Video Games - Waiting for a New AAA Game (that isn't Elden Ring)

[Fez]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

Yup. ME1 has, by far, the best writing, dialogue, worldbuilding, RPG systems and maybe the best characterisation, but the shittiest combat. ME2 and ME3 are much better with combat and moment-to-moment gameplay, but the worldbuilding (for anything not inherited from the first game) goes to shit and the writing and dialogue becomes way more inconsistent.

The overall story for the trilogy is excellent from a distance, I think, but they definitely screw the pooch on the details and how things hang together.

The dialog in ME1 is mostly awful. Almost all of it are lore dumps about the world building. I'm surprised anyone would think it was good. The rest of the writing I could see someone preferring in ME1, even though I don't, but the dialog is an extreme weak point of the game.

[IlyaP]

57 minutes ago, Fez said:

The rest of the writing I could see someone preferring in ME1, even though I don't, but the dialog is an extreme weak point of the game.

It's the Vigil scene, man. 

NOTHING in any game has come close to somehow hitting every Sensawunda button for me like the scene on Vigil. 

That, combined with Jack Wall's *astonishing* music during that scene...::chef's kiss::

[IlyaP]

3 hours ago, Werthead said:

Yup. ME1 has, by far, the best writing, dialogue, worldbuilding, RPG systems and maybe the best characterisation, but the shittiest combat. ME2 and ME3 are much better with combat and moment-to-moment gameplay, but the worldbuilding (for anything not inherited from the first game) goes to shit and the writing and dialogue becomes way more inconsistent.

The overall story for the trilogy is excellent from a distance, I think, but they definitely screw the pooch on the details and how things hang together.

I loved the writing in ME1. I know ME2 is the most beloved by fans, but...aside from Moridin, none of the people introduced in ME2 spoke to me at all. 

There was a legitimate sense of wonder, spectacle, and exploration to ME1 that I still love to this day above anything else that ever followed in that series. 

[IlyaP]

And to ME1's credit, it gave us this perfect bit of music: 

This is the track I have on damn near repeat when I read James S.A. Corey's novels. It's just so...expanse-y. (I'm so sorry. I could not think of a better synonym at this hour.)

 

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, Fez said:

The dialog in ME1 is mostly awful. Almost all of it are lore dumps about the world building. I'm surprised anyone would think it was good. The rest of the writing I could see someone preferring in ME1, even though I don't, but the dialog is an extreme weak point of the game.

ME1 uses its worldbuilding to inform and establish the story in the game. ME2 and 3 are aggressively opposed to that because the primary focus has shifted from using gameplay to support the story to creating story solely to justify kewl setpieces. A good example of that is how ME2 is a massive heist story without the actual heist, because it's missing the key ingredient of scoping out the target. That creates the weird thing in ME2 of having a really well-realised character like Samara who has a great side-quest and a great resolution to her story in ME3, but the game absolutely never explains for a second why you need her on your team to undertake the final mission (because nobody knows what's waiting for you on the final mission), especially when you already have one superpowered mega-biotic already (Jack) and another almost as good (Miranda). Or why you need Zaeed when your team is already overflowing with people who can shoot well and make sarcastic quips whilst doing it (Garrus being the king of that idea).

A good example of the writing is that ME1 is the only game in the series to gives us a good villain. In fact, it gives us two: Saren's initial motivations are clearly established, you find out why he allied with the Reapers and you later find out about indoctrination and you can even get Saren to redeem himself at the last minute. Sovereign is a good villain at this stage of the series because he does what the Reapers are supposed to do, show up, be unknowable and Cthulhu-esque and then F off before they wreck the Reapers with too much exposition (which they proceed to then do in ME3). In fact, the game in the series with the second-best villains is Andromeda, as at least the Archon's motivations and goals are decently explained, even if he is just a cheesy bad guy.

Neither ME2 nor ME3 have any good villains at all. The Illusive Man is just a walking cliche-generator, the Catalyst is just a plot device, Harbinger is like a 12-year-old cosplaying as Sovereign ("I WILL TAKE DIRECT CONTROL EVEN THOUGH ANNOUNCING THIS JUST MEANS YOU KILL THE GUY I'M TAKING OVER INSTANTLY") and Kai Leng is laughably pathetic.

[IlyaP]

Kai Leng is just awful. Why was that inflicted upon us?

[Caligula_K3]

3 hours ago, Werthead said:

Yup. ME1 has, by far, the best writing, dialogue, worldbuilding, RPG systems and maybe the best characterisation, but the shittiest combat. ME2 and ME3 are much better with combat and moment-to-moment gameplay, but the worldbuilding (for anything not inherited from the first game) goes to shit and the writing and dialogue becomes way more inconsistent.

The overall story for the trilogy is excellent from a distance, I think, but they definitely screw the pooch on the details and how things hang together.

Whaaat?

 

I'm now about a quarter of the way into ME2 on my Legendary Edition replay and there's no comparison, in my mind, for writing. Sure, the basic scenario starting off ME2 is dumb, and ME probably has a more interesting plot. But in terms of character and world writing, ME2 stands head and shoulders above ME1, in my opinion. I noticed an immediate difference. Take Garrus and Tali: in ME1, pretty much all Garrus' dialogue hammers home the same point over and over (I don't want to play by the book!). Tali, meanwhile, is just an exposition machine for Quarian society. In ME2, they become actual well rounded characters, and in general the different species are written with much more nuance. Even side quest characters tend to get some development.

Shepherd working for Cerberus and the Illusive Man is also just a lot more interesting than Shepherd working for the Alliance.

Anyway, all this to say that a quarter of the way through ME2, I'm reminded why it's one of my favourite games of all time. I enjoyed replaying ME1 more than I thought I would, but I still think it's one of the weakest pre-2014 Bioware games, and not just because of the combat.

[Darryk]

3 hours ago, Caligula_K3 said:

Whaaat?

 

I'm now about a quarter of the way into ME2 on my Legendary Edition replay and there's no comparison, in my mind, for writing. Sure, the basic scenario starting off ME2 is dumb, and ME probably has a more interesting plot. But in terms of character and world writing, ME2 stands head and shoulders above ME1, in my opinion. I noticed an immediate difference. Take Garrus and Tali: in ME1, pretty much all Garrus' dialogue hammers home the same point over and over (I don't want to play by the book!). Tali, meanwhile, is just an exposition machine for Quarian society. In ME2, they become actual well rounded characters, and in general the different species are written with much more nuance. Even side quest characters tend to get some development.

Shepherd working for Cerberus and the Illusive Man is also just a lot more interesting than Shepherd working for the Alliance.

Anyway, all this to say that a quarter of the way through ME2, I'm reminded why it's one of my favourite games of all time. I enjoyed replaying ME1 more than I thought I would, but I still think it's one of the weakest pre-2014 Bioware games, and not just because of the combat.

I agree. ME2 is the best of the trilogy in every respect for me. Best gameplay, best world building, best story.

The way it builds up to massive climactic battle where your choices determine who lives and who dies was so cinematic. Some of the deaths are gut-wrenching 'cause you get so attached to the characters.

The fact that he has to form a team made up of the dregs of the galaxy was a really good story concept. It shows his qualities as a leader. 

[karaddin]

@Werthead with the Archon I feel

Spoiler

Him actually having gone rogue against the main Kett group adds to his depth as well. It makes the threat two tiered, Archon is a direct threat now and competing for the Remtech but that might actually be protecting the cluster from the full force of the Kett and ensures they don't receive any of the genetic data from the Milky Way species.

I think this conversation on the writing got started from talking about the tv series angle? I think for that you need to ditch the death and resurrection angle, although you can still have Shepard being severely injured and getting the overpowered cybernetics based on reaper tech. I think building Cerberus up more in ME1 would help some of the way things bounce all over the place, but that means Shep didn't be knowingly working with them in ME2. I think you can reasonably tackle that with it being through another group (also at least mentioned in 1) that wind up being a Cerberus front. By the time Shep figures it out, it's too late in the game to back out but they jump ship at the first opportunity.

[Werthead]

4 minutes ago, Darryk said:

Best gameplay, best world building, best story.

The Illusive Man: "So, Shepard, having spent the GDP of several entire planets on reviving you and building a better ship than anything in the entire human Systems Alliance, I need your help in stopping these aliens called the Collectors."

Shepard: "Gotcha. So where do these guys come from?"

TIM: "Beyond the Omega-4 relay, from where nobody has ever returned."

Shepard: "So what's the plan?"

TIM: "You collect these twelve guys and fly through the relay and defeat the Collectors."

Shepard: "Wait, what? How do we know one ship and twelve people can defeat an entire civilisation?"

TIM: "Basically we're going to vaguely hope for the best that twelve people and one ship will be enough for the job."

Shepard: "What if they have a fleet of a thousand ships and are on a whole planet and you'd need an entire fleet and army to defeat them?"

TIM: "Dunno, guess you're fucked. Good thing you're expendable and Cerberus didn't spend the resources of several planets on reviving you and building your ship."

Shepard: "This battle plan feels like it was drafted by Vladimir Putin."

TIM: "Don't worry, I might be indoctrinated by now, or maybe not, who knows? Not the writer. It's all incredibly vague."

Quote

 

The way it builds up to massive climactic battle where your choices determine who lives and who dies was so cinematic. Some of the deaths are gut-wrenching 'cause you get so attached to the characters.

The fact that he has to form a team made up of the dregs of the galaxy was a really good story concept. It shows his qualities as a leader. 

 

I agree with this, the "entire game as a heist" concept for Mass Effect 2 is absolutely fantastic and it's a shame more games don't do more with it (especially since it's very compatible with the RPG structure). I just get the impression that someone came into the office at BioWare with this absolutely great idea for a heist movie game and then decided to shoehorn it into the Mass Effect universe.

This structural chaos then ripples into Mass Effect 3, which is trying to simultaneously do the job of Parts II and III of a trilogy (hence the simultaneous presence of Cerberus, very much a Part II villain, still causing chaos even though your Part III villain, the Reapers, have shown up in force and you need to be focusing on them) because the actual Part II was replaced by a side-quest filling the entire game.

[Werthead]

Quote

 

 I think for that you need to ditch the death and resurrection angle, although you can still have Shepard being severely injured and getting the overpowered cybernetics based on reaper tech. I think building Cerberus up more in ME1 would help some of the way things bounce all over the place, but that means Shep didn't be knowingly working with them in ME2. I think you can reasonably tackle that with it being through another group (also at least mentioned in 1) that wind up being a Cerberus front. By the time Shep figures it out, it's too late in the game to back out but they jump ship at the first opportunity.

 

Those aren't bad ideas. The alternative is that Shepard actually dying in ME2 and being resurrected from death is actually impactful on the story, or it creates some kind of new and maybe unprecedented being that makes the Catalyst think, "Hang on, this is a synthetic-organic fusion being who can make the decision on whether to continue the cycle or not." As it stands I think Shepard has one conversation where they go, "Am I still me or am I some kind of AI in a meatbag body?" and then forgets about it. Again, I get the impression that was supposed to be a bigger plot point that got lost in mix when they lost their main writer.

Shepard working with Cerberus I think is easily fixable by simply downplaying Cerberus as Space-Nazis when adapting ME1, instead presenting them as a splinter group with controversial views but they're not going around murdering people all the time for proposing stronger ties with aliens (I think in the backstory they assassinated both a US and a Chinese president!). Also make them an actual separate polity to the Alliance, maybe having gone off and colonised 3-4 star systems and developed an advanced but relatively small fleet and army. Put them in the Terminus Systems. Then you have them recognising the Collector issue as being a threat to them but eventually the rest of the galaxy, and they're out defending other human colonies whilst the Alliance and Council won't/can't do anything to help and Shepard eventually joins forces with them extremely reluctantly. They then don't go full batshit insane until ME3, after the Illusive Man has been duped or indoctrinated by the Reapers. I have seen an interesting idea about either swapping Jacob for Kai Leng, or having Jacob decide to stick with Cerberus at the end of the ME2 arc and he comes after you in the ME3 arc, rather than showing up from nowhere.

The problems with the Collectors you can solve from simply sending a recon ship through the Omega-4 relay before the story begins, identifying that the Collectors indeed just have the one base and one ship and a scan of the base shows weaknesses which you need certain specialists to deal with, hence the Dirty Dozen of ME2. And also drop the "Human Reaper" thing as being far too dumb, they're just building an ordinary Reaper.

[Darryk]

2 minutes ago, Werthead said:

The Illusive Man: "So, Shepard, having spent the GDP of several entire planets on reviving you and building a better ship than anything in the entire human Systems Alliance, I need your help in stopping these aliens called the Collectors."

Shepard: "Gotcha. So where do these guys come from?"

TIM: "Beyond the Omega-4 relay, from where nobody has ever returned."

Shepard: "So what's the plan?"

TIM: "You collect these twelve guys and fly through the relay and defeat the Collectors."

Shepard: "Wait, what? How do we know one ship and twelve people can defeat an entire civilisation?"

TIM: "Basically we're going to vaguely hope for the best that twelve people and one ship will be enough for the job."

Shepard: "What if they have a fleet of a thousand ships and are on a whole planet and you'd need an entire fleet and army to defeat them?"

TIM: "Dunno, guess you're fucked. Good thing you're expendable and Cerberus didn't spend the resources of several planets on reviving you and building your ship."

Shepard: "This battle plan feels like it was drafted by Vladimir Putin."

TIM: "Don't worry, I might be indoctrinated by now, or maybe not, who knows? Not the writer. It's all incredibly vague."

I agree with this, the "entire game as a heist" concept for Mass Effect 2 is absolutely fantastic and it's a shame more games don't do more with it (especially since it's very compatible with the RPG structure). I just get the impression that someone came into the office at BioWare with this absolutely great idea for a heist movie game and then decided to shoehorn it into the Mass Effect universe.

This structural chaos then ripples into Mass Effect 3, which is trying to simultaneously do the job of Parts II and III of a trilogy (hence the simultaneous presence of Cerberus, very much a Part II villain, still causing chaos even though your Part III villain, the Reapers, have shown up in force and you need to be focusing on them) because the actual Part II was replaced by a side-quest filling the entire game.

 

Well it's a desperate situation, the colonists are being abducted and the council doesn't care, someone has to do something.

It's made clear throughout it's a suicide mission, but they don't have any other options.

 

[Darryk]

4 minutes ago, Werthead said:

And also drop the "Human Reaper" thing as being far too dumb, they're just building an ordinary Reaper.

I think the human reaper was important because it showed the Reapers had taken a special interest in the human race after Shepard's actions.

[Werthead]

9 minutes ago, Darryk said:

Well it's a desperate situation, the colonists are being abducted and the council doesn't care, someone has to do something.

It's made clear throughout it's a suicide mission, but they don't have any other options.

I agree with that, it's just that TIM's plan is extremely random because he has zero information on the enemy. If he was treating Shepard and the team as expendable mooks to get that information, that would be one thing, but he isn't, it's the most expensive special ops team in human history which he is willing to risk dying the second they go through the Omega-4 relay because they have no idea what's on the other side, let alone what kind of plan they need to employ to deal with it.

In retrospect that just needed one warship with Thanix cannons camping the Omega-4 relay and just blowing up the sole Collector ship that exists next time it comes through, and literally the problem never arises again.

7 minutes ago, Darryk said:

I think the human reaper was important because it showed the Reapers had taken a special interest in the human race after Shepard's actions.

I gather it was more the original idea that the Reapers were supposed to be creating in the image of each race that was harvested, so Sovereign and Harbinger resemble the Leviathans and you'd eventually end up with several Salarian-looking Reapers, several Asari-looking ones etc. Then someone at BioWare (or possibly EA) ran the numbers and realised they'd need tens of thousands of different Reaper designs and it'd be simpler and far cheaper just to make them all look identical to one another.

[karaddin]

Good point regarding just not making them blatantly evil at the start, for some reason I was thinking from the perspective of having to keep that carry over from ME1.

Yeah I think that idea works much better, giving them a power base that actually makes sense for them being able to manufacture ships. It also would mean that working with them wouldn't necessarily need to be something the council would take issue with - just the alliance, so it could play into a narrative where the alliance thinks Shepard is essentially a traitor having fully committed to loyalty to the council. Obviously that goes with having saved them from Sovereign.

[Darryk]

52 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I agree with that, it's just that TIM's plan is extremely random because he has zero information on the enemy. If he was treating Shepard and the team as expendable mooks to get that information, that would be one thing, but he isn't, it's the most expensive special ops team in human history which he is willing to risk dying the second they go through the Omega-4 relay because they have no idea what's on the other side, let alone what kind of plan they need to employ to deal with it.

In retrospect that just needed one warship with Thanix cannons camping the Omega-4 relay and just blowing up the sole Collector ship that exists next time it comes through, and literally the problem never arises again

Well I think TIM wanted the technology that was on the Collector base, hence why he wanted a team that could infiltrate it rather than employing any ships to destroy it.

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, Darryk said:

Well I think TIM wanted the technology that was on the Collector base, hence why he wanted a team that could infiltrate it rather than employing any ships to destroy it.

That makes absolute sense, except TIM doesn't know that at that point. Maybe if there were a few lines where TIM said that nobody's ever seen more than one Collector ship at a time and the pattern of attacks are consistent with one ship coming through the relay, attacking a colony and then returning, so there aren't vast numbers of them. But that's not articulated (and opens up another can of worms where if they've worked out there's one ship causing havoc, why the Terminus Systems don't band together a few dozen ships to destroy or capture it; Omega, with a not-inconsiderable military force as we find out in ME3, is literally next door to the relay).

There are issues in both ME2 and 3 where it feels like characters act as if they are in possession of information they don't actually have yet, enough to make me wonder if there was a change in the script at some point and it was only half-implemented in the game.

[Corvinus85]

I finished the main storyline in HZD. I loved the narrative but what the hell, they just reset the game before the final mission?

Spoiler

I'm guessing it had to do with the destruction of the city of Meridian and them not wanting to leave it as a smoking ruin as you go back to free exploration. Still, I think they could have done a minor time skip instead. I wanted to see what GAIA would do now.

I still need to do the Furious Wild DLC. I do feel a bit burned out though. About 45 hrs of gameplay and I know I didn't do all the minor quests and plenty of other places to explore.

[Werthead]

9 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

I finished the main storyline in HZD. I loved the narrative but what the hell, they just reset the game before the final mission?

  Reveal hidden contents

I'm guessing it had to do with the destruction of the city of Meridian and them not wanting to leave it as a smoking ruin as you go back to free exploration. Still, I think they could have done a minor time skip instead. I wanted to see what GAIA would do now.

I still need to do the Furious Wild DLC. I do feel a bit burned out though. About 45 hrs of gameplay and I know I didn't do all the minor quests and plenty of other places to explore.

Frozen Wilds? Furious is a Three Kingdoms DLC.

Frozen Wilds is good but I did it as part of the playthrough of the main game. I think it makes more sense before the final battle, since the end of the main plot makes it odder to have Syens still doing his "man in a van" spiel.

Otherwise it's more HZD. It's fun, it's reasonably long (10 hours, I think) and it has a couple of new enemy types that are interesting. Looking forwards to whenever Forbidden West comes to PC (probably another year or so).

I just finished Mass Effect: Andromeda and it oddly reminded me of Horizon: Zero Dawn more than any other game. The gigantic machine enemies (though only a few of them compared to HZD), the Vaults being very Cauldron-ish and the backstory about the machines remaking the Heleus Cluster according to a set design all felt weirdly similar, and they both feature a key location called Meridian. The odd thing is that they came out three weeks apart, so couldn't really impact on one another.

[Corvinus85]

37 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Frozen Wilds? Furious is a Three Kingdoms DLC.

Frozen Wilds is good but I did it as part of the playthrough of the main game. I think it makes more sense before the final battle, since the end of the main plot makes it odder to have Syens still doing his "man in a van" spiel.

Otherwise it's more HZD. It's fun, it's reasonably long (10 hours, I think) and it has a couple of new enemy types that are interesting. Looking forwards to whenever Forbidden West comes to PC (probably another year or so).

I just finished Mass Effect: Andromeda and it oddly reminded me of Horizon: Zero Dawn more than any other game. The gigantic machine enemies (though only a few of them compared to HZD), the Vaults being very Cauldron-ish and the backstory about the machines remaking the Heleus Cluster according to a set design all felt weirdly similar, and they both feature a key location called Meridian. The odd thing is that they came out three weeks apart, so couldn't really impact on one another.

Ha, yeah Frozen Wilds. Funnily enough, I am familiar with Furious Wilds from 3K.

I did start it before finishing the main storyline and Sylens talks to you telling you to not get distracted and go back to doing the main thing. lol

The game has a lot of nods to various popular culture stuff. The one that made me lol is a reference in an ancient text about a podcast financed by the Rational Capitalist Network that pandered to corporations. It made me think they were giving a wink to the Rational National youtube channel/podcast hosted by David Doel.

Another similarity with ME is that the final battle seems to be influenced somewhat by the side quests you do. Characters that you helped in various side quests show up to fight alongside you and considering that they are all effectively immortal in the battle I suppose that helps you with distracting machines that may otherwise get in your way. I'm not sure how much that matters in the end.