Bioware Says Shooter Combat "Biggest Risk" in Mass Effect 2

[MiracleOfSound]

Well, BioWare is nothing if not a game studio that actually listens to their critics. If this trend of fixing what was broke in the previous game continues in Mass Effect 3, we'll probably be getting little less than the second-coming of Action RPGs.

Agreed. It's nice to know they are taking their fans on board in the design decisions.

I think ME3 will probably make me a very happy man.

 

[Grumman]

Well big problem of ME2 story was it being the middle child in a trilogy.

I feel the opposite. If it had been more like an extension of ME1's story and less like an Alternate Universe story shoehorned into the original timeline, I would have had some desire to buy the game.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

[
What I mean is driving, inventory hell ebven shooting weren't important in Mass Effect. The shooting was passable, nothing great but it served the game as much as it needed to. The main focus of the game was the dialog and story, which were bad.

That is just your opinion, and one that you are probably in the minority with.

So you didn't like the story, that doesn't make it bad.

I loved the story in Mass Effect, it had me more pumped up than any other game's story.

 

[Shapoolaman]

I also fail to see how the global cooldown improved anything.

Most biotics getting the additional nerf of being unable to affect anything with armor, shields or barriers only makes it worse, of course. I mean, yeah, it's a balanced system for Soldiers, Infiltrators, Vanguards and Sentinels... and it's probably alright for Engineers too, but the almost entirely biotic-oriented Adepts just end up with a heap of useless abilities.

Yeah, the shield/barrier/armor thing is a real mixed blessing. On the one hand it promotes the use of multiple weapon types in your squad (compared to my favorite ME1 approach of "give everyone a shotgun and go to town") since one weapon might be strong vs shield and another strong vs armor. On the other hand, a lot of the biotic powers are useless against protected enemies since the protection blocks the power, and against unprotected enemies it's faster to just shoot them since they go down in a few hits anyway.

I agree. All I ever got to use was warp then pull for the most part. In the first game once you leveled up your biotic you became a god amongst men and it was awesome, as it should be. Thats how the "mage" type character is suppose to work. In ME2 I really ended up just shooting everything most of the time. I miss the power.

 

[Shapoolaman]

[
What I mean is driving, inventory hell ebven shooting weren't important in Mass Effect. The shooting was passable, nothing great but it served the game as much as it needed to. The main focus of the game was the dialog and story, which were bad.

That is just your opinion, and one that you are probably in the minority with.

So you didn't like the story, that doesn't make it bad.

I loved the story in Mass Effect, it had me more pumped up than any other game's story.

The story was great! Very Lovecraftian which we don't see enough of these days.

 

[darth gditch]

Alright, and what actually matters in an RPG hmm?
Story? Check, its Bioware.
Gameplay? Check again, a major chunk of skills that were involved in ME 1 were just the basic "shotgun/assault rifle/pistol/armor" skills so obviously there would be less when they junked those.
Fun? Yep. Convoluted inventory systems aren't fun, despite what people think. Tedious isn't fun. Driving the gosh-darn Mako was certainly not fun.

The main story in ME2 didn't make a whole lot of sense. The loyalty missions were fantastic, but just about everything involving the Collectors simply did not make sense.

Spoiler

The Reapers were using an organic race (which they have an avowed hatred towards) in order to create a new Reaper to activate the Citadel relay. But this new Reaper was made out of a paste from thousands of humans. It would have been easier, cheaper and less likely to be stopped if they simply built a new ship out of the pieces floating around their station and installed Reaper software on it. The whole plan of the Reapers to use the Collectors is full of plot holes the size of the Galactic Core.

I loved ME2, but I have 2 major issues with it. The first is the aforementioned stupid plot. It was just silly and made very little sense in the grand scheme of things. The second is the feeling of getting stronger, or lack thereof, in the game. I just didn't feel any stronger at level 30 than I did at level 1.

Also, heatsinks, lose them. Terrible idea, especially when nigh every enemy drops them and you never run out of ammo anyway, unless you're terrible.

Well, if I remember correctly, which I may not, the Reapers were a race of machines with organic parts as well as non-organic. Which would make the harvesting make sense.

 

[Flunk]

They should release a patch that makes the mining automatic.

 

[tehroc]

As far as I'm concerned, they completely failed in making Mass Effect a decent shooter. The only redeeming point of both Mass Effect games is the dialogue. Everything else takes a back seat, including gameplay. Gameplay is where Mass Effect is extremely weak, poor shooter mechanics and ever poorer enemy AI. Dragon's Age is still a clearly superior product and should be counted as Bioware's flagship, not a poor excuse of a hybridized shooter/rpg that is Ass Effect.

 

[Deviltongue]

Alright, and what actually matters in an RPG hmm?
Story? Check, its Bioware.

No Mass Effect does not get a check for story. In a post Planescape market I require more from an RPG than save the galaxy from killer robots for the plot. RPGs especially of the style Bioware is selling have the story as the main ocus and Mass Effects just didn't hod up. It starts as evil robots attacking humanity and it doesn't get much more than that, the bad guys don't even get a motivation but somehow I still remember them giving me long motive rant.

What matters in an RPG is story, dialog, freedom, and choice and consiquence. Mass Effect does poorly on all those fronts.

Gameplay? Check again, a major chunk of skills that were involved in ME 1 were just the basic "shotgun/assault rifle/pistol/armor" skills so obviously there would be less when they junked those.
Fun? Yep. Convoluted inventory systems aren't fun, despite what people think. Tedious isn't fun. Driving the gosh-darn Mako was certainly not fun.

None of those are what matters in an RPG.

I may get reported for this but I really don't care. Shut the fuck up. You are a stupid troll who just pulls arguments out of his ass. Mass Effect 2 doesn't have good story, dialog, freedom of choice or consequence? REALLY?! So the story, the one that had me on the edge of my seat, filled with engaging characters and enough information and backstory to fill an encyclopedia wasn't there? So all of that dialog that was excellently delivered and excellently written (so excellently written I might add that my non-gamer friend came in and asked where he can watch this movie online), is none existent? What game has any really freedom moron? you can handle the missions in the order you want, that's about the most you're gonna get from any game and it's more than you'll get from most. Mass Effect has no choice or consequence? Shut the fuck up. You are 7 different types of stupid. From where I stand you seem like the kind of person who lacks any real friends and spends all his time watching Jersey Shore or some shit thinking that's how real people interact. Go. Die.

 

[Axolotl]

That is just your opinion, and one that you are probably in the minority with.

So you didn't like the story, that doesn't make it bad.

I loved the story in Mass Effect, it had me more pumped up than any other game's story.

I'll try looking at the story from an objective standpoint then. The Bad Guys have no motivation, at all, the Geth follow Saren because they're evil robots, Saren follows Sovereign because of mind control and Sovereign has no reason at all for what it does. The plot itself is just a tribute to old cheesy Sci-Fi and it neer moves beyond that, theres no subtext, no depth just evil robots trying to wipe out all life.

Looking at the story all I see is a mindless epic that doesn't try to do anything new or interesting.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

That is just your opinion, and one that you are probably in the minority with.

So you didn't like the story, that doesn't make it bad.

I loved the story in Mass Effect, it had me more pumped up than any other game's story.

I'll try looking at the story from an objective standpoint then. The Bad Guys have no motivation, at all, the Geth follow Saren because they're evil robots, Saren follows Sovereign because of mind control and Sovereign has no reason at all for what it does. The plot itself is just a tribute to old cheesy Sci-Fi and it neer moves beyond that, theres no subtext, no depth just evil robots trying to wipe out all life.

Looking at the story all I see is a mindless epic that doesn't try to do anything new or interesting.

Sovereign does have motivation, we just don't know exactly what it is yet.

And by saying the basic good/evil story is a bad story, you're basically saying every action movie/fantasy epic ever written is aslo a bad story.

Star Wars and LOTR have no more original stories than Mass Effect.

 

[Axolotl]

Sovereign does have motivation, we just don't know exactly what it is yet.

How is that an improvement? When the only explanation for why the bad guy is doing anything is a handwave about them being too alien to understand. That's a sign of a bad atory.

And by saying the basic good/evil story is a bad story, you're basically saying every action movie/fantasy epic ever written is aslo a bad story.

I'm not saying good/evil storys are bad I'm saying when a story has nothing beyond saving the world/galaxy from evil bad guys then that's a bad story.

Star Wars and LOTR have no more original stories than Mass Effect.

LOTR backs up it's basic good against evil plot with themes and ideas integrated into the story. Mass Effect does not.

 

[Bored Tomatoe]

I preferred Mass Effect 1's RPG elements and shooting, sure the RPG stuff was sort of confusing, but it was there. I also found the slow progression of shooting proficiency and surplus of slowly improving guns to be much more rewarding than "We now have 5 guns that you get no better at using. Enjoy".

 

[Awexsome]

Star Wars and LOTR have no more original stories than Mass Effect.

LOTR backs up it's basic good against evil plot with themes and ideas integrated into the story. Mass Effect does not.

Really? Have you even played through ONE of the loyalty missions?

 

[Caiti Voltaire]

I describe Mass Effect 2 to people whom ask me about it or speak to me of it, as the original Mass Effect with a few things fixed and most of the compelling elements of the original that appealed to me taken away.

I have to agree with Yahtzee on one very pointed example - the vehicle sections. Yes, the preternaturally indestructible Mako felt like it was bouncing around on massive air cushions, but the vehicle sections gave the game a sense of scope and bigness, and it rewarded the explorer and the roleplayer in me. Mass Effect 2 took this element out and suffered greatly for it, indeed, again as Yahtzee said, the game feels very much like a collection shooting galleries rather than flowing between different locales. It feels more like a JRPG with ambitions of being a shooter in that I feel like I'm only really there to direct the character from one scene to another while watching the comparatively bland exposition unfold. This is not to say that the dialogue is bad - it is in fact rather good, if a bit skewed because of the horrid moral choice system that gets shoehorned in - but rather that compared to even the original of the series, Mass Effect, it seems lacking, and lets not even begin to compare it to KOTOR, NWN, or the Baldur's Gate series.

The combat in Mass Effect was kept somewhat lively because of the great degree of customization the characters were afforded, and the challenge of developing not only a self-sufficient and powerful single character, but also in balancing a team that complimented each other's strengths and weaknesses. Mass Effect 2 takes that variety out to the back and basically gives it a pair of concrete shoes to wear before tossing it in the deepest portion of the Marianas Trench. It is repetitive, boring, repetitive, nothing we haven't seen before, repetitive, and I really didn't enjoy it. Did I mention it was repetitive?

Really I expected better out of Bioware, but they seem to be suffering from the EA syndrome lately. Lets hope they pull their heads out of the sand and develop at the level they're capable of - because as a studio they've proven they can push out some real gems and it would be a terrible shame and a loss to see them go the way of these companies that rush out utter bollocks to make a profit and squeeze a series well beyond its worth.

 

[Axolotl]

Really? Have you even played through ONE of the loyalty missions?

I don't recall Mass Efect having any loyalty missions.

 

[Nuds]

Regarding the changes in the FPS system? One word. Casuals.
By dumbing down the options required, skills, talents etc, therefore anyone can boot up the game and just go in and shoot shit. Dialogue is pretty much mandatory, all you do is click some choices and get from A to B. The new inventory system was a bit lackster as it went from having to sort out fifty items in ME1 after every battle to not actually having any items AT ALL.

Don't get me wrong, I loved ME2 and I will definitely be getting ME3. It's just, it felt more like an "Hide in cover and shoot stuff until it dies" than an RPG/FPS.

Oh and the mining bit, you do know that you only need to get enough for the crucial upgrades?
Being the obsessive player that I am, I visited every single planet and mined the crap out of them. By the time I finished the game, I was rolling around in 350k+ resources. EACH.
(Except for element zero, only got like 100k of those )

Overall, story/dialogue is...well, it's Bioware enough said. Gameplay is pretty much what you would expect of an FPS game on consoles. The RPG element, depending on what your personal preferences are, would either be perfect or near enough. My personal preferences would be more statistics based, ie items, equipments, more skills etc. But each to their own.

The most important thing is, if you had FUN, then the game has fulfilled it's purpose.

 

[Fappy]

I think it is safe to say we won't be seeing the mining game in ME3

 

[Insideout Ink Demon]

love the way Bioware listen to the fans complaints

 

[DustyDrB]

Sovereign does have motivation, we just don't know exactly what it is yet.

How is that an improvement? When the only explanation for why the bad guy is doing anything is a handwave about them being too alien to understand. That's a sign of a bad atory.

Do you want a Reaper to give some cliche monologue explaining their whole plan in its entirety and why they do it? They want to destroy all galactic life, we don't know why yet. Villains can work just as well when their is mystery behind their motivation.