Too bad they took out much of the mystery and streamlined features instead of evolving them.
Hm, I don't know. As I said, I played the series back to back and there isn't really anything substantial missing from ME2 that was in ME1. Quite the contrary. Everything was improved and better done.
It's almost like they made a low risk, low budget ME1 to test the waters if the gamers would be interested in the characters and universe and then when people bit they decided to make a "real" game with part 2.
Also, I thought that the mystery of what Cerberus is up to carried the game very well. There was this constant tension because naturally everyone knew that the Illusive Man was up to something but we didn't find out until very late in the game.
My only complaint would be that they shouldn't have depicted the Illusive Man as as completely stereotypical villain. The only thing missing here was a "This is the bad guy!!!" arrow over his head. He could have been straight from a Bond flick. The only thing missing for that would've been a white cat on his lap and he'd been a carbon copy of Blofeld.
So they certainly could have made the mystery of what Cerberus is up to a lot more interesting with a much more inconspicuous character but I still thought that it was quite exciting to keep playing until the end to find out what would happen.
It doesn't help that I didn't care much for the story or the characters.
Yes, that would definitely be a huge detriment
. One reason I disliked many earlier BW games is the fact that their characters were always very generic, predictable and stereotypical.
In ME2 I really liked how the characters were way more fleshed out and how they all had their unexpected (dark) secrets. They felt more like "real" people to me and not just like quest automat party banter meat shield heal/DPS/whatever companions. I mean their
function was basically just along those lines as well, of course, but it all came in a much nicer, more interesting wrapping
.
I don't know... it worked for me but I can definitely see if the story/characters don't "click" for you then there isn't much left to get excited about because character progression or gameplay isn't really the strong part of the ME series.
