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Mass Effect 2

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The bar has been set: virtual orgasmic rape just the push of a button away. Can Bioware surpass this bar and perhaps set it even higher? Or do you think this anticipated feature will be dropped from the sequel?

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Rather than digging up a much older thread, and since the discussion seems more skewed towards ME1, I'll add this here.

I downloaded and started playing the new Pinnacle Station DLC last night, and am enjoying it - because it's like hanging out with an old friend I haven't spoken to in a long while.

If you don't like the combat in Mass Effect, you won't like this at all. It's basically a high-scoreboard, arcade-y take on it - where the challenge is to beat NPC's time/score in VR missions. And that's about it.

But, like I said - I'm enjoying it.

Is it free on PC?

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I just started playing the Bringing Down the Sky DLC (which came as a bonus with the Classic edition of Mass Effect). So far it's fun. I'm always loved driving around on planets that had a huge other planet behind them on the horizon. Epic!

I especially lovvved driving on the moon and seeing Earth in the distance. That was such a memorable moment! And it was just 'a thing' in the game, not a huge plot point or choreographed cinematic, but a goosebump-inducing set nonetheless.

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I especially lovvved driving on the moon and seeing Earth in the distance. That was such a memorable moment! And it was just 'a thing' in the game, not a huge plot point or choreographed cinematic, but a goosebump-inducing set nonetheless.

I felt exactly the same way.

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Rather than digging up a much older thread, and since the discussion seems more skewed towards ME1, I'll add this here.

I downloaded and started playing the new Pinnacle Station DLC last night, and am enjoying it - because it's like hanging out with an old friend I haven't spoken to in a long while.

If you don't like the combat in Mass Effect, you won't like this at all. It's basically a high-scoreboard, arcade-y take on it - where the challenge is to beat NPC's time/score in VR missions. And that's about it.

But, like I said - I'm enjoying it.

I'm tempted to pick it up, but at this point with my current character all combat is a bit of a drag due to low health.

Female Renegade was definitely the way to go. I LOVED the voice acting for the female Shepard - especially when she was being a cold, calculated bitch.

On my first playthrough - I went as the default male Shepard - just to get a sense of what the game designers intended. I played him pretty middle of the road, asshole with a heart of gold, Han Solo style. I really really enjoyed it.

But then, I made a vampy female protagonist and fucking loved it beyond measure. Definitely one of the most enjoyable game experiences of my lifetime. The character that I had created so perfectly fit the voice.

Taste is subjective. This experience was meaningful and enjoyable to me beyond many of the games being held up as "better" or more innovative games. That's fine if you think that those are better, and I'm certainly not going to try to convince you otherwise.

Seconded, it works excellently with my current character. The kill everything or make them run away approach is pretty cool.

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I'll take all the Mass Effect I can get. Sad to hear I can't keep my party from the first game (because Wrex was absolutely my favorite thing about the game) - but whatever, I played through the entire game twice and loved every second of it, warts and all. My frothing anticipation and all that...

I think they struggled with this once they decide on carrying over previous saves coz there were like 6 alternate endings and somewhere along the line in one of them u kill wrex so it pretty much made it impossible to be a major character, which is stupid, if they had already thought of the save game thing they shouldn't have given us the option to kill a major character, granted as soon as i saw his silhouette in the party screen its so obvious u shouldn't kill him (y all the people who did kill him didn't notice this i have no idea)

anyway thats my stick, erm, more details on the planets is a must, less character anti-climaxes and more original and unique side quests

"the wizard will blow u away" ign.com

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I think they struggled with this once they decide on carrying over previous saves coz there were like 6 alternate endings and somewhere along the line in one of them u kill wrex so it pretty much made it impossible to be a major character, which is stupid, if they had already thought of the save game thing they shouldn't have given us the option to kill a major character, granted as soon as i saw his silhouette in the party screen its so obvious u shouldn't kill him (y all the people who did kill him didn't notice this i have no idea)

It's not that people killed him before finishing his intro mission. He will join your party no matter what. It's later in the game that this happens. In one of the last few areas, you get into a conversation with him about the oppression the Krogans have experienced, and if your Charm/Intimidate isn't high enough, he pulls a weapon and gets gunned down.

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SPOILER TAGS, people?

Anyways... I've been wanting to ask: Having listened to the podcast and seen the general "Mass Effect is awesome" vibe growing since the game's release (when I seem to remember people were a lot more subdued about it) -- I really wanted to know...

Have the people who think Mass Effect is amazing played and completed Knights of the Old Republic 1?

I ask because I thought that game was simply outstanding on all counts, even the combat was enjoyable. The dialogue, story, voice acting, characterisation -- just amazingly good. Mass Effect's seemed less so in comparison when I started to play it... but I haven't completed it yet.

I'm really interested to hear...

Edited by ThunderPeel2001

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I also played KOTOR1, liked it enough to also play KOTOR2. However, I don't remember much from the game. Was KOTOR1 with the meatbag? Or was that 2?

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That was the original, such an awesome droid, I loved Kotor and never got around to playing the sequel but am in the middle of a second play through of Mass Effect.

To quickly summarise my opinions on it I pretty much echo everything Chris has said on the podcast, although I have determined that the best way to do well as non-soldier classes is to thoroughly abuse the Radial menus to freeze the action and aim frequently.

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I'm not sure I would say that, but there are things I prefer in Mass Effect. The options available to you are much less clearly EVIL or GOOD in a lot of case, a lot more nuance which is very pleasing.

I find the combat in ME is a bit less coherent than Kotor, the TPS aspect seems to be more developed whereas the biotic and tech skills can be powerful but I found their effects either samey or not well communicated so weren't as enjoyable to use.

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I sort of hope there is a diplomat play through, where you never have to fight, but that ain't gonna happen.

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SPOILER TAGS, people?

Anyways... I've been wanting to ask: Having listened to the podcast and seen the general "Mass Effect is awesome" vibe growing since the game's release (when I seem to remember people were a lot more subdued about it) -- I really wanted to know...

Have the people who think Mass Effect is amazing played and completed Knights of the Old Republic 1?

I ask because I thought that game was simply outstanding on all counts, even the combat was enjoyable. The dialogue, story, voice acting, characterisation -- just amazingly good. Mass Effect's seemed less so in comparison when I started to play it... but I haven't completed it yet.

I'm really interested to hear...

KotOR is my favorite game of all time. I'm a huge Star Wars guy so that helps, but I just thought it was so great and something we hadn't seen before. And having played KotOR before Mass Effect, you can see how much BioWare has taken from that and their previous games in terms of the characters and story. I never got bored with KotOR, but I thought Mass Effect's gameplay could become boring after a while, which caused me to not do most of the sidequests after the initial Citadel part. In comparison, I'd always do all the sidequests for KotOR.

My personal opinion aside, I do also think KotOR is a better game than Mass Effect. A lot of times I personally like something better but know that something else is actually done better, but in this case for me KotOR is better on both counts.

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I'm an all-round Bioware fan, so yeah I played and loved the KotOR games.

I enjoyed the combat in KoTOR, but it was essentially a refinement of the rolling-turn ruleset that went all the way back to Baldur's Gate. It's a bit in-depth for some folks, plus maybe Bioware just wanted to try something a bit more realtime action based. For a first effort (disregarding Jade Empire) it's pretty good. It does get a bit same-y though. I'm sure as they get more experienced with making action games they will improve Massively (Effect).

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Hmmm... so if the general consensus is that KoTOR is a better game (which from my experience I completely agree with) -- what's so amazing about it that wasn't done better six years ago?

One thing I can kind of think of is the atmosphere and the way conversations flow naturally with less pauses... but while that's cool, it's not necessarily game-changing. I also agree that the choices you make are a lot less transparent "good/evil", which is a massive improvement.

What else?

(Or should I just listen to the episode where Chris talks about it?)

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SPOILER TAGS, people?

Meh. Also, HK-47 does re-appear in KotOR 2. And Vader is Luke's father.

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Yeah, I would have to say KOTOR was a better game. KOTOR is better on all these levels: Plot, combat, memorable characters, minigames, universe, built out areas.

At the same time Mass Effect is an impressive game because it tried things that were never done before, made a relatively successful action-battle mechanic and was Bioware's first next-gen game.

It's crazy to think about adjusting to next-gen while creating an RPG with all these elements.

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Hmmm... so if the general consensus is that KoTOR is a better game (which from my experience I completely agree with) -- what's so amazing about it that wasn't done better six years ago?

One thing I can kind of think of is the atmosphere and the way conversations flow naturally with less pauses... but while that's cool, it's not necessarily game-changing. I also agree that the choices you make are a lot less transparent "good/evil", which is a massive improvement.

What else?

(Or should I just listen to the episode where Chris talks about it?)

In general I'd say I agree with you about the dialog, while in some cases Shepard didn't say exactly what I expected of him, it was still a better cinematic experience than reading the entire line of dialog before selecting it, and then not having any of your lines voiced.

I like the combat better in KotOR, I felt like it was much easier to get party members to do what I wanted them to do by taking direct control of them and issuing several actions in the queue while paused, rather than giving orders in Mass Effect which usually resulted in both my squad mates dead within 5 seconds of an encounter starting. I think Chris also talks about this on one of the episodes where they talk about Mass Effect, so you should still listen to it. Not so much that I didn't like the action part of ME's combat - I was fine with it being more of a shooter.

I also feel like KotOR was almost better with the good/evil system than Mass Effect. I feel like the paragon/renegade had almost no effect on gameplay as you pretty much decide how the game ends with

whether you kill the council

where as in KotOR it seemed to be more of a culmination of the choices you made throughout the game. That said, it was still less transparent in ME, just seemed to be more pointless in the long run. Maybe if I played Mass Effect again as renegade it would seem better, I've played KotOR like 6 times so pretty much seen everything that game has to offer (except somehow I never got the "kiss Bastila" scene :().

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I feel like the paragon/renegade had almost no effect on gameplay as you pretty much decide how the game ends with

whether you kill the council

where as in KotOR it seemed to be more of a culmination of the choices you made throughout the game.

Except it wasn't, KotOR had exactly the same thing where you decide how the game ends with a single binary decision, none of your choices compound to affect the plot at all.

Every good / evil game seems to work this way and it always dilutes the experience for me when your character is basically asked close to the end "so do you want to continue to act in character or have a completely absurd shift and see the other ending?"

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KotOR II is the one that really rocked my world. Idle Thumbs used to have a fantastic review of it up a few years back.

I like the combat better in ME -- and, honestly, the much improved graphics engine does a lot for me, too. (Those aliens are enormously detailed!) But in terms of story-telling, both KotORs are far superior.

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Except it wasn't, KotOR had exactly the same thing where you decide how the game ends with a single binary decision, none of your choices compound to affect the plot at all.

Every good / evil game seems to work this way and it always dilutes the experience for me when your character is basically asked close to the end "so do you want to continue to act in character or have a completely absurd shift and see the other ending?"

Guess that just shows how long it's been since I've played; I made a similarly silly mistake in saying there were no non-human Sith in the game on the official swtor forums a while ago. I guess it was more apparent for me because I was much younger the last time I played KotOR, and Mass Effect is so much more recent that it doesn't show much progress when it's using the same flawed mechanic from 6 years ago.

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My personal opinion aside, I do also think KotOR is a better game than Mass Effect.

Ironyyyyyyy.

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Ironyyyyyyy.
:shifty:

I know I didn't word that in my other post very well, but putting aside the fact that it's my favorite game and just comparing the two objectively is what I meant.

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