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[djspectre]

A decade ago I was given Neverwinter Nights as a gift from a co-worker. While not initially into RPG computer games, I was immediately sold with an entrenching storyline, unbelieveable graphics, quality voice acting, and a long involving quest. The two expansion packs proved just as good. 

Fast foward to 2010. I had heard about Mass Effect, but wasn't totally sold on the concept initially. I'd been a FPS gamer for a long time and several mods for Unreal Tournament (and its successors) had added RPG elements to it. They were mostly dull and honestly felt more like a 'grind' similar to MMORPGS. Firing thousands of rockets per match to level up seemed boring to me.

BUT, when I saw in-game footage of the cinematic nature of Mass Effect 2, my mind started to change.

I found ME1 on Amazon for $10 and bought it. I was immediately sucked in, hook line and sinker. I knew nothing about the ME world and everything was so fresh and new and amazingly acted and...just WOW! I was utterly blown away. I hadn't even gotten 1/3 of the way through when I immediately bought ME2. Despite it being nearly a year old by that time. 

While I had a few issues with ME2's combat system and overall pacing of the plot, I generally enjoyed it and was drooling over what ME3 could offer. 

Needless to say, I pre-ordered and picked it up at a midnight event. I even made custom t-shirts for myself and my girlfriend (mine said c-sec, and her's had a quote from Wrex). 

I am a deeply devoted fan.

However, I feel somewhat disappointed. Please don't stop reading this isn't some nerdragefacepalmrant, I want to be helpful and concise with my critiques and help you understand the ideas I have for solutions. 

I WANT TO HELP, politely and calmly of course. 

For now, I'll ignore bugs that are currently being fixed as even Neverwinter Nights (my favorite RPG of all time) had no less than SIXTY NINE point revisions made to it. (version 1.0 to the last version 1.69).

My comments are about quality of product, I will discuss story-related (no spoilers of course) second, and then solutions and ideas I have to remedy them, last. 

QUALITY OF PRODUCT:
Graphics:
The graphics options for PC players were limited. While, both the previous titles weren't overflowing with them, there were more available other than simply Anti-Aliasing and Dynamic Shadows being either just on or off.  Further, even with the general textures of items, shortcuts were obviously taken. The skycar seen outside the asari monastary clearly has jagged edges around the lettering, as if a smaller graphic was simply enlarged and stamped on the side in a rush. The helmets that Shepard wears are equally unsmooth in look and texture...andwe see a lot of his face close up! Objects, even for a console, shouldn't look all pixelated at a moderate distance. I could understand if you walk up to point-blank range and see that, but when I'm halfway across a map and can tell a building has a low quality texture applied to it, then that is a problem. 

Sound Quality:
Here I thought overall sound effect quality was good with a few exceptions. Certain weapons and powers sounded wimpier than their ME1/ME2 counter parts. Concussive shot being one of them. In ME2, the Concussive shot power was deep and powerful sounding, utilizing my subwoofer to good effect. ME3's version seemed to just sound like a little firecracker with a pop at the end. Gunfire in general seemed somewhat muted until you got to the later, more advanced weapons, but even those didn't have the 'impact' of firing them. 

Musical Score:
This one really confused me. The game has ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL music. I mean truly beautiful. Even the stuff from the previous games (like when you meet Jacob and at the end of certain variations of the Tuchanka missons) was perfectly timed. ....HOWEVER.....during all the big space battles there was a vacuum. Literally. Lost of lasers and mass effect weaponry and explosions, but no musical score to enhance and bring emotion to those battles in a way only great music can. 

Digital Actors:
This was the hallmark of the two previous titles, and probably the asset that made them so beloved and immediate hits. The way the characters moved, gestured and actually seemed to be truly speaking their lines was revolutionary. I was instantly immersed in the game and emotionally connected to the characters in it. BUT, with ME3 that immersion was jarred by poor lip syncing (the actors lips often moved too quickly or didn't make the correct movements for obvious letters like 'o', 'm' 'b' and 'e'...all of which were present in the previous two games. Additionally, many of the lines between characters weren't immediate, even obvious answers or generic responses like 'yes sir', 'alright', and 'okay'. There would be these awkward pauses for certain common dialog that didn't exist in the other two games. This broke immersion and distracted me from what the characters were saying.....instead pulling my attention to HOW they were saying it so unnaturally. 

This next section deals with story related items (no spoilers) instead of technical execution. 


The 'AUTO-STORY' feeling
In ME1, you were given a dialog choice immediately after the Normandy Arrives at Eden Prime and several more subsequent ones when talking with Anderson and Nihlis. These dialog choice interruptions were great and continued throughout the entire game in a consistent manner. If you clicked your choice fast enough, you could even get a extremely fluid, pause-free (relating to previous item) conversation that made you feel like you were watching a movie. Sadly, ME3 missed here somehow. A lot of the opening dialog seemed forced, dryly acted and with few opportunities for dialog choices. A lot of dialog by shepard was simply pre-determined for us thus for the first time in the series, we felt like we no longer were in control of our own story. Granted, in ME2 the exchange when Shepard reunites with Joker and the Normandy was revealed, was well done, but also very short and it kept us entertained because we found out Joker's personal history since Shepard was lost. ME3 continually had an uneven pacing for dialog options. In ME1 and 2, after every statement an NPC made, Shepard was prompted with a dialog wheel, not so in ME3. 

Further on this is the renegade and paragon interrupts. In ME2 it was an awesome addition, but in ME3 a lot of those interupts have little to no consequences on what happens. And sadly the same can be said of the standard 'paragon-like' and renegade-like options. They basically both lead back to the same result. Ironically, some of the interrupts don't even have an effect on gameplay or in one sequence there are FOUR  RENEGADE INTERRUPTS in a row, 1 second apart.....none of which actually added anything to the plot or had consequences further down the line. 

These things gave the player a disconnected feeling from the plot of the game. 

STORY QUALITY
I will avoid spoilers here. In the first two games, regardless of what I thought of the overall plot, the story elements and the characters involved in them were engaging. Their dialog was not repetitive and every line they had contributed to either moving the plot forward or developing the personality of that character. It was an ingenious idea. ME3 had some shortcomings here. And honestly, it all stemmed from ME2. ME2 had 13 squadmates, which made it hard to get to know any of them really well. A fact that probably infinitely complicated ME3's character developement beyond human means. 

That said, though, there was a lot of wasted opportunity in ME3. A great deal of dialog was spent on 'Uh-huhs', 'okays', 'lets get moving', 'yes, sir' and other filler material. Characters like Garrus, Liara and Tali ALWAYS had something clever to say in the first two games. But this time Garrus get's a mini-cutscene of his own on the citadel, Liara gets one really good line and scene in London, and Tali gets her best line (if you didnt romance her) near the end also in a surprise aboard the Normandy. Other colorful characters such as Jack and Thane, were better when you encounter them and need them. However, some characters like Miranda were retreads of things already seen or weren't used to the best effect (jacob, samara, grunt)

One last thing here: the mini-missions. The ones caused by eavesdropping on citizens as you walked past them. In the previous games, you had a standard closeup dialog with people you could do side quests with along with questions about that side-quest. The Salarian on Illium who lost his family's genetic history and the waitress in Flux who wanted her sister out of Choras Den come to mind. These you could ask questions and feel more involved. In ME3, you just walked past someone, scanned a planet, and then clicked on them again later. It was much less personal and, again, didn't succeed in immersing me in the desperation this person had when they asked me to help them in the first place the way my two examples did. 

SOLUTIONS and SUGGESTIONS
Graphics:
give us PC players additional textures to apply or more refinement than 2 toggle switches. We are PC players and typically we expect more refinement console players because we do not have the same system restrictions. Neverwinter Nights wasn't able to be played at 60fps on full settings till around the time ME1 was released, we'd like to be able to SEE our game in a new way on future playthru's once we get nicer hardware. 

Sound Quality:  
Here I think sounds just need to be louder and have more ambience than currently present. Give them more resonance and depth to make it feel like we are in some ridiculous battle for the fate of the galaxy. 

Musical Score:
We need music during all the automated cutscenes, especially any big dramatic scenes like space battles, reapers attacking earth, near death situations, anything to evoke an emotion from us and tingle when we see the crashing score against a visually vivid mini-movie. The trailers were epicly scored, so should the game. 

Digital Actors
Creating a better timing between lip movements and the dialog being spoken is the main thing to correct here. I don't know the technicals of how it was done so well in the first two games, so my only suggestion is to make sure that obvious letters like the pursing of the lips when M and B are said, and the near-smile-like look of the letter E (as in need, feed, deed, breed) look as if the person is saying that. Also, the pauses between snippits of dialog needs to be drastically reduced. People didn't wait 1-3 seconds to respond with an 'uh huh' in real life or the first two games, a shortening of the pauses would go a long way in ME3. 

Auto-story:
We need our dialog wheel of options back. Yes, this might mean additional voice work for the actors, but honestly, I think you can afford it with all the sales of ME3, but it would mean a world of difference to the fans to have control of their story back. And please, let our paragon/renegade inturrupts become meaningful again. I loved right clicking or left clicking in ME2 to see what action Shepard would take and how it would work, but in ME3 all i get is a sense of indifference or failure, not glee from seeing a new twist in the story unfold. 

Story Quality
I think this can be solved with additional dialog in place of the 'filler' matierial I mentioned earlier. And again, yes, EA/Bioware, you can probably afford to hire the actors again to do another 3-4 dozen lines of dialog to flesh out their characters. 

Also, while Thane and Jack got decent amounts of screen time, others did not. For example Samara got next to nothing.  Fleshing these sidelined characters doesn't require a whole lot, but it would give some depth to them so that whatever their fate is at the end, it evokes an emotional response when you find out. 


You may have noticed that I completely left out ANY mention of the issues of the Ending(s). The reason for this is that this topic is covered in hundreds of other places and that was not the point of this post. I wanted to get other, less discussed, topics out in the open for discussion and hopefully the attention of the people who make it all happen. 

I understand that all of what I mentioned could not possibly be done within a DLC or even a patch. 

I have made a suggestion of a full sized expansion pack to include some of these, mentioned here: social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/323/index/10354806

I just want to let everyone at Bioware and EA that there are people like me that are out here trying to get our voice heard in a constructive way and be helpful, and help you produce additional content to support an already great product that some feel was half-baked in a few aspects. 

The game is a hit, this is true, but why not go from hit to truly epic? =)