Mass Effect 2: Electric Boogaloo

If you're not tired of reading my Mass Effect 2-related ramblings, this is the post for you!

This is the coolest office ever constructed, so surely you will fight The Illusive Man here and not some random side villain, right? Right?

Characters

Even though I spent most of the last post whining about Mass Effect 2's new direction, I can't disagree with the consensus that its character-focused stories were executed extremely well. The main plot may be a complete mess, but BioWare's writers nailed this game's party members and the decision to structure the game around them was a great one. For those not in the know, most party members have two missions centered around them: one in which you recruit them after solving their immediate problem and one in which you resolve some long-term problem in their lives. After finishing the second mission, that squadmate will become "loyal." This boils down to unlocking a new special power and (purely cosmetic) outfit for them, plus making them less likely to die in the final mission. These missions comprise the bulk of the game; there is very little content analogous to the main missions in the original Mass Effect.

The recruitment missions are fairly by-the-numbers. You travel to the area where the candidate is holed up, shoot some dudes, have a brief chat with them, and they accept your job offer. Here's the full list of party members:

• Jacob: For plot reasons, he's one of your first party members, which I think is unfortunate. Given that you spend Mass Effect 2 working for a human-supremacist terrorist organization, the humans do need to be front-loaded, but Jacob is not a good introduction to this universe, especially given this game's implicit goal of greatly expanding the series' player base. Jacob is terminally boring. He's an average guy on a ship full of weirdos from eight different species, and he just doesn't bring anything interesting to the mix. Unless you're looking to romance him, there's really no reason to talk to him...ever.
• Miranda: Also given to you at the start of the game. Her character design is blatant teenage boy fanservice, but her personality doesn't match at all. She's cold, manipulative, and has a massive superiority complex. I think the character artist and the writer could have worked more closely together here. If you've decided you need a T&A character, shouldn't she be warm and flirtatious (at least toward a male Shepard)? When I imagine someone with Miranda's personality, I think of a CEO-type: slender, hair worn up, glasses, etc. (Though glasses don't make much sense in a sci-fi setting. Magic space glasses, then.)
• Mordin: A Salarian and the team Doctor of Everything. Mordin's a great character and in retrospect it's a real shame that the first Mass Effect didn't have any Salarian party members. They are canonically one of the three most important species in the Milky Way, but this is the first time we get to talk to one at length. His conversations are consistently some of the best in the game, from arguing over the moral implications of his bioweapon research to his riff on "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General."
• Garrus: A fan favorite from the last game returns. Ironically, Garrus actually serves the function of the Regular Guy that was intended to be Jacob's job. Garrus can be relied upon to be Shepard's bro in any situation, despite being a spiky-headed alien. That's great for returning fans and unfortunate for players new to the series (including anyone playing on the PS3), who probably had no idea what they were intended to feel when "Archangel's" true identity was revealed.
• Grunt: KROGAN SMASH PUNY HUMAN! Grunt is...a Krogan. He has a "what does it mean to be Krogan" arc that does not and can not go anywhere deep, because the Krogan themselves aren't deep. The Krogan are only interesting for what the Salarians and Turians did to them rather than any inherent attributes. Imagine one of Tolkien's orcs pondering the true meaning of orc-hood and you get the idea. In short, the decision to bring back Wrex in Mass Effect 3 rather than subject players to more of Grunt was a good one.
• Jack: A psychotic biotic. Winner of the "least practical outfit" contest by a country mile. The game tries to mislead the player regarding her gender, but whoever wrote that mission forgot to tell the marketing department, because I remember that reveal being spoiled by a trailer. Also the absolute last person you should be recruiting, given that she spent her childhood being tortured by the organization for whom you are now working. But if you absolutely insist upon having a Chaotic Evil party member, I suppose she will do.
• Tali: Another squadmate from the first Mass Effect. Tali is now the full-time team nerd now that Liara is no longer available for or interested in sharing the position. The Quarians are one of the more interesting races in the setting, and now we get to see their fleet up close. Sadly, Mass Effect 2 teases you by reintroducing Tali in the second mission but delaying her recruitment until the latter stages of the game; I would have liked to have her in my party from the start.
• Samara: An Asari and the anti-Liara. Samara is a space paladin and her alignment is firmly Lawful Stupid. Thankfully, this doesn't affect the plot after her recruitment mission, since she swears an oath to prioritize Shepard's orders over her original oath. Interesting mostly as an Asari viewpoint from a perspective opposite that which Liara would have provided, but again, first-time Mass Effect players won't have the context to appreciate the contrast.
• Thane: A member of the newly introduced Drell species. I get the impression that he's supposed to be a gender-swapped Miranda, included for teen girl fanservice. At least, I can't think of any other reason for the inclusion of a character who is literally under doctor's orders to go bare-chested. Being a straight man, I mostly found Thane tedious and annoying. If you're not a straight man, you may like him more than I did.
• Legion: At last, a chance to talk to "a" Geth! Legion is another great new character, thanks in no small part to BioWare's animators. They did a fantastic job of making Legion's "face" more expressive than that of many of the flesh-and-blood people in the game. You won't be seeing much of Legion, however, as the game actively punishes you for using them. Once you recruit them, you are on a strict time limit before your crew gets liquefied. If you like using Legion, you'll have to settle for a sub-optimal ending.
• Zaeed: A DLC character, and a carbon copy of Canderous from Knights of the Old Republic. His interests are shooting people and stabbing people. Fun if you want your party members to take things a bit less seriously, but don't expect him to say anything profound.
• Kasumi: The other DLC character. She's a ninja girl who does ninja girl stuff. She's also the only person in the galaxy who finds Jacob interesting, but this isn't allowed to go anywhere, since Jacob needs to be available for Shepard to pursue.

Illium has by far the best side conversations of any of the few hub areas. I particularly enjoyed listening to this Salarian and his Asari stepdaughter.

The loyalty missions are the best part of the game, hands down. Since the writer knows that a particular party member must be present, they can have great back-and-forth dialogue with Shepard. The structure of these missions is in tension with the fundamental game design, however. Mass Effect is a three-person squad shooter to its core, and three is definitely a crowd here. The designated squad member will have a dramatic personal revelation, Shepard will react, and the third party member will stand around awkwardly. Rebalancing these missions for two party members would eliminate this, but then every loyalty mission would need a half-baked justification for why it needed to be a two-person job. There's really no perfect solution here, though I did appreciate the more experimental loyalty missions that had no combat at all. Samara's mission is fantastic, though the game can't keep its own lore straight regarding the Ardat-Yakshi. (Samara claims there are exactly three Ardat-Yakshi, but the codex claims that 1% of Asari are on the "A-Y spectrum." Either Samara knows less about Ardat-Yakshi than the codex does, or she is lying to Shepard. Neither possibility makes much sense.)

This area in Jack's loyalty mission was a nice piece of environmental storytelling. It reminded me of something you'd see in Half-Life.

DEE ELL CEE

Apart from the aforementioned party members, there are three major pieces of DLC for Mass Effect 2: Overlord, Arrival, and Lair of the Shadow Broker. Each of them is a throwback to an element from the original Mass Effect: vehicle combat, the Reapers, and Liara, respectively. Overlord replaces the Mako with the Hammerhead, a fragile hovering APC. It's serviceable, but for some reason it was decided to give the Hammerhead its own (masculine) VI voice. This was completely redundant, since it does nothing that couldn't have been handled by EDI. Was Tricia Helfer unavailable?

The main area on Aite is absolutely gorgeous. Imagine if all of the planets in ME1 had this level of detail.

Arrival focuses on the Reapers, which serves to underscore the oddity that is their near-total absence from Mass Effect 2. You only ever deal with their Collector proxies, and those appear to only be in contact with Harbinger. My headcanon is that the other Reapers think that Harbinger is a giant tool and are metaphorically rolling their eyes at his Collectors and the "human Reaper." If you have a better explanation for Mass Effect 2's final boss than a giant robot Cthulhu's desperate and doomed attempt to be cool, I would like to hear it.

Finally, Lair of the Shadow Broker presents two Liara-centric missions which highlight how her character has done a complete 180 since the first game. The only thing missing was a proclamation from her that archaeology is for nerds and all the cool kids are information brokers now. Apparently there's a comic book that explains some of this, but I have no plans to ever read it. ME1 Liara is functionally dead.

The Mass Effect 2 Effect

Mass Effect 2 was far more successful than Mass Effect ever was, so it was no surprise that Mass Effect 3 would follow in the second game's footsteps. Thermal clips were here to stay. Shepard has traveled to every corner of the galaxy, but it's time to go back to Earth.