Videogames: The Sequeling

[kungtotte]

51 minutes ago, Werthead said:

STEAM SALE 2021:

"Look, Mass Effect: Legendary Edition is on sale."

"Oh that sounds goo..."

"Yes, it's now only £45."

"Ah, this is some new definition of the word 'sale' that I was previously unaware of?"

Even just 1% off is technically a sale. They never promised you a good deal

[IlyaP]

12 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

I had to check who the composer was, to see if it was Jeremy Soule. I like it so far.

Justin Bell is the composer - he's been composing music for Obsidian for about 11 years, and was the lead composer on Pillars of Eternity, Pillars of Eternity 2, Pathfinder Adventures, The Outer Worlds, Grounded, Tyranny, and several other games. He recently left Obsidian and took on a new role at Playstation. 

[Werthead]

20 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

Speaking of sales, I picked up The Outer Worlds. I've never played the Fallout games, so I can only say it feels like Skyrim in space with added dark humor. Even the music makes me think of the TES games, I had to check who the composer was, to see if it was Jeremy Soule. I like it so far.

That would have been extremely awkward, but no, it was Justin Bell, who's been Obsidian's inhouse composer since New Vegas.

[Fez]

On 6/25/2021 at 11:43 PM, IlyaP said:

It's the scene with Vigil, isn't it? 

Because if you had to ask me what the best scene in the game is - it's that amazing, beautifully scored, edited, and structured scene. 

The scene with Vigil is one of several good, solid scenes in the game. But no, the one truly awesome scene to me in ME1 is when you talk with Sovereign on Virmire. It's an all time "oh shit" moment in storytelling.

[mcbigski]

7 hours ago, Fez said:

The scene with Vigil is one of several good, solid scenes in the game. But no, the one truly awesome scene to me in ME1 is when you talk with Sovereign on Virmire. It's an all time "oh shit" moment in storytelling.

Yes.  Its been a long time but other than listening to that cloaca Virmire was peak.  Plus that sets up the Ashley/kaiden sacrifice IIRC.  

[Werthead]

Damnit. The thread is sad, but also shows how they integrated the real-life dog's performance in the game, and in particular how she inspired them to make Dogmeat a genuine companion character rather than just a weapon.

[IlyaP]

10 hours ago, Fez said:

The scene with Vigil is one of several good, solid scenes in the game. But no, the one truly awesome scene to me in ME1 is when you talk with Sovereign on Virmire. It's an all time "oh shit" moment in storytelling.

Oh yes, that scene! It didn't rank quite as high, mainly due to the score not being as personally memorable to me as during the Vigil scene. But despite that - yeah, there's something about being told "y'all are gonna die and we're coming for you!" that was pretty wild. 

[Werthead]

Finished off the GTA4 saga and put that one to bed. Very solid games - The Ballad of Gay Tony probably has the best genuine friendship in the series and one of the best storylines - but I was waaaay past it being ready to end. They really made the most out of every nook and cranny of that map.

Want to clear out my hard drive of a few games that have been clogging it up before doing some more Wildermyth, so trying to polish off Far Cry: New Dawn. Solid game, keeping what really worked about Far Cry 5 - the map, the companions, the solid combat - and throwing out all the hateful taking-control-away-from-you-every-5-seconds bullshit. Very solid game, though not exactly moving far from the standard series formula. The post-apocalyptic setting does make the usual formula make a bit more sense though.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

On 6/27/2021 at 7:37 AM, Fez said:

The scene with Vigil is one of several good, solid scenes in the game. But no, the one truly awesome scene to me in ME1 is when you talk with Sovereign on Virmire. It's an all time "oh shit" moment in storytelling.

I've never been a huge fan of the first game, but that conversation you're referencing is what hooked me and pushed me to buy the second game (which is in my top 3 games ever, still). That scene with Sovereign changed the tone of the game into something amazing. 

Spoilers for ME3:

Spoiler

Another reason I hate the third game. I loved Harbinger in ME2, and then he just never shows up again except in the background. Whenever I read "gaming journalists'" reflections on 3 being a letdown, they always say, "Fans just were entitled and wanted a better ending." Nope. The ending was the last in a long line of letdowns in ME3. All the awesome squadmates from ME2 just get guest roles throughout the game, no party Krogan, Legion--who is just...amazing but doesn't show up until the last mission of 2 is replaced by EDI. Don't get me wrong, I love EDI as the AI voice, but I didn't need her in my squad. She was always there anyway, chiming in with info and cool story bits. It should've been Legion. And Thane. And Grunt, Moridin, Miranda...ugh. I just can't buy the HD version of the trilogy because of where it goes. Getting Ashley back and losing Miranda was such a drop in quality. Still trying to talk her into not being an asshole/racist.

I guess Javik was cool.

 

[felice]

1 hour ago, Centrist Simon Steele said:

Spoilers for ME3:

Spoiler

Since some or all of those characters might not be around by the end of ME2, the developers put themselves in a tricky situation. It's hard/expensive to both give them major roles and make the game work just as well without them.

 

[Fez]

49 minutes ago, felice said:

  Reveal hidden contents

Since some or all of those characters might not be around by the end of ME2, the developers put themselves in a tricky situation. It's hard/expensive to both give them major roles and make the game work just as well without them.

 

Yeah, that's the reason given. But I bet the overwhelming majority of players would've imported a save with everyone there. And Bioware could've made the default, non-import option that everyone was there too. 

Plus, James and Liara are enough to ensure that, at worst, you'll always have a full party for combat if things go real bad in ME2.

[Gorn]

10 hours ago, Centrist Simon Steele said:

I've never been a huge fan of the first game, but that conversation you're referencing is what hooked me and pushed me to buy the second game (which is in my top 3 games ever, still). That scene with Sovereign changed the tone of the game into something amazing. 

Spoilers for ME3:

  Hide contents

Another reason I hate the third game. I loved Harbinger in ME2, and then he just never shows up again except in the background. Whenever I read "gaming journalists'" reflections on 3 being a letdown, they always say, "Fans just were entitled and wanted a better ending." Nope. The ending was the last in a long line of letdowns in ME3. All the awesome squadmates from ME2 just get guest roles throughout the game, no party Krogan, Legion--who is just...amazing but doesn't show up until the last mission of 2 is replaced by EDI. Don't get me wrong, I love EDI as the AI voice, but I didn't need her in my squad. She was always there anyway, chiming in with info and cool story bits. It should've been Legion. And Thane. And Grunt, Moridin, Miranda...ugh. I just can't buy the HD version of the trilogy because of where it goes. Getting Ashley back and losing Miranda was such a drop in quality. Still trying to talk her into not being an asshole/racist.

I guess Javik was cool.

 

I don't get the Ashley hate, and I think the "space racist" thing is overblown. All her objections are security-based, and she explicitly rejects actual racists of the Humanity Front. Considering the setting and the number of times that Council ends up screwing humans over in the series (especially in the first game and prior to it), I even think her attitude is perfectly understandable.

On the other hand, you have two ME2 party members, Miranda and Jacob, who are literally members of a human supremacist terrorist organization (Miranda even a ranking member) who don't get anywhere near as much hate.

[Slurktan]

2 hours ago, Gorn said:

On the other hand, you have two ME2 party members, Miranda and Jacob, who are literally members of a human supremacist terrorist organization (Miranda even a ranking member) who don't get anywhere near as much hate.

That's because Jacob is essentially a nothing and Miranda is hot. Not rocket science.

[Gorn]

1 hour ago, Slurktan said:

That's because Jacob is essentially a nothing and Miranda is hot. Not rocket science.

I guess I have different preferences when it comes to women, but I would rate Ashley way above Miranda in terms of hotness, and that's not even considering personality (badass space marine vs. smug ice queen with daddy issues).

[Slurktan]

1 hour ago, Gorn said:

I guess I have different preferences when it comes to women, but I would rate Ashley way above Miranda in terms of hotness, and that's not even considering personality (badass space marine vs. smug ice queen with daddy issues).

Let me rephrase, Yvonne Strahovski is Miranda and the character looks like her, a real woman not just a computer generated model.

[Rhom]

1 hour ago, Gorn said:

I guess I have different preferences when it comes to women, but I would rate Ashley way above Miranda in terms of hotness, and that's not even considering personality (badass space marine vs. smug ice queen with daddy issues).

But... But... But... I think the internet parlance is "dat ass tho."

[Rhom]

So of direct interest possibly only to me, but tangentially interesting I would think to anyone here who is into fan mods and such.

There were two Legend of Heroes games in the Trails saga that didn't make it over here.  (They come between the Trails in the Sky trilogy and the Trails of Cold Steel quadrilogy.)  I have mentioned before that they just received a very high quality fan translation mod that was every bit the quality of a full localization (minus English voice acting).

Well last week, it was announced that those two games are finally getting full localizations... and furthermore, that they are using the fan patch as the basis of what they are doing.    Someone like @Werthead who is more of a game historian than myself may know if something like this has happened, but I certainly don't know of other examples.  There's been no information on how they sorted out the legalities and other details, and I'm sure there's quite a bit of work on the official team to make the translation work on multiple platforms and such; but I'm honestly surprised that this is happening this way.

[Werthead]

3 hours ago, Rhom said:

So of direct interest possibly only to me, but tangentially interesting I would think to anyone here who is into fan mods and such.

There were two Legend of Heroes games in the Trails saga that didn't make it over here.  (They come between the Trails in the Sky trilogy and the Trails of Cold Steel quadrilogy.)  I have mentioned before that they just received a very high quality fan translation mod that was every bit the quality of a full localization (minus English voice acting).

Well last week, it was announced that those two games are finally getting full localizations... and furthermore, that they are using the fan patch as the basis of what they are doing.    Someone like @Werthead who is more of a game historian than myself may know if something like this has happened, but I certainly don't know of other examples.  There's been no information on how they sorted out the legalities and other details, and I'm sure there's quite a bit of work on the official team to make the translation work on multiple platforms and such; but I'm honestly surprised that this is happening this way.

Interesting. Fan patches being the basis of full game patches is certainly a thing. MechWarrior 5's AI improvements in the recent DLC release and patch are based on two mods released last year.

Employing modders to work on the next game is also a thing. Bethesda have done that before and when Gabe Newell set up Valve, he basically recruited his entire level design team from the Quake modding community. The first game they made was Half-Life, so that worked out.

OTOH, you have Bethesda stealing the work of a New Vegas modder to create a questline in Fallout 4, which was much less cool.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

11 hours ago, Gorn said:

I don't get the Ashley hate, and I think the "space racist" thing is overblown. All her objections are security-based, and she explicitly rejects actual racists of the Humanity Front. Considering the setting and the number of times that Council ends up screwing humans over in the series (especially in the first game and prior to it), I even think her attitude is perfectly understandable.

On the other hand, you have two ME2 party members, Miranda and Jacob, who are literally members of a human supremacist terrorist organization (Miranda even a ranking member) who don't get anywhere near as much hate.

She's the kind of racist who doesn't realize she's a racist, you know? She's kind of like Sam Harris, brilliant genius extraordinaire, who thinks profiling Muslims at the airport is good for security--not based in racism. Or that race science makes some good points about "the reality of the world"--therefore, it's not racist. She's actually a pretty good representation/prediction of young white men who love the IDW. 

5 hours ago, Slurktan said:

Let me rephrase, Yvonne Strahovski is Miranda and the character looks like her, a real woman not just a computer generated model.

I love her character model (not because "hawt" but because she looked real), but there was also something about her character that was just way more sympathetic and fully fleshed out when compared to Ashley. She showed a character arc in ME2 where she changed and saw the Illusive Man for what he was, whereas Ashley...I'm not how she really changed at all. She also was just incredibly dull and boring.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

19 hours ago, Fez said:

Yeah, that's the reason given. But I bet the overwhelming majority of players would've imported a save with everyone there. And Bioware could've made the default, non-import option that everyone was there too. 

Plus, James and Liara are enough to ensure that, at worst, you'll always have a full party for combat if things go real bad in ME2.

I gotta agree. I know the excuse was "why make so much of the game when it would possibly be missed by players who didn't save their crew?" Well...I'm guessing most people would import the save with the full crew, or make the right choices in the interactive comic. Hell, people new to the series with ME3 wouldn't know they missed anything, and the vast majority of fans of the series would play the game with all the characters.

It worked for Garrus and Tali, and honestly, the extended storylines with Legion, Grunt, Jack, Thane, etc.--those stories occur without those characters if they died in the second game, so it seems like it's the same thing.

I was also reading you have to have 2 survivors from ME2 to import that save into ME3. Which means, you'd always have at least two extra squadmates.