Unofficial Mass Effect Thread, Someone had to do it Options

[Zarrexaij]

I'm sure many of you have heard of Mass Effect, a hybrid action RPG by Bioware. It obviously also has many science fiction aspects, taking place in the future and space. You take on the role as Commander Shepard, and can costumize your character's appearance, gender, and class. On your missions you can have two people with you, and your squad eventually grows to be about six people max. It has recieved an overhwelmingly large amount of positive reviews, many close to near-perfect. In my opinion, it has one of the best storylines of any game to date, and an original one to boot. I'll be damned if it doesn't end up with oodles of awards.

I rented this and I'm hoping to get it for Christmas. It's one of my favorite games, below Half-life and Half-life 2 (and the various episodes). Its dialogue is amazing, and it's a damned pretty game.

If we're going to discuss Mass Effect, I'll ask anyone to post in this thread to follow a rule or two:

1. If you're going to post a spoiler, please mark it well.
2. This thread isn't here to discuss the infamous sex scenes inappropriately (you know "LULZ THAT SECKS SCENE WUZ AWSUM!") I know you're all most mature than that, but from what I've seen in other forums this needs to be posted.

That's pretty much it for now. If I think of new rules or this thread requires more, I'll add some.

[Renee]

Nah, they should keep the main quest; I like that there's a main focus to the game. Of course, they should also keep making it so that we can ignore the main story as well.

When you are allowed to create your own character, with your own backstory, your own profession, you get exactly what you want. But the developers cannot insert you very deeply into their own story of what is going on. You are too much of a blank slate for that.

BGS is unparalleled at giving you a blank canvas and letting you go wild. No other gaming studio comes close, unless you count Obsidian for their efforts in games like New Vegas and The Outer Worlds.

Yes to both of these! I think for some gamers, who haven't got much imagination, this is why they have problems with open-world-styled games which Bethesda makes. They get into the game, but since they don't get into backstory or any of the imaginitive stuff like we do, they treat the game as a shooter, or an action/adventure. And then once they're done with the quests they simply move on. "Yo i b34t d4 g4m3!" now they're playing the next Call of Duty or whatever.

But some of them wouldn't move on, right? They'd show up in our discussions, flabbergasted that we're still playing after hundreds or thousands of hours. "How do I roleplay?" some of them would ask.

This post has been edited by Renee: Feb 15 2023, 02:37 PM

[TheCheshireKhajiit]

But some of them wouldn't move on, right? They'd show up in our discussions, flabbergasted that we're still playing after hundreds or thousands of hours. "How do I roleplay?" some of them would ask.

Before Morrowind, I was one of them. Up until that point, I had never played a game that didn’t tell me right from the start who I was, and what I was supposed to be doing. Morrowind suggests that you go to Balmora and talk to Caius Cossades but it never really felt like something you had to do immediately. Even after you do talk to him he’s basically like, “You need more experience. Here take this gold and get some better equipment. Maybe join a guild. I don’t know. Just get more experience and come back to see me.”. My point is, most games out there do not allow you to play your own character. You are always a Commander Shep, a Laura Croft, a Mario, etc. So when people boot up a BGS game for the first time, instead of telling you who you are, and what you should be doing, it asks you “Who are you? Who do you want to be? What do you want to do?”. I can speak with experience that this is a completely alien concept to most gamers.