DarthCaine wrote...
Ecael wrote...
Neither ME1 or ME2 have choices that will affect the storyline. You'll get the same ending either way. Dragon Age didn't have choices that made any difference in the storyline either - it only affected which armies were shown in the cutscenes and what text is shown in the epilogue.
Choosing who lives and who dies IS affecting the storyline, however small that affect may be
In Dragon Age, it had basically no effect. None of the characters that could die carried over in any significant way to the expansion, and Dragon Age 2 is not going carry anyone over - not even the Warden - except Morrigan (who is probably going to be some potential villain).
Orchomene wrote...
Well, many reactions that are here to defend the opposite point of views and are certainly as valid as mine. I'll answer globally if you don't mind.
1. ME1 and ME2 are RPG by definition of an RPG.
Of course, one can always find that an explicit definition of a RPG encompass those games (and thus many games including perhaps even Mario Bros). Computer roleplaying game genre is a transposition of the pen and paper roleplaying game genre. Of course, since the media is different, it is difficult to establish a parallel.
There is no game master, only a software, that means that the design of a CRPG has to give some illusion of freedom. I've not yet finished ME2, but so far, I've seen missions where the freedom is entirely lacking : you follow some fixed path of rooms and kill enemies. At some moment, there may be a fork that will result in the same thing : killing some enemies. That alone could be the description of Doom, Duke Nukem, Quake. These games are not RPG.
That's changing the definition of an RPG. Mass Effect 1 and 2 have always had fixed sets of rooms where you shoot stuff and fixed sets of empty planets where you shoot stuff - that's describing the shooter aspect.
Asking for an open-ended, populated world is more Bethesda's style, not BioWare. You can complete the missions in a different order every time, but you're still going to have the same ending as someone else.
What defines Mass Effect as an RPG is:
-Appearance Customization (character creator with voiced main character)
-Personality Customization (affecting dialogue in a way that suits a certain attitude)
-Gameplay Customization (several classes/roles or several ways of going about a quest)
-Progression (leveling up, choosing sets of skills)
-Side Quests (taking time off the main plot to do other unrelated tasks)
-Side Characters (characters that interact with the main or fight with you)
Does Mass Effect 1/2 have all these? Yes. They also require you to shoot stuff, but it's still an RPG.
2. There are differences between level 1 and level 30. That's possible, but I don't feel there are. That is surely because I'm at the moment playing a soldier that just use more or less the same tactics from the beginning.
But in the end, since enemies scale to your level (or above depending on the difficulty), there is no real accomplishment feeling : in the beginning you are killing meca and ten levels later you are still killing meca with the same ease (or lack of). That's true for other games that follow the same logic that you can fight level 20 rats at level 20 and face the same challenge as in the beginning. I think this is a choice toward an audience that would feel frustrated to be outmatched directly by strong enemies and have to flee somewhere else and return well prepared later. But each one his/her opinions. If in fallout (1 and 2) you go to different places with your beginning equipment, you may be one shot killed pretty easily by anything from super mutants to well equipped mercenaries : it was open yet you had to be careful because the game was not scaled to your level.
Scaling and linearity are mutually exclusive. Why? You have basically two choices:
1. Have the enemies scale, allowing you to choose which area you wish to do first (freedom from linearity)
2. Have the enemies not scale, forcing you to do areas or quests in a certain order (freedom from scaling)
BioWare games use (1) in order to let you do the available missions in any order you like. If the enemies don't scale (like in Fallout), then that's actually limiting the open-ended world. MMORPGs are notorious for this - it feels like an open world, but you're still going through the same areas the same way everyone else did.
3. Inventory or not inventory.
I've already answered, but it's about physical interaction. When you can't take anything, when you don't find anything but ammo, you feel that the world is pretty empty.
The same goes with merchant. I don't mind that merchants don't have the best weapons, that's just that having a look at what is seeing a merchant and seeing in total three objects breaks the immersion because you are wondering why there is a whole shop for just selling three objects.
Ironically, the heat sinks are the only thing that actually counts as looting in the Mass Effect world. All items from killing things or merchants are automatically sent to your inventory.
Merchants are almost useless in both games, specifically because most of what they sell is pointless. BioWare simply removed any items that may be unusable or unappealing for Mass Effect 2 and replaced them with novelty items (like ships) or upgrades/pieces of armor that you might actually use.
In the end, you still have armor with some variable numbers behind it (stats in ME1, upgrades in ME2) and a Pistol, Assault Rifle, Shotgun and Sniper Rifle with variable numbers behind them. Heavy Weapons a tad more unique - and much more fun - in comparison to grenades, though.
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