T w e n t y S i d e d

Some people claim that Mass Effect 2 is not a brown corridor shooter. Allow me to retort:

Gah. I haven’t been subjected to such high doses of brown since the original Quake.

It’s not just the lack of color, but also the overbearing industrial style. It’s as if everyone in the galaxy lives in warehouses. Yes, we get some nice color in Jacob’s mission. And the non-combat areas of the game are at least as vibrant as the ones in Mass Effect 1, perhaps even better. But as soon as we start fighting it’s back to flat, boxy, linear, and monochrome.

Let’s list the missions in the game. Industrial corridor shooter levels are in bold. Levels which are lively and varied are in italics. Areas that are a mixed bag are in unadorned text.

Core missions:

Project Lazarus
Freedom’s progress
Horizon Colony
Investigate Collector Ship
Dead Reaper
Collector Base

Recruitment & loyalty missions:

Recruit Garrus
Recruit Tali
Recruit Thane
Recruit Jack
Recruit Samara
Recruit Mordin
Recruit Grunt
Garrus: Eye for an Eye
Grunt: Rite of Passage
Jack: Subject Zero
Jacob: The Gift of Greatness
Legion: A House Divided
Miranda: The Prodigal
Mordin: Old Blood
Samara: The Ardat-Yakshi
Tali: Treason
Thane: Sins of the Father

I’m sure some people will argue with a few of my classifications one way or the other. Maybe Garrus: Eye for an Eye and Miranda: The Prodigal should be in bold because most of the action takes place in a warehouse far away from the interesting bits of the Citadel. Maybe Recruit Tali should be given credit for being colorful and well-lit, even through it was a sea of concrete and industrial crates. We can bicker over individual entries, but I think the trend is clear.

Again, we see the Jekyll & Hyde nature of this game. Omega, Illium, and the Citadel are all bright, colorful, and feel lived-in. (By space opera standards.) But once the shooting starts it’s like we’re playing a late 90’s first person shooter – warehouses, crates, and nondescript industrial stuff. What happened to places like Virmire and IIlos? Does every battle need to be close-quarters? There was no reason to smother players in crates like this.

You could argue that Mass Effect 2 has just as many interesting areas as Mass Effect 1, but since it’s a far larger game the overall percent is worse. Still, it would have been really nice to mix things up with an ice world. Or some alien ruins. Or a beach. Grasslands. More residential stuff. Gardens or temples. I think the game just has too dang much industrial scenery.

Lair of the Shadow Broker was really, really good, in that it presented spaces that looked plausibly residential, detailed, and interesting. (At least, until your reached the titular lair.)

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

If I changed my tone as quickly as the game, then everything I wrote about Mass Effect 2 would look like this:

I am sick and tired of these fun and witty side quests with the ridiculous characters and their bullshit plot twists that engage you, challenge you, and make you puke your guts out because of how stupid the logic is and how the game becomes a shining example of a deep, rewarding, and sometimes intellectual role-playing brown corridor shooter.

I really do like Tali’s loyalty mission, and I have to say we didn’t really do it justice. There just isn’t enough time, and our format doesn’t really work all that well for long conversations laced with political intrigue.

I think the game has five really strong sections:

1) Tali’s loyalty mission
2) Legion’s loyalty mission
3) Mordin’s loyalty mission
4) Thane’s loyalty mission
5) The part where Guybrush is thrown into the sea and has to hold his breath for ten minutes.

By contrast, there’s only one part of the game that really falls flat:

1) Everything else

I’m kidding, of course. Thane’s mission wasn’t all that impressive.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

This game is the Jekyll & Hyde of storytelling. Last episode was Commander Shepard vs. Common Sense. Now we’re meeting a Geth and visiting the Migrant Fleet. With a Geth.

I was actually very sorry when our session ended this week, because I wanted to keep going with this mission.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.