I've played through that controversial scene, it's a fairly early side-quest. The game is very good, but I can never find the time to play it, I highly recommend it if you enjoy this genre.

 

To me, honestly, being nearly at the end its been a bit of a letdown. I was holding it up to KOTOR simply because that was Bioware and is still the best RPG out there atm.

It simply feels simplified and incomplete in some parts, like they tried to consoleify it a bit too much. But having said that it's still easily GOTY and by quite a way too. I just set my standard a bit too high.

So it remains that the only game to challenge KOTOR for the RPG crown is Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines. I'd rate Mass Effect as right behind those on my list, but in reality quite a way behind in terms of quality. Still, a must play for any genre fan.

 

Just bought a 360 FOR this game. AWESOME. The combat system sucks to me, but it's possible b/c I'm not used to it yet.

 

Hey guys FYI it has been confirmed for PC sometime in '08. Heres a link to some guys who saw the PC demo being messed with http://www.joystiq.com/2008/02/21/gdc08-mass-effect-pc-demo/.

 

yeah... the game is pretty awesome. Nothing like I thought it would be, but still pwnz. The sidequests are so shitty thought. And everytime I play it, things remind me of KOTOR like major woah. >_>

 

Is it going to be worth replaying?

I went soldier and I'm not totally impressed. The accuracy is really shitty

 

It ... isnt that much different replaying with the other characters. It's a bit harder, I guess, since the Tech powers don't work that spectacularly. Bio ... meh... I didn't really like them that much.

I guess its worth it if you want to play around with the side quests and Para/Ren stuff, but as for the other classes, not really. The sidequests are really lame anyway and no one seems to really care if you're a dickhead or not.

minor spoiler: At the beach, I choose to kill him, and no one really seemed to look twice. >_>

I wasn't really all that impressed. Over-hyped and a let down, I think. But it was still pretty awesome, just for the main quest bits. Good story to it I guess.

 

yeah that's what I liked was the story so far. But I'm not drawn back to it like I get sometimes with FF games. The need to play it just aint there. I'm more content doing the shoutcast content atm

 

Sidequests were shitty, towards the end I had so much buffed up shit I just ran right through everything, Saren included. I got like 43hours out of the game, most of that was planet hopping, and a chunk of it I fell asleep on the Citadel one night.

The combat was repetative as hell, and I had little to no use for the biotic powers playing as a soldier. By the time they actually used the powers, the targets were almost dead. If I had to see one more of the same damned planet building structure I was going to go nuts. And the mountain driving in the Mako sucked ass.

Awesome twist at the end, but the ending made not a whole lot of sense. I felt like it was missing big chunks as well, but nothing I could directly point out.

Spoiler

Shepard says he's not done, that the Reapers are coming, yet the game says the Reapers will stay in black space unless they're called via the Citadel mass relay opening. You keep Soverign from activating it, hopefully you destroy it, so how the hell would the Reapers get here otherwise? Shepard acts like they're going to get there soon and he needs to stop it.
Sleeping with Ashley was amusing, not a big deal like folks made it out to be either.

 

True.

But seriously, in how many games can you run up to someone, pound a shotgun round into their face and watch them disintegrate into slightly-radioactive ash?!

The Mako was fun and I adored the massive worms. Such fun to strafe and fire.

Probably one of the few let-downs was the lack of complexity.

I was hoping for an Elder-Scrolls class of game. Instead you get a...Halo version with just a bit more side quests and etc.

 

In regards to the contents of the spoiler tags...

Spoiler

The way I interpreted it was the Reapers were in power down mode until the Citadel Relay activated and woke them up. You might keep Sovereign from activating it, but you can't destroy it without destroying the Citadel itself which is stated earlier in the game to be nigh on impossible for any armada to do. The whole of the Citadel *is* the relay, just superscaled, and the fact that its been the hub of the entire galactic civilisation for lord knows how long means they can't just up and abandon it - not that they'd want to either considering the power it commands. It makes more sense to me that they'd examine the 'hack' that the Protheans developed and work on developing a way to reproduce it and give them permanent control of the Citadel systems.

In relation to the Reapers, its my belief that they'd have a built in wake up call. "If we've slept for 10 million years without anything happening something has gone wrong, lets wake up and kick ass." If they're the pinnacle of machine evolution it'd make no sense for them to be caught out without any redundancies in place.

As for how they would get here, you have to remember that the first time this all happened the Mass Relays didn't exist - the Reapers had to go around building them. So they DO have the ability to travel without using them, it may just take longer or use a hell of a lot more power to utilise.

Having said all this though, I'm not so certain the second game will focus as heavily on the Reapers. I'm not so sure we'll be controlling Shepherd either.
With humanity now set to step up to the plate and wrench control of the galaxy from the now defunct Council I think Shepherd has a point when he tells us that the other races aren't going to take that lying down. Whilst war with the Reapers is on the cards it seems to me important to remember that after the Citadel battle it will be necessary for balance to be restored and fleets to be rebuilt before any serious attack can be launched to Dark Space - after all, it took an entire Alliance platoon to take down Sovereign with heavy casualties, and the Geth destroyed most of the Citadel fleet.

To me, it would make sense that Mass Effect 2 will focus on civil war between the other species and Humanity as they try to stabilise their grip on power post-battle. Just because the Citadel fleet was decimated doesn't mean they'd have nothing to fight with, and Im sure the Turians in particular wouldn't let power go so easily.
We also have to remember that it is likely the Alliance will not attack through the Citadel Relay when the time comes, rather find another route to Dark Space, after all if they were defeated it would leave the path to the Citadel wide open with the relay active.
With the civil war as the back drop it would make sense to me that whilst Shepherd is following leads with the Normandy regarding said secondary route to dark space you play a character far more heavily involved in the Civil War side of things. I can see ME2 ending with humanity's grip being solidified once and for all and the route found, the Human Council prepping everything they've got to launch the attack.

 

Awesome theory Anubis, something I' dreally love to see in ME2. The only problem with your theory is that it only covers one half of the story. If Shephard had made the call to Alliance Command differently, there wouldn't be anywhere near the level of conflict neccesary for an entire game.

Oh and what about the Rachni?

 

It'd be kickass if you could PLAY a Rachni.

They were an awesome race

Different-race playability would be good, with each side able to either win or lose against others, since it is a stand-alone game and not a MMORPG.

Ya know...it'd be so easy to make porn of the Rachni and humans *Shifty eyes*

Rachni/ Human action!

Or...Rachni/ Krogan!

/shudder

 

Hmmm, I'm not so sure. A lot of characters in the game go out of their way to point out why they don't like humanity. Too abrupt, always pushing aside anyone in their way to get what they want, there will be *some* species and even groups of species that won't be happy with humanity joining the Council (since I'm assuming they at least get one representative on it with the Paragon ending, I have not played that yet).

I could see, even at best, a group of people coming together to try and work aginst Humanity because of the Council's decision. It'd be a smaller conflict, you're right about that though, and probably not enough to solely focus on.

I'm just not entirely sure how BioWare are going to keep people happy here. They've said they want ME2 to flow on from the ME1 ending, with your choices counting. But killing the Council and saving the Council is a drastically different ending, meaning that what happens next for them both should be drastically different too. Not sure how they're going to do it...

I hate the way of some RPGs where you're given a choice in the game then told one way is 'canon' and they're going to build on that. I mean, what was the point of giving us the choice in the first place if you're just going to ignore it? If BioWare don't intend to do that then there'd have to be some kind of internal conflict in ME2, it's just scale that would differ.

As for the Rachni, to be honest with you I'd like to see them left out of ME2. I was somewhat irritated that for an extinct species I met them on what must have been 5 or 6 planets But again, there is another dilemma in this situation since you could choose to kill the Queen or save her. Meaning realistically some players should never see them again whilst some should :/

 

I thought the combat in KOTOR was ok.. but the story and the whole talking thing was crazy for the time. Well crazy for a console at least.

 

KOTOR was win for the fact that it opened up a whole new era of story, and it was many times cooler then the movies. I felt a bit ripped off at the revelation of who Revan was, but it was still a good game.

KOTOR 2 however, was rushed as fuck and had it's soul ripped out, and didnt make sense in a fuckload of spots.

 

KOTOR 2 did get fucked up pretty bad but they had some pretty good ideas in there they just couldn't get them out right. I really liked the expanded level of interactivity with your group and other things in general. I think that if they had taken the project away from Obsidian and left it with Bioware it would have been made the way it had the potential to be

 

For those of you with KOTOR 2 for the PC - TSLRP Restoration Project

Nearly finished, basically restores all of the cut content that was left in the gamefiles. Finally we get proper endings.

In regards to KOTOR in general though, still one of the best RPGs ever made. It set a very high standard for story, characters, and quality. It evolved the RPG from the era of eternal random battles, and meshed combat fluidly into the general gameplay - in other words combat was 'in world' rather than having to be taken into a combat mode of sorts.

A finished KOTOR 2 could have beat it. Maybe, but I guess we'll never know. Fault lies with LucasArts for pushing up the release date to a point where they just couldn't get the game anywhere near finished.

 

Anyone gotten the latest sidequest download for Mass Effect? I heard It sucked if you had already beaten the game, because it was only ever interesting if you did it while around the right level in the storyline.