Was Mass Effect 2 really that Much Better than MEA?

I will always be of the opinion that the Shepard in ME2 and ME3 is not the original Commander Shepard and was just a nearly perfect Cerberus clone with implanted memories.  Supported by the Shepard clone that appears in ME3 Citadel DLC.  There are even moments in ME2 that Shepard can question if he really is the real Commander Shepard, but it just kind of fizzles out and goes no where because Cerberus says "yep, you are Shepard."  Either way, other than space magic, it would be impossible to resurrect a corpse that was exposed to the void of space, experienced re-entry through an atmosphere and then collided with the surface of a planet.  Then Cerberus reanimates his body to life after two years of his body, organs and brain being dead?

No.

Commander Shepard died at the start of ME2.  Cerberus recreated him by breeding a clone with all the memories artificially inserted of the original Shepard.  Shepard in ME2 and ME3, in my head canon, is a perfect replica, but not the original. That's my Mass Effect story.  Kind of depressing, but no less depressing than other Sci-Fi shows where the crew have something horrible happen, creating an alternate reality where they all die and their "past selves" find out and correct the wrong... meaning they aren't REALLY the same people we've followed through the whole story until that point.. Just alternate reality/timeline versions that are identical.  Pretty sure that happened to every crew of every Stargate series at LEAST once.

Agreed that's kind of how I see MEA as well in that is kind of  modern version of ME1 a new story and how I think that if they did ME1 today this would have likely been how they'd go about doing it. I think MEA is better than ME1 but I wouldn't put it quite up to ME2 or ME3 standards though as I think the story and quests an what have you for me seemed to meld together much bette than they did in MEA. I love all 4 games but tbh comparing MEA to the trilogy just feels a bit wrong to me anyway because MEA is just one entry in the franchise the trilogy is 3 games. Shepard has had their time so I was happy to give someone else a look in and while Ryder's not perfect I kind of feel like I don't think they were supposed to be. P)art of that I think is down to the fact I think is because they're supposed to be young and very green and learning the ropes and to me it's also what makes them more endearing and likeable characters to me in the fact that despite not having the experience they'er willing to give it a shot. Sometimes I like to play a character like that. The new Tomb raider games 2013 and Rise gave me those feelings as well. I think it worked great there and if Ryder's story continues like that as well (assuming they do give Ryder another game which is questionable atm) it could end up being pretty good.

I was pretty critical towards ME2 as well. It had huge problems with the rwiting and continuety (almost as bad as ME:A).

However, it did manage to impress a lot with the smooth gameplay - which at the time was a huge step forwards from ME1 - and with its awesome cinematic presentation. Also, while there were a lot of issues with the writing, it was at the same time chock full of little details that really managed to enrich the Mass Effect world to no end. Mostly little stuff. Just walk around the Citadel in ME2 and listen to all the awesome side content that's there, conversations like the Isaac Newton stuff, the krogan wondering about fish in the presidium, the asari-turian couple in the souvenir store, Emely Wongs news broadcasts, all of this filled the universe with so much life that it was a bit easier to see past the glaring stupid things.

In contrast, most of this side stuff in Andromeda was IMO either stupid and inconsistent itself or it was just not memorable enough to be impactful. And since not only story was an issue (as it was in ME2) but also presentation (with the animation issues) and characters (which were much better in ME2), ME:A just accumulates more negatives while having less of the awesome stuff that would make one forgive some issues.

That's an interesting alternate take, though I don't know how you'd be able to implant enough of Shepard's memories to make it work.  It's still space magic.

But this is what the "real" ME1 Shepard may have done in these circumstances:  Played along with TIM long enough to find out what's what, taken Miranda and Jacob prisoner to find out everything she could about Cerberus operations, hacked though EDI's defenses to download everything known about Cerberus (and then shut her down), cleaned out the SR-2 of any monitoring devices and hijacked it, fully investigated and shut down Cerberus and insisted the Alliance use the intel to protect the colonies and defeat the collectors.

Instead the supposedly pure alpha / awesomesauce Shepard spent the entire game dancing like a puppet with TIM pulling the strings.  The Shepard that supposedly don't take crap from nobody, yet she just went along with all of TIM's crap - all of his manipulations, his luring the collectors to Horizon and releasing info about Shepard, etc.  Gad.

I think when people are saying that the graphics in ME2 are better, they are confusing it with a consistent art style and really good us eof colour / lighting.

So whilst this has better and more hi-res textures, higher polygon counts, better resolution, shader models etc:





The overall art design (if that's the right word) for ME2 is in my opinion superior as it hides the lower resolution and technically inferior graphics (note this has higher-res texture mods installed as the original textures are gash):





However, ME:A does look stunning, it's just not consistent enough. For example, the Nexus is bland as hell.

Hasn't it always been?   I don't see any new complaints here in this thread I didn't see on the old BSN right after ME2 released.

No. MEA is not my favorite Mass Effect game, but it is better than ME2 which is in my opinion the worst of the main Mass Effect games.

This is great. The art style for ME2 was great but the overall effect of the unreal engine was just so much darker. There's more vibrance in colors with the new game that was never achieved before. But then all the games at that time went for this more dark, gritty look. I still think the facial details for ME2 were terrible outside of default Shepard. The new faces aren't great either but I like them better overall.

Ultimately, bring on the more vibrant art style and story tones. We had a decade of dark, gritty games.

The new Zelda, Horizon Zero Dawn, and MEA are all good examples

I love Mass Effect 2. Hell, I love all the Mass Effects. That's why I hang around here.

But Mass Effect 2 sort of has this problem where pretty much EVERYTHING was ditched for rule of cool with very minimal attempts to explain it, which shot ME3 in the foot later and occasionally makes my eyes roll out of their sockets. It's kind of incoherent, like an 80s action movie but in space. Which yes, is why it's good. I dunno, it's just too much sparkle to be my favorite (which is still 3, so what do I know?).

MEA needs some time to let the new Mass Effect smell wear off before I can solidify my feelings beyond "Yay, NEW MASS EFFECT OH FRABGEOUS DAY!"

Question on whether you're using a console or PC?  I can never get my screenshots to look that nice.

Yeah ME2 is overrated. I feel like it being the best selling and most notable entry in the series made people have these strange goggles on that aren't entirely objective.

The charm of ME2 wears off after the first playthrough. 

Anytime I do an OT  replay, I anticipate playing ME2 the least.

Yeah, they really did some tone-setting with dramatic lighting in ME2. It was okay when I played it on PS3, not so much on PC. On the rare occasion I load it up on PC, I do a lot of mucking around with config files and adjust my monitor so I can see things better. Too much contrast for me.

As for MEA, someone mentioned that the lighting adjustments were intended to provide a sense of your eyes actually adjusting to different lighting conditions. For example, when you step into a cave, the lighting gradually comes up to simulate your eyes adjusting to the darkness - and the opposite happens when you come back out into the bright sunlight.