Terror_K wrote...
Well, neither KotOR nor Jade Empire were ever trying to go for the concept of space exploration and making their universe's feel vast, which is something BioWare originally touted as being a selling point of ME1. The idea was to make the universe feel vast and real and allow you to go out into the unknown and --sort of-- "boldy go where noone has gone before" in a way (yes, I know most locations had people on them already, but... still).
And they were all the better for it. Essentially, Bioware went for quantity, not quality, with Mass Effect. Instead of fewer locations. KotOR allowed the player to explore seven very different planets. Jade Empire had the player explore cities of increasing size and splendor. Mass Effect 1, utilizing only the main quest planets already felt vast. If Bioware really wanted empty planets for the player to explore, they should have:
1) tied it to the main quest, somehow (Therum would have been a great opportunity for this, instead of the weak Liara questline).
2) focused on developing fewer planets, each with more detail.
Ultimately, if Bioware wanted to make a game about space exploration, they should have made a game about space exploration. Don't just throw it onto a sci-fi epic about saving the universe and tell us it's about the vastness of space. Hence why KotOR/Jade Empire's side quests featured much better design: a dedicated narrative, but since you're mostly helping people along the way to quest objectives, it's a much more cohesive design.
KotOR definitely had good sidequests, but going about it purely that way (because ME1 did have some of those types of quests too, albeit mostly on The Citadel) would have made the Mass Effect universe feel rather small, IMO. For example, ME2 often felt rather small thanks to things like going to Illium and finding Liara, Gianna Parasini, Conrad Verner, Shiala, etc. all within 100m of each other and all with quests that had you wandering not much further than that to boot. While it was good to see these people again, it made the Mass Effect universe seem small to have them all bunched up like that.
Even ignoring the planet exploration, KotOr's/Jade Empire's quests were more detailed than Mass Effect's by a large margin: Taris Arena, Jedi Murder Trial, Sunry Defense, Imperial Arena, the Scholar's Garden Debate, etc. Both games feature quests of extensive scale. I don't recall their being a single extensive questline tied to a main quest location outside of the Noveria Hot Labs, which I did enjoy.
I'm more inclined to say that ME2 felt smaller because the lack of proper transition areas. Notice how both KotOR and Jade Empire go about handling their loading screens. Almost all locations are directly tied to the previous area. Ex: Going from the Imperial City to the Imperial Arena. You see a door to enter-->loading screen--> you are now on the other side of the door. Clear connection. Most of ME2's locations involved traveling via taxi (all of Ilium). This was one thing that Mass Effect did, to its credit, for the main quest planets. But this has little, if anything to do with uncharted worlds. Proper transitioning makes the world feel cohesive. Excessive uncharted worlds make it bland, imo.
ME1's sidequests had better set-ups and execution too. It wasn't just get sent an email or listen to somebody on The Citadel, you actually got to speak with Admiral Hackett, or actually spoke with the likes of Helena Blake, Admiral Kahoku, Nassana Dantius, Garoth, etc. and got a proper set-up complete with dialogue choices, then sometimes even got to meet with people on the missions themselves and get given dialogue choices, moral dilemmas and interesting NPCs to interact with such as Major Kyle, Chairman Burns, Helena Blake again, etc. Squadmates would also even comment on what was happening directly, and you could even defer to them now and then (e.g. Kaidan could speak with the L2 biotic terrorists and help you talk them down). A lot of the locations and basic mission parameters may have been the same, but they were at least dressed better than ME2 and ME3's efforts and integrated properly into the narrative.
Sure, but better and good are not really synonymous. Mass Effect's side quests had bland written all over them, since it was clear that so much time/effort was built into the cinematics of the main quest, by comparison (again, too many planets, not enough detail). Perfect example: the Cerberus sidequests involving Admiral Kahoku. Compare how Mass Effect goes about killing Ashley/Kaidan vs. Kahoku. One has a huge buildup, cut-scenes/dialogue included, ...the other has a paragraph of text over his corpse. Essentially, I consider the gap between the quality of KotOR's/Jade Empire's side quests to be much larger than the gap between ME1's and 2's.
So you're right in that ME1's side quests were better than ME2's. But considering that ME1 required the player to endure longer travel time for less dialogue/sidequest, it loses out to anything in Jade Empire/KotOR, which had better level design and more significant interactions (Ex: not listening to Hackett's disembodied voice every time I return to the Normandy).
Modifié par BaladasDemnevanni, 06 août 2012 - 01:39 .
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