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Mass Effect - Wherein we argue about plot points, spoiler tags, and galactic peace.
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You should appropriate them for ME2. I'm sure there's nobody left to sue BioWare over it.
The C'tan. Duh.
(See: Warhammer 40k - Necrons: Ancient Emo Robots bent on destroying life)
Currently playing: Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, Metro 2033
1) Go into your steam/steamapps/common/mass effect/binaries folder. Run the Mass Effect Config executable in there. There were some options that didn't work properly for me until I used that. Don't know why.
2) Force max AA and AF on your graphics card. I did that with and it made all the difference.
3) Someone said something about the textures not being high res; I had the same problem the first time I played it. I think you may have to adjust the settings in game, then restart for it to take effect. I think that's what got it to work for me.
The hanar? They revere the Protheans as the Enkindlers. They believe that the Protheans did something to assist their development as a species. Which, as far as we know, is the truth. It's similar to how the salarians helped in uplifting the krogans... And, if one is inclined to make the argument, is parallel to how as humans evolve they tend to replace their gods with other objects if interest or devotion.
The geth worship the Reapers insofar as they believe the Reapers to be the pinnacle of machine lifeforms. I think it was only Saren who mentioned directly that they treat the Reapers as gods (but not their 'creators' as the hanar believe about the Protheans). There is an interesting interplay on Feros at the shrine and in light of Ashley's beliefs really stands out, but there, it's only suspected that the geth might have a religion of sorts. And they sure don't worship/revere their own creators...
In the grand scheme of things, there is minimal religion in Mass Effect. Most of it comes directly from Ashley since it's likely that the hanar evangelist is dismissed by most players. Probably as 'silly'.
You're muckin' with a G!
Bah, in my opinion it made the choice much easier...
I think he means intially, to fight the bug people.
As we all know, the Salarians giveth, and the Salarians taketh away.
That's it. They did it quickly and without thinking ahead. Then their act of 'godhood' rather backfired. What ever the Protheans were supposed to have done was a slight thing and the hanar simply evolved from that.
Speaking of Prothean intervention:
You're muckin' with a G!
I would be pleased as punch if a sideways reference to Frungy was put in somewhere.
Colonel Shepard: Specter and Space Pope.
Ah, that is what is so brilliant about it. We just assume organic life would be the original species, the twist in Mass Effect is
Personally I am hoping the universe will eventually tie into transformer continuity, bring in the all spark.
Also Sovereign's theme is badass, I am listening to the soundtrack right now. His theme in particular reminds me of the Toto soundtrack to David Lynch's Dune.
Also Wrex and Tali fuck like a dozen times.
This is neglecting the possiblity that the reapers actually ARE organic or partially organic in nature, and are simply differentiating themselves from other organic sentients purely due to differing modes of thinking. They could in fact simply be cyborgs of an ancient alien race, something similar to the Bentusi from the Homeworld series. The Bentusi, despite being of organic origin, consider the ship to be a part of themselves, and thus don't think of themselves as being similar to humans.
Fix'd for G1.
Also you go on another sidequest that you think is to a generic barren world, but end up landing on Unicron and accidentally re-activating him.
Off topic, but there's another Transformers film in the works for this summer isn't there?
I believe you are correct, sadly.
"We're supposed to talk to meat?"
"That's the idea. That's the message they're sending out by radio. 'Hello. Anyone out there? Anyone home?' That sort of thing."
"They actually do talk, then. They use words, ideas, concepts?"
"Oh, yes. Except they do it with meat."
"I thought you just told me they used radio."
"They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how when you slap or flap meat it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat."
"Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much. So what do you advise?"
http://www.setileague.org/articles/meat.htm
EDIT: Anyone else find the use of the word "Omigod" in a SciFi story written in the 1940s to be a bit ... odd?
EDIT2: Nevermind, written in 1991. I thought it was older.
I'll admit, there was way too much silliness and teen soap opera for my liking, but the film did deliver on the GIANT TRANSFORMING ROBOTS (that needs to be in caps) with the huge guns and full blown battles taking place in the streets, so I can forgive that. Plus there were like a half-dozen references back to the old series and movie thrown in, which a geek like me just eats up.
I can still hardly believe that they even brought Peter Cullen back to play Optimus Prime. That was such a freaking 80's throwback.
Pfff... Like Tali would ever come out of that biohazard suit of hers.
:winky:
Nah, it's not dumb. I actually tried that, but it doesn't make a difference.
It's definitely something with low res textures. Up close, objects and faces look great. From further away, you start to notice that "stair step" graphics. It's definitely an AA issue, I'm just not sure how to force higher res from my end.
Edit: Oh and as much as Sovereign is a badass,
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If that was an option and even if it did damn me to hell...I'd take that.
8-)
The Reapers have reached the pinnacle of their "machine" evolution. However, one thing they're missing is the ability to manipulate the fabric of the Universe directly. In their near infinite wisdom, they've discovered the possibility of a genetic mutation occurring in organic life that will lead to the eventual manifestation of such power (what we humans call "Biotics").
Hence, they've redesigned elements in the galaxy to act as a sort of controlled experiment, where in they will allow sentient organic life to develop and evolve to a certain point at which it's probable that this mutation will occur. If the mutation doesn't occur within the allotted time frame, they "reset" the experiment by annihilating all high-level organic life forms, and start again.
However, this time around, the mutation has occurred, and the Reapers were preparing to harvest the organic life forms, in preparation for assimilating this ability, thus allowing them to become true masters of the universe.
Basically my guess is that, hey, the galaxy has been around for billions of fucking years. Somebody got cocky and developed an AI that was smarter than they were. The AI starts improving itself, a Terminator situation rolls around, and the squishy meat-people lose this time. The AI leaves the planet in search of more unique ideas to add to itself, building more and more copies, each one better than the last. Basically they become "infinite" in the sense that they've taken everything that's ever been in the galaxy and they're going to take everything else that ever shows up. If everything that ever was is a part of you, you've sort of gotten rid of your original manufacturer.
STEAM ID
Which makes sense, as iirc, Sovereign refers to himself as being "infinite" in one of the encounters you have with him. That would be the typical mythos for sentient machine based life.
However, the one downside to the perfect, calculated evolution of a machine is you lose the randomness of mutating genetics, which is why the Reapers still allow sentient life to develop and evolve. Hell, the Reapers might not even understand what's happening with Biotics right now, and figured this was just another boring cycle of biological development...but either way, you can imagine once the Reapers do discover such as thing, they're sure as hell going to want it.
But isn't biotics just a small-scale application of the titular Mass Effect? You know, the one which allows the mass relays to shoot your ship to other sectors at incredible speeds? If that's the case, then the Reapers invented the Mass Effect technology and allowed us to find it.
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I like the Biotics thing too, though. And the two don't necessarily have to be mutually exclusive.
GT: batshido Hit me up on ME3.
I was having trouble playing for more than 5 minutes with my 8800 GTS, and found the same complaints in Steam and Bioware forums that you did. After fighting with the game for a few hours on and off (bought it during the Steam deal along with a bunch of other things), I finally tried swapping drivers, like several threads suggested. I removed my 180.48 drivers (most recent on the Nvidia site at the time, though I've heard there are 180.84 drivers available now as well) and installed 175.19 (from around July last year, I believe), and lo, I managed to finish the game with only 1 bug and one outright crash. YMMV, but I am now a believer in the glory of the 175.19 drivers. At least for Mass Effect. Which is awesome.
Speaking of which, I finally beat the game last night, and enjoyed the hell out of it.
My main quibble was with the elevators. Oh god, so many elevators, and they just took sooooo loooooong to get anywhere.
As I've heard elsewhere, the game sure talks a lot, which at times felt sort of like I was tediously going through the motions, but I felt the same way near the end of KotoR too, so I knew what I was getting into, and perhaps I just tried to push through too much too quickly.
My first playthrough was as a Soldier, which in hindsight may have been a poor choice. Having some guaranteed combat power on hand is always nice, but with squad auto-levelling on (a mistake, I'm sure) I often found my crew a bit behind on being able to hack or bypass certain objectives. While this could've been combated with a little personal direction in their skill levelling, it still left me desiring to always have a tech member with high electronics/other skills on hand, and to balance that I tried to grab a high biotic member, which left me almost always running the same pair of associates.
Now I'm looking at doing a New Game+ run for more achievements, as well as doing all the content I skipped (while very little seems to actually be timed, I'm a sucker for a good flow to the "oh god, we have to go now, go go go" main storyline, and found myself buried in the "final dungeon" as it were without the ability to go back and finish up a giant pile of side quests and content.
So I guess I'm pondering whether I want to do a New Game+ with my soldier, perhaps doing more of the Renegade chains/actions (as with KotoR I'm a sucker for the 'Good Guys', so I maxed out Paragon and only accidentally snagged a bar or so of Renegade), or abandon that character altogether and start anew with a Tech or Tech Hybrid class, so I can a little more freely adjust my party on a whim without feeling required to have a certain character or characters along to snag odds and ends throughout the levels.
With the idea that Mass Effect 2 will take actions and previous characters into account, it's something I'm giving thought to, but given that ME2 might take years to come out (and/or get onto Steam), I suppose I've got time to kill.
Hopefully the first downloadable content will hit Steam eventually as well.
Except the Reapers need large scale machinery to achieve the Mass Effect. Organics have developed the ability to manipulate such forces with their minds.
Imagine being able to do everything the Mass Relays do, without the Mass Relays. Like being able to bend or break the laws of the Universe with your mind.
Or maybe I'm nuts, and just trying to bend Mass Effects towards a ripoff of the Hyperion series...
I also thought that there might be something about them not being able to reproduce and make new copies of themselves.
Beyond that I also think they actually hate biological life, it is inimical to them, and they genuinely want to make sure to swat it down before it runs rampant. I don't think the biotics really surprised them though, I mean, Saren had biotics and they saw you using them and didn't suddenly go "Woah! Thats sweet, take that dude alive!"
If you read on down you can't wear it as a mask/helmet, so it's just a vaguely shoddy bust of him rather than a cool costume piece.
You're muckin' with a G!