jaguars4ever

Not to mention, very little emotional value. Contrast that with Morrigan. I hated her with a vengeance. Not because she sucked, but because he was a heartless bitch that was true to form. Which actually ends up making her a good character. The same applies to Mordin even though a loved the Salarian to bits. Give me love, give me hate, just don't give me indifference.

You're kidding me right? ME2 was all about urgency. And not only especially near the end. From building a team to stop the mass abductions, to chasing the of Horizon, to snatch and grabbing the IFF. That's pretty damn urgent. And as for the suicide mission, well, that's one of the most awesome and exigent rpgs quests of all time. The only time the sense of urgency is ruined is when you can put off retrieving the IFF for as long as you want, in order to finish up the loyalty missions and basically roam around the galaxy at your leisure. ME was no different, with being able to put off going to Ilos as long as you wanted as well. What's funny about that is Saren still only ended up there just ahead of you. Yes, but urgency should not be confused with linearity. Being able to "put off going to X as long as you wanted" until mission/quest Y is a crucial component in open-ended rpgs. Otherwise you're having your cake and eating it too. So many times players bitch about the game being more straightforward than Mr. Rogers wardrobe, and they yearn for open-ended freedom as George Costanza yearns for Marisa Tomei. Yet, when you give them that freedom they bitch about the lack of urgency. The compromise is or course to go the FO1 route and impose a penalty to the dilly-dallying of your exploration. Take too long to send water back to the vault? Your vault thirsts to death. Take too long to deal with the mutant threat? Villages get razed. ME2 incorporated the failure system to an extent, and for that they should get credit. If you took too long to rescue the crew, they got liquefied. Seems like a fair consequence to a fair choice to me. I agree with this. If Bio is gonna give you the chance to save your squad during the suicide mission, they have to give you the chance to meet all the requirements they put in place -- loyalty missions, upgrades, etc. As you pointed out in your previous post, the sense of urgency is there through building the team, going to Horizon, during the suicide mission, and even after you retrieve the IFF. It just seemed a bit jarring that you could go back and forth across the galaxy as often as you liked. Maybe they could have placed another "you must go here now" quest or two in the middle of that. That's definitely right on the money my sleepless friend. But why stop there? Bio should have (read: should in ME3) have used the Gromnir approach of paying-the-price/earning-the-reward-of-sacrifice during the suicide mission. That is, you shouldn't have been able to procure a perfect result/outcome with minimal causalities. In other words, say you want to snatch some valuable tech that would benefit the entire galaxy in the fight against the reapers. This should have been possible...but only if you're willing to sacrifice Tali/Legion to go fetch it. Or say you can safely get the crew back to the ship...only if someone is willing to bite the dust for the team. Or better yet (as Grom said) how about forcing a Kaiden/Ashely-esque choice between saving your own ass vs saving yours henchies. I think if that was the case, we'd be seeing a hell of a lot more dead Sheps floating around in space. As it stands, there really isn't any incentive to have your henchies die, let alone yourself. It's almost Nintendo-hard to kill off your own Shep during the suicide mission. You really have to work for it. So naturally, no one does, especially when there's no incentive to do so.

You're kidding me right? ME2 was all about urgency. And not only especially near the end. From building a team to stop the mass abductions, to chasing the of Horizon, to snatch and grabbing the IFF. That's pretty damn urgent. And as for the suicide mission, well, that's one of the most awesome and exigent rpgs quests of all time. The only time the sense of urgency is ruined is when you can put off retrieving the IFF for as long as you want, in order to finish up the loyalty missions and basically roam around the galaxy at your leisure. ME was no different, with being able to put off going to Ilos as long as you wanted as well. What's funny about that is Saren still only ended up there just ahead of you. Yes, but urgency should not be confused with linearity. Being able to "put off going to X as long as you wanted" until mission/quest Y is a crucial component in open-ended rpgs. Otherwise you're having your cake and eating it too. So many times players bitch about the game being more straightforward than Mr. Rogers wardrobe, and they yearn for open-ended freedom as George Costanza yearns for Marisa Tomei. Yet, when you give them that freedom they bitch about the lack of urgency. The compromise is, of course, to go the FO1 route and impose a penalty to the dilly-dallying of your exploration. Take too long to send water back to the vault? Your vault thirsts to death. Take too long to deal with the mutant threat? Villages get razed. ME2 incorporated the failure system to an extent, and for that they should get credit. If you took too long to rescue the crew, they got liquefied. Seems like a fair consequence to a fair choice to me.

Obviously, he means adept but given the homogenity of ME2 classes, it would be better to say fighter/mage. While this is true, even ME2's dumbed down combat is way better than that in most of the other crappy rpgs these day. Bio's worst > the other guys best. Sad but true. Not quite. ME1 had better nightclubs with more quests, minigames, plus the mako, & Faunts M4 Part II. But apart from that everything else about ME2 > ME1. This is what I don't get. Mako wasn't crap - it was merely lacking. Why Bio didn't simply improve it beggers belief. Here's to hoping the Hammerhead will be as fun. You're kidding me right? ME2 was all about urgency. And not only especially near the end. From building a team to stop the mass abductions, to chasing the of Horizon, to snatch and grabbing the IFF. That's pretty damn urgent. And as for the suicide mission, well, that's one of the most awesome and exigent rpgs quests of all time. While ME2 was definitely fun, I would hardly call it filler. With the exception of the dumbed down combat (and some minor minutia mentioned above) it's superior to ME1 (a fantastic game) and therefore worthy of standing on its own merit.

Hopefully in ME3 we'll be able to see this 240 year old freakin' Dyson Sphere WIP! Haven't seen one of those babies since Freelancer! Oh Von Clausson - wherefore art thou?

No. Put it in your Xbox 360 and see if it blows up. I second this. You'll kill one console, and another console's title in one fell swoop.

Do yourself a favor and play with a lady. They don't look fugly, don't run like somebody pushed a stick up their arse & their giggle after wasting enemies is even sexier than Leliana's. SOLD.

PS3?! Traitor! You've turned to the Console Side!

Gah, does anyone know how to increase the text size on this game? Damn you eyestrain! And no, I'm not switching to a non-wide screen resolution. I have my standards.

*tsk tsk* Kids these days. They know nothing of romance and affection.

Your brother-in-law is clearly Batman.

That won't end well...

Only when my boss isn't looking over my shoulder. I didn't know you were married. These two, on the other hand, should be: Keelah!

"n" should have been a "c". Opportunity fail.

You pretty much described all my emails on ME2.

I delete data like you on the way to real errors.

NumberMan hit the nail on the head (as usual). If there was ever a moment begging for choice & consequence in RPG history, is was it. What a miss. Worse than Gazza's airshot against Germany in Euro '96. In fact, this was a C&C moment that not only was needed, but was required for the reasons Numbers mentioned. At least it'll go down as one of the greatest FU moments in gaming history. To bad the real victims weren't those saps on the Wall, but guys like RPGmasterBoo and 213374U (i.e. guys actually smart enough to know that they're being ripped.)

I'll give that a try, thanks Don't do it man. Once you hack, you can't go back.

Whether they're "permitted" to bring about a paradigm shift in Fugue Plane (which incidentally had the best music in the game along with the Astral Plane. Well done Obsidian!) is Obsidian's problem. The point is that denying the player a chance to assault the wall is anti-climatic after all that build up. If they cannot properly execute a climatic finish due to the constraints you mentioned, then either their plot is whack, or the setting is as appropriate as Lady Gaga's style of clothing. Besides, there's a distinction between process and result. What you describe as failure is the result. Assuming, arguendo, that symbolism and fatalism that you describe is congruent with the result of failure, it doesn't explain the denial of process - i.e. the attempt - to bring about that result. Some things are worth fighting for, dying for, even if for all intents and purposes your efforts are doomed to failure. The devs didn't even give us the choice to throw caution to the wind and go for it. I would have gladly settled for a character death ending if need be. Instead, we had to settle for Kelemor's waiving palm of deus ex machina as everything skuttled back to the status quo ante. Somehow, the devs confused Epic Levels with Epic Fail.

Even though I rate MotB and reckon its the closest thing since PS:T, not being able to destroy (or even attempt to destroy) the Wall of the Faithless was the most disappointing thing about MotB. All the hype, army building, testosterone pumping was geared towards that final climatic moment...only for the rug to be swept from under your feet with a giant FU from Daddy Mac Kelemvor. Yeah, I'm happy for you that you're God of this realm, and Imma let you finish, but Shard-Dude is packing some of the ph4test shizzle of ALL TIME! Fo' sho, homies. Shard-Dude was a veritable god-slayer (goodnight Myrkul) bordering on god-like powers himself. Combine that with some of the nastiest generals in the business (Ammon Jerro, Uber Dragon, Epic Lich, Fallen Angel) and we pretty much had the badassitude department covered. Hell (pun not intended), even if the odds were suicidal we should have at had the chance to go for it ala ME2. That's the way to do a suicide mission right.

Good luck grinding through the Grolm tunnels.

Irenicus actually translates to awesome. So Chateau Irenicus is literally Chateau Awesome. Would wouldn't want to revisit a place called awesome? Besides, if ME2 intro cut-scenes really bother you, just alt-tab out. They'll play in the background. Kinda pointless though since you're willfully depriving yourself of awesomeness.