Bioware/Bethesda appreciation thread

[ramza]

Volourn, please find yourself a cave for the winter and leave us in peace...

[Volourn]

Why? You don't like differing opinions? I say tough.

[entrerix]

this is another one of those, this guy must be joking or crazy

 

mass effect was 10x better than kotor?

 

I definitely did not get that impression upon playing them both

 

for the record though, i didnt like kotor 1. I DID like kotor 2. so take that for what you will

 

mass effect and kotor 1 are actually not that far apart in my book except the story in kotor was way better. companions were lame in both (except that robot killer dude - he was cool)

[alanschu]

While I don't think Mass Effect was a significant improvement over KOTOR, I'd probably give it a slight edge.

 

I enjoyed both games an awful lot. And even though ME's combat was nothing to write home about, I did enjoy it more than KOTOR's. KOTOR's was cool for me simply because it was me roflstomping people as a Jedi, which will always be fun for me lol.

 

 

KOTOR's story is a bit tainted for me, because I saw too many parallels with NWN, from Bastila = Aribeth to Star Maps = Waterdhavian creatures.

Edited August 28, 2009 by alanschu

[Pidesco]

Mass Effect was KOTOR, but with better combat.

[alanschu]

I can see it.

 

I enjoyed both so I don't care all that much

 

 

While this might not be popular, I loved the cinematic nature of ME, and actually really enjoyed the dialogue wheel for the most part.

Edited August 28, 2009 by alanschu

[Wrath of Dagon]

mass effect and kotor 1 are actually not that far apart in my book except the story in kotor was way better.

And the quests were way better, that is if one could even call the travesties in ME "quests". And the characters were better, and the dialog actually went somewhere. So pretty much all content was way better. Edited August 28, 2009 by Wrath of Dagon

[Darth InSidious]

Yeah, no, not really. They were basically the same game.

No. They were certainly similar, but KotOR had:

 

-Better/more engaging side-quests (The Sunry murder trial in particular is an exceptional example by Bioware standards - in a good way; the mysterious box quest and the Yavin Station DLC also spring to mind);

-The originals of several of the characters mercilessly and rather badly cloned for ME (Carth [Kaidan] in particular, but also Canderous [Wrex], Juhani [Liara, etc.);

-An element of actual C&C (albeit not much, but this is Bio);

-Better dialogues;

-Greater variety in quest and level design (Consider the differences between, say, Manaan, Tatooine and Korriban, and the differences between any three of the planets in ME);

-Better voice-acting (This is debatable, admittedly, but KotOR wins by not having Male Shepard in it);

-Better party members (Jolee in particular);

-Better reason that you're SPESHUL;

-Better plot, (see also: SPESHUL).

 

Like I said, it's the better game. The one edge you might argue that ME has is its combat system, but given how your party members are balanced in such a way that your experience of how balanced combat is varies wildly depending on your class, this isn't quite as good as some might make out. Mass Effect's side quests are so banal and generic that they might as well have been procedurally generated. (Collect ten of X from planet Y by travelling to it and clicking on it!)

 

Perhaps for an encore we can argue over whether MotB is PS:T and vice versa?

And if you are named Darth, you are probably biased towards the Star Wars universe, so you might want to keep that in mind when judging the two.

Actually, I don't give much of a **** about Star Wars; my primary fandom is Dr. Who, but great job judging a book by its cover.

 

I chose this username when joining Filefront four years ago and looking for Jedi Academy mods, if you must know.

 

No, no it isn't. In fact, ME is 10x better than KOTOR. I do agree they have lots of common but the cool thing about ME is it does everything better than KOTOR.

 

KOTOR is BIO worst game (still good) is really overrated.

Could you elaborate on that, please?

[alanschu]

I agree that KOTOR had better/more varied quests/side-quests. Though I expect that, given KOTOR is more "Action RPG" while KOTOR is more "RPG." Most of the sidequests in Mass Effect were, indeed, utter **** however.

 

A few things I disagree on however:

 

 

-The originals of several of the characters mercilessly and rather badly cloned for ME (Carth [Kaidan] in particular, but also Canderous [Wrex], Juhani [Liara, etc.);

 

I actually disagree that Kaiden is a clone of Carth. Kaiden was much more level headed about a lot of issues. I think people got hung up on the fact that he was voiced by the same person, but Kaiden is much more interesting than Carth IMO.

 

Wrex differs from Canderous in that Canderous is purely about the tactics. He had no issues with Revan annihilating Mandalorians, because it was the Mandalorian way. Wrex, however, is hardly giving Saren a free pass for subjecting his race to be slaves and test subjects. He was mercenary, but if that's the similiarity, Canderous is hardly unique in that regard.

 

On a final note, I do find a lot of BioWare's characters to be rather similar. You accuse ME of cloning/copying KOTOR, though IMO KOTOR copied an awful lot of stuff from NWN.

 

 

Re: C&C Both games seem about even IMO. Perhaps there could have been more consequences for your choices in Mass Effect, but this is something I would have really preferred gone differently in KOTOR as well. Given your comment though, you seem to indicate that Mass Effect was devoid of any C&C, which is frankly an absurd statement. If you were to make me pick which game had better C&C though, I'd pick Mass Effect.

 

 

Dialogues I felt were very comparable.

 

I greatly disagree with voice acting, even if you didn't like male Sheppard (whom I had no issue with).

 

Party members I could probably give you. I'm a big fan of Jolee and HK. However, everyone seems to hate Ashley and Kaiden, both of whom I had no real issues with, and liked both characters. In fact, they were the NPCs I played with the most in my first playthrough, which made the big decision on Vimirie that much more awesome since I had to choose between the two NPCs I used the most.

 

Having said that, the game experience I enjoyed the most was definitely KOTOR. A lot of that has to do with the setting though.

 

 

As a final note DarthInsidious, you may not give a **** about Star Wars, but you most certainly do give a **** about KOTOR. We all have our biases.

[Volourn]

Do a search. It's elaborated enough, and I don't fel like posing point after point just to have you bash me, anyways. Better to make it short, and sweet and have you bash me for that.

 

Bottom line is ME is a superior game to KOTOR. It's that simple.

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

Jennifer Hale voices female Shep AND has a lesbian scene.

 

Why would you ever want to play as Male Sheppard?

[Maria Caliban]

Carth != Kaiden - Other than that they were both the 'regular guy' of the crew.

Juhani != Liara - I have no idea where this came from. Their personalities are very different.

 

I can see how Wrex could be considered a copy of Canderous.

[Bos_hybrid]

Volourn, please find yourself a cave for the winter and leave us in peace...

 

Volourn posts are easier to read. He/she doesn't post long winded posts about 'the death of rpgs' and about how he/she is no longer interested in them anymore.

 

Anyway, the ME/KoTOR debate, meh. I will just say I prefered them both to BG.

[RPGmasterBoo]

I think everyone here (me included probably) repeats their opinions on every RPG, several times a day. This could be because we talk about the same 10-15 titles all the time.

 

For example, did you know that Volourn's favorite is NWN?

No?

Really?

 

So, to avoid pointless arguments I'm just going to include the "Good, the Bad and the Ugly" in my sig and anyone who is willing to dispute them can just go and...

Edited August 29, 2009 by RPGmasterBoo

[RPGmasterBoo]

While this might not be popular, I loved the cinematic nature of ME, and actually really enjoyed the dialogue wheel for the most part.

 

So you are more a circle than a rectangle person?

 

[Aristes]

Boo, you lunatic, your sig is almost as long as your rants. Hell, your sig *is* one of your rants.

 

Plus, I've never played Mass Effect, but I'm sure you could have found an actual screenie that would have demonstrated your point. I'm not certain that anything in the game was really quite as bad as that. Oh, and I appreciated the BG series and KotOR quite a bit. I even got my money's worth out of NWN. I did finish it and enjoy it after all. That's pretty damned good if you ask me.

[RPGmasterBoo]

Its a nice bite sized rant, so I dont have to write war & peace every time.

 

Its not about the dialog, its about the system being exactly the same, just using a different shape. It shows that all the dialogue wheel "innovation" is a baloney. It did do one thing however, it made things easier for people who equate reading to medieval torture.

[Aristes]

Wow, that actually is much better. I mean, it's still a rant, but the columns work quite nicely.

[RPGmasterBoo]

God bless Excel and Image shack.

[HoonDing]

So, to avoid pointless arguments I'm just going to include the "Good, the Bad and the Ugly" in my sig and anyone who is willing to dispute them can just go and...

Where are the legendary "Descent into Undermountain" and "Ruins of Myth Drannor"?!

[RPGmasterBoo]

So, to avoid pointless arguments I'm just going to include the "Good, the Bad and the Ugly" in my sig and anyone who is willing to dispute them can just go and...

Where are the legendary "Descent into Undermountain" and "Ruins of Myth Drannor"?!

 

They are the Un-mentionables or the Forget-we-existed category

Edited August 29, 2009 by RPGmasterBoo

[Purkake]

Save it as a .png, the JPG compression screws the edges up and makes it look generally ugly.

[alanschu]

Its a nice bite sized rant, so I dont have to write war & peace every time.

 

Its not about the dialog, its about the system being exactly the same, just using a different shape. It shows that all the dialogue wheel "innovation" is a baloney. It did do one thing however, it made things easier for people who equate reading to medieval torture.

 

 

I have no issue with it because functionally it's the same (I would usually pick the full verbose dialogue based on its intent, just like the circle).

 

 

The advantage the circle had though, combined with full voice over, is that it made the game more cinematic. I didn't know exactly what was going to be said, so I actually watched the PC's dialogue responses, since I didn't already know specifically what was said.

 

 

As you say it's not really any different than previous dialogue progression. Yet people seem to have no issues chiding the **** out of it for somehow being inferior.

Edited August 29, 2009 by alanschu

[RPGmasterBoo]

Save it as a .png, the JPG compression screws the edges up and makes it look generally ugly.

 

Crap, I lost the BMP original.

[Purkake]

Now it's destined to be a blurry annoying thing for all of eternity. Guess I'll just turn sigs off.