On a recent episode of Talking About Gamers I voiced some of my strong opinions on Mass Effect 2 and proclaimed that I still hold Mass Effect 1 to be the superior game. In this series of blog posts I'm going to go into even more detail and hopefully get more thoughts out than I was able to on the show.

This is Part Two in my series of who knows how many. If you missed Part One you can check it out here.

This time I'm going to be looking at how your squad characters have changed in Mass Effect 2.

The Change

In Mass Effect you are on a mission to stop Saren. As you go about your investigation different squad members naturally join your cause as you run into them.

In Mass Effect 2 almost your entire squad has been replaced with new members. The only holdovers are Tali and Garrus. Also in Mass Effect 2 the main story and the majority of gameplay focuses on you going around the galaxy and recruiting people to your cause.

Why Change is Good

The new characters introduced in ME2 are fantastic. Not only do we get new, interesting people to meet but we also get a look at several new races that are not in ME1 or that have little interaction. Of course I'm referring to Mordin, Thane, and Legion.

Mordin shows a deeper insight into Salarians and is easily the funniest character in the game. How fast he talks and how quickly he moves from subject to subject makes him very entertaining to talk to. Also make sure not to miss his Gilbert and Sullivan moment.

Thane introduces a new race to Mass Effect, the Krell. As with each race in ME the Krell are fully fleshed out with customs and ideals that are interesting to learn about.

The last, and personally the coolest, is Legion. Seeing as how you spent the entire first game fighting Geth, it is quite a culture shock to meet and interact with one. How the entire Geth collective works is very intriguing, as is the idea that there is a rift between regular Geth and the "Heretics".

The other characters are less interesting than these new characters but they are still all great. Miranda is hot and has an interesting "genetically designed" back-story. Samara is a very intriguing character and her Code is cool to learn about. Jack is obviously messed up but also has a soft side. Jacob doesn't have much interaction but perhaps I need to play a female to really see it. The worst new character to me is Grunt. They try to make him a replacement for Wrex and he does so poorly.

A lot of interaction with your squad is done by the completing the loyalty missions. These allow you to really get into a characters mind. Every single one of these loyalty missions is unique and thought-provoking.

The best of these turns a ho-hum character from ME1 and makes them one of the coolest. I'm referring to Tali. In ME1 she was just that chick in the suit who liked electronic things. She was ok in a fight but never really had many cool things to say. In ME2 we get way down to the core of what makes Tali. We get to visit the Migrant Fleet and learn a lot more about the Quarian culture. In fact I became so interested in Tali that she was the one who I decided to become romantically attached to.

Why Change is Bad

With almost entirely new characters filling up Shepard's roster, that leaves the problem of what to do with everyone else. As it turns out, the answer is not much. The crew that you may or may not have grown very attached to in ME1 have very tiny influence on the story and have little interaction with Shepard once they reunite.

The big thing as far as character interaction goes in ME1 was who you decided to romance. Sadly who you fell in love with in ME1 seems to have little to no affect on the story, especially when you run back into your lover. Liara acts very cold and shows disinterest in Shepard. Kaiden and Ashley both show distrust and have the least interaction of any returning character.

To me the coolest ME1 character was Wrex. It makes sense that in ME2 he is the coolest reoccurring character. He seems to be the one doing the most important work in trying to unite the Krogan clans. His dialogue is still great. I mean you got love "Shepard".

The one that was horribly underused was Garrus. He went from one of my favorite characters in ME1 to one of my least favorites in ME2. His aspirations of joining the Spectres seem to have disappeared and were replaced by him starting a war with random mercenaries. That's fine except his loyalty mission is easily the worst one and therefore I never really got to like him. Also for some reason he sounds like he was voiced by a different person, even though IMDB tells me it's the same person.

Verdict:

Change is Good

While it was sad to see the ME1 characters not named Tali be horribly underused in ME2, who they were replaced with were almost all better choices. Kaiden always felt kinda wimpy to me. Ashley was cool but doesn't have the complexities of Miranda. Liara is about on the same level as Samara. Her knowledge of the Protheans was cool to learn about but Samara and her Code is also very interesting. Wrex is the only one that I really missed on the squad. Grunt does not come close to replacing him. Tali is made a lot cooler but Garrus is made way less cool.

In the end of the day I'll take my ME2 squad over my ME1 squad. Just give me back my Wrex!