ProfessorMoran
Member
ThoseDeafMutes said:
I let Kaiden die, he was a boring piece of shit.
Mass Effect Franchise bitching thread
- Thread starter The Technomancer
- Start date
I let Kaiden die, he was a boring piece of shit.
Rahxephon91
Banned
No I keep Ashley alive so that in two(somehow not being capture by the collectors or whatever) she can tell me how awesome I am, only to say I'm crap when I tell her I'm with Cerberus.ThoseDeafMutes said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAeH_6RrW1I
Truant said:
Strangely enough, this post is pretty close to my opinion. I'm fond of both games but I only give the edge to the first because it nailed that tone.
I find it funny when I see people putting the first game on a pedestal, though. Mass Effect, as an RPG, was flimsy. Choice and consequence? Lol, completely nonexistent. You make a few big choices, but the consequences are all pushed away to the next game. There are only a few quests with branching paths, most of the time you do the same thing but cap it off with a red or blue response. The skills trees were much more complex (relatively speaking, lol) but you will only see a fresh character build if you choose a different class. Many of the trees were redundant and unnecessary.
To put it simply, it was a haphazardly designed RPG that made a sloppy attempt at focusing on action TPS combat and it only got by because the universe was so damn interesting and because it's fun to be Space Jesus.
Fimbulvetr
Member
ThoseDeafMutes said:
Pretty sure the Science! in your avatar is being done to Kaidan.
Foliorum Viridum
Banned
+ the narrative was so well done.Snuggler said:
Mass Effect is definitely a case of being wayyy better than the sum of its parts.
If it really was a Spectre admision mission, then Ashley/Kaidan failed horribly. Not only wasn'tAdventChild said:
AdventChild
Neo Member
Billychu said:
?????
Mr_Zombie said:
Thats the point. Eden Prime mission failed too. Nihlus dies, almost all civilians dies, Saren scapes, broken Beacon.... Geths appears from Perseus Veil, Collectors appear from Omega 4 relay... So much similarities.
I think that a Spectre saves Ashley/Kaidan from the petrified state. U know, a Spectre checks a Spectre admision mision.
Sorry for my english.
Fimbulvetr
Member
Snuggler said:
Also because the console focused industry was dazzled by such totally-new-and-deep-we-promise ideas as "dialogue choices" and "alignment systems".
AdventChild said:
He's talking about why Ash/Kai can survive horizon.
AdventChild
Neo Member
Mr_Zombie said:
Thats the point. Eden Prime mission failed too. Nihlus dies, almost all civilians dies, Saren scapes, broken Beacon.... Geths appears from Perseus Veil, Collectors appear from Omega 4 relay... So much similarities.
I think that a Spectre saves Ashley/Kaidan from the petrified state. U know, a Spectre checks a Spectre admision mision.
Sorry for my english.
Fimbulvetr
Member
AdventChild said:
Shepard made good of a situation that was already screwed by the time he got there, and still had to get another Spectre implicated for murder before he could become a Spectre himself.
Ash/Kai had to be saved by Shepard, and ended up not doing anything of note.
Rahxephon91
Banned
Dating sim.Snuggler said:
It's a third person shooter role playing game. An action Role Playing Game. And both games are based more on their character interactions and interactivity in general, world building, sense of exploration, story (in Mass Effect) and stories (in Mass Effect 2) and so on, than shooting alone. And there are also level ups and stat allocation as well, as well as classes.
Foliorum Viridum
Banned
ME1 felt like an RPGTPS, because I feel it was more RPG than TPS, but ME2 feels much more like a TPSRPG.
ME1 has a bigger skill tree, but aside from that, I fail to see how it's any more of an RPG than the sequel. The C&C is no better or worse (just bad), the variability of builds is the same, even though the trees were cut down, the equipment and weapon choices were probably even worse since it mostly came down to sifting through tons of junk in ME1.
At least the weapons in ME2 were actually different, there were various types of snipers, shotties, SMGs, and so on. The junk loot in ME1, at it's best, would offer the same weapon you already have with a slight stat bonus. All the rest was just omnigel fodder, lol.
The one other thing in ME1's advantage is it's so-called open world element. At this point, I feel like people are grasping for straws. Have you forgotten how barren and pointless it is to visit those planets? The backdrops look very nice, as proven in pic posts lately, but it always came down to the same rountine of scooting the Mako to the two spots with items (usually completely pointless stuff like the Matriarch writings) and completing a quest at a copy and paste building. I love that ME1 attempted open world elements but it did a terrible job at it.
I don't approve of ME2's shit side missions, but at the same time I'm not gonna pretend that they've botched something that the first game did right.
At least the weapons in ME2 were actually different, there were various types of snipers, shotties, SMGs, and so on. The junk loot in ME1, at it's best, would offer the same weapon you already have with a slight stat bonus. All the rest was just omnigel fodder, lol.
The one other thing in ME1's advantage is it's so-called open world element. At this point, I feel like people are grasping for straws. Have you forgotten how barren and pointless it is to visit those planets? The backdrops look very nice, as proven in pic posts lately, but it always came down to the same rountine of scooting the Mako to the two spots with items (usually completely pointless stuff like the Matriarch writings) and completing a quest at a copy and paste building. I love that ME1 attempted open world elements but it did a terrible job at it.
I don't approve of ME2's shit side missions, but at the same time I'm not gonna pretend that they've botched something that the first game did right.
Foliorum Viridum said:
To be honest ME doesn't feel like much of an RPG to me. Some of the bits that people generally point to (lots of points to put into skills upon level up, loot drops and inventories) were anywhere from "not good" to "I'm pretty sure a koala designed this" - in particular that game has some of the worst loot AND inventory system to manage said loot out of damn near anything I've ever called an RPG.
A lot of people wanted them to be kept and fixed (if not further expanded on), but personally the enjoyment I did derive from that game, those elements held almost no value. I suppose that is why I don't hold much contempt for the way things changed in ME2.
I fucking hate that Bioware seems to think more romance options equals a better game. Fucking Garrus? He was kind of a cool character in ME1 and would have been even moreso in ME2 if not for the stupid inclusion of a romance subplot. How does that even physically work? Not that I know what Turians look like 'down there', and I don't want to know, but I do know that if we as humans ventured into space and found something looking like Turians, my first thought would not be to fuck it. Can't someone say NO to Shepard? It would have actually been nice if Miranda, Ashley or any of the many other characters said "NO SHEPARD GOD DAMN IT WE'RE ON A MISSION TO SAVE THE GALAXY I DON'T REALLY FEEL LIKE SLEEPING WITH YOU RIGHT NOW".Rahxephon91 said:
Hey Bioware how about creating a character that is actually INTERESTING in some way except "You can have a romance with this character". Legion or maybe Wrex is the closest thing to it in the ME games so far. I was actually surprised you couldn't proposition Legion to set up some kind of Virtual Reality sex simulator or that the Krogan genophage subplot didn't lead to a mating scene with Wrex.
I'm playing through ME1 right now and it's a lot better than ME2, but what happened to the KOTOR Bioware? You know, the ones that created interesting sidequests and characters with atleast a little bit of personality (like HK-47, Mission, Jolee, Bastila), and made, you know, RPGs ?? They seem to have thought Carth was the only good thing about Kotor and they took that, scrapped everything else and made Mass Effect with the sole purpose of making it as 'Carth' as possible. Well, they sure succeeded.
AdventChild
Neo Member
The question is... What is a RPG?
Chinner said:
No, I'm pretty sure that the thread creator, The_Technomancer, is critical of Mass Effect. He just made this thread so that these convos wouldn't take over ME3 news threads.
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
AdventChild said:
A role playing game is a broad genre loosely defined by the inclusion of gameplay mechanics derived from or inspired by traditional pen and paper roleplaying games, such as character statistics, leveling, an inventory, and undertaking quests.
Mass Effect 1 and 2 are both Action RPGs, which are a subgenre of RPGs that have real-time combat controlled by the player.
Relaxed Muscle
Member
Chairman Yang said:
You know, you're right.
ME1 was an incredibly flawed game, but something was lost in the transition between ME1 and ME2. Although I bitched about those stupid wastelands, called planets in ME1, they added sense of exploration, the universe instead of getting expanded from ME1 actually it felt like it narrowed to a few key species and events...
I think the best exemple of this were the sidequests:
In ME1 a lot of sidequest added interesting subplots, the best example was the Cerberus one, but then we have the one with the biotic cult, the one about the woman who get insane because she couldn't save her beloved one, the IA going insane, etc..
They felt like little adventures, mini-episodes in some epic sci-fi show.Helping to create the universe and series we all loved.
Instead ME2 give us really stupid sidequest like: recovering some merc cargo, attacking some merc base, attacking some installation that some merc group invaded, mercs.....mercs and mercs.... I don't fucking care about mercs groups in my sci-fi epic!.
Not an single one was interesting from a plot point of view, you got there and killed merc groups or mechs, with logs talking about inintersting things like sending more slaves to get more resources, others the plot is so secundary that you can even care about it, because is almost none existent.
ME1 had admiral heckett providing a nice briefing for every sidequest, so you could care about the plot.
I know there are the loyal mission, but those were character related and gave little to do with the universe, except maybe Mordin.
So a part of me can't love ME2 as much as ME1, even knowing ME1 was a worst game. Bioware did more than just stripping the RPG elements in ME1, they removed something that in won't be there either in ME3 and that saddens me a lot.
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
They could have thrown in some more non-mercenary enemies to change it up for sure, but the three merc groups were somewhat distinct if you were paying attention, and ME1 can hardly claim to have so much more variety when 90% of the UNC sidequests involved wiping out Husks/Thorian Creepers. All the while the most you got from it were dull text logs as a reward and some credits.
I cannot even remotely empathise with your experiences if you think ME1 was an epic grand SciFi adventure but that ME2 wasn't. I will argue until the end of the time that neither of them were an epic, grand adventure, and both were fairly mediocre with respect to exploration and side questing. Of course, ME2 has the distinct advantage in side quests because it has the optional character recruitment/loyalty missions. I think most people tend to forget that these are actually side quests because they help directly with the main questline and thus get tacked on to the main quest in people's minds.
ME2 is far easier to swallow in long sittings because the missions are far more interesting than ME1's. I think the story in ME1 was less terrible and a bit more compelling than ME2 for a couple of reasons, but ME1 got repetitive before even a single playthrough was over. If you factor in DLC for both games, ME2 just gets even better because it has the awesome Stolen Memories/Overlord/Shadow Broker missions, which are in many ways better than any of the other missions in ME1 or ME2.
ThoseDeafMutes said:
Sorry, but I have to disagree with you. There's only few interesting missions, the rest is just a linear corridor filled with chest-high obstacles and mercenaries you have to shoot. At least in ME1 you have Mako and various puzzles here and there, in ME2 there's mostly just shooting. And thanks to the global cooldown, you have to depend on your weapons much more than on your powers.
Relaxed Muscle
Member
ThoseDeafMutes said:
It's not the enemy variety, it was the plot behind those quests: destroy that merc cargo, stop that merc squad.....what the fuck is this? a tom clancy novel?...that's what I hated.
In ME1 we had experiments, biotic morals, Geth cruel punishments, etc...they were more interesting and had way better narrative, they helped to create a more compelling universe than in ME2.
Yes, as a game ME2 is better is most ways, but I think the universe and plot in ME1 was more compelling and interesting.
Also, I think for replaying ME1 is an easier way, without the constant waves of enemies and a good understanding of the combat system ME1 missions can be a blaze to go trough.
ME2 can be a worse experince in multiple playthroughs because even it's a decent TPS....is neither a very good one.Also ME1 had more variety, Mako missions while there were a pain in the ass, they helped to avoid monotony.
Riposte
Member
ThoseDeafMutes said:
Quite lame. The "strategy" parts of RPGs are equivalent to wargames(and that is where Dungeon and Dragons originates from). Wargames = TBS(and eventually RTS) when adapted into videogames. Naturally the games which are shaped by DnD's combat systems are obviously strategy games.
A more sensible answer is that RPG isn't a genre. Roleplaying can be adapted to any other genre and subgenre, whether it be a game like Fire Emblem or Baldur's Gate or a FPS. Feel free to continue calling stuff like JRPG and WRPG, but it only makes sense if JRPG means something along the lines of "Dragon Quest-like" and WRPG likewise roughly means "isometric CRPG-like".
EDIT: Also calling Mass Effect an "Action RPG" is just confusing, since it is clearly belongs to an easy to recognize genre: Third Person Shooter.
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
Mr_Zombie said:
No, I'm sorry, because ME1's combat is utterly abysmal. The shooting is terrible, the powers are mediocre (but somehow, extremely OP at the same time) and when you turn it up to high difficulties it just magnifies the problems even more. I forget what it's called (Insanity maybe?) but the highest difficult in ME1 has every enemy and their dog popping immunity, so half the firefights descend into endurance rounds that try your patience like nothing else. Specific missions with biotic enemies (The Benezia fight comes to mind) can have you stuck in level geometry thanks to biotics knocking you about like a ragdoll. And OH GOD some of the enemies are so incredibly shit to fight. The boss battle with the Thorian was awful, the Asari commandos are irritating as shit, and Geth stalkers/sappers making it pass focus testing is a very strong argument for the non-existence of God. Don't get me started on the final bossfight, where they took the most fucking annoying as shit enemy type in the game (geth stalker) and then gave it 1,000,000,000,000 hit points.
The mako is shit for combat, shit for crossing steep terrain (and ALL of the planets are 90% mountains for some reason) and the Mako missions are nothing but this combat and mountain climbing. Ok that's not fair, sometimes you have to get out of the Mako to look at the same crashed probe you've seen five times already, too.
There were only two puzzles I can recall in the game, only one of them that made sense and neither of them were "good". The restarting the reactor core in Noveria is optional, out of the left field, and irritating the first time you do it (although I can do it blindfolded now since I've played the game like seven fucking times). Then there was the pneumatic pressure one to remove the Geth ship from the building. That one at least wasn't a weird abstract puzzle with no relation to what was going on, so I'll give it some points for that I guess. Still, this happens so rarely that it barely warrants mentioning.
Regarding ME2 forcing you to use your guns, eh. You can play Adept with nothing but powers just fine on all but the highest couple of difficulties, and in fact on lower difficulties it's a total cakewalk. The cooldowns, although global are SO MUCH SHORTER than ME1. In ME1 if you used Push you couldn't use it again for like 90 seconds or longer. In ME2 you can use your powers eight+ times per minute in sustained battles. The fact that you have to interchange use of guns and powers makes the game MORE interesting, not less. In ME1 it was opening round power spam followed by minutes of having no powers to use. When you factor in squadmates to take with you, you are using powers so much more often in ME2 it's not even funny.
The barrier system really adds to the game, although it's effects are not really felt at all on lower difficulties (because regardless of the power/ammo type you use, it gets shredded in like half a second). The game really comes into it's own above normal, where barriers become more common and durable, although IMO for Insanity it's a bit much since EVERY enemy has a barrier and I didn't really like that. Here is a video of a guy who is very good at using Vanguard playing on insane. Vanguard vs Infiltrator vs Adept are three completely different game-play experiences.
I think Bioware is on a downward trend. ME2 was pretty disappointing, DA2 was nothing short of awful. And judging from the E3 trailer of ME3 with its Omitool blade bullshit, generic nu metal riff and "high octane" Gears ripoff bullshit, the transformation from engaging space opera (ME1) to generic sci-fi shooter (ME3) will be complete.
Certainly not the kind of game I was hoping for. I will give it the benefit of the doubt until its release, then I'll be waiting for impressions before I jump in. At worst, I'll wait until it's dirt cheap in a bargain bin or one of the many DD sales, if only to finish the trilogy.
Certainly not the kind of game I was hoping for. I will give it the benefit of the doubt until its release, then I'll be waiting for impressions before I jump in. At worst, I'll wait until it's dirt cheap in a bargain bin or one of the many DD sales, if only to finish the trilogy.
Heavy's Sandvich
Member
Playing through Mass Effect 2 now.
It's just mediocre. The loyalty missions have been quite boring. The scanning is unacceptable.
It's just an average 3rd person shooter.
The only good thing about it is Thane.
Also, I'm definitely making Shepherd gay in ME3.
It's just mediocre. The loyalty missions have been quite boring. The scanning is unacceptable.
It's just an average 3rd person shooter.
The only good thing about it is Thane.
Also, I'm definitely making Shepherd gay in ME3.
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
Riposte said:
Read. RPG is a genre, saying it isn't is ridiculous. The fact that sub-genres exist does not imply the broader genre doesn't. FFVII, Demon's Souls and ME2 all share common elements, which make them RPGs.
Calling it an action RPG is in no way ambiguous, because it's got all the makings of an RPG, but uses TPS mechanics for it's real-time combat component. You level up, you have gear to equip, you have abilities to use, you have stats, you have quests, you have a strong narrative focus. It's an action RPG, end of story.
Riposte
Member
ThoseDeafMutes said:
You can safely assume that I already know everything wikipedia has to teach me on the subject of videogames.
Genres need to differentiate themselves from each other. That is how you break things down into groups. I really hope I don't have to explain this. Creating a random list of attributes(and, it is random) doesn't peel away to the essence of the subject and doesn't give good enough reason why you cannot properly compare it to something different. (EDIT: Here is a preschool example: You don't compare bananas to school buses just because they are both yellow and long. You compare bananas to other fruit, or other foods at most.)
Everything you said can be added into every type of game. Not just some, but every one. In fact some of them are in just about every game. ("Quest" is a fancier way of saying objective, videogames are nothing but stats.) So we come down to leveling and equipment, which is a fancier way to say "change "character" stats during play". This is also in just about every game, but here is a very small sampling: switching/obtaining new guns in a FPS, having the bar grow in Pong, getting a 1up, obtaining a costume in Super Mario by grabbing a power up. Even if you were to restrict to more permanent changes in stats, you'd still wouldn't be able to do a good job. Megaman, Devil May Cry, Team Fortress 2, and etc all just became RPGs. But that's enough with this flawed approach. I explained why you are fundamentally wrong in the previous paragraph. You don't compare Devil May Cry to Final Fantasy, you don't compare Megaman to Baldur's Gate. (And I really don't understand why it is common for people to compare Demon's Souls here too.)
UnluckyKate
Member
Heavy's Sandvich said:
Some loyaulty missions are stellar (Mordin first, Tali second) and yes, it is unacceptable that gay romance were not avaible anymore in ME2 while it was in ME1.