44 replies to this topic

[Jaide]

Okay, Mass Effect 3 is really cutting into my capacity to get things done, including but not limited to the game making front. I find myself fangirling all over again, even though both the previous games had some aspects I could have really done without. So far, though, the third installment seems to have cut the things I hated, making for a fangirly, amazing experience.

So let's talk about the series! What did you like about the previous games? What did you hate? Who are your favorite characters? Lease favorite? Look, I'm just trying to give you ideas to get the ball rolling. Post whatever you like related to Mass Effect, but please put Mass Effect 3 spoilers behind a spoiler tag! The game is still very new and I myself haven't finished it yet; I'm sure others are in the same boat.. XD

I'm a big Garrus fangirl, so any discussion about how amazing Garrus is will of course receive the most brownie points. Just sayin'.

[gcook725]

I JUST finished the first Mass Effect a few hours ago and then promptly started playing the second.

Took a little to get used to the controls (playing both on the PC and the controls are simplified from the first to the second) and get used to the idea of ammunition, but the changes started growing on me.

I've personally been using Garrus since I found out he can use an assault rifle AND he can decrypt stuff for me in the first one; just recruited him in the second one and I'm still using him.

[TheRedPenguin]

I've played Mass Effect 2 but not 1.
I finished the game in 26 hours and no one died in my team.
Also,I finished it in 3 days...so imagine how much sunlight I got for those 3 days.

My favourite character was of course Mordin and Garrus.
I always had them in my squad just for their witty but sometimes funny comments.


About Mass Effect 3:

Spoiler

I finished the game and wasn't too satisfied by the ending...
I also wasn't too attached to james and ashley,but EDI was a very interessting character with good character developpement.

[Confederacy]

My opinion with the series is very rocky. I loved the first one, disliked the second one, and I was hoping the third one was good. As far as my opinion goes, Mass Effect 3 is the worst of the series and has one of the worst endings ever made. Truth be told, I only completed the game about half way through, but it was enough time to form my final opinion.

Still, Garrus is one of my favorite characters from any BioWare game and the parts that featured him in ME3, were some of the best.

[gcook725]

Why didn't you like the second one, Confederacy? I personally feel it was an improvement from the first.

[Touchfuzzy]

I felt the second one took all the RPG out of the first one and attempted to bludgeon it to death. The citadel which in the first one felt pretty huge, felt like 3-4 rooms in 2, Instead of being a bit free roamy feeling, the "missions" were all instanced (why are you instancing a single player game seriously) and hell, they even threw in MISSION COMPLETE SCREENS. Way too many of the maps are "once only" things that you only access during instanced missions, so the area you can wander around was very small.

Equipment was half stripped away, and what was left was dumbed down, XP was restricted to quest completion only, and honestly with it that way they might as well have just removed it altogether. The skill system was cut down, and a lot of it felt kind of stupid (why am I skilled at making my bullets magically special?). After coming up with an explanation of how bullets had infinite ammo in 1 (or near infinite, enough where reloading wasn't necessary), they decided to go even more convoluted by adding replaceable heat sinks in a nonsensical explanation of adding ammo back in (seriously how are the heat sinks SPENT, rather than just needing to cool down. And I don't care how much you hate the Mako, driving that thing around was better than clicking on a globe repeatedly.

They also seemed to want to push it as much towards HARDCORE as they could, and it just looked like it was trying to hard (Hi, Jack), and most of the characters were really rather meh to me (the exceptions being returning characters from 1, and the salarian doctor who was a riot).

That being said, the shooting mechanics ARE better than 1's.

1 felt like an RPG with shooter mechanics. 2 felt like a shooter with a few RPG mechanics.

Also, @Confederacy. Seriously. Garrus is BAAAAAD AAAASS.

[Jaide]

I definitely agree with Touch, but the shooting mechanics in 2 were far superior to 1's, for obvious reasons, and so much so that I found 2 more enjoyable from a combat perspective (which is really odd, considering I much prefer RPGs over shooters).

That being said, the option for a femShep to romance Garrus in 2 gave it some extra points in my book, since I find the romance options in 1 to be exceedingly limited--and I also find it kind of sexist, since a female Shepard can be with Kaidan or Liara (a female), but a male Shep has no male romance options. This changes in 3, but it feels like too little too late.

Also, Mordin is one of the best characters ever. Garrus is my favorite, but Mordin holds a special place in my heart. Also Wrex. Krogan are just badass.

As for Mass Effect 3, I've heard that the ending is horrid, but I'm not there yet, so I'll reserve judgement. I do feel like mechanics-wise it combines the good parts of 1 and the good parts of 2, doing away with the completely retarded aspects of both.

[Confederacy]

@gcook725: Touch pretty much summed up how I felt about the game as well. ME2 had its moments, but the negatives outweighed the positives. That and I found a lot of the writing to be rather poor, and much like anything BioWare has hyped, had very little choices and consequences.

@Touch: *Brofist* (about Garrus at least)

@Jaide: I don't really want to say anything that might come off spoiler-ish, so I won't say anything. Just prepare for total disappointment and possibly ripping your hair out at frustration.

Edited by Confederacy, 18 March 2012 - 08:25 PM.

[gcook725]

I feel that most of the changes Bioware went with in ME2 were improvements and streamlined play, effectively removing a lot of unnecessary features from the previous game. On the other side of things, I can still see how someone who prefers or got started with RPGs back in their golden age would think of them as step down from what it once was. I was among the latter group and disliked what changed from the first game to the second at first, but as I continued to play it I began to see why those changes were made from a design point of view and realized that it was mostly a good decision.

The most notable examples of good changes come in the form of the removal of equipment and the addition of ammunition in my opinion. The removal of equipment made leaps and bounds in the effort to streamline ME2 as it removed minutes of examining new gear and finding the optimal set of equipment to use every time you opened something which may have just given you better gear (but you couldn't be sure until you opened up that inventory screen!). The implementation of equipment in ME2 made it so that no single piece of gear is necessarily better than the others and, as such it allows for greater customization of your playstyle than before (I'm ignoring mods in this case, of which I felt you should've been able to use in addition to your loadout).

The addition of ammo was a good leap to improving combat in general. Ammunition adds an extra level of strategy to combat in that you have to actually aim and conserve your ammo, only use the best weapon-type for each particular incident -- for example its a waste of ammo to fire at anything that isn't heavily armored with the low-maximum ammo of your M6 Carnifex Hand Cannon, but in the case you're fighting something with a lot of armor the Hand Cannon will tear it to shreds. In ME2, you actually bothered to switch weapons from time to time not only to exploit an enemy's weaknesses, but also so that you would be able to conserve ammo to use the way it would be most effective. With the previous "overheating" concept, it removed the necessity to hunt down and find ammunition and therefore the downtime in between battles. Overheating promoted firing recklessly and and without abandon, stopping only to wait for your waste heat to lower to an acceptible level so you could then continue your barrage. My only complaint about the way ammunition worked in ME2 was that it should have replenished itself outside of combat so that you wouldn't have to waste time looking for heat sinks... Oh, and the lore reason behind adding ammunition was silly -- Bioware could've dome much better in that department.

The one thing that I really do think was unexcusable was the way leveling up was done in ME2 -- it was far too simplified and didn't really allow for any customization. While I admire the fact that I don't have to dive through a plethora of menus to level up every 10-15 minutes like I did in the first, it still could've been handled differently, especially when it came to talents. The only bit of character customibility I found from leveling up came in the form of "what do I want to max out first so that I can evolve it?" I did, however, like the idea of evolving an ability, but the lack of talents overall and the fact that sometimes you would just have to wait for another level to roll around to actually increase one of those talents was annoying.

[WizzyT]

I really didn't like mass effect 1, at no point did he game make any sort of impact on me.
I got about 6 hours into it with very little having happened and just never picked it up again.

[Daevian]

Jcook just said about everything I have to say about the change of ME1 to ME2.

My personal order of favoriteness in the ME series: ME2, ME3 (Ending aside), ME1. Not to say that 1 was bad! I'll admit, I originally hated it when I first played it becuase of its slow beginning and all that, but I find myself getting a strong urge to replay it quite often.

The only thing I ultimately wish for? Some more RPG. I dunno, I'm just a real sucker for collecting items/equipment (but not a fan of loot-'em-ups like Diablo though.) and seeing those stats rise. But that's just me.

Garrus is awesome. Mordin is awesome. Tali is cool. Wrex is cool. Kaiden and Ashley...you two can get off my ship.

[Quadocky]

I dislike Mass Effect for the same reason I dislike Plumbers Don't Wear Ties.

Its not a video game. Its just a very slow paced, awkwardly interactive film that was rightly mistaken for pornography.

To me, games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age define all that is wrong with modern games. Specifically, they focus on graphics and delivering a narrative in the most incomprehensible fashion possible.

Though I must add, the only thing I actually LIKED about Mass Effect was Garrus. In fact, the whole game should have been about Garrus. Seriously.

[Daevian]

"A video game is an electronic game that involves human interaction with a user interface to generate visual feedback on a video device." It meets that criteria in every way.

Pornography? That's a rather harsh claim. " There's no full nudity... there's the side of an alien boob... it's a small sexual situation in this game which is about two minutes out of a thirty-plus hour experience...you can actually play through this game without the sexual situation ever happening." Prime-time television seems to be just as revealing, yet I don't see the same accusations there. If it was pornographic in its nature, I wouldn't play it.

I can't speak for Dragon Age, but I definitely don't look to Mass Effect for it's graphical prowess. It has a plethora of texture-loading issues and a bunch of odd nuances all over.

Edited by Daevian, 19 March 2012 - 11:40 PM.

[Quadocky]

"A video game is an electronic game that involves human interaction with a user interface to generate visual feedback on a video device." It meets that criteria in every way.

Pornography? That's a rather harsh claim. " There's no full nudity... there's the side of an alien boob... it's a small sexual situation in this game which is about two minutes out of a thirty-plus hour experience...you can actually play through this game without the sexual situation ever happening." Prime-time television seems to be just as revealing, yet I don't see the same accusations there. If it was pornographic in its nature, I wouldn't play it.

I can't speak for Dragon Age, but I definitely don't look to Mass Effect for it's graphical prowess. It has a plethora of texture-loading issues and a bunch of odd nuances all over.

I am probably not as eloquent as I feel I am.

I know I know I know. Yeah. I just don't like Mass Effect at all.

[Daevian]

It's not a problem. Sorry, I got a little defensive. D: Everyone's entitled to their own opinions, yeah? It'd be kinda scary if everyone uniformally liked the same exact things.

[Confederacy]

Its not a video game. Its just a very slow paced, awkwardly interactive film that was rightly mistaken for pornography.

This was a good laugh.

To me, games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age define all that is wrong with modern games. Specifically, they focus on graphics and delivering a narrative in the most incomprehensible fashion possible.

Sounds to me like you just don't like Western RPG's in general. While, BioWare's writing is for the most part, sub-par, the writing has been fairly straight forward and generic at best, so I'm not entirely sure how you can't understand it. And with that in mind, Mass Effect and Dragon Age don't even define what is wrong with modern games. Mass Effect 2, 3, and Dragon Age 2, that's a whole different story and I have believe EA had a major influence on this.

I am probably not as eloquent as I feel I am.

I know I know I know. Yeah. I just don't like Mass Effect at all.

It's fine that you don't like the game, just don't over-exaggerate about something that is entirely false.

Edited by Confederacy, 20 March 2012 - 10:36 AM.

[Quadocky]

This was a good laugh.

Thank you, it was intended to be humorous.

Sounds to me like you just don't like Western RPG's in general. While, BioWare's writing is for the most part, sub-par, the writing has been fairly straight forward and generic at best, so I'm not entirely sure how you can't understand it. And with that in mind, Mass Effect and Dragon Age don't even define what is wrong with modern games. Mass Effect 2, 3, and Dragon Age 2, that's a whole different story and I have believe EA had a major influence on this.

No. Its just that I dislike how some AAA modern RPGs deliver their narrative. Or at least in the case of Mass Effect you are not Shepard, Shepard is Shepard. Its not so much I couldn't understand it, it was that I couldn't even begin to care about it, given how as a player I was entirely rejected from the story in the first place.

There is so very little room for the player to feel involved in the story. Not to mention, the Codex feature, though optional, removes any element of discovery or imagination.

It's fine that you don't like the game, just don't over-exaggerate about something that is entirely false.

The comparison I was trying to make was that of in consideration to how Mass Effect to me felt like an interactive Film and tend to dislike it for those very reasons.

[BigEd781]

As far as my opinion goes, Mass Effect 3 is the worst of the series and has one of the worst endings ever made. Truth be told, I only completed the game about half way through, but it was enough time to form my final opinion.

I stand confused.

[gcook725]

I agree with BigEd -- How do you complete a game when you're halfway through it? Sounds more like you just stopped playing, and if you merely quit the game how could you form an opinion that it had the "one of the worst endings ever made" especially since you never had a chance to view it for yourself?

[Quadocky]

Given the controversy surrounding the third one's ending, it would seem like they did something wrong.

The only thing I found really outrageous about it was at the very end they asked the player to buy DLC. And given how supposedly awful the ending was.... that is pretty callous.