toblix

Mass Effect 2

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I heard the Subject Zero audio on the podcast before I saw the trailer, and I'm still wondering whether or not what I initially imagined was worse than the reality of this trailer. I'm going to guess "no".

About the whole tattoos for your favorite your kills dealy: in the world of Mass Effect, certainly in the first one and it looks like even more so in this one, does killing someone actually mean anything? There's no feeling to it in most games, and I think Bioware takes a more, to use a bit of a pejorative here, video gamey approach to violence. Anyway, I guess my point is that since violence means nothing in this and most games, why the hell does she care about her kills? It'd be like Mario having tattoos for every koopa he jumped on, or for the really good times he jumped on koopas. I'm sure in ME1 I killed at least two or three hundred people throughout; to call any one of them special would be quite a leap. There's such a disconnect there for me, and it's the type of artificial thing you see tried a lot in games; players don't really care about what happens in the game, so the devs have to tell you that you do, or that the characters do.

It's not like Bioware has been creating metric assloads of original, non shitty characters in the past, but they had a few, y'know? We've gone a long way from HK-47.

You kill a lot of Geth in Mass Effect. And a fair number of zombies/drones/etc. But if you played as a good guy you probably didn't kill that many people. (Taking "people" to mean a living, sentient individual of a Citadel race.)

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As I said: If they'd made her character look sexually appealing then I'd totally agree. Instead they threw just about every traditional idea of beauty out the window when designing her

I see what you're saying, but I think it's all the same old thing. her character design is pointedly the opposite of the conventionally attractive thing. They're totally going for the "hot, hardened, counter-culture bad-ass punk girl with an edge... she doesn't need no one so let's make out.. RAGH!" They're just titillating a different demographic. Hooray for smack-you-in-the-face stereotypes, because I don't know how I'd be able to relate to a character who I couldn't easily categorize as "something".. ugh.

Way beyond how she was designed, it's the kinda cutsey "super-hard core" girly attitude thing that I think is just done to death in this way... Not that there shouldn't be a strong female character or whatever but.. Mix it up a little people! It drives me bananas.

I agree that she'd be much more interesting if she was a guy. That make out scene would have been so progressive!! :clap:

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Anyway, I guess my point is that since violence means nothing in this and most games, why the hell does she care about her kills? It'd be like Mario having tattoos for every koopa he jumped on, or for the really good times he jumped on koopas.

That would be incredibly bad ass. He could even show some plumber ass crack during the close-ups in the trailer.

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I agree that she'd be much more interesting if she was a guy. That make out scene would have been so progressive!! :clap:

If Mass Effect 2 includes an optional makeout scene with a male Shepard and a male party member, it would almost make up for "Subject Zero."

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A step in that direction immediately makes me think of this:

beowulfjoliemommy_l.jpg

That was all.

Ahahaha. Nice. Also, I do sort of agree with you about the "why the hell should she care" part. Thought I expressed that with my second paragraph. Oh well.

As to someone else's "tatoos for kills" thing, in the first game you're killing a fuck of a lot of hostile crazy androids, but very few organic things. For all we know, it WILL be a huge deal if you have to start killing people, and maybe a murderous past would be something to dwell upon.

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Ahahaha. Nice. Also, I do sort of agree with you about the "why the hell should she care" part. Thought I expressed that with my second paragraph. Oh well.

As to someone else's "tatoos for kills" thing, in the first game you're killing a fuck of a lot of hostile crazy androids, but very few organic things. For all we know, it WILL be a huge deal if you have to start killing people, and maybe a murderous past would be something to dwell upon.

There were definitely a bunch of times you have to kill people in Mass Effect, even without your say in the matter. One of my most frustrating combat memories in that game is killing a bunch of security guards on Noveria in one of the game's first required combat scenarios after the intro (assuming you go to Noveria first).

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I see what you're saying, but I think it's all the same old thing. her character design is pointedly the opposite of the conventionally attractive thing. They're totally going for the "hot, hardened, counter-culture bad-ass punk girl with an edge... she doesn't need no one so let's make out.. RAGH!" They're just titillating a different demographic. Hooray for smack-you-in-the-face stereotypes, because I don't know how I'd be able to relate to a character who I couldn't easily categorize as "something".. ugh.

Way beyond how she was designed, it's the kinda cutsey "super-hard core" girly attitude thing that I think is just done to death in this way... Not that there shouldn't be a strong female character or whatever but.. Mix it up a little people! It drives me bananas.

I agree that she'd be much more interesting if she was a guy. That make out scene would have been so progressive!! :clap:

Humm. I think you could well be right. Agree with you on the make-out scene too, that would be a vast improvement! :)

But wait, what's this? You can play as a female in Mass Effect, too? I guess that would mean some "mature" and "progressive" girl-on-girl action, right? *wink* *wink* *nudge* *nudge*

How depressing.

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But wait, what's this? You can play as a female in Mass Effect, too? I guess that would mean some "mature" and "progressive" girl-on-girl action, right? *wink* *wink* *nudge* *nudge*

*hangs self*

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Given that I never managed to finish Mass Effect, marketing materials like these are eating away at my desire to play this game at an alarming rate...

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Ok, so I was listening to Episode 45 and I heard the samples from the Subject Zero trailer... Clearly even when I thought I was listening to the trailer, I wasn't.

In short: WTF?

"some are just <beep> you"

Good grief, what a lame character. Listen to the heavy rock music in the background... she really IS dangerous! Ugh.

(Sorry for being late in realising this.)

I wonder if her story involves Shepherd forcing her to face her past and thus "taming" her? (How's that for a horrific and vomit-inducing thought?)

Edited by ThunderPeel2001

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Given that I never managed to finish Mass Effect, marketing materials like these are eating away at my desire to play this game at an alarming rate...

I thought Mass Effect had a cool ending, I'd recommend finishing.

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Hahaha. BioWare. They got the sex scene into the last game, saw how everyone praised them for advancing video games as a mature art form, took that praise, and went in the totally wrong direction with it. Now their attempts at "adult content" look even more juvenile. (Though I agree with ThunderPeel2001 that they could have made her more conventionally sexual.)

Or maybe they know exactly what they're doing, and are just going to make more money this way. Either way, they've lost some respect here.

It makes Dante's Inferno seem respectful to the source material by comparison.

Did anyone else pick up on how they changed "wrath" to "anger". That change pretty much says all there is to say about what they're doing to the Divine Comedy: dumbing it down and, in the process, cheapening it and making it less powerful. There's so much more potential in the idea of Dante's inferno than a God of War clone.

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Is it okay if I admit to being kind of underwhelmed by Mass Effect? I enjoyed the music and I thought the locations were amazing but it seemed like it fell short of it's potential. It was kind of like watching an episode of Star Trek that isn't about Kirk mediating peace between two alien races but instead is about Kirk killing hundreds of robots and then rifling through a bunch of cabinets looking for loot. Having said that, Mass Effect is one of the few RPGs that I've actually completed so that says something about it's quality I think. I suppose I just wanted the gameplay to focus more on the moral dilemmas and conversation systems and less on the combat and item collecting. Am I way out line crazy pops?

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Did anyone else pick up on how they changed "wrath" to "anger". That change pretty much says all there is to say about what they're doing to the Divine Comedy: dumbing it down and, in the process, cheapening it and making it less powerful. There's so much more potential in the idea of Dante's inferno than a God of War clone.

HAY WRATH IS A HARD WORD!

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Did anyone else pick up on how they changed "wrath" to "anger". That change pretty much says all there is to say about what they're doing to the Divine Comedy: dumbing it down and, in the process, cheapening it and making it less powerful.

They're not dumbing it down, they're making it better. As only a software studio is able to do. Hurrah.

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They're not dumbing it down, they're making it better. As only a software studio is able to do. Hurrah.

I've heard that's what they're doing with an upcoming Jack the Ripper game as well.

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They'll no doubt "fix" Victorian London by giving the victims perfect skin and teeth, and maybe even pretty dresses to wear, too. They were merry olde times!

"Oh my gawd! Saucy Jack's bin at it agin!"

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I've heard that's what they're doing with an upcoming Jack the Ripper game as well.

Who wants to bet that Jack will be the protagonist, and is presented as a misunderstood hero. The victims will be demons disguised as prostitutes.

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Or they could go the other way and imply that Jack THOUGHT he was doing good and killing demons with his supernatural powers, but in fact was just a delusional lunatic killing whores with a knife.

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Or they could go the other way and imply that Jack THOUGHT he was doing good and killing demons with his supernatural powers, but in fact was just a delusional lunatic killing whores with a knife.

You just know that's what they'd do...

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