Kai Leng

I'm not saying those things didn't happen, but what I said is also true. Mass Effect 2 did nothing for the series all on it's own. What was there to use from ME2, particularly if you didn't save the Collector base?

That's true. I've always said that Mass Effect 2 jettisoned the idea of a coherent plot and decided to focus on the characters. That decision reached forward into ME3 until the ending where we forgot about the characters and had to focus on a new plot that was formerly just a B-plot.

It is ME3's fault for bypassing Harbinger, but the Collectors didn't add anything to the series. They didn't give us reason to oppose the Reapers where we didn't have one before. We already know they make husks, so the Prothean reveal didn't have much value, even if it's not exactly the same. We didn't learn anything valuable about the Reapers to help us stop or understand them. And that doesn't even get into all the plot problems like Shepard dying for no reason and not using that at all, having no reason to get anyone but Mordin, the whole ground team leaving the Normandy for no reason, or jumping through the Omega 4 relay despite knowing nothing about it or what you'll face on the other side. I can let that last one slip a bit more though because drama.

But we already knew they don't destroy what they can use. It's a little darker and creepier, but did we need that?

I do look at ME2 as a whole. There is nothing interesting about the Collectors other than that they interact with normal people to make their deals. Why couldn't we find out more about how Okeer made his deal or follow up on the Vorcha from Omega? Why not make a fake deal to catch the Collectors, which could be where they get the seeker drone that magically appears in Mordin's box.

Some of those "opposites" are interesting but others are a stretch. They are just supposed to be a group of badasses to go kick some Collector ass like The Expendables.

The last two sentences are nonsense. I do stop and smell the roses because those are the reasons to like the game. None of that is a defense of the plot. Why do roses mean the road has to be terrible?

I would just add that this makes even less sense since you're not Iakus... who dislikes ME2, but for more specific reasons. Like he didn't like the crew. But you seem to like them... and still speak like him.

I'm just getting frustrated because this conversation won't end... it just keeps going. I don't know what you want me to say anymore. I'm just trying to state what I see as positives.

It's true that ME1 had both, but that's not always true of literature in general. So my expectations are seen in that light, rather than just ME1's. ME2 is it's own thing, using a different structure. I appreciate it for what it is and not what it's not.

But like I said, I imagine the change in writers impacted things. Drew left to write Swtor. That's a huge change. Who knows what could have been carried over with him on board. But even without that, I still appreciate the characters and motifs it touched on.

None of us knows what they truly intended with Harbinger at first.. so what can I really focus on? I can't comment on things I don't know about. All I can say is that I don't think they're stupid. Bioware doesn't write genius level stuff, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that they intended something more here first.

But you want to judge everything in light of ME3, which I think is unfair. As if they wrote ME2's plot to intentionally be pointless. I'm just not that cynical. Sorry.

So all I can do is appreciate what lives on about it. The characters mostly.

I think it was more than that. We already know, for one, that Drew was contemplating a Dark energy storyline. Some things make some sense in light of that. Like some of Harbinger's combat barks. And Drew was far more focused on the significance of human biotics in the bigger picture, which got dropped.

I would personally say it's probably a worse overall story and far more bleak than what we got, but at the very least, there was an underlying vision. Like I said, I'm not so cynical to just dismiss it all as random. Bioware are better than that... As if they all went for rule of cool or something.

And you mentioned Okeer earlier. That stuff was brilliant, but the writer left early too. He wrote some good stuff, and it wasn't carried through properly. He also wrote Grunt, Jack, Samara/Morinth. Weekes took over most of it and just pushed his own projects and diminished these. Same with L'etoile's take on Legion. His other characters suffered too. Ash and Thane.

And I have to wonder how Hudson juggled all of these things. Or what he even paid attention to or what was weakened by writer losses. I mean, when Deception came out, he pimped that book like it was the greatest thing. lol. I like him, but it makes me wonder how much attention he put into some of this other stuff.

I would say it was going well before all of this happened. But you want to say losing 4 main writers (including the lead) was getting things back on course in ME3. Like suddenly that's the "right" vision for the direction and they were only screwing up before. I have my doubts.  ME3 certainly got back to the Reaper plot in a clearer way, but it was more simplistic, and some stories took a backseat. That's easier to write that way, but it isn't necessarily better.

I'm sorry, were you trying to be clever?

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In any case, I just finished the trilogy for the first time and when I first saw that ridiculous jumping mannequin I actually jerked in my chair.

"What the hell is that thing doing on the Citadel!?"

Calling it 'Immersion breaking' would be an understatement.  For those who have played DA2 - it's obvious someone at BioWare has/used to have a fetish about anime.  In DA2 it was the fighting style and those grotesque overblown screams all anime characters seem to bellow whenever they're fighting; in ME3 it was Kai Leng - who literally does the whole gamut of strut/jump/scream/smash things during the Cerberus HQ mission.  Perhaps they wanted to pander to the Asian market?  Regardless, the Shamus article analyses this in details but my personal reaction to the introduction of this character was immediate revulsion.

And I'm gay so...

I think that's part of what makes him so hard for people to care, he has no motivations to explain his racism. And sure, that's fine, some people are like that, but for a story where it's trying to portray Cerberus as grey morality?
There was a book, Fearful Symmetries by Andrew Swann where the antagonist had a grudge against Moreys, genetically engineered animals who function like humans. They were bred for war and the villain was a near casualty when a morey took a hatchet to his face as a kid. There, something sympathetic for someone to hold a racist feel towards another species. If Kai Leng had something like that, was a teammate even during ME2 that while you would not sway his hostility to aliens, you could at least reach an understanding, the fight with him could have been powerful.

That'd be clever, pulling a reverse Horizon on Shepard. It'd also give players a sense of whether they were right in the end about whether they'd act the same as Kaidan or Ashley. Now I wish I could have seen that!