By Quintin Smith on May 5th, 2011 at 10:48 am.
Hmm, this is interesting. The streamlining of Mass Effect’s more traditional RPG mechanics that occurred with Mass Effect 2 (the removal of the inventory screen, for example), is going to continue with Mass Effect 3. Eurogamer has the full story- John Riccitiello, the CEO of Electronics Arts, publishers of Mass Effect, yesterday told investors that the game would have greater “mass appeal” and be a “shooter-meets-RPG”. As opposed to whatever it was before. An RPG-meets-shooter? The full quote’s after the jump. Thanks to RPS reader Edward “Fiasco” Fiala for the tip.
Here you go!
“One of the things that Ray Muzyuka and the team up in Edmonton have done is essentially step-by-step adjust the gameplay mechanics and some of the features that you’ll see at E3 to put this in a genre equivalent to shooter-meets-RPG,” he said, “and essentially address a much larger market opportunity than Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2 began to approach.
“We’re huge believers in the IP and are purposefully shifting it to address a larger market opportunity.”
What, I wonder, is left to cut? They could bury the character progression a bit so that the default option is for your characters to auto-level up, I suppose. They could package the renegade/paragon stuff more intuitively. What else? Surely they can’t be thinking of slimming down the time spent exploring and talking your way around city hubs?
In an interview I did with Mass Effect executive producer Casey Hudson last year, he did say that the second title in a trilogy is traditionally darker than the first, and the third is more climactic. Maybe we will be seeing a more action-focused game than before. Hmm, I say. HMM.
05/05/2011 at 10:51 Gunsmith says:
well that’s buggered it.
05/05/2011 at 10:53 Quintin Smith says:
Steady now! Mass Effect 2 was (1) streamlined and (2) a significantly better game.
05/05/2011 at 11:00 John P says:
I preferred ME1 to ME2, but not because of the streamlining. The combat was certainly much better in 2.
Anyway, considering the audience of these comments (investors) I wouldn’t be surprised if Riccitiello is just trying to convince them that the game will make some dough. Might not mean anything much.
05/05/2011 at 11:01 AndrewC says:
These reactions are awfully kneejerky.
05/05/2011 at 11:03 MrMud says:
ME2 was not a significantly better game.
Some parts were better (shooting) and some parts were worse (story).
05/05/2011 at 11:06 Branthog says:
Steady now! Mass Effect 2 was (1) streamlined and (2) a significantly better game.
And then you have the attempt they made at the same thing with Dragon Age II.
Angry Birds is easier to get into and has greater mass appeal than Dwarf Fortress. I think we can see the direction things are going, in general. I’ll hope it’s only an over-reaction, but at this point, at least I’m prepared to assume the worst if it happens.
05/05/2011 at 11:13 Iskariot says:
@ Quintin Smith
It was a better, improved game in certain aspects, yes. But the removal of some rpg elements made it an emptier, flatter, shootier game too. For example instead of improving the dysfunctional inventory system, they decided to kill it entirely. And I like being able to really scavenge and compare weapons and armors etc. I was really disappointed about the increased emptiness, or should I call it ‘streamlining’, of ME2 gameplay. If they are going to ‘streamline’ (read: destroy) even more rpg elements I am not buying.
To be honest it is very unlikely that I will buy the collectors edition at first day of release, like I did with the previous games anyway. I am very much put off by the way Bioware abuses DLC and greedy and uncaringly shreds its own game into little pieces, destroying gameplay in the process. I will wait for the GOTY this time. If there is going to be one.
05/05/2011 at 11:19 Danorz says:
this isn’t coming after mass effect 2 though quintin, it’s coming after dragon age 2.
05/05/2011 at 11:36 Quintin Smith says:
@Danorz
That is true. On the other hand, the team at Bioware that make Dragon Age is separate from the team that make Mass Effect. They’re different people that work on two different floors of the same building. Besides, DA2 looked like a different game from the start. This looks like more of the same.
05/05/2011 at 11:58 V. Profane says:
Mass Effect 2 was more polished, it wasn’t a better game though. In ME1 I felt like I was investigating a vast conspiracy to wipe out all organic life in the universe. In ME2 I felt like I was pandering to load of whiny babies who couldn’t put their own family issues aside in the face of the biggest threat possible, and then spending about half an hour actually getting anything done. And that fucking end boss…
05/05/2011 at 12:13 Raiyan 1.0 says:
I miss the Mako… :,(
05/05/2011 at 12:24 thegooseking says:
@V. Profane: That end boss was just weird. First time I played through, I emptied a heavy weapon at it (the particle beam, I think) and found it tough. Second time, a few sniper rifle shots in the eye and I took it down without even taking any damage. It wasn’t quite logical enough.
@Raiyan 1.0: ME2′s Hammerhead (the “free” DLC as long as you bought a new copy of the game or a pass to Cerberus Network) was better than ME1′s Mako. Shame there were only about five short missions where you got to use it.
05/05/2011 at 12:35 Andrei Sebastian says:
Going for the mass effect appeal, ey? (I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, it was right there, I had to go for it.)
As a mass effect fan – this is definitely bad! ME2 had allready gone over the top with the simplification – only the combat came out winning from that situation. The truth is, cool RPG features were so cut out from it, it allready was shooter meets rpg… ME2 I think really was the acceptable limit.
How much more moronic do they want it to be, should the characters speak in SIMS talk?
P.S.
Oh geez, I remember the nerd rage when I first saw the leveling up options in 2.
05/05/2011 at 13:32 Raiyan 1.0 says:
@thegooseking: Replacing the Mako with the Hammerhead was a good move on Bioware’s part, considering the former was so universally reviled. But I always loved the original because of all the insane driving I did on rough terrains. Looked lovely too.
It had a charm of its own.
05/05/2011 at 13:55 visualdeity says:
@Quintin Smith
It’s a matter of taste I suppose, because I don’t agree. The story (and the telling thereof) was up to the usual Bioware standards, but because of all the stripping of the RPG mechanics I felt ME2 was a significantly worse game than ME1 in terms of gameplay. I don’t wish to imagine what ME3 will be like if it goes even further in this same (wrong) direction.
05/05/2011 at 14:05 J-snukk says:
I much prefered ME2 to ME1, however I don’t think it needs to be *more* streamlined. I thought ME1 was a bit needlessly unwieldy, but ME2 hit (more or less) the nail on the head, makes me wonder how on earth they could possibly streamline it any further.
Also, the RPG grognards who always surface in these comment threads annoy me the point of self-harm, but I’m cautiously on their side until bioware can prove them wrong (again).
05/05/2011 at 14:16 ScubaMonster says:
The problem is the game started out as an RPG and is basically being progressively turned into a shooter with each new installment. While it could be a good game in its own right, it is resembling nothing like the original, at least if this information is to be taken at face value. Bioware seems to be pulling the rug out from under the genre of the game, which I think is wrong. But of course the bottomline is money so principle takes a back seat. Actually it’s not even given a backseat but left sitting alongside the road left in dust.
Bioware might be able to tell a good story, but if they really want to make shooters, than stop calling their games RPG’s.
05/05/2011 at 14:42 Dachannien says:
@Iskariot:
To be honest, I didn’t really miss the ME1 inventory system. Normally, I enjoy finding new gear and dressing up my dolls with it. I don’t know, though, whether not missing ME1′s system is an extolment of the great storyline in ME2, or an indictment of just how crappy the inventory system was in ME1. Probably both. (I also didn’t miss the rolling around planets in the rover. And I really enjoy old-school planetary exploration games like Starflight.)
But at this point, my feelings about ME3 versus ME2 are pretty much where your feelings were with ME2 versus ME1: if they dumb the game down any more, I probably won’t enjoy it as much.
05/05/2011 at 15:32 kyrieee says:
“ME2 was not a significantly better game.
Some parts were better (shooting) and some parts were worse (story).”
I think most people would disagree.
ME was busted both technically and mechanically, and even if you preferred the story in the first game (which is subjective) I’d argue that the environment design made up for any deficiencies. ME2 is just so much more interesting visually.
05/05/2011 at 16:02 scienceshoew says:
Hmmm indeed! This sounds bad, but it seems a little early to start complaining about it.
05/05/2011 at 17:58 phuzz says:
Getting rid of the inventory system from ME1 was a good call, regardless of if you prefer 1 or 2 better.
(I’m more a fan of ME2 personally)
05/05/2011 at 18:26 Danorz says:
to state outright there’s no crosstalk between teams, or that this statement, coupled with what they said and did with DA2, does not indicate a seachange in management opinion, for example (i am not stating it is this either) seems odd.
05/05/2011 at 18:45 sinister agent says:
I agree with J-snukk. I can see how they could improve things for the third (the UI, for example, was badly butchered between the first and second game, and they really need to switch off the two minutes of pop-ups that covered a quarter of the screen every time you did anything), but how they can ‘streamline’ it further without simply removing good and enjoyable features is beyond me.
05/05/2011 at 19:25 Barman1942 says:
Sure, Mass Effect 2 played better, but the story was just so…meh. Drew Karpyshyn was the lead writer for ME1, and he wrote Baldur’s Gate 2, KOTOR and Jade Empire. Mac Walter worked on some parts of ME1, but I get the impression that the more interesting story concepts were mainly because of Drew.
05/05/2011 at 20:37 V. Profane says:
@thegooseking, I don’t even care about the damage model, it was the entire concept.
05/05/2011 at 20:45 Ultra Superior says:
“better game”
I don’t know. Was it? I don’t think so.
ME1 was in its contemporary context much greater game than what ME2 meant in after that.
I personally liked ME1 better, though I guess it might be less “playable” today.
05/05/2011 at 23:39 Nevard says:
How about instead of forming snap judgements based on words for a game that isn’t out yet and won’t be until next year we sit and wait patiently until the time when it will actually be possible to justify some of these opinions?
06/05/2011 at 01:16 Manley Pointer says:
@Nevard: If game companies want to release a steady stream of information about their games for years before release, consumers will judge their games on that information. It’s better to acknowledge that this direction sounds mediocre than to emulate the eternal optimism of a Game Informer previewer.
Quinns’ comment is a little weird because, unless I missed something, Bioware as a studio seems to be abandoning the full-on RPG model (BG2, DAO) that most gamers considered their best work. DA2 was “streamlined” into being almost nothing at all, and the message here appears to be that ME3 will be less of an RPG than ME2. The only mechanics-rich, long-form RPG that Bioware seem to have in development has been Frankensteined with a by-the-numbers WoW clone, as RPS’s previews suggest.
ME2 was a “better” shooter than ME1 but still not a good one, I think; if you introduce it to a shooter fan, you have to apologize that the AI kind of sucks, the guns feel unresponsive, and it’s mostly menus and shields and layers rather than visceral impact and blood. I’m not thrilled at the prospect of “the new Bioware shooter.” Hopefully they’ll reveal more of an RPG angle at E3.
06/05/2011 at 08:50 Lilliput King says:
Manley: Dunno if this really counts as a games company “releasing information” given the context.
06/05/2011 at 12:59 Celidus says:
I wish Bioware would have remembered what made the IP great and stuck to it. It was first and foremost an RPG. And the best one ever in my opinion. Everybody says the combat was better in the second one and to an extent they are right. If you want a flat out third person shooter then yes it is better.
But, as I said before Mass Effect was originally an RPG and that’s what I wanted from the second game. Sadly, the second had none of the charm of the first game. There was practically no story, RPG elements, or atmosphere. The game also felt much “smaller” than the first. Do you remember when you first stepped out onto the walkways of the Citidel? I do, it was an OMG moment for me. I literally said out loud “How did they fit all this on one disk?” It was an amazing experience. With the second game the Citidel felt like a level of the game rather than an entire city. It was a disappointment.
I have played through the first ME more than twice now. ME2 I had to force myself to finish. I fear the same is going to be true for ME3 after reading this article. I don’t want ME3 to be another third person shooter. There are other third person shooters out there that are better like Gears of War. I’ll play those instead, but for ME3 bring back the RPG element that made the first one so great.
06/05/2011 at 17:04 drinkingjacket says:
I don’t know guys, I think alot of this angst is misguided.
A game like ME3 has a pretty hefty budget. Bioware long ago married into the EA family. EA has the $$$, EA gets to make changes to their product to improve ROI. This is just the way of the world, in any industry (Especially entertainment), anywhere.
Now, speaking specifically about those changes, I don’t see what all the fuss is about. ME2 combat is superior to ME1 combat. Pausing a game and cycling through 5 different menu screens to throw a grenade or use a heal is something we may all look fondly on but I think that kind of gameplay is dead. And probably with good reason.
Say in some alternate universe Gygax never invented D&D or better, he was in his prime during the information age. Do you honestly think D&D would be a box for sale in a bookstore telling you to use graph paper, pencils, a shaped plastic die with 20 numbers and imagine you are slaying orcs and dragons? Or would it be a video game?
The numbers are still there, they are always there. Even COD is just numbers. What the developers decide to show or hide and the level of specificity the user is generally granted in improving their avatar are really the only differences between any run of the mill video game (last I checked the player is almost never playing as him/herslef, ie you are always asuming the role of another character ) and a role playing game. We, the old guard may equate RPG with hit points, THACO, saving throws, dice pools, turn based combat, hitting the space bar to pause, counting out action points, etc, but those contrivances (and thats what they are) should never be what defines an RPG, they are simply the systems in place to make the game playable.
Lamenting the “dumbing down” of a franchise because an exec told an investor they are making it shooter meets rpg is more than a bit reactionary and sad. The world changed. Technology evolved. Go play ME2 and then play Uncharted 2 or Red Dead Redemption, (yeah they aren’t PC, shoot me) and ME2 pales in comparison in the “gaming” portion of the gameplay. Both of those titles want the gamer to be immersed, I would even argue Red Dead does is better, instead of an empty galaxy to zip around in between 1-2 hour set piece missions, you can ride your horse from one end of the map to the other with all manner of activity constantly occuring around you. Bioware are too big now, with too much backing to be forgiven for less than AAA combat and given a free pass by the critics for their dialogue wheels and “decisions ” the player has to make.
Hiding the numbers under the hood is just the way they want to go. Sure they could have gone the opposite route ala Borderlands and shown every bullet’s damage maybe even with a Blizzard-lite talent tree for the classes, but would that really make the game better?
If anything we should be asking Bioware why they haven’t made an original game since Jade Empire. Literally everything they do and have done since KOTOR has been a riff of KOTOR. NWN gave us the toolset, but the actual game was meh. DA:O was their long developed shot at making a fantasy RPG without the D&D liscense and look what we got. Orcs with a different name. And seriously, go play DA:O, how much depth is there really? If you have half a brain you put your points in magic if a mage, strenth if a warrior, etc. Its a power gamer’s paradise. I have never found a CRPG that cannot be power gamed, in many cases the only way to succeed is to power game. Is grinding levels and obsessing over bonuses in an inventory screen really what we want? Is that really depth?
If anything we should be demanding Bioware put more effort into the story. Into what an actual relationship or romance can be like instead of a sterilized sex scene “reward” and color coded dialogue trees. Its always disappointing to me, when I approach the 5 hour mark in any RPG and realize that all the thought and caution I am putting into my decisions via dialogue or should I open this safe or hack this terminal or accept this quest is just background static. The only things you ever find are gold/creds/whatever. Doing a quest never has repurcussions (especially in a Bioware game) until the end when they tally up your efforts and give you your cutscene reward. The “Role” is lost to the “Roll.” Does that make a better RPG or a better time sink?
I think there is potential for a great online game in the ME ‘verse. (Even if it is just star wars meets Halo without light sabers or blasters or wookies) But that game would have to be built on the squad shooter level, cover, layered defensese, tech/biotics and weapon types to use against shields/barriers/etc. There’s plenty of room there for character classes, for evolving power trees, etc. And, I think, this is clearly where they want to go. (Casey Hudson mentioned something about online in the GI interview).
06/05/2011 at 21:51 shizamon says:
I’m sorry but ME2 sucked hard “MISSION COMPLETE” screen, non equipable team (I’m the commander dammit!), and overall felt like a on the rails linear story.
Like marketing a ship-in-a-bottle to toddlers.
05/05/2011 at 10:51 Diziet Sma says:
This doesn’t sound good, I hope it’s not quite how the soundbyte makes it out to be.
05/05/2011 at 10:52 FadedReality says:
Here’s hoping they improve the button to awesome ratio.
05/05/2011 at 10:58 DeepSleeper says:
I would rather have the button to opera ratio improved. Have a key or button bound to make Mordin belt out a selection of classic Gilbert and Sullivan, mid-battle.
If Mordin is not in the party, Grunt is pushed up from understudy. If Grunt is not in the party, I’m not sure what they’re doing but it doesn’t look like any Mass Effect sequel I want to play.
05/05/2011 at 10:52 wazups2x says:
Where’s my killstreaks?!
05/05/2011 at 10:54 sneetch says:
More shooting, less talking, I’d guess.
I’d say “Gears of Effect” or “Mass of War” if I was interested in being witty without truly understanding what wit is.
05/05/2011 at 10:56 Wulf says:
I hope not, that’s primarily my issue with Bethesda’s games. What I long for is more talking and meaningful choices.
05/05/2011 at 11:06 faelnor says:
You’re probably not the “larger market opportunity”, Wulf.
05/05/2011 at 11:11 SanguineAngel says:
100% with you Wulf. And yeh that’s certainly where Beth games fall over for me too and why I really dug ME 1 & 2.
05/05/2011 at 12:18 Teddy Leach says:
‘Effect of War’ sounds pretty swanky.
05/05/2011 at 12:40 dsi1 says:
That implies your choices will have even the smallest effect on the story though…
05/05/2011 at 17:30 DrGonzo says:
Except Bioware’s games never have meaningful choices in them do they? You always end up saving the world, someone may die, but all that will change is the npc that gives you a mission in the next game.
Whereas in Bethesda’s games I can make choices of where to go, what to do and the like. Mass Effect 2 really felt like a corridor shooter to me that was trying to hide the fact that it was one. I’m not trying to say Bethesda’s games are full of meaningful choices, just that meaningful is subjective.
Not that I dislike ME at all, quite the contrary, I loved them. But I wouldn’t say they have any meaningful choices in them, and I find that quite disappointing.
05/05/2011 at 10:54 explosiveface says:
I just don’t get it. Dragon Age Origins, a hardcore RPG, outsold ME1 and 2. Then they dumb down DA2 and ME3.
05/05/2011 at 10:56 kororas says:
Yes this trend is becoming increasingly worrying. Especially coming from Bioware.
05/05/2011 at 10:58 Wulf says:
It outsold it, yeah, but I think that there were a lot of complaints surrounding Origins. I know I didn’t play further than the Deep Roads. I don’t mind the grind and padding being cut off like so much fat, really, because those aren’t the parts of an RPG I care about. Mass Effect 2 was more chatty than any Bioware game has properly been in a long while, and entertainingly so, so I hope ME3 continues that trend.
05/05/2011 at 11:41 Alexandros says:
I think it outsold the ME games because of the marketing. The trailers and the ads had absolutely nothing to do with the real gameplay, so my guess is that a lot of “larger audience” people were “tricked”, so to speak, into buying Dragon Age because they thought it would be a different kind of game.
05/05/2011 at 12:37 Joshua says:
Sigh.
Appealing to a wider audience does not indicate dumbing down. If Dragon Age origins sold better then ME, giving ME3 more RPG elements (Which Christina Norman said they would) is THE way to appeal to more audiences (in other words, making it sell better).
“Wider Audiences’ has become to PC gamers what “Communism” is to Americans…
05/05/2011 at 13:04 Bloodloss says:
Tell me Josh, do you really believe that? I think we both know they’re not going to add more RPG elements. It’s going to go the way of DA2.
It’s become a dirty phrase to PC gamers because time and time again it turns out to mean making games for retards, often utterly ruining a series.
05/05/2011 at 14:12 Joshua says:
Yes. I bloody do believe what I am saying. I am getting a bit tired of the pessimists who count a series as doomed based by one sentence of marketing speech towards investors.
05/05/2011 at 14:54 subedii says:
What Joshua said. I’m not going to repeat what I said in the previous ME post comments, but basically I felt the changes from Mass Effect to Mass Effect 2 did fit more naturally with what the game was attempting to do. People whine about how the storyline was “dumbed down” or the RPG elements were “dumbed down”, but that’s really not the case.
The RPG elements as they were used in ME1 were fiddly and not all that well implemented, and got in the way of the combat gameplay, which improved quite a lot in ME2. The overall storyline was basically one note (you’ve going on a suicide mission, PREPARE!), but that was built around a far more character based story. That was really more of a trade-off, and I felt it worked brilliantly, because the characters were way more interesting in ME2 than they were in ME1.
I have no problems in ME shifting towards better action gameplay, honestly I feel that suits Mass Effect best. This DOES NOT however, equate to making the story or characters worse, which are the defining aspects of the game.
I’d be concerned if I didn’t think ME2 wasn’t a better game than ME1. As it is, I thought the writing was better, the characters were better, and the gameplay was better (and they got rid of those flipping Mako segments across procedurally generated fractal landscapes).
So yeah, I’m willing to trust them on ME3. I heard this same song and dance about Portal 2. Which didn’t mean much because when I played it, it turned out to be one of the best and most well thought out games I’ve played, and easily a candidate for best game of the year so far.
Any sequel can be a disaster, including this one. But these comments? They’re not a particular indicator as to the final quality of the product one way or the other.
05/05/2011 at 17:52 DrGonzo says:
I preferred the second DA. Since when did you need more ‘RPG’ elements anyway? Planescape is my favourite RPG. It didn’t have particularly deep or complicated combat and stuff.
05/05/2011 at 18:49 sinister agent says:
I also agre with Subedi, but I am not sure what they mean by ‘streamlining’, because I really can’t see where it needs to be done. Unless they mean the planet scanning, now that I think about it.
05/05/2011 at 23:38 Birdman Tribe Leader says:
I have to second what DrGonzo about Planescape. I like RPGs for the talky bits and for (generally) more interesting art direction than a lot of other genres. I don’t enjoy the numbers part of the game. I can get into loot if each item has unique properties and new art and (ideally) lore (swords and amulets and stuff in Baldur’s Gate or even guns with unique art in Fallout 1 and 2), but the stupid fiddling around in ME1 with who has Incendiary Ammo +5 and who has Incendiary Ammo +6 was just plain tedious.
05/05/2011 at 10:56 DiamondDog says:
I’m not going to panic. I’m not going to panic. I’m not going to panic.
05/05/2011 at 11:44 McDan says:
Panic! They’re making it for small children who just want explosions! Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
Anyway, this is a real shame, I thought mass effect 2 was just simplified enough to make it better than ME1, but if they had done any more to it it would have turned out not to be a better game. So them saying they’re simplifying it even more really annoys me, speaking as a mass effect fanboy. Albeit a coherent one.
05/05/2011 at 13:30 NightKid says:
What Claptrap said two posts above.
05/05/2011 at 10:57 groovychainsaw says:
But – the shooting in both ME games was the worst bits (and far too frequent)? So… they’re going to put more in? It could be good if they radically overhauled how the shooting works, but I can’t see that happening (even after the noticeable improvement from 1 to 2, it was still clunky at best). Shame no-one looks at portal 2′s example of how a game can be almost entirely without manshooting and still be compelling and interesting, with a good plot that sells lots of copies.
I guess I’ll have to start looking for RPG goodness elsewhere (please be good Witcher 2!). Between the streamlining of all the RPG functions (which weren’t extensive even in the first one) and the fairly dumb shooting, there’s not much intelligence left in this game.
Poor old Bioware, what a fall from grace they’ve had – they may be making lots of money, but they’ve sold their soul … to the man! ;-)
05/05/2011 at 12:39 Andrei Sebastian says:
Exactly my thoughts… Witcher 2 kinda seems our last hope now.
Fingers crossed!
05/05/2011 at 12:58 thegooseking says:
By the same logic, you could say that the shooting in Deus Ex was the worst bit therefore Human Revolution is going to suck, but I’m not quite prepared to jump to that conclusion.
05/05/2011 at 13:14 groovychainsaw says:
Not sure that’s a good comparison – The newest DE looks to be approaching the material with a similar balance of shooting/RPG tropes to the original, and the developers seem to be aiming for that complexity, not ‘for a wider audience’ (although I’m sure they’d like that appeal!). So I have more hope for that right now.
I liked ME 1 and 2, and I’ll probably get ME3 to see how it ends, I’m just saddened by the continued decline of interesting options/choices in games for more shooting/less interesting/simpler choices under the heading of ‘wider appeal’. I’ve yet to see a game claim to be aiming for ‘wider appeal’ during development and get MORE complex afterwards.
05/05/2011 at 23:47 Birdman Tribe Leader says:
Yeah, the shooting was the least interesting and most tedious part of both games (welllll, except for driving around in the Mako in ME1). I wish they would either just cut a bunch of the combat or try to create some more interesting scenarios for shooting beyond “here’s a corridor and here are some identical mercenaries to shoot at. But these ones are wearing BLUE instead of RED!”
It doesn’t take a ton to make things a little more interesting. Some of the shooting parts that were just a little different were much more fun: defending the bridge with Archangel, Grunt’s vision quest, the first Collector battle or two. But just about every action mission should have had the number of nearly identical corridors with identical enemies cut in half.
05/05/2011 at 10:59 Coins says:
Well, this can either be good, or bad. I really hope it’ll be good, but for some reason, it doesn’t quite inspire hope.
05/05/2011 at 10:59 Taverius says:
Ummm … I guess in some alternative reality this is a good thing … as far as I’m concerned, I liked ME1 more than ME2 ..
05/05/2011 at 11:05 sonofsanta says:
God Quinns, we’ve already completely covered this topic in the other comments thread. You’re so slow. You’re not young like you used to be.
05/05/2011 at 11:08 Quintin Smith says:
NONE OF US ARE YOUNG LIKE WE USED TO BE
I eat porridge for breakfast these days. No lie.
05/05/2011 at 11:13 SanguineAngel says:
I used to eat porridge for breakfast when I was a kid now I do not… Am I benjamin button?
05/05/2011 at 11:24 Bhazor says:
@ SanguineAngel
No you are just a fool who denies himself the best winter breakfast in the world. Proper porridge oats, full fat milk, a dusting of sugar, yum.
05/05/2011 at 11:57 sonofsanta says:
@Quinns: got a tea pot yet? Tea pots are when you realise a) you must be old now, you just bought a tea cosy b) tea pots are TOTALLY AWESOME and having hot tea to hand for 2 hours is a life changing kind of paradigm shift.
05/05/2011 at 12:02 Quintin Smith says:
Haha. Yeah, we own a teapot but the thing cools too fast. We genuinely need a tea cosy but I don’t know if I can bring myself to buy one.
The girl made me a Super Meat Boy cosy for the coffee pot though, which is just about my favourite thing in the flat. http://twitpic.com/4j70b5/full
05/05/2011 at 12:27 Lars Westergren says:
Instead of a tea cosy, can’t you just pour the tea over into a thermos? Then instead of feeling old you can tell yourself “I’m a rugged adventurer. I just happened to pick a camp site which is in in my bedroom right in front of a computer.”
05/05/2011 at 12:38 Baboonanza says:
That is so awesome, you are a lucky man.
05/05/2011 at 15:16 Sassenach says:
Plus, thermoses are magical. They take perfectly good tea and make it taste awful and no one knows why. Except maybe wizards.
05/05/2011 at 11:08 Tei says:
I truth then to make a good game, but I hope we don’t get the same problems of ME2:
– To bloody obvious mission structure
– That horrible “score window” wen you finish a level
– That lame “shot from cover” shotting gameplay
I also hope we get more of the good bits of ME2:
– Interesting characters
– Decisions
– Interesting missions / Quests
If have to choose betwen adding a boring gameplay, or add excellent characters, I hope choose the excellent characters. But I have no problem if have time to do both, and we get a FPS-y combat plus everything else we love about ME.
05/05/2011 at 11:12 Freud says:
Perhaps the game will scan planets automatically while I go take a dump.
05/05/2011 at 11:37 DSR says:
“Probe launched!”
*water splash*
Urgh… My imagination hurts!
05/05/2011 at 11:12 thegooseking says:
Don’t really understand the logic of “more people will like it, therefore it’ll be bad”. It’s pretty much contingent on one of a few premises being true.
1) What they think people will like is not, in point of fact, what people will actually like. (Possible, but not a sure thing.)
2) People are stupid, so what they like doesn’t count. (The antecedent may be true, but the suggested consequent doesn’t necessarily follow.)
3) They should make games that I like, not that other people like, because I’m better and therefore deserve it. (Just… no.)
05/05/2011 at 11:24 SanguineAngel says:
Whilst there is business sense, superficially, in making all your games appeal to the widest possible audience what will happen if everyone does this is that all games will essentially be the same.
Mass Effect as a franchise has a pre-established audience and there would be nothing wrong with making a game for /those/ people. They may not be the majority but there is still money to be made there.
Ultimately, it comes down to whether they are making the game purely for the benefit of their coffers or whether they actually value their exisitng customers and their creative vision.
I don’t know simply from the information at hand what changes will be made to the game. His statement does imply that this game will not be in the same RPG vein though which is worrying to those of us who like ME for its version of RPGness, namely character and dialogue based role playing.
Thems my thinks anyway
05/05/2011 at 11:33 thegooseking says:
Well, no, I think I’m suggesting the opposite. Notwithstanding that the words “mass appeal” were used, all games would be the same if the people who are suggesting how games should be had their way, too. Which is where the flawed logic comes from, I guess.
I do appreciate your point, though. A sequel is an odd choice to try to “target new market opportunities”. I suppose it makes business sense, because that could lead to not only increased sales of ME3, but new sales of ME1 and ME2. But I agree that a sequel should tap into what fans of the series already like about it.
05/05/2011 at 11:44 Bhazor says:
@ TheGooseKing
“1) What they think people will like is not, in point of fact, what people will actually like.”
Sounds about right to me, lets take Dragon Age versus Mass Effect as an example.
Dragon Age was originally marketed as a successor to Baldur’s Gate (we’ll egnore the UNIVERSALLY mocked “New Shit”). Now they were apparently marketing it to to a small sub market of mature gamers who remember their classics and look for strategy heavy gameplay. Mass Effect 2 on the otherhand made sure you knew it was an interactive movie. For me the best example for this was the trailer with the hollywood actors talking awkwardly about their characters who never acted with anyone and just read through all their lines in a long list*. Yet the stodgy game for old crumblies outsold the flashy wizz pow action film. The moral, for me at least, is that people like variety. When every game they play is a wizz pow action film maybe they’d want to play something that isn’t.
“all games would be the same if the people who are suggesting how games should be had their way, too. Which is where the flawed logic comes from, I guess.”
Ok I want a hardcore party based RPG. I also want a mindless fun Serious Sam shooter. I also want a racing game with a Burnout style focus on thrashing. I also want a modern space trading sim. I also want a slow burning multiplayer competitive management game like MULE. I also want another go on Minecraft.
This is my point, despite what publishers seem to think, people want variety. They do not want the same game again and they do not want their favourite genre reduced to an amorphous “Shooter-_____”. Not everyone wants the same thing and even if they do that doesn’t mean they want it everytime.
*To go on a tangent this is my biggest complaint with videogame voice acting (with a few exceptions like Uncharted). Theres an audible beat between every single line and it completely ruins any naturalist acting, the actors don’t know what is happening in that scene, they’re usually given the vaguest direction and most importantly they don’t know the next actors response. When was the last time you heard characters talk over each other? Or the last time you heard banter that wasn’t DA style:
A: Line
(beat)
B: Line
(beat)
A: Line
(beat)
B: Line
(beat)
(whir click)
A: Ha Ha Ha
05/05/2011 at 11:51 SanguineAngel says:
I don’t necessarily think producing a game for a wider audience will make a bad game. But altering your target audience halfway through a series does risk alienating your existing audience and also destabilsing the consistancy of your product.
I agree, i don’t think all games should all be made to /my/ specifications either. As you say, games would all end up the same again. I don’t think games should be made to any single standard at all.
I do think that games should be made for a spectrum of audiences. Everyone is unique with their own tastes and preferences and so it is impossible to make a single perfect game that everyone likes. But as creative entities, developers ought to perhabs be reaching out to different people.
I guess what I’m saying is that I find it upsetting that so many developers and publishers in a creative entertainment industry (a place you would think attracts passionate and or artistic people) are more concerned with wringing every last cent from a franchise than the artistic integrity of their work.
There are certainly some games out there that fly in the face of convention and appeal to minority audiences but it saddens me that that is the exception not the rule. There’s a whole spectrum of possible games and for the most part we end up with the same thing over and over again, especially in the AAA market becuase that’s what market testing believe will make the most money.
05/05/2011 at 12:09 V. Profane says:
People are stupid, but the imaginary people that corporate pseudo-science wants to sell things to are even stupider. More mass appeal, coming from a CEO, almost certainly means lowest common denominator, or copy what is more popular.
05/05/2011 at 12:16 thegooseking says:
I’d like to think that everyone learned their lesson about altering a target audience eight years ago, from Deus Ex: Invisible War, but maybe that’s a lot to ask.
I do hope that a “larger market opportunity” means that they can retain the appeal of the original games while incorporating elements that appeal to other players, rather than simply switching to appeal for other players. And that’s just it: I hope that. There’s no real reason to assume one way or the other. History has shown that trying to produce a game that is all things to all people is tough, and there is a risk of failure and having it all fall apart. But it’s a risk, not a certainty.
05/05/2011 at 12:30 Mattressi says:
thegooseking, I’ve gotta say, I find your logic much harder to follow than the logic of others.
You say: “Don’t really understand the logic of “more people will like it, therefore it’ll be bad”. It’s pretty much contingent on one of a few premises being true.
…
3) They should make games that I like, not that other people like, because I’m better and therefore deserve it. (Just… no.)”
How do those two sentences, which you claim others to be saying, line up?? Your issue is with people saying it’ll be bad because more people will like it. How does that suddenly turn into that person saying “I’m better; they should make games I want”?
I think the game will suck because it’s being dumbed down for a wider audience. I don’t think I’m special though and I’m not demanding that they make it how I want it nor chucking a hissy fit over it (in fact, I haven’t seen anyone on here saying anything past “I won’t buy it if you don’t make it how I want”, which is exactly how capitalism works).
Hell, none of your points make logical sense, but the third was the most obvious. The second also has nothing to do with your original statement which you say you have an issue with: I can’t imagine anyone, when calling ME3 bad, is saying that other people’s opinions don’t count – just that the game will be bad for them, because people in general tend to prefer things to be easy and simple. The first point assumes that people are basing this idea that “games which the general public enjoy are games which I do not enjoy” off of nothing.
05/05/2011 at 12:34 SanguineAngel says:
Yup, I’m with you there gooseking – if they can retain the things that made the first two games great I actually wouldn’t mind a little more variety in gameplay & combat etc. But despite the amount of shooting, I hope they remain aware that combat wa never the focus of the first two games.
As you say, we don’t have any specific reason to believe they’ll fluff it all up. Although past experience with the industry in general teaches us to be pessimistic perhaps?
05/05/2011 at 12:37 thegooseking says:
X says “More people will like it, therefore it’ll be bad”. This implies two things. 1) X won’t like it. 2) Other people will.
This will make the game “bad” if X has a problem with people making games that other people like, and thinks that people should make games that X likes, instead.
I’m not sure if I can make it any clearer than that. I’m not really seeing how that logic is hard to follow.
Maybe, to make it clearer, I’m not talking about people who don’t enjoy the game. That would be ridiculous and silly. I’m talking about the people who take the idea of a game they don’t enjoy as some kind of personal affront.
05/05/2011 at 12:55 Andrei Sebastian says:
Gooseking, you gave the best possible example I can think of – Deus Ex: Invisible War.
Game over, man!
Let’s just hope this is all bad PR and empty talk.
05/05/2011 at 13:01 thegooseking says:
@Andrei: Well, it’s not even PR. It’s telling the investors what they want to hear. Obviously what investors want to hear and what players want to hear is going to be different – that’s been true since forever – and it’s probably bad news for PR if, as in this case, the players find out what EA thought the investors wanted to hear, but it’s not a big surprise.
05/05/2011 at 15:04 vagabond says:
Goose, how about the following as a general rule?
Creative things (because I would contend this also holds true for things other than computer games) when made for a specific audience, are to that specific audience, very satisfying. (assuming they are of decent quality. Whether you’re an FPS fan or not, the game tie in for “Battle: Los Angeles” is still pretty dire by most accounts).
Creative things are, when made to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, assuming they are again of decent quality, only mildly satisfying to everybody.
When I say “more people will like it therefore it will be bad” what I actually mean is “more people will like it therefore it will not be as good as it might otherwise have been, and this makes my feet sad”.
I’ll opt for a modified version of your option 3, which is:
They should make some of the games that are made, games I like. Other games are free to be games I do not like. If a game I like has a sequel, it should remain as a game I like*.
Also, I _am_ better than other people, but that isn’t their fault so I try not to blame them for too much that is wrong with the world.
* This is not to say it cannot change at all. I like it when things I like are made better. My point is, you wouldn’t make the film “the Notebook 2″ and decide to make it a comedy starring Jack Black so it had wider appeal, you’d make a different film altogether. Similarly don’t announce that you’re making the follow up to two RPGs a corridor shooter. (and don’t start with your “that isn’t what he said”s, he must have known that was clearly the only possible interpretation people would come to before he even opened his mouth)
05/05/2011 at 17:11 Pointless Puppies says:
Uh, people aren’t decrying the “mass appeal” statement because they think “More people liking it = it’ll be bad”.
People are decrying “mass appeal” statements from developers because history has shown developers have no idea how to actively aim their product at a wide market. They have a sound philosophy (i.e., take an existing IP, tweak it to get INSTA-SALES!), but they don’t actually know how to do carry it out. What this statement almost always amounts to is that the thoughts of the developers eventually converges to a common “just make it simpler. Simpler = more accessible = INSTA-SALES!”.
It’s not the fault of the audience to instantly think “dumbed down” when a PR statement says “wider audience”, because that’s honestly what people have been seeing every time those words are uttered. The true fault lies in the developer who mistakenly thinks “dumbed down = MOAR SALES”. Nobody would decry this “wider appeal” philosophy if developers knew how to actually do it properly.
05/05/2011 at 11:14 SuperNashwanPower says:
Indeed
This is a game for the young
Not a game for me
Indeed
/meme building
05/05/2011 at 11:20 JackShandy says:
Keep up the good work, son. We’ll make a contender out of this meme yet.
05/05/2011 at 11:40 Lilliput King says:
Indeed
Is the second phrase a question?
Yes it is
Indeed
05/05/2011 at 12:15 Teddy Leach says:
Indeed
It is a shame
What a shame
Indeed
05/05/2011 at 13:30 JackShandy says:
On second thought, gang, let’s all get together and kill this fucking meme immediately.
05/05/2011 at 11:14 DiTH says:
Im shocked that you guys dont know what he means !! He said the exact same thing about DA2 and look what happened.
Expecting easier combat,Complete Linearity and as little exploring as possible.I imagine they can have the whole thing be a standoff at London and on space around earth.Something like. Sheppard is on the trial,Reapers attack and they ask him to save earth.He kills everything, he get hold of some kind of virus he uploads it to the Reapers coms and he wins.And he will have 1 quest for each member and gg.
I hope that Bioware understands that they are now on the 2nd chance after DA2 and if ME3 turns something like that again their preorders will go away.And paying sites like ign and eurogamer for GREAT reviews about bad games like DA2 will not take them far.
Bad i have to say that even though they reduced the RPG features from ME1 to ME2, i still liked it but i dont know if this trilogy can withstand a lot more gimping.
OSAMA Lives.
05/05/2011 at 11:15 TsunamiWombat says:
A company is hoping to sell to large numbers of people! I am filled with rage and confusion, GRR! INSERT KNEE JERK REACTION BECAUSE MASS EFFECT IS RUINED FOREVER!
05/05/2011 at 11:35 Kdansky says:
As if the intro of ME2 hadn’t ruined the series already.
But most people did not pay attention to the main plot of ME2. Which is for the best, really. If you actually try to make sense of it, you’ll suddenly become very angry about how bad it really is.
05/05/2011 at 11:17 Symitri says:
“Surely they can’t be thinking of slimming down the time spent exploring and talking your way around city hubs?”
Incoming Mass Effect XIII.
I kid, I kid.
While I can see a lot of people feel let down by how Dragon Age 2 turned out when it was “stream-lined for the masses”, it wasn’t a problem with the idea so much as the rushed execution. The re-use of the same areas repeatedly, the empty choices that felt like they meant bugger all – these all seemed problematic because they weren’t given the time to polish things off. It’s kind of the opposite problem that studios like Troika had where their ideas were grand and you could see that if they had the time to finish off, it would have been incredible but they had to push for release or risk it never seeing the light of day ever.
The fact they’re pushing ME3 back another year gets me hopeful they’ll at least try to get it right rather than make a botch job of it. Either way though, I’ve come to the dreary realisation that unless I start paying for DLC content, I’m not getting the final story out of any Bioware (or EA) game now and I’m not sure if this is more or less dreary than eating a cake alone, in the dark,singing happy birthday to myself.
05/05/2011 at 11:23 thegooseking says:
They’re not pushing ME3 back a year; they’re pushing it back a few months.
Anyway, since I’ve already set myself up for crucifixion, here, I’m going to say that I found the choices in DA2 more meaningful than the choices in DA:O. Or maybe ‘meaningful’ is not the right word. I had the sense that the choices in DA:O were meaningful in themselves, but lacked enough context for me to be informed enough to meaningfully choose. DA2′s choices were far better contextualised, which made them more meaningful, if not in scale, then at least on a personal level: I felt I had much more motivation to make those choices.
05/05/2011 at 12:36 DeathHamsterDude says:
@TheGooseKing – Well, in DA2 the choices were more dramatic, it’s true. But they were basically just an illusion in the end, no matter what choices you made nearly everything turned out the same anyway. Even with the small stuff. I’ve reloaded many conversations and nearly EVERY one where violence was a possibility (talking down an angry group of mercenaries for example) ENDED in violence, no matter what you said! They gave you the illusion that you could actually do something without it ending in bloodshed, but it was a blatant lie. And it’s not only the smaller stuff in the game. The main plot line is pretty much pro-mage/anti-mage, but even as a pro-mage, you end up killing just about the same number of apostates ass an anti-mage, and you’re just not given the option to do anything else (except in one, maybe two cases throughout the whole game), and then the perceived scope of what you could get from the endgame was just that, perceived. There was really only two endings, with tiny little inconsequential details to make it seem like you made decisions yourself, which you really had very little say in when it comes down to it. That as much as the horrible combat (throwing reinforcements out of the sky right on top of my mages Bioware? Way to fucking encourage tactical play!) is what turned me against the game (and I was a major fanboi). I didn’t feel like I had anything to do with the game in the end. I didn’t influence it, or at least in such minor, cosmetic ways that didn’t matter in the end.
And about ME3; If I had heard this announcement before DA2 was released I would give Bioware the benefit of the doubt, but now, I’m not so sure. In my mind the guns and conversation aspect of ME2 was skewed a little too much towards guns. It was still a great game though, but I don’t think it could afford to skew anymore while still retaining it’s Mass-Effectiness. PC gaming these days scares me. It reminds me of TV. Instead of trusting in the intelligence, or even trying to raise the intelligence, of their viewers, most TV shows pander to the lowest-common-denominator
And I know I’m going off on a bit of a tangent, but DLC is another major problem. I would have previously thought Bioware wouldn’t stoop to the level that a lot of other game designers have, but imho they are now one of the worst offenders. Check out this link, which I think fairly accurately sums up modern day DLC; http://www.jpgdump.com/files/7389
05/05/2011 at 19:23 Gormongous says:
I’m going to call shenanigans on “nearly every” conversation threatening combat ending that way. With Aveline in my party, I could frequently appeal to authority, and that made at least three hostile groups disperse.
Of course, the fact that developers hid some of the game-changing set items on the bodies of these persuadable fellows is another matter entirely.
05/05/2011 at 22:09 DeathHamsterDude says:
That’s why I said nearly. There are indeed a few times where it is possible, but it seems like they’re always setting you up to try and negotiate with people, and offering you conversation choices to try and dissuade them, but not following through on that.
Plus, yes, Aveline is captain of the guard, but you’re the Champion of Kirkwall. You think that might carry more clout. The only one I can really remember being able to change the mind of was Alain the apostate in the third act. There were others I’m sure.
05/05/2011 at 11:19 DeepSleeper says:
I liked Dragon Age Origins.
I liked Mass Effect.
I loved Mass Effect 2.
I hated Dragon Age Awakenings.
I skipped Dragon Age 2. (One day I’ll see if I enjoy or hate it.)
… I have no idea what I’m going to make of Mass Effect 3 at this point, but I’m not sure it matters, since after the first two it’s essentially an automatic purchase. I can’t think of anyone else doing such a talky shooter or such a shootery talker. (Unless we get that Alpha Protocol sequel I keep daydreaming about.)
05/05/2011 at 11:45 Lilliput King says:
We heard Obsidian weren’t going to make one a while back.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/29299/Sega_No_Alpha_Protocol_Sequel.php
‘Tis a shame, though in all honesty I don’t particularly hanker after a sequel, just another game which uses those mechanics.
05/05/2011 at 12:13 vandinz says:
Get and play DA2. It doesn’t matter if it’s better or worse than the first, it’s whether you enjoy it. If you loved ME2 you will love that too. Trust me.
05/05/2011 at 13:40 orangedragon says:
@ vandinz – Liar! I loved ME2 and couldn’t stand more than an a few hours of DA2. I was hoping it’d improve at some point but gave up after hearing from others that it never would.
05/05/2011 at 11:19 cqdemal says:
I know that the statement does sound like more streamlining when you focus on the ‘larger market opportunity’ part, but on the other hand it can also be interpreted as an attempt to achieve a greater balance between shooter and RPG elements. Mass Effect 1 was a great RPG with a rather poor shooting element attached, and Mass Effect 2 is a lightweight RPG with improved shooting sequences that, if not for the RPG-enhanced action and excellent talky bits, would have faced much stronger criticism over its totally pedestrian level design and simplistic character development.
Also, everyone seems to have forgotten this: http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/04/08/mass-effect-3-to-have-deeper-rpg-elements-expanded-skill-trees-and-alternative-endings/. Greater choice of abilities, larger skill trees, multi-level powers and weapon upgrades do sound like the return of RPG elements from ME1, don’t they?
05/05/2011 at 11:19 StranaMente says:
So… it will be just one long grey corridor with people to shot in it.
Great. Way to go Riccitello. For a moment I thought EA could improve itself.
Did they ever stop to think that if people wanted a tps they could buy a tps and if they want to buy a rpg they buy a rpg?
05/05/2011 at 11:25 thegooseking says:
Because that would totally have the mass appeal they’re going for. Yep.
And, oh, some of us have understood that game genre labels have been meaningless for a few years now. Do try to keep up.
05/05/2011 at 11:43 StranaMente says:
Label are there for convenience. I do not like them too, and from the mingling of genres were born some of the best game ever made.
That said, making combat more accessible is good, cutting out choices, dialogues, npc interactions, small commerce with merchants, fiddling with your stats (things that are stereotipical for a rpg) is bad.
That’s what I’m saying, when I want to play a rpg means that I want to do those things. If I want to play a tps means that I want to shoot things, without thinking too much.
05/05/2011 at 11:46 Lilliput King says:
Bully for you.
05/05/2011 at 11:50 thegooseking says:
I can definitely agree that I’d like to see more traditional RPG stuff going on in games in general, but I don’t think I want it in Mass Effect 3 specifically.
05/05/2011 at 16:31 StranaMente says:
It really is full of shooter all around the game scene, instead there are really few (in comparison) rpg’s. My point is, why do they have to turn this game into another shooter?
05/05/2011 at 11:20 rivalin says:
Games should come with an intelligence slider for the players, so all the idiots (apparently the largest market segment) can set it to “I’m a witless dullard”, and stop forcing studios to pitch games at people with an IQ of 90.
And it’s only going to get worse as the audience of people who play games gets bigger. Hopefully once the market essentially consists of everyone (a la tv, films) it will be so big that there will be space for relatively high budget stuff pitched at people who are not idiots (i.e. the gaming equivalent of Mad Men or Rubicon etc)
05/05/2011 at 11:24 DeepSleeper says:
Really? “They’re just stupid”? That’s what you’re going with here? Great, thanks.
You could’ve at least brought up System Shock and/or the first couple Silent Hill games if you wanted to make a point about separately-scalable puzzle and combat difficulty levels.
05/05/2011 at 11:22 Subject 706 says:
Hopefully Riticello was only trying to calm his investors. If not I hope they’ll come to their senses someday and realize that you can’t chase the lowest common denominator for too long without completely ruining your franchise and/or alienating your fans.
05/05/2011 at 11:23 WMain00 says:
Maybe they’re going to remove femshep…
05/05/2011 at 11:55 pagad says:
That would kill off the chances of anyone who played femShep in the first two games from being able to complete the trilogy, thus reducing their audience.
I don’t think they’d do something so completely stupid, though. That’d just be idiotic.
05/05/2011 at 13:01 FLAMEIFRIT says:
With E.A pulling the strings this sort of idiotic decision is possible … unfortunately
05/05/2011 at 13:20 Eightball says:
Not if they value their lives.
05/05/2011 at 15:18 vagabond says:
They brought you back from the dead in 2, so I guess forcing FemShep’s to undergo a sex change operation in the Prologue of 3 wouldn’t be too hard sell tech-wise. Quick and painless, Rex Nebular style.
05/05/2011 at 17:20 DaFishes says:
I don’t think they’ll yank femShep, but on whatever their next game is, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were no female option. In interview after interview, they keep pushing the idea that the male hero is “more iconic.” Even BioWare’s co-founders are on video doing this.
05/05/2011 at 11:24 JayG says:
Dragon Age 2 kinda soured me on Bioware, though was still looking forward to ME3. I do wonder what they are trying to achieve, Fallout and the Elder Scrolls did very well saleswise without having to dumb down. And the next big game from Bio that has done all it can to alienate it’s PC audience is a PC MMO based on a console francise. They admitted that DA2 was going where the sales were, console, fair enough, but if that is what u are aiming at surely TOR on Xbox would make a heck of a lot more sense.
05/05/2011 at 11:39 DiTH says:
The trick here is that both Fallout and Elder Scrolls come from a publisher like Bethesda who love to do their thing like Bioware did it pre EA.Im not sure that EA is pressuring them to change things rather than they are pressuring themselves and follow the market trend.The last year have seen games like FinalFantasy13,FinalFantasy14,Starcraft2 and Dragon Age2 ,propably more that i dont remember or i dont care so much about like i do for these games, that are all inferior to their predecessors and for me they were pure failures and if not for their names/publicity/creators they would be on 5$ sales now.
I just feel so let down and soured like you.I have finished more than 2 times every other Final fantasy game but i didnt even finish 1 time FF13.I played FF11 for 3 years but i didnt play FF14 more than 1 month.I played Starcraft for 6 years but i didnt play SC2 for more than 3 months.And in the end i played DA:O finishing it completely with all side quests with 2 chars of Human Origin and 1 fast ending with Elven origin but when i finished DA2 with most of the sidequests i just uninstalled it.
Its pathetic that i have to play Elder Scrolls 4 or baldurs gate 2 in 2011 and i dont believe anythign will change with the current trend at least until the next generation of AAA titles come in 2015.
05/05/2011 at 11:24 JB says:
“What, I wonder, is left to cut?”
They could make it like Infinity Blade with guns.
05/05/2011 at 11:30 Negativeland says:
RPG meets firing squad?
05/05/2011 at 11:37 Horza says:
So, Dragon Age 2 with guns then?
05/05/2011 at 11:51 Andrigaar says:
I only played the demo of DA2, but it already felt like ME2 with swords–and D-cups as far as the eye could see.
Wouldn’t DA2 with guns be ME2 with stupider teammates?
05/05/2011 at 12:16 Spinks says:
Anders isn’t stupid! He’s just totally hatstand.
05/05/2011 at 12:25 Horza says:
Less conversations at least.
05/05/2011 at 15:12 kibayasu says:
And hear I thought DA2 was ME2 with swords. Haters gotta make up their minds.
05/05/2011 at 11:37 Spinks says:
I wonder if this is about them putting a melee class into the game (something for the non-shooter fans maybe)
05/05/2011 at 11:38 Kevin says:
The big reason why I thought the RPG elements seemed to be phased out in ME2 in my mind was because the abilities didn’t seem to have as big of an impact as they did in ME1. In ME1, you could most definitely see the benefit of a properly leveled up Singularity, whereas in ME2 the difference between levels of that ability can only be immediately discerned by the most observant eye. .
05/05/2011 at 11:41 Shadram says:
No need to panic just yet. Maybe they’re just making it more brown.
05/05/2011 at 11:42 Zarunil says:
This, to me, sounds like they are leaning more towards W + LMB = WIN rather than a complex RPG with lots of customization and choices. Final Fantasy did this and look what happened. I defeated a boss without actually touching the controller, the game played itself.
05/05/2011 at 11:42 Cinnamon says:
Hooray for larger market opportunities, I guess. All the “streamlining” and crass marketing didn’t especially help the sales of Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age 2 so I hope that they have some really clever idea for improving the series instead of trying to flog that particular dead horse again.
05/05/2011 at 11:42 Rii says:
I’m not interested in joining a character/story-based franchise in the third reel, particularly one that looks as bland as Mass Effect does, but I do approve of this sort of thing in the abstract, i.e. skill-based FPS/TPS shooting mechanics PLUS skills/characterisation/choices/development MINUS inventory/stats. So, best of luck to ‘em.
Also I’m glad I’m not actually a fan of Mass Effect, because if I were I suspect these genre-shifts between games would piss me off no end.
05/05/2011 at 12:47 DeathHamsterDude says:
I agree that Mass Effect LOOKS like a vanilla-generi-Space Opera, but it really isn’t. You should give it a try. It’s nothing like Halo etc.
Aside from a few stupid elements (planet scanning) the series has been fantastic. The amount of choices from ME1 and ME2 really add up, and people’s games ended up being drastically different from others, because of choices that they had to make. Which is something admirable in a game, especially in the current climate. However, ME3 looks like it might linearilise this.
05/05/2011 at 11:45 Finster says:
By the time we get to Mass Effect 6, they’ll have winnowed the game down to one screen that just says “Press Enter to Start.”
05/05/2011 at 12:26 Raiyan 1.0 says:
Don’t you mean just ‘Press Start’? ;)
05/05/2011 at 13:35 groovychainsaw says:
Or just ‘Press’ :-D
05/05/2011 at 14:17 Raiyan 1.0 says:
@groovychainsaw: But I can’t complain about how the game is a console port if it just says ‘Press’! :(
05/05/2011 at 11:47 Edward F. says:
Thanks for the mention guy! I’ll have to put down Fiasco as my new action hero name.
05/05/2011 at 11:47 Jetsetlemming says:
I don’t understand, didn’t Mass Effect 1 and 2 sell millions of copies (probably mostly due to EA advertising but still, good games)? What wider audience do you want, the facebook-and-sims social gamers? Chinese gold farmers? Mass Effect 2 pretty much applies to every mainstream American gamer. It hits all those bullet points. There are no more bullet points to hit in that particular field!
05/05/2011 at 11:58 MrMud says:
It didnt sell blops level of millions…
05/05/2011 at 11:59 thegooseking says:
That’s another reason not to panic, really. The guy didn’t say they were going for “mass appeal”, he said they were going for “a larger market opportunity.”
What that could mean is retaining the mass appeal of ME2 while incorporating elements that are more attractive to niche gamers.
I held off on buying ME1 for a long time, because it was marketed as “a shooter”. Eventually I thought, “might as well try it anyway.” Now they’re calling it shooter-meets-RPG. That could mean entirely the opposite of stripping away the RPG elements.
I mean, that’s wild speculation and there’s no reason to assume that that’s how it’ll go down, but it’s one possibility.
05/05/2011 at 15:54 K. says:
@thegooseking: Thank you for that posting. I missed that oh-so-important semantical difference on first reading. I am feeling better about that delay now.
“larger market opportunity” usually means two things:
- We want to avoid fierce market competition with similar titles released at that time.
- We are waiting for EA 2D to finish their Mass Effect facebook game for additional crossmarketing (see. Dragon Age Legends).
And, by the way, you heard it here first: “Mass Effect Legends” is in production (probably).
05/05/2011 at 11:50 Ralphomon says:
As long as it doesn’t turn into a straight-up shooter and I can still have hilarious conversations I think I’m going to be happy. I guess maybe I’m not as discerning as the rest of you ladies and gentlemen.
05/05/2011 at 11:51 Deano2099 says:
More guns, less conversation.
Are classes confirmed? If not my money is on the bigger skill trees meaning there’s just a single skill tree and one class, with three branches.
05/05/2011 at 11:55 Lilliput King says:
“More guns, less conversation.”
Do we actually have enough information to make that assessment?
05/05/2011 at 11:59 James G says:
Well if they end up using this in a trailer we might:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0vXxH1IEmQ
But if they do scrap the C from the G&C then they’ll lose one of the main things that made ME2 my GotY 2010.
05/05/2011 at 12:00 Deano2099 says:
Definitely not.
05/05/2011 at 11:53 James G says:
Not keen on the implications of this announcement, but we shall see. I wasn’t keen on the direction ME2 was supposed to take, but think it worked out better for it in the end.
05/05/2011 at 11:56 Gap Gen says:
Screenshot says: Let’s all stand a metre apart and have a gunfight!
05/05/2011 at 12:04 henben says:
They can cut the tedious hacking minigames and planet scanning! Did everyone just blank those out?
05/05/2011 at 12:10 vandinz says:
Aaand cue the purists crying because we’re not going to bogged down with stats and numbers. I love ME1 and 2 and DA 1 and 2. Whether one is better than the other is not important to me, it’s whether I enjoyed the one I was playing at the time. Yes in all cases for different reasons. Absolutely NO WAY can you claim any of those games were not good games.
05/05/2011 at 12:39 Big Murray says:
I can claim Dragon Age 2 wasn’t a good game. And not because I’m a “purist”, but because it had boring combat, had a claustrophobic world, didn’t do nearly enough character development and had a confused narrative.
05/05/2011 at 13:09 DeathHamsterDude says:
Yup, sorry Vandinz, but I hate when people pull that card. Look, I had a pretty fun time with DA2, but it had so many turn-offs that in the middle of the second act I had to stop playing it for two or three weeks, and then I had to make myself go and play it half an hour at a time for a long while until I started to enjoy it again. It also made me turn the difficulty down from nightmare to casual, not because it was too hard, but because I wanted to get through it quicker. That does not speak to me as a great game. Elements of it were, and I desperately wanted to love it, and I will always have a soft spot for fantasy games, but I can still point out the many many flaws in DA2 AND compare it to other Bioware games and other games in general! Why do you think we shouldn’t be allowed to do that? I think that as a person I am discerning enough to not just have a like/dislike button in my head a la BookFace, but to be able to say, I liked THIS, but I think this is better, although not quite as good as . . . right? I mean, it seems pretty normal for me to compare things, and to prefer one thing over another. I LIKED DA2, but I preferred DA:O. I LIKE tequila, but I prefer rum. I like WOMEN, but I prefer this particular woman. ;)
05/05/2011 at 12:14 Anthile says:
Cue Mass Hysteria.
05/05/2011 at 12:14 Teddy Leach says:
I’m not going to say it, because the backlash will be massive and I’ll die under a torrent of internet hate.
No, I wasn’t going to say THAT.
05/05/2011 at 12:19 Bureaucrat says:
Eh, we’re overreacting. Clearly, they’ve just concluded that ME2 didn’t have enough lizards for you to sleep with. They can reach the widest possible audience by expanding the previous game’s paltry 3 sexable lizards into the dozens– by covering the whole range of herpetological lust, the market potential of the game will be unlimited!
05/05/2011 at 12:27 Joshua says:
But.
When people say ‘We are aiming at a larger audiance’ they simply say ‘we want to sell more games’.
This does not indicate any ‘dumbing down’. This does not indicate ANYTHING. Just that they are changing stuff to what they feel is better. No need to panic. They only say this generic stuff to appeal to the investors.
Didn’t we already hear from Christina Norman that ME3 was going to have more RPG elements in it as opposed to ME2? That also appeals to a section of the market, and thus a wider audience.
05/05/2011 at 12:31 thegooseking says:
This is what I’m saying. There’s no reason to believe that retaining the appeal for existing players and increasing the appeal for new players are mutually exclusive. It’s harder to combine both than just do one or the other, yes, but it’s not impossible and I don’t think it’s out of the reach of a developer like BioWare.
And, in response to your sneaky edit, this is what I’m also saying. Mass Effect already had mass appeal, so targeting a larger market may mean bringing more niche gamers into the fold. There’s no reason to assume that’s true, but there’s equally no reason to assume it’s not true.
05/05/2011 at 12:43 poop says:
okay, when has an attempt at broadend mass appeal ever lead to something that is not considered “dumbing down”? unless you count a few rare examples of sequels that just simply have a larger marketing budget I cant actually think of anything
05/05/2011 at 12:49 thegooseking says:
GTA IV. Or basically anything that already had mass appeal to begin with.
05/05/2011 at 12:56 poop says:
@thegooseking
“unless you count a few rare examples of sequels that just simply have a larger marketing budget I cant actually think of anything”
05/05/2011 at 13:07 Joshua says:
Sorry for the sneaky edit, did not know anyone was replying :P.
@poop
Quite simply, any sequel ever released tried to apply to a larger audience, since any sequel’s goal is to sell better then the previous game. There are many, many, many ways to achieve that. Sure, bigger marketing is also a way to do that. But every game does that as well.
Quite simply, ME3 tries to be better then ME2. That will lead to more sales. That is what investor’s want to hear, and that is why it was delayed. No talk about how they were going to do it. What are you worrying about?
05/05/2011 at 13:19 poop says:
i was responding to the dude who said that there isnt a corellation between developers saying they are going to change the game for mass appeal and a dumbed down end product.
I really can’t think of that many sequels where developers have said things like that that havent ended up dumbed down, the hitman games I guess?
05/05/2011 at 14:10 mouton says:
This doesn’t mean dumbing down, but dumbing down is, usually, the end effect of going for “broader appeal”. I will be the first to cheer if this is not the case, but forgive me for having little hope.
05/05/2011 at 17:37 Om says:
@Joshua: But Bioware are not simply *aiming* at a larger market; they are “in the process of realigning its Mass Effect franchise to appeal to a larger audience”. There is, to my mind, a difference here. This is not ‘Yeah, we want to sell more games’ but rather, ‘We want to sell more games and we’re making changes to the game design to accomplish this’
Now it may be that this involves adding more RPG features or the like. Given the progression of the ME “franchise” however, I’d wager heavily that the opposite is the case. This does not automatically translate as a worse game but nor does it inspire confidence
05/05/2011 at 12:36 Hoaxfish says:
Free hamburgers with every copy sold? That’d certainly get larger audience members
05/05/2011 at 13:53 Zarunil says:
Ha! I was about to make a snide comment about how they must be trying to target the US market. And it seems I just did.
05/05/2011 at 17:20 Hoaxfish says:
oh… it’s also called mass effect… that would work as a fat joke too
05/05/2011 at 12:37 Big Murray says:
They said the same thing about Dragon Age 2. And, like DA1 and 2, there was a very short turnover period between the games.
Mass Effect 3 is going to suck badly, isn’t it. :(
05/05/2011 at 12:57 FLAMEIFRIT says:
Look what happened with dragon age 2. They “Appealed to larger audiences” there and in the process made a worse game.
I’m guessing they are going to make ME3 it into a largely generic shooter with most of the RPG elements cut out. HOWEVER that is just a guess and I admit this is a knee jerk reaction with no real reason. Its just that given the recent direction bioware has been going marketing to console kiddies, cutting corners to release faster etc… I cant help but think I am going to be disappointed with ME3 .
Heres hoping I will be surprised though :)
05/05/2011 at 12:45 poop says:
someone fucking fire bioware’s entire pr department already, these guys got no idea how to say anything without making somebody angry, in a way that I can’t think of for any other developers except notch I guess
05/05/2011 at 12:53 thegooseking says:
This isn’t PR at all, though. It’s a leaked communication with “the money people”. I’m surprised that anyone expected what “the money people” want to hear to be anything other than talking about what kinds of markets the thing could address, really.
05/05/2011 at 12:55 poop says:
fire everybody who has a job that involves making games sound entertaining then, i guess
05/05/2011 at 13:06 FLAMEIFRIT says:
I think I would prefer they didnt say anything until much much much closer to release time.
06/05/2011 at 21:56 shizamon says:
Amen..
They shouldn’t be backing down with the money people, but explaining to them that they know nothing about what people want, and that THEY will make the decision that will bring the most value to THEIR company.
05/05/2011 at 12:49 poop says:
a shooter AND an RPG?!?!?!? TOGETHER??!?!?!? WHY HAS NOBODY DONE THIS BEFORE?? THANK YOU BIOWARE
05/05/2011 at 13:13 Hoaxfish says:
Dear god, that was sarcastic enough to be detectable on the Internet!
05/05/2011 at 12:49 drewski says:
No character progression at all, I suspect. Just “this is better so you’re using it” and talking and shooting and NPCs.
05/05/2011 at 12:59 Moni says:
The only things I think this could mean are:
- Multiplayer mode, with constant dying and leveling up.
- A less sci-fi setting, like a modern war zone or something.
- More close ups of Miranda’s arse.
05/05/2011 at 13:15 drewski says:
Well, the last one is a given.
05/05/2011 at 13:04 Rinox says:
At the risk of being ‘that’ guy (ie the monocle-wearing PC elitist looking down in disgust at console peasants), could it be that the fact that the consoles are nearing the end of their current cycle has an impact on the ambitions of new cross-platform AAA titles?
I mean, in DA2 it was rather clear that they skimped on backgrounds and effects to be able to present good-looking graphics for the combat and characters (I though the new art style was shite, but that’s only the designers’ fault). Since Bioware et al are obligated to make newer, shinier games on an increasingly aging machine they seem to ‘streamline’ their titles with every installment so that the paltform can still handle it. Or invest more time in optimizing that aspect of the game vs. deepening out other things.
Eh, anyway, I’m curious about ME3 and unless it’s DA2 style of fail I’ll probably buy it on release. Jean-Luc Shipard has a date with destiny.
05/05/2011 at 13:27 DiamondDog says:
I don’t think what you say has much to do with being one of ‘those’ people. I’d imagine that most sensible console-only gamers would agree with you that certainly the 360 is starting to show it’s age. They probably look at things like the Battlefield 3 trailer and wish the next generation was coming around a bit sooner.
05/05/2011 at 15:47 Chayat says:
That’s a very disrespectful way to talk about the GAMES MASTER!
05/05/2011 at 13:07 skyturnedred says:
Well, if they insist on increasing the amount of shooty bits, at least they realized that while the combat was okay in ME2, it was still far behind actual shooty games and therefore got DICE to help them out.
05/05/2011 at 13:10 JohnnyMaverik says:
Dumbing down for the win! Yes I accept Mass Effect 2 was a better game than Mass Effect 1, no I don’t accept it was a better game due largely to being more “streamlined”, some of the streamlining was very welcome, much of it felt purely like dumbing down.
05/05/2011 at 14:15 Joshua says:
Hmm. The problem for me was not that they ‘streamlined’ it, but that they could have done a lot more with those streamlined stuff. For example, the distinctly varied weapons (As opposed to the 100 variants of hte same thing) were quite cool, but they certainly could have included more different stuff then just two pistols, for example. As long as they kept things varied and not turned into the horrible exercise into hammerspace management that ME1 was.
05/05/2011 at 13:13 Blackseraph says:
I am already quite disillusioned about bioware after DA2 and now this. Bioware should have stayed independent.
But oh well perhaps this won’t be that bad. Me2 wasn’t an rpg anyway but cover shooter with some talking here and there.
For so long name bioware was synonymous to me with quality, that seems to be thing of the past.
05/05/2011 at 13:19 mouton says:
Oh that’s just jolly. Why don’t they simply make it a facebook game and add farming and killstreaks.
Anyway, I still haven’t bought/purchased DA2, despite having purchased the earlier ME/DA games, with ME2 collector’s edition. This seems like a strong trend in my relationship with Bioware. Truly sad.
05/05/2011 at 13:26 colinmarc says:
What RPS needs is a knee-high wall.
05/05/2011 at 13:27 poop says:
that is otherwise concealed but rises out of the ground quickly when people get too shouty?
05/05/2011 at 14:58 Will Tomas says:
No, what RPS needs is a ha-ha.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha-ha
05/05/2011 at 16:18 Lacessit says:
Or perhpas a ho-ho. Which is like a ha-ha, only deeper.
I wish I had thought of that joke myself, but credit must go to the delightful Terry Pratchett.
05/05/2011 at 13:29 terry says:
I played Mass Effect 2 for 40 minutes yesterday and I did not fire a shot. I like games where that is an option and any divergence in that philosophy would make me sad and would probably not be a good thing. Whether or not that’s “mass market” or whatever (The Sims 3 has no guns at all and is pretty darned “mass market”) is by the by.
05/05/2011 at 13:43 groovychainsaw says:
Planet scanning for 40 mins, by any chance?? ;-D
05/05/2011 at 13:40 Unaco says:
“What, I wonder, is left to cut?”
Where, in the quote that has been quoted, does it say ANYTHING about cutting features? It doesn’t.
05/05/2011 at 14:16 Joshua says:
This.
05/05/2011 at 13:42 amorpheous says:
A friend of mine commented the other day “Bioware don’t make RPGs anymore”. I couldn’t help but agree.
05/05/2011 at 13:55 theleif says:
Preemptive sadface.
05/05/2011 at 14:02 Lobotomist says:
RIP
BIOWARE
05/05/2011 at 14:06 Vinraith says:
Wow. Just wow.
ME2 was a shooter with the lightest of light RPG mechanics attached, presumably even those paltry remaining concessions to the genre are now to be abandoned. I mean, what’s left? Now you can only play a soldier? Now you can’t give orders to your party? Now instead of 4 skills to upgrade there are only 2? How much more “streamlined” can an already braindead-shallow design get?
If Bioware is no longer interested in making RPG’s, I think it’s safe to say I’m no longer interested in buying Bioware games. What a disappointment.
05/05/2011 at 14:17 Joshua says:
Eh? Where does it say they are not making an RPG? For all we know, they are trying to attract the WoW fanbase.
05/05/2011 at 14:21 Vinraith says:
@Joshua
They thought ME2 was an RPG. They’re saying ME3 will be a “shooter meets RPG.” If you dillute the “RPG” mechanics in ME2 any more with shooter, what you’re left with is a pure shooter with conversation trees.
05/05/2011 at 14:21 Telekinesis says:
Yeah becuase the “broader audience” is the WOW fan base /facepalm.
05/05/2011 at 14:36 Joshua says:
@ Telekeniss
It is a larger audience then they have now ;). Why do you think that the broader audience is the CoD crowd?
@Vinraith
For all we know, they have simply become better in their assessments. Mass Effect always was a shooter meets RPG. How they call it does not mean anything.
05/05/2011 at 15:09 Vinraith says:
@Joshua
In principle, of course, you’re entirely right. In practice, I can’t think of a single instance where a dev has said something to the effect of “we’re making the game more mainstream” that hasn’t directly translated to “we’re dumbing the game down.” Learn from history, and never take PR-speak literally.
05/05/2011 at 17:33 Marshall Stele says:
I have to agree with this general thought. It seems that Bioware isn’t interested in doing RPGs anymore. But the problem is that I don’t think cover based manshoots are their forte at all.
ME3 may very well be my last Bioware game; and this was a company that pretty much defined my early PC days. I’ll keep my eyes open regarding any other games they make, but this still makes me genuinely sad.
05/05/2011 at 18:32 thegooseking says:
You’ll be lucky. All you can upgrade is STRANTH, and you have to buy the potion, even if you don’t want to.
In what way is this supposed to be an RPG anyway? Explain to me. EXPLAIN TO ME.
05/05/2011 at 14:09 Jason Moyer says:
Wouldn’t it be great if this meant “less time staring at a spreadsheet of planets” and “more time playing the damn game”?
Also: PROBE LAUNCHED
05/05/2011 at 14:19 Telekinesis says:
Durrr, can I haz COD?
05/05/2011 at 14:33 JKjoker says:
there is only one way i can think of to streamline ME2 any more, so …. mass of duty ? maybe those white armor guys are not enemies but the usual generic red shirts of call of duty games
i dont understand Bioware’s approach, the one thing they had that nobody else did was that their games had a type of gameplay (rpg) others developers have abandoned, so their great idea is to abandon that and join the call for duty/gears of war/god of war crowd ?, eliminate all uniqueness and make clones of other games, yeah thats a great objective to follow
ive seen a lot of ppl say that the ME3 is a different team than DA2, they forget that the company is the same and the marketing department is the same (which i felt made most of the important decisions in DA2)
05/05/2011 at 14:39 Joshua says:
I still can not understand how people can read so much into one sentence which said: We are delaying it to get more sales.
That is like determining someone’s entire policies from the sentence: “We more money spend on education”, and then berate them for persuing the policies you imagined them to go, even though the sentence implied nothing as such and was only there to appeal to the voters.
(I also do not get why there should be an article speffically about this).
05/05/2011 at 17:34 Pointless Puppies says:
Maybe because that’s what always happens when developers make that kind of PR statement? And the fact that BioWare themselves have made that statement before and we’ve been able to see first hand what it actually means coming from them?
I don’t know. Just a thought.
05/05/2011 at 19:47 Joshua says:
But its not a PR statement. He was talking to the investors on why they delayed the game. When they talk directly to games journalists on the direction they are taking, then i’d consider it PR where one might speculate about.
05/05/2011 at 14:49 BobsLawnService says:
OMG! They’re turning it into a Facebook game!
05/05/2011 at 15:02 bluebogle says:
They’re adding fart jokes.
05/05/2011 at 15:04 Telekinesis says:
I tell you,*what* set ME apart from everyone else …its RPG elements …now their idea is hey guise lets eliminate that and join the generic-ass crowd; it may work for ONE iteration, but that’s it. F’ing companies spend years and millions to get what they had and fail, and they just throw it away. Multi-million dollar idiocy.
05/05/2011 at 15:11 Lilliput King says:
Sometimes you just want an ass that conforms to social norms.
05/05/2011 at 15:14 Vinraith says:
This is something that big companies seem to do a lot of, actually. We’re not quite as successful as larger company A. Clearly the best way to compete with company A is to eliminate everything about ourselves that makes us different from company A, then somehow and for some reason we’ll be as successful as they are.
It’s not an error I understand, but it’s rampant in the corporate world.
05/05/2011 at 15:16 Moleman says:
Look- I know we all want to freak out, because Dragon Age 2 was disappointing, but does this actually track with any of the announced features for the game? I mean, just from simple mechanical stuff that’s been mentioned (upgradeable weapons, more varied ability upgrades, etc). What’s actually going on is probably one (or a combination) of the following:
1. “Simplified” is a relative term- there’s one or two adjustments that look like they’re bringing it closer to a shooter (class weapon loadouts are now # of slots, not “can’t use weapon X”), but you could make just as convincing an argument that they’re edits for consistency. It may be as simple as making the PS3 “previous playthrough adjuster” standard on all systems- they’re banking quite a bit on making this the big finish for the series, but if I were an investor, my first worry would be the possibility for new player lockout. The only real “more shootery” bit mentioned has been faster-paced combat, which is probably a welcome change- unless you were particularly reckless, even ME2′s enemies rarely pressed the advantage, and would just let you dictate the terms of the fight.
2. Let’s not forget- it’s an investor meeting. He’s got the unenviable task of convincing a group of non gamers that he’s going to take the lump of money that the company has gotten, and turn it into a larger lump by selling this game. And as much as we complain about game prices, they’ve been basically unchanged since the first ME, and dev costs have gone up. Since higher unit prices and cutting costs are off the table, and the investors aren’t completely stupid, you’ve got to tell them you’re going to shift more units.
05/05/2011 at 15:16 Mac says:
So we are getting Mass Dragon Effect Age 3 ?
05/05/2011 at 15:16 Kent says:
I hate the Mass Effect franchise. First game was crap, second was somewhat better – but this entire time this franchise has been BioWare’s only hook in the gaming market because people are so obsessed over this extremely silly “science-fiction” adventure. When will BioWare make the same caliber of RPG brilliance like CD Projekt’s The Witcher? Never, they’re simply only out for making quick bucks and the mindless sheep that is their community is just irresponsibly handing over their cash to them.
If Mass Effect 3 flunks I say good riddance, but knowing their community it doesn’t matter how bad the game becomes it’s never going to flunk.
05/05/2011 at 15:22 Lilliput King says:
“Mass Effect becomes a mix between greatness and complete shittyness.”
One word:
Wordsmith.
05/05/2011 at 15:29 Telekinesis says:
“first game was stupid”
Do you REALIZE son that they practically broke new ground there, HS bro what are you 19? You have to be because your taste in gaming is like … breeeeeeath, breeeeeeeeeeeeeth…
Only “hook”, kid you realize they made Baldurs Gate? Damn kid why you on this website?
05/05/2011 at 16:44 Unaco says:
“When will BioWare make the same caliber of RPG brilliance like CD Projekt’s The Witcher?”
They already have done… it was called The Baldur’s Gate Trilogy.
05/05/2011 at 19:41 Joshua says:
@Unaco
I would entirely disagree with you there. The Witcher, I personally thought, was much, much better then Baldur’s Gate. The only thing that really made it interesting was the 6 party member combat, and the world, off-course. But the levelling etc. was just… basic (have fun with your slightly higher to hit chance!). So was the influence the player could have on the storyline. I thought the Witcher to be better in these regards. The ‘How The Witcher dealt with choice’ article outlined it quite well.
05/05/2011 at 21:06 Unaco says:
@Joshua,
I didn’t say which game was better than the other, or that I thought one game was better than the other.
What I said was the Baldur’s Gate trilogy is a game of the same calibre as the Witcher. To say otherwise would be madness, regardless of whether you liked the game or not. BG is one of the most critically acclaimed, popular, fondly remembered, biggest selling RPG series ever. It’s been included in countless “Top XX Games of All Time” lists, numerous glowing retrospectives, and it still sells well today (with DVD rerelease, or GOG picking it up and offering it recently). It is easily of the same calibre as the Witcher.
06/05/2011 at 01:26 fuggles says:
You mean The Witcher – a game so bad they had to release a second, good version? Hmmm. The Witcher was alright, it came at a drought stage with awful characters, super awful combat and dull quests. Only due to originality of setting did it earn any interest, and that was only in the second version (director’s cut).
You cannot compare the witcher to baldur’s gate, it’s not in the same league. The witcher is the book you leave in the airport; Baldurs gate is the book next to your pillow. Criticising an older game for being basic is all sorts of retarded. ME1 and ME2 were great, although I could live without scanning.
Easily of the same calibre as the Witcher? Definitely. Witcher the same calibre as BG? Hell no.
06/05/2011 at 01:54 Big Murray says:
Anybody who even thinks of comparing The Witcher to Baldur’s Gate deserves to be cut in twain with my axe.
Baldur’s Gate was an RPG masterpiece. The Witcher, whatever your opinion on it, can never escape the title of “flawed”. At best.
05/05/2011 at 15:19 Soender says:
The future of streamlined gaming
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPkUvfL8T1I
05/05/2011 at 15:23 rocketman71 says:
Yeah, because they did it so well with Dragon Age 2.
Don’t fuck it up more, Bioware. Mass Effect 2 was almost right (a little too casual, but I can manage).
05/05/2011 at 15:43 Gvaz says:
UGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
I hope this doesn’t end up to be true. I’m sorry but RPGs are for RPG fans. This shit is devolving from an RPG (first game) to Gears of War where you get to pick some conversation options. Whoop de freaking do
05/05/2011 at 15:46 cjlr says:
Execu-speak before a – I’m not sure of an appropriate collective noun; I’m leaning towards morass – of investors has never been and will never be all that related to reality.
You don’t pick up a massive new audience for sequels. You get the people who enjoyed previous installments and liked them, plus a few curious neophytes. FACT.
Look at what else he said – they’ll hype the fuck out of it at E3. THAT will give us a chance to be proper judgemental, instead of merely preemptively judgemental.
ME2 fixed bad elements by removing them entirely, replaced heat management dynamics with a fucking ammo counter (’cause that spells innovation), splashed shit on screen when your health got low, PLANET SCANNING, and had a joke of a main plot and a terrible joke of a final boss. Except there were some wonderfully written parts in between that – some tremendously wonderful bits. Enough to make it all worth it. Here’s hoping they pick the right things to build on.
05/05/2011 at 15:48 skyturnedred says:
I still think it’s gonna be a great game, but they should drop the act and stop calling it an RPG.
05/05/2011 at 15:54 Deano2099 says:
Well more complex and branching talent trees have already been announced. So my honest best guess is a single-class Shep, with talent trees for guns, biotics and tech. When you level up you choose what to put a point in to.
Theoretically you could make a Vanguard or whatever still, but it’d cure that problem of 80% of people starting as a Soldier and not seeing any of the other stuff by starting everyone as a generic Soldier and letting you create your class as you go.
05/05/2011 at 16:36 Buttless Boy says:
No, no, you guys misunderstand. When they say “larger”, they mean “fatter”. ME3 will be the first video game marketed toward the obese.
05/05/2011 at 17:13 Muzman says:
I thought it was already on consoles?
They should have some sort of ‘Biggest Loser’ for game sequels. Sub title it “The race to the bottom”. Have ‘roided up ex military sales people barking focus group results at sweaty, red faced games trying to cut features.
“THIS ONE SAYS “BORING!”, “INVENTORIES ARE STUPID!”, “I COULDN’T FIND THE DOOR!”"
05/05/2011 at 17:00 Unaco says:
I remember, 10 – 15, maybe 20 years ago, when gaming wasn’t a ‘popular’, mainstream pastime. It was still a somewhat ‘geeky’ thing, a dirty little secret perhaps, it wasn’t cool, it wasn’t hip. Back then, gamers were quick to defend and promote their pastime… It is a cool thing, it can be hip, games can be art, they can tell stories, it’s not a niche thing and everyone can enjoy it… “Competitive games could be a new sport, Artsy games can be pieces of Art, Narrative games can tell stories” they all cried, “If only people could get over the stigma of gaming, and embrace it as a new, interactive medium”.
And so people did. Games went ‘mainstream’, they became popular, some as big as Summer Blockbuster movies.
And what’s the chorus now? “We should go back to the days when games weren’t mainstream”, “Games shouldn’t appeal to a wide audience, they should appeal to the niche audience”, “Mainstream/casual gaming is killing gaming”.
05/05/2011 at 17:01 RP says:
I will pre-order ME3′s fancy edition, whatever it is. But when it comes out, if it’s gone the way of DA2, I’ll be done with Bioware for good. The ME3 team is the only one I have faith in anymore, but if that’s superseded by the kinds of executive decisions Bioware and/or EA is making now, then I “hope” they reach lots of new fans to replace all the old and loyal ones they’ve driven away.
05/05/2011 at 17:09 Man Raised by Puffins says:
Sounds like a plan.
05/05/2011 at 17:28 Falx22 says:
This seems like a terrible fuss over very little evidence
05/05/2011 at 17:30 catmorbid says:
*sigh* I don’t really care what bioware does anymore. They’re certainly not doing rpg’s – at least not those that I care for. Maybe ME 3 will be an entertaining game. Who knows. But I’m certainly not expecting anything from it, nor will I expect anything else than “greater mass appeal” bullshit from bioware ever again. Too bad, Mass Effect 1 had great promise for the series.
05/05/2011 at 17:45 ChromeBallz says:
Bioware’s business strategy since EA took over:
1) Make a game for a hardcore loyal audience.
2) Make the sequel appeal to a more mainstream audience once you’re sure the loyal customers won’t leave you whatever you do.
3) Repeat step 2.
This seems to have been the plan for DA and ME anyway. I can only imagine ME3 having no RPG elements whatsoever and being an interactive movie/gears of war ripoff rather than the game it tried to be in ME1. Same for DA3.
It seems that Bioware would rather cut features out entirely than improve them if they receive criticism. Given how much the rest of the game is gravitating towards Gears of War i can only imagine that the most important people on the project (the (lead) game designers) are lazy f- [the next 15 words are censored for obvious reasons].
05/05/2011 at 17:56 Nick says:
I hope this isn’t a result of their stat tracking survey of what gamers did playing ME2, like DA2 was of DA: Origins. Because the results from that survey were fucking depressing.
05/05/2011 at 18:04 bwion says:
I don’t get people saying that Mass Effect 2 didn’t have a good story. It had an excellent tale of a scientist being confronted by the ethical ramifications of his work. Not to mention the similarly strong stories of a hardened criminal confronting old demons, a dying assassin trying to make a better life for his son, an old cop having to bring in her daughter for murder, an archaeology student on track to become the most powerful person in the galaxy, the ethical dilemma of whether to brainwash an entire species into being less evil, etc.
(Oh and there was some nonsense about bug people and evil space monsters or something. But who cares about that?)
Anyway, I wouldn’t put too much stock in this. It was a CEO talking to investors, of course he’s going to say HEY WE WANT EVERYONE TO BUY OUR GAME. This could even work to our benefit; when Bioware inevitably turns in a build of Mass Effect 3 that is like 70% scanning planets for minerals or Tower of Hanoi jumping puzzles in hovertanks, they might get a response of THIS IS NEITHER GUNS NOR CONVERSATION, TRY AGAIN.
(Unless the planets you’re scanning for minerals are brown. Then we might have a problem)
05/05/2011 at 18:43 thegooseking says:
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head, there, but I’ll ignore your violent tendencies towards carpentry tools and say why I think you’re right.
Mass Effect 2 was supposed to be ‘cinematic’. Except it wasn’t. It more more a sci-fi TV show than a sci-fi movie. A collection of pretty much self-contained episodes. And those episodes in themselves were great. The main arc might have been lacking a little bit, but as in good sci-fi TV shows, it existed as a background thread of continuity throughout the episodes, rather than as an up-front all-consuming thing.
I’m not sure this is a bad thing. I don’t know where we got this idea that games are supposed to be like movies when the mid-90s showed that they’re really not.
06/05/2011 at 19:02 montagohalcyon says:
I just created an account solely to thank you for that perspective. I see so much whining on the internet about how lame ME2′s “main story” was, when it was pretty obvious to me that it wasn’t the point. It was merely the background, which is not that different from ME1, or really any RPG with sidequests (all of them). I would argue the episodic, character-driven feel was a better excuse for that kind of thing than the “we need to save the world, but let’s insert-minor-completely-unrelated-fetch-quest-here first!” approach that most RPGs take.
Also, I think ME2 had better decisions, personally–I never really had to think about most of ME1′s, but Mordin and Legion’s loyalty missions both had me really unsure what to do for a while.
05/05/2011 at 18:47 Jimbo says:
I understand them wanting to aim their games at larger audiences, but I don’t understand how they think they can achieve that midway through a very story-heavy franchise. They tried it already with ME2, pulled it off about as successfully as it’s possible to do, and sales were still capped at around 2 million because ME1 didn’t sell enough to support anymore. Are millions of extra people going to buy ME3 even if they haven’t played 1&2? Probably not. I think if they really want to make this shift, they need to do it with a fresh franchise (or at least a fresh storyline).
However, even if they go that route and start a fresh franchise which is closer to a straight FPS or TPS, they run the risk of it backfiring, because I just don’t think they’re good enough at making action games to compete in that market.
05/05/2011 at 19:25 Zogtee says:
Streamlining a game means removing options, so fewer classes, fewer NPC’s, less zooming around in space, etc. If you want that extra stuff, you damn well buy it as DLC.
05/05/2011 at 19:28 Lilliput King says:
“Streamlining a game means removing options”
Don’t think so.
Let’s say a game has twelve screens all saying “click to continue!” that appear when you first start it up. If I remove those screens, I think it’s rational to say I’m streamlining the game.
06/05/2011 at 19:35 Nick says:
It *shouldn’t* mean removing things but it generally does.
05/05/2011 at 20:00 Dreamhacker says:
It seems the last game I will ever buy from Bioware is Jade Empire 2. Maybe.
05/05/2011 at 20:03 adammtlx says:
Standard RPG elements have nothing to do necessarily with “fun” or “enjoyment.” Case in point, inventory systems. ME1′s inventory system was bad. Scrapping it altogether may not have been the BEST choice, but it was certainly better than leaving it in for ME2. Which illustrates the point that whatever makes things more fun is the better choice.
The point: I adored the first ME but the 2nd was the Dark Knight to ME1′s Batman Begins. Prettier, grittier, smoother and funner. I didn’t even notice the absence of the inventory past the initial realization that it was gone because I was too busy having a blast playing the game.
I was as worried as anyone going in with words like “streamlined” and “optimized,” those words often being euphemisms for “dumber” and “less interesting.” The game wasn’t, though, dumber or less interesting. It WAS streamlined: more focused, more intent on the things that were FUN, not insistent on including the things that were RPG simply for RPG sake. Some RPG trappings work for some games, some don’t. Bioware cut out what didn’t work and improved what did. I’m a little concerned about how much more fat you can cut from something as wonderful and well-executed as ME2, but I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt until forced to do otherwise. They’ve earned that much credit from me.
05/05/2011 at 20:20 adammtlx says:
With that said, I greatly enjoyed Dragon Age 1, but Dragon Age 2 looked completely unappealing and having played the demo I was left convinced I wasn’t interested. Maybe when it goes on sale on Steam for $20. Maybe.
The “streamlining” thing did NOT, in my opinion, work for DA2 at all. But DA1 and ME1 were completely different games and Bioware didn’t seem to realize that and just went full steam ahead stripping down a game that I believe needed to act and feel MORE like a traditional RPG than its predecessor, not less.
And I’m sorry but TOR looks awful so far.
05/05/2011 at 21:01 Betamax says:
This isn’t really news. Ever followed these invester talks before? They always come out with this ‘investor simple speak’ quotes when discussing upcoming games, it’s just to sell the product to the people fronting the money in a way that they understand. Most probably don’t even game, let alone play a game lke ME.
Anyway, who are you going to trust? JR or the BioWare team who have been quoted in interviews stating that they have returned certain more RPG-like elements to the game for part 3? No doubt they will continue to try and market the game to a ‘larger audience’ (despite DA2 most RPG fans still follow BioWare related news, even if they are on the fence about their products a bit more now). That means pushing the shooter side of things.
And make no mistake the Mass Effect series has ALWAYS been a Shooter-RPG hybrid, in that order.
Until a preview, BioWare dev or gameplay video indicates that the earlier interviews were completely wrong I’m quite happy that we will be seeing more RPG elements than we saw in ME2.
I mean, weapon mods alone is an improvement right there!
05/05/2011 at 21:21 RyuRanX says:
Which means more cutscenes, meaningless choices, corridors and deeper dating-sim mechanics.
05/05/2011 at 21:40 vodkarn says:
‘Larger market opportunities’ = attempting to add multiplayer.
Yes, I would put money on it. They want to add multiplayer, it won’t work, but they’re still trying.
06/05/2011 at 00:08 PoulWrist says:
So it’s going to be Call of Effect instead?
06/05/2011 at 00:32 branewalker says:
This does not sound like a man talking to customers. Whether it sounds like a man talking at all depends on your ability to put up with marketing BS.
I don’t care what they tell their investors as long as any changes they make are fully rational within ME canon.
Starting with fixing the makes-no-sense-anymore ammo system. Really.
It’s a story game. I didn’t mind the lack of inventory, found planet-scanning boring and tedious, the combat more fun (mostly).
None of those changes really matter much to me, though. The strength of Mass Effect is a compelling fiction. The first chink in that armor was the half-assed explanation of why weapons now have limited ammo. As long as they don’t keep eroding the credibility of their story in the details, then the third game should be a satisfying conclusion.
Compelling. Detailed. Sci-Fi. More of that, please.
06/05/2011 at 01:58 Frank says:
How about they take out the 80% of the game spent walking around their f#$%ing artwork.
I get it, they spent a lot of dough on it. And, I’m always one to enjoy me some exploration. But the sheer empitness of ME1 made it look like filler.
06/05/2011 at 02:17 Caleo says:
So basically, #3 is mass effect’s Dragon Age 2.
06/05/2011 at 02:25 Armante says:
as part of this week’s EA sale, Mass Effect 1 and 2 (and 2 digital deluxe edition) are on sale on Steam today. 1 is75% off at US$5, 2 is 50% off at US$10 and 2dde is US$20
06/05/2011 at 04:40 DCCTV says:
Guys, what’s your favourite sequel released on pc, but not the title before it.
mercenaries 2, saints row 2 and bad company 2 are highlights for me… actually burnout paradise beats them all but it doesn’t have a number which is disappointing.
06/05/2011 at 07:26 gwathdring says:
I don’t like the Hammerhead. It feels too floaty. I miss my big-ol rock. And doing flips off mountains in it.
But overall … the combat was more fun in Mass Effect 2. You could customize your armor instead of needing to find the right color in a stack of loot, the graphics were slicker, the conversation interrupt system that was implied at the first big E3 showing of Mass Effect was implemented (not always effectively, but it was there), there was more dialog with each member on board the ship, even some though it was still pretty much a “wait until a new mission has been completed before chatting” affair, which was disgruntling but expected, there were some intriguing fully acted side characters, the urban areas had more a greater feeling of activity, there were more interesting level designs (though still samey as a whole, and with contrived placement and behavior of enemies), and the voice work was superb. Most of the issues I have with Mass Effect 2, I had with Mass Effect 1. There are things that changed in ways I didn’t like, but in a lot of those instances (hammerhead to mako) the original had plenty of flaws too.
I don’t think it’s fair to blame the streamlining process for the issues in Mass Effect 2. Mass Effect 1 had buckets of charm and Mass Effect 2 had less … but that doesn’t mean that Mass Effect 2 should reclaim some of the clunky and unimportant aspects of Mass Effect 1 in order to retain that charm–that’s for some good work with atmospheric direction to take care of. I’m fine with the combat sections playing like a shooter–as far as I’m concerned, my main frustrations in ME1′s combat stemmed from the arbitrary RPG elements. Shepard isn’t as good at aiming his gun as I am at moving my mouse around despite all his experience? I have to level him up first? I understand the appeal … I love CRPGs. But the RPG parts of ME1 that I thought a) were well done in the game and b) were interesting when mixed with shooter elements are the intense focus on characters, the interweaving of story and gameplay, the ability to alter the story outcome through in-game actions, and the ability to decide how the character plays. Mass Effect 2 did a comparable or better job on these counts with the exception of interweaving story. That was a big problem for me with ME2. But I really don’t think Mass Effect needs the RPG elements that ME2 dropped intentionally (inventory, detailed stat leveling …), and even if I thought they needed to be in Mass Effect 3, I would say that they were poorly implemented in Mass Effect 1, and were holding parts of the game back.
06/05/2011 at 07:45 mattjb says:
So basically they want to take out the RPG elements to make it more of a shooter? Sort of like how they took out the strategy and tactics of Dragon Age 2 and made it more action than RPG? It sounds like Bioware doesn’t like doing RPG’s anymore. Or maybe they’re tired of it. If they think RPG’s aren’t popular with the mainstream crowd, then they obviously didn’t see the popularity of Oblivion the Xbox 360. Irregardless, Bioware aren’t the same anymore. Like that one guy said when he was banned and had all his games stopped functioning, they really did sell their soul to the devil (EA). RIP Bioware, you were awesome when you actually cared about your games and the audience that played it.
06/05/2011 at 19:42 drinkingjacket says:
Well what about Bethesda then? Everything I read about Skyrim is that they are removing attributes from the game. You level up you get to increase stamina or magic and then pick a perk ala Fallout 3. That’s it. Is that better or worse than allocating points to strength/dex/int/what have you?
And going with the Mass of Duty jokes, why do you think COD has been so popular? The IW guys, when they made Modern Warfare 1, struck a very obvious but very resonant chord with the gaming community. They put some staples of the rpg into a shooter and made a crap ton of money because of it. Levels. Allocating perks/feats/bonuses whatever you wanna call them, attachments to weapons, and love it or hate it, I don’t see how you could possibly argue that it wasn’t well executed and a vast improvement over Counter Strike/Rainbow 6 and all the other shooters out at the time. They took the 30 second attention span of a shooter and married it to the kind of character power progression you see in an RPG.
Seriously there is just as much depth and player choice in Modern Warfare in terms of outfitting your avatar and having to make choices as there was in Baldur’s Gate 2. Call me whatever you want, but its the truth. D&D (2nd edition) was hardly full of character improvement choices. Get level. Get hit points. If Spell caster, choose spells, if not continue to next dungeon.
So making the shooting elements of Mass Effect better is absolutely the 1st thing I would have done were I EA/Bioware too. Like I said before, and like Manley Pointer says, the gameplay doesn’t stand up on its own. Why bother with all that artwork and graphics (which tbh were a big let down after the awesome view of the blown up Normandy in the prologue) and have crappy unresponsive combat?
I do agree though that Bioware balanced the game (ME2) terribly. Fact is, they just aren’t good at it, as a company, historically. Maybe their leadership just never had any interest in it. Because, as I said in my earlier post, there’s never been a Bioware game that couldn’t be cheesed/power gamed. Certain things work, others are not worth the repeated loads and saves over. The Biotic and Tech powers should probably be refocused so that they are not completely worthless against anything but a raw health bar and the particular defense the specific power is designed to combat. But that kind of polish only gets looked at late, if at all. Here’s to hoping they do. Things like that are vastly more important to me than whether I get to make Vindicator Assualt Rifle IX after making Vindicator Assault Rifle XIII. In fact, of vast more importance to me is the game’s fiction. Sure there’s a big codex full of all kinds of words, but you could go the whole game and never look at it. I’m sure most players don’t. What do they say about lazy and bad storytelling? Something along the lines of bad authors tell you a tale, good one’s show you one? I think there’s about 5 lines of dialogue in ME2 about Biotics. Everything else is in the codex. And half of that doesn’t add up under scrutiny. I mean I guess Thane can warp and throw because he “meditates?” And why am I playing a game called “Gravity” anyway?
But yeah. This is EA’s baby now. Other than their sports franchises, and Battlefield EA needs all the Bioware IP (as generic and lite and ripped off as they are) because they sell. So absolutely expect Mass Effect Mobile, Dragon Ageville, Shepard N7 Armor/Skins in Battlefield 3, etc. Welcome to 2011.
07/05/2011 at 03:59 MordeaniisChaos says:
Well fuck you Bioware. FUCK. YOU. First Mass Effect 2 comes out and I was literally SPEECHLESS with how different (FOR THE WORSE) the game was from the original (you know, that one that actually did something new and interesting for once), then Dragon Age 2 comes out and is an actiony re-regurgitated dungeon crawl with grossly massive tits on every female in existence, and now this?
Awesome. Just. Awesome.
I am done with you Bioware. You made my two favorite games (Mass Effect and Dragon Age) and then you totally shat on them by making sequels that just gave a massive “Fuck you” to anyone hoping for an improvement vs a rethinking.
God damnit, you were the last bastion of hope for us RPG players who wanted AAA games with fantastic production values.
PLENTY of developers already fucking make shooters and action RPGs. Instead of assuming that the reason for your games not selling is because they are the wrong kind of game, try fucking fixing the things you screwed up, rather than just removing them entirely. Fucking twats.
07/05/2011 at 04:12 y0chang says:
Mass Effect 1 = Matrix
Mass Effect 2 = Matrix: Reloaded
Mass Effect 3 = Yeah we can see where this is going….
Oddly enough I still liked ME2 but I realized it was never gonna live up to the premise of the first.
I replayed ME1 almost 3 times, while I haven’t even replayed the 2nd…
09/05/2011 at 18:58 NicolinoH says:
I agree with you y0chang. Dragon age origins ,5 main storylines to begin with.. that affected how people somethimes would act to you, tacktical battles, wich should of been improved? they didnt in DA2 they just made a game for a console, and added the pauze mode lol. I got mass effect 2 first i liked it, so i got mass effect 1 to import my charackter first i had to get use to the system again, because well ME2 was alot easier. so i started playing and i loved it so much more.. then ME2, ME2 was good but ME1 was better what i like about RPG’s is being able to customize my teams armor, ME2 they just made those DLC’s.
It’s just draining your money for something worthless. I did not buy Dragon age 2 i played it tested it, disliked it didn’t buy it. and i will never buy anymore bioware game, unless they go back to how they use to make their games, i mean WHERE WAS SARA WONG in ME2 ? she sends you a email ? and thats it ? Chronicles of Kirkwall, Chronicles of sovereign + 50 DLC packs ^^
31/05/2011 at 23:36 cyclekarl says:
I suspected as much,the vast majority of xbox 360 games are shooters,why can’t they be happy with that and keep RPG fans happy with a few decent RPG’S,why does everything have to be about mindless blasting,I love mass effect,the story,the exploration,the customisation, and the sound track were all vastly superior to it’s sequel,if they are going to make it more attractive to a wider audience that means,none of the first games features and little of the firsts,it seams like it will be a Call of Duty in the mass effect universe,if so I won’t buy it and frankly have about given up on gaming,maybe one day shooters will be a thing of the past and Role players and adventure games will come back,we can only hope.