As far as the Collectors are concerned, it’s good to know that they at least foreshadowed their existence somewhere, though you can’t expect everyone to have read the novels, and most people’s experience will be going from Mass Effect 1 to 2, and I think they will find the way the Collectors are handled jarring.

The thing is, I’m not bothered by the fact that the Collectors weren’t mentioned in the previous game per se, what bothers me is the way that they are introduced and treated in the sequel. The reason why their existence feels like a retcon, is because everyone you meet seems to know about their existence, except you.

In other words, if the game had just introduced them as a mysterious new threat, and everyone else in the game was freaking out about where the hell these weird new aliens came from, I think it might have worked out alright.

Instead, the first game gave no indication that such a race exists, while the second has everyone treat it like common knowledge, which smacks of retcon to me, and took me out of the game.

I also understand that the Illusive man in a manipulative bastard, and I can appreciate that he’s trying to downplay what Cerberus is really like to manipulate Shepard, but it doesn’t feel like Fridge Brilliance to me because Shepard should really know better.

I actually like the Illusive man character, and I also actually quite enjoyed getting a first-hand view of Cerberus, and the new characters that were introduced as a result. However, I felt that Shepard really shouldn’t be going along with it, especially a Paragon Shepard. You really have no choice but to go along with the Illusive man’s schemes until the very end, even if you keep saying you don’t trust him, you can’t do anything about it.

The role that Cerberus plays also has the unfortunate result of making the Alliance and the Council look insanely incompetent. I don’t care how “busy” they are, they would not turn a blind eye to hundreds of thousands of colonists disappearing, and colonists on other worlds would be fleeing the Terminus Systems en masse once word got out.

I liked working with the Alliance in the first game, the Council could be a pain in the ass, but the Alliance was helpful, and the ending, with epic fleets of ships fighting a common enemy felt much more satisfying to me than anything in Mass Effect 2.

That’s also why I think I enjoyed the first game more overall, it had a lot more moments that affected me emotionally.

I’ll be the first to admit that all the side planets and side quests in the first game were terrible, you can check out my post from a few weeks ago where I mention hating Mass Effect on my first playthrough, because the Mako and terrible side quests ruined the game for me and made me stop playing. However, when I did go back and finish it, the main questline left me enormously satisfied, while the sequel’s didn’t do much for me at all.

I’m not saying that Mass Effect 2 doesn’t have a lot of great things going for it, I know these posts probably sound more negative than I intend. You’re right that the second game has tons of great info about alien culture, and much better side quests. I mean, you get to visit the Quarian flotilla! How cool is that? And Jacob’s loyalty quest alone is way cooler than any of the side quest in the original game.

If I come off as too negative it’s probably just because I thought the ending was very anticlimactic and boring compared to the first game, and the ending is the last thing I experienced in the game, so it might be coloring my overall perception more than it should.

1. As a third weapon choice, you also have the assault rifle, not just shotgun and sniper rifle. At least my soldier had it.

2. The Collectors already played a small part in the Ascension novel. So while they didn’t appear in the first game (and why should they as they are mainly active in the Terminus systems where you cannot go to) they have been part of the universe for 2 years now.

3. Cerberus is actually a case of Fridge Brilliance for me because while I shared your criticism for the most part of the game it hit me later. Maybe I’m giving BioWare too much credit here but consider this: What if all these retcons and “softening up” portions are actually intentional? A part of the Illusive Man’s game?

You need Shepard for your plans and you want her/him on your side. So, do you put your Dr. Mengeles and General Rippers on the crew of the Normandy or your more nice, idealistic agents who probably haven’t seen your more darker projects or sufficiently rationalized them? The latter of course. Do you try to actively manipulate and challenge Shepard’s decisions or do you acknowledge them with a subtle undertone you find everywhere in his messages, conferences and mission reports?

And of course all those bad guys weren’t rogue factions of Cerberus. EDI actually tells you that Cerberus has only a handful of operations going on at any time because (to paraphrase Joker) the Illusive Man is a control freak. This information is only accessible after EDI is unshackled and she switches her allegiance to Shepard.

But blaming rogues is the obvious course if you have a black ops organization and you have to justify past actions. The quest with Jack is a rather obvious one: The mission report and the Illusive Man’s message make clear that Cerberus has checked out the facility before after it had fallen, so they might as well have planted the “The Illusive Man doesn’t know about the bad things we did, seriously!” message at the frigging entrance.

4. I didn’t like all of the plot points better then the original Mass Effect – especially the ending – but the vast majority. On Mass Effect, you had Eden Prime, the Citadel plot to prove Saren’s betrayal, Liara’s Planet, Feros, Noveria, Virmire and then Ilos. Everything in between, all those side quests and missions felt like really badly designed and tacked on DLC content. Go down to a planet, drive your drunken cow of an APC around and shoot stuff, get into a bunker or mine which looks identical to every other bunker or mine you’ve seen before, shoot some more and then get a text message that you are done and get up to the ship.

While Mass Effect 2 doesn’t have the quantity of side quests the original game had, all of what is there has a unique atmosphere, good storytelling and compelling characters, even if they also amount to “shoot stuff till your done”

Furthermore, have you noticed the lack of alien culture in the original game? Oh, the Citadel, sure. But after that? Prothean ruins or human settlements. In Mass Effect 2 you see the Krogan homeworld, an Asari planet, the Flotilla, the Quarian ruins, a Geth space station, the Collectors, the interior of a Reaper and on top of that the Citadel and Omega. It feels much larger, more colorful and gives a feeling of a real universe instead of a handful of important places and several dozen lifeless copy&paste planets.