Mass Effect 2 forces the player to join a racist terrorist group and does nothing interesting, and then Mass Effect 3 is pure anticlimax. As Franck says, it just seems like they had no idea where to go after the first one.
EDIT: Cerberus is xenophobic, not racist. I am fully aware of the existence of Cerberus.
After all, the question if it's right to use the resources of people you profoundly disagree with (if you do! You can be a mankind-first person in ME after all) if you have to to stop a greater evil is far more interesting than having all the resources you want without any strings attached.
> Cerberus is a human-survivalist paramilitary group led by the enigmatic Illusive Man. Cerberus' core belief is that humans deserve a greater role in the galactic community, and that the Systems Alliance is too hamstrung by law and public opinion to stand up effectively to the other Citadel races. Cerberus supports the principle that any methods of advancing humanity's ascension are entirely justified, including illegal or dangerous experimentation, terrorist activities, sabotage and assassination. Cerberus operatives accept that these methods are brutal, but believe history will vindicate them. Nevertheless, both the Systems Alliance and the Citadel Council have declared Cerberus to be a terrorist organization and will prosecute identified Cerberus agents accordingly.
- In ME1 they're a rogue bunch of moustache-twirling villains who feed humans to thresher maws to find out exactly how much of a crunchy sound they make. You're supposed to happily shoot them on sight without the slightest care.
- In ME2 they're a cynical and wealthy "the end justifies the means" organization of human patriots who trample over ethics in pursuit of a greater good, such as kidnapping kids to turn them into biotics and give humanity an edge. You're supposed to feel conflicted and hate the means they employ while recognising you do need to work with them.
- In ME3 they're back to moustache-twirling, but now they're also a giant army trying to take over the entire galaxy, and worst of all they also have Kai Leng as a poster boy. You're supposed to treat them as the secondary but unambiguous villain of the story (even if in ME2 you role-played as a fellow human supremacist).
In hindsight, Bioware should probably have kept the ME1 version as cannon fodder and put Martin Sheen in charge of a different, non-moustache-twirling but still ethically questionable human-first organization. What they actually ended up writing was a narrative trainwreck.
(ME 1: Drew Karpyshyn) Cerberus thinks humanity has to have the techonological edge, even when it comes to crossing the ethics line, a simple "for science!" taken to the extreme. Even before you figure it out you expect a blackop like that to exist.
(ME 2: Karpyshyn & Mac Walters) We need a fresh start for players who didn't play ME1, Cerberus is a little more ambigious and the overall tone darker-er, still agreeable (given aliens' and human governments do nothing about it) or at least understandable line of thinking "we can't save everyone let's focus on our kind". Weak but not horrible.
(ME3: Walters) WE WERE REAPERS ALL ALONG. WE COMMON HUMANOID ENEMY NOW. ALSO MARTIN SHEEN.
ME2 streamlined a lot of things but the game lost its RPG elements as a consequence. The scanner game was moronic.
ME3 struck a slightly better balance but the "side quests" were ridiculous.
The real problem is, story wise, the latter two games could never live up to the first. Hell, The Expanse demonstrates that very phenomenon. The first two books are fantastic, but Abaddon's Gate and Cibola Burn are only decent by comparison.
My favorite of all might be the novella The Churn, which explores the backstory of Amos, the Laconic muscle of the Expanse crew.
The way I remember it - the universe was dying of entropy. The Reapers were created to solve the problem of entropy, but could not do so by the time of the events of Mass Effect. The purpose of the Reapers was to combine the intelligence of each species in order to attempt to solve the problem. Each cycle, species would be harvested to add to the computing power of the Reaper fleet.
The final choice of the series was to be: 1. Acquiesce to the demands of the Reapers, and join them in their quest to save the universe; or 2. Do not acquiesce, end the cycle of destruction, and trust that the races of the galaxy will be able to solve the problem.
This is an infinitely better ending than what we got. Although...the indoctrination theory would have been breathtaking as well. Too bad BioWare wasn't that clever.
That seems to be the case. Drew Karpyshyn, the lead writer of ME1 and ME2, admitted that his original planned ending wasn't "super fleshed out"
http://www.pcgamer.com/mass-effect-3-series-former-lead-writ...
Karpyshyn left BioWare shortly before the conclusion of Mass Effect 2, with Mac Walters taking over as lead writer for Mass Effect 3. Even so, Karpyshyn defended series' real ending, pointing out that his planned version was just as likely to disappoint.
"... because endings are so important – you better know what your ending is and you better be setting that ending up right from the beginning. Otherwise it just feels muddy and unsatisfying."
The point I took from both articles was that the Mass Effect series never had a solid vision for the ending (which Karpyshyn admitted), and it showed in the way many (most?) people reacted to ME3.
io9 has a nice writeup around this: http://io9.gizmodo.com/5886178/why-mass-effect-is-the-most-i...
Arguably in both Star Trek and Mass Effect, humans came from being relative newcomers to becoming legendary leaders and saviors of the universe.
a racist terrorist group that lets you recruit aliens? that let's you protect human colonies when the council don't bother allocating any resources to their protection? this is about survival, like Shepard says himself.
Cerberus is a human-survivalist paramilitary group led by the enigmatic Illusive Man. Cerberus' core belief is that humans deserve a greater role in the galactic community, and that the Systems Alliance is too hamstrung by law and public opinion to stand up effectively to the other Citadel races. Cerberus supports the principle that any methods of advancing humanity's ascension are entirely justified, including illegal or dangerous experimentation, terrorist activities, sabotage and assassination. Cerberus operatives accept that these methods are brutal, but believe history will vindicate them. Nevertheless, both the Systems Alliance and the Citadel Council have declared Cerberus to be a terrorist organization and will prosecute identified Cerberus agents accordingly.
I played with engineer class, and it kinda sucked, none of the engineer powers were that useful, and engineers couldn't use any decent weapon, in the end I finished the entire game with the starting pistol (yes, even the final boss I killed with the starting pistol).
Oh... and those elevators... but in a way I missed them in ME2 too.
Yeah the sequel was as long, boring corridor with virtually no freedom at all. That's a good example of how games have changed throughout the years.
Exploring a sandbox is only interesting when it's actually filled with something to find. Still, I think the game play of both ME1 and ME2 (and ME3) actually fit their respective points in the story line.
ME1: You don't really know what's going on, you have a vague feeling, but it's mostly "let's stumble around and see what we can find"
ME2: Okay, you know what will happen, but almost everyone else is in denial and doesn't want to help you, so you have to be laser-focused to fix the immediate problem with whatever you have at hand.
ME3: Denial is over, the problem is squarely in everyone's face and even if some people still want to ignore it your focus is more on showing people that your way to deal with the problem is in their best interest as much as in yours.