Mass Effect Remastered coming soon and new Mass Effect Game in the Works

[Calemyr]

I always thought it was a bit weird that Liara of all people would get involved in high stakes espionage when just a few scant years previous she was a mostly naive scientist just looking to find out about an ancient, extinct civilization.

Liara was less naive and more sheltered. Her mother made a strong effort to keep her locked up in the academy, not even letting her even know about her father or her quarter-krogan lineage. The blue girl grows up FAST in ME1, going from a theoretical historian tracking a fringe (but ultimately accurate) theory to a badass gunslinger and biotic with the skills to rival a justicar. What she also strikes me as is incredibly intelligent, driven, and adaptive. She was also very, very angry. Even without a potential romantic angle, Shep is the one who saved her cerulean rump, mind-melded with her to give her direct proof of her theories, and held her hand on the treacherous path between the library and the shooting range. She owes Shep big, and is royally pissed when everyone else just kinda shrugs their shoulders when the Commander deep-fries themselves to save everyone else. Then she gets cheated by the Shadow Broker and left with absolutely nothing but bitterness and a taste for blending research with wetwork. Oh, and a raging vendetta against the Broker, which quickly evolves into a rivalry. I think it really works.

The evolution of the cast (well, the non-human cast, anyway) of the trilogy is almost certainly my favorite part of the game, rivaled only by some Shep's lines. Seeing Liara go from scholar to spymaster, Garrus go from a beleaguered cop to a warped blend of Batman and the Punisher, Wrex going from the last sane member of an insane race to the front man of a crusade to restore it, Tali going from scared refugee to hero of her people... They really did the characters in the trilogy right, starting them off interesting and then letting them grow into something new without losing what they were to begin with. The humans on the other hand... they really didn't do anything particularly interesting with most of them.

[LibraryOgre]

The humans on the other hand... they really didn't do anything particularly interesting with most of them.

There were human NPCs in Mass Effect? Where?

[Artanis]

There were human NPCs in Mass Effect? Where?

Mostly getting turned into husks

[Eldan]

Not sure I ever saw any human party members after the tutorial missions.

[Forum Explorer]

Liara was less naive and more sheltered. Her mother made a strong effort to keep her locked up in the academy, not even letting her even know about her father or her quarter-krogan lineage. The blue girl grows up FAST in ME1, going from a theoretical historian tracking a fringe (but ultimately accurate) theory to a badass gunslinger and biotic with the skills to rival a justicar. What she also strikes me as is incredibly intelligent, driven, and adaptive. She was also very, very angry. Even without a potential romantic angle, Shep is the one who saved her cerulean rump, mind-melded with her to give her direct proof of her theories, and held her hand on the treacherous path between the library and the shooting range. She owes Shep big, and is royally pissed when everyone else just kinda shrugs their shoulders when the Commander deep-fries themselves to save everyone else. Then she gets cheated by the Shadow Broker and left with absolutely nothing but bitterness and a taste for blending research with wetwork. Oh, and a raging vendetta against the Broker, which quickly evolves into a rivalry. I think it really works.

The evolution of the cast (well, the non-human cast, anyway) of the trilogy is almost certainly my favorite part of the game, rivaled only by some Shep's lines. Seeing Liara go from scholar to spymaster, Garrus go from a beleaguered cop to a warped blend of Batman and the Punisher, Wrex going from the last sane member of an insane race to the front man of a crusade to restore it, Tali going from scared refugee to hero of her people... They really did the characters in the trilogy right, starting them off interesting and then letting them grow into something new without losing what they were to begin with. The humans on the other hand... they really didn't do anything particularly interesting with most of them.

I actually liked Kaiden's arc, going from a relatively well trained specialist, but ultimately more or less an example of faulty biotic technology to the next human Spectre.

Actually I liked Jacob too. Though his arc was more just transferring his loyalty from Cerberus to you.

[LibraryOgre]

Mostly getting turned into husks

I think you mean "Improving Ashley's personality"

[Morty]

I actually liked Kaiden's arc, going from a relatively well trained specialist, but ultimately more or less an example of faulty biotic technology to the next human Spectre.

Actually I liked Jacob too. Though his arc was more just transferring his loyalty from Cerberus to you.

Sadly, if I were to rank the ME2 loyalty missions, Jacob's would probably rank on the bottom. Not only is the entire Heart of Darkness re-enactment pretty contrived, but Jacob's takeaway from it all is "I don't care, my father was already gone".

[Sholos]

We don't get to see Liara's evolution at all, though, and it's such a drastic change in direction for her. Tali was always planning on going back to the fleet after helping you with Saren (and then Sovereign) and Garrus always had that rebellious, chaotic streak about him. Their character changes from 1 to 2 made sense to me. Liara's... sure she might be mad that no one helped Shep (though when you find her she doesn't have any time for you so it doesn't really seem like she cares that much) but going from dedicated scientist to spymaster? I would have expected her to be furthering her studies, maybe to the point of isolation in her grief and anger, instead.

[Dienekes]

I actually liked Kaiden's arc, going from a relatively well trained specialist, but ultimately more or less an example of faulty biotic technology to the next human Spectre.

Actually I liked Jacob too. Though his arc was more just transferring his loyalty from Cerberus to you.

I suppose I’ll throw in my hat here. I actually like Ashley’s development.

At first she has a nationalistic bordering on racist view of other races. She’s suspicious of showing potential enemies the best military hardware the humans have. And is mostly an unpleasant person.

Then she starts seeing her squadmates as friends. Then she is first to volunteer risking her life fighting beside an all alien unit. Quickly followed by denouncing racists she meets in the Citadel.

And by the third game she is the last line of defense of a united alien government against a human supremacist faction and was willing to fight her old friends to protect them, and calls at least one non-human members of the crew a family member.

That’s a pretty fine character arc if you ask me. Having played through both I liked hers more than Kaiden’s who always seemed pretty bland with little in the way to develop.

[Rynjin]

I never forgave Ashley for killing Wrex on my first playthrough of the game.

Especially because then I felt FORCED to kill Kaidan instead of her since she was my only other beefy frontline character.

[Rodin]

I do wish that the superfluous ME2 characters had been the ME1 characters instead. Swap out Jacob or Miranda and replace them with whoever survived Virmire, leaving the remaining character as the "Cerberus rep". Either do it based on who survived or just pick - probably Miranda based on her having a stronger story, even if I don't like her. I like Grunt, but he brings little to the story and Wrex would have been a better choice. Samara is just pointless and we should have had Liara doing her evolution into a spymaster for her recruitment/loyalty missions. Vega in ME3 should have been a Padok Wiks to get you through the early game if you got all your crew killed on the Suicide Mission. The resources for writing him should have gone to making Thane a playable character.

[Dienekes]

I never forgave Ashley for killing Wrex on my first playthrough of the game.

Especially because then I felt FORCED to kill Kaidan instead of her since she was my only other beefy frontline character.

Doesn’t that only happen if you fail to convince him to stand down? I honestly don’t know since I’ve never lost my boy Wrex there.

And I will say, I have nothing against anyone disliking Ash. I just think her character development is well constructed.

As opposed to say Mordin Solus who is a fantastic character, but seems to completely change his view of the genophage off screen for reasons we’re never really given. The end point of his journey is amazing and one of the best parts of ME3, but I don’t think as a character arc it was developed all that well.

[GloatingSwine]

Having played through both I liked hers more than Kaiden’s who always seemed pretty bland with little in the way to develop.

Otherwise known as Pattern A Bioware Male Love Interest.

See also: Anomen, Carth.

[Morty]

Otherwise known as Pattern A Bioware Male Love Interest.

See also: Anomen, Carth.

Kaidan is bland, but comparing him to those two is a little unfair. I played KOTOR 1 as a female character last year and his interactions with her were really cringy. The fact that he also has massive trust issues caused in part by the loss of his wife just makes it worse.

Though in general I do feel like all three of those guys share one thing - they were written by straight men without a very good idea what women consider appealing in a love interest.

[Calemyr]

Kaidan is bland, but comparing him to those two is a little unfair. I played KOTOR 1 as a female character last year and his interactions with her were really cringy. The fact that he also has massive trust issues caused in part by the loss of his wife just makes it worse.

Though in general I do feel like all three of those guys share one thing - they were written by straight men without a very good idea what women consider appealing in a love interest.

Agreed. Kaidan is actually much better than most romanceable male characters in Bioware games. I think this is partly because the archetype they went with for him was "stable, supportive guy who mostly has his stuff together" rather than the previous standard of "passionate but emotionally wrecked guy the ladies might be able to fix". They did the same with Jacob, as a competent badass commando nearly on Shep's level, though I feel his ME3 treatment costs him a fair bit. The stability makes them somewhat bland, but also makes them far less irritating than the "fixer-upper" archetype.

As for the human NPCs in a nutshell, don't get me wrong. None of them are bad, per se, just not on the same level of fascinating the aliens have.

[Rodin]

As opposed to say Mordin Solus who is a fantastic character, but seems to completely change his view of the genophage off screen for reasons we’re never really given. The end point of his journey is amazing and one of the best parts of ME3, but I don’t think as a character arc it was developed all that well.

This is part of a larger pattern that afflicts the series as a whole. The scope is too wide to tell the story Bioware wanted to tell. ME1 establishes the situations - the Quarians and the Geth are at war, the Krogan suffer from the genophage, etc. ME2 gives a bit more background. And then BAM - we're into the climax of resolving these galactic scale problems that have existed for decades/centuries. Each story is missing the equivalent of Dragon Age 2 - a game that focuses on a particular conflict in the world without worrying about what is happening in the wider galaxy. Mordin changes his mind off-screen. Wrex becomes a leader of the Krogan influential enough to single-handedly change their culture off-screen. Liara becomes a spymaster off-screen. Mass Effect 2's main story becomes less of a problem if there are other games focusing on the Reaper threat to take up the slack. Using the Collectors as more than a villain of the week would have also helped.

[Dienekes]

This is part of a larger pattern that afflicts the series as a whole. The scope is too wide to tell the story Bioware wanted to tell. ME1 establishes the situations - the Quarians and the Geth are at war, the Krogan suffer from the genophage, etc. ME2 gives a bit more background. And then BAM - we're into the climax of resolving these galactic scale problems that have existed for decades/centuries. Each story is missing the equivalent of Dragon Age 2 - a game that focuses on a particular conflict in the world without worrying about what is happening in the wider galaxy. Mordin changes his mind off-screen. Wrex becomes a leader of the Krogan influential enough to single-handedly change their culture off-screen. Liara becomes a spymaster off-screen. Mass Effect 2's main story becomes less of a problem if there are other games focusing on the Reaper threat to take up the slack. Using the Collectors as more than a villain of the week would have also helped.

I don't think you're wrong, but this specific case I think has more to do with not completely planning out each characters arc more than not having enough room. For Mordin, during his loyalty mission they could've gone harder into him questioning himself and his methods which could in theory lead to his decisions in ME3. But instead he leaves his mission still pretty much convinced he did the right thing. And that's where we leave him off and suddenly he's done a 180 next time we see him.

Wrex I'm a bit more forgiving of. They dropped that he was once important among the krogan, best son of a clan chief at least, and he was actually thinking of ways to save his race throughout ME1. Give him a few years and I can see him trying to establish his own petty kingdom as he does.

He's a bit more successful at it than I would've thought. Growing a power base to develop a kingdom that turns into an empire takes decades. But this is an adventure romp, I'm willing to cut them a little slack on timelines.

[Rodin]

I don't think you're wrong, but this specific case I think has more to do with not completely planning out each characters arc more than not having enough room. For Mordin, during his loyalty mission they could've gone harder into him questioning himself and his methods which could in theory lead to his decisions in ME3. But instead he leaves his mission still pretty much convinced he did the right thing. And that's where we leave him off and suddenly he's done a 180 next time we see him.

I agree about the character arcs, but messing with his motivations in 2 is the wrong way to go about fixing it. What makes Mordin's story powerful is his conviction. He did the math and saw only one choice. He saw the suffering of the female Krogan in that lab and he was not swayed. No matter how horrible the result, the alternatives* were worse. Him changing his mind and having to convince Renegade Shepard only becomes a powerful scene if he truly believed he was doing the right thing in the previous game. Mordin having doubts in 2 changes his entire character for the worse.

The problem is that we never see what shook his conviction. It happens off-screen, and we don't see him processing the suffering his actions have caused. He's just...different. His entire worldview is shaken over the course of 6 months, and we see none of it.


*either a new Krogan war or preemptive Krogan genocide when a less skilled scientist patches the genophage

[Rynjin]

Doesn’t that only happen if you fail to convince him to stand down? I honestly don’t know since I’ve never lost my boy Wrex there.

From what I recall, talking Wrex down is one of those events that requires a lot of either Paragon or Renegade points, and I was just going with the flow the first time I played, taking actions as they appealed to me personally. So by the time we get to Virmire I have like half a bar in each, and saving Wrex requires you to either be a complete psychopath or goody goody two shoes man.

[Forum Explorer]

From what I recall, talking Wrex down is one of those events that requires a lot of either Paragon or Renegade points, and I was just going with the flow the first time I played, taking actions as they appealed to me personally. So by the time we get to Virmire I have like half a bar in each, and saving Wrex requires you to either be a complete psychopath or goody goody two shoes man.

Not really. I was mostly Paragon at that point, but not purely Paragon and it was just fine. I think you have to do some serious flip flopping to not have enough. Or perhaps just a little flip flopping and only playing the main missions.

[Morty]

If you complete Wrex's mission first, you don't need to persuade him. Not to defend the Paragon/Renegade nonsense, but it's not necessary in this particular instance.

[Spacewolf]

The Original mass effect didn't have paragon/renegade did it? I seem to remember it being tied to some sort of speech stat you had to level up separately.

[Morty]

The Original mass effect didn't have paragon/renegade did it? I seem to remember it being tied to some sort of speech stat you had to level up separately.

It had both, with Charm and Intimidate being used to unlock dialogue options but also being influenced by the Paragon/Renegade scores.

[LibraryOgre]

It had both, with Charm and Intimidate being used to unlock dialogue options but also being influenced by the Paragon/Renegade scores.

That's one thing I was really glad of in ME2 and later... dropping the social skills, which are always a point sink for the main character.

[Morty]

That's one thing I was really glad of in ME2 and later... dropping the social skills, which are always a point sink for the main character.

That's how it always works in RPGs with one main character - Coercion in Dragon Age: Origins is the same way. Or charisma in Shadowrun: Returns.

[LibraryOgre]

That's how it always works in RPGs with one main character - Coercion in Dragon Age: Origins is the same way. Or charisma in Shadowrun: Returns.

One thing I liked in DA2 was, if you had the right person with you, you could have them take over. "Varric, I need you to bury someone in bull****. Bethany, please convince the nice people that I don't work for the Templars. Aveline, you're captain of the guards, please explain to this man why he is dumb."

[Psyren]

That's how it always works in RPGs with one main character - Coercion in Dragon Age: Origins is the same way. Or charisma in Shadowrun: Returns.

Yeah but that's not an interesting choice. Invariably you either max it out, or you ignore it entirely and at some point several dozen hours into your playthrough you get a crappy outcome. Trying to hedge by only throwing in a couple of points almost always amounts to the same as ignoring it. Which then results in future installments (ME2/ME3, DA2/DAI etc) ditching that skill tree and coming up with something else.

One thing I liked in DA2 was, if you had the right person with you, you could have them take over. "Varric, I need you to bury someone in bull****. Bethany, please convince the nice people that I don't work for the Templars. Aveline, you're captain of the guards, please explain to this man why he is dumb."

DAI did this too, though it seems they scaled it back from DA2. Understandable since you start the game with a lot of political influence as opposed to being a relative nobody for the first two acts.

ME3 went with a third score, called "Reputation", which you filled up by doing sidequests. There are actually very few points in the game that only grant paragon or renegade - most of your persuasion skill is based on this hidden "reputation" score that counts for both. Most notbaly though, it's just a measure of how much time you spend outside the critical path helping people rather than relying on you allocating resources away from your build. (There was still a skill you could put points in that would help with persuasion, but it was tied to the class passive everyone wanted to max out anyway and didn't count for much on its own.)

[Calemyr]

Dang it all. Now I've got the bug to do another ME3 run. I'll build a custom ME2 save to skip the first two. Any suggestions on variables? I've tried a lot of combinations over the years.

[Zevox]

Dang it all. Now I've got the bug to do another ME3 run.

I know the feeling - I've been tempted to pull out my old 360 and pop in Mass Effect 2, thanks to all of the talk about Bioware around here of late. But I'm resisting it, since I don't know if I'd be able to finish it before Persona 5 Strikers releases in two weeks, and with Legendary Edition coming in just a few months, I figure it's better to wait for that anyway.

[Calemyr]

I know the feeling - I've been tempted to pull out my old 360 and pop in Mass Effect 2, thanks to all of the talk about Bioware around here of late. But I'm resisting it, since I don't know if I'd be able to finish it before Persona 5 Strikers releases in two weeks, and with Legendary Edition coming in just a few months, I figure it's better to wait for that anyway.

Same boat for me. I will put whatever game I have on hold when Strikers comes out, but I'm not expecting the game to have significant legs. I don't think it's supposed to be Persona-level long and it's quite linear with minimal social element, so I will enjoy the hell out of hanging with my buds again, but it won't fill the months until May. I still have ME3 with all the fixings on Origin, so might as well enjoy the ME game that isn't going to change much at all. The MELE is mostly valuable for an up-to-date ME1, as far as I'm concerned. That one desperately needs a fresh coat of paint.

Also, I'm a little worried for the Legendary Edition these days, anyways. Taking the camera off Miranda's rear is fine by me (I always found that little quirk of the game to be stupid - heck, I always felt she and Jack were oversexualized to the point they weren't attractive at all, but at least for Jack that seemed to be intentional), but it also opens the door to all kinds of shenanigans from well meaning people who put their sensibilities before the integrity of what they're trying to restore. Once you start making changes, where do you draw the line? Will they remove the "All Humans Are Racist!" turian from ME1? The bachelor party from ME2 where men of multiple species are a little creeped out to discover that all species are attracted to asari equally? I would much rather have a "Warts and All" remaster than a butchered one. I mean, I don't even want them to fix the things I actively hate.