Suncatcher said:
Granted, many of these things have outcomes that seem roughly equivalent on the face, since it's just not feasible to make an entirely different game for every possible combination of factors
Really? Because After I finished Mass Effect 3 I sat down in a fit of rage and wrote one.
I'm not programing gameplay or designing levels or anything but I wrote a script that takes into account every combination of choices you can make in the first 2 games.
Yeah, a script is easy. But just as a simple example, if the Ravagers were removed from the game by killing the Rachni queen in the first game? Every single level that included them needs to be reworked and rebalanced. The quest in the tunnels no longer exists for half of the pcs, so suddenly you have to allow for a wide range of levels of Shepard in every mission after that because of lost exp, and half your your players are going to be bitching about the game being too long or too short unless you make some equivalent mission that only happens if there aren't rachni around for some reason. Which would increase production costs by a significant amount and make the story even more nonsensical.
Wait. How is compensating for a very important player choice that was completely ignored by the writers of the game going to make anything more nonsensical?
Because to my mind.
I killed the last Rachnai. Oh shoot they're all back is more nonsensical than
I killed the last Rachnai, anything that doesn't involve Rachnai happens.
And I fully agree that redoing the levels to compensate for player choices would take work.
You know what? Good things take work.
If Bioware seriously thought that they could half ass and cut every corner and end up with a good game that means they should stop making products because they obviously don't know what they're supposed to be doing.
When it comes right down to it there aren't that many factors you have to take into account... there are only 50 possible outcomes you have to consider.
And if you make the basic structure of the game different for each one, that's 50 different full length AAA games you need to make. With all the rage over day 1 DLC, do you really think anyone would be willing to pay the several hundreds of dollars per copy required to recoup those costs?
There are really only 3 or 4 choices that would drastically effect the gameplay.
There would only be 1 or 2 levels they'd have to build from scratch, and just recycle the enemy AI they already used.
The vast majority would only effect the writing process and since that's
the easy part just nut up and pay your vice actors to read more lines.
Like I said the script is only about 5 times the length, the amount of new architecture you have to program is negligible. and they'd really only have to make one, maybe two more enemy factions. And considering how boring and samey all the Mass Effect firefights are all they'd have to do is re-skin Cerberus and call it a day.
But this is Bioware we're talking about, if the writing is good people would play Mass Effect 3 the text adventure, that's the kind of fan base Bioware had, and they're fucking us over with these poorly written worse constructed action games. Go back to RPG's, go back to the Hero's Journey, and if you need to cut cost cut cut graphics.
What does this have to do with Day 1 DLC?
That would be the case if any of the scenes you mentioned existed. You save the queen, your numbers go up.
You save the clone, your numbers go down and you get a strongly worded letter from Hackett.
Did you actually read any of the text in the game? Because everything in the game is a part of the story, and if you don't pay attention to anything without a big shiny cutscene you're missing much of the plot and can't really contribute to a story discussion.
Yes I read every word of it.
Especially the Emails from people who refuse to talk to you when you're standing 3 feet from them insistently clicking on them.
The problem is that it was mostly exposition, There were a few times when you got a legitimately good Email (Kai Leng's post coup message, Morinth's message to Rila and what's her name. A lot of the messages that had nothing to do with anything like the interrogation records and such)
You never got any real insightful character information that made me think differently about any of the stuff I think. Wrapping up an entire story arc in a brief impersonal email is very bad form. It's like they outsourced all the email messages to interns. (Except the ones I mentioned up there. But hey, some interns are talented. Maybe interns wrote all of 'em. I don't know.)
If Shepard knew that TIM and by extension Cerberus is was and forever will be evil, why in the hell did s/he give TIM the Collector base?
That base was full of tech which could be used against the Reapers. For all you knew, it was the only way to catch up the crippling technological disadvantage in time to save the galaxy. That wasn't a question of whether or not you liked Cerberus, it was a question of whether you were willing to take the risk of giving that resource to someone you knew was evil but currently working on the right side, or if you would destroy that threat at the cost of being less prepared for the real invasion.
According to you. YOU. Shepard knew the Illusive Man was evil and going to stab him/her in the back the second s/he showed it to him. That's you talking (That's me paraphrasing you)
And willing to work with people who are clearly evil because he can't accomplish what he needs alone
That's you taking.
Would you trust someone who is "clearly evil" with that level of technology?
It's all rendered moot anyway because TIM attacks you first thing in ME3 regardless of what you did with the base.
Regardless of how much you wanted to work with him.
Regardless of how much you thought his Idea about reverse engineering indoctrination to use it against the Reapers was a better plan than putting all your eggs in the Dues Ex Machnia basket.
Basically Shepard died in the 6 months between ME 2 and 3 and was replaced by a personality deficient dipshit who was unwilling and unable to think for him/her self.