Mass Effect 2 - BioWare

[bladeofdarkness]

it just came to me how overpowered your team in ME2 actually IS when you think about it
unlike the first game where you just sort of stumble upon most of your team, in this one you actively go and recuit members for it, and what you end up with is probably the most impressive collection of individuals in the galaxy

by the end of the game you have on your team
1)the greatest pilot in the alliance
2)a genetically engineered krogen super soldier (remember that krogen are a SPECIES of super soldiers)
3)a quarian mechanic who is considered a prodigy even by quarian standards
4)one of the best assassins in the galaxy, if not the outright best
5)the most powerful human biotic every made
6)one of the most brillient scientific minds in the galaxy
7)an asari warrior priestess with hundreds of years of combat experience
8)a geth one-of-a-kind super prototype
9)the most badass and experienced bounty hunter in the galaxy
10)a woman who's been genetically designed to be the perfect human being
11)one of the best soldiers in the entire alliance
12)a turian cowboy cop who managed to become the scourge of every crime syndicate and mercenary group in mass effect's equivalent of Roanapur

and of course, there's you
commander shepard
the man who makes the impossible, possible

i'm feelings sorry for the reapers already

[Arbitres]

Originally Posted by bladeofdarkness

it just came to me how overpowered your team in ME2 actually IS when you think about it
unlike the first game where you just sort of stumble upon most of your team, in this one you actively go and recuit members for it, and what you end up with is probably the most impressive collection of individuals in the galaxy

by the end of the game you have on your team
1)the greatest pilot in the alliance
2)a genetically engineered krogen super soldier (remember that krogen are a SPECIES of super soldiers)
3)a quarian mechanic who is considered a prodigy even by quarian standards
4)one of the best assassins in the galaxy, if not the outright best
5)the most powerful human biotic every made
6)one of the most brillient scientific minds in the galaxy
7)an asari warrior priestess with hundreds of years of combat experience
8)a geth one-of-a-kind super prototype
9)the most badass and experienced bounty hunter in the galaxy
10)a woman who's been genetically designed to be the perfect human being
11)one of the best soldiers in the entire alliance
12)a turian cowboy cop who managed to become the scourge of every crime syndicate and mercenary group in mass effect's equivalent of Roanapur

and of course, there's you
commander shepard
the man who makes the impossible, possible

i'm feelings sorry for the reapers already

I've been feeling sorry for them for a long time. You also pegged them all pretty well.

Ahh yeah, Qwib Qwib... LOL. Making fun of him for that doesn't help....

[LoweGear]

Damn... my mind was not green enough

Vas Iktomi... if you put it that way, Qwib Qwib doesn't sound too bad afterall

[Arbitres]

Oh come now, who doesn't want the name 'Vas Iktomi'?....

I did as recommended, and started a female Shepard, and yes. The voice is better.

x_x; I didn't know you could have a relationship with Garrus-kun... No, i'm not in it. It's just... I imagined the kids.

-sigh- I finally got it, too. The suicide mission achievement, "No one left Behind".

Now it's time for me to completely unwind and.... play my renegade shepard.

[-KarumA-]

Is there a way to just end a mission.. a side mission not a main
I'm on this stupid planet where I put power cells in a robot whose going to dig for me but the quest is bugged... been doing it 6 times now but whenever he runs out there is a 50/50 chance that instead of staying crouched so I can enter the cell he'll stand up straight again and I can't do anything....
I can't do anything with my transport ship either.. and I've just explored 5 universes before coming here so I don't want to lose that precious scanning time

edit:
thank god for auto saves, it debugs it

[Keroko]

One thing I wonder is how the Paragon/Renegade ending will affect ME3. I can't help but imagine that with a full base filled with Reaper tech to analyze, the galaxy stands a much better chance against the Reapers.

[RWBladewing]

Originally Posted by Keroko

One thing I wonder is how the Paragon/Renegade ending will affect ME3. I can't help but imagine that with a full base filled with Reaper tech to analyze, the galaxy stands a much better chance against the Reapers.

That was my line of thinking for picking that choice on my main file as well. In both games now I've played as mainly neutral with a leaning towards paragon but taken the renegade ending choice. Was sad to see that letting the council die didn't allow for a more intelligent one that was willing to act to be put in place. Hopefully saving all the advanced technology instead of pointlessly blowing it up will have more of an effect. Though based on the reactions of my party and just the fact that it is the renegade choice in the first place, the Illusive Man probably has other plans for it in addition to just that.

[Keroko]

On the surface it seems that saving the station is the right choice, especially when you think about those upgraded guns that saved your crew and remember how said guns were created by studying Sovereign's remains.

This might be a hint at ME3, that Cerberus is -in the end- still an evil organization. Perhaps you will have to make a choice between Cerberus and the Alliance somewhere along the line. And in doing so decide whether humanity will rule the stars or live among them.

[RWBladewing]

That was actually one thing that kinda bugged me, the fact that you can only choose to either destroy the base or give it to Cerberus. I'd have liked a third option to send the coordinates/specs of the base to the Alliance or the Citadel or whoever else. It would have made a lot of sense too considering that picking even the "nice" dialog options in conversations with the Illusive Man results in Shepard insulting him or telling him off.

[Arbitres]

Evil is a matter of perspective, thats how Cerberus is so effective, because they think what they're doing is right. But thats a different conversation altogether.

As told by ME1, Cerberus is quite experimental, regardless of it's subjects.

I would've much preferred to have kept the specs to myself, personally. Guns = War, Really powerful gun specs = Future wars.

Maybe the creators made up that mission for "By any means necessary". But thats up in the air, too.

[Matrim]

Personally, I blew up the base just to spite the Illusive Man. Can't stand the rat bastard. If the ending featured me shooting him that would have been the best possible outcome.

But yes, the inability to tell him - "Screw you, I am giving the base to the Council/The Alliance/keep it to myself" is quite puzzling. Why do the Collectors have just a single base anyway? I really don't like the overall plot of the game. The mission of the squadmates are great, the main plotline is terrible. Which is weird.

[Tokkan]

Well, BioWare did say that that ME2 is basically all about the squadmates.

[Nightengale]

Well, for starters, the Collector Base's main control room is a direct FTL comms link to Harbinger. And we all saw what happened to Cerberus's research team in the Derelict Reaper.

That's one issue about Mass Effect though. We don't have the luxury of choosing a more rational choice when it matters. We couldn't keep the Rachni Queen caged while forwarding the coordinates to the Council, it's either acid or release. Nor could we make a recommendation that any study on Reapers be done through remote controlled robots to avoid indoctrination effects.

Even then, we don't get to know what's what and how will some events transpire until the sequel. The penultimate choice of Mass Effect 1, between saving or letting the council die ended up making the renegade choice make all of humanity look like the biggest jackasses in space, sacrificing 10,000 Asaris in the Destiny Ascension among other things. Not exactly what one would've expected, but it was only natural, since the game couldn't exactly create too many branching scenarios.

[KrimzonStriker]

Didn't Harbinger cut off the link though? He probably had to given what happened to Sovereign after he possessed Saren at the end of Mass effect 1. That said, I wanted to point out that in the everyone dies ending The Illusive man sends in research teams to the Collector base, so me thinks he had the IFF after Shepard acquires it.

Too risky in my opinion, you'd just cut through a facility designed to manipulate them as weapons, who knows what the Council will do with them, it would change the power balance considerably and lead to all sorts of abuse. Better to save it and give the Rachni freedom as a paragon or be safe and kill it as a renegade.

That said, I tend to think the game was built around dissuading you from making a pure renegade choice, as it seems to only keep biting you once the sequels come out. Even if humanity comes out on top after the first game, it's overburdened with trying to maintain control over all the other races.

[bladeofdarkness]

its more then that really
sovereign makes it clear that the REASON reapers leave behind their tech like the mass relay and the citadel is because it allows them to control what evolutionary paths the organic races who find them take
and the collectors ship is the same way really (the collectors were created by the reapers after all)
so trying to use it for their selves would just mean that humanity is doing what the reapers want

besides, do you really think the reapers wouldn't have a self-destruct mechanism on something like that if they felt it could be used against them ?

[-KarumA-]

silly Q, when is the romance scene supposed to happen
I'm about to use the omega 4 relay D:

edit:
nevermind lol

[KrimzonStriker]

Originally Posted by bladeofdarkness

its more then that really
sovereign makes it clear that the REASON reapers leave behind their tech like the mass relay and the citadel is because it allows them to control what evolutionary paths the organic races who find them take
and the collectors ship is the same way really (the collectors were created by the reapers after all)
so trying to use it for their selves would just mean that humanity is doing what the reapers want

besides, do you really think the reapers wouldn't have a self-destruct mechanism on something like that if they felt it could be used against them ?

That they planned, I admit, but never along the lines of giving them great detail of their technology which they themselves are based on, just enough to set them along the path, and their not omnipotent as the Prothean counterattack showed. The citadel didn't have Reaper schematics on it for example, as Shepard gets to see at the end.

And I doubt that was the case in this scenario, the Collectors had far more advanced technology then the other races, it was leverage in their trades and abductions and maintaining that monopoly on technology was what gave them an edge/made them useful.

Dude, the Collectors didn't even have internal monitoring sensors, I rather doubt they thought anyone would get this far, plus the Reapers are extremely arrogant to begin with.

[Arbitres]

The reapers are 'arrogant'... though I guess you could stamp it as that.

They are machines, logical. They understanding the human mind to an extent, and may very well try to duplicate it. But here is my theory....

They are logical, but they take a form of... 'logical' about their amazing destructive prowess and numbers. On a pole/theory/percentage, they 'Will win'. As in, logical deductive means they outnumber and outgun their meat puppets.

I can't really go into great detail, since the Protheans/Vigil was the best source for Reaper info.

I'm more interested in what created the reapers. Machines of any kind don't just suddenly pop up, machines have to be made by someone. Or something. -suspense music-

Let's say Shepard met the... 'being' (yes, let's call them/it a 'being' for now.) that made the Reapers, and it's intentions were actually good, though misdirected. What would you say/think?

Simply asking.

[bladeofdarkness]

Originally Posted by KrimzonStriker

That they planned, I admit, but never along the lines of giving them great detail of their technology which they themselves are based on, just enough to set them along the path, and their not omnipotent as the Prothean counterattack showed. The citadel didn't have Reaper schematics on it for example, as Shepard gets to see at the end.

And I doubt that was the case in this scenario, the Collectors had far more advanced technology then the other races, it was leverage in their trades and abductions and maintaining that monopoly on technology was what gave them an edge/made them useful.

Dude, the Collectors didn't even have internal monitoring sensors, I rather doubt they thought anyone would get this far, plus the Reapers are extremely arrogant to begin with.

lets say for a second that i completely agree with you...

even if it WAS a good idea to explore this tech and try to use it against the reapers...
do you really think that letting CERBERUS have it ?
given what we know about how they made the likes of jack ?

[Xion Valkyrie]

Originally Posted by Solstice Cross

The reapers are 'arrogant'... though I guess you could stamp it as that.

They are machines, logical. They understanding the human mind to an extent, and may very well try to duplicate it. But here is my theory....

They are logical, but they take a form of... 'logical' about their amazing destructive prowess and numbers. On a pole/theory/percentage, they 'Will win'. As in, logical deductive means they outnumber and outgun their meat puppets.

I can't really go into great detail, since the Protheans/Vigil was the best source for Reaper info.

I'm more interested in what created the reapers. Machines of any kind don't just suddenly pop up, machines have to be made by someone. Or something. -suspense music-

Let's say Shepard met the... 'being' (yes, let's call them/it a 'being' for now.) that made the Reapers, and it's intentions were actually good, though misdirected. What would you say/think?

Simply asking.

The first reaper most likely created itself. Probably a race that wanted to 'ascend' and made their version of the instrumentality project and what not.