Anyone play Mass Effect?

Pythagorean

It might be beneficial from a marketing point of view. Like it might help with immersion, for instance, that the players character doesn't conflict too much with the character being controlled with the player. Best way to guarantee that for the most people is to bland them out.

Mentalist

Shepherd for me was always a Paragon with a bit of a bad side. I never let the renegade score get too high as I tried adding a bit of spice to a 1-dimensional character I created. He was an old guy, but with spunk.

SHISHKABOB

So I went and played it for a while today because I had nothing else to do. I was at that Noveria planet which was all icy and stuff and I had just entered the secret lab or whatever after driving towards it in the vehicle thingy. I spent like an hour playing and got to the survivors when... the game glitched out when I tried to enter an elevator and apparently I had not quick saved and the game had not done any auto saves during my ~hour of play... <:|


anyways, I think the game has relatively fun combat gameplay, though I had set it to casual because I could remember getting my face reamed when I had played this part last. I still think the characters are pretty dumb. For instance, I had Liara and Tali as my sidekicks. At one point I'm talking to the Captain dude of the survivors about the Benezia chick and Liara pops in randomly and says "the matriarch has skills that allow her to survive for long periods of time" all out of the blue and stuff. I felt like the line didn't really add anything and just plain sounded strange and dumb.

Little stuff like that makes me lose my interest in the characters because I feel like it was sort of put together haphazardly. I still don't like it how Sheperd says *everything*. It would be nice if they could show me precisely what he is going to say for each option, because then I could go over it in my head and decide whether that's really what I want to say. But no, I basically have to wing it with some of the options.

That said, I like shooting stuff with my sniper rifle, it's enjoyable. I also like how the actual game itself progresses along with opening doors and pressing buttons and stuff. The puzzles aren't too tough, especially when all you need to do is pour in a bottle of omnigel or whatever.



After my frustration of losing an hours worth of playtime subsides I'll probably play some more.

Drakkith

Oh god, the save system in ME1 makes me want to throw my Xbox through the window. I replayed ME1 a few months back and I think I lost about 5 hours total throughout the game having to replay things I'd already done either because I died and hadn't saved for an hour, or something would bug out. ME2 and 3 were far better with their saves.

SHISHKABOB

seriously, I even checked and saw that I had the auto save option *on*

what kind of auto save system doesn't auto save during an hour's worth of playtime <:|

Mentalist

Auto-save cuts out the suspense in my opinion.

Drakkith

I think you and I have a different idea of what suspense means lol.
I play games to enjoy the storyline usually. The gameplay is a big part, but without a decent story I usually don't care at all for the game. So when I have to replay an hour+ of game time I get extremely frustrated. It's like having to re-read chapters in a book when you just want to get on with the story.

AnTiFreeze3

You can always manually save. Granted, you have to be paying attention and recognize where there might be danger, or at least be cognoscente of the fact that you have been playing for a while without having reached a save point, for it to work well.

I have only played ME1. I'm on my 3rd play-through, because I want to make sure that I've beaten it on the highest difficulty before progressing to the next game. As far as I have heard, the quality of the games decline from ME1, with storyline and dialogue taking a backseat to graphics and action, much like almost every other game. From what I have seen of ME2, it actually looks wonderful (I can't wait to spam that Vanguard charge), but I'm a little worried about ME3. The dialogue seemed very forced, and Shepard often only had two lines of dialogue to choose from, which was hardly ever the case in ME1.

(I have watched numerous review videos, and some gameplay of ME2 and ME3, so I do have some basis for analyzing them).

That said..... has anyone else noticed how they changed how Shepard runs from ME1? In ME1, he had a very distinct run... it was a little unusual, but not something that people would point at and make fun of. Then, in ME2 and ME3, he all of a sudden has this wide, football player gait where he looks like he's taking a dump while running. It doesn't make sense to change that, unless when he was revived, they altered a few things.

Mentalist

Have you played Dark/Demon Souls by any chance? (Off-topic but I am wondering).

I get what you're saying though. I don't mind having to replay whole segments again, although I don't want to. I believe I really just like to stay within the universe instead of finishing the story quickly. I became sadden once I completed ME3 because I missed the ME-universe right after finishing to which I searched online for ME4 rumors.

Drakkith

Which is why it doesn't work well.

Honestly I think I enjoyed the dialogue much better in the last 2 games than the 1st. Perhaps the voice acting quality increased. But remember that the universe the game is set in is changing as the games go along. I'd elaborate but I don't want to post any real spoilers. Suffice it to say I thought the story was much better in the last 2 games than the 1st. ME1 just seemed too open ended which made it difficult to put any real quality into all the side missions and stuff you went on.

I don't remember ME3 being this constricted. Some of your options are only available if you do certain actions beforehand or have a certain status I think, so if you don't do those you may not have certain options available.

They probably had to change it when they upgraded the engine and models between the games. I don't remember that bothering me.