When ME2 came out, in order to help convince people to buy a new rather than used copy, BioWare and EA released free DLC to original purchasers of the game via the “Cerberus Network”. People who bought the game used would have to pay $15 to access the network.
To date, the free DLC has consisted of a recruitable character and loyalty mission (Zaeed Massani), a single shot mission investigating the crash site of the SR-1 Normandy, some weapons and the Firewalker mission pack.
Now, they’ve released the first premium content in the form of some new NPC outfits and a new recruitable character and her loyalty mission, “Kasumi’s Stolen Memory” for $7.
Has anybody downloaded this new for-pay content? If so, how does it integrate with the rest of the game? Does Kasumi have actual dialogue between missions, or does she just rattle off anecdotes like Zaeed? Actually I thought the way they handled Zaeed fit his character of the old vet spinning stories of his experiences rather than trying to get to know the rest of the crew… But I wondered if that was the result of trying to shoehorn some extra content into an existing framework rather than an intentional design decision. Zaeed did at least have some interactions with the other crew members that were amusing.
I guess most importantly, does the new mission represent $7 worth of fun to the game? How well does it flow with the rest of the story? I’m debating on another playthrough vs. just tacking it on to the end of my last post-suicide-mission run.
From what I hear it’s another Zaeed job, no dialogue tree.
The mission seems short but fun, with some interesting…oddities to examine.
Including the Statue of Liberty’s head! You maniacs, you blew it up! Damn you, damn you all to hell![/spoiler] and a new SMG [spoiler]which was used to assassinate 2 presidents.
It looks hard as hell to do an insanity run on, especially with certain classes.
Kasumi herself has 2 interesting new abilities, a cloaking attack type thing and a stunning flashbang grenade. Much more worthwhile doing it pre-suicide mission (or when you have a lot of N7 assignments left), then at least you can take her along.
I got it (Apparently I am too impatient to wait for replies to my own thread on this matter too!).
The mission is your standard loyalty mission, however, it is not as engaging as Thane or Tali. Most of the loyalty quests are great and well executed, and I place this one among one of the weaker though. That said, it is still fun, but not as satisfying as Tali’s (which is one of the best crowning of moment of awesome ever) or heart-warming as Thane or Miranda.
Thanks for the input - I’m still on the fence about it and might do it if I start another playthrough. I do wonder how Zaeed and Kasumi will pan out in ME3 though. Will they support the DLC? Will ME3 require a download for them as well since they’re not “out of the box”? Or will we get a cutscene at the beginning explaining their untimely demises?
$7… it’s the price of a combo meal at a fast food restaurant. Yet I’m still reluctant to buy it…
I doubt it very much. The Mass Effect 1 DLC Bring Down The Sky got one line in a Galactic News thingy on the Citadel in Mass Effect 2; if you haven’t got it it goes with the renegade ending. Pinnacle Station (wisely) isn’t referred to at all.
There are so many threads hanging and combinations of squad members/LIs from ME2 I doubt ME3 will devote much time to Zaeed/Kasumi beyond an email or line in a report. Remember all the quests in ME1 that got the same treatment? Even the Rachni Queen, one of the biggest decisions in ME1, got only a random asari to appear in ME2.
I don’t think my $7 was well spent. It adds barely an hour to the game with no integration to the existing storyline. It’s just like Zaeed’s quest, and that was free.
Ditto – it’s all pointing to how many allies can you rally behind you when the Reapers drop in for their visit, based on the decisions you made. By my estimation, you might (or might not) have on your side the:
a. The rachni, if you spared the queen
b. The geth if you recruited Legion and did his quest
c. The quarian and their “largest fleet of ships in the galaxy” if you didn’t cause a civil war by giving up Tali’s dad, or losing her loyalty by siding with Legion, OR cause geth retaliation on the quarian by siding with Tali.
d. The Krogan, if Wrex lived and united the clans under Urdnot, and they don’t catch on that Mordin is trying to block a genophage cure
The DLC characters don’t really affect any of those, though, so it’s easy to imagine they get dropped by the wayside.
I just wrapped up God of War III and am currently without a main focus for gaming… and $7 isn’t that much, right? I see myself caving sometime in the next couple of weeks.
I hope not, I dissolved the queen with my main Shep. My guess is that there will be a sort of balance for the paragon and renegade - in ME2 the ending choice didn’t have too much consequence in game other than a few lines of dialogue here and there. For paragons I’m guessing you’ll have all these little factions like the Rachni if you spared queenie, geth heretics if you rewrote them, Krogan if you kept the genophage cure research etc, but if you wiped them out in the name of galactic stability the ‘main’ factions like the turians, asari and salarians will be stronger.
Hard to imagine how the quarians could contribute. At the trial my main Shep kept his gob shut about the war, leave it to the quarians. My always-paragon FemShep infiltrator and always-renegade soldier took their respective options. There’s a lot of talk in the fleet that a war with the geth would turn the fleet - where they live - into scrap metal. Why the hell would they fare any better against Reapers, one of which annihilated the Citadel fleet? For comparison Harby calls geth ‘an annoyance’.
I guess I’m thinking in terms of sheer numbers. It’s pointed out that they have by far the largest fleet of any faction, period. They’re good techies, and if Garrus can duct tape a thanx cannon onto the Normandy, the quarians could do the same assuming they had the supplies. I’d want to have as many guns to bear as possible when the invasion starts.
Also from a logistics standpoint they would be ideally suited to haul a bunch of krogan or rachni or anything else from point A to point B. After all, the allies couldn’t have won World War II without all those jeeps and deuce-and-a-halfs.
The Thanix Cannon gives the Normandy, a frigate, the firepower of a cruiser. Unfortunately Reaper kinetic barriers are impervious to dreadnought fire (not to mention that the Thanix Cannon is reverse-engineered from Sovereign - so they’d know exactly how to counter it. “You civilisation is based on the technology of the Mass Relays. Our technology. By using it, your civilisation evolves along the paths we desire”.)
Not sure why we’d want to transport troops around, either. Ash in ME1 says that her role as a rifleman will mean jack-diddly against a Reaper, whose MO is to bombard from orbit and indoctrinate. I really want to see how ME3 will handle the Reaper fleet…part of me almost hopes that BioWare doesn’t come up with a solution and they wipe out all sentient life anyway.
I’d argue the opposite. If it is possible to counter the Thanix Cannon, sure, the Reapers would probably have discovered that counter, but I see no reason to believe that just because the stuff they wanted the meatbags to discover is counterable (by Reaper technology like the Thanix Cannon, no less), that the stuff they were keeping for themselves would have similar vulnerabilities to be exploited.
If the intro to ME2 hadn’t been enough to put me off the series, this would. I mean, I like my character. Role-playing as the character for a couple of days only to run into a dead-end of DM fiat, in which she dies in vain and the galaxy burns, would just suck all the fun out of the game.
Hopefully, since that was my logic behind saving the Collector Base. Although this still has the problem that Thanix Cannons only have the firepower of a cruiser. If we could stick one of Sovvie’s main guns on the Destiny Ascension then we might have a chance.
Exactly! Imagine the outrage, it’d be king of trolling. Like taking off Tali’s mask and finding this.
I can see two obvious solutions:
[ul][li]Reverse-engineer the Thanix Cannon and make more Thanix Cannons.[/li][li]Reverse-engineer the Thanix Cannon and make bigger Thanix Cannons.[/ul][/li]
You say that like you think it would be a good thing.
I can see two obvious solutions:
[ul][li]Reverse-engineer the Thanix Cannon and make more Thanix Cannons.[/li][li]Reverse-engineer the Thanix Cannon and make bigger Thanix Cannons.[/ul][/li][/quote]
A possibility, but still no guarantee that it can punch through Reaper shields. Also not much for Shep to do, although the 3rd game could have him running around recruiting allies for a big showdown at the end.
It would annoy the fanboys, and would take a lot of balls…would be good to see a villain who doesn’t just talk smack. “Confidence born of ignorance. The pattern has repeated itself more times than you can fathom…”
After all, the Protheans fought, and were wiped out. As were the residents of Bothros, Etamis, Helyme, Joab, Junthor, Tosal Nym and Aphras.
They’ve been at this a long time, at least 37 million years. In the case of Etamis, like Shep, they seem to have actually killed one, but it didn’t make any difference. I just hope it isn’t a matter of ‘kill the lead Reaper and the rest die’ or pull some superweapon out of nowhere.
