Why Mass Effect RP does not exist?
It does, you just have to look harder.
I would've uploaded the d6, but it's 13MB.
http://masseffectd6.blogspot.com/
>>48025240
But no one plays it.
>>48025177
Because the GM controls what choices you make.
>>48025252
So? Start a game. Host it somewhere. Eventually someone will.
>>48025177
because the universe is dryer than the sahara
The community is terrible and full of waifu lovers like all bioware games.
>>48025177
Mass effect sucks.
>>48025252
>>48025240
I ran a campaign in this a while back, and it seemed really swingy. Our first session the party struggled to kill one enemy who wasn't fighting back with no DR or KB. Two sessions later, an Asari adept and 2 turian bodyguards were basically taken down instantly by a Varren and a Krogan, despite the NPCs having a 1 turn lead. The problem was that while high HP makes things take longer to kill, DR basically makes them impossible, and most in-book NPCs have a DR of 8+.
Plus spaceship stats make no sense. An alliance fighter can take down the Normandy in 3 hits? Nuh-uh
>>48025177
It's not a popular setting because of both the ire the games brought with it's lackluster sequels, and because all the really exciting stuff has pretty much happened eons ago in the lore. Also too much HFY, the other races are just there to get your dick wet and sell you things.
>>48025177
Because anyone who wants to RP in the mass effect universe wants to ERP in the mass effect universe, and dice just get in the way.
>>48025177
There is D6, D20, Dawn of Shadows and Spectres, Mass: the Effecting (for WoD), Fate Effect, and a couple RP forums.
And I'm probably forgetting some.
>>48025531
>too much HFY
then base it on ME1.
>>48025177
Because ME's fanbase is composed of horrible people.
>>48025790
>Humanity Fuck Yeah.
Definitions varies, but nowadays it's usually sci-fi wankery by bad writefags about a cultural element that they consider important.
They are some excellent stories in that genre, but it's Poe's Law at its finest.
Still not a reason to trash everything with that etiquette.
https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Humanity_Fuck_Yeah
>>48025886
Interesting read. I like it mentioning pursuit predation.
I'm not really into vidya, but what is the appeal of this setting? It always seemed pretty boring.
What does Mass Effect's setting have going for it that would make it fun for a multiplayer RPG?
>>48026200
vidya
>new rpg after a long time without a decent one
>sci-fi, to boot.
tabletop
>non-humanocentric setting, based on exploration and discovery
Take a look at a couple entries here, it should be enought to give you a broad idea of the setting (and the differences between ME1 and ME3)
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=27792
>>48026200
I think the main appeal the setting has is it's a high tech space opera that isn't Star Wars or Star Trek. It's also refreshingly unique in a lot of aspects, and its aesthetic has a very recognizable identity.
The ships look cool, the armor looks cool, the weapons look cool, the aliens look cool. It still has the typical Galaxy of Hats approach to its alien races but it's a little more understated and individual alien still have pretty distinct personalities.
Basically, it's a quality RPG setting which has most of what you'd want in a sci fi game already in it. It's a viable "third option" if you want a space opera game which doesn't have Jedi or the USS Enterprise in it and you don't feel like going through all the trouble of homebrewing a whole new setting.
It also has a sizable following, because the vidya were pretty fun. A quality science fiction experience featuring a colorful cast of interesting characters and a story which was fairly compelling until it shat the bed near the end.
>>48026692
>until it shat the bed near the end
What was wrong with ME3 ending lore-wise?
>>48025177
I can see why Joker wants to tap that/r/ing pic of EDI's cameltoe
>>48026013
pursuit hunting is actually badass. as a hunter i have to say it's not really possible or convenient nowadays but knowing that it's a strength of our species is pretty damn cool
>>48026954
I'm not as familiar with the huge amounts of backlore for the game as other people here, so I can't tell you much. My main beef was it came out of absolutely fucking nowhere and the "destroy the universe in three different flavors" style ending was pretty darn unsatisfying.
>>48026954
Forgive me for linking this, but here is a novel length rant that explores just about every reason people dislike the third and second games. In short, suspicions that Bioware changed writers for someone who wanted to tell a completely different story. And who presumably though Kai Leng was a good idea.
In fact, here is a picture just so you have something to direct your hate towards.
>>48027140
Derp, forgot to actually link:
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=27792
>>48026954
Literally everything.
The basis of ME3, both in lore and mechanics, is using all the knowledge, alliances and sacrifices made along all the games into a final battle against the legions of space-tech Cthulhus. You lose a huge battle, and every day you are there sucking the dick of a random aliens and doing the chores to get them to help you build the biggest army in the galaxy, and every person you saved and helped from all the games comes to your aid, while Earth's population shrinks by the day. You solve all sorts of centuries-old fuckups, even if they might cause huge wars afterwards, because everyone understands how much the evil tech gods will fuck the galaxy.
What happens when you reach the machine that most of Earth died to build and most of the galaxy sacrificed to aid it's construction? The most literal Deus ex Machina (As in, a ghost-god-machine-kid) telling you that you are a fucking retard, and that you can choose which color the ending is.
All three endings have all kinds of holocaust-level implications. The Red one? You blew up synthetic life, which is one of the most ambiguous thing since you spend a large portion of the game defining what is really life with some shades of transhumanism/transalienism. The Blue one kills you (all of them do) but you now control all the Cthulhus. Even if you are a murdering psychopath that sacrifices everything for the sake of what you want. The Green one? You fuck up dna so hard that the entire life in all of the galaxy is now a synthetic and biological hybrid. Your clue as much as everyone on how hard that fucks up life.
Also, you have an aditional chance of wiping all life on Earth, most of the life on all Galaxies and destroying most advanced tech if you don't get enough arbitrary points. The two ways to get arbitrary points are sucking as much dick as humanly possible, and by playing multiplayer.
>>48027140
>>48027157
To this day I still don't understand people who hate on Mass Effect 2.
It's by far my favorite game in the series and honestly I'd put it on my list of all time favorite games.
>>48027227
Question, what precisely did you like about it? The main storyline, the setting or the character side missions?
>>48025531
>Lacklustre sequels
ME2 was one of the greatest sequels ever you dumb cunt
>>48027042
Weren't you able to refuse using the Crucible?
>>48027325
All three, really.
>>48026692
>The ships look cool, the armor looks cool, the weapons look cool, the aliens look cool.
That doesn't really matter for an RPG, though.
As for the rest of what you said, why would ME need its own system, rather than just refluffing a generic space opera system like Traveller?
>>48027421
Not originally, that is DLC.
And if you do, the entire game goes "Shepard fucked up, and we hope when the next time comes to try save the galaxy they don't fuck up." and everyone dies.
It feels more like a fuck you for complaining than an option.
>>48025177
There's a pretty decent d20 homebrew out there, too
>d20?! REEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
Yeah, yeah. Nobody cares.
>>48027503
You'd be surprised how much people take aesthetic into account for their RPGs. I certainly was.
I also never said ME needs its own system. Just explaining why other people feel it does. If I were to run an ME game I'd just use Savage Worlds since it's my pet generic system.
>>48027325
Not him, but the atmosphere is different enough to feel fresh but doesn't feel like a different setting (Omega in particular was great), the new squadmates were all great (save Jacob), I liked the main 'heist' plot of the story and how it felt tighter than the original and the missions on Horizon, Collector Ship, Reaper IFF and Collector Base were excellent. Gameplay wise it was much better too. Combat was improved more in Mass Effect 3 but it was heaps better in Mass Effect 2 compared to the original.
>>48025177
There's always that autistic as fuck website.
If I was going to run Mass Effect I'd likely use Fate, or use it as an excuse to try Savage Worlds or Tristat dX or Traveller.
>>48027698
Use Fate if you want to emulate ME's deep focus on personal narratives and characterization.
Use SW if you want to play around with aliens and the tech. The sci fi supplement basically has everything you need for statting out both.
>>48027227
It was a excellent game by itself.
Gameplay in particular, was miles above ME1 (Christ, the loot system...).
However, it didn't advance the plot of the series one single bit, and paved the way for a lot of the issues that made ME3 despicable.
>>48027157
>>48026541
Hivemind at work
>>48028108
>However, it didn't advance the plot of the series one single bit
It did advance the plot, just not in the ways the new writing team they got for ME3 wanted. I'm thoroughly convinced they only hired people who put "I hate ME2. PS: Thane is a fag" on their resume to write that game.
>>48028229
>It did advance the plot
How?
Shepard doesn't progress compared to ME1, since the Collectors didn't exist in the first game, and are killed at the end. He did nothing to stop or study the Reapers in that game.
You could reskin ME3 and ignore the events of ME2 with minimal efforts.
The only element that furthers the plot is Haestrom's sun getting messed by Dark Energy, but it's both tiny and never brought up again.
There's Arrival, but it's a DLC.
>>48025177
Dungeon: The Dragoning 7th edition came out while ago.
>>48025177
>ctrl-f "GURPS"
>0 found
What the fucking fuck
>>48027417
ME2 wasn't a sequel.
It was an introduction of the "new" head writer's characters, into a universe he didn't care enough to build upon. I mean fuck, they even admitted to FORGETTING what the Protheans looked like (squid people in ME1) so Mac the Hack could introduce a race of Not!Geth (Collectors).
ME2 is a glimpse of what Mac wanted out of the first game. So much so that the thin plot of the sequel is almost a blow by blow of the first, just with more stereotypes...err I mean characters.
>>48025790
Lurk more faggot.
Can asari cross breed with varren? If i ever played an ME RPG, i'd play aggressive half varren asari, or at least everyone keeps implying or teller her she is to piss her off. Either that, a krogan or a vorcha. Hel, make her salty about not being let into the bloodpack.
>>48028891
Asari don't technically "crossbreed" with anyone at all, and when you get down to it their method of reproduction doesn't even require sex to happen, just skin-to-skin physical contact to help randomize her own DNA.
An Asari who wanted to get pregnant literally just could touch someone's nose with the tip of her pointer finger and then wham, she's knocked up.
That's why they treat sex so casually in their culture; it really has literally no inherent meaning at all to them so it's something they do for entertainment purposes.
>>48027325
I could put my dick in Tali
>>48028827
Yeah this is completely wrong my man
Please give me examples about how ME2 is a 'blow by blow' of the first. Aside from the 'run around trying to find out what the villain is doing ' but that applies to so many films and video games
>>48028976
Same but my Shepard's vagina and garrus' bird dick
>>48029143
You mean the metal bird dickDo not ingest
We made a really fast homebrew hack of FFGs Star Wars system and it works really well.
Basically you erase some Force powers and rename others so that they can be biotics and rename some species. Twi'leks are Asari, Trandoshans are Krogans, etc.
It worked surprisingly well for a hack that was made in 1 minute
Ran a game based on the D20 rules. Had fun.
>>48028891
>Dog fucker
>Wanting to play a ME rpg
I'm not surprised in the least.
>>48028624
GURPS is a terrible choice for damn near everything. It might surprise you, but most people don't like spreadsheets.
>>48029351
GURPS is excellent for modern stuff, and pretty good for patchwork settings.
I wouldn't recommend it for a space opera like Mass Effect, though.
>>48029351
>but most people don't like spreadsheets
Oh gee wiz, guess who didn't try GURPS.
>>48027417
ME2 was a series of recruitment missions punctuated by three story missions, and chest high cover wall shootmans with hilariously barebones sorry excuses for RPG mechanics and progression.
I've never understood why people love it so much. There's really not much there.
>>48029612
The character writing and world building was good, Anon. Seeing the darker side of the bright, happy world from the first game was pretty awesome.
That and the RPG mechanics and progression weren't that good in the first place, so it wasn't a big loss when they played around with it.
>>48029612
I agree. The gameplay, the story and the world seemed terribly bland for me and I couldn't spend more than 2 hours on it.
>>48028229
I'm with >>48028385. How exactly?
ME2s plot consists of these beats:
- We know the Reapers are out there, but the Council is doing nothing about it (which is unforgivable no matter what choice you made at the end of ME1. Saving the Council should make them give you the benefit of the doubt and start planning for the possibility Shepard is right - and sacrificing the Council and getting a pro-human council should logically mean they'll want to politically back Shepard).
- Shepard dies at the hands of the collectors.
- Cerberus (a terrorist/rogue organization who is directly responsible for one of the possible Shepard backstories, Akuze) "resurrects" Shepard because the Illusive Man has more money than teeth.
- Cerberus sends Shepard 2.0 to fight the Collectors (no chance of refusal) and discover why they're taking human colonists. Shepard 2.0 assembles a team of specialists for this mission.
- It is discovered that the Collectors are degenerated Prothean slaves of the Reapers, and that at least one of them (Harbinger) is prowling the galaxy. They're taking human colonists to build a Human Reaper (which looks like a skeletal Sentinel from X-Men). Apparently the process to create Reapers involves rendering organics into a grey paste or something.
- Collectors are defeated, baby Reaper is destroyed, and that's it.
The only real news is that not all the Geth supported the Reapers in ME1. By the end, we know that the Reapers are out there. They're coming. And no one is listening to Shepard for no particularly good reason so Shepard gets to be right and say "I told you so" in ME3.
So, we're basically where we started at the end of ME1, with a side story that only serves to highlight how poorly thought out the series was.Despite this, ME2 is my favorite.
>>48029612
They love it because it's better than the first in every way minus maybe the massive scale. Conversations flow better and have less exposition (fuck talking to Tali in the first one), and say what you will about cover shooting it's miles better than the janky shit of the original.
Like I said before, I've always seen Mass Effect 2 as a heist plot rather than anything else so the recruitment never bothered me.
>>48026692
Yeah, my least favourite part of Mass Effect is the main plot.
>>48029861
>Apparently the process to create Reapers involves rendering organics into a grey paste or something.
I seem to recall that one of the original ideas was that the human Reaper was bank of genetic material because "muh diversity" which was constantly brought up in ME2 and this was supposed to result in some kind of benefit. This plot point was then changed into something else in ME3.
The problem with ME 2 and 3 was the lack of immunity.
I miss taking rockets to the face with impunity on inasnity.
>>48028976
Tali is the best side character. Ending should have been Shepard and Tali building their own home on Rannoch, pioneer style
>>48029861
>>48030576
No matter what, the dialogue about the reaper juice as "the ESSENCE of humanity" at the end of ME2 is so deeply stupid it makes me want to jump off a cliff into a shallow vat of liquid nitrogen.
>>48025177
There are so many good sci fi settings that settling for Mass Effect isn't necessary.
>>48031251
Most of the main plot in Mass Effects makes me wish I was doing sidequests and exploration instead. Which is also why I like ME2 the best.
>>48031315
To me there was a very stark difference between ME1 and ME2 & 3 for that. I mildly enjoyed the main plot in ME1, and i despised it in the other two games.
>>48031139
Tali sucked and I got her killed deliberately
>>48031419
That's because you're a soulless monster who is incapable of empathy and love.
>>48031348
I liked the idea of the ME2 story being about investigating strange slavers in a rogue system. Most of it ended up just being about picking up fun characters, but whenever the plot wanted to remind me it existed, I always found it intrusive.
>>48028827
to be fair, we did see collectors in the prothean vision, and that would have been fine had they not introduced what the protheans looked like in 3. that under the reaper enslavement and being turned into horrors and foot troops made them so fundamentally different from what they actually looked like.
if they wanted to showcase the protheans, they could have done what they did for the ME3 multiplayer and have a single collector break away under thanks to the intervention of a Leviathan orb. that would have been.acceptable
>>48025177
I have the Mass Effect d20 system and it's objectively bad just by looking at it. The formatting alone causes me to weep blood. Pic related is a common example of what you're getting.
>White text on a blue background
>Two columns that are trapezoids, not rectangles, slanted diagonally from the upper left to lower right
>Tables are black text on alternating light blue and white background with a bright red border
>Horrible negative space everywhere, especially above or below tables
When pictures of characters are presented, they're in the middle of the page and the text wraps around them. The edge of the column becomes an IRREGULAR CURVE that adjusts so there's negative space between the text and the image.
I honestly don't know if this game is good or not because I can't stand to read it. The occasional glimpses and skimming I've done tell me that it's based on D&D 3.5 only with classes that draw their powers from a common pool of Combat, Tech, and Biotic abilities, with one or two unique abilities per class.
>>48028624
>>48029351
>>48029470
>>48029559
Huh, you'd think there would be GURPS Effect. On the Bioware dev blogs they flat out said that they used GURPS for in-house RP and initial worldbuilding
>>48031550
I completely agree. I felt the same way.
I did enjoy the way the final mission was implemented, but the main plot stuff had terrible writing and was either uninteresting or stupid compared to the companion-related missions, so it always felt like it was beside the point.
>>48031698
Well, I also cared even less about the plot because ME2 was the first game I played in the series.
>>48028976
Ahh a fellow man of class and taste.
>>48026954
Well, >>48027199 covers most of it, but from a Doylist story perspective rather than an in-game lore Watsonian one - The Catalyst is not foreshadowed at all. The goofy little AI fuck just shows up at the end of the game, with a 'fuck you very much.' All those 'dream forest' nightmares are so much wasted time in game that could have been better spent giving the Catalyst some foreshadowing and actual character.
Narratively the three endings (all four, with the extended cut) shit all over the primary theme of the ME universe, which is choice. Your choices matter. Every time you make a choice in ME1 or 2, it echoes into 3, and choices made in earlier games impact what options you can take against the Reapers and what options are closed to you. But you get to the endings, and none of the previous choices matter. Now it's a choice between red, blue, and green. The initial endings completely ignore the serious and possibly horrific consequences of compromises and back deals you make to try and gather up the forces to form your giant armada. The extended endings are better, but only give your previous decisions a nod or two.
Trying to wrap up the whole of the ME trilogy with a single, easily contained ending was a mistake, and what it really needed was an extended epilogue chapter that let you play as a new recruit fresh to the Normandy, showing how things had changed in the year(s) after the Catalyst fired.
Storywise, 3 is all over the place as well - Some arcs are fucking astounding, like the whole thing with Mordin Solus. Other parts are total shit, like anything involving Kai Leng.
>>48027227
I can understand the hate ME2 gets even if I don't share it. It's a perfectly fine for most Shepards - except Sole Survivors. They want to punch Miranda's head off of her cat-suited body and tell TIM to go stick his head in a space oven. Instead you are pretty much forced to go along with the same guys who murdered your buddies.
>>48028976
You got any porn ya wanna share?
>>48027199
At least the Yellow ending isn't so bad. Every sapient creature in the galaxy dies, but the next cycle defeats the Reapers using all the information gained from Liara's beacons. It's also implied that they solved the whole 'synthetics and organics will inevitably murder each other' problem, making the insane troll logic of the Reapers just that clearly idiotic.The Indoctrination Theory is still the best ending, and the fact that Bioware didn't incorporate it into their DLC is a crying shame. It would have been a really cool way to correct their horrible writing mistakes while honouring the fans.
>>48025177
>>48025769
>>48027698
>>48028084
>>48031671
Someone did an Alternity conversion for the series back in the day. It was looking fairly decent but I dunno if they finished it.
>>48032577
Didn't take much looking, but it looks like he only got partway through the project before abandoning it. I'd still say this is probably best to run Mass Effect under, since Alternity is straight up designed for Space Opera.
>>48032659
And I forget to copy the link like a moron.
Mass Effect Alternity:
http://thefairlyunkempt.blogspot.com/search/label/mass%20effect
>>48025496
I can see that. Normandy sr-1 is small and fighters have variable mass torpedoes that can in lore rip apart an asari dreadnought with the right placement and 3-5 shots. Thats why fights fight fighters in fighter fighters cause if even one gets through they just poke holes in everything.
>>48032733
>Thats why fights fight fighters in fighter fighters cause if even one gets through they just poke holes in everything.
Anon did you have a stroke
>>48032810
Nope. Its legit ME fighter tactics. Fighters fight fighters in fighter fights FIRST. Survivors fight everything else second. The reason is if you ignore even one than thats a fighter that will be swiss cheesing your shit while you deal with other fighters. So fighters must fighter fighters first in fighter fights.
>>48026954
It ignores everything you did and basically tells you that your goal the entire time "Unite the galaxy-- Defeat the Reapers!" wasn't even the real goal, and is instead some bullshit about how organic and synthetic life cannot co-exist unless you merge the two.
Even if you managed to get the Geth and Quarians to make peace and co-inhabit their homeworld because Legion, the best goddamn companion in the series, died for their sins.
Also, it was incredibly ham-handed as fuck, and revolved around literally the worst aspect of the game, some kid that was literally impossible for Shepard to save, but for some fucking reason we need to deal with PTSD nightmares about the kid, only to have the kid condescend to you in the form of an AI with a plan to keep peace that makes no fucking sense and just makes the Reapers, previously creepy and alien, into utter fuckwits.
>>48027227
The mechanics were so much better, but the story wasn't quite as good as ME1's. I blame Harbinger.
>>48032871
So fighters must first fight fighter fighters in fighter fights.*
Phones autocorrect was sure this was entire sentence was off. weird.
>>48027511
I felt that too. Like, I got to that point the first time I was playing, and shot the hologram in frustration (I bought it after the DLC came out) and then I felt like the game just got super bitchy with me. It was almost as if it was saying "Fine, don't like these choices? FUCK YOU, YOU LOSE!"
>>48032988
If it makes you feel any better Andromeda throws all that shit out the window by leaving it open ended as you leave earth for an entirely different galaxy before the reapers touch down.
>>48033059
Not really. I'm done giving BioWare and EA money though, so it really doesn't matter how I feel about it.
>>48032919
It's pretty clear the Reapers were a metaphor for "The Patriarchy," and the solutions are the super-extreme political solutions usually straw-manned in politics. If they'd fucking bothered to properly foreshadow the ending situation it could had been palatable, even with the superficial ham-fisted "choice that isn't really a choice" bullshit. It could have been GREAT if they just laid off the fucking politics and proselytizing a tiny goddamn bit.
>>48033859
>Leviathans notice organics creating synthetics inevitably causes synthetics to murder own creators.
>Leviathans create an AI to solve this problem. It creates the Reapers and attempts to annihilate its own creators.
>Reapers cull the galaxy of organics in 50,000 year cycles (the calculated time at which organics will begin creating synthetics).
>Somehow this is supposed to prevent war between synthetics and organics, and somehow preserve organics by imprinting their DNA/"essence" into new Reapers.
The solution is to build a giant space penis, dock with the space vagina and:
>Use Space Magic to kill all synthetics.
>Use Space Magic to become Space God.
>Use Space Magic to make all synthetics partially organic, and all organics partially synthetic. Somehow this will make them brothers and sisters in eternal peace.
So, mind explaining how you arrived at the Reapers being "The Patriarchy"? I'm not really seeing it. Genuinely curious.
>>48034130
>So, mind explaining how you arrived at the Reapers being "The Patriarchy"? I'm not really seeing it. Genuinely curious.
>Reapers use "Indoctrination." They all are defined with hyper-male voices. The solution is clearly multiculturalism.
Not to mention the """writer's""" own politics definitely permeated the story, not to mention the business.
>>48034191
I kind of see where you're going with this, but machines manipulating people's minds or brainwashing them is not unknown in SF (the Berserkers, for example, upon which the Reapers were based - at least in ME1 anyway).
The hyper-masculine voices... I dunno. Seems a bit of a stretch. I just figured they made them sound that way to be intimidating/scary.
However, the writer and company politics I can see. That goddamn Green ending was definite some hugbox space magic BS.
>>48034238
*definitely, rather
Also, I want to point out that the Green ending is AS BAD as the mindwipe option on the Geth from the previous game.
>>48034238
That's my point, though. There weren't any sophisticated male civilizations, either. The threats to the galaxy were Reapers, defined as male, and that one dude, that built a gynoid you "persuade" into being a good girl through the power of sex appeal.
The overtones were primitively hidden and pretty disgusting, honestly.
>>48034130
There was also other impressive amounts of rail-roading in ME3 as well.
>You got to catch the assassin-bot on foot, Shepard. Don't ask me why I can't just grab her with my biotic power, just run!
>Everything centers around Earth eventually.
>After Citadel gets raided by Cerebus. Hours of side-quests and gathering armies and resources getting Citadel ready for its final stand against the Reapers.
>Oh hay Shepard, Cerebus captured Citadel again off-screen, and is flying it towards Earth. Convenient that.
>>48032556
>but the next cycle defeats the Reapers using all the information gained from Liara's beacons
then didn't one of the developers go and basically say on twitter (or some other social media site) "nope they didn't "defeat" the reapers, they just weren't stupid like you and picked a color like they were supposed to"
>>48034380
There should have been an ending where the Reapers start the war and they couldn't finish it, so it rages forever. Now THAT would have been a fucking ending.
>>48032919
> but for some fucking reason we need to deal with PTSD nightmares about the kid
Honestly I didn't mind that so much. That kid kind of represented the harsh reality: no matter how badass Shepard is he'll never save everyone. That kind of weighs a bit on you, especially after the shitstorm that was the Reaper invasion of Earth.
That said, they could have handled it a little more tactfully, possibly tying the substance of the nightmares in with your Paragon/Renegade score.
But turning him into the avatar for this AI who exists only to tell me I'm a fuckup was pretty damn stupid.
>>48035054
The dream should have featured everyone you've let die. Even a perfectshep run has Jenkins and the Virmire sacrifice. Plus a few mandatories in ME3 itself.
The kid can be a standin for humanity in general I guess, but having him be front and center was dumb.
>>48033059
>>48033455
See as this year literally the LAST guy who originally worked at BioWare left BioWare and everyone else there now is an EA transplant, I'm basically done with BioWare and giving them anything resembling the benefit of the doubt.
The company is literally a corporate sock-puppet with EA Games hand shoved up it's ass and working it's mouth, so not only do they NOT get the benefit of the doubt they get the absolutely critical examination eye that is completely unforgiving of their faults as game designers and STILL doesn't buy the game even if they try it based purely on principle alone.
>>48032493
I don't know of any site with a large amount of Tali smut except hentaifoundry. I don't keep images on my phone tho, so sorry.
I must be the only one here that barely cared whenTali died in my ME2 playthrough.
I dislike her intensely. Choosing not to help her cover up her father's fuckup (and incriminate her in the process) is the smart thing to do. Should you need help from the quarians in the future, do you want a respected engineer or an exile in your crew?
>>48035435
But defending Tali is best, because she committed no treason. She just have her father, an admiral, things he requested. She helps get rid of the problem.
>>48033059
The only thing that gives me hope is the fact that they're actually taking their time with it, and not trying to shove it out as quickly as possible.
>>48034130
>>Use Space Magic to make all synthetics partially organic, and all organics partially synthetic. Somehow this will make them brothers and sisters in eternal peace.
This bothers me so much. How did the Synthetics get organic parts?
>>48034374
Or every scene with Kai Leng. I beat that mother fucker every single time we met, but the cutscenes made it seem like I somehow lost and he goes on some edgy rant about how he is superior.
You have no idea how satisfying it was to be given the option to smash his face in and go back to work on that computer like it was nothing.
>>48035054
All those Nightmare sequences sucked.
>>48035174
>The dream should have featured everyone you've let die
That would have hit home more. Especially if you let people die in ME2 ending.
>>48035435
Best ending is the one where you don't lie, but you defend Tali and tell them that this trial is sham, and make them respect that shit through sheer force of will.
>>48035696
I dunno. After the blend of colossal snoozefest and shameless virtue signaling that was Inquisition, I've lost an real interest in buying another Bioware game.
>>48032988
The confusing thing for me is that the speech Shepard gives after refusing the bullshit choices is one of the most affirming of the games' themes and falls perfectly in line with what Shepard has done for the entire series: Saying fuck you to the choices and taking a third (fourth) option for the best possible result.
Then the game says "lol you die."
>>48036045
My favorite bit is that all the non-standard romances are the least fufilling story and lore wise while the most expansive one and the most fun one is entirely down to heterosexual relationship between the player and a staunch anti-gayer, only downside is you HAVE to play as a mage and to get certain parts you have to roll with half your team being mages.
>>48036238
That's very much the GM going "Well screw you for not wanting to stay within my rails" yeah.
>>48036238
Well yeah, the games have also been hammering home the fact that the reapers cannot be beaten in conventional warfare. They're too advanced and there's too many of them.
>>48036045
No offense, but Dragon Age was always kind of balls.
>>48036238
Seriously.
>>48036294
That, I think, is one of the major problems with the Reapers as a premise. I was fine with the Reapers essentially being an AI gone wrong, in fact, I thought it was cool. The way they were set up, though, space magic was the only way they were ever going to be beaten. Although I think if the games said "actually, with the combined strength of the entire galaxy and the wisdom of the cycles before you, you CAN beat the Reapers" it still would have fit in with the tone of the games.
Mass Effect is fairly easy to run with Traveller.
Just give everyone with people armor another layer of health representing Kinetic Barriers and replace Psionics with Biotics, since Biotics is basically an extremely vaguely more scientifically plausible stand-in for psionics anyway.
No idea why you'd WANT to to a Mass Effect RPG, but that's your problem OP, not mine.
>>48036369
>Although I think if the games said "actually, with the combined strength of the entire galaxy
Except even with the entire galaxy united they'd still be outnumbered by a massive degree. For every capship the galactic forces have, the reapers have a hundred, and that's just the sovereign/harbinger sized ones. If you do the math on how many reapers there are, the reapers could trade ship for ship and still come out way ahead.
>>48025177
I've been meaning to play the d20(talked about previously in the thread, the one with trapezoid columns for text) with a few friends. Really looking forward to it, as it'd be set after the Synthesis ending, and I have a lot of freedom to work with the ramifications of what that means...
I'm pretty happy with the ME setting, even though the aliens aren't alien in the slightest, but rather quirky humans at best. I can like it for what it is.
Previous to tabletop RP for ME, I used to do some forum RP, but it had the issue of it not being... as fast-paced, let's just say that. So it made folks lose interest over time. Whereas, I've been known to drill my players in tabletop with things like 6 hour sesions, 3 days a week, during the summer vacation.
>>48031611
How do we know that the Protheans in ME3 weren't actually just their Zentraedi-equivalent Protheans, while the Squids were the Hanar-type Enkindler Protheans? Didn't they make a point of saying every species became Prothean in the last cycle, and this is part of why they failed to defeat the Reapers?
>>48035200
But was Inquisition good?
>>48036422
Which is dumb. There's no reason for there to be thousands of Reapers; there could just as easily have been, like 100 super-ancient Reapers filled with the combined knowledge and wisdome of a hundred ancient galactic civilizations.
>>48036593
It was worth the 50£ i spent on it and it's dlcs. I mean that's less what I spend on alcohol in a week. And it kept me from drinking for about 2 weeks.
>>48036624
>Which is dumb.
It's math is what it is. Oldest known reaper was what, a couple billion? Divide that by 50,000 and you get a shit ton of reapers.
>>48036593
Pffft, no.
+Solid gameplay
+ Interesting first act, featured a scene where everyone breaks out in a Pippin-style song. Pretty cool.
+ A couple pretty great characters, the best being Blackmoore.
- Boring "Stop Lord Darkbad" plot, made worse when the game flat out tells you "you will win and live happily ever after"
- most of the characters are boring at best and downright obnoxious at worst. The most offensive is some elf who seems cool at first but starts bitching at you unless you use him as your moral compass
- Repetitive, grindy leveling
- Romance arcs amount to little more than a dating sim
- Blatant SocJus pandering, including an open FtM transgender who exists solely so you can ask about their gender identity
- None of the dark beauty of the original game; it feels like some bored GM's Pathfinder romp
>>48036680
>>48036593
So yeah
>DA:I, better than alcoholism.
I particularly enjoyed several characters, Solas the righterous bastard, Sera the unrepentant asshole and Blackwall, a man trying to be better. Great flaws and redeeming factors. Blackwall was a whiner and a liar, but he tried to be better. Sera had her heart in the right place and has a nice perspective once you get past her cumrag of an exterior. Solas is possibly the best character of the game, heis only cleaning up his mistake surebut him keep trying to get you to see the big picture and making a lasting change in thedas is nice.
But in general. It's kinda meh.
>>48036593
I got a solid 60 hours of overwhelming mediocrity out of it.
>>48025360
Not choosingJuhanias best bioware waifu
>>48036882
Man I wish that her romance was not cut.
>>48036902
I wish that all the stuff they cut from both of those games wasn't.Third KOTOR when?
>>48036943
Never, that fucking mmo killed any chance we might have had.
>>48036593
God no, are you fucking joking me?
That was the last chance I'm giving them and even Gaider just dropped the series flat rather then work on it and pretend EA listens to him anymore.
>>48036999
Maybe if we give them enough money, they'll make a third one. That's what they want, right?
ME2 is the best game and ME3 is the worst game solely based on how much Reaper involvement there is. The fact that people actually wanted the Reaper plot line to continue is mind boggling, that reveal was the worst part of ME1. There's nothing interesting or cool about the Reapers.
>>48037064
Depends entirely on the message they get with the money. It could easily backfire and they just do some other bullshit. It's dead, we must move on.
>>48025177
I ran a game of Mass Effect using the fanmade Fate hack for it. It's objectively better than the other systems that were around at the time (I heard there's a new d6 or d20 out there, maybe it's not shit? I dunno) and actually improves on a lot of stuff about regular Fate that I thought was lacking, mainly by fleshing out rules and adding a few more systems to make it crunchier while still maintaining the narrativist flow. Apparently the site went kaput and the pdf is too big to upload here, but you might still be able to grab it here: http://web.archive.org/web/20150629183534/http://masseffectrpg.org/wp/?page_id=51
One complaint I do have with it is that the pre-made enemies are generally piss-easy, except for really big enemies like krogan and geth primes and stuff. And this was with a group that barely used any biotic/tech/combat powers, so i imagine that more tactical players would cream them. Point is, it's better just to make your own enemies for them to fight.
>>48037158
To? Jrpgs now that all others are dead?
>>48037158
Honestly I don't want new BWs take on Star Wars anyway
>>48032441
>I can understand the hate ME2 gets even if I don't share it. It's a perfectly fine for most Shepards - except Sole Survivors. They want to punch Miranda's head off of her cat-suited body and tell TIM to go stick his head in a space oven. Instead you are pretty much forced to go along with the same guys who murdered your buddies.
I think they really dropped the ball by forcing the player to join Cerberus.
Ok, minimal effort change: The game actually follows the same general plot, except the player's motivation/allies change, and there's a few minor decals/flag changes.
No mater what, the player's ship gets shot down and player gets borg'ed up. Player was paragon in ME1? It's the Alliance (or council?) who rebuilds Shepard thanks to some military industrial complex subcontractors (aka Alliance Aerospace, aka Cerberus) Alliance Aerospace also manufactured the Normandy 2 which will be under Specter-Alliance control (main change being that it has a Alliance flag on it instead of Cerberus, side note why does a secret organization stamp their damn flag on everything) Same crew, same missions, TIM even hands out most of the missions except he calls himself Steve or something, part of a think tank created by AA to help deal with the harvesters/human colony abductions. Renegade? Stock ME2.
ME3? If the player was paragon Shepard wasn't arrested, Alliance threw everything at the Reapers when they showed up but it didn't matter since LOL REAPER SHIELDS.
>>48036728
Really, I think it just comes down to a combination of a.) writers having no sense of scale, and b.) the Mass Relays making it too easy for the Reapers to just kill everyone in an afternoon.
You'd think that after billions of years, the Reapers would get bored of killing off all life. Sovereign claims that they are unfathomable and nations unto themselves - seems kind of stupid for such a godlike entity to get its rocks off by spraying the lawn every 50,000 years.I say this as a big fan of the Berserker series; at least the Berserkers had an excuse - they were weapons and were only following their (flawed) programming. The Reapers are effectively sapient AIs existing together in a fuckhuge spaceship. Their inexplicably stupid logic speaks volumes about the quality of BioWare's writing.
>>48037402
>seems kind of stupid for such a godlike entity to get its rocks off by spraying the lawn every 50,000 years.
Old people love doing shit like that though. Maybe Sovereign is just an old man that likes to mow his lawn.
Except instead of grass, his lawn is sentient life.
>>48036535
i think Javik be talking about the elimination of culture and non-prothean style thought. everything thought like a prothean even if they themselves were not protheans in a biological sense.
>>48037402
Would have been nice if the writers did more with that control panel on the citadel council chamber in ME1 that could remotely turn off mass effect gates.
Pretty much ultimate power for galactic conquest for an all human council or would be really useful in slowing down the reapers.
As for "nations unto themselves" I saw them as gathering up a few million of a species, scanning their minds/turning them into goo, then having that species "live on" in a virtual civilization simulation or gestalt mind. SOMA ending but less "everybody is on a tiny weather satellite" and more "everybody is on a giant space robot octopus with giant space lasers"
>>48037495
There are so many dangling plot threads in the series it's difficult to remember all of them.
As for the "preservation through annihilation" thing the Starchild (or "Reaper Git" as I like to call him) claims they do... I've never been more angry with a plot justification.
The Reapers just don't make any sense, from their methods, to their thinking, even to the thinking of their creators. The Leviathans watched dozens, perhaps even hundred of civilizations create synthetics who inevitably turned on them...
... only to create synthetics of their own. And be surprised when they turned on them.
I wrote up a human biotic assassin awhile back. Raised by asari criminals and rogue salarian geneticists. Was meant for false flag operations to blame the systems alliance and cerberus and crap. Eventually got sick of it and lead a SPECTRE back to his creators and escaped in the ensuing shit storm with a ton of stolen bank accounts and a ship.
Now he just sort of wanders the galaxy aimlessly. Tried rediscovering his human roots and found he has nothing in common with most humans and serious issues with empathy and emotions in general.
>>48037632
I'm becoming increasingly less embarassed that I never actually started ME3. Still a little embarassed though, I pre-ordered the damn thing.
>>48037632
honestly the series would've been better off never bringing the reaper invasion to bear. Maybe have a handful of other reapers pop up. Names like PSYCHOPOMP and ZIETGEIST come to mind.
nothing is scarier.
>>48037708
Honestly I think the Reapers and even the invasion would have been fine if they just kept the Reapers mysterious. We don't really need all this bullshit about a Organics/Synthetics Forever War. They're a mysterious, alien threat which is totally incomprehensible in their motives, origins, and methods. It's like C'thulu mixed with Skynet.
>>48037632
Remember when Dark Energy was supposed to be a factor in all of this?
No?
Well, neither do the writers.
>>48037632
They also dropped the whole subplot about the stars dying early and it having something to do with e-zero use.
>>48037706
The first and last hours are mind-numbingly stupid. Anything to do with Kai Leng is cringeworthy (and Cerberus in general).
Somewhere in the middle are some really good character moments, and the gameplay is pretty solid.
But to be honest, you're not missing all that much if you've come this far without playing it.
>>48037708
I could get behind that. I wish the Mass Relays had really been Prothean tech, and that it was one of the ways in which the Protheans had tried to give the next cycle a chance. The Reaper invasion would have been slower and less immediate.
Still, BioWare and EA burned their fans. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
>>48037766
It would have been nice if that goofy fucking googly-eyed Skeleton Human-Reaper Fetus was just an experiment by them, and not how Reapers get made. Because that's kind of stupid.
>>48037766
my headcanon was they were beings from a previous universe that collapsed and they somehow survived, which let them produce eezo, the essence of their original universe, and so defy the rules of this universe. the Reaping was them going on power trips to prove to themselves they were gods.
>>48037778
I can't be the only one sick of the, physics was the real enemy, shit that's been going on for the past few years in fiction.
>>48036680
But I can buy it now for like $40 with all the DLC because of the Origin Summer Sale.
>>48037218
Tyranny
>>48037492
That's what I meant. In Macross, the Zentraedi are a specific race bred by the Protoculture as their warriors, and other races were bred for other things.
>>48037886
>Origin
Oh yeah, one last massive "fuck you" from the studio.
You play the game, get to the ending, then lie awake that night wondering just what the hell you just played all while getting the satisfaction of knowing Origin is currently rooting around in your computer like a cyberspace racoon.
>>48037798
the entire issue with the whole series starts at 2 really, and the real shame is 2 isn't even a bad fucking game taken on it's own merits.
But A: the gameplay directly contradicts the lore. We go from guns that can shoot forever except that they need to cool sometimes to guns that load 'thermal clips' except they're loaded in a magazine. So they aren't even clips really.
Next we have shepherd ressurected by cerberus which is fine for Renegade FUCK YEAH HUMANS Shep but what about Sol Survivor "you killed my entire battle group' shep? Or "I am everythingt good and just in humanity" shep?
you get 'your choices matter' promised in one and in 2 they basically say 'yeah no, you're working with human supremacist terrorists' it was lazy and indicative of what was to come. Only take away from 2 was the custom world state DAI got when fans expressed their rage at dealing with ME3's "HUMANS FUCK YEAH" galaxy.
then we have the collectors, and ASSUMINGDIRECTCONTROL who honestly turned repears into a fucking joke. Sovereign took the combined fleets of the Galaxy's greatest military powers to destroy. This guy can't even micromanage the galaxy's creepiest specimen collectors right.
Oh and the Dark Energy plot.
what dark energy plot? What do you mean shepherd getting PTSD over some dead street urchin is contrived?
We're bioware bitch we ARE the game industry.
>>48037218
>>48037158
Witcher 3. Alternatively, that Middle Ages Czech RPG without any fantasy.
>>48037862
The really fun part? They basically ripped off TNG with that plot point.Warp travel is ripping subspace apart, and so Starfleet makes a rule that they can't exceed Warp 5 unless there's an emergency.
>>48037915
>ASSUMINGDIRECTCONTROL
YOU FEEL THIS
>>48037862
I figured it was building up to a
>Mass effect fields are literally greenhouse gasses
>If you keep using fossil element fuel you're going to kill the galaxy
>We need the Reapers to show us the error of our ways
>>48038000
Honestly it almost reminds me of the last Ultima game, where some sage guilt trips you for creating the big bad even though he popped into existence without your knowledge as a cosmic reaction to all the good guy things you did in previous game.
>>48037915
>Starts with ME2
Agreed.
>Thermal Clips
Don't even get me started. I miss my sniper rifle with unlimited ammo.
>Sole Survivor Shep
Brought that up myself in >>48029861. Though I meant "more money than brain cells" but ended up mangling it with "more teeth than brain cells".
>Railroady choices
Yep. I remember being very vociferously angry about having to work with Cerberus. Most of my friends who were into it wondered why it bothered me so much.
>Collectors
I don't necessarily mind the Collectors by themselves, but them being re-purposed Prothean slaves under the control of a Reaper just sounds idiotic (and begs the question: What were they doing in ME1?). Moreover, the Mass Relay that led to the system could have easily been a Reaper ingress point, but apparently it's a dead end (because reasons).
Harbinger is irritating because we didn't NEED a Reaper to be a direct antagonist. Just the idea of there being another Reaper out there was sufficiently terrifying. Having it taunt you about your weakness and your inevitable demise was Saturday morning cartoon villainy.
>Dark Energy
Yep.
>>48037919
That game looks fucking dope by the way.
>>48038025
Isn't that basically Final Fantasy X?
>>48038086
no. FFX is when the immortal golem you create keeps killing things because you misprogramed it.
>>48037915
Actually, from how Xenophobic and HFY I played ME1 Shepard I was really resentful that I couldn't go full HFY in ME2 or ME3.
>>48038146
>xenophobia
perfectly justified reasonable suspicion, vindicated when tali steals the normandy stealth tech and gives it to the migrant fleet, Liara goes to be an information dealer after being on the normandy with access to secure alliance channels (who i firmly believe was always a freelance information agent on the side, how else was she supposed to build up a massive spy network in two years)
the only decent aliens are Garrus, who is an all around great guy, Wrex, who is a reliable mercenary that is trust worthy and is also a decent guy.
and thane i guess, if only because he has a few months to live
>>48038227
I was really disgusted with how phoned-in the Migrant Fleet design was. Every ship is the same fucking thing.
>>48038227
I still can't believe I got Renegade points for telling Tali she couldn't hand over my experimental ship's blueprints to the fleet of notoriously shifty space gypsies.
>>48038278
Because Renegade is literally mustache-twirling.
I thought ME1 was fucking perfect.
I played the second game but it was just meh and wtf mostly.
Never bothered with the third.
Do I miss anything?
>>48025177
It does.
In form of TTRPGs barely anyone plays and not because they are bad, but because the setting is nothing impressive.
And in form of PBFs and similar gameplay, which is not suitable for everyone and most definitely doesn't generate the same feelings and emotions as TTRPG, mostly because you are pretty much writing a fan-fic in duet/small group of people. And said people are hard-core fans, because nobody else can stand the bland setting.
So in short - it's the setting that kills it for most people. The games were pretty good, a textbook case of what 7/10 games are, but the setting is just it - a really, really bland space opera with small dose of tacticool frosting.
>>48038257
all quarian designed ships left over from the morning war, carefully maintained over the years that are just finally breaking down to the point that even they couldn't repair it to full, and full on ships are impossible for them to build, and would be much rarer to either salvage if they are in good enough condition, and no shipwright would sell to them due the culture that they adopted and the propaganda that the council has put up on them, which i assume that the turians played a decent part in, either on their own or funded by the salarians or the asari, which then i would lean towards the Asari.
>>48038278
anon, bioware doesn't understand what they wanted renegade and paragon to be
>>48038227
>>48038278
I like Tali, but her even asking that is extremely bad, and BioWare's decision to give you Renegade points for saying no is just completely bonkers.
>>48038257
The Migrant Fleet was really lazy. It was a sign of things to come.
>>48038313
>anon, bioware doesn't understand what they wanted renegade and paragon to be
I think what they were planning was Paragon Shepard was Picard, and Renegade Shepard was Kirk. But this kind of got lost in translation in many parts. Picard may have been a by the books and conscientous commander, but he was never a total pushover like Paragon often was. My knowledge of TOS is a little lacking, but I don't think Kirk would ever have punched a woman just for annoying him.
Basically, I got the impression they saw Renegade as the option for a commander who was curt, no-nonsense, and occasionally a little dickish. But they wound up throwing in moments of pointless cruelty because they wanted to give players that freedom but couldn't pose those options any other way. At least not without breaking their artificial binary.
>>48038379
i was also thinking that they would have done something with him having come back to life and come back wrong in a mental state. Renagade ME2 and ME1 are nowhere near eachother. and unless something happened in those six months between 1 and two that turned him so much, i honestly don't know what they were doing with it.
>>48038313
Except that it's pretty well-established in the lore that the Migrant Fleet is mostly made up of second-hand ships bought, stolen, or "gifted" to the fleet by Quarians on their pilgrimages, and that most of the fleet is pretty patchwork without being unified in design, standards, or quality.
I wish ME2 Shepard looked more obviously fucked up after being rebuilt
Like they make references early on about how bad he looked when the project started but you never see any evidence of that other than a few minor scars on his face that you can get rid of later on
>>48038313
>anon, bioware doesn't understand what they wanted renegade and paragon to be
>>48038379
They basically wanted Renegade and Paragon to be Closed Fist and Open Palm.
>>48030957
The problem with 2 and 3 was that Soldier was fucking neutered as a class.
In Mass Effect 1 endgame you literally could not die as Soldier unless you were on Insanity; even then, it took more firepower than a Geth Colossus.
>>48038415
>>48038379
They realized it was easier to rewrite the light/dark scale from kotor then it was to actually plan what they meant.
>>48038443
>closed fist/open palm
even in jade empire it wasn't clearly established what they waned it to be
>>48038379
>Renegade = Kirk
As a dyed in the wool TOS fan, I'm going to have to say "no" to that. Kirk was actually pretty by the book, but he was willing to bend or break the rules if his conscience (and common sense) led him down that road.
Renegade is more like... Janeway. Arbitrary, cruel, and often just bizarre and petty. I would have said Sisko, but Sisko is what Renegade SHOULD have been. Unorthodox, willing to deal with people in their particular set of expectations, and fully willing to commit wrong in the pursuit of a higher good (but be torn and conflicted about it).
>>48038437
I was hoping that Cerberus would just mass produce Shepard, thousands of Shepard clones and used them as their main combat unit. And that Shepard is just "a" Shepard, a VI simulation running off a computer inside Shepard's brain.
Instead reveal in ME3 on Mars mission is just indoctrinated random refugees.given guns.
>>48038496
sounds like Oblivion
>>48038468
I guess a better comparison is Renegade was meant to be PineKirk. A little more of a loose cannon but still nowhere near as petty and mean-spirited as it actually panned out.
>>48038570
In the same vein, Closed Fist was far more petty than it should have been. But then, I suppose it's difficult to program intent.
>>48038515
If EA ever makes a Mass Effect movie, Tom Cruise will probably play Shepard.
>>48038602
The only Closed Fist choice that felt "closed fist" and not jerkass murderous bandit was telling the slave girl to kill the slaver. That choice felt like it was about making her stronger to survive in the world. Instead of just the player trying to steal crap and break things.
>>48038604
>Tom Cruise
>"I'm Commander Shepard and this is my favorite store on the Citadel."
I'd watch it.
>>48038604
can't, no motorcycles. tom cruise won't do a movie unless it have a motorcycle. i can't imagine tom interacting with Garrus. the universe couldn't handle those two on screen
>>48038465
Exactly my point.
>>48038623
BioWare's take on morality has never had much depth.
Something I really hated was how my Shepards (both Paragon and Renegade) were punished for not being 100% either way. My Paragon Shepard occasionally did dickish things (like kicking the merc out the window in ME2, since the guy was shooting unarmed civilians previously), and my Renegade Shepard occasionally did kind things she didn't have to do.
But if you aren't 100%, there's some dialogue choices you're barred from. Not a complete pushover? Too bad. Not a petty maniac? Too bad.
>>48038450
God. I remember by the end of the game, I was just shrugging off missiles to my face that those big ol' geth would shoot at me, in what was one of the most amazing levels ever (Where you're fighting geth on the hull of the Citadel).
In terms of Gameplay, I liked ME2 better than 1, but it didn't come close to how big and cinematic ME1 looked. It almost felt like a really great Sci-Fi movie who got an sequel with a drastically cut budget/the budget got spent elsewhere.
>>48038675
You should have seen SWTOR,
Depending on the class, letting people go and live would be a darkside option while gunning someone down mid conversation before an honor duel was a neutral choice light side companions supported.
>>48038735
I quit playing once I got to Coruscant. I don't intend to return to it.
>>48038735
>play mostly pragmatic but prideful Sith Warrior, which inevitably leads to light side choices most of the time
>after betrayal, add a dash of ruthlessness and cruelyt which give me dark side points
>forever stuck in slowly curving light side gradient being set back due to roleplaying.
still haven;t gotten light 4, but doesn't matter because Eradicator armor is best armor
>>48038730
I was an Infiltrator with an end-game sniper rifle which I used to blow up a Geth ship with just 2 shots, I miss that gun so much.
Also loved that Citadel level, with how the Geth bodies floated by after they'd been killed. Was a nice touch.
>>48038751
I made it through smuggler because I had 5 friends playing.
I quite after I got to then end of the game and had it explained I had to use that character to grind gear, credits and comms if I did not want to take a week of free time for each class story. Also, i had to grind for on the worst servers ever for stuf to get raid gear to grind for end game gear.
Fuck mmos, just fuck them all.
>>48038779
In Retrospect, if Mass Effect 2 kept it's overall mechanics, maybe not the thermal clips though kept the same writing team, and strived for the same overall level design and cinematic style, it would have been aces.
>>48038760
Just run the low level strike, like the level 4 one alone and you can max out your light/dark side with conversations in like 2 hours.
>>48038804
Originally Mass Effect 2 was going to have a hybrid system, disposable heatsinks if the gun was overheated otherwise it'd work like Mass Effect 1, but it was cut at the last minute. There's an .ini file setting which restores the system but it's buggy.
>>48038804
Mass Effect 2 was a lot like DA2 in terms of tone and scope. But it was much more polished than ME1 in terms of gameplay. I found ME2 just to be so much better to control on PC and the inventory system wasn't fucked, even though I missed the variety that was present in ME1 for arms and armor.
I thought the story was fine. It wasn't quite as epic as ME1, but it couldn't really be given the premise. You're basically Ghost Protocol-ing your way through the galaxy, without a ton of resources. The fact that ME3 throws both ME1 and ME2 out the window in favor of some half-hearted war story was what ruined it.
>>48038443
Paragon is the good guy who saves the day, but has a habbit of just start on spiels about ideals and shit instead of just concrete solutions, Renegade is spetsnaz.
>>48038850
>>48038837
i think this guy nailed what the transition was like from ME1 to ME two in terms of theme
>So the first two Twilight books are out and the series is a pretty big hit. Stephenie Meyer can’t write the sequels, so she’s outsourced the job to me. I’m given the job of writing two more books that will complete the story. I don’t know why she hired me. She just did.
>I don’t know anything about writing teen romance. I don’t like it, I don’t read it, and it actually kind of gets on my nerves. But now I have to write one.
>So… plot twist! It turns out that leading man Edward is also a retired Witch Hunter. They weren’t mentioned in any of the previous books, but there’s this nasty coven of super-powerful witches who are a threat to all vampires. No… the Earth! So Edward has to get his sword out of mothballs (he never told Bella about his old job because he didn’t want her to worry) and hunt down all these witches.
>What follows are hundreds of pages of Ed killing witches in brutal, high-energy fight scenes. Ed gets a costume with a black cape and maybe a gun-sword or a shuriken-crossbow or somesuch. The books are all about fighting these witches and how dangerous they are to the world.
>Every few hundred pages I have to stop and give some lip service to this whole “teen romance” thing. But I don’t know how to write teen romance. So the Bella / Edward romance never progresses beyond the point where Meyer handed it over to me. Their conversations repeat the same themes every time and they have the same arguments. They fight and make up, always talking about how everything will be okay once this witch-hunting thing is over.
>Then, at the end of the last book, I finally have Ed kill the witch-queen and save the world. Great, now I just need to wrap up this romance bullshit and we can call it done. (1/2)
>>48038911
>I still don’t know how to build a proper teen romance, but I’m familiar with the tropes of the form. I’ve seen some romantic comedies and I think I basically get the idea. Let’s see…
>Bella and Edward seem doomed to break up. He meets her at a train station in the rain. (Fans: WTF is this writer doing? This town doesn’t have a train station!) They talk and stop fighting and profess their love for each other (What about Jacob, did you forget about him???) and agree to move in together. (What about Edward insisting on getting married!?!) The sun comes out (Aren’t they in a public place? He sparkles in direct sunlight! Did you even READ the original, you asshole!?!) and they decide to move to New York (Edward would never!) and he can help her start her career as a painter. (WHAT the SHIT?!?)
>If you didn’t know or care about Twilight, you probably wouldn’t see anything wrong with this scene. I mean, isn’t this how they’re supposed to end? A relationship solidifies, our leads kiss, we get some symbolic happy scenery, and they discuss how they’ll spend their Happily Ever After. It’s sappy love story horseshit. Isn’t that what the fans want? You’re probably happy to read a story that was 80% badass witch-hunting and only 20% of this stuff.
>But while I’ve copied the superficial trappings of a romance story, I’ve totally failed to make one myself. This is not a proper ending to the Twilight saga. It’s not even a proper ending to my witch-hunting books. It’s just a fake ending devised by a someone who didn’t understand the form he was trying to mimic and didn’t respect the source material he was working with.
>This is what happened to Mass Effect.
>http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?cat=508
>>48038666
Come on, it wouldn't be that hard to have an opening scene with Shepard using a vintage motocycle to establish how cool and special he is. As if being played by Cruise wasn't enough already
>>48038911
>>48038927
Shamus was more or less right.
>>48038945
>using a combustion vehicle
>in the year of the council 2000+189-6
what are you, a Yhag?
>>48038945
>>48038666
Instead of stepping out on foot from the Mako to do the final kill shot (because of the huge XP penalty for killing stuff in the Mako) on a Thresher Maw, Tom Shepard would drive out of the Mako's rear ramp on a vintage motorcycle to do the final kill shot.
>>48038964
Actually, science has advanced to the point where it can capture and neutralize greenhouse gasses. That's part of why things work in Mass Effect; they can make use of hyperefficient fossil fuels, instead of shitty renewables.
>>48038984
Would watch the shit out of it. Literally the only thing that holds out from Oblivion are the crazy chases
>>48032556
>The Indoctrination Theory is still the best ending
No. It's not. God fucking damn, as much as I hate the existing ending, if they made even a drop of that dogshit canon, I'd have snapped my disk then set the local gamestore on fire.
Smug fucking faggots.
>>48039003
then why don't i have a revolver that is actually 6 mini heat sinks near the back that rotate to distribute heat to accommodate for the larger round that it shoots, making it a hand cannon?
if science is so advanced, why doesn't it have a revolver?
>>48039008
>implying
that soundtrack is fantastic. literally the reason why i picked it up is because it came on my pandora. that, and the comfy as fuck sky house
>>48039035
The fact I can't even remember the main theme or any other pieces proves the soundtrack was absolutely forgettable.
>>48039047
were just going to have to disagree anon
>>48039035
The only thing I remember about the soundtrack is how artificial it was and how pretentious the bass and rising notes were.
But it DID capture scenes involving machines pretty well, that's for sure.
>>48039053
>Oblivion OST
>Implying anything else than Generic Fast Paced Drones of Dread Bass With String Instruments In Continous Loops Soundtrack #29
It was passable at best
>>48025177
Lack of appeal, I think?
Mass Effect, even before it became a meme of itself, wasn't particulary popular. No, that came out wrong. It was popular, but within specific demographics and groups. People playing TTRPGs are on peripherias of those target groups, hence no TTRPG of any lasting popularity, because ME fandom dropped tabletops and tabletop players weren't interested in the ME game.
>>48025177
because the universe sucks
>>48038666
Well, he changed the motocycle into doubled pay check in case of The Last Samurai, so...
>>48035054
Then why not use the ghost of Kaidan/Ashley, depending on whom you abandonned on Virmire?
Killing a party memeber was a bold move from bioware. Shame that nothing came out of it.
I was particularly disappointed with the ME2 reunion.
>Hey Kashley, turbs out I'm not dead after all, and I really need a moral anchor currently
>Fuck you, Shep! How dare you be healed by Cerberus? Go away from me, I can't stand the mere sight of you.
>...Kay.
Seriously Bioware, wtf.
step 1: use star wars d6 system with different skills
step 2: ???
step 3: profit
worked well with my group. Played a krogan that just messed shit up.
![[contemplative .50 machine gun fire].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/9B7hYEm.jpg "[contemplative .50 machine gun fire].jpg")
>>48038450
>mfw mowing motherfuckers down with fully upgraded Overkill
>>48037632
No and yes. The original conciousnesses are lost in the liquification process. They merely make millions of AI's based off the flavor of those scanned. You wouldn't have a Chakwas AI rolling around inside you'd have an AI with the logical thought processes of Bob the Farmer from eden prime, Maria the Earth Colony #1275 chief programmers intellect, and Chakwas's emotional leanings.
You know what really grinds my gears now, after all the dust is settled? We can talk about how the ending was out of place and how the DLC didn't fix any thing, but it would be fine if it was just out of place. The broken machine logic was kind of alright, Azimov pretty much started that trope and Azimov can do no wrong, and I can respect "Artistic Integrity".
I just want to know why Shepard can't point up at a Quarian and a Geth ship jointly taking on a Reaper and just say, "Friendship, problem fixed, please go now".
>>48039731
>I just want to know why Shepard can't point up at a Quarian and a Geth ship jointly taking on a Reaper and just say, "Friendship, problem fixed, please go now".
A single anecdote does not undo countless cycles of observation.
>>48039879
No see, because every time the robots revolted it was because they were treated like a disposable slave class by their progenitors.
The second they are seen as equals they come to an understanding.
>>48025177
Because it's be a single page, with a single chart.
You roll a d3, see the appropriately coloured box and it'd contain the same thing that's written in the other two.
So, Mass Effect homebrew. What system would be good for it?
>>48038443
They fucked up Open Palm/Closed Fist as well.
Remember Smiling Mountain? That speech he gives detailing what the two philosophies entail? How we NEVER meet someone who represents the positive things about Closed Fist? How Closed Fist and Open Palm are just reskinned evil/good choices?
The way I saw Paragon/Renegade was that Paragon was "What choice will let me look at myself in the mirror and not be ashamed" while Renegade was "What choice will allow me to end this bullshit the quickest?"
I will give them props for not having the morality meter be one, so a Renegade action does not nullify a Paragon action of equal or lesser value AND carefully measuring out the R/P points so that you can't max out both and get the benefits that would entail.
>>48040138
GURPS. No other system will be capable of having psonics, cybernetics, smart weapons, space combat and what not.
>>48038082
It's not. 1st one is. 2nd one not so much. 3rd one is sidequest slog simulator for the next 300 hours.
>>48040233
Witcher 3? It's fantastic if you like being a witcher.
>>48040267
Its a good looking game but the fighting gets stale quick and the literally never ending slog even quicker. It also feels really phoned in in the story. It just somehow seems to itch everyone just right to keep them playing it forever.
>>48040296
Loved the game, and happily paid the 50 bucks for it. Compared to inquisition with most of the game filled with grinding and "collect 6 blankets for the poor, head inquisitor of a fucking army" type of quests I just had pure enjoyment out of witcher 3, and am playing it trough a second time with boom build.
Out of all cRPGs I've played, witcher 3 stands in top 3 with fallout 2 and TPlanescape: Torment.
I was working on a conversion of Dark Heresy to mass effect (Because I really like the way gun combat plays out in dark heresy over other games like traveller) but I didn't get around to finishing it, only about 75% through the alpha
>>48040432
Agree to disagree i suppose.
Someone made a pretty good Traveller splat for Mass Effect a while back.
https://destination-zero.obsidianportal.com/wikis/mass-effect-conversion-rules
>>48040509
Seems to be the case with us, indeed.
Now, back to our scheduled homebrews of Mass Effect.
>>48036238
>>48032988
>>48036294
I think it's important to remember that there were elements floating around in 2 that were linked to the idea that the galaxy was preparing itself.
In Mass Effect 1 we know that the reapers are actually like 500-1000 years late (I forget what number somewhere around there) because of what the protheans had done on Ilos
In Mass Effect 2 we start seeing that the galaxy has begun reverse engineering reaper technology, which is how we get small reaper guns on the normandy at one point, and how capital ships are starting to use them.
We also get evidence of a previous cycle that was able to fuck up a reaper with a weapon that ended up carving the mother of all grand canyons in a planet light years away.
There was definitely some themes of the galaxy being able to unite and defeat the reapers before it was swept away by the story in Mass Effect 3, where they decided the reapers CAN'T be defeated and that there was no other way to handle them.
>>48037461
Would have been much cooler if it turned out that the reapers weren't just chilling at the edge of the galaxy, but were instead crusading around multiple galaxies purging life.
Then have a citiadel station in each galaxy as nothing more than a huge comm relay.
Left behind reaper (sovereign) hangs around until life if advanced enough then signals, adding that galaxy to the purge que.
Use the whole "darkmatter" plot as well.
Make up some handwavey bullshit about how use of mass effect technology speeds up the expansion of the universe, lesser so if you use the highly advanced mass relays.
Then have the galaxy core blackholes have reaper stations built around them, feeding off their accretion disks or something.
The reapers are doing this as their galaxy core blackhole stations are advanced quantum computers, running simulations that will (the reapers hope), how to reverse entropy and the expansion of the universe.
This is projected to take until almost the "big freeze" heat death of the universe.
So the reapers are a bit twitchy about organics speeding this up and potentially ruining the universes chances of continuing.
>>48038227
Literally missing one of the themes of the series by you stupid cunt
>>48039450
I hate there is no similar choice in later games. If you do everything right, everybody survives.
>>48040166
Someone made a good point about Traveller being viable.
>>48027199
>The Green one? You fuck up dna so hard that the entire life in all of the galaxy is now a synthetic and biological hybrid. Your clue as much as everyone on how hard that fucks up life.
The green one is most easily described as genetic rape on a galactic scale. On top of that, it's literally what Saren was championing in the first game.
Why people would ever want it I don't know.
>>48040621
Whether to trust aliens or not? P.S. The answer is a resounding "No." As they're all universally racist towards humanity to some degree and a whole 2/3rd's actively work to prevent our success out of sheer spite. Above that the quarians steal, namely from you a highly classified stealth system even after you vouch for her lay down your word and honor that she won't, and turians admit to having a species wide disgust for humans lack of honor and lack of want to following proper channels as well as also stealing and pumping info during the joint Normandy project. The asari see us as a threat and so put enormous amounts of economy on stalling our spread and keeping us as reliant on a single point of failure, earth, just in case. The volus active did the same as they saw us as jousting for their rightful place in 1/100th the time frame and so got jealous. The fucking elcor hate us for the same fucking reason but also because we personally disgust their natural want of slow ponderous success. The yahg and vorcha straight up hate everyone including us. The ONLY race that treats us as any other species are the fucking hanar and they were genticslly engineered to do so even if they view us as filthy heretical heathens.
Seriously, the ONLY race that plays even handedly with everyone without reservations despite knowing the other races are absolute dickbags is, and probably ever will be, Humanity. We even willing help others without the need for a return political or otherwise and willing spread ourselves thin doing literally everything to save humanity while the other races bickered and we STILL never asked for a return until we could no longer stand the strain alone.
