Help me play the Mass Effect series

I started another ME3 playthrough, this time with my crabbier lady Shepard (she filled about 80% of the renegade bar and 40% of the paragon bar by the end of ME2). And I was reminded about something I really, really loathed that the writers did, romance-wise:

Ugh, no.

You only get that angle from Kaiden if you slept with him in the first place, which, well.... oops! ;-)

Of course he still winds up just as whiney and pathetic of a "why do girls never like nice guys" kind of guy even if you don't sleep with him. Let me tell you bub, while Blue Space Alien Lesbian Sex might be hot it's not the only reason you were off the bottom of the list.

Part of me likes that he's clingy and irrational though. It's not endearing, but it does seem like the sort of stuff you see in real life relationships, especially given his isolated background and probably never having been with anyone before.

If he does get whiny with the chicks even if you didn't hook up with him in the first place, that is just another reason why he belongs in the arms of my ManShep. There was none of that bullshit at all, and the romance was kind of adorable.

Also it's not like my straight lady Shepards had a lot of choice about who to sleep with in ME1. :P

(And yes, I know gay mansheps, I shall cry you a river. ;) )

He doesn't. There is a certain amount of awkward uncertainty built into his personality so he often comes off a little needy but I wouldn't classify it as whiny, and he definitely didn't try to hump my Shepard's leg or anything. He's mostly the safe, boring Kaiden I remember from ME1.

If they hadn't made Ashley so wtf in ME3, I wouldn't have used Gibbed's save editor to bring Kaiden back from the dead. Why aren't these games moddable? :( I want my old Ash back.

Guys why are you playing Mass Effect and having sex with humans

The complaint shouldn't be the use of "cheater" but rather the fact that, from what you're saying, that you can't call him on his bullshit. Likewise not being able to punch Jacob for his BS line in the hospital.

I did a long post over in the spoiler thread about how, unless she's your LI, you completely screw Liara's life.

I had a game where I went Ash, Tali, Tali.

I went Ash, Miranda, Miranda. I don't remember much, but I think Ash was pretty cool about it. There was an early conversation where it's obvious you can set back down Ash's romance path, but t's easy to get out of and she's pretty on-whiny and reasonable.

In my first ME1-3 playthrough with femshep, it was Garrus. because Garrus is one smooth son-of-a-bitch. In my second playthrough with maleshep (who was craggier than Tommy Lee Jones) it was Miranda, simply because of the immature thrill I got from having my looked-like-he-spent-some-time-in-a-wood-chipper PC get it on with Ms. Perfect Genemod. There's probably an underlying problem, there :)

Liara, Tali, Tali, because sexy aliens.

Mine have shaken out like this so far, in chronological order:

Because

There is that. Liara was Mary Sue at her finest; whereas Miranda seemed to be the strong, proper mate for a guy that quotes turns-ons as "killing 300,000 Batarians in a single mission".

Ingmar I'm glad you were able to explain that. I've been playing through ME1 again (with the thought of maybe going into ME2) and I just don't like the alien romance options for male Shephard. You hit the nail right on the head in terms of explaining why!

Still playing my way through ME2. Enjoying it so far, though I almost wish I hadn't bought any of the DLC, as I now feel compelled to complete those missions as well. This despite me actually enjoying the two DLC missions I've played so far (Kasumi and Liara) a lot more than any of the main game storylines, because at this point (about half-way through the loyalty missions), this is beginning to drag...

I think the biggest problem I have with the game is that the game world feels so dead. Mass Effect had all of these empty worlds to run around on the Mako, but at least you could imagine that there wa spoilt my expectations.s a breathing world outside the deserted locations that the game mostly set its missions in (other than the Citadel). ME2 spends far too much time on the Citadel, Omega, and Illium, and IMO completely fails to make them feel alive to me. I've been spoilt by the populous open cities of Assassins Creed 2, I guess. Strangely it bothered me a lot less in ME1 - but ME2 feels as if it tries just that little extra to be "realistic", that the locations just end up feeling that more off. It just becomes so very obvious that all of the maps are just long corridors transporting you from one predictable set-piece gunfight to the next. Oh - this door opens out on an area with a lot of good cover. Time to bring up the HUD.

The corridor shooter approach also really brings home how no major plot point ever gets resolved with anything other than violence. At some point, you'd think it would be enough for the player to simply take along a bullhorn on each mission and shout "This is Shephard, S.P.E.C.T.R.E. I kill other Spectres, eat Eclipse mercs for breakfast and Blood Pack mercs for dinner. Do you feel lucky, punks?" before the start of each fight.

Despite that, I'm enjoying the story; I just wish it felt more like my story, rather than a story Bioware is telling me.

See, the cities of AC2 felt dead to me. So many people, but it was all copy & paste. In ME2 I can constantly overhear unique conversations fleshing out the world and its people.

"I WONDER IF THERE'S ANY FISH IN THAT LAKE"

Background people in the ME games are the usual Bioware one-or-two-bark signposts we've had since BG1. While the people in AC2 are there to WOULD YOU GET OUT OF MY GODDAMN WAY GODDAMN IT CAN'T YOU SEE I'M TRYING TO CHASE SOMEBODY SO THAT CAN STAB THEM REPEATEDLY GODDAMN JESUS

Being a long-running mechanic for building atmosphere is not, unto itself, a bad thing. You need to explain more than that.

Overhearing the same "unique" conversation 3-4 times, from the exact same people, standing at the exact same place they've been standing for the past unknown number of days, kind of takes the shine from it.

In other words, much like in the real world.

ME2 follows the standard RPG trope "if it moves, kill it". Warehouses and backalleys in the ME galaxy are apparently only frequented by mercenaries. You always know when a firefight is coming, because your environs will be automatically clear of anything resembling life, except when dictated otherwise by the power of the plot. I can understand why they do it that way (imagine if your Paragon Spectre actually had to worry about causing collateral damage and casualties while going after the bad guys... the PR probably wouldn't be pretty), but the absence of anything resembling real activity when you're in the shooting corridors deadens the game.

Finished episode 2.

Pleased to find that the final act did not take as long time as I had feared based on the number of missions. I also really enjoyed that some of the loyalty missions threw in a little variety, rather than the talk-shoot-talk-shoot of the first half of the game. The final mission was also excellent, and I really liked that it allowed the "use" of the entire squad (or at least the pretence of using them). If there is one thing I really dislike about the Bioware companion system, it is that you always end up running around with a dozen or so companions in these games, but for no good (in-story) reason, the actual gameplay limits you to two companions. "Oh we are going in guns blazin on a Collector ship with hundreds of enemies? No problem - let's leave 80% of our fighting force behind, we don't need it." Apparently, in Bioware's RPG universes, God is always on the side of the smallest viable force.

Overall a very satisfactory conclusion to the game - good stuff.

My only annoyance is that I can't (won't) pick up on third game just yet, as it appears that there is a significant new single-player DLC pack going to be released and since I can't really imagine that I'll want to do more than one playthrough, I'll wait for it to come out first.

Well just as an FYI, of the current DLC I'd recommend Extended Cut, From the Ashes and Leviathan. Skip Omega, unless you really must have it all.

Thanks for the recommendations.

I just played through Omega for the first time a couple days ago, and ugh. Didn't take me long to just ratched the combat difficulty down to moron level and speed through the entire thing as fast as I could.

So now that the "final" DLC is out, I'll probably pick up Mass Effect 3 to finish my own playthrough.

Quitch already suggested Extended Cut, From the Ashes and Leviathan. Should Citadel be added to that?

Any reason to get the Digital Deluxe edition? From what I can see, it is mostly stuff irrelevant to the game (sound track, graphics), extra clothing (pointless), extra weapons (multiplayer only? Not that interesting, as I don't intend to do MP unless forced to), and a Robo dog with no impact on the storyline. Anyone who has that edition who can confirm this?

IIRC, the Digital Deluxe edition also includes From Ashes. You should check to see which is the better deal: buying the DDE or buying the base edition + From Ashes separately.

Also, the MP is surprisingly very good. Like you, I was ready to dismiss it entirely, but after giving it a chance I easily got more value from the MP mode than I did from SP.

Welp, I'm starting what is probably my last playthrough of the series, as an engineer. I always thought the engineer in ME1 was a little underpowered, though Bioware fixed that in ME2. Should be interesting.

I'm currently working on an ME2 playthrough (male infiltrator, renegade) and I'm at the Reaper IFF mission, having wrapped up most of the loyalty missions with the exception of Tali. This playthrough as a renegade has been fun but frustrating. It seems like going renegade is just harder overall that going paragon, in the sense that you have fewer opportunities to accumulate renegade 'points' and that the requirements for getting renegade results in some interactions / situations seem like a higher bar than the corresponding paragon results. For example, I was really disappointed to find out that I couldn't ...

...because despite filling about 3/4s of the meter, my renegade score still was not high enough. I may be forgetting some early-game choices (I started this character two years ago and haven't played him since February 2012) but I've been solidly renegade throughout, so I'm a little confused as to what opportunities I missed that would have enabled me to completely fill 100% of the Renegade meter by this point in the game. For Tali's loyalty mission, I'm pretty sure I'll fail the Renegade check there as well, forcing me to either lose out on her loyalty or do the cheesy route where you lie to the authorities and get her to remain loyal, but get stuck with some Paragon points. (I'm not remembering that mission exactly, but I do recall there being some middle-ground route like that.) So I've been putting off the remaining loyalty mission and the Reaper IFF thing and going around doing every other side-mission or activity I can find, just to try and get enough Renegade score that I can pass that check. Thing is, you get so few points at a time that this is looking like a fool's errand. I should probably just throw in the towel on that effort and finish the game with whatever score I currently have, and let go of this being the "really Renegade for real this time" playthrough... but it's frustrating to feel like the game is continually pushing me to go all intergalactic Boy Scout.

Also, one of the hilarious side-effects of being at least somewhat Renegade are the cosmetic changes to your Shepard and how the NPC reactions to your demonically-possessed visage are flat-out nonexistent. People should run screaming from this dude, rather than cheerfully chirping "I've always got time for you, commander!"

If you like the characters and want to hang out with them for the end of the trilogy, you want Citadel.

Plot wise Citadel is played before the ending, but tone wise it's best played after. It's really designed as the final send-off for Shepard and crew and I think is best played that way, even if it doesn't make sense from a timeline perspective.

I thought it was the best bit of DLC Bioware have ever produced. It takes full advantage of the depth of history you have with this universe and its characters.

So how "bad" is Omega? With Citadel costing 1200 points, it looks like I'll have to either have to waste 400 pts or spend the extra 800 and buy Omega as well.

A special place in hell is reserved for developers/publishers who sell DLC without matching money coupons. Got to finish ME3, but it will take something extremely special for me to buy another Bioware/EA title anytime soon.

Never mind. Finally found an option to only buy 1200 BW pts, albeit hidden away deep in their interface.

I tend to disagree, just because while it does feel like a big ol' send-off, I can easily slot it in as a big-ol' send off to the Final Mission. So I think I'd suggest not playing it until you're about to do that or play it after you finish.

Really enjoying the opening scenes of ME3 so far. The "corridor shooter" aesthetic isn't as bad in this one as the previous (so far at least), as we're mostly moving through no-mans land/warzones; plus they generally did a hugely better job of making it seem as if things are happening around you (crashing ships and all that). I'd love to see a game that combines Assassin Creed's world and crowd dynamics with the writing and choices of Mass Effect style gameplay, though.

I'm afraid the ME series is going to ruin me for all other action-RPGs. Played the Amalur demo (looked interesting and since it comes with DLC for ME, why not try), and the "storyline" parts were just... ugh. ME2/ME3 still has parts that grate from time to time, but it does tell an incredibly effective story. I'm really looking forward to seeing what the new Wasteland and Torment games from inXile deliver, because when McComb says: “All respect to the guys at BioWare, because I mean no disrespect, but I think that people are looking for a really reactive, really involved storyline that they have some control over, rather than just an interactive movie with player-controllable combat,” I'm not convinced he is right. ME delivers an excellent story that people get extremely emotionally invested in and making it really reactive and really involved wouldn't necessarily make it a better story or the emotional impacts stronger.

ME is one of the very few games where I feel invested enough in the game characters that emotion get the better of my obsessive min-maxing tendencies. I love the small scenes like the one with Dr Chakwas in the hospital at the beginning.

Choices don't need to be game-changing or have far-reaching consequences in order to mean something to the player.

I want a noir-style mystery game based on Garrus (complete with first-person narration while you play).

Day One.

Someone with better art skills than I needs to render up Garrus in a trenchcoat and fedora, because that would be divine

Forget it, Garrus, it's Zakera Ward.

Uh. You guys know that Garrus Vakarian was one of your partners in L.A Noire right? I mean, before they threw his entire chapter out of the game forever.