I don't know about multiplayer being fun, but I know about it being "mandatory": http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/03/06/ma...s-your-ending/Originally Posted by Phatose
Fun times. XBOX people even get the privilege of having to PAY for it.
I don't see how that makes multiplayer mandatory. In the last game if you did all of the sidequests, gathered resources for upgrades, and made the right choices before the final battle you were rewarded with a happy ending. In the new one if you do all of the sidequests, gather resources for upgrades, and make the right choices before the final battle you're rewarded with a happy ending. Or you can do some co-op and make the other parts optional. Big deal.
Er...I suspect he's misunderstood the situation.
He didn't get a bad ending because he didn't play multiplayer. He got a bad ending because all the endings are bad.
ITT: I grade Bioware's writing. This is the opening plot summary. No spoilers.
The first 'unnecessary' comma is actually required to block off a parenthetical phrase, and the second one is fine because fiction writing also happens to pay attention to rhythm and dramatic effect.
So, 85/100. Not too bad. Also: yeesh.
Spoilers ahead, maties. If you actually care about this game, you may not want to click the linky below.
Luckily for all of us, in this exciting installment of the Mass Effect series we get to see what Tali looks like. Apparently, she's a stock photo from off the internet.
Hah, holy fuck. Also, peeps (assuming geniune image), they've also plastered giant plot spoilers there too, for no apparent reason.
Yes it's a genuine image. I've seen the gameplay vid where Shepard looks at the photo on YouTube.
Bioware's laziness is now legendary.
Haha, oh wow. Do they somehow assume people won't find out these things? I don't get it.
At the very least they could've picked a stock photo with some sideboob.
Wait. I honestly do not understand what the outrage is about. They needed a photo of a woman to photoshop, so they bought a photo of a woman and photoshoped it... it completely escapes me what is "lazy" about this. Would you guys be happier if they hired a professional model, photographer and a camera package and paid some 20x the cost?
No, you take one of the several dozen illustrators, character or texture artists and have them spend 2-4 hours to create the portrait, from scratch, from his/hers imagination.
It is very lazy considering what it is, and considering what most professional artists can speedpaint without any reference.
I think it comes down to the fact that Tali's appearance has been a mystery throughout the series. To have that mystery brushed away with a cheap photochop of a stock photo and conform to tradtional human standards of beauty is lazy at best, dismissive of your audience at worst.
Real spoilers:
Just found out that Joker and EDI date each other. Clip here. Holy. Fucking. Shit. What have they done to the plot? This series started as nice respectable sci-fi. Not entirely original but at least the plot made sense and you could immerse yourself in the universe. Now it's on fanfic levels.
Last edited by Dresden; 8th Mar 2012 at 00:42.
That's not really spoilered.
Sorry, I didn't think about people having different link colors.
So it's... interesting. 4-5 hours in and... the hammy opening is, of course, still hammy. The overall arc of it is what I expected - you need an arc-resolving MacGuffin, you get one. You need the Seven Samurai plot expanded into alliances and politics played on a 'galactic' scale, you got it. You need End Times to drive the (melo)drama, you get more than a sodden handkerchief's worth, or so I've heard/read.
The focus on the Earth invasion remains an irritatingly clichéd device for narrative urgency, but it's not in your face all the time, at least -- not so far anyway. The import from my ME2 save doesn't seem to have transferred my Renegade Shep's cool neon scars.Also, it looks like I lost Legion in that playthrough. Tsk.
The combat's more or less the same, with a couple of tweaks from ME1 - mods and ends and stuff. And grenades and a melee attack, which are welcome. You get tons of skill points and start at level 30 or so if you import a character - interesting, because I've maxed out my Infiltrator's tactical cloak skill already in 4 hours, and I don't know if Bioware does enemy scaling with levels.
And the graphics - Bioware seems to have gotten a nice handle on UE3 now. Faces and models are still ew, with human skin continuing to look like bacon wrap and faces continuing to be eery and bug-eyed; but environmental design's been given some care. The Normandy's design isn't as spartan as in previous installments, and the incidental detail makes it look lived in. Details like a poker table in a room and odds and ends lying around on desks are nice little touches. Environments are still a touch modular and boxy, but that's Bioware design for you.
The lighting is generally lovely and more than a touch moody (witness the CIC's brightness levels now compared to ME2), but there are also more lens flares in this game than in every scene of J.J. Abrams' Star Trek combined. Every time I visit the War Room, I feel like a disco ball's about to descend from the ceiling and then the Bee Gees rise up from the centre, singing 'Staying Alive' and shaking their booties. It's like the time I discovered Photoshop's Filter menu when I was 15 and promptly added lens flares to every nipple in every photo in my porn collection.
Get a handle on it, Bioware.
Pics or it didn't happen!
I just started playing ME1 a few weeks ago and am currently on my third playthrough (1st one on normal difficulty with Soldier, 2nd and 3rd on hardcore with Adept and Engineer, respectively). How would you rate the three games overall and storywise? Should I stop playing ME1 and go on to ME2 since it does everything better, or even rush through just one playthrough with it so I can get to ME3 which is the best of the bunch? Or are they more or less the same and I should just keep playing ME1 for as long as I have fun with it?
It's not that there's one that's the best of the bunch. They each fuck up different things. ME1 did the main plot well, but the interface sucked. ME2 did the characters very well, but the RPG portions were largely removed and the main plot was forgettable. So far, ME3 is on a crash course for having an epically shitty plot, but good everywhere else.
Step 2: Draw some wires on her neck. BOOM. Instant Tali porn.
I can't fucking believe they're still beating the "Hired assassin hunts the hero" cliche. That horse is a bloody pulp now. He looks like a space ninja too.
Been playing ME3 since release day a few days ago. Its a shame that I played the demo first as that half ruined the effect of the opening "level" for me since I knew already what was going to happen (obviously). Quite impressive none the less. Up until you FINALLY had some level of control of where you would head to next I was starting to think "what the, can't you choose where to go now?". Glad you still do.
I've noticed on 2 occasions a weird head bug with the game, where Shepard's head will turn alittle too far in a direction when your talking to people. The first occurred in a conversation with Liara, with Shepard and her fixing their direction of gaze on the robotic floating thing with only their heads and not their bodies as well and since the robot moves about the room, their heads would go to very odd amounts in directions. Saw it again to a lesser degree with the girl who stands by the galaxy map. Hope I don't see that again. Reminds me of a similar bug in Freelancer except in that games case the heads would on rare occasions spin the full amount around.
In either event I am absolutely loving the game so far, though the weapon included with the from ashes dlc makes some of the battles alittle too easy at times. One thing occurred in the game that had me take my hands off the keyboard and have to think really hard before I made a decision. What choice was that? the choice between Tali and Liara since I had been slept with Liara in the first game and Tali in the second. So when Liara asked me if it was over with Tali I had a very hard time deciding on which of the 2 I preferred. Both have their own pluses and negatives.
The reliance on multiplayer for what I assume to be later events on the singleplayer end of things is a bit of an annoyance as it forces you to play the multiplayer (if your like me and like to get everything done well in a game the first time round). The multiplayer I should point out however is awesome. I've been making a point of playing 1 singleplayer mission, then going and clearing 10% off the readiness percentages each time.
FYI, a lot of the INI tweaks from ME2 work in this game as well. Use ME3 Coalesced Utility to edit coalesced.bin located in \Mass Effect 3\BIOGame\CookedPCConsole\ (Make a backup of this file first. Also the coalesced.bin will get overwritten every time EA put out a new patch, so back up your modded file too.).
Some of the ones that I use:-
- FoV tweaked to 100 (default is 70). You'll want also want to bind a few spare keys to reset the FoV value back to either 0 or 70, because cinematic cutscenes are designed for the default value of 70 and can look weird when zoomed out (eg I've bound numpad 0-4 to reset the values to 70).
- Mouse smoothing and mouse acceleration disabled
bioinput.ini -> engine -> playerinput
Change benablemousesmoothing to false
Add bViewAccelerationEnabled and set the value to false- Mouse dampening disabled
bioinput.ini -> sfxgame -> bioplayerinput
Change benablemousedampening to false- Framerate smoothing disabled
bioengine.ini -> engine -> engine
Change bsmoothframerate to FALSE
So in order to make it easier for me to keep to my self-imposed boycott of this game I've already spoiled the ending for myself, and wow, that sounds pretty fucking awful.
They basically pull a Deus Ex: Human Revolution, giving you 3 ending choices. It doesn't matter about your actions throughout the series; it all comes down to "Pick one of 3 buttons".
*Golf Clap*
Not regretting my decision at all at the moment.
Good lord the quality of the writing in this game is all over the map. Occasionally genuinely interesting (Seeing the memories in the Geth Server), occasionally actually amusing - Joker and Garrus swapping jokes on the bridge of the Normandy. But also frequently dipping into self-parody (I'm Garrus Vakarian, and this is now my favorite spot on the citadel!), stupid nonsensical cliche (LOL I killed 300,000 Batarians, 40,000 assorted sentients with small arms, and now I'm having bad dreams about one kid in a fucking apocalypse.), just flat out retarded (Ancient Death Machines are destroying our civilization, so we'll seek refuge status on a station built by those Ancient Death Machines for the purpose of destroying civilizations), to goddamned awful romance fanfic level WTF. Aside from the previously mentioned WTF, there's the Garrus/Tali hookup.
The actual combat is fun, although so far warp/throw seems to be the answer to everything. Maybe an occasional shot from the Paladin, but that's for personal satisfaction instead of actual strategic value.
But goddamn, the plot is like a road accident.
Last edited by Phatose; 9th Mar 2012 at 12:47.
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