ME1 on higher difficulties is interesting in the fact that everything early in the game is just so disproportionately overpowered, while you end up outranking and one-two shotting people late game with overpowered abilities (marksman, assassination, immunity, etc). Early in the game, enemy squads usually just turn on immunity, walk through your cover and blast your squadmates while you can't even damage race their immunity.
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Mass Effect 3 Spoiler Thread |OT2| Taste the Rainbow
- Thread starter Patryn
- Start date
firehawk12
Subete no aware
Man, those Krogan husks... stuff of nightmares.
Zomba13
Member
lol. The option Bioware chose was the one I wanted. I didn't want A B or C. I wanted D, "thanks for the offer but I'll have to pass".
Red Blaster
Member
Damn, I want some cupcakes now
Maybe I should create a sci-fi trilogy with a terrible ending
Maybe I should create a sci-fi trilogy with a terrible ending
Hasphat'sAnts
Member
I liked Hale a lot better in ME1. In the two sequels she just sounds pissed off for some reason.
That's because ME1 had a really bad case of exponential character growth. As you advance through the game, the damage that your weapons do via your weapon proficiency skill grows, the damage that your weapons do via inherent weapon stats grows, weapon damage is kind of multiplied by how accurate they are and how long you can fire them versus waiting for them to cool down, and all of those things advance in parallel with your basic damage. You get more bonuses to damage through passive skills like your class skill and your Spectre Training.
You start the game with low health, low damage reduction on your armour, low shields, and a single skill that restores about half of your shields and a single skill that restores a small amount of health as your sole defensive ability. As you advance through the game, your health goes up, your armour gets better damage reduction and stronger shields, your Shield/Health restoration skills become usable more frequently and become much more powerful, you get passive, constant health regeneration, and you gain further skills that either double/triple your shields and make them regenerate constantly even under fire, or you get a skill with such a boost to damage reduction that you can literally take rockets to the face without noticing a change in your health bar. And those skills start to refresh so quickly that they're up permanently as long as you can remember to hit the button once in a while.
You start with one or two biotic skills that ragdoll an enemy for a second or two, or a tech skill that disables their guns for a few seconds, and those skills take nearly a full minute to recharge. You get more skills (three or four, at least), all of those skills grow to disable the enemy for longer periods of time, to have larger areas of effect so that more enemies are affected per skill, and the cooldown on individual skills just gets lower and lower until it's more of a hassle than it's worth to even bother using them as their cooldowns come up.
When you have that many factors that play into how powerful you are, and they're all going up in parallel, at the exact same time, you end up with this really bizarre difficulty curve where a single enemy is a juggernaut that tears through you like tissue paper for the first couple hours of the game, and you slowly, sloooooowwwly get stronger, little by little, until you finally don'tfeellikeachumpnowthegame'sdifficultyisalrightbut oh no there it goes, now I'm one-shotting everything and I'm invincible. The window where Mass Effect 1 actually feels like you're an appropriate level of strength to be fighting the enemies you're put up against is hilariously small. Like maybe levels, I dunno... 18 to 23, or some shit, out of a full spectrum of 1 to 60.
This doesn't seem hard to do.
Sigh. I remember when we could walk on the planets we visited without having to fight 100% of the time there.
Can you imagine how glorious it would have been if the first Mass Effect supported mods...
Seriously though, how comes there aren't any mods for ME? I always assumed Unreal Engine games were highly moddable.
Less mods = more DLC
But you can use texmod to fix the low-res textures in ME2. Check out Eatchildren's thread on a playthrough of ME1+2 for the links.
I H8 Memes
Member
I think it's the planet where you have to check the monkeys for some kind of info. There is a parallel there
on how you treat the monkey type animals. Kill them for the easiest way to search, or search each one individually. Meanwhile the prothean orb tells the story of the protheans observing humans when they were barely more than monkeys themselves.
That orb was suppose to trigger something in the sequels but apparently they forgot about.
Yeah I was pretty disappointed with that. I made a big deal over the Palaven one in the game's OT and then...nothing else really happened the rest of the game in terms of skyboxes .
There is a couple really good ones. The Geth Dreadnaught in space with Rannoch in the background was awesome. The Citadel skybox during the end scene was really good as well.
Not the best screenshot, but this is what I'm talking about
Psychoward
Banned
Just finished my second character, then created a new character in Skyrim, man, what a breath of fresh air.
Fuck yeah Mass Effect 1 discussion. It still is the best game in the series with a lot of heart and soul. To celebrate, here's my various screenshots of the levels, just to show how magnificent the sci-fi atmosphere and sense of exploration were:
This is probably one of the most wasted franchises in gaming history.
Their absolute inability to take a joke has been amazing. I would have just shrugged it off and let the crew eat cupcakes. Seriously this whole incident has really lowered my opinion of Bioware as a whole.
UnluckyKate
Member
How the hell did Vega and his shuttle came back abroad Normandy after he crashed it on Mars ?
I remember it getting beat up, but it was still functional.
And the Normandy picked them up.
I understand that they might have thought that keeping the cupcakes implied a transaction of some sort -- even if that wasn't the feeling of those who gave the cupcakes. That said, I think they should've announced ahead of time (if they didn't) that any cupcakes received would be donated, since they knew full well the cakes were coming.
ME3 has a really amazing soundtrack and many of the themes in 3 are definite throwbacks to 1. It's a worthy successor to the first soundtrack.
It could also very well been stated earlier by a dev that they have no control in decisions made by the company. I don't think any sane person would have assumed giving cupcakes is a transaction for a proper ending.
UnluckyKate
Member
I mean, there's like 20 seconds between the crash on them going back on Normandy with Ashely uncounsious. How did they towed the wreck ? Or did Vega flew it into normandy bay before Shep walks in ?
So many missing things.
Also, how come Liara tell " a weapon, massive in scope and with unparallel level of destruction " about the crucible but they have no idea what it is or how it works ?
I'd say both. ME1 is filled to the gills with wikipedia entries masquerading as answers to questions. It's clearly a 'setting the scene' entry in the series. I mean, the first third of the game is almost all "Tell me more about Asari history and culture" type interactions. Not to mention that there are fewer dynamic changes each time you visit your crew between missions. How many times can Joker get pissy about his condition and give me the exact same dialogue for 40 hours?
You get the same prompts ("Just looking for personal input" "Thoughts on the last mission?"), and the same cut scenes (just how sweaty does Kaiden get twiddling knobs? How come I startle Liara every time I enter the room?)
2 improved on it a bit by making the conversation scenes more dynamic and showing full body movement instead of two talking heads, and 3 upped the ante even more by having them move around - not only in their areas, but all around the Normandy as well. And they would all have unique things to say after nearly every mission, not just main plot ones. Seeing Garrus and Liara having a drink in the lounge or Javik and Vega swapping jokes in the mess hall were great character moments.
Just my $0.02
Seriously, if you think the ME3 soundtrack didn't have anything like ME1, listen to Mars:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZsR6jKT8bk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZsR6jKT8bk
Have an expansive and wonderful looking sci-fi universe? Make it a corridor shooter.
Have very interesting characters from variety of alien races? Fill the game with humans.
Such a waste.
I think so, too. I liked the callbacks and the new material.
I'm pretty sure I actually did say them say exactly that.
I'm choosing to interpret their response to the cupcakes as one of the higher-ups at EA coming in and going "Cupcakes are for (story) closers."
Only place really. I associate those songs with exploring places and there was nowhere you could actually do that in ME3.
While we're at it, why would anyone colonize a ginormous space station in the middle of space and not know who built it, how old it is, or how it has miraculously performed self maintenance for 37+ million years? And how come all of those Keeper scans I did in ME1 never carried over?
THAT'S IT MASS EFFECT IS RUINED FOR ME
Not to mention how easy it would have been to fix many of the problems in the franchise. The UNC missions only needed to be expanded and the Mako controls tweaked. Instead they axed that entire portion of the franchise and never replaced it.
They then got rid of meaningful sidequests in 3. It really was a corridor shooter at the end.
"Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and ask you to drop the cupcakes by the executive office and make a PR statement saying we donated them to charity. That'd be great, thanks..."
Jake Tower
Banned
Tali stopped by the BioWare offices earlier. They offered her a cupcake.
Last Hearth
Member
This is perfect. Because the analogy is so fitting.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
WrenchNinja
Member
So the 360 version just came in the mail for me. How did they deal out the content? I heard there was a lot of early game disc swapping.
Always thought it was weird that they felt they had to shoehorn human compatriots into each game. Like it was to meet some diversity quota. "I heard that humans might boycott our game if there aren't enough of them in the squad. We can't have that kind of bad press. Quick, make that stupid Jacob guy from the beginning of the game a permanent party member."
Last Hearth
Member
I'm still pissed at all the people complaining about the Mako that caused them to abandon it. I like the Mako and honestly had no problems navigating it. That was IMO one case of Bioware listening to a vocal minority too much.
UnluckyKate
Member
I'm replaying the game and, taken appart, it doesn't make ANY sens from the horrible introduction to the citadel. From here, things get alright.
But yeah, we love this series for the bigger picture.
Riposte
Member
Has this been posted? Weekes, a writer on the game, basically trashes the ending. (Makes himself look good, he had a hand in all the good parts of the ending lol.)
http://i.imgur.com/W2gwS.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/W2gwS.jpg
I wasn't meaning to imply that ME1 and ME3's soundtracks are completely detached; as mentioned, "Mars" feels like it was taken from ME1. But overall I'd still say ME3's soundtrack is still a little closer to ME2 than ME1.
What I was getting at is that ME1's aesthetic and mechanics in conjunction with its soundtrack is quite different from ME3's atmosphere.
What I was getting at is that ME1's aesthetic and mechanics in conjunction with its soundtrack is quite different from ME3's atmosphere.
WrenchNinja
Member
I never had a problem with the mako cause I never bothered to fight anyone with it. Just drove right past enemies. Easiest way to deal with all the bullshit in hardcore and insanity.
You have a party of six characters and you use two humans? Instead of fleshing out that one human character they add on another shitty human instead of a Krogan or even a Batarian.
Asari sales alone could have carried the game, fuck their political correctness.
I'm glad you took the spirit of my post and ran with it
Lots of entertainment falls apart under close scrutiny, a healthy dose of disbelief suspension is key to enjoying a lot of things in life.
Jake Tower
Banned
Pretty sure Jack is human.