S.T.A.G.E. said:
Your decisions didnt affect three much at all. Very little in truth because the game was so highly cinematic. If you wanted a game that trully gauged the consequences for your actions the Witcher 2 did it best without all of the nonsense. I'll agree that character customization in 2 wasnt as good as 3 but the pacing of the RPG elements was better in two than three. It seems that with every game they streamline a certain part of it (After EA bought them).
I played two multiple times and experienced more variation in it than three (between itself and one), which is why I went back and started over part one or used the comic book to change the story a bit to play through twice. I've found zero reason to play three twice. The only real thing that counts is who lives or dies leading you to the people who are in the game. Part three is an insignificantly changed story which leads to the three choices at the end.
|
There is no element of this which I can acquiesce to.
Every single major decision you've made throughout the series is reflected in ME3, one way or another, often in combination with each other. Let Balak go in ME1? Well, he's back! But I didn't, so I had someone else to shoot now. Talked Charr and Ereba into shacking up? That ended up mattering, and it's even sadder if you didn't (soul-crushing in a really despairing way). Conversations you had in the first two games determine who lives and dies in the third one; a lot of people can't figure out how to keep Miranda alive simply because their previous decisions force them into scenarios that border on unwinnable.
Or how about Rannoch, or Tuchanka, where peace and survival may be impossible to achieve based on the decisions you've made up to that point? Or Priority: Citadel, where you may have to kill the Virmire Survivor depending on who made it through the first two games, and how you've treated the Survivor the whole time?
There were literally hundreds of decisions throughout the first two games that were reflected in ME3 in one way or another, some minor and some major, but all of them acknowledged, all of them ultimately mattering. There are more ways to go through ME3, more consequences to see, than the first two games combined - and that's not an opinion, that's a mathematical fact.
And "pacing of the RPG elements" doesn't make any sense. There are two elements of RPGness in Mass Effect, and those are character customization and decision-making. ME3 had more of both than did ME2, and more decision-making (and consequences) than ME1.
And my original point stands: the writing in ME1 was weakest, the combat in ME1 was weakest, the worldbuilding in ME1 was weakest, the characters in ME1 were weakest. The asari were paper cutouts blue space-women until their culture was explored in ME2; the krogan were basically dead opposites of the asari; the salarians were "the smart ones"; the turians were "the military ones"; this extended to every aspect of the universe. The setting matured and became more real and believable over the course of the series, not less, and all of the characters did the same thing.
I cannot think of a single meaningful metric by which I would place ME1 at the top of the food chain in this series.
