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It's impressive how Mass Effect 1, a video game, had as much depth in its lore and universe on release day, as Star Trek did after decades of tv shows and movies. That's really what drew me into it 13 years ago.
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Feb 14, 2021 00:41
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Pattonesque posted:Crucially, none of your teammates can die or be kicked out. IIRC you can’t even get mad at them Every Bioware RPG save Neverwinter Nights(who's campaign was an afterthought) and maybe the Sonic RPG(never played it) had interesting situations with party members. Whether it was how you recruit you them, if they could have storyline deaths, how they got along with each other or if you could kick them out. And all the games tried new stuff so every game you would have a situation that wasn't in a previous game. And not every situation was followed up in new games so their were great ideas that were basically abandoned. So if you just look at Bioware RPG's party member situation and fates there just a ton of ideas to draw from. What did Andromeda do? Nothing. You get all 6 following a short linear path, no choice to not recruit any of them, no choice recruit someone later, you get each party member exactly when the game wants you to. None of them can die. None can be kicked out. You can't annoy someone so much they leave. No real fundamental conflicts between party members. None of them even leave and you have to do a mission to get them back. Basically they took romances and Dragon Age Origins party banter and did nothing else. And it wouldn't be a problem if the party members were absolutely critical to the plot and/or exceptionally well done. Which they weren't.
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Feb 14, 2021 00:46
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SubponticatePoster posted:I honestly don't know if BW is even capable of making a good game at this point. I want them to, but they seem utter poo poo at managing projects. DAI was the last "complete" game they put out and that was almost 7 years ago. Everything since has been a disorganized shitshow with team leaders grabbing at the flavor of the moment (procgen! GaaS!) and trying to make that work to the exclusion of everything else, like, oh I dunno...writing a complete, coherent story and managing the nuts and bolts of gamedev. Both MEA and Anthem were effectively completed in around 18 months or so which is nowhere near enough time for a AAA game. Whether the problem is external (EA making idiotic demands) or internal (lack of leadership), or maybe a bit of both, if they don't get their poo poo together either EA is going to take them back behind the barn or they'll get relegated to making someone else's content for the rest of their existence. yeah. i am hoping EA screamed at them enough that they learned something. maybe, maybe not. i will buy the new mass effect probably. Thom12255 posted:It's impressive how Mass Effect 1, a video game, had as much depth in its lore and universe on release day, as Star Trek did after decades of tv shows and movies. That's really what drew me into it 13 years ago. this. also the fact that humanity was kind of just another species, they weren't the anointed god race like with Halo and such. like they had joined maybe 50 years ago and had quick bloody war with one of the three but we are still kinda of new kid on the block. its just there is alot of humans and poo poo.
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Feb 14, 2021 00:52
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Dapper_Swindler posted:this. also the fact that humanity was kind of just another species, they weren't the anointed god race like with Halo and such. like they had joined maybe 50 years ago and had quick bloody war with one of the three but we are still kinda of new kid on the block. its just there is alot of humans and poo poo. And then Mass Effect 3 had to have the Reapers think Humans are the most special and unique out of all races they've ever seen before, right?
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Feb 14, 2021 00:55
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Humans were always special in Mass Effect, even in the first game.
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Feb 14, 2021 00:59
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Dapper_Swindler posted:this. also the fact that humanity was kind of just another species, they weren't the anointed god race like with Halo and such. like they had joined maybe 50 years ago and had quick bloody war with one of the three but we are still kinda of new kid on the block. its just there is alot of humans and poo poo. 26 years from first contact to Mass Effect 1. Which means Anderson was 20, the Illusive Man was an adult and Miranda was 7 when first contact was made. So you have a ton of characters, human and aliens that remember time from before humans entered the galactic stage.
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Feb 14, 2021 01:02
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Harbinger will gladly explain to you why the other races this cycle weren't good enough to have their souls liquefied and put into a robot squid for all eternity. Only reason quarians didn't make the cut is that there isn't many of them.
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Feb 14, 2021 01:14
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Dapper_Swindler posted:yeah. i am hoping EA screamed at them enough that they learned something. maybe, maybe not. i will buy the new mass effect probably. Yeah, all the main races had really good political and social tension with one another. I really how Turians are kind of a light deconstruction of the planet of hats trope in that they have spent the last couple centuries carving out their place in the galaxy as the race of proud warriors who formed the core of Citadel space's military and police but then humans burst onto the stage and within a couple decades have a military capability that is essential equal to the Turians', while also being good at other stuff too. A lot of their resulting racism and wanting to keep humans down politically starts to make sense when you realize they're terrified that everybody else will decide the Alliance is the better military and the Turian's main justification for their political power will erode away. It's a very realistic reactionary movement and highlights the problem of being "the warrior guys" and not much else like you see in a lot of fictional alien races. Humans are still kinda special in the setting since it's a plot point they grow out their technology and military power WAY faster than pretty much any other race up to that point, and three ruling races all at least on some level fear them as being a sleeping giant. The Reapers also become so obsessed with Shepard that they go out of their way to try and make a human reaper, and the first thing they do upon reaching the Milky Way is jump to Earth and sit there for what is presumably months trying to wipe all the humans out. It's definitely not Halo levels of "dons the sacred mantle of protecting the galaxy" wankery but humans are still a big deal.
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Feb 14, 2021 01:18
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Funky Valentine posted:Harbinger will gladly explain to you why the other races this cycle weren't good enough to have their souls liquefied and put into a robot squid for all eternity. I always just figured that the other races of the galaxy were going to their own Reaper made out of them eventually if the extinction cycle was allowed to roll on unimpeded. Harbinger just got started on the human Reaper early because it was humanity that killed Sovereign and that skyrocketed them up to the central focus of his attention.
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Feb 14, 2021 01:19
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nine-gear crow posted:I always just figured that the other races of the galaxy were going to their own Reaper made out of them eventually if the extinction cycle was allowed to roll on unimpeded. Harbinger just got started on the human Reaper early because it was humanity that killed Sovereign and that skyrocketed them up to the central focus of his attention. it's one species per cycle that makes the cut, and in this case it was humanity because genetic diversity though as posted above, the datalogs also mention that humans were eerily quick to adapt to the relays and galactic civilization in general so there were probably a few other boxes they ticked
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Feb 14, 2021 01:33
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The thing I liked the most in Andromeda were the companion quests, which were incidentally the closest the game came to Mass Effect 2 missions. I also kind of liked the main quest-line on the obligatory hive-of-scum-and-villainy planet. Of course I think it takes at least 30 hours to even get to the first companion quests or the hive-of-scum-and-villainy planet, which is one of the reasons I can never bring myself to replay that game.
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Feb 14, 2021 01:35
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I love how Liam's quest is basically a worst case scenario that we pull out of the fire by being hideously lucky. And we can take him to task on that. If his friend had been kidnapped by the Kett rather than some marauder with dreams of being a pirate king, it would have ended badly for the initiative.
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Feb 14, 2021 01:45
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I always kind of guessed/gauged how much was cut from ME3 by the absence of the Hammerhead, just going from its proof of concept in 2.
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Feb 14, 2021 01:48
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Kurieg posted:I love how Liam's quest is basically a worst case scenario that we pull out of the fire by being hideously lucky. And we can take him to task on that. If his friend had been kidnapped by the Kett rather than some marauder with dreams of being a pirate king, it would have ended badly for the initiative. Liam's quest really stood out to me because while Liam was boring as poo poo and the plot of the quest was a big roiling fart that I can't remember. But the gameplay mechanics of gravity getting all hosed up and the ship rolling over a few times so you were walking on the walls and the ceiling here or there was really fun and memorable and a testament to what the game could have done if the dev team was given the time they needed to actually work on poo poo and if they'd had a more coherent idea from the start.
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Feb 14, 2021 02:48
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nine-gear crow posted:Liam's quest really stood out to me because while Liam was boring as poo poo and the plot of the quest was a big roiling fart that I can't remember. But the gameplay mechanics of gravity getting all hosed up and the ship rolling over a few times so you were walking on the walls and the ceiling here or there was really fun and memorable and a testament to what the game could have done if the dev team was given the time they needed to actually work on poo poo and if they'd had a more coherent idea from the start. "My apologies pathfinder, walls are not floors."
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Feb 14, 2021 03:02
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DourCricket posted:Yeah the crazy thing is that, other than requiring Frostbite, basically every mistake is Bioware shooting themselves in the foot or just faffing about for years. Even that wasn't EA's fault other than as enablers. Bioware actively went to EA and asked for Frostbite back in 2011. EA gave it to them - and gave them support for years. Part of the point of Mass Effect: Inquisition was to learn to use the engine - and EA supported them. EA gave less support teaching them to use Frostbite over time and for Andromeda and Anthem because they had other projects, and because the Inqisition tools were meant to support the rest of Bioware's games and other games were switching to Frostbite. And this is a big part of how EA kills studios. Westwood also died because they were faffing around rather than making games, EA asked them what they had, and they had nothing.
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Feb 14, 2021 03:45
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I need help finding the original teaser for mass effect from like 2004. It teased a 2006 release year, it showed a varren leaping at the screen, shepard walking through a sandstorm, and a thresher maw bursting out of the ground. Some really early footage of the game, even before the demo footage inside the bar in the citadel
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Feb 14, 2021 04:05
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Weren't Humans the first species to use things like carriers and some other common military tactic no other race did, which is what helped them not get wiped out immediately by the Turians?
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Feb 14, 2021 04:07
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neonchameleon posted:Even that wasn't EA's fault other than as enablers. Bioware actively went to EA and asked for Frostbite back in 2011. EA gave it to them - and gave them support for years. Part of the point of Mass Effect: Inquisition was to learn to use the engine - and EA supported them. EA gave less support teaching them to use Frostbite over time and for Andromeda and Anthem because they had other projects, and because the Inqisition tools were meant to support the rest of Bioware's games and other games were switching to Frostbite. EA management proclaimed everything was going frostbite eventually so BioWare read between the lines and made the jump. DAI was... ok but MEA clearly wasn’t built on the same foundation bobjr posted:Weren't Humans the first species to use things like carriers and some other common military tactic no other race did, which is what helped them not get wiped out immediately by the Turians? Carriers are dumb in space. They put the nuclear rockets website guy in ME2 so this is a fair criticism
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Feb 14, 2021 04:08
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neonchameleon posted:Even that wasn't EA's fault other than as enablers. Bioware actively went to EA and asked for Frostbite back in 2011. EA gave it to them - and gave them support for years. Part of the point of Mass Effect: Inquisition was to learn to use the engine - and EA supported them. EA gave less support teaching them to use Frostbite over time and for Andromeda and Anthem because they had other projects, and because the Inqisition tools were meant to support the rest of Bioware's games and other games were switching to Frostbite. Possibly the most mind boggling thing to come out of the Anthem postmortem and a major reason why people should stop it with the "EA made them do it" boogeyman thing was the reveal that Bioware Edmonton deliberately discarded all the Frostbite tools and systems they created for Inquisition and Andromeda and started again from a stock build of the engine
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Feb 14, 2021 04:10
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Seemlar posted:Possibly the most mind boggling thing to come out of the Anthem postmortem and a major reason why people should stop it with the "EA made them do it" boogeyman thing was the reveal that Bioware Edmonton deliberately discarded all the Frostbite tools and systems they created for Inquisition and Andromeda and started again from a stock build of the engine But you see, if you're going to make the Bob Dylan of games, you must throw out all prior knowledge of gaming, like how Bob Dylan did with how to play instruments and sing.
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Feb 14, 2021 04:14
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bobjr posted:Weren't Humans the first species to use things like carriers and some other common military tactic no other race did, which is what helped them not get wiped out immediately by the Turians? hobbesmaster posted:Carriers are dumb in space. They put the nuclear rockets website guy in ME2 so this is a fair criticism Nah the Carriers were a thin veneer for having another dreadnaught scale railgun on the line despite the treaty limitations on how many dreadnaughts you could have. It wasn't the fighters that made human carriers so groundbreaking and incredible, it's that humanity had the balls to build a mile long ship, put a gun the entire length of it in it, and the look at the other council races and go "no see it's a carrier, doesn't violate the treaty, see it launches fighters and everything" And while the Turians complained about this the Salarians went "huh, okay" and built a bunch of carriers too It was actually a bit of good writing imo  The reason humanity didn't get insta-wiped by the Turians was pretty much just that the Turians thought Human space was waaay smaller than it was and sent a token force that immediately got bogged down in a ground war against the entire Human industrial base and when the Turians were gettin ready to go hard the Asari told em to cut it out and invited Humanity to the council. Turians shot first, etc Psycho Landlord fucked around with this message at 04:29 on Feb 14, 2021 |
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Feb 14, 2021 04:26
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All this talk of space carriers and FreeSpace 2 making me miss Wing Commander something fierce.
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Feb 14, 2021 04:39
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Best Friends posted:A Ben Shapiro mod where Sheppard is 5'4" and all the renegade options are Sheppard talking fast instead of punching. Suppose a Reaper shows up on your planet. Let's say 10 Reapers show up even. And say they turn, let's say, half of the planet's land utterly uninhabitable and covered in corpse dust and husks, OK ? Um, you don't think people will just sell their houses and move ?
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Feb 14, 2021 04:40
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TheCenturion posted:All this talk of space carriers and FreeSpace 2 making me miss Wing Commander something fierce. Why would you want to play wing commander when a better game is right there in your post
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Feb 14, 2021 04:41
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Psycho Landlord posted:Nah the Carriers were a thin veneer for having another dreadnaught scale railgun on the line despite the treaty limitations on how many dreadnaughts you could have. It wasn't the fighters that made human carriers so groundbreaking and incredible, it's that humanity had the balls to build a mile long ship, put a gun the entire length of it in it, and the look at the other council races and go "no see it's a carrier, doesn't violate the treaty, see it launches fighters and everything" man mass effect was so loving cool 
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Feb 14, 2021 04:46
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kilus aof posted:26 years from first contact to Mass Effect 1. Which means Anderson was 20, the Illusive Man was an adult and Miranda was 7 when first contact was made. So you have a ton of characters, human and aliens that remember time from before humans entered the galactic stage. thanks. i knew it was 50 or under. but yeah i like that its not first contact but its within real living memory. bobjr posted:Weren't Humans the first species to use things like carriers and some other common military tactic no other race did, which is what helped them not get wiped out immediately by the Turians? i think it was more they fought the turians to a stand Sydin posted:Yeah, all the main races had really good political and social tension with one another. I really how Turians are kind of a light deconstruction of the planet of hats trope in that they have spent the last couple centuries carving out their place in the galaxy as the race of proud warriors who formed the core of Citadel space's military and police but then humans burst onto the stage and within a couple decades have a military capability that is essential equal to the Turians', while also being good at other stuff too. A lot of their resulting racism and wanting to keep humans down politically starts to make sense when you realize they're terrified that everybody else will decide the Alliance is the better military and the Turian's main justification for their political power will erode away. It's a very realistic reactionary movement and highlights the problem of being "the warrior guys" and not much else like you see in a lot of fictional alien races. yeah. like the reapers going after humans and poo poo sorta makes sense because it was the first time they were actually stopped by species before they could do their magic warp blitzkrieg.
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Feb 14, 2021 04:48
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nine-gear crow posted:Liam's quest really stood out to me because while Liam was boring as poo poo and the plot of the quest was a big roiling fart that I can't remember. But the gameplay mechanics of gravity getting all hosed up and the ship rolling over a few times so you were walking on the walls and the ceiling here or there was really fun and memorable and a testament to what the game could have done if the dev team was given the time they needed to actually work on poo poo and if they'd had a more coherent idea from the start. Yep. The whole game is littered with these remnants of what could have been
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Feb 14, 2021 04:55
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The turians saw humans trying to open up a new relay. Given in council space this is considered really really dangerous the turians assumed any species doing that would post significant military forces in case of a rachni incident. So when the turians defeated the small Alliance fleets they assumed this was the bulk of Alliance power. But the Alliance had just send small fleets to it's outer territories with hostile aliens contact given a small priority so when the Second Fleet arrived in full force it caught the turians off guard. When the turians then started to mass a huge invasion force the Council noticed and forced a peace treaty.
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Feb 14, 2021 05:06
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If I remember right the thing that caught the Turians off guard is that humanities space forces are designed exclusively around being highly mobile strike teams, so they conquered human colonies with ease because they only had token defenses only to get hit with devastating hit-and-run attacks on their supply lines and weaknesses driving them back out. It's why in ME3 the Reapers take Earth almost immediately, most of Earths forces left rather than stand and fight head on. I think humans are also meant to be punching above their weight because they use more automation and AI technology than any other major power, so their power is growing fast despite their raw numbers being low compared to the others
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Feb 14, 2021 05:08
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The turians were also stunned that the humans could fight like that with such a relatively small percentage of the population in the Alliance Navy. Humans are also the ones who come up with the general war plan to fight the Reapers (sea denial as long as possible while amassing resources to complete the Crucible.)
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Feb 14, 2021 05:13
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Humans also seem to have been a species in the ME setting that threaded the needle of reaching space on their own and also continuing to war with itself without bombing itself back into the proverbial stone age. So while most new space-faring races would have maybe a token military force at best and be overwhelmed by the Turians, the first thing Humanity did when it reached space was build a big rear end space fleet and they already had a relatively mature fleet doctrine ready to go by the time they made first contact with another species.
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Feb 14, 2021 05:17
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"Humans are just better than aliens" is a common sci-fi trope but I really hate it. I think if they just pushed forward the timeline by 100 years or so it would feel a bit less ridiculous than humans going from discovering FTL to one of the biggest military powers in the galaxy in less than 40 years.
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Feb 14, 2021 05:19
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ME1 did it right in that humans weren’t really superior it’s just that the galactic status quo was so stale and ingrained that anything new would really catch people off guard and throw everything off kilter. This created different opportunities for everyone. This had been completely abandoned by ME3 and was disappearing fast in ME2.
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Feb 14, 2021 05:24
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Humanity also has a real standing army unlike everyone who isn't the turians or the batarians (and the batarians are hamstrung by being a rogue state run by a completely Indoctrinated government.) Of course when the Reapers showed up humans would be playing the lead role in organizing everything.
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Feb 14, 2021 05:29
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The timeline in general doesn't really make sense. The games themselves are written as if humans have been part of the galactic community for a lot longer - I'd probably have guessed 70 years or so since first contact. 26 is crazy and doesn't really fit with how many colonies they have and how many humans there are all over the galaxy. Cerberus's numbers are even more insane but that's kind of a separate factor considering how wildly they fluctuate between games.
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Feb 14, 2021 05:30
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Is there a game like MEA co-op that doesn't have horrible poo poo netcode? Division 2 maybe? (ME3 hurrr)
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Feb 14, 2021 05:38
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TheCenturion posted:All this talk of space carriers and FreeSpace 2 making me miss Wing Commander something fierce. my friend have you heard the Good News of star citizen? 
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Feb 14, 2021 06:36
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TheCenturion posted:All this talk of space carriers and FreeSpace 2 making me miss Wing Commander something fierce. I have 4 on Origin. It sort of holds up and it's still kind of playable. Except it uses archaic arrow buttons to move instead of WASD and you can't remap the keys. Which undoes what I just said about it "sort of holding up" and being "kind of playable."
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Feb 14, 2021 07:17
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SirPhoebos posted:I think I'm the only person that liked the Mako sections in ME1. I dunno, I've been up too long, I'm a pretty lovely poster and its been a decade since I last played it but no other game has given me that vibe at that level since. No Man Sky should be perfect for it, but once you've played that for a bit you can already feel what the algorithms that do its proc-gen are doing and it becomes predictable so its not the same. Its not even like the Mako sections were even fun. There was a ton of tedium and poor writing in there because it was meant to be filler. Yet here I am thinking "I can't wait to get a quiet moment on the Moon and shoot at Earth with my lovely gun again".
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Feb 14, 2021 09:28
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