Sorry, but Mass Effect is not large Open World planets full of npcs and fetch quests. It's a story where you always decide which main quest to take next between a tight intro and end-sequence and the side-content is conversational and the optional planets are just vibe-zones with one quest encounter, and there's 30 of them, not 6 Dragon Age Inquisition levels.
he is right, planets were composed of this : >different flavour text >different 3D geometry + texture >different skybox
and that's it. calling them "vibe-zones" isn't really far off
that's why most journalists didn't like them back in the days, the planets were "roleplay-heavy"
ME3 had action mode to skip the entire gameplay pillar of the conversation wheel and that's single-handedly the reason why it's the worst game in the series. Even Andromeda was better although its dialogue wheel implementation was not as thoughtful as it was in ME1 and ME2.
people playing mass effect for anything but the story are sadomasochists.
bioware has its writing to stand on and nothing else, the gameplay is woefully generic and dull, and all three haven't aged very well
andromeda doesn't count, and it's very likely we'll never see the next mass effect before bioware inevitably goes under as a result of severe financial mismanagement and hiring LITERALLY ANYBODY to come design for them.
they fricking deserve it for the absolute slop they've pumped out recently.
>same
If you're playing these games for their "amazing gunplay" honestly what are you even doing? The market is full of TPS games that are wayyyy better and with less narrative interruption on the combat. I get ME3MP was hype but honestly it's almost 1 for 1 with PvZ Garden Warfare if you need a game like this today. I don't get anyone who hypes up this franchise based on "Man I jus hope de gunplay and abilities are grande in de new game"
It's the best gameplay for beta cucks
Storywise... > ME1: Grande, a bit too macguffin heavy and the Saren/Conduit reasoning is a bit convoluted but the story did a good job of being about the core themes and escalating into its epic finale >ME2: Great heist story and a story about a lot of topics, and Suicide Mission is kino, but didn't push the main plot forward. >ME3: morono logic everywhere but at least has all the themes it needs like uniting the galaxy and sacrificing for greater good, but it invalidated ME2 and the ending also kinda invalidated every good plot-point in ME1. >MEA: An actually decent environmentalist sci-fi story underneath a pile of shitty character subplots and rehashing of ME1.
Like, I've seen better, but I find Mass Effect's way of injecting social issues and ethical pontifications way more effective than Gay Bill in the Last of Us or how fricking forgettable Marlene is. Maybe y'all think there's anime games that outdo these but I'm playing Persona 3 on my Xbox right now and I think it's literally just a bunch of fanfiction moon logic.
2 lays a lot of groundwork for 3 with how it expanded the cast, introduced Cerberus as a secondary antagonist, and developed the Genophage and Quarian/Geth plotlines.
The way I always think about it is that Mass Effect 1 has a lot of choices you make but only 4 of them are really affecting the plot. ME2 has 1 such choice, and ME2 often reminded you that you made the choices in the past. ME3 on the other hand bean-counts ALL choices representing ALL characters but throws them away seconds after they're shown, and then it does NOTHING with the mere 5 choices that actually were supposed to matter. Think of it this way: It's the only 5 choices that you cannot skip if you play the trilogy before launching ME3, as they're tied to main plot. >Rachni Queen's survival >Ash or Kaidan dying >Council: Dead or alive >Councilor: Anderson or Udina >Collector base: Kept or Destroyed
Mass Effect 3 gleefully abandons every single one of these minus Ash/Kaidan which it dealt with okay, but the Rachni choice is so obviously patchworked if you killed the Rachni that it hurts, the nu-Council is just the old one with different flavor text and the "humans control the council" thing from ME2 is dropped without a word, and Udina just sits in his office acting as Councilor without Shepard even going "HUH?" if you chose Anderson before. There isn't even a part on Earth where Anderson goes "It's all sorted out. Udina is my interim, you'll have to trust my judgment on that."
And yeah, that's not even "the plot", but ME3 already streamlined itself so hard out of actual choices that meant anything to the development of its core plot that there is no excuse in just how mediocre ME3's streamlined plot actually is.
>has character classes with unique identities >has class powers >power combos which squadmates can participate in >variety in guns and equipment >decent cover system >equipment progression through resource gathering
trans freaks want to throw that out for "story"
Based, absolutely agreed, I'm not going to sit here pretending to eternally seethe about the ending of 3 just to try to fit in.
Ending sucked, I don't care, the rest of the game was more than amazing. 2 was still the best in the series though.
Problem is there's so many of us who don't even think ME3 was an amazing Mass Effect game prior to the ending, and honestly I didn't even think it was a particularly great AAA game when I first played it. There are many parts where it tugs at your heart strings but there are just as many parts where it tries to do that, but falls flat because it's not earned, and even outside of how pathos-ridden the writing was in ME3 I was just waiting for the plot to... develop, and it really doesn't develop very well over the course of the game. It's Dragon Age Origins but Mass Effect but with less varying outcomes in the core story. Even the endgame is a lot like the Archdemon bit where you know you're going to make a sacrifice of some sort but in Dragon Age they present you with a dilemma before the climax where if the player doesn't make a sacrifice someone else will, and if you die that's it but if you survive you get an epilogue where you talk to people before heading out the door. In Mass Effect 3 there's this sense that I was just watching the writers's story and I didn't think they even told that linear story very well. The combat is better in 3 but I don't think the encounter-design was tight (they just spawn enemies right in front of you in most levels, and there's no tower-defense esque parts unlike ME2) and the conversation system was reduced to the bare minimum which killed all side-content in the game.
I just never understood the whole "Mass Effect 3 would've been perfect if the ending wasn't bad" mantra. I can't see it that way because to me it's just this streamlined experience where I felt like a passive participant, being forced to listen to ambient background dialogue as a reward for "exploring" places.
>grenade spam which pigeonholed gameplay into power spam >day1 DLC (javik) >broken codec/journal compared to previous mass effects (didn't have a submenu for objectives) >shit ending which made devs scramble a dlc to fix it >general hamfisted plotlines that originated from ME1 making a return
there's just too much that needed to be fixed for an ending to a trilogy
OP here
1>2 > shit > 3 & MEA
MEA did no harm to the franchise. It was already scorched and MEA moved so far away from anything that mattered that there was no way it was going to retroactively damage anything or make it seem less. MEA more than anything was just a 5-year-delayed proof for me that the people who knew how to make Mass Effect feel so special and kino were no longer involved. I saw that during ME3 but the reaction everyone had to MEA made me feel vindicated because up until that point everyone acted as though the only problem with Mass Effect 3 was that ending bit in ME3 as if the trilogy was somehow perfect otherwise. I didn't mind the changes in ME2 as long as it meant not taking over the series going forward. But I'd have happily taken ME2.5 as ME3 with more Reapers in the story and closing out the whole "cycles" plotline and Shepard's character, but that wasn't even what they made. They took the things ME2 diminished about ME1 and doubled down on them while losing their touch with the writing (because 3 of the OGs left) and ME3 never really develops the lore. Instead it was written by fans of ME1/2 who just reference shit. It felt like being a kid building a sandcastle and then your friends coming over to smash it. That's Mass Effect 3. Andromeda was then the idiots who smashed the castle trying to build another but ended up making a mountain of sand instead.
OP here
1>2 > shit > 3 & MEA
MEA did no harm to the franchise. It was already scorched and MEA moved so far away from anything that mattered that there was no way it was going to retroactively damage anything or make it seem less. MEA more than anything was just a 5-year-delayed proof for me that the people who knew how to make Mass Effect feel so special and kino were no longer involved. I saw that during ME3 but the reaction everyone had to MEA made me feel vindicated because up until that point everyone acted as though the only problem with Mass Effect 3 was that ending bit in ME3 as if the trilogy was somehow perfect otherwise. I didn't mind the changes in ME2 as long as it meant not taking over the series going forward. But I'd have happily taken ME2.5 as ME3 with more Reapers in the story and closing out the whole "cycles" plotline and Shepard's character, but that wasn't even what they made. They took the things ME2 diminished about ME1 and doubled down on them while losing their touch with the writing (because 3 of the OGs left) and ME3 never really develops the lore. Instead it was written by fans of ME1/2 who just reference shit. It felt like being a kid building a sandcastle and then your friends coming over to smash it. That's Mass Effect 3. Andromeda was then the idiots who smashed the castle trying to build another but ended up making a mountain of sand instead.
>MEA did no harm to the franchise
I'd argue it does. And it starts with trivializing intergalactic travel.
Now, I know what you'll say; "trivialize how? it's 600 years just to get to Andromeda!" Yes, yes it is. With our tech. Of various species that barely have two thousand years in the galactic scene. Because of the Reapers. Does the same go for other galaxies? Do they have a head start? Do they not develop technology? The Reaper cycle has been going on, correct me if I'm wrong, for a few million years, by the time of ME1. Did no other galaxy develop the technology to go to another galaxy? Was it all Milky Way organics going to the rest of space? Why did nobody come back, if they were? If the other galaxies developed their own organics, would then those organics create synthetics? wouldn't it be just a matter of time before those synthetics would eventually invade neighbouring galaxies? Wouldn't Andromeda's synthetics inevitably invade the Milky Way? What would the Reapers do, if synthetics from another galaxy had eradicated the Milky Ways organics? Would they just go "woopsie"? That's not answered at all.
mass effect 2 is a good game and no amount of shitposting will change that fact
Mass Effect 2 is a good game, but it also ran away from the responsibility of being the middle game in a trilogy
What? 3 being a rushed mess isn’t 2’s fault. The writers just had no long term plans and made shit up as they went even in 1.
They fricked up 2 with the Arrival DLC. Imagine having to pay to have the real reason why Shepard was locked up at the start of 3 explained.
Desperation at its best.
Andromeda did it, but you morons didn’t give it a chance.
Sorry, but Mass Effect is not large Open World planets full of npcs and fetch quests. It's a story where you always decide which main quest to take next between a tight intro and end-sequence and the side-content is conversational and the optional planets are just vibe-zones with one quest encounter, and there's 30 of them, not 6 Dragon Age Inquisition levels.
>vibe-zones
Drink bleach
he is right, planets were composed of this :
>different flavour text
>different 3D geometry + texture
>different skybox
and that's it. calling them "vibe-zones" isn't really far off
that's why most journalists didn't like them back in the days, the planets were "roleplay-heavy"
throw in occasional thresher maw loot pinata for variety
>optional planets are just vibe-zones
Your big, fat ass is a vibe-zone. Get outta here.
I did give it a chance. It turned out to be atrocious and should never have been made.
HAHAHAH
Mass Effect 1 sucked
me3 allowed you to skip gameplay but didn't include a feature to skip the story
ME3 had action mode to skip the entire gameplay pillar of the conversation wheel and that's single-handedly the reason why it's the worst game in the series. Even Andromeda was better although its dialogue wheel implementation was not as thoughtful as it was in ME1 and ME2.
ME2 is the best game.
>inb4 contrarians start writing essays on why driving the insufferable Mako on barren wastelands is fun
people playing mass effect for anything but the story are sadomasochists.
bioware has its writing to stand on and nothing else, the gameplay is woefully generic and dull, and all three haven't aged very well
andromeda doesn't count, and it's very likely we'll never see the next mass effect before bioware inevitably goes under as a result of severe financial mismanagement and hiring LITERALLY ANYBODY to come design for them.
they fricking deserve it for the absolute slop they've pumped out recently.
>same
If you're playing these games for their "amazing gunplay" honestly what are you even doing? The market is full of TPS games that are wayyyy better and with less narrative interruption on the combat. I get ME3MP was hype but honestly it's almost 1 for 1 with PvZ Garden Warfare if you need a game like this today. I don't get anyone who hypes up this franchise based on "Man I jus hope de gunplay and abilities are grande in de new game"
It's the best gameplay for beta cucks
same but for the story because the story is garbage
Storywise...
> ME1: Grande, a bit too macguffin heavy and the Saren/Conduit reasoning is a bit convoluted but the story did a good job of being about the core themes and escalating into its epic finale
>ME2: Great heist story and a story about a lot of topics, and Suicide Mission is kino, but didn't push the main plot forward.
>ME3: morono logic everywhere but at least has all the themes it needs like uniting the galaxy and sacrificing for greater good, but it invalidated ME2 and the ending also kinda invalidated every good plot-point in ME1.
>MEA: An actually decent environmentalist sci-fi story underneath a pile of shitty character subplots and rehashing of ME1.
Like, I've seen better, but I find Mass Effect's way of injecting social issues and ethical pontifications way more effective than Gay Bill in the Last of Us or how fricking forgettable Marlene is. Maybe y'all think there's anime games that outdo these but I'm playing Persona 3 on my Xbox right now and I think it's literally just a bunch of fanfiction moon logic.
2 lays a lot of groundwork for 3 with how it expanded the cast, introduced Cerberus as a secondary antagonist, and developed the Genophage and Quarian/Geth plotlines.
The way I always think about it is that Mass Effect 1 has a lot of choices you make but only 4 of them are really affecting the plot. ME2 has 1 such choice, and ME2 often reminded you that you made the choices in the past. ME3 on the other hand bean-counts ALL choices representing ALL characters but throws them away seconds after they're shown, and then it does NOTHING with the mere 5 choices that actually were supposed to matter. Think of it this way: It's the only 5 choices that you cannot skip if you play the trilogy before launching ME3, as they're tied to main plot.
>Rachni Queen's survival
>Ash or Kaidan dying
>Council: Dead or alive
>Councilor: Anderson or Udina
>Collector base: Kept or Destroyed
Mass Effect 3 gleefully abandons every single one of these minus Ash/Kaidan which it dealt with okay, but the Rachni choice is so obviously patchworked if you killed the Rachni that it hurts, the nu-Council is just the old one with different flavor text and the "humans control the council" thing from ME2 is dropped without a word, and Udina just sits in his office acting as Councilor without Shepard even going "HUH?" if you chose Anderson before. There isn't even a part on Earth where Anderson goes "It's all sorted out. Udina is my interim, you'll have to trust my judgment on that."
And yeah, that's not even "the plot", but ME3 already streamlined itself so hard out of actual choices that meant anything to the development of its core plot that there is no excuse in just how mediocre ME3's streamlined plot actually is.
>2 lays a lot of groundwork for 3 with how it expanded the cast
It literally ruined 3 because of how many irrelevant characters it introduced
You only say that because most of 2’s squadmates got sidelined. Mordin and Legion fit into 3’s main plot perfectly.
I WILL DESTROY YOU!
>has character classes with unique identities
>has class powers
>power combos which squadmates can participate in
>variety in guns and equipment
>decent cover system
>equipment progression through resource gathering
trans freaks want to throw that out for "story"
the story is way better in ME1 than ME2
2 > 3 > 1
Based, absolutely agreed, I'm not going to sit here pretending to eternally seethe about the ending of 3 just to try to fit in.
Ending sucked, I don't care, the rest of the game was more than amazing. 2 was still the best in the series though.
Problem is there's so many of us who don't even think ME3 was an amazing Mass Effect game prior to the ending, and honestly I didn't even think it was a particularly great AAA game when I first played it. There are many parts where it tugs at your heart strings but there are just as many parts where it tries to do that, but falls flat because it's not earned, and even outside of how pathos-ridden the writing was in ME3 I was just waiting for the plot to... develop, and it really doesn't develop very well over the course of the game. It's Dragon Age Origins but Mass Effect but with less varying outcomes in the core story. Even the endgame is a lot like the Archdemon bit where you know you're going to make a sacrifice of some sort but in Dragon Age they present you with a dilemma before the climax where if the player doesn't make a sacrifice someone else will, and if you die that's it but if you survive you get an epilogue where you talk to people before heading out the door. In Mass Effect 3 there's this sense that I was just watching the writers's story and I didn't think they even told that linear story very well. The combat is better in 3 but I don't think the encounter-design was tight (they just spawn enemies right in front of you in most levels, and there's no tower-defense esque parts unlike ME2) and the conversation system was reduced to the bare minimum which killed all side-content in the game.
I just never understood the whole "Mass Effect 3 would've been perfect if the ending wasn't bad" mantra. I can't see it that way because to me it's just this streamlined experience where I felt like a passive participant, being forced to listen to ambient background dialogue as a reward for "exploring" places.
>grenade spam which pigeonholed gameplay into power spam
>day1 DLC (javik)
>broken codec/journal compared to previous mass effects (didn't have a submenu for objectives)
>shit ending which made devs scramble a dlc to fix it
>general hamfisted plotlines that originated from ME1 making a return
there's just too much that needed to be fixed for an ending to a trilogy
TLDR learn how to use the enter key.
>Asking for reddit spacing
Go back
Ironic.
>shitty 7th gen brown and piss regenerating health/shields cover tps slop
Die
3>2>>>>>>>1
you dont get to decide what mass effect is
2>1>3
1 > shit >2 and 3
/thread
OP here
1>2 > shit > 3 & MEA
MEA did no harm to the franchise. It was already scorched and MEA moved so far away from anything that mattered that there was no way it was going to retroactively damage anything or make it seem less. MEA more than anything was just a 5-year-delayed proof for me that the people who knew how to make Mass Effect feel so special and kino were no longer involved. I saw that during ME3 but the reaction everyone had to MEA made me feel vindicated because up until that point everyone acted as though the only problem with Mass Effect 3 was that ending bit in ME3 as if the trilogy was somehow perfect otherwise. I didn't mind the changes in ME2 as long as it meant not taking over the series going forward. But I'd have happily taken ME2.5 as ME3 with more Reapers in the story and closing out the whole "cycles" plotline and Shepard's character, but that wasn't even what they made. They took the things ME2 diminished about ME1 and doubled down on them while losing their touch with the writing (because 3 of the OGs left) and ME3 never really develops the lore. Instead it was written by fans of ME1/2 who just reference shit. It felt like being a kid building a sandcastle and then your friends coming over to smash it. That's Mass Effect 3. Andromeda was then the idiots who smashed the castle trying to build another but ended up making a mountain of sand instead.
>MEA did no harm to the franchise
I'd argue it does. And it starts with trivializing intergalactic travel.
Now, I know what you'll say; "trivialize how? it's 600 years just to get to Andromeda!" Yes, yes it is. With our tech. Of various species that barely have two thousand years in the galactic scene. Because of the Reapers. Does the same go for other galaxies? Do they have a head start? Do they not develop technology? The Reaper cycle has been going on, correct me if I'm wrong, for a few million years, by the time of ME1. Did no other galaxy develop the technology to go to another galaxy? Was it all Milky Way organics going to the rest of space? Why did nobody come back, if they were? If the other galaxies developed their own organics, would then those organics create synthetics? wouldn't it be just a matter of time before those synthetics would eventually invade neighbouring galaxies? Wouldn't Andromeda's synthetics inevitably invade the Milky Way? What would the Reapers do, if synthetics from another galaxy had eradicated the Milky Ways organics? Would they just go "woopsie"? That's not answered at all.