What Are You Playing: 9 Years since the Last Dragon Age

[Thane of Fife]

Also agree on Mordred. It sounds like such a dumb idea, but the full inversion of the traditional Arthurian saga ends up paying off in surprising ways.

I've read in a few places discussion of the similarities between the Arthur/Mordred and Vortigern/Vortimer stories, with theorizing that they may be based in the same beginnings, but divided based on who was the good guy - the king (Arthur) or the son (Vortimer). So the idea of a full inversion may not be as weird as it first sounds.

[Errorname]

Spoiler: Mass Effect 3 Ending Spoilers, if anyone cares

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It really is impressive how bad the Starchild sequence in Mass Effect is. I have a low opinion of a lot of the Mass Effect 3 stuff, but even from that standard it's such a steep drop. It's like a ten minute sequence and it ruins the franchise forever. It's also really funny because it's completely unforced. If you cut it and just had the crucible fire and destroy the reapers after confronting the Illusive Man, that's a much better ending. Still underwhelming, but a survivable wound, not something that mangles a franchise so badly that you have to go to a whole new galaxy to escape the consequences of it.

Oh well, at least Citadel makes for a decent send off on it's own.

[Lord Raziere]

Spoiler: Mass Effect 3 Ending Spoilers, if anyone cares

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It really is impressive how bad the Starchild sequence in Mass Effect is. I have a low opinion of a lot of the Mass Effect 3 stuff, but even from that standard it's such a steep drop. It's like a ten minute sequence and it ruins the franchise forever. It's also really funny because it's completely unforced. . Still underwhelming, but a survivable wound, not something that mangles a franchise so badly that you have to go to a whole new galaxy to escape the consequences of it.

Oh well, at least Citadel makes for a decent send off on it's own.

Spoiler: ME3

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If you cut it and just had the crucible fire and destroy the reapers after confronting the Illusive Man, that's a much better ending

Well Yeah, why else do you think I got a mod to do EXACTLY THAT for my own playthrough of the whole trilogy? much more satisfying ending.

anyways, beat Pokemon Unbound

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The eighth Gym leader was....not as bad as I expected. basically the younger forms simply became the enemies form of sending out more pokemon, so they were constantly getting weaker.

on victory road I ended up getting my crobat into a war of attrition with an ace trainer's Hippowdon set up to tank and just use toxic/earthquake so with my flying poison type, I was just immune to all its methods of dealing damage to me and I just gradually grinded it down until it ran out of healing moves and protects.

after that there was a memorable sequence where I had to get past a sliding ice puzzle and apparently they thought it so torturous they put a guy for you to pay like 45,000 pokedollars to get across without dealing with it, but I went and slid across the ice legit. I'd say it was a little harder than most ice puzzles but not a "torture chamber" or anything as they called it. dev really didn't have faith someone would have the patience to solve it.

the Elite four of Borrius had a few rules changes of their own, but I determined that the pokemon I've already got and had been playing with for the game were sufficient for the task. the ground one, the first was oddly the hardest I faced and the rest just got....not easier, but I knew what to expect and how to deal with the level of difficulty I was faced with. between Ground, Ghost, Dragon and Fairy elite fours, I defeated them all like any other elite four even though I did have to revive and heal up between each battle.

However you must know: the game had been saying that the previous champion had retired and none were currently holding the title. that I could simply take my place as Champion and whatnot. I however was distrustful and healed up all my pokemon regardless because pokemon games ALWAYS have a champion fight. ALWAYS. and my suspicions were confirmed as Jax, one of the games rivals came in and talked about how he was raised to be the next champion because he and the protagonists fathers had a rivalry to. it was a double battle where Jax' braviary had this weird strategy of constantly using U-turn to switch itself out, but in my experience those just lead to me killing more of their team faster, and this was no exception.

My champion team for Borrisu was:
Kagrona the Mega-Tyranitar and Starter
Zisha the Unbound Hoopa and this games Cover Legendary
Astra the Lunala, the Free Cosmog
Sonarica, the Black Sludge Crobat that low key carried throughout the entire game
Ringara the Infernape
Meri the Primarina who came in late but whose Water and Fairy typing proved useful for the Ground and Dragon Elite Four members

Honorable mentions go to Bewear, Pyroar and Excadrill who were earlier game strong contenders but got replaced as time went on.

Overall, I'd say Unbound is good pokemon fangame with much to like. but the most memorable part of it to me, was a moment where Primal Groudon was awakened and due to a mishap, all my pokemon were in the hands of an ally, thus making it so that I couldn't select the moves of the pokemon- in the battle I could select which pokemon were sent out and such, but the moves would not be determined by me, so it was a fight where I had to have faith in my pokemon that they come through for me despite being commanded by another trainer. I won first try, but it was something where strategy of knowing your pokemon mattered more than the specific move selected and just trust that it would have a good result and that made me feel a bit more like a pokemon trainer than most things I've ever played, specifically the raising and trusting your pokemon part. I doubt most other people would like it, I'm not sure I liked it in that moment retrospect but its certainly something to remember looking back on it as this one unique fight in a game that is full of weird rule switchups to keep you on your toes.

now to try to finish up either Pokemon Insurgence, Pokemon Reborn or Pokemon Mega Adventure, all of which I've neglected partway through and don't remember what I was doing last.

[Rynjin]

If you haven't played it yet, I just finished the Elite 4 in Infinite Fusion and have been having a ton of fun with it. Would suggest.

[Anonymouswizard]

Spoiler: Mass Effect 3 Ending Spoilers, if anyone cares

Show

It really is impressive how bad the Starchild sequence in Mass Effect is. I have a low opinion of a lot of the Mass Effect 3 stuff, but even from that standard it's such a steep drop. It's like a ten minute sequence and it ruins the franchise forever. It's also really funny because it's completely unforced. If you cut it and just had the crucible fire and destroy the reapers after confronting the Illusive Man, that's a much better ending. Still underwhelming, but a survivable wound, not something that mangles a franchise so badly that you have to go to a whole new galaxy to escape the consequences of it.

Oh well, at least Citadel makes for a decent send off on it's own.

Spoiler

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The more I've thought about it the more I've become convinced that the game shouldn't directly show if the Crucible works or not. Just cut to credits as Anderson and Shepard sit down to watch the battle with the implication that they both die.

Then you use the Stargazer to imply success or failure.

I think the issue is that they wanted multiple endings where your War Assets mattered, but the solution was to make Priority: Earth more variable.

ETA: I'll repeat my belief: a happy ending is worse than a satisfying ending. Thankfully there seems to be a mod that agrees with me, including keeping whether Shepard lives or dies tied to EMS.

I might actually drop my current Paragon run to actually do an NG+ of ME1 with the Renegade leaning Engineer I played...

[Errorname]

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The more I've thought about it the more I've become convinced that the game shouldn't directly show if the Crucible works or not. Just cut to credits as Anderson and Shepard sit down to watch the battle with the implication that they both die.

Then you use the Stargazer to imply success or failure.

I think the issue is that they wanted multiple endings where your War Assets mattered, but the solution was to make Priority: Earth more variable.

ETA: I'll repeat my belief: a happy ending is worse than a satisfying ending. Thankfully there seems to be a mod that agrees with me, including keeping whether Shepard lives or dies tied to EMS.

I might actually drop my current Paragon run to actually do an NG+ of ME1 with the Renegade leaning Engineer I played...

I'm also thinking about sequels. Mass Effect is a popular franchise, people want more and Bioware/EA wants to make more, but the Mass Effect 3 ending makes that insanely difficult. The apocalyptic events are already a lot to come back from, but throw in three different but completely incompatible endings and you've basically made the game unfollow-upable.

[ArmyOfOptimists]

I'm also thinking about sequels. Mass Effect is a popular franchise, people want more and Bioware/EA wants to make more, but the Mass Effect 3 ending makes that insanely difficult. The apocalyptic events are already a lot to come back from, but throw in three different but completely incompatible endings and you've basically made the game unfollow-upable.

Wouldn't be the first game series to have multiple endings where the sequel just picks a defined canon ending and ignores the others. Baldur's Gate 3 does the same thing and nobody batted an eye at it.

[Anonymouswizard]

I'm also thinking about sequels. Mass Effect is a popular franchise, people want more and Bioware/EA wants to make more, but the Mass Effect 3 ending makes that insanely difficult. The apocalyptic events are already a lot to come back from, but throw in three different but completely incompatible endings and you've basically made the game unfollow-upable.

To be fair my idea still gives an 'this is obviously canon' version where more games can be set, it just lets you keep the details vague until Mass Effect 4: Okay Fine You Can **** The Krogan. Hell in the vanilla version it's obvious that Destroy is the only ending that has a chance of being canonized.

Honestly my main issue is

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Shepard surviving.

[Wookieetank]

Wouldn't be the first game series to have multiple endings where the sequel just picks a defined canon ending and ignores the others. Baldur's Gate 3 does the same thing and nobody batted an eye at it.

Or they go the other way where all endings are canon and occurred, ala Daggerfall and subsequent Elderscrolls games.

[Rodin]

To be fair my idea still gives an 'this is obviously canon' version where more games can be set, it just lets you keep the details vague until Mass Effect 4: Okay Fine You Can **** The Krogan. Hell in the vanilla version it's obvious that Destroy is the only ending that has a chance of being canonized.

Honestly my main issue is

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Shepard surviving.

Mass Effect 4 Balls?

Spoiler: ME3 Ending

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I'm the weirdo that likes the Star Child ending, because it appeals to the Babylon 5 fan in me. The Crucible is the stupidest thing in the entire franchise and shouldn't exist, and the Star Child represents talking to the Reapers which is the only way you could realistically have the younger races survive. Yeah, it could have been done a lot better, but the alternative is three games of running around the galaxy doing literally nothing only to have a Deus Ex Machina handed to you by blueprints found on MARS. It's head-explodingly dumb. With Star Child at least you can pretend you're negotiating with the Reapers to either get them to go away (Destroy), get them to become mentors (Control), or fuse with the younger races to ascend to a new form of existence (Synthesis).

There's a lot of problems with the ending, but almost all of them are rooted far earlier in the franchise. ME3 has a bad ending because they never set the groundwork to make a good ending possible.

[warty goblin]

After the embarrassed of its own genre jankfest of Inquisition, the C-tier Ubigame that is Andromeda, and the utter flaming catastrophe that is Anthem, Bioware is not a developer that's worth my money. Bioware is not good at making games at this point, they've been profoundly badly managedsince at least Inquisition by all accounts, abusive to their employees, and have made nothing but failures for a decade. They are seriel failures coasting on strong IP and fond memories from over a decade ago.

But I'm done with that. I'm just going to let the ghost of ME go, it's dead, I don't care what they do with it, time to move on.

[ArmyOfOptimists]

ME3 has a bad ending because they never set the groundwork to make a good ending possible.

I don't think this is much of a spoiler by itself, so I'm unspoilering it to make it less of a pain to read.

I find that pattern - not doing the groundwork to make a good ending possible - happens often in pop culture and it always ends with the fans placing blame on the last entry instead of recognizing the problem earlier. Mass Effect is a particularly egregious example because the problem really lies in Mass Effect 2, which many consider the best game in the series despite it doing nothing to further the plot from the first game. There's a whole essay from Shamus Young about why ME2's writing is bad for the series and how it setup ME3 for failure.

I also have a bit of a chip against ME2 because it tossed the interesting premise of humans being infants on the galactic stage and decidedly not the most important or even a particularly major player in the setting in favor of making the humans the only race that does anything meaningful without being dragged into it by Shepard.

[Errorname]

Or they go the other way where all endings are canon and occurred, ala Daggerfall and subsequent Elderscrolls games.

Deus Ex: Invisible War also did this.

Spoiler: ME3 Ending

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I'm the weirdo that likes the Star Child ending, because it appeals to the Babylon 5 fan in me. The Crucible is the stupidest thing in the entire franchise and shouldn't exist, and the Star Child represents talking to the Reapers which is the only way you could realistically have the younger races survive. Yeah, it could have been done a lot better, but the alternative is three games of running around the galaxy doing literally nothing only to have a Deus Ex Machina handed to you by blueprints found on MARS.

Gonna be honest, I'd have rather just had the Deus Ex Machina. It wouldn't have been good, but they could have coasted on the emotional beats of saying goodbye to characters you've spent three games with and gotten at least some satisfaction from it.

Bioware is not good at making games at this point, they've been profoundly badly managedsince at least Inquisition by all accounts, abusive to their employees, and have made nothing but failures for a decade. They are seriel failures coasting on strong IP and fond memories from over a decade ago.

Baldur's Gate 3 coming out to overwhelming acclaim and proving there was still massive demand for the classic Bioware format happening at the same time Bioware laid off a bunch of the people who made the original Baldur's Gate games really kind of says it all about where the company is at.

I find that pattern - not doing the groundwork to make a good ending possible - happens often in pop culture and it always ends with the fans placing blame on the last entry instead of recognizing the problem earlier. Mass Effect is a particularly egregious example because the problem really lies in Mass Effect 2, which many consider the best game in the series despite it doing nothing to further the plot from the first game. There's a whole essay from Shamus Young about why ME2's writing is bad for the series and how it setup ME3 for failure

I think that series makes some compelling points and I don't disagree that Mass Effect 2 really left 3 in a difficult position where the plot hadn't really advanced much but the next game had to be the finale, but I still think that the Mass Effect 3 ending is a massive drop in quality that dives the game off a cliff

They had a bad but functional ending lined up, and then at the last minute they suckerpunch you with the cosmic child.

I also have a bit of a chip against ME2 because it tossed the interesting premise of humans being infants on the galactic stage and decidedly not the most important or even a particularly major player in the setting in favor of making the humans the only race that does anything meaningful without being dragged into it by Shepard.

Cerberus is the worst part of the series and the main thing that keeps ME2 from being hands down the best game in the series is how central they are to it.

[Wookieetank]

Cerberus is the worst part of the series and the main thing that keeps ME2 from being hands down the best game in the series is how central they are to it.

Not to mention the whole

Spoiler

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opening ME2 with straight up killing Shepard, and then resurrecting him 5 mins later as a reason for why he's now beholden to Cerberus.

Change the opening to pretty much anything else, and Cerberus can be in the background/less of a focus. The opening also killed the stakes on the expected one way mission for me as well.

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When your game opens with resurrecting your MC, a suicide mission climax is rather meaningless when its already shown MC can be brought back from the dead.

Gameplay wise ME2 was lots of fun, story wise needed to be less Rogue One and more Empire Strikes Back.

[LibraryOgre]

I maintain that Mass Effect works a whole heck of a lot better if you go with ME2, ME1, and ME3. For clarity, I'm going to call the originals ME1, ME2 and ME3; the reordered versions are MEC (Cerberus), MES (Specter), and MER (Reaper)

MEC: You start on an Alliance ship which explodes. You have no idea who the crew are, but your character clearly knows them. Cerberus brings you back from the dead, not because you are Commander Shepard, but because they want to see if it will work. They have intelligence about human colonies disappearing, and throughout, you get hints and statements that Cerberus is probably not someone you should be working for, but things on the Normandy don't really show that, and you've got Jacob there saying "They're not all that bad", and they don't seem to have a problem with you recruiting a bunch of non-humans so... hey, who knows. This leads to the human Reaper through the Omega Gate, and a big WTF is going on.

Then MES happens, with much of the plot of ME1. Since you were dead, the Alliance has to officially bring you back to life. Your heroism in MEC gets you tested to be a Spectre. You get sent to Eden Prime, find the Beacon, go on adventures to understand and stop Sovereign, who attacks the Citadel. You now see Cerberus as a threat... you don't see the prettied up ones from your first adventure, but the experimental weirdos from the original ME1.

This brings us to ME3/MER, where you've got people alerted to the problem, but still self-interested. Shepard, hero of the Citadel, rallies people to the cause, opposing the Collectors (who are back), Cerberus, and the appearance of the Reapers. MER can be much the same, though we either get rid of the Star Child or do a bit more to make him into something.

Some details have to be moved around; I think I'd keep Wrex in MEC, with Grunt's story happening in the new MES, but I think you can keep Tali in MEC more or less the same. Introducing Legion in MEC gives you background on the Geth. You might move Mordin to MES, so you can keep the Wrex/Grunt/Mordin story more or less together. But you have, IMO, a clearer narrative, no weird left turn for Cerberus, that then turns right back around for the next entry.

But I also hate Monday morning quarterbacking, he says after going over the offensive failures in detail.

[GloatingSwine]

Deus Ex: Invisible War also did this..

Yeah, Invisible War's "it was all a bit confusing there" is probably a better model than "all nine of these mutually exclusive things somehow not only happened but happened retroactively such that they had always been true".

[Errorname]

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Not to mention the whole opening ME2 with straight up killing Shepard, and then resurrecting him 5 mins later as a reason for why he's now beholden to Cerberus.

Change the opening to pretty much anything else, and Cerberus can be in the background/less of a focus. The opening also killed the stakes on the expected one way mission for me as well. When your game opens with resurrecting your MC, a suicide mission climax is rather meaningless when its already shown MC can be brought back from the dead.

Spoiler: ME2

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I actually kind of like the opening, it's pretty normalized for RPG sequels to start with big dramatic resets that explain why all your cool stuff from the first game is gone and why you have to start over from scratch. In that tradition I think the Normandy blowing up is one of my favourites, actually. It's a little bit nonsense but it's dramatic nonsense, and if Shepard was resurrected by a faction that was more compelling than Cerberus I'd probably have no issues with it.

I maintain that Mass Effect works a whole heck of a lot better if you go with ME2, ME1, and ME3. For clarity, I'm going to call the originals ME1, ME2 and ME3; the reordered versions are MEC (Cerberus), MES (Specter), and MER (Reaper)

Some details have to be moved around; I think I'd keep Wrex in MEC, with Grunt's story happening in the new MES, but I think you can keep Tali in MEC more or less the same. Introducing Legion in MEC gives you background on the Geth. You might move Mordin to MES, so you can keep the Wrex/Grunt/Mordin story more or less together. But you have, IMO, a clearer narrative, no weird left turn for Cerberus, that then turns right back around for the next entry.

I can see the logic, but I think you'd break a lot of character arcs just to have a cleaner progression for Cerberus, and the narrative bends itself into twists to accommodate those guys way too much as it is.

But I also hate Monday morning quarterbacking, he says after going over the offensive failures in detail.

Mass Effect gives you so many opportunities to Monday Morning Quarterback it. I think basically everyone who played MEA could write at least a few paragraphs about how they'd have improved the story.

[Wookieetank]

Spoiler: ME2

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I actually kind of like the opening, it's pretty normalized for RPG sequels to start with big dramatic resets that explain why all your cool stuff from the first game is gone and why you have to start over from scratch. In that tradition I think the Normandy blowing up is one of my favourites, actually. It's a little bit nonsense but it's dramatic nonsense, and if Shepard was resurrected by a faction that was more compelling than Cerberus I'd probably have no issues with it.

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It was a rather epic way to start things off, and quite spectacular to watch. It just ruins the whole Will Shepard Survive the suicide run bit. Doesn't matter if he survives cause he can just get brought back to life again.

I think my other main letdown with ME2 was the lack of Reaper involvement.
ME1: Discover that the Reapers are coming and we need to convince people
ME2: The Reapers are still coming and people still aren't terrible convinced (but at least the collectors are stopped)
ME3: The Reapers are here, PANIC!
A bit simplified, but ME1 & ME2 have rather similar end states and very little progression in ME2 other than in individual character stories.

[Errorname]

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It was a rather epic way to start things off, and quite spectacular to watch. It just ruins the whole Will Shepard Survive the suicide run bit. Doesn't matter if he survives cause he can just get brought back to life again.

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Eh, they establish that bringing someone back from the dead is possible, but they also make it clear that it was expensive, difficult and time-consuming

I think my other main letdown with ME2 was the lack of Reaper involvement.
ME1: Discover that the Reapers are coming and we need to convince people
ME2: The Reapers are still coming and people still aren't terrible convinced (but at least the collectors are stopped)
ME3: The Reapers are here, PANIC!
A bit simplified, but ME1 & ME2 have rather similar end states and very little progression in ME2 other than in individual character stories.

Yes, this is a big problem with ME2. While the character stuff is excellent, and generally represents a peak for the franchise, the actual main plot doesn't progress much and then the ending says "by the way, the next one's going to be the last one"

[Zevox]

I think my other main letdown with ME2 was the lack of Reaper involvement.

Honestly, I feel like that's a big contributor to why it's so good. The Reapers were never an interesting main plotline. They're literally just giant killer space robots. Compared to basically everything else about the Mass Effect setting, they're boring, and there was never really a way to change that I think. ME2 sidelining them let it focus on the more interesting elements of the setting, and on more interesting characters - it's no coincidence that the best parts of ME3 are wrapping up plots that were mainly pushed forward by the loyalty missions of ME2.

They could've done the ending of ME3 much better, to be sure, but I don't think it was ever going to be great, because the Reapers themselves were never a good setup for it to be anything more than mediocre. The best parts of Mass Effect as-is are the parts that have nothing to do with them, and that's telling.

[LibraryOgre]

I think my other main letdown with ME2 was the lack of Reaper involvement.
ME1: Discover that the Reapers are coming and we need to convince people
ME2: The Reapers are still coming and people still aren't terrible convinced (but at least the collectors are stopped)
ME3: The Reapers are here, PANIC!
A bit simplified, but ME1 & ME2 have rather similar end states and very little progression in ME2 other than in individual character stories.

Which is part of why I like the new order... in MEC, you're just some (guy), with some sketchy connections, who has a wild tale. In MES, you're a Spectre, and there is a literal attack on the Citadel by a giant space-ship that seems to be able to directly interface with the Citadel. Then with MER, you're building on that attack.

[warty goblin]

Far be it from me to defend ME2, but I think the fundamental issues with the overall ME storyline are actually nearly intractable.

The major problem is this: the ME series is a very personal scale game. You talk to people and shoot dudes, that's it. You don't manage planets, or fleets, or civilizations. You don't even fly a spaceship. You walk around and shoot and talk to people, then a spaceship-shaped loading screen takes you to the next map where you shoot and talk to people. This, on its own, is perfectly fine. It facilitates bonding with your crew and exploring the galaxy directly and having interesting, personal-scale stories. You, Shephard, are special and awesome and all the cool people want to be your friend. Great structure for a game, 10/10, rock solid concept.

It becomes a problem when combined with two other things. Firstly, the Reapers are not a personal scale threat addressable by the personal-scale gameplay verbs and story themes. You can't shoot them with your space-pistol. Even if you could talk the entire galaxy into uniting against them it explicitly doesn't matter. In game and in the themes of the story nothing you can do addresses the threat. Everything the game is structured around is dealing with the people in front of you, but the Reapers are hilariously impersonal, they eat entire civilizations. Any universe that contains a Reaper is one where your tragic backstory suddenly matters a whole lot less, and your space-pistol matters not at all. It's like worrying about your dinner plans right after a facehugger shoves itself down your throat, except it isn't your personal biomass its but your entire civilization. You're now occupying a very different spot on the food chain, a perspective shift is in order. Conversely, any universe where your personal choices are super important is one where Reapers don't make any narrative sense at all, because they have nothing to do with that, and solving one has nothing to do with solving the other.

Secondly, it's sci-fi and not fantasy. Worse, the first game set up an expectation of at least sort of hard-ish sci-fi. Not really hard, more like jello-hard, but compared to the cream of nonsense soup that is most videogame sci-fi it feels like a goddamn razor blade. The fantasy solution to the impersonal kill-everything demon horde is obvious, you are that special, you get the special sword, and you personally kick their butts. Magic swords and prophecies just work like that, and nobody bats an eye. But you can't do that in even jello-hard sci-fi. Worse, demons don't require explanation. They want to kill everybody, they're demons, that's what the do. The explanation for a demon is the word "demon." But omnicidal robots, although nearly exchangeable with demons, are still machines. Somebody built them for some reason, and the player base is going to want to know why. So now you need a good explanation for the regularly scheduled galactic annihilation. You also need some sort of plot device off switch, preferably one that feels personal because the entire story is fundamentally personal, and also you can get to by shooting things and talking to something. But if its personal it also kinda runs the risk of making the Reapers feel kinda silly, like what, it just took this one person asking just right to stop the eternal rain of blood? Silly extinct civilizations, why didn't they think of that? Oh, and it needs to recognize how you played the series up to this point, but it cannot lock you out of an acceptable ending because of some seemingly unrelated choice you made three games ago, and you have to be able to get there by being a dirty space hippie who unites everybody or a total hardass who tells the rest of the galaxy to take a hike, and the companions have to matter but also they can't matter because any number of them could be dead.

I don't think this ending exists. There's too many constraints, and several of them are, if not actually contradictory, teetering right on the edge of it.

[Errorname]

Which is part of why I like the new order... in MEC, you're just some (guy), with some sketchy connections, who has a wild tale. In MES, you're a Spectre, and there is a literal attack on the Citadel by a giant space-ship that seems to be able to directly interface with the Citadel. Then with MER, you're building on that attack.

The order does make the shrink from ME2's 12 member squad to the six members of the other games much worse. In the games as is you go from 6 to 12 than down to 6-7, whereas this would start you at a peak it never reaches again.

[Rynjin]

I pretty much agree with Warty Goblin. The series' narrative issues start and end with EVER trying to make this a story of "all out war against the Reapers". The plot should ALWAYS have involved ensuring they never wake up in the first place, because that is a goal that a streamlined specops team can realistically achieve, as the "cultists" of the "ancient evil" are a much more human threat to take on.

ME2 is the only game in the series that really makes use of this concept. That is, in part, what makes it the best game in the series. ME1 has the crew chasing their tails for way too long, and ME3 throws out the entire concept of you being a small, competent, but inherently fragile group of people and turns you into the Lone Man Who Can Save the Galaxy which...sucks.

[SerTabris]

I started playing Life is Strange: Before the storm over the weekend and so far my main takeaway is realizing how addicted I had gotten to the ability to rewind time. Though considering who the main character is, it might help with the role-playing since making an impulsive choice and then having to face the consequences seems very on brand for Chloe.

It really is, that's true. I think I occasionally had trouble with that, considering I tend to be, well... a much more Lawful-aligned sort of person than Chloe is. But I think it helped me get going with it when I realized that it's actually completely impossible to not skip school on the first day, because of course it is. I think they do a good job of giving you a range of choices while keeping them within the bounds of who Chloe is based on the first game.

Spoiler: Mainly just spoilers for the original, not BtS

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Since we have those parts of the first game that happen several years ago, I kind of think of it as deciding where on her character arc from that past time period to where LiS occurs Chloe is right now.

Speaking of which... what ending did you choose for the original game? I'd imagine that would change the feeling of playing Before the Storm somewhat, even if it's a prequel...

[The_Snark]

Oh, and it needs to recognize how you played the series up to this point, but it cannot lock you out of an acceptable ending because of some seemingly unrelated choice you made three games ago, and you have to be able to get there by being a dirty space hippie who unites everybody or a total hardass who tells the rest of the galaxy to take a hike, and the companions have to matter but also they can't matter because any number of them could be dead.

Agreed. Even leaving aside all the Reapers and Cerberus and all the other things people like to argue about, I think the basic conceit of "your choices matter" and "we want to make sequels" were at odds. I remember being disappointed when I played ME2 and discovered that it barely mattered whether I saved the Council in the first game, much less who I nominated for the job of Chief Human Guy; it just meant the people refusing to help me would have different names and maybe one or two different lines of dialogue. But... what were they supposed to do here? Make two different versions of the game with hugely different geopolitical landscapes? And that's just one choice from one game. Wrex's death? Sparing the Rachni queen? The suicide mission? It's just not feasible to explore the consequences of these in depth, at least in this medium. (Maybe in a less AAA game - but even as a text adventure I feel like this would be an awful lot of branching storylines.)

[Anonymouswizard]

Mass Effect 4 Balls?

Spoiler: ME3 Ending

Show

I'm the weirdo that likes the Star Child ending, because it appeals to the Babylon 5 fan in me. The Crucible is the stupidest thing in the entire franchise and shouldn't exist, and the Star Child represents talking to the Reapers which is the only way you could realistically have the younger races survive. Yeah, it could have been done a lot better, but the alternative is three games of running around the galaxy doing literally nothing only to have a Deus Ex Machina handed to you by blueprints found on MARS. It's head-explodingly dumb. With Star Child at least you can pretend you're negotiating with the Reapers to either get them to go away (Destroy), get them to become mentors (Control), or fuse with the younger races to ascend to a new form of existence (Synthesis).

There's a lot of problems with the ending, but almost all of them are rooted far earlier in the franchise. ME3 has a bad ending because they never set the groundwork to make a good ending possible.

Followed by Mass Effect Quint, a spinoff dating sim set on Tuchunka

Spoiler

Show

Honestly replace Starchild with Harbinger and I'm down for any of the endings. Control's actually my personal favourite, willingly performing a destructive upload to give the Reapers new parameters.

Honestly, I feel like that's a big contributor to why it's so good. The Reapers were never an interesting main plotline.

ME2 just completely messed up when it came to the Reaper's. It should have shuffled them off screen, instead they spend half the game talking at you whenever you fight one enemy faction, with so few voice clips that they become boring. Oh, it tries to bait you into believing it's not a Reaper, but what's the first thing the characters say when you're given your overall mission? That the Inhibitors are behind it.

What the Reapers needed to be was the big looming threat behind the relatable villains, which the first game got. Saren was an amazing villain for the game, and TIM very nearly serves the same role in the third installment. Really only ME2 is missing a Reaper Herald, which could probably have been fixed by giving the Collectors more defined characters than 'the Reaper who controls them'.


Also I like about 90% of ME3's story, I think having to creep around the galaxy securing alliances works. Most of your commando squad missions aren't about directly fighting the Reapers but the result of negotiations for aid that the Alliances needs.

[Eldan]

Still saying that ME2 should have been ME1 and vice versa.

The ME2 mission is just so much smaller. In ME2, you investigate a threat to some human colonies, in ME1 you're stopping the Geth and Sovereign from eating the entire galaxy.

So, start the game with Commander Shephard, not a Specter, using the new stealth ship Normandy on a trial run in Terminus space, where a space ship would actually be extremely useful so the Batarians don't notice the patrols. Find out Harbingers are abducting humans. Investigate. Find out more. Go to the Council, they say it's a human problem, humans should solve it. Decide to instead hire team of specialists. Find Derelict Reaper and explanation that this is what wiped out the Proteans. Go on suicide run through Omega Relay. Find out Collectors are building a Human Reaper. Try to stop human reaper. Have conversation with Sovereign awakening in galactic core, hinting at Reapers still existing and preparing another cycle. End game.

Game 2, be promoted to Specter, with mission to investigate what Sovereign is doing. Find out Harbinger has infiltrated specter organisation via Whatsname Turianface and is simultaneously also preparing Geth invasion. Geth Invasion begins. Do usual ME1 stuff. Find final planet of the Proteans. At that point, get Javik as companion instead of just infodump from AI, why not. Find out about Citadel being giant interdimensional mass relay. Stop Sovereign from activating it. Get vague psychic impression of more Reapers in dark space, who have felt that the Citadel plan has failed and are now coming the long way. Start plot of ME 3.

It's just a much nicer escalation of stakes.

[Errorname]

Wrex's death? The suicide mission? It's just not feasible to explore the consequences of these in depth, at least in this medium.

I actually think the series did a really good job with the understudies, the ones for Wrex and Thane especially. They get to do similar enough things to keep the story on track, but they're different enough that you still feel the absence of the dead characters.

[warty goblin]

I pretty much agree with Warty Goblin. The series' narrative issues start and end with EVER trying to make this a story of "all out war against the Reapers". The plot should ALWAYS have involved ensuring they never wake up in the first place, because that is a goal that a streamlined specops team can realistically achieve, as the "cultists" of the "ancient evil" are a much more human threat to take on.

ME2 is the only game in the series that really makes use of this concept. That is, in part, what makes it the best game in the series. ME1 has the crew chasing their tails for way too long, and ME3 throws out the entire concept of you being a small, competent, but inherently fragile group of people and turns you into the Lone Man Who Can Save the Galaxy which...sucks.

Honestly I was rather disappointed that ME2 was such a direct sequel to ME1. It seemed like the Reapers could have easily been treated as a solved problem, just stuck out there, drifting in the dark forever. I rather liked the idea of going for entirely new plotlines, possibly with a new protagonist and supporting cast. Really explore the universe, which to me was the most compelling part of the first game.

Agreed. Even leaving aside all the Reapers and Cerberus and all the other things people like to argue about, I think the basic conceit of "your choices matter" and "we want to make sequels" were at odds. I remember being disappointed when I played ME2 and discovered that it barely mattered whether I saved the Council in the first game, much less who I nominated for the job of Chief Human Guy; it just meant the people refusing to help me would have different names and maybe one or two different lines of dialogue. But... what were they supposed to do here? Make two different versions of the game with hugely different geopolitical landscapes? And that's just one choice from one game. Wrex's death? Sparing the Rachni queen? The suicide mission? It's just not feasible to explore the consequences of these in depth, at least in this medium. (Maybe in a less AAA game - but even as a text adventure I feel like this would be an awful lot of branching storylines.)

One of the things that I think keeps tripping up choice and consequence in games is the idea that your choices matter means they drastically impact the plot. I much prefer to see choices as revealing character, which can be done with much less plot impact, arguably almost none at all. You can have the protagonist saves the world plot and all the same setpieces, but if the protagonist is a bitter jerk it'll feel very different than if they're a nice person, and all you need to alter is dialog.