IIRC, that was for in atmosphere versions. Meaning, the nose and mouth are exposed. The closed helmets only had the visors as "glass" and didn't show any facial features.rusty_shackleford wrote: ↑ February 6th, 2026, 07:00ME1 had transparent visors for the helmets, worked fine.
But, logincrash already demonstrated how the intro of ME2 showcases Shepard with a full face helmet and through delivery alone Mark Meer conveys a lot to the Player so it wasn't needed. The real answer was what wndrbr posted:
wndrbr wrote: ↑ February 6th, 2026, 06:47I think it had more to do with the devs not wanting to cover their unique-looking snowflake characters with generic identity-less armor. Of course they could've came up with separate unique 'armored' designs, but in that case it would've made no sense for your squad members to wear their non-armored outfits outside of Normandy.
'Ahh we've spent so much effort designing Jack, giving her all these elaborate raped tattoes. How can you even consider covering her with armor???'
This is the actual reason. And also, what you said as well ME1 was done by Bioware before EA. ME2 was EA in full swing wanting to cash in on their purchase by courting the Gears of War crowd with the heavy focus on 3rd person cover shooter gameplay, with ammo and such even if it essentially retcons the lore of how the weapons work in ways that cannot be truly reconciled. And, in the lore the heatsink packs are alledgedly an improvement.
But then Jacob's mission shows the humans stranded on the planet using ammo as well, when technically those guns should behave like the weapons in ME1. But of course, they couldn't be bothered with making sure that remained consistent because it was just a blatant band-aid to the lore just to have 'moar gears of war' style gameplay.
