Mass Effect 2

The only problem is if you go back to play ME, then you immediately miss all the gameplay and graphical and storyline improvements they made for ME2...

<sigh>

Ya know what? Once they make ME3, I'd like to see a Mass Effect: Game of the Decade edition that is a remastered combination of every single Mass Effect game and DLC into one, continuous package.

but that's me with my fantasizing again.

Zoombie said:

This is not so much directed at YOU, Lhun, because you say its a matter of personal choice and I respect that. This is more a question directed at bioware fans who are calling this a betrayal of the "RPG roots" of Bioware.

Yes, Bioware made awesome RPGs in the past. This makes it impossible for them to make shooters, or RTSes, or whatever else they feel like making?

That complaint just weirds me out, is all.

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I guess it's not so much a feeling of betrayal because Bioware usually makes RPGs, but because ME1 had stronger RPG elements. I guess a lot of people hoped for ME2 to be more RPG and less shooter, and well, Bioware decided to make the game for those people who hoped for it to be more shooter and less RPG.

Zoombie said:

What law says that a company can only make one kind of game, anyway? Dragon Age was an oldschool, hardcore RPG.

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Haha, no. The benchmark for what a hadcore RPG is, are the good' ol PnP RPGs. Most MMORPGs are pretty hardcore RPGs. Well, those i know, i don't know if i know "most" anymore with new MMORPGs coming out right and left.
Anyway, Dragon Age, while awesome, is only RPG light. Like most console RPGs. Hardcore RPGs seem to be only MMORPGs these days.

And I bet Dragon Age 2 will follow the same progression as ME2: The RPG stuff, the graphics, the story...all will be increased, fine tuned, honed.

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Well lets hope that DA2 will increase the RPG elements as ME2 decreased them. If you ask me there's nothing wrong with Bioware making shooters or RPS oder action adventures or whatever you call ME, but i think it is a pity that there are so many shooters available from so many companies nowadays and so few RPGs.

LOG said:

Telling us what we (the gamers) already know.

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I'm calling bullshit here. Mass Effect isn't the first game to this by far. Heck they even brought up Fallout 3 (which fails in this department) without bringing up Fallout, which was one of the very first non-linear RPGs.
They might be right about ME changing gaming however. Sadly, it's not the first game introducing a good idea that gets that idea spread, but only the first really popular game. While Fallout 1&2 weren't exactly unknown, ME is vastly more popular. And it's a different gaming age nowadays. Hopefully ME manage to make good storytelling and non-linearity a standard occurrence in games, even though Half-Life and Fallout didn't manage to do so.

PnP RPGs and CRPGs are entirely different games. Expecting one when you buy the other is setting yourself up for disappointment.

One exists to tell a story. The other exists to tell YOUR story. Neither are better than the other...I've had just as much fun playing ME or Dragon Age or Planescape Torment as I have playing DnD, WOD, or RT.

And, of course, a lot of people wanted stronger shooter elements in ME2...and I rather like what we've been given...

As a fan of RPG's, I'd say that the Mass Effect series is better served as more of an action game then an rpg. The last Mass effect game just felt clunky in a lot of ways. The inventory system sucked balls, and the combat was lack luster. With the new game, I feel that it just plays better. It takes most of what's good from the first game, and made it better.

Also, it still has the codex and all its nice, nifty, scientific accuracy.

The Mass Effect games will have an influence on video game RPGs, but not for the reasons listed in that article. For example, I suspect we'll see the old style of dialog trees go the way of the dodo. The Mass Effect dialog interface is pretty good, albeit limited in certain ways, and will appeal to a larger market.

So, I beat Mass Effect. Now to transfer the save over and beat MAss Effect 2!

Zoombie said:

One exists to tell a story. The other exists to tell YOUR story. Neither are better than the other...I've had just as much fun playing ME or Dragon Age or Planescape Torment as I have playing DnD, WOD, or RT.

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Well, i don't know how your play/run PnP RPGs, but that's one things thats not supposed to be different.
What defines RPGs on the PC though is character customization, not storyline or storytelling. And for that PnP RPGs set the benchmark. And not only because PC RPGs have been derived from PnP.

And, of course, a lot of people wanted stronger shooter elements in ME2...and I rather like what we've been given...

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Well it's not bad, for a shooter. But then, if there's one genre that's being flooded with games it's shooters, while RPGs have been almost as rare the last few years as TBS.

The one thing I want to see in future mass effect games is a more realistic "good/evil" system employed.

For example, the end of Mass Effect 1, puts you in a position where you've got to decide to save the council. Now I chose to focus my attack on the reaper. It's not because I hated the council, but because I felt that if it was me that's what I'd do. I'd rather us lose some leaders then risk extinction. However, if you make this choice it's portrayed as a "renegade" type of decision. What should have happened, is if you choose to try to save the council, is that they die anyway, and in the process most of the human fleet gets wiped out(you still kill the reaper, but rather then being in a position of dominance, basically all law and order in citadel space goes to hell because the human fleet got killed off).

They need more catch 22 types of scenarios. That way there is a realistic aspect to trying to play "the good guy", in that being the good guy sometimes causes more harm then being the bad guy. I'd like to see something like that pop up in mass effect 3.

Dommo said:

The one thing I want to see in future mass effect games is a more realistic "good/evil" system employed.

For example, the end of Mass Effect 1, puts you in a position where you've got to decide to save the council. Now I chose to focus my attack on the reaper. It's not because I hated the council, but because I felt that if it was me that's what I'd do. I'd rather us lose some leaders then risk extinction. However, if you make this choice it's portrayed as a "renegade" type of decision. What should have happened, is if you choose to try to save the council, is that they die anyway, and in the process most of the human fleet gets wiped out(you still kill the reaper, but rather then being in a position of dominance, basically all law and order in citadel space goes to hell because the human fleet got killed off).

They need more catch 22 types of scenarios. That way there is a realistic aspect to trying to play "the good guy", in that being the good guy sometimes causes more harm then being the bad guy. I'd like to see something like that pop up in mass effect 3.

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I agree!

<stamps agreement on Dommo's forehead>

They needed to add this renegade interrupt.

LOG said:

1) Their first problem was getting it for the console XP

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To be fair, some games have problems with text display on PC monitors as well. Empire: TW for example has horribly blurry text on TFT monitors, unless the resolution is the monitors native resolution. A problem i haven't encountered since the very first TFT monitors.
But yeah, PCs haven used SDTV resolutions in decades.

actually, my first thought was, "Well, that's just gonna get silly. It's gonna be like an episode of Star Trek, 35 minutes to build the "all you alls gonnna die" tension, 10 minutes for jordi/data/riker/picard/whoever to have their side plot and then solve it in 5 lame minutes."

Yes, I do think in /'s.

My first thought was 2011 was too far into the future.

Well we knew the Reaper invasion was coming.

My money says that Shepard, renegade or paragon, makes the Heroic Sacrifice at the end of 3.

So I must have missed the earlier discussions on what constitutes an RPG. For my part, I'm having trouble seeing Mass Effect as anything but. I'm making choices that affect what happens. I'm playing my role. Granted, a lot of the choices end up in a firefight, but that's the Game part of it.

Anyway, props to BioWare for making story a huge part of the experience. I love an old-fashioned shoot em up, but a good story will make for more memorable games.

That's all fine and well, but it's not what was meant when a computer game was labelled RPG in the last, oh, twenty or so years. The previously used descriptor for games where player decisions have an impact was "non-linear". Probably sounds to complicated for today's target audience.

But i've given up being annoyed about it and just accept that RPG ist the game industry's new bullshit term which gets slapped on every single game when the publisher thinks it'd increase sales to be labelled RPG, and so is completely meaningless by now.

I do agree that 'RPG' has been thrown onto titles that barely deserved the moniker. Hell I think they even called 'Splinter Cell' that. I'm still not seeing what makes the Mass Effect stuff NOT an RPG. What games would you call legitimate RPGs and how do they differ from other BioWare titles?

RPG means role playing game. Technically, all games are roleplaying games. An FPS has you playing the role of the titular character.

Therefor, I'd post it is not that you play a role but rather that you have choice in what that role IS.

Obviously, tabletop games always be better than CRPGs in terms of choice...but CRPGs could be determined to be RPGs based off how much choice they grant you.

Like, Arx Fatalis lets you customize your character into thief, warrior, wizard...or any combination thereof.

But the plot is still extremely linear.

Fallout lets you customize your character a lot, and make many choices, but the plot is very linear.

Planescape Torment allows for variations on how you play the Nameless One, but he still ends up being the Nameless One no matter what you do.

Mass Effect lets you choose the look and skills of Shepard, and chose "the gist" of his or her actions...so, its an "RPG" in that sense.

Its better to think of RPG's on a sliding scale, with zero being games like Painkiller or Half-Life, and 100 being games like...uh...any well designed table top RPG?