184 réponses à ce sujet

[CroGamer002]

Alex_SM wrote...

ME1 shooting mechanics are not "outdated". Just plain bad. By far the weakest point of the whole game (along with clipping issues and low-res textures).  

I was talking about ME2.

Last time I checked ME1 didn't got GOTY awards.

Modifié par Mesina2, 30 novembre 2011 - 01:16 .

[Sgt Stryker]

@Alex_SM

Pretty sure Mesina was talking about ME2.

[Alex_SM]

Then I don't get the comment. ME2 shooting mechanics are pretty good. Could be better (removing invisible walls, health regeneration), but I don't thing they are bad at all.

Modifié par Alex_SM, 30 novembre 2011 - 01:28 .

[Swampthing500]

Alex_SM wrote...

Then I don't get the comment. ME2 shooting mechanics are pretty good. Could be better (invisible walls, health regeneration), but I don't thing they are bad at all.

Plus a key to enter cover at will rather than automatically. That made things easier when retreating.

[chuckwells62]

I came into the Mass Effect universe through the second game and only played the original after the fact, so the squaddies from ME2 are closer to my heart than either Ashley, Wrex or Kaidan. Another factor for me regarding the suicide mission, is that "The Dirty Dozen" is one of my favorite older films.

I understand Walters comments and can sympathize with Bioware's predicament over all of the particulars and how it all could impact ME3, but that's what you get when there are such a large number of possibilities for fans to manifest through their various playthroughs.

Spoilers generally don't ruin an upcoming property for me, and I have read the leaked info. I look forward to seeing how the third game plays out, but based on certain indications I'm losing favorite teammates that I would otherwise prefer not to.

Modifié par chuckwells62, 30 novembre 2011 - 01:42 .

[JoePilot]

Mac Walters wrote...

"They're more hurdles. Sometimes they're hurdles that we've given
ourselves, so we kind of smack ourselves in the head and say 'What the
hell were we thinking? Why did we do that?'

The classic example is 'Hey, let's make the ending of Mass Effect 2 a
suicide mission where all your henchmen can possibly die, and Shepard
can even die!' Oh right... and then we're gonna do another game after
that. What the hell are we gonna do with all those guys?"

No worries BigMac, I'm certain you will find a way to make all these decisions and different outcomes entirely insignificant in ME3.

[CroGamer002]

Alex_SM wrote...

Then I don't get the comment. ME2 shooting mechanics are pretty good. Could be better (removing invisible walls, health regeneration), but I don't thing they are bad at all.

There's no blind shooting, simple cover animations, no cover to cover movement.

Those kind of stuff many TPS before ME2 already had, hence it's outdated.

Not bad, but outdated( that stuff we will get in ME3 though).

ME2 just solely on gameplay couldn't get perfect scores and brake GOTY awards.
And it didn't get them only do to that, but also do to great story, great characters and tough decisions that are often morally questionable( for example Legion loyalty mission).

[Alex_SM]

Mei Mei wrote...

Whey you announce you are taking decisions into account for the main story, you NEED to have all those decisions (and their consequences) written before starting. Otherwise you won't be able to do it, because the story tree will grow and grow.

Things can change, but you stick to the basic storyline and the plot-changing decisions. And if you have to change any of this, rewrite everything again, including the "future parts", to be sure everything is tied. Otherwise you'll end up with an incoherent mess.

Now Bioware has a huge amount of possibilities and they are just going to ignore everything and end it as they never gave anyone the change to choose (except for some cosmetic details). Because in a normal development cycle, under the pressure of a big corporation (EA), it's impossible to fulfill their promises. That's disappointing. It could end up being a good game, but I'm pretty sure It won't be the GREAT (in uppercase, a "Game of the decade") game it could have been.

This starts to look like Lost. Written on the fly, with writers having no idea about how to end it until the started with the last season, and most fans disappointed. 

Modifié par Alex_SM, 30 novembre 2011 - 01:48 .

[Terror_K]

JoePilot wrote...

Mac Walters wrote...

"They're more hurdles. Sometimes they're hurdles that we've given
ourselves, so we kind of smack ourselves in the head and say 'What the
hell were we thinking? Why did we do that?'

The classic example is 'Hey, let's make the ending of Mass Effect 2 a
suicide mission where all your henchmen can possibly die, and Shepard
can even die!' Oh right... and then we're gonna do another game after
that. What the hell are we gonna do with all those guys?"

No worries BigMac, I'm certain you will find a way to make all these decisions and different outcomes entirely insignificant in ME3.

Of course.

On Sur'kesh for example we'll be tooling around with Urdnot Wreav and Dr. Nordun Dolas, while two of our squad members will be Garrus' never-before-seen brother Tarrus Vakarian, and Tali's lost cousin Pali'Zorah nar Tonbay , who both join the fray with some throwaway lines about "how much my relative spoke of you, Shepard" etc.

Modifié par Terror_K, 30 novembre 2011 - 02:00 .

[Alex_SM]

Mesina2 wrote...

There's no blind shooting, simple cover animations, no cover to cover movement.

Those kind of stuff many TPS before ME2 already had, hence it's outdated.

Not bad, but outdated( that stuff we will get in ME3 though).

ME2 just solely on gameplay couldn't get perfect scores and brake GOTY awards.
And it didn't get them only do to that, but also do to great story, great characters and tough decisions that are often morally questionable( for example Legion loyalty mission).

oh, that kind of things. I'm not used to play TPS, so never missed them. In fact ME and ME2 where the 2º and 3rd TPS I've ever played (after Gears of War in a friend's XBOX). I'm more an FPS player, and mostly an old school FPS player (screw Battefield, COD and that kind of stuff, I want Doom, Descent, Quake and that kind of stuff).  

I always missed some things, like the chance of climbing to every low wall or step instead of  just the ones the game wants, or having interaction with every object, or the chance to take multiple routes, or that f***ing invisible walls...etc... or a bit of the pacing of Mirror's Edge... but that's hard to find (hey, if you know where, just tell LoL)

[Fraevar]

I have to say, it's actually refreshing to see Mac Walters acknowledge faults in the basic ME2 premise. I know, I and a lot of other fans have been trying to look for indicators of this due to dissatisfaction with how certain elements in ME2 were handled, or mishandled as it were.

I've always felt ME2 was in a bad place for two reasons: Shepard's death and the suicide mission. Both things that seem very cool and dramatic but ultimately caused the whole series to skew off track leaving the writers struggling to get it back to where it was at the end of ME1 - Shepard needing to find out more about the Reapers and rallying the galaxy to fight them. If we add Mac Walters' statements in this interview to what we heard before the release, that the decision to exclude Ashley and Kaidan from the second game (in a major capacity) was because they needed to be alive for the third act, then you can start thinking about just how damaging the suicide mission as an idea really was to the integrity of Mass Effect as a trilogy. The suicide mission turned the second act into a throwaway story. Shepard's death was a pointless plot device to isolate it from the previous game, recruiting the squaddies resulted in good missions which lacked a real strong sense of motivation, the Collectors were suddenly thrown into the mix because they now needed a completely isolated new villain to facilitate the suicide mission, with a tiny bit of Reaper plot thrown in for good measure.

ME2 won a lot of awards for its cinematic presentation and the various recruitment and loyalty missions. I've always felt that yes, the new characters were mostly very enjoyable and the cinematic presentation was really well executed. But...

It just didn't manage to be a good second chapter to ME1. Ultimately, by the end of ME2, Shepard was in the exact situation she was in at the end of ME1: Reapers are coming - need to rally people against them, at least as far as the overarching plot was concerned. And...as good as the various ME2 missions in and of themselves were...I just can't say that they were actually worth losing a "real" second chapter in a trilogy - the chapter where the real protagonist and plot growth was supposed to happen in preparation for the finale.

So in closing - yes, BioWare have really written themselves into a corner with ME2. All the character and plot development concerning the protagonist and the Reapers now has to happen in the first half of ME3 instead of over the course of a full game. Will ME3 be a good game? Very probable. Will it really be the gaming equivalent of the original Star Wars Trilogy? No, not with ME2 going the way it did. There just isn't time for it. And it's a shame. Because it could've been, and not just in presentation.

Modifié par Delerius_Jedi, 30 novembre 2011 - 02:19 .

[Kusy]

Combat mechanic that requires you to do one and only one thing to succeed is bad. Especially when that one thing is annoying and boring. Mass Effect 2 punishes you for any attempt at doing something else than staying in cover and returning fire from time to time.

I'm not expecting a Hollywood run-n-gun action movie, but it would be nice to have some sort of balance. You can dislike modern FPS like Battlefield 3, but the fact is, you will never have two exactly the same rounds in that game. 
And I don't expect the AI in Mass Effect 3 to give me the same experience I get from playing with other people, I'm just pointing out that playing with other people would be just as boring if the game would only give me the ability to stand behind a wall and shoot at the opposite wall where my enemies are hiding.

@ Delerius_Jedi :
I think we're reaching the point where people start to realize they don't want freedom in their games, because that's what became Mass Effect's problem. Flawed freedom is not always better than well done linear story. And I'm not necessarily saying that Mass Effect was flawed, I'm just saying it's way easier to please more people when they are experiencing the same thing, not giving everyone their own setup and trying to make compromises between those setups later.

Modifié par Mr.Kusy, 30 novembre 2011 - 02:23 .

[Fraevar]

@Mr. Kusy: I actually don't wish for entirely linear experiences in BioWare games, either. I am fine with there being linear elements, but when it comes to my protagonist, I do want choice over how she reacts and replies to people.

My main problem with ME2 in that particular regard was that throughout the game I found myself asking: "Ok, when do I get to Shepard's loyalty mission?" ME1 had quests related to Shepard's past and the fact that Shepard died at the start of ME2 raised my expectations that we'd get to really explore and define Shepard's psyche. The marketing for the game reinforced this. And it just never happens, almost nothing in ME2 comes back to Shepard, it's always Shepard fixing someone's problem. I honestly would have preferred if they had cut 2-3 squadmates from the game and used that to actually develop Shepard beyond being just the hand holding the gun for me, the player.

I guess what I'm saying is, that this is where I really expected BioWare to go above and beyond with their ressource allocation. Instead of just focusing on set pieces, show the other side of narrative mechanisms - the character studies. ME2 set expectations it failed to live up to in that regard, by opening with the protagonist's death.

The suicide mission problems facing the writing team now is simply another facet of the fact that no one apparently asked: "Wait, won't doing a suicide mission and needing to isolate our protagonist from the previous game to accomodate it disrupt the flow of the trilogy's narrative?". That BioWare, a company that cannot stop telling us how much they focus on story failed to ask that question is very disheartening to me, even moreso as a customer.

Modifié par Delerius_Jedi, 30 novembre 2011 - 02:33 .

[Someone With Mass]

Mr.Kusy wrote...

Combat mechanic that requires you to do one and only one thing to succeed is bad. Especially when that one thing is annoying and boring. Mass Effect 2 punishes you for any attempt at doing something else than staying in cover and returning fire from time to time.

Well, that's a complete lie.

Edit: It's not the game's fault if you're taking the safe and boring route. Same can be said about ME1.

Modifié par Someone With Mass, 30 novembre 2011 - 02:33 .

[Kusy]

Mhm... that's why you need to find the right way between sandbox orgy and linear ordnung. What I'm saying is that Mass Effect 2 was too drunk to walk that road straight.

It's also a valid point, Sheploo was a total brick in Mass Effect 2, they stripped him of all character except for paragon / renegade choices that didn't really add anything to it.

[Dilandau3000]

Delerius_Jedi wrote...

@Mr. Kusy: I actually don't wish for entirely linear experiences in BioWare games, either. I am fine with their being linear elements, but when it comes to my protagonist, I do want choice over how she reacts and replies to people. My main problem with ME2 in that particular regard was that throughout the game I found myself asking: "Ok, when do I get to Shepard's loyalty mission?" ME1 had these quests related to Shepard's past and the fact that Shepard died at the start of ME2 raised my expectations that we'd get to really explore and define Shepard's psyche. And it just never happens, almost nothing in ME2 comes back to Shepard, it's always Shepard fixing someone's problem. I honestly would have preferred if they had cut 2-3 squadmates from the game and used that to actually develop Shepard beyond being just the hand holding the gun for me, the player.

I couldn't agree more. Shepard's death seemed nothing more than a device to get him/her out of the picture for a bit. It never affects anything, and Shepard doesn't seem bothered by it all. I'd be pretty freaked out and would be very worried about the "am I really still me?" aspect of it.

Spock spent a whole movie finding himself after he was restored to life. Buffy had almost an entire season. But Shepard shrugs it off before even leaving the Project Lazarus facility. Why kill and resurrect a character when doing so makes absolutely zero difference to the story? Shepard could've gone "sorry, I spent the last two years playing Skyrim" instead and the story would've been no different for it.

[Kusy]

@ SWM:

Yeah, I heard about this Vanguard you speak of. This doesn't change the fact that the game was not planed for this. It takes your hand and leads you from one box to another short wall you are supposed to use as cover. Playing it without cover is something you might do because you want to prove you can, while it should be fluent enough to feel natural, not like a feat worth bragging about.

Please do continue to take my words out of context.

[Someone With Mass]

I can play as a Sentinel or Infiltrator without cover too.

Just because the game encourages you to do something doesn't mean that you must. For example, it encourages me to use SMGs against shields. Do I have to do this? Nope. I can just slap on some Disruptor Ammo on my pistol and I'm good to go if I prefer pistols instead of SMGs.

If you don't like taking cover so often, then don't blame the game when you do it.

[jamesp81]

chris2365 wrote...

Neoseeker just posted an article on ME3. While it talks about the Citadel's cut content in ME2, lead writer Mac Walters also shares a few of his thoughts: http://www.neoseeker...fect-2-mission/

Interestingly, Walters also admitted that the suicide mission at the end of Mass Effect 2 was not BioWare's greatest idea; the revelation hit while the team was looking at accommodating every significant player decision from the previous two installments.

"They're more hurdles. Sometimes they're hurdles that we've given ourselves, so we kind of smack ourselves in the head and say 'What the hell were we thinking? Why did we do that?'
The classic example is 'Hey, let's make the ending of Mass Effect 2 a suicide mission where all your henchmen can possibly die, and Shepard can even die!' Oh right... and then we're gonna do another game after that. What the hell are we gonna do with all those guys?"

Despite his soft spot for the series, Walters notes that after seven years of Mass Effect, he's grown "a little weary" and looks forward to a change of scenery. That said, he doesn't mind just taking a break and returning to the series later.

It's true. It must be really tough to make a sequel in which almost everybody can die. Got to give the guys credit

They painted themselves into a corner, no doubt about it.

[jamesp81]

chris2365 wrote...

The suicide mission was awesome. However, it creates difficulties for a sequel. Hope they can pull it off

This.  I loved that sequence of the game, but the myriad results from it made things tough on the writers.

[Alex_SM]

I play using covers, but usually not just "staying in cover and returning fire". I tend to advance whenever I can, pushing enemies back.

And I don't see anything bad about the "freedom" Bioware allowed in ME2. In fact there wasn't so much freedom (bioware never allows much). Freedom is what Bethesda allows in their games, where you can even ignore the story.

The only complain I have about that, in ME2, is that the level cap is ridiculous. In my actual playtrhough I've reached lvl30 before ending the loyalty missions, and before doing any side mission, or Overlord, or Arrival, or the whole end of the story (still didn't went to the derelict reaper).
How is it possible to reach the max level with so much left?

[Dilandau3000]

I use cover, but it's because I'm absolutely terrible at shooters of any form. Essentially, before ME the most modern shooter I had ever played was Doom (and I sucked at that too). I can't stand FPS games, and the combat in ME for me is something that must be endured to get to the story bits. It's tolerable, it has its fun and intense moments (and I'll take it over those god-awful combat and stealth sequences in Dreamfall any day), but if BioWare announced they were turning ME3 into an adventure game I would hold a week-long celebration.