Mass Effect Series Catch-All

Yeah, they really managed to write themselves into a corner with the ME series.

Well, if it's a prequel and the new character's only an N7 and not a Spectre and the games are confined to a sliver of the galaxy that the first trilogy never touched...might work.

I haven't really followed the reveals yet. Are they that N7 focused? Really? They create this HUGE lovable universe to get lost in. Races and characters abound and after three games we get to follow another N7 centered story? Hope not.

I still think the best thing to do would be playing as a C-Sec officer. Sleeping Dogs style, maybe?

Or an Omega version of GTA?

I can see the new main character being N7 but not a Spectre. They need the new person to have the authority to command a ship.

Demosthenes wrote:

I still think the best thing to do would be playing as a C-Sec officer. Sleeping Dogs style, maybe?

Or an Omega version of GTA? :D

I would love a smaller, more intimate story set on the Citadel. Sure, gimme that planet-hoping space travel, but let's take it a little slower this time, instead going 0 to "ZOMG-save-the-universe" in 4 seconds.

Nicholaas wrote:
Demosthenes wrote:

I still think the best thing to do would be playing as a C-Sec officer. Sleeping Dogs style, maybe?

Or an Omega version of GTA? :D

I would love a smaller, more intimate story set on the Citadel. Sure, gimme that planet-hoping space travel, but let's take it a little slower this time, instead going 0 to "ZOMG-save-the-universe" in 4 seconds.

I don't even need the spacehopping, to be honest. I just want interesting folks and all the species you can cram in there... and for the love of god, let me see an animated Elcor with a friggin' minigun on his back!

While flying home yesterday a question dawned on me (it was the second flight of the day)

Let me start with: blah blah ending blah blah for ME3; also this may have been covered before.

My question, why did the Reapers not attack the Salarians. They hit Humans, Asari, Turians, Batarians, Voth, and the Elcor at least.

The trip to the Salarian homeworld did not see it under siege, while the other major races were.

I will state I do not buy the argument that the Reapers did not seem them as a threat; the Elcor are clearly much more minor players in the galaxy but their homeworld got hit.

The best explanation I could muster is that the Reapers either had two concerns:
1) The Salarian's were the most likely to have last ditch hiding places and hoped to get the Salarian's to reveal all their hidey holes.
2) They were intending to use the Salarian's as the next cycles collectors.

Any thoughts??

Edit they also were at the Krogan and Geth/Quarian homeworlds - arguably those two groups were not as strategically relevant as the Salarians.

I happen to be playing through ME3 now, which is the only reason I remember this throw-away line from the planet description of Sur'Kesh (Salarian homeworld):

Due to Sur'Kesh's location in the galaxy, far from dark space, it has yet to be invaded by the Reapers. But its rulers are all too aware that they are in the path of attack. Because they could not strike the first blow, as their military doctrine suggests, many already consider their forces at a severe disadvantage.

Silly speculation - if you were head writer, how would the next game be played out?

My stab - next game a sequel. All the mass relays were destroyed, stalling civilization hundreds years. Since the fleet that hit the reapers at Earth were from all parts of the galaxy, they were all stranded on Earth. How each race grew, how they integrated or separated will be part of the lore. Now Earth is an intergalactic melting pot with a species diverse government that is often at heated odds with itself

With the mass relays gone there has been no interstellar communication. No one has heard anything outside of Sol. How the rest of the galaxy survived the Reapers, IF they survived and what happened has been unknown for hundreds of years. While it's generally believed the events led by Shepard put an end to the Reapers, it is not known what happened to their allies or the victims the reapers twisted into converts.

At the start of the game, Earths first home made mass relay is built. Our hero leads a team that will go through and see what has become of the rest of the galaxy.

That's how I would do it.

But I'm guessing it will just be a super-duper mass relay to another galaxy and your expedition gets stranded there. That lets them just play lip service to the ME3 choices since it essentially reboots things in a brand new setting.

gewy wrote:

That's how I would do it.

But I'm guessing it will just be a super-duper mass relay to another galaxy and your expedition gets stranded there. That lets them just play lip service to the ME3 choices since it essentially reboots things in a brand new setting.

Did Stargate Atlantis do that well?

Duoae wrote:
gewy wrote:

That's how I would do it.

But I'm guessing it will just be a super-duper mass relay to another galaxy and your expedition gets stranded there. That lets them just play lip service to the ME3 choices since it essentially reboots things in a brand new setting.

Did Stargate Atlantis do that well?

;)

Pretty much but so did Robinson Crusoe and Gullivers Travels It may have been done before but a sci fi Gullivers Travels would be fun.

RooksGambit wrote:
Duoae wrote:
gewy wrote:

That's how I would do it.

But I'm guessing it will just be a super-duper mass relay to another galaxy and your expedition gets stranded there. That lets them just play lip service to the ME3 choices since it essentially reboots things in a brand new setting.

Did Stargate Atlantis do that well?

;)

Pretty much but so did Robinson Crusoe and Gullivers Travels It may have been done before but a sci fi Gullivers Travels would be fun.

Wasn't that called Land of the Giants and Lost in Space? :p

I am thinking about picking up the Mass Effect Trilogy on Origin... it is 25 euro at the moment. I might wait until Origin has a Winter Sale.

Should I go with the trilogy or just get a specific game?

surfer1890 wrote:

I am thinking about picking up the Mass Effect Trilogy on Origin... it is 25 euro at the moment. I might wait until Origin has a Winter Sale.

Should I go with the trilogy or just get a specific game?

Trilogy.

Even if the ending of the third makes you a bit 'mad,' the overall connected experiences of the three games is kind of the pinnacle of the 'Modern Bioware' experience. And however you may feel about the last game's ENDING, the last game is pretty damn solid too.

Also I think they white-washed the endings via 'correction' patches, to make it less... 'impacting'.

I'm interested to see what they will do in another game. Here's hoping they aren't saving the universe.

Sometimes I think Bioware games could be better with a stronger sense of urgency and if time + quests unfolded like Dead Rising 1 & 2

For example, I'm working on my 2nd playthrough and just got the message that the students at a station were under attack. I know Bioware games, I can do a dozen other missions and they'll be fine and still under attack when I get around to it.

What if they weren't? What if by doing other missions, when I do get to the station I find them all dead? What if I had to pick & choose who I save and deal with the passage of time more realistically?

I love Bioware games and always replay them multiple times but I do think they could be better with a stronger sense of urgency.

RooksGambit wrote:

Sometimes I think Bioware games could be better with a stronger sense of urgency and if time + quests unfolded like Dead Rising 1 & 2

For example, I'm working on my 2nd playthrough and just got the message that the students at a station were under attack. I know Bioware games, I can do a dozen other missions and they'll be fine and still under attack when I get around to it.

What if they weren't? What if by doing other missions, when I do get to the station I find them all dead? What if I had to pick & choose who I save and deal with the passage of time more realistically?

I love Bioware games and always replay them multiple times but I do think they could be better with a stronger sense of urgency.

Fun fact, if you don't do that quest pretty quickly, it WILL disappear, and you will have to face the results of that...

Spoiler:

No students for War Assets, minor but real.
Jack as a Cerberus Agent in the attack of the Illusive Man's base.

And, to be fair, this was true in a very specific mission of two as well...

Spoiler:

The more time you put between the attack on the collector attack on your ship where you play as Joker and going into the relay, the more people from your crew die. If you spend enough time doing side quests after this, it's possible to have everyone, including your good doctor, die and injected into the reaper you fight at the end.

From an immersion point of view, timed missions and their consequences if failed would be a tremendous leg up. But, from a gameplay point of view, I absolutely hate timed missions. Those examples do exist in ME, and I hated them.

Perhaps there's middle ground, and the consequences being just as built up in either scenario would leave a better taste in my mouth. As it is, in the Grissom Academy mission mentioned above, the failure consequence is a name on a monster. There's no effort put into it. If the consequences felt more dire, and just as meaty as if the mission is a success, then I guess I'd be all for it.

I'd like to see my characters react to it, have it be a burden on them, if it applies. But just having a name on a monster is...well, seems lazy. I get that there's only so much one can do with the time and resources given to them, and the number of iterations would be astounding, but IMO, it just hurts the game overall, when within that same game, you can see just how much thought, effort, money, time, and dedication went into every iteration there could be (Tuchanka mission), and then have something like Jack and the Grissom academy be just... blah. Don't have both sides of the spectrum. And if you're gonna have both, try not to have them in the SAME game.

"I'm blowing off my urgent quest to save the world so I can go fetch sandwiches for lazy villagers" is such a common pacing problem in RPGs to be a trope or stereotype. If you've been playing them long enough, it is a reflex to run AWAY from where you should be going with the expectation that there is some reward waiting in a dead-end corridor behind you.

I don't think this is a good thing at all, but it is hardly Bioware in particular. On the other hand, the early promo videos for Mass Effect gave the impression that you would have to make a lot more difficult choices based on time management; so it does make one want to hold the series to a higher standard.

beeporama wrote:

"I'm blowing off my urgent quest to save the world so I can go fetch sandwiches for lazy villagers" is such a common pacing problem in RPGs to be a trope or stereotype. If you've been playing them long enough, it is a reflex to run AWAY from where you should be going with the expectation that there is some reward waiting in a dead-end corridor behind you.

Not only that, but if you run toward the thing you're supposed to be doing, you'll be permanently locked out of side content or additional goodies back in the dead-end corridor.

I don't think this is a good thing at all, but it is hardly Bioware in particular. On the other hand, the early promo videos for Mass Effect gave the impression that you would have to make a lot more difficult choices based on time management; so it does make one want to hold the series to a higher standard.

I've mentioned this before, but I was very disappointed the first time I played Mass Effect and was allowed to pick my quests in any order and faff about the galaxy without consequence. I guess I was expecting a certain degree of weight to my choices; more along the lines of what you'd find in a visual novel. But content in a visual novel is a heck of a lot cheaper to create than in a AAA RPG.

I finally finished ME3 last night.

Spoiler:

I have the extended edition DLC installed, so I avoided the original endings. I also had around 5500 in effective war assets or something. At first, I did the refusal ending, figuring that's what my femshep would've done. That was a little disappointing, but probably the "right" way for her from an RP perspective. Of course, I wasn't going to let that be the end, so I reloaded the mission.

Then I figured out that it was going to force me to sit through the 15 minutes of unskippable talking and stumbling to get to the final choice again, which was annoying. Finally did it, and did the synthesis ending, which seemed pretty decent to me. Everyone lives, but now has freaky green eyes, and Shep dies. So sad.

Ultimately, I had a pretty happy set of outcomes. I went generally renegade with bits of paragon, and ran one character through all three games. Apparently that meant that I was able to accidentally resolve the Quarian/Geth conflict with everyone alive and peaceful. I lost Mordin, but he heroically sacrificed himself, so that was a fitting end. I was pretty shocked to learn later that you could actually make Tali kill herself and be forced to shoot Mordin.

I think my only crew deaths across all the games were Kaiden (good riddance), Mordin, Legion, and Thane (in ME3), so mostly super happy funtimes on my Normandy.

Now I just wish they'd drop the prices on the Citadel and Leviathan DLC. I'd like to play them, but I really don't want to spend $25 on the two of them.

Chaz wrote:

I finally finished ME3 last night.

Spoiler:

I have the extended edition DLC installed, so I avoided the original endings. I also had around 5500 in effective war assets or something. At first, I did the refusal ending, figuring that's what my femshep would've done. That was a little disappointing, but probably the "right" way for her from an RP perspective. Of course, I wasn't going to let that be the end, so I reloaded the mission.

Then I figured out that it was going to force me to sit through the 15 minutes of unskippable talking and stumbling to get to the final choice again, which was annoying. Finally did it, and did the synthesis ending, which seemed pretty decent to me. Everyone lives, but now has freaky green eyes, and Shep dies. So sad.

Ultimately, I had a pretty happy set of outcomes. I went generally renegade with bits of paragon, and ran one character through all three games. Apparently that meant that I was able to accidentally resolve the Quarian/Geth conflict with everyone alive and peaceful. I lost Mordin, but he heroically sacrificed himself, so that was a fitting end. I was pretty shocked to learn later that you could actually make Tali kill herself and be forced to shoot Mordin.

I think my only crew deaths across all the games were Kaiden (good riddance), Mordin, Legion, and Thane (in ME3), so mostly super happy funtimes on my Normandy.

Now I just wish they'd drop the prices on the Citadel and Leviathan DLC. I'd like to play them, but I really don't want to spend $25 on the two of them.

Hold out, but definitely try to get those. Both are very good.

Quick question about Mass Effect Trilogy. I'm wanting to play through this again (at least through 2 and 3 since I think you can do a shortcut for your choices in ME1) and I'm trying to decide whether to get the XBox 360 or PC version. Is the PC version any better? I already own all the DLC for ME2 so I'm thinking 360, but I wasn't sure.

ME1's performance was improved quite a bit when it came to PC. There were lots of issues with blurry textures loading in with ME1. They also revamped the control scheme from the 360 original to be more M&KB friendly. Since you're considering skipping 1 and going to 2 and 3, that might not impact your decision as much. The standard improved graphics, frame rate, resolution, etc all apply to the PC versions over the console ones. If you go PC, you'll have to buy all the DLC again for ME2. There's no "game of the year" edition or bundles that have all the DLC, as far as I know.

The other drawback is that (I may be wrong) if you start with ME2, you're stuck with the default resolution for the plots in ME1.

On PC you can make a custom me1 save to import into 2 very easily.

You people are all monsters for encouraging skipping the best Mass Effect.

beanman101283 wrote:

They also revamped the control scheme from the 360 original to be more M&KB friendly.

A note of caution. They actually completely redid the interface and control scheme for a keyboard and mouse exclusively for all three games on the PC. Meaning playing with a controller isn't even an option unless you resorted to some kind of software like xpadder, and even then it might have issues due to the new control scheme using hotkeys for your powers instead of a radial menu.

That might be a consideration if you were planning on playing the trilogy from your couch.