Mass Effect 3

Ghostz said:
Wait so they didn't actually plan on how the game would with end? So they just made it up as they went along? That's a sure hallmark of BAD writing there.

....when I say Mass Effect is your average RPG it means it's representative of what your average RPG looks like these days. Which is to say they aren't doing anything ground breaking: it's average. Pure RPGs that aren't MMOs are going away, that's been the trend for years before bioware even went "mainstream".
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Are you sure? Skyrim and Mass Effect 3 seem to sell in serious numbers, and so far I don't think anything other than World of Warcraft have made a significant profit rivalling these games?

I have been watching Mass Effect 3 on youtube a bit to see if I'd be able to stomach the Story mode, but I'm getting the impression from that that either what I've seen isn't story mode, or the shooting is still in there, just made easier?

From just watching it, I don't get a good impression that this has a good enough story just to have very limited interactions with, and the dialog options really seem far too limited to make for an interesting 'adventure' type game, or am I seeing this wrong?

Geniunely still interested in this, but I'm currently trying to put it through the 'my wife would play / watch this' test and my hopes that it will pass that test currently aren't very high. The dialog is stunted (typical separately recorded type affair, which is understandable, but still very noticeable) and not very well written either, and the graphics look really weird, especially the animation and lighting stands out with some very bad case of dead-eye. If I were on the ME4 team, I'd focus on getting the eyes right first and foremost, as this seems to be by far the biggest bottleneck for engaging with the characters.
 
In my opinion, if you only play the third game, the story won't nearly reach it's full potential. it might still be good enough, but Imo the only right way to go is 1,2 and then 3 as lot of the beauty of the story is seeing how things from the first and second game reaches their conclusion in the final game. I realise this doesn't seem to be an option for you, but said it anyway :)
 
Also remember that not only is the story carried over from ME1, but so is most of the character animation and scripting system, as well as a lot of the character asset pieces... ME3 looks good and plays good, but in many ways it's 5-years old tech.
 
Laa-Yosh said:
Also remember that not only is the story carried over from ME1, but so is most of the character animation and scripting system, as well as a lot of the character asset pieces... ME3 looks good and plays good, but in many ways it's 5-years old tech.
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Come on, if you are going to do a game that features a lot of character close ups than your technology better be able to handle it. Character animation is everything for a game that features a lot of novelization, plot and screen time. A lot of the tech they are using literally looks like tech they ripped out from one of their older games, not technology you've built to last through a 360 and PS3 generation. They obviously didn't think it all the way through. Maybe they should contact David Cage for his technology on the next Mass Effect trilogy. Get people who are good at it next time.
 
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Arwin said:
...and the graphics look really weird, especially the animation and lighting stands out with some very bad case of dead-eye. If I were on the ME4 team, I'd focus on getting the eyes right first and foremost...
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Urgh, dem eyez is not natural! I must admit that most of the characters have eyes that would better fit two day old dead fish and the perennial mouth issue is still there. But there are some characters that they have obviously spent a lot more time on (the reporter for instance - I wonder why :rolleyes:)

The dialogue is far more in depth than is suggested by the interactive prompts, they are more of a condensed idea than the actual dialogue. Also there is a lot to get from listening in on others conversations.

I have really enjoyed the whole ME trilogy though I think for me 1>2>3.

Just need it on the Vita now!:LOL:
 
Arwin said:
graphics look really weird, especially the animation and lighting stands out with some very bad case of dead-eye. If I were on the ME4 team, I'd focus on getting the eyes right first and foremost, as this seems to be by far the biggest bottleneck for engaging with the characters.
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Dead eyes? That hasn't been in any of the three ME games so far. Also, lighting design is outstanding in the last two, some of the best this gen.
 
I've seen a lot of "dead eye" in the Mass Effect games. Ever watch how conversations switch from character to character and all the other characters turn their faces giving you a blank dead eyed stare on the character that's doing the talking? You can't miss it. Every character literally gives you a blank dead eyed look, it looks like a puppet show and it's strongly pronounced in a game with a lot of character close up narration.
 
The eyes and head follow the person who is talking. The characters also blink and have facial ticks. Isn't dead eye usually referring to characters that do not actually look at each other? It is definitely not as good as say the up close conversations in Uncharted, but I don't think we could expect it to be, with the sheer amount of dialog and all of the different options. Still, I thought they did a very good job of it.
 
I guess what I mean and I guess what arwin is implicating is that the faces don't really animate all that well and comes off expressionless.

Also I'd like to think Heavy Rain has a fair amount of dialog and pulls it off infinitely better.
 
AlStrong said:
Really? You can't see the difference in situations?
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What differences are you talking about? Yes, Mass Effect isn't even in the same league Heavy Rain but could it been so hard to animate pupil dilation? I've seen a lot of UE games using real time wrinkles, not used to greater effect in Mass Effect.
 
I'm not getting what's the insider joke, that's the second time someone responded to my post with an lol, please enlighten. I thought that was against the rules or do I have different sites mixed up.
 
Ghostz said:
Character animation is everything for a game that features a lot of novelization, plot and screen time.
Click to expand...


They are working with the following constraints in the 'standard' conversation scenes:
- automatic lip sync
- canned animations driven with a scripting language
- universal skeleton for all characters (except the volus, hanar and elcor)

This is because of the 100+ hour of speech in the game. The only way to do it better is to completely throw out everything they've built. But they really had to leverage as much as they could so that they could build the sequels in ~2 years each. I can't even imagine how long it must have taken to build the first game, and yet it feels unfinished compared to ME2 and 3.

Also, they did improve on what they could - shadows, shaders, lighting are all vastly improved from ME1 and even from ME2, and the new assets are of an insane quality as well (trust me, I've seen them).


Now there's the chance for a complete rewrite with the nextgen consoles around the corner. I really, really hope they'll keep both a sci-fi and a fantasy series going on, although I'm not yet decided if I want them to keep Mass Effect and Dragon Age.
ME's ending certainly makes room for a different setting, but they could also make games taking place before the galactic war.
 
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