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The Mass Effect Community Thread
- Thread starter shinobi602
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Reckless Onion
Member
I like this about them, though. I get the impression it's a deliberate design choice, to really drive home the point that they weren't originally intended to be the pathfinder, and are just young soldiers (or, rather, people with some military training) thrown into something bigger than them.
It's thematically consistent, in my eyes, tying in with the larger concept of going to an entirely new galaxy (in an entirely new chapter of the franchise). We're tiny, we're nobodies, appearing in this new, huge, established place; Sara and Scott are relatively unremarkable people thrust into this relatively remarkable situation, and them looking 'ordinary' (although they're still both attractive) just reinforces that idea.
Watch how she can lift an unconscious guy in full body armor like it weight nothing like FemShep used to do.
Watch how she can lift an unconscious guy in full body armor like it weight nothing like FemShep used to do.
Is there any exoskeleton properties to suits and armors in ME universe, from lore perspective? Even femShep is on skinny side for being professional soldier, but still is fast and quite strong for her size.
Poodlestrike
Banned
I do agree with this. Not necessarily that it looks worse, but that they don't look as special. I don't know if I'd call that a downside necessarily, though. Shepard looked special and he WAS special. It played into his Chosen One thing. The Ryders look more normal, which seems like it might fit their role in the story, assuming Bioware's telling the truth about the plot not being about saving the galaxy or anything on that scale.
I really enjoyed all the positive feedback during the combat and skill profile videos. Trolls and shitposters being buried under positive comments, it was great.
I think this preview video has nothing interesting to offer, all I saw was boring combat (I blame the player), characters never shut up, scan this, scan that, hand holding and terrible AI. This leads to frustration and the negative wave begins, amplified by the regular shitposting.
That's the only positive point I saw. The weight of your armor and how your body and legs react to the environment... and that's all.... IMO.
Fucking LOVE the footwork there. And agreed that the player contributed to the combat looking boring, they basically just bruteforced their way through, with very little interesting play.
It does, yeah. She's pretty slim, and unlike a lot of the other armors we've seen this one doesn't have a lot of mid-body coverage, so there's a big honking chunk of armor up top and on bottom, which throws it into pretty stark contrast.
Some, but not all. Adding powered armor was a mod in 1, and there were pieces that increased strength in 2 and 3. I think that all armor is at least semi-powered, though, just to support its own weight, which has a side effect of mildly increasing the wearer's output strength.
Royal_Phalanx
Member
I really enjoyed all the positive feedback during the combat and skill profile videos. Trolls and shitposters being buried under positive comments, it was great.
I think this preview video has nothing interesting to offer, all I saw was boring combat (I blame the player), characters never shut up, scan this, scan that, hand holding and terrible AI. This leads to frustration and the negative wave begins, amplified by the regular shitposting.
That's the only positive point I saw. The weight of your armor and how your body and legs react to the environment... and that's all.... IMO.
Wonder how that girl even walks with all that tactical gear on based on how skinny she is.
Also, what's a 'mock review'?
I think the answer is simply that Bioware only though about the male Shep model, animation and "weight balance" when creating the trilogy and simply used the same ones for fem Shep for saving time & resources. They didn't take time to think "Wait, femShep is lifting an armored and unconscious Kaidan on her shoulders like he weight nothing??"
LegalEagleMike
Member
Companies pay for reviews to try and determine how well the game will be received.
prag16
Banned
LegalEagleMike
Member
Shinobi said Horizon mock reviews were great and ME:A were good. Therefore ME:A will review worse than Horizon.
/s
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
When are industry reviews hitting?
I'd be surprised if that wasn't the case. I'm thinking low 80's for Andromeda on metacritic.
If we still don't have reviews for Zelda with less than a week left, I'm guessing Mass Effect will be in the same boat...
LegalEagleMike
Member
That would be pretty bleh as far as Bioware games go. Like Dragon Age 2 was the only game that comes to mind that reviewed low 80s.
shinobi602
Member
It's not nailed down yet but the plan is a good deal before release. Issue is making sure the patch is ready for reviewers.
Anyway, mock reviews are in line with Horizon's mock reviews for the most part. "Good" and "great" are interchangeable. They were great.
Royal_Phalanx
Member
Predicting mid-80s to low 90's for Andromeda based on that info. Signs seem to be good then.
dr_rus
Member
Let's hope that this will be true for real reviews and the game itself. I'm ready to be pleasantly surprised by MEA after all the lackluster showings.
DOWN
Banned
Well we do know that the patch is going to actually go live before EA Access trial, but I believe we've had some EA games in which the EA Access trial has already started while the reviews still aren't out. Often players get to try it themselves before the embargo lifts with how EA Access is structured in relation to embargoes.
moustascheman
Member
Maybe it might be because I don't know how to use it properly, but I feel the exact opposite about annihilation field. On bronze or silver it can be pretty fun quickly chaining together combos with an n7 fury or asari valkyrie, but on gold or platinum I feel that you need to be way too close to use it properly making it pretty useless for me IMO. I honestly prefer the vanilla human adept with his warp + shockwave, sure you can't chain them as quickly but each explosion is stronger as far as I remember.
John Petrucci
Member
Oh, wow. Positivity. This feels good. Why was I in that other thread again?
The visuals in this game are just ridiculously impressive. Loved seeing the squad taking down a single powerful Krogan there at the end of the vid. Reminded me of when we first got Liara at her dig site and had that hell of a fight with that beast Krogan. I loved the challenge of avoiding him on hardcore so he couldn't 1 shot charge me.
From the way things were feeling from fans the media alike, I was expecting it to be around 83/84 ish. Would be nice if it could get into the high 80's or even low 90's.
The visuals in this game are just ridiculously impressive. Loved seeing the squad taking down a single powerful Krogan there at the end of the vid. Reminded me of when we first got Liara at her dig site and had that hell of a fight with that beast Krogan. I loved the challenge of avoiding him on hardcore so he couldn't 1 shot charge me.
From the way things were feeling from fans the media alike, I was expecting it to be around 83/84 ish. Would be nice if it could get into the high 80's or even low 90's.
TheUnsunghero26
Member
It's nice that we are starting to get clips of long interrupted gameplay. What I really want to see is a conversation using the dialogue wheel. I feel like we've seen very little of it in all the videos they've shown.
EatChildren
Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
Only "good" mock reviews? 6/10 confirmed.
I mean this is unfair because there are videos of great players abusing every character on Platinum, but the N7 Fury is definitely Top Tier. She does take some effort to get there though. Since she's squishy you have to be on top of your angles and ready to throw yourself through a wall at any time. That hyper-aggressive playstyle is hard to top. Right up there with the very underrated Slayer Vanguard.
prag16
Banned
Damn. Didn't look at the IGN gameplay trailer thread until now. And I should have stayed here where it's safe. Bioware derangement syndrome continues unabated.
Mad internet points to ThoseDeafMutes though for the timely Monty Python reference. (Only redeeming quality of the last three pages of that topic.)
Mad internet points to ThoseDeafMutes though for the timely Monty Python reference. (Only redeeming quality of the last three pages of that topic.)
DOWN
Banned
AWizardDidIt
Member
Yeah I've been playing Horizon and while I'm enjoying the game so far, no sane person can criticize Andromeda for its animations while giving a pass to Horizon. From my two hours or so of play they seem about equivalent to one another.
Which is fine for reference, I don't mind the facial animations looking a bit funky and the in game animations being sometimes jerky because I'm not a crazy person.
The writing has been pretty stilted but I'm waiting to see if it gets better.
Tekomandor
Member
Watch how she can lift an unconscious guy in full body armor like it weight nothing like FemShep used to do.
Shepard post ME2 is superhumanly strong due to having much of their body replaced with cybernetics. Prior to that, there was a powered armour upgrade in ME1 as well as standard Alliance genemods. Femshep's build is pretty dumb, but it's not like Sheploo could have done any of the feats of strength Shepard pulled off either.
But shouldn't you expect far better from a studio known for rpgs, and the fourth entry in the series? Comparing it to horizons faults better mean andromedas highs are higher than horizons.
John Petrucci
Member
Breadth of content has to be considered as well. I don't know how long Horizon can be when you take your time, but I'm guessing it's not nearly as long and has the amount of dialogue/outcomes that a game like MEA has. Could be wrong...just a hunch.
DOWN
Banned
Mass Effect has to deal with making an animation range that won't fuck up when your character looks nothing like their defaults
They can't guess exactly which lips you chose with what eyes to make it all hit the exact right spots that games with no customization like Witch 3 and Horizon can slide by without. Mass Effect has to be a little looser than we dream of because we might choose big lips or small lips and angry eyes or soft eyes and the dozens of hours of lines are tuned to work as well as they can for dozens of slightly varying faces.
Seems plenty of people were aware DAI was well made and enjoyable based on how successful it was, despite its shortcomings. GAF gave it RPG of the year and 4th best game in 2014 despite many pretending it wasn't a good time when they first beat it.
Mass Effect should easily improve on the DAI tech, and the previews have been very positive.
Negativity is the way when it comes to modern BioWare it seems.
AWizardDidIt
Member
Horizon isn't made by some podunk nobody studio, it's a Sony first party with a number of games under their own belt. These are similarly budgeted games and experience doesn't make up for a difference in what's likely to be significantly more scripted dialogue sequences for Andromeda.
John Petrucci
Member
So true. Very rarely recognized how difficult the face customization options makes things on devs who have to account for all the variations. The facial animations are put squarely up against the W3's,etc of the world when they're not the same thing technically. They're talked about as if they are on absolute equal footing.
EatChildren
Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
I hate to do subposting and always condemn cross thread bitching, but the reality is BioWare threads on GAF and numerous other places on the internet are utterly atrocious. Maybe it's a bias speaking through, but I'd hope not as I like to think I can apply critical thought to even the things I love, but they're routinely a cesspit of pile-on shitposting. Regardless of what reputation BioWare has or has not deservedly earned from their accountable failings and mistakes, those who refuse to treat each new title as its own thing are the loudest chestbeaters in every thread.
It's exhausting, hollow, and futile towards any conductive discussion. And it's so blatantly obvious the standard projected against BioWare and the less impressive qualities of their titles is greatly in excess of the way other developers are treated. The Witcher 3 is one of my favourite games ever made and I have zero belief Andromeda will top that, but I'm not so deluded to ignore the heavily scripted approach to quest design (particular detective vision), rough and reused animations in cutscenes, unusually low quality assets (eg: npc hair), and so on.
BioWare is creating these mammoth action RPGs with an tremendous quantity of asset diversity and playable content, but they're uniquely held to the same standard as a short, tightly scripted, linear project like those from Naughty Dog. If people want to talk the nuances in quest and game system design, character writing and narrative beats, and what does and does not work and more importantly as to all these things why, then I'm open ears. But fuck off with repetitive le mass effect maymay gif XD spam posting and the tired retreads of empty arguments relating to trivial inconsistences with a project made on a development scope that dwarves most others in the industry.
So many are so quick to pile on BioWare yet fail to provide comparison of developers doing consistently better across the board. Often it's a similar level of jank, but ignored or favourited for that developer while BioWare is crucified. It's tiring bullshit.
It's exhausting, hollow, and futile towards any conductive discussion. And it's so blatantly obvious the standard projected against BioWare and the less impressive qualities of their titles is greatly in excess of the way other developers are treated. The Witcher 3 is one of my favourite games ever made and I have zero belief Andromeda will top that, but I'm not so deluded to ignore the heavily scripted approach to quest design (particular detective vision), rough and reused animations in cutscenes, unusually low quality assets (eg: npc hair), and so on.
BioWare is creating these mammoth action RPGs with an tremendous quantity of asset diversity and playable content, but they're uniquely held to the same standard as a short, tightly scripted, linear project like those from Naughty Dog. If people want to talk the nuances in quest and game system design, character writing and narrative beats, and what does and does not work and more importantly as to all these things why, then I'm open ears. But fuck off with repetitive le mass effect maymay gif XD spam posting and the tired retreads of empty arguments relating to trivial inconsistences with a project made on a development scope that dwarves most others in the industry.
So many are so quick to pile on BioWare yet fail to provide comparison of developers doing consistently better across the board. Often it's a similar level of jank, but ignored or favourited for that developer while BioWare is crucified. It's tiring bullshit.
I also can't help but feel as though people take a look at Andromeda with conflicting requests. Meaning, they look at the game and say they can't feel any of the "old magic" or it looks like a "retread" but then go on to complain that the game took away a mechanic or an aspect that they liked and thought was so "Mass Effect" that "how could they take it out?". Some things will change, and some will stay the same. It is not a particularly difficult concept to grasp, especially 5 years later. Besides, coming from a trilogy of games with characters you are familiar with will always hold some meaning over new faces not seen in context and only in small vertical slices. People are obviously going to give their impressions, but I believe there is a lack of perspective in some of them.
John Petrucci
Member
I can't think of one. Bioware seems to be the only one going into the future with it. You've got companies like Obsidian just copying super old school RPG's (no disrespect intended, they're awesome) that have all that player choice diaogue, etc...W3 is of course awesome but you're stuck as one character with hardly any customization.
I don't see anyone besides Bioware trying to take party based Western RPG's to the next level when it comes to player choice/dialogue/character customization. Isn't the amount of lines in MEA supposed to be absolutely mind boggling? I seem to remember hearing some insane number.
And don't worry I'm willing to be an idiot in these GAF MEA threads. Already got killed upstairs for something. Starting to kinda get used to it.
Well said. I agree.
DOWN
Banned
At the end of some of the recent videos they put on YouTube, it had an Little promo at the end saying get a free Nomad skin and it looked kinda chrome. Where do I find that skin?? It said MassEffect.com but I don't see it. It's at the end of this video https://youtu.be/nFMoZGBzAHQ
EatChildren
Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
I don't need to, but I would, ideally a HDR 4K GSync monitor and a 1080 Ti. But I think my 1440p GSync and 1080 are acceptable. I'm going to wait until the aftermarket 1080 Tis hit the market and the monitors have gone through an inevitably questionable QA period. Replay Andromeda and The Witcher 3 in glorious native 4K.
Thanks
I'm in the process of doing this right now...lol. Definitely upgrading from my 970 and thankfully the board partners look like they are putting up their versions on the 10th. I kind of want to move to a mATX case as well so I've been looking at new motherboards which means new CPU and new RAM. I'd love to get in on a HDR monitor too, but that is taking forever and the price makes me want to gouge out my eyes so I guess I can wait on that bit.
So much money. Kill me.
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
980ti will murder it. Running 1080p so there's no need. I can probably supersample and maintain >60fps.
My 980 is gonna be fine. More worried about my 2600k. Gonna wait for origin access to see how it runs before deciding on PS4Pro or PC
Your CPU and GPU are better than the PS4 pro's, go with PC IMO.
Part of why I'm so glad I invested in the PC version of the trilogy is the ability to go back to it on the same platform 5 years later at 4 times the resolution I originally played it at in 4K, with a better framerate, mods, etc.
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