Do you think that the Mass Effect series has lost it's 'touch'?

[Thamian]

I don't think it's lost its touch yet. I'm not going to judge ME3 until it's released, no matter how much some of what people are saying worries me.

That being said, I really missed my mako and world exploration, and while we're at it, weapon and armor mods. Yes, the mako tank was poorly executed as far as it's steering was concerned, but was way more fun to both drive and fight in that that damned hammerhead... thing, and to (mis)quote yahtzee, 'having a square mile of a world to explore gave the game universe a sense of tangible bigness'.

Meanwhile, mods meant you could tailor weapons to your preferences, play style and enemies, and armour to suit particular sets of play preferences. Yes ok, you could still do that with shepard's armour to an extent but only an extent. By all means, streamline them from what was in ME1, but they still add just that little bit more depth. And while ME2 got both it's atmosphere and pacing beautifully right, it didn't have even close to the sheer depth of ME1 (and the cover mechanic in ME2 can only be described as asininewhen compared to the same mechanic in ME1 as far as I'm concerned, but that's a personal gripe of mine...).

 

[Savber]

Lets put it this way...
Even if it's not a great RPG like The Witcher 2... I still believe it's a GREAT game. Screw what's a RPG or not as despite anything I LOVE Mass Effect 2.

Imagine if the stats and skills were taken out of The Witcher 2. Would I then hate the Witcher 2? No, because it was the CHOICES AND CONSEQUENCES, the CHARACTERS, the WORLD, and the STORY, not those damn numbers that made me love the game as it is.

 

[Haelium]

ME2 was fun, but not as good as ME here's why I think so:

1 - Leveling, 5 abilities and a weird points system, nuff said.
2 - Planet mining. The Mako was fun, the controls werem't as bad as people said.
3 - Story, Mass Effect brought you into a galaxy threatened by an immediate enemy, each mission mattered, and you were a spectre, which was cool. You made derisions and Mass Effect 2 was just preparation, more preparation, and then you fight some aliens. Oh, and you're working for Cerberus, which sucks.
4 - Characters, Liara was basically a nerd, Ashley was a soldier to the core who was xenophobic, Garrus was a renegade cop who wouldn't play by the rules, Kaiden was a bit lacking in depth, but he was still cool, Tali was curious bubbly genius. In ME2, Liara is a ***** all of a sudden, Ashley stays the same, Garrus never talks, Kaiden suddenly acts like a woman and then you've got a bunch of crappy characters(Aside from Grunt, Kasumi, Zaeed and Jacob).
5 - Paragon means illogical in many parts of the game, any favour for the genophage is somehow renegade? "Don't hide behind statistics!" has to be the stupidest line I've ever heard in a game. And not destroying the human reaper makes sense, it should be studied, and the collector base has valuable tech that could be used against the collectors.
6 - I just preferred the soundtrack in Mass Effect.


Once they remove planet mining and make the levelling more like the first game ME3 will be great. Also, more characters like Zaeed, he's awesome.

 

[scar_47]

They tossed most of the annoying or useless features and balanced the classes, in 1 weapon stat and inventory management just became a pain after a while and biotics users were way over powered compared to the likes of the solider since a biotic could render the enemy immobile and do damage on top of shooting them all a solider got was shooting which doesn't do crap compared to biotics after a few level. I don't really miss anything they cut and the streamlined skills were a lot more intuative than ME 1's skill set. I do look forward to seeing certain things like grenades and weapon mods back and hopefully done better.

 

[linwolf]

Yes I do. ME2 was a shallow game that instead of improving on the first just removed features until it was a boring hall shooter. Not too mention the story went over the deep end with the plot.

 

[Nimzabaat]

ME1 was Pitch Black, ME2 was Chronicles of Riddick I'll agree with those who voted with their wallets, dumping ME2 in the bargain bin really damn early, and venture that Bioware has lost their touch as a company. In my opinion, ME2 and DA2 were both inferior games when compared to their previous games. ME2 was prettier but the improvements ended there. Glitchy, weak story (baby human Reaper? that's Final Fantasy bad), breaking immersion as often as possible... ripping off Gears of War with the "interact with chest high walls to take cover or possibly attempt to take cover behind pixels which really don't offer a lot of protection and die" (oh wait GoW wasn't that glitchy). I'm going to wait until the reviews from actual gamers before buying another Bioware product.

 

[AlternatePFG]

The main plotline of Mass Effect 2 was terrible, while the loyalty missions were amazing. I really hate what BioWare did with ME2, instead of fixing what was wrong with ME1 they simply removed it.

It still has some excellent writing, but it also has some crap writing as well. I prefer the story of ME1, though I will admit the game is not very fun to play at all.

 

[DustyDrB]

It didn't even HAVE a "touch" to begin with.

WTF, Bioware? Stop making stupid crap and make another Sonic Chronicles already!

/rant

~Tom#!

*takes out my "List of Things I Will Never Hear Anyone Say", scratches off item #8*
Well...I can't always be right.

 

[SpaceBat]

Yeah I know. The part that bugs me the most is the fact that someone over at Bioware (or possibly EA) thought it'd be a good idea to replace the Mako driving sections, which were quite fun for the most part, with the mineral scanning minigame which was NEVER fun by any stretch of the imagination. ...well except for EDI's witty comments when you probed certain planets.

You skipped like 75% of my post haha, but whatever. Anyway, I'm going to have to disagree with you there. I mean, they shouldn't have removed the mako driving sections entirely, but there was nothing fun about roaming the same planet over and over again. The enjoyment I got out of driving the mako didn't last for more than four or five planets, because they're just so similar to eachother and the objectives are placed as far away as possible from eachother, which means I spent more time driving through empty, boring areas rather than actually doing something interesting.

Yes, mining isn't fun at all. AT ALL. But it barely is necessary and it doesn't take long before you mine enough minerals and never have to touch that horrible minigame EVER again.

And speaking of EDI, that's another thing that bugged me about Mass Effect 2. In the first Mass Effect, they made it very clear that AIs are illegal. And yet in Mass Effect 2 nobody seems at all concerned that an AI has been installed on the ship. Well I mean Joker makes a fuss and I think Shepard can express some sort of concern about it, but nobody mentions anything about AIs being illegal or anything. I mean I know Cerberus isn't likely to care about that sorta thing, but I wouldn've thought at least someone would've commented on it. Also you show up at the Citadel and C-Sec doesn't seem to care either.

Either it's because the AI was tied up, had little power and was locked within the Normandy 2, meaning it couldn't cause any problem to anything outside of the ship, or it was because of Shepard.
I mean, he is/was a specter and he did save the citadel and possibly the council, so they might have chosen to ignore it and Specters are not bound to the galactic law anyway. The AI rule probably only applies to common citizens and military. Yeah, it's kinda weird that nobody made a single fuss over it, but it's not that big of an issue.

 

[chronicfc]

What, after only two games, no, no it has not. In what way could anything lose its touch after only two games, after two games Zelda had yet to decide on what view point the game was to be viewed from.

 

[ShadowsofHope]

Nope, I loved Mass Effect 2 all the more over Mass Effect 1. Save the Mako, ammo (I prefer overheating to reloading) and the Armor designs from Mass Effect 1, that is.

And, Mass Effect 3 is not out yet, and not even finished. Leave the doomsaying out of this until March 6, 2012, eh?

 

[pspman45]

i don't think so
the formula is solid, and they keep updating gameplay

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

EDIT: and has it lost it's touch?

There's only been two games, both great. At what point did it lose its touch?

 

[GameMaNiAC]

Series lost its touch? The series is only two games long, it is far too early to ask that question.

 

[Seventh Actuality]

Hell no. The only reason to ***** about the loss of "RPG elements" between ME1 and ME2 is this bizzare tribal thing that really extreme RPG fans have going on. They were utterly tertiary in ME1 and a pain in the arse to use for anyone who enjoys micromanaging as part of a larger game experience rather than micromanaging for its own sake.

There also seem to be a lot of ME2 haters selectively forgetting that the looting and upgrade systems were panned by critics back when the first game was released, too.

People really didn't ***** about this at all when Mass Effect 2... you know, actually came out. Everyone heralded it as a mass(ive) improvement on the original. This is a new fad, it seems.

It only really started when DA2 set off a bombshell. Take from that what you will.

This this this this this.

 

[floppylobster]

RPG fans are BY FAR the worst, most entitled, most fickle group of people on the planet. Bar none.

Totally agree. They are a group of people who have never made a game in their life, never will, yet somehow believe they are experts on everything that makes a good game.

Despite the game they don't want going on to sell millions, and the game they never make themselves going on to sell absolutely zero, they still rage against industry experts and the top game designers in the world because their personal preferences are not met.

 

[Magicman10893]

As far as disappointments with the change from Mass Effect 1 to Mass Effect 2 goes, the Mako and weapon mods are the only gameplay related ones. I'm glad that they changed the weapons up, but I wish they would explicitly show the damage, fire rate and other notes about a weapon in it's description. I like the fact that they made each weapon unique, but I still like seeing the numbers somewhat.

Spoiler: spoiler'd for wall of text

My main disappointment with Mass Effect 2 is that the world felt smaller and more linear than Mass Effect 1 and that the story didn't have as many epic sequences. In Mass Effect 1 you get this whole backstory about the Reapers slowly revealed to you and you realize that things are a lot bigger and more complicated than they seem at first. Then when you get to Virmire and have the conversation with indoctrinated Saren and Sovereign. Then on Ilos you talk to the Prothean AI and learn even more about the Reapers.

Plus the feeling that you were exploring an entirely foreign land and riding around exotic planets in your rover tank thing and it felt like you were small in this big galaxy, even if most of the terrain was just wide open spaces or arbitrary hills and mountains.

Mass Effect 2 had you in the dark about the Collectors and then, BAM! you learn what they are. Then you keep going and in the final mission you find out why they are collecting humans. The pacing is pretty much gone and the epicness is reduced. Then when you explore the galaxy they have a fuel system involved that made exploring solar systems take way too long and boring and have to keep going back and refueling so you could go planet to planet mining resources and eventually finding a random side quest that has little to no impact on the game as a whole. Then the environments themselves were largely linear. In ME1 there were hubs for the main missions that you could travel and feel like they were real locations, but in ME2 all you have is Omega and Illium (the Citadel was disappointing because it was just a straight line for the most of it).

 

[Vykrel]

i couldnt really finish Mass Effect 1, due to its sub-par shooting gameplay. (lets be honest)

ME2 was a MAAAAAAAAAASSIVE improvement, and its still an RPG at heart. Bioware has clearly improved on gameplay with ME3, as well. its much more fluid and fast-paced. it finally looks just about perfect, imo.

 

[Worr Monger]

Nope.

Mass effect 3 is not released yet, is it?

And for the record RPG means ROLE PLAYING GAME, mass effect is an RPG. I challenge anyone out their otherwise.

I can roleplay as Master Chief while playing Halo

Therefore, Halo is an RPG under your definition.

And by your definition... Every game ever made is an RPG... which is obviously not true, because then the term wouldn't exist.

Your only control over Master Chief is the ability to walk, jump, and shoot.... which is pretty much any game. The developers decide Master Chief's role in the story from beginning to end. How he looks, what he says. All you get to do is walk from A to B, and shoot at things in between the story board cut scenes already laid out.

You can customize your own Shepard (with some limitations of course), you can decide the outcome of a variety of situations with the options given to you, you choose what abilities he has... including your squad mates, you can decide if a character will live or die. You can play as a complete dick, or a token hero. You can choose NOT to do certain missions. You have the choice to visit various areas at any time, and can usually decide when you want to visit certain areas. Your choices will actually change aspects of the ending.

Mass Effect gives you a variety of options to play with. Halo gives you 1 option, walk and shoot. That's the difference between Halo and an RPG.

Mass Effect 1 & 2 are RPG's, anyone who says otherwise needs to get over themselves.

OT: Mass Effect has not lost its touch. I like the fact that ME1 & ME2 are very different... it keeps the series from stagnating.. and they're both fun in their own ways. I'm looking forward to any changes they have for ME3... I don't want it to be a clone of either game.

I want it to mix the best aspects of both games, and be the end of the trilogy that it is meant to be.

 

[The Loojster]

Nope.

Mass effect 3 is not released yet, is it?

And for the record RPG means ROLE PLAYING GAME, mass effect is an RPG. I challenge anyone out their otherwise.

Actually, it's Rocket Propelled Grenade. Mass Effect is NOT a Rocket Propelled Grenade.

Source: COD4