Right, that's Mass Effect 2 finished

[andrewducker]

I think I did as well as it's possible to do, and made all the right decisions.

But then I _would_ think that :->

Next up, Lair Of The Shadow Broker, followed by The Arrival, and then ME3 (which I picked up for £17 last week from Amazon - price seems to have come back up now).

Feel free to talk about ME2 in the comments - and don't click through if you haven't played it/don't mind being spoiled.

Comments

[andrewducker]

Everyone survived, and I played as close to pure Paragon as I could the whole way through. Including blowing up the base at the end, tempted though I was to keep it around for ME3.

[snowking.livejournal.com]

Yeah but who did you shag?

[andrewducker]

I stayed faithful to my beloved Liara.

I did make sure that I'd be seeing her at some point in the future/ME3, and so this was worthwhile. Which is a teensy bit less than paragon of me :-)

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

Apparently if you don't blow up the base, EVERYONE on your crew thinks you're a complete moron.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

Legion is the best character. I will not hear any objections to this because they are WRONG.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

Never thought I'd envy a gamer but

"I think I did as well as it's possible to do, and made all the right decisions."

Oh, what I would give to ever be able to feel that about *anything*.

[andrewducker]

That's why I like games - you get to "do things" that are far more important/meaningful than in real life - so long as you can suspend disbelief somewhat.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

"so long as you can suspend disbelief somewhat."

Ah, that's the issue for me. I can barely suspend disbelief enough to find the whole work/society/culture/whatever situation meaningful. So games really arent' gonna cut it...

[steer.livejournal.com]

I think I did as well as it's possible to do, and made all the right decisions.

But then I _would_ think that

Hmm... that's an interesting way to think about the game... Perhaps everybody makes the right decisions "for them" for the most part. I pretty much always play "good guy" on these things. The "renegade" versus "paragon" in mass effect is much better than "good" versus "evil" in other games. "Get the job done at all costs" versus "risk failure from being squeamish".

In my playthrough, at least one character (Zaeed) I "failed" the loyalty mission, but I knew the decision I made would most likely fail it (and later discovered that this failure would kill that character) but I don't think I would change the decision (I think I could have passed if I'd started that mission with a higher loyalty score).

For other characters I made decisions which caused them die but consider those decisions to be "correct at the time" -- that is, I backed Jack in an argument against Miranda because I thought Jack was correct even though I was closer to Miranda. This turned Miranda against me slightly and caused her to not have the "loyal" tag.

Finally there were points where I made decisions that I thought were wrong. In particular I wanted to be supportive of Jack but not be in a relationship. However, I played that "wrong" and she ended up distrusting me and lose the "loyal" tag.

From those decisions, those three characters died and because of the transparent "loyalty" game mechanic, I knew that it was my fault that they died. It was really quite moving. Mostly "in game" deaths in computer games fall into:
1) Moving but unavoidable -- it's a cutscene and you know it is inevitable.
2) Unmoving because avoidable -- the character has died but you can go back five minutes and restore then from a save point.

Mass effect 1 has the "Ashley or Kaidan" death but it's pretty transparent that you are deciding between them and cannot choose both.

Mass effect 2 was the first game I can remember which gave me the feeling that important characters died and it was my fault they died. This was very interesting.

Mass effect 3 without spoilers, did this only moreso... and I realise on reading wiki sites after playing through that some of the most moving parts of mass effect 3 for me were 100% screw ups on my part yet, ironically, some of the best part of the game.

As Penny Arcade points out, the interesting thing by ME3 is that everyone finishes ME2 so differently that ME3 is a very different game for most people. My ME2 save was either lost or incompatible due to steam versus non-steam ME3 so my ME3 start position was very different to my ME2 finish position -- this was frustrating in some ways, good in others. (Just finished ME3 this weekend).

I love what they've done there though. Sometimes it was frustrating. In particular the default "no save" ME3 has one major character dead and one major character not even encountered (I won't say which because I'm already treading close to spoilers).

[andrewducker]

Yeah, I managed to get people to agree, both in the Miranda/Jack case and the Legion/Tali argument. In both cases I was a high enough Paragon that I could sweet talk people out of their disagreements.

I also failed the Zaeed mission, now I think about it. And definitely feel I did the right thing there.

I watched the "Everyone dies" ending of ME2 this morning on YouTube and it was surprisingly moving.

I _really_ hope my save game imports into ME3 ok.

[steer.livejournal.com]

I also failed the Zaeed mission, now I think about it. And definitely feel I did the right thing there.

I *think* you can pass that one with the decision we both made and with a high paragon score. So presumably Zaeed died in your ending?

I managed to get agreement on the Legion/Tali argument thank goodness. I would hate to lose either.

I think a lot of how you do does depend on the order in which you do missions. Scavenging "low importance" missions to raise your competence before going for character missions would probably help but I think would ruin the fun of the game.

I _really_ hope my save game imports into ME3 ok.

I have very mixed feelings about it. Returning characters I had killed would have lost some emotional moments. On the other hand, some "assumed dead" characters I had saved would have reappeared at interesting moments and I don't know what that would have been like.

[andrewducker]

He survived. So presumably I did Paragon my way past (I can't actually remember).

This is something that irked me actually. It seems that being a Paragon allows you to do things that being a Renegade doesn't - and it felt like this was an advantage to playing one particular way.

[steer.livejournal.com]

So presumably I did Paragon my way past

Fair enough... I did not despite playing "pure paragon" -- perhaps you're better than I am at identifying paragon actions or perhaps you took those missions later when you had more paragon points. I'm very disorderly in the order I do missions.

It seems that being a Paragon allows you to do things that being a Renegade doesn't - and it felt like this was an advantage to playing one particular way.

I don't think so. If you play pure renegade you get different "get through it" options (you renegade your way past). In ME2 though there was a disadvantage to playing "middle ground" -- so playing "pure paragon" or "pure renegade" got you a "win" where playing half/half did not. I *think* but am not sure that in ME3 it is the combination of both that gets you through.