Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Mass Effect Legendary Edition remaster trilogy

Atlantico

unida e indivisible
Patron
Undisputed Queen of Faggotry Vatnik In My Safe Space
Joined
Sep 7, 2015
Messages
15,147
Location
Midgard
Make the Codex Great Again!
I don't get why people bring up that something is "derivative" or "lacks originality" or whatever as if that was inevitably a bad thing when it still succeeds at world-building, works at what it tries to do and can be fun/good for what it is.

That's because you're a mentally challenged NPC who likes his entertainment bland, predictable and accepted by the other NPCs.

ME's universe was sadly and incomprehensibly derivative. It has nothing to do with "the heroes journey" you dumbfuck.

Now go get vaccinated, NPC. Wear a mask. Obey.
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
18,152
Pathfinder: Wrath
Or morbid curiosity to see what the fuss is about only to say to yourself "is that it? It isn't even good".
 

TemplarGR

Dumbfuck!
Dumbfuck Bethestard
Joined
May 30, 2013
Messages
5,815
Location
Cradle of Western Civilization
Unbelievably I've never played this series. Is it worth playing this?

Definitely a yes. If you think you would enjoy a space opera adventure, with some gears-of-war cover shooter and some light rpg elements, then definitely yes. It is not a spergy spreadshit simulator, so nerds here (most of whom have played it plenty of times) pretend to hate it, but really, it is a great and entertaining game trilogy. The ending of 3 is kinda shitty but it didn't really ruin my experience much. The 3rd game, ending aside, was the best in the series. It is a really fun and immersive trilogy.

Just play it, enjoy it, and come here pretending to hate it, cause otherwise morons here are gonna call you "retarded" like they do to me. It is the Codex.
 

Nutria

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 12, 2017
Messages
2,252
Location
한양
Strap Yourselves In
Except the Hero's Journey is extremely made up by Campbell.

Yeah but the basic point still remains. Every good sci-fi story has been told on multiple Star Trek shows, the Outer Limits, the Twilight Zone, the Dimension X radio show in the 1950s, and pulp sci-fi magazines before that. Most of them probably go back centuries to the Thousand and One Nights. Nobody bitches about how Shakespeare ripped off all his plots from Boccaccio or history or whatever.

ME1 did a really good job of using those building blocks they'd inherited form former generations to build up a setting where you could make good games. You have to remember that games are not literature or cinema. Telling a story in an interactive way is vastly different from that and a game should not be trying to compete with other kinds of media. ME1 ripped off all these old ideas in a way that was designed to work for making a series of games to follow on to it. Unfortunately by ME2 that had all been discarded.
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
18,152
Pathfinder: Wrath
Telling a story in an interactive way is vastly different from that and a game should not be trying to compete with other kinds of media. ME1 ripped off all these old ideas in a way that was designed to work for making a series of games to follow on to it. Unfortunately by ME2 that had all been discarded.
Sure, but this story had been told to us 3 times in the past already, by Bioware themselves no less. Nobody is expecting brilliant innovation from anyone, a good story can be told well without being extremely new. Johann Sebastian Bach didn't create anything new or innovative for example, only mastered the old things. I just don't think ME is compelling or makes much sense as an interactive story in which you play an individual. Maybe if it were a wargame and not an RPG.
 

Nutria

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 12, 2017
Messages
2,252
Location
한양
Strap Yourselves In
I just don't think ME is compelling or makes much sense as an interactive story in which you play an individual.

This is exactly what I think is so tragic about it. They played it pretty safe with the plot of that game but they set up so much foundation for sequels that would take it in different directions. A hell of a lot of effort went into defining the universe that you're playing in. The game itself was pretty good, but what disappoints me is that it promised so much for the future that wasn't delivered.
 

KVVRR

Learned
Joined
Apr 28, 2020
Messages
618
Would it really have mattered if every new game had a new protagonist as boring and bland as Shepard was?
 
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
1622227102926.png
 

Loremonger

Barely Literate
Joined
May 28, 2021
Messages
3
That Rean fella (now known as deleted member 7219) was closing in on 2 million posts I do believe. Has anyone ever deleted their account and had more posts than that?
 

cruel

Cipher
Joined
Sep 17, 2014
Messages
892
I started playing this, and the game is actually good (which is a surprise for me). Authentic, well written characters, nice atmosphere, some C&C here and there, non-moronic quests, good writing, no SJW agendas, nice music, not everything is black and white, build variety, etc. Comparing this to the shit we're getting recently (Greedfall, Outer Worlds), Mass Effect looks like a game on a totally different level. Totally depressing how the games declined in those 14 years.
 

J1M

Arcane
Joined
May 14, 2008
Messages
14,658
I punched the reporter.

Immunity skill (soldier) is heavily nerfed in ME1 (only lasts 6 seconds instead of 20).

Doesn't seem like you could hit level 60 in a single play of ME1 without some form of meta-gaming.

ME2 has less backtracking and scanning when you import a character with a million credits.

Infiltrator seems like it would have been a much better choice than Vanguard for ME2 on Insanity difficulty.

Driving the MAKO into a mass relay is still cool.

Charging up the side of the citadel is still a genuinely fun and exciting level idea.
 
Last edited:

antimeridian

Learned
Patron
Joined
May 18, 2021
Messages
278
Codex Year of the Donut
Immunity skill (soldier) is heavily nerfed in ME1 (only lasts 6 seconds instead of 20).

Doesn't seem like you could hit level 60 in a single play of ME1 without some form of meta-gaming.

Immunity was the craziest thing in ME1. I don't remember if the original game ever explained that enemies were using it when their health started flashing white. I remember it took me forever to figure that out when I played it as a kid. Rewarding when you realize Warp and Neural Shock are good counters, kind of.

You couldn't hit 60 in a single game in the original, even with stepping out of the Mako to get full XP for kills etc. I read they made some changes to XP gains and leveling for LE but I don't know if it's any different now.
 

Riddler

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jan 5, 2009
Messages
2,355
Bubbles In Memoria
I finished my playthrough of the trilogy and I had a pretty good time.

It's kind of hard to compare the games since they are so different but I feel like I have to go against the codex consensus (?) here and say that ME1 clearly is the worst game. It has truly atrocious gameplay, animations are stilted and character writing is often poor and it's full of filler. It does set up an interesting universe but it doesn't use that very well narratively or for character writing. The best thing about the game is the music, lore and some of the aesthetics.

ME2 is a step up in pretty much every department except the main narrative and music. It is less of an RPG in that there are less conversation options but compared to the implementation in ME1 this feels like a good thing, more show and less tell through the investigation panel. Would I have preferred a game with more options for characterisation? Sure! But I prefer less if the option is more of what I got in ME1. It's a pity that the game went almost full retard with the main plot and didn't let it progress much of anywhere. It's as if they had one thing in mind, scrapped that relatively late in dev and then didn't have time to implement something new. I would have preferred a smaller squad that you had more interactions with rather than almost everything being either a recruitment or loyalty mission.

ME3 was the strangest game of the trilogy. In most ways it was a big step up from the previous games, mainly in combat and animation but also to a lesser extent in character writing. It's once again a pity that they went full retard with the main plot and this feels like it partially has to do with the lack of set up from the precious game and a misguided desire to wrap up every loose plotline in the universe. The individual set pieces were often very good but they didn't fit very well in the larger narrative. Kai Leng was just embarrassing, all the interspecies relationships a bit strange and wildly varying character writing, spanning from the best to the worst in the trilogy.

For ME4 I would recommend the creators to go with the indoctrination ending. IE. Shepard having very mild indoctrination until the very end when he gets almost fully indoctrinated to try to fool shepard into making a meaningless choice that has nothing to do with the reapers goals, but the game ending with the physical destruction of the reapers and the relays. My idea would be that the reapers real goal was the dark energy thing all along and that the synthetic stuff was only to mess with Shepard and to divide and conquer the galaxy. Set the game one to a few generations after the first trilogy and make it about rediscovering the galaxy as the mass relays are being rebuilt. If you want a larger lurking threat it could be people discovering that the story they were told about bioVSsynth was a lie and that the goals of the reapers were something else. As for the main character I feel like it could be fun to play the leader of a mercenary company or something.



A final thought: god damn, ME2 and 3 are so fucking horny! The ridiculous Miranda ass, all the skinsuits, Ashley being dolled up like a prostitute and even a robot camel toe... I can kind of see how an internal backlash to this kind of ridiculous sexualisation could occur in an organisation and lead to the equally ridiculous uglification we have in later bioware games. I wonder what happened between ME1 and 2 to cause this shift in direction. Is Mac Walters irredeemably horny and his current wokeness a cover for that?
 
Last edited:
Self-Ejected

MajorMace

Self-Ejected
Patron
Joined
May 6, 2018
Messages
2,008
Location
Souffrance, Franka
I wonder what happened between ME1 and 2 to cause this shift in direction.
The most discussed topic back then regarding ME1 among the plebs was how cool it was to finally get sex scenes.
BioWare, maybe under the impulse of EA (?), went hard on giving that hollywood feel. This is why ME2 replaces ME1's scifi novel feeling by hollywood space opera shitshow. That's why we never got a proper sequel to ME1 with proper expansion of its well-presented setting.
I disagree with most of your summary of the trilogy. I believe that ME2 was far worse than ME1. It did everything but writing better you say, but that's forgetting that everything but writing is horrendous in ME1, and even if it's better, it's still pretty fucking bad in ME2 and 3. Writing however, was pretty good in ME1, and it turned to shit in 2 and 3. Oversexualisation of the companions being a clear and sad illustration of the complete downfall of the tone and themes of the game. So what ME1 did good, ME2 suddenly did very poorly.

We go from a game with good writing to a game with pretty much no qualities.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom