Okay, I'm Sorry but... Just What on Earth is so Great about Mass Effect?!

[MetalDooley]

So I ask you all... What the fuck is the big deal?

To be honest I could ask the same question about the Half Life series

It's a unique FPS game.

And what's so unique about it?

 

[KrossBillNye]

So I ask you all... What the fuck is the big deal?

To be honest I could ask the same question about the Half Life series

It's a unique FPS game.

And what's so unique about it?

That it isn't an FPS....

FPS stands for First Person Shooter.

Key word. First Person. Which in definition is to see the game through the avatar in their prospective in first Person.

At most the game is a Third Person Shooter mixed with Role Playing elements.

Sorry but I thought I would just clarify that.

 

[MetalDooley]

That it isn't an FPS....

FPS stands for First Person Shooter.

Key word. First Person. Which in definition is to see the game through the avatar in their prospective in first Person.

At most the game is a Third Person Shooter mixed with Role Playing elements.

Sorry but I thought I would just clarify that.

But we were talking about Half Life which is most definitely an FPS

 

[KrossBillNye]

That it isn't an FPS....

FPS stands for First Person Shooter.

Key word. First Person. Which in definition is to see the game through the avatar in their prospective in first Person.

At most the game is a Third Person Shooter mixed with Role Playing elements.

Sorry but I thought I would just clarify that.

But we were talking about Half Life which is most definitely an FPS

Ah ok. I was confused cause the title of the topic was Mass Effect. My bad.

 

[Tjebbe]

I don't think that ME is especially good (though I kinda liked 1 and 2, I have not played 3 yet). But I also don't understand why HL is so highly rated. The first one was ok, but I thought the second one was boring.

But it's all opinion of course, I could not care less about replayability for instance, there's way more games than I have time for anyway. And I tend to prefer rpgs over shooters. So if I would have to choose between the two I'd certainly go for ME.

 

[Yopaz]

Opinions! People can like and dislike what they want. Some people like Mass Effect for many a reason such as the universe you play in, certain characters or perhaps the combat. Other people may not like it for similar reasons such as yourself or because of the ending to Mass Effect 3.

My fair suggestion to an added feature to the Escapist is that this post should be isolated and automatically posted whenever there's a thread with "why does people like/hate X" since it's ALWAYS the most relevant response to all of those threads. Whatever people post about story, gameplay or any of that it still boils down to opinions. Thank you sir for pointing this out. Now go on and have an awesome day.

Now personally I dislike the Mass Effect series because I feel like it's a dating sim with a few shooting bits and a story I do not care for.

 

[wierdman51]

I am tired of your disingenuous statements (heh, had to!) about the "Fact" that mass effect and ha;f life are both amazing.

I have a strong dislike for both. Half Life less so. But nonetheless. I dont see a reason for all the hubbub on one users opinion. Getting angry over it is ridiculous. Have some thicker skin.

 

[Cabisco]

I love Mass Effect and personally feel Half Life is one of the most overrated game series going, yes they are great but there is a sizable amount of people who full heartedly feel it is better than everything and take personal offense when something threatens this.

So yeah like everyone else is saying it's all about opinions but I feel this thread again highlights the typical Half Life hysterical fan base, god forbid something is considered better by people.

Really when I think about it, apart from both having guns and being videogames I can't really see how comparable they are. I guess you could argue they both have far above average stories.

 

[Brandon Logan]

Sub-par animation(lets blame mo-cap), Blue Alien Sex, Complete inaccurate portrayals of homosexuality and a fan base so entitled it almost makes me want to go to a firefly convention.

 

[sethisjimmy]

Mass Effect is a game with an alright if very cliche space opera story, and mediocre gameplay. The reason I so oppose it is because I don't like the way the rabid fans are pushing gaming further towards this trend of "story first, gameplay after" and "cinematic movie style" games. I know it's a brazen overreaction, but some part of me just feels extremely defensive about it. I mean why does anyone play Mass Effect? For the story right? Where's the love for the actual gameplay, the part of a medium that makes it an actual game, the most important part?

Eh, I know deep down it's a fallacy of sorts, that people can like whatever for whatever reasons, they don't have to love the gameplay.

 

[w00tage]

Personally, I think Mass Effect's kind of been coasting ever since part 2.

Don't get me wrong, they're not terrible games, and there's a lot to like, but I do think the OP is right in saying that it does seem to have gotten this reputation among fans as being not just a great sci-fi game, but some kind of high-point of science fiction of the last 30 years.

Honestly, I can't help but groan a little whenever people mention how great the story of the series is. As a unified three-act structure, it simply isn't all that coherent or well paced. Stories told over several instalments have to stagger events so that everything proceeds smoothly over the course of the entire series. Mass Effect doesn't do that. It front-loads its first instalment with narrative, largely takes a large step sidewards and backwards in part two, then races to the finish line in part three to make up for the lack of distance covered in part 2.

Now, there are certainly individual elements of the overall story that are very well done, such as the Genophage. But there are also large elements of the story that are really quite crap, such as the Human Reaper finale to ME2, and every single thing about Kai-Leng in ME3. Or, perhaps more importantly, the fact that Shepard has no clear progressive arc across the 3 games: in the first game he's fighting against Cerberus. In the second game he's inexplicably killed off, then brought back to life and sides with Cerberus for the most arbitrary reasons, introducing a whole host of headscratching moments and plot-holes in doing so. Then, in the third game, he switches sides again and is back to fighting Cerberus.

It's kind of like if in Lord Of The Rings, Frodo started out on his quest to destroy the Ring in Fellowship, then decided in Two Towers to surreptitiously work for Saruman instead, doing all sorts of secret dirty work for the evil wizard, only to flip the bird at him in Return Of The King and race to Mordor to destroy the Ring in record time. Regardless of whether you want to be 'paragon' or 'renegade' the whole thing is just inconsistent. True Paragons would never join as quasi-fascist an organisation as Cerberus in the first place, and true Renegades would never want to leave once they joined.

I think there's a couple of things that the Mass Effect series has been riding on as a whole:

1) The legacy of the first game. The first game was by far the one with the strongest, most cohesive and consistent narrative. It had a clear arc to it, a very well done premise, and packed in some very well executed moments that people are still talking about to this day, such as being forced to choose between one of your two squadmates. Both ME2 and ME3 had deeply, deeply flawed narratives in comparison. The way ME2 shanghai's Shepard into joining Cerberus I've already covered, and the same with the Human Reaper ending (so, so much derp in that ending). As for ME3, even without the ending fiasco, it features an incredibly badly written, frustrating antagonist (Kai-Leng), and essentially boils down to a Deus Ex Machina to resolve the plot. Creating an enemy as overbearingly evil and mighty as the Reapers only works when you can find a natural cohesive way to overcome their threat. Making up a MacGuffin without any prior referencing in earlier games that is magically able to wipe out the Reaper threat is not good writing. It's what you do when you've written yourself into a corner.

When it comes to overall narrative strength, it's only really the first game that manages to bar up to scrutiny, and I think it's because of the first game that fans have remained as dedicated as they have. If the series had started with a narrative as wonky as ME2's, it would have never picked up the kind of reception it has.

2) The increased emphasis on sex. No, sorry, I'm going to argue this one. The first Mass Effect included romance sideplots without focusing unduly on them. You had the choice to hook up with your party members, but they still existed as characters whether or not you forced your tongue down their throat. But starting with 2, Bioware started to specifically define the characters based on whether you could bone them or not. Sure, they had tragic backstories and snarky one-liners, but seemingly everything from the writing to the marketing focused on the idea that Commander Shepard is a bonafide space-pimp, and everyone in your party has the hots for you. Mass Effect went from being a throw-back to classic Space opera fiction to being a chance for sweaty palmed teenagers to shag their way round the galaxy.

You can tell simply by how noticing how many people's recollections of the latter 2 ME games revolved around which character they hooked up with or wanted to hook up with (Tali and Garrus being the most commonly mentioned). ME 2 is basically one giant game of blind date, with Shepard being presented with a selection of possible characters that he can knock boots with. The actual narrative, the plot relevant stuff carried over from the first game, is pretty poor, and it's not much better in the third game.

This is why I don't have a lot of love for the ME franchise. It was a series that started off focusing on big ideas and themes, and it gradually morphed into simply seeing how many woobie characters Bioware could fit into one game. For all that Bioware said from the outset that they were planning it as a trilogy, it seems to me that they simply didn't write out enough of their narrative from the start, and instead just decided to make it up as they went along. And when compared to the storytelling brilliance that other recent sci-fi such as Battlestar Galactica have managed to maintain across their entire span, for me that simply doesn't cut the mustard.

Of course, all this is IMO, so please don't take this as me trying to spout objective reasoning and gospel truth.

Dead on and the reason I only watched a LP of ME2 and haven't bothered with ME3. And I am a sci-fi guy and gamer, so this should absolutely be my thing. ME1 had major flaws, as in shallow, plot driven characterization of the MQ, seriously exploitable powers, and ham-handed "romance" dialogue that could be triggered accidentally (I ended up with the Asari consort by ACCIDENT lol) but that could be forgiven because it was a first attempt.

But I skipped the second and third games because I won't deal with some writer's arrested-development sexual power fantasy ham-fisted into the game and forced onto the supporting characters. Supporting or not, they are supposed to be characters, and that means the MQ is not the center, lodestone and sexual deity of their existence. Having them make their OWN hookups, or NOT, would have been far more believable, not to mention palatable. And the moral decisions and faction changes that opens up would have been interesting, to say the least.

And I also won't deal with a MQ plot that isn't fit for a kid's cartoon. You said it better than I could, so I won't repeat it here (although I disagree with BSG being storytelling "brilliance", but that's a different convo). But at any point, I could usually think of different, somewhat intelligent things for Shep to do instead of shoot his way through the corridors because rawr bad@ss. And no way to betray Cerberus and take the ship off to the side of the good guys right off? Come on.

I kind of wish there was a mod to let you choose a selection of missions to play through as the whole game. I would be interested to go through like that, especially if we could compare or share the mission sets we choose.

 

[Terminate421]

Half-life sucks.

Mass Effect is better because I can sit down and have a decent conversation with Garrus.

Valve is just, much more deliberate in everything. The villain in ME2 isn't worth a damn, the opening and ending are illogical, ME3 is overall very mediocre.

The Design Process for Half Life 2 was to take as much time and resources as they needed to "make it the best game ever made." Everything is perfected, designed and deliberate. There's no parts that are bad (Only graphics and such compared to modern ones, of course) only some meh parts. And HL2 will always remain the most amazing game I've ever played.

Whenever I replay HL2 or it's episodes I have fun and I am intrigued by it.

If I ever have to replay ME1, ME2 or 3 I'll be bored to death. (except for most of the latter half of ME1 where the developers at Bioware were still thinking for themselves.)

Thats great, thanks for sharing. I'm still not convinced and I find Half-life still awful. I like Valve's other franchises such as Left 4 Dead, Portal and Team Fortress but the truth is I cannot stand Half-life's "godly" status it gets when I feel that there is nothing special about it, other than modding capabilities.

 

[bafrali]

snip

You hate it because it gets so much attention? That is the kind of behaviour i expect from little kids who are jelous of their newborn brother. As you can see it is not very mature

 

[Terminate421]

snip

You hate it because it gets so much attention? That is the kind of behaviour i expect from little kids who are jelous of their newborn brother. As you can see it is not very mature

Thats not it at all.

I hate it because it feels dated, plays like ass, linear as balls, and is just boring in general. There is nothing special about Half-life IMO, other than modding capabilities.

Overrated isn't the primary concern with my hate towards it.

 

[bafrali]

snip

You hate it because it gets so much attention? That is the kind of behaviour i expect from little kids who are jelous of their newborn brother. As you can see it is not very mature

Thats not it at all.

I hate it because it feels dated, plays like ass, linear as balls, and is just boring in general. There is nothing special about Half-life IMO, other than modding capabilities.

Overrated isn't the primary concern with my hate towards it.

What a shame. Valve worked so hard to keep the gameplay varied too. There is no need for hate though. Maybe Half Life 3 will change your mind.

 

[Gorilla Gunk]

It's science fiction for people who love melodrama and don't want to think too hard.

 

[Terminate421]

snip

You hate it because it gets so much attention? That is the kind of behaviour i expect from little kids who are jelous of their newborn brother. As you can see it is not very mature

Thats not it at all.

I hate it because it feels dated, plays like ass, linear as balls, and is just boring in general. There is nothing special about Half-life IMO, other than modding capabilities.

Overrated isn't the primary concern with my hate towards it.

What a shame. Valve worked so hard to keep the gameplay varied too. There is no need for hate though. Maybe Half Life 3 will change your mind.

Its ironic because I like all of there other games but Half-life isn't what people make it out to be (At least for me)

Hate is too strong of a word I guess, I can't say its bad because a truly bad game is something like Too Human. How about, "I just don't like it"