I'm going to start off by admitting that I am not part of the Mass Effect modding scene and am unlikely to become too big a part of it due to having the Xbox version of Mass Effect, however I have experience in modding other games such as Warcraft 3 (where I ran a very large team for nearly a year before we were hacked and lost our stuff), and I have done small amounts of modding of Medieval 2 Total War and Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, and I still find all mods of interest, and my greatest interest of late has been with Mass Effect 3.
The Mass Effect series is a beautiful game series, even Mass Effect 3 is beautiful although it sadly is the tarnished, somewhat deformed younger brother of it's two siblings. The game is sadly riddled with bugs, and there are missed opportunities aplenty, and for a while I did think that we would never get to see these fixed due to Bioware rarely patching their game, and that the modding scene seemed only texture based until recently. But that has changed, we saw the arrival of the Mass Effect Happy Ending Mod which has managed to change the entire layout of the final parts of the game from the Death of Anderson onwards, and on this very forum we are seeing the first attempts by people to show Tali's face ingame with an editted model of her. All this seems to be because of the ME3Explorer that is in the works, but after reading up on the net about it, I am still unclear of it's full potential, so I have prepared a list of questions to try and understand how powerful it is and just how much we could potentially do with it:
- Can we fix scripts so that the games runs smoother or to iron out the many bugs of the game? The classic ones that need fixing are things like Shepard's head turning around in wierd directions in some segments or the laughable Aria speech on Omega where does a teleportation-disco dancing act.
- Can the Journal be editted/fixed?
- Can new music and speech files be added to the game? After watching Mass Effect Happy Ending Mod on Youtube, it seems so.
- Can brand new Weapons or Weapon Mods be added to the game? Not multiplayer ones, but brand new ones built by modders.
- Can new pieces of Armour or full new Armour sets be added to the game? I currently feel that the game has too few armour pieces to pick from, and that too many interesting pieces of armour come as a full set such as the Cerberus outfit.
- Can new abilities be added to the game? Ones from Multiplayer or just brand new ones.
- Can new NPC's be added to the hub "worlds", and can new enemy NPC's be added to the ingame levels?
- Can new NPC's be added to the Normandy? Can NPC's locations on the Normandy be changed? The reason for this is that I feel it is currently too.. Human a crew, and that some members of the crew are poorly placed. Allers gets a proper room over Ashley, when their positions could be easily switched.
- Can new Squad Members and additional new Squad Member appearances be added? I felt the amount of Squad Members was woefully small compared to Mass Effect 2, and again too.. Human, it'd be interesting to see a Volus or Batarian added, or even Mass Effect 2 characters. Even if they are not true Squad Members and just are on the ship.
- Is it possible to replace NPC characters or Squad Members?
- Can we add or edit entries in the Codex?
- Can we add or edit War Asset entries?
- Can we add new Star Systems and Planets to the Galaxy Map? So we could add in Star Systems for worlds from the previous games and also add Star Systems for some of the background races that we haven't seen, such as the Raloi and Yahg.
- Can we add in brand new level maps or adapt the new multiplayer maps into proper missions for us to go on? Many Eavesdropping Quests would've made for fine Mini-Missions, my thought was that these could finally be added through modding.
- Can new Hub Worlds be added? Like most others I am sick of having to always go to the Citadel, when after saving Omega I should be able to revisit it, or even visit the Crucible as it's being constructed.
- Is it possible to replace Citadel loading screens in the elevators with a small elevator you stand inside and listen to news stories? This is something Mass Effect 1 had, and it was interesting.
- If the above is possible, is it possible to add vehicle combat?
I understand these are a lot of questions and I understand most folk won't be able to answer them with close to 100% certainty, but if you have any actual knowledge of the limitations of ME3Explorer then please answer them. I also understand that if they are possible, these additions could prove to be exceptionally difficult to add.
The reason I want to know is that I feel that modders could theoretically fix the game or at least tune it up to be on par with Mass Effect 1 and 2. There are many skilled individuals who are keen to work upon this game, and many who are trying their level best to improve it. If the answer to these questions is "Yes, they are do-able", then I do believe that the modding community could do with getting together to work on consolidating all their work towards the goal of a Mass Effect 3 Expanded Mod, to fix the parts Bioware forgot to add or did poorly, and improve the quality of the game as a whole.
I am not requesting nor asking to be the creator of such a mod, but I am interested in seeing if it is possible.
So, is this possible? Would it be something modders would be interested in exploring? And more importantly, should we do it?
If people want, I'll explain further the kinds of things that I feel should be added to the game, don't worry, I wouldn't start suggesting adding whole new Priority Missions or anything.
Modifié par Sil, 15 décembre 2012 - 12:09 .
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