Doesn't make a whole lot of sense actually? Now that I'm coming with the correct context of ME1, ME2 does a lot of weird shit. Like, why am I automatically working with Cerberus, an actual terrorist organization that has done actual crimes? It's such a bizarre decision to strongarm Shephard into working with them despite how pro-cooperative and pro-alien you can be in ME1. And why would Joker work with them as well? I didn't talk to Joker much in ME1 but working with actual terrorists is such a jump for him even if the Alliance is doing their bureaucratic bullshit. Like, Cerebrus isn't just some rebel/outlaw faction that Sidesteps Democratic Insufficiency, they've literally attempted a hijacking of a Quarian ship and bombed it. I get the game is going full hard-on with this jingoist fantasy of Special Operatives Who Always Get The Job Done, but this is so far gone. It'd be like if you had a game about an American War Hero in the Iraq War, and then in the sequel you found out the War Hero is resurrected and being supplied by ISIS. Except Cerberus has far-less justification than Middle Eastern terrorism. Just a bizarre narrative decision.
I'll accept the sideswiping of working with Cerebrus--the game tries its hardest to assuage Paragon players that they're just working with Cerebrus, not actually under Cerebrus; a pretty meaningless distinction but fine, maybe there's a larger narrative point the writers want to hit and having Paragons work with Cerebrus was the best way to do that. What I don't get as readily is the wild swings in everything else that happens in the game. You have Mordin over here who's pretty unshaken by having participated in the Krogan Genophage Project, so there's that can of worms again; then over here you have Miranda who's just a pandora box of genetic modification, perfectionism, and inadequacy schemas, so there's that character arc; then you have Jack who also has her share of inadequacy schemas and as well as lot of weird codification by the writers to have her be this 'abused' or 'damaged goods' bad girl archetype; Jacob is the 'sane one', which is okay, but it feels kinda weird that they gave the black character a lack of interiority but whatever. And then you have the batshit DLC characters Zaeed and Kasumi with their own short but strangely excessive plotlines as well. Now having all this in your game is fine, my question is: what's the point?
The personal traumas at play with the characters here are fine, and they should be explored, but what's the connection between any of them? In ME1 all the lore about the Krogan Genophage, the Reapers, the Protheans, the Alliance, the Council, the romance options, squad decisions, etc. all lead to the central question of the game: how should human civilization interact with aliens? Whether we should integrate on our hands and knees, be cordial but maintain our own interest, or assert dominance is all up to the player's Shephard. And the game tries to provide evidence for and against all three different paths using both the history of the world and what happens on your quest to defeat Saren. Even small design decisions like having to buy non-Human armor for your squad can help players express how willing or unwilling they are towards accommodating aliens. Now, you can think the way Mass Effect 1 goes about these connections makes the game overall more tedious to play, or that the way the actual event-by-event plot moves is not entertaining, but there's a far more cohesive narrative in that game than in this one. There's a cohesive sense of edginess and grittiness in ME2, reinforced by the moral ambiguities, Cerberus, the 'suicide mission', setting a lot of the conflict outside the Council's jurisdiction, the more urban and oppressive combat settings versus the open plains and industrial rooms of ME1, etc. It's a coherent and understandable tonal shift, but what is this tonal shift saying? And that's probably my biggest problem with ME2--it's in many ways less tedious than ME1, but it's not saying anything compelling, which makes it a good bit more boring to me than its already rather sterile predecessor.
I'll accept the sideswiping of working with Cerebrus--the game tries its hardest to assuage Paragon players that they're just working with Cerebrus, not actually under Cerebrus; a pretty meaningless distinction but fine, maybe there's a larger narrative point the writers want to hit and having Paragons work with Cerebrus was the best way to do that. What I don't get as readily is the wild swings in everything else that happens in the game. You have Mordin over here who's pretty unshaken by having participated in the Krogan Genophage Project, so there's that can of worms again; then over here you have Miranda who's just a pandora box of genetic modification, perfectionism, and inadequacy schemas, so there's that character arc; then you have Jack who also has her share of inadequacy schemas and as well as lot of weird codification by the writers to have her be this 'abused' or 'damaged goods' bad girl archetype; Jacob is the 'sane one', which is okay, but it feels kinda weird that they gave the black character a lack of interiority but whatever. And then you have the batshit DLC characters Zaeed and Kasumi with their own short but strangely excessive plotlines as well. Now having all this in your game is fine, my question is: what's the point?
The personal traumas at play with the characters here are fine, and they should be explored, but what's the connection between any of them? In ME1 all the lore about the Krogan Genophage, the Reapers, the Protheans, the Alliance, the Council, the romance options, squad decisions, etc. all lead to the central question of the game: how should human civilization interact with aliens? Whether we should integrate on our hands and knees, be cordial but maintain our own interest, or assert dominance is all up to the player's Shephard. And the game tries to provide evidence for and against all three different paths using both the history of the world and what happens on your quest to defeat Saren. Even small design decisions like having to buy non-Human armor for your squad can help players express how willing or unwilling they are towards accommodating aliens. Now, you can think the way Mass Effect 1 goes about these connections makes the game overall more tedious to play, or that the way the actual event-by-event plot moves is not entertaining, but there's a far more cohesive narrative in that game than in this one. There's a cohesive sense of edginess and grittiness in ME2, reinforced by the moral ambiguities, Cerberus, the 'suicide mission', setting a lot of the conflict outside the Council's jurisdiction, the more urban and oppressive combat settings versus the open plains and industrial rooms of ME1, etc. It's a coherent and understandable tonal shift, but what is this tonal shift saying? And that's probably my biggest problem with ME2--it's in many ways less tedious than ME1, but it's not saying anything compelling, which makes it a good bit more boring to me than its already rather sterile predecessor.
2 Comments
@RockoEstalon Totally. I remember reading a little into the production history and IIRC one of the main scenario writers left in-between ME1 and ME2; regardless of what his involvement was, its clear that the people who were directing ME1 did not have the same vision of the series as the ME2 staff did. And to a lesser extent there's that same dissonance between ME2 and ME3, given how contradictory those two games are on just a literal plot level. I think your assessment of the series being entirely buoyed by characters is accurate--I didn't mention them here but Thane, Garrus, Wrex, & Tali are all just no-frills good-ass sci-fi characters throughout the trilogy.
Rocko
2 years ago