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[uberdowzen]

Terror_K wrote...

rplong wrote...

I agree with uberdowzen on how ME2 is more polished. The correction of having all textures loaded when going into a scene is a massive improvement. I hated watching the textures slowly come into focus or improve as a scene progressed in ME1

I don't get why people keep saying this. ME2 comes across as BioWare's most slapdash and rough-around-the-edges game they've ever made, IMO. It clearly could have done with a little more time in the oven. Heck, it wasn't even delayed at all when it could have easily been. ME2's polish overall is rather schizophrenic though (some bits really polished, other aspects as if they've just been slapped on and left as is). It reminds me a little bit of KotOR2 in this regard.

How can you say ME2 doesn't feel polished, especially compared to ME1. Consider the following:

• Wonky animations that don't always flow together
• Tacked on UCWs which do nothing more than bulk out the game
• Appalling optomised graphics (it brings my video card to it knees, and my computer can run Crysis pretty well)
• Some of the worst self shadows since the Quake 3 team arena engine ones
• An impossible to use custom character creator

[uberdowzen]

SkullandBonesmember wrote...

uberdowzen wrote...

Why do you need a voiced protagonist?

Because the technology is there and we're in 2010 not 2000 and even then a good percentage of games had voice acting from the main character. When your protagonist isn't voiced like in a game such as DA, it kills the immersion.

I've got to go now, but I'll come back and reply to this proper in about an hour or so

[Dick Delaware]

SkullandBonesmember wrote...
Because the technology is there and we're in 2010 not 2000 and even then a good percentage of games had voice acting from the main character. When your protagonist isn't voiced like in a game such as DA, it kills the immersion.

First off, I want to put forth a motion to ban the word "immersion" on this forum by censoring it like curse words. It is a bullsh*t buzzword thrown around far too often for my liking. What is "immersion" and why would having a voiced protagonist aid in that?

Just like anything else, a voiced protagonist is a trade-off. On the plus side, it allows the PC to have a bit more of a personality - in ME, you can see Shepard's facial expressions when he/she's speaking, and it's perfect for the cinematic feel that ME is going for. In something like Dragon Age, your PC's face rarely changes facial expressions, which is pretty silly during an important scene.

The downsides are things like cost, obviously. The PC has the most dialogue in the game, and voicing that is pricey. However, more than that, you don't get the same ability to role-play that dialogue trees would give you. Compare the dialogue options of ME to Dragon Age, which allowed you more freedom to dictate what kind of values your character had. It allows for more nuances in how your PC interacts with people.

[TJSolo]

" Wonky animations that don't always flow together

Tacked on UCWs which do nothing more than bulk out the game

Appalling optomised graphics (it brings my video card to it knees, and my computer can run Crysis pretty well)

Some of the worst self shadows since the Quake 3 team arena engine ones

An impossible to use custom character creator"



I don't run ME2 on PC, can't comment on the optimization.

Animations where more correct in ME1, ME2 has several instances where animations frames are less detail. Like pivot and then turning.

UCWs were a tool for exploration which communicated isolation and scale of the universe. They were not tacked on they were planned from early beta and part of the touted "exploration" Casey Hudson pushed on every dev diary/beta update video.

The shadows were fine and above average at the time of launch. Using hindsight to judge the graphics is cleary baised and unfair.

Yet the character creator has gone unchanged in ME2, except for the exclusion of facial scars.



Of the issues you bulleted 1 isn't even improved in ME2, while another is a concept clearly lost upon you, thirdly it seems you are using hindsight to judge a game instead of the relevant time of release, and lastly the appalling performance is an assumption it is not an issue with your PC. Sure you say you can run crysis but that is one game and is a different benchmark.

[SkullandBonesmember]

Dick Delaware wrote...

First off, I want to put forth a motion to ban the word "immersion" on this forum by censoring it like curse words. It is a bullsh*t buzzword thrown around far too often for my liking. What is "immersion" and why would having a voiced protagonist aid in that?

Just like anything else, a voiced protagonist is a trade-off. On the plus side, it allows the PC to have a bit more of a personality - in ME, you can see Shepard's facial expressions when he/she's speaking, and it's perfect for the cinematic feel that ME is going for. In something like Dragon Age, your PC's face rarely changes facial expressions, which is pretty silly during an important scene.

The downsides are things like cost, obviously. The PC has the most dialogue in the game, and voicing that is pricey. However, more than that, you don't get the same ability to role-play that dialogue trees would give you. Compare the dialogue options of ME to Dragon Age, which allowed you more freedom to dictate what kind of values your character had. It allows for more nuances in how your PC interacts with people.

Oh yeah. Bioware's "budget". Well, for better or for worse, Bioware has made a LOT of profit from ME2, quite possible their most successful game so far. So with all that profit, they certainly can afford voiced protagonists in a potential DA2. Second, you may not play for a connection to the character you roleplay as, but I, along with all other story driven fans do. I'm afraid I can't make a connection with any type of character like from Fable who gives "thumbs up".

[TJSolo]

Dick Delaware wrote...

First off, I want to put forth a motion to ban the word "immersion" on this forum by censoring it like curse words. It is a bullsh*t buzzword thrown around far too often for my liking. What is "immersion" and why would having a voiced protagonist aid in that?

Immersion is not a buzzword. The use of the word matches the definition exactly. Buzzword are either made up or stretch the actual meaning. If you want to start an anti-immersion movement perhaps you should start with the doctors of Bioware as many of their interviews will use some form of the word immersion.

Just like anything else, a voiced protagonist is a trade-off. On the plus side, it allows the PC to have a bit more of a personality - in ME, you can see Shepard's facial expressions when he/she's speaking, and it's perfect for the cinematic feel that ME is going for. In something like Dragon Age, your PC's face rarely changes facial expressions, which is pretty silly during an important scene.

The downsides are things like cost, obviously. The PC has the most dialogue in the game, and voicing that is pricey. However, more than that, you don't get the same ability to role-play that dialogue trees would give you. Compare the dialogue options of ME to Dragon Age, which allowed you more freedom to dictate what kind of values your character had. It allows for more nuances in how your PC interacts with people.

The PC does not automatically have the most dialogue. Shepard is the exception but we don't control what he says only guide. A 5 word sentence in the dialogue wheel for Shep could have Shep talking for 30secs about cuttlefish. Now DAO, even though the PC is not vocal if we go exactly by the lines offered the PC doesn't talk much. There isn't a lot of RPing room when it comes to Shepard. If you don't know what is going to be said, you can't RP it until after and at that point the conversation has moved on. Until the dialogue wheel fully shows what Shepard will say, the choices in DAO have more RPing opportunity.

[Dick Delaware]

SkullandBonesmember wrote...
Oh yeah. Bioware's "budget". Well, for better or for worse, Bioware has made a LOT of profit from ME2, quite possible their most successful game so far. So with all that profit, they certainly can afford voiced protagonists in a potential DA2. Second, you may not play for a connection to the character you roleplay as, but I, along with all other story driven fans do. I'm afraid I can't make a connection with any type of character like from Fable who gives "thumbs up".

Budget constraints are only part of the issue. My point was that voiced dialogue is a trade-off, not that I didn't look for a connection to the character I role-play as. Of course you want to create a distinct identity for your PC, I'm just saying that there are negatives and positives for both approaches.

A major negative is that you don't have dialogue trees that are as intricate and complex as those in something like Torment or Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. In ME, most of your dialogue typically boils down to Investigate + Paragon Response + Neutral Response + Renegade Response. In Vampire, you would get some unique dialogue options depending on your vampire clan, allowing for more nuanced PC dialogue. Likewise, in Dragon Age, you get unique dialogue depending on your origin, and also there are opportunities to lie, which you can't really do in ME. Well, once with Jack, but that's it.

My point was, that dialogue trees allow you to have a wider range of options for your character to express themselves. Yes, this comes at the expense of them having facial expressions to make them seem more "in the moment" and alive, but it constitutes the trade-off I was talking about.

[Dick Delaware]

TJSolo wrote...
Immersion is not a buzzword. The use of the word matches the definition exactly. Buzzword are either made up or stretch the actual meaning. If you want to start an anti-immersion movement perhaps you should start with the doctors of Bioware as many of their interviews will use some form of the word immersion.

Of course the BioDocs use the word, they want to hype up their game. I wasn't asking about them, I was asking about what the word immersion means in general. So, what does immersion really mean and why would having a voiced protagonist be immersive? 

Planescape: Torment had the majority of dialogue relayed with text, and that never suspended my disbelief. I don't think it's inherently a problem. Voiced dialogue for PC's is nice if it's done well, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to allow you to suspend disbelief more than a game with dialogue trees/text.

[Terror_K]

uberdowzen wrote...

How can you say ME2 doesn't feel polished, especially compared to ME1. Consider the following:

• Wonky animations that don't always flow together
• Tacked on UCWs which do nothing more than bulk out the game
• Appalling optomised graphics (it brings my video card to it knees, and my computer can run Crysis pretty well)
• Some of the worst self shadows since the Quake 3 team arena engine ones
• An impossible to use custom character creator

Because it doesn't. Regarding your points:-

* I don't know what you're talking about with regards to animations in ME1 that are "wonky" and don't always flow together. This is news to me. I do know that ME2 has that awful walk and those awful animations for Femshep, so chock that up to a point against ME2 I would have likely otherwise forgotten to mention.

* It's funny that you mention the Uncarted Worlds, since I feel its actually ME2's equivalent (the N7 missions) that most illustrate the lack of polish. The UNC missions weren't lacking in polish, they were just samey in their design. I don't think this is due to a lack of polish, I think this is the way they were designed and meant to be. Despite this, the UNC planets were all given different textures and skyboxes to differentiate them when a lesser company could have literally given you the same worlds with the same textures and skies every time. On top of that the missions were given an excellent presentation, being well set up, including some dialogue, sometimes getting your companions involved, introducing some interesting NPCs and even a moral choice here and there. Overall the devs clearly did their best to polish these missions and make them come across as more unique than they were. The N7 missions on the other hand completely lacked in polish in any way and felt like poorly thrown together DLC that just happened to be part of the vanilla game. Set-up is reduced to emails or just finding them, there's almost no dialogue as Shepard goes from place to place silently and your companions have nothing more than the odd generic quip. There's no interesting NPCs, no dialogue, only rare moral choices, and any story involved usually unfolds via simply reading some datapads, even the the point of ridiculousness with mercs giving each other orders via them when Shepard is attacking rather than doing so verbally. The N7 missions are more original than the UNC missions in content and appearance, but they lack polish or any depth whatsoever, and they are the most obvious thing to point to as proof that ME2 is unpolished.

* Funny, my computer runs ME1 fine. I was actually surprised when I read people saying ME2 ran better on their machines than ME1 did, because that's not the case for me. ME1 runs more consistently, though has many loading times that hitch it up, but beyond that its smooth. Texture pop isn't really a problem... it takes 2 seconds at the most. ME2 has no texture pop of course, but in either case this is an Unreal Engine 3 feature and not an ME1 exclusive fault. Performance wise ME2 is smooth most of the time, but there are some areas and cutscenes where the game slows and jerks a bit for me. It was actually worse with one of the Nvidia updates in fact, so I rolled back and it was back to normal, but still jerky in places. For ME2 to run smooth all the time I need to reduce my resolution. This was never the case with ME1.

* Does ME2 even have self-shadows? In either case, yes... ME1's were bad, but so were all the UE3 games before Epic did the update to their engine shortly after ME1 came out. So, again... not a fault of the game so much as the engine. On the PC version it can be fixed with some .ini file edits too.

* Yes, the impossible to use custom character creator. Admittedly, this was bad, and I had to do a lot of jotting down of slider numbers and restarting of games repeatedly to get many Shepards to look right. That said, again its funny you bring this up, since this is another case where ME2 fails worse: it has the SAME character creator. Pretty much anyway, with all the same flaws and bad angles that lead to failure Shepards simply because you can't get those angles and you want. Yes, ME1's was bad, no question... but its even worse after making it like that to NOT CHANGE IT for the sequel whatsoever. Especially when I recall it being a much complained about aspect of the first game, might I add. The fact that it wasn't really upgraded at all just proves even more how unpolished the sequel was. Add to that the fact that PC import characters don't get an accurate face code (which STILL hasn't been fixed in a patch yet) and that in ME2 one has to sit through a 15 minute unskippable cutscene prior to every character creator attempt with no save just before hand and it makes things even worse.

And that's all without even going into the lack of keybinds and the lack of dynamic keybinds in the instructions in the PC version, or the feeling that pointless stuff like Normandy customisation got more attention than more core gameplay elements.

Modifié par Terror_K, 10 mai 2010 - 08:20 .

[KitsuneRommel]

bjdbwea wrote...

So you agree that skill based weapon proficiencies would be good to have again in ME 3? Good. As to the characters being bad on the lower levels - well, that's the point, isn't it. Besides, ME 2 also forbids you to use some weapons, based on your class. Based on your logic, Shepard should be able to use them all perfectly.

Not perfectly. I served in fire control in the military but I still had the same basic training as everyone else (and nearly got a perfect score on the shooting range). And no, we didn't train in hand guns. If you are an infiltrator for example it would make sense that you would be pretty damn good with sniper rifles in the beginning.

But I don't mind weapon skills. Just the implementation of them in ME1.

[SkullandBonesmember]

Dick Delaware wrote...

Budget constraints are only part of the issue. My point was that voiced dialogue is a trade-off, not that I didn't look for a connection to the character I role-play as. Of course you want to create a distinct identity for your PC, I'm just saying that there are negatives and positives for both approaches.

A major negative is that you don't have dialogue trees that are as intricate and complex as those in something like Torment or Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. In ME, most of your dialogue typically boils down to Investigate + Paragon Response + Neutral Response + Renegade Response. In Vampire, you would get some unique dialogue options depending on your vampire clan, allowing for more nuanced PC dialogue. Likewise, in Dragon Age, you get unique dialogue depending on your origin, and also there are opportunities to lie, which you can't really do in ME. Well, once with Jack, but that's it.

My point was, that dialogue trees allow you to have a wider range of options for your character to express themselves. Yes, this comes at the expense of them having facial expressions to make them seem more "in the moment" and alive, but it constitutes the trade-off I was talking about.

With a competent voice actor and good dialogue, there is no "trade off".

[Dick Delaware]

Terror_K wrote...
Post

The problem here is that we may have different definitions here, otherwise we're just going in circles. We need to define what words like "polished" and "immersion" mean so that we know the parameters of the discussion.

[uberdowzen]

SkullandBonesmember wrote...

uberdowzen wrote...

Why do you need a voiced protagonist?

Because the technology is there and we're in 2010 not 2000 and even then a good percentage of games had voice acting from the main character. When your protagonist isn't voiced like in a game such as DA, it kills the immersion.

Ok so technology was never the issue. There are actually several reasons they didn't voice the warden in DAO. The first is that in Mass Effect, despite the fact that you can customise him/her, Sheperd is to a certain extent a predesigned character with his/her own back story unlike DAO, where you can basically make up anything you want. Secondly, the amount of dialogue Sheperd has is already limited (you might notice that often when you're presented with a "choice" Sheperd will say exactly the same thing no matter what you choose) and DAO has a lot more played dialogue than ME. Thirdly, to be able to have fully customizable characters who are voiced would require you to have about 20 voice actors, as players would not be content with all their characters sounding the same. And most importantly, you stop noticing after about 10 minutes of playing (like watching a foreign language film you forget about the subtitles after very little time). It's not worth the extra cost and because of the way DAO works, the VA would just be repeating what the player just clicked.

[uberdowzen]

TJSolo wrote...

" Wonky animations that don't always flow together
Tacked on UCWs which do nothing more than bulk out the game
Appalling optomised graphics (it brings my video card to it knees, and my computer can run Crysis pretty well)
Some of the worst self shadows since the Quake 3 team arena engine ones
An impossible to use custom character creator"

I don't run ME2 on PC, can't comment on the optimization.
Animations where more correct in ME1, ME2 has several instances where animations frames are less detail. Like pivot and then turning.
UCWs were a tool for exploration which communicated isolation and scale of the universe. They were not tacked on they were planned from early beta and part of the touted "exploration" Casey Hudson pushed on every dev diary/beta update video.
The shadows were fine and above average at the time of launch. Using hindsight to judge the graphics is cleary baised and unfair.
Yet the character creator has gone unchanged in ME2, except for the exclusion of facial scars.

Of the issues you bulleted 1 isn't even improved in ME2, while another is a concept clearly lost upon you, thirdly it seems you are using hindsight to judge a game instead of the relevant time of release, and lastly the appalling performance is an assumption it is not an issue with your PC. Sure you say you can run crysis but that is one game and is a different benchmark.

Actually, I get the feeling optimization was pretty bad on Xbox too.

The animations flow together a lot more smoothly in ME2 (in ME1 in conversations NPCs often jerk back to their default postion when they start a new line.

The UCWs may not have been tacked on but they were still unpolished. Bleakness is fine, but there aren't even any rocks or anything and when there's a base it just looks like it was plonked there without any kind of thought to making it look good or anything.

The self shadows were bad for the time, hence why I said that they were as bad as the ones in an engine that was abandoned in 2002.

The character creator is unchanged, but for some reason I seem to be able to create characters who don't look deformed now.

Crysis is a much higher benchmark than ME1 (there's no competition graphics wise, Crysis is the best looking game around and ME1 doesn't even come close) and it still does make my fan do what ME1 does. And Bioware admitted that it was terribly optomised, as they didn't actually have an Xbox to try out the code on when they were building it.

[uberdowzen]

Terror_K wrote...

* I don't know what you're talking about with regards to animations in ME1 that are "wonky" and don't always flow together. This is news to me. I do know that ME2 has that awful walk and those awful animations for Femshep, so chock that up to a point against ME2 I would have likely otherwise forgotten to mention.

* It's funny that you mention the Uncarted Worlds, since I feel its actually ME2's equivalent (the N7 missions) that most illustrate the lack of polish. The UNC missions weren't lacking in polish, they were just samey in their design. I don't think this is due to a lack of polish, I think this is the way they were designed and meant to be. Despite this, the UNC planets were all given different textures and skyboxes to differentiate them when a lesser company could have literally given you the same worlds with the same textures and skies every time. On top of that the missions were given an excellent presentation, being well set up, including some dialogue, sometimes getting your companions involved, introducing some interesting NPCs and even a moral choice here and there. Overall the devs clearly did their best to polish these missions and make them come across as more unique than they were. The N7 missions on the other hand completely lacked in polish in any way and felt like poorly thrown together DLC that just happened to be part of the vanilla game. Set-up is reduced to emails or just finding them, there's almost no dialogue as Shepard goes from place to place silently and your companions have nothing more than the odd generic quip. There's no interesting NPCs, no dialogue, only rare moral choices, and any story involved usually unfolds via simply reading some datapads, even the the point of ridiculousness with mercs giving each other orders via them when Shepard is attacking rather than doing so verbally. The N7 missions are more original than the UNC missions in content and appearance, but they lack polish or any depth whatsoever, and they are the most obvious thing to point to as proof that ME2 is unpolished.

* Funny, my computer runs ME1 fine. I was actually surprised when I read people saying ME2 ran better on their machines than ME1 did, because that's not the case for me. ME1 runs more consistently, though has many loading times that hitch it up, but beyond that its smooth. Texture pop isn't really a problem... it takes 2 seconds at the most. ME2 has no texture pop of course, but in either case this is an Unreal Engine 3 feature and not an ME1 exclusive fault. Performance wise ME2 is smooth most of the time, but there are some areas and cutscenes where the game slows and jerks a bit for me. It was actually worse with one of the Nvidia updates in fact, so I rolled back and it was back to normal, but still jerky in places. For ME2 to run smooth all the time I need to reduce my resolution. This was never the case with ME1.

* Does ME2 even have self-shadows? In either case, yes... ME1's were bad, but so were all the UE3 games before Epic did the update to their engine shortly after ME1 came out. So, again... not a fault of the game so much as the engine. On the PC version it can be fixed with some .ini file edits too.

* Yes, the impossible to use custom character creator. Admittedly, this was bad, and I had to do a lot of jotting down of slider numbers and restarting of games repeatedly to get many Shepards to look right. That said, again its funny you bring this up, since this is another case where ME2 fails worse: it has the SAME character creator. Pretty much anyway, with all the same flaws and bad angles that lead to failure Shepards simply because you can't get those angles and you want. Yes, ME1's was bad, no question... but its even worse after making it like that to NOT CHANGE IT for the sequel whatsoever. Especially when I recall it being a much complained about aspect of the first game, might I add. The fact that it wasn't really upgraded at all just proves even more how unpolished the sequel was. Add to that the fact that PC import characters don't get an accurate face code (which STILL hasn't been fixed in a patch yet) and that in ME2 one has to sit through a 15 minute unskippable cutscene prior to every character creator attempt with no save just before hand and it makes things even worse.

And that's all without even going into the lack of keybinds and the lack of dynamic keybinds in the instructions in the PC version, or the feeling that pointless stuff like Normandy customisation got more attention than more core gameplay elements.

* There's this thing with the animations that I'd never noticed before my last playthrough of ME1. In most of the conversations (not in cinematics) often the character will have finished their current line and then snap back to their default position and start their next animation. It makes the gaps between lines of dialogue much more noticeable. I haven't seen this happen at all in ME2. And while we're at it, try and deny that almost every conversation in ME2 is very well shot.

* You say that the UCWs are samey in their design. This'd be fine if they comprised maybe 2 hours of the game, but they make up for I'd be tempted to say over half. And apparently they're meant to give you a feeling of exploring. The only reason games like Rogue and Diablo have fun exploration are 1) the dungeons are randomized and 2) there's fog. UCWs aren't randomized (they just look it) and when you land you can just bring up the map and see the whole thing. Then you just have to sweep backward and forward across the terrain trying to find minerals. It's like planet scanning, only slower and with your cursor (or in this case the Mako) getting stuck on terrain every now and again. The N7 missions may have lacked some of the moral choices (which I'd like to add less then half of the UCWs had) but they added some interesting ideas. Like the one where there's all the fog and you have to follow the beacons. And they didn't take about 25 hours to do them all.

*Oh my computer doesn't slow down when it runs ME1 (consistent and smooth framerate) it's just that my fan starts making a racket so loud that I often can't hear the game. Even my noise cancellng earbuds can't keep it out. ME2 runs at the same framerate, but my fan doesn't go any louder than it does for most games.

* Yes it does. That's the great thing about them, like real self shadows you don't actually notice them. Unlike ME1 where they are incredibly noticable.

* They didn't change the character creator, but my character which I just brought from ME1 (where she barely looked human) now looks so much better.

*It's irritating that you can't bind the function keys to select weapons like you could in ME1 but you get used to it pretty quick. I'm not totally sure what you mean by dynamic key binds though. The "pointless" stuff like Normandy customisation is a design choice, not a lack of polish.

[bjdbwea]

uberdowzen wrote...

The UCWs may not have been tacked on but they were still unpolished.

Depends on how you would definie "polished" in such a context. At least the side missions on the UNCs in ME 1 were much better than the side missions in ME 2. You had a spoken briefing and debriefing, you could often interact with NPCs during the mission. Gone in ME 2. Replaced with handcrafted levels (good, but unfortunately much smaller), with no content (very bad). Press a button three times to feed a new battery to a Mech? Walk over a shipwreck without even the possibility of falling down, and press one button when you're there? Really? Most idiotic and useless missions I've ever seen in a game. And then there are some side mission where you shoot stuff. Just like in ME 2. Only without traveling there in the Mako, without dialogue and without interaction.

Modifié par bjdbwea, 10 mai 2010 - 09:24 .

[uberdowzen]

bjdbwea wrote...

uberdowzen wrote...

The UCWs may not have been tacked on but they were still unpolished.

Depends on how you would definie "polished" in such a context. At least the side missions on the UNCs in ME 1 were much better than the side missions in ME 2. You had a spoken briefing and debriefing, you could often interact with NPCs during the mission. Gone in ME 2. Replaced with handcrafted levels (good, but unfortunately much smaller), with no content (very bad). Press a button three times to feed a new battery to a Mech? Walk over a shipwreck without even the possibility of falling down, and press one button when you're there? Really? Most idiotic and useless missions I've ever seen in a game. And then there are some side mission where you shoot stuff. Just like in ME 2. Only without traveling there in the Mako, without dialogue and without interaction.

Yeah, I will give you that some of the N7 missions were a bit pointless. But you're complaining abour driving over boring terrain with hardly anything to do before you do exactly the same thing you'd do in a ME2 N7 mission being removed? And also you're complaining about having smaller but more handcrafted missions? Sounds like you want quantity of quality. And what do you mean by no content?

[Fraevar]

SkullandBonesmember wrote...



Because the technology is there and we're in 2010 not 2000 and even then a good percentage of games had voice acting from the main character. When your protagonist isn't voiced like in a game such as DA, it kills the immersion.

I have to disagree with this point - the silent protagonist can help immersion every bit as a voiced one can. It's a question of perspective and personal preference. For me, the downside to ME/ME2's voiced protagonist is that I can't stand to play the game as a male character, because I can't stand to listen to the voice. To me he sounds like a generic spacehero composite, and it just kills any desire I have to actually play the game. In short, having the voiced protagonist makes me not care about him.



As for femShep - it's different - with fem!Shep I can buy more into the voice, simply because I treat her like I would any other NPC. She's not me - she's a character that I get to nudge, morally, but she's not me - she's not my avatar, so to speak. The implication exists that dude!Shep is supposed to have that function since I'm male, is what kills it - because he's so unrelateable to me.

[bjdbwea]

At least when driving the Mako, you could always do some stunts and try to race through the "boring" terrain as fast as possible. And don't forget there were enemies and even a few surprises on some worlds. So yeah - even after many playthroughs, the Mako still doesn't really bother me. Of course it COULD be done better, and it SHOULD have for ME 2. But the "solution" isn't to remove it completely. That's exactly the kind of cutting corners that obviously happened so often during development.

Modifié par bjdbwea, 10 mai 2010 - 09:42 .

[SithLordExarKun]

Terror_K wrote...



I don't get why people keep saying this. ME2 comes across as BioWare's most slapdash and rough-around-the-edges game they've ever made, IMO.

You see the little acronyms in your sentence that says "IMO"? That is bascially your personal opinion of ME2 being horribly polished. The same can be said for the other people, its their opinion that ME2's more polished.

No offence but with people like you around its difficult stating our opinions without getting relentlessly attacked in the process.

SkullandBonesmember wrote...

.

Of course you did.
Because anybody that prefers ME1's combat over its sequel will
definitely lose their credibility by default, IF they had any to begin
with.

Preferring ME1's combat is absolutely fine but stating
that ME1's combat mechanics is superior as a universal fact is
different.

bjdbwea wrote...





Depends on how you would
definie "polished" in such a context. At least the side missions on the
UNCs in ME 1 were much better than the side missions in ME 2. You
had a spoken briefing and debriefing, you could often interact with
NPCs during the mission. Gone in ME 2. Replaced with handcrafted levels
(good, but unfortunately much smaller), with no content (very bad).
Press a button three times to feed a new battery to a Mech? Walk over a
shipwreck without even the possibility of falling down, and press one
button when you're there? Really? Most idiotic and useless missions I've
ever seen in a game. And then there are some side mission where you
shoot stuff. Just like in ME 2. Only without traveling there in the
Mako, without dialogue and without interaction.

Yes, i
so agree with you, storming into the same bunker killing the same
enemies in the same position is 100000000000 times better than the N7
missions.

Whats funny is this "dialogue" in the UNC missions
always lead you into the very same bunker(or after storming the said
bunker killing everything inside).

You're right, its so damn
much better. Only edge i'd give to the UNC missions is how its
integrated, other than that its a huge waste of time and repetitively
boring.

Modifié par SithLordExarKun, 10 mai 2010 - 09:59 .

[Vicious]

No offence but with people like you around its difficult stating our opinions without getting relentlessly attacked in the process.

Indeed, and posters like that justifying their poor attitudes is a great example of the kind of incomprehensible 'logic' common on these forums.



ME2 was superior to ME1 in every way except for the inventory aspect and overall story. Story-wise, it was simply different.



And the inventory management was extranaeous. OOH GOSH! I SURE MISS MY MANY PALETTE-SWAPPED ARMORS THAT ALL LOOKED THE SAME! Right.



Crappy inventory management does not make an RPG. But it seems to many it does. Pretty odd.



And yes, I think ME2 rocked, and I still replay it. Of course, I played the living hell out of ME1 too, and damn if ME2 isn't a fine successor.





But Bioware fans are so incredibly spoiled everything is a step backwards for them, nevermind the fact that there is really no alternative when it comes to real, thought-provoking RPG fun. And yes, I discout JRPGs because they have been utterly juvenile for the last several years.

[Terror_K]

uberdowzen wrote...

* There's this thing with the animations that I'd never noticed before my last playthrough of ME1. In most of the conversations (not in cinematics) often the character will have finished their current line and then snap back to their default position and start their next animation. It makes the gaps between lines of dialogue much more noticeable. I haven't seen this happen at all in ME2. And while we're at it, try and deny that almost every conversation in ME2 is very well shot.

I'm not sure that ME2 doesn't do this too, I just think it does a better job of making it not as noticeable by changing camera angles at the appropriate times. It does this because what is said next depends on player choice and so there's generally a default, neutral expression at the start and end of each line to make it so their faces flow through without suddenly being in the wrong places. I don't think this is really a lack of polish so much as just finding a better way of doing it.

* You say that the UCWs are samey in their design. This'd be fine if they comprised maybe 2 hours of the game, but they make up for I'd be tempted to say over half. And apparently they're meant to give you a feeling of exploring. The only reason games like Rogue and Diablo have fun exploration are 1) the dungeons are randomized and 2) there's fog. UCWs aren't randomized (they just look it) and when you land you can just bring up the map and see the whole thing. Then you just have to sweep backward and forward across the terrain trying to find minerals. It's like planet scanning, only slower and with your cursor (or in this case the Mako) getting stuck on terrain every now and again. The N7 missions may have lacked some of the moral choices (which I'd like to add less then half of the UCWs had) but they added some interesting ideas. Like the one where there's all the fog and you have to follow the beacons. And they didn't take about 25 hours to do them all.

You seem to be talking about the worlds themselves in a physical sense. I was talking more about the missions associated with them actually. Simple put: the N7 Missions feel far less polished than the UNC Missions do.

*Oh my computer doesn't slow down when it runs ME1 (consistent and smooth framerate) it's just that my fan starts making a racket so loud that I often can't hear the game. Even my noise cancellng earbuds can't keep it out. ME2 runs at the same framerate, but my fan doesn't go any louder than it does for most games.

* Yes it does. That's the great thing about them, like real self shadows you don't actually notice them. Unlike ME1 where they are incredibly noticable.

* They didn't change the character creator, but my character which I just brought from ME1 (where she barely looked human) now looks so much better.

I fail to see what these factors have to do with polish. Especially when I've explained that they all pretty much relate to faults of the game engine at the time and are not related to how polished something was or wasn't. The last factor alone is just an example of them improving the graphics, not a lack of polish in the first game (they redid pretty much all the character models).

*It's irritating that you can't bind the function keys to select weapons like you could in ME1 but you get used to it pretty quick. I'm not totally sure what you mean by dynamic key binds though. The "pointless" stuff like Normandy customisation is a design choice, not a lack of polish.

What I meant is that changing your keys from something else other than default doesn't reflect in the game's instructions, which is awful and amateur programming. Admittedly that's more of a porting issue though, since its a factor the 360 version doesn't have.

My beef with the pointless stuff is that it is overly polished when other factors that should have had more of a focus and could have done with some more work are not. As I've said before, ME2 has a very schizophrenic nature to it, where it seems like its never quite sure what it wants to be and where the focus should lie. Some factors are neglected that shouldn't be, while others that didn't really need much attention seem to get more care than a vintage Jaguar in an obsessive compulsive turtle waxer's garage. Which is why overall I feel the game itself isn't as focused, finished or above all polished as it should be. Its just not as well rounded and balanced as ME1 was, nor any of BioWare's other games for that matter, and as such I fail to see why people say that it's a more polished product. Certain factors are certainly, but overall... no.

[KitsuneRommel]

SkullandBonesmember wrote...

With a competent voice actor and good dialogue, there is no "trade off".

Of course there is. You could have 100's of hours of conversation with text while that's not feasible with voice actors.

I was actually surprised when I read people saying ME2 ran better on
their machines than ME1 did, because that's not the case for me.

I'm one of those people. ME1 runs pretty horribly on my computer.

[Terror_K]

SithLordExarKun wrote...

Terror_K wrote...

I don't get why people keep saying this. ME2 comes across as BioWare's most slapdash and rough-around-the-edges game they've ever made, IMO.

You see the little acronyms in your sentence that says "IMO"? That is bascially your personal opinion of ME2 being horribly polished. The same can be said for the other people, its their opinion that ME2's more polished.

No offence but with people like you around its difficult stating our opinions without getting relentlessly attacked in the process.

Well, I did purposefully write "IMO" in there (it wasn't originally when I first wrote the sentence... just FYI) to purposefully indicate that it was my opinion and not a fact, because I fully realise this.

And no offense back, but don't you find this statement a little ironic and hypocritical? I mean... it works both ways, you realise that right? And the fact is, most of the people who are expressing their disapproval are doing so because they're hoping that the comments will lead to a better ME3 for it. What are those that just praise ME2 at almost every turn actually doing to benefit the third part? Are you trying to keep ME3 as much the same as ME2 as possible by countering everything the naysayers say and stop us from perhaps... y'know... offering some constructive criticism and suggesting where things went wrong and offering solutions or preferences? Its criticism that invites change, not blind praise. Shame it seemed that initial criticism led to ME2 being dumbed down, but it seems to me that BioWare listened too much to the wrong people and missed the point in a few areas.

[SkullandBonesmember]

uberdowzen wrote...

Ok so technology was never the issue. There are actually several reasons they didn't voice the warden in DAO. The first is that in Mass Effect, despite the fact that you can customise him/her, Sheperd is to a certain extent a predesigned character with his/her own back story unlike DAO, where you can basically make up anything you want. Secondly, the amount of dialogue Sheperd has is already limited (you might notice that often when you're presented with a "choice" Sheperd will say exactly the same thing no matter what you choose) and DAO has a lot more played dialogue than ME. Thirdly, to be able to have fully customizable characters who are voiced would require you to have about 20 voice actors, as players would not be content with all their characters sounding the same. And most importantly, you stop noticing after about 10 minutes of playing (like watching a foreign language film you forget about the subtitles after very little time). It's not worth the extra cost and because of the way DAO works, the VA would just be repeating what the player just clicked.

As I understand it, the player can choose to play an elf, human, or mage. I think 2 VAs would be able to handle all 3 roles. And it's way better to actually have a voiced protagonist as opposed to not having one, regardless if the VA does or does not "repeat what the player just clicked".