Giant Bomb Thread The Third: #TeamBrad

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SailorDaravon said:
Mine was also in September (like another poster mentioned in response to this post), and I also used the web form on the page linked above except that I sent two forms and never got any response. It is what it is at this point, and I in no way would expect them to refund me now, but they've also guaranteed that I will never, ever give them money again.

Also some other people mentioned this as well, but the 2013 subscriber shirts feel cheap and flimsy as fuck, so that doesn't help either.
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Interesting to know - the fact that quite a few people seem to have had similar experiences with their support should indicate to Jeff that this is really something he should address at CBSi.

I personally am paid up to 2014, and I still love the site and its content very much: If the page stays entertaining, I'll gladly continue to pay them well after that. But I can see why your bad support experience would turn you off the site. While my matter wasn't of a financial nature (account related), I still was pretty annoyed at never getting a single response from GB. And Jeff publicly dismissing a complaint about the state of customer support at his site directed at him doesn't inspire any confidence in the situation changing.

We know the crew reads this stuff: Take note!
 
Morts said:
The ending of ME3 was pretty bad, but I don't understand why people point to
the fleet being stranded at Earth and Garrus and Tali having nothing to eat as evidence of the ending being bad. Complain about the deus ex machina, but just because defeating the Reapers had some negative consequences doesn't mean the ending was bad in a narrative sense.
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It wasn't about those things being narratively bad just because they were negative consequences to what happened. It was about bringing that scenario up to Bioware and then they saying: 'Oh that, no, that is not what happens at all'. Then they changed the scene of the ending that did imply that would happen when they made the extended cut, recognizing it as a plausible interpretation. All of this in light of the prologue scene which further implied those negative consequences were not really felt after the fact, as if they didn't even happen in the first place.

It was at that point a clear tell that Bioware went for their particular type of ending conceptually, but without care and consideration to cross-check it against their own fiction first.
 
SailorDaravon said:
I'm also of the opinion (as I mentioned earlier) that Binary Domain is way overrated. It has some wacky, funny, and over-the-top stuff especially in the first half, but that's it. The combat is okay at best, and the second half of the game is just dull.



Mine was also in September (like another poster mentioned in response to this post), and I also used the web form on the page linked above except that I sent two forms and never got any response. It is what it is at this point, and I in no way would expect them to refund me now, but they've also guaranteed that I will never, ever give them money again.

Also some other people mentioned this as well, but the 2013 subscriber shirts feel cheap and flimsy as fuck, so that doesn't help either.
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The quality of the new shirts is pretty bad. $20 for those is pretty insulting.
 
Jibbajabbawockky said:
Yeah, I think that's sort of where a story heavy game like The Walking Dead does things right- it absolutely nails the ending, which makes you more likely to view the whole game in a more positive light, since it ends so strongly. ME3 has some nice moments within, but it just has such a nonsensical and contrived ending that leaving the ending as the last impression you have of the game is not a good thing, and makes you more apt to view the whole game in a more critical/negative light.
Click to expand...

What The Walking Dead absolutely nails is the final scene. I can't believe more people haven't kicked up a fuss about
Station Wagon Man
since episode 5 came out, though. To me, that's as hard to swallow as anything at the end of ME3.
 
rudds said:
What The Walking Dead absolutely nails is the final scene. I can't believe more people haven't kicked up a fuss about
Station Wagon Man
since episode 5 came out, though. To me, that's as hard to swallow as anything at the end of ME3.
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Complete with the tired "here's a rundown of all the decisions you made over the course of this game" scene
 
John Rabbit said:
does the
rachni queen/rachni
come back in ME3? thats literally the only side story i'm interested in after the conclusion of 2.
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There is one sidequest involving the queen, but it's there no matter if you saved her or not. So no, don't buy ME3 just for that. It's a really disappointing part of the game.
 
Jeff's tumblr:

tumblr_meu13eiaoG1qe4qeqo1_1280.jpg
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I can't make any sense out of this.
 
rudds said:
What The Walking Dead absolutely nails is the final scene. I can't believe more people haven't kicked up a fuss about
Station Wagon Man
since episode 5 came out, though. To me, that's as hard to swallow as anything at the end of ME3.
Click to expand...

Plausible (though unlikely) within the bounds of the fiction was my take on it
 
Hey Brad if your reading this go back on youtube and watch what can happen to
Mordin
alternately if your're a renegade Shepard. One of the most evilest things I've seen in a game.
John Rabbit said:
does the
rachni queen/rachni
come back in ME3? thats literally the only side story I'm interested in after the conclusion of 2.
Click to expand...
Sort of a small spoiler. Not the conculsion of said question though.
Yes. I actually liked the little scene that plays out after that. Nice bit. The queen part itself though is alright but it does lend credence to the whole your choices don't particular matter thing.

I'm all in for a fight on ME3 GOTY front though. It was a hell of a ride.
 
rudds said:
What The Walking Dead absolutely nails is the final scene. I can't believe more people haven't kicked up a fuss about
Station Wagon Man
since episode 5 came out, though. To me, that's as hard to swallow as anything at the end of ME3.
Click to expand...

It at least made since as a thing that could potentially happen, even if it was highly unlikely- more importantly, despite its lack of elegance, that idea was at least born from the core theme of the series- that nothing you choose to say or do really goes unpunished.
Plus at least you got to fight back, as opposed to problem number one people had with ME3.

It also wasn't the last thing in the game, which helps.
As you say, the final scene is handled so well, it probably makes that episode more than the sum of its parts.
 
John Rabbit said:
jesus what a cock-up this game must be.
Click to expand...

Spoilers:
You go to a planet during a sidequest and find the Reapers have been breeding warped Rachni to use in an army. You get to the end of the tunnels and find...

If you saved the queen in ME1: A mutated rachni queen being held hostage. You can free her (sacrificing some krogan soldiers to secure an escape) or leave her to die. If you free her, you get like 400 war points, the rachni work as scientists on the Crucible (wtf), an email says "boy the scientists here sure were surprised!" and that's the last you see of them.

If you killed the queen in ME1: A mutated rachni queen is being held hostage, only it's a clone of the original with a spooky devil voice. Blah blah, same options. If you leave her to die you learn it was probably a good idea, if you free her you eventually get a second email that she and the other freed rachni went crazy and killed a bunch of Crucible scientists and left and that's the last you see of them.
 
John Rabbit said:
does the
rachni queen/rachni
come back in ME3? thats literally the only side story i'm interested in after the conclusion of 2.
Click to expand...

Sort of.

If you saved her then you can rescue her in a side quest after she's been captured by the Reapers and is spitting out mutated/corrupted babies. If you save her then she will join your cause and increase your readiness. If you killed her in ME1 then you come across ANOTHER rachni queen that is somehow created from genetic scraps of the one you killed or something and this is the one being used to produce Reaper-ized spawn. And so once again your choices made in the previous games are rendered meaningless.
 
rudds said:
What The Walking Dead absolutely nails is the final scene. I can't believe more people haven't kicked up a fuss about
Station Wagon Man
since episode 5 came out, though. To me, that's as hard to swallow as anything at the end of ME3.
Click to expand...

Yeah,
Station wagon guy in TWD was sort of weak, but especially at the end of episode 2 if you took food from the car, you kind of expected some blow back from that choice. Station Wagon Guy really has a weak presence if you didn't even take the food/supplies. But I feel like at least The Walking Dead sort of set that up and foreshadowed it starting back in episode 3. You knew something was up with the walkie talkie and that somebody was on the other end
So you were sort of mentally prepared for something to come of that plot, even if you didn't know exactly what it would be. But then any bad taste that revelation may have left was washed away or at least forgotten a little based on how superbly TellTale nailed the ending scenes.

With ME3, at least with the original ending without DLC, there really is little to no foreshadowing of
Space Kid and his Space Magic, so it feels like its all coming out of left field more or less. And you're pretty much forced to swallow everything he says, then just pick a color, the end.
It just left me with a bad taste in my mouth and lingering negative thoughts on the game, mostly colored by how WTF? inducing the ending was.
 
rudds said:
What The Walking Dead absolutely nails is the final scene. I can't believe more people haven't kicked up a fuss about
Station Wagon Man
since episode 5 came out, though. To me, that's as hard to swallow as anything at the end of ME3.
Click to expand...

I've absolutely been kicking up a fuss about episode 5, man.

Didn't like when Lee fought through the mob of zombies. Didn't like the goofy antagonist. Didn't like when Clem carried Lee off the street (already baffling) and no zombies paid any mind, but then the guard in the store wanted to eat her up. The whole last part felt like they wrote themselves into a corner and needed to find a way for Lee and Clem to have a moment together while Clem shows herself being self sufficient. And rather than finding a solution, they just fade to black and you're in the store with a little trial for Clem to overcome.

Still, not on par with ME3's ending at launch. And TWD only stumbled a couple times throughout its story and I felt like ME3 had dumb stuff going on all the way through it.
 
Ok you win guys... I started a playthrough of Binary Domain lol. I just finished what looks like the intro
(right after the scene where they shoot the chief of staff in the conference room)

The game looks interesting but I gotta find a way to tweak it. I run it with everything set to maximum in the settings (using MLAA) and yet I still get a ton of jaggies. I also get weird shadows issues. Like everything has a black halo and the shadows are kinda low-res or staticky... (not sure how to describe it exactly).

Anyway, nothing gamebreaking but it would be nice to have it run flawlessly.
 
TWD EP5 Spoilers

As contrived as station wagon guy was, he was intended to give some sort of doubt if Lee was really qualified to take of Clem. I think it was a failure since he ended up just being fucking insane. It would've been alot cooler if he was more even minded.

At least it was still even in tone with the rest of the game. ME3's ending is straight out of left field and is completely against most of the themes and intentions of the franchise.
 
Somebody is going to fuck up some spoiler tags and ruin some games for me. I'd say if you want to discuss spoilers, go into the spoiler topics. ME3 I couldn't care less about, though.
 
Felix Lighter said:
Some resolutions were handled well, some were handled poorly. Overall, I thought the individual side plots were mostly handled well individually if a little too neatly. All considered together it is a bit much, a bit pandering and overly convenient.
Click to expand...

Examples of great resolutions:

Nearly everything you did, and every life and death regarding the genophage and the krogan comes back and matters in the Tuchanka mission.

Likewise for the quarians and geth in the Rannoch missions.

Thane dying in 2 means that Captain Kirrahe from ME1 has to defend the salarian councilor from assassination. If Kirrahe died in ME1, then the salarian councilor dies and you lose war support.

Those examples can change severely depending on your choices in all three games, and you may easily have locked yourself out of a path before you even started ME3.

Examples of far too convenient results but BioWare kind of pokes fun at it so it's okay:

If Mordin died in 2, then there's a replacement Eccentric Salarian Scientist Working On the Genophage. Joker calls him "not-Mordin," which is awesome.

Conrad Verner presents you with a list of extremely specific requests to help his work on something, and they turn out to be all of those meaningless collectibles from ME1, which Shepard still has sitting around after all these years. Shepard hands them over, gets Conrad's life-altering report on dark energy, and it earns you something like a whopping 4 war points.

Then the examples of "fuck it, we ship in March."

The rachni queen shows up no matter what, with the difference being points and a different email.

Hey, what did you pick regarding the Council at the end of ME1? Too bad, it's either the regular alien Council or a palette swapped replacement alien Council.

Speaking of which, did you pick Anderson or Udina as human councilor? Who cares, Anderson retired between ME2 and ME3 and Udina got the job anyway.

Did you destroy the Collector Base and Baby Reaper or give it to Cerberus and The Illusive Man? If you gave it to him, then he has the Baby Reaper chilling in his Cerberus base. If you destroyed it, then he has the Baby Reaper chilling in his Cerberus base. You get a different part from it, though. I think the parts have a +/- 10 war points difference or something.

Did Legion die at the end of ME2? Shit, we need someone for Shepard to talk to on the geth side. I know, how about a geth that's running a "Legion VI" that sounds just like Legion and even projects a hologram on its own chest to look like Legion's hole!
 
EmCeeGramr said:
Did Legion die at the end of ME2? Shit, we need someone for Shepard to talk to on the geth side. I know, how about a geth that's running a "Legion VI" that sounds just like Legion and even projects a hologram on its own chest to look like Legion's hole!
Click to expand...

Oh shit that sounds kinda cool. Can some post a pic of it?
 
EmCeeGramr said:
Spoilers:
You go to a planet during a sidequest and find the Reapers have been breeding warped Rachni to use in an army. You get to the end of the tunnels and find...

If you saved the queen in ME1: A mutated rachni queen being held hostage. You can free her (sacrificing some krogan soldiers to secure an escape) or leave her to die. If you free her, you get like 400 war points, the rachni work as scientists on the Crucible (wtf), an email says "boy the scientists here sure were surprised!" and that's the last you see of them.

If you killed the queen in ME1: A mutated rachni queen is being held hostage, only it's a clone of the original with a spooky devil voice. Blah blah, same options. If you leave her to die you learn it was probably a good idea, if you free her you eventually get a second email that she and the other freed rachni went crazy and killed a bunch of Crucible scientists and left and that's the last you see of them.
Click to expand...

CHOICES
 
ViewtifulJC said:
I can already tell Emcee's GotY list is shaping up nicely, the way he loves to talk about ME3
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1. Mass Effect 3: number 1 with a bullet, comm shep really jacks fools up in this tight azz game, i got laid w/ that chick from chuck

2. Call of Duty 2 Blops 2: what upppp this game is sick i play zombie mode eerryday

3. Halo 4: dat ass man, if cortana weren't 4 inches tall then hnng smang it dawg

4. Medal of Honor Warriorfights: this game is like cod but not quite as good but its still awesome as shit, i smashe d adoor with a axe

5. Far Crysis 3: shit if i was on that island i'd be all "what up" getting in them island titties

6. WWE 13: i made me and my crew and we wrestled it out and i won the belt, fuck you aj i owned you

7. Forza Whatever: sweet soundtrack, balla cars, what more can u ask 4

8. Resient Evil 6: more like president evil am i wright jk lol but 4 srs this game aws scary as hell

9. Asassin's Creed 3: i played like 20 minutes of this but it seemed great, i merced some fool in like knight times and snuck out 11/10

10. Persona 4: The Golden: damn, that chie
 
Jintor said:
My absolute favourite EmCee post is the mock GiantBomb documentary script he was posting examples of in the Polygon thread.
Click to expand...
Nothing really beats the ongoing saga that is Operation Caliphate, but that's pretty much an OT thing.
 
chickdigger802 said:
link?
Click to expand...

SAN FRANCISCO

Time lapse shot of early morning traffic in the Bay. Ambient music.

Cut and slow-pan right as JEFF GERSTMANN sits on a sill and stares out a window into the soft blue glare of the morning light. He is contemplative. Cut to confessional shot of JEFF.

JEFF: I... I think that video games provide a unique medium and opportunity to elucidate upon them.

Black and white, left shot, Dutch angle

JEFF: That's my calling in life. It's not an easy one.
Click to expand...

EmCeeGramr said:
CARAVELLA RESIDENCE

VINNY and I CAN'T REMEMBER THE NAME OF VINNY'S WIFE are seated in a sparkling white modern kitchen engaged in quiet conversation.

Soft focus shots of papers and computer equipment. A closeup of VINNY's furrowed brows and eyes, deep in thought.

Interspersed shots of birds in trees, neighbor children running through sprinklers on lawns in the orange glow of a late afternoon sun.

Title card: Video Games
Click to expand...

.
 
ME3 Ending Spoilery stuff:
I have no problem with a downer ending. I loved the ending to Red Dead Redemption. If ME3 had ended with Shepard and Anderson looking out over Earth and dying I would be totally cool with that. I would be satisfied. I was NOT satisifed because they pulled out some Deus Ex Machina character, the godchild. Which is kind of a cheat as he came up out of left field. But the problem was actually with the choices.

We are given three choices: Destroy, Control or Synthesis. But these are all choices my Shepard had actively spent three games fighting against!

The Illusive Man wanted to control the reapers, but I fought against his beliefs on that.

Synthesis was Saren's goal in Mass Effect 1, so that didn't fit the bill of my Shepard to flip flop on that choice.

Which leaves destroy, but I just spent the entirety of Mass Effect 3 trying to prove that the AI races should be treated as equals, and not shunned!

Now I know since then they've added a fourth option, telling the kid to go to Hell. Which I would have chosen if it was there when I played the game.

But it wasn't. I was given three choices, none of which my Shepard would've made. He would not have compromised his beliefs after fighting for them so hard over the course of these three games.
 
greendomo's ghost said:
Now I know since then they've added a fourth option, telling the kid to go to Hell. Which I would have chosen if it was there when I played the game.
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That fourth option was great, because I've conditioned by a lifetime of video game tropes that lead me to believe that that is the one true option for unlocking the best ending. Even moreso because it's something they added in their attempt to correct the ending.

But NOPE. The egg was on my face when I guess Shepherd just stood there and died. Of all the potential triggers for a super short "bad ending", that seemed like an unnecessary amount of work to create it on Bioware's part.

Also it was to, within the fiction of the game, say "FUCK YOUR ending choices" only to have the game retort "No, fuck YOU" [bad end]
.
 
meltingparappa said:
That fourth option was great, because I've conditioned by a lifetime of video game tropes that lead me to believe that that is the one true option for unlocking the best ending. Even moreso because it's something they added in their attempt to correct the ending.

But NOPE. The egg was on my face when I guess Shepherd just stood there and died. Of all the potential triggers for a super short "bad ending", that seemed like an unnecessary amount of work to create it on Bioware's part.
Click to expand...

That's their way of telling you that you're stuck with their original shitty endings. lol
 
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