My Ten Best Friends are Talking Pies: Mass Effect 2

Mass Effect 2
BioWare Studios, EA Games
ESRB: M for Mature (Blood, Drug Reference, Sexual Content, Strong Language, Violence)

There are exactly three good things about the city of Edmonton: the good company, the public library, and BioWare, that august game studio which brought us Neverwinter Nights, Baldur's Gate, Jade Empire, Star Wars: Knight of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age: Origins - in other words, more high-quality fun than you can shake ten to twelve sticks at. Sometimes, good things fraternize with each other, like when you find out that some of the good company you keep works for BioWare. The ultimate irony of the video game developer is that the good ones who work for good studios are way too busy developing games to have the free time to play them, and one in particular makes good use of this irony by combining it with his delight for gift-giving, and so it came to pass that in the space of three months, I've had the superb luxury of playing two games a week or two after they were released as opposed to waiting a year or two for the price to fall into my tax bracket. One of those was Dragon Age: Origins, which I've been meaning to blurb about for a while now, is ridiculously entertaining, and has just released an expansion pack (Dragon Age: Awakening). The other one, you may have surmised, is the highly anticipated Mass Effect 2, which I'm playing on an Xbox 360.

Beginning shortly after the attack on Citadel Station that served as the climax of the first game, ME2 is set around (surprise!) a fresh encroachment of Reapers and their new lackeys, the Collectors. Human colonists are disappearing in huge numbers throughout the lawless frontier Terminus Systems, and the Citadel Council doesn't appear to be doing too much about it - meaning neither, seemingly, is the Alliance Navy. The game opens with Commander Shepard and the Normandy nearing the end of a long geth patrol, being sent to a system in which ships have been going missing, the official speculation being to blame geth (the synthetic villains of the first game) or slavers. Of course, the official speculation is dead wrong, the Normandy is lost, and after a long series of negotiations (further explained when meeting an old friend in the game's second act) what's left of Shepard's body ends up in the hands of Cerberus, that shady, biological experimenting organization whose entire base of operations in the Attican Traverse you may or may not have destroyed as a series of side quests in the first game. Two years later, Cerberus has put you back together because they believe you're humanity's best hope against the Reapers, and Cerberus insists that their primary goal is to protect and advance human interests. They provide you with a ship, a crew, and the information you'll need to prepare for that ultimate battle, and off you go.

BioWare games tend to have outstanding writing, and ME2 has (unsurprisingly) set a new standard. With an eight-author crew co-headlined by Star Wars novelist and BioWare regular Drew Karpyshyn (Mass Effect, Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire), ME2 features a solid cast of archetypes and cliches removed from their boxes and turned into whole, satisfying, engaging characters and storylines, with very few exceptions. Honestly, the only aspect of the writing I'm disappointed with in ME2 is the missed golden opportunity to pay tribute to the classic running joke from John Carpenter's Escape from New York ("Snake Plissken? I've heard of you! I thought you were dead!"). As in the first game, there is a Paragon/Renegade scale in lieu of the standard RPG Good/Evil scale (cue Bill Bailey's slide whistle), in which Renegade dialogue and actions are blunt, aggressive, usually focus on the Big Picture, believe in "live and let live", and that the end justifies the means, while the Paragon is diplomatic, polite often to naive excess, concerned with the small-scale personal elements that form the big Picture, and believes in intervention and that that the end never justifies the means. The fact that neither the Paragon or Renegade actions are always good/wise or bad/foolish choices, coupled with the facts that both paths contain hard to stomach decisions and work towards the same main goal, is what makes the Mass Effect story so interesting to play. Also very interesting, it is made quite clear in-game that decisions made in regards to loyalties and alliances in ME2 will have significant impacts on the outcome of ME3. Decisions carried over to ME2 from ME1 save games did not have as blatantly big impacts in this game as I'd expected, but a quick peek between the lines suggests that they will become very important in the story's final installment. I'm also very interested to see how the writers will handle the fact that most if not all of your squadmates can end up dead by the end of ME2, and how that will affect save games carried over to ME3.

While we're on the subject of dead squadmates, it should be noted that in spite of the big fuss made over the fact that the suicide mission that ends ME2 can in fact be a true suicide mission - even Shepard can die, rendering the whole playthrough null and void since if this happens there are no do-overs and you will be unable to import it to the sequel - the game tells you repeatedly what to do in order to ensure that everyone makes it home. The only way to lose people at the end of the game is by ignoring those instructions and/or making obviously foolish or illogical tactical decisions. There is a critical point after which, if you don't begin the suicide mission immediately, you will lose some or all of the random NPCs floating around the Normandy, but this is easily avoided for experienced gamers who know that heading for your objective is always the last thing you do - and for the inexperienced gamer who gets trapped here, the game tells you in two different places at this point that delaying the mission will help ensure squad survival but sacrifice the crew, thus giving you a clear choice instead of an unwelcome surprise. And while I hate losing usable characters, it would be interesting to see which losses will make a difference in ME3, since I can only think of three instances during the suicide mission in which you can ensure a specific character's demise - all others are chosen at random by the computer. At any rate, my point is, it is impossible to unwittingly lose any of your ten specialists, or your Shepard - it must be done deliberately, through ignorance or choice, so if you haven't played yet and are nervous about this, don't sweat it.

In other story-related news, ME2 also does a great job with romantic sub-plots. They are considerably more interesting and evolved than ME1's, make strong efforts to avoid boring cliches, run the gamut from poignant to cheesy to hilarious (see previous post), and those who protested against ME1 on grounds of moral degeneracy for including a relatively tame, optional sexual cutscene will be pleased to note that there are no similar cutscenes in ME2. There is, however, what could be perceived as a significantly higher fetish content, as two of the three gender-specific love interests for a female Shepard are aliens, and all three characters available to both Shepards for sexual flings are female, with one being an alien Amazon and another being - I am not making this up - an alien sex vampire. Read into that what you will. Someone on the writing crew may have been poking fun at this business by including the galaxy's first "titillating alien magazine" as an in-game shop item, kind of like Three Dog's "weather forecast" taking a shot at the excessive gore in Fallout 3.

On the boring technical side of things, the main edge video games have over any other entertainment media I can think of is that, due to continual and rapid evolutions in computer technology, it's a very rare and embarrassing occurrence for a game's sequel to not surpass its predecessor in almost every way. BioWare doesn't have a habit of letting gamers down, and ME2 is no exception to that rule. For starters, it runs smoother than any other game I've played to date - it doesn't even pause while saving. There are some obvious ways in which this was achieved, most notably in your ship's layout. While there are four levels on the new Normandy, as opposed to two on the original, separating the ship into those load zones makes a huge difference in how the game runs, dividing conversations across three decks. Also, not having a personal inventory is probably a big factor. Sure, you can acquire a decent amount of armor and ordinance over the course of the game, but significantly less than the average RPG selection, and they're stored in different locations. Guns are kept in weapons lockers found aboard the Normandy and in various locations during main quests, and these are the only places to swap out your weapons - you can't carry more than one of each type on your person. Armor is divided into parts (helmet, chestplate, etc.) and stored in your shipboard cabin, and that is the only place you can swap your armor after completing the game's introduction. All this to say that the game doesn't have to remember nearly as much content in each save as it did in the first game, which had a 150-item personal inventory. As well, upgrades are no longer items, but permanent additions to weapons and armor once found, bought, and/or unlocked.

This inventory system also contributes to more interesting tactical decisions than were available in ME1. The limit of one weapon of each type can be a hard call at times, because the developers did a great job of giving each grade of weapon a different purpose, meaning that the "higher"-grade weapon isn't necessarily the one you want. You can have a mini-nuke, but it's not the most practical heavy weapon, it's tricky to use and you cannot get off more than one shot even at full ammo-carrying capacity, and there's a lot to be said for a good old-fashioned grenade launcher - which in this game happens to require a good deal of skill and practice to use effectively. Likewise, a more powerful sniper rifle or shotgun may not always be more practical than its weaker, rapid-fire version which carries three to four times as many rounds, and oftentimes which weapon is better for the job seems to rely on your character class. For example, the high-caliber Widow Anti-Material sniper rifle (unique to Soldiers and Infiltrators) virtually guarantees, when paired with sufficient upgrades and skill, a one- to two-shot kill even on "Hardcore", and for an Infiltrator is the kind of weapon that explains why some people name their guns. However, the weaker Viper rifle is arguably a better pick for Soldiers, who do not have the passive "sniper time" slowdown unique to Infiltrators, but who do have the class-specific "Adrenaline Rush" ability, which in this game pairs a total time dilation with increased weapon damage - meaning that the slow-firing, slow-reloading, one-round chamber Widow is largely impractical for the Soldier on "Hardcore" or "Insanity", but the rapid-fire Viper (with twelve rounds to the chamber and fourty-eight in the clip) can have first- and second-tier enemies dealt with before Adrenaline Rush times out (2-5 seconds). Combined with the fact that, unlike the first game, there are class restrictions on weapon use (ME1 only had restrictions on effectiveness), the combat is much more interesting than it used to be.

ME2's leveling system is another significant change from the first game, with fewer abilities and only four ranks of each, requiring a total of ten points to fully upgrade each ability . That may sound like leveling up is a breeze, but the way squad points are awarded in ME2 - combined with a 30-level cap - makes for some tough decisions for your squad. However, if you're not happy with your decisions for Shepard, one upgrade available after the game's halfway point is the opportunity to re-distribute your points at any time aboard the Normandy provided you have the necessary resources (or you can always exploit the "infinite squad points" glitch, but that's kind of lame). It's a fantastic system that allows you to specialize your abilities in accordance with the mission you're about to undertake, and really ties the game together as specialization is a big deal plot-wise in ME2. While we're talking about missions, my absolute favourite gameplay aspect of ME2 is the ability to, from the load menu, restart whichever mission you last began, allowing you to change your weapons or squad and providing the choice to skip the hassle or take the challenge if it turns out that you chose the wrong tools for the job. The restart option for any mission, main or side, will remain available until you begin a new mission. It really is a fantastic enhancement to the gameplay. As well, you can unlock non-essential main quests (what?) by completing side quests. Unheard of! Absurd! Fantastic.

One of the big advertised features for ME2 was the fact that you can change your class and appearance on imported ME1 games. I was really excited about that, because while ME1 was a big deal at the time for how much you could customize your appearance, I was never very happy with its presets, never quite able to get the look I wanted, and after seeing how far BioWare upped the customization ante with Dragon Age, I was totally jazzed. Which means I was also totally bummed at first when I discovered that ME2 has the same toolset as ME1 - all the preset faces are the same, all the eye/nose/mouth shapes and hairstyles are the same, and there's no additional fiddling around that wasn't present in the first game. I got over it because it makes sense. Another big advertised feature currently unique (as far as I know) to the Mass Effect series is its combination of facial customization and fully cinematic dialogue, in which your character speaks and runs a wide range of facial expressions. These have been really nicely toned up in ME2, and I can't see how it would work so well and run so smoothly if you could go wild with customization. Also, though I can't find a way to save it on the 360, there is a code at the bottom of the customization screen which encompasses every aspect of your appearance, meaning that if you got a really good face and you just want your next character to have different hair, you can write down that code and enter it next time to get that same face instantaneously. For someone who takes their customization seriously, and spends what some may consider a disgusting amount of time getting it "just right" since I'll have to look at it for the next 40+ hours (especially if I run a second play on the same ME2 character, for which you cannot change appearance or class), this is a very big and welcome deal.

The only kind of big downside to ME2 is that the combat AI, at least on the 360, has some weird issues that tend to get you killed three quarters of the way through a huge multi-wave fight for no good reason (though I should note in the game's defense that its well-planned autosave system will only require you to restart the fight you got killed in, not the entire mission). For starters, you can only regain health by taking cover (no medi-gel for you!), and it's not always clear what stationary objects the game does or does not consider to be cover. There are also many instances of the AI making you stand up out of cover if you tap a button too fast when changing weapons or issuing commands, which causes a whole lot of instant death on higher difficulty levels. And while the ability to vault into/out of cover can really come in handy, it can also really screw you over if you tap the left stick in just the wrong way, as can that same tap accidentally running you into something the game considers to be a corner or wall, which will also make you stand up, and if staggered by an attack, you can't take cover until regaining your balance...by which time you'll probably be dead. It also seems that the squad AI has more problems the higher your difficulty level, at least I'm noticing a huge shift from "Veteran" to "Hardcore", though this could simply be perception based on the fact that "Hardcore" is, um, harder. Squad members will also sometimes randomly get out of cover, and if you don't send them to just the right angle, they'll shoot at their cover instead of at the enemy, or simply not fire at all. There have also been a lot of times when I've ordered a squad member to use an ability, and they just...don't. And I may be too busy to notice that they didn't, until it's too late. This is probably a button time-delay issue, though time-delay doesn't explain why squad members sometimes repeatedly turn off their specialty ammo in the middle of a fight. All that being said, the combat is overall more interesting than it was in ME1, especially since the main story fights tend to involve being ambushed on the enemy's turf, with little or ineffective cover, and there are a lot of other big quest fights in which it's more effective and more efficient to learn how to move around a battlefield rather than try to depend on cover. However, "more interesting" also tends to mean "more frustrating"... :)

Of course, there are scads of little features that have made wonderful additions to ME gameplay, like the new and greatly improved minigames for hacking and circuit bypass...but listing them all would make this post even more long and boring then it already is. ;)

Lionhead Studios' Fable series was and is infamously sold on the hype of being an RPG in which all your actions affect the world around you. The first installment, enjoyable though it was, didn't take this premise anywhere close to as far as advertised, and neither did the second installment which, though having excellent gameplay, lowered the bar in spades by continuing to hype this feature while still forcing all serious plot decisions of consequence on the player, decisions which were, in my opinion, rather thoughtless and other less complimentary adjectives, resulting in a game whose completion provided no satisfaction whatsoever and in which "affecting the world around you" really only meant whether wandering NPC's think you're the cat's pyjamas or the devil's right hand (wooo! Hard-core!). The Mass Effect series showed Fable how it's done, resulting in two engaging, outstanding, utterly satisfying titles whose decision-making aspects command repeated playthroughs for the sake of seeing what their consequences will be, and in which combination. Though I got it for free, Mass Effect 2 is some extraordinary bang for your buck, and with how many hours of thought-provoking entertainment it offers, the downside even bigger than the combat AI issues is that it takes an awful lot of self-discipline to not spend way too much time playing this incredible game. The upside? It'll keep you plenty busy while waiting for Mass Effect 3. Enjoy!

Dialogue of the Week

This week's gem which you probably shouldn't use in general public conversation comes to us courtesy of everyone's favourite Mass Effect 2 vigilante sniper, on the subject of not rushing relationships to fourth base:

Garrus Vakarian: Well, you know me. I always like to savour the last shot before popping the heat sink.

[awkward pause while him and Shepard give each other weird looks]

Wait. That metaphor just went somewhere horrible.

Dialogue Of The Week

Heard on Human Target episode 4, "Sanctuary":

(Chris and Winston are stranded with the guy they've been hired to protect in a remote part of Quebec (vive La Belle Province!), and in sore need of a contingency plan.)

Guerrero: (answering his cell) This is Guerrero.

Winston: It's Winston! Where the hell have you been? I called you, like, thirty times in the last ten minutes! Alright, listen. I thought this job was straightforward, but things have gotten kinda complicated, and we're gonna need your help.

Guerrero: Busy today dude. Sorry.

Winston: You're "busy"? Chance and the principal are in danger. What the hell could you be so busy with that it can't wait?

Guerrero: Winston, my life does not revolve around you. As hard as that may be for you to believe, I'm on another job.

Winston: Another?...Look. Fisher and his crew are here, now Chance is stuck up on that mountain with those psychopaths. Now, he told me you know a chopper pilot down in Montreal, and I need him here fast...

Guerrero: Well, I know who he means, but that's not really an option. We kinda had a falling out.

Winston: Well, can't you apologize?

Guerrero: Yeah, if I had a time machine, or a hell of a Ouija board....Listen, you're gonna be fine, man. You're, uh, capable.

Winston: "Capable"?! Who the hell do you think you're...

Guerrero: Gotta go.