I am a member of the Mako Mountain Climbing Team as well. Once I was finally able to learn to ‘run and gun’ with it, I actually felt pity for those poor Thresher Maws.
No, it’s not the norm. Two games have pulled this crap on me. ME2 and Dead Rising. Borderlands? Fine. Dragon Age? Fine. The other dozen or so games on the same TV? Fine.
Which is particularly odd considering both games are from the same developer.
Yeah but I’m thinking the two teams didn’t have much to do with each other. Look how different they handle DLC
Dragon Age: In game window easy to click and install everything from inside the game. Confirmation of what you have installed.
ME2: err a little laptop thing that doesn’t show you what you have and what is available requiring you to go to the website and install everything manually. It endlessly says ‘new content available’ and seems to be unable to see I have everything I can get.
Lately I’m hitting a lot of the Dragon Age DLC bugs. I’ve started to rotate saves every hour and obsessively check Shale to make sure I’m not saving a corrupted game. ME2 I never had the slightest problem with any of the DLC.
They really need the interface of Dragon Age and whatever DRM they used in ME2 to keep the DLC from corrupting in the next go around. DLC aside they also seem to have different philosophies about game design. Dragon Age seems to be about creating a streamlined classic RPG game where ME2 is about making a shooter with a deep story and a few RPG-style abilities.
One team really seemed to be out to make a really good console game and carried it over to the PC. The other seems like a really good PC game and carried it over to consoles. They both have good points I would have liked to see in the other. It’s very annoying to notice a detail that one team clearly thought through which seems to be lacking or badly handled in the other. I guess I shouldn’t worry about it though. Hopefully the teams will be mixed up a little when it comes time for ME2 and DA2 and the good things migrate and the sloppy/bad ideas get cleared out.
I realize this is somewhat tangential to the TV issue I’m just replaying DA as I lost all my saves and after just having played through ME2 it’s really highlighting the similarities and the differences. You can definitely see they are from the same house but completely different teams.
Both games are also developed differently - Dragon Age use an in-house engine, while Mass Effect 2 uses Unreal 3.5
This may account the “why does the graphics in DA doesn’t look as good as ME2?”
So, has anyone figured out…
…the rock-bottom least optimal scenario that will still allow Shepard to survive the suicide mission?
[spoiler]You need at least one survivor to pull you into the shuttle. So, let’s see :
- lose three guys before you even land on the Collector base by not upgrading the ship at all (Legion, Jack and Thane).
- pick either a shitty decoder, or a bad team leader for the initial plan, and the fire team leader gets killled (let’s say Grunt, he’s a good fighter but bad team leader)
- second phase, you get to kill one guy by picking a shitty biotic (either one of your two squad mates. Let’s kill Zaeed or Jacob here by taking them both), one by picking a shitty fire team leader (bye bye Tali’Zorah vas Normandy). Pick your *one and only *loyal team member to escort the refugees, he/she’ll survive. Let’s choose Miranda.
- third phase, pick two good fighters with you to fight the boss, so that the rest of the team lacks firepower. I say take Garrus and Jacob/Zaeed with you, leaving Mordin and Samara/Morinth to hold the line. Yeah, they’re pretty much toast. Your two team members will also die with the boss if they’re disloyal. Race to the ship, Miranda catches you, congratulations, a hero is you !
End result : You survive, everyone else but the babe is bio-goo. After a long exchange of pregnant glares on board the empty ship (you did wait around a bit to ensure all your crew died before you even got there, didn’t you ? :p), Shepard shrugs and declares mission accomplished. It’s no one’s fault if it went that bad, really. Humanity über alles, rah rah ! [/spoiler]
[spoiler]I assume as long as one of your squad members survives, Shepard will live, since it’s the absence of someone to provide covering fire while Joker’s trying to pull you aboard that leads to Shepard’s demise. So if I were going to try killing everyone but one, I’d first make sure that only that one person was loyal. Then I’d pursue a strategy that involves killing off everyone else as efficiently as possible while keeping that my loyal follower alive.
One potential strategy for doing this could go as follows:
First, I would not upgrade anything related to the final mission (Thanix cannon, heavy ship armor, multicore shielding) on the Normandy, thus ensuring the deaths of at least three squad members before we even arrive at the Collector base. I would leave Grunt and Legion in their respective deactivated states. I would also recruit only one of the following: Zaeed, Tali, Samara/Morinth, or Thane (necessary to ensure the survival of at least one squadmate). Recruiting my lone Act 2 squad member is enough to trigger the “Investigate Collector Ship” mission.
My chosen “sole survivor” (i.e. the one loyalty quest I actually do) will be either Miranda or Jacob as their eligibility for the biotic shield mission will be important.
After escaping the Collector Ship, I would immediately get the Reaper IFF. I’d perform one nonessential side quest (most likely the loyalty quest for my sole survivor) to trigger the Collector attack on the Normandy. Then I futz around with nonessential scanning missions for a couple of hours to ensure maximum crew deadness, and only then dive through the Omega 4 relay.
So my entire squad going into the suicide mission would consist of:
Shepard
Miranda
Jacob
Garrus
Jack
Mordin
Additional Act 2 Squadmate X
Pretty slim pickings. 
Not upgrading the Normandy will result in the deaths of three of the above. According to the Mass Effect Wiki, these three squad members are most likely to be Jack, Garrus, and Squadmate X.
Therefore, by the time we arrive at the Collector base, my squad will have been reduced to:
Shepard
Miranda
Mordin
Jacob
We’ll lose our tunnel specialist no matter what, since we don’t have anyone sufficiently skilled as a tech expert to do the mission successfully. Therefore, I’ll send one of my two non-loyal squadmates through the tunnel. Ixnay non-loyal squadmate #1.
Since we don’t have a strong biotic, we’ll also lose at least one squadmate to the bug swarms. I’d select the loyal character as my biotic so that he/she survives no matter what (a poor choice here only results in death for one of the squadmates you take as your combat team, not for the biotic him/herself). There’s nobody left to be the fire team, so choosing the fire team leader is irrelevant. Ixnay non-loyal squadmate #2.
At this point, the squad has been reduced to just Shepard and the loyal squadmate. No need for a “hold the line” team since everyone else is dead. Loyal Squadmate and Shepard blow the hell out of the Human Reaper, survive the ensuing bedlam, and run like hell for the Normandy. Shepard lives… but only just.[/spoiler]
Interesting. I thought the whole mission would fail at once if you didn’t have enough people to at least fill up your team, nevermind the other roles. I do wonder what happens if nobody holds the line and/or provides the diversion. Whether Bioware thought of that eventuality and put in a result for it (more enemies on the way to the Reaper, maybe ?) or just figured nobody would be *that *bad at the game