Mass Effect

adam's post up there is booming though

i watched my pal play the end of mass effect 2 the other day, and man was it hard to sit through. So many cut scenes, and so painful!

so i'm wrapping up ME1 and it's enjoyable enough to pick up ME2, then we'll see about ME3.

i almost gave up on the entire game when i had to fight matriarch benezia and i was severely underpowered: 10 seconds of fighting, getting killed, waiting for the save to reload, X through the stupid dialogue, repeat. it probably took me about 30 tries over the course of two days

I had the same issue at that point. I just knocked down the difficulty for the fight and beat it the very next time.

Xpost, cutscenes are awesome.

It probably helps to play through the game and get invested in the characters.

That said, I am a notorious cut scene skipper.

The Benezia fight is such bullshit- I had the same problem.

ME2 is weird in that the story is noticeably worse- there are plot holes you could drive a decent-sized bus through, and seemingly half the supporting cast are raging assholes- but it's way more fun to actually play. It's like they handed off the combat to a completely separate dev team that had actually played an action game at some point in their lives.

I am staying up until ME3 unlocks at midnight, in order to get in a few rounds of multiplayer, and oh god that is the most pathetic thing :(

http://i42.tinypic.com/2e1hpmv.jpg

not only did they already beat it BUT they already found plagiarism AND took the time to photoshop a snide meme
the internet, damn

i love the idea that someone searched for "winter space"

This is good so far, better than the demo led me to believe. I like all the mechanics to roll around and move from cover to cover.

so if I was to play this damn thing and i already own ME1, should I buy ME2 and just play top to bottom? Anybody want to argue that you should just jump into this in the middle?

Apparently if you play through 2 you start 3 with all of your stuff and at the same level?

I'd play each game in order. At least at some point even if you start with 3.

1 suffers from RPG inventory glut, copy/paste dungeons and endless vehicle roving.
2 suffers from awful planet scanning for minerals/upgrades.

I played through both (years ago) but have no save files due to severe virus eradication efforts a year ago. My plan is to playthrough ME2 again using a savefile from a completed ME2 save from Mass Effect Saves. Replaying a completed ME2 game gives "200,000 credits, 50,000 of each resource; Renegade and Paragon points reset to neutral; and your weapons and armor (but no upgrades) from first playthrough".

There are pointers for importing PC saves on XBox360 at the site, but none for PS3.

spoilery image - http://i.imgur.com/fCcd3.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/viq2Z.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/zP9p9.png
http://i.imgur.com/l1lHa.gif

^ ass effect

should i activate the cerberus network in ME2? i'm wary of signing up for EA stuff with all the haxx0ring going on with xbox live

Oh come on, man, this came out TWO DAYS ago! Giant fucking spoiler in that post :(

sorry, I honestly didn't think anyone would care. or that anyone didn't know. mods?/?

I can only delete a post, I can't edit text.

pc version of this keeps locking up on me at the first loading screen. bioware's forums are completely silent and a few dozen ppl having the same prob. this suxxx

That sucks. Start chopping down the graphics settings.

I'm waiting for a bit on this one.

I am about 2 hours in. Pretty fun.

whats the spoiler, that you see ass?

Naw, we all know that the ass is coming. The ass rules the character design.

The spoiler involves a plot relevation happening deep in the running-time to one of the characters whose ass has received quite the amount of online attention and one could say abuse from Rule34- and DeviantArt-types.

The point of the graphic is just to show another "lol Bioware used stock photo assets" thing, but the explanatory text is unnecessarily spoilery.

The electronics section of the local Fred Meyer has a trailer for this playing on the display screens. They put Jessica Chobot in this game?!

I just wandered around the citidal for an hour and half tonight. I want to live there.

How are the overheard combos/side distractions there? I enjoyed the previous outings where you got glimpses into deeper-than-average NPC lives, or hearing your own voice used in shop adverts whenever you wandered into or by a place.

I like them, adds to the game even if you don't get a side mission out of it.

12 hours in, still good. Although there is still a severe lack of Liara sleeping with me.

What's this about faces from old save games not importing properly? Anyone having that happen? Got this but only about 2 days from finishing skyrim so holding off starting it for now, though I'm pretty attached to the big old spud head that is my shepherd, so if I need to wait for a patch to get him in it I guess I will.

I got it, but I just recreated my face. There are workarounds out there.

can someone plz explain the huge spoiler to me

actually i just want someone to concisely summarise the plot so i never have to think about playing this, maybe with screenshots of anything actually visually interesting

I will give you the summary of what I have experienced so far in me3. I didn't play the first two games, fwiw, even though I did start this thread. lol

SPOILERS!

There is an uneasy coalition of several civilizations of different kinds of aliens. They have their own tensions and political infighting, but largely all of these civilizations are good in their own way. Some are more warlike, some are more logical. So, Star Trek, basically.

They are all facing attack from an ancient alien threat called the Reapers, who arrive every 50,000 years to wipe out all organic life in the universe or something. And winter is coming! But everyone is so busy arguing and dealing with their own problems that they won't help Earth, where the Reapers are currently focusing their attacks. They are scary aliens, basically.

But there is also another evil force called Cerberus, who are led by a dude called the Illusive Man (Martin Sheen), and they do all kinds of fucked up things. I guess they seem like a mix of war profiteers and genetic engineers? It seems like their idea is to fuse reaper DNA with other DNAs to create super soldiers or something.

Anyway, you are trying to unite the world to fight against these two threats.

Also there are these bug monsters called rachni that are gross and will kill you but not evil per se.

Very sad after the Tuchanka missions...

haha wow that is the dullest thing i can imagine for them to do with cerberus

Cerberus is a human-survivalist paramilitary group led by the enigmatic Illusive Man. Cerberus' core belief is that humans deserve a greater role in the galactic community, and that the Systems Alliance is too hamstrung by law and public opinion to stand up effectively to the Citadel races. Any methods of advancing humanity's ascension are justified, including illegal or dangerous experimentation, terrorist activities, sabotage and assassination. Cerberus operatives accept that these methods are brutal, but believe history will vindicate them. Nevertheless, both the Systems Alliance and the Citadel Council have declared Cerberus to be a terrorist organization and will prosecute identified Cerberus agents accordingly.

okay

does mass effect demonstrate anything interesting about the narrative potential of videogames or

lots of ppl seem unhappy with the ending because there's no real divergence, which seems like it's the case with ... everything else, too

basically the plot continues in much the same way whatever you do but your choices are:

i.a. whether shepard is a prig or an asshole
i.b. whether some people die or more people than that die

which are basically choices about the mode in which you enjoy your heroic narratives to exist, rather than choices about what happens

and

ii. who shepard sleeps with

which, oy.

People's expectations are too high.

Gamers are some of the most entitled consumers of pop culture ever, except for certain indie types or ILM posters

i.b. whether some people die or more people than that die

If the people have names and matter to you then it has more narrative consequence. I've made a few decisions so far that have resulted in the deaths of fairly major characters, and I'm pretty sure they'd be alive if I'd done things differently. There aren't a lot of games that even offer that much choice.

And also, there are characters in this game that wouldn't even be in this game if you let them die in 2. That's pretty crazy to me.

there are characters in this game that wouldn't even be in this game if you let them die in 2

or 1!

^ im still pissed that i let ashley die instead of alenko

does mass effect demonstrate anything interesting about the narrative potential of videogames or

in terms of writing and storytelling, i'd say definitely no
but i think the use of the radial menu for dialogue choices feels very natural with the xbox controller and i think holds a lot of potential in the future of 'interactive storytelling' in games

I think having a radically different endgame would be pretty hard to program in at launch when there are so many things that need to be done just to make sure the game actually WORKS and shit, but I'm surprised more developers haven't tried creating new story paths as add-ons instead of just making entirely new side stories. But I guess it's harder to do that with a big budget title because maybe there aren't many people who would spend $10 to unlock something they can't even access unless they've reached that far in the game, or I guess there's also the risk of fucking up save data or ... ? Whereas with a conventional add-on you can just start it right away.

But the iOS model of constant updates and improvements to existing titles is so fun, and I wish that would happen for bigger games.

I let Ashley die too. Because she shot Wrex. Pissed me off so she dies.

Some game reviews sites have been spurting massively over The Witcher 2 last year just because there's a decision you can make about halfway through, and you get completely different second halves based on that decision.

Which in my view is kind of why freedom and interesting stories are only ever going to be so compatible until we create story-generation technology that isn't completely terrible.

is the witcher 2 a good game apart from the "choices" one makes that define the story? b/c mass effect 1/2 are boring as fuck as far as being a game that is fun to play rather than being The Science Fiction Epic of Our Time is concerned.