![[Graphic] The ebb and flow of sci-fi and fantasy on television](http://www.geeksix.com/wp-content/plugins/wordpress-popular-posts/scripts/timthumb.php?src=http://www.geeksix.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/fantasy-television-geek6-520.jpg&h=90&w=180&zc=1)
The big letdown at the core of Mass Effect 2
Josh
Thursday
1:11 pm
In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m kind of a Mass Effect fan.
Hell, I even added N7 armor to my avatar up there. (See him? His awesome manliness crowds out Christy even as we speak — but don’t worry, it’s only temporary.)
I eagerly awaited the sequel. I even went to my first and last midnight launch event. I’ve been thoroughly and completely enjoying submersion into the Mass Effect universe again. It’s a delicious and real world, complete with every bit of sci-fi goodness I could possibly want. The game’s production values and voice acting are both top-notch.
But something has been gnawing at the edge of my consciousness. Some piece of the game hasn’t been as enjoyable as it was in its precursor. I figured it was just a case of having impossibly high expectations.
But yesterday, it dawned on me: The traditional RPG elements have been dumbed down to a ridiculous level.
The evidence:
You can’t really buy stuff: A good hallmark of an RPG is the ability to outfit and equip your team with the best gear you can get. But if you go to a gun shop in Mass Effect 2, you won’t see that characteristic “bevy of things you can’t afford yet” to entice you to keep playing. Instead, you see the occasional “research” to unlock a new weapon. Once you research it, your whole team gets that type of gun instantly. Part of the fun of an RPG is surveying your gear, and thinking, “I only have one heavy shotgun, so I’m giving it to Grunt, since he’s the best with it. And I don’t like Jack, so she’s getting this crappy suit of armor until I can afford something better.”
The skill system borders on non-existent: In a typical RPG, part of the fun is selecting your skills, and making hard choices about what to select, since you can’t take them all. In Mass Effect 2, there are virtually no skills. Gone is anything of a technical nature (electronics, hacking, etc.). Each character class gets FOUR skills, which you can pretty much level up near maximum by halfway through the game. And, to add insult to injury, some of those skills aren’t skills at all — they just give you a different type of ammunition.
There’s no real weapon choice: Yes, I know it’s possible to change the type of weapon. But, other than the possible switching of heavy weapons, there’s no REASON to. You progress through the game, and occasionally earn knowledge to “upgrade” a weapon, at which point you get the new weapon. And then, it’s never a contest as to which gun to select. When you have two weapons, listed as, say, the “M-99 Popgun,” or the “M-129 Popgun / Upgrades the M-99,” which would you use?
There are virtually no numbers: How much damage does this gun do? How resistant is this armor to energy attacks? Bullets? The touchy-feely system Bioware has introduced is completely opaque. Armor upgrades can “add 10% to sprinting speed” and things like that, but you don’t get to really toggle between types of armor based on missions, or sell off old suits for extra cash.
Why that’s not going to change:
"What do you MEAN I can't buy a gun here?"
They’ll fix it all in the third game, right? Wrong.
The first Mass Effect game got really high marks, but it was dinged for “a cumbersome inventory system.” So, to fix the problem, Bioware pretty much just eliminated it — not like that visit to the doctor where you complained about it burning when you pee, so the doctor just cut off your junk.
And, in Bioware’s case, the action made Mass Effect 2’s ratings make the first game’s reviews look like Extreme Paintbrawl.
Given the acclaim the sequel has gotten, Bioware will likely stick to this formula for the third and final installment in the trilogy. Which means you still have a great story and fantastic characters, but something more resembling a thinking man’s shooter, instead of an action-lover’s RPG.
This is likely fine for most of the gameplaying populace — but for those of us who LIKED the hardcore RPG aspects of Mass Effect, it’s a real let down.
What do you think? Sound off below.
Thanks Amy! 
Amber
Jason
Nick Burns
Christy
Charlotte
Autumn
Bill
Blain![Josh [geek6.com]](http://a2.twimg.com/profile_images/449316830/neweravatar0509_normal.jpg){kind=avatar}
Reader Comments
I haven’t played any computer rpgs in a long long time, I basically got into a groove for FPS’s like Call of Duty and Soldier of Fortune, and combat sims like the X-Wing and Mechwarrior series, but has there been anything that has been as good of a computer RPG since Wasteland?
See, that’s interesting because I’m as hardcore of an RPG player as you get (tabletop, at least) and I couldn’t get through more than 5 hours of the original Mass Effect because of the constant inventory annoying mini-game, that also drove me nuts in Dragon Age and Fallout 3. Choosing what gear to carry at all times among several people is not why I want to play an RPG- I want to play my dude and have him do (and kill) great things, not worry about what stuff I have on me.
The things you point out make me want to play ME2 more when I had written it off.
Huh. I had the exact inverse reaction to the things you mentioned. As I’ve gotten more and more into table top roleplaying, I’d enjoyed less and less the number tinkering and skill-paths and equipment wrangling aspects of CRPGs. I tend to run campaigns that are almost economyless and just guage whether a PC could realistically acquire some piece of equipment or not. If you think about most fiction, the characters don’t generally slowly increase in power over the course of the whole thing. Han Solo never really levels up. So I felt like the greater concentration on characters and story made it MORE like an RPG… just I was thinking of GURPS, not Final Fantasy. Huh.
I both agree and disagree. On one hand, yeah the elimination of the traditional inventory system, the different guns, and micro-managing your squad is a sucky departure. However, I find myself being able to focus more on the game and manage upgrades and all better without worrying about my inventory. Also I don’t have to give two shits about what Jack is wearing because I don’t care about her anyway. Also, if I gave Garrus new armor, he’d have to give up his awesome battle damaged one.
I feel cheated on the lack of guns though. However, if you think about it, they aren’t really “upgrades”. The first assault rifle has more rounds, less accurate, and is fully automatic. The battle rifle has less rounds, is more accurate, and fires in bursts. The machine gun has a ridiculous amount of rounds, is less accurate but does the most damage, and is fully automatic. They’re different enough from each other that I sometimes pick the battle rifle so I can get headshots, but pick the machine gun when there’s hordes of bad guys or if I’m fighting in close quarters. The first pistol you get has average damage and all while the second pistol does a lot more damage but has much less ammo. Both seem pretty accurate but the first pistol has a higher rate of fire.
You DO buy some upgrades, and I disagree completely with the skills since only the soldier gets to have all the special ammo and it can really help out in a fight. Also it means unlike the first game, you don’t have to have a tech in the group to hack stuff if you don’t upgrade/or have the electronics/hacking skill. Would I rather waste precious skill points on a skill barely related to combat or spend it on something to make me more of a badass?
If I wanted numbers, I’d play Borderlands. Inventory management is the focus of that game and it has virtually no story. Taking my mind off that management in ME2 lets me focus on the story. That’s probably why they streamlined it, though I agree they may have went a bit too far in that regard.
Jason — Wasteland is one of my all-time favorites, although Fallout 1 and 2 satisfy that jones almost as well. The Mass Effect series is much more action oriented, but still wants to be an RPG at heart.
Dave — I’m glad I can help boost Bioware’s bottom line. : )
And Ben #2 — you make some magnificent points. That said, I should have made clearer that I thought the inventory system in ME1 was pretty cumbersome. But they could have cleaned it up and simplified it without destroying it outright.
Also — I’m not a numbers guy at heart — I shy away from some of the Pen-and-Paper RPGs that are heavy on math for that very reason.
But, once you remove those elements and peek behind the curtain a little, the simplification of the game DOES bug me a little. The level design is beautiful, but it also distracts from the idea that you’re effectively playing a semi-linear shooter: Walk through a series of corridors, shoot people, get clips, and undertake a larger battle at the end of the level.
Maybe it’s because I haven’t gotten through the whole game yet, but the environments in the first Mass Effect felt larger and more diverse, somehow, in terms of gameplay.
One way I feel that Bioware could have made us really feel the repercussions of our choices, even if we died, was to have epilogue cutscenes that played out what happened in the galaxy due to our death. Instead of just a ‘Game over, you died. Press X to load last save game’, they could put in a small 30 second cut scene that shows the grief people experienced over your death, the political fallout, and even devastation caused by your absence from the galaxy. Depending on your character and how you treated other people you’d get different scenes. Sure, after a while most people would just skip them, but it’d be interesting to see it play out.
I was also very happy to see the inventory system go away in ME2. I found that tracking my inventory and having to try to figure out the upgrades in ME really bogged down the game. It got to the point where I just stopped paying attention and only every looked at my inventory when I got the warning that I was running out of space.
I don’t mind the inventory tracking in some games, both Torchlight and Borderlands are both about killing things and taking their stuff. For me Mass Effect is about the Story and the character interactions, and killing things of course. ME2 has resolved all of my major complaints about the first game.
I’d argue that Mass Effect 1 & 2 aren’t RPGs. They’re cinematic 3rd person shooters with an open world & very soft RPG elements.
I don’t think BioWare ever intended to make an RPG. I think they essentially wanted to bridge the gap between a good shooter and a good story-driven RPG.