Video Games: Fantasy's Final '16

[Centrist Simon Steele]

26 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

 

I dunno. Considering the attitude towards Krogan reproduction in the timeline the departure of the Arks is set, I would think bringing on a few squads of Krogan to help establish the Milky Way species in the new galaxy is a pretty good idea. Better for a few of them to fight and die than more people who can actually breed. Then in a couple of hundred years after colonies have been settled and secured and new alliances with indigenous Andromedans achieved, having the Krogans all die out and become extinct in Andromeda would bee seen as desireable. And given the fatalistic attitude of many Krogan towards the species survival I imagine there would be plenty of Krogan ready and willing to go on a mission that has zero intention of potential to preserve the Krogan species. They'd be just going for the opportunity to be able to fight with a whole bunch of new species.

And of course there are more than enough Asari for Krogans to breed with. Even though the offspring will of course be Asari, the Krogan willl leave a biological legacy of sorts.

Hopefully the Geth (not the heretics) caught wind of this plan and stowed away a few units in the Ark software. Not having a Legion 2.0 (well actually a Legion 0.5 I guess) would be unfortunate.

 

Honestly, Legion was one of my biggest disappointments of Mass Effect. Such a cool character to get at the end of the game--then you never get him again. Really that whole Mass Effect 2 squad I loved--and for them to be dumped off to the side in the third game was annoying. But Legion really hurt.

[Rhom]

I'm about to run the Collectors' ship in my Femme-Shep game.  I'm trying to remember what I read long ago about getting Legion before Tali so you can take him with you to the Quarians... I really want to do that.

[Jace, Extat]

3 minutes ago, Rhom said:

I'm about to run the Collectors' ship in my Femme-Shep game.  I'm trying to remember what I read long ago about getting Legion before Tali so you can take him with you to the Quarians... I really want to do that.

You can do that!?!

I am working on how I'll do a replay in the coming months. Never played ME sober before.

[Rhom]

17 minutes ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

You can do that!?!

I am working on how I'll do a replay in the coming months. Never played ME sober before.

Yeah, I've seen a video of it.  I think you can get him then not do his loyalty mission or something and you still have time before the Normandy crew is toast.

[Rhom]

19 minutes ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

You can do that!?!

I am working on how I'll do a replay in the coming months. Never played ME sober before.

So looks like they have Tali first.  Must be Tali's loyalty mission that you can take him on.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

38 minutes ago, Rhom said:

Yeah, I've seen a video of it.  I think you can get him then not do his loyalty mission or something and you still have time before the Normandy crew is toast.

 

 

I believe you CAN do his loyalty mission too.

Edit: Oh, I see, n/m. Taking him on Tali's mission would mess this up. Would be interesting though.

[The Anti-Targ]

1 hour ago, Rhom said:

I'm about to run the Collectors' ship in my Femme-Shep game.  I'm trying to remember what I read long ago about getting Legion before Tali so you can take him with you to the Quarians... I really want to do that.

You don't need to get Legion first to take him on Tali's Loyalty mission. You just need to not do Tali's loyalty mission until after you get the Reaper IFF. What would be troll is if you could do the Reaper IFF mission before picking up Tali at Haestrom. But as Haestrom is a story mission, that must be completed before the Reaper IFF mission it is impossible to take Legion to Haestrom.

I'm not sure you have the time to get the Reaper IFF, then do Tali's Loyalty mission and Legions loyalty mission before the Normandy crew gets Collectornapped. So If you want to do that, then you have to sacrifice Kelly Chambers.

I was doing a ME2 PC playthrough to get the feel for playing ME on PC before Andromeda comes out (making the conversion to playing ME on PC now). I forgot how to get everyone through the suicide mission alive, so I lost Zaeed (no big deal) as the leader of squad 2 in the seeker swarm part. And then I stupidly took Grunt and Legion with me on the final part to defeat the Reaper baby, and so Morden Solas died. Damn, I'm glad there's no carry over stuff for Andromeda and that this was just a practice run. I forgot you have to take relatively weak characters with you on the Reaper baby section in order for everyone to survive that part.

I watched a video of the worst possible ending for Mass Effect 2, where everyone dies, including Shepard, aside from Joker. I wonder what happens if you import that save game for Mass Effect 3. I suppose it's not actually possible to do that. Or is there some contrivance where Shepard is rescued. Maybe Shepard can only die if you elect to preserve the Collector Base for Cerberus and they manage to find a not quite dead Shepard when they go back through the Omega 4 relay to start harvesting the Collector tech.

[Jace, Extat]

2 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

You don't need to get Legion first to take him on Tali's Loyalty mission. You just need to not do Tali's loyalty mission until after you get the Reaper IFF. What would be troll is if you could do the Reaper IFF mission before picking up Tali at Haestrom. But as Haestrom is a story mission, that must be completed before the Reaper IFF mission it is impossible to take Legion to Haestrom.

I'm not sure you have the time to get the Reaper IFF, then do Tali's Loyalty mission and Legions loyalty mission before the Normandy crew gets Collectornapped. So If you want to do that, then you have to sacrifice Kelly Chambers.

I was doing a ME2 PC playthrough to get the feel for playing ME on PC before Andromeda comes out (making the conversion to playing ME on PC now). I forgot how to get everyone through the suicide mission alive, so I lost Zaeed (no big deal) as the leader of squad 2 in the seeker swarm part. And then I stupidly took Grunt and Legion with me on the final part to defeat the Reaper baby, and so Morden Solas died. Damn, I'm glad there's no carry over stuff for Andromeda and that this was just a practice run. I forgot you have to take relatively weak characters with you on the Reaper baby section in order for everyone to survive that part.

I watched a video of the worst possible ending for Mass Effect 2, where everyone dies, including Shepard, aside from Joker. I wonder what happens if you import that save game for Mass Effect 3. I suppose it's not actually possible to do that. Or is there some contrivance where Shepard is rescued. Maybe Shepard can only die if you elect to preserve the Collector Base for Cerberus and they manage to find a not quite dead Shepard when they go back through the Omega 4 relay to start harvesting the Collector tech.

You get a stock ME 3 Shep if she died at the end of 2.

True story, my first run saw only myself, Jacob, Thane, Miranda, Grunt, and Joker survive.

[Jon AS]

Yeah, you can't import a game with a dead Shepard into ME3.

IIRC there's a way to mod ME2 to make all recruitment missions available from the get go, including the Reaper IFF. Squadmates who can only be recruited later in the final product still have some dialogue for earlier missions. I think there was some speculation that Bioware locked you into recruiting specific characters first was done in order to minimise disc swapping for console players.

[Jasta11]

Yeah, I once modded the game to have Legion available earlier, and he has special dialog at a few key places such as Jack's recruitment mission and Haestrom.

Hopefully they learn from that and all the Andromeda squadmates are available early enough.

[The Anti-Targ]

3 hours ago, Jon AS said:

Yeah, you can't import a game with a dead Shepard into ME3.

IIRC there's a way to mod ME2 to make all recruitment missions available from the get go, including the Reaper IFF. Squadmates who can only be recruited later in the final product still have some dialogue for earlier missions. I think there was some speculation that Bioware locked you into recruiting specific characters first was done in order to minimise disc swapping for console players.

Correction: Minimise disc swapping for Xbox 360 players. On PS3 all games were delivered on a single Blu Ray disc. Blu Ray almost killed PS3 at the start of the generation with it making it so damned expensive. But it did mean avoiding the minor annoyance of disc swapping.

[Fez]

17 hours ago, Melphis_Amekia said:

Anyone here playing Tales of games? I unfortunately don't have any consoles so, for now, I've only played through Tales of Zestiria, which I absolutely love to a fault, and am currently going through Tales of Berseria and am really really loving it so far too.

I played Tales of Vesperia a while back. It was okay, but I never fell in love with it. I'm playing Berseria now though, and I'm liking it a lot. I still can't quite grasp the combat system, but 8 hours in that hasn't been a hindrance yet. I'm liking the story a lot though so far; rare to see a JRPG be so relentlessly dark. I think Velvet is a really solid character too, and would be fairly unique even outside of a JRPG. Not a lot of video games have a female protagonist on a bloody rampage of revenge. It's good stuff. 

[Melphis Amekia]

14 minutes ago, Fez said:

I played Tales of Vesperia a while back. It was okay, but I never fell in love with it. I'm playing Berseria now though, and I'm liking it a lot. I still can't quite grasp the combat system, but 8 hours in that hasn't been a hindrance yet. I'm liking the story a lot though so far; rare to see a JRPG be so relentlessly dark. I think Velvet is a really solid character too, and would be fairly unique even outside of a JRPG. Not a lot of video games have a female protagonist on a bloody rampage of revenge. It's good stuff. 

I'm twice as far in as you are, and yes, Velvet is a damn good protagonist, as well as the whole cast is essentially pretty great. IMO, you should have perhaps played Zestiria before Berseria, though, since they are directly tied to each other because Berseria is Zestiria's prequel(events of Berseria happen several centuries before Zestiria's), and, honestly, seeing what was a grand ruin in Zestiria be a grand temple in Berseria was more than a little eerie. You've probably not arrived there yet, but the place is called Empyrenean Throne in Berseria(and the name it carries in Zestiria is a huge spoiler.)

[Rhom]

16 minutes ago, Fez said:

I played Tales of Vesperia a while back. It was okay, but I never fell in love with it. I'm playing Berseria now though, and I'm liking it a lot. I still can't quite grasp the combat system, but 8 hours in that hasn't been a hindrance yet. I'm liking the story a lot though so far; rare to see a JRPG be so relentlessly dark. I think Velvet is a really solid character too, and would be fairly unique even outside of a JRPG. Not a lot of video games have a female protagonist on a bloody rampage of revenge. It's good stuff. 

I had Tales of Symphonia on the GameCube and I loved it.  I haven't played any other Tales games though and thought about getting Berseria.

6 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Correction: Minimise disc swapping for Xbox 360 players. On PS3 all games were delivered on a single Blu Ray disc. Blu Ray almost killed PS3 at the start of the generation with it making it so damned expensive. But it did mean avoiding the minor annoyance of disc swapping.

Yeah, it wasn't quite like the PS2 and the DVD player.  Back then, DVD players were still almost as expensive as a PS2 so I was able to justify it by saying I was getting a DVD player with a free PS2.   

As to Legion, I appreciate everyone reminding me of the order that things have to happen.  Its been several years and I knew I had seen a video of the Quarians freaking out about Legion, but couldn't remember anything else about it.  So we think Kelly has to die to make this happen?  I would hate to do it, always liked the spunky gal... but considering she just winds up as some sort of junky in a back alley Citadel market in ME3 anyways or something like that, no big loss.  (I honestly have no memory of what exactly happens to her... but that sounds really familiar to me.) 

[DunderMifflin]

1 hour ago, Rhom said:

I had Tales of Symphonia on the GameCube and I loved it.  I haven't played any other Tales games though and thought about getting Berseria.

Yeah, it wasn't quite like the PS2 and the DVD player.  Back then, DVD players were still almost as expensive as a PS2 so I was able to justify it by saying I was getting a DVD player with a free PS2.   

As to Legion, I appreciate everyone reminding me of the order that things have to happen.  Its been several years and I knew I had seen a video of the Quarians freaking out about Legion, but couldn't remember anything else about it.  So we think Kelly has to die to make this happen?  I would hate to do it, always liked the spunky gal... but considering she just winds up as some sort of junky in a back alley Citadel market in ME3 anyways or something like that, no big loss.  (I honestly have no memory of what exactly happens to her... but that sounds really familiar to me.) 

She's in refugee sector. You can make her commit suicide.

[Rhom]

2 minutes ago, DunderMifflin said:

She's in refugee sector. You can make her commit suicide.

That must be what I remember... So yeah, if the trade off for taking Legion to the Migrant Fleet is missing out on that; I think I can handle it.  Don't need her to feed my fish anyways.   

[DunderMifflin]

There's supposedly a way to save her from getting killed during the Cerberus attack where she shows up as a blonde.

[Rhom]

38 minutes ago, DunderMifflin said:

There's supposedly a way to save her from getting killed during the Cerberus attack where she shows up as a blonde.

I do think I remember that.  You tell her to change her identity or something and she disappears.  I'm starting to remember more of the game now.

[Werthead]

Quote

Agreed.  I think part of my problem is obviously reduced gaming time as I get older.  The other part is all the added stuff takes away from consistency with the central theme, which when combined with my reduced/sporadic playtime makes it hard for me to get attached to a game.

I think there's a good sweet spot for RPGs now for me which is about 20-30 hours. Longer than that and I tend to lose interest unless the game is really good. Dragon Age: Origins and The Witcher, for example, were far too long at 50-55 hours for a complete (ish) playthrough apiece. The 20 hours or so for The Witcher II, Dragon Age II and Awakenings was much better. I've actually been put off playing The Witcher III and Dragon Age: Inquisition because of how long they are.

Baldur's Gate II remains the only mega-long RPG IMO which really gets the pacing right, slowly dropping storyline elements back and forth, having a highly unusual protagonist (and your relationship with him) and handling the pacing a lot better (although Throne of Bhaal was less successful with that).

Mass Effect also works as one very long game broken into three distinct "seasons", each made up of their own "episodes". That pacing and structure is highly effective. I'm actually a bit disappointed BioWare have not gone back and turned them into one long game with a continuing UI and consistent controls, it'd be quite good to replay them like that (shades of the BG remaster).

Bethesda games aren't quite as bad because you have much more control of the main quest and narrative length, and it's up to you how much time you spend. I don't think there's a Bethesda game from Oblivion onwards where you can't complete the main story in under 10 hours if you really go for it and ignore everything else.

[KiDisaster]

Sunless Skies is going to Kickstarter in a couple of days. Really can't wait, Sunless Sea was phenomenal. 

Also, Resident Evil 7 is pretty good.