Less then 66 days until Mass Effect 3 comes out, cant' wait.

[ATARI800XLfan]

Because none of your ME2 companions were back as companions. They wanted to use them for important story moments in ME3 without being shackled by having to consider them as player companions.

Consider how many of your ME2 characters have forced deaths and add in all the deaths that occur if you didn't do loyalty in ME2. If all those deaths were of player companions it would have felt terrible as a player. I finally got to use Mordin and now he's dead. I finally got Samara and she just blew her brains out. I finally got Grunt and he died saving us from the Reaper Rachni. By not giving us them as full companions you still maintain the emotional impact of the loss from a storyline perspective but without the additional frustration of losing a gameplay character. To compare, when Aeris was killed in FF7 I wasn't affected by it from a storyline perspective but I was pissed that I lost the character I had been raising as my mage.

Now, if they wanted to replace Freddy Prinze Junior with a Krogan, I'd have no problems with that. There's just a good reason you don't get Grunt or Wrex.

But grunt was not really, why not have at least 1 from the second game. By Freddy Price junior do you mean Vega? A Krogan would be a 100 Percent improvement over Vega, Also like the scenes with Rex and how much we learn about Krogan history, one of my favorite parts. Bro high five with Rex. Too bad that mission also shows how much of dicks the salarian leaders are.

[ATARI800XLfan]

There's another pretty epic moment involving alcohol and one of your squadmates later on in the game. Suffice to say, after major missions make sure you go talk to everyone on the ship.

Looking forward to that, I've noticed there's a LOT more going on aboard the Normandy than in previous games. Despite whatever complaints I may have about the game, I credit Bioware for making the characters, including Shepherd, feel much more like real people in ME 3 than they did before. Shepherd shows more personality, and the characters don't seem to have their world revolve completely around him anymore.

Exactly, By the way, mission on sur Kesh bring along Garrius and talk to Rex.

But not liara.

[ATARI800XLfan]

The way I look at it:

ME1 - Better story/plot/atmosphere, hands down
ME2/ME3 - Better characterization (minus the lack of a good Saren-like character in ME2-ME3).

The dialogue and interactions was definitely at its best in ME3, very dynamic stuff. You see your crew around the Citadel too a lot which was even cooler. An awesome improvement over the first two games where they were just always in the same spot every single time.

Which makes it even harder to understand what they did to the last 5 minutes of the game.

[MrPopo]

Gah! There's a W in his name! It's Wrex!

[ATARI800XLfan]

Gah! There's a W in his name! It's Wrex!

Darn it, how could I have forgot the W, Doh.

[dsheinem]

I thought it was "Wrecks in Effect"?

[Gamerforlife]

I had to look that up...

I don't think TIM fits the "villain" bill though like Saren did, or some of Bioware's other older games with a character like that. Even if Saren was still pretty dynamic himself, you saw him as the central core of the Geth in ME1. There was nothing like that in the sequels. TIM, Harbinger, and certainly Kai Leng didn't fill those shoes to me.

The thing I liked about Saren is that he was kind of a grey character, not truly evil. The great thing is, once you're starting to kind of relate to Saren as something other than an evil villain, they introduce Sovereign. And now you have someone else to hate. It was all brilliantly done.

There was always a strong, villainous force driving you through the game. Let's not forget Benezia, what an awesome villain she is was too. Evil Deanna Troi is awesome

I kind of miss Mass Effect 1's explosive rounds. Man I had fun rag dolling people with those

[captainhavoc]

The way I look at it:

ME1 - Better story/plot/atmosphere, hands down
ME2/ME3 - Better characterization (minus the lack of a good Saren-like character in ME2-ME3).

The dialogue and interactions was definitely at its best in ME3, very dynamic stuff. You see your crew around the Citadel too a lot which was even cooler. An awesome improvement over the first two games where they were just always in the same spot every single time.

IMO, ME1 and ME3 are pretty much the Harry Potter series in space. Shepard discovers the reapers and tries to warn everyone (ME1), then the allies understand the threat but still gradually start to be conquered until Shepard can show up again with e̶l̶d̶e̶r̶ ̶w̶a̶n̶d̶ crucible to end the war. (ME3)

ME2 is 13 Assassins (Seven Samurai if you're old, A Bug's Life if you're young) in space. The plot being that Shepard has to round up a bunch of badasses to go on a suicide mission

(giant dumb terminator looking human reaper aside)

makes it the best of the three, story-wise for me.

[Gamerforlife]

Man, it's MUCH harder to play pure paragon in ME 3. Not because they force Renegade points on you like ME 2 does, but because some of the renegade options just seem like the way Shepherd SHOULD act. I'm still early in the game, but the alignment system seems a bit better integrated. I'm playing a boyscout Shepherd, yet I'm finding situations where taking a renegade action doesn't really make my Shepherd seem like any less of a good guy. It feels less cut and dried than previous games where it was like, "Here's nice guy Shep, and here's dickhead Shep".

Now it feels more like if you don't do renegade actions in some parts of the game, it makes Shep seems weak willed or just downright stupid. I used to NEVER say or do anything renegade in ME 1 or 2, but I now feel embarrassed for Shep in some parts of the game if he DOESN'T do the renegade thing. I'm finding that some characters react to Shep better if he does something renegade, so it feels like you HAVE to be renegade at times just to improve interactions with some people. It's surprising to me to see POSITIVE reactions from other characters when I do something renegade. It's changing how I play a bit. Sometimes it seems like you've just got to make Shep show people that he actually has a set OR that he is passionate enough about something as sometimes ignoring the renegade route just makes him seem too passive or uninterested.

So yeah, interesting work there Bioware

[Gamerforlife]

The more I play this, the more shocked I am that the ending upset people so much, as so far I'm finding the game's writing and dialog a real step above BOTH previous games