116 réponses à ce sujet

[78stonewobble]

Yup... I don't think ME1 has aged too badly really; granted the weather's not dynamic and some of the landscape textures are a bit iffy (and don't tessellate brilliantly) but you can still get some nice screenies.

 

http://images.akamai...3D36DCCBC61401/

 

http://images.akamai...0570AA6F0EE722/

 

... even the asset re-use only niggles me a little (the mines and pirate bases mainly) but I sort of shrug it off as it's modular "shake 'n' bake" prefab junk ... the "fantasy" setting of DA:2 actually made the asset re-use a lot worse for me.

 

Backgrounds? That's it? Comeon. 

 

The exploration space was an arbitrary square. 

The terrain was all more or less the same, with different textures. 

Random mountains and hills, that weren't impressive and just in the way.

No trees, plant or animal life really... 

Enviromental differences boiled down to a timer bar. 

No differences in gravity really...

 

The newer games, imho, did a much better job of actually convincing you were in space and exploring. With less even. 

 

One of the problems actually was making the mako able to traverse all, but the steepest mountains. If that wasn't the case you could have made some awesome scenery of the exploration space in a crater, with steep walls.... Or canyons and so on... And by limiting the exploration of mostly emptyness, you could have filled it with some interesting stuff like indignious plant and animal life. 

 

... 

 

But again I have hopes for me:a ... and the improved tech

[Chealec]

Backgrounds? That's it? Comeon. 

 

The exploration space was an arbitrary square. 

The terrain was all more or less the same, with different textures. 

Random mountains and hills, that weren't impressive and just in the way.

No trees, plant or animal life really... 

Enviromental differences boiled down to a timer bar. 

No differences in gravity really...

 

The newer games, imho, did a much better job of actually convincing you were in space and exploring. With less even. 

 

One of the problems actually was making the mako able to traverse all, but the steepest mountains. If that wasn't the case you could have made some awesome scenery of the exploration space in a crater, with steep walls.... Or canyons and so on... And by limiting the exploration of mostly emptyness, you could have filled it with some interesting stuff like indignious plant and animal life. 

 

... 

 

But again I have hopes for me:a ... and the improved tech

 

I'm not going to claim the mechanics of exploration in ME1/Mako were great, they were extremely limited - but I figure most planets are going to be basically lumps of barren rock so I didn't actually have a problem with that side of it. I actually had more of a problem with the planets that had life on them; since the flora was nothing more than rocks painted green it didn't make a lot of sense to have space monkeys wandering around.

 

Hopefully the Frostbite engine, and not supporting old consoles, will allow for better realised environments... but for the age of ME1 I think the barren rock worlds still don't look too bad ... mostly... and that's pretty much all I was referring to with that post you quoted.

[78stonewobble]

I'm not going to claim the mechanics of exploration in ME1/Mako were great, they were extremely limited - but I figure most planets are going to be basically lumps of barren rock so I didn't actually have a problem with that side of it. I actually had more of a problem with the planets that had life on them; since the flora was nothing more than rocks painted green it didn't make a lot of sense to have space monkeys wandering around.

 

Hopefully the Frostbite engine, and not supporting old consoles, will allow for better realised environments... but for the age of ME1 I think the barren rock worlds still don't look too bad ... mostly... and that's pretty much all I was referring to with that post you quoted.

 

Oh, you just meant visually? Ah, well in that case it does hold up quite decently. I agree...

 

EDIT and PS: To the guy asking me whether I preferred planet scanning. Uhm, noooo not the ME2 version. I meant the ME3 warassets thing (finding them like that, not exactly a huge war assets fan). Gave me the same small tidbits of lore, without the boringness I found most of the mako missions in me1. 

[Zekka]

Why isn't Bioware getting help from DICE with vehicular exploration and properly making a large world? They already have experience with this and both companies are owned by EA

[Sylvius the Mad]

Exploring with the MAKO was my favourite part of ME. I loved mapping out a search pattern to find all the points of interest, and figuring out how to climb those hills.

I miss the MAKO.

The uncharted worlds were also the only part of the game where we go to decide from which direction to approach a combat encounter. I hate when level design is linear and forces us into specific encounters with specific resources. The uncharted worlds let us make actual decisions about how to accomplish things, and ME2 was greatly diminished for their lack.

[Elhanan]

Exploring with the MAKO was my favourite part of ME. I loved mapping out a search pattern to find all the points of interest, and figuring out how to climb those hills.

I miss the MAKO.

The uncharted worlds were also the only part of the game where we go to decide from which direction to approach a combat encounter. I hate when level design is linear and forces us into specific encounters with specific resources. The uncharted worlds let us make actual decisions about how to accomplish things, and ME2 was greatly diminished for their lack.

I did not truly explore, as there were only the same map marked locations each time. But I did like trying to find varied assault nests from which to launch combat, snipe turrets, etc.

[capn233]

I always felt the problems with the Mako and the uncharted worlds in ME1 were overblown.

 

There are really two problems that were annoying:

 

-Mako had unusual damping and would bounce in a strange manner sometimes.

-There was a lot of tall terrain.

 

For the first, you mainly just need to get used to driving it, and learn a modicum of restraint with the go pedal, and when to use the thrusters.

 

And as for the second, although it wasn't usually blatantly obvious, there was typically a path to take to anything that could be picked up that had gentler grades.   Also, the main part of each mission could be completed driving on nearly flat ground in the vast majority of cases.  Start reviewing the maps of the side missions and practically everything important for the core mission is clustered in the middle.

 

Of course, if you want to pick up all the potassium you might have to get off the beaten path.  But this is completely optional content that has no bearing on the game other than XP gain and extra credits.  It also helps to simply get a map that has the locations of all the points of interest so you don't waste time driving for nothing.  I have used something like this for all my playthroughs after the first.

 

Personally, I liked the uncharted worlds overall.  Even though many aspects of each planet were recycled (random terrain geometry, similar prefab structures, similar lootable objects), the skyscapes made them relatively unique and interesting places to visit.  It added to the atmosphere, and made the galaxy feel bigger.  I would not mind having many varied locations in MEA to visit.

 

That said, what I do not want to have gigantic areas where you drive for half an hour to complete a single sidequest.  I do not want to manually gather resources that are used in a gameplay capacity.

[Sylvius the Mad]

I did not truly explore, as there were only the same map marked locations each time. But I did like trying to find varied assault nests from which to launch combat, snipe turrets, etc.

There were unmarked points of interest. I really liked looking for minerals.

[Elhanan]

There were unmarked points of interest. I really liked looking for minerals.

Wrong maps:

http://www.gamebansh...walkthrough.php

[Oni Changas]

I agree with TC. I also liked the idea of the Mako and the movement of the Hammerhead to an extent. I won't call it half baked though. Here's what I'd do:

 

A flying shuttle that moves like the Hammerhead except that it flies, so no vertical thrusters. Have it as an actual flying vehicle. In terms of finding and highlighting important locations and materials, it should work like the probe from ME2/3 where you could scan the area below in say...a 10 meter diameter. When you find something or just want to step outside, you descend and exit.Say you encounter a thresher maw or another large creature, it'd make for a very dynamic battle because you can approach and dodge at several different angles rather than driving in circles. Use the jet controls from Battlefield for a better idea; an actual flying vehicle, limit the height it can go of course so that we don't fly into the atmosphere.

[7twozero]

I LOVED exploring practically empty planets in ME1. It's different from DAI. DAI spread out a million collectibles to excuse space and didn't have interesting side quests. ME1's maps made sense to be empty and deserted, it was atmospheric and when you did find that point of interest it was really mysterious and cool.

Yeah I thought it felt pretty realistic.

[Reorte]

The Mako started off well  - the first couple of planets gave me more of a feeling of being on another world than I've had from, well, pretty much every game (the skyboxes helping a great deal), it just became so repetitive.

[Tempest_]

Mixed feelings. A little more variation and detail would be required if they do it again.

I am inclined to agree with the OP in regards to Mass Effect 1, it did become increasingly tedious. That said, I don't have an issue with vehicle exploration.

Just give us something worth exploring.

[AdmiralBoneToPic]

My biggest beef with ME1's exploration(if one can even call what ME1 did as "exploration"..which you cant imo) was effectively go to a planet, drive around a square of rocky terrain, go to one of three building layouts, kill the inhabitants and receive a text update of what you have achieved. I mean in my last ME1 playthrough pretty much consisted of going through areas, pointing my gun at any red triangle available and engaging Marksman until win. The uncharted worlds exploration and thier side missions became the stuff to plough through to get to the good stuff, which was essentially Virmire's big reveal and everything past that. Although more relevant to exploration: I'll put Noveria down as an early game highlight, that was a really well constructed part of game. They did exploration right there. Its a shame the game never attempted anything like that again.

 

But i just hope that with ME:A the exploration is not poorly implemented + the idea that the Mako and simply driving around on a barren rock with long windy paths(a long winding road punctuated by enemy chokepoints: oh! this is a main quest mission!) is "exploration"... I hope the ME:A team bring more to the table than that. There's much more to exploration than just that imo. I hope they don't skimp on the cultral aspect of exploration too. I note Star Trek and i think Bioware were closest to that with ME2. That was just the right way to go about exploration imo. See for exploration to be fun, it cant be exploration for explorations sake. It needs to be varied and every location unique, different, highly detailed n fully realised. Purposeful & worthwhile(if its not exploration can become very tedious & repetitive in short order, you end up huge worlds, but not enough content to justify them. Its too much for too little really. I call it the Skyrim/Bethesda Effect..just saying~) etc..and if that means a smaller number of worlds then i'd be happy with that. To me bigger is not better, Quantity over quality should never be an open world's game motto. Unfortunatly it sounds like to me they're going for biggness again. I just hope in going for this huge scope they don't loose the sight of the detail, richness & intricacies. That we don't end up with a game that's as wide as an ocean but as deep as a puddle(like DAI n ME1 or Skyrim or Elite Dangerous with its empty, souless, ridiculously huge procedurally generated galaxy with a ****-zillion systems/stars etc). That'd be a regressive move.

 

 

 

Having said all that, again im not a fan of the Mako tbh, i thought it & the uncharted worlds were ****. BUT.. as long as the Mako has well done realistic physics, and also isn't just dumped in:

a) the same featureless, barren rock squares, with the same buildings, with the same enemies
or
a long winding road punctuated by enemy chokepoints (i.e. oh! this is a main quest mission!)

Then that is ok.

 

But personally i'd prefer to have the Kodiak shuttle as the primary exploration vechicle(it makes the most sense to me. I mean for one why in whatever x century really far into the advanced future would they still be using something based such old, obsolete & outdated transportation technology like the Mako?.Why does a wheeled vehicle even exist in this era?, it's like firing up Need for Speed... but you have to drive a horse and buggy or something. Seems a outta place considering they've flying cars & shuttles). Though having said that why can't they include both the Mako AND the Hammerhead AND Kodiak?(i mean different planets would presumbaly have differing terrains/gravity levels/atmospheres(i hope they do, Always bothered me in ME1 how similiar these worlds were), in terms of immersion it'd be better & more believable as not every world would suit merely one type of vechicle).

[Robbiesan]

The Mako wasn't the issue in ME1, the monstrous hills and mountains that plagued the planets of ME1 were the issue. Those things were gone in Mass Effect 2 and 3, and then they came back in Inquisition with a vengeance. When the game was designed around the Mako, I thought it worked pretty well. It was kinda rocky in Therum, but otherwise I thought it had potential. 

 

This really.  I didn't mind zipping around in the Mako, thought it was fun overall.  The planscapes though and where some resources/items were located...

 

I'd like to see some opportunities for making huge jumps across a canyon using turbo, driving through hazards that could take you out if not careful in terms of navigation and timing, if we must search for resources place them in easily accessible areas, having to outrun (/CaptKirk some... thing... or things...), timed run from point A to B through a difficult course.  Anyhow, much more than ME1 provided more.

[Angry_Elcor]

Mako was the best thing about ME 1. The only thing wrong with it was that we couldn't romance it.

[KCMeredith]

My biggest fear is driving around in the Mako for hours collecting useless stuff and fetching random items. That is literally one of my nightmares, thinking about the Mako is like thinking about that time you dropped the soap in prison for me.

 

Just....ugh, please NO