>Mass Effect 1It's the best game in the series, because it establishes the whole setting, and its writing is substantial and builds upon itself as you play more. The Citadel's first visit is an amazing segment, the less combat the better. Then the game gets extremely boring. Once you reach Virmire it picks and becomes a page-turner. There's a euphoric feeling to everything between meeting Vigil, and up until the Credits. The Uncharted Worlds were evocative, eerie, and better than 70% of the main game.>Mass Effect 2Updated art and cinematic direction without losing the Dialogue Wheel made ME2 godlike. Competent shooter gameplay wrapped up in the 'talking to NPCs', put me in a zen-like state. The main plot is not great, but the execution of the "build a team, and run them through hell" is. It incorporates the companion system into the plot in a way that feels way less awkward than ME1. Joining Cerberus and meeting Illusive Man made the story more than "sci-fi slop", and surmising that there's something more to the Reapers worth examining was the right direction to go. It's missing something to set up ME3 as the inevitable end, but the post-game DLC kinda made up for it.>Mass Effect 3A mistake. The game doesn't fulfill the potential of the first 2 games, and blows its load, trying so hard to be "climactic" that it rapes many returning characters, and turns them into something they weren't. Misplaced focus on "Save Earth" is at odds the premise of "Harvest ALL ADVANCED life" not "Harvest the Human Race!". It's as if the writers thought saving Earth equals saving the galaxy, which isn't the right logic. The Crucible confuses and deprives the final chapter of a lot of tension. The only suspense is from not understanding what the fuck the writers are trying to do anymore, which comes to fruition at the end when the Starchild shows up with an anecdote about the origins of the Reaper Conflict, that doesn't match the overarching theme of the trilogy, whatever it was.
3 feels really trashy and hastily cobbled together compared to the other twoLike it's a fangame rather than something made by real developers
ME3's biggest problem besides the infamous endings was the betrayal of the Paragon/Renegade distinction, which led to Earth being emphasized as an end all be all.Paragon was supposed to be "I want to save everyone, aliens are good, traditional hero", and Renegade was supposed to be "Accomplish the mission at all costs, humans over aliens, antihero", and this should have led to two separate objectives. Maybe even sacrificing Earth for the aliens, or sacrificing the aliens for Earth. Instead, you get to have your cake and eat it. Renegade is no longer the anti-hero path, it's the "80's action hero one-liner" path.
>>736364340How do you feel about having a super ending where you do everything right and get the ability to have the best of both worlds? Like with the quarians and geth.
>>736364591>Like with the quarians and geth.Nta but this sucks. When the game first released you were only able to pick between one or the other, but gaymers complained so much that they patched in the option to save both. I hate it.
>>736364318Agreed. I try to level with "fans", but I often find myself forcing and mind-reading them, because I genuinely didn't like 3. It disappointed me in a way I wasn't prepared for.
>>736364591I don't think that's really an issue if you do everything right. That felt like the whole point of raising war assets and preparedness of whatever was basically ensuring you get the "Best" ending. But, it was so easy to do it I don't know anyone who didn't do the ending at 100%.
>>736364115I disagree, ME 1 hasnt aged well at all. Yeah, the main missions are still great and the story is on point, but everything else is pretty bad. Characters are paper thin, side missions dull and full of copy pasted dungeons and mako segments are god awful. Shooting and gameplay in general are really dated too.Even though ME2 sidetracked the whole trilogy, i still think its the best one, simply because of the bigger focus on characters and smaller scale story.
>>736364758there were people who betrayed the krogan with wrex in charge and lost the turians as a result.
>>736364340>ME3's biggest problem besides the infamous endings was the betrayal of the Paragon/Renegade distinction, which led to Earth being emphasized as an end all be all.I'm not convinced that's what led to making Earth the end-all-be-all. I think there were marketing folks on the EA side, the BioWare Marketing side, and complete fucking idiots on the Executive level at BioWare (like Casey Hudson, or Mac Walters, or Preston Watamaniuk), saying like>If Shepard can't win this battle, the Reapers take Earth>Earth is lost, then game over, right?Simply because they didn't know the details of their own plot. There was definitely some bad communication at BioWare between who were on the writer team and who were "above" it. That's not exclusive to 3, but it does far the most damage to 3, where they had to untangle the story of everything previously set up. in 2 fans nitpick about some lore they retconned or reconfigured. The Heat Sinks, or the lack of true anti-citadel shit in the Terminus Systems as promised in ME1. That stuff is pretty big, but they're not the same as taking something we've already been involved with, that's fundamental to the narrative progress, and suddenly pretending it's something else. Reapers were not retconned during 2. They reaffirmed their goal of "50.000 year cycles, target advanced life for [unknown reason]" and examined that a little bit during 2-3 of the levels and the Human Reaper.But in 3 they're taking it head on and changing it in front of you, and it's not just at the ending. On Rannoch they also heavily imply that the background of the Reapers attacking is due to Organics and Synthetics, but that just hasn't been established at any point, but the writers pretend as if it already was. They also flip-flop constantly between saying "Reapers want to kill all ORGANIC LIFE" and accurate: "The Reapers will kill everything, except some species, and then leave again."
>>736364763>I disagree, ME 1 hasnt aged well at all. Yeah, the main missions are still great and the story is on point, but everything else is pretty bad. Characters are paper thin, side missions dull and full of copy pasted dungeons and mako segments are god awful. Shooting and gameplay in general are really dated too.As a standalone, ME1 was always a disappointment compared to KOTOR. The companions have similar backstories but are not as satisfying to complete, and the main story, while having some mindblowing moments doesn't feel fully rounded like KOTOR.I wonder how many ME1 players in 2007 accepted this due to being Part 1 of a new series, because I think a lot of people actually disliked it, even KOTOR fans. I always accepted it, but ME2 had just come out when i started it.
2's story is just as shit as 3's, but 3 at least had good gameplay
>>736364340>ME3's biggest problem besides the infamous endings wasFor me it was about dumping the cosmic scale that the first game in particular had and making every race hyper focus on their own stupid fucking homeworld planets which defeats the previously established 'we can live literally anywhere in our milky way galaxy' culminating in an embarassing Save Planet Earth from the evil aliens towards the endLiterally fuck Earth who cares
>>736364591I think the ending should've always been where sacrificing Shepard is the pragmatically "right" thing to do, by not sacrificing Shepard leads to an acceptable, but questionable future in which we get what we wanted. But I definitely think there should've been a "Perfect" ending where you get basically what you wanted, but not without asking a little question of "what will happen in the future" and "were the Reapers right?"Like, any version of the Reapers would've always been "something-something, advanced civilization can't persist because you make something-something which isn't sustainable" and it would've been cool to get a perfect win where Shepard returns to his Romance option, and survives the Big Blast, but then in the epilogue you're kinda thinking "Are we out of the woods for all eternity, or was the long-term survival of organic life dependent on the Reapers?"And that would've been enough to warrant a lot of interesting discourse long after the series had ended, without pissing everybody off and forcing them to "think" about something.
>>736364591If such an ending existed, it should be fantastically difficult to achieve.Not tedious or literally monetarily expensive, but requiring the conquest of complicated and challenging ordeals - or to the progress through the game in the most unforgiving and painful way possible.
>>736365121it's the polar opposite for me.3's plot is as shit (actually a bit worse) than 2's, but 2 is the one that has the game-modes and gameplay I prefer.Yeah, rolling and taking cover feels tigher in 3, but the "gameplay" is not literally better just because the core mechanics were tighter. Encounter design is often thoughtless in 3, just you in a map with enemies spawning anywhere you're not looking, and being more close-up. In 2 there was a bit more strategy and often maps with choice in them, between going close-up from the ground level, or taking the stairs up to a balcony if you were sniper-based, and enemies appearing on unreachable balconies to warrant power-use and guns/snipers and companions.I literally don't get people who say 3's "gameplay" is better. 2 is a better "thinking man's game" from a gameplay POV. I suppose Musou fans and Call of Duty bros got their fill with 3.
>>736366051What should be done with Conrad Verner?
>>736366147Lel.All conversation died at the mention of Conrad Verner.
It was already dead, we just didn't know it yet.
Why is there still no game where you can play as asari?
