Mass Effect 2 Broke the Franchise
Mass Effect 2 Broke the Franchise
Mass Effect 2 is full of brilliant stories, but it does a terrible job of setting things up for the third game.
On it's own ME2 is incredible in terms of character dialogue, art direction, sound design, and gameplay improvement overhaul. I would argue that from a lore and world building perspective it was a failure to commit to previously laid out ideas about the Terminus systems being a second set of galactic species and powers.
We could have laid the foundation for getting them to work together with council space for the Reaper invasion instead of the actual plot of ME2.
I absolutely love ME2, but I often wonder how they could have reworked the second game to make it supply more ground work for ME3.
Then again, I don't think any amount of plot would have saved ME3's two year dev cycle. It was always going to feel like an incomplete game, rushed. I often hear people blame the shortcomings of ME3 squarely on ME2 and I just don't agree. Could they have done a better job? Absolutely. It likely wouldn't have made the ending any better, and unless you consider bringing the Reapers into the mix in the second of three games, the Reaper war would be crammed into the third no matter what.
@stopthatgirl7 The rough transition from ME2 to ME3 is a direct consequence of a failure in leadership at BioWare, full stop. ME2 doesn't mesh well with ME3, because it was not BioWare and EA's priority during ME3's development to make it as such. ME3 is gameplay over story, profits over creativity, and a harbinger of everything that was wrong within BioWare that culminated in the utter failure of Anthem. ME2 as an art piece is in opposition of everything that BioWare would for a time become.
EA buying them was the worst thing to happen to BioWare. They made so many top-down decisions that really hurt the games. From little things like insisting they get rid of heat sinks in ME to insisting on a boss battle with Orsino in DA2.
@stopthatgirl7 But so too was it the case that BioWare themselves contributed to their downfall. The leadership were very open around the time of ME3's release about their desire to focus more on gameplay than story. I also cannot forget that crazy interview where the creator of ME said that they procrastinated on Tali's appearance, simply because they didn't want to make people upset, which is bonkers considering how unhappy pretty much everyone was with ME3 upon release.
I've never heard someone point out exactly what decisions were from EA leadership. Do you have a source where I can do more reading? Bioware was my favorite studio before EA bought them.