ME3 does have those choices. But its negated by the fact you can bypass them by having done the right stuff in ME1/ME2.
That's my point though.
Did you know the Virmire decision was originally going to be that way, that if you tried hard enough (had enough of some in-game asset, I guess, or maybe high enough paragon/renegade) that you could save both Kaiden and Ashley? The recorded dialog for it was found by dataminers. Making it so that you actually cannot save both was a design choice and, I think, a good one.
Though Is suppose they did do a little bit of that, with
Mordin, Thane, and Legion
being (mostly) unsavable.
Come to think of it, the choices around Mordin are the most interesting, since you can save him if you played truly renegade through three games, killing Wrex, refusing to save Maelon's data, etc. so that both Wrex and Eve are dead by the time you are at the shroud with Mordin trying to convince him to let the genophage remain sabotaged.
DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
Oh I actually agree with you. And I feel having to make a choice usually makes for more interesting conversation because people make said choices for different reasons.
I think the game manages enough emotional impact without making you arbitrarily fail things just to make you have to give up characters. Mass Effect 3, even with my pristine run of saving all the people all the time, was still twenty hours of feels.
A non-imported game, which seems to be the default assumption in 3 given the "perfect place to enter the series!" marketing crap, does indeed have to choose between the geth and quarians.
I think the game manages enough emotional impact without making you arbitrarily fail things just to make you have to give up characters. Mass Effect 3, even with my pristine run of saving all the people all the time, was still twenty hours of feels.
Meh. I'm not saying that ME3's conflicts working the way they are is bad. In a way it was the payoff for having played the game since the beginning.
But I would say choices are more interesting when they are choices.
Like that is one I genuinely feel bad about. It's also a good example of the perfect 'mid ground' between super shepard and grim dark must choose kinda situations. Simply because you CAN stop it happening, it just isn't obvious while you're playing ME3 that it will ever become an issue, it's also not even obvious what choice (in Legion's mission) leads to being able to do it or not.
It rewarded super good Shepard's for always being super good, even when it seemed to not matter. Which is neat as hell.
I like Arrival and Overlord both, but Overlord has way more emotional impact, at least the first time around.
Although for me
destroying an entire system full of people
was also a pretty big deal the first time, because I don't do the comedic "all Batarians should die" roleplaying in my games.
Yeah, that's an important point. If you play a Paragon Shepard, please note that Arrival
forces you to kill 300k people.
More reason for me to dislike it tbh.
That's actually the reason I like it myself.
"You can always fix everything, if you try hard enough" gets kind of boring. I was expecting more Sophie's choice type decisions like that in ME3 and didn't really get them.
People still remember the emotional impact of the Virmire decision after all this time for good reason.
To each their own, I found it obnoxious and contrived. Why take away the player's ability to just make that call? You're still going to do the important thing.
The Virmire decision is different because Kaiden and Ashley knew what they were up against, and both actually tell you to go after the other. Arrival feels jarring because you can succeed absolutely on the suicide mission. I went along with Arrival because I figured it might have an impact on ME3, but it doesn't, so it's just dumb shock value.
I like Arrival and Overlord both, but Overlord has way more emotional impact, at least the first time around.
Although for me
destroying an entire system full of people
was also a pretty big deal the first time, because I don't do the comedic "all Batarians should die" roleplaying in my games.
Yeah, that's an important point. If you play a Paragon Shepard, please note that Arrival
forces you to kill 300k people.
More reason for me to dislike it tbh.
That's actually the reason I like it myself.
"You can always fix everything, if you try hard enough" gets kind of boring. I was expecting more Sophie's choice type decisions like that in ME3 and didn't really get them.
People still remember the emotional impact of the Virmire decision after all this time for good reason.
To each their own, I found it obnoxious and contrived. Why take away the player's ability to just make that call? You're still going to do the important thing.
The Virmire decision is different because Kaiden and Ashley knew what they were up against, and both actually tell you to go after the other. Arrival feels jarring because you can succeed absolutely on the suicide mission. I went along with Arrival because I figured it might have an impact on ME3, but it doesn't, so it's just dumb shock value.
Maybe if there had been a Batarian squadmate?
“I used to draw, hard to admit that I used to draw...”
I rate Arrival ahead of Overlord because Arrival didn't make me drive around in the Hammerhead. I also like what Arrival attempted to do with the stealth aspects, it's just the execution had a long way to go. Hopefully it's something they can do better with the next engine.
I don't understand what lack of choices are being presented to me in ME3.
I told the Dalatrass to fuck off and warned Mordin about sabotage. He went up and gave his life to ensure that the cure was legitimate and I was able to do so because of choices I made throughout the entire series. The Salarians decided against helping me, I didn't get to 'please' everyone. And to please everyone, you have to deceive them and in the end you kill the Krogan if you DO please everyone at the moment. It's a decision with delayed consequences, one that's at the end of a road where you haven't pleased people in the past.
Achieving peace between the quarians and geth is a similar situation where there were various choices and each of them had consequences. Does every choice have to be some kind of genocide on the line to make it a legitimate 'consequence' for not following certain actions? Isn't that the basis of the ending? I thought we didn't like the ending. The ending gave me 'choices' with clear consequences, and I hated it.
I like Arrival and Overlord both, but Overlord has way more emotional impact, at least the first time around.
Although for me
destroying an entire system full of people
was also a pretty big deal the first time, because I don't do the comedic "all Batarians should die" roleplaying in my games.
Yeah, that's an important point. If you play a Paragon Shepard, please note that Arrival
forces you to kill 300k people.
More reason for me to dislike it tbh.
That's actually the reason I like it myself.
"You can always fix everything, if you try hard enough" gets kind of boring. I was expecting more Sophie's choice type decisions like that in ME3 and didn't really get them.
People still remember the emotional impact of the Virmire decision after all this time for good reason.
To each their own, I found it obnoxious and contrived. Why take away the player's ability to just make that call? You're still going to do the important thing.
The Virmire decision is different because Kaiden and Ashley knew what they were up against, and both actually tell you to go after the other. Arrival feels jarring because you can succeed absolutely on the suicide mission. I went along with Arrival because I figured it might have an impact on ME3, but it doesn't, so it's just dumb shock value.
Maybe if there had been a Batarian squadmate?
I'd actually love for a spin off (honestly to me most ME stuff should be spin offs, don't call it ME4, just be: a game set in ME cannon at some point) of you playing a bounty hunter in the terminus systems.
Have like:
A Vorcha
A krogan
A Turian
A justicar
A batarian
Loadsa the more fringe/criminal aspects of things.
Though speaking of driving, now I'm a little sad the arcade in the Citadel doesn't have a racing game that Shepard could be hilariously bad at. Like no matter how well you play you still finish with the lowest score and/or your car blows up.
+2
NEO|PhyteThey follow the stars, bound together.Strands in a braid till the end.Registered Userregular
Got my AR mastery up to 8/9, decided to finally try out the harrier for my finisher.
I can see why people like it, though man it doesn't have much spare ammo.
It was that somehow, from within the derelict-horror, they had learned a way to see inside an ugly, broken thing... And take away its pain.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
The early marketing buzz for ME3 was that you would have to decide the fate of whole species and that Virmire was but a small taste of the sacrifices you'd have to make to defeat the Reapers.
But, and I believe this was a detriment to the story and overall tone of ME3, you get to cheat these encounters by your actions in the past games.
I'd rather those past choices effected the strength of your allies that you got to keep, and not enable you to save everyone. There needed to be more choices like Virmire, like the Arrival, hell, we never even got a situation like the one that was offered in the very first Mass Effect trailers!
A situation like that never happened. Not once. You were never forced to make a Virmire choice on a large scale, all of those big events were "solvable" by storing enough "correct" choices from past playthroughs. Which made the Red ending seem especially unfair to some, it shouldn't have.
"Shepard is a memetic god that saves everyone" is cool and all, but I think it helped set up the game for disappointment in the finale when it was clear you couldn't get a magic sparkle ending.
manwiththemachinegun on
+1
CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
A non-imported game, which seems to be the default assumption in 3 given the "perfect place to enter the series!" marketing crap, does indeed have to choose between the geth and quarians.
Actually, thinking about it in that respect makes it feel like a worse design choice than what we previous-save folks got, because
The way you relate to the Quarians and the Geth is through the character you actually "friend." You want to save Quarians because you like Tali, you want to save the Geth because you like Legion. Saving the Geth and losing Legion anyway is kind of a cheat.
That the individual characters are the reason we care for each species seems to be a concept that kinda-sorta forget in 3. They really got it in 2: "For this fight, want personal connection. Can't anthropomorphize galaxy, but can think of favorite nephew. Fighting for him."
People are constantly forced to make those decisions in their playthroughs if they haven't taken the time and toiled to set things up to work in specific favor. Just because you can avoid those situations doesn't mean they didn't exist for people. If you want a story where everything you do really doesn't matter and at the end of the day you're still a fuckup, I would recommend LA Noire. There, no matter what choices you make, you find out in the end that you weren't really that much of a hero after all.
+1
DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
I don't understand what lack of choices are being presented to me in ME3.
I told the Dalatrass to fuck off and warned Mordin about sabotage. He went up and gave his life to ensure that the cure was legitimate and I was able to do so because of choices I made throughout the entire series. The Salarians decided against helping me, I didn't get to 'please' everyone. And to please everyone, you have to deceive them and in the end you kill the Krogan if you DO please everyone at the moment. It's a decision with delayed consequences, one that's at the end of a road where you haven't pleased people in the past.
Achieving peace between the quarians and geth is a similar situation where there were various choices and each of them had consequences. Does every choice have to be some kind of genocide on the line to make it a legitimate 'consequence' for not following certain actions? Isn't that the basis of the ending? I thought we didn't like the ending. The ending gave me 'choices' with clear consequences, and I hated it.
Not really much of a choice in the case of the Krogan or Geth/Quarians.
Its basically like you have to choose between cake and cupcakes, but you can get both anyway so it isn't much of a choice unless you purposely don't want one.
The choices in ME2 worked a bit differently. They were smaller scale, yes, but I feel the fact that you couldn't have yor cake and eat it too made you put more thought into.
I mean in ME3 I guess you could say with the Krogan its a choice of whether or not you should trust Wrex and Eve to do the right thing. But, meh, even then it isn't given much weight.
I could well see a Mass Effect 4 Xmas 2014. Dragon Age 3 is the last hurrah on the current gen consoles, EA/Bioware will want to have a big RPG out every holiday.
My hope, maybe as a phone spinoff, is a tactical turnbased game a la XCom. It's a cover based shooter where they developed a ton of different weapons, classes, aliens, enemies, factions etcet.
In the meantime, I'm about to do some multi, anyone up for a round on PC?
I don't understand what lack of choices are being presented to me in ME3.
I told the Dalatrass to fuck off and warned Mordin about sabotage. He went up and gave his life to ensure that the cure was legitimate and I was able to do so because of choices I made throughout the entire series. The Salarians decided against helping me, I didn't get to 'please' everyone. And to please everyone, you have to deceive them and in the end you kill the Krogan if you DO please everyone at the moment. It's a decision with delayed consequences, one that's at the end of a road where you haven't pleased people in the past.
Achieving peace between the quarians and geth is a similar situation where there were various choices and each of them had consequences. Does every choice have to be some kind of genocide on the line to make it a legitimate 'consequence' for not following certain actions? Isn't that the basis of the ending? I thought we didn't like the ending. The ending gave me 'choices' with clear consequences, and I hated it.
Not really much of a choice in the case of the Krogan or Geth/Quarians.
Its basically like you have to choose between cake and cupcakes, but you can get both anyway so it isn't much of a choice unless you purposely don't want one.
The choices in ME2 worked a bit differently. They were smaller scale, yes, but I feel the fact that you couldn't have yor cake and eat it too made you put more thought into.
I mean in ME3 I guess you could say with the Krogan its a choice of whether or not you should trust Wrex and Eve to do the right thing. But, meh, even then it isn't given much weight.
I have very little comprehension for this mindset.
"Alright, Shepard, we need to gather some allies. But you can only get three. The other three you need to kill or betray."
'Why?'
"You just have to. We need to teach you to make tough decisions that will have a deep impact on you."
'Why?"
"Just do it. Just ... you can't get the help of everyone. That's stupid. This is a war. You have to decide who you like and who you don't like. It's not like you can just help everyone all the time. That's not realistic. Do it."
The early marketing buzz for ME3 was that you would have to decide the fate of whole species and that Virmire was but a small taste of the sacrifices you'd have to make to defeat the Reapers.
But, and I believe this was a detriment to the story and overall tone of ME3, you get to cheat these encounters by your actions in the past games.
I'd rather those past choices effected the strength of your allies that you got to keep, and not enable you to save everyone. There needed to be more choices like Virmire, like the Arrival, hell, we never even got a situation like the one that was offered in the very first Mass Effect trailers!
A situation like that never happened. Not once. You were never forced to make a Virmire choice on a large scale, all of those big events were "solvable" by storing enough "correct" choices from past playthroughs. Which made the Red ending seem especially unfair to some, it shouldn't have.
"Shepard is a memetic god that saves everyone" is cool and all, but I think it helped set up the game for disappointment in the finale when it was clear you couldn't get a magic sparkle ending.
Synthesis is the magic sparkle ending where Shepard saves everyone.
Only one wave with six enemies, each one is Shepard of a different variety; soldier, vanguard, adept, sentinal, engineer, and infiltrator.
Good luck!
Missiles. Done.
Shepard has a habit of taking Reaper beams to the face and being fine. I doubt a piddly hydra would do more than give him an itch.
still, having done this in SP insanity, there's one thing even shep would have a hard time dealing with, and this applies to pretty much everything in the mass effect universe: the Reegar Carbine is a hell of a gun
i think i'd be content with telling the reegar clan to build an ark.
Sheps also get medi-gel. Vangod gets a reegar too. Soldier gets a either a falcon, claymore, or typhoon. Adept/engineer/sentinel gets either a scorpion or acolyte. Infiltrator gets choice of shotgun or sniper rifle or both.
even with those advantages, you're talking AI versus a real squad of 4 players - players with powers that shep can't touch, like anni field, snap freeze, shield boost, arc grenades, flamer, havoc strike, etc.
hell, i think your standard plat team of GIs/TGIs/AIUs would be able to handle it without too much trouble.
Shepard gets time dilation.
yeah, once you get that working in multiplayer you let me know
Well in this case it would be once Shepard sees you she will have emptied her entire clip onto you before you have a chance to react.
to be clear here i'm talking about by-the-book AI-controlled sheps, not actual shepard. gameplay-wise, that's an extreme difference. i feel that there's some "SP shep is awesome and would totally kick our team's ass in MP" going on here, and that's fine, but narrative-shep is not the same thing as gameplay-shep.
SP gameplay-shep would have trouble dancing with a kroguard for sure. narrative-shep would of course win, but not because they're on even turf.
Registered just for the Mass Effect threads | Steam: click ^^^ | Origin: curlyhairedboy
0
DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
I don't understand what lack of choices are being presented to me in ME3.
I told the Dalatrass to fuck off and warned Mordin about sabotage. He went up and gave his life to ensure that the cure was legitimate and I was able to do so because of choices I made throughout the entire series. The Salarians decided against helping me, I didn't get to 'please' everyone. And to please everyone, you have to deceive them and in the end you kill the Krogan if you DO please everyone at the moment. It's a decision with delayed consequences, one that's at the end of a road where you haven't pleased people in the past.
Achieving peace between the quarians and geth is a similar situation where there were various choices and each of them had consequences. Does every choice have to be some kind of genocide on the line to make it a legitimate 'consequence' for not following certain actions? Isn't that the basis of the ending? I thought we didn't like the ending. The ending gave me 'choices' with clear consequences, and I hated it.
Not really much of a choice in the case of the Krogan or Geth/Quarians.
Its basically like you have to choose between cake and cupcakes, but you can get both anyway so it isn't much of a choice unless you purposely don't want one.
The choices in ME2 worked a bit differently. They were smaller scale, yes, but I feel the fact that you couldn't have yor cake and eat it too made you put more thought into.
I mean in ME3 I guess you could say with the Krogan its a choice of whether or not you should trust Wrex and Eve to do the right thing. But, meh, even then it isn't given much weight.
I have very little comprehension for this mindset.
"Alright, Shepard, we need to gather some allies. But you can only get three. The other three you need to kill or betray."
'Why?'
"You just have to. We need to teach you to make tough decisions that will have a deep impact on you."
'Why?"
"Just do it. Just ... you can't get the help of everyone. That's stupid. This is a war. You have to decide who you like and who you don't like. It's not like you can just help everyone all the time. That's not realistic. Do it."
'Why?!'
Meh, I just find making choices interesting.
And I think the traditional hero's story is boring and overused at this point.
I know it isn't a popular opinion but meh. Never been that kind of person.
I don't understand what lack of choices are being presented to me in ME3.
I told the Dalatrass to fuck off and warned Mordin about sabotage. He went up and gave his life to ensure that the cure was legitimate and I was able to do so because of choices I made throughout the entire series. The Salarians decided against helping me, I didn't get to 'please' everyone. And to please everyone, you have to deceive them and in the end you kill the Krogan if you DO please everyone at the moment. It's a decision with delayed consequences, one that's at the end of a road where you haven't pleased people in the past.
Achieving peace between the quarians and geth is a similar situation where there were various choices and each of them had consequences. Does every choice have to be some kind of genocide on the line to make it a legitimate 'consequence' for not following certain actions? Isn't that the basis of the ending? I thought we didn't like the ending. The ending gave me 'choices' with clear consequences, and I hated it.
Not really much of a choice in the case of the Krogan or Geth/Quarians.
Its basically like you have to choose between cake and cupcakes, but you can get both anyway so it isn't much of a choice unless you purposely don't want one.
The choices in ME2 worked a bit differently. They were smaller scale, yes, but I feel the fact that you couldn't have yor cake and eat it too made you put more thought into.
I mean in ME3 I guess you could say with the Krogan its a choice of whether or not you should trust Wrex and Eve to do the right thing. But, meh, even then it isn't given much weight.
I have very little comprehension for this mindset.
"Alright, Shepard, we need to gather some allies. But you can only get three. The other three you need to kill or betray."
'Why?'
"You just have to. We need to teach you to make tough decisions that will have a deep impact on you."
'Why?"
"Just do it. Just ... you can't get the help of everyone. That's stupid. This is a war. You have to decide who you like and who you don't like. It's not like you can just help everyone all the time. That's not realistic. Do it."
'Why?!'
Except...actual choices make sense and are by far more realistic:
Salarians uplifted the Krogan as pawns during the Rachni War. Afterwards developed the Genophage to keep them in check since Krogan are just so damn unkillable. Now you want to reverse it and potentially put the whole galaxy at risk. It makes sense that the Salarians wouldn't support you in that case. That's not "just because".
The early marketing buzz for ME3 was that you would have to decide the fate of whole species and that Virmire was but a small taste of the sacrifices you'd have to make to defeat the Reapers.
But, and I believe this was a detriment to the story and overall tone of ME3, you get to cheat these encounters by your actions in the past games.
I'd rather those past choices effected the strength of your allies that you got to keep, and not enable you to save everyone. There needed to be more choices like Virmire, like the Arrival, hell, we never even got a situation like the one that was offered in the very first Mass Effect trailers!
A situation like that never happened. Not once. You were never forced to make a Virmire choice on a large scale, all of those big events were "solvable" by storing enough "correct" choices from past playthroughs. Which made the Red ending seem especially unfair to some, it shouldn't have.
"Shepard is a memetic god that saves everyone" is cool and all, but I think it helped set up the game for disappointment in the finale when it was clear you couldn't get a magic sparkle ending.
Synthesis is the magic sparkle ending where Shepard saves everyone.
Only one wave with six enemies, each one is Shepard of a different variety; soldier, vanguard, adept, sentinal, engineer, and infiltrator.
Good luck!
Missiles. Done.
Shepard has a habit of taking Reaper beams to the face and being fine. I doubt a piddly hydra would do more than give him an itch.
still, having done this in SP insanity, there's one thing even shep would have a hard time dealing with, and this applies to pretty much everything in the mass effect universe: the Reegar Carbine is a hell of a gun
i think i'd be content with telling the reegar clan to build an ark.
Sheps also get medi-gel. Vangod gets a reegar too. Soldier gets a either a falcon, claymore, or typhoon. Adept/engineer/sentinel gets either a scorpion or acolyte. Infiltrator gets choice of shotgun or sniper rifle or both.
even with those advantages, you're talking AI versus a real squad of 4 players - players with powers that shep can't touch, like anni field, snap freeze, shield boost, arc grenades, flamer, havoc strike, etc.
hell, i think your standard plat team of GIs/TGIs/AIUs would be able to handle it without too much trouble.
Shepard gets time dilation.
yeah, once you get that working in multiplayer you let me know
Well in this case it would be once Shepard sees you she will have emptied her entire clip onto you before you have a chance to react.
to be clear here i'm talking about by-the-book AI-controlled sheps, not actual shepard. gameplay-wise, that's an extreme difference. i feel that there's some "SP shep is awesome and would totally kick our team's ass in MP" going on here, and that's fine, but narrative-shep is not the same thing as gameplay-shep.
SP gameplay-shep would have trouble dancing with a kroguard for sure. narrative-shep would of course win, but not because they're on even turf.
If you're just talking powers then sure. Gameplay-Shep is a human soldier/sentinel/adept/engineer/infiltrator/vanguard with some additional bonuses and weight capacity. On a powers-to-powers basis that Shepard would have a tougher time competing unless you brought in the other advantages as well.
0
CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
edited March 2013
Ok quote tags broke again, so I'll just state this is in reply to Renaldo's post instead of quoting it.
No see that would be terrible writing, and I wouldn't like that at all.
Thus I specifically bring up the Virmire choice. First you're asked to split off members of your team, which immediately makes you uncomfortable. When you send Ashley off with the Salarians it feels like for sure she's going to die. Then you come upon the choice. You don't have enough time, either you save the person guarding the bomb, or you save the distraction team. It's not a "for no reason" choice, which would suck. The reason is set up and given in the text, right from the start.
Similarly, the Suicide Mission is one of the greatest experiences I've ever had in a game, because the choices are all about how well you know your crew and what they can do, and also about understanding the parameters of the mission. It's all on you, soldier, better make the right choices.
You can do a 100% perfect job the first time, but I certainly didn't.
There's a reason these things are memorable and awesome, and "they made you choose for NO REASON!" is not a complaint I've ever seen about either of them. (Well maybe people on BSN complain, but who listens to those weirdos?)
And because it's restated over and over that the races of ME are hopelessly unprepared for a Reaper invasion, and that trying to cobble together an ad hoc alliance of races with very good reasons to hate each other can and should backfire in various unexpected ways.
Thanks for the opinions on Overlord and Arrival. Currently leaning more towards Overlord myself, if I decide to grab either. Now I just need to decide if I want to stick with Adept or Vanguard. Been playing as both to try and get a feel for the classes.
Honestly I like that ME for the most part catered really well to both the side that wanted a set of 'hard choices' and to the group who were in it basically because well, they like space opera and watching tons of aliens while being the Luke Skywalker of the given galaxy was great fun.
Tuchunka and Rannoch don't fall into the 'gotta make it gritty' hard choices that would have wrecked it for me. Both are set up well and delievered in such a way that I didn't mind having to make the choice, especially when I knew it was my own fault Shepard wasn't good enough.
Off course, the ultimate example of what failed to do this was the ending but hey lets not go there.
Arrival happens, then Shep goes home and sits down on Earth for six months doing nothing, despite working with a known terrorist organisation for all of ME2 to combat the Reaper threat.
It was interesting to have people die in the suicide mission, but then you can replay it and save everyone. The argument I was hearing was that there should be no situation in which you can replay and save everyone. That such a story shouldn't be able to be told. There's a capacity for widespread destruction and despair on account of Shep's actions in all of the games - complaining that three didn't have enough 'Virmire' choices seems silly because you lose plenty of people along the way. Sometimes, it causes negative effects and sometimes it causes positive effects. You couldn't save both people in Virmire. You couldn't save everyone in three. Even taking the best possible route, the Memorial Wall on the Normandy is still littered with nameplates. What is the significance in making the choices incorporate more losses that you can't mitigate? You can entirely mitigate most losses in two. You can do so in three by having done the right things throughout the games. If you weren't min-maxing all three games and using save editors, I imagine a lot more people would be dead in these playthroughs.
Overlord is the Omega of Mass Effect 2. Tons of combat, but the plot is pretty much irrelevant. At the very end, you'll either get the feels if you're a good person, or if you're not a good person you'll roll your eyes at the way the developers threaten to punch a kitten if you make the renegade choice. Arrival is the Leviathan of Mass Effect 2. You get a very plot-centric mission, and at the end Shepard gets to be really awesome in a non-combat sort of way.
Of the four DLC I just named, I feel Overlord is by far the weakest and the least worth purchasing. The best part about Overlord in my opinion is that choosing the Paragon option there triggered a scene in ME3 that did give me the feels.
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
Only one wave with six enemies, each one is Shepard of a different variety; soldier, vanguard, adept, sentinal, engineer, and infiltrator.
Good luck!
Missiles. Done.
Shepard has a habit of taking Reaper beams to the face and being fine. I doubt a piddly hydra would do more than give him an itch.
still, having done this in SP insanity, there's one thing even shep would have a hard time dealing with, and this applies to pretty much everything in the mass effect universe: the Reegar Carbine is a hell of a gun
i think i'd be content with telling the reegar clan to build an ark.
Sheps also get medi-gel. Vangod gets a reegar too. Soldier gets a either a falcon, claymore, or typhoon. Adept/engineer/sentinel gets either a scorpion or acolyte. Infiltrator gets choice of shotgun or sniper rifle or both.
even with those advantages, you're talking AI versus a real squad of 4 players - players with powers that shep can't touch, like anni field, snap freeze, shield boost, arc grenades, flamer, havoc strike, etc.
hell, i think your standard plat team of GIs/TGIs/AIUs would be able to handle it without too much trouble.
Shepard gets time dilation.
yeah, once you get that working in multiplayer you let me know
Well in this case it would be once Shepard sees you she will have emptied her entire clip onto you before you have a chance to react.
to be clear here i'm talking about by-the-book AI-controlled sheps, not actual shepard. gameplay-wise, that's an extreme difference. i feel that there's some "SP shep is awesome and would totally kick our team's ass in MP" going on here, and that's fine, but narrative-shep is not the same thing as gameplay-shep.
SP gameplay-shep would have trouble dancing with a kroguard for sure. narrative-shep would of course win, but not because they're on even turf.
If you're just talking powers then sure. Gameplay-Shep is a human soldier/sentinel/adept/engineer/infiltrator/vanguard with some additional bonuses and weight capacity. On a powers-to-powers basis that Shepard would have a tougher time competing unless you brought in the other advantages as well.
well, let's keep in mind that gameplay-shep is the only thing we'd be facing in this hypothetical diamond-difficulty. narrative-shep gets all sorts of advantages, but MP has no respect for plot armor, etc.
i don't remember who said it, but someone was saying that renegade shep would be putting scorpion rounds all over the place and such, and that illustrates my point: AI cannot 'flavor' a gameplay style, cannot twist expectations and show ingenuity to survive and prevail. that's down to writing and circumstance and thus must remain in the realm of SP.
Registered just for the Mass Effect threads | Steam: click ^^^ | Origin: curlyhairedboy
Only one wave with six enemies, each one is Shepard of a different variety; soldier, vanguard, adept, sentinal, engineer, and infiltrator.
Good luck!
Missiles. Done.
Shepard has a habit of taking Reaper beams to the face and being fine. I doubt a piddly hydra would do more than give him an itch.
still, having done this in SP insanity, there's one thing even shep would have a hard time dealing with, and this applies to pretty much everything in the mass effect universe: the Reegar Carbine is a hell of a gun
i think i'd be content with telling the reegar clan to build an ark.
Sheps also get medi-gel. Vangod gets a reegar too. Soldier gets a either a falcon, claymore, or typhoon. Adept/engineer/sentinel gets either a scorpion or acolyte. Infiltrator gets choice of shotgun or sniper rifle or both.
even with those advantages, you're talking AI versus a real squad of 4 players - players with powers that shep can't touch, like anni field, snap freeze, shield boost, arc grenades, flamer, havoc strike, etc.
hell, i think your standard plat team of GIs/TGIs/AIUs would be able to handle it without too much trouble.
Shepard gets time dilation.
yeah, once you get that working in multiplayer you let me know
Well in this case it would be once Shepard sees you she will have emptied her entire clip onto you before you have a chance to react.
to be clear here i'm talking about by-the-book AI-controlled sheps, not actual shepard. gameplay-wise, that's an extreme difference. i feel that there's some "SP shep is awesome and would totally kick our team's ass in MP" going on here, and that's fine, but narrative-shep is not the same thing as gameplay-shep.
SP gameplay-shep would have trouble dancing with a kroguard for sure. narrative-shep would of course win, but not because they're on even turf.
If you're just talking powers then sure. Gameplay-Shep is a human soldier/sentinel/adept/engineer/infiltrator/vanguard with some additional bonuses and weight capacity. On a powers-to-powers basis that Shepard would have a tougher time competing unless you brought in the other advantages as well.
well, let's keep in mind that gameplay-shep is the only thing we'd be facing in this hypothetical diamond-difficulty. narrative-shep gets all sorts of advantages, but MP has no respect for plot armor, etc.
i don't remember who said it, but someone was saying that renegade shep would be putting scorpion rounds all over the place and such, and that illustrates my point: AI cannot 'flavor' a gameplay style, cannot twist expectations and show ingenuity to survive and prevail. that's down to writing and circumstance and thus must remain in the realm of SP.
Pfft, Phantoms have plenty of plot armour.
Also they're the only characters in the entirety of the ME cannon capable of wielding the fabled 'plot pistol' that all soldiers carry, you know, the one that one shots anything at convenience in cut scenes, in actual combat.
What I'm basically saying is Phantoms are the kind of thing Skynet is made out of.
Posts
That's my point though.
Did you know the Virmire decision was originally going to be that way, that if you tried hard enough (had enough of some in-game asset, I guess, or maybe high enough paragon/renegade) that you could save both Kaiden and Ashley? The recorded dialog for it was found by dataminers. Making it so that you actually cannot save both was a design choice and, I think, a good one.
Though Is suppose they did do a little bit of that, with
being (mostly) unsavable.
Overlord is longer and more fun because of the variety. It's like a mini planet to explore.
Arrival is more important to the story, but shorter and all one flavor.
So it depends what you like more -- gameplay/exploration vs. shooting/story.
Meh. I'm not saying that ME3's conflicts working the way they are is bad. In a way it was the payoff for having played the game since the beginning.
But I would say choices are more interesting when they are choices.
I would prefer something that takes place concurrently with 3, but I'd still probably give them my money for a prequel.
Like that is one I genuinely feel bad about. It's also a good example of the perfect 'mid ground' between super shepard and grim dark must choose kinda situations. Simply because you CAN stop it happening, it just isn't obvious while you're playing ME3 that it will ever become an issue, it's also not even obvious what choice (in Legion's mission) leads to being able to do it or not.
It rewarded super good Shepard's for always being super good, even when it seemed to not matter. Which is neat as hell.
I didn't get a chance to go drinking with Wrex on the strip, never got the invitation.
To each their own, I found it obnoxious and contrived. Why take away the player's ability to just make that call? You're still going to do the important thing.
The Virmire decision is different because Kaiden and Ashley knew what they were up against, and both actually tell you to go after the other. Arrival feels jarring because you can succeed absolutely on the suicide mission. I went along with Arrival because I figured it might have an impact on ME3, but it doesn't, so it's just dumb shock value.
No invitation. You just bump into him at the bar.
Maybe if there had been a Batarian squadmate?
Achieving peace between the quarians and geth is a similar situation where there were various choices and each of them had consequences. Does every choice have to be some kind of genocide on the line to make it a legitimate 'consequence' for not following certain actions? Isn't that the basis of the ending? I thought we didn't like the ending. The ending gave me 'choices' with clear consequences, and I hated it.
I'd actually love for a spin off (honestly to me most ME stuff should be spin offs, don't call it ME4, just be: a game set in ME cannon at some point) of you playing a bounty hunter in the terminus systems.
Have like:
A Vorcha
A krogan
A Turian
A justicar
A batarian
Loadsa the more fringe/criminal aspects of things.
I can see why people like it, though man it doesn't have much spare ammo.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
But, and I believe this was a detriment to the story and overall tone of ME3, you get to cheat these encounters by your actions in the past games.
I'd rather those past choices effected the strength of your allies that you got to keep, and not enable you to save everyone. There needed to be more choices like Virmire, like the Arrival, hell, we never even got a situation like the one that was offered in the very first Mass Effect trailers!
A situation like that never happened. Not once. You were never forced to make a Virmire choice on a large scale, all of those big events were "solvable" by storing enough "correct" choices from past playthroughs. Which made the Red ending seem especially unfair to some, it shouldn't have.
"Shepard is a memetic god that saves everyone" is cool and all, but I think it helped set up the game for disappointment in the finale when it was clear you couldn't get a magic sparkle ending.
Actually, thinking about it in that respect makes it feel like a worse design choice than what we previous-save folks got, because
That the individual characters are the reason we care for each species seems to be a concept that kinda-sorta forget in 3. They really got it in 2: "For this fight, want personal connection. Can't anthropomorphize galaxy, but can think of favorite nephew. Fighting for him."
Not really much of a choice in the case of the Krogan or Geth/Quarians.
Its basically like you have to choose between cake and cupcakes, but you can get both anyway so it isn't much of a choice unless you purposely don't want one.
The choices in ME2 worked a bit differently. They were smaller scale, yes, but I feel the fact that you couldn't have yor cake and eat it too made you put more thought into.
I mean in ME3 I guess you could say with the Krogan its a choice of whether or not you should trust Wrex and Eve to do the right thing. But, meh, even then it isn't given much weight.
My hope, maybe as a phone spinoff, is a tactical turnbased game a la XCom. It's a cover based shooter where they developed a ton of different weapons, classes, aliens, enemies, factions etcet.
In the meantime, I'm about to do some multi, anyone up for a round on PC?
I have very little comprehension for this mindset.
"Alright, Shepard, we need to gather some allies. But you can only get three. The other three you need to kill or betray."
'Why?'
"You just have to. We need to teach you to make tough decisions that will have a deep impact on you."
'Why?"
"Just do it. Just ... you can't get the help of everyone. That's stupid. This is a war. You have to decide who you like and who you don't like. It's not like you can just help everyone all the time. That's not realistic. Do it."
'Why?!'
to be clear here i'm talking about by-the-book AI-controlled sheps, not actual shepard. gameplay-wise, that's an extreme difference. i feel that there's some "SP shep is awesome and would totally kick our team's ass in MP" going on here, and that's fine, but narrative-shep is not the same thing as gameplay-shep.
SP gameplay-shep would have trouble dancing with a kroguard for sure. narrative-shep would of course win, but not because they're on even turf.
Registered just for the Mass Effect threads | Steam: click ^^^ | Origin: curlyhairedboy
Meh, I just find making choices interesting.
And I think the traditional hero's story is boring and overused at this point.
I know it isn't a popular opinion but meh. Never been that kind of person.
Except...actual choices make sense and are by far more realistic:
Steam ID: 76561198021298113
Origin ID: SR71C_Blackbird
It's also ridiculous.
If you're just talking powers then sure. Gameplay-Shep is a human soldier/sentinel/adept/engineer/infiltrator/vanguard with some additional bonuses and weight capacity. On a powers-to-powers basis that Shepard would have a tougher time competing unless you brought in the other advantages as well.
No see that would be terrible writing, and I wouldn't like that at all.
Thus I specifically bring up the Virmire choice. First you're asked to split off members of your team, which immediately makes you uncomfortable. When you send Ashley off with the Salarians it feels like for sure she's going to die. Then you come upon the choice. You don't have enough time, either you save the person guarding the bomb, or you save the distraction team. It's not a "for no reason" choice, which would suck. The reason is set up and given in the text, right from the start.
Similarly, the Suicide Mission is one of the greatest experiences I've ever had in a game, because the choices are all about how well you know your crew and what they can do, and also about understanding the parameters of the mission. It's all on you, soldier, better make the right choices.
You can do a 100% perfect job the first time, but I certainly didn't.
There's a reason these things are memorable and awesome, and "they made you choose for NO REASON!" is not a complaint I've ever seen about either of them. (Well maybe people on BSN complain, but who listens to those weirdos?)
But some of us like well-written difficult choices more than easy choices.
Tuchunka and Rannoch don't fall into the 'gotta make it gritty' hard choices that would have wrecked it for me. Both are set up well and delievered in such a way that I didn't mind having to make the choice, especially when I knew it was my own fault Shepard wasn't good enough.
Off course, the ultimate example of what failed to do this was the ending but hey lets not go there.
Arrival isn't even a choice!
Of the four DLC I just named, I feel Overlord is by far the weakest and the least worth purchasing. The best part about Overlord in my opinion is that choosing the Paragon option there triggered a scene in ME3 that did give me the feels.
well, let's keep in mind that gameplay-shep is the only thing we'd be facing in this hypothetical diamond-difficulty. narrative-shep gets all sorts of advantages, but MP has no respect for plot armor, etc.
i don't remember who said it, but someone was saying that renegade shep would be putting scorpion rounds all over the place and such, and that illustrates my point: AI cannot 'flavor' a gameplay style, cannot twist expectations and show ingenuity to survive and prevail. that's down to writing and circumstance and thus must remain in the realm of SP.
Registered just for the Mass Effect threads | Steam: click ^^^ | Origin: curlyhairedboy
Pfft, Phantoms have plenty of plot armour.
Also they're the only characters in the entirety of the ME cannon capable of wielding the fabled 'plot pistol' that all soldiers carry, you know, the one that one shots anything at convenience in cut scenes, in actual combat.
What I'm basically saying is Phantoms are the kind of thing Skynet is made out of.