This contains major spoilers. It’s also a moderate amount of awesome. The Mass Effect 2 demo from E3 has been done up as a slick development video diary (below) explaining what the Bioware team is aiming to do with the game. It contains quite a bit of footage, and seems to encapsulate all the significant changes to combat, conversation, and storyline. I can’t say much more that that, other than to suggest you hold back if you’re trying to avoid learning too much about the game before you play it.
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Excuse me for being just a little cynical, but after all the hype and plans that were thown around prior to the 1st game I think I’ll withhold judgement this time around.
@juv3nal: Considering KOTOR was already a watered down BG2, that’s not a good thing at all.
You know, the “I’ve played this before, and it was better then”, feeling.
Soooo tired of hearing every developer interview and press piece talk about the “suicide mission”. Is this what the next 6 months of coverage will hold?
And I would point to it as a perfect example of boring Bioware fantasy RPG’s that are just jumping from one cliche to the next. Different strokes for different people. ;)
Planescape: Torment is the exception to the rule, I’ll admit.
Also, I wonder if the loot will be as ridiculously leveled this time around?
If it’s as much fun as the first one I’m in. Sure, it had faults, but even the mundane parts (repetitive levels and combat) was amusing to me.
I’ll keep a separate save game, so I can find the ending, where my Shepard lives though.
The original is the first Bioware movie-RPG I’ve ever made it all the way through. I bought it for $20, and that’s about what it was worth, being as there’s no real replayability. If I hear good things about this one, I’ll pick it up at the same price point.
Call me oldfashioned, but I don’t like magic in my scifi.
Agreed I don’t like magic in my sci-fi either, unless it is FF . . or Star Wars . . . Or Phantasy STar, okay I do like magic in sci-fi and didn’t even know it ;P
I had to laugh when they mentioned the fuel and exploration bits. Because it looked *exactly* like Star Control 2. With an eighteen-years-later facelift. Actually, you know what? Mass Effect pretty much is Star Control, right down to the blue alien chicks and fifty-thousand year destruction roulette. Sovereign even looked like an Ur-Quan.
Based on that we can look forward to (after a solid first offering) a groin-grabbingly transcendent sequel, and a trainwreck I-wish-for-amnesia part three. Bioware should totally have recruited Fred Ford and Paul Reiche III.
I don’t like magic in my sci-fi either, but if I recall correctly, the biotics were explained away as electrochemically manipulating the gravitational permeability of free space. Er, wait, was that canon, or did I subconsciously make that up? I can’t remember. In any case it’s quasi-justified, even though you know the first thought was “hey, let’s make the player able to throw shit around”, and only then did they realize, “hey, we need to justify that somehow…” Plus the in-game effects look really dodgy sometimes. Just saying.
Plus, thinking back to Star Control, everything about *that* game was more or less taken straight from Starflight.
Which means that space opera video games haven’t advanced so much as a light-second since 1986. That was five years before I was even born.
Here ya go, guys. Fun’s on me:
Starflight
Star Control
Ah Starflight, now there’s a game that ate a considerable portion of my childhood. I’m pleasantly surprised to see that someone born in 1991(!) is aware of it. :)
You bet. I, sir, am an historian!
But seriously, you can’t truly appreciate an art form (whoops, there goes that can of worms) without knowing its history.
“To me, the first Mass Effect was an even more simplified version of Knights of the Old Republic …You join an elite justice-dispensing organisation (Jedi/Spectres) in service of a pan-galactic government (Republic/Council) to stop a former member of said organisation (Malak/Saren) who plans to use old alien technology (that fish-race/Reapers) for universal domination, both utilise a ancient technology (25,000 years/50,000 years) as plot devices.”
Aren’t those also the stories of Starcon 3, the Crystaline Entity of Star Trek (TNG), Master of Orion, Warcraft, etc.
I’m not defending it, I’m just saying this isn’t exactly the only time a plot similar to that has been used. Also, while the plot itself isn’t [i]original[/i], that doesn’t make it [i]bad[/i]. I really enjoyed the way my character interacted with the story, the way the species were all interesting, and just the way the game flowed.
I’m on my 6th or so playthrough, which must mean something. I only made it through Stalker 3 times, and Clear Sky twice. Fallout is twice, but will soon be third.
They have to do a lot more than that. They’ve got to improve squad AI tenfolds. They’ve got to keep the enemy AI from rushing up to your face, and the bullet sponging.
And issuing movement commands to your squad from the OTS perspective is just a bad idea all around (and not only because your HEAD tends to block the view of where you’re telling them to go)
Jennifer Hale’s female Shepard was the only element of the original that kept me interested in the main character. It’s a damn shame that despite her superior performance and the stated preference of most critics, it’s the male Shepard that once again gets the marketing spotlight.
re: T. Slothrop and modern gaming journalism.
I remember a Crispy Gamer author confessed that he and a dozen other gaming journalists (that he knew personally) felt pressured to rate Fallout 3 higher than they felt was deserved, or even vote it for Game of the Year, because of the impression that to do otherwise would be to welcome backlash from passionate fans and to zig against the perceived zagging of other critics (who might have been thinking the same thing). In many cases, the reviewers played Fallout 3 for less that 4 hours.
I thought the same must have occurred when Mass Effect were being reviewed in such positive light.
I have to say I found both Mass Effect and Fallout 3 a little disappointing, but I spent much more time with Mass Effect, and I think I got a lot more out of it.
I believe ME2 will be the equivalent of Empire Strikes Back: the best installment in the series. I think it may go above and beyond anything the original was and did. One of my few real criticisms of ME (apart from the inventory system, heh) was that you spend a good part of the game being talked to in the ‘don’t you remember the…’ and ‘of course you know about the…’ because the devs needed to explain the intricacies of this new universe/franchise they created to set the game up against.
I understand its necessity, don’t get me wrong, and it wasn’t anyway near a gamebreaker. But I get the feeling ME2 will roll with things more and will take advantage of ME’s setting stage, effectively using it as a trampoline to an even better game. Or so I hope.
The main problem I had with the story of ME was that I’m playing as a galactic secret agent.
Here I am! Representing the might of a galactic alliance yet free from the political affiliations and niceties of my superiors.
Here I am! On a mission of galactic importance in pursuit of a guy whose already massacred at least one colony.
Here I am! Paying for my own equipment, forming a crack team out of an unbalanced insubordinate merc a cop fired from his own department and two jar heads who were easily defeated by the weakest enemies in the game.
Here I am! Risking my crews life and delaying my epic mission to wander through some sewers for three hours. Here I am! Being sent out on my mission with equipment that is literally the worst in the galaxy.
Now it looks like Shepard even has to pay for his fucking petrol. He should really join a union and learn to get some expenses.
The party complaints are pretty standard in all RPGs. But in Kotor they could be dismissed as the force bringing you to who you need to complete your destiny. But in ME it takes it’s story so seriously and tries to make a realistic setting with so much emphasis on well equipped and capable you are that this stuff is just jarring.
Bhazor says:
Here I am! Paying for my own equipment, forming a crack team out of an unbalanced insubordinate merc a cop fired from his own department and two jar heads who were easily defeated by the weakest enemies in the game.
you forgot the blue, bisexual damsel in distress and the bubble girl that has no immune system
Well, to be fair, he also gets command of the Normady, one of the finest ships in the fleet (with one of the finest crews). That’s gotta be worth a few simeoleons. But yeah, the merchants on the ship don’t make sense.
re: Jim
Yeah, me too. The exploration in Mass Effect (the most disappointing element of the game, given its emphasis) was bland, the combat detached, the ‘choices’ merely the same path in different colours… but the graphics were actually pretty (Fallout 3 looked good until you witnessed the doll people move like lego puppets), the actors were engagingly distinctive, and it didn’t sound like it was written by basement-dwelling man-children.
ps: I discovered this site following the crumbs left by your Escapist articles way back when, which I in turn found while trying to find a reviewer who shared my impressions of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
Jim, I’d follow your opinion into bankruptsy.