Videogames: Who Are You Buying This For?

[Frances Bean Corbray]

As many flaws as they have (particularly recently) I'll always have a fondness for Bioware that can't really be killed. KOTOR was the first videogame I ever played where I could enjoy being a girl in a videogame and get treated with the same respect as the boys. That still held true in ME, where it really did not matter that Shep was a woman, she was just a fucking badass and everyone respected that. That gets as much props from me as anything.

Dragon Age II just burned me really, really bad. Which, of course, would not have been possible without me first enjoying Dragon Age I tremendously. Whenever I bag on Bioware, it's really just the DA2 talking. :)

[Jon AS]

They don't "kick the shit out of everyone in a few weeks" though. All the major powers are still standing by the end of the game. They are engaged in fierce fighting and it's not going well, but they are still knee-deep in a war and large parts of the galaxy are still untouched.

They cut through all of humanity's defences in minutes in the opening, including destroying Arcturus Station and the Alliance parliament, a miniature version of taking the Citadel in the first strike.

They take apart the strongest military in the galaxy (including, again, large parts of the leadership), and Palaven is only saved from utter defeat by importing lots of krogan.

Thessia falls. Nothing Shepard can do about it.

And then they go and nab the Citadel and move it to earth without much trouble. Only a massive united fleet can even get close, and stands no chance at defeating the Reapers without the Crucible.

The Protheans had the advantage of unifying the galaxy, which is odd. And the cleanse taking centuries is, according to the game as I remember, standard.

Yet the Protheans lost most of the advantage of a united galaxy the moment the Reapers arrived: they destroyed their highest government and command structures and took out the relay network, allowing them to defeat them piecemeal.

Where does it say a thousand years? Only thing I've ever seen/read said a few centuries at most spent surreptitiously trying to figure out what went wrong with the normal signal.

Isn't it strongly implied that Sovereign influenced the Rachni? At least the queen in ME2 talks about Shepard fighting the enemy that "soured the song" or something like that, and wanting to help because of that.

[Enguerrand]

It doesn't matter what Sheppard knows. The point is that ME2 just spins it's wheels. It's not ME3's fault that the guys writing ME2 didn't advance the plot at all.

Well I'm vastly less bothered by rational decisions leading to nothing, then being rail roaded into doing stuff that's blatanty absurd and while Me2 plot is banal and uninspired, blaming ME2 because ME3 choose not to build on it strikes me as silly. No one forced Me3 writers to write the Me2 squad out of the game, which many consider the best feature of it. Even doing something obvious and lazy like having the crucible plan found in the base instead of Liara's purse would have bridged the series.

Sovereign didn't intend to die. That it does is a big surprise. You keep forgetting this point and that's your whole problem.

The calculus looks different to Sovereign because it doesn't think it can lose. It's a minimal risk plan in it's mind.

No, I think the problem is that you can't concede points. The issue isn't that launching an attack Sovereign plotted for thousands of years and tried to form alliances to make possible suddenly is risk free for some reason.

The issue is that Sovereign waste thousands of years forming alliances against the Citadel for this riskfree operation when all he had to do were a 4 year round trip to pick up his friends.

ME3 does demonstrate that the galaxy can engage the Reapers head on when they work together. It also demonstrates that they can win if they prepare enough and blunt the Reapers tactics.

That's why if you tell the kid at the end to fuck himself, you win next go around.

From what I understand you have it completely backwards. If you don't submit to the Reapers they win, period. The next cycle is spared by accepting the Reaper god's offer, not successful resistance.

[Enguerrand]

Isn't it strongly implied that Sovereign influenced the Rachni? At least the queen in ME2 talks about Shepard fighting the enemy that "soured the song" or something like that, and wanting to help because of that.

It was but I think they retconned that into being the harbringer race nowadays. It's Legion in a conversation in ME2 that tells Shepard that Sovereign approached different species over millenia for alliances, including the Geth after the morning war.

[Jon AS]

From what I understand you have it completely backwards. If you don't submit to the Reapers they win, period. The next cycle is spared by accepting the Reaper god's offer, not successful resistance.

It's open ended. The refusal ending ends with Liara's recording explaining about the war against the Reapers and the Crucible, IIRC.

It was but I think they retconned that into being the harbringer race nowadays. It's Legion in a conversation in ME2 that tells Shepard that Sovereign approached different species over millenia for alliances, including the Geth after the morning war.

Forgot about Legion's dialogue (him being last to be recruited cuts down on the number of conversations I usually have with him).

[Inigima]

New Wolfenstein looks really good. I can't quite see paying $60 for it -- or for anything else these days, but especially for a single player FPS -- but I am likely to pick it up when it gets cheap.

[Inigima]

I played the opening few bits of Transistor. I declare it Pretty Cool So Far and bestow on it the Under Ten Fucking Gigabytes award (the download is 2.5GB).

[KiDisaster]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5fhUIcrag0

New Shadow of Mordor trailer. The Tolkien lore butchery continues as far as I can tell. Human controlling an orc army? What the pancake flipping fuck?

Also dubstep because nothing says sword and sorcery like wubs and wobbles.

Also I feel like Mass Effect might need its own thread because holy shit :lol: Not that I mind it, you guys just have a lot to say.

[Stannis Eats No Peaches]

New Shadow of Mordor trailer. The Tolkien lore butchery continues as far as I can tell. Human controlling an orc army? What the pancake flipping fuck?

Also dubstep because nothing says sword and sorcery like wubs and wobbles.

This looks like utter shite.

[Fez]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5fhUIcrag0

New Shadow of Mordor trailer. The Tolkien lore butchery continues as far as I can tell. Human controlling an orc army? What the pancake flipping fuck?

Also dubstep because nothing says sword and sorcery like wubs and wobbles.

Also I feel like Mass Effect might need its own thread because holy shit :lol: Not that I mind it, you guys just have a lot to say.

Well, as suspected this looks nothing like Middle Earth. But I'm completely okay with that, if its a good game on its merits.

That seems like its a pretty big 'if' though.

[Lyanna Stark]

As seen here, preserved forever in the amber of Youtube (of course it is)

lest any of you thought Jace was merely engaging in hyperbole. Nope! It really happens. Stay Classy, Bioware

:lol: :lol:

Oh my goodness, I remember that one. And as far as I can recall, that was not the only time either.

I don't think they're getting slapped with the "OMG superweapons" so much as the "cliche" concept. DA:O was actually closer to what ME3 should have been: go get dudes to help you kill the bad guys. Bioware just took their usual "go to 4 places, get thing, go to endgame" plot structure and slapped a really bad Macguffin plot around it. DAO at least did that better, and to DA2's credit, they tried to avoid that formula too.

Yep, agreed, for all DA2's faults, the storyline is absolute greatness. I can sympathise with people who feel that DA2 is supremely annoying because the game play and the repetitive areas, but people who complain about the story I will never understand. For a computer game (normally a medium a bit light on the story telling side), it is a fabulous trainwreck and descent into darkness and chaos.

*snipped*

:rofl:

OK, I don't necessarily agree with all that, but it made me laugh. Plus yes, I can sort of see your point. It felt lack ME3 needed for it to feel like a properly cathartic ending for it to be absolutely hopeless and then this massive save that only Shepard Commander could achieve, possibly by sacrificing herself a la Dragon Age:Origins and the Archdemon.

I guess I still think for all its flaws and sometimes mind-boggling dialogue and doubtful plot with convenient "Well didn't they just dodge a bullet there" fluff, it is still a solid game series. Granted, I'd rank ME2 higher than the other two every single time, but I still really enjoyed both the original ME and ME3 despite that. It still made me all emo to see the Geth and the Quarians share their old home-world, or Liara's grief over Thessia, or the end to the Mordin Solus/Eve storyline.

As many flaws as they have (particularly recently) I'll always have a fondness for Bioware that can't really be killed. KOTOR was the first videogame I ever played where I could enjoy being a girl in a videogame and get treated with the same respect as the boys. That still held true in ME, where it really did not matter that Shep was a woman, she was just a fucking badass and everyone respected that. That gets as much props from me as anything.

Totally. Despite dodgy plot holes and what have you, they will always have my love for this. Hell, I had played through BG1 and BG2 twice before I even *realised* I could play a female character and be just as good/bad/badass as with a male character. Because back in 1999 I was a big, fat n00b. Totally unlike now. :p

[Jon AS]

Oh my goodness, I remember that one. And as far as I can recall, that was not the only time either.

Miranda's derrière should probably have been billed as a separate character...

I guess I still think for all its flaws and sometimes mind-boggling dialogue and doubtful plot with convenient "Well didn't they just dodge a bullet there" fluff, it is still a solid game series. Granted, I'd rank ME2 higher than the other two every single time, but I still really enjoyed both the original ME and ME3 despite that. It still made me all emo to see the Geth and the Quarians share their old home-world, or Liara's grief over Thessia, or the end to the Mordin Solus/Eve storyline.

It was a very good series, but it could have been significantly better.

[Rhom]

Finished up the Suicide Mission this morning. Loved up Miranda beforehand. Afterwards had some angry sex with Jack.

Thought I'd try to do both Lair of the Shadow Broker and Arrival before I came into work... holy shit was I wrong about that! Finished Shadow Broker and made it in about 5 minutes before my first patient. Whew. So Arrival will have to wait a bit. Shryke wasn't kidding, the DLC is definitely stout. Really liked it. :thumbsup: Loved up Liara after it was all over. :smileysex:

So now I will finish up Arrival likely tonight and then take a short break to play through Stick of Truth before ME3.

One question though, is there anywhere that I can see all the dialogue options from Shadow Broker? For example, I had Kasumi with me and before I killed him the Broker thanked me for bringing Miss Kasumi with me because of the value of her grey box. Was curious if he had something to say about everyone. :dunno:

ETA: Okay, another question... also after the Suicide Mission I was going back and finishing conversation strings with other characters. Spent a lot of time talking to Legion. I was under the impression that the IFF mission was sort of the "Unofficial Point of No return" for the game. So how have people brought Legion on other missions with them? Does your crew die to the Collectors if you don't go straight there? Is there no effect?

And lastly, I had everyone survive the suicide mission; if someone had died, are they just inaccessible for post game missions like Shadow Broker and Arrival?

[Jabronius Maximus]

All these posts lead me to believe that I should really get around to playing Mass Effect. Is it really that good?

[Werthead]

The Banner Saga is half price on Steam right now. I strongly recommend it. It's written by a couple of ex-BioWare writers who have created a turn-based RPG set in a Malazan-esque world where Giant Vikings and their puny human allies are fighting Giant Steampunk Robots through an animation style reminiscent of early Disney films. You won't have a clue WTF is going on for the first half of the game but it is still brilliant.

And lastly, I had everyone survive the suicide mission; if someone had died, are they just inaccessible for post game missions like Shadow Broker and Arrival?

They also don't show up in ME3, where many of them have missions attached to them.

I've got this amazing games radar. It told me never to touch another bioware game after NWN.

You'd have missed KotOR, which is easily BioWare's second-best-game after BG2 and certainly a hell of a lot better than NWN, and Jade Empire, which is absolutely enormous amounts of fun (even beyond the very random scene where John Cleese seems to be taking the piss out of WarCraft).

The Mass Effect trilogy and Dragon Age franchise are both somewhat overrated, but they're still enjoyable with a lot to recommend them, even if BioWare's use of structure and tropes are starting to outweigh even Blizzard's in predictability. I actually applaud DA2 for at least trying to break away from a lot of the BioWare cliches, even if it doesn't do a fantastic job out of it.

All these posts lead me to believe that I should really get around to playing Mass Effect. Is it really that good?

ME1 is a bit of a dog's arse of a game (reasonable story but the combat is weak), ME2 is really good and ME3 borders on excelllent before a catastrophically nonsensical ending (salvaged, sort of, in the DLCs). The universe, characters and choices you make are really strong, even if the whole thing is a massive mixing bowl of other SF franchises (Star Trek, Babylon 5, BSG and various SF novel series are influential).

People tend to go apeshit over it because it was the only new SF space opera franchise on the screen (of any stripe) for the whole of the last gaming generation, and it's probably the best space opera universe created for video gaming due to the level of detail it's presented in. And there aren't that many really good space opera RPGs around in the first place. The only other two I can think of are Anachronox and Knights of the Old Republic and its sequel, all of which are better than ME but much less slickly-presented. And they are also much shorter.

[Ziggy Targdust]

All these posts lead me to believe that I should really get around to playing Mass Effect. Is it really that good?

Fuk yeh it's that good.

Then again, it hadn't been built up or hyped that much to me when I played it. I was expecting a run of the mill shooter.

Maybe it can't live up if it's been glorified beforehand too much

[Fez]

One question though, is there anywhere that I can see all the dialogue options from Shadow Broker? For example, I had Kasumi with me and before I killed him the Broker thanked me for bringing Miss Kasumi with me because of the value of her grey box. Was curious if he had something to say about everyone. :dunno:

ETA: Okay, another question... also after the Suicide Mission I was going back and finishing conversation strings with other characters. Spent a lot of time talking to Legion. I was under the impression that the IFF mission was sort of the "Unofficial Point of No return" for the game. So how have people brought Legion on other missions with them? Does your crew die to the Collectors if you don't go straight there? Is there no effect?

And lastly, I had everyone survive the suicide mission; if someone had died, are they just inaccessible for post game missions like Shadow Broker and Arrival?

1) I don't know where it'd be, but yes, the Broker has a different line for every character.

2) After the IFF there's a timer. I forget the exact mechanics, but I think its that you can do one mission afterwards before hitting the endgame and have no ill effects, if you do two missions Kelly dies, three to X missions and various random crew members also die, more than X and the doctor is the only survivor.

But the doctor will always survive, and the rest of the mission isn't affected no matter how many die. So if you want to see how Legion interacts with other missions, you can hold off on doing them until after the IFF mission and then bring him along. I'd recommend doing it in an alternate save though, otherwise you're a heartless bastard to all those people who looked up to you.

3) If they die, they're done for the series. No post-game DLC, and they won't be in ME3. For most of them, this isn't a huge issue (unless you really liked the character), because there are other characters that replace them in the plot. However, Garrus and Tali are party members in ME3, and they aren't replaced, so you miss out on a big chunk of the game if they die. Miranda is reasonably important as well.

Also, anyone who's dead won't be in ME3's Citadel DLC, and that'd be a real shame.

[aceluby]

I must have played through KotoR 1 & 2 at least 20 times a piece... and I'm not even exaggerating. That game and Halo were the only games I played for like 3 years.

I'm realizing I'm a pretty cheap date when it comes to gaming. Even though I've sunk a lot of money into this hobby, by and large I have spent most of my time on a stark few games.

[Rhom]

All these posts lead me to believe that I should really get around to playing Mass Effect. Is it really that good?

I picked up the entire trilogy in one bundle for PS3 last year. I've really enjoyed the first two games.

[Werthead]

Garrus may have the best scene (well, one of them) in ME3, so definitely don't lose him.