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    Default Re: Mass Effect: General thread of Awesomeness

    Quote Originally Posted by Anteros View Post
    It's really easy actually. You just sit still and jump over any incoming projectile. I hated the Mako, but combat wasn't a problem with it.
    Right, "jump." With the thrusters that slowly lifted you off the ground and then dropped you like a lead balloon after getting you only a short distance up. Unlikely I'd have been making that work without a lot of practice, and screw that, the Mako's portions of the game are not worth practicing. Better to just avoid them so I can enjoy myself more.

    Quote Originally Posted by GloatingSwine View Post
    You could also use the zoom function of the Mako to snipe most things from out of their aggro radius.
    Maybe you could. Every time I tried that, I found I couldn't hit anything most of the time, and even when I did telling when I actually killed them was a pain. The enemies were just too damn small when you do that. And frankly, I don't like using sniper rifles normally, so why would I want to do that anyway? And why should I have to with something that's supposed to be a tank? If that's supposed to be the solution to the Mako's problems, it's just another piece of evidence of how badly designed it was.
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    Default Re: Mass Effect: General thread of Awesomeness

    One thing that should be noted with the ME1 Mako was that everyone, everyone, aimed for the front of the vehicle, while the cannon fires from the middle. Once you get the hang of it, it's pretty easy to broadside virtually everything by parking with your nose behind a boulder and just blast the hezmana out of them while they shoot at rocks. It was actually pretty funny.
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    Default Re: Mass Effect: General thread of Awesomeness

    Quote Originally Posted by Zevox View Post
    Right, "jump." With the thrusters that slowly lifted you off the ground and then dropped you like a lead balloon after getting you only a short distance up. Unlikely I'd have been making that work without a lot of practice, and screw that, the Mako's portions of the game are not worth practicing. Better to just avoid them so I can enjoy myself more.
    Yes, jump. You can quite literally vault over incoming missiles, globs of acid and energy blasts (but not machine gun or sniper fire) with a well-timed jump.

    Quote Originally Posted by Zevox View Post
    Maybe you could. Every time I tried that, I found I couldn't hit anything most of the time, and even when I did telling when I actually killed them was a pain. The enemies were just too damn small when you do that. And frankly, I don't like using sniper rifles normally, so why would I want to do that anyway? And why should I have to with something that's supposed to be a tank? If that's supposed to be the solution to the Mako's problems, it's just another piece of evidence of how badly designed it was.
    Telling when you've killed them is easy; the little notification at the bottom of the screen flashes up telling you that you've gained XP.

    You weren't very good at using the Mako (or sniper rifles) and didn't want to practise it either. That doesn't make them badly designed.
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    Default Re: Mass Effect: General thread of Awesomeness

    Quote Originally Posted by Kiero View Post
    Telling when you've killed them is easy; the little notification at the bottom of the screen flashes up telling you that you've gained XP.
    Not sure if that exists in the console version. I don't remember one, in any event.

    Quote Originally Posted by Kiero View Post
    You weren't very good at using the Mako (or sniper rifles) and didn't want to practise it either. That doesn't make them badly designed.
    No, what makes it badly designed is how it handled, how the shields took forever to recharge, and the fact that the best way to use it in a fight was to treat it like a sniper rifle when it's a damned tank. Not helping matters was the horrible design of the planets/stages you were expected to use it on, which are vast empty spaces with unnecessarily steep terrain that massively slows you down from getting to the one to three locations on the planet worth visiting for no damn reason.

    Frankly I have nothing but contempt for the Mako and everything related to it in ME1. It is the biggest flaw in any game in the series in my mind, bar none.
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    Default Re: Mass Effect: General thread of Awesomeness

    Quote Originally Posted by Kiero View Post

    You weren't very good at using the Mako (or sniper rifles) and didn't want to practise it either. That doesn't make them badly designed.
    No, they were badly designed. I immediately hated the Mako as well, not for difficulty but just aggravation. It handled like a pig and was genuinely unfun to play. And the complaints about it were sufficient that the Mako was mocked as a piece of crap in-game for the rest of the series. It was bad enough that my "on the fence" attitude about ME1 immediately went to "not worth dealing with this crap", and I haven't played the game all the way through as a result (making it the only Bioware game that I own with that distinction).

    A minority of players may have liked the Mako, but that doesn't stop the majority of us from having our hair turn white whenever it gets mentioned in relation to a future game. I cannot name a single enjoyable vehicle experience in any Bioware game. It isn't something they do well, and goes actively counter to the party-centric nature of their games.

    I fully expect the decision to pick up ME4 to be "well the Mako sucks, but the rest of the game is good, soooo...."

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    Default Re: Mass Effect: General thread of Awesomeness

    My biggest problem with the Mako was its controls. i could be zoomed in and firing away while dodging their return fire. Figured I had the vehicle settled in one way and zoomed out to see the darned thing half way up a random surface and facing away on a funky angle. That was annoying.

    I want to see the hammerhead come back more than the Mako. But overall I would be glad to have some sort of auxiliary craft included.
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    Default Re: Mass Effect: General thread of Awesomeness

    It is simultaneously true that the Mako was a PITA to play and that the Mako was easy to play.

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    Default Re: Mass Effect: General thread of Awesomeness

    In my opinion, if you're using the Mako to do anything other than drive around, you're doing it wrong. You can kill eveything on foot with your sniper rifle, given a bit of patience (and, in the case of Thresher Maws, a lot of strafing round in a big circle - pretty much the same way you do in the Mako) and you get much more XP for it. My last couple of playthroughs, I killed EVERYTHING on foot.

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    Default Re: Mass Effect: General thread of Awesomeness

    Quote Originally Posted by Zevox View Post
    Not sure if that exists in the console version. I don't remember one, in any event.
    I play on the XBox 360; I suspect you've turned those notifications off in the game options if you're not seeing them. They appear literally every time you earn XP, get money and so on.

    Quote Originally Posted by Zevox View Post
    No, what makes it badly designed is how it handled, how the shields took forever to recharge, and the fact that the best way to use it in a fight was to treat it like a sniper rifle when it's a damned tank. Not helping matters was the horrible design of the planets/stages you were expected to use it on, which are vast empty spaces with unnecessarily steep terrain that massively slows you down from getting to the one to three locations on the planet worth visiting for no damn reason.

    Frankly I have nothing but contempt for the Mako and everything related to it in ME1. It is the biggest flaw in any game in the series in my mind, bar none.
    The best way to handle the Mako is to kite, though sniping from very long range works too.

    I agree with you that far too many planets were far too mountainous, but appreciated the freedom that having an open space, rather than a rat run, gave you. Furthermore, sniper rifles are a lot more useful in an open environment than in a tunnel. And you get an actual choice of where to set up.

    Quote Originally Posted by Rodin View Post
    No, they were badly designed. I immediately hated the Mako as well, not for difficulty but just aggravation. It handled like a pig and was genuinely unfun to play. And the complaints about it were sufficient that the Mako was mocked as a piece of crap in-game for the rest of the series. It was bad enough that my "on the fence" attitude about ME1 immediately went to "not worth dealing with this crap", and I haven't played the game all the way through as a result (making it the only Bioware game that I own with that distinction).

    A minority of players may have liked the Mako, but that doesn't stop the majority of us from having our hair turn white whenever it gets mentioned in relation to a future game. I cannot name a single enjoyable vehicle experience in any Bioware game. It isn't something they do well, and goes actively counter to the party-centric nature of their games.

    I fully expect the decision to pick up ME4 to be "well the Mako sucks, but the rest of the game is good, soooo...."
    As above, the primary thing for me was getting open environments where you had a real choice of where you went and how you got there. Rather than being channelled along a railroad as in ME2/3. You could actually surprise enemies in ME1, that's not really possible in ME2/3 given the range most fights start at.

    Can't say I'm all that interested in ME4 at all, especially if it in any way follows on from the incoherent mess that was the end of ME3.

    Quote Originally Posted by Derthric View Post
    My biggest problem with the Mako was its controls. i could be zoomed in and firing away while dodging their return fire. Figured I had the vehicle settled in one way and zoomed out to see the darned thing half way up a random surface and facing away on a funky angle. That was annoying.

    I want to see the hammerhead come back more than the Mako. But overall I would be glad to have some sort of auxiliary craft included.
    Ugh, I didn't mind the Mako, but I hated the Hammerhead. Especially all those stupid sequences trying to jump over lava. Apparently even though it's a "hover" tank, it can't actually stay in place without sinking. Plus the main gun was crap (a rocket launcher - wtf?) and it had no backup weapon.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kiero View Post
    I agree with you that far too many planets were far too mountainous, but appreciated the freedom that having an open space, rather than a rat run, gave you.
    I don't. A whole lot of empty space is nothing but a waste of my time as far as I'm concerned. It's one reason I dislike the whole "open world" game design style and far prefer linear games. I'd much the rather game keep its focus and have me doing something engaging and fun consistently, not make me trek across a big area with nothing enjoyable to do for a while. It's one of many reasons why I like ME2 and 3 much more than ME1.

    Quote Originally Posted by Kiero View Post
    Ugh, I didn't mind the Mako, but I hated the Hammerhead. Especially all those stupid sequences trying to jump over lava. Apparently even though it's a "hover" tank, it can't actually stay in place without sinking. Plus the main gun was crap (a rocket launcher - wtf?) and it had no backup weapon.
    Much as I don't like either, I'd take the Hammerhead over the Mako. It may have been paper-thin and the stage design for it was definitely poor, but at least it handled well and you were actually doing something during those stages, not just moving across a lot of pointless empty terrain.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Math_Mage View Post
    It is simultaneously true that the Mako was a PITA to play and that the Mako was easy to play.
    This is my stance as well. It wasn't exactly difficult, but it was certainly frustrating.

    I'll be happy if it appears as nothing more than a fast travel location, or a set piece. If they absolutely insist on keeping it they need to drastically change the way it handles as well as limit it to certain areas designed for driving.
    Last edited by Anteros; 2014-11-04 at 02:38 PM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Zevox View Post
    I don't. A whole lot of empty space is nothing but a waste of my time as far as I'm concerned. It's one reason I dislike the whole "open world" game design style and far prefer linear games. I'd much the rather game keep its focus and have me doing something engaging and fun consistently, not make me trek across a big area with nothing enjoyable to do for a while. It's one of many reasons why I like ME2 and 3 much more than ME1.
    This would appear to be a function of emptiness, rather than solely a function of space. Perhaps a compromise can be struck between filling the emptiness and taking away the space? Just a thought.

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    Default Re: Mass Effect: General thread of Awesomeness

    It's easy to fight in the Mako once you get the hang of it, but I still didn't like it. I would have greatly preferred a Hammerhead with the Mako's shields and armor.

    Wasn't the main cannon removed from the new Mako? I seem to remember one of the PAX panels revealing that.
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    Default Re: Mass Effect: General thread of Awesomeness

    I'd like to apologize if in the recent discussion I've come across as a bit too hostile. It's occurred to me that this one is getting kind of a strong reaction out of me, probably because the initial remark that prompted it is kind of perfect to do so. I'd generally disagree with any argument that ME1 did anything other than the ammo system better than its sequels, but the Geth Incursion sidequest in particular I remember as a very low point of the game personally, and as a perfect example of what I fear seeing again in ME4 now that we know the Mako is back as a major element, so praising that over anything in the sequels was kind of the perfect way to set me off.

    Quote Originally Posted by Math_Mage View Post
    This would appear to be a function of emptiness, rather than solely a function of space. Perhaps a compromise can be struck between filling the emptiness and taking away the space? Just a thought.
    The problem being that the more space there is to fill, the more things that need to be created to do so - NPCs, side-quests, etc - and thus the less time that can be spent on making each one if the game is to be made in any reasonable amount of time. Which I'm fairly certain is why I come away from open-world games with the impression that they took a quantity over quality approach to their game design, which I dislike. Broadly speaking, I'd rather game designers take the approach of creating space only as is necessary for the content they intend to have, and focus on making that content as strong as they can. Starting with the intent of creating a large amount of space, which is the nature of open-world game design, only seems to create problems to me.
    Last edited by Zevox; 2014-11-04 at 09:34 PM.
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    Default Re: Mass Effect: General thread of Awesomeness

    Yeah sidequests in ME1 were awful. There's good sandbox exploration. And then there's rocky world #342 with one sidequest worth doing per solar system (probably a carbon copy of some other side quest with slightly different dialogue) and collectibles scattered around to do nothing but waste your time. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.

    That said, the hammerhead was fun.
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    Default Re: Mass Effect: General thread of Awesomeness

    Quote Originally Posted by Zevox View Post
    Not sure if that exists in the console version. I don't remember one, in any event.

    It totally was a thing in the console version.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Math_Mage View Post
    This would appear to be a function of emptiness, rather than solely a function of space. Perhaps a compromise can be struck between filling the emptiness and taking away the space? Just a thought.
    Yeah, I think the problem with the Mako in Mass Effect wasn't so much the Mako itself but rather the terribly designed open-world areas that you used it in. The areas were far too large to have so little of interest, and the fact that 95% of the terrain you encountered was either nearly-flat plains or sheer cliffs and mountains with hardly anything in between was just ridiculous. (The other 5% were plateaus IIRC.)

    Still, the one thing I appreciated about the open-world planetary sections was that they really let you choose how you wanted to approach most situations. I remember a lot of times where a group of enemies was well defended from most angles, but a tenacious Mako driver could still climb up a nearby mountain and find a good place to snipe from. Then again, the rest of the time you were stuck just peeking out of cover slowly wearing down those damn missile towers over and over again.

    Actually, wait, the BEST thing about the Mako was using it to run over Geth.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Zevox View Post

    The problem being that the more space there is to fill, the more things that need to be created to do so - NPCs, side-quests, etc - and thus the less time that can be spent on making each one if the game is to be made in any reasonable amount of time. Which I'm fairly certain is why I come away from open-world games with the impression that they took a quantity over quality approach to their game design, which I dislike. Broadly speaking, I'd rather game designers take the approach of creating space only as is necessary for the content they intend to have, and focus on making that content as strong as they can. Starting with the intent of creating a large amount of space, which is the nature of open-world game design, only seems to create problems to me.
    Open-world games can work well. The problem is that they need to be focused on being, well, open-world games. I've never taken issue with the open-world design in the Elder Scrolls games, but those were designed from the ground up to be that way and even then they sometimes wind up feeling empty (Oblivion being the worst offender in recent years).

    And open-world exploration isn't what I'm going into a Mass Effect game for. I'm there for the plot and the characters, and every minute that I'm driving the Mako around is time that I'm not taking part in an actual mission.

    Really, the genre adultery is what makes me worry the most. Open-world games do open-world because they're open-world games, but tend to be very loosely plotted as a result of spending so much time on the open-world. Games with heavy focus on vehicles do vehicles well because the entirety of the gameplay revolves around it - this focus comes at the cost of other content. And RPGs simply do not have time to be mucking about in other genres because they already feature massively more content in the form of actual plot, character dialogue, sidequests, and the mechanics of the combat system they are going to be primarily using.

    If Bioware can come up with a lush, verdant open-world filled with interesting sights and manage to make it open-world with interesting vehicle combat that doesn't detract from the tightly knit band of adventurers feel? All power to them.

    If they manage to do all that and maintain 100% of the quality of the rest of the game, without having a budget that drives them out of business? I'll be over here riding my flying pig across the frozen snowscapes of that land far below.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Rodin View Post
    Open-world games can work well. The problem is that they need to be focused on being, well, open-world games. I've never taken issue with the open-world design in the Elder Scrolls games, but those were designed from the ground up to be that way and even then they sometimes wind up feeling empty (Oblivion being the worst offender in recent years).
    I never played enough of the couple of Elder Scrolls games I tried to say too much about them (few hours of Morrowind, maybe half an hour of Oblivion), but I did play Fallout 3 through the full main story, and I'd say it falls squarely into the category I described. It's big, but shallow, with a lot to do but none of it worth doing. Combined with how unimpressed I was with what I played of Morrowind, that's lead to me just avoiding anything made by Bethesda. (Oblivion I mostly played to see if using its third-person perspective would help my dislike of its first-person based gameplay at all - it did not.)

    Quote Originally Posted by Rodin View Post
    And open-world exploration isn't what I'm going into a Mass Effect game for. I'm there for the plot and the characters, and every minute that I'm driving the Mako around is time that I'm not taking part in an actual mission.
    On that, I fully agree.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kiero View Post
    In both this instance and the derelict in the brown star, if they weren't actually dead, why didn't the other Reapers recover them? If each one is a precious storehouse of genetic information from one of the cycles of extinction, why wouldn't they go to every effort to find and repair them, rather than leaving at least two that we know of mouldering away untouched?
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kiero View Post
    No, the most likely source is the individual artifacts themselves, as a passive quality in their construction/composition. Something the Reaper AIs can augment/boost in an active way. This doesn't require us to believe there's a galaxy-spanning signal directing all of these things which is mysteriously invisible to everyone.
    The leviathans themselves could enthrall other creatures through their "artifacts". During the war these artifacts were deposited behind reaper lines all over the galaxy by commando forces and the reapers would then use their enthrallment to disrupt the reaper control over their forces. They would use their artifacts to enthrall any creatures that encountered their artifacts in order to cover up the fact that they still existed so as to continue hiding from the reapers every cycle. It was not a natural process that occurred when a creature discovered the artifact. The leviathans never left the worlds they hid on so that is a galaxy-spanning signal net. With the reapers being based on leviathans it is not unreasonable to believe that their indoctrination operates on the same principles as the leviathan'ss enthallment.

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    Quote Originally Posted by GloatingSwine View Post
    I mean in ME2 the Krogans think Shepard and Grunt are the king and/or queen of the badass people for taking down a thresher maw on foot, but in ME1 you did it all the time.
    Rarely worth it. Much easier to weaken the thresher with the mako then get out and kill it on foot.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Kiero View Post
    As above, the primary thing for me was getting open environments where you had a real choice of where you went and how you got there. Rather than being channelled along a railroad as in ME2/3. You could actually surprise enemies in ME1, that's not really possible in ME2/3 given the range most fights start at.
    It was a pointless open world. Any given planet had at most five sites worth going to. Plenty of planets using the mako would have sites that only had one path to get to given the terrain and if it didn't the site was trivial to get to which meant your "choice" was just choosing which order you would go to the various sites.

    The Mako was an overall crappy experience with nothing good about it. It was stupidly exploitable. It handled like a greased up pig. There was no point to kill things with it since you were rewards more by killing on foot.
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    Default Re: Mass Effect: General thread of Awesomeness

    Quote Originally Posted by Kiero View Post
    For someone talking about "facts" you're demonstrating few. The ending montages don't tell us anything at all about indoctrination, so stop pretending your conjectures and speculations from some vague images are anything but.

    "Canon" is completely silent on whether or not indoctrination is still a problem.

    You are completely blinded by your own preferred fanon, which you are treating as established fact when it quite simply is not.
    What Fanon? The only one with Fanon is you, who invent problems just because.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Aotrs Commander View Post
    In my opinion, if you're using the Mako to do anything other than drive around, you're doing it wrong. You can kill eveything on foot with your sniper rifle, given a bit of patience (and, in the case of Thresher Maws, a lot of strafing round in a big circle - pretty much the same way you do in the Mako) and you get much more XP for it. My last couple of playthroughs, I killed EVERYTHING on foot.
    If you're a Bastion, you can freeze Thresher Maws with Stasis, and bullets can still hurt them. Easy pickings

    Quote Originally Posted by Kiero View Post
    The epilogues give little hint of anything at all. Seriously, we have a montage sequence of images showing some general notions of things happening. Pretty much everything you assume about what they say about indoctrination is entirely fabricated and baseless speculation.
    What they show us is that the galaxy is at peace. The large-scale indoctrination you seem to want would render that outcome impossible. At best, indoctrination leaves organics as mindless husks incapable of higher thought, and at worse it makes them actively psychotic and violent, as we saw with the Salarians on Virmire or Rana Thanoptis.

    So yes, barring a retcon I have plenty to go on. What indoctrination may persist clearly was not enough to derail galactic recovery or progress, and therefore can be dismissed.
    Quote Originally Posted by The Giant View Post
    But really, the important lesson here is this: Rather than making assumptions that don't fit with the text and then complaining about the text being wrong, why not just choose different assumptions that DO fit with the text?
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    Default Re: Mass Effect: General thread of Awesomeness

    You know, all the times I've played, it never occurred to me to kill a thresher maw on foot.
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    Default Re: Mass Effect: General thread of Awesomeness

    Quote Originally Posted by Mark Hall View Post
    You know, all the times I've played, it never occurred to me to kill a thresher maw on foot.
    It's actually really easy. So long as you don't walk into the insta-kill zone you just pull out your gun of choice and blast it while walking in a circle.

    As someone who's done a max exp runthrough, it's not worth it. Every fight that would normally be done with the Mako either involves the circle shoot method above, or hiding behind a nearby rock for a volley of fire to end, popping up to get off a shot or two, rinse and repeat until everything's dead. I'm pretty sure my only deaths were when I just got too bored and decided to do something stupid. For example, punching a Colossus to death before you've killed everything else in the area is probably not the smartest tactic.

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    Default Re: Mass Effect: General thread of Awesomeness

    Use the Mako to whittle them down to a sliver of health, then hop out and use your guns/powers to finish them off.

    I first discovered it many, many years ago when I accidentally hopped out of the Mako while fighting one and the maw smashed my ride. Since I couldn't get back in and couldn't get away, I took it out on foot. It was then that I noticed the XP gain was orders of magnitude higher than normal. With that done I radioed Joker for pickup.
    Quote Originally Posted by The Giant View Post
    But really, the important lesson here is this: Rather than making assumptions that don't fit with the text and then complaining about the text being wrong, why not just choose different assumptions that DO fit with the text?
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    Default Re: Mass Effect: General thread of Awesomeness

    Quote Originally Posted by Zevox View Post
    I never played enough of the couple of Elder Scrolls games I tried to say too much about them (few hours of Morrowind, maybe half an hour of Oblivion), but I did play Fallout 3 through the full main story, and I'd say it falls squarely into the category I described. It's big, but shallow, with a lot to do but none of it worth doing. Combined with how unimpressed I was with what I played of Morrowind, that's lead to me just avoiding anything made by Bethesda. (Oblivion I mostly played to see if using its third-person perspective would help my dislike of its first-person based gameplay at all - it did not.)


    On that, I fully agree.
    Fallout 3 is designed to feel empty. It's a post apocalyptic wasteland. The emptiness is intentional ambiance. Skyrim and new Vegas are much more populated.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Anteros View Post
    Fallout 3 is designed to feel empty. It's a post apocalyptic wasteland. The emptiness is intentional ambiance. Skyrim and new Vegas are much more populated.
    Um, the emptiness wasn't my complaint in that quote - though I certainly wasn't any fan of that either.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Zevox View Post
    Um, the emptiness wasn't my complaint in that quote - though I certainly wasn't any fan of that either.
    Well, your complaint was that it was big but there wasn't much worth doing. I was stating that there are other similar sandbox games that have more to do.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Mark Hall View Post
    You know, all the times I've played, it never occurred to me to kill a thresher maw on foot.
    I have done it once, to try it (same with the heavy Geth units). Since I (except the first time) always cheat to give me lvl 50 from the start, so I won't have to drive around as much (I LOATHE the Mako, it almost renders the game unplayable for me) however, I tend to just drive past them.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Anteros View Post
    Well, your complaint was that it was big but there wasn't much worth doing. I was stating that there are other similar sandbox games that have more to do.
    You seem to have missed part of the statement: "It's big, but shallow, with a lot to do but none of it worth doing." Quantity of things to do wasn't the issue, quality was. I played the whole main story, which was dull, and I could certainly find side-quests all over, but none of them were any better than the main story.

    I honestly think the only reason I even finished the main story is because I had planned out my character build in advance and wanted to see it come to fruition, because my motivation to play the game very noticeably vanished the moment I hit the maximum level. Fortunately I was already at the final mission at that point, or I may not even have bothered to finish the main story.
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