Mass Effect 2

yeah, it's a shame because I never really got to use him in combat besides for his loyalty mission. still, it was a pretty cool twist to put him in there and it worked really well to save him for last.
 
Sander said:
nemo00 said:
Oh yeah...in Fallout to you were destined to save your willage, vault and in the process destroy a couple of evil organizations who were threatening to take over the planet.......it is the same thing in most of the RPG's except Planescape....hell it is the same thing in 90% of the games,not just in those made by Bioware
That's not really true. Fallout worked with a different mold, and started with a very personal quest (save your fault). And it wasn't that the big powers didn't believe you (hell, the Broterhood sends you out there, the Overseer wants you to do something about the Super Mutants), nor were you spending most of the game gathering support for your cause.

Well this is also a very personal quest....save humanity (which could be considered equivalent for a vault on a much more larger scale) it is up to you to make a galaxy dominated by humans or more of a multi national galaxy, I don't see why saving your vault or village is more personal than the galaxy (considering that the vault or the village is the only thing that counts the rest of the world being more a means to an end).

So what if the council doesn't belive you? Do you believe all the crazy out there that say that the end is neigh? Would any government believe that logic is the main argument of any debate conditioned by the paradigm in which you live in anything deviating too much being dismissed by most of the population ? Look the original fallout world is a world in which the extremes became mainstream, (like in Ma4 after a succesfull Reaper invasion) and everybody is prone to jump at shadows and believing all kinds of bull. And actually they did believe you at firs they went to ilos to investigate your claims, but they didn't find any proof....Would you risk a whole gallactic order on the words of a commando who just may be smoking something to cope with the stress?

The point is that most of the accusation that are thrown at ME2 are too general and could be aplied on most of the games, but the fact is that you couldn't make games in any other way, Who the hell would be interested in an RPG about an average Joe's quest of personal developement.


Sander said:
nemo00 said:
And about diablo 1 read any review of the time, it was the game that relaunched RPGs, the critics of the time considering the genre a dead one.
Sure. But to consider it an RPG in the same mold as Fallout, Baldur's Gate or even Ultima is nonsense. If anything, it's a roguelike.
....nobody is saying that it is in the same mold as Fallout, but still it is an RPG. MA is a combination of diablo style combat with from a different perspective a more or less classical RPG dialog + Septerra Core inventory system, and in my oppinion a quite succesful one
 
As the review at Gamebanshee says (if you didn't bother to read it), the game is far too streamlined. *All* quests are about combat, there are no non-combat skills, there isn't much dialogue with your crew\party members, for an action-packed game there's like 20 weapons in the whole game and the upgrades for them are as unimaginative as they can get (boost to accuracy and damage, more ammo per clip). Story is almost the same as in the first part with some twists.

The combat isn't THAT good to make it the main focus of the game, the goddamn minigames annoy the hell out of me and the fuel stuff for Normandy is plain dumb.

Sure, the way the story is shown is nice, but let's face it, it isn't something groundbreaking. Just more effort put into interactive cut-scenes.
 
So what if the council doesn't belive you? Do you believe all the crazy out there that say that the end is neigh? Would any government believe that logic is the main argument of any debate conditioned by the paradigm in which you live in anything deviating too much being dismissed by most of the population ?

Again, the problem isn't so much with the story but that it's been reused far too many times. Replace a few words, and it becomes the story of Dragon Age, for example. etc etc etc You're missing the point.
 
wow you guys whine a lot. the story sucks, got it. there's too much combat, got it.
 
nemo00 said:
Well this is also a very personal quest....save humanity (which could be considered equivalent for a vault on a much more larger scale) it is up to you to make a galaxy dominated by humans or more of a multi national galaxy, I don't see why saving your vault or village is more personal than the galaxy (considering that the vault or the village is the only thing that counts the rest of the world being more a means to an end).

So what if the council doesn't belive you? Do you believe all the crazy out there that say that the end is neigh? Would any government believe that logic is the main argument of any debate conditioned by the paradigm in which you live in anything deviating too much being dismissed by most of the population ? Look the original fallout world is a world in which the extremes became mainstream, (like in Ma4 after a succesfull Reaper invasion) and everybody is prone to jump at shadows and believing all kinds of bull. And actually they did believe you at firs they went to ilos to investigate your claims, but they didn't find any proof....Would you risk a whole gallactic order on the words of a commando who just may be smoking something to cope with the stress?
I'm not arguing the internal logic of the story, just that it's the exact same story they've been using over and over again.
nem00 said:
The point is that most of the accusation that are thrown at ME2 are too general and could be aplied on most of the games, but the fact is that you couldn't make games in any other way, Who the hell would be interested in an RPG about an average Joe's quest of personal developement.
Gogo false dichotomy.
Also, Planescape: Torment.

aenemic said:
wow you guys whine a lot. the story sucks, got it. there's too much combat, got it.
Don't troll.
 
seriously, I'm not trolling. I'm just pointing out that it's annoying how the same complaints have been repeated for 10 pages now. every time I click on this thread I'm hoping to be able to have some serious discussion about the game, but most of the time it's yet another comment on how the story sucks and how there's too much combat.

but I'll be quiet.
 
Well, hey dude, it's NMA, people here like to complain about the same things over and over again. Remember the FO3 release. It's not like the things complained about are false/irrelevant. I guess you just feel left out because you're on neither side of the argument.
 
Ravager69 said:
As the review at Gamebanshee says (if you didn't bother to read it), the game is far too streamlined. *All* quests are about combat, there are no non-combat skills, there isn't much dialogue with your crew\party members, for an action-packed game there's like 20 weapons in the whole game and the upgrades for them are as unimaginative as they can get (boost to accuracy and damage, more ammo per clip). Story is almost the same as in the first part with some twists.

The combat isn't THAT good to make it the main focus of the game, the goddamn minigames annoy the hell out of me and the fuel stuff for Normandy is plain dumb.

Sure, the way the story is shown is nice, but let's face it, it isn't something groundbreaking. Just more effort put into interactive cut-scenes.

1 read the article,
2. I do agree with the fact that the game feels like it is prepearing you for the ME 3.

2.About the weapons it's a debate between a large number of weapons from which you use like 3 or have only a couple but all of them being extremely useful (i personally hate shotguns and avoid using them in most of the games but here it really helped me trough a couple of tough situations). In the end it is a matter of taste. Personally i am ok with both.

3. I also tend to hate minigames(Like the one in Fallout 3, i mean why bother with a lock picking skill), but here they are a kind of enjoyable, butt still i would like them to dissapear. Still I admit the planet scanning is kind of anoying.....

Sander said:
I'm not arguing the internal logic of the story, just that it's the exact same story they've been using over and over again.

In this case we are in trouble cause i haven't played a game with a gorudbreaking story for a looooooooong time. What differentiate them is, and i risk repeating myself, how the story is toldi. Heck Fallout New Vegas (which hopefully will be much better than F3, as it is made by people who now a thing or two about Fallout) starts by you being a courier who lost his memory, were the hell did I heard that before. So there aren't really to many original stories out there, all of them being told over and over again. Starcraft which is one of the greatest RTS of all time is acused, and quite rightfully, of being a Warhammer clone, still it is a very good game. "The story not being original" is kind too much of a general acusation.

The game is maybe original for the fact, that your main quest is to recruit your perfect team for completing the suicide mission, in the rest of the games your party members are people who tag along. I also admit that maybe having a larger recruit pool, you having the option of choosing the members who you think, would be better suited, might have been better.......

Sander said:
Gogo false dichotomy.
Also, Planescape: Torment.

I don't think that somebody who is almost immortal, and lives in Sigil, and has a flying skull, as his best buddy, fits your average joe description.....

Look I am not trying to say that ME2 or Me are the best games ever or they rightfully deserve perfect scores, but still from a scale from 1 to 10 they deserve a solid 8.3.
 
nemo00 said:
In this case we are in trouble cause i haven't played a game with a gorudbreaking story for a looooooooong time. What differentiate them is, and i risk repeating myself, how the story is toldi. Heck Fallout New Vegas (which hopefully will be much better than F3, as it is made by people who now a thing or two about Fallout) starts by you being a courier who lost his memory, were the hell did I heard that before. So there aren't really to many original stories out there, all of them being told over and over again. Starcraft which is one of the greatest RTS of all time is acused, and quite rightfully, of being a Warhammer clone, still it is a very good game. "The story not being original" is kind too much of a general acusation.

The game is maybe original for the fact, that your main quest is to recruit your perfect team for completing the suicide mission, in the rest of the games your party members are people who tag along. I also admit that maybe having a larger recruit pool, you having the option of choosing the members who you think, would be better suited, might have been better.......

ME and ME2 are repetitive not because of some cliches, but because it follows exactly the same Bioware-scheme (gather allies to fight a threat that nobody but you understands and can battle). As for NV story, I don't recall any memory lost, but you simply have some drawbacks due to the double headshot you miraculously survived. I do not demand a unique story, but diffrent from all the previous Bioware games. Also, I was commenting on how many people say that ME 1\2 has some kind of unique story-telling. All I could find were the previously mentioned cinematic-like cut-scenes, nothing more.
 
This dudes done a pretty good overview of why the plot is so meh and also why the ending is so stupid.

http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=7004

Also I wonder how mining works. You fire down a probe and magically get some stuff back.
Your a super secret spy ship thingy (with massive Cerberus logos on) not the bloody Red Dwarf so how do you manage to mine, process and refine ore?
 
Ravager69 said:
nemo00 said:
In this case we are in trouble cause i haven't played a game with a gorudbreaking story for a looooooooong time. What differentiate them is, and i risk repeating myself, how the story is toldi. Heck Fallout New Vegas (which hopefully will be much better than F3, as it is made by people who now a thing or two about Fallout) starts by you being a courier who lost his memory, were the hell did I heard that before. So there aren't really to many original stories out there, all of them being told over and over again. Starcraft which is one of the greatest RTS of all time is acused, and quite rightfully, of being a Warhammer clone, still it is a very good game. "The story not being original" is kind too much of a general acusation.

The game is maybe original for the fact, that your main quest is to recruit your perfect team for completing the suicide mission, in the rest of the games your party members are people who tag along. I also admit that maybe having a larger recruit pool, you having the option of choosing the members who you think, would be better suited, might have been better.......

ME and ME2 are repetitive not because of some cliches, but because it follows exactly the same Bioware-scheme (gather allies to fight a threat that nobody but you understands and can battle). As for NV story, I don't recall any memory lost, but you simply have some drawbacks due to the double headshot you miraculously survived. I do not demand a unique story, but diffrent from all the previous Bioware games. Also, I was commenting on how many people say that ME 1\2 has some kind of unique story-telling. All I could find were the previously mentioned cinematic-like cut-scenes, nothing more.

Hey it is the clice of all RPG's (except fallout 1 where you were better of without companions, unles you liked being shot in the back)..there is some world threatenning danger you must divert and on the way you recruit people who help you in acomplisihg your goals, and it is not only Bioware who uses this scheme. In theri case is more evident cause they specialise in RPG's.

Alphadrop said:
Also I wonder how mining works. You fire down a probe and magically get some stuff back.
Your a super secret spy ship thingy (with massive Cerberus logos on) not the bloody Red Dwarf so how do you manage to mine, process and refine ore?

the same way having pockets large enoug to fit a gazzilion weapons and other stuf like reactor parts.....
 
Heh, what I always found interesting was that Element Zero could only be found on planets that have been inhabited in the past, or are currently inhabited, as only other than close to Neutron Stars (I think) Ezo could only be found on places where space traveling species have been before.

While I can understand that abandoned colonies or homeworlds might have some left behind deposits or storage buildings containing a supply, I am wondering how that works on planets still inhabited when you start launching probes at it.

In my mind it plays something like this:

In orbit you/Shepard discover a large deposit of Ezo on the northern continent of an inhabited world belonging to one of the council species.

As you need Ezo you decide to launch a probe at it.

On the planet we see a storage building where the local government or company has stored their Ezo supply which they gained through hard working on through trading.

We see people doing their daily business while the probe heads with great speed towards the place.

(the probe is probably stealthed or something as otherwise missile or asteroid defenses would have shot it down.)

All the workers hear is an increasing loud whistle as the probe comes down.

They all look up, seeing the probe on a direct impact course with the location where they work before a loud impact blasts the place apart and kills most, if not all the people on the spot

Back onboard the Normandy 2 the player reads that the probe has gathered so much Ezo.

On the planet after rescue workers have come to the aid of survivors and investigate the cause of the destruction, they discover records that indicate that some kind of sensor invisible missile hit the storage building to raid its supplies.

This news is relayed to the Citadel Council and the galactic news network.

Newscaster "The recent wave of raids on Ezo storage buildings in the Terminus systems is still continuing, taking hundreds of lives and costing millions in damage. Investigators are searching for a raider who is apparently equipped with undetectable missiles which are used for the attacks."
 
Alphadrop said:
This dudes done a pretty good overview of why the plot is so meh and also why the ending is so stupid.

http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=7004
Hmm agree with pretty much all of that other than the rest of the game being awesome, mediocre at best.

Alphadrop said:
Also I wonder how mining works. You fire down a probe and magically get some stuff back.
Your a super secret spy ship thingy (with massive Cerberus logos on) not the bloody Red Dwarf so how do you manage to mine, process and refine ore?
I wonder why you even need to when working for an organisation that isn't exactly short of funds. Same for the researching and buying of upgrades. Okay it makes sense for the Geth and Collector, and perhaps even the Quarian tech but for the rest?
 
nemo00 said:
In this case we are in trouble cause i haven't played a game with a gorudbreaking story for a looooooooong time. What differentiate them is, and i risk repeating myself, how the story is toldi. Heck Fallout New Vegas (which hopefully will be much better than F3, as it is made by people who now a thing or two about Fallout) starts by you being a courier who lost his memory, were the hell did I heard that before. So there aren't really to many original stories out there, all of them being told over and over again. Starcraft which is one of the greatest RTS of all time is acused, and quite rightfully, of being a Warhammer clone, still it is a very good game. "The story not being original" is kind too much of a general acusation.
Look, I'm not saying Bioware makes horrible games. Just that they're constantly stuck with the same type of storyline, just like Avellone is constantly enamored with amnesia stories.

Look, every Bioware game has been about facing a hidden threat with little support and then gathering a slew of companions before finally facing that ancient threat that now threatens the entire world/universe. This doesn't mean these games are shit, it just means that Bioware is constantly retreading the same ground.

Conversely, Fallout and Fallout 2 had nothing to do with gathering all your companions to face that threat, nor was it a story of an ancient threat re-emerging, nor was
The Gothic games didn't follow this either. Nor did Planescape: Torment, Vampire: Bloodlines or Arcanum.
nemo00 said:
I don't think that somebody who is almost immortal, and lives in Sigil, and has a flying skull, as his best buddy, fits your average joe description.....
What average joe description? I mentioned Planescape: Torment because it had a storyline nothing like the Bioware games, yet sold decently nonetheless.

And I mentioned 'false dichotomy' because you made it seem like stories either follow the Bioware formula or are games about average joes living average lives. There are plenty other options.
 
Alphadrop said:
Also I wonder how mining works. You fire down a probe and magically get some stuff back.
Your a super secret spy ship thingy (with massive Cerberus logos on) not the bloody Red Dwarf so how do you manage to mine, process and refine ore?

It's a stupid shooter video game. That's how.

I'd hate to play the game where I had to sit in front of the screen for years mining shit.
 
Sander said:
Look, I'm not saying Bioware makes horrible games. Just that they're constantly stuck with the same type of storyline, just like Avellone is constantly enamored with amnesia stories.

Look, every Bioware game has been about facing a hidden threat with little support and then gathering a slew of companions before finally facing that ancient threat that now threatens the entire world/universe. This doesn't mean these games are shit, it just means that Bioware is constantly retreading the same ground.

Conversely, Fallout and Fallout 2 had nothing to do with gathering all your companions to face that threat, nor was it a story of an ancient threat re-emerging, nor was
The Gothic games didn't follow this either. Nor did Planescape: Torment, Vampire: Bloodlines or Arcanum.



I agree with a number of things you say, it does seem like Bioware, is stuck with a formula that is repeated, the point that I am trying to make is, so is the whole god dam "gaming industry". which of course is not a good thing, but has it's reasons. like in the saying "if it's not broken don't fix it"

In case of Fallout 1 and 2 (as I also mentioned before) I also agree that it wasn't so much about gathering a party.....but it was about an ancient threat....ok not millenia old, but a couple of hundred years old. Fallout 1 is the exception, there only the base with the FEV containers was old, but in the second one the threat was the former US government which laid hidden for almost 300 years......that has to be semi ancient at least

I think the debate with ME2 is in some ways similar to those that were about F2... I remember people bitching about....oh how the dvelers descendents went tribal so quickly, New Reno doesn't make sense, why soo much tech in NCR...so on and so on....but still we accepted it as a great game.

Sander said:
What average joe description? I mentioned Planescape: Torment because it had a storyline nothing like the Bioware games, yet sold decently nonetheless.

And I mentioned 'false dichotomy' because you made it seem like stories either follow the Bioware formula or are games about average joes living average lives. There are plenty other options.

About the dichotomy,...that wasn't trying to make one. What I wanted to say is that most of the games have some kind of threat and in the case of RPG's these being from the past. Actually the blast from the past motif is used in the case of games that are set out to bee universe creators(as Mass Effect and Dragon Age), trying to set up the game's lore. If we look at the Baldurs Gate saga or Planescape, both of them had the advantage of taking place in a werry well known franchise, which already has a very well established lore. If we look at Blizzard for example, for all their franchise sooner or later they had to crack open the blast from the past motive (arch demons, or night elfs or xel'naga or diablo himself). This is the reason for i don't really criticize MA for repeating the pattern.

What I wanted to say with my Avarage Joe example is that no one is interested making a game about a guy who gets up in the morning and goest to work where if i gain a level up i use my skillponits to improve my thyping skill, or my skill to ignore my boss.

Oh and Planescape didn't actually sell that decently, I think that it is one of those games that is rated A by the critics and the people who played it, but the it was not that apreciated by the general public. It is a very similar case to Free space 2 (also made by Interplay), if anyone here played it which again was greatly apreciated by the critics but sucked when it cam to the number of copies they sold. I don't know but is it only me who thinks that the old Interplay was the antithesis of Beth, Beth making awful games but has a great PR, and Interplay making very good games but suuuucked at the PR department (I know that those were differnet times but still.....)

Now for the last thing
Alphadrop said:
Also I wonder how mining works. You fire down a probe and magically get some stuff back.
Your a super secret spy ship thingy (with massive Cerberus logos on) not the bloody Red Dwarf so how do you manage to mine, process and refine ore?

This is one of the things I hate, people bitching about o how do you mine with a probe, like i said exactly the same way that you can cary 5 plasma rifles, one minigun a bunch of toolkits, 200 stims and a rubber doll in your pockets, the same way that you can steal a boozar from the pockets of other people without being seen, or aliens with supperior everything wait around for you to tech up and go to mars and blast them away, that is, how. It is there for the game-play stop trying to find the science behind it, but I also admit that the scanning part of ME2 is the most anoying one.
 
nemo00 said:
Hey it is the clice of all RPG's (except fallout 1 where you were better of without companions, unles you liked being shot in the back)..there is some world threatenning danger you must divert and on the way you recruit people who help you in acomplisihg your goals, and it is not only Bioware who uses this scheme. In theri case is more evident cause they specialise in RPG's.
They're Bioware, the legendary RPG developer that pushes the genre forward with each successive title. What does it matter that lesser developers have done something similar?

Does 'specialising in RPGs' excuse them for using the same structure for every game? After the intro, you are whisked to the 'nonlinear' (read: 3-4 mandatory areas which can be done in any order) segment before playing through linear ending. Doesn't look like they'll run out of worlds to save any time soon either.

This is one of the things I hate, people bitching about o how do you mine with a probe, like i said exactly the same way that you can cary 5 plasma rifles, one minigun a bunch of toolkits, 200 stims and a rubber doll in your pockets, the same way that you can steal a boozar from the pockets of other people without being seen, or aliens with supperior everything wait around for you to tech up and go to mars and blast them away, that is, how. It is there for the game-play stop trying to find the science behind it, but I also admit that the scanning part of ME2 is the most anoying one.
The other things you mentioned enhance the gameplay rather than detract from it - most people don't want to be limited to two guns or subjected to impossible odds that are actually impossible. Why implement a minigame if a) it doesn't make sense and b) it's banal shit boring?
 
^ Pff, I hate that improper use of word "nonlinear" myself. Doing certain areas out of order is still fucking linear if the ending is the same! I hate this "inventive marketing" that invents things that just aren't there. It like saying all FF games are non-linear because you can explore some areas not in plot sequence.

@Sander: as much as I agree with your point, but still

ancient threat re-emerging...Vampire: Bloodlines or Arcanum.

As much as a story isn't a BW-cliche, it does have those elements... It's not so much about what the story is about, but how it's handled/written.
 
Back
Top