Mass Effect 2

[vinsanity]

Looks like it's gonna be a movie:

I am very pleased this morning to announce that there will be a Mass Effect movie made by the fine folks at Legenday Pictures! I know there has been a lot of speculation amongst our fans ever since Mass Effect 1 came out as to whether or not there would be a movie, who should star in it, who would direct, would there be a Wrex sized bucket of popcorn, etc and I can now reveal that, yes, there will be a movie (popcorn deal is still unconfirmed.

Legendary Pictures, the studio behind great films such as The Dark Knight, Watchmen, The Hangover and 300 have picked up the rights to make Mass Effect. Legendary Pictures will produce with Thomas Tull, Jon Jashni along with Avi Arad (who has been behind great films like Iron Man, X-Men and Spider-Man). From BioWare Ray Muzyka, Greg Zeschuck and Casey Hudson will serve as executive producers.

"At BioWare, we’ve always thought of Mass Effect as having the depth, emotion and plot twists perfectly suited for an adaptation to a motion picture,” said Casey Hudson, executive producer of the Mass Effect series. “With Avi Arad and Legendary attached, we believe that the Mass Effect movie will be an extraordinary entertainment event that realizes our vision for the franchise and thrills fans.”

I am super psyched for this and look forward to seeing the Mass Effect movie take shape.

Is it too early to buy tickets?

from Chris Priestly, bioware forums
http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/129/index/2717410

 

[TheCorpulent1]

I hope they don't try to translate Shep's story into a movie format. I'd be all for a Mass Effect movie featuring one or more of the other characters, though. There have been hints at a lot of great stories that haven't been expanded upon yet, or they could even adapt something from the extended universe. Anderson and Saren's prequel story from ME: Revelations would be a good one.

 

[SolarTiger]

Or a first contact war movie would be cool.

 

[Upset Spideyfan]

OMG NO MOVIE PLEASE.

Yes, and the Soldier's Adrenaline Rush does a flat +100% bonus damage, on top of the passive skill increase, plus ammo, plus headshot damage, plus possible visor bonus damage, plus all the rest too. I think it's more damage overall, even considering Assassin Cloak, but I could be wrong by a few percentile points.


Adrenaline Rush does slow time down more, though, and for longer.

Of course a Infiltrator doesn't need the length of adrenaline burst. Your target should be dead after the first shot, second MAX, and if I'm not mistaken the effect recharges more quickly than adrenaline burst (don't quote me on that last bit though, working off of memory there).

I do intend to make a close-quarters Infiltrator one of these days, though. Cloak + Shotgun, whee!

I did one, it works damn fine.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Thinking my squad at this point will actually be Miranda and Morinth. Morinth's great at setting people up for my biotics with Pull and Dominate has turned out to be a super-fun power. I'm looking forward to using it on some Collectors.

I've also decided I'm gonna start up another male Shepard who'll be a Paragon and actually try to get everyone killed on the suicide mission. Curious to see what happens.

 

[El Bastardo]

Of course a Infiltrator doesn't need the length of adrenaline burst. Your target should be dead after the first shot, second MAX, and if I'm not mistaken the effect recharges more quickly than adrenaline burst (don't quote me on that last bit though, working off of memory there).

Are we having a pissing match or something?

I don't even remember what I originally said, and I'm too lazy to go looking for it, but if I stated that the Soldier is better than the Infiltrator then it wasn't what I meant. There's no better, really. It's all subjective.

That said, I do prefer the length of Adrenaline Rush. Sure, I don't need all the time to set up a single shot, but it does allow me to use the Viper - that's the rapid-fire sniper rifle, right? - and pop off around five shots, which I think is actually more shots than I can manage with the rapid-fire Scimitar shotgun. It's a great tactic against Scions, whether up close or far away. Up close, it's a huge amount of quick burst damage that can finish them off, especially with the AP sniper rifle upgrade. Far away, it's the same thing, and takes them down in record time. <3 the Viper.

For the other matter, Adrenaline Rush does have a very short cooldown timer, but I think the Infiltrator time dilation effect happens each time you scope.

 

[Upset Spideyfan]

Are we having a pissing match or something?

No.

Sorry if I came off hostile.

Thinking my squad at this point will actually be Miranda and Morinth. Morinth's great at setting people up for my biotics with Pull and Dominate has turned out to be a super-fun power. I'm looking forward to using it on some Collectors.

I've also decided I'm gonna start up another male Shepard who'll be a Paragon and actually try to get everyone killed on the suicide mission. Curious to see what happens.

Morinth? Siding with the psychopathic little girl killing characters now are we!

Don't have sex with her without saving.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

I'm a Renegade. Why would I want the do-gooder Justicar on my side when I can have her equally powerful daughter with the killer vajayjay?

 

[Upset Spideyfan]

Because you're on the menu!

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Pff, bring it. I already resisted her mind control.

Oh, and starting up new characters is kind of obnoxious. I decided to set up a new Shep for a speed run to see how it ends when everyone gets killed, and I forgot that you literally have to sit through like 15 or 20 minutes of unskippable prologue before you can even set your face and class and such. They should really change that in a future patch. It's great the first time around, but when you're creating your fourth or fifth Shep to test out all kinds of alternate decisions and morality choices and such, it's just irritating.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Finished up my side quests and got the IFF last night. I've gotta do Legion's loyalty mission and then it's off to the Collectors and certain death! I'm really looking forward to finishing the game for the first time.

 

[Upset Spideyfan]

I'm sorry to inform you that by getting the IFF you have failed the game.

You should just throw your game and the xbox out the window and never speak of this failure again.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

I'll get right on that.

Scions are the worst, by the way. I hate those guys. What the f*** kind of armor are they even wearing? It must be solid, 8-inch titanium to stand up to the s*** I'm throwing at it for so long.

 

[Upset Spideyfan]

Fight them on insanity. You will be a husk of the man you used to be.

The Praetorian made me cry in a corner the first time it raped me.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

I avoid the harder difficulty levels specifically so I won't get raped. I'm much more interested in the story than winning any "I kicked ass on X level" pissing contests. Maybe I'll drop it down to Easy next time one of those bastards shows up.

 

[SolarTiger]

Fight them on insanity. You will be a husk of the man you used to be.

The Praetorian made me cry in a corner the first time it raped me.

I ****ing hated those things, hardest enemies to fight IMO. You can't take cover against them because they will just fly and be right above you.

 

[Upset Spideyfan]

Thankfully I could lose them with cloak and make my way to cover but even then it just takes a second, a misstep and if it catches you it will just devastate you in seconds.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Oh, hey, so since I've finished all the side quests now, I was wondering, what's everyone's favorite?

Mine is without a doubt the chain of assignments that starts when you find the crashed MSV Corsica. I loved how it reversed the usual order of events. Instead of chasing after the VI virus to try and stop it, you find its ultimate victim first and then you have to track down its source to prevent it from claiming anymore lives. Pretty cool. Plus, blowing up mechs is always fun. They're like insanely stupid geth.

 

[Upset Spideyfan]

Oh how did you like Mordin's loyalty mission, eh?

Anyway, I guess the fight with the Geth in the storm. That was rather nuts.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

That was fun. I brought Tali along and kept having her hack the first geth my target reticle appeared on, who in turn took care of a few of the others around him, and Miranda mopped up the rest with Overload. I think only about 2 or 3 geth got close enough for me to actually see them through the fog.

Mordin's loyalty mission was cool. I had him shoot his ex-pupil right in the pupil, if you know what I'm sayin'. Grunt's was awesome (Wrex was leading Clan Urdnot for me ). Jack's was fun, especially since Miranda was my other squad member for it. Kasumi's was the best. They just dropped a heist movie right into Mass Effect 2. I love that.

 

[Upset Spideyfan]

The Saren statue and Shepard's reaction to it was hilarious.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Haha, yeah. The Locust SMG is pretty good too. On the few occasions I run out of AR ammo, it makes a nice backup. It's weak, but it's way more accurate than the other SMGs, which spray rounds all over the screen.

 

[El Bastardo]

The Corsica N7 chain was fun.

But I like the Conrad Verner mission the most.

 

[SolarTiger]

Oh, hey, so since I've finished all the side quests now, I was wondering, what's everyone's favorite?

Mine is without a doubt the chain of assignments that starts when you find the crashed MSV Corsica. I loved how it reversed the usual order of events. Instead of chasing after the VI virus to try and stop it, you find its ultimate victim first and then you have to track down its source to prevent it from claiming anymore lives. Pretty cool. Plus, blowing up mechs is always fun. They're like insanely stupid geth.

This mission rings zero bells to me. Care to remind me?

I liked Garrus's side mission. I kept getting in the way of his headshot and eventually calmed him down. I like Garrus in general. Hopefully he is in the third game as a crew member.


I also liked Samara's mission, but only because I got to punch turians at that nightclub.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

I let Garrus shoot the guy. I've been molding him into as horrible a person as my Shepard since the first game.

The MSV Corsica chain:

Spoiler

It starts off when you find the MSV Corsica crashed on a planet that you scan. The ship was transporting mechs and you read on a few datapads about how the mechs started going crazy. You also learn that they had recently docked at Jarrahe Station. There are no survivors, and when you finally shut the distress beacon down, the mechs start activating and you have to fight through them to get back to your shuttle.

Once you get back to the shuttle, you can go to Jarrahe Station and investigate there, and it turns out that a rogue VI killed everyone on the station and tries to kill you. (This was my favorite part of the mission, since the station doesn't have any personnel or mechs, so it tries to kill you in subtler ways, like venting plasma into rooms you need to go through and such.) You shut down the VI and pick up some clues about where the Corsica came from before docking at Jarrahe.

So you follow the clues back to a Hahne-Kedar facility that manufactured the mechs. Turns out there was some kind of defect in the mechs' programming that mutated into a computer virus. The mechs transmitted it to the Corsica's systems and the Jarrahe VI, and you find out that it also ran rampant through the remaining mechs at the HK facility, killing everyone there. So ultimately you have to destroy the whole facility to stop the virus for good.

Anyway, I finally finished my first play-through last night. Renegade Adept, bedded Miranda, managed to get everyone to survive. I sent Kasumi through the vents. I realized later that they probably wanted the most tech-savvy person, who would be Tali, but they mentioned "infiltration" so I figured, "Ooh, send the thief!" Didn't matter in the end; Kasumi was good enough with tech to get the job done. I took Miranda and Jacob with me as my final team--figured they had a good mix of skills and I liked the symmetry of ending with the same two Cerberus people I started with. Plus I wanted incendiary ammo and I didn't want to pull Grunt off the defensive line.

Next up: A new Shep who'll be Paragon, bang Jack, and probably only save Jack, Garrus, Grunt, and maybe Mordin.