Review Twenty-Sided nitpicks Mass Effect

[DarkUnderlord]

Tags: Mass Effect

<a href="http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=2069">Part 1 of Nitpicks against Mass Effect: Dialogue, Inventory, Mini-Game</a>:
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<blockquote>In the past, dialog-driven games have offered you a bunch of possible answers and left you to read each and every one of them, looking for what you want to say. This is a lot of pointless skimming if you’re just looking for the one that boils down to, “How much will you pay me for killing ten rats?” This breaks the flow of conversation, and all that prose eats up a ton of screen real estate. Mass Effect has a much better system, where you’re offered a very short summary of your answers, and the option to select it appears while the other person is still speaking, letting you get your answer ready before it’s your turn to talk. When it works right it provides a smooth conversation with lots of options that doesn’t require a lot of reading and doesn’t obscure the visuals. You choose your intent and tone, and the dialog flows naturally. Wonderful.
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But there are places where the summary doesn’t match what you actually say, and others where the tone isn’t at all clear. When I see the option to say, “What do you want?”, I can’t be sure if my character is going to say, “Can I help you, sir?”, or, “What do YOU want, anus-face?” They’re usually arranged in order from “nice” to “jerk”, but there are still times where you still can’t figure out what’s going to come out of your mouth when you hit the button. And there are plenty of rail-roadish moments where all of your possible responses are variants on the same stupid question or offensive remark.</blockquote>
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Discuss, anus-faces!
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Spotted @ <a href="http://www.rpgwatch.com">RPGWatch</a>

 

[Jung]

:declineoftherpg:

 

[Multiple Sarcasm]

Discuss

For Pete's sake... Flush it down, already. The game's already had incomprehencibly more attention than it was ever worth.

 

[Volourn]

Kinda like Troika! R00fles! But.. wait.. they've alreayd been flushed. HAHAHA!

 

[oscar]

Kinda like Troika! R00fles! But.. wait.. they've alreayd been flushed. HAHAHA!

 

[janjetina]

In the past, dialog-driven games have offered you a bunch of possible answers and left you to read each and every one of them, looking for what you want to say. This is a lot of pointless skimming if you’re just looking for the one that boils down to, “How much will you pay me for killing ten rats?”

In other words, if you are an ADHD sufferer with the intelligence of a french fry you just had with your supersized Mcshit order.

This breaks the flow of conversation, and all that prose eats up a ton of screen real estate. Mass Effect has a much better system, where you’re offered a very short summary of your answers, and the option to select it appears while the other person is still speaking, letting you get your answer ready before it’s your turn to talk. When it works right it provides a smooth conversation with lots of options that doesn’t require a lot of reading and doesn’t obscure the visuals. You choose your intent and tone, and the dialog flows naturally. Wonderful.

So, we have established that the reviewer is a brain damaged illiterate piece of shit. However, it (the reviewer) offers a good explanation for its state in a previous paragraph - it (obviously literally) "abandoned the way of the Y chromosome", i.e. it became both a retard and a woman at the same time (or, using politically correct terms, it became "chromosomally challenged").

 

[DraQ]

So, we have established that the reviewer is a brain damaged illiterate piece of shit. However, it (the reviewer) offers a good explanation for its state in a previous paragraph - it (obviously literally) "abandoned the way of the Y chromosome", i.e. it became both a retard and a woman at the same time (or, using politically correct terms, it became "chromosomally challenged").

Hardly a surprise, just look at any of the reviews there (including TW).

I'd like to see it play STALKER:CS, though, after all this bitching about STALKER:SoC being too hard even on novice.
Or some other unforgiving game like FFE.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

You will also notice him as more than a massively big Bioware fanboy. A good example is that he doesn't mention the stuff he criticized NWN2 and TW at all in his fapping over Jade Empire.

 

[DraQ]

You will also notice him as more than a massively big Bioware fanboy. A good example is that he doesn't mention the stuff he criticized NWN2 and TW at all in his fapping over Jade Empire.

So it's more like a gigantic faggot, right?
*meme*

 

[Worm King]

Bioware is possibly the worst RPG developer, mainly because it is held in such high regard. The gameplay is nonexistent with generic settings and stupid morality. I played through KotOR and it was one of the worst RPG experiences I have had. Even BG 2 is not good at all because it's a D&D party Diablo, basically.

Bioware, answer me this. Why do you have incredibly large dungeons with enemies that can't even scratch your character? Why are the said dungeons littered with chests that hold a bunch of junk and require either bashing or lockpicking? Why do you have such utterly boring gameplay? Do you REALLY believe that complete absence of challenge is enjoyable?

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

At least BG2 had a number of good fights, lots of stuff to do and a few memorable moments.

 

[DraQ]

BG2 wasn't bad, if you expected just a well done, but still generic DnD romp.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Kinda like how I feel about NWN2 OC.

 

[Rhalle]

What bothers me most about Bioware games is the politically correct atmosphere they all insist a player breathe, something that goes hand in hand with dialogue (and story) refined to the point of flat, formulaic and stupefyingly correct boilerplate. The result is an inevitable cartoony-ness.

In all BW games since BG2, it has been trending this way more and more, and (unfortunately) all imitators of their storytelling and dialogue system have adopted this weird brand of 'morality'-- Fallout 3 is a case in point, but there are many others. (I tried Drakensang last night, and there it all was again; super-refined dialogue trees all tonally the same, grammatically conventional and colorless, the same old cultural Marxist wearing a doublet and longsword speaking like a castrated Shakespeare who got an A+ in Composition II, but with all the interesting stuff pared away.)

The complexity of the DnD number crunching is what gave BW games guts and legitimacy, what stopped them from slipping completely into sap and corniness-- from becoming little more than a cartoon fantasy Days of Our Lives with perhaps five more IQ points.

 

[Ebonsword]

I have to admit, Mass Effect has kind of grown on me since it first came out.

That being said, there are some pretty glaring flaws with it. What I can't believe is that, when the blogger got around to criticizing the inventory system, all he could complain about is the fact that every character has to carry one of each weapon. He seems to have totally missed the highly annoying fact that you can't sort your inventory at all which makes managing it pretty frustrating. This is compounded by the fact that you can only carry 150 items and you can't go more than 10 feet without stumbling across a container with three different weapons in it, so you're always going into your inventory to get rid of unwanted items.

As for the dialogue, maybe I'm in the minority, but I thought that a lot of the Paragon Shepherd dialogue was actually pretty well written. (Well, maybe some of it was a little Stupid Good.) On the other hand, the Renegade Shepherd dialogue was so Chaotic Stupid for the most part that I couldn't even stomach an entire playthrough in that mode.

 

[Volourn]

"What bothers me most about Bioware games is the politically correct atmosphere they all insist a player breathe,"

Huh? ME fuckin' encourages you to be a racist for fuck sakes. Politically correct my fuckin' ass.


Ebonsword: Anyone who defends ME's inventory system is retarded. It actually makes KOTOR's inventory look top notch. L0L

 

[Talby]

Racist against aliens. It's kinda different.

 

[Volourn]

The concept is exactly the same. Only a racist human would think otherwise.

r u wacist?

 

[Talby]

Not really. Aliens are fictional, so Shepard calling an alien a squid-faced monster (or whatever) isn't the same as Shepard calling his CO a nigger. It doesn't have the same impact.

If the aliens landed tomorrow and started hanging around being friendly, attitudes might change so that calling an alien a "greenskin" or a "bug-eye" would be seen the same way as contemporary racial slurs. That's not how it is now, though.

Btw, bonus points for "if you disagree with me you're racist."

 

[Rhalle]

Huh? ME fuckin' encourages you to be a racist for fuck sakes. Politically correct my fuckin' ass.

That's clearly (and it couldn't be much clearer unless they painted it on the side of the Mako) the eeeevil path-- while longsuffering thorugh persecution for the purpose of universal peace and harmony, intergalactic puppy farts and rainbows is the good path; whereas someone like Ashley is eeeevil (as well as vacuous and worthy of emotional manipulation) because she is a de facto bigot.

An 'Evil Power' isn't the problem in a Bioware game. It's Power, period.

Bioware games are awash in PC sensibilities, and they are worse games for it.

 

[Volourn]

"Not really. Aliens are fictional, so Shepard calling an alien a squid-faced monster (or whatever) isn't the same as Shepard calling his CO a nigger. It doesn't have the same impact.

If the aliens landed tomorrow and started hanging around being friendly, attitudes might change so that calling an alien a "greenskin" or a "bug-eye" would be seen the same way as contemporary racial slurs. That's not how it is now, though."

Yup. You are racist. This is exactly what a racist would say.


"That's clearly (and it couldn't be much clearer unless they painted it on the side of the Mako) the eeeevil path"

Not really. You obviously didn't play the game.



"whereas someone like Ashley is eeeevil"

Simply not true. Ashley doesn't come across as neccessarily 'evil' unless you you see things in black and white and claim all racists are evil. Are you Mr. Black And White? As outside of her rcaism she doens't do much 'evil'. In fact, quite the opposite. It's also not like she goes around slaughtering aliens for shits and giggles like your typical KKK member. In fact, she actually works with them.

R00fles!

 

[Talby]

Troll on! ::

 

[aries202]

The whole point in ME is that you by your actions choose who Shepard will be; nice person or not so nice person. Or a racist douchebag; choosing this option calling an alien for a 'squid-faced monster' will probably rumour out through the Galaxy to all alien races in ME. This probably means that you as Shepard will be seen as a racist, hating all aliens. And this will probably (surely?) mean that the alien races in ME will see Shepard, and the human race, in a different light than if Shepard did choose some nicer answers or commentaries throughout his (her) journey through the Galaxy.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

The CnC should be that they see Shepard as so fucking EXTREME that they don't want to mess with him.

 

[kenney bounces]

Compulsory comment about how calling someone names doesn't mean racism.