Mass Effect 2 Halfway Point (Spoilers)

Continuing with Mass Effect week here on the ol’ blog…

I’m starting this draft on March 22, but again I probably won’t publish it until after I finish Mass Effect 3. There are story spoilers below if you haven’t finished the game.

Mass Effect 2 is a much, much larger and longer game than Mass Effect 1. I’m well over 20 hours into the game, and I don’t even think I’ve gotten to the halfway point yet. There are a lot more opportunities to get distracted with side missions. Omega, The Citadel, Illium: All teeming with entertaining vignettes to watch and interact with as you pass by.

The game part of Mass Effect 2 is an improvement, although it morphed from more of an RPG-style game to more of an action-style game. I find that the cover mechanics work a lot better, and the combat is more fun. (Although sometimes it drags on far too long.) I’m still playing on Casual mode, though, because I’m more interested in the story than the game.

Mass Effect 2 has a much darker tone than the original. Perhaps because of the way it starts out with the total destruction of the Normandy and Shepard’s resurrection from the dead. (It was a pretty exciting opening scene, I’ll give them that.) But beyond that, the locations seem to be darker and seedier, like Omega, the first place you visit. Shepard’s attitude seems a bit darker, too, or maybe it’s just that my choices have gotten darker. I feel like she would be bitter after being resurrected by what she would have previously considered a “terrorist” organization.

The best new character by far is Mordin the Salarian (voiced by Michael Beattie). I mean, so, so obviously. What an amazing character. Not only is he an amazing character with amazing voice acting, but the subject matter of his personal storyline is really meaty and thought-provoking (the Krogan genophage).

Miranda is okay (the fact that Yvonne Stahovski’s voice is very pleasant saves that character), Jacob is meh and fairly pointless. Garrus is still Garrus, except even more of a bitter old cynic. Jack is pretty good, but her character feels like a cliche and I thought she reformed from a sociopathic killer to a loyal squadmate unnaturally quick.

Grunt is probably my least favorite so far. He’s nowhere near as interesting as Wrex was. (Are Krogans supposed to be uplifted dolphins? At first I thought they looked like some sort of big featherless hawk head but now I can’t see them as anything but dolphin heads.)

I’ve just gotten to the Assassin and the Justicar, so I don’t have an opinion on them yet. (I can’t even think of their names offhand.) My first impressions weren’t that great, though. At first glance, they seemed very much like cliches (the gentle assassin and the warrior monk).

Now about the story in Mass Effect 2. Remember how I said the story was really focused in Mass Effect 1? You always knew that you were chasing Saren to stop his nefarious plans. I feel like that’s not the case in Mass Effect 2. I understand that the goal is to “stop the Collectors” but it’s not super clear exactly what needs to happen to stop them (it’s not entirely clear what a Collector even is, except another agent of the Reapers).

I feel like the “assemble the team” part of the game is becoming a big distraction from the real story. I enjoy getting to know these new characters, and I’ve enjoyed seeing the new areas, but it’s not at all clear why these particular people (what’s the word for “people” when you mean humans and aliens?) are the only ones who can get this job done. They just seem like random people whose main qualifications are that they are interesting characters.

In Mass Effect 1, the characters were clearly there for story-related reasons. Alenko was a member of the crew to start with-he had to go because Shepard captained the ship. Williams joined the crew after her squad was lost on Eden Prime, and again, had to follow orders. Garrus and Wrex and Tali joined the crew because they believed in the mission (more or less). And Liana joined the crew because she was an expert on Protheans.

Maybe it will become clear later on-maybe there will be some cut scenes that show exactly why Jack and Grunt and the rest are vital to completing the Mass Effect 2 story. But right now, right after picking up the Justicar, I feel like they are non-essential to the story and it should have been optional to complete these quests. I feel like I’m spinning my wheels, bogged down in a slow, irrelevant part of the game, and I’m anxious to get back to the main plot and learn more about the Collectors.

More on Mass Effect 2 when I finish it.