Jashin on 27/8/2008 at 14:25
In Deus Ex the Renton scenario played out across the span of the game.
This is not worthy :p
ercles on 28/8/2008 at 08:17
After looking through some other reviews of Mass Effect, I'm glad to see I wasn't the only one who enjoyed this game. Yes, it was unorigional, but god damn the characters were well written...
Zillameth on 30/8/2008 at 15:45
Characters in Mass Effect are not at all well written. They are just copies and rehashes of characters from older Bioware games most of the time. They don't have anything interesting to say. They are one-dimensional in that every character is just one personality trait plus one struggle against some minor vice (Ashley doesn't trust aliens, Liara is a social outcast, Kaidan has migraines, Garrus doesn't like playing by the rules, Urdnot lacks subtlety, and Tali is homesick). It's like authors wanted to copy Babylon 5, but ended up copying JAG instead.
When they started quoting poetry, the pretentiousness factor jumped so high it made a hole in my ceiling.
june gloom on 30/8/2008 at 15:50
Quote Posted by Zillameth
It's like authors wanted to copy
Babylon 5, but ended up copying
JAG instead.
/me spits drink
Koki on 30/8/2008 at 15:54
I liked JAG :(
Matthew on 30/8/2008 at 23:30
Koki, man, my respect for you just went ++.
mothra on 1/9/2008 at 10:08
Quote Posted by Zillameth
Characters in Mass Effect are not at all well written. They are just copies and rehashes of characters from older Bioware games most of the time. They don't have anything interesting to say. They are one-dimensional in that every character is just one personality trait plus one struggle against some minor vice (Ashley doesn't trust aliens, Liara is a social outcast, Kaidan has migraines, Garrus doesn't like playing by the rules, Urdnot lacks subtlety, and Tali is homesick). It's like authors wanted to copy
Babylon 5, but ended up copying
JAG instead.
When they started quoting poetry, the pretentiousness factor jumped so high it made a hole in my ceiling.
exactly my impressions of this game (just like JadeEmpire).
they do shallow or "pretend it's deep" pretty good though. so Bioware's out of the picture for the next decade, considering they wanna do at least 3 DragonAge's (not my cup of tea) and 2 other MassEffects.
Shakey-Lo on 1/9/2008 at 10:13
A followup was (
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/08/31/the-sunday-papers-32/) posted on RPS:
Quote:
This was buried deep in the comments thread for (
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/08/26/morality-tales-bioware-versus-the-issues/) Walker’s piece on Bioware’s dealing with issues of morality in Mass Effect. Patrick Weekes, the writer/designer of the section Walker took to task playfully turned up to explain the background behind it, which was fascinating reading. (
http://pats-quinade.livejournal.com/125004.html) He’s reprinted it on his livejournal, and is well worth reading to grasp some of the difficulties of development: “Even without combat, the Citadel pushes the 360 to the edge of its memory constraints pretty hard, and at one point in playtesting, we were playing in a special game mode, “Get from one end of the Presidium to the other without crashing,” using our FPS indicators as sonar to try to figure out which way to go without our memory going splat.”. (
http://pats-quinade.livejournal.com/125004.html) Recommended.
Briefly following that, Jay Barnson of Tales of the Rampany Coyote also read Walker’s piece and had a little head think about that part of game design. (
http://www.rampantgames.com/blog/2008/08/rpg-design-making-tough-decisions.html) And he posted the results. Also, fun James T Kirk inspiration image.
