289 réponses à ce sujet

[DukeOfNukes]

Mesmurae wrote...

5. EDI has a ******. I'm not sure why that warrants making this list, but there you are.

THANK YOU! That bugged the crap out of me while I was playing. I used the CE edition armor, where she had the white clothing over her...and the ****** was so blatantly obvious. Why the hell would you include that in a game to begin with, let alone throw it on a ****g robot...which may or may not even have anything down there!?!?

[Baihu1983]

GigaTheToast wrote...

Jaysh wrote...

I think the dialogue was awful.

A lot of people think alot of things.

As i mentioned in another topic most the dialogue suffers for me because its writtern for new players too much.

But yeah sidequests suck
end battle sucks
Lack of Mako or hammerhead sucks
Lack of hub worlds to explore sucks.

[txgoldrush]

DukeOfNukes wrote...

txgoldrush wrote...

the combat was poorly balanced and buggy as hell.

Yes, yes it was. Again, however...a design choice. To fix it would have required basically rebuilding the game from scratch.

The Mako can get stuck.

So I'm told...but in my dozen or more playthroughs, I've only gotten absolutely 100% stuck once. I definately got frustrated with it repeatedly, but with the exception of the 1 time, I COULD get out.

The game is by far the buggiest of  the three.

I agree. However, KotOR was really buggy as well. And Fallout 3, New Vegas, Skyrim, GTA IV, so on and so forth. It definately hurts the game...but it didn't ruin it...and doesn't prove it was "rushed"

No poor balance is not just design choice, its from rushing their games. I wonder why Blizzard does not rush their RTS's...to keep them as balanced as possible.

Bethesda either rushes their games or sucks bad at bug checking. How was the PS3 version of Skyrim even released at the state it was in? Thats rushing.

And the PC version of ME1 proves that the 360 version was rushed...not for EA, but for Microsoft.

[txgoldrush]

To all those who think the Rachni Queen decision doesn't matter.....

UPDATED (if Shepard killed the rachni queen in Mass Effect 1, but spared the replacement rachni queen in Mass Effect 3)
Military Strength: -100

The last reports from the AEC were little more than officers screaming about rachni flooding into their barracks, scything through unsuspecting scientists. After a brave, but brief, battle, the core of the Alliance Engineering Corps was wiped out by their traitorous alien "allies."


This basically wipes the AEC out.

[txgoldrush]

Baihu1983 wrote...

GigaTheToast wrote...

Jaysh wrote...

I think the dialogue was awful.

A lot of people think alot of things.

As i mentioned in another topic most the dialogue suffers for me because its writtern for new players too much.

But yeah sidequests suck
end battle sucks
Lack of Mako or hammerhead sucks
Lack of hub worlds to explore sucks.

ME1 and ME2's side quests were not much better.

So does the end battle to ME2 and even ME1.

The game does not need more hub worlds....

[DukeOfNukes]

Ah, ok, TX, so, the only game in existence that wasn't rushed was 3D Realms Duke Nukem Forever. Advancements were made, and the game wasn't released so it could incorporate those advancements.

There's always SOMETHING to improve. You have to make the cut off somewhere...and if you don't, you share their fate.

[Tom Lehrer]

txgoldrush wrote...

To all those who think the Rachni Queen decision doesn't matter.....

UPDATED (if Shepard killed the rachni queen in Mass Effect 1, but spared the replacement rachni queen in Mass Effect 3)
Military Strength: -100

The last reports from the AEC were little more than officers screaming about rachni flooding into their barracks, scything through unsuspecting scientists. After a brave, but brief, battle, the core of the Alliance Engineering Corps was wiped out by their traitorous alien "allies."


This basically wipes the AEC out.

The Rachnni Queen decision does not matter. If you save her a second time you get a net of 75 points and that is it. Hackett has one line about them after that and we never see or hear of them after. We dont get the Rachni warships they hinted at in two and they dont join the fight like that Asari on Illium said they would.

All we get are a few numbers.

[txgoldrush]

DukeOfNukes wrote...

Ah, ok, TX, so, the only game in existence that wasn't rushed was 3D Realms Duke Nukem Forever. Advancements were made, and the game wasn't released so it could incorporate those advancements.

There's always SOMETHING to improve. You have to make the cut off somewhere...and if you don't, you share their fate.

No, ME1  was cut off before it can be polished.

Many games, some with flaws,  aren't rushed or show signs of incompleteness.

[txgoldrush]

Tom Lehrer wrote...

txgoldrush wrote...

To all those who think the Rachni Queen decision doesn't matter.....

UPDATED (if Shepard killed the rachni queen in Mass Effect 1, but spared the replacement rachni queen in Mass Effect 3)
Military Strength: -100

The last reports from the AEC were little more than officers screaming about rachni flooding into their barracks, scything through unsuspecting scientists. After a brave, but brief, battle, the core of the Alliance Engineering Corps was wiped out by their traitorous alien "allies."


This basically wipes the AEC out.

The Rachnni Queen decision does not matter. If you save her a second time you get a net of 75 points and that is it. Hackett has one line about them after that and we never see or hear of them after. We dont get the Rachni warships they hinted at in two and they dont join the fight like that Asari on Illium said they would.

All we get are a few numbers.

No saving the new Rachni queen is a massive 200 point loss of war assets plus the company losses. And really not doing the mission altogether is better than saving the new queen. While this decision may not hurt people that play MP, it can affect people that do not play the MP, especially if they are on the border to a better ending.

And really The Reapers inflicted heavy losses on the Rachni, therefore the position the queen is in as a prisoner.

[DukeOfNukes]

txgoldrush wrote...

Many games, some with flaws,  aren't rushed or show signs of incompleteness.

such as?

[txgoldrush]

DukeOfNukes wrote...

txgoldrush wrote...

Many games, some with flaws,  aren't rushed or show signs of incompleteness.

such as?

Blizzard games aren't rushed...Nintendo games generally aren't...JRPG devs do better in not rushing their games than WRPG studios do (although Xenogears is an example of a JRPG rush job an dthe localization is subpar in may of those games)...

[Ad_Hoc]

Tayah wrote...

I don't use twitter or facebook and I expect everything relevant to the game I buy to be in the game and since I worked pretty hard to build up the citadel defense force I would think what happens to the people on the citadel constitutes a game element that should be resolved in the game...

Oh right, ME3 isn't about resolution it's about speculation! Silly me.

quoted for truth

[Tom Lehrer]

txgoldrush wrote...


No saving the new Rachni queen is a massive 200 point loss of war assets plus the company losses. And really not doing the mission altogether is better than saving the new queen. While this decision may not hurt people that play MP, it can affect people that do not play the MP, especially if they are on the border to a better ending.

And really The Reapers inflicted heavy losses on the Rachni, therefore the position the queen is in as a prisoner.

Wrong the most points they give is 75 because the Krogen team there takes a 25 point hit if you save her a second time while the most you can lose for saving the new Queen is 125 including the Krogen.

The whole mission is pointless however since you are just doing what you already did in ME1 and that is just pointless. If I killed the Queen she should stay dead and if I saved her I should get a Rachnni fleet and ground corps and the cost of Reapers making husks out of ones they kill.

Modifié par Tom Lehrer, 27 mars 2012 - 08:37 .

[txgoldrush]

Tom Lehrer wrote...

txgoldrush wrote...


No saving the new Rachni queen is a massive 200 point loss of war assets plus the company losses. And really not doing the mission altogether is better than saving the new queen. While this decision may not hurt people that play MP, it can affect people that do not play the MP, especially if they are on the border to a better ending.

And really The Reapers inflicted heavy losses on the Rachni, therefore the position the queen is in as a prisoner.

Wrong the most points they give is 75 because the Krogen team there takes a 25 point hit if you save her a second time while the most you can lose for saving the new Queen is 125 including the Krogen.

The whole mission is pointless however since you are just doing what you already did in ME1 and that is just pointless. If I killed the Queen she should stay dead and if I saved her I should get a Rachnni fleet and ground corps and the cost of Reapers making husks out of ones they kill.

The game effectively shows the difference between the queens however.....the real one is more measured, th ecreated one is more insane. And if the Salarians can clone dead species, so can the Reapers.

[Jadebaby]

MattFini wrote...

I agree with you.

Playing it through a second time has made me realize how ... problematic the whole game is.

Terrible journal system, lazy side quests consisting of planet scanning and nothing more, N7 missions that are simply the multiplayer maps slapped into the campaign ... it goes on and on.

Of course, ME3 is still a solid, if unspectacular game, that could be saved overall if they fix that godforsaken ending.

But it doesn't even come close to ME2. And that's a shame.

Agreeed

[AllThatJazz]

Wow, I almost completely disagree with many of the people here.

Ending (s) aside, I think the game is wicked. Tuchanka, Rannoch and Grissom Academy are some of the best levels I've played in a videogame. Yeah, the fetch quests are a bit meh, as was scanning for minerals in ME2, and looking for rocks and 'collectibles' in ME1. But the 'proper' sidequests - bomb on Tuchanka, Grissom Academy, rescuing Admiral Koris, Grunt, the AY monastery etc - were really good, and quite substantial. Much, much better than sidequests in ME1 or 2, imo. Also, I loved the geth consensus.

The 'big' moments (endings and beginning aside) were done very, very well. Mordin, Legion, Thessia, Sanctuary - I loved experiencing these.

Squaddies (in terms of conversations) are vastly better. I think they have far more meaningful stuff to say, I love that they interact with each other so much, and that taking them on particular missions really pays off (Ash/Kaidan on Horizon is another one). The Garrus and Kaidan romances are beautifully done, and Garrus is overall even better in this game than in the other 2. That moment when Shep is really down after Thessia and Garrus gives her a bit of a peptalk is just marvellous, as is the bit with him on the top of the Citadel. The fact that they can all be found around the Citadel is also a neat touch.

I don't get the fuss about Diana Allers. Not amazing voicework, but not the worst I've heard by a long shot. 

The Emily Wong thing was brilliant, I thought. You didn't need to have twitter, you could follow it on the fansite CDN (which I found by looking at the BSN stickied thread), where the folks there posted the tweets and then roleplayed responses to the tweets. It was awesome, and the fans were fantastic.  I would understand the rage about this if it was a pivotal character such as Anderson who was killed off via twitter. But Emily? A minor questgiver in ME1, and sender of an e-mail in ME2. Agree that there should have been some reference to it in-game, however, such as Allers doing an obituary for her or something.

The Citadel itself is wonderful. I think it's a more lively and entertaining hub than anything in ME1. I loved Omega and Ilium in ME2, can't decide whether I prefer those or ME3 citadel.

Squadmates in combat are also much better - they can actually handle themselves and not die all the time.

Dialogue is largely on par with the other two games imo, and better in places (though maybe a little worse in others). Drunk Tali was great, as was Blasto 6. Mordin and Legion's deaths were written beautifully. 

Short? I've just finished Horizon and I'm on 53 hours. My longest playthrough of ME2 (with all dlc) was 65 hours. Longest ME1? 40-odd.  All on hardcore.  Really, though, play speed is far too subjective to ever be discussed with any accuracy. 


That said, there's some non-ending stuff that I didn't like:


Lack of exploration - I think there was scope for a little random exploration, although there being less does make sense given the urgency of the main mission. When scanning planets, instead of finding a war asset, you could pick up a distress signal. Cue a mission to extract some civilians or help out a spec ops team or whatever. I was disappointed not to be able to rescue Elcor civilians from Dakuuna

Auto dialogue (Shep) - I did feel more passive than in the previous titles. I didn't love it, but it stopped bothering me part way through, probably because I was playing pure paragon so the paragon responses were appropriate.

N7 missions - generally on a par with ME2's N7 missions. But in ME2, there were a couple of non-combat ones (Normandy crash site, for example) that provided a nice change of pace. Something like this would have been welcome.

Can't get Shep breathes ending without multiplayer - honestly, this is my biggest gripe with the game. I am locked out of in-game content that I've paid for, because I am unable or unwilling to play MP or get the app. Not cool.

Javik. Don't get me wrong, guy is really, really cool. Which is sort of the point. He should have been included in the core game. I got the CE, so I got him anyway, and yes, his content is purely 'flavour' - but great flavour! He really adds so much to the gameworld, and I can't imagine not taking him to Thessia, people who don't have him are really missing out there, I think. 

Harbinger. We needed him there as an antagonist, his absence was noticeable.

Last hour or so - yep, rushed. And the endings were not good. See the million other threads for reasons why.

But honestly, endings aside, this is easily my GoTY. Which makes the endings even more gutting.


Tl;dr - awesome game, sucky ending 

Modifié par AllThatJazz, 27 mars 2012 - 09:34 .

[Andrew_316]

For the most part the first 98% of the game is pretty good with a few exceptions here and there. The one thing that bothered me the most was the eavesdropping method of gathering sidequests and how the developers totally dropped the ball and didn't include a script that updated the journal entry when you found what you were looking for. I had so many of these quests and no way to keep track of what I had found and where I had to go to turn it in. I think in this day and age, not having a decent journal system in an RPG is just plain stupid. With so much going on you need to be able to effectively manage quests.
there are a lot of other things that have started bothering me but I think that my fierce distaste for the ending has coloured my perception a bit and influenced my feelings. Any lack of polish or flat dialogue sequence just kind of adds to my frustrations a bit. In the moment when I was playing for the first time I thought the game was very enjoyable.Definitely the weakest of the trilogy though.

Modifié par Andrew_316, 27 mars 2012 - 09:37 .

[DukeOfNukes]

txgoldrush wrote...

Blizzard games aren't rushed.

Really? Because even after 10 years, they still patch Diablo 2. Clearly there are balancing issues that needed to be resolved. And WOW, All the crates look the same! And all the ruins repeat endlessly. Don't even get me started on the clunky combat and TERRIBLE inventory management.

For the record, that was sarcasm...but I can make subjective judgements as well!

Modifié par DukeOfNukes, 27 mars 2012 - 10:06 .

[Baihu1983]

txgoldrush wrote...

Baihu1983 wrote...

GigaTheToast wrote...

Jaysh wrote...

I think the dialogue was awful.

A lot of people think alot of things.

As i mentioned in another topic most the dialogue suffers for me because its writtern for new players too much.

But yeah sidequests suck
end battle sucks
Lack of Mako or hammerhead sucks
Lack of hub worlds to explore sucks.

ME1 and ME2's side quests were not much better.

So does the end battle to ME2 and even ME1.

The game does not need more hub worlds....

1 showed more of the battle going on with soverign while Shep raced to stop Saren. It felt big scale

2 did a great job with you and the squad vs the Collectors in their base. Having to set up roles during the mission for squad members was cool and choices we had made leading upto that had an effect on the mission.

3 yeah you get a few quick shots of ships fighting a few repaers but once you get to earth its lame. It always feels like Shep and who ever you pick vs the reapers rather than the galaxy vs the reapers. And no matter how you played the game you end up the same as anyone else.

[JPR1964]

CRISIS1717 wrote...

 I don't know about the rest of you but as this ending thing has dragged on I have come to realise not just the end of the game was the bad part. 

Things like wrapping up plot points over twitter, fetch quests, filler quests with a reward of an email, limited personal quests, blatant plotholes, poor characterisation, wasted potential like the Rachni quest, forced decisions again like the Rachni appearing even if you kill them.

The only consistent thing which was good imo was the combat which by the end got old because they threw the same enemies at you in the same way...

Make no mistake though I realise best chance everyone has is getting an ending change but the rest of the game is far from perfect.

Hello,

Agree with you : my main problems (that could have been overlooked easily with real endings)

- Steve Austin syndrom when Shepard run (for example, in the citadel)
- scanning awfully done (you never know what you've just scanned)
- DA2  like filler quests
- weak romance for some npc
- plotholes
- obvious bug

Sure I can find more now...

JPR out

[Trephinate]

AllThatJazz wrote...

Wow, I almost completely disagree with many of the people here.

Ending (s) aside, I think the game is wicked. Tuchanka, Rannoch and Grissom Academy are some of the best levels I've played in a videogame. Yeah, the fetch quests are a bit meh, as was scanning for minerals in ME2, and looking for rocks and 'collectibles' in ME1. But the 'proper' sidequests - bomb on Tuchanka, Grissom Academy, rescuing Admiral Koris, Grunt, the AY monastery etc - were really good, and quite substantial. Much, much better than sidequests in ME1 or 2, imo. Also, I loved the geth consensus.

The 'big' moments (endings and beginning aside) were done very, very well. Mordin, Legion, Thessia, Sanctuary - I loved experiencing these.

Squaddies (in terms of conversations) are vastly better. I think they have far more meaningful stuff to say, I love that they interact with each other so much, and that taking them on particular missions really pays off (Ash/Kaidan on Horizon is another one). The Garrus and Kaidan romances are beautifully done, and Garrus is overall even better in this game than in the other 2. That moment when Shep is really down after Thessia and Garrus gives her a bit of a peptalk is just marvellous, as is the bit with him on the top of the Citadel. The fact that they can all be found around the Citadel is also a neat touch.

I don't get the fuss about Diana Allers. Not amazing voicework, but not the worst I've heard by a long shot. 

The Emily Wong thing was brilliant, I thought. You didn't need to have twitter, you could follow it on the fansite CDN (which I found by looking at the BSN stickied thread), where the folks there posted the tweets and then roleplayed responses to the tweets. It was awesome, and the fans were fantastic.  I would understand the rage about this if it was a pivotal character such as Anderson who was killed off via twitter. But Emily? A minor questgiver in ME1, and sender of an e-mail in ME2. Agree that there should have been some reference to it in-game, however, such as Allers doing an obituary for her or something.

The Citadel itself is wonderful. I think it's a more lively and entertaining hub than anything in ME1. I loved Omega and Ilium in ME2, can't decide whether I prefer those or ME3 citadel.

Squadmates in combat are also much better - they can actually handle themselves and not die all the time.

Dialogue is largely on par with the other two games imo, and better in places (though maybe a little worse in others). Drunk Tali was great, as was Blasto 6. Mordin and Legion's deaths were written beautifully. 

Short? I've just finished Horizon and I'm on 53 hours. My longest playthrough of ME2 (with all dlc) was 65 hours. Longest ME1? 40-odd.  All on hardcore.  Really, though, play speed is far too subjective to ever be discussed with any accuracy. 


That said, there's some non-ending stuff that I didn't like:


Lack of exploration - I think there was scope for a little random exploration, although there being less does make sense given the urgency of the main mission. When scanning planets, instead of finding a war asset, you could pick up a distress signal. Cue a mission to extract some civilians or help out a spec ops team or whatever. I was disappointed not to be able to rescue Elcor civilians from Dakuuna

Auto dialogue (Shep) - I did feel more passive than in the previous titles. I didn't love it, but it stopped bothering me part way through, probably because I was playing pure paragon so the paragon responses were appropriate.

N7 missions - generally on a par with ME2's N7 missions. But in ME2, there were a couple of non-combat ones (Normandy crash site, for example) that provided a nice change of pace. Something like this would have been welcome.

Can't get Shep breathes ending without multiplayer - honestly, this is my biggest gripe with the game. I am locked out of in-game content that I've paid for, because I am unable or unwilling to play MP or get the app. Not cool.

Javik. Don't get me wrong, guy is really, really cool. Which is sort of the point. He should have been included in the core game. I got the CE, so I got him anyway, and yes, his content is purely 'flavour' - but great flavour! He really adds so much to the gameworld, and I can't imagine not taking him to Thessia, people who don't have him are really missing out there, I think. 

Harbinger. We needed him there as an antagonist, his absence was noticeable.

Last hour or so - yep, rushed. And the endings were not good. See the million other threads for reasons why.

But honestly, endings aside, this is easily my GoTY. Which makes the endings even more gutting.


Tl;dr - awesome game, sucky ending 

glad someone else has a similar view as me. ending aside, i thought the game was substantially better than the first 2 in a number regards brought up here as points of failure.

for example:

you might have mixed feelings about the sidequests, but honestly having each one uniquely rendered unlike me1 (factory, bunker, or kowloon-class spacheship?), and most centred around/directly linked to the large number of priority quests gave the game that sense of urgency and continuity in story the other two lacked. while i did like some of the odd ones from me2 (even the cereberus ones etc of me1), most of that game felt like a bunch of non-sequitur sidequests or a complete digression into the recruitment and loyalty missions whilst severely lacking in actual story missions (oh yeah, the collectors... horizon, collector ship, iff, finish the game.) in this same vein, replacing the mako drive-up-and-down-each-inch-of-the-sandbox for matriach writings, minerals, league of one medallions or scanning each planet for more goddamn palladium (probe launched, probe away... scanning uranus) tedium with the simple scan, fetch, return quests helped maintain this focus on what is happening in the galaxy around you at that point in time whilst giving some nice conversation and more character based interaction. saren's off to ilos? give me a couple of weeks to fully explore about 6 systems and buy some fancy spectre gear from the citadel. collectors abducting colonies? well, i'll just upgrade my ship, my armour, my guns etc first with a week of cosmic proctology.

it seemed to me there was far more conversation in this game, too. while perhaps i would preferred the cut-scene style interactions (players uninterested in this can always just hit skip), there was plenty of discussion that i found i'd sit there and listen to even just passing the random pedestrians on the citadel which would play a continuing conversation each time you visited. having the crew members move around the ship and hold these passive conversations helped flesh-out the the small areas we had to do this in and actually made it seem like a living world rather than a static environment waiting for me to hit button a to get some info out of. and quite frankly, i'm glad they cut out the needless choices on the convo wheel inwhich your 'choice' would lead to the exact same dialogue, and largely scripted the entire lot into the general flow rather than break it up for no other reason than to give you some sense of control over it (ie investigate options in the normal flow of dialogue).

finally, the combat... as someone whom only played each of these games on insanity i wonder how anyone can complain against the variety etc which is more than made up for by the depth and improved mechanics of the fights in this. me1 ... oh, generic humanoid with gun hit immunity, let me hit you with the mako cannon then scour half the planet for where your body landed after losing less than a millimeter of health or just sit behind a wall and spam overload/sabotage/lift till this room clear; me2 was a nice step forward till the cain made every tough ymir/praetorian fight (and the humanoid reaper for that matter) a joke. but from grappling husks, charging brutes, warping banshees, explosive or smoke grenades, smashing canopies on atlas', infiltrator phantoms, guardians and turrets (i'll leave out the geth because taking cover and getting the grab melee, whilst very satisfying, was also very easy) let alone varying the environment so that pushing forward and controlling areas of the map would lend you the one use heavy weapons for clutch kills... would take that any day over a new splash of paint on the armour of this/that merc or the inclusion of a shield/barrier/armour/regen.

most of the other faults i can look past in light of what i think was a good direction taken in a lot of the gameplay mechanics and what was largely one of the best games i've played on the xbox, ever. sad the ending was such a steaming pile of manure.

[Grasich]

I quite liked the dialogue, save for the removal of the dialogue wheel in a number of conversations. It de-personalized it, which was annoying.

I also actually really liked the new personalities many of the characters had. They had changed and grown since the previous games, but in believable and interesting ways.

The four real issues I see with ME3 as it is now are:

1. Obviously, the ending. This also spans over a number of other issues, such as negating previous missions.
2. Lack of dialogue wheel in a lot of conversations, and at least a seemingly reduced amount of dialogue.
3. Too few high quality quests. Most of the main quests are great, such as Rannoch and Tuchanka, but there are very few of those. The side quests, while perfectly good side quests, are not enough to fill the place of more main quests.
4. Only one central hub: the Citadel. ME2 had so many more hubs (Tuchanka, Omega, the Citadel, etc)

All of these can, and hopefully will, be fixed with DLC later. I'll wait until they've fixed the ending and released a few DLC missions and patches to really judge them.

[Jaysh]

bump

[aliastasia]

I enjoyed most of the game up to where Udina gets shot and where the VS comes aboard. I like how they wrote Garrus and Kaidan, at least for my playthroughs.
I thought Thessia was intense, but would have loved that level to be larger. The Quarian vs Geth quest was also pretty cool.

There were things I wasn't too big a fan of, though: Where I personally think they went wrong, is that they tried to add too much content from the books into the game in order to finish everything in the universe. And even though i.e Sanders works because she has such a small role, and because Grisson Academy is so fast-paced, it works well.
I don't think Leng does - he is, just like so many others say, a cartoony anime antagonist thing, and not a very exciting one at that - I'd actually have preferred more TIM-explainy stuff than bossing about with Leng - he's a poor replacement for Saren/Sovereign and Harbinger assuming control all over the place.
It was also disappointing to see your choices hadn't made that much of an impact.

One thing I also missed, was multipart quests, like the Geth outposts in ME1 and the Hahne Kedar Facility quest in ME2.
I'd have liked some more N7 or actual filler quests, actually. The few N7 quests are too few, and the planet scanning is pretty... meh. Very DAII FeDex
For me, first time you play a game, you tend to be all over it, you go anywhere you can - which is why I never minded all the exploring you could do in ME1 or 2. ì even loved the Estevanico sidequest - that was different, and pretty fun.

It's one of the things I do not understand about the way development seems to have taken a turn at BioWare - the simplifying of the games; from a SWE perspective I completely understand that if you have a streamlined platform, it will increase production speed, and make work easier across games - and that it includes more than conversation wheel and the animation rigging library.
Thing is, by stripping it so bare, I also think the game lost some of it's soul.

Me, I'd have loved to have the puzzles remain, and more banter. I missed i.e Garrus' "Never saw me coming!" whoops, stuff like that.

I also loved the first part of the ending - the goodbyes, the boss fight, all that. I usually go Normal>Hardcore>Insanity, and I do like that the harder levels play better, in addition to a lot of the tweaks which have been done to make it run smoother. Loving the short load screens, and no CD wanted, for one.

Bar the ending, of which I cant decide whether we're being trolled or if it's for real, it's not the überstellar game we've been promised, but it is fun and playable, imo:  I'd give it a 7.5 out of 10 - and thats pretty much based on the action gameplay-sequences and the interactions with the surviving team from ME1

/A

Modifié par aliastasia, 27 mars 2012 - 02:30 .

[leapingmonkeys]

I think the biggest problem with ME3 is that the game play did not change based on players prior decisions.  The ending is simply the piece that makes that omission most visible, but the problem is persistent throughout the entire game.

What should have happened in ME3 is that there should have been multiple plot paths through the game.  They could deviate, cross and re-merge in various ways, but there should have been multiple paths with one's prior decisions dictating which paths were open to you.

What I see as the primary decisions from the earlier games are:

1) The Council in ME1 - save or sacrifice
2) The Rachni in ME1 - save or destroy
3) The Geth in ME2 - re-write or destroy
4) The Collector Base in ME2 - save or destroy
5) The Genophage cure in ME2 - save the data or destroy it

Each of these decisions impacted the survival of a species or a major political power in the universe or the fate of a major cache of Reaper technology.  They were, as I see them, the big decisions of the prior games and should have caused various plot paths to open/close in ME3.

For example, if the Collector Base was saved, Cerberus should have been much more advanced.  They should have had tougher units, be further spread throughout the universe, have a larger number of political figures under their indoctrination control, etc.  All this should have opened up plot paths that would not have been open if the base was destroyed.  Also, if one really wanted to go with the three choices at the end (Destroy, Control, Synthesis) then the "Control" option would require that one save the Collector Base and then discover that Cerberus had made a major breakthrough in understanding the Reaper signal (the basis of their control) which would lead into a boss fight to retrieve that knowledge and/or device from Cerberus in order to make the 'Control' attempt at the end.

Instead the plot in ME3 is strictly linear.  Sure, some of the NPCs involved in the quests are different depending on who survived in prevous games, but the quests are the same.  There can be slightly different final impacts from the quests also, but again, not anything that one experiences as game play.  The only way in which prior decisions are reflected in ME3 at all is through what are typically very small differences in TMS.  And TMS has no impact on game play.  Its only role is to compute EMS which in turn is used to lookup which non-interactive video to play at the end of the game.

So yes, the endings for the game are what most people are dissatified with, but really the endings simply highlight what is to me the primary problem with ME3 which is that prior decisions made no difference.  The fact that all three endings are almost identical (Reapers neutralized in some way, mass relays destroyed, Normandy crashed on an unknown planet with only three crew members visible, etc) only further serves to highlight the fact that all your prior decisions meant nothing.

There are other short comings as well.  The gathering quests were lazy beyond belief.  Simply scan a planet until you find the dot and you're done?  Each such war asset should have been a landing mission to retrieve.  We're told that we finally get to "see Tali" and they put a silly picture in our cabin?  Lazy, lazy, lazy.  I dislked the whole "evesdrop to pick up quests" mechanic as well.

I cannot help but wonder if ME3 would have been a better game if they hadn't diluted their efforts with the whole multiplayer thing.  They are obviously trying to strong arm people into playing MP since it does not appear to be possible to reach that 4,000 EMS level (necessary to get the Shepard Lives clip) without playing MP.  The fact that the impact of MP on SP also decays over time was simply a slap in the face as well.  If they had simply decided to not do multiplayer and put that effort into making ME3 what was promised by their maketing literature, both Bioware and the paying customers would be so much happier right now.

Modifié par leapingmonkeys, 27 mars 2012 - 02:50 .