75 réponses à ce sujet

[wowolfhen]

I just don't get that. It took more than 2 years for Bioware to make Mass effect 2. And the actual world is rather small. All we got is just levels no more than 100 square meters.  Moreover, almost no planets to explore. Maybe, it's time to 
start persuading Bioware to make Mass Effect 3 universe more extensive?

[Recnamoken]

Why have a really big universe with no content instead of a smaller space where everywhere is something interesting?

[Duduris]

So you just want to run around the Citadel/Omega ect without a reason?

[Traumacrazy]

Recnamoken wrote...

Why have a really big universe with no content instead of a smaller space where everywhere is something interesting?

......

[moteh]

Open world games like Oblivion, Fallout, GTA, etc are a pain in the ass to make and QA. It's much easier to QA levels and then stream them together. This also has the added benefit of allowing for more flavor and and substance to be inserted into each level than a game like GTA has.



Basically it boils down to having a smaller more detailed world or wasting those resources making an overworld that lacks definition. The one complaint I had about ME1 in this sense was the planets you drove the Mako around on were huge and empty. If the Hammerhead DLC allows for smaller but more detailed terrains to explore I'd say go for it, but I'd rather have 10 planets to explore rather than 50 with just a fractal height map with a couple points of interest in opposite corners of the map.



Bigger is not better, it's just less defined, giving the illusion of depth until you realize there is nothing really there.

[wowolfhen]

moteh, thanks for an extensive answer. But are Oblivion and Gta4 empty? I agree that Mass Effect 1 planets for exploration were seriously dull (only 1*1 square km of nothing). But such a big company Bioware could make an open world system. As a matter of fact, Space is supposed to be enormous!

P.s.I loved city videos on Illium with all those flying cars.Pity, these were just videos..

[Jigero]

Because people will still complain it's too much like GTA and there aren't enough useless stats and annoying inventories to bog it down.

[Gorn Kregore]

wowolfhen wrote...

But are Oblivion and Gta4 empty?

Oblivion was pretty copy paste same terrain, add few wolves there make it snow there, add a few little exotic trees. GTA 4 was lacking as well..

[AlanC9]

The short answer is that's just not the kind of game Bioware likes to make. They haven't even attempted that sort of thing since Baldur's Gate 1. They moved to defined quest-related areas in BG2 and never looked back.

[Chromie]

wowolfhen wrote...

moteh, thanks for an extensive answer. But are Oblivion and Gta4 empty? I agree that Mass Effect 1 planets for exploration were seriously dull (only 1*1 square km of nothing). But such a big company Bioware could make an open world system. As a matter of fact, Space is supposed to be enormous!
P.s.I loved city videos on Illium with all those flying cars.Pity, these were just videos..

Yes they are empty. Both games are boring. I have Oblivion for one reason only and that is to mod to my hearts content

[moteh]

Oblivion is very empty. You have a terrain over-world that is split into cells with essentially a lot of doors all over the place. The terrain looks great up close, looks like crap from far away, and has random creatures and enemies scattered around. There're very few non-combative NPCs in the over-world, and while it is detailed in that there are many different types of locations, overall it is very devoid of interesting content. Mods change this sure, but the vanilla game is pretty sparsely populated.



Each individual dungeon in Oblivion is a collection of standard rooms in different patterns (similar to the planetary bases in ME1), and even though there are 100 Oblivion gates there is only 7 -15 different permutations of the oblivion world, which means visiting all 100 necessitates a lot of repetition (which is artificially inflating the game world).



I'm all for someone making an open game world, but so far the technology isn't there to make an open game world that is really interesting. They always end up being very empty with a lot of carbon copy NPCs and very little to actually do. It ends up being a place for you to make up your own fun (i.e. in GTA how long can I survive with X wanted level), and that is then a failing on the developers part. If it's not interesting it's not worth playing.



To wrap up, Oblivion is only great for those first couple hours you play the game, then you start spamming map travel as often as possible. As of yet, open worlds take too time to develop, too much time to QA, too much time to play in (traveling is a pain), and really it takes too much effort all around just to put a bullet point on the back of the box.

[pacer90]

You will never hear a bachelor party conversation or have a quarian/turian talking about human obsession with quarians in those games. (As a nod to the crazy forum goers)



GTA was big, but all the quests were the same. Even the main storyline ones. I still haven't finished it and I bought it a year ago.

[NeoGuardian86]

Because GTA is 3-4 islands that make up a city and Mass Effect is a galaxy.....

[Odd Hermit]

Both types of games have their charms, the main attraction of the more recent Bioware games has been their dialogue and story, with a giant sandbox game they couldn't pay as much attention to detail with full voice acting and lots of dialogue and cut scenes like they did in ME 2 and Dragon Age.



I'd love to see a Mass Effect sandbox game, but they'd have to change their style a lot to make it work. Perhaps after Mass Effect 3 brings the story from the first 2 games to an end(assuming it will) they might make an open world game in the Mass Effect setting.

[MidgardSerpentZ]

I have the feeling that something like the latest GTA are pretty expensive to make, just a hunch.

[Justin2k]

pacer90 wrote...

You will never hear a bachelor party conversation or have a quarian/turian talking about human obsession with quarians in those games. (As a nod to the crazy forum goers)

GTA was big, but all the quests were the same. Even the main storyline ones. I still haven't finished it and I bought it a year ago.

You should, crazy twist at the end.

GTA DLC was good because they changed the quests quite a bit, but you are right, the inital game was lacking, not in environment but in what you could do.

Oblivion was ok.  But I got really bored after a while.  As I did with Sacred 2 which again is very fun.  They just become same old same old where as ME2 was a story, beginning, middle, end.

ME2 certainly could improve and bigger/more hub zones would help it, but its still a fantastic game of decent length if you do everything.

[7th_Phoenix]

Recnamoken wrote...

Why have a really big universe with no content instead of a smaller space where everywhere is something interesting?

I agree. A lot of space filled with nothing is pointless. Smaller is better in ME.

[sherban1988]

Bioware has a certain game format, and they're sticking to it.

Focus on dialogue, party of three, good & bad decisions/endings, etc.

Do I like the open world freedom GTA offers? Sure. But I wouldn't trade the story and character depth Mass Effect offers for anything.

[Shadowwot]

I find that games like DAO and ME I will replay because I enjoyed the stories. Games like Oblivion and Fallout 3 I will generally really enjoy at first but after a few hours where everything looks the same and nothing sticks out I will get bored - rush to finish the game and never load it up again.

[wowolfhen]

I completed the main story and all side quests.Finished at 26 level. Now there are only 4 planets to visit: Tuchanka, Illium, Omega, Citadel. Nowhere else to go...

[Justin2k]

wowolfhen wrote...

I completed the main story and all side quests.Finished at 26 level. Now there are only 4 planets to visit: Tuchanka, Illium, Omega, Citadel. Nowhere else to go...

Only thing to do is import the character and play through again for the next 4 levels.  Or start a new one and it gets bonus XP.

Sad i know :-(

[wowolfhen]

I remember in all trailers and interviews, Bioware were telling how big the game universe became...

[banshee768]

Games like Oblivion, Morrowind, GTA and other with huge open worlds rely heavily on random contents. Random bandit/gang attacks, random spawned missions, random this and random that. Depending on the amount of planning going into the random events, this can be good and keep you emerged in the game world. Most of the time though, it's rubbish. Oblivion is the prime example here. Defeat the big bad boss of something and when you loot his chests find.. a broom and 3 forks (real story). Also, bandits scaled to your level to keep them challenging. Which meant that they ran around in some of the rarest armor towards the end. Which again broke the illusion.



When everything is done by hand (in the case of Mass Effect 2) everything fits together and the illusion is maintained. This, however, takes a lot of time, so the amount of places and/or the size of places are reduced as a consequence.



It's the classic quality vs. quantity. And BioWare went with quality.

[SwiftSweeper]

I kind of wish that Bethesda would attempt to do something like Mass Effect. Sure, the story and characters would probably not be as good Bioware's, but it would be cool to have huge universe with hundreds of planets to explore.