Mass Effect

[Mr. GOH!]

It's really nice playing through ME2 on PC with gamepad support.

[Mr. GOH!]

Triple post!

ME2 is way jankier than I remembered. I forgot how easy it is to get stuck on level geometry, and I forgot about the infamous hallway on Ilium and the Kasumi DLC crashes. And that the fix for the Kasumi crash causes crashes later if you don't undo it.

Edited January 12, 2017 by Mr. GOH!

[TheMightyEthan]

The next video is finally up.

 

It's funny, as soon as they stop showing combat I start getting interested in the game again...

[Mr. GOH!]

I hope the new team of writers has improved since ME3. I replayed the Tali recruit mission in ME2 last night and I forgot how it, among a lot of the worlds you scan, heavily foreshadowed some sort of stellar-scale shenanigans beyond (or maybe originally related to) the Reapers' return. There are all these implied descriptions of previous alien races' attempts at stellar engineering or doing wacky or foreboding things to entire planets, things beyond the capabilities of the Council races. 

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, all that dark matter/dark energy foreshadowing was supposed to be related to why the reapers were coming, and they dropped it all when they fired the lead writer. Sucks too, because that was way more interesting than the whole "synthetics/organics can't possibly coexist" thing.

[deanb]

There's a bit with a background conversation discussing not firing rail weaponry willy nilly, then iirc later you find a planet that has a giant artificial canyon on it that's presumed to me from a massive rail gun that grazed it...and there's also that sorta-dead Reaper and nothing is ever really tied together as you'd expect.

[Mr. GOH!]

I am kind of dreading finishing ME2 and moving onto ME3. I do not think 3 will hold up. 

[Hot Heart]

My memory's a little hazy but the Dark Matter/Energy storyline wouldn't have been great how one of the original writers (Drew Karpyshyn) explained it. First of all, it hadn't been super fleshed out so what was in ME2 was a bunch of "hooks" or "threads" (kind of like how some TV shows operate...) that were left to potentially be filled out. As far as I can remember it was something to do with biotic organics causing/accelerating entropic death of the universe and the Reapers had experimented with Protheans before as they showed the most "potential" but then there was humanity (hence the Collectors and building a human Reaper) and I think the final decision of the trilogy was going to be, like, "sacrifice all humans or wipe out Reapers and hope to find your own solution"

 

... which is sort of close to what ME3 did?

 

Anyway, there's a reason some big franchises allow 3-4 years between games instead of 2.

[deanb]

So firstly:

 

There's sign-ups for the ME:A MP beta
https://beacon.bioware.com/

Which I believe Hot Heart will be into.

 

And secondly if you're on Origina Access you can get access to a 10 hour trial of the game from the 16th of March (which'll carry over to the main game)

[Mr. GOH!]

I'm enjoying Mass Effect 3; my fears were unfounded. It's messier, in ways, than ME2, but everything except the overall narrative is better than ME2. I kinda miss having a million party members, but the increased focus has been good. 

 

Ugh, I wish Bioware games didn't try to shoehorn in MP.

[TheMightyEthan]

I saw an article a while ago that said Dragon Age Inquisition's MP was shutting down, and I went "Dragon Age Inquisition had multiplayer?"

[Mr. GOH!]

New trailer and new recruitment vid up. http://io9.gizmodo.com/new-mass-effect-andromeda-trailer-gives-best-look-yet-1791657820

[TheMightyEthan]

I feel like all their faces look weird, and there's also something odd about their body proportions.

[Mr. GOH!]

So, it's following all Mass Effect traditions?

[TheMightyEthan]

Looks worse than previous games to me.

 

*Edit - Or if not "worse" then at least more strange.

[TCP]

I don't know what it is, but I just can't get excited for this. 

[Mr. GOH!]

True; the heads and animation look weird in a different way than in the original trilogy.

[Hot Heart]

The only thing I can get excited for is that Evan Rachel Wood looking woman.

 

Okay, I admit it, it's only really the hairstyle that matches.

 

... also, I'm most excited about playing a Krogan in multiplayer.

[Mr. GOH!]

What's multiplayer?

[Hot Heart]

Eh, it's just a little mode you can dip into every now and then.

 

[deanb]

Are they on Frostbite? Might be why things look weird if they're not comfortable with the engine. They looked weird even in the earlier videos. Can't entirely put my finger on why though.

[TheMightyEthan]

They are on Frostbite, though given what little I know about game development I don't see why that would affect the proportions of the models.  Aren't models typically created in another program and then imported into the game engine?

[Hot Heart]

I know with one of the previous videos there was a bit where they said it was some sort of bug (the gun being drawn bit) and that lots of those things have been ironed out.

 

Then again... you all remember the run animations from before, right?

[Mr. GOH!]

I think your objections are to the art direction and character design, Ethan. It ain't the engine.

[deanb]

 

It's like 45 minutes long so I've not watched it all, but so far seems to be a decent overview of the trilogy so far and its creation.