[Beware: Here there be spoilers!]
First things first: this is NOT a retraction of my review. Mass Effect 2 is still a jaw-dropping experience, and if you like either shooters or RPGs and own a 360, you should own this game.* Rather, this post is meant to supplement and revisit my previous review, now that I’ve beaten the game once and am working on a second play through. Because, you see, this game got two to three times better after I posted my review. And, unsurprisingly, it’s all down to the suicide mission.
The great thing about the way BioWare released information about Mass Effect 2 is that you knew there was going to be a suicide mission against the Collectors, but that wasn't really a spoiler: Shepard knew that by the end of the first hour of gameplay. And like Shepard, you weren’t exactly sure how this was all going to play out: oh sure, the ship upgrades and loyalty mechanic meant that you probably knew pretty early these were going to be big factors, but BioWare sort of banked on that. After all, I went in with a completely loyal characters, all upgrades done as thoroughly as I could, and so on. I swore up and down I wasn’t going to leave a single character behind.
Two died.
I was heartbroken. Quite possibly as much as I was when I saw Aerith buy it in FFVII. And the two characters weren’t even my favorites of mine.
The difference was that I knew that they died because I’d screwed up. (And if that isn’t a decent, if not somewhat facile, simulation of leadership in combat I don’t know what is.) This wasn’t scripted. I could have saved everyone, had I not made two wrong decisions. I knew what points those decisions were made, but what were the right decisions to make?
So I immediately reloaded and tried the suicide mission again. And two died once more. So I tried a third time. Got it down to just one. Then a fourth. One again. By now I was falling over asleep, but I sure as shit wasn’t giving up until I had every single one of my crew safe as houses. I cared that much.
(I had to resort to using the Internet to sort it out: normally, that isn’t too big a deal for me. I try to do it only when I'm at a loss, but this time it felt like a betrayal. I was that into it. But I digress.)
I got there eventually. What I was missing, in a word, was leadership. Getting your whole crew out alive isn’t just a function of some stats and upgrades, like many games might treat such a scenario. At various points in the mission you’re asked to split up one or more members of your squad, in order for them to do some specific task. Unless you pick the party member that best meets the criteria for that job, chances are that they aren’t living through the mission. Put differently, you as a leader need to know your squad – and their strengths and weaknesses aren’t always made immediately obvious.
But what sticks with me the most almost two weeks after I finished Mass Effect 2 is how I felt on that first playthrough of the suicide mission. Just the sheer tension of it all: “Did I get it right? Oh God, is ___ gonna catch a round?” Yes, at some points that feeling is achieved through clever cuts and the like, but it’s such an immersive experience that I absolutely and completely forgive BioWare the use of a couple cheap tricks of the camera to heighten tension at the climax of this game.
I could go on and say more about this game. A lot more, in fact. But I needn’t bother.
*If you don’t, I will stop satisfying your mom sexually. And who’s she gonna take that out on? You, that’s who. Cogitate on that.
