The Artisan
Member
lol yeah but...femshep was never a dlc was she? I thought every single game always gave you the option from the getgo to be male or female.
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The Mass Effect Community Thread
- Thread starter shinobi602
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shinobi602
Member
Lol, he's joking...
I thought he meant "lock" as in, "I'm going to use femshep all the way"
Hasn't Bioware said that ME4 is a new galaxy? Or implied it?
If I'm mistaken, I'm sorry.
The Artisan
Member
oh, my bad then.
ah, alright. well there's that then.
I don't know. as far as I know they haven't said anything about a new galaxy but from that short clip they showed the yelling krogan in what could be presumed as Tuchanka.
The only thing that implied it's a new galaxy is the galaxy map (if that's what it's supposed to be) not looking like the milky way.
JohnnyFootball
GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
The Artisan
Member
yeah, this is pretty much what I meant with legion turning in Me3. although there was some sort of linkage between him and the reapers iirc, not sure what it was supposed to be though.
JohnnyFootball
GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
I do appreciate that many of us are discussing the other flaws in ME3 aside from the ending.
I do have to wonder how much EA affected the game design.
I do have to wonder how much EA affected the game design.
The Artisan
Member
the guy who did the indoctrination documentaries said that ea was also rushing bioware to finish the game, so the time pressing might've been a contributing factor
Yeah that's what I mean by budget constraints, but the blame falls on BioWare, too. If EA gives you 2.5 years to make a game, you shouldn't set out to make a game that takes 3.5 years.
This is pure speculation, but I always felt like EA may have encouraged some weird pandering stuff that made it into the third game like EDI's design and the boob armour with clearly increased cup size. It felt very non-Bioware to me and I want to blame EA for those things but honestly, I don't know who was responsible. I also realise it's not game design so much as troubling little details.
The pandering's been there since ME1, even before EA was involved. See: anything related to the Asari, ever.
JohnnyFootball
GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
I think EA is very much to blame for trying to make it appeal to a wider (aka CoD) audience.
Now, I will NEVER hold it against anyone to try and expand the audience, but it should never be done at the expense of alienating the audience that got you where you were.
However, the sexualizing is not something I agree with since the Asari were major sexual and that was before the EA days.
Yeah, that's fair enough - I never really paid attention to the asari but I suppose they are very much the sexy space babes. Perhaps the other things I mentioned weren't intentional either, they just stuck out (haha) on a personal level especially compared to the first game.
And yes, definitely agreed that EA were aiming to broaden the appeal to a more general audience at expense to the fanbase.
The Artisan
Member
I was taken aback when I started uop Me3 and had the :action, rpg, and story options for playing the game. I don't think that should've ever been there.
It does show a very weird lack of confidence in your own game to offer new players the option to actually skip half of it either way.
You look at that, and then what games like Skylines, Bloodborne, PoE and others are doing and wonder whether EA is trying too hard to capture new audiences by doing what they *think* new audiences want, rather than just designing really good products and building the audience for those.
Why would you want to remove an option ?
Because the Action option is downright antithetical to what the game is about. RPG and Story are basically just Normal and Easy in disguise. Action is something else entirely.
It's a theory, but I can easily see a correlation between the streamlining of dialogue options down to 2 in every situation and a setting that removes the player's ability to select dialogue options.
Indeed. I understand the sentiment of not wanting to alienate those who don't like action with the combat-free option, but it's a really odd thing to do later in the series rather than include from the beginning. Besides, the combat is really manageable on low difficulties, even for people new to the TPS genre.
As for stripping out the story elements, that is just straight-up trying to appeal to shooter fans who I'm not sure would be looking at space opera RPGs in the first place (especially considering how poor combat was in the first game).
JohnnyFootball
GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
Yeah, I was concerned when I heard that the game would have an action mode.
The Artisan
Member
this is something else which is kinda nitpicky because it didn't really bother me but just something I noticed that felt shoehorned in. ashley became a romance option for femshep and kaidan became a romance option for shepard. it's fine that they wanted to broaden the appeal to a wider audience and obviously the kaidan/ashley romance opportunities in Me3 are still optional and not needed, but it feels forced because they weren't romance options for the same-sex shepard in Me1.
Ashley is not a romance option for FemShep.
The Kaiden stuff is stupid beyond belief, based on his characterization in the previous games.
I know this is just hypothetical but:
It was the first game of this kind for BioWare, a finale for a trilogy.
Game Development is not an exact science. EA should know better than release a game a year early. They have so many corpses of former game studios on their hands, most of which rushed their final games.
Though I doubt that anything like that actually took place. Just look at DA:I. BioWare needed time and the game was essentially given half a year extra time. Either EA has learned a bit from DA2 or BioWare has gained more importance within EA.
It's because they wanted to give players another same-sex option for male Shepard, and he was the only feasible option. As somebody who played through as a gay male Shepard, I would have been pissed if dead-husband-McGee was my only option through the entire trilogy.
I have no problem giving multiple same-sex options to a player. I just think that Kaiden was not a good choice to fill that role, given what we know about him.
What's wrong with Vega? He doesn't have a history that would be in conflict with the option.
If you want someone from a previous game, what about Kenneth?
Even Joker would have worked better, as prior to ME3 he hadn't really expressed a preference one way or the other.
Both Ken and Joker have shown attraction to females only in the past games. They're also not squadmates. And as for James Vega: take a look at him. You think they would make somebody like that a m/m romance?
Why not Vega?
And I don't recall Ken or Joker showing attraction in the previous games. Remind me?
The Artisan
Member
I felt similarly about the new administrative assistant on the normandy. I forget her name, the woman with the really expensive toothbrush, who replaced yeoman chambers.
oh she wasn't? I thought she was.
this. you said it in a nutshell. but ultimately what made it feel forced to me was that he wasn't a romance option in Me1.
yeah, I was about to say if it's just us giving bioware the benefit of the doubt with the things wrong with Me3. like, we're also just presuming they made bioware do the 3 options at the start of Me3 but we don't know for sure.
with that being said, in response to you saying bioware tackling an idea they planned to put forth in practice that would've taken at least an extra year with all the care, I for one would've much preferred them to have ended Me3 with a "to be continued" rather than the rgb, honestly. I know i'm probably the only one thinking this way but I'd rather have a straight up cliffhanger than the ending we were dealt.
Well, Ken's obvious flirting with Gabby, for once. And EDI in ME2 talks about how Joker finds women in power attractive.
Vega looks and acts like he was brought in to appeal to a very specific demographic. You know the one.
The needed someone to replace and perform the same function as Kelly because there was a high likelihood that Kelly would be dead for a large amount of players, given that she is the first crew member to die if you don't immediately go to the Omega 4 relay.
I always saw the Ken/Gabby thing more as a sibling relationship, personally.
As for Vega, that is why he would have been the perfect option. Make people reconsider their preconceptions.
People say this all the time and I always feel like he was better than that.
The Artisan
Member
if that's the case why couldn't they just make it so that kelly is still your aa in Me3 if she survived? that would've been neat rather than giving a new character to replace her role in its entirety from the past.
I explained why in what you quoted:
There is a high likelihood that she is dead for most players. It's cheaper to just make a new character that everyone sees rather than spend the resources creating content for two characters that would split the player base.
Regardless, I quite liked Traynor. Frankly she was better than Kelly.
Poodlestrike
Banned
Ditto. A lot of people wrote him off based on appearance and general attitude, but dude had some depth.
Maybe not directly pandering, but the entire game he felt barely there as a character, especially past the first couple of missions. It just felt like there were alterior motives for his inclusion, you know?
He was better than fucking Kaiden and Jacob, thats for sure. James was doomed by the game he was in to go under developed.
Which is why making him a MaleShep romance option would have been a great idea. It would have given him a lot more depth, especially later on.
No what would have given him more depth is if he had several games and a personal mission in order to develop instead of the other two wastes of space that previously occupied his role.
The Artisan
Member
agreed. I know most people probably hated and despised james but for the most part he was one of my favorite new characters and squadmates to use in Me3.
alright, fine. that makes sense, and it's cool that you liked traynor more, but I still would've liked kelly back more.
Poodlestrike
Banned
I kind of liked that he was too intimidated by Shepard to be romanceable. Nice little twist.
Keep in mind he pretty much drools over EDI and shamelessly flirts with FemShep and Ashley in the third game. If he was open for male Shepard, it would be the standard Bioware I-prefer-the-opposite-gender-but-will-make-an-exception-for-you schtick.
Well, if he was an option all that drooling wouldn't be in.
The Artisan
Member
i think james should've been a femshep romance option too. I think taking up that option and watching it play out would've been interesting.
Actually I really enjoyed flirting with James as female Shepard and it not going anywhere - he was such a tease! But perhaps if he had been available and handled well (like if he played hard to get for a while or was emotionally distant) that could have been nice.
I wound up romancing Traynor in the end because she was smart and cheeky. Far more interesting than Liara (as much as I liked her too).
I like romances but found it quite unnatural how quickly the characters would fall for Shepard; hopefully this is improved in the next game. A couple of romance paths in DA:I were very well done, and locking out certain characters depending on gender and species was a good move in my opinion.
I wound up romancing Traynor in the end because she was smart and cheeky. Far more interesting than Liara (as much as I liked her too).
I like romances but found it quite unnatural how quickly the characters would fall for Shepard; hopefully this is improved in the next game. A couple of romance paths in DA:I were very well done, and locking out certain characters depending on gender and species was a good move in my opinion.
I like the fact that he isnt interested/is intimidated by Shepard. Not every character should be on the table. Otherwise it gets contrived, like in DA2 where everyone seemed to be on the table and also bisexual.
More of a Schrodinger's kink situation with everyone except Isabela but the less said about that the better.
The Artisan
Member
yeah, I agree that not every character should be on the table but then again they made it so for kaiden a new same-sex love interest when he wasn't one in the first place.
Sebastian?
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