Mass Effect 3.. is boring.

[Yeast Lord]

I thought two was dumbed down back in the day and never got around to picking up the OG 3. But after replaying them all in LE. It's sad to see how much the games regressed. Mass Effect 1 had such a Kotor 1 & 2 vibe and it's definitely the strongest out of the 3 games. 2, with all its dlc is pretty good.. but after playing 3 for about 5 hours. I don't think I'll finish it. It's just a generic scifi on the rail shooter. No hacking minigames, nothing to explore, the Normandy feels desolate, utter garbage of a game. It's like with this series you can tell that the old Bioware was at the apex of making something great and then died. Mass Effect 1 was their last good game.

[wilky]

Originally posted by Jon_Smith:

2. Fix the combat......? Dunno how since the classes are not unique enough to make any of them interesting to play vs the others.

^This is one of my biggest complaints about the combat/gameplay in ME1, aside from the fact that it's extremely easy even on Insanity difficulty.

All of the classes in ME1 have like 12 talents each, so there is way too much overlap between them (plus the specialization classes also overlap) and in ME:Legendary now every class can equip all weapons with deadly accuracy... so there is basically no unique identity among any of the playable classes in ME1 any longer.

[Gerfreckle]

Originally posted by Dagg:

ME1 had the most flaws sure. But it started it all and was by far the most unique and it didn't hold your hand as much as ME2 and ME3 and on top of the that the story was much much better than the trope it turned into in ME3.

I do think the story is better in ME1 than ME3, but it still isn't all that great. It ultimately just boils down to "stop a rogue soldier with alien tech from taking over the world'. Not very original or groundbreaking stuff. ME1's biggest strength is the worldbuilding, not the story or dialogue (ME2 is superior in both those regards, in my opinion).

[Black Hole]

I'm just consider anyone who calls themselves Lucifer to be a likely troll.

[Jon_Smith]

Originally posted by Dagg:

ME1 had the most flaws sure. But it started it all and was by far the most unique and it didn't hold your hand as much as ME2 and ME3 and on top of the that the story was much much better than the trope it turned into in ME3.

There is a difference between respecting something for being innovative and starting something off, and it still being good now.

Windows 95 was an absolutely innovative OS, but would be a pain to use these days.
Zelda 1 was an absolutely innovative game, but its awful to play these days.

Mass Effect 1 was innovative, but the story doesn't transcend the issues it has, especially since the story isn't as strong as everyone claims.

The opening is really strong. Eden Prime is great and establishes Saren as a great villain.
Citadel is decent, but not exceptional.
Therum is terrible from a story perspective.
Feros is terrible from a story perspective until you meet the Thorian (but thats 5 minutes).
Noveria is terrible from a story perspective except the 5 minutes with Benezia.
Virmire, is pretty decent, really good at the end.
Illos is great.
Citadel ending is great.

The problem here is a strong start and ending but a terrible middle is a problem, since the middle is the real core of the game and where most of the time is spent.

[Captain_Emeritus]

Originally posted by bear.:

ME2 is a dating sim. It's the worst of the 3 games. 90% is going around the galaxy trying to make your squad mates happy.

Yeah, something like that. Roughly 90% of ME2's story was a combination of undoing most or all of the plot development from ME1 and taking small side mission character stuff from the first game and turning it into the main focus of the plot.

I'm a big story and plot guy. The clean ending of ME1 left BW in a bit of a tight spot with where to pick up the story and the problems were compounded when they changed developers from MS who let them do what they do more so to EA who appeared way more hands on and mainstream focused with them. ME2's combat was better in most ways and the overall level design benefited from cutting all the copy and paste stuff from the first game, although overall gameplay is more 1-dimensional.

It's almost a reboot of the first game with Shepard trying to stop a doomsday Reaper threat that no one believes exists outside your crew except 1 other story character, only you're working as a secret agent for Cerberus instead of the Citadel and the one guy who believes you is the Illusive Man in place of Captain Anderson. Instead of chasing after Saren and the Geth, it's the Collectors who are a front for the Reaper activity now. The first mission is basically Eden Prime all over again but darker and less gripping. From there each main story mission basically finds a way to kick the ball further down the road to give room for more badass genetically modified characters and some genuinely great character moments.

I haven't gotten to ME3 yet. So far, I still have ME1>ME2 by a bit although I do appreciate ME2 more now than back in the day. I roll with ME1 for the main story, world building, and being more immersive overall and then ME2 for the action and having more consistently dope levels.

[iza]

Originally posted by Captain_Emeritus:

all the copy and paste stuff from the first game, although overall gameplay is more 1-dimensional.

I hear this quite a lot but I fail to understand why ME2/3 are more 1-dimensional than ME1? Like combat is A LOT better in 2/3 unless..?

[Jon_Smith]

Originally posted by Captain_Emeritus:

I'm a big story and plot guy. The clean ending of ME1 left BW in a bit of a tight spot with where to pick up the story and the problems were compounded when they changed developers from MS who let them do what they do more so to EA who appeared way more hands on and mainstream focused with them. ME2's combat was better in most ways and the overall level design benefited from cutting all the copy and paste stuff from the first game, although overall gameplay is more 1-dimensional.

How do you stand all the grind in ME1 though....? The story is spread so thin. The setup is great, Sovereign and Saren are amazing character to chase, the Citadel stuff drags abit and ends abit too conveniently but its ok.

Problem is then that Feros and Therum are just absolutely awful from a 'big story' perspective. One is you just go and get Liara. Nothing big story happens in the slightest.
Feros, there is a weird colony thing, Geth attack, there is alot to get to until you actually get to the Thorian (which is cool) and even realise why you needed to be on the planet, and its over in 10 minutes.

Thats ME1 in a nutshell, really cool ideas spread out so far that they become super, super diluted. There are some strong story moments, but they are so few and far between with so much nothing inbetween, with many quests have no explanation or point whatsoever. (League of One, I'm looking at you).

The overall story of ME2 is weaker, but in bitesize chunks its much, much strong. Tali's loyalty mission is a special highlight for example.

ME3 might work for you, it has the big story in my opinion, and great smaller stories.
Its very focused though, alot of freedom is taken away.

[Mr. Bufferlow]

The trouble with all finales, is you have to spend a lot of time tying up loose ends, and completing the story. Given the time, they did a pretty good job IMO. It is a worthy tale.

[Prydzen ᛋᛟ]

IF you combined ME1 gear play and ME2 ability play then you have a pretty solid combat system.

[Emi-Didact]

Pity. I always look forward to it when I start a new playthrough of the trilogy.

[Captain_Emeritus]

Originally posted by Jon_Smith:

How do you stand all the grind in ME1 though....? The story is spread so thin. The setup is great, Sovereign and Saren are amazing character to chase, the Citadel stuff drags abit and ends abit too conveniently but its ok.

Problem is then that Feros and Therum are just absolutely awful from a 'big story' perspective. One is you just go and get Liara. Nothing big story happens in the slightest.
Feros, there is a weird colony thing, Geth attack, there is alot to get to until you actually get to the Thorian (which is cool) and even realise why you needed to be on the planet, and its over in 10 minutes.

Thats ME1 in a nutshell, really cool ideas spread out so far that they become super, super diluted.

If the mechanics in the first game are a problem for you, which they are for most gamers, I get how it can be a chore. But there's a lot of gamers that don't mind and even enjoy it for a number of reasons. The same way that what a lot of people think of as underwhelming plots don't bother some players if the gameplay is fun enough, what a lot of people think is underwhelming gameplay doesn't bother some players if the plot and other immersive elements are good enough. Same as Fallout and other shooter rpg series'.

On the story issues you brought up. You kind of have a point with Feros. There's more than 1 part of the mission that's technically redundant. It does advance the plot in some ways, but the mission has it's pros and cons.

The Liara mission, on the other hand, is actually crucial to the plot. Although it's short, she's the only dedicated Prothean history researcher at the time and bridges the final gap in helping Shepard understand the Prothean visions as well as connecting the visions to Ilos which only she and Saren knew about. The character is crucial to advancing the plot.

That said, I agree that those two are the most underwhelming main story missions in ME1. But that also helps explain why so ME2's main story is looked at so poorly. Because the vast majority of the missions in ME2 are the exact same as those two missions, but generally with less material that advances the overall plot of the series. About 5 or 6 of ME2's missions are "recruit Liara" type missions, only none of the characters you recruit are key to advancing the main Reaper plot. Half of characters' sole purpose is being bad a** hired guns that you only acquire because it's explained that you need a lot of bad as** hired guns on your team to beat the Collectors. And the only reason you need those hired guns is because inexplicably, everything you did at the end of ME1 was retconned so you can't get any help from the Council, the Alliance, or the intergalactic community, all of which fought against a Reaper and agreed to band together to stop them. It's all forced and doesn't make any sense from the jump. Then there's another 7 or 8 missions that are basically the 2nd half of the recruitment missions because the loyalty missions act as a way to solidify each character's recuitment. Only Mordin helps advance the plot in anyway, but his specific expertise isn't said to be as unique or crucial to the mission as Liara's in ME1.

Another 3-5 missions are basically Feros type missions where you go some place, shoot some stuff up and try to help some random colony of people and don't learn anything to advance the Reaper threat plot. In the end, over half the missions are redundant and even some of the characters you get are, with many of them sharing similar backstories and archetypes.

And at the end of it all, once you've beaten the Collectors and stopped their human reaper plot, you end up right back where you were at the End of ME1. The reapers are still coming through dark space and you're no closer to finding out what they're after, how long they've been doing what they do, or how to stop them.

I'm about done ramlbing. They're both great games, just for different reasons. One excells on world building, plot, and other mechanics that improve immersion. The other excells on action and focus on characters. The issues with ME2's plot were inevitable. When Bioware opted to go to EA and go multiplat, they introduced almost unavoidable plot problems. Namely they had to try and continue the story they'd built for the current Xbox and pc players while introducing it to PS3 players in a way where they could pick up everything and not be out of the loop. To do that, they not only made much of ME1's main plot developments irrelevant, but they made most of ME2's plot irrelevant too because instead of building on the original story and covering new ground to get us closer to the end destination, we wound up driving down the same road as before just this time we're driving at night because it's darker and makes the lights look cooler and we picked up more passengers along the way.

Sure it may have been a funner ride for people who are suckers for bright lights, which I am as much as anybody. But it doesn't change the fact that we didn't really go anywhere. We just got to the same place in a little more style.

[Jon_Smith]

Originally posted by Captain_Emeritus:

Snip

Ya know I've never been able to understand the hate of ME2 and love of ME1 that some fans have because, as I mentioned, I find the gameplay so weak and the story so thin across the mid game and no-existent in the side quests.

Your explanation finally gets me to understand and empathise with it now. The haters just bash on ME2 but I had yet to see someone explain it in context and compare with ME2, demonstrating the weakness of both and how they can appear greater in ME2 to a person.

Thanks for the details and nuanced insight.