Old Mass Effect Megathread: Original Camera Angles

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Lt. Danger: Dec 22, 2006; jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

Mac Walters was the lead writer of Mass Effect 3 and as such was responsible for the writing as a whole. Now shut the gently caress up about it and let Andromeda fail on its own merits

# ¿ Nov 7, 2016 22:36

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# ¿ May 3, 2024 03:51

Lt. Danger: Dec 22, 2006; jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

Actually, it turns out Mass Effect 3 was just fine.

# ¿ Nov 12, 2016 11:56

Lt. Danger: Dec 22, 2006; jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

I'm glad we made a new thread to talk about Mass Effect.

# ¿ Nov 14, 2016 21:33

Lt. Danger: Dec 22, 2006; jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

I think they shifted to an ammunition system because it isn't tedious and unfun.

# ¿ Nov 14, 2016 22:09

Lt. Danger: Dec 22, 2006; jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

exquisite tea posted:

They had to cater to those Call of Dudebro idiots who couldn't handle the mental fortitude and careful planning of taking two shotgun blasts before your gun overheated for 30 seconds.

I can't believe Bioware would just completely copy Call of Duty's patented "ammunition and reloads" mechanics. Original much, Casey Hudson??

# ¿ Nov 14, 2016 22:22

Lt. Danger: Dec 22, 2006; jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

Trast posted:

I'm not sure exactly why Bioware is so hung up on everything attracting empathy. They even tried to make the Reapers empathize with their "saving the galaxy through culling" story. In a video game I'm not really concerned with why I should empathize with the giant space horror is trying to eat my family. No I don't care that there has been layoffs at his job he's a giant space horror trying to eat my family. There is no need for the game to shove some sort of emotional conflict into that situation. Here's the monster, here is your assault rifle, go to down dude.

Do you know what "empathy" means?

# ¿ Nov 17, 2016 10:36

Lt. Danger: Dec 22, 2006; jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

The geth were originally going to resurrect Shepard in ME2.

I think the idea kinda breaks down when you start to think of the actual details. Cerberus was the better choice.

# ¿ Nov 20, 2016 12:11

Lt. Danger: Dec 22, 2006; jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

Milky Moor posted:

I'd like to hear your thoughts. My initial thinking on is is that the Geth make more sense.

I mean, one, they've had direct exposure to the Reapers, so, they can understand the magnitude of the threat and I can see 'Rebuild Shepard-Commander' working in their minds. Two, their technology potentially fits a Project Lazarus analog in there a bit easier than Cerberus.

I just don't know how you'd, well, implement it because Geth don't really have personalities and I can't imagine an action-packed opening sequence where you meet your first two squad members working with a Geth facility as a basis.

That's exactly the problem I saw too. How do you get Shepard to a ship, a crew, two squadmates and ten dossiers from a geth resurrection? How do you write these other geth when Legion is supposed to be a special unique platform designed for operating in organic space?

The advantage of Cerberus is that Shepard can play off Martin Sheen-as-TIM-as-the-Devil for the central antagonistic relationship (one that is fun and ambiguous). Harbinger/the Collectors are already largely faceless - having the collective geth consciousness as the other major supporting character wouldn't help.

I think the thing with Cerberus is you just have to discard all the ME1 stuff as first-draft material.

# ¿ Nov 20, 2016 16:03

Lt. Danger: Dec 22, 2006; jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

Same, except the reverse because I remember what ME1 looked like

# ¿ Nov 20, 2016 20:22

Lt. Danger: Dec 22, 2006; jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

Mass Effect 2 is very nearly the Platonic ideal of a video game.

# ¿ Nov 20, 2016 23:06

Lt. Danger: Dec 22, 2006; jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

Witcher 3 is good but I think I like Witcher 2 better. Both beat all of the Dragon Ages.

Torgover posted:

Having played the three Witcher games in order in a relatively short time, I can say that Geralt is a not very good character. He reminds me of the Gary Stu of an angry fourteen-year-old shut-in whose sole desire is to touch a boob. He bears too many similarities to Blade/Vash from Christian Humber Reloaded to convince me otherwise.

I haven't read the books but I understand this was sort of the original intention with Geralt - a send-up of Elric-alike moody broody anti-heroes with special snowflake hair and special snowflake fighting styles.

# ¿ Nov 23, 2016 11:26

Lt. Danger: Dec 22, 2006; jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

Yorkshire Tea posted:

I'm sorry, game where the final boss is unbeatable if you were unfortunate enough to build as a spellcaster is not better than DA:O.

Oh and remember kids, no respecs because being cornered in a terrible build is really fun.

Edit: Actually thinking about it, you could do this to yourself in DA:O but the game was so moddable that it never really ended up being an issue.

Never had a problem with my magic Geralt build.

I wouldn't say the Witchers have particularly good mechanics but by god are they still better than the turgid sludge of Dragon Age combat.

# ¿ Nov 23, 2016 12:39

Lt. Danger: Dec 22, 2006; jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

Jeza posted:

An example from Mass Effect is letting Ashley kill Wrex, or letting Ashley live at all.

Yes, good Shepards shoot Wrex themselves.

# ¿ Nov 23, 2016 14:08

Lt. Danger: Dec 22, 2006; jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

A Buff Gay Dude posted:

If you can't notice the massive change in the way your relationships with the crew developed in me2 relative to me1 I don't know what to say. I didn't like it.

As said, Bioware's focus on the supporting cast started with Minsc/rewriting the BG2 plot so fan-favourite Imoen would stay alive. In NWN, party members got their own subplots which would dribble out across the course of the game. In KOTOR, party members become integral to the core plot (Bastila, Carth) rather than interchangeable perma-summons. Dragon Age's Morrigan is probably the first Bioware character designed with cosplay in mind.

ME2 just happened to have a core concept of "Dirty Dozen in space" and also execute it really well, because ME2 is literally one of the best games of all time, they should put it in a museum or something it is so good

# ¿ Nov 27, 2016 20:28

Lt. Danger: Dec 22, 2006; jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

Whoa! Somebody spilt a load of bad opinions all over this thread!

# ¿ Nov 27, 2016 21:37

Lt. Danger: Dec 22, 2006; jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

Hmm. Another day, another set of mild hysterics over the ending to Mass Effect 3, Bioware's second-best game ever.

# ¿ Nov 27, 2016 22:12

Lt. Danger: Dec 22, 2006; jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

Mr. Unlucky posted:

lol at the best game in the series being completely skippable busywork.

me1 was okay, me3 multi was good but greedy with that slot machine poo poo.

that's about all they've done so far with mass effect that is in any way notable. sorry but me2 is just completely pointless.

This, just this. I don't play video games to "goof off", mister!

# ¿ Nov 28, 2016 18:43

Lt. Danger: Dec 22, 2006; jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

Mass Effect 3, is good.

# ¿ Nov 28, 2016 23:31

Lt. Danger: Dec 22, 2006; jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

I can't believe a work of fiction would imbue a character with symbolic meaning.

# ¿ Nov 29, 2016 01:18

Lt. Danger: Dec 22, 2006; jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

"Sovereign said we would not understand why the Reapers do what they do, that was cool"
"Mass Effect 3 explained why the Reapers do what they do and I didn't understand it, that was bad"

Milky Moor posted:

They could have borrowed from the Shivans. They wipe out species when they reach a certain point so species below them on the evolutionary ladder get their chance to rule the stars for bit - destruction and preservation are the one and the same.

This is what they did though??

# ¿ Nov 29, 2016 11:01

Lt. Danger: Dec 22, 2006; jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

Milky Moor posted:

But it's still not effective and probably not the best story for a cinematic third-person shooter action game. The Shivans work because FS2 is entirely based around the idea of hubris in a fundamentally hostile galaxy where the player is a nameless cog, just as the GTVA is a nothing entity in the greater span of things. This doesn't work so much for the Mass Effect series.

Why?

# ¿ Nov 29, 2016 11:44

Lt. Danger: Dec 22, 2006; jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

Milky Moor posted:

One's a game about the folly of hubris in a fundamentally hostile galaxy, where every element of the gameplay and narrative works to assist that, and the other is a bit more muddled. I'd still rate Mass Effect as one of my favorite sci-fi properties but I don't think its storytelling is as consistent - if I had to pick it, I'd say that Mass Effect is generally about the ability of all people to self-determinate regardless of the past - or, perhaps, the importance of children stepping out from under the shadow of their parents. When talking about consistency, though, it's unfair to not point out that Freespace was hardly consistent in the first installment, and a lot of the depth of its storytelling only came from the sequel. The original Freespace was, really, a somewhat derivative sci-fi flight sim with some writing that is so mindbogglingly weird that you wonder if the writers were ever all on the same page.

They're games I feel good about directly comparing because the broad strokes of the story are similar. The first game in each series could broadly be described as:

A terrifyingly powerful battleship is the harbinger of some sort of cosmic cleansing cycle. Through a combination of sacrifice, skill and secret knowledge obtained from the ruins of the last civilization to fall victim to the inscrutable destroyers, the battleship is destroyed although there remains the possibility that the worst is yet to come.

Freespace puts the player in the position of being nothing but a cog in that cycle. The player has no name, no gender, not even an age. They are just 'Alpha 1'. Frequently, they fly missions where the outcome is actually impossible to complete. In battles, it is entirely possible to get killed instantaneously by capital ship beam fire because the player is in the wrong place at the wrong time. There are maybe three characters who get names in the whole series, and they are distant figures who the player never encounters. The player is deliberately on a need-to-know basis and they are never in the need to know, something compounded by the fact that the people in charge make bad decisions - or decisions that are above the pay grade of the player. Whatever the player does, whatever the player's allies say, the universe is always there to kick them in the teeth and remind them that they are not prepared. The story culminates with a supernova, which the player will probably die in the attempt to escape.

The Shivans are the primary antagonists. They never name themselves, only known by a scientific designation taken from the deity Shiva. The only time any attempt to communicate with them transpired it ended in murder and abduction and the player has no idea what was said, if anything. Their best ships dwarf any ship the GTVA can field, can annihilate them in a single volley, and number in at least the hundreds. Whatever stratagem the GTVA deploys, the Shivans deftly counter or simply bulldoze through. Their goals are never stated and only theorised. As mentioned, the Shivans seem to show up when species hit some sort of threshold (apparently conflict related) and proceed to wipe out everyone before vanishing. Freespace - but particularly the second installment - is this terrifying cold and alien game which points out that the familiar tropes (the one of a kind super ship, the player as super protagonist, the alliance of former enemies taking on a greater evil) are nothing when put on an galactic timescale. The GTVA gets its teeth kicked in and, like a terrified mutt creeping to its kennel, retreats to try and repair the damage to their fleets, people and, ultimately, their pride.

It's one of the best-told stories in gaming and a lot of it comes down to how perfectly it works within the constraints of a sci-fi flight sim.

The parallels with the Reapers are obvious. They're known by a designation that came from the Protheans. Attempts to communicate with them are seemingly fruitless (and Indoctrination might actually render it impossible). A single Reaper seems to be a match for an entire fleet. They show up every fifty thousand years and blow everything up before vanishing. The problems are that these godlike battleship-beings are rendered down to a personal level in the first two games before going with the force of nature approach in the third and that their goals are directly stated which invites players to question their methods and strategies while not actually letting the players question any of the mechanism behind it. This source is also the godhead of the antagonists who, ultimately, routes the player into picking the three options he lays out. To make this work would have required alterations to the Reapers and their methods - making them less openly sadistic, for example.

In a cold, terrifying galaxy, this kind of story might make more sense. The problem is, the Mass Effect universe is quite warm and personable. Bad things happen but they are the result of intolerance or misunderstandings (or the direct intervention of the Reapers). With mutual respect, understanding, trust and empathy, the player - and the galaxy - is always able to move forwards and improve. Shepard isn't a cog in a hostile universe, he's basically a sci-fi messiah who can talk down anyone, pull his team through impossible situations, and spit in the face of power and (always) live to tell the tale. When he turns, the galaxy turns with him. And that's fine, because ME is basically a sci-fi action film. There's no threat that Shepard can't shoot down or talk down. Every part of the series reflects the ability of Shepard to choose and, frequently, to choose a better option than the two provided.

That's kind of a key thing. Shepard - and the player - interacts with the world through either shooting or talking and both of these options have clear win/loss outcomes in the eyes of the player. In that sense, the Reapers had to be brought down to Sovereign and Harbinger to give Shepard someone to talk to and interact with. But ME3 really prevents the player/Shepard from doing either of those things (if they shoot the Catalyst, they get the worst possible ending, too, which smacks of someone being upset over the ending's reception). Part of that is because the Reapers themselves - a race of sentient super-battleships - aren't exactly suited for a three-person squad combat game. If the Reapers were defeated by having enough war assets in a space battle outside Shepard's control, that'd be unfulfilling. If the Reapers were brought down by killing Harbinger, or convincing them to leave the galaxy with a Paragon interrupt, that'd also be unfulfilling. Sometimes, I think Bioware had a fundamental conflict between their antagonists and the scale of their gameplay and that ME3 was doomed to have a poor ending.

A lot of the problem with ME3 is that it does not neatly fit into ME1 and ME2. I won't rehash the points here. As an isolated game, I think ME3's ending works much better, as does the beginning. I think a lot of the worst parts of ME3 are the parts which try to combine the Reapers as presented in ME3 with the two previous games. For example, the Reaper conversation on Rannoch which feels like a naked attempt to ape the Sovereign and Harbinger conversations but comes off as utterly bizarre in light of the ending. While we know that the ending was constructed in a vaccuum of Hudson and Walters, I think it's also quite clear that, whatever overarching plan they had for the Reapers, they didn't share their intentions at any point previous.

The thing that is always brought up is the Geth/Quarian conflict. "Why is the biggest example of organic/synthetic conflict something that Shepard can solve with a few sentences?" everyone says. Now, of course, the idea is that the Catalyst simply can draw upon aeons of knowledge and is operating on a timescale of hundreds of thousands of years, where any probability resolves to one. But Shepard is never exposed to this before the ending. If ME is about stepping out from the shadow of the past, this is the shadow of the past suddenly becoming a solar eclipse. This is additionally complicated by the fact that Javik points out that the Reapers were responsible for corrupting the synthetic race in his time, as well as Legion pointing out that Sovereign turned the Geth against the rest of the galaxy. It's a mess.

But, again, ME3 as standalone means that the conflict can't be resolved. Sort of like how Harbinger is just not mentioned in ME3 if you don't import. ME3 as a whole seems to be more set on putting Shepard in situations where the player loses due to things out of their control (for example, Kai Leng on Thessia) but doesn't do it as elegantly as they should and doesn't obey the rules the games have set up, even simple ones like that a gunship is really not threatening to the player.

A lot of the issues with ME3's ending revolve around the execution of it as much as they do the content but, mostly, I think it is because the Reapers in their entirety are just something too big for Shepard to solve and for the players to confront with their existing toolkit, an utterly out-of-context problem for a squad sci-fi shooter. To their credit, Hudson and Walters gave the out-of-context problem and out-of-context solution. They aimed for some kind of higher art, which is good, but when your game only really gives the player options like 'shoot' and 'persuade nicely/persuade forcefully' maybe it's okay to embrace the fact that the player probably wants villains they can shoot to pieces or defeat in a conversation battle.

Whoa nelly

# ¿ Nov 29, 2016 16:21

Lt. Danger: Dec 22, 2006; jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

A Buff Gay Dude posted:

Actually that's a good effort post

The question "Can you describe the Reaper cycle as 'to clear a crowded sky'?" is a [2] mark Understanding & Comprehension question and does not require 1600 semi-relevant words to answer.

# ¿ Nov 29, 2016 17:35

Lt. Danger: Dec 22, 2006; jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

Psion posted:

you of all people do not get to criticize long posts on ME3, my friend

Milky Moor's thesis is that the Reaper cycle cannot be about galactic-scale husbandry (?) because Mass Effect is a third-person shooter with characters and people in it (??) and that's not a good way of conveying hubris (???). I like Milky Moor, but I am gonna rib him for rambling here.

Also this is the Mass Effect Andromeda thread, so we should be saving our words for talking about the upcoming third-best Mass Effect title.

# ¿ Nov 29, 2016 18:53

Lt. Danger: Dec 22, 2006; jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

Psion posted:

i enjoy reading them but I think they fundamentally misunderstood Milky's thesis and it's a little rough for someone who so frequently argues not to take the time to try and understand, ask for clarification, and engage someone else's argument.

I get the broad thrust of Milky Moor's (I feel kinda inaccurate and sloppy - sorry) argument: there is a difference in scale between Reapers and squad-based cover shooting; Mass Effect has a traditional Campbellian transcendental hero protagonist while Freespace does not. However neither is relevant to what I actually asked! Do the Reapers cull galactic civilisations to make room for younger races? (Yes, this is text.) Does being a cinematic third-person shooter game hinder Mass Effect from using that premise effectively? (No, unless you demand the Reapers be punchable in some form).

If you really want a long-form post from me I suppose I could PM you or something, but why on earth would anyone want that?

# ¿ Nov 29, 2016 21:08

Lt. Danger: Dec 22, 2006; jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

Milky Moor posted:

I know this hurts you, Shepard.

Pfft, I'd like to see you write better at 1AM, buddy!

The Reapers cull galactic civilisations, but I don't think it is immediately clear in the text that it is done to make room for younger races. The Catalyst claims it is done to prevent synthetic life from becoming an existential threat. The fact that the Reapers do it every fifty thousand years and preserve the old species as Reapers (and that this preservation is apparently good) comes across as more of a side-effect.

quote:

Catalyst: The created will always rebel against their creators. But we found a way to stop that from happening, a way to restore order.

Shepard: By wiping out organic life?

Catalyst: No. We harvest advanced civilisations, leaving the younger ones alone. Just as we left your people alive the last time we were here.

Shepard: But you killed the rest.

Catalyst: We helped them ascend so they could make way for new life, storing the old life in Reaper form.

# ¿ Nov 29, 2016 23:49

Lt. Danger: Dec 22, 2006; jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

Basic Chunnel posted:

Like it's a series in which civilian institutions like "democratically elected governments" and "journalism" are inerringly weak / corrupt / obstructionist. Meanwhile the only figures of any real wisdom / benevolence / willingness to face Hard Truths are military officers, and they are the only things preventing the annihilation of a helpless and agency-free populace (as embodied by a nameless, cowering child) that is actively resented for its ignorance.

I dunno, man. I kinda agree on a "lol" level but there's always gonna be a lot of crossover between fascism and any kinda heroic narrative because it's such a bankrupt ideology.

Also blame for the Rannoch situation is largely placed on the ruthless military leadership of the Admirals (and to a lesser extent you get something similar with Tuchanka - that turian bomb, for instance), and TIM/Cerberus, the Hard Truth faction, are antagonists throughout.

Umberto Eco was obviously writing from a historian's perspective but even so he suggests there's a bit more to fascism than the "dumb bureaucracy/strong military/helpless civilians" tripartite trope.

# ¿ Nov 30, 2016 10:40

Lt. Danger: Dec 22, 2006; jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

OtherworldlyInvader posted:

If defeating the big boss and winning the game isn't a good fit for Mass Effect 3's narrative, then we're back to Milky Moor's original point of "maybe you should re-think making your 3rd person cover shooter's narrative about fighting giant space battleships."

The scale is irrelevant. The stakes in Freespace are an existential threat to the human race that is somehow resolved by a space fighter shooting lasers at subsystems on an enemy ship - the exact mechanism for how this stops the rest of the Shivan armada from annihilating the remaining eight human colony systems ("oh, I guess the Shivans are a hive-mind") is handwaved off-screen in the expansion pack. In games like Dragon Age and KOTOR, you win nation/galaxy-spanning wars by duelling the enemy general and then the other army just goes home. In Alpha Protocol, you stop American imperialism by giving Leland a grenade. In Tyranny, you murder all the Archons and drop a magic nuke. In Deus Ex, you blow up/become the Internet. So on, so forth.

There's always gonna be ludonarrative dissonance in games. For that matter, stories in general are going to boil large conflicts down into personal, individual conflicts between two agonists because humans parse that better. That's not really the problem here.

I think a lot of people are actually fine with the concept of resolving the Reaper War through confrontation with the Catalyst, and you can see it in the alternative proposals they make: it's not called "the Catalyst", it's called "Harbinger's Drive Core"; you don't accept its surrender through dialogue, you shoot it or plant a bomb; the Catalyst doesn't shoot an energy beam that destroys/controls/synthesises the galaxy, Harbinger's destruction disrupts the Reaper hive-mind etc. etc. Again, not a question of scale, but a question of execution - people don't like the Catalyst as a character, they don't like the final dialogue, they don't like the mysterious mystical energy beams as a device.

In turn, what I think Alain Post's problem (and definitely my problem) with shooting the boss Reaper until it dies is is that it's boring and over-used. It also doesn't in itself address the deeper issues of Mass Effect: can man and robot ever truly ~~have a romantic relationship~~ get along?

# ¿ Nov 30, 2016 11:32

Lt. Danger: Dec 22, 2006; jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

exquisite tea posted:

you wouldn't even have to focus on any of the original cast.

Which is fortunate, because I killed them all.

# ¿ Nov 30, 2016 17:43

Lt. Danger: Dec 22, 2006; jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

This is all pure fanfiction. We must set such things and look to the future. I for one am very interested in the rock-aliens of Andromeda.

# ¿ Nov 30, 2016 18:43

Lt. Danger: Dec 22, 2006; jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

Basic Chunnel posted:

Might work out that way for Rannoch, but the villainy of the Quarian hawks is undercut and softened by the constant harping on the hardship of their diaspora in games previous. They're on the cusp of retaking their ~~Holy Land~~homeworld and just about everybody (Tali included) has tacitly concluded that not living at all is better than continuing to live off-Rannoch. That the Geth would have let them return if they had just been willing to talk is, if nothing else, a contrivance that throws their previous characterization.

quote:

Tali: We've got the largest fleet in the galaxy. If you can help us, we'll hit the Reapers with everything we've got. Or however much is left from this stupid war.

Tali: Xen backed the invasion, largely as a chance to test her toys. Raan gave provisional support. Only Koris opposed the war with me. And he was right. We could lose the whole fleet, Shepard.

Dorn'Hazt: Please, listen. The Civilian Fleet didn't want this war. If there's even a chance that Admiral Koris can get us out alive...

Rael'Zorah and Daro'Xen literally commit war crimes in ME2 and Tali enlists your help in covering them up for her loyalty mission.

quote:

As for the Turian Hierarchy, they're never less than valorous

Saren.

quote:

As for Cerberus, they're barely an entity in ME1 and only become villains when they are infiltrated and go turncoat in ME3. ME2 doesn't even take seriously the arguments that Shepard is working with terrorists (even when they're directly and openly responsible for Shepard's supposedly formative traumas), because the Council and Alliance are willfully blind, per usual.

TIM: Yes, I knew Freedom's Progress was attacked by Collectors, I lied about it because I wanted you to investigate with an open mind.

TIM: Yes, I leaked information about you and the Virmire Survivor so the Collectors would attack Horizon, because that way we were expecting the attack and I could send you to intercept.

TIM: Yes, I fed you misinformation and knowingly sent you into a trap aboard the Collector Ship that would later cause your entire crew to be kidnapped by the Collectors, because that was our best chance of getting data on the Omega-4 Relay.

TIM: Shepard, give me control of the genocide factory.

quote:

Sometimes you just have to accept that fascism without ethno-nationalist mythopoeia or nationalized industry is still fascism

This is kinda weak man.

# ¿ Nov 30, 2016 20:20

Lt. Danger: Dec 22, 2006; jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

Yes, there is nothing to forgive.

# ¿ Nov 30, 2016 20:43

Lt. Danger: Dec 22, 2006; jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

No, the embarassing Bioware retcon was that Joker crash-landed on Earth.

# ¿ Nov 30, 2016 21:51

Lt. Danger: Dec 22, 2006; jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

Dragon Age: Inquistion cast was written to give players the full spectrum of gameplay classes and romance options, but not much else.

# ¿ Dec 2, 2016 19:19

Lt. Danger: Dec 22, 2006; jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

Alain Post posted:

When thinking about the Dragon Age: Inquisition cast the word "spectrum" definitely comes to mind

*with an extremely tiny head* You said it, boss

# ¿ Dec 2, 2016 19:25

Lt. Danger: Dec 22, 2006; jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

Mac Walters is a better writer than Drew Karpyshyn

# ¿ Dec 2, 2016 20:32

Lt. Danger: Dec 22, 2006; jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

Drew Karpyshyn's first treatment of Mass Effect (bad guy Saren misuses ancient technology) was so boring Casey Hudson had to intervene to rewrite it.

Mac Walters took on the Lead Writer role mid-way through Mass Effect 2 after Karpyshyn left to write for The Old Republic.

I would not use "optimistic techno-futurism" or "ominous lovecraftian horror" to describe Mass Effect games.

You need to be really careful when you talk about "cheap narrative devices" etc. because Bioware has always used these, even in ME1 and 2.

# ¿ Dec 2, 2016 20:51

Lt. Danger: Dec 22, 2006; jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

Cheap narrative device: a vagrant girl with critical evidence against a rogue government agent is conscripted into an elite spec-ops task force instead of being put into protective custody

Cheap narrative device: all physical evidence corroborating the hero's theory about killer robot gods is coincidentally destroyed, nuked or rendered unusable shortly after the hero finds it

Cheap narrative device: the villain has the hero at their mercy and chooses to dangle them over a ledge for several seconds instead of throwing them off or using his superior strength to snap their neck

Cheap narrative device: in the climactic battle, the hero is apparently killed by collapsing debris. the hero waits until it seems their friends have given up all hope of their survival before clambering over the rubble with little difficulty and posing for dramatic effect

Cheap narrative device: the hero decides who will become humanity's representative to the galactic government and one of the most powerful people in history. this representative can potentially be a mid-ranking military officer with no diplomatic or political experience

# ¿ Dec 2, 2016 21:09

Lt. Danger: Dec 22, 2006; jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

Alain Post posted:

During time-critical missions where each second could put more and more lives at risk, Our Heroes stop to get lore information from computers, one of which is actually the Bad Guy doing a monologue.

Tragically, they left the lens cap on the camera the whole time.

# ¿ Dec 2, 2016 21:15

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# ¿ May 3, 2024 03:51

Lt. Danger: Dec 22, 2006; jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

ME2 does break from Shepard's perspective twice - TIM in the beginning and Joker later on (and a third time if Shepard dies).

e: plus a bunch of other times where we cut away to other characters but Shepard is generally around and involved in the scene

Lt. Danger fucked around with this message at 21:27 on Dec 2, 2016

# ¿ Dec 2, 2016 21:25

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