Mass Effect series.

[Rand]

1>3>andromeda>2

This is why people shouldn't take rusty's opinions on games seriously.

Anyone who likes ME2 is a woman. It's easily the worst of the three, the entire game is just interpersonal drama.

After the kludgy mess of the first one, I enjoyed the shooting gameplay of 2. I thought the story was pretty weak, though.

[Vergil]

I remember trying Andromeda and not only did it run like shit but there was a persistent audio bug that causes weird noises to play or all dialog audio to cut out over 3 different versions of the game I pirated.

[SoLong]

The Qunari are tyrannical communists, but they validate trans people uwu. They're also funny sex pests now.

The kicker is he gave himself a social shield with "they/them" pronouns, making him immune to criticism, I guess. I hate this guy for ruining what I enjoyed. Love or hate David Gaider, it's a travesty that Weekes took over as a head writer.

Honestly that part was where they broke my willing suspension of disbelief too.

The Qunari brainwash people. Not just with standard gitmo tactics, they have wonderful magic ways to lobotomize you too if you step out of line. The idea that a society entirely built around absolute conformism would bend over for a handful of trannies is just ludicrous.

[Vergil]

they have wonderful magic ways to lobotomize you too if you step out of line. The idea that a society entirely built around absolute conformism would bend over for a handful of trannies is just ludicrous.

Sounds like they're accurate to me

[Shillitron]

Gotta respect this Manveer dude. He goes to Montreal aka Shitlib central, joins the most libtarded dev studio at that time, rubs his racism right into fellow devs' faces, leaves.

Then the players praise Andromeda's gameplay (the thing he worked on), while shitting on everything else.

He lied about his role, bioware made a public statement about it after he was let go.

Source?

[Mondain]

Gotta respect this Manveer dude. He goes to Montreal aka Shitlib central, joins the most libtarded dev studio at that time, rubs his racism right into fellow devs' faces, leaves.

Then the players praise Andromeda's gameplay (the thing he worked on), while shitting on everything else.

He lied about his role, bioware made a public statement about it after he was let go.

Source?

[loregamer]

Non sequitar but how did you guys feel about the Citadel DLC? I wasn't really a fan. It felt out of place, like trillions are dying to the reapers every second Shephard delays and he's throwing a dance party? Really? And it just felt like it was the MCU DLC to the games.

I think I'd have liked it better if I used the Citadel Epilogue mod.

[Envergence]

Non sequitar but how did you guys feel about the Citadel DLC? I wasn't really a fan. It felt out of place, like trillions are dying to the reapers every second Shephard delays and he's throwing a dance party? Really? And it just felt like it was the MCU DLC to the games.

I think I'd have liked it better if I used the Citadel Epilogue mod.

It was stupid on many levels, and I hated everything about it. I have no problem with the "We're gonna dry-dock the Normandy so it's in tiptop shape before you take on Cerberus and the Reapers," but everything else after that blows.

The story is shit, the cringe OC from one of the shitty books is shit and in typical ME3 Cerberus fashion, is always one step ahead of the player.

The party is shit, and so are the majority of companion scenes. All characters are reduced to stupid tropes, stereotypes, and jokes because the writers wanted to cater to their retarded fans' "headcanons."

And because they catered to them, Citadel gets endless heaps of praise. They successfully amused the part of their fan base that never matured beyond their teenage years (AKA most of them).

[Irenaeus]

I know my opinion isn't going to be popular in this thread but I wanted to say that Mass Effect (1) sucked ass. The writing was really bad from the start, you had a nigger boss in the tutorial and you were quickly introduced to that pathetic scifi cliche with the Council of Aliens. Then after you have the main character give a ridiculous speech when launching his ship from the main spaceport. I kept playing a bit because the gameplay was ok - I liked the explanation for infinite bullets and overheating stuff, also liked the tank with rockets that you explored random worlds with - and parts of the lore were interesting but the writing continued to be bad and I dropped the game around the Ice Planet stage.
My brother played the trilogy and whenever I got together to watch him play the bad writing would always make me cringe. The intro to Mass Effect 2 (where you die and they rebuild your body) was a high point in bad ideas for videogames. I watched some other scenes on youtube (Tali shit, the Pirates of Penzance song, the really bad robot/ai main enemy speeches, some James Bond villain speeches, the terrible endings in ME3). It was mostly bad, terrible. Like Ass-Ass-In Creed, Skyrim or BG3, I'll always have a hard time understanding the popularity of this series.

[Vergil]

I know my opinion isn't going to be popular in this thread but I wanted to say that Mass Effect (1) sucked ass. The writing was really bad from the start, you had a nigger boss in the tutorial and you were quickly introduced to that pathetic scifi cliche with the Council of Aliens. Then after you have the main character give a ridiculous speech when launching his ship from the main spaceport. I kept playing a bit because the gameplay was ok - I liked the explanation for infinite bullets and overheating stuff, also liked the tank with rockets that you explored random worlds with - and parts of the lore were interesting but the writing continued to be bad and I dropped the game around the Ice Planet stage.
My brother played the trilogy and whenever I got together to watch him play the bad writing would always make me cringe. The intro to Mass Effect 2 (where you die and they rebuild your body) was a high point in bad ideas for videogames. I watched some other scenes on youtube (Tali shit, the Pirates of Penzance song, the really bad robot/ai main enemy speeches, some James Bond villain speeches, the terrible endings in ME3). It was mostly bad, terrible. Like Ass-Ass-In Creed, Skyrim or BG3, I'll always have a hard time understanding the popularity of this series.

I think most of your criticisms are pretty valid it's really up to whether the stuff surrounding that is interesting/enjoyable enough for you to counter act those negative points. I didn't mind some of the cliches because it's a new franchise and they have to get the player up to speed on how this universe works. Mass Effect has always had a pretty lame generic main plot to just get things moving but I liked a lot of the smaller stories and character stuff. It's when those started taking a nose dive as the series went on that the other issues became unbearable alongside the new ones each entry brought. It's like as the series went on they took the wrong lessons every time and stripped away a little more of the good parts to emphasize the shit that sucks.

[Rand]

Fucking pussies.
There ARE times when it's appropriate to harass people, such as when they're being lying assholes messing up games you care about or gaming as a whole.

[A Chinese opium den]

Non sequitar but how did you guys feel about the Citadel DLC? I wasn't really a fan. It felt out of place, like trillions are dying to the reapers every second Shephard delays and he's throwing a dance party? Really? And it just felt like it was the MCU DLC to the games.

I think I'd have liked it better if I used the Citadel Epilogue mod.

Its great as the fun send-off to end the trilogy in a nice way that it was made to be, but its much more like a jap style fan disk than a traditional RPG expansion pack really. I don't think you should even be able to start it without having finished the game as a character imported through ME 1 and 2, but they didn't do that for obvious business/accessibility reasons so it can feel very out of place if your just halfway through the game and play it.

[Oyster Sauce]

Shepard's dancing is my favorite recurring gag

[BobT]

I wish someone would mod the foids in the games not to be ugly.

I wouldn't have minded a game with a less over the top threat that fleshed out the universe a bit more.

That's an issue many cRPGs face - the writers are retarded and think they need to up the stakes, which then clashes with the gameplay since the devs are too chickenshit to add a time limit, which is understandable since players tend to hate those. Cyberpunk 2077 suffers from the same ludonarrative dissonance (look, I'm using big words). cRPGs really need to learn how to shape the plot in such a way that it allows some breathing room for the player.

One big issue I had with all three Mass Effect games is the lack of space combat. Your ship is your hub, you spend a lot of time on it, you can even upgrade it, yet none of the games actually let you fight battles in space.

That being said, a game where you are a human specter doing actual specter stuff, instead of trying to stop the n-th ancient evil from awakening, would have been a much, much better way to handle the games, allowing for far more narrative freedom.

I agree, you're a specter yet don't really go on any proper "missions". It's just reaper reaper reaper straightaway.

[Vergil]

When I was a kid I thought being a Spectre sounded like the coolest shit ever.

[Irenaeus]

I wouldn't have minded a game with a less over the top threat that fleshed out the universe a bit more.

That's an issue many cRPGs face - the writers are retarded and think they need to up the stakes, which then clashes with the gameplay since the devs are too chickenshit to add a time limit, which is understandable since players tend to hate those. Cyberpunk 2077 suffers from the same ludonarrative dissonance (look, I'm using big words). cRPGs really need to learn how to shape the plot in such a way that it allows some breathing room for the player.

(...)

That being said, a game where you are a human specter doing actual specter stuff, instead of trying to stop the n-th ancient evil from awakening, would have been a much, much better way to handle the games, allowing for far more narrative freedom.

I think this post more clearly details the issue I had with the game - aside from the more generic "bad, terrible writing" complaint I posted. Like Vergil said in responding to my post, which I completely I agree with, the problem of Mass Effect is that the main plot is incredibly cliche and predictable, and the twists are paints-on-head retarded, cf the whole plot of ME2. An LLM autocomplete would write a more original and less contradictory sci-fi story. If they had focused on the interesting subplots and quests, making a game more about the little original or creative aspects of the lore, it would have been a much better story. I imagine people who are fans of the game, like Vergil was saying, focus on these parts such as interesting companions and their sidequests. Personally, I wasn't impressed with any companion but de gustibus. A game with episodes where you play space detective/sheriff (specter - even this name is so cliche) would have been light years better.

As an example of a game with much better writing, I was replaying Bloodlines the other day, and had a blast just going through the variety of stories and quests that you go through in the first half of the game, of course the main plot (ominous antedeluvian coffin) being much more creative and well-written helps the mood.

[gerey]

A game with episodes where you play space detective/sheriff (specter - even this name is so cliche) would have been light years better.

I agree. BioWare should have ditched the Reaper plot altogether, or at the very least kept is as Eldritch background noise, and made each of the games episodic - focusing on a new (mundane) threat you have to face, but with an overarching plot of sorts focused on your party members and what you did. This would have given them much more creative freedom, instead of having to actively retcon and reretcon their own lore.

I remember at one point people were saying Mass Effect could have been the new Star Wars, or at the very least a worthy contender, but BioWare and EA had to squander it all away to scrape together what amounts to pocket change.

[rusty_shackleford]

I remember at one point people were saying Mass Effect could have been the new Star Wars,

monkey's paw curls

[SoLong]

I think most of your criticisms are pretty valid it's really up to whether the stuff surrounding that is interesting/enjoyable enough for you to counter act those negative points. I didn't mind some of the cliches because it's a new franchise and they have to get the player up to speed on how this universe works. Mass Effect has always had a pretty lame generic main plot to just get things moving but I liked a lot of the smaller stories and character stuff. It's when those started taking a nose dive as the series went on that the other issues became unbearable alongside the new ones each entry brought. It's like as the series went on they took the wrong lessons every time and stripped away a little more of the good parts to emphasize the shit that sucks.

Correct. Bioware's main stories were never good, they were just the bare maypole everything else danced around. Solid but nothing spectacular.

Their characters and little emotional moments were what helped them stand out.

Looking back on Andromeda I can see some of what I liked in there but honestly, many of the NPCs you spent the most time with are just painfully generic. The "diverse" human ones are the worst. The woman is obsessed with her asari, the gay guy's entire story revolves around him being gay (why would you recruit a gay man for a mission that explicitely requires procreation and is on a tight budget?) and the black guy is the generic resistance fighter who is sooooo respected by some group you barely hear about.

...Actually the rest are pretty generic too. The asari chick is the generic quirky genius woman, the old grizzled veteran krogan (still somehow the least abrasive of the bunch), the tough woman smuggler turian (she's least badly written woman for what it's worth) and the token new alien who might be the only non-generic member of the cast on account of being allowed to have a personality.

...dear god, the characters have less effort to them than Dragon Age 2.

[rusty_shackleford]

The overall story of games doesn't matter at all and writers focus on it because they keep hiring writers who have no experience writing for an interactive, nonlinear medium. All that matters is setting, characters, and individual story arcs('quests'). It's why people think the idea of a spectre going on missions would be cool.

[KnightoftheWind]

A game with episodes where you play space detective/sheriff (specter - even this name is so cliche) would have been light years better.

I agree. BioWare should have ditched the Reaper plot altogether, or at the very least kept is as Eldritch background noise, and made each of the games episodic - focusing on a new (mundane) threat you have to face, but with an overarching plot of sorts focused on your party members and what you did. This would have given them much more creative freedom, instead of having to actively retcon and reretcon their own lore.

I remember at one point people were saying Mass Effect could have been the new Star Wars, or at the very least a worthy contender, but BioWare and EA had to squander it all away to scrape together what amounts to pocket change.

But that assumes they'll get to develop a dozen or so Mass Effect games to tell the "whole story", and with the same creative staff at the helm no less. They barely made it to three entries, I can't imagine they would have had the opportunity to do more, and thus getting to the meat of the story ended up being the best idea.

[BosanskiSeljak]

Non sequitar but how did you guys feel about the Citadel DLC? I wasn't really a fan. It felt out of place, like trillions are dying to the reapers every second Shephard delays and he's throwing a dance party? Really? And it just felt like it was the MCU DLC to the games.

I think I'd have liked it better if I used the Citadel Epilogue mod.

Citadel DLC was pandering from beginning to end with some really shit humor (MY TOOTHBRUSH!!). If the game was a bit different , would've been a cool "calm before the storm" session, hanging out eith everyone before it all goes to shit, as long as there was still some tension in the air because of Repear threat.

Was nice to have Wrex around again, though.

[rusty_shackleford]

I liked about 70% of the citadel DLC, some of it was far too tumblr-esque but the overall story narrative itself was better than the rest. And the arena was good fun.
Leviathan DLC was quite good tho. Don't remember any bad parts.

[Oyster Sauce]

I never played the Leviathan DLC. So they're giant squids and they're the most advanced race ever? They built space ships that could accommodate their gigantic bodies and launched them from underwater? Seems a little goofy.

[Vergil]

I never played the Leviathan DLC. So they're giant squids and they're the most advanced race ever? They built space ships that could accommodate their gigantic bodies and launched them from underwater? Seems a little goofy.

It introduces a super secret even more ancient race at the last minute that ultimately amount to nothing but war assets

[rusty_shackleford]

overall stories are dumb so idc, the individual dlc itself was cool

[Oyster Sauce]

I never played the Leviathan DLC. So they're giant squids and they're the most advanced race ever? They built space ships that could accommodate their gigantic bodies and launched them from underwater? Seems a little goofy.

It introduces a super secret even more ancient race at the last minute that ultimately amount to nothing but war assets

Read the wiki page and it seems like they're an even greater threat to humanity than the reapers or curing the genophage. There isn't even an option to take them out?
Still not sure how ME4 is supposed to work

[loregamer]

Leviathan DLC was pretty cool. I was rolling my eyes at the idea of a “good” Reaper halfway through it, but then I saw the Leviathan and was like OH SHIT

[TheEmptyRoad]

I think we should have gotten a Crucible DLC where we had to solve a problem or a leak with the big superweapon being worked on. Also would’ve been nice to see some of our ‘War Assets’ in the flesh there.

[Mondain]

All the stuff in mass effect would make me more religious, not less. The more evidence of intelligent design the less likely we're just meaningless space dust, not more likely. And the leviathans get quite close to the concept of a deity, so....