Mass Effect 3 Demo Impressions [Online Open To All]

mescalineeyes said:
*record scratch*

hwat?
no. I honestly don't think so. At least Shepard talks in a way that is somewhat normal and expected from a person to speak like. In Heavy Rain, the bad acting is amplified by the unnaturally sounding writing.

The reason people are upset is exactly because Mass Effect was better than most of the games you listed and 3 seems to suggest a bigger drop in quality than 2 was, even.
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As i said, personal preference... I can´t help but love detective stories, and there are so few of them translated into game format. :P

Regarding the rest of the game listed, i heartily disagree that any game in the mass effect series reaches the quality of writing.

Doesn´t mean i dislike the writing in ME1 and 2, it´s scifi opera and that is by it´s own definition as cheesy and heroic as it comes. :)

There's no BioWare masterplan behind Mass Effect 3 not supporting gamepads on PC - the team was overstretched and couldn't spare the time and effort required.

Edit: Bioware on gamepad support:

Oh GUI, not GI Joe. Or, err, The Village People.
"There is a development cost in terms of time/effort to get all the graphical user interfaces so 360 buttons show up on PC," senior designer Manveer Heir explained to Eurogamer reader j0hn385 on Twitter.
"It may seem minor, but our GUI team was already stretched thin, and things were coming in at the last minute, so we couldn't add more work."
j0hn385 responded that BioWare's workforce and budget is large enough to cope. Other games routinely support the Xbox 360 gamepad, j0hn385 pointed out, so this smacked of a "we don't give a damn" attitude by BioWare.
"Definitely not 'we don't give a damn'," Manveer Heir riposted. "It's unfortunate and I understand why people are upset, but there are dev realities, sadly."
The Mass Effect 3 demo is out now for all three formats, PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.
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I call bullshit... what a piss poor excuse.
 
pirateben said:
I just really miss the ME1 menu music, and in general I feel like it may be a sign that BioWare have lost track of the tonal ethos and influences that made the first game feel so Sci-Fi in that kind of retro 80s yet futuristic way. The whole orchestral, bombastic Hollywood score just doesn't gel for me. I know there were elements of that in the previous games, but here it's front-and-centre, as soon as you reach the title screen.
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Exactly how I feel. I even missed it in ME2, there was just something so retro and quirky about the tone of the first game, and the music played a big part.

Oh well, at least I have the soundtrack.
 
Kem0sabe said:
As i said, personal preference... I can´t help but love detective stories, and there are so few of them translated into game format. :P

Regarding the rest of the game listed, i heartily disagree that any game in the mass effect series reaches the quality of writing.

Doesn´t mean i dislike the writing in ME1 and 2, it´s scifi opera and that is by it´s own definition as cheesy and heroic as it comes. :)
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Every game you listed was pretty damn amazing as far as writing is concerned that's why I was so surprised about the inclusion of Heavy Rain.
 
mescalineeyes said:
Every game you listed was pretty damn amazing as far as writing is concerned that's why I was so surprised about the inclusion of Heavy Rain.
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Can´t help but feel that the obligatory voice over´s of this generation limit the quality of dialogue somewhat, more the quality of interaction between "actors" i guess. Something of the scope of Planescape is impossible to implement these days in a AAA rpg... Guess that train has long past.

Can´t find the source, but i read somewhere that the full game will have more dialogue choices in the prologue than the ones available in the demo.


Equus Bellator Apex said:
I'm really torn.

As an adept I feel like a god.

As an infiltrator I feel like I can kill one.
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Planning on respeccing my imported sentinel into an adept, and go with a single pistol loadout. The low cooldowns and the improvements on biotics went a long way to convince me to change class.
 
Was someone just saying Heavy Rain's writing/acting is better than Mass Effect's....? Really? Like, someone with ears and a conception of what is a decent dialogue?

Anyway, does anybody have any idea when us non early access plebs get multiplayer, and that tasty free month of Live Gold they mentioned?
 
Kem0sabe said:
I call bullshit... what a piss poor excuse.
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Why?


Why the fuck do so many people play victims and start yapping their mouths about all sorts of shit that they are entitled to? the lets-start-a-shit-storm-like-a-kid-with-ADHD needs to be left at the doormat. It ain't going to change a thing.


Looking at this demo, the inconsistency in quality make me think that it could be very plausible and true that their teams are stretched thin. I found lots of wonky and unresponsive problems with the UI. And if you look at Bioware games in general - ME, KOTOR, SWTOR etc, you can easily see a trend that they are often not very successful with their menu systems, UI's and especially inventory management systems!

They suck at UIs like Obsidian sucks at QC - That doesn't make the games bad, but you can easily see a trend if you put two and two together, IMO!
 
Des0lar said:
They don't have the resources, but Team Meat and basically every other indie dev can do it no problem. At least be honest with your fans Bioware.
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Why would you compare indie games to a full blown game like ME3? Have you seen a finished code? you don't know what the UI team is focused on - Maybe the later parts of the game are literally in shambles, or maybe one of the other versions of the game has UI sorely lacking?


Just because you make a full blown AAA game it does not mean that everyone on the team gets unlimited resources. It's retarded yes, but you always have producers who come in and cut corners on shit that seems the least important. This is very true for the animation industry too. Understaffed is very common among things like coloring, brush up and so on.
 
Vigilant Walrus said:
Why?


Why the fuck do so many people play victims and start yapping their mouths about all sorts of shit that they are entitled to? the lets-start-a-shit-storm-like-a-kid-with-ADHD needs to be left at the doormat. It ain't going to change a thing.


Looking at this demo, the inconsistency in quality make me think that it could be very plausible and true that their teams are stretched thin. I found lots of wonky and unresponsive problems with the UI. And if you look at Bioware games in general - ME, KOTOR, SWTOR etc, you can easily see a trend that they are often not very successful with their menu systems, UI's and especially inventory management systems!

They suck at UIs like Obsidian sucks at QC - That doesn't make the games bad, but you can easily see a trend if you put two and two together, IMO!
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If they have such poor asset management then i dunno what else we can expect from them. Look at DA2, not the same team but it suffered from a lack of UI refinement (reused radar map layouts) that bordered on abject stupidity.

To say that in this day and age, especially in a windows directx environment, adding gamepad support would not be possible due to time limitations... is just ridiculous. Everyone else manages it, why not them?
 
Vigilant Walrus said:
Why would you compare indie games to a full blown game like ME3? Have you seen a finished code? you don't know what the UI team is focused on - Maybe the later parts of the game are literally in shambles, or maybe one of the other versions of the game has UI sorely lacking?
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No I don't, but it's certainly not optimising it for PC. The problem I have is that they made on of the laziest ports but the one thing they can't port is Xbox buttons.
Also if I'm wrong ridicule me all you want, but Bioware will never be bothered to patch these in later, now that the GUI team should be free.
 
Vigilant Walrus said:
Why would you compare indie games to a full blown game like ME3? Have you seen a finished code? you don't know what the UI team is focused on - Maybe the later parts of the game are literally in shambles, or maybe one of the other versions of the game has UI sorely lacking?


Just because you make a full blown AAA game it does not mean that everyone on the team gets unlimited resources. It's retarded yes, but you always have producers who come in and cut corners on shit that seems the least important. This is very true for the animation industry too. Understaffed is very common among things like coloring, brush up and so on.
Click to expand...

Vigilant Walrus said:
Why?


Why the fuck do so many people play victims and start yapping their mouths about all sorts of shit that they are entitled to? the lets-start-a-shit-storm-like-a-kid-with-ADHD needs to be left at the doormat. It ain't going to change a thing.


Looking at this demo, the inconsistency in quality make me think that it could be very plausible and true that their teams are stretched thin. I found lots of wonky and unresponsive problems with the UI. And if you look at Bioware games in general - ME, KOTOR, SWTOR etc, you can easily see a trend that they are often not very successful with their menu systems, UI's and especially inventory management systems!

They suck at UIs like Obsidian sucks at QC - That doesn't make the games bad, but you can easily see a trend if you put two and two together, IMO!
Click to expand...

It's not really just the problem with ME3, people have been asking for it since ME1, there's been mod to partly "restore" controller support like these ones and they take a bit of work:

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1683943

People posted on their forums before, sure they have their hands full at the moment, I could agree on that, but they could easily planned ahead since the second game to fully support it, I'm not really outrage though but it's obviously more important for some people.
 
derFeef said:
Yeah, I constantly looked back at the reaper ships, the scope is fantatisc. Kind of a shame you seem to always look into the opposit direction.
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Don't know what you mean by that quite, but looking down and seeing either dozens of humans/Husks running across the destroyed cityscape was pretty epic.

Also, I looked up. Someone did say Heavy Rain had superior writing/acting to ME. How very disturbing. Mark Meer might be a little wooden at times, but still doesn't beat "JAAAAAASON"
 
Played the demo and thought they nailed the "Everything is fucked" vibe so well in the first part that I could actually end up enjoying this game by telling myself that it's all action now because it's supposed to be and the less RPG-y gameplay actually fits.

Then I played the second part where it was Mass Effect 2 again and no thank you.
 
The sound was excellent but the mixing is boned, at least for me. On high dynamic range everything that isn't right up in your face is way too quiet, and even on low it doesn't sound right. Reapers especially, as I imagined their, err, horn, to be this deafening, terrifying roar that blankets every other sound, like War of the Worlds. Instead it sounds too quiet and far off in the distance.

ME2's audio was pretty poorly mixed for 5.1 I thought, and it looks like I'm going to have the same problems again.
 
ScreenSplitter said:
Also, I looked up. Someone did say Heavy Rain had superior writing/acting to ME. How very disturbing. Mark Meer might be a little wooden at times, but still doesn't beat "JAAAAAASON"
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Can´t a man have a guilty pleasure by loving heavy rain? :D

Also, was comparing the demo, not mass effect in general.
 
There was something else that annoyed me, as soon as you get to control Shepard, you start running and a battle cruiser is brought down by a reaper. But only if you run, it's an even triggered by your position, not time. So the reaper can be firing lasers to the cruiser endlessly as long as you don't advance.
 
ScreenSplitter said:
Don't know what you mean by that quite, but looking down and seeing either dozens of humans/Husks running across the destroyed cityscape was pretty epic.

Also, I looked up. Someone did say Heavy Rain had superior writing/acting to ME. How very disturbing. Mark Meer might be a little wooden at times, but still doesn't beat "JAAAAAASON"
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Hm, the part where yu head to the Normandy with Anderson, everything cool was happening behind me I always felt. Looking back revealed that huge ass Reaper ship crawling closer and closer.
 
AgentOtaku said:
Tried the PS3 demo last night

...got all of 3 minutes into actual gameplay. Framerate is a fucking embaressment.

With that, i'm officially done with the series. Wife was watching for a minute and commented on how terrible everyone looked

"What's wrong with their faces!?"

lol
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21fps on average. Bad.
 
I am really torn now. I played both of the first games on PC and my savefile is there, but playing the demo on the 360 made me realize that is performs and looks quite well, especially on a big setup. Plus there is the fact that you can't use a gamepad, which makes it almost impossible to play the PC version on the TV.

Argh.
 
derFeef said:
I am really torn now. I played both of the first games on PC and my savefile is there, but playing the demo on the 360 made me realize that is performs and looks quite well, especially on a big setup. Plus there is the fact that you can't use a gamepad, which makes it almost impossible to play the PC version on the TV.

Argh.
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Gibbed's Save Editor lets you convert 360/PC saves between each other, if you were wondering, so you could easily continue your PC character on the 360.
 
I just replayed it on the PC and it was much better with that resolution and framerate. The horrible textures stuck out a lot more, though.

KB/M didn't feel too bad, although it wasn't as easy as with the 360 pad, so I think I might go for that version...
 
Des0lar said:
They don't have the resources, but Team Meat and basically every other indie dev can do it no problem. At least be honest with your fans Bioware.
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You could have picked any one but Team Meat. Their controller support on Mac and Linux is a piece of shit and they have no interest in fixing it.
 
lastplayed said:
Exactly how I feel. I even missed it in ME2, there was just something so retro and quirky about the tone of the first game, and the music played a big part.

Oh well, at least I have the soundtrack.
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I don't understand, i thought i heard some ME3 music that sound more like what was in ME1. Unless those musics weren't in the 2 demo missions at all?
 
Just played through the demo a second time with 8x CSAA and 4x SGSSAA. That looks pretty awesome indeed. Compatibility bit is 0x000010C1 (same as ME1) if anyone wants to give it a go.
 
This demo really left me unimpressed ... (PC)

I entered my Shepard's face code and it looked nothing like him (the game kept changing numbers in the code) really hope it's fixed in the final game, or that you can import it directly like in the second one.

The facial animations really stroke me as really stupid-looking this time.

And the demo is supposed to take place in some epic battle scene, but really if you don't really look at the background it's like walking into a parc, hell I cant' even remember if there was some epic music in the background or not ...

I won't even go about the textures it surely has been discussed a dozen of times.

After the bummer that was the Reckoning demo and now this, i'm not playing another demo anytime soon ... they are just so bad these days.
 
Do you guys think ME3 is gonna get its 93 Metacritic score despite the backlash the demo got from the community? The Dragon Age 2 demo was horrific as well and yet it earned highest scores among videogame journalists. Will they do they the same mistake again?

That said, I have no idea whether the full version will be as bad as the demo or not but looking at DA2 and TOR, I wouldn't get my hopes up.
 
There is a demo backlash?
  • The game looks good
  • The combat is far better than ME2
  • Music and sound is excellent
  • Scope in the first scene is great
  • It's pure Mass Effect and nothing like DA->DA2 conversion.
 
ScreenSplitter said:
I don't get it either. I frigging loved the demo.

"Fans" are idiots.
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Excuse me? People who don't like a demo are idiots? Wow, great conclusion you've drawn up there.

To me the game looks like shit. The animations are laughable and the textures haven't improved. The scope in the first scene was non-existent, I didn't feel a part of something bigger at ALL. It remains to be seen how the rest of the game captures this.
 
Anybody have a link to somewhere describing the differences for each classes between 2 and 3? I played Soldier mostly in ME2 but I'm curious to see the other ones.
 
Imp the Dimp said:
Judging from the Bioware social network forums, yes, there is. In fact, it got torn apart.
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The SP portion of the demo isn't very great. The MP however is actually pretty damn well amazing. It shows how much of a leap forward the combat, enemy design and AI are. ME is not a game that works well in demos. The core part of the ME games weren't shown off in the demo, and you can't with all the spoilers involved.

My major gripes with the SP, besides it being a demo and all, were mostly texture, animation, or pacing related. Most of it can be improved in the full game. Those aren't things that render a game from being great. The things that made DA2 bad were fundamental game designs.
 
Name calling from both sides needs to be toned down. If you want to express bitter disappointment/unbridled joy at the demo then by all means do so, but please refrain from berating and belittling those who don't share you view.

Megasoum said:
Anybody have a link to somewhere describing the differences for each classes between 2 and 3? I played Soldier mostly in ME2 but I'm curious to see the other ones.
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Engineer owns.
 
Moaradin said:
The SP portion of the demo isn't very great. The MP however is actually pretty damn well amazing. It shows how much of a leap forward the combat, enemy design and AI are. ME is not a game that works well in demos. The core part of the ME games weren't shown off in the demo, and you can't with all the spoilers involved.
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Random unlocks are not great, they are a step back in mp gaming.
 
Rezbit said:
Excuse me? People who don't like a demo are idiots? Wow, great conclusion you've drawn up there.

To me the game looks like shit. The animations are laughable and the textures haven't improved. The scope in the first scene was non-existent, I didn't feel a part of something bigger at ALL. It remains to be seen how the rest of the game captures this.
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I really don't know what would please you, or how seeing the full scale destruction of Earth doesn't make you feel part of something "bigger". Your standards. Dey are ridiculous.
 
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