mass effect

On Unexpected Surprises

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Blaugust Post #16

First things first, this post will contain extremely minor spoilers for Mass Effect 2, and large spoilers for Mass Effect 1. ME1 came out 8 years ago, so I’m not exactly going to step lightly, this warning is all you get.

Yesterday I beat Mass Effect 1. If you know what you’re doing, it’s about 15-20 hours long, depending on how many elevators you take and how many sidequests you do. (If you want one of the squadmember achievements or the completionist achievement, expect to extend this to 30+.) I like it, but it’s really my least favorite of the three. One of the major reasons for this is the way powers work in Mass Effect 1: Each power has an independent cooldown ranging from 30 seconds to multiple minutes. Mass Effect 2 dramatically reduced the cooldown on individual powers, most of them are under 10 seconds, but all powers now have a shared cooldown. For power-spamming classes like Adepts or Engineers, this changes how they play dramatically. (It does decrease those classes alpha-striking potential, however.)

On Unexpected Surprises

On the other hand, Saren is a better villain than anything in the later games, although Harbinger’s taunting certainly makes an impression in ME2. Even though he’s under control of the real big bad (Sovereign), he provides a face to what you’re searching for. He’s even a moderately difficult boss fight on Virmire, although I’ve never fought him in the citadel. (I have no idea what the Charm/Intimidate Threshold for skipping that encounter is. Since it’s at the end of the game, I’ve never been without at least one of them at 10.)

On Unexpected Surprises

New Game++

So this brings me to Mass Effect 2. Normally, your choices in the game allow you to pick up select powers from your squad for your own, whether this really makes sense or not. (It doesn’t make much sense for a non-biotic to have Slam, for instance.) One of the bonuses on starting a new game is immediate access to one of these powers of your choice at the start of the game. It’s my personal opinion that some of them aren’t balanced for this, but it’s kind of a nice bonus for repeat playthroughs. Id’ completely forgotten about this, and now I have an engineer with Shredder Ammo, which does a large amount of bonus damage against targets with no armor/shields. Engineers specialize in stripping armor and shields, so I suspect this will go pretty well.

On Illusion of Choice

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Blaugust Post #15

After writing about the Mass Effect 3 multiplayer, I had a strong urge to go back and play Mass Effect 3 all the way through again. Really, what this meant is that I had a strong urge to play the entire Mass Effect trilogy again, because the second and third games make really awkward assumptions if you don’t import a save file. Because I said I hadn’t, I’m playing as a Soldier, but I think I’ll probably play 2 and 3 as an Engineer (which is the other class I’ve never played through any of the games). My only regret so far is that playing as a Soldier makes Wrex largely redundant, and he’s probably my favorite party member.

On Illusion of Choice

A Dirty Trick

I’ve heard it said that Mass Effect 1 is the best RPG in the series (even from people who don’t consider it the best game in the series), and while I don’t really agree, it’s certainly the most traditional. Your conversation options depend on the skill points you spend in Charm/Intimidate (and it’s also traditional enough that investing in both is a trap). Locked items and even how well you can shoot your weapon are also controlled by skill investments. You can equip a weapon that you have no skills for, but don’t expect to hit anything with it. None of this applies to the following games: Mass Effect 2 entirely limited weapons by class, and Mass Effect 3 went with a system where your class just determines how much weight you can carry (but all classes use all weapons equally well).

One of the other things is that Mass Effect 1 gives you the conversation wheel a lot more often than either of the following two games, creating the impression that is has more choices. Realistically, ME1 is playing a grand trick on its players, although you’re really only likely to notice it if you play the game more than once (or specifically replay a scene while giving different answers). In a lot of cases, multiple options on the wheel will lead to the exact same voiced line. It will almost always be a line generic enough to “fit” whatever summary the wheel presented, and the only difference is player interpretation.

On Illusion of Choice

Maybe Not so Dirty

Mass Effect 2 and 3 abandon this idea, in favor of just giving you the line, which generally makes conversations flow better. ME3 goes farther than ME2 in this sense, and also occasionally gives you a line based on your Paragon/Renegade scores. In the end of things, I’m not sure which is better. I personally prefer Mass Effect 2’s approach, where you only get a conversation branch for actual line differences. Appearances are important in games, and maybe some well-placed illusions are called for.

AggroChat #70 – Calibrating “Main Gun”

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massEffectGarrus

This week we are joined by Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Tam and Thalen, with Kodra having to deal with some family stuff.  I was not certain how much we would have to talk about, but like always we managed to fill a show full of all sorts of games that we had been playing.  Thalen starts it off talking about his further adventures into the Magic Duels free to play game.  Similarly with the launch of Fallout Shelter for android he has started playing that as well.  Finally he talks about the recent Fantastic Four event in Marvel Heroes and how The Thing is the tankiest of tanks.  Tam spent the day at an Infinity Tournament and talks about just how awesome the Seattle minature gaming scene has been.

Grace talks about her recent swap to spending most of her time in Wildstar and the excitement surrounding the impending free to play drop that is now on the public test server.  Additionally she talks about her recent foray into the PVP system, and how generally cool the community seems to be surrounding it.  While board games are normally the territory of Kodra, Grace mentions the Exploding Kittens card game and how much fun she has had with it since receiving it.  Ashgar has followed in Tam’s footsteps and talks about his experiences playing Sword Art Online Hollow Fragment.  Ash has also started on a brand new playthrough of Mass Effect with the intent of carrying one save game from one all the way through three.  This of course spawns a conversation where we talk about our experiences with the Mass Effect series.  

Finally I talk about my recent return to Rift, and my obsessions with Hellgate London.  Additionally we talk about next weeks show, where we plan on talking about the storyline of the Final Fantasy XIV Heavensward expansion.  We have purposefully kept discussion of plot points to a minimum, but we feel it is generally safe enough to start talking about where we think the game is going.  We are announcing this ahead of time for the purpose of letting our listeners and readers join in the fun.  Do you have any interesting theories or are there parts of the story that you didn’t quite grasp?  We are taking in questions via email for this coming show, and we will go over them on the air.  I should be a lot of fun and it is our first real attempt to do something like this.

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