Liam gave us movie night, which is one of the best moments in the game. Was he super interesting? Probably not, but I never understood the hate he got.
As for Jaal and the Angora, the Angora were fine, Jaal on the other hand was dull and the perfect embodiment of what trekking around his home planet in the dark was like.
Peebee and Drack always had the best dialog.
P: "Why do you have bones strapped to your armor? Are you trying to look like a super villain or something?" "..." "Yes."
P: "Cool!"
Jaal was just a casualty of me not finding the angora interesting at all.
This was my biggest disappointment with Andromeda's writing. The Angara were pretty okay. I wanted to delve deeper into their culture, but most of what I found was kinda bland. There are hints that they're sticklers for rules and laws, but you never really see it play out. They're supposed to be extremely empathetic, but Jaal is the only one I noticed demonstrating that quality. I don't remember even seeing a large Angaran family unit? They're mentioned a few times but we never get an example of that dynamic; not even two siblings, IIRC. There's a bunch of stuff that could have supported the larger themes of the game if it had gotten more exploration.
Krogan, on the other hand, are amazing. Not perfect, and maybe the butt of too many jokes, but I thought they were way more interesting as colonists than they were as war-weary survivors.
Liam gave us movie night, which is one of the best moments in the game. Was he super interesting? Probably not, but I never understood the hate he got.
As for Jaal and the Angora, the Angora were fine, Jaal on the other hand was dull and the perfect embodiment of what trekking around his home planet in the dark was like.
When I played Andromeda, I rolled credits and realized I hadn't ever done movie night. So I did it as post-game, and somehow that seemed like a perfect place to leave things -- everybody crammed into the lounge eating dubious snacks and watching even more dubious films together.
Liam is bad at his job. He's okay when it's low to no stakes, and he's probably a good bro, but you can't really depend on him to do anything correctly.
Lam just never seemed to have a decent niche in my games; Drack was way better for heavy fire support/bull rushing, vetra was a solid cover fire type, Peebee and cora had my back with Biotics and liam was... guy who runs up and bonks things while annoying drack.
I could craft all sorts of super guns but Liam was still stuck with a silly SMG to tickle the enemy with.
Same goes for Cora and her shotgun which I'm still surprised/disappointed wasn't a Disciple to go along with her asari fetish.
Not being able to select companion gear was so disappointing.
That and they kept earning skill points well after they hit their cap. So after a certain point (ha?) you just had to accept there was always going to be a highlight next to their name as a result.
On the subject of skill caps, the one that made me pull my hair out was the bonuses you unlocked by improving habitability, since I'd keep gaining points towards it and thered still be things to buy, but the game just decided to cap out at 20 levels.
Which wouldn't have been so annoying if you didn't cap out like 65% of the way through the game if you're doing a decent amount of side questing.
On the subject of skill caps, the one that made me pull my hair out was the bonuses you unlocked by improving habitability, since I'd keep gaining points towards it and thered still be things to buy, but the game just decided to cap out at 20 levels.
Which wouldn't have been so annoying if you didn't cap out like 65% of the way through the game if you're doing a decent amount of side questing.
They eventually fixed that.. sort of, raising the cap to 25 (or maybe 29). There's still options left over I think, but not as many.
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
All Mass effect titles are on sale for $5 each, and complete DLC bundles for $15 or less:
My level of annoyance that I can't pick up the last couple of DLC that I'm missing on their own is high.
If you don't have the DLC, those are cracking discounts though!
Florida's getting its annual allotment of two and a half days of cold weather, so I've had ample opportunities to wear my N7 Hoodie. Pretty funny how much of a cool guy badass I feel like when I've got this stripe going down my arm. The power of Vidya gamez!
Everyone has a price. Throw enough gold around and someone will risk disintegration.
+10
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BRIAN BLESSEDMaybe you aren't SPEAKING LOUDLY ENOUGHHHRegistered Userregular
The N7 video this year was pretty cool, it leaned into the thing that we all knew for a while that coming across another rando on the street with N7 gear felt like we were in a super secret special cool kid's videogame club
If only they, y'know, followed that up by supplying the cool kid's club again with a new BioWare merch store you fuckers I need my BioWare merch /sob
Apparently they don't understand that we want to give them money. My N7 faux leather jacket is looking rather shabby now and I would buy another one in a goddamn heartbeat even with this suspect longevity (I wore it often but looked after it, but I'm not convinced the vinyl or whatever it's made of is as good quality as it looks when new).
But I'm not buying one of those goddamn knockoffs on eBay and Amazon where they can't even be arsed to get the N7 logo right. Ugh.
Almost everything about the Krogan Colony was also pretty great.
+14
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
edited December 2018
I finished Mass Effect Annihilation last week. A couple brief notes:
An Elcor is a main character. One who loves theater!. It is a thing of beauty.
As is a Drell, and her remembrance fugues are actually used to good effect.
A hanar, an elcor, a batarian, a volus, a quarian, and a drell walk into a bar...
Everyone agrees batarians are the worst.
There is a fun little digression into quarian ancestor rituals.
Keelah Si'yah!
Overall a fun read. The prose is good, and most of the characters enjoyable, with quirks and irritations. The characters' histories and foibles reflect the greater Mass Effect world in ways big and small: the elcor loves Hamlet; the quarian has the heretical belief that maybe AIs aren't the worst thing ever; the drell once worked for the Shadow Broker.
It's set up as a who-done-it, with the six main characters working together, yet suspecting each other, and most of them not liking each other. The Ark is huge, the population numbering thousands...yet most are still in cryosleep. Attention narrows on Sleepwalker Team Blue-7 as they try to figure out both what has happened and who has done it in a vast playing field.
Valente leans too heavily into the Mass Effect references (do I really need to know that the small-arms locker contained an Adas Anti-synthetic Rifle, an Arc Pistol, and a Reegar Carbine? None of those weapons' special effects end up being relevant to the story), which is unfortunately common in this kind of fiction, but still disappointing to run into. She also falls into what I like to call Weber-land, where there are long digressions into minimally important aspects of the background that don't always fit. Sometimes it works and fits well into the story (as in the ancestor rituals of the quarians), but just as frequently I found myself wondering why this particular digression had any importance at all. Still, the characters bounce off each other well, and the friction and tension between them is fun.
Overall it is clearly a labor of love from someone who has played through all of the games repeatedly and fell in love with the Mass Effect universe the way we all did. She takes the dregs and cast-offs of the Mass Effect races, mashes them together, and expands the universe--all without having a single human, turian, or asari enter the picture.
Recommended if you need your Mass Effect fix, and possibly even if you don't.
I finished my Mass Effect 2 replay and my goodness is that game amazing. I did everything in my playthrough short of depleting every planet of resources.
I don't even know where to begin describing how good that game is because nearly every aspect of the game is stellar. Probably my favorite aspect was how immersive it was. The game is a galactic romp from the Citadel to Omega, Tuchanka to the Migrant Fleet, with all sorts of other cool places in-between. And the large cast of awesome crew members all had their own stories to tell, adding richness and depth to the setting.
It's also a blast to play. Tali's recruitment mission is one of my favorite levels in any videogame, if only for that geth walker boss fight at the end.
I started up Mass Effect 3 the other day, to continue my replay of the series.
Leaving Earth is still one of the strongest moments in any video game.
Really? I find the openings of 2 and 3 awkward and vaguely incompetent. They both get much better later. The forced dialogue and ugh kid in 3 is especially not good...
I started up Mass Effect 3 the other day, to continue my replay of the series.
Leaving Earth is still one of the strongest moments in any video game.
Really? I find the openings of 2 and 3 awkward and vaguely incompetent. They both get much better later. The forced dialogue and ugh kid in 3 is especially not good...
Specifically everything from the conversation with Anderson as he chooses to stay behind to the late title card.
Even the kid though is fine when you take the sequence as a standalone. It only becomes worse when you get the added context from later in the game.
I started up Mass Effect 3 the other day, to continue my replay of the series.
Leaving Earth is still one of the strongest moments in any video game.
Really? I find the openings of 2 and 3 awkward and vaguely incompetent. They both get much better later. The forced dialogue and ugh kid in 3 is especially not good...
Specifically everything from the conversation with Anderson as he chooses to stay behind to the late title card.
Even the kid though is fine when you take the sequence as a standalone. It only becomes worse when you get the added context from later in the game.
Can you refresh me in spoilers on the later context? I can’t recall what it was (which means I’m due for a replay through the series myself!)
I think 3’s opening is fantastic. As was said up page, leaving Earth is a fantastic moment. Admittedly this probably creates some forgiveness for any clunky parts of the opening.
As for 2, yeah, it’s opening is pretty awful. I’m okay with everything post
dying
, but that scene never seemed to have the weight it deserved.
Can you refresh me in spoilers on the later context? I can’t recall what it was (which means I’m due for a replay through the series myself!)
He means
Starkid.
Anyway, I disagree. I loved the opening to 2. The fact that they never capitalize on it later in the game and the whole thing is basically just a contrivance is a separate problem, but spacewalking your way through the Normandy as it's torn apart was incredible, and I loved waking up in some random lab already under attack.
Meanwhile I felt the opening to 3 was pretty underwhelming. I thought the kid was unconvincing and obvious right off, and I thought a lot of the backdrop scenes felt kind of lethargic and didn't really sell the urgency, like some essential piece was missing. Also while I'm not normally particularly graphics-focused, I thought the whole Earth level was just really ugly and marred by muddied, blurry textures, generic building debris, and flat-looking water and background.
Though I'd agree that Anderson, the flyaway and the music and the title card were excellent.
I finished my Mass Effect 2 replay and my goodness is that game amazing. I did everything in my playthrough short of depleting every planet of resources.
I don't even know where to begin describing how good that game is because nearly every aspect of the game is stellar. Probably my favorite aspect was how immersive it was. The game is a galactic romp from the Citadel to Omega, Tuchanka to the Migrant Fleet, with all sorts of other cool places in-between. And the large cast of awesome crew members all had their own stories to tell, adding richness and depth to the setting.
It's also a blast to play. Tali's recruitment mission is one of my favorite levels in any videogame, if only for that geth walker boss fight at the end.
What boss fight?
This post brought to you by the Cain. Because when you positively need to kill every motherfucker in the room, the room itself, and the building the room is in, call the M-920 Cain.
+15
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
I loved the opening of ME2, I don't know what anyone means calling it 'awkward'. I do find the ME3 opening awkward and forced, though.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
You technically got to shoot batarians in the ME3 opening. That is worth many points in my omni-book.
Also in 2 I like to think of "this weapon doesn't have a thermal clip" as Shepard having no fucking idea what it means but is just bluffing based on the error message.
Mostly I mean the dreams, really. I get the idea behind them but geez they are so dumb. It's a pretty interesting idea, to have Shepard dealing with PTSD and stress from everything that is going on and how much is expected of her, but they picked a terrible way to represent it.
I finished Mass Effect Annihilation last week. A couple brief notes:
An Elcor is a main character. One who loves theater!. It is a thing of beauty.
As is a Drell, and her remembrance fugues are actually used to good effect.
A hanar, an elcor, a batarian, a volus, a quarian, and a drell walk into a bar...
Everyone agrees batarians are the worst.
There is a fun little digression into quarian ancestor rituals.
Keelah Si'yah!
Overall a fun read. The prose is good, and most of the characters enjoyable, with quirks and irritations. The characters' histories and foibles reflect the greater Mass Effect world in ways big and small: the elcor loves Hamlet; the quarian has the heretical belief that maybe AIs aren't the worst thing ever; the drell once worked for the Shadow Broker.
It's set up as a who-done-it, with the six main characters working together, yet suspecting each other, and most of them not liking each other. The Ark is huge, the population numbering thousands...yet most are still in cryosleep. Attention narrows on Sleepwalker Team Blue-7 as they try to figure out both what has happened and who has done it in a vast playing field.
Valente leans too heavily into the Mass Effect references (do I really need to know that the small-arms locker contained an Adas Anti-synthetic Rifle, an Arc Pistol, and a Reegar Carbine? None of those weapons' special effects end up being relevant to the story), which is unfortunately common in this kind of fiction, but still disappointing to run into. She also falls into what I like to call Weber-land, where there are long digressions into minimally important aspects of the background that don't always fit. Sometimes it works and fits well into the story (as in the ancestor rituals of the quarians), but just as frequently I found myself wondering why this particular digression had any importance at all. Still, the characters bounce off each other well, and the friction and tension between them is fun.
Overall it is clearly a labor of love from someone who has played through all of the games repeatedly and fell in love with the Mass Effect universe the way we all did. She takes the dregs and cast-offs of the Mass Effect races, mashes them together, and expands the universe--all without having a single human, turian, or asari enter the picture.
Recommended if you need your Mass Effect fix, and possibly even if you don't.
Thanks for this writeup, Orca! I had actually read mixed opinions on the book, but your description makes it sound like a pretty captivating Mass Effect book - I'll pick it up when I get the chance!
Thanks for this writeup, Orca! I had actually read mixed opinions on the book, but your description makes it sound like a pretty captivating Mass Effect book - I'll pick it up when I get the chance!
You're welcome! Just keep your expectations set appropriately, because like I said, it's by no means a perfect book. But I had fun reading it, and may end up checking out more of Valente's work because of it.
P.S. the Elcor dialog works best if you say it out loud in a drone.
I agree with the intro being weak. Anderson is good, but the rest not-so-much.
Shepard has a bit too much automatic dialog at the start, the conversation with the committee was awkward, and the kid was weird and creepy. The Vancouver rooftops weren't a great setpiece to start the game, as the whole space felt grimy and monotone. Between the Earth setting and the dead kid, it felt like the game was trying to build some unearned pathos.
They also way overdid it on the number of reapers. As we saw in ME1, one reaper is a major threat. Two? Unprecedented. The dozen or so we got? Absurd to the point of silliness.
The game fares much better once we can get to the Citadel and tour our ship. The Citadel does a perfect job of building the unease and tension of the galactic war.
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BRIAN BLESSEDMaybe you aren't SPEAKING LOUDLY ENOUGHHHRegistered Userregular
edited December 2018
The intro gave us a live scene of a cruiser drive core going critical in atmosphere and it was fucking immense, I was already sold by that point
The intro gave us a live scene of a cruiser drive core going critical in atmosphere and it was fucking immense, I was already sold by that point
Don't care starkid whatever that was fine
Starkid didn't work for me, but I also didn't care. But with Earth clearly fallen and Anderson giving me my marching orders I was fired up and ready to go. And the Normandy's arrival had me almost literally shouting "fuck yeah!" So the intro worked for me.
Honestly I usually just talk to Conrad, being Paragon and all that most of the time. I don't actually want him to end up having one of the deaths he can so easily have, and he's a really good character who expands in some interesting ways over the trilogy. But playing Renegade Shep, the shooting him in the foot is just too damn funny. (As is the joke about him in Citadel.)
I agree with the themes of 3's opening being really strong, but it did come across as unpolished and kind of an afterthought aside from the performances.
That's okay though because you really don't spend any time there.
Registered just for the Mass Effect threads | Steam: click ^^^ | Origin: curlyhairedboy
Posts
As for Jaal and the Angora, the Angora were fine, Jaal on the other hand was dull and the perfect embodiment of what trekking around his home planet in the dark was like.
P: "Why do you have bones strapped to your armor? Are you trying to look like a super villain or something?"
P: "Cool!"
This was my biggest disappointment with Andromeda's writing. The Angara were pretty okay. I wanted to delve deeper into their culture, but most of what I found was kinda bland. There are hints that they're sticklers for rules and laws, but you never really see it play out. They're supposed to be extremely empathetic, but Jaal is the only one I noticed demonstrating that quality. I don't remember even seeing a large Angaran family unit? They're mentioned a few times but we never get an example of that dynamic; not even two siblings, IIRC. There's a bunch of stuff that could have supported the larger themes of the game if it had gotten more exploration.
Krogan, on the other hand, are amazing. Not perfect, and maybe the butt of too many jokes, but I thought they were way more interesting as colonists than they were as war-weary survivors.
When I played Andromeda, I rolled credits and realized I hadn't ever done movie night. So I did it as post-game, and somehow that seemed like a perfect place to leave things -- everybody crammed into the lounge eating dubious snacks and watching even more dubious films together.
Same goes for Cora and her shotgun which I'm still surprised/disappointed wasn't a Disciple to go along with her asari fetish.
Not being able to select companion gear was so disappointing.
Which wouldn't have been so annoying if you didn't cap out like 65% of the way through the game if you're doing a decent amount of side questing.
https://www.origin.com/usa/en-us/store/deals/blackfriday?fq=franchise:mass-effect&sort=rank desc
My level of annoyance that I can't pick up the last couple of DLC that I'm missing on their own is high.
If you don't have the DLC, those are cracking discounts though!
Goodreads
SF&F Reviews blog
If only they, y'know, followed that up by supplying the cool kid's club again with a new BioWare merch store you fuckers I need my BioWare merch /sob
But I'm not buying one of those goddamn knockoffs on eBay and Amazon where they can't even be arsed to get the N7 logo right. Ugh.
If it doesn't re-open around Anthem's release...
Steam | XBL
Picard_facepalm.jpg
Steam | XBL
I think I wanna play Andromeda again. It had some good moments!
Registered just for the Mass Effect threads | Steam: click ^^^ | Origin: curlyhairedboy
The movie quest is amazing
Overall a fun read. The prose is good, and most of the characters enjoyable, with quirks and irritations. The characters' histories and foibles reflect the greater Mass Effect world in ways big and small: the elcor loves Hamlet; the quarian has the heretical belief that maybe AIs aren't the worst thing ever; the drell once worked for the Shadow Broker.
It's set up as a who-done-it, with the six main characters working together, yet suspecting each other, and most of them not liking each other. The Ark is huge, the population numbering thousands...yet most are still in cryosleep. Attention narrows on Sleepwalker Team Blue-7 as they try to figure out both what has happened and who has done it in a vast playing field.
Valente leans too heavily into the Mass Effect references (do I really need to know that the small-arms locker contained an Adas Anti-synthetic Rifle, an Arc Pistol, and a Reegar Carbine? None of those weapons' special effects end up being relevant to the story), which is unfortunately common in this kind of fiction, but still disappointing to run into. She also falls into what I like to call Weber-land, where there are long digressions into minimally important aspects of the background that don't always fit. Sometimes it works and fits well into the story (as in the ancestor rituals of the quarians), but just as frequently I found myself wondering why this particular digression had any importance at all. Still, the characters bounce off each other well, and the friction and tension between them is fun.
Overall it is clearly a labor of love from someone who has played through all of the games repeatedly and fell in love with the Mass Effect universe the way we all did. She takes the dregs and cast-offs of the Mass Effect races, mashes them together, and expands the universe--all without having a single human, turian, or asari enter the picture.
Recommended if you need your Mass Effect fix, and possibly even if you don't.
Leaving Earth is still one of the strongest moments in any video game.
I don't even know where to begin describing how good that game is because nearly every aspect of the game is stellar. Probably my favorite aspect was how immersive it was. The game is a galactic romp from the Citadel to Omega, Tuchanka to the Migrant Fleet, with all sorts of other cool places in-between. And the large cast of awesome crew members all had their own stories to tell, adding richness and depth to the setting.
It's also a blast to play. Tali's recruitment mission is one of my favorite levels in any videogame, if only for that geth walker boss fight at the end.
Steam | XBL
Really? I find the openings of 2 and 3 awkward and vaguely incompetent. They both get much better later. The forced dialogue and ugh kid in 3 is especially not good...
Specifically everything from the conversation with Anderson as he chooses to stay behind to the late title card.
Even the kid though is fine when you take the sequence as a standalone. It only becomes worse when you get the added context from later in the game.
Can you refresh me in spoilers on the later context? I can’t recall what it was (which means I’m due for a replay through the series myself!)
I think 3’s opening is fantastic. As was said up page, leaving Earth is a fantastic moment. Admittedly this probably creates some forgiveness for any clunky parts of the opening.
As for 2, yeah, it’s opening is pretty awful. I’m okay with everything post
He means
Anyway, I disagree. I loved the opening to 2. The fact that they never capitalize on it later in the game and the whole thing is basically just a contrivance is a separate problem, but spacewalking your way through the Normandy as it's torn apart was incredible, and I loved waking up in some random lab already under attack.
Meanwhile I felt the opening to 3 was pretty underwhelming. I thought the kid was unconvincing and obvious right off, and I thought a lot of the backdrop scenes felt kind of lethargic and didn't really sell the urgency, like some essential piece was missing. Also while I'm not normally particularly graphics-focused, I thought the whole Earth level was just really ugly and marred by muddied, blurry textures, generic building debris, and flat-looking water and background.
Though I'd agree that Anderson, the flyaway and the music and the title card were excellent.
This post brought to you by the Cain. Because when you positively need to kill every motherfucker in the room, the room itself, and the building the room is in, call the M-920 Cain.
Also in 2 I like to think of "this weapon doesn't have a thermal clip" as Shepard having no fucking idea what it means but is just bluffing based on the error message.
Thanks for this writeup, Orca! I had actually read mixed opinions on the book, but your description makes it sound like a pretty captivating Mass Effect book - I'll pick it up when I get the chance!
Steam ID: 76561198021298113
Origin ID: SR71C_Blackbird
You're welcome! Just keep your expectations set appropriately, because like I said, it's by no means a perfect book. But I had fun reading it, and may end up checking out more of Valente's work because of it.
P.S. the Elcor dialog works best if you say it out loud in a drone.
Shepard has a bit too much automatic dialog at the start, the conversation with the committee was awkward, and the kid was weird and creepy. The Vancouver rooftops weren't a great setpiece to start the game, as the whole space felt grimy and monotone. Between the Earth setting and the dead kid, it felt like the game was trying to build some unearned pathos.
They also way overdid it on the number of reapers. As we saw in ME1, one reaper is a major threat. Two? Unprecedented. The dozen or so we got? Absurd to the point of silliness.
The game fares much better once we can get to the Citadel and tour our ship. The Citadel does a perfect job of building the unease and tension of the galactic war.
Don't care starkid whatever that was fine
How could you?
Starkid didn't work for me, but I also didn't care. But with Earth clearly fallen and Anderson giving me my marching orders I was fired up and ready to go. And the Normandy's arrival had me almost literally shouting "fuck yeah!" So the intro worked for me.
How could you not?!
Steam | XBL
That's okay though because you really don't spend any time there.
Registered just for the Mass Effect threads | Steam: click ^^^ | Origin: curlyhairedboy