Where's the Next Video Games Thread?... Oh here it is.

[Fez]

The first big leak of Mass Effect 4 details has supposedly happened. I don't totally understand the details, but it seems like EA held a random survey asking people how they feel about certain details of the game and several people on reddit leaked the survey questions (presumably breaking some sort of NDA). It sounds kind of odd, and it could be trolling, but apparently its been proven that EA has had these kinds of surveys for other games in the past and the details from those have leaked. If true, its hard to say how much of this is set in stone and how much is just potential design ideas.

NARRATIVE:

Premise: Set in the Helius Cluster of the Andromeda Galaxy, removed by time and space from the Mass Effect "Commander Shepard" trilogy and its ending. Play as a "Pathfinder" explorer leading expedition with the aim of establishing new home for humanity. Encounter "savage untamed lands", "cut-throat outlaws", and "warring alien races" in an effort to survive and colonies. Andromeda is home to a mysterious alien race, the Remnants, who've left their vaults and ancient technology throughout.

Game Objective: Explore 100s of solar systems (over 4x size of Mass Effect 3) collecting resources, developing your ship, crew, and arsenal, while engaging in diplomacy in order to set up colonies, while discovering the mystery behind the Remnants and racing to secure their technology.

New Species: Remnants, an ancient race who've left ruins and technology throughout the galaxy. And Khet, seemingly antagonistic.

Squadmates: Same as previous games: make friends, take two with you on missions. Cora is able to generate biotic shields you can fire out of. Drack is a Krogan.

Loyalty Missions: Same as previous games: complete to unlock increased loyalty and new skill tree for that character. Example: Krogan colony ship has been stolen by outlaws. Track down the ship and return it to increase loyalty with Drack. Dialogue trees and end game impacted by loyalty status.

Dialogue: "Meaningful choices". Deeper control over responses, such as interrupting conversation. Action based choices are physical choices to shape the course of conversation, such as pulling out a weapon and forcing them to open a door instead of attempting to do so purely via conversation.

EXPLORATION/CUSTOMISATION

Tempest Starship: Pilotable ship to discover 100s of solar systems. Customisable with trophies/loot/photos taken through the galaxy. Transition between flying ship, to landing on planet, to driving Mako, to getting out on foot, all seamless with no loading screens.

Mako Vehicle: Upgradeable with turbo boost, shield generator, hostile detector, etc. Customisable paint job.

Planets: 100s of surfaces to explore, for discovering places to colonise, and alien vaults/outputs to conquer.

Colonies: Build settlements on habitable planets. Able to decide what type of settlement for bonuses. EG: Recon Settlements will clear fog of war on space map and offer more strike team missions, meanwhile Mining Settlements will periodically supply crafting materials.

Blueprints: Allow you to craft alien technology using materials for better equipment and weapons, such as a jetpack for jumping, cryo-beam to target enemies, etc.

Crew: Customisable skill trees, gear, weapons, etc.

MISSIONS TYPES AND MULTIPLAYER:

Remnant Vault Raids: Ancient ruins in two variants. Standard: Accessed by finding and activating Remnant Monoliths, explored to find a "powerful artefact". Acquiring artefact triggers defence systems: robots, traps, and restructured layout. Rewards with valuable loot, crafting resources, and Star Keys.Orbital Facilities: Unlocked with Star Keys, provide permanent stat bonuses, and optional higher difficulty vault raids that add Khet patrols and outlaws. Rewards with rare loot and narrative acclaim.

Khet Outposts: Optional wave-based combat challenges that reward with XP, reduced Khet power and additional narrative options in the region if destroyed.

Strike Team: Spend resources to recruit mercenaries and develop AI controlled strike teams to be deployed on randomly generated, time sensitive missions. Include settlement defence and remnant artefact recovery. Strike Teams return 20 - 30 minutes later with XP, currency, and equipment depending on mission outcome. Spend money/resources to train Strike Team, and buy better equipment, to increase success rate and send on dangerous missions.

Active Strike Team: See above, however you can choose to complete the Strike Team mission manually via play using your multiplayer roster of characters. Able to play co-op with friends, more friends increasing difficulty and rewards. Bonus rewards for joining another players strike team mission. XP, loot, and customisation rewards for Strike Team played characters are cohesive with multiplayer specific horde mode.

Horde Mode: Similar to Mass Effect 3: four players against waves of enemies with additional objectives such as disabling a bomb or assassinating a target. Similar XP/loot rewards to Mass Effect 3. APEX funds earned to be used in single player.

The narrative has potential, so long as things don't get too disconnected from the existing lore (although, bleh, at the idea of yet another precursor race). The gameplay though, sounds very similar to DA:I (to be expected, I suppose), and I'm concerned that this will also suffer the problem of the very good bits being stretched far too thinly.

[eyenon15]

Infinite has a great setting, a great ending, and a great story but yeah, the gameplay is probably the weak point. It was good enough to get me through the game but not good enough that I have any real desire to replay it.

Didn't you hear? Bloodborne is the goty already.

This is exactly how I would describe The Order

[Melphis Amekia]

Technically, Mass Effect's universe has possibly hundreds and thousands of precursor races, so one other in-game isn't really a stretch.

[KiDisaster]

The first big leak of Mass Effect 4 details has supposedly happened.

<snip>

Mako Vehicle: Customisable paint job.

This is all I need to hear.

[Rhom]

I'm fine with all of that.

Not sure why they need to go to an entirely different galaxy, seems like ours is plenty big to set stories; but hey, I'm cool with it. It sounds a bit like some sort of galactic takeover though.

I agree that it runs the danger of being too spread out like DA:I; but I think that could work in the Mass Effect setting moreso than in Thedas. It really depends more on what the emphasis of the story is and are the explorable planets worth exploring?

[Fez]

I'm fine with all of that.

Not sure why they need to go to an entirely different galaxy, seems like ours is plenty big to set stories; but hey, I'm cool with it. It sounds a bit like some sort of galactic takeover though.

I agree that it runs the danger of being too spread out like DA:I; but I think that could work in the Mass Effect setting moreso than in Thedas. It really depends more on what the emphasis of the story is and are the explorable planets worth exploring?

Well, I remember one of the games said that only something like 1% of the Milky Way had been explored (i.e. the parts that had relays near them), but they could add an addendum that that 1% included most of the habitable planets in the galaxy; most of which were ruined in the Reaper War, and therefore the races of the galaxy needed to find a new place to live. Or retcon that the Reapers did something to the galactic core that is slowly destroying the galaxy, or that some natural disaster is. Or retcon that everyone in the game comes from generation ships that were sent out during the Reaper War to try to ensure species' survival. I agree that its not necessary, but yeah, it seems like there are ways to explain why the enormous effort of going to another galaxy is happening. And between some combination of developing even faster ships and using generation ships gives more backstory reason for setting the game long after the Reaper War. Also, by putting it in another galaxy, its less glaring for planets from the trilogy to only show up in the codex (it being much easier to cover the different states they can be after ME3 in short, text-only form).

So I'm fine with it, so long as the story is well-told and there's enough characters from the council races so that all the trilogy lore isn't completely sidelined.

[The Drunkard]

Short Charles Dance video about The Witcher 3. This game looks so pretty, the "I'll give her what she deserves" scene looks a lot better.

[Alex.]

New Mass Effect details sound great to me. Well up for exploring again.

[Ferrum Aeternum]

I agree that it runs the danger of being too spread out like DA:I; but I think that could work in the Mass Effect setting moreso than in Thedas. It really depends more on what the emphasis of the story is and are the explorable planets worth exploring?

Agree with the bolded. So long as there's meaningful variety in terms of both locations and tasks, dozens of hours of galactic exploration sounds hugely appealing.

Regardless, I am unabashedly excited as fuck about new Mass Effect in any form.

[Werthead]

Total War: Warhammer officially announced, complete with an impressive cinematic trailer.

First factions will be Empire, Dwarves, Orcs and Undead. There's also a nod that Chaos will show up at some point, and may be an unlockable faction. Two expansions are already planned, likely to bring in the Elves, Skaven and possibly Lizardmen and Brettonians.

[Jack Bauer 24]

about The Witcher 3. This game looks so pretty, the "I'll give her what she deserves" scene looks a lot better.

This is going to be brilliant.

[MerenthaClone]

Total War: Warhammer officially announced, complete with an impressive cinematic trailer.

First factions will be Empire, Dwarves, Orcs and Undead. There's also a nod that Chaos will show up at some point, and may be an unlockable faction. Two expansions are already planned, likely to bring in the Elves, Skaven and possibly Lizardmen and Brettonians.

I'll have fun with this.

In very different news, Killing Floor 2 is a hell of a lot of fun. Available for Early Access, its actually in about the same state KF1 was on release with a shitton more to come. Only 4 classes and 3 maps so far, but what's there is very, very fun for some classic zombie-killing action. Looks great, plays great, and KF1 got a ton of free continued support post-release so there's no reason to think KF2 won't either.

(And I can't wait for W3 either. I hope my computer can run it decently. )

[Corvinus85]

Total War: Warhammer officially announced, complete with an impressive cinematic trailer.

First factions will be Empire, Dwarves, Orcs and Undead. There's also a nod that Chaos will show up at some point, and may be an unlockable faction. Two expansions are already planned, likely to bring in the Elves, Skaven and possibly Lizardmen and Brettonians.

Good luck to them. I would like to think that the "Our rules have changed" line means more than them stepping into the fantasy setting. I would like to think that they will provide a much better game than the last few, but it could just be a forlorn hope on my side.

[Gears of the Beast]

Xbox uploaded this Witcher 3 gameplay video to promote Xbox One, however the gameplay was captured on PC playing with an xbox controller. Kinda funny because this footage is 60 FPS which isn't even possible on the Xbone version. Sidenote: Witcher 3 is looking pretty good, I have a feeling this game is going to deliver - at least in terms of graphical fidelity.

[Talleyrand]

I'm fine with all of that.

Not sure why they need to go to an entirely different galaxy, seems like ours is plenty big to set stories; but hey, I'm cool with it. It sounds a bit like some sort of galactic takeover though.

I think its a way of sidestepping the fact that after ME3

A lot of higher technology could be destroyed along with all the robots, we could have giant robot cuttlefish monsters helping humanity under the direction of a bodyless god shepard or everyone could be some weird half robot creature

[Inigima]

In very different news, Killing Floor 2 is a hell of a lot of fun. Available for Early Access, its actually in about the same state KF1 was on release with a shitton more to come. Only 4 classes and 3 maps so far, but what's there is very, very fun for some classic zombie-killing action. Looks great, plays great, and KF1 got a ton of free continued support post-release so there's no reason to think KF2 won't either.

Seriously considering EA'ing KF2. I almost never do Early Access games, but I loved Killing Floor. I loved it enough to buy cosmetic DLC for it.

[Corvinus85]

The first big leak of Mass Effect 4 details has supposedly happened. I don't totally understand the details, but it seems like EA held a random survey asking people how they feel about certain details of the game and several people on reddit leaked the survey questions (presumably breaking some sort of NDA). It sounds kind of odd, and it could be trolling, but apparently its been proven that EA has had these kinds of surveys for other games in the past and the details from those have leaked. If true, its hard to say how much of this is set in stone and how much is just potential design ideas.

<snip>

The narrative has potential, so long as things don't get too disconnected from the existing lore (although, bleh, at the idea of yet another precursor race). The gameplay though, sounds very similar to DA:I (to be expected, I suppose), and I'm concerned that this will also suffer the problem of the very good bits being stretched far too thinly.

I don't mind this narrative, yet I have to wonder about the Mass Relays. That's where the title of the games comes from.

[Alex.]

I don't mind this narrative, yet I have to wonder about the Mass Relays. That's where the title of the games comes from.

Surely it comes from the "mass effect" fields generated by element zero which the Mass Relays merely used to do what they did?

[Fez]

I don't mind this narrative, yet I have to wonder about the Mass Relays. That's where the title of the games comes from.

Depending on what the setup is, there could be a massive Mass Relay connecting the galaxy to the Milky Way (or a chain of them stretching across the void)

Surely it comes from the "mass effect" fields generated by element zero which the Mass Relays merely used to do what they did?

Also this. Mass Effect fields are used in lots of technologies, the Relays being only one of them.

[Gears of the Beast]

Seriously considering EA'ing KF2. I almost never do Early Access games, but I loved Killing Floor. I loved it enough to buy cosmetic DLC for it.

It's much more polished than the vast majority of early access games.