Monitoring my big bowl of black dye in the kitchen with one hand and netbooking in-between, thinking about how much I’d like to be playing Mass Effect 2 instead of waiting for this baby blue sweater to make itself more color-friendly (the dye package says “STIR CONSTANTLY!”).
Well, honestly I could be playing considering the inherent portability of a laptop, but I’d rather talk about it and my broken heart first.
I’d just finished ME1 a few days prior (late, yes. Shush) so I was ready to import my save the hour of release. Upon launching though I couldn’t figure out how to do that, so I just made a character to see what would happen. Most noticeable upgrade to the female models? EYELASHES. Long, dark, borderline-scary eyelashes. If I ever saw them on a real person I’d think they were wearing double falsies for both top and bottom lids… (no one does that).
Once I was over the femininity/tranny upgrade, I hit up the internet to figure out this save import deal. Solution found, save imported, introduction revisited, character loaded, ANNND….no eyelashes. WTF. My imported character had no eyelashes. I know I was just thinking they were creepy, but in the moment I felt quite gypped.
[Add] Apparently I’m getting a number of hits from people searching for Mass Effect 2 + eyelashes, so I thought it’d be worth mentioning that I played for 12 hours straight without eyelashes, but once I exited the game and relaunched it the next day, the things magically appeared.
Okay, more importantly, the entire game is different. They stripped out a lot of RPG elements from the first Mass Effect and pushed’em into a deep, dark corner of the sequel. No inventory to manage, no real stats on items, limited talents, less emphasis on experience gain, more emphasis on action. It was jarring at first, but after 12 hours of playing I’m really enjoying the changes. I actually switch weapons now instead of only using an assault rifle (as a soldier), combat requires a little more thought (i.e. push spacebar a lot), and I no longer have to salvage crap in my inventory every hour to make space. Good done.
Now, the broken heart. *Spoilers.*
I’d pursued Kaidan as my romantic interest in the first game simply for the quasi-novelty of having that option again (last title I played that had the option was probably FF7 ._.). In truth, he bored the crap out of me. Dull conversations with a really bland, nice guy personality. VERY YAWN (in fictional worlds..maybe in real worlds as well. IDK). Going into the sequel I was planning to explore other options (like Jacob), and before heading to Horizon in ME2 I already expected Kaidan to join my crew without me even asking, being the boring nice guy that he was …But he didn’t! He gave me a hug when he saw me then ultimately refused to join. WHAT IS HAPPENING. I’m now determined to win him back in ME3 and ignore all other man options in the process because he rejected me. Asshole.
[Add2 regarding recruiting Kaidan *MORE SPOILERS*]
As I understand it, Mass Effect developers purposely made it so that you can’t recruit all of your original team members because there’s a mission at the end of ME2 where your squad can potentially die. They want the characters from the first game to be able to rejoin you in ME3.
Sweater is done cooking.
