T w e n t y S i d e d

I know we picked on this section of the game where you assault the Cerberus base, but it’s actually got some good points. My excuse is that the dream sequence caused some sort of build-up of complaint energy that needed to be released. That’s totally how it works.

Chris was right, in that the enemy variety is pretty good. There’s a good mix of tight corridors and open areas, along with some multi-level combat to keep things fresh. There are bright areas, dark areas, cool blues, and deep reds. You’ve got snipers, turrets, shield guys, standard mooks, and mechs.

The thing where you launch the fighter to blast a hole in the wall is a pretty classic BioWare gate. (Like using the mining laser in Mass Effect 1.) It’s there to give you a combat breather and allow time for a few lines of dialog without stopping for a cutscene.

As a bonus, the whole “Am I who I think I am?” moment takes the form of a dialog wheel that you can exit if you’re apathetic or you’ve seen it before, which is better than packing it into a linear conversation.

So yeah. Ignoring the whole “Cerberus” thing, this is actually a fun section of the game.

I still like the idea that your team breaks into their base to find Cerberus is fighting rogue robots, space-zombies, holographic ninjas, haywire vehicles, carnivorous plants, biotic dogs, robot thresher maws, zombie thresher maws, astrally projected thresher maws, regular thresher maws, indoctrinated ghosts, and an army of mantis-men. It’s like this every day at Cerberus HQ. There’s a line of troopers punching in at the Cerberus timeclock, just shooting the breeze and talking about what sort of failed, escaped experiments they’ll fight today. They ignore you when you blast your way through the Cerberus break room because 1) You’re not on the schedule of stuff to fight and 2) they’re on break.

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.

The Illusive Man runs a super-powerful organization that opposed you in the first game, because they are inept pro-Human terrorist mooks. Then he brings you back from the dead, because he opposes the Reapers. But then he’s attacking the Citadel, because he’s… pro-Human again? But then he’s husking Humans because he wants the Reaper power for himself. Later on he tell the Reapers what the Prothean AI revealed about the catalyst, either because he’s indoctrinated or because he knew how the Reapers would respond. And then at the end he’s just a stupid crazy idiot who got indoctrinated ages ago.

You can’t say any particular thing is a plot hole, because he has character elements to justify almost any sort of behavior. His only real motivation is identical to the motivation of the writers: Oppose Shepard no matter what she’s trying to do, and oppose her in a way that leads to squad-based shooty combat. TIM is the avatar of the writers, and he doesn’t step out of the way until we meet the Star Child. Who is arguably the same thing. This is true of a lot of videogame antagonists. The problem is, it’s not supposed to be this obvious. Usually the writers hide that sort of thing behind a curtain of of characterization.

This could have been done much better, is what I’m saying.

Sorry for the rough start to this week. It really did take us a long time to get it all working, and by the time it happened some of us were tired and irritated. Maybe that was just me. At any rate, we’re near the end. Looks like we’ll finish this game right around the end of the month. We’ve picked out our next game. I won’t reveal what it is, but I will say the next season is likely to be a lot more positive.

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.

I don’t know what to think of Horizon / Sanctuary. Did they install a gun out in the boonies, away from a population center in Mass Effect 2? Was that area the ONLY rural area? Or did the collectors invade the only rural area with a huge space-gun? Or was this new massive population center / Cerberus base built in the few months since the events of ME2? Or was this an existing Alliance base that Cerberus took over so they could build a secret underwater husk factory?

If Horizon had been built around characters the way Zhu’s hope had been, I might have felt like there was an emotional stake in this place. But at the end of Mass Effect 2, we don’t even know what happened to the colonists. Did we rescue them? Did any live? Did some escape? Going by what was shown us, it seems reasonable to assume everyone was turned into Reaper slush. But then why is this place so much bigger?

It doesn’t matter. None of it matters. It’s not connected, nobody thought about it, nobody cared enough to give a name to a single person on Horizon. The writers just re-used the name of the place without bothering to explain what happened here. Re-using the name just serves to make the galaxy feel smaller without taking advantage of that smallness to build characters, relationships, or stories.

Well, we got Miranda’s sister. There’s that.

Behold, the nunchuck gun!

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.