75 réponses à ce sujet

[Aidunno]

Most sandbox games I play once through to story completion then never load again. I'm on my fourth runthrough of ME2. I remember when waiting for Oblivion there were lots of discussions about how each NPC were going to lead their own lives and possibly interact randomly with each other. It didn't work out that way. Moving NPC's simply went from point A to point B at set times of the day. I guess technically it takes too much time to develop at the moment. With diminishing returns compared with time taken for enhancing graphics maybe developers will start looking more and more to the actual content again instead.

[AtreiyaN7]

I agree with what Aidunno just said. Oblivion promised a lot more than we really got as I recall. I played it once and that was pretty much the end of it. I didn't feel compelled to play it again to see anything, and the Oblivion NPCs were not quite what I was hoping for. Sure, you could play after the game ended, but it wasn't terribly exciting. I think I got some armor and looked at the statue/monument or whatever it was, and that was it since I'd had my fill of the side quests (such as they were). Playing Oblivion was an enjoyable experience mind you, but the fact that it was an open environment didn't really make it a better game.

[sedrikhcain]

Sphaerus wrote...

sedrikhcain wrote...

Sphaerus wrote...

wowolfhen wrote...

Sphaerus wrote...

Sandboxes are boring. They sound like a great idea, but they can not be made into something worth the time to make them. They are a boring, overused gimmicks that have no real way to give real complexity to a game. Sandboxes were awesome ten years ago when GTA III was fresh and amazing, now they are just boring and ironically predictable.

Mate, it's not so true. Don't wanna mention the game again, but Gta 4 is one of the most well received games..

Based on the story, not the gameplay.  GTAIV's story was excellent and actually a more serious, "adult" experience than the cartoony or over-the-top worlds of Vice City or San Andreas.  The gameplay was incredibly derivative.  Show me a reviewer who celebrated GTAIV for its innovative gameplay and I'll show you a reviewer who was paid off.

Doing the same thing as everyone else but "not awful" while supporting it with a strong, appealing story is not wholly an achievement, though it does say good things about the writing going on.

so games must be innovative or else they are boring?

In a word:  Yes.

Well, unless you're the sort who thinks the Halo series is on the same level of a series like Mass Effect.

I've never played Halo and am not really interested in it. But to say that every single game has to reinvent the wheel to be fun, interesting and immersive is a bit absurd, I think. By that logic, you'd never play Mass Effect 2 because it isn't innovative -- it's derivative of Mass Effect.

[sedrikhcain]

Crawling_Chaos wrote...

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..

Yeah, for the most part Oblivion and GTA 4 are empty.

There are only small hubs that have any interesting content in those games.

I guess it depends on what you call interesting but there missions and diversions all over GTA 4, everything from hookers to pigeon hunting. They're dotted all over the map. Not sure what you mean by having nothing there.

[gGs Dark Tide]

wowolfhen wrote...

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?

That would be so fun, travelling from planet to planet, taking weeks to do so in real time.

[nikki vixen]

Its kind of funny to read you guys making up excuses why Bioware's "games" have to be so mind-numbingly linear. These arent games guys. These are interactive novels that force you to play half-assed shooting sequences so you can get back to the talking. Is that what you guys play videogames for?

Open-ended environments cost too much money, are too hard to make? Thats your excuse, really? How much time and resources do you honestly think it would have taken them to make the side-quest planets worth visiting? After all the money they WASTED on hiring hollywood stars to do the voice acting when any no-name could have done just as good a job for a fraction of the cost?

It makes no sense to me why Bioware would decide to give the player control of the ship, give them the freedom to explore the galaxy at will...yet disregard any attempt whatsoever to make the game open-ended. Its like they are teasing me with visions of a freeform RPG set in space. Its like they WANT me to come to their forums and **** about it. But after playing the game you realise...the "flying through the galaxy" sequences are nothing more than a glorified level select menu.

Arg. These games are such a huge disapointment for me. So much untapped potential absolutely wasted.

[Aidunno]

nikki vixen wrote...
These are interactive novels that force you to play half-assed shooting sequences so you can get back to the talking. Is that what you guys play videogames for?

Yep... at the end of the day that's what I expect from any RPG be it computer based or pen and paper. you can forget the "half-assed shooting sequence" and just place the word  "combat" in instead. Then look at how Oblivion etc also fits into that category if you do the main storyline. Only difference is you occasionally have to combat a few more random foes while travelling from point A to point B. The sole pupose of  which is to distract you from the fact that travelling, generally is boring and once you've seen the look and feel of a place it gets boring quickly.

[AtreiyaN7]

Oh look, nikki vixen, troll extraodinaire. Go register your game if you actually have it and then contribute something meaningful instead of trolling some more.

[The Capital Gaultier]

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..

Oblivion was definitely empty.

[Rapamaha1]

I think Omega, Illum & Citadel could have been bigger with more side quests in them but thats pretty much with every good game, once you completed it you would have wished it would have been even longer, ME1 and 2 have 30 - 50hours to play, depending on your difficulty and how you play it ofc, when again GTA4 has the achievement on xbox that you complete it in under 30hours (and I got it really easilly atleast) , all bioware games I played have been over 40h played on my first playtrough's (ME1,ME2,KOTOR % Dragon age origins wich was more like 70h) if you think game is not big enough then I suggest dont play it 24/7

[AtreiyaN7]

I've played the more recent Elder Scroll games (Morrowind & Oblivion) and Fallout 3 - all from Bethesda, and I can say with certainty that they all ultimately feel very empty even though the environments are lovely and open. I enjoyed the games, all of them, but in terms of interesting characters and stories that make me feel something they're lacking. That's why I'll take BioWare and the trade-off of having somewhat more limited environments.

Modifié par AtreiyaN7, 12 février 2010 - 08:43 .

[Paperghost]

wowolfhen wrote...

Moreover, almost no planets to explore. Maybe, it's time to 
start persuading Bioware to make Mass Effect 3 universe more extensive?

okay, this "nothing to explore" thing that keeps popping up on here is crazy.

you have a collection of hubworlds, a number of loyalty missions that show you different parts of those hubworlds, a large selection of recruitment and loyalty missions that take place in spots all over the galaxy AND you have 19 N7 missions, all of which involve doing things on new planets.

when you say "explore", do you actually just mean drive around in the mako?

[SwiftSweeper]

I just do not understand why Bioware did not re-use hub words from original ME in ME2. Citadel was already created... It would be easy to add some interesting quests to it. I appreciate variety in ME2, but hub words are just too small.



I remember Bioware talking about Omega as seedier version of Citadel. When I got to Omega, I was so disappointed with its size. I could not even explore Presidium in ME2 I wish that Bioware made Omega similar to original Citadel in size and just reused original Cidatel. ME2 just feels too bite sized to me, and end mission screens does not help the matter either.



Say that you will about Oblivion NPCs, but at least, they are moving around. In ME2, all NPCs just stand there and have exactly the same conversations every time I go back to Citadel. These guys must really love shopping lol.



Granted, I am not saying that Mass Effect games should turn into Oblivion or GTA, but larger hub words and more land-able planets with dynamic NPCs will go a long way to make the universe more believable to me.

[Paperghost]

SwiftSweeper wrote...

I just do not understand why Bioware did not re-use hub words from original ME in ME2. Citadel was already created... It would be easy to add some interesting quests to it.

I remember Bioware talking about Omega as seedier version of Citadel. When I got to Omega, I was so disappointed with its size. I could not even explore Presidium in ME2 I wish that Bioware made Omega similar to original Citadel in size and just reused original Cidatel.

yes, just take up a chunk of disc space with the exact same location from the first game, even though it already served its purpose and the story has moved in an entirely new direction that has little to nothing to do with the citadel.

i couldn't imagine anything more eye rollingly awful than waiting two years for a game to arrive and then find myself doing a load of fetch quests in the exact same location i did it in two years earlier.

why not just ask for all the original main mission quest worlds to be included too? you do want to play a NEW game and not a rehash of the first one, right? a small citadel hub was fine, given its relative unimportance to the story of ME2. and why on earth would you want to wander around the presidium just for the sake of it?

Modifié par Paperghost, 12 février 2010 - 11:31 .

[SwiftSweeper]

Paperghost wrote...

SwiftSweeper wrote...

I just do not understand why Bioware did not re-use hub words from original ME in ME2. Citadel was already created... It would be easy to add some interesting quests to it.

I remember Bioware talking about Omega as seedier version of Citadel. When I got to Omega, I was so disappointed with its size. I could not even explore Presidium in ME2 I wish that Bioware made Omega similar to original Citadel in size and just reused original Cidatel.

yes, just take up a chunk of disc space with the exact same location from the first game, even though it already served its purpose and the story has moved in an entirely new direction that has little to nothing to do with the citadel.

i couldn't imagine anything more eye rollingly awful than waiting two years for a game to arrive and then find myself doing a load of fetch quests in the exact same location i did it in two years earlier.

why not just ask for all the original main mission quest worlds to be included too? you do want to play a NEW game and not a rehash of the first one, right? a small citadel hub was fine, given its relative unimportance to the story of ME2. and why on earth would you want to wander around the presidium just for the sake of it?

I would have zero problems going to original cidatel in ME2.  Cidatel is intergral part of ME universe.   It is location of galactic concil after all.  As long as Bioware added new quests to it and made some minor changes to it, I would be happy.  This approach would free up the resources to make other hub words larger.  It would also be cool to visit other worlds from original ME like Noveria to see how things have changed.  This approach would make ME 2 universe feel much larger.  To be honest, I would prefer if Bioware scrap some of hub worlds in ME2 to make 1 or 2 larger hub worlds like original ME Cidatel.  I would love to see much larger Omega or Illium. 

[Paperghost]

SwiftSweeper wrote...

Paperghost wrote...

SwiftSweeper wrote...

I just do not understand why Bioware did not re-use hub words from original ME in ME2. Citadel was already created... It would be easy to add some interesting quests to it.

I remember Bioware talking about Omega as seedier version of Citadel. When I got to Omega, I was so disappointed with its size. I could not even explore Presidium in ME2 I wish that Bioware made Omega similar to original Citadel in size and just reused original Cidatel.

yes, just take up a chunk of disc space with the exact same location from the first game, even though it already served its purpose and the story has moved in an entirely new direction that has little to nothing to do with the citadel.

i couldn't imagine anything more eye rollingly awful than waiting two years for a game to arrive and then find myself doing a load of fetch quests in the exact same location i did it in two years earlier.

why not just ask for all the original main mission quest worlds to be included too? you do want to play a NEW game and not a rehash of the first one, right? a small citadel hub was fine, given its relative unimportance to the story of ME2. and why on earth would you want to wander around the presidium just for the sake of it?

I would have zero problems going to original cidatel in ME2.  Cidatel is intergral part of ME universe.   It is location of galactic concil after all.  As long as Bioware added new quests to it and made some minor changes to it, I would be happy.  This approach would free up the resources to make other hub words larger.  It would also be cool to visit other worlds from original ME like Noveria to see how things have changed.  This approach would make ME 2 universe feel much larger.  To be honest, I would prefer if Bioware scrap some of hub worlds in ME2 to make 1 or 2 larger hub worlds like original ME Cidatel.  I would love to see much larger Omega or Illium. 

okay, i'm curious. How would readding the original citadel and a large slab of citadel related missions (because it'd need them to justify putting it back into the sequel) free up resources to make other sections larger?

and while the citadel is indeed integral to the ME universe, it has almost nothing at all to do with the main story of ME2 and imho would have been a gigantic mistake to give it more than the cursory tip of the hat it gets in the sequel.

[Vaeliorin]

wowolfhen wrote...
There is not much to do after competing the game. U can still visit 4 planets and that's all. What can u do?

This is because, for some inexplicable reason, Bioware let you keep playing after the game was over.  They've never done it before, and I hope they never do it again, because it's pointless.

Start a new game. But u can't play through the same stuff 10 times.

Lots of people would disagree with you.

[Paperghost]

Vaeliorin wrote...

wowolfhen wrote...
There is not much to do after competing the game. U can still visit 4 planets and that's all. What can u do?

This is because, for some inexplicable reason, Bioware let you keep playing after the game was over.  They've never done it before, and I hope they never do it again, because it's pointless.

They have done it before, in a certain recently released RPG.

The reason is obvious - so you can use DLC without having to dig out a savegame before the typical bioware "point of no return". See all the idiocy surrounding the original DLC mission for ME1. (in actual fact, this is implemented better in ME2 than that other certain RPG, as that game bizarrely puts you at a point in time BEFORE the final battle so all sense of context with regards DLC is lost - and they don't let you visit any hubworlds / villages either, JUST dlc unlike ME2 which throws open the whole gameworld).

In relation to ME2 specifically, it also allows you to complete any N7 missions you might not have found (there are quite a lot of them) and without getting into spoiler territory it allows you to see some of the after effects of the final battle on your crew as a whole.

seems like a great idea to me.

Modifié par Paperghost, 12 février 2010 - 01:42 .

[Bootsykk]

Here's the thing: GTA features a very detailed city.

ME features a detailed, but not so open ended in every city, kind of universe, that is actually in total a lot bigger than GTA games.

[Cloaking_Thane]

Oblivion/Fallout/Morrowind is all about questing......you go from quest to quest to quest, random dungeon looting, quest. Very enjoyable games, and I've run through each twice.



Mass effect is much more dialogue immersive, and more interaction based/ story driven than the questing itself.

[SwiftSweeper]

Paperghost wrote...

SwiftSweeper wrote...

Paperghost wrote...

SwiftSweeper wrote...

I just do not understand why Bioware did not re-use hub words from original ME in ME2. Citadel was already created... It would be easy to add some interesting quests to it.

I remember Bioware talking about Omega as seedier version of Citadel. When I got to Omega, I was so disappointed with its size. I could not even explore Presidium in ME2 I wish that Bioware made Omega similar to original Citadel in size and just reused original Cidatel.

yes, just take up a chunk of disc space with the exact same location from the first game, even though it already served its purpose and the story has moved in an entirely new direction that has little to nothing to do with the citadel.

i couldn't imagine anything more eye rollingly awful than waiting two years for a game to arrive and then find myself doing a load of fetch quests in the exact same location i did it in two years earlier.

why not just ask for all the original main mission quest worlds to be included too? you do want to play a NEW game and not a rehash of the first one, right? a small citadel hub was fine, given its relative unimportance to the story of ME2. and why on earth would you want to wander around the presidium just for the sake of it?

I would have zero problems going to original cidatel in ME2.  Cidatel is intergral part of ME universe.   It is location of galactic concil after all.  As long as Bioware added new quests to it and made some minor changes to it, I would be happy.  This approach would free up the resources to make other hub words larger.  It would also be cool to visit other worlds from original ME like Noveria to see how things have changed.  This approach would make ME 2 universe feel much larger.  To be honest, I would prefer if Bioware scrap some of hub worlds in ME2 to make 1 or 2 larger hub worlds like original ME Cidatel.  I would love to see much larger Omega or Illium. 

okay, i'm curious. How would readding the original citadel and a large slab of citadel related missions (because it'd need them to justify putting it back into the sequel) free up resources to make other sections larger?

and while the citadel is indeed integral to the ME universe, it has almost nothing at all to do with the main story of ME2 and imho would have been a gigantic mistake to give it more than the cursory tip of the hat it gets in the sequel.

If Bioware re-used original Cidatel when they could have dropped one or two new "hub worlds" in ME2.  They also would not have to do whole new Cidatel area in the game.  As the result, Bioware could have focused on creating larger hub words.  For instance, instead of doing new cidatel area and let's say Tuchanka, they could have given us much larger Illium or Omega or both.  Noveria could also be reused.  This way, we would have enough hub worlds to explore, and they would have been larger size. 

[Paperghost]

but they'd still only be "larger" because you'd have had to remove something else, so I don't see any real benefit to this. and again, from a storyline perspective the citadel has no ties to ME2 to warrant a return in any larger capacity than it already has. imho having us spend more time on worlds we've already spent a considerable amount of time on would have been a massively underwhelming and unambitious move for a new title two years down the line.

[SwiftSweeper]

Paperghost wrote...

but they'd still only be "larger" because you'd have had to remove something else, so I don't see any real benefit to this. and again, from a storyline perspective the citadel has no ties to ME2 to warrant a return in any larger capacity than it already has. imho having us spend more time on worlds we've already spent a considerable amount of time on would have been a massively underwhelming and unambitious move for a new title two years down the line.

The benefit is having larger hub-words while keeping around the same amount of hub-worlds to visit. The storyline can be ajusted, and there are missions on Cidatel in ME2, or they could have used the cidatel for large chain of side - quests.   The area is already created, so it would be easy to do.

Bottom line, I much rather have larger hub-words to explore even though some of it is recycled from the first game.  

Modifié par SwiftSweeper, 12 février 2010 - 04:58 .

[wowolfhen]

AtreiyaN7 wrote...

Oh look, nikki vixen, troll extraodinaire. Go register your game if you actually have it and then contribute something meaningful instead of trolling some more.

That wasn't necessary. 

nikki vixen, +1. Reading my thoughts. 

[AtreiyaN7]

wowolfhen wrote...

AtreiyaN7 wrote...

Oh look, nikki vixen, troll extraodinaire. Go register your game if you actually have it and then contribute something meaningful instead of trolling some more.

That wasn't necessary. 

nikki vixen, +1. Reading my thoughts. 

Sorry, but he/she had already had a thread deleted that night for being inflammatory/trolling (not surprised if the other one he/she started got yanked too, but perhaps it still exists). I respect people who voice their views thoughtfully and treat them with respect, but I find people with a history of trolling to not be worthy of respect or civility (they do earn whatever snarkiness they get however).