[PC/PS3/360/WiiU] Mass Effect 3

[Xion Valkyrie]

Originally Posted by LoweGear

No more mining for minerals it seems, which is nice. Also, I love the new Mass Relay animation, much better than in ME2 and even in ME1. Finally, I am wondering what happens if Reapers do catch you on the Galaxy Map.

I hope you lose the game =D

[LoweGear]

Originally Posted by Xion Valkyrie

I hope you lose the game =D

Complete with Normandy getting nommed by Reapers cinematic?

[Xion Valkyrie]

It should be a really dramatic ending with your dudes on your ship fighting as the ship explodes. Like the really bad end for ME2.

Then it should cut to Earth with a refugees hiding in rubble, with mother telling her child that help will come. Reaper shadow then looms over them.

BAD END.

[-Sho-]

Meh no more exploration with vehicle , i liked it in ME1 , exploring different planets.
Probe system is boring(well it's easier now) . Seems like the easiest way win.

[Keroko]

Originally Posted by MeoTwister5

I'm pretty sure I already said that starting in the middle of the saga is something by circumstance and not by choice. Not everyone was there when the story began, and not everyone can start from the starting line. Some have to begin in the middle of the war. Have to, not want to.

Honestly people need to wrap their head around the fact that there will always be people who will end up jumping midway for one reason or another, and this isn't an excuse to exclude them from some way of easing them in. Gaming is supposed to be fun for all and not some exclusive club dividing "teh elitez" from "teh n00bs".

I still don't see how this "forced" you to play ME2 before ME1. Yes, you have less time to play games, but you could easily have chosen to play ME1 over a longer period of time. That you chose to jump into ME2 instead was still your... well, choice.

And while I am aware that there will always be people jumping into the midway (I myself played Ar Tonelico 3 before diving into the first two due to the former simply being easier to find) I don't see how that justifies lowering the narrative quality. To use the aforementioned comparison, one can dive into Return of the King before reading Fellowship and Two Towers, but Return of the King is still the third part of a trilogy and written as such. Anyone who does so knows they're going to be missing context. Does that make the people who read the first two "teh elitez?" No, it just makes them the people who've read the first two parts and are now diving into the last part.

Originally Posted by com_gwp

It's my pleasure to be Mr Obvious and perform this community service.

I just don't get why we must have this same debate when the points are stated so many times before already, same with the Origin/DRM one. Case in point, if you were following BF3, you would remember the HUGE outcry over Origin and what basically amounted to unlocked guns which were presumed to have an edge over the competition but turned out to be pretty damn useless in the end.

Last I heard the outrage did cause EA to make some changes to the BF3 debacle though.

Originally Posted by LoweGear

No more mining for minerals it seems, which is nice. Also, I love the new Mass Relay animation, much better than in ME2 and even in ME1. Finally, I am wondering what happens if Reapers do catch you on the Galaxy Map.

Oooh, good news. I like good news.

Lessee, mineral scanning is gone, and scanning for bonuses is made easier and less time consuming. Not sure what they're planning with fuel though... I hope that system went the way of the dodo and means something different now.

[MeoTwister5]

Originally Posted by Keroko

I still don't see how this "forced" you to play ME2 before ME1. Yes, you have less time to play games, but you could easily have chosen to play ME1 over a longer period of time. That you chose to jump into ME2 instead was still your... well, choice.

And while I am aware that there will always be people jumping into the midway (I myself played Ar Tonelico 3 before diving into the first two due to the former simply being easier to find) I don't see how that justifies lowering the narrative quality. To use the aforementioned comparison, one can dive into Return of the King before reading Fellowship and Two Towers, but Return of the King is still the third part of a trilogy and written as such. Anyone who does so knows they're going to be missing context. Does that make the people who read the first two "teh elitez?" No, it just makes them the people who've read the first two parts and are now diving into the last part.

And that's the problem right here. Does Bioware's attempt to give first time players a sort of semi-intro automatically become a reduction of narrative quality as a foregone conclusion? The game isn't even out yet, we don't even know exactly how this newbie intro is going to go, and people are automatically assuming that this concession to the newbie player is itself a reduction of quality. We have bits and pieces of what it'll be, and I don't expect it to be any sort of perfect at all, but all I see are fragments: until I get to try it out on my own, any and all conclusions I have are premature. Do we know this as a fact, or even as a personal opinion based on experience? No, just an assumption.

And as an extension of my chosen profession, I prefer evidence over assumption. I'll make my conclusion whether the narrative suffers or not when I actually experience it, and not simply a priori.

[Keroko]

That, I agree with.

[BetoJR]

And you guys seem to forget that those on PS3 simply couldn't play ME1. At all.

[MeoTwister5]

It's pretty obvious that the new gamer is going to get the short end of the stick if they choose to jump in at the third game by choice or circumstance, but like I said before, if this allows more people an entry point to appreciate the fight to take earth back, there are sacrifices I'm willing to accept.

How much sacrifices are being made on that end, of course, remains to be seen.

[-Sho-]

This video killed me :

And i agree with this

[Vallen Chaos Valiant]

Originally Posted by BetoJR

And you guys seem to forget that those on PS3 simply couldn't play ME1. At all.

Bioware made the concession by giving them an interactive comic book to play through the first game.

If they did the same thing for ME3 I would not mind. But to write the story assuming most of the players have never played ME2...

It's bizarre. It means Bioware consider fans of the past two games to be the unimportant minority. People they can just ignore, because they can get a bigger group of gamers by pretending there was never a game before ME3.

Hey, they did that once with ME2, by removing most of the RPG elements from the first game. So no reason why they can't do it all over again by abandoning the players of ME2 entirely and just get a new audience all over again in the third.

As others said, who cares as long as they still get paid? Screw the plot. As long as they get money, who cares if it isn't a trilogy any more?

[LoweGear]

Originally Posted by Keroko

Not sure what they're planning with fuel though... I hope that system went the way of the dodo and means something different now.

Unless you can get chased by Reapers in-between systems, and then you get screwed due to lack of fuel. Woops.

[com_gwp]

Originally Posted by Waven

Why won't you let people argue about what they want? Just because as an individual you can't change a specific state doesn't mean you stay quiet and can't talk about it, even if it doesn't have a direct result.

What you're describing, DLC not vanishing anytime soon, may be right but point is you basically told people to shut up about it just because there is no change to be made.

This is a forum so gimme a break...

I didn't know I had the power to stop people from arguing, wow!

I'm not stopping anyone from arguing, everyone has a point to make in a forum, and this is mine. All I want to do is just point out the pointlessness in this argument that's been repeated ever since Bethesda thought selling Horse Armor was a good idea. And you know, actually focus on the discussion of the actual game itself?

Also, so glad I managed to secure a collector's edition through gamestop.ie after preorders were halted throughout the UK. That'll teach me to preorder way ahead next time.

[BetoJR]

Originally Posted by Vallen Chaos Valiant

Bioware made the concession by giving them an interactive comic book to play through the first game.

Yeah, like that could compare with an actual playthrough... Let me tell you right now, it couldn't. But we soldiered on, anyway.

[SoldierOfDarkness]

How do we do missions then if a reaper is in the system? that means there'll be spots where we can't go without being destroyed.

[Nixl]

Originally Posted by killer3000ad

IGN has a review in progress up. http://au.ps3.ign.com/articles/121/1219416p1.html

Ugh, I remember why I stopped using IGN.



That and, the scores are always bloated beyond belief.

[Vallen Chaos Valiant]

Originally Posted by BetoJR

Yeah, like that could compare with an actual playthrough... Let me tell you right now, it couldn't. But we soldiered on, anyway.

My point is that with ME2, Bioware assumed that most of the players would have already played ME1, so for those who haven't, they made a comic book.

But with ME3, Bioware instead assumes that most players never had and never will touch ME2. So they write the entire story assuming that you never played it, and those who want story links with the old game will have to pay an extra ten dollars for the privilege.

Fans of the series were the main customers with ME2. But with ME3, fans of the series are an afterthought. Unimportant.

[SoldierOfDarkness]

That doesn't make any sense.

Why or how could anyone critize a game/movie when it's the third sequel to the original?

You can't go into Return of the King and then be like, "What the hell? Why are there two guys running into a volcano? Why did that ugly looking guy betray him?" OMG this movie sucks and Peter Jackson is an idiot!

Or take Crysis 2 or Call of Duty. Do you need to explain everything from the beginning? Not really.

You don't need to play the first or second game nor does the company need to set it up to the point that you wouldn't have to.

Granted the 3rd game should at least have a narrative or do something to bring any newbies up to speed on what's happening (heck the narrative they give at the beginning IMO is more than enough). If you want the full story there's always comic books and playing the first games.

It just seems more unnecessary work.

[Dhomochevsky]

ehhh.... guys you realize this is just marketing talk?

They figured their established fanbase would buy anyway, so they say things like that to get to the ones who think 'I'd like to play that, but I haven't played the other parts, so maybe I shouldn't...' to buy too.
If you are a fan of the series, you should just ignore marketing campaigns like that.

Besides, if the level of continuation in ME2 was ok for you, then you should not worry. Because that was already zero, basicly. After Shepard being declared dead, all ties were conviniently severed, so even if he met characters from before, there was still a time gap and thus reintroduction. And the storyline was completely standalone too.

[Nixl]

Originally Posted by MeoTwister5

And that's the problem right here. Does Bioware's attempt to give first time players a sort of semi-intro automatically become a reduction of narrative quality as a foregone conclusion? The game isn't even out yet, we don't even know exactly how this newbie intro is going to go, and people are automatically assuming that this concession to the newbie player is itself a reduction of quality. We have bits and pieces of what it'll be, and I don't expect it to be any sort of perfect at all, but all I see are fragments: until I get to try it out on my own, any and all conclusions I have are premature. Do we know this as a fact, or even as a personal opinion based on experience? No, just an assumption.

And as an extension of my chosen profession, I prefer evidence over assumption. I'll make my conclusion whether the narrative suffers or not when I actually experience it, and not simply a priori.

True, it does remain to be seen what they do, but at this point I have very very little faith in them. I think we can agree that there are many ways for Bioware to fill in any potential narrative gap without resorting to changing the actual gameplay or narrative/dialogue.

I will use Blizzard as an example since they also have games that are entering trilogy size or beyond. During the installation of each of their games now is a story prompt titled "The Story So Far." It is basically a narrative summary of what happened in the past. For Starcraft 2 Wings of Liberty Blizzard had a slide show with pictures of all the key characters in the past games and the even the actual text was narrated to the player. Thus, all someone had to do in order to catch up was watch the video and it all took place during the installation of the game, rather than time spent in game explaining everything.

I think that type of catch employed by Blizzard could potentially serve Bioware in this case and allow them to avoid long recaps of everything within the game and/or simplify the story.

To be clear, making the story easier for new gamers is not bad if done well, but I have no faith in Bioware to do anything but a recap or dumbed down dialogue.