Of course, in all these years, I've never seen anyone praising ME2 main plot and main missions as the game's strength. Well, except for Suicide Mission, but that was all about different outcomes, epic music and cinematics, not the writing.
Most of ME2 diehard fans have no trouble admitting that the game was saved and propelled into the stars by the characters, their loyalty missions, worldbuilding and overall presentation. Style over substance and all that...
Day one DLC was such mindbogglingly stupid decision, same with tying EMS score to playing multiplayer. I never understood how anyone sane could think that BW would get away with that without massive backlash and hit to their reputation (which has already started to show cracks in the armor after DA2).
I'm not sure about Leviathan not being planned from the start. Most studios already knows how they want to support their game post-launch. Sure, they will take input from players and incorporate what they see fit, but I think the core concept of Leviathan was already settled before ME3 came out. It's only my speculation, but that DLC didn't strike me as something they made in panic. Case in point - Extended Cut and the evac scene.
If anything, I suspect Citadel DLC was influenced by the reactions to the ending to a much greater degree than Leviathan...
I liked the idea of the suicie Mission very much, that people can die if you do the wrong decisions. This was a great detail for the game. And I really liked the final scene where you see all the Reapers flying to the Milky Way (gave me goosebumps everytime)
...of cause this scene was totally destroyed with the Arrival DLC; but as long as this DLC was not there it was a great scene.
I did some SFM/XPS arts back in the day and with that you had to search through the gaming files of the game. You can see which DLCs are kind of planned. For example you were able to find sounds clips and maps from Omega in the standard game long before the Omega DLC came out. This shows it was planned from the start. Or some files with the name ".citadel" were able to found when Leviathan was released, so you could know that something in this direction will come in the future.
Those are small thing you can encounter when you look through the data... and if you have too much time on your hand XD
Day 1 DLCs are stuff I really dislike. Same counts for Bridge DLCs, like Arrival, Tresspasser etc. This is also a real di**kmove by the developers.
True. It has all the final interactions that everybody was expecting in the main game. And the party was a very nice touch to finish it and to say goodbye to everyone, while having some fun outside of combat. Beyond that, It comes Priority Rannoch and Priority Tuchanka as the best thing for me.
I enjoy the London mission, even if it already has some flaws by not really showing all the alien races going alongside you. I just want to turn off the game when that child appears. Overall everything is so rushed that it just helps the rumor about Bioware having to completely change the ending after the original one was leaked months before the release.
Rannoch and Tuchnaka were very great missions, and you really can see and feel that those were written by Patrick Weekes and John Dombrow. The dialogues, the 'feeling' this is something which other missions really can't compare with... which is sad.
I really want to like the London mission.. but I can't XD
Even the scene which is liked by nearly everyone (the arrival of the fleets and the orbit battle) is not enjoyable for me cause there is so much lack of lore that it kinda hurts. And of cause London leads to the 'ending' of ME3
This may sound that I hate those two games from the heart, but I actually like to play them from time to time.
I love the ME lore, the species, this universe, the mythology; I really can dive deep in it and those games will always have a special place in my heart, even if the story really was a downfall since the second game; but at least, better than Andromeda
