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Mass Effect 2

Agreed about Wrex in pink or Kaiden in Ashley's default armor, but I don't recall any cutscenes that had characters in their original armor...?

.

I specifically remember that in the cutscene with the nuke Ashley changed back into her white basic armour from whatever I had her in. I played the game over a year ago and still recall it badly breaking my immersion.
 
Agreed about Wrex in pink or Kaiden in Ashley's default armor, but I don't recall any cutscenes that had characters in their original armor...?

.

I specifically remember that in the cutscene with the nuke Ashley changed back into her white basic armour from whatever I had her in. I played the game over a year ago and still recall it badly breaking my immersion.

Now that you mention it, I do seem to recall something similar during that scene--I was just too wrapped up in the story to worry about it. I'll have to keep an eye out for it when I get to it during my current playthrough.
 
Am I the only one who prefers the old inventory system?

I loved the old system.
It gave you fool control over everything.

You enjoy spending 5 minutes per half-hour of game play deleting items from your inventory? ;)

It was annoying but they should have added a benefit to all that omni gel instead of getting rid of the whole system.

There was very little wrong with the things they got rid of
The elevator rides.
The level up system
The armor
The weapons
The old paragon system
The powers

The game is almost completely different.
And less dynamic and interesting now.

It's pretty much a dry shooter with elementary level up with movie level Drama and action. Yes we rave over this but it's not the master piece the first one was.

Just goes to show you that feedback from internet forms should be taken with a grain of salt. They ruined a work of art.
 
yeah, the old level system and the 10-15 different skills you had...I prefer that.
(I just got to Omega so I haven't been playing that long)
 
Am I the only one who prefers the old inventory system?

I loved the old system.
It gave you fool control over everything.

You enjoy spending 5 minutes per half-hour of game play deleting items from your inventory? ;)

It was annoying but they should have added a benefit to all that omni gel instead of getting rid of the whole system.

There was very little wrong with the things they got rid of
The elevator rides.
The level up system
The armor
The weapons
The old paragon system
The powers

The game is almost completely different.
And less dynamic and interesting now.

It's pretty much a dry shooter with elementary level up with movie level Drama and action. Yes we rave over this but it's not the master piece the first one was.

Just goes to show you that feedback from internet forms should be taken with a grain of salt. They ruined a work of art.


I agree with most of it but the elevator rides. That was just dumb. It may have worked on the xbox where they knew what the load times were going to be, but on the PC it just extends loading times unnecessarily. On my system it only takes a few seconds for new sections to load, yet on ME1 I'd have no choice but to wait the 1 minute or whatever to get to the next section. It's particularly annoying in areas where I have to take a long elevator ride to do one thing that takes like 10 seconds, then have to take the same long elevator ride back just to turn the quest in.

While the inventory system was unwieldy, the new system is just too simple for an rpg imho. Dragon Age was able to have lots of weapons without having the problems that ME1 had. I've resorted to editing the weapon characteristics myself just to get some variety in the guns. For me, having options is an important part of an rpg. Without it, it feels more like an adventure game than an RPG. If anything they should have at least kept the modifier slots on the weapons so you can tweak them to your liking. As it is we get a handful of gun types, most of which become useless when the newer gun arrives, and we get the ammo type. Not too exciting.
 
Am I the only one who prefers the old inventory system?

I loved the old system.
It gave you fool control over everything.

You enjoy spending 5 minutes per half-hour of game play deleting items from your inventory? ;)

It was annoying but they should have added a benefit to all that omni gel instead of getting rid of the whole system.

There was very little wrong with the things they got rid of
The elevator rides.
The level up system
The armor
The weapons
The old paragon system
The powers

The game is almost completely different.
And less dynamic and interesting now.

It's pretty much a dry shooter with elementary level up with movie level Drama and action. Yes we rave over this but it's not the master piece the first one was.

Just goes to show you that feedback from internet forms should be taken with a grain of salt. They ruined a work of art.
In some ways I actually felt the same way. Really, instead of Mass Effect it felt alot like Deus Ex to me. That isnt a bad thing per se, but it is different
 
I don't know, I like that they're redefining RPGs as games that involve playing a role rather than games that involves comparing outfits to determine which is slightly better and levelling up more abilities and mods than you'll every probably use.

It's one of the main things that puts me off about western RPGs like KotOR and I appreciate stripped down stats and the combination of action with a well written story. I haven't seen a game balance those aspects this well since Deus Ex.

[Edit] Ah, beat me to it! ;)
 
Am I the only one who prefers the old inventory system?

I loved the old system.
It gave you fool control over everything.

You enjoy spending 5 minutes per half-hour of game play deleting items from your inventory? ;)

It was annoying but they should have added a benefit to all that omni gel instead of getting rid of the whole system.

There was very little wrong with the things they got rid of
The elevator rides.
The level up system
The armor
The weapons
The old paragon system
The powers

The game is almost completely different.
And less dynamic and interesting now.

It's pretty much a dry shooter with elementary level up with movie level Drama and action. Yes we rave over this but it's not the master piece the first one was.

Just goes to show you that feedback from internet forms should be taken with a grain of salt. They ruined a work of art.
Personally, I find a loot system makes no damn sense in a futuristic scifi setting where stuff can be manufactured on the fly. ME2's scanning system makes way more sense in terms of lore and logic than ME1's loot based inventory, plus it eliminates the bloated inventory ME1 constantly suffered from.

As for leveling, I do admit I prefer applying individual points to a power instead of chunks of points, but I like the removal of the weapon and hacking skills. Having to waste points to aim my gun properly pissed me off in ME1, since it seemed so antithetical to me actually being this badass soldier who was being recruited as a secret agent. The hacking skill thing also irritated me, as it forced me to bring along a tech specialized character to open lockers and what not. The one skill I wish they had kept was Charm/Intimidate, just consolidated into one "Persuade" skill. The current system punishes players who don't max out Paragon or Renegade by locking out certain dialogue options, which is quite annoying.

With regard to weapons and armor, those were mostly recolors of other armors and guns with different stats. ME2's system at least makes the choices between the different guns and armors meaningful. You've got the N7 armor, which you can spec out to your heart's desire, the various DLC armors with their numerous bonuses, and guns with different advantages and disadvantages instead of fucktons of guns that offer only marginal differences and are totally redundant once you acquire the Spectre gear weapons. I personally think that the system could be improved by adding an Army of Two style customization scheme on top of ME2's upgrade system, but that should be incorporated into the weapon lockers, not something that you pull up in the middle of a firefight.

The only thing bad about ME2's power system is that it gives you a global cooldown. I would prefer fast individual cooldowns, especially since the rest of your squad either gets themselves killed by executing suicidal maneuvers instead of taking cover or gets killed due to their crappy shields and health. It's usually not worth using up medigel to heal them since they get killed again within a minute or two, leaving you to deal with swarms of Husks/Collectors/mercs/etc...
 
Personally, I find a loot system makes no damn sense in a futuristic scifi setting where stuff can be manufactured on the fly. ME2's scanning system makes way more sense in terms of lore and logic than ME1's loot based inventory, plus it eliminates the bloated inventory ME1 constantly suffered from.
Games will never make sense when held up to reality. Shepard never eats, sleeps or goes to the bathroom and seconds after nearly being torched to death by a geth shock trooper or vorcha will be back in tip top fighting condition.

I like dumping physical inventory for a virtual one on the omni-tool. What I don't like is the dumping of the inventory altogether. Loot is one of the unique aspects that makes RPGs fun for a lot of gamers (try to imagine Diablo or World of Warcraft without it).

The trick is keeping it sane and fun. More is not better (I'm looking at you Borderlands) but neither is none.
 
Well there is SOME loot. Aside from scanning or purchasing upgrades and new armour pieces you also get an opportunity to get a unique weapon from the collector ship and by the end of it you'll have about 5 heavy weapons to choose from...though you'll probably only ever use the collector beam weapon. I suppose those little ship models you get for your room can count as booty.

One thing that did slightly bother me was the lack of an option to buy more thermal clips between missions. Several times now I've run my ammo dry near the end and not gotten an opportunity to pick up all the clips before the end of mission cut-scene, leaving me struggling to find ammo at the start of the next mission.
It's not a big problem, certainly not as bad as the grenades in ME1 but it seams like an off oversight.

Oh, btw, has anyone figured out exactly where on the first Normandy the escape pods were? I had a wonder around the prologue mission to see were T'soni (or Ashley or Kaiden) buggered off to. I can't figure out where the door to the "escape tunnel" is supposed to be.
 
actualy one thing that did bother me is that I could not gain experience from individual enemies. While not that big of a deal, it felt like an RPG aspect that had been cut away
 
Personally, I feel the lack of number crunching improved the game for me.

I remember playing KoTOR and being thrown out of the story by all the obvious dice rolling going on. ME2 is a RPG in the proper sense - you are playing a role, you are Commander Shepard, making your own choices which have consequences.

The role playing aspect comes from choosing whether to hug a mother whose daughter has been killed, not rolling against your stamina score.
 
I think that they stripped it down a bit too much. But it is still better than ME1, IMO.

For ME3, I would give a few more skills to level and double or triple the amount of weapons to give you more variety.
 
Oh, btw, has anyone figured out exactly where on the first Normandy the escape pods were? I had a wonder around the prologue mission to see were T'soni (or Ashley or Kaiden) buggered off to. I can't figure out where the door to the "escape tunnel" is supposed to be.
Here's a rough guess about where they were externally:

As for internally? There were probably special bulkheads that descended or broke away on the crew deck to allow access to the pods.

TheBrew said:
For ME3, I would give a few more skills to level and double or triple the amount of weapons to give you more variety.
Doubling the guns risks making them start to feel like reskins of other pistols/shotguns/etc... I'd gladly settle for fewer guns with more customization since in reality there aren't really that many major differences between guns of the same type.
 
What I'd like to see for example incorporated in ME3 that they retain the weapon inventory as it is in ME2 along with thermal clips and all ... but re-introduce the inventory in a sense that you have to pick up items and use them in various puzzles yourself (as in manually) throughout the game, or compose something in the inventory.

The skill point spending was radically altered (as in skewed down in terms of abilities).
I think they can keep the present system, but add more aspects on which to spend the skill points and whatnot.

Oh ... and an option for a male/male romance.
Seriously, second game in a row and only female/female options present.
Not that it's THAT big of a deal, but I'd like the option for my male Shepard to get some men on the side (right now he's alone as a dog, because the females are simply ANNOYING).
 
There was a female female option in ME2? You sure about that?

Yup.
As a fem or male Shepard you can have sex with Kelly apparently (the secretary).
Haven't tried it myself, but saw it (and no, it was not a mod).
 
I'm playing a Renegade FemShep Adept game at the moment. The Kelly conversation/charm options are still there so I assume this is correct.
 
I'm playing a Renegade FemShep Adept game at the moment. The Kelly conversation/charm options are still there so I assume this is correct.

You can't actually have sex with Kelly, she basically just gives you a lap dance while wearing a standard asari stripper outfit.

For the record, a male Shepard has the following options:

- Miranda
- Tali
- Jack

A female Shepard has the following options:

- Garrus
- Jacob
- Thane

Both a male and female Shepard have the following "non-standard" options which don't actually result in sex.

- Kelly - romance her enough and you'll get the aforementioned lap dance.

- Samara - she will admit to feelings for you but will tell you that her duty comes first so it cannot be.

- Morinth - you can have sex with her, but for obvious reasons you die as a result and will have to reload from a previous save.
 
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