Sequel Slump: Mass Effect 2

Three years after the title’s original release, RPGamer editorializes on Mass Effect 2, and presents a slightly critical take on the title. In case you haven’t played the plot yet and want to go in blind, you should be warned there are some spoilers:

Despite all that, the plot is what really breaks the game for me. The game opens with the Normandy destroyed and Commander Shepard dead in high orbit over a nameless planet. Cut ahead two years and Shep is waking up from a treatment center under the tender ministrations of Cerberus. As reminder, the first game had three villains: the Geth, Batarians, and Cerberus. And Cerberus wasn’t even especially villainous during the original, as it was only on every fourth explorable planet that players would come across a distress signal from a Cerberus research facility. The group would be looking into something like testing the effects of mutagens on humans or the long term interactions between horrible space monsters and planetary colonists, but things had gone horribly wrong and from Shepard and crew would clean it up. Mass Effect 1 presented a pro-human terrorist organization that only succeeds at killing humans by accident. The Cerberus of ME2 is a sprawling, clandestine organization with access to technology far greater than that fielded by the Systems Alliance and the Citadel Council, but with little more than a handwave explanation for the discrepancy.

Cerberus and the Illusive Man didn’t bring Shepard back from the dead for any reasons related to actual plot points of the first game. The ancient Prothean data construct inside her brain doesn’t even get mentioned. There’s some half-assed excuse about being a symbol for the potential of humanity and having you on the side of Cerberus is emblematic of something…except players then spend the rest of the game operating covertly (or at least it’s supposed to be covert, everyone recognizes Shepard and her ship no matter where you go). It seems the actual reason the Illusive Man needs the Commander is to assemble a rag-tag bunch of misfits and then use the power of life-affirming field trips to turn them into a fighting force capable of anything. So, Shepard came back from the dead because she’s a BioWare protagonist. The Illusive Man could have invested those same six million dollars into an metafictional warp-gate to grab Wu the Lotus Blossom out of Two Rivers and gotten the same results. Of course being the best hope for humanity doesn’t mean that Shepard should be part of strategic decisions or be fully briefed on all of the errands she gets sent on by her new terrorist masters. No, she can be unknowingly be sent to spring traps for no other reason than “authentic reaction.” That’s a great use of resources there, Mr. Illusive. However, all is forgiven because putting together a team and performing psychotherapy by sidequest is what BioWare does best. A game where that is the whole point of the plot should be pretty spot on.