BobSmith101

Disclaimer I have not played the game. However after reading both yours and GOA's posts I don't really see that much of a problem. He's having an easy time with something , ok it's a dragon and it should feel like a fight because his character has the right sort of build. Mages kick his ass because he has the wrong sort of build for fighting mages. On the other hand your character is not built for fighting dragons, but probably has no problem killing mages ? Without knowing why the Dragons are so easy for GOA it's hard to pin down. But two characters with different builds finding different things easy/hard. That seems like good RPG design to me.

I think that would have any real sci fi fans (hehe) spitting blood. I'd certainly say ME had a lot of potential but it was squandered in favour of Hollywoodesque values.

Interested in my case is the difference between a

I'd say I'm about 3/4 of the way through KOA give or take and for a sandbox game to still be keeping my attention it must be doing something right. I never bothered with Skyrim, I'll get the inevitable "complete edition" next year or something, I'm in no rush. I'm also not that taken with ME3 after playing the demo either, I don't see myself playing it more than once unless the full game dramatically improves over the demo.

Don't know if this is bothering anyone else (or if it's been noticed).But when you compare the size of the ME2 demo and what you got on it and the size of the ME3 demo and what you get on it. ME3 seems to take up a lot of space for a lot less content.

Organic civilization isn't a specific group of species but any advanced organic life forms. In the time of the Protheans, they were organic civilization. In the time of the games, humanity, asari, turian, korgan, and such are organic civilization. If Shepard failed and the Reapers win, there are likely other organisms living at a pre-industrial level that will become space faring and discover the Citadel in the next 50,000 years. To use a metaphor, imagine an alien race comes to earth and wipes out all existing civilization, sending humanity back to the stone age but somehow leaving all the natural resource intact. When I say 'human civilization will rebuild itself' I'm not saying that China, Russia, and India will reappear, I'm saying that some form of civilization will arise over time. The problem is while 50,000 years might be enough to go from "caveman" to space. It's not enough to go from organism to "caveman". Thats on the millions scale so the Reapers would soon run out of targets unless they were doing something else. I'm not even sure if Bioware knows what that is... In the intro to ME3 it says the Reapers appear every 50,000 years to cleanse the galaxy of ALL organic life. Considering how long the Reapers have been doing it, they must be really bad at it.

I think what Janamden is getting at is that the Reapers would run out of civilisations rather quickly if they were to hit the same area every 50k years. Unless they do leave behind some "seeds" or use some sort of fertilizer to kick start new evolution.

I'm not going to click it but I guess that means I was close?

Ironically the Protheans look like humoids with squid tentacles, kind of like a mind flayer or Cthulu. The Reapers are more squid like than bug it's in the shape of the head/body especailly if you see them from the front. When they are wandering around in the demo , they are actually walking on the "tentacles". When I first saw the invasion Eather stuff I thought it would be funny if the "Reaper Killing Mcguffin" turned out to be R'lyeh. And Cthulu turns out to be a Prothean.

Kind of....Can't really say anything on the plot without giving something away. I think the enjoyment comes down to two things. 1. Do you like the combat system 2. Do you like brighlty coloured worlds over the shades of brown. There are a lot of side quests and they don't really add anything (besides money/items xp). The exceptions are the faction quests which have interesting stories behind them and are also very well done.There are exceptions though one of which rewards you with a house quite early on whjich is nice to have. But there are other ways to get a house so it's not essential. I'd say your looking at a 15-20 "investment" hours before everything starts to come together. That's why I highlighted those 2 key points. I've been playing it since last friday on and off. I've gave up doing every side quest (as I had to a certain point) now I just do the ones my character likes the look of. That means I'm making more plot progress and more faction quest progress , which I think is where the real fun is. It's really not a fault of KOA I think the same is true of all sandbox games. If you play a mage "Meteor" will make you go Muuhaawhaa whenever you use it. It's totally over the top and makes the 70 points getting there totally worth it.

I think it's because it's so random and because it's about loot rather than about quests it's, very replayable with all those classes and builds. If you compared it to something like DS3, in DS3 you will always be on the same maps fighting the same things so it's predictable. In Diablo one game you could get one set of monsters in another you could get something completely different. All those variables change how the game plays as long as you are playing it to experience builds rather than for the story or something like that. I'd have to say though even as a big fan of Diablo and games like it. After playing War in the North I think the goalposts have moved as far as dungeon crawling adventures go. The otherhead view does not really do it anymore and to a lesser extent the one button killing too.

It may just be possible that all those people who get turned into goo are those millions of voices inside the Reaper. That kind of makes sense if you take legions words of in the context of a machines thought process and understanding. Perhaps that what Harbinger means by salvation through destruction, the goo exists in a state similiar to those inside Sin in FFX. For anyone unfamiliar with FFX. Sin is giant shell that contains the "ghosts" of a 1000 year old civilization which continues along as though nothing had actually happened to them. In reality there were completely wiped out and exist in the dream of the original high summoner. Each Reaper would be like a living record of every society that had ever been reaped. Being organic goo might not be so bad after all. The Reapers definately need organics because they only reap those above a certain tech level. Unless ME is set in a "fantasy" universe, then humans would have been around 50k years ago. The logic falls appart if you consider the time required for something to go from organism to evolved lifeform. But maybe the Reapers use some sort of fertalizer as well as leaving behind technology. When you look at it like that, they are really not so bad. Not so different from human farmers breeding and then killing livestock. Thats quite a scary scenerio because the Reapers are not evil as such and by killing one you are commiting the genocide of an entire speices and everything that it was.

You should be able to switch at the equipment screen. As far as I recall (might be wrong) but there are two ways either from the main menu or by pressing the right arrow (PS3 version). Pressing select and then highlighting equip and then the character and pressing X is the other way. It has to be stuff that the character can actually use though , shows their picture. Or it will not appear to equip.Makes no difference who buys it everything is shared between you and whoever is in your party at the time. If thats no help post again and I'll go check it out.

The issue was really not so much in what they do when they get there, but rather how they get their within a specified time frame. It's clearly not the Reapers goal to wipe out all organic life. If that were the case , they could easily have done so. The Reapers are more like farmers (maybe thats the reason for the name :D) they let the Galaxy fatten up for 50k years, then go reap the results. They always leave behind the non advanced races so the cycle can continue next time. Since it's not an exact sceience, there is always a chance that a civ discovers something, or a remarkable individual appears and throws a spanner in the works. Perhaps that is the reason for the citadel gambit. Or maybe initially when there were few Reapers , that was the only viable strategy (that certainly makes sense). With the numbers the Reapers have now and with the intel. from the advanced scout (Sovereign) the whole citedel thing, which only appears to shave 3-5 years off the arrival time seems like a giant waste of time. That is what leads me to believe that the Reapers have a set of directives. Which they follow in order much like a program. 1. Citadel Gambit if 1 fails then 2. Enslaved/changed organics from previous cycle (collectors). if 2 fails 3 Mass invasion Quite why the reapers need to do this, I've only got 2 theories. 1. They need the organics as some sort of "fuel" 2. They are corrupted AI and are just doing it because they have no choice. Ulitmately if the answer is 1 then the most effective way to beat the Reapers is to eradicate all Organic life in any particular cycle. It's extreme, but it would end the threat once and for all because without the Organic fuel the Reapers would be about as useful as a car with no gas.

I'm not sure there is any. Unless they are very careful with what screenshots are released it's something that people will easily be able to see prior to release and judge themselves. Came across the orginal post make of it what you will. "It's a runtime memory cost, not a disk space issue. You need those anims for the non-combat areas... so they're going to be on disk regardless. In order to support exploration in the combat areas, you'd need to have all the anims loaded in memory... so that would be things like the 8-way walks, runs, incline anims, idles, idle twitches, male/female variant overrides, eye noise... etc. All in all (iirc) it came out to around 2-4MB, which is relatively significant. Also, as you've guessed, yes - I'm referring to the main game (as well as the demo" A shame there is no source for the above. Otherwise I would point at that next time somebody claims the game isn't aiming for lowest common denominator when developing for multiple platforms Well as an ex PC gamer there is no way I would bother spending the money on what passes for a PC game now. I'm not saying console games (at least those not from Japan) are any better quality wise, but they have the advantage of being easy to return and or rent. This overly long console cycle is mostly the fault of the publishers. One of the main culprits being EA. Obviously they make more money in an established console market, than one "starting over". There is also a wide gulf in the talents of developers in just what they can make a consoles limited hardware do. In many ways thats a flaw in PC gaming since developers will always take the easy option and push the upgrade costs onto the user. In the end it's a silly sort of arguement obviously PCs are "better" but that wholly depends on what you are willing to pay and that will ultimately be many times the cost of a console over the course of 5-6 years.

I think you're selling some of the writing short. The plot-heavy stuff was indeed dire, but the character writing had its high points. Mordin and Legion were interestingly written. Garrus, Grunt, and Samara were largely cliches, but they were well executed cliches that fit well with the overall space-opera mileu. Even some of the more minor characters managed to be memorable, like the cops you meet on the citadel in the missions for Samara and Thane. I think ME2 makes sense IF you accept the premise that the purpose of the Reaping is to create another Reaper. Had things gone to plan, the majority of the galaxy would have been wiped out, some retained and liquidised as Reaper "fuel" and the rest husked and or turned into the next version of the collectors. In a way this is smart. We can call the collectors "plan B" in case the Citedel gambit fails for some reason. What makes it utterly pointless though is the time scale. Plan A and plan B have failed and plan C is to just gather up and take an extra 3 years to get to the point where they would have been if the citdel plan had worked. For an immortal race that's nonsensical , why go through all the trouble of A and B when C works and is far more direct. Had the game been about the story and not about Shepard the super human bad ass, then ME and ME2 would have bought the galaxy the time it needed to prepare (maybe 100 years or so making ME3 VERY different) But in ME3 no preperations just "oh look the Reapers are here". You're in no better position at the begining of ME3 than you would have been had Sovereign won and the Reapers come through 3 years ago.

Heres the running animation set to music.

I think what the guy is in the article is missing , is that there are two parts to Mass Effect. The plot, and the game mechanics. While there was no need to "rewrite" Shepard from the plot aspect, from the game mechanics in ME left no such "wiggle room" as he puts it. When they wrote Baldurs Gate the first chapter was capped in ME I think you could get to level 40 , not really a good posistion for a planned trilogy.

I can just see the headlines. "Teenager killed over Mass Effect3" Just imagining what would happen if 20-30 people turned up at the same time is pretty frightening really. It strkes me as an irresponsible marketing gimmick.

That was my feeling too the plot was pretty ignorable. Quite why ME3 does not feel as good as ME2 I can't really put my finger on it. More than likely it's the animations and ever drawn gun movement speed, or it could be that everyone just looks "wrong" now. Theres a mistake in the intro of ME where the VS says something about a dreadnaught. It's actually a cruiser(this is confirmed by Bioware as a mistake). It's a minor thing completely not important in the grand scheme of things, but a mistake like that in the first level just kind of sums up the loose feeling of everything about ME3 like it was never quite finished,or like a beta version of MMO that just needs those final finishing touches. It will make scads of money anyway, but it's just kind of sad that "good enough" seems to be Biowares new mantra.

I only tried the Infiltrator , which was pretty gimped without a sniper rifle. Melee build would be effective though I imagine. The Engineer which felt kind of overpowered in being able to sit behind cover and toss out drones/turrets (fully upgrade either for major laughs in the demo). Soldier, because everyone said it was least affected by the 4 weapon demo load out (proved not to be the case but I was in "arcade" mode so it chose autobuild). After that I was kind of bored mostly because the way the demo is structured has massive cooldowns on powers. I'll probably rent ME3 I want to see how it ends but the gameplay does not hook me the way ME2 did and I don't see myself playing it more than once because of that. Anyway I'm going back to KOA until I finish it.

Heavy Melee is press and hold rather than just press. That and the animation accounts for the extra time. It is pretty effective though if you can get it to work, far quicker than shooting and thats whithout the upgrades.

I'm not sure there is any. Unless they are very careful with what screenshots are released it's something that people will easily be able to see prior to release and judge themselves. Came across the orginal post make of it what you will. "It's a runtime memory cost, not a disk space issue. You need those anims for the non-combat areas... so they're going to be on disk regardless. In order to support exploration in the combat areas, you'd need to have all the anims loaded in memory... so that would be things like the 8-way walks, runs, incline anims, idles, idle twitches, male/female variant overrides, eye noise... etc. All in all (iirc) it came out to around 2-4MB, which is relatively significant. Also, as you've guessed, yes - I'm referring to the main game (as well as the demo"

Well the demo levels are really small anyway. But if there are larger levels crawling around at that speed would get old fast especially if it applies to "hub" areas where quests require lots travel. Funny thing is after reading what was said here and on the Bio boards , I really want to play the Batman games now more than I do ME3.

Well here are a few observations from the demo. 1. The intro lacks any sort of drama even after they added "token kid". Maybe it's because its so heavily scripted but compared to something like R3 it feels like a totally static set piece with no urgency at all. 2. Why is Shepard being treated like a Rookie ? In ME2 it made it sense, but here it's just insulting and non sensical. Yes I understand you need a tutorial, but there had to have been a better way. 3. The demo gives you 4 weapons, this puts your cool downs through the roof because of weight. This on seems demo specific, so if thats what is bothering you, then it won't be a problem in the full game. 4. No holstering... The result of which means crawling along at a speed similiar to "weapon zoom" in ME. Or sprinting in that oh so convincing manner posted above. 5. I think there are 4 choices in the demo, and there is quite a lot of dialogue there...I think the FFXIII-2 demo has more interactive conversation choice than ME3. None of these choices made a whit of difference to what happened either. I think the reaction is going to come down to this question. "Should Bioware and developers like them be held to higher standards" ? Judged as a game in itself it's got lots of bells and whistles and high production values. But judged against what has come before (with the exception of DA2) it feels unfinished and lacking in those professional touches that seperates great from just good enough.