The only people I can think of by name for ME are Drew Karpyshyn – good as a games writer, not so great as a novelist – Casey Hudson, and Mac Walters, all of which contributed to the Mass Effect trilogy in significant ways.

Karpyshyn, who was he head writer for ME & ME2, recently left BioWare for the second time after working on Anthem for a while. I think he was also involved in developing parts of the Old Republic story/lore, before leaving BioWare behind for the first time in 2012. He was responsible for a lot of the novels set in the ME universe, to varying degrees of success, as well as two TOR companion novels. I remember reading he‘s now a freelancer.

Walters replaced Karpyshyn for ME3 after having relatively little experience in writing, and I‘d be the first to admit that it shows. However, there was also the trouble over the leaked/scrapped Dark Energy ending (not sure about which version is actually true), so I‘m willing to plead mitigating circumstances for him. There were still some very good moments during ME3, after all. He was then involved in ME Andromeda, and I’m definitely not going to give him a pass for that. In retrospect, that story was a mess. His Twitter account has been silent for over a year, and I have no idea what he does now. His bio still lists him as Creative Director for ME:A.

Hudson, of course, was the director for the trilogy, before leaving and returning to BioWare last year as GM, likely to oversee the demise of this once great developer.

 

Karpyshyn wrote like half the class storylines for vanilla TOR, if memory serves, and his involvement with Anthem is what led to my initial hopes for the game. It's too bad everything I've seen since gave the impression he didn't have nearly the creative freedom needed for making that good though.

As for Walters, he's actually not awful. He's not great, but he's better than average, I'd say. ME3 was largely fairly well written; it had some problematic elements (read: the Crucible ex Machina and the ending), and they cast a big shadow, but the rest of the game was at least moderately well written. At worst, it was "decent, for a video game" tier, with some real standout moments (Tuchanka and Palaven spring to mind). And while Andromeda had a lot of flaws, the writing wasn't really one of them. It didn't touch ME1, that's for sure, but very few things do. It was at least on par with ME2, plot wise, and the characters weren't that far off either. Andromeda's big issues were bugs and graphical nonsense, not the writing.

 

I was going to say "nothing really," as the main games I am looking forward to within the next year-ish(Grim Dawn: Forgotten Gods, and Age of Wonders: Planetfall), the latter of which being just recently announced, are, well, already announced. That, and some reasonable curiosity about Borderlands 3, but as mentioned they won't be there anyway.

Ghost of Tsushima looks neat, though, so thank you for bringing that to my attention as I had not seen it yet. Also Cyberpunk 2077, to a degree, but I had heard about it before.

 

new fallout game announced

 

Rumor (and I use that phrase very loosely) is that it's a Rust clone. :< I hope not.

 

There's been one good Fallout game in the last decade, and the folks involved in that aren't touching this one, so I wouldn't get your hopes up.

 

The last Fallout game came out pretty recently, I think I'd be more content if it was an Elder Scrolls game.

 

Same. I barely touched the last fallout. Oh well.

 

I bought Fallout 4 when it first came out and I literally have 5 hours in the game.

 

Screw you haters, I'm fucking EXCITED! Also ready to be slightly disappointed, but fuck it. You live once and all that.

You know what else I'm potentially excited for? They're showing the next update for No Man's Sky as well. Once again, I'm thankful for being easily amused. At this point, I'm just hoping that something else will be as fun as Path of Exile has been for some time now.

 

https://twitter.com/assassinscreed/status/1002331391789617152?s=19

New assassin's creed at e3. Ancient Greece.

 

Now, admittedly, I'm predisposed to hating That One Ubisoft Game: Assassin's Creed Edition, but does that announcement trailer seem way too "try-hard-y", for lack of a better phrase, to anyone else?

It just feels like there's a less on-the-nose way to do it than a lazy reference to a 300 meme.

 

You say that, but if I get to punt a Templar into a bottomless pit in that game, that's an instant buy, lol.

 

It looks about as good as I'd expect from a trailer thrown together in an afternoon after the game was leaked a week before they planned to announce it.

 

Word of warning, before you get too hyped: It's not a "real" Fallout game, in the same vein as 3, New Vegas, and 4. It's an online survival game, ala RUST.

There hasn't been confirmation on that yet, but the news is coming from Schreier, who's basically never wrong when it comes to Bethesda leaks.

 

I won't deny I'm worried about the direction of Bethesda. I'm starting to lose faith in their ability to create games as opposed to being another EA.

 

I doubt they're removing the RPG elements and I'd be surprised if there was no narrative. At that point, how different is it really? The online aspect? I'm sure if you're a Fallout fan, this will probably still be right up your alley.