Posted by Lynk Former
Reviews3 February 2014

Game Spotlight: Mass Effect 2

Warning: This entry contains spoilers for the Mass Effect trilogy.

After finishing the first Mass Effect, I continued my epic marathon run through the Mass Effect trilogy. As soon as the credits finished and the game too me back to the start screen, I eagerly swapped out the Mass Effect disc for the first disc of Mass Effect 2. There was no time to waste, Commander Shepard’s journey must continue…

I was looking forward to playing Mass Effect 2 back in 2010, but for some reason I hadn’t bothered to pre-order the game, the thought just didn’t occur to me for some odd reason. Luckily, my local EB Games store had a copy of the Mass Effect 2 Limited Collectors’ Edition just sitting there on the shelf on launch day despite the fact that all the pre-orders had been bought up by everyone. The guy at the counter told me that someone had cancelled their pre-order on launch day and that’s the reason that one was on the shelf… very lucky for me.

The journey of Lynk Shepard continues

They’re a rarity, but I absolutely love games that have the ability to carry over your progress from previous games in the series. There are some oldskool games that did it with code strings, while other games such as Mass Effect use save data. When I think about it, there must be so many variables involved in the creation of games such as Mass Effect, I mean, going from Mass Effect to Mass Effect 2 is complex, but then going from 2 to 3 must have been even more complicated for everyone involved. Everything from the big obvious differences right down to the tiny differences most people may not notice have to be taken into account.

We can rebuild him!

With my save data from Mass Effect 1 imported into Mass Effect 2, I simply accepted the imported face and chose to stay with the Soldier class, though I don’t like the idea that you can simply change your character class through an imported save file in Mass Effect 2, it doesn’t make much sense for Shepard to start as a Soldier and then suddenly become an Infiltrator. As for the bonus power, I chose Slam since it’s the power with the quickest cooldown, allowing me to follow-up quickly with concussive shot… not that I used Slam all that often. Additionally, while Slam is an odd choice to make considering it’s already been established that my Shepard doesn’t have any biotic powers to speak of, in my headcanon, I associate this sudden ability to use Slam as an unwanted side effect of the Lazarus Project. I’m sure plenty of Element Zero was used during the procedure that could account for such a thing to happen.

My choices

I made a few “mistakes” during my first playthrough of Mass Effect 2 back in 2010, though this was mostly because I was going in blind. The big mistake I made was to try to get both Tali and Legion on to my team as soon as I could, thus ploughing straight into the story progression content and skipping the side missions until after the Reaper IFF mission. Naturally, doing things in that order cost me greatly, such as the entire crew of the Normandy. I was operating under the assumption that ME2 would follow the standard RPG line of thinking that would allow me to go back and complete all the side missions I had missed before going pass the point of no return and into the last part of the game. I merrily went through all the side missions with an empty Normandy for many hours thinking there were no real consequences.

This time around, I was patient, I did everything in their logical and chronological order including the DLC missions, some of which I didn’t own during the first playthrough. Tali was acquired during the latter half of the game and Legion was only acquired once I had made sure to complete everything else the game had to offer. Once his loyalty mission was complete, the only thing left to do was to go to the galaxy map for the Normandy attack to trigger and then head straight into the Omega 4 relay to save my crew. It’s been many years coming, but I finally saved them the way I should have from the start. Of course, back in my first playthrough, I accepted my failure to save my crew and soldiered on, importing all of my mistakes into Mass Effect 3.

As with the previous entry, here are all the choices I made in Mass Effect 2 that go on to effect various elements of Mass Effect 3 with the major decisions in bold.

I have to say the DLC added quite a lot of really good content to the game, but I’ll talk about that a bit later.

Story

I didn’t quite know what to expect from the continuing story of Mass Effect. At the end of Mass Effect, all we knew was that Shepard had revealed the existence of the Reapers and that they were coming. Therefore, the logical assumption to make would be that the next game would probably focus on getting the galaxy ready for the arrival of the Reapers, banding them together, forging alliances, etc. What I got wasn’t anywhere near what I thought would happen, in fact, what I expected to get ended up being played out in Mass Effect 3 instead. Right from the very start of the game, within the first five minutes everything has gone to hell, the Normandy is lost, some of the crew manage to escape and some die along with Commander Shepard himself. With Shepard drifting through space, his suit leaking air, the only thing that came to mind was “Well, fuck…” as the Mass Effect 2 title appeared on-screen. It was quite the shock the first time I saw it, suddenly I didn’t quite know where this game was going to go and I’m really glad I kept myself ignorant of most of the pre-release content that was released for the game.

On a side note, I was more concerned about Tali and Garrus escaping from the Normandy before it got blown to hell than Liara…

It was a great relief when the Lazarus Project sequence showed that Commander Shepard was still alive and intriguing that the people who brought him back from the dead was Cerberus. I remember, at the time of my first playthrough, I didn’t really recall who Cerberus were aside from vague recollections that they were bad somehow. Throughout the course of the game, many characters around me such as Tali and Kaiden (I had saved him in my first playthrough) had questioned my involvement with the group and it didn’t take long for me to question it as well. If Cerberus is as bad as these characters are telling me, then why am I still with them throughout the entire course of the game? It’s a question that many fans ask and feel that the entire premise of a paragon Commander Shepard working with this terrorist organisation is completely unbelievable.

Armed with a lot more knowledge about the canon of the Mass Effect universe now than I was when I first played ME2, there are obvious indications that a lot of the Cerberus back-story has been retconned to fit into their larger role in Mass Effect 2. However, the question remains, why would Commander Shepard work for Cerberus in the first place? At first it seems like only a renegade Shepard would allow himself/herself to ally with these people, but there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for paragons as well.

While Shepard eventually gets a new ship, another Normandy, the crew of that ship is filled with Cerberus personnel aside from Joker and Dr. Chakwas. Shepard has been given a mission, one of great importance to the survival of the human colonists in the Terminus systems. While he does have a ship and can go practically anywhere he needs to go with that ship to accomplish his mission, he’s not about to team up with Joker and Dr. Chakwas to take over the SR2 and haul it back to the Alliance. He’s also not going to just abandon his mission and hand himself over to the Alliance so he can sit around for a few weeks while they try to figure out what to do with a man who has been dead for two years.

He has no real choice but to work with Cerberus to accomplish his mission against the Collectors. Additionally, whether you save the Citadel Council or leave them to die during the attack on the Citadel by Sovereign, humanity has its hands full, either rebuilding their fleet or leading the Council and running the rest of the galaxy. Their overall effectiveness to protect their own colonies has been diminished greatly. It makes sense for Shepard to use the resources he has now to try to resolve the situation as quickly as possible and not abandon them just so he doesn’t have to work with the bad people. The true right thing to do would be to exploit the resources Cerberus has provided for a worthy goal. I do find it very interesting that throughout Mass Effect 2, there are indications that Admiral Hackett is trying to cover for Shepard, allowing him the space he needs to get the job done.

If my enemy asks for my help in stopping a greater threat against humanity, I would certainly help them, conditionally. That’s exactly what my Shepard told the Illusive Man when Shepard agreed to the mission… if we’re going to do this, we do it my way on my terms. It may be a tough call to side with an enemy, but it’s the smart thing to do in the situation Shepard was thrown into and it’s the best thing to do for the greater good. And yes, Cerberus did a lot of things to play Shepard, they’re sneaky and underhanded, but that’s on Cerberus, not Shepard. Shepard did what he needed to do to save lives, and that is the paragon thing to do.

Perhaps that line of reasoning doesn’t work for everyone, but it does make perfect sense to me.

Moving on, about the overall storyline of Mass Effect 2, in many ways this game feels like an extended side-story of sorts… not that I consider that to be a bad thing, though I am aware that many people consider ME2 to have a much weaker storyline compared to the original Mass Effect for this reason. For the most part, the story of Mass Effect 2 consists of Shepard gathering a crew of capable individuals, gaining their loyalty and preparing them for a suicide mission through the Omega 4 relay to strike at the Collector’s and stop them from abducting any more human colonists, revealing their involvement with the Reapers along the way. In some ways it’s similar to Shepard’s journey in the first Mass Effect, gathering together a team to strike at Saren and the geth while revealing their involvement with the Reapers along the way.

The key difference between the two stories is the involvement of the rest of the galaxy. In the first Mass Effect, the stakes were for multiple species in the galaxy with Saren and the geth being a real threat to everyone. In Mass Effect 2, the threat that Shepard is facing is targeting humans, and while he’s getting help from members of other species, the overall tone is that this is a human problem and nothing more. There’s no sense that you’re gathering the forces of the galaxy down on a common threat like you felt when you worked with Captain Kirrahe’s unit on Virmire or having a multi-species fleet protecting the Citadel from a geth attack.

This was a singular mission you were basically undertaking on your own, with no real support from anyone but a pro-human terrorist organisation as well as a group of people you gathered to help you. So while the stories may have their similarities, the tone of each story is very different and makes Mass Effect 2 seem like a smaller, less significant event than what we played through in the first Mass Effect.

It isn’t until the last part of the game do things come into perspective, at least for me. During the suicide mission you end up utilising your entire squad, making the tough calls based on each squad members strengths and weaknesses. What Mass Effect 2 did was bring the importance of loyalty and camaraderie into the forefront of the story, though whether this was done successfully is up to the individual. Throughout your journey together, you’ve been interacting with each person on your team, getting to know them and taking on missions that are personal to each of them. You had spent the majority of the game bonding with your crew to allow you to work as a cohesive unit when you finally went through the Omega 4 Relay to confront the Collectors.

The primary antagonists of Mass Effect 2: The Collector’s

While in the first Mass Effect, you were searching for Saren and trying to figure out what his objectives were, chasing him throughout the galaxy, Mass Effect 2 had already set you up with a target and sent you on a journey to gather the forces required to attack the target. I have to say that the suicide mission is one of my favourite parts of the Mass Effect trilogy and was done really well, right from the very start with the space battle sequence all the way to the very end. It was all very exciting, very tense and your choices really did matter since one bad decision could kill off one or more of your squad.

Before I continue, here are the choices I made during the suicide mission… funnily enough, I made the same choices on both my first and second playthroughs of Mass Effect 2.

I was able to come out of the suicide mission, on both playthroughs, without losing any of my squad mates, however, as stated before, on my first playthrough I did lose the entire crew of the Normandy that were abducted aside from Dr. Chakwas. My failure to save the Normandy crew made the first playthrough a little sad at the end, knowing I had failed the people who had come to trust me… but since this is only a video game, I had the opportunity to save them on my second playthrough.

Also, I think I’m the only person on the planet who actually thought the entire idea of the Human-Reaper was really cool. As soon as I saw it, I immediately understood that what we were fighting was the unfinished core of a Reaper and a H.R Geiger/Stan Winston style monument to humanities extinction. The idea that inside each Reaper, there’s a hideous monument to the extinction of the species that was used to create them is pretty damn cool. I don’t know where people got the idea that it’d just be the metal skeleton floating in space, I mean, the Human-Reaper is tiny compared to Sovereign which was 2 kilometres long.

With the suicide mission complete and a total victory achieved against the Collectors, there were still two more pieces of story content to complete. For the first time, I would be able to experience the Lair of the Shadow Broker and Arrival DLC content, both of which take place after the events of the suicide mission.

Downloadable content

Unlike Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2 has quite a large collection of story DLC of varied sizes, some more interesting than others. On my first playthrough of ME2, I only had the Normandy Crash Site, Firewalker and Zaeed DLC packs installed. This time around, I set aside my feelings about DLC and decided to just dive in and get them all…

Note: I’ll be putting my thoughts on the Zaeed and Kasumi content in the Characters section after the Downloadable content section.

Normandy Crash Site

I completed the Normandy Crash Site pretty early in both my first and second playthroughs, it’s a small and simple piece of content, but is still interesting and allows for a bit of nostalgia. The one part about this mission that I enjoyed aside from the various flashback moments was finding Navigator Pressly’s datapad containing logs about his changing feelings about the alien crew of the Normandy. A very simple piece of content, but very nice… too bad we couldn’t recover the Mako considering it was still intact. I remember reading somewhere that people joke that Tali, Garrus, Wrex and the others in the cargo area used the Mako as their escape pod, riding it all the way down in the crash.

Firewalker

The Hammerhead missions are okay, there’s nothing really much you can say about them other than it’s a nicer vehicle to control over the Mako… though, the Mako is a lot tougher and has that “can do” attitude about it. After all, while the M44 Hammerhead may hover and have pretty powerful jump thrusters, can it go up extremely steep mountain like the M35 Mako? This DLC pack does come with 5 missions, but there’s nothing much to say about them other than that they’re short and fun optional distractions to break up the gameplay a bit.

Overlord

For the most part, the Overlord DLC missions were a pretty standard affair, there wasn’t anything really special about it… until you get to the last boss and see what Cerberus has done. I literally said “You poor bastard” aloud when I saw David for the first time. That was some Clockwork Orange kind of shit happening there and being the paragon I am, I stopped Cerberus’ asshattery immediately.

Lair of the Shadow Broker

I had heard many good things about this piece of DLC content and looked forward to playing it after I had committed myself to this Mass Effect trilogy marathon, I was also interested to see just what Liara has been up to during this time. As you may recall, Liara was my romantic interest in Mass Effect so I was interested to see what would happen between Shepard and Liara, especially since I ended up romancing Tali during the events of ME2.Also, this may seem silly, because it is… I took Tali along with me through the entirety of this content. I didn’t want to start anything new with Liara and I didn’t want Tali to think that I had, so I brought her along for that reason… I know, I put myself way too much into the story sometimes, but I like to do that for certain games, it adds to the experience.

The first section of the Shadow Broker DLC is a pretty interesting ride through Illium, literally. I was surprised by that car chase and enjoyed myself throughout the entire sequence on Illium. From the investigation in Liara’s apartment all the way to defeating the Shadow Broker’s operative, there was a lot to enjoy and it definitely felt special unlike the Overlord DLC pack that simply felt like any other mission of Mass Effect 2. This was a fun ride from start to finish and added a lot of depth to Liara’s character arc throughout the trilogy.

Things got even more interesting when we stormed the Shadow Broker’s ship, again, with Tali tagging along… I’m sure someone out there is questioning the decision to bring my girlfriend along to a mission to help my ex-girlfriend… it seemed like a good idea at the time. When we finally confronted the Shadow Broker, I was impressed with the design of the alien that stood before me. It’s really is rare to see an intimidating alien design these days and this piece of DLC delivered very well with the Shadow Broker himself.

Along with the events and the jokes during the DLC content, I really enjoyed learning about the motivations Liara had for becoming an information broker and what she was doing for the last two years. I was also able to understand why Liara wasn’t able to join me on my mission and her motivations fit very well into the romantic relationship I had with her during the events of Mass Effect 1. I was always bothered by how cold and distant she was during the events of Mass Effect 2 and, as Shepard would naturally assume, she seemed to have moved on with her life, which is what allowed him to move on with his life and find a new love interest with Tali.

Learning that she had worked tirelessly to recover my body and that it was in fact her intervention that allowed Cerberus to gain access to my body for the Lazarus Project instead of the Shadow Broker (who was the one who instigated the attack on the Cerberus base when Shepard woke up) was quite the revelation. It added a really interesting layer of complexity to the relationship she has with Shepard and tied in very well with my motivations to move away from her and toward Tali. Liara still cares for Shepard, but she in her effort to recover Shepard’s body she was burdened by the sacrifice Feron had made as a result.

Liara’s story arc, becoming the new Shadow Broker, further set her motivations apart from Shepard. She would help him in his cause from the background, but they were no longer close as they use to be. While there is still potential for a relationship between them, while Liara chose to continue to pursue the Shadow Broker instead of joining Shepard on his mission, Tali did end up joining Shepard and was there for him during a moment where few people were there to support him. This piece of DLC not only gave me a good story, but it also gave me a sense of closure to the romantic relationship Shepard and Liara once had. It was also nice to have Liara’s approval of Shepard’s relationship with Tali when we had our talk aboard the Normandy. Not that I needed it or that she had to give it… it was just a nice thing for her to say.

Arrival

The final piece of story content that leads us into the events of Mass Effect 3 and the ultimate arrival of the Reapers. A piece of content that is also controversial for some paragon Shepard players due to the climactic events that occur. Setting an asteroid into a crash course with a Mass Relay to destroy it in the hopes that it will delay the Reapers and in turn sacrificing a Batarian colony isn’t an easy decision to make, though Shepard largely didn’t have any choice in the matter.

One big thing about Arrival that does bother me is that despite the level of indoctrination Kenson and her team undergo, they still end up launching the asteroid toward the Mass Relay during the two-day period in which Shepard is unconscious. It isn’t until the last few minutes, right before the asteroid is about to hit the Mass Relay, that Kenson tries to stop it… it really doesn’t make any sense. They were all obviously affected by the Reaper artefact, enough to attack Shepard and keep him unconscious for two whole days, so what were they doing during those two days that stopped them from sabotaging their own mission?

It almost seemed like BioWare was trying to shift as much of the responsibility for the destruction of the Batarian colony away from Shepard as they could. At the very least, I did try to warn the colony to evacuate when I had the chance. However, when I think on this mission, ignoring the plot holes for the moment, I ask myself what I would do in that situation. Would I stop the destruction of the Mass Relay and save those Batarian lives only to have them extinguished by the Reapers moments later? Or do I allow the destruction of the Mass Relay and become partly responsible for all the lost Batarian lives?

What was your plan?! You had so long before Shepard woke up to do something!

It’s a tough call to make, and although it may not seem like a very paragon thing to do, I would still sacrifice those lives to delay the Reapers for as long as possible. Had the Reapers come through that Mass Relay, the first system they encountered would have been the first to be purged. Either way, those lives would have been the first to go and the purge of the entire galaxy would have started immediately with Shepard right in the middle of the Reapers foothold on the galaxy. At that point, the galaxy just wasn’t ready to face the Reapers at all, although as it turned out, Shepard would end up spending the next 6 months under Alliance custody over the events of Arrival.

Of course, had you not played through the events of this DLC, the explanation that you hear in Mass Effect 3 is that a team of Alliance marines had been sent in to rescue Dr. Kenson and destroy the Mass Relay, so it doesn’t really matter that Shepard is here to begin with. However, it’s still an interesting piece of story DLC, though maybe not as interesting or well made as the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC. After speaking to Admiral Hackett at the end of the DLC, I literally took the Normandy and parked it in orbit of Earth, saved for the final time and finishing my game of Mass Effect 2 as if I had taken myself into Alliance custody.

Characters

As I’ve said before, the big focus of Mass Effect 2 was your interactions with the characters aboard the Normandy, getting to know them and helping them out with their loyalty missions took priority over an epic galaxy-spanning thrill ride. I’ve decided to put each of the squad mates under their own subheadings, though I will obviously be saying more about some characters than I will for others.

Garrus Vakarian

My man, Garrus Vakarian. He was the first person I recruited in my first playthrough of ME2, though the second in my second playthrough since I wanted to get Mordin as quickly as possible to gain access to the upgrades aboard the Normandy as soon as possible. While we spent quite a lot of time together in the first Mass Effect, the bromance doesn’t really take off until the events of Mass Effect 2 when you reunite with him after two years. Damn, it was great to see Garrus again, it may not have been as long of a wait for me as it was for other Mass Effect fans between games, but it was still good to see a familiar face after meeting so many new characters during my first playthrough of the game. On a ship full of strangers, I needed someone I knew I could count on, and Garrus is most definitely that man.

Even before Garrus joins your team, there are so many bromance moments between him and my Shepard, it was great. On my first playthrough I was even blessed with the moment where my shields were taken out by Garrus’ sniping so I could choose the “You shot me!” option when talking to him. It was all so perfect, I love that guy. The bromance moments didn’t stop once he did join my crew and the calibrations began. There is nothing bad you can say about Garrus, he’s such a great guy and Mass Effect 2 would have been a much lesser game without him.

I liked Garrus’ loyalty mission since it’s very much a continuation of sorts to the mentor/student relationship you have with him in Mass Effect 1. Obviously, being a paragon Shepard, I was able to persuade him to allow Sidonis to live, killing him wouldn’t have solved anything and wouldn’t have made Garrus a better man. During the suicide mission, as I’ve already said before, he’s the only one I trusted to lead the second group throughout the entire mission. I would’ve liked to have him fight by my side, but he’s got proven leadership skills, even if he may not think so himself after losing his team on Omega. I trusted him and he came through for me and the rest of the team.

Funny thing is that I used him less during my first playthrough because I wanted to force Tali and Legion to team up with each other… though that ended up killing the Normandy crew as a result. For this second playthrough, Garrus and Tali were my two most used squad mates throughout the game, together again… my bromance and my romance. Unstoppable.

Grunt

He’s no Wrex, but he’s still got that Krogan charm about him. I particularly liked his loyalty mission, taking on a Thresher Maw on foot is a lot easier than taking one down with the Mako. Though, since my Shepard is a survivor of Akuze, I’m surprised he didn’t get flashbacks during that moment. While I never took him on any missions aside from his loyalty mission, I did use him once during the long walk segment of the suicide mission… just because I could.

Jack

I like Jack, she’s got a lot of attitude she’s not afraid to show to the rest of the universe, yet I never once used her for anything outside of her loyalty mission. She gets a lot cooler in Mass Effect 3 though, I certainly enjoy the way she’s grown as a person between the two games.

Jacob Taylor

Jacob seems like a decent enough guy, despite being with Cerberus, and the game likes to remind you of that constantly. His loyalty mission is even designed to remind you of that fact, pitting his decent nature up against his corrupted and deranged father. I also love how Kasumi has a bit of a crush on him…

Kasumi Goto

I missed out on Kasumi during my first playthrough of the game since I didn’t buy her DLC pack, however, for this second playthrough, I finally got to see what this thief was all about, at least in her loyalty mission. Like with many other characters in ME2, I didn’t end up using her for anything outside of her loyalty mission… which, as it turned out, proved to be quite interesting. I particularly like the statue of Saren… it just goes to show how twisted Donovan Hock is if he thinks that’s a good gift to receive. I like the insights she gives about the crew when you visit her on the Normandy… and yes, I did take her advice about Tali to heart.

Legion

Geth? On my Normandy? It’s more likely than you think.

Legion is definitely one of the more interesting characters of Mass Effect 2 and easily my third favourite among the whole squad. I have a particular interest with the geth and their conflict with the quarians, so having a geth character on my team made for a much more interesting game, especially with Tali added into the mix. His loyalty mission was also very interesting and had an interesting dilemma at the end, whether to rewrite the heretic geth or destroy them. Also, while I didn’t catch onto this during my first playthrough, on the second time around when I talked to Legion about the piece of N7 armour he wore that belonged to Shepard, I realised… Legion is a Shepard fanboy. No data available, indeed.

Miranda Lawson

Not my favourite character, though I do know someone who absolutely loves Miranda… I just can’t get pass the fact that she’s genetically bred to be the “perfect woman” but clearly has buck teeth. Not that I care what people look like, I’m no prize myself, it’s just… funny. But hey, I can’t be too harsh on her since she’s Australian like me, but the blatant ass shots every time there’s a scene of her standing up is just ridiculous, I mean, come on. Still, it’s a fine ass…

Mordin Solus

It’s always fun to be around Mordin, you gotta love his eccentric nature. He’s always one of the first squad mates I talk to on the Normandy even when he doesn’t have anything to tell me since the conversations with him always provide you with something funny. Despite the obvious amusement I get from him, I like that there’s a more serious side to his character, the whole business with the genophage is pretty heavy… and plays pretty well going into Mass Effect 3. However, along with many characters, he only saw action during his loyalty mission.

Samara

Samara is an interesting character, though aside from her loyalty mission and choosing to use her to create the biotic field during the long walk segment of the suicide mission, there was really not much use for her in my game. At least she spent some quality time looking out the window of the observation lounge while meditating. Naturally I chose her over Morinth during their confrontation… though perhaps in a future playthrough, with a renegade femShep, I’ll side with Morinth and kill off Samara.

Tali’Zorah vas Neema

Ah, Tali… by this point after reading through my first Mass Effect entry until this point, you’ll have a pretty good idea of my feelings for Tali. She is by far, my favourite fake video game girlfriend character. I enjoyed talking with her about her people’s history and about the geth, but in this game, I got to know Tali a lot more. I was glad she was the first familiar face you see (figuratively speaking, of course) in the game. I urged her to come along with me during both playthroughs because I wanted her help so badly, I really wish she could have come along right from the beginning, however, she had her own responsibilities which was totally understandable.

The quarian girl on her pilgrimage was now a woman with responsibilities, and although it made me sad to know she wasn’t able to join on my mission against the Collectors, I was aware that Tali would become available for recruitment later in the game… which became the downfall of the Normandy crew during my first playthrough. Thankfully, this time around I was able to prevent myself from pressing on ahead to grab both Tali and Legion ahead of schedule.

Naturally, when you are finally able to recruit Tali after the mission to Haestrom, I had her teamed up with Garrus and myself throughout the rest of the game (though, as I said before, I had her working with Legion in the first playthrough). The three of us were together again and there was nothing that could stop us, however, when it came to choose either Garrus or Tali to take along on various loyalty missions, Tali won over Garrus. When Kelly Chambers (and Kasumi in the second playthrough) comments about Tali’s obvious interest in Shepard, I became very happy at the prospect of romancing Tali. It’s something I always wanted out of the first Mass Effect, and finally it was going to become a reality here.

Tali’s loyalty mission is one of the highlights of the game for me and gave me a really good opportunity to learn more about her and her people. I don’t really know why I’m so interested in the history between the quarians and the geth, but it’s one of the parts of Mass Effect I tend to put my most attention on when it appears. Also, the fact that this is Tali we’re talking about by default makes this a much more interesting mission than any other… I mean, come on, charging Tali with treason? She’s done more for the Migrant Fleet and the greater galaxy than most, how could they even think to charge her with treason? During the first playthrough I brought Legion along for the ride. At the time, I did it out of curiosity over what would happen and not from any suggestions people were making online since I was playing the game at launch, though for the second playthrough I took Garrus instead.

The deadly pounce of love

I felt personally invested in Tali’s loyalty mission, not because she’s my favourite character… well, maybe because of that, but also because she’s a member of my crew and we’ve worked together for two games at this point. It’s also a mission that FTL jumps Shepard’s relationship with Tali… things got a lot more interesting after Tali’s loyalty mission and became the start of a very cute romance. Tali has always been there to help Shepard when he needed her and he’s been able to help her along the way too. She’s totally adorable and cute, but she also has a shotgun and can hold her own in a fight, you got to admire that. Also, finally, and I’m sure everyone who has read through this are all thinking the same thing along the lines of “dude, you’re being way too creepy with the whole Tali thing” …to those people, I say this: It was totally worth it.

Thane Krios

Thane is a pretty cool character, and I feel that if I wasn’t so eager to use both Garrus and Tali, he would be a squad mate I would definitely take with me on my missions. As I’ve said before, in my first playthrough of Mass Effect 2, I ended up failing his loyalty mission… really stupidly too, I got distracted by something that was happening in real life and forgot to pause the game. Of course, like with other mistakes I made in the game, I accepted it and moved on… luckily, he did live through the suicide mission.

Zaeed Massani

Zaeed is an interesting one, while you don’t get much interaction with him, it’s always interesting to visit him on the Normandy to hear one of his stories. His loyalty mission revealing that he’s one of the founders of the Blue Suns is also pretty interesting, though aside from his loyalty mission, I never actually used him for anything.

Gameplay

Despite the sacrifices made to the RPG elements from the first game, the lack of armour and weapon customisations, etc, there are quite a lot of improvements made to Mass Effect 2 that have great benefit to the action side of this action RPG. Of course, I do acknowledge that what was lost is as important as what was gained, so while Mass Effect 2 ends up being more fun to play in an action sense, it does lose some of the depth and charm found in the first Mass Effect due to the simplification and removal of certain other elements.

But does this ruin the experience completely? Not really, I don’t think the biggest drawback to Mass Effect 2 is actually gameplay related, it’s the way the story was handled itself that made it seem like a lesser game for most people. But then, there are the people who really did prefer to micro-manage every aspect of their team who got shafted with Mass Effect 2, so there’s that too. I probably could have done without the hacking mini-games though. ME2 was made during a time when those ended up being very popular for some reason and I can’t imagine why.

Combat

From the very first time I picked up a weapon, reloaded it with a fresh thermal clip and fired my first shot, I realised just how much better the weapon feel is in Mass Effect 2 when compared with the first game. That first shot felt so damn good, the accuracy was just right, the recoil felt just right and the way the shots hit your target felt just right. The time BioWare took to improve the combat in Mass Effect 2 was very well spent and improved one of the big things I felt was lacking with the first game. For a Soldier class, this game gives you exactly what you were craving for and changed the combat experience from being padding that slowed down your progress from one story element to another, to actually being a part of the gameplay experience. Many may disagree with me on that opinion, however, it did make Mass Effect 2 a much more enjoyable experience for me as a result.

The cover mechanic is also greatly improved over the first game, feeling less sticky and allowing you to take cover when you wanted to and not when you accidentally rubbed up against a wall too hard. Combined with the improved weapon feel and the vastly improved shooting mechanics, it all felt perfect, a well-built game with well thought out gameplay mechanics… at least for the Soldier.

Out of all three games, the action gameplay mechanics of ME2 are my favourite because they feel just right… though I have heard that there are other classes that end up getting a raw deal from the gameplay changes, particularly biotic users going up against shielded enemies. Personally, I find shields to be a nuisance for the Solider class too at times, but that’s exactly why I take Garrus and Tali along with me everywhere I go (yes, I do use them on missions for reasons aside from them being my favourite two squad mates) since Garrus has Overload and Tali has Shield Drain, both very useful abilities I use constantly to take down those shields.

Planet scanning

Okay, so there’s a really funny thing I noticed when BioWare changed the planetary exploration aspect of Mass Effect 2 from how it used to be in the first game. In the first game, we were able to explore the planet’s surface using the M35 Mako and in this game we’re able to scan the planet from orbit and launch probes to collect various resources and find landing points for various missions. This all started looking very familiar to me and then I realised something… the planetary exploration in both games reminded me of an old DOS game I used to play when I was a kid called Star Control II. I also recently discovered that Star Control was inspired by a game called Starflight, a game that heavily influenced the creation of Mass Effect. There are plenty of other similarities between Mass Effect and Star Control II which I didn’t notice until this point, it was quite a revelation the first time I scanned a planet and was reminded of such an old game.

Anyway, I absolutely love scanning for resources in Mass Effect 2, it’s such a simple mini-game and can become pretty addicting if you let it. I know I was negative about the other mini-games present in ME2 before, but the scanning mini-game is simple and done so well that it didn’t get old for me. Plus, you didn’t have to scan EVERY planet you came across after all. It certainly does provide an interesting alternative to the Mako missions, though it does cut down on the exploration factor of the game quite a bit, leaving only the more linear based levels to look through.

I did appreciate that BioWare was trying not to use the same tricks for both games and made an effort to bring something new to Mass Effect 2 that separated it from the first game.

Final thoughts

The first Mass Effect is a classic and has the more epic space sci-fi storyline, but Mass Effect 2 plays better despite the sacrifices made to the RPG elements. It’s also the game that really let me get to know Tali and Garrus a lot more and enjoy some pretty good moments with them. It’s hard for me to decide which game out of the two I like the most. I like both games for different reasons and both games have their own strengths and weaknesses the pull from, but I do realise that a lot of people out there wholeheartedly prefer 1 over 2 for their own reasons.

One thing is for certain though, I do feel like Mass Effect 2 has the best overall action gameplay out of all three games… at least for the Soldier class. Oh yeah, one final thought which I really should have mentioned earlier… damn, I love the music that played during the suicide mission. It’s so epic and really adds to the epic nature of the mission.

I think I’ve pretty much covered everything, this has certainly turned out to be a much longer article than the previous one. Look out for the Mass Effect 3 entry coming some time within the next week.

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