I'm playing through this game for the second time. The first time I had my Shepard from ME1 & 2 Imported. Had a delightful time with the game and seeing everyone again and how they played into each mission.

My original 360 Red Ringed, so now I have a new Slim. In an attempt to add the achievements I lost on the old 360's hard drive, I decided to play through the game again. Without a save game to import, I had to make a whole new Shepard.

This is probably a minor complaint, but shit man. The thing asks you if Kaiden, Ashley, or Numerous died. I picked Kaiden, yet apparently Thane, Wrex, Jack and a few others I'm probably forgetting are dead, and Grunt hasn't ever been mentioned. Why? Because a new player wouldn't care about these characters or something? I feel like If I said Kaiden or Ashley died, then it should have assumed EVERYONE survived the suicide mission. I dunno, maybe I'm the only one who finds this to be a problem. In any case, it's made my game ALOT different from my import game. Eve died, the Salarian Councilor died, and I've had to deal with random characters like Wreav that could have had their spots taken by the originals.

I just feel like if I said Ashley or Kaiden died, then ONLY that person died, numerous should make it into the story I'm experiencing right now.

tl;dr choosing who died at the beginning of a new game feels like it has no bearing on who actually died

Discussion being your thoughts on it, or how they could've made it better, for example with a comic prologue.

EDIT: Also, moreso than who died: The choices your new game Shepard made are all renegade by the sounds of it. Rachni Queen died, Tali is exiled, etc., etc. Again, probably a minor complaint and something an actual new player would think nothing of, but man, it's really getting to me.

There are websites out there that can offer you save games for the pc version, I assume there are ones for the 360 too.

@jadewiz said:

EDIT: Also, moreso than who died: The choices your new game Shepard made are all renegade by the sounds of it. Rachni Queen died, Tali is exiled, etc., etc. Again, probably a minor complaint and something an actual new player would think nothing of, but man, it's really getting to me.

These are the 'neutral' choices in ME1 & 2.

You would get Tali cleared of the charges in 100% renegade playthrough. As far as I can tell, Paragon and Renegade gives you mostly the same outcome in ME2.

@easthill said:

@jadewiz said:

EDIT: Also, moreso than who died: The choices your new game Shepard made are all renegade by the sounds of it. Rachni Queen died, Tali is exiled, etc., etc. Again, probably a minor complaint and something an actual new player would think nothing of, but man, it's really getting to me.

These are the 'neutral' choices in ME1 & 2.

You would get Tali cleared of the charges in 100% renegade playthrough. As far as I can tell, Paragon and Renegade gives you mostly the same outcome in ME2.

I was straight Paragon and got her cleared of charges. I played Paragon through all 3 games and now just playing through the third and having them hand me the less than stellar choices from the previous games is probably whats bothering me about it.

Isn't the choices a good mix of paragon and renegade?

Similar kind of stuff annoyed me in 2. Always kinda sucked that if you don't import from ME1, then Wrex is dead, council is dead, rachni queen is dead, etc.

one of many bioware bails.. bit off more than they could chew.

The Geth in the Dreadnought isn't even Legion.

So far the "Neutral" choices have handed me no Wrex, Thane, Legion, Jack, or Grunt, have the Rachni Queen dead, entire ME2 ship crew is dead, and Tali exiled.

It's just now hitting me how bad the neutral choices in these games are compared to actually having your own story. I appreciate my Shepards story that much more having played through this new game so far.

@jadewiz said:

@easthill said:

@jadewiz said:

EDIT: Also, moreso than who died: The choices your new game Shepard made are all renegade by the sounds of it. Rachni Queen died, Tali is exiled, etc., etc. Again, probably a minor complaint and something an actual new player would think nothing of, but man, it's really getting to me.

These are the 'neutral' choices in ME1 & 2.

You would get Tali cleared of the charges in 100% renegade playthrough. As far as I can tell, Paragon and Renegade gives you mostly the same outcome in ME2.

I was straight Paragon and got her cleared of charges. I played Paragon through all 3 games and now just playing through the third and having them hand me the less than stellar choices from the previous games is probably whats bothering me about it.

That's the thing. The choices a 'fresh' Shepard start with is the 'You didn't do shit' choice. But overall, Paragon and Renegade is just how you reach the goal, with the goal being pretty much the same thing in both situations.

I can't even comprehend playing 3 without starting with ME1. There's so much that would be lost and having no context for the universe.

@jadewiz: Hold on. A Slim PS3 or 360? If it's 360 then there is a way for you to get save files.

@mordukai said:

@jadewiz: Hold on. A Slim PS3 or 360? If it's 360 then there is a way for you to get save files.

360 slim. I'm aware of the ways to get my save files, but dropping my old HD in this new 360 doesn't seem like a great idea to me and masseffect2saves seems going a little far to play through a game I've already beaten with my old save file in the first place. I'm playing through it again just to be an achievement whore and get the achievements that didn't get uploaded when my old 360 was offline for 6 months.

Not sure what people were expecting here or why they are frustrated. 99% of the time you either have an import or you didn't play the older games, and if you didn't play the older stuff you don't know or care about the old characters. It's unfortunate that people end up in situations where they get screwed out of a save file but I don't expect Bioware to screw over all of their newcomers by putting them into situations where they are constantly hearing references to events that never took place. Thane's death wouldn't mean anything, Wrex's seven-million Virimire references would feel out of place, and since the Rachni Queen always just kind of shows up as a bad guy it'd be dumb to tell the player "Hey we decided that you saved this thing that you just had to fight." I mean even if you did play through the last two games and they could somehow put everyone, alive, into 3, they'd have to randomly generate every decision you made with those characters in loyalty missions and dialogue, and when those characters busted out with some random reference you were only supposed to get if you let Garrus kill Sidonus or Thane's kid got away you'd be going "Did I do that in my game? I'm not even sure what he's talking about."

@SonicBoyster said:

Not sure what people were expecting here or why they are frustrated. 99% of the time you either have an import or you didn't play the older games, and if you didn't play the older stuff you don't know or care about the old characters. It's unfortunate that people end up in situations where they get screwed out of a save file but I don't expect Bioware to screw over all of their newcomers by putting them into situations where they are constantly hearing references to events that never took place. Thane's death wouldn't mean anything, Wrex's seven-million Virimire references would feel out of place, and since the Rachni Queen always just kind of shows up as a bad guy it'd be dumb to tell the player "Hey we decided that you saved this thing that you just had to fight." I mean even if you did play through the last two games and they could somehow put everyone, alive, into 3, they'd have to randomly generate every decision you made with those characters in loyalty missions and dialogue, and when those characters busted out with some random reference you were only supposed to get if you let Garrus kill Sidonus or Thane's kid got away you'd be going "Did I do that in my game? I'm not even sure what he's talking about."

Yeah, specifically the point is that they'd need to record 3 passes of dialogue for everything intstead of 2. Every character that could be dead, if important, is replaced by a substitute you don't know and are meeting for the first time, and the general use case for these games is if you're playing a default Shepard with no import, you're going to be new to the series. If on top of all the permutations of stuff they needed the classic characters to give lines for, they also had to record all new dialogue that assumes you don't know what they're talking about.

They do that already with some characters that always survive, like Anderson. Specifically, I had played the demo 2 or 3 times before the game came out to try out the different classes and the opening cutscenes on earth were actually different from my imported Shepard that had completed all of the DLC. Anderson was making references to the stuff in The Arrival, my reinstated Spectre status, all this stuff he didn't mention at all during the demo using Demo Shepard.

Incidentaly, isn't it a little weird how Udina is in charge of everything even after I recommended Anderson for his job for two games in a row? (end of ME1 and at the start of ME2). I guess it's because of the events in Mass Effect: Retribution, but that's just a massive cop out. (For anyone not reading the books, Anderson gets some intel on Cerberus bases that he can't send up the chain of command because of undercover operatives within the govt, so he convinces the Turians to strike the bases for him, and illegally signs off of "joint military venture" documents with them so that there isn't an intergalactic political incident -- Regardless of how much of a terrorist organization Cerberus is, no one on earth would look kindly on Turians attacking human bases after the First Contact war. In anticipation of getting fired from his ambassadorial role, he resigns.)

@SonicBoyster said:

Not sure what people were expecting here or why they are frustrated. 99% of the time you either have an import or you didn't play the older games, and if you didn't play the older stuff you don't know or care about the old characters. It's unfortunate that people end up in situations where they get screwed out of a save file but I don't expect Bioware to screw over all of their newcomers by putting them into situations where they are constantly hearing references to events that never took place. Thane's death wouldn't mean anything, Wrex's seven-million Virimire references would feel out of place, and since the Rachni Queen always just kind of shows up as a bad guy it'd be dumb to tell the player "Hey we decided that you saved this thing that you just had to fight." I mean even if you did play through the last two games and they could somehow put everyone, alive, into 3, they'd have to randomly generate every decision you made with those characters in loyalty missions and dialogue, and when those characters busted out with some random reference you were only supposed to get if you let Garrus kill Sidonus or Thane's kid got away you'd be going "Did I do that in my game? I'm not even sure what he's talking about."

Yeah, this makes quite a bit of sense.

I guess all I really want is the options they give you, and then maybe "Advanced Choices" where you choose most of the other big choices, like who died in the other games.

I dunno, I'm gonna bite the bullet and finish this playthrough regardless, but it wont be nearly as fun as my first with MY Shepard's story.

I hate complaining like this and sounding like a generic Bioware hater, hating on anything lmao.

I kinda figured they would go for a new digital comic catch-up/decision-maker, or at least a list of tick-boxes. When I saw the choices of Ashley/Kaidan or "numerous," I sighed. I couldn't imagine going through the game without importing. I'd at least play through 2 again.

It's because they want you to play the other games. The "standard" decisions made by the game for you if you don't import a save are almost always universally TERRIBLE. Frankly, the think they are ever so slightly punishing you for not playing the previous games, and incentivizing you to pick up ME1 and ME2.

Frankly, it would not have been hard for them to put in a simple menu that allowed you to customize all the choices. Mass Effect save files are not very large. The PS3 version of ME2 had a prologue section that allowed you to adjust your save file as you saw fit, mostly. It didn't get everything, but it got the important decisions.

It wouldn't have been that difficult to allow the player to customize the decisions at the start of the game. I mean, the game reads all the save data, so it must be able to replicate or create that data. I'm not even asking for a PS3 style visual-sequence - I'm asking for a simple menu which can toggle between "Is this guy dead? Alive? Loyalty mission complete?" It wouldn't have been THAT hard - a little confusing for new players who don't understand all the options, but useful for fans who might not have their save files.

In any event, you can download save files created by other people from the internet, and then just customize Shepard's face. That's what I did when I lost my ME2 saves, because my computer failed on me.

@Korolev said:

It's because they want you to play the other games. The "standard" decisions made by the game for you if you don't import a save are almost always universally TERRIBLE. Frankly, the think they are ever so slightly punishing you for not playing the previous games, and incentivizing you to pick up ME1 and ME2.

Frankly, it would not have been hard for them to put in a simple menu that allowed you to customize all the choices. Mass Effect save files are not very large. The PS3 version of ME2 had a prologue section that allowed you to adjust your save file as you saw fit, mostly. It didn't get everything, but it got the important decisions.

It wouldn't have been that difficult to allow the player to customize the decisions at the start of the game. I mean, the game reads all the save data, so it must be able to replicate or create that data. I'm not even asking for a PS3 style visual-sequence - I'm asking for a simple menu which can toggle between "Is this guy dead? Alive? Loyalty mission complete?" It wouldn't have been THAT hard - a little confusing for new players who don't understand all the options, but useful for fans who might not have their save files.

In any event, you can download save files created by other people from the internet, and then just customize Shepard's face. That's what I did when I lost my ME2 saves, because my computer failed on me.

Hard? No. Confusing and intimidating for new players? Yes.

Also, they've shown they like to charge for that sort of thing later. While it's included in the PS3 version, if you'd like to get the "Genesis" comic DLC that lets you create an ME1 save file to import on 360, you need to pay about $5 for it. They're probably slapping something else together just like that for ME3 for release at some point after fan furor has died down. It's free money.

The import settings are set up to have as little connection to the old games as possible. Thus, you never opened grunts tank, and you sold legion to cerberus. You don't 'waste time' running into people like Jack and Thane, because you have no clue who they are.

It's fine they've set the game up this way, but by god they should have given people more choice to mess about with creating custom states to save from, because the only way to get a new playthrough with different choices and all surviving, is to play the games from 1-3 again.

@jadewiz said:

@mordukai said:

@jadewiz: Hold on. A Slim PS3 or 360? If it's 360 then there is a way for you to get save files.

360 slim. I'm aware of the ways to get my save files, but dropping my old HD in this new 360 doesn't seem like a great idea to me and masseffect2saves seems going a little far to play through a game I've already beaten with my old save file in the first place. I'm playing through it again just to be an achievement whore and get the achievements that didn't get uploaded when my old 360 was offline for 6 months.

Step 1: Plug in old hard drive

Step 2: Plug in USB stick into Xbox

Step 3: Move save to USB stick

Step 4: Remove old hard drive, plug in new one

Step 5: Move save over to new hard drive

@joshthebear said:

I can't even comprehend playing 3 without starting with ME1. There's so much that would be lost and having no context for the universe.

Yeah they're pretty shitty. Not at all a good way to start off if you're new to the series.

Wait, what am I saying. Fuck the 'who died' question; starting at Mass Effect 3 period is not a good way to start off if you're new to the series.

But man, how awesome would it be if they just gave you a straight up raw spreadsheet checklist of every choice in the first two games without context to choose from. That'd make for some fun random playthroughs.

@TheHT: I feel like that should've been one of the options for a new game. Any new player who saw a checklist would say "OH SHIT" and back out back to the menu before with the shitty choices, whereas people who have played all the games would know what they're doing and go through the checklist as desired.

The real option is for Bioware to release or include a "scenario editor". Asking players to play Mass Effect 1 again, today, just to see what is different with/without Wrex is kind of absurd. A little less absurd is relying on third party software as well as hoop jumping to get around it.