Game News Mass Effect Universe better than Lightsabers+Jedi Powers?

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Tags: BioWare; Mass Effect; Mass Effect 2; Mass Effect 3

Learn, over at a site called PopBioEthics, why the Mass Effect universe is better than StarTrek, StarWars and the Dune Universe combined. Also, this other universe, with the foundation and Hari Seldon and in the end it was the robots who planned this all the time. Anyway, apparently the Mass Effect universe is more important than any of those.

Mass Effect’s deep decision-making system is finely tuned to draw out realistic responses from players. During an interview I had with Daniel Erickson, lead writer for Star Wars: The Old Republic, he revealed two key elements of BioWare’s process that makes their games ideal for ethical exploration. The first is that quality voice acting triggers complex emotional responses in players. The second is that allowing players to choose their next line in conversation based on emotion, not the precise words written down, creates a huge level of investment by the player in the main character.

Jesus, this Erickson dude is a fucking genius.

I’m not saying that Mass Effect provides any answers. The value of Mass Effect as a science fiction universe is that it is a critical starting point for discussion about the purpose of humanity in a materialistic universe. Without an answer to that question, there is no real reason for Ender to defeat the Buggers, or for humanity to seek out new life and new civilizations, or for us to not let non-organic life be the torch bearer for intelligence in the universe. Mass Effect confronts us with a female hero of our own creating, with the deepest implications of diversity, with the most dramatic questioning of the value of what it means to be human. Whether you are a feminist, a transhumanist, a theologist, a proponent of space exploration, a pacifist, a human exceptionalist, a bioethicist, a scientist, or a philosopher, Mass Effect demands you rethink your world.

More random Mass Effect news:

- Mass Effect 3 "Take Earth Back" Cinematic Trailer

- Editorial on Gameranx, Mass Effect Jumped the Shark.

The big plot reveal of Mass Effect 2 was (spoilers haha) that those pesky Collector guys were abducting humans to turn them into DNA pulp to—you guessed it—build a human shaped Reaper—one of those giant robo squids—out of that pulp. Let me tell you my reaction to that big reveal of what Mass Effect 2’s suicide mission and all that buildup of tension was all about. First, I yelled “what is this bullshit?” at the TV. Then I paused the game as the giant Terminator / boss from Contra fight came up. Then, again, I yelled “what IS this bullshit!?” at the TV.

It couldn’t have been worse, had that “Human Reaper” sported a big, red clown nose. That shot one-hit-kill attacks.
I felt betrayed. Mass Effect 2 had its moments, I won’t deny that. A lot of the side stories which made up almost the entire game were pretty well done in and on themselves. And then that. That was the best the BioWare writers could come up with? Really? This reduced to entire main mission of Mass Effect 2 into one giant pile of utter rubbish. It couldn’t have been worse, had that “Human Reaper” sported a big, red clown nose. That shot one-hit-kill attacks.

- Mass Effect 3 interview at the BioBlog

Exactly how extensive is weapon customization? Will it be available in multiplayer mode?

CG: “If you love the M-8 Avenger you can level it up and mod it to be a competitive end game weapon, the choice is in your hands.” Players can literally handcraft their favorite weapons around their playstyle, build and preference in both MP/SP. With over 40+ weapons and 50+ weapon mods in Mass Effect 3 we pushed very hard to ensure there is zero difference between weapons/mods in Single Player vs. Multiplayer, they are the exact same.

Why yes, it must have been one hell of an effort to make the weapons exactly the same. They pushed hard.

Thanks to shihonage.

 

[adure]

i thnik i lost some IQ puints wehile raeding this shit

 

[Fens]

Mass Effect is epic. It’s the product of the best parts of Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica and more with a protagonist who could be the love-child of Picard, Skywalker, and Starbuck.

these are the first sentences of that article... i couldn't read further... i still need my screen and can't punch it all the time, please think of my screen !

 

[hoopy]

Despite writing at the turn of the last century, H.P. Lovecraft’s Cosmicism is something with which no major narrative of humanity’s journey through the stars has dealt. Until, that is, Mass Effect allowed Sovereign to utter the following sentences:

Organic life is nothing but a genetic mutation, an accident. Your lives are measured in years and decades. You wither and die. We are eternal. We are the pinnacle of evolution and existence. Before us, you are nothing . . . Your civilization is based on the technology of the mass relay, our technology. By using it, your society develops along the paths we desire. We impose order on the chaos of organic evolution. You exist because we allow it. And you will end because we demand it.

In doing so, Mass Effect forces the observant player to ask, “Why fight for survival in a meaningless universe?”

An observant reader would point out that eternal beings aren't killed by Extreme Shepard. He would then ask how Sovereign's speech has anything to do with whether or not the universe is meaningless. Sovereign may claim organic life is just an accident, but nothing indicates he has the answers any more than a college student does after his first philosophy class.

The framework of Cosmicism allows Mass Effect to explore the progression of intelligent life in an incredible way. First, one must accept the premise that the technology to explore the universe is a trap and a structure that forces galactic civilization to follow an invariable path. Like Descartes’ mischievous demon or Hume’s apathetic creator, the universe is indeed the product of an intelligence, but a negligent one at best, a malicious one at worst.

The Reapers didn't construct the universe, they just constructed the mass relays. Sovereign even says the Reapers are "the pinnacle of evolution."

A big problem with this article is that the author doesn't know what he's talking about. And then there's this knee slapper I already talked about in the LOL thread:

The Reapers are biomechanical equivalents of the Elder Gods of H.P. Lovecraft.

Uh huh.

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island in the midst of black seas of infinity and it was not meant that we should voyage far. Some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality that we shall either go mad from the relevation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

Yeah, it’s a war, yeah it’s got giant robots we get to shoot in the face, but there is a human side to the story.

 

[shihonage]

Mass Effect is epic. It’s the product of the best parts of Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica and more with a protagonist who could be the love-child of Picard, Skywalker, and Starbuck.

these are the first sentences of that article... i couldn't read further... i still need my screen and can't punch it all the time, please think of my screen !

Man I know how you feel man.

Mass Effect can only be considered "good sci-fi" by someone who hasn't read a single science fiction book. I shudder at the fact that there are millions upon millions of males in their adolescence, 20s and even 30s whose only exposure to science fiction apparently comes from Bioware-peddled drivel.

As icing on the cake of mediocrity, the ME series actually appears to go derp in a manner similar to DA1--->DA2. Mass Effect 2 eliminated loading elevators (which didn't bother anyone), but to conserve memory they also eliminated weapon holster animations and did something to running animations, and generally, I thought it was just my imagination, but the game actually looked less detailed than the first one. The buggy was gone, the cool music wasn't there anymore, everything became shootery minus the fun...

Everything I've seen of ME3 suggests the game can be summed up by "Shepard epically stabbing wacky aliens in the general facial region".

 

[Morkar Left]

Thanks Biowhore for all the effort you put into your marketing to entertain me that much. And the best thing is you guys even believe what you say.

 

[Ulminati]

Tags: BioWare; Mass Effect; Mass Effect 2; Mass Effect 3

Learn, over at a site called PopBioEthics, why the Mass Effect universe is better than StarTrek, StarWars and the Dune Universe combined.

 

[racofer]

Learn, over at a site called PopBioEthics, why the Mass Effect universe is better than StarTrek, StarWars and the Dune Universe combined.

 

[Spectacle]

It should be illegal to be stupid enough to write shit like that.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

I fear a black hole will form.

 

[racofer]

It should be illegal to be stupid enough to write shit like that.

Oh but think of the freedom of speech! I can write whatever fucked up stuff I want but you should know better as to criticize what I write, you fucking troll.

 

[attackfighter]

- Mass Effect 3 "Take Earth Back" Cinematic Trailer

Reaper's, the most technologically advanced faction in Mass Effect, decide to "destroy" earth by flying in a billion ships and randomly cutting buildings in half with lasers. And their ships perform a synchronized landing. While flying at super duper slow speed. Truly the pinnacle of military efficiency
Oh and Shepard picks up the burnt toy that the child was playing with. SINISTER CONNOTATIONS

 

[snoek]

same ol..
retards gonna retard.

 

[rpgcodexusername]

'Robots that want to kill all humans', is the pinnacle of sci-fi now?

 

[snoek]

I'd like to add:

 

[Ion Prothon II]

And yet another retarded looking child. Why all children in games look as if they got square chromosomes?

 

[Captain Shrek]

Why do we care? Tomorrow we will have a topic for a retarded comment each.

 

[Shiki]

Reaper's, the most technologically advanced faction in Mass Effect, decide to "destroy" earth by flying in a billion ships and randomly cutting buildings in half with lasers. And their ships perform a synchronized landing. While flying at super duper slow speed. Truly the pinnacle of military efficiency
Oh and Shepard picks up the burnt toy that the child was playing with. SINISTER CONNOTATIONS

Damn it, in Mass Effect 1 just to defeat a single, lone reaper it took a huge fleet from both aliens races and humanity AND attacking the reaper while it was busy taking over the citadel controls. How could Shepard, in ME3, have enough time to save the earth when a FLEET of reapers have already landed ? it should have ended right in the intro, with the Normandy getting shred to 1 milimeters pieces as soon as it tries to flee back to space. The original Normandy was defeated by a lesser enemy in the intro of mass effect 2 !
This is the worst case of retcon by bioware, ever. Because tbh I think that the original ME setting had potential. The execution was crappy (no sense of urgency, cloned, identical environments in most sidequests/planets apart from the main quest, shitty characters) but the setting wasn't all that bad. At least compared to other mainstream shit like Star Wars, which is basically fantasy in space. Fuck jedis, and fuck the force.

And the intro with the kid felt a bit like they wanted to copy the new trend set by Call of Duty, beginning the game with some appalling shock scene that is supposed to evoke emotion for teh pixels. Meh. Wouldn't be past Bioware to be trying to pull the CoD and gears of war audience.

 

[Aldebaran]

"Hey guys, on Wikipedia I read about this guy called 'Harry Shelton(?)'. He was a psychiatrist. Totally not as cool as Shepard."

I can't understand anyone who honestly believes this. Even a single episode of Star Trek has more to say about human nature, philosophy, what have you, than the entirety of the Mass Effect series. Sure, Mass Effect might reference large, relevant, already well worn ideas, but if the writer isn't willing to explore these ideas, then their work contains only two things: Jack, and shit--and Jack got banned from the forums for being twelve.

At least, as far as big ideas are concerned.

If Bioware really cared about making "deep" science fiction of the likes of the big three, and refused to work in any other industry, then they would make Adventure games: the abandoned step child genre whose mechanics did not revolve around killing hordes of enemies. It is the genre where you don't need to include action modes, skeletor reapers, and close up execution sequences. It would be the perfect genre to explore an idea, and make a point.

As it is, I will be generous and say that one quarter of the game is dialogue. The remainder of the game is spent performing typical game actions that might as well be saving a princess. The lion's share of the dialogue is exposition for the loose plot, characters, and history. These "big ideas"? Side quests or, if they are unfortunate enough to be a diversion in the main plot, completely irrelevant thanks to appeasement of people who played either saint or asshole Shepard. Essentially then, what this all boils down to is a survey tacked onto a sixty dollar game which you must complete in order to progress. Thanks for your input bioware, I was really unsure of where I stood on the issue of genocide, or helping sick people at the wave of a hand.

To be clear, I have no problem with the writing in Mass Effect if people are willing to admit that it is only a game story: there have been plenty of better games with worse writing. Opinions like the one in the article are just mind boggling.

 

[Jaesun]

To be clear, I have no problem with the writing in Mass Effect if people are willing to admit that it is only a game story: there have been plenty of better games with worse writing. Opinions like the one in the article are just mind boggling.

People keep forgetting that Mass Effect has always been a B Sci-Fi movie. It's not SERIOUS BUSINESS THE GAME.

 

[Stinger]

DELIBERATELY BAD IS STILL BAD.

 

[treave]

Despite writing at the turn of the last century, H.P. Lovecraft’s Cosmicism is something with which no major narrative of humanity’s journey through the stars has dealt. Until, that is, Mass Effect allowed Sovereign to utter the following sentences:

Organic life is nothing but a genetic mutation, an accident. Your lives are measured in years and decades. You wither and die. We are eternal. We are the pinnacle of evolution and existence. Before us, you are nothing . . . Your civilization is based on the technology of the mass relay, our technology. By using it, your society develops along the paths we desire. We impose order on the chaos of organic evolution. You exist because we allow it. And you will end because we demand it.

In doing so, Mass Effect forces the observant player to ask, “Why fight for survival in a meaningless universe?”

Why fight?

Because it is the only thing we can do - we fight, or we die.

 

[Mozgoëbstvo]

But Mass Effect IS, in the truest and most essential way - that is, the figure of the space captain - the successor to the original Star Trek.

Painted in next gen AWESOME!, captain "extreme" Shepard embodies Kirk's principle of being sometimes roguish, sometimes hammy and sappy, but most important of all, kicking alien arse and boning indiscriminately all sentient lifeforms in the galaxy.

 

[bhlaab]

Mass Effect is more important than all the stuff it ripped off

 

[Ion Prothon II]

The article is shit, but I could partially agree with the thread title idea. The setting presented in ME was quite rich and much less kitschy- looking than SW universe (inb4 KOTOR rip-off with cosmetic changes)... as for 1-shoot popamole with RPG elements, which was ME1 in 2006.