Preorder and DLC items

[Nepenthe]

I didn't realise you could hear your guns in hard vacuum (and I probably think they wouldn't work, either). Curiously, the only time you're in a hard vacuum is at the beginning of the game, when neither of these things happens.

You're exposed to a vacuum in both the derelict Reaper and the Collector cruiser. And there's at least one assignment that takes place on board a ship that has been venting atmosphere for who knows how long.

No. Because they use the "mass effect field" hand-wave to explain how you can be in a non-breathable environment and still not in vacuum.

 

Only an "issue" if you are just concentrating on finding... "issues".

 

OTOH, I think DAO DLC is kind of close to being an example of how to not do things. Abovementioned "storage chest" only in paid day-1 DLC, in-game characters hawking said DLC, 95 % recycled assets... sigh. Delivered a strong impression of existing only to recoup massive production costs... and of DA definitely being the "secondary" Bioware franchise.

[213374U]

No. Because they use the "mass effect field" hand-wave to explain how you can be in a non-breathable environment and still not in vacuum.

 

Only an "issue" if you are just concentrating on finding... "issues".

Might be my scientific background driving me to be anal here, so bear with me. I'm fine with plot devices trumping science, but they need to be well executed - that is, at least consistent with established canon and the observed in-universe tech. This is a perfect example of the opposite, however.

 

In the collector cruiser, you enter the ship through a hole in the outer hull. If there's indeed a breathable atmosphere within, there's no need for the masks equipped by the crew - if the environment is a partial vacuum, you still need to do something about ebullism (bubbles in the blood); if it's an unbreathable but pressurized atmosphere, how come nobody has trouble breathing aboard the collector base? The trap scenario also suggests that the scene was conceived to convey the idea that the collector vessel was little more than a dead, floating piece of scrap. This is supported by the fact that the collector vessel is stated to have suffered main power failure, with kinetic barriers offline. In the intro cutscene, when the Normandy is torn apart, the good old forcefield sci-fi cliche is used for atmosphere containment, so no kinetic barrier = no atmosphere.

 

And the naked EVA antics in the upper layers of a brown dwarf (and near the accretion disk around a black hole!) are even worse. Brown dwarves radiate more heat than they receive from the star they orbit (temp ~1000 K and upwards) and also emit hefty amounts of ionizing radiation. Personal barriers or ship-mounted shields won't help as you need magnetic fields to deflect that (or a lead shirt). Interestingly, they also equip gasmasks for that scene. If there was an atmosphere, such a thing wouldn't be necessary.

 

I'm not really concentrated on finding faults with the game, it's just that this is a glaring hole brought about exclusively by the removal of ME1-style wardrobes and their substitution with nothing. I guess different people have different thresholds for their suspension of disbelief, but I feel this was a pretty silly mistake to make, and one that could have been solved pretty easily. But then... they failed to solve it through DLC. D:

[Nepenthe]

I'm not really concentrated on finding faults with the game, it's just that this is a glaring hole brought about exclusively by the removal of ME1-style wardrobes and their substitution with nothing. I guess different people have different thresholds for their suspension of disbelief, but I feel this was a pretty silly mistake to make, and one that could have been solved pretty easily. But then... they failed to solve it through DLC. D:

 

Well, I still think that's the equivalent of me throwing a fit (as a lawyer) over the quarian kangaroo court.

 

Disagree with the quoted part. The problem comes from the unification of onboard and "offboard" uniform for squadmates, which is only indirectly related to the alteration in the gear system. Preferred the way it was handled in ME1, even though I don't think that the gear system was particularly good in the first one, and generally consider ME2 to be superior in this department.

[Orogun01]

No. Because they use the "mass effect field" hand-wave to explain how you can be in a non-breathable environment and still not in vacuum.

 

Only an "issue" if you are just concentrating on finding... "issues".

Might be my scientific background driving me to be anal here, so bear with me. I'm fine with plot devices trumping science, but they need to be well executed - that is, at least consistent with established canon and the observed in-universe tech. This is a perfect example of the opposite, however.

 

In the collector cruiser, you enter the ship through a hole in the outer hull. If there's indeed a breathable atmosphere within, there's no need for the masks equipped by the crew - if the environment is a partial vacuum, you still need to do something about ebullism (bubbles in the blood); if it's an unbreathable but pressurized atmosphere, how come nobody has trouble breathing aboard the collector base? The trap scenario also suggests that the scene was conceived to convey the idea that the collector vessel was little more than a dead, floating piece of scrap. This is supported by the fact that the collector vessel is stated to have suffered main power failure, with kinetic barriers offline. In the intro cutscene, when the Normandy is torn apart, the good old forcefield sci-fi cliche is used for atmosphere containment, so no kinetic barrier = no atmosphere.

 

And the naked EVA antics in the upper layers of a brown dwarf (and near the accretion disk around a black hole!) are even worse. Brown dwarves radiate more heat than they receive from the star they orbit (temp ~1000 K and upwards) and also emit hefty amounts of ionizing radiation. Personal barriers or ship-mounted shields won't help as you need magnetic fields to deflect that (or a lead shirt). Interestingly, they also equip gasmasks for that scene. If there was an atmosphere, such a thing wouldn't be necessary.

 

I'm not really concentrated on finding faults with the game, it's just that this is a glaring hole brought about exclusively by the removal of ME1-style wardrobes and their substitution with nothing. I guess different people have different thresholds for their suspension of disbelief, but I feel this was a pretty silly mistake to make, and one that could have been solved pretty easily. But then... they failed to solve it through DLC. D:

I wub this post sooo much

Do Dead Space next, what did you think of moving objects in vacuum space?

[HoonDing]

Do Dead Space next, what did you think of moving objects in vacuum space?

Did they manage to violate the first law of Newton?

[Volourn]

"Might be my scientific background driving me to be anal here, so bear with me. I'm fine with plot devices trumping science, but they need to be well executed - that is, at least consistent with established canon and the observed in-universe tech. This is a perfect example of the opposite, however.

 

In the collector cruiser, you enter the ship through a hole in the outer hull. If there's indeed a breathable atmosphere within, there's no need for the masks equipped by the crew - if the environment is a partial vacuum, you still need to do something about ebullism (bubbles in the blood); if it's an unbreathable but pressurized atmosphere, how come nobody has trouble breathing aboard the collector base? The trap scenario also suggests that the scene was conceived to convey the idea that the collector vessel was little more than a dead, floating piece of scrap. This is supported by the fact that the collector vessel is stated to have suffered main power failure, with kinetic barriers offline. In the intro cutscene, when the Normandy is torn apart, the good old forcefield sci-fi cliche is used for atmosphere containment, so no kinetic barrier = no atmosphere.

 

And the naked EVA antics in the upper layers of a brown dwarf (and near the accretion disk around a black hole!) are even worse. Brown dwarves radiate more heat than they receive from the star they orbit (temp ~1000 K and upwards) and also emit hefty amounts of ionizing radiation. Personal barriers or ship-mounted shields won't help as you need magnetic fields to deflect that (or a lead shirt). Interestingly, they also equip gasmasks for that scene. If there was an atmosphere, such a thing wouldn't be necessary.

 

I'm not really concentrated on finding faults with the game, it's just that this is a glaring hole brought about exclusively by the removal of ME1-style wardrobes and their substitution with nothing. I guess different people have different thresholds for their suspension of disbelief, but I feel this was a pretty silly mistake to make, and one that could have been solved pretty easily. But then... they failed to solve it through DLC. D: "

 

*shrug*

[Orogun01]

Do Dead Space next, what did you think of moving objects in vacuum space?

Did they manage to violate the first law of Newton?

They violated, killed it and violated it again.

But then again i'm not one of those people who complained when Star Wars had sound in space. We should just take ME for what it is, the spiritual successor to Flash Gordon.

 

Shepard AAAAhhhhh

Edited February 6, 2011 by Orogun01

[213374U]

Well, I still think that's the equivalent of me throwing a fit (as a lawyer) over the quarian kangaroo court.

 

Disagree with the quoted part. The problem comes from the unification of onboard and "offboard" uniform for squadmates, which is only indirectly related to the alteration in the gear system. Preferred the way it was handled in ME1, even though I don't think that the gear system was particularly good in the first one, and generally consider ME2 to be superior in this department.

Fair enough. I have to say, I really like that they have given each squadmate a very distinct style. And I also like what they've done overhauling the weapons, with each gun having a unique feel and not necessarily being "worse" than its counterparts (except for the Mattock, I hear that's just crazy-silly OP), but it's a shame that DLC guns are just mailed to you as soon as you install the pack - I'd much rather have them added to stores or optimally, to quests, as in Kasumi.

 

It's a bit schizophrenic, because they obviously put a lot of effort into giving each gun and character style a touch of uniqueness, but then they kinda bungled the way it's actually handled ingame, just throwing it in. I could understand Jack making her daring escape in her default outfit, but there's no reason why she wouldn't wear a hardsuit when the situation warrants it... an issue that could have been rectified with DLC but wasn't. Ideally, let the player choose what squaddies wear.

 

And yeah, I can understand how a lawyer would tear his shirt over the quarian "legal proceedings".

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3or9lrQ2_ms

 

^that's how it should have been handled, imo.

[Nepenthe]

Fair enough. I have to say, I really like that they have given each squadmate a very distinct style. And I also like what they've done overhauling the weapons, with each gun having a unique feel and not necessarily being "worse" than its counterparts (except for the Mattock, I hear that's just crazy-silly OP), but it's a shame that DLC guns are just mailed to you as soon as you install the pack - I'd much rather have them added to stores or optimally, to quests, as in Kasumi.

 

It's a bit schizophrenic, because they obviously put a lot of effort into giving each gun and character style a touch of uniqueness, but then they kinda bungled the way it's actually handled ingame, just throwing it in. I could understand Jack making her daring escape in her default outfit, but there's no reason why she wouldn't wear a hardsuit when the situation warrants it... an issue that could have been rectified with DLC but wasn't. Ideally, let the player choose what squaddies wear.

Yeah, pretty much agree with what you write here.

 

Of course, I always spent an absurd amount of time in ME1 to get my squad into a visually matching set of Armax Arsenal Predator L/M/H armor, so I'm definitely one who appreciates customisation in this front. (which reminds me, non-randomised store inventories FTW ). I would have preferred to have hardsuit options for all squadmates, but it's hardly a gamebreaker for me. Though, it looks like Miranda's new armor is still going to have just the see-through rebreather as headgear, so another ball dropped there.

 

I think the overpoweredness of the mattock has been slightly overstated - it hits like a sledgehammer, all right, but (IIRC) it has a seriously limiting ammo capacity, which limits its useability in some of the missions.

 

I think that the current trend with Bio is going to be that the main character and NPCs won't be drawing their equipment from the same pool, as it were (or, you won't have the opportunity to strip NPCs for main char benefit/possible problems down the road). There's a presentation by the ME2 lead gameplay designer using Alistair in his diapers, huddling at the campfire to illustrate the point. That said, I can rationalise it away in a sci-fi setting (with future/present-day RPGs often using different loot systems from the classic FRPG "kill guys and use their stuff" approach). DA2 is going to have NPC specific armor, so we'll see how I manage to live with that in the context. I hope they evolve it a bit and go to a system of "visually distinctive, of course, separate on-board/mission gear for the NPCs.

 

Come to think of it, considering the ridiculously small amount of casual clothing available for Shepard, I have to wonder what they've been thinking. The game files have a ton of gear (including the blue-black alliance uniform and an all-black variant of it) that are simply inaccessible. Bioware developed an aversion to toggles and options of simply visual import?

[Majek]

Orogun01 what are you talking about?

Edited February 6, 2011 by Majek

[Orogun01]

Orogun01 what are you talking about?

Crazy stuff obviously, need you ask?

[Nepenthe]

Orogun01 what are you talking about?

Crazy stuff obviously, need you ask?

No credit for partial answers, maggot!

 

Also, thumbs up for the Flash Gordon connection.

[Majek]

Orogun01 what are you talking about?

Crazy stuff obviously, need you ask?

 

Of course. Wherever enlightenment is possible, i have to ask.