HoonDing

"Hey look, a cave! Wonder what's inside."

I feel in my left toe Conrad Verner is going to return as a surprise miniboss.

With Reapers being this stupid, I no longer want to become one.

Every 50,000 years, the Reapers completely obliterate all intelligent life in the galaxy and "harvest" the dominant race. There are several worlds in the previous games with descriptions of ancient civilizations that mysteriously vanished. There's even a planet with a huge rift caused by a Reaper gun, and another planet with cities blown to dust. This time around they're only interested in humanity for harvesting (because Shepard is awesome), and humanity is only reduced to Earth and a handful of colonies. So it doesn't make much sense that the Reapers are suddenly inept, unless Sovereign was somehow an exception. They could easily nuke the Asari, Salarians and Turians into oblivion so that they're completely unhindered to reap Earth, yet somehow they actually took a beeline to Earth (probably again because Shepard is awesome). Anyway, yeah, BioWare wrote themselves into a corner and it's best to shut off your brain when playing this.

Shepard is always still tied to the Alliance when she shouldn't be. As a Spectre, Shepard is totally beyond the Alliance and shouldn't even be able to be court-martialed. She only answers to the Council. BioWare just put Shepard back on Earth for the whole invasion drama; pity it's kind of a major letdown. Reapers just fly in, walk around and occasionally blow up random shuttles with kids. For a supreme machine god race, you'd expect them to nuke everything from orbit or just send in the Collectors with their paralyzing bugs.

The Renegade option I always wanted was an opportunity to call Tali out on her persistent damsel-in-distress habit. The game keeps telling me that she's a useful addition to the crew, but every time I actually see her on screen, she's gotten herself into great danger and needs Shep to pull her butt out of the fire. My 2 favorite dialogue choices in the ME games: First, in ME1, after you rescue Liara, Joker makes some crack, and Liara asks how he can make jokes about life-or-death experiences. The renegade option on the dialoge wheel is labeled "He's a jerk," and the dialogue is "Joker can be a real ass sometimes." Second, in ME2, when Ms Perky Secretary says, "Please, call me Kelly," dialogue-wheel option "No." It's funny, but Twitcher 2 paraphrasing is even worse than ME. One of the very first dialogue options the game gives you is "Very funny", which translates into "**** you". Ironically my favourite ME2 dialogue option is only possible in a Paragon playthrough, namely telling the Council to shove it.

BioWare can't even manage bow strings. It's like chastising a ten year old for being unable to solve the Riemann equation.

Default Femshep looks hideous. I shudder to think what my own imported Femshep will look like.

It worked for Shaddam IV.

Sure it would, considering Renegade is just Chaotic Evil/Stupid half the time and especially in ME1. For example, Shepards shooting three unarmed people that surrendered and needlessly causing the death of two others. And my favourite, shoving a pistol in the face of a clearly mentally unstable but otherwise harmless man. Heck, five minutes into the game SHepard knocks out a rambling scientist and threatens farmers with her gun. The funny thing is that this behaviour is perfectly in line with Shepard's "Earthborn" background, where Shepard is basically a thug from the streets that made it into the army.

I was initially impressed as well, until I discovered Ashley and Kaiden have exactly the same dialogue during that scene. I bet it's the same with Wrex and whatever Krogan is put in his place if he's dead. The worst is that Shepard is forced to act like a complete wuss on Horizon and just take it when Ashley/Kaiden are griping, with not even a chance for a Renegade interrupt. If BioWare had guts, there would've been an option to kill those idiots right then and there.

Yes, on x360 and ps3. I thought Origin was only required for multiplayer? I believe they are moving to the same model as Steamworks. I know Kingdoms of Amalur requires Origin to be running. On the positive side, Origin is pretty unobtrusive, and even seems less resource hungry than Steam. Wasn't it that you need to activate it over Origin and then you can play without, but you need Origin running for MP? Can anyone confirm this? After authorizing the game via Origin, can I remove that crap from my pc and still play the single-player?

Dialogue animations are still way over the top, they're exactly like the ones in Divinity 2.

The personal edition is very rare. Didn't it come with a card game and soundtrack as well? Actually, the soundtrack was very good, it's a pity it wasn't included in retail (same with Divinity 2). Last retail game I got that came with a soundtrack was Risen.

I'll have to look at my ME2 saves because I don't even remember whether Kaiden or Ashley are alive in my Paragon Shepard playthrough. Apparantly Kaiden/Ashley became Spectres and also outrank Shepard (at least Kaiden, IIRC Ashely was just a NCO in ME1), they'll have to be taken down a notch quickly.

Yes, on x360 and ps3. I thought Origin was only required for multiplayer?

So can the single-player be played without Origin at all?

So that is what happens when someone fuses the X-files and Twin Peaks main theme.

Ripping off Space Above & Beyond can't be a bad thing, considering how obscure and unknown that series is.

It's a good thing Newton's laws don't apply in Mass Effect universe, or Shepard would've shot herself into orbit.

"This isn't about strategy or tactics, this is about survival" I love Renegade Shepard.

Looks good, but kinda disappointing that the Reapers have gone from invulnerable space gods in ME1 to mooks that can be blown apart in one shot. Maybe I'm wrong, though, and that thing at the end of the video is not a Reaper?

I still remember the outrage when Belgian paratroopers (the elite of the elite) pissed on Somalis in '90 or '91. That was before the military was pussified, and Belgian UN soldiers just let themselves be macheted by those nice Hutus in '94.

If there truly was a gaming god, this Kickstarter success would convince Neal Hallford and Brian Moriarty to try and make sequels to Betrayal and Krondor and Loom, respectively. After more almost 20 years, though, who in their right mind would still bother. I finished a replay of Betrayal at Krondor last weekend, still an amazingly fun game to play. I'll move to Betrayal in Antara, and while it's a nice game as well, it just isn't the same.