Bioware General (Mass Effect/Dragon Age/Other)

[Someone With Mass]

My favorite classes will always be Infiltrator and Engineer. I liked hitting the invisibility ability just before triggering a cutscene and having Shepard making a rather badass entrance by decloaking because of it.

Stuff like that is why I'll always prefer in-engine cutscenes ahead of pre-rendered ones.

[TheodoricFriede]

Male Shepard is Vanguard. Female Shepard is Infiltrator. Every time.

Insanity play through I only did once as a Sentinel and it was BOOOOOOOOORIIIIIIING, but also the only class it felt doable as.

[Alienmorph]

I'll say one of the reasons the multiplayer of ME3 was surprisingly fun is how many variations of the main classes it had. Too bad some of the later power combos they came up for it never became avaiable for Shepard, but there were a bunch of classes and power combinations I would have never tried without it. Still like Sentinel and Vanguard the best, but I don't think there's any class I've ever actively disliked.

[magnuskn]

Yeah, some of the later classes introduced into the multiplayer were crazy fun. Sheesh. It would be too much to hope that the developers could be arsed to make some new classes available for the single player of at least ME3? ^^

[SciFlyBoy]

The Mass Effect 1 shotgun is, to this day, one of the most satisfying guns in gaming, if only because it behaves like an actual shotgun.

That's how I won the game, with that trusty HMNV or whatever the acronym was.

[TheodoricFriede]

That's how I won the game, with that trusty HMNV or whatever the acronym was.

Only other game that does it as well is Red Dead Redemption 2. Again, because it gives the shotgun realistic range.

[Vol]

How'd the ME1 shotgun with the overload amps work out? Near as effective as the "portable artillery" sniper?

[SciFlyBoy]

Goddess, one thing I have to give credit to Bioware for in ME1 was making the using of the sniper rifle for the first time a pain in the ass. In every other game I play when I use one it treats me as a marksman, but I have to 'learn' how to use it better in ME1 or get better guns. I really liked that.

[Sinekein]

I've been replaying ME1, which is the one game where I never really amped up the difficulty level. And since it's a newly installed game, I could only try Veteran.

Honestly, while difficulty in 2 and 3 is interesting because it forces you to prepare strategically and use the right skills - especially in 2 - in 1, it's just dumb. Enemies just use Immunity/Barrier/Shield regen every three seconds which means that it takes an unholy amount of time to down just one of them - and since they come in packs of up to 10, it is not very enjoyable. On the other hand, Geth are just way too easy when you use Tali (or any character with good tech powers). I tried going as Infiltrator, and I cant fathom how much of a bore it is (while it is pure pleasure in 2 and especially 3).

I really don't see how the remaster can make this better.

[Vol]

Oh man.

The krogan battlemasters on Virmire. Flashbacks. They just don't _die_.

Which makes them, funnily enough, closer to canon than we see later, where a pistol shot can drop one.

[Sinekein]

I'm not bothered if some 1000 years old Krogan are hard to down, that's the point.

But when you need to take cover for 15 secs because random merc #524 is using Immunity, it's really annoying.

[Vol]

The emphasis on how terrifying krogans would have been during the rebellion could have stood to be emphasized in the gameplay. "These aliens are very hard to kill for good, they outnumber you, and they're extremely aggressive."

Yeah. Hence why I did the portable artillery build with the Spectre sniper rifles. Either they died too fast to pull that shit, or, I was far enough away to wait it out.

[Sinekein]

Well, done with ME1, for the first time in...I'd say 8 years?

Summary: Earthborn/Sole Survivor Commando Infiltrator (almost) full Paragon Femshep. Kaidan lived, Rachni freed, Coucil Saved, Councilor Anderson. No romances. Didn't unlock any "Squadmate achievements" because I rotated between Liara, Wrex, Tali and Garrus all along - Tali/Garrus for geth, Tali/Liara for husks, Liara/Wrex for rachni/creepers, Garrus/Wrex for outdoor mercs, Liara/Tali for indoor mercs, Tali/Liara for Noveria, Wrex/Garrus for Feros, Liara/Wrex for Virmire, and Tali/Garrus for Ilos/Citadel to justify later banter (and I forgot there still were Krogan battlemasters there, nasty surprise when you have no biotics).

Replaying it made me realize how it is both a rather mediocre videogame, but how fantastic a prologue it was.

It makes the decisions regarding the trilogy's ending even harder to understand. In 1, you mostly travel through Alliance space, with a bit of Terminus/Geth. In 2, you're almost entirely in the Terminus systems, with some incursions on Tuchanka or near Asari space. In 3 you go everywhere but all planets are at war. It still leaves a ton of places to visit, and we might never get the opportunity to because they wanted to go for an artificial open choice to the trilogy. And, in particular, they wanted one ending - Synthesis - that means you cannot hope for a sequel "far enough in the future" tha whatever you picked is just a footnote in the lore books.

What's mind-boggling is why they killed the golden goose. I wonder if there might be parallels with the GOT endings, where the creators were a bit sick of having to devote all their time to the project and consciously or not scuttled the ship.

Edit: and now I get to experience once again that Origin is the worst piece of shit ever created.

I struggled for half an hour to find how to open the launcher and import my ME1 save to ME2, and I don't know what I did, but it decided to reinstall the game entirely. Presumably as a copy, and presumably again not where I would like it to be installed - but guess what, Origin does not have the option to check the folder in which a game's local files are installed because, I assume, it would be beneficial to everyone.

[Alienmorph]

There are parallels in the sense that the person who wrote ME1 and most of 2 had quitted the company and only the less capable writer/producer combo was left in charge. So in that regard it is similar to how D&D were left without material to adapt since the last 2 GoT books are (and likely will remain) MYA, and had to wing it.

But at the same time what Karpyshyn had in mind probably was only going to be marginally better overall, still involved a big twist about the galactic superpredator species being actually a necessary evil, and was going to end up killing the main character and torching most of the setting anyway.

At this point I just think they didn't have any plan beyond the Shepard trilogy, and only realized afterwards the bigger potential of the IP.

[TTTX]

What's mind-boggling is why they killed the golden goose. I wonder if there might be parallels with the GOT endings, where the creators were a bit sick of having to devote all their time to the project and consciously or not scuttled the ship.

Well one of the lead creators did leave either slightly before or after ME2 came out and he had a different ending in mind and ME2 and ME3 were made on pretty tight time scales less then 2 years each and let's be honest that's not enough time to figure the story needed to go and how it needed to end.

you can pretty much see for the endings for ME1 and ME2 don't really line up (along with a bit of lore) with how ME2 and ME3 should begin.

ME1 ending Sheppard vows to find a way to stop the Reapers, start of of ME2 Shepard is hunting Geth on council orders and then dies and nothing major happens for like 2 years to make the galaxy to prepare for the Reapers.

Ending of ME2 Shepard has evidence of reapers knows they are coming and seems to be preparing for them to come, start of ME3 Shepard is locked up and doesn't seem all that worried or seems to have made any plans what so ever that the Reapers are coming despite having evidence.

Not to mention since the Reapers are here, the galaxy should be dead at least according to lore as they only need to take the Citadel and shut down the relay network, this is never explained, not even a bad explanation is offered, mind you this happens a good few times in ME3, ME2 also have few things that are never explained, but no one seems to care because the ME2 was so satisfying that people just love that game automatically and despite this where the Reapers main plot basically went off the rails and never recovered.

[Sinekein]

But at the same time what Karpyshyn had in mind probably was only going to be marginally better overall, still involved a big twist about the galactic superpredator species being actually a necessary evil, and was going to end up killing the main character and torching most of the setting anyway.

Killing the character really is not an issue. If you schedule a trilogy, it makes sense for it to end with the death of the main character. How many examples are there in literature or cinema of characters not overstaying their welcome past the original story they were supposed to star in? Especially in Shepard's case where s/he accomplishes absolutely titanic feats of galactic importance, you cannot really have him/her running around at random in any story you write after the end of the Reaper War.

I mean, if you decide to write about a big threat in a post-ME3 universe in which Shepard is still alive, s/he will deal with it him/herself. There's no "ifs". Even if s/he survives and decides to retire on Rannoch, Palaven, Grissom Academy, Tuchanka or wherever else, you can't expect such a person to just go the "Not my problem anymore" route to justify your new cast being in the light.

I would even argue that "torching the setting" might be a necessary evil in itself. Shepard's shadow is so huge in the pre-ME3 galaxy that it's very hard to write around the many decisions you could take while roleplaying him/her. Plus s/he's not the only one of galactic influence. Wrex and Tali become among the (if not the) highest ranking members of their races, so whether or not they survive will really shape the galaxy if nothing too bad happens at the end of ME3.

Burn down everything, and you force a timeskip long enough to fix things and get rid of these cumbersome characters who will either steal the show - in which case, you would just redo the OT - or force you to constantly justify their absence or inaction, with the high risk of character derailment considering how eager most of Shepard's crew tends to be when it comes to fixing things.

The problem is that here they torched the setting and made it so that there is just no possible unifying sequel. You can explain away the relay's damage (high or low) on Destruction and Control, you can explain away Shepard him/herself surviving with a 100 years timeskip - which would also help you get rid of everyone but Liara and Grunt, but Liara is always the SB so not a consistency issue, and Grunt is unlikely to ever become invested in politics, or you can handwave him dying in some absurdly heroic moment, like being that one krogan that put Kalros down - you can explain away the Reapers being there or not (Shepard sends them in a supernova or something), you can explain away the geth being created again, or the genophage being cured again, if you give everyone enough time - but you can't explain away how in one ending people became cyborg abominations.

[Alienmorph]

Well yeah, that's what I meant with "torching the setting". Blowing up the status quo is a thing, and that makes perfect sense at the end of a trilogy, what I call torching the setting is breaking things so much that you can't do anything else with it afterwards.

As for killing the main character... yeahh, that can also work, but much like most of ME3's plot it felt like the inevitable result of the b.s. story they went for. I'm still baffled when people say "oh yeah, Mass Effect 3 is good up until the last 10 minutes" when it's literally the prologue of the game, with the Reapers arriving in full forces that doomed the whole thing to rely on some kind of idiot Deus Ex Machina and put Shepard on a collision course with martyrdom. It felt all forced because BW wrote itself in a corner, rather than something the story earned. The fact you don't even get to go down fighting but just crawl to your doom after a last minute exposition dump also didn't make it feel particularly good either, but that can be more up to personal tastes, I guess.

[Sinekein]

You need a degree of Diabolus Ex Machina to kickstart the plot, in 1 it's the attack on Eden Prime, in 2 it's Shepard's death and in 3 it's the Reaper attack. I don't think you can write a Mass Effect 3 game where your smart diplomatic choices or something manage to completely cancel the Reaper invasion. And I'd rather face the galactic destructors that have been teased since ME1 than having to settle for Cerberus being the main antagonist, they were already blown way out of proportion.

In a galactic war video game, either you are playing a 4X or a RTS and your decisions can influence everything at play, either you don't and you'll need shortcuts so that you decisions can matter in the grand scheme of things. That's the corner BW wrote itself into: as Shepard your actions need to matter, but in the end you're just Shepard, and Mass Effect is not a tactical battle game - if it was, Hackett would be the main character.

Honestly, I won't blame them for the whole conclusion being underwhelming. It is super hard to combine large-scales stakes and a personal storyline without resorting to magic. And while Star Wars basically uses magic all over, ME only did it in its last 30 minutes or so because...well, sure it's divisive, but you cannot really have a video game in which the ending is just 30 minutes of cutscenes with you having no influence whatsoever on what's going on because everything was decided beforehand. If it was a novel it wouldn't be an issue but games are supposed to require player input, and I didn't expect Mass Effect to suddenly turn into Starcraft for it's conclusion just so I could both be Shepard and decide who wins the Reaper War.

[magnuskn]

They kinda put themselves in a corner with the promise of multiple consequential endings and of course the time constraints EA imposed upon. I'll never defend what they finally came up with, but those were two decisive factors why the third parts ending turned out the way it did. If they had stuck to one ending, which varied some of the side-plot outcomes (which is what they, after all, did in the context of the three main endings), I'd think they would have come up with something better. Or not. Many stories don't stick the landing, Mass Effect just crashed and burned theirs so effectively that it took Game of Thrones to upstage it years later. The only way forward in the Milky Way would be to decanonize the endings of ME3 and just stick with one alternative outcome. Y'know, the Crucible just works, after all. MEHEM.

Then they could do a time-skip (within or not within the lifetimes of Shepard, Tali and the other non-superlonglived members) and do something new. If they do it right, Legend of Korra-style, we could have some of the normally aging characters still around as old mentors and side-characters we could check in with.

Ah, well. That would necessitate Hack Walters and Casey Hudson to shrink their egos down to manageable size and think of how to tell a better story and a new one after that, about which the fans actually would care about.

BTW., I thought the dark energy star entropy ending would be that Shepard had to decide to let the Reapers do their thing or choose to destroy them and hope that the galaxy would find a way to stop the universe from collapsing in a short frame of time. Which would have led itself much more to a sequel than what we got, IMO.

[SciFlyBoy]

Man, you guys are having this deep conversation and here I am writing how I hope they add the rock Tali's suppose to hold on Rannoch into the updated game.

[Sinekein]

Ah, well. That would necessitate Hack Walters and Casey Hudson to shrink their egos down to manageable size and think of how to tell a better story and a new one after that, about which the fans actually would care about.

The saddest part is that now some studios are literally running on fan returns, negative or positive. Like Firaxis who is exploiting the crap out of Civ 6 by listening to the community and enacting some of the changes that are proposed. Or, from what I heard, Larian.

But since the communication regarding Mass Effect basically boiled down to trading insults, it's doubtful it can be achieved as long as teams don't change in their entirety. If we're lucky, sometime in the future, the BW team will have been entirely overhauled, and someone truly passionate about the games will be put in charge to revive the franchise, kind of like what has been done with Age of Empires. Oh, and this time they'll listen to fan return instead of automatically calling them "entitled".

BTW., I thought the dark energy star entropy ending would be that Shepard had to decide to let the Reapers do their thing or choose to destroy them and hope that the galaxy would find a way to stop the universe from collapsing in a short frame of time. Which would have led itself much more to a sequel than what we got, IMO.

It's kind of a missed opportunity in retrospect because it would be easy to put an ending like that in parallel with current environmental issues. They could also add in some intermediary outcomes (like a Thanos-like "limited culling"). But you could imagine a sequel if the "Reapers destroyed" is picked because those three solutions would not be equal at all: in the grand scheme of things, destroying the Reapers would be the "bad" outcome, so you'd be left with having to salvage things in the future.

XCOM did this absolutely perfectly, since XCOM2 is basically "what if you just lost during Enemy Unknown?" It works because the choice that was picked is the one that is the best to create conflict in the future - if the aliens are eliminated, no reason to have an XCOM sequel.

But ME3's endings are built to be extremely similar, so it would be much harder to arbitrarily pick one of the three as a basis for a sequel. Especially since the best ending for a sequel is probably Control, and it might be the least popular of all. Which is logical because it is the one that requires you to shift your opinion of the Reapers built over 70+ hours of gameplay in roughly 10 minutes. I mean, Control is basically the dark energy star ending rebranded, but for it to work you need to learn more about the Reapers throughout the trilogy. You can't expect people to suddenly empathize with the genocidal machines with 3 minutes of cutscenes, that would be like hoping for Thanos to be compelling if he only revealed his plans after he did the snap.

Still, it can be done, but as you mentioned before it requires the writers to swallow their pride a bit (or to show much more talent than they did in Andromeda - that's the most worrying part, that the writing quality that definitely existed in BW seems to have almost disappeared).

[TTTX]

Man, you guys are having this deep conversation and here I am writing how I hope they add the rock Tali's suppose to hold on Rannoch into the updated game.

well the ME3 was a life changer for it's time anyway.

Still, it can be done, but as you mentioned before it requires the writers to swallow their pride a bit (or to show much more talent than they did in Andromeda - that's the most worrying part, that the writing quality that definitely existed in BW seems to have almost disappeared).

Well it wasn't the main team that was working on ME:A and well there have been a lot of manager mismanagement in the last BW games which explains the quality have been really bad of BW games have been rather well far less then what we are use too and it doesn't help that BW keep using the same kind of story over and over.

[magnuskn]

A start would be to not begin with a completely unreasonable premise, which would be "a completely procedural exploration game with a deep roleplaying story in it", which was Andromeda's base idea. With which they wasted several years to come out on the other side with the insight that, d'oh, it can't be done that way.

Return to a more linear story or go the full The Witcher 3 route, i.e. make side-quests more than just "shoot ten of those!".

Anyway, I'm not holding my breath on any of this.

[Dragaros]

Man, you guys are having this deep conversation and here I am writing how I hope they add the rock Tali's suppose to hold on Rannoch into the updated game.

If BioWare doesn't fix it, then there’s already a mod for that. Its version 3.0 of the Project Variety Mod. (And according to the people who made it it, correcting the "invisible rocks of Rannoch bug" was surprisingly difficult to fix and took a ton of work.)

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3HWnogNAR0

[Dragaros]

https://www.darkhorse.com/Books/3005-69 ... lopment-HC

https://felassan.tumblr.com/post/634477 ... er-11th-is

[[ "According to Dark Horse, today November 11th is the publication date for the new book “BioWare: Stories and Secrets From 25 Years of Game Development”.

The blurb for the volume reads as follows:

From BioWare’s isometric role-playing roots to its intense space operas and living worlds, chart the legendary game studio’s first 25 years in this massive retrospective. See what it took to make games in those wild early days. Pore over details of secret, canceled projects. Discover the genesis of beloved characters and games. Includes never-before-seen art and photos anchored by candid stories from developers past and present.

There are preview pages available to check out on Dark Horse. The book has 328 pages and its listed age range is 14+.

Dark Horse lists the price as $49.99. Check other outlets in case of different prices. There are Kindle versions available elsewhere." ]]

[Dragaros]

https://www.reddit.com/r/masseffect/com ... ages_from/

https://felassan.tumblr.com/post/634868 ... ace-a-look

[[ “A look at the next Mass Effect.”

"On the heels of a long-awaited remaster of the Mass Effect trilogy, BioWare now prepares its epic return to space. A veteran team is hard at work envisioning the next big Mass Effect game. Expect amazing new worlds to explore with memorable characters buoyed by the series’ signature choices and consequences.

“There’s an incredible universe of history to draw from, and many more stories for us to tell,” project director Mike Gamble says. “We’re focusing on creating something truly for the fans.”

I think these 3 pieces of art are new to us (correct me if I’m wrong). They were presented in the book along with the mudskipper image that came out with the blog post about the remaster and the next Mass Effect. They didn’t have captions. (All previously-seen concept art for the next Mass Effect is collected here.) What can we glean from these guys?" ]]

[Dragaros]

https://felassan.tumblr.com/tagged/Mass-Effect

[TTTX]

this is giving me ME:A vibes.

[TheodoricFriede]

Can you please elaborate on those quarian faces?

What is the context of those? Because I remember seeing that 'original' Tali face, but it was NOT nearly as detailed. Nor was it used that often.

@Vol, our quarian re-design bet is long since canceled, but i feel more confident than ever I would have won that.

[Sinekein]

If I had to bet not knowing anything about Tali's picture in ME3, I would assume Quarians have softer features than those shown here.

There seems to be a degree of correlation between a race's looks and their ships & architectures in the trilogy. Asari or Salarian builds are slick and smooth, while Turian or Krogan ones are more angular and "rough". We don't have that much Quarian architecture for reference and their ships are not necessarily of their design, but we see a ton of geth and they tend to be much more on the "smooth" side design-wise.

Re:ME5 - well, since there is virtually no content to talk about aside from way too vague concept artworks, I must say I am at least hyper-cautiously optimistic that they call it "ME5", which might (grasping at straws here) mean that they see it as a continuation of the original trilogy instead of something entirely new. The odds of playing in our (infinitely more interesting) galaxy are slightly higher than if they talked about it as a "New Mass Effect game" which might be Andromeda 2.0.

[TheodoricFriede]

If I had to bet not knowing anything about Tali's picture in ME3, I would assume Quarians have softer features than those shown here.

...They look like humanoid greys, how much softer do you want?

Anyway I dont remember which developer said it during the post ME3 freakouts, but at least one of them said "As far as I'm concerned [the above versions] are Tali's face, and always have been." It was a last minute decision to reveal her face in ME3 at all, which is why you got a poorly done Photoshop.

I hope beyond hope, if they actually DO ANYTHING with these remasters beyond what I can already get for free, they update the quarians.

And throw in some female turians and other aliens in the background for Christ sake.

[Sinekein]

I don't know, the first concept art makes Tali look really old. I wouldn't mind if it was Raan, who's supposed to be somewhere in her 40s or 50s, but that doesn't really make me think of a character who is supposed to be a young adult. The next ones are better in that regard.

[SciFlyBoy]

Badassfully, I just discovered that after playing the Citadel DLC, when you're in the commons in the apartment level that there's a billboard for Blasto and that you can hear scenes from the movie.

[TTTX]

Badassfully, I just discovered that after playing the Citadel DLC, when you're in the commons in the apartment level that there's a billboard for Blasto and that you can hear scenes from the movie.

yeah that was in the base game, I found it very funny when I discovered it back in the day.

[Sinekein]

I forgot how tedious some of ME2's side content could be. Some N7 missions are just time-padding. The mine in which you have to kill husks took 10 minutes, not because I had to retreat not to be overwhelmed, but because there were that many husks to down (and I was downing them fast). From a gameplay perspective that's just dumb: either you know how to deal with husks and 40-50 in the whole mine will be enough to test you, or you don't and 40-50 will be enough to show that you need to practice. I didn't count, but I am fairly certain there were nearly 100 of them here, which means that I spent a lot of time doing exactly the same thing over and over again (Incinerate-shoot-Jack Shockwave).

If at least there was a Scion popping up because it requires you to do something else, but no, just Husks with 2 or 3 Abominations thrown in the mix.

Then again, I also forgot how well-written almost all of the main missions are. Even the worst squadmate in the franchise, Jacob, gets a fantastic Loyalty Mission (ironically that was also the case with the super annoying dude in Andromeda, his LM was the only good thing about him).

[TTTX]

Then again, I also forgot how well-written almost all of the main missions are. Even the worst squadmate in the franchise, Jacob, gets a fantastic Loyalty Mission (ironically that was also the case with the super annoying dude in Andromeda, his LM was the only good thing about him).

Well technically loyalty missions are also side content as they aren't mandatory to complete, if you want the chance for the best outcome you have to do them (along with building optional stuff for the Normandy), but you don't have to in order to complete the main story.

[Sinekein]

You know what I mean. Actually written missions, not random stuff you get from scanning planets.

[Dragaros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9gUseLeMOw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwdvITiOIY0

[Dragaros]

[Dragaros]

"Dragon Age development insights and highlights from Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development. Some really tasty factoids here."



"Mass Effect development insights and highlights from Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development."



[[ "There’s a segment called “Shepard’s story ends”. Casey on the ending: “There’s a whole bunch of things that come together to make it incredibly tense and emotional for players. I think the biggest one was the sense of finality, that whatever it was that happened in that very last moment… was it.”
Wrapping up the story was a massive feat. In a way all of ME3 is an ending. Its final moments were the players’ last with a char they’d been with all the way from Eden Prime
“And while the critical reception of the game was extremely positive, many fans were unsatisfied with the ending, which became one of the most controversial in the history of games.” CH: “We were, on one hand, at the end of a marathon trying to finish the game and the series. But as devs we also knew that there would be more. We knew that we would continue to tell the story. In retrospect, we didn’t fully appreciate the tremendous sense of finality that it would have for people”. He envisioned an ending that posed new questions, something in the tradition of high sci-fi that left players dreaming about what that particular galaxy’s future could hold. “Frankly, there’s a lot more that we could have and should have done to honor the work players put in, to give them a stronger sense of reward and closure”
AAA games are massive undertakings with a million moving parts. Somehow they come together but even the best-planned projects don’t turn out quite like devs hope. From start to end video game production is a series of compromises. It’s rare if not impossible for devs to ship a game they’re entirely happy with. “I think that people imagine that when you finish a game, it’s exactly the way you wanted it to be. But whether people end up loving or hating the final result, we work hard to finish it the best we can, knowing that there’s a lot we would have wanted to do better. I think that’s true of any creative work”
As the dust settled after the initial reaction to the ending and later its epilogue, meant to show the wide-reaching ripple effects of Shep’s final choice, “players emerged mostly asking for one thing”. CH: “Now, most of what we hear, after both ME3 and MEA, is ‘Hey, just go make more Mass Effect’. And that to me is the most important thing. Knowing that players want to return to the ME universe is what inspires us to press on and imagine what comes next” ]]

[Dragaros]

[Dragaros]

"A Reddit user who has the book was able to denoise, upscale and correct the new Mass Effect concept art."

[magnuskn]

Yeah, of course there cannot be honest self-reflection about how they screwed the pooch so spectactularly on the ending, the ego must be maintained. Well, at least they obliquely refer to the massive shitstorm as an "initial reaction" to which the dust had to settle, so they are not completely unaware.

But apparently they didn't realize how much they would screw themselves with three incompatible endings, at least two of which would make it impossible to continue the franchise?

[Alienmorph]

Welp, that sure looks a lot like a man-made Mass Relay... interesting, interesting...

[Sinekein]

I'm almost done with ME2 - doing Arrival right now - and one thing I reaaaaally hope they change when they remaster it is the Objectives interface.

Anytime there is some important value for a mission - like Garrus' health for his recruitment, or right now Kenson's during the escape - it is straight in the middle of the radar. So you cannot see the radar. In a moment where, in all likelihood, you don't have just to hack through your enemies, you have to be more careful with positioning and whether the objective is being targeted.

Put it someplace else - anywhere really as long as it's not on this damn radar.

Edit: Holy fuck, the exact same problem for the Object Rho fight. FFS that's annoying.

[Mazder]

Okay so I am replaying Dragon Age Origins as a stabby city elf rogue and I can not remember what I was gonna do next.
I have gone to Redcliffe, sorted out their attack, went tot he circle and dealt with the Fade and liberated Connor. I then went to Orzammar to grab Oghren and do all that business. Picked Behlen.
I can't remember if I was gonna go grab the urn of sacred ashes next or go speak with the elves.


Which one is better at this point?

[Vol]

Okay so I am replaying Dragon Age Origins as a stabby city elf rogue and I can not remember what I was gonna do next.
I have gone to Redcliffe, sorted out their attack, went tot he circle and dealt with the Fade and liberated Connor. I then went to Orzammar to grab Oghren and do all that business. Picked Behlen.
I can't remember if I was gonna go grab the urn of sacred ashes next or go speak with the elves.


Which one is better at this point?

I do elves last, always. Unless you're going to attempt the dragon at the peaks, in which case you'll want Arcane Warrior if that's your style. Seem to recall the forest spat having too many dangerous casters to do right away.

[Mazder]

I do elves last, always. Unless you're going to attempt the dragon at the peaks, in which case you'll want Arcane Warrior if that's your style. Seem to recall the forest spat having too many dangerous casters to do right away.

Can't do Arcane Warrior as a rogue.

I guess we go to find the urn then, lol.

Fucking magic in this game is OP, how did I forget that?!
Mind you I forgot A LOT about this series.

[Sinekein]

Just passed Tuchanka in 3. Still an amazingly enjoyable game, although I got a couple of dumb deaths due to forgetting about some battles - like those barrier generators on Grunt's mission, or the fact enemies popped from everywhere in the atrium during Jack's. Still, much easier game than 2, mostly because you are less punished for going to the offense : Shepard is more mobile so it is possible to be more agressive without getting immediately killed. Honestly, Marauders don't deal as much damage on Insanity as LOKI mechs did on Hardcore in 2. And they go down faster due to the many options to kill things Shep has (and the many powers squaddies bring).

Went for the good old Armor-Piercing Rounds as bonus power, using the Valiant while I save to buy a Black Widow. Having to start from scratch weapon-wise is really annoying, but I'll make do, I'll do another run eventually to get everything from V to X. Sabotage is levelled up so I assume the geth missions are going to be a cakewalk as long as I remember to look for Hunters. Plus Tali will be here by that time.

The dream sequences are still dumb and boring. My Shep is Sole Survivor, I doubt she's be traumatized by one kid dying. She lost her entire squad on Akuze, I assume she'll need more to get nightmares. Maybe it can work for a Spacer/War Hero Shep, but either Colonist or Earthborn will have seen some shit in its life. I wish they were skippable.

Looking at the galactic readiness, I wonder what will happen if it becomes impossible to play MP in the remakes. Right now I'm far from over (still to do Rannoch, Thessia, Horizon, Omega, Citadel, plus right now the Citadel coup) but I don't know if I can reach 5000+ with 50% preparation. Maybe it's possible, but if there is no way to bump it to 100%, they'll have to change the system. It's super minor though.

Speaking of MP - I wished some of the MP abilities were brought to single player, because goddamn that would be fun. My top picks would be, for each class:
- Infiltrator - Shadow Strike (N7 Shadow) - would allow actual melee builds. I think it would be super doable since only a handful of enemies in 3 are located on balconies or other impossible-to-reach loactions (unlike in 2 were they were a dime a dozen)
- Sentinel - Snap Freeze (N7 Paladin/AIU) - would give a strong short-range option, along with a ton of tech combo power
- Engineer - Flamer (Geth Trooper/Vorchas) - see above, would make the Engineer more adept at close-range encounters
- Vanguard - Biotic Slash (N7 Slayer) - opposite of above, would give Vanguards a ranged option if they don't want to charge at everything
- Adept - Biotic Sphere (Asari Justicar) - use it to soldier up and soak up damage, or in a choke point to destroy everything that walks inside
- Soldier - Recon Mine (Drell Infiltrator/Volus Engineer) - would give them more tactical options (aside from shooting everything in sight)

In any event, all of those would make the single-player campaign far more diverse - and those are only a few of the great powers/actions the MP has, I could also mention several grenades (Arc, Homing, Cain Trip Mine), or melee actions (the Paladin Shield, the Phoenix lashes, the Krogan Battlemaster's hammer - if any human can use it it's Shepard), or other powers (Biotic orbs, Shield Boost, Ballistic Blades...). I understand if Shepard can't get Geth Hunter Mode, but most of those wouldn't break the lore if the greatest fighter in the galaxy could use them.