[ibage]

 
Quote:

And how is the DLC being included in the collector's edition a slap in the face to those who didn't buy the collector's edition? It's not like you're having to pay for the DLC when those who bought the CE didn't. The CE cost more money. Either way, you pay for it.
 
Fun fact: there was day one DLC with Mass Effect 2 as well. Was there public outrage then? Not nearly to this extent. Honestly, people have been in a right ol' stink ever since DAII. They feel betrayed or something, because they labor under the delusion that developers are there to cater to their every fancy. When a game turns out to not conform to that, suddenly the developers are "lazy" and "letting their standards slip" and "sell outs." People feel entitled, and people love to whine about stuff (like I'm doing now ironically), and so we get these elaborate conspiracy theories about how BioWare is getting lap dances from their EA Overlords in exchange for screwing over the fans.
 
The changes to Mass Effect and Dragon Age weren't always for the better, but they weren't the result of "laziness" like some want to argue. That's just ridiculous quite frankly. BioWare never rests on their laurels, and they're constantly experimenting with new narrative techniques and approaches. If a game ends up broken like DAII, it's because it's rushed out the door by EA or because too many compromises just buckled the project under its own weight. But it's not laziness. It's being TOO ambitious if anything. Really, if BioWare wanted to be lazy, wouldn't they simply re-hash DA:O and ME1 over and over, basically just releasing the same game in terms of mechanics with slight tweaks, rather than building an entirely new system and presentation? That's why I can't buy the "BioWare is lazy" argument.

 
I think the DLC included with ME2 was the perfect example of how companies can combat pre-owned sales. The Cerberus Network was an interesting idea especially since you got way more than $10 worth of content in my opinion. Day one DLC isn't a bad idea all the time. However, you encroach on dangerous territory in my opinion when you have the content already on the disc like Javick was. EA also pulled this with Dead Space 2 and Capcom with RE5. 
 
Extra Credits did an excellent video on DLC last week http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/mass-effect-3-dlc
It's very insightful. 

 

[Mad Lust Envy]

1.) The same exact thing was said about Final Fantasy VII and VIII when they were released; some people pointed to all those cutscenes and decried "it's all about graphics now! Final Fantasy VI has so much more actual content." Happens every generation.
 
2.) I'd also strongly disagree about games today not having "as much content" as Final Fantasy VII and VIII. I love FFVII myself, but honestly it was extremely linear up until the acquisition of the flying ship. Games like Elder Scrolls and Dragon Age: Origins allow the player much more freedom to approach the game in a variety of different ways. You can spend hours upon hours just reading in-game books that were written solely for the game. The amount of "world building" that goes into such games is immense. I can understand preferring RPGs like Final Fantasy VII, but to say they have more content than something like Elder Scrolls strikes me as completely unfounded.

I was referring to S-E themselves.

They CAN make a new Final Fantasy that has as much content as the PSOne ***. However, they won't. The resources get pooled around graphics. It'd take a very long time for them to make an FF with good graphics and as much content as the older ***.

The one game that had a lot of content and still managed to look good in terms of JRPGs was Tales of Vesperia. Sure, it's not FFXIII graphics, but it still felt like a JRPG of the golden age, just prettier. There was no sacrifices there.

More companies need to take that approach. Make the game pretty enough without sacrificing content.

 

[MuppetFace]

Quote:

I was referring to S-E themselves.
They CAN make a new Final Fantasy that has as much content as the PSOne ***. However, they won't. The resources get pooled around graphics. It'd take a very long time for them to make an FF with good graphics and as much content as the older ***.
The one game that had a lot of content and still managed to look good in terms of JRPGs was Tales of Vesperia. Sure, it's not FFXIII graphics, but it still felt like a JRPG of the golden age, just prettier. There was no sacrifices there.
More companies need to take that approach. Make the game pretty enough without sacrificing content.

 
Ah, okay. When you said "it's all about graphics today," I assumed you meant it as a more broad statement and not just about Square-Enix.
 
As for Mass Effect 3, I'm finding it's both more restrictive than ME2 in some ways and less restrictive in others. I definitely prefer the upgrade system versus the second game, and the limited weapon customization, while not particularly useful for me personally, is a nice addition that doesn't bog things down. In terms of morality and problem solving however, I'm still unsure. Neither ME2 or ME3 can touch the first game in this regard IMO, but whether ME3 trumps ME2 in this regard remains to be seen.
 
At first I was disappointed by the lack of pure paragon / renegade dialog options, and while dialog seems scaled back in general, I'm starting to see more clearly delineated options. I've been frustrated by the very narrow margin-for-error room in the game, as it seems like the game will punish you for making seemingly minor mistakes, and the window of opportunity for quests seems much more finicky and arbitrary this time around. All this leads me to believe the developers are trying to encourage multiple play throughs, and that they don't want you to get everything to go the way you want.
 
Ultimately my biggest gripe are the fetch quests taken from DAII. I didn't like them then, and I don't like them now. Having a billion random artifacts to look for by scanning planets is just.... bleh. A lame way to try to inject content into the game. I'd much prefer the planet side exploration of the first game, albeit with the Hammerhead rather than the Mako.
 
Also, I'm a bit disappointed in the scaled back romance system. What happened to the "drama" and "dire consequences" one would face from cheating in the second game? Also no love triangles.
 

 

[Kukuk]

Quote:

 
Ultimately my biggest gripe are the fetch quests taken from DAII. I didn't like them then, and I don't like them now. Having a billion random artifacts to look for by scanning planets is just.... bleh. A lame way to try to inject content into the game. I'd much prefer the planet side exploration of the first game, albeit with the Hammerhead rather than the Mako.

 
It still beats Mass Effect 2's resource scanning.

 
It pads the game out a little, but honestly, I didn't think I spent more than maybe an hour scanning all the planets. It is a little obvious in borrowing it from DAII, but I thought the payoff was pretty good. Once you've scanned everything you end up with tens (hundreds?) of thousands more credits, plus some research upgrades, and some extra war assets.
 
Also: that picture is horrifying.

 

[MuppetFace]

Quote:

 
It still beats Mass Effect 2's resource scanning.

 
It pads the game out a little, but honestly, I didn't think I spent more than maybe an hour scanning all the planets. It is a little obvious in borrowing it from DAII, but I thought the payoff was pretty good. Once you've scanned everything you end up with tens (hundreds?) of thousands more credits, plus some research upgrades, and some extra war assets.
 
Also: that picture is horrifying.

I actually prefer the resource scanning from ME2.
 
With the fetch quests in ME3, you invariably trigger a Reaper alert, hear that awful buzzy noise they make, flee the system, re-orient yourself hoping to come in at the right angle, re-enter, hear the buzzy noise again, hurry to collect the item, race back out, rinse and repeat. Then you have to go and find the volus or marine or whoever needs the item and tell him/her it's waiting for them in the loading bay. Hooray. Now every member of their species is motivated because you found their special book, sacred banner, magical earrings, ruby slippers, etc. And you better hope you didn't wait too long to deliver it because after some priority missions there's an arbitrary cut off point for completing certain fetch quests.
 
Bleh. Personally, it's my least favorite mechanic of any Mass Effect game so far. At least the mineral scanning could be done whenever you wanted, and to whatever extent you wanted without much penalty.
 
There is one definite improvement over the same system in DAII however. In DAII you'd get the same canned response no matter what the item was, so you'd end up returning the remains of someone's dead grandmother to them, and you'd hear them say "Ohh... so that's where that went off to!" or "thanks, I wont let that get away from me again!" At least in ME3 the responses are scripted for the specific items in question lol.
 

 

[Kukuk]

The planet scanning in ME2 was just such a drag for me, and all to get upgrades that were nearly essential. It didn't help that you got such measly amounts of materials relative to how much the upgrades cost. It would actually take hours to collect all the resources you need. And of course if the planets your scanning aren't giving the specific materials you need you're just wasting your time.
 
Argh! Just thinking about ME2 planet scanning is making me mad!

 
Oh, and I think the only resource gathering quest you can fail is the dog tags one. At least I don't remember being cut off from turning any of them in...

 

[ibage]

I'll take the Mako over scanning and fetch missions any day. I hated the Mako before ME2. Once ME2 came out, they seemed to have dulled down the exploration available taking away that open feeling the first game had. I was really hoping in ME3, they'd put the vehicle exploration back in but I can see why most people hated it. 

 

[nate6138]

I agree with not liking the planet scanning in ME2. It really took me out of the game when I had to do it.
 
I really liked ME3 though, the overall combat and dialogue between all the characters was awesome.

 

[AxelCloris]

Planet scanning in 2 was my least favorite of the 3, I agree as well. Thankfully I played on PC this last time. So in order to actually enjoy that playthrough I just edited my save to have 150k of each resource. Cheating, I know, but after playing through 3x on the 360, I wasn't about to do that a fourth time. It wasn't game content, it was a waste of time. Especially when you factor in that different shade/size planets have specific materials, so if you're looking for say, Ezo, you want to go find a small black planet that's close to that system's sun. Not many systems had such a combination, so Ezo was in smaller supply on most of the other planets. And the planet's size/color was not visible from the galaxy map. So I couldn't just enter a system, see a planet and know it would be a water based planet with the platinum I needed.
 
And I agree, the reaper screech in 3 when you're surveying gets annoying very quickly.

 

[Mad Lust Envy]

All this mining for resources and whatonot should have been taken out, and they should have focused more on the meat of the game. Granted, these are minor things, but still, it detracts too much from the main game. Perhaps some Citadel specific missions (as in doing them ON the Citadel like certain quests) would have been wiser.

Sure, it takes away from the exploration, but hell, story-wise, it didn't make sense at ALL to make Shepard go throughout the galaxy doing non-important fetch quests, when the galaxy was a stake. At least in ME2, time plot-wise wasn't a factor.

Just, some personal issues with the game structuring.

 

[MuppetFace]

Quote:

I'll take the Mako over scanning and fetch missions any day. I hated the Mako before ME2. Once ME2 came out, they seemed to have dulled down the exploration available taking away that open feeling the first game had. I was really hoping in ME3, they'd put the vehicle exploration back in but I can see why most people hated it. 

I was hoping the planetary exploration would return, but with the Hammerhead instead of the Mako. They tossed that idea out the airlock in the first 10 minutes of the game tho...

 

[MuppetFace]

Quote:

The planet scanning in ME2 was just such a drag for me, and all to get upgrades that were nearly essential. It didn't help that you got such measly amounts of materials relative to how much the upgrades cost. It would actually take hours to collect all the resources you need. And of course if the planets your scanning aren't giving the specific materials you need you're just wasting your time.
 
Argh! Just thinking about ME2 planet scanning is making me mad!

 
Oh, and I think the only resource gathering quest you can fail is the dog tags one. At least I don't remember being cut off from turning any of them in...

 
I always seemed to have an abundance of all minerals, even after upgrading my weapons. The biggest limited resource for me in ME2 were actual monetary credits. I had the maximum, capped amount in ME1 (like 999,999?). They should have brought back the ability to sell weapons and armor you don't want.
 
And there are many other quests in ME3 you can fail by not doing in time. Timing seems to be a much bigger mechanic in ME3 for quests and relationship responses. 

 

[Kukuk]

Quote:

 
I always seemed to have an abundance of all minerals, even after upgrading my weapons. The biggest limited resource for me in ME2 were actual monetary credits. I had the maximum, capped amount in ME1 (like 999,999?). They should have brought back the ability to sell weapons and armor you don't want.
 
And there are many other quests in ME3 you can fail by not doing in time. Timing seems to be a much bigger mechanic in ME3 for quests and relationship responses. 

I dunno, from my playthroughs there didn't seem like there were many quests you could fail. Now that I think about it there are quests like the bomb on Tuchanka, and the bigger side quests, but you get ample warning to finish those.
 
As far as Citadel quests go, though, I think it's just the missing son quest that you can fail.

 

[MuppetFace]

Quote:

I dunno, from my playthroughs there didn't seem like there were many quests you could fail. Now that I think about it there are quests like the bomb on Tuchanka, and the bigger side quests, but you get ample warning to finish those.
 
As far as Citadel quests go, though, I think it's just the missing son quest that you can fail.

Several of the fetch quests can be missed by not completing them before certain points. For instance, the Shadow Broker wet squad requires you to return to Barla Von on the Citadel to get the full reward. However after a certain point early on, Barla Von will be gone, so you wont be able to finish. Similarly other NPs will not be there past certain points, so in that sense you can miss the rewards.
 
On a larger scale too, regarding the main quests, it's pretty hard to get things to go "perfectly" like in the previous games. Also small details you overlook can have really sad ramifications later on (especially with regard to NPs you encounter, or certain choices made from the Specter access terminal). That's probably intentional though, and the developers are probably encouraging multiple play-throughs.

 

[Kukuk]

Okay... I know I said I was going to shelf this, but I ended up giving another playthrough, this time on normal mode. (I played on narrative and easy mode before) It's quite a different game on normal mode, since you can't take a ton of damage before your shields deplete, and you need to pick your weapons more carefully. I gotta say, the Saber is a beast of an assault rifle. That and the Geth Shotgun saved my skin countless times. I also noticed I ended up using my sniper rifle a lot less. Fires too slowly for the damage it does I guess. (Was using the Black Widow)
 
So now I will shelf it. Probably.
 
Also, my Shep was pretty sexy. Just sayin'.

 
I think I'll end up reusing this character code for future characters.