Mass Effect 2

Posted on | Tuesday, 16 November 2010 | No Comments

Shepard's journey is coming to an end. I have vanquished pirate colonies, stalked politicians through nightclubs, slept with innumerable alien women and am fast approaching the point of no return. Outside of one or two "help this party member resolve their past" quests, we're almost there.



It's rare that a game compels me to spend a decent amount of time with it - least of all in an extended sitting unless it has "football" or "manager" in the title - but Mass Effect 2 has managed it. One or two of it's cast are forgettable and, in truth, I feel your selectable "crew" is too broad to promote any continuity or emotional connection to their plight; especially when your relationship with them involves little more than repeated questions and pre-selected times until they reveal their "secret" to you. That said; the cast that do stand out are far more memorable than most from the original game and, however contrived the approach might be, the side stories are well constructed and, in one or two cases, poignant and powerful. It's testament to the design of each character, from both games, that personal preferences can be drawn, not on combat ability, but on character. By this stage I have, for want of a better expression, "favourites" in my crew that, regardless of whether or not they fit into the "combat, tech and biotic" triumvirate, remain in my team, though perhaps that's indicative of the difficulty level I've chosen to play on. These two characters are the ones I've chosen to invest time in, while I've done the majority of quests for every character, and will finish the quests for those whom I haven't, I didn't feel much of a connection with the majority of the other characters that drove me to do their quests outside of a completionist nature.

Emotional connection is certainly difficult to achieve - it's nearly 13 years since I last felt a connection to the death of a character in any videogame - and Mass Effect 2 comes close, but ultimately falls down on the back of it's protagonist. Shepard is, deliberately perhaps, an every man. His design is solid, yet unspectacular, and while the range of customisation options are impressive, I opted for Bioware's "vision" of Shepard. The biggest concern I have with him is his voice work; he is monotone, boring and routinely feels like he is talking to himself rather than in conversation. That, of course, isn't aided by some clichéd "good" and "evil" dialogue choices, though renamed "paragon" and "renegade", that are shoe horned into situations with little room for an independent choice outside of those two options. To it's credit there were a few occasions which this discourse was challenged - the paragon option was, in one particular instance, the wrong choice, and occasionally grey areas will have you questioning the relativism of your morality against those you bring along with you.

The combat is standard, and also something that I have very little interest in discussing. The mechanics are what they are, and as a vehicle between story segments and exploration I can say I never found it distracting, nor frustrating, though perhaps that will change upon the conclusion to the game or on a higher difficulty setting.

I'm told that the end is something to behold and, spoilers aside, the choices you're faced with at the original's finale were some of the better constructed in the first game - outside of a series altering confrontation with Wrex - and, judging by the increase in quality across the board in Mass Effect 2, I have nothing but high hopes for these final few hours.

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