Mass Effect 2 Broke the Franchise
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- Опубліковано 5 сер 2024
- Mass Effect 2 is full of brilliant stories, but it does a terrible job of setting things up for the third game.
Companion article:
www.shamusyoung.com/twentysid...
00:00 Intro
02:41 Space Mystery!
05:18 Cosmic Horror
06:55 The Plan
15:34 And then Mass Effect 2 Happened
20:28 Shilling my Book
21:47 Ending
My "personal setback":
www.shamusyoung.com/twentysid...
My Mass Effect Series:
www.shamusyoung.com/twentysid...
My Book:
www.amazon.com/dp/B095PX8HTW/... - Ігри
Shamus Young died on Wednesday, June 15th, 2022, at 3am, of cardiac arrest. He is greatly missed by family, friends, colleagues, and his audience.
What?
Am I stupid or is he actually dead?
Nevermind, I read though his web page
Jesus Christ, that's horrible :(
@@Trakesh That's not a joke either.
Rest in Peace, Shamus. 💗
I didn't know he passed away. Loved his Fallout video. RIP.
Homeboy died very shortly after this. His epilogue hits harder for that.
Yeah, it was hard to get all this together because your body was quitting on you. Shit fuckin sucks man. I really wish he'd gotten help sooner.
Mass Effect 2 is a story that circles back in on itself. No seriously.
Shepard dies to come back.
The Normandy is destroyed to be rebuilt.
Shepard joins Cerberus to defeat the Collecters. Then leaves Cerberus.
Not only did this game ingore what ME1 set up but even jettisoned it's own story. Nothing in this game really matters in the larger picture. Then it introduced a lot of new characters everyone expected a resolution to. Mass Effect 3 was doomed from the start no progress was made on the Reaper threat. The forward progression in the game are reset and Mass Effect 3 already had to conclude the series. There was no way Mass Effect 3 could have possibly accomplished what it needed to and what Mass Effect 2 was supposed to do on top of it. So no the ending is not the problem the problem is all the time Mass Effect 2 wasted.
If it's all ME2's fault then how do you explain the dark energy retcon? You know the star that was prematurely dying? You can lie all yo want to yourself but ME3's ending was rushed into shit, it was such a mess that Bioware had to release a free DLC to fix the ending. Of all the shit that ME2 gets, NO ONE mentions that the dark energy plot just vanished in ME3.
@@Battouga The problem is lack of buildup not just the ending itself. I didn't say ME3 didn't have it's own problems. It's a video game series anyway don't howl at me over it.
@@spartanq7781 They wanted to make it a trilogy, if the Reapers were going to invade in the middle game what's left for the third? They had no idea what the Reapers wanted in the first game but atleast we were told that they wanted to harvest us in ME2. I guess that didn't make it into the cut and I won't argue against the video maker since he has apprarently passed but he exaggerated a lot. Shepard don't get counsel support in ME2 because the counsel still thinks Sovereign was Saren's ship and the Reapers are a myth. Echo chambers wanna echo.
@@Battouga I didn't ever say the Reapers should arrive in the second game. I said it needed to build to the final entry. Instead ME2 spun it's wheels and didn't advance the overall narrative. Worse it just made more things for ME3 to resolve most of which doesn't matter the grand scheme of things. What does helping people with their daddy issues have to do with finding a way to stop the Reapers. That was what the final line of dialogue Shepard said in ME1 but in ME2 it was never done. Forcing ME3 to rush through it. The crucible has no build up or foreshadowing nor is it even Shepard who finds it. If they were smart they could have found it at the end of ME2 and in ME3 you need to find specialists to finish it and Shepard's cipher to activate it. That is far better than Reaper god child or just being told it exists.
@@Battougadark energy plot never was properly developed in a first place. Its not even part of actual main plot, nothing connects collectors reaper building with “omg stars dying cause dark energy”. It was just an idea to which they never fully committed even during ME 2 itself.
But thats not just ME 2 problem, its problem with trilogy in general, they had bunch of ideas what to do with their main conflict but they just couldn’t decide what to do until it was too late.
Mass Effect trilogy is one of those what I call "1+2/3 trilogies" where the first entry is drastically different than the second and the third entry whereas the second and the third entry are directly related.
And it's so obvious too. The first Mass Effect game was more interested in introducing interesting settings and concepts whereas 2 and 3 was more interested in introducing interesting characters. This fundamentally changed the feel of the games.
what's the point of introducing more stuff to an established world?
Me2 added a couple new races and some new lore, there's no need to top the ammount of exposition the 1st one had, the 1st one already had too much.
I never saw much of a difference in terms of writing between the games (only 3 felt a little rushed in places) The 1st chapter of a story in a massive sci-fi universe is always inherently gonna be about introducing and learning new stuff about the universe the story is set in while the sequels are almost always about creating new conflicts or finding a resolution to a conflict that was set up in the 1st chapter. I mean the entire 3rd game is about resolving conflicts/storylines that were introduced in the 1st game.
Come on, ME1 had interesting characters too.
ME3's new characters were shoehorned tokens, ALL of them forgettable and cringe.
ME1 was all world building while dealing with an imminent threat. It was well crafted even if its gameplay was jank at times.
It's because they're different companies. ME1 is Bioware, ME2 is EA.
Literally the best take on Mass Effect there is. RIP.
You ever seen Smudboy’s series on ME2? It’s an insanely long multipart evaluation of the entire plot of the game, where he covers narrative inconsistencies/plot holes, outright bad writing, etc.
It’s really old now and the sound quality isn’t great, plus he has background music on that’s kinda loud and distracting. But holy crap, I thought I found a lot of problems with the plot. Not even close.
@@souldryThanks for the hint. I'll take a look at it.
@@souldry Thank you,dear nostalgic wanderer.
I like obscure older channels like that.
Here,i found another myself!
ua-cam.com/video/5vVciIjpUo4/v-deo.html
If you stop to think about it, the "From Ashes" & Leviathan DLCs of Mass Effect 3 should've been the main plot of Mass Effect 2.
Just remove the Leviathan's stupid need to talk about darkness every time and we're good, that shit is cringe as hell
I would argue that the "Arrival" DLC from ME2 should have been the entirety of the game. It should have been nothing but running around the galaxy looking for reaper clues and possible entry points.
From Ashes and Leviathan shouldn't have existed in any shape or form, they only serve for ruining the mysteries the series still had going, there's no need to explain everything.
@@nicudelpapa4056 Aha, if that was the case everyone would be disapointed and the developers would be called lazy XD
@kyzit8458 They don't need to dump the Reapers backstory and ideals at the last minute through a new character. If they were actually trying to be artistic and subverting expectations they could have had characters across the series each make speculations on the Reapers with their big goals and background never confirmed.
I hated ME2 when it came out. I screamed at the television when the credits rolled "That was it?". There's no main story. No one cares about the collectors or the human reaper. There's hundreds coming! The story is absolutely pointless. Selling Bioware to EA was what broke the franchise.
Wow. You sound like a twelve year old toddler who believes that a game must cater to his feelings.
actually it's a common misconception, BW sold to a company called elevation partner. And that company sold them to EA. BW had no idea they would end up in the hands of EA by selling to elevation partner.
Ah yes, I remember the slow realization setting in that this entire game was going to be a grocery list of characters to collect, and make 'loyal'.
@@femtoservants maybe not but Id bet EA knew that!!! Reeks of underhad deal.
Honestly, I've always loved the original game more than the sequels
Same here. I ADORED ME and whilst I enjoyed ME2, I didn’t think it was anywhere near as good as ME. ME3 was great and imo better than ME2, too.
I don’t understand all those babies who go on about ME2 and shit all over ME.
@@Nav3n I never seem to have trouble getting into mass effect 1, because it's a lot more focused on exploring and learning about the many cultures and planets. The combat isn't as good, but I never really thought that was the main focus.
Mass effect 2 was far too much of a shooter imo.
The production values are objectively higher, but I personally prefer ME1.
Fuckin'a
I played ME1 like 20+ times. It’s up there with Neverwinter Nights, halo, and Skyrim for number of hours I’ve put in. Never did that with the other two. I can’t even finish 3 anymore. Beat it twice, and couldn’t get past Rannoch each subsequent play through I’ve attempted. It’s all downhill after Rannoch.
Yeah it's a no Brainer. That game has so much soul
When you realize that ME2 is just a glorified side quest
Mass Effect is the most inconsequential sequel I have ever played.
It's the fault of ME3's poor writing that causes ME2 to feel irrelevant.
@@NostalgicGamerRickOShay No Mass Effect 3 is the result if Mass Effect 2 doing nothing.
I loved ME2 when it came out. But after having went back and replayed ME1; ME2 is a silly product that introduced slightly better gameplay but a crappy story with a motley crew of clowns to boot. Plus the DLC spam.. The additional armor and weapons which could've been in the initial release were instead poorly implemented with an explanation in a email in your ship..
@@rixille You know what I prefer the combat of the original. It was a role-playing game first and a shooter second. Mass Effect 1 just needed more squad tactics like the overhead view from Dragon Age and it would be perfection. The weapon cool down was so much better as well narrativly and gameplay wise. I don't think I need to explain why the change to thermal clips was astronomically stupid. Gameplay wise it made ME2 onward far more generic. Really though a blend between cool down and ammo weapons was what they should have done.
Replaying ME2 is so frustrating where everyone is yelling at you for working for cerberus and you have to just sit there and want to scream, "I DON'T WANT TO, I'M BEING FORCED BY THE AUTHOR. FUCK CERBERUS!"
What's worse is you cannot bring up all of the terrible things Cerberus has done in the first game.
@@spartanq7781 Oh yeah, the game keeps reminding you as well of their bad deeds. Just to add a little insult to injury.
@@Gmesboo Then Mass Effect 3 shoehorns them as villains. Hell you fight them almost as much as the Reapers. As if the Illusive Man wasn't bad enough he gets worse and then the goddamn space ninja.
@@spartanq7781 TIM, like Aria, has question-proof armour where Shepard can either whine, or sound like a doofus when talking to them. You can’t take them to task, not even in a way like you could with Miranda who then handwaves it away with _"muh rouge sells!"_
@@spartanq7781 i honestly think cerberus was a mistake, but they at least should have been the renagade option for destroying the reapers, by doing something ethically questionable like blowing up half the galaxy with them
Cerberus is the single greatest problem in the entire franchise, their inclusion doesn't even make any sense whatsoever. A lot of ME2's main plot problems seem to stem from some EA exec stepping in and demanding that the game be "more cool and badass", so they spent thousands on hiring Martin Sheen to play the chain-smoking mysterious baddie that gets all the cool camera angles.
I'm just speculating on my part. Some story decisions are quite baffling when put next to the brilliant companion missions. One mission you're in a space courtroom defending your friend from a crime that their father committed, the next a bunch of space insects come out of nowhere and taunt incoherent Saturday-morning-cartoon lines such as "THIS HURTS YOU, SHEPARD", then leave after you blast them enough times.
The Illusive Man wasn't a baddie. Unlike Saren, he was an actually well written and morally ambiguous character, untill the third game, which was the real franchise breaker. I really doubt EA could come up with something as great as the Illusive man.
@@toby2581
>Morally ambiguous characters usually have some particular aims in mind and are willing to do unethical things to achieve them
Did you not play the game? I can't believe somebody couldn't see that in the Illusive man. That's literally his whole point as a character - "all means to an end".
>to have an aim besides what served the plot at any given moment.
He didn't make sense in the third game, because he's practically a different kind of character there (a shitty one). But in the second his every decision had some meaning behind it.
>He consistently does things that make no sense relative to his stated philosophy.
I say otherwise - everything he does makes total sense.
"the chain-smoking mysterious baddie that gets all the cool camera angles."
I dunno about that, Miranda gets some choice camera angles too. 😜
@@toby2581 listen man, he's supposed to be like, "illusive", its in the name
@@toby2581 doesn't role of the tongue quite as well. but i like how the writers thought "if we just put illusive" in the name then we don't ever have to come up with anything intresting about him, because then its the point"
I remember coming across your Mass Effect retrospective on your blog a couple of years ago and taking an afternoon to read through it all - you put into words so many issues I had with the series plot. To me, it's required reading for any Mass Effect fan.
Co-sign!!
This was always my biggest problem with ME2- it essentially lowered the stakes from the reapers, who will genocide the entire galaxy, to the collectors, who are "only" killing thousands of humans. Yes the collectors work for the reapers, but through stopping them we never gain any new information to help with the larger goal of stopping the reapers. At the very least, if they wanted to have the crucible, it should have been revealed at the end of ME2. Maybe the dead reaper we find was killed by a prototype crucible and we need to get the plans for it from the collector base... or something that actually ties your goals in ME2 back into finding a way to actually stop the reapers!
Finding the crucible at the end of ME2 would have made everything flow a lot better:
ME1: Reveal the Reapers
ME2: Discover the solution
ME3: Wage war to implement it
@@Tomwithnonumbers Exactly. Instead Mass Effect 2 isn't about anything. It feels like a canon filler arc.
I think the issue is when they wrote ME2, the dark energy subplot while not definitive was one of the Core
ideas bouncing around in the writing, and there are multiple references to it, and it’s main focus would’ve been on humanity having the key genetic code the Reapers were looking for. While it’s nowhere near perfect either, it would’ve made the ending of 2 make more sense and connect better to 3 had they done it or make up a reason why the Reapers went after humanity specifically the way they did. As it stands, the main plot of 2 doesn’t really matter to 3.
@@Tomwithnonumbers Certainly would have been better than ME3 starting with "oh crap, we forgot to include some way to stop the reapers, uuuuuuuuuuh go to Mars the answer is there, next to Earth the entire time!"
Some asshole executive thought that, above everything else, this series needs a human enemy to echo "white supremacists", I.E. Cerberus. And everything was built around that.
It's so frustrating because ME1 is still one my favorite games of all time, and it feels like it never got a proper sequel even though it set up so much.
THIS! I love ME1, I've played through multiple times doing ever side quest and exploring every little thing. Just about everything in the game totally blew me away. Then ME2 came out and everyone else seemed to think it was such a better game... and I was left scratching my head.
It's a great game on it's own... but the opening almost feels like a "F- you" to fans of ME1.
@@JosephMason Yeah, you can just tell it isn't from the same creative mind largely behind the first game. The story, gameplay, and world building all took a huge turn and it still bums me out to this day. It's a good game, but a bad sequel
The Witcher 3 is the "spiritual successor" imo
@@brenobonfim5749 Maybe that's why Witcher 3 is also one my favorite games of all time lol
@@typickoopakid Yeah same
Mass Effect 2 should have been a spin off game. ME2 is literally like Dragon Age 2. Two games that are meaningless to the overall plot and are so insignificant they can be written out completely without any loss to the overall plot. ME3 was doomed to fail simply because of the damage from ME2.
@@toby2581
Exactly how I feel.
I’d take half the amount of squad mates if the main story would’ve been better.
@@toby2581 They managed it by having multiple writers. I don't know how much overlap there was between the character writers and the main story writers, but I do know there were a bunch of separate writers who handled different parts of the game.
@@Dilandau3000
The writing side of things is confusing to me. Long story short, there seemed to be some shakeup on that front between ME1 and ME2 that hurt story development. Then changing publishers from MS who gave them tons of freedom to do what they wanted and EA who wanted to appeal to more mainstream shooter audiences only hampered things more.
DA2 was integral to the plot lol. It literally started the mage rebellion
It was integral to a minor subplot.
The same way Mordin and Talis loyalty missions are integral to ME3s 2 mid game arcs. To the overarching plot it is not integral.
Its funny actually as both DA2 and ME2 had the largest factor in the next game left for DLC. Arrival and Legacy respectively. Both deal with the antagonists for the next game.
Thats a lesson in why side-content based games suck. This from a company who used to make perfectly balanced rpgs with good side vs main content distribution like baldurs gate 1 & 2 and kotor.
Mass effect 1 was canceled and never had a continuation.
Mass Effect 2 is just a reboot for the original series, but it was also canceled and then, Mass Effetc 3 tries to go back to its origins with a new story and close everything in a single game which only generates a failure.
Yep that's what it feels like to me.
Fuck you EA, Fuck... you.
Mass Effect 1 is the only game in existence that gave me those Star Trek feels and you ruined it.
Holy cow. I have had issues with the story of ME2 for YEARS. And your video really quantifies and clarifies them. Nothing that happened in ME2 made any sense to me. And everyone talks about how much they love the game. And yeah, I loved the game. But I didn't feel it had any point to the trilogy as a whole.
ESPECIALLY the suicide mission. I also just beat ME1 for the first time in years, and all these plot points came back to me and I wondered what the hell happened to them.
ME2's strongest point was the gameplay, like the fighting. That part of it was better, but not by much. It will never beat ME1 in terms of story and RPG.
The Cthulu symbolism point is great because every reaper looks the same and yet we're supposed to believe in ME2 that the reaper born from human DNA looks human just because.
The HU-Man are important because reasons.
It literally says its the core of the reaper and that all reaper cores look like the race its made from. They just look like swuid shrimp things on the outside.
The Reapers actually look different from each other in ME2's ending.
@xenostra Retcon.
Mass Effect 2 at the very least should have been about finding the answer to the Reaper threat. We find a derelict Reaper we should have then found out what happened. Which should lead to the crucible. We should be able to hand the Collecter base to the Alliance to gain a wealth of knowledge. The fix was right in Bioware's faces but they failed to read the writing on the wall they themselves written.
Smudboy said the same thing in his analysis of ME2...back in 2010.
@@Ebalosus Then I agree with him.
This is so sad to listen to because it's so true. I was constantly shaking my head in disbelief as you continued to point out the things that always bugged me, but could never put into concrete words. The Mass Effect sequels are a perfect example of missed opportunities and squandered ideas.
Fully agree. ME2 doing NOTHING with Reaper invasion plot forced ME3 to cram everything into one compressed episode, creating the ending mess we know now.
ME2 might as well have been a soft-reboot given how much it seemed it wanted to distance itself from ME1
@@williamkerfoot8039 yeah you missed the point of this whole video
The ending has nothing to do with it. 3 was poorly written from the opening lines. Cramming it all into one game wasn't even the beginning of the problem since they seemed to have forgot a lot of details. Worse, they couldn't even put a competent game overtop. Watered down the powers to "mix two, achieve big boom, win". Sucks, but that's what happened when studio heads want to appease EA. Why they swapped writers is beyond me. They could have sold the game out but the story? Why? It already had fans and would have had them anyways.
The boss in ME2 was a joke. "Muh giant terminator".
Man you perfectly articulated why ME1 is my favorite in the series in a way I didn't even understand myself.
I didn't even realize how badly they had bungled ME1's story, as demonstrated by your 6 points. The only one that really stood out to me was taking Liara out of the game and replacing her with a new character that strangely had the same face and name. Presumably to make her central to the plot, but the irony was she already was central to the plot (as you illustrated) in a way that was believable and would have made for a much more satisfactory character arc.
I also thought the council completely reneging on their stance on the Reaper threat was really lazy writing that didn't make sense.
Despite that I still really enjoyed the game, but always felt ME1 was the stronger of the two, and now I understand why. Thanks for illuminating!
@CrzndlSndr They wrote the Council how they did since they were just doing the "hero is a rogue or lone warrior trying to save everywhere important but still has significant fame and/or position in their society/faction so they need to write all authority besides the hero as malicious or incapable."
I think this is so important.
I love ME2 as much as the next person, but the shift it has done to the series (for the worse, more action based and less geeky), still bums me the hell out. themes, tone, world building all took a dive.
the side missions are beyond brilliant and I love the characters, the gameplay is also improved, but I hate every decision in the main story.
sometimes I wonder what might have been if the same people behind me1 continued the rest of the trilogy with the original vision.
also, hope youre doing alright!
Yep. ME2 improved gameplay a lot and the companions are the best characters made in a game. But the story sucks. Instead of finding something to fight the reapers we are going after missing colonists? ME2 would have been a great spinoff. But narratively it sucks as a sequel.
The side missions sucked in this game. The loyalty missions were the only good ones.
People are actually this crazy? Good grief. The original is a shell of a game. It's biggest accomplishment is allowing the sequels to exist.
@@nathanlevesque7812
The original is a sci-fi epic with intellectual discussions, emotional stakes and a novel action-RPG combat system.
The sequels are barely-inspired Gears of War clones that retcon and casualize almost everything from the first game.
@@roadent217 hyperbolic bullshit
I will not discuss ME with people who can't even approach reality
I think ME2's plot was originally for a prequel story. If you set the whole thing 20 years prior, switch out Shepard for Anderson, Miranda and the Illusive Man for Saren, and Mordin Solus for Dr. Saleon (Garrus' request from ME1), you can start to see the pieces of the story fitting together.
The theme works better, since it's a human-centric problem that ties the humans to the greater galactic community. But those ties weren't properly vetted because the humans are acting in desperation, meaning that they made mistakes the first time around - a recurring theme from ME1.
The ending makes more sense, since Anderson can rigidly adhere to morals and piss off Saren and the Spectres, or make a compromise and have his One Big Regret.
It also clears up a bunch of plot holes like, if Sovereign has the Collectors in the galaxy at his disposal, why didn't he use them? Because Anderson destroyed the Collectors.
Or if Sovereign can just contact the Reaper fleet without the Citadel, by flying directly to them in a couple of months, why do this weird thing with the Citadel? Because he can't.
Why doesn't Ashley misidentify the Geth - a species humanity has had no contact with at all - as the Collectors - a bogeyman that ME2 establishes in the first hour? Because they're actually a classified secret that she wouldn't know, they're dead.
Agreed. For years I've fancied the idea that ME1 and ME2 would work better as a pair if they were swapped around.
I think if Mass Effect 2 was the first game in its own series, I would have loved it. But it just doesn't really fit as a sequel to Mass Effect 1.
@@Raycloud Fucking thank you. You deal with reaper lackeys in the first one, one reaper in the second, and a fleet of them in the third. Would have worked a lot better.
@@Raycloud There was someone on the old Bioware Forums - before EA killed it - that had worked out exactly how that set up would work. Too bad I can't remember who that was or if that great, well thought-out post was saved anywhere on the internet, because that could've absolutely worked.
The idea, or how what's implied in me1 and barely and disjointedly in me2, is that reapers weren't really the "fighter"... They were the entity that used others to fight. It's why they have the mind corrupting power in the first place. It's why in me1 their direct creation the cyber zombies are well zombies and Saren becomes "like them"(a visual clue).
In this context me2 makes " sense" as Sovering "tool of combat" were the collectors, and in a proper hypothetical me3 you'd have reapers using other and different slave races or entities as tools...not only one ineffective zombie thing...
Mass Effect 2 is basically The Last Jedi of Mass Effect.
Destroying eveything set up by the original, for the sake of making things that sounds cool, and left just a wound open when it's over, so the sequel is now all alone to try to write a story.
Nah , say what you want about the last jedi but at least it had a point and ideas that it tried to convey.
ME2 has literally nothing
I've stated since the very beginning that ME1 is the best game of the franchise.
Eeeehhhhh.... It has the best story in the seriesfor sure. But the gameplay is mostly poo. It's just a half-assed RPG, mixed with a half-assed third-person shooter. ME1 is still a great game, but it's a chore to re-play.
@@NihilisticIdealist that's pretty much all western rpgs though
@@NihilisticIdealist I disagree. Mass Effect 1 has soul unlike it's sequels.
@@spartanq7781 Finally i'm starting to see people who agree with me, i love everything about the first one, the combat and even the Mako never bothered me, i was just so thrilled by the main plot that i didn't even care about the rest of it. But as i played it i learned to like the overall gameplay as well.
It is.
My first time playing Mass Effect 2 I was so disappointed in the story. It left my ME1 playthrough feeling useless, and retconned or dropped damn near every meaningful choice that was made. I was hoping for a more Spectre based storyline, but we got what we got. I still love the characters and gameplay but damn it could’ve been so much more.
name 1 thing that's retconned or any choice that ended up not mattering.
I thought I was the only 9ne who felt this way over ME2. The first game is this great 70s-esk sci-fi game but then ME2 turned into some bombastic sci-fi thriller/action game. When the remaster trilogy hit game pass I just played ME1 again and didn’t bother with the rest.
That's what I do, as well
The first game was a genuine slice of science-fiction, RPG goodness whereas 2 and 3 are just braindead action games with the Mass Effect name slapped on
I’d also add to your comprehensive list of 6 story tools is the vague Terminus Systems. In ME1 it’s described as it’s own coalition of spacefaring and space-warring species, capable enough that the Council races do not want to provoke them into war. The way it’s described it almost sounds like the Terminus Systems are to the Council Species what the USSR was to the USA.
And yet in ME2 it’s basically the equivalent of Space Wild West. The Council tells Shepard to go operate there just to stay out of their hair and besides Omega there’s really no sign of mass civilization there. It’s mainly mercenary bases. Once again the ME2 writers have taken something presented in ME1 and warped it to fit their agenda.
Damn the more you discest the series the more it hurts what Mass Effect 2 wrought on the series. Worst of all most people fail to even realize this.
They could have stripped down Mass Effect 2 to the recruitment and loyalty missions. The main story could be ... Shepherd assembling a space harem, or something.
That's pretty much what it was, but then he took his harem to fight space terminator with three eyes.
When I clicked on this video I thought there was no way you could convince me of this premise. You absolute mad man. You did it, you actually did it. Love your videos. Hope you're feeling better
Same
He is dead
I kinda agree. It was strange how the second one onwards doesn't seem to have the planning of the first.
@@toby2581 thing was, Drew Karpyshyn was on board as lead writer the first two games. i wonder how it went south with him leading the writing team.
@@sadakotube Mac Walters took over the lead writing midway through ME2. Notice how the lead writer credits went like this:
ME1: Drew
ME2: Drew & Mac
ME3: Mac
From a Kotaku interview:
"I was there pretty much until we locked down most of the story. I left in the last few months when we were kind of polishing things up, passing things over to Mac Walters, who had been one of the writers on the first game as well. He took over the lead writing,” Karpyshyn explains."
But look at this timeline:
Fall 2007: ME2 development begins
July 2008: Mass Effect: Ascension book published (written by Drew)
Spring 2009: Drew moves to Austin, TX to work on Star Wars: TOR
January 2010: ME2 published
July 2010: Mass Effect: Retribution book published (written by Drew)
What effect would writing two books and being sent to work on another game during ME2's development have on Drew's ability to contribute to ME2?
Can you think of incentives for Drew to not publicly bash Mac or Bioware management for the changes in ME2's story or its writing team?
What about incentives to publicly make it seem like everything is OK?
For another clue as to how things went south, look at Kai Leng's portrayal in Mass Effect: Retribution vs. ME3.
Any parallels with that and the 6 story elements covered in this video?
@@brized ah. So thats why the writing took a different direction.
@@brized That explains a lot. If only Drew stayed at least until Mass Effect 3 finished development.
@@spartanq7781 I would be so interested to see "Mass Effect Trilogy: Drew Edition" and "Mass Effect Trilogy: Mac Edition". Seeing the differing artistic visions fully realised would be fascinating.
2:02 welllllllllll not quite. The ending choice to possibly betray Samara was always kinda stupid to me. Like even from a renegade perspective there’s no point in siding with the daughter. She’s the type who will betray you, so why keep her over Samara who is loyal.
Her skill Dominate is very useful, but yeah from a story perspective it's pretty insane to side with her.
Not only that but the game renders that choice as meaningless. If you choose to do it then everyone will think Morinth is Samara. Which undermines the choice. If that wasn't bad enough she doesn't even appear in Mass Effect 3.
@@frd9423 It's also insane to recruit Jack for the same reasons as why siding with Morinth is stupid.
@@spartanq7781 I could see Jack's recruitment working if the first batch of recruitments involved Cerberus being more controlling and, y'know, Cerberus-y. They're a pretty overtly human-supremacist group. Justify the recruitments a bit differently:
- For Mordin you're there to get his research and leave, he's looked into Collectors before so he must have something you can use. He joins the crew against the Illusive Man's wishes because his research is incomplete and he personally would need to study live samples for it to go anywhere.
- Archangel's species is unknown, it's just known that he's killing a lot of alien-centric gangs on Omega, a place wracked by a plague that only spares Humans and Vorcha. Cerberus is assuming he's the one who brought the plague and that he's human, Vorcha lack the discipline and technology for what he's doing or something like that. He joins the crew because he's Garrus and you know him.
- Jack is on the team because the team needs a strong biotic and she's the only one who can compete with Asari.
- Grunt is from a Cerberus lab trying to create a disposable slave army. Person running the lab developed Krogan sympathies and roped in various Krogan scientists with the promise of curing the Genophage. He joins the crew against the Illusive Man's wishes because he has nowhere else to go, wasn't personally involved in the betrayal of Cerberus and is innocent/potentially a useful tool.
After that point throw in a disastrous first contact with the Collectors before Cerberus loosens their grip and lets you find your own crew.
I feel like making Cerberus seem genuinely scummy would also make the Samara/Morinth choice harder. Sure, Morinth has questionable morals and loyalty, but Samara is virtually guaranteed to turn on the crew once the mission is over for all of the Cerberus-related war crimes.
@@spartanq7781 Even funnier, prerendered cutscenes will display Samara in the subtitles for Morinth.
I never thought about those six plot boons that way, that was really interesting to see them laid out like that. I almost feel as though maybe ME2 should've been a self-contained spinoff game and that the Arrival DLC should've been a whole game that would be the true second installment. I do think that ME3 could've still resolved all the plot threads, but ME2 certainly stacked the deck against it.
I don't think anyone is going to say this, but I think what happened was EA was given the initial story and mechanics bibles for ME2 and 3 and put the hammer down on both. "Infinite ammo laser guns? Sounds terrible. This Space Lovecraft angle? We HAVE a, better, Space Lovecraft franchise already. Ditch em!"
An actual good mass effect analysis, it's a shame this guy is no longer with us
He’s dead ? How ?
Cardiac arrest in 2022.
Well his ME retrospective still exists on his blog
The entire main story of Mass Effect 2
(the Collector Threat) should’ve been a massive DLC similar to “Shivering Isles” for Oblivion or “Dragonborn” for Skyrim
Mass Effect 2 should’ve been what ME3 was, going around the Galaxy, finding research & clues on the Reapers & building up Galactic readiness
ME3 should’ve been ruthless all out war.
Not building alliances last minute & finding the umpteenth scannable “collectible” to finish a “side quest”
The ~2 year development for ME2 very apparent in retrospect post game.
ME3’s ~2 year development was very apparent halfway through the game.
You should be a carpenter because you hit the nail on the head.
I call the spin-off series "Mass Effect: Cerberus". It keeps basically everything the same as ME2, except you're not playing Shep. Remove the bits with the ME1 squad and save them for the real Mass Effect 2, but for everything else you can keep it as it is: you're the latest Cerberus project to produce an independent team leader. Definitely drawing from hacked N7 materials and maybe even Shep's brain-scan if need be, just designed to suit a game that's a full-on shooter instead of an RPG hybrid.
You could even justify the ammo restrictions by saying exactly what our timeline's ME2 does: you're using an advanced variant of the Mass Effect guns, they are effective but have limited ammo, and you need to pick up items to reload. Instead of saying everyone in the galaxy uses the new gun mechanics and drop their own thermal clips, just say you make the ammo on the fly from omni-gel, and that's what you're picking up.
@@DeliberateZero The way I would do it is to call it Mass Effect Corsair. The player character is a corsair: an easily disavowable combatant who is formally not part of the Alliance but operates in an area the Alliance has interests in, but no direct authority: independent human Terminus colonies. These colonies are a motley collection of fringe ideologies that wouldn't be able to exist in Alliance space: communes, cults, would-be utopias, corporate worlds, and plain old alien-haters. They are always under threat, especially from Batarians, which is why they rely on the protection racket that is ME2!Cerberus. Their relationship with the Alliance is complex. Formally they are at loggerheads. In practice there are a lot of backroom deals going on. We also know of some Alliance Black Ops that explicitly sided with them, like ME1!Cerberus, which Shepard destroyed in the first game.
A war is brewing between the human Terminus and the Collectors, who in this scenario are NOT Protheans. Thematically they fit a very important role: emphasise that most relays are unexplored and the galaxy remains mysterious. They might be a Reaper backup plan. My pet idea is that they're building a mass relay somewhere strategically important that links to dark space and the Reapers. The suicide mission is to go through the Omega 4 relay and blow the backup relay up. We'd need to figure out how this connects to attacks on human colonies though.
This cleans up a lot of problems. People who are intimidated by the massive main games can dip their toes in the franchise with a more action adventure story where humans are more central. It could be an introduction to the franchise to the uninitiated. It also feeds back into the main Reaper plot but leaves Shepard to do her own knowledge quest, allowing ME2 and 3 to build up on ME1.
It also allows for character cleanup. You play as corsair Vega, gender and appearance customisable. This gives you a credible action hero and removes an ill-fitting character from ME3, so it's two birds with one stone. Your starting team mates could be Jacob (the ex soldier who was dismissed but the Alliance still wants to use, and thrives in the more anarchic environment of the Corsairs) and Kasumi, the criminal who trades information and valuables with the Alliance through the institution of the Corsairs. You could then recruit those characters whose backgrounds would never allow them to realistically be part of Shepard's crew: Jack, Thane, the Batarian merc Zaeed (:P) etc.
Because you are technically a neutral player at the start, you could choose what attitude you take towards ME2!Cerberus. They're not your employer. You can agree with their human supremacist ideology and violent means. You can help them against the Collectors while being ambivalent. You can hate them after finding out what they did to Jack, or simply out of principle.
That leaves ME2 free to do its own thing, for which I also have an idea, but this comment is long enough as it is. But I admit I'm curious to hear what Shamus thinks about this. Sadly it seems I can't tag him :P
As someone who's familiar with your work on the blog, this is gonna be a spicy vid.
Which blog? Can some kind soul share the link?
@@danielandrade8211 just type shamus young blog and you'll find it
@@pendantblade6361 thanks
@@danielandrade8211 it's also linked in the description.
I've read the blog but had to say on this video that I'm so happy that someone was able to put into much better words why ME2 feels like such a chore to play through. I've only played the Legendary edition and even my first go of ME2 I just wanted it to end so I could get back to dealing with the Reapers and being a Spectre again. Instead I was forced to work for terrorists who are so clearly some writers/developers pet project and have to wait 40-50 hours before I can get back to the important stuff.
Also, RIP Shamus. Gone too soon.
Oh boy, do I remember.
I remember playing Mass Effect, and that many side missions revolved around a terrorist group called cerberus. And "terrorist" doesn't even cur it, they were doing truly heinous, despicable stuff: they were, clearly, the second biggest threat against humankind (perhaps even against the galaxy) after the Reapers.
And I remember, at the start of Mass Effect 2, being absolutely baffled that Shepard, my Shepard, my imported saved game Shepard, pertty much agreed that Cerberus was just morally grey, and to work for them.
I've been told by friends that Cerberus in the first game was too cartoonishly evil and that they needed to tone them down, to make them a more realistic group, in the second. And it doesn"'t work on two levels:
First, they sadly were not cartoonishly evil. You don't have to cast a wide net in History to find groups as unbelievably evil as Cerberus. And second, they made Cerberus cartoonishly evil again in the third game.
I had a gret time playing ME2, because the recruitment and loyalty missions were for the most part a treat, and they're 90% of the game. But the 10% were you work directly for Cerberus were so dumb... not just in contrast with the first game. They clearly wanted to write a story were Shepard barely trusts the Illusive Man, except that it's pretty difficult in itself, and you have to take away players' agency to do so. You end up with a main character that feels incredibly dumb because he's clearly being manipulated by what you know from the first game are space nazis.
So, yeah, I completely agree, the problem with that franchised aren't confined in the ending.
As a rule of thumb, I assume anyone with much sympathy for Cerberus played ME2 first.
Good point
As if 2 doesn’t also make Cerberus cartoonishly evil, if using 1 as a baseline. They have a whole facility the terrorizes children to pull out their biotic potential, another facility that forced a man to communicate with the geth because he was autistic. Then the game begins with Miranda (the 3rd Cerberus representative you meet since waking up) explain away how all the people on the station who died don’t matter.
What did Cerberus even do in me1? Far as I remember they were just generic npc bad guys hanging out in those same copy pasted corridors for you to shoot at. You pick up some text long that says they tortured a Turian or something. So what? Lmfao. As if the Alliance didn't ever do that.
The game pretty clearly states that Cerberus (for the time being) has stopped the anti-alien practices. Ffs, their leader fucking compliments and endorses all of your alien companions. Even Hackett agreed that Cerberus and the Allience are on neutral ground (for the time being), because their goals actually allign with the good guys.
@@user-ly2ll5od1r "In 2183, Commander Shepard may encounter Cerberus, investigate their activities and discover they conducted experiments intended to create supersoldiers, including experiments on rachni and Thorian Creepers. The organization accidentally unleashed rachni on Listening Posts Alpha and Theta when their experimental subjects, which were shipped from Noveria, escaped from Depot Sigma-23.They are also involved with a settlement on Chasca whose colonial pioneer team was converted into Husks. In addition, a traumatised marine named Corporal Toombs claims that Cerberus lured thresher maws to the colony on Akuze, resulting in the notorious massacre there; Toombs was one of the only survivors. Soon after the massacre Toombs was captured and withstood brutal experiments."
More on Corporal Toombs: "Toombs was subjected to horrific ordeals *including* *being* *injected* *with* *thresher* *maw* *acid*."
"Tests were done on me that you can't even imagine. For years. Cerberus did them. They tortured me. They used me as a damn lab rat. And now you're teaming up with them like they're any other merc band?"
And in case it's not clear, the Chasca settlement husk situation was directly caused by Cerberus: "In 2183, the colony is wiped out by a Cerberus experiment. Dragon's teeth converted the colonists to husks."
So no, Cerberus didn't "just" torture a Turian. ME1 Cerberus is portrayed like some sort of futuristic Unit 731, pure evil. And then in ME2 we're suddenly told Cerberus is "morally grey"? Yea, sure, LOL.
Rest In Peace, brother
Everything here is great, but I feel like you're missing one of the worst way ME2 was a big step back.
In ME1 Shepard is tasked with finding out what Saren's up to. It's an investigation, culminating in finding out about the reapers and the assault on the citadel. Then ME2 rolls around. Shepard isn't actually DOING anything except just waiting for the illusive man to contact the team, in the meanwhile the task is to just recruit a bunch of people without even knowing what they're recruited for, just that people are needed. 90% of the game is spent recruiting everyone, for the most part not knowing why such a large team is required, and resolving their daddy issues. This is probably a good thing because of the other big problem; what they did to the reapers.
In ME1 you get to talk to Sovereign a bit, and it quickly becomes clear that the reapers barely consider the civilizations of the galaxy to be sentient, much less a threat. Sovereign talks to Shepard out of some slight curiosity, and quickly terminates the conversation out of boredom or disinterest. We're to the reapers what ants are to us. In ME2 there's Harbinger, who continues the cosmic horror aspect by... remote controlling insect people and constantly hurling childish taunts, maintaining a weird vendetta specifically towards Shepard. And the grand plan is to... turn a lot of people into mush, pump it into a metal superstructure and give 'birth' to a new reaper... which is defeated with a shotgun. Yeah, the scariness of the reapers took a lethal hit. Harbinger is to Sovereign what Tim Curry's rendition of Pennywise is to Cthulu.
harbinger is such a clown I swear
@@powercouch1845 "Assuming direct control."
"My attacks will hurt you."
He sounds like a kid trying to sound badass in a online game.
I always felt that the cosmic horror aspects of Mass Effect were the worst parts of the game and Sovereign’s speech on Virmire was eye roll inducing. Harbinger and the collectors were an attempt to nerf the Reapers because they were presented as way too powerful in the first game and it would lead to ME3 using a deus ex machina to get rid of them. But nobody wants to admit that because apparently ME1 isn’t flawed.
I always thought the dead reaper mission was a huge missed opportunity. They could have set up a way to beat them there instead of just getting the IFF.
What do you mean?
@@Ergeniz Like they found a dead reaper could have been a follow up mission where they found the weapon that killed it and when we get to ME3 the alliance has already been mass producing it would have been quite simple.
Or the Normandy, Mordin whatever could have scanned the reaper and when it comes to ME3 we've used that data find their weaknesses. Something along those lines.
The worst part is that they only focus in on it being dead in a passing sentence. There is never even a question asked by anyone as to how it managed to get killed as ME1 set up that you need a galactic fleet to kill just one of them.
@@MikaelLV I assumed it was killed through conventional means in a previous cycle. This question is what sparks the Leviathan plot in ME3 with the Leviathan of Dis.
Totally agree. Mass Effect 2 had brilliant character writing, but the main plot was just awful and undermined so much of what made the first game special.
I liked so much the gameplay and the new treatment to the characters that I was not that angry with the plot.. not true today I can like hate it lol
Customization was my favorite thing on every game so I felt at home right at the start , despite the weirdness of it
It's not awful per se, but doesn't stay to the main theme of the series.
@@GhostCell47 It's awful. In any objective viewing of the plot it goes off the reservation and begins to create plot holes. The biggest problems don't even materialize until the next game. Which is outright horribly written from the intro to the end. People often forget that 2 had a totally different writer. Many of the things we like about 2 with side characters and side stories, were all Drew, the guy who wrote the first game.
Not only that but the universe was shrunk down. The only forward progress Mass Effect 2 has is with the genophage,the Quarians and the Geth. That's it. Even then they're apart of side missions. Imagine if they had a major presence in the story. How much better the game would be if the focus of the game was more consistent. Instead of isolating everything in a vacuum. The Geth war really would make far more sense if every organic species was in on it for the whole game. That way when we meet and befriend Legion we could find some way to coexist to combat the Reapers. Mass Effect 2 and 3's stories should be swapped around. Mass Effect 2 should be coming up with a plan and forging alliances or at least attempting to. That way Mass Effect 3 would have a much lighter load and a direction to go.
@@spartanq7781 I don't even want to call that forward progress in terms of plot. We got some side story to explain more of it and introduce characters involved, the entire process of tackling those problems gets a single mission in ME3 and calls it a day. ME2 should have been more exploratory as well as tackling the issues creating conflict between the various groups. I don't think singular plot to tie it all together would have worked. The two towers approach would have been better.
Ahh, I waited years for this video... It came in good timing
You should search for a video called
"A story that goes nowhere. Mass Effect 2 is a bad sequel."
It's essentially what was stated in this video but much longer.
It's really sad, I read through shamus's 50 part blog about all this and it absolutely nailed what felt off to me. It's like some execs sat the writers down and said "hey what you're doing isn't enough we need more of the lasers and explosions and shit" and that's what they did. Chucked the details-first narrative, simplified the gameplay to the point it barely qualifies as an rpg. And it did gangbusters. There's no questioning it, if the series continued off of ME1 it wouldn't have sold nearly as well as what we got which was just schlock. Really pisses me off.
The moment ME2 unraveled for me was when I met Liara. The game had built up a lot of dissonance from the beginning for me (Cerberus, Lazarus, "we have dismissed that claim", etc.), but I bore with it until that moment. Even meeting Kashley on Eden Prime did not feel that jarring to me (probably because I liked neither very much) -but Liara complete broke my willingness to engage with the universe.
Yeah even back when I was more tolerant of ME2’s follies, I thought that Liara’s character and characterisation sucked. She became a badass like everyone else, and Ali Hillis was phoning in her performance; just like she did in Starcraft 2.
Tali's change of character was always expected, I could go along with that. Liara will grow and mature in the same way, but that's going to continue long after Shep's natural lifespan -- doesn't explain the scientist I knew turning into an Udina type. The DLC outfit looks snazzy, but we could have had Dr T'soni wear it.
@@DeliberateZero I didn’t expect her to change character, or at least I didn’t expect it off-screen. Going from ME1 to ME2, I thought that Liara would be indispensable when it came to further understanding the Protheans and delving into the Reaper mystery. I didn’t expect her to basically become like her mother.
Yeah the devs made it seem like the stuff we did in the first game didn't matter. So it's no wonder the second game broke people's willingness to engage with the universe.
I just heard. Can't believe it. RIP to you Shamus, absolute legend
He’s dead ? How ?
@@JamesBond77 He died just over a year ago, last June
16:18 Don't forget that all of those problems result from blowing up the ship in the beginning.
If im not completely mistaken the destruction of the normandy was the demo of the game.
The pessimist in me wants to say that the shock value marketing campaign (destroying the ship and killing everyone in the demo) came before the plot was developed.
Would make for an interesting conspiracy ^^".
Destroying the Normandy is symbolic of destroying the whole setting, it's just that you can't appreciate it until it's over.
So Mass Effect 2 was The Last Jedi before The Last Jedi.
Mass Effect 1 is, in my opinion, the best iteration of My Favorite Plot. It's the plot that made Isaac Asimov famous with "Nightfall." It showed up as the setting in Descent: Freespace. It was even hinted at in smaller scale in the movie Pitch Black. The loose form goes like this: you find remnants of ancients that are far more advanced then you. They suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. You investigate why that is. You find out the reason. The reason is happening to you right now.
It's hard to put in to words the sense of unease I felt at the climax, during the conversation with the Prothean computer. It was the gut-wrenching feeling of inevitable doom; all these other races and civilizations were powerless to stop what has already started happening to you. I was instantly in love with the game and universe. I bought ME2 on release, but ended up never playing it after reading reviews that mentioned its plot didn't really do much with ME1. After ME3 was roundly criticized, I forgot about the series. I've still never played anything that comes close to that gut-punch of ME1.
Star Control 2 is where ME seems to have drawn a lot of its inspiration for a setting. Grimithr has a fun let's play of it on this platform, that I've rewatched several times over the years, in case it's too old and clunky for you to play.
lol just play it if you haven't
still
Me3 was the last jedi of mass effect
@@almalone3282I think he means how Last Jedi kinda just said forget this to the overarching plot which kinda screwed with the ability to make a good finale
First: sincerely glad to hear that you’re feeling better.
Second: weird to think that next March will be the 10-year anniversary where the wheels came off Mass Effect. Sure, there were people like you and Smudboy who saw Mass Effect 2 for what it was, but for a lot of us it took a terrible ending for us to appreciate how the faults didn’t begin in the final mission of Mass Effect 3, but in the first mission of Mass Effect 2.
I remember playing that mission where you first meet the Collectors and I was thinking “what the fuck is this?” And the ending of ME2?! An effigy? A fucking effigy?! Are you shitting me?!?!
Man, how I missed Admiral Hackett’s voice in the briefings in ME2 and Cerberus? Fuck Cerberus! Spent all my time on the Normandy SR-2 longing for interaction with the Alliance.
Yep. Can attest personally that one reason the Star Child takes so much heat is because it's the hard stop at the end of a long, tumbling freefall. When you're in freefall, I suspect it doesn't feel that bad, weightless and all that. When you're emotionally engaged, it's easy to ignore the problems all around and smooth it over into a fun experience. Then, BBC's Sherlock hits the final episode, and there's no more, and you realize 'Oh, this all was in fact going nowhere.Oh.'
I hated that 3 had such a bad ending people convinced themselves anything before hand was good. 3 was just objectively bad from a gameplay perspective and a plot perspective, start to finish. The game does not hold up to time and certainly not to other third person shooters at the time. The plot problems are obvious. I've seen more coherent runs of veggie tales.
ME2 felt like Star Trek reboot movies to me. Fun, but veered away from the original spirit of the franchise.
I think the biggest problem of ME3 was that regardless of the (lack of) set-up in ME2, the ending was just utter crap that came out of nowhere.
No it didn't come out of nowhere, it was actually foreshadowed on Thessia,
Thank you! I remember being very disappointed in Mass Effect 2 when it came out and this is exactly why. Had the series started with that entry, I probably wouldn't have played for long. It's only the worldbuilding of the first game that kept me holding out for another good one.
Damn with the ammount of people here saying they thought that me2 is the worst thing since 9/11 you'd assume that it wouldn't have been so universally revered.
I was a damn elementary school student with no internet access from eastern Europe back in 2010 and even I knew how good me2 is. Everyone was talking about it. Even the news outlets on tv.
@@user-ly2ll5od1rdon't be so dramatic. It's just people who are usually a minority venting about how a story they loved got ruined for no reason
I totally agree. The second game should have been a low, low point for Shepard, running into all the traps the Reapers laid down for someone just like him if they failed to take the Citadel.
But no.
ME2 was fun.
But it was the start of the EA Goat Rape of Bioware.
That is what they did tho.
Man, I remember when your big Mass Effect 'master thesis' came out and I was reading the new installments week by week. I still consider it to be the 'canon' examination on what the hell went wrong with Mass Effect and I still refer back to it now and then when I want to brush up on writing technique.
Bioware could have easily saved this story by making the assult on the Collecter base meaningful. Instead of destroying the base or handing it to Cerberus why not have another option of giving it to the Alliance. This would lead to the best possible ending to the trilogy. Giving the base to Cerberus should ruin your reputation and make Cerberus on your side. Instead the choice is completely meaningless because it doesn't even stick. Bioware was so close to retroactively saving this game. Instead they render the climax to their irrelevant side plot forgotten about in the next game for the most part. Shepard getting killed off is the biggest narrative flaw of the trilogy. All it did was force the writers to contrive Shepard coming back from the dead and pointlessly shaking up the status quo. Mass Effect 2 doomed the third game before it even begins.
Mass Effect 2 was always my least favorite of the trilogy specifically because ultimately that game does very little to further the reaper plot.
Meh mass effect 3 was my least favorite. But I guess I’m not as attuned to the minutia of storytelling as some are, so it took a blatant example that was the ending of 3 to smack me in the head.
Damn glad to see people saying this. I couldnt stop facepalming during ME2. Its a game where you go aboard a semi-dead reaper. The series overarching antagonists. You go INSIDE one. What an opportunity to learn something new.
Whats that? Were going to shoot husk and scion waves for thirty minutes instead? Brilliant.
I remember reading this in the blog the first time and having some things click into place. Great video, can't wait to buy the book.
I've always said that if you wanted to rank Mass Effect games from best to worst, simply list them in the order in which they were released.
I actually like ME3 more than ME2
Agree 100%. I have been shitting on ME2, not as a game, but in terms of the direction it took the franchise.
and what direction is that? To the war with the reapers? That was set up in me1 before you even fucking landed on Eden Prime.
As a huge fan of Mass Effect 2, I'm glad I saw this video. It changed my perspective on the entire franchise, and how I view the second game. I've always viewed the entire trilogy as a masterpiece, with 1 and 2 as its high points. Now, I'm not so sure, because you showed that 2 wrote 3 into a corner. That has to count against 2 in some major ways. I still love 2 for the characters and I still do enjoy its story, but it so fundamentally limited the story of the Mass Effect franchise and hurt 3.
Finally, I thought I was the only guy who didn't like ME2 and preffered ME1! Thank you!
I thought I was alone as well until I voiced that opinion on a discussion forum. Turns out that apparently quite a few people who played 1 before 2 feel that way. maybe not the majority opinion, but not really uncommon either - thank the Gods.
The first person I saw take down ME2 in a video was smudboy he made an entire series about its writing flaws
Honestly, thinking back, I had a lot of the problems that Shamus mentions here with ME2, but was so in love with everything else it had to offer I was willing to ignore its issues. After ME3 the problems were much more apparent (particularly anything involving Cerberus annoyed the hell out of me, and obviously the ending) but, again there was still a lot I liked about the game - namely how they wrapped up most of the character arcs and such (again discounting everything after you take the magic space elevator to dumbness).
In the years since I went and did a full playthrough of the franchise and definitely could tell that ME1's held up the best when you're talking about the main storyline. ME2 and ME3 still have plenty of great moments, and much better gameplay - but they definitely dropped the ball with what was going on in the main story with the Reapers and Cerberus
There's about 50 of us in the universe who share that thought.
They really crammed all of the RPG-ness of the first game into the loyalty missions, and it only got more watered down from there. People, for some reason, love the combat of ME2, but I can't stand it after playing the legendary edition of ME1. I beat both Mass Effect 1 and 2 on Insanity as the Soldier class. ME1's combat feels so tactical and fluid, and your weapons have actual threat to them. ME2 you just hug cover, shoot peashooter guns and have half of your power budget loaded into heavy weapons. That doesn't even get started on how they dumbed down the class system. Mass Effect 2 is so frustrating to play, and it makes Mass Effect 3 feel even worse by comparison.
This perfectly focused my generalized feelings while playing the game. You always have such a great way of boiling things down to their roots.
I've ordered the dead-tree version of your book and can't wait to read it through! I haven't read the series since you posted it originally so I'm pretty jazzed!
Beautiful and well articulated work. I always felt that problems presented in ME2 simply were not "big" enough for me. Collectors who? Cerberus why? Im a Spectre, and me coming back to life is not a huge deal to the council? The companions, both new and old were great and kept me going. However, those same stories could have been told within a much, much more compelling main story.
There are additional things introduced in ME2 that were steps backward. Adding magazines to the gunplay where they weren't needed before, thay was lame. ME1 had a novel idea; everybody wears armour even the ladies ... but not the broads in ME2.
Anyway, I found this video cathardic.
A good villain/antagonist in a hypothetical ME2 that was a knowledge quest in uncharted space likely would have been... the Shadow Broker. It would have been interesting to see some of the new squad members in ME2 as antagonists instead - either as agents of the Shadow Broker (Zaeed, Thane, Kasumi), or as a Cerberus team (Miranda, Jacob, Jack), both groups trying to beat you to the prize.
Could keep Garrus and Tali, natch, and Mordin and Legion, potentially, to keep their ME3 arcs intact and to add a Salarian and a Geth. Samara would even make a good nemesis for Liara - hunting her for killing Benezia.
And the Collectors make sense as a bad guy race, too, still. What else would still be hanging around Prothean ruins, if not Prothean husks?
Mass Effect: Andromeda uses all these plot boons, too. The Spectres/the Pathfinder, the Cipher/SAM, Liara’s research/Peebee’s research, closed relays/new Galaxy, Reapers revealed/Kett known, the Normandy/the Tempest.
Great video. Makes me sad for what could have been.
Never thought of it this way, great video! I used to be one of the people who thought that screenwriters suddenly forgot how to do their job in the last 1 hour of the trilogy :D
Enjoyed the video, just bought the book, and glad to hear you're feeling better. Take care and best regards.
Thanks so much. Hope you enjoy it!
Great video - succinct, timely, and well-argued. Glad to hear you're feeling better!
Great work, Shamus.
You nailed it. I absolutely LOVED the first game and pre-ordered the second only to be hit with a system shock of disappoint.
The 2nd game just tossed away all that I enjoyed about the first and took it in a weird new direction.
It got rid of the vehicle exploration portions, introduced limited ammo (with a pathetic BS explanation that didn't make any sense), and demoted Shepherd from Specter agent to lackey. It took away my favourite team members and added angsty weirdos that I didn't care about.
The writing of the first game was amazing, from the world building to the different moods of the missions, but the second game just felt (to me) like video game writing.
To me the series is like the Matrix movie and Sonic Adventure; They are akin to excellent Disney movies that got a bunch of direct-to-DVD sequels that can be ignored. :)
That was exactly my reaction. I finished the first game after the sequel was out, loved it, and started on ME2 within a week or a day of the ME1 credits. It was a shock to be working with the enemy and be expected to believe that *literally everyone in the galaxy* replaced every gun in the span of two years. Instead of expanding on the mechanics for a hazardous environment, they took hazard-resist suits out along with the rest of the loot and inventory systems, and dropped the exploration of driving your own rover.
I expected it to get better, but by the time I knew enough to make that call, I'd been distracted by good moments with the characters.
Me2 got rid of the annoying shit from the first game.
Me1's dialogues are infinitely more cringe. 19% is just characters spewing exposition at you and explaining lore directly to you. 1% is developing characters, and the rest 80% of the story is just characters regurgating the same information you already heard.
What's the point of showing an identical inchorent vision to the player for like a dozen different times and even repeating the same cutscenes that initiate that vision.
Driving for hours with shitty controls , fighting the game just so you don't flip over forcing you to repeat the process that you started an hour ago because the game didn't allow you to quick save for some reason, and pointing your cursor at bullet sponge enemies until they die just isn't fun, it's not even real combat.
You don't even bring up any arguments as to why you have problems with these changes. You just don't like changes period. And that's just a dumb hill to die on.
Mass effect 2 is superior in every single concievable way. Be it the characters, the combat or even the writing. There's actual options in your dialogue, me1's dialogue options aren't even options.
It's a choice between 1. sure. and 2. yes. and 3. Okay.
Mass effect trilogy is more equivelant to Lotr than any disney movie.
The first one is the worst one, mostly just introductions and exposition explaining the lore.
the second one is complete filler, but is the funniest one and has the best battle sequence at the end (so far)
third one is easily the best, gives you all the answers that the first 2 asked. Best battles, the most ammount of them too, all the pay-off, best highs and is the longest one.
I'll keep my post short and sweet.
ME1 ending. "I'm going to find a way to stop the Reapers."
ME2
ME3 opening. "Stop them? This isn't about strategy or tactics, this is about survival."
Yeah, guess Shepard sort of forgot about the Iron Fleet.
Me2: shoot dudes in space wild west with interesting new friends. Wait, what's that about overarching character arcs?
But they certainly haven't forgotten about him. ua-cam.com/video/u8K9XuPrXko/v-deo.html
@@Avenus112
ME1: the Reapers end civilization every 500,000 years
ME2: ... and they re-purpose species for their own ends; also, the Geth working for Sovereign were Heretics, actually only 5% of them, and we can work on weakening the Reapers by ending them or re-programming them
ME3: ... I'm not really sure, ME3 felt disjointed and I couldn't disagree more with this dude; I think ME3 was disjointed because ME3 was disjointed. ME1 set up some things, ME2 set up some other things while following up some points from ME1 (and they serve as really interesting parts of a whole, with ME1 being about the Citadel, being introduced to this amazing world, then ME2 you see the seedy underbelly)... ME3 tried to pull a rabbit out of a hat, but after watching this video, I still blame ME3 for ME3's... I don't know that I'd say "failure" because I think it's still a good game, it's just nowhere near as compelling as 1 or 2.
What really frustrates me is that they had the chance to address problems and fix things with LE, but instead they just made you crazy OP in ME1 for no fucking reason, completely fucking up the gameplay balance... and that's it? Better graphics?
Maybe it's overly ambitious to expect meaningful overhauls to several different story beats, but man I'd've loved it if they addressed Paragon/Renegade (they never seemed to have a clear idea what it meant to be "renegade"), and make your decisions matter more, like if Mordin dies you shouldn't be able to cure the genophage (I'm not 100% you can, but I'm guessing you can); make it so if Wrex dies in ME1 you can't recruit the Krogan in ME3 because they're not united; make it so that if you give the Collector base to Cerberus at the end of ME2, they're much more powerful in ME3 (I'd say however powerful they are is right IF you gave them the base; if you didn't, they should be at most half as powerful, half as numerous); make it so that choosing between letting the Council die vs saving them *matters more*, so that the only difference isn't people being mean in ME2; give some boost if you elevate Udina over Anderson (he's a politician, his experience should be worth something so that there's some reason to choose him; I can't imagine a single person chooses Udina over Anderson). See if you can bring some ME2 players back in ME3 as squadmates. Also, fuck Kai Leng, get rid of his entire bullshit.
Also: MAKE IT MULTI-FUCKING-PLAYER! I can't believe ME isn't multiplayer, it's fucking insane. DA:O should be too. They made BG multi-player but not ME? Why not?
... honestly, it's crazy how much hate ME2 is getting because this dude made a ton of dumb points that aren't refuted, despite every point being wrong and lazy, because it's his video and he's the only person talking
so way ME2 went is probably due to commercial interest. bioware/EA wanted the game to touch a larger portion of player, but to do so, they needed to "resest" the story so new player would not feel left behind. even if instead of cerberus, shepard as a spectre wanted to inestigate on the reaper things could've happen, but they needed to kinda make everything new for new player.
Just imagine how many players started the ME journey with ME2
They did not reset the story. That is just something people beliebe when their attention span is shorter than that of an insect. ME3 is where the two strings get tied together. It was done on purpose.
@@niemand7811 Dude is calling people insects while holding 0 IQ. Come on my man stay humble.
A comment for the algorithm, because this video should reach people. Also, really happy you're doing better now, Shamus!
Glad to hear you’re feeling better! Also glad to find an enclave of likeminded ME1 aficionados
Mass Effect 1: Look, we got dozen of skills for each class, and a dynamic cover system.
Mass Effect 2: Lets take most of the Skill aways and transform Mass Effect into a cover shooter so the console plebs and call-pf-duty kids can enjoy this game.
Mass Effect Andromeda: Dynamic Cover System is back, but let's not talk about the rest.
It's always nice seeing someone highlight the fact that while something may be good in itself, it can cause problems as part of a set. I see a lot of people kind of talking past each other in complaining about or defending media because one side doesn't quite realize that fact, or has difficulty articulating that.
The first video I’ve come across of yours. Your points are brilliantly conveyed and really really enjoyed listening to it. I still adore the trilogy but after doing a full run of the series these problems or shortcomings of the series are a lot more apparent. Especially playing this with an older head on my shoulders. Anyways brilliant video, subscribed 👊🏽
Great video. Fresh take and easy listening.
This is all accurate. I appreciate the diplomatic approach by the way, there are a lot of snarkier ways you could have approached it. Paragon video.
Happy to see you're out of the hospital, too.
Glad to hear you're feeling better, I'm thinking about buying the door stopper just because I like books in actual book form. Good health to you.
As a new Mass Effect fan, I agree with your perspective 100%
Did you watch it before or after ME3, there are spoilers
I'M GLAD YOU ARE FEELING BETTER SHAMUS!
Excellent video. I think people are finally coming around to the fact that Mass Effect 2’s plot is ridiculous, and largely a waste of time. The entire plot is about about stopping the Collectors (who are pointless) from building a weird terminator baby (which Shepard kills by shooting it in the eye).
Me and friends argued years ago that ME2, like Half-Life 2, hasn’t aged nearly as well as we thought it would. It was really big and respected at the time, but given enough time, people’s nostalgia glasses have come off, and now realise that it wasn’t as good as they thought it was.
I beat it again a few weeks ago and its still amazing to me. Speak for yourself chief.
@@Ebalosus How is Half-Life 2 not good?
@@memesjack3615 it’s good, but not nearly as groundbreaking in hindsight as the first game.
@@recklessnotion1899it’s a great game if you don’t give a damn about the first game or play the 3rd game
Thank you for pointing out the issues I had since I first completed ME2 when it came out.
It really should be called Mass Effect Cerberus or something, a la Dragon Age Inquisition. It’s a good ME game, but not a good ME2. Retcons, abandon previous plot threads while not introducing new ones, the story leads nowhere etc, the list goes on.
It’s basically Mass Wars: The Last Spectre.
Interesting. The first game has always been my favourite, and I think having watched this, I can probably explain why better.
It's like ME1 feels like Star Trek (the show) and ME2 and 3 feel like the recent movies. (even down to the excessive lens flare, lol)
Speaking of lens flare they made things worse in the legendary edition because that's what it needed.
I don't remember Stark trek (the show) opening with setting up of a galaxy wide existential doom. And then having dozen minute long shootouts at every single episode that ended with universe ending stakes battle between like 10 different armies and thousands of ships.
Even the new star trek hasn't even come close to the action that mass effect 1 had.
Mass effect 1 is star wars, through and through, there's 0 science in it, it's all fantasy.
My issue with mass effect 2 is it felt skimped in a way that it was cheap. I went from the first game running around the citadel to the 2nd game just selecting off a list of where in the citadel I wanted to go.
This has a MrBtongue vibe. For those who may not know, search his old Mass Effect vids. He was so on point that he was forced to remove a vid about ME3.
Funnily enough, MrBtongue has written several articles on Shamus' website. His name is Bob Case.
What video was he forced to remove? All the ones I remember him making are still there: the OG one, the indoctrination theory one, the Bioware responds one, and the extended cut one.
That will probably have been around the time I subscribed to him then, and why I remember his name so fondly. Never knew that.
MrBtongue was great.
Hmm, I see parallels to some of the criticisms I've seen regarding the Disney Star Wars trilogy.
ME2 = The Last Jedi
Derails the plot and advances nothing in the story.
ME3 = Rise of Skywalker
Rushes to go back to the original plot but in a rushed matter.
Though I felt ME3 did a better, but not flawless, job going back to the original themes of the story.
@@Rainbowhawk1993 While I see what you mean about ME2 being the one in the middle that goes nowhere, it's more comparable to TFA in that it's a reboot. Tears out the plot as it would naturally carry forward, all in order to pull in a new audience and return to the setup from a previous entry.
You're right about ME3 being TROS, the final instalment that could never have pleased everyone, yet fails harder than it needed to.
Great video, basically puts into words what I've been thinking for years without being able to properly articulate it.
Just playing Mass Effect series for the first time, and I gotta say the transition from ME1 to ME2 is awful. They really limit yourself to personal freedom, like changing weapons when you feel like it.
I totally agree, the other day I started my first-ever playthrough of ME2. And the transition in gameplay for me was just awful. Of course, I've gotten used to the controls now; but that initial transition left quite a sour taste in my mouth throughout my current playthrough.
Excellent points, as usual. Always look forward to your videos. Stay healthy and safe!
I agreed with pretty much all of you said. Also, isn't cute that the plot of ME1 just became a kind of references hunt, through side-quests and a DLC in ME2? :(
I'm just glad Drew Karpyshyn is working on games again
Really? Where did you saw that? As much as I know he is working at archetype entertainment.
You nailed it. I can't always put into words everything I felt was wrong with ME2 (there's still a good number of things I like). After going through the trilogy a second time with Legendary Edition the first game was the superior game of the trilogy, by far. Private Sessions also does a deep dive that's 5+ hours.
A very well put together video. Very well said. Kudos for pointing out how Liara was rewritten entirely for ME2. It's very baffling. One small quibble: ME2 does use the closed relay concept. Hence the Omega IV relay. In a sense anywhere. Too bad going through that relay doesn't lead to any interesting or useful revelations.
Not surprised to learn you wrote that brilliant series on Twenty Sided. It's influenced my own thinking about Mass Effect. I really love this series... well, I love the setting. Well, I love the idea of the setting anyway. I love what it could have been.
Man. Another GREAT video from you Young!!!!! You work your ass off and it’s very clear whenever you post a video. I’m a mass effect stan and 2 is my fav in the trilogy , you spoke nothing but facts here
Wow. I’ve always preferred the first entry over its two sequels but couldn’t really put into words why that is - you just did it perfectly. Great video!
RIP buddy I found ur videos too late 🙏
I don't disagree with a lot of what you're saying, but your whole premise is built on the fact that they could only make 3 games. 2 is self contained and doesn't tell us how to stop the reapers, but it does setup what the Reapers want (Suns dying too fast, basically setting up a Gurren Lagann style problem). A third game could have easily continued from that point and worked back to the issue of "Well we know what they want, how do we stop them?" and it could have either gone with stopping them by blowing them up, or finding a compromise that would solve the Dark Matter issue.
I don't think anyone would argue that a 4 game, or even 5 game Mass Effect series would struggle to find an audience.
Instead the ME3 writers put themselves in a corner by shoehorning the entire journey into one game with some of the worst Dues Ex Machina storytelling around.