Mass Effect 3: "Lets milk this for every penny" Edition
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You receive close to double, iirc, the XP from on foot kills vs using the mako anyway so I did all the killing outside of the vehicle. But yeah, I played it the same way except that I ran around killing the thresher maws on foot too.
Because they make the game for the console then just copypaste it to PC in the last month. So they are not gonna bother optimising anything or adding in features.
Alright, I'll be quick so I don't turn this into yet another thread where I argue with the entire board (I do this a lot, don't I?)
Quite frankly, there are only a handful of games that I think excel. The Portal games were hilarious and introduced plot points in an awesome way, doing a great job of the slow reveal of GlaDOS, though at their heart, the games are hollow. Bastion was just marvelous to enjoy, though having that same kind of overly simplistic core, and no real meaningful character development. Psychonauts was also a delight, though Schaffer, despite being awesome, almost always veers to far to childish glee when he could be mining some deeper depths (he's mentioned a number of times how he wanted to be like Kurt Vonnegut, but he emulates him only in terms of inventive humor, and doesn't really come close to the exploration of what it means to be human). The Witcher games have some pretty pedestrian writing, but they manage to elevate it with their ridiculously well thought out integration of choices (that no other game even comes close to). DA:O has the most interesting, well developed videogame character I've ever seen (Morrigan), but the rest of the game is...you know, fine. The Uncharted games are pure delight and ridiculously well-scripted, but they are very, very simplistic--which fits the genre they belong to, but this is sad because they have the space, production values and acting ability to really have gone deeper and done more interesting things.
This makes me sound like a very, very grumpy old man, but I simply think that games can (and should) do better. One of the ways that they need to get their shit together, narrative wise, is by better integrating elements. I don't think that writing is just about dialog, it's also about incorporating the gameplay and visual nature into the larger meaning. Yes, I'm aware of the fact that this is the realm of the designers. I'm not saying that game designers should be writers, but rather the two need to work together, making the narrative truly shine. So few people seem to even think about this, much less integrate it.
We obviously have different tastes, so I won't bother addressing that issue, but I like for things to make narrative sense. If I'm in a hurry to save the universe, I don't have my pilot drop me off two miles away from my destination--I have them drop me right there (especially since he is capable of dropping me into a space the size of a living room). I hate walking/driving in games when I don't have to. I like for things to use shorthand, to cut to the chase. If I need to kill some people, get me to the point in which I have already traveled and I'll kill them. If the Mako missions were interesting, rather than just traveling and then getting out to kill people, that would be something else, but they weren't. It makes no narrative sense for the spec ops person to take leisurely drives around planets, to not get to the destination as fast as possible, to sit around and drive, etc. Games rely on this too much and it is silly and frustrating. I'm already spending 40 hours with the game, why do I have to spend another 5-10 walking/running/driving to where the actual game is? And while to a very, very, very, very small degree it makes sense that there would be the same basic materials, even housing delopments use different models, so why is the entire universe using the same cut and paste base? If it had happened a few times, sure, but it happened over and over and was silly.
Having worked on a few failed mods, I understand pretty decently the difficulties and limitations of trying to write for a game (and it must certainly be said that the writing I did for those was certainly full of its own flaws). This isn't an excuse though. All writing is different. A short story is very different than a novel (and not just in length), a play is very different from either of them and a movie is very different from a play. Each particular medium has its own challenges and opportunities. What is frustrating to me is that most of the problems I have with game writing are the most basic of problems, where the writers have either fallen into the traps of terrible writing or they have completely disengaged from the fact that they are participating in a videogame script and so the writing they do is completely detached from the narrative of gameplay. Red Dead Redemption is an excellent example of this--despite the makers being experienced game developers, they built RDR the game, where you run around doing whatever the hell you want in wildwestville, and RDR the movie, where the character is a completely different person that the way he has been acting throughout.
Quite frankly, there are only a handful of games that I think excel. The Portal games were hilarious and introduced plot points in an awesome way, doing a great job of the slow reveal of GlaDOS, though at their heart, the games are hollow. Bastion was just marvelous to enjoy, though having that same kind of overly simplistic core, and no real meaningful character development. Psychonauts was also a delight, though Schaffer, despite being awesome, almost always veers to far to childish glee when he could be mining some deeper depths (he's mentioned a number of times how he wanted to be like Kurt Vonnegut, but he emulates him only in terms of inventive humor, and doesn't really come close to the exploration of what it means to be human). The Witcher games have some pretty pedestrian writing, but they manage to elevate it with their ridiculously well thought out integration of choices (that no other game even comes close to). DA:O has the most interesting, well developed videogame character I've ever seen (Morrigan), but the rest of the game is...you know, fine. The Uncharted games are pure delight and ridiculously well-scripted, but they are very, very simplistic--which fits the genre they belong to, but this is sad because they have the space, production values and acting ability to really have gone deeper and done more interesting things.
This makes me sound like a very, very grumpy old man, but I simply think that games can (and should) do better. One of the ways that they need to get their shit together, narrative wise, is by better integrating elements. I don't think that writing is just about dialog, it's also about incorporating the gameplay and visual nature into the larger meaning. Yes, I'm aware of the fact that this is the realm of the designers. I'm not saying that game designers should be writers, but rather the two need to work together, making the narrative truly shine. So few people seem to even think about this, much less integrate it.
We obviously have different tastes, so I won't bother addressing that issue, but I like for things to make narrative sense. If I'm in a hurry to save the universe, I don't have my pilot drop me off two miles away from my destination--I have them drop me right there (especially since he is capable of dropping me into a space the size of a living room). I hate walking/driving in games when I don't have to. I like for things to use shorthand, to cut to the chase. If I need to kill some people, get me to the point in which I have already traveled and I'll kill them. If the Mako missions were interesting, rather than just traveling and then getting out to kill people, that would be something else, but they weren't. It makes no narrative sense for the spec ops person to take leisurely drives around planets, to not get to the destination as fast as possible, to sit around and drive, etc. Games rely on this too much and it is silly and frustrating. I'm already spending 40 hours with the game, why do I have to spend another 5-10 walking/running/driving to where the actual game is? And while to a very, very, very, very small degree it makes sense that there would be the same basic materials, even housing delopments use different models, so why is the entire universe using the same cut and paste base? If it had happened a few times, sure, but it happened over and over and was silly.
Having worked on a few failed mods, I understand pretty decently the difficulties and limitations of trying to write for a game (and it must certainly be said that the writing I did for those was certainly full of its own flaws). This isn't an excuse though. All writing is different. A short story is very different than a novel (and not just in length), a play is very different from either of them and a movie is very different from a play. Each particular medium has its own challenges and opportunities. What is frustrating to me is that most of the problems I have with game writing are the most basic of problems, where the writers have either fallen into the traps of terrible writing or they have completely disengaged from the fact that they are participating in a videogame script and so the writing they do is completely detached from the narrative of gameplay. Red Dead Redemption is an excellent example of this--despite the makers being experienced game developers, they built RDR the game, where you run around doing whatever the hell you want in wildwestville, and RDR the movie, where the character is a completely different person that the way he has been acting throughout.
For me, part of that is simply that it's something you would be doing if you were Commander Shepard. Many of my problems with ME2 stem from the fact that you don't just do things that Shepard would do, you do specific things you are told to do in most cases. Like Jacks said, it feels like you are being teleported to the yellow brick road and at the end is a bunch of guys in a shooting gallery.
I really disagree if only for the simple fact that driving around on Novaria, for example, gave you an incredible sense of the scale of the planet. Looking out at a vista you say "wow, that's big." driving around, though, you end up saying "holy crap this place is huge!" I was honestly expecting the driving parts in ME2 to be better with driving through city streets and stuff. I was hoping for more areas like where you drive on the highway (can't remember the level...) but there was nothing like that.
Well there is considering where you are doing the missions. Jacks nailed that one.
Yeah, when you're going to the geth ship on the building, that was pretty cool. Missions like that were interesting. Driving around empty planets. Ugh. About half of the Firewalker missions were interesting, because they were like this. The other half were stupid move from point to point, which was dumb and missed the lessons of the terrible Mako missions.
As for the similar layout: this is a terrible argument. In ME2, you see a bunch of basic, standardized pods here and there, but they are laid out according to the needs of the colony (see the mission you run into Tali, for instance, and when you first fight the collectors--the same kinds of buildings, a different layout). This avoids the lazy, copy+paste buildings, which is visually painful and boring gameplay-wise and it makes no logical sense (because, really, the entire universe and there is only one layout?).
Ummm... this is pretty much how ME was as well. When you're driving up to a satellite relay on an empty planet or a "moon base" or whatever all the other solitary locations were, why would they have anything other than what they had there? I don't remember ANY of them having the exact same layout, but they may have been boring like The Library in Halo simply because the props were all the same and they looked similar and you were in them a lot.
ME2 suffered from this too, just to a lesser extent. There weren't nearly as many side missions on desolate planets and, as far as I recall, none that took place inside anything like a "moon base".
Having written the ingame "story" messages on only one independent game, I can certainly state that there is indeed a bit of detachment involved. The game I wrote for I had not played until it was sitting on a shelf, retail. But the situation, for me, was more technical than anything. I'd write these blocks of several sentences for a message that were about 800 to 900 characters, and then I'd have to cut them down to 350 or something. There was kind of a disconnect there, as I knew what I needed to do and what things I had to mention, but there were limitations on the delivery system.
The experience has given me a lot to think about, writing for games. The reviews I've read that were receptive to the game always seemed to list the storyline as one of the weaker aspects. I have not, to date, read one that states otherwise.
The reason I asked you which games you enjoyed the writing in is because I myself often ask myself the same thing. There is a severe disconnect between the ability of competent game designers to provide good storytelling and the words to fill the blanks. I tend to think it's because there are too many creative hands involved in the same task, and that's not taking into account localization. Some of the most heralded games are loved for just this thing, storytelling, and often have little or no real writing involved (or average, if it's there). And then some games I play and enjoy I can see have very good, thought out writing but the delivery undermines it. I remember walking into Ceasar's camp in Fallout: New Vegas, not completely certain if I was going to hear him out or kill him (because he was perceived to be a tyrant). But I sat, listened, and had a conversation about politics and survivalist ideals and I was very surprised by how researched and put together the character was. I left the tent, destined to leave things neutral with the Legion from that point on in that game, and that was because of good writing matched with a voice actor that got the tone and a scene that worked for the encounter that we had (in other parts of the game people will unravel all their problems suggestively simply if approached and asked about the weather, to keep the questlines rolling).
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Firefly
United Kingdom is not a country.
I still play games for fun too. I'm just sick of all these nickel-and-dime tactics. It's getting really fucking ridiculous, and I'm sorry, but I can't understand how nobody else thinks the same thing.
it's not that we don't agree.
there are simply more important things going on.
like deciding which of the first 2 games was better.
serious business is - as you know - quite serious.
there are simply more important things going on.
like deciding which of the first 2 games was better.
serious business is - as you know - quite serious.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ri0vrJ-y2zM&hd=1
I went out of my way last time to find a CE for ME2. But I can't in good conscience do it in this case. It's absolutely horrible that EA/Bioware would do that. People who have datamined the game have already shown that there are related files included, the CE was announced way in advance to contain a character, and apparently there's even a leaked script that showed up even earlier where that character was mentioned.
Sigh. I'll tell you what's "dead" in gaming: it's getting the full game for what you paid for on release day.
And it's exasperating.
I went out of my way last time to find a CE for ME2. But I can't in good conscience do it in this case. It's absolutely horrible that EA/Bioware would do that. People who have datamined the game have already shown that there are related files included, the CE was announced way in advance to contain a character, and apparently there's even a leaked script that showed up even earlier where that character was mentioned.
Sigh. I'll tell you what's "dead" in gaming: it's getting the full game for what you paid for on release day.
And it's exasperating.
This day one DLC is getting worse and worse. When something is announced as coming with the collector's edition a year in advance and it is a new team member who is such a HUGE part of the plot and lore of the series, you can't hide behind the excuse that it wasn't meant to be in the game. I'm fine with making more armors/guns, of using the time before launch to start on the next projects, but something like this has no place not being part of the main game and it is frustrating to watch happen.
That bugged me with the previous game - you've got to get the DLC for character X. That DLC isn't out yet. Am I supposed to wait six months before I can finish the game, or do I have to play through the entire game again to play the DLC mission?
You guys should be hating on DLC itself, not the content of the DLC. Especially when it's such little content for $10 (that's the real crime). It's completely up to the creators what is a part of the main game and not. If you don't like it, don't buy it, I won't be getting this DLC, or any DLC for ME3, just like I didn't get any for ME2.
I, for one, think any day one DLC is dumb, and I hate DLC in general, I prefer larger expansion packs.
Also, the guy in the youtube video doesn't really have any good points, hes just raging and ranting cause he's butthurt from being banned from the ME forums. And a 25 minute rant just for one short announcement with very little detail? /facepalm
I, for one, think any day one DLC is dumb, and I hate DLC in general, I prefer larger expansion packs.
Also, the guy in the youtube video doesn't really have any good points, hes just raging and ranting cause he's butthurt from being banned from the ME forums. And a 25 minute rant just for one short announcement with very little detail? /facepalm
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Have you watched any of his other videos? He makes really damn good points and is a pretty well respected member of the PC community.
I don't mind DLC when it is priced properly and is either a self contained story or does not affect the story or outcome of the main game. The Borderlands DLC are a good example of this, though they were probably not all priced properly when they were released.
Unfortunately, Bioware/EA don't get this. There is a huge market of people who aren't going to buy your stupid DLC when it is $15 for a single character mission in ME2 and the price literally never goes down. They are also obviously intent on milking every penny they can possibly find out of this series and I've just had enough. There are dozens of other great games I can support that don't do stupid crap like this on every freaking game they release. Talk to me again when there is an ME compendium with all the DLC and you don't have to install five 1-1.5gb separate packages just to get the whole game.
The length is uhhhhhhh.... but his point is fine. Dragonfliet nailed it above when he said that having day one DLC that comes free with one edition of the game and also is pretty central to the theme and plot of the entire series is just really bad form. It's underhanded and should simply not be done. Also, ambershee's point, too, if the DLC cannot be completed after you've finished the main game, it is stupid. I shouldn't have to do another 22 hour playthrough of ME2 just to play the Kasumi mission and have her in the final mission. Same for Liara. It reeks of either poor planning or greed... or both.