Thoughts/questions about the end of Mass Effect 1

MMO & Computers 6 comments

Just a few quick thoughts/questions:

  1. Wow. Great ending. Epic.
  2. In the second-to-last fight (you vs. Saren, rather than you-versus-robot-Saren), is it typical to be able to talk your way out of the fight and convince the bad guy to shoot himself in the head rather than give in to the Big Evil?  I know (a) I got to that point via the ‘blue’ dialog options that show up in the game due to my Charm skill, and (b) I had Charm absolutely maxed out at that point, but I’m wondering how rarely that solution presents itself. BECAUSE IT WAS AWESOME.
  3. I found out (while transferring my saved game to ME2) that “saving” Wrex in the middle of the game was also A Thing I Did Via Charm. That makes me super-happy for two reasons.
    1. Wrex is awesome.
    2. It really makes me feel like I didn’t waste the points I spent on Charm.
  4. I also got to use my Charm-opened dialog options to convince a crime boss to retire, rather than arrest/kill her. That did not suck.
  5. The voice acting on the game was uniformly great. Seth Green as Joker is excellent. Whoever that guy is who plays the Captain (the actor has a gap between his two front teeth, but I can’t think of his name). Lance Henriksen as the admiral. Good stuff.
  6. I was level 49 in ME1 at the end. That’s just interesting. I wonder if 50 was the cap.
  7. I was completely maxed out on the “Paragon Path” in ME1. Completely. That’s also kinda cool.
  8. I squeezed 47.9 hours of gameplay out of it.  Given that I paid 20 bucks for the game, that’s about 40 cents per hour of spaaaaace. Not quite MMO-levels of cost-to-entertainment-time value, but not too damn bad. (And that’s assuming I or Kate don’t play it again.) Most of the reviews I’ve read of the game mentioned finishing it in about 20 hours. Yeah. I talked the HELL out of that game. Exploring dialog options is king.

After finishing the game, I decided to install ME2. NOT TO PLAY (that’s a reward for doing revisions this week), but to mess around with transferring my saved ME1 game over to ME2. This kind of forced me to experience the first 10 minutes or so of the game. A few quick thoughts on that:

  1. I need to keep the ME2 disk in the drive to play? Really? It’s 1996 again? What. The. Fuck. Bioware.
  2. I have to keep track of ammo? You considered that a critical need for improving the gameplay experience over ME1?
  3. I’m working for the evilest group of humans I ever encountered in the first game? Really?
  4. From what I saw of the skills table, there is very little customization/choice available during the leveling process, and I didn’t see anything like the Charm/Intimidation pair from ME1 that expanded my dialog options. This makes me sad simply because those options and what I did with them made my ME1 experience really memorable.
  5. AMMO? Really?

Anyway. It’s a cool looking game. SUPER pretty. It sounds like they got most of the voice actors back from the first game and added few new ones — pretty sure Miranda is Lucy Lawless. Martin Sheen is the guy with the kooky eyes… and I’m pretty sure the Ship A.I. is Caprica Six.

But if they wanted to reboot things so drastically, they should have just had me play a different guy. Seriously. Completely different guy. Or a force-grown clone. Or something.

I dunno. When I actually start play, I’ll see if the reboot annoys me enough to just roll a new character — I hear the voice actor for the female version of your protagonist is pretty good.

6 comments

  1. 1. ME2 is more FPS than RPG, albeit with the same depth of conversation, maybe more. I’m not an fps Guy, but the tradeoffs they made, ammo and all, made for even better play

    2. Persuasion is now directly folded into your paragon/renegade rating

    3. The fact that they’re an evil organization is definite not overlooked in play

    4. Saving Wrex makes me2 more awesome. If you don’t import an me1 game, he died. He is also only the tip of the imported game payout.

  3. ME2 definitely has its flaws, but it grabbed me much more than the first. The ending of ME1, while good, suffered from chronically lame combat fights. ME2 fixes this almost completely. In addition, while the acting was very good in ME1, I give a crap about the characters in ME2. ME1 made me remember how good KOTOR was – ME2 made me not think of the comparison.

  4. I’m definitely excited to dig into it deeper. I’m pleased that the charm/persuasion stuff is still there — I’m even pleased that it build organically from play — sort of like ‘chargen from in-game choices.’ Cool.

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