That's a good post. Agree with all of that.
I'm a huge fan of the original series. I know I've mentioned that a half a dozen times before, but ME2 I'd regard as the best game of the original series, and possibly the best narrative driven game in existence. Most of that, if not all, is down to the characters. Just like a film or a book, if the characters aren't right, then nothing is right. Having said that, as far as a game goes, it has to be just a good game to begin with to draw a player in, and then it's down to personal opinion on whether or not you like the story or specific characters. ME1 did all of that, yet it wasn't released with a torrent of hype behind it, nor was it a bug infested mess for that matter either. Literally everything about it was solid, and like all good series, the follow up knocked it out of the park. If it didn't, we wouldn't have a now critically renowned and much loved series, and ME:A wouldn't have been nowhere near as anticipated as it was.
That is where the issue lies with me. Bioware and EA knew the pedigree that they had to live up to. They knew that anything other than an impeccable, polished, and well written game wouldn't do. They should also have known that one of the big reasons, as I've previously said, that ME was so successful, was through it's portrayal of characters, and how they narrative bonds those characters to the player. They knew that starting with a blank slate, introducing a entire brand new cast of characters, those characters would have to be at least on par, or even better. Admittedly, I haven't played the game yet, but from what I've seen of it, none of those characters appeal to me. Not only this, but I don't know what Bioware's excuses are for some of the models on display, because they are absolutely shocking in more than one aspect. A lot of that is down to janky animation, but the way most of them look is just bizarre. They are on brand new hardware, so polygon budget should have went up, but to me it looks like it's went down or at least stayed on par.
Normally, I wouldn't complain about anything regarding technical issues, so long as they are just that. You can patch out glitches, even replace models (they've already done this) but you can't patch out bad writing, story, and shoddy characters. More importantly, from what I've seen - and this is something that you can actually judge by eye and ear without playing a game - they've completely botched the tone of the game. I could be wrong about that, but to me it seems like they've completely missed the point of the originals, and just taken elements from it that they know fans would recognise, and called it a Mass Effect game. It doesn't feel like it was made by the same people. It feels like an homage, and that's a bloody shame, because I can't see how they rectify any of those problems with future iterations.
