Mass Effect 2 *spoilers around pg 29/30*

[Riggswolfe]

Post Game spoiler:


You know, I liked Dragon Age. I loved the 1st Mass Effect. Mass Effect 2 was so good that Dragon Age seems tarnished and I have little desire to ever play Mass Effect 1 again. The game was so cinematic and they even made me emotional at certain points. It's rare for a game to actually make me have an emotional reaction beyond anger.

[Khaldun]

Last night for the first time I got stuck on terrain twice, on the recruit Thane mission. Very annoying.

[NiX]

Last night for the first time I got stuck on terrain twice, on the recruit Thane mission. Very annoying.

Walked slowly. Rose 4 meters above the ground. I'm in the ceiling. Breathing becomes heavy. Frustration sets in. I click load.

[tmp]

[caladein]

You have to use the laptop-looking thing RIGHT NEXT to your Private Terminal in the cabin.  I totally missed it the first couple times I was up there after I finished the game.

[tmp]

Oh doh; thanks i'll try that. I thought these laptop things are together "private terminal" item since the one on combat deck looks just like that too iirc.

[kildorn]

Last night for the first time I got stuck on terrain twice, on the recruit Thane mission. Very annoying.

Walked slowly. Rose 4 meters above the ground. I'm in the ceiling. Breathing becomes heavy. Frustration sets in. I click load.

Second mission on my vanguard. Shockwave threw a fenris, thought it was gone.

Door won't unlock, squad is shooting the ground. I'd tossed the fenris under the terrain, and had to load the game <3

[Ingmar]

Last night for the first time I got stuck on terrain twice, on the recruit Thane mission. Very annoying.

Walked slowly. Rose 4 meters above the ground. I'm in the ceiling. Breathing becomes heavy. Frustration sets in. I click load.

Second mission on my vanguard. Shockwave threw a fenris, thought it was gone.

Door won't unlock, squad is shooting the ground. I'd tossed the fenris under the terrain, and had to load the game <3

At one point in the 'walk around the crumbling freighter' side mission I wandered off into the air; given that the entire point of the mission is 'find the safe path to walk' that was a little disconcerting.

[Ingmar]

You know, I liked Dragon Age. I loved the 1st Mass Effect. Mass Effect 2 was so good that Dragon Age seems tarnished and I have little desire to ever play Mass Effect 1 again. The game was so cinematic and they even made me emotional at certain points. It's rare for a game to actually make me have an emotional reaction beyond anger.

Yeah this is kind of where I'm sitting except I think I liked DA better then the first ME. EVEN THOUGH the mining is totally annoying and stupid and I hate the fact that it is basically required, ME2 is really damn good. The writing is awesome in both DA and ME2 but I think the fact that your character actually talks out loud really raises the bar on the immersion/cinematic factor. To the point where I tried to play the game with a different looking Shepard and it was incredibly jarring to hear my original dude's voice coming out of the wrong face.

Also, insanity difficulty this time around is actually goddamn difficult, in ME1 it was mostly just a case of things taking forever to die. Not so now (although they do take forever to die, they're also more aggressive and use powers more, and the way they toughened them up is adding shields and armor to things that didn't have them before, so your own power use and the balance of who has what power among the people you bring along is really important.)

[kildorn]

Scions on insanity are crazy. Jesus.

But yeah, even Lokis coming at you to soften you up requires some active response on insanity. I like it, as much as two scion fights irritate me.

[tmp]

Scions were probably hardest to deal with overall for me. Tons of armour to chew through and their long range attack hits like a truck and travels faster than regular biotic powers/rockets i think.

Husk swarms was the other type i found threatening, mostly because i didn't have biotics with me on the mission they appear. To the point where i'd break out the ice cannon, go for the freeze ammo and aim for the legs just to slow/stop them before getting overrun. And it'd still end in melee sometime.

Incidentally, being able to shoot the legs from under your opponent is 

[Ingmar]

You can shoot the arms off of robots and stuff too. What's interesting about all that stuff is it is actually in the base difficulty too but you never see it happen because things don't live long enough. I see a lot more robots crawling after me like zombies on insanity.

[kildorn]

Go for the legs, boo!

Husks are pretty much doomed with a solid hit to the legs, they're just mean in packs.

So does anyone know if singularity works on armor? I'm curious if it's a solution to the melee swarms.

[Special J]

Want some free DLC equipment?

Nothing major.  Some head pieces that give 5% damage or shield or something else I can't remember. But they are freebies.

Edit: Link is broken.  Here's a new one.

http://www.xbox360achievements.org/forum/showthread.php?t=205844

[AcidCat]

Free goodies are free, thanks. Those are some freaky headpieces, look forward to trying them on.

[Velorath]

I'll probably hold off on doing a second playthrough until more of the DLC is released.  Apparently there are files in the PC version of the game that show evidence of another party member, named Kasumi.

[Venkman]

The writing is awesome in both DA and ME2 but I think the fact that your character actually talks out loud really raises the bar on the immersion/cinematic factor.

Yea, you said it. My mute in DA always disappointed me, but now ME2 makes it really jarring. I need to finish ME2 and then come off the high before I can go back to DA

[Lakov_Sanite]

Even after ME1 the standard should have been set for all future rpg's to have the main character speak. Sure it's a time/money investment but can you honestly think of any quality game in the last five years that has had a mute protagonist?

(the wolf in okami barks)
(halo is NOT a quality game)

[Trippy]

Yes the lack of a "voiced" protagonist in DA is one of my main complaints. On the other hand the DA party conversations are far superior to what is in ME2, and ME1's were better as well. And whose bright idea was it to make your party members' "flavor" speech be explicit "hot spots" in the world that you have to explicitly trigger? It feels much more natural and organic to have it be movement trigger based like it is in earlier games.

[Venkman]

Good question that. I first encountered that when I arrived on Ilium with Miranda (the vista conversation). I figured, eh, ok, so this is a neat trick. But then I've had it happen a few times since. I much prefer the random conversations of DA.

At the same time, I feel like theres a lot more downtime running in DA than ME2, so more time for those spontaneous conversations to fill.

[Ard]

Even after ME1 the standard should have been set for all future rpg's to have the main character speak. Sure it's a time/money investment but can you honestly think of any quality game in the last five years that has had a mute protagonist?

A large portion of the games in the Shin Megami Tensai franchise have silent protaganists.  Last time I checked, for those that enjoy those types of rpgs, they're pretty highly rated.  Honestly, it's a valid style choice, and allows the player to act as their own voice in their head.  This obviously doesn't work so well in games that are heavily based on voice acting, but it's still an option.

[tmp]

Even after ME1 the standard should have been set for all future rpg's to have the main character speak. Sure it's a time/money investment but can you honestly think of any quality game in the last five years that has had a mute protagonist?

Portal?

But more seriously the time/money issue means having the protagonist with voice is going to reduce choice when it comes to the nature of said protagonist. Games which tell story of 1-2 predefined characters are fine but i wouldn't want alll future rpg's to become limited in such manner.

[Nightblade]

Just discovered this by accident on my second playthrough whilst doing Garrus' loyalty mission.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0a54Vm1ww8w

Wish there was more interaction between party members, or maybe there is and I haven't found it.

[Trippy]

Even after ME1 the standard should have been set for all future rpg's to have the main character speak. Sure it's a time/money investment but can you honestly think of any quality game in the last five years that has had a mute protagonist?

Portal?

But more seriously the time/money issue means having the protagonist with voice is going to reduce choice when it comes to the nature of said protagonist. Games which tell story of 1-2 predefined characters are fine but i wouldn't want alll future rpg's to become limited in such manner.

There's a difference when you are talking about games where your character doesn't actually "speak" (in game text or otherwise). Dragon Age is jarring because you "talk" a lot but it's not voiced like Mass Effect was.

[Riggswolfe]

The writing is awesome in both DA and ME2 but I think the fact that your character actually talks out loud really raises the bar on the immersion/cinematic factor. To the point where I tried to play the game with a different looking Shepard and it was incredibly jarring to hear my original dude's voice coming out of the wrong face.

Yeah, my friend said something similar. He came over to my house the other day and I said something like "How do you like my Shepard?" (On a sidenote, it's one of the first times I'm 100% happy with a Mass Effect male face. I don't know if the second game just does it better or what.)

His response was something like "He's good looking but it's weird seeing the wrong face on Shepard."

I totally got what he meant. I remember reading on the Mass Effect forums that a theory of why the Shepard statues didn't sell as well as anticipated was because most gamers said "Thats a Shepard. That's not my Shepard." I thought about it and that's exactly why I didn't buy it. It even carries over to the commercials to an extent for me. I see the commercials and my first thought is "that's not really Shepard!"

[Trippy]

I restarted the fucking non-skippable "intro" 3 times just so I could get my ME2 Shepard to look as close to my ME1 Shepard as possible.

They changed the face settings enough between games that my "imported" Shepard face looked totally wrong in ME2 so I had to rebuild from scratch.

[tmp]

There's a difference when you are talking about games where your character doesn't actually "speak" (in game text or otherwise). Dragon Age is jarring because you "talk" a lot but it's not voiced like Mass Effect was.

Yes, hence my second paragraph starts with "more seriously". Still, while DA's mute protagonist can be jarring i'm willing to accept this limitation if it allows for a wider range of race/gender/origin options for said protagonist. Sure, in the ideal world we could have both choices and the voice work, but as long as it's not possible i'd prefer different games to cover both options rather than all adhere to single model.

[Lakov_Sanite]

There's a difference when you are talking about games where your character doesn't actually "speak" (in game text or otherwise). Dragon Age is jarring because you "talk" a lot but it's not voiced like Mass Effect was.

Yes, hence my second paragraph starts with "more seriously". Still, while DA's mute protagonist can be jarring i'm willing to accept this limitation if it allows for a wider range of race/gender/origin options for said protagonist. Sure, in the ideal world we could have both choices and the voice work, but as long as it's not possible i'd prefer different games to cover both options rather than all adhere to single model.

Yes but aside from your character origin and a few bits of flavor texts your characters race/gender almost never comes into play. The only exception being the human noble ending.  At least on all the chars i tried, my choice in race/class/gender seemed to matter only in the most minimal of ways.

[tmp]

Yes but aside from your character origin and a few bits of flavor texts your characters race/gender almost never comes into play.

That's true, but i was rather thinking along the lines, you'll probably want to have different VA for female dwarf and female human and female elf if the NPCs of these races are given different accents. Even if they all have to record mostly the same lines. Same for the males. Ideally, you'd also want different VA for a commoner and the noble even if they're of the same race etc and so on. Otherwise having everyone just run with the same voice based on the gender is likely to cause the problem people describe, the "Shepard's voice coming out of wrong face" thing along with the voice not matching what one would expect given the character's background.

[Trippy]

"Go for the optics"

[Trippy]

Okay that little Gilbert and Sullivan riff almost makes up for the lack of personality in party member dialog compared to ME1.

[Riggswolfe]

Okay that little Gilbert and Sullivan riff almost makes up for the lack of personality in party member dialog compared to ME1.

Yeah, that's probably my favorite party interaction in the game. "I am the very model of a Salarian Scientist!"

[TripleDES]

Modding my character the hard way! 

[Lantyssa]

That is freaky.  I have a friend who is the spitting image of that if we gave her a bit of black lipstick.

[lesion]

I just hit the derelict ship on insanity. As an adept. I think it's time to start over.