If You Had To Cut 3 Squadmates from ME2...

Honestly, Jacob only looks bad when compared to everyone else. We have genetically engineered perfect humans and krogan, genius scientists and engineers, master assassins and thiefs, thousand year old asari, geth... and then there's Jacob. He's an everyman. He's got biotics but he's far outclassed. He's a soldier but he's far outclassed there too. Unlike everyone else on the ship apart from Kelly, and the nameless crew, he's just a regular dude.

So yeah, obviously he looks dull and uninteresting. Look at his competition. There's nothing wrong with Jacob, but there's nothing particularly right either. He's just there.

Provide cover fire for Brynn and Shepard. Brynn, without any regards to her own safety, ran out to help Shepard while Jacob, without hesitation, provided cover for both to get back in the shuttle

I think you forget that Jacob is a Cerberus loyalist. He even talk about Cerberus being fantastic because they don't judge him for screwing all his female bosses. He's okay with Collector's Base being given to Illusive Man because it was in the interest of humanity. He went back to Cerberus after Normandy got impounded by Alliance and hook up with his Cerberus girlfriend on Mumbai and made a safehouse on Gellix for Cerberus personnel and their family. He merely cut ties with TIM but he came back for the Cerberus folks because he believe in their ideals and he even let Dr Archer stay with him.

Miranda became Normandy XO because she's a Project Leader for Lazarus whose main function was to allocate all fund on Shepard's reconstruction and then her main function on the ship was to send reports about Shepard to Illusive Man like an overqualified secretary. She found out about Cerberus because her 'daddy' fund the organization and apparently she rebelled against her father by working for that organization. She's hardly a believer like Jacob and she never form attachment to them. 

You're kidding me right? So did you skip all the conversations with her too? The ones where she talks about believing in Cerberus' goal of advancing humanity, telling Shepard she misjudged him and maybe he misjudged Cerberus as well, saying she liked her work because she always envied the STG for their operational freedom, defending Cerberus on every known operation to date and providing justification for their actions, all that? Or how about being only a handful of people to get facetime with TIM?

Jacob is a grunt who has clear and stated reservations about Cerberus' more extreme measures, unlike Miranda who mostly justifies them in ME2. The only reason he didn't personally get assassins on his ass once leaving Cerberus is because he was too low ranking to bother with. He didn't know anything that could be a threat, he didn't matter, one way or another. And defending the Gellix scientists doesn't mean he supports Cerberus, far from it. The scientists are good people and brilliant in their fields. They're valuable on their own and that's what Jacob responds to. He protects them from Cerberus, not because of it.

Personally, I would have written this whole story around the Geth. And Legion would be the first crewmate.

It's funny that he was the first thing ever shown about ME2 at one time..





I'd like to pick their brains on what ideas were floating around once. Because I don't think the Lazarus project was their first idea. Drew even said something along these lines... making the suggestion that maybe Shep was a cyborg.

It would have just been a different game with a completely different story then wouldn't it?  There still would have been, IMO, 2 squad mates for the basic combat tutorial since that was the focus of the combat mechanics of the game.  It happened much the same way in ME1... we lost Jenkins and picked up Ashley... and in ME3... we lost Anderson as a squad mate and picked up the VS and James.  We learn how to move the character and just shoot either with just the PC and one squad mate, then learn squad control using two squad mates... followed by the recruitment of other team members to give us a selection of different squad mates to choose from.

... but we'll never really know, will we... because that story wasn't actually written.  If "ifs and buts were candy and nuts, we'd all have a merry Christmas non-denominational holiday of unspecified ethnic origin.

Awe... I was trying to be... because part of the issue with Jacob, I think, is that they really had no idea how to write an interesting black character without stepping on ethnic toes somewhere... so they blanded him out.

I do agree the geth angle would be an intriguing story angle; and maybe someday, they'll write that story... might be under a different IP or in a different cluster of the Mass Effect universe or as a totally overhauled "reboot" of the ME Trilogy franchise.

I also agree that the Lazarus Project was a dumb way to start ME2 and Jacob's personality is certainly not my favorite in the game.  I have a really tough time playing through ME2 with a FemShep expressly because of Jacob's personality and Jen Hale's inflection in the lines needed to talk to him.  I wouldn't axe him though... I'd change his personality instead. 

Still, if the theoretical question is simply cutting 3 squad mates, I wouldn't cut Jacob because of that early game play role he fills.  I'd cut the two DLC characters (Kasumi and Zaeed) because they're DLC and their story arcs are designed to not be critical to the overall story anyways.  Then I'd cut Samara (because I see her background arc as being the most expendable and her being a mother living just to kill off her children is not a story arc that I personally like anyways).

In ME1, the two squad mates cannot be positioned individually in separate places (at least on the Xbox 360).  You press "up" on the D-pad while aiming at the location and BOTH squadmates will go there.  In ME2, you can position each squad mate in different locations by pressing either left or right on the D-pad, left ordering the squad mate who is on the left side the power wheel and right ordering the one on the right separately.

Mass Effect characters aren't equally written and often time there's several writers handling on character in the trilogy and whether they're successful with their characters is subjective to me. Its just so happened that some of the characters I happened to like are written in depth are also the ones people dislike and often hated and given the most ridiculous brush off one-liners because out of failure to understand them or that they're unlikable or simply just "boring".

Miranda's primarily goal in her life was to escape and to confront her domineering father to save herself and her sister. She is an independent woman herself and she never was dependent on Cerberus like Jacob does and it will always take a secondary place in her personal narrative. But it doesn't change the fact that her entire narrative in ME2 and ME3 was to be emotionally vulnerable and inadequate so she could dependent on you as a player to resolve her problems in exchange for good favors and sex which happened to be the most common denominator especially with majority of romanceable characters in this game. And it so happen, I find her creation and her father's experimentation to be the most fascinating aspect of her. It explained her preoccupation with being the perfect woman and her desire to see her sister to have a normal life and family because those are the things she couldn't have and it does explain all the comments about her extensive alteration.

I often interpret characters in depth whenever I play each playthrough and I like to explore as much as I can find about them and review these character as a person themselves. Kaidan is just a character who happened to be consistently well-written throughout the game and complex enough for me to still figuring him out as I play the game. I like to write about him because of his writing, his acting, his portrayal inspired me to do so and he's actually my third favourite character in the trilogy under FemShep and Wrex. I can't say he have daddy issues because he have none. He love his parents. His father was killed in action and he hated that he wasn't there on Earth for his mother. I can't say that I have to be told that he is made to be perfect and that he would use his sexuality and masculinity to get whatever he wanted. I could decide it for myself that he is sexy and handsome without the camera forcing me to view him sexually. All of his achievements was just him by being good at being a soldier and not because how he was genetically modified to be perfect at everything. And I CAN say that the Alliance matters to him because he didn't drop everything to join Shepard and he even accused her of betraying everything they believe in. I don't see Miranda accusing Shepard for betraying Cerberus or whine about ruining her entire career. Cerberus does not define her as a person which does for Jacob.

You are free to write about whatever that you like. But its not my job to make myself gush about the character you like nor was to hate the character you hate.

Was that video suggesting Shepard was going to come back as one of the geth?  Robocop Shepard?  I'm glad that didn't follow up on that one.

I'm glad you defend Kaidan, cause as a fan of his character as well, I find it frustrating when the character can be written off so to speak. 

I don't mind it when people dislike a character I like, or vice versa. I really only find it disappointing when the character is just labelled as one note. Even Zaeed, who is close to being fairly one-note, can be interpreted and viewed as more to that, so I prefer it when these characters aren't just lazily written off this way.

I mean, I don't like Ashley, but I wouldn't ignore the character's development across the trilogy, and the qualities of the character others like about her.

I appreciate you expanded your views on Miranda's character, I really only took issue with the initially labelling of the character as one-note as I iterated in my other post.