By John Walker on December 4th, 2008 at 5:58 pm.
For the second game of Christmas my true blog gave to me… well, you’ll have to click on to find out.
It’s Mass Effect!
I never got on with the downloadable content for Mass Effect. For a storywhore like me, Mass Effect gave me both a large, established history to investigate, and within it, something self-contained with a beginning, middle and end. While the universe was left with vast, unanswered questions, for Shepherd and her gang there was closure. My cast of characters had achieved their goals, and it was time for a slap-up tea and high fives all round. Why on Earth would I want to go back in time – with them in particular – and delay their success?
The combat was an interesting departure for Bioware, almost getting into a third-person action place, which of course gave me cause to worry it wouldn’t be delivering what I want from their RPGs: big old conversations with my companions, and on-the-spot ethical dilemmas. But of course they were there in force. (And often as daft as usual). And I came to quite enjoy the fights, and most of all, bouncing around planets in that spacecar.
So while you were always pursuing rogue Spectre, Saren Arterius, and attempting to fathom the mystery of the Geth, the real story was one that had happened in the past. An elaborate recent history of the colonisation of space, and the Human’s latter involvement, as well as a far greater story that’s only hinted at throughout, about the very nature of conscious existence in the galaxies. These levels of magnification mean that Shepherd’s story, while of course vital the continued survival of almost every species, seems almost quite minor. But it’s still your story, and I think the role you play only feels more meaningful for its being set within the larger framework.
The scale allows a sense of tragedy to permeate throughout, and never more so than when you discover the Prothean’s underground preservation chambers, intended to save them from the Reaper attacks. But of course all that remains is an AI, long ago having had to turn off the cryogenics to keep itself running. Death is everywhere, and has been happening for an awfully long time. It offers perspective.
If there was one aspect I’d like to have seen explored more – and in fairness, it was explored quite a lot – it would be Humanity’s fledgling role in the universe. Obviously we join the story after the most momentous events, when Humans discovered Mass Effect capabilities and learned they were not alone in the universe. This is such an interesting time as Humans shift from top predator to bottom of the pile, and the game prods at it, most notably with the pursuit of a seat on the Council, but I’d love to have seen it take it further. Human arrogance is talked about, and as a species they’re already not liked by other “minor” races for even being considered for a Council position so soon. But I’d have liked to feel the effects of this a bit more. See what consequences it had had on Earth’s politics, what extremist fractions had occurred (beyond experiencing racism), whether it had dramatically affected the Human psyche.
I’d love to play a prequel set during the earlier times of transition. In fact, if Bioware want to give me a job I’ve got a few pitches… But in the meantime, Mass Effect was a real highlight of 2008 for me. I think Shepherd’s specific tale perhaps felt slightly trivial (despite the implied impact) within such a fascinating context, and perhaps this was in part because of its non-linear paths and side-quests, which let me muddy the story as it progressed. It became hard to differentiate clearing out a bunker on a remote planet for the sake of finding some ancient runes, or doing the same for the sake of the main plot. But I’m left with memories of a rich story, and the part I played in it. I remember Shepherd and her relationships. I remember saving the universe.
Kieron: John’s pretty much nailed the appeal of Mass Effect really. In fact, more than anything else, it’s Mass Effect which allows me to stay hopeful for Dragon Age despite its somewhat iffy I-am-in-armour-i-am-the-armour-man-+3 aesthetics. Mass Effect felt like a lived in, well designed and relatively novel Science Fiction universe. Most videogame fictions don’t really have the sense they could support anything other than random shooting of other characters. Mass Effect did. I have no idea what the Mass Effect novels are like, but there’s no reason why they won’t be good. I’m actually surprised there isn’t a tie in comic – and I dare say there will be when the second part comes out. And it’s one of the games that’s been licensed for film which abstractly could work.
(Er… that “It will be a comic” isn’t me pitching for work, by the way.)
It was nice to see DEATH WORM have a cameo in Mass Effect.
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I defy developers to think of a game where a DEATH WORM cameo would not improve their game in every way possible.
I don’t think such a hypothetical game exists.
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Good to see some Mass Effect love, I muchly enjoyed it but only ever tend to see people complaining about it. I’m especially interested in how future games in the series will reflect some of the larger choices you made in the first game.
MINOR SPOILERS
I chose to save the council, although having seen the paragon dead-council ending, I do wonder if I made the right decision. A replacement government consisting of all races is vastly preferable (in my mind) to the council, and I’m hoping that I’ll see the human presence on the council prompt it being opened up to other species.
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Now you mention it, yes, the real star of Mass Effect is the universe/setting the human race is placed in and its interactions with the other races, rather than the main story which I felt was a tad, err, lacking somehow.
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Mass Effect is a stellar game, though I did find it a bit less of an RPG and more of an action game than I had hoped. Still, probably the best game I’ve played this year, and definitely the one with the best production values and coherent style.
For anyone who has yet to play it: pick a female character. Her voice-acting is infinitely better.
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DEATH WORM is could make an awesome additional boss for L4D, if that game could be made any more awesome.
Mass Effect? Meh.
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Mass Effect really rubbed me up the wrong way. The writing was relatively good (by videogame standards) and you had to admire the way they’d constructed the fictional universe. But it was also a bit too formulaic, and if you’ve been exposed to enough Space Opera, the last thing you want is another Babylon 5. Which is unfair really, given all the fantasy stuff is the same, but still…
I’m sure I would have liked it if there was more characterisation, but I felt that’s where it fell down. The companions bored the arse off me. Tali was an exposition dump. Monacle-boy flip-floppped at the slightest rebuke. Blue girl was the traditional white-mage romance sap. Baron Greenback had no reason to join you in the first place. Princess Pogrom was the only one that didn’t feel completely lazy. God bless her bigotry.
And the planets were poor. The same geography in different colours, with identikit buildings and scavenger hunts that inexplicably required the same button mini-games.
The biggest problem was probably that I chose Man-Shepard though. And Man-Shepard is a complete tool.
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Yes, but does it make your Mass Erect?
(sorry, ZP made me doo eet!)
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You’re nuts, we all need MORE B5!
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Man Shepard is awesome. I have no idea why so many critics played up the female version, not that she isn’t good, it’s just that the guy is too.
Just justifying their own gender bending perversions I guess.
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Mass Effect and Left 4 Dead are the only games that have met (and exceeded) my expectations this year. Maybe my expectations are too high, but everything else this year has been a major disappointment, most notably Clear Sky and Far Cry 2. Boo hoo!
Good read as ever :)!
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I’m not exactly B5′s number one fan, but I was also a bit surprised by the notion that we shouldn’t want more of its type. Intelligent, adult science fiction in a universe where everything isn’t made better with a magic button? Yes please!
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More Babylon 5!!!
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=CWtuKm6C1Sw
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I did love Mass Effect’s “humanity are at the bottom for a change” idea as a counterpoint to stuff like Star Trek, where the entire galaxy is apparently sitting around waiting for humans to get off Earth and unite everyone.
But it then proceeded to fall into the same cliche with – yes, a human saving the galaxy and getting a seat on the Council which even I thought was unfair to all the other, less glamorous species slogging away in the background.
I’d have preferred it if at least some of the aliens were all “Huh? What are you guys? …Humans? Earth? Never heard of it.”
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I enjoyed Mass Effect, but while the main quest was awesome, the rest of the game seemed boring and undeveloped.
The main quest had awesome looking planets and exciting story, while side quests basically had the same planet in different colours, and all the buildings seemed to have the same layouts too.
I thought items where done well. It was difficult to find really good items. You got the occasional kick-ass gun etc, but the good stuff was in shops for lots of $$$. Just how it should be
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Now, what people never talk about is the soundtrack. Mass Effect’s OST is awe-inspiringly beautiful and I pretty much have had it on loop since the summer.
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They are good. At least in my opinion. From story perspective, they are better than the games at least.Compared to e.g. Isaac Asimov novels they fall short, but not very far. Karpyshyn is a fairly good author me thinks.
Anyway, I think they should make a hybrid racer/orienteering game with that spacecar driving around planets. Would be lots of fun.
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I really don’t get all the love for a game that is 90% percent filler, and really bad, repetitive filler, at that. Really, the only thing in the game I commend, compared to recent Bioware titles. is the combat, but having better combat than JE or KOTOR isn’t exactly a feat in game design.
Also, the dialogue in Mass Effect can get pretty atrocious, with almost all the dialogue options being “tell me about it”. Also, the development of party NPCs is still nothing but a bad metagame that detaches the player from the characters. The morality system is again the same good vs bully schtick from all the previous games, only now with character animations.
Don’t get me wrong, Mass Effect is very much a competent game (well, the main quest is), but I’m really sick of Bioware getting acclaim for failing to improve on their game formula after 10 years. They’re essentially Squaresoft, these days
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Intelligent, adult science fiction indeed. And it would have made for a great TV series.
You seem to have forgotten to talk about why it was a good game though.
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I loved the game, but there was a lot of cookie-cutter generic filler content.
I don’t understand why when it looked like the generic interiors such as space-ships, caves, etc. looked like they’d been made out of pre-fab sections that they didn’t actually make any different layouts out of those sections, like they do in Oblivion & Fallout 3. Instead every space ship or other interior was exactly the same layout except for strategically placed crates. A massive missed opportunity.
And of course the obligatory DRM reference: wheres our de-authorisation tool, EA? You’ve given one for red-alert, but Mass Effect was the first game to use the new activation system, so why haven’t we got a way to de-activate the game yet?
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For those who didn’t recognise her, Woman-Shepherd was Bastila from Knights of the Old Republic of course (and tons of other stuff), and apparently Bastila and default Woman-Shepherd are based on her, so be nice.
Also, Drew Karpyshyn was of course the writer of the KOTOR stuff which became Star Wars canon, and he’s the one filling in the blanks in the back story with the Darth Bane novels, which I have to say have been very good so far.
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So, what about the rest? Surely it deserves some mention, because it is a good story and it is an interesting universe. But the quests are average and the combat was poo. So, you know. One of the twelve? Ahma not so sure.
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Favourtie gaming moment of the last 12 months: the intro voice-over in mass effect, Lance Frikkin’ Henriksen giving it “Maybe she/he’s the one”.
Hell. Yeah.
(Special mention to Soverign who was an awesome villain)
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Have there been 12 games ever that you like, MC?
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That voice-over would have been laughed out of any movie theater.
“Is that the kind of person we want protecting the galaxy?
That’s the only kind of person who can protect the galaxy!”
And that’s when my forehead hit my desk.
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While I sympathise a bit with comments about poo combat, don’t a lot of RPGs fall down on this point? The combat in KOTOR (for example) was pretty poor when you think back on it.
And I was being dumb earlier. Babylon 5 was pretty smart all in all, and it’s not a good comparison point. But I struggle to articulate why I found ME so bland. Maybe it was the ancient returning evil cycle-of-civilization shtick. I don’t know.
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Oi, Badger. That’s harsh.
I thought Mass Effect was excellent because of its story and setting. That I wouldn’t place it in my top twelve (because of mediocre quests and bad combat) clearly implies that I have *at least* twelve games this year I liked more, surely?
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I don’t think we need more B5. IMHO it was just as hamstrung by its PG13 production as is mostly every other tea-time scifi serial, and like some of the worst of those (which I suspect took their cues from B5) it turns into a horrible mess by struggling to explore adult issues within the strictures of a PG13 moral universe. Its a whole other thing, but relevant to storytelling in games too I think. But not really what I meant to talk about…
Uh…
Mass Effect, oh yes. I nearly ragequit (thanks for that one forumguy!) for good after tiring of all the interminable lifts, funny combat and frankly dreadful vehicle sequences, but somehow I stuck with it and was rewarded with a game that for me came closer to being a truly involving interactive story as anything I have played in a decade. It might have been illusory, but I really did feel at times like the game was allowing me to tell the kind of story that I wanted to tell, and that it was reading my directorial intent from the many and varied dialogue choices. Obviously it wasn’t a perfect fit, and I felt much maligned by the ending the game served up to me, but otherwise I was pretty impressed.
EDIT: I picked WOman-Shepard (and made her look like a better version of an ex-girlfriend), skipped almost all of the sidequests and cracked the hell out of the game. If I hadn’t done these things I may have enjoyed it significantly less!
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I’ve long ago lost hope that there’d be sequels to Mass Effect in the foreseeable future. Before Mass Effect came out, there was talk about it being a trilogy that would occur during one console generation. Since it came out, I haven’t heard one word about a sequel.
It’s even more damning how few of the original voice actors seemed to be involved in that extra mission(the DLC with the Batarians and such). None of your companions say a word, the pilot doesn’t say a word, the senate is mute, you don’t hear from anyone in the Earth military. Instead you get a never-before-heard narrator in the form of the ship’s computer feeding you some basic information, and off you go into some (nicely) new content.
It seems to me that if they were really intending to make a sequel anytime soon, they’d have had ample reason to bring the voice actors back in. Even if the old companions wouldn’t join you in the next game, you’d think they’d at least get a decent cameo.
Of course that’s all very circumstantial, for all I know they could’ve been planning a brand new cast for each game in the series right from the start. But nothing could adequately explain why there’s been no marketing, other than the very obvious concept that Bioware’s working on Dragon Age right now and (thankfully) they aren’t letting some other studio at EA pick up the slack.
Which leads the other way, to the easy angry internet man assumption that Bioware’s old games were too much content for too little gain, and that from now on thanks to their new ownership by EA, to put it mildly, the studio will not make any more big-budget roleplaying games. Given a long and proven track record for taking brilliant studios and turning them into crappy studios, much worse could be inferred. I suppose in the near future, Dragon Age is the only thing that’s going to give us some idea of Bioware’s new trajectory.
I’ve heard gamers who’ve been around a long time and once wrote off EA saying that the company’s taken a better direction lately, but I’m unconvinced. I’m not sure why anyone thinks that publisher is actually trying to foster good games. I think they prefer to lower our expectations by making every game they publish at least a /little/ crappy, and augmented by the fact that making a good game is really, really hard, they usually end up with a game that’s /really/ crappy.
I look at every game in my house with ‘EA’ stamped on the end and I see more and more proof with every case. In my heart of hearts, I feel Bioware’s new corporate overlords are a cancer that will rob them of all function and identity, that EA will use the goodwill that studio has earned from their customers to sell an increasingly stinkier pile of shovelware onto them.
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Anyone who found the combat lacking was obviously using insufficient numbers of SHOTGUN ROCKETS.
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Pidesco: yah boo sucks, I thought it was great.
Meat: sorry, dude. You just come across as a glass half-empty kinda guy. No offence meant, head being pulled back now ;-)
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I liked Mass Effect a lot, but the criticisms of the ‘cookie cutter’ side maps is a very valid one. ME gets extra marks from me for naming one of the characters ‘Steve Hackett’, tho’!
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Yes, sci-fi in film has never really lived up to sci-fi on paper. Not sure why – there are plenty of great sci-fi films, but in terms of concept they’re not quite as adventurous. I mean, compare BSG to Dune. Sure, BSG is based on a tacky 70s show and so has much of its baggage to carry, but the society is basically America in space but with paganism, compared to Dune’s fantastically detailed feudalistic technophobic society. I’m not saying that every show should go to as much trouble as Tolkein or Frank Herbert in making a universe (but then again, why the hell not if you have a multimillion dollar budget?) but I’ve generally been disappointed by film sci-fi – for one thing, most sci-fi shows generally seem quite scared of the whole ‘science’ thing.
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I must be the only person who thought the combat was mostly really good, for a first/third person RPG. I mean, look at Oblivion for God’s sake. And I was definitely a sucker for the facial animations (no cold, dead eyes, for once!). But, yeah, the sidequests were unbelievably disappointing. I remember seeing the first footage of the Mako landing on a planet and driving about and thinking: “Wow, and there are dozens of these worlds! How are they going to manage that?” About an hour after leaving the space station, I realised how.
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@Gap Gen
I hear you! Even when scifi manages to spawn a character or two who isn’t just an American (although to be fair a lot of ST often seems quite British) in space the show usually then becomes overly concerned with them becoming more human. Aliens which have no interest in learning how to love are generally the bad guys. And even then you get stuff like the ridiculous soap opera BSG’s supposedly inscrutable killing machines get caught up in.
Re. spelling scifi with a capital ‘Science’. I’d love it if it were possible, but even in literature hard sci-fi sells so poorly its madness to think you could make a TV serial or a feature film where maths, geometry and real quantum mechanics get pushed to the forefront. Scifi barely acknowledges relativistic effects (Gunbuster ftw!), so I think it will be a while before it catches up with modern science, let alone gets to a point where it can speculate intelligently about the scientific advances of the future, and then actually plot explorations of their implications. For instance, the difference between Greg Egan’s attempts at exploring the implications of simulated reality and strong AI and those of TV & film scifi of the last couple of decades are really pretty staggering.
I love TV & film scifi with all of my being, but there is no doubt in my mind that thus far its been a pile of pish.
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It would have been a ton better if the sidequests and random planets had been fleshed out.
It’s also a shame the ship was barely used. There was barely any point to being a captain and the ship was just mundane minihub.
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Played ME, loved it. I didn’t like the combat, it felt very floaty and weak at low-levels (despite SHOTGUN ROCKETS) and they could have done more with the magic powers. Aso got incredibly (like really amazingly) annoyed that the colonist-base interiors were all the same despite their clearly modular design. How much I would have loved a labyrinth in the mars-rock-behind-glass type one… Oh, and the incidental side missions had very little to them in terms of, you know, content.
On the other hand, the plot was incredible, FEM-SHEPARD had astonishing voiceacting (she could do both nasty and nice, unlike the voiceacting in every other RPG ever), the world actually interested me enough to have me reading the Codex stuff, and the aliens were just freaky enough. Can’t wait for the sequel, so long as they fix the combat and the interors…
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Yeah, a number of the visual elements, planet surfaces in particular, were very bland, there was rarely any effort made in making places special or unique, except for some story centric locations and even then those were few and far between.
But the games heart & soul was in the right place, gave the player some genuinely big decisions, like SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER towards the end where you get asked whether to save the council or not – it took me 3 minutes to make the decision /SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER and despite taking a big risk with its combat system, pulled off something that was functional if not very enjoyable to use.
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I played Mass Effect (on the console, boooo!), and found it quite incredible. There were times when I was distinctly irritated at it, there were times it made me gnash my teeth, times I felt deep disappointment– but also times when I just had to stop and say, “Oh my god I can’t believe how much fun this is. This is what I dared hopes games could be when I was a child.”
That really made it all worth it. Despite my heavy reservations about their new ownership, I would be giddy as a kindergartner snorting a bag of sugar if a Mass Effect sequel did materialize. I’d probably be sorely disappointed, but I couldn’t help looking forward to getting my hands on the thing anyway.
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Ashley and Wrex are among the best characters I’ve ever encountered in an RPG.
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Not to mention Tali, who gets my sexiest-alien-in-a-mask award (though probably a bit too young for me).
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Points hard sci-fi fans int direction of Stanislaw Lem’s boks – particularly Fiasco – no one writes better fiction about science
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Firstly on the subject of ME sequels, I’m pretty sure its still going ahead. I’m sure I’ve even seen some Bioware folks mention working on it. (Yup. Priestly confirms that it is underway over here: http://tinyurl.com/5oa7lk )
Ashley especially was great, one of the most well formed characters I’ve seen in gaming. Her xenophobia (and I think Xenophobia is probably more appropriate a description here than racism) was tempered with reasoning, and although neither my Shepard or myself agreed with her, it was difficult to write off her concerns as the rantings of an unhinged racist. At the same time, it was clear that even among concerns of humanities safety which she claimed were based purely on pragmatism, there was an underlying fear/discomfort with aliens in general. The little throwaway comments were also great, revealing underlying negativity, and a degree of morbidity.
SPOILERS
I felt genuinely guilty when I left Ashley to die. Earlier, when you selected who to send with the Salarians, I had sent Kaiden, on a purely utilitarian basis. I realised that the narrative was setting us up for a death, and Ashley’s combat specialisation would be more useful than Kaiden, who was almost identical build to my Shepard. However, when it came to the bomb I let Ashley die, and couldn’t help but wonder if I had let ‘personal’ feelings get in the way of that decision.
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Hands up who named their Shepherds “Adrian”.
*does the Opposing Force secret handshake*
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“CORPORAL SHEPERD HUH? DROP DOWN AND GIVE ME 20.”
Fond memories.
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James: I didn’t realise there was a death coming up there, even as the (cut scene) bombs began to fall I thought the game would give me a chance to go back and be the hero. Was literally, wonderfully, stunned when it didn’t. A fantastic moment.
(Also, it wasn’t clear from the set-up which was the death choice, so I reasoned who would best protect the bomb, which was top priority. Fortunately for me, this meant if was Captain Alien Hunter that got smoked – I wouldn’t have minded her nearly as much if she wasn’t such a God-botherer)
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eyemessiah: scifi doesn’t necessarily need to be about science – technofetishism kinda tired me after a while. But it is very easy to get the science right; after all, even if a film about Wolf Rayet stars might not sell, gritty realism does – after all, things like Band of Brothers are more in the vogue than When Eagles Dare, and even Bond has become grittier and less camp than before.
For my money, scifi films would have been totally different had 2001 been the seminal scifi film rather than Star Wars. The science is never really the point of 2001 exactly, but it gets it right quietly and without fuss.
I guess another problem is the advance of technology. BSG has jump drives and yet its soldiers are no better armed and equipped than modern US marines (granted, one of the themes is the unreliability of technology, but still). A film where a UAV kills you from kilometres away is less fun than fighting unconvincing aliens hand-to-hand. Then again, if you don’t try it you don’t know.
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mass effect is super i hate anyone who doesn’t like it, one of my favorite games maybe even in the top 10!
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I was quite wary of it when I picked it up. In my mind I knew it was just a prettied up port of a console game…. I was nicely surprised it turned out as well as it did.
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Overall Mass Effect was one of the best games I’ve ever played (PC), and I look forward to it’s sequel(s?). I’m mixed on the combat side… I really only enjoy it when I don’t have to tell my companions what to do all the time. I hope they work on the AI for them.
Some of the side missions really do start to become a bore, and the environments really do need to be improved heavily (especially variety). Though for me, the the story / characters / dialog / animations / graphics all overpower its flaws, which makes it one of my all time favorites.
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Someone mentioned Herbert, and Mr. Walker mentioned wanting to see more about the impact of the Mass Effect discovery on humanity so this probably isn’t too random but:
SPACE TRAVEL!
Where is my damn post-space travel religious weirdness! Did everyone but the wibbly goon-skin jellyfish men become comfortably atheist? I seem to recall Gun Chick was religious but she just seemed sort of dull and non-denominational to me. A lost opportunity I think.
Also (I am not afraid to admit it!) I wanted more interstellar banking nonsense. That’s banking.
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I wanted more banking and also sex. No one would have sex with me!
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I think the thing that bugged me worst about Mass Effect were the party members. None of them were *awful*, but Bioware has previously had an excellent history of deep involvement of the party in your story as well as irrelevant side conversations. This one had several party members (Tali!) who were essentially an info mine on their particular race and never had that much else to do with them. There were all of two companion sidequests, no more interesting or important than the others. Hardly any people whom you could converse with on the ship ever had new dialogue after events except for the couple of love interests.
I guess there were a few transitory elevator conversations, but since you can skip most elevator rides with Citadel fast transit, (and were better off doing so) that wasn’t a satisfactory solution.
Other than that and the woefully bland side planets, it was pretty awesome.
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@eyemessiah:
And in the game?
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Surely I wasn’t the only one who would form party’s purely for the elevator conversations? I’d go up and down several times, switch out, repeat.. it was great. Even alien elevator music sucks (=
Loved Mass Effect. The flaws imho were very minor, and easily addressed in the sequel. But it wouldn’t be the internet if people didn’t harp constantly on the negative, however trivial.
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What game?
EDIT: Equally it wouldn’t be the internet if other people didn’t constantly trivialise other people’s displeasure.
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Mass Effect was/is a great game. The universe it built and depicted had so much depth and possibilities. You can see that most of the criticisms here are that everyone wanted more, which must surely be a good sign.
It’s not been mentioned but it has to be one of the best console ports done so far (if ever). The PC version was way better. Something Ubisoft, Rockstar, and even Valve have not been able to do this year.
Plus anyone that played as a girl is a big bufty!
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The plot was EPIC, with strong undercurrents of tragedy on more than one level. The bit where you need to choose between the two- my, I wavered before deciding long enough for both of them to die.
SPOILERS
The final race to the conduit on the Prothean world was ethereal, especially with that floaty music (the menu music) and the podfarms with long dead Protheans. The Prothean AI infodumping me with Reaper history was great denouement, if a bit cliche.
Also, was I the only one surprised (as in, jumped out of my chair) when I found out the Relay monument on the citadel (that is, the conduit) was functional?
/SPOILERS
Also, great music. The suitably orchestral intro music makes my hair stand on end.
Mass Effect is easily the best Sci-Fi RPG I’ve ever played. (Actually, it’s the only one.)
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@Monkeybreadman
I think you’ll find that the Fem-Sheps you can build are much easier on the eye than the Man-Sheps, but your mileage may vary.
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Opposing Force was RUBBISH. Completely destroyed the soldiers as credible antagonists, added new aliens for no reason whatsoever and even went and blew up Black Mesa denying us the possibility of return in future sequels! Blue Shift was better.
Oh, Mass Effect? Still haven’t played it.
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Though I agree that Mass Effect is long way from hard sci-fi, what with your ship’s engine fuelled by magic stuff, and that the Reapers were almost a cut and paste of B5′s Shadows, for me the strongest element of the story was the sense of military command.
You took decisions not based on who had killed your father or because you had lost your memories and only the widespread murder of rats and bandits can bring them back; rather you took decisions based on military expedency which was why the political angle worked so well. Also more NPCs should salute me as I pass Goddamit.
The combat was fun – at least if you played as one of up close and personal shocktrooper builds – but the space buggie, for me, was more than a little broken. I did love the fact you could just get out and take down something massive on foot though.
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I really liked Mass Effect. Well, apart from the game destroying “infinite-weapon-overheat” bug.
Why wasn’t that fixed in the bloody patch? :(
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The voice of Sovereign is up there in my top 5 of game villians. So bassy, it’s like listening to Unicron all over again…:)
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The voice of Sovereign is up there in my top 5 of game villians. So bassy, it’s like listening to Unicron all over again… :D
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Yes, Sovereign had a great voice, very much like Unicron. Orson Welles’s finest moment IMHO. Also Saren had a great voice too. Him saying “Blow the colony” was probably the moment when I decided to buy the game.
Yes, the infinite overheat bug wiped out much of my progress several times over. And made the un-skippable scripted sequences even more intolerable. Exposition should always be skippable, particularly if the game is taking control away from the player.
I also really liked the way the plot set you up as an autonomous military unit. It felt very enabling. As you say Phil, much better than the usual compulsory backstory;cutscene driven nonsense of “Avenge your father;Save your sister!”. I liked that you could deal with your superiors as you saw fit. I was pretty antagonistic toward the council but felt very much that we were on the same side. It was a nice interplay that couldn’t have functioned had the game not given me at least the illusion of a bit of authority. If I’d just been a grunt following orders, or a father avenger (who is probably just a grunt taking orders from the “plot”) I wouldn’t have given a damn about the relationship between the Earth Fleet, the council and the Spectres.
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Opposing Force was RUBBISH. Completely destroyed the soldiers as credible antagonists, added new aliens for no reason whatsoever and even went and blew up Black Mesa denying us the possibility of return in future sequels! Blue Shift was better.
Half-Life’s fiction wasn’t handled with the greatest of care by Gearbox (the male assassins, particularly, were a bad choice), but it’s all tangential to the original plot anyway and shouldn’t get in the way of enjoying a great game. Opposing Force is a fine example of what an expansion pack should be, while Blue Shift is basically a mini Half-Life with no HEV suit.
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Commas; look for them and where they are unnecessary.
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The amount of ‘space’ in a book to potentially explore ideas is massive in comparison to film (by dint of their history, films have been made to be viewed in one sitting, and must unfold in real time; novels face neither problem) so a sci-fi film has little choice but to appeal to different virtues than a sci-fi novel — usually by pressing for ‘texture’ over actual imparted information (since the alternative usually manifests as great big embarrassing infodumps like at the start of the Dune film — a film should be weighting the maximum possible time to showing, rather than telling). We shouldn’t judge a painting harshly for not imparting as much on its subject as, say, a full-length comic book — the form just doesn’t compare in regards to how much narrative it can naturally supply.
I don’t think Dune and BSG are a very natural comparison; BSG is largely a vehicle for parables about life as we know it, while Dune is a book/saga that starts with a broad First World/Middle East/oil = Empire/Arrakis/spice analogy underneath, and then pummels its human/once-human population with endless situations and value-systems that are extremely alien to us, thereby exploring how humanity might behave under massively different conditions. Both are ‘soft’ scifi (assault rifles sit alongside warp drives because it doesn’t matter for series purposes; ditto being able to teleport space-freighters by being good at maths), but BSG’s a drama that uses scifi tropes to abstract itself from real life, and Dune’s a work of social ‘speculative fiction’. I like both; I wouldn’t say they’re going head to head (although I hope the Cylon God turns out to have been pursuing a Golden Path-style plan!…)
(…When I read the originals, I liked to picture the ‘Butlerian jihad’ as using all senses of that term — ‘jihad’ means a struggle not just against an enemy, but the internal struggle to overcome sin — thus the Butlerian jihad might even have been largely non-violent, more an ideological struggle to wean humanity off of reliance on computers to the point where they became banned and driven from existence. Sure, chuck some war in there, but I think it’s crude to just read ‘Butlerian jihad’ as ‘Terminator-esque war against the machines’. So James Herbert can fuck off!)
…Mass Effect? Unimpressed.
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by a strange coincidence, nuts are a good source of the vitamin B5
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