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[Pasquale1234]

@Pasquale1234 
I can see where are you coming from

Good.
 

ME3 was more cinematic, yes, but it is not as drastic as you say, especially compared to ME2.

I'm glad we can agree to disagree.

Every ME3 mission started with a cutscene while you were en route. When the cutscene ended, you were in combat. That isn't true of either one of the other games. Even going to the Citadel spawned a cutscene, asking if you want ground transportation. That was somewhat helpful, in that you could go directly to a specific location without needing to use the elevator.

I think the cutscenes became much more intrusive and dominant as the series progressed. ME3 had more than ME2 which had more than ME1.

Most of the cutscenes in ME1 & 2 were singular - (some optional) interactions during missions, post-mission debriefings. In ME3, they were stacked.

I may not be remembering this correctly (and am too lazy to look it up), but let's look at what happens post-Tuchanka.

Cutscenes:
-- Shepard escaping after dropping the maw hammers.
-- Mordin - dialogue and then Mordin going up in the tower.
-- Wrex / Eve
-- Hackett debriefing
-- Primarch Victus promising support, Garrus offering to co-ordinate Turian aide and sending Shepard to bed
-- Dream sequence
-- And I think there were more after Shepard woke up

If you wanted to see the results of, for example, different choices with Mordin, your only option is to load your last save before hitting the shroud, go through the rest of combat and dropping the hammers and everything else all over again. It's actually faster (and less damaging to the mood and pacing) to quit the game and reload everything from scratch. And I guess maybe that's the crux of my issue with it.
 

Of course ME1 will have the shorter time. Consider when it was made and the amount of content in the game. ME1 is much shorter than either ME2 or ME3.

I think that depends on how much time you spend exploring. My playthroughs of all 3 games are roughly equivalent in terms of how much time they take.
 

I still don't understand the point of Normandy not being fully staffed. It wasn't. So what?

You tell me.

I mentioned Shepard being automatically shuffled from Vancouver to Mars to the Citadel with no opportunity to greet the crew, change clothes, or do anything else in-between, and you started arguing with me.
 

During the trip to the Citadel Shepard is checking on Ash/Kaidan and (maybe) James. He/she says it himself/herself

Hmm... I remember a debriefing w/ Hackett where Shepard reports the injury and that they are taking them to the Citadel. Then Liara comes in to tell you she's done what she can for them and that they have info about the device to present to the Council. Then Bailey meets you when you arrive on the Citadel. I don't remember Shepard making the comments you've stated.

[The Elder King]

If I recall, the mage tower quest is so disliked by people that there's actually a PC mod that lets people skip it. That says a lot.

It's the FADE part of the mage quest Who has a skip mod, Not the whole mage quest.
The fact that you hate It and find If the worse main quest Made by Bioware doesn't mean everyone/the majority believes so. I love the Deep Roads quest and yet there Are many Who hated It.

[Vazgen]

OK, let's see.

Your example, Shroud cutscenes (including those after what you mentioned): 36:33-48:48    12 minutes 15 seconds

ME2: Horizon - 26:26-33:55    7 minutes 29 seconds

If you want to experience different dialogue, reloading is still faster. Unless those 5 minutes make all the difference for you, in which case we'll just have to agree to disagree.

 

I'm talking about main content. If we are taking exploring into account, might as well include planet scanning. ME1 has 4 main missions (or 6, if you count Eden Prime and Ilos/Citadel). ME2 had at least 6 recruitment missions (since you need 8 squadmates to launch Suicide Mission) and 4 main story missions, including Suicide Mission itself. I don't count Prologue up to getting control of the Normandy. In ME3 we have Menae, Sur'Kesh, one side mission (Rachni or Turian Platoon), Shroud, Citadel Coup, Geth Dreadnought, one side mission (Geth server or Admiral Koris), Rannoch Reaper, Thessia, Horizon, Cerberus HQ and Priority Earth. 12 in total, not including prologue and Mars.

 

This was your comment:

The urgency is a valid point, but there is still *some* travel time involved. Shepard could be doing something other than twiddling her thumbs while en route. Also, bear in mind that the Normandy had been in drydock undergoing retrofits - it did not have (or should not have had) a regular, full crew prepared to set sail onboard. Adams, Traynor, and Cortez tell you they were working on the retrofits, which is why they were onboard. Joker and Edi will tell you how they took the Normandy, and that the guards posted outside the War Room had been there to guard Joker. In ME1, Shepard was given the opportunity to address the crew over the PA after taking command of the SR1. Apparently, that all happened off-screen in ME3. 

You were the one bringing the crew, not sure why.

 

Here you go: Video

[Majestic Jazz]

Bioware 'pandered' to Skyrim fans as CDPR did. Both software hours watched Skyrim's success and Both followed a open/semi-open world approach.
The difference, it seems, is that TW did a better job in balancing the new world approach with their game model.

And thats the point. CDPR followed many Skyrim examples but still stuck with the direction that TW1 and TW2 went with. Bioware didnt.

There is a difference between using certain features from other games but still remaining true to your core versus scrapping corr features of your game to be like another game. CDPR did the former with TW3 and Bioware did the latter.

[The Elder King]

And thats the point. CDPR followed many Skyrim examples but still stuck with the direction that TW1 and TW2 went with. Bioware didnt.
There is a difference between using certain features from other games but still remaining true to your core versus scrapping corr features of your game to be like another game. CDPR did the former with TW3 and Bioware did the latter.

Which code features do you think Bioware scrapped to be like Skyrim?

[AlanC9]

If I recall, the mage tower quest is so disliked by people that there's actually a PC mod that lets people skip it. That says a lot.

It says something. I've never been sure exactly what.

[azarhal]

And thats the point. CDPR followed many Skyrim examples but still stuck with the direction that TW1 and TW2 went with. Bioware didnt.

There is a difference between using certain features from other games but still remaining true to your core versus scrapping corr features of your game to be like another game. CDPR did the former with TW3 and Bioware did the latter.

 

BioWare failed at following the Skyrim example. It's like they tried to mash ME2-ME3 mission based design into a MMO with zones split per level world design instead of following the open world free-form approach of Skyrim (something TW3 did succeed at).

[MissOuJ]

And thats the point. CDPR followed many Skyrim examples but still stuck with the direction that TW1 and TW2 went with. Bioware didnt.

There is a difference between using certain features from other games but still remaining true to your core versus scrapping corr features of your game to be like another game. CDPR did the former with TW3 and Bioware did the latter.

 

I don't think that's it, actually. I think maybe an open world just works better in an ARPG like the Witcher 3, in terms of gameplay and story. At its heart, TW series has been just as much about, well, hunting and survival as it's been about politics in a dark fantasy world and Geralt sleeping with as many women as he can. IMO, open world fits that genre much better than it fits the usual BioWare formula, where the story is also driven by your PC's interactions with their companions and where that has always been a bit of a focal point on their games, with recruitment and loyalty missions, approval systems, party banter and so on.

 

If you want to make an open-world game, you'll have to make that matter and to have stuff to do in there and have it make sense, story-wise. In TW3, doing monster hunting related sidequests and such makes sense, but in DA:I, where you're supposed to be the important head of a powerful organization, those sidequests (which are not all that different if you start to really think about it) seem very out-of-place. But despite that, DA:I had moderate success with the Skyrim model, in my opinion: they did manage to marry the story and character driven RPG with an open world, but they had too many too insignificant quests, and the real quality content was spread a bit too thin. Too few Cradles of Sulledin, too many Woolsey the rams.

[Valkyrja]

Old Bioware IS dead, and I'm pretty sure that's been the claim the whole time. There's a difference between being dead and being broke. Bioware isn't broke, but the Old Bioware that used to produce high quality RPGs that would live on as classics is more certainly dead. Was DA:I a good game? Yes it definitely was. Will it stand the test of time? No. Dragon Age Origins is still the best DA game, and The Witcher 3, no offense, destroyed DA:I in almost every department. Ok that part may be subjective, but let's all agree Witcher 3 was much better received both critically and commercially.

 

CDprojektRed hasn't been producing nearly as much AAA games has Bioware have. They're fairly new in that department. But despite that, TW3 sold 3-4 times the amount that DA:I in it's first two weeks, and it wasn't even on as many platforms as DA:I. So that's something to consider here.

I don't hate Bioware, I still really enjoy their games, and I'm very much looking forward to Mass Effect 4. But they don't crap gold anymore. I did enjoy DA:I a lot, but it wasn't as good as it could've been. I don't think it lived up to the hype.

 

They've been a pretty inconsistent developer for a long time now.

 

If you take off the rose-tinted glasses with ME1, their last pre-EA game, while the broader strokes of the story hold up the dialogue is generally clunky and sometimes outright horrible, the game doesn't get its own morality system, your party is boring as ****, and that first section on the Citadel is a clinic in how not to pace a game and there are issues with pacing elsewhere as well. The less said about the combat mechanics and RPG elements that have aged like milk the better.

[AlanC9]

If you wanted to see the results of, for example, different choices with Mordin, your only option is to load your last save before hitting the shroud, go through the rest of combat and dropping the hammers and everything else all over again. It's actually faster (and less damaging to the mood and pacing) to quit the game and reload everything from scratch.

If you're interested in mood and pacing, should you be cheating on the dialogues in the first place?

Also, I take it having to quit is a console thing? I might be confused about when this comes up.

[Majestic Jazz]

Which code features do you think Bioware scrapped to be like Skyrim?

Since KOTOR, cinematics has been a core feature for ALL dialog aside from a few instances like talking to Zaeed on the Normandy in ME2. So with DAI, about 80% of the dialog was done through non-cinematic means which is a reversal of what they have been establishing since since 2003.

Limited cinematics works in the Elder Scrolls and Fallout games because that has always been their base. Same cannot be said about DA or Mass Effect.

[Pasquale1234]

OK, let's see.
Your example, Shroud cutscenes (including those after what you mentioned): 36:33-48:48    12 minutes 15 seconds
ME2: Horizon - 26:26-33:55    7 minutes 29 seconds

I'm not sure why you keep bringing ME2 into it. ME2 started the railroading, and ME3 expanded on that. ME3 had more stacked cutscenes than ME2 which had more than ME1. Do you disagree with that?

One of the reasons that ME1 is my favorite of the lot is because I had a lot more control over my character through most of the game.
 

If you want to experience different dialogue, reloading is still faster. Unless those 5 minutes make all the difference for you, in which case we'll just have to agree to disagree.

5 minutes? Looks like 12 to me.

And it doesn't change the fact that sitting through all of that stuff, waiting for an opportunity to reload, messes with the mood and pacing. I'd much rather quit the game than sit through the same series of cutscenes again.

Of course, if there was a wee break where I could save before speaking to Mordin, Wrex / Eve, etc., then the whole thing would be moot. ME1 told me to go talk to Anderson, Joker, etc., but allowed me to save / reload between those scenarios. All they would have needed to do is put Shepard in a room after combat - where I could save first - before going to talk to Mordin - and I would have been a lot happier with the game. Ditto Wrex / Eve, etc.
 

I'm talking about main content. If we are taking exploring into account, might as well include planet scanning. ME1 has 4 main missions (or 6, if you count Eden Prime and Ilos/Citadel). ME2 had at least 6 recruitment missions (since you need 8 squadmates to launch Suicide Mission) and 4 main story missions, including Suicide Mission itself. I don't count Prologue up to getting control of the Normandy. In ME3 we have Menae, Sur'Kesh, one side mission (Rachni or Turian Platoon), Shroud, Citadel Coup, Geth Dreadnought, one side mission (Geth server or Admiral Koris), Rannoch Reaper, Thessia, Horizon, Cerberus HQ and Priority Earth. 12 in total, not including prologue and Mars.

Point?

My playthroughs of the 3 games are roughly equivalent in terms of time. YMMV.
 

This was your comment:
 
You were the one bringing the crew, not sure why.
 
Here you go: Video

Thanks for the link. I had forgotten that comment.

As for the rest - this started with my mentioning the railroading from Vancouver to Mars to the Citadel, with no opportunity for me, the player, to do anything else. I cited it as an example of the way cutscenes are stacked and the game railroaded.

You mentioned the urgency, and I felt I needed to explain what else Shepard might have been doing and justify the reasons why I might have liked to have more control over Shepard. Shepard - who had been decommissioned and was basically in prison - had just hijacked a ship in drydock undergoing retrofits. Vega protests leaving Earth, but everybody else on board apparently just automatically adapts and goes along with it?

And honestly, this entire argument is mostly moot. We're arguing about the story as presented. There are a bazillion other ways it could have been written and presented while giving the player more control over the character and not stacking cutscenes as they did.

[Majestic Jazz]

I don't think that's it, actually. I think maybe an open world just works better in an ARPG like the Witcher 3, in terms of gameplay and story. At its heart, TW series has been just as much about, well, hunting and survival as it's been about politics in a dark fantasy world and Geralt sleeping with as many women as he can. IMO, open world fits that genre much better than it fits the usual BioWare formula, where the story is also driven by your PC's interactions with their companions and where that has always been a bit of a focal point on their games, with recruitment and loyalty missions, approval systems, party banter and so on.

If you want to make an open-world game, you'll have to make that matter and to have stuff to do in there and have it make sense, story-wise. In TW3, doing monster hunting related sidequests and such makes sense, but in DA:I, where you're supposed to be the important head of a powerful organization, those sidequests (which are not all that different if you start to really think about it) seem very out-of-place. But despite that, DA:I had moderate success with the Skyrim model, in my opinion: they did manage to marry the story and character driven RPG with an open world, but they had too many too insignificant quests, and the real quality content was spread a bit too thin. Too few Cradles of Sulledin, too many Woolsey the rams.

Good point. Either way I think we both agree that DAI was too foriegn for what Bioware normally does. Lets hope ME4 isnt a DAI in space which is what a lot of us fears.

[AlanC9]

Of course, if there was a wee break where I could save before speaking to Mordin, Wrex / Eve, etc., then the whole thing would be moot. ME1 told me to go talk to Anderson, Joker, etc., but allowed me to save / reload between those scenarios. All they would have needed to do is put Shepard in a room after combat - where I could save first - before going to talk to Mordin - and I would have been a lot happier with the game. Ditto Wrex / Eve, etc.

Hmm. This strikes me as clunky and somewhat annoying. Of course, that's because the feature has little value to me -- I'm one of those RPG purists who plays his character and takes what he gets, and if the character's being railroaded by the situation then I'm fine with it. I suppose I can see the case for having an armor locker on the Normandy before Mars, but that's it. And I can see why they didn't do that -- doing the Normandy intro/tour would have been lousy pacing at that point, and they didn't want to roll out the ship piecemeal.

I guess one of us ends up annoyed here.

[CronoDragoon]

Good point. Either way I think we both agree that DAI was too foriegn for what Bioware normally does. Lets hope ME4 isnt a DAI in space which is what a lot of us fears.

 

So, let's hope it isn't like Mass Effect 1? I agree with what.

[Pasquale1234]

If you're interested in mood and pacing, should you be cheating on the dialogues in the first place?

Cheating is the eye of the beholder, I guess. There's a world of difference between repeating one conversation versus repeating several conversations in multiple locations.

And I think pacing is a personal thing. Some people continue a paused video where they left off, while others will rewind some.
 

Also, I take it having to quit is a console thing? I might be confused about when this comes up.

Perhaps. Once you start a set of scripted cutscenes, you have to either play through all of them until you regain control of the character and can reload, or quit the game.

[AlanC9]

Whats the problem with ME1? its gameplay is a mess and there are some other problems but overall its a great game
It shouldn't be anything like DA:I which was a mess

Well, the ME1 plot's a mess too, and incoherent with the exploration elements of the design. Inventory was awful. The morality system was incoherent. The non-human squadmates were walking exposition dumps. The Renegade ending was preposterous. A few more things, but you get my drift.

[Vazgen]

I'm bringing ME2 because often (and even in this case) ME3 is singled out as the game that turned the series into an interactive movie or something (roughly speaking). I use ME2 to show that the shift started a game earlier and I don't remember people complaining about it. If they did, maybe we wouldn't have that many cinematics in ME3. 

 

5 minutes is the time difference between those scenes. It's again that ME2 example. If you are willing to sit through 7 minutes of piled cutscenes, are 5 more minutes that hard to withstand? Especially since it has a break in the form of a dream sequence when you gain control of the character. If you wish to experience different dialogue you'll still have to reload the combat sequence (which is much harder in case of ME2)

 

The point was, the games and technology were not as developed as for later games and thus content using those technologies was not as extensive. For example, in ME1 voice actors didn't hear what the other people in the conversation were saying. They voiced each line independently. The script was printed. They had piles of paper with dialogue. This all impacted the quality of the dialogue and as a result there was less dialogue than in consequent games.

 

Remember "consider yourself reinstated, Commander"? There was another soldier next to Ash/Kaidan who heard that. Maybe he told the news to the crew. And it was not Shepard who hijacked the ship, it was Joker. And as you recall, Ash/Kaidan are on the Normandy so they support the decision. I don't see a problem here.

 

But you're right, it's moot. There are other ways to go about presenting the story and they could've gone the different way. I don't think they wanted to, IIRC they even stated that ME3 was the "movie of Mass Effect" or something like that. For what its worth, I believe ME:Next will be less movie-like.

[The Elder King]

Since KOTOR, cinematics has been a core feature for ALL dialog aside from a few instances like talking to Zaeed on the Normandy in ME2. So with DAI, about 80% of the dialog was done through non-cinematic means which is a reversal of what they have been establishing since since 2003.
Limited cinematics works in the Elder Scrolls and Fallout games because that has always been their base. Same cannot be said about DA or Mass Effect.

While I'm not exactly a fan of those type of dialogue (Though it's more about the quantity), but I don't think it's about copying Skyrim. It's about resources.
Tw3 manage to keep their dialogue system with the open world, but it doesn't have companions to drain massive resources from the budget.

[Pasquale1234]

Hmm. This strikes me as clunky and somewhat annoying. Of course, that's because the feature has little value to me -- I'm one of those RPG purists who plays his character and takes what he gets, and if the character's being railroaded by the situation then I'm fine with it. I suppose I can see the case for having an armor locker on the Normandy before Mars, but that's it. And I can see why they didn't do that -- doing the Normandy intro/tour would have been lousy pacing at that point, and they didn't want to roll out the ship piecemeal.

I guess one of us ends up annoyed here.

No doubt.

Indeed, role-playing involves your character's reaction to outside stimuli, but it should also allow you some degree of control over your character's priorities. The character I wanted to play cared enough about the other people "kidnapped" during the Normandy hijacking to have wanted to explain and somehow reassure them. I'm okay with those things not being explicit, but the game left me no space in which they might have happened - at least, not until after leaving the Citadel.
 

I'm bringing ME2 because often (and even in this case) ME3 is singled out as the game that turned the series into an interactive movie or something (roughly speaking). I use ME2 to show that the shift started a game earlier and I don't remember people complaining about it. If they did, maybe we wouldn't have that many cinematics in ME3.

I wasn't around at the time, or I would have complained offered constructive feedback. But yeah, the shift started in ME2 and became much more pronounced in ME3.
 

5 minutes is the time difference between those scenes. It's again that ME2 example. If you are willing to sit through 7 minutes of piled cutscenes are 5 more minutes that hard to withstand? Especially since it has a break in the form of a dream sequence when you gain control of the character. If you wish to experience different dialogue you'll still have to reload the combat sequence (which is much harder in case of ME2)

Ah, yes - the dream sequence. I'm required to control the character in a dream? I've always thought that was a really odd decision on their part.

I'm still not sure what your point is, unless it is to offer an ME2 example. There are several examples in both games, though they are longer and more frequent in ME3.
 

But you're right, it's moot. There are other ways to go about presenting the story and they could've gone the different way. I don't think they wanted to, IIRC they even stated that ME3 was the "movie of Mass Effect" or something like that. For what its worth, I believe ME:Next will be less movie-like.

Yes, I've heard of that comment before. I'm sure they were very aware of the sheer number of cutscenes they were building, and knew that the effect would be very movie-like.

I'm hoping. I guess we'll see.