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[Bisnic]

Always liked seeing this in Bring Down the Sky.

Skyboxes are gonna be so awesome in Frostbite 3. Hopefully 2D backgrounds will be gone for good.

 

[Joco]

Drew Karpyshyn was the lead writer on ME1, and was a writer on ME2. Mac Walters was the lead writer on ME2 and ME3. Outside of these leads there are a number of other writers across all three games. The final resolution to the Reaper arc was not set in stone until the third game. An alternate motivation for the Reapers was considered during the first game, which was that the use of dark energy was somehow bad and the Reapers were around to stop or police it or something like that. You can find interviews with Karpynsyn about it but there aren't many details (and "the reapers leave technology that uses dark energy and deliberately goad civilizations into using it, because dark energy is bad" is every bit as circular and moronic as the actual thing we got in the third game).

The "star" your friend is referring to is the star in the Haestrom (might not be it's exact name) system, where you find Tali in ME2. The Quarians on the planet mention that the star is exhibiting very unusual properties, causing the star to age much faster than it should. They suspected that it was somehow related to dark energy, but did not know much more than that. There was a lot of fan speculation that Haestrom was important to the overall plot of the games, and one such example was the idea that the sun would be related to something that could destroy the Reapers in the third game (this would be why the heretic Geth were after the planet, if that was true). But it was just that, fan speculation. A more popular theory was that the sun was going to be how the Reapers would return to the Milky Way galaxy, the Geth/Collectors/Agents of the Reapers were messing with it, and that's why it was exhibiting unusual properties, and it would form a wormhole or mass-relay substitute. Knowing what we know now, this mission was probably one of many hooks left in the game that could have had important story functions, but the writers weren't sure which precise direction to go in.

Your friend probably heard this stuff from other people, or read about it on the internet indirectly.

Very informative, thanks for the reply.

Also thanks to EatChildren for your reply as well.

 

[TheUnsunghero26]

Didn't Walters write Wrex and Garrus in ME1?

Also, the unused ME1 360 boxarts were pretty cool.

 

[i-Lo]

Hope to see this kind fidelity in "off into the distance" vistas:

 

[shinobi602]

Didn't Walters write Wrex and Garrus in ME1?

Also, the unused ME1 360 boxarts were pretty cool.

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU that cover looks amazing.

 

[KyanMehwulfe]

The DLC for ME2 and the Shadow Broker is the best DLC that I've played and a example of it down right, IMO. High quality, on par or better than much of the main games, and enough of a side story that it can be optional yet still carry emotional relevance to a fan of the story.

What I enjoyed the most of the series was the continuity of my actions. Not without disappointed or controversy but, especially with the Suikoden series dead and poor attempts at recruiting/castle building by a couple other WRPGs, the Mass Effect series is still the only series that offers that type of experience with any decent production level.

My hope for a new game would be simple: exploration and mystery of the first game, character recruitment, development, and loss of the second game, and war campaign and gunplay of the third game. Each has a strength which makes it fun to replay and I would hope that a forth game could take advantage of all those strengths.

 

[Nirolak]

When, outside of prerendered cutscene, does Dragon Age need to do this? The giant battle at Ostagar in the beginning of DAO was achieved through smoke and mirrors, same way ME3 conjured up hordes of fleeing civilians in the opening sequence in Vancouver. Worth saying I'm still making my way through DA2, if you're referring to that.

Okay so I realize I'm replying to this twice, but I loaded up the end of Act 2 in DA2 and counted at least 22 characters involved in one battle, with other NPCs in the area.

----

Also to add to i-Lo's comparison for forecasting:

DA2:

ME3:

Unfinished DA3 (1.5 years prior to release):

ME4:

?

Albeit ME4 will at least be on the same engine.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

Okay so I realize I'm replying to this twice, but I loaded up the end of Act 2 in DA2 and counted at least 22 characters involved in one battle, with other NPCs in the area.

The remarkable thing about going between AssCreed and DA2 was that DA2 managed to have worse graphics in almost every respect, while still having less characters on screen. And it's not like DA2 is some massive open world either.

 

[Bisnic]

What the hell at that face to the left, even the first Mass Effect was far better than this.

 

[Nirolak]

The remarkable thing about going between AssCreed and DA2 was that DA2 managed to have worse graphics in almost every respect, while still having less characters on screen. And it's not like DA2 is some massive open world either.

What the hell at that face to the left, even the first Mass Effect was far better than this.

Yes DA2 was a trainwreck technologically.

 

[i-Lo]

Yes DA2 was a trainwreck technologically.

Well you did say it was meant for an isometric view. It's almost like expecting Uncharted like graphics from a game like Company of Heroes.

Good art direction transcends technicality, every single time. Crysis 3 is perhaps one of the best examples of this; technically stupendous and artistically contrived. By the same token and on the flip side, when I played ME1 I was blown away.

Hopefully, given how "open world" is the new direction old dogs are discovering, perhaps we can have more freedom for the sake of exploration (like Citadel or Virmire in ME1 or the mansion privy to an astounding view in Kasumi DLC for ME2).

Also, characters' have become realistic enough to elicit emotions, albeit with the dead eyes syndrome. We need better animations and moments that evoke emotions (like it was in TLoU). I know it is asking a lot but with a new generation comes a renewed hope and desire for surprises and overcoming obstacles for the sake of greater immersion and emotional investment.

Here's a moment immortalized that truly exemplified "Larger than life". Warning it's a rather large file (~40MB gif):

http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2013/195/d/0/me_best_1_by_gifsandmore-d6di40u.gif

And Nirolak, this is a better gif for the dwarf in DA I:

http://i.minus.com/ibnkw0vKjvfKJt.gif

 

[Bisnic]

Here's a moment immortalized that truly exemplified "Larger than life". Warning it's a rather large file (~40MB gif):

http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2013/195/d/0/me_best_1_by_gifsandmore-d6di40u.gif

I just played that part, never get tired of it.

 

[Nirolak]

Well you did say it was meant for an isometric view. It's almost like expecting Uncharted like graphics from a game like Company of Heroes.

Well, they actually took isometric mode out of DA2 in favor of technological upgrades for closer rendering but that didn't really seem to happen...

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

Well, they actually took isometric mode out of DA2 in favor of technological upgrades for closer rendering but that didn't really seem to happen...

"I can confirm that we're doing a lot of work on the Dragon Age engine, and doing a lot of stuff to pump it -- to make it visually super hot."

Here's a moment immortalized that truly exemplified "Larger than life". Warning it's a rather large file (~40MB gif):

http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2013/195/d/0/me_best_1_by_gifsandmore-d6di40u.gif

That whole scene was kinda ruined for me because I was religiously reading the codex entries as I got them, and that final battle basically ignored the entire thing. Left me with a bad taste in my mouth.

 

[Ridesh]

Didn't Walters write Wrex and Garrus in ME1?

Also, the unused ME1 360 boxarts were pretty cool.

Fuck, it would've been the box art of the gen.

 

[Nirolak]

"I can confirm that we're doing a lot of work on the Dragon Age engine, and doing a lot of stuff to pump it -- to make it visually super hot."

Here's about sum total of the change:

 

[truestatic]

Well, they actually took isometric mode out of DA2 in favor of technological upgrades for closer rendering but that didn't really seem to happen...

Was this really what it was? Wasn't isometric never in DAO's console versions to begin with? I'd always thought the shift to fixed over the shoulder on PC was to reinforce the shift to ARPG style of play. Again though, my familiarity with DA2 is limited.

 

[Subitai]

"I can confirm that we're doing a lot of work on the Dragon Age engine, and doing a lot of stuff to pump it -- to make it visually super hot."



That whole scene was kinda ruined for me because I was religiously reading the codex entries as I got them, and that final battle basically ignored the entire thing. Left me with a bad taste in my mouth.

In what way? I read a fair amount of the codex at the beginning.

 

[Nirolak]

Was this really what it was? Wasn't isometric never in DAO's console versions to begin with? I'd always thought the shift to fixed over the shoulder on PC was to reinforce the shift to ARPG style of play. Again though, my familiarity with DA2 is limited.

Basically they eventually revealed that they switched the art direction and removed isometric mode from PC for three reasons:

1.) They wanted a more distinct art style.
2.) The new art style would run much better on consoles on their current technology.
3.) Their old engine couldn't handle higher resolution textures well in isometric mode, since it had bad streaming technology, so while you can zoom out more than you can on consoles, you can't zoom out all the way to isometric. Given the game kind of runs pretty badly on my overclocked GTX560 Ti, 8 GB of RAM, and 3570 i5 quadcore, I believe them.

That said, they did actually deliver better environments than Dragon Age 1:

Frostbite 3 on the other hand is built to handle significant zoom-in thanks to C&C, and it also streams data every frame, so it should be able to handle camera changes better as well:

To try and tie this to Mass Effect, that data streaming should also allow much better texturing and variety while having notably larger environments in Mass Effect 4 as well. It should also improve things like animation and the variety of enemy types you can face at a given time since it can load/unload them as needed much easier.

 

[Oblivionmancer]

That whole scene was kinda ruined for me because I was religiously reading the codex entries as I got them, and that final battle basically ignored the entire thing. Left me with a bad taste in my mouth.

You've intrigued me with this statement. Can you be more specific?

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

In what way? I read a fair amount of the codex at the beginning.

They talk about how fighting takes place at extreme ranges, everybody uses guns and laser point defenses shoot down enemy missiles. When the Geth fleet warps in, nobody opens fire even though they're in (distant) visual range, i.e. well within what the codex would tell you is weapons range. The ships on both sides fire huge blobby missiles out of what is clearly meant to be railguns, which move super slow and don't get intercepted by PD at all. They also fire what look like bullets, except they're moving extremely slowly, and almost like machinegun fire in some cases. There's one moment where Turian ships are less than a kilometer away from Sovereign, and only then do they actually decide to open fire with their guns. Which make pew pew sounds. Also, there is sound-in-space for the whole battle.

Admiral Hacket's fleet comes in with either 15+ or 0 dreadnoughts, depending on whether you count the "Dreadnought model" they use as actually dreadnoughts, or accept the later retcon of them being " cruisers". Either way is problematic, since his fleet was supposed to have some, but the entire of Humanity is only meant to have 7 total. This is a cockup from the art deparment once again, who accidentally used the Dreadnought model too many times without realizing the story gave a maximum number of them. Whether all this impacts your enjoyment of the battle is up to you, but for me I was bothered that they'd gone to all this trouble to flesh out the world in the codex, only to just totally disregard that world-building when they finally show us a space battle.

ME2 has its share of stuffups as well actually. There's the thermal clips being used by people who had been stranded on a remote planet since several years before the introduction of thermal clips (complete with mechs who couldn't have existed when they crashed), the Normandy moves around like an aircraft in atmosphere in the final battle (instead of a Newtonian spacecraft), and there's a funny dialogue bork when you're on one of the human colonies. They refer to the defense tower as a "high powered GARDIAN laser" (GARDIAN system is a laser defense system ships use according to the codex), then when you activate it, it's clearly a gun, firing a solid slug at speed slow enough for us to see it, complete with significant recoil on the gun itself when it fires.

 

[truestatic]

Basically they eventually revealed that they switched the art direction and removed isometric mode from PC for three reasons:

1.) They wanted a more distinct art style.
2.) The new art style would run much better on consoles on their current technology.
3.) Their old engine couldn't handle higher resolution textures well in isometric mode, since it had bad streaming technology, so while you can zoom out more than you can on consoles, you can't zoom out all the way to isometric. Given the game kind of runs pretty badly on my overclocked GTX560 Ti, 8 GB of RAM, and 3570 i5 quadcore, I believe them.

That said, they did actually deliver better environments than Dragon Age 1:



Frostbite 3 on the other hand is built to handle significant zoom-in thanks to C&C, and it also streams data every frame, so it should be able to handle camera changes better as well:



To try and tie this to Mass Effect, that data streaming should also allow much better texturing and variety while having notably larger environments in Mass Effect 4 as well. It should also improve things like animation and the variety of enemy types you can face at a given time since it can load/unload them as needed much easier.

Thank you very much for the breakdown.

 

[Staf]

Basically they eventually revealed that they switched the art direction and removed isometric mode from PC for three reasons:

1.) They wanted a more distinct art style.
2.) The new art style would run much better on consoles on their current technology.
3.) Their old engine couldn't handle higher resolution textures well in isometric mode, since it had bad streaming technology, so while you can zoom out more than you can on consoles, you can't zoom out all the way to isometric. Given the game kind of runs pretty badly on my overclocked GTX560 Ti, 8 GB of RAM, and 3570 i5 quadcore, I believe them.

That said, they did actually deliver better environments than Dragon Age 1:



Frostbite 3 on the other hand is built to handle significant zoom-in thanks to C&C, and it also streams data every frame, so it should be able to handle camera changes better as well:



To try and tie this to Mass Effect, that data streaming should also allow much better texturing and variety while having notably larger environments in Mass Effect 4 as well. It should also improve things like animation and the variety of enemy types you can face at a given time since it can load/unload them as needed much easier.

In my opinion the art style in DA:O is more suited to a fantasy wrpg than the art style in DA2. The art style in DA2 looks like something from a anime inspired JRPG. The only thing i wanted on my PS3 version of DA2 to change from DA:O was to successfully implement isometric view and a move-to-point command. Got the latter of the two but at the same time they changed hundreds of other things in DA:O that really wasn't needed.

 

[Marvel]

First contact war could be good... seeing the Turians for the first time. I'm very excited about what Bioware are doing. Can't wait.

 

[Patryn]

In my opinion the art style in DA:O is more suited to a fantasy wrpg than the art style in DA2. The art style in DA2 looks like something from a anime inspired JRPG. The only thing i wanted on my PS3 version of DA2 to change from DA:O was to successfully implement isometric view and a move-to-point command. Got the latter of the two but at the same time they changed hundreds of other things in DA:O that really wasn't needed.

The art style in DA:O was bland and serviceable at best. It screamed generic fantasy setting.

The art style in DA2 was a slight improvement, but I still can't believe they turned the Darkspawn into the Putty Patrol.

 

[Bisnic]

First contact war could be good... seeing the Turians for the first time. I'm very excited about what Bioware are doing. Can't wait.

That "war" was very short from what i remember, it wouldn't be that interesting to be honest. Well, i guess it could only be PART of the game, but then what would happen during the rest of the game? Humans going to the Citadel for the first time? Humanity meeting the other races? Our crew would be human only too, which is big NO for most fans.

Plus... there is the big problem of prequels... knowing already what happen in the future, leaving no surprises or suspense.

 

[Nirolak]

First contact war could be good... seeing the Turians for the first time. I'm very excited about what Bioware are doing. Can't wait.

I was fairly convinced they were going to do a First Contact War FPS the way Casey Hudson was talking until he decided to bail out and do a new IP, at which point it seemed the game changed direction to something a bit more traditional and going into the future of the timeline judging by how BioWare Montreal has been talking.

The art style in DA:O was bland and serviceable at best. It screamed generic fantasy setting.

The art style in DA2 was a slight improvement, but I still can't believe they turned the Darkspawn into the Putty Patrol.

While they still were pretty questionable, I feel they looked better in the concept art phase:

 

[Dennis]

The art style in DA:O was bland and serviceable at best. It screamed generic fantasy setting.

The art style in DA2 was a slight improvement, but I still can't believe they turned the Darkspawn into the Putty Patrol.

I disagree.

Both the art style and the graphics were much better in DA:O

 

[Patryn]

First contact war could be good... seeing the Turians for the first time. I'm very excited about what Bioware are doing. Can't wait.

Oh please god no. Bioware keeps threatening to do the First Contact war, but if you read about it, it would be boring as sin. Shanxi was the only major conflict in the whole thing. Hell, the Turians didn't even call it a war: they call it the Relay 314 incident. That's how boring it was.

They'd also royally fuck up the same thing prequels always royally fuck up on: they'd give the humans technology more advanced that they had in the original trilogy simply to design new things.

 

[i-Lo]

Another love letter to this thread.

EDIT: Just refresh to make the gif load faster.

 

[shinobi602]

Oh please god no. Bioware keeps threatening to do the First Contact war, but if you read about it, it would be boring as sin. Shanxi was the only major conflict in the whole thing. Hell, the Turians didn't even call it a war: they call it the Relay 314 incident. That's how boring it was.

They'd also royally fuck up the same thing prequels always royally fuck up on: they'd give the humans technology more advanced that they had in the original trilogy simply to design new things.

This. THIS THIS THIS. Bioware please for the love of Shep.

 

[Bisnic]

Oh please god no. Bioware keeps threatening to do the First Contact war, but if you read about it, it would be boring as sin. Shanxi was the only major conflict in the whole thing. Hell, the Turians didn't even call it a war: they call it the Relay 314 incident. That's how boring it was.

They'd also royally fuck up the same thing prequels always royally fuck up on: they'd give the humans technology more advanced that they had in the original trilogy simply to design new things.

lol Star Wars lol

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

Oh please god no. Bioware keeps threatening to do the First Contact war, but if you read about it, it would be boring as sin. Shanxi was the only major conflict in the whole thing. Hell, the Turians didn't even call it a war: they call it the Relay 314 incident. That's how boring it was.

They'd also royally fuck up the same thing prequels always royally fuck up on: they'd give the humans technology more advanced that they had in the original trilogy simply to design new things.

And then it would be retconned to have secretly had something to do with the Reapers and Cerberus and oh wait that already happened.

 

[popeutlal]

Finished ME3 and wtf, it was a shooting game! Where were the interesting characters, the beautiful environments, the exploration, the amazing dialog tree from the previous games?

From the start I was shooting the reapers, then moved on to shooting Cerberus clone army then ended with shooting readers again. Every mission was just more shooting. That was the gameplay extent of the entire game.

Sure there was shooting in the previous games, but they seemed like adventure/exploration games with shooting elements. ME3 is a shooting game with the story sprinkled here on top of it.

And what's with the music? They used the music form ME1 which just reminded me of the superior game...which I was not playing.

I played the PS3 version, does the citadel in other versions also run at 15 fps too?

ME3 plays like a knock off ME game made by Gameloft.

Magic Ovaries out.

 

[BabeSlayer]

Finished ME3 and wtf, it was a shooting game! Where were the interesting characters, the beautiful environments, the exploration, the amazing dialog tree from the previous games?

From the start I was shooting the reapers, then moved on to shooting Cerberus clone army then ended with shooting readers again. Every mission was just more shooting. That was the gameplay extent of the entire game.

Sure there was shooting in the previous games, but they seemed like adventure/exploration games with shooting elements. ME3 is a shooting game with the story sprinkled here on top of it.

And what's with the music? They used the music form ME1 which just reminded me of the superior game...which I was not playing.

I played the PS3 version, does the citadel in other versions also run at 15 fps too?

ME3 plays like a knock off ME game made by Gameloft.

Magic Ovaries out.

What....I don't even know how to respond to this. Maybe just a few names Mordin, Wrex, Tali.....LEGION some of the best ME moments. I understand not loving the ending but man there were some seriously awesome parts of ME3 IMO

 

[shinobi602]

Alright guys, I'm going to send another question Yanick's way. Anything in particular you want to ask?

It's hard to really know what he can and can't answer yet, but it seems a more general question can be answered. Graphics, general gameplay inquiry, etc?

 

[Bisnic]

Alright guys, I'm going to send another question Yanick's way. Anything in particular you want to ask?

It's hard to really know what he can and can't answer yet, but it seems a more general question can be answered. Graphics, general gameplay inquiry, etc?

What's the name of that guy who made most of the soundtrack of the trilogy? Sam Hulick? I wonder if he can answer whether or not he'll be back.

 

[shinobi602]

What's the name of that guy who made most of the soundtrack of the trilogy? Sam Hulick? I wonder if he can answer whether or not he'll be back.

I can tell you right now that's definitely not something he's going to answer lol. So many devs keep the composer of their soundtrack a hugely guarded secret for some reason.

Something more general would be better...

 

[Bisnic]

I can tell you right now that's definitely not something he's going to answer lol. So many devs keep the composer of their soundtrack a hugely guarded secret for some reason.

Something more general would be better...

Well then, there isn't that many questions you can ask. Might as well go with : "Will krogans headbutt people again?"

 

[shinobi602]

Well then, there isn't that many questions you can ask. Might as well go with : "Will krogans headbutt people again?"

I've asked him if they're wanting to make customization and/or RPG mechanics more in-depth over ME2/ME3.

 

[Bisnic]

I've asked him if they're wanting to make customization and/or RPG mechanics more in-depth over ME2/ME3.

I already got the answer for you : "Sorry, i cannot say anything about that."

 

[shinobi602]

I already got the answer for you : "Sorry, i cannot say anything about that."

Lol, I think that's general enough

We'll see.

 

[Patryn]

Alright guys, I'm going to send another question Yanick's way. Anything in particular you want to ask?

It's hard to really know what he can and can't answer yet, but it seems a more general question can be answered. Graphics, general gameplay inquiry, etc?

I'm sorry to say, but right now he'll only answer stuff that is not really important, and he'd probably hedge his answer anyways.

We're not going to get any real and serious answers until the PR plan says it's time to reveal that information.

 

[shinobi602]

I'm sorry to say, but right now he'll only answer stuff that is not really important, and he'd probably hedge his answer anyways.

We're not going to get any real and serious answers until the PR plan says it's time to reveal that information.

I'm expecting that. It's still nice to talk to him.

 

[dark_prinny]

I really wanted to like these series. I tried. And I failed, miserably.

 

[royalan]

I really wanted to like these series. I tried. And I failed, miserably.

Well, thanks for letting us here in the appreciation thread know.

 

[dark_prinny]

Well, thanks for letting us here in the appreciation thread know.

I'm saying it like a compliment. I mean I'm a sci-fi whore, an RPG whore and even the best of the three games ( The first one ) didn't click with me for some reason.

I should give them another go, but I don't think is the best time at the moment.

 

[Just_myles]

I know the next-gen ME will look amazing. I just hope that it recaptures what made the original so amazing. Go back to those ideas that they couldn't implement in the past games or something.

 

[i-Lo]

They need to do better with NPC models esp, the ones who will speak. Granted it is better than Kotor where it was galaxy of clones but it still has some ways to go esp. in the dead eyes department:

 

[Kadayi]

They need to do better with NPC models esp, the ones who will speak. Granted it is better than Kotor where it was galaxy of clones but it still has some ways to go esp. in the dead eyes department:

They'll be on a new engine and it will be next gen so say goodbye to the same six haircuts in the galaxy and all the other bugbears of low palette options. Not to say everything will be unique, but there would be a lot more variety for sure. Also better animations etc I imagine.