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I've just started my Andromeda replay and I realise one of the things that sucks the most is that it's genuinely a really good opening. The optimism of waking up to the something obviously hostile and very alien, then of landing on Habitat 7 only to find it even more hostile and alien, is really cool. And then an hour later they dump you on a desert that is none of that, and the stakes crater, and it's just even more disappointing for having already seen what might have been.
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Jun 6, 2021 23:07
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If they had started development with that end-product in mind and worked on that for 5 years I think it would've been a pretty decent start to a new series and any problems could be forgiven with it being a new studio making it under the Bioware title, instead they made most of the game we got in 18 months and filled it with junk to try and make it longer.
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Jun 6, 2021 23:17
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Dealing with first contact scenarios and the ramifications of coming to colonise already inhabited worlds could have been an interesting idea but, as the unintentional fascism discussion last page shows, I don't really trust Bioware - or any video game developers to be honest - to handle that topic particularly well.
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Jun 6, 2021 23:32
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Deformed Church posted:I've just started my Andromeda replay and I realise one of the things that sucks the most is that it's genuinely a really good opening. The optimism of waking up to the something obviously hostile and very alien, then of landing on Habitat 7 only to find it even more hostile and alien, is really cool. The first couple hours of Andromeda was exactly the kind of game I was hoping it would be... and then the rest of Andromeda happened 
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Jun 6, 2021 23:34
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I really wish Andromeda had even like...better ways to make your own fun. The crafting and combat is fleshy enough that if there were good outlets for it, you could at least focus on the gameplay, but all the encounter design is incredibly bland and samey and the optional bosses are dreadful. You can craft custom weapons and build interesting power combinations but at the end of the day you're just shooting at clusters of bandits in several interchangeable deserts.
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Jun 6, 2021 23:38
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nine-gear crow posted:The first couple hours of Andromeda was exactly the kind of game I was hoping it would be... and then the rest of Andromeda happened My hopes for Andromeda died right when Clancy Brown's character died.
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Jun 6, 2021 23:40
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Android Blues posted:I really wish Andromeda had even like...better ways to make your own fun. The crafting and combat is fleshy enough that if there were good outlets for it, you could at least focus on the gameplay, but all the encounter design is incredibly bland and samey and the optional bosses are dreadful. You can craft custom weapons and build interesting power combinations but at the end of the day you're just shooting at clusters of bandits in several interchangeable deserts. the open world really fucks Andromeda's combat because how're you gonna set up a good setpiece battle outside of self-contained missions?
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Jun 6, 2021 23:43
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nine-gear crow posted:The first couple hours of Andromeda was exactly the kind of game I was hoping it would be... and then the rest of Andromeda happened i knew poo poo was bad the moment the dude is like 'oh yeah, we just gave up searching for other survivors  '
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Jun 6, 2021 23:48
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Open world design just ruined andromeda for me. It meant very little of the combat encounters were memorable or had a unique twist. And you had to loving cross large swaths of terrain to get to lovely encounters (which ME1 is also guilty of, but at list has good main mission setpieces).
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Jun 6, 2021 23:53
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the fascism reading is weak, as it always is when applied to any property - it's always vague both when it comes to quoting the text but also when it comes to defining what fascism is ultimately as a bankrupt ideology fascism borrows from narrative and myth to shore itself up, so it's hardly surprising that stories can suddenly appear to be "fascist" hard counter posted:while i definitely like this idea, i would be more confident in this interpretation if, say, the resolutions of your loyalty missions made a meaningful commentary on the state of the galaxy's generational trauma if we're going to argue the connection here is intentional, given that you can renegade-chat jack into murder is the answer psychopathy, let jacob watch his dad get torn apart by feral colonists, let zaeed burn down a refinery to get his man, etc, etc, etc without following up on any potential consequences of these routes of problem solving, given they're all equally effective, if there's an intentional undercurrent tying them all together I don't think it's necessary to tie the Paragon/Renegade conceit into it - P/R is just the structure for quest-paths and player conceptualisation, an alignment grid for the modern age. Bioware's purpose in ME2 is simply to establish that generational conflict exists and is the thing the audience should be thinking about. per Casey Hudson, the ultimate root of conflict in Mass Effect is the technological threshold of creating artificial intelligence i.e. a successor that is stronger and smarter than its creator, and these generational conflicts are a way to develop and explore that concept over multiple iterations compare Mass Effect 1, where the source of conflict is typically unethical science and/or corporate corruption. that's a different kind of conflict with a very different nature
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Jun 6, 2021 23:53
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Shame they don’t actually explore it
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Jun 6, 2021 23:58
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Simone Magus posted:Honestly though Vanguard is kinda boring in the story because Charge-Nova is like your only fun option. Pull and Shockwave are just kind of "okay" at best and the ammo powers are meh. Charge-Nova on its own is tedious, but take the Reegar with ultralight materials and the penetration mod + inferno ammo and you'll melt everything. Charge > Nova (if enemies are unshielded) > dump the Reegar mag > reload > reload-cancel by charging. Speaking of reload-cancelling, I remember on PC there was a keybind you could set in ME3 MP that would do it for you - I want to say it was a scoreboard keybind or something that never actually did anything in MP? Does anyone remember what the bind was? cell fucked around with this message at 00:01 on Jun 7, 2021 |
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Jun 6, 2021 23:59
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Chuka Umana posted:btw does anyone else think that the Shepard-Liara romance option will be canon in 4? I was gonna make a joke about Garrus being the only possible answer, but in all seriousness it would be really dumb to dictate who the player's romantic partner was given how much variety/choice was provided in the three games for your Shepard to make that decision themselves (including not romancing anyone).
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Jun 7, 2021 00:14
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It wouldn't be the first time they did something like that, because *gestures at Revan* Of course it will probably go horribly because *gestures at Revan*
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Jun 7, 2021 00:21
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My hope is that Shepard won't be the protagonist, it'll be like Dragon Age Inquisition where you use an external tool to import your world state and then you might get a text mention or two, or a character who references, whatever Shepard's romance option/gender/favourite pizza topping was.
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Jun 7, 2021 00:21
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I'd love it if mass effect went the dragon age: origins route and let you choose from at least the council races and krogan. The Shepard trilogy should end with the reapers in 3.
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Jun 7, 2021 00:22
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They kinda push Liara as being the 'canon' romance right from the start really. She can be romanced by both m/f Shepard in me1 and she gets a whole dlc to herself in 2, and she gets way more scenes, focus and time in 3 than any other romance option. They really want you to bang Liara over anyone else.
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Jun 7, 2021 00:23
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Stanley Tucheetos posted:I'd love it if mass effect went the dragon age: origins route and let you choose from at least the council races and krogan. The Shepard trilogy should end with the reapers in 3. Agreed. It would be dope as hell to play as an alien and I honestly don't think they'd have to change much to make it happen. It was important to the thrust of ME1 that Shepard was an Alliance soldier, but in the post-ME3 world it would make a lot of sense to have pan-species rebuilding efforts spearheaded by whoever's best suited for the job. Like, at least a choice of human, asari and turian (ideally you'd also want salarian, krogan, quarian...) would be something and I can't imagine it would be crazy hard. You'd only even need to do one model for asari!
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Jun 7, 2021 00:25
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Okay, add to the list of "renegade decisions I feel bad about" killing Mordin and sabotaging the genophage. They kind of rub it in with a much longer death scene than I was expecting and everyone thanking you for bringing hope back to the krogan. Cool little bit after with Garrus talking to you about it and possibly deducing what happened, though.
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Jun 7, 2021 00:30
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Helith posted:They kinda push Liara as being the 'canon' romance right from the start really. She can be romanced by both m/f Shepard in me1 and she gets a whole dlc to herself in 2, and she gets way more scenes, focus and time in 3 than any other romance option. They really want you to bang Liara over anyone else. I cannot wait to find out about the relationship Liara created in her head since my current Shep just finished ME1 after doing Therum last and being nothing but loving rude to Liara throughout the remaining hour of game time.  oh btw here's wiggly shepard https://twitter.com/DoctorNutt/status/1401676558281052162?s=20
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Jun 7, 2021 00:37
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Android Blues posted:My hope is that Shepard won't be the protagonist, it'll be like Dragon Age Inquisition where you use an external tool to import your world state and then you might get a text mention or two, or a character who references, whatever Shepard's romance option/gender/favourite pizza topping was. her picking up the N7 helmet piece might be just a "this is mass effect btw" thing or it could suggest Shepard will be involved somehow in this. idk how.
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Jun 7, 2021 00:39
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Lt. Danger posted:I don't think it's necessary to tie the Paragon/Renegade conceit into it - P/R is just the structure for quest-paths and player conceptualisation, an alignment grid for the modern age. Bioware's purpose in ME2 is simply to establish that generational conflict exists and is the thing the audience should be thinking about. per Casey Hudson, the ultimate root of conflict in Mass Effect is the technological threshold of creating artificial intelligence i.e. a successor that is stronger and smarter than its creator, and these generational conflicts are a way to develop and explore that concept over multiple iterations that was mostly an example of how i would expect the loyalty missions to make further commentary on its attached theme of generational conflict, if we're assuming that's the undercurrent giving all the loyalty missions their direction and purpose - those missions would represent an opportunity to develop and refine the game's underlying messaging there but, by and large, instead there seems to be an absence of any coherent elaboration or expansion of those ideas since it's muddy and all over the place imho reminding us to think is fine sure, but giving us something tangible to think about would be better assuming those sections were really as united in theme as the argument suggests, and as much as i love the idea of those missions actually criticizing/commenting on the galaxy's problematic tendency to create a new crisis to solve the old crisis (because of its reliance on a self-destructive system that keeps doing it), i'm not sure if the material supports that interpretation, however interesting it is ...but maybe my bar is too high here, we are talking about a trilogy that shot its own foot off with its mixed messaging on the inevitable conflict of synthetics and organics
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Jun 7, 2021 00:39
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Helith posted:They kinda push Liara as being the 'canon' romance right from the start really. She can be romanced by both m/f Shepard in me1 and she gets a whole dlc to herself in 2, and she gets way more scenes, focus and time in 3 than any other romance option. They really want you to bang Liara over anyone else. but i don't like liara 
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Jun 7, 2021 00:45
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Comrade Blyatlov posted:but i don't like liara Silly to think that at this point the writers care at all about what your choices might be. It's their artistic vision, after all, how dare a plebian such as you question it. Artistic Integrity! Ignore that they made a game ostensibly about choice and how choices matter.
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Jun 7, 2021 00:53
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Stanley Tucheetos posted:I'd love it if mass effect went the dragon age: origins route and let you choose from at least the council races and krogan. The Shepard trilogy should end with the reapers in 3. While playing through me3 there have been conversations from salarians and krogans about naming their kids Shepard. You could have the next character be any alien or hymn but still be called “Shepard”. Might be confusing though...
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Jun 7, 2021 00:56
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Stanley Tucheetos posted:I'd love it if mass effect went the dragon age: origins route and let you choose from at least the council races and krogan. The Shepard trilogy should end with the reapers in 3. I'd love this, tbqh.
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Jun 7, 2021 00:56
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Stanley Tucheetos posted:I'd love it if mass effect went the dragon age: origins route and let you choose from at least the council races and krogan. The Shepard trilogy should end with the reapers in 3. Bold to assume that by ME4 the Krogan aren't a council race.
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Jun 7, 2021 01:00
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Admiral Ray posted:During Garrus's loyalty mission in ME2 I had an exchange like this, paraphrased: There’s a decent amount of Farscape in Mass Effect’s DNA. “ Farewell, my friends. And thank you for teaching me to kill again.”
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Jun 7, 2021 01:01
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I want more adventures with Shepard and his friends, solving problems by clicking the blue or red buttons. Grandpa needs to watch his stories
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Jun 7, 2021 01:02
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The Doomhammer posted:Bold to assume that by ME4 the Krogan aren't a council race. I mean if it was up to me the krogan would lead the council.
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Jun 7, 2021 01:08
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They tried writing something different with MEA and it crashed and burned, I think they'll continue ME3's story with Shepard instead of risking doing that again.
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Jun 7, 2021 01:08
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lunar detritus posted:They tried writing something different with MEA and it crashed and burned, I think they'll continue ME3's story with Shepard instead of risking doing that again. I honestly wonder how much to read into the fact that Liara *might* have wrinkles by her eyes in that trailer
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Jun 7, 2021 01:24
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The overhead space battle cut scene concludes and the camera pans down to the ground team. As it slides behind their eyes you hear the PC speak to their squad: "Geth do not *intentionally* infiltrate"
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Jun 7, 2021 01:38
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liara rules kramers into room shouting by the goddess then starts spamming singularity whats not to like?
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Jun 7, 2021 01:39
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In me2? More like Kramers into a room and cries because literally every enemy has shields and the only reason she got to cast things at all is because I was working on the biotic combo achievement.
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Jun 7, 2021 01:43
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If there's an expanded council in ME4, it should include the Volus and Krogan. It'll have a Quarian instead.
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Jun 7, 2021 01:45
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The new council should be all Krogan.
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Jun 7, 2021 02:15
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Pops Mgee posted:The new council should be all Krogan. I'd be afraid to hang up on them if that was the case.
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Jun 7, 2021 02:17
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Liara is a very monotone character the whole series except for the one side mission in 2 where she can fly off the handle and murder her assistant
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Jun 7, 2021 02:20
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On the one hand, the derelict Reaper remains a very rough mission for an engineer. On the other hand, I'm once again very glad I went for sniper training. The fully upgraded viper melts scions. I always do Normandy Crash Site right before the Reaper IFF. I like to think of it as Shepard's loyalty mission.
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Jun 7, 2021 02:25
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