If you listen to our podcast (GolgoCast, listen, srsly) then you know that I have wanted to talk about Mass Effect 2 for a few weeks. Much to my chagrin though, Cory hasn’t played it yet, and probably won’t in the near future. Since I can’t talk about the game on GolgoCast, I decided to write a little ditty about a disappointing part of the game. Note that THIS CONTAINS SPOILERS. And it’s also not for Corys.

If you know anything about Mass Effect 2 then you probably know that the whole game builds up to a major “suicide mission”. Most of the game is spent recruiting and gaining the loyalty squad members in hopes that you will survive the mission of the suicide. If you don’t recruit all the squad members, or gain their loyalty, there is an increased chance that members of your squad may die during the mission… including Shepard.

I really liked this idea on paper, but I think it could have been executed better. The first problem you’ll run into is that you need to upgrade your ship completely or it will be partially destroyed during the initial attack. This, of course, will cause a completely random character to die before anything else happens. The second problem is that you need the loyalty of everybody, even if you don’t care if the person dies or not. If one person is not loyal, that can lead to a different random character dying. On top of that, it is possible for a random character to get shot and die in a cut-scene even if you have done all the ship upgrades and loyalty missions.

One thing that I do like about the end of the game is that it forces you to make several decisions which may or may not lead to a squad member dying. You have to choose who will lead the second team, who will go up the ventilation shaft, who will go back to the Normandy with the crew, and who will hold up the Barrier. If you choose the correct people then all of your members will survive, but if you choose wrong then one or two of them might die.

After my brother finished the game I happened to chat with him about it. He had completed all of the loyalty missions and the ship upgrades, and also had two of his characters die during the final mission (one by complete random and another by a bad choice). He asked which two of my own characters died, thinking I wasn’t as balls to the wall awesome as him. He was then quite surprised when I told him that I actually got through the whole ending without anybody dying, and even moreso when I pumped the most awesome rock fist into the air. I guess he just assumed that two of the characters had to die, but then again he is not as awesome as I.

This issue of random character death, and some of the character interactions and development, could have been better executed. While the Mass Effect 2 loyalty sidequests are well designed, I think Dragon Age managed to have more dynamic characters and seemingly deeper decision making. Instead of just having a sidequest to gain the loyalty of a character, almost anything can play into whether or not any of the squad members is loyal to you or not.

Rather than recruiting the character and then completing their sidequest to keep them loyal through the whole game, DA characters can go back and forth based on the decisions you make. Each character will receive different levels of bonuses in combat depending on how much they like you. If you have a character in your party and make decisions that they don’t agree with, they will express their discontent and their loyalty towards you will diminish. If you don’t keep your characters on your side there is even a chance that they will leave you or turn against and then you may have to kill them.

I do really like the fact that everything from Mass Effect 2 will be crossing over into ME3. This might be part of the reason for a slightly simpler character system. It is safe to assume that things get more complicated as you add more decisions that need to transfer into the next series in the title. I don’t even know how they are going to pull off a 3rd game with the possibility of Shepard being either dead or alive. I am definitely planning on having a play through where all the squad and Shepard dies because I really want to see how that turns out. The game is still amazing and I hope that the game’s DLC is enough to hold me over until ME3 comes out.