Calax

From what the devs have said, when you load up ME2 your ME1 save will be loaded into the game, so those decisions that seemed to have no value other than WOOT PARAGON/RENEGADE POINTS! will change how the universe is structured. A lofty goal, but I'm worried it'll end up like fable 2's "Lawl you can change the world!" feature that only worked once in the main quest line.

The dog, fits into the story a bit (not much), I've never seen it do much in combat, and it's hyper about finding treasure. you could be having your arms cut off and fighting bandits with a dagger in your teeth and that thing would still be barking about the treasure chest that's a foot underground.

Yeah, I think he didn't want to get into it unfortunately. Clearly, he hates you and will destroy your favourite chocolate brands. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Yeah, I think he didn't want to get into it unfortunately. Clearly, he hates you and will destroy your favourite chocolate brands. Honestly, I think KOTOR's stupid combat was a direct consequence of trying to bring NWN combat into a behind-the-shoulder 3D perspective. They wanted realtime/pause, they wanted lots of abilities, theyw anted direct control of party, but they wanted it all done in a camera which makes it very difficult to select things and effect large-scale abilities. As a result combat is a clusterfest, your abilities are mostly confined to smaller areas of effect, the difficulty is ramped down to comical, and so forth. Also, of course, the fact that you had blasters for half the game, and gun combat just didn't work with that system and that camera. At least ME, as far as I know, actually catered to guns. ME was nothing but guns. Sure you could bash but you might as well blow that guys brains out because bash was pathetic.

Actually I quite like Red Alert 3. Although I do wish that it had more of a connection to the other Red Alerts the sheer campyness of it was awesome.

nVidia's Website? At the bottom, under "Other Drivers", the first link is to beta and archived drivers. Alternatively you could try looking here. Thank you Der, now I hope I won't have to deal with random moments in Left 4 dead where the comp freezes for anywhere between 1-30 seconds with repeating sound and the whole deal.

your first sentence confused the heck out of me. bastila is "most" jedi? wtf does that mean?

Not much, appearently at GDC the Bioware devs will be giving a 60 minute talk about level design. Also we should save our Saves from the game because we will be able to upload the Shepard we used (and their choices) to ME2 and continue play. Characters will also be returning provided you didn't kill them. How much of that is true, how much of that will make it to the finished product is yet to be seen.

How powerful you are for the main planets depends on how many UCW you've done. I will say though that a 30 + level soldier can easily stand in the middle of a firefight for long periods of time soaking damage. Add to that the Stormtrooper (? not entirely sure what exactly it was called any more) prestige class that was designed to be a tank.

Question, Where would I find old drivers for my 8600 gts? the current ones (181.72?) are terrible and often give me glitches in WoW and Left 4 dead.

you didn't really encounter politics in KotOR. You got drama, but not really politics. Politics are rarely touched on in video games. Culture and myths and relationships with humans were all touched on in ME too. Differently but touched on. As to the filler, yes you play though them usually, as most RPG's require you to do random stuff before you can continue the main questline. I thought it nice that in Mass Effect you could just scream through the Main quest and figure out what was going on without having to find little suzies doll.

Explain to me how Wookies past is explained to you in gameplay and not the Rachni. IIRC the Wookies told you about their problems, and while you were doing the Star Forge quest you just happened to kick Czerka out and expose a traitor in the wookies midst. Most of the exposing is done by finding a single datapad and then a small pile of dialogue. I didn't say anything about Wookie past, I said current situation on Kashyyk. And what do you mean it's just one data pad, the whole storyline is nothing but Wookies, it's a wookarama. Except the thing is that the whole drama with the family and all that jazz could have easily been done with any other species. Hell it could have been done with humans on Taris. As to the "current situation on Kashyyyk" all that bioware had to do to create that was look at what the Empire was doing during it's height and translate that into the KotOR era. Also the whole family business thing on Kashyyyk is exactly what you disliked, it was filler. Each planet had a filler on it to make it so the game had a much larger scope than it really did. Mass Effect they went a different direction and made it so you didn't have to play the filler if you didn't want to, whereas in KotOR, even though it had no impact on the galaxy at large, you had to deal with a family drama, stop sand people from raiding, become a lawyer (which IMHO was a stupid plot. How the hell is a jedi supposed to be able to be a lawyer? their the sheriff not the DA), Pick which side was right in a generational feud on the unnamed planet, Korribon is the only planet out of the star forge worlds that had consequences beyond the planet. Seriously all I remember from Kashyyyk was a quiz to figure out if you were really Revan, and finding a datapad to show off to the other wookies that they were betrayed. Oh, and finding jolee. No, all I knew about Star Wars was Darth Vader was evil and the Jedi return, whoever they are. Also I hate SW because it's for kids. All I learned about SW was from KOTOR. Wow, if everything you learned about star wars is from KotOR, you have a really skewed version of the universe. That's probably why you hold KotOR up as a better game. Everything that was done in KotOR was ripped from various other places within the universe. Taris=Courscant, all bioware did was take tropes from older days and throw that star wars sheen on them. All these mind melds and alien mind impressions get me confused. I know you get a little bit of info accidentally at the end of each planet, but it's basically a check mark you get at the end to progress the plot, you're not even looking for anything specific, it's kind of just coincidental, another thing I hated. Mass Effect is more of a detective game than KotOR was. You weren't given a task and told "Now get to it!". Instead you had to go though figure out where Saren had been interested in, and then follow his trail to learn what the heck was going on. Every "mind meld" that you had happen to you had immediatly after it a summary of what you were supposed to know. You rail that ME was all about combat and there was no gameplay mechanics to tell a story when you've obviously not been paying attention to what you're being told. Mass Effect relies upon the player being observant, and also making logical jumps, where KotOR almost force fed you the entire story line so that nobody could get lost. Heck Mass Effect has I believe in the codex or quest log, a "what's happened" tab so that if you take a LONG break you can catch up on where exactly Shepard is.

I disagree with your later statement. This had something to do with videogames obviously. I mean the kid was probably an addict who was used to getting his way, when he didn't get his way he became unhinged and grabbed for a gun. The kid probably had some emotional damage or disorder that led him to thinking murder was a solution, I know with my bipolar I've come up with some pretty scary stuff when I'm frustrated and on the down swing of the bipolar. Usually though I have enough self control to realize I'm being an idiot. The kid needs counseling and probably be sent cold turkey around video games.

"Hero, your health is getting low, use a potion!" X100

Explain to me how Wookies past is explained to you in gameplay and not the Rachni. IIRC the Wookies told you about their problems, and while you were doing the Star Forge quest you just happened to kick Czerka out and expose a traitor in the wookies midst. Most of the exposing is done by finding a single datapad and then a small pile of dialogue. Also KotOR relied upon you having previous knowledge about Wookies, Life Debts, and most of the background on any of the species that have appeared in the books and movies. Mass Effect didn't have the luxury of having an established universe to play around in, which is why they tossed in the Codex. I mean if I had played KotOR as a person who had never EVER touched Star Wars (which is almost impossible in this day and age) I'd be confused as all hell because Bioware relied upon the fact that at least everyone who plays the game, has seen the movies. Also it's statements like the one above that make me question if you played the game before you condemn it. I mean the whole Rachni/conduit/ilos thing was pretty important, same thing with the Thorian on Feros. If you missed these plot points it's no wonder you seem to hate the game, you skipped most of the important dialogue and explanations. I mean Lord of the Rings would be a terrible book if you skipped everything except "Frodo gets ring, frodo takes ring to mordor, frodo looses finger." It's like you have tunnel vision when playing the game, you ignore anything not perfectly aligned with the main quest.

except we did. that's what they were referring to with the white phosphorus.

Carth wasn't an important part of the story, yes he had more plot points surrounding him than all your other characters combined (excepting Bastila), but he still wasn't crucial to the plot. If he had been he the developers would have forced him onto your team or off your team for reasons other than 'nooo I've been betrayed again! :whine:' Bastila was the only character other than Yourself in K1 that was crucial to the plot.

Theoretically you could choose to hit virmire third. So if you made the choice between your two characters you'd have to live with it for quite a while, whereas in KotOR, you did it at the very end and only if you felt like it. I think the forcing of the choice is what attracts most people to it. Meaning you have to Weigh the concequences of your action vs. the benfit of said action. In KotOR, your main character could be so powerful that he would just do things by himself, ME you needed others to do stuff like hack droids or toss enemies into the air like pinatas. As to Wrex I guess the reason why you Liked KotOR is because most of it was force fed to you. In ME you actually had to dive in and practically submerge yourself in the story to figure things out. KotOR has the depth of a puddle after a rainstorm, ME is like the Marianas Trench.

Those are more objective measures, but still those aren't the only things that make a game bad. Yes, the story is awful and non-sensical. And many other issues. I already posted the description of the design process to try to show lack of quality. Obviously they're just throwing in filler instead of doing a real design. But really the problem to me is just the lack of gameplay, there's literally nothing interesting to do in that game except shoot, shoot and shoot. Did you even play ME? You need to learn to actually play a game before you try to tear it down. From only what Calax has mentioned in this thread, ME seems at least as thought out as KOTOR. Or is that not the case in-game? IMO, absolutely not. I've never seen anything so half-baked and amateurish. Again, you obviously haven't even touched the Codex. KotOR was easy to put together because you didn't have to do much thinking about how things worked. It's F'n star wars, I haven't seen a technological breakthough in Star Wars since it was created. Hell, half the tales in Star Wars have so many personality inconsistencies that it's not even funny. The writers of Mass Effect actually went through and put together a pretty good version of the future. They thought almost everything through to a degree I have yet to see in another area that isn't 30 years old. So explain why you think things are half baked and amaturish. Seriously, I have yet to see you actually try to give evidence of Mass Effects "crappyness" beyond statements without substance. Go ahead, throw out some evidence that's actually worth reading rather than "I like". Give examples, try to put them up against their Kotor versions. Also give more evidence than a blanket statement.

The thing about the Juhani choice is that if you killed her you wouldn't even know what you were missing. Both Kaiden and Ash were Romance options. Also Both Kaiden and Ash were useful. In K1 I usually ran around with Jolee and Bastila or when bastila was unavailable I'd cram the wookie in there. So yes you could kill Juhani but it was a largely bleached choice because she didn't have a personality that you knew of yet. The thing about Wrex is that while he whines about the Genophage from the beginning, by the end of the tale he has to get over that. Carth didn't have to get over squat.

I'm sorry but Canderous is nothing more than a token grizzled war vet. He's the anti carth in a way. Wrex starts out as a cold as ice bounty hunter, and eventually he becomes a sympathetic character because he sees the cure to his species genetic impotancy slip through his fingers. NOTHING in KotOR comes close to that. The people liked that choice so much because it actually had an effect. Most choices you make only effect your morality level. This one forced you to choose which character you used/liked more (I tend like ashley more than Kaiden). Seriously, find a choice that has that much impact on gameplay in KotOR.

Well that works for historical events, but what about the biological component? Why would they tell you that asarii reproduce by selecting the genetic traits from the "father" that they want to pass on?

That's all it had though. You can't be serious. Kill someone for no reason or don't kill them is a big advancement in morality? Getting a pass was so complicated? (and already done in KOTOR) And at least Sith you could talk to, the Geth are just glorified toasters with 0 personality. You know why? ME quests are one dialog, at most two. If you're frustrated doing real quests, no wonder you like ME better, plus there were no quests in KOTOR like you describe. I don't know if my memory is rusty but I remember on Kashyyyk having to go up and down and up and down and then to Mannan then back then up and down. I don't like having to visit the same place a dozen times because quests that require you to return to the Quest Giver to receive the next part. As to Feros, It wasn't kill somebody for no reason, it was more about weather or not they were redeemable. I mean the people are shooting at you and you have to decide to take the easy way and just mop up, or try to nade as many as you can. I also don't remember in Kotor being able to have both parties that will give you a pass killed by each other. And what quest in Kotor had dialoge more than "Oh my baby is kidnapped save them" 1 fight and some trekking later "Yay you saved my baby, I will give you all my possessions!" to which you either take the stuff and leave for a Lightside bonus or you say keep the stuff for a higher bonus. Oh wait there was also the quest where you are sent to kill/deal with a bandit or other raiders (tuskens) and you get allowed to enter an encampment and talk the guy into stopping his banditry for lightside points. Every quest in Kotor had a copy in ME, the biggest difference is that in ME you didn't have to wander all over the place to finish all your quests, you could get em in one quick movement through the area. As to sith you could talk to, sure you could talk to them. But they were always the exact same guy doing the exact same thing. At least with the geth they dropped the pretense of individuals. Hell, KotOR didn't even do things first, I'd give that to Baldurs Gate. As to Carth, yes he was a flawed character. But the problem is that he kept harping on his flaws, a good character who was developed better would have by the end of the adventure, gotten over the fact that he was betrayed and tried to do somthing. Carth just kinda sat in the exact same spot as when you first met him in terms of personality. Heck all your companions in KotOR 1 showed little development over the course of the game. They all stayed as their archtype and never grew beyond the basic archtype. At least Wrex was more than just a living version of HK, He got angry and he actually showed some development when you have to blow up the genophage base. I'm not saying that ALL of the mass effect NPC's went through character growth, but at least a few showed that they could do more than just stand around and say the same things. Mission was always the peppy teen, Juhani was always haunted by her darkside and her failures, Bastila was always trying to be the leaders, Carth was just a dolt who got betrayed once and thus hated anyone who he relied upon, Hanharr was the faithful protector, HK the slaughter bot, T3=R2, Jolee was always the grampa. Not one of them had the depth that wrex had. Even malak was nothing more than a stock supervillian who you had to defeat. At least Saren started out trying to save the world and could be convinced to change his path. And don't get me started on Bandon/ the Admiral, those two had as much personality as my carpet. All in all ME and KotOR are very similar games. ME however had a heck of alot more depth in it's creation (probably because it was a new universe, where as with star wars you didn't have to be very innovative about how things worked because somehow Star Wars is timelocked technologically)

Citadel=Dantoinne Noveria=Tattoine I mean seriously the level design for the worlds in Kotor and the story planets in ME were very similar. Slightly different atomosphere but ultimatly their design and style were very similar. The thing that makes them feel different is the fact that in ME terrain actually effected your combat while in kotor you just kinda stood there. Each Story planet in ME had it's own themes and sets of problems just like KotOR. You laugh at Feros for having a simple gathering quest while you're out and about. Seriously? That's a staple of every RPG ever MADE. I mean if you cut KotOR 2's story planets down to the same # that's in ME you'd probably find all of HK's parts on one planet. And don't cry about the same geth over and over, if I have to deal with one more sith soldier I will rip Revans eyes out and replace them with lazers. I have yet to see a choice in morality that even approaches how ME did the end of Feros. Or anything as complicated as getting a pass to go outside on Noveria. The reason nobody takes you seriously is that you have yet to say anything of substance about ME that wasn't mirrored in KotOR. You also have yet to say anything that was better in KotOR. Sure you say "BUT the LEVEL DESIGN!!" but the level design in each game was about the same, maybe a bit better in ME, it's just that in KotOR because of the way that the combat occurred you didn't notice the drawbacks as much as in ME. Also ME's zones generally didn't have you running hither and yon to complete quests, except in the Citadel and there there were so many ways to get around you didn't have to do much running. In KotOR I remember being frustrated because you go halfway across a planet four times to complete one quest. In ME you just zipped out in one fell swoop and completed all the quests.

from what I've heard, if they hadn't gotten the Star Wars license they would have gone with a Mass Effect MMO, so they probably were trying to lay the ground work for that too. Seriously Tig, if you are interested in the backstory visit the Wiki Most of it comes from the in game codex. Including the primary reason for a Krogan dying being death by gunshot.