Recruiting most of the people in Mass effect 2 and doing their loyalty mission is all optional. But, it explains your companions motivations and why they are capable of certain things.
This is the biggest take away with ME2. You don't
have to do their loyalty missions. You don't
have to recruit everyone, but guess what happens? People fucking die. You showed no investment in their character, and the character still has personal doubts and fears that eat away at them in the final mission so they mess up and get themselves killed. They can even get
other people killed if you don't do their loyalty mission. Brilliant example, right there. Side content is often
very important in well-made RPGs. It won't prevent you from getting the "You Winner!" screen if you don't do them, but you most likely won't get the best outcome either.
So I wanted to take a jab at this, because it feels like the evidence we could get will be lackluster. What are the odds of the God Wraith plotline ending up as "We get prayed to, so we take an infinitesimal amount of their soul with each prayer"?
Sounds pretty on brand, doesn't it?
It sounds on brand, but it would be something people would start to notice yknow? What I was implying was that as the mortal body died the wraith would scoop up the Qi/Soul bullshit thing and eat it. No one ever passes on to the afterlife anymore, because when you die you become Wraith chow. It protects their godly image of "Oh yeah we're totally not Wraiths" but also allows them to dine on them sweet, sweet life-juice bottles.
I'm very confused, can I get a brief rundown on all this Gods = Wraiths stuff means?
So a long time ago, Savarrah was in a golden age and everything was fucking
awesome. Then some wizards at the Wizard College (TM) opened up a portal, but it went to nowhere. In that space between worlds live things called wraiths, and these wraiths came in. Tl;dr on the lore, the wraiths starting eating people's life force and basically steamrolled the world. Then, some wraiths gained sentience and decided that they did not want to be destroyers and pretended to be the Gods that everyone worshipped. They defeated the wraiths and then a few hundred yeats pass, and then Kas shows up. These wraiths are still pretending to be gods, and now you know
Also shout outs to Moneyman but it's all good. Skandranon lives for the debate, and so do I. They can disagree with me up, down, left, and right. It keeps the environment healthy because it doesn't become an echochamber. Although I wish I could get a better answer on why I should trust these abominations...
Edit: The only thing I actually extremely disagree with is the "Your character is not a blank slate" argument. If they weren't, I wouldn't be offered to choose a background/class/eye color/defining trait/dick size/race/etc. I would be John/Jane CoC2, here to finish the fight. But I'm not. I'm ImperialGuardsman, who wandered from a far away land, seeking answers on how the Blades could fail defending the Emperor. Instead, I've been burdened with the responsibility of saving a land I have no attachment to, yet as an Imperial Guardsman I cannot help but be there for any citizen. It's written into my AI, after all.
TheImage
