#me2 critical

[mass-effect-anonymous]

CONFESSION:

I've always disliked the idea of Shepard being dead - and then a hate group bringing them back. Whats worse, Liara, who Shep can be romatically involved with, cooperated with the group to get their remains to the Lazarus Research Station. It just seems such a strange solution for 'we need time to pass between the titles and need a good reason for Shep to be away from all their friends and not know what happened to any of them or what is going on'

And its not like the project is really explored either. Like there are so few implications drawn from it. Shep is asked about some things from the last game (To confirm some game choices) and then thats that. Sure I know the whole thing comes back in the DLC - but then its treated as a one off as well. I mean imagine if Shep was plagued by the doubts of them being a clone as well - or not knowing if they came back right.

You are told Shep is full of implants now - but you literally have the choice to erase the scars forever and never worry about it again! I just wish this was explored more. Like, it kind of reminds me of the body horror of Aliens: Resurrection where Ripley (the galaxy's savior) comes back wrong. How about reaper tec being used in bringing Shep back? Or discovering a cloning facility at the Colleactors ship? There's just so much that could have been done aside of just 'They died and came back like jesus'...

It's such a shame BioWare didnt really choose to explore this further.

[omegastation]

their friendship is everything

from the way he makes them join the dancefloor, her comment about him not knowing how to dance, his little smile, the way they proceed to dance anyway

me2 is so bad regarding mshep&jack, and this makes things so much better. i love them like this

[shepardlives]

I’m going to make a longer post about this later but Lair of the Shadow Broker should’ve been about Liara coming to terms with her mother’s death and her legacy

Edit: thoughts on this hypothetical under the cut

[solstheimtxt]

So i resumed my me2 insanity pt:

Squaddies are absolute ass no matter who you bring, so i googles it and apprently the best thing to do is literally have them wait back a bit, and just solo the whole mission and use their powers as needed

✌️😭✌️ fuck me2 man this shit sucks can the squadmates pls just get out of the line of bullet fire??

So far my pt has been:

>keep squaddies back, run forward to cover. Use squaddies powers, use combat drone, get a few shots in as needed, rinse and repeat

[jadequarze]

Replaying ME2 Suicide Mission ost while drawing Imogen with a long coat inspired by the new ME trailer. In my silly little zone

[transmasc-tabris]

People saying that Davrin and Lucianis are really mean to each other or that Neve is an angry bitch if you help Treviso or that Taash is mean for finding Emmrich weird... Wouldnt last an hour in the asylum where they raised me or whatever:

[ndostairlyrium]

I think I'm less disappointed with the finale than others because I was there for the me3 finale debacle lol

The bad part is that me3 finale made sense. It was just um, straight up one of the worst ideas they could ever think of, but it made- sigh.

Here you have like, the perfect build up, the stakes are me2 level of "if I fucked up during the pt my friends are gonna pay the price", and closure with your companions. However it's contradictory asf, it forces you to break immersion and, in the wrongest moment for a rational thought makes you say "wait, why are we back to step 1? what about the bli- aw the lost elf theme ;; hold on, why aren't you bringing up the things that has been repeated nonstop via super long expositions throughout the game?? MR. MORRIS COME BACK, CONFUSE ME AGAIN"

It's gorgeous, but it doesn't make sense, and then it does, and then it doesn't again. I am confusion

Back in my days (lmaooo) we got an apology and a 2gb free dlc called "extended cut" that was like this meme

but it did patch only a few things. The finale stayed there. Immutable

and we only had to presume what went wrong during development, but then we all saw the artbook and agreed that maybe there were interferences from above and that the real treasure was the friends we made along the way and that would die horribly if you had 50% or less of reactivity that you could raise only by playing the multiplayer and those who were playing the game on a console had to spend money to gain access to it

Yeah, I don't think they're good at finales. "But at least"

[princessshikky]

DAO: Sometimes sacrifices must be made for the good of the many. Your Warden might leave Redcliffe to be ravaged by the undead, let Branca have the Anvil of the Void, convince the werewolves to massacre a Dalish clan, side with the man who committed fratricide for the throne and plans to usurp the power, recruit a man who started a civil war in his own country and sold its citizens to slavery - all in the name of stopping the Blight.

DA2: Sometimes there is no good choice. Shit happens because of things that are outside of Hawke's control, and the best thing Hawke can do is try to manage the outcome.

ME2: Shepard literally has to genocide the batarians in order to delay the Reapers' arrival and buy some time for the galaxy to prepare for a war.

ME3: Sometimes sacrifices must be made for the good of the many. Shepard might lie to the crogan about curing the genophage in order to get the salarians' help, sacrifice either the geth or the quarians (or potentially both) and forcibly alter the bodies and minds of every living being in the galaxy.

DAI: Sometimes the best outcome is the one where you let that Orlesian empress be killed and help that elven rebel blackmail the new emperor into submission. Also, you may convince the future Divine that killing people is the easiest and fastest way to victory.

...

DATV: Oh no! Solas, an army general fighting in a rebellion against slavers and tyrants, had to *gasp* sacrifice some people in order to obtain a weapon that could bring them victory! How could he!.. What an irredeemable monster, right?

Just. How? How did we get from genuine grey morality to this? I just... ugh.

[greypetrel]

Live Max Reaction

Going on with Mass Effect 2, I would have a couple of things to say about the romances, but I'll let Max "Disagio" Shepard do the talking.

(Hi new followers, welcome! In case you were wondering, my superpower is entering romances in Bioware games without knowing it. It happened with Alistair and Anders in Dragon Age. Oops, I did it again: It happened now with Jack. Which I'm told shouldn't be romanceable by a female Shepard, but I don't know what to say, I succeeded. Max decided to be genderfluid. And a bro. Liara waits for news about her as one waits for the next episode of a tv show full of cliffhangers.)

(I love Garrus, btw, it was just so much of a TMI that I laughed hard, and had to draw a live Max reaction.)(thane is a great character, but that romance option was a little out of place? I laughed too)

[mass-effect-anonymous]

CONFESSION:

I'm going to be honest. I recently replayed ME2 and while I still enjoy it for the most part, the stuff with Kelly Chambers really made me uncomfortable now.  Maybe its dues to getting older and having grown a lot but it just makes me cringe now

[ghostryders]

there’s no way the Lazarus station attack wasn’t planned bc we’d have had to do like 5 quick time events for Shepard to take out a catheter or something.

[villainanders]

seeing mass effect 2 came out just about a year before da2 is explaining a lot to me bc 1) even tho me2 seems to be a more thought out game than da2 in just about every regard it seems like there's a lot similar stylistic impulses going on 2) bioware was REALLY into 9/11 during this timeframe apparently. i don't know what was going on over there nearly 10 years after the event that made them feel like it was finally time to start dropping their 9/11 political commentary but it was happening i guess

[solstheimtxt]

Jk the praetorian is murdering them

I FINALLY GOT PAST THAT FUCKING COLLECTOR SHIP ROADBLOCK ON THE COLLECTOR SHIP LETS FUCKING GOOOOOOO

[omegastation]

(if you don't want to read something critical avoid this post because something bothers me a bit)

one of Shepard's first conversations in the Citadel in ME1 is with Din Korlack, who is so grumpy that we think, aaaaw, he's just mad the volus don't get a seat on the Council, but he talks about how some species are not seen as equal, and when you get to Avina in the embassies and you ask her about the volus and Council seats, she ends her little speach with "The embassies allow lesser species to have a voice on the Citadel." she was 100% programmed to tell visitors that, with those words.

fastforward in me3 and you can tell the writers don't know how to deal with the batarians and the sheer level of atrocity that has been commited in me2 yes yes, the reapers would have done worse in arrival and shepard had no choice, and yes, the batarians have done terrible things but it's so big, as in "every remaining batarian knows shepard's face because of what they're done" big that the writers can't deal with what truly happened and what it should do to a human being

so we get a sort of simplistic story in me3 to make the guilt seems less than it should be (the remaining batarian leader, Balak, is bad and wants revenge). after a talk with him, batarians with their ships become war assets. it goes okay?

but when Officer Noles asks Shepard if they want Balak arrested and Shepard replies "I want you to put a bullet in his head… but we're all making some sacrifices today", I'm thinking that's a very questionable default line right there and that's not how I see Shepard. because yes Balak is not exactly someone innocent in this story but the use of the word 'sacrifices' is really annoying me considering arrival and the near extinction of the batarian race.

Balak just told Shepard he feels he can't save his people. and if you read the war assets, batarians are described as "enraged survivors". he even implies that the remaining batarians are basically cut from war info, he knows the location of Reaper forces because he's listening to Council transmissions. so he's basically their only hope at this point, and it's clear he doesn't know what to do. the level of despair there is just really high

"No collection of vessels is more eager to engage the Reapers than Khar'shans last warships."

so... it's not like i want shepard to be a full on batarians fan but there was a better way to express themselves after talking to Balak

[lilmissnatcat24]

Yet another post in defense of the Virmire Survivor because they get the rawest deal by the fandom.

But people love to clown on Ashley and Kaidan for how they act in me2 on Horizon (which is completely justified, by the way. Imagine your friend/partner comes back from the dead with glowing red eyes working for terrorists. Are they supposed to be okay with that? No! But that's another post). What people forget is that Wrex and Tali literally do the SAME THING to Shepard, and no one bats an eye.

On Freedom's Progress, Tali is HORRIFIED Shep is working for Cerberus. She knows what Cerberus did to the quarians, she knows what Cerberus did to Kahoku and the rachni, and now the one person she admired more than anyone else is working for them? She tells Shepard that she can't trust them, that she can't join up with them. And this is after Tali drops EVERYTHING to join them in me1. Sure, she eventually joins later in the game, but Shepard was alone and scared and surrounded by strangers after being dead, and the first thing Tali tells them is no. And yet no one criticizes Tali for that.

And Wrex? You can KILL him in me1. He's so distraught and angry over what Saren doing on Virmire, but what makes it even worse is that Shepard doesn't even blink before telling him that they need to bomb the facility. Wrex, who was so vocal about his people and how they're dying, doesn't even get to give them the benefit of the doubt before expecting to fall in line. He questions Shepard, questions their choices and their motives, and depending on your choices you can kill Wrex for his doubt. And yet no one criticizes Wrex for that. If anything, he's praised for being a complex character with firm motivations.

But when the VS tells Shepard that they won't join them on Horizon and criticizes their choice to join Cerberus, all of a sudden the entire fandom decides that they're EVIL and they're UNREASONABLE and they're DRAMATIC. When what they're doing is having the most valid criticism of all time-- the same exact criticism that Tali has in the beginning of the game (and, to an extent Garrus too).

And again, in me3 when Udina makes them a Spectre and for just a second it looks like Shepard is back with Cerberus, the VS doubts Shepard. Which is REASONABLE! They don't necessarily have the best track record. They're protecting the Council and here comes shepshep pointing a gun at them. Who wouldn't doubt them? The VS is such a critical part to the story because Shepard needs someone to check their impulses and their decisions, or else you get people like Liara and Garrus who blindly support anything they do. Shepard needs to be kept in line by someone.

In conclusion, VS fans are entitled to financial compensation.

[anneapocalypse]

I realize I already haven't been posting a lot of DA stuff relative to how much FFXIV is on here these days, and that is probably going to be the case for the next couple months, until I've had time to play the new game at my own pace.

While I have found the barrage of promo material a bit overwhelming and have mostly chosen for myself not to worry about keeping up with it all, I'm not especially worried about spoilers ruining the game for me. For one thing, spoilers don't ruin a story for me, and for another, Bioware loves to do fake-outs in promo material where they show you something out of context that look like a massive spoiler and in some sense is but they don't give the context and it usually turns out to be something very different than the impression it gave us (showing In Hushed Whispers Leliana without revealing the time travel thing, for example, or showing Shepard's death like it was a potential ending for ME2 and not the prologue to the game). So like, whatever wild shit they've already shown or will get talked about after previewers get to play a scant few hours of the game, I'm pretty confident that there's going to be plenty of big moments and story context that very deliberately will not be shown before release. I'm going to beef up my blacklist, but I'm also not worried about it, personally.

Mostly, I am probably just not going to be engaging in a lot of meta discussion for a bit, because this just isn't my favorite time to be doing that. I was around for the hype train for DAI and also for the game's initial reception and I'll just say it was not the most pleasant time to be in DA fandom. And please don't misunderstand me--I'm not saying that none of the criticism was warranted or that nobody should complain when they play a new game and don't like something.

I'm just saying that a big new story with lots of new characters and lore and locations and details takes time to absorb. It takes more than a couple of weeks to fully process and analyze a complex story sometimes. And in my experience, the meta and lore discussions get better and more nuanced and interesting with a bit of distance from the initial release. And personally, that's where I start to really enjoy it. I had a lot more fun talking with people about DAI--its strengths and its faults--once the initial hype and backlash had died down. I expect it will probably be that way with DATV too. Again, I want to stress that I don't think there's anything wrong with sharing and discussing first impressions, including negative ones, just that I will probably enjoy the discussions more once things settle a bit.

So if I'm not talking about Dragon Age much here for a while, it's not from lack of interest, I just might chill for a bit and enjoy it on my own before jumping back in.