Meccanical
Member
I think Mass Effect opted out of the whole role playing thing a while ago.
Mass Effect 3 Demo Impressions [Online Open To All]
- Thread starter CyReN
- Start date
Reversible covers on the standard edition:
That's actually really cool.
HarryHengst
Member
Indeed, it isnt as boring anymore as most rpg's are.
Woo-Fu
Banned
I think Bioware opted out of the whole role playing thing a while ago.
Well the game does have nearly twice as many lines of dialogue as ME2 and twice that of ME so that would be surprising. Audio director stated they had 40k lines of dialogue to ME2's 25k and ME's 20k. Also theres the issue of the demo being edited and not representative of the final version and that it was a non import opening which could effect the dialogue choices and depth, but I think both those are wishful thinking mostly. Really its an intro that doesnt hide the fact that its trying to jump right into the action so its no surprising they didnt give us much of a choice at all.
Well, they sure opted out of the RPG with complex mechanics and battle systems. They're pretty much offering watered down RPGs with more style than substance and there's not much to do about it. That's not to say the games they make now are bad, far from that but I did enjoy their previous titles more than their recent ME and DA offerings.
Fine Ham Abounds
Member
Reversible covers on the standard edition:
That's actually really cool.
sorry, couldn't help it, but I do agree
Hopefully there's more dialogue options. Otherwise, I'd seriously consider just playing the game on the "action" setting. I'd rather play an over-the-top space shooter than an over-the-top space shooter that wants me to believe it's compelling.
I wonder if the Canadian PS3 version have reversible covers.
Augh, I hate how the bilingual Canadian editions never get those sweet reversable covers
((Haven't played Mass Effect 1 or 2, but I downloaded the demo to see what the fuss over this franchise was all about.
Went with Female Shepard, as her design is more refreshing than Male Shepard's.
Chose Action first, will try the others later.
First impression, these cutscenes are as choppy as hell. The gameplay isn't the smoothest either, but I was really taken out of the moment with the story due to how choppy the cutscenes seem.
Played through the first 2 areas, and the gameplay seems solid but not exceptional. And I think my AI partners ended up doing most of the work in the second area. I appreciate competent AI, but not where they make it feel like I don't have to do anything.
Story doesn't really grab me either, even ignoring the choppy cutscenes. The part where
was so predictable and the cheesy music in the back just made it seem forced. Maybe I was expecting too much given the hype.
Overall, it seems solid. Not a turn off, but not a hook either. I guess I'll give the ME2 demo a try as well. Perhaps it'll grab me more.
Went with Female Shepard, as her design is more refreshing than Male Shepard's.
Chose Action first, will try the others later.
First impression, these cutscenes are as choppy as hell. The gameplay isn't the smoothest either, but I was really taken out of the moment with the story due to how choppy the cutscenes seem.
Played through the first 2 areas, and the gameplay seems solid but not exceptional. And I think my AI partners ended up doing most of the work in the second area. I appreciate competent AI, but not where they make it feel like I don't have to do anything.
Story doesn't really grab me either, even ignoring the choppy cutscenes. The part where
the kid dies
Overall, it seems solid. Not a turn off, but not a hook either. I guess I'll give the ME2 demo a try as well. Perhaps it'll grab me more.
TGO
Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
What?
jediyoshi
Member
Choppy...?
TGO
Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
Oh no, I ain't saying he can't have a opinion, I just can't believe he thinks that bit of music was cheesy, cheesy music is cheesy music, that was not cheesy, but like ya said, opinion..
BootlegSnackz
Member
is there no regular OT for Mass Effect 3? Can't believe the CE is sold out, those things are always crowding up the stores after launch day.
Would i be able to preorder the regular copy, then maybe find a CE copy on launch day at a retailer that doesn't preorder?
I wonder if there are even any retailers that are not preordering but will still have CE on launch day. I could get the preorder DLC from gamestop, then return the regular copy of the game, what do you think?
I don't think gamestop is packing this one in, gamestop.com says it will be on the receipt for in store orders.
Would i be able to preorder the regular copy, then maybe find a CE copy on launch day at a retailer that doesn't preorder?
I wonder if there are even any retailers that are not preordering but will still have CE on launch day. I could get the preorder DLC from gamestop, then return the regular copy of the game, what do you think?
I don't think gamestop is packing this one in, gamestop.com says it will be on the receipt for in store orders.
I'm late and this is probably a popular viewpoint, but after seeing the footage from this game over the past year now I wasn't impressed. I loved ME2 (though was disappointed in ME1) so I was all excited for the third entry. However, with all the focus on Earth and what I perceived to be a step back in utilizing the Unreal tech (like ME1) I just stopped caring. On a whim I downloaded the ME3 demo, and boy was I surprised. I'll get the thing that I hated out of the way first. The lip sync and facial animations are fucking terrible on the humans. ME2's was better. What saves it though is the amazing pacing and direction in those scenes. It feels like someone blocked the shots and payed attention to how you compose scenes. They transition smoothly from cutscene, to conversation into gameplay. Characters are given moments to talk. It's like the artists, writers, sound designers and programmers got together and tried to fix all that shit that breaks the immersion in cinematic games. Textures never popped in and the framerate was surprisingly high for this series. I was soooooo god damn impressed by this demo. The combat is what it has always been. Slightly janky, but I don't care. This demo made me care about saving Earth in this series, and that's all it needed to do.
The music in itself is really good, but that scene as a whole is one of the most cheesy, eyeroll-inducing things you're likely to see in a video game. Rather than being emotionally resonant, the music just comes across as inappropriate when it's played over top of something that ridiculous.
OTs aren't up until a week before the game launches, so this tuesday at the earliest.
The only place I can see the CE is gohastings.com, I ordered it there. Never used the site before though, so if this is a case where they actually don't have enough in stock and send emails saying "we're out sorry lol" I will be super pissed.
Yes to both of your questions.
How can people hate Tali? She's kawaii uguu~
Oblivionmancer
Member
I'm not calling it high art, but I really don't understand what you mean by ridiculous. It's a Reaper invasion, the Reapers are doing their invading, and they blow up some ships; one of them has a kid on it. I didn't break down into tears, but I wasn't rolling my eyes.
I think he's looking at it in more of a cinematic sense. Like there is no build up to it whatsoever. It's just Shepard casually looks over in the distance as he's leaving and sees that scene play out.
Oblivionmancer
Member
Not sure about the world 'casually' there, but otherwise that's a fair description of the scene. Again my question though is what is the problem with it? What build up is necessary to sell it?
I'm no apologist for Bioware by any means, and cringed as much as anyone at the opening dialogue of the demo with Shepard shouting uselessly at Alliance command. But I'm having a hard time sussing out why the scene at the end of that first section is cheezy or lame or ridiculous. Like I said it didn't cause me to tear up or anything, but it seemed to serve it's purpose reasonably well. It said 'everything is not going to be okay' and I comprehended. Exactly what else are others asking of it is, I suppose, what I want to know.
I think the thing for me that made it feel cheesy is how different the feel of that scene was in comparison to the music. The music was incredibly dramatic. That scene however, I felt was not. It felt really forced, as if it was supposed to be a surprise. But you knew what was going to happen the second they showed the kid again. There wasn't a doubt in my mind for even a second that anything else was going to happen during that scene. I was just waiting for it to play out and get over with, and then suddenly there was super dramatic music that made me feel like I was supposed to mourn the loss of an individual who I tried to help but was just like "nah."
I think what it comes down to is the scene just wasn't pulled off well. Looking at what happens objectively, yeah, the music should fit. But just the way it happens in the game and everything just makes it feel really off to me.
Oblivionmancer
Member
I think at a certain point it's on the player to know what they're signing up for; this is a game about giant space robots killing all humans; if a cutscene at the start of the game meant to convey that is something that you just wanted to 'get over with,' I'm not really sure how much responsibility for that lies in Bioware's hands.
That scene didn't pull at my heart strings or beg me to mourn a loss so much as it told me in no uncertain terms that everyone is fair game.
One last time I'll ask though, what else was it that Bioware needed to do to convince you that a little kid, along with several soldiers getting vaporized in a surprise invasion as you bail out to go get help, is some bad shit that is relevant to the narrative you're participating in? What would this scene need to have been to be satisfactory. Maybe I'm asking too much, but I'm looking for some help here. If what we got was bad execution, what would have been good execution?
The feeling that they're trying to evoke with the music is obviously one that's really sad and tragic, but they haven't put in the work with the story to earn that emotion. You've got no reason to really care that this is happening to Mass Effect's Earth. The only time you see it in a non-destroyed form is for a few seconds during a prerendered cutscene, there are no places that you get to see and become attached to before and after the attack, and there are no sympathetic characters that you actually know who are under attack, other than Anderson (who disappears before that scene and music actually kick in, and isn't particularly vulnerable or tragic to begin with). There's nothing that the player's become attached to, so there's no reason to feel any sense of loss or tragedy.
Their sole attempt at garnering that kind of emotional reaction is the kid, and his inclusion is so ham-handed that it backfires and makes the scene less engaging. If the kid had been written out of the intro entirely, then the scene with that music would have, at worst, created sort of an ambivalent reaction. They seriously might as well have popped overlaid the screen with a neon text display that says "You should feel sad right now!" There's nothing natural about the way the kid is written. He doesn't have a name, you don't know what he was doing or what his life was like before he shows up, there's no indication that anybody is really going to miss him once he's gone, he doesn't have a particular reason for being anywhere that you see him, and the couple of lines that comprise his entire characterization are written as though they're being spoken by [Thing that is meant to underscore the point of the scene, #23] rather than a frightened child in a dangerous situation. When he dies, they've made it so obvious that you're watching a plot device coming to its conclusion instead of watching a character die, and so my reaction to the scene is "So what?" instead of "That's horrible". (Well, my reaction actually was "That's horrible", but not in the way that the writers intended.)
Their sole attempt at garnering that kind of emotional reaction is the kid, and his inclusion is so ham-handed that it backfires and makes the scene less engaging. If the kid had been written out of the intro entirely, then the scene with that music would have, at worst, created sort of an ambivalent reaction. They seriously might as well have popped overlaid the screen with a neon text display that says "You should feel sad right now!" There's nothing natural about the way the kid is written. He doesn't have a name, you don't know what he was doing or what his life was like before he shows up, there's no indication that anybody is really going to miss him once he's gone, he doesn't have a particular reason for being anywhere that you see him, and the couple of lines that comprise his entire characterization are written as though they're being spoken by [Thing that is meant to underscore the point of the scene, #23] rather than a frightened child in a dangerous situation. When he dies, they've made it so obvious that you're watching a plot device coming to its conclusion instead of watching a character die, and so my reaction to the scene is "So what?" instead of "That's horrible". (Well, my reaction actually was "That's horrible", but not in the way that the writers intended.)
Yeah, it has one.
Oblivionmancer
Member
I don't really agree with that explanation, but at least it's an explanation, so thanks for that. It's kind of funny, but I can't help feeling the take-away is that the music is apparently too good.
For myself, I would definitely agree that the intro all in all is pretty rushed, and does little to build a connection with fictional Earth before it starts melting it. I still thought that the particular scene we're discussing worked fine; It's still unclear what else about that particular moment could or should have been executed differently, how else would it have happened except for suddenly? I wasn't raging at any clash between the visuals and the music, and I wasn't screaming at those damned Reapers either; I was absorbing the bit of context the game provided me and getting ready to move on. But hell, if it rubbed you folks wrong I can't much argue with that.
Generally though, it's pretty stone-cold that you don't care about a little kid getting lazored just because you didn't know his name
My biggest question is why that Reaper didn't arc his helldeathray up a little further and gut the Normandy as well. I suppose we could go down that rabbit hole, but as gentlemen who understand that we're at the start of a 30-40 hour story that that ship needs to exist to tell, I think it's fair enough to agree that the Normandy was a bit out of range.
For myself, I would definitely agree that the intro all in all is pretty rushed, and does little to build a connection with fictional Earth before it starts melting it. I still thought that the particular scene we're discussing worked fine; It's still unclear what else about that particular moment could or should have been executed differently, how else would it have happened except for suddenly? I wasn't raging at any clash between the visuals and the music, and I wasn't screaming at those damned Reapers either; I was absorbing the bit of context the game provided me and getting ready to move on. But hell, if it rubbed you folks wrong I can't much argue with that.
Generally though, it's pretty stone-cold that you don't care about a little kid getting lazored just because you didn't know his name
My biggest question is why that Reaper didn't arc his helldeathray up a little further and gut the Normandy as well. I suppose we could go down that rabbit hole, but as gentlemen who understand that we're at the start of a 30-40 hour story that that ship needs to exist to tell, I think it's fair enough to agree that the Normandy was a bit out of range.
HarryHengst
Member
I liked it because Shepard was like 'oh well' and turns around like she doesnt give a fuck. Which she doesnt because she had just blown up 300.000 Batarians without a second thought (fuck Batarians though so who cares), so one more dead kid doesnt matter to her.
Really wasn't feel the piano keys. I know they were trying to invoke the sense of tragedy, but it failed to make me really give a damn. Guess the fact that the tragic moment didn't have a very good build up might have had something to do with it as well.
...not fluid? Not really sure how else to say it.
shinobi602
Member
Wat
That music was some of the most beautiful I've heard, you nuts mang?
MikeE21286
Member
I downloaded this and played it (the multiplayer on PS3) last night for a quick round.
What the hell is up with the FOV?
It's suuuuuper narrow. Like ridiculously so.
Am I missing something?
What the hell is up with the FOV?
It's suuuuuper narrow. Like ridiculously so.
Am I missing something?
shinobi602
Member
Yea they brought it in a lot closer now. I will admit that's one of the things I really wish they didn't do...
Calisto Glory
Banned
The demo build is almost... one year old?
And that's you just assuming this because the demo is shitty, or was that ever confirmed?
Calisto Glory
Banned
I played the demo (at least the part with the krogans) at Gamescom last year. Its not really different. Didn`t see any difference at all. Not sure about the opening part... but it kinda reminds me on the presentations at gamescom. The only difference i can see is the new model for Ashley.
The only thing that feels new is the Multiplayer. And i expect the Singleplayer as smooth as the Multiplayer @ Release!
There are plenty of differences between this build and the gamescom one if you watch them side by side. The build is from January
Freeza Under The Shower
Member
ouch. Well, at least they brought in multiplayer to a previously all single-player experience, lol.
That's kinda kidding, but still: if this demo really is THAT recent and thereby very indicative of the actual retail version... user metacritic score of 3.0 for the PS3 version incoming.
Of course, it might still be that the demo suffers from being small in format, which might not occur in the retail release. Or so one can hope.
Lifejumper
Member
DAT Mars Combat Sample
http://soundcloud.com/mr-toffee/mass-effect-3-mars-combat
Interview with some of the composers: http://www.gamespot.com/features/sound-byte-meet-the-composers-mass-effect-3-6350923/
http://soundcloud.com/mr-toffee/mass-effect-3-mars-combat
Interview with some of the composers: http://www.gamespot.com/features/sound-byte-meet-the-composers-mass-effect-3-6350923/
D
Deleted member 13876
Unconfirmed Member
I retract my bitching about there not being any voice commands for Belgian/possibly other region accounts. The latest dashboard update fixed that, although we still don't have any dashboard voice commands.
Everything you wrote is like the complete opposite of what I experienced, particularly your impression of the cinematics and and transitions between gameplay and cutscenes.
So good, thanks for posting this.
In all seriousness though, I liked Tali from the original game *because* she wasn't a Romance Option. Made her seem more interesting I guess.
Play as fem shep and she'll never be one! Problem solved.
Unless she become lesbian in ME3. :lol
Blue Ninja
Member
I had in-game voice commands here (Belgium) since the first day I played the demo, which was February 11th or something.