Giantevilhead

I would really like to see some societies and cultures within the world that are really innovative and experimental. There could be a highly pragmatic meritocracy that puts logic and practical concern ahead of metaphysical ones where they have no problem using necromancy or "dark magic" to achieve goals that would benefit their entire nation. Maybe they siphon the life out of criminals and uses it to heal sick people or they turn highly educated and skilled people, who are willing, into undead so that they could continue to serve their society. There could be a culture that's built upon social engineering principles found in B.F. Skinner's Walden Two or Karl Popper's The Open Society and its Enemies. There could be a truly open society or a society where concepts like happiness and fulfillment are much more quantified and are planned out or regimented for populous. There could be a society in which the standards of beauty, gender, and sex are different. A society in which there are less differences in how men and woman are raised and treated. Where instead of power and strength being associated with beauty/sexiness in men and submissiveness and vulnerability being associated with beauty/sexiness in women, standards of beauty/sexiness are similar for both genders.

It would be great if your perception changes based on your behavior/choices/temperament. For example, if you're always forgiving of others, then NPC's appear less suspicious. If you're always choosing the aggressive/angry options, then other characters seem more confrontational.

Not unless you change their biology. Women and men are not equal. They have different things that biologically they are good at. Now if they augemented themselves with technology or magic then both sexes can be equal in every way. Not unless you change their biology. Women and men are not equal. They have different things that biologically they are good at. Now if they augemented themselves with technology or magic then both sexes can be equal in every way. Except I never said that men and women can be equal in every way. I said that sexual dimorphism is exaggerated due to society and culture. A society in which there is less differences in how men and woman raised and treated will likely result in less sexual dimorphism.

I think people forget that sexual dimorphism is exaggerated due to culture. In most societies, men and women are not raised in the exact same environments. They do not have the same diets, they don't play the same kinds of games, they don't go into the same sports, they don't perform the same kind or amount of physical activities/exercises, they don't do the same jobs, etc. Even when you look at athletes, who may go through similar training regimes, you have to consider the differences in how they were raised from birth to the point when they got into their sport. In fictional culture in which there is less difference in how men and women are raised, it is entirely possible that there would be far less difference between the sexes.

But it would no longer be metaphysical in the context of that world if it's explained/reduced/quantified too much. For example, in PS:T, belief can shape reality but they don't explain why it's able to do that or how much belief is required for things to change. If instead they had said that belief is quantified as neural activity in the brain and that once a certain number of neurons start firing in a certain way, it creates some kind of interaction with the latent energy field of the multiverse, which causes the change in reality, then you take away too much of the mystery and ambiguity, and the story wouldn't work as well.

Is it even metaphysical if it can actually be objectively measured and studied?

Might and Magic is a reasonably good example of doing the traditional fantasy races right. Sure there are some stereotypes but there's also a lot of variation between the races/factions. Minotaurs and Trolls aren't mindless brutes, some of them are good with magic and are quite intelligent and reasonable. The Dark Elves are evil cave dwelling torturers, they're mostly merchants and business people. The necromancers aren't all power hungry maniacs bent on world domination, they get tired of war and death.

I think there should be greater synergy between different skills and game mechanics. For example, if you've ever seen the 2002 wuxia film "Hero," there's a master swordsman who develops new fighting techniques through the practice of calligraphy. So it would be really cool if mastery of other skills can affect a character's ability to cast magic and mastery of magic could affect mastery of other skills. Also, I think it would be interesting if there was a temperament system rather than a morality system that could be used to affect many factors, magic among them. So instead of good vs. evil/order vs. chaos, you have impulsive vs. patient, vengeful vs. forgiving, prideful vs. modest, etc. And a character's temperament would affect how magic works. Certain spells could be easier or more difficult to cast/learn if you have a certain temperament or would have different effects based on temperament. Spells would affect you differently based on your temperament.

I don't think there's anything wrong with the "traditional" fantasy races, as long as they aren't all monocultural stereotypes.

I think it would be interesting to introduce a morality system based on emotions/temperament rather than good/evil or chaos/order. So your character would develop reputations or temperaments based on whether you choose to be rash, calm, aggressive, passive, vengeful, forgiving, etc. Plus since the magic system is based on a character's soul, the way a character behaves could have an effect on that.

I'm guessing the game will explore subjects like religion vs. spirituality, justice/redemption vs. punishment/revenge, idealism vs. pragmatism, nature vs. nurture, etc., plus various combinations of those ideas.

Given the limitations in technology, I think they really should have made Planescape: Torment into a point and click or an adventure game rather than an action RPG.

They should get Bruce Timm and the DCAU people involved in the production and writing. They did a great job of integrating a huge amount of different ideas and continuities with the DCAU.

The new ending is idiotic.

So basically, all the plot holes and bad writing is still there. They just gave you some pretty pictures and extra exposition to try to make you forget about them.

Except most popular sci-fi's don't have all those elements. Star Trek doesn't have them, neither does Star Wars, Stargate, Farscape, Andromeda, Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, Macross, Gundam, etc.

There's too many similarities between Mass Effect and Babylon 5 for it to be a coincidence. Deep Space 9 sucka While Mass Effect certainly took a lot of ideas from Star Trek, its universe has much more in common with Babylon 5. In both ME and B5 1. Both series begin after a war resulting from first contact with an alien race. 2. Humans are a relatively new race in the galactic scene and yet they've acquired a lot of power and influence in that short amount of time. 3. They both have sort of a security council with the most powerful races in the galaxy. Unlike the Federation in Star Trek, it's not really an alliance and the different factions often work against each other. 4. The relationship between different races is much more tenuous. Different races may pretend to be allies but secretly work against each other. 5. Lots of powerful corporations around. The way the corporations in ME operate is similar to the way they operate in B5. Although in B5, the most powerful corporations pretty much run the earth government. 6. There is quite a bit of xenophobia present among humans. There are organizations dedicated to preserving human interests. 7. Ancient races meddling with the evolution of various species in the galaxy. 8. Primitive races are artificially uplifted/modified to fight wars for more advanced races. 9. Malevolent ancient race that bring cycles of destruction to the galaxy and they claim to be doing it for the good of everyone in the galaxy. 10. The malevolent ancient race possess a degree of control over the younger races and use agents among the younger races to sow destruction and chaos. 11. The malevolent ancient race harvest younger races for their ships. 12. Both series focus on the protagonist's struggle to unite various races to fight the ancient threat. Granted, many of these are pretty common sci-fi tropes but for both series to have this many in common has to be more than a coincidence.

There's too many similarities between Mass Effect and Babylon 5 for it to be a coincidence. Just like how there are too many similarities between Dragon Age and Warhammer for that to be a coincidence.

I think the problem with Ashley is that more humans didn't have her attitude. Humans really should be more paranoid towards alien. Mass Effect takes place less than 30 years after humanity made first contact with aliens and it almost led to a massive war. Fear of alien influence on human culture should have been a big subplot. Considering how many ideas they took from Babylon 5, I'm surprised they didn't make Ceberus more like Homeguard or Nightwatch.

I really wonder if they canceled Command and Conquer: Tiberium because of Crysis 2. The Ceph do look a lot like the Scrin.

Might and Magic A real Heroes of Might and Magic Wizardry Ground Control

Kai Leng is reverse Jar Jar Binks. Whenever he shows up, everyone puts on their idiot hats and become Jar Jar Binkses. It is funny how they do quite a few of those kinds of reversals like what they do with Shepard in the cut scenes. In most games, the cut scenes generally make the characters, especially the heroes, a lot more kickass than when they're controlled by the player. They show the main character taking down 50 bad guys, sniping enemies with shotguns, and doing all sorts of acrobats. The ME3 cut scenes make Shepard look like a weakling. S/he's indecisive, slow to react, physically weak, inaccurate, and unable to use any tech/biotic powers or special combat skills. As for the story, I really think the whole thing started falling apart with "The Arrival" DLC, which had a terribly written story with big plot holes, all sorts of nonsensical crap, and basically erased/supplanted ME2's main plot and its dramatic ending.

That one at least is explained in game- in the codex, I think, since I noticed it and went looking for an answer. Resigned from the council to prepare for the reapers when the council did it's standard sit-on-hands routine one time too many. That's just lazy. At least they some lip service was paid to the other inconsequential choices. This was one of the bigger decisions in ME1, not to mention how it's the last choice you make in that game. Shows self awareness. Certainly not unique: ZEN: -- dysfunction on computer banks three and six. All resources now concentrated on maintenance of teleport facilities. I-- I have failed you. VILA: He never referred to himself before. He never once used the word "I". ZEN: I have failed you. I am sorry. I have-- Also Nordom the Modron from PST, a lot of Borg episodes (wossname, Hugh?) from ST. Except Legion isn't a single individual, it's a network composed of a thousand different AI's. They'd almost certainly have a good idea in a general sense of what a cure would entail, at least if ME science works at all similar to Real World science. If you were weaponising a virus you'd know with near total certainty that the cure (well, preventative really) would be a vaccine of some sort, for example. Except they have advanced nanotechnology in the ME universe so how do they know the cure won't use nanites? Plus if they were going to use the Shroud to spread the cure over the entire planet then the cure would already have to be designed to retain its effectiveness after being shot into the upper atmosphere where it would be exposed to extra solar radiation and be able to sustain Tuchanka's harsh environment.

There's a lot of that in ME3. It's a really cheap tactic. But more specific they make the trigger, the more complex the sabotage will have to be, which would make it easier to detect. It makes much more sense for the sabotage to be designed to detect general tampering.

But they could have easily written it so that it wouldn't have been a contrivance. It would make sense for the Salarians to ensure that the Shroud doesn't get tampered with but it doesn't make any sense for the safeguard to work against a genophage cure but not the Reaper poison. It also doesn't make any sense for the Shroud to be able to disperse the cure over the entire planet in one burst while the poison had pretty much zero effect despite having been spread by the Shroud for a much longer time. A simple rewrite would be to have the Reapers trying to modify the Shroud to spread the poison over the entire planet in one burst. Shepard stops the Reapers from spreading the poison and uses the modifications the Reapers made to the Shroud to spread the cure in one burst. However, the Salarian sabotage has been triggered by the fight between the Reaper and the Thresher Maw so the Shroud begins to self destruct. Mordin then sacrifices himself to ensure the cure is spread before the Shroud blows up. Same basic story but makes a lot more sense.