Oblarg

Fractional reserve banking works fine - there's no compelling evidence that it's the cause of our recent economic problems (I think the utter lack of governmental oversight is a big problem there, and Paul certainly won't fix that).

Flames? No, but I do wonder why you'd think that what the bible says would hold any significance for us...

Yes, if implemented properly. I'm hoping with the rise in fan-funding the whole AAA game trend dies a horrible, painful death. It certainly has the potential to go that way if enough people catch on...

That didn't work for DA2, what makes you think it'll work for ME3? What makes you think a game can be wholly successful on nothing but week-1 sales? I'd argue most of those are guaranteed no matter what sort of product you put out - fanboys are fanboys.

DA2 sold more than DA:O in week 1, then nosedived and ended up a relative failure.

Yeah, I always thought of that as a cinematic touch more than anything - I thought it was made pretty clear that the fleet destroyed Sovereign, not the Normandy.

The upgrades are entirely irrelevant - you win the fight against the Collector ship without them. It is not "one of the most powerful ships" in the alliance navy - certainly not in terms of combat, at any rate. It's chicken**** compared to a dreadnaught. The ship was not designed for pitched combat. That is not what frigates are for. And yes, it is a frigate (even upgraded).

Have you read the codex? It's a frigate. Frigates are not built for pitched combat. In large battles they never directly engage a larger ship alone. The Normandy is not a particularly powerful warship - it's stealthy and quick, yes, but nothing special in a battle (especially un-upgraded). It certainly shouldn't be able to fight a heavy cruiser head-on, (unless you've upgraded the weapons, but that's irrelevant as it's not needed to win the fight) and it's absolutely negligible compared to a dreadnaught. This indicates that the only Collector ship was fairly weak in direct combat, and would not make any sort of meaningful impact on the outcome of a large battle.

It's still spec'd to the original normandy, and it's still a frigate whose primary purpose is not combat. Do you really think the Collectors would be able to avoid all detection and bypass entire fleets in order to do any sort of damage in a large war? Nah, not by a long shot. They encounter one bulk cruiser and they're done for.

You win the fight even with an un-upgraded SR2, which is spec'd to the original Normandy (which wasn't even built for pitched combat, mind you). The **** are the Collectors going to do with a single weak cruiser and a pack of floating eyeballs? They'd be destroyed before they could get close enough to do anything meaningful at all.

No, we wouldn't. The collectors had negligible military force (one cruiser, which loses in a pitched fight to a frigate), and thus they never could have really competed that human reaper. They were a non-threat.

RotJ's ending was satisfying - ewoks notwithstanding, it provided closure for all the major plot threads and felt reasonably complete.

DEHR wasn't a conclusion to a trilogy of games built around a reactive narrative.

Reflected throughout the game, yes. But then the ending comes along and takes a big dump over all of them - with the mass relays destroyed, pretty much none of what you've done matters. The effective state of the galaxy at the end of the game is virtually unchanged by any of your decisions throughout the trilogy. On top of that, it simply offers no closure - all those characters which they've spent so long building and making you care about? **** knows what happened to them. It's just intensely dissatisfying, given the scope of the game before it.

Volourn, the problem people have is that the game touted reactivity to all your previous choices throughout the series, and what we got instead was reactivity to one choice made at the very end of the game. Not only that, but the endings not only lacked reactivity to your previous choices but also, to a large extent, invalidated them - with the state of the galaxy at the end of ME3, much of what you've done over the entire trilogy is rendered completely meaningless.

BioWare have long been immune to criticism. Sure, this time they may not have their usual buffer of rabid fanboys to cover them, but I sincerely doubt they'll acknowledge that ME3 was in any way flawed.

Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion is coming out this year.

Guard Dog, you'd really vote for Santorum over Obama? Obama has shown himself to be little more than what, 50 years ago, would have been centrist republican. Santorum has all but called for open theocracy and is, essentially, bigotry incarnate.

I bought none of the ME2 DLC. Plot-critical things should be in the actual game.

The sad thing about the whole transvestite Ashley thing is that, given recent trends, it doesn't sound too far out from something BioWare might actually do.

If they really want to convert people to Christianity they should really just force them to read r/Atheism for extended periods of time.

ME1 had balance problems, but I'd argue the base mechanics for powers and ammo were easily superior to those of ME2. ME2 was better in the cover department, no doubt, and in overal fluidity, but a lot of it felt repetetive and underdeveloped. You actually read the bioware boards? That can't be pleasant, if memory serves they give a new meaning to the term "fanboy" over there. Oh, and creepy romance threads...

I play a vanguard, and that's not true at all.

Because encounter design based on moving forward through enemies is largely less tactical and more reflex-based than encounter design based on defeating a set number of enemies in a certain environment. It's boring and repetitive, and requires no thought. "Cover-camping" isn't a problem in either system if your encounter design isn't ****ty, and I find nothing satisfying about having to run around looking for little red cylinders after every fight. I agree with pretty much all of this. Biotic powers felt completely neutered due to the combination of shield restrictions and the global cooldown - essentially, for 90% of the game your biotic powers were little more than "press this button to damage this type of shield," and it felt really, really lame. It's frustrating as hell not being able to push an enemy until he's already almost dead; one of the most enjoyable things about playing a biotic in ME1 was being able to open a fight by throwing a group of enemies against a wall. The global cooldown just compounded on this, because it prevented pretty much all the useful combos (e.g. lift+throw) from being executed without two biotics on your team. Powers in general just felt a lot less special and unique in ME2.