Mass Effect 2 *spoilers around pg 29/30*

[MournelitheCalix]

I'm still completely convinced that the Illusive Man told the collectors where to find you in the first place and that's how this whole thing got started. There are too many "coincidences".

If you talk to Vigil in the first game, he states something to the effect that, "Saren wasn't the only indoctrinated servant of Sovereign.  He is just the most visible."  With hindsight of Mass Effect 2 and given the obvious implants that the developers made obvious in TiM, I got the idea that TiM has not only been indoctrinated but also implanted.  I agree completely there are just too many coincidences with TiM.

I hope in the next game that trusting TiM and cerebrus is viable, but will most likely be disasterous to the point of losing the battle with the reapers.

[Jeff Kelly]

Why would somebody indoctrinated by the Reapers fund an operation that basically destroys the Reapers' race of bio-engineered minions slash midwives?

I didn't want to turn this into a meta-discussion about game lore. I just noticed that the options you have in ME 2 as far as Paragon/Renegade go were rarely the choices I would have liked to see, especially since more often than not it doesn't matter one bit whether you take the Paragon or Renegade route.

I get that it's mostly about ambience and flavor, even the small set of alternate universes that you do get at the critical decision points add up to a lot of different combos come ME 3, which all have to be included.

At least give me more reactions by my party/NPCs to my choices. Let me feel that I'm notorious/famous more often.

In the Samara recruitment quest for example you can throw a Blue Suns merc out the window with a renegade interrupt (he was talking entirely too much for my taste :) ) and if you have Garrus in your squad he comment's along the line of "harsh but he probably deserved it".

Make them love me if I'm the embodiment of Justice/loathe me when I'm a loose cannon. Make it so they act according to their alignment (Jack would probably like Renegade Shepard more). Use the people that wrote the wall of text that is the ME Codex for that instead. Something like that.

[ajax34i]

I haven't finished the game, but ME2 seems to have a lot less of the sprawling dialogue-fest that was the Citadel in ME1, and a lot more just-go-kill-'em content, so when exactly would your companions have time to butter you up?  I go to Omega, Citadel, or Illium to shop and that's about it; I think I'd find it annoying if they keep talking as I walk around, and I would definitely find it annoying if they start blabbing while I'm in the middle of combat.  And having to chat up everyone on the ship (and feed the fish) after every mission is already annoying.

As a derail, my big question about the lore is: if people can do crowd-control by "passing a current through some eezo" inside their body, why can't ships?  Why don't ships have adept-like capabilities?

[Ratman_tf]

It's not even about doing the 'I quit' thing, it's numerous other options that are perfectly reasonable yet never even considered or brought up.  And frankly, I don't think 'I quit' is such an unreasonable option, all things considered.  After handing you the ship, Cerberus gives very little that could not be obtained elsewhere.  As soon as you dock at the Citadel you could order the ship commandeered, and between the resources of a Spectre and what Liara could help you learn, Cerberus provides little to nothing you couldn't obtain elsewhere.

Yup. Specters are allready set up in the first game as these Lensman types who do whatever they feel like and only answer to the council.

If this weren't a CRPG, I think I would have taken the Normandy 2, headed back to the Citadel, got my Specter status reinstated (which can happen in the game) and then thumbed my nose at Cerb and the IL and saved the galaxy on my own. Which is what Specters are good at.

Now, if they had made it more of a point that no one trusted ressurected Shep, then the idea of having to work with Cerb makes a little more sense.

It doesn't help that Cerberus is the Cobra of Mass Effect. They only exist to fuck up so Shepard can clean up their mistakes. Which utterly sucks at portraying them as any kind of useful resource.

[Sjofn]

They did make it a point that no one trusted Rezzed Shep. Your reinstated status? It's contingent on you staying the hell away from everyone. It's decorative. You can tell yourself it's because you're with Cerberus and everything would be sunshine and ponies if you just broke up with them, but you're fooling yourself. The AI on the Normandy alone would get you in trouble. With the Council. The one body that does have authority over Spectres. And good luck finding out, uh, anything Cerberus told you in ME2. Without them, you wouldn't have even known where to start.

It is entirely possible to not get Spectre back, of course. Dead old council + Udina on the new council = not even offered.

[Merusk]

Fuck Spectre status.  The only reason you needed it is for their reach, resources and immunization from pesky laws.   And that last part is wholly optional, since in the progress of exploring the world through two games you find plenty of places the law doesn't apply.  Private research planets, hellhole stations, wholly secret labs hidden from everyone.   The power of the council is illusory.. particularly after you blew up their nice, expensive command ship. 

Cerberus might be incompetent but they show that other powers exist for you to get the resources the council only grudgingly gave you in the first place.  Hell, you're Commander fucking Shepard, your name alone should let you start up your own, highly organized and competent organization by now.  Never mind that the close comrades you'd made over the last few years have excellent contacts and created networks of their own.

As a last resort you could even just work with the true Geth. 

[Jeff Kelly]

I adore Legion, it's a pity you get him so late in the game on your first playthrough. The animators did a really great job with his facial expressions and his blind spot for irony and hidden context makes his dialogue really deadpan. And he clearly has emotions but pretends he doesn't understand Shepard.

"Why did you use the piece of N7 armor?"
"there was a hole"
"No I mean why did you not use something else"
""no data available" (watch his face during the dialogue)

They even worked in the Pentium FDIV bug ;).

Also the way EDI and Legion interact with each other there'll probably be little Geth-Kids running around in ME 3 ;)

They should have given you Legion much earlier in the game.

[NowhereMan]

Well in fairness the reason Legion has Shepard's armour is because a designer thought it would look cool, so *data not found* was a pretty accurate explanation from the writer.

[Lantyssa]

Why would somebody indoctrinated by the Reapers fund an operation that basically destroys the Reapers' race of bio-engineered minions slash midwives?

Funny how the only (known) being to lead to the destruction of a Reaper just happens to have been brought back from the dead and is half cybernetic...  Maybe because the loss of a few tools and a proto-Reaper of nothing but average humans is nothing compared to the Reaper constructed from the ultimate representative of that race?

[Jeff Kelly]

Which entirely makes sense in a very very scary way.

[Rasix]

I hate getting into lore discussions, but aren't we making a lot of assumptions about the Reapers themselves? Mainly that they're completely apolitical and just one big happy family joined together by the love of squashing sentient races.   There's the possibility that facitions exist within the Reapers.  Or has that been explained away in the mountain of ingame text that I didn't read?

Or maybe even with Cerberus/humanity they're looking for someone to be their new stoolie race in the universe.  

[Lantyssa]

We know very little about the Reapers themselves besides them being boogie men.  We know a bit about the races they've enslaved, that Saran was one tool, and that others are out there.  That's about it, really.

I just like making wildly speculative guesses based on a few loose ideas others have thrown out.  If I'm right I look like a genius.  If they make a worse plot then I still look like a genius.  If they make an amazingly awesome twist, then I get to play an amazing game while everyone forgets what I wrote a year prior.

[Sky]

With hindsight of Mass Effect 2 and given the obvious implants that the developers made obvious in TiM, I got the idea that TiM has not only been indoctrinated but also implanted.  I agree completely there are just too many coincidences with TiM.

He's an AI, imo. One that probably created the reapers! He just uses the human image to deal with humans.

[LK]

Comics are setting him up to be some pivotal badass even though he's using his status to fuck super models and enjoy everything that life has to offer.

[Jeff Kelly]

So he's Iron Man?

[Ingmar]

They should have given you Legion much earlier in the game.

They planned to - if you play the PC version you can mod him in earlier and it turns out he has dialogue in everyone else's missions, etc. I think originally the structure in terms of who you could recruit when was much more open, but they had to change that when it turned out the game was going to be too big for one disc on the 360.

Re: TIM, I haven't read the comics but he's plenty fallible in the novels.

[Morat20]

So he's Iron Man?

I thought Lex Luthor was the guide with the hidden lair and all the supermodel-fucking?

[Sjofn]

Legion does not have much to say on the ship if you saveedit him in (I assume he has dialogue that triggers after the suicide mission), he's been building a consensus since I blew up the heretics (I love that mission because I still haven't decided which decision is actually the right one), but he does pipe up basically everywhere but Horizon, so it was definitely worth it for one playthrough. He is especially cute on Tali's recruitment mission. 

[Stormwaltz]

They should have given you Legion much earlier in the game.

They planned to - if you play the PC version you can mod him in earlier and it turns out he has dialogue in everyone else's missions, etc. I think originally the structure in terms of who you could recruit when was much more open, but they had to change that when it turned out the game was going to be too big for one disc on the 360.

In Legion's particular case, the situation was that the time to build levels was running short, and we still didn't have a solid plan for what you would do to get a MacGuffin that let you through the Omega 4 relay. Legion's acquisition was mostly done. The original design was a surprise side mission from TIM unlocked in the first third of the game. He had that team out investigating the Reaper, and lost contact with them. He considered the possible causes of failure grave enough to interrupt Shepard's mission.

The leads felt Legion's mission was a natural fit to place the MacGuffin in. I agreed, suggested an IFF device, and plugged it in with minimal rewrites. The greatly reduced time with legion was a side-effect.

The original title of Legion's acquisition mission was "That Which Can Eternal Lie," a Lovecraft paraphrase.

[Jeff Kelly]

Thanks for the info. The way the game is paced makes you miss out on some great characters though that you simply get too late in the game. Especially Legion which is a great character that I hope to see again in ME 3.

[Sjofn]

To be fair, it did fit really well! The only downside for me in the first playthrough was me going "Goddammit what character am I missing." I think if it were me, I wouldn't have blank spaces being SO obvious on the character select screen. I did want MOAR with Legion but hopefully he is still cool in ME3.

[MournelitheCalix]

Why would somebody indoctrinated by the Reapers fund an operation that basically destroys the Reapers' race of bio-engineered minions slash midwives?

My take on this is that TiM may be used to set the battlefield.  Remember in ME, Sovereign failed.  Perhaps TiM is the backup plan, sow discord while also hiding in plain sight.  He prepares the field, for the invasion that is coming.  Just the appearance that Shepard and Cerebrus was working together was enough to have the Council basically disavow him.  TiM is very polarizing in a galaxy that I would guess needs to  be united in order to stand against those that would "reap" them.

Something else i mentioned previously and I would love to discuss this since I haven't heard much of a discussion given to this.  At the end of Mass Effect 2, Shepard looks alot like Saren.  You might ask how so but consider this, Saren's principle allies were the Geth, the Krogan, "Sovereign," and influential contacts.  He was also trying to use the Rachni to further his plots.  At the end of Mass Effect 2 Shepard now has  the potential to have great influence in the Krogan, The Geth (ala Legion's Mission), the resources of the Shadow broker via Liara (who was starting to act like her mother Matron Benezia), He has an AI enabled ship built with parts of Sovereign or its design ( i forgot which), and depending on your choices the Rachni.

That sure seems like too much of a coincidental setup for the savy Bioware writers and I doubt this is a coincidence.

[Sjofn]

It maaaay just work out as "This is how you actually save organics, SAREN," but yeah, that's an awful lot of connections. Another possible dot to connect is Shepard now has a lot of implants and shit, just like Saren.

I hadn't really thought of the "TIM has basically made Shepard's job even harder." And given the Reapers are, well, completely full of themselves, if they WERE behind all the TIM whatnot, they probably didn't think Shepard would succeed. However ... it still seems kinda convoluted, since they had Shepard dead. People were, according to Jacob and some other people you talk to, either forgetting about Shepard or trying really hard to make sure people did. And everyone was in serious, SERIOUS denial about the Reapers. Sooo ... I am pretty sure TIM is going to fuck Shepard over somehow in ME3, but I am pretty sure it won't be because he was working for the Reapers in ME2.


EDIT: I will cry if Udina winds up being a secret Reaper agent. He is a giant douchebag, but that's what I like about him. I'm apparently a sucker for NPCs who are just not that impressed with you.

[Azuredream]

Just me, but I'm on the Cerberus bandwagon. I saw eye to eye with TIM pretty much throughout ME2 (when he sends me to investigate some bogus distress signal I was thinking "hm, smart, I would've done the same"). When he asks me to hand over the Collector base I did it gladly. I think it would be incredibly lame if TIM turned out to be a Reaper agent instead of just a well-intentioned extremist.

[UnSub]

ME is a lot more interesting if everyone isn't a secret Reaper double agent.

The weapon that destroyed the IFF Reaper is likely to come back - TIM is working on a plan to eliminate the Reapers AND make Humankind the pre-eminent force in the galaxy. Perhaps by becoming part organic, part synthetic.

... of course, the final ME3 boss could just be TIM inside a giant Reaper suit.

[Sjofn]

If that comes to pass, UnSub, I will hold you personally responsible.

[UnSub]

If that comes to pass, UnSub, I will hold you personally responsible.

[Sir T]

the one place the railroading got to me was when that Collector ship was lifting off from the planet heavily damaged. I already had the guns Garus had installed. Why not Just tell Joker to try and put a very very big hole in the thing while it was vunerable...

[Sjofn]

You were probably too busy pulling husks out of your ass.

Also congratulations to THANE, winner of the coveted "Romance That Made Sjofn Go 'Awww'" Award! Tali was a contender but I could never shake that sisterly vibe completely, plus her soulmate is obviously Kal'Reegar. I have detailed my issues with Jack (twice!). Jacob's is ruined before it begins by LadyShep's horrible voice acting in her scenes with him. Miranda is boring. I can't even bring myself to start the Garrus one, as he doesn't even have lips, for God's sake. He and the Friend Zone Turian can go out for BOYZ NITE and bitch about how ladies only like assholes or something.

But Thane! He made me go "Awwww!" when he said he looked forward to the memories when we established we had the hots for each other. Awwwwwwwwww.  

[Mosesandstick]

Friend zone Turian is my hero.

[Koyasha]

the one place the railroading got to me was when that Collector ship was lifting off from the planet heavily damaged. I already had the guns Garus had installed. Why not Just tell Joker to try and put a very very big hole in the thing while it was vunerable...

Let's not forget when we're coming up on a de-powered collector ship.  "Oh by the way, take out its engines and weapons while we're on the approach, just to be sure.  Don't want any surprises, don'tcha know."

[ajax34i]

the one place the railroading got to me was when that Collector ship was lifting off from the planet heavily damaged. I already had the guns Garus had installed. Why not Just tell Joker to try and put a very very big hole in the thing while it was vunerable...

It's even worse:  you manage to activate the guns at the moment when that harbinger bug with the heads inside flies towards you.  Throughout the fight with it, the guns are pelting the collector ship (I sat behind cover and watched).  If you just sit behind cover and delay the fight indefinitely, the guns should theoretically completely destroy the ship.

But they don't.

As far as plot and Shepard being indoctrinated, I don't think so.  He certainly is full of implants (Shep's eyes look exactly like TIM's, only red, at full renegade w/o facial reconstruction), but the whole Mass Effect series plot is about facing off vs. a fleet of possibly thousands of Reapers, with the stargates disabled.  The only way this can end is with a deus-ex-machina plot, cause even if we combine rachni, geth, and un-genophaged krogan fleets we still won't have enough ships to make a dent in the incoming reaper fleet.

Speaking of ship tech (and derailing again) - linear mass accellerators as main guns?  Haven't Bioware heard that circular particle colliders are much more effective and take a smaller area than linear ones?  And again, giving a ship the ability to create singularities and warp fields in space would seem useful - odd that nobody's thought of it.  Sorry, pet peeves that I can't stop mentioning (though I will).

[tmp]

But Thane! He made me go "Awwww!" when he said he looked forward to the memories when we established we had the hots for each other. Awwwwwwwwww.  

Considering he spends most of the budding relationship with Shepard reminiscencing his dead wife, if i heard something like that it'd probably stop things cold right there and then.

"i'm looking forward to remembering what we had"... well 

[Morat20]

Speaking of ship tech (and derailing again) - linear mass accellerators as main guns?  Haven't Bioware heard that circular particle colliders are much more effective and take a smaller area than linear ones?  And again, giving a ship the ability to create singularities and warp fields in space would seem useful - odd that nobody's thought of it.  Sorry, pet peeves that I can't stop mentioning (though I will).

You could coil them, but wouldn't that reduce your firing time, since you'd have to 'spin them up' for each shot? I don't even want to think about battle damge and failure modes of a 10kg slug travelling around in circles in yoru ship -- or the forces exerted on the thing to keep it circling. I'm not sure you could build magnetic fields strong enough to hold it in place like that.

Straight line accelerators are simpler, faster, and would seem less prone to blowing up the ship if damaged.

As for the warp fields and such -- I don't think they fight many close range battles.

Also, Sir Isaac Newton is the baddest motherfucker in the galaxy.

[Jeff Kelly]

That was one of the most brilliant pieces of dialogue ever.

"Once you fire this hunk of metal, it keeps going til it hits something. That can be a ship. Or the planet behind that ship. It might go off into deep space and hit somebody else in ten thousand years. If you pull the trigger on this, you are ruining someones day, somewhere and sometime."

My first though was that this has to go on a t-shirt, this being the internet and whatnot, though it already had ;).