By Quintin Smith on September 7th, 2010 at 2:09 pm.
Okay, so wrap your head around this. IGN have done a short feature where they talk to Bioware Executive Producer Casey Hudson about the studio’s stat harvesting in Mass Effect 2. For their part, Bioware have revealed some of those stats, and some of them are genuinely mad. More people chose the Soldier class for Shepherd than all the other classes combined. Players skipped an average of 15% of the game’s dialogue. Two PC owners finished their copies of the game 28 times.
Click through for the full list of stats, including some interesting differences between 360 and PC gamers.
Pew-pew!
33 hours average completion time? I finished my game in 24 hours, and I did almost all the side quests. What in the Hell were you lot doing?
In the article proper Casey states that 360 gamers did more of the crew loyalty missions, while PC gamers took longer to complete the game overall. Also, more PC gamers did Miranda’s loyalty mission, while more 360 gamers took an interest in cloned super-warrior Grunt. Maybe they mistook him for Marcus Fenix. Or maybe us lot are just more attracted to imaginary attractive Australians.
Casey also says some interesting things about using these stats in the article proper, but for anyone excited about Mass Effect 3 this is the key quote:
There was a great improvement in quality from Mass Effect 1 to Mass Effect 2, and that was without collecting this telemetry data. If this endeavor proves useful, we can expect great things from the final chapter in the trilogy.
Mm! I’m expecting some pretty great things myself, to the point where I’m a little sad that they’re only talking about this being a trilogy. Still, it’s not like games haven’t escaped their status as a trilogy in the past. C’mon, moneymen of the games industry. Don’t fail me now.
07/09/2010 at 14:12 mrmud says:
80% male?
Thats a disgrace if I ever saw one
07/09/2010 at 14:15 robrob says:
In other news, 80% of ME2 players are thickies and completely wrong about everything.
07/09/2010 at 14:21 Rich says:
Silly people.
07/09/2010 at 14:26 AlexW says:
I don’t see anything that says that 80% ONLY played Male. It’s entirely possible they combined it, so anyone that decided to play from both sides appears too and it’s instead saying that 20% only played as the more enjoyable third person experience.
Similarly, I would certainly be dismayed if most players didn’t experience the thrill of having their own character be a Biotic God.
07/09/2010 at 14:30 Veret says:
Seriously. Between this and the soldier data, it’s like half the world is playing a gimped version of the game. What’s next, playing Dragon Age on Xbox?
07/09/2010 at 14:32 The Pink Ninja says:
I’d assume if they say 80% male then 80% of all play-throughs featured a male Shep, which is fail
FemShep.Jennifer Hal;e forever!
07/09/2010 at 14:40 SanguineAngel says:
pssssshhhh, I admit it, I played as a male sheppherd. And I loved it. I did it cos it was the role I chose to play – i had just finished gridlinked for the 2nd time when I playe ME1 and so I had some awesome cormac/sheppherd bad-ass going on. I got attached to my original character so I stuck with him in 2 and I will stick with him in 3 too. I regret nothing and I’d do it again too!
Having said that, femme-shep get cudos for being awesome and also a lot of fun to play. She’s just not my original and therefore I simply can’t equate her with MY Mass Effect
07/09/2010 at 15:08 bleeters says:
I’m personally wondering how much of that 80% is the result of Miranda stripping off in the engine room.
07/09/2010 at 16:06 Huggster says:
The only reason I played a Male Shep was the romance interest.
What can I say – I have a weakness for curvy brunettes! In any form!
07/09/2010 at 16:11 pagad says:
I just can’t understand why Bioware insist on using generic macho Man!Shep in all the trailers etc. This thing about 80% of people actually choosing to PLAY as him is even more mystifying.
07/09/2010 at 16:29 Nathan says:
That 80% /do/ play as a Male Shepard should entirely answer your concern about why the marketing always features an alpha-male Shepard, though.
07/09/2010 at 16:32 Snall says:
…er…yeah, I’m not crazy enough to RP a chick, sorry.
07/09/2010 at 17:40 DJ Phantoon says:
I always just made my male Shepard look like the Doomguy.
07/09/2010 at 17:49 Chizu says:
I played a playthrough withe each. Both carried over from ME1.
Though pretty much the sole reason for Male Sheps existence was so I could date Tali in 2 :]
07/09/2010 at 18:07 Dean says:
“That 80% /do/ play as a Male Shepard should entirely answer your concern about why the marketing always features an alpha-male Shepard, though.”
Maybe. Though maybe 80% played as Male Shep as that’s what he is in all the marketing.
I’m genuinely convinced, having played the first one through twice, that the part was written as a female role. It just feels more right. Hale’s Shep actually sounds like a character, there’s a lot more emotion in it. Male Shep just drifts between reading the lines and shouting a bit.
07/09/2010 at 19:02 Anthony Damiani says:
Wait, 80% played mShep, what percentage played femShepherd? Surely, not 20%?
07/09/2010 at 19:28 DrGonzo says:
I can’t play as a woman in a game like this. It’s roleplaying, and while I’m not playing myself I can be a little more immersed as a man rather than a woman. Plus I started a game as a woman in the original, while I hate the male voice-over, I can’t stand the woman either. I’m a brutal killer and she sounds too wimpy to me.
07/09/2010 at 19:32 DrGonzo says:
It may have been written for a woman, but not the voice actress they got. I go round punching people in the face everytime I can or killing them if possible, and she doesn’t come across that way at all. At least the guy is a dick, that fits my style of play a bit more. But why oh why couldn’t they hire as good a voice actors for the player characters as they do for the npcs?
07/09/2010 at 20:14 V says:
Are they talking about playERS, or playTHROUGHS? Seems like it would be useful to distinguish between the two.
And yeah, femShep pwns, but the bulk of ME players are fraternitards who see nothing wrong with the statement “A woman couldn’t be a hero like Shepard is.” So, go figure.
07/09/2010 at 20:25 A-Scale says:
Are you Brits really getting your panties in a bind about male gamers playing as males? You don’t think the player base of ME2 was at LEAST 20% male?
07/09/2010 at 20:35 Tacroy says:
A-Scale: well yes, probably the vast majority of the players of Mass Effect 2 are male. Statistically speaking, about 90% of them will be straight males.
And that’s why we expect them to play a female character – or do you enjoy staring at a man’s ass for an average of 33 hours?
07/09/2010 at 20:41 Ian says:
I don’t have an issue playing as a female character, but nor do I understand the “If I’ve got to stare at a backside-” argument. I tend to be more interested in what’s going on around me and if something’s going to try and jump out and kill my face and hardly look at my character’s bum ever.
07/09/2010 at 21:49 Jacques says:
I don’t know what you look at when you play, but I don’t tend to look at my character when I’m moving about.
I played a Male Shep, never understood playing a female character, unless I was forced to.
07/09/2010 at 23:00 rollermint says:
Tacroy :
Thats a pretty silly argument. Overused as well.
Do you play a game so that you can stare at a virtual person’s ass or do you actually PLAY the game?
IRT I’m not sure whats wrong with 80% playing as male characters. Its pretty obvious that males constitute the majority of the playerbase…across almost all genres. Political correctness gone bonkers?
Be happy that theres a distinct, very distinct possibility that about 20% gamers are actually females…lol
08/09/2010 at 02:09 JackShandy says:
It’s pretty obvious that these are only the statistics because Male and Soldier are at the top of the list. It’s the same reason politicians always want the to be the top name on ballots, people who have no idea what they’re doing choose the first available option.
As a male, I played femshep first, just because that was my character from ME1. Then I cried in anguish as I realised that I could never be more than Good Friends with Tali. Then I threw myself into the arms of frog-skin Thane just to get the Paramour, feeling disgusted with myself. Then I failed even that because I said the wrong thing to him at the last minute.
MY SHEP IS A FAILURE.
08/09/2010 at 03:01 ET says:
I’m a female player who usually play male characters because it’s actually easier to RP that way, the way games tend to write women. (Note : this is not intended to bring about a GAMES ARE SEXIST issue, it’s simply that I’m quite odd for a women. Grew up with men, played all the boys’ toys, works in an intensely male-dominated industry, weirded out by femininity, blah blah blah.) But still, for ME, I’ve never been able to play a MaleShep. I COULDN’T MAKE HIM LOOK OR SOUND LESS GENERIC, ARGH.
But then again, I played Engineer. Maybe THAT’S part of the issue. =p
08/09/2010 at 09:52 panther says:
renegade male, paragon female
what up
08/09/2010 at 21:40 Dhatz says:
you guys know it: statistics cannot be trusted because they are useless without complementary data. it’s like telling that planes have least crashes per mileage. but how many of the crashes are 100% fatal and what could we consider a crash? one engine getting fucked up and flying into safety with a trail of sparks carried by other 3? can you imagine how low would be fatality for bus crashes, taht would have to include every minor collision where nobody was even hurt.
08/09/2010 at 21:47 Hidden_7 says:
Paragon male, renegade female.
I’ve never really gotten the “which backside would you like to look at?” argument. I sort of understand it, but for me I’m not staring at Shepard’s backside for 30+ hours, I’m BEING Shepard for 30+ hours. And I’m a guy, so it’s easier to role play being a guy. I’ll play as the lady eventually, but it won’t be the first playthrough, since the first playthrough is going to be the most naturalistic one. Later ones tend to be a bit more contrived. That’s also why I always end up playing goodie goodie first, and evil bastard second.
07/09/2010 at 14:15 TCM says:
There’s people who didn’t do all the loyalty missions?
Most played class soldier?
urrrrgh
07/09/2010 at 14:23 Rich says:
I personally wish I’d played ME1 as a soldier first, so that I could unlock the assault rifle skill for who ever else I chose to play.
Why doesn’t my sniper know how to shoot an SMG, why?
07/09/2010 at 14:26 TCM says:
Soldier is booooring, and ME1 assault rifles are broken. There’s no reason whatsoever for a full automatic weapon to be that accurate, and have that much firepower.
Soliders in ME2 are…slightly less boring, but have pretty much no real advantage over all the other classes. Especially not BOOM STEALTH HEADSHOT Infiltrator, or CHARGIN TARGE Vanguard.
07/09/2010 at 14:34 The Pink Ninja says:
I played the solider because it was simple, good in a fight and straight forward. I didn’t understand the real difference between classes until after I completed the game.
And I deliberately didn’t do the Loyalty missions in a play through because I was trying to get people killed.
07/09/2010 at 14:55 SanguineAngel says:
I did most of the loyalty missions because they were what my character would have done. I liked that I didn’t have to though.
I talked about being attached to my Sheppherd in another post, and part of that is because of the choices he made in the previous game and the bad shit that happened sometimes because. It was narratively compelling. Forcing no win situations on the player is something that should happen more often. It is a place where video games can really really learn from other story telling mediums.
If I have one gripe with ME2, it was that I it was far too easy to have everyone live. I didn’t do anything special, i even made a few (as I saw it) poor choices, but I did play it as seemed appropriate for my character and nothing bad really happened to him. I feel like maybe it should.
07/09/2010 at 15:22 Dyos says:
No advantages? I think nearly unlimited bullet-time + a machine gun is a pretty big advantage.
07/09/2010 at 15:23 TCM says:
Infiltrator gets near infinite bullet time, but with instant death sniper rifles instead.
07/09/2010 at 15:47 Lack_26 says:
I played soldier since it suited who my character was as a person, not to mention I loved all the weapons I got to play with.
07/09/2010 at 15:57 bleeters says:
…I may have cheated slightly and modded in assault rifle use for my infiltrator, at the expense of removing SMG and heavy weapons skill to cut down on feeling like a walking munitions factory. Damnit though, I wanted my Avenger back.
07/09/2010 at 19:43 DrGonzo says:
@TCM I disagree. In ME1 I played Soldier, because the combat was broken and dull apart from the shooting. In ME2 I played the force powers guy who uses pistols and loved it because they had actually made the combat fun.
07/09/2010 at 22:10 Tacroy says:
@Sanguine: the thing is, I don’t think any game developer is willing to take the same risk that Deus Ex did – for instance, there were people who didn’t even realize until the tenth anniversary that you could get your brother out of the ambush alive, or that Jock’s chopper doesn’t have to explode. If you make the “perfect” endings not completely obvious, there’ll be a lot of people who miss out on some of your content and thus think that your game isn’t as great as it could be.
08/09/2010 at 09:39 SanguineAngel says:
@ Tacroy Well developers are certainly very reticent about putting the player in any unpleasant situations as a general rule. Deus Ex is a good comparison here. But look at ME1: [SPOILER] where you are forced to choose between (in my opinion) two pretty great characters on one of them IS going to die{/SPOILER].
What developers or publishers seem to misunderstand is that there is a very real difference between an unpleasant gaming situation – ie somewhere that is unreasonably difficult to beat in context of the game – and an unpleasant narrative situation – ie something bad happens to the character(s). Provided that something bad doesn’t spell game over it is actually a very important narrative technique. I think it’s why games as stories usually fall flat. Books, films and stories in general are driven by unfortunate situations, things going wrong, emotional turmoil, tragedy. And then ovrecoming that, or reconciling with it.
In general stories in games, or even sub-plots, simply go from strength to strength. There is some problem to start but at every step of the way from then on, the game has you get better, stronger, always putting you in a better position. If the player makes a mistake then it’s restart. It was the major strength for me in ME1, and something they didn’t do anywhere near as well in ME2 to my mind. And as you say, Deus Ex had that. In terms of story, it wasn’t the overall plot that made Deus Ex great, it was the way it was told, the betrayals, the errors in jedgement, the deaths of people he loved, and the eventual victory or downfall of JC Denton that made it a compelling story.
In general it strikes me that this is where developers need to hire professional authors. People who know how to construct a story. And they need the freedom to do so. I suspect there is a lot of railroading even in the rare circumstances when such an expert is utilised. ME1 showed me that they knew how to tell a story. ME2 disappointed me in the regard in comparison. I am very much hopeing for better from ME3.
Sorry if that’s a bit rambly, it’s early! ish!
08/09/2010 at 22:10 Dhatz says:
@sanguineAngel: while that is true, having bad shit happen in the story doesn’t save a game from being bad overall. You know I mean Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days.
09/09/2010 at 08:01 Wraggles says:
Instant kill snipers….what game were you playing? On easy difficulty sure, on others, not so much.
Stealth-> Boom, there goes barrier, ->wait 3 secs -> boom, there goes the shields, wait 3 secs, boom, there goes half the armour, wait 3 secs, boom, the rest of the armour, wait 3 secs boom, there, dead, onto the next enemy.
Admittedly only boss types had all 3 defense, but still many had 2. There’s only a few basic enemies you could headshot…..and u could do it with ANY GUN.
Soldier was simply, Pull trigger and feel like a God.
07/09/2010 at 14:17 Rhythm says:
Interesting stuff but can’t say I’m enamoured by this sort of analysis. If the data behind (stellar) ME1 resulted in the (IMO) lacklustre ME2, I dread to think what this sort of data’s going to turn ME3 into
07/09/2010 at 15:25 mootpoint says:
07/09/2010 at 15:27 mootpoint says:
Fail, try again:
07/09/2010 at 15:50 Markachy says:
I’m sorry but I have to ask, but how on EARTH can you think ME1 was better? It was more tedious (jesus god the Mako missions, save me), the guns and combat were significantly worse (and although I liked the many many weapons in ME1, it was just an illusion that came down to Spectre Gear X every time, there was no positives and negatives to each, as in ME2 – quality over quantity), texture pop-in during play, I personally thought the characters were worse (come on, Liara and Ashley were cringeworthy! “Oh I love poets” “Oh I am a unisex sexy alien geek”), more running back and forth, insanity wasn’t a greater challenge, it was just a war of attrition/boredom etc etc.
Don’t get me wrong, I was and am a massive (hur) fan of ME1, completed it maybe 6, 7 times. But ME2 was, I thought, a huge improvement in many ways, and has redefined what I expect from RPGs. And again this is coming from a “hardcore”, BG-playing, FO1 and 2 obsessing, Planescape-worshipping, Obsidian-believing RPG geek.
Just interested as to your reasons for it. I never actually thought anyone could have preferred the first.
07/09/2010 at 16:24 Freud says:
You are quite correct that the Mako missions were boring and ME2s combat is significantly better. But the planet scanning (which is required to do research) in ME2 is much worse than the Mako stuff is in the first. The side quests generally work better in the sequel too. Overall, it is much more polished.
Now let’s get into why ME1 is better than the sequel. There is this new universe that the game wants us to explore and learn more about. You get to travel to places that seem to mean something and not just spots that are randomly created because you have to scratch the back of every crew member. It’s like they had a lot of story for ME1 and then realized they didn’t have story for a full trilogy so they decided to make the middle one purely transport. This really creates a weird break from discovery to an almost complete lack of it.
If they can get the first ones sense of wanting to tell us about the world the game is set in with all the polish of the second for the last game, I am happy. And if they bring back the scanning just to fluff up the hours played to hide just how short the actual game is, they should be shot.
07/09/2010 at 17:00 1nightStand says:
Am I the only one who liked the MAKO? Yes, it was a goofy vehicle but its sections offered the illusion of vastness and freedom. I like exploring planets- those were my zen moments, devoid of drama and fights. And some of those planets had great atmosphere (no pun intended).
When they said that they listened to their audience and would be fixing the planet exploration, I was excited- I pictured vast different planets, some with unique eco-systems, others harsh and desolate, but each with unique missions and scenery.
It was pretty disappointing to find that by “fixing”, they meant ditching it out all together.
07/09/2010 at 17:32 SanguineAngel says:
I’m partly with 1NightStand here, I didn’t really dig the mako missions in ME1 – they felt far too cookie cutter and lifeless (i never felt i was exploring anything at all) but they certainly had some very interesting stories and explorations of the character of the universe. The mechanics were terrible to my mind but what they were actually trying to show you was pretty cool. And then in a lot of those little optional missions you frequently got to make interesting choices.
I was looking forward to more of that choice and exploration combined with genuinely exciting and varied gameplay. This did not happen. Which is a shame. They did end up replacing one tedium with another in the end.
Certainly it was easier and LESS tedious to just scan the planet with my mouse, rather than have to drive all over the damn thing for no good reason. But I would rather not face that sort of tedium at all. I hope that is what they have learned this time.
07/09/2010 at 20:34 Tyler says:
I liked ME1 quite a bit better myself. I liked the ground vehicle just fine, which probably helped, and am actually a little baffled as to why so many people hated it. First playthrough on X-Box or something?
Also, the plot of the first one is just -way- more interesting, and compelling, what with you starting out as a more regular person and getting a super-cool ship and political powers a little later. There’s a reason that’s a trope. It draws you in. The first also has a way better ending.
Not that I dislike the 2nd…The first game is pretty hard to follow up on, plot-wise, and they did a pretty good job, considering that.
08/09/2010 at 03:17 DSX says:
I loved the MAKO too – and was sad that it was replaced by swishy mouse scanning and the cheesy hopping hover craft thing. Bring Down the Sky was my fave DLC for ME1 because of the awesome driving bits with that amazing backdrop of the planet.
08/09/2010 at 22:21 Dhatz says:
people generally agree that the best game ever hast to have everything you could ever want to do/be in a game and in outstanding quality, but those very same bastards could never buy/finish/enjoy such a game. there are people/enitites who didn’t think san andreas was best of the GTA III trilogy. Mako was the relaxing part and mounted cannon and mobile cover and hat little jmp jets! I would enjoy ME2 much more if it’s successor the hammerhead tank was in the vanilla ME2 instead of what only (us) pirates don’t hate that much(DLC).
07/09/2010 at 14:18 litrock says:
So most people played a male soldier who didn’t do everyone’s loyalty mission? Apparently most people are doing it WRONG.
Those poor bastards.
07/09/2010 at 14:19 laikapants says:
My Female Engineer Shep is so so lonely. And not just because her suspicious doppleganger/almost lover got turned into Reaper Goo.
Also, is the Shadow Broker DLC the end of ME2 DLC? I’ve been waiting for them to finish before I buy them all and start from scratch, again.
07/09/2010 at 14:29 tekDragon says:
Yes squarely in the minority. Female engineer go!
07/09/2010 at 14:42 Rosti says:
Snap! Had too much fun as Ms. Hale & Engineer in ME1 to pass it up this time around.
07/09/2010 at 14:20 Risingson says:
I did all the missions, and spent 30 hours exactly, and didn’t pass from level 26 either. I thought it was well measured regarding gameplay.
And I skip most dialogues. I use to get a glimpse and process the information later.
07/09/2010 at 14:34 disperse says:
And I skip most dialogues. I use to get a glimpse and process the information later.
I find this fascinating. Can you follow the storyline skipping the dialogues? Do you just rely upon the quest log to tell you what you need to do next?
I don’t normally skip dialog(ue) in games but do believe they are often unnecessary. I think gamers are skilled at distilling the important game-related information out of dialog. Blah, blah, blah, I need to rescue this guys daughter, blah, blah, blah. The things that make the biggest impression happen in game using the language of the game system, which we all understand.
07/09/2010 at 15:42 ScubaMonster says:
I don’t mind reading/listening to the dialogue of a game. However, I do think a lot of dialogue in games is tedious and unnecessary filler.
07/09/2010 at 15:46 Lack_26 says:
It took me 40 hours to complete, mind you I strip-mined EVERY planet there was since I didn’t understand how the end of the game would work and Pentadact had said you need a lot of Platinum, I just assumed he meant a LOT of platinum (i.e. all of it in the game).
07/09/2010 at 16:10 disperse says:
I remember enjoying speaking with the aliens in KOTOR because the dialog was subtitled. The random pseudo-alien speech was good enough to be believable and I didn’t have to sit there and listen to a voice actor make a speech. I think people don’t actually talk the way NPCs in RPGs do. We say as little as we need to in order to make our point.
08/09/2010 at 22:27 Dhatz says:
ypu just pointed out bad(=unbelievable) writing, which happens to be almost a rule as people naively thing writers provide authentic/good conversations. you need someone who never whitten as pro/never got corrupted by the text nature of written media(quite hard as most communication is nowadays text-based). best game dialogue writing/VA is such where characters make errors/have to clarify themselves in their speech.
07/09/2010 at 14:21 Ganders says:
It makes sense to use the soldier class more, because the special powers that the other player classes specialize in (apart from their single unique one) can be used through your teammates- and you can control their powers better than their shooting.
07/09/2010 at 14:24 Rich says:
I suppose. You are the squad leader after all.
07/09/2010 at 18:23 Zenicetus says:
Yeah, this. Soldier allows the most tactical options, and I could usually make better decisions about who to target for a special attack, and when, than my AI companions. Not that it’s an especially deep tactical game, but I liked having the option. And the assault rifle is fun. The Geth pulse rifle version (unlocked if you do the save Tali mission on Hardcore) is almost overpowered for the game, but still great fun.
The other reason I chose Soldier for 2 of the 3 playthroughs I did, was that I just liked the choices for engineer and biotic companions better than the soldier-class companions.
07/09/2010 at 14:21 Lh'owon says:
I played as female Shephard and as an Engineer, though I found myself slightly regretting the latter – I love sentries in games (being a lazy sod who enjoys letting a machine do my killing for me) but the one in ME2 wasn’t all that interesting.
07/09/2010 at 14:21 Chris D says:
I find it depressing how many people chose to play as the soldier. I mean really you couldn’t find enough games where you shoot people with an assault rifle so you just had to have one more?
07/09/2010 at 14:25 Ian says:
Hopefully in a crazy, distant future what class other people play the game as won’t effect the amount of fun you have when you play it.
07/09/2010 at 14:31 tekDragon says:
Is that the future where execs wont look at the numbers and ask the dev team why they even bother making other classes?
07/09/2010 at 14:39 Foxfoxfox says:
The thing is, the more attention people pay to stats like these – the more wrong you will be about that otherwise sharp assertion. Actually the fact that 80% of people play soldier will indeed affect the sequel.
I kind of fear a future where the design of games is totally democratized in this way, leading to a generation of very mediocre games which contain to strong design decisions, because they are all about letting people do what they already do.
07/09/2010 at 14:51 Chris D says:
Ian
Ok, maybe I am being a bit grumpy about it. There are reasons why people like playing as soldiers and that’s fair enough. It’s the “more than every other class combined” bit that really grates. I have no problem with people enjoying shooting people in the face, I quite like it myself sometimes. But it seems like now every other game is a shooter so to take one of the games which is trying to do something else and turn it into more of the same seems like a wasted opportunity. And as TekDragon and Fox say, there’s an increasing chance that the number of games which aren’t shooters is going to shrink.
07/09/2010 at 15:25 Archonsod says:
When you boil it down, the classes in Mass Effect equate to the traditional warrior/thief/mage used by every RPG. And to be honest, the other classes didn’t interest me in the slightest; the engineer had nothing that looked fun they could build, and the other is a cheap Jedi rip off. So I went with the soldier primarily because out of a selection of bland and generic classes he seemed to be the only one not arbitrarily gimped for having meh abilities.
07/09/2010 at 15:35 Nova says:
That’s the slight disadvantage with the save game importing.
I started ME1 with a biotic and got stuck on one planet (don’t remember which one) at this geth ambush. I tried it many many times but didn’t make it. So I tried a soldier and just played through the game.
Since I wanted to import my save games and don’t play ME1 again as a biotic just to play one in ME2 I sticked with it and probably will in ME3.
At least I wasn’t a male Shepard.
07/09/2010 at 15:42 Ian says:
I think at least in part it’s because in so many games AI team-mates are abysmal and people less used to this sort of game just assume that’ll still be the case. There are also many games with guns and Assorted Abilities where you’re just so much easier shooting people in the face than trying to use whatever fun-but-ineffective stuff you’ve also got to play with. The two combined probably caused some people to pick the soldier because it’s what they know is least likely to be face-mashingly bad rather than thinking it sounds the most interesting.
I’m not entirely sure why more games don’t go down the route (that less seem to these days) of giving a try at different things. A taster of each class and saying “You’re pretty good at this, but you can choose what class you like” so that you can have a go before you start your tens-of-hours game.
Okay, so games where it’s mages and stuff are fairly self-explanatory, you’re probably going to be lobbing fireballs and healing and chucking lightning at people. The uninitiated may not be grabbed by the description of biotics though, so why not provide the option of having a ten minute play with them?
“People like to play as shootyman” stat doesn’t tell anybody, least of all Bioware, anything that we don’t already know, so maybe what they’ll take from it is that they could bear to sell the other classes a little more.
07/09/2010 at 15:45 ScubaMonster says:
A smart dev team wouldn’t base everything for the sequel on some stats. Sure they could look at things to see how they could make it more interesting, but saying, “Well not many people played that, so let’s just toss it out the window entirely” is a bit ridiculous. I think Bioware is smarter than that. I hope.
07/09/2010 at 15:54 choconutjoe says:
Don’t get to hung up on the wording. “More than every other class class combined” is just a more rhetorically powerful way of saying “over half”.
If 51% of people played as the soldier then that would still be “more than every other class combined”. If Bioware were to then remove classes from the game then they would potentially alienate 49% of their customer base. Hardly a smart move.
It’s probably safe to assume that the different classes will make a comeback in ME3.
07/09/2010 at 16:10 Archonsod says:
They’d have to keep the same classes. Unless they come up with some funky way to explain why your imported character forgot everything he knew about Biotics and learned to fire a machine gun.
07/09/2010 at 18:01 perilisk says:
“Since I wanted to import my save games and don’t play ME1 again as a biotic just to play one in ME2 I sticked with it and probably will in ME3.”
FWIW, you can change your class on import.
07/09/2010 at 14:22 Dean says:
There’s bound to be more Mass Effect games. Or at least, games set in that universe. Worth remembering this is a much tighter ‘trilogy’ than you normally get, in that your actions in one game effect the next. ME3 will be the final adventure of Shepherd, but there’s bound to be another trilogy of Mass Effect games out at some point (perhaps even with a different name.)
07/09/2010 at 14:23 Urthman says:
Mass Effect 3: Male Space Marine Adventures!
07/09/2010 at 14:32 sneetch says:
Now with 15% less conversation!
07/09/2010 at 19:52 Kevin says:
Hopefully by “Space Marine” you mean Sheperd gets back-up organs, chainswords, fully-automatic rifles that shoot rocket propelled bolts, sealed into a 9 ft. tall power armour, and indoctrinated into religious zealotry and utmost loyalty to the Emperor.
07/09/2010 at 14:24 Daniel Rivas says:
“33 hours average completion time? I finished my game in 24 hours, and I did almost all the side quests. What in the Hell were you lot doing?”
Mining.
07/09/2010 at 15:26 mondomau says:
24hrs? Forgive me, but I’m a little dubious unless you did one or all of the following:
- drastically overestimated the percentage of the side quests you completed
- spoke to literally no one and skipped all dialogue everywhere
- did a practice run.
- Didn’t upgrade or research anything
- Didn’t explore any non-mission essential planets.
Either way, I can’t help feeling you missed out on a lot of the fun in this game.
But then, so did a lot of people apparently….
07/09/2010 at 15:26 Archonsod says:
20 hours completing the game, 13 hours staring at the slinky dancers in the bar …
07/09/2010 at 20:32 Phinor says:
My first playthrough was around 26 hours and I talked to every NPC I could find, skipped no dialogue, explored every planet, scanned every planet for minerals (though towards the end, I only scanned few major spots per planet). I got every upgrade and did every research. I saved everyone in the end and out of those 26 hours, I spent 4-5 hours outside of the game, alt-tabbed, doing other stuff but the clock kept running.
ME2 is a damn short game if you go forward and don’t spend time running back and forth for no reason. Well maybe not damn short by today’s standards but not a very long one either.
07/09/2010 at 14:25 Ricc says:
I’m a little scared about stat-driven game design, to be honest. So, most people played Soldier in ME2. Maybe that has something to do with all the chest-high walls in their encounter spaces? I just hope they don’t make it their top priority for ME3 to be the most average game that appeals to everybody in order to sell.
(This also applys to Dragon Age 2, btw.)
07/09/2010 at 14:37 Walsh says:
Old Bioware would use this information to make the least played classes more interesting.
New Bioware, YARRR SOLDIERS ARE THE NEW SHIT
07/09/2010 at 14:27 ChaosSmurf says:
Male Soldier confirmed for canon.
07/09/2010 at 14:29 TCM says:
I think Bioware is trying very hard to establish there’s no canon.
To that effect, ME3′s default choices will probably be all paragon, just to screw with folks.
07/09/2010 at 14:30 Bullwinkle says:
Well, at least this will put an end to all the whining about too many characters being white, male, space marines. Oh, who am I kidding.
07/09/2010 at 14:30 teliach says:
So, how much time till they drop any character costumization from the game and make us all play male soldiers. Their marketing is already on it ignoring completly the possibility that you can play anything but the standard Shepard or Hawke, the new Dragon Age seems to be poiting this way with eleminating all the races, next step no female characters.
Also this quote
[quote]More and more we’re trying to create something dynamic and exciting like a really great movie and we’re trying to get away from dialogue…[/quote]
Seeems they really want to do fps like CoD or half-life and not roleplaying games.
07/09/2010 at 14:34 ChaosSmurf says:
IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD
07/09/2010 at 14:52 Urthman says:
And that whole gameplay bullshit. You don’t have to deal with any of that crap in movies.
YAARR! MOVIES ARE THE NEW SHIT!
07/09/2010 at 14:31 Arnulf says:
Spin-offs are always a possibility.
Most time spent? Nudging a cross-hair over various planets. Really.
Er.. I’m playing the 360 version.
07/09/2010 at 15:44 cjlr says:
No, no. That’s what took most of my time too. The game would have been fifteen hours long if planet scanning and navigating didn’t take an eternity. And that’s on PC. I pity the fool who was stuck with that shit on a gamepad…
07/09/2010 at 14:32 spinks says:
Ooo, I wish we could see the Dragon Age stats …. *hint*
07/09/2010 at 14:33 Schaulustiger says:
Seriously, 28 playthroughs? What were those two guys doing? Learning all the dialogue for a theatre reenactment of Mass Effect 2?
Regarding soldier players: I often find it uncomfortable to start a game as a strangely named class I know nothing about (“Vanguard”, “Infiltrator”) because I don’t know if it will suit my play style. So I instead choose something familiar and in 99% of the games it’s the good old soldier class (or its fantasy equivalent: the warrior). I sure know what to expect from that.
07/09/2010 at 14:34 ChaosSmurf says:
Various death sequences, difficulty levels, classes…
07/09/2010 at 15:15 Mark O'Brien says:
People may have been letting their friends play, even with limited activations.
It also may have been installed on a computer or XBox in a dorm or something.
07/09/2010 at 14:35 Schaulustiger says:
Also, looking at all the posts with the “Staring Eyes” tag will give me nightmares tonight.
07/09/2010 at 14:35 Walsh says:
Why in the future with guns that require no ammo would they replace them with guns that require ammo? Guh.
Why in the future with everyone wearing effective armor and personal shields, would some users suddenly stop wearing shields while wearing armor? Guh.
07/09/2010 at 15:14 bleeters says:
To be fair, infinite ammunition guns and indestructible shields didn’t make for the most compelling shooty wizz-bang experience in Mass Effect 1. Slap a couple of -heat addons into most weapons and you could fire indefinately.
07/09/2010 at 15:28 Dyos says:
There’s something in the lore regarding both of these. It was decided little devices that stored heat (non-heavy weapons do not actually use ammo) and could be ejected prevented overheating, and thus did less damage to the weapons over extended use.
I think the shields were replaced with armor sometimes for the same reason it makes sense in game…different defenses for different attacks.
07/09/2010 at 15:36 cjlr says:
It’s not quite as retarded as suddenly restricting ammo – but it is stupid.
Core ejection disposes of a large amount of waste energy almost instantly – instead of merely letting it radiate gradually. However the difficulty lies in expected us to believe that the addition of the former capacity somehow removes the latter.
I’d agree that the cooldown rates from ME1 were too high – but it seems to me an ideal solution is, durr, both? Finite cores for maintaining high rates of fire – but a slow energy dissipation (much slower than ME1, but still several shots per minute) so that we don’t have to pretend all weapon designers in Mass Effect are idiots. Also, it would mean that if you suck you wouldn’t be able to leave yourself with no “ammo” left. And have to fo on biotic and melee only rampages. Actually though I did that for fun sometimes, but still! Point still stands.
As for armour/shields/health – that was very, very obviously a way to cram in a rock paper scissors mechanic were a is good v shields, b is good v armour, and c is good v health. At least higher end enemies (and higher difficulties) give most of the bad guys both.
07/09/2010 at 14:40 Jamesworkshop says:
Looks like i’m a somwhat typical player
male default face
Infiltrator
completion time with all DLC 45 hours
2 playthroughs
No import save
All loyalty mission complete
all side quests complete
07/09/2010 at 14:45 LukeE says:
I did try to play through the other classes… but I just couldn’t do it.
Every time I’ve played ME and ME 2 I’m a sentinel. The others just really don’t work for me.
07/09/2010 at 14:47 Kali says:
@disperse
I “skip dialogue” in the sense that I can read faster than they speak. I turn on subtitles and blast through the text, skipping the voiceovers where possible.
I’m not sure if the OP meant that or not, but that’s the way I do it.
08/09/2010 at 21:46 Dhatz says:
I will say it everytime: statistics are useless as they cut a lot of relevant info.
07/09/2010 at 14:47 Butterbumps says:
“…I’m a little sad that they’re only talking about this being a trilogy. Still, it’s not like games haven’t escaped their status as a trilogy in the past. C’mon, moneymen of the games industry. Don’t fail me now.
Eh, much as I enjoy the ME universe, I think I would be happier for Bioware to move on to something different (of similarly high quality, of course) after three Mass Effects.
07/09/2010 at 14:48 Fred Wester, CEO of Paradox says:
I wonder why the skipped-conversation was so high. Was that due to people replaying? I’d love to get my hands on all of the raw stats, but that’ll never happen :(
07/09/2010 at 16:30 Freud says:
You don’t really need to read the dialog. If you play as a good guy, you pick the blue when available. If you play as the bad guy, you pick the red. You never can go wrong.
07/09/2010 at 17:33 Serenegoose says:
When do they decide if you ‘skipped’ dialogue? Is it if you hit escape before the voice actor is done? I do that all the time, but I read all the dialogue, I’m just too impatient to always wait for the guy to finish saying something I’ve already read. Do I count as a dialogue skipping stat? Probably.
07/09/2010 at 14:49 Tadhg says:
Those stats are not at all surprising.
It’s not really very clear why one character over another is a useful choice in the game from the start, nor why the gender choices might matter (they don’t) so a whole load of players are basically just zipping through those parts pretty quickly.
The most interesting stat for me is the 50% completion rate. It speaks volumes about game “storytelling” that most games with such apparently compelling narratives (Yes, I am being sarcastic here) are actually not completed. Clearly the interest level drops long before the official story gets the game anywhere.
07/09/2010 at 15:02 TCM says:
That’s actually a higher completion rate than Portal.
Which is 2 hours long.
http://steamcommunity.com/stats/Portal/achievements/
Heck, it’s about the same completion rate as Half-Life 2 Ep 2.
http://steamcommunity.com/stats/HL2:EP2/achievements/
07/09/2010 at 15:05 James G says:
50% completion seems about standard (Actually, its fairly good):
Portal: 46.7%
HL2:ep2 50.2%
Trine 30.5%
Zeno Clash 35.5%
World of Goo 24.7%
Aquaria ~14% (No end game achievement, based on ones near the end)
Just Cause 2 21.7% (Although obviously a bit unfair for a game which works best as a sandbox)
07/09/2010 at 15:28 Manley Pointer says:
Yeah, completion numbers don’t mean a whole lot for sandbox games, do they? If somebody plays 100 hours of Oblivion, or GTAIV, or Just Cause 2, but never completes the main quest, is that really something the developer’s going to be upset about? A sandbox game is always going to distract you from traditional “completion.” If GTAIV had a 10% completion rate, I wouldn’t think Rockstar should be upset about it.
08/09/2010 at 00:00 Lyndon says:
I wonder what the completion rate for War and Peace is.
07/09/2010 at 14:51 Tony M says:
“33 hours average completion time? I finished my game in 24 hours, and I did almost all the side quests. What in the Hell were you lot doing?”
Remember how you played games before you wrote about games for a living? Thats what we were doing.
07/09/2010 at 14:55 Urthman says:
Yes. Writing about games is probably second only to working in QA for games as a way to ruin gaming for you.
07/09/2010 at 15:16 Quintin Smith says:
I was playing it for fun! I shouldn’t be blitzing games when I’m playing them for fun. This is messed up.
07/09/2010 at 15:21 Manley Pointer says:
Pretty much everyone I know finished this game in under 25 hours, and none of them were game reviewers. I actually think the more common stereotype is “game reviewers are worse at games than normal gamers,” where commenters/bloggers bitch about how some critic missed an important detail about their favorite game, or misrepresented it as being too difficult.
ME2 was an easy game and I think everyone with a rudimentary grasp of Gears-em-up gameplay would have breezed through it on the default difficulty. I imagine they balanced it specifically so they would have a higher completion rate (and 50% is one of the highest percentages I’ve seen for a game that tracked those stats) and nobody would get hung up on a hard sequence. Even the original ME was significantly harder.
07/09/2010 at 16:11 Clovis says:
I don’t think it took some players longer because of the difficulty. I only died a few times, but it did take me almost 40 hours to finish. Playing in short sessions probably added a good amount of time. The Normandy took forever to load for some reason. I tended to wander around a lot looking for every possible item. I spent way too much time mining and ended up with a big surplus at the end. It’s not like I even mined every planet or something.
Oh, then there’s the reading. Maybe a lot of players actually read (or listened to) the Codex*. I read quite a bit of it. I also read almost every planet description in the game for some reason. I visited every planet to make sure to not miss a side quest. That one with the freighter teetering on a cliff was pretty cool, so I was glad I did that.
* No, that’s impossible.
07/09/2010 at 16:22 Bluebreaker says:
I just used a memory editor to skip resources gathering.
I know I missed some random missions with random enemies in a generic map and a random reward “email”. But it is worth it.
Without resource grinding, it will last even las than 20 hours.
07/09/2010 at 17:20 Ian says:
Quinns got through it pretty fast because it to complete it you don’t need iron.
07/09/2010 at 17:42 Shagittarius says:
I never managed to get through either of these boring Ass Fest games. If I wanted to be bored to death I could do it for free by watching Soap Operas, which is all Ass Effect is.
When I play a game I actually want something to play, not a choose your own adventure with graphics.
08/09/2010 at 11:20 Kadayi says:
Games are like wine, what’s the rush?
07/09/2010 at 14:52 goatmonkey says:
I skipped some dialogue in my second and current playthough, I used soldier as my first class as I couldn’t get into mass effect 1 with the other classes till I unlocked the assault rifle, though I have subsequently enjoyed infiltrator and vanguard more, I only used the face editor on my female playthough as the default Shepard looked better than anything I could create, I guess my playthroughs with dlc are about 30 – 40 hours.
In me3 I will most likely use infiltrator as my default class
07/09/2010 at 15:03 Colthor says:
33 hours average completion time? I finished my game in 54 hours, and probably missed something somewhere. What in the hells were you lot doing, speedruns?
Female Human Pinball was fun, after you got some decent powers to use. Soldier sounded boring.
07/09/2010 at 15:04 tekDragon says:
The choice of playing a female character in any 3rd person game is rather straightforward. Who’s ass would you rather stare at for 33 hours (on average). A pretty girl’s or some burly dude’s? No contest.
07/09/2010 at 15:41 Miko says:
The burly dude’s, duh.
YMMV.
07/09/2010 at 17:45 Shagittarius says:
YMCA
09/09/2010 at 02:57 Hidden_7 says:
That’s if that is a relevant factor for you. I don’t tend to notice my character’s asses. I’m more concerned about who I’m going to be for 30+ hours. If asses come up, it’s more which asses would I rather be “tapping”, the burly guys or the sultry alien ladies?
09/09/2010 at 10:48 Male Shepard says:
no sane male- gay or not- would think about staring at the ass of the protagonist of a videogame. What about looking at the, I don’t know, the rest of the game?
In fighting games, do you pick females characters because you don’t want to risk looking at the biceps and pecs of the male character and get an hard-on?
I’m not accusing you of being gay. I don’t think a gay would stare at shepard’s ass or at ken’s pecs. I am just accusing you of being a weirdo for even thinking about the problem.
07/09/2010 at 15:12 Alphabet says:
@Sneech
Win.
07/09/2010 at 15:13 fuggles says:
I played as femshep as PCG told me to, insinuating that by playing as male shepherd you get a much worse voice actor, and spoilers in the character description on ME1.
Obviously my ME2 character is just my ME1, but imported.
I played as soldier as it’s the most commanderly and badass sounding to me. Engineers fix things under the captain’s instruction and biotic is a type of yogurt, and damned if I’m playing as a yogurt.
07/09/2010 at 15:15 SanguineAngel says:
hahaha excellent. I definitely played as a yoghurt
07/09/2010 at 15:20 Tei says:
Is called yogurtfobia. The fear to get eated from inside by a yogurt.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgYyyHIl6rM
07/09/2010 at 15:17 Tei says:
50% completed the game? thats a huge achievements. Congrats!
I have the idea that most games only manage a 20% or something like that, often much less. That a game manage 50% and 33 hours of play, mean has “sticky powers” for 16.5 hours!!. Imagine this compared to a movie that feels long if last more than 1.8 hours.
07/09/2010 at 15:32 Gundrea says:
Yeah I mean I’d consider myself a gamer yet when I look back on my catalogue I see at least half my games lying uncompleted. not due to any kind of disgust or protest, just I lost interest.
07/09/2010 at 15:34 Butterbumps says:
I don’t think movie length is really a useful comparison here, since movies are generally meant to be consumed in one sitting, and games aren’t.
A much more helpful comparison for Mass Effect 2 specifically (and some games in general, I suppose) is to a season of a TV series. ME2 is structured very similarly (and here I’m talking more about modern, continuity-having shows): there’s an overarching story, broken down into individual episodes (missions), which may be related to a greater or lesser extent to the overall plot. Mostly the missions focus on the development of one (or not much more than one) character. ME2 even has a Lower Deck episode.
Also, a game like ME2 would tend to be consumed in the same way you’d (or in the way that I would, at least) watch a box set of a TV show: usually a few mission/episodes at a time, or a longer binge if I have the time.
I don’t know if all of this has anything to do with ME2′s relatively high completion rate. Maybe the player is more likely to keep going back if it’s for “just one more mission”, instead of for some undeliniated chunk of however much game is left.
Anyway, I’ve typed enough for now, RAMBLE MODE OFF.
07/09/2010 at 15:35 Archonsod says:
Possibly not even that.
You can get some hilarious stats just looking at Steam’s achievement stats. Apparently, 22.2% of Empire players have failed to take a single region in the game, while 8.2% of Napoleon players have failed to start a single campaign, battle or historical battle.
07/09/2010 at 19:41 DrGonzo says:
Well I often get Steam achievements disappear or not register. I wonder how much that effects Steam’s stats?
07/09/2010 at 15:30 cjlr says:
My first game took 33 hours! What a coincidence.
Of course, I also completed every single quest, and listened to at least 80-90% of the dialogue (though I admit to just reading and skipping through duller bits). And I even took the time to scan every. last. fucking. planet. Just to be sure I didn’t miss anything. ALL of that – every POSSIBLE THING – to do in the game, and it still only took 33 hours. HOW DO YOU TAKE LONGER??
07/09/2010 at 15:31 plugmonkey says:
I feel I’m writing the fiction more than acting it out myself, so I create whatever character I think will be most interesting within the setting: be that good or evil, male or female.
For me, sci-fi settings seem ripe for a strong female character in the Sarah Conner / Ellen Ripley / Aeryn Sun mold. I find that more interesting than some meathead jock, so I have a female Shep, and Jennifer Hale plays that role very well, so it’s all good.
07/09/2010 at 15:32 Joe The Wizard says:
All these stats do is make me want to play ME2 again.
07/09/2010 at 15:35 Sagan says:
I skipped none of the dialogue, but I guess I show up in their statistic as skipping 100% of the dialogue. Simply because I always read faster than the actors talk, and then click to proceed the dialogue. Which is a sign of weak voice acting, because in real life people don’t talk slower than they read.
I guess that also accounts for the long completion time. If people actually listen to all of the slow dialogue, that takes a long time.
07/09/2010 at 15:40 AndrewC says:
Yes they do speak slower then they read.
07/09/2010 at 15:41 cjlr says:
Everybody reads faster than they talk, don’t they? I thought?
But, even if you say that reading something takes just as long as saying it – when it’s already written to recite – then at the very least one might grant that reading something already written is faster than thinking of it to say as you go along, neh?
I always skipped a few seconds ’cause there’s always a second-ish long pause when switching between speakers or lines. Very annoying. Breaks flow. Should be able to crossfade already queued speech. Especially for characters who talk fast.
07/09/2010 at 15:42 Ovno says:
@ in real life people don’t talk slower than they read.
Yes they do much much much slower…
Adults read at 200 – 250 wpm on average, whereas the best source for a good speaking speed I could find quoted audiobooks at 150–160 wpm, so thats arround 65% faster reading than speaking which is a massive differance…
07/09/2010 at 17:22 Sagan says:
OK maybe I was wrong, but I still maintain that the voice actors speak slowly or do something else which makes it boring to listen to them.
07/09/2010 at 15:42 bleeters says:
I’m going to assume that 15% of skipped dialogue consisted of every word that came out of drab, monotone male Shepard’s mouth. It would certainly explain how, apparently, virtually everyone withstood it for 33 hours.
Personally, I only lasted as long as it took him to utter “And they don’t send Spectres on shakedown runs”.
07/09/2010 at 15:44 sonofsanta says:
Hopefully they will think “80% of people played as soldiers? We need to make the other classes cooler/better explained” and not “everyone loved the way we streamlined ME1 down into ME2, let’s streamline out all those other classes!”
I mean, I played ME1 through, twice, and I still had to spend forever watching the videos on the website to decide which class to go with. Infiltrator was definitely the good choice though, BOOM HEADSHOT.
Would be interesting to see the stats on average paragon/renegade bar at the end of the game, and the split therein between PC and 360. I suspect a lot of people (myself included) still see the “good” options as the “correct” options in a game, and the evil choices are just a different line spoken here and there. I know it’s not so true these days, but the early morality games were a lot like this.
Also I have the suitable levels of middle-class guilt that make me think I’m always being judged, so I’m good even to pretend pixel people.
07/09/2010 at 15:52 FP says:
The most insane part of this thread is how all you people can remember exactly how long it took you to complete a game half a year ago. I literally couldn’t even remember what class I played until someone mentioned cloaked sniping then I hazily recalled that it was an Infiltrator. Damn my pitiful brain.
07/09/2010 at 15:53 Binman88 says:
Interesting stuff, though I guess not really surprising. I’m right there with the masses with my male soldier Shepard – but I didn’t muck around with his face in ME2, after realising how fugly my imported ME1 character looked.
Also, I get the feeling those people who adamantly rant on websites that a female Shepard is the only way to play the game and that everyone who thinks otherwise should die in a fire, are the same people who lambaste total strangers via internet forums for liking their steak cooked well done. Maybe I’m the only one who noticed these people. They’re a small group, but a vocal one.
(FYI, I like mine medium-well)
Video games.
07/09/2010 at 15:56 Clovis says:
So 80% of players made the obvious choice of Soldier. Big deal. It’s not like 80% of players picked a Barbarian vs. Wizard/Thief in a single character RPG. If you read anything about the game and knew how the combat system worked, why would you pick any other class?
Oh boy, I got cool powers, but I spend most of my time shooting weaker weapons than the soldier. It just seemed logical to pick the soldier and rely on your teammates for the various powers. Since you can control exactly when and where they use their powers, I don’t see how you lose anything. Blowing dudes heads off in slo-mo seemed much more useful than my main character having some biotic power or something. What am I missing?
I was probably doing it wrong or something. The only powers I really cared much about were the ones to drop the various types of shields (or robot kiling if appropriate). After that, I could drop any enemy quickly myself.
07/09/2010 at 16:15 bleeters says:
Squad mate damage is, with a couple of exceptions, 45% lower than your own. This applies to any biotic and tech powers they may throw around too, which also have a longer cooldown than your own versions.
What was that about knowing how the combat system worked?
07/09/2010 at 16:23 bleeters says:
…Good grief, that made me sound like a total dick. Let me try again.
The most used abilities I personally threw around are ones that jam shields and remove armour. Using those abilities yourself means those defences are stripped at a far quicker rate, which is fairly useful when you’ve a hard difficulty heavy mech stomping in your direction. Also, squad abilities land where you point them. You’re able to ‘aim’ far more when using them yourself, arching them around corners and the like, hitting targets that’re behind cover.
Sure, it’s not necessarily better than headshotting folk with a sniper rifle, but it’s not particularly worse either.
07/09/2010 at 20:13 Thants says:
The cool powers is the reason to choose another class. Mass Effect doesn’t strike me as the right game to minmax.
07/09/2010 at 15:58 Eddeman says:
I started out in ME1 as a male vanguard, then I upgraded my PC and forgot to keep my savegame and started over as a female soldier, because I figured I was better at shooting than the AI and I could always just use their powers as my own anyway. Imported my save to ME2 and played through it so I will definitely stick to it in ME3 just because I spent so much time on it.
Having said that, I guess it’s about time I try out the other classes. Shooting people in the face tends to get boring in the long run, specially when the assault rifle was so good at turning heads into swiss cheese.
07/09/2010 at 15:59 Sobric says:
I tried playing other classes after my first play through as a Vanguard. It just couldn’t get very far. Where’s my ZZSHOOOOOOOOOM KEERSPLAT *slow-mo* HEADSHOT, HEADSHOT, HEADSHOT *relax*?
07/09/2010 at 15:59 Aemony says:
I pretty much did the same thing as Lack_26. Not really every single planet, but about 50% of them all. The average time is probably before they changed the scanning to be easier, and not such a tedious and unimportant job. But… Now whenever I play through the game I get all those goddies you get for having a ME1-character at lvl. 60 as well as already finished the game once and all that kind of stuff. I don’t think I ever required to scan a planet to finish my second playthrough…
I might be wrong, but scanning is pretty much useless after the first playthrough.
07/09/2010 at 16:00 Markachy says:
Casting my physics-master-degree-trained eye of skepticism on conclusions drawn from data, first of all I for one leave my game on pause for quite significant periods of time, and even occassionally accidentally left it unpaused for maybe an hour at at time in-game, in a non-combat area. Just through laziness/forgetfulness. This would push my “playing time” artificially high. Maybe not many other people do this?
Also on the dialogue-skipping part, 15% is an amazing result, but I have just done a playthrough where I skipped the majority of the dialogue because I knew it all and was just replaying to try out another class in combat. This sort of thing would also surely make that number artificially high as I would expect a fair number of people who have replayed it quite a bit did the same. So maybe that number should be even lower, even more impressive!
PS Engineer never appealed to me. Having said that, neither did soldier. I am a freak! But seriously though, WHY when you have the opportunity to be a badass, cloaked sniper, a charging shotgun nutter or a biotic chucking the bad guys left, right and centre?!
If you haven’t tried a pull-throw or pull-slam adept build yet, get on it. They go FLYING!
07/09/2010 at 17:18 JimRyanor says:
I’m replaying the game as an Adept and I’d be having much more fun if there were a lot less Blue Suns. Bloody shields :(
07/09/2010 at 18:10 Markachy says:
Yeah, I played it on Hardcore (the one below insanity) so there were shields and armour everywhere! I reckon an adept playthrough on the lowest 2 difficulties would be ludicrous fun, if way too easy.
Advice: either get the Kasumi DLC and use the Locust(?) a lot or choose assault rifle training. I was using the Mattock from the Firepower DLC (very powerful) but the Collector assault rifle would absolutely DESTROY shields easily.
Seriously though, check out pull+slam(crippling version)/throw combos. Adept really benefits from retraining powers to try out different combos, that particular combo is a lot of fun because the cooldown is really low so you can blast people about everywhere!
07/09/2010 at 20:20 Mana_Garmr says:
@Markachy
I had a lot of fun with Adept on veteran too. The Reaper IFF mission in particular was great because of all the ledges. I spent a huge amount of that mission watching husks run toward me while I just stood there going
Throw…throw…throw…whoops, there’s 4 of them, shockwave…throw…etc.
It was especially enjoyable due to how annoying I found abominations on my previous playthrough as they always seemed to get close enough to do damage with the explosion.
07/09/2010 at 20:45 Markachy says:
Most fun I found unexpectedly was using Dominate (the bonus power you get from Morinth) on Abominations. Its hilarious to see them turn and stumble towards their Husk buddies, blowing them to smithereens. That was on Insanity also!
PS Insanity+Widow Infiltrator=fairly easy
07/09/2010 at 16:03 Bloodloss says:
The 66 hour thing is as if it’s specifically referring to me. I did it in 65 hours 47 minutes. How did I manage this? I’m not entirely sure myself honestly. Sometimes I’ll take longer than average to finish a game… usually not double the average though.
07/09/2010 at 18:36 Dean says:
Err, you left it on stood somewhere safe and went to have dinner a few times? I do that all the time… I try and remember to pause but often fail.
07/09/2010 at 16:04 deimos says:
Pfff. I used 2 male and 4 femsheps afterwards.
07/09/2010 at 16:05 Bhazor says:
So 80% of the population are idiots. I knew it.
07/09/2010 at 16:16 Freud says:
They aren’t even designing games anymore. They are designing focus groups.
07/09/2010 at 16:31 pipman3000 says:
80% of players had to put up with boring acting.
07/09/2010 at 16:31 Atalanta says:
I find this fascinating. Can you follow the storyline skipping the dialogues? Do you just rely upon the quest log to tell you what you need to do next?
The first time through a game I don’t usually skip dialogue and cutscenes, but if I replay it, I know what (generally) is happening and I can read subtitles faster than the characters can speak, so I tend to skip big chunks of dialogue.
07/09/2010 at 16:33 Atalanta says:
Gah, that was supposed to be @disperse on page 1.
07/09/2010 at 16:36 Ben says:
I played as a male Shepard… because I’m a bloke. The majority of gamers are and a majority just go with their own gender. No mystery there. I would like to have tried the female Shepard in ME2 but importing removed the option.
I played as a soldier on my first run. It’s easier, imho. You have access all the bionic abilities via your team and you’re more durable. You revive your more fragile companions so there’s an obvious tactical advantage in being a soldier yourself.
I have played as other classes but I really miss adrenaline rush. It’s too powerful an ability if anything.
07/09/2010 at 17:16 Rich says:
Yeah I played, as I often do, a bloke for precisely the same reason.
Barely on topic:
Been playing a lot of Super Smash Bros on the Wii, and while it’s (obviously) not an RPG, I find myself gravitating towards the male characters. Hell, I identify with Kirby* more than say, one of the princesses. Although I’m not sure though under what logic I’ve concluded that Kirby is male.
*OK, so maybe it’s the fact that he’s small, pink and largely spherical.
07/09/2010 at 18:55 Klaus says:
FWIW, if a gender/sex is not explicitly specified and there are no obvious clues, I assume every character is male.
07/09/2010 at 16:37 Nick says:
I’m willing to bet this sort of stat tracking in DA was what lead to the DA2 changes.
07/09/2010 at 17:06 CMaster says:
I know a lot of people are afraid of the next game being even more solidery.
That might even be what Bioware will do.
But if I was a game designer looking at those results, I think I’d actually tun around and flat-out remove the soldiers class entirely, make all the other classes more proficent with weapons (Shepard is meant to be a decorated solider after all) and let players be able to play with toys, while stilll able to do some fun shooty-bang.
07/09/2010 at 17:07 BlooDeck says:
I played as a FemShep Engineer. Does that make me unique?
07/09/2010 at 18:33 Klaus says:
It makes you great.
07/09/2010 at 23:59 Fwiffo says:
I’m afraid you appear to be in the mainstream as far as RPS goes though.
07/09/2010 at 17:12 danarchist says:
As an aside, at some point I found a mod for ME2 that caused all the “pings” on a planet to be pre marked with like this color coded circle. It basically took out the most annoying part of the game, you’d hit orbit on a planet and then you could just probe the colors of the minerals you needed. Anyone know what the heck that mod was called? Two formats later and its not on any of my backups :(
07/09/2010 at 17:24 coldwave says:
I play games as a male.
Haters gonna hate.
I have nothing against playing as a female, but there are just not many good games with good female character.
Recommend me one on PC or PS3.
07/09/2010 at 17:38 bleeters says:
Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2.
*cough*
(Also, no one lives forever, or beyond good and evil spring to mind)
07/09/2010 at 17:42 Nick says:
Also Oni and Mirrors Edge.
07/09/2010 at 18:06 Dood says:
Beyond Good & Evil
07/09/2010 at 18:49 Tei says:
Portal, Bayonetta, The Longest Journey, Lara Croft (if you are into 3d platforms), …
07/09/2010 at 19:17 coldwave says:
Played all of those.
Tei, you are actually serious about Bayonetta?
I absolutely hated it.
So far, my favourite game with a female character is *gasp* Septerra Core.
And Dreamfall.
07/09/2010 at 19:43 Psychopomp says:
“Tei, you are actually serious about Bayonetta?
I absolutely hated it.”
I’m afraid you have no soul :(
07/09/2010 at 21:06 Easydog says:
I loved Bayonetta. It was like having an acid trip during a She-Ra cartoon, except with less damage to my mental health.
07/09/2010 at 21:10 Dominic White says:
Bayonetta is widely considered the best in its genre by a long way – it’ll be quite some time before anything challenges it.
And as a character, she was pretty funny, too. Such a tiny attention span – she keeps interrupting the bosses generic exposition speeches by shooting them.
07/09/2010 at 22:29 Nick says:
Oh… forgot No one lives forever and NOLF 2.
08/09/2010 at 02:24 jaheira says:
Grace Nakamura in Gabriel Knights 2 and 3
07/09/2010 at 17:41 The Snee says:
Breaking news! Bioware statistics show that some people played Mass Effect 2 in a different way to you! The only possible response is be angry on the internet.
07/09/2010 at 18:13 Markachy says:
If that was on facebook I would be liking it furiously.
So…LIKE
07/09/2010 at 23:11 rollermint says:
WINNING POST OF THE ENTIRE MODERN AGE OF INTERNETZ.
07/09/2010 at 17:57 Urthman says:
The absolute weirdest thing in this thread is how many people seem to feel that their actual gender has some connection to which character they choose to play in a video game.
Serious question to people who said that: Does playing Tomb Raider feel weird to you because you’re not a girl? Or is it just because this is more of an RPG?
Personally, it would never occur to me that choosing the gender of my character had anything to do with me being a male. That seems like feeling you had to play a human character in Dragon Age because you personally are not a dwarf or an elf.
07/09/2010 at 18:29 Klaus says:
I played as a female Shepard because I thought the voice acting was better than the males. I did play as male Shepard a few times, but he is something I had to get used to. Actually I had to redesign him to look less jock-like and more average.
I like playing as females when the game allows anyhow, playing as some kick ass woman in what is essentially a male dominated genre/universe is simply more interesting to me and makes a better story.
That seems like feeling you had to play a human character in Dragon Age because you personally are not a dwarf or an elf.
Yeah, this. Though I could imagine some strange people would do that.
07/09/2010 at 18:40 Rich says:
For me, it’s more of an issue in dialogue-heavy games (my comment about Super Smash Bros. above, notwithstanding). I am playing Titan Quest as a female character at the moment, and I never had a problem with Tomb Raider (lack of choice there though).
As an aside, who here actually played Deus Ex (and Invisible War), as the dark haired white* JC (Alex), rather than any of the others? I know I did, and found it distinctly weird when I saw anyone playing as the white haired or black guy. I never even considered playing Invisible War as a woman (the facial models for the females were crap anyway).
*Now I come to think of it, it made Paul Denton look kind of Hispanic.
07/09/2010 at 19:32 pipman3000 says:
i am short, live mostly underground, and drink allot of beer so i might actually be a dwarf.
07/09/2010 at 20:16 Zenicetus says:
“The absolute weirdest thing in this thread is how many people seem to feel that their actual gender has some connection to which character they choose to play in a video game. ”
It does when there are romance options. Everyone is at least some degree affected by their personal wiring for attraction to same or opposite sex. Not just that, but what specific options are available for a romance partner.
I played through ME1 twice — once as male, the second as a female Shepard. Both times I romanced Liara because that scenario looked and felt right (to me). The potential partners for a female Shep in ME2 just didn’t do anything for me, so I imported my male Shep from the first game, not the female one. Besides I’d wanted to nail Tali since the first game. ;)
07/09/2010 at 21:03 Klaus says:
Perhaps, though in Dragon Age the only one I found I liked romancing was Alistair. The other three were kinda meh. In ME2 the only people I liked romancing was Jack and Tali. Jacob is boring, Garrus is kinda boring, and Thane dances on the line of boring.
07/09/2010 at 23:17 rollermint says:
The only weird thing that I don’t get is that some people just don’t get that its different strokes for different folks.
So some people don’t share your exact tastes and gaming philosophy….wow, big deal?
07/09/2010 at 23:23 Klaus says:
I don’t think anyone really cares, well maybe except for ‘The Juice.’ And while I am surprised by the 80% maleshep thing, this doesn’t seem like a case of AIM. It seems more like nerds arguing – and I use that word loosely – over which Doctor was best one (10th btw).
07/09/2010 at 23:33 Ben says:
Playing the Female Shepard didn’t feel weird, just less natural.
Possibly I identified with Shepard more because… that’s my name. Replying to Shepard is normal, but replying in a female voice, a bit jarring.
I wouldn’t actively avoid being a female character for this reason. I just picked the male Shepard without thinking about it and then I was stuck with it when I heard that the Female Shepard was better acted.
07/09/2010 at 18:04 teo says:
I find all the non-soldier classes boring. Hitting 1,2,3,4 etc. isn’t as satisfying as shooting people with your assault rifle
07/09/2010 at 18:22 Dante says:
You’re thinking of Mass Effect 1 my friend, before biotic powers became too cool for school
07/09/2010 at 18:21 Dante says:
Male Shepherd is great. Fie on the gender bending orthodoxy!
No, seriously, both Shepherd’s are great, and I’m more than a little tired of hearing the Femshep eulogising that seems to have been started up by a few guys who always play as women anyway.
07/09/2010 at 19:23 pipman3000 says:
i liked femsheps voice better.
07/09/2010 at 18:22 negative-space says:
The fact that most games have male protagonists, and that many female characters are terribly written, makes picking femshep a very refreshing choice. Female gamers usually have to put up with having to identify with a male avatar anyway. Maybe more good female protagonists will help the game industry in the long run by pulling in a broader audience, since it seems from these comments that there are plenty who need to play their own gender to immerse themselves effectively.
Now I’m expecting my Shepard to go through an inexplicable sex change when I start up ME3, if they’re making good on applying this stat harvest. Not gonna rage on the people who choose the most generic option, it’d just suck if companies use these stats to homogenize games. But hey, Bioware says they’d want to make non-soldier options more appealing, that’s more constructive. I imagine even if 80% of players choose soldier, the fact that they are given various choices as a feature is part of what makes the game sell, so getting rid of alternate options as a cheap way out might hurt sales and hype? Even if we all end up choosing the same thing, we get a kick out of choosing.
The high completion rate is amazing. I’m pretty bad with completing games (how the fuck have I not completed Portal?), but ME1 and ME2 somehow got me breezing through ‘em. Wonder what exactly motivates that.
I actually miss the elevator chats.
07/09/2010 at 18:23 2GunCohen says:
I sense we are all going to play a female shepard and choose something other then soldier.
Just to mess with Bioware! !!!
07/09/2010 at 18:38 Dean says:
Actually it might be fun to do that same survey on here and see how the results differ?
07/09/2010 at 18:43 Rich says:
Yay, internet surveys, the most accurate an unbiased method of determining a consensus known to man… or at least that’s what our results tell us.
07/09/2010 at 21:32 Easydog says:
I for one would like to see how the RPS readership differs from the general populace. An internet survey may not be accurate but it’s easy to get into a nerd rage over.
07/09/2010 at 19:10 manveruppd says:
I’ve been thinking this for a long, long time actually – you games journos get to play games a lot more than us common mortals, so you’ve probably gotten inhumanly good at them! That’s why I never listen to review criticisms of a game being too short or too easy – you all have a very very skewed perspective!
Now, if journos call a game too difficult, then I KNOW it must be difficult! :p
07/09/2010 at 19:17 Marcin says:
Wow, they really thought ME2 came out better than ME1? Guess I’m skipping the last one until it’s at the proper $5 price point … :/
07/09/2010 at 19:20 RyePunk says:
I played a male soldier. But that was what I was in the first game! It was continuity. But then I played thru as a Naughty evil engineer guy. And a whatever-sauce female vanguard.
Definitely not liking the magic or tech stuff. But thats mainly because every skill shares its cooldown with every other skill. Seriously. What the fuck.
07/09/2010 at 19:38 geldonyetich says:
80% male and mostly Soldier I can understand: it’s the default setting.
However, my theory that the majority of the players just ran with the default setting without changing a thing seems wrong by the merit that 80% used the face customization.
My class was the least played, eh? My originality complex likes that a lot.
07/09/2010 at 19:52 Jimbo says:
Doesn’t it default to Male and Soldier?
That these stats will shape future development is kinda depressing and I don’t think they’re being as smart as they think they are. This approach will eventually just lead to everybody making the same game – the game that appeals to the single largest section of the market. You then have all of those games competing for that same group of players, whilst the rest of the market isn’t adequately catered for.
This is why your many, many cover-based TPSs generally cap out at ~3 million sales, whilst something like Assassin’s Creed – which doesn’t really conform to what is considered ‘most popular’, and has virtually no similar competition (stabby, open-world, historical fiction) – is capable of selling 8 or 9 million.
I think Bioware will find that if they just blindly move towards whatever is ‘most popular’, they will simply find themselves suddenly surrounded by competitors where they currently have very few.
07/09/2010 at 20:05 FunkyBadger says:
First character in any game/system tends to be a fighter/soldier – mainly because they’re simple, and the moer subtle characters take longer to learn how to play.
Having said that, Male Infiltrator first, then female err, psionic, whatever they were called.
Loving the irony of the “it’s about roleplay, so I can’t play a female” argument.
07/09/2010 at 20:06 0mar says:
Playing as a renegade male soldier was one of the best gaming experiences I ever made. I felt like the voice actor did a great job if you made mostly renegade choices. I’ve played all 4 types, that is, paragon/renegade male and paragon/renegade female. The paragon male felt the weakest with respect to voice acting. The female voice actor did a great job regardless.
Secondly, the soldier class is easily the best class in the game, IMO. I’ve played soldier, infiltrator, vanguard and adept. Most of the time, you’re going to be using your gun. Soldier has access to the best guns, especially if you have the firepower DLC. That Mattock is ridiculous, you can easily kill two guys in a single clip, even on insanity.
Finally, I don’t understand how people could play ME2 without an import save. ME1+2 is what all RPGs should be. Not stat-grinding, loot-hoarding dungeon crawls, but actually playing a role. My original Shepard was one of the more nuanced characters I’ve ever roleplayed and it felt seamless. He was mostly renegade, but compassionate towards his crew. He didn’t tolerate fuck-ups and generally had little patience for people trying to justify their actions. He also dispensed some major extrajudicial justice. The best moment I had roleplaying my character was allowing Ashley to die, even though he had a budding romance with her. Jeopardizing the mission was unacceptable to him.
07/09/2010 at 20:20 Gritz says:
I’d feel weird about playing a female Shepard too, if ME was actually felt like a role playing game. But I didn’t feel any need to identify with the character at all. Shepard was just someone I watched between action sequences, and the female version had a better voice so I chose her.
07/09/2010 at 20:21 Gritz says:
And, shockingly, the reply button fails again! Never change, RPS.
07/09/2010 at 20:20 David says:
I would guess that they mean 80% of playthroughs, not players, are male Shep. I mean, they do advertise him as male, and on the cover of the game he is male. I played 2 Female and 1 Male. I don’t know why, but for some reason I’ve always found the male voice acting to be infuriating. I always played males as a paragons, maybe the I just think the paragon dialogue is terrible. Jennifer Hale on the other hand is amazing, and I just love the idea of a strong renegade femme kicking ass. The only drawback was her romantic options- Garrus, Thane, and Jacob. Jacob was an asshole whom I didn’t like personally, but he was human and ripped so I chose him on my Insanity playthrough just to get the achievement. Dumped him promptly after the suicide mission. Garrus and Thane? I role played my character too much. Just couldn’t take it seriously. Can we has some LGBT Shepards (that give the achievement and are more than just a cutscene, and not asari)? I really wanted to see Jack and Shep get it on man. Cmon ME3.
08/09/2010 at 03:53 bleeters says:
In the future, inter-racial sex with hideous mandible aliens is more acceptable than homosexuality, apparently.
07/09/2010 at 21:06 Luttman23 says:
female shepard rules.
07/09/2010 at 21:11 Bob says:
Other peoples preferences don’t make one iota of difference to my enjoyment. If playing a male Shepard, and soldier to boot, puts me in the idiot category, so be it. The Geth who’s head I’m about to remove with a round from a sniper rifle would probably agree. :D
07/09/2010 at 21:15 King Toko says:
I would of played as one of the alien races if I had choice maybe in Mass Effect 3.
Anyway if you played Mass Effect 1 your going to play as the same character again so Mass Effect 1 stats would of been more interesting.
I think I played more than 60 hours in my game because their so much to do.
07/09/2010 at 21:28 Easydog says:
Meh, the great thing about Mass Effect is that it allows me to play the game the way I want to play, even though I seem to play it differently to most (Fem Shep Engineer, who hates Tali and is saving herself for romancing Mordin in ME3).
I may have edged up the ‘time completed’ as well by spending stupid amount of hours mining. Getting near to all the metal in the galaxy onboard.
I’ve suspected these statistics for some time from talking to friends and the internet so I’m not shocked, I just hope they keep allowing choices and don’t tailor the experience for the majority. I don’t want my gameplay choice limited to what’s designed to appeal to 14yr old American males. But thus far Bioware has done an awesome job of allowing me to see the story I want to see. Not perfect, not by a long shot, but pretty damn good.
07/09/2010 at 22:01 sebmojo says:
Personally I liked all the ME2 minigames, including planet scanning. Scanning was sort of a vague, meditative thing to do when you feel like a slow period, like grinding in WoW. But I know that puts me in the minority, and I’m fine with that.
Similarly, saying “Mass Effect 1 was awesome and the sequel mediocre” is a perfectly respectable opinion – but it puts you in the minority.
07/09/2010 at 22:23 MadMatty says:
Male Shep looks like Lorenzo Lamas (Llamas?)
07/09/2010 at 22:24 Teliach says:
They must be to busy reading numbers to put a DLC that works on the PC, how can they release somehting that does not work and after the froums explode they are “testing a fix”? No one doble clicks the files to see if they work at bioware….
07/09/2010 at 22:30 Zenicetus says:
Yep, “Lair of the Shadow Broken”… just writes itself, don’t it? I’m sure they’ll have it fixed by the end of the day. But still, an .exe file with all zeros? How does that get past QC and onto their servers?
07/09/2010 at 22:29 Elyvern says:
I’d play femshep more if the male LIs weren’t so cringe-worthy. “Heavy risk, the priiiiiiize” Jacob just puts me off like nothing and non-humans like Thane and Garrus just doesn’t cut it. Subsequently, all my 3 malesheps romances no one but Miranda. And yes, I’m one of those PC players that think of nothing ignoring Grunt’s loyalty quest.
07/09/2010 at 22:37 Wildcard says:
I played em-shep for ME1 because I knew no better but having read about the virtues of fem-shep in the run up to 2 (from RPS comments no less) I took her for a spin in ME2. I have to say on balance the voice acting was far superior playing as fem-shep imho.
07/09/2010 at 22:58 Lacero says:
I started as manshep and his voice in the cutscene at the start drove me MAD.
Also I skipped a lot more than 15% of dialogue, with subtitles on I’d not pressed space so much since tribes! ;)
07/09/2010 at 23:18 Vagabond says:
I played a soldier in ME1 because as far as I could tell the main difference if I played another class would be that rather than quickly killing enemies with my gun while they shot back, I could watch them float helplessly in the air while the died much more slowly. Fun for a while, but after 30+ hours I’d rather they just died quickly. When I started ME2, I was given no obvious indication that there would be any difference to how the classes would play compared to ME1, so I stuck with Soldier. Perhaps if there was a tutorial that let you sample some of the powers available to each class before you chose, I might have picked differently (I’d almost certainly have gone for the slo-mo sniper powaz). As it stands though, soldier is the obvious default class that wont prove to be a chore to play once you’re 10 hours in and it’s too late to restart.
07/09/2010 at 23:26 xthetenth says:
I value my ears. That simple. If I got as dramatic an increase in acting quality, I’d play flagrantly-homoerotic-shep or broodmother-shep. If you don’t have the confidence that you possess the merest scrap of masculinity so you can’t play a game with vastly improved acting because you can’t contemplate seperating yourself from your character, fine, but don’t act like that’s somehow a good thing.
07/09/2010 at 23:33 Klaus says:
If I got as dramatic an increase in acting quality, I’d play flagrantly-homoerotic-shep or broodmother-shep.
I’d play both of those regardless.
07/09/2010 at 23:56 WMSkyfall says:
You assume that everyone who played a male Shepard used the “generic macho Man!Shep” face. My Shepard is unapologetically male; I built him using the character face generator in Mass Effect 1. The Shepard on the box art is an imposter.
08/09/2010 at 00:06 Fwiffo says:
I don’t need to write a defensive essay about how I’m PC or secure in my sexuality or even that I like gawping at polygonal buttocks or female is the canon Shepard to be one.
Nope. I’m justified in 5 words: Manshep’s voice acting is shite.
08/09/2010 at 00:28 otterdude says:
ManShep + Engineer + Tali Romance = Me
Played this game for a great role playing experience, not for ass. Ass is a nice bonus, every once in a while, though.
Also, they should show what romances were chosen most. :o I demand a pie chart!
08/09/2010 at 01:57 Layla Shepard / Leela Shepard says:
Played as female shepard twice.
I like T&A
08/09/2010 at 02:36 E says:
Played as a male Adept, then a male Vanguard, then a female Infiltrator. Default appearances all around. All three being imports from ME1, with different backstories and Paragon/Renegade alignments.
Did every loyalty mission and most side missions and DLC content on each playthrough, the average playtime was 35 hours.
The mixed Paragon/Renegade Vanguard was ace. That’s who I’m bringing into ME3 first. Seriously, SWOOSH-BAM. What’s not to like about Biotics?
1. To the people talking about staring at asses for 33 hours; seriously, is that what you were doing?
2. I think one of the reasons the male soldier was most popular was because Bioware set it up with their trailers and people just went with it. In ME1, it took four clicks to generate a non-soldier with the default appearance; one to just start the game.
Anyone else notice how Shepard always has an assault rifle in his/her hands during in-game cutscenes? Man, that was jarring. Shows how Bioware planned it.
08/09/2010 at 02:47 acidchunk says:
I refuse to play a John Shepard of any spelling that is not voiced by Joe Flanigan.
08/09/2010 at 03:04 deliciousandjuicypileofshit says:
No. Why should I play as a female when I can play as a male?
(p.s. Infiltrator gon’ blow your head off mate)
08/09/2010 at 03:12 deliciousandjuicypileofshit says:
As for the apparently crappy voice acting; well I never noticed because I probably skipped 80% of the convos (why wait for the guy to say it when you can plow through the subtitles in half a second?)
08/09/2010 at 04:13 Zak says:
The Soldier class is the ranch dressing of Mass Effect 2 character classes. Interpret that however you like.
08/09/2010 at 05:05 DarthBenedict says:
I’m amazed at how many people seem to think not pretending to be a girl in a videogame makes you a meathead fratboy.
08/09/2010 at 05:21 Vinraith says:
Given a choice between my male paragon soldier from ME1 and my female renegade vanguard from ME1, it was easy to go with the latter. I couldn’t tell you whether that’s because of Hale’s great voice acting (it’s certainly better than the male voice actor, but then like a lot of others I tend to read rather than listen), that renegade is markedly more satisfying to me than paragon, or because vanguard is more interesting than soldier. I’d suggest that it’s a bit of all three.
08/09/2010 at 06:01 privacy says:
Don’t see the word privacy in the comment section. Hope this is not the new norm.
Ok, so maybe you don’t mind games phoning home, but what if this was statistics of your usage of applications?
08/09/2010 at 07:05 Nick says:
wasn’t there an option to turn stats tracking off? I mean, there was in Dragon Age but I honestly can’t remember with ME2.
08/09/2010 at 08:51 bleeters says:
Just to mention, the lair of the shadow broker dlc comes with a couple of ways to leviate tedious mining. There’s a console which, for a small credit loss (650 or so), will give the location of a planet rich in a specific type of mineral. Also, there’s another console which continually stashes supplies of apparently random minerals for you to collect. Quite useful, I suppose.
(Also, the dlc itself is actually entertaining, and lengthy. I particularly liked a section where I defended a door as it was being slowly hacked. “Remember the good old days, when you could just pour omni-gel on everything?”)
08/09/2010 at 10:11 Alex says:
I took 46.3 hours according to Steam. I think about three of those were dedicated to putting a beacon on every single square inch of a planet for fun (not to mention the penis I drew on one of them).
08/09/2010 at 10:26 A says:
Personally I believe that “What in the Hell were you lot doing?” can be explained with going out to the loo while the infinite and also infinitely boring conversation fluff took place, falling asleep from another tirade of “So you see, you must help me find item/person/ship so that you save me/the universe/a very important person and if you do so, I will reward you greatly/give you a superduper item/hint at havesing mad seksings wissu” and waking up another 1-2 hours later.
Quite frankly, I think ME playtime could easily be cut in half would all of the dialogue just pop up instantly and completely as a box of text.
As much as it’s nice to be in the age of voiced dialogue, I have found as someone who is a very speedy reader that it bugs the living crap out of me to be finished with what the guy/girl is trying to say 90% faster than the time it takes them to spit it out as voice actor.
And quite frankly, most of the time it’s just not worth listening to them.
Immersion shmershion, I quite honestly at some point just want to get on with it so I get my next level up / reward / skillpoint.
I rather keep the acting restricted to the truly important plotpoints and cutscenes.
As for male solder, I personally feel this is a perfectly normal reflection of society’s no-risk / defensive living attitude of just going what seems the most simple / mainstream / uncomplicated / easy choice to go with. I know we as gamers love to think we’re extra special, but the truth is that – ESPECIALLY in the day and age of the console gamer – the amount of hurr-durr-age is just as tremendous with people sitting at their desk as it is when you walk out your front door.
Also sexual identity. And no, I don’t want to hear all your pretentious self-denial “I’m neithr gay nor sexually confused” lies about how you can choose to play girls when given a choice without being suspicious. It’s one thing for Tomb Raider aka the Swinging Tit Sim, it’s another when you’d rather feel like you’re a pretty pigtailed sorceress in nice silky robes that’s gonna rescue her that hunk of a hero next. As a real life male. Srsly.
Moving on..
08/09/2010 at 12:29 Kadayi says:
Maybe stick to peggle? It’s all points and flashing lights and none of that plot type stuff that seems to irk you so much
08/09/2010 at 11:41 Canadajezus says:
I played a male soldier. I also played a female vanguard and a bunch of other stuff. I enjoyed the soldier class the most. Honestly it was the most fun class for me if that makes my tastes pedestrian so be it.
Then again maybe i just thought the most fun class was the most fun
08/09/2010 at 12:42 JKjoker says:
I dont know why everyone is so surprised, I played the game twice both as a Male Soldier and Female Adept, i tried most of the other classes before i settled on them and i had the most fun by FAR as the soldier (i used my squad abilities Overload and Incinerate as my own tho), if anyone asked me which class to play i would say the soldier
i ended up hacking the Adept to use assault rifles because i was so bored of watching my cooldown timer (the shield/armor/health system that makes most of the abilities useless until you damage the enemies to the point they are almost death was the worst offender)
about the male/female Sheppard, its true the female one has more feeling to her lines but i think she is a little overrated, the male one works just as well and had less disgusting alien sex options
08/09/2010 at 15:34 pipman3000 says:
not true maleshep has to screw an alien in a hazmat suit.
08/09/2010 at 13:17 SirSpankalot says:
So I basically flat my stats our since I always play games like this twice: One good (male) and one evil (female) playthrough.
Always funnier to be a mean bad-ass broad.
09/09/2010 at 02:52 Hidden_7 says:
Why is a male necessarily a meathead jock? Or why is a female not? Meathead jock is a character type, not a gender.
My female Shepard was way more of a jock, as well as being much more aggressive and unyielding compared to my male Shepard.
09/09/2010 at 08:43 Traped says:
I remember having clocked-in 130 hours of game time for Dragon Age.
Turned out that I was just leaving the game on pause or the pause menu when I was just going to get drunk for the night or simply through a day at work…
And it did add up all this :)
09/09/2010 at 10:22 Male Shepard says:
why the hell the 80% percentage of male shepard players outrageous? Sorry but only weirdos identifies with females, and 120% of gamers are male
10/09/2010 at 17:37 N says:
Wow, only weirdoes identify with females? Color me a weirdo, all female and shit, gosh. Also, you can ROLE PLAY (ie. PLAY A ROLE aka SOMETHING THAT IS NOT YOU) as whatever you want – it’s no more suspicious than an actor playing a part. You, sir, betray a tremendous lack of imagination and empathy. You have fun with that.
I’m really curious about all these people that find a dude playing as a girl “suspicious.” What about girl gamers who are stuck playing DudeBro McAssaultRifle in game after game- that’s not “suspicious” at all, right? Just par for the course. That in and of itself honestly doesn’t bother me; it’s people’s shite attitudes, like this fellow’s, that annoy me far more than playing Jockface von Ripplepecs in title after title.
I’ll tell you, though, it IS a relief having the CHOICE to play a female character, and not have them be in any way neutered into damsel-in-distress pretty princessdom or forced into idiotic strips of cloth that are impractically supposed to serve as armor. FemShep kicks ass, takes names, and is armored up for it. Extremely refreshing.
12/09/2010 at 13:49 Yes Male Shepard says:
girls can identify in male characters, male can’t
I think a girl playing a “manly” game is not the type of girl who would like to identify with a heroine anyway
10/09/2010 at 21:35 utzelgrutzel says:
I played through ME1 as an infiltrator and tried to recreate my character in ME2 (lost savegame). Before reaching Mordins clinic I already deleted that character and started new as a soldier. I can snipe nearly as good, but now I can also be in a firefight for more than 2 minutes and still have some ammunition. I guess that’s what the invisibility is good for, getting ammo when you ran out even for your pistol…
12/09/2010 at 03:02 vine says:
Unrelated but the IGN site is positively hideous. Hire a decent designer IGN, and take a page from RPS.
15/10/2010 at 20:55 arik says:
Maybe those players that completed the game 28 times have OCD
and they have to finish the game again and again and again and again