Mass Effect Series

[Hisako]

I think they've released a patch for ME2 on PS3 to allow the save import.

Caalled iiiiit~ :3

 

[Lex]

Well I'm not sure, I don't have it yet Satsu

But that's what they'll probably do :desu.

And Tenny, yeah there's a hard copy but you have to buy the trilogy collection. That's the thing, I really want the hard copy too but I don't know if it's worth buying all the games again. The trilogy itself is the same price as a normal new game so it might be worth it

I could be wrong though. It might be that they've just included the discs for 2 and 3 and a DLC code for 1 in the PS3 trilogy. I'm gonna do a bit of research to check it out so I'll update this post when I know more.

EDIT: Just checked, everything I've said here is right.

In the US it's released within a N7 cardboard flip-style thing, but here in the EU (and UK obvs) each game has it's own case within the box set.

It comes prepackaged with all DLC (I mean ME1 - ME2 came with all the DLC already aside from Arrival) and the disc version just installs it to your PS3 in the exact same way the digital download will. I'm thinking about buying the PSN version since it's cheap and just waiting for someone to trade in ME1 on it's own at local game stores, then I'll grab it for cheaps. I love the games but I don't want to buy 2 and 3 again.

 

[Lex]

So I'm currently using my iPhone's "Personal Hotspot" feature as my main internet since my ISP randomly cut it off last Monday. They still haven't been able to reconnect me yet due to some apparently random system thing. I am rage but lets just ignore that.

The point is, I was waiting for them to sort the internet before I downloaded the game. I'd prefer to have a physical copy but see previous post for explanation

Anyway, I didn't think I'd be able to download the game, but I bought it and thought I'd try anyway. Lo and behold, it's downloading at quite a steady pace. I'm lucky, in that I have a staff contract from when I worked at my mobile network's company 2 years ago so I have an unlimited data plan, which don't actually exist in the UK anymore.

They're going to get quite a shock when they see I've used up 11GB in the space of a few hours

I'm quite impressed. It's averaging a whole MB/s. I wish they'd turn my fibre optic back on, it'd be done in about 20 mins or so.

 

[ForceStealer]

So, I'm a good 5 hours or so into ME3. Definitely enjoying it, it is indeed an easy world to get caught up in. And I really like how it doesn't just import your Shepard's looks and choices, but your level, that I picked right back up at level 30 is pretty cool and goes a long way to making it feel like "my" Shepard.

But is it just me or are the dialogue options a lot more sparse then they used to be? I pretty much always just have 2 choices, occasionally a third on the left. Combined with ME's penchant for making what is ACTUALLY said difficult to glean from the choices summary, I'm always concerned about settling for a choice I don't want to.

The only other complaint is the way Shepard walks. Especially coming off a game like Assassin's Creed where the animation is impeccable, why does she walk so stiff and almost bow-legged? She looks fine during combat, but walking around the citadel...she looks ridiculous

Anyway, still enjoying it, I enjoyed that in a quest last night it wasn't just "Do this evil thing to get help, or don't get the help," but that I could work around it and solve it a way more like I wanted to.

 

[Strangelove]

what's the file size of mass effect 1? i have seen the trilogy box but already having mass effect 2 and 3 wasn't feeling like buying it. but i don't have much of a hard drive on my ps3 unless i get around to upgrading or get a newer model. seeing as it was an x-box game it shouldn't be that large? the files would have to fit on a dvd after all. but still.

 

[Lex]

It's around 11GB in size. And I have no idea why it's that huge, I can only assume they took the opportunity to leave some things uncompressed when they did the port (maybe the music and sound effects or some graphics or something).

But yeah it's fairly large. I was quite shocked when I bought it for the same reason, I assumed it'd be quite small.

 

[Strangelove]

was there dlc for me1 that they've included, maybe? a lot of dlc at that size

but 11gb will probably mean i'll need 22gb of space, which i don't have without deleting other stuff. so that sucks. time i seriously looked for a bigger hard drive.

 

[ForceStealer]

Way to make him miss my post, hito :/

 

[Strangelove]

 

[Dana Scully]

But is it just me or are the dialogue options a lot more sparse then they used to be? I pretty much always just have 2 choices, occasionally a third on the left.

Yeah I found that the amount of dialogue choices decreased with every game. By the time 3 came out it seemed like a lot of the 'neutral' options had just been dropped.

Which reminds me how much I wish Mass Effect (and just about every other game with a moral choice system) had a morality option between 'total dick' and 'sainthood'.

 

[Cthulhu]

That Star Wars MMO, also from Bioware, has a similar system and as far as I've played it so far, almost all conversation options - minus the ones where the third option is to refuse a sidequest - has decent answers that go every way. The main exception is the conversation options that give you 'good' or 'evil' points, where there generally is no middle ground. There's no rewards for staying neutral either, and the rewards from going evil or good is the ability to use certain (equipment/vanity) items (afaik, not additional conversation options based on your alignment).

 

[ForceStealer]

Agreed wholeheartedly, Yacc. And yeah Yop, they've done it before, the first Dragon Age (just the first one) had some of the more impressive dialogue trees I've seen. I almost had more fun in that game navigating those than I did actually playing the thing.

Bethesda did it well with Fallout 3 as well.

When truly role playing, my characters tend to be...good Machiavellian, (Chaotic good?). Will do what they believe is the right thing, and won't kill someone needlessly, but also has no compunction about doing so should that person's presence hurt the cause.

That's part of why I was pleasantly surprised by the quest I mentioned in my last post.

Spoiler

To bring the...Eclipse I think, into the war. And your options look, at first, like you let their leader out of prison, or you don't get the war help. I didn't want to let such a loose cannon out. Also she was a dick to me when I was talking to her to consider releasing her. So then I discovered that I could convince her second in command to kill her and take control of the mercenary band. I don't have any problem with her dying. And that's the kinda stuff I like.

Similarly, the same thing with the Blue Suns. They want me to kill some Turian General that's giving them crap. I'm not about to assassinate some general because he's pestering a bunch of mercenaries. Especially ones that have caused me a bunch of headaches in the past. But you can work out a way to get the General what he wants so he backs off them and they join the war effort.

Good stuff. It's just too bad the dialogue itself doesn't reflect that amount of flexibility.

 

[Hisako]

Funny thing is that in no way does the presence of the "wheel" restrict the writers from adding just as many options as they used to have in their past, non-voiced games. It just allows them to simplify the number of outcomes required to write.

Of couse, if you're a cynicist, the writing team just got lazy and cba,

 

[Lex]

I genuinely think they couldn't be bothered with a neutral Shep in ME3, but I missed his presence. There were so many situations whaere I was caught thinking how useful the professional middle ground response would be, and it just wasn't there anymore.

The cynicist would say what satsu said, bnit the optimist would say they removed the neutral choice because as so many issues are coming to a clkose in 3 there are "lightswitch" choices to be made and the whole game is just full of emotion which I think suits paragon/renegade choices.

ngl i really missed the extra options though, this game really forced you to be heroic or ruthless. But there is more to it than meets the eye, there are so many ways diffrrent situations can work out, almost the entire game is a totaL masterpiece.

Please post every time you have a plot point/gameplay to discuss Force because I could tl;dr about Mass Effect about the rest of my life and I can't do it on the Bioware forums because they're all lunatics. And I mean proper full belt YouTube people. I sometimes go there to see which way the fandom wind is blowing but I've made 9 posts in the 4 years since i became a member.

 

[Carlie]

Hey Force Lex is serious, he could talk about ME for 24 hours if he was able.

 

[ForceStealer]

Honestly, the way I expected it to go down, was that 1 had a bunch of heavy choices, and then 2's choices were more limited because, as the middle of the story, it was more constrained. But then 3, since it's the ending, would have the sky be the limit since they wouldn't have to worry about further sequels and it would go off in all kinds of crazy directions.

Clearly that's not the case

But like I elaborated on in my spoiler tagged post above. I'm glad that some quests do let you do a sort of "middle ground" even though you only have binary choices when it's presented to you. It's something.

Here's something, but you may not like it Lex,

Spoiler

Screw Kaiden man. ...no, not like that. I mean what the hell. I save him from certain doom, sacrificing another crewmember to do it. Then I save his ass again at Freedom's Progress and he immediately leaps down my throat for wearing a Cerberus uniform. Annoying, and I told him off then, but it was a stressful situation, maybe I could have let it slide.

So then we're back in a fighting unit together on Mars, and he's STILL on my back the whole damn time about Cerberus. I make it pretty clear I have no patience for his bullshit. Then when he wakes up in the hospital - which, by the way, I dropped what I was doing to be there for - and as he and Shepard are having their heart-to-heart and making up, he STILL makes it sound like she was the one in the wrong on Mars! I didn't have the heart to tell him off when he's lying on a hospital bed, so I ignored it. But &#%$ you man, I should've saved Ashley.

 

[Lex]

Hahaha I understand what you mean, that can be anmoying. But believe it or not, the alternative is even worse about the whole Cerberus thing. They have the same storyline in that respect.

 

[Carlie]

Force it was Horizon, Freedom's Progress is the first Colony you visit in ME2 where you encounter Tali for the first time. Ashley is the same way about Cerberus but at least you can't say that's out of character for her but Kaidan wasn't he suppose to be the sane, sensible one of the group? Also yeah you should've saved her over Kaidan, she's annoying yes but she's a better character than him, one of the best ones in gameplay while Kaidan is a Master of None.

I understand the dialogue thing in ME3 but sometimes when dealing with characters in certain situations two opposite choices are not the way properly solve a problem.

 

[Lex]

^There are pros and cons for both characters. Kaidan is actually one of the most powerful squadmates in combat in ME3 (also he has Reave which I love) but Ashley is powerful too.

It's really just personal preference. They're both worth saving at least once.

It also really depends on your Shep. If you're a soldier, there's literally no point in saving her because Vega is a soldier and Garrus has some of those abilities too. The only thing she really has is a squad power damage upgrade and Disruptor ammo. Reave is one of my favourite abilities (though it's a bit nerfed in ME3) but I play as a Vanguard with Reave as a bonus power so having Kaidan in my squad allows me to do double reaves causing biotic explosions. Which is neat and incredibly useful on higher difficulties.

Also I've just finished playing through on insanity and him and Vega are the only two characters that never died. I think Ashley is a tank too though, if I ever have the urge to play insanity again I'll probably take her along

 

[Hisako]

I think the humans are meh in general, The only one I actively used out of all 3 games was Miranda, and only because she had Overload and Incinerate, strong abilities that covered barriers, shields, and armor all at once. (And then that role was replaced by EDI in 3)

Choosing your squadmates is really just a matter of complementing your abilities. Kaidan favors synergy with biotic powers with his Reave setup (and Warp? I think?), while Ashley provides backup with tech powers and her inferno grenade (which is basically a free mass incinerate power that sets up for tech explosions).

Ashley's Marksman ability allows her to turn comparatively shitty weapons like the Revenant into a killing death machine, especially against high-barrier/armor enemies (depending on which ammo powers you have available)

At the end of the day, though, imo you can have better backup with the non-human companions in setting up biotic explosions and creating diversions. Garrus has always been a better all-round choice due to his Armor-Piercing Ammo and Overload. Concussion Shot is a fantastic disabler and a strong barrier-stripping ability.
Proximity Mine (which is possibly my all-time favorite skill in the ME series) provides a universal 25% damage increase to any targets in (up to 3m) range. You name it - tech/biotic skills, explosions, weapon damage, a flat 25% increase is amazing, especially on Insanity. Carry it on your Shepard as well, and a Garrus-Shepard combo increases the damage buff to over 50%. It generates tech explosions, can't be dodged by enemies, staggers almost everything (interrupts Brutes and Atlases) except perhaps Banshees (but fuck those things srsly).
Also, it detonates and damages enemies who are behind cover. It detonates through cover. I'm gushing here but seriously, proxy mine is an amazing go-to.

Liara provides Singularity which creates a static point at which to detonate a biotic explosion using just about any other biotic skill (Shockwave being a very effective method since you just have to point it in a direction but it's limited by range), Warp and Stasis. I don't actually use Stasis a lot either as an Infiltrator or a Soldier, but Warp is a good armor/barrier skill to use. But (as Lex might also say) she's a glass cannon and her weapon choices are kinda shitty. Squad Warp Ammo if you must.

Tali's also great for diversion but she's mostly geared towards tech-oriented Shepards and her misdirection skills like Combat Drone and Sabotage are decent but situational and very easily substituted for EDI's Decoy, which is a better general go-to and explodes fgj. Also, pistols/shotguns is still pretty meh as far as weapons support goes. And speaking of EDI, she's basically Miranda 2.0 plus Decoy. Almost like a tech-support version of Liara with pistol/SMG function but better survivability using Defense Matrix.

 

[Carlie]

I sure hope that when you say all the humans are meh in general you're not including Kasumi on that list or else we're gonna have a problem satsu shun.

This is how I used my squad in the series: a combination of Wrex, Ash and Liara for the main mission (Wrex and Ash for Therum, Liara and Ash for Feron, Wrex and Liara for Noveria, Wrex and Liara for Virmire and Liara and Ash for Ilos and onwards), Garrus and Tali were used for side missions and Kaidan wasn't used period.

For ME2 I used Miranda in every main mission and she was usually accompanied by Kasumi, Tali or Garrus. Everyone else was delegated to side mission except for Zaeed and Mordin who I hardly saw any use for in gameplay (Mordin was still awesome regardless) and Jacob who just sucks in general.

I mixed things up more in ME3 but Liara and Garrus were used for the Tuchanka missions, Tali for all the Rannoch missions with a combination of Garrus and EDI. For the final mission I went to my ME1 squad of Liara and Ash. I didn't use Javik a whole lot and I hardly ever James because he destroys my language every 5 minutes.

 

[Lex]

I don't really have a set squad now. I try to take different characters for their dialogue on every mission. I took Javik to Thessia. Holy crap is that a good idea, the dialogue is brilliant.

Playing through ME2 on Insanity as a Vanguard was nice and challenging. Kasumi is surprisingly useful, though I only used her for a few missions. I used to use her a lot. I loved taking Samara for double reave (it just completely gets rid of any first line of defence and takes off half of whatever's underneath, so useful on the collector ship).

In ME3, the Bubble evolution of Liara's stasis is pretty amazing, but she dies so easily like Satsu said. Bubble just traps everything in it, it's a very mwahaha ability. Bubble + Biotic Charge = Biotic explosion to everything trapped in it. Again mwahaha.

I just really wish I could mix the engines up a bit. The no sprint limit in ME3 with the abilities of ME3, with the enemy health/ GUI from ME2 (I didn't like the "blocks" of health in ME3) and ME2's difficulty would just make it more interesting. Apply that across all 3 games please, the combat in 1 sucks. And no biotic charge is booooo. Surely someone has produced a hack like this? I'll have to play them on PC one day.

It's just so weird. On my insanity runs I died a lot more in ME3 than 2 but it was also so much easier. Probably because I just never played defensively, like ever. ME1 on insanity was no fun whatsoever. Fucking everything uses immunity and each enemy takes about a full minute to kill. If there was an ammo system in 1 you'd be pretty fucked tbh. I eventually just spammed barrier and ran past the enemies, because you can get away with that in 1. Not in 2 or 3, but then the combat isn't shit in those.

 

[Hisako]

I had a lot of fun with ME1's combat simply because it had the age-old RPG tradition of being able to completely break the mechanics (assault rifles that never heated up, sniper rifles being able to kill thresher maws in a couple of hits). The combat wasn't inherently *bad*, just completely different from 2 and 3.

And shut up your face the overheat system was awesome but Vanguard was definitely the meh race in 1. Nothing all that special. 2 and 3 divided classes into unique/distinct abilities.

I'd really like for them to bring back more of the RPG elements. Keep the distinct class abilities that make each worth playing, but bring back the customisation from ME1. ME3's multiplayer has shown that most people put the same mods on their guns because there's usually a *best* way to do things - it's still a far cry from the amount of choice you got from the first game. Revert ammo powers back to ammo mods (maybe keep companion-specific ones as exclusive to that character or whatever) and bring back a more refined inventory system plox :3

 

[ForceStealer]

D'awwww Shepard and Garrus date

Spoiler

That was the first time I've ever seen them be "sweet." Everything thus far has just been them spouting innuendos at each other.

But then after the sweetness, Garrus challenging her to an accuracy contest? Awesome. I was kind of hoping that that only happens if your Shepard is an Infiltrator like mine, but I see that it doesn't Guess I shouldn't have even looked it up, lol.

But anyway, great little heartwarming scene.

 

[Hisako]

feels

ME3 has all of mine