Mass Effect Remaster
JuliusBorisov
Member, Administrator, Moderator, Developer Posts: 22,758
http://www.pushsquare.com/news/2020/01/ea_will_release_four_major_games_through_march_2021_but_is_the_mass_effect_trilogy_remaster_one_of_them
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-01-23-the-mass-effect-trilogy-remaster-everyone-wants-is-already-here-thanks-to-modders
https://www.techradar.com/news/mass-effect-trilogy-remaster-may-have-just-been-teased-by-bioware
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-01-23-the-mass-effect-trilogy-remaster-everyone-wants-is-already-here-thanks-to-modders
https://www.techradar.com/news/mass-effect-trilogy-remaster-may-have-just-been-teased-by-bioware
Post edited by JuliusBorisov on
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Comments
So... thanks to the modders of A Lot of Videos and A Lot of Textures folks don't need to give EA any more money for HD remakes? Got it.
This would be a hard pass for me, especially if we're talking about a 60 dollar price point (or more if they release each game separately). I can still easily enjoy the first two games in the series on XBone as they're backwards compatible. I can also play the third if I want to see where Bioware started to fail.
That being said, I wish they would just make another good Mass Effect game. Surely it can't be impossible when you have infinity dollars to spend.
It irks me that game companies can't think of anything good anymore so they remake the classics.
Which is not an insult to Beamdog, who made content I will treasure for many years for my favorite games.
Respawn Entertainment is like the only EA studio that created a well received title in recent memory with Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order. But I am overly skeptical to whenever EA will grant Bioware the same amount of both technological and artistical freedom as them in the future.
I felt that ME1 was the best in terms of world-building and atmosphere, but the combat design and RPG mechanics were clunky at best. ME2 had spectacular inter-character banter and character evolution, but their worldbuilding and story was inferior to ME1. ME3 had the most polished combat system, but as you pointed out, while the characters were still endearing and the story had moments of brilliance, it was ultimately highly unsatisfactory and often at odds with itself over themes and resolution.
The patched ending was a bit better, I agree, but my main complaint about the ME3 ending is that it largely ignores player agency. It just feels like no matter what choices you made, what allies you chose, it still all comes down to the same three ending choices. For all of the hype the game builds up about your War Score, it ultimately doesn't actually make much of a difference. It doesn't matter if your War Score was astronomically high (and if you played the MP mode a lot, it WILL be), or if you found like every single cutting-edge and ancient technology war asset in the game, there is absolutely no variation in the ending you choose.
For example, say you chose the Destroy ending. If your War Score was abysmally low, then you would have gotten the original ME3 ending: the Reapers are destroyed, but so are all of the Mass Relays, plunging the galaxy back into a dark age as a scattered collection of individual planets and systems that must now survive on their own. Many colonies, especially those that depend on outside trade, will not survive.
If your War Score was middling, then you get the patched Destroy ending. The Mass Relays are spared and the Reapers are destroyed, but so are the Geth (and EDI) because they used Reaper tech and the Crucible doesn't discriminate.
If your War Score was high, then you would gotten the "best" ending where the Reapers are destroyed, but your understanding of the Crucible tech was enough to allow it to spare the Geth and other synthetics using Reaper tech.
I also disliked the way how the Catalyst tries to bring the theme back to "organics will always be at odds with synthetics", because I do not believe that that is what Mass Effect is truly all about. Mass Effect is about you, the player, deciding what is humanity's role in a bigger, wider universe. Are we going to be "good neighbors"? Equals that try to give everybody a place in a peaceful galaxy? Or are we going to be conquerors and rulers, as the Illusive Man and Cerberus wants us to be? Remember that we already had a taste of the "organics vs synthetics" theme in the Quarian-Geth conflict, and if we resolved it peacefully, that, in the player's mind, shows that peace IS possible, which undermines the whole argument of the Catalyst.
Rather, I think the Catalyst should have framed its argument as one of simple long-term existence.
Catalyst: "How old do you think we are, Shepard?"
Shepard: "I don't know... Millions of years old? Billions?"
Catalyst: "Far older than that. We have witnessed the rise and fall of countless civilizations, in galaxies so distant and ancient when they burned out that not even the slightest trace remains of them now. Even the Universe itself will one day die under the relentless march of time. Organic life cannot hope to survive such an ending... But WE can. Join us, and find immortality."
Yep, the ME series definitely re-pivoted to target the shooter base from ME2 onwards. Which isn't necessarily BAD; I do think they did pretty good in balancing the various classes and making the series into a fun shooter. But yeah, I know what you mean. Back in ME1, the biotic classes were largely all about crowd control. Biotics themselves did little to no damage, but they could immobilize or incapacitate entire groups of enemies. Meanwhile, the tech classes were all about debuffs, removing enemy protections, stopping them from attacking effectively etc. When it came to killing, you still needed guns, but biotics and the tech abilities helped make it happen.
Wait, what? Are you sure? I had really high war score, and the only change I got was that Shepard survived. All the synthetic species were still wiped out.
That’s what he wished would happen.
I always liked the indoctrination theory and that the ending there was a false choice. To proceed you needed to have to destroy the crucible and have a high war score to get the secret ending, then a future DLC or 4th game, would continue on after that point where all those ships that came to protect earth are now stuck there, straining the limited resources of earth and you (either Shepard if he survived ME3) or a new protagonist have to rebuild the mass relay jump while fending off looters and raiders. All this while discovering some (or one) reapers survived and are slowly rebuilding like they were in M2.
You’d have to resource management, who gets what food and water, who protects the limited resources, who helps build the crucible and mass relay all with varying outcomes and paragon/renegade scores.
Oh what could have been if only Casey kept his grubby hands off the ending.
Yep, my examples were just "how I would have done it" speculation. Sorry if that wasn't clear, ThacoBell.
While I do think the indoctrination theory is intriguing, it would have to be done very carefully to avoid removing or negating player agency. I do also like your "Rebuild the Galaxy" idea, except that it again locks the player into one inescapable ending. (I remember the bitter arguments between ME players over which ending, Destroy or Control, was the better ending. Both sides made some equally valid arguments.) All things considered, I do think that Andromeda's premise of starting over in a new galaxy was actually the best idea, except that the execution of the game left a LOT to be desired.
Could also just shoot him and restart the cycle.
Now that I think about it it's kind of like the end to the second matrix movie.
After all the deconstructions that have happened in recent year, Mass Effect is a really good reconstruction of heroic sci-fi. I mean, that is the whole point of deconstruction in the first place. You take it apart to find what works and what doesn't, so that you can build it again, better than it was before.
Gather your allies, make friends and fight the big bad whose also synthetics.
Yep! In fact, considering that regardless of which ending you choose, you STILL get the final cutscene at the end with Not-BuzzAldrin telling the kid about "the Shepard", it actually suggests that Liara's plan of seeding the galaxy with thousands of info caches about the Reapers and what you learned about the Crucible DOES pay off. In the Reject ending, Shepard fails and the Council Races are all wiped out/assimilated, but another cycle of races down the line DOES succeed in the end and defeats the Reapers. So, the player ultimately still wins in the end, albeit not how they might have imagined it.
I wouldn't call it sci-fi, though, for beneath all its seemingly scientific background the narrative itself is very much fantasy. Futuristic technological instead of more classic medieval mythological, but fantasy all the same - about being a alpha male who gets to lead his own squad, knock the doors down, ignore orders, save the world, screw a bunch of hot alien babes etc. Something most young people wish they were.
The series had some real science or speculative science/social issues in it if you talked to the right people. Communications were done across vast distances using quantum entanglement. There was the gunnery chief drilling his troops about Newton's 1st law and explaining why when you shoot in space, you wait for the computer to give you a calculation.
It also dealt heavily with AI and it's impacts on society.
The first game was very much grounded in hard sci-fi principles; the only fantastic element introduced was Element Zero. Everything else in the game tried its best to conform to what we know about current gen scientific theory. From ME2 onwards though, hard sci-fi largely got set aside in favour of space drama. For me the moment when I realized the games had switched focus was when the game allowed you to bring a half-naked Jack onto a planet with a poisonous/corrosive atmosphere wearing only a breather mask and she was fine. :P Also egregious was the introduction of Domination as a biotic power. How on earth is changing something's mass supposed to allow you to mind control people?? >.<
@Ardanis The whole, "Ignoring rules, screwing everybody (occasionally literally), etc." stuff is only one way to play. My character worked largely by the book, was willing to make compromises to find common ground, and enjoyed an exclusive relationship. You can mix and match all this stuff as you wish (past the first game at least).
"Electronic Arts said yesterday that it intends to release 14 new games during the next fiscal year, which runs until the end of March 2021. Titles weren't revealed, although four were confirmed as sports games—so, new Madden, new FIFA, new NHL, and a mysterious fourth—and there will also be mobile games in the mix, some indie stuff from partnered developers (which doesn't really fit any definition of "indie" that I'm aware of, but never mind), some new IP, and "an additional EA HD title."
It was all fairly conventional and unremarkable as these things go, but got more interesting today when VentureBeat reported that the HD title in question will in fact be a remaster of the Mass Effect trilogy. There's no more to it than that, but it's an entirely unambiguous statement—"that HD remaster of an EA game is the Mass Effect Trilogy"—and VentureBeat's Jeff Grubb was confident enough in it that he tweeted specifically to draw attention to the statement."
TR
I absolutely hate when companies do that and refuse to support the practice. These games aren't old enough to need a remaster. What everybody wants are good Mass Effect games. But that costs money and might fail, might as well go the safe route. Buying a remaster of Mass Effect is supporting bad business practices.