Since I'm pretty certain that ME3 will be shit, I had few qualms about reading the leaked scripts and all kinds of delicious spoilers. Few random thoughts about the game, without any spoilers.



First point - retcons, retcons everywhere! Seriously, they're retconning the retcons from ME2. How's that for quality writing?


2nd point - maybe it's just beta version of the script (...hah, as if!), but there are many, MANY inconsistent situations around. And you know how it is - once you find a few glaring holes, then you're starting to look for more and pick up smaller things along the way that you wouldn't normally notice. Sure, they've fucked up here and there from the beginning, but it makes it no less annoying.


3rd point - some mechanics are quite... strange. For example, you finish one quest by scanning some planet, even though it has very little to do with gathering any informations etc. It's yet to be seen if it will be only a minor annoyance tho.


4th point - endings. Not to spoil anything, so I'll just say that it seems adorable how Bioware spits in the face of the people wanting to ride into the sunset with their love interest of choice, and reapers turn out to be more than another generic enemy to be defeated at the cost of some random lackeys meaning nothing in the grand scheme. Even though they don't seem to make much sense, it's better than any feel-good bullshit I thought they would come up with.


5th point - story. Plotholes everywhere, but there are some things that appear to be genuinely good (we are given, for example, the reason as to why the Reapers bother with organics at all, and it's arguably a sound one). Shame that they need to pull some things out of their ass that ruins the experience somewhat, but there are bits of pieces that are good.
At least if anyone is interested to give it a spin on their own with a fanfic or so, they should get some decent bits here and there to incorporate into their stories.

Problem is, your choices from all games mean apparently fuck-all, just as it was from ME1>ME2, and the fact that all of your teammates could die in ME2 makes for a rather shitty band of permanent buddies you have. While the fact that there was a wide range of things that was possible to change in the game (such as saving the council or making it a human one), ultimately it seems to make the game worse instead of better, as it's quite constraining.


6th point - Jesus fuck, this game looks genuinely worse than ME1 (at least in demo, but I'm reasonably certain that it would be the same in the full game), IMO plays worse (RPG vs. boring Gears of War), has stupid mechanics such as binding few different functions to the same key on PC (which took all of 3 days to change by one guy with a small mod - yet, they couldn't be fucked to do this on their own?). In short, it's another console-game-into-2.0-PC-abortion that seem to become the norm lately.


Also, what in the fuck happened to Ashley, I'll never know. It seems that they hope than some random T&A will bump the sales...
Well, in turn I hope than they die in a fire.



Meh, I guess it will be a similar experience to ME2. While not necessarily bad, it's nothing really good either, especially compared to the great first chapter of the trilogy.

 

Chengar, Red Aviary: Cool ideas. Only problem is that Saren canonically HATES humans. He deliberately sabotaged Anderson's chance at becoming the first human Spectre simply because he was human. Fat chance of him willingly working with/alongside a human, let alone actually recommending them for the Spectres or becoming a love interest. You'd better have a damn good reason for his complete change of heart if you go with that arc.

 

Saren hates humans in canon, but in the type of AU they propose that would be irrelevant. I think just making Saren a bigot is kind of a cop out; in an expanded story like that, we would see a much closer look at Saren's motivations, and the respect Saren develops for Shepard in canon would be quite feasible in an AU where they start out on the same side.

 

It's not irrelevant - his bigotry and skill as a Spectre are his two defining characteristics leading into ME1. Unless you scrap the whole backstory between Saren and Anderson (And why would you do that? It's one of the few pre-game character interactions we hear about.) Saren has to at least start out as a bigot. If you take away that backstory, he just becomes a generic OC - you could just as easily make up another Turian Spectre and have him fill the exact same role.

I'm not saying that he can't change, just that I think it would take a pretty powerful event to completely reverse his opinion. And it would have to happen fairly early in their association - if forced to work with another human by the council, he would no doubt at least try to pull what he did to Anderson. Two possibilities I could see would be that Shepard saves his life when it wasn't necessary to complete the mission (one single shocking event that could at least start his views changing) or Shepard somehow manages to defeat all his attempts at sabotage (grudging respect, possibly leading to friendship). They aren't necessarily hard to think up or too challenging to write, but they could still be powerful events for Saren's character.

I agree that there is a lot more that you can do with Saren outside the bounds of the game, but you have to have a starting point, and Saren's bigotry is a well-established part of his character.

 

What you suggested is actually what I meant, I think I just phrased it poorly. In canon, Saren just kind of shows up, Anderson tells you he hates humans, and you just have to accept it. In an AU where Shepard actually works with Saren, rather than just meeting him in hostile situations, there's plenty of opportunity to hear the story behind it and see some real character development.

 

Normandy is investigating the missing colonies. Anderson sends Shepard down to a planet where he discovers evidence that the Collectors are behind the disappearances. They present that evidence to the Council, who assign Saren to investigate further. Saren demands the Normandy, insisting he needs the stealth systems, but Anderson gives him the finger and promises there's no way in hell Saren is getting hold of his ship without an epic shitstorm being kicked up by the Alliance. One diplomatic negotiation sidequest later, it's decided that Anderson is out because his history with Saren makes it impossible for them to work together, but to keep the Alliance sweet the Normandy keeps it's human crew with Shepard as captain. Saren is beyond pissed he has to work with humans again, but goes along with it just so he can sabotage the mission and fuck with Shepard - just like he did to Anderson.

Over the course of the game/story Saren butts heads with Shepard constantly and there's plenty of tension about exactly when and how he's going to screw Shepard over. Finally it gets down to the suicide mission in the Collector base, where Saren ends up alone with Shepard. The Reapers' plan to harvest the galaxy is revealed and Saren is presented with the perfect opportunity to leave Shepard to die. Instead he saves Shepard - the Reapers are the important thing and he hopes that the Council will be more willing to believe two people telling them about how civilization is doomed. The Council doesn't believe them of course, they're happy to dismiss the Reapers as a Collector myth. So Saren is forced to begrudgingly recommend Shepard for Spectre status. He knows he'll need powerful allies to fight the Reapers and, despite being a human, Shepard is the only other person alive who really believes that they exist.

Boom. Shepard gets to be a Spectre for ME2 (it really doesn't matter for ME1) and Saren is established while keeping his original racist character mostly intact. ME2 can then open with the Eden Prime mission a year or two later, Saren having disappeared shortly after ME1 to follow his own leads and get mindfucked by Sovereign.

 

Well, it does bear mentioning that our main source of info on Saren's anti-human beliefs is Anderson. Anderson's a very cool guy, but he's not exactly unbiased when it comes to Saren.

Might be worth mentioning that one of the tie-in novels is about what happened between Anderson and Saren. From what I recall of the book, Saren doesn't come off as a flaming KKK-style racist so much as just very pissed off that Anderson/the Alliance is getting in his way.

 

He lost a brother (I think?) in the First Contact War between humans and turians. He's absolutely a racist dick, but it's not like he doesn't have a reason to be a racist dick.

 

Launch Trailer

 

Well at least it will look pretty.

As for the Saren discussion, I was planning on an alternate First Contact situation. I'm not sure that Saren losing his brother will even happen if that's the case. I see Saren's primary attribute being his ruthlessness, not his bigotry, and that's what I would be focusing on.

 

That sounds great to me. I was never entirely convinced that he was a bigot in the first place-we only have Anderson's word for it, and as someone else said he's not an impartial source. (Though I hadn't read the things written outside of the games, which sound like they do confirm his bigotry).

If you did write this, what type of Shepard would you be writing?

 

If I'm sure about anything, it's that I'm carrying over my main Shepard from the games. So, female with a mostly Paragon outlook, but with a Renegade streak that comes out under the right circumstances. Colonist/Ruthless background: my personal fluff for role-playing purposes is that her motivation is preventing atrocities like on Mindoir, but what happened on Torfan and what it cost taught her that being a no-holds-barred Renegade in pursuit of that goal isn't the way to do things.

A relationship with Saren isn't in the cards. I'd never even considered it before Chengar brought it up, though I can't deny that it's an interesting angle. My game-Shepard romanced Liara. That'll probably carry over too, but I haven't thought far enough ahead for exactly how I'll incorporate her yet.

... I was going to wait until I had thoroughly played ME3 to start work on this, but the discussion in this thread has gotten me in the mood and I'm starting to write a more solid outline for it. Problem is, I'm fairly certain that I'm going to do the Code Geass rewrite after all. I've had that on the backburner for a while, and I think combining all these ideas would be interesting. Since a lot of elements in this Mass Effect AU will rely on the Code Geass rewrite, I'll have to do that first.

It's been five or six years since I've really been committed to writing anything. Hopefully putting all this out here will make me less inclined to drop the idea as I've done with many others. >_>

 

Activated my Origin copy early using a VPN to get a Hong Kong IP. EA/Bioware's not said anything yet, and I've been playing for about 2.5 hours.

The initial tutorial level kind of disappointed me- it was exactly like it was in the demo minus a few cut scenes. But after that? Lip syncing is spot on, especially for supporting characters like Hackett and Liara (I've not met many others yet), music's superb, cut scenes transition naturally into combat, and the general all-around polish is pretty great. Loading times are short as fuck, animation's pretty awesome (excepting the tutorial level), and gameplay in general's been polished up very well.

I would like to note that Bioware appears to have concentrated on making this game as cinematic as possible without sacrificing any of the gameplay. There's a whole bunch of semi-cinematic cut scenes, and they work pretty damn well in terms of conveying Shepard's emotions, as well as characterization in general.

It may be because I'm playing from a ME2 savefile (level 30 cap reached - tons of talent points), but powers are pretty fucking awesome. The new loadout system works exceptionally well- if you load up more weapons (or heavier weapons), your power recharge time goes down. The lighter you're armed, the faster your recharge time gets (you get bonus recharge speed too).

The Citadel is pretty fucking beautiful. Less linear level construction plus a greater view of the surrounding environment (you get to see much more of the Presidium than you could before). They've also implemented different movement animations for Shepard between combat and explorative modes, and the stamina element of gameplay's been eliminated.

All in all, it's pretty damn fun.

In other news, I was able to turn the Origin overlay off while playing, and I'm happy to report that ME3 appears to be compatible with the Steam overlay.

If you're interested:

1. Add Origin to Steam Library as a non-Steam game. Launch it from Steam.
2. Go into Settings in Origin and turn off the Origin overlay- it'll just run in the background doing nothing.
3. Add ME3 to the Steam Library, launch.
4. Screenshots! Pretty pretty screenshots!
5. ???
6. SCREENSHOTS.



D'aw Liara <3

---------- Post automerged at 04:37 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:41 AM ----------

Pardon the doublepost.

Ran into my first bug playing the From Ashes DLC.

There's a spot in the DLC mission where you have to retrieve two pieces of data, and while one of them works fine (each one forces you through a pretty awesome cutscene), one of them featuring:

Spoiler

The Prothean's personal history, fighting a bunch of Collectors as they swarm their planet of Eden Prime, getting to the stasis pods.

After this cutscene, the game seems to freeze as it returns to normal combat view. Anybody else experiencing the same problem? I've got Liara and Vega on my team ATM.

 

I just finished downloading and figured I might as well use a proxy, as it doesn't come out here for a few days yet. I'm on the second mission at the moment, and it isn't bad. I'll go into further detail when I've played more, but so far it's just been pretty similar to ME2. The new weapon system confused me at the beginning, but I like it quite a bit.

Also Lutris, how do you know whether the DLC is installed or not? I bought the Digital Deluxe version, but I can't figure out if the DLC is already installed or I have to download it. Going to the DLC option in the main menu just tells me that I've purchased it.

If I get the DLC working though I'll let you know if I run into the same bug.

 

Every second that I play this piece of shit is painful.

It had fucking better improve soon. I'm playing a god fucking damn cinematic.

I actually had to go into options to make sure that the combat mode wasn't selected by mistake. Fucking railroaded through the entire fucking thing. Out of 10 minutes of dialogue from Shepard, I'll maybe get to pick one thing he says. Out of two options.

And Vega is so fucking annoying that I've already pledged to not do his loyalty mission(or the ME3 equivalent), because I want that fucker dead.

I hope to god that this improves.

Edit:

There... isn't words.

I'm playing a cinematic with shooter sections.

Entire sections of important dialogue will go through with the only input I get to give is when the NPCs directly ask Shepard a question. And all the fucking answers are the same. I only get to pick the tone of his voice... Asshole voice or not an asshole voice.

Edit2:

I can't play this any more. It's just depressing. I spent the entire week just playing Mass Effect One and Two. Whatever your opinion on either, they're so far beyond this it's unreal. I am honestly depressed.

 

Since I'll be playing on Xbox, this is pretty useless to me, but Alienware is giving away a free in-game sniper rifle for PC.

Link

 

I'll be waiting for more opinions on this before I decide to break the Black March vigil and buy this. Before, I was almost certain I would, but response has been negative enough to push me onto the fence.

And I want so hard to believe it's not so. What happened, Bioware? Is EA really that bad?

 

Hey Iztiak, Are you playing Action, RPG or Story Mode?

 

I fucking thought "Oh no, this can't be how the game is, maybe it's on action mode by mistake..."

No. It wasn't. I even put it on story mode so I could blast through the combat(To be honest I don't give a flying fuck how the combat works) and see if the dialogue ever starts to give you a choice.

(Not an actual conversation, but may bear resemblance to several.)

Shepard: Oh hello Ash, how are you doing?
Shepard: Ah, that's interesting, you feeling any better?
Shepard: Good to hear it Ashley. I've been worried about you.
Shepard: Here, I got this for you, I hope you like it.
Shepard: Insert X more random shepard lines.
THEN I get to make a conversation choice
A"I'll be here if you need anything Ash"
B" You need to rely on yourself"
Shepard goes and says goodbye, exits convo, game railroads you into a conversation in an entirely different area that you get to sit and watch, hoping eventually you'll have some say in what happens.

I could have handled anything else. But fucking why did they have to do this to the dialogue...

Wrote this a few hours ago. Still stands, but the game has improved since then. Quite a bit, I'm not going to stalk and kill Bioware employees as originally planned. Conversations are still a bit shitty, but better. But goddamn, still have no idea why they changed it.

 

I'm currently wondering if I should cancel my pre-order and either pirate the shit out of this game or just wait till a friend beats it and get it from him for PS3.

Because it's EA and they want their target audience - i.e. CoD consoletards who doesn't understand written word - to play this game and not be confused by many choices. Or they are just lazy, because they thought that no matter what a shit load of people would buy their game.