That Mass Effect 2 intro
GAME MASS EFFECT 2 / FORMAT PS3 / RELEASED 2011
06
The end of the first Mass Effect makes it clear that things are really just beginning. Sure, you’ve saved several species from extinction and avoided your own death, but the return of the Reapers is a fact the universe at large can no longer ignore. Considering all this, there is probably no worse way to start ME2 than with the Normandy’s destruction and Shepard’s death. Oops! It’s a strangely beautiful scene, with Shepard first marching through flames and even, for a tense moment, wading through debris in the silence of space, and it works because you’re sure to the very last moment that the hero of Vermire is going to save everyone somehow – right until they don’t.
Mass Effect 2 symbolically leaves the old Shepard behind. This makes it possible for you to start anew in many respects – once revived, Shepard is new and enhanced, and thanks to the uneasy alliance with Cerberus, you get to leave the politicking at the Citadel behind. Most importantly, your crew, now no longer beholden to the Alliance, becomes less strait-laced (not that Garrus ever was), and you have to earn their trust. All of this literally rises from the ashes of the old Normandy. The Citadel, so important to the first game, is a sidenote here, as you begin new adventures, potentially even hungry for revenge against those who did this to you in the first place. Even better, ME2 mirrors this opening incident later on (see ‘Joker and EDI’, opposite).