Video Games - Legendary Edition

[Rhom]

Just now, IlyaP said:

I picked this up on Steam, but haven't installed it yet. Do I need to play ME2 an ME3 to properly understand and enjoy this game? Or is it enough that I've played ME1? 

A bunch of people decided to leave the Milky Way for Andromeda.  They didn’t know that a galaxy wide menace was coming, but the people arranging it did.

Now you know enough to play!  

I’m with @karaddin I enjoyed Andromeda and am still bitter that it didn’t get the obvious continuation it was meant to.

[karaddin]

Yeah what Rhom said. You need to know that for one of the best quest lines that winds through the game, I *think* they left before ME2 but it was definitively all planned at the final stages before ME2 and the trip took 600 years of them in cryo sleep so whatever happened in the original trilogy was a long time ago but they don't know about it.

It uses the combat mechanics that they'd iteratively improved on across the ME2 and ME3, so it's going to play quite differently to ME1 - that said it actually deemphasized taking cover in favor of high mobility combat, so in that way it's actually more like ME1 than the other 2 are. It's also got much more inventory management, crafting (which you actually use) etc.

For the story I actually wish

Spoiler

They'd had the initiative tell everyone about the Reapers and their expedition essentially being a life boat for the milky way species. One of the biggest criticisms of the story was that it reinforces the idea of colonization, when they're really refugees without knowing it. By making them all aware it completely shifts the tone of their attempts to find a home.

They also set up a whole bunch of interesting plot lines that were hooks for DLC and sequels, the former definitely isn't happening and the latter looks unlikely as well. They'd done all the work to set up those stories and then gave up on the easy and fun part of paying them off.

All for Anthem. Great choice guys.

 

[karaddin]

Oh and I forgot the most important change in terms of combat etc - you get a jet pack that not only lets you jump, but let's you jump much more than a person could and can also be used for dodging in combat. It makes movement feel so much better and more fun. You can also hover for a while after jumping, and that hovered combat is one of the alternatives to using cover.

[Jon AS]

I'll third that Andromeda is worth playing. Like with Dragon Age Inquisition, there's way too much time-wasting filler in the vein of Ubisoft games (though the quality is better than the comparable stuff in ME1), and there are definite structural and pacing issues.

Apparently, in what seems to have been a pattern for Bioware, they were messing around with various ideas (originally trying to create dozens or even hundreds of procedurally generated planets to explore, which would have been incredibly boring if the remaining "exploration" content in the game is anything to go by), wasting tons of time and money before ultimately slapping the final game together in something like 18 months. Considering all that, it's not just intriguing to imagine what the first game would have been like with competent project management, but also how sequels could have shaken out considering the general shape of the game had finally been decided on. But alas we'll never know.

 

On the plus side, combat is the best in the series, the characters are mostly fine-to-good and the younger game engine obviously generally looks better than Unreal3 at this point. It's probably going to be my go-to game if I feel like playing some ME in the future, since I see no reason to spend money on the remastered trilogy.

 

 

I finally knocked out my BattleTech career game. That felt really anticlimactic, but with that box checked I think I might now be able to finally leave that game behind. Definitely got money's worth out of that one...

 

Speaking of money, I picked up Pathfinder Kingmaker very cheaply in the Epic sale, so that's going to be my next focus. The game seems to have gotten good post-release support, so I figure most bugs should be ironed out. Now I only have to get into a new RPG ruleset, though at character creation it looks very similar to D&D 3e, so hopefully it won't be too complicated.

[kungtotte]

I bought Battletech years ago but never got around to play it, but after seeing it mentioned in here I finally picked it up and I must say I'm enjoying it. I'm only in the early parts of the campaign as of yet but I restarted my campaign a few times because I made a few mistakes in my first couple of games that really hampered my progress.

It feels a little bit slow in the opening stages when you're trying to bring up backup mechwarriors, having to delay progress a little bit by playing safer missions to get them XP, instead of just pushing forward with your main crew. But if you don't have a few backups you'll invariably end up in the position where you've got multiple wounded mechwarriors and you have to sit a month out waiting for everyone to get back on duty.

But I guess this balances out once everyone has gotten their masteries and you're mostly using XP to fill up gaps in the skillsets, then you can rotate people in and out of missions with less concern about mission difficulty and have everyone follow along in XP. If it was quicker or easier to get XP for backup warriors in the early game it would turn the mid game into a steamroll.

It's a fun game. I like this style of game with the running of operations mixed with tactical battles, and the vast amount of lore for the setting means they've got lots to draw on  when they're creating the world and it does feel like a lived in world, unlike many other games that just slap a styrofoam rock set dressing on and then lets you go blow stuff up.

[Werthead]

Noclip with an outstanding doc on the making of both Dishonored games.