I love the Mass Effect trilogy and full stop, the second game is amazing. And there's certainly some hipster in me that is a bit put off by having been there from day one of the original's 360 exclusivity, then reading the numerous new players jumping in for the middle entry as 2 was announced for multiplatform release. Because for me, I had a lot of fantastic, wondrous, atmospheric, and emotional connection to what I saw in Mass Effect in 2007 (best year in gaming btw - gave us BioShock, Halo 3, Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed, CoD4, The Orange Box, Uncharted, Etc). Mass Effect was a successful, critical hit and unlike the other techno epic announced as a trilogy for 360, Mass Effect made it past one entry. But from the beginning of Mass Effect 2's announcement, there were some bizarre changes in tone, scope, and gameplay that sparked debate in forums.
The eerie tension in the first cinematic trailer for ME 1 focused on a radio call was haunting for me:
Mass Effect was a fairly open game in many places. While the main story missions often had a path to flow through, it also had some hubs and nonlinear hub missions. The Citadel was large and multifaceted, with both a facade of utopian ideals that quickly are cracked for the player by elements of race, corruption, and political turmoil.
Controversially, it also had vehicular exploration of remote planets. Now, here I won't deny there are many detrimental technical limitations in Mass Effect that influenced the changes in Mass Effect 2's scope. So the exploration in ME 1 was highly imperfect - but man was the discernible vision behind it incredible. First, the shortcomings: many of the Uncharted Worlds planets varied rather mildly in terms of terrain and assets you could visit at the points of interest. While there were many varieties of colors for terrain and skyboxes to change things from rock, to sand, to snow, or grass , as well as blizzard or sunny atmosphere or simply visible space and planets above you - I won't deny that wasn't enough for many players over the years since release looking back. There seemed to be essentially one design for outposts (though there was also a space ship/cruiser/station design used for missions in some systems) and another design for tunnel mines and another for mobile research barracks. You might see a little bit of stuff like Geth guard towers or some supply crates implying a supply point, but it was indeed limited in how new it would look to a seasoned player. So yes, the reasons to visit the planets were hurt by repetitive assets.
But for me there was a lot of good. You could at any time choose one of dozens of uninhabited planets to drop the Mako rover on and drive or walk freely. You could take out a gun or put it away at any time. You'd encounter various non-combat creatures inhabiting the planets, occasional old ship crashes and the remains of their lost pilots, abandoned research barracks or supply zones. Many times you'd be there to fight big space worms in the ground or Geth troops or outlaws. For me, I wasn't too bothered - few console games had tried anything similar in my playing history.
And space exploration in my mind was as I felt BioWare designed it - where civilization had been established, I was dropped right in the thick of it. The outpost at Noveria or the stations on Virmire, that kind of thing showed me what I needed to see of other civilized planets. But the Uncharted Worlds and the Galaxy Map were something else. It started with this wonder as you hear the smooth synth look at a planet you don't know. You read about each place's history - from being just a resource mine, to ones you see sparkling from your distant view and come to find out are covered in bioluminescent plant life. You find the ones that are available for landing, and off you go. And this is what I imagine most astronauts would see: it's plains of dust under the glow of foreign stars. I would drive the Mako around, and feel such empathy at times when I'd find the crash site of a lone pilot, preserved for unknown years without being found. I'd wander a grassy planet with valleys and feel dazzled by isolated artifacts of the past life forms, intensely different than anything human. Standing on a plateau on a dark planet and finding what remains of a small researcher's outpost made my mind wander and feel for what that might be like, to grow old or sick in space away from everyone who got you out there. I found a lot of magic in the quiet out there.
Mass Effect 1 was a moodier, cooler tone than its sequels. You were an astronaut and an agent more than an action legend. Many of those you'd meet didn't know your name and you weren't a celebrity and N7 wasn't a fan service brand that would later be on hoodies like it wasn't a military class. You'd visit neon lit casino bars or a club, you'd visit the lobby of a snowy corporate laboratory planet's hotel, walk big halls of fluorescent lights around the citadel, go see your ship in the starry blue metal hangars, meet politicians and bureaucrats in their offices - so many nooks and halls and views to think on. It was a lot more contemplative and open to me.
Then Mass Effect 2 was inbound and things seemed to have shifted. The cinematic was presented as a cliche band of misfits combat montage, though I won't say it was bad just because it was different:
We learned some things about Mass Effect 2 before launch that made many of us over on the good old BioWare Forums (RIP) concerned. What feedback they'd received about improving visuals and asset variety in the exploration was apparently an impossible task on the old consoles, leaving all open and vehicle exploration cut. Inventories and customizations were gone from the RPG almost entirely instead of being improved. Guns were to become more conventional video game weapons in which you have a 'bullet count' and ammo pickups instead of overheats and cool downs that the original canon created. Melee would become more brutish and central. You can no longer do much to your party gear like armor and attachments. But inventory removal oddly led to MORE resource farming, with a tragic planet scanning task. The morality system was less fluid. The music moved away from synth sounds. The new female star's in-game model is the fugliest thing I have ever sent. Etc.
But ok, it came out and was many people's first Mass Effect game. And it was good. It had slicker combat, more varied assets, a dynamic cast, and less technical hiccups. Some defended the missing exploration, loot, and customization RPG elements as cutting the fat and keeping an urgent story in motion (this is nonsense to me since the game also expects you to do numerous side missions, and many massively irrelevant loyalty missions). For me, there was a lot of fun and thrill, but I noticed immediately that it changed tone. Everything was now twisting toward corrupt and seedy video game writing. They said in interviews that the second act of a trilogy is the darker act, and boy did they get caught up in that. The innocent optimism and spectacular vision of the future was almost entirely clouded over for Mass Effect 2. Places like Omega and Ilium were talking nonstop about local crime lords and mercenaries and disease and corruption. Even someone like Liara or Tali from the first game got bizarre rewrites making them criminal rogues and brokers. For goodness sake, you were dead until some hardcore super surgery experiment resurrects you with terminator face scars that get scarier if you're mean to people.
I guess I just miss the mystery and unknowns that you were led by in the first game. Not everybody everywhere knew about gangs and mercenaries and death in the original vision of future civilization.
Do I think they made a mistake in the reimaginings in scope and atmosphere? I won't say that. Some of the best stuff I ever played was in the sequels. But was I hopeful when Andromeda was being described as a return to much of the scope and tone of the first game? Yeah, and I was disappointed in the end by that game.
I'll leave you with this, the original demo I saw of the revolutionary fully voiced dialogue wheel in the flaring neon of Mass Effect:
Also apologies if any sentences seem cut off. I'm on mobile and it's being tricky.
The eerie tension in the first cinematic trailer for ME 1 focused on a radio call was haunting for me:
Mass Effect was a fairly open game in many places. While the main story missions often had a path to flow through, it also had some hubs and nonlinear hub missions. The Citadel was large and multifaceted, with both a facade of utopian ideals that quickly are cracked for the player by elements of race, corruption, and political turmoil.
Controversially, it also had vehicular exploration of remote planets. Now, here I won't deny there are many detrimental technical limitations in Mass Effect that influenced the changes in Mass Effect 2's scope. So the exploration in ME 1 was highly imperfect - but man was the discernible vision behind it incredible. First, the shortcomings: many of the Uncharted Worlds planets varied rather mildly in terms of terrain and assets you could visit at the points of interest. While there were many varieties of colors for terrain and skyboxes to change things from rock, to sand, to snow, or grass , as well as blizzard or sunny atmosphere or simply visible space and planets above you - I won't deny that wasn't enough for many players over the years since release looking back. There seemed to be essentially one design for outposts (though there was also a space ship/cruiser/station design used for missions in some systems) and another design for tunnel mines and another for mobile research barracks. You might see a little bit of stuff like Geth guard towers or some supply crates implying a supply point, but it was indeed limited in how new it would look to a seasoned player. So yes, the reasons to visit the planets were hurt by repetitive assets.
But for me there was a lot of good. You could at any time choose one of dozens of uninhabited planets to drop the Mako rover on and drive or walk freely. You could take out a gun or put it away at any time. You'd encounter various non-combat creatures inhabiting the planets, occasional old ship crashes and the remains of their lost pilots, abandoned research barracks or supply zones. Many times you'd be there to fight big space worms in the ground or Geth troops or outlaws. For me, I wasn't too bothered - few console games had tried anything similar in my playing history.
And space exploration in my mind was as I felt BioWare designed it - where civilization had been established, I was dropped right in the thick of it. The outpost at Noveria or the stations on Virmire, that kind of thing showed me what I needed to see of other civilized planets. But the Uncharted Worlds and the Galaxy Map were something else. It started with this wonder as you hear the smooth synth look at a planet you don't know. You read about each place's history - from being just a resource mine, to ones you see sparkling from your distant view and come to find out are covered in bioluminescent plant life. You find the ones that are available for landing, and off you go. And this is what I imagine most astronauts would see: it's plains of dust under the glow of foreign stars. I would drive the Mako around, and feel such empathy at times when I'd find the crash site of a lone pilot, preserved for unknown years without being found. I'd wander a grassy planet with valleys and feel dazzled by isolated artifacts of the past life forms, intensely different than anything human. Standing on a plateau on a dark planet and finding what remains of a small researcher's outpost made my mind wander and feel for what that might be like, to grow old or sick in space away from everyone who got you out there. I found a lot of magic in the quiet out there.
Mass Effect 1 was a moodier, cooler tone than its sequels. You were an astronaut and an agent more than an action legend. Many of those you'd meet didn't know your name and you weren't a celebrity and N7 wasn't a fan service brand that would later be on hoodies like it wasn't a military class. You'd visit neon lit casino bars or a club, you'd visit the lobby of a snowy corporate laboratory planet's hotel, walk big halls of fluorescent lights around the citadel, go see your ship in the starry blue metal hangars, meet politicians and bureaucrats in their offices - so many nooks and halls and views to think on. It was a lot more contemplative and open to me.
Then Mass Effect 2 was inbound and things seemed to have shifted. The cinematic was presented as a cliche band of misfits combat montage, though I won't say it was bad just because it was different:
We learned some things about Mass Effect 2 before launch that made many of us over on the good old BioWare Forums (RIP) concerned. What feedback they'd received about improving visuals and asset variety in the exploration was apparently an impossible task on the old consoles, leaving all open and vehicle exploration cut. Inventories and customizations were gone from the RPG almost entirely instead of being improved. Guns were to become more conventional video game weapons in which you have a 'bullet count' and ammo pickups instead of overheats and cool downs that the original canon created. Melee would become more brutish and central. You can no longer do much to your party gear like armor and attachments. But inventory removal oddly led to MORE resource farming, with a tragic planet scanning task. The morality system was less fluid. The music moved away from synth sounds. The new female star's in-game model is the fugliest thing I have ever sent. Etc.
But ok, it came out and was many people's first Mass Effect game. And it was good. It had slicker combat, more varied assets, a dynamic cast, and less technical hiccups. Some defended the missing exploration, loot, and customization RPG elements as cutting the fat and keeping an urgent story in motion (this is nonsense to me since the game also expects you to do numerous side missions, and many massively irrelevant loyalty missions). For me, there was a lot of fun and thrill, but I noticed immediately that it changed tone. Everything was now twisting toward corrupt and seedy video game writing. They said in interviews that the second act of a trilogy is the darker act, and boy did they get caught up in that. The innocent optimism and spectacular vision of the future was almost entirely clouded over for Mass Effect 2. Places like Omega and Ilium were talking nonstop about local crime lords and mercenaries and disease and corruption. Even someone like Liara or Tali from the first game got bizarre rewrites making them criminal rogues and brokers. For goodness sake, you were dead until some hardcore super surgery experiment resurrects you with terminator face scars that get scarier if you're mean to people.
I guess I just miss the mystery and unknowns that you were led by in the first game. Not everybody everywhere knew about gangs and mercenaries and death in the original vision of future civilization.
Do I think they made a mistake in the reimaginings in scope and atmosphere? I won't say that. Some of the best stuff I ever played was in the sequels. But was I hopeful when Andromeda was being described as a return to much of the scope and tone of the first game? Yeah, and I was disappointed in the end by that game.
I'll leave you with this, the original demo I saw of the revolutionary fully voiced dialogue wheel in the flaring neon of Mass Effect:
Also apologies if any sentences seem cut off. I'm on mobile and it's being tricky.
