10 terrible things from Mass Effect 2: the awful characters
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We loved Mass Effect 1 so much that we somehow missed that Mass Effect 2 was pretty terrible. Let’s talk about some very badly designed characters. It would be fair to say that Mass Effect 2 received universal acclaim from critics when it was released. It didn’t deserve it. Whatever the reason, the game journalism community gave ME2 a critical pass. With Mass Effect 3’s demo coming out in less than a week, I’m revisiting Mass Effect 2 in a four part series. This post will look at some significant flaws with characters in the game. We’ll follow up with posts examining the design of the game itself, the writing and concluding with the five worst elements of Mass Effect 2. 10: Mordin the geeksploitation.Bioware clearly thinks very little of its core audience from Mass Effect 1. Mordin is the most insidious example of this disrespect. Mordin’s character is the geek on the team. While the rest of your team have superpowers or are action stars, Mordin’s the guy who spends the time he isn’t in your squad sitting around doing research in the lab. In other words, Mordin, “the professor,” is a stand-in for the average video-game-playing audience, or at least the type of person who’s expected to like the RPG-stylings of the original Mass Effect. How is he characterized then? He’s anti-social, unable to fully express emotion, unable to engage in any type of relationship, either with the male or female Shepard. He’s autistic, one of only two characters in the entire Mass Effect universe who is unable to speak proper English. Since everyone else can speak well, including others of his race, it’s clear that this isn’t some universal translator breakdown, he’s just too dysfunctional to speak correctly. Now, you might claim that the Mass Effect lore somehow supports Mordin’s behavior, but compare a prominent salarian character from Mass Effect 1 to Mordin and you’ll see a significant difference. Makes you feel all fuzzy inside, doesn’t it? 9: Making exposition a racial trait: Thane’s ridiculous flashbacks.So I got this cool new assassin on my team. I go over to talk with him and in the middle of things he starts to babble in incomplete sentences. Apparently Bioware forget how to incorporate exposition into the telling of a story, instead giving it out in badly written flashbacks. To make it even worse, they wrote this into the lore, so now there’s an entire species who has a racial trait of spouting off gobs of back-story. That just defines lazy writing. Why are Thane’s verbal flashbacks interspersed in unassociated speech? Why does he have them? Why do they require a creepy closeup of his face? We will never know. 8: Too little Garrus.I have no problem with Garrus’s ever increasing bad-assery. Really, I was only disappointed with how there was relatively little Garrus. Yes, it’s awesome when you meet up with him. I just wish I could have had more time being Microchip to his Frank Castle. This was a serious missed opportunity. Garrus’s writing in ME2 was some of the best characterization done in the game. This is partially because, for the short period you’re helping him out, he’s the protagonist. Considering the characters you collect as squad-mates, this really should have happened more often. I’d like to see more games take the opportunity to have significant periods where the player character is not the primary protagonist of a plot. 7: AI on my God Damn Ship. Hello, I am a giant plot hole. The whole universe justifiably distrusts AI to the point where it is pretty much outlawed. Cerberus, however, has decided to drop an AI on your ship. There is a brief objection by Joker and perhaps you, but it’s not a very strong one. This just doesn’t make any sense. We know what happens with AI in the Mass Effect universe, so why would you risk it? They don’t give any real reason beyond Cerberus spying on you, but that’s not a real reason. You just bug the ship and you’d get the same result without the huge security risk. Which brings us to… 6: Putting the Captured Geth in the Server Room.You have just captured a member of a robotic species famous for subverting networks, killing all organics, and spiking dead human bodies to turn them into aggressive robotic husks. Where do you put it? Oh I know, in the central location for all computer systems in your ship, right next to the sketchy AI’s server. No! You put it in a goddamn Faraday cage! No one even mentions that you’ve just given the geth the ability to take over your ship. It’s just, ‘oh, this is a computer and we have some other computers, let’s put all the computer things together.’ 5: Making the Krogans Boring. This guy is clearly going to go out for a latte after the game. Or something. When I went to Tuchanka, I was excited to get a more in depth look at krogans. I wanted to get more exposure to the whole tortured honorable warrior thing I’d seen in some of the krogans in Mass Effect 1. I wanted to see an interesting different race fallen on the toughest of times. Too bad all I got was a boring slum in which the NPCs were written without any real unique characterization. If you save the scout as part of the side mission you receive an email back which includes the line: “Thanks. Next time I have a chance to kill a human, I won’t. Unless I go into blood rage or something.” “Or something”? Really? I didn’t know that krogans were west-coast millennials. The writing for the krogans was an immense disservice to the initial work characterizing them in Mass Effect 1. 4: Not Enough Tali.Tali and her background are one of the most interesting parts of the Mass Effect universe. In fact the Quarians, with their political issues and conflict with the geth, are practically at Mass Effect’s center. Missions with Tali could have provided the opportunity to casually increase the depth of the player’s interaction with the greater narrative. It’s a shame they didn’t put more in. Even her mission was surprisingly devoid of real content beyond some new knowledge of the political structure of her race. Every interaction with the Quarians, and especially Tali, is an opportunity to show us the back-story of the universe, not just tell it to us. Not giving her a more prominent role was a significant missed opportunity. 3: The Smoking Man. Separated at birth? The truth is out there. Oh, I’m sorry, I meant The Illusive Man. You can see why I might be confused, right? Because they’re the same exact character. They both keep secrets from the public, are part of a quasi-government-related organization, and make the choices that those with morals cannot. Oh, and all the smoking, because that’s somehow mysterious. Yes, Martin Sheen did a great job voicing The Illusive Man. It’s too bad his character provides absolutely no new innovations on the ‘maintaining the order by being outside of the order’ archetype. He could have been Sloan or Sloane and no one would have been able to tell the difference. Ok, I guess he did provide one innovation on the modern archetype… his name doesn’t start with ‘Sloan.’ Characters like The Illusive Man gain their attraction and value for the rarity of their appearances in a narrative. He was not rare enough in ME2, let’s make him even more elusive in ME3. 2: Bad companion design This was the best image I can find of Morinth/Samara. You don't want to know what the others were. The characters from Mass Effect 1 were just better written and more interesting than the ones introduced in Mass Effect 2. The entirety of Zaeed’s charicterization was ‘I’m tough, I’m a mercenary, check out my scar.’ Then there is the Asari teammate who is so replaceable that you can swap her for a nearly identical version half-way through her loyalty mission. Samara and Morinth are so spectacularly bland that even the developers can’t be bothered to remember who’s who. We won’t even go into the weird implications that Asari are apparently so interchangeable that no one on your team notices. Jacob has little depth besides his weird loyalty mission and resulting daddy issues. He and Miranda are difficult to take seriously within the context of their service to Cerberus. Considering all the terrible things Cerberus does, how can you take the game’s attempts to make them sympathetic seriously? Thane is a weirdly bad copy and paste job of Garrus, right down to his skill set. They have the same class skills, both came to their jobs by following the laws of their cultures, tend to work alone, are ruthless, and focus on tactical analysis and infiltration. Thane seems to be distinguished by being green and wearing a trench coat. The squad choices also had a great deal of overlap in companion character skill sets, making me wonder what incentive I’d have to use one over the other. There just weren’t enough companion missions and input. In Mass Effect 1, your companions mattered, they were your partners. You might even have cared about them. In the second game, they’re just set pieces. 1: TerminatorWow that last boss battle was terrible. Let’s ignore for a minute that you just took down a huge mechanical uber-enemy with your pistol, not to mention the numerous other problems with the final boss, and take a look at the idiot.
What is that? Why does it have three eyes? I’m not entirely sure if you are ripping off Terminator or the last boss from Contra III, but either way you didn’t even pull that off well.
Join Aram on Saturday, February 4 for part two: Mass Effect 2: game design hell. |
Wow, what a trite, silly article. Sorry, Kotaku just lead me to believe that there was smart criticism and analysis to be found on this site aaaand… this is my first impression. A rejected, sub-par Cracked article. Yeah, no thanks.
This article is a disservice to nightmare mode. Poorly conceived, sloppy, and full of nerdrage that totally misses the point. No need for a four-part series when the original is so terribly wrong-headed.
Excellent article.
It’s adorable to me that the two people hating on this article don’t bother to explain what the issue is, all they do is insult it and move on. Mass Effect 2’s a heavily flawed game, and for whatever reason everyone just wants to cover it up. It’s up to people like you, Aram, to inspire real, critical discussion.
:-D. This sounds like a comment from the OP’s pseudonym.
I’ll play ball anyway, though.
It’s hard to take this article seriously when it starts with this claim: “We loved Mass Effect 1 so much that we somehow missed that Mass Effect 2 was pretty terrible.” Complaining about unsubstantiated claims in the comments? Why don’t you start with this whopper from the original article you praised.
-MOrdin–OP’s central criticism of Mordin seems to be that he wanted to both sex him up and see him transcend his geekyness. The section about his speech totally misses the point of how videogames can create compelling characters (hint: it has nothing to do with worrying about whether his speech pattern is too different from his fellow Salarians). And really, criticizing Mordin’s portrayal as too nerdy is ironic given the author’s obvious spergey nature. I guess something about the character hit too close to home :).
-Thane–author has minor complaint of his pattern of speech (which most people thought was a pretty neat effect and is meant to channel a sense of his species’ perfect photographic memory and resulting inability to completely live in the present), proceeds to write off the entire character. Hardly one of the ‘significant flaws’ he was setting out to expose.
-Garrus–Too little of a character you like does not consistute a ‘signficicant flaw’ with the game. He had the same amount of story time (recruitment and loyalty mission) as every other character).
-AI–minor character, minor importance to the game. Thus not a ‘significant flaw’ in character design.
-Geth–again, minor point about purported logical inconsistency. HOw does the geth being placed in the server room ruin the character for anyone who isn’t a sperg?
-Complaining about a non-party member Krogan. Seems legit.
-Tali–see Garrus complaint above.
-Illusive Man–may have been derivative of the x-files character, but no less compelling.
-I have to disagree that ME1’s characters were better written and would take Morden or Thane over Kaiden and Ashley any day. Jacob and Miranda were admittedly weak, though I found Jacob’s loyalty mission compelling in itself.
-The last boss fight was pretty lame, but again, this isn’t exactly an important character in the game. The point of ME2 is your party and the relationships you develop with them, not the faceless collectors (and their equally unsatisfying terminator creation).
I’m not here to say the game was flawless. But the good greatly outweighed the bad. More importantly, ME2 was vastly superior and made me care much more deeply about its characters than the original.
I’m glad you gave reasons for why you disagreed with the OP’s thoughts, because I was rolling my eyes at you pretty hard. Clearly the OP’s “whopper” wasn’t “unsubstantiated,” he just wrote the whole bloody article that you’re commenting on.
I think I’m sort of halfway between you and the OP on where things stand … I liked Thane’s characterization and didn’t see a problem there either, also thought Jacob’s loyalty mission was compelling. The AI & Geth plot hole issues are, I think, maybe even bigger than the OP initially stated and I’m not sure you’re handwaving them … I mean, the whole first game was about how dangerous AIs were. Why are we acting like that didn’t happen?
I would have liked more Tali/Garrus as well, but it wasn’t a dealbreaker with me. I also thought the companions were a little same-y., and didn’t enjoy the way the Samara/Morinth thing felt like a throwaway. I enjoyed Jack’s storyline a lot, although found myself annoyed that there weren’t dialogue choices that allowed me to ally/align with her more, instead of just offering middle of the road peace offerings.
And that final boss was appalling. Especially compared to the whole firefight at the end of ME1? Appalling.
Anyway, good convo 🙂 I loved this game despite the shortcomings it had.
“The AI & Geth plot hole issues are, I think, maybe even bigger than the OP initially stated and I’m not sure you’re handwaving them … I mean, the whole first game was about how dangerous AIs were. Why are we acting like that didn’t happen?”
Precisely. Yes, we will be getting to more of that in later posts, as they are less character problems and more writing problems.
Thanks! I hope you continue to argue with me for the future posts! If I didn’t want my ideas challenged, I wouldn’t have posted them on the internet.
Haha, trust me, Ercoman is not I. If I want to respond I’d be using my real name, like so. I haven’t hid behind a pseudonym for a long time.
And trust me, I’d not complain about unsubstantiated claims in the comments. I expected them. That’s what the internet is all about. ;).
-Mordin – Oh, it totally struck close to home. That was my problem. I’m a geek and while it’s clearly reaching at what I do, it’s not accurate in it’s depiction. Mordin felt like a dark mirror for myself and people I know. I’m complaining here because I found him offensive in the same way I find Big Bang Theory offensive. Someone in marketing passed down a description of my demographic that is clearly wrong, but that doesn’t stop it from being targeted towards me. The problem being that the geek subculture still has such an attention complex that they don’t protest when a character, show, or game is clearly perpetuating a negative stereotype. I must dissent.
-Bioware wrote a character whose ‘neat effect’ is to be able to spout exposition. If that isn’t lazy writing, I don’t know what is.
-I won’t disagree with you there. The difference is that Garrus should have had more, because he was a more interesting and better written character.
-Same for Tali, but also because she was an opportunity to give us the background of the ME universe instead of having green people spout it out in closeup shots.
-I find characters that just repeat other characters and add no innovation but a sci-fi skin annoying. Considering how integrated he was into the entire game, I think this is a criticism that could use attention. Imagine playing a game where all the characters are just re-skinned archetypes from other media. I’d find it boring, wouldn’t you?
-I may be getting to Jacob’s loyalty mission later. We’ll see on that one. That being said, character bonding is personal, and I’m not one to disagree with another player’s personal experience. That doesn’t make mine (or yours) any less valid.
-The last boss fight is the culmination of over 30 hours of work in the game. I think it should have felt that way. Instead it felt like a joke.
Busy day today so I’m not going to respond at length, but I wanted to say thanks for posting my comment and responding. And to apologize for being unnecessarily inflammatory in my comment. Not that I don’t still disagree :).
I agree with BF’s argument about Mordin but I am curious as to how you (author) would characterize a ‘geek’. I’m aware at your distaste for Big Bang Theory (which I share) but I think Mordin’s characterization is no where close to that.
There’s a whole dialogue tree where Mordin explains how he is completely desirable to other races (and yes, some of those reasons would be deemed negative, i.e. Salarian flexibility) and it also speaks out to the audience; it was a point in the game whereI quickly thought Mordin would be my femshep’s romance of choice, and the lack of such option was more or less Bioware’s oversight.
Mordin may be autistic, but he comes with a plethora of extremely desirable values. If any of this is linked with him being portrayed as a geek then I see that it is placed in a positive tone. There is no subtle slap across the face to the average-video-game-audience. Even his choice of song is nothing to scoff at; Gilbert and Sullivan. I’d agree with your comment on Mordin being the next shoe-in for the Glee cast but he isn’t exactly singing Katy Perry here, he is singing valued, historical literary works. It’d probably be more offensive if Jacob started rapping.
Finally, the whole issue with whether he is the one stuck in the ship doing nothing whilst the rest of your crew are out fighting is a bit irrelevant. Story-wise, he plays a paramount role in protecting your crew from the Seeker Swarm, gameplay wise he is just as useful as the rest of your teammates (which to say is not-very-useful-at-all-since-the-AI-sucks).
I’m an ME fanboy, hugely biased towards the game, and…well, I just couldn’t resist when I read this. It’s rather like reading an article promoting creationism; I love pointing out things I believe are wrong. So, to begin:
10) In short: Mordin is not a representation of the ME1 audience. If he was reclusive, useless during a gunfight, generally lacking a backbone or sense of humour and wearing glasses, then yes. He’s a stereotype. He is, however, none of those things. Further, bemoaning negative attributes of a character and claiming these are a disservice to the stereotype is a rather slim view. Mordin is a bloke who, depending on your views, is complicit in genocide, and undergoes an emotional transition depending on your choices. In addition to his frequent comments about other things, such as views of art as a key element to civilisation to talk about his nephew, he seems to be a rather well rounded character.
Plus he is a terrific singer.
9) I’ll confess, his little flashbacks did annoy me quickly. I never particularly liked Thane, for a variety of reasons, but the flashback device is explained in the codex and by Thane himself, as he has a perfect eidetic memory. Annoying though it was, I did recognise it was an interesting narrative device. I don’t believe ‘laziness’ is a factor, even if it is true.
8) The squad members of ME2 are given roughly equal amounts of screentime. One recruitment mission (for most of them), one optional loyalty mission and a few potential conversations. I like Garrus as much as the next guy, but I’ll bet there will be plenty of people who don’t, and would argue against him getting extra. Popularity is an important factor for how much Bioware develop a character, but I think Garrus got a fair share.
7) It’s stated, at least once, that having EDI along is a gamble, taking a risk. They mitigate that risk by ‘shackling’ her, while still taking advantage of her tremendous capabilities. So no. No plot hole.
6) Hehe, agreed. That was a spectacular error; I imagine they simply ran out of rooms on the Normandy. No argument here. 🙂
5) In a word…no. Wrex is essentially the only Krogan in ME1, and as awesome as he is, expecting every Krogan in ME2 to compare is somewhat poor, as we don’t actually spend most of the game with each individual Krogan. Regardless, from the traditionalistic bloke who interferes with Grunt’s trail, to that rather amusing romantic dock worker on Illium, to the totally obsessed Krogan during Mordin’s loyalty mission, to the young scout encountered at the same time…yeah. Wide variety of characters, doing different things and having different beliefs.
4) The same as my point with Garrus. Although I thought we did a lot with Tali during ME2, with promise for much more in ME3.
3) Similarity to one or two characters from other sci-fi works is hardly a bad thing. 😛
2) Most of that is your personal opinion, based on emotion rather than logic, and there’s little point arguing. There’ll always be people who prefer some characters over another, even some who dislike virtually all of them. I’d agree that there are too many companions in ME2 to allow good focus, but I disagree that the game doesn’t devote enough time to them. Collecting and getting to know your companions IS the game, for pete’s sake, with the exception of the endgame and the occasional side mission.
1) Agreed. They gave it a human visage to, at least in part, impart a kind of horror, and indeed, I did feel that somewhat at first. The thing was far too small to be the exterior of a kilometer long Reaper,. When that thing woke up though, on my first playthrough, I think I groaned out loud. Bioware are brilliant in many ways, but they tend to do a poor job with final encounters. KoTOR and Dragon Age 1 are the only final encounters I remember that they did well. 🙁
I’m with Ercoman on the first two responders. There’s nothing wrong with posing a valid argument laden with “nerd rage”. I just finished up ME2 recently and couldn’t agree more with what the author of the article has said. Some of the ridiculously bone-headed things BioWare did in terms of the narrative and characterization with ME2 is a genuine insult to the legacy of ME1. I still enjoyed ME2, to be sure, but it certainly wasn’t nearly as good as it should have been.
I treat Bioware games like parfait. It’s just the sweet typical story with stereotypical character and plot packaged with Hollywood-tier production value. Familiar, easy to get into, no need to think much. If I want something tasteful or high cuisine or complex I won’t play Bioware games.
I can understand that. Completely! Sometimes you don’t want to have to think too much when playing a game. However, if it is a game like that, it should receive an appropriate response. If we want games to progress as a medium, we can’t just let a game like ME2 stand without addressing its flaws.
All I saw in Mordin was a fascinating character who quickly became my favourite squad mate in ME2. I would even go as far to say that his vocal performance was a huge part of why I found him so appealing. It instantly characterised him and led to some intensely funny moments.
I could argue til the cows come home at how shit Garrus has become though. Out all the characters universally hailed as amazing, Garrus significantly changed from the original into someone much less interesting. Where he once was a man torn between duty to the law and his own personal vendetta for justice free from red tape, he’s now simply a killer. In ME1 you asked “Should Garrus feel guilty or not?” and in ME2 you were asked “How should Garrus deal with his guilt?”. It’s a much less interesting characterisation than before. Actually, much of the writing was better in ME1.
I’m very interested to see where this piece goes.
Ha, I won’t disagree on much of the writing being better in ME1. We’ll be getting to that soon too.
Thank you!
Thank you. I’m so sick of hearing people say how “UBER-mazing” MAss Effect 2 was.
In my humble opinion, it SUCKED.
I agree with every point you made, except Tali.
From what information has been released, it looks like Tali’s story and her people will be a big part of ME3… least I hope. Leaving Tali alone until the third installment makes her story and her people that much more mysterious. It works.
The final boss fight was the worst boss fight in any game I have ever played.
Period.
I honestly want to strangle people like the first two posters.
You are the reason we are getting sub-par games this generation.
Game companies pump out weak, poorly written crap, and you lop it right up with a smile.
Worst part is, you’re so ignorant to your own ignorance, that you’ll never know what you are missing.
“It’s a Giant Terminator in space, yo! Thith is awethum!!!
I doubt much of the praise for the game centered around the final boss fight, which as I think anyone would admit was laughable. Bioware kind of painted themselves into a corner making the Collectors the main antagonists, since they were just tools with no agency of their own. Again, it hardly ruined the game for me. I still found the ending sequence in general, where whether party members lived or died depended on how much you’d invested in them and your ship incredibly compelling, particularly in light of the semi-persistent nature of your decisions between games.
In any case, I’d still take the terminator skeleton over the 5 hours I spent dealing with the almost pointless mars rover segments (and the utterly forgettable side missions generally) of the first game!
@BF Exactly! I could never bring myself to play through ME1 twice. I knew I’d have to trudge through the hours where you drive the BOUNCIEST VEHICLE EVER around the most boring landscape I’ve ever seen.
Both games had flaws! Neither was terrible!
I actually mostly enjoyed the vehicle sections. I thought they gave ME1 a sense of scale that ME2 lacks.
Just figured I’d point out that you used illusive wrong. Making the Illusive man more illusive would just make him more conniving and deceptive. You want to make him more elusive as in hard to find. Perfect example: I want this website to be more elusive. So I don’t find it.
You are entirely correct. I used illusive wrong. I’m going to correct it up in the post, but I’ll leave this here to note that I am, sadly, not infallible.
The game wasn’t perfect but I don’t think it was as bad as you’re trying to make it out to be. I really liked ME1 but I loved ME2. I agree with the stupidity of the AI/geth remarks and I hated the giant-metal-skeleton-human/reaper boss. Jacob was pretty boring. Other than that I thought the game was great.
I don’t understand your complaint with Thane. Hes able to relive memories… So? I thought it was pretty cool. I know I wouldn’t be able to do it! It makes him unique.
How would you rather have had the Illusive Man? I can’t imagine him any other way. It just… fits.
No disrespect to your well-written article but I feel like most of this is up to opinion, y’know? I personally loved the game. Played through it four times which is unusual for me. It was a flawed game, to be sure, but I enjoyed every minute (except terminator-boss). If that makes me ignorant (or whatever that other commenter said) than… Whatever! At least I’m having fun.
Like I said above, my problem with Thane is he’s a character constructed to spout exposition. I expect better than that from BioWare and especially from Mass Effect.
For The Illusive Man, perhaps this was triggered due to overexposure to the archetype, but I just can’t believe they couldn’t have put more time into adding greater detail and distinction to his character. They should have. That’s the expectation I have for a game which builds story as one of its greatest selling points.
No disrespect taken. I consider some of these things flaws, and further articles will get into more significant ones than the points listed here. However, how people take them, how they move through the game, and what people accept is a very personal experience.
There are many games I can think of, that I’ve played, where I was able to overlook significant flaws because I liked the game a great deal. I wouldn’t challenge anyone’s perceptions about that.
My complaint is more that there are publications who have a responsibility as critics to point out flaws in a game, no matter how much they liked them. They mostly did not. Without that, how can we ever expect games to get better?
Beyond that, for me the flaws overtook the game, I found them to be so annoying that I didn’t have fun, but I can hardly claim the same is true for everyone else, nor would I try.
I hope you stick it out through the following articles in the series and continue to challenge my assumptions!
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Wow, this article is just awful. This isn’t even constructive criticism on the game, it’s just… bad. ME2 certainly has a lot of flaws, but I don’t think you touched on any of the aspects that really bring the game down. You clearly don’t have a very good grasp on the lore of the series or it’s characters, and for some reason you just seem to ramble on about nonsense the entire article instead of actually touching on any of the real issues within the game. Jacob is definitely boring though, we can a agree there. I rate this article a 1 / 10 in logical criticism of a game. I’d really just stay clear of video games if I were you, this really isn’t your area of expertise.
@JohnnyCresto Your comment ain’t any better, saying it’s bad without elaborating how doesn’t lead to any productive discussion. The article is definitely harsh but I do agree writing took a dive after ME1.
Mordin is certainly NOT a bad character. He doesn’t serve as a Mary Sue character that players identify with (like Shepard). He was a personality, a few Bioware quirks, and he filled the role of Scientist on the team. And what are scientists? NERDS! He is obviously obsessed with various cultures. The Genophage seems to not matter to him, but that is only because he justifies his actions with increasingly strained rationals that become less and less passionate as he sees the world and culture he is murdering. He obviously thinks he did the right thing because of his Utilitarianism. But he is increasingly horrified and whenever pressed on the matter, he gets more and more defensive of his actions, desperately trying to avoid the conclusion that is may be possible that he could have made a mistake. In Mass Effect 3 we see it played subtly through the game, where he makes another Utilitarian argument to avoid the gaping answer. He. Could. Have. Been. Wrong. I don’t even think he realized that until that very moment when the mask falls down in his final moments alive: “I MADE A MISTAKE!” That was truly a powerful moment.
kk
Idk why you’re so angry but none of these “10 terrible things” are terrible…first of all Mordin is a great character and you saying that bioware only made him to make fun of nerds makes absolutely no sense because all of the people at bioware are total nerds. They make video games for a living they would basically be making fun of themsevles and all of their consumers which would make no sense. The reason he sits in a lab throughout the game doing science stuff is because THAT IS HIS PURPOSE ON THE TEAM! To do sicencey things to protect the rest of the team from what they will face. And also you saying he is just the nerd and nothing else is definitely not true. To many people in the game Mordin is known as a rutheless killer who only focus is to get what needs to be done. On the mission you go get him from Omega and save his assistant Daniel from those mercs Mordin says “sparing them, risky, would have killed them myself.” He is a no nonsense badass!
Next you saying Thanes flashbacks are irrelevant and half formed is just stupid. His flashbacks are a wonderful, interesting and cool idea to get to know Thane and his past in a unique way instead of simply talking to him like every other character. After his first flashback while you are talking to him Shepard says “what was that?” and Thane explains. So you saying we have no chance to “challenge” them is also false.
You saying AI on the ship and Shepard activating Legion is horrible and yada yada is also dumb. The whole point of Shepard is Shepard doing new things and putting trust in others that no one else in the galaxy will even consider. Thats what makes Shepard the savior of the galaxy and why he can get things done that no one else can because he does things that no one else will take a chance on. The Geth are only fighting because the Quarians betrayed them and tried to kill them. The Geth arent bad they are just fighting to survive, which Legion, makes completely clear because Shepard actually listens to him and trusts him like no one would.
You saying the Krogans are boring. In mass effect 1 the Krogans are made out to be one thing and one thing only. A blood thirsty, war torn, angry race. Its that simple, they are the irrational race that are blinded by fury because of what the salarians and turians did to them and that may seem boring and one dimensional but in ME3 if you cure the genophage the Krogans are thankful and focus on building their species back up and starting over for the better. They are supposed to come off as boring and simple, angry behemoths until you save them which is what brings it full circle.
Finally I can understand some of your other gripes with the game and characters but geez nothing in the game is as terrible as you make it sound. I feel like you just wanted to rag on the game just because it got so much acclaim for being great…which in most parts it is.
You know there really is an elitist culture on the Internet about how being overly critical and negative while not pointing out anything good in something makes you smart. So what is it for you? Does it make you feel smart, does it make you feel big or does it make you feel better about all of your own faults?
This is the nitpickiest, snarkiest thing I have ever read on the internet, period.