votemarvel said:
DO I seriously need to give examples of this beyond Shepard's marvellous running animations?
I'd say some of ME's animations actually got much worse throughout the trilogy, sure, but none of the three were exactly highlights of the medium... It was all much of a muchness.
Conversations such as with Zaeed after his meeting. Tali when she was drunk on the ship.
...you're citing one of the best exchanges in the entire series as
a negative?! Clearly you're off your nut. ;-) The "It's just a straw, Tali"/"Emergency induction port... " back and forth is a mini work of genius, and ME3's Citadel shindig brings back Drunk Tali to good effect.
You mention the Salarian family records in ME2. Yes you could hear it but it never became an active quest until you picked up the item in Dantius Towers. If you wanted to turn it in, then you actually had to talk to the person.
I don't quite get your criticism. Are there any misc-quests/tasks that can be be finished without talking to a single NPC? And does it really matter how those kinds of tasks are triggered? They amount to filler, but can be acquired without breaking the pace of the game, which I see as a great way to do things.
You just admitted that it was bad in ME3, why do you feel the need to argue for its defence? That you never used it does not forgive how 'shite' it became.
Well, to elaborate, I think the journal in all three games was arse - but also that the Journal simply wasn't that important in the series anyway, so as a criticism it's very periphery.
Mass Effect 3 on the other hand maintains the armour and shields penalty to the biotic classes but now introduces a weight penalty with the weapons, and keeps the global cooldown. So you can have either an effective gun or have low cooldowns, which since biotics don't do much against the protections forces you to prioritise the guns.
Maybe I'm getting the wrong end of the stick here (I did play through ME3 again last year, but it's been a good few months), but the underlined doesn't make sense to me. It's entirely possible to roll with one or two exceptional weapons and retain 200% CD bonus, or 'compromise' and maybe go with certain esoteric weapons or a selection of three, and have around 50%+ or a 0% rating. Small swings as far as effective difference in CD goes are only really life-and-death on the highest diff, and even then ME3 is not a very challenging game at all.
Ammo types are also more than adequate to compensate for any defensive lack - every class can take AP or Disruptors. Plus, all classes have access to potent weaponry that can deal with any defence, leaving their powers to be the main focus of attack.
I don't see any bias towards weapons in ME3. I feel the balance across the base classes was spot-on. If anything, I'd say the powers-biased Engineers and Adept's could be rather OP (the former's combinations of turrets and drones can be utterly devastating - and allow for certain tactics no other class can quite dish out - and stuff like dual-Lift/Push and detonated powers were an Adept's way of more or less nuking battlefields, especially when they had zero or very low CD penalties).
Tech based classes have actually improved I would say, thanks to the changes to powers such as Hacking and Overload. However a Soldier with Disruptor Ammo is far more effective against shields and mechs than a tech based class.
ME3 is surely a squad-based shooter, ergo a given weakness in Shep is kinda irrelevant when you have a squad to pick in order to augment abilities (didn't a load screen way back in ME1 even state this? to remind players to balance their capabilities for precisely this reason?). Unless someone shoves powers-use on auto, Mass Effect is effectively played as if Shepard has access to their own and everyone else's powers.
...I'd also subjectively say Soldiers are rather hamstrung by being the most boring vanilla class in the whole series, too.
You forget the information we found out about Cerberus in ME1. Where they were an Alliance Black Ops group.
Somehow between ME1 and ME3, they became a power capable of assaulting the seat of government during war time. That's hell of a leap in power.
In 3 they more or less pulled a Hydra as well, so it wasn't exactly just a conventional combined assault.
Even in ME1 their labs and shenanigans spanned the galaxy, so they were always rather conveniently deep-pocketed, having a hand in events or behind the scenes when the story or lore building required it.
I think they were dreary and lazy enemies, but ME3 needed another force to fight, and given Cerberus's resources in ME2 it kinda made them an easy candidate for cannon fodder between Reaper encounters.