Mass Effect Mass Effect general thread

[Husky_Khan]

Shocking Announcement!!!

Bioware just announced something called the Mass Effect Legendary Edition

Happy N7 Day!

It’s tough keeping a big secret (and we really struggled to keep this one a surprise) but now it’s official: today we announced the Mass Effect Legendary Edition! We’ve heard (for years!) you…

blog.bioware.com

As Bioware states:

Mass Effect Legendary Edition will include single-player base content and DLC from Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, and Mass Effect 3, plus promo weapons, armors, and packs – all remastered and optimized for 4k Ultra HD. It will be available in Spring 2021 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC, with forward compatibility and targeted enhancements on Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5.

 

[Nikkolas]

I've grown a bit less favorable of ME since I first played it. I think the trilogy shows plainly it's an incoherent mess with no real overall vision. When you write by the set of your pants, things almost inevitably crash and burn. Look what happened to my beloved Metal Gear Solid. You need to know where your story is going.

But, extracted from the trilogy as a whole, I think Mass Effect 2 is an unbelievably great game, probably the second best BW game ever after DA Origins.

 

[GoldRanger]

I've grown a bit less favorable of ME since I first played it. I think the trilogy shows plainly it's an incoherent mess with no real overall vision. When you write by the set of your pants, things almost inevitably crash and burn. Look what happened to my beloved Metal Gear Solid. You need to know where your story is going.

But, extracted from the trilogy as a whole, I think Mass Effect 2 is an unbelievably great game, probably the second best BW game ever after DA Origins.

The first game had a really solid setting and plot. It's the second game that for some incomprehensible reason decided on a soft reboot of the franchise, discarding most elements from the first game in favor of a clean slate.

 

[Nikkolas]

The first game had a really solid setting and plot. It's the second game that for some incomprehensible reason decided on a soft reboot of the franchise, discarding most elements from the first game in favor of a clean slate.

Very, very true. But I didn't really care for ME1 so it didn't bother me much.

ME1 shows very clearly BW wasn't quite ready to make their own universe yet. BW is known for its characters first and foremost but a lot of ME1's cast does nothing for me. Wrex is a 1:1 clone of Canderous from KOTOR. A merc from a warrior culture that has degenerated and is only a merc because he's lost faith in his people but still holds out hope which you can rekindle so he later returns to become the leader of his warrior people and restore them to glory.

 

[Tyzuris]

The first game had a really solid setting and plot. It's the second game that for some incomprehensible reason decided on a soft reboot of the franchise, discarding most elements from the first game in favor of a clean slate.

Heck. ME1 could have stood on its own without any sequels. Just by making it impossible for the Reapers to survive the trip to Milky Way on their onw FTL and being dependent on the Citadel relay.

 

[SuperS4]

The only thing I would hope they fix, but know they won't, is the sudden appearance of thermal clips out of nowhere in ME2, and how all the "old" weapons just, vanished into the ether.

The way I picture it, the best option is to "merge" the two systems into one. So guns can still overheat and have a "cooldown" mechanism. But if you want the ability to instantly cool down, you use the thermal clip. You can balance this by making the cool down system take longer, so it's not extremely useful in high intensity firefights where you need firepower ASAP. So then you'd want to keep thermal clips around for when in a jam, etc. But also make thermal clips less common, or very expensive to purchase.

There would likely need to be other tweaks. But it at least would make the whole "Thermal clips are now a thing and all old guns are gone" make a bit more sense in-universe. Never made sense that suddenly in-universe that all the old guns just basically up and vanished, completely(minus the Citadel DLC IIRC). I mean, you go on a mission to find Jacob's father, who went missing ten years ago and they somehow all have the new thermal clip weapons. If these were supposed to be the "next great thing", you'd expect that, lore wise, the Spectres would have had their hands on them in ME1, if somehow the Gernsback's crew had them, nearly a decade earlier.

This would require likely implementing this in ME1 though. Or else ME1 guns would still need to "vanish" in ME2. The whole "all guns lack cool down and now require thermal clips" would make sense, if ME2 took place a lot later then it actually does in the timeline, rather then the what, 2 years after ME1?

That was always my gripe when ME2 came out. I still enjoyed the games, but that just made little sense other then "infinite ammo because of cool down" apparently, the developers didn't like? Personally they should have just tweaked the cooldown feature if it made weapons too "powerful" since you never run out of ammunition.

 

[bullethead]

The way I picture it, the best option is to "merge" the two systems into one. So guns can still overheat and have a "cooldown" mechanism. But if you want the ability to instantly cool down, you use the thermal clip. You can balance this by making the cool down system take longer, so it's not extremely useful in high intensity firefights where you need firepower ASAP. So then you'd want to keep thermal clips around for when in a jam, etc. But also make thermal clips less common, or very expensive to purchase.

That's an .ini option in the PC version. They tried it in production and switched it to all thermal clips because every single player burned through all but one clip, then turtled behind cover to conserve the last clip, instead of pushing forward to get more clips.

 

[SuperS4]

That's an .ini option in the PC version. They tried it in production and switched it to all thermal clips because every single player burned through all but one clip, then turtled behind cover to conserve the last clip, instead of pushing forward to get more clips.

That's great.

...but does nothing about the whole "these guns from ME1, that had infinite ammo? In 2 years, poof, we magic'd them out of existence! Oh...and time-travelled so a ship marooned like 10 years in the past magically has these new thermal clip operated weapons we JUST rolled out!"

The issue isn't just making the guns work a certain way. But making it gel between game 1 and 2. Even if you introduced thermal clips, you couldn't magically eradicate the old guns out of existence. Even if somehow they are all magically connected to a network that gets "updates" that makes them useless. You'd have people who would bypass that, etc, you know...rogue groups, pirates, etc.

 

[Battlegrinder]

I'm reminded of that mass effect retrospective and it's comments on the clips, which is broadly similar and that they really should just have just changed the mechanics and then not mentioned or drawn attention to it.

 

[bullethead]

...but does nothing about the whole "these guns from ME1, that had infinite ammo? In 2 years, poof, we magic'd them out of existence! Oh...and time-travelled so a ship marooned like 10 years in the past magically has these new thermal clip operated weapons we JUST rolled out!"

It's a video game. Sometime the devs let the gameplay needs override the narrative.

That said, maybe the remaster will tweak Jacob's loyalty mission to have the old style guns and no thermal clips, but you can pick up the heat sink equipped gun from the Citadel DLC.

 

[AnimalNoodles]

I have always wondered if Mass Effect was inspired by Master of Orion.

Salarians: Greylike Superscientists = Psilons: Greylike superscientists
Asari: Psionic Blue matriarchs = Elerians: Psychic Blue Matriarchs
Krogan: Hyper Reproducing Hyperexpansionist reptilians = Sakkra: Hyper Reproducing Hyperexpansionist reptilians
Turians: Honorable warlike psuedo-avians = Alkari: Honorable warlike pseudo avians
Rachni: Hyperexpansionist insectoids = Klackons: Hyperexpansionist insectoids
Volus: Midget moneygrubbers who live in non-standard gravity = Gnolams: Midget moneygrubbers who live in non-standard gravity
Citadel council = Orion council
Reapers: Mysterious hyperadvanced alien invaders = antareans: Mysterious hyperadvanced alien invaders.

you get the idea.

 

[SuperS4]

It's a video game. Sometime the devs let the gameplay needs override the narrative.

That said, maybe the remaster will tweak Jacob's loyalty mission to have the old style guns and no thermal clips, but you can pick up the heat sink equipped gun from the Citadel DLC.

If your gameplay needs cause you to literally break your own lore, to the point of saying one thing and doing another. That's a major issue.

Like @Battlegrinder mentioned, they'd have been better to just put in thermal clips and not making a codex entry about how they've replaced all the weapons in the galaxy with them. Because the loyalty mission makes zero sense, nor does the fact that no one seems to carry the old rifles, 2 years after the first game. No way do you roll out that many weapons in that time span and get everyone equipped with them. Would have made more sense to tweak the settings, "nerf" the old style guns a bit to make the thermal clips have way more use compared to them.

Since the new system literally is worse then the old one. You had unlimited ammo in the first game. The second game makes the weapon system inferior by adding in thermal clips that effectively limit your ammunition count. Regardless of how the "gameplay" would have worked, the system just...makes zero sense with how it was implemented, both in-universe, and out. In-universe, no way would it work that quickly to purge all the old guns from the entire galaxy. Out of universe it stinks of devs not realizing the mistake they made in a previous game and attempting to fix it, by making the system worse. Rather then just tweaking the cool down system from ME1 to balance the game out. Thermal clips were dumb in a universe where ammunition was never an issue, thermal clips effectively became an ammunition limit(even if lore wise you still have "unlimited ammo" just "limited thermal clips" instead).

I mean, to most people it's a minor issue. I just find it absolutely stupid that the devs didn't realize the issues they'd have thrown into their story, and gameplay.

 

[Emperor Tippy]

Thermal clips were a shit idea in pretty much every way.

I mean for the rank and file masses, the logistics burden of having to worry about ammunition (which is effectively what thermal clips are) far outweighs the relatively marginal gains in rate of fire.

And for the absolute high end, top tier ME1 equipment already had effectively infinite ammunition as you really, seriously, had to try to get the weapons to overheat.

The only place that thermal clips made sense is actually for "rank and file" special forces and the like. People who can handle the logistics issues, are expected to face the high intensity combat where clips are an advantage, and yet can't afford million credit guns for every troop.

But then, ME as a whole really fucked up its lore as EA couldn't figure out what they wanted. Each game standing on its own is fine, but as a collective whole the series has no cohesion or coherent story and the lore was constantly shifting as whomever was writing it couldn't make up their minds.

 

[Battlegrinder]

This isn't an EA problem, it's a bioware problem. Bioware's world building has always been bad, but they did fantasy and soft-sci like star wars where hard and fast rules were few and far between so they got away with it. But even so they still dropped the ball regularly, TOR being the most notable example.

So of course when they decided to write a new setting with more details and grounding in set rules, they were going to screw it up.

 

[Emperor Tippy]

This isn't an EA problem, it's a bioware problem. Bioware's world building has always been bad, but they did fantasy and soft-sci like star wars where hard and fast rules were few and far between so they got away with it. But even so they still dropped the ball regularly, TOR being the most notable example.

So of course when they decided to write a new setting with more details and grounding in set rules, they were going to screw it up.

Except that most of the crappy changes occured after EA took over and decided to change the genre from a fairly traditional PC RPG into a console shooter with some RPG elements.

 

[Battlegrinder]

Except that most of the crappy changes occured after EA took over and decided to change the genre from a fairly traditional PC RPG into a console shooter with some RPG elements.

I've yet to hear anyone complaining that EA mandated or was involved in any of the story changes, and if they had a had in the gameplay tweaks, good. ME 1's combat and RPG elements were awful and ME2's more slimmed down, actually functional system was a massive improvement.

 

[Laskar]

Yeah. The original Mass Effect was a steaming turd as far as gameplay mechanics go. It wasn't a traditional PC RPG. It was a PC RPG with RPG mechanics clumsily grafted on to a third person shooter. I can't think of a single thing that game did well, except for most of the powers.

 

[Battlegrinder]

I'd actually disagree, mass effect was very much a traditional PC RPG of its era, most RPGs back then had gameplay that was clunky, unfun, or just outright terrible.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Currently playing through the first game.

I am playing with a controller. Installing mods for ME1 is frustrating, because you have to install all of your mods before your graphics mods, so if you want to change anything, you have to reinstall the game again and do all of the mod installations all over. To play with the controller, I had to install a controller mod, but it disables mouse and keyboard controls, so I'm stuck playing with the controller, and playing FPS on controller is awful. Had I known I would have lost mouse and keyboard controls, I wouldn't have installed the controller mod in the first place. That being said, it is tolerable at the moment, I do like being able to lean back in my chair and just casually play. It is very difficult to aim with a controller, so I'm playing with sticky aim set to high and the difficulty set to casual.

I'm playing an Adept, and oh boy am I glad I picked it. Gun gameplay has been absolutely terrible, not just because it's hard to aim, but because the bullet sponge gameplay is not fun. Being able to use a bunch of abilities on cooldown is fun. Infiltrator sounded interesting: I would have liked to have played a stealth sniper, sneaking around backstabbing enemies and shooting them from far away, but the levels just aren't designed for that kind of gameplay.

I've been running with me, Garrus, and Wrex (1-to-1 Rytlock Brimstone expy... or is it the other way around? It's Steve Blum voicing a snarky proud warrior man ofcourse I'm bringing him). I might bring Tali along... if I encounter a mission where she is more story relevant. I'm not really invested in any of the characters, but Garrus, Wrex, and the Captain are cool. Tali might be interesting, dunno. Otherwise, the rest of the cast is forgettable. I don't really know why Ashley, Tali, and Liara are tagging along. They don't really have a personal stake in our quest and aren't really our friends.

I'm about 10 hours in. Currently wrapping up the Feros mission. Looking at a walkthrough on gamefaqs, it looks like I might be half way through the main story. Not sure if I will do all of the side content, as so far the side content has been fairly mediocre (MMO style quests, like go scan Keepers on the Citadel, or time wasters like spending 10 minutes on a planet driving around looking for a probe with virtually no story, etc).

Driving the rover around and touring the scenery is pretty fun... until I have to stop and try to meticulously aim with the turret trying to pick off tiny targets.

The setting is okay. The Citadel and the Council don't feel like alien societies and organizations. They feel like the modern US but in space. The Citadel has human style bars and clubs... that have been operated by aliens for decades long before humanity was admitted. The cities on the Citadel are organized like human cities. The council uses modern 21st century American logic that worships laws and constitutions and is skeptical of esoterism. Nothing about the Citadel or the Council feels like it an alliance of non-human races at all.

The Turians and the Krogan and the Volus have interesting faces to look at (Saren looks really good!), but ME's aliens for the most part suffer from rubberhead alien syndrome, where everyone has the same posture and proportions as a human. The floating evangelical alien at the citadel, and that ambassador who stood on four legs were visually quite unique, but sadly there are no party members that are unique like that. I really liked how the Sovani in the The Last Remnant had 4 arms (and could quad wield 1 handed weapons, or dual wield 2 handers), or how the Charr in GW2 were hunched over and even ran on all fours. Really made those races stand out in my mind.

The writing so far seems to be mediocre (lots of huge leaps in logic, antagonists to the player act cartoonishly, dialogue is stilted at times, the story can't decide if being a Spectre means being revered like a Jedi Knight or being super secret and treated with suspicion like Section 31, etc), but the presentation is good (camera angles, music swelling during climatic moments, etc). Overall seems to be a decent game.

I'm not seeing the hype here, though. Story heavy RPGs are kinda dead in the West, so unless you're into JRPGs, and Mass Effect/Dragon Age were your only exposure to RPGs, I can see why it'd get hyped up as an amazing RPG. I guess Bioware was subject to Pixar syndrome, where they were hyped up as the greatest animation studio ever (I do think that a lot of their earlier films were legit good, just not the end all be all. I love Toy Story 2)... when the Japanese were putting out a higher volume of animation just as good, if not better than Pixar, but since Pixar was pretty much the West's only real exposure to big animated movies, they thus got hyped up to high heaven.


Not sure if I'll get the sequels, as I've heard that the story in 2 and 3 gets worse. Apparently they don't really have a main storyline like 1, but are more of a loose collection of side quests. I guess it will depend on how much I enjoy the general gameplay and characters. ME2 and ME3 do look pretty, though.

 

[Aldarion]

Thermal clips were a shit idea in pretty much every way.

I mean for the rank and file masses, the logistics burden of having to worry about ammunition (which is effectively what thermal clips are) far outweighs the relatively marginal gains in rate of fire.

And for the absolute high end, top tier ME1 equipment already had effectively infinite ammunition as you really, seriously, had to try to get the weapons to overheat.

The only place that thermal clips made sense is actually for "rank and file" special forces and the like. People who can handle the logistics issues, are expected to face the high intensity combat where clips are an advantage, and yet can't afford million credit guns for every troop.

But then, ME as a whole really fucked up its lore as EA couldn't figure out what they wanted. Each game standing on its own is fine, but as a collective whole the series has no cohesion or coherent story and the lore was constantly shifting as whomever was writing it couldn't make up their minds.

If your gameplay needs cause you to literally break your own lore, to the point of saying one thing and doing another. That's a major issue.

Like @Battlegrinder mentioned, they'd have been better to just put in thermal clips and not making a codex entry about how they've replaced all the weapons in the galaxy with them. Because the loyalty mission makes zero sense, nor does the fact that no one seems to carry the old rifles, 2 years after the first game. No way do you roll out that many weapons in that time span and get everyone equipped with them. Would have made more sense to tweak the settings, "nerf" the old style guns a bit to make the thermal clips have way more use compared to them.

Since the new system literally is worse then the old one. You had unlimited ammo in the first game. The second game makes the weapon system inferior by adding in thermal clips that effectively limit your ammunition count. Regardless of how the "gameplay" would have worked, the system just...makes zero sense with how it was implemented, both in-universe, and out. In-universe, no way would it work that quickly to purge all the old guns from the entire galaxy. Out of universe it stinks of devs not realizing the mistake they made in a previous game and attempting to fix it, by making the system worse. Rather then just tweaking the cool down system from ME1 to balance the game out. Thermal clips were dumb in a universe where ammunition was never an issue, thermal clips effectively became an ammunition limit(even if lore wise you still have "unlimited ammo" just "limited thermal clips" instead).

I mean, to most people it's a minor issue. I just find it absolutely stupid that the devs didn't realize the issues they'd have thrown into their story, and gameplay.

I always explained thermal clips by making the permanent overheat bug canon: basically, the Geth found out a way to not just overheat but destroy weapon's thermal clip, which meant you had to have a way to quickly replace said clips mid-battle. Thus expendable clips: no use wasting expense on reusable thermal clips if they are going to get destroyed anyway.