ME2 Revisited - After the Hype Wears Off
On the day the game arrived, I got out of my classes, said quick byes to my friends, got the game, and retreated into my apartment for the next few days, bathed nothing but the glow from my Samsung HD screen and sensuous, dark tones of the sequel to one of the best games I had ever played in my short career as a game enthusiast.
I say "game enthusiast" because I am by no means a "professional gamer." To those who have custom-built PCs with liquid cooled motherboards, I am but a dabbler in the arcane arts. Yet, after the whirlwind ride of a lifetime that ME2 took me on as I was snugly tucked in my chair, I could not help but feel that something was wrong.
Something was off.
I tried to write a review about Mass Effect 2, just to get what was on my chest out. I did, but, it was to no avail. There was something wrong about the game, I just couldn't find what it was, and it bothered me.
After 4 more playthroughs of different gender and class and around 8 months later, I found myself longing for the original Mass Effect. I went back to the original game and mostly played through it for a save I could carry over to ME2, and eventually, to ME3. It was then that I realized something - something that had been buried deep beneath the hype that glossed over Mass Effect 2.
I was so excited and geared up for the game when it first came out that I was blind to something I now know as completely obvious: Mass Effect 2 is -not- a RPG.
It is a Third-Person Shooter with dialogue choice and a certain degree of flexibility when it came to the ending.
What had been bothering me all along was the fact that ME2 did not sate what I was looking for. It only temporarily numbed the itch I had - the itch for an immersive RPG experience that would lead me through a world of mystery, intrigue, and adventure. That's what ME was - it was a world that was unfamiliar, and this unfamiliarity was what made it incredible. When I played it, I bumped around in a figurative darkness, trying to find my footing and exploring my surroundings.
This is what ME2 lacked.
In ME2, I found myself in a different part of the ME world, a place that the game developers could have easily made strange and inhospitable. Instead, they didn't.
The first thing that happened to Shepard when he landed on Omega was to be greeted by someone, who told him EXACTLY what to do: Report to Aria.
In Mass Effect 2, there were no more quests that we found simply by wandering around, trying to find our way - everything was laid out in front of us, and we were told what to do. It took away the mystery, it took away the uncertainty, and it took away the explorative nature that is innate in a RPG.
The Illusive Man dumps a bunch of names on Shepard's lap and the game essentially revolves around the player going to each "level" and beating it to receive a new party member, weapon upgrades, cash, and plot. Instead of having Shepard engage in dialogue with persons in locations for information that may reveal an interesting quest or a hidden location, the developers had the player scan planets for "signals."
Player-NPC interaction was reduced to non-significant Q&A, while others led to a few diplomacy-style mini-missions instead of the short, but interesting quests that ME one possessed.
Ultimately, I felt that ME2 was not an adequate successor to ME. The game, was a fantastic blend of certain RPG elements and shooting, but in a way, ME2 cannot be called a RPG for the same reason BioShock 1 & 2 cannot be called a RPG. While I thoroughly enjoyed the game itself, the fact that the game presented itself as something it was not was disappointing to me.