BioWare Trims Mass Effect 3 Squad to Focus on Deeper Relationships

[mizutanitony]

Garrus is confirmed actually. G4 put a big post on the site.

 

[-Ulven-]

DOn't diss Garrus' calibration. It made the guns rip open a collector ship (or I hope thata was him).

But yeah. I'm hoping you can pick out your own crew this time. Not just go around and hire EVERYONE like the charismatic superman you are.

 

[Lissa-QUON]

Okay all you folks panicking - if what I've read around about ME3 is right, Tali and Garrus are confirmed full time squad members. Kaiden/Ashley also make a come back of some nature.

As for the rest, who knows? Though considering some of these folks WERE LIs (even if you didn't romance certain folks someone out there did) so I think its a fair bet that the LIs will stick around in some important form if only for drama for those who left Ashley/Kaiden/Liara. Unless Thane dies. In which case *shrug* nothing you weren't warned about going into that relationship.


But yea, definitely glad to see them pruning the cast, there were too many folks and not enough time devoted to them, and not really a need for that many of them.

From a game strategy stand point we had a lot of over lapping abilities, two heavy biotics, two techs, two semi biotics with guns, two snipers etc. And from a story point of very thin amounts of dialogue and story to go around for everybody.

 

[teh_gunslinger]

So instead of expanding on the characters they decide to just cut down? Colour me unsurprised. It seems like anything I read about the game makes it seem more and more terrible.

Bioware: some of us would like to see more stats, more companions (it's bad enough that everybody I meet just turn up at my ship. Make me decide like in BG), more inventory management, more talking, less combat, more space opera, less stupid Cerberus plot that makes no god damn sense as my Shep spend all of the first game killing those guys, more stats (repeating myself) and for the love of god! Don't send me to Earth! Earth is boring as fuck! I want a space opera! Not a grey brown space marine shooter on Earth!

 

[OldNewNewOld]

I just need Legion.

Ohhh.... I loved him. The best part of ME2 is when Legion comes with you on Tali's mothership.
It was EPIC.

IMO, ME 1 had better interaction with crew members then ME 2. Somehow I connected more to them then to the new one.

EDIT: O yes, I also want Jack.
Jacob can burn in hell if you ask me. I hated him the most. Even more then the council in ME 1.

 

[Chappy]

People keep saying Thane will most likely be dead but if ME-3 is meant to be nearly immediately after Arrival would Thane still be alive? As he was sure as heck still alive when I played through Arrival. :/

And please Bioware let us have Legion back and fleshed out.

 

[GooBeyond]

oh well, jack died in my playthrough anyways.

 

[Kayos]

I'm hoping Garrus, Tali, Mordin, Thane and Legion are still able to be chosen.
I would understand if Thane isn't due to his illness, but those characters are the ones i really liked in the mass effect series.

 

[Trolldor]

Wow logan, really? Mass Effect 2 was great was it?
I mean despite the horrid story, complete lack of characterisation, even greater polarisation of Paragon/Renegade and a section of the final mission being tied entirely to resource gathering.
Entire characters were cut short because they had to accommodate the fucking Xbox so the consoles dumbed down the story (Legion's commentary, for example, ran through a number of levels that he could never have access to in the Vanilla game). None of your actions in Mass Effect 1 had any real consequences, for almost all of them you recieved and e-mail for the others the character simply wasn't there but it in no way affected or changed the direction of the story.
And now we find they're "limiting" the squad, "streamlining" the already streamlined combat, getting rid of "useless stat games" (without defining what they are) and linking all choices to combat.
I can't think of a worse description for Mass Effect 3.

 

[Ian Caronia]

Well, this proves it. Bioware really did bite off more than they can chew and in fact are now regretting it.

Spoiler: Hypothetic Daydream Explanation...

Bioware Exec 1: "JESUS Look at all these characters! How are we supposed to keep track of them all?!"
Bioware Exec 2: "Uh-Um, fuck man! I don't know! Make some cameos and-uh-fuck it! Fuck it! Just shorten the list!"
Bioware Dev: "But fans will want to have a big climax involving all the characters from the previous games to choose from to-"
Bioware Exec 2: *SLAP* "You don't get paid to think, asshole! You see all these characters?! Do YOU want to write out all the variables the ending would have if you included them all?! Now shut your mouth and put them in cameos!!"

So here's the deal:
1. You had the ability to make Jack stay cruel in ME2 through an awful manipulative Renegade choice...and it seems like that will be retconned. Nice EDIT: Though it could've just been an example. Maybe it did have a big impact on her like it should've

2. "Watts also pre-empted fears that characters would get really radical makeovers, saying that it was the same people redesigning the characters as had designed them in the first place.
...That doesn't mean anything. Last I recalled Ashley got one hell of a radical make-over, didn't she? As did Liara with that Shadow Broker DLC. Just because the same people are working on the same characters doesn't mean things won't change radically...

3. "These characters might not be exactly as players remember them though, as they will have grown and changed in the time between games."
...In a year? Look, I know a lot can happen in a year, but generally it takes a lot longer for people to really change personality-wise. Also: YAY! MORE ALTERATIONS TO CHARACTERS WE LIKE! 8D
Oh, Bioware, will you ever fail to realize that constantly changing characters' personalities and behavior towards the main character only serves to detach the audience from said characters and force them to be reintroduced to faces that should be familiar and inviting (case in point: Liara and Ashley/Kaiden)?
Oh. Wait. You have. Nevermind then.

*sigh* I'm so looking forward to this game, but the more I hear the more worried I get. Three reasons I bought ME2 (as well as legions of others): Love Interest, characters, and continuing the story. EA said it was making ME3 to appeal to a "wider audience" of some such thing, and now you're telling us you're trimming the cast?
If I don't have my love interest in my party for more than a single level and the game is shown to be dummed down somehow, you can kiss my 60 bucks goodbye.

 

[Therumancer]

Listening to a company claim they are adding depth, when they are actually REMOVING it, is what annoys me more than any of the specifics.

What annoys me the most is the misconception statbased dungeoncrawlers are the real rpgs. The real rpgs are storytelling, roleplaying, interaction social games with some combat thrown in.
It should be rather plain to see that its better to have 8 characters with double the content of 16 less fleshed out characters. (Unless you care more about stats, in which case there are perfectly fine tactical games.)
Also, Truffles said she was misquoted about the stats. They're actually making them more meaningful and relevant.

Well, to be entirely honest since the core of the experience is the game in my opinion, I'd much rather have the 16 playable characters for when I do missions and such. All the backround and storytelling and stuff is nice, and I like it being there, but beyond a certain point you have to ask "why don't I just go watch a movie, or read a book". In the end, while I love a good story the bottom line is that I'm there for something that *I* can do. Also there is the issue of replayability, I mean it's kind of neat the first couple of times you hear a companion's backroing speils, but in successive playthroughs it can be a bit of a pain to wade through stuff that you've already heard more than once already. Opinions vary, but as much of a defender of storytelling and having a good plot as I am, this isn't a movie, and you overdo that kind of thing and that's what it rapidly turns into. It's a fine line, but the attitudes Bioware is espousing are running far more towards the "interactive movie" camp than having games with a strong storyline... They aren't there yet, but they seem to be moving in that direction. Keep it up and we'll wind up with "Final Fantasy XIII" where I walk down one hallway, listening to well developed character chatter in between cut scenes, and where combat is on autopilot, and I wind up watching pretty FX that I have very little direct control over. I like story driven RPGs, but there is such a thing as too much.


As far as RPGs go, if this was a quiz show, you'd have just been shocked by the wrongo buzzer. I *DO* understand why you think that way though.

Things like "Dragon Magazine" (back in the day) and various PnP RPG sites have gone into some pretty lengthy histories of RPGs and how they developed. Here is a "quick" run down.

RPGs are the child of war games. Basically you used to have guys in college use little figures to refight historical battles as a sort of simulation. It was done as a part of certain teachers lesson plans, to sort of put people in the shoes of specific leaders and show what the movements looked like, however people had fun with it, and started coming up with systems so they could say fight as opposed to reconstruct the battles, or evem change the variables to say play out "The Battle Of Watrloo" if the force arrangements were differant. Or say give one guy Napolean's forces, and the other guy Wellington's, the freedom to deploy on a historically accurate map however they wanted, and see who would win of the various players were in command of what both had at their disposal rather than the specific leaders. The mechanics for this thing got pretty involved, and dice were brought in as a way of similating the role of fate, and whether things like moving a group of soldiers into a bog were going to wet their powder, or to represent the relative accuracy of one type of weaponry against another (since this could be done with all kinds of differan ttime periods).

As time went on people became interested in increasingly small battles, using increasingly sophisticated statistics to represent specific units, including things like crossing periods and areas to like try and determine whether a single World War I german infantry battalion could have taken The Forbidden City in China as it was in like the 12th century or whatever (that being a case of 200 dudes being able to beat like 10,000 or whatever the crazy sized garrison there was, given technology 700 years more advanced). It went down to things like specific units, and then even down to individual soldiers. Along the way people got interested in pure fantasy, like whether someone could come up with mechanics for say emulating some of Tolkien's orcs and their order of battle using the same mechanics as opposed to just real world units.

Role-playing games as we know them now pretty much came from stats being developed to emulate combat between individuals, and then someone coming up with the idea of rather than two nerds deciding "hey let's have a sword fight with numbers and dice" and deciding what weapons each one wanted to use to set the numbers, that instead they could play a game where one guy would control an opposing force, and everyone else would control a single warrior. Victory conditions perhaps including things like "seize the treasure" as opposed to just a flat out "who is left standing" encounter.

This later lead into the idea of dungeons, with a singple player creating a labyrinth with differant enemies in it that the team of players would have to overcome to achieve the victory condition. The old joke about "there is a dungeon in front of you, do you wish to enter" and the players saying "nah, we leave and go somewhere else" comes largely from this kind of convention.

At any rate, this is what defines a role-playing game, one guy, controlling one character statistically. People were doing this BEFORE anyone decided to come up with any kind of personality for their characters, or even any real explanation for why they were fighting, why these dungeons full of treasure existed, or anything else. It was an intellectual exercise for nerds that came from wargaming.

When you look at things like "Dungeons and Dragons" you'll notice that it's the work of guys who started out by statting out fantasy combat for a set of minatures rules called "Chain Mail". I'm a bit of a collector and I personally own the original pamphlets, including two copies of Eldrich Wizardry (some dork took a pen to the front of one of them), and I even have the "new and revolutionary" campaign setting pamphlets for Grayhawk and Blackmoor (same size, when I say pamphlets, that's what these are pretty much). I wasn't around to buy these new, but I am an uber-nerd and wanted them for my collection. "Deep Story" and "World Building" aren't exactly a big part of these.

To be fair though there was this insane guy (well debatable) called MAR Barker who invented an RPG called "Empire Of The Petal Throne" which arguab;y predated the work of Gygax and Arnenson, which DID have a highly developed world setting, as he produced design from a differant direction. But he was pretty obscure, and not all that influential on RPG development, while his stuff has remained around the fringes, he's sort of like Nikola Tesla and his psychic pyramid power hats to Gygax and Arnenson's Edison. Few people even heard about MAR Barker's Teukamel, and it didn't really influance RPGs the way D&D did, as D&D was the game people actually played (price was apparently a factor as well).

As time went on, the idea of things like campaign settings took off, but even so the storyline was always a backdrop to justify killing monsters and stealing their treasure for a very long time. You can even see this in the early modules produced by the guys who created dungeons and dragons where all the monsters, traps, and treasures might include like three paragraphs of backstory to explain why the party might be out there to do this stuff. Even as far up as things like the now famous "Against The Giants" series, the actual backround for the player characters was basically "your the king's minions, he heard there are giants out there, he told you to go deal with the problem because your expendable, and if you come back without dealing with it you'll be executed". Basically any detailed back story I might have through of, doesn't matter because I can't leave for fear of being executed as a traitor, and damn... looks like the adventure started with us finding those bloody Giants. Being classic AD&D, three guesses what the personalities of the said giants are if someone was to try and strike up a conversation... it involves their club, and your head. Even the Drow pulling the strings (back when Drow were like new and revolutionary as a concept) aren't really there for conversation.

The game mechanics involved balancing factors like how characters gained experience points from the money they found. This kept character level and wealth relatively proportional, as well as ensuring that the PC who rolled low at the end when divvying loot after an adventure and didn't get to pick a magical item they could use from the kitty, and instead wound up with money instead wound up getting a payoff by leveling up faster due to having obtained more gold pieces. It made no logical sense, but it was a brilliant piece of game design. If you take the Sword +2 and I take the 50,000 gold piece diamond, guess who just jumped up two levels biatch. It also meant that if some moron produced a 2nd level character with 20,000 gold worth of gear and two +3 weapons you know the kid cheated (I mean beyond the obvious) because any character with those things would be higher level through osmosis since while the value of a magical item in EXPS was *much* lower than it's GP appraisal for game balance reasons, someone who obtains ownership of a magical sword gains *some* exps from it and the exps from a powerful weapon (and +3 was insane early on) would cause a low level character with low exps requirements to jump up in level. Incidently this ALSO meant that if someone just started with a high level party, you could begin them at level 1 sometimes, because they would gain exps basically through osmosis. Hide for a battle or two, and your share of high level treasure will level you up, which will eventually result in parity. Again, brilliant game design, no real logic. It shows exactly where the priorities were.

Now to be honest, as these games went on, over a pretty substantial period of time, the storylines DID pick up, there was more thought put into WHY adventures were happening, and what the towns and the world was like, and so on. Indeed you'll notice that some of the published campaign settings, which have a ridiculous depth of information, are centered around dungeons. Grayhawk for example was Gary Gygax's campaign world, which started with adventurers generically plowing into the dungeon "Castle Grayhawk" and it's catacombs, eventually he wound up detailing the environs, like breathing more life into the "City Of Grayhawk" where adventurers sold their loot from the castle, and then into the lands around the castle and city, and of course other famous dungeons and locales being built around them. With "The Forgotten Realms" it's the same basic thing, except the centerpiece is a dungeon called "Undermountain" which was it's first treasure hole, that had the city (right above level 1) on top of it. A lot of the key characters from both of these settings were the first adventurers. Tenser for example is Gary Gygax's son, Robillar was an evil fighter one of his friends played who famously collected an army of orcs and sacked "Tomb Of Horrors" by simply having his army camp outside and sending his hapless minions in to Kamikaze all the traps while he watched telling the GM "hey, I *AM* evil". Gary put that ancedote into a few places apparently. Elminster, Durnan (The Thinking Man's Barbarian), Mirt The Merciless (err Moneylender) and other characters were all characters that were not only RPed but guys Ed Greenwood and his friends used to play make believe as when they were kids. There was an article called "Come Play With Me" about this in "Dragon Magazine" which also went into the details of a girl he grew up with and who was terminally ill, she played with him as a kid, and has a huge influance in the games, and you'll notice groups with a missing member (one of the seven sisters having died defending Shadowdale, only seven members in the company of eight due to a slain comrade, etc...) are a recurring theme, this is why. Not to mention the simple fact that "I'm going to open a bar at the dungeon entrance" is an idea only a kid could come up with, yet Durnan's "Yawning Portal Inn" is the entrance of choice into Undermountain.. deep, deep, and mature RP for sure a looot of serious thought must have gone into that.

At any rate, nobody ever disputed that a good story improves an RPG, however like everything some people take things too far. A big turning point came with a game called "Vampire The Masquerade" and it's "story before everything" attitude. An attitude I might mention got it BANNED from Fidonet RPG for quite a while because it was argued that a "storytelling game" and an "RPG" are two differant things, despite the fact that they can be similar. While Vampire and it's ilk DID change their attitude somewhat, and become more embraced as genuine RPGs, and even get un-banned as a topic of discussion on Fidonet, that was about the time people started to really get into the whole "stats don't matter" attitude, and cause a divide between real role-players and storytellers, that remains to some extent to this day.

The storytelling approach to things in part became so popular because it's easy. It takes a LOT of work for a GM to sit down and create a full fledged scenario, especially one with a backround. Given the freedom involved in an actual RPG, and having the stats matter and determine outcomes, it means that in a good adventure the GM might wind up putting a lot of work into things that the players never run into. They might bypass a paticularly creative trap easily, avoid a planned encounter on the road by deciding "hey we've got a ranger and two druids, roads are for wusses we travel faster through the brush due to our level anyway", or might bypass things for numerous other, unintentional reasons. This is to say nothing of cases where the party might decide something trivial is important and say spend 4 hours of real time messing with a statue that really is just a piece of scene dressing, or whatever else.

The storytelling approach basically tries to create the illusion of freedom, but involves leading the party from one set piece to another, that way nothing is wasted, and nobody gets side tracked. It of course had the side effect of removing any real control from the player's hands, which can be a problem when you have PCs who have very differant ideas of what their character might do in a situation than what the GM planned. Leading to all kinds of problems with GMs wanting to spank "hack and slash" players who get out of line and so on.

You'll notice also that this influanced module design, where increasing modules DO involve the party going from one set encounter to another, and might not even involve actual maps for the entire thing a s a result. Compared to say classic D&D modules like "The Isle Of Dread" where you had an enviroment where the PCs could literally go anywhere and choose their own path of progression and exploration... of course at the risk that they might not ever find certain "key areas".

I generally am of the opinion that older modules tend to be superior from a gameplay perspective (and I've shocked players who have only played "storytelling" modules with some of them in the past), and generally speaking tend to enjoy a good storyline, but get irritated when I find myself being railroaded by a GM, or worse yet called an idiot for you know... wanting to go off the beaten path or something. I have fond memories of adventures that had decent storylines as part of them... like oh say Chateau D'Amberville (Or Castle Amber to some) where exploration wasn encouraged, and coming accross say an open pit trap thinking "Hmmm, I wonder if someone else might have fallen into this before we go here" and climbing down inside of it to see could reap rewards (I think there is a chasm in there with a Spear +3 at the bottom or something crazy like that in one place, not to mention some other stuff in other unlikely places). I tend to personally think that someone who thinks I'm an idiot for occasionally wanting to say look in an old pit trap (or even thinking of it) are kind of missing the point of exploration and having fun. Of course then again it seems the guys doing adventures nowadays never bother to hide stuff in places like that anymore anyway.

At any rate, this is getting long, and I'll get back on the subject of video games. Look back at your classic computer RPGs. Things like "Wizardry: Proving Gronds Of The Mad Overlord", or even the original "Might And Magic". They were basically dungeon crawls with only the most basic pretexts of a plot, and they were RPGs without needing any more of a plot than that. What's more they reflected the gaming sensibilities of the time. The guys who made a game like "Wizardry" were basically making a game about classic D&D, where you descended into a pit full of monsters, with a few traps and puzzles in the way, in search of bigger and badder loot so you could delve deeper, and get even bigger loot, and maybe someday find some generally big and bad thing at the bottom which by killing you save the day for whatever reason... (and heck, maybe your just doing it because some random bard told you it was a good idea... and umm, hey where is that bard anyway?).

The point here is that plot and story has NOTHING to do with RPGs... not one stinking bit. You can have an RPG with nothing but a couple of pieces of paper with numbers, some dice, and a GM saying there is an orc in front of you, roll initiative! (oh boy my dice hand is itching... just typing this... arghhh!), you need no reason for knowing why that orc is there, why you want to kill it, or even a name for your character. Now this doesn't mean that this is the best way to play, because it isn't, a storyline and plot makes things infinatly better, but that's an addition to the RPG, not what makes something an RPG.

Now truthfully, I will say that when looking at games, my personal preferance is that a game should be a careful balancing act. I think it's possible to very easily have RPGs that have too much story, and ones that have two much focus on the game mechanics. I think there is a general trend nowadays for things to rapidly become TOO story driven, because it's easier to tell people what's happening, than create an enviroment for them to make desicians and cause things to happen as a result. This applies to both PnP RPGs, and ones on the computer. Too often nowadays storytelling comes down to some variation on the level conundrum. That is to say that a character enters a room with a lever, the GM wants a trap to go off on the player. As a result he decides that whichever direction the player pushes the lever in, the trap will go off. If the player decides his character has no desire to play around with the lever, then that obnoxious NPC bard that has been skipping around behind him will pull the level and shut if off. If the PC tries to stop the bard, then he will trip and set it off anyway. The basic result is that no matter what the PC does, a trap goes off. It doesn't matter if he's a 29th level thief with trap immunity, trap evasion, instant trap detection, and every anti-trap item in the game, who also has the common sense to not F@ck around with strange levers in wierd places before you know what they do. If the player goes "Well my character Trapkiller The Trapbane of the Mctrapavoider clan should never have this happen" the storyteller response is to call him a munchkin, despite the GM having approved the character.

In computer games, one of the things that annoys me about a lot of them nowadays is that they provide tons of non-options that basically have no real outcome in what is going to happen. It's hard for me to take a game like Mass Effect seriously when they talk about sacrificing gameplay, for more backround and storytelling, when I'm already playing a game when the most extreme seeming desicians ultimatly wind up maybe changing a line of dialogue since I ultimatly wind up doing the same exact missions, fighting the same exact enemies, and doing all the same stuff anyway. Sure, they promise all these "epic things" but really they have done that for the first two games, and in general my epic universe saving desicians have amounted to less than deciding how many sugars go into my coffee. Big things were promised for Mass Effect 2, and they never actually promised. I doubt 3 will offer any more truely meaningful desicians, especially seeing as it's been said they plan to keep the franchise going after this storyline is complete, so that means they can't have things turn out radically differant for differant path options. Their 1000 or more variables probably just amount to 1000 or more cases where in the hours of dialogue someone makes a referance to something that happened in a previous game. In the end I doubt that means they have actually developed hundreds of differant dungeons each with plot specific encounters based on desicians you made. As a result, while I have found Mass Effect entertaining, you can color me unimpressed when they are talking about taking out elements I can actually do something with (like choosing to have someone in my squad or not) in exchange for more dialogue, that will probably cease to be cool after the third time I've heard it. At least with a ton of squad members I can have a somewhat differant experience going through the dungeons by having differant companions with differant tactics I can use.



At any rate, this is long and rambling, and I hope you read most of it. The bottom line is that I'm one of those Omega Nerds. I have probably forgotten more about RPGs than most people who work in the industries related to them have ever known. I'm the kind of demented fan that they would run away from if they ever knew. RPGs have gotten me through some rough times in my life, and I've spent more time with them, learning about them, and analyzing them than is probably appropriate. As I mentioned I actually own the old D&D Pamphlets (even if I haven't read through them for a while), I have pretty much every iteration of D&D and AD&D to ever exist, and wierd collectibles like the 1st Edition Deities and Demigods with the Cthulhu and Melnibonean sections in it, which I spent a bit of time tracking down at one point. I know this crap really well, and I'll be the first one to say the RPGs have grown a LOT, since they were very bare bones in the beginning. PnP RPGs are pretty much on Death's Door,but some guy picking up his glossy 4E book (or portable digest copy), or D20 player's handbook, probably has no idea what an original D&D book looked like (as I said, it's not even a real book, it's like a pamphlet), and if they have heard that, I doubt they've ever seen one. You also need to have a very "special" kind of damage to actually buy a second copy of something like Eldrich Wizardry that's damaged (someone took a pen to the cover as I pointed out) just to have a second copy because well... it's an original book. Never mind read enough about the guys who made D&D and the campaign settings and the logic behind them, often enough, to actually know some of the things I do, like which "famous" NPCs were the player characters
of friends or relatives of the game designers.

 

[Prof. Monkeypox]

I like this idea. While I liked most of my squad in ME2, it was hard to keep a decent regular relationship with them all, and a lot of my interactions felt rushed because of that.

I just hope the squadmates that make the cut are fun and interesting.

 

[Warped_Ghost]

This is good if they are taking time with quality,quantity and comedy of the conversations but if they are just making another dragon age 2 It will just be another good sequel that is based off of a great game.

 

[numbersix1979]

Doesn't sound like a bad idea to me. While having the choice to have a bunch of people come with you in the second game was nice, it got redundant fast. Especially since so many were biotic specialists.

 

[Silver Patriot]

anc[is]Makes sense, with all your old buddies from ME1 probably coming back, there's bound to be some doubles anyway. Grunt and Morinth probably wont be back, because they fill the same role as Wrex and Liara; and Thane's probably dead. I hope Legion gets a lot more love, he really got shafted when they stuck him in the 2nd to last mission.

Spoiler: Mass Effect 1-2 spoilers.

Legion probably will be in ME3 but I have a feeling he won't be in your party. Chances are he is going to rally the geth to your cause. I also think the same thing will be true with Wrex. Also Liara is the Shadow Broker now so I kind of doubt she would be fighting directly. Though she will likely help in her own way.

 

[themerrygambit]

*** SPOILERS BELOW READ AT YOUR OWN RISK ***

I'm not sure how I feel about this. At first I was up in arms about it but there are a few characters that I could stand to not have on my squad.

1) Thane... He's terminally ill anyway so I could see him not making it to ME3
2) Samara... I just never really cared about her enough to want to get to know her... she's like a fighting nun without a personality. I'm not a huge fan of Liara as a replacement and besides she's already the shadow broker. Morinth has more personality but having sex with her kills you so I don't like the fact that that's a dead end (literally) in the romance department. I'd like to see a sexy sultry badass Asari chic that has an actual personality I could get to like.
3) Jacob. He's a cool guy and all but he's more or less uninteresting. He's so straight laced I could see him being in charge of a part of the ship but I'm not all that interested in having him on my team.
4) Kasumi - She's a cool character to have and I love her special abilities but from a story perspective I don't see why she would stay on the normandy. I'd like to see her available as a temporary team member on an infiltration mission.

The Next three I'm on the fence about:

5) Zaeed - Man I loved using this crazy bastard when I was fighting because he would be throwing those fire grenades all over the damn place and lets face it I loved crazy S#$t he says. That being said I could see him moving on to the next job. That being said I'd like it if you could still hire him on in ME3 as an extra hand like in ME2

6) Legion - I actually loved legion. I'd take him around just to get a rise out of people (Especially the Quarians lol) But I can see him playing a more important role as an ambassador for the Geth and mending relations between them and the rest of the races. That being said that could also make him an important squad member to have on the team

7) Mordin Solus - Here's the thing with Mordin. I don't think I really need him as a squad member. I think he's a great asset as the research guy on the ship but I don't need him out on missions... I never used him frankly, but his comic relief was absolutely priceless so I would like to see him moved to a "joker" like position of the crew. There but not a squad member.


People I can't live without:

Miranda Lawson - because she's by far the best love interest in the entire game and I want to see her loosen up more or see more of her period ... and let's face it hearing Yvonne Strahovski speak in her natural Aussi accent makes me weak at the knees anyway. She's also not a bad squad mate... could improve though.

Garrus - But let's face it he's not going anywhere and he's already been announced for ME3 anyway.

Grunt - Because He's a F--king badass is why... nuff said.

Jack - Here's the thing, I think Jack could go either way too but I don't see her having any kind of reason to leave the Normandy... this is the first time she's ever "fit in" and so seeing her mature and grow as a person is really something I want to witness.

Tali - She's our token tech girl, but lets face it she was an original cast member and she's already been announced as a character in ME3. But I would like the option to keep either her or Legion.

I like the idea of having seven squad members... just feels right for some reason.


Anyway those are my thoughts

 

[themerrygambit]

Liara is supposedly in ME3 according to the Mass Effect Wikia.

 

[Grey_Focks]

TL;DR

Jesus christ man, think you could cut that down a bit? I'm kinda interested in what you have to say, but it's far too late for me to read an essay.

 

[Therumancer]

TL;DR

Jesus christ man, think you could cut that down a bit? I'm kinda interested in what you have to say, but it's far too late for me to read an essay.

Ah yeah, a bit late for that now though.

In short with all the rambling it's a run down on the history of RPGs from their beginnings. The basic point meaning to illustrate their evolution and how stories have nothing to do with them, but were added in later. The origin beginning with collegiate wargaming exercises, which got scaled down to personal combat. I also gave some examples of how some of the most heavily developed RPG campaign settings out there started out as bare bones number crunching frameworks, that slowly evolved with the hobby.

The point basically being that I can see where the confusion for some people about storytelling being the point of RPGs can come from given how things evolved, and how storytelling can so easily be used as a crutch to avoid having to engage in actual adventure design. Going off about the classic "lever conundrum" which "academically" illustrates the whole problem with the storytelling school of thought in comparison to actual RPG gaming where story is simply used to improve the experience, and so on.

You can basically have an RPG with just a couple of pieces of paper with numbers, a dice, and a GM saying "there is an orc, roll initiative". No context is nessicary. The first RPGs being pretty much that, albiet without a GM and two history geeks agreeing on mathematical abstractions of period weaponry and then simulating a sword fight between them using dice to represent the role of chance.

I said more than that, but it's a basic run down. Not sure how coherant it was since I'm tired, you might find it interesting none the less though.