Game News Mass Effect 3 and the Spirit of Streamlining

[KalosKagathos]

In Mass Effect 2 we focused on what we love about action/adventure games: An awesome sense of exploration, intense combat, a deep and non-linear story that's affected by your actions, and rich customisation of your armour, weapons and appearance...

C wut I did?

 

[Drakron]

That reminds me, the concept of C&C affecting game after game needs to die with ME (and I think DA to). WORST FUCKING "FEATURE" EVER!

No.

THAT is one of the things ME2 did RIGHT, what you are saying is "Choices should have no long run Consequences" and THAT does not fly well with me and I doubt with many people here.

C&C that is window dressing is window dressing, if you want to have your cake and eat it too I suggest you bitch about it some place that shares that mentality ... like GameFAQs.

The main impact is IF the council survived or not and that barely have a impact on the game (besides getting a store discount in the Citadel), the rest are EMails, NPCs showing up (or not, Wrex comes to mind) and chat up and minor dialogue variations.

Only two quests require some actions to been done on ME1, Illium: Gianna Parasini (that requires working with her in Noveria) and Illium: Medical Scans (that requires saving enough colonists in Feros or persuading Jeong to rebuild the Colony).

 

[ortucis]

That reminds me, the concept of C&C affecting game after game needs to die with ME (and I think DA to). WORST FUCKING "FEATURE" EVER!

No.

THAT is one of the things ME2 did RIGHT, what you are saying is "Choices should have no long run Consequences" and THAT does not fly well with me and I doubt with many people here.

What I am saying is that when your game world is a barren fucking waste-land for side-quests then it's fucking retarded to cut the content out for the player who isn't importing character from the last game.

Maybe if you moved your fat nutsack u call your "eyes" enough to read the rest of the post, you'd know.

 

[Elzair]

"In Mass Effect 2 we focused on what we love about RPGs: An awesome sense of exploration, intense combat, a deep and non-linear story that's affected by your actions, and rich customisation of your armour, weapons and appearance...

I think Bioware has a different definition of exploration than the rest of the world considering each new offering since BGII has gutted exploration elements.

 

[markec]

I think Yahtzee said that he hated mining mini game but loved Mako exploration, to me personally it was other way around. If I have to choose between two necessary time consuming features Ill rather take one I could easily cheat trough.

 

[ironyuri]

I think by skill he means karma meter.

Yet that's still one more dialogue skill than AP offered.

 

[circ]

In Mass Effect 2 we focused on what we love about RPGs: An awesome sense of exploration, intense combat, a deep and non-linear story that's affected by your actions, and rich customisation of your armour, weapons and appearance...

LOLOLOL!!!1 ME2 had no exploration. BW games by default have no exploration STOP THE LIES. Intense combat uhuh. Popamole is more like it, and every area is so similar to the previous one it's insane. Not sure how he gets deep story either, or non-linear. And yeah, rich customization of armor? No. Fucking bullshit all of it.

 

[Melcar]

It´s all bullshit.

 

[Phelot]

The hype... it is unbearable!

And it really is hype. Look, there's nothing wrong with saying that they wanted to move away from stats and inventory and other shit, but there's no need to insult it, like it's not what makes an RPG or that it's flawed or whatever. Fuck off with that why the fuck does this same company have a game like DA then?

Just be honest and tell us you want to move the series in another direction. Nothing wrong with that. Tell us that you feel the inventory in ME didn't work out and that you feel you can do without it.

 

[Fowyr]

Mass Effect 3 will be shaped by over 1,000 story variations from the first two games in the series.

And FO3 has 200 endings.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

Take 10 variations, multiply the shit out of them and voila - 1,000 C&C possibilities!

 

[Micmu]

Well, and let's not forget, it IS an RPG, which means you can finish it with either blue or red jacket on - that's 2 * 1000 = 2000 endings!

 

[DragoFireheart]

Mass Effect 3 will be shaped by over 1,000 story variations from the first two games in the series.

And FO3 has 200 endings.

I raged so hard after hearing that comment when FO3 was first coming out.

 

[Raapys]

By the sound of this, they must have a completely different version of Mass Effect 2 in their offices. Maybe we'll get to play it someday.

 

[Rhalle]

I think Yahtzee said that he hated mining mini game but loved Mako exploration, to me personally it was other way around. If I have to choose between two necessary time consuming features Ill rather take one I could easily cheat trough.

Neither were worth much, but the Mako was better, at least fundamentally.

The idea of leaving your ship and getting in a vehicle to explore many different worlds is awesome. The cookie-cutter limitations were not. Still, at least it had the party aspect about it.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

I think Yahtzee said that he hated mining mini game but loved Mako exploration, to me personally it was other way around. If I have to choose between two necessary time consuming features Ill rather take one I could easily cheat trough.

Neither were worth much, but the Mako was better, at least fundamentally.

The idea of leaving your ship and getting in a vehicle to explore many different worlds is awesome. The cookie-cutter limitations were not. Still, at least it had the party aspect about it.

For someone reason Earth's moon atmosphere just grabbed me by the balls - can't remember why.

At least Mako wasn't a minigame, it was part of the game only with flawed controls. It was fun driving around and having enemies suddenly pop on the radar. ME2 had like only five mining planets with actual in-game location on them?

 

[Overweight Manatee]

The Mako in ME1 would be more interesting if it did much greater damage and had about half as much shields. As it was combat was ridiculously uninteresting, as nothing could kill you unless you were retarded, and some of the big enemies took a minute or so to kill.

'Mining' minigames should have been gotten rid of in both ME1 and 2. I get the feeling that they wanted to replicate mining as it was in Star Control 2, but its 100x more tedious, there were no risks and there were no great rewards for taking great risks.

 

[Drakron]

The Mako was a rubber ball (no traction), that was the biggest problem with it.

As bad the Mako was, the Firewalker managed to be even worst as it follows the ME2 tradition of NOT telling us important information as hull integrity (I assume its unshielded) and it have no manual aim (guide missiles only, that is the worst thing to use against infantry), no zoom (worthless as a scout, impossible to engage enemy at long range) and it have the exact same feeling as the Mako as it lacks traction.

 

[AnalogKid]

Well, and let's not forget, it IS an RPG, which means you can finish it with either blue or red jacket on - that's 2 * 1000 = 2000 endings!

 

[Pablosdog]

Me 2 was a decent game. It' plays more like a choose your own adventure popamoly holy plotholy

 

[Twinkle]

The Mako in ME1 would be more interesting if it did much greater damage and had about half as much shields.

The Mako would be more interesting if they had at least the basic playtesting with controls and physics. Seriously, is hiring a designer with racing game experience really that hard?

 

[racofer]

Racings games are inferior, thus anyone capable of developing RPGs is surely able to do better.

 

[ironyuri]

I enjoyed the Mako. I wanted more Mako. I desired more Mako. The Mako was .

Why?

Because I got dropped on a planet and got to roll around it in a space vehicle. It was awesome.

The physics were fucked. The turning arc was problematic. The booster jets didn't always work properly. It was a bitch to fight sandworms with. It sucked when you couldn't go up some steep cliff faces but could go up other, equally steep cliff faces. But I really enjoyed the open roaming exploration feel. It's not an RPG element to be able to drive around a world and explore it, but it certainly added to the atmosphere of landing on a previously unexplored part of a planet (for humanity) and exploring and mapping it out while marking minerals, fighting sandworms and geth/pirates.

In the missions where the Mako was an absolute necessity for driving along linear pathways it was not overly terrible. It worked well in straight lines, with occassional annoyances if you got stuck on walls.

The mining game in ME2 was a way of cutting content (planets), decreasing exploration (eventhough they say that the game had a great deal of it), and saving on cost. The mining planets were all so tedious and could easily be rendered compared to rendering 30+ slightly different looking worlds. It made me

Further, the planetary exploration in ME2 was so linear as to no longer be exploration. Just fucking planet corridors you could land on and walk from A-B without going outside the pre-determined corridor path. You can't explore a corridor, it's a fucking corridor.

I still enjoyed Mass Effect 2 for what it was, but it was not Mass Effect 1, it was not much of an RPG.

Codex, let us join together and prepare for F:NV the saviour of RPGS!

 

[jazzotron]

One thing that perplexed me was that for all the technology available in the Mass Effect universe, planetary scanning still needs to be conducted manually.

 

[chzr]