Murdoc

Man, this and the stuff I found with dragon age, I'm really glad to see the benefits for the pc, but really sad that I prefer mass effect on the consol simply because it's one game that gets me away from the PC for a length of time.

Yeah, I think I'll give a playthough again on insane just to see what it's like. I found most of the game fairly challenging on hardcore(or whatever it was) but by the end once I got a decent combo going it went really smoothingly. Curious to know what domination would do on insane level husks, as group domination proved to be a one stop cure for them on hardcore. I think the domination + ai drone really worked well for distraction while I fired massive warps.

Ah that's interesting then. I noticed the photo in my cabin was gone after the new choice was made. I don't really mind honestly, anyone who didn't stand with me on this mission can go to hell.

Not necessarily, it is just a file after all, a simple program could stick it on a mem card to hard drive, or send it to your pc and send it back to your new xbox, or even the harddrive could potentially work in the new xbox or have some sort of transfer program(didn't they already have this with the old hds and the larger ones?) Not saying thats optimal, would work, or at all plausible; but I'd assume it's not an impossiblity that is too much work. All of this could just be born out of my desire for a greater care in backwards compatibility between this gen and the new one. Squid: Also wondering about this too,b ut from the looks of it most of that "love interest" is totally cut off in ME2 from the first anyway. But I also wonder if some of them will even show up in ME3, or maybe they will play a larger part and the others in ME2 will take a back seat... not sure.

Thunderpeel; though I had a thought reading your message and I wonder why more publishers and developers don't hire small mod teams/developers to do a re-release of some of these games. Sort of like the HL1 project, but with a little bit of budget behind it so it can get done faster/better. I'd totally pay 15-25 bucks for SS1, SS2 if it got a once over in art assets/engine and maybe a bit of gameplay tweaks along with many other games I can't think of right now.

I'm more hopeful that the postive recepition equals postive sales this time around so we can push these a little more into the main stream(not casual) and hopefully create a trend of trying different, very polished ideas in games. I might be asking too much, I just hope it's good and sells.

Just read a comment from the devs saying the third one will be on the 360; I was really hoping for it to be on the 720(whatever) since I'd like to see the mechanics/tech step it up a bit. Also in terms of how long it will take to make the game, it better be at least a couple years away... which will seem odd because that could potentially put it very close to the launch of a new generation of consoles; which makes me wonder why not just go full hog for the new ones. Soulchicken: Yeah I noticed that on Illos(Illium? Illios?what the hell is it called?) Though anyone else notice how willy nilly they handled space and the fact there isn't much of a vacum or lack of oxygen in this one? There were a lot of moments where I'm pretty sure we're looking out into space through a hole or a window with no pane and I could breath/not get sucked out. It's a shame too because the last part of ME1 was really cool and the introduction of that quiet space moment at the start of 2 wasn't every repeated. The collectors ship especially; I swear I was staring out into the abyss with no helmet.

PiratePoo: Yeah thats what I was guessing those decisions could go horribly wrong, luckily I picked the right decisions (I guess in the exception of jacob, but technically it was the right decision for me) so I didn't really understand the point of deciding. Kolzig: I'm pretty sure if you flew through ME1 it could be done in around 6-8 hours; from what I'm seeing from other people ME2 could be accomplished in 12-17. juv3nal: As entioned i loved it, but I don't think thats what elmuerte was mentioning. Me1 had this throw back scifi music, I mentioned it was a bit like what was coming out in the 80s as a lot of it reminded me almost of john carpenter type stuff. There's a few tracks in ME2 that felt like the original, but they were very low key in comparison. Oh and a quick thought:

Well I finished it; I'll say this non-spoiler; it at least didn't kick me in the balls repeatedly from a fiction standpoint like Dragon Age did. edit: apparently some of this ended up being spoilers... Sooo... The old crew... One half of me is happy that people went their own way, another part of me is sad I couldn't' get the old crew back together. The bits of info I did pick up was the old crew was gone, so it was nice that some of them came back, all of them made a cameo. I'm also a little disappointed they couldn't handle the differences between who's alive and who's dead, they basically wrote them out of the game and it made very little difference either way. The two that joined... More about the end brings up some issues with me... *** I was speaking for the colour palette specifically, not any similarities between the physical locations. The colours choices for different environments are surprisingly similar between ME2 and Kotor 1; I can't say that about ME1 and Kotor 1. Maybe it's just my personal aesthetic but I found locations to "feel" similar because of the choices of specific combination of colors, I've seen Bioware recycle these before in their games, but it seemed very similiar/often in ME2.

Agreed. I mean warrior monk, and theres nothing wrong with justifying a highly sexualized race, or even an empowered women using it; but as soon as I saw her the very thing I criticized Miranda for was basically blown up by 11. Also I thought it was funnier the alternative outfit for Miranda is About Jack's starting location I was a little disappointed in seeing/experiencing it after hearing the description. About Archangel, I had no knowledge on it, and I may have picked up on it after talking with the bloodpack krogan, but I was surprised and smiled when it all came together after seeing him.

Art assets are expensive. Which was the answer you knew, but didn't want, it does kind of suck. Not to pee ont he parade of the ME universe; because I fucking love atmosphere and realized worlds, but go back to Kotor 1, take a screenshot of every key location, slap a gaussian blur on it, and you'll probably find the colour/lighting palette for every location in mass Effect. I think it works awesome, but when my mind wanders to that on "happy tropical world 04" I get a bit sad.

It has it's moments and a lot of them are cool; but that tone/mood is gone. Which isn't surprising. The music is good, but a lot of it is not very distinct. You know how Gears of War has those post fx filter options? I'd love a music/intense blue fill light on characters option.... I really miss it.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/26955/Analysis_Mass_Effect_2s_Surprising_Genre_Experiment.php Chris did a good write up on the changes of Mass Effect 2; I found it interesting. I was desperately trying to finish the game this weekend because I knew this week was brutal, i am just wayy too busy to finish this thing off. I expect I only have like 45 minutes left, I really have no way of telling since my play time is so astronomically off from how long my friends said it took them to finish it. But man, do I want to finish this up to talk about it as a whole, but I'm going to talk about something on length anyway. Listening to the thumbs at work and combining my own personal wants out of the game, and capping it off with Remo's article gave way to this idea. DLC: Aside from Lost and the Damned I don't think there has ever been a satisfying DlC or downloadable expansion that I've played. From the looks of Dragon Age and what I expect Mass Effect 2 to do is more fight missions, with minimal character or story development (because it's expensive). But DLC is relatively new, cheap, and offers a lot of opportunity to experiment a bit with your content and not overly upset any part of the market. I refer back to a blog post Chris did (Not to be a super fan boy) about Portal and how it was like the equilent of a short film, a highly polished proof of concept for games. So why not experiment with different content drops for both types of players? The systems in Mass Effect 2 are all there to achieve what I would want out of these games. I think it would be amazing to take one location (Citedal, Omega, Illios) and create a complete interactive story in these. Sprinkle combat in here if you want, but honestly I just love dialog trees and mysteries, so I think it would just be incrediable to have a hard-boiled detective story in one of these places. Basically introduce a main plot (Investigating a murder for example) where you have to go around questing people, taking people in for interogation, and picking up side missions along the way. The locations are confined, the characters many; the entire thing would only be 1-3 hours. Aside from the cost of voice acting and possible animation requirements, everything you need is already in the game, it's just directing a controlled experience within the game they already have. I'd just love to see them take a risk on seeing if something like this would sell, because it would be amazing to get these little stories between ME2-3 to further the universe and weave new details that doesn't concern the fate of the galaxy. If they offered mod tools for the PC, I'd be working on it right now... I just think something like this would be cool.

I think that's awesomely weird/quirkly. I'm glad it isn't a sex button.

Seriously, this exists? Shit, I missed out on that... also sounds weird. edit: wait, by lie down do you mean, literally, because that sounds odd. If you mean six, thats very weird... that's a sex button and kind of disagrees with me a bit. That is my main problem from above. In the first one it seemed like the relationship tree was a side dialog option, not the main one. I'd like to get to know Jack more, because aside from being a cliche, it is one that isn't normally presented outside of a gta or something, but I can't get to know her unless I imply I want to sleep with her. Same with Miranda, she's a cliche, an utterly boring one, but again it goes straight to sex talk if you try to learn more. So I come to a barrier with those two simply because the game is saying is deliberately forcing that on me; which is odd, because, again, ME-1 seemed like it had a separate tree for relationships and getting to know someone. *** Still not done, I didn't get a chance to play tonight and I don't want to try to cram in the end.

I don't have perspective in this as I never did touch Bomberman Act Zero; but I'll offer a possible counter point called Hour of Victory. I still have the demo on my xbox as a hilarious and valuable lesson of shittiness.

Alright, spent some more time in it and the game has grown on me, I still feel I favor the first alot more due to the characters, lighting, tone; but this still feels like Mass Effect and I'm starting to get a bit sad it will end. I've sat around ports listening to NPC chatter and have onlyreceived one side quest; so I pretty sure that info I read about that system is totally bunk. I found some star charts to expand the galaxy and I've been to every planet available, there were some side missions on there, but I wouldn't necessarily call them quests except that one miffy mentioned. Loyalty Quests: These have been the most interesting to me so far, some really neat things going on there. I like some of the new characters, others seem like throw backs, and I'm infinetly dissapointed in the two main sidekicks. Dragon Age did the same thing; like you have two people along for the ride from start to finish(I assume), only I think Jacob and Mirander are probably the most boring people on that ship. Relationships: Getting mildly annoyed at Biowares recent fascination with Tits and Ass. The women in Mass Effect 1 were fairly normal in sex appeal, I really gave them credit for that. Furthermore, you got to know them like any other character and would only enter into the flirting crap diliberty or could brush their advances off and still continue talking as friends. ME2 seems to funnel those conversations into that, so you can't really just get to know either Mirander or Jack before it turns to sex; seems weird and honestly have no interest in that, I just wanted to know the characters. Elevators/Party talk:After Dragon Age I really expected some of those enhancements to make their way to Mass Effect 2; with the team mates chatting while you move around the world. I found out last night, that it is there, it just might only happen once. I was walking on the Citedal with two characters from ME1 and in an awesomely self aware line they mentioned the talks they had in elevators and how one of them missed it and the other didn't. So yeah, it's there, but I've only had it happen once and it was a diliberate line addresses that game feature... so interesting to that and sad they didn't do this everywhere. I'm near the end, I expect, and will most likely finish it up tonight; I'm around 50 hours which my friend calls insane because he's further then me and nearing 20 hours.... I really need to stop getting lost in Bioware games, I check everything, I read everything, I soak up everything. Regardless of where the game-play goes as I do miss more/expanded dialog trees, if they can keep the game as fresh as ME2, I will be pleased. I have an grocery list of desires for the third game which I'll probably summarized after finishing it. In short, I hope they continue ME3 on the next consol platform because theres so many little things I would like to see improved with a significant tech overhaul that would only be finacially sound on another platform, but understand if they wanted to finish the current trilogy on the 360.

Is iridium the future word for soil? I swear that it's everywhere and I have too much. I need a viva pinata style export system to send this crap to friends.

Yeah I dunno man, I'm playing the shit out of this game and I'm coming up with nothing, so i dunno. **** So I got an interest tip in the load menu... "Export your saved game to Mass Effect 3... If you survive" I realize they already use the import saved game in ME2, but for some reason this just implies and makes me hope the sequel is on the next xbox? Can only hope so... I'm pretty sure my current box is barely going to make the end of this game.

Well it was more a personal gripe as in a choice of direction; I recognized ME1's potential to go either way and I'm fine with both; but personally I do want dragon age in space; the characters were better, the combat system was better, and the dialog trees were more robust; but that's me. I'm perfectly fine with it becoming its own thing, but if they could keep one solid rpg thing, it'd be more quests/talking. I am, however, talking with several people and starting to think I am playing the game "wrong" as they say they have tons of side quests. I get e-mails from the people I helped in ME1; but no one has ever asked for additional help. I've only got one assignment by over hearing a conversation so far, and from the sounds of it there are a ton... so it's possible I'm in the situation where "it's not you, it's me." Just a thought; could it possibly mean there is potentially backlash from being a space asshole? Maybe thats why people don't ask for help anymore... if that's true, by nature of my character, I would stop being a prick to people; but this goes against the very fundamentals of Bioware games since they have taught me that being a dick for no reason to everyone you meet gets you more.

I didn't see the trailer, but I heard the clips/comments on the thumbs podcast and was very concerned. The character, as it turns out, is well written even if it's a cliche personality type. She's just an annoying character full of the punk emo bullshit, but the emotional side and the complete actualization of teh bullshitty nature of it is what makes her a decent character; shes a headcase, but a well written one. Also, and I'm ashamed to know this, but the whole type of character and name seems like one big reference to that vin diesel movie; which is sad if true. *** Overall I'm enjoying it but I need to get this off my chest. I'm not done with the game so there's a chance that things may change, but I doubt it. It's not that it's bad or poorly done(mostly) but the direction of the gameplay isn't necessarily what I would have done with Mass Effect. Maybe Dragon Age spoiled me with endless dialog trees, side quests, and quests in general, but Mass Effect is seemingly dropping the RPG elements and going more towards the action game route. In short, I wouldn't be surprised to see ME4 be more like a modern warefare game then a Mass Effect 1 type game... just with better narrative. I am by no means a supporter of old school rpgs with ridiculous menus and convoluted customization. I also agree that ME-1 was pretty flawed with that crap, but they seem to have turned the dial back a bit too far with the inventory/items/upgrade type stuff. It's a more simple system(not a bad thing) but it's not entirely straight forward; I have a page worth of upgrades that are currently greyed out, not because of resources, but because I need something else before I can upgrade that one thing. The only problem is, from my understanding, that something that I need first is what I'm trying to upgrade... so I have to seek out a lower level upgrade first? I don't get it; so it's a bit "dumbed down" but still confusing to me; I'd just prefer a straight up "you need to be level whatever for this" or something. Quests/side-quests: Right now this appears to be dialed wayyy back. I mean one of the "dissapointments" with Mass Effect was that outside of the Citedal it just turned into a series of combat missions (at least there were a lot of side combat missions) but instead of directing the game more towards improving that, it's taken the action game route... so it's starting to boil down to just map selection for combat zones. It's neither good or bad as awhole, just a different direction then what I personally wanted to see. It looked like the organization your working for was going to feed missions to you like the Alliance, but I only recieved one and I haven't met too many other people asking me too do things. edit2: Ok I just read on the shack that you get more by listening to entire coversations overheard from npcs... I tend to get the gist and move on, so far I've only got one quest and never thought anything of it... so yeah thats cool, time to stop and smell the roses more. Combat/Action/WTF: Agree with Miffy completely about the ammo/heat thing; it's a change that seemed redundant/not as good. I didn't like random generated terrain and mako stuff, but I'll agree the game is somehow missing something with out it. At the best of times they really improved this, the classes are more specialized(I miss my shotgun!) but I really like the 1-2 punch team ups with the biotics, it's cool to mix and match to see what happens, but the combat still has that shitty/wtf quality about it that ME-1 had. If you walk through a combat zone I can see the level design had intent, just like in ME-1, but it never gets utilized, either due to bad AI, poor design, or I as a shitty player. If I advance or flank on my own; I die. If I walk into a room, take the first peice of cover and stay there, I live. So I clear out entire areas huddled in a corner or when I'm force to move just a little bit, then I walk through these areas seeing the intent and think "this would have been neat". Maybe it's more a comment on my shittiness; I'll try the PC version one day to see if they actually get used, since I'm a better shot with a mouse, but with all the subtle improvements and the full throttle direction in the action direction I'm really surprised to see level design not being used and the same shitty "wtf I died" moments from the first. Mood/Tone: It's not surprising this was my biggest concern for the sequel, Mass Effect just hit something very, very subtle and special in me and I wondered if it was a fluke. The sequel's mood and tone is alright, it's not that far off from the original, but it's not tickling me in the same way; small differences and directions have change that, so it was either a change in direction or a fluke. I'm not so much dissapointed by this as I expected it, but it just boils down to the approach, music, and art direction that has subtley shifted it. The one place that actually tickels me is Omega; I think it's kept what they did from Mass Effect 1 and showed you the dirty other side, it has stmosphere and character that just delights my senses... I'm only saddened that this isn't the equivelent of the citedal where I can spend 6 hours talking to people... also considering its the Terminus system it would have been amazing if they introduced a ton of new species on Omega rather then recycling everything from ME-1. It's a great place that has been sadly underused so far. Edit: Oh and one last thought: this may sound a bit strange, but it's the second game in the series and most likely the direction the whole thing is going in, but it kind of feels like a spin off game of mass effect; sort of like the Fallout Tactics of the Fallout series. If anyone understands that and knows what I mean, cool, if not, just call me crazy. Again, that's the direction I'm seeing it going in and it's not my preference, which kind of sucks, in a perfect world this is what I'd like to see: Mass Effect 3: Incorperate a more Dragon Age party system, scope(not game length) and quest/dialog system. Further more, I'd really hope it's on the next xbox and they invest in some new technology, the static npcs and crew is getting a little old; I'd love to see a more "fable" approach to the game worlds where npcs are walking around and have purpose, where you actually have to ask around to find someone, etc... I'd also love to see the ship bustling with activity as everyone has a job to perform... a small touch I'd enjoy. Dragon Age 2: Take the same approach for Presentation/Design/Art direction as Mass Effect did... polish it up and make something wonderful.

Well got a new disk(lots of complications there) installed it to hd... then found out I need to swap disk 2 half the time and when I do everything runs off the disk... not sure if my xbox is going to make it through this. lol So far so good. Not really a spoiler and I know I've been kind of bagging the game(overall impression is good)but I'm getting more down the paragon/renegade path and, well the whole starwars "be evil, look evil" thing is kind of annoying not to mention the direction its going in is making my character look like something out of too human... like good job there. The eye thing is more annoying, maybe I'm crazy, but I swear I'm getting eye glows of red and blue based on that system... it looks dumb. I just want to be human shepherd regardless of these choices.

Maybe not your shepherd, but mine was punching women in the face while he was still in his mothers womb.

The Informant... kind of, pretty interesting. It wasn't really what I expected but I found it pretty comical, this horrible little spiral and all the while I was trying to figure out the guys game and was pleasently surprised. Kind of seemed almost coen bros-esq and has a really good cast, though probably the most under used collection of comedians; which made it all the more odder. thunderpeel: trust in the wire, it may, in the end, be one season to long, but Ive watched the series twice and never noticed.