"Every single choice you make matters. But you still die in the end...like regardless of what you do. 100% Completion and you did everything right? Yeah you still die."
Well, you could save Shepard's life if you met certain requirements, but point taken.
ME2 is still my favorite in the series. It had the best teamates, and I loved the suicide mission storyline. It was sad watching some of them die in ME3 though.
The only way you really "save" his life is by doing the Destroy Ending, and you get a short clip of him taking a deep breath in the rubble of the Citadel right before the screen cuts to black. Because I did everything.
I still enjoyed it. A lot actually. I don't get caught up by what designers say. Development isn't set in stone. Sometimes something doesn't work out and needs to be removed.
As long as the game is good, that's all I really care about.
When I was a chef and was planning menus, there is a fair bit of times where I tell somebody I'm doing something. I test it out and it's shit so I do different things. Same thing can happen with games.
I guess the problem is that people say way too many things before the game gets released.
The original ending wasn't the greatest. If it was the Extended Ending was the original one, the backlash would be less severe.
But in my opinion, the third game was the most epic game I have played. It was exactly what I wanted in the third. Seeing Reapers destroy Earth at the start made it memorable for me. I would argue that all three endings the series were roughly the same no matter what decisions you made.
But this has always been a BioWare complaint. Dialogue, okay first time they dropped the ball there but it's somewhat redeemable in the very end when you talk to your squad before the final battle. That gives me chills EVERY time.
This wasn't an issue of appealing to "casuals." They were probably rushed because it's EA but BioWare truly doesn't believe in aspects of other RPGs.
They don't believe in exploration or big worlds. They don't believe in side quests because that will distract you from the one thing BioWare believes they invented: story. To them exploring, or doing other quests is no big deal compared to their "epic narratives!" Which were at times epic but they are definitely losing steam.
As technology progresses and they look to improve their games there should be a correlation with more open, unique and fresh worlds. We've had an inverse effect. ME1 at least attempted exploration then it got scrapped in ME2 and ME3 was an even bigger joke. You can't even go back to some planets...
DAO had a decent world but DA2...****ing horrendous. I'm so glad Skyrim kicked BioWare's ass and humbled them on their "winning" formula. Now they're forced to look at what they're doing and implement some of what made Skyrim good.
I ranted more than I intended but BioWare didn't suddenly just suck at making RPGs with ME3, they've gradually been doing it for awhile.
In fact, ME2 is less of an RPG than ME3 is. You barely have any choices on how to upgrade your character and both ME2 and ME3 follow the same mission structure as well. ME1 and ME2 have missions that take place on planets and you have a choice on what to do first but at certain times, missions appear that will need to be done right away. As well, ME2 last mission is unavoidable if you accidentally trigger the previous mission.
You can't compare Bethesda to Bioware. Both do different things and have been for a very long time. Bioware creates stories and are excellent at universe building. Bethesda create excellent open world sandboxes but have shit storytelling.
Last edited by Smasandian on Aug 11th, 2014 at 03:08 AM
Of course but Bethesda has been trying to improve with each and every game.
BioWare is staying the course or at some points devolving. They don't have to be completely open like Skyrim or Fallout but at least make a damn effort to try and have an open world.
Like in ME1 they have shown that they can try and juggle between an open ideal RPG game with an epic story. Far from perfect but a solid beginning. But with each installment they take things out instead of trying to add more features. That was a bit cocky of them and in the end it blew up.
ME2 is one of my favorite games to play but that had its issues too. It was erased by how awesome the suicide mission was.
I loved ME2. Fantastic game. Just like I loved ME1 and ME3. All three games were really good.
I don't know why Bioware needs to create open world games? That's not why I play Bioware games.
Supposedly DA3 will have much more open environments but a series like Mass Effect doesn't seem to need open worlds. I always felt the series was more about the alien species you encounter and less about the environment you were in.
A game based in space and featuring a multitude of aliens and planets and stuff absolutely needs open worlds. You make a game featuring the entire galaxy, that makes people want to explore. You bring out aliens, people want to know about them and where they come from. I would have loved to visit the Asari or Drell/Hanar homeworld. It had sooooo much potential.
Don't need open worlds. But I do things the places we went should have been more open then they were. Like more places like the citadel that you can walk around and really get a feel of outside of the specific path
I would agree that some places could of have been a bit more open but I always felt that ME wasn't about the environments but how the story was told.
For instance, the Reapers are invaded the known galaxy and destroy the Turian home planet and your off doing sidequests and exploring every nook and cranny (like in Skyrim)....kind of ruins the vibe of the game.
ME3 isn't technically a poorly designed game, though. ME3 is thoroughly a masterpiece and is up there with the other two installments. It effectively carries a balanced and solidly dark storyline through it's paces. The whole "pick your color" joke is funny but has no merit. Any conclusion, or part of a tale for that matter, can be trivialized with such carelessness. I've seen it countless times.
ME3 generates a whole host of contrarian hate and really bad criticism. I'm not on that bandwagon.
Technically it is a poorly designed game. Its quite lazily and sloppily made. Like, if you want to see a quick indication of this skip to 1:41:20 -
Note that this is after he's already pointed out how they cut corners on the scaling of that environment. Check out 2:17:30 for more on this kind of thing. And then theres all the other poor design decisions we've already mentioned. Like, the dude on the last page was sperging hard about open environments and shit, but he still had a good point about how much smaller and restrictive ME3 is compared to the other two. Even in ME2 you could go to the Citadel, Omega, Tuchanka and Illium in between missions. In ME3 you could go to the Citadel.
Furthermore, its attempts at a dark storyline are frequently undercut by its poor attempts at drama and plain ol' bad writing. The stupid kid in the vent, the dream sequences, a blatant deus ex machina resolution, Thessia, Cerberus being the primary antagonist for much of the game, Tali's face, many of your choices not mattering, Thessia, the Rachni resolution, Thessia etc.
Kai Shitlord doesn't deserve for me to remember how to spell his stupid name.
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Last edited by Nephthys on Aug 13th, 2014 at 09:48 PM