f13.net

So. I just finished Mass Effect. Yea, took a while. To be fair, i started it Friday night. Productive weekend, imo  :awesome_for_real:

ANYWAY.

I see them as a yin and yang to eachother. Mass Effect had an EXCELLENT storyline and fantastic lore. Everything around that though, total garbage. Flair and fauna to artificially extend the life of the game. Hell, even the weapon license thing was just dumb as you found better stuff on Ilos and could buy SPECTRE level gear shortly before then. Maybe earlier. I kinda bolted through the game (finished all but 1 collection quest... heh). That said, it only artificially extended the game to 30 hours. So what was the goddamn point? It might as well have been a 10 hour game, just had a little more in the main quest, and viola, one of the most tight-knit RPGs to come out since, well, who knows what. It would've been fucking riveting! The ending however, so lame. So lame. Forced sequel. Do not want. Reapers should be caught in the dark space forever so I stop saying Reavers when I say it out loud. Like Shepherd can't magically fuck up the Mass Effect Drive on the Citadel.

Now, Fallout 3. Goddamn worst main story in gaming and totally hackneyed lore. But everything attached to it was masterful. Perhaps that's due to the setting. Or perhaps it's due to the fact I lived in DC. Maybe things would've been different for Fallout if I was  or some shit. But they were meatheads anyway.

Anyway, point being, these two games share the same type of gameplay for the most part, the same type of exploration (though Fallout's is far more compelling - so much so that I think I would've preferred the Mass Effect story have taken place in post-apoc DC, har), and the same level of grandiosity (sort of). I'm not sure what I'm trying to say at the end there. It doesn't matter.

Fuck, the Mass Effect GUI was shit. Also, can a brother buy a goddamn 1080p cutscene please? If you're gonna release a game for PC and have hi-res textures and 1920x1200 as a resolution, don't display goddamn 720p video or 480p (it might've been f'ing 480P!) video for cutscenes. Goddamn were they horribly ugly. Yegad. And there were so many of them! Shit, you all have some great writers. Now get someone who can change the resolution when you go to render video. Yargh. Also, what's up with the low-res squad selection screen? Did ANYONE at Bioware play this? Seriously? It's just horrible.

Anyway, enough complaining. Point being, if Fallout 3 and Mass Effect had a child we would either get the greatest game ever made, or a horrible faceless creature from space that we'd have to destroy lest it destroy us all.

That's all. I haven't slept in a LONG TIME.

I'm trying to think of anyway I disagree and I realize that I don't. Yeah, put Fallout 3 exploration into the Mass Effect planet sequences and you have a game that would probably cause me to lose my job and wife due to never getting up from in front of the TV. Oh, and VATS. VATs in Mass Effect would also make me become some kind of subhuman creature with legs that have rotted off, arms that are sticks, and thumbs that belong on the Incredible Hulk.

Mass Effect and Fallout 3 were both already way too fucking easy. VATs would just compound that ease of play past Fable 1 and blow right past Fable 2 as well in competition for the easiest RPG ever. Which Fallout 3 is. The easiest RPG ever.

All the cutscenes were in 1080p on my XBOX 360!   :drill: :why_so_serious:

Likely, they were upscaled to 1080p from 720p. If they were even that. The 360 has excellent upscaling capabilities and on a standard TV, the artifacting would've been much less noticeable than on a 24" monitor at 1920x1200. In fact, I'm pretty sure we both saw the same video as I remember it being pretty shitty on the Xbox also - but I was playing it on a 720p native TV the first time so it wasn't nearly as bad as it was now.

Anyway, the biggest crime against polish was the fucking squad selection screen. What a disaster. I should start another game just to screenshot it. Christ does it look bad. Like a "compressed at level 1" jpg in Photoshop.

I wish I could play F3 in 3rd person, but skating around while wearing fancy-hats really sucks. Also, cover system please. I do like me a good cover system. Or A cover system. Just let me hide behind shit and shoot people and/or robots.

No, it was the useless, lifeless planets of suck, driving around in you suckmobile that couldn't climb suck mountain. Having ME's buggy in F3 would've been cool, though (assuming it could suddenly climb an anthill).

I enjoyed both games, but I'm finding F3 far, far superior. Since I'm still playing it on my first playthrough. Toward the end of ME, I just kinda wanted it to be over. I gave up on collection quests because the planetside driving parts were so poorly done. I don't agree that they both had the same style of exploration, really.

Mass Effect takes the prize for being one of the very few PC solo RPGs that I've actually finished in the past 10 years.  I really enjoyed the main story.  My understanding going into the game was that ME was written as a trilogy, so I knew from the start that the ending was going to be cliffhangery.  I was not disappointed in the main story.  I was, however, very disappointed in the fluff side quests and the collect-a-crap.  It's simply needless in a game like this.  

I hope they move ME2/3 into more of a rpg/fps, with less emphasis on loot/gear and more emphasis on story.  If I could make it my way, I'd make it like watching a movie or reading a book, only that you actually take the role of the protagonist.  A big long story that plays out, instead of choose your own adventure... especially when all paths end up at the same place at the end regardless.  

Fallout 3, I still haven't finished.  My PC was infected with a nasty virus and when I wiped it I never bothered to reinstall it because I'm trying to keep SecuRom off my rig now.  It's a great game.... that I got bored with fast.  I think mmorpgs burned me on solo rpgs.  

If you died a lot it wouldn't be fun because it would eat into your exploring time. For me, Fallout is all about exploring. The combat is a secondary. The story, tertiary. I loved just wandering the wilderness looking for buildings to recon and ammo to find.

Waiting until I can mod the suck out of F3 before I get it. I like what I've been seeing done so far, but I'm still hoping they release a toolset for it. However, even without mod tools there already looks to be quite a few decent "upgrades" floating around. Dunno, I really can't stand Bethesda's games, so I might just never buy it.

This is almost not a Bethesda game. I was a huuuge fan of Arena and Daggerfall, but I disliked both Morrowind and Oblivion. Fallout3 rocks.
Heh. That's a good one. Solo rpgs burned me out on trying to have a good experience with Darzzit and Legolam raiding the uberfoozle for the eighth time to hope for a drop you can use and win the roll on.

 :awesome_for_real:

You sir are correct.  I don't think i have the time or desire for massively multiplayer pointless grindathons.  Gimme an ending and a nice 20-45 hour game time.

But I haven't played Mass Effect yet mainly because I am cheap, and now all the reports of god awfully slow loading times frightens me.  I think we passed the long load times when the Commodore 64 had its sad death around 92-93.

Good to hear. All the "oblivion with guns" crap flying around was gonna make me puke. I pulled maybe 20 minutes in Oblivion the first time before pulling the plug and uninstalling it. A year and maybe 25 mods later, it held me for perhaps 4 hours. I spent days playing Arena and Daggerfall (skipped morrowind), so Oblivion was quite a let down.

I think overall I enjoyed Mass Effect more. I always have preferred linear rpgs that play like reading a book or watching a movie (only works if the story is decent so - to most Japanese rpgs).

You can recognize the underlying mechanics of the game as similar to Oblivion, but it's not "Oblivion with guns", it's "Oblivion with guns, blood, mutilation, and slow-motion decapitation shots in VATS".  Actually, it goes beyond that; you'll be mostly fighting people, and they taunt you as they shoot you (as opposed to mostly fighting animals or whatever monsters that just roar).  And they got the atmosphere of the world pretty well, unlike Oblivion (although, Oblivion did surprise me now and then, for example with that painting world).

Did you guys notice that it never rains in Fallout 3?  Ever?

Mass Effect, I did like the story and I didn't mind the planets.  Some of them made for good screenshots, especially the deep red lit ones, or the ones with huge planets in the sky.

So, I guess, tldr, I agree with the OP.

EDIT:  I think Bethesda has released the Fallout 3 Developer Kit (http://fallout.bethsoft.com/eng/home/home.php) (recently), and this Fallout 3 Nexus (http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/) site seems like a good index of mods that are already available.  I'm using the MTUI user interface (http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=43) one.

Mass Effect is awesome but throws Titan Quest amounts of shitty loot at you. Killed a single geth? Here's like 20 fucking shotguns that're worse than what everyone in your squad has, convert to gel? Okay, you have a oil-tanker full of it and can now ignore locks.

I liked Fallout 3 better, but mostly because I liked being a loner in the wilderness of post-apoc society. Probably just my mood. I'd have thought I'd be all over a sci-fi future MMO with a good story arc. I just couldn't give a shit past the 10th hour or so. And I don't seem to contain the special completionist gene. The only RPG, hell the only game I've ever finished with Ultima III. Shortly thereafter my folks restricted my computer use to weekends  :awesome_for_real:

There hasn't been a story since that I haven't gotten bored of around 1/2 to 2/3 of the way through. Which I guess is why MMOs and multiplayer arena-like FPS matches are good for me.

Awesome. Well, that just about cinches it. I just need to pay more attention. Thank you  :grin:

People have been glossing over this, but Fallout 3 is the only game ever that has a real relationship to the city it claims to represent.

It does and it doesn't. They missed a lot of major stuff in the area, the subway system isn't quite proper and the whole map is just totally fucky in size. Some of the stuff is enjoyably ridiculous though.

Vice city was a better representation of 80s/90s Miami than this is of DC. I played Vice City once and knew my way around, I should've known my way around everything in Fallout 3, but hell, I needed the map because distances were, as I said, all fucky.

Never been to Miami, so I may have missed that one.

As for Fallout/DC, the metro being obviously wrong was an unecessary fail, which irritated me. But the prevalence of the metro in specific areas of the city was bang on. So was the difference between DC and NE Virginia. Also, not sure if the national Cathedral is in there, but I haven't seen it, and I missed it.

The scale difference I could live with.


Anyway, the vast improvement over Hellgate:London (no relationship whatsoever to London) and any of the GTA Liberty City games (tenuous at best) is worth giving props for.

It's an improvement, but really they should've started with the metro from the top of the green all the way to the bottom, across the water to Virginia and built up from there. That should've been the map. Hell, the metro goes to Bethesda, they still could've had their offices. /shrug, the scale really does anger me a bit when I think about it.

I have no idea why they didn't use the real metro map - it's the sort of thing that residents get antsy about, and costs nothing.

I prefer a mass effect sequel to have less mini games please.
The lockpick mini game is quite boring after playing it for a long time. And having a 'optimum' team is too easy. Having every level up grant 2% boost to dmg is too miniscule.

Overall the shooting part was great, but they need to add critical hit on body parts like Fallout 3, minus the VATS. Have a feat maybe that can trigger an aimed shot every 30 seconds with sniper rifle maybe. I know I always wanted Shepard to shoot the pistols off etc. It has much better VA than Bethesda game ever will. High production values and good original soundtrack. I also felt happy they didn't hire big name actors just for the sake of having them. Bethesda should take a good look at this and reflect on what they did with picard & qui gon. But i wouldn't mind Samuel L Jackson to voice Shepard. :)

A little loot tweaking that actually lets you modify guns would be great as well. Ala KOTOR. Increased Clip Size, ROF. And HEAVY WEAPONS with ammo please. Grenade launchers too. The armor and weapon upgrade is so generic that certain choices are 'DEAD WRONG' while some is totally 'BEST' for the rest of the game. I also felt changing ammo during combat needs a reload animation and must be done in real time to preserve the tension. Pausing the game, taking my sweet time to switch over to +50% dmg to synthetics to blast off the squad of 12 geth troopers is 'in game tension' wasted. Too hardcore? Well make it optional. It'll improve the gunplay more than holding your left mouse and pausing before the overheat bar pops out while ducking behind cover.

Not the only game. The Getaway, for example, modelled a section of London.

Midnight Club 3? And Midnight Club LA?

Are they accurate? Dunno, I live in Australia.

It was the only thing that made an otherwise terrible game bearable.  After a bad day at work, I used to put the Go Anywhere cheat code in, take a ride to where the offices were and shoot everyone who walked out of the building. 

It was cathartic.

They did.  Northern side of DC.  In the Bethesda marker.

I'd dig out the exact location, but my game crashes too quickly now to accomplish it.

I know they did, you get a bobblehead there. And I know the location. What I meant was, they should've made it to scale or at least some kind of scale so that the metro would've actually been proper, to the current metro map.

http://www.dcdaysinn.com/images/map_DC_metro_lg.gif

Some of the ministories in Fallout 3 are good, and the characterizations are interesting enough, even if the main story is a let-down.

A small thing about Fallout 3 that I really really liked: the implementation of traps and locks. The lockpick makes perfect sense and never really annoyed me, and the traps were integrated into the landscape in a way that works perfectly--none of that shit "you detect a red area" kind of thing.

Because mines beep before they go off in real life?  :grin:

Okay, the mines were cheesy, but the trip wires were all very well placed.  I can't tell you how many times I walked into them and got a shotgun blast to the face.  It actually made you feel clever for finding them.  Not like Oblivion, where I hardly ever hit trip wires because they were all so goddamned obvious.

*clunk*

FUCKING BEAR TRAPS!

I still react to the beep with "Huh? What? Oh fu..BOOM".

I loved both games. If I had to pick one thing, I'd say I'd love to see the depth of storylines and quests for party members from ME integrated in to a Bethesda game. It's always annoyed me how in games like F3 you can have this huge ongoing conversation with a character, but the moment you complete their quest, the only thing they ever say to you again is "have a nice day".

Apparently each resident of Megaton only has one single goal in life that you need to help them with. I'm pretty sure Moira was the only NPC outside of the Mainquest that actually had multiple quests associated to her, and really they all tied in to her book, which was essentialy a thinly veiled tutorial quest. Put some additional quests on some of the NPCs that only come up later in the game, and all of a sudden I actually have a reason to go back to town outside of selling loot.

Fallout's a bit on the "grey and brown" side of things. Never played Mass Effect. Is it in color? If so, then I agree.

And possibly a reason to not kill them.

A little too much, yes.  You will dream exclusively in blue for a few days after finishing it. 

Like I said, I haven't played Mass Effect, but I'll just assume it's typical Bioware fare (which is good as far as scripting and story goes.. and crap as far as gameplay goes). My verdict so far on Fallout 3 though is that the missions are lame and tedious. Lacks the humor of the original Fallouts too, no matter how many F-Bombs are dropped here. Only one sequence comes to mind that was halfway decent, and it's the last part of getting to Galaxy Radio and meeting Three Dog (when you run into the Brotherhood and fend off the Super Mutants). Everything is about as crappy as an MMO. Lots of trekking about, doing stupid shit. In a drab world. The overall theme to Fallout is cool, and the combat and character building is OK, but umm...

Not sure where I'm going here. I guess if they were mixed, it'd be a pretty good game (again, assuming Mass Effect is a good example of what Bioware does).

[edit] I'd like to add some other things..

I know it's a nuclear wasteland and shit, but damn, the Fallout world needs to be a bit more populated. Jesus. Have extended caravans walking around or some shit. People reenacting the Oregon Trail or something. The world doesn't feel as alive as it does in cities.

Like I said though, the missions are lame. Not very scripted... and the goals/objectives aren't very interesting. I'm too lazy to go into detail right now, but I'll assume that everyone knows what I mean. I feel like the act of skulking about, killing things, searching shit, walking the mazes.. it's all pointless. It's not my cup of tea. I keep looking forward to getting through it and running into another NPC to talk to. When the ideal for me would be to have the NPC interaction mixed into the gameplay more.

you should give mass effect a try. It's quite unique and unintentionally funny.
It's like being in a somewhat low budget sci fi movie. And shooting mechanics is not half bad. except there's lack of locational dmg. So leg shots is as lethal as head shots.

One instance is when you're on a rescue mission. You meet this head scientist with her assistant, and the assistant start mumbling about the end of the world while having a nervous breakdown. I picked the option 'I know what will calm him down' and my guy decided to punch him. That was my first LOL moment in Mass Effect, and I continually try to find similar options to screw it up in dialogues for laughs. Definitely the most fun way to play the game.

Unfortunately, I do not own an XBox or a gaming PC.

At least with the sniper rifles, head shots definitely did more damage for me.

  All my time recently has been spent on cooking, relatives and G.E.C.K.  Adding rain's been the goal since someone beat me to enabling child mortality, but making it not suck is a real hassle.  The problem is the game's oodles of explorable outdoor roofed structures. 

I can:
1. Use the plain ol' default rain that follows you inside and falls from the ceiling. (suck)
2. Modify every outdoor structure to switch the particles off and modify the sound based on roof material when entered. (daunting + suck, because backing into and out of a doorway makes the rain appear to turn on and off like a spigot)

3. Give up and work on the Sarah Palin character model instead.
(http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/8978/palin2eo1.gif)

You're failing.  That chick is cool, while Sarah Palin I couldn't stand to look at. ;D

Mass Effect has combat that would likely be panned horribly if it was a straight shooter like Gears of War or something, but it's better than most action-based RPGs. The auto-aim is pretty hamhanded and cover has a 50/50 shot of actually covering you, but it's pretty fun all the same. All of your weapons and armor have slots for mods, which you get from shops/drops/boxes...which is cool until you figure out that you can change them in combat. Makes it way too easy. Oh whoops, I had phasic rounds in to cut through the shields of the Geth Armatures and now I'm fighting Krogan mercs, I'll just go to the menu and throw in my poison rounds. Sorta trivializes the preparation part of combat.

The plot's pretty good in my opinion ignoring the romance subplots that were clearly written by a sweaty-palmed nerd.

I've never gotten the "RPG game X is too easy" arguments. I usually play RPGs for the stories and if the gameplay is too hard it makes me want to destroy my controller. I don't have that kind of reaction to things like high difficulty in FPS for instance, but I think it's because in an RPG, high difficulty feels like a cockblock between me and the storyline.

Well, it's about game and a story. Not just a story. If I just wanted a story, I'll read a book or watch a movie. Sorry to point out the obvious, but this medium is supposed to be a little more interactive. :)

Anyhow, when it comes to RPG's, instead of easy and hard, it's more of a difference between "actual gameplay" and "just picking shit off, going through the motions". There's little middle ground.

Yes, in the final analysis, the combat became academic, much the same way as when watching a movie, you know the action hero is going to make it to the end, killing everyone in his wake. Yet you still get a thrill. It requires the same suspension of disbelief to be immersed in the storyline, and in this regard, F3 delivers imho. ME does so as well.

Conversely, I was very very dissapointed on CoD4's storyline. Short, unimaginative, with no compelling characters. Yet FPS fans the world around hailed the game's story as a selling point, including Yahtzee, for crying out loud. Clearly, entirely different audiences.

To be fair, some games have a compelling enough story for me that I do just trudge through mediocre or "easy" gameplay. In fact, that's nearly everything from Bioware, imho. In general, it's pretty rare for a game's story to be that good though.

Difficulty != Interactivity.  There are many games that I've never had to spastically reload because of combat death or a misjump or had to search GameFAQs to deal with an arbitrary puzzle that were perfectly interactive.

I just finished Bully, and I wouldn't call it difficult.  I've lost a handful of fights or races, but they're easy enough to redo.  And it's certainly interactive.

Bad choice of words then. I just mean that in RPG's, mediocre to me is when I start feeling too overpowered, or feel no need to think tactically - y'know, like having to stop and think about which order that my party members need to attack, or positioning, or which powers need to open up the fight. As long as I feel I have to think about such things, I'm fine with the gameplay. It doesn't need to be morbidly difficult. It's just that some of them get bad enough to the point where I have to actually try to die, and don't have to think about shit.

Action RPG's are another story -- I can see how that can be too much difficulty for some people (sometimes). I dig it myself, but some of them introduce a test of strictly player-side skills, like button combos/twitch/etc.. and I understand if a traditional RPG player doesn't want it. Then again, it's a different genre and they should know better.  :-)

Oh, well I agree then.  Certainly a big part of RPGs (eastern even more than western) is having a big inventory of abilities, items, and attacks.  And if the battles are easy enough that you can auto attack your way through them, then those abilities and items are just chaff.  This is a big problem in eastern console RPGs.  I'm finishing up .hack/GU (which admittedly is targeted at the kiddies, so isn't supposed to be that hard).  The battles are easy enough that I never have to use items.  Which is fine. . like I said, I don't find lack of difficulty to necessarily impair fun or interactivity, except there are like 8 million different types of weapon, weapon upgrade, spells, and items the game drop on you, nearly all of which you just ignore.  Huge waste.

The Baldur's Gate series was a good middle ground of not being frustratingly difficult while still feeling like you needed to use those scrolls and potions, so you didn't just groan when you found a chest full of them.

We probably played different versions of Baldur's Gate.
At the standard difficulty, potions were only useful if you didn't want to sleep.
The game did show quite clearly why consumable arrows have no place in a game.

BG2 also had a lot of *very* game breaking items.

So it was like AD&D.

The side stories are the key to my enjoyment anyway. The main storyline is ok, but I view it as just context.

Actually, I found that the difficulty of BG / BG2 partly rested on how often you were prepared to rest. I've seen people play it who rested after every encounter, and others who would only go back to an inn when everyone was at 5 hp, every spell had been cast and all the potions had run out.

I was one of the latter, and found the game enjoyable throughout.

Yeah, the whole bit doesn't fit together well though.  If you only do the main story line you finish up the levels about on time.  If you do the sidequests you get to level 20 about 1/2 the way through the main story line or thereabouts.  I didn't mind the main story line, it just wasn't fleshed out enough- like a movie that has no character development after the first thirty minutes.

I think your analysis is dead on.  I think Dragon Age: Origins has the potential to be the very best game ever made.  One really large plus is its got Dave Gaider writing for it so one thing is for certain.  Its going to be an amazing story with amazing interparty dialogue.  I honestly can't wait, the only  thing that will prevent me from buying it and taking the week off of work would be the EA DRM.  So here is hoping for a steam release of Dragon Age: Origins.

Dragon Age? ....No. Don't get the hype man.

Or maybe you need to green text.

I'm worried about Dragon Age because they couldn't even be bothered to come up with a good name for it. I mean, Dragon Age. WTF BIOWARE. And then they went and gussied it up to be stupider. /snarl. What, are they gonna get Hickman and Weis to write the manual?

Isn't Dragon Age the new BG? They don't have the rights to Dungeons & Dragons, which is a dumb name anyway...not to mention spiritually dead thanks to WotC. Dragon Age is setting up the Bioware D&D IP, I don't have a problem with it. Maybe if it were Maku Nu Hakuni Ju Dragon?  :why_so_serious:

A rose is a rose and BG3 should be pretty  :drill: by any name.

As long as you don't ride dragons on some planet that's completely bland and empty except for one outpost and a couple of chests. Or have a dragon named Mako.

I think having the word Dragon anywhere in the title is just uncreative. I'd rather it just be "Here, take a quest, now fight some shit, asshole. Ok, here's some loot. Repeat."

Not every game can have a name like Devil Summoner: Kuzunoha Raidou vs. The Souless Army.

Dragon Age is worse than AC:For Answer, tho.  :uhrr:

(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3087/3161100490_5867350b1a_o.jpg)

 :why_so_serious:

I can't wait to team up with my half sister, fight my own half brother, and have my foster father killed as well as having the place where I grew up burned to the ground. Oh and romance really 'hardcore' warrior women or elven druids.
It's like a brand new game all over again.  :awesome_for_real:

You forgot the AWESOME and completely unpredictable plot twist that will reveal that you have some dragon blood in you.  :ye_gods:

Oh Black Isle, how I miss your writers...

That's the best post you've ever made. Ever.

Post of the Year, 2009. Hands down.

I'm glad my title worked out so fucking awesome too. We should get posters made. But replace the bioware logo with a transparent f13 logo since Bioware will never be cool enough to make such a goddamn cool game. BIS would've been though. :awesome_for_real:

Ever since they got reincarnated as Obsidian, it hasn't quite been the same.

Quite? Shit. Not even "quite" more like "pissing on the grave."

Interesting. I just looked up Obsidian's list of upcoming projects. Apparently their summer game is some kind of modern-spy action RPG that sounds like they're trying to mix KOTOR with Splinter Cell. They're reportedly using the martial arts system I used to train in; watching them butcher techniques should be good for a groan or three.

Beating out my last schild-approved post?

(http://img352.imageshack.us/img352/8568/weirdcartoonvh7.jpg)

Considering I don't even remember the last one, yes.

http://hawk.kotorfanmedia.com/node/702  :uhrr:

Yes...let's...make babies.

I'm looking forward to Here, Take A Quest 2.