Mass Effect universe discussion thread

[Oranos]

Would it? Dragon Age 2 had some fantastic writing, it's probably one of my favourite stories in a game and has some of my favourite characters. That said, it is not epic at all, even if one takes into account the scale was smaller, restricted to one city, there was at times a major lack of scale, when the city fell into conflict, it simply wasn't grand enough.

As an idea, sure, I agree. The writing was only solid, but disjointed, and would have benefited from greater escalation of tensions between the mages and templars throughout the three acts. Instead, it felt like three completely different stories (which, while good, really needed to have that arc of consistency to really make it great and epic). Instead, at the end of Act 2, it felt like "boom!" Now the mages and templars are at odds just because. Little to no build-up there, which was unfortunate. It was one of the things that really killed this game.

It's all very well writing an interesting story, with good characters and a well developed villain, but we need to have glimpses of conflict that show things to be larger, larger than just what goes on around us, hell even small things like vista's of a major battle going on in the distance are important. The scale of things needs to be bigger, and in the case of Mass Effect 3, in terms of gameplay they had to bring in scenarios with reapers, foes considerably larger than most fought in previous games.

You don't think plotting and writing have a little something to do with that? If there's going to be a massive space battle in the background, who do you think came up with that idea?

Any way at this point I'm not sure what your arguing, I like the look of the game, hell I love the look of the game, it's tied with Battlefield 3 and Skyrim for my most anticipated games. Yeah I had a couple of reservations before hand, but at this point they're gone, but if your arguing I should have blind faith in a development studio, and accept everything will be wonderful before I've seen one bit of gameplay, then frankly, bugger off. Blind faith is reserved for Valve only.

You said you had reservations for Mass Effect 3 because of Dragon Age 2. I had some doubts, too, but to have them because a different studio ****ed up Dragon Age 2? How does that make sense? The point is, if you're going to crucify, have doubts or questions about Mass Effect 3, shouldn't it be because of something Hudson's team is actually responsible for? Hudson's team has had the time to make this game right. They've improved the questionable aspects of the first Mass Effect. And now they're showing what they need to show to prove that this is going to be the best installment of Mass Effect yet. It's hard to draw comparisons between the two studios (other than the fact they're both BioWare).

[The Mighty 6 platoon]

You said you had reservations for Mass Effect 3 because of Dragon Age 2. I had some doubts, too, but to have them because a different studio ****ed up Dragon Age 2? How does that make sense? The point is, if you're going to crucify, have doubts or questions about Mass Effect 3, shouldn't it be because of something Hudson's team is actually responsible for? Hudson's team has had the time to make this game right. They've improved the questionable aspects of the first Mass Effect. And now they're showing what they need to show to prove that this is going to be the best installment of Mass Effect yet. It's hard to draw comparisons between the two studios (other than the fact they're both BioWare).

Yeah they're the same company, and in the end the same people who had oversight on Dragon Age 2 have oversight over Mass Effect 3. It's the same company, the same design ethos and in the end the same people responsible for the general direction and oversight of their products. So I think I might be justified if I had some reservations, and in the end it's none of your business whether I had concerns or not.

Christ on a bike are you looking for an argument here? I had some ****ing reservations, and if you don't like that I had them you can shove it up your arse, because I did not come on the internet to argue 19 to the dozen with a ******* who wants to argue about reservations I don't even have now.

As far as I'm concerned this is the end of this topic of conversation, it's pointless, especially considering it's about concerns that don't exist now. I'm all ears if you want to talk about the game, but if you want to continue this line of conversation, find someone else, because I am done with it.

[Oranos]

Christ on a bike are you looking for an argument here? I had some ****ing reservations, and if you don't like that I had them you can shove it up your arse, because I did not come on the internet to argue 19 to the dozen with a ******* who wants to argue about reservations I don't even have now.

I was trying to help alleviate any lingering concerns, just a little shocked at the reasoning behind your concerns. That's all. This, however, is completely uncalled for.

I don't know if it's the way I phrased it, but the only thing I was trying to get at was this: if you get bad service at one Wendy's doesn't mean you'll get bad service at every Wendy's. Hudson has more than a solid track record (first with KotOR, then ME1 and ME2) and his projects have shown clear improvement. I do wonder how the loss of one of Dragon Age's project leads contributed to the quality of its second installment combined with their time constraints, however.

[Ouroboros]

I was actually quite relieved to see how much ME3 looks and plays like ME2 in the E3 trailers that came out. It makes me think that they're not going to be wasting any time ****ing around with the way the game actually plays at a core level and instead just devoting more of their energy to polish, fun add ons, and the actual story itself.

The only things I didn't really like about the way ME2 played was the clunky weapon selecting, the inability to crouch/prone, and the epically dumb idea of putting the commands for "take cover" and "vault over cover to your death" on the same button.

That last one alone has probably killed me more times than any other single factor.

They're apparently addressing it in this one though so smiley faces from me on that point.

I hear that you're also going to have to preselect which weapons you want before a mission and that certain classes might get to carry less than others but not be restricted to what types they can have. I like this idea to, provided they increase the lethality of the weapons or the amount of ammo they can hold because it did get pretty retarded at times in ME2. The Carnifex held what, 2 reloads of it's tiny magazine? Or the whole "save up ammo for 3 missions to fire the Cain once because that giant room on the Normandy doesn't have any ammo for the weapon that was created there" thing.

I like also that they're not going to restrict the types of weapon anymore. No more "Durr I'm a N7 special forces biotic in the Alliance military but I can only use SMGs and pistols because the Union says only vanguards and soldiers can have shotguns or assault rifles *unless they're found on collector ships".

All and all if this thing ends up a letdown for me it'll almost certainly be because they botch the story. One of the biggest and most cringe inducing ways I could see this actually happening is via some sort of bull**** pseudo Christ figure ending that railroads you into killing yourself to save the universe or else live with your eternal shame.

NO

The whole reason I've been gathering elite teams and making key alliances for what will by then be the duration of 3 entire games is so I DON'T have to get cornered into some kind of nonsense Kamikaze option.

I'll swear even more about it than I did at the end of fallout 3 when I got the **** ending for sending my radiation immune mutant ally into the radioactive room to push the "save world" button instead of killing myself by doing it personally while he watched.

[magictrick]

Blind faith is reserved for Blizzard only.

Corrected for accuracy

I am expecting something epic for this final release, but I will be satisfied with anything that isn't any worse than ME2.

[DigiFluid]

Blizzard? Heck no! Diablo? Yawn. Starcraft? Warcraft in space. WoW? Zzzzzzzz. Bring back single player Warcraft, please.

My blind faith is reserved for Bioware. The only game of their's that I've taken issue with was Jade Empire. And that was just because of the busted-ass combat and movement system. The story/universe was still awesome

[The Mighty 6 platoon]

Fecking heathens. Only Valve deserve undying love. Worship them! Worship them! If we do not prostrate ourselves before Gabe Newell then he may never release Half Life 2 episode 3!

[magictrick]

Blizzard? Heck no! Diablo? Yawn. Starcraft? Warcraft in space. WoW? Zzzzzzzz. Bring back single player Warcraft, please.

I will agree to disagree. I will give you WoW though, I could never get into it. But the other 3 franchises are solid and undeniably successful. Heck, we may not like WoW but it trumps them all in popularity. Except in Korea where SC is king (what other game transforms gamers into celebrities playing in stadiums and earning hundreds of thousands of dollars like pro athletes?)

Bioware is a close 2nd though, and I have found that I've been playing more of its games recently rather than Blizzard.

Fecking heathens. Only Valve deserve undying love. Worship them! Worship them! If we do not prostrate ourselves before Gabe Newell then he may never release Half Life 2 episode 3!

Valve elevated and then destroyed Counter-Strike. They are forsaken in my eyes.

[DigiFluid]

Fecking heathens. Only Valve deserve undying love. Worship them! Worship them! If we do not prostrate ourselves before Gabe Newell then he may never release Half Life 2 episode 3!

Spoiler:

But the other 3 franchises are solid and undeniably successful.

Oh without a doubt. I wouldn't dream of saying otherwise.

But Modern Warfare 2 was a massive success too--and it was a great big pile of s**t.

[magictrick]

Oh without a doubt. I wouldn't dream of saying otherwise.

But Modern Warfare 2 was a massive success too--and it was a great big pile of s**t.

Another game I enjoyed. It seems our only common ground in gaming are Bioware releases

[gotthammer]

Fecking heathens. Only Valve deserve undying love. Worship them! Worship them! If we do not prostrate ourselves before Gabe Newell then he may never release Half Life 2 episode 3!

Paradox Interactive FTW!
(while I would like to say CDPR, they only have, well, 2 games...Euro devs, in general, FTW?)

edit:
re: Modern Warfare 2 and any future MW or CoD releases:
No dedicated servers, no buy!
(I have CoD:MW installed, alternating installs between that and CoD:WaW...BF:BC2, while pretty, needs more juice than what my system can produce. Hopefully I'll have upgraded before BF3 comes around)

[Demonique]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBUrvY5m2XE&NR=1 - Claudia Black in ME2

[TheRandomOne]

Bring on the Live Action movie

[The Mighty 6 platoon]

Bring on the Live Action movie

Oh God no, I am not looking forward to that car crash. Mass Effect works because it has 30 hours+ to tell a detailed story and really flesh out the universe and characters.

In a 2 hour movie everything is going to be so shortened that it will just be generic Hollywood filler, in 3D inevitably.

[TheRandomOne]

Oh God no, I am not looking forward to that car crash. Mass Effect works because it has 30 hours+ to tell a detailed story and really flesh out the universe and characters.

In a 2 hour movie everything is going to be so shortened that it will just be generic Hollywood filler, in 3D inevitably.

Well the game makers are involved & has say in the process so how bad can it be ? This will be the first game movie with the creators involved heavily