[UPtimist]

Originally Posted by marvio

Hey Uptimist,

You probably know my opinions about games story lines pretty well, we've had some heated arguments in the past

For shame, I have to admit that at the moment I'm having a bit of trouble remembering details about what such arguments were about... If you can refresh my memory I can maybe give better suited advice, as it probably depends on how critical you are to especially Bioware's stuff... But nevertheless, I'll give my feelings (get ready for a rant, or at least a lot of blabbering)

Oh, and thanks for valuing my opinion so much

I haven't played any of the ME games, I keep wanting to because everybody I talk to says it's fantastic.
Should I bother with it? I mean, it's a ton of time to spend with something you don't like, and knowing myself, if I get even past the middle of the first one I'll have to finish the trilogy.
You post made me pause, so, what say you?

Well, I think Mass Effect 1 was an excellent effort to combine a more traditional RPG with FPS elements. The story was interesting and it was well-built, it slowly starts to unravel and you have some decent open-endedness in the way you play it, and it manages to have a few nice plot-twists too. And the game had a great sense of exploration of the galaxy. The characters are pretty usual Bioware - if you tend to like them in their other games then there's no issues there, if you have problems with their characters then you'll have some of the same issues as always, but luckily the characters tend to be a bit better than usually. It's certainly interesting and fun enough to play through again, though in this (and I'll get to the same for ME2 where it's a very different reason) the main deterrent to replay comes from the slow exploration of unimportant planets (if you want to do it properly) with your Mako "car" which in some cases can get a bit tedious (though I wish they'd rather not taken it away and replaced it with the even-more-tedious (though not as time-consuming) planet scanning but just improved it).

In Mass Effect 2 they lost some of the magic in ME1. They decided to "streamline" pretty much everything, which was in some cases good but for the whole it went far too far. The "new" (that is, much improved) combat is more interesting than it was before, but the game also loses much of its old role-playingness. The story isn't so much a story as it is one mission from beginning to end, so that the main surprises come from how little there really is anything surprising - the story is definitely waaay streamlined. And they're so obsessed with their militaryness and especially "ooh, things are so desolate now, how will you make all these tough decisions?" that at least for me it started to feel a bit arduous. With the characters, Bioware seemed to get overly confident and thought they're the most profound writers ever, resulting in caricatures with syrupy drama. Also, they forgot about the open-endedness of your character to make the decisions he wants, and rather (if you want to be "at the top of your game") forces you to be either the ultimate paragon or ultimate renegade.

Now, I might make that sound worse than it really is, and I know there are people (very much on this forum) who will massively disagree with me, but you did ask for my opinions With all of that out of the way, I have to say that yes - I did still enjoy Mass Effect 2. I played it through twice (though the second time mainly just to get a very different save for ME3), and I liked it. However, any more I'd rather not play because while I enjoy the actual gameplay of it very much, the flaws in the story and writing become more and more obvious on each playthrough, and on the second playthrough I found myself having to load back several times because I was quick-jumping through the dialogue so much that I chose the wrong decisions in the dialogues every now and then. Also, the way that you don't have so much RPG elements is also a bit dull. It's starting to feel more like a shooter with RPG elements and open dialogue than RPG with shooter elements (which was the appeal to me in the first game)

Now, I'm not very far in ME3 yet. I can say that while they're still obsessed with having that desolate atmosphere and really squeezing all they can from that (and I'm sure they'll force an endless armada of choices where in each one something goes wrong), the story seems to be built better than ME2. Even the characters seem to be better written, and they're not just side-quests waiting to happen. They dumped, yet again, their planetary exploration for even more streamlined version, but this is a great improvement over ME2 so it's a good thing (and they manage to streamline it while giving it an interesting twist so it's not just going around gathering resources with a click of a button). Still, I miss going on "unimportant" planets and exploring them to find... you know, stuff. They've improved the combat and brought back more customability, even if it's not back at ME1's level. I think it's a pretty good compromise, adn overall I'm enjoying playing this far more than ME2, even if the "truth" tends to only come on a second replay. ME3 doesn't quite manage to be the perfect midway between ME2 and 1 I had hoped, but it still manages to compromise in the right direction.

So far, at least.

Now, as for whether one should play them at this point or not... I think that ME1 is definitely a game that, if you like RPGs, if you like scifi, etcetera, you probably should have a try at it. The storyline and all that is interesting enough, in my opinion, to get you through even if the action isn't totally your thing. And it was an important step, at the time, into a different kind of blend between genres.

ME2 is a game that if you liked ME1 and the way that it played, you'll probably want to play, if only to keep continuing the story. Or what little there is of it in this one. It is, however, seriously flawed compared to the first one and you shouldn't get your hopes up in regards to the story. Unfortunately this seems to be a game which is just a little halfway step in between the first and third ones, like an exercise. Still, it's enjoyable enough so you shouldn't quit playing through halfway.

ME3, well, I don't know yet I think ME1 is enjoyable as a stand-alone game, though I haven't played it in a while so I'm not sure if the age is starting to feel yet or not. Anyway, looking at them just storywise, ME1 is worth it just for the story, in ME2 the story is the weakest point (though not absolutely devastating, just very much below expectations) and ME3 hopefully might fix that to at least acceptable levels.

Now, like I said, I'm having a bit of trouble remembering your preferences, so maybe I can say more if you refresh my memory But generally - yes, I would suggest the first Mass Effect. After that's it's your own call