Quest to Nowhere

I never finished Mass Effect 1, at least until the day Mass Effect 2 was released. I picked up ME1 on PC during Steam’s holiday sale intending to finish it so I would have a save to import into ME2. I played ME1 on 360 originally but never finished it, so the Steam sale provided a nice way to play the game over again, and get the save to import.

With only a few days before the release of ME2 I finally buckled down and decided to finish the first game since I had barely made a dent in it since I had picked it up. This caused me to finish the game the day of the release of ME2, so I finished ME1 then went straight into ME2. Which looking back on it now was maybe the best thing that could have happened.

Going right from ME1 to ME2 like that proved to be a really great experience, since you are playing with your same character from ME1 and it picks up right at the end of the last game so it almost felt like I wasn’t so much starting a new game as I was continuing onto the second disc of an epic game (I guess you’ll only get that reference if you played some of the long ass RPGs from the PS1 days when games like Final Fantasy VII came on 3 discs; I think FFIX came on 4.)

It’s also a testament to how well designed this series is. While ME2 does have better visuals then the original, everything still felt familiar, and looked consistent with ME1. It’s a great game, and I think that anyone who hasn’t played or finished ME1 should probably go and play that first, because you’re experience in ME2 will be all the better for it.

<Possible ME1&2 spoilers ahead?>

My one possible complaint with the game, although I’m not sure if it is, is that the ending doesn’t seem as fulfilling as it does in the first game. But as I noted I’m not sure its a problem with the game, but perhaps more a problem with Act 2′s.

See with ME1 it’s basically the first act of a larger trilogy long story. As such it’s more about introducing the player to the world of ME, as well as introducing the the overarching story. It did this through your pursuit of Saren and his goal of finding the conduit so that he can call the Reapers back to the galaxy. Thus the crux of the story is chasing after Saren to stop him, which serves as a very understandable goal.

ME2 though is Act 2 of this trilogy, so although it delves deeper into the world of ME, it also has to serve as a vehicle for mainly moving the overarching story of the games. Although the story feels somewhat less focused then in ME1 where you were set about stopping this one person who you could understand the motivations of, while in ME2 you are trying to stop the Collectors who you don’t really understand at all.

But even though you are trying to stop them, the missions you go on are generally not in pursuit of them. They are typically about building up your team so that you can fight them and win. Then when you do pursue them, or go to fight them, it’s generally on someone else’s terms and not your own. You generally seem to only have control over how you go about constructing you team.

As I was saying I’m not sure that this is so much the fault of the game, but more about where it falls in the overarching story, since they need to start setting the stage for the final battle while also trying to tell you an interesting story. So regardless of what you do I think that it no matter how you try and end an Act 2 game like this, you are going to end up leaving a lot open and leaving it feeling like you are just setting up Act 3 (the last game,) because that is what you have to do.

</Possible spoilers>

I have one more things I want to talk about in regards to Mass Effect, but I think I’ll save that for a separate entry, as I think this one is long enough, and that it can stand on its own.