Wrath of Dagon

Yeah, that guy must've lost touch with reality a long time ago.

@gromnir Well you certainly learn a lot about the current situation on Kashyyk, and you get to participate in it. And Geth had meaningful interaction? You mean shooting them? Yes, ME did give you tons of background info, but you had to read it, in a game!

Did you forget that the whole plot of Kashyyk was liberating the Wookies? That wasn't interaction? Edit: You did talk to the Rachni, but that was one conversation. Everything you learned about the Quarians you learned from Tali's tales or from the Codex, there was no related gameplay. Is gameplay only important to me, the rest of you just absorb info and don't care in what form it arrives, perhaps that's the source of the disconnect.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090113/ap_on_...or_s_wife_slain

I completely disagree about ME companions. You only got to talk to them on the Normandy, and they only had a few convos, and they really weren't interesting at all. May be Ashley would've been OK if she didn't clam up early. I did like how they made context sensitive comments though, hopefully more RPG's will start doing that.

OK, I'll try again. People who are saying ME is as good or better or the same as KOTOR are missing the point of KOTOR. The point was to flesh out the Star Wars universe. You learn what Jedi are like, and the Sith, and Czerka, you see how the Wookies live and what the Sand people are all about. And you do it all through gameplay, you actually participate, instead of just reading boring facts in the Codex. ME has none of that, Tali bores you with her stories but you never go to a Quarian ship, or do something to help the flotilla, or get involved with Quarians in any way. Same with Krogan, you never interact with any except Wrex. ME is all about Saren's stupid plot, and nothing else. In addition, the planets have nothing to do but linearly shoot your way from one end to the other. Also I agree with Meshugger, especially about the kinds of decision you make, and that is because you make those decisions in a gameplay vacuum. So understand, just because ME recycled some characters and ideas from KOTOR, doesn't make it anything like KOTOR, or even near the same quality.

The difference between Taris and Citadel was the Taris had a bunch of good quests, all of which fit into its theme. All Citadel had was a bunch of pointless filler. And as I said, Carth was a developed character who played an important part in the story, Kaiden was a couple of conversations, that's all.

Anyway, I can see this can be argued for ever, if you find the story logical, good for you, to me it seemed very contrived to try to justify going to a bunch of planets which didn't really fit into the story. Edit: Yes, you're right, I do like the game to explain everything, instead of having to come up with my own explanations.

I always took Juhani with me, she was very useful. Also you could kill most of your party in KOTOR, so I really don't see the difference, As far as Wrex's reaction, it never made sense to me. Stuff like that is what I find very amateurish in the game, or may be it's juvenile.

I'm not a subscriber to the postmodern crusade, so sure, it is possible to say that a game is simply bad, no 'opinion' about it. But uh, in those cases you don't follow that up with comments like "Wrex's stories are real boring but Canderous' stories are real good". It's like you're doing your very best to make all your evidence sound like subjective opinion. Look, sooner or later it's going to come down to subjective opinion. Either a story is good or it's not. Sure you can parse things into finer and finer detail, but eventually you'll have to make a subjective opinion if that detail is good or bad. So eventually you just have to see for yourself. If someone likes one dialog quests, or where your whole assignment is to shut off a water valve, what can I say to that? 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. 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.

So you are an infallible being who knows with absolute certainly what is "good" and what is "bad"? Finally you're getting it.

You could kill Jihani and she wouldn't be in your party at all. Also whenever you select a Force power, it impacts gameplay, so what? Edit: Actually Wrex doesn't start out as ice cold, he's whining about the genophage from the beginning, he's a sheep in wolf's clothing, er, I mean Carth in Canderous clothing.

No, it's a badly made game, no question about it. It's not my fault some people can't distinguish between good and bad. I'll give one more example. Wrex told you one war story, and it was really stupid. Canderous told you many war stories, and they were all pretty good, and really shed some insight on the Mandalorian war, which was an important part of the plot. Things like that happen all the time, ME has completely pointless stories and conversations, while everything in KOTOR is well thought out and fleshes out the Universe. But there's nothing I can do if someone states white is black and black is white. You for example liked the Uncharted Worlds, how is that even possible?

I'm not necessarily saying he wasn't one dimensional, but he was cool, kind of a tough, ruthless Spartan type:

Wrex has some good one liners, but if you talk to him he bores you to tears, almost as bad as Tali. He's completely one dimensional and a Canderous rip off, except not near as good as Canderous. The choice on Virmire is a coin toss choice (I don't mean the one with Wrex), I never really understood why people like that so much. And about being created for specific purposes, that's very true, everything feels very contrived, and the few decisions you actually make aren't organic to the story or the gameplay, they are just there because you're supposed to make decisions in an RPG, it's like they have a big sign "Make Big Decision Here!"

So, Carth was a very damaged human being, anything against portraying that in a game? The problem with Kaiden is he's so underdeveloped, he tells you his sob story (which is pretty dumb btw) and that's it.

If you think parrotting that endlessly makes you look intelligent, you're very much mistaken. What are you, 12 or so?

And KOTOR was a degenerate version of BG2 in more ways than one. You may be right, never played BG2. But so what, I never claimed KOTOR was the same or better than BG2.

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.

ME ripping off KOTOR is not to its credit. Top side of Taris went along with it's theme, rich live on higher level, the lower levels get increasingly poorer and more dangerous. Sure, a lot was left to the imagination due to graphic limitations, but you could see some beautiful vistas of the city with spaceships and so on. Plus it set up the contrast with the sewers and the squalor of the refugee camp. And at least there was lots of interesting stuff to do on Taris, unlike the Citadel.

ME did have a degenerate version of Carth, which was Kaiden, just like Quasar or whatever that game was called was a degenerate version of Pazaak, just like ME is a degenerate version of KOTOR, which is what I think makes it so hard for people to understand the difference between KOTOR and ME.

No, Citadel is all peaceful, except for main story related combat. Noveria has a very small and boring peaceful zone, the rest is all combat. All other planets are linear combat only. Level design in ME generally consists of a corridor, a door, followed by another corridor, another door, and then yet another corridor, with one more door, culminating in a room with some crates for cover where you kill a few enemies, usually the same Geth over and over. Each KOTOR planet had its own theme, its own character, its own situation you had to deal with, and its own story. You had exploration, quests, combat, dungeons, and dialog which was actually meaningful. All of these elements were reduced to laughable proportions in ME. "Turn off a valve and replace a battery, and voila, you're done with all the quests on Feros. But don't forget to pick up some files while you're in the corporate building." Also you can claim just about anything is generic. The art in KOTOR went with the theme and situation on each planet, Tatooine looked like a desert planet, Sand People camp looked like a Nomad camp, etc. I could go through each ME planet and describe to you why the art on each one sucked, but I've done it before and I don't think anyone is that interested.

Which objective opinions? What have I been posting through this whole thread? What did you ask, I didn't see anything in your posts that looked like a question.

No, you don't, thanks for your opinion, but then you really shouldn't be arguing, should you? Also, if JE and ME ripped off KOTOR in some respects, how does that count against KOTOR? It should only count against later games. You're saying because you like all 3 and I don't my opinion is somehow suspect, even though you refuse to explain your reasoning, while I explained mine.

None of which I agree with. ME is not KOTOR as it has none of KOTOR's good attributes. If you want to prove ME is as good as KOTOR, you have to show positive attributes in ME which are as good or better than KOTOR. The fact that you don't like KOTOR doesn't make ME any better; specifically you have to show how ME's level design is superior to KOTOR, since that is what we're discussing. And yes, I agree ME had better combat and was mindless filler otherwise.