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Mass Effect BioWare Montreal's Mass Effect: Andromeda - where element zero meets trisomy 21

donkeymong

Scholar
Joined
Nov 23, 2012
Messages
210
I

That's the problem: there's little to no reason to care about any of those characters because they are given a very basic bare bones characterization, and it mostly ends up as a subtle way for Bioware to allow you to kill the "racist" character because racism is wroooong.
Most of the companions are given shit characterizations. Wrex is a fighter, Liara a scientist, Ashley is a racist, the other guy is as bland as wet white bread.
Bland? Kaidans backstory isnt worse then the one of Jack...
He just dealt with his past himself (like an actual adult), like killing his instructor without doctor Shepard, maybee that makes him bland?
Also this, kaidan was one of the most grounded characters in the normandy, so was ashley, but they werent bland.
Kaidan had a nice backstory showing you what it was like growing up as a biotic.
Ashelys backstory was one of military family tradition, a bit of xenophobia and a bit of religion. They did a good job at making the human military feel real.

True, when you had ultra badass mercenary, super engineer, mega police, ultra scientist, etc. they certainly seem dull, but nontheless they make the more strange elements of the setting stand out merely by being there, and thats a good thing.

Mordin wasnt only a scientist, but a magician too. He had cought a Collector bug even before Horizon...
 

a cut of domestic sheep prime

Guest
He had cought a Collector bug even before Horizon...
Meh, but it was from the first colony that got attacked. The one you visited at the start of the game. Deus Ex Machina I mean, Cerberus caught it for Mordin somehow.
 

a cut of domestic sheep prime

Guest
What?

If you let Wrex die you get Grunt, and you don't even get chased off Tuchanka because you killed a notable krogan warrior. If you let Legion die, you get Geth VI. You never get locked out of stuff in the first two games, at least. Have you played them?
Wrong, you get grunt regardless in ME2. Wrex stays home to rule over his people. If you let him die you instead have to deal with an asshole and no longer have the best or easiest way to resolve things available.
I think he's referring to ME3 and other continuity stuff between the sequels. He's saying you aren't ever locked out of content - as in major quests because you definitely are locked out of the characters if they are dead - which is kind of nitpicking because it's not reasonabe to expect the devs to kill off or add entire hour-plus story arcs because of decision you may or may not have made in a previous game.

They basically have a choice:

Create a stand-in or something to fill the gaps should you have killed said character. If you go and visit the Turians, most players are going to expect to see Garrus. It'd be lame if they don't, yet he could have died in the previous game.

Or they could go the Witcher 3 route and keep a character in the game no matter what - even if you personally cut his head off in the previous game:
fbfdea7debee68104b46469856e4e4c9.jpg



edit: or maybe you don't kill Roche? These games came out a long time ago and weren't worth too many replays.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

GloomFrost

Arcane
Joined
Dec 9, 2014
Messages
993
Location
Northern wastes
Its a kindergarten level of quality writing of forced "emotionally engaging" scene where you make a choice between two boring characters nobody cares about.

How in the world would someone use it as an example of a great gaming moment is beyond me.

"Compared to what" is a good point. 98% of videogame writing is teen fanfic at best and an incoherent word borscht masquerading as real text at worst.

As bad as standard mainstream literature is the bulk of it is at least coherent and professional. If you pick up any of Steven King or Tom Clancy the story will be well constructed, the language will be clean and everything will make sense, more or less. Plus ofc there's a substantial amount of "high literature" too, some of it pretentious but some genuinelly life changing.

In comparison there isn't a single videogame script you could describe as "high art". At best there's a lean handful of profesionally well written games like PST or Witcher. Videogame writers are usually middle class kids wthout any discernible talent, willing to "work" for peanuts at famous studios coz it's cool. And studios can get away with employing them because noone cares about writing (well didn't use to till recently, apparently with MEA everyone suddenly does), not even prestigious critics congregating at a certain web forum. Because writing is for storyfags, muh gameplay etc.

In that environment ME1 was like a revelation. Not only it was a sci-fi RPG - a blissful delight after years and years of dwarves, dragons and ancient swords - but it even attempted to rise above the standard and NOT aim squarely at the 11 years bracket with their story, characters and general writing. Of course it couldn't have lasted, nothing good does, Age of Kali is unstoppable. But saying ME wasn't anything special, just more shit coz everything's shit...nah.
Early Lucas Arts games have much better writing then King. And Tom Clansy are you serious man???? "Story will be constructed" hahaha
Oh before ME we had Deus Ex, Anachronox, System Shock, Fallout, Vampires Masquerade the real RPGs without fantasy elements.
 

Freddie

Savant
Joined
Sep 14, 2016
Messages
717
Location
Mansion
Update on the Forbes article...

...Paul Tassii says the article is open for comment and he doesn't see a problem with the articlle:D

Anyway i tried to post again and again with no luck, so just ended up posting on the story below, the comment went through straight away. Basically now Forbes is a paid up EA marketing pamphlet. I gave them room but with the high reviews and positive press they gave the game. Not to mention the twisted goolgle searches (on last friday morning here I typed in Mass Effect Andromeda on google and all I got was articles ripping the animations to shreds, an hour later they all popped out of existance and were replaced by buying options and two glowing Forbes articles on the first page. Forbes is a brothel and Tassi and Kain are whores.
Holy crap... I just tried searching for Mass Effect Andromeda and with exception of few (very few) reviews from usual suspects, there are links to official Mass Effect resources and rest are almost all where to buy it.

In hour your say... if this happened how the hell did they pull it off? No offence but can anyone else verify this?

This is interesting because Google should customises search results. If you clicked lot of links leading to memes, etc. Google should prioritise those results higher in future searches. Other is trend, if trend is towards user generated content, that should show up in every search result somehow.

Basically since the first animations hit harvested from the early access, articles started appearing about the poor quality and showing the clips. More an more of these articles appeared from large gaming magazines in the days before the reviews hit. I searched a few times for mass effect andromeda over a few days, to see the latest news. Anyway I did a search one day in the morning, I think it was the Friday before last and most of the articles mentioned the criticisms, when I searched later they had all been replaced on the front page. By sales offers, positive spin and a Kotaku article accusing people of sexist bullying and death and rape threats, towards one of the animators and other defensive articles that painted the game sympatheticly.

It wasn't because the searches were tailored to my personal searches either as I purge my search history often because of...ahem...reasons:D Also it happened on both computers I use.

I don't think it's any great revelation that google often fiddle their search results for political as well as financial reasons, I just found that it was a bit jarring to change the front page search results all at once.
Tailoring IIRC at least used to be based on cache history and IP, simply to target ads, tailored search is kind of by product I guess. Anyway, I can think of people browsing reviews and online shops after the release, which could create new trend fast, that might explain it. Timing is interesting, but it would make sense that some party bought a plan earlier, including search engine optimatisation package. If it worked like there's nothing on google. Of course if results are so easily skewed, we may need to use other search engine to get results we need.
 

a cut of domestic sheep prime

Guest
Update on the Forbes article...

...Paul Tassii says the article is open for comment and he doesn't see a problem with the articlle:D

Anyway i tried to post again and again with no luck, so just ended up posting on the story below, the comment went through straight away. Basically now Forbes is a paid up EA marketing pamphlet. I gave them room but with the high reviews and positive press they gave the game. Not to mention the twisted goolgle searches (on last friday morning here I typed in Mass Effect Andromeda on google and all I got was articles ripping the animations to shreds, an hour later they all popped out of existance and were replaced by buying options and two glowing Forbes articles on the first page. Forbes is a brothel and Tassi and Kain are whores.
Holy crap... I just tried searching for Mass Effect Andromeda and with exception of few (very few) reviews from usual suspects, there are links to official Mass Effect resources and rest are almost all where to buy it.

In hour your say... if this happened how the hell did they pull it off? No offence but can anyone else verify this?

This is interesting because Google should customises search results. If you clicked lot of links leading to memes, etc. Google should prioritise those results higher in future searches. Other is trend, if trend is towards user generated content, that should show up in every search result somehow.

Basically since the first animations hit harvested from the early access, articles started appearing about the poor quality and showing the clips. More an more of these articles appeared from large gaming magazines in the days before the reviews hit. I searched a few times for mass effect andromeda over a few days, to see the latest news. Anyway I did a search one day in the morning, I think it was the Friday before last and most of the articles mentioned the criticisms, when I searched later they had all been replaced on the front page. By sales offers, positive spin and a Kotaku article accusing people of sexist bullying and death and rape threats, towards one of the animators and other defensive articles that painted the game sympatheticly.

It wasn't because the searches were tailored to my personal searches either as I purge my search history often because of...ahem...reasons:D Also it happened on both computers I use.

I don't think it's any great revelation that google often fiddle their search results for political as well as financial reasons, I just found that it was a bit jarring to change the front page search results all at once.
Tailoring IIRC at least used to be based on cache history and IP, simply to target ads, tailored search is kind of by product I guess. Anyway, I can think of people browsing reviews and online shops after the release, which could create new trend fast, that might explain it. Timing is interesting, but it would make sense that some party bought a plan earlier, including search engine optimatisation package. If it worked like there's nothing on google. Of course if results are so easily skewed, we may need to use other search engine to get results we need.
I really wouldn't discount Google fiddling with the results or Bioware's marketing department using SEO and negative SEO to kill stories. Certainly is possible, though tinfoil hat without proof.

But yeah, it's probably just the massive avalanche of shill pieces on big gaming sites combined with console tards and forum shills linking to them. Plus the newer news stories are going to push older stories off the page.
 

Jarmaro

Liturgist
Joined
Dec 31, 2016
Messages
1,466
Location
Lair of Despair
ME1 was shit, saying otherwise just confirms you having low standards and shit taste. Sorry, but saying it was SF game in sea of fantasy and that it was more competently written then other shitty RPGs does not make it good, only less shitty, but still shit.
Everything is shit
 

DeepOcean

Arcane
Joined
Nov 8, 2012
Messages
7,394
About the Mako, I gave up Mass Effect 1 right at this point and watched the rest on youtube:

Some people told me Virmire was the best stuff on Mass Effect and that it was a mistake for giving up that early as I gave up right after the Rachini queen the first time I played as the combat was just absolute crap. Tried again and reached Virmire and boy, never trust people on the internet.

It is basically you driving the Mako on a corridor with cliffs on both sides and you one shoting geths that can't put up a fight. Notice how your squad mates will try to shoot enemies through walls and you had so much I win buttons that challenge was an alien concept, encounter design with enemies with different behavior beyond shooting at you was something alien to Bioware too.

Then you get on the installation itself and it is a long ass walk on a corridor with non descript concrete walls on both sides with both your squad mates mostly on silence until you reach the end and have to decide the fate of Captain Raycism, Mr. Boring and Dindu Nuttin Kroogan, all you barely knew as on Mass Effect 1 there weren't loyalty missions and especially captain Raycism and Mr. Boring were dudes that just stood there on the Normandy for some reason chilling out and doing nothing.

Very funny, that now Bioware had the opportunity to make a version of Mass Effect 1 that is actually fun to play but that is to expect too much from SJW "bloggers" that become writers and cosplayers that become animators.
 

Freddie

Savant
Joined
Sep 14, 2016
Messages
717
Location
Mansion
Update on the Forbes article...

...Paul Tassii says the article is open for comment and he doesn't see a problem with the articlle:D

Anyway i tried to post again and again with no luck, so just ended up posting on the story below, the comment went through straight away. Basically now Forbes is a paid up EA marketing pamphlet. I gave them room but with the high reviews and positive press they gave the game. Not to mention the twisted goolgle searches (on last friday morning here I typed in Mass Effect Andromeda on google and all I got was articles ripping the animations to shreds, an hour later they all popped out of existance and were replaced by buying options and two glowing Forbes articles on the first page. Forbes is a brothel and Tassi and Kain are whores.
Holy crap... I just tried searching for Mass Effect Andromeda and with exception of few (very few) reviews from usual suspects, there are links to official Mass Effect resources and rest are almost all where to buy it.

In hour your say... if this happened how the hell did they pull it off? No offence but can anyone else verify this?

This is interesting because Google should customises search results. If you clicked lot of links leading to memes, etc. Google should prioritise those results higher in future searches. Other is trend, if trend is towards user generated content, that should show up in every search result somehow.

Basically since the first animations hit harvested from the early access, articles started appearing about the poor quality and showing the clips. More an more of these articles appeared from large gaming magazines in the days before the reviews hit. I searched a few times for mass effect andromeda over a few days, to see the latest news. Anyway I did a search one day in the morning, I think it was the Friday before last and most of the articles mentioned the criticisms, when I searched later they had all been replaced on the front page. By sales offers, positive spin and a Kotaku article accusing people of sexist bullying and death and rape threats, towards one of the animators and other defensive articles that painted the game sympatheticly.

It wasn't because the searches were tailored to my personal searches either as I purge my search history often because of...ahem...reasons:D Also it happened on both computers I use.

I don't think it's any great revelation that google often fiddle their search results for political as well as financial reasons, I just found that it was a bit jarring to change the front page search results all at once.
Tailoring IIRC at least used to be based on cache history and IP, simply to target ads, tailored search is kind of by product I guess. Anyway, I can think of people browsing reviews and online shops after the release, which could create new trend fast, that might explain it. Timing is interesting, but it would make sense that some party bought a plan earlier, including search engine optimatisation package. If it worked like there's nothing on google. Of course if results are so easily skewed, we may need to use other search engine to get results we need.
I really wouldn't discount Google fiddling with the results or Bioware's marketing department using SEO and negative SEO to kill stories. Certainly is possible, though tinfoil hat without proof.

But yeah, it's probably just the massive avalanche of shill pieces on big gaming sites combined with console tards and forum shills linking to them. Plus the newer news stories are going to push older stories off the page.
Yeah, it's just that EA isn't the only publisher out there. Fiddling with results from Google's part... I just don't see how they would benefit from it. Of course we could make a nice tin foil theory about how it could work, running it like racketeering business! :D

But what comes to EA... SEO and negative SEO definitely sure I'm sure is part of the packages. That said, I'm not that sure negative SEO has any influence but middle managers in corporations... if there's 0.1% change it would work and the price is right, they buy it.
 

Des

Educated
Joined
Aug 6, 2016
Messages
83
Location
Everywhere
The main plot of Mass Effect 1 wasnt complete trash. Predictable, yes, but 100x better than the sequels.

In Mass Effect 3 the main plot is such an avalanche of trash that it makes the main plot of Dragon Age 2 look good in comparison :mad:
 

moon knight

Matt7895's alt
Joined
Apr 7, 2015
Messages
1,101
Location
Italy
What?

If you let Wrex die you get Grunt, and you don't even get chased off Tuchanka because you killed a notable krogan warrior. If you let Legion die, you get Geth VI. You never get locked out of stuff in the first two games, at least. Have you played them?
Wrong, you get grunt regardless in ME2. Wrex stays home to rule over his people. If you let him die you instead have to deal with an asshole and no longer have the best or easiest way to resolve things available.
I think he's referring to ME3 and other continuity stuff between the sequels. He's saying you aren't ever locked out of content - as in major quests because you definitely are locked out of the characters if they are dead - which is kind of nitpicking because it's not reasonabe to expect the devs to kill off or add entire hour-plus story arcs because of decision you may or may not have made in a previous game.

They basically have a choice:

Create a stand-in or something to fill the gaps should you have killed said character. If you go and visit the Turians, most players are going to expect to see Garrus. It'd be lame if they don't, yet he could have died in the previous game.

Or they could go the Witcher 3 route and keep a character in the game no matter what - even if you personally cut his head off in the previous game:
fbfdea7debee68104b46469856e4e4c9.jpg



edit: or maybe you don't kill Roche? These games came out a long time ago and weren't worth too many replays.

You can't kill Roche.
 

pippin

Guest
I hate it how Crowbcat likes to play it safe. His video is like a medley of stuff we already know.
 

J1M

Arcane
Joined
May 14, 2008
Messages
14,616
Also ME1 has plenty of memorable moments, some mako bits were pretty great. fighting a giant worm is pretty great, the whole sequence at the end of the game where you fight while climbing a tower from the outside is fantastic. The music is great, Heck, the tutorial area is a very good mission on its own right, and never got old. The mission where you have to pick who lives or who dies, or where you have to talk down the angry krogan or put him down. Or how about assaulting a geth base in the middle of nowhere and having enemy drop ships bringing reinforcement, that was a sight to see.

This is all wrong.

The mako sucks, and the worm fight is just boring. The mako parts were the most boring ones of the game, actually. And the tutorial is one corridor, and sure, it's not as tedious as Taris or Irenicus' lair, but it's still an inconsequential corridor. Granted, Ashley or the other guy is a real decision, but in the end they are still interchangeable, just like wrex's fate. You still get a new Krogan. Assaulting a base with the enemy bringing reinforcements? I think Bioshock Infinite had a segment like that. Is Bioshock Infinite a great game?

I dunno, it kinda reads as if ME1 was your first rpg.
Mass Effect 1 is a bad game because there is an alternate Krogan leader to replace Wrex in Mass Effect 3? Are you retarded?
 

pippin

Guest
Also ME1 has plenty of memorable moments, some mako bits were pretty great. fighting a giant worm is pretty great, the whole sequence at the end of the game where you fight while climbing a tower from the outside is fantastic. The music is great, Heck, the tutorial area is a very good mission on its own right, and never got old. The mission where you have to pick who lives or who dies, or where you have to talk down the angry krogan or put him down. Or how about assaulting a geth base in the middle of nowhere and having enemy drop ships bringing reinforcement, that was a sight to see.

This is all wrong.

The mako sucks, and the worm fight is just boring. The mako parts were the most boring ones of the game, actually. And the tutorial is one corridor, and sure, it's not as tedious as Taris or Irenicus' lair, but it's still an inconsequential corridor. Granted, Ashley or the other guy is a real decision, but in the end they are still interchangeable, just like wrex's fate. You still get a new Krogan. Assaulting a base with the enemy bringing reinforcements? I think Bioshock Infinite had a segment like that. Is Bioshock Infinite a great game?

I dunno, it kinda reads as if ME1 was your first rpg.
Mass Effect 1 is a bad game because there is an alternate Krogan leader to replace Wrex in Mass Effect 3? Are you retarded?

Mass Effect 1 is also the first game in a trilogy which promised to respect your decisions in future games, you hemorrhoid-ridden homosexual.
 

a cut of domestic sheep prime

Guest
I hate it how Crowbcat likes to play it safe. His video is like a medley of stuff we already know.
I hadn't seen half of those, so I'm fine with it. Don't know Crowbcat tho, so maybe he could have done better.
 

a cut of domestic sheep prime

Guest
Mass Effect 1 is also the first game in a trilogy which promised to respect your decisions in future games, you hemorrhoid-ridden homosexual.
for a bioware game, it did. Wrex doesn't come back to life. He's dead. But, in true bioware fashion, all roads lead to the same effective outcome. Same with the rachni queen.

to bioware, respecting your choices just means window dressing and call backs.

it's pretty much their design philosophy. go back to BG2 and how it waffled between letting the player choose what happened before and forcing previous actions on them. Oh, and even if you establish that you killed characters, there they are again. Resurrection pretty much makes death irrelevant in the Forgotten Realms. Unless you are Kahlid The Cuck, of course.

but again, it's a little more understandable in a game like ME because every quest/scene is extremely expensive - what with dialog, animations etc.
 

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