Mass Effect Series

[Carlie]

They showed as much as I thought they would and it was a really cool teaser. I do wish someone from the team would've come up on stage and talked a bit about it.

Also fuck whoever is complaining about Johnny Cash music being in the trailer, it was perfect.

This is my new jam:

 

[Sublime]

I haven't finished playing ME3. Are there spoilers in the trailer?

 

[Ami]

I haven't finished playing ME3. Are there spoilers in the trailer?

Nope. Spoiler-free!

 

[Sublime]

Very nice looking trailer but doesn't really tell us much at all.

 

[Carlie]

 

[Cthulhu]

Spoiler: ME Collector's Edition

 

[Hisako]

It also basically confirms that the Backwards Compatibility on the Xbox One is a straight-up full Xbox 360 emulator, which is reflected in the fact that it's basically run under the same processes but with better hardware

 

[Lex]

It also basically confirms that the Backwards Compatibility on the Xbox One is a straight-up full Xbox 360 emulator

I don't mean this to sound "salty", but well... obviously. It's not like the XBox One contains a 360 inside it. No matter how it runs the games, it's going to emulate them if they're 360 games XD.

 

[Hisako]

Well, there are different approaches to backwards compatibility, even on the software side. The Xbox 360 to Xbox approach was different (each game required an individually-coded wrapper to translate the interface into something the 360 could read) and was janky as fuck.

The virtual machine is much more elegant solution which is also the reason why they were able to say that "all we have to do is get the legal nod from the publishers and we're pretty much good to go", as opposed to the previous generation where each game was a ton of coding busywork

That said, as per emulators the process isn't perfect for all games, and it's not all cut and dry as it seems.

 

[Ghost X]

Spoiler

So the milkyway is destroyed, or something, so they have to move to another galaxy to continue the story? Am I doing it right?

 

[Carlie]

^

Spoiler

No.

 

[Hisako]

^That's the part that annoys me the most and what makes me bitch and whine the most. I don't see any particular justification as to how the Milky Way is such a small place as for the writers to need to set it in another galaxy entirely. I can't suspend my disbelief enough to believe that the spacefaring races have absolutely mapped out everything there is to see in their own galaxy.

 

[Roger]

^That's the part that annoys me the most and what makes me bitch and whine the most. I don't see any particular justification as to how the Milky Way is such a small place as for the writers to need to set it in another galaxy entirely. I can't suspend my disbelief enough to believe that the spacefaring races have absolutely mapped out everything there is to see in their own galaxy.

It is if they want ME4 to utilise the same kind of Space Relay system to get around like they have in the trilogy. If they were in the Milky Way there's no reason they couldn't then also make it back to civilisation and definitely find out whether the Krogan, Quarians, Geth and Rachni have been exterminated or not.

 

[Hisako]

Judging from the leaked material, honestly if it's right it's just another way to phone in another new galaxy-threatening mysterious incomprehensible threat without making it look contrived.
Which is a shame, because if it's true then it's still contrived and getting tired.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 Dexluxe Edition are on sale on Steam for $8.75 combined...

I kinda don't think I'll ever be able to get them for less...

So expect me to start posting here soon...

 

[Ami]

I just really want to know who's wearing the N7 armour and which

Spoiler

ending was canon, or if it's just going to be left a mystery.

 

[Carlie]

The game takes place before the ending of ME3 and I'm pretty sure they would like to stay away as far as possible from that topic.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

So... class advice... I've obviously got certain tendencies in mind, but I'd like to know what you guys have noticed while playing. And this is for the first ME.

 

[Ami]

They differentiate significantly between the first and second, but I'd go for Vanguard.

 

[Joker]

For the first game, Infiltrator is really good (although that could be said of ANY of the games). It really depends on your personal playstyle, though.

-Vanguard specializes in close quarters combat - pistol and shotgun.
-Sentinel is a support-oriented character.
-Soldier is an all-around shooty mcshooterson guyman.
-Adept is a pistol user that is focused on crowd control (and sending people flying into the stratosphere ahahahaha).
-Engineer is best for people that like to weaken enemies (lowering shields, keeping them from shooting at you, increasing the cooldown time on their abilities, etc).
-Infiltrator uses combines long range sniper tactics with some of the Engineer's abilities.

Also, it's worth noting that the pistol, while weakest (per shot), is the most effective weapon in the game

 

[Obsidian Fire]

I am such a typical modder

One look at the game and the first thing I do is head over to the wikia to figure out what all the config.ini files do. Then I promptly change the HUD button to a toggle instead of a hold...

And after starting the game up for the first time I go and track down the hi-rez textures that someone had to have made by this point (someone did) and the ENB/SweetFX lighting/post-process stuff which also fixed the shadows. So my game looks like this:

 

[Kuja9001]

Judging from the leaked material, honestly if it's right it's just another way to phone in another new galaxy-threatening mysterious incomprehensible threat without making it look contrived.
Which is a shame, because if it's true then it's still contrived and getting tired.

I tired of big ass threats. I'd like some small or medium sized threats.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

Got out of the Citadel. And I find I'm finding I'm more sympathetic towards the Council then towards Anderson and Udina, or at least, if Anderson and Udina are the type of humans the Council sees the most of... well, I'd be exasperated with them too. During the entire Eden Prime mission I kept wondering why Anderson was so sure that the artifact was a weapon when there was so many other things it could be and after that he has a massive chip on his shoulder concerning Saren (understandable, but still, everyone knows it clouds his judgment concerning Saren so that's not helpful). And to be honest, there's a big difference between someone being a jerk co-worker (which Saren sounds like) as opposed to actively going out to get people (which Saren might not have been doing).

Udina meanwhile is stuck trying to represent a "star system" of people who (from the looks of it) are in between technology scales compared to the other systems. And it looks like he hasn't figured it out yet that humanity doesn't have the shear mass of large-scale tech yet to make the jump to the next level. The Council (and the other systems) seems like it's used to having the "big three" systems and a bunch of smaller systems that aren't even close to them as far as technology and numbers go. And now they've got to deal with the United Federation was operating at a fairly high tech level before it ever made contact with the Council races. High enough to make it an up-and-coming political power right from the get-go anyway. Which is jarring for the other lesser systems which first met the council at lower tech levels.

And yeah, I know I'm probably wrong on a lot of stuff, but hey, first impressions matter a lot in games like this.

As far as the story so far goes... It's a really good thing there is a cutscene of when Saren kills Nihlus himself. Because otherwise there isn't a really good reason to go after him until Tali brings in the info on him. And the two people who do want you to go after him are biased enough that their motives are questionable until the extra info comes.

My favorite character so far is the AI that was siphoning funds from the Flux's gambling tables. Given how limited it was in what it could do, it came up with a pretty good "solution" to it's problem. I hacked it for the funds instead of blowing it up.

 

[Hisako]

Are there specific ENB injectors for the other games too?

 

[Obsidian Fire]

^^Here was what I was able to find from a quick look at nexusmods:

http://www.nexusmods.com/masseffect/mods/54/? for ME1 (what I'm using)

http://www.nexusmods.com/masseffect2/mods/55/? for ME2 (by the same guy who did the ME1 version)

I'm probably going to poke into those to see what settings he uses so I can use them for ME3...

http://enbdev.com/download_mod_me3.htm for the raw ENB for ME3
http://enbdev.com/enbseries/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=492&sid=ffe1044d4b0419c97f6184ecc7615487 for some ME3 presets...
you also might want to try this out: http://forum.bioware.com/topic/258553-update-cinema-mod-v12-for-me-trilogy/