THESE FORUMS NOW CLOSED (read only)
Fun Stuff => CLIKC => Topic started by: Storm Rider on 29 Nov 2007, 19:23
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OK, so if you've finished the game, talk about the story stuff here.
About the speech with Sovereign on Virmire. Did anyone else get the implication that synthetic life actually preceded organic life? If that's true, that's completely insane. It's more likely that Sovereign was just refusing to acknowledge the origin of the Reapers, but that totally blew my mind when I first heard it.
Also, I'm curious about who died in everyone else's game on Virmire. Did anybody not have enough Charm/Intimidate to avoid killing Wrex? And who did you let die between Kaiden and Ashley? I let Kaiden die because I thought he was kind of a tool. Maybe next playthrough I'll change it, but probably not.
And the part where you can talk Saren into shooting himself in the fucking head? Insane.
I almost forgot, but the true mark of how much this game engrossed me was how for the 40 seconds after Sovereign was destroyed where I thought the debris had killed Shepard I felt like somebody had punched me in the gut. I didn't want the character I had created and brought so far to be taken away from me just so I'd have to start over in the next game. Also, choosing Captain Anderson over Ambassador Udina for humanity's spot on the Council gave me serious amounts of glee. Serves him right for being a giant dick the whole game.
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Yeah talking Saren into offin' himself was INTENSE. I let Ashley die, I'm probably pickin' Kaidan to die next playthrough as he IS kind of a tool.
I almost hope they never go into full detail explaining the Reapers' origins. They're more menacing as this big unknowable entity than they would be if it turns out that Ancient Galactic Civilization X made them Y million years ago. I kind of hope the writers pull a Frank Herbert on us and it turns out the Reapers are hiding out in our neck of the universe because they're hiding from an even bigger, weirder threat. I can't really imagine why else such an advanced machine intelligence would be essentially parasitising younger civilisations.
It would be really cool to get to know the non-Reaper controlled Geth better in the next game. A Geth squad-member would be AWESOME.
The council better be fucking throwing me whores and battleships next game after I elected to save their bitch asses in this one.
Who wants to bet we meet some surviving Proteans next game? All the talk about stasis chambers on Ilos makes me think there are probably some on ice somewhere.
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I wouldn't be surprised at all if there were living Protheans you met at some point in the next game.
What I did like is that they never explained WHY the Reavers had this elaborate cycle of exterminating organic life. It leaves them something to develop later on, plus it fits in with the whole concept of alien (in both the extraterrestrial and incomprehensible sense) perspectives that sort of runs throughout the whole dynamic of the game.
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I was not expecting Saren to blow his own goddamn brains out at all during that bit. Surprised the shit out of me when it happened.
I let Kaiden die, then shattered Liara's hopes and dreams and got booty call from Ashley. It was strangely satisfying to be the first creature to toss her heart/thing into a blender. Next play through Ashley's god-fearing ass is taking the fall.
I'm very curious how they are going to continue the series. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if we don't play as Shephard in the next game, but I hope to god they have a save transfer for the sequels. Not enough games (Damn you Quest for Glory for spoiling me) have the option of transferring characters and game choices through games and that's a goddamned crime.
This only the first of a 3 part series and it's already easily one of my favorite games of all times. I just hope EA's purchase doesn't affect Bioware's development practices much.
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i'm pretty sure i read somewhere that you will be able to load your game onto the next one. that way, the actual galaxy will be different for everyone instead of just your character. i.e. kaiden/ashley dead, wrex dead/alive, council dead/alive, who you chose for human coucilor etc.
there will be some sort of "default" story for starting a new character or if you didn't play the first one but i believe you'll be able to continue from you left off.
I kind of hope the writers pull a Frank Herbert on us and it turns out the Reapers are hiding out in our neck of the universe because they're hiding from an even bigger, weirder threat.
that was my first thought when they explained the reapers. i was like "wait a minute. the reapers are gnarly as fuck. what the hell are they doing camping out, killing us off over and over again?"
oh, the possibilities!
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It wouldn't surprise me in the least if we don't play as Shephard in the next game
That's why I was so horrified when the ending first kicked in and the piece of Sovereign falls in and crushes part of the Citadel Tower. I was like 'Oh fuck no, they killed Shepard so they can reboot the player character for the next game'.
To be honest, I would be kind of surprised if all of the stuff you did carried over into the next game, because there would be just so many contingencies they'd have to alter and it would take a ton of work. I think it's more likely that they'll just pick one outcome as the 'canon' and move on from there.
Maybe next playthrough I'll let the council die just to see what happens.
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that's the thing; i think if you chose to let them die they will still live but just barely...and they will hate you. i don't know?
it seems like a cheap way to make us feel like we have choices when we really don't. but i wouldn't know.
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ME's game mechanics seem well-suited, or at least better suited than most systems, to carrying over into the epic levels above 60 (which is as far as I'm aware the upper limit in the game) so I wouldn't rule out Shepard being in the second game. It would just require some retooling and rebalancing. But we're not dealing with D&D ridiculousness.
I'm hoping for a substantial expansion pack with a self-contained plotline in the meantime, although Bioware hasn't made an xpac since NWN. There will definitely be galactic exploration add-ons, though it remains to be seen how in-depth the new sidequests will be.
If I were to wager a guess, I'd say that the next game (or xpac) will deal with either A) The "Cerberus" wetworks conspirators B) the Batarians or C) the Geth, on their home turf. All three were skirted around enough in the storyline to count as being "foreshadowed".
i'm pretty sure i read somewhere that you will be able to load your game onto the next one. that way, the actual galaxy will be different for everyone instead of just your character. i.e. kaiden/ashley dead, wrex dead/alive, council dead/alive, who you chose for human coucilor etc.
there will be some sort of "default" story for starting a new character or if you didn't play the first one but i believe you'll be able to continue from you left off.
I heard that as well, but that's a colossal amount of content to work in. If they were to do that, I'd expect them to take 2 full years of dev time (minus QA) at the least, and they're working on a tighter timeframe than that. I envision something like KOTOR2, where at the beginning of the game you're asked questions about events in the first game and the story adapts to more or less what you'd expect from a sequel to the particular game you played.
About the speech with Sovereign on Virmire. Did anyone else get the implication that synthetic life actually preceded organic life? If that's true, that's completely insane. It's more likely that Sovereign was just refusing to acknowledge the origin of the Reapers, but that totally blew my mind when I first heard it.
Well, they seemed to be going a Lovecraftian direction with the Reapers. Sovereign was "beyond human comprehension" and didn't really acknowledge Shepard at all. So the most likely answer is that Sovereign either didn't know what created him or wasn't telling, probably the latter. You can bet your sweet ass somewhere down the road it will turn out that the only way to know how to defeat the Reapers will come from the things that created them. I will bet you real money defeating the Reapers will involve ancient creator artifacts of some sort. The Reapers obviously aren't organic, and all synthetic life forms have to be created, that's what "synthetic" means. It's also worth considering that the Reapers may have been organic at some point but became robotic.
Also, I'm curious about who died in everyone else's game on Virmire. Did anybody not have enough Charm/Intimidate to avoid killing Wrex? And who did you let die between Kaiden and Ashley? I let Kaiden die because I thought he was kind of a tool. Maybe next playthrough I'll change it, but probably not.
Kaidan, both times I played. For one, I was a male character and because you can't romance Kaidan when you'r male they make a number of character-building conversations unavailable, something they didn't do with Ashley, for whatever reason. Kaidan was just sort of there, and I used Ashley more.
And the part where you can talk Saren into shooting himself in the fucking head? Insane.
What I want to know is if you actually have the option to fight Saren apart from when he's resurrected by Sovereign. The fact that I could convince him to shoot himself was diminished somewhat by the knowledge that Bioware wouldn't allow it to really end that way. The only game I've ever played that allowed you to talk your way past the very last boss is Planescape:Torment, which was nice, because combat in that game was boring.
I almost forgot, but the true mark of how much this game engrossed me was how for the 40 seconds after Sovereign was destroyed where I thought the debris had killed Shepard I felt like somebody had punched me in the gut. I didn't want the character I had created and brought so far to be taken away from me just so I'd have to start over in the next game. Also, choosing Captain Anderson over Ambassador Udina for humanity's spot on the Council gave me serious amounts of glee. Serves him right for being a giant dick the whole game.
You need to watch more action movies / play more action games ;) Hell, did they really kill the Chief in Halo?
It would be really cool to get to know the non-Reaper controlled Geth better in the next game. A Geth squad-member would be AWESOME.
Eh. The Geth aren't really that compelling as villains. There wasn't a single Geth character, I doubt there will be in the coming games. The entire race serves as evil cannon fodder to be sent to die by Shepard's hands. That's what you get when you make your villains mute and universally hostile. They might as well have been goblins.
Who wants to bet we meet some surviving Proteans next game? All the talk about stasis chambers on Ilos makes me think there are probably some on ice somewhere.
But the big twist was that for the most part, the Protheans weren't nearly as important or all-powerful as everybody believed them to be. They were just another tool of the Reapers (God, that name will always be hokey). I'd guess that Bioware is moving on to bigger and better things, so to speak.
It looks like I'm alone in that I wasn't terribly impressed with the Reapers. For one, the whole 50,000 year cycle / prophecy thing seemed more at home in a fantasy game than a sci-fi game. My eyes just about rolled back into my head when I ran across the mad doomsayer at the beginning of the game. Unlike Star Wars and its ilk, ME puts in a good faith effort to explain just about everything and tries not to rely on invisible magic or mysticism, which makes the weird stuff stick out like a sore thumb. That serves as further proof to me that everything will be revealed in due time and the Reapers will not remain mysterious. And I felt like Saren, a perfectly adequate villain who himself was barely in the game, was tossed aside in favor of an even more vaguely sketched sentient ship that the PC has no connection to.
Maybe I went wrong in expecting KOTOR "oh shit" twists.
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You do, in fact, fight Saren twice if you do not choose to talk him into breaking free of Sovereign. I checked.
Also, as far as storylines that they'll probably put into the next games, I'm betting a big one is dealing with the Shadow Broker. He's mentioned, and his vast amount of control over the underworld is alluded to, but you never specifically deal with him (or her, or them). So, I'm betting they tie up that particular loose end in one of the next two games.
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There's a lot of stuff that could be explored and used a lot more in the sequels. For example, the Elcor, the best thing about Mass Effect. I counted 4 Elcor total in the entire game. There are the 2 diplomats, the ambassador, and the merchant on Noveria. They must exploit this resource in the future.
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In an interview for Game Informer, Greg from Bioware says "I can be definitive in saying that we are definitely going to use the save file that [Mass Effect 1] created."
:-D - Woo!
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In an interview for Game Informer, Greg from Bioware says "I can be definitive in saying that we are definitely going to use the save file that [Mass Effect 1] created."
:-D - Woo!
Excerrent.
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I feel something wet in my pants....
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I fail to see Kaiden's toolitude, but I let him die. Being a vangaurd and all I didnt really need him.
Though I should've cutt Ashley off, That bitch killed Wrex!
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To be fair, she only did it cause you failed at being a good commander.
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You do, in fact, fight Saren twice if you do not choose to talk him into breaking free of Sovereign. I checked.
Also, as far as storylines that they'll probably put into the next games, I'm betting a big one is dealing with the Shadow Broker. He's mentioned, and his vast amount of control over the underworld is alluded to, but you never specifically deal with him (or her, or them). So, I'm betting they tie up that particular loose end in one of the next two games.
I would be willing to bet real money that the "shadow broker" is in fact that whore Sha'ira. I'm sorry but from everything thats going on its just too obvious to me that its her.
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I rarely went renegade, and I actually enjoyed talking to Kaiden, but I never used him in missions, unlike Ashley, who I used to help back me with firepower, so when I couldn't save them both, I felt, well, horrible, to be honest.
Thing they need to do with the next game.....better auto save feature. I thought they dropped the ball with it, cause it pissed me off more to have to retrace such a large amount because I didn't save on my own and got jacked by heavy rocket turrets and rocket geth. In fact, fuck rockets. Fuck them to hell.
I also saved the council, but they didn't have the talking choice I wanted.....where Shepard walked up to thier faces and just screamed, "I TOLDZ YOU BITCHES! I FUCKIN TOLD YOU! BUT NOOOOOOOOO!" Or a "Raise your hands if you knew all of this was coming? *raise hand* me? Wow. Ok. Now, raise your hands if you warned everyone about it too" *keeps hand raised* Oh snap, look at that.
Also, I object to being "renagade" by shooting a black mailing xenophobic (I feel good for using that word in proper context) gang member in the face.
I want to know what biotics they'll introduce next game too.
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Loved it. I picked Kaidan because I wanted to finish the romantic subplot. Next time through I'll probably keep him alive because I though he was a badass. He's kinda like "I'm not awesome, but I've got your back."
Saved Wrex.
Felt bad for Saren. Kinda glad he shot himself....
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On my second playthrough, when the admiral came to the docking bay and demanded to inspect my ship, I told him to go fuck himself.
I can't remember the last time a video game gave me such satisfaction.
in other news i am apparently fourteen and hate authority
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Wait, commander shepard ACTUALLY said, "Go fuck yourself!"?
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second playthrough, now I'm just cruising around doing side quests with my tech support.
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Well, stayed up until 2:30 last night to beat it. It was quite possibly the most epic thing I've ever seen. I want to learn more about Ilos. That place just looked so cool.
Also: MOAR ZERO GRAVITY. Lifting a geth Juggernaut off the spindle and pushing him down towards one of the citadel arms is hella awesome.
And I wanna see what the Citadel looks like when it goes off.
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yeah, why the hell haven't game designers realized yet that zero-gravity is what everyone wants.
i want a game where i can mob along in my space suit, disengage my magnetic boots, jump straight up, do half a flip, reingage my magnetic boots and land on the ceiling/wall/whatever. is that so much to ask?
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Probably, yes.
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Asking a currently nigh impossible deed from a developer is perfectly reasonable I think.
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i thought so too
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Now you guys are thinking like gamers. The kind of gamers that inhabit the codex, anyway.
Damned gamers.
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I can kinda visualize how they'd pull it off...the problem wouldn't be turning physics on and off, it's movement in the zero gravity and making it a controllable thing that'd be a problem.
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Sort of late to the party, I just bought it a week ago and finished it tonight. Definitely the best storytelling and cinematics in a video game ever. Shame the sidequests were so repetitive.
I was pretty convinced during the whole convo with Vigil that Sovereign or some other Reaper communicating from dark space was the Shadow Broker. Think about it . . . Vigil said that the Reapers used the info collated on the central planet to organize their extermination of all organic life. So it would make sense for Sovereign to pose through intermediaries as an information broker . . . . Actually this sounded a lot more plausible an hour ago.
Also, I'd be surprised if they didn't bring the Arachni back no matter whether you chose to release the Queen or not.
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The funny thing about the rachni queen is that I've finished Noveria on both my paragon and renegade playthroughs and the Council finds a way to be pissed at you no matter which choice you make.
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I'm halfway through my renegade playthrough. Now that I know that you're supposed to talk to everyone on your ship after every main plot mission, certain side quests are much more straightforward. It's interesting how the Salarian on the council likes you a lot more when you eradicate the thorian controlled colonists. Good design and an excellent example of merging game design (allowing for paragon and renegade playthroughs) with game mythos (if you read the codex, Salarians are very short-lived so it makes sense that they would be all for killing quasi-innocents if it made sense in the long run).
I think for many people the superficial flaws in Mass Effect detracted overly from the really, really clever and well thought through bits of design. It's definitely part of a new trend where the game designers appear to be hiring boiler rooms of graduate students to right a library worth of accessible in game mythos (hurray!)
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Well that was largely unexpected.
I punched the air when Shepard made it out from the rubble though. Then I picked Anderson and told Udina he could shove it.
It looks like I'm alone in that I wasn't terribly impressed with the Reapers. For one, the whole 50,000 year cycle / prophecy thing seemed more at home in a fantasy game than a sci-fi game.
Man so what if it seems like more of a fantasy convention? The two genres aren't that far separated.
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Like I said, Star Wars this ain't. It feels boring, is all. I'm not saying I played ME to get away from the silliness of KOTOR, but I'd like to think that ME at least wants to be "hard sci-fi", when it clearly isn't. Part of it is my annoyance at not really having much of a central villain. You get maybe 20 minutes of in-game Saren time. It's not enough, and when they throw Sovereign at you it was less of a revelation than one bit actor stepping in for another. I barely cared about Saren, I didn't care at all about Sovereign. The other part of it is that it's the first game in a trilogy, and as much as it couldn't be helped, I kept feeling like they're saving their best stuff for a later date. At least, I hope that's the case. As much as I like ME, they'd better top it next time.
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The volume of sidequest vs. game proper didn't really help that, but I dunno. I still felt there was a lot of Saren/Sovereign even in the side missions - all of the stuff with Cerebrus, for example, which I hope gets explored more in later games. Seriously, the first time I ran into Thorians or Rachni were on Cerebrus missions, before they were even brought into the main story. When I found out how important both of those species wound up being to the game proper I realized that I hope they actually deal with Cerebrus more in the future.
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Yeah, that's my hope. It'd be nice to have a human villain, and you'd have more varied opportunities, combat-wise, than if it was a geth-centric group of enemies. You might even get to interact with them outside of combat. They might actually be characters.
That's one of the bigger things that annoyed me about ME. Aside from Benezia, all of Saren's underlings were pretty much faceless, be they geth or krogan. It's a little much to ask, I suppose, but maybe multiple villains are in order. Cerberus is a conspiracy, and conspiracies generally aren't the work of one guy and his subordinates. They're usually a group of influential people.
But that would be hard to do, what with the Reapers having been revealed as the big setting baddies. All evil plots would have to relate to them in some manner, lest the focus be lost.
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After playing Crackdown, actually, the villains in this game seemed remarkably well-developed. Probably just clouded judgement on my part.
And the thing is, I think Cerebrus are related to the Reapers somehow. Besides the fact that everything they did related to Reaper-initiated events in the main plotline, Vigil also suggested that Saren was not the only pawn used by the Reapers in this cycle. It's likely that Vigil was suggesting that the events of the game had been in motion for years, but I don't think it's too far-fetched to think that Sovereign had its claw-bits dipped in multiple pies across the galaxy at the same time.
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The Shadow Broker.
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Hey guys, how will the whole "pick up where you left off" sequel work with two playthroughs? I'm going to do a renegade run next but let's be honest, I'd really like to keep going in the series as the noble, selfless defender of the galaxy.
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I'd assume your karma axes will be reset to 0, as they were when you started your second playthrough. The only way to get around your renegade playthrough influencing the events of the second game, however, would be if they had a KOTOR2-esque questionnaire at the beginning. You might want to take a break and replay as paragon again, if possible. Or play with another character.
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Dangit!
Maybe I'll just start a new playthrough and do my renegade run as a maxed-out female character. I got pretty attached to ol' Dom Shepard.
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Well, presumably you'll tell the game which of your playthroughs to use the save data from. I would be surprised if you did otherwise, so you should be able to have a renegade character without problems.
Of course, that's just my guess. I can't pretend to know how Bioware will implement it.
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I have no intentions of playing this game as I do not have, and do not want a 360, and Bioware's stubborn refusal to port the game to PC (which is a whole other discussion of why exclusivity should die). So despite the excellent KOTOR being avalible on my primary gaming platform, ME will (as it stands) not be so.
But I'm still curious about it, and so I read this thread.
Am I wrong in thinking that the "Reapers" that you guys talk about sound like Necron from Warhammer 40k? Sentient machine beings (check) awake after long slumber (check) to wipe out all life (check). Created by some other being (maybe check).
Given that Sci-Fi is a pretty small circle, and anyone writing it is probably at least aware of, if not fully versed in, the staples of the genre, but still. In the little you guys have talked about them, they seem highly derivative of Necrons (or even the ReaVers of Firefly/Serenity). In the same way that Warcraft feels derivative of Warhammer Fantasy (although theres a reason that happened).
Feel free to point out ways they aren't, I'm only going off what is written in this thread.
Also, a short lived race? Tau much?
It's definitely part of a new trend where the game designers appear to be hiring boiler rooms of graduate students to right a library worth of accessible in game mythos (hurray!)
Which might be why it sounds so very derivative.
Definitely the best storytelling and cinematics in a video game ever. Shame the sidequests were so repetitive.
I also find this hard to believe. It sounds like it may be the "fluffiest" in recent times, but certainly not the best.
Again, feel free to correct my thinking.
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It's derivative intentionally. The entire point of this game is to be an interactive homage to the epic 80s sci-fi films. That's why you can put an old-school film filter on the game, for crying out loud. And is all that is required for a game to ripoff 40k to have an alien race that doesn't live for a long time? I don't know anything about the mythos of 40k, so I don't know if the Reapers really are anything like the Necron, but I can say that the fiction in Mass Effect is universally (if you'll pardon the pun) excellent, especially by the standards of the video game medium.
Basically, Mass Effect is everything KOTOR accomplished only made even more ambitious. And Mass Effect isn't on PC because A) PC gaming is dying and everybody knows it and B) because Microsoft financed this game and they wanted to use it to push 360s. It's MGS's call, not Bioware's.
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Again, as I dont have a 360, I wouldnt know about the film filter. I am not super universal on the 40k mythos, but again, how they reapers were talked about in this thread made them seem like they were a direct lift off of the Necros (as I said, ancient race of organic machines bent on exterminating all life, blah blah, wiki them if you want more).
I would disagree with your point of PC gaming dying. As the biggest games in existance exist soley on PC (CS on original XBox doesnt count), and last I checked, the most likely next biggest game from Blizzard is going to exist only on PC. Honestly, you may be a smart person, but any time someone says "PC Gaming is dying/dead," I want to punch them in the throat.
In reference to the second point, it seems silly that they wouldnt release ME on PC months later, once its a budget / greatest, sorry PLATINUM hits title on 360. Given the facts of what I have read about developing for Xbox it seems like it wouldnt be hard to even put out a half assed port in a couple months to PC.
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Have you played that Starcraft game? HUGE 40k rip off. HUGE.
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So having Counterstrike, Starcraft and nothing else means the PC market is doing swimmingly? The most ambitious PC-only games in years, World in Conflict and Crysis, both bombed horribly sales wise. Piracy and the inherent costs of the PC platform means that fewer and fewer games are coming to PC, and the ones that do are rarely significantly better than the console versions.
Another reason Bioware is probably reluctant to make a PC port of Mass effect is because Bioware has stated repeatedly that they want to finish the full Mass Effect trilogy within the lifespan of the 360, and dividing up their development team to make a PC version would likely make it much more difficult for them to release the sequels in the time period they're projecting.
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Counter Strike, Half Life, World of Warcraft, Starcraft, The Sims, Warcraft, Guild Wars; I could keep going, but I think you might see where this is going. Yes, it probably costs more to dev on PC, but you also show that you dont know how ports are made. Most ports are done by a DIFFERENT dev studio (as CS was for XBox). Piracy is not as big an issue as the PUBLISHERS would have you believe.
Starcraft is the reason why Relic wont put Tyranid into Dawn of War, which is both ironic and annoying.
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There was a recent blog post by a CoD4 dev about how shocked he was at how many people were playing online with the same code/lack of one. Piracy is pretty bad, at least for the popular games out there. CoD4 and Crysis have been downloaded at least 100,000 times each (checking the latest scrape at a torrent site). That's a huge amount of sales that the publishers aren't getting.
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Dudes don't feed the PC-only trolls.
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And when people think blockbuster video games I'm sure the first title that springs to mind is Guild Wars.
In fact, you've indirectly shown one of the many problems with modern PC gaming: the newest game on your list is over 2 years old. Are people who have been playing Counterstrike and Starcraft for 10 years and the Sims for 8 or spending 30 hours a week playing WoW going to buy new games? No, they do not, so what incentive is there to develop new games for it? Even if they do decide to spend the money and time to make a PC port, it always sells far, far less than the console counterpoints, so at some point they just won't even bother anymore. The only games that are commercially viable on PC anymore are MMOs, which is why the MMO market is glutted with tons of knockoffs trying to catch the next lightning in a bottle and become the new blockbuster after WoW loses steam.
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Hey Statik! Quit bein' a tool.
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I love my PC, and I've loved my PCs for close to 20 years now, but anyone who thinks that the non indy PC development scene isn't dying a slow painful death is lying to themselves.
Back to Mass Effect
I think I'm accepting, during my 4th playthrough, that my love for this game might be hitting "unhealthy" status.
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My hope is that sometime in a future unlike the present the market will expand to such an extent that boutique developers will be able to do reasonable business, or at the very least will begin to imitate the movie business, where independent and DIY efforts can work alongside (or be co-opted by, depending on how you look at it) the big guns. But as it is now, it looks like PC gaming is folding into console gaming, and that only encourages consolidation. At this point it seems like you can only be an indie console developer if you make platformers or casual games.
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I think I might start another playthrough tonight, without using the Specter guns.
(I think I have a Problem)
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My hope is that sometime in a future unlike the present the market will expand to such an extent that boutique developers will be able to do reasonable business, or at the very least will begin to imitate the movie business, where independent and DIY efforts can work alongside (or be co-opted by, depending on how you look at it) the big guns. But as it is now, it looks like PC gaming is folding into console gaming, and that only encourages consolidation. At this point it seems like you can only be an indie console developer if you make platformers or casual games.
Again, I think that the Xbox Live and Playstation Network games are the recourse for independent shops at this point. They're much less expensive to develop, can get you a solid amount of money right off the bat because there's no retail overhead, and if you make enough money off that you maybe can afford to expand your dev team or parlay that into a deal with a major publisher. Of course, if you end up establishing a good relationship with a publisher as a result of that, they'll probably end up buying your studio. The thing is, more and more publishers seem to be giving their development teams more free reign, because more often than not if the publisher ends up interfering with the game too much they just end up breaking it. So, in the interest of playing devil's advocate, I don't think that the consolidation the market is seeing right now is necessarily a bad thing, at least on the whole. I think the desire to see the 'indie development scene' stay strong is largely a romantic thing, and that while it's always nice to see that group stay healthy, it's not vital to the success or failure of the medium.
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The Live Arcade, PSN and WiiWare systems encourage indie development, I like to think. At the very least they give small-scale developers the chance to make a buck off their hard work and maybe get picked up by a large developer.
The thing is that bigger agencies in gaming aren't particularly evil at this stage, not to the extent of major labels or motion picture studios. A good chunk of the bigger companies like EA and Ubisoft seem to go the Ben Affleck (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Affleck#Filmography) route - one to pay the bills, one to make something good.
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Johnny C, where is that graphic of a nail being hit because you just did that.
Anyways, I want to go back through this again, but school is starting back up soon, so I'll be chopped for time. Plus, Brawl, Mario Kart, Too Human...yikes.
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Somewhat coincidentally, on another forum I frequent there's a discussion of the PC vs. Console market. This particular post from a software designer caught my eye, I think it makes some pretty good points, despite some typos.
The idea that PC gaming will die is an absolute myth, time and time again I've explained the patterns of the gaming industry and its very unlikely to change. The PC market itself vastly outnumbers the console market, so even contemplating that developers will simply cease to develop for the platform is out there in the realms of ignorance, or perhaps better put as misunderstanding.
It's very simple matter of the fact stuff really, PC gaming has been in such a position before, back when the playstation was released and 3D graphics were all the rage, the PC's of the time we're not capable of producing the same results as the playstation without the aid of what was then extremely expensive 3D accelerators. Windows 95 and Direct X eventually changed this, along with some notable titles, Quake, Half-life, Diablo, Fallout, and Baldurs Gate spring to mind.
What does exist belongs to technological leaps, when the XBox was released it was based upon Direct X 8 API and the windows 2000 kernal, albeit modified and optimized for the specific hardware. This in laymans terms basically states that you can do more with less so to speak, yet the PC soon entered the direct X 9 era, which is frankly a far more capable API, HLSL and programmable graphical hardware placed the PC technologically well above the Xbox, all noteable sellers made there way on top the PC, Halo and KOTOR, albiet that they were originally exclusive to the XBOX, the same can be said of Paystation 2 titles (which has a insane crap - good game ratio, and awfully weak hardware). We also found that developers would always jump at cross platform development, this isn't a new thing at all, heck I remember the days when cross-platform releases consisted of totally different versions of the same game!
Now we've seen the release of the next generation of consoles, the XBOX 360 is, to be blunt, Direct X 9.0c in a box with three dual threaded processors. The PC is looking at an entirely new API Direct X 10, and entirely new operating system Vista, and quad cores becoming common place, all that is happening is the same as what happened when PC's moved from DOS to windows 95, the next few years will see more reliable games made on the PC, this can be attributed to this latest step forwards. There will always be developers working on the edge creating cutting edge games. Direct X 10 really does make it easier for the developer, and the PC has something now that no other gaming platform has, geometry shaders.
It is always financially viable to make games for console and PC, the problem comes from publishers who will pay more to developers to develop for consoles when they're first released, the same game may get double the budget on a console than on the PC in regards to development. Developers want to reach as many people on as many platforms as possible, so why would they cut out the platform which is more capable (hardware-wise) than others? It just doesn't make sense. Developers aren't just going to stop developing games for the PC, but they may very well stop developing games for only the PC, when other options exist, but there will always be PC only titles as there are console only titles.
To be blunt, the PC market can't die, because that's where the next generation of consoles will come from, its where the hardware is researched, where the API's are developed, where the cutting edge technology is released, the console is the technology of yesterdays PC's, just optimised.
Not sure about that third paragraph. Rest looks good.
As for Mass Effect, my 360's disc drive went kaput after 3 years of hard use, and now we're sending it back. Hopefully by the time the replacement arrives there will be some news re: DLC. The rational part of me thinks that the DLC was probably worked out before release, and is more of the cookie-cutter side planets and missions everybody's so tired of. The irrational part of me hopes it's actually something good.
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Well that's fine, but if the cutting-edge games like Crysis only sell 80,000 copies in their first month on the market, then I'd hardly call the platform a 'success'. And he completely fails to acknowledge the piracy or install cost problems of PC game development. To an extent the PC market is astronomically larger than the console market, but when you narrow that down to the people who are actually willing to upgrade their machines often enough to play those cutting edge games, I imagine the number drops exponentially.
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I think Crysis is something of an anomaly. It was made to showboat an engine, an engine that was grossly decadent. Honestly, I think Crysis deserved to fail. When you come out and say on a top-of-the-line computer you'll get maybe 30 frames per second running your game, that your game is built for theoretical computers (Yahtzee made it sound like a joke, but they literally said it), you're asking for it. It's basically asking the consumer to worship you and bring you gifts of high-tech hardware so they can gaze upon your wondrous visage. Forget the game, just develop the engine internally and sell it to the army (something Crytek's already done) It's dumb business, at least in the short term (the short term being at least a year) When HL2 came out it ran on my computer. Choppily, but then, my computer by that point was below average. It barely ran HL1.
The shelf life of a good computer is too often understated, especially when you've built the computer yourself. Computers can last longer than console cycles.
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Well I was just using Crysis as an example. What about the other 'big' PC games that came out like UT3, World in Conflict and Supreme Commander? Hell, I don't even think C&C 3 performed particularly well commercially.
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The software designer dude is missing the point.
I could actually not give a shit about geometry shaders. I give a shit about playing a game where I care about the story, characters, setting and theme.
You could argue that I'm rare but there are an increasing number of gamers who feel the same way.
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Man guys what the fuck is this thread doing talking about PCs? I could rant for a day about PC/console wars but we are here to talk about cool goddamn aliens and saving the freaking galaxy. What the hell.
The Spectre (totally the right spelling, suck it spellcheck!) weapons are so completely overpowered it makes me cry. For my second play-through I had enough mad cash to stock up on VII Spectre gear for two of my dudes (are there any other merchants that actually sell them?), and it just makes the game piss-easy. Once the final difficulty is unlocked I think I'll finally have some tense moments, but until then?
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There's an achievement that allows Spectre weapons to be sold by the Normandy quartermaster (I forget which one it is). Other than that, there's just the Citadel CSEC quartermaster.
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I was honestly asking questions about the game, which I got a good response to.
As far as being a "PC only troll" I had a big long bunch of text I wrote, but whatever, it isnt for this thread. I have 12 consoles (including 4 different gameboys), I enjoy consoles, I enjoy playing my friends 360, and a different friends Wii, and anothers PS3. I have other expenses to worry about first.
Also, stop assuming that every downloaded copy of (CD/Movie/Game) is a lost sale. Its not.
CoD needs an authentication server if its that much of a problem.
On the subject of ports, like I mentioned before, as apparently (according to other companies) developing for the XBox is not dissimilar from PC (since the XBox / 360 are in essence, stripped down PCs) so "porting" the game isnt a long involved process (compared to PS3, which uses completely unique hardware and is apparently much more difficult to port to/from). Do I have $350 for a 360 + one game? No. Do I have the $40-50 for a PC game? yeah, if its good.
Am I interested in playing ME? Moreso after being told that it does pay homage to the Sci Fi it comes from (being a massive sci-fi geek). Enough to buy a 360? No, unfortunantly. Although ME + Armored Core 4 might make me get a used one (360) from a friend, depending on his price of course.
A side note that developed, Ill post a rant Ive had/developed for a while about PC Gaming, and what I feel could be done (and I do care/hope to do, as thats where I will be in a couple years)
Anyway, as it was not my intention to derail the thread, so going back to the thread at hand, my reference to Tau being a short lived race was only because the Reapers seem like Necrons (from the little they have been talked about in the thread). I never claimed it unique or any such, just interesting. Also, do the Reapers not exist visually in the game? Even the ME wiki doesnt exactly have much on them (Im curious).
Edit: WTF? (http://kevinmccullough.townhall.com/blog/g/ad4fece3-3a1e-42bd-8546-295599024191) As best my understanding, the extent of the "sexuality" present in the game is less than the average daytime soap opera. (The link is from Penny-Arcade)
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Yeah that dude missed the mark. The resultant Penny Arcade comic is actually probably the funniest I've seen in a very long time. (I love 'em, but "Shit on a biscuit" pretty much takes the cake.)
The Reapers DO appear, though I can't say much more without really giving it away further.
I think focusing on PC gaming and console gaming as separate entities is what's really hurting PC gaming a lot. Television and film are separate methods of exploring the same medium, you know? That's the approach that needs to be taken, and rather than doing that there's just PC and console people duking it out.
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Ermm, isnt this a spoiler thread? Ive already read the whole thread, and I do not have access to play the game (at the present). Some of the other character design is interesting, so I would be curious to see what the reapers look like (as far as the whole motivation ala Necron) somehow I doubt they look like living metallic skeletons with glowing green gauss guns, but hey.
I dont know if I said it explicitly, but I understand MS pushing ME as an exclusive, they are in competition with PS3 and etc. etc. etc. All I'm saying is that if ME is so fantastical, and (according to some interviews with developers I've read) Xbox PC cross development is not terribly difficult as the Xbox IS a stripped down PC, why not give the game a bit of life later by re-releasing it on PC (re: Halo 1).
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They might, but they're probably not gonna port it until at least 18 months after the last game in the trilogy. EA would love to port it earlier, I'm sure, but I don't know all the details of Bioware's agreement with Microsoft.
The reapers look kind of like red isopods.
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Ermm, isnt this a spoiler thread? Ive already read the whole thread, and I do not have access to play the game (at the present).
Then, and pardon me because this is just out of sheer blistering curiousity, why have you read this thread in favour of the one that is simply about the game?
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There's an achievement that allows Spectre weapons to be sold by the Normandy quartermaster (I forget which one it is). Other than that, there's just the Citadel CSEC quartermaster.
I've already picked up a single VII set from the CSEC QM, and another VII set from the Normandy, but I can't find anywhere that replenishes. Apparently the Normandy stock is supposed to increase eventually, but I'm not sure if this "time" is measured in real-time minutes, or quests completed, or what. I am a sad Spectre.
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Weird. Every time I land on a populated world he comes back with shit to sell.
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I let Kaiden die, then shattered Liara's hopes and dreams and got booty call from Ashley. It was strangely satisfying to be the first creature to toss her heart/thing into a blender. Next play through Ashley's god-fearing ass is taking the fall.
Is there any video with this or is it just implied? I was thinking there was some sort of romance you could have with her since Liara asked you about how special she is to you, but I was really pushing to see the video. Is getting with her harder or easier then getting with Liara?
Let's see
-talked Saren into offing himself
-killed Kaiden, though was sad that I had to sacrifice one of them (didn't use any of them once outside of Eden Prime though)
-didn't kill Wrex, talked him down and got the achievement
-saved the council since I was going for paragon
-put Captain Anderson on the council (my favorite clip was when he decked that prick in his office)
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All the romance subplots are equally easy, really.
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I'm finding the romance subplot much tougher on my second playthrough, because the girls confronted me after either Feros or Noveria the first time and made me choose between them. This time I've basically ignored Liara and it's much tougher to read whether or not I'm actually making headway with Ashley.
At this stage the game is becoming uncomfortably close to real life.
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You don't really know that you've made headway with Ashley until the end of the game, when you've committed treason and the penalties for fraternization don't look so bad anymore.
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Well, I did tell her "I like a challenge."
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Ashley is a bitch.
Then again, Liara is basically the sci-fi female version of Piro from Megatokyo.
Also I was really disappointed that the tentacle lookin' things on Liara's head didn't extend out and engulf Shepherd's head during the sex scene.
"Hey baby, that's a fine, blue ass you got there *SHLORP* *GLOMP* MMMFFFF! HRRMMM!! MRRRGFFFN!"
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"Hey, baby, let's make a brainslug"
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The romance subplots irritated me, because I felt like there was no distinction between being a nice dude, and trying to get some ass. I was just talking away with Ashley and all of a sudden I get sprung with this whole "we're making innuendo because it's wrong for us to hook up" crap. I didn't want that, I was just being polite! There should be a way to be nice, and also say "you are an ugly bitch and sex in video games is like having a pistol-shaped dildo" or some crap.
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Ashley is a bitch.
Man, I don't get this at all!
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Ashley is a bitch.
Then again, Liara is basically the sci-fi female version of Piro from Megatokyo.
Also I was really disappointed that the tentacle lookin' things on Liara's head didn't extend out and engulf Shepherd's head during the sex scene.
"Hey baby, that's a fine, blue ass you got there *SHLORP* *GLOMP* MMMFFFF! HRRMMM!! MRRRGFFFN!"
That's what fan-fiction and fan-art are for.
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Ashely's fine most of the time, which makes it even more jarring when she's needlessly bitchy. Like when she wanted to pick on Liara about her sex life. The sheer pettiness of it marked the first time I've ever felt like slapping a videogame character and asking her if she could step out of her highschool mindset for a moment and talk like a grown up. It's not like she's guilty of cartoonish villainy or any other number of video game cliches, but she damn sure is the sort of person I'd take steps to quietly cut out of my life, which I promptly did by leaving her on the Normandy.
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I ordered her to die
:3
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Ashely's fine most of the time, which makes it even more jarring when she's needlessly bitchy. Like when she wanted to pick on Liara about her sex life.
When did this happen?
Ashley for me felt like shit about Liara's mom dying, both times! She made me go talk to her!
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Everyone is having a different game experience! This is cool stuff!
I'm getting the same stuff Johnny C is getting, but I got the bitchiness once, to which I ended up getting Ashley to apologize. I'm not sure how I did this.
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I dunno, I was sitting around while my brother was playing that I saw her being pissy and taking shots at Asari sexuality. Maybe he was leading them both along and got pissed off. I haven't really pay much attention to the fems yet because I got distracted by playing with my Wrex/Garrus/Sentinel Shepard legion of doom combo.
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the fems
legion of doom
Ah see there's your problem right there.
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See, I didn't mind when Ashley was being bitchy to me though. My character was a grade A asshole. But my brother's character? Straight paragon, and she was still acting crazy.