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Milky Moor posted:Can you really imagine Bioware having the balls/brazen stupidity to not include some of their more interesting and unique species? Hello, and yes. The lead writer for this game is the same person that wrote Halo 4. Several key writers that worked on goon favorite parts of ME2 and ME3 quit the company while he was lead, and mentioned it was due to creative differences with him. He also left midway through writing the story, which is never good for story based games because well, jumping writers/plotlines isn't like jumping technical or gameplay directors. The initial rough drafts of this game were of you being an almost Columbus figure invading the lands of a new species because the Citadel Races wanted more lands. They are presented as sentient/sapient, but just technologically inferior, so it's fair to steal their lands. At one point they were also redskinned, though that seems to have changed thankfully. On the bright side, this seems to have changed to "whoops this galaxy was inhabited! can't go back though!" which.....isn't overtly racist at least? There has been massive, massive turnover at Bioware since ME2. Almost everyone that has worked on ME2 is gone. Most of the people that worked on ME3 are gone. This game has likely seen multiple revisions as word on the street is it's had a very, very rough time in the oven. This is also not counting the massive turnover on major development staff/project leads this game has seen in that time, which likely isn't good for the project. At one point they lost so many people they had to introduce the DA:I team into the fold to finish the game ( and it sounds like the DA:I guys basically said "Let's make space DA:I, you build forts on every planet and get quests from planet zones." which also might not bode well for the story. ). This isn't to say this game can't be great ( I'm expecting it to be great gameplaywise, and further flesh out the stronghold/keeps system of DA:I in some neat ways, which'll make it worth the price off that alone. ). But yes, I could 100% see the man who took the Halo lore and said "HUMANS ARE ACTUALLY A GOD SPECIES THAT OWNED ALL OF THE GALAXY IN THE OLD TIMES, AND FOUGHT THE ANCIENT SPECIES AND FORCED THEM TO CREATE THE FLOOD TO STOP THEM." completely not giving a poo poo about the rest of the lore/setting might in fact not give a poo poo about previously established Mass Effect lore. I could see a game that was forced to be rewritten/remade multiple times perhaps having to cut out a lot of extraneous stuff like extra races. I could see a team that had no real connection to ME2/ME3, largely being built from the ground up to make this game because EA knows the property still makes money might not having the same reverence the old team/fans do. This has also been pushed back from Q1 2016 to Q4 2016 ( with literally no info for either outside of the N7 video last year which was supposed to lead up to the March 2016 release. ), and then finally to Q1 2017. A full years jump from it's initial planned release is uh. I ain't saying don't get excited here people. I'm excited because I liked 100%ing DA:I even though I didn't like much else, and this'll probably at least scratch that itch. I'm saying maybe temper your expectations a bit, and let the more foolhardy goons preorder this poo poo and fully beat it/give confirmation they pulled it off before jumping fully on the train.
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Nov 8, 2016 03:36
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Carmant posted:Considering Dragon Age: Origins is the only good game Bioware has released since like 2002 this shouldnt surprise anyone Bioware doesn't exist anymore. DA:O was a surprise success that took 6ish years to make and almost everyone working at Bioware to put out the door. EA had no faith in it, and suddenly it was one of their top selling franchises. So they did what EA does to highly successful franchises, and asked Bioware to make another one. Except for this new one, they wanted it started and finished in under a year, as they had a dream of an annual RPG franchise. Mind you that's hard enough to pull off for FPS games which are relatively simple to make with multiple teams. Bioware was expected to put together a full length AAA RPG in 6-7 months while also putting out the last of the DA:O DLC. This killed the company. Huge swathes of people up and quit. They couldn't handle the stress. They couldn't handle what they were expected to do. Every single major program director and creative lead left the company during this year period where they were developing DA2. Go look at LinkedIn profiles for the major people that worked on DA:O, and more then half of them suddenly leave Bioware in 2010. The combat director quit and wasn't replaced for months, so they had no real lead directing what the combat should have been during that period. Major story beats and combat ideas got forced into the game in the final months of 2010 not because they were good, but because the game needed to ship in a few months and it needed to get out the door. To help the DA team actually finish DA2 in a somewhat annual fashion, they drew most of the ME2 team off ME, throwing them into this grinder as well. By the time DA2 launched, around half if not more of the original "Bioware" was gone. Go through the credits of DA:O, ME1, or ME2 and start LinkedIning people, none of them work for Bioware anymore. Most left between 2010 and 2012. It's been a pretty steady drain since then. Compare the credits list of Inquisition to the credits list of DA:O or DA2. It's almost an entirely new team, and it's a team that Bioware specifically hired to replace the losses from DA2. It's why so many styles have changed since then, why the gameplay changed so steadily, and why they chose to try so many new things. Because Inquisition wasn't made by the DA:O team trying their hand at open world game design. It was maybe 1/6th of the guys that even touched DA:O/DA2 suddenly getting an influx of new blood, most of it Bioware fans finally getting a chance to work for the company they loved, that had great new ideas for what they wanted out of future Bioware games. It's the same for the ME team. The brain drain has been bad, and the development of Andromeda has apparently picked off massive chunks of the team. The lead writer of the group was the lead writer for Halo 4, and he apparently clashed with a lot of the senior writers/main writers of previous ME games. A whole bunch of goon favorite ME writers have quit the company, and on various development forums have mentioned it was due to creative differences with the former lead writer. Gameplay leads have been leaving the ME/Bioware teams at a pretty steady pace since the game was developed as well. The story had to be picked up mid completion as the lead writer got forced out/quit and replaced, which likely doesn't mean great things for the narrative ( which we are also seeing here. ). Andromeda has currently had the great slow drip of Bioware talent since the dark days of 2010 when DA2 "killed" the company. They've been forced to cycle talent multiple times during the development of Andromeda, not just in management ( which has seen multiple complete turnovers ), but also among the rank and file people working on the game. This isn't to say Andromeda can't be great, or that it won't live up to the hype. I'm personally hoping it does because I need something to play right now. But if it's good, it'll be good on it's own merits and it's own merits alone, rather then because "it's a Bioware game, I like Bioware!". Because Bioware doesn't exist anymore, it's a completely new entity and needs to be treated as such. People really need to be viewing this as "EA'S NEW ACQUISITION, BIOWARE VICTORY'S FIRST RPG. HOPE IT'S GOOD." rather then "Bioware always makes quality. I know what I'll get here.". As it is right now, EA is propping up Bioware's corpse with a new studio and hoping people don't notice while they keep using it as their RPG house.
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Mar 15, 2017 04:32
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I just got told a major plot point reveal.
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Mar 17, 2017 03:06
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Fojar38 posted:Don't tell us please Yeah, I'm not going to post a major spoiler like that in this thread 6 days before release. There are goons who will enjoy this game and I don't want to do that. I'm just really bummed out.
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Mar 17, 2017 03:10
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I don't have PMs y'all, which is why I'm not PMing any of you. Also don't buy me PMs for this, it's more depressing then a huge thing. I bet it'll get revealed in the next couple days off a streamer anyways.
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Mar 17, 2017 03:43
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Ages posted:Intentionally depressing? No. gmq posted:This game sucks, I can't use the toilet in the Tempest's bathroom. Because it explains something that didn't need to be explained with an explanation that doesn't actually work within the constraints of the lore. It's also extremely dumb. It also retroactively makes the original trilogy worse, but somehow makes the ending of ME3 better in the process? I just wanted to mope, not derail the thread.
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Mar 17, 2017 03:52
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exquisite tea posted:If the plot of Andromeda really ends up being some dumb Halo clone like I predicted when it was revealed in 2015 then I want an official Good at Predicting Stuff in Games award. Just wait until you see what they do with some of the later reveals!
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Mar 19, 2017 04:29
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The game ends without finishing up the core plotline, and instead plops out a "The story continues with DLC." I knew a lot about what they were doing with the Kett, and even the things they used to further explain the ME3 ending ( please avoid this, it ruins the og series entirely ), but even I didn't know that.
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Mar 20, 2017 03:51
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"Game completion 59%" "Time played 21 hours." Guy said he did all the main stuff/side quests, everything else was just grabbing collectibles/maybe finding a few extremely wayward endgame quests. Said the main core path took him about 15 hours not rushing, and he spent about 5ish hours trying to 100% a few planets. Yikers.
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Mar 20, 2017 04:22
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Burkion posted:Yeah I call bullshit on the game 'only' being 20 hours. I'm not going to post it because it's a straight endgame spoiler location, but the stream earlier had saves with the time played attached to them, alongside game completion. And as I said, guy had "Game Completion 59%/Time Played: 21 hours." Now, guy could 100% be lying about how he spent 5 hours 100%ing worlds, and he actually did spend all 21 of those hours doing the main quest with zero side quests, but he still finished FIFTY NINE PERCENT of ME:A in 21 hours. And he can't even be lying about side quests, because he opens his quest log/journal at various points and it's full of completed side quests. So yeah, I'm going to say it's very possible the pacing after the first world goes to absolute poo poo.
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Mar 20, 2017 04:31
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Fojar38 posted:video game streamer plays games fast especially when they have the full edition before anyone else, stop the presses But that's usually because they skip side quests and skip dialogue. This guy had a journal filled with completed side quests, and he didn't skip dialogue/side quests across any of the footage he's posted ( he also posted other footage of the game previously ). So either he's setting up for the long con here and played the game legit through the first world/ending, but secretly speedrunned it to showcase the ending online, or ME:A does have a serious drop off.
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Mar 20, 2017 04:38
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Reminder. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLlAObjR-gs This is the actual ME3 ending. You also have the fight across the Citadel with Anderson, and your deaths. The leadup to all this is also brilliant and great. The problem with the ME3 ending wasn't the buildup, or execution. It was Walters little tacked on bit about how no, it's actually all about ethics in synthetic relations. Once you separate that from the rest of ME3, either through a mod or just alt-F4ing as Shepard closes their eyes/dies near the end you can make ME3 have a better ending. You cannot make ME:A have a better ending.
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Mar 20, 2017 04:50
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Anyone find out who made the Remnant yet? I want to know if they actually included some of the stuff I heard about, or if they wised up. Or if they plan on introducing the stuff I've heard as DLC.
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Mar 22, 2017 22:27
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So do the colonies actually grow/stop complaining about their problems as you do their quests, or are they basically static after you build them. Anyone got a count on how much the Nexus opens up/grows as you progress throughout the game?
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Mar 24, 2017 06:42
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Fart City posted:I'm not sure if it's a glitch, but the changes were very noticeable for me. I raised Eos all the way up before ever going back to the Nexus, and it was like night and day. Lights were on, crowds of people. Boxes and environmental debris were removed. Like if you had told me the Nexus was just a district on the Citedal in ME2, it would fit right in. Did you get a conversation bit with Tann's secretary where Ryder mentions how much cleaner his office is, out of curiosity? Did it get further changes as you upgraded later colonies? Also do the colonies ever change appearance as well/get better as you do the side quests for them? Or do they stay pretty static?
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Mar 26, 2017 16:12
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Neddy Seagoon posted:It is in-game. Systems Alliance soldiers all have designations of a letter, (which denotes their specialization) and a number from 1 to 8, which denotes their rating (You can see C8 on one of the other armor suits which means they're a top-level combat grunt.). However the N rating is a special one. Soldiers get to go into a special program at a secret site, and come away with an N1 rating if they complete it. They can't display it like other ratings, but they have it. After that they can go back and complete other training programs for N2-6 ratings, and if they complete all those then they get an N7 rating. That's the only one they are allowed to wear on combat armor, and it means you are King loving Badass of All Mankind. So uh, isn't that pointless? If everyone has their designation up, then the loving top level commando rolling around with nothing is probably an N anyways.
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Apr 2, 2017 15:31
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DancingShade posted:I'm pretty sure the rest of the galaxy with their own homeworlds is ok with this though. Blow up Earth to save their own homeworld and eliminate the Reaper threat? Or face down galactic extinction? Of course they'd do it. The Reapers can move through dark space. Also that doesn't stop the Reapers overall, it just locks away most of them for x years ( which doesn't help much considering they couldn't even fight off the 2-3 Reapers attacking their homeworlds ). The real reason for the Earth Assault was to get to the Citadel so you could launch the whatever device. Most of the alliances throughout the game aren't "join our great assault!" it's "hey can you help the Earth fleets fight the Reapers near our homeworld, since we have the weakest military.". It only became LETS ALL ATTACK TOGETHER when the Citadel mysteriously activated and went to Earth right before? the point where you finished making the bomb thing.
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Apr 4, 2017 05:50
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For those enjoying this, do the planet based areas ever change to your actions? One of the things I loved about Inquisition was how your actions even during side quests changed the world around you. Suddenly you started seeing Inquisition patrols wandering the roads, the people moved back to their homes, watchtowers went up, the environmental dialogue changed about how things were getting better. It made doing the side quests feel worth it, even if it was a deluge of them, and it honestly made the world building aspects of the game make up for the rather weak main plot to me. I know the Nexus changes, but do you see further changes on planets after the colony goes down and you start doing sidequests for them? More outlying bases showing up? People moving around the colony to new areas? People talking about how things are improving? Even these small changes would probably be enough to push me over the edge and buy this game, as that's the sort of stuff I live for.
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Apr 6, 2017 20:56
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Kesper North posted:I expect Krogan learn how to make anything taste palateable, because that's all they have. I got no problems with her faith. I got serious problems with the fact my responses are "YES I LOVE GOD." or "HA HA. HAVE YOU HEARD OF DARWIN M'LADY *tips fedora*." Where is the "Cool! Not actually my style, but I respect that." option like the og Mass Effect trilogy had?
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Apr 8, 2017 00:43
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Milky Moor posted:The ME novels - well, their ME tie-in fiction in general - is pretty bad, even by tie-in fiction standards. The first ME novel was the best it got and it's bland, boring and poorly-written. But the ones that came later made it quite clear that no one had any idea where the Reaper plot was going (maybe because the third novel which delved into the Reapers a bit was written by Karpyshyn). What's worse is that the final one made it apparent that no one at Bioware or EA or whoever was signing off on them exhibited any form of editorial/quality control. It was ridiculously clear that they expected people to eat it up and buy them regardless of the quality. Hey, you know how Jardaan tech requires the user to be mixed organic/synthetic? And how they didn't exist in the Andromeda Galaxy 600 years ago when the Initiative left? Word on the street ( and this is what I was talking about pre release as the disappointing bit that hurts the og trilogy ), which I'm going to spoil since it might show up in the DLC is that the og plan for the Jardaan was that they were us from the Milky Way after the synthesis ending. Now that all are one, we decided to go to the Andromeda Galaxy to prep/uplift the galaxy for the Initiative. We also might have had something to do with the creation of the Kett/Angarans. There was apparently a huge debate over this, which is what led to the Halo 4 writer/quite a few Bioware writers to finally leave. No idea if it's still the actual plan going forward, so I'm spoiling it for the people that are really enjoying Andromeda.
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Apr 11, 2017 18:36
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As I play more, I think my biggest issues aren't the game proper, because the core has so much promise. But it's the Kett that hold this game back narratively. That intro planet with the mystery as to what went wrong is fantastic. Why are all our Golden Worlds ruined? What do we do? We have thousands of people in Cryo, how are we going to handle this situation if we have nowhere to live. What is the Scourge/Remnant tech, and where did it come from, as neither existed 600 years ago when we left the Milky Way. Oh! We are fighting just the beasts of these worlds, which could potentially grow to Thresher Maw level crazy without any sort of sentient life to hold them back. What a great concept! Nope, here's evil aliens. Here's more evil aliens. Actually ignore this cool mystery we set up, here's the EVIL ALIEN POPE MAN waving his hands a bit. Don't you care more about our new evil aliens? The Nexus intro is fantastic. Where did everyone go? What's going on? Is this whole thing just a complete failure? The primal politics of a dying station in a dying land with no real hope to get out of it's predicament are all very good. We need you to go explore these worlds and bring us resources Pathfinder, which cool, I'm not a space hero then! More like a space engineer! Then nope. It's actually about the Kett. We really need to start planning for our final boss fight against the Kett. The real enemies of this new trilogy. Even stuff like the Exiles work, because you naturally handwave quite a bit of RPG storytelling to appreciate the overall. And sure, add some new humanoid bandit style enemies around alongside the machines/wildlife. That's fine by me. The second you start asking too many questions about games in general their plots don't hold up, we are just more angry about how this game turned out so asking more questions then we normally would. Every single time the plot tries to move forward the colonization, Nexus, Ark, or colony plots ( which are the best parts of the game ), the Kett instead take the spotlight and we learn more about the Kett. Really it's a game about fighting a new alien race over a game about exploring, which is sin #1. I think the only times the Kett have even been remotely helpful to the overall cool exploration/colonization stuff is during the Ark stuff where you learn the Kett have really been ruining the various Arks. But they could have just gone all in on the wildlife idea and just made giant loving spiders that can cloak or something on that planet that have been stealing people away.. The Kett feel from beginning to end like someones personal OC don't steal that they begged to add to the game and had to shoehorn in to every major event. And they pull away so much from the strong initial concepts the game tries to tell you is the core meat of the game.
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Apr 13, 2017 15:40
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Arglebargle III posted:The remnant caused the golden worlds that the Geth detected before the events of ME3, timeline doesn't work. Also this isn't actually true. The planets were naturally habitable ( to a degree ) 600 years ago. Somewhere between 300-400 years ago the Remnant buildings were constructed. They helped make the areas even more habitable/fixed one of the planets that looked habitable but wasn't. Suspiciously they were all placed on the specific Golden Worlds the Initative planned to use. ~something~ happened that caused the Scourge to exist, it ruined all the Golden Worlds. Ryder shows up and gets the Scourge to leave the worlds, causing them to become Golden Worlds again. There are multiple quotes on Habitat 7, Nexus, and Eos about how they did long range scanning and none of these buildings existed 600 years ago. You seem to be under the impression the vaults made the worlds Golden Worlds. That's not actually the case. They were all fairly ok to good worlds, the Vaults got built on top of them to help terraform them after the fact. You can even scan stuff in the Vaults and all of it is only 300-400 years old. They got placed on the planets to help terraform them to be more Golden then they actually were. The Initiative didn't expect the worlds to be perfectly livable out of the gate, they just hit the basic standards that suggested they could be livable. That's why they have all the terraforming equipment to terraform Habitat 7 manually if you get everything dealt with, the og plan was the Golden Worlds were close enough to livable at worst they'd only need light terraforming to become habitable. The Vaults were just a ~mysterious gift~ that suspiciously existed on every single Golden World the Initiative planned to go to that happened to be planet level terraformers. That just so happened to be placed there 200-300 years after the Initative left. .
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Apr 13, 2017 17:08
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fruit on the bottom posted:The Reapers are there to protect organic life from synthetic life. Only they don't exist to protect specific life, only organic life in the abstract. The whole ending of ME3 is like this. THE GETH HAVE WARRED WITH YOU, AND ARE STILL WARRING WITH YOU. OBVIOUSLY SYNTHETICS ARE A PROBLEM FOR YOUR GALAXY. nevermind we are the reason the geth turned evil. they were pretty chill actually. But they would have!!! Also like, how does Destroy even work? It destroys reaper tech? Sure so it blows up the frames then. But does it even touch server architecture? Backup files? How does it handle the fact the Geth aren't a singular AI, but are actually many interlinked VIs, after a certain amount of Geth get killed does it stop recognizing them as AI/synthetic life and let them go? At a certain point, don't the Geth exist so gridded to conventional hardware, that if Destroy actually destroyed that conventional hardware the galaxy would have also been sent back into a dark age, and the Allied fleets would have crashed into Earth after the wave went out? Same with EDI. Shouldn't she have had backups in place across the Normandy, especially of before she became sexbot? Like the whole thing seems to have been written by someone that got way too caught up in the whole "Geth are people!" thought process to the point they forgot the fundamentals of how machines actually work. Rookersh fucked around with this message at 01:57 on Apr 25, 2017 |
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Apr 25, 2017 01:54
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This really isn't a topic going anywhere fast, but to Obsidian's credit that's only been the case in a single one of their games. KotOR2, New Vegas, AP, and Tyranny all ease out the lore through showing not telling.
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May 11, 2017 16:28
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Also realize DA2 had a lot of very interesting ideas that never made it to fruition because loving lol ~7-8 months development. Like the original baddie was going to be Cory. The game was going to end with your death because you couldn't stop a being that powerful, and Kirkwall was going to be destroyed. The whole reveal was going to be that Kirkwall wasn't a city, it was a Tevinter Blood Prison designed to hold Cory in, and the massive amount of ~bad poo poo~ that went down to form the prison was what led to Kirkwall being a nightmare. That's why so many of the Mages fell to Blood Magic, why so many cannibals/cultists found refuge there. Why strong/stable people that would normally be fine slowly ended up corrupted and mad by the end of the game, because the prison seals were breaking/the stress of the city in general. That's also why everything warped around/got fixed so quickly. The city was supposed to be repairing itself/"alive" and slightly evil. Then they realized they didn't have 2-3 years to make an epic RPG and instead said "Oh god oh god this has to go gold in 3 months. Uh......RED LYRIUM????", mashed out a Mage/Templar plotline since it was the fastest thing they could think of, and had it end with evil Meredith and the statues.
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May 11, 2017 23:12
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If they ever go back, it'll be Destroy with the Starchild having been lying. The Geth will be fine due to xyz. Aka the "Galaxy got hit hard, but things are going back to normal now and we can pull from all the fan favorite races." ending.
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May 14, 2017 05:10
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The only thing to add about Bioware romances is that you can compare them nearly 1:1 with Bethesda romances in terms of quality of writing ( and Bethesda are not great writers ). Hell, I'd argue Bethesda romances have so far ended up being handled with more tact because they progress at a slightly more natural pace and the end of them is usually just admitting you are in a relationship now, rather then a bad fade to black. Also they reference you are a thing in both personal conversations and through chatter around the world. Actually, outside of the porny problems of the Bioware romance structure, I'd also argue they kind of suck in terms of taking away development from further fleshing out the character. nonRomanceable characters tend to be the most fleshed out across all Bioware games, because no part of their personality has to be tied to a bad romance script. The cast of Awakening sans Oghren, Varric, Krogans, Garrus/Tali in ME1, etc etc tend to be the fan favorite characters with the most backstory, and it's probably because they got a chance to actually write a real personality for them, rather then "Here's 30% lines/buildup of personality, and here's the 70% for fuckin'." they usually do for romance characters. Major plot romance characters like Alistair usually have triple the writing of everyone else so it barely matters for them, but it's really obvious with guys like Thane, Vega or Jacob that they basically only exist to be hosed, they lack any real defining features/ties to the plot or world. I'd argue it actually hurts LGBT representation in games as well. You can be a hetero character in a Bioware game and lead a perfectly normal life doing whatever you want, and since you aren't a romance character you have time to be given a full backstory/personality. But if you happen to be LGBT, you must be a love interest because we can't have too many of the gays in our video games. And this means that basically every LGBT character is half a romance option, which means their personality suffers as a result. Rather then just have a lesbian character existing for the sake of representation, they will have to be a romance option for the female PC. It feels like they are written in for the sake of giving LGBT gamers something to gently caress, rather then for the sake of adding legitimate LGBT representation into their games. Without giving them a chance to be fleshed out/grown around, you just have proverbial sex meat to throw to the frothy hordes. The only exceptions I can think of to this are Crem and Dorian, and both were obviously written by the team that can actually handle these issues a little better then the Mass Effect team seems able ( and Crem is not romanceable. ). Like this is I think a thing Obsidian does masterfully. You may not -like- a character in an Obsidian game, but because none of them are romanceable, their entire personality can be learned from them as who they are actually defines them. Obsidian didn't have to go out of their way writing a huge romance subplot for half the characters in their game, which would have taken time away from writing more about who they are and why they tick. It also lets them have characters in their worlds that can be LGBT and represent the LGBT community but also have no interest in the PC because not everyone wants or needs to gently caress you. And Obsidian seems to have used this extra writing time/space to instead write in rivalries, deeper personal quests, and overall more interesting characters. There has to be an understanding that romances take time to write, and do take up space that could go to something else.
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May 31, 2017 23:23
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NikkolasKing posted:I disagree with pretty much all of this but subjeciivity and personal opinion so I just want to focus on a couple things. Specifically, since your position is that the best and "fan favorite" characters can't be romanced, and you are kind enough to give examples, how many people would say they liked someone such as Velanna over Alistair? Far as I can tell, Al is pretty much the most popular companion in the entire series and he's easily the most fleshed out Origins companion with a romance that is integral to the plot. You are not in any way subverting or halting his character by romancing him. As I already said, Alistair exists as one of the few worthwhile romance options solely because he has significantly more writing then anybody else. This is due to his position as a major plot character, the core companion character, and the lead writers pet character. This helps his romance not overtake who he is as a person, because massive chunks of the game and core plot are built around him. Unlike say Thane where his romance is roughly 60-70% of his character ( and the other 30% is "son" ), Alistair has so much else going on for him that his romance only really takes around 10-20% of his total writing. Characters like Alistair are rare in Bioware games though. That's the problem. But also compare them to characters who also have romances. Morrigan if you don't romance her barely speaks to you. Zevran stays pretty tightlipped about himself. Ashley and Kaiden give you very cursory glances into their struggles but never really open up. Thane just sits in your ship and has a problem with his son mysteriously. Jacob just does weights and barely exists. Miranda is built as this core integral character to the plot, but if you aren't willing to go through with the romance she barely exists outside of the occasional popup to tell you whats going on. That's the standard for Bioware. A crew of people that only become interesting and fleshed out if you find them physically attractive/initially interesting enough to start flirting with them. As hard counter mentioned, Garrus got loving gutted in 2 because of it. I'm not going to argue the representation point because everyone is different. I also directly point out in my post that the DA:I team actually handled these issues better then Bioware normally does, and specifically mentioned Crem and Dorion. I also agree Celene/Briala are great. But as someone that identifies as LGBTQ everything Mass Effect has done has felt forced and awful. Gil feels almost offensively bad. Traynor and Cortez felt like they existed as characters solely to be romance options, and both feel bit in really bad ways. It's especially egregious because both have no real need/personal connection that should drive them to romance Shepard, yet they do because "ah they are lesbian/gay, and Shepard is lesbian/gay so they should gently caress yes???" which in my mind is bad representation. Why couldn't we just get a gay pilot that isn't romanceable by Shepard at all, because they've got other poo poo going on/still pine for their husband. Why can't we have a lesbian coordinator that just doesn't find Shepard attractive. We have dozens of hetero people we meet on the regular who have zero interest in boning the PC, but if you meet a LGBT character 99.9% of the time they are boneable because Bioware needs to get their pander on. It's a bad representation in my mind, and feels super skeevy. Like we can only have one gay per game, and that gay needs to be fuckable. I'd much rather NOT have LGBT romances, and instead just have additional LGBT characters to flesh out the world.
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Jun 1, 2017 00:38
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The worrying thing about the Suicide Mission is that when people got asked to pick a squad lead, their mind did not immediately jump to Garrus. Homeboy was presented as Shepard protege from the very beginning, and has been with you from the start. Your mind went to the alcoholic failure over your boy Garrus? What game you been playing.
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Jun 15, 2017 15:59
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Arcsquad12 posted:Been playing some Knights of the Old Republic 1 again, and most of the PC dialogue options are pretty bad? Like they were writing babby's first choose your own adventure bad. I've played KOTOR 2 off an on over the years but I haven't gone back to K1 in a long time and the difference in writing quality across the board is astounding. Yuuuuup. I've said this for awhile. KotOR exists fondly for people because in their minds it's better written then it actually is. But it pales in comparison to stuff that came out before ( Baldur's Gate, Fallout, Planescape ), and even stuff that came out around the same time ( Homeworld 2, Max Payne 2, hell even Splinter Cell 1 ). Then realize. Months after KotOR1 released we had Half Life 2, Doom 3, San Andreas, VtmB, Dawn of War 1, Riddick, MGS3, etc. Obsidian had a year to make KotOR2. And I mean, jesus loving christ, just look at KotOR 2 compared to 1. It's such a dramatic shift, so many additional options, so many additional areas, etc. Not even getting into the story/choice KotOR2 has almost triple the content of KotOR1. It's easy to look at KotOR1 and place it in this really weird era where it was a marque game, but no. It launched against some of the best games of all time, and it does not look good against any of them. It's remembered fondly because we were 13 when it came out and nobody replays old games anymore. But if you do, youch.
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Jun 25, 2017 04:43
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Palpek posted:Welcome to gaming food megathread! HI PALPEK. IS THIS THE COOK SERVE DELICIOUS 2 THREAD? I've got a bunch of witty posts I'm preparing once it comes out. CSD was my favorite indie game, so I'm eager to get the SA community engaged with my CSD2 content.
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Jul 5, 2017 23:57
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