So, guys, what do you actually think about the concept of DLC in general? Is it a good way for a company to head into? Or a bad one? Personally I'm not too fond of DLC, as it always gives me the feeling I bought an incomplete game. I mean this in the case of Bioware games. Let's take the Witch Hunt DLC for Dragon Age: Origins for example. Unless you buy the DLC, you'll never know what actually happened to Morrigan after her passing the Dark Ritual. Such things make the story feel incomplete to me, especially as Morrigan was quite an important character during the main game. Her part of the story just...stops...after the Dark Ritual and it made me feel dissatisfied.
Shepard: "I don't believe the choice you're offering me is very reasonable, ethical, or optimal." Ghost kid: "YOUR BELIEF IS NOT REQUIRED." Shepard: "Well.. I feel that is a weird thing to say, considering I've spent 3 games being asked what I believed what was the most reasonable options." Ghost Kid: "Just pick a color!" Shepard: ".. No. Nah. You seem to got this covered for the most part. I'm leaving. Play me out, Linkin Park!"
Linkin Park: "I tried so hard, and got so faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar... But in the end, it doesn't even matteeeer"
Shepard walks out: "... Guess they had it right from the start... Shame Linkin Park was an underrated band, and simply branded 'emo'. Just goes to show what life can throw at you..."
@Zinodin: Yeah, it seems happy endings have gone out of fashion. Now all endings have to be gritty and dark, and they need to involve sacrifice, suicide and pointless choices. I honestly can't understand what kind of message the developers were trying to get across with the ME 3 endings. All of the choices didn't make sense in one way or another.
Yeah.. According to other ME3 writers who wrote all the good parts; they handed in their work to the lead writer. Casey Hudson was the lead writer, working with two others behind a closed door. It's like those three people didn't even look at the things the other writers had written and instead squeezed in a very impractical idea that didn't fit the rest of the games. I mean, the ending was so bad that a lot of fans invented their own theory that Shepard was indoctrinated from the start of the third game. Even Casey Hudson had to go: "um, wow..? -really-?" Even a higher ups from EA did look at the manuscript and went: "Um, Casey. This ending will seem to get people mad. Are you sure you're happy with the writing?" And Casey went "Yep." To EA's credit, their business model is to not interveine with Bioware's writing. They hired them for the reason that they loved Bioware's work. But I suppose it's easy to grow arrogant and lose touch with the things that made you good in the first place. Especially if you're backed up by the evil Empire from Star Wars, and you now only see the planet from the balcony of your Death Star.
"Psh, tiny insignifigant people. They have no idea how worthless they are. They should be in awe of me.. M'yes."
Sorry about the excessive use of the word 'even', but it's amazing how bad that ending got. It had the biggest fan-backlash since E.T. on the Atari console.
Sorry about the excessive use of the word 'even', but it's amazing how bad that ending got. It had the biggest fan-backlash since E.T. on the Atari console.
You know after I finished the game I honestly figured there would be mild gripes at most about the ending, it wasn't until I went on the internet the next morning and saw all the rage. I still have trouble processing the anger. I like it a lot better than the Terminator reaper in ME2.
@State_Lemming The random itens I was finding before I even took the quests were one thing. Then the ending discussions hit the internet and I avoided reading about it, but in the end gave in and read. Discovering that all my choices had no meaning at all and that I would be forced to take a decision completely contrary to everything I had done until then was enough.
Also I was fed up having to play that horrendous iOS game to keep my readiness high. I certainly wasn't going into multiplayer for that.
The war asset nonsense was annoying for sure, but I didn't get any of the 'bad' endings with my limited amount and I didn't play multiplayer until afterwards. I hope one day (not necessarily soon) you give the game another try, I think the ending hate is overblown.
I dont know what happened. Maybe (big maybe but still) DA3 will be good. Maybe the next Mass effect will be good. But I'am happy to see that we mostly agree that both dlcs and me3 was just wrong. To start they had the fabulous idea of relocating the guy who was writing it and then, make that ending... that not only is a copy of deus ex but also rewards the players 300hrs of gameplay with the most boring, nonsensical and unepic ending ever. There are many 20 min rants on youtube how it could be different, without being "too happy".
Actually I always expected a very tragic ending. I could accept the destruction of humans or any of the other races, maybe there was no real ay to win and the maximum we could hope for was a delay requiring the entire Galaxy to remain United... i didn't bring a species back from the dead and finished a generations old war between an AI race and their cretors to have the same 3 endings with different colors... I didn't see any effect of my choices in the endings and THAT is a big problem to me.
I've just played Mass Effect 1 again and was once more struck by the link between Saren and the synthetic/organic-combination-ending... and the lack of a connection between the sidemissions linking the sole survivor background to Cerberus and the beginning of Mass Effect 2. There where quite a few things I believe Shepard would have liked to say to Mr. Sheen...
I'm surprised the ending never showed a "what if" shot of Saren synthesis...ing the galaxy, like they did for Anderson and Martin Sheen. My friend had the same problem with a sole survivor Shepard, sounds to me like a plot hole, they must not have had the idea of making Cerberus an active part of the series at that point.
@State_Lemming And my point is that those are not personal choices at all, as they don't affect only your character. Those are choices that should change the history of the Galaxy.
You basically prove the Catalyst wrong by making peace between the Geth and their organic creators and you don't even mention it when the Catalyst comes with the gibberish about destroying organic life because of an inevitable cycle that always lead to organics creating synthetics that will kill organics? That is the same as saying you'll murder me to save my life.
Deciding wh lives or die in your group that could be seem as a personal choice, one that a commander in war time has to make often, but proving the Catalyst wrong, bring extnct races back from the dead, etc. are muche bigger than that.
@mlnevese: Agreed. That bullcrap about syntethics killing organics and the constant cycle didn't make an ounce of sense to me. I was, like, 'GTFO and lemme destroy the Reapers already!'
I'm saying none of the ME games have ever had the choices change the course of the series, I meant personal to you the player, not Shepard.
It is perfectly fine to like or dislike the series because of it. I am just pointing out that your choices have never actually affected anything in the series. This is why the people who disliked the ending because their choices didn't matter confuses me, because I don't understand how they got that far in the series if that was an issue for them . :P
@State_Lemming Up until the end the Mass Effect series seemed to be a lot more dynamic. However when it came down to pushing button 1, 2 or 3 with none of the options being particularly attractive it felt like filling in a survey and hugely anticlimactic. Also the options were highly reminiscent of Deus Ex. In that case however at least the choice appeared to be appropriate and follow the flow and theme of the game. In the case of Mass Effect it seemed a lazy and ill thought out way of ending the series... until the next DLC.
I'm saying none of the ME games have ever had the choices change the course of the series, I meant personal to you the player, not Shepard.
It is perfectly fine to like or dislike the series because of it. I am just pointing out that your choices have never actually affected anything in the series. This is why the people who disliked the ending because their choices didn't matter confuses me, because I don't understand how they got that far in the series if that was an issue for them . :P
I think its more the shitty ending and the gazillion plot holes in it that is the general problem of ME III. I havent played, nor read much about it lately tho, but i seem to recall one of the complaints were you never acctualy saw anything of the war assests you picked up during your railroad tour through the galaxy (someone smack me over the head with a crowbar and correct me if my brain is not working as intended)
I'm saying none of the ME games have ever had the choices change the course of the series, I meant personal to you the player, not Shepard.
It is perfectly fine to like or dislike the series because of it. I am just pointing out that your choices have never actually affected anything in the series. This is why the people who disliked the ending because their choices didn't matter confuses me, because I don't understand how they got that far in the series if that was an issue for them . :P
I think its more the shitty ending and the gazillion plot holes in it that is the general problem of ME III. I havent played, nor read much about it lately tho, but i seem to recall one of the complaints were you never acctualy saw anything of the war assests you picked up during your railroad tour through the galaxy (someone smack me over the head with a crowbar and correct me if my brain is not working as intended)
You do not see most of the war assets in any video or anything. Some of your decisions I suppose would have an impact on it (namely your choices in the geth conflict), but generally I believe you don't see the war assets at work.
It truly is a pity. I mean, they could have made it SO much better...If only they had invested a bit more time and money into that game...It could have been on the top RPG lists for years to come...Alas, the inevitable happened with EA in power.
I find it highly ironic that the multiplayer is the only thing that keeps Mass Effect going at this moment. The games were never intended to be focused on multiplayer and most people who were avidly against it, have now grown to love it. I can only shake my head when seeing the weekly multiplayer challenges when visiting the BSN. It's as if the devs are putting more effort into thinking out interesting multiplayer challenges, than to actually keep themselves busy with the ESSENCE of the Mass Effect games themselves, namely the story and characters.
I was only replying to a specific argument against it, the one about the choices not mattering. I decided I had participated in to many paragraph wars on the subject, so I am trying to take things slow this time. :P
It truly is a pity. I mean, they could have made it SO much better...If only they had invested a bit more time and money into that game...It could have been on the top RPG lists for years to come...Alas, the inevitable happened with EA in power.
I find it highly ironic that the multiplayer is the only thing that keeps Mass Effect going at this moment. The games were never intended to be focused on multiplayer and most people who were avidly against it, have now grown to love it. I can only shake my head when seeing the weekly multiplayer challenges when visiting the BSN. It's as if the devs are putting more effort into thinking out interesting multiplayer challenges, than to actually keep themselves busy with the ESSENCE of the Mass Effect games themselves, namely the story and characters.
Multiplayer was fun to a point, but the random card system combined with only three types of enemies with the DLCs (Cerberus, Collectors and Reapers if I'm not mistaken) made the multiplayer side of things get boring fast.
@elminster: Yeah, that's the problem with multiplayer. As there hardly ever is a good background story supporting your actions, you need to be kept on being challenged by other things, such as new character classes and new enemies. Point is, you can't keep on adding these without reaching a point where the game becomes boring and pointless, where the classes all start appearing to be the same, where grinding over and over again for one particular weapon just doesn't seem to be worth it anymore, because before you know it, you encounter an even stronger weapon and all of your effort would be for nothing. I've also read that Bioware is needlessly nerfing and buffing certain weapons, making them become pointless as well. So you see, multiplayer games always need more and more content to keep the player interested. A single player game also offers a lot of content, but this is done in packages (prequels, sequels, spin-offs and so on) and at a slower pace, usually also raising the overall quality of the game. Also, unstable servers and account issues (bans, your account accidentay getting wiped out, scores being reset, etc), especially in the case of EA, make a multiplayer game from Bioware kind of unappealing to me.
@elminster: Yeah, that's the problem with multiplayer. As there hardly ever is a good background story supporting your actions, you need to be kept on being challenged by other things, such as new character classes and new enemies. Point is, you can't keep on adding these without reaching a point where the game becomes boring and pointless, where the classes all start appearing to be the same, where grinding over and over again for one particular weapon just doesn't seem to be worth it anymore, because before you know it, you encounter an even stronger weapon and all of your effort would be for nothing. I've also read that Bioware is needlessly nerfing and buffing certain weapons, making them become pointless as well. So you see, multiplayer games always need more and more content to keep the player interested. A single player game also offers a lot of content, but this is done in packages (prequels, sequels, spin-offs and so on) and at a slower pace, usually also raising the overall quality of the game. Also, unstable servers and account issues (bans, your account accidentay getting wiped out, scores being reset, etc), especially in the case of EA, make a multiplayer game from Bioware kind of unappealing to me.
Well since it was not VS. the power of the weapons your companions have is only so important in if it lets you survive to extraction. But I mean the fact that you could not communicate through text in the multiplayer lobby is a big downside in my opinion. I can't say there were a lot of gameplay issues with the multiplayer outside of the random card boxes, but the user experience was rather poor I found. Like it takes forever for the "store" to open in game, the actual game has to go through a dlc check when you start it (which stops you from being able to do anything for a good minute or more). I think I might have mentioned that I started and beat the game less than a month ago, and despite patches none of these issues have been fixed.
Comments
Shepard: "I don't believe the choice you're offering me is very reasonable, ethical, or optimal."
Ghost kid: "YOUR BELIEF IS NOT REQUIRED."
Shepard: "Well.. I feel that is a weird thing to say, considering I've spent 3 games being asked what I believed what was the most reasonable options."
Ghost Kid: "Just pick a color!"
Shepard: ".. No. Nah. You seem to got this covered for the most part. I'm leaving. Play me out, Linkin Park!"
Linkin Park: "I tried so hard, and got so faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar... But in the end, it doesn't even matteeeer"
Shepard walks out: "... Guess they had it right from the start... Shame Linkin Park was an underrated band, and simply branded 'emo'. Just goes to show what life can throw at you..."
"Psh, tiny insignifigant people. They have no idea how worthless they are. They should be in awe of me.. M'yes."
Also I was fed up having to play that horrendous iOS game to keep my readiness high. I certainly wasn't going into multiplayer for that.
The war asset nonsense was annoying for sure, but I didn't get any of the 'bad' endings with my limited amount and I didn't play multiplayer until afterwards. I hope one day (not necessarily soon) you give the game another try, I think the ending hate is overblown.
To start they had the fabulous idea of relocating the guy who was writing it and then, make that ending... that not only is a copy of deus ex but also rewards the players 300hrs of gameplay with the most boring, nonsensical and unepic ending ever. There are many 20 min rants on youtube how it could be different, without being "too happy".
Did you see any effect from your choices in the previous games?
Yes but did that change anything in the game? My point is that ME choices are personal, the endings are no different.
@Eleuthros
I'm surprised the ending never showed a "what if" shot of Saren synthesis...ing the galaxy, like they did for Anderson and Martin Sheen. My friend had the same problem with a sole survivor Shepard, sounds to me like a plot hole, they must not have had the idea of making Cerberus an active part of the series at that point.
You basically prove the Catalyst wrong by making peace between the Geth and their organic creators and you don't even mention it when the Catalyst comes with the gibberish about destroying organic life because of an inevitable cycle that always lead to organics creating synthetics that will kill organics? That is the same as saying you'll murder me to save my life.
Deciding wh lives or die in your group that could be seem as a personal choice, one that a commander in war time has to make often, but proving the Catalyst wrong, bring extnct races back from the dead, etc. are muche bigger than that.
I'm saying none of the ME games have ever had the choices change the course of the series, I meant personal to you the player, not Shepard.
It is perfectly fine to like or dislike the series because of it. I am just pointing out that your choices have never actually affected anything in the series. This is why the people who disliked the ending because their choices didn't matter confuses me, because I don't understand how they got that far in the series if that was an issue for them . :P
Up until the end the Mass Effect series seemed to be a lot more dynamic. However when it came down to pushing button 1, 2 or 3 with none of the options being particularly attractive it felt like filling in a survey and hugely anticlimactic. Also the options were highly reminiscent of Deus Ex. In that case however at least the choice appeared to be appropriate and follow the flow and theme of the game. In the case of Mass Effect it seemed a lazy and ill thought out way of ending the series... until the next DLC.
I havent played, nor read much about it lately tho, but i seem to recall one of the complaints were you never acctualy saw anything of the war assests you picked up during your railroad tour through the galaxy
(someone smack me over the head with a crowbar and correct me if my brain is not working as intended)
I find it highly ironic that the multiplayer is the only thing that keeps Mass Effect going at this moment. The games were never intended to be focused on multiplayer and most people who were avidly against it, have now grown to love it. I can only shake my head when seeing the weekly multiplayer challenges when visiting the BSN. It's as if the devs are putting more effort into thinking out interesting multiplayer challenges, than to actually keep themselves busy with the ESSENCE of the Mass Effect games themselves, namely the story and characters.
I was only replying to a specific argument against it, the one about the choices not mattering. I decided I had participated in to many paragraph wars on the subject, so I am trying to take things slow this time. :P