Mass Effect 2 (2010) Review

Lucas Versantvoort / February 4, 2015

After the incredible success of the first Mass Effect in 2007, developer BioWare knew it had a franchise on its hands and merrily went on its way to develop the sequel. Mass Effect 2 was released in 2010 to even more critical acclaim than its predecessor. Though fan debate still persists as to which one of the two is better, it was undeniable that it was a success.

            The story kicks off several weeks after the ending of the first game. Our ship, the SSV Normandy, is attacked by some kind of enemy ship and everyone’s forced to evacuate. Commander Shepard is unable to escape in time, however, and so dies from suffocation. Naturally, this being the beginning of the game, nobody’s doubting Shepard’s eventual return. (So much for dramatic purpose…) Shepard’s body is recovered by Cerberus, a pro-human organization. Cerberus, as opposed to the bureaucratic fuckwits on the Citadel, are very aware of the threat posed by the enemies (Collectors) that attacked the Normandy and, realizing Shepard’s immense charisma and leadership, spared no expense in recovering and reviving Shepard. This is two years later. Shepard awakens and hesitantly joins Cerberus. He is told by its leader, TIM, that the ship emerged from the Omega-4 Relay and that no ship has ever returned after passing through. Shepard is thus tasked with crafting a team of talented individuals, passing through the Relay and kill the Collectors that want to assume direct control over humanity.

"I'll relinquish one bullet. Where do you want it?"

            What first has to be said is that while this storyline sounds interesting, it really isn’t. In fact, it’s a typical BioWare placeholder while you complete the parts of the story that actually are interesting, the side quests involving your teammates. This is both the game’s greatest strength and its greatest weakness from a narrative point of view: while the recruit and loyalty missions of your teammates are great and allow for some great characterization, it also strips the main storyline of any tension and complexity for the most part, turning it into ‘here are the big bad aliens with some master plan that you don’t care one iota about, now go kill them.’ Overall, it’s quite a far cry from Saren, the first game’s antagonist who at the end is revealed to be a more complex character than you thought and whom you could actually reason with at the end. And what do we get in Mass Effect 2? Giant enemy crabs… Even worse is that the main threat mentioned in the first game, the Reapers, are pretty much AWOL in this game, only revealing themselves at the very end, like a friendly reminder, ‘hey guys, yep, we’re still here and we’re still invading.’ Particularly now, when the third game’s been released and we can judge the trilogy in retrospect, do we see how the Collectors storyline is pretty much filler in the bigger scheme of things.

            Thankfully, the missions involving your teammates pretty much save the day and they’re effective enough to make you forget about the main storyline’s weaknesses. Whether it’s helping Garrus get revenge or convince him not to, or helping Jack deal with her past life in a Cerberus prison facility, or defending Tali when she unfairly faces exile, etc., it’s all pretty engaging and forms the emotional core of the whole experience. Indeed, this game is a very good example of what people mean when they say that characters are what define BioWare’s games, which is indeed the case here as they draw attention away from the poor main storyline. Though the main story does feature the excellent final suicide mission, it is mostly due to the bond you’ve developed with your teammates that the mission is as tense as it is.

            Now, the gameplay. This is where things enter Your Mileage May Vary territory. It’s obvious BioWare took the gameplay of the first game and streamlined it, reducing various RPG elements and turning the whole deal more into an action-packed third-person shooter. If that’s your thing, then it won’t bother you at all. In fact, you will probably appreciate combat more now that the experience has been ‘tightened.’ On the other hand, if you belong more to the RPG crowd, you’ll spend combat lamenting the presence of regenerating health and the reduction of things like talents. One need only compare this and this to see what I mean. Personally, I can’t help but feel BioWare, now that EA was their publisher, either wanted or was told to look to Gears of War for ‘inspiration’ so that they might hope to widen their audience. Unfortunately, decisions of this nature in the end mostly serve to anger the series’ loyal fans as they start bemoaning the loss of RPG elements and what not, so you have to wonder what’s the preferred option here: alienating your fan base for a few extra copies sold, losing sight of your game’s unique aspects in the process or just ‘be Mass Effect’? As for me, I’ve never really loathed the gameplay so much as tolerated it.

Oh man, this is way too fun for me...

            Something concerning gameplay that’s always baffled me was the positive critical reception of scanning planets for minerals and what not. This basically boils down to accessing a computer, selecting a part of the planet that the scanner indicates is rich with minerals, launching a probe and automatically collecting the spoils. That’s it. Why online critics praised this mind-numbingly boring busywork continues to mystify me, especially considering that in the first game you could actually control a vehicle and explore planets. Sure, there was extremely little to do there, but at least you were out there, exploring. Instead, you get to analyze every single planet in search of various types of minerals in a way that anticipated BioWare’s embracing of endless ingredient farming in Dragon Age: Inquisition. The criticism that in that Inquisition you’re a leader reduced to gathering item farming is also valid in Mass Effect 2. Why can’t I tell some of my subordinates to gather minerals while I tend to some of the more important matters at hand, like saving the universe: “Sorry guys, I’m a bit busy with recruiting and psycho-analyzing my teammates and saving the human species from the Collectors, so could you do me a solid and take on the almighty task of gathering minerals by yourselves?”

            Also, the morality system returns. Like the first game, you’re allowed to engage in conversation and depending on your responses and actions, you’ll either fill your Paragon or Renegade meter, aka good guy or bad guy. This is all fine and dandy, but the main problem is twofold: first of all, due to the dialogue wheel you’re always aware that the upper right options are the Paragon options and the bottom right the Renegade options. As a consequence, you can basically shut your brain off during conversation, because if you’re paragoning, all you have to do is always select the upper right option. Mass Effect 2’s story throws all kinds of tough moral subjects and questions at you, so it’s disappointing that responding to these things requires no intellectual effort on your part. Secondly, a handful of times the upper right option doesn’t ‘feel’ like the Paragon option, like at the end of Legion’s mission, where you decide between rewriting the Heretics’ code or destroying the base, the first option being the one that grants you Paragon points even though it seems like the artificial intelligence version of brainwashing. Another example is when you romance Miranda and she, towards the final suicide mission, begs you to promise her that you won’t die, as your death would be too devastating for her. The upper right option causes Shepard to say, “I died once already. I don’t plan on doing it again” while the middle option makes Shepard tell Miranda that he can’t promise her such a thing. Obviously, a great deal of gamers felt the middle option to be the more realistic one, the first option reminding of the scene from Team America where Lisa tells Gary that if he promised her that he will never die, she would make love to him right then and there, to which he unsurprisingly responds, “I. Promise. I. Wrisingly responds, “I. t of your time bonding with your teammates, the final mission is incredibly tense.ill. Never. Die.” Many gamers felt that telling Miranda he can’t promise such a thing was the more mature thing to do, so you can imagine their confusion that the ‘I will never die’ option was the Paragon option. Dragon Age: Origins handled conversation options much better with its simple list of options, because the order of options was always random and not listed from nice to evil. This naturally forced you to think carefully about your responses.

            All in all, you could argue that the downfall of Mass Effect, culminating in Mass Effect 3, started here in pure gameplay terms if nothing else, but it’s the characters that save Mass Effect 2. The characters are the sole reason why I’ve played through Mass Effect 2 over and over again. It’s my favourite game in the series. I like to compare it to Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy, where The Dark Knight, though featuring a narrative with zero connections to the overall storyline, is almost everyone’s favourite. Similarly, Mass Effect 2’s story is of almost no consequence in the bigger scheme of things, but is nevertheless a lot of people’s favourite game in the series.