Mass Effect Legendary Edition remaster trilogy

[Heroic Liberator]

Staring at sculpted male butts is totally guilt-free

 

[Lodis]

I never had a reason to play as femshep in the original trilogy and I still don't have a reason to play as her in the remaster. All the armor looks better on maleshep and he gets all the bitches.

Also Mark Meer's voice acting starts out weak because he was a newbie in the first game but by the third game he's leagues above Jennifer Hale. Especially with Renegade dialogue. Male Shepard actually sounds intimidating, female Shepard looks and sounds like a stripper trying too hard to be badass.

 

[Lemming42]

Meer's performance does step up by the third game and he loses much of the "trying not to laugh" aspect of his performance, but I still can't take him seriously. Doesn't help that with maleshep, you're more or less forced to use the default head, because any custom head you make will look like a thalidomide baby with downs syndrome, but the default head makes me laugh too. He looks like one of those guys you see trying to sell "weed" (actually tea leaves) in ziploc bags round the back of football stadiums at night. I definitely don't find him intimidating in either appearance or voice.

Hale does fail to sell a lot of the Renegade lines in ME2 or ME3, but she can sound genuinely threatening in ME1 at times, when the dialogue is a bit more understated and less cartoonish. She plays it slightly restrained, like Shepard is deliberately holding back but on the brink of snapping. Works well in ME1 but doesn't work at all in ME2 and ME3, where any and all subtlety is gone and the Renegade options turn into deranged threats and dumb postmortem one-liners.

 

[Lodis]

where any and all subtlety is gone and the Renegade options turn into deranged threats and dumb postmortem one-liners.

That seemed to be a problem with Bioware's "red and blue" morality system in general when they still took that approach. I remember with Jade Empire the red path actually had a philosophy behind it that is explained multiple times in the game. But when your character actually chooses those options in dialogue, 90% of the time it's just you acting like an unhinged madman.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

KotOR is the worst offender in that regard imho.

 

[Lemming42]

That seemed to be a problem with Bioware's "red and blue" morality system in general when they still took that approach. I remember with Jade Empire the red path actually had a philosophy behind it that is explained multiple times in the game. But when your character actually chooses those options in dialogue, 90% of the time it's just you acting like an unhinged madman.

Yeah I'm still not really sure what Paragon and Renegade actually are, especially the latter. In ME1 Paragon seemed to be standing up for the values of the Alliance and doing your job properly (acting professionally, limiting casualties, etc) while Renegade seemed to be trying to get yourself court-martialled (acting like a prick to everyone, reckless endangerment of bystanders, making no attempt to de-escalate situations). But in ME2, Paragon is anything from killing "bad" people to lying to a war crimes tribunal to cover up for Tali's dad (why is this "Paragon"???), and Renegade is anything from being a bit brusque with people to actually executing civilians.

That stupid "click now to do something cool!!" feature doesn't help. The concept of being able to perform a decisive non-dialogue action during cutscenes is really cool but the fact you usually have no idea what it'll do renders the entire thing a mess. Click the Renegade option expecting Shepard to yell at someone and she ends up shooting them in the nuts and setting fire to a nearby orphanage.

 

[J1M]

I never had a reason to play as femshep in the original trilogy and I still don't have a reason to play as her in the remaster. All the armor looks better on maleshep and he gets all the bitches.

Also Mark Meer's voice acting starts out weak because he was a newbie in the first game but by the third game he's leagues above Jennifer Hale. Especially with Renegade dialogue. Male Shepard actually sounds intimidating, female Shepard looks and sounds like a stripper trying too hard to be badass.

100% correct.

Meer was hired to record some placeholder lines for the tech demo. The devs were expecting to replace him, but nobody replaces Commander Shepard.

 

[racofer]

Well over a year since the legendary edition release, BiowarEA hasn't patched the lack of proper anti aliasing. And since this prestigious remaster runs in DX11 for whatever reason, one cannot simply force MSAA through driver settings. Unless BiowarEA implements proper TAA directly into the game, this "remaster" will always looks worse than the original games.

 

[jackofshadows]

Also is this a self aware poke at Bioware? Or am I reading too much into it

Spoiler

Rather a poke at "whiny" gamers who are unhappy with the studio course changes.

 

[Caim]

Also is this a self aware poke at Bioware? Or am I reading too much into it

Spoiler

Rather a poke at "whiny" gamers who are unhappy with the studio course changes.

Nah, it's just proof that even two centuries in the future the Codex persists and we have branched out to include aliens.

Remember: everyone is welcome on the Codex as long as they can half-heartedly pretend to have played old RPGs.

 

[Mauman]

Having grown up with a Marine (who served in Vietnam) for a father....femshep sounded TOO emotive. Soldiers who've seen shit and still function tend to be very controlled, or at least based on what I've seen with my father and his friends.

I had an easier time believing Meer's more wooden performance than Hale's as a combat-experienced Marine commander. In fact, I'd go as far to say that femshep rubs me the wrong way. It just never sounded right to me.

 

[Caim]

Hale's the better Paragon, Meer's the better renegade.

Simple as.

 

[tritosine2k]

Also is this a self aware poke at Bioware? Or am I reading too much into it

Spoiler

Rather a poke at "whiny" gamers who are unhappy with the studio course changes.

Compare (1) or A development time to the rest. That was EA management's doing. So rather not.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

Also is this a self aware poke at Bioware? Or am I reading too much into it

Spoiler

Rather a poke at "whiny" gamers who are unhappy with the studio course changes.

Maybe if it was done now, but that's Mass Effect 2, so they were yet to hear the most of unhappy former fans at that point. They hadn't even had "Awesome Button" happen yet. It's probably two thing, one is them having a little fun with themselves, and the other is a version of his:

 

[Roguey]

Also is this a self aware poke at Bioware? Or am I reading too much into it

They're complimenting themselves while making fun of grognards.

 

[whydoibother]

Commander Shepard, the player-created hero of BioWare's Mass Effect trilogy, began life as a woman, developer Jonathan Cooper revealed on Twitter today.

Cooper is currently an animator on Uncharted 4: A Thief's End at Naughty Dog, but he previously worked at Ubisoft Montreal as the animation director for Assassin's Creed 3, and prior to that, at BioWare as the animation lead on Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2. He said today that 10 years ago this month, he did the first animation test for the character that would become the protagonist of the Mass Effect series.

The 3-second animation, which you can watch below, consists of a character model turning while jogging forward. The character is clearly a woman.

"Yup, Commander Shepard was originally a woman," said Cooper.

That settles it once and for all: FemShep is the one true Commander Shepard.

Hóngwèibīng​

Lemming42​

 

[Lemming42]

Knew it! They likely just had to put a male option in later in development in order to satisfy repressed homosexuals, like Unreal (the game, not the Codex user. Or maybe both).

That said, femshep being the original makes the disparity in quality between the two primary hetero love interests in ME1 quite strange. You'd think Kaiden would get the most development with Ash being more of an afterthought, but instead Ash is a fairly well-drawn and enjoyable character while Kaiden is literally just a man with hair who's essentially only there so you can throw him away on Virmire without a second thought.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

You'd think Kaiden would get the most development with Ash being more of an afterthought

Tell that to the Disciple. (Dunno if the canon gender of the Exile was established in advance of the game's release tho.)

 

[Nano]

That said, femshep being the original

Femshep was not the original. Stop believing the shit you read on game news sites.

 

[whydoibother]

That said, femshep being the original

Femshep was not the original. Stop believing the shit you read on game news sites.

Moids btfo'd!

 

[tritosine2k]

(1) is Drew Karpyshyn's game. There's an early poster with protagonist eerily resembling Drew. Then supposedly EA management took charge of project beginning with (2) in hope for fast profit and recklessly ape-d of Gears of War - hence "visceral combat" ( and CRUNCH).
Hysterics unable to grasp this simple fact still wallowing over Andromeda @ the other thread prove that EA management wasn't entirely wrong with their assessment of playerbase.

EDIT:

 

[Roguey]

Tell that to the Disciple. (Dunno if the canon gender of the Exile was established in advance of the game's release tho.)

It wasn't, that was post hoc canon that isn't even possible in the game (female exile with Handmaiden is what they went with).

 

[Aarwolf]

Then there's that blue alien bitch that everyone fawns about telling me, "OMG! Shepard! Turns out everything we need to know about defeating the reapers is on Mars". Then I was like *facepalm*. How the hell did you miss that in THREE fucking games; her reasoning for why we somehow missed it even though blue skin bitch was researching the reapers AND has the database of Shadow Broker at her disposal - It was so bad I just couldn't after that.

I missed it, I never gave it any thoughts, but of course you're right. She's so utterly useless as a researcher and as an information broker it hurts.

 

[Duraframe300]

Fun Fact: If you want to get all codex entries in the first Mass Effect you have to romance blue bitch.

 

[Lacrymas]

Kaiden is literally just a man with hair who's essentially only there so you can throw him away on Virmire without a second thought.

Huh, I thought the exact same thing about Ashley.