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SubponticatePoster posted:
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Feb 11, 2019 19:17
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I'm sure I will, because I fuckin' hate myself. 
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This takes me back Having some chats and cleaning up a few sidequests. Miranda's is one of those that doesn't seem like a big deal, but can (sort of) gently caress you down the road if you aren't aware. I'll go into it more in depth in a couple of missions. And we run into an old friend. We met Din Korlack way back in like episode 4 of ME1, he was the Volus ambassador then as well. In a neat touch they got the same VA to do it. Oh yeah, we also meet up with Zaeed too  . Next time we'll talk to the Asari councilor and push the plot onward. There are only a couple more major story missions before endgame.
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Feb 15, 2019 01:11
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Who in the hell animated the scene where Shepard walks in to talk to Zaeed? It bugs me every single drat time I see it. Shepard looks like she's got a bum leg or a hunchback. Also, Liara, work on the flirting.
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Feb 15, 2019 02:24
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grack posted:Who in the hell animated the scene where Shepard walks in to talk to Zaeed? It bugs me every single drat time I see it. Shepard looks like she's got a bum leg or a hunchback.
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Feb 15, 2019 02:33
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Sylphosaurus posted:I´m pretty conflicted regarding ME: A since it had some good ideas but in the end it shows that it´s a hastily thrown together product that introduces several game elements and promptly drops them within two planets. Anyway, I´ll shut up regarding this since Subponticate has a ways to go before this game is done and over. my complaints about ME:A come down to it not respecting my time as a player in any way, which it does rather comprehensively. an impressive achievement, but perpetual background irritation isn't the best mood to be in for what is supposed to be entertainment these problems don't really exist in LPs because you can just not show dumb timewasting poo poo and just highlight the actual content of MEA which isn't that bad. Everyone wins! well, except subponticate having to make a bunch of cuts in the video 
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Feb 15, 2019 05:58
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The important thing to remember about ME:A is that the first guy in charge spent like the beginning 3.5 years of the dev cycle trying to get procedurally generated worlds to work. They didn't and he bailed and they basically finished the game in 18 months. When you view it through that lens it's actually impressive it turned out as good as it did; instead of recycling the same map 300x like they did in DA2 they just recycled the Asaris' faces
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Feb 15, 2019 06:47
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SubponticatePoster posted:The important thing to remember about ME:A is that the first guy in charge spent like the beginning 3.5 years of the dev cycle trying to get procedurally generated worlds to work. They didn't and he bailed and they basically finished the game in 18 months. When you view it through that lens it's actually impressive it turned out as good as it did; instead of recycling the same map 300x like they did in DA2 they just recycled the Asaris' faces Probably explains why their faces are so tired. They have to extra hard on every single person.
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Feb 15, 2019 17:40
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late on the Leviathan stuff but I kinda wish in retrospect that the main plot had been that and the collector stuff fused together. The atmosphere of the DLC is really, really cool - for a brief time, it has a vibe more like the first game than most of 2 and 3 - and a plot where you have to find answers about the Reapers, their creators & vulnerabilities and about what happened to the Protheans would've been neat. Especially if they'd dialed back on the Cerberus poo poo and hadn't killed Shepard at the start of 2. That being said, I dunno if the writing staff for Bioware had even thought up the Leviathans even as a concept by the time 2 was in development, so idk.SubponticatePoster posted:This takes me back Yeah, doesn't Miranda get killed by if you don't warn her about Kai Leng and you don't give her resources when she asks for 'em later? I recall that it accidentally happened when I last went through ME3 because I didn't do the latter.
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Feb 17, 2019 03:23
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Kurieg posted:Probably explains why their faces are so tired. They have to extra hard on every single person. Also 90% of Andromeda's facial animations were done by a speech recognition AI animation interpreter that was very poorly optimized and needed to be hand corrected in certain extreme cases (hello Foster Addison!).
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Feb 17, 2019 03:26
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nine-gear crow posted:Also 90% of Andromeda's facial animations were done by a speech recognition AI animation interpreter that was very poorly optimized and needed to be hand corrected in certain extreme cases (hello Foster Addison!). It's a shame that overwhelmed any and all conversation about the game, almost to a meme level.
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Feb 17, 2019 14:21
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Dawgstar posted:It's a shame that overwhelmed any and all conversation about the game, almost to a meme level. It went exactly to meme level. Just about any video you’d find on YouTube during the height of discussion on ME:A had Addison’s bug eyed poo poo face as its thumbnail as the physical avatar for everything wrong with the game (also there’s too many black and gay people in it, goddamn SJWs ruining gaming by reminding me that non-white, non-straight people exist).
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Feb 17, 2019 19:06
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It's not like the game didn't also give SJW's plenty of reasons to be mad.
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Feb 17, 2019 19:25
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nine-gear crow posted:It went exactly to meme level. Just about any video you’d find on YouTube during the height of discussion on ME:A had Addison’s bug eyed poo poo face as its thumbnail as the physical avatar for everything wrong with the game (also there’s too many black and gay people in it, goddamn SJWs ruining gaming by reminding me that non-white, non-straight people exist). I wonder how far off we are from thoughtful "it wasn't that bad" retrospectives.
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Feb 18, 2019 15:27
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Dawgstar posted:I wonder how far off we are from thoughtful "it wasn't that bad" retrospectives.
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Feb 18, 2019 16:31
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My main issue with ME:A is that while bad, it was salvageable. Both ME3 and DA:I were games with problems that had two "alright" DLCs followed by one "Extremely good" DLC. People were expecting that ME:A would get some bugfix patches followed by DLC to extend the story and reinvigorate interest in the game. EA's whole "Well if you're going to be mean about it we'll take our ball and go home" thing was not what we expected and may be the last nail in he coffin for the entire franchise.
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Feb 18, 2019 16:45
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Kurieg posted:My main issue with ME:A is that while bad, it was salvageable. Both ME3 and DA:I were games with problems that had two "alright" DLCs followed by one "Extremely good" DLC. People were expecting that ME:A would get some bugfix patches followed by DLC to extend the story and reinvigorate interest in the game. The head of BioWare recently said at some game conference that they “weren’t done with Mass Effect just yet” and the response was incredulous laughter from all sectors. So that tells you everything you need to know about how people view the future of the franchise.
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Feb 18, 2019 22:08
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Kurieg posted:EA's whole "Well if you're going to be mean about it we'll take our ball and go home" thing was not what we expected and may be the last nail in he coffin for the entire franchise. Did they even have any resources to divert to a hypothetical Quarian Ark DLC? Everything else seems geared for Anthem or (I guess) SWTOR.
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Feb 18, 2019 23:08
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Dawgstar posted:Did they even have any resources to divert to a hypothetical Quarian Ark DLC? Everything else seems geared for Anthem or (I guess) SWTOR. It sounded like it was in progress. I mean, the game itself ends on what’s basically an ad for the DLC and then EA just ripped the plug out of the wall on them. Now it’s gonna be wrapped up in some novel no one’s going to read.
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Feb 18, 2019 23:30
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The novel came out, it was bad.
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Feb 18, 2019 23:34
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It always confused me that there weren't at least a couple Quarians running around for the Andromeda initiative. I mean, keeping ships running years and years past their expiration date is kinda their thing. Kurieg posted:My main issue with ME:A is that while bad, it was salvageable. That's kind of how I feel about it as well, though i'd say I just found it underwhelming instead of outright bad. There's totally a lot of cool ideas in there, it's just incredibly unpolished and feels like less than the sum of its parts. It could've been a really solid game in the hands of a developer staff that wasn't as mismanaged.
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Feb 18, 2019 23:53
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nine-gear crow posted:The head of BioWare recently said at some game conference that they “weren’t done with Mass Effect just yet” and the response was incredulous laughter from all sectors. So that tells you everything you need to know about how people view the future of the franchise. But not a shootmans battle royale. A battle royale that draws from the walk-and-talk half of Mass Effect. That's right: Romance Dialogue Battle Royale. Fuckfight your way to last space commander standing (barely, cuz second place was a Krogan).
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Feb 19, 2019 07:25
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Kurieg posted:My main issue with ME:A is that while bad, it was salvageable. Both ME3 and DA:I were games with problems that had two "alright" DLCs followed by one "Extremely good" DLC. People were expecting that ME:A would get some bugfix patches followed by DLC to extend the story and reinvigorate interest in the game. Andromeda was not salvageable unless you think Bioware could've patched in basically an entirely new game. The main story was weak, dialogue was bad, cinematography was boring, and the conversation system was horrendous. A good DLC isn't going to fix all (or most) of that. Sure, the gameplay was fun but gameplay isn't what brought people to the Mass Effect franchise in the first place - it was the writing, characterization, world-building and the emphasis on telling a coherent narrative in every possible way while involving the player in that story. Andromeda can be fun, but it's in no way "memorable". Even ME3, easily the weakest of the trilogy story-wise, still has standout moments like Mordin's sacrifice and the ending of the Quarian story arc. Dragon Age: Inquisition didn't need DLC to "save" it, it was a plenty deep game without them.
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Feb 19, 2019 09:05
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Honestly, I'm not holding my breath that even DA4 comes out, with how Anthem is looking, both the game itself and what other games are being released around it, Bioware might go the way of Visceral Games
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Feb 20, 2019 18:42
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grack posted:Andromeda was not salvageable unless you think Bioware could've patched in basically an entirely new game. The main story was weak, dialogue was bad, cinematography was boring, and the conversation system was horrendous. A good DLC isn't going to fix all (or most) of that. Sure, the gameplay was fun but gameplay isn't what brought people to the Mass Effect franchise in the first place - it was the writing, characterization, world-building and the emphasis on telling a coherent narrative in every possible way while involving the player in that story. Andromeda can be fun, but it's in no way "memorable". you're stating your opinions as if they were facts here, so of course you don't think it was -- but that doesn't make it universally true for everyone else. no, good DLC can't fix most of the issues you have and that's fair but if someone else thinks otherwise of those same things, it could be salvageable for them. A good DLC producing a few hours of play experience where Andromeda's strengths were on display to the best extent possible would have at minimum done more good for the game's rep than not, and that rep does need the help. also claiming the ME franchise had an emphasis on telling a coherent narrative in every possible way when it contradicts and changes itself every single title is ... questionable? like define the size and power of Cerberus based on ME1, ME1's Codex, ME2, or ME3. or Haestrom. Or the motivations of Harbinger (in particular) and the Reapers (in total) ... etc. e: i'm gonna point to LOTSB as an example of a good DLC retroactively removing frustrations players had from the main title, so I also think a good DLC could have retroactively addressed some of your story issues, seeing as how we had ME DLC do just that before. And there's a certain ME3 DLC with a pretty good reputation for same... Psion fucked around with this message at 19:51 on Feb 20, 2019 |
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Feb 20, 2019 19:33
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The story in Andromeda was drat near identical to the story in ME1, just told way, way worse. -Land on world that's supposed to be peaceful but isn't -Fight enemies with great power and galactic-scale plans -Find and activate ancient technology with incredible power -Meet leadership group on hub -Get ship -Get crew consisting of human biotic, human soldier -Meet and recruit street-smart turian, introverted asari, and veteran, charmingly murderous Krogan. Different details for turian and asari, same archetype -Race against enemy to find mystical mcguffin-type thingie -Blow up a big, important enemy base -Find info on mcguffin on secret world -Leadership groups fucks you over and locks you out of your ship, you have to get your friends to create a distraction so you can go -Learn more about back story on secret world, find out secret world was a ruse -Enemy gets ahead of you and takes over hub -Finally fight enemy empowered by ancient technology Also, if you think constant shot-reverse-shot dialogue scenes and quests that mostly consist of either "go here and shoot stuff" or "scan stuff with your omni-tool" are interesting or in any way well done I got some bad news for you. How is that gonna be fixed in a DLC? grack fucked around with this message at 22:45 on Feb 20, 2019 |
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Feb 20, 2019 22:26
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Also, Lair of the Shadow Broker didn't "fix" ME2. It was a successful, well-reviewed game before that point. Andromeda could claim none of those things.
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Feb 21, 2019 01:40
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grack posted:The story in Andromeda was drat near identical to the story in ME1, just told way, way worse. Also on a personal level I'd rather have shot-reverse-shot than Miranda's rear end being a conversation centerpiece I mean, it's fine if people don't like the game. It's not the best videogame ever made. It has issues. But it's not the worst one ever made either, and people got so worked up over making GBS threads on it that it resulted in killing the general ME thread. That's kinda hosed up.
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Feb 21, 2019 02:36
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I modded my rear end in over Miranda's. If I have to stare at something, it may as well be glorious. Also, I'm, this video basically sums up my issues with Andromeda: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D12n35evy0Y It's long, but it's very well done and covers a ton of stuff far clearer than I'm capable of doing, so I'm going to quit here. grack fucked around with this message at 03:18 on Feb 21, 2019 |
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Feb 21, 2019 03:13
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grack posted:, so I'm going to quit here. y'know, good. because i'm not gonna lie, i'm a little annoyed you didn't address my whole post directly and instead just decided to take the tinest bit and go off on MEA again as if that invalidated the parts you skipped, and then on top of that just pre-emptively decide you're done without letting anyone else even get a word in. That's pretty lovely of you but I'm glad you realized it wasn't going anywhere good. for anyone else if part of my post was unclear, that's on me and ask me to clarify, sure, be glad to. I see that perhaps I need to clarify "removes frustrations" is not a synonym for "fixing," though SubponticatePoster posted:Every single BW original IP game follows this almost exact same formula. Even Jade Empire, the weird outlier very few people remember does a lot of the same things. It's fair to say "they need to find a new story archetype" but "they did this before" is, well..pretty much every game they've ever made. where's that Bioware Plot Chart image when you need it? Probably best not to spoil Anthem but I have to wonder how many points it hits, too. Freelancer = Jedi = Spectre seems plausible! e: but I agree with you, following the same broad plot strokes - so what. It's how you do it that matters and Bioware's had some hits and misses with the same general formula so the formula's not to blame, it's the details of how they do it. And that's a lot more manageable for a DLC to do properly for itself even if it can't fix things like MEA's awful inventory system. ...so awful. Psion fucked around with this message at 07:28 on Feb 21, 2019 |
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Feb 21, 2019 04:05
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I kinda liked MEA. I mean yeah it got issues but the plot was okay, VA was great, animations were mediocre(and not even close as bad as people made them out to be at the time, especially after the patch), the crafting was kinda fun and combat was better than the original trilogy. THAT SAID, it needed more time and polish. It was a rushjob due to executive bullshittery and the studio, already overstretched, paid for it. The DLCs and future support being shitcanned didn't help it either and you can count me as someone who believe that Anthem is the last full release Bioware will ever do. And that makes me sad cause Bioware was the company that introduced me to WRPGs with Baldur's Gate 1 back in the 90's and probably my favorite dev overall.
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Feb 21, 2019 10:16
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Rutkowski posted:THAT SAID, it needed more time and polish. It was a rushjob due to executive bullshittery and the studio, already overstretched, paid for it. The DLCs and future support being shitcanned didn't help it either and you can count me as someone who believe that Anthem is the last full release Bioware will ever do. ME:A really felt like a AAA game without AAA resources. I liked a lot of what was there, but yeah, it needed more time to marinate. Most RPGs do and the publishers are just so against giving anything the proper time to marinate. Rutkowski posted:And that makes me sad cause Bioware was the company that introduced me to WRPGs with Baldur's Gate 1 back in the 90's and probably my favorite dev overall. Yeah. I bought an X-Box for Mass Effect.
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Feb 21, 2019 13:56
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I was talking in general, not on a personal level. If you liked the game, great. So did I, in parts (which I already mentioned numerous times). But Bioware/EA was never going to commit to DLC on a game that was seen as such a disappointment. Rutkowski posted:THAT SAID, it needed more time and polish. It was a rushjob due to executive bullshittery and the studio, already overstretched, paid for it. The DLCs and future support being shitcanned didn't help it either and you can count me as someone who believe that Anthem is the last full release Bioware will ever do. A big chunk of the issue was the fact that the original director brought on pushed so long for procedurally generally planets. The devs at Bioware never got that to work and the idea was eventually shitcanned completely, but they stuck with it for way too long and it screwed up development. grack fucked around with this message at 16:56 on Feb 21, 2019 |
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Feb 21, 2019 16:43
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grack posted:I was talking in general, not on a personal level. If you liked the game, great. So did I, in parts (which I already mentioned numerous times). But Bioware/EA was never going to commit to DLC on a game that was seen as such a disappointment. You replied, specifically, to one thing I said and ignored the rest. And this is a forum where yknow people read and reply to each other. So what other conclusion, exactly, should anyone draw from this? Like I’m willing to admit I was wrong but convince me because I don’t see it. Also weren’t you done?
Psion fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Feb 21, 2019 |
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Feb 21, 2019 17:48
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Dawgstar posted:ME:A really felt like a AAA game without AAA resources. I liked a lot of what was there, but yeah, it needed more time to marinate. Most RPGs do and the publishers are just so against giving anything the proper time If I remember the postmortems right (correct me if I don’t) EA gave it years and was hands off the first several weren’t they? I know this is like the instant refrain for any game but a BioWare director threw millions down the drain loving up the first several years of dev. The blame doesn’t solely lie on their publisher refusing to be an infinite source of money, there’s plenty to go around It’s a minor miracle andromeda actually loads, really Psion fucked around with this message at 18:04 on Feb 21, 2019 |
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Feb 21, 2019 18:01
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gently caress this, eat poo poo, blow me Sorry this took so long, I was car-shopping (a pain in the rear end) and then I got a nasty cold (a bigger pain in the rear end). Today was the first day I could talk without sounding like a frog gargling pudding. We stop by the Citadel because the Asari councilor wanted to have a chat in Udina's office. But we're not there to talk about him, she's got this thing to help finish the Crucible. Because the Reapers finally showed up on Thessia. All we're told is it's an artifact at a temple. So off we go. When we arrive we find it pretty much in the state we left Earth: hosed. On the surface everything is nuts and we have to fight our way to our destination. A temple to the goddess Athame - the one referred to when you hear "by the goddess." It's untouched by fighting and deserted except for a couple of corpses of the scientists. Oh, also Athame was actually a loving Prothean and the "artifact" is a beacon which the Asari have been slowly raiding for info over millennia, effectively hax0ring their way to galactic supremacy. I brought Javik along for this exposition. If you don't have him, whoever you do bring keeps commenting that man, sure does look like a Prothean, doesn't it? We activate the beacon and crap, a pop up. After arguing with a computer we convince it to give us the final piece of the puzzle for the Crucible. And then this mission goes right in the toilet. Everyone's (un)favorite shithead shows up and you're treated to a bullshit sequence where you can barely damage his 100x usual shields and when you do he calls in a gunship to cover him while he regens, all the while insufferably spouting rear end in a top hat dialogue. Get him down to just health and it's cutscene time where suddenly everyone becomes incompetent again, he makes off with our prize and Shep is somehow all torn up and sad about this. Instead of being furious with the Asari for keeping it secret. If there was a renegade option to say "gently caress you, you deserve this" I'd take it 100% of the time. Traynor at least is still not an idiot so we have at least somewhere to go looking. There's angst everywhere and boo hoo, poor Thessia. This mission actually made me angry the first time I played it. Instead of righteously calling out the Asari in front of everyone Shep's all mopey. Liara is at least understandably flummoxed by discovering her people were basically lab rats, but she ought to be pissed too. Also the Kai Leng this is utter bullshit. Like if it'd just been a fair fight and he chickens out once he gets his rear end kicked that'd be one thing, but his supar awesomest ninja poo poo is just loving annoying. Instead of looking for the catalyst they should just duct tape him to whatever planet is currently being reaped since his plot armor is indestructible and makes everyone in proximity into drooling imbeciles. Anyway, with a destination and sort-of plan, we'll head to Sanctuary next. Only 2 missions to go before the end, though we'll do at least one more MP map and some chats.
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Mar 8, 2019 06:44
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The best/worst part of Thessia is Kai Leng's shitpiss "lol I tricked you into reading this" email afterwards. God, he's such a prick.
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Mar 8, 2019 08:56
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I'd like to reiterate that despite having not played Mass Effect 3: gently caress Kai Leng.
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Mar 8, 2019 09:23
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The very satisfying renegade interrupt later doesn't come close to making up for having to endure Kai Leng in the first place. He's the biggest sin the ME writing team committed, apart from the endings of course.
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Mar 8, 2019 10:18
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You can't spoil Anthem, it would have to actually have some kind of plot for that. Yes, I have played it and I like Andromeda more.
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Mar 8, 2019 10:19
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Why would they draw attention to the temple by having "classified government funding"? That's so loving stupid that it's... right on par for the course. Unfortunately. Not even going to bother with commenting on the rest. (no loss to anyone there )
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Mar 8, 2019 14:59
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