Playing other games

[pjknibbs]

If you haven't played any of them, I would recommend to do so now. It's one of the few series that each sequence greatly improve on the previous tittle, both in term of story telling and gameplay.

I will freely agree with you that the gameplay in ME2 definitely improved on 1 (haven't played 3 so can't judge), but going to be a hard NO on the story improving. Mass Effect 1 was an excellent set-up story--it defined the problem and gave us tools that could have been used to solve that problem in subsequent games. ME2 basically ignored all the good setup work done in the first game and had you spend its runtime dealing with an irrelevant sideshow that got you no closer to solving the big issue. While the side quests in ME2 are some of the finest you'll find anywhere, the main plotline is just hot garbage from beginning to end.

[Gavrushka]

Gonna buy the damned lot, with the exception of Half Life 2 (which I own) as the screen motion in it makes me vomit so hard I do Catherine Wheel impressions.

I loved the 1st Bioshock game, loved the sound effects and cut scenes, so will get the newer ones too.

I might even try a multimedia FPS or two if I can find a server dedicated to the decaying, inept and the elderly.

Thanks for all the recommendations.

[birdtable]

@Gavrushka .. If you find a "mmo FPS dedicated to the decaying, inept and the elderly" ... Let me know...

[Gavrushka]

@Gavrushka .. If you find a "mmo FPS dedicated to the decaying, inept and the elderly" ... Let me know...

LOL, you have a deal. Yesterday I managed to play a game with my own password protected server, just me in it, and still managed to lose. I can imagine if it's populated with others as clueless as me, it'll make for a great Monty Python sketch...

[Mightysword]

If you haven't played any of them, I would recommend to do so now. It's one of the few series that each sequence greatly improve on the previous tittle, both in term of story telling and gameplay.

I will freely agree with you that the gameplay in ME2 definitely improved on 1 (haven't played 3 so can't judge), but going to be a hard NO on the story improving. Mass Effect 1 was an excellent set-up story--it defined the problem and gave us tools that could have been used to solve that problem in subsequent games. ME2 basically ignored all the good setup work done in the first game and had you spend its runtime dealing with an irrelevant sideshow that got you no closer to solving the big issue. While the side quests in ME2 are some of the finest you'll find anywhere, the main plotline is just hot garbage from beginning to end.

I think the goal of the story in ME2 is pretty well defined as well? Build a team and go after the bad guys, that objective is set within the first 30min of the game and I don't think we strayed too far from it. It also serves as world building and explain the 'motive' of the bad guys beyond the 'simply wipe out everything', the big relevation at the end fit the overall story of the series (although I don't remember if one needs to play ME3 to see that). ME1 does the introduction, ME2 set the stage, and ME3 is the grand performance.

Kinda hard to discuss this without spoiling haha.

One thing that definitely consistently improve is the characterization. ME1 was good but felt just typical Bioware standard, ME2 is a lot better, and ME3 is one of the best if not the best from Bioware about connecting the NPCs. IMO of course.

[pjknibbs]

The problem is, though, the bad guys in ME2 are not the main bad guys of the series that you spent the whole of ME1 trying to stop and who actually invade in ME3. They're an irrelevant sideshow, as I said, and nothing you do in ME2 advances your goal of dealing with the Big Bad. As you say, it would be spoilers to go into more detail, but I could give you chapter and verse as to all the things that make the ME2 storyline hot garbage--and I think many people give the game a pass because it definitely plays better than the first one, and has superb quality side missions, without paying too much attention to how irrelevant the main plot is to the overarching storyline of the series as a whole.

[Mightysword]

I agree with you in the sense that the core missions of ME2 (the team building ones) seem to be unrelated to the ultimate objective, but I would still argue that there are enough relevant stuffs in ME2 itself about the 'bad' guys. It may not directly involving stopping, but nether-less they are important bit in building the the over-arching world. For example, the 'faction' you work for in ME2 has a bigger role to play, not just within the current timeline, but similar factions with similar roles also existed in previous cycles, and serve to construct what I see as the methodology of the 'bad' guy. What we see in ME2 around the world I think is to serve as an example of what had happened in previous cycle, why civilization are so un-prepared and why the bad guys can success easily, on which ME3 built on the foundation of why this cycle success.

Most importantly though, and I bet this is on purpose given Bioware's story telling style. The 'bond' you build in those seemingly unrelated missions in ME2 help connect you with those characters in ME3, and some of them would be fighting their own battles in ME3 because of what they learnt with your character during ME2. Half of the reason why ME3 was so good for me personally is because of this, and without ME2's context they would be definitely much less impactful.

Of course, most of that is in hindsight after playing ME3 though. Like I said ME2 is like setting the stage, and the audience may wonder "why do they put that piece on the stage?!?" until you see the scene itself play out than you go "oh so that's why that piece is there".

Been so long since I played the series, but if you were happy with the gameplay change from ME1 to ME2, I think ME3 makes even a better improvement.

[notaterran]

Bannerlord question:

How do I kill my wife? I'd like to get rid of her because I found one with better armor. I activated the "heroes can die" option when I started the campaign, but so far nothing works. I took away her armor and I always send her to the front line, but even though she's only fighting in her underwear and falls relatively quickly to enemy attacks (or mine) she won't stay dead. Also, before I put her in my army I left her in a town, but she just kept on having kids. I need a mod to stop her whoring around because now I have to scroll down a bunch of baby icons to get to the rest of my companions (and where are all those babies anyway?). Unless illegitimate children are a game mechanic, pregnancy is broken in this game.

[Mightysword]

Are you playing the latest Beta? And are you on an old save? The babies making were overturned and was significantly reduced since 1.3. But if you want to directly have control over it, I think there is a mod on nexus for that.

The devs are probably football fans, since there is a saying "do you want enough Children to field a football team" is an endearing expression.

Haven't heard anything about killing your wife, but there is a chance she'll die at each child birth though.

[pjknibbs]

I agree with you in the sense that the core missions of ME2 (the team building ones) seem to be unrelated to the ultimate objective

Those aren't the core storyline missions--they're entirely optional, in fact, you can skip pretty much all of them if you want. ME2 has three main types of missions: story ones, team recruiting ones, and companion loyalty ones. The latter two are fine, in fact, as I've already said, some of Bioware's best work. They're not what I'm talking about when I say the main plot is hot garbage.

[notaterran]

Are you playing the latest Beta? And are you on an old save? The babies making were overturned and was significantly reduced since 1.3. But if you want to directly have control over it, I think there is a mod on nexus for that.

The devs are probably football fans, since there is a saying "do you want enough Children to field a football team" is an endearing expression.

Haven't heard anything about killing your wife, but there is a chance she'll die at each child birth though.

There have been several updates since I started playing this campaign, perhaps with a new campaign I'll have less problems. Thanks anyway.

[Golden_Gonads]

ME2... Build up a team of bad-asses to save the galaxy, and then they bugger off by ME3 and only make cameo appearances....

[Mightysword]

Those aren't the core storyline missions--they're entirely optional, in fact, you can skip pretty much all of them if you want. ME2 has three main types of missions: story ones, team recruiting ones, and companion loyalty ones. The latter two are fine, in fact, as I've already said, some of Bioware's best work. They're not what I'm talking about when I say the main plot is hot garbage.

I always treat the recruiting missions as the main one though, because while you can do them in any order, I think you have to complete all the dossiers mission in each art for the main mission to trigger and move to the next act. So they're not side or optional in term moving forward. While the loyalty one are indeed side mission.

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If by main story mission you refer to the 3 missions that trigger after you complete each set of dossiers: Horizon, Collector Ship, Install IFF, and of course the final one through the relay. I have no problem with them myself:
- Horizon: give the answer to what happening to the human colony.
- Collector ship: give insight to what happened to the Proethean, and also what awaited humanity.
- Acquire the IFF: at first glance it seems inconsequential and self-contained to ME2 story, but that 'ship' you were on would serve as a major plot to explain certain effect in ME3

Out of those Horizon is probably the weakest. The mission's premise is fine, but the interaction with a certain old squadmate there. It's the one thing I would agree to put the label hot garbage on. Sadly the issue with that one particular squadmate also persist into ME3 as well. I feel it's the case they try too hard to make that particular one stand out and end up making it fall flat.

Like I said ME2's lack of direct action because it's meant to be an information exposure chapter. We know very little about the bad guys by ME1 except they're coming to wipe everyone out. ME2 explains the motive, method, and a glimpses of what would actually be the process.

[Mightysword]

ME2... Build up a team of bad-asses to save the galaxy, and then they bugger off by ME3 and only make cameo appearances....

I don't think it's as simple as that though, it makes sense everyone is scattered given what happens at the last DLC of ME2. Plus it's not like they burger off randomly, given the state of the galaxy in ME3 it makes sense where most of them ended up where they are. Put a smile on my face in fact, the larger role most of them were given make me feel they grow out of the concept of just a squadmate/side kick, and our collective effort in previous games are finally recognized.


Finished playing Valkyria Chronicle 4. Don't know why I waited that long for it given the fact I thoroughly enjoyed VC1 ... 10 years ago. And I wish I waited forever. VC1's story may be a tough act to follow, but VC4 has probably one of the most stupid and cliche story in all the games I've ever played, even by anime/JRPG standard where I normally can ignore minor inconsistency to just enjoy the ride.

[pjknibbs]

Like I said ME2's lack of direct action because it's meant to be an information exposure chapter. We know very little about the bad guys by ME1 except they're coming to wipe everyone out. ME2 explains the motive, method, and a glimpses of what would actually be the process.

Spoiler

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The Collectors are an irrelevant sideshow. They're minions of the Reapers who happen to be trying to build a Reaper in the absence of their true masters, and the fact the Reapers invade anyway at the beginning of the third game shows just how irrelevant they were in the grand scheme of things. We should have been spending ME2 trying to find out how to defeat the Reapers, not dealing with their manservants. Incidentally, we already knew the motive and method of the Reapers from the first game, the Prothean VI you find near the end of the game explains it all in great detail.

As for the main plot, it starts by killing off Shepard and resurrecting him--because of course it does, there obviously isn't any other way they could pull a hard reset on the plot. We're back to everybody not seeing the Reapers as a threat, despite the Council nearly--or even actually, depending what you did at the end of ME1--being destroyed by one. We're working for Cerberus, who were a two-bit terrorist organisation in the first game yet now have the capability of building a ship which is bigger and better than the best the Alliance could produce, not to mention being capable of raising the dead, and we're never given a choice about that. The entire crew of the Normandy from the first game also jumped ship and decided to join Cerberus as well, apparently for the lulz.

Liara, a main character from the first game and someone you'd think would be quite helpful in the quest to find out more info about the Reapers given her Prothean knowledge, either doesn't appear in the game at all or, if you have the Shadow Broker DLC, has turned from a meek archaeologist to become the most secretive information broker in the galaxy. Because that's an entirely logical progression given her character.

As for the main plot missions themselves, they make very little sense generally. The first one just happens to put you on a planet that Tali is also investigating, because God forbid anything happen by other than sheer coincidence or good luck. The ones in the middle are entirely forgettable and I can't even remember what happens in them. I'm sure I don't need to explain why the "All the heroes aboard the Normandy II get into a shuttle and fly off somewhere while the Collectors attack the ship" mission is plain nonsense? Even assuming you could fit all those people in the shuttle (and you could potentially have 12 companions at this point, which seems a bit of a tight fit), why wouldn't you just go in the Normandy? It's not like the ship has anything important to be doing. Finally, the Suicide Mission is kind of cool, but it really belongs at the end of the third game, because putting it here means the writers have to jump through hoops to get around the fact most of your companions might be dead in ME3!

And then we get the "human Reaper"...um, when were these things ever supposed to be organic? What does making one out of humans do to help? I can get the idea the Collectors are trying to build a Reaper to take over the job Sovereign failed to do in the first game, but since the Reapers arrive from deep space in a couple of years anyway, you kind of wonder why they bothered. The Reaper purge takes centuries, after all, delaying it by a couple of years isn't going to hurt.

[Mightysword]

Warning: following reply contain spoiler for ME3, if you want to save the surprise for playing the game itself, please don't read it.

Spoiler

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The Collectors are an irrelevant sideshow. They're minions of the Reapers who happen to be trying to build a Reaper in the absence of their true masters, and the fact the Reapers invade anyway at the beginning of the third game shows just how irrelevant they were in the grand scheme of things. We should have been spending ME2 trying to find out how to defeat the Reapers, not dealing with their manservants. Incidentally, we already knew the motive and method of the Reapers from the first game, the Prothean VI you find near the end of the game explains it all in great detail.

First, the collector weren't acting randomly. They are acting under direct order of Harbinger, which possess command of individual collector like we saw in ME2. In ME3 we see Harbinger himself in Reaper form, and he's 'the' leader of the Reaper. It sets the tone that for this cycle, human has become an object of interest to the Reaper (more on this later).

Secondly, someone have to investigate why Human colony in particular are disappearing. Yes, eventually the collector became a side show but that is in hindsight, we don't know that from the beginning. At the beginning of ME2 we're basically on a fact finding mission, to hopefully learn something more about the reapers. I think the difference between what we know at the end of ME1 and ME2 are massive. I think at the end of ME1 the sense of scale is not quite there yet, yes they're coming, but when? Yes reaper are powerful, but how many of them are there? Yes they're wiping out organic, but why? (this may not be relevant to stopping them, but important in term of exposition for the player). To make a comparison: ME1 is like watching a report of 400 deaths a day on the news, while ME2 is more like seeing convoy of trucks loaded with coffin. They're coming right now, and they are a whole fleet of them!

This explains a few things that lead to ME3:

- Shepperd detonated the Omega relay to buy time, basically commit genocide of the 300k of the entire Bitanrian race. At the beggining of ME3 when Sheppard expressed the frustration Alliance command doesn't listen to him, Anderson corrected him: "look Sheppard, you basically committed a genocide and you don't even get court martial, do you think command would try to protect you like this if they don't believe you?". Admiral Heckett expressed the same sentiment in the last communication with Sheppard in ME2 as well.
- Samething for Garrus: he used what he learnt in the ME2 and go back to Turrian command, managed to get some token of support and he used that to harden the Turrian defense line. When you meet him again in ME3, he told you this and said: "hopefully those preparation make a difference at the end". So ME2 are meaningful in prepare the galaxy in what to come, how little it is given the scale of thing.

The point is, without the journey of ME2, Shepard wouldn't have enough resolves to pull the trigger at the Omega Relay to not only buy precious time, but preventing the invasion from dropping right on top of the current races, Garrus wouldn't put away his pride to go back and beg his father, and he specifically mentioned by bring back what they learnt with him. Despite they knew the truth from Vigil, the fact that Shepard were still begruggingly hunt Geth at the beginning of ME2, and Garrus just ran away playing hero in the middle of nowhere kinda prove they didn't quite appreciate the Reaper threat yet. Also the data from the collector base helped convince the leaderships of the threat, as ME3 point out.

Third, coming back to the first point. It's revealed in ME3 (I think), that the role of the Reaper is not simply wipe out current organic to protect the next cycle, but also in a twisted way, preserve the trait and legacy of the current cycle as well - even as their goal is to kill everyone. The reaper themselves were made in the image of one of the first master race of the universe - Leviathan. Knowing this hindsight make the action of the collector in ME2 more understandable, if things goes as plan for the Reaper this cycle, than the galaxy of the next cycle would face some human shape reapers like we did at the end of ME2.

We're working for Cerberus, who were a two-bit terrorist organisation in the first game yet now have the capability of building a ship which is bigger and better than the best the Alliance could produce, not to mention being capable of raising the dead, and we're never given a choice about that. The entire crew of the Normandy from the first game also jumped ship and decided to join Cerberus as well, apparently for the lulz.

Just because the first game doesn't mention Cerberus as much would make them a 2-bit terrorist, plus I think it's more of a gameplay/presentation problem of ME1. ME3 connected Cerberus action as a whole through out 3 games very well. More importantly, Cerberus is more than just a coincident of an organization, they are more likely a construct or pattern from previous cycle that serve as one of the catalyst for Reaper's work.

Also I disagree the crew of the old Normandy just joint for the lolz, they each provide solid reason/condition for joining, at least I find the explanation satisfied me enough. Also entire crew is a big of stretch, there were only not even a handful:

- Joker: flying is everything to him, a sarcastic guy like him obviously hold very little respect for stuck up command. Most importantly though, Joker carries a certain guilt (he revealed this at the end of ME3) that he blame himself for the the reason Sheppard died at the beginning of ME2 (refuse to abandon the old Normandy and made Sheppard late to get to the escape pot trying to rescue him).
- Tali: she didn't join you and outright shot you down when you first ran into her. She only joins the 2nd time when her mission is completed.
- Garrus: you just got his arse out of the fire, given the circumstance you ran into him it actually would be weird if he doesn't join you.
- Chalkwalk (the Dr in sickbay): she's the one with the weakest reason to join Shepard. I pass her as it seems she and Shepard are closed friend and want to look out for him, and the old lady seem to enjoy the thrill. I believe she is the 'only' alliance personel that joint.

The rest of the squads are new members who mostly joint under quid-pro-quo conditions. And the Normandy II are maned entirely by Cerberus staffs.

- Kaden/Ashley: provide the exact contrast of why a soldier loyal to the alliance would refuse to jump ship.

Liara, a main character from the first game and someone you'd think would be quite helpful in the quest to find out more info about the Reapers given her Prothean knowledge, either doesn't appear in the game at all or, if you have the Shadow Broker DLC, has turned from a meek archaeologist to become the most secretive information broker in the galaxy. Because that's an entirely logical progression given her character.

You're correct about this point, and I think most people agree Liara's shift is too extreme to be believable. They tone this down a bit in ME3 though, strong but still sweet rather the almost psycotic rage version we see in ME2.

The first one just happens to put you on a planet that Tali is also investigating, because God forbid anything happen by other than sheer coincidence or good luck.

It's a valid point, but it's also too typical in narrative, especially in space opera for me to hold it against the game specifically. Like starwars back ground is build upon thousand if not million planets, yet for some reason every single major events only keep happening only on a few same planets

The ones in the middle are entirely forgettable and I can't even remember what happens in them. I'm sure I don't need to explain why the "All the heroes aboard the Normandy II get into a shuttle and fly off somewhere while the Collectors attack the ship" mission is plain nonsense?

Yes, that part is rather stupid, just something to force the story alone. Feel like they just want to rush it there.

[Gavrushka]

Great, motion sickness from Far Cry (just bought the damned game... )

[notaterran]

A word about the Metro series. I can't comment on later games but I finished 2033 Redux a few times, and my impression with that game is that it's rough. The story is ok, I liked the atmopshere a lot (make sure to manually change the FOV), but the combat was not smooth. I'm guessing it's the engine.

[Mightysword]

Great, motion sickness from Far Cry (just bought the damned game... )

Motion sickness while playing FPS is something I can't understand myself, as I also suffer from it. I'm generally fine with Third Person Shooter, but half of the FPS games I played give me motion sickness. The weirdest part for me is back then I can play counterstrike for hours and hours just fine, but playing Haft-life for an hour straight could make me sick enough to wanting vomit, and those two games are more or less the same thing!

[pjknibbs]

Regarding Mass Effect: I don't think either of us is going to convince the other, and the thread is getting derailed, so I'll leave it there.

Regarding nausea: I don't get it myself, but I've heard that changing the field of view setting (assuming the game gives you the option for that) can help, is that something you can try?