mass effect - Felt pretty silly after naming my Shepard "The Normandy Crew"

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > mass effect - Felt pretty silly after naming my Shepard "The Normandy Crew"

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exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Despite all its problems and Andromeda which I'm not even recognizing here, Mass Effect is still probably one of the greatest game series ever made.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2021 14:28

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 04:27

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Javik was definitely one of the best things about Mass Effect 3. I can�t believe EA partitioned him off as DLC!

# ¿ Feb 2, 2021 15:32

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

OhFunny posted:

Missed out on him and all the DLC since my brother and I felt pretty burned by the ending.

This is a shining example of how greedy-rear end anti-consumer policies can hurt a product overall, because Javik is a thematically important and I would argue essential character to what ME3 is going for. It would be like if you had to buy the Digital Deluxe version of Home Alone to see Kevin's scenes with Old Man Marley.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2021 16:23

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

By the end of the trilogy Mass Effect had really good gameplay, but the problem with these MP-only spinoff ideas is that people enjoyed the co-op so much because of their familiarity with the world & characters. Would it be as much fun bitchslapping dudes with a Krogan if they were just some ala carte frog dinosaur race and you didn't have memorable characters like Wrex and Grunt as a reference point? Maybe a little, but Andromeda shows you how few diminishing returns you get from squeezing out a tired fascimile from the core experience.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2021 16:54

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

ME1 attempted to be a cover shooter as well, it was just exceptionally bad at it.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2021 16:56

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Looks like they made FemShep's default face from ME3 canon. Wonder if they'll canonize Liara's big bazongas as well.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2021 17:10

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

ME3's ending is what it is at this point, that ship has sailed, who cares. MP though, what were they thinking.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2021 17:47

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Bholder posted:

Is it me or Pinnacle Station is missing on the list of DLCs?

Pinnacle Station was so bad EA removed it from their marketplace, pretty sure you can't even buy it anywhere to this day.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2021 17:49

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Please don't post what actually happened re: Pinnacle Station.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2021 17:52

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

I liked that his hacking animation was just him kicking the console.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2021 19:43

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

thrilla in vanilla posted:

It would have been cool to get a little more time with him before the attack sequence at the beginning of the game. That whole segment was a total garbage hatchet job tho

I think Shepard's trial was supposed to constitute the entire opening act of the game but we ran out of time WHOOPS the Reapers are already here.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2021 19:56

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Hitting a rock now sends you into low orbit.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2021 20:40

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

The terminator reaper baby boss was good, sorry haters.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2021 00:52

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Mark Meer improved as Shepard as time went on, but Hale was always good. She had an icy intensity that was just perfect for Renegade runs. "How about goodbye?"

# ¿ Feb 3, 2021 15:35

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

This is why when people said "b-but there's no possible way you could make a direct sequel to ME3" I always thought it was a dumb thing to say, because if you think about it creatively for even a few minutes you can already come up with a lot of compelling storylines for a galaxy in disarray following the destruction of the Reapers and the mass relay network.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2021 22:02

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

A Festivus Miracle posted:

You basically can't get any more serious than galactic Armageddon without basically turning the game into an anime plot. They wrote themselves into a corner, and the fact that the Andromeda game was so rushed and bad basically killed any real interest in providing another sequel dead.

Nobody is asking for Reapers but even bigger and badder. Andromeda failed because it was Mass Effect homeopathy, an extremely watered down fascimile that attempted to replicate the settings and characters of the original trilogy without earning any of it narratively.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2021 22:42

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Liara was super OP in ME1, I usually paired her with Tali or Wrex.

In ME2 it was hard not to go with Miranda. Kasumi, Mordin and Samara all had great class kits as well.

For ME3 Liara and Javik had a great dynamic. I always rolled Vanguard in these games so biotic explosions galore.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2021 12:36

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

The Shadow Broker DLC is one of the single best examples of its kind. Good story that integrates back into the main plot, gives Liara something to do besides sit in her office on Ilium all game, solid set pieces, fun little details. It rocks!

I liked Kasumi too and I wish she could have played a larger role in ME3.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2021 19:38

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Sally posted:

Isn't Wrex a temporary member on Tuchanka if he survived up until then? ME3 had a lot of guest character moments compared to the other games.

No, he only rolls with you for the Citadel DLC if he's still alive.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2021 21:37

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

The dark energy plot is no more of a satisfying explanation for the Reapers than what they settled on in ME3. Maybe it would have been executed better, maybe it wouldn't have, but it's just another spacey wacey explanation for an antagonist that really shouldn't have been explained. There's nothing inherently better about "the Reapers were created to solve the dark energy problem" versus "the Reapers were created to solve the synthetics problem," it's a whole bunch of who cares either way.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2021 00:47

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

They should have swapped the Shepard clone for the main plot and used Kai Leng as the joke wannabe antagonist of Citadel.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2021 18:28

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Lt. Danger posted:

agreed on Final Hours of ME3 but I believe it was also made during the game's development, so it offers an interesting window into a moment between Mass Effect 3 being largely complete and Mass Effect 3 being released to subsequent backlash

in particular it's interesting to see Hudson's ideas about science and technology around apparently during development for ME1, ahead of any need for Bioware to do PR damage control - suggests that "Hudson and Walters locked themselves in a room and pulled something out their asses for the ending" has been exaggerated by the fanbase i.e. the basic concepts were there from the start, it was just the mechanical line-by-line script that needed to be rushed out by the producer and lead writer

"Bad man lock room keep out good guys" is one of those apocryphal gaming myths that's completely stupid to anyone who maybe thinks about it for a single minute, yet it somehow endures.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2021 20:58

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

And then Shepard goes, "...who?"

# ¿ Feb 7, 2021 22:29

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Lt. Danger posted:

Bioware has always been a little uneven: Mass Effect 2 has "humans are genetically diverse", butt shots, a mis-balanced Suicide Mission, an awkward transition to working for Cerberus; Mass Effect 1 has Malthusian economics, Saren/Benezia, awful gameplay, a scientific explanation for psychic blue space babes

in turn Bioware aren't all that egregious - even Obsidian got in on the gaming-journalism-stunt-casting with the New Vegas DLCs

Saren kicking around a trash can inside Sovereign screaming RAAARGH! ARRGHHA! in Mass Effect 1 is the absolute lowest point in the trilogy and I'm including the star child here.

# ¿ Feb 8, 2021 18:20

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Funky Valentine posted:

I feel that if you can't resolve Rannoch peacefully, you should get Renegade points either way because both options are Shepard allowing genocide.

Quarians had it coming.

# ¿ Feb 8, 2021 18:34

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

There was voice chat in ME3 MP but nobody used it (good).

# ¿ Feb 9, 2021 14:14

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

There was some relatively easy way to hack text chat into the game, which made me think they got 90% of the way toward implementing it and then just.. didn't for whatever reason. Not like you really needed that for ME3.

# ¿ Feb 9, 2021 14:19

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Renegade is a fun way to play the game but you often can't anticipate which particular flavor of renegade you're going to get. It runs the full gamut from ruthless to recklessly stupid.

# ¿ Feb 9, 2021 16:14

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Error 404 posted:

Blowing up that rear end in a top hat krogan during Mordin's loyalty mission is too perfect not to do it every single time, even on a Paragon playthrough.

You gotta let him go on a little bit though, to get the full effect.

# ¿ Feb 9, 2021 17:10

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Baron von der Loon posted:

Is there a write-up anywhere about them changing the ending, because their original plans were leaked? From what I remember, there was a Final Hours of ME3 thing, is it in there?

No because "bad men locked selves in room, made bad ending" is a made up piece of Gaming Myth that people somehow seriously still believe in 2021.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2021 01:11

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

This is really poorly explained in ME3, but the Crucible is itself also a piece of Reaper technology that, if constructed, causes the Catalyst to reconsider its programming. It wasn't first devised by the Protheans, or any other cycle race. Like Lt. Danger said it's just The Thing that makes ending the cycle possible.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2021 09:31

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

The problem isn't really that the Reapers have an origin story. It's not even a bad or unexpected one: "The Leviathans created an AI to solve a problem of monumental importance, the AI arrived at a rather inconvenient conclusion for them, and the entire galaxy has suffered ever since." Okay, something we've all seen before in sci-fi, but otherwise fine. The problem is when the Reapers bother to care or even explain to someone as insignificant as Shepard what their motives are. They're a crazy alien machine race, who cares about trying to make their reasoning sympathetic.

To me this is why the Dark Matter plot would be equally unsatisfying. The Reapers don't need to be owned with facts and logic, they just need to be destroyed!

exquisite tea fucked around with this message at 17:28 on Feb 11, 2021

# ¿ Feb 11, 2021 17:25

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

There was Liara and sexually harassing Kelly Chambers until she fed your drat fish, if you were playing as FemShep.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2021 18:35

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

She can survive but you gotta tell her to scram when she shows up on the Citadel instead of staying around to help people.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2021 18:42

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Zlodo posted:

i'd like the control ending to be canon because it means reapers would still be around (i mean what's mass effect without them) but we'd no longer really know what they're up to so it would restore some mystery. it would also mean shepard would still exist as a mystery entity while avoiding making them the protagonist again (bc as awesome as shepard is a fresh protagonist would allow for new character development)

I agree that Control is the most interesting setting for a post-ME3 Mass Effect. Galaxy rebuilding, mass relays in disarray, and you have this weird protectorate of ancient machine cuttlefish just ominously floating around out there in dark space.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2021 21:11

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

When people are like "they'd be on Mass Effect 8 by now with 11 spinoffs if they didn't write a definitive ending" I'm starting to see the merits of the star child.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2021 18:57

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

It's very funny how what the writers clearly want you to think about mages is so utterly at odds with the text of all three Dragon Age games. The phrase "ludonarrative dissonance" gets thrown around quite irresponsibly but here it is well-deserved.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2021 12:18

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Psycho Landlord posted:

thinkin bout that alternate universe that's out there somewhere where the people that wrote mass effect had played Volition's Masterpiece Freespace 2 before they did the mass effect thing and therefore had actually good ideas about how to write their godzilla robot squid space boogeymen instead of THIS HURTS YOU

Sounds like a crap universe imho.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2021 16:46

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Andromeda's core conceit was already a failure to understand what made Mass Effect appealing. It was never about having a bunch of freeform worlds to explore, but presenting the appearance of a complex galaxy with a deep history and politics as the framing device for some really well-structured, tightly wound linear missions. The skyboxes on Noveria, Ilium, Omega or the Citadel already told you everything you needed to know about that world, you didn't need to physically travel to some building in the distance to collect +15 Palladium and get back in the Mako. Sometimes limitations are better at exciting the imagination than just overwhelming the player with a whole bunch of meaningless crap.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2021 20:54

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 04:27

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

SirPhoebos posted:

I think I'm the only person that liked the Mako sections in ME1.

What was it like directing Mass Effect: Andromeda?

# ¿ Feb 13, 2021 23:22

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > mass effect - Felt pretty silly after naming my Shepard "The Normandy Crew"

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