Mass Alex: Mass Effect - Part 09

Maaaan everyone amongst my friends and the internet fucking loves garrus and I always disliked him. Now I remember why.

He's a trigger happy cop! A SPACE COP!

Excited for ME 2! This is the best series, keep it up guys.

Mass Effect 2 is not the game that the original Mass Effect promised.

OG Mass Effect is both space opera and sci fi mystery. Equal parts Star Trek and 2001. It captures the danger, mystery and excitement of space exploration and actually gives you the feeling of being the first being ever to land on a planet. I love driving around the few uninhabited planets with the Mako. Only Elite Dangerous gives me a similar feeling.

Even the music captures that spirit perfectly.

ME 2 is just another linear corridor cover shooter and it captures none of the flair and atmosphere of the original. It’s without a doubt the better game by far and it’s one of my all time favorite games but I’ll never forget the utter disappointment and sadness I felt the first time I played it and realized it’s not really Mass Effect 2 at least not I the sense I wanted it to be.

ME 1 has the best world building, music, dialogue and story beats.

ME 3 has the best gameplay and the best multiplayer.

ME 2 is exactly in the middle, world building is worse than 1 and better than 3, gameplay is much better than 1 but worse than 3, which makes it probably the best of the three overall.

I’ll always love ME 1 the most though.

Please do more story missions, those are the good parts of ME1 and what makes it the best game in the series

Missed stuff (a quest and stuff) at the high end shops in the presidium (Across the lake )!

@treesplease: I'm not sure why you tagged me but, I love all three games.

Just an fyi you get less xp when you kill enemies in the Mako.

There's also a couple of side-quests in the main presidium that you'll miss if you keep fast traveling everywhere.

they.... should learn to read the map a little more accurately lol

Alex and Vinny you missed a medigel upgrade from Expat on the Citadel, it could come in handy

@nigeth: This is basically my opinion as well, although I wasn't as disappointed as you were with ME2.

2 and 3 took the series in a more Grimdark direction.

Ashley having a narrative justification for space racism doesn't excuse her space racism.

@ildon: But it does make her a more interesting character than Kaiden

It's more satisfying to verbally dismantle all of Khalisah's arguments. Punching her just gives her legitimacy.

Wow he really just blew by that Medigel upgrade.

Wow, didn't expect to see so many Mass Effect 3 sympathizers in here or people questioning the quality of Mass Effect 2.

...and people even daring to say that Andromeda was better than 3? Like what? That's insane.

@vinny@alex Kahoku contacted you on the Normandy via comm at some point. He had been digging around and was being chased by Cerberus as a result. He then gave you the coordinates to one of Cerberus' facilities. You won't find him on the Citadel anymore.

Edit: Haha, I spoke too soon. Never mind. In that case: you can see how many keepers you still have to scan in your jounal. ;-)

@travala10: I liked ME3 back in 2012. Sure, the ending is a bit disappointing, but almost everything before that is excellent.

It's right there, IT'S RIGHT THERE. Literally the following words. RIGHT THERE! OH MY GOD KILL ME NOW!

Anyway ME 1 is the best game. ME 2 plays better, but it loses a lot of the cool ME stuff.

@travala10: “Wow, didn't expect to see so many Mass Effect 3 sympathizers in here or people questioning the quality of Mass Effect 2... ...and people even daring to say that Andromeda was better than 3? Like what? That's insane“

Some people like Mass 3 the most and that’s ok.

Some people like Mass Effect Andromeda more than ME3 and that’s also ok.

Some people consider ME2 to be in some aspects a dissapointing sequel and that’s absolutely fine.

There is not some kind of cosmic quota of rightness people’s opinions on a video game must measure up to.

It's before that. You have to finish the side mission with the Quasar scanning/cheating given by the Salarian who got thrown out of Flux. Then Doran hits the dance floor (as he said and Alex reacted to) and you can 'talk' with Doran to dance.

"Shepherd, I'm a cop."

Ye, and having that explained (by the protagonist) as "heart" is... not a good look. Some Bioware writing seems to age pretty quickly and that's definitely an example of something that would get more of a critical reception today than when it came out.

I mean, people have written book-length essays on how ME1 was the slightly janky but amazing world building retro-scifi game that turned into ME2's ensemble character piece (with mainly better mechanics - save us from resource gathering) while starting to fall in on itself before that game concluded, seeding the issues that only got more visible in ME3.

Did the space racism seem less heavy handed when this game came out? I'm guessing it was a new thing to try and handle games.

I love space, and Alex.

@tetra4: I think almost everyone would have to respectfully disagree with that statement. Mass Effect 2 is leaps and bounds better. 1 is still fantastic, just a bit too slapshod and the Mako stuff is awful

@tetra4: Oh fuck, looks like I fell into Bizarro world again.

I view the Mass Effect trilogy as being like the Godfather trilogy. People argue about whether 1 or 2 are better, but they are indisputably both classics in their own right. And 3 is . . . a thing that was made.

And I have to disagree that 3 plays the best. If anything, it's the worst game in the series in terms of gameplay. So much of that game involves half-baked mechanics that felt like the devs putting in the minimum amount of effort necessary.

Xanadu smells like honeydew and the milk of paradise, obviously.

I actually went looking looked it up and as soon as i saw his full name (Vidkun), the briefing screen for the second mission in Commandos 1 flashed in my mind. "So THAT'S where i know him from!"

Is there another part yet? I want to keep watching :(

I'm so mad Alex left that planet without killing Haliat and finishing that mission....

My favorite feature on GB right now. Keep up the good work.

I still get a kick out of that dry, snide way Garrus is basically saying "yep, obvious trap is obvious" when the mine entrance explodes.

@the_ruiner: Alex takes care of that loose end at the 1:28:20 mark. You don’t ever touch Shep Shep’s car!

Disagree with Vinny. I played the first two games last year and thought ME2 was a disappointment compared to 1. Still haven't played 3 though.

@shivoa: The protag isn't rationalizing her racism as "heart", but the fact that she's clearly an emotional person who makes decisions based on her gut. Her racism is part of that, but so are her more positive qualities.

I'm not even entirely clear what you think an appropriate "critical reaction" to that line would be. The player is permitted to have a positive interaction, if they so choose, with a bigoted character...that's not a moral position, that's just how RPGs work.

I don't get this idea that it's somehow troubling that ME has racist characters...it's a story, not every character is going to be a shining paragon of virtue. In the best stories, no characters are.

Great, a new episode! Thanks.

@shivoa said:

What about the writing in that linked video is aged or considered "bad writing" (title of the YouTube video)? Some seem to like it.

@jibbajabbawocky: I'm not pro-Kaiden, but if I have to choose to let one die, it's going to be the racist over the boring guy every time.

I mean, it's all rather clunky "edgy snark" but specifically it ends with a misogynistic attempt at a put-down that doesn't even work in a game where you have some limited control over what the characters are wearing so that's not even what the writers expected to be worn during that scene. It's misogyny for no good reason that doesn't even work within the mechanics of the game (ability to change uniforms). That feels super dated.

Typically good stories comment upon the problematic elements in them. That's what makes them different from just replicating bigotry. And that's something that has increasingly been commented on in critical writing about games in more recent years.

You absolutely don't have to allow the protagonist to be happy to have a racist on the team or give them a positive reply when they justify their racism analogy. There certainly wasn't the option to shove the character out the airlock - the options are always going to be constrained.

@tetra4: oh god you're way off on this

Uhhhh.... what's up with uncovered spoilers in this comment section? :/