Mass Effect 2: Picking Holes
Mass Effect 2, such is your reporter’s wont, has recently become just another entry on his list of videogames approaches six months after their release.
Tempting as it was to formulate a straightforward BioWare retrospective, the fact we’d just praise its thoroughly consistent, logical universe prompted us to pick holes in it in order to prove our own point. Here’s the result (with obvious spoiler consequences)…
Point one: How can Shepard get away with taking Samara, the asari justicar, along with him for missions before proceeding to plunder every vaguely abandoned safe for the riches within? Surely the course of action she’d take should be to take him down with extreme prejudice?
Point two: Why doesn’t the prusuit of two lovers at the same time not lead to some kind of interstellar Jeremy Kyle type mission, as Shepard is grilled by some asari bleeding heart while herds of elcor scream ‘Annoyed. He a skank.” Not only does such secrecy not make sense, but this would be excellent.
Point three: Why does Shepard feel totally at ease bringing a geth on board after the merest few seconds of covering fire? Having spent nearly all his professional life slaughtering the things, surely some sort of natural apprehension would be appropriate?
Point four: Why is it that Miranda starts her relationship with Shepard basically hating his guts, before becoming some sort of vulnerable archetype during her personal mission, and then returning to her barbed self should you decide against her in one discussion?
Point five: Why wouldn’t the greatest military leader of all time delegate the mining of some useless lump of rock to, well, anyone else at all? All his crew do are stand at their consoles, gossiping wildly anyway.
That’s all the X360 office can come up with for today, proving perhaps beyond doubt that BioWare’s 96 Metacritic average is well and truly deserved. Can anyone out there offer any more, at all?
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As a rabidly fanatic Mass Effect fan, I will pick holes in your hole picking.
Point one: How can Shepard get away with taking Samara, the asari justicar, along with him for missions before proceeding to plunder every vaguely abandoned safe for the riches within? Surely the course of action she’d take should be to take him down with extreme prejudice?
Samara pledged her fealty to you until the Collectors were stopped. In that time she told Shepard her loyalty was to him/her, even before her loyalty to justice. If you’re an evil renegade though, at some point Samara will confront you and tell you she will hunt you down after this is all over.
Point two: Why doesn’t the prusuit of two lovers at the same time not lead to some kind of interstellar Jeremy Kyle type mission, as Shepard is grilled by some asari bleeding heart while herds of elcor scream ‘Annoyed. He a skank.” Not only does such secrecy not make sense, but this would be excellent.
It happened in Mass Effect 1. I guess that the love interests in Mass Effect 2 aren’t too fussed about the whole loyalty thing.
Point three: Why does Shepard feel totally at ease bringing a geth on board after the merest few seconds of covering fire? Having spent nearly all his professional life slaughtering the things, surely some sort of natural apprehension would be appropriate?
Correction: Having spent a few years slaughtering the things. Geth hadn’t been outside the Veil for a century before they attacked Eden Prime in Mass Effect 1. The reason Shepard brought this Geth on board was simple: a Geth saved him/her, lowered the barrier preventing him from reaching the Reaper’s Core, and also spoke to him/her. If your Shepard had a problem with Legion, then you should have given him to Cerberus for scientific research.
Point four: Why is it that Miranda starts her relationship with Shepard basically hating his guts, before becoming some sort of vulnerable archetype during her personal mission, and then returning to her barbed self should you decide against her in one discussion?
She’s highly strung.
Point five: Why wouldn’t the greatest military leader of all time delegate the mining of some useless lump of rock to, well, anyone else at all? All his crew do are stand at their consoles, gossiping wildly anyway.
Shepard’s Xbox broke. He needs SOMETHING to do, dammit.
Oh, and as for other plot holes, there are tons of them, unfortunately. It doesn’t at all detract from the quality of the game and its amazing universe though.
ME1 | 1. Why weren’t there geth ships to guard both ends of the Mu Relay (to counter the Normandy’s stealth), and how did Joker fly out once they were alerted to their presence?
ME2 | 2. Why didn’t the Collectors try to abduct the Normandy SR-1 crew instead of destroy them?
ME1 | 3. Couldn’t the Turian Councilor accuse Shepard and Tali of pre-recording Saren’s voiceprint during the “trial” and modifying it to say what they want (like in Kasumi’s DLC)?
ME2 | 4. How DID Shepard’s body remain intact during the descent into Alchera or his orbit around it?
ME1 | 5. If recording was that simple, why didn’t they use it during their conversations with Saren, Sovereign and Vigil? After all, a soldier from Ashley’s team was able to send helmet recordings of Sovereign in the middle of battle (why didn’t they use that too?)
ME2 | 6. Why are there dog tags in intact crates on Alchera? Did crew members think that hiding in crates would help them survive?
ME1 | 7. In Bring Down the Sky, why didn’t Balak just set the bomb charges off while Shepard was disabling it to kill two birds with one stone?
ME2 | 8. Why wasn’t Shepard and Jacob more suspicious of the fact that Wilson was in a room by himself with human corpses and a wounded leg?
ME1 | 9. Why wasn’t Shepard suspicious enough to ask Ian Newstead how he managed to get past all the geth in the Feros tunnels? Is the Thorian allied with the geth or something?
ME2 | 10. If Garrus wasn’t recruited in ME1, why does he still act like he’s known Shepard personally through all the “old times”?
ME1 | 11. If you let Fist live, why didn’t the Shadow Broker hire anyone to go after Fist again, or to go after Wrex for betraying him like Fist did?
ME2 | 12. Why didn’t Warden Kuril in Purgatory wait until Shepard and squad stepped INSIDE the cell before closing it on them?
ME1 | 13. Why couldn’t the geth or Saren just attach explosives to all the elevators in Feros, Noveria, Virmire, Ilos and the Citadel to get rid of Shepard?
ME2 | 14. If Garrus knew how to take down a gunship in one shot, why didn’t he do that the second time instead of shooting at all the offloaded mercs?
ME1 | 15. If the Mako’s jets only work for a few seconds, how does it get back to the Normandy without forcing the Normandy to land?
ME2 | 16. If Haestrom’s sun destroys all shields and Quarian technology – including Legion (but not Grunt’s armor) – why are the other geth unaffected?
ME1 | 17. If the Mako can’t fire upwards and has limited mobility, why didn’t combat drones just hover over the Mako and fire at it from above?
ME2 | 18. If Haestrom’s radiation prevents all off-world communication, how does EDI immediately contact Shepard after?
ME1 | 19. Why didn’t Saren destroy the second beacon on Virmire after using it to prevent Shepard from doing the same?
ME2 | 20. Why does Maelon mention “Reaper indoctrination” specifically when referring to Mordin’s past research when no one knew about it before then?
ME1 | 21. If Shepard chose to go to the AA Tower, why didn’t Saren and the geth just eliminate whoever stayed back at the bomb site and either disable or take the bomb out of the facility?
ME2 | 22. If the Disabled Collector Vessel was a trap by the Collectors, why would they leave behind a large cache of upgraded weapons for Shepard to pick from?
ME1 | 23. Opold in Noveria asks you to smuggle weaponry because they check everyone’s belongings and shipments for weapons – except Spectres. How was Matriarch Benezia able to carry all that cargo with her when the weapons can be detected (even though the inactive geth can’t)?
ME2 | 24. How did they know the Derelict Reaper was 37 million years old, if the Council was incapable of testing any of Sovereign’s parts?
ME1 | 25. If you go to Virmire with Wrex but haven’t recruited Garrus or Liara yet, Wrex will automatically agree with you to destroy the genophage regardless of what you say to him. Why?
ME2 | 26. Mordin told Shepard that they made covert drops of the modified genophage on Tuchanka’s water supplies and hospitals. What about all the krogan in the rest of the galaxy?
ME1 | 27. On Therum, if there were so many enemies (including underground), why didn’t any of them use the mining laser first to get around the barrier?
ME2 | 28. Why are there mechs and heat sinks in Aeia when Ronald Taylor and crew were stranded there 10 years ago? (commonly asked question)
ME1 | 29. Why did the Thorian attach itself above a seemingly bottomless pit to fall down in?
ME2 | 30. The Illusive Man said that an Alliance science team discovered the great rift on Klendagon, but it was a Cerberus team that traced the location of the Derelict Reaper. What happened to the Alliance science team?
ME1 | 31. If either Ashley or Kaidan are left behind by themselves in the Virmire multi-squad mission and two other squadmates are with Shepard, what are the other two doing?
ME2 | 32. Was Legion saying that Shepard talked to Sovereign on Ilos writer oversight or did the geth really make a mistake?
ME1 | 33. If hanar are allowed to roam on the Presidium, where is their Embassy and where is the Hanar Ambassador?
ME2 | 34. Why didn’t the crew test the Reaper IFF near the Citadel fleet? Was there supposed to be some kind of actual multi-squad mission they needed to do?
ME1 | 35. Why didn’t the Normandy SR-1 just use its Reaper-slaying cannons instead of the Mako in the Ilos ruins the moment they saw Saren walk in?
ME2 | 36. After the Mass Effect core was destroyed in the Derelict Reaper and they floated over to the Normandy (suggesting the Reaper no longer has its own gravity), why didn’t they immediately start falling into Mnemosyne instead?
ME1 | 37. Why did the Protheans disable the Keepers’ reaction to open the Citadel relay instead of disabling the relay portion of the Citadel itself (both the Keepers and the Citadel are advanced technology, after all)?
ME2 | 38. Why did the Collector Base only have one ship to defend itself when the Base itself is the size of a planet?
ME1 | 39. If Turian husks (Saren) have more reach and flexibility than human husks, why didn’t Sovereign just convert all the Turians he found?
ME2 | 40. Why does Grunt die as Second Fire Team Leader because his shields went down (he has armor, not shields)?
ME1 | 41. How does the Citadel Rapid Transit shuttle manage to get into enclosed spaces like the hallway in Chora’s Den?
ME2 | 42. Why didn’t the diversion team (the one without the biotic barrier) get attacked by massive amounts of seeker swarms?
ME1 | 43. If Shepard eliminates the Council and replaces it with a new, all-human Council, why can’t Udina and Anderson both be on it?
ME2 | 44. Why were we forced into joining Cerberus? I wanted to side with the Shadow Broker.
ME1 | 45. Why were we forced into joining the Council Spectres? I wanted to side with Saren.
ME2 | 46. Why are Tali and Garrus (and all the aliens on the ship) more trusting of Shepard working with Cerberus than Ashley and Kaidan?
Dave Shaw has some good points.
Singularity is officially my new hero.
But the answer to most of Singularity’s queries can be answered in 1 sentence. Ready…”It wasn’t in the script.” You can have only so many outcomes and they are going for the long haul. Do you know how hard it is to have a successful game? Let alone shooting for three successful games that have to and get to interact with one another.
I’m only guessing here, but i’d say its hard.
“ME2 | 2. Why didn’t the Collectors try to abduct the Normandy SR-1 crew instead of destroy them?”
Because the Reapers want Shepard dead. It follows that theme for the entire game.
“ME2 | 42. Why didn’t the diversion team (the one without the biotic barrier) get attacked by massive amounts of seeker swarms?”
I wondered that myself. But Miranda did say any Biotic could do it, and since you don’t see them so maybe someone else used a shield? It’s not specified either way, so I didn’t let it bother me.