[Henry Fool]

Originally Posted by cDnStealth

I liked the fact that the main cast from the first game re-unites in this one. I loved having my squad as Garus and Ash again. The new characters are pretty terrible though. Except Javik. That guy is pretty darn cool and he has some interesting things to say. Perhaps better new characters is something they really should have looked at.

Also, I am not saying the game needed more side missions I am saying it needed better quality side missions. Landing in a tiny box and fighting waves of enemies is dull and lazy. We don't need loyalty missions again but something along those lines would be a nice break from the main story.

Spoiler!

Okay, but my counterargument is that there were enough "main missions" apart from the 6 N7 missions. I usually want good games to last as long as possible but I really didn't feel like I needed additional things to do when there was always the next meaningful mission to go on.

ME3 really does have more of "meaningful" mission content than either of the previous games. Not all of them are mandatory, I don't think, but they're all carefully directed, and there are like three times more of them than there are of the N7 missions. And if you think about it, many of them actually were missions centering around the ME2 characters and they actually had more content than the loyalty missions in ME2. And you got to talk to everyone.

I think they went as far as they could without just making it full-on fan service. One could argue that they even crossed that line and it became slightly comical to encounter every old friend. You get to talk with everyone on the missions, you get to talk to most of them on the Citadel.

One technical thing about the ME2 characters is that any combination of them could have died in that game, so bringing them all back as full crew members would have been impossible just game-design wise.

And the ME2 crew was built for that one mission. They weren't a family. They aren't tied to Shepard in the same way that the ME1 characters are. There's no narrative reason to suggest that they'd just wait for Shepard to get active again and rejoin her.

I thought Mordin's and Thane's stories were amazing in ME3. Really, all the missions involving the ME2 characters were great and I really felt that I got to meet them and catch up. ME3 had more moving personal moments than the previous games combined.