Mass Effect 2 *Spoilers*

[Atekimogus]

You're saving the galaxy from imminent destruction from a race of sapient machines who have made a hobby out of exterminating all sapient life in the galaxy every 50,000 years for at least the last 37 million years. I think you might get a bit emotional about that.

No not really. Having a person close to you die yes, but doomsday? Hard do grasp on an emotional level imho.

In other news, have Jacob take care of opening and closing doors in the first part of the assault on the Collector base and he dies, win.

Hm...I would rather have Jack die due to no heavy armor installed . But the perfectioniest in me tries to save everyone of course, even the mental ones.

On that note I really am interested how they will handle your team in ME3. In ME you only had two hard choices two make (concerning your team) Wrex and Wiliams/Kaidan which lead to all characters mentioned only having extreme small roles in ME2 which makes sense since every dollar you spent developing one of those characters you have to spent twice.

And now you have a much larger crew and altough all of them can survive, all can also die, hell it is even possible that only Joker survives. I don't know how they will solve this but I fear we won't see many people from ME2 in the next game or if they are there have only very small roles so not to waste to much on characters some might not even have at this point.

I really found it a nice idea beeing able to import your savegames but given the possible combinations alone one could have only concerning surviving team mates I'd rather have they start ME3 with the optimal solution from ME2 and continue to develop the characters in a meaningful way instead of throwing another new set of more or less generic archetypes at us.

[Tyyr]

Except lets face it, almost everyone is going to have a "perfect" save game where everyone survives and will probably play that one. Even if your "perfect" save doesn't save everyone it will probably be pretty close to it. In my case I have two perfect saves, one truly perfect save and one with Jacob dead. The best method for Bioware is to assume everyone survives. If the next story is structured similarly you"ll miss the dead people's side quests but with some careful overlap of rewards you could still finish the game. After all, they stated in game that your choices in ME2 could have serious consequences in ME3.

As for new team members you only need 1. The minimum survivable mission requires that you have at least one team member survive the suicide mission, Therefore you need at most one extra squad mate to fill a three man squad. Easily done by having either Ashley/Kaidan change their minds or by having Liara pull her head out of her blue ass.

ME2 already doesn't require playing ME1. You get a basic set of assumptions to go off of if you just want to go.

[Atekimogus]

I agree as far as the perfect savegame is concerned, nonetheless I fear that because of the very freedom of choice all/most characters of ME2 will getting sidelined, similar to Kaidan/Williams. (I imagine some might become npc-mini-quest-giver with a few lines of text maximum).
Indeed the only character they can develop further without paying twice is Liara because she is the only character you just never had the chance to kill off.
Well I am curious how they will pull it off, I just hope the good doctor is included since "he is the very model of a scientist salarian"

[Tyyr]

My argument is that they likely won't get sidelined specifically because of the perfect save game. They can assume most people will have saved them and just go forward with the story. My sincere hope is that they do that and have Liara, Ashley/Kaidan, and maybe even Wrex get back with the main group for the final go around. While these two games have been good I think there's just too much potentially going to be happening in ME3 to waste a lot of time putting together yet another group of people to go save the galaxy.

And for fucks sake put the lesbian option back in with someone besides the ship's concubine.

[Atekimogus]

My argument is that they likely won't get sidelined specifically because of the perfect save game. They can assume most people will have saved them and just go forward with the story. My sincere hope is that they do that and have Liara, Ashley/Kaidan, and maybe even Wrex get back with the main group for the final go around. While these two games have been good I think there's just too much potentially going to be happening in ME3 to waste a lot of time putting together yet another group of people to go save the galaxy.

Well, let us hope you are right on this one.

And for fucks sake put the lesbian option back in with someone besides the ship's concubine.

Well I'd rather have they do not introduce new options. Now don't get me wrong, I couldn't care less who might with whom it is just that I think all romancing options where rather poorly done in me2. They all go from cold, neutral or downright hostile to jumping you after one loyalty mission. The only option not feeling forced was with Tali imho, for the rest they spread their butter to thin imho.

[Tyyr]

Tali doesn't feel pushed because she's had a lot of time with you. You met her in ME1 very early on so she's been with you for almost all of two whole games. You got to know her in ME1 and got deeper in ME2. I disagree though on the other's being rushed. You can develop the relationships prior to their loyalty missions. Its that their loyalty missions are the trigger for allowing things to proceed beyond a holding point in the relationship. If you pound through the conversation options as quickly as they show up then anyone's character arc will feel rushed. It's not a slowly budding relationship for sure. However these are people in extremely high stress situations. Relationships can be put into high gear in this kind of thing.

Personally I hope they at least continue on with the existing romances into ME3. Give them a chance to get deeper, maybe have it come to the fore if you ditched your ME1 love interest (understandable since Ashley/Kaidan basically tell you to go fuck yourself and Liara doesn't even seem to realize you're not dead) and run into them with your ME2 one in tow. As for developing new options, well Jack's already said she's been with a girl before and Tali seems to have warmed to you a great deal by the end of the game even if you are a woman. Frankly I'd rather them spend some time on the romance options than bring in even a large cast of goons.