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Mass Effect 1/2: Under-rated or shit?

sea

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Mayhap I should explain myself better. OP was stating that Mass Effect is less blocky than what came before. I'm arguing that Mass Effect uses the same rigid grid tileset structure that NWN1 uses, as do all Bioware games, including reusing many of those old tileset blocks from NWN1. So, thus, Mass Effect's design is exactly as blocky as all of Bioware's other games, going back all the way to NWN1. Bioware reskins the blocks, adding better textures, but it's the same blocks.
What exactly do you mean by blocks? Do you mean the fact that they have, uh, stairs, floors and walls? Or that the grid size they use is always similar? Or that they copy-paste large swathes of content between games?

I just don't understand how you think any single assets in NWN have been reused for something like Mass Effect. You talk about "reskins" and "better textures" but if that were the case then BioWare games would feature extremely simple, angular geometry with high-res textures plastered over. This is not at all the case, and I'm not sure how "thousands upon thousands of models constructed and textured from scratch" equates to reuse of "tiles." It takes millions of collective hours to produce the art assets for modern 3D games.

Could you give screenshots comparing the reuse of tiles between NWN and Mass Effect 3? Or even Mass Effect 1? As I said, the only BioWare game in recent time that even resembles this is Dragon Age Origins, and only for some of the interior levels.
 

Telengard

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I no longer own any Bioware games. Nor have I played any of their latest, as stated. I suppose I could do a netsearch, and hope someone else has posted some decent screenshots.

It is the dungeons, particularly the caves, where I noticed it. I happened to play one Bioware game right after the other, and started noticing extremely familiar scenery. The example that I gave, where the cave trail peters out above the water, was the first one I noticed. It's essentially a 20x30 room that you encounter several times over the course of one game, and it was also in that other game that I had just played. At first, i thought it was just a quirk of the mind. But once I started looking, I kept finding familiar locations scattered throughout their dungeons.

So I started looking at the structure of their maps, and realized their corridors are all the same 10 foot wide line. Which is when I realized that they still use a grid based structure for their level design. I suppose it may be so that that is what everyone is moving towards. Or rather, back to. But that's not the point I was making. My point is, in using a rigid 10 foot graph-paperable grid, one's dungeons will have the same basic structure game to game. Which means each one will be equally as blocky as the next.
 

sea

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So I started looking at the structure of their maps, and realized their corridors are all the same 10 foot wide line. Which is when I realized that they still use a grid based structure for their level design. I suppose it may be so that that is what everyone is moving towards. Or rather, back to. But that's not the point I was making. My point is, in using a rigid 10 foot graph-paperable grid, one's dungeons will have the same basic structure game to game. Which means each one will be equally as blocky as the next.
You are conflating level design (i.e. the specific layout of levels) with level building (assembling art assets to create a playable space). Tilesets and grids are artistic tools to make it easier to create large levels - they have no bearing, design-wise, on the width of a pathway, or whether or not you see a waterfall at X spot. I would say if any similarities exist between BioWare games, they probably come down to the fact that many of the same level designers were responsible for them, and that the needs of gameplay (larger spaces to accommodate parties of 3-4) impose certain restrictions on the level layouts.

Level designs/layouts:

Secluded-Deception-Canus-Layout.jpg


Level art/construction:

zoomer_37.jpg


Again, the actual level as realised in-game might bear certain trademarks as a result of the needs of the game design itself, and typically developers have a good handle of how big or small levels should be for a given purpose. And yes, designing levels on a grid (paper) can carry over into the actual game if there is little done to change or mask things artistically. But this has nothing to do with whether or not art assets and the tools used to create levels are reused from game to game.
 

Telengard

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It's the basic structure I'm talking about here. Not art assets. Not swords. Not people. Not buildings. The basic background. The way they shape tiers of cliffs. The shape of their dungeons. It's blocky. It's blocky because it's on a 10x10 grid. That's neither inherently good nor bad. It's just blocky. Because it's on a block-based graphable structure. As are many of the old school dungeon RPGs. But if all your games are on that same wide grid, they are all equally blocky.
 

Telengard

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Remember me next time you come to what looks like a it might be a T a short distance above water, but it's not really a T, one way peters out quickly just as it rounds a bend in the rock, the other is the only way you can go. The liquid will be lava, ice, rushing water, still water, etc. The area seems 20x30, though the amount you interact with is small. The piece may have been rebuilt each time they redo their engine, and/or it may be a part of some randomly procedurally generated level design that attaches cave slots, but that's my point. You'll get to see it lots. And will do until they remove that little piece from their dungeon sets.
 

sea

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It's the basic structure I'm talking about here. Not art assets. Not swords. Not people. Not buildings. The basic background. The way they shape tiers of cliffs. The shape of their dungeons. It's blocky. It's blocky because it's on a 10x10 grid. That's neither inherently good nor bad. It's just blocky. Because it's on a block-based graphable structure. As are many of the old school dungeon RPGs. But if all your games are on that same wide grid, they are all equally blocky.
return_to_ostagar_walkthrough_04.jpg


dragon-age-origins-screenshot-forest-path.jpg


MassEffect3%202012-03-14%2014-16-15-35.jpg


MassEffect3%202012-03-11%2020-08-19-53.jpg


jadeempire212.jpg


tos_memes.jpg


I'm... not seeing it.

Remember me next time you come to what looks like a it might be a T a short distance above water, but it's not really a T, one way peters out quickly just as it rounds a bend in the rock, the other is the only way you can go. The liquid will be lava, ice, rushing water, still water, etc. The area seems 20x30, though the amount you interact with is small. The piece may have been rebuilt each time they redo their engine, and/or it may be a part of some randomly procedurally generated level design that attaches cave slots, but that's my point. You'll get to see it lots. And will do until they remove that little piece from their dungeon sets.
And? There are probably dozens of other games that have that exact same type of location - heck, Skyrim reuses it probably 50 times. It's a stock set piece that is often situationally appropriate both for gameplay, narrative and/or artistic purposes. You'd might as well say "remember me the next time you see a BioWare game with a town square in it."
 

Achilles

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I think Mass Effect 1 is underrated and Mass Effect 2 clearly overrated on these forums.
 

Telengard

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And since I must link to pictures, here you go. http://blog.bioware.com/2011/02/16/the-technology-of-dragon-age-ii-–-part-1/

First pic. If you look at the stairs, you will notice the balcony is 10x50. The stair landing is 10x10. The stairs are 10x10. The stair landing below is 10x10. The stairs below that are 10x10. The room below is, hard for me to see, but probably 50x50.

A couple pics down, you will notice some construction platforms. one is exactly 10x10. The others are built around a 10x10 format, but are of a larger size.

The house pic below that has a fireplace that is a 10x10 jut into the room.

in other words. Modular design everywhere. The same modular design they have always used. You can even really see it when you find buildings outside that have fences. Many times the fence will be a perfect grid square with one 10 foot section taken out of the center of one side for an entrance.
 

sea

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in other words. Modular design everywhere. The same modular design they have always used. You can even really see it when you find buildings outside that have fences. Many times the fence will be a perfect grid square with one 10 foot section taken out of the center of one side for an entrance.
I already told you that Dragon Age did this in interior levels. This was done for a few reasons, I imagine.
  1. No geometry in levels themselves to manually model and texture (i.e. engine-level issue dating back to NWN), hence requiring static meshes for walls/floors/etc.
  2. Budgetary. Getting good results out of building levels in a massive game with 50+ hours of content requires some cut corners. If a designer can make a good-looking level in a day even though it's a bit copy-pasta, that's a win. See any Bethesda game for the same approach. I think Dragon Age does a better job of it because it has more variety in base assets.
  3. Laziness on the part of designers. Most of these pieces are meant to fit together because they have trim and other details already on them. You can deviate from them in building levels as much as you want, but you don't have to and you can still get decent results.
  4. Avoiding clipping errors. If two models occupy the same space and have surfaces that intersect (like two floor pieces overlapping), they will flicker when the camera moves as they fight the Z buffer for priority. Having things fit together perfectly means you don't have to tweak every individual object to avoid errors (though I still frequently have to do this in building my own levels because the pieces don't always fit together perfectly for my purposes).
I get what you're saying in that the grid is often fixed width and indeed, this is true. The Deep Roads in Origins, for instance, has all of its smaller tunnels made out of pieces that all link together. However, there are just as many exceptions, and I'm inclined to say that this is done for gameplay reasons (i.e. knowing the right size areas to accommodate different types of gameplay - every hallway needs to be of X width to be able to facilitate 4 player characters running around in it, etc.).

Meanwhile, this stuff only really applies to Dragon Age, KotOR and NWN, because they are all built on the same tech base and of course made by the same developer. Mass Effect does not suffer from this at all, and Dragon Age 2 significantly less so for most locations. Jade Empire avoids it for the most part.

The fact is if you are making a game with 100 levels instead of 10, you simply can't put the same amount of resources into making each and every one of them. I can't think of a single game with as much unique level content that doesn't resort to these sorts of sacrifices.
 

Gregz

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I'm pretty sure I'll get ass-raped for this, but here goes:

My gold standard for corridor shooter 'RPGs' are games like Half-Life 1, Deus Ex, and System Shock 2.

I honestly felt that Mass Effect 1 was a good game, although I haven't bothered to replay it after so many years. Mass Effect 2 was a major step down in my apparently unpopular opinion with the Biodrones. As for ME3, I never played it, and hope I never will.
 

Shadenuat

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ME is Bioware in a nutshell. ME has everything Bioware can do right - amazing presentation, memorable characters, good graphics and decent style, story which keep you going, always some cool music themes. Buuuuut that's it. Unless Bioware borrows some other RPG system, like D&D, there is't much to do in the game beside listening to VO and watching cutscenes. Take a balloon, stick it into glue, then stick into confetti. That's ME - looks pretty, huh? But inside there is just air. And balloon pops when you murder enemy #246695 behind cover and wondering why the hell are you playing this at all. I really don't like ME series.

And I don't really care if it's ME1, 2 or 3. ME2 and 3 are at least short pop-em-moles, while ME1 is probably even a bit worse, because it has that JRPG "+0.000001% bonus damage on my gun" and level-scaled item drops arrrrrrrggggghhhh. I believed otherwise for some time, but now I think no-RPG system at all is much better than terrible RPG-system.
 

Telengard

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Now, Mass Effect changes things up: http://firsthour.net/first-hour-review/mass-effect-2

It allows for more dynamic backdrops, interior placeables, and a less rigid floor level system, and possibly a 5x5 grid (but I don't see it) that together give an air of a much less rigid system. But if you scroll on down to a similar stair scene here, you will find that the space in between the stairs is exactly the same width as the stairs, and that width is also the same as their length. The fence is also on a similar rigid grid line.

Going back up to the door opening, you will notice that the door is two grids wide. Innovative, to be sure. The fence and tile squares are eerily similar in size to the fence and tile squares in the outdoor snow scene.

Then hop over to these: http://www.lumethemad.com/2010/03/0...-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-bioware/

You will find more staircases and walkways of the same size and height with the same kind of landings. They are encased in a far more dynamic presentation, but it's still the same overall structure.

Now, as to reused set pieces, Bioware does that. It's no secret. They also copy/pastad dungeons. Which is what I was saying was their cardinal sin. To save time by reusing set pieces and then to also copy/paste.
 

Turjan

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Now, as to reused set pieces, Bioware does that. It's no secret. They also copy/pastad dungeons.
I don't think anyone denies that part. Probably everyone here heard of the reused dungeons in DA2, where this method ran rampant. You are fighting windmills.
 

sea

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It allows for more dynamic backdrops
Technically, you can do this in Dragon Age just fine. There are spinning windmills for instance, or waterfalls and other moving objects/effects. It's just that they didn't really bother with it much because it doesn't make sense to have space cars and robots everywhere in a medieval fantasy setting. Not to mention of course that creating these objects, animating and scripting them can all take hours and hours of work for even these small incidental background details, and that's time that would be better spent elsewhere in most cases.

interior placeables,
Uh, what? You can place any object in Dragon Age anywhere you want it to go, and while I'm not sure about their other tools I assume it's the same for NWN, KotOR, NWN2, etc.

and a less rigid floor level system,
There is no rigid "floor system"! Pieces of levels are created grid-sized to be snapped together. It still takes time to make complicated and pretty-looking environments, and you can deviate as much as you want. The only drawback, as I have said, is that there is no CSG modeling that lets you make your own modeled and textured objects or surfaces inside the level editor itself - which is really not much of a drawback practically speaking.

Every game these days, if it uses CSG, only does it for very specific things - 99% of what you see is going to be static meshes, because they are faster for the engine to handle and much more detailed. Even the cool stuff you see in a game like Unreal Tournament 3 is usually like 50 unrelated meshes all fused together by a level designer, and that only works in certain situations (like "nondescript futuristic-looking machine-thing").

and possibly a 5x5 grid (but I don't see it)
Snapping to grid is just a feature of basically any level editor. Any editor lets you specify how much you want to snap and many of them let you specify the grid size (including Unreal, which Mass Effect uses). It's almost a necessity when building any sort of rigid structure with straight, man-made surfaces, like buildings. Otherwise you get small but obvious gaps in solid surfaces and misaligned meshes which do not look good at all. Remember, levels are made out of distinct pieces - you have to be clever to mask the rough edges around them (ever notice how so many games have hallways with wall pillars at regular intervals?) and grid-snapping is one of the most basic ways to ensure things fit.

But if you scroll on down to a similar stair scene here, you will find that the space in between the stairs is exactly the same width as the stairs, and that width is also the same as their length. The fence is also on a similar rigid grid line.
So what? Any game has limited art assets! Developers specifically build them to fit together so that they don't waste time positioning every single object to fit each other exactly! That's the entire goddamn point and it's been that way since even the earliest days of 3D level creation! You even see this in Quake or the original Half-Life, right up to today in modern shooters like Call of Duty and Battlefield which otherwise feature incredibly detailed visuals.

Of course some developers will put more time in to hide the grid, but I'll say it again: the grid is just a tool, and being able to snap models together is integral to creating levels efficiently in 3D space. You can by all means go off the grid at any time to place any single object you want any way you want... but it's usually not necessary to do so and meshes are specifically created to fit logically and cohesively together... you know, just like real objects and structures made by human beings. Next time you walk through a suburb or office building... guess what, you're going to see that those real-life architects copy-pasted the shit out of that stuff.

Moreover, if anything Mass Effect's grid-like setup for levels makes more sense in the context of a futuristic world where things would be built prefab for ease of manufacturing and construction, if not outright designed and built by computer. In Dragon Age it makes less sense because it's all medieval-ish huts and castles, but again, name me basically any 3D videogame ever that does not feature these problems. I guarantee you that any game you name will, and if it doesn't appear to then it's only because they had enough time, money and people working on it to paint over everything to disguise it better.

I understand the nature of your complaints, and I agree sometimes BioWare could do a better job in disguising these things (Dragon Age II especially was obviously rushed, which can be seen in how sparse many environments are), but your confusion of terminology and constant backtracking of your arguments , as well as your lack of understanding of the capabilities of the tools at hand, suggests that you have absolutely no 3D level creation experience whatsoever (and probably none with any sort of 3D tools at all for that matter), and are probably talking out of your ass.
 

Telengard

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Interior placeables in the new ones can come in at angles! Though aren't usually from what I saw. I would never try to compare DAII and Mass Effect 2 directly art asset wise, as I skipped them both. I used those because they are the latest (well MEIII is later, but it was too hard to see stuff over the close-ups of people's chests and all the splosions) and I was told I had to illustrate my point. OP was comparing ME to KOTOR. And i agreed that ME is a step up over KOTOR in creating a shell surrounding a level.

I drew on ME2 and DAII to show they use the same size stairs and the same size hallways as each other, and the same structural ideas about using large blocks in building a scene. And in using large blocks to build a scene, they make a blocky scene. They then fill that scene with different assets to make an illusion of less blockiness, but it is still the original blocky scene structure. That they choose to use such large blocks, I don't care. I just point out that since they still do use the same size large blocks, their designs are no more nor less blocky than one another.
 

Papa Môlé

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I don't get really the gripe with 3rd person cover shooters. Seems like someone came up with a clever term and now everyone repeats it but they play almost the same as a third person shooter with no cover. You can still see around corners and have perfect vision when you are behind an obstacle in no cover system games, the only difference is the cover system game has your character press his back against objects and face you (which is a stupid way to take cover but I assume is so you see his face more or something). If you are using a weapon that either requires a lot of movement, like a light-hitting but fast-firing carbine, or a weapon that needs a single precise shot with almost no movement, like a high-powered sniper rifle then you almost never use cover in any meaningful way anyway really. In the former case because you have to constantly move and in the latter because you pick people off before a firefight breaks out usually. In ME, I played an Infiltrator who used pistols and sniper rifles and so this was largely the case for me. If I took cover it was basically to LARP feeling like in an action movie.

Binary Domain was a great cover shooter, outside of the grindy end bosses, but the game was premised on having to move in and out of cover and between different cover so it worked. Problem with most of these games with cover systems is that they aren't premised on such, they are just tacked on because it's the trend or to be more playable with a gamepad. If cover shooters just made more use of this as well as some other elements they'd be fine. Like having full cover (can't get hit) vs. partial cover (some protection but still can get hit), hard cover (doesn't degrade) vs soft cover (can be destroyed, which a few do have), didn't allow you character perfect ambidexterity (so firing from around a left corner if a righty was more awkward or required exposing yourself more), allowed or required some manual leaning instead of just popping out perhaps, and finally just blurred the background vision when your LOS is being blocked they'd be more interesting.

ME though I don't think would work as a cover shooter period. I had to pause the game to bring up the HUD menu literally every 2-3 seconds to command my followers, either in movement or powers so the game played like a crawlingly slow real-time with pause if I wanted to take advantage of my or my squadmates techs/biotics which was really the only thing that made combat sort of tactical and fun. Actually it's a good example of why party-based RPGs should just be turn based to begin with. The AI isn't competent enough to use its own abilities well, and even it was, it's more enjoyable to set up tactics yourself (ordering say one guy to dampen and another lift at the same time on an enemy group of biotics-tricky to do in rt). Indeed, I thought the character system and combat techniques in ME had some promise but they were crammed into a genre where they were far less than optimal. Now, a JA-type TB squad combat game with sci-fi and psi powers could have been pretty cool.
 

Roguey

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I don't get really the gripe with 3rd person cover shooters. Seems like someone came up with a clever term and now everyone repeats it but they play almost the same as a third person shooter with no cover. You can still see around corners and have perfect vision when you are behind an obstacle in no cover system games, the only difference is the cover system game has your character press his back against objects and face you (which is a stupid way to take cover but I assume is so you see his face more or something). If you are using a weapon that either requires a lot of movement, like a light-hitting but fast-firing carbine, or a weapon that needs a single precise shot with almost no movement, like a high-powered sniper rifle then you almost never use cover in any meaningful way anyway really. In the former case because you have to constantly move and in the latter because you pick people off before a firefight breaks out usually. In ME, I played an Infiltrator who used pistols and sniper rifles and so this was largely the case for me. If I took cover it was basically to LARP feeling like in an action movie.
The big issue with cover is what it does to enemy AI. Pop the heads when they poke out. "You're not the mole getting popped" as skyway once said.
 

Papa Môlé

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I think this is mostly in people's heads though. In third person shooters with no cover, the moles are mostly out in the open for you to pop and maybe they strafe a bit. In cover system the moles pop in and out from an object instead of strafe. Seems like a very marginal difference to me. The big problem is that in both types I always have perfect situational awareness (which dots for enemy radar blips makes even worse).

Edit: On the other hand, third person comes closer IMO to simulating peripheral vision and how easily a human can move his eyes and neck to adjust vision, as opposed to the tunnel vision, and usually the requirement of turning your whole body too, first person has. I just wish they'd make a third person game that took LOS into account properly.
 

Ermm

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I don't want to call ME shit, because then I would be already overrating it. Back in 2007/08 this thread would be axed already, but it seems that Biosheeps does it's infiltration well in Codex.

Anyone who says in this thread that ME or DA is anything except shit is a AIDS-infested schmuck.
 

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