Introduction
Little about me: I love the Mass Effect series, and while I’ll always cherish and look forward to the story content of the games, the combat in Mass Effect 3 was a revelation. I’ve spent many hundreds of hours in the cooperative multiplayer mode. The symmetry of all the classes and powers is brilliant.
Now, I understand that focusing on combat is somewhat a point of contention for the community here, but towards which what I just said eludes, I am a big fan of the Mass Effect combat. I think this series was developed under the notion of being an amazing role playing game, and also a brilliant tactical action game. I completely understand if you don’t agree with me, I only ask that you show me the same courtesy.
So, back to it. Something that has always stood out to me—me being a universal melee nut—in Mass Effect, the melee is disconnected to the powers and weapons. There is no systemic link between, say, a biotic punch and a target primed with Warp; the power effect logic used by typical tech and biotic powers suggests this should yield some sort of detonation.
That said, what I’m suggesting is a bit more comprehensive than just detonations.
Customizations
I don’t want to explicitly list a set of customizations that I’ve thought up, because that would take much to long, instead I’d rather just suggest the class philosophy be a guide for such a system.
In Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer, the Engineers and Infiltrators had some of the most elaborate and often interesting melee attacks. The Shadow’s sword was an easy favourite, as was the Demolisher’s Falcon Punch. Soldiers and Vanguards tend to rely on their strength to put an enemy down, the Human Vanguard’s Biotic Strike was an instant win.
Engineer options would be governed by the notion of creativity; Infiltrators are stealth, a space ninjatō needs to be a thing there; Sentinels are tech and biotic, left omni-blade slash could set enemy ablaze, the follow-up stab from the right could be charged with biotic energy and give the enemy flight with a detonation, or simply make him explode.
Melee leveling
I think melee strength should level within its own tree; “Fitness” was a paradox. This way your levelling choices within this tree only effect your melee, and each class could have unique choices.
For example, Soldiers could choose between Force and Peirce Damage, one dealing more damage to armour, the other knocking unshielded enemies to the ground.
Combo Strikes
To further connect your melee to the other systems, enemies who are put in a staggered state become vulnerable to very powerful, class unique, melee attacks. This idea was inspired by the melee system used in Resident Evil 4 and 5—more 5, since it was more advanced. And like that system, it would be cool to stagger enemies with critical hits.
So, landing consecutive hits (or one powerful one—Sniper Rifle) on an enemy’s knees, face, or back; or landing a Warp, Incinerate, Overload, etc. on an enemy, would put that enemy into a “staggered state”, at which point the player can initiate a very powerful melee attack.
In case you’re unfamiliar with Resident Evil 5, and aren’t following what I’m on about, here’s a video demonstrating how the system worked. Now do remember, I am not talking about the animations, even though I think Resident Evil had very nice animations, I am talking about the mechanics only.
In Resident Evil, you need only hit an enemy in the face or leg once to stagger them, but Mass Effect is a different kind of game, your weapon, your ammo, the enemy archetype; does the enemy have kinetic barriers? All these things would be considered by the game, so pulling of consistent staggers would require you to become familiar with all the variables.
Also, low enemy health leads me to my next topic.
Executions
The infamous sync kills. I think we’ve all moonwalked into a facepalm. But, the player has had a sync kill of his/her own. The Abduction Kill over cover. A spot of genius there, and they all look very cool. Also gave you invulnerability; nice reward for a bit of patience and good timing.
Since the player can monitor enemy health in Mass Effect, being able to outright execute enemies at low health with a melee takedown would be a very sweet inclusion. The idea is that instead of your typical Heavy Melee, these executions would benefit from the Abduction Kill perks—you become invulnerable for the moment the animation is playing, and even allow you to look around, take a breath and plan your next move.
In both Singleplayer and Cooperative play, this would be a very nice addition. Setting up an Execution move via squad commands—get your squaddie to chip health off an enemy near you—or simply calling out to your coop partner to drop the hammer on that other baddie, would let you recover Barriers without pausing from the fight.
Execution moves would of course take precedence over the aforementioned Combo Strikes if the subject enemy’s health is within the Execute threshold. And really, the notion of the Execute is you being a badass, so very cool and class unique animations would be the name of the game here.
edit: A game I'm quite fond of that has some very cool canned takedowns is Splinter Cell Conviction: Takedown Monatage. Obviously Mass Effect hardsuits wouldn't allow many of these, but thinking in terms of the methods: very efficient, brutal and hands-on, using your weapon as a weapon sort of thing. If you know of anything more fitting for Mass Effect, bring it on. I considered Halo Reach, but while cool, tends to be too jumpy and knifey.
Well that was a mouthful.
Let me know what you think.
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