her introduction and first conversations on the Normandy are dire. There she's a generic angry tattoo girl. I have no liking for that cardboard cutout archetype because it's almost always a shortcut instead of a personality. For one thing it's typically impossible to work out whether angry female = tattoos, attitude and shaved head, or shaved head, tattoos and attitude = angry female. That might sound like a silly thing to say; it's not. Which came first? Who was this person before? Often there is no before, or the before is a hazy bundle of cliche "This must make a woman go crazy for revenge!" tropes. She got raped and her family was killed. Her fiance was murdered by a drug cartel and she was possibly raped. She was abducted as a child and abused, and experimented on. Note the rape obsession with this trope. That's it, no actual depth, only cheap comic book ideas that don't affect the character in any way other than the makeover and sweary-kill attitude.

Jack's loyalty mission changes the character's presentation. When she suggested turning around and giving up on the bomb, that's when I started paying attention to her. If you drag her around in your party and talk to her at specific spots (e.g. the men's toilets on citadel) you find out a little more about her past. There's more to her than the generic rage, extreme makeovers, swearing and an obsession with killing. Most importantly, for once there's been some thought about how the traumas she's survived would affect her as a person. It's not the total shortcut of "She's been abused so she must swear at everybody!" Hidden deep inside Jack is the little girl who wanted to play with the other children. She's a mix between vulnerable and tough. Conflicted. Wanting to do 'normal things and at a loss of how to do it and terrified of something bad coming at her as a result. She knows she can kill with a thought and enjoys it, and knows she has been conditioned to enjoy it and so hates it at the same time. When she returns to the lab she is on the verge of having a breakdown, skirting on the edge of control, torn between running away and blowing it up. That is realistic, and the major difference between the generic angry tatto girl and Jack. Ms Generic wouldn't be affected.

Deep down Jack wants to move on, to be something else, and she will admit it. That's somewhat rare in this character cutout; normally they revel in what they've become and don't want to be anything else, often with generic proclamations about being anything else meaning being weak or vulnerable. Daft; no one ever wants to be so damaged, no matter how deeply they hide it. Hence blowing up the lab, and her comments later if you persuade her to let the other test subject live. At the same time and about as rare, there's no suggestion that a wave of the hand and a bit of love from a good man and she'll return to being a normal human being; such heavy psychological trauma cannot be washed away as though it never happened. If you handle Jack correctly you can see a bit of change, she's more in control, more willing to talk, and thinking about herself and what she wants to do next ... but she's still the damaged person she was at the beginning.

The other thing which helped Jack is that Bioware appear to have conceived Subject Zero first and the angry tattoo girl second. Jack's treatment by Cerberus is an important part of the story, it's the reminder that this group is not as nice as the Illusive Man would have you believe. She has every reason to be the way she is and the reasons came first, not second.

And, at the end, having her loyalty and thinking all of this, there was no way I'd choose her for the biotic shield part of the suicide mission. She's loyal to herself, has a grudging appreciation for Shepard, and couldn't give two figs about any of the others. Why would - or should - she put herself at such risk to protect them? It's not who she is. It's be great if she could but I wouldn't bet others' lives on her. I expect that if you have ticked the right boxes she will keep everyone alive ... I think the character works best if you never find out.

My Shepard was female. A male Shepard would have access to other insights; I hear she's romancable. Really not sure how that would work. Could be ok, could be a characterisation disaster.



Some of those are semi-optinional. You'll need to to do at least a bit of recruiting to continue the main plot chain
The plot missions appeared once a set number of the character missions had been done. But you choose which and don't need to do all, meaning that they're all optional. Miranda and Jack are the only characters you are forced to have. Maybe Mordin, from what he does in the plot? None of the loyalty missions are required.

[Kekvit Irae]

The plot missions appeared once a set number of the character missions had been done. But you choose which and don't need to do all, meaning that they're all optional. Miranda and Jack are the only characters you are forced to have. Maybe Mordin, from what he does in the plot? None of the loyalty missions are required.

Miranda and Jacob are the only required members (you can choose not to re-activate Legion), since you need to recruit only three members to trigger Horizon (Zaeed counts as one), and six total crewmembers to trigger the Collector Ship mission (and, again, Zaeed counts toward this total). This means that three out of eleven crewmembers are totally optional. Other than Miranda and Jacob, you are free to choose who you want if you don't want to spend the time for a full crew.


On a side note, I have discovered that it is entirely possible to get level 30 on a single playthrough; you just need the Long Service Medal for the 25% experience bonus. Having a level 50 or 60 character does not matter, since I used my imported level 49 character. I obtained level 30 after the Reaper IFF mission. All you need to do is just complete every side-quest available (barring a few, since I missed Conrad during my ME1 Renedage playthrough), and you'll get it after the Reaper IFF's 1250 exp gain.

EDIT: I don't know why, but it brings me much amusement to hear Tricia Helfer/Caprica Six/EDI say "Really, Commander?" and "Probing Uranus."

[rajpoot]

Dark Energy;
What's the deal with it? It's been mentioned atleast thrice in the game. Gianna Parsini (the lady on Illium, from Noveria in ME1) says that her bosses want her to check why suddenly people are getting interested in dark energy. Tali is studying the star which is degrading due to dark energy. Can't rightly remember the third reference but it was either one of the news telecasts in the Citadel or something Legion says....

[Kekvit Irae]

Dark Energy;
What's the deal with it? It's been mentioned atleast thrice in the game. Gianna Parsini (the lady on Illium, from Noveria in ME1) says that her bosses want her to check why suddenly people are getting interested in dark energy. Tali is studying the star which is degrading due to dark energy. Can't rightly remember the third reference but it was either one of the news telecasts in the Citadel or something Legion says....

http://nasascience.nasa.gov/astrophysics/what-is-dark-energy
Mass Effect 2 is pulling a "Star Trek," taking scientific jargon and making it seem more fantastic or plausible than it really is.

[rajpoot]

Right. Got that. But I wondering more along the lines of in-game implications...it can't be co-incidence, that they're mentioning it again and again.....

[Crazed Rabbit]

Anyone listen to the game salesman on the Citadel?
"I miss the old role playing games. These days it's all big choices and visceral combat. Back then you had to remember to drink water and traveling to a new location took five hours real time."

Gee, I wonder what that is referring to. :book:

Also, I wonder if I'm one of the few who liked driving the Mako on the PC. It reminded me of tribes 2, which was a big plus, plus it was a heck of a lot easier to drive than the Tribes 2 wheeled command center.

CR

[Kekvit Irae]

Anyone listen to the game salesman on the Citadel?

Yep.
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?125814-Mass-Effect-2-gameplay-thread&p=2428169&viewfull=1#post2428169

[Mailman653]

Cerberus Armor and Eviscerator Shotgun DLC Available Feb 9 (http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/103/index/1074772)


Cerberus Assault Armor
Cerberus assault armor is designed for shock troops, turn the tide of battle against creatures or forces that would decimate normal soldiers.
Increases heavy weapon ammo capacity by +10%
Increases shields by +10%
Increases health by +10%

M-22a Eviscerator Shotgun
The M-22a Eviscerator Shotgun is a longer-range shotgun with armor-piercing loads. This design also violates several intergalactic weapons treaties, so the M-22a is not distributed to militaries.

[Kekvit Irae]

Cerberus Armor and Eviscerator Shotgun DLC Available Feb 9 (http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/103/index/1074772)

Yay. More crap DLC armor you can't remove the helmet from. Joy.

[Krusader]

Yay. More crap DLC armor you can't remove the helmet from. Joy.

At least it is free...I'd prefer swappable armor bits where you could decide the stat bonus, instead of one big suit with stats attached. Hence why I prefer the N7 armor with the "negotiation bonus helmet".

[a completely inoffensive name]

hmm, i will need to check whether or not it will be better then what armor i can piece together on my own.

[TinCow]

Just finished the game a few minutes ago. For the record, I found Mass Effect 1 to be interesting, but entirely average, bordering on the negative more than the positive. Having finished Mass Effect 2, I feel comfortable saying it's in my top 5 RPGs of all time. That's a very strange thing for me to say, but I honestly feel its true. ME2 started as a TPS first and a RPG second, which is the reverse of ME1, and I think that's where it succeeded. Instead of trying to be an RPG and then dumbing itself down, it tried to be a TPS and added RPS elements to itself. The simplified gameplay was far less distracting and far more entertaining. The NPCs were, bar none, much more interesting and I actually got invested in them in a way I never did with ME1. The main storyline may have been less 'grand' than ME1, but there was a level of sheer balls-to-the-wall entertainment in the last 1/4 of the main plotline that had me absolutely riveted to the game. It was, simply put, great entertainment. I am extremely eager for the sequel; Bioware have outdone themselves with this game

[Crazed Rabbit]

Finished the game about an hour ago.

Thougts about combat;
I liked that it kept the danger up through the end, constantly. In my ME1 game plus play through on hardcore, I'd run up to a guy in the middle of a battlefield and shoot at him for 10 seconds while he shot at me and so did his buddies. And I'd be fine. ME2 worked well at keeping combat dangerous all the time.

But...the sticky cover system was terrible. Half of my deaths were due to hitting the shift key (remapped from spacebar) and vaulting over a box into the firing arc of three machine guns instead of backing off the cover, or not being able to crouch if not directly behind cover, or getting shot from behind and having to stand up to shoot the person.

Why, why, why oh why didn't they just add a crouch toggle key?! Or at least make the "go into cover key" different from the "leap out out of cover" key.

I still don't like taking all the armor and weapons and mods out.

About the ending...
I didn't get the best ending.
I chose Legion for the vent shaft, but he died in a cutscene.
Then I chose Zaeed (DLC merc) and he died leading the parallel fire team the second time (having survived the first).

Then I told cerberus to screw off regarding the base. In those scenes, telling off the Illusive Man, gave Shepard the chance to stand up to cerberus that all paragons needed.


About romances...
It seems that if you're compatible with NPC, conversations will go to romance even if you don't want them to. It's either 'continue talking' and go down the romance path, or stop asking 'how do you feel'. I had a male shepard.

I loved all the side conversations. One conversation between nameless crew members on the Normandy struck me...
The father who gets his family off of New Canton right before the collector attack, and then says he'll give his daughter the longest hug when he sees her again. And then the collectors catch him. And then I saved him and he was so glad to be able to see his family again. What's that? Oh, I must have got some dust in my eye...

Overall, a great game.

CR

[naut]

About the ending...
I didn't get the best ending.
I chose Legion for the vent shaft, but he died in a cutscene.
Then I chose Zaeed (DLC merc) and he died leading the parallel fire team the second time (having survived the first).

Then I told cerberus to screw off regarding the base. In those scenes, telling off the Illusive Man, gave Shepard the chance to stand up to cerberus that all paragons needed.

I had Garrus and Jack die. I was so annoyed. The two I didn't want to die.

Without going into detail. I don't know if it just me, but I found the end a bit too easy.
Plus. Playing on the XBOX,the ending felt like a lazy Gears of War rip-off. The biotic shield thing to avoid swarms, lol, Gears of War rip-off right there. The ending enemies are like locusts, lol. The 3rd person angle is the same as Gears of War, as is the combat system. I haven't looked, but they used the same engine didn't they? They must have.

That's my only gripe. Otherwise, it's a decent game. And I am glad that it came out when it did, as I dodged the Dragon Age bullet. :thumbsup:

[Crazed Rabbit]

I had Garrus and Jack die. I was so annoyed. The two I didn't want to die.


That's one reason I chose Legion for the shaft - he's just a walking platform for Geth programs, right? So it's not the same as a person dying.
And Garrus was just so awesome - he set himself up as a Batman like figure in the heart of the terminus systems!
And since my character had a romance with Tali
I've never seen anything like Quarian faces!
I kept her in my group, figuring it's easier to keep NPCs alive through the end that way.




Without going into detail. I don't know if it just me, but I found the end a bit too easy.
Plus. Playing on the XBOX,the ending felt like a lazy Gears of War rip-off. The biotic shield thing to avoid swarms, lol, Gears of War rip-off right there. The ending enemies are like locusts, lol. The 3rd person angle is the same as Gears of War, as is the combat system. I haven't looked, but they used the same engine didn't they? They must have.

That's my only gripe. Otherwise, it's a decent game. And I am glad that it came out when it did, as I dodged the Dragon Age bullet. :thumbsup:

I've only played about 10 minutes of the first GoW, so none of that for me.

One minor gripe; why can't you change your helmet during the mission? Going helmet-less in non-earth environments just seems wrong. It perturbs the engineer in me.

CR

[Kekvit Irae]

That's one reason I chose Legion for the shaft - he's just a walking platform for Geth programs, right?


Keeping Tali/Legion alive is easy. All you need to do is make sure they are loyal, and that your first fireteam leader is either Miranda, Jacob, or Garrus (again, they need to be loyal).

[johnhughthom]

Completed with my level 50 imported character, reached level 28, 43 hours played.

Tali and Samara killed last level, I'm going to have to play again before ME3. Got to have Tali back for that.

[frogbeastegg]

Decent article (http://www.pentadact.com/index.php/2010-01-30-the-best-and-the-worst-of-mass-effect-2-spoiler-safe) with a rundown of the highs and lows of ME2. All spoilers are concealed until you request the page displays them, and are labelled so you know what to expect. NB: language warning.

I'm putting ME2 to one side for a bit. I've done everything I want to with it except my insanity/renegade run. That can wait until the experience is less fresh in my mind.

The achievements are far easier to come by this time, kind of disappointing. I replayed ME1 many times before I reached 100%. I've got 50/51 with a single playthrough and 45 minutes of play on a new game+. Insanity is the only one I am missing.

[Crazed Rabbit]

Decent article (http://www.pentadact.com/index.php/2010-01-30-the-best-and-the-worst-of-mass-effect-2-spoiler-safe) with a rundown of the highs and lows of ME2. All spoilers are concealed until you request the page displays them, and are labelled so you know what to expect. NB: language warning.


That's a very good article.

CR

[Mailman653]

The Shepard dance (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTuhj-9xTdE)

[Krusader]

Decent article (http://www.pentadact.com/index.php/2010-01-30-the-best-and-the-worst-of-mass-effect-2-spoiler-safe) with a rundown of the highs and lows of ME2. All spoilers are concealed until you request the page displays them, and are labelled so you know what to expect. NB: language warning.

I'm putting ME2 to one side for a bit. I've done everything I want to with it except my insanity/renegade run. That can wait until the experience is less fresh in my mind.

The achievements are far easier to come by this time, kind of disappointing. I replayed ME1 many times before I reached 100%. I've got 50/51 with a single playthrough and 45 minutes of play on a new game+. Insanity is the only one I am missing.

To be on safe side:
The writer sums up my thoughts on Cerberus perfectly. I expected there to be more conflict for Shephard to play out regarding Cerberus, as they were portrayed as a pretty twisted organization in ME1.
I just have the feeling that someone on Bioware's writing team had a hardon for Cerberus and/or secret organizations and wanted Cerberus in, maybe as a rather unsuccesful attempt at doing a story twist.

And a little image I found which I find amusing:

[snip]The comic contains swearing and shouldn't be posted directly here. Post a link with a language warning instead. Froggy.

[rajpoot]

I reloaded some old saves today to try finish building 'relations' with Legion; He says some interesting things in the final two chats.

First thing worth noticing was that he says the Geth maintain the Quarian home-world as a sort of monument for all the Quarians who died there. Next time he says the Geth are planning to build something akin to a Dyson Sphere into which they'll all finally upload.
Both seem quite harmless, and I'll wager that if the proper Paragon choices are made, in ME3, we might most likely see the Quarians and Geth make peace and co-exist peacefully. Now if the player's choices can affect something of this magnitude, in ME3, then that will be awesome.

[Kekvit Irae]

First thing worth noticing was that he says the Geth maintain the Quarian home-world as a sort of monument for all the Quarians who died there. Next time he says the Geth are planning to build something akin to a Dyson Sphere into which they'll all finally upload.
Both seem quite harmless, and I'll wager that if the proper Paragon choices are made, in ME3, we might most likely see the Quarians and Geth make peace and co-exist peacefully. Now if the player's choices can affect something of this magnitude, in ME3, then that will be awesome.

I'm also interested in seeing how a certain dialogue choice during Tali's trial will effect ME3.

[rajpoot]

I'm also interested in seeing how a certain dialogue choice during Tali's trial will effect ME3.

:yes: I believe that the last bit of dialogue will decide how that bit of story reopens in ME3.
Tali says something about being nominated for Admiralty after the quest is over. So my guess is that in ME3 there'll be a quest where you can support Tali in a bid to become an Admiral....what I can't guess is whether she'll be favouring peace or war.....during the quest she seems to speak in favour of both options at two different occasions.

[gaelic cowboy]

I ended up finishing it there last tuesday night at about 5 in the morning god I have not done that for years.

I am already salivating for the last one its sad I know.

The planetary scanning is pants get rid it Bioware or reform it at the least and another minor quibble the lack of a baddie to boo at like Saren kind of felt a bit lacking for me but overall its my game of the year already

[gaelic cowboy]

I feel this might have significance later

I am guessing everyone has kind of copped it but I think that saving the Rachni and rewriting the Geth will be rewarded with them saving the council later in ME3 my guess is they plus the Krogan will fulfill the ewok role so to speak against the Reapers

I have just realised that I both love and hate this game as in I hate the silly stuff we can do without like minigames but I am in love with the story and interaction .

To be honest if there were only four weapons and one suit of armor for the character I would not mind in the slightest.

Still my favorite game of the year even with all the things I hate in it and reading the thread I realised there were a lot of them I hated I still cant wait for the next instalment of the story.

[CrossLOPER]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQz7u0BWD9c

[Mailman653]

I'm sure its in the Minos Wasteland

There is a side quest on one of the planets which has a Reaper indoctrination device, rather spooky.

[Kekvit Irae]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQz7u0BWD9c

The only thing better than the video are the comments.

"My grand parents didn't die in WW2 for this, NOT FOR THIS "

[al Roumi]

I'm sure its in the Minos Wasteland

There is a side quest on one of the planets which has a Reaper indoctrination device, rather spooky.

I've been going through the systems, it seems there is an average of 1 anomaly for every 2 systems. Some are puzzles, others combat missions. The best have been those with follow-up missions, e.g. tracking a freighter's route, stop by stop.

This has meant alot of scanning, although i stopped picking anything up a while ago (nothing left to research). I'm a little frustrated that I can pick up endless resources but have nothing to do with them, and instead have want turns out to be limited cash for buying upgrades. I know this is not Elite or Freelancer but why can't I sell some of these damn resources?

[rajpoot]

This has meant alot of scanning, although i stopped picking anything up a while ago (nothing left to research). I'm a little frustrated that I can pick up endless resources but have nothing to do with them, and instead have want turns out to be limited cash for buying upgrades. I know this is not Elite or Freelancer but why can't I sell some of these damn resources?

I think that if you do all the side missions and the story missions, then by the end of the game you have almost all the upgrades, without having to buy any......AFAIK the ones at the shops are freely available during some missions too, and some at the end of the missions.
But then again, there are so many upgrades that I might well be wrong.

Edit:

On a different note, I just realised that the way ME2 focuses on Shepard's face many times throughout the game dialogue, has a lot to do with how one actually feels attached to the character.....And I realised that in Dragon Age, save in a few precious cut-scenes, there isn't a single place where the player character's face comes into focus....I don't know what my Cousland nobleman looks with his mouth open :P

[Krusader]

I think that if you do all the side missions and the story missions, then by the end of the game you have almost all the upgrades, without having to buy any......AFAIK the ones at the shops are freely available during some missions too, and some at the end of the missions.
But then again, there are so many upgrades that I might well be wrong.

AFAIK, you can find three damage upgrades for each weapon throughout the game and buy two from shops (total of five damage upgrades, each upgrade adding +10% damage). Then you have two other upgrades that "unlock" when you have upgraded certain amount).
This (http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Upgrade_guide) page lists where you can find weapons, equipment and upgrades in the game and what they cost in credits & resources

[tibilicus]

Just finished my first play through now, I wont use any spoiler tags as well, I'll include no spoilers.

I personally loved everything about it, it took what ME1 had and made it go further as well as tweaking some of the other faults with the first one. Only major gripe is the whole paragon and renegade system I still feel isn't 100% good. I mean, essentially, for 100% success in the suicide mission 100% paragon or renegade is needed to secure the loyalty of all your crew. Those who have completed the game will know what I mean when I say certain "confrontations". Anyway, 100% paragon or renegade is needed to have a desirable outcome from such "confrontations". Most are aware it isn't as clear cut as that. Maybe I want my Shepherd to be a bit of both, a nice guy who isn't afraid to bust some balls if he needs to. Under the current system this isn't really possible if you want to "win the game".

I think I'll finish of my other save game from this play through tomorrow just to secure my other love interest. I'm curious to see if Bioware will be good on their word that a ME1 love interest will have a more dominant role in ME3. I hope so seeming their apearences in this one were pretty terrible..

[Scienter]

I think I'll finish of my other save game from this play through tomorrow just to secure my other love interest. I'm curious to see if Bioware will be good on their word that a ME1 love interest will have a more dominant role in ME3. I hope so seeming their apearences in this one were pretty terrible..

I played as a female Shepard and I think the romance options for her were better in ME2 than in ME1. Personally I hope there's an option to continue with the ME2 romance the player doesn't feel like going back to the ME1 love interest.

Kaidan pretty much dumped me on my :daisy: when I got to Horizon. :shrug: I thought the three (or more? I couldn't tell if Tali played for both teams) options for female Shep were more interesting than either Liara or Kaidan. I read somewhere that if you engage in one of the ME2 romances, it will have an impact with your ME1 love interest in ME3.

[tibilicus]

I played as a female Shepard and I think the romance options for her were better in ME2 than in ME1. Personally I hope there's an option to continue with the ME2 romance the player doesn't feel like going back to the ME1 love interest.

Kaidan pretty much dumped me on my :daisy: when I got to Horizon. :shrug: I thought the three (or more? I couldn't tell if Tali played for both teams) options for female Shep were more interesting than either Liara or Kaidan. I read somewhere that if you engage in one of the ME2 romances, it will have an impact with your ME1 love interest in ME3.

I completely understand, from a Male Shepard point of view.

Williams was no better, I personally blame the shoddy script writing for it. I mean it's really hard to feel any kind of loyalty when your supposed lover insults you and pretty much wants nothing to do with you. Only to receive some shoddy email saying sorry later on.

[gaelic cowboy]

From what I can see of the story in the game and the literature outside the game Liara is the cannon romance interest Ashley is really only included for renegades and should really always be left on Virmire for a paragon.

[Scienter]

I completely understand, from a Male Shepard point of view.

Williams was no better, I personally blame the shoddy script writing for it. I mean it's really hard to feel any kind of loyalty when your supposed lover insults you and pretty much wants nothing to do with you. Only to receive some shoddy email saying sorry later on.

I suspected that would happen. My first Shepard romanced Liara, but I used my second Shepard for ME2, so I don't know what she does if you romanced her.

I figure she doesn't have time to rekindle things with Shepard because she's trying to take down the Shadow Broker.

[rajpoot]

From what I can see of the story in the game and the literature outside the game Liara is the cannon romance interest Ashley is really only included for renegades and should really always be left on Virmire for a paragon.

I kind of disagree with that. For one you'll have to point out the literature you're referring to.....Secondly, Ashley/Kaiden are the canon romances. Liara is the second choice regardless of gender. Like Morrigan/Alistair in Dragon Age and Leliana regardless of gender.
Furthermore on starting a new ME2 game (not importing an ME1 save that is), by default for a male Shepard, Ashley is dead and for a female Shepard, Kaiden is dead. Which I think is done so that the player can check out the new romance options in the game.

[gaelic cowboy]

I kind of disagree with that. For one you'll have to point out the literature you're referring to.....Secondly, Ashley/Kaiden are the canon romances. Liara is the second choice regardless of gender. Like Morrigan/Alistair in Dragon Age and Leliana regardless of gender.
Furthermore on starting a new ME2 game (not importing an ME1 save that is), by default for a male Shepard, Ashley is dead and for a female Shepard, Kaiden is dead. Which I think is done so that the player can check out the new romance options in the game.

Well the literature I mentioned came with my edition of the game it is a comic called Mass Effect Redemption. Liara is searching for Shepards body and the collectors and illusive man are also the feel of the story is Liara is the love interest so far anyway to my mind.
I accept your reasoning if you had no romance and you generate a character without a save but Kaidan and Ashley really cannot be cannon because they do not both survive one has to die in ME1. The story needs a person who survives regardless hence Liara this game was always meant to have consequences on the next one so my money is on that I am right but it is only a game and doest really affect the playing experience too much
The game will start with liara on the normandy if you saved that romance and she has way more dialouge in the game with you.

[tibilicus]

I kind of disagree with that. For one you'll have to point out the literature you're referring to.....Secondly, Ashley/Kaiden are the canon romances. Liara is the second choice regardless of gender. Like Morrigan/Alistair in Dragon Age and Leliana regardless of gender.
Furthermore on starting a new ME2 game (not importing an ME1 save that is), by default for a male Shepard, Ashley is dead and for a female Shepard, Kaiden is dead. Which I think is done so that the player can check out the new romance options in the game.

I'm just wondering, if you don't import a save then is there still a picture on the desk in Shepards room or is it simply absent?


Well the literature I mentioned came with my edition of the game it is a comic called Mass Effect Redemption. Liara is searching for Shepards body and the collectors and illusive man are also the feel of the story is Liara is the love interest so far anyway to my mind.
I accept your reasoning if you had no romance and you generate a character without a save but Kaidan and Ashley really cannot be cannon because they do not both survive one has to die in ME1. The story needs a person who survives regardless hence Liara this game was always meant to have consequences on the next one so my money is on that I am right but it is only a game and doest really affect the playing experience too much
The game will start with liara on the normandy if you saved that romance and she has way more dialouge in the game with you.

I don't think you can call it Canon either way. The point about Mass effect is there is no real canon, the games are designed so you choose what is canon and what isn't canon. If Liara is meant to be the main love interest in the game then it doesn't really show over the other choices. Sure, Ashely/kaiden are fairly cold when you see them on Horizon but the way Liara is written is just as bad. She basically doesn't acknowledge you as a love interest and talks to you like your one of her employees.

She's an Asari too, meaning that because her lifespan is so huge, 2 years should be nothing to her. The way in which Asari comprehend time, apparently, is vastly different from the way humans comprehend it. 2 years should only feel like months to her, if not less.

Oh well, hopefully we will find out in ME3.

[rajpoot]

Right, I'm err....sorry I remembered it wrongly :embarassed: Actually Ashley survives for the male Shepard and Kaiden for the female, by default when not importing a save that is......

No idea about the picture, I'd read the info in the wiki. Never did start a new game myself.

[tibilicus]

Forgot to add in my earlier post, the end game sequence was awesome.

The Reapers are coming!

Now we know why they need to harvest organic life, I can't wait to find out who created them and why..

[Mailman653]

So.....who here bought their issue of Fornax (http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Fornax)? ha ha ha..!

[rajpoot]

So while playing the endgame sequence using old saves for like the 10th time, two things struck me;

Does anyone else feel sorry for the Collecters? I mean in that last shot, when the whole station is blowing up and Harbinger abandons the Collecters, the Collecter General looks rather forlorn and pitiable, staring at advancing wall of fire....

Secondly Harbinger says something along the lines of,'We are your salvation through destruction'...I hope this does not mean that the Reapers would turn out to be AI guardians who decided that the best way to preserve biological life for ever is to kill them all and make Reapers out of them.....I mean where else have we heard about machines going mad and killing people because they thought that was the best way to save them?....Wait, almost everywhere!
I hope ME3 does not follow the crowd....

[Beskar]

So.....who here bought their issue of Fornax (http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Fornax)? ha ha ha..!

I got it, but I didnt know if you needed it for something. What does it do?

[Scienter]

I got it, but I didnt know if you needed it for something. What does it do?

I didn't come across any quest that required it. I think it was just there to be funny. I bought it in the hopes that it would show up in my cabin somewhere.

[tibilicus]

So while playing the endgame sequence using old saves for like the 10th time, two things struck me;

Does anyone else feel sorry for the Collecters? I mean in that last shot, when the whole station is blowing up and Harbinger abandons the Collecters, the Collecter General looks rather forlorn and pitiable, staring at advancing wall of fire....

Secondly Harbinger says something along the lines of,'We are your salvation through destruction'...I hope this does not mean that the Reapers would turn out to be AI guardians who decided that the best way to preserve biological life for ever is to kill them all and make Reapers out of them.....I mean where else have we heard about machines going mad and killing people because they thought that was the best way to save them?....Wait, almost everywhere!
I hope ME3 does not follow the crowd....


Sorry for the collectors? The same collectors who are servants of the reapers and have been abducting organics for years trying to harvest them. The same collectors who tried to melt my crew into reaper goo, no way. I felt slightly bad for the general as he helplessly tried to save his base but then I smiled with joy as me and my crew flew of into the sun set in the Normandy.

I also have my own little theory going on about the reapers. I think that they're not as "machine" as we think. I wouldn't be surprised if the reapers were initially an organic civilisation who simply made themselves into machines to preserve themselves and what they considered life in the galaxy. After all, organic life comes and goes but the reapers do not, they can preserve themselves by combining organic and Artificial life.

Also they need to harvest organic life to survive or so it would seem, It appears they don't just desire the destruction of organic life because they're opposed to it ideologically or whatever, but it's essentially a survival tactic. I really have no idea beyond that though, that's just my own little theory.

Guess we'll have to wait till ME3..

[a completely inoffensive name]

Rap about ME2 mineral scanning:
http://tindeck.com/listen/lqip

[rajpoot]

:shocked2: :laugh4: Priceless!

[Krusader]

Finished my second playthrough of Mass Effect 2


This time I played through as an Adept and I loved the difference. Curving Throws around obstacles is actually very gratifying, especially when it sends the enemy flying. And Warp is fun too, perfect to take down enemy shields/armor particularly with Mordin & Garrus in group (Incinerate, Overload, Concussive Shot). I will admit though that it became much easier when I got the Geth Pulse Rifle (along with Assault Rifle training on Collector Ship) to take down foes.
Also, among the bonus powers you can obtain, the only real useful ones I've come across are the shield-boosters (Barrier, Fortification, Geth Shield Boost = Identical in stats) and Armor-Piercing Ammo. Picked Barrier on my Adept and it saved my life many a time when I had to run from cover to cover.
My Adept's customized Cerberus-themey N7 armor (https://img246.imageshack.us/i/adeptcerberusn7.jpg/)

I also tinkered around with my Engineer and I like the looks (stats are nice too) on the new Cerberus Assault armor. The shotgun is also supposed to be good and more effective at long-range, but havent tested it on any character yet.

Yahtzee/Zero Punctuation's take on Mass Effect 2 (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/1461-Mass-Effect-2)
I agree with him on one point. Bring back the planet exploration, but with jetpacks!

Also, here's a nice article: RPS article on RPGness of Mass Effect 2 (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/02/17/bonus-wibble-mass-effect-2/)

[frogbeastegg]

I saw a post that's supposedly copied from a post one of the ME2 team made and then deleted. It's material cut from the game, an entire alternate beginning. I don't recommend you read it unless you've already completed the game.


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.

If that's true then ARGH!! So much better than what we actually got in the game! I had wondered why Legion featured so prominently in the early publicity material.

And on Liara from the above
Her boohoo story about the Shadowbroker killing a friend makes more sense now. On the other hand, if she had Shepard's body then SHE handed her over to Cerberus - aka the crazy evil people with a penchant for sadistic science - to be used in some freakish Frankenstein experiment?! There is no way at all my cannon Shepard can view that as anything but a betrayal. Don't see my renegade Shepard being much happier.

[tibilicus]

I saw a post that's supposedly copied from a post one of the ME2 team made and then deleted. It's material cut from the game, an entire alternate beginning. I don't recommend you read it unless you've already completed the game.



If that's true then ARGH!! So much better than what we actually got in the game! I had wondered why Legion featured so prominently in the early publicity material.

And on Liara from the above
Her boohoo story about the Shadowbroker killing a friend makes more sense now. On the other hand, if she had Shepard's body then SHE handed her over to Cerberus - aka the crazy evil people with a penchant for sadistic science - to be used in some freakish Frankenstein experiment?! There is no way at all my cannon Shepard can view that as anything but a betrayal. Don't see my renegade Shepard being much happier.

I believe that there is some DLC in the works revolving around Liara, or so the talk on the Bioware forums would suggest. If there is it might be nice to see this included within the DLC as a kind of prequel play. I think more people would get it as well seeming they would be familiar with Legion at this point and it wouldn't be so confusing. Obviously some stuff would have to be adjusted like legion not receiving his wound but it could work.

I can see why they might of missed it out though, If you played the first game and the comics you might get what was going on but otherwise it would of been a bit confusing. I really hope we see more of legion in the future though in ME3. It kind of sucked you got him so late in the story.

[rajpoot]

In reference to Legion's early story;
I for one am glad that they removed the bit about Legion repairing himself with Shepard's armour just because it happened to be there when he was shot. This explanation is, what can I say....a bit too....dull....
Ever since I first activated Legion in the game, and the dialogue about the armour played out, I'd been trying to guess what the explanation might be, and I'd been hoping for something along the lines of the Geth seeing Shepard as a hero or something.....quite unlikely I know, but far more exiting....
Since they removed the original bit, the devs now have a chance to actually crate a more interesting explanation for the whole thing.....that is if Legion comes back in ME3.

[frogbeastegg]

In reference to Legion's early story;
I for one am glad that they removed the bit about Legion repairing himself with Shepard's armour just because it happened to be there when he was shot. This explanation is, what can I say....a bit too....dull....
Ever since I first activated Legion in the game, and the dialogue about the armour played out, I'd been trying to guess what the explanation might be, and I'd been hoping for something along the lines of the Geth seeing Shepard as a hero or something.....quite unlikely I know, but far more exiting....
Since they removed the original bit, the devs now have a chance to actually crate a more interesting explanation for the whole thing.....that is if Legion comes back in ME3.
In reply to that spoiler
There's already that same explanation in the game. In one of his dialogues on the Normandy I got to ask him about it and he said something like "Because it was there." and that was it. I loved Legion's laconic dialogue except for that one bit as it completely avoided the question I myself was asking when I picked the dialogue. What was this geth doing near Shepard's old armour and why did it need the repair?

[Krusader]

I saw a post that's supposedly copied from a post one of the ME2 team made and then deleted. It's material cut from the game, an entire alternate beginning. I don't recommend you read it unless you've already completed the game.



If that's true then ARGH!! So much better than what we actually got in the game! I had wondered why Legion featured so prominently in the early publicity material.

And on Liara from the above
Her boohoo story about the Shadowbroker killing a friend makes more sense now. On the other hand, if she had Shepard's body then SHE handed her over to Cerberus - aka the crazy evil people with a penchant for sadistic science - to be used in some freakish Frankenstein experiment?! There is no way at all my cannon Shepard can view that as anything but a betrayal. Don't see my renegade Shepard being much happier.

If you press Liara on the issue, I think after doing her two quests, she will say to your face that she handed Shephard's body to Cerberus and you can choose between a "Bad Liara" or "Good Liara" dialogue option.
And its now I see that Bioware actually had plans all along that you could customize your fresh ME2 Shephard if you did not import. Who knows, maybe they will release a DLC with that opening, but fat chance I'd think. Would have a comment on how new players or non-RPers don't have the attention span required to play RPs.

And its a damn shame Legion is available so late ingame. If you want to save the Normandy crew that is. At least I have saved sidemissions on my Adept for some Legion action.

[frogbeastegg]

If you press Liara on the issue, I think after doing her two quests, she will say to your face that she handed Shephard's body to Cerberus and you can choose between a "Bad Liara" or "Good Liara" dialogue option.
Wait a minute! Were you playing through with a ME1 character that had romanced Liara? Because mine hadn't and I found something subtly different.

I talked to Liara at every possible chance, to the point of going back to chat at several points during her mission. I always chose all of the investigate options before picking those on the right hand side to advance the conversation. As far as I'm aware I saw all of her dialogue, including the explanation of why she wants revenge on the Shadowbroker, which you only have a single chance to get in the entire game.

She told me that she'd been investigating what happened to Shepard, that she'd crossed the Shadowbroker while doing so, and that her friend had been killed during the fallout. At no point did she say that she had found Shepard's body and she certainly said nothing about being the one to hand her over to Cerberus! Otherwise my cannon Shepard would have been raging.

So ... where does that leave my cannon Shepard? Is Liara lying to her, covering up the fact she basically betrayed her? Or does Liara only do that to a Shepard she romanced, and all other Shepard's get found by Cerberus' own resources?

This whole thing has bags of potential.
What made Liara so desperate that she handed her friend's body over to such a dubious group to be used in experiments? And why did she believe they could bring Shepard back? Did she not think Shepard might end up as a husk? Or a Cerberus controlled puppet? Did she stop to consider what Shepard would think of it? Why did she think it was necessary? Don't answer that last with anything related to "Only Shepard can save the galaxy!" because I don't buy that at all - Shepard's not a super being, and she was doing a lousy job of convincing people of the Reaper threat in the time between the citadel attack and her death.

So many questions!

[rajpoot]

Wait a minute! Were you playing through with a ME1 character that had romanced Liara? Because mine hadn't and I found something subtly different.


Pick all the paragon options while speaking to her, for one. Secondly this option appears only after you've done both the quests Liara offers, the one about hacking the terminals and then one about finding the person who's involved with the Shadow Broker.
After the quests, when you speak to her again, at one point she'll confess that she gave the body to Cerebrus since she could not bear to lose Shepard (my Shepard hadn't romanced Liara, still got the dialogue), and then paragon Shepard can say that it was all OK since what he's doing is important work and that bringing him back made it possible

[frogbeastegg]

Hmm, I did all of that, paragon options included. I got the right answer on the second quest as well. Wonder why I didn't get the line?

As reasons go, the one Bioware gave her is awful.

[Krusader]

Wait a minute! Were you playing through with a ME1 character that had romanced Liara? Because mine hadn't and I found something subtly different.

I talked to Liara at every possible chance, to the point of going back to chat at several points during her mission. I always chose all of the investigate options before picking those on the right hand side to advance the conversation. As far as I'm aware I saw all of her dialogue, including the explanation of why she wants revenge on the Shadowbroker, which you only have a single chance to get in the entire game.

She told me that she'd been investigating what happened to Shepard, that she'd crossed the Shadowbroker while doing so, and that her friend had been killed during the fallout. At no point did she say that she had found Shepard's body and she certainly said nothing about being the one to hand her over to Cerberus! Otherwise my cannon Shepard would have been raging.

So ... where does that leave my cannon Shepard? Is Liara lying to her, covering up the fact she basically betrayed her? Or does Liara only do that to a Shepard she romanced, and all other Shepard's get found by Cerberus' own resources?

This whole thing has bags of potential.
What made Liara so desperate that she handed her friend's body over to such a dubious group to be used in experiments? And why did she believe they could bring Shepard back? Did she not think Shepard might end up as a husk? Or a Cerberus controlled puppet? Did she stop to consider what Shepard would think of it? Why did she think it was necessary? Don't answer that last with anything related to "Only Shepard can save the galaxy!" because I don't buy that at all - Shepard's not a super being, and she was doing a lousy job of convincing people of the Reaper threat in the time between the citadel attack and her death.

So many questions!

I played through with my Adept which had no romance from ME1. Unfortunately I can't remember what I asked, but I just replayed Ilium on my Infiltrator (hadn't romanced Liara in ME1 either) now and you only get that option it seems after doing both quests for Liara (did them both on Infiltrator, but forgot the "corpse-part" of dialogue earlier and when I went back, there was nothing).

Edit: Check this Youtube video: Shows what options to pick after handing in second Liara quest. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNwEzlquryo)

[frogbeastegg]

Edit: Check this Youtube video: Shows what options to pick after handing in second Liara quest. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNwEzlquryo)

Ah! That video helps a lot. When I chose that conversation option she didn't stand up like she does in the video - she got caught on the desk and the whole scene jammed while the model tried to free itself from the obstruction, which it eventually managed to do. When the audio started I missed nearly all of that. I only got the last couple of lines and thought that the entire thing was related to the dead friend; there was nothing to indicate that nearly the entire conversation had been skipped over.

It's not the only conversation bug I ran into.

[Wishazu]

I have now finished playing the game through for the 5th time with one of my many ME1 Shepard characters and my opinion is that this game is near perfect! It's certainly the best game I have played in a long time. Taken together with the first game it's a serious contender for best game EVAR!

I think a few people have massively over criticised a few minor flaws. I love the new characters but find Jacob a little dull and something about jack irks me. My favourite new character is Legion(btw, if you havnt done it already, do the iff mission before recruiting Tali, then take Legion with you to find her. Once her loyalty mission activates take Legion aboard the migrant fleet with you).

Anyways, doing Insanity with my ME1 level 60 renegade soldier now and thoroughly enjoying the challenge.

[Mailman653]

Firewalker DLC (http://xbox360.gamespy.com/xbox-360/mass-effect-2/1072538p1.html)


The Hammerhead assault vehicle is coming to the Cerberus Network in late March!

Free to all Cerberus Network members, the Firewalker pack includes 5 all new missions featuring the Hammerhead. Hovering over the battlefield at up to 120 kilometeres per hour, the Hammerhead also boasts a guided missile system ensuring accuracy even during aggressive maneuvering.

[tibilicus]

Firewalker DLC (http://xbox360.gamespy.com/xbox-360/mass-effect-2/1072538p1.html)

Mako but at 120kph?

I'm game. God I love Bioware, first they give us this brilliant game then they throw DLC at us, for free! If they keep this up they'll give of the dangerous impression that they're actually game developers who cares about their fan base.

[Meneldil]

If anything, Dragon Age's DLC's shown they actually don't give a damn, like pretty much any other company.

[tibilicus]

If anything, Dragon Age's DLC's shown they actually don't give a damn, like pretty much any other company.

What was so bad about it? I wouldn't know as I didn't buy the game.

[Meneldil]

Two out of the 3 DLC's are rubbish.
Warden's Keep and Return to Ostagar both last 20 to 35 minutes, offer nothing of interest, except for a cheap retcon in RtO. 8€ for 1H of content is not really my view of caring about their fan base.

Then, there's how RtO's release was handled by Bioware. The DLC is delayed several times (which ain't a problem), appears on the downloadable content list, then disappear because it was bugged. People get mad, because they bought the DLC in good faith, which in turn made the game go FUBAR. When faced with this, Bioware decides to close all topics about RtO on its social website and to ban users who complained. Two weeks later, the DLC is released for Xbox360 and PC, and PS3 users get no news, until RtO was finally released for them a few days ago.

[rajpoot]

It says that the hammerhead isn't integrated into the regular missions but has five separate missions...which might have been disappointing had the DLC not been free......I appreciate this gesture on EA part.

Edit:
Ofcourse come to think of it, there wasn't any place in the original missions where they could've integrated the hammerhead was there.....

[Krusader]

Two out of the 3 DLC's are rubbish.
Warden's Keep and Return to Ostagar both last 20 to 35 minutes, offer nothing of interest, except for a cheap retcon in RtO. 8€ for 1H of content is not really my view of caring about their fan base.

Then, there's how RtO's release was handled by Bioware. The DLC is delayed several times (which ain't a problem), appears on the downloadable content list, then disappear because it was bugged. People get mad, because they bought the DLC in good faith, which in turn made the game go FUBAR. When faced with this, Bioware decides to close all topics about RtO on its social website and to ban users who complained. Two weeks later, the DLC is released for Xbox360 and PC, and PS3 users get no news, until RtO was finally released for them a few days ago.

Really? They did that on Social network forums?
But yeah RtO can't be called a success exactly.

As for Hammerhead, well there were vehicle controls already in ME2 so it was expected. And honestly, I'm surprised that we have five missions. Thought they'd only make 1 or 2.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Selfishly speaking, I hope Dragon Age continues to be neglected in favor of Mass Effect. I simply cannot understand how one can even enjoy the former and it seems so entirely different than the latter. Different strokes for different folks I guess, but I'm surprised my tastes are so out of the mainstream for that single game.

[Meneldil]

Well, DA:O is a half-failed half-successful attempt at making a modern Baldur's Gate. In some ways it is an excellent game, but overall, it's average +

Mass Effect is indeed much more original, much more refreshing than DA:O. But I wouldn't go as far as saying that DA:O is neglected because of ME. Two different teams are working on the two games. DA:O got its share of useless Armor/Item DLC's (similarly to most ME2 DLC's) and is going to have its first expansion released next month, various books, a comic book on the way, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if DA:O sold much more than ME1 (though I might be wrong).


@Krusader, yeah they did that apparently. I don't go on the social website often, but there was some kind of uproar a few weeks ago, and I saw several people making fun of Bioware for closing all threads related to RtO, and banning people who were too much vocal about it. I'm not sure this was entirely a bad idea, knowing how nerd rage is sometimes ridiculous. Still, I think they should have been more vocal about what was going on with RtO, instead of just closing topics about it.

[rajpoot]

Warden's Keep was, IMO quite good...added some nice bit of lore to the game.....RtO on the other hand, even aside from the bugs and stuff, I don't know why the devs made it at all.....It rubbishes the logic of the original game's story.....Cailan was a simple character, and now they've complicated him needlessly.

[Meneldil]

I don't think this is really the place to discuss DAO DLC's. If you wish to continue this discussion, we can move it to the DAO thread :) I saddly don't have ME2 (never even finished the first one), but I can't wait to get back on the series.

[Wishazu]

I don't think this is really the place to discuss DAO DLC's. If you wish to continue this discussion, we can move it to the DAO thread :) I saddly don't have ME2 (never even finished the first one), but I can't wait to get back on the series.

Unfortunately for me, I woke up yesterday morning to find that my house had been broken into, My xbox, all my games and controllers, TV, Mobile phone and ipod were all stolen. I won't be playing much of anything for a while.

[Mailman653]

Unfortunately for me, I woke up yesterday morning to find that my house had been broken into, My xbox, all my games and controllers, TV, Mobile phone and ipod were all stolen. I won't be playing much of anything for a while.

If you're lucky the perp may try to connect to Xbox live with you're system or maybe the person that buys it. You should notify the police and MS. They can trace the IP. It wouldn't be the first time someone gets arrested for using a stolen 360.

http://www.examiner.com/x-13034-Denver-Xbox-Examiner~y2009m12d28-X-marks-the-spot-Stolen-Xbox-Live-account-leads-police-to-robber

[Wishazu]

If you're lucky the perp may try to connect to Xbox live with you're system or maybe the person that buys it. You should notify the police and MS. They can trace the IP. It wouldn't be the first time someone gets arrested for using a stolen 360.

http://www.examiner.com/x-13034-Denver-Xbox-Examiner~y2009m12d28-X-marks-the-spot-Stolen-Xbox-Live-account-leads-police-to-robber

Cheers mate. I have already recovered my account to another console but whoever took mine will still have all my account info on there. Can they track the box if the perp has wiped the hard drive before using it?

[al Roumi]

Selfishly speaking, I hope Dragon Age continues to be neglected in favor of Mass Effect. I simply cannot understand how one can even enjoy the former and it seems so entirely different than the latter. Different strokes for different folks I guess, but I'm surprised my tastes are so out of the mainstream for that single game.

Couldn't agree more. Believe it or not, I find ME2 more plausible (ha!) and engaging than DA:O. Stupid stupid armour that everyone wears!

[Secura]

I recently played Mass Effect 2 over two days (a relative is able to get me free rentals for 360 and PS3 :3), and wondered how far through the game I was. I'm looking to buy the game itself, but curious as to how much I have left?

I believe I had just completed the loyalty mission for Jack, and then she had an argument with Miranda and I sided with the latter (I believed her side of the argument was more in tune with my Paragon Shepard), lost favour with Jack for that though. I currently have nine companions, eight of which are loyal, and the game's prodding me to check out an abandoned craft or some such? And will I have a chance to increase Jack's loyalty back?

Also, a quick question regarding romance; I have yet to get the Paramour achievement, but I think I was in the course of having my way with Garrus, so to speak. He has flirted with my Shepard and she mentioned sparring to him; Mordin's also suggested positions and ointments and such to me (the smutty little fellow!). When will this relationship culminate in me getting my Turian on and the achievement?

Many thanks. :3

[frogbeastegg]

You're close to the end.

In response to the first spoiler paragraph: you can. According to what I hear, you need to have very high (possibly 100%) paragon or renegade and then go chat to the affected party. The conversation might be a one-off so save before you talk to the person in question in case you don't have enough points to get the option. I can't say more than that since I successfully resolved the situation when it appeared and so didn't need to do this.

In response to the second spoiler paragraph: yes, you have everything set up for what you want. It will happen at a specific point in the main plot arc. It would be a good idea to keep talking to the character occasionally until the trigger point just to make sure.

[Secura]

In response to the first spoiler paragraph: you can. According to what I hear, you need to have very high (possibly 100%) paragon or renegade and then go chat to the affected party. The conversation might be a one-off so save before you talk to the person in question in case you don't have enough points to get the option. I can't say more than that since I successfully resolved the situation when it appeared and so didn't need to do this.

Darn it. I'm about... 85% Paragon and 5% Renegade overall. I'll have to go back and find some quests I've missed, fingers crossed. I really dislike everything about Jack (especially her clothing, or lack thereof) and usually avoid using her in my party, but I hear I can't get the 'No One Left Behind' achievement without her loyalty.


In response to the second spoiler paragraph: yes, you have everything set up for what you want. It will happen at a specific point in the main plot arc. It would be a good idea to keep talking to the character occasionally until the trigger point just to make sure.

Oh, excellent! From what I remember, everytime I tried talking to him, he basically told me he was busy calibrating the ship's laser weaponry or some such. I'd begun to think he didn't wanna talk to me. :<

I'm still debating buying the game and playing through for a Renegade approach; I play the d-bag role very badly. Even in KotOR and Dragon Age, I just couldn't be mean to anyone, it isn't really in my nature. I punched out a Citadel reporter on ME2 by accident (wondered what pulling the Right Trigger would do when the prompt appeared) and once I saw the Renegade points come up, I considered restarting!

Thank you for the responses, it's a big help and means I can avoid the spoilers in guides and such. :3

[tibilicus]

Darn it. I'm about... 85% Paragon and 5% Renegade overall. I'll have to go back and find some quests I've missed, fingers crossed. I really dislike everything about Jack (especially her clothing, or lack thereof) and usually avoid using her in my party, but I hear I can't get the 'No One Left Behind' achievement without her loyalty.



Oh, excellent! From what I remember, everytime I tried talking to him, he basically told me he was busy calibrating the ship's laser weaponry or some such. I'd begun to think he didn't wanna talk to me. :<

I'm still debating buying the game and playing through for a Renegade approach; I play the d-bag role very badly. Even in KotOR and Dragon Age, I just couldn't be mean to anyone, it isn't really in my nature. I punched out a Citadel reporter on ME2 by accident (wondered what pulling the Right Trigger would do when the prompt appeared) and once I saw the Renegade points come up, I considered restarting!

Thank you for the responses, it's a big help and means I can avoid the spoilers in guides and such. :3

I believe that if you reach full paragon points you can persuade Jack to become loyal again later on by talking to her again. I would also highly recommend buying the game, it has a lot of re-playability. You can probably get at least a good 50+ hours game play out of the game.

If you haven't tried playing an infiltrator already I recommend you do. Awesome fun. ~:)

[Secura]

I believe that if you reach full paragon points you can persuade Jack to become loyal again later on by talking to her again. I would also highly recommend buying the game, it has a lot of re-playability. You can probably get at least a good 50+ hours game play out of the game.

So it is max Paragon? Hmmm, there's lots still to do before I head off to the Omega Relay. I hope that the tenth squad member has alot of possibilities for Paragon points, at any rate! I probably will buy the game at some point, just to try the rest of the classes as well as the other romance options and Renagade responses.


If you haven't tried playing an infiltrator already I recommend you do. Awesome fun. ~:)

I'm currently a Sentinel, I think. The class that gets the cool 'Tech Armour' buff; I picked that because it seemed the most balanced of the six. I think I picked 'Wave Bullets' as my single Advanced Training skill, seems to add lots of individual damage. Is there a better option for Sentinels to pick for Advanced Training? I have all nine loyalty options open at this stage, so quite a range to choose from. :3

Infiltrator is the class with camouflage, right? I was actually going to pick that at first, but was weary of the whole pistols & sniper rifles things. I usually let Garrus do all the sniping, with Samara as biotic/assault rifle support and Shepard acting as a 'tank' of sorts with Tech Armour and her submachine gun.

[tibilicus]

So it is max Paragon? Hmmm, there's lots still to do before I head off to the Omega Relay. I hope that the tenth squad member has alot of possibilities for Paragon points, at any rate! I probably will buy the game at some point, just to try the rest of the classes as well as the other romance options and Renagade responses.



I'm currently a Sentinel, I think. The class that gets the cool 'Tech Armour' buff; I picked that because it seemed the most balanced of the six. I think I picked 'Wave Bullets' as my single Advanced Training skill, seems to add lots of individual damage. Is there a better option for Sentinels to pick for Advanced Training? I have all nine loyalty options open at this stage, so quite a range to choose from. :3

Infiltrator is the class with camouflage, right? I was actually going to pick that at first, but was weary of the whole pistols & sniper rifles things. I usually let Garrus do all the sniping, with Samara as biotic/assault rifle support and Shepard acting as a 'tank' of sorts with Tech Armour and her submachine gun.

How far are you of max paragon? The last squad member does offer an opportunity for paragon points but that last segment of paragon points is a pain to fill, on my female Shepard run through (just finished it earlier) I didn't fill my bar until the very last mission.

As for sentinel builds, I haven't actually played one yet, that's going to be my next play through but what a lot of people playing the game seem to recommend as a build is:

Heavy Warp
Area overload
few points in cryo as it isn't really needed
Tech Armour evolution is down to preference.
Defender due to the paragon plus health bonus, quick cool down is really handy to.
Seeming Sentinels don't get an ammo power, either warp ammo or armour piercing ammo is recommended as a bonus power.

The nice thing about playing a sentinel though is you can have a really flexible style of game play. If you upgrade your tech armour so the explosion it produces when it's knocked of increases you can play a close combat mele class. Alternatively pick extra protection and your a lot tougher to take out.

[Secura]

How far are you of max paragon? The last squad member does offer an opportunity for paragon points but that last segment of paragon points is a pain to fill, on my female Shepard run through (just finished it earlier) I didn't fill my bar until the very last mission.

I'm about 85% of the bar filled for Paragon. There's still some side-quests left and such, but the big ones that pertain to the story are done up to the point where I have to pick up this Friend-Foe thing.


The nice thing about playing a sentinel though is you can have a really flexible style of game play. If you upgrade your tech armour so the explosion it produces when it's knocked of increases you can play a close combat mele class. Alternatively pick extra protection and your a lot tougher to take out.

From what I remember, that's pretty close to my own spec anyway, although I haven't gotten into spending points on Cryo yet; I haven't really seen much need to use Tech abilities at all, if I am honest. Biotics just seem to do everything I need of them.

I actually evolved my Tech Armour into the variant that offered more overall protection, so that I could keep more of the fire on me for longer and ensure Garrus and Samara were safe to do their respective jobs. Samara in particular was a little gung-ho at first, so I found it necessary to increase my own defenses so that I could hold fire off the silly woman. :3

I'm glad I picked Warp Ammunition then! I think I evolved it into the self-buff rather than the party-wide one, as I didn't want to override Garrus' Tungsten Ammunition (is that it's name?). I had considered using Reave as my Advanced Training for the heavy damage and healing potential, but considering I bring Samara along anyway, opted for the Warp Ammo instead. :3

[tibilicus]

I'm about 85% of the bar filled for Paragon. There's still some side-quests left and such, but the big ones that pertain to the story are done up to the point where I have to pick up this Friend-Foe thing.



From what I remember, that's pretty close to my own spec anyway, although I haven't gotten into spending points on Cryo yet; I haven't really seen much need to use Tech abilities at all, if I am honest. Biotics just seem to do everything I need of them.

I actually evolved my Tech Armour into the variant that offered more overall protection, so that I could keep more of the fire on me for longer and ensure Garrus and Samara were safe to do their respective jobs. Samara in particular was a little gung-ho at first, so I found it necessary to increase my own defenses so that I could hold fire off the silly woman. :3

I'm glad I picked Warp Ammunition then! I think I evolved it into the self-buff rather than the party-wide one, as I didn't want to override Garrus' Tungsten Ammunition (is that it's name?). I had considered using Reave as my Advanced Training for the heavy damage and healing potential, but considering I bring Samara along anyway, opted for the Warp Ammo instead. :3

I wouldn't worry to much about the loyalty situation. Without ruining the main story for you it's a factor in your teams survival but it defiantly isn't the most important one. You can still achieve success with quite a few squad mates not being loyal.

[Secura]

I wouldn't worry to much about the loyalty situation. Without ruining the main story for you it's a factor in your teams survival but it defiantly isn't the most important one. You can still achieve success with quite a few squad mates not being loyal.

But I would fail to get that all-important 75G for the achievement, right? Haha. :P

[tibilicus]

But I would fail to get that all-important 75G for the achievement, right? Haha. :P

Maybe, maybe not. ~;)

As I said, a lot depends on your actions during the actual mission. If your a smart gal, you should have no problem. I don't want to ruin anything for you though.

[a completely inoffensive name]

I'm Commander Shepard and this is my favorite store on the citadel.

[Krusader]

http://unrealitymag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/mass-effect.jpg
Had to share :grin:

And oh, there is a new heavy weapon one, a "chain lightning gun". Called Arc Projector or something.
And just 1-2 weeks till Hammerhead is released.

[Mailman653]

First paid DLC coming in April. (http://xbox360.gamespy.com/xbox-360/mass-effect-2/1076929p1.html)

[gaelic cowboy]

First paid DLC coming in April. (http://xbox360.gamespy.com/xbox-360/mass-effect-2/1076929p1.html)

A picture of Kasumi leaked a while back but I wrote it off as a fake looks like the fun continues :2thumbsup: sweet

[tibilicus]

Possible spoilers regarding Liara DLC?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSNdH6PBTB8

There's been rumours circulating about this for a while but if the voice clips are genuine I'm kind of disappointed with what they've done with Liara. She went from the Asari scientist fascinated with the protheans to a really dark and indifferent character who's consumed by the desire for revenge which I don't quite understand. I'm ok with the fact the shadow broker tried to kidnap me, why can't she just let it go?

[gaelic cowboy]

Possible spoilers regarding Liara DLC?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSNdH6PBTB8

There's been rumours circulating about this for a while but if the voice clips are genuine I'm kind of disappointed with what they've done with Liara. She went from the Asari scientist fascinated with the protheans to a really dark and indifferent character who's consumed by the desire for revenge which I don't quite understand. I'm ok with the fact the shadow broker tried to kidnap me, why can't she just let it go?


Well if its true then I believe its got to do with the whole story in the Redemption comics which deal with a time between the start of ME2 and your resurrection by cerberus. I guessing that Liara is trying to free someone from the shadow broker possibly Thane who is an early character in it. I got a copy of the first one with my game copy looks like Thane helped her to find shepard and she handed you to cerberus to save you from shadow broker. Actually now that I think of it Thane is from the main game I forget the actual name of the guy but it obviously him

[rajpoot]

Another drell. Feron in the comics. Most likely dead.

[tibilicus]

Well if its true then I believe its got to do with the whole story in the Redemption comics which deal with a time between the start of ME2 and your resurrection by cerberus. I guessing that Liara is trying to free someone from the shadow broker possibly Thane who is an early character in it. I got a copy of the first one with my game copy looks like Thane helped her to find shepard and she handed you to cerberus to save you from shadow broker. Actually now that I think of it Thane is from the main game I forget the actual name of the guy but it obviously him

I knew that was the case as I've read about some of redemption on the wikia but to me that still doesn't excuse the massive character shift for Liara. Pretty much the only female character which is trustworthy is Tali. I really feel that Miranda has the cold female character nailed, we don't need another.

Also coming out of the rumour mill on the Bioware social is a DLC which according to Christina Norman will make Femsheps "very happy". Cue speculation... Now!

[gaelic cowboy]

Also coming out of the rumour mill on the Bioware social is a DLC which according to Christina Norman will make Femsheps "very happy". Cue speculation... Now!

Good I played from Me1 to Me2 on a female character like has been said earlier in the threads it just seemed a better character fit the male guys voice kinda annoyed me dunno why strange

[Mailman653]

I wouldn't know what could make female Shep's in particular "very happy", the only thing that comes to mind is a new romance. Currently I think they only have the option of two aliens and a human.

[tibilicus]

I wouldn't know what could make female Shep's in particular "very happy", the only thing that comes to mind is a new romance. Currently I think they only have the option of two aliens and a human.

A cure for Thane Krios maybe? That's about all I could think of.

[DisruptorX]

I'm Commander Shepard and this is my favorite store on the citadel.

I'm Commander Shepard and I'd like to remind you that slavery is an integral part of the Batarian caste system.

[Scienter]

A cure for Thane Krios maybe? That's about all I could think of.

That was my first guess, too.

Re: Liara, I was actually ok with what they did to her in ME2, I thought she was kind of naive and boring in ME1. <- don't know if I need the spoiler tags for this, but better safe than sorry.

[Mailman653]

I believe its been two months since ME2 came out? I think the spoiler rule has expired now.

[frogbeastegg]

The extra strict spoiler policy has expired. Standard arena spoiler policy applies.

[Secura]

Really chuffed to have just finished ME2 for the first time, my thoughts on the end past the tags:

I was unable to ensure Jack's loyalty again, but did have enough Paragon points to diffuse the Tali-Legion dispute and keep them both on-side. I had about 95% Paragon rating overall before going to the Relay, and I couldn't find any other means of increasing it to win Jack over, so took the chance and the jump through Omega 4 (after getting my romance on with Garrus :D).

Some of the cutscenes had me pretty worried; heavy damage to the ship, Miranda getting shot... pretty stressful. I went along with the standard team set-ups for each choice (Tali as tech-spec, Samara as biotic shield, Mordin leading Chakwas/Chambers etc back to the Normandy, Miranda as leader on both occasions), and then ended up with that tough choice at the end.

I heard that leaving the bigger party members behind (Grunt, Garrus, Jacob) would ensure that those holding the line had a better chance of doing so without dying, so I simply took Tali and Legion along with me and left everyone else behind, crossing my fingers that Jack wouldn't end up with a bullet in her head despite the fact I wanted her to.

I found the final boss to be anti-climatic at first; destroying four vial chambers? But then the bloody thing came back and the fight was really on then; Tali was utterly useless, just had her hide back and use her auto turret when it was available; Legion was much more effective, basically able to one-shot those darn Harbingers while I concentrated on the Reaver with the Collector Particle Beam weapon.

Cue another heart attack on my part when the cinematic comes up and it looks as though Tali and Legion were dead, only for them to be simply pinned beneath some wreckage. I enjoyed the whole 'leap of faith' thing at the end, got my "Survive the suicide mission" achievement and then thought that I'd missed out on Leave Noone Behind achievement. Turns out I just had to tell the Illusive Man to get lost, return to my crew and the achievement popped up and I did the happy dance. xD

Amazing game, can't wait to go back through and pick up the achievements I missed (Lvl.30, fully upgraded weapon, etc etc). The third installment looks set to be fantastic, really glad I can import my character. :3

[tibilicus]

Really chuffed to have just finished ME2 for the first time, my thoughts on the end past the tags:

I was unable to ensure Jack's loyalty again, but did have enough Paragon points to diffuse the Tali-Legion dispute and keep them both on-side. I had about 95% Paragon rating overall before going to the Relay, and I couldn't find any other means of increasing it to win Jack over, so took the chance and the jump through Omega 4 (after getting my romance on with Garrus :D).

Some of the cutscenes had me pretty worried; heavy damage to the ship, Miranda getting shot... pretty stressful. I went along with the standard team set-ups for each choice (Tali as tech-spec, Samara as biotic shield, Mordin leading Chakwas/Chambers etc back to the Normandy, Miranda as leader on both occasions), and then ended up with that tough choice at the end.

I heard that leaving the bigger party members behind (Grunt, Garrus, Jacob) would ensure that those holding the line had a better chance of doing so without dying, so I simply took Tali and Legion along with me and left everyone else behind, crossing my fingers that Jack wouldn't end up with a bullet in her head despite the fact I wanted her to.

I found the final boss to be anti-climatic at first; destroying four vial chambers? But then the bloody thing came back and the fight was really on then; Tali was utterly useless, just had her hide back and use her auto turret when it was available; Legion was much more effective, basically able to one-shot those darn Harbingers while I concentrated on the Reaver with the Collector Particle Beam weapon.

Cue another heart attack on my part when the cinematic comes up and it looks as though Tali and Legion were dead, only for them to be simply pinned beneath some wreckage. I enjoyed the whole 'leap of faith' thing at the end, got my "Survive the suicide mission" achievement and then thought that I'd missed out on Leave Noone Behind achievement. Turns out I just had to tell the Illusive Man to get lost, return to my crew and the achievement popped up and I did the happy dance. xD

Amazing game, can't wait to go back through and pick up the achievements I missed (Lvl.30, fully upgraded weapon, etc etc). The third installment looks set to be fantastic, really glad I can import my character. :3

About Tali being useless in the final fight, on insanity I've found her useless for pretty much the whole game. Why does her combat drone need a 30 second cool down if it's going to be destroyed in less than 5 seconds?

As a plus, she can use a shotgun though which puts her on par in terms of usefulness with jacob.

[Krusader]

About Tali being useless in the final fight, on insanity I've found her useless for pretty much the whole game. Why does her combat drone need a 30 second cool down if it's going to be destroyed in less than 5 seconds?

As a plus, she can use a shotgun though which puts her on par in terms of usefulness with jacob.

Aye. Hadn't it been for Legion's sniper rifle both of them would be useless. I usually take along Mordin, Grunt, Garrus, Thane or Miranda. Overloads, Warps, Incinerates + different ammo types make them IMO the most useful.

[Secura]

The reason I took those is because the information I recieved about that final choice suggested that the success of the defenders relied upon who was left behind.

For the final choice, it's all based upon the characters relative 'defensive ability', it seems; some are high (Jacob, Garrus, Miranda, Grunt), others are low (Jack, Mordin, Tali, Legion). If you leave behind enough of the 'high values', you're more than likely going to ensure that those with them survive. This link explains it well (http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Mass_Effect_2_Guide#Final_Battle).

I didn't have Jack's loyalty, wanted the 75G for the achievement, and was really cagey about her dying so I ended up taking her with me at all points up to that part. At the final choice, I decided to have Mordin head back to the Normandy with the crew (cos he's squishy too, loyal or not) and then take Tali and Legion with me. Samara, Thane, Garrus, Grunt, Miranda, Jacob and Jack all stayed behind to hold the line, and it worked out.

Unfortunately for Tali, I feel her weapon combination of Shotguns/Pistols just doesn't really do her any favours. She needs a weapon with a higher rate of fire, or more health to offset the fact she prefers to be up-close with the shotgun. Otherwise she's simply a weaker, more tech-orientated version of Grunt or Jacob.

Legion's actually pretty decent, his unique sniper rifle sorta made my jaw drop at how powerful it was, but I feel that the fact he's geth and he comes into the game so late doesn't really give you much scope for relating to him as you might Garrus or Miranda, for example.

[Scienter]

Aye. Hadn't it been for Legion's sniper rifle both of them would be useless. I usually take along Mordin, Grunt, Garrus, Thane or Miranda. Overloads, Warps, Incinerates + different ammo types make them IMO the most useful.

Like you, I used Garrus, Grunt, Thane, and Mordin a lot. I found Mordin less effective in combat but he's so funny that I wanted to take him along just to hear him talk. Sometimes I used Samara and Jack together for a crazy kill everything with biotics party. My Vanguard and Jack had maxed out Shockwave by the end, it was fun to have two characters using it at once. :P

[Wishazu]

The reason I took those is because the information I recieved about that final choice suggested that the success of the defenders relied upon who was left behind.

For the final choice, it's all based upon the characters relative 'defensive ability', it seems; some are high (Jacob, Garrus, Miranda, Grunt), others are low (Jack, Mordin, Tali, Legion). If you leave behind enough of the 'high values', you're more than likely going to ensure that those with them survive. This link explains it well (http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Mass_Effect_2_Guide#Final_Battle).

I didn't have Jack's loyalty, wanted the 75G for the achievement, and was really cagey about her dying so I ended up taking her with me at all points up to that part. At the final choice, I decided to have Mordin head back to the Normandy with the crew (cos he's squishy too, loyal or not) and then take Tali and Legion with me. Samara, Thane, Garrus, Grunt, Miranda, Jacob and Jack all stayed behind to hold the line, and it worked out.

Unfortunately for Tali, I feel her weapon combination of Shotguns/Pistols just doesn't really do her any favours. She needs a weapon with a higher rate of fire, or more health to offset the fact she prefers to be up-close with the shotgun. Otherwise she's simply a weaker, more tech-orientated version of Grunt or Jacob.

Legion's actually pretty decent, his unique sniper rifle sorta made my jaw drop at how powerful it was, but I feel that the fact he's geth and he comes into the game so late doesn't really give you much scope for relating to him as you might Garrus or Miranda, for example.

You don't have to go through the relay immediately after recruiting Legion. As I mentioned in a previous post, bottom of page 6 I think you can get alot more mileage out of him if you go to the derelict Reaper before recruiting Tali, then take Legion aboard the migrant fleet. A few interesting exchanges ensue between Legion and the Admirals.

Legion is my favourite character, his sniper is very powerful, he can absorb alot of damage when his shield boost ability is upgraded, I love the way he speaks and he's Geth! Take the time to chat to him as much as pos, you will not be disappointed.

Addendum: Has anyone else seen him do the Robot dance when you enter the AI Core?

[al Roumi]

Like you, I used Garrus, Grunt, Thane, and Mordin a lot. I found Mordin less effective in combat but he's so funny that I wanted to take him along just to hear him talk. Sometimes I used Samara and Jack together for a crazy kill everything with biotics party. My Vanguard and Jack had maxed out Shockwave by the end, it was fun to have two characters using it at once. :P

I took Mordin on any mission mostly involving biological enemies - Neural shock and cryo-blast are great, incinerate is good on the big mechs' armour. Thane's Shredder ammo also makes him a good team mate for biological enemies. I mostly then used Garrus, Miranda or Zaeed against sinthetics.

[Mailman653]

Hammerhead DLC, March 23rd (http://xbox360.gamespy.com/xbox-360/mass-effect-2/1078790p1.html)

[tibilicus]

New Kasumi DLC trailer.

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/kasumi-dlc-mass-effect/63465

Playing a vanguard in a dinner suit looks really fun.

[Krusader]

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.joystiq.com/media/2010/03/me2newcostumesdlc.jpg

Coming out 23rd. Will cost some Xbox points and PC bioware points.
If I end up buying this, it will solely be to fix Garrus' armor. Looks like a hobo-dino at times. Don't like the sunglasses on Jack & Thane at all, but at least Jack got some clothes.

[Mailman653]

Heh heh, they made Shep look like a Cerberus James Bond in that video. As for the DLC costumes.....I don't know about that but they look nice.

[Krusader]

Firewalker DLC out along with Costume Pack.

Haven't bought costume pack and the Firewalker (Hammerhead tank with 5 missions) was not much to cheer for, then again its free.


First mission is just a tutorial on how to do things. Unfortunately what pops up on screen are not the correct keys to press. Apparently its a problem on both PC & X360. And being a non-native English speaker I thought the "Mine" key was about laying mines, not mining for minerals or mission objectives.

You then get 3 missions you can do in any order. One is to race through a icy canyon and collect 10 data nodes (using mine key to collect them when hovering above a beacon thingy) before your engine is incapacited due to cold. At least the Hammerhead becomes visually icy and your boost & jumping is reduced to lower temperatues.
Another mission is to hover through a volcanic area, locate a base, use some sensors which causes seismic activity and you need to race your Hammerhead to an exit before lava & stone kill you. The third mission is to collect five artifacts while killing geth.
Last mission unlocks after doing "volcanic mission" and that is killing rocket drones while taking down generator shields and then entering base and thats just running to a Prothean relic. You find a Biotic Damage upgrade in there though.

The controls on the PC at least are good enough, better than the mako, but then again different vehicle types. But i was sorely disappointed with with weaponry. Only weapon is a "homing missile launcher". You dont even need to target enemies, just fire away and the missiles home in, as long as you keep the launcher somewhat horizontal. No secondary weapon. When I fought some Geth even though I kept crosshair on a geth a bit farther away the missiles homed in on nearest enemy.

All in all, had this been paid content I wouldn't have bothered. I hope if they ever make an expansion they will integrate the Hammerhead in a much better way. This just felt tacked on and done in a hurry.

[al Roumi]

Thanks for the review Krusader!

[Lemur]

Finally broke down and bought the game. I have no willpower.

[Ser Clegane]

Finally broke down and bought the game. I have no willpower.

The real challenge to my willpower came when I had it had to make sure that I do not spend too much time playing it (I did not spend so much time with a game for ages).

[Krusader]

Kasumi DLC out for sale...560 points.

Only tested it a bit...don't know what to say so far.

[Mailman653]

Kasumi DLC out for sale...560 points.

Only tested it a bit...don't know what to say so far.

Looks pricey IMO.

[rajpoot]

Would be grateful if some one could tell what exactly is the DLC like....is Kasumi a full and proper character or is she like Zaeed Massani?

[Krusader]

Would be grateful if some one could tell what exactly is the DLC like....is Kasumi a full and proper character or is she like Zaeed Massani?

Zaaed when it comes to interacting with her aboard Normandy and recruitment is just talking on the Citadel.

[tibilicus]

I will probably end up buying it but it doesn't hate the fact I loath DLC as a concept.

I pine for the days where we actually had expansion packs which had enough content to justify the price tag. Now we're left paying any where from £5- 10 for something which lasts about 30 minutes and is ridden with bugs most of the time.

The only DLC I ever played which was worth the money was the Fallout 3 DLC, and that's only because Broken Steel raised the level cap. I guess the GTA 4 DLC is meant to be pretty good too, but these are of course the exceptions which prove the rule that DLC was created solely for the purpose of ripping of loyal fans and smashing the consumer base open like a giant money pinnate.

[Mailman653]

So me and Kelly got together....certainly the most interesting romance option I've seen so far.

In regards to the DLC, I might pass on it for now. If she came with a whole new storyline, four or five missions, IMO she would be worth the points. But as it stands, one character, one level and a new gun....no thanks. Especially if it's a heavy weapon, I haven't used anything else after getting the arc projector.

[Hooahguy]

my friend got a copy of ME2 so i thought id give it a whirl when hes done with it.
scratch that, when i get my laptop back.

[Veho Nex]

I shall play you a sad song on the worlds smallest violin.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tdsL4kvp_I&feature=related

[A Nerd]

I feel your pain with the laptop being unattainable at the moment. No better way to express ones sympathy than with a good ol' Spongebob quote!

[Mailman653]

Overlord DLC (http://media.xbox360.gamespy.com/media/143/14320288/vids_1.html)

[tibilicus]

Overlord DLC (http://media.xbox360.gamespy.com/media/143/14320288/vids_1.html)

Think your links are wrong. ~;)

Here, allow me to help. http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/129/index/2599256/1

[Mailman653]

:oops:Overlord DLC, correct link (http://xbox360.gamespy.com/xbox-360/mass-effect-2/1089310p1.html)

[johnhughthom]

A VI gone rogue? Wow, never seen that in Mass Effect.

[Mailman653]

A VI gone rogue? Wow, never seen that in Mass Effect.

True, but it's not just any VI, a human-VI hybrid. Seriously.....if anyone had any doubts about Cerberus and their intentions, this has to be the wake up call. Who else would be crazy enough to try to meld a human brain into a VI interface.

[rajpoot]

Is this dlc by any chance related to the ME novel due to be released in July? Its title is 'Mass Effect Retribution' I think, and if my memory serves correctly, its supposed to have a similar storyline with the Illusive man combining advanced tech with a human test subject....