FirstOfTheFallen wrote...
I'm back!(and I really should have figured out how to use the pic code before I had to edit this post 4 times -- damn there being no preview function!)
It's annoying that the FemSheps are the ones getting hammere--um...being most affected by this. Personally, ever since KOTOR, I play as a female character(ohh, the concept of a female Revan...the mind spins with the possibilities). The reason for this in the previous gen was pretty straightforward: in this style of RPG, you're running around for 50+ hours with a behind-the-back camera. And as a guy, if I'm going to be looking at someone's ass for that long, I'd prefer it to be a woman's ass.
Then this gen: it just seems to me like the female characters get the better voice talent. It pissed me off when ME1 made MaleShep the default, for two reasons. 1, Mark Meer's voice does not look like it ought to come from Mark Vanderloo's mouth. 2, I wanted to see a kick-ass female heroine held up as a gold standard. Additionally, I was annoyed that the voice of the franchise was not one of the best voice actors of this generation(Jennifer Hale) but, IMO, one of the worst(Meer). However, as Rufus the 13th Apostle would say, "That's just my pet peeve." Let's get back to the real issue at hand.
Now, as to the facial importing...I'm still annoyed. This is, as I said yesterday, a heavily-publicized cornerstone of the franchise: the ability to create a custom character, whether it be an avatar of yourself or just how you think the character 'should' look. And now it's broken. This needs to be fixed, and fixed soon. When we longtimers spent hours getting our Sheps 'juuuust right', I for one really didn't want to have to do that again.
But...*sigh*...I did, as an experiment. Which is why it's almost two EST and I'm just now getting on, even though I got off work 7 hours ago. And let me point out: while I've come to a very slighter degree of acceptance as it relates to re-creating my Shep, I am still not okay with my story choices being wrong. They need to fix that now.
Okay, here's the situation. My parents went away -- no, no, sorry. Tired, no caffeine.
On ME1 release day, I spent several hours(not sure how many -- it was most of the morning shot to hell, though) creating a FemShep that I thought was both attractive and that -- to my ears -- fit how I envisioned her voice. This is her(squad shot-Normandy bridge shot). When posting pics before, I've heard everything from "She's hot" to "She looks like David Bowie", but it's just my personal taste.
ME2 release day, I was pleased as punch to find out that the 'import your character's face' had NO problems whatsoever. There were, as I've said, some very minor differences, but that was only to be expected with a graphics upgrade. This is her(squad-shot-talking to Chakwas shot)
http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/mm311/DiScOrD_tHe_uNaTiC/ME2FemShep.jpg
ME3 release day, I came home, waited for GameStop to open, then got the game. Installed it, selected 'Import ME2 character'...and felt my heart sink as I saw that several of my story options for my original, primary FemShep(I have 3 Fem, 4 Male) were wrong(as noted before, my game went LI-Liara--Virmire-kill Kaidan--ME2LI-stay faithful. The import thought it was LI-Kaidan--Virmire-kill Ashley--ME2LI-stay faithful). I got so pissed at that, that I quit the game and went to bed.
Then, yesterday. I happened to mention the debacle to a buddy of mine at work who is a regular on sites like Kotaku, and he informed me of the glitch. I came here and met all you wonderful people:) and contributed my $0.02. And by the time I was finished researching the problem, trying the workarounds(I used Janus', if you're wondering), it was again time for bed. To be honest, it was a little early for me, but the last thing I felt like doing was messing with the game more.
Which led to this morning when I got home. Started up ME3 and input the code I got from the Modio/Mass Effect 2 Saves website/YAML rigamarole. And this gave me...her.
[img]http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/mm311/DiScOrD_tHe_uNaTiC/ME3coderip.jpg[/img]
Kill it, kill it!
I sighed, back out of the CC, and thought for a moment. Then I picked 'Import ME2 character' and progressed past the screen showing my wrong story options, figuring I'd see what my no-longer-valid-facecode FemShep looked like. This is her.
[img]http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/mm311/DiScOrD_tHe_uNaTiC/ME3import.jpg[/img]
That's...actually, that's not really so bad. I mean, she's not my FemShep, but she's no Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander knock-off like the coderip Shep was. So then I spent...around 3 hours working on a 'new' FemShep to use as a last resort if they come out and say "Oh, the patch is gonna take 'till May". This is her.
[img]http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/mm311/DiScOrD_tHe_uNaTiC/ME3FemShep.jpg[/img]
And that's as close to my original as I could get, as it seemed like some of the options I used for her didn't work on this one. Now, I have to say I'm fairly happy with this face. I can easily imagine that a month or so of downtime has reduced her stress level, she's not eating Rupert's cooking anymore, growing out her hair a little...I could play through the game with this face if I had to.
Which leads to another thing I don't get: why they arbitrarily removed or altered some values instead of just adding new ones. The DA:O character creator had 46 option sliders, ME1 had 37. Why keep that number of options unchanged unless you're going to keep them THE SAME across the series? I don't mind them adding new stuff(although, the full-right female hairstyle -- really? that's what you replaced my cute jaw-length right-side parting with? eugh), but it's a big pet peeve of mine that games/movies/tv shows add new things but take away old ones.
As to this being fixed by a patch, I hope most fervently that it is. With that last face I did, I wouldn't be so upset about playing the game, but like I said, some of my story options were screwed over too, and there's no way to change them like ME2 had(the Shepard-Jacob-Miranda in the shuttle convo). But patches are just a symptom of the sickness. When the 360 was about a year into its life cycle, I started seeing lots of release-day patches for games. I mentioned this to a buddy, and he informed me that as a PC gamer, he was so used to it that he didn't even care anymore. That, unfortunately, is what this generation was moving towards and is now in, and the next gen is going to be even worse. They find a bug late in the development cycle, the release date and promo materials are already be printed out, and instead of saying "Hey, we found a bug and we're gonna delay shipping the game until we make it right", they just write a patch and have it on the servers on release day. If I had my way, I'd have the game companies always pad their schedule by three months minimum. For instance, ME3. Say it would be out in June, even though you plan to have it out in March. That gives you time to release a demo-beta, listen to feedback, find-fix-address stuff, and if you get it all fixed soon enough, ship it in April. If it meant having a working CC that could flawlessly import everything, I would have gladly waited a couple extra months, and from reading this topic, a lot of you would have too. Otherwise, you run the risk of it turning into a Dilbert strip: "All the bugs were reclassified as security features just to make the ship date!"
I know the devs, by and large, worked tens of thousands of hours on this game, had sleepless nights worrying about it, neglected personal hygiene and familial obligations for it. As a gamer, I always have the utmost respect for those who create the games I love, both for the amount of work they put in, and because I know I couldn't do it myself in a million years.
I don't really blame the devs for shipping the game with this glitch; they probably knew about it, but they're beholden to their corporate overlords. Most problems can be traced back to one single thing: the corporate 'money money money' agenda. EA made a very smart business decision when they bought BW, and the Drs. probably breathed sighs of relief when they realized they'd never again have to scrounge for backing. But publishers want things done one way: quick. It's like the old joke, a sign in an auto repair shop:
"We do three kinds of jobs: good, fast, and cheap. You can have any two. A good fast job: won't be cheap. A good cheap job: won't be fast. A cheap fast job: won't be good."
Publishers want to grow the existing audience, which is only rational. More audience = more money. If you want to change a game to make it 'more accessible', that is a justifiable business decision. But there's no reason to alienate the original audience in doing so. All of the changes that have been made from ME1 to 2 and now from 2 to 3 could have been implemented without leaving out original stuff. Like removing certain options in the CC and replacing them with new ones -- come on, you've got two discs, almost 14GB of storage, and can't leave in a few MB of hairstyles, noses and mouths? That's the kind of thing that peeves people. And it leads to this, perhaps the greatest thing that's been written about this gen.
"We tend to be very critical of the video game industry here at Cracked, and damn it, the industry deserves it. They charge more per-copy of their product than any home entertainment medium, and are always looking to squeeze us for more. If they don't like being held to a high standard, tough ****."
Anyway, I'll be going now. Gotta keep blazing through ME2 -- again -- hoping that my story options don't glitch -- again.
But before I go: may I just say how genuinely moved I am that so many of you are using I AM NOT PLAYING UNTIL I HAVE MY SHEPARD BACK as your tagline. I'm not being sarcastic here, that really is pretty freakin' cool. I'm not trying to take credit for the phrase itself, I want to make clear that VAHNFOX SAID IT FIRST, but it WAS my idea to put it in the taglines. And now, barely 24 hours later, thirty pages of posts, that tons of people have said it. That, to me, is the best of the gaming community, where one person(or two people, again, vahnfox said it first) start something grassroots-y and it builds. Makes me feel like part of something, and that's what the gaming community should be about.
Excellent post. My fem shep and a lot of other peoples look nearly exactly the same and as far as I'm concerned it is THE femshep - if i remember right, it is one of the premade ME1 femsheps with some alterations. It suits the voice perfectly.
The face is impossible to recreate in ME3 because simply put - it is missing. The eyes are missing, the hairstyle is missing, the general face and body shape is totally missing. No amount of complaining will fix this because it is at it's core a design issue. They will not put these facial features back into ME3 because it doesn't suit their artstyle. ME3 follows the philosophy of style over substance in all aspects, cheesy "hollywood" cutscenes and dialogue that makes a 12 year old cringe has become the standard in an extremely transparent attempt to grab sales from the Call of Duty audience. You, me and the rest of us with custom fem sheps will not be able to play as them ever because the 'strong woman' archetype from the first game has been replaced with this new petite 'babe' Shephard in fitting with their marketing campaign.
The truth of the matter is, it was a conscious decision by Bioware to abandon us. The best you can hope for from a fix is something that slighty resembles your Shephard, no better than what you have made yourself. We all need to either put it past us or call the game a dud and move on. Bioware isn't listening to us.
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