By Jim Rossignol on March 4th, 2012 at 5:54 pm.
So I am busy playing through Mass Effect 3 at the moment, with my collected thoughts on the events, happenings, and systems therein to appear on Tuesday. I’ve been doing a bit of retrospective browsing over the first two games, too, and comparing events in those to the events in the third game. This process led me to wonder this: what has been your favourite event in the games so far? And why?
As a follow up question: who is your favoured character? Garrus seems like the obvious choice for acerbic/murderous sidekick, and I generally take him on missions for the sound of his voice, but I think Thane was the highlight of Mass Effect 2. Anyway: speak your brains, show your working.
04/03/2012 at 17:58 Alec Meer says:
Easy.
04/03/2012 at 18:07 Casimir Effect says:
For a moment I thought you were describing Liara, HIYO!
04/03/2012 at 18:28 Lambchops says:
Exactly what I was going to post.
04/03/2012 at 19:17 Caleb367 says:
Dang, my thoughts exactly.
05/03/2012 at 09:53 Dinger says:
That’s my second-favorite Mordin dialogue bit. The absolute best, however, only occurs if Ms. Shephard pursues the Garrus love interest angle.
Y’all say you love Mordin and Garrus, but how many of you loved ‘em that much?
05/03/2012 at 12:36 JohnH says:
Yes, +1 for Mordin!
04/03/2012 at 17:58 ch4os1337 says:
The Wrex and Garrus wombo combo are easily my favourite characters.
My favourite event was at the end of Mass Effect 1 where you interact with the Reapers for the first time and in Mass Effect 2 the Shadow Broker DLC quest.
04/03/2012 at 19:20 sinister agent says:
Agreed. Wrex and Garrus were by far my favourite pair in the first game. I spent half the second game thinking “WHATEVER GET TO WREX GODDAMN IT”. I enjoyed their bickering (and the fact that Wrex always, always comes out on top), and Wrex was easily the smartest person you could take with you.
In the second… well, Thane was good, but I found his silly flashback voice bits very annoying. Overall my favourite was Mordin. I disliked him at first, thinking he was a cock, but grew to respect and even care about him through his character arc. Complexity!
Miranda was well drawn too – she was a horrible bitch, but wasn’t actually cruel or evil, and was intelligent and professional enough to work with you even though she obviously hated you. I hated her as a person, but she was an excellent character.
Favourite events: Speaking to the AI on Ilos, and everything that happens from there (minus (a) the clumsy bossfight and (b) the fact that Sheperd survives). In the second, seeing Wrex leap up and brush someone aside to shout “Sheperd! My friend!” when he sees you. Seriously, I love that big lunk.
That and helping Garrus get his revenge. Most other times I erred on the non-murdery side of things, but fuck that guy. Treachery earns you a lot worse than death. Oh, and Jacob teasing Tali. Never knew he was such a bitch.
04/03/2012 at 19:29 Geen says:
Yes. So much win. Wrex and Garrus are the BEST. Hands down, argument over.
04/03/2012 at 19:32 mouton says:
I also liked the nerdy not-really-hot Liara from ME1. She made no sense in ME2 at all. Maybe she does in that Lair thing, but I never got to playing it thanks to EA never ever reducing the DLC price.
I liekd some of the ME2 crew, but I really hated all the “let’s hump all the aliens” fanservice crap they pulled there. In ME you could only boink the Asari, but it was strongly justified.
04/03/2012 at 19:36 ThTa says:
“Oh, Tali was very intelligent, and the smurf was educated, but neither of them would have made the right decision at the end (ie: saving the goddamn universe is more important than some arsehole politicians, guys).”
Actually, Tali suggested I let the Council die.
But that’s mostly because I also had Liara with me, there. They can’t both suggest the same thing, so they let the most “good/naive” one suggest letting the council live, where the other one would suggest letting them die. Wrex being the least good/naive, Liara and Kaidan both being more good/naive than Tali, Garrus and Ashley being stuck somewhere in between. So if I had Wrex with me, she would’ve suggested I let them live.
05/03/2012 at 04:58 TheEndlessGrey says:
My favorite banter was on.. Noveria? The frozen one where you have to get a garage key from one of several moral choice options. Garrus (who was still on the “by the book” citadel security side of the personality spectrum) and Wrex had a conversation that went something like:
Wrex: Why don’t we just break his neck and take the key?
Garrus: We can’t do that!
Wrex: Sure we can, look at him. He’s never lifted anything heavier than a stack of papers.
05/03/2012 at 13:40 Styles says:
Another vote for Garrus and Wrex! Hilarious conversations, awesome characters, badass combatants …loved it.
So pissed off that Wrex isn’t back as a crew member you can have in M.E.3. Why not?!?! Nobody I know killed Wrex in M.E.1 …why would you? He was awesome.
05/03/2012 at 17:03 zind says:
WREX AND GARRUS FOREVER.
As for favorite moment, nothing will top my badass femshep headbutting a Krogan “noble” or whatever, followed by the shaman’s laugh.
“I like this human!
She understands!”
04/03/2012 at 18:00 Unaco says:
The whole FOX news/Alien sex/pretend psychologists/sodomy/morons thing was pretty good. I got a chuckle out of it at least. Barely played the actual games though.
05/03/2012 at 03:02 Catfishsupreme says:
That was pretty funny watching them bicker about a game, Until they blew it out of proportion.
04/03/2012 at 18:04 Mobius says:
Jim, is the actual real purpose of this article to show off that you are “busy playing through Mass Effect 3 at the moment”?
But ah the memories. I’d say Miranda but then everyone’s going to say it so I’ll look just like any other shallow teenager.
Oh well.
04/03/2012 at 18:08 Jim Rossignol says:
“Jim, is the actual real purpose of this article to show off that you are “busy playing through Mass Effect 3 at the moment”?”
Yes.
04/03/2012 at 18:08 PieInTheSky says:
You monster
04/03/2012 at 18:30 GreenArchon says:
Monster indeed.
04/03/2012 at 18:37 ThTa says:
He’s not the only one, though!
I have it on good authority that Future-Me is busy playing ME3, as well.
…I’m terribly sad. Won’t someone give me a hug? :(
(Preferably you Jim; yes, nice and tight. Don’t mind the other man trying to pry that disk out of your PC.)
04/03/2012 at 18:38 Nemon says:
You pair of skis, you.
(oh yeah? Google it)
04/03/2012 at 21:28 The Sombrero Kid says:
People who pirate games on xbox & ps3 are also playing it right now which is why piracy is killing the PC 0_o
04/03/2012 at 18:05 Icyicy9999 says:
I liked exploring things on the Mako.
04/03/2012 at 19:00 Eddy9000 says:
Yeah that was fun, but scanning the planets in ME2 added to the narrative better imho.
04/03/2012 at 19:38 mouton says:
I replayed ME1 some time ago and I must say Mako isn’t thaaat horrible on most planets. Its only the jagged edgy high mountains that give pain. And even there, there are usually reasonable routes if you just go to the objectives. Only completeist fools like me who MUST get that ore behind local alps really suffer from mako. It also helps if you use maps from the wiki.
04/03/2012 at 19:45 Koozer says:
Mako exploration was my favourite part. Seeing the first Thresher Maw burst out of the ground in front of you was a sight to behold.
04/03/2012 at 22:11 DigitalSignalX says:
+1 Mako love. It gave the universe a sense of scale so much better then any of the levels in the second game. The utterly magnificent sky backgrounds made up for relatively boring surfaces and repetitive structure types. I wish I could sit on a mountain in BDTS and ride the asteroid all the way in.
04/03/2012 at 23:55 gwathdring says:
I loved that thing. Mako 360s, Mako flips, and driving up nearly vertical terrain was fun. Of course, the environments in which this occurred were terminally boring and redundant. But they could be quite lovely and large at the same time. There was something pleasant about rolling over massive and mostly empty stretches of planet to find a small smuggling hideout.
04/03/2012 at 18:07 Vinraith says:
Why is Dr. Chakwas sleeping with Thane?
04/03/2012 at 18:09 PieInTheSky says:
Was about to ask the same thing.
04/03/2012 at 18:31 Vithren says:
Isn’t this one gigantic spoiler? I _try_ to avoid everything spoilerish I can about ME3 and here I am, without any kind of warning, given one.
Not cool, RPS. Not cool.
04/03/2012 at 18:45 Spoon says:
I think that’s actually someone’s femshep. You could wear the doctor clothing as your casual outfit, and the hair is too dark for Chakwas.
04/03/2012 at 19:06 Vinraith says:
@Spoon
Yes, that was the joke.
04/03/2012 at 21:01 Doth Messar says:
@Vinraith
You suck McBain!
04/03/2012 at 18:09 Miked says:
When Jack, my favourite character, was killed on approach to the final mission – killed by lasers because I did not upgrade the Normandy armour. It was so difficult not to reload and I felt slightly empty after her death.
It could have been worse though. To have her taken away by bees would have been mildly heartbreaking.
04/03/2012 at 18:09 PieInTheSky says:
Wrex………
04/03/2012 at 18:22 erutan says:
Yeah, Wrex was my fav ME character – basically always kept him in the party (swapping out other nonhumans as situations seemed to warrant). Krogans in general amused me in ME2 (headbutting, the fish mission, etc) tho Mordin was the only new playable character in ME2 I enjoyed as much as the originals.
While the second game was arguably tighter, the first one felt more coherant. There was a difference between feeling like you are on the trail of someone (with detours of course) vs. randomly going around learning little backstory bits about a random crew before one big event. I also feel the large crew size + unlocking a last ability when you can barely use it was a little off in terms of a feeling of esprit de corps vs the original, though the game structure was nice for long character explorations.
04/03/2012 at 20:39 AlwaysRight says:
…… Shepard.
(ignore erutan and this works fine)
04/03/2012 at 18:10 goatmonkey says:
Wrex and Jack, hope you get the chance to run with both in your party in 3 (noone say if this is possible)
As annoying as the Mako was the huge traversable environments from the story missions really added to the sense of scale and place that the 2 seemed to miss.
Whole finale of the first game is my favourite part of the series so far point of no return onwards.
04/03/2012 at 18:12 Luciphear says:
I can but agree with what’s already been said. Garrus is good, but Thane was the most interesting in my opinion. I did take Mordin with me quite many times too though, since he has some interesting solutions to things involving violence.
Although, I recently replayed Mass Effect 1 and 2 in order to get a save I’m very comfortable with, and instead of just picking Garrus on every mission I picked squad members appropriate to the current mission at hand. If it was geth and/or technological things I’d pick Legion and Tali, or Tali and Garrus etc.
If it was pure combat, I’d pick Garrus and Grunt, sometimes even Zaeed over Garrus for the variation.
Assassinations I went with Garrus and Thane, and sometimes Kasumi over Garrus. Mordin for scientific missions, like against the collectors etc.
Although, I did pick Legion for Tali’s loyalty mission. Totally worth it.
04/03/2012 at 19:42 mouton says:
“Although, I did pick Legion for Tali’s loyalty mission. Totally worth it. ”
Huh, didn’t think about it. I did that mission before getting Legion, due to the fact those damn time constraints after getting him. Eh.
05/03/2012 at 13:24 Lenderz says:
“Although, I did pick Legion for Tali’s loyalty mission. Totally worth it.”
Couldn’t agree more, I did that in my second play through, was most entertaining, I wonder if the Quarians will make mention of that in 3, as they’ve now had a Geth aboard their flotilla and must now realise there are ways of dealing with Geth other than with a gun.
04/03/2012 at 18:13 frenz0rz says:
Nngghhah! Why does the sodding game have to come out three days later in Europe than in the US? The internet is going to be full of rampant spoilers and some asshat is going to ruin the story for me. I just know it.
Ah, well. At least I dont live in Japan – they get it nearly two weeks later!
Edit: Oh, and in answer to the question: Garrus. Garrus, Garrus, Garrus. It would not be Mass Effect without him.
04/03/2012 at 19:12 Eddy9000 says:
The entire script including ending was leaked onto the internet already, so I just wouldn’t use a computer for the next 3 days if I was you.
04/03/2012 at 21:30 westyfield says:
It’s alright. I’m shutting myself off from the internet starting on Tuesday, because a) it’ll be at least two weeks before I’m ready to start ME3 (ME1/2 playthroughs are taking longer than anticipated) and b) EXAMS OH SHIT EXAMS.
So there’s that.
04/03/2012 at 21:49 Edradour says:
Same here bloody exams…every time a mass effect game comes out it collides with my exams :/
I screwed up one of my exams in first semester because of me2 dont want that to happen again :D
Favourite moment? Ending of the first game, dat Song i dunno it really hit something in me i dunno what feeling it was…it just overwhelmed me there never before have i expierenced something like this
05/03/2012 at 01:52 RogerMellie says:
@frenz0rz
“Ah, well. At least I dont live in Japan – they get it nearly two weeks later!”
You sure? Origin is telling me it’s coming out on the 8th.
05/03/2012 at 02:00 frenz0rz says:
@RogerMellie
I was going off Wikipedia, which claims it is the 6th for North America, 8th for Australia, 9th for Europe and 15th for Japan. Perhaps “nearly two weeks” was a slight exaggeration, but 9 days is a bit of a piss take.
Then again, the Giantbomb release list doesnt even mention the Japan release, so I’ve no idea where the Wiki date has come from.
05/03/2012 at 09:18 RogerMellie says:
@frenz0rz
So it does…. Sorry for the late reply – been stuck in moderation purgatory. After some detective work, it looks like the English version on PC will be available on the 8th with the Japanese versions coming on the 15th to PS3 and XBOX. That’s some quick translating. Cheers for the heads up.
And on topic – my favourite to have on the team was probably Kasumi. I’d line up a sniper shot and then just before pulling the trigger she’d appear behind them and shiv them. Class girl. In terms of personality…. then probably one more vote for Mordin – After killing his ex colleague he says “I taught him everything he knew not everything I knew” – loved that line :)
04/03/2012 at 18:13 RagingLion says:
From 2 I actually really liked all the ethical dilemmas that came up out of going round the Krogan world and it genuinely got me thinking and I thought it was a good exploration of those kinds of racial themes.
I loved walking into the bar during Samara loyalty mission where you have to get the attention of her sister and I felt like I had all these possibilities about how to go about doing that in this place that felt alive, with lots of things going on (in general all of the big space bars are some of my favourite things – since that’s just a setting I love to get immersed in).
The planet where you have to hide in the shade was great cos it was just in the textual info about the planet about it having high radiation and yet it actually had a gameplay effect – felt like the sci-fi aspect of ME game alive with that level.
The final mission is the other thing I can immediately remember – it felt like it mattered that much more because it had been built up the whole game and you knew it was coming – also, I knew I could lose my squad members permanently – I lost Mordin :(, but I’ll keep going with that save.
Edit: Just remembered from the first game that wandering the Citadel was the real highlight – such a fleshed out place. Also, meeting the Elcor for the first time had me in stitches.
04/03/2012 at 18:15 Azhrarn says:
I rather like Garrus, Wrex, Tali and Liara in both games, but I don’t think I could call any of them my true favorite, the games just wouldn’t feel the same without them. I actually missed Wrex in ME2, and was quite relieved to see him on Tuchanka during my games. For ME2 I rather like Mordin’s sense of humour and my discussions with Samara are also rather fun, and even though she doesn’t have much dialog, I rather like Kasumi too. Reminiscing on her old heists is cool, with all the mementoes in her quarters.
Simply put, I rather like most characters Bioware put in the ME games, the only 2 I didn’t really care for are Jacob and Miranda, although I’ve warmed up a bit to Miranda over time, Jacob really feels out of place.
05/03/2012 at 03:19 Catfishsupreme says:
Every game has to have a black character, it’s just a thing to avoid “Offensive lack of racial variation”
04/03/2012 at 18:15 DiTH says:
Legion for sure!!!
I spent the whole first game thinking the Geth as pure Evul and was thinking that Quarians should get their HW back.But Legion on ME2 changed a lot of that story.If he wasnt a machine but another biologic race you could say that they are the victims of all this ;P
05/03/2012 at 11:23 Harlander says:
You still can say that. In the description “sentient machine”, the important word is “sentient”
04/03/2012 at 18:15 .backslash says:
From the first, the whole Ilos/Citadel ending sequence was very well done. Many games make you plough through a whole lot of faceless mooks before the final boss without any reasonable justification, but it works pretty well in ME. Also, it had an interesting infodump in the middle and I very much enjoy infodumps.
In ME2, maybe Mordin’s loyalty mission, although the paragon choices in it are consistently the dumber ones, or Jack’s. I never cared about her as a character, but it was interesting to see what made her the way she is. And I found it funny that hers is one of the least violent loyalty missions in the game.
Favourite characters are Wrex and Mordin, respectively, cause they’re awesome. Liara’s alright as well.
04/03/2012 at 23:58 gwathdring says:
I loved the ending sequence from landing on Illos all the way through to encountering Sarren at the top. I hated the boss fight sequence though. That was awful for several reasons.
04/03/2012 at 18:19 AlastairStephens says:
Tali, particularly in the first game. She offered a sense of wonder and adventure that mirrored mine, as the player, but was absent from my Shep. Visiting her in engineering was my first priority between missions, even though I was pursuing a relationship with Liara.
She also arced nicely in the second game, and I found her romance storyline to be the most interesting and emotionally sophisticated.
04/03/2012 at 18:30 ThTa says:
See? You’re someone who can properly motivate their “that one, I like that one”.
I agree wholeheartedly with your sentiment.
Now I just need to find some more people to explain my other choices.
I’m much better at explaining why I dislike characters, but I’ll refrain from doing so, since it might get a bit messy (as it tends to, at least).
04/03/2012 at 18:53 Joshua says:
I really liked Tali… Except the romance. I did not like the romance. Some of the dialogue in there made my skin crawl a bit.
04/03/2012 at 23:10 E_FD says:
While most people aren’t able to verbalize it, I think this feeling really is why Tali has such a big fanbase; she’s the most relatable character in the game, and would have made a far more appealing PC than Shepard.
05/03/2012 at 00:04 DrGonzo says:
I read that as she also arsed nicely.
05/03/2012 at 02:04 Bureaucrat says:
Eh. Tali’s persistent damsel-in-distress habit got on my nerves. The game keeps telling me that she’s impressive and competent, but whenever I see her doing anything, she’s screwing up and requiring rescuing. Shep saves her from Fist’s assassins. Shep recovers the stuff she needs for her pilgrimage. Shep rescues her on Horizon. Then rescues her on Haestrom. Then rescues her from her trial back home.
It’d be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic.
04/03/2012 at 18:20 Snargelfargen says:
Counting dlc, my favourite bit would probably be meeting Lliara in ME2′s Lair of the Shadow Broker. It starts with a running battle at the end of which, among other things, Lliara talks about her new job as an information broker, berates Shephard for disappearing and says that she knows he’s been sleeping around.
It was neat having a potential romantic character have a life of their own outside of the protagonist’s circle of influence, and getting back together with her is rather difficult unlike most of the other romances.
Fave character is totally Garrus, even though he starts repeating himself rather quickly.
04/03/2012 at 18:22 Amnesiac says:
Talking to Legion, Thane and Garrus were the parts of Mass Effect 2 I liked most.
I really wish I could play all the talky bits again without having to play the combat sections again.
04/03/2012 at 18:31 staberas says:
Legion,Thane dialogs were very interesting i also like the relationship between joker and EDI
04/03/2012 at 18:23 ThTa says:
Garrus, Mordin, Kasumi, Wrex, Chakwas, Jack and Tali, easy ’nuff.
I’m having a hard time motivating my choices, though, beyond the fact that my Shepards generally sleep with the ones on that list who can be slept with and the ill-defined denominators of “funny”, “badass”, “smart”, “emotionally engaging” and “cute”.
And I feel I may be missing some on that list; it’s been such a long time since I played.
edit: Yes, I did. Joker and EDI were great, too, as was their interaction in ME2. Hoping to see more of that in ME3.
04/03/2012 at 18:23 feighnt says:
The ethical dilemma that Mordin had at various points during his loyalty mission was pretty well the high point for me.
There are a number of very minor bits of back-and-forth talking that actually affected me emotionally in ME2… in particular, I really liked the talk on Illium between the salarian father and his asari daughter about his own mortality. Or the conversation between the two krogan on Tuchanka about fatherhood. Ironically, these moments were more emotionally poignant than a *lot* of the main game.
I also must say… I have *extremely* fond memories of the opening title screen of ME1. Solely for the song. I love turning the game on and being aurally greeted with *that* song.
05/03/2012 at 02:07 Bureaucrat says:
I agree that Mordin’s loyalty mission was the best-written part of the series. They did a great job showing his wrestling with his conscience in a way that is both consistent to the character and flexible based on Player input.
04/03/2012 at 18:23 Jimbo says:
Favourite moment for me is towards the end of ME1 when Sovereign shows up at the Citadel and you’re on Ilos in the Mako booking it to the conduit to get back and save the day. Awesome music plays.
I also like the look on the faces of the Destiny Ascension crew when they realise I’m not coming to help.
04/03/2012 at 18:29 Ninja Foodstuff says:
Agreed. So, so agreed.
04/03/2012 at 18:23 Vinraith says:
Favorite moment? In my renegade playthrough of the first game’s DLC:
“Who’s the real terrorist?”
“You are.” *bang*
Most satisfying moment in a video game ever.
Favorite character? Probably Tali in ME1, probably Thane in ME2. Wrex and Garrus are up there too, though.
05/03/2012 at 06:58 The Godzilla Hunter says:
This. This all the way.
It is just so incredibly satisfying to shoot the guy. Though shooting him multiple times beforehand is also really awesome. Bonus points if you were a colonist Shepard.
04/03/2012 at 18:23 Agnol117 says:
Overall, Tali, Legion, and Miranda are among my favorite characters.
04/03/2012 at 18:23 jalf says:
Hmm, Garrus, probably. Both in ME1 and 2, he had a lot of depth, and was definitely “his own” character, rather than just Shepard’s puppet or some barely-controlled ball of rage and anger.
I also felt like he’s the character whom Shepard has the most real impact on. I mean sure, you do all the characters favors in ME2, solve all their little problems and help Jack sort out her psychological issues, help Grunt figure out what it means to be Krogan and so on. But with most of the characters, you’re really just there to do them a favor. With Garrus, it seemed like you were really trying to talk him around to your point of view (in ME1 especially, with all the talk of his time in C-Sec following rules, vs. being a Spectre and just getting results), and actually make an impact on the character.
Ash in ME1 had a bit of the same, with her so-called racism, which you could discuss with her and try to get her to soften up (yes, she was another of my faves, perhaps *because* I disagree with her views)
Thane, while a cool character, was much more of just an infodump. You didn’t really impact him much.
I love Tali, of course (who doesn’t), but more because of the culture she represents, than because her character as such is very interesting.
I wasn’t a huge fan of Wrex initially, but he kind of grew on me, especially in ME2, for some reason.
Kaidan can just fuck right off. And Liara and Jacob almost as much. Miranda, I just wish I could erase from the universe.
And hmm, favorite moment? Some strong candidates are when you bump rediscover old friends in ME2 (Joker and Garrus especially)
The Ilos/Citadel sequence (but not so much the final battle with Saren) was awesome. The ME2 intro was awesome.
For that matter, I also loved the introduction to ME1. How you were eased into the universe, and how they weaved the dialogue together so that you could ask things like “what the hell is a Turian” without sounding completely ignorant, like someone who just woke up in another universe.
04/03/2012 at 18:36 Maldomel says:
Actually, I was feeling proud of myself because in ME Garrus followed the way I wanted: being a badass law enforcer without restrictions. I was even more proud in ME2 when I found out he was totally on that path.
04/03/2012 at 19:05 jalf says:
Yeah, that’s what I like about him, that you could play it both ways, and sure, his overall story arc was fixed (he’d become a badass vigilante by the time you met him in ME2 regardless of what you told him in ME1), but all those little moments throughout both games where you could either argue for being “the good cop” or “the badass vigilante”, and he’d seem like he actually took your opinion on board, as if it actually gave him something to think about.
04/03/2012 at 18:27 airtekh says:
For me, it was the entire finale of Mass Effect 2.
I felt like shit afterwards, because I lost three team members (Jack, Thane and Legion) and the entire Normandy crew as well. I’ve never been so morose during a credits sequence; it didn’t feel like I had won at all.
I’m quite fond of Garrus and Tali, and I was relieved that they made it through the game unscathed.
04/03/2012 at 18:32 Vinraith says:
How’d you lose Legion? I was actively trying to get the dangerous monstrosity killed and couldn’t figure out a way to do it.
04/03/2012 at 18:34 Aler says:
I played nearly all of ME2 with Garrus and Tali. I like their chemistry.
04/03/2012 at 18:41 airtekh says:
Tali and Legion had an argument, and I sided with Tali. This made Legion lose ‘loyalty’ towards me, so when I picked him to fight during the finale, the game killed him.
I only found this out afterwards though; when I was playing, I had no idea why my guys were dying.
04/03/2012 at 19:08 Vinraith says:
If only my Shepard had known. The truth is, though, since she never trusted that pile of scrap metal it would never have been in character for her to choose him to fight anyway. I know the argument you mean, though, and needless to say she sided with Tali.
There really needs to be a renegade option to kill and dissect Legion.
04/03/2012 at 19:17 Anthile says:
There is, you can sell Legion to Cerberus before you activate him. Gives you renegade points and cash.
04/03/2012 at 20:50 LionsPhil says:
How can someone with Professor Farnsworth for an avatar not like murderous robots?
04/03/2012 at 21:23 Anthile says:
But he isn’t even a murderous robot! Quite the opposite, really. Legion is likely the nicest entity in the entire galaxy.
04/03/2012 at 18:30 Ninja Foodstuff says:
Jennifer Hale.
04/03/2012 at 18:33 ThTa says:
Jennifer Hale as Commander Jun’ko Zane in Freelancer, perhaps.
04/03/2012 at 22:28 RakeShark says:
Jun’ko Zane…
*swoon*
04/03/2012 at 18:31 Maldomel says:
Wrex’s death in Mass Effect. Because for the time my choice actually had a consequence, and because I loaded my game, tried other dialogues and found out it was him or me, all the time. Sorry, liked you Wrex.
From ME2, I’d say the mission when you recruit Garrus on Omega. Seeing my favorite character being glorified that much as a threat to bad guys was a treat for me. Really made me want to save him and keep him in my team all the time.
I haven’t finished ME2, but now I want to play the third one so bad.
04/03/2012 at 18:38 Malleus says:
Yeah, Garrus’ recruitment mission was great. The mission goes a long way to establish (before you meet him) that this Archangel guy is the ultimate badass. Then I got to him and WHOAH, GARRUS? When I played it for the first time I didn’t even know he was gonna be in the game, so best revelation ever. :)
13/03/2012 at 18:41 JagRoss says:
I managed to ruin that for myself, I went on the wiki to check something and *just* glimpsed it.
I spent the rest of that mission thinking how awesome it would have been.
04/03/2012 at 20:00 NathanH says:
Unfortunately for me this is one of the few moments where playing ME2 first lessens the experience.
04/03/2012 at 20:13 Azhrarn says:
Wrex doesn’t need to die, but it’s a hard conversation to pull off.
But the potential for consequences in the ME games really helps pull me in. ^^
I’ve played through both so many times now, something that’s very rare for me with other games.
04/03/2012 at 23:26 InternetBatman says:
It really isn’t a hard conversation to pull off. Gaming the conversations in Mass Effect are a bit harder since you don’t really know what your main character is going to say and the main character is so awful, but you can just pump a ton of points into speech and it works pretty easily. It’s nothing like some of the older Bioware games, where conversation was a game in its own right and not just content. Viconia’s romance and redemption in particular was good example of the old dialog game, or convincing the master to kill himself in Fallout.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaJ9RI1xDDU
04/03/2012 at 18:32 Aler says:
In ME2 I didn’t handle an argument well, and lost Jack’s loyalty. As a result, Moradin was snatched away and killed in the suicide mission.
Moradin was my favourite character in ME2. In any other game, I would immediately reload my last save and try again to get a better result. But I didn’t. His death was so sudden and so emotionally affecting, that to undo it would be to cheapen it.
04/03/2012 at 18:32 Matt says:
The “human” Reaper at the end of Mass Effect 2 really was a weird, uncanny thing. (Although giant floating head end boss is in principle such a hackneyed arcade trope…)
Edit: That’s not to be discriminatory of the emotional relatability of bug-people.
04/03/2012 at 18:34 Malleus says:
My favorite scene is the renegade speech solution to Tali’s loyalty mission. I just love shouting down the admiralty board. Who the hell do they think they are… :) Now that I think about it, I just love the scenes where you get to mess with / be inappropriate with authority.
Otherwise, the final sequences of both games are pretty well done IMO.
As for characters, Joker, Garrus, Legion and Mordin are the ones I like.
05/03/2012 at 22:04 eclipse mattaru says:
Seconded. In Tali’s mission, in fact, I took Legion as the third member of the party. It was nice to see the reactions of the Quarians to such defiance. “Hey, what’s up, I’m Tali’s employer and this is our good pal Legion the Geth.” :D
Conversely, it was slightly disappointing that something similar didn’t happen by taking Mordin to Tutchanka.
04/03/2012 at 18:35 tungstenHead says:
In Mass Effect 2, I was playing female Shepard and when the opportunity for the Garrus romance came up, I went for it, but Garrus was a little uneasy about the interspecies bit and in the end, I said, “Okay, we don’t have to do this if you don’t really want to, Garrus.” Then the finale happened very very shortly after. Garrus took a rocket in the face and died (forever). It made me sad. The alien-man I nearly loved. Gone. GONE! Forever…
04/03/2012 at 18:39 Maldomel says:
You mean there was a romance with Garrus! Shit, if I hadn’t play with my maleshep from ME1, I should have done a girl just for that :’(
04/03/2012 at 19:02 Joshua says:
I love it when Garrus feels uncomfortable about the romance, and you can say “Okay, this was a bad idea, lets not do this”. Garrus’ response made me chuckle.
04/03/2012 at 18:36 Lemming says:
Tali. The fact that you could ‘romance’ her in ME2 was the icing on the cake after liking her from the first game. Only time I’ve ever done a romance option in any of these kind of games.
04/03/2012 at 18:39 ThTa says:
I thought I’d be able to romance her in ME1, took me two playthroughs to look it up on the internet and figure that my attempts to “fix things” on my second playthrough were pointless.
(Ashley being dead and Liara being picked up at the absolute last moment, resulting in her perceiving Shepard as some sort of fever dream are now absolutely canon, though.)
04/03/2012 at 18:38 Anthile says:
Blasto, the hanar spectre.
“This one has forgotten whether its heatsink is over capacity. It wonders whether the criminal scum considers itself fortunate?”
04/03/2012 at 23:47 TheBigBookOfTerror says:
I really hope they have a video of him in ME3, perhaps introducing an Elcor sidekick. I also really want there to be a Hanar crewmember at some point, either DLC or any future Mass Effect games.
05/03/2012 at 06:56 DiePingu says:
“Enkindle this!”
In general the random background stuff is one of the best things about ME / ME2, such as the automatic adverts which are not quite smart enough to realise you were dead, the mad preacher on Omega etc.
That and Wrex obviously.
04/03/2012 at 18:39 jellydonut says:
Legion. EDI.
Yes I have a case of the robot-itis.
Male characters: Thane. Zaeed.
Female characters: Liara. Tali. Shepard herself of course!
I mostly like them all. I tend to not connect to the default humans though. Even less so the ones in ME2. I’m not sure what their deal was, constantly insulting and belittling my old squadmates and new friends. It’s like they didn’t want me to give them a chance.
04/03/2012 at 18:40 Dreforian says:
Loved 1, 2 had some tradeoffs not all of which I could agree with. One thing both of them did well, however, was making aliens that were both physiologically and therefore psychologically different. In ME1 I never ~really~ needed anyone more than Wrex/Garrus (maybe Ashley) as squadmates but I dragged everyone around just to see them react and interact. Elevators are our friends! In ME2 the human squadmates were easily outshined by the aliens and even the non-squad humans like Joker and Kelly. Even EDI was more fun to bother than either Jacob or Miranda. Jack probably wins the prize for human depth. I could pester Mordin Solus all day though. A hyper singing scientist with a distinctly different system of morals. Never new if I was supposed to be amused or terrified or both whenever he said something.
If I had to be anyone other than shepard I’d probably be Garrus. He’s probably the least alien of the aliens but that simple fact lets his character have some fun he couldn’t have otherwise. Incidentally I wonder if ~any~ of the love interests for either shepard weren’t programmed to be totally awkward… (Garrus and Tali are adorably awkward at least).
Thane was another one like Mordin, so alien that it was just fascinating to talk with him and wonder at the true nature of his thought process and emotions.
Samara/Morinth didn’t engage me sadly.
Tali, like Garrus, was already an old friend by ME2 and just as much fun. Her culture played such a huge part in how she interacted with everything, not just shepard.
Grunt was neat but the krogan society was moreso. If you played it right you could make Shepard act more Krogan than Grunt. Made me miss Wrex as a squad member.
Legion was another blast to mine for gems and walking in on it doing the robot dance is a priceless memory. EDI still stole the show for best artificial character/crew member
04/03/2012 at 18:42 PopCandy says:
My favorite moment is slightly cheesy one, when Mordin suddenly breaks into song. I was so shocked, and I could not stop laughing. And my favorite character is also Thane, his backstory was just heartbreaking. I hope I can see him again on Tuesday.
04/03/2012 at 18:43 Mr_Day says:
I am so sorry.
04/03/2012 at 19:05 Eddy9000 says:
This!
Is it my bad memory or wasn’t Uranus a barren planet, giving you no other reason to probe it then to make the same joke that the game pre-empted?
04/03/2012 at 23:53 Lemming says:
Uranus is a gas giant. So yes, bad memory. Also, bad astronomy.
04/03/2012 at 18:43 Maldomel says:
All those comments reminds about the one thing I hate about the mass effect games. Choices are too obvious. I mean, right choices, keeping the loyalty of your teammates, protecting them for the final mission, romance and all. It’s too easy too make it right (well, I did found an impossible situation with Wrex in ME1 but that was the only time it was not forced on me, like the choice you have to make a bit later in mission between Ashley and the other dude).
I’d really like some real choices, with unexpected consequences (kinda like The Witcher 2).
04/03/2012 at 18:44 karthink says:
Legion!
For reasons that should be obvious to anyone who’s talked to
itthem.Hands down the biggest surprise of ME2.
ME1 had the talk with Vigil; that sent shivers up my spine.
ME2 also had the Lair of the Shadowbroker, a perfectly executed apology for the poor way they handled Liara in the game proper.
The humour pervading all of ME2 was pretty great.
04/03/2012 at 18:47 Ysellian says:
My favourite would be Tali. There was something I just liked about her.
04/03/2012 at 18:51 NathanH says:
My favourite bits are the attack on Saren’s base, the final mission of both games (especially the first), and Jacob’s loyalty mission.
My favourite party members are Tali, Ashley, Mordin, Jacob. I didn’t click with Thane at all; he seemed totally crazy so I avoided talking much to him. Garrus is interesting because I always like the righteous vigilante but actually having him under my command in military operations changed my perspective! The krogan I wasn’t hugely keen on; I generally don’t like the Warrior Culture race. Alenko and Miranda annoyed me.
Favourite combat was husks + praetorian on the collector ship on second-highest difficulty.
Favourite moment was sending the merc through the window :-P
Favourite line: “I enjoy the sight of humans on their knees”.
04/03/2012 at 18:53 jealouspirate says:
Mordin is my favourite character by far. The best written character in the series for me. Multifaceted, I felt like he had more depth than anyone else Bioware has put out.
04/03/2012 at 18:56 Joshua says:
Ashley, who had a lot of depth.
A pity a lot of people do not see trough that lot of depth and just call her racist – thus making themselves guilty of exactly what they falsely accuse her off.
Also – well… All the squad members, actually. Except Liara in ME1, who IMO was really shallow.
I exceptionally loved Saren at the end of ME1 as well.
04/03/2012 at 19:08 ThTa says:
Ashley wasn’t really racist, but she made it pretty clear she was xenophobic and perhaps a bit misguided (largely due to her “aliens as dogs” comparison). I didn’t like her as a person, but I did like her as a character, mostly for her determined personality and the fact that she came across as a believable human being. (Not that those are particularly rare in the ME series, but she did stand out, in that regard, especially relative to Kaidan, who had all the personality of a rock in ME1, despite a neat backstory.)
I’ll agree on your assesment that Liara was shallow, though. I dislike the asari race as a whole, for being a bit too much of a wish-fulfillment gig; what with them being oh so serene, promiscuous, intelligent and what not. The only ones I really liked were the bartender and the map saleswoman/investor in ME2 (both on Illium).
04/03/2012 at 20:59 Kompi says:
Actually, in Ashley’s comparison to sending your dog on a bear to survive, it’s humanity – not aliens – who are the dog ;)
04/03/2012 at 19:00 malkav11 says:
The final sequence battling up the side of the Citadel in Mass Effect 1 was one of the best endgames ever. I was very sad that there was nothing even close to as awesome in Mass Effect 2. (Sorry, but no, the “suicide” mission that was trivially easy to complete without losses if you just did all the questing and paid attention and felt largely identical to previous Collector fights – easily my least favorite enemy type in the game – was not up to that standard. Even before the ridiculous boss fight.)
I can’t say as I ever really connected with Garrus. He simply didn’t interest me much in ME1 and I tended not to run any of the hybrid classes as companions for my Adept because I needed Ashley up front and Tali being adorable and techy in the back. By ME2 I didn’t have any real bond with him and party selection didn’t matter, so I just took Moridin because he was hilarious and Tali because I was romancing her. Occasionally Zaeed because his morals – or lack thereof – fitted well with my Renegade playstyle.
04/03/2012 at 19:03 Eddy9000 says:
The renegade option to tell Garrus he was always ugly anyway after he recovers from a face wound and asks how it looks. In general the whole Shepard-Garrus bromance banter is well done. I take him everywhere, when I get married to Liara he’s going to be best man.
04/03/2012 at 19:04 TychoCelchuuu says:
Favorite event was of course Mordin breaking into song.
Character stuff:
Mass Effect 1: The buddy cop team of Wrex and Garrus was fun. Rolling around the galaxy with those two shooting people and resolving conflicts was a fun experience.
Mass Effect 2: I disliked much of ME2, but one thing I really liked was how well written a lot of the characters were, not so much in the loyalty missions but in the Normandy conversations. Mordin’s pretty stupendous, Grunt was extremely interesting (I assumed he would be some boring Klingon-esque “kill it all” stereotype, which he kind of was, but it was done well), Jack was actually interesting (which was extremely surprising given how ridiculous she seemed before the game came out), Thane was neat, Legion was stupendous for the short bit that you got from him, Samara was fun, and it was nice to learn more about Tali and Garrus. Oh, and Kasumi and Zaeed were both awesome, and their loyalty missions were a nice break from the norm because they were actually compelling. Zaeed’s stories were always pretty funny and Kasumi managed to pull off a “look at me I’m sort of a dorky person” sort of thing which (like Jack) is something I would’ve thought would never have worked, at least in BioWare’s hands. So really in ME2 I liked most of the crew members. Jacob and Miranda = yawnsville though.
And Ash was definitely racist.
“Second best” moment would perhaps be Anderson punching Udina and third best would be “let’s take a walk.” The advertisement for elcor Hamlet on the Citadel was also stupendous.
04/03/2012 at 19:11 Bloodloss says:
My favourite characters are Thane, Legion, Wrex, Mordin. You know, the characters that won’t be permanent squad members in ME3 because they just had to have spots for amazingly interesting characters like Ashley and Kaidan.
04/03/2012 at 19:13 Kadayi says:
I’ve a fondness for Zaeed. Albeit he is a DLC character and not as fleshed out as others, his loyalty mission (if you take the renegade option) ending is just pure bad ass. Something of the Bob Pecks from Jurassic park about him (they really needed to slip a ‘clever girl’ in his dialogue somewhere tbh). I doubt he’ll be turning up in ME3, but I’m hoping that they might feature him in some spin off title.
04/03/2012 at 19:21 Christian O. says:
A couple of people dislike the fact that the consequences to your speech choices are obvious, but I always feel like I’m cheated if because of my character’s phrasing something goes horribly wrong (like in L.A. Noire), so I think it’s an okay trade-off.
If I can’t micromanage the responses then I’d prefer them to be predictable. Otherwise it frustrates me and drags me out of the game.
04/03/2012 at 19:23 arkestry says:
Harrot, the cigar-smoking elcor shopkeeper. Runners up include the Ilusive Man, Garrus, Mordin, Thane, glowing red scars and retinas, Feros, Omega and the Shadow Broker’s ship.
04/03/2012 at 19:26 Noodlemonk says:
When I heard “You WANT me to arrest you?”, and Wrex quickly replies half laughing and clearly not impressed with the officer, “I want you to try.”, I was in love with a big bad moloch horridus for the rest of the series. I can’t wait to spend some more time with my good old buddy.
I too am extremely fond of the first dialogue between Shepard and Sovereign – that’s the stuff! I still get goosebumps just thinking about it.
Finally, I just love hanging around the generic first station on Noveria, where you park the Normandy. For some reason I have a soft spot for being inside, when there’s a blizzard going on… It’s rather cosy…
04/03/2012 at 19:35 malkav11 says:
Edit: Oh look, my comments are uneaten, so this was a doublepost!
I’ll just note a couple of other favorite bits:
“Scientist Salarian”, of course.
The obnoxious fanboy, carried between two games.
Learning that the Asari appear different to different races, and may just be messing with our minds to reproduce – creepy!
04/03/2012 at 19:35 Vinraith says:
@Anthile
How the hell did I miss that? Ah well, I’ll get it right second playthrough.
Then again, you’d lost out on his loyalty mission that way. Hmm. That’s probably why I didn’t do it, I suppose.
04/03/2012 at 19:40 Lokik says:
When playing Renegade, Zaeed and Wrex were my favorites. Tali and Legion with Paragon. Garrus is always a nice choice though.
04/03/2012 at 19:40 Metonymy says:
Ive tried more than once to enjoy this series, but the environments just seem dessicated to me, completely lacking in life or creativity. It lacks soul, like a bad episode of Voyager. Then the weapons and enemies are all slight variations on a single theme, and the ‘plot’ is horny simpletons standing around imagining themselves to be important. It’s just dead on the inside, and I feel sorry for people who don’t quickly move on to something better.
04/03/2012 at 19:43 jalf says:
Has it occurred to you that those people might just have seen something in the game that you missed? That, perhaps, they don’t need to be felt sorry for?
If not, I feel sorry for you. It must be sad to have such a hard time coping with subjective matters, the fact that others might experience things differently or have different opinions than yourself.
Really, there’s no law that you have to like Mass Effect, but “feeling sorry” for people who do? Really?
04/03/2012 at 19:42 jaheira says:
In ME1 cutting off the council on the video conference screen thingy. And getting a phone call from my mum. More games should have phone calls from our mums in them.
In ME2 it was Shepard’s response to the prison warden’s demand that she relinquish her weapon ie:
“I’ll relinquish one bullet. Where do you want it?”
04/03/2012 at 23:39 TheBigBookOfTerror says:
Oooh that is a good moment. I really enjoyed the renegade moments in ME2, they usually were funny, which is why when I tried it on Mouse I was absolutely horrified and disgusted with myself when Thane and Shepard proceeded to knock seven shades of shit out of him. Anyone else usually was a “bad guy” but seeing what I thought as a cocky, self-serving snitch revealed to just be a poor scared kid trying to make it in an uncaring galaxy was heartbreaking. I even tried apologising but was quite pleased he didn’t accept it. Why should he? I tried to keep playing but I couldn’t live with it, I never did it any other time during either games as it’s not authentic otherwise but I had to reload to a previous save. That’s not a problem with the game, I thought it was brilliant they went with that and it made me feel a bit wary afterwards of constantly trying to be a “cool” and laconic badass. I wish I had the guts to go with it and leave it in but it was too much!
04/03/2012 at 19:42 Bluerps says:
Favorite moment was the suicide mission. I loved most of both games, but the finale of ME2 gripped me the most by far. I kept thinking “I hope I have done nothing wrong, and they all survive”. They did, and I was happy.
Favorite character is hard, because I like most of them. I am not a big fan of Miranda, because this whole “I’m made to be perfect” thing irks me. She is also kind of a bitch. Grunt and Zaeed are kind of boring, compared to the others. If I had to pick one from the rest, it would probably be Tali.
04/03/2012 at 19:43 InternetBatman says:
I liked Garrus, Tali, Mordin, and Legion. Hated Jack, Shepard, Kaiden, Ashely. The game might have been better without humans altogether.
04/03/2012 at 19:49 stkaye says:
I thought of this immediately: http://youtu.be/H_MW0hplZTQ?t=2m2s
I remember this moment was when, in the first game, I suddenly got a feel for just what Mass Effect was trying to achieve. It’s tremendously exciting and inspiring – helped a lot by ME’s customarily strong soundtrack.
After all this fuss, I kind of wished they hadn’t just dumped the council politics and spectre cachet so completely in ME2.
04/03/2012 at 19:50 DM says:
Yeah Garrus is a fan favorite but I think he was quite… transparent during ME2 and he was hardly develloped during ME2, no real evolution from ME1 Garrus.
My favorite ME2 character is Legion, I love his design, his ways of speaking, and his dialogue with EDI were pretty funny. Sadly he came into the team pretty late and thus is also not develloped as Miranda or Thayne.
Mordin is a badass motherfucker too. =D
04/03/2012 at 23:04 jealouspirate says:
Exactly. I like Garrus and all, but it seemed like his story in ME2 was identical to ME1. It was like all the stuff I did with him in ME1 to sort out his authority/anger issues didn’t happen.
04/03/2012 at 19:50 Om says:
Only ever played the first one and there was nobody that really jumped out and said ‘Hey, give a damn about me’. Which is one of the reasons that I never played the second
04/03/2012 at 19:52 Mike says:
Wrex’s death in ME1. He’d made himself my favourite character after hating him initially. Gruff, abrasive, and unafraid to laugh at the ridiculous happenings of the early game in ME.
Then Ashley shot him in the back.
Which was a surprise because I’d not seen this kind of thing in videogames all that much before (besides, perhaps, a smattering in Final Fantasies). I certainly wasn’t expecting it to happen so early on to what I assumed was perceived as a minor character.
I was pretty distraught. Everything after that point became a drive to help the Krogan in any way I could. I left Ashley to die at the end of Mass Effect as a result, too. Even with the option to change that outcome at the beginning of ME2 (I lost my savegame) I kept it as it was because it pretty much defined my entire story. I really like that the game managed to sustain that feeling throughout.
04/03/2012 at 20:01 stkaye says:
It’s a fantastic game that makes you feel allied to a certain turn of events like that: that’s roleplaying.
04/03/2012 at 22:55 Runs With Foxes says:
No it’s not?
Have you read a good novel before? Seen a good movie? Do you think feeling attached to characters in those makes them ‘roleplaying’? Have you given this any thought at all?
05/03/2012 at 00:14 Kadayi says:
@Runs With Foxes
Do you remotely understand the difference between passive and interactive media? Have you given this any thought at all?
05/03/2012 at 00:22 Runs With Foxes says:
Do you remotely understand the concept of relevance?
05/03/2012 at 00:57 Kadayi says:
@Runs With Foxes
I asked first. Go for it. Knock yourself out.
*gets pop corn*
Pulls up chair.
05/03/2012 at 01:03 soldant says:
@Runs with foxes – what you’re saying might make more sense if the cutscenes didn’t actually have any choices. As Kadayi said, the difference lies entirely in the interactivity. I don’t play a role in a book or a movie, I’m an external observer. In a game, I am Shepard, and this is my favourite argument on the citadel.
05/03/2012 at 06:30 Runs With Foxes says:
So you agree that making some binary Moral Choices and feeling attached to a character constitutes ‘roleplaying’? How extraordinarily far that proud genre has fallen at the hands of Bioware and their fans.
05/03/2012 at 11:47 Grim_22 says:
I remember when that happened in my first playthrough. I got so pissed at Ash, all I wanted was a dialogue option to shoot her in the knee or something. I actually shot her several times in the face with my shotgun after the scene was over, frantically hoping that she’d fall over dead sooner or later.
She didn’t.
05/03/2012 at 19:26 Kadayi says:
@Runs With Foxes
Amusing as it is to listen to you rubbish Bioware and the people who enjoy their games from your high horse (which makes me totally think of of this:- http://xkcd.com/610/ )
I think it’s important to point out that pretty much all CRPGs offer up a limited number of choices in terms of dialogue responses, and often you get shoved down the route of picking one side or the other. Hell some games don’t even give you that choice at all. There’s a clear end goal (kill the bad guy, rescue the princess, save the kingdom) and until you do that the game’s unfinished. Whether you side with the elves or the Goblins, or marry a horse is entirely moot.
Certainly ME isn’t Shakespeare, but then again neither is BG. PS:T is about the best written RPG we’ve had, and in that you play a pre-defined character with a fixed history and a limited number of dialogue options. About the closest you can get to a free narrative experience is something like the Sims where in the game-play is entirely emergent and often (comically) unpredictable.
04/03/2012 at 20:04 Sunjammer says:
I always remember enjoying the games, but they portray curiously unmemorable events. I remember characters more.
I liked Talia a lot, kind of irrationally. Just something about a faceless character lets you project in a way that’s rare these days. Also, Kelly, which in spite of its ridiculous conclusion was the only semi-realistic romance plot in the game.
Also, I remember how hideous my custom Sheperd was
04/03/2012 at 20:16 Reset says:
Little moments I enjoyed-
In ME2, when surveying the wreckage of the first Normandy, I found a datapad of diary entries talking about a crew member overcoming their feelings of xenophobia and growing to like the aliens on the crew. I assumed it was Ash, who I’d let die in ME1 because I thought Kaidan was a better choice to work with a team of Salarians on a delicate mission and then decided to rescue the larger group of people in danger. Then it turned out it was actually Navigator Pressly’s diary. Oh Ash, xenophobic to the end.
Also in ME2, when my recently resurrected Shepard got a slightly passive-aggressive “How come you never write your mother and tell her you’re still alive” email from my spacer background mom. Really added layers to my interpretation of the character I wasn’t expecting to be there out of a small moment.
Also memorable were the moments when the game pushed my typically paragon Shepard into going with renegade options or dialogue choices. In the confrontation with Saren at the end of ME1, I could’ve talked him into shooting himself, and I almost always prefer to solve problems with words and not violence when games give me the option. But for some reason angry threats about how much I was about to destroy him just seemed the right way to go here. And then in ME2, in Thane’s loyalty mission, I kept trying to hold off roughing up the interrogation suspect, but gave in and punched the guy the third time I was given the option to.
Oh, and the Elcor Hamlet advertisement in the Citadel was great.
05/03/2012 at 10:38 Skeletor68 says:
I loved the Elcor Hamlet production thing too. Very funny.
Agreed about playing Paragon and being pushed into Renegade. I remember going back to the Citadel and speaking to the Council. After saving their ungrateful asses in the first they were still a bunch of limp idiots so I basically told them to screw themselves and rejected their offer to rejoin as a spectre. Emotion got the best of me there.
Also my Mordin is dead. I picked him as a tech expert on the final mission (apparently scientists aren’t techy?). I’ll have to keep going without him now, a pity but will add weight to the storyline.
04/03/2012 at 20:16 diestormlie says:
There is something frightening about hating your Player character.
Additionally, Jack is awesome and Bad-ass. Period.
05/03/2012 at 02:20 Bureaucrat says:
Yeah, I found the way both Jack and Miranda developed disappointing. Satisfyingly badass ladies… until you dig into their respective daddy issues and they turn into blubbering softies.
You don’t see this kind of thing happening with male characters.
05/03/2012 at 11:13 Christian O. says:
@Bureaucrat
It happened with both Jacob and Thane in ME2 though.
04/03/2012 at 20:36 Buemba says:
The opening of ME2, when you open the door to the Normandy’s command center and see the Reaper ship blasted a gigantic hole in it. Everything goes silent and all you hear is Sheppard breathing as he slowly walks towards the pilot cabin.
Also loved the elevator conversations between squadmates in ME1. Their absence in 2 was particularly annoying after seeing how much better Dragon Age: Origins did them.
04/03/2012 at 20:47 Pinky_Powers says:
I play as a wizard Female Shepard, so I like to have hard-boiled killers to round my party out. In ME 1 it was Wrex and Garrus. In ME 2 I fell in love with Jack in place of my Turrian and Grunt for obvious representation. In my last playthrough, however, I used Jack and Miranda for nearly every mission. I was surprised how well they worked for me.
In terms of favorite characters… It’s a hard one. There are so many good characters in this series. But to be fair, Mordon has risen pretty high on my list. And I’m absolutely smitten with Tali, and have been from the outset.
04/03/2012 at 20:56 Deviija says:
Favorite event specifically? Garrus’ romance. In general, I love everything relating to Garrus, from the humor to the sidekick status, to the friendship and budding love between these two allies that have been through hell together.
04/03/2012 at 21:23 The Sombrero Kid says:
Killing the racist was my favorite moment & Thane is my favorite character.
04/03/2012 at 21:25 thestage says:
Who is your favorite character? What, are we 12 years old? Am I supposed to use the words “badass” and “epic” somewhere too?
04/03/2012 at 22:06 jaheira says:
Some us might be twelve years old, I don’t know. Feel free to use the words “badass” and “epic” wherever you like, though it would be most appropriate to use them when describing things which are either badass or epic.
04/03/2012 at 22:13 NathanH says:
Bonus points for “visceral”!
04/03/2012 at 22:44 Geralt says:
Well aren’t you all grown up and mature. It’s alright, naming your favorite character in a fictional story is something everyone does, including grown ups since we all like some characters more than others.
04/03/2012 at 22:55 Jimbo says:
Wrex is the best and because ferocious!
04/03/2012 at 23:02 Antsy says:
That was an epic and badass stand against all things childish. Don’t worry though, you’ll learn to appreciate the childish again some day.
04/03/2012 at 21:37 pierrot says:
I’ve seen broadsheets ask the exact same question about The Wire
04/03/2012 at 21:43 kyrieee says:
The obvious answer is…
SHEPARD! :D
04/03/2012 at 21:45 Jauffre says:
From all the awesome parts throughout the game, I love Bioware’s humour. Especially the Turian who gets friend zoned on Illium with the Quarian. I laughed for so long about that. My favourite characters are Garrus/Tali. Garrus is awesome by default and I love Tali’s awkward personality.
I really wish I didn’t kill Wrex in ME1 as it seems so many people liked him in ME2. But oh well, I didn’t know how else to do it and I can just make another game for it.
04/03/2012 at 21:56 Suits says:
the dude from the DLC ofc
04/03/2012 at 22:05 McDan says:
So many things, my favourite game series after all. Well favourite companions would have to be Garrus and Tali, I suppose liara counts as well seeing as she’s always the romance option when I go for it. But having Garrus and Tali present in all three games (hopefully) just makes them seem like pretty solid best space buds!
The most fun I’ve ever had was in the first ME, in Feros on my second playthrough on insane with a character, blasting away geth and infected colonists with a fully upgraded shotgun. So much fun. There’s a little side mission in ME2 that comes close to that on a planet with seemingly infinite husks and you have to blow up a reaper artifact. Ah! Too many good moments! The story DLC for the second game was amazing as well, best would have to be the shadow broker one, the first part of just finding liara then the assassin was so good. I’ll stop otherwise I could continue all night. Favourite. Game. Series.
04/03/2012 at 22:10 stevendick says:
I loved Mordin’s rather ADD/Asperger-flavoured dialog. Having just watched Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I’m reminded of the similarity of Lisbeth and Jack – both broken individuals, but powerful in their own right.
04/03/2012 at 22:14 sharkh20 says:
Punching the reporter….twice.
04/03/2012 at 22:32 Henson says:
Virmire. This is where things felt real.
04/03/2012 at 22:45 hypercrisis says:
talking the final boss into killing himself (shame he came right back)
and renegade cutscene actions
04/03/2012 at 22:45 Asklepios says:
One of my favorite game series, besides t.ex. with Dragon Age and Witcher.
Favorite moment:
In the end of ME2, I thought I did everything right, nobody should die. Then, after the human reaper is killed, Mordin lies dead. That was an awful moment, since Mordin was one of my favorite characters. But then again, feeling awful for Mordins death makes it my favorite moment. I really haven’t felt so before over a game. It really makes me feel like I’m really playing the story. And I love it.
I still consider loading a saved game and make Mordin go with the crew members. I really want to, I want Mordin to survive. But I won’t. This is my story, and despite how bad I feel for Mordin, or actually becouse of it, I want to play it trough as it goes.
04/03/2012 at 23:02 Runs With Foxes says:
Funny how everyone’s favourite moments in this series are all about cutscenes, conversation options and character dialogue. Not a bit of actual gameplay to be found.
My favourite moment has been over the past year or so: the huge backlash against Bioware for making mediocre screenplays aimed at their inbred community of emotional manchildren, and turning the popular definition of RPG into ‘third person relationship simulator’.
04/03/2012 at 23:21 Gap Gen says:
Equally, I think it’s a good direction to go in to put more stats under the hood. You can make games where you expose every algorithm in the game to the user, or you can make a game that attempts to abstract all that away. Bioware don’t have an obligation to make either.
04/03/2012 at 23:24 sinister agent says:
So, Kaiden then?
04/03/2012 at 23:26 TheBigBookOfTerror says:
I actually treat the games as more advanced versions of the interactive movies of the 90s. It’s still gameplay, just not in the traditional sense. While there are flaws, I do find the action exciting and have no complaints other than I hated the Hammerhead. The Mako was much more fun. The scanning wasn’t too bad, but I won’t miss it if it’s gone from ME3.
04/03/2012 at 23:30 kyrieee says:
ME1/2 doesn’t have much of what you traditionally call a cutscene, and most of moments people are referencing certainly aren’t. No, you’re not in direct control of your character during conversations, but the interactivity still makes you feel more involved than you would be in a cutscene and part of the reason people remember certain scenes is because they were impacted by the choices they had made.
05/03/2012 at 00:24 Kadayi says:
“the huge backlash against Bioware for making mediocre screenplays aimed at their inbred community of emotional manchildren, and turning the popular definition of RPG into ‘third person relationship simulator’.”
You’ve a luminous imagination there. Also very classy getting the ad hom in there at the fan base.
05/03/2012 at 00:36 thestage says:
It’s not an ad hominem if it is 1) true, and 2) relevant to the argument. Not that I would expect anyone talking about their favorite moments in mass effect omg to be aware of any of this.
05/03/2012 at 00:37 jaheira says:
“Funny how everyone’s favourite moments in this series are all about cutscenes, conversation options and character dialogue. Not a bit of actual gameplay to be found.”
So what?
05/03/2012 at 01:00 Kadayi says:
@thestage
Is this an invasion from the Codex or something? True? What’s true? That some people like a game and others seemingly despise them for it? Heavens forbid people don’t share the same tastes as others? Call the culture police, we’ve got ourselves a situation.
05/03/2012 at 02:40 TariqOne says:
It’s sort of endearing, the maelstrom of hormonal emotion churning in you over a fucking video game — and how you still pridefully struggle to wrap yourself in that little figleaf of feigned haughty indifference.
We’re all really just human beings at bottom, I guess.
05/03/2012 at 05:12 Saskwach says:
@jaheira: ‘So what?’
Because games are about gameplay and if you want to make a movie then make a B-grade movie with shitty dialogue but you can’t because you’re a HACK and everyone who likes your stuff is STUPID and IMMATURE and probably fondles GOAT TESTICLES and why are we even discussing STORY in a game games are about gameplay there is NO OTHER WAY.
Seriously, I’m laughing my ass off. This troll is hilarious.
05/03/2012 at 06:21 Runs With Foxes says:
Saskwach sums it up.
05/03/2012 at 07:57 Kadayi says:
@Runs With Foxes
You need to pay greater attention to what’s being said.
05/03/2012 at 10:26 Runs With Foxes says:
Seriously, remove the sarcasm and Saskwach’s post is right on. What a terrible state the industry is in if ‘games are about gameplay’ is used sarcastically now.
05/03/2012 at 11:27 Christian O. says:
Actually, yes, it is an ad hominem even if it is true and relevant to the argument. Ad hominems are logical fallacies which means that conclusions don’t follow from premises and thus aren’t logically valid. If I say that vegetarianism is bad because Hitler was a vegetarian, then I use a type of ad hominem (“reductio ad hilterum”) and while the comparison might be apt (the person I’m speaking to might be a bad person, as Hitler was a bad person), it does not logically follow.
Ergo, attacks on character can be relevant and true but they’re still ad hominems, because you attack someone’s person and not their argument. You can claim that the argument is implicit in your attack of their character, but it does not follow from the premises you put forth.
This argument is stupid, because genres aren’t absolute things (rather they have fuzzy standards) and treating them as such means you have to set standards down that most likely won’t apply to all things that you would deem part of that genre. You’re welcome to have a civile discussion about it, but let’s not fool ourselves into believing that genres are necessary for a game to be either good or poor. They only define what a good or a poor example of the genre is.
04/03/2012 at 23:18 TheBigBookOfTerror says:
I used to hate Ashley but on my first and current complete ME1 & ME2 Ms Shepard, she didn’t display any xenophobic traits. Kaidan made the statements about Shepard liking freaky blue aliens and how there were too many foreign types on my crew. I’m sure I went through all the dialogue choices, it just never cropped up. I never liked Kaidan anyway though so he ended up a smoking crater and Ashley ended up being a loyal best bud through ME1.
I was a bit ticked off that you really only get to know Jack and see her more vulnerable side if you go full paragon with a male Shepard. Although I really liked Miranda (she does have the capability to change, and she does in my story so I don’t think she’s a bad person), I tended to gravitate towards Jack. Once the loyalty mision was done with, beyond taking Jack on missions, there is no more interaction aside from a short chat and that made me sad.
Somehow despite playing ME2 three times before, it was only this recent playthrough in anticipation of 3 that I finally saw Mordin’s rendition of Gilbert and Sullivan, it’s definitely a highlight.
My absolute favourite moment is during Miranda’s loyalty mission, the renegade option when facing off against the mercs. Shepard shoots the exploding crate and Miranda unloads whole clip into their Captain.
04/03/2012 at 23:20 Gap Gen says:
My ending. I fucked up horribly, but the pointless tragedies made the game my own. I was going through a rough patch and it was somewhat comforting to see a videogame character fail in her life goals as well.
I would say the dialogue is pretty neat for a game, but Human Revolution topped it, so what a shame.
04/03/2012 at 23:51 Retsudo says:
I scanned through the comments and I’m surprised no one has mentioned the Rachni. I was pretty happy to make a connection with a species near extinct and misunderstood in ME1, as well as hear from them later on in ME2. Even happier to find out they kept their word. I’ve been anticipating their return, and hoping they haven’t been conveniently forgotten. Probably the biggest decision that keeps me holding on to my save file.
As for characters, Wrex and Tali in close 2nd. Legion deserves an honorable mention because the talks with him definitely changed my thinking regarding synthetic life as a people.
The implications of the spoiler DLC are pretty interesting, but not so much to me as the potential swarm of Rachni beasts to blind-side the reapers.
05/03/2012 at 00:25 TheBigBookOfTerror says:
I think there are so many it’s easy to miss out such a glaring obvious choice. While there is a lot of valid criticism of some elements of the series, I think it gets a lot more right than wrong.
One of my favourite features has to be the continuation of savegames. It must have been quite a gamble to put aside resources and time to implement it in the original when success was not guaranteed once the game was out. In an alternate universe there could well be a RPS article focussing on clever gimmicks that appeared in failed games and Mass Effect would be highlighted for having this ambitious feature that sadly never paid off.
05/03/2012 at 05:06 Jackablade says:
I thought the Rachni queen was interesting because if you decide that the whole “I’m the last of my kind” sob story is a bluff and decide to melt her, it becomes clear fairly quickly that she was indeed lying. There are still planets swarming with nasty giant bugs that you’ll come across while bouncing around in the Mako. Of course now they’re probably going to ally with the bee guys against me, but that’s the price one pays for ones “no negotiation with bugs” policy.
05/03/2012 at 05:19 Saskwach says:
Yeah, in hindsight I think I should have melted the Queen. You can never be sure, but the choice as presented was essentially:
1) Take a chance on love and beauty and risk another ride on the bug invasion merry-go-round, but this time without the rabbit-reproduction-super-soldier Krogan.
or
2) Kill her just in case.
I’m all for love and beauty and best friends forever, but it’s not worth the risk in this case. If you decide to go with 2 you have nothing to go on besides the Queen’s own word – someone with every reason to lie if the truth doesn’t suit the person with the big red button. Whereas 1 has a pretty brutal interstellar war going for it.
Don’t know how the Queen convinced me the first time tbh.
05/03/2012 at 08:18 piratmonkey says:
But she’s not lying? The Rachni born without a queen are crazy because they can’t hear “the song” or whatever. And the Queen tells you, through an intermediary, that the Rachni were mind controlled by the Reapers to fight everyone. However, I would’ve preferred that it be revealed the Rachni had just wanted to expand or were provoked..
05/03/2012 at 00:09 Velvetmeds says:
I pretty much liked everyone, except Jack, Jacob and that ME2 DLC guy… Aside from those, great characters all round
05/03/2012 at 00:10 DaFishes says:
I loved all the alien squadmates. The humans were fine, but the aliens were way cooler. Garrus was my favorite.
None of this matters, though. It’s all going straight to shit.
05/03/2012 at 00:12 The Hammer says:
I think my favourite moment from the first two Mass Effects took place near to the end of the former, in which you’re hurtling the Mako down a several miles-long corridor, with the Vigil score from the main menu gradually replacing the level’s default music.
Cue a detour into a chamber housing Vigil himself, an AI created by the Protheans to record all kinds of portentious information. Vigil ties up loose ends, and then presents you with an entirely new set of strings which are somewhat harder to knot.
It’s the “epiphany” moment of Mass Effect, a prelude to the awesome Citadel battle to come, and oh so every emotional too, if you’re hooked in by the music, the voices, and the shimmering visage of the AI itself. Which I shamelessly confess I was.
Mind you, I started this post with “I think”, mainly because I thought I’d remember other great moments deserving of praise. It turns out I did, but hells, too many to list.
05/03/2012 at 00:21 HermitUK says:
Favourite moments are difficult, especially since I’ve been replaying the series and a lot of them are fresh in my mind. Some of the dialogue in Shadow Broker, for instance, is just genius.
But in terms of major set-pieces, the attack on the Citadel at the end of ME1 is brilliant, and would be up there on the list of best game endings in my book. From the foreshadowing of the Conduit, to climbing the side of the tower, to the entire fleet battle. It manages to absolutely nail ‘epic’, without resorting to an incredibly difficult final boss; Saren’s tough but by no means the hardest fight in the game, and you can even talk your way out of the first part of the fight entirely. ME2 is certainly the better game, but the story and pacing of the first gripped me much more, and the ending just capped that perfectly. ME2′s suicide mission was clever, and very tense the first time through, but the Citadel attack just feels huge in a way taking out the Collector base didn’t.
Favourite character is too difficult, really. Garrus and Tali would be up there, given they’re usually my main squad for most of ME1, but Mordin is fantastic as well. I really like Legion, too. The loyalty missions were a brilliant bit of design, as well; I found myself mixing up my squad more regularly after finishing them.
05/03/2012 at 00:27 HermitUK says:
Unrelated Addendum; saw top picture, thought Thane was getting it on with Dr Chakwas.
05/03/2012 at 01:43 Pattom says:
Favorite scene in the series is still the mission on Virmire. Everything that makes this series worth playing is there: interplay between characters, choices with weight, ferocious combat, unexpected horror and tragedy. The first game has been fun this whole time, but this is the part that makes my jaw drop, and it never lets up from here on out.
As for favorite NPCs, it’s a tie between Mordin and Garrus. Mordin because he’s Mordin, and Garrus because of the way he’s developed between the first two games. In ME1, you get to mentor this rough-and-tumble kid looking for a fight; in ME2, he’s the only one cool enough to be Shepard’s back-up. Second tier would be Wrex and Samara: their internal conflicts are pretty compelling, I think, once you get past the walls they put up.
05/03/2012 at 02:08 gwathdring says:
I’m with you and those above who have pointed to Virmire as the strongest set-piece. The Reapers felt more threatening on Virmire than ever before or after that sequence when Sovreign has a chat with Shepard. The mission felt like it had a sense of urgency, Saren still seemed like a threat in his own right, up to two team members could die, the dialog felt pretty solid, and the combat was relatively engaging. I even felt like more than Kaidan or Ashley was at stake at the end (will the Geth break past Kaidan’s lone defense and diffuse the bomb? What about the Salarian commando team?). I came out of Virmire intimately engaged with the game, and too filled with a sense of urgency to dither about with side quests. I wasn’t emotionally pulled out of the game again until Liara showed up en route to Illos leaving me with the options “let’s have sex,” “let’s have sex” (nicely), and “Get the hell out of my cabin.”
05/03/2012 at 02:33 Bureaucrat says:
Favorite individual dialogue choices:
ME1, after recruiting Liara, Joker makes some crack and Liara asks how he can make jokes when all our lives were at risk. The bottom-right option on the wheel is “He’s a jerk,” and voiceover is “Joker can be a real ass sometimes.” That crystalized an alternate narrative that feels a lot more likely to me: Shepard hates Joker. I mean, she’s a high-ranking military officer, responsible for the safety of a crew and the success of a mission. He’s a hotshot pilot who insists everybody call him by a stupid nickname, who makes a mockery of ship discipline, and who is on board in a position of responsibility in spite of being physically unfit for service on a ship of war. This is not the sort of person that military commanders like having around.
ME2, when the perky receptionist chick says “Please, call me Kelly,” dialogue-wheel option “No.”
05/03/2012 at 05:55 TheBigBookOfTerror says:
I befriended the nutcase just so someone would feed my damn fish. Seriously, I can’t just order some lackey to do it? JACOB, FEED MY SPACE FISH AND CLEAN MY SPACE HAMSTER’S CAGE OUT RIGHT NOW!
05/03/2012 at 03:07 Ruffian says:
Mordin! of course. his whole story arc was my fave. I also thoroughly enjoyed Legion being a part of your crew, and the way he fleshed out the geth as a race, was pretty interesting.
05/03/2012 at 03:09 bill says:
The way my passive aggressive annoying sheppard responds to everything in exactly the way i didn’t intend just to annoy me?
05/03/2012 at 03:12 harlequin382 says:
Unless i missed it, you are all wrong. . . Zaeed is by far the best character :) along with miranda- awsome combo
05/03/2012 at 04:34 evilhippo says:
Jack was my fav… followed by Miranda and then Legion
05/03/2012 at 05:33 Jackablade says:
Wrex is my favourite character and the source of my only retconning of the story through reloading. Usually I’ll live with my decisions where ever they take me, but I couldn’t deal with Wrex being gunned down by Ashley who was a character I could never bring myself to deal with. If I’d been given the option to execute her on the spot then perhaps I’d have stuck with the story as it was, but just rolling on after my favourite character was murdered and having no choice of repercussion beyond a stern talking-to didn’t sit with me at all. I reloaded, went back hours in gameplay to build up sufficient paragon points in order to talk Wrex down. Would have been nice to be able to have the option sympathise with him, maybe even grab a sample of the genophage cure to analyse, but never the less, it felt more “right” in the story and meeting Wrex again in ME2 made it all worthwhile.
On a similar note, making my choice of what to do with the Geth that wound up being dragged into the AI core of the Normandy was somewhat memorable. The choice? Do nothing. As a player I know that he’s a friendly NPC with what sound like some interesting associated missions, but Shepherd does not the Geth have been consistent enemies throughout and as such activating one on the ship, the the ships AI core of all places, would seem to be an act of stupidity, particularly with the suicide mission in the very near future. I can justify the likes of letting Grunt out of his tank because I have had positive experiences dealing with Krogan in the past. The option was also there to hand the Geth to the Illusive Man, but at this point he’s not someone who’s motives I’m inclined to trust much more than a potentially killer robot.
I’ll be interested to see how Bioware interprets my choice here.
05/03/2012 at 05:42 Dreforian says:
now I need to do a run-through on my male shepard just to see the other side (female shepard is my main data because Hale > Meer)
05/03/2012 at 06:22 nabeel says:
I have many favourite moments in the Mass Effect games, but definitely the singlemost coolest moment for me was the first encounter with Sovereign. The music and dialogue were just perfect, it was a short but ominous conversation that hit all the right notes for me in terms of creating awe and a sense of mystery and foreboding.
A close second was the opening to ME2. The way everything goes quiet when you step into the damaged area of the Normandy and you can only hear Shepard’s breathing, chill inducing. And that shot of Shepard struggling to breathe and falling into the planet’s atmosphere just before the titles show, so disturbing and disquieting.
05/03/2012 at 10:46 Fiyenyaa says:
The ME2 opening was amazing; the really evocative sound-direction makes it that much more noteworthy.
Although I will say as a mega-nitpick; the fact that your shepherd is wearing armour types that aren’t actually available in the main game is quite annoying to me (my Shepherd was an infiltrator, and was wearing armour much lighter than the default ME2 armour that everyone wears after being rebuilt). Having played the ME3 multiplayer demo, I hope they do as good a job with single-player armour customisation as they did with multiplayer weapon customisation.
05/03/2012 at 07:31 jimangi says:
I’ve never seen a game ending better than Mass Effect 2′s. No game I’ve seen has you lose major characters through mistakes like ME2 does. The turning of a person into Reaper goo is a whole lot more revolting when it’s Kelly Chambers. When Mordin looked like he was going to slip off the side of the hover -thing my heart was in my mouth (even though they can’t die on that particular bit).
05/03/2012 at 07:53 Tei says:
My favorite events are… the visit to one of the protean worlds, … the sense of mistery was strong. Also that mission where you have to defend a room where a sniper has got stuck. I like that final where you kill that big monster that attack the citadel.
05/03/2012 at 08:04 TheIronSky says:
Garrus was always one of my favoured characters – had good powers, great stories (“I had strength while she had flexibility…”), and too often saved my ass from husks when they swarmed in on me.
Thane was not a favourite of mine. The Drell are certainly an interesting species, but Thane left so much to be desired, and after seeing him in action I didn’t feel like he anything more to offer than just being the slightly-ironic Drell assassin. Although, I must admit that his loyalty and recruitment missions were stellar. I really enjoyed seeing him drop through the air-ducts to assail Nassana and stand in the Blade-Runner inspired venetian blind-based backlighting. That was good stuff.
I guess I’d have to say that Liara is my favourite character, since she has such a storied past and seems to have some serious dedication to her work, whether that’s saving Shepard’s corpse from the Shadow Broker or working on some intergalactic SCIENCE!
Then I’d say Garrus is next, for reasons detailed above; followed by Mordin, because he’s just a quick-witted intellectual who’s as likely to heal you as he is to shoot you (in the words of Aria, I believe).
Then I’d say Tali and Saren. Tali because she’s the main Quarian in the game (and Quarians are so damn interesting!) and Saren because it’s so much fun watching his slow descent into insanity and eventual cyber-kineticism.
As far as moments, I’d say that it was pretty incredible when you spoke to Sovereign. He was the first bad guy in a long time that made me feel like I’d encountered a truly sinister inter-stellar being. Nothing can humble a man like the reaper-instilled fear of complete and utter annihilation.
05/03/2012 at 08:26 RedViv says:
The ending sequences to both games are among my favourites of all games.
Characters? Really anyone except for Kaidan and Jacob. Everyone else has something I can connect with. Tali’s lack of a real home, Mordin’s constant quest for logic and consideration of previous choices, Jack’s screw-that issues, Garrus’ conflicts, Samara’s wardrobe malfunction…
05/03/2012 at 08:55 UncleLou says:
I enjoyed both games, but I’ve got a terrible memorey for content. I barely remember who was who, and what exactly happened. Have you guys all recently replayed them, or am I just becoming senile? :-/
05/03/2012 at 09:11 SanguineAngel says:
Undoubtedly the Ashley/Kaiden decision. To my mind, all of the decision making in ME1 was superior to ME2, but this moment in the game is what makes ME1 stand out for me. It made the entire story a lot more meaningful. It worked for a variety of reasons but mostly because whatever choice you make THERE ARE CONSEQUENCES. There was no safe option.
Also, when I realised that my choices early in the game affected my choices later in the game. With the renegade/paragon meter dictating your potential abilities in speechcraft. I didn’t min/max, I choice character appropriate, which meant some later situations, I was unable to resolve in particular ways. Which was awesome
05/03/2012 at 09:18 Wizlah says:
I also tended to choice appropriate decisions, and it made the game more enjoyable. In ME2, I think I ended up marginally more bloody-minded renegade, I think, but in the first I was more a Paragon with a fairly ruthless streak.
05/03/2012 at 09:22 NathanH says:
Interestingly I think the paragon/renegade mechanic as implemented is terrible. One of the great things about Mass Effect is that you can choose pretty much any combination of dialogue options and create a coherent character. In most RPGs, you have to choose the same sort of option repeatedly or your character comes across as crazy. That the mechanics then conspire to undermine that strength is a disaster. The conversations are more fun if you play the game badly, which is a mistake.
Having some persuasion options only open if the difference between your two meters is sufficiently low, or when the highest of the two meters is sufficiently low, would be a good way to fix this.
05/03/2012 at 09:36 SanguineAngel says:
The only thing I dislike about the Paragon/Renegade meter is that it comes across as a morality meter when it is not one. So you start off thinking about it all wrong and so you make the assumption as you make, Nathan, that you need to unlock all the options in one of the tiers.
The game semi-dictates your character based on the character you have played up to that point. It is not playing the game badly to not maximise one of the statistics. It is just a reflection of the character that you have shaped. The failing, I think, is possibly in showing you what options you missed out on. And, as stated, the suggestion (largely through aesthetic) that it is a morality meter. It’s actually just a personality meter. calculating the types of choices you have made and the types of choices that your character is likely to make at that point in time. It forces character development. Which is wicked.
05/03/2012 at 10:01 NathanH says:
It is bad play though, because having high paragon/renegade will unlock advantageous dialogue options, whereas having both paragon/renegade low provides no such bonus. Therefore whenever you have the choice between gaining points and not gaining points, and the choice otherwise affects nothing in game-terms, it is always good play to choose the points-gaining option. Similarly, in a choice between gaining paragon points and gaining renegade points, it is usually optimal to choose the route that increases whichever is already highest. The game mechanics encourage extremism, while the dialogues encourage moderation. I think this is a mistake.
05/03/2012 at 10:20 SanguineAngel says:
But I don’t think the options are advantageous – I am replaying the game at the moment (lost my saves :( ) and as far as I can tell, you just resolve situations differently by using paragon/renegade options. Usually they are a method of avoiding conflict, always they just produce an alternative resolution to a situation – the idea being that that resolution is in keeping with your character. Equally, your character might make more sense NOT choosing those options. In that instance, they are unlikely to have unlocked those options, having made more down the line decisions in the past. Whatever happens, you still get xp and loot from those situations. And I haven’t noticed a discernible difference between the xp I get when solving with or without the unlocked options. A completed quest gives out fairly hefty xp either way. So there is no “right” decision. Which I think is crucial to why I like ME1 more than ME2 (where you clearly CAN make the correct decisions in the long run).
Your point about the choice between gaining points and not is valid and I think ties into the perception of the renegade/paragon mechanic vs the actual purpose. Which is a flaw in my view. But how else would you see the system in effect? Maybe you don’t need to see it but there is a certain satisfaction to be gained from knowing your character is developing – that’s what RPGs are all about! (IMO – not trying to start a genre war)
05/03/2012 at 10:27 NathanH says:
There are, for example, arguments between the team members that you need high persuasion to deal with. I suppose it doesn’t make the game easier, but it helps you get what are obviously the best endings.
I think the system doesn’t need much work, all you need is a couple more persuasion types. Currently you have Inspiring from paragon and Aggressive from Renegade. I would also have Diplomatic (balanced between paragon and renegade) and Professional (not too high in either). All four options wouldn’t be available for each persuasion scenario, of course.
05/03/2012 at 12:02 SanguineAngel says:
Those arguments are in ME2 but not ME1 right? I am only on ME1 atm, still in the main section. As far as I remember there is only 1 conflict in ME1, which I have already faced – liara and Ashley and there was no special options for that.
I think that the standard responses in the dialogue wheel would count as the middle ground responses. I agree that it would appeal more and may work better if these were also tracked. I suppose the idea is that as the default setting, just tracking the variations (paragon & renegade) would be sufficient but in reality, despite choosing renegade down the line for example, you’re still able to suddenly become diplomat of the year. Which does go a little counter to the system.
To get back to those arguments – even if your character has not unlocked those dialogue options, (s)he is still able to resolve them using normal options. If those normal options do not resolve it in a peaceful manner for all then it just means that the character YOU have developed does not have the ability resolve it in that manner. That is life man, you can’t please everyone. That’s one of the strengths of the system in my mind.
I can’t recall if failing to resolve those situations peacefully results in people’s deaths? I don’t think it does but if so THEN that results in the process being a win/lose situation and I would say that is not so good, because then you would want/need to game the conversations for the best possible outcome.
In my opinion ME2 tends to be weaker than ME1 in most respects but I don’t think that the paragon/renegade mechanic is inherently broken or terrible, I think it’s actually pretty good. I would like to see it taken further as you suggest maybe. Have that middle ground or diplomatic response receive the same treatment.
05/03/2012 at 12:36 NathanH says:
ME1 does it better than ME2 because you can manually increase your diplomatic skills on level-up. In ME2 your persuasion ability is determined completely by how many of the options for the relevant tone you have chosen in the past.
As you say, it creates situations where the character you have built is not able to deal with the problem optimally. That’s fine in theory. In practice, what the mechanic does is reward you for picking one of the extremes and following it religiously. That’s also fine, there’s nothing wrong with that in theory, but from my experience the dialogues are more fun when choosing what seems most natural, rather than what will boost your persuasion abilities. A game that is best to play one way but best play is to do the opposite is, to me, a game with a problem that ought to be addressed.
05/03/2012 at 12:52 plugmonkey says:
People try to “game” morality systems too much, imho. If you set about to do a “renegade” or “paragon” playthrough then you are essentially removing the morality feature from the game. If all your decisions are predetermined, the choice might as well not keep coming up.
You’re effectively making one choice. They could ask you straight after the title screen, on the character creation: nice or nasty. Job done.
If you play like that, you never get to explore how far your character is willing to go, where they draw the line, which is where the experience lies. Morality exists in the grey area.
To that end, I would say Bioware are wrong to attach any sort of extra features to being at one extreme of the scale or the other. In doing so, they’re actively encouraging players to opt out of the feature.
05/03/2012 at 09:26 Wizlah says:
Tali ended up my favourite mate. I bollixed up the first mission, putting zaeed in command (hey, he’s an experienced merc, right?) and she got killed and I couldn’t have that and so reloaded. I think I still have the save point though, so I may go back and play as originally intended before going on to ME3. Which I’m unlikely to play until chrimbo anyway. And like a lot of people, I had a bit soft spot for wrex.
In terms of moments in the game, pushing the garrus thing almost to the edge of a romance, but not quite, was a fun option (I don’t think I ever suggested it, stopped a thing short). My character stayed true to Liara, and her whole stubborn intransigence in ME2 was a good scene. I think I’d agree with a lot of people that Virmire is probably the most compelling oh fuck the galaxy really is going to war bit, although the assault on the space station in zero G was pretty good.
I got Legion late, and was kind of pissed I did, because I quite rated him/it/them. Something about a bit of my armour being part and parcel of them was what made it compelling. I wouldn’t mind getting the lair of the shadow broker at some point before I play ME3 although I’d happily leave the rest of the DLC.
05/03/2012 at 09:27 Gittun says:
Well, yeah, Garrus is just a badass, no way around it. Besides that though;
First game: The last bit after you land on Ilos, I loved the sense of being on a planet where the protheans actually lived. I really enjoyed the prothean lore bits, which is why the me3 dlc thing annoys me so much.
Second game: Probably Mordin in general, he’s hilarious. Also really enjoyed the shadowbroker stuff, all the consoles with extra bits of info you can read after you beat it made me squee with loregeek joy.
05/03/2012 at 09:44 SanguineAngel says:
I also agree with everything in this post
05/03/2012 at 09:59 AmateurScience says:
I loved the ending of both ME1 and 2. My biggest regret is that I let my completionist nature get the better of me for ME2 and I did everyone’s loyalty missions – even for characters I really didn’t like (Jack/Jacob) and got all the upgrades. And then no-one died during the final mission: I think I lost a lot of the drama right there. Worst part is if I go back and play ‘sub-optimally’ then I’ll be arbitrarily picking and choosing who lives and who dies which completely misses the point too. I wish they’d made it a bit harder to lose no-one and a masked the important ‘live/die’ choices more.
Really tempted to have a second playthrough going with my gut a bit more.
Also: Garrus is probably my favourite character in the series. Joker’s up there as well as Anderson.
05/03/2012 at 10:26 SanguineAngel says:
Said it a dozen times but THAT is my biggest problem with ME2. I loved the game but ME1 did it better. Personally, I think you should not have been able to save everyone at all. Maybe if you had to choose whose loyalty missions you completed but couldn’t do them all… or maybe some more immediate choices (I’d have preferred that).
05/03/2012 at 13:19 plugmonkey says:
I would also have preferred that.
A little bit of Dead Rising’s “Now means NOW!” could have been quite effective here, as opposed to the traditional RPG “We need you help immediately! (and by ‘immediately’, we mean ‘any time in the next 18 months’)” approach.
05/03/2012 at 10:12 Tunips says:
“You can’t bludgeon your way through bureacracy, Shepard. ”
“I can bludgeon pretty hard”
That was my Shepard: the hard surface of the moral imperative. He did the right thing as hard as humanly possible, and ME1 really gave you the space to do that.
As such I felt massively betrayed by the compromise of the character. My Shepard would have teamed up with Tali – the only other character with reservations about Cerberus – blown up the reaper/AI infested Normandy II, marched into the council and started bludgeoning the bureaucracy until he got an alliance ship and a council mandate.
05/03/2012 at 10:14 alexanderjmee says:
I was looking forward to the consequences of my choices being a big deal. On my first play through of ME2, I went for max loyalty of my team and let the crew die. Watching the ensign get mashed was really affecting.
Sadly, every play through thereafter was completed so quickly that I got full loyalty, and saved the crew. Kind of broke the narrative for me. I’ve also never lost a team member, which made the finale a little hollow.
05/03/2012 at 10:15 alexanderjmee says:
and Mordin’s little sing along moment was classic.
05/03/2012 at 22:11 Orontes says:
Thresher maws!
J/k Wrex and Garrus from the first game. One with shotgun, one with sniper rifle. Perfect.