TTTX wrote:Vol wrote:
ME2 aesthetically is the best, writing stepped up, more tactical combat, better side quests, etc., and while I maintain the heat sink system was a poor idea, it's the one I played the most, and it gave us the Talimance, so I'm biased as fuck. But this is where the setting started to choke itself. It detailed the lore, expanded some, and will probably go down as the commonly accepted best in the series. If it was the only one someone played, would they call it a classic though?
Well the writing did go backwards in a few areas (like the main plot has lot of questions and stuff that doesn't make sense when you think about it and Liara becoming an infomation/Shadow Broker because apparently BW had no idea what else to do with her.)
Well I would consider it a classic like MGS, Legacy of Kain Soulreaver 1 and 2, however if you want the most of ME2 you need to play ME1 which is also a classic in it's own right.
I think any plot related issues with ME2 was born from the fact Bioware didn't expect ME1 to be so huge hit. But when it did become one, they were taking totally by surprise as they didn't have any plans for the future. And when they eventually realized they had a hit in their hands and it was time to start making sequel, they still didn't know what to do really. Because of that, I believe a lot of writers started to make their story arcs (small and whole game(s) spanning). This cause some competition, even rivarly between writers and their "arcs". Then they just had to choose the ones that fit (like whole Cerberus focus) and those that did not (Dark Energy idea). In that light, I'm actually surprised how well the whole trilogy went in the end.
As for Liara, I actually like the basic idea of her story arc in ME2. Exploring the concept of Shadow Broker. In ME1, you actually heard a surprisingly lot of Shadow Broker, yet not really anything solid at all. That made me curious about him, much more so that anything Cerberus related and I saw them just as another Merc group. Sure, I started my ME universe from ME2, so I knew Cerberus was much more. But playing the ME1, Cerberus just felt like your average Merc group and only thing that made it seem more was the whole Admiral Kahoku part.
So, ME1 made Shadow Broker interesting and when I learned that SB was after Liara, I got really curious. I was asking myself, how that came to be? And when they released the DLC, it was one of the rare cases I actually spend money to buy addition and I was happy about it. We got to learn more of Shadow Broker, how SB had so much reach and power and difficult it would be fighting against something like that after you. And the way how the build up Liara as your gateway to this story arc worked well too.
Liara was literally only on that they could use. To do this, a) you needed to have character that players had prior emotional connection to,b) a reason to go after Shadow Broker and c) the ability to do it in believable way. Liara was only one that hit all of these naturally. She was your team member or even LI in ME1, so players cared of her. Knowing the fact that Shepard saved Liara's life in ME1 and took her part of the team and treated her as such, it makes sense Liara would go great lengths to find Shepard's body as she saw her owning it to him/her. And Liara also had the ability to do it as not only she had financies for it after her mother's death, the whole experience of going from awkward archeologist to suicide mission combatant made it believable enough that Liara's personality changed a lot.
Only thing I'm not happy with whole Shadow Broker arc, was that Liara become SB at the end. Sure, it makes somewhat sense, yet made Liara a little too important. Not to mention the fact that she definitely didn't have skills to go on that level. Liara killing/helping to kill SB? Definitely believable. Liara becoming one at the end? Not so much. Alas, I think this was just payback all those people that missed Liara as LI.
And TTTX comment about ME2 needing ME1 to make to complete experience, I beg to differ. As one of those that started with ME2, I can say I didn't need ME1 to make my experience enjoyable and understand what was going on. It was actually shocking to play ME2 and then ME1 as those two game plays like night and day. ME2 is true RPG at its best with linear game play. ME1 is decent at them, but the experience gets lost to arduous exploration and time consuming walking. First time playing ME1, the openness of the planets and exploration was fun, but with multiple game plays it became painful. This is main reason, why can still enjoy ME2 play through even after dozens of them, but ME1 feels too much of work.
Of course, like Vol said, ME2 giving us Tali romance makes me too really damn biased. Yet, I can't help but feel like that Bioware did damn great job with Tali romance. I would even go so far as to say that Tali' romance is the most "normal" and developed in whole ME trilogy and one of the only one that's a true romance. Liara gets close in this aspect and surprisingly Ashley too. But Miranda and Jack were treated just as they were in ME2. Your average empty headed smoking hot girl for banging and damaged hard ass bitch with deprived sex appeal. Granted, Citadel DLC added great depth to Jack's romance and actually made it feel one, but without DLC it wasn't much of one in the games.
