Raithe

o O (I foresee a lot of duck and cover time...)

Then again, Bio spent a long time on crafting DA.. they've obviously put a lot of effort into this whole "original ip" for Bioware.. maybe part of that was laying a lot of the groundwork to follow on with sequels and related games set in the same fantasy universe... Which would cut down on the "usual" time frame for producing a game.

I thought Tali's actually had a time limit.. or at least if you spent too long doing other missions there was only one possible outcome...

Ah but the point is special forces groups , while willing to do the odd suicide mission, aren't designed for suicide missions. They're meant to do the mission and get out alive. Remaining capable of performing further missions. Unconventional warfare does not equal suicide missions.. o O (But also, throw in the whole cinematic style. How can you not see the shiney aspects of The Dirty Dozen in that? A bunch of competent, slightly deranged and creative, out of the box people.. ) The point wasn't so much burnouts and psychoes for the team... Just that the odds of people in that frame of "brilliantly violent, and willing to do a suicide mission" means there's going to be a few personal issues, baseline stable wasn't really a big point. Just because most of the persona issues in ME2 were family related...

ME works as a fairly standard space-opera style universe. It doesn't really try to claim to be some groundhshaking thing in that way. The main thing Bio pushes is the voice acting and trying to do the actions and consequences. Which I think will be sort of hard to say about until you can get the "trilogy" together and played through. Then you can sit down and go "yeah , there were consequences to my actions" or "crapcrapcrap" to the tune of spam. FR has aspects that were deep. Also that were shallow. It was immensely patchwork after 30 odd years of accumulated pen n paper supplements.. While i enjoyed many aspects of it, the whole "archmage in every town" was a touch annoying. It was like they were put in just for the "in case the GM needs a big stick to hit players with". Personally, I tended to prefer Dark Sun and Al-Quadim (and yes, I know, technically Al-Quadim was on the same planet as FR). Hell, even Spelljamming was interesting for its little twisting around of conventions. But I think Bio is taking a break from having to partner up with WoTC and the like at the moment, and trying to experiment with their own worlds.. They haven't said what type of other games they'd follow with in the ME setting.. sure there might be other rpg stories, but they could always try something else.. They've created a universe, let's just see what they come up with to use it..

There was a bit more to it then that. After the Alliance decided to sweep the whole "reaper" side of it under the carpet they broke the surviving Normandy crew up and Doc got grounded. She's a doctor whose career was all about being on ships, travelling around, the constant change of situations challenging her. And suddenly the Alliance had her stuck on a major base where she couldn't go out flying around the universe and she was one member in a big medical staff. That was part of it. The other, the only real "stability" in her career had been looking after Joker in a medical capacity. So it sounded almost like a mix of medical and maternal aspects kicking in. (even if it half countered her wish for new challenges by having the one constant). So with Joker away, she was losing that. Which she regained by joining the crew. Plus, it wasn't so much hero-worship as the fact that she respects Shep as a Commander, and trusts him to make the correct choices. When presented with a galactic danger, Joker being on the crew, and then being told that Shep was going to be commanding... it doesn't quite seem like joining up enemy #1...

Well looking at it from a certain point of view.. If you're gathering together a collection of individuals who are: a> extremely capable of violence in a large degree and b> likely to be okay with going on what everybody believes is a total suicide mission.. There wouldn't be many people who can tick the "mental balance" box on their cv Even Shep has to have issues, although you can't really get a feel for them , I mean, Ruthless / War Hero / Survivor, all things that would leave a few mental scars.. that's not going into the whole Death Experience. "We heard you were dead." "I was. I got better." Plus by now, I'd think Shep would be developing a nice case of a Cassandra complex..

Yeah, the whole conversation with the if you'd played Paragon and not exterminated them in ME1 does kind of hint they could play an important role in ME3 when it arrives..

Hey, at least Wrex is trying to be a bit cosntructive (if you got him to live through ME1) rather then the typical Krogan destroy, destroy, destroy rant.

Supposedly, there is a random selection of which characters will get killed off for each non-upgraded part.. If you play it several times, it shouldn't be the same person being killed at the same point.. It's not a direct "if you haven't upgraded this, this specific person will die".

Every character you recruit gives you an upgrade option. Sometimes it's one that just helps that character, other times its relevant to the ship.

Hm, I was a little disapointed with the CE... the shiny box was nice.. I did like the art book (but then I like concept art stuff)... but the Bonus DVD was fairly crappy. about 5 of the character trailers, and the "Behind the Scenes" stuff was more like a compilation of rehashed "interviews" with the usual suspects of Producers, Lead Designers, and a few of the voice actors gushing over ME2 rather then providing any serious behind the scenes look. And I think nearly all of those "interviews" had already been shown in some of the pre-release internet teasers and such.

Yeah, I researched the Nuke-Em Cain before heading to Purgatory.. thought Yeah, I'll give it a try for that.. then ended up running through the whole mission without being able to use the dang thing because it kept flashing 62% at me.. If I'd realised that I'd just have taken the missile launcher and had a few moments a bit easier...

Yup, I only used the nuke twice, right at the end of the game.. apart from that, I always found the other heavy weapons more useful. I think I ended up using either the missile launcher or the avalanche cryo blaster most.

I only used the nuke twice in the game.. both times during the final fight. Didn't quite get the mushroom cloud effect..but definitely lots of plenty flashing lights around

I found the two.. hm, Praetorians you face in the game a bit annoying. The first one on Horizon was the repeated bouncing around cover because it came close, and then the one on the Ghost Ship that's bouncing at you while the Husks swarm.. You'd take down it's shields.. have to reload to take down it's armor.. and during the reload it would hit the ground, do that squat, blast of energy, and it's shields would be back up 100%..

Yeah, getting "Inferno Ammo" evolution was fun.. why I kept Grunt with me for most of the Collector suicide run

Technically, the SMG is meant to be good against shields, but not so great against armor.. While the Assault Rifle is meant to be equally good against shields , armor, and health. Plus it works better to pick them off at longer range and is a bit more steady if you're ripping off long bursts at the enemy.

Maybe they're just spending so much time figuring out the whole.. choices and consequences from ME1 to ME2 to ME3 that they're keeping the character skill advancement streamlined... It's a random thought. I'm curious to see just how big a change it will be depending on if you carry on with the Illusive Man's request, or tell him to stick it in the final sequence..

There's some history there I first encounted Doc Smith when I found an aging boxed set of the Lensman series at an old church jumble sale when i was about 12. To be fair, not a lot of people still enjoy the literary style of the original pulp adventure / space opera stuff. It can be a bit hit or miss. But then I can say how while I can appreciate the technical aspects and history created by Tolkien for LoTR, I found his writing dreadful as a "good" read. Personal styles and flavours for what you like are all point of view. So I can't knock what you enjoy. But to bounce back, Heinlein joked that he half thought Smith was a superhuman in disguise for some of the things he got up to. My original thought was that just Smith's Lensman series inspired so much after the fact is impressive. George Lucas willingly admits how much of Star Wars and the Jedi were inspired by it. J. Michael Straczynski got a bunch of the Babylon 5 ideas from it. Vorlons were Arissians, and Eddore were the Shadows... For comic flavourdom, the Green Lantern Corp was basically The Lensman (and they even came out and used some names from Smiths work for some of the alien Green Lanters...) There are just so many sci-fi aspects and tropes that came about after, that writers used because Smith created them, that for a guy whose job is a literary critic to have said his writing was cliched without putting it into context was just....

Heh, I redid the ending and finally managed to get everyone through it alive.. Although I'm sort of amused by the way one of the cinematics changes...

You might call it sem-literate but that was the style of the 30's and 40's pulp stories. Triplanetary (which is the one with "Roger" in) was originally written for.. Amazing Stories as I seem to recall, it was only later the chapters were collected and done up as a single novel. You might not like the style yourself, but Smith was a very literate person. And frankly, how can you not love a chapter where he knowingly does the villain monologue intoduction, grand title after grand title, and then looks at the hero and goes with "and you may call me... Roger." It's done with intent. But it just might not be to your style. To go with the classic quote from a writer of the time :

It might be me, but I do find it slightly odd some of the twists of legality. If tv show is shown in England, I'm legally allowed to have my pc hooked up to record it.. and keep it to watch as I want from my pc. If the show happens to have been shown in America and doesn't get released in England for another 6 months.. it's illegal to download it across file share to my pc to watch it... Since I have to pay for cable/satellite/tv licence regardless it's always puzzled me exactly why there's that legal split..

I remember reading something about Robert Heinlein having been a good friend of Smiths. He was being interviewed and someone brought up Smiths constant use of these "unrealistic" characters for heros. Heinlein turned round and did a "Have you met Smith? He's tall, good looking, square-jawed, highly athletic, incredibly intelligent, extremely gallant.. and he's married to a red-head who's just as remarkably beautiful, intelligent and spirited to match him. He takes his inspiration from real life." Heh, not only did Smith create half the tropes that get used in modern sci-fi... The US Navy in the 40's based the CIC design used in their ships around the ideas Smith had written for displaying and controlling starship fleets in space...

No, the ruined starship that was perched on the edge of the cliff.. Only Shepard is active, and you have to make your way around the "scaffolding/superstructure" ruins to get to the main log at the front of the ship before it tips over... Then later there's the news report of the lost ships discovery, and bumf about historians looking over it.