User blog comment:StagedDom19/Missing the Main Problem/@comment-2256917-20120710190737/@comment-2256917-20120710212819

Sorry, I haven't played any other Bioware games. The ME series is very good, but I'm not so sure that Bioware is as good as it could be in writing and quality-control (even though the programming seems excellent). So I hear you about the thermal-clips-on-Aeia inconsistency: obviously a stupid oversight. It could've been a cool twist of a mission if, for that one alone, you couldn't resupply your clips (or not easily).

There were too many characters in ME2, as Bioware seemed to admit come the third game. And thinking again about Grunt, I meant that he brought you to Tuchanka, etc. But Mordin, actually, was enough for that too (although Grunt as a squadmate was great). So, I agree.

I don't understand your anti-biotic comment: biotics are central to the mass-effect Sci-Fi. Or do you wish the games were all straight shooters? Then why introduce element zero and thevdark-energy hocus pocus? Star Trek type sci-fi would be more than sufficient for a shooter. But I assume that's not your meaning (since you seem to prefer the RPG aspects of ME?).

What you say of Jack is spot on. Her character as written and acted was the most believable (aside from The Illusive Man's), but her plot-relevance potential really was wasted.

As for character-character relations, ME3 is at least as good as ME. Better, even: they respond to Shepard with greater variety in accord with the characteristics of Shep's comments, or even with his "alignment" or the current plot-state, and Javik is so self-certain and experienced as to silence Shepard, etc. Above all, they finally talk to each other, and do "their own" things, on the Normandy & even while on missions. That is where their characters are developed. The only thing ME has over ME3 in these connections is that it's overwhelmingly "RPG" on Shepard's side, while the action is mediocre (and tailored to consoles), whereas ME3's "action" is about on par with the hours upon hours of walking around, talking, brokering and breaking deals, & making countless irrelevant (but real-life imitative) decisions. Only the Virmire Survivor is wasted, as though Bioware "hated" him or her.

I still don't see how Mass Effect 2 fails plot-wise; or how it lost the "overall theme" of Mass Effect. I take the overall theme to have been the conflict between natural-rational animals ("organics" is our neologism), and their modes of thinking and choosing, and artificial intelligences and/or hybrids ("synthetics" seems to cover both the geth and the Reapers, and Collectors). Saren even states this conflict explicitly, speaking of Sovereign: "He's a machine; he thinks like a machine..." ME2 only furthers that theme by showing the possible use of "synthetic" stuff in us (Shepard's resurrection and implants), which is set in sharp relief by the soulless Collectors and Harbinger's power of possession (it's almost like Hudson forgot this fact when he put forth the "synthesis" ending as "the best". You can see his, or whomever's, prejudices all over ME3). If this isn't what you were speaking to, what did you mean?

And the ME2 plot is, not unlike that of ME, simple but excellent: the outstanding soldier (who is now a rogue special agent him- or herself) investigating, hunting, and finally thwarting the unknown perpetrators of massive human-nappings, who turn out to be bent on galactic domination (i.e. as agents for the Reapers, like Saren).

Each plot (the overarching action) in a series does not need to have much dependence on former stories (plots) in the series. Instead, I'm saying that the so-called plot of ME3 is not a plot at all, since negotating alliances and collecting personnel and materials to build a big gun are not constituent parts of any single action (Shep. throughout complains that he has to play "politician" [there's another Canadian/American prejudice]; he should complain about the fact that he's reduced to a delivery boy). They could, sort of, contribute to a single action--say, that of taking back earth--if those parts had anything to do with taking back earth, and if taking back earth were a major part or series of events in the game; but they don't, and it isn't (the single mission of mediocre complexity, in London, is no more than another delivery-boy exercise). Whereas the main plot missions of ME are necessary, or at least seem necessary, to the hunt for and thwarting of the rogue special agent who is bent on galactic domination; and the main missions of ME2 are similarlly necessary, or at least seem necessary, to the discovery and thwarting of the human-nappers.