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Best Bi Geek Squid posted:the kett could have been ok if there was any ambiguity or nuance to them. like when you have your first firefight with them I was like "poo poo...I really hosed up first contact there". Could have been some interesting stuff if you struggle with communicating the whole game and it's unclear if one or both of you was in the wrong and if there is a way you can figure out how to peacefully coexist. But nah - they're just one dimensional evil dudes you have to blow up That's exactly what soured me on the game. I would have been absolutely down for a "mutual incomprehension leads to setting in of prejudices leads to a big wasteful conflict and you're the One Sane Person who seems to either understand what's going on at all ; or to not be thoroughly down with it because of selfish, short-sighted profits on both sides" story, and that opening led me to believe I could be playing that. "Your blind colonization EDIT : in fact, when you think about it, "we colonized and stumbled upon the Good Natives and the Bad Natives and so we helped the Good Natives fight the Bad Natives which makes us Good" is a very... British tale, let's go with that. Kobal2 fucked around with this message at 15:08 on Feb 16, 2021 |
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Feb 16, 2021 14:29
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Thom12255 posted:Andromeda did have amazing movement and combat, I'd love for every Mass Effect to just copy that from now on. "Amazing" is gilding the lily. It has serviceable movement and combat that, despite having more options and freedom, still feels worse to play than 2 and 3
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Feb 16, 2021 14:33
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Simone Magus posted:"Amazing" is gilding the lily. It has serviceable movement and combat that, despite having more options and freedom, still feels worse to play than 2 and 3 I think that’s subjective then, because to me ME:A has far far better movement and fluidity in combat, and not just because of the jet pack. Being able to quickly switch which shoulder to aim from, being able to “duck” behind cover without a button press, similar but better than ME1s “sticky cover.” Being able to dodge in any direction quickly and efficiently. Being able to leap straight up and hover, with a slow-time effect when aiming while hovering. The biggest issue I take with ME:As combat is the loss of control with squad members. You get used to it, but I miss being able to pause and survey the battlefield and direct my squad mates to do poo poo.
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Feb 16, 2021 15:55
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Andromeda has quests where you have to go to five places on a planet to see if one of them has the MacGuffin But whether or not the MacGuffin spawns in those places is random so sometimes it doesn’t spawn and you have to go back to the Tempest and then back to the planet again Sucks
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Feb 16, 2021 16:44
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Andromeda has better combat controls, but 2 and 3 are better designed around theirs.
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Feb 16, 2021 17:13
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Aphrodite posted:Andromeda has better combat controls, but 2 and 3 are better designed around theirs. this is such a good point the encounter and level design absolutely ruins everything about the combat in Andromeda, it doesn't matter how good the controls feel if it's in service of nothing
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Feb 16, 2021 17:16
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Yeah I can remember all kinds of cool fights from ME2/3 and basically just Liam's mission from Andromeda
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Feb 16, 2021 17:20
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Aphrodite posted:Andromeda has better combat controls, but 2 and 3 are better designed around theirs. Nailed it
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Feb 16, 2021 17:34
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Aphrodite posted:Andromeda has better combat controls, but 2 and 3 are better designed around theirs. the pacing in ME2/3's encounters were A+ and somehow worked for any of the game's classes. Like it has to be real difficult to design encounters around a dude who pinballs into enemies and shotguns them at the same time as a dude who invisibly snipes from a distance but they pulled it off
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Feb 16, 2021 17:56
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here are the best missions in The Mass Effect Setting ("Themes") in no particular order save for: THE SUICIDE MISSION (A+ No. 1 no serious challenger) Shadow Broker ship Citadel archives Grissom Academy Archangel recruitment Thane recruitment Kasumi heist Tuchanka genophage cure/sabotage Citadel coup Liam's loyalty (only MEA entry on the list and even then it's a bit of a stretch) ME1 final mission (battling up the side of the Citadel with Sovereign in the background was v. cool) Virmire
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Feb 16, 2021 18:02
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Andromeda is what you get when you don't have good product management, and a bunch of teams run off and do their own thing, then somebody has to mash the results all together. How I would have done the storyline: The Arks launch as described, but a smaller ship, Ryders and a detachment of actual Pathfinders, is launched first. You know, to find paths ahead of the actual colony ships. The Pathfinders arrive, find themselves in the Helios cluster, and there's a few different polities not at war, exactly, but in a state of low-grade conflict and animosity. Ryder has to immediately start picking sides, negotiating alliances, and so on. The Nexus arrives as the 'second wave' ship. On arrival, it's attacked by somebody, damaged, and quite a few of the administrative staff killed in cryo. The remainders need to do the best they can, but this gives a diegetic excuse for Ryder, the player, to be making important decisions, allocating resources, etc etc. It also provides a diegetic reason for the Nexus to start out crappy and improve throughout the game. Ryder will have identified a few colony sites by this point, and has to balance various decisions; some have resources, but native populations. Some require extensive terraforming, but are empty. Some have artifacts, but are contested by numerous polities. I'd make it so there's no 'golden path;' you have to pick sides, you have to choose allies, and there's no 'well, you could pick the happy cooperative peaceful advanced race, or you could pick the cannibal savages' crap. Every polity has it's good side and it's bad side. Gameplay now involves finding resources, trading for technology, and getting a few colony sites up and running. Then the arks arrive, and this really pisses off whoever you're not allied with, and concerns who you are allied with, who start making more demands on your time and your attention. The Nexus at this point has become a true administration center and council, and of course immediately falls to squabbling and conflict, leaving Ryder to deal with all sorts of problems, internal and external. Throughout all this, you're finding clues to a big, important artifact squirreled away somewhere. Vaults give you pieces of a map. When you find it, there's a big final sequence to get your allies on board, find it, fight off your not-allies, claim it, and figure out what it is. Surprise, it's an early warning system for the Kett. They were off 'pacifying' some other cluster, and now they've noticed some new kids on the block, and they send a single 'scout' ship that's gently caress-off huge. You fight them off, but you're unable to stop them from sending back a report. Their main fleet will be coming in a few years, surprise, tale as old as time. Fade to black. Basically, this game should have been Mass Effect: New Vegas.
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Feb 16, 2021 18:12
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Pattonesque posted:the pacing in ME2/3's encounters were A+ and somehow worked for any of the game's classes. Like it has to be real difficult to design encounters around a dude who pinballs into enemies and shotguns them at the same time as a dude who invisibly snipes from a distance but they pulled it off  Thane's recruitment really sticks out to me as a gold tier A++ mission. I must have played it a dozen times with every kind of class/loadout you can think of, and it plays well no matter how you approach it. big open spaces, but lots of cover and large objects to hide behind/flank around too; so it works if you're a shooty guy or biotic who sits back and plinks away at targets, or you can use the line of sight breaking objects to your advantage as a vanguard/infiltrator and aggressively push forward thematically it owns too. You have this great sense of urgency as you quickly make your way up each floor, trying to beat the assassin to his target. They also break up what would be very repetitive combat encounters by using set pieces like the lift fight and the looong bridge as a sort of mini boss fight
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Feb 16, 2021 18:15
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Moola posted:thematically it owns too. You have this great sense of urgency as you quickly make your way up each floor, trying to beat the assassin to his target. They also break up what would be very repetitive combat encounters by using set pieces like the lift fight and the looong bridge as a sort of mini boss fight And the high point of the entire series, pushing that dude out the window.
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Feb 16, 2021 18:19
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TheCenturion posted:Andromeda is what you get when you don't have good product management, and a bunch of teams run off and do their own thing, then somebody has to mash the results all together. This sounds pretty good but I would have eliminated Pathfinders as a thing (so loving sick of Bioware's common noun capitalized SPECIAL BOYS/GIRLS) and just made the main character a SPECTRE or an N7 or something and had them following a hierarchal command structure, either Alliance Military or some type of multi-species UN style force. Also would have eliminated all the Kett nonsense and not expanded the scope beyond the colonization narrative, because there's plenty of meat there for one game and not every single game in existence needs GALAXY (or even cluster) WIDE THREATS. But your little treatment there is still far better than what we got.
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Feb 16, 2021 18:19
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The great thing about ME2's mission design in particular was that all they tied back into the theme of the planet where they took place. Omega's lawlessness, Ilium's decadence, the Citadel's political intrigue. And there were great one-offs that let you wonder what it'd be like to live on a ship high above a venusian hothouse or on a dying planet beneath a failing sun. All of these stark locations combined to flesh out a setting that provided enough glimpses of the world beyond to excite the imagination, rather than just filling a 4x4 map with a bunch of pointless crap and calling it exploration. Locations mean nothing if you can't tell a good story.
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Feb 16, 2021 18:20
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ME2 has semi-hidden side content that is more memorable and well designed than main story content in ME:A. Just off the top of my head, there's one where while scanning for minerals you pick up a distress beacon for a crashed ship. You land and the place is empty, just a bunch of crates and a crater. You pick through wreckage and find that it was a freighter carrying mechs, which started to activate themselves and then took down the ship. Once you reach the beacon and get the coordinates the ship was heading to, all the containers burst open and you've got too book it back to your ship before you get swarmed by mechs. There's then a second leg of the quest where you trace the coordinates you found on the beacon back to a research station that had it's VI go rogue, and in a desperate attempt to prevent it from killing them the staff cut the power to the whole station but then couldn't access the VI core itself and starved/froze to death. You have to work your way through the station reactivating the power to all the various wings, and while there's no combat the VI is throwing environmental hazards and puzzles at you. Finally you restore power and reach the core, and realize the VI had been infected with some kind of virus and as you shut it down it apologizes for not being able to protect the station. And then there's a THIRD leg of the quest where you go to the production facility that created the virus, and have to fight through waves of the toughest mech enemies in the game to shut down the production line, all to find out that this tragedy had been caused by... one of the mech parts used in production having a defect and needing to be recalled. And by the time they realized this, a ship had already taken off with a bunch of defective mechs, which is the original ship you found crashed. And that's just some dinky side content I bet most players never even find because they don't obsessively scan every single planet in every single area.
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Feb 16, 2021 18:22
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exquisite tea posted:The great thing about ME2's mission design in particular was that all they tied back into the theme of the planet where they took place. Omega's lawlessness, Ilium's decadence, the Citadel's political intrigue. And there were great one-offs that let you wonder what it'd be like to live on a ship high above a venusian hothouse or on a dying planet beneath a failing sun. All of these stark locations combined to flesh out a setting that provided enough glimpses of the world beyond to excite the imagination, rather than just filling a 4x4 map with a bunch of pointless crap and calling it exploration. Locations mean nothing if you can't tell a good story. Some of the coolest loving environments in ME2 were just optional side quest planets that contributed nothing to the greater story, but they went all out to address the criticisms of ME1s barren planets. Would have preferred something a little more in-between how on rails the quest environments in ME2 were and the openness of ME1, but I think in general the former is better than the latter, my personal feelings about the games aside.
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Feb 16, 2021 18:24
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The whole pathfinder thing was undone in game by finding all the other pathfinders and then having them be completely irrelvant to any plot. Ryder still calls all the shots regardless with no consequences.
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Feb 16, 2021 18:25
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Funky Valentine posted:And the high point of the entire series, pushing that dude out the window. I will never get tired of pushing that smug bastard out of that window https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQI4G_fXokc the "turn around very slowly" "...dammit" exchange is great too lol. ME2 had lots of great moments where you would be given dialogue options, there would be a pause and then a character would finish a line while you were reading your options. Miranda's "...not anyyyy more..." quip is also great
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Feb 16, 2021 18:26
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No matter how paragon the run I always headbutt Uvenk.
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Feb 16, 2021 18:29
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Soylent Pudding posted:No matter how paragon the run I always headbutt Uvenk. its the law. I think the game uninstalls if you don't tbh
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Feb 16, 2021 18:30
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I like the interrupt in Kasumi's mission where, in the middle of the villain's grand speech about how doomed you are, Shepard can just turn around and obliterate some priceless vase in the villain's vault and he immediately stops monologuing and flips out.
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Feb 16, 2021 18:31
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Soylent Pudding posted:No matter how paragon the run I always headbutt Uvenk. Also the one with uh... what's his name on Mordin's mission. And that gunship engineer. I always feel slightly worse about that one but not that much.
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Feb 16, 2021 18:31
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Kibayasu posted:Also the one with uh... what's his name on Mordin's mission. No reason to feel bad, he was working too hard
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Feb 16, 2021 18:33
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man its been like a decade since I played ME2, and just reading "headbutt Uvenk" I remember the exact scene you're referencing vividly. You could post "having a drink with Chakwas", "shooting cans with Garrus" or "assuming direct control" and waves of warm pleasant memories come flooding back. Even some of the lower points of ME3 are still memorable as hell "chatting with Anderson before he dies" Andromeda has loving NONE of this. People post names of the main characters in this thread and I'm just like, who? Or species names like the Anagrams or the Kett and I'm just like, oh those... purple guys and the putty monsters??? And I played Andromeda last loving year lol
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Feb 16, 2021 18:38
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OctaMurk posted:No reason to feel bad, he was working too hard AH this loving line. It's GOLD JERRY!
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Feb 16, 2021 18:39
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Moola posted:man its been like a decade since I played ME2, and just reading "headbutt Uvenk" I remember the exact scene you're referencing vividly. You could post "having a drink with Chakwas", "shooting cans with Garrus" or "assuming direct control" and waves of warm pleasant memories come flooding back. Even some of the lower points of ME3 are still memorable as hell "chatting with Anderson before he dies" I remember Cora gushing over the ASARI CODEX REMEMBER THE CODEX WHAT DOES THE CODEX SAY ABOUT THIS MAIDEN REMEMBER YOUR TRAINING FROM THE CODEX LINE 7 OF THE 44 VERSE. It's rare in a video game a character is written so badly its embarrassing to watch the game present it like it's a Big Deal. She came off like some tumblr superfan who would not shut the gently caress up about Hamilton and her fave ships.
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Feb 16, 2021 18:42
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Moola posted:ME2 had lots of great moments where you would be given dialogue options, there would be a pause and then a character would finish a line while you were reading your options. Miranda's "...not anyyyy more..." quip is also great I don't remember this one, when was that?
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Feb 16, 2021 18:43
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That's the line that comes after, Miranda's renegade interrupt is "...DEAD?!" after she shoots Steve Blum in the prologue mission.
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Feb 16, 2021 18:44
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Moola posted:man its been like a decade since I played ME2, and just reading "headbutt Uvenk" I remember the exact scene you're referencing vividly. You could post "having a drink with Chakwas", "shooting cans with Garrus" or "assuming direct control" and waves of warm pleasant memories come flooding back. Even some of the lower points of ME3 are still memorable as hell "chatting with Anderson before he dies" oh yeah, you can bring up NPCs from the good ME games and DA games (and even DA2 honestly because that game had a lot of heart) and I immediately remember what's up. Like when I went through the Dragon Age Keep it was like "ah yeah, poor Thrask! And I hope Bella and the tavern show up sometime!" I forgot details of ME:A literal days after finishing it.
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Feb 16, 2021 19:06
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DA2's encounter design and maps were dogshit but the story and characters were actually pretty good for most of it. The game definitely peaks with the Arishok though and the last third of the story when the actual Mage/Templar conflict kicks off reads like a lovely fanfic where the author didn't quite grasp what either faction was actually about in DA:O.
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Feb 16, 2021 19:18
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Aphrodite posted:Andromeda has better combat controls, but 2 and 3 are better designed around theirs. yeah. the fights in 2 and 3 are more fun, while andromedas feels too much like they pasted the world design from DA;I down and added verticality. like people somewhat rightfully poo poo on ubisoft for doing dumb openworld poo poo thats crowded with dumb poo poo, but they know how to make an encounter design in open worlds in their game make it feel dynamic/cinmatic/FUN. andromeda is just empty but sometimes there are boring fire fights. Sydin posted:DA2's encounter design and maps were dogshit but the story and characters were actually pretty good for most of it. The game definitely peaks with the Arishok though and the last third of the story when the actual Mage/Templar conflict kicks off reads like a lovely fanfic where the author didn't quite grasp what either faction was actually about in DA:O. i like the 3rd act as dumb as it is. it nails everything just exploding into chaotic violence and both sides looking into their asses instead of trying to solve problems for like 10 loving years and than it just bursts because your weird dickhead friend with a warp entity living in him decided that "gently caress it, its 9/11 time" i feel like if it had longer dev time than a year and half. it could have been great. pentyne posted:I remember Cora gushing over the ASARI CODEX REMEMBER THE CODEX WHAT DOES THE CODEX SAY ABOUT THIS MAIDEN REMEMBER YOUR TRAINING FROM THE CODEX LINE 7 OF THE 44 VERSE. the whole game comes off as they hired a bunch of 20 something super fans to write the characters. some came out alright(drack, ventra, the penis head dude jar something) but the rest were lol. Doctor Nutt posted:This sounds pretty good but I would have eliminated Pathfinders as a thing (so loving sick of Bioware's common noun capitalized SPECIAL BOYS/GIRLS) and just made the main character a SPECTRE or an N7 or something and had them following a hierarchal command structure, either Alliance Military or some type of multi-species UN style force. yeah one of the reasons i liked mass effect was outside 3, there is no galaxy wide threat outside the reapers and there were no "great evil" outside them and cerberus. cerberus has its own issues but most i can get around. in 1 your dealing with some of their various weird operations that are all run by morons. 2. they are quietly building streantgh while TIM trys to woo and use you by putting all the non insane people on the ship with you, plus dumbfuck horror experiments. 3. they have their secret army that they have probably been building since 1 or 2 and go full out in the open about it. I honestly don't think TIM actually believed Shepard was "the chosen one", but rather that he saw the potential to create him as a figurehead of human-branded, human-led superiority. He spent the money to bring them back, got them the best team, and tried to push them to achieve his own human-centric goals. Shepard's death in ME2's opening turned them into a legend, the martyr of humanity that elevated us and died as humanity's "best". and he uses that as a recruitment tool. Dapper_Swindler fucked around with this message at 20:17 on Feb 16, 2021 |
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Feb 16, 2021 20:11
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exquisite tea posted:That's the line that comes after, Miranda's renegade interrupt is "...DEAD?!" after she shoots Steve Blum in the prologue mission. I remember it fondly because it was the moment I thought "...oh this game is going OWN" liol
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Feb 16, 2021 20:49
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I remember exactly one NPC in Andromeda fondly, but don't remember his name or anything he said and you only do like one mission with him I think he was uhhhh... some kinda bandit leader with a heart of gold? Or something Grandpa Krogan and Female Garrus were okay companions I guess
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Feb 16, 2021 20:52
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Simone Magus posted:I remember exactly one NPC in Andromeda fondly, but don't remember his name or anything he said and you only do like one mission with him ... Reyes? Maybe?
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Feb 16, 2021 21:02
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They made an entire race of people looking like dick-headed cat fetuses.
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Feb 16, 2021 21:04
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Pattonesque posted:... Reyes? Maybe? Haha, yep.
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Feb 16, 2021 21:06
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Simone Magus posted:I remember exactly one NPC in Andromeda fondly, but don't remember his name or anything he said and you only do like one mission with him The guy who was Zaeed's son? Yeah 3 minutes of him casually talking to you was more memorable then most of the entire main cast. Mostly because it was like the only bit of subtly into the entire game. He was just a guy taking merc jobs 'helping out' but getting paid and casually mentions his deadbeat dad might've been the same.
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Feb 16, 2021 21:17
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Wait, Andromeda had Zaeed's son and didn't make him a companion? God add one more to the gently caress up pile.
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Feb 16, 2021 21:19
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Zaeed's son was in Andromeda???
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Feb 16, 2021 21:24
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