Tomeran said:
I am of the oppinion that gameplay elements has largely improved since ME1. That dreadful inventory system and the vechile section sometimes made me want to weep.
Has the game been more streamlined towards a shooter? Sure it has. And I dont mind it. Mass Effect is still very far away from say Gears of War(an example mentioned a lot) and it still keeps many of its highly praised character interaction elements and story that to me makes the game series so compelling.
It is indeed sad that Bioware Pulse seems to mostly focus on gameplay elements, but at least many story-based elements have been confirmed for the game by Bioware, if not just on Bioware pulse. After all, it doesnt need to be on pulse for it to "hit the feed", so to speak.
So no, Mass Effect 3 is not gonna be another "what´s story? Screw any sort of character interaction or memorable storytelling!"-shooter-game just because they show a lot of gameplay footage.
As for the pulse episode and "dynamic" shepard...nothing special. Nothing of it seems remarkable or particulary new in the gaming industry, and my care factor is fairly low.
"Good enough, I guess" would cover it.
Gameplay elements isnt why this is my most anticipated game of 2012, the story is. But I suppose I cant blame Bioware for thinking that not everyone thinks along those lines.
But was it good to completely get rid of the inventory, and the items that would have come with one? I know this is an old argument, but having something like 4-5 different models for each kind of weapon, with different stats or quality wouldn't have been that bad. They turned the combat in a rock-paper-scissor kind of game, with a really limited number of viable tactics/enemies combinations (you might argue that in the first one there wasn't any need for tactics at all, but it gave you the freedom to put together a tactic or a preferred style on your own, and you could make it more difficult, if you made the wrong choices. This way, it makes the game feel on railroads, if you pair it with the predictable "walls to take cover" that would advertise the next fighting zone from a mile away).
You say that you don't mind the shift toward an FPS style, and that's ok, but saying that it is still far away from GOW isn't a good thing. For once, they seem to be going that way, and just a lack of experience in that genre might be what's stopping them from going all the way, also, this should still be an action/RPG. I am all for avoiding some of the old mechanics, that wouldn't really fit with the style anyway, but having the really small skill tree, no inventory, planet probing (but at least later on they added some variety with the hovercraft on the exploration side, even if scanning planets remains still necessary AND annoying), no upgrades for the weapons with different effects (I admit that the way it was done in ME1 was silly, but nothing at all?), giving a cooldown to change the ammo (and making them available only to certain class? That didn't really made sense)? Most of it felt necessary to balance the gameplay, but it was, in my opinion, a step in the wrong direction.
If there wasn't even the story anymore, we wouldn't even discuss this, you'd have to agree that this couldn't possibly be considered a good RPG, maybe a decent FPS at best. Also, while I can't comment on ME3 (of course!), I felt that the second chapter was a kind of "let's not push the story forward too much" choice, so they took a branch from what would have been a more natural development of the plot (and don't get me started with the whole "die and resurrect so that you can be indebted with the bad guys and can also give the game a blank slate" kind of story, that felt a really cheap plot device, to me). I can't comment on the choices, as it seems that most of them will show their full effect in the third chapter.
They are giving a lot of coverage to the mechanics, to the point that one might feel a little worried. While it's true that they couldn't possibly give away the story (who would spoil its own plot?), it still feels another nudge toward the direction of a greater focus toward FPS mechanics.
