It’s not a matter of picking a person for the job, it’s about picking the best person for the job. This means you have to have more than just a passing knowledge of who your team is made up of and know how to give orders that best suit their strengths. Whether or not you and the rest of your merry band of misfits make it through the Collector Base relies on two things: did you upgrade your ship to survive the trip, and can you as the commanding officer make the best tactical decisions to get everyone safely past the finish line.
You’ve recruited this team for the sole purpose of undergoing a battle that has the potential to wipe out every one of your crew mates. The journey through the Omega-4 Relay into the unknown of the Collector homeworld is what all of Mass Effect 2 has been building toward. As Commander Shepard, you lead a group of 10 (give or take depending on DLC or just refusal to recruit some of them) squadmates into what you anticipate to be a one-way trip. Mass Effect 2’s final mission wrote the series’ name in the stars, but it also poisoned the well of discourse surrounding it in the ten years since the game launched.įirst things first, Mass Effect 2’s suicide mission is, to this day, a masterclass in player agency.
