Mass Effect 3

[Lexx]

Playing it now too. Was really pissed when I imported my ME2 save and got the info that the face couldn't be taken over... Spend the next 30 minutes with trying to recreate it by hand. Bleh.

[Raithe]

So for the random question; How easy is it to hijack the Cerberus mech doohickies, and is it worthwhile? Or is it just simpler and better to just blow the crud out of them?

Edited March 7, 2012 by Raithe

[Tale]

Probably better to blow them up. I've never managed to get a mech other than the Grisshom one that's handed to you. You practically need sniper rifles or cover piercing ammo.

[Calax]

I didn't know that you could hijack the bots

[Hurlshort]

 

I'm also loving my sniper rifle...I'm the mail slot king!

 

I love when I get that mail slot ding!

[Tale]

I have an armor piercing mod on Javik's particle beam rifle. It makes me feel sorry for those Guardians. Their shields don't even seem to matter.

[Malcador]

What is this mail slot ding ?

[Tale]

What is this mail slot ding ?

Shoot a guardian through the slot in his shield.

[Raithe]

I didn't know that you could hijack the bots

 

I'd heard you have to aim at the ****pit glass, enough to break it, then you can kill the pilot.. leaving it empty for you to run up and jump into.

[Auxilius]

Mass Effect 3's Gay Romance Option Leads To User Backlash On Metacritic according to Forbes.

God, do they dumb down the matter.

Besides, those gender and sexuality issues are really starting to erode Bioware's credibility. When Helper was harassed on her twitter account, it was cringing to see her write that people were jealous of her because she got a vagina [and a job in the industry] and not them. Seriously, was that her best answer? She should has come out of this mess as a victim, not as a jackass.

If I'm talking about this, it's because I think this is the same problem here. (I hope) People don't care about homosexuality, they just don't like the whole marketing that has been built around this and how it shoved it down our throats... ahem. It's like the whole thing is engulfing every negativity around Bioware. People are not that insecure. For Forbes to play this angle like Helper did mean they don't even try to understand why is the Internet reacting like that. And this article will certainly fuel the hate more than anything. What a trainwreck.

 

You just have to read video games webcomics to see how fine this marketing worked by the way. So far, I checked Penny Arcade, Virtual Shackles, VG Cats, Nerfnow and another one whose name I forgot. The random ME drawing is always about Shepard's sexuality or a random character's sex-appeal. Shepard is half the time, insane.

 

Edit: Hey, Forbes did a second update, doubting what they said earlier. Well, all for the best.

Edited March 7, 2012 by Auxilius

[HoonDing]

Funny how these things go. The same people would likely be all *roflmaotntwmp* at some hot lesbian action.

fixed

 

The sex scenes are all laughably bad, BioWare's worst to date even. ME1 sex scenes are still the pick of the litter .

Edited March 7, 2012 by virumor

[Malcador]

Funny how these things go. The same people would likely be all *roflmaotntwmp* at some hot lesbian action.

fixed

 

The sex scenes are all laughably bad, BioWare's worst to date even. ME1 sex scenes are still the pick of the litter .

 

From the one scene I saw, the shower one, yeah they're pretty bad.

[Raithe]

And I heard you even catch Tali and Garrus making out in the main battery.. Something for the in-jokes..

[Janmanden]

It'll have to attributed to "space magic" considering their reproduction is driven by their mind melting/"embrace eternity" bs. Asari are basically Twileks and Vulcans merged together.

 

It's hard to believe a mammal lifeform would ever evolve to monogenderism.

 

Overthinking: They do look a bit fishy.. With the tentacle hair.. Maybe they paralyze their 'prey' into a happy dream state and then those tentacles do sucky 'things'.. Aria also sort of hinted that nothing leaves a body quite as empty as an Ardat-Yaksi does.. Maybe she sucked a bit too hard.

 

Well.. Hmm.. Liara talked about it when she was still a virgin.. Personally I think she was just being naive.. A 'slightly' more avanced tale than finding babies under gooseberry bushes.. In my experience it was 'virtually' quite physical after the mental foreplay even though the connection was obviously fruitless.. erm, asaribabyless, buuut there was clearly left something out. I think the mental foreplay/intercourse is just a cover up, a parlor trick,

like the one you get from the Asari Consort as the Renegade reward in ME1, except I think that was a mental blowjob..

Considering how linear ME is I am a bit puzzled why there were no offsprings produced from either romance.. Shepard must be rusty. No wonder.

[Janmanden]

Delivery has so much to do with the storytelling, and I think that's where Bio lost me. KOTOR1 onwards they've been very determined at fusing together their cutscenes, dialogue scenes, normal play camera perspective, writing, etc. all together into their particular brand of 'cinematic' experience, and it just really bores me. Even if we set aside any concern for 'deep' stuff and say, what's cool/badass/sets off your inner six year old boy, I find Irenicus' cutscenes a lot more vivid and 'cool' than all the cutscenes I've completely forgotten in KOTOR1, or what little I've seen of the ME series. It just looks all too similar to a bad movie for me to imagine it as anything otherwise.

 

Increasingly I think that it's not just a case of good/bad writing, ratio of cool stuff, or technology, but how different genres and styles cultivate different ways in which we treat the game content and imagine things off it. I don't know if I would claim BG1/2's plot to be any better or different than Bio's later offerings, but it was about the way in which the isometric perspective, sparse voice acted lines, the UI, and all of those other things combined to make you imagine the world in certain ways. ME just never gets me going in that way - and, in fact, neither did TW2, although I really liked that game.

 

I liked KotOR1 and 2, because the voice was still mine to think up.. I think.

 

BG was in parts like reading a book with a few hints about how to see the character.. The voice and style of Minsc echoed in my head whenever his voice was missing like it did for all the characters. It wasn't until a new gamer on the old IPLY boards, who apparently wasn't used to that kind of self-compensating gaming, came along and asked about the missing voices that I realized that it wasn't fully voiced.. Playing a game that isn't fully voiced, lipsynced and so on leaves a lot for the mind to work with and that work is nice.. Playing a game that is fully voiced and like a movie.. That's quite alienating in a way and it leaves me feeling a bit empty headed as my head is never actually used for anything, because I am just supposed to be sucking it all up.. apart from the action.

 

I think every time the dev add a voice or remove a choice.. The loss is on me. I lose out on having a mental experience of compensating with my mind, which is a personally gratifying experience I lose, and thus I miss out on the personal involvement. In a manner of speaking in BG I was the Bhaalspawn, in ME I am just the puppeteered puppet-master.. Every dialogue option is actually just a disguised PLAY button in a way. Somehow every cutscene is just blah-blah-blah until the action begins.. As long as I can skip those cutscenes and move straight to interaction I can forget the pain of what I lost, but give me too much time waiting for something to play out without me and I get distracted and start thinking.. The suicide mission was particularly bad in that way as you lose control completely for several minutes..

 

It's hard to imagine that it's the same company that made BG that also made ME, but I guess it really isn't the same company. It's just the same name.

[Janmanden]

At a point in ME you could just hold down the fire button and not overheat.

 

That was a balance problem, not an issue with the mechanics themselves, which were solid.

 

They could have easily kept the reheat mechanics nearly untouched (except for some rebalancing of the values) and added "thermal clips" in quantities comparable to medi-gel and grenades from the first game, so that if you really needed to keep firing in a certain situation you'd have the option to cool down your weapon immediately.

 

If you have infinite ammo, unless you have an AI that is determined to remove you from cover you can just hide until you cool down.The way things spawned in ME2 made it rewarding to move forward.

 

I actually felt that ME2 punished me for moving on and wanted me to camp out every combat and as much as I hated that it always worked.. Especially the Kasumi DLC was one big scripted camp-fest and especially the end of that emphasized the futility of it all to me. Dodging bullets is also a bit hard with clunky controls, no strafing, crouching or jumping and every now and then I am suddenly glued to a brick.. I felt the global cooldown crippled me as a Vanguard with Area Charge.. Right smack in the face of a horde of enemies sprawled all over and then one shot.. and no powers?? I just couldn't get the hell out of there fast enough. The Locus helped, but the controls are just not as responsive as I need them to be and I still fought too much with the omni-key.. Covering, when I should be storming or jumping over to enemy side of cover to duck and silly things like that.

 

I liked the infinite ammo and overheating was a nice balance system.. Maybe they should have worked harder on that. The change in ME2 where you suddenly have to run and around and search for those completely random ammo drops.. I thought that was a quite boring and painful exercise.. The way it was it should have been an auto-loot feature. If all the dead bodies didn't just vanish mysteriously and actually required me to search their bodies for 'goodies' that would be okay with me.. But this.. Little invisible space valkyries come down to bring the dead bodies to never-never land and sometimes leaves a present behind, that's just ridiculous.. I guess it kinda puts the fantasy in fantasy, hehe.. erm, heh.. leave it.

[Bos_hybrid]

Really bioware?

 

You say you reduce the number of squad members, so you can focus on the 6 you get in ME3. But then you give the ME2 and ME3 squad mates similar levels of content............

 

Then you give us three new characters that aren't squad mates but with enough content to be, there real purpose, characters players can have sexy time with.So instead of having Mordin, Grunt, Zaeed or Miranda we get, Dianna Allers, Samantha Traynor and Steve Cortez. Characters that add nothing to the story, but hey at least we can romance the hell out of them...............

 

But perhaps it's a good thing, I really don't want to see the you tube vids of Grunt and Shep in the shower.

[Drowsy Emperor]

Mass Effect 3's Gay Romance Option Leads To User Backlash On Metacritic according to Forbes.

God, do they dumb down the matter.

Besides, those gender and sexuality issues are really starting to erode Bioware's credibility. When Helper was harassed on her twitter account, it was cringing to see her write that people were jealous of her because she got a vagina [and a job in the industry] and not them. Seriously, was that her best answer? She should has come out of this mess as a victim, not as a jackass.

If I'm talking about this, it's because I think this is the same problem here. (I hope) People don't care about homosexuality, they just don't like the whole marketing that has been built around this and how it shoved it down our throats... ahem. It's like the whole thing is engulfing every negativity around Bioware. People are not that insecure. For Forbes to play this angle like Helper did mean they don't even try to understand why is the Internet reacting like that. And this article will certainly fuel the hate more than anything. What a trainwreck.

 

You just have to read video games webcomics to see how fine this marketing worked by the way. So far, I checked Penny Arcade, Virtual Shackles, VG Cats, Nerfnow and another one whose name I forgot. The random ME drawing is always about Shepard's sexuality or a random character's sex-appeal. Shepard is half the time, insane.

 

Edit: Hey, Forbes did a second update, doubting what they said earlier. Well, all for the best.

 

Its hilarious how seriously people are taking Mass Effect. Its like discussing the philosophy of Independence Day and the nuances of Will Smith's character.

 

Besides there's something wrong with championing gender rights in a game which has you kill people/creatures half of its playing time. Its like "gay rights are the spice of our mass murder simulator".

So homophobic boys are bad, bad, but shooting everything "for great justice" is fine and dandy.

 

Just goes to show that the game creators can be as juvenile and as irrational as their audience.

If they wanted a sophisticated response they should make a sophisticated game.

Instead they made a room temp IQ shooter wrapped in a blockbuster plot, throw in a few political issues "of the day" and consider themselves champions of liberty and free thinking.

[HoonDing]

I actually felt that ME2 punished me for moving on and wanted me to camp out every combat and as much as I hated that it always worked.. Especially the Kasumi DLC was one big scripted camp-fest and especially the end of that emphasized the futility of it all to me. Dodging bullets is also a bit hard with clunky controls, no strafing, crouching or jumping and every now and then I am suddenly glued to a brick.. I felt the global cooldown crippled me as a Vanguard with Area Charge.. Right smack in the face of a horde of enemies sprawled all over and then one shot.. and no powers?? I just couldn't get the hell out of there fast enough. The Locus helped, but the controls are just not as responsive as I need them to be and I still fought too much with the omni-key.. Covering, when I should be storming or jumping over to enemy side of cover to duck and silly things like that.

I agree in general, but then there is the Sentinel class. The Sentinel with maxed Tech armour can run up to every group of enemies and melee them to death. Even Krogan. It's like playing a Vanguard without all the ADD that comes with it.

 

A soldier with Fortification and maxed concussive shot is almost the same.

[213374U]

Besides there's something wrong with championing gender rights in a game which has you kill people/creatures half of its playing time. Its like "gay rights are the spice of our mass murder simulator".

So homophobic boys are bad, bad, but shooting everything "for great justice" is fine and dandy.

 

Just goes to show that the game creators can be as juvenile and as irrational as their audience.

If they wanted a sophisticated response they should make a sophisticated game.

To be honest, that's not so much a problem with Bioware in particular as it is with society in general. Just head over to YT, vids of B1s dropping heavy ordnance on Taliban fighters are a dime a dozen, but try finding a nipple. Taboos need not be logical, but they are undeniably powerful. Hypocrisy is one of the side-effects.

 

With the advent of political correctness, LGBT bashing has more or less become a new taboo, and any entertainment that is meant for mass consumption will necessarily reflect that. I think you are misrepresenting Bioware in the sense that I don't think they are interested in being champions of anything, except of, perhaps, making money. I don't see anything wrong with that, by the way.

[Drowsy Emperor]

To be honest, that's not so much a problem with Bioware in particular as it is with society in general. Just head over to YT, vids of B1s dropping heavy ordnance on Taliban fighters are a dime a dozen, but try finding a nipple. Taboos need not be logical, but they are undeniably powerful. Hypocrisy is one of the side-effects.

 

With the advent of political correctness, LGBT bashing has more or less become a new taboo, and any entertainment that is meant for mass consumption will necessarily reflect that. I think you are misrepresenting Bioware in the sense that I don't think they are interested in being champions of anything, except of, perhaps, making money. I don't see anything wrong with that, by the way.

 

That's right, but how many other RPG's bother with LGBT rights? In fact, explicit support for such things and other political ideologies is an exception, not a rule in games. The standard explanation from BW is "that the fans want it". That's rubbish - the majority of fans customers are heterosexual males and they either don't want that sort of content or are indifferent to it.

The other explanation you're going to hear is that its "progressive, giving people the opportunity to express themselves". That's even more unbelievable, coming from a company that's really only interested in making money.

So it can either be a lame attempt to get even more sales by pandering to minorities (which doesn't make much statistical sense - to go to such lengths to please the odd LGBT gamer) or something else, like a personal crusade by some individuals in Bioware.

And when you hear the way they defend it, it really sounds like the latter. I find the idea of somebody using a game to push their personal ideology around intensely annoying.

 

I wouldn't have paid any attention to it as I've stopped buying BW games a while ago, but the silly article above got me all riled up.

Edited March 8, 2012 by Drowsy Emperor

[Morgoth]

Sorry for dropping in so blatantly, but what's the opinion on the Prothean day 1 DLC? Must have, or not?

[Tale]

Then you give us three new characters that aren't squad mates but with enough content to be... Dianna Allers, Samantha Traynor and Steve Cortez.

Allers doesn't seem to have anywhere near the content of a squad mate. She's so completely detached from content it seems she was only tossed together in the last minute. I've seen soda pop promos with more content.

 

She'll make a general comment towards her little bot after every mission and a short dialogue at the act resolutions, but that's all she seems to get. I'm doubtful that there's a romance there at all.

 

Sorry for dropping in so blatantly, but what's the opinion on the Prothean day 1 DLC? Must have, or not?

I really like him. He's a regular in my squad.

[Gorgon]

I quite like it so far. Not using biotics on my squad as they make everything a bit too easy. The barebones game feels complete enough, doesn't bother me.

 

Without being specific ;the dream cutscenes are anoying, too much on the nose. Also, this may differ depending on your choices, but it seems like an epedemic of NPC last stands and charging off to die in a blaze of glory.

[greylord]

Sorry for dropping in so blatantly, but what's the opinion on the Prothean day 1 DLC? Must have, or not?

 

He is not necessary, but he definately fills out the game in some ways.

 

I'd say whether he's a must have or not depends on your definition of must have. If you considered Shadow-Broker and Arrival as Must haves for ME2, then he's a must have. If you didn't, he's not. I think those would be somewhat comparable in what they added to ME2 in comparison to what the DLC adds to ME3.

 

On the entire downgrading the game, I don't think it's as much about sexuality as it is about a furor over th ending. Two things about the ending, first, the entire, you have to play MP or if you play MP the game actually get's easier for SP....AND the fact that for many the endings...all of them found thus far...seem to stink to people.