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You know, I've played through the series multiple times, on multiple platforms, and I've never done a renegade playthrough. I tried one, once. I got as far as lying to some Krogan tourists about fish on the Citadel, felt like a monster, and went right back to being Commander Shepard, Intergalactic Hall Monitor.
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Feb 9, 2021 15:42
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Codependent Poster posted:Harbinger is an edgelord reaper. Maybe Sovereign is the edgelord, and all the other reapers are like 'jesus christ, are you pretending to be mecha-cthulhu again?"
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Feb 10, 2021 17:02
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The destruction of the galaxy was a fine 'high stakes' for ME 1 - 3, where the setting was galaxy-spanning. ME4 being Liara travelling from planet to planet looking to track down clues of the final battle and all that, while pitching in where she can, means that 'our water purifier is on it's last legs, and we need help' are perfectly good high stakes. I guess what I'm saying is I want Liara to be wandering around like Bill Bixby from The Incredible Hulk, keeping mean men from interfering in the local rodeo or making sure the YMCA doesn't get demolished and the neighbourhood kids have nowhere to play basketball, then flying away to the next planet while The Lonely Man plays. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1d4C1ZQKmw4
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Feb 10, 2021 20:56
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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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Strategic Tea posted:Here's another Andromeda head scratcher. Well they wanted to make it gigglesquee nom your head ~PeNGuInS~ lol I’m so random but cooler heads prevailed. Also, Daddy Ryder (not my stage name) designed it, so it sounds like a slightly obsequious British butler.
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Feb 14, 2021 21:51
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Blastedhellscape posted:My favorite thing about ME1 was that it had the aesthetics of a cheesy space opera novel from the 70's or 80's. You've got rail guns, force fields, latex space suits, gimmicky aliens, everything looks all shiny and ceramic, and the soundtrack is all 80's-style synth. It was like a Larry Niven or Jack Chalker novel come to life, and as someone who read a lot of those books as a kid I loved seeing that sort of thing in a visual media. I mean, ME was a 70s/early 80s movie, ME2 was a 90s movie, and ME3 was a modern movie full of set pieces, explosions, and stripped-down characterizations.
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Feb 15, 2021 04:44
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Funky Valentine posted:The stronger your biotics, the better your rear end. Tits and rear end is where biotic power is stored. Exhibit 1: Samara. Exhibit 2: Jack and Miranda. Exhibit 3: Kaiden.
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Feb 15, 2021 18:33
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Last King posted:so uh... what was andromeda? Andromeda was somebody trying to make a mass-effect style game.
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Feb 15, 2021 21:19
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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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thrilla in vanilla posted:I don’t want to address this and would prefer to move to an adjacent topic. Canonically it’s Quarians, because the toys are built into their suits. Brings a whole new meaning to the term “vibin’.”
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Feb 17, 2021 14:59
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Isn’t it a war asset in ME3 if you save it in ME1?
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Feb 18, 2021 14:00
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:It's honestly the best joke of the series. It’s true. The political tension in ME1 comes from the “client” races, which I think are explicitly referred to as such, being mad that humanity is the new girl in school just walking up to the queen bees and being accepted. Don’t blame humanity for not digging the status quo, yo.
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Feb 18, 2021 15:44
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Funky Valentine posted:"With condescending contempt: Ah yes. 'Reapers'. With condescension beyond mortal ken: We have dismissed those claims." Sadly, when the Elcor representative reared back to air-quote  Reapers he fell over and died.
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Feb 18, 2021 17:21
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What about a Hanar counsellor? This one understands your allusion. This one is skeptical of the existence of Reapers . (Editors note: airquotes are epic when you have like eight tenticles.) May this one suggest instead searching for the Enkindlers?
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Feb 18, 2021 20:37
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Shepard. (Sips whiskey.). The Babylon project was out last, best hope for peace. (Drag) It failed. (Sip) But in the year of the Reaper war, it became something greater. (Drag) Our last, best hope for victory. (Sip)
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Feb 19, 2021 15:43
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Zurtilik posted:When will Mass Effect let me be a Krogan? You do not have the quads for it.
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Feb 19, 2021 18:45
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red plastic cup posted:When will Mass Effect let me romance a Krogan? YOU DON’T HAVE THE QUADS!
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Feb 19, 2021 18:58
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Outer Worlds is a technically brilliant engine, an out-of-budget design department, and a story written by young millennials who learned everything they knew about politics and economics from Twitter, echo chamber subreddits and out of context Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein quotes. ME:A is a bunch of independently designed and implemented features and gameplay systems bolted into a not-designed-for-that engine by a bunch of journeyperson techies and artists, and a story written by a bunch of young millennials who learned everything they know about science and mass effect from mass effect fan forums. Honestly, the game is fantastic, given its history, and the fault lies with senior management. Imagine “my face is tired” being quipped by Buffy after a long day forcing smiles at work, and it makes a lot more sense.
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Feb 21, 2021 13:10
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Android Blues posted:lol that you think millennials are into buffy. that's a gen x-er show if anything ever was! Joss Whedon and his quippyness is still a thing.
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Feb 21, 2021 15:15
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A talking coyote posted:Everyone Shepard works with is a loving weirdo though. Do they mean just the regular no name ship crew? Just enough of a weirdo to not be suspect, and all with issues for Shepherd to solve. Shepherds need a flock, after all.
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Feb 23, 2021 20:33
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Pattonesque posted:Priority Earth shoulda had a lot of reactivity based on Your Choices I agree. The game should have had a 'fallout slide show' only it would have short cutscenes, not static images with v/o, woven throughout a 'final stand' of pretty much every war asset you'd managed to acquire. I want to see Elcor heavy artillery trundling across the battlefield. I want to see Asari commandos ripping apart Banshees with their minds. And in their absence, I want radio messages 'There's too many!' 'We're falling back!' 'Nobody is coming to help us!' 'We're so hosed!' Then the run on the Citadel becomes either a triumphant 'they're on the ropes, we're ending this cycle once and for all' or 'oh poo poo, this is our only chance, guess we have to blow up the Earth and hope we take the Reapers with it.'
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Feb 24, 2021 16:56
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denimgorilla posted:They replaced the Illusive Man’s cigarette with a vape. Paragon interrupt; “Sick vape cloud, bro.” Renegade interrupt: pulls out a torpedo sized cigar.
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Mar 2, 2021 12:48
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drat, that’s messed up.
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Mar 2, 2021 15:22
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Moola posted:Dragon's teeth are a hoax sheeple! *I yell as I purposefully husk myself to own the space-libs* "LOL it's just a flu, bro!" I cackle as Harbinger possesses my frail mortal shell, using me to hurt Shepard.
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Mar 3, 2021 18:44
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TIM: Shepard. (drag.) I've been reviewing intelligence reports. (sip) There are reports that the Quarian Migrant Fleet are heading towards earth, and as I'm sure you know, that means trouble. Shepard: What sort of trouble? TIM: (drag) The Quarians are scavengers and vagabonds. They strip planets bare of resources and technology, leaving behind starving populations and rampant disease. (drag) I need you to take your team and stop them. Shepard: I'll go investigate, but I'm not going to hassle an innocent people just looking for resources to sustain themselves. TIM: (sip) You'll find out for yourself. (turns around to holographic displays, turns up volume.) Holographic display: TUCKER CARLSON EXPOSES THE TRUTH BEHIND THE QUARIAN INVASION FLEET!
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Mar 3, 2021 21:35
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Sentinel Red posted:Still keeping a sidebet on the player being Shep and everyone's overjoyed to see you yadda yadda... Surprise; the Shephard you play after Project Lazarus in ME2 was also a clone! You can't bring back somebody from how dead Shephard was, but they managed to harvest most of the DNA, throw in some frog DNA to fill the gaps, and make a bunch of Shephard clones. They took the best of the bunch and called them Shepherd. Most of the rest were disposed of. A few escaped, including the one you deal with in Citadel. But there are others, oh yes, there are others.
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Mar 10, 2021 21:57
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One big wormy boi.
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Apr 28, 2021 21:43
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Eau de MacGowan posted:Isn't the final twist/reveal that he also recruited all the autistic kids from his school into a super assassins agency, because each of them has a particular kind of autism that lends itself really well to a different aspect of contract murder? No, just the one girl who in very non verbal; she acts as his Theora Jones type research/control/guiding-voice-over-a-comm-link, though at the end of the movie, a new non-verbal girl shows up, wanders into her room, and it's implied that she's going to start teaching the new girl the ropes, so to speak. I liked the movie, personally, and not just because Anna Kendrick.
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May 6, 2021 13:33
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Mass Effect isn't Star Trek, it's Star Wars. It's literally KOTOR3 but Bioware decided they didn't want to pay licensing fees to Lucasarts.
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May 19, 2021 14:50
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I mean, she's objectively not wrong that random other polities in the galaxy don't necessarily have humanity's best interests at heart, nor is she wrong to observe things like the 'client race' status quo of the Volus, for example, and think 'gee, that's not what I want for Humanity.' But I've never been able to bring myself to play a full, or even mainly, renegade playthrough, so I'm not sure what she actually says. I always feel like too much of a monster when I lie to the Krogan about delicious fish on the Citadel.
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May 19, 2021 15:57
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Willatron posted:Attitudes toward homosexuality were improving in the late aughts, but gay marriage was still illegal in the entire US iirc (might've been some states that had legalized by that point, but don't recall) and Canada had only legalized it 2 years before the release of ME1. I don't know if it was BioWare or EA's call that had them remove the homosexual romances from the first and second game, and I'm certainly not saying it was okay for them to do so, but they were probably afraid of bringing down even more wrath from the bible thumpers and morality brigades that were already trying to paint Mass Effect as a pornographic game for having the most PG sex scenes imaginable other than a straight fade to black. ME was progressive *for it's time.* It's not their fault that times have continued to progress.
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May 19, 2021 20:28
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Snake Maze posted:Yeah, the numbers there have always been bizarre. The massive number of humans you see doing all sorts of jobs all over the setting, plus the huge number of colonies does not fit with the fact that the majority of the humans you see in the game were alive before first contact happened. I mean, humans going out and colonizing behind random relays was the cause of the FC War. fadam posted:What's the lore behind Humanity being so powerful and advancing so fast compared to the other races? I think the idea is most other species got found by the Council species and colonized/uplifted/patronized-by-gunpoint, where as humanity never got randomly found, and was like 'gently caress the Drake equation, t'aint no such thing as aliens, yee haw, lets get out there and colonize us some uninhabited worlds, oh yeah! But lets arm our ships, juuuuuuust in case.' Like imagine the council rolling up on a random planet and being like 'Hey, nice planet you have here, come hang out on the Citadel, all it's going to cost you is ten percent of your planet's GDP, also, that's some cool Eezo you've got there, mind if we hold onto it for safe keeping? Cool. Also, here's a list of planets you can colonize, yeah, they kinda suck, but it's scary out there, and it would be a shame if something happened to you guys, like, oh, I don't know, fractional-c orbital bombardment that wipes out your higher-level biosphere but leaves the planet fundamentally colonizable by somebody else. So, should we load up that donation now, or.....?' Also: https://www.tor.com/2016/10/17/the-answer-to-why-humans-are-so-central-in-star-trek/ TheCenturion fucked around with this message at 20:39 on May 19, 2021 |
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May 19, 2021 20:32
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Psycho Landlord posted:Mass Effect is definitely one of those Humanity gently caress Yeah reddit self-masturbation stories at its core but it's better about it than a lot of properties. There's no magic spark or chosen one status or whatever, it really just boils down to "there's a lot of us and we Go Hard when pissed." I don't think it's 'Humanity, gently caress Yeah!' so much as 'the other polities are mired in bureaucracy, red tape, and endless powerpoint presentations in committee.' Like humans showed up to play footy on an empty field; the field was empty because all the major-league teams were busy arguing over the game schedule and sponsorship deals. Then the assistant coach for one of the more physical teams shows up, orders the humans off the field, gets roughed up, goes to round up the boys, but before they can come back to deliver a right proper kicking, gets called off by the league ownership, who takes humans aside for a bit of a 'hey, here's how things work around here, don't upset the apple cart' speech. The ME series is full of Asari, Turians, Salarians, whatever, who are either chafing under the bullshit, or who leave to do their own thing because they can't get anywhere under all the bullshit. Aria and Mordin come to mind. Comrade Blyatlov posted:Eh, it's not that hard to follow blueprints even if you have no idea what it's for. There's an amazing amount of modern technology that you could travel back in time to, oh, Roman times (or the Chinese, or the Muslims, or all sorts of historical civilizations) and explain to them, in not a lot of detail, and they'd be able to figure it out. There's no reason the Romans couldn't have movable type presses, repeating rifles, steam engines, telegraphs, hydroelectric power generation, refrigeration, all sorts of surprisingly basic poo poo that simply nobody thought about. And that's without thinking of some of the indirect applications. Make a spark-gap generator, hook it up to a really long wire, and you can transmit a signal. Transmit that signal once an hour, and now you've got a global time reference, which means you figure out your latitude and longitude, which revolutionizes ocean travel. Introduce the germ theory of disease and watch quality of life explode. It was only about 150 years ago that Semmelweis was laughed into an insane asylum for suggesting that one wash their hands after performing a dissection and before sticking their fingers into pregnant women's vaginas. Dead simple to build AM radio transmitters and receivers; imagine an ancient empire with a national radio network. Or cannon with trunnions and elevation screws. I mean, we went from 'the first powered flight' to 'men on the moon' well within a single lifespan, and those men went to the moon thanks to some very talented women doing calculations by hand. In the 1940s, 'computer' meant 'the person doing the computing.' In the 1980s, we were getting into the 'a computer on every desktop' paradigm. In the 2020s, a lot of people don't even have a 'computer,' they just do everything on their smart phone or tablet. So yeah, there's a lot of technology that isn't really complicated, just nobody thought about it. And there's a lot of technology that is very usable without actually understanding it; you can make steel without understanding molecular science, you just figure out if you toss in some bone meal at the right time, heat it a right way, cool it the right way, but don't cool it too much, blah blah blah, your swords work better. You don't need to know that the local iron has more chromium and vanadium in it; you just know that swords from this region have a neat water-ripple effect. Jerusalem posted:Mass Effect: Endgame, followed by the prequel, Mass Effect: Endgame: Origins Mass Effect 4: The Search For Shepard Mass Effect 5: The Voyage Home GhostDog posted:I want Mass Effect A-Team, just me any my buddies taking on odd jobs on different planets. No stupid galaxy saving. Make a 60$ initial/pilot game about how we ended up going rogue with our Normandy equivalent and then just drop 2 DLC missions every quarter. MechWarrior 2->MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries Mass Effect 3-> Mass Effect 3: Mercenaries Yes please. Or better yet, Mass Effect: Kingmaker. A small chunk of the Attican Traverse or whatever, a few systems close enough for non-Mass Effect travel between themselves, is cut off from the rest of the galaxy when the Mass Effect Relay falls silent/explodes/whatever. You start out as a local explorer/merc/raider/whatever and work towards uniting the area. Will you be a benevolent leader or a merciless tyrant? How will you deal with internal issues? Do you bring other communities under your banner with diplomacy and trade, or by plasma and fire? TheCenturion fucked around with this message at 16:26 on May 26, 2021 |
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May 26, 2021 14:49
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Pattonesque posted:Buddy, are you reading my mind? I would kill for a Mechwarrior game where half of it is MW4 Mercenaries and the other half is ME2 “well how did you FEEL about us rebuilding your Atlas?” poo poo Honestly, you could straight-up reskin Mass Effect as a BattleTech/MechWarrior game. Time to go play Crescent Hawk's Inception again.
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May 26, 2021 18:07
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Doctor Nutt posted:I mean it's honestly pretty surprising she can't given her prominence in the game's writing and marketing, and how hard it is to kill her compared to everyone else in ME2. I love that scene. "Annnnnnnnnnnddddddddd.......now, Mr. Scott." "Sir? (while poking away at buttons)" "The doors, Mr Scott." "Aye sir, I'm working on it." And god, just the visuals of the Enterprise, gaping holes in the hull partially plated over. Honestly, ST2/3/4 was an amazing trilogy of movies, and one of the main reasons is that the Enterprise is straight-up treated as a main character.
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May 26, 2021 19:46
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Seemlar posted:The tell on that choice is almost as obvious as Zaaed being a bad leader, your options are a centuries old Asari super warrior, the most powerful human biotic known and... the character who
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May 26, 2021 19:51
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Vichan posted:The rage comic version of Mass Effect Deception is loving hilarious, and I hate rage comics. I 100% read all of Anderson's words in Keith David's voice. Keith David from SR4, albeit. I also gave up around chapter three.
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May 27, 2021 20:41
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Cythereal posted:In an early version of the game, Mordin had a conflict with Grunt ala Jack/Miranda and Tali/Legion. "I'll take a small team and go through the seeker swarms. Jack, Samara, you're with me. Miranda, you come too. Jack, you hold them off as long as you can. When you start to get tired, Samara will take over. If we need to, we can fall back on Miranda."
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May 28, 2021 14:25
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bobjr posted:It’s probably brought up in 3, but a point is made that the Geth are peacefully tending to Rannoch and waiting for the Quarians to come back. Is no one else aware of this or do the Quarians just come in blasting any time they get close so the Geth are forced to defend themselves? You think the Quarian Admirality wants it known that everybody could go home, start some farms, maybe even have some democratic elections, not live under a perpetual state of 'emergency measures?' Honestly, the cultural meme of 'next year in Rannoch!' probably does far more to hold themselves in power, and hold Quarian society together, than 'Hey y'all, we can go home, Geth left the keys under the 'Welcome' mat.' Ethiser posted:I'm not even sure the Geth actually reproduce or create more of themselves. There numbers are incredibly small for what an entirely synthetic species given hundreds of years and multiple planets could potentially do. Geth are software; they reproduce all they want, they just don't bother building a ton of mobile platforms. TheCenturion fucked around with this message at 19:26 on May 28, 2021 |
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May 28, 2021 19:21
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I'd forgotten that ME1 is 'six point five story beats, a fuckton of filler, and four purposefully cruel collectathons.' Still a fun game, but man, I'd love if the LE had the option to at least tweak those drat resource gathering quests. I remember playing ME at launch and doing all those collections, too.....
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May 31, 2021 19:00
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