Subtitle, Just Slow Down.
Act 1
I think ME2 was my favorite ME game. It's the game that got me into the series, and really my first "known" Bioware game, but even more than that--it had a special effect to it.
The game starts off by giving you a few directions, but then it tells you, "go collect crew members!" and that's it. No big, "The world is caving in right now and you need to save it!" The game was...slow. I could play at my leisure. There were a few times when the plot pushed me into a mission, but that was what--three, four times? I didn't have the weight of the world hanging over me. I could explore with virtually no sense of the feeling as I'm doing this, worlds are burning/Saren is bringing the Reapers/Darkspawn are stampeding across the land. There's time.
Act 2
Enter ME3. The game starts, right off the bat, with the Reapers arriving. It's obvious right then and there that the world is hanging on our shoulders, that time is against us. We have to drum up as much support as we can in the shortest amount of time, because this war won't get any easier. Running off and exploring would be silly in the game, just silly.
And where I felt the real problem was at was in the areas where ME3 tried to open up the ME-verse to us. I feel that's Bioware's greatest point (creating worlds with meaningful delimmas and fascinating cultures), but when they did it in ME3, it was overshadowed by the urgency of the plot. Sure, we went to Sur'Kesh, but it was only an STG facility, and we didn't have any chance to explore the Salarian homeworld, or see Salarians in their natual habitat (i.e., a city not a military/scientific base). Sure, we went to Thessia, but the entire place is being bombarded by Reapers at the time. We have no chance to appreciate, to absorb Asari culture. The plot is a sword hanging over us by a thread, keeping us moving. There's no time.
Act 3
And so we come to Dragon Age Inquisition. From our short "reveal" trailer and the end of DA ][, we've already got an impetus for speed, a push for swiftness. But when we're being pushed in that direction, we don't have time to fully appreciate the world the game is carrying us through. The plot already feels like it will make exploring the world all the more nonsensical--the mages and Templars are in open conflict, and the Fade's been torn open, there's no time for such nonsense as visiting an Orlesian ball or exploring Nevarra. There's no time.
I'd love some time to explore, without the world hanging over me and pushing me to run on.
Regarding: The Problem With ME3, and Worries for DA I
Débuté par
Guest_EntropicAngel_*
, juil. 26 2013 07:27
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#2
Posté 03 août 2013 - 08:49
Allan Schumacher
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- BioWare Employees
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- 7 640 messages
EntropicAngel wrote...
Nightwriter wrote...
There are a lot of valid criticisms for ME3, but that isn't one.
I get the "don't give me leisure quests when there's a main quest that seems time sensitive" thing, though.
Well I felt it was one! *crosses arms*
But really, the point I was mainly going for and kind of failed to elucidate was--in the midst of all this, it's tough to do milieu. Bioware makes milieu games, that's their specialty. ME2 was a marvelous, marvelous milieu game. ME1 was a decent one, but it was somewhat hindered by a plot that depended somewhat on the speed of Shepard (artificially, anyway).
A slower plot allows the game to better be a milieu game without breaking the plot.
As a game player, I am pretty open to either. Some games work well with a more directed, faster crit plot. Others work well with one that is slower. The variety keeps things fresh, IMO.
If *all* games were one or the other, I think that that would be suboptimal for me.
