Mass Effect

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.

whereas the impression i'm getting about ME3 is that it's the most fun, but i won't care because i didn't spend 80 hours playing 1 & 2?

I liked a lot of things about Mass Effect 1, looking forward to playing 2 when I get around to it, but it's firmly in the "Guns and Conversations" genre - you run around sorting out shit for people, sometimes involving a fight, sometimes talking people out of it - a lot like the KOTOR games unsurprisingly. If you consider it boring, you could always... fuck off to Gears of War?

first parallel that struck me was actually ocarina of time

jordan 2 is meant to be the big leap i think? the combat in 1 is amazingly boring, it's like jrpg combat meets a cover system and they glare at each other for ever and ever

i found a lot of the conversation dull because i'm pedantic about conversation trees, & a lot of them are fleshed out in a fairly lazy way - there's a lot of shephard saying "tell me about _THING" - and i think the way the game positions itself w/r/t finding about the 'lore' and the 'world' is ... bad on a very elementary level. imagine if fallout dropped the intro cinematic and you spent the first hour going 'we live in a vault? what's a vault?' or if planescape: torment had, say, a magical library in which you could read on and on about the different planes you visited.

this isn't the same thing as finding conversation as a mechanic dull, or finding the world dull.

haven't played the witcher but apparently it makes sword fighting quite fun. also i get the impression the story choices come closer to my definition of 'making meaningful decisions', though probably not that much closer

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.

one of the things i find interesting is that meta-game decisions (reload save + consciously explore how to make someone not die / get the good ending / whatever) are absolutely central to how people get through the narrative experience now? i'm sure someone's made some interactive fiction about this already though.

mass effect 1/2 are boring as fuck as far as being a game that is fun to play

Can't speak for those games but I am finding the game part of ME3 really fun so far. The story part is good but I would've stopped playing by now if I wasn't enjoying the process of killing lots of baddies.

imagine if fallout dropped the intro cinematic and you spent the first hour going 'we live in a vault? what's a vault?' or if planescape: torment had, say, a magical library in which you could read on and on about the different planes you visited.

Fallout seems like it is meant to be ABOUT having a lack of information, though. Sorting your way through the wreckage.

I don't know Planetscape.

man the degree to which people will strain credulity to imagine that this ending is ~actually~ ~if you catch all the hints~ ~really mind-blowing~ is depressing

reminds me of message board chatter after the 2nd matrix movie came out when people were like 'no, see, the 'real world' is actually totally another matrix"

not sure what you're trying to say? i've been reading a hell of a lot about the indoctrination theories and have come to genuinely believe them, such as fact that i very much see bioware releasing epilogue dlc by next month

rumors brewing about that as well

still have to add 2cents that the ending was fucking devastating, in the worst way

i mean

i just don't buy the theories man

**spoilers**spoilers**spoilers****spoilers**spoilers**spoilers**

that a company would spend millions to put out a game with an ostensibly fake ending for the sake of ~really driving their narrative point home~ just strikes me as completely implausible, and it seems considerably more likely to me that they just wrote an ending that lots of people were unsatisfied by. i think it's a fine ending as it is! and the fact that so many are so dissatisfied by it that they're seeking evidence that it's ~not the real ending~ might say more about divergence of taste than it does about the likelihood of bioware fooling their customers. can you imagine the outrage if, after all the hubbub over DLC lately, they released the ~real ending~ as DLC?? total fucking shitstorm.

those are the least spoiler spoilers i ever saw

this game's ending is the ending to a game, hot diggity

Ha I mean better safe

i mean

i just don't buy the theories man

**spoilers**spoilers**spoilers****spoilers**spoilers**spoilers**

that a company would spend millions to put out a game with an ostensibly fake ending for the sake of ~really driving their narrative point home~ just strikes me as completely implausible, and it seems considerably more likely to me that they just wrote an ending that lots of people were unsatisfied by. i think it's a fine ending as it is! and the fact that so many are so dissatisfied by it that they're seeking evidence that it's ~not the real ending~ might say more about divergence of taste than it does about the likelihood of bioware fooling their customers. can you imagine the outrage if, after all the hubbub over DLC lately, they released the ~real ending~ as DLC?? total fucking shitstorm.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Friday, 16 March 2012 04:28 (Yesterday) Permalink

All this I agree with, but it's not an alternative ending I think possible, it's an epilogue - a follow-through, or at least some sort of "reality check" sans the fringe supernatural shit that occurred near the end. I think the largest factor of my convincing was the fact that, towards the end, the Illusive Man's "path" was lighted as blue and destroying the reapers red - driving home sense that the reapers were tricking you, the player, into thinking you were making some sort of right decision by following this color-code that has dictated how much of the series plays out.

I could never imagine Bioware apologizing and issuing forth an alternative re-written ending - it would set the possibility that gamers could do this in the future: Bitch enough and things will change. Plus, rewriting or remaking one's own "artistic vision" at the request of unhappy customers is just not something I could see Bioware do...that's just not something people will do. When the lot of BSN posters have tossed their hands up following the wake of the Final Hours "documentary" and in regards of Hudson & Co. clearly stating this is the ending they wanted to see happen and thus disowning all indoctrination theories, I think their missing the point that these theories are integral to how the ending played out in the first place. I'll scrounge up some more evidence if you're not convinced, but numerous twitter feeds from staff have hinted to an announcement in the ready that they only want to be made when they feel a proper amount of people have actually finished ME3 (as if the spoilers were unavoidable in this mass internet tirade: My game was spoiled, on accident, long before I finished it).

Also, DLC promotes purchases of original copies and thus I see DLC being likely - the merger with EA kinda posits the acquisition of a franchise as big as this as a step toward combating the likes of GameStop and other retailers that reap 100% of used-purchase profits. You can still buy a complete game used - but if you want the "full experience" do you have to buy an original copy. It's bullshit, I know, but I really think this is an opportunity EA couldn't bear to pass up - it's not often that DLC is regarded as "essential".

- it's not often that DLC is regarded as "essential".

― kelpolaris, Saturday, March 17, 2012 4:20 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm just saying that the very idea of DLC as essential is both problematic as to the nature of the game released

well no other half of that "nature of the game" come to think

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=zRRpGlmtws8

wait

http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=zRRpGlmtws8

okay here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRRpGlmtws8

I have been playing a bunch of the multiplayer and it's pretty enjoyable. I happen to prefer co-op multiplayer vs. computer opponents over getting shot in the face over and over again by 12-year olds so there's that.

i want to know if ur allowed to roleplay a homophobe

lol

this kid should be shot. what a fucking crybaby.

http://kotaku.com/5894278/mass-effect-3-fan-complains-to-the-feds-over-the-games-ending

it's pathetic, but i'm rather glad there are people willing to go to such lengths. it kinda channels my rage for how much i absolutely hate casey hudson/marc walters since fucking with the minds of so many loyal and devoted fans. mass effect 3 was the first game i've pre-ordered since....shit, i think it was doom 3 in 2004.

and now i make them both sound like royal geniuses, for having the ability to exhibit so much control. what i meant to say is that they're both cunts who committed reputation suicide for thinking such a shit ending was a great idea.

it's been a week since i beat the game - i'm just a little pizzed that it has no incentive for replayability. the first couple games i gave a good 2 runs a piece. too fun, being able to see all the outcomes of your actions.

but i'm rather glad there are people willing to go to such lengths.

they should expend that kind of energy for something other than a goddamn video game. it's really first-world problem bullshit.