Mass Effect 3

[Laa-Yosh]

Also I'd like to think Heavy Rain has a fair amount of dialog and pulls it off infinitely better.

ME has a LOT more dialogue. For a start there's Femshep, there's the ability to take a huge combination of squad members to any mission, then there are the paragon/renegade approaches to a lot of situations.

ME conversations are all completely procedural. HR conversations are all individually recorded. The game's much shorter and has a lot less freedom, too.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

I've seen a lot of UE games using real time wrinkles, not used to greater effect in Mass Effect.

Even ME1 had animated normal maps.

 

[AlNom]

What differences are you talking about?

2005-2007, early UE3, custom faces for the character that has to carry through the generation whilst conforming to known animation tech.
shit tons more dialogue to put in the game
platform resources i.e. RAM, multiplatform issues (split mem + OS overhead etc on PS3). It was bad enough that they ditched the holster animation for memory reasons.
scope of gameplay
2 year dev schedules

Heavy Rain targeted a single platform since 2006 and came out four years later and the entire scope of the game and gameplay were completely at odds to what ME was trying to accomplish.

Your comparison is ignorant when you actually look at the development and scope of the games.

The very notion that they should have come up with a technology that was 5+ years futureproof is just inane.

If each ME game got 4 years we wouldn't have seen ME1 until 2008, and ME2 until now.

I thought that was against the rules or do I have different sites mixed up.

Apparently you forgot about silly game comparisons too. ("just because I saw another developer do it means that other developers can do it too with completely different game types, platforms, resources, schedulse etc, drekcetera.")

 

[Ghostz]

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.

ME has a LOT more dialogue. For a start there's Femshep, there's the ability to take a huge combination of squad members to any mission, then there are the paragon/renegade approaches to a lot of situations.

ME conversations are all completely procedural. HR conversations are all individually recorded. The game's much shorter and has a lot less freedom, too.

Even ME1 had animated normal maps.

That is exactly my point, they didn't build a technology base that could last through a 360 and Ps3 generation.

Yes, they could do better with more scripting to get real acting done ( get Jennifer Hale to do the acting for Shepard ), than recording a bunch of disjointed lines than have them procedurally spit binary responses in some auto generated animation system. It comes off as cheap.

There's a lot of dialogue the game can do without. While it's nice to explore the backstory of each and every character's personal relationship and stake in the series, it's irrelevant if that expose isn't tied to ark of the overall narrative which most it isn't. Hell, in the end none of it mattered anyway.

As for the "graphics" judging games on an individual basis there are games out there with better character models, animation, lighting and physics. They do some interesting things with lighting but that's the only particular strength I can point to. My biggest annoyances are texture quality, hair rendering, lack of cloth physics and character animation is all sub-par quality no matter how you slice it.

 

[AlNom]

ME has a LOT more dialogue. For a start there's Femshep, there's the ability to take a huge combination of squad members to any mission, then there are the paragon/renegade approaches to a lot of situations.

Quite so... but I suppose if you only play it once, you're really only scratching the surface as to how much work has gone into the game to provide all the different scenarios where person X is alive or dead or shepard did this or that option plus all the other relevant flags that allow for particular outcomes being available.

There are lots of events that a majority of players will likely never see because you didn't make enough characters to import with wholly different decisions. This sadly makes me wonder if they'll actually attempt something like this again.

 

[AlNom]

There's a lot of dialogue the game can do without.

Hell no. Just no. But fine, that's your opinion. I don't think I'd like the series without the character dialogue. Without all the character stuff, you have.... what? A rather empty and non-immersive story experience.

 

[Ghostz]

Most people only play a once, in fact, never finish them. People are always talking about scope and this and that, none of it matters if the execution comes of poor.

 

[AlNom]

Most people only play a once, in fact, never finish them. People are always talking about scope and this and that, none of it matters if the execution comes of poor.

Heh, well if you're unwilling to acknowledge the sheer amount of work that has to be done thus leading to very different outcomes, then I think we're done here. I'm not saying you should ignore the issues, but complaining and saying they should have done better when you're completely ignoring all the differences (to some other game) is asinine. From what I gather, all you're saying is "just because I saw another developer do it means that other developers can do it too with completely different game types, platforms, resources, schedules etc".

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Yes, they could do better with more scripting to get real acting done ( get Jennifer Hale to do the acting for Shepard ), than recording a bunch of disjointed lines than have them procedurally spit binary responses in some auto generated animation system. It comes off as cheap.

What the hell are you talking about??
Procedural is the only way to deliver this amount of content and I haven't seen anyone else come even close to ME's level at all. Yeah, Uncharted looks better, but they have like 90 minutes of content, and ME has like 90 hours. 60 times as much.

There's a lot of dialogue the game can do without.

Seriously. What the f*** are you talking about???

 

[Ghostz]

No, what I'm saying is they could've shrunk the game and offered a better experience. The project seemed troubled, their direction seemed befuddled and lacking identity after the first ME. They stripped the RPGness bear and added a pointless MP and didn't even plan out the ending until late last year. That's what f*** I'm talking about.

 

[AlNom]

Well who knows what happened to the development schedule and project management after being bought out by EA and undertaking multiplatform duties. ME2 was already pretty downsized in the RPG section. Being stuck with 2 years per sequel with ever increasing demands was just not what should have been done.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Quite so... but I suppose if you only play it once, you're really only scratching the surface as to how much work has gone into the game to provide all the different scenarios where person X is alive or dead or shepard did this or that option plus all the other relevant flags that allow for particular outcomes being available.

Case in point: Tuchanka.
I only know this because someone pointed out.

Variables:
- Wrex alive/dead
- Mordin alive/dead
- Maelon's cure saved/destroyed

A few possible outcomes:

Spoiler

- female lives, Wrex lives, Mordin sacrifices himself for the cure
- female dies, Wrex lives, you have to shoot Mordin to sabotage the cure and get the salarians' support; may have to kill Wrex later as well
(seriously, how can anyone kill Mordin???)
- female dies, Wrex is already dead, you can convince Mordin not to sacrifice himself
- Mordin isn't even there because he died in the suicide mission and a new salarian scientist has replaced him, various outcomes are possible depending on the other two variables

The game is so complex that you can't even chart it on paper most of the time. The amount of variable dialogue is an order of magnitude bigger than what you get to hear during a single playthrough.

 

[AlNom]

The game is so complex that you can't even chart it on paper most of the time. The amount of variable dialogue is an order of magnitude bigger than what you get to hear during a single playthrough.

heh, yeah. Some of the wikia pages on some of the characters are a bit difficult to read at the moment. The ones that aren't are pretty light on the alternate scenario descriptions. I await people to fully flesh it out in the coming months though Youtube has been a good way to see the material.

 

[Ghostz]

Well who knows what happened to the development schedule and project management after being bought out by EA and undertaking multiplatform duties. ME2 was already pretty downsized in the RPG section. Being stuck with 2 years per sequel with ever increasing demands was just not what should have been done.

Out of all the trilogies that were birthed this generation which one has had the more course corrections than Mass Effect? You don't think adding a MP is needless burden now? Did it actually add value to the single player campaign? For a shooter that is marketed like Mass Effect is still only pulling in average numbers. You think abandoning the RPGness in favor more shooter wasn't a burden?

 

[Ghostz]

Case in point: Tuchanka.
I only know this because someone pointed out.

Variables:
- Wrex alive/dead
- Mordin alive/dead
- Maelon's cure saved/destroyed

A few possible outcomes:

Spoiler

- female lives, Wrex lives, Mordin sacrifices himself for the cure
- female dies, Wrex lives, you have to shoot Mordin to sabotage the cure and get the salarians' support; may have to kill Wrex later as well
(seriously, how can anyone kill Mordin???)
- female dies, Wrex is already dead, you can convince Mordin not to sacrifice himself
- Mordin isn't even there because he died in the suicide mission and a new salarian scientist has replaced him, various outcomes are possible depending on the other two variables

The game is so complex that you can't even chart it on paper most of the time. The amount of variable dialogue is an order of magnitude bigger than what you get to hear during a single playthrough.

You can reduce the variables with more scripting.

 

[Scott_Arm]

There's a lot of dialogue the game can do without. While it's nice to explore the backstory of each and every character's personal relationship and stake in the series, it's irrelevant if that expose isn't tied to ark of the overall narrative which most it isn't. Hell, in the end none of it mattered anyway.

I have to take issue with this. Mass Effect is a character driven story. More than anything it's about the characters and their personal stories. All of it mattered. If two vastly different approaches reach the same conclusion it doesn't mean the stories are equivalent. The means are as important as the ends. If that wasn't true, you could skip to the end of every book you'd ever read and not bother with the rest.

 

[Ghostz]

There's only about a handful of characters that actually mattered to the story. The only character they did absolutely perfectly was Anderson Liara comes a close second.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

But that'd rob ME of its essence, the reason for we like it the most.

 

[AlphaWolf]

And they could call it gears effect.

 

[Ghostz]

I don't think you would have liked it any less with a stronger scripting and tighter narrative and well the ending of the series would have made a lot more sense.