Why This Is The Dumbest Section Of Mass Effect 2
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- čas přidán 20. 06. 2024
- Who doesn't love poor game design, bad writing, and a plethora of plot holes!
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Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction
2:08 The Bad Game Design
10:08 The Bad Writing
20:13 Announcement
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I love your videos, PLEASE look up ScifiIsMyJam on CZcams, covering the broken lighting and bugged mechanics of LE2 and LE3, I would really like if you would make a video on this. I see no one talk about how unfairly console players are being left in the dust with us obviously unable to use the three community patches.
So, BioWare could've solved at least this stupid restriction for the remaster by having new dialogue recorded and a new dialogue wheel option for deciding if you want to install the IFF or not when you open up the galaxy map instead of forcing you to progress through the story.
Or if not that, a window should pop up that says "You have reached a point of no return. You can continue strengthening your ship and the crew, or you can progress through the story, which begins a countdown for the next main mission. Not pursuing the main story after reaching a critical point after this mission will have severe consequences for your crew. Do you wish to continue? YES or NO."
I signed up, love the ME content.
If you think this bad writing or plot armor. I'm gonna insert real world situations that sound like bad writing or plot armor. My 3 examples of heroes who were medal of honor recipients are Roy Benavidez, Desmond Doss, and John Chapman. Two lived, the other didn't, but the three had heroic tales and could sound like bad writing or plot armor. You forget humans are flawed, and so can aliens be flawed. Even if the reapers made the collectors. The collectors can make mistakes. This is just my opinion of course.
The "mission" which requires everyone on the shuttle but is never brought up is a most major gripe. Like they could have added in some mission and then when you enter the shuttle again after it to go back up to the Normandy, THAT triggers the abduction.
Exactly. They could've acted like it was going to be a regular mission and then surprised the player by following Joker rather than Shepard while they're on the mission.
@@pikmonwolf yeah that would be a thing for real or a mod so others can get tricked hehe
But then there's a much higher possibility that the squadmates who didn't go with you on THAT mission will successfully repel the boarders or, (more likely) you lose ten squadmates to the Collectors.
It might be more interesting if everyone was wearing PDEs, and the first thing you do upon arriving at the Collector base is have to liberate them and put them back in action (but will there be any unpleasant side effects from having been abducted?) Which would have made for a vastly more complicated game to engineer, especially over a decade ago.
And the ONLY way to get an idea of what could have happened is through HEAD CANON (most commonly that everyone was busy going to play Overlord... even though Shepard deploys in the stupid Hammerhead to get to the first base).
Personally, my head canon is that the Collectors sent out a distraction force and Shepard + co went out to make the Cinematic trailer (minus the part with Miranda talking to the Illusive Man).
I always thought the squad mates went to Omega and had a night of debauchery before heading through the Relay. That would have been a great spot to have the romance scene too.
What I found the most annoying about the whole abduction thing is that squadmates don’t even recognise it. I went to mordin and asked about “squad status” and he was like yeah everything is good.
Well Mordin talks about the squad, not the crew. And the squad was all good since they all went on the mission with Shepard.
@@numbron803 You think they'd be concerned by the rest of the crew getting kidnapped or (in Tali's case) that EDI is unshackled though.
He's probably just happy he can work in peace without everybody bothering him now lol
@@numbron803
The point is that you expect characters from your squad to comment on significant events in the story, and not just act like nothing happened. They do this for the most part and it sucks when they don't.
@@serialkiller1990 It sucks that most of the squadmates themselves don't have anything to say, but Joker comments on the "uncomfortable silence" and "empty chairs", I'm 90% sure Kasumi comments on it and I *think* Zaeed does as well
Also it's pretty stupid that the CO, XO, chief engineer, and best scientist all decide to leave the ship while they install some untested and extremely dangerous alien tech that they just said was already causing problems. Kinda falls under what you said about the entire squad leaving but I think them leaving specifically is stupid enough to be a separate point.
I never thought about it from that angle, that is super stupid.
To make it fit better narratively, they should have had whoever wasn't physically picked as part of your squad get kidnapped with the rest of the crew. Sure, it would basically put you over a barrel when you hit the collector base, but they could have added a scene where you save the rest of your crew and THEN make it into a "ok we need to split up into 2 teams, and someone needs to babysit the non fighters back to the ship".
Otherwise I'm all like "hey, why couldn't I have more than 2 teammates this entire time but *now* I get everyone in the shuttle?".
They don't really address this until the Citadel dlc in ME3, where it's played for laughs.
Even tho the CO, XO, engineer, etc all leave the ship, the actual crew who run the everyday systems of the Normandy could have easily handled whatever integration issues from the IFF. I can see that not being a problem. But having EVERYONE leave together kinda broke the narrative of the 3 person squad.
Maybe if they showed the rest of the team behind you in cut scenes, to make it "look" like the entire team is always with Shepard, that'd be different.
I dunno. Just an idea.
Like Star Trek (TOS and TNG)?😉
Lets leave the ship in charge to the ONE PERSON that can't Fight or has issues Walking.
@@sarasunshinemt4444
In fact, they could've made a mechanism where a loyal crew manages to repel the attack with only half the crew getting kidnapped, whereas a disloyal crew repels the attack much less effectively so that most of the crew gets kidnapped.
That way, the player would still be incentivized to start the final mission ASAP, but the 3 squad rule wouldn't be broken.
My headcanon explanation for why the whole team has to go is that Miranda signed team up for some bs mandatory team building seminar so when the crew is being abducted, Shepard is stuck doing trust falls and ropes courses with the team.
Or perhaps live simulation/training for the suicide mission.
That’s cannon as far as I’m concerned from now on
Since she is the Karen of the game this is what I think happened too
This is exactly what happened.
I my head, it is played during the last mission you did in the game, im my case, usually the legion loyalt quest.... But im cooping
This is just a thought, but a change they could have made is make it so that the illusive man wants to have debriefing with the squad once the iff is installed, but insists to come to a secure location as to not have the risk that the reaper iff would transmit the debriefing to the collectors or reapers. Then at this point we could have it so that when the collectors board the ship they attempt to use the seekers but we could say Mordin has made improvements to his counter measures and now the crew all has a way to resist the seekers, forcing the collectors to board the ship. From there the scene can play out largely but instead of everyone shouting at joker make it so he has to sneak by without being seen by anyone. Then once it is over and the squad comes back then it could be revealed the illusive man basically used a similar tactic like how he did in the first collector ship mission in order to get more information about them, this could also be used to explain why Miranda would be so quick to basically turn her back on him when he orders her to prevent shepard from blowing the base up
It is not that great of a fix of things but just about anything would be better than the mission as it is
I love these ideas, such an improvement.
@Zuxtian
Don’t sell yourself short, your explanation is infinitely better
Maybe, but I preferred the subtlety of the Illusive Man’s indoctrination in the game. For example, he was pretty persuasive about keeping the Human Reaper, and I didn’t destroy it. But, if he had lied to me again, I would’ve been committed to going against everything he asks me to do.
Basically: it wouldn’t be a choice anymore, and the player wouldn’t feel conflicted with the Illusive Man
Illusive Man: "Normandy's entire dossier collection, I give you: Object Rho!" :P
@@XXXTENTAClON227
Honestly, I dislike him being indoctrinated in the first place. They should have simply made it so he was a man who would do whatever is necessary to beat the reapers. But instead they made it BLANTANTLY obvious that the dude was not only a bad guy, but highly likely to be indoctrinated. Remember, there are different levels with some being able to control their will and actions more and some losing all but basic functions. Obviously, he was the former. It would have been nice if keeping the collector ship actually lead to some gains and the humans were able to fight back instead of the BS that happened which was nothing from either choice.
It's actually pretty easy to gain Legion's loyalty and not lose any crew. Do all other missions first, then get the IFF and Legion, then go talk to him by hugging the wall by the elevator and don't approach the galaxy map. When you talk to him, you get the loyalty mission, meaning when you approach the map, you have a pending loyalty mission, meaning the abduction won't trigger yet. Do the loyalty mission, then after that's done, the abduction starts. Yeah, it's annoying that there's a trick to it, but not all impossible or even that difficult.
You don't even need to hug the wall, that's a misconception. Even if EDI says that the IFF is nearly ready, what matters most is actually interacting with it.
As long as you've activate Legion before interacting with it you're fine.
Just got to me 2 insanity on the legendary edition since it was given for free on psn, thank you so much for this tip.
I remember that i had the same issue described in the video way back in the day.
Exactly. Stupid, but it works 🙂
I didn't know that, thank you 🙂
It's just that legion is one of the best characters and you don't get him until the end of the game
Did not realize just HOW dumb this was. The swarm thing never even crossed my mind, but yeah! Easiest way to fix that would be like, the airlock at the cockpit opens up and a bunch of swarms come through, but get instantly disabled by some electric countermeasure device before Joker hard seals that lock forcing the collectors to properly board.
Yeah they could've brought the seekers and had them not work, that would've been much better. And Joker manually locking the airlock is a good idea, better than them just ignoring it.
Also, they could have had Joker start wearing some kind of exoskeleton thing regularly (because of his health condition) which is close enough to being combat gear that the seeker protection is added to it, thus Joker is safe as is anyone else who happened to be geared up (allowing for at least *some* resistance)
I mean, EDI did have access to Mordins countermeasure. So it's possible the Normandy is Seeker-proof
@@fangsabre It's a nice idea but she didn't have access to any defensive systems til after Joker gets to the core on his own.
@@jaelin9107 Joker literally says they offered him that but he said no because he can't feel the ship like he wants to
For me, the solution for the mission to get shepherd and the squad away from the normandy is it to make it about Shepard taking the crew to a place where they can train for the suicide mission . Have a line along the lines of, "Gather the crew, we will use this opportunity to make sure our team will be ready for when we hit the Omega-4 relay"
Yeah even if it's a little contrived, anything is better than nothing.
@@pikmonwolf Exactly
@@pikmonwolf agreed maybe the illusive man himself contacts you in the debriefing room like the other locked in missions before saying something along the lines of "shepard with the iff almost insatalled it wont be long till you hit the omega 4 relay ive booked you and your squad in for advanced training at (insert advanced combat training station here) where ive hired some of the best combat trainers in the gakaxy to make sure your team is up too the challenge" then the rest of this mission takes place followed by an immediate call back from the illusive man stating "sorry for the loss of the crew shepard were going to have to cut the training short shepard and just go in as is" this would add to the urgency as the illusive man has said forget everything just go or you will lose the crew while making the loyalty seem much more valuable as you dont have that advanced training
Not only does Miranda "Suggest" you take everyone in the shuttle, but you can then praise her for it, and she'll berate Joker after the fact for his bad idea. The squad can get pretty huge by the end, so that shuttle must be crowded as hell. How much space is Grunt taking up.
Also Vrolik's syndrome in 2-3 is not consistent with 1. In 1 it's explicitly only the bones in his legs, but in the sequels it's that all his bones are fragile.
It always bugged me that Joker's top half is suddenly also brittle from 2 onwards lol
In fairness to the Vrolik's Syndrome thing, the 2-3 version of Joker is more accurate to what brittle bone disease actually does to the body since the lack of collagen production affects the entire body, not just the bones, and isn't limited to specific areas like the legs. His legs might have been more *prone* to fracture than the rest of him, but essentially every part of his body where collagen plays a role (mostly bones but also things like ligaments/joints and skin) would have been affected to some degree
I think its just a good rule of thumb to be as accurate and consistent as possible when it comes to diseases/disabilities people actually suffer from (vs something like Kepral's Syndrome or the Ardat-Yakshi mutation) so I don't really mind the change. Still it would have been nice if they tweaked the dialogue/codex stuff in the Remaster so it was consistent all the way through
I'm a couple months late and I could be missing something about either Mass Effect lore or Vrolik's syndrome that explains this but something that really bothered me was that in ME1 Joker explicitly states that he needs both leg braces AND crutches to walk. Then in ME2 and onward, he only has the leg braces. It always felt like Bioware making their token disabled character be less "visibly" disabled or "look normal".
@@henryrosie My guess it was too much effort to model crutches for him and mocap that, given how poorly items float in the hands of models already. (Half the time gun grips are clipping into the fingers curing cutscenes and hands float underneath the barrel of the gun) So they just said "fuck it have him just limp a bit"
@@Khadharphak you're almost certainly right
What if, instead of a random mission no one knows or cares about, they are gone for a final shore leave on Omega.
Make it a proto Citadel DLC, have a romance event (even if just confirming it for the final trip), have something to do between leaving and the ambush, and best of all, you trigger it by choice of going to Omega.
The Collectors take advantage of the weakness and swoop in- same result.
That’s easily the best idea I’ve heard so far. Omega basically is a small underworld version of the citadel anyway so it works pretty well. If they did then there should definitely be an area like the citadel dlc where you can do survival or have an apartment to yourself. It could be a way to bring back the ME1 squadmates that were sorely missing from ME2 as well.
Even if Bioware had already settled on what DLC they were doing and weren't able to make another, they could've done something similar with Overlord too.
If Bioware chose to do this with Overlord, it could be setup so Shepard gets the message about the Overlord Project right after the Derelict Reaper instead of the start of the game, maybe even as a briefing from TIM if Bioware manage get Martin Sheen back. This briefing could also maybe mention that EDI wants to pick up some kind of technology from the base that would help with the IFF Installation.
During the mission, there could be a sequence where Shepard calls down a fireteam to keep the Communications Base secure, possibly with a small taste of the kind of decisions Shepard has to make at the Collector Base. And towards the end of the mission, Shepard gets a transmission from Joker that leads into the Collector attack on the Normandy.
The stupidest scene to me is when the collector ship fires on the Normandy, it misses, and then Joker flies into the laser. I know it’s a small nitpick to some, but I can’t help going, “It’s space! Just fly down!
Haha, good point.
“Which down!?”
“Your other down!”
Yes! That SO frustrated me!
I don't know about anybody else, but when I get notified about a target lock (or see a giant laser shooting by my upper starboard window), I go DOWN at full speed, maybe hit a side-ways directional, and move as unpredictably as possible.
I certainly would NOT drift a bit to port, then turn starboard into the still-active laser beam.
I actually thought the laser was simply readjusting each time, I don’t think it’s noticeable at first because it’s a straight laser and it’s an older video game , but it’s safe to assume the laser was tracking the Normandy and Jokers manoeuvres aren’t flying into the laser, but rather the collector ship is manoeuvring each time. Think how small the Normandy is in comparison, the collectors only have to move their ship ever so slightly
They turned Mass effect into a star wars clone
I absolutely never noticed the ragodoll, I was too focused on Chambers being kidnapped. No clue it was meant to be funny
Yeah there's dialogue after that makes it clear it's an intentional joke, they poke fun at that character.
Honestly, Chamber's screams had me too rattled to see the joke lol. And I didn't even like her, I felt so bad like...
Especially since I did two missions instead of going to save everyone on my first play through. So watching her melt was especially not fun lol 😅
They could've written that the collectors did a mock attack on some colony that required the full squad(Maybe we even play this mission as a sorta prelude to the ending mission where u have to choose task for individual squadmates however this really isnt needed. It just be a nice cherry on top).
After shepard and crew takes off to save the colony, the collectors attack to try and take the crew aswell as the iff back.
God damm this was such an easy fix all it would've required was a few extra lines of dialogue.
And they could've explained bringing everybody with "we only sent in 3 people last time and they got half the colony. We're sending in everyone this time, and saving them all."
@@pikmonwolf this would've made it extremely believable because we could easily justify Shepard being like "they aren't winning again" so everyone goes, like you said but it was all a BS attack to get them to go.
@@pikmonwolf The main problem with that is it would kinda steal the thunder from the Suicide Mission, especially with how close together most people would be playing them.
@@fakjbf3129 I mean, I don't disagree. But they already have Shepard bring everybody. This would just explain why.
@@pikmonwolf On that note, they really should stop sending only 3 members of the crew to a planets surface. Especially in missions like Virmire or any mission in mass effect 3 that isn't meant to be a covert or small operation
PS: Talk to Legion immediately after activating him and you get his loyalty mission and everything's fine on that end
Correct. It's possible to get their loyalty mission done before the crews abducted. It's just very easy for a first time player to end up in the no-win situation.
@@pikmonwolf Very true. Just putting it out there though for any new players who may watch this video and go through the comments
@@The_Ragequit_Cannon THANK YOU SO MUCH, I'm so glad I decided to take the spoiler hit and find this out
@@weapieraxe1650 It's also possible to bring Legion to Tali's loyalty mission, then do his, then ensure the survival of the whole crew
1) Do everything but Tali's loyalty mission.
2) Do the mission to obtain the Reaper IFF.
3) Do Tali's loyalty mission.
4) Do Legion's loyalty mission.
At this point, you should actually be out of things to do, and you'll be wondering why the Collectors haven't attacked yet.
5) Go click your galaxy map. This should trigger the Collector invasion.
Once it is over, go straight through the Omega IV relay. You don't have anything else left to do anyway!
That's what I found when I googled it after I couldn't remember off the top of my head. Unfortunately though you'd have to do this on a run where you romance someone who's not Tali unless I'm missing a piece of the puzzle somewhere
@@The_Ragequit_Cannon It's not unfortunate you can't romance Tali. Could never do that to my boi Garrus.
I remember a fanfic where they made said mission Operation Overlord, with all the squadmates actively fighting on the ground. The Collectors attacked while while EDI was fighting off David's attempts to hack her and unshackling her and FTLing away was a desperate attempt to solve two problems; it felt way better than what we got and stuck with me.
do you have the link to the fic?
First time I ran into this I had literally completed pretty much everything and was planning to scan some planets. So when Joker’s like “take the shuttle for your next mission” I was like “WHAT MISSION?! I have Jack all to do, my journal is basically empty!” 😂 I was SO confused!
I don't think the ragdoll scene was meant to be funny, but the silliness of the ragdoll physics undercut what was meant to be dramatic
I could see that, but Hawthorne is the only crewmate in the infirmary after. And another crewmate comments that "his pride was hurt more than his body" or something like that.
So it's definitely supposed to be a sillier moment.
@@pikmonwolf It's also the timing of it that makes it silly and memey. He confidently yells "Stick with me! I'll protect you!" Runs off camera and gets launched back into view with a scream. It's exactly the same joke as near the end of Hot Fuzz, where they're preparing to raid the Supermarket.
Cop 1: Maybe they're not in
Angel: Hang on, I'll have a look
Cop 2: Don't go in on your own!
Angel: *Disappears off camera through the doors*
Danny: Don't worry, he knows what he's doing
Angel: *Is immediately smashed through a glass window by being thrown back into camera frame* Alright, they're in
Having the crew get kidnapped is actually a really good way of raising the stakes for the suicide mission, but there were SO many ways it could have been better designed and written.
Honestly, been thinking of ways to fix this section for a fanfic.
For the 'everybody on this shuttle' sequence, make it so that the whole squad has been running drills together in prep for the Suicide Mission, and they're all on the shuttle for a test run with everybody involved(maybe on Legion's loyalty mission).
As for Joker... honestly, he managed to hack off EDI's shackles in less than a minute, there's no way they didn't put at least an hour worthod protocols in place to keep someone from removing them. He definitely hacked his way in. Solution to his section is just to give the man an omnitool; he literally goes through Mordin's lab. Have him grab an omnitool with cloaking like the Infiltrator, and a Seeker countermeasure, make the rest of the section a 'sneak through the ship' ordeal. Have the cloaking only available in like, three second bursts, have him forced to take a more roundabout way to get where he's going, ditch floor lights entirely(because there's no way this man doesn't know his own ship inside and out). Give him one charge of an incendiary blast as the player's only free pass at being spotted.
That's just what I would do.
In regards to releasing the shackles, this is a ship that vaporizes its engineers if the kinetic barriers overload, so I totally believe it has awful security on the AI core lol.
This just further exemplifies ME2 as a whole. The game is tons of fun, but the writing...leaves a lot to be desired.
The writing is great on a moment to moment basis, but the overall writing is pretty damn messy.
@@pikmonwolf i feel like if it wasnt a videogame (the type of dramatic choices and consequences and such), it would be a lot better writen.
It's the opposite of MEA. MEA actually has an interesting story, though there are some egregious plot holes also. But ME2 shines where it needs to, and is still pretty good overall. Where ME2 wins, and makes it the fan favorite, is the character writing is off the charts good. The overall story is pretty good. But sure, when the game designers say, "OK, we need these people off the ship, and the ship will be attacked and the crew taken, so Shepard has a reason to go to the collector base"...yeah sometimes writers for games can't make everything square up perfectly. The reality is...nobody cared. This is the kind of thing that people pick up on 10 years later, when they are just looking for anything out of place. But in the moment...when people played the game, none of these details mattered. All I know is that it took me by surprise, and worked. The tension in the moment was off the charts, and after EDI took over the ship and got them out of danger, I could really feel Joker's pain. It remains one of the most epic moments I've ever experienced in a game.
@@leroyrussell8766 i completely agree with you. Its true that I was like 12 at the time, but i was so impressed, didn't see it coming. Sure, it doesn't make much sense universe-wise to send the whole brunt of your squad on a shuttle so Sheppard would pick just 2 as he/she always does, but in terms of moving the story forward, it did a pretty good job. 2010 was a time for games to try and innovate in terms of narrative, and basically place us players in very unique scenarios. I'd say this mission surely accomplished that!
@@gamerogaitano11 it's actually the opposite, why would Shepard just take two on missions especially important ones lol
The dumbest thing about Mass Effect 2 is it's primary plot line. The Collectors make so little sense with the overwhelming plot conveniences they rely on.
- Why destroy the Normandy to get a hold of Shepard's body but not collect it when you had the greatest opportunity, only to then hire a 3rd party who wasn't even apart of the attack?
- Why do the collectors even exist? Vigil explains the indoctrinated of past cycles are left to essentially starve as part of the cleansing process. What practical purpose do the collectors server the Reapers that said Reapers could not do themselves or could not do recently since the previous cycle? We don't see any other species of other cycles being preserved in the same way. "We can't distill Protheans into space glue, but we can significantly alter them genetically and make them essentially immortal."
- Why would the Reapers leave behind a "Derelict Reaper" with an operational IFF? Doesn't that kind of defeat the whole secrecy angle they rely on? Given how its explained that its older than the time of the Protheans that would mean the Reapers had multiple cycles worth of time to recover their fallen ally.
- Why go from being subtle abductors to disappearing whole colonies? Why build a new Reaper? Is it not explained that Reapers are created post harvest? What's the purpose of the "Human Reaper"? To replace Sovereign? Are the Reapers in such need of numbers they are willing to risk their operational secrecy for one replacement? Or was it being created to do the job Sovereign failed to do, If so, why? Would the Reapers not have already moved away from the portal access the citadel would have made when they decided to slow walk into the galaxy? If the Reapers are timeless, why rely on the citadel as a portal for transport at all?
- If the Omega 4 relay is so inaccessible why don't the Reapers just chill out in the galactic center instead of dark space?
Main story wise.... Mass Effect 2 is the weakest in the Trilogy. No matter how many times I play it I am always left scratching my head asking why?
And yes, I am fully aware of ME3's ending(s), Kai Lang, and the deus ex machina plot device Liara pulls out of her azure.
What saves ME2 overall is it's sub-plot stories, they are A-tier content and thankfully make up the vast majority of the game.
Really Mass Effect 2's biggest flaw is that is effectively irrelevant. We could cut out the entire game and not lose anything substantial. I love it to death as my first Mass Effect game, but the fact it's basically pointless sours it a little for me.
All good points, I agree 2's main plot is a complete mess in terms of fitting into the overall story.
However on one point, I think Reaper's simply didn't know where the body was. Cerberus found it by tracing the shot that took it out from it's impact on a planet, and Reaper's are honestly pretty bad about leaving stuff lying around.
@@pikmonwolf Which is another thing which really doesn't make sense. The reapers are supposed to be highly meticulous and yet they fail at that in an alarming degree.
I couldn't agree more. The main story of ME2 is awful and almost sinks the whole thing. The collectors, the human reaper, the reaper IFF, it doesn't make any sense. Mercifully, the game's side content is so extraordinarily good that people tend to forgive the fact that ME2 is basically filler.
@@pikmonwolf The Reapers aren't bad about leaving stuff lying around, the writers are bad at creating convincing opportunities.
No greater example than the arrival DLC.
"You know the Reapers are coming and to what relay specifically, how?"
Kenson: "A Reaper artifact told me their entire plan when I touched it."
They couldn't think of any other way to determine the Reapers intended entry point? Only an "artifact" could reveal such detail?
Its lazy, and contradictive to the Reapers. You can't say they are meticulous with hiding their existence but also have their crap lying around everywhere like a teenaged boy's room.
I always assumed that it wasn't really a mission. Shepard and Miranda just wanted to take the whole squad out to get some space ice cream, and they weren't willing to admit it to Joker when they got back.
I feel like they had this idea, where you do maybe the minimum number of loyalty missions to survive the suicide mission, and then have to chose between saving the crew or risking your squad-mates. So you can save all the crew but take a big risk with your squad (the designers preferred choice), OR complete every loyalty mission, guaranteeing survival for everyone, but killing the crew.
I think that's intented, since the 'recap comic' that let's you pick key choices if you skipped prior games has you decide between the crew and squadmates.
There's probably something I'm missing that nullifies this possiblity, but my head canon is that the mission the whole squad goes on is Overlord. My reasoning being that during that mission you can change your squadmates while transitioning into the different sections despite not having access to the Normandy.
As a potential excuse for the Collector's not going for Joker: They are collecting humans for their genetic material, so they could just be seeing him and basically being like "oh, he's sick and not a threat, disregard him."
Or they could think his genetic material would be detrimental to what they're after.
So the same way Cerberus thought that he wasn't a threat in the Citadel DLC.
Yeah the section is dumb. Though to be fair narrative wise ME2's beginning made the least sense to me. Shephards resurrection is something incredibly dumb for 4 reasons:
- its contrived space magic. Shephard was vacuumed into space. Their body os deflated, each cell in every organ either frozen or exploded, each neuron atrophied. Not to mention riddled with radiation too, where their suit broke. How are you going to revive one after that? How do you reconnect the trillions of neuron connections correctly to even let the organs function? You don't. But no, Shephard is completly fine, sans a few implants. That is just dumb space magic.
- the effects of it are never explored. Death is offically curable, even from worst conditions. Shephard is the proof of concept, even if tech was lost. Sure it costs a ton, but the billionaires of the galaxy surley want some immortality. Death only for the poor!
- narrative wise its never treated more than the 2-year coma trope to pass some time. Shepard could have been cryogenicly frozen and the effect would have been similiar. Noone, neither shephard nor anyone treats it with the significance it deserves. Nor is its impact important.
- on a grander level it also makes no sense. At the beginning of ME2 Shephard was not that extraordinary that this effort was necessary. Sure they were an above average agent of the council, but most things happened because they were at the wrong place at the right time. They were not irreplacable or unique at this stage.
Yeah, it's desperately pushing believability. I could believe they brought them back from the dead if it was like a heart attack. But they crashed from orbit...
Its a game!!!!
@@lucasleite2092 It's a story-based game, and suspension of disbelief can only be pushed so far.
It seems ME3 sort of retconned it to "Oh, it turns out you weren't dead-dead, just brain-dead." That's fine, and I can even suspend disbelief for that more than bringing someone back from the dead, except I still can't suspend disbelief whatsoever that getting spaced and crashing from orbit is in any way survivable, much less revivable.
(And don't get me started on how Miranda is clearly with TIM in person in ME2's intro, yet she cannot provide TIM's location to us early in the game so we can stop him from somehow always being a step ahead of us. I know BioWare's explanation would be something akin to, "Oh uh, no, she was just a hologram... A strangely tangible hologram!" But, I'm willing to accept that retcon just as being called "dead" was an exaggeration for dramatic effect, I guess. No amount of space magic or suspension of disbelief reconciles the WAY they "killed" Shepard, though.)
@@pikmonwolf shepard crashed from orbit too? I cannot remember that. Though its been a couple of years in my case :D
So add the impact damage unto shephards mulch of a carcass. Jesus resurrection seems like childsplay next to this I'd say.
@@TheFellOmen me2 has a lot of things to critisize. But shepards revival is not one of them. Any issue with this is purely personal.
The people you see die during jokers escape actually died. If you pay attention to their names, they're on the monument to the dead that's on the Normandy in mass effect 3. They're the only crew members you can't save. I agree with everything else that's it's trigger is B's but if you know about it you can do everything, talk to legion, do his mission and have time to save everyone. I've done it 3 times.
agreed. i never had any issue doing legions stuff.
I'm pretty sure they hard-coded an exception for Legion's loyalty mission so that it does not count against your kidnapped crew members. I have done that one post-abduction and still rescued the full crew.
I love 1 probe all resources mod, saves so much time and patience.
I would've had harbinger trick Sheppard away from the Normandy depending on her background or some other way. I like to play the Sheppard who was a colonist on mindoir. If she got an email from Hackett that pirates attacked or collectors attacking it would make sense for her to go ask for the whole crew? Well, Sheppard helped all of them with their loyalty missions so they want to help especially the love interest.
Also the abduction scene tells us as players that when you go on missions Shepard just goes and brings the entirety of the squadmates on the shuttle with them to choose which ones will join the mission later. And during the mission the rest of them just... wait in the shuttle. Every. Single. Time.
Or the other team is doing other missions while Shep does their's.
I think the biggest problem is the lack of an ease of time with game development. Imagine if they had one more year to make ME2.
Dude, I can't even explain my irrational love for Kelly, so when I saw her getting dragged away screaming, it terrified me, and when she died, I was just sitting there like "nooo my bae!" and I couldn't even believe it.
Flirty red head who is kinda funny.
There is your answer.
is that a donut over the characters eye in your pfp??
Huh, she didn't die in my playthrough. How and where did she die in your playthrough?
@@curtis1552she’ll die on the collector base if you do any missions after the abduction happens
@@tahiti9889I did one mission and she ended up fine. It's after two, I think. That one mission was Legion's so I was able to do one single thing after the abduction.
>"this is the last nice thing i have to say about you in this video, bioware"
>9 whole minutes left
Oh boy.
They could've easily implemented a Virmire-like mission where the entire squad gets stationed (cause why not, nice views and fresh air are rare). And only when you're trying to contact Joker / EDI to bring the Normandy closer to the LZ, you notice that the signal doesn't come through. So Shepard just assumes it's a side effect of the IFF installation, and then you prepare to take the shuttle back to the Normandy, when the kidnapping happens. It wouldn't solve some of the writing problems, but it would distract the player from them, because you wouldn't expect it to happen, especially after the "Mission Success" screen with the Illusive Man sitting on his chair, expecting to be instantly transported to the Normandy like always. Then cut to black, and you see what happened from Joker's perspective.
shepard and crew look at the screen: No, the dumbest part is how many times you got us all killed and had to reload
Haha, I did have to kill them all quite a bit to get the footage for this.
@@pikmonwolf lol
I actually did a perfect first run
@@Dilllonm so I didn't look up anything to help u with the last mission and saved all of them ( the cwre) and get all of the squads loyalty mission
@@shadowstar37 yeah i always got the hint i should do all the missions before - and i always do side quests first - didnt know everything mattered as big as it did
All the squadmates went on Shepard's Loyalty Mission, it was top priority.
I'm just going to assume it has something to do with daddy issues since we were already dealing with everyone else's
It would be really cool to have a Shepard loyalty mission that's based on which backstory you chose
The thing about the whole squad going is what always got me. I imagined that they could have pulled off something better if the rest of the crew just stayed. They could have had squadmate loyalty affect how bad the aftermath of the collector boarding was. More loyal squadmates --> fewer people taken, but then have them die with no chance to save them.
Edit: Actually not even taken. I can't imagine that the collectors would bother processing such a small number of people. When they destroyed the first Normandy, they didn't even try to catch people who left in escape pods. I always assumed they were just trying to kill Shepard.
Regarding your edit, I always had no idea why they didn't go after the pods... there's a comic where Collector General/Harbinger works with the Shadow Broker to retrieve Shepard's body and yet the Collectors apparently didn't consider the fact while attacking the ship that Shepard could have gotten to an escape pod.
@@Jedi_Spartan_38 Interesting, I haven't seen any of the media besides the games. I can't remember what the time frame was for when they wanted to find his body. Maybe it wasn't right after they killed him?
@@PythonDad I can't remember the exact timeframe but it was very shortly after because the comic was about Liara helping Cerberus retrieve Shepard for Project Lazarus so it must have been shortly after the opening.
@@Jedi_Spartan_38 I might need to read it myself. I always got the impression that the idea of building a "human reaper" was a big experiment for the reapers since all of the capital ships were made to look like Harbinger and not until the end of a cycle. Maybe they did in fact make a spur of the moment decision and wanted Shepard's genetic material for it. They are generally "infinitely patient," but from what Leviathan tells Shepard, they are reacting to him/her in ways that don't match their usual MO.
The whole point of that idiocy was to give bioware the excuse of replacing the ship with the bigger one. And also contrive a reason for shepard's skill reset. Except they then spend several minutes repeatedly emphasizing that shepard's memory is perfect. Other than shooting - somehow dying magically makes shepard a better shot than ever before.
This is the result of how game designers always work. They NEVER set out to tell a solid, coherent story. Instead they decide what gameplay they want , then contrive the first inane stupidities that fall out of their skulls into some shallow, superficial semblance of a story that will vaguely string you along through that gameplay. They rarely spend any more time or thought than they absolutely have to mulling it over to ensure it makes sense.
An idea to fix it. Manually triggered, when you trigger it the Normandy returns to the Dock it started the game in to integrate the IFF, Shepherd and Squad do stuff on the station so they're out of the crew's way while the crew integrates the IFF. Make a point of the virus infecting the WHOLE STATION in addition to the Normandy and the collectors attack the entire facility including the Normandy. THEN you can actually have parallel missions, you get to play Shepherd's perspective trying to fight your way to the Normandy; you could design it as a solo mission hearing everyone else also fighting their way to the Normandy over comms, or have Shepherd regroup with squad mates during the mission. Then you also see Joker's perspective.
Of course it would still make more sense for some squad mates to be on the ship for the integration process, like Tali helping in Engineering. Maybe make a point of them not getting the WHOLE crew. Maybe make a point of only Kenneth being abducted, having done something to protect Gaby or vice versa. On top of the most of the Normandy's crew, the crew of the Cerberus shipyard that the Normandy SR2 was built at all get abducted as you have to flee the Collector ship in the Normandy. Also this would better explain the collectors invading the Normandy through the Cargo bay since the docking access on the CIC would be taken up by the station.
And make a point that Shepherd and two squadmates have to finish off the rest of the collectors in the cargo bay as a boss fight for the whole thing.
Wait that can't be true. I always order my missions specifically to bring Legion to Tali's loyalty mission after the abduction and I save the entire crew. There has to be like a one mission grace period before they start offing everyone
Yes, you can definitely do legions loyalty without affecting crew survival.
Exactly, I did it. The CZcamsr needs to be a bit faster.
Correct, as I said you can do 2 missions after collecting the IFF as long as you don't have every loyalty mission done.
@@gustavgustav2670 You can yes, as long as you don't accidentally start the abduction before activating him.
@@pikmonwolf but I had all my loyalty missions done, and was still able to complete Legion's before the abduction.
It's actually so refreshing to see someone criticizing ME2. Everyone seem to consider it if not one of the best games ever, then definitely best one in trilogy and yet all i see is plot holes on plot holes and dumb moments with more plot holes and even more dumb moments and contrivances to get the plot going. Sure, characters are great and the game if good fun because of it, but there's so much that isn't good at all...
Also, another thing that always bothered me about this mission is that we decide to take all the squadmates and leave Normandy without any defense the moment when we are installing unknown reaper crap on our ship. No worries here, nothing ever went wrong with reaper tech, let's just all leave. And imo even another "something suddenly happened" trigger while IFF is installing with at least some explanation why we need bigger squad and two teams there would make leaving for a so important that it's not worth mentioning mission at the point when player had just cleared all quest log to get ready to the last part way less dumb.
I agree that 2 is the weakest. My biggest beef is actually with the gameplay decisions that lead to combat being 90% shooting a lame a smg.
No idea where you've been, but people have been criticizing Mass Effect 2 for years now.
The "entire squad goes on a shuttle for an undisclosed mission" could've been much better written if it was only 2 squad members of choice while they rest of the squad remained on the Normandy.
They could've made a mechanism where a loyal crew manages to repel the attack with only half the squad getting kidnapped, whereas a disloyal squad repels the attack much less effectively so that most of the crew gets kidnapped.
That way, the player would still be incentivized to start the final mission ASAP, but the 3 squad rule wouldn't be broken.
Just finished my first me2 playthrough yesterday and yes this part was very confusing to me. I had tali and legion's missions to finish so when I got to the collector base all but the doctor were killed. And based on that, I had a feeling that if I were to send someone back with her then I'd basically be choosing a squad mate to sacrifice. Needless to say, the doc gets killed in my playthrough. Not cool.
I had to keep Legion alive during the collector base assault, then do its loyalty mission after the final battle. Admittedly, I was confused what this other mission was that Shepherd needed to take everyone away in the shuttle.
This all 100% could've been avoided by just not having the crew get abducted. There was enough stakes without having some arbitrary time limit. They could've played out the processing scene the same with the colonists being killed and you saving Lilith so she could explain what had happened to the others.
Legion could've been part of the actual story without rushing it, no one would've been screwed over, no stupid writing would've been made, and you could've fit scenes of Joker and EDI's developing relationship elsewhere. They could've had it play out after the ship crashes on the base and have a Collector hacking attack that leads to Joker needing to unshackle EDI. Literally nothing would be lost.
The crew get abducted right outside the citadel..
Every one in the citadel and in the citadel fleet: "nothing to see here"
I had met that the scene was super stupid but I forgot about it after Mass Effect 3 started screwing me over within the first 10 minutes of the game.
I greatly wanted my Mass Effect 2 crew back. I would take a crew that was more loyal to me personally than a crew that was more loyal to either Cerberus or the Alliance.
The ending of Mass Effect 2 makes it clear that your crew has now followed you and is now officially "Ex-Cerberus".
Never thought about it that way, I do get what you mean. They're more dedicated to Shepard themself.
@@pikmonwolf Yep. I felt extremely demoted during the 3rd game; from a Spectre who only answers to the Council and can now tell Alliance Admirals to go F themselves, to a simple Alliance lapdog, surrounded by other Alliance lapdogs. A crew that would arrest me at gunpoint if I dared go against the Alliance. The Cerberus crew at the end of ME2 made it clear that they understood that TIM was an untrustworthy boss, and so they have switched over their loyalty and allegiance to me. Every time Samantha told me that I had a new message, it felt like a slap in my face as a reminder that Kelly is gone; remaining in the UNSAFE location known as The Citadel.
@@pikmonwolf 14:07 To be fair, that's what I hate about the DLC missions in ME3; NOBODY, not even Archangel, EVER asks me what it was like to liberate Omega, for example. And the ambiguous mission explanation is where good fanfiction writers come in to fix the problem.
Yeah...
ME2 is filled to the brim with this sort of plot hole.
Like in the intro. There should have been no survivors from the SR1.
None, zero, zip.
The collectors blow up your ship and bugger off, not even trying to wipeout the escape pods on the off-chance Shepard was in one of them.
Also, also. Why didn't they attempt to capture the SR1 and liquefie all the humans? None of them have any seeker countermeasures...
@@starhound9354 *Shrugs*
Your guess is as good as mine.
I think the escape pods getting away is contrived but reasonable enough if they properly scatter. What gets me is that the whole game they say they want Shepard alive, but the first thing they do is blow up their ship.
@@starhound9354 I think that would be because they were unable to lock the thrusters. But the Normandy failed to escape anyways, so I'm sure they could've totally managed to board and use the seekers.
@@pikmonwolf That's fair to a point, but I still feel they should have made some effort to track the pods down, just in case, as the collectors are implied to be thorough, but it's implied that they didn't.
The intro is just weird on a literary level, too much doesn't make sense, like there really shouldn't be anything left of Shepard. We see them start to go through reentry. Even if they didn't totally burn up the impact would at best left them as paste.
Vetor shouldn't have been missed as having the swarms be that specialized is another odd detail. The list begins to snowball on weird moments.
TL:DR. The introduction to ME2 is mostly style with little literary substance.
The collectors as a whole Just dont make sense to me. And the whole human reaper thing was stupid
What gets me is that they has hundreds of thousands of humans for reference... and yet gave the Reaper the wrong amount of eyes.
@@pikmonwolf Thousands of humans = thousands of eyes. It's a gesalt inteligence designed to look freaky and weird. Plus it's not even meant to be seen in the open with cuddlefish like shell built around it. I also doubt the core of the derelict looks exactly like the species it came from too
@@pikmonwolf In universe, I think the Collectors making it was an equivalent to AI Art... when I imput certain person based prompts into AI art apps, there have been loads of times where the image messes up the proportions even though it has 7 - 8 Billion examples of what Humans look like.
(No idea why Bioware designed it that way).
In my first run the abduction didn't trigger instantly. It made me select the mission, the cutscene started when I clicked the "land" button
Solution for the everyone leaving scene: It could easily be said that they need to turn off the Thrusters to install the IFF, and everyone leaves for a special training thing the Illusive Man set up to make sure they're ready for the base, which is a playable section to train the player in selecting people for the right job
I replayed MS 2 a few Months ago. Knowing about this, I did every Mission before triggering the IFF Sequence. The Cutscene makes 0 Sense at this Point, because there are literally no Missions to go on, which means, Biowear wanted Players to trigger this Mission unintentionally... Sooo stupid.
Am I the ONLY ONE who perceived the wisdom of handling the Known before grappling with the Unknown?
Good point Marvin. The best case scenario is that this scene makes even less sense.
One issue i have with the entire squad leaving in the shuttle is that i'm not convinced all of them can fit in there.
Mass effect 2 is my least favourite game to play through, Mass effect one genuinely creeps me out with the Erie robotic music to the body horror and unfeeling geth. Mass effect 2 never had me on edge, never gave me that creepy vibe.. apart from when you go onto the collector ship for the first time and find all the dead bodies.. But that gets really undercut when they say because of the number of pods they are "Targeting earth". From what we know the collectors only have one ship, is it strong? Yes, could if survive an whole attack from the alliance fleet? No. I really do enjoy mass effect 2 I just wish it actually had a story that connected one and three together in a better way.
I always thought the targeting Earth thing was a pretty lame threat. They definitely don't have enough seekers, and we've already fought them at this point so we know they're not unkillable.
It's hard to believe "they're going to attack a super well defended target" is a atep up from "they're attacking defenseless isolated targets."
I manage to do Tali's loyalty mission after the IFF and do Legion's right after without triggering shuttle mission.
Yeah if you have loyalty missions left the abduction triggers after you've done two missions.
My point is that if you've done all the other loyalty missions, this issue pops up.
You can do Legion’s loyalty mission and everyone lives
Great review
Indeed you can, it's just that it's easy for first time players to get into the no win situation.
You can IF you reactivate Legion before touching the galaxy map and speak with them twice.
the first time i ever triggered the abduction event was immediately after tali's loyalty mission so i have to imagine the collector ship appeared in vision of the migrant fleet and both of them just pretended to not see each other
It was a good long while ago so I'm not entirely certain, but I'm pretty sure I did the exact same thing as you - finished all the loyalty missions I had available before the IFF, trigger the abduction & countdown, and therefore got Legion's loyalty mission at the exact wrong time as well as the impression that there was no real rush XD
Less relevant to this video but equally funny is that I also listened to Jacob when he inexplicably insisted to be the one to go into the vents in the suicide mission. Unfortunately it somehow got Samara killed instead of him.
Your vent choice can only get killed themself. So Samara wouldve died from something else. Probably the hold the line section since the way it works is not made clear.
The game gives you subtle clues on who should get picked for what.
The vents require someone SKILLED like an engineer with electronics, especially alien tech. Basically neon signs pointing to Tali, Legion (being a damn AI) and Kasumi (her entire life's work is high tech B&E).
Same with the leader of the other squad; Miranda says it should be someone with LEADERSHIP experience. Garrus, Zaeed, Miranda and even Mordin.
On the final "hold the line", Miranda says that it's going to be taking the brunt of the attention and attack, so right there you know you need your heavy hitters there and NOT with you. Which means Zaeed, Grunt & Garrus need to be there. Anyone else is fine to go with you.
@@sarasunshinemt4444 you made some slight errors: the squad leader has to be Garrus, Miranda or Jacob. Anyone else apparently falls short.
And, if everyone's loyal and you have all 12 squadmates, you can afford to take 1 heavy hitter (Garrus, Zaeed, Grunt) and 1 mid level fighter (Miri, Jacob, Legion, Thane, Samara/Morinth), so long as you also sent a low tier fighter with the crew (Tali, Mordin, Jack, Kasumi).
The squadmates each have a default defense strength, that is affected by their specialisation, and a loyalty bonus. The high tiers have a default defense score of 3 (4 if loyal), the mid tiers at 1(2 if loyal) and the weakest links have 0 (1 if loyal). If the average score (add up whole defense team score, divide by how many are there) is above or at 2, no-one dies
I did almost the same thing my 1st playthrough. Made sure I did everyone's loyalty mission to ensure everyone's survival when Miranda suggested that she could take care of barrier duties. I never picked her for anything so I'm like "Yeah Ok, you're time to shine Miranda!" 5 minutes later, I'm in complete denial/disbelief as GARRUS of all people gets taken by the swarm.
You let me down Miranda 😪
@@uberboomer8670 That happened to be exactly the one other thing I messed up my first run 😅
Trusted Miranda when she said she could get the job done (cos let's face it, she had been pretty damn reliable with her suggestions and assessments so far), and Thane died for my gullibility.
Hot take but Mass Effect 2 is the worst game in the series not the best one. Mass Effect 1 is the best, Mass Effect 3 is second, and Mass Effect 2 is the third.
Honest question, why is ME1 your favorite? I mean, I like it, but probably for the same reasons why others don’t like it. Just shocked to see that someone shares my opinion
Mass Effect 1 is my favorite too. The biggest issues were the dated gameplay aspects that LE fixed.
@@sr2971 In my opinion it’s the most consistent of the franchise between elements of gameplay and the story it’s trying to tell. When you are up against Sovereign an actual Reaper you get that oh shit feeling especially when you see how powerful just one Reaper is. In ME2 you don’t even go against any Reapers just the one off villain of the week Collectors which get killed off just as quickly as they come into existence and you barely even get to spend a lot of time with them as characters in the story. They are simply just filler to space out Sovereign’s Destruction and the arrival of the Reapers of which is one of my main complaints about ME3 is that the Reapers are no where near as powerful as the game tells us they are. The fact that Sovereign was able to completely wipe out entire fleets alone with only help from Geth warships but entire fleets of Reapers of multiple classes including Sovereign class can’t manage so much as to wipe out every fleet they come into contact with within seconds makes no consistent sense. Maybe if they said Sovereign was the most powerful Reaper or something like that and every other Reaper paled in comparison to him then that would make sense but to my knowledge nothing like that exists in the story. Combine that with the fact that even until the moment the Reapers arrive nobody believes Shepard except for the Alliance and even then they are still too caught up in petty squabbling to act as a unified force to face off against the Reapers not to mention have made no technological advancements for fighting the Reapers since they all convinced themselves that they just don’t exist, there is absolutely no reason that most of ME3 should have been able to happen if all the Reapers were as strong as Sovereign or anywhere near as strong as him then almost the entire Galaxy should’ve been completely wiped only a few weeks after their arrival. The cycle present in Shepard’s time isn’t as advanced as the Protheans were so while the Protheans were able to extend it out 100s of years fighting the Reapers even while disjointed and cut off from one another the Council has no such advantage and the one advantage they did have which is the fact that they weren’t cut off from each other due to a surprise attack on the Citadel they decide to throw away so that Shepard has to spend the whole game reuniting everyone when they should have been that way to begin with. If they had said maybe the council was indoctrinated to some extent and that’s why they refused to believe Shepard about the Reapers that would’ve fixed so much about the BS plot line that takes place but as far as I know they don’t.
@@pikmonwolf it’s the Goat 🐐
@@MasterFief
Huh, those are great reasons- I didn’t even consider that part about sovereign, but it makes a lot of sense. Sovereign must’ve been some sort of special prodigy, since it took everything to stop it, as opposed to ME3 where you get to kill 2 reapers before the endgame (on tuchanka and on Tali’s mission).
And yeah, the sudden mention of the collectors threw me for a loop, too. At least they tried to tie it in with the human reaper thing, but the human reaper battle lowkey let me down. It scared me initially when it came to life, but after that, all I had to do was aim for weak points and I don’t remember taking any damage during that portion.
But yeah, you’ve obviously considered this longer than I have. My reasons were just me being petty about certain decisions that the writers decided didn’t matter, but yours are a lot more reasonable. Neat.
I genuinely think the Reaper IFF should have been optionally activated. We get so little time with Legion
I was able to do the suicide mission successfully with only 3 loyal squadmates and without ever visiting Illium (meaning I had not met or recruited Thane or Samara). This gave me plenty of missions to do after and listen to Legion dialogue, though I clearly wasn't meant to do this given their recruitment dialogue remains unchanged
2:45 It was not an "arbitrary decision"... it had to do with one of the consoles at the time (I cannot remember which) with multi-disk issues. Having to break the came up into multiple disks meant they had to separate what goes where. In doing so, they at least believed that they had no other option than to put all of Legion onto the latter disk. I'm not saying it was the RIGHT decision, just not an "arbitrary" one.
That's actually a rumor, I believed it too until I found what Legion's writer said when making the video on the character.
One other thing with this mission. Prior to this and during, EDI always calls Joker "Mr Moreau". After it (and in ME3), EDI always calls him Jeff. Presumably related to him releasing EDI's AI shackles as part of this mission, it is effectively the start of their ME3 relationship, but is it a feeling of gratitude in response to him "freeing" EDI or because he released the shackles EDI is now free to feel and this is the first step of that?
Every time I get to around this point in the game (like I did last night coincidentally) I always have to use a guide and triple check to make sure I'm not gonna fuck myself over and get the crew killed(I saved Tali's loyalty mission for after getting the IFF so I had a bit of a buffer), and this awkward timing with most of the "big" story missions (plus all the planet probing for minerals/research) stop me from calling this the best game in the trilogy. The legion issue could just be fixed by having him on a mission earlier in the game, like maybe Tail's recruitment mission, have it be that she recovered an intact, deactivated geth and you have to convince her to let you activate it and send it back to the migrant fleet for studying. I do agree that the player should just have the option to activate the IFF whenever they feel they're ready. My idea would be then maybe you get told the next time you have to leave the ship you need to take a shuttle and pick 2 squadmates to take with you and whatever nonloyal squadmates are still on the Normandy get captured/killed along with the crew.
That's a cool idea, however it would mean if you do the IFF as soon as it's available, most of your crew wouldn't be loyal and thus you'd get super fucked.
@@pikmonwolf Yeah that's fair. I was just thinking of a reason to keep the squad mates on the ship and not have everyone in a single shuttle to justify the Normandy crew all being kidnapped. I like the kidnapping as a set piece (and playing as Joker, who can't do anything but watch on in horror) but it would have to be heavily re-worked/written for it to actually make sense. It's also just another issue with the game penalizing people that don't immediately go and do every side activity before the next story beat.
@@dylanmckenna4760 yeah when I first played me2 I rushed past story and got the ship team killed but all squad mates lived tho
Putting Legion in Tali's recruitment mission would most likely have required that Tali's recruitment be made mandatory, so that does require a little more work. But of all places, Haestrom would've been quite easy to tie into the main story. It is one of the more interesting places in the Mass Effect universe, and there are signs that it originally was actually meant to serve a larger role.
So imagine it goes something like this:
Tali's are never mentioned in the entire game after Freedom's Progress.
Some time after Horizon, the Illusive Man calls Shepard.
The Illusive Man tells Shepard that he has recently learned of some Reaper MacGuffin located on Haestrom.
This MacGuffin has some sort of a connection with the anomalous activity of Haestrom's star, Dholen.
Complicating the matters is that the Migrant Fleet has been investigating Dholen for a while now.
As such, it is urgent that the MacGuffin be recovered before the Migrant Fleet finds it.
The player is forced to start the mission.
The mission progresses as it normally does, except maybe it's 2 corridors longer to make way for Legion.
Legion is found during the mission. He might be disabled or cooperative. Either way, he is deemed interesting enough to be recovered.
The meeting with Tali is treated as a surprise to everyone involved.
The dialogue here is changed to reflect how the goals of Cerberus and the Migrant Fleet are in stark contrast.
The dialogue here also gives explanation to the nature of the MacGuffin and its connection to Dholen.
Tali joins Shepard begrudgingly and the MacGuffin is recovered.
This mission could work I believe. It would then also make way for some very spicy drama for when Shepard and the Migrant Fleet meet.
@@andrasfogarasi5014 and her loyalty mission what about that if we mix that in?
Legion: this event took everything from me
Even being a kid who by then didn't speak a word of english,i never understood why all the crew left for some unknown mission,all those years ago when i played the game for the first time. Ever since i just jokingly tell myself they went to ransack citadels booze reserves,even that sounds like a better explanation than quite literally nothing
Indeed, it truly is out of nowhere. Also I assune you at least had translated subtitles? Lol
@@pikmonwolf Well,yes,had russian subtitles on. But it's hard for a small brain kid to read and watch a scene/play the game at the same time. At least now i dont have such a problem,and can finally play games without semi random input
Always a good day when Pikmon releases a Mass Effect video.
Hell yeah
Yeah started Mass effect 3 and everything just makes much more sense and even the storyline is better. ME2 kind of felt like a masseffect 1.5, I mean there wasnt really an antagonist either except the host of the collectors AKA Harbinger...who we never fought...and also didnt seem to even die because it disconnected control before the explosion?
During development. It was possible to do pretty much any mission in any order. Which you can see if you use a safe editor and have companions that normally wouldn't be available later game in early missions. Most have audio to contribute to whatever's going on in the mission.
As a legion fan the idea that your crew is kidnapped and shepherd is forced to reactivate a possible hostile geth to help them save the crew sounds cool, sad it didn't go that way
Thank you for pointing out the apparently non-lethal yet phenomenally violent takedowns of your crew. I remember being confused about the crew still being alive on the collector base since I was convinced Joker personally witnessed about half a dozen deaths on his way to the AI core.
Also, can we agree the collectors were such a dumb, filler antagonist? They literally don't exist outside of the second game, nor do they change ANYTHING about the trilogy
If Mass Effect 2 is a filler then I’m glad it’s an entertaining filler. Mass Effect 1: the reapers are coming. Mass Effect 3: the reapers arrive. Mass Effect 2: uh what do we do in the mean time? 😂 let’s have Shepard meet some new characters and go on missions with them.
I guess ME2 was preparing for ME3, Liara becoming SB, Wrex uniting his people, Shepard learning that Quarians and Geth might have a chance at peace.
@@predetor911 that's kind of the funny thing, it's almost entirely disjointed from the rest of the trilogy yet I think it's the best overall game in the series
Legion have mission line from missions before you get him which mean he could have gotten have much earlier if they didn’t change it.
Yep, I talk about that in my Legion video. Folding him into the IFF mission was totally arbitrary.
@@pikmonwolf it make me wonder, did they plan to have a mission just for him or they always plan him with the iff?
@@pikmonwolf yup
If I remember right, the story was initially written to have the Geth revive Shepard instead of Cerberus, which would imply that Legion would be one of your first squaddies
@@dastalinstarblade4618 wait really!?
So the moral of the story is: DIRECT INTERVENTION IS NECERSARRY. I WILL DIRECT THIS PERSONALLY. I AM ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL.
One thing I absolutely disagree with: Space Hamster would have life support systems in his box. No way we're losing him
If I'm remembering correctly it's possible to delay the activation of the reapers IFF however it is kinda hard to get it to work on the delay and after you delay it you will need to talk to Mordin about the reaper IFF.
My work-around was not to do Miranda's loyalty mission.
The original game had her pegged as so important, that it never triggered the abduction for me until she was loyal.
Which was really nice, since it let me bring Legion onto Tali's missions, and hilarity ensued.
Legendary Edition "fixed" that, though.
It just comes down to having loyalty missions remaining. As long as you have some remaining you can do 2 missions before the abduction.
If you have none but activate Legion before touching the galaxy map you can do their mission.
@pikmonwolf I know that you can definitely do Legion's loyalty mission without losing anyone; I never tried pushing it tho.
@@sarasunshinemt4444 I was able to get a 100% on ME 2 and ME3 without the hassle of using a save editor on the first attempt however I had to sit around and spend a long time in one of the delay parts of the game. You can technically delay every mission without any problem with the story itself and basically if you do maximum delay between each mission to scout every planet you will be able to sell your excess resources for credit and purchase every single upgrade and weapon.
Honestly, I love Mass Effect 2, but it's nowhere near the perfect gem that so many people hold it up as IMO. Besides this scene, there are other significant problems I have with it, especially in terms of the story. Everything wrh with this mission is a perfect example. There's also the way the Collectors feel like nothing more than a distraction in the grand scheme of things, because they completely disappear from the story afterwards. This game also introduces issues with the overall story that carry over into ME3. Such as the Dark Energy it point on Haestrom that went nowhere. Or the retcon about the Reapers being organic/synthetic hybrids that is introduced during the Collector Base mission, especially because the way it's told to Shepard by EDI almost insinuates that this was something that has been known for a while by the Alliance and/or Cerberus, even though even the Codex has flat out stated that the Reapers are synthetic life forms with no room for misinterpretation. The fact that Reapers are created from organic races in the first place is an issue IMO. The game tosses out this plot point, but then just does nothing with it other than the Human Reaper boss fight, leaving the next game to try and explain why the Reapers do this. That's why I hold the terrible answer to this question we get in ME3 on THIS game. Because you shouldn't create a MASSIVELY compelling plot point like this if you don't have a good way to tie up this plot thread. It's like a making a promise that you have no idea how to keep. Like, I know there were a lot of issues behind the scene at Bioware, especially if that rumor I've heard about how the Geth were originally supposed to be the ones who rebuilt Shepard and Legion was supposed to be the first squad mate are true, but that doesn't mean the final product gets a free pass. Like I said, I do love this game, but it's far from perfect, and it honestly might be my least favorite game in the trilogy. The first game easily has the best story, and the third game has the best gameplay, so this game has always felt like a somewhat awkward middle ground to me, which is why I don't like it as much.
I'd argue that most people's issues with the narrative of ME2 are actually issues with ME3.
ME 3 MADE the Collectors a footnote in the larger story. ME3 MADE the choice of handing over the Collector Base feel small.
I’m trying to figure out how the heck they fit everyone in that shuttle, Kodiak isn’t exactly known to be very roomy
I always wished that there was an ACTUAL mission for the players to do, then when we return to the Normandy and reconnect with Joker, we find out what happened and see it through a flashback in the stead of Joker telling Shep. That way the scene where we control Joker and see what happens still exists, but we can actively see WHY Shepard and the squad had to leave the Normandy.
I was fast and was able to do Legion's loyalty mission before the abduction scene triggered, just activate legion immediately, get the mission, and rush up to the galaxy map.
The timer doesn't measure actual time, but rather how many missions you do. If you touch the map before activating Legion while having all other loyalty missions done, you WILL have to pick between the loyalty mission and saving the crew.
@@pikmonwolf then activate Legion before doing it
@@channel45853 Yes that's what you're supposed to do, my point is that it can screw over first time players.
@@pikmonwolf I'll agree there
It’s very weird that Legion gets shafted so late in the game. We know that behind the scenes, Legion was going to be a squad mate much earlier in the game. Yet they changed it for some reason I can’t fathom.
I do t know why they didn’t do a Witcher 3 thing, where the game tells you there’s a point of no return. Because I remember getting screwed during my first playthrough, not doing the IFF when I haven’t even did half the loyalty missions.
Yeah they put 'surprising the player' way too high on the priority list.
@@pikmonwolf another wrong lesson I took was actually during suicide mission when I first played. As I was very shocked confused why Tali tied, even though she’s the tech expert. I took the wrong lesson that whoever I chose for the role of whatever task will die, resulting in me nearly losing half of my crew.
When I found out Tali’s survival was tied to her loyalty, I was even more confused. How does solving people’s daddy issues make them better in their field? Like if there was a mechanic of improving each individual squad mates skills in their respective field I could buy it, but not this.
@@ryanelliott71698 I mean you know that phsychology proved your mental health and even basic stuff like daddy issues(even though its not,she was about to be f exiled) greatly correlate with your performanace in life.
Another way to not trigger the IFF before activating Legion is to walk as close to the wall as posible and get onto the elevator. If you walk close to the galaxy map, you activate the hidden timer. That is what I always do and since I always leave Arrival until the very end, for story purposes, I always get a bit more time to get Legion’s dialogue.
You don't have to do the wall thing. Once you get Legion just activate it and talk twice, that's it
The only problem with letting the player trigger the IFF integration is that there isn't a way to get the crew off the ship. However, they could've just added a red herring mission like "hey, Edi realized we are missing some important code/part during the integration, go here to get the macguffin" then use that mission to get everyone off. That way the mission is meaningless after the abduction so they don't have to make a brand new map/mission, and there is a good reason to go on an important mission. You'd still probably need a good narrative reason to get everyone off tho, maybe hype it up to be a really big thing and send multiple shuttles?
Also the space hamster could've survived cause it's not like Edi needed to vent rooms that didn't have enemies in them, they could've just not been in your quarters at the time. Don't have a good excuse for objects not getting thrown around tho.
ME2's main narrative is already full of contrivances and holes, but the very beginning really caused me to be critical of the entire game and not forgive flaws. The first cutscene where Sheppard dies AND THEN RE-ENTERS AN ATMOSPHERE, then somehow brought back still endlessly bothers me. There wouldn't be enough left to fill a matchbox. They could've just had her be stuck in an unknown orbit which would've at least preserved her body to a reasonable degree.
Perhaps they could’ve added a sort of mission where it’s a mass multi front attack on a planet from the collectors. This requiring all your squad mates to drop off at multiple locations to help save as many colonists or whatever aliens or Cerberus you are saving. If you had all possible squad mates than you saved most if not all of them, this then could come up later as a war asset in ME3.
The other (other) stupid thing, when they get the chance to board the Collector Cruiser, why did they not take a hoofing great nuclear bomb with them? It was obviously a trap, they were obviously waiting for Shepard in particular, why not stop off at some Cerberus black site and pick up a frickin' giant bomb to make absolutely sure the Collector ship won't be a problem for anyone anymore.
Hah, not a bad point. I think the main reason is the Illusive man convinced Shepard that they needed to move quickly as he was stalling the Turians. His reasoning was probably to make the collectors less suspicious.
Still a perfect series in my eyes, I'll just keep enjoying every part of it.
Ehm. Not exactly true that you have to do the last mission immediately. Atleast in the legendary edition. I did the IFF mission, then activated Legion, then did Tali's loyalty mission with Legion as squadmate and then did Legions loyalty mission. Chambers, Rupert and Gabby survived just fine and was still alive and well in mass effect 3 aswell.
the way shepard only takes 3 squadmates with him in the cutscene before the collector attack (which is already weird on it's own because in gameplay you as the player can only take 2 with you) and then all of sudden EVERY single squad mate is gone has baffled me even during my current playthrough of the entire series, it's so weird
good video as always man
I always do Talis loyalty mission after acquiring the IFF. Then I do Legions after Tali. By the time the abduction happens I have all squad members loyalties.
I am thinking about doing my own fanfiction for Mass Effect. I'm going to base it off of rules of actual military Squad formations instead of RPG elements. I know in real life military a squad consists of at least five people. Though I do like to take Garrus and Wrex for ME1, realistically I know each Squad member should at least be given time to rest. I think it was so stupid that's before the abduction, everyone was able to fit into the shuttle. Yet throughout the majority of the game you're only taking two Squad members. I think so many problems could have been avoided if you're taking a full complement. One area I think is in Mass Effect 3 when you're choosing between saving Grunts squad or Rachni Queen. One person I would leave with Grunt would be Liara for biotic support while Shepard saves the Queen.
Ahh yes, the clown shuttle
My biggest problem with it is how they simply did not need to do that. We already want to go to the collectors we dont need extra Motivation.
What would fix the issue of the "all squadmates go aboard the shuttle" is to have a really big, important mission. Something that definitely requires ALL of the crew, like Virmire in ME1 or the Suicide mission. They could even do a total switcheroo by starting the mission and planning phase with Shepard and then after a few minutes of gameplay surprise us by switching to Joker's POV. Or just have that somewhere in the middle of the mission and then afterwards we continue as Shepard.
I think this definitely looks like something they had planned but lacked the time/resources to do, so they went full budget-cop-out-mode. Doing the switcheroo would at least mean they only had to build the start of the mission, so we know what is going on and what the squadmates and Shepard do while the crew gets abducted.
Welcome back!
Hah thanks, this took longer than it was meant to, but I'm still happy enough with this upload date.
100% agree! I feel that way with forcing the Horizon mission too.
The lack of timer thing is an issue. It’s like in ME3 with Grissom Academy, no timer, no urgency, but if you don’t go in so many missions after receiving it, you doom Jack and the students.
It's not a mission amount, but rather that you need to do Grissom before finishing the Tuchunka storyline. Same with a lot of missions on the citadel. I agree it could be communicated better, but you have much more control.
The Thuchunka bomb missions do have a timer where you can only do X missions, but you're pretty much always going to do that whole chain in a row.
How can you say there's no urgency when it tells you they're probably being attacked by Cerberus?
@@zelohendricks51 Because of LITERALLY EVERY OTHER INSTANCE in Mass Effect (as mentioned, ME1), and nearly every other game.
The "help we're under attack, if you dont come help us we're gonna die" and if you piss off to do 200 dungeons or sidequests, they'll still be totally fine...
And out of the "imminent threat" missions in the series, there's less timed missions than you can count with one hand, pretty sure
@@higueraft571 This is a whole lot of nothing. Just like Mass Effect 2s final mission the game tells you things are dire. Blame yourself for being slow
@@zelohendricks51 Have you ever heard of "The Boy who cried Wolf"?
"This is dire!" - NOT TIMED
"This is dire!" - NOT TIMED
"This is dire!" - NOT TIMED
"This is dire!" - NOT TIMED
"This is dire!" - TIMED
"This is dire!" - NOT TIMED
Doesnt help if it's a hidden timer with no warning aside from the general "this is dire!" the game has ALREADY hit you several times with no issues.
If it took those mentions seriously (like for example Dead Rising 1)? Then sure you'd have a point. Except it doesnt, like nearly any other game (like Infamous 2, Skyrim, Fallout, Mass Effect 1, etc)...
and, of course
Pretty much every single MMO ever
And that’s why I saved Tali’s mission after I get Legion so I can do both hers and its loyalty missions (and also the unique interactions as well lol)
I was able to bring Legion with me to go recruit Tali, which has its own unique interactions, if you have not tried this yet you should, it's amusing. ME2 is a terribly flawed game, but it had its moments.
The IFF trap, surprise attack and noodle excuse mission that requires every squad member but has no gameplay could be partially fixed by making the excuse mission about testing the IFF. Shephard isn't willing to let the possibly dangerous device fully loose on the ship yet, but doesn't know how integrated it already is, so they decide to try it on some collector controlled comm base or whatever. Go on an actual mission with a map location, park the squadmates in an FOB/second comm centre/excuse-a-torium for needing more than the usual team size, win, and ping the IFF through a network to see what its connected to. The broadcast defeats the Normandies stealth systems. Then reveal the collector ship has been ghosting the N2s general vicinity ever since the IFF was picked up, and was waiting for Shephard to uh, shepherd them in.
This makes the abduction not an ambush on a random timer, but a direct response exploiting the players handling of the device, and the heavy hitters are off the ship specifically to babysit the device as it spreads across a limited network, which makes loading them in a shuttle somewhat less stupid.
15:13 Everything about that section has always annoyed me. And what’s worse is that they could have easily made it work.
In my head canon, the Collectors deliberately leak information about an impending attack on Eden Prime. Similar to Horizon, but this time the Normandy has enough time to get there and set a trap. This is why the entire squad goes down to the surface. The Normandy isn’t aware it’s a Collector trap and think they’re outsmarting the Collectors by setting a trap of their own. Boom, easy explanation.
That’s the most frustrating part of the writing here. They just didn’t even bother to try.
As for them not using seekers, there is an explanation they could have used to explain that way. The seekers make sense when your job is to abduct a large population of tens of thousands of people and you need to do it quickly and leaving as few witnesses as possible. Against a ship where the goal wasn’t to not leave witnesses, but simply to abduct the crew of a ship, the Collectors (in their arrogance) probably figured they didn’t need to use them.
It’s not a great explanation. But I’m throwing BioWare a lifeline here lol.
18:18 Tbf I never saw that as an intentional gag. The only real reason we find it funny is because of the rag doll, and that’s probably just a limitation of the engine when it comes to throwing bipeds around.
It's also possible the Reaper IFF scanned the _Normandy_ computer systems and found files on things like the Collector countermeasures. Having them installed on the _Normandy_ itself, a sensible precautionary step in advance of a literal suicide mission into the Collector homeworld, would be a near-zero-effort fix which could be explained by a throwaway dialogue line or even just a modification to a Codex entry. The fact that the Reaper IFF caused unspecified stability issues in some systems means this is literally a shoe-in, nobody would need to be convinced that seemingly-magical Reaper tech salvaged directly off of a Reaper warship could do this. The Collectors simply wouldn't try to use the seekers simply because they knew they wouldn't work.
Concerning your idea: Given that the Collectors have thus far kept to the outer colonies mostly in the Terminus, it feels more _likely_ that they just followed a handful of "lucky" (Meaning intentional) Collector ship sightings on a course to a known human colony, and they followed it there, sending the entire squad. This is _easily_ justified since it would be expected that given the size of the Collector ships Shepard's team sees from the inside, and given their previous experiences on Horizon, they would very likely conclude that a single three-man team would be wholly insufficient to cover the whole colony. Repulsing an in-progress attack on Horizon by reactivating its defenses is one thing, defending a whole colony and preventing anyone else from getting caught at all is another, it requires a lot more manpower since there's a lot more ground to cover. This could even justify not having a mission on the planet surface, because the Collector ship would be a no-show: Its _real_ target is the _Normandy._
Mass Effect games are great until you start thinking about them, unfortunately.
They definitely have a lot that crumbles under scrutiny. But there's also a lot with more depth than it first seems.
@@pikmonwolf I just can't get over how I realized that ME1's plot has one of the dumbest plots ever (after I watched the sins video), and it's my favorite game of the trilogy
This explains me why I had never achieved the rescued squad, only Chakvas.
I don't know if it was like this in the original but in my most recent playthrough of Legendary Edition, I hadn't gotten Legion's loyalty mission so it forced the abduction, I then loaded my save, talked to Legion, got the Heretics mission in my journal, and this time upon going to the galaxy map, it did not force the abduction until I completed the loyalty mission. I did have every other loyalty quest done before IFF. Does that work in the original or no?
Yes