[cDnStealth]

Originally Posted by Henry Fool

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.

I can agree with that. I supposed I wasn't sure if those could have been considered side missions or more main story missions. Regardless, they were good. I suppose the N7 missions just give me a bad taste in my mouth even though they make up a very small portion of the game. Also, I don't really have an issue with the lack of ME2 squad members on my team. I'd probably be a little happier if they chose 1 or 2 of them to replace the 2 aforementioned new characters. I also would have been happy with 2 new characters who didn't totally suck. At the end of the day, that's a pretty minior complaint from me. As I said, I am happy I have my original team back. It just seems right that it comes full circle with the first game and what we started together we get to finish.