I'm still working through Mass Effect: Andromeda, which I've been playing in between other games, as a follow-up to finishing the original trilogy remaster.
I've been trying to keep an open mind about this game and so far, it's been better than I remembered it, with just a few annoyances here and there. I've gotten past the point where I quit playing the first time!
But that means I've now met the Angara for the second time and boy, I hate how these guys look. The male Angara look lion-ish and sort of serviceable, but the female Angara - Why do they look like that? Are they... cross-eyed?
It also really bugs me that the Angara are so bow-legged. They look awkward when they walk around, and it's hard to suspend my disbelief through all this.
I think I just expect more from the creators of the original trilogy than this. The Angara look like a first draft for an alien race in a game with a fraction of the budget this game had. They aren't bad, per se - just not up to snuff with what I know BioWare is capable of.
Anyway, I continue on... slightly disturbed, but undeterred.
I completed Mass Effect 3 for the second time, finishing out the remastered Legendary Edition trilogy. Like Mass Effect 2, I had almost no recollection of playing the original game 9 years ago, and so it felt like a new experience, save for a few bits here and there that had stuck with me.
Like my other posts, there might be spoilers in here. So if for some reason you've not played these games yet, it's a good time to stop reading.
That's right - this dude is back to finish the job he accidentally started two games ago.
It's funny - going into the Legendary Edition, most of my memories were of the first game, and I always considered that one my favorite by a long shot. I still look back on it fondly, but after playing them all once more, back-to-back, I feel a little different about it. Both ME2 and ME3 are excellent games, each telling an entertaining story, and each refining the experience in its own way. The sequels also feel more fleshed out and more focused than the first game, and just all around more polished. I'm not just a fan of the first game now; I'm a fan of the entire trilogy.
Emotion runs high in the third game. It opens with a full-scale Reaper invasion of Earth, and has Shepard flee in order to rally the other races of the galaxy to help stop the annihilation of all sentient life. At every turn you are reminded that the battle rages back home as you hop around space trying to make friends, recruit allies, and fight back the enemies.
The finality of it all is palpable, and this leads to many great moments in the story. For example, I'd had Garrus on my strike teams throughout all three games, and so at one point, when I took him up on some downtime at the Citadel, he and Shepard shared a really fun moment as they took turns shooting at clay pigeons. It was touching to see these two friends, who had been through so much, take a minute to appreciate each other as the fight of their lives loomed.
I also made a late-game decision to romance Liara, who Shepard had kept at arm's distance throughout the trilogy, and that lead to many satisfying sequences as the game drew to an end.
It was powerful to see all these characters grow throughout the series, and to show love for each other before taking on the final mission, which none may survive. It is a credit to all the work BioWare did with these games that those moments feel so real.
Weirdly, there is no boss fight at the end of ME3. That is something I did not remember. Instead, you face a series of difficult enemy encounters that lead up to the finale, where you can choose one of three potential futures for the entire galaxy. I was glad for no boss fight, but I still don't like the run-up to the end sequence. The AI you meet when you activate the Gauntlet is strange, and I don't like how it has to explain the entire story to you, to tie everything together. The story itself is fine though, and even though the ending of the game was altered a bit since the first time I played ME3, I didn't really feel like it needed it.
I chose to destroy the Reapers, along with all non-organic life, and it was good, though I was sad to see Legion be killed. I was surprised at the end, when after the Citadel was destroyed and all Shepard's friends had gathered to say goodbye, I was treated to one final scene where it is pretty heavily implied that Shepard survived the ordeal. That I had never seen before, but I guess you can get that small change to the ending if you manage to grow your defense force to a certain size.
So I did enjoy the game and conclusion pretty thoroughly, but I had a few gripes too, as usual.
I am still not a fan of the way Ashley Williams' appearance was changed. It still looks really overdone compared to her modest introduction on Eden Prime in the original game. I get that she has advanced in her career and gotten past Shepard, who she bonded with in ME1, but no other character in the game was redone in such a ham-fisted way. It's honestly distracting.
Though Ashley was the biggest change, I felt like all the women of Mass Effect were sexualized more, to lesser and greater extent. I'm not a prude, so I don't mind if games dare to venture into that territory - but after the modest start with ME1, where the focus was the story, and all the men and women had somewhat realistic proportions, ME3 (and to some extent ME2) just got sexier - for no reason other than, I'm assuming, to be more of a spectacle. This change isn't as prevalent in the Legendary Edition, since the characters all use the same model assets throughout the remaster, but it's something I noticed in my original playthrough and something that just felt off this time around as well.
Finally, though I appreciate all the added content the included DLC provides to the game, I didn't really care for the odd change in tone it carries with it. In one new sequence, you're lead on a wild goose chase around the Citadel after a failed assassination attempt on Shepard - okay, fair enough. This endeavor eventually includes every member of your crew in the same fight, which is fun, but throughout this segment, the characters make an endless series of action-movie type jokes. The jokes are funny, and I did have a good time hearing the lighter side of the crew, but this happens in the middle of saying goodbye to old crew members who you might never see again, working diplomacy between proud and jealous alien races, and preparing for what might be the final fight for all sentient life. It jut feels like too big a departure from the otherwise serious tone of the game.
Anyway, those are pretty minor complaints. I spent many, many hours playing through the Mass Effect Legendary Edition, and I loved the experience all over again. The Mass Effect trilogy is a masterpiece.
Now... maybe it's time to finally give Mass Effect: Andromeda a proper playthrough?
I've finally finished Mass Effect 2 again - and I've got a lot to say about it!
Just an FYI: if you care about spoilers for this 11 year old game, stop reading now.
I'm a fan of the Mass Effect series - I've read the books! - but I remember surprisingly little of this game from my first play-through back in 2010. I didn't replay it as many times as the first game, because I didn't really like many of the changes BioWare made. I have a better appreciation for ME2 now, although there are still some things I find annoying.
My baldy Shepard is back! I like that he's sort of a normal-looking dude, though. It helps sell the game's story.
In a lot of ways, ME2 feels like the game that Mass Effect 1 wanted to be. Gone are the long "gray box" hallways, the elevator loading sequences, and the generic planet bases reachable only by way of the Mako. In their place are a number of custom set-pieces and scenarios that never feel like they've been copied and pasted from another part of the game. There are a handful of large city areas to explore. The expanded interior of the new Normandy is more believable. The combat feels more strategic and punchy, and the game overall just feels more solid. ME2 is what ME1 might have been, had it had a longer development cycle, and a larger budget, I suspect.
Coming straight off the first game, ME2 is much darker - both in presentation and story.
The lighting effects in this game are much more dramatic than the original game, likely the result of the better-produced game world. Sometimes, it's distracting, and I did miss the softer, film-grainy look of ME1, but it's not necessarily bad.
With Shephard relegated to the seedier side of the galaxy, the subject matter in this game is accordingly much darker as well. New, more scary alien races are introduced as villains, as are a number of missions that have you exploring messy subjects like human experimentation, forced captivity, slavery, etc. Many of these themes are present in the first game's lore, but they are brought to life in ME2. There's also more cursing, which I personally don't mind, and is more a sign of the times during which the game was developed, rather than anything that services the characters or story.
ME2 still has the same expansive feel of the first game, minus (most of) the planetary romps. The galaxy map is augmented with a new mechanic where you have to buy/spend fuel to get around locally. Rather than bouncing around planets in the Mako, you now scan planets from the comfort of space and send out probes to mine resources. Included DLC adds the Hammerhead, a hovercraft that you take out on a few short missions, but those are neither interesting or particularly memorable - I didn't do any of them until I was ready to complete the game.
I appreciate all the work that went into ME2. As I mentioned above, levels feel complete and fleshed out, in both size and detail. There are a number of cool surprises in the story: Tali appearing with the Quarian strike team in the opening sequence, Ashley (confronting Shephard!) on Horizon, the reveal of Garrus as Archangel, the battle with the Shadowbroker, and the last addition to your team, a rogue Geth platform. I had a great time cruising around the galaxy collecting team members and helping them out.
The core of the game is less intimate than the first, but it's still quite engaging. I actually felt a bit touched when Shephard met old members of his team and gave them a hug. That is what humanity brings to the stars!
There are the inevitable bumps in the road, of course. One thing that I really dislike is the inclusion of a "mission complete" screen at the end of each sequence. Outside of these screens, the game retains the same cinematic feel as the first - so it is particularly strange to me that BioWare felt that constantly reminding players that this is, indeed, a game, was a good idea.
Another annoyance is that, in the Legendary Edition, it's not uncommon for some bits of dialogue to get cut off just before it finishes. It doesn't happen frequently enough to ruin the game, but it happens often nonetheless. This bug was present in ME1 as well.
The soundtrack is a little less synthy than I want it to be, but there are some cool moments there as well. It's serviceable.
One final gripe is with the end-game sequence where, after the Normandy's crew is abducted, you are given the option to keep exploring/completing missions or get right to the rescue effort. Unless you're familiar with the game, it's not obvious that you will trigger this event until you do - and then it's not obvious that there will be consequences if you don't begin the end-game immediately. Wanting to get the best ending, I had to play through the last few hours of the game twice, because on my first run, I opted to finished up all my open missions before tackling the finale, and nearly all of my crew was killed before I got there.
The end-game is cool. Instead of the standard 3-person mission, you work through a number of sequences where you choose a leader for a second strike team, an infiltrator, and other specialists. Who you choose and their loyalty status determines the outcome, and there are a number of things that can go wrong if you pick poorly.
I'm not a fan of the final boss: a human Reaper, which looks like a giant Terminator robot. It's huge and scary to look at, but the idea that the Reapers, ancient machine-beings that kill all sentient life every 50,000 years, needed to make a human version of themselves is just silly to me. There is some voiceover-provided lore about how they assimilate new sentient races to make new Reapers, but all the rest of them look like insects, so it just doesn't fit.
Anyway, I'm on to Mass Effect 3 now, and I remember absolutely nothing from that game. I will be back with another progress report once that one's behind me!
Last night, I finished the first Mass Effect, as part of the Mass Effect Legendary Edition remastered re-release of all three of the original games. I'm sort of an opportunistic completionist, so I made sure to do all the achievements. It all took me around 46 hours.
I've played the original game from start to finish a few other times before, but it has been a while, so I didn't remember much outside of the main story beats. I had a lot of fun re-experiencing it, and there were still a few things that I found surprising and noteworthy as I replayed the game.
My biggest surprise was how few mainline missions there are. The number of missions that advance the story and lead you to the end of the game is surprisingly low. They ran longer than I remembered, though, so that was nice. One early mission took me around 2-3 hours as I explored the entirety of the map and completed all the objectives. As I get older, I find it harder to devote that kind of time to games - at least, not without interruptions - so some of the missions took me multiple sessions to finish.
I was also a bit stunned at how clunky - and in the early game, strangely challenging - the combat is. If there is any part of this remastered Mass Effect that cannot hide its age well, it's the combat. Enemies are extremely basic, sliding into cover by just running into it feels weird, and the balance is off; your AI-controlled teammates either require constant babysitting or are an unstoppable force of combat and biotic abilities.
A good portion of the game is the combat, so luckily it doesn't take much time to get used to its eccentricities. But at times I wondered how this game was able to overcome how weird the combat is and become the beloved property that it is today.
If you've played the game using the default male Shephard, or you're familiar with the various promotional materials, you might be wondering who that odd-looking bald man is in the screenshot at the top of this post. Well, I was delighted that BioWare added the option to use a character code to import your old characters from previous play-throughs, and so that's how the game's hero, Shepard, looks in my game.
He is the result of me firing the game up when it first arrived 14 years ago, and in my rush to play, anxiously mashing through the character creator. I figured, once I got a taste of the game, I'd start over with a proper character that looked a bit more like me. But the game was so engrossing, I ended up not wanting to start over, and got used to the way he looked. Now I cannot hear male Shepard's voice without automatically thinking of this weird dude. I like him!
It was nice that BioWare added the option to use a custom character code at the beginning of the first game, so I could easily import this guy from my original play-throughs. It had one odd quirk, in that the skin color was wrong when I entered it the first time, but that was easily sorted out.
My experience with the Legendary Edition is limited to the first game so far, but it's been a good one. The game looks and runs great on my Xbox Series X, and was a joy to experience once more. There were certainly parts that I wish could have been touched a little more heavily by the remaster team, and a few bugs here and there, but despite all that, it's quite easy to get caught up in the sci-fi world of Mass Effect BioWare created.
When EA acquired BioWare in 2007, on the eve of its successful franchise launch with the original Mass Effect, I tried my hardest to reserve my criticisms until after they shipped a few more products, and we would start to see just how extensive the inevitable changes to the company would be. With BioWare's history of crafting superb games, it seemed like I owed it to them to at least wait for the dust to settle before making any judgments.
Three years later in 2010, I found myself generally happy with Mass Effect 2. The story was an interesting continuation of the epic set forth in the original game, and most of the conventions that made the first game fun were carried over successfully. Some things from the original game were shed away however, like the synth-heavy soundtrack from the previous game, and Mass Effect 2 definitely felt like a vision a little less realized (and a little more mainstream) for it. I found some other small changes annoying as well, like the end-of-level summary screens, and the (over) simplification of some of the RPG elements (weapons, armor).
I have no idea that these changes were planned additions by BioWare or the results of EA leaning on the team to try to make their game more appealing to the masses, but either way, they did nothing but dilute what would have otherwise been another grand RPG experience.
This week, it was announced that the upcoming Mass Effect 3 would feature a multiplayer element, and I find myself utterly disappointed. Why? Because this is just another step towards mediocrity for what started out as a really outstanding series of games. Instead of spending time working on improving the storytelling in the game engine, adding more side-quests and expanding, what I find to be, a very interesting universe for the upcoming game, EA / BioWare are squandering their time developing a multiplayer mode that will likely not fit within the canon of the story, or even be something that players want to buy the game for.
It's almost as if we've gone backwards a step. I really thought we'd mostly gotten past the days of executives trying to check off all the boxes, making developers create bolted-on, forgettable multiplayer experiences just so they'd have another item to highlight on the back of the game's box.
Maybe EA isn't to blame here; maybe this was BioWare's decision. Either way, I think it's a mistake, and is ignorant to all the things that made the series popular to begin with.
Mass Effect is a single player experience. If I buy the third game, it's going to be because I want to continue that experience. I want to play a game with a carefully crafted world, where story is king, and the game isn't interrupted by lag, idiots cursing at me over their mics, etc. I'm not going to buy Mass Effect 3 for multiplayer; I've got Gears of War, Halo, and Team Fortress 2 for that.
But hey, I could be wrong; Mass Effect 3's multiplayer could turn out to be just fine. From the outset however, it doesn't seem like a very fun idea to me.
Ultimately, I really just hope that Mass Effect 3 (the single player role-playing game) doesn't lose its edge because BioWare had to spend months tacking on a multiplayer component. It would be a real shame to end such a brilliant trilogy on such a sour note.
