Was Mass Effect 2 as good as I remember? - An analysis of BioWare's companion collection simulator
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- Опубликовано: 4 июл 2024
- Join me as I take a look at BioWare's dating sim- I mean friend finder. Wait... Yeah.
The audio and drawings for this one were done by my talented wife: / cakefan220
Quarian towards the end is voiced by the talented Korka: / harleygr88
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Plushies are done, thanks for the interest!
Songs:
A lot of the Mass Effect 2 and part of the Mass Effect 1 OST
Work Harder from the LISA OST
JeffMusic- Tense, licensed under creative commons
BOB LE HEAD- 90BPM: / 90bpm-1
Infiltration from the Modern Warfare 2 OST
Satellite Compromised from the Modern Warfare 2 OST
The Rain Formerly Known as Purple from the Risk of Rain 2 OST
Lovely Gate 3 from the Sonic Adventure 2 OST
Desert Highway from the Hotel Dusk: Room 215 OST
Ka'rta Tor from the Republic Commando OST
Welcome to Delta from the Gears of War 2 OST
Air from the Ghostrunner OST
Master Plan from the Payday 2 OST
Beacon Beach from the Oxenfree OST
Sneaky Driver from the Katana Zero OST
You Will Never Know from the Katana Zero OST
Heretic, Hero from the Halo 2 OST
The Gun Pointed at the Head of the Universe from the Halo OST
Kate (chase) from the Mirror's Edge OST
Kate (combat) from the Mirror's Edge OST
Minor 9th from the LA Noire OST
Deference for Darkness from the Halo 3 ODST OST
Detroit Marketplace from the Deus Ex: Human Revolution OST
A World of Assassination from the Hitman (2016) OST
Coalescence from the Risk of Rain OST
Trial from the Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney OST
Allegro 2001 - Questioning from the Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney OST
Coasting from the Transistor OST
Crew's Quarters from the Metal Gear Solid 2 OST
Lighthouse from the Splinter Cell Chaos Theory OST
Can't Say Goodbye from the Metal Gear Solid 2 OST
A Nearly Peaceful Place from The Witcher 2 OST
Faron Woods from the Twilight Princess OST
Battle Against an Unsettling Opponent from the Earthbound OST
Virtuous Mission from the Metal Gear Solid 3 OST
Titan from the Hyper Light Drifter OST
Blackout (Original Mix) by Jacob: • Jacob - Blackout (Orig... | www.beatport.com/artist/jacob... | open.spotify.com/artist/7nS2L...
Suicide Mission Hybrid Mix- • Mass Effect 2 - Suicid...
Tough Guy Alert from the Mario and Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story OST
Timestamps:
00:00- Intro
02:27- Prologue stuff
27:00- Gather your party Pt. 1
58:44- Planet Kaidan
01:05:15- Gather your party Pt. 2
01:18:47- Displate ad
01:21:08- Companion analysis intro
01:23:02- Jacob
01:29:57- Miranda
01:43:44- Zaeed and Kasumi
01:53:03- Mordin
02:05:17- Grunt
02:12:54- Jack
02:25:26- Garrus
02:30:30- Tali
02:46:03- Thane
02:53:59- Samara
03:02:02- Companion final thoughts
03:05:46- Main quest stuff Pt. 1
03:11:10- Side stuff and DLC
03:30:04- Main quest stuff Pt. 2, Legion
03:42:19- End game
03:51:17- Final thoughts
03:58:32- Outro
Thanks for watching! 
Игры
I appreciate your patience on this one and hope you all have a great new year!
Oh, and I wouldn't be able to tell you why in even the slightest, but I accidentally blended the Council and the Alliance together. For some reason, they just became the same entity to me in ME2, and that's my bad.
Love your videos bro your osum.
While Mass effect 2 is definitely goat there are now six endings to three but I'm sure you already knew that 🤣
I think it's a bit sad you release this at this time, with this timing CET 😅
4hours?!!!! Idk what to even say... Thanks for blessing us this end of year
the "advertisement" for the plushie was hilarious lol
This video sure will have a mass effect on my schedule today.
Aaaaaa aaaaa I see what you did thare
*Finish Him!!!!!!!!!*
Go away
Badum tsss
I’m sure it’ll have a mass effect too.
If you haven't already, I would recommend looking up how stopping Garrus from shooting Sidonis goes. For many of my first playthroughs I always let him shoot him, because of course the guy was a monster. But after stopping Garrus shooting him, it's a way more emotionally satisfying conclusion in my opinion.
Yeah, on my earlier playthroughs I always let Garrus kill Sidonis because Garrus is my bro and I wanted to help him. However, when I finally took the other route, I could never go back. Garrus has more development and growth as a character when you stop him, whereas he basically doesn't change or learn anything if you just let him kill the guy.
@@Il_Exile_lI Yeah, I think it's easy to poke fun at the fact that you already gunned down a whole squad of mercs to get to Sidonis just to let him go anyway, but I think it's more interesting for Garrus's character arc to acknowledge shades of grey in morality, as opposed to black and white solutions to everything.
@@YorkJonhson Well, there is a difference. Those mercs attacked you, so there was pretty much no choice. Even though I always help Garrus with this, it doesn´t change the fact that this is premeditated murder, and for personal reasons as well. That is quite different from something like killing in combat, or even a contract killing.
I kind of wish Garrus successfully taking his revenge had any kind of follow-up though. Like, maybe failing to learn his lesson about letting a desire for revenge go, he gets involved in some petty blood feud that ends up costing him something. Or even something as simple as a scene saying that killing Sidonis didn't bring him the peace of mind he was hoping for. It just kinda sucks to run into a fork in a story and to have one of the paths in the fork lead to a satisfying character arc while the other just leads to an abrupt end.
My Renegade Femshep always leads Garrus down the Darkest path lol did the other one where he spares him once and was unsatisfied
I can't believe anyone wouldn't be grinning like an idiot when Wrex drops everything and greets Shepard as "my friend!"
Him saying that actually made me stupid happy. It was like seeing an old friend again. Or that one crazy uncle everyone likes
Loved that moment, Wrex was my favourite from the first game.
Never played mass effect but I understand the feeling of meeting an old friend after a long time so yeah, I was also smiling when wrex said that.
seeing Wrex genuinely happy is a nice break from sarcastic and surly.
…. The writing is so frickin great in this game!! Woooo
It's apparent that the writers were going through some parental issues with ME2 characters, especially for their Loyalty missions:
Miranda - Controlling evil dad
Jacob - Deadbeat roofie dad
Tali - Dead dad
Grunt - Dead adoptive dad OR Shep adopting a rebellious teen
Thane/Kolayt - Dying dad
Samara/Morinth - Homocidal mother / daughter
You’re absolutely right
If you've seen any pictures of Bioware's staff from that era, things become immediately apparent
I mean like, looking between mass effect and dragon age, nobody writing at bioware likes their parents
Jacob in LE looks like his parental problem could be his former wife hooking up with Pete Davidson and co-parenting children with them while trying to run a fashion and music corporation and being batcrap crazy.
They're Canadians. Of course they hate their parents.
“I get the dopamine rush of sucking a planet dry like you’re in college”
You and I had very different college experiences.
If you went through college without having a couple of the boys in the back of your throat, you did college wrong.
@@moistloaf3854 respect
Incel
@@moistloaf3854 🤣🤣🤣
@@torachan23 don’t think you know what that means
I'm sorry, but how exactly is Shepard hugging Tali weird? They've known each other for quite some time now and her father just died. Girl needed a hug. That's not Shepard being a perv, it's him being a supportive friend.
You’re absolutely correct.
Salt doesn't seem to understand the emotional support aspect of hugs. A hug is not a purely romantic gesture.
I think in his mind it was the the context of shepard being a rapist and refusing to take no for an answer and just being a general pervy creep and then saying "come here" to Tali when she's grieving, I agree that hugs are often just there for support and not anything gross, but with the previous actions of shepard I can see how salt saw it differently
@@emiloguechoons9030 wtf are you talking about lmao
@@emiloguechoons9030 What did you smoke? Pass me some
The "ah yes, 'Reapers'... we have dismissed that claim!" bugs me so very much. There is reason in not wanting to go full hog on Reapers. "Look, Shepherd, Sovereign is dead; the Reapers are still hibernating in Dark Space and without Sovereign they are not coming back. We won, we beat them, now stop scaring people by chasing ghosts." But instead the Council really believes the 'ship' that's vastly superior to any other piece of technology and had special interface with the Citadel, a millenniums old relic, was built by the Geth... who've never been to the Citadel... and don't have that capability... oh and they built the thing they worship as a god?
the entire writing staff at bioware checked out either after the purchase of the IP by EA or during development because bioware's actual in house board are all hacks who had no idea what they were doing and were never satisfied. Once knowing this fact trying to figure out why the writing was so mediocre or just outright trash in 2 is easy to figure out
Ever heard of the golden calf? Or Greek paganism? You’ve got good points but the last one about worshipping what they built is not so good
The "Ah, yes, 'Reapers'...we have dismissed that claim!" line also comes from the Turian councillor. Y'know, the councillor whose species was at war with humanity a generation before the game, who is always openly hostile towards Shepard, and immediately dismisses any claims made by Shepard even when clear evidence is presented for those claims. The Turian councillor is, very clearly, _extremely_ space racist when it comes to humanity.
The Asari and Salarian councillor are a _lot_ more receptive to the things Shepard tells them, but aren't really willing to do anything because the evidence to support claims made by Shepard is either something that they won't be able to understand because it requires the ancestral memories of Prothean civilisation, a thing that Shepard uniquely has, or they can't verify it because (as the Turian councillor likes to point out) it was destroyed during Shepards escapades.
Also worth considering is that the _concept_ of the Reapers, an ancient race of unstoppable machine gods who have spent millions of years wiping out organic life when it gets sufficiently advanced, is absolutely terrifying on an existential level. So, is it really a surprise that even the galactic government would be in denial and trying to rationalise events aways as something less threatening?
@@victorkreig60892 and onward. As in it never gets any better. And people gush like prom-queens after the party when mentioning Dread Wolf.
That said... The thing about Sovereign is that he was heavily within the Geth forces. It goes without saying that he upgraded their shit and that, from an outsiders perspective, would seem to be the top of the line, best-they-could-ever-do Geth Dreadnaught. Specifically because the tech was both alien to them and similar to each other.
In hindsight it's absolutely not believable. There was an amazing video nitpicking the writing of ME2 to hell and back but its seemingly been lost to time. Can't find it anymore.
I think you must have missed some dialogue or something with Okeer. The blue Suns leader found out he was double crossing her and she issued in order to destroy all of the krogan in tubes with poison. Grunt was hooked up to it and to save him he broke the pipe and vented the poison to him so that grunt could live
But still, why would he stay in the room?
@@ethanbarker9811 To vent the poison...
@@spikey288 right but once it was vented, surely he could have just left the room before dying considering it’s a big ass room and Krogan are highly resistant and have massive lung capacity
@@ethanbarker9811 Clearly the poison gas was strong enough to kill krogan, hence their decision to inject it into the pods in the first place. Once the gas is breathed in it kills you, leaving the room doesn't change that, the gas is still inside your lungs.
@@spikey288 strong enough to kill Krogan who are unconscious, in a small enclosed space. Okeer is a veteran who survived the rebellions, has lived for more than a millennium, and like all Krogan he has an entire set of redundant backup lungs. Why did he sit there flapping his jaw leaving a message for Shepard when he could have been holding his breath? Why would the gas be so potent when it’s being vented into a container like fifty times larger than it’s intended container? Would that really kill someone like Okeer who knew it was coming and could prepare and belongs to a species who were specifically uplifted due to their incredible resistance to a wide range of toxins? Like he INSTANTLY dies, there’s no way to take him back to Chakwas?
Also, EDI says the gas coincided with a system failure but now that it’s over, she can take over the lab and vent the room. So for no reason at all, Okeer has control over venting the gas from the tank to the room, but doesn’t have control over venting the room? He could definitely hold his breath for a little while at least but given everything we know about Krogan, probably a long ass time. He doesn’t even try to leave? Just accepts his death and trusts that this random human is going to protect his legacy?
Like, I just think it’s more likely that they killed him off with contrived nonsense because while he should clearly be an important character, they had no idea how to tie up the collector plot thread. Kind of like how the collectors making the plague for Omega was barely explained and made no sense.
Skipping the Lair Shadow Broker DLC was probably the biggest mistake you could have done, seeing as it's the best DLC, offers more time with Liara and genuinely is a blast to play.
He skipped DA:O - Awakening as well ;) two strikes so far.
It also sets up ME3 Liara's arc as well
@@Amdor I enjoyed Awakening more than the base game lol. What Salt did is a crime
eh the dialogue is good. The actual gameplay is awful though.
Maybe he'll cover it seperately. I hope.
I've got disagree with the Paragon interrupt when Tali finding her dead father. I didn't see that as Shepherd forcing himself on her, but comforting his friend. Femshep has the same interrupt.
I *think* Salt writes his scripts on the go, alt-tabbing and then writing, then going back in-game. So it could just be him thinking on the spot and not giving it much further thought.
I think the We'll Bang Okay? meme will forever skew our view of Shepard
@@beefsteakozzy9117 sounds like a crappy way to review something then
@@torachan23 I guess the idea is to give a kind of on the spot review, the same way that the average player would view the game without giving it much further thought. That's the charm of it for me anyway.
Watching boys absolutely gasping the copium about his (totally understandable) take on that moment makes me chuckle
The thing about the Ardat Yakshi is that by the time their genetic defect is discovered' it's too late to correct. From this we can infer that Samara's three daughters are fairly close in age for their condition to be discovered too late.
Edit: Skipping LotSB!?!?! Salt, go play it right now!
Came looking for this exact comment
I can’t believe he played firewalker and normandy crash site and then was like nah 😂
Ammo exists for Insanity difficulty, where enemies become more bullet spongey. Trust me, you'll be thankful for each ammo drop on that difficulty.
I wouldn't really say bullet spongey, as it implies that they don't die from 1 hit. Other than that you're entirely right.
I still remember retrying the same exact level he's complaining about bullets because i wasted most of mine (as an infiltrator). Mostly cuz if you do miss one shot, that bullet would be wasted.
funny enough i am literally playing infiltrator right now on insanity. man i sucks that you cant hang back too long because you will quickly run out of ammo on your sniper. and you die really fast. its still fun. but that ammo gripe only applies to close range builds because enemies only drop where they die@@TheKueiJin
No ammo exists to streamline the gameplay to be more like call of duty even though it makes zero sense lore wise or gameplay wise especially on insanity cause now you have to scramble for ammo to kill enemies compeltly halting the pacing of combat
I mean because for one thing shields exist, armor exist making enemies light bullet sponges on normal, but in COD there's just health. So it makes zero sense to have reloading at all unless your purposely trying to emulate call of duty. At least in andromeda there's guns with an overheat but no literal reload of magazines and it makes sense lore wise.
@@TheKueiJin but they don't die from one hit. What enemy on insane difficulty dies with one shot? He's totally right about them being bullet spongey
Salt is slowly inching towards making videos that are as long as the average workday and im all about it.
Witcher 3 will probably be the full 9-5 shift.
@@fictionarch
Trash game.
@@I_Cunt_Spell ok
Aye that would be nice to get me though a full day
SaltFactory va Patrician for longest analysis videos
You're not missing much skipping Overlord, but the Shadow Broker DLC is kind of essential as it fills in a lot of gaps for Liara's character between ME2 and 3. If there was one to cover, it was probably that one.
Yeah I found overlord a grind! I also agree about the shadow broker the boss fight is really cool too!
overlord was good towards the end
I always play Overlord. When you meet David again in me3, it is pretty damn emotional for such a short cameo.
Overlord had its moments, but it is a mess gameplay wise.
Disagree. Overlord is imoy the best of the ME2 DLC's. Firewalker is hot garbage and Arrival doesn't really make much sense. SB's only redeeming factor is some Liara time if you romanced her.
My thoughts on the discussion on Jack's loyalty mission: I feel like the information you're given during that mission helps paint a picture of the way Jack's trauma affects her in a very realistic way, and a reveal that just makes it an "abuse survivor wasn't actually abused" thing would be way worse. Jack's memory of what happened is wrong because she didn't have access to all the information, and was a child who misinterpreted things like children easily can, and was also traumatized. It did not feel like a red herring to me, it felt like a pretty accurate reflection of how the combination of her being a prisoner, child, and traumatized could affect her memory/view on the events that transpired. And in my opinion, exploring the way trauma can twist someone's views and memories on events is so much more interesting than just going with a cheap reveal of "none of the trauma was real in the first place." I guess YMMV, but watching Jack process her trauma and how her situation meant that she didn't get to see the full picture of what happened at the facility while she was held there made that loyalty mission genuinely one of my favorites in the game.
Freud had a field day with this part of the ME 2 story
I swear. The moment I see Wrex. I get a massive smile. While I'll always romance tali. Wrex was always the most endearing character. He felt genuinely was happy when your around. Moreso in 3. Can't imagine the people that do him dirty. He'd legit die for Shepard.
You have to admire that Bioware did take into account certain NPCs dying in ME1/ME2 when playing ME3. I bet a lot of people never even met Wreav in ME2.
Oh he definitely would die for Shepard......on Virmire! 😈
That's because Wrex was written by Drew Karpyshyn, the man who built bioshit's reputation for writing from the ground up
And then he quit during the development of ME2 because the board were POSs that were never satisfied with anything he wrote so he said screw this I'm out
@@victorkreig6089 damn you're really dedicated to ruining peoples fun aren't you? how many comment sections have you ruined by devolving them into meaningless arguments? take your bioshit elsewhere
@@victorkreig6089 yep which is why we get garbage characters like Jack,Zaeed & Kasumi in ME2 while Ashley gets hosed because the Leftist writers hate religious characters with a functional loving family
I always thought the gas that killed Okeer was being pumped into grunts tank to kill the krogan, so Okeer rerouted the gas from the tank to the room he was in. I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure if you have subtitles on you can read part of his message before you can actually hear it where he says that's what he did.
You know it's crazy I always thought that too.
Maybe we're monsters who listen and watch subtitles in games??
(Pretty sure that's accurate as well I just re-finished the series last month and I vaguely remember that being the reason)
(I do also enjoy Salt's explanation on the rationale right or wrong it's Uber entertaining)
I’m certain this is the case. I’m in the midst of a play through of the series and haven’t gotten to this point in the game yet, but I wrote it down for scrunity.
It gets kinda annoying to listen to a guy complain about something for 5 minutes and have the root issue be wrong. Because you can't stop and correct him.
@@PhabioTheHost wouldnt be so bad if there was somewhere he would reply to and acknowledge these corrections. He definitly has multiple misunderstandings in each of his videos.
Salt factory "What if Okeer spent his dying moment's hammering away at the keys to prevent his perfect krogan's tank from being drained?"
Er. That is what happened.
LOL not trying to give you shit, I know there is a lot to cover in these games and it's easy to miss something. But it's just funny when you mention the exact thing that actually happens.
Stuff like that always gets a chuckle out of me.
It's probably just an effective troll to gain comments lol
plus we cant expect homeboy to be perfectly on point for 4 hours str8
there are bits like this in every review he makes lol. im use to it at this point.
Just starting the video, paused it and came to the comments to see if there was the, almost obligatory, "Salt makes a critique that he wouldn't make if he paid attention to the game" comment only to see that, literally, the first comment is one of those.
Just wanted to point out that in Zaeed's Loyalty mission: It is possible to save the workers and still have him as a crew memeber by the end. It pretty much leads to your character actually being a commander and out right tells Zaeed that on your crew, you follow orders, and that you don't stand renegade crewmates.
ALSO: Lair of the shadow broker is so important, especially to Liara's development!
Liara, development? lmao!
Also not doing what Zaieed wanted just to save a few dozen workers is silly
@@victorkreig6089 I tell myself that the workers could have found a way down from the walkway as it wasn’t that high up.
Zaeed just doesn't make sense...a merc getting paid a large sum KNOWING he will probably die? What?? What merc would even consider that?
I’m happy someone else appreciates jack’s character. I feel like a lot of people just instantly dislike her without really delving into why she is the way she is. She’s been alone and betrayed basically her whole life. I love playing as female shep and literally just becoming her friend.
I love Jack's character. I'm sure I'm in the minority, but I enjoyed romancing Jack the most out of the three potential love interests (Jack, Tali & Miranda). I feel it was pretty poignant to see her drop her hardened veneer & see a tender/vulnerable side of Jack.
Pretty sure people dislike her because she's just an extremely unpleasant person to be around lol
Jack is a woman, she's intelligent, assertive and doesn't seem to have been brainwashed into wearing sexy outfits to satisfy the player's eye. Assuming the vast majority of ME2 players and viewers of this video are young men, I guess this female profile will typically trigger some hidden insecurities :)
I understand her character, what she went through, and i was glad to see her in ME3.
Still, i don't like her in most of ME2, lil' biatch acting like a total badass maniac along with her looks ain't my thing🗿
She is one of the few characters written pretty well DESPITE the writers being hacks and messing with her development a lot, hell I would have even romanced her if it wasn't for the gangbangs. It's funny on the whole part because she's a typical human weapon character trope with Jack from Pitch Black injected into her and yet despite all that she ends up being written better than pretty much any other character in the game
The confusion I felt with him talking about the Council and calling it the Alliance is immeasurable.
Look, I'm by law required to make at least 3 mistakes every video
@@TheSaltFactory I appreciate you setting minimum and not a max lol. Love your videos dude and have a wonderful new years!
a mass effect analysis video that makes the most basic lore mistake.
this was embarassing.
@@TheSaltFactory correction on Ashley for you she doesn't hate aliens she simply doesn't trust them and also in your first Mass Effect 3 do you completely misinterpreted her bear and dog metaphor
@@TheReaper569 It happens. Do you have a 4 hour lore video for everyone to pick apart for every misstep? I'd sure love to see it, because I am also a pedant.
Only bit I really disagree with is Shepard hugging Tali being like the other “shepard being pushy sexually” things. I feel that it’s a natural response to try to comfort a grieving friend and think it’s a cold response to not do so in that scene honestly. Another great video though
Oh for sure, that moment was just a clear case of basic human decency.
Would’ve made Shepard seem like a robot to just stand there blankly lol
Yeah, hard agree. I play as a fem!Shep, so I'm locked out of that romance anyway. That interrupt is about being there as a friend in a horrible time more than a pushy romance option.
It's the sudden interruption that does it. When I've been in such situations in life, where a person grieves the dead loved one in front of them or even in their arms, you let them say what they need to say. You don't just hug them quiet. I remember waiting for Tali to finish, missing the hug and then redoing the scene to see what the interrupt was about.
TL;DR: Shepard cutting her off makes the hug-scene weird, not the hug itself. The hug is natural, but her just stopping her grief to hug is not. It would be fine if she just kept on talking.
@@probablythedm1669 now that I can sorta understand.
2:03:40 I love that post mission conversation with Mordon for how it fleshes out Salarian psychology; short lived mean even their emotional processing has to be much faster than a humans. Though as Mordon says, it's no more likely to turn out good than in humans; some can process emotional turmoil well, others can't and end up doing horrible shit like Maelon.
my favorite interaction with that biotic god volus is bringing jack, playing along and sending him to his death... jack goes like "okay that was cruel... hilarious yeah. but cruel"
When I get to this game I've definitely got to do that
A note on the Tali section; It wasn't that her father was just trying to test weapons on the Geth, he was reactivating them and linking them together through a neural network, then testing weapons on them. Basically, he was recreating how the Geth function and gain sentience and interact with one another, which is severely dangerous. The more geth linked to one another, the smarter they are, after all. A ship full had the potential to take out many quarians on the fleet, maybe even a ship or two, before anyone knew what was happening, because her father did not tell anyone about this.
Great video, though! Just thought I'd help clear up some confusion you showed in this part.
Tali's loyalty mission was an amazing episode. Even better if you take Legion with you. =P
@@JayMaverick Yeah, but honestly, he didn´t have as many interactions as I thought he would.
@@jirkazalabak1514 You aren't strictly *supposed* to have him with you, if you trigger the IFF mission and the crew gets nabbed, performing any mission will result in loss of the crew, so in a "perfect" playthrough, you couldn't have him present. Hope that makes sense!
@@prongs8488 You're not required to do Tali's loyalty mission early. There's nothing stopping you from retrieving the crew without any losses.
@@davidmcgill1000 Except if you want to Romance Tali. You need about 3-4 conversations after the loyalty mission. for the romance to be possible. I took Legion on Tali´s loyalty mission, but I was romancing Miranda (it was a Renegade playthrough) at the time. I was still able to save the crew though.
"Jacob Taylor is easily one of the most likeable characters" - I just fucking choked on my drink when he said that, Salt's must be the only person in existence who doesn't actively hates him
To be fair, one of the things that makes Jacob the goddamn worst is if you romance him and then play ME3. Like wtf bro.
I don't hate him he was the bro but i played male shep seems most that hate him are people that play as female
I like him and don't see why you should dislike him in any way
I honestly like Jacob. If you don't romance him he's just a chill dude. Honestly I used to go talk to him after dealing with everyone else's issues just for the relief of him saying he was good lol
i legit don't know why people shit on jacob as much as they do in ME2
sure you could argue he's boring but that doesn't mean he's a cunt; he's just an average dudebro whom the illusive man placed with shepard to provide some sort of comfort as a former alliance member who isn't particulary enthusiastic about cerberus but realizes they're the best option given the circumstances (like, you know, an average commander shepard would probably feel once they see that both alliance and council are doing fuckall about the reapers)
what happened in ME3 is another thing; dude got shafted as a character romanced or otherwise (as were several other characters but that's another can of worms)
I think you are the only person to ever like Jacob, let alone rank him so highly. I have seen people talk about how they dislike him so much that they intentionally immediately kill him at the beginning of the suicide mission by sending him into the vents(he volunteered, after all).
i don't get all the hate he gets. I still think hes one of the weaker characters but i don't hate him he's just whatever
@@vicioussatire482 a lot of the hate stems from what he does in me3 and honestly him being kinda mid in me2. He isn't terrible and I initially liked Jacob and romanced him.... I'm js, everybody else waited. It was only a few months. He is literally the ONLY romance option that couldn't wait and cheated on femshep. He's mid and has the nerve to cheat on the hero of the galaxy so...
I think it's because he cheats on femshep in ME3 if you romance him in ME2.
A lot of people seem to justify why they don't like Jacob because of a thing he does in a later game but...the guy has _always_ been a poorly written character, even before all the "waaa, he cheated on Femshep".
Like, you could replace Jacob with a cardboard cutout that repeats 3 phrases and the cardboard cutout would probably only be a _marginally_ better character.
To be fair, you only really get to understand why to hate him if you play as femshep. I personally just find the man boring, and what makes him worse is that he refuses to connect with the player. His loyalty mission gives him the plenty room to expand his character, yet when you ask him about it after the mission, he just hits you with a blanket statement "Let's not talk about it again".
Martin Sheen's performance in this game was fantastic.
Giving your friend a hug when they are hurt or in distress is weird... huh. Guess I've been doing it wrong this whole time.
It’s the fact that he interrupts her to give her a hug.
Like, let her speak and grieve and be there to listen then hug, don’t cut her off while she’s venting just to hug her.
it’s the interruption that’s the issue not the hug itself
@@xanderkbruh582
as someone with anxiety and depression...the interruption can actually help sometimes. If they let you go...you might keep spiraling in your own mind and getting worse and worse as you can't think straight. Cutting her off to let her know that her friend is there, she's not alone. there are people to help her work through htis...can help slow down your mind to help you process and think a bit more rationally.
which as I stated in my own comment, also is good when youre...literally in danger from active enemies in the vicinity.
I think the "We'll Bang, Okay?" meme has forever skewed male shep's image
@@0MidnighttheDragon0 and other ppl are opposite or different too. Generally, Jesus Christ don’t touch me. *especially* during a pandemic lmao. This is not an uncommon trait. And in the age of weird ppl on the internet it’s only grown more normal. You can interrupt ppl spiraling with out physically pulling them into you. And like salt said, alone it’s probably alright or easily seen as a “they’re closer than you may have known” but juxtaposed against all the other times Shep is, weird it’s, weird
@@poosley7476 yes, different people have different reactions to touch. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that a hug for comfort does NOT exqual a sexual advance. I'm. Not denying all the OTHER things that were said about m!Shep's advances, but this is not one of them
Jacob is in many ways the "Anti-Garrus" for me. When I first got Garrus in ME1, I didn't really like him, but over time, he grew on me to the point where he's easily my favorite crewmember. Jacob was the opposite; he started off very strong for me, but the more he interacted with the other crew members and the advice he gave to me throughout the game, the less and less I enjoyed him, to the point where he's just kinda background noise in subsequent playthroughs. (Also my thoughts and prayers to all the peeps who romanced Jacob in ME3, developers done did you dirty)
What’s the problem of romancing Jacob?
@@lordeverett5642 If you romance Jacob, he breaks up with you because he had a kid with another woman during the six months between Mass Effect 2 and 3.
@@BlaireRabbit1440 And it also says it's your fault because you are a career oriented woman. Like b*tch, you just found out? You couldn't broke up with me instead of cheating?
@@drawingsticks5333 imagine dating the hero of humanity and then being surprised they are kinda busy xD
@@BlaireRabbit1440 Well he does kind of tell you he didn't want a relationship and femshep coerced him into having sex.
This nitpicks so much and missed so much. It's hilarious.
For instance, the reason Ashley doesn't like Cerberus despite her reservations about aliens, is that Cerberus is basically a terrorist organization that is caused the deaths of a lot of alliance personnel. I mean, in the first game Cerberus literally leads a thresher maw to take out an entire Alliance unit, and they also killed admiral kahoku. And that's just some of the things they did.
It's so weird he brings up tali willing to join shep with that whole thing. Like he realizes they're different people that can make different choices, right? He boils the whole thing down to "Cerberus likes humanity and Ashley likes humanity so they should be best buds" when Ashley's character isn't really that simple
yeah i think he fundamentally doesn't understand Ashely's character and is just one of those "she's a space racist" heathens.
the crux of his argument being, "she doesn't like aliens, Cerberus doesn't like aliens, why doesn't she want to join Cerberus!?!?!?"
whereas she doesn't *hate* aliens, she (rightfully) distrust them because she understands that the council that was formed by Aliens thousands of years prior would prioritize their own interests over humanity's well being. Hell, in every single game from before ME1 through ME3 she is proven right about the self-centeredness of the Citadel council (whom Salt also seems to have deeply confused with the Human System's Alliance)
-the first contact war, Turians attacked a human vessel for violating citadel law in a first contact scenario and then proceeded to occupy a human planet, comitting warcrimes in the process.
-The Citadel Council encouraged humanity to expand into the Attican traverse, knowing that doing so would put them at odds with the Batarians, whom the council disliked.
-The Council remained neutral during the Skylian Blitz when batarian backed pirates began a spree of terrorist and slaver attacks on human colonies.
-After the attack on Eden Prime the council elected to withhold fleet support that could help protect human colonies from future geth incursions
-The Council refused to help Shepard pursue Saren into the Terminus systems, and actively hindered Shepard's own pursuit.
-The Council tried to sweep Shepard under the rug by having them hunt geth in fringe systems after they (potentially) saved the council's lives.
-After Shepard's death the Council succeeded in sweeping their legacy under the rug. and refused to act on the warning they had received, going so far as to actively dismiss Shepard's claims after their reappearance.
-The entirety of ME3 is Shepard running errants for the Council races to get their support for earth.
Cerberus on the other hand are human supremacists who are willing to go to great lengths, including manipulating, brainwashing, and murdering other humans, to get to the top. they lured alliance personnel to their deaths to study thresher maws, experimented on reaper technology, tried to turn thorian creepers into disposable soldiers, Murdered a fleet admiral, and that is just the things that *Ashely* was involved in uncovering. she doubtless has alliance intel reports on their other activities, including brainwashing and the use of mind controlling implants... like the one Miranda says she actually wanted to put in Shepard before TiM said no because it might fuck Shepard 's head up.
his entire premise of "oh but Cerberus looks like it might be trying to turn over a new leaf." is utterly asinine when TiM actively denies any change of heart the entire game.
In ME1 she has never met an alien. she has an active distrust for them because they are more powerful than humanity, and her entire life she has been looked down upon because her grandfather surrendered Shanxi to them to prevent them bombing civilian populations from orbit. Her first interaction with an alien race is when geth slaughter her entire unit and half the civilian population during Saren's assault on Eden Prime. she is also a loyal member of the System alliance armed forces from a military family, and She understandably expresses discomfort over alien personnel of unknown loyalty being allowed carte blanche access to a System's alliance warship.
over the course of ME1 she still forms a friendship with Garrus, a respectful relationship with Wrex,, and she later describes Tali as "like a little sister" and feels bad about distrusting Liara after she helps kill Matriarch Beneziah.
by the end of ME1 she has completely grown out of her active distrust for aliens, only holding to her justifiable distrust for Alien governments. she is not and has never been an extremist, just cautious.
Aw poor baby can't take criticism of your favorite non rpg
@@ORiOh4582 Can you read?
@@MFenix206 I hear you but my 1 counter point is that she only outgrows these behaviors if you stick with her. By the time you can get her killed she's still insufferable.
You're fun to listen to while still having some of the worst takes on every game you play. That's a compliment I swear.
THIS LMAO
This is what I think with every video.
FORREAL LMAO
Literally this. The takes are sometimes hilariously bad but it’s entertaining to listen to still.
This sums all of it up
I remember when the game first came out and people would get upset that Thane would die on the suicide mission because they sent him in the vents. The reasoning was always "When you first meet him he's crawling in vents!". WTF kinda logic is that?
😄😄😄😄😄
I can see that logic... I mean, I did choose Mordin to close the doors instead of a mechanic, since, you know, he is the most intelligent and brilliant characters xad
Seriously what? The game literally spells it out you need to send someone with technical skills. Are those people braindead? I could at least see why someone might think Mordin. But Thane?
I choose Thane for the part myself since it said that the tunnel would be extremely hot, making me think anyone who wasn’t equipped to handle extreme heat would die. Thane sounded perfect at the time because his people live in arid environments and even says it’s feel kinda comfy in there, so you weren’t the only one who made the wrong choice there
I dunno. I always sent Legion since he doesn't care about temperature as much as organics would, at least in theory. Plus he's like a mobile EDI in terms of being basically a sentient supercomputer (before ME3 gave us EDI with a body). Not sure how people would send anyone BUT Legion for that task.
Chitinous: "Kai-tin-us."
Okeer stays because the tank is actively being flushed and is compromised. Your suggestion about how he stays to prevent his tank from being flushed is absolutely what is implied to have happened.
You have misunderstood Mordin regarding giving nuclear weapons to the krogan. He is making an analogy, not claiming the salarians literally gave nukes to the krogan. The krogan developed them on their own.
On the subject of the Collectors not loading the console with dummy data. EDI has not simply accessed this particular console, she is infiltrating the entire ship and its network, hence why she can work devices on the ship, like the platforms and doors. Beyond that, the Collectors are unaware of EDI even existing, so it makes sense that they are caught off-guard by the whole scenario.
Legion's geth are not a splinter group. They are the primary geth faction. The only other faction are the heretics, which actually are a splinter group. This one is probably just a slip of the tongue, honestly...
That's that. This is pretty much just objective nitpicks that stood out for me that I didn't think were reasonably explained by them being for humor or just opinions I didn't totally agree with. Enjoyed it as ever, and I look forward to the next one.
Yeah this is some unnecessary nitpicking for something that is reasonably well explained in the dialogue.
@@Lockerus I am editing this comment as I progress through the video. Just for context, so you don't agree with stuff you didn't actually see.
I'm assuming you were just listening to the video (at least for this part) cuz regarding the Salarian/Krogan stuff he overlaid the section where he was talking about it with text on screen clarifying that he looked it up later and understood what had actually happened.
I’ve watched like 5 of your videos in the last few days, and they’re very good. But I swear to God, I’m gonna develop a trauma response to the phrase “in my eyes”
Kasumi and Zaeed were always a little odd because of their origin as DLC add-ons. My guess is they couldn't properly integrate them into the main story and it was too much money to grab all the voice actors to add them in better.
It's sad because they are both great characters who could've even greater if they were more integrated in the story. Kasumi's loyalty mission is really cool and plays out like a heist, and Zaeed's one offers an extremely interesting moral choice.
@@rockingbirdey I mean i like Zaeed, but leaving innocent civilians to cook to death by an issue YOU created, or let a mercenary and (probably) former slaver get revenge? Idk doesn't seem that in depth.
@@TheMasterUnity It was not a deep moral choice in the story's context, but it is an interesting one because if the player did not know better he or she might fear a consequence in gameplay, aka losing Zaeed's loyalty. It is extremely rare in the ME triology. Paragon rarely offers negative setbacks as sometimes doing good deeds should. It would be interesting to have Zaeed only loyal to Shep if you let the civilians die, which is kinda the case but Paragon/Renegade check just cancels the impact let everyone have the candy...
@@yidingliu8663 That wasn't necessarily the case on release; before the LE lowered the mark for speech checks, it was damn hard to have a high enough Paragon to talk Zaeed down.
@Bill Hicklin yeah in the OG I would leave his loyalty to near the end so I'd have enough paragon to clear it. It was almost as hard as Paragon Morinth
“hard to see the bigger picture over a pile of corpses” what a fantastic line
My understanding was weapons didn't have "ammo" but thermal clips that stored the weapon's heat build-up and had to be ejected after a certain number of uses. This is why all the dropped "clips" are universal and work in any weapon.
youre not wrong but its the entirely same thing from a gameplay perspective
Yeah I think they are basically blocks of metal, silvers are sheared off and shot out
Aside from the Heavy Weapons, the bulk of ME2/3 guns (using in-game lore) have internal 'ammo blocks' that are shaved away at to create the bullets being fired whilst the thermal clips are expendable heatsinks that soak away the heat of the actions of shaving and firing so the guns don't jam or melt down.
Which was incredibly retarded playing on insanity and fighting bosses as an infiltrator. I would run out of sniper ammo and have nothing except incinerate to deal damage to bosses. Made me wish I had the heat system of 1, even if it always bugged out and infinitely overheated if I ever tried to shoot multiple times in a row.
While I can understand the concept, and why in the lore they switched away from the overheat stuff, I still find it dumb that they didn't keep the overheat stuff as an emergency.
Sure, thermals clips allow you to shoot for a while without having to worry about overheating. But did you really had to make the gun lock in place and not shoot anymore without a clip?
Not to mention that, since clips store heat, and everything hot cool down after a while, the player should technically be able to hand on to those thermal clips and reuse them.
As its stand thermal clips are the exact same as regular ammo, and it doesn't really make a lot of sense as to why the Citadel would COMPLETLY move away from their previous system.
As a comparison, the Imperial Guard in Warhammer 40k switch from using regular guns with bullets to using Lasguns with energy packs that could be recharged by letting them in the sun or throwing them in a fire, and since they no longer had to ferry ammo around, or at least as much ammo, a whole ass third of their supply fleet was freed to do other shit and greatly simplified their supply lines.
The Citadel Races basically did the reverse, trading near-limitless ammo and nigh non-existent supply lines to having to have ships ferry thermal clips around and have facilities produce these clips, with no option to go back to the old system in case they ran out of clips. While the very concept imply being able to reuse the clips after they cool down, I don't think I saw anyone in ME mention it. Maybe in the Codex, but even then I don't think it would get used as a plot point.
When he talks about how the vorcha gives away their plan, it goes to show how little attention he paid to reading or seeing the other species. Because the vorcha are portrayed as nothing but cannon fodder by everyone, so it’s no stretch of the imagination to think that the vorcha leader was overconfident in taunting Shepard and his crew because they are a species that isn’t all there.
"he paid little attention"
"it's no stretch"
So, did he miss some information, or you're just reaching really hard? Stop coping
@@raven75257 by what stretch of imagination have the vorcha EVER been more than cannon fodder with little to no common sense? Every other vorcha in the game that you talk to (that even talks to you lmao) has basically the same attitude especially to humans. To me, that's just overlooking the general personalities of vorcha in the game.
If you pick up Legion before Tali and take him with you to pick her up you can get a paragon option if going between her aiming her gun at Legion and explain that way or just let her fail at trying to kill him and Legion asks for help I found that part weirdly adorable
About the Tali mission, do remember that her trial is a secondary concern mostly used as a political stage for competing ideals
The Quarians act inept because having Tali rescue the ship proves a point that war is possible, and Han'Gerrel supports Tali but still needs her to clear the ship even if he wouldn't condemn her otherwise
Koris on the other hand has to stand up for Geth rights and peace, and wants Tali gone only because keeping her would encourage more Geth testing and warlike attitude, he also trusts Tali but is unwilling to let her father's research bear fruit
I realize that others have probably corrected this as well, but Salt missing the point of Admiral Rael’Zorah’s crime is so distracting to me, I need to comment 😂
He received dismantled and disconnected geth parts for experiments. This, in itself, is fine and not illegal (or Tali never would’ve sent them to him). What is illegal is that he then connected those parts into a network to essentially have functioning Geth on a ship (with computers) in a fleet of ships (with computers) that are carrying EVERY Quarian alive except exiles and those on their Pilgrimage.
It is repeatedly stated that Geth become smarter the more units are linked together, so the threat of linking sentient computers together while IN the Migrant Fleet is that they could take over not just the Alarai, but spread quite easily to the rest of the fleet, effectively making a couple of Geth capable of wiping out the Quarians.
Experimenting on Geth is fine(?), since factions of the Quarians do intend to take back their homeworld at one point. But risking the Migrant Fleet and the near-total extermination of their people by reactivating Geth while aboard a Fleet Ship and risking them becoming smart enough to take over the ships is not.
salt not understanding that having random chemicals is fine, but building a bomb out of them is BAD xD
@@ich3730 That's a very good way of putting it.
Yes but understand, his live for Tali & his overzealousness of wanting her to have her home back led him to that mistake... which is why that mission is really great in my opinion...too bad the daddy issue writers made Tali resent her father in ME3
@@TheImapotato Oh absolutely! I loved the mission!
Just frustrating that Salt missed why Tali was so distraught by what her dad did. 😅
You should've did Lair of the Shadow Broker.
1. Great DLC
2. You get to work with Liara again.
3. You actually get to continue your romance directly.
4. If you continue your romance you still have the option of romancing someone else on the Normandy. However both romances transfer over to ME3, but Liara won't ask you awkwardly about the other party.
5. Spoiler: You get to see Liara become the Shadow Broker, as she mentioned in ME3.
It's overrated honestly unless you really really like Liara. Information broker as a sci-fi concept is just cheap and cheesy.
@@AggrofoolOn what grounds is it overrated? Besides a whole new map, with the most interesting backstory in the entire franchise, as well as the be coolest types of AI, acting like a typical russian team-mate (aka flashbanging you every 2 seconds), you couldn't really ask for more. Furthermore the story itself is beyond amazing, and the benefits of the station after the DLC is concluded is truly well worth the effort of doing it as soon as possible!
So explain to me, how is it overrated?
One interesting thing is that the plotline of the diying sun and dark energy in the Tali mission was originally supposed to be part of the motive of why the Reapers do what they do which imo is much better than the plot they ended up going with in me3
Also you should've done liaras dlc
That hug with Tali happens with both genders, though. I always thought of it as a friend comforting a friend, sometimes you just need a hug after bad shit.
Donovan Hock has an Afrikaner accent. Afrikaner is a South African English accent that developed from the Dutch that immigrated to South Africa prior to it being taken over by Great Britain.
There is also the Afrikaans language which is a version of Dutch much like American English is a version of English or Quebec French is a version of French.
He has an Afrikaner accent, and the language is Afrikaans, with an S. Spot on other than that.
During my playthrough i was thinking he Got a Russian Accent 😅
@@mrskittles08
kk and thank you. I was not sure, I will adjust my comment with these changes.
@@kacperrys3003
hehe.. when I first played ME 3 I was living in South Korea as an English teacher. At that time I have had Russian friends (and one girlfriend) and had hanged out with South Africans which helped a lot in me recognizing Donavan's accent.
Its more of a brummie uk accent i love in the uk and he sounds exactly llike them
I know you already have a lot, but skipping Overlord and Lair of the Shadow Broker is a mistake. The former not being that important but still pretty good. And the latter being more insight to Liaras overall arc from MA2 to MA3, and a cool boss fight.
Overlord was good, and the payoff in ME3 was nice. Skipping Lair is baffling given the Liara romance in ME1.
Fun Fact in Mass Effect 1 Garrus has his own paragon renegate meter depending on your action. In ME2 he has few different lines of dialogue if you gone either way.
If you do Tali's recruitment mission on Hardcore difficulty or higher then you get an Geth Assault Rifle at the end of the level.
As a heads up for your ME3 retrospective, there's a trick to rebind sprint/use/cover to separate keys in an .ini or .cfg file by literally just separating the three between new lines
Thanks
…..but why not make it an option to begin with?!
That's great, but it shouldn't be that complicated.
@@relishcakes4525 because it was designed for console where the A button controls all of those functions and pc ports are hard I guess.
@@nicholaslowry2366 that might be true, but that makes it even more weird considering most console shooters, even ones with cover systems had different buttons for actions at the time,
7:10 Technically there are a bunch of tiny sidequests that continue from ME1 to ME2 that aren't apart of the major decisions you can make with the comic introduction.
But since The Salt Factory didn't really care much about a lot of the sidequests in the first game, it probably wouldn't matter much to his enjoyment of the game.
I don't think i've ever seen the quarian with a tummy ache line before without an immediate "I'm standing right here" from Tali.
Also, I love your music choice for the opening of Tali's loyalty mission.
Garrus and Tali are always my favorite characters in all three games. There's just something about them that click with me. They're always in my squad except when I can't have them
If you don't have Jaavik PERMANENTLY in your party in ME3, you're playing it wrong (or you don't have the DLC/legendary edition)
You make my favourite #shorts
Happy New Year, dude!
Lmao
Never thought I would see you here.
@@toolazyforaname In here for like, every video! One of my favourite channels
@@MahDryBread I just discovered this channel last night, so it was pretty wild to find you here lol
@@toolazyforaname That's awesome! Salt's a friend of mine, he's an awesome dude. If you liked this video, check out his backlog, it's all quality stuff!
These videos are so good, really in depth and your way of delivery is unique and a breath of fresh air. Thanks for taking the time to do these.
Watching mordin sing his song during the suicide mission and blowing up brought a tear to my eye
“Companion collection simulator”
Never have I been so offended by something that I 100% agree with
Edit: I absolutely adore how you used the Payday 2 OST during the section about Kasumi’s loyalty mission. That was a great touch
Even cooler is the hitman ost during the garrus section
Collecting companions to fight collectors and their companions.
@@Tsukuyomi28 fight fire with fire
He also used Hitman's OST during Garius's mission and Ace Attorney during Tali's. There's probs more of them, but those are the ones i caught
I think the "Hell, Garrus, you were always ugly." Line is better for Shepard to Garrus than the "You'll have some scars. I'm sorry."
Your channel has the best retrospectives. Thanks for doing this one!
Garrus is your best friend vs he’s just another ally
With Miranda's butt, I think its just more noticeable because of the white honeycomb pattern on her clothes. There was even a meme of leggings with that same pattern and how it makes a butt look AMAZING
Thanks for this vid dude. Lots of hard work and a really well put together project. Really looking forward to the next one. ME has always been one of my favourite series and it’s so easy to view it all with rose tinted glasses.
1:09:00 re: the Quarians having different accents: i would imagine it's an aesthetic choice. There's no reason such a translation system couldn't support different timbres and accents - modern day speech synthesis is a perfect example.
Totally. Whenever people speak of Tali having a Eastern Europe or Arabic accent, I immediately think of the other Quarians. That marine sounded very much American to me and that Qwib-Qwib apologist Admiral sounded very English. Raan was voiced by Aghdashloo, an Iranian with a very recognizable voice. And Gerrel the warmongerer and Xen the 'legion-so-cute-want-to-disassemble' are both English enough to my ears.
Not to mention two other factors. `1/ Each ship is its own extended family and community with its own sub culture, so them having unique accents is totally believable. 2/ Quarians would have had regional accents back on their home world which they'd have retained and passed on to their children. Having every Quarian have the same accent would have been jarring - which is why I get weird vibes off many Asari, for example - they all sound so similar!
36:00 ish About the ammo issue they increased the amount you replenish with LE. Using the Mattock in the original for instance you will constantly run out of ammo unless you're a bit more efficient.
Very much this, anything with a low max ammo capacity would easily run out in the original game.
Shoutout to every sniper rifle in the game.
I think Vanguard also masks this issue somewhat since you charge right into the ammo refills.
Yup.
It why I go really good at abusing any of the armor and shield destroying abilities.
Shred the defenses with warp or incinerate, then line up headshot with the sniper, mattock, or carniflex.
Salt: Ammo is abundant and I rarely ran out of it
Me (punching Husks at the end of the Collector ship): Motherfucker are you outta your damn mind?!
Same, running my Carnifex/Krogan Shotgun/Locust on my Vanguard was basically melee simulator 2010. Especially against the Collectors, I would run out of ammo and have to spend the rest of the battle Charging/Shockwaving/and punching bugs until I found 3 more thermal clips on a random crate somewhere. Locust was a bit better for ammo management but I loved the heavy weight recoil and general power that came with the krogan shotgun and carnifex.
Man I love your channel so much. I can listen to a 4 hour video on literally any game with how you do them
I love the long in-depth video, coming back to each section and watching the video in chunks is better than a playlist imo
You missed a great bit on Mordin's loyalty mission by not taking Tali. She lets out an adorably indignant, "Hey!" at the "Quarian with a tummy-ache," line.
"I'm standing right here!" -Tali
Always bring her to that mission lol
Shepard: "You? I said a badass, not some scout whining like a quarian with a tummy ache"
Tali: "I'm standing right here..."
Krogan gets motivated
Tali: "I can't believe that worked."
I do everything in my power to make sure Tali is the only crew member I ever lose. And I make sure to lose her EVERY time
@@whocares9033 Easy. Send her through the Vent and pick the wrong team leader.
Rocket to the Face lol I used to fuck that up alot till I realized Samara doesn't work.
@@MistahJay7 or just do all of the missions, then pick Legions side during their fight
Much easier
I imagine if we ever get translation tech like the one Tali has, it would probably be a feature to pick the voice that our translator has. Like the different voices for Siri and Alexa.
To be honest the suit translator doesn't make any sense considering she takes her helmet off in her romance and speaks. It's even stated in the books (Ascension) there is a common language, which for simplicity is English.
@@DragonessYT fem shep mentions in a romance scene with Thane that she has a translation microbe
@@TheCatabolicTrex Which, the way I remember it, is actually commonplace tech in the Mass Effect universe by the time we are introduced to it. Remember reading it in a codex entry. Hence why alien species can communicate fluently despite not actually knowing each other's language, though some things still seem to require people actually knowing the languages, rather than being reliant on technology. Some words also don't translate at all, like the quarian bosh'tet or Keelah.
And it's probably a microchip, or a device along those lines, connected to the brain.
"I'm not gonna explain what the classes do."
It's not gonna make the video any shorter bud but alright.
been watching your " as good as i remember" series of videos for awhile now and just wanted to take a moment to say thanks for your hard work on these. Almost all have been games id never play so its really interesting to get the gist of it in one video without having to take the time to play the game myself. Keep up the great work!
Some details I like to add:
You missing a LOT skipping Lair of Shadow Broker DLC. Liara gets fleshed out before ME3, and is the best DLC around, I strongly suggest you play it.
Also Overlord gameplay may bea mess, but the story is really good
Thanks Salt. Never feel bad about long videos. This was something to look forward to about 4 different times, 4 different days. I always love your character analyses. You’re one of the few RUclipsrs I actually remember to like videos from. Can’t wait till the next one.
Heyy hugging tali is fine lol, that's being a friend. The samara shit omg i didn't realize he was talking about sex bc i only did it once and assumed he meant relationship
Idk why I like Zaeed but I always have. Not enough hardened merc types that are just uncomplicated allies.
Quarians having different accents in my own head cannon is their suit translator having different options. I wish they took a sentence to explain this in anyways because it’s quite funny now that you point it out at like 70 minute mark
My headcanon is that, when they find a cheap translator, they buy it. And the cheap ones all have different accent
The answer is they have colony ships. your accent is based on which ship you were born on because each one likely represents a large portion of the ancestors of a specific geographic locale on their home planet. Like Texas would be its own ship and so would south Africa. So they have different accents. My headcanon
samaras visual design has always been the most intriguing/beautiful to me in this series
I'm loving these videos, but I have to say, if bioware did a "Jack is violent because of mental illness" story line as you suggested, I would have noped out hard. I leve Jack's mission as is and while I agree something could have been done better, there is enough stories out there perpetuating the idea that people with mental health problems are dangerous as is.
I don't know how to break this to you, but severe mental illness can directly result in violence and violent tendencies. I'm not judging people for problems they can't help, just saying that it is true. Psychotics and narcissists are particularly dangerous without meds or therapy. So, yeah, it would have been an excellent take to suggest that Jack is ultimately the monster and Cerberus innocent in that specific cell. It would have been a fantastic twist and it could have made her redemption far more impactful, should Shepherd help her down that route. Maybe she could seek help with the Alliance, or maybe even Mordin could have a miracle drug for her, who knows. I don't agree with allot of what Salt says in his review here, but that's a nice bit of fanfiction rewriting and I would have been all for it instead of another Cerberus bad cell screwing up biotic kids.
You say this yet even in this game Shepard helps Jack mellow out and she gets an outstanding bit of character development that makes me really love what she becomes. She still has her edge but her kind of mama bear tendencies with her students is super endearing and makes me happy that she found something to live for and care about. Beginning ME2 Jack wouldn’t give a shit about those students really. ME3 Jack? She implores you to leave them in support roles. To let them help but not just throwing these kids into the fire.
@@Firealone9The thing is, there's enough stories about mentally ill people being dangerous or violent. And 99% of the time it's just incorrect. It takes a lot to get that sort of thing right, and there's a lot of issues with portraying a mental illness poorly. It's extremely hard to set the record straight when you're talking about really serious conditions. So for someone like Jack, what ME got right was good enough. The realism is actually refreshing and different, so why would you want her to be even more of a trope?
Edit: I feel obliged to add in that mentally ill people are far more likely to be victims of violence, rather than perpetrators.
This honestly one of my all time favorite games, with the final mission at the Collector base being in my opinion one of the best final levels in a game ever. Literally everything you do prior to and during it determines who lives and who dies. The game feels so rewarding because pretty much all your decisions determines what happens during the final battle. And it just feels so satisfying to escape the Collector base with everyone still alive. This game is just an honest to God masterpiece.
I remember I beat the suicide mission without losing anyone my first time through and was like WTF, I thought that was supposed to be hard.
It is a bit stupid though they are like "shepherd was a bit mean to me i cause there is no reason to live anymore"
@@rabidrabids5348 Same for me, I think I only lost the doctor lady, whom I did not care for that much anyway, since she was not even a party member. I did not even know the triggers I needed to save every one but if happened anyway, so the whole suicide mission was kind of underwhelming to me. Especially with the really dumb final boss.
It's a great mission, you can kill party members on purpose.
Of course no one would ever do that.
@@lanceuppercut2204 I went through a lot to kill Miranda, and at the end I reloaded the save anyway. The costs are too great just to watch the dough faced Cerberus cheerleader die.
Tali would have had a bigger reaction the first time you meet her if you’d imported a save from ME1 where you’d given her the Geth data for her pilgrimage… you can choose not to give her the data in ME1 and that similarly would have provoked a similar cold shoulder
I just love your videos, and when I saw the 4 hour length I was like "yessss"
don't know why but I dig your style and listening to you about video games is just fun to me.
"several camera angles during cutscenes were altered"
we all know which ones. RIP miranda's assets
3:16:36 Yeah, that one is definitely not in context for what you were talking about at the time. The Tali hug Paragon Interrupt happens for both Male and Female Shepards, regardless of whether Shepard is romantically interested in Tali or not. I mean, if one of my close friends came across their dad's dead body, I'd hug them to comfort them too.
You made a fantastic counter-point. You’re absolutely correct.
The Paragon-Interrupt hug is only barely romantically charged for those players who have been romancing Tali & protecting her from all of the political interests that are actively destroying her life.
However, the Paragon-Interrupt hug is nothing more than social comfort from a caring friend if the player is not romancing Tali.
It only makes sense for an uncaring/unfeeling Renegade Shepard to stand there and refuse to comfort an ally & friend who is clearly in distress suffering from the emotional weight of the current circumstances.
@@poseidonc1259 And even a smart Renegade might still do it. Renegade doesn't mean evil, after all. Jacob is Renegade but he's definitely not evil.
@@FalenDragmire
I said uncaring/unfeeling Renegade would refuse to comfort her. Even my Renegade Shepard playthroughs have never been a piece of shit to their allies/squad-mates. But I will say that Renegade Shepard has some inconsistent writing. Sometimes he’s just straight up cruel or evil. Haha.
@@poseidonc1259 Right? Like, siding with Morinth over Samara. Why would ANY Shepard who wasn't a brain dead moron, Paragon or Renegade, EVER do that?
Take a shot every time salt says “in my eyes”
Also, I’m fairly sure the accent of the guy in kasumi’s mission is South African
Its a hybrid of multiple accents. Representing human culture melding in space.
As a South African, I can confirm that it's definitely not a South African accent. It sounds much more like a combination of mostly Scottish and maybe some other UK dialect.
The South African accent is much closer to the New Zealand accent, which is similar to the Australian one.
I've shot 12 people now, how it went with you?
@@jesusonatortilla624 I think it's bad south African. That's the accent everyone in the UK puts on if they're making fun of white south Africans or Rhodesians but yanno ... They're pretty much all dead now.
It should be noted about the ammo. The harder difficulties drop less. There were many times where I ran completely out until a guy finally dropped one. Also ran out cause the enemies are so spongy on said difficulties.
03:12:00 "there are people who will refuse to believe you, thank you for your help and then go straight back to not believing you" .... I didnt expect to end up 1000 yard staring off in the distance reflecting on being a front line health care worker for the last 2 years.
Honestly, always thought giving Ceberus the Collector Base was rather stupid considering half the series is basically Shepard cleaning after them. Hell, Shepard's technically another one of their projects gone wrong.
EDIT: Also the blue hue over Cronos Station works better in terms of forshadowing
Likewise. The events of ME2 really paint Cerberus as a comically evil, yet dangerously incompetent organization with inexplicable amounts of funding. Even a full Renegade Shepard wouldn't have handed over the Collector Base to those idiots.
@@kw9849 I feel like there was some serious wasted potential with Cerberus. Pretty much every operation we see of them they fucked up and try to justify it with what their experiments COULD have accomplished. That really skewed my perception of them because initially I was kinda on board with their Mindset; Being Humanity Shield whenever, and it's Sword when needed. Not strictly against aliens but also not really for full on Trust and Cooperation. Essentially they were advocating for Realpolitik and pure pragmatism, side with aliens when both they and Humanity stand to gain something but never lose sight of Humanity best interest.
But seeing them fuck up every single Project (except reviving Shepard) makes them seem less like a cool Humanity first Illuminat-esque Group and more like Villain of the Week, crazy Technocrats. If there were some missions that were complete successes but still very dubious in their morality it would make it more interesting because they would have something to show for their Cruelty. For example the Biotics Project could have had a groundbreaking success ~5 years after Jack escaped because they gathered so many important insides from that first attempt. Or Project Overlord could have saved a small Human colony from a Geth or Collector Raid. Just let them have SOMETHING that actually worked lol.
Mass Effect 3 made this problem even bigger because they work against the Alliance and Shepard all the way. That was a terrible decision in my opinion. It's so weird to have this secret organization use legitimate Armies and small Fleets all of a sudden. They could have been kept morally grey by making them fully supportive of the Alliance but not moving a single finger to help their Alien Allies. Maybe have the illusive man pitch plans to lure Reaper forces into Alien territory to ease the Burden of Human forces during the War. Something like that to illustrate Cerberus is still ruthless, but in their own way really does care about Humanity. They could still betray Shepard at the End because they feel like it's the only way to win the War. Or if you were able to assist their coup attempt they could stay loyal instead.
I probably haven't structured this text all that well, it's mostly stream of consciousness, it always seemed such a weird decision to me to have the Radical Pro Humanity Group actively work against the United Human Government during an extinction level threat.
I'm self isolating with Covid on New Years Eve. "Aaah man this is gunna suck, what am i going to do all night....oh 4 hours Mass Effect 2 analysis......sweet"
That moment where you put coalescence in as the background music right at the beginning of Tali’s section…. actually gave me shivers lol
I love that song
This video must have been an enormous undertaking. I respect it and look forward to the third game, but understand if it takes a while. Great video!
1:24:06 I think that you are confusing the Alliance with the Council. The Alliance is the human government, and the Council is the intergalactic organization that alien (and human) governments report to
Now THIS is the way to start a new year. A massive thanks to you, Salt. Have a good new year.
The best part is going to Uranus, launching a probe, and EDI saying, "Really, Commander?".
15:10 "does every game need a strong variety of options" no, but when the game is asking you to role play a character rather than showing you a characters story, the most choices the Devs can offer the better. If they wanted to tell the story of a premade character, then no choices at all would be fine, like God of war, but they asked us to make our own character and told us we could role play them. That implies we should be allowed to make choices that impact the story.
i've never timed it to be able to bring legion to Tali's loyalty mission, really cool to see that outcome.
It's even better if you bring Legion to Tali's recruitment too. She pulls a gun on him.
@@DragonessYT Impossible to do base game however if you want the Normandy crew to survive and complete all loyalty missions though
I remember this game being pretty good but I always thought I liked Legion, Grunt and Garrus the most when I was kid. After playing the LE, I realized just how good Mordins character is, specifically in ME2, all the dialogue and his personal quest was my favorite part in the game. Not sure why he was so well written and stood out to me, I guess I like that he actually argues with good points and the grey area that's involved with the genophage. It reminds me of when I replayed Origins and realized just how good Morrigan is in that as well.
Yup. His loyalty mission is definitely an interesting one. It forces you to think about your own morality in ways that you normally don´t. I even agree with him, tbh. The only reason many people (including me) save the krogan in ME3 is because of Wrex. When he´s not there, the krogan are just another threat to be dealt with.
@@jirkazalabak1514 i can definitely say id sabotage if wrex isnt alive. The krogan are too vengeful otherwise and my favorite thing about mordin is that its actually understandable why he'd do it. The main argument comes from how he treats the subject
@@HandsomeMainLive It´s not really about being vengeful. They weren´t vengeful after the Rachni Wars, but they still destroyed the planets they were granted by the Council, simply by breeding out of control. Their physiology is designed for extremely tough environments. Take them outside of those environments, and they become a scourge. Hell, even with Wrex alive, that is still very much an option. I doubt that he will be very forthcoming about any hard limits on birthrates.
Yeah, Mordins arguments for the genophage and why it was justified and is still justfiefied were really interesting. Just a shame that the morality system dumbed your answers down to "The genophage is terrible and no one would ever deserve such a thing! They should have won the war without it!" or "Fuck Krogans, they deserve the genophage!"
The morality system in generel really seemed to sabotage nuance in the games. And the fact that you can do everything possible as a paragon makes it seem like Renegade is just being a cynical bastard for no reason. After all, if paragon can achieve everything without compromising their morals, there is no reason to play renegade except Role Playing.
@@felixsylvester4266 Yeah, that frustrated me as well. In real life, any success is largely based on your ability to do what is necessary. The saying "nice guys finish last" doesn´t just apply in dating. There are a few instances where choosing the Paragon option leads to bad results, but they are mostly irrelevant.
For instance, if you let Elnora (the Eclipse novice) go instead of killing her, you later find out that she was a murderer, and escaped because of your naivete. Likewise, if you spare Rana Thanoptis (the asari scientist in the Virmire labs), it is revealed in ME3 that she had been already indoctrinated at the time, and ended up being involved in a murder spree that cost the lives of several top Asari scientists. I believe you even lose some War Assets for that one, but that´s hardly enough. I think the most impactful one is that Kelly Chambers will be shot in ME3 if you use the Paragon option when talking to her.
I still usually play around 75% Renegade, simply because I find it way more fun, especially with the Renegade interrupts.
Fantastic work my man! Makes me want to play the games again, cant wait for the vid on Me3
2:01:30 fun fact if you bring tali on this mission, when you say this she says something like "you know I'm standing right here"
When you talked about the armor in the beginning, I also missed being able to give squad members different armor, from ME1, and the more customization that ME1 offered. ME2 feels a little flat for me as an rpg. Though the alternate outfits are cool, it's not the same.
That's because ME2 is an action game with sprinkles of RPG elements, not an RPG.
Mass Effect 3 finally got it right, for Shepard at least.
ME2 is when Bioware started making pseudo rpgs. ME3 was the worst. That one was on rails. In retrospect, ME1 was their last true rpg. Western RPGs no longer exist in the AAA industry. It's just action games with shallow skill trees.
@@fyrentenimar I mean sure but it’s still worse for it. lol.
@@fyrentenimar and acting like they didn’t try to market or sell it as a role playing sci for sequel to the first role playing sci fi game in the franchise is, charitable. It’s not like they said “yeah we’ve dialed it back it’s more action and less RPG” lol
I know exactly what he means about the depth of the game. As a young teenager maybe 14 when I played the trilogy it seemed SO much more deep and intricate and even longer hours wise than playing it again as a 28 year old.
Do you still find it deep?
The part at 1:01:53 where you zoom in on Ashleys absolutely train wrecked face killed me
Rewatching these and replaying though the game again myself. I really think a lot of the squad could’ve been cut down and merged. Like kept the crew to like 7; Miranda, Jacob, Mordin, Garrus, Tali, Grunt, Jack and Legion. Merge Thane into Jacob, Samara into Jack , etc, and give some of their missions into the remaining team to give more time with them.
Example: Miranda is usually cold toward you the whole game. Till one of the missions for her would be taking down a rogue Cerberus base (jack’s mission.) she learns about the what happened there. What they did to the kids, and the boss for that level being one of those kids attacking them. She chooses to blow up the base bc she sees it as defective, but it starts to open her eyes to who she really is working for. She cools off, then she has her sister mission. After that she isn’t as cold anymore, and trusts Cerberus less, leading into mass effect 3 where she actively works against them outside of shep.
A lot of them other missions could’ve been merged n rewritten like this and I think it really would’ve helped.