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Post by A Normal Pathfinder on May 19, 2013 17:13:34 GMT 1
And if I know bioware they won't do something stupid like The crusible effects wore off Or they're still are reapers that survived Those outcomes would annoy me
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Post by Mr. Glow on Jul 6, 2013 9:03:59 GMT 1
And if I know bioware they won't do something stupid Top banter, matey. So anyway, what do you guys make of this? Between getting this Gears of War guy, and members of the memorable and enjoyable Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning coming to work on ME4, I'd say this RPG series is going from strength to strength!
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Post by jklinders on Jul 6, 2013 10:06:34 GMT 1
Unless we are getting level design from the Kingdoms of Amalur guy (little improvement there) and art direction from the Gears of War guy (lots and lot of brown anyone?) I would over all agree. Bioware has headhunted some pretty good talent this year!
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Post by Mr. Glow on Jul 6, 2013 11:56:09 GMT 1
Mass Effect 4 is certainly a game that should be made.
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Post by jklinders on Jul 6, 2013 20:53:03 GMT 1
Mayhaps my sarcasm detector needs a little more calibration?
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Post by Warhammer Gorvar on Jul 6, 2013 22:06:19 GMT 1
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Post by Mister Buch on Jul 7, 2013 0:10:48 GMT 1
It's... it's a small frog, it's a small frog. Get off, get off there.
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MEdiscovery
Gunnery Chief
The discovery of a life time.
Posts: 93
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Post by MEdiscovery on Jul 7, 2013 13:49:37 GMT 1
You and your space cowboys.... I still think it would be a horrible idea to set it after Mass Effect 3, since doing so would automatically negate or retcon the ending. If a fourth game really must exist then I guess playing as one of the exiting characters would work. I know Garrus is the big fan favourite but he's not one of mine. I would however like to play as the Illusive Man! Maybe it could be him in the First Contact War, eh? Saren could be in it. Zaeed would also have been fun, but I think that without the glory of Robin Sachs the character wouldn't work. But really, if they offered me the choice of a fourth game or drinking puddle water at this point, I would go for the water. If the game is about either Aria or Kai Leng I will shoot myself. Players had the option of killing Shepard in Mass Effect 2, and that didn't keep them from selecting the canon ending. I personally think they should pick a canon ending, though the only one with too drastic a difference would be the Synthesis ending.
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Post by A Normal Pathfinder on Jul 7, 2013 18:26:14 GMT 1
And if I know bioware they won't do something stupid Top banter, matey. So anyway, what do you guys make of this? Between getting this Gears of War guy, and members of the memorable and enjoyable Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning coming to work on ME4, I'd say this RPG series is going from strength to strength! Agreed
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Post by spookyjacobs on Jul 13, 2013 4:51:04 GMT 1
You and your space cowboys.... I still think it would be a horrible idea to set it after Mass Effect 3, since doing so would automatically negate or retcon the ending. If a fourth game really must exist then I guess playing as one of the exiting characters would work. I know Garrus is the big fan favourite but he's not one of mine. I would however like to play as the Illusive Man! Maybe it could be him in the First Contact War, eh? Saren could be in it. Zaeed would also have been fun, but I think that without the glory of Robin Sachs the character wouldn't work. But really, if they offered me the choice of a fourth game or drinking puddle water at this point, I would go for the water. If the game is about either Aria or Kai Leng I will shoot myself. Players had the option of killing Shepard in Mass Effect 2, and that didn't keep them from selecting the canon ending. I personally think they should pick a canon ending, though the only one with too drastic a difference would be the Synthesis ending. When it comes to going forward from an ending that had multiple choices, I'm usually all for letting the developers just pick one and go with it instead of retconning things or doing some kind of weird combination of all the endings like they did with Deus Ex. But with Mass Effect...ehhhh. From what I've seen, fans feel very strongly about the endings they prefer and the endings they don't. They could maybe do a poll for fans to determine which ending should be canon, but I feel like that would still leave a lot of people very unhappy. And there are so many other choices you make that would have larger implications later on that they would have to make a lot of polls. I would just prefer a prequel to avoid all that nastiness. Mass Effect is a rich universe that has thousands and thousands of years of possible settings, and that's only within the cycle we played in. And as for those possibilities offered by the four developers mentioned in the first thread, I gave my opinion on them on reddit awhile ago, so I'll just repost that here: Casey Hudson: Yes, especially the C-Sec one.Preston Watamaniuk: Ehhh...(The "brutal" Krogan melee one, my opinion of this one has since developed to no no no no no no no no no, etc.) Mac Walters: Aria could be cool. Illusive Man, maybe. Part of the Illusive Man's allure is the fact that he's a mysterious character. Yes, I know there was a whole book that gave his backstory or whatever, but do we need a whole game about it? (Although an XCOM-like game about managing Cerberus might be cool...) And not Kai Leng ever. Never again. Mike Gamble: My body says yes, but my mind says it might not bring anything that new to the table. Standard ME gameplay, just 50,000 years ago. I want something that feels fresh. Aside from shining more light on the Protheans, it would probably just be more third person RPG-ish Collector and Reaper fighting.
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Post by jklinders on Jul 13, 2013 10:17:20 GMT 1
There are a couple of main reasons why I don't really want to see a prequel. As I have said somewhere here before humans were only on the scene in the ME universe for a rather brief window of time. Something like 30 years. There is a pretty small history to draw on there that was not done to death in the games or books. The likelihood of any sci-fi game being successfully pitched without human characters is really low. So we will have no mystery at all in a new prequel game. Frankly mystery is part of the mystique as far as I am concerned. It's the reason a game doesn't feel as good to play the second time.
Assuming the unlikely happens and a really long ago prequel happens, Prothean era or Rachni wars, we're either gonna be fighting Collectors (again) or have a rehash of Aliens ala Mock Effect ("they're coming out of the goddamn walls!"). If it's gonna feel fresh to me it has to be either really out there, a different playstyle altogether (I still want me my Mass Effect space trader sim Freelancer style, I don't care how much they muck around with canon to do it) or set after the third game.
I see nothing wrong at all with Bioware picking a canon ending and using that to build their world from there. Fallout had about 100X the variables in the ending with the very first game in that franchise. They still picked a canon ending so that the sequel would make sense. Maybe the gaming community is different now ( I know it is but have to fucking get over ourselves eventually right? right?) but I don't remember anyone going apeshit over that and it made for a pretty kick ass sequel that made sense and felt fresh even though it was the same freaking engine and gameplay.
Market is pretty saturated with 3rd person cover shooters, where is my Mass Effect space Trading Sim dammit?!!
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Post by spookyjacobs on Jul 13, 2013 14:59:02 GMT 1
But the original Fallout simply wasn't as popular as the Mass Effect franchise. More importantly, Mass Effect has always been marketed to players as a game that's all about the choices you make. You're meant to mold you're experience and pick your very own special colored explosion at the end of the game and all that. For them to suddenly say, "No, that's not what happened. That's wrong and this is canon." just invalidates all the time and effort I put into the series. I don't know that I would even want to play Mass Effect anymore depending on some of the choices they made canon.
And I'm not so sure that a game without human characters is that out of the question. Maybe this is a bad example, but the Ratchet and Clank series has only had one human in it - who isn't the protagonist - and that franchise seems to be doing fine. People want human characters because they want someone to relate to. That's probably why if we got a prequel, it would be centered around a character we already know. But then again, many of the races in the ME universe have proven to be relatable, so I can see a game about a Turian, Asari, Krogan, or various races of your choice could be marketed.
But I agree that I would rather see some games from the franchise that aren't third-person RPG shooters. I would love a Homeworld style space battle game. Or an LA Noire style C-Sec detective game.
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Post by jklinders on Jul 18, 2013 18:12:46 GMT 1
I really don't see how the marketing or the popularity of a franchise has any bearing on the viability of picking a canon and keeping your continuity intact. As the creator sometimes you just have to piss a few people off and make a choice. Doing anything else creates the homogenized mess that we got in the third game to begin with. For example, renegade players had the choice to make the Rachni extinct in the first game. the right way to go would have been to leave the Rachni out of the third game altogether. This would actually have lent credence to the idea that renegade=pragmatism as this would have denied the Reapers a powerful source of shock troops. but the dev team pussed out and made some weird ass clone that they used to breed Rachni and left them in the game because "they didn't want to deny some players content because of past choices." Not making that up, that was their reason and it all but completely invalidated the choice to kill or spare the queen in the first game. So well before the ending, unwillingness to stick to player created canon lead to a worse product over all. There are lots of games with no or few human characters but they exist in their own universe and continuity. We are already used to seeing humans in ME so suddenly taking them out of it will seem a little odd to the player base. Plus much of the basis for sci-fi and science fantasy alike is seeing how humanity reacts in a wider universe. Take the human out and you lose a lot of your audience. Given how expensive these things are to make right now they are not going to risk that. It would take far more balls than bioware has shown in their history to make a ME game without humans or to pick a proper canon for the ending so I think one of two things will happen. Either a short term prequel around the first contact war and it's aftermath or something that happened after the third game with the space magic having in some way worn off. The first option sounds pretty lame to me as I hate prequels in general with very few exceptions. The second option will piss everyone off as it will be the final confirmation that the writing team has lost their balls and have graduated to straight pandering. Also apparently the next game is "moving forward" whatever that means. www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/126102-New-Mass-Effect-Moving-Forward
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Post by spookyjacobs on Jul 19, 2013 4:32:11 GMT 1
I feel like I'm just repeating myself, but my argument against a sequel where the developers pick the ending will always be that I think its wrong for them to take away the universe that everyone built by homogenizing it. It defeats the purpose of even bothering to play the original trilogy in any way that won't result in that outcome. But then again, I'm a weird stickler for things like that.
And I really just don't think that the races of ME are so...alien that people couldn't handle a game without humans. As interesting as Bioware made their cultures, the other races are not really that inhuman. They are all relatable in a lot of ways to the point that I really don't see an audience, even one that wasn't already invested in this universe being put off by them. Based on the suggestions these developers have put forth, they don't seem to think so either. More games centered around aliens than humans were suggested.
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Post by Tillian Panthesis on Jul 19, 2013 9:12:29 GMT 1
Where did I heard this catchphrase before? Oh dear...
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