WARNING!!! This article contains some spoilers!!!
“Mass Effect 2: Project Overload” is the latest premium DLC for Mass Effect 2, content which I almost didn’t purchase after the experience of “Kasumi Stolen Memories”. However, that would have been a shame because unlike “Stolen Memories” “Project Overlord” is actually pretty good.
The first thing to realize about “Project Overlord” is that while you might pick up a few upgrade while running around the levels it won’t be granting you any weapons, characters (Kasumi was the last) or armor, so if you only want to spend your $7/560 points on things which give you these items you may wish to save it for later. That said, “Project Overlord is a solid mission containing some actually interesting locations and combat scenarios as well as some pretty good writing and atmosphere. The actual plot, content, and ability to observe the basic rules of the Mass Effect universe are however a bit off.
The mission is one laid out as a rescue. You have been sent to see what happened to a Cerberus facility which was working to create a method of influencing the Geth and preventing the potential war with the Geth from ever starting, something which doesn’t make any sense.
For starters, it has been repeatedly established that the Geth are not a big priority for Cerberus. The Heretics are broken and dwindling in number rapidly and the actual standard Geth don’t have any interest in fighting anybody. They only ever do it in self-defense or in defense of someone or something which will help further their ability to combat the coming Reapers. More importantly, the battle of the Citadel showed that a conflict of with the Geth wouldn’t be as big a deal as the story of this DLC would have us believe. After all the factors which prevented the Geth from simply being annihilated were Sovereign, sheer numbers, and the malfunctioning of the Citadel’s computers. All of these factors would be removed from future conflicts, to the point where in the main game you are repeatedly told the Geth Heretics are able to be easily destroyed by Alliance ships when they show up at all. Yet for some reason Project Overlord still considers them to be a threat worth Cerberus’s typical disregard for safety, morality, or ethics.
Additionally, all Geth, both the Heretics and the standard variety, are immune to electronic attempts at takeover, except for the hyper advanced Reaper virus that was developed to somehow change their firmware operations over time and neither will simply acknowledge an outside being as their leader, a technique which required a compatible FTL communications linkup of massive proportions and is well beyond the capabilities of Cerberus.
Saren in the first game managed to exert control over the Heretics only because of the fact that he was chosen to act as a leader on behalf of the Reaper “Sovereign” and they only chose to follow Sovereign because of its promise to advance their technologies and allow the Heretics to become Reaper-like beings themselves.
The Geth also self-destruct when highly damaged or tampered with, and when active quickly overtake any attempts to contain them. Project Overload features: a ship full of Geth that have been temporarily off-lined, an active Geth held in place by a robot arm, and the idea that a Savant who they are trying to turn into another leader of the Geth by cybernetically linking him to a VI.
Which brings up an interesting point: what is that supposed to actually do? The human part of the equation is not capable of making the kinds of determinations and judgments necessary for the Geth to believe he is worth following because other than his singular geniuses he’s mentally and emotionally impaired. If the VI is smart enough to somehow compensate for this it wouldn’t be a VI at all, it would be an AI and would not require or gain anything from the addition of its human interface except possibly a vehicle, but as we see the subject of this experiment is in no position to act as one. More importantly, EDI on the new Normandy is a more sophisticated AI which would have rendered the whole project pointless and she was developed and implemented by Cerberus itself, meaning the time and resources of the same facility could have simply been put to engineering and training an AI capable of doing the job, possibly one which could simply pass as a human.
There are other continuity and logic errors in the writing, but I’ll try to leave them alone. ”Project Overlord,” while it has some serious writing issues is actually fun to play. It has a dark and slightly creepy atmosphere which inspires me to shoot all the destructible surveillance cameras.
Not that it makes a difference, but hey it’s Bioware and it’s DLC.
The action bits are very solid, the dialog and acting delivery is very good, and the process of working your way through the different locations is very solid. Unlike “Stolen Memories” the combat here, while still making use of our standard stock Geth and a handful of generic security drones, is actually interesting in its setup and has some possible difficulty in spots instead of allowing you simply steam roller the mess of them. The interiors of most of the structures follow an actual semi-logical layout, albeit they are all still our loveable corridors that shooters and ME2 are known for.
One thing which detracts from the actual mission components of this are some of the logical choices. First of all, for no particularly good reason the Project Overlord facilities are split into four base locations, I could understand why the main base and the geo-thermal power plant facility are separate mostly because the power plant is located in a logically impassable sea of lava and rocks which the facility lacks any way to reach for some reason. Although why they are using geo-thermal power when almost no-one and nothing else in ME 1 or 2 does is never explored, particularly considering that facility does have other power sources which they are using in addition to the massively dangerous thermal plant.
Another location is a downed Geth ship which logically should not be a major part of the security network in any situation, but it is anyway. The Geth ship is pretty awesome overall though and the exact nature of the other facilities is completely irrelevant, it is touched upon in the game, but it doesn’t really matter.
Beside that, why are all the buildings separate? There is a ton of room to have simply built them right onto each other and it would have allowed for some more dynamic locations and game play. Instead they force us to use the DLC hover tank to flit from location to location disabling or destroying various parts of their security network to gain access to the main science facility where the test subject is located. This looks a lot better than it plays, particularly the bits where you have to pilot the hover tank over the rivers of lava by leap-frogging over some rocks.
The tank bits badly break up the pacing, but allow them to showcase some nicely rendered alien scenery and even some extra-terrestrial wildlife. At one point the hover tank has to use air vents to boost its jump capabilities enough to climb a wall. Actually this happens a few times. Once you get to your destination things go much smoother, but the inside parts would play better if you could just go between them while playing through a single unified facility. This is made more illogical by the fact that there is a tram system on the base and it only goes to the communications array while they could easily have made such a system to get between the individual locations on the base. This would also make sense because the base appears to lack any form of vehicle which would allow the staff to actually get between the separate facilities.
They do some really great game play and cinematics at the end which are end the mission pretty nicely, but it does seem naggingly familiar somehow. Almost as though it is stolen from another game, but as I can’t put my finger on what game I could easily be wrong.
All and all despite the logical, continuity, and vehicle problems with the mission “Project Overlord” is definitely worth the money. For anyone who has played through the game 3 or 4 times already I would advise when destroying the dish you don’t allow yourself to plow through the defenders and destroy it too fast as this can cause the game to freeze and die on you. You’ll see what I mean.
