[Hades]

Mass Effect (and ME2 even more-so) are more of a TPS rather than an RPG.

[Mongoose]

Yeah, but it still has the whole endless-side-quests and exponential-option-trees that many RPGs, or at least the computer variant, seem to have.  I tend to prefer my games to be linear in nature, so I don't feel like I'm forced to replay them twenty times in order to see everything there is to see.  (Having a bit of OCD doesn't help matters.)  But maybe I will give it a shot someday, since I've heard nothing but high praise about the franchise as a whole.

[Starman01]

Well, I think both Mass Effect Games were certainly one of the best games in the last decade. Extremly good characters, good Story, awesome atmosphere, nice graphics, good action and dialogues and very great designed locations (main plot at least).  Of course, that's a matter of taste, I'm quite a RPG fan.

A shame that there seems to be no modding access. The always same buildings in the sidequest sucked especially in ME1

[TrashMan]

The whole concept they ended up using was fatally flawed because it rendered the Reapers into dependent, lamely Borg-esque things, merely human, instead of the Lovecraftian monstrosities they were supposed to be.

I agree.

In ME 1, the reapers were mysterious, ancient, cold, and menacing. It seemed liek they had no weakness.

In ME2, they are dependant on the human "slurpie", and explaining that as some sort of civilization memory is the biggest slap to science I've ever seen. What? Racial memory contained in human juice? WTF????
The reaper baby, the harvesting - those were HORRIBLE decisions. HORRIBLE.

[QuantumDelta]

Hmm?
Each reaper being 'the strongest race' of each era isn't too bad of an idea, the model was a bit tragic, but RASENGOKU! ..erm, anyway.

If they had used a typical reaper it probably would have gone down better.
Anything loses is 'power' as it's explained, all enemies become humbled when you understand them, by words or weapons.

I still don't mind the concept of each reaper being the sum of the galatically dominant specie, delivery could have been a bit better though.

[Demitri]

I'm not much of an RPG person.

Neither am i in all honesty but the ME games are def worth a go.

[Satellight]

I just hope they will release some kind of collector with ALL the 3 games and ALL the DLC together in ONE box. A nice box, if possible.

[consumer mode] I'm ready to spend money for this [/consumer mode] 

[Ransom]

This trailer did nothing for me. Need more information, I guess.

I kind of agree with NGTM-1R that it's all in the execution, at least where this series is concerned, but the execution in ME2 was awful. I don't find the Reapers intimidating. That's kind of a problem.

[Herra Tohtori]

I agree.

In ME 1, the reapers were mysterious, ancient, cold, and menacing. It seemed liek they had no weakness.

In ME2, they are dependant on the human "slurpie", and explaining that as some sort of civilization memory is the biggest slap to science I've ever seen. What? Racial memory contained in human juice? WTF????
The reaper baby, the harvesting - those were HORRIBLE decisions. HORRIBLE.

It was supposedly genetic material they harvested, not some sort of genetic memory. Incidentally it could have been better if they had used the abductees as source of some psyche building process, leaving the abductees as, I dunno, some sort of empty husks that maybe could have made some appearances throughout the game, foreshadowing what the Collectors were doing to them - ridding them of their higher cognitive processes, leaving them for the Collectors to use as cannon fodder.

Why, imagine if the game had had enemies like that, that would've been pretty smart.

Other than that, I agree that the... thing at the end was a letdown.

[T-LoW]

I was facepalming and laughing at the "my god... a human reaper..."
There are flaws but the games are absolutely great. But how to kill a totally overwhelming army of killer-ships? (points at Independence days windows based virus...)

[Starman01]

Also, there is a minor sidethingie that would interest me...

What is the dark energy ? Who creates, and controls it. Why have the Geth manipulated the star where we rescued Tali ? Somehow, I have the feeling that this could become a part in ME3

[Herra Tohtori]

Dark matter would be more likely culprit for Haestrom's accelerated decay, although there is speculation that dark matter (more specifically dark matter annihilation) could make stars look younger than they are, not older.

After all, Tali is not a cosmologist, she's an engineer. She solves practical problems, like how is she gonna stop some mean mother hubbard from tearing Shepard a structurally superfluous new behind.

She could easily have mixed the terms dark energy and dark matter. Because, you know, saying "dark energy this" and "dark energy that" is just the short route into explaining anything... it just becomes cheap phlebotinum.

Real dark energy is the element of universe responsible for generating a repulsive force throughout the universe, which causes the accelerating expansion (assuming the observations so far have been accurately interpreted).

[Starman01]

Hm, never heard of the dark energy in our science, only the term dark matter is known to me. But I was more referring to the part, where Tali said, that the Haelstroms Star Lifecycle has been accelerated. It's growing to a red star, way sooner than it was supposed to be. But you are right, in first place she is a engineer, not an astrophysican. Stil I liked her, and I want to see her face too (and she is now my girlfriend after all )

[General Battuta]

None of those points are connected to what I said, since my critique of the final draft has nothing to do with the 'combination enemy' (er?) trope.

Then you've completely failed to explain yourself in any meaningful way, since you were saying

rendered the Reapers into dependent, lamely Borg-esque things, merely human, instead of the Lovecraftian monstrosities they were supposed to be.

And I'm saying

If each individual Reaper is essentially the sum total of a civilization, these are the equivalent of a Culture Mind or similar entity.

Which is in direct response to your commentary that the Reapers are "merely human lamely Borg-esque" things. Since a Culture Mind is about as far from "merely human lamely Borg-esque" as you can get without proceeding to sodomize physical laws for the pure fun of it.

And actually the Borg have been known to do that, but maybe you've been watching too much Voyager and you've forgotten what they're like.

So what, then, is your real objection?

I think I'm not making clear exactly what was wrong with the ending. The fact that the individual Reaper is essentially the sum total of a civilization has nothing to do with the fact that they were rendered dependent and weak. We have known that each Reaper is a nation since Mass Effect 1, and we learned it again speaking to Legion well before the suicide mission. That is not at issue.

The real issue comes out of the same conflict that drove so many of the problems in Mass Effect 2: clashes between the art department, who want soft SF, and the writers, who want it hard. The soft SF crap won here, which is why the excellent original draft of the purpose of the Collector experiments (which jived nicely with the notion that the Reapers are each a nation, free from all weakness) was discarded in favor of the final draft, which rendered the Reapers most definitely full of weakness, unable to control their own reproduction. It was sad to hear poor EDI struggling through all that handwaving when it was clearly introduced to justify the human form of the final boss.

This doesn't mean the Reapers are ruined forever; like you said, it's all in the execution. There are interpretations of the Mass Effect 2 ending that still allow them to remain cool, and hopefully the fan outcry will lead them to take those interpretations.

Seven million in a week? Jesus, the Reapers are under-performing big time.

I know. That has me worried. Hopefully the Reapers are intentionally not killing people.

So anxious.

[Dilmah G]

...clashes between the art department, who want soft SF, and the writers, who want it hard. The soft SF crap won here,

Oh, what the hell? That sounds like a f@cking school, not a dev team!

Argh, silliness beyond my expectations.

EDIT: For grammar.

[TrashMan]

they should just retcon the end of ME2..IT NEVER HAPPENED!

[General Battuta]

they should just retcon the end of ME2..IT NEVER HAPPENED!

In my head I pretend they used the original draft. They can still say it's what the Reaper experiments were really about; it's an available interpretation of the human-gooing, even if it's a bit more of a stretch than the original draft was.

...clashes between the art department, who want soft SF, and the writers, who want it hard. The soft SF crap won here,

Oh, what the hell? That sounds like a f@cking school, not a dev team!

Argh, silliness beyond my expectations.

It's also the reason the warship fights happen in visual range (though they justified it nicely in Mass Effect 1, with the relay assault...maybe) and why Mass Effect 2 got its reloading mechanic, which I loved; the art department insisted the player needed the tactile feedback of reloading a gun.

[Dilmah G]

Oh, that's alright then.

[General Battuta]

Here's my quick and dirty flawless redraft of the ME2 ending, swapping in the original draft. Ransom, gimme your take on this.

Shepherd and her team reach the core of the Collector base, where they find a Reaper embryo that looks like the thing on the left:



It is floating free instead of being supported by four crappy little red glowing pipes. There are lots of big ol' cables like creepy umbilicals connected to its hull.

EDI explains that it has a fully functioning mass effect core, and that overcharging that core will destroy the entire base. (This removes the need to have a base-destroying reactor in a floor panel on a random hexagonal platform.) However, she will need direct access to the immature Reaper's systems to trigger the overload.

Shepherd is freaked out by this, but ultimately convinced. The final boss battle involves no giant Terminator making Transformer noises and playing peek-a-boo; instead your team jumps onto the Reaper's hull and moves around it, fighting Harbinger and getting EDI a hard link. There is actually a Praetorian to fight.

In a moment of horror, EDI explains that she has found all the missing colonists. They are alive inside the Reaper. Shepherd demands to get them out, but EDI explains it is only their minds, stored inside the Reaper - tens of thousands of colonists, transferred not by some bull**** 'raw genetic material' pipe that gives the Reapers their 'essence', but by the destructive dissection of their minds. But they are, EDI senses, no longer quite human... (Bear in mind this could be what's happening in ME2 already, it just wasn't revealed.)

The Illusive Man makes his call. He wants the Reaper intact. One of your squadmates suggests it'd be a crime to kill all these colonists. Another says they are already dead; whatever the Reapers have done to them, it'd be a mercy to end their suffering.

Shepherd makes her choice: overload the Reaper's mass effect core, destroying it and the base, or set it to emit a radiation pulse, killing all the Collectors but leaving the Reaper and its posthuman cargo intact.

Voila. All the horror of the ME2 ending retained - you can still have people disintegrating juicily in pods, because we could say their brain matter is used for part of the Reaper design, just as human brain matter is used in the Scions or Praetorians. And none of the crap!

nuuu ransom read the thread and LEFT

he HATES it
And Jeff Vader hates double-posting. *****.

[Starman01]

IMO if the left scetch, the real reaper larve would have been taken, I would have absolutly nothing to complain with the entire game. I even liked the reloading part of the weapons, it makes (forces) you to sometimes switch weapons, so that's really adding something.