Mass Effect 2 *spoilers around pg 29/30*

[Reg]

Hmm. I only just got Mass Effect off Steam yesterday. I'm guessing that it's not my imagination that so many of the voices are familiar.

[Lantyssa]

The female Shepherd's voice acting was good.

Which is interesting, considering that her voice acting of Bastila in KOTOR made me want to ram a screwdriver into my ear drums...

The dialog helps that a lot.  She's much more direct and take charge than whiny and frustrated.

[gryeyes]

Hmm. I only just got Mass Effect off Steam yesterday. I'm guessing that it's not my imagination that so many of the voices are familiar.

Not just the voices but the characters themselves are almost identical to many in KoTR.

[Reg]

Yeah I've noticed that too. I swear that the first regular party member I get sounds and acts exactly like Carth. All angsty about his headaches.

[NiX]

Yay for never finishing KOTOR.

[Riggswolfe]

It's too early to say. I'm going to assume that this teaser is a hint about something that happens and I'm in the camp that leads towards "the galaxy thinks you died, but you're just off the grid!"

Edit: Oh, and Schild? BG I'll give you. Easily the best CRPG I've played. (I even like it better than Torment.) But Icewind Dale? That's got to be the only RPG that is less...you know RPGish, than Diablo.

[Morat20]

Yeah, but evil Shepard occasionally said some hilarious shit with his bad delivery.  Wanting to throw the crippled pilot off the ship for fear that his genetic disorder cripple legs could infect the crew was 

Mental note: Must go talk to Joker. (Doing a Renegade playthrough. I just got the game a month ago. I'm about two years behind everyone on games).

[Megrim]

It's too early to say. I'm going to assume that this teaser is a hint about something that happens and I'm in the camp that leads towards "the galaxy thinks you died, but you're just off the grid!"

Edit: Oh, and Schild? BG I'll give you. Easily the best CRPG I've played. (I even like it better than Torment.) But Icewind Dale? That's got to be the only RPG that is less...you know RPGish, than Diablo.

Did you ever play Icewind Dale 2? It actually had a very nice storyline.

[Koyasha]

Don't forget that the ME1 trailer/teaser/intro video and some other things I saw contained scenes that never even took place in the game, like the distress call from calistan or whatever.

[Riggswolfe]

Did you ever play Icewind Dale 2? It actually had a very nice storyline.

No. I was so disappointed in Icewind Dale 1 that I never did. One thing I liked about the old Infinity Engine games was the party interaction and Icewind Dale took that away.

[ajax34i]

To me that teaser seems to say that the (Normandy?) ship has been transformed into a big geth, is in orbit around Earth, and is receiving a trasmission from the geth database with all the information they know about Shepard.

[Reg]

How on earth do you get that? It couldn't have been any more direct about saying Shepherd was killed in action. It looked like his Alliance records to me - although I really wish game designers would stop having their computers make teletype noises and use fonts from 1965.

[Hindenburg]

Because plastering helvetica into everything is oh so much better.

[Stormwaltz]

I really wish game designers would stop having their computers make teletype noises and use fonts from 1965.

That was made by a company in Hollywood that (IIRC) does nothing but trailers, not us.

[Reg]

Wow Bioware really paid out good money to an outside company for that? Did you guys pull an EA and lay off all of the artists between games or something?

Edit: I probably sound much more negative than I mean to.  I just finished playing Mass Effect this weekend and loved it. I even did all the silly side missions and enjoyed shooting stuff up in the Mako. But that teaser just did nothing for me at all.

It got people talking about the game I guess. Maybe that's all Bioware was going for...

[schild]

Wow Bioware really paid out good money to an outside company for that? Did you guys pull an EA and lay off all of the artists between games or something?

Edit: I probably sound much more negative than I mean to.  I just finished playing Mass Effect this weekend and loved it. I even did all the silly side missions and enjoyed shooting stuff up in the Mako. But that teaser just did nothing for me at all.

It got people talking about the game I guess. Maybe that's all Bioware was going for...

I've stopped with the surprise on when it comes to finding out what companies pay for and what they do in-house. Trailers are easy, I'm not sure why they're farmed out. I can see why a company would farm out the sound (if they have no inhouse sound studio of any sort) and sometimes even the art (especially when a shop like Massive Black is better than like 90% of the industry).

[Stormwaltz]

It's idolatry, IMO. I chalk the trend up to this bizarre idea that's taken root in the games industry that Hollywood knows how to do what we do better than we do.

Hollywood knows how to make and market movies. They're good at that. Games? They just try to shove them into the same mold they use for everything else.

One effect of this idolatry is the trend of hiring Hollywood marketing companies to make elaborate CGI commercials that show events that never happen in the game, show no footage of the game, and often don't focus on the title of the game. It worked very well for Gears of War, but most of the time - again, in my opinion - it doesn't work at all.

[Tebonas]

So game trailers are like trailers for TV series in the future? Yay

[Margalis]

Game advertising is going down a strange road. It's becoming less and less about the games, almost as if companies are embarrassed to sell their real products.

Remember when Sega showed shots of Mario Brothers and Mario Kart and compared them to shots of much faster Genesis games? That sort of advertising based on actual game content looks to be dying off. Now it's either vaguely related CG trailers or rambling talking heads.

[FatuousTwat]

Game advertising is going down a strange road. It's becoming less and less about the games, almost as if companies are embarrassed to sell their real products.

Remember when Sega showed shots of Mario Brothers and Mario Kart and compared them to shots of much faster Genesis games? That sort of advertising based on actual game content looks to be dying off. Now it's either vaguely related CG trailers or rambling talking heads.

Then it is just following the trend of most advertising today. How many commercials do you see that actually talk about the features of the product?

[rk47]

mentos, the freshmaker. 
I never get that ad at all.

[Strazos]

You remember it from years ago - that was the point.

And after having been made aware of Mentos, did you buy some?

[rk47]

You remember it from years ago - that was the point.

And after having been made aware of Mentos, did you buy some?

i was too young, but parents bought it for me and I liked it.  does that count?

[Strazos]

You were beaten by a Mentos ad, then. How does that make you feel? 

[FatuousTwat]

Now I want some Mentos... Damnit.

[rk47]

You were beaten by a Mentos ad, then. How does that make you feel? 

heheh, I don't know why they didn't advertise it with kids having a nice chew out of it. It's the best part of Mentos. You just chew and chew. Before you know it, the whole roll is gone. So I learn to savor it by just letting it stay on the tongue and not let my teeth chew it.

[Lantyssa]

Mentos makes the most memorable commercials.

What else makes you drive up to your apartment, see the mailman down the street, notice he missed a letter and ran after him, then after successfully delivering it turn around to your roommate and make the Mentos smile while holding up your hand (pretending to hold the Mentos you wish you had) and flashing your thumb in your best Fonzie imitation?

Or is that just me?

[Strazos]

No, that would be fucking hysterical.

[ajax34i]

How on earth do you get that? It couldn't have been any more direct about saying Shepherd was killed in action. It looked like his Alliance records to me - although I really wish game designers would stop having their computers make teletype noises and use fonts from 1965.

Yup it says Alliance Records, I may have been wrong about that, but if you ignore all text and look at just the images, there's the planet (thus the point of view is "in orbit"), and then the close-ups look like a rifle's muzzle and parts but shrug, it could be a ship, and then the geth has the N7 logo on his shoulder, with blood next to it, so that's what I concluded.  It could just be a regular-size geth made with spare human armor and weapon parts (they all had the N7 logo on them too).

Anyway...

[Ingmar]

Obviously Shepherd has undergone a Bond-style You Only Live Twice fake death!

[Reg]

Hmm, I'll try watching it again at some point and see if I can see what you saw. I'm pretty much a strict "focus on the text" kinda guy. 

[ajax34i]

Of course, the Cerberus logo is displayed as the video loads, so maybe that Geth is their own version of one.  Who knows?

[Lantyssa]

Vaguely related, the new nVidia 182 drivers seem to help those of us who were having excessive crashes, or couldn't start due to GPFs.

With the 169 drivers I could kind of play, but the graphics were messed up and things were iffy.  Was never able to save.  Later drivers made the game die upon launching, usually slowly and painfully.  These I was able to make a character, save games (!), talk to people, launch and quit easily.  When I finally crashed it was clean.  They are working on a patch, finally, but for anyone with an nVidia card who hasn't been able to play but wants to, give these a shot.  (Apparently 90% of people having trouble are using a 8xxx series card.)

[AutomaticZen]

Mass Effect 2 on PC to release same day as 360 revision.

Some were some pretty significant differences in the controls between the PC and 360 versions last time round. Is it the same with the sequel?

We learned a lot from building the PC version before, and having built it six months later there was a big difference. So we actually took what we learned from PC and put it back into 360. Fundamentally, we want you to have the same gameplay experience, but just with the difference in controls. This time round, doing it at the same time for a sim-ship, we can control the differences much more smoothly because it’s the same team building it now.

Finally.  Know which version I'm buying.

[Trippy]

It doesn't say that the controls are going to be the same.

As a sidenote, BioWare fucking SUCKS at UI design. GAH!