This is topic Mass Effect 3 in forum Books, Films, Food and Culture at Hatrack River Forum.


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Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
 
It's The Avatar of Video games... Except Better Written.
 
Posted by airmanfour (Member # 6111) on :
 
I have to wait a year for that? A YEAR?!?!?!?!
 
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
 
****! YES, YES, YES!

I'll wait a year, I'll wait half my lifetime, just do it right! (I know they will.)
 
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
 
Huh, didn't realize the board auto-censors. At least you know the f-word was there in my heart.
 
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
 
Really?

*** testing deleted ***

It's an awfully specific auto-filter. So far I can't get another word that is automatically censored.
 
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
 
Dragon Age 2 is coming soon. Then next fall we've got Mass Effect 3, Uncharted 3, Gears of War 3, and some other stuff I know I'm not thinking of.

Madness. All sequels, but sequels to great games. I'm okay with that.
 
Posted by SoaPiNuReYe (Member # 9144) on :
 
I'm so pumped for this to come out. And BioShock 3.
 
Posted by ricree101 (Member # 7749) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Mucus:
Really?

*** testing deleted ***

It's an awfully specific auto-filter. So far I can't get another word that is automatically censored.

Me neither. At the least, it's the only one of the Carlin's seven dirty words to get censored (except the duplicate substring, of course).

Incidentally, the preview button runs through the auto censor, in case anyone else is curious but doesn't want to post inappropriate language even momentarily.
 
Posted by Nighthawk (Member # 4176) on :
 
...and Portal 2
...and DNF
...and possibly Beyond Good and Evil 2
...and Alice: Madness Returns
...and
...and

*head asplodes*
 
Posted by Sterling (Member # 8096) on :
 
It's a good time to be a gamer.

Now if they'd just port Red Dead Redemption to the PC...
 
Posted by Geraine (Member # 9913) on :
 
I'm pretty excited about it as well.

I am very curious about the new Back to the Future game coming out next Wednesday. They got Christopher Lloys to do the voice of Doc and it happens six months after BTTF 3.
 
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
 
Huh, I hadn't heard that. Sounds good!

I'm worried that after ME3 I'll have a big letdown. Sometimes when I really love a game, movie or series thereof, I get a huge rush at the end followed by a sort of depression: all the fun is over now! (It also has something to do with the time that I've just sunk down the drain of the game.)

Anyway, that feeling was pretty intense at the end of Mass Effect 1. The worst game for it was Knights of the Old Republic. It also happened when the LOTR movies were over.
 
Posted by Dr Strangelove (Member # 8331) on :
 
I actually just had the urge to pick up KotOR again today. I usually say the Mass Effect games are my favorite games of all time, but if I think about it, that honor goes to Knights of the Old Republic, because without that game I doubt I would be the lover of RPG's that I am today.

Memory lane aside, I'm trying to decide what game to get myself for Christmas. Fable III is on sale new for $40, but I also could get Dragon Age and Borderlands for cheaper, and throw in Gears II for another $10. I've played Dragon Age (beaten it, but obviously not exhausted it), dabbled in Borderlands (hopefully my wife would play it with me) and loved Gears II, so those are the safe bets. But Fable III is Fable III... it's a tough call. I'm leaning towards the Dragon Age option right now, but I'll have to see what I feel like in a couple days when I go to Gamestop.

It is good to be a gamer. Even a cheap gamer.
 
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
If the choice is between Dragon Age and Fable III, I'd say having played both it's an easy choice for Dragon Age.
 
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Destineer:
Huh, I hadn't heard that. Sounds good!

I'm worried that after ME3 I'll have a big letdown. Sometimes when I really love a game, movie or series thereof, I get a huge rush at the end followed by a sort of depression: all the fun is over now! (It also has something to do with the time that I've just sunk down the drain of the game.)

Anyway, that feeling was pretty intense at the end of Mass Effect 1. The worst game for it was Knights of the Old Republic. It also happened when the LOTR movies were over.

I had this from Watching Angel Beats! and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann.

It's called Awesomeness Withdrawal.
 
Posted by AchillesHeel (Member # 11736) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Rakeesh:
If the choice is between Dragon Age and Fable III, I'd say having played both it's an easy choice for Dragon Age.

Maybe, but the New Vegas bugs were recently fixed and you should be able to find a gently used copy seeing as most people who the bought the game at the drop couldnt play it.
 
Posted by AchillesHeel (Member # 11736) on :
 
quote:
It's called Awesomeness Withdrawal.
BSG, how dare they end it so well when we should have the ability to make it live on in discussions about how it could have been better and make half-hearted attempts to force them to renew it for a movie or something. But instead we can only nerdrage about Firefly, they still have Awesomeness Withdrawal Group meetings over that one.
 
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
 
Eeeeeh BSG ended alright but it was a bit unfilling, since it was sorta a deus ex machina and left many things unexplained other than sorta confirming that hey, Baltar wasn't crazy.
 
Posted by Sterling (Member # 8096) on :
 
I have to admit that I'm a little concerned that Bioware is looking to release ME3 so soon after ME2. I remember Obsidian complaining bitterly that the reason that The Sith Lords was so unfinished was that they only had about eighteen months to get it done and out the door.

But then, that's Obsidian, who seems to be gaining a reputation for inability to get a completely finished and bug-free product out the door under any circumstances... Bioware has a better track record.
 
Posted by Ginol_Enam (Member # 7070) on :
 
Also, Bioware has stated that they already had begun pre-production on ME3 by the time ME2 was completed. ME3 won't be as different to ME2 as ME2 was to ME1 (supposedly), so that cuts development time down as well.

Also, the gap between 1 and 2 was, like, what? A little over two years? This is just under two years, so its not that different.
 
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
 
quote:
I remember Obsidian complaining bitterly that the reason that The Sith Lords was so unfinished was that they only had about eighteen months to get it done and out the door.
Excuses! Sith Lords would've been worthless with or without those bugs. The first ten hours of that game literally bored me to death. That's right, you're talking to a ghost.
 
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
 
A Force ghost or a regular ghost?
 
Posted by Tarrsk (Member # 332) on :
 
A Terran Ghost. Watch out for red dots of light.
 
Posted by Dr Strangelove (Member # 8331) on :
 
Sith Lords is one of two video games I played for over two hours but never completed. Of course, right now, the other game on that list is Deadspace, so my taste isn't necessarily reflective of most people.
 
Posted by Nighthawk (Member # 4176) on :
 
The Sith Lords was PAINFUL to play.
 
Posted by Sterling (Member # 8096) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Destineer:
The first ten hours of that game literally bored me to death. That's right, you're talking to a ghost.

If the first ten hours bored you to death, the last five would have brought you back in order to kill you again. I swear I could almost hear someone muttering "copy... paste..." in the background of the soundtrack.
 
Posted by GaalDornick (Member # 8880) on :
 
About how long does it take to beat the first Mass Effect game?

I recently got my first Xbox and I'm trying to catch up on all the good series. So far I've only beaten Assassin's Creed 1 and the Halo series. For now, I just want to play fun games that I can beat them and move on, not long-lasting RPGs. Does Mass Effect fit that description?
 
Posted by umberhulk (Member # 11788) on :
 
Next year looks crazy. I'd post the lineup if I hadnt already typed in on another forum so i dont feel like it sorry.
 
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by GaalDornick:
Does Mass Effect fit that description?

No. You might be able to power through it in 20 hours, but you'd sort of be missing the point.
 
Posted by Dr Strangelove (Member # 8331) on :
 
Yeah, I ran through it once in about 15 hours, but that was probably my fourth or fifth play through.

Really, the games are amazing (IMO). I would say its worth it to put 50 hours into a really really good game versus putting 10-15 hours into 4 games. But that is me, who enjoys staring at the inventory screen comparing stats.

Oh, and definitely get Assassins Creed II. It's really really good.
 
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by GaalDornick:
So far I've only beaten Assassin's Creed 1 and the Halo series. For now, I just want to play fun games that I can beat them and move on, not long-lasting RPGs. Does Mass Effect fit that description?

No.
 
Posted by Geraine (Member # 9913) on :
 
The Mass Effect series is good because of the storytelling. You discover things whent he characters do.

I hate RPGs in which they tell you in a cut scene that someone is actually working against you, yet the main characters are oblivious to it. The only surprise is when they are going to betray you.

I want to be wow'd when something happens or when the characters learn something. Wing Commander III is a good example. All throughout Wing Commander II and III, Hobbes is essentially your best friend. Towards the end of the game, you (Well, Mark Hamill really) discovers Hobbes has been a spy the whole time, and you have to go shoot his ship down. It was a pretty emotional scene and mission. I remember saying "No way! Not Hobbes!" I was angry and sad at the same time.

Aside from the last boss of Mass Effect 2 (I mean come on... Really?) the game was amazing.
 
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
To be fair, there's at least one other major WTF in Mass Effect 2: that you, if you're playing a hard-core paragon who spent a lot of the side quests in the first game shutting down Cerberus' horrific scientific experiments and pro-human plots, basically accept without question that you're "forced" to work with Cerberus and, even once returned to Citadel space, cannot simply betray the organization immediately and return to working for the Council.
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
Whether shepard goes paragon or renegade, any moral option you choose is a different way of approaching the same end: to defend against the reapers. for the sake of the story, it's assumed that shepard sees no option that makes it prudent to walk away from cerberus's provided crew and ship. Especially in a game wherein the original council was sacrificed by Shepard, in which case the new human council won't have anything to do with the reanimated Shepard.

If you saved the original council, you can actually officially rejoin the Spectres, and they basically give you free reign to pursue the investigation on the down-low while working with Spectre.

But with either circumstance, it becomes quickly evident to Shepard that he/she has no choice but to stick with Cerberus' offer if he/she wants any chance of protecting the human colonies. The council has dismissed the reaper claim and will not support you substantially in any effort to pursue the collectors.
 
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
quote:
If you saved the original council, you can actually officially rejoin the Spectres...
Eventually. I fully expected, on my first play-through, to show up and say, "Hey, look, this whole Cerberus thing isn't doing it for me. How about you set me back up with a ship and I investigate what killed me the first time?" And the Citadel's response was, "We can't do that. You're working with Cerberus." To which my response would have been, had the game given me the option, "I am only working with Cerberus because you won't work with me because I'm working with Cerberus."
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
The council's response to your investigation shows that they actively consider you deluded. You can't get support from them. You can try to persuade them, but it's obviously useless.
 
Posted by Herblay (Member # 11834) on :
 
Re: Mass Effect

As a newcomer, would it be recommended to start with Mass Effect? Or would I be fine to play Mass Effect 2.

If the second is significantly better, and it isn't heavily reliant, I may not want to play the first. I'm in grad school, and I don't have much time.

DragonAge, for instance, is a game where you'd WANT to play the first (as the second is really only an expansion pack).
 
Posted by MattP (Member # 10495) on :
 
Mass Effect 2 can stand on its own and fixes a number of problems with Mass Effect. If I were pressed for time I'd skip the first one.
 
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
 
quote:
I want to be wow'd when something happens or when the characters learn something. Wing Commander III is a good example. All throughout Wing Commander II and III, Hobbes is essentially your best friend. Towards the end of the game, you (Well, Mark Hamill really) discovers Hobbes has been a spy the whole time, and you have to go shoot his ship down. It was a pretty emotional scene and mission. I remember saying "No way! Not Hobbes!" I was angry and sad at the same time.
Great game, great moment. The Wing Commander series will always live in my heart.

By the way, are you aware of the cut footage explaining why Hobbes became a sleeper agent? It really adds to the story, IMO.
 
Posted by Geraine (Member # 9913) on :
 
Whoa I didn't know about that scene. Thanks!
 
Posted by Dr Strangelove (Member # 8331) on :
 
Eh, I don't know, I think the first Mass Effect is pretty important. If you're pressed for time, put it on easy mode and just run through the story line missions, maybe throwing a couple Cerberus missions in too. I'd say do this if for no other reason than having a character to import to Mass Effect 2, complete with your storyline decisions (the plot line ones anyways. One of the awesome things about ME2 is that even the small, side mission decisions you make in Mass Effect 1 show up in Mass Effect 2. IIRC, the default is that you were somewhat of a renegade, so if you're interested in being good, playing through the first is essential).
 
Posted by Geraine (Member # 9913) on :
 
I own the first on 360 and the second on the PC, so I couldn't carry over my saved game. Now that ME2 is only $20 I may buy it on the 360 and play through both again.

I played ME1 as a pure Paragon, and was also able to save the alien crew member near the end by talking him down. (Tried to keep that spoiler free) I did lose one crew member, but that is required.

I started ME2 and was kind of let down that they did not give some sort of little test to determine what kind of choices you would have made in the first game. I guess the PS3 version of ME2 is going to have something like this, but it would have been nice for the first release.
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by MattP:
Mass Effect 2 can stand on its own and fixes a number of problems with Mass Effect. If I were pressed for time I'd skip the first one.

I heartily disagree! I think you should absolutely play through mass effect 1 so that the world in 2 is the result of your playthrough in 1, and is filled with the people you know.
 
Posted by Sterling (Member # 8096) on :
 
Worth mentioning- Both ME and ME2 are $10 on Steam today.
 
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
 
Yeah, its pretty awesome considering that MS2 was only released in January. I think $10.00 or so might become my new maximum price for games (PC games anyways).

[ December 23, 2010, 01:30 PM: Message edited by: Mucus ]
 
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
Yeah, personally I would say ME1 is a sufficiently outstanding enough game that it's well worth playing through just so you can get the full bang for the buck on ME2, much less ME3.
 
Posted by Tarrsk (Member # 332) on :
 
Definitely. ME1 has some game mechanics that don't quite work (particularly the Mako driving segments), but the overall gameplay is quite enjoyable and the story is excellent. Plus it sets up the universe - a very important thing for this series, which has some of the best RPG world-building I've ever seen.

ME2 takes everything great about ME1 and ramps it up a notch. The writing is tighter and funnier, the shooter gameplay is better, the biotic powers are more useful, and the animation is even better (quite a feat considering ME1 is still one of the best-animated dialogue-driven games out there). But ME2 does sort of throw you into the plot, with just barely enough exposition to keep new players semi-aware of what is going on. Considering that ME3 won't be out for another year, that's plenty of time to play through both ME1 and ME2. I'd highly recommend getting both games, and make sure that you import your ME1 character into ME2.
 
Posted by Sterling (Member # 8096) on :
 
One small thing I have to note regarding ME2.

To be clear, I really enjoyed both games; they're totally worth the time and money, and some of the finest examples of the craft available on the market. Seriously.

But ME2 does have times where it feels a bit "everything looks like a nail", if you get me. The Mako sections in ME1 may not have been everything they could have been, but they did help break things up a bit; without them, you go more or less from conversation to gunfight to conversation to gunfight. It started to get to the point where I went into every conversation thinking, "Okay, how am I going to have to use violence to solve this one?" (And I was playing mostly Paragon.)

The "surveying" fills time, but not in a good way. It feels like a function that ought to be fulfilled with a macro; it rarely makes one feel connected with the experience, aside from a small handful of special encounters discovered that way. Star Control 2 managed to handle a similar function better, and that was almost 2 decades ago.
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
The mako sections were annoying to most who didn't like to play explorer/surveyer, but they were extremely preferable to the probe-launching in ME2.
 
Posted by Nighthawk (Member # 4176) on :
 
It's always baffled me how such a beautiful game like ME2 could include the whole probe sending thing. What genius thought of that idea?!?
 
Posted by Dr Strangelove (Member # 8331) on :
 
Did I miss the Elder Scrolls V announcement? I was just looking on Gamestop's website and saw that it's listed as coming out this year.
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Nighthawk:
It's always baffled me how such a beautiful game like ME2 could include the whole probe sending thing. What genius thought of that idea?!?

I think, like most Bad Ideas in games, it was an interesting design concept and novel idea that would have been great as an extremely limited part of gameplay that is used alongside multiple other farming/surveying interactions. Then at some point, other elements of the gear upgrade system got pulled out and there were already sound, graphical, and coding elements invested in the surveying system and it became a much, much larger obligatory investment of time than it should have been. An accident of the design timeline.
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Dr Strangelove:
Did I miss the Elder Scrolls V announcement? I was just looking on Gamestop's website and saw that it's listed as coming out this year.

If elder scrolls v comes out and still has the same combat and leveling system as Oblivion, I'm going to write off the entire studio as being the victim of a brain damaging gas leak.
 
Posted by Dr Strangelove (Member # 8331) on :
 
From what I read, they are going to be using a whole new engine.

That's what Wikipedia said anyways [Smile] .

I had a good time with Oblivion. Not great, but it was just so big that I was able to find something I liked. Namely, making two 55% Chameleon spells that stacked and walking around invisible the entire game, getting sneaking critical hits every time. The final Thieves Guild mission was one of the most enjoyable video game playing experiences I can remember, while the final Assassins Guild was one of the most nauseating (still fun, but the lighthouse room with the flies buzzing was disturbing. I felt like I could smell death). But I agree, the combat system was unimaginative. Regardless though, I'll buy it.
 
Posted by Nighthawk (Member # 4176) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Dr Strangelove:
Namely, making two 55% Chameleon spells that stacked and walking around invisible the entire game...

You didn't even have to do that. Eventually you find enough equipment with the invisibility trait on it to take you well over 100%. After that I was pretty much plowing over anything I came across.

It was a fun game, but had its bad parts. For example, when I reached one of the "bosses" (General Zod... I forget his name in game), right in the middle of his BBEG speech I fired a single arrow in to his head that launched him clean over his throne to a crumpled heap against the back wall. "Wait... That's it?!?"

Tried the same thing on the final boss. At least that didn't work then...
 
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Nighthawk:
It was a fun game, but had its bad parts. For example, when I reached one of the "bosses" (General Zod... I forget his name in game), right in the middle of his BBEG speech I fired a single arrow in to his head that launched him clean over his throne to a crumpled heap against the back wall. "Wait... That's it?!?"

I agree Oblivion had serious problems (mostly in how leveling up worked: the worst possible thing you can do is choose your bread and butter skills as "major" skills) however this actually sounds amazing.

But I guess I'm a huge fan of anticlimax, sooooo...
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
to beat oblivion into mush, all one needs to do is not make the mistake of choosing skills you intend to use or that will level you up by accident. that is it. the rest of it does not have to be creative.

Eventually your 'hit with sward' skill is level 9,872,652,389,075 but you're still level one. And so, by extension, is the rest of the entire world. You kill people just by making direct eye contact with them while holding a sword. All foes die faster than the speed of light.

no i am serious bethesda is dumber than paste
 
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
I agree, in light of the rest of the game's (in my opinion) excellence, that was a very strange mistake to have made. And the mechanic was so close to being really very excellent too, IMO, if - for example - certain things were made more difficult and particularly if players were advised more carefully, "This is what will happen if you choose this.
 
Posted by Sterling (Member # 8096) on :
 
I didn't play Oblivion setting out to break it and I still found it kind of frustrating and repetitive by the end. Part of that was my own stubborn insistence on closing Oblivion gates, I suspect, but boy, they sure found some silly ways to make progression less than exciting.

It's also one of the games that made "You did (such and such thing that was absoultely unavoidable to trigger the mission to advance)? You fool!" one of my pet peeves.

Still, it did have its moments. I liked the idea of gathering allies from each nation to help face down the final threat, and the graphics were remarkably pretty for the time, and some of the set pieces were well done, as was a lot of the voice work.

[ January 02, 2011, 01:01 PM: Message edited by: Sterling ]
 
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
You didn't have to, at all. Heck, unless you picked one of the pretty inappropriate* classes, you'd run into the problems. If you picked a custom class as I did, not even intended (the first time) to be a bit of a game breaker, well, the game would quite quickly be broken. I had my fun by playing with the intent that nobody would die, not even the no-name schlubbo guards, heh.

But I still say, for my fun's worth, it was a pretty damn amazing game that for all of it's hobbled, strange level system, it was spectacular.

*By that I mean I forget what they even were, but one of the classes that didn't have blade, blunt, or one of the attacking magic schools in their major skills. But then, of course, there were plenty of workarounds even then for, say, a monk-it just would've made the early game quite a bit trickier.
 
Posted by Parkour (Member # 12078) on :
 
Making the whole world your level was such a dumb idea. It made it so that progress doesn't exist, and that if you didn't level your combat skills, you quickly started dying to everything. I walked out of the starter town and got murdered by boars in two hits wherever I went because I had leveled up a few times from social skills.

And the leveling system was bad in all other ways too like the multiplyer for stats. And half of your character options at creation were duds.
 
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
 
The leveling system caused problems for my spellblade on my first playthrough, since I leveled up too much from using my major skills and consequently I wasn't powerful enough to defeat at-level foes at a few points in the game. I wound up having to turn the difficulty down for those parts, which is a really, really bad solution to what should never have been a problem to begin with.

On my Shivering Isles playthrough, I made a new character and designed a custom class with a proper mix of skills to prevent either over- or underleveling.
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
the leveling system is broken even beyond the whole 'the entire world is your level of combat difficulty whether or not your level has combat abilities kept up to date' — when you use overhauls to give the world some degree of objective regional difficulty, or not, characters get overpowered or broken based on if they were being built to maximize per-level multipliers for stat upgrades. And stat upgrades tend to invalidate like half of the star signs you can be born to. Really, it's such a bad system that if it's in the next installment, that's almost enough to assume I'm going to think it's bad too!

Okay, but there are more tangible ways that the game gets tired and old, beyond both that and the drudgery of the gate missions.

As the levels advance, all enemies start turning into buckets of HP; at level one you can smack someone with a weapon or an arrow and they crumple (and this is fun) but by a certain level all battles are mashy grindy battles of attrition.

The world is full of dungeons. But all of them are nearly always built from three tilesets and all look pretty much alike.

Fast travel anywhere anytime out of combat is the easiest way to break the scope and immersion of the world. You just made a giant continent and ate all the novelty of that.

Don't make it so that all character interactions jam the camera dead-on into their face. It's stupid. Especially if this self-indulgent exercise in pimping out your faces and animation falls flat because your faces are so bad that better faces were patched in by fans in literally days after release.

Also, oh my god, bethesda, hire more than, like, ten voice actors. When, like, every dark elf in the game on the continent has the same mealy squeaky voice, for example, it's like, what.
 
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
 
Samp I know very little about the actual game industry, so tell me: Are the people at Bethesda who worked on Fallout the same as the people working on Elder Scrolls? Or different? Because a lot of the worst problems that plagued Oblivion were improved upon in Fallout. Not all of them, sure, but the most egregious ones were, especially by the time they did New Vegas.

The character leveling system (but that's SPECIAL so not really going to apply in TES)...

The world-leveling system (not gone, but not nearly as blatant and in your face)...

The fast travel issue (not gone, but at least you have to explore the damn world one time)...

The attrition battles (brought back in Broken Steel with a vengeance, especially on "hard," but seems to be absent in New Vegas)...

The dungeons still have some tileset repetition but often have at least a few interesting features (or maybe I'm just more forgiving of post apocalyptic dungeon sets, I dunno)...

More voice actors! Not, like, enough or anything. But, more!

Still jams the camera onto everyone's face but they aren't quite as ugly anymore so that's sort of a wash.

So yeah. Are the teams the same here? This gives me hope that the next Elder Scrolls will have learned from Fallout. Is that wishful thinking on my part?
 
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
 
Fallout 3 was done by Bethesda. New Vegas was done by Obsidian.
 
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
 
Right. I knew that at some point. Even so, Fallout 3 solved some of the problems plaguing Oblivion. Were those two the same design team?
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
I don't think the lead design was the same, no. That, and bethesda softworks was operating on a completely different design principle for FO3. The only real relevant question is how attached they are to maintaining the legacy of elder scrolls' system, which is the only reason why they keep it mostly the same in every game no matter how outdated it is.
 
Posted by Geoffrey Card (Member # 1062) on :
 
The folks I know at Bethesda are definitely very aware of the problems in Oblivion, and I've gotten the sense that they consider Fallout 3 to be an important and informative step on the road to improving their games in general.

So you can definitely expect Skyrim to be another major step forward from Fallout 3, and not simply a return to whatever was going on in Oblivion.

I've been playing Fallout: New Vegas voraciously for the past week, and I have to say that while Obsidian's games have historically had problems with polish (probably due to them having less time and money than the studios whose IPs they develop for), they are one of the best things that ever happened to western RPG storytelling. Ever IP they touch gets better. I'm really excited to see what they do with Dungeon Siege 3, and I HOPE that Bethesda contracts them to do another Fallout.
 
Posted by Sean Monahan (Member # 9334) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Geoffrey Card:
...and I have to say that while Obsidian's games have historically had problems with polish...

When I first read this, I thought, "What issue does Obsidian have with people from Poland?"
 
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
 
Glad to hear that, Geoffrey. And yeah, I agree with you about New Vegas; Obsidian solved so many of Fallout 3's problems, even problems I didn't specifically know they had.

It's sad to hear they're racist against the Polish though. [Frown]
 
Posted by Geoffrey Card (Member # 1062) on :
 
http://kotaku.com/5728236/the-next-elder-scrolls-has-new-combat--levelling

... and here's the proof!
 
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Dan_Frank:
It's sad to hear they're racist against the Polish though. [Frown]

Not that this justifies it or anything, but there is a bit of history to it. One time, Obsidian went on vacation and asked Lech Walesa to house sit for them. Walesa let their cat out, and didn't even go to look for her. When Obsidian got home, Walesa was all "Oh, hey, hope you had a good time. Things were pretty quiet here, especially after Mme. Urquhart left". He didn't even apologize, and he acted confused when Obsidian got pissed off about it. He actually threatened to take them to small claims court over the $20 and the souvenir shot glass that Obsidian refused to give him, but nothing ever came of that.
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Geoffrey Card:
http://kotaku.com/5728236/the-next-elder-scrolls-has-new-combat--levelling

... and here's the proof!

very positive news. well, intent-wise. I hope the execution goes well.
 


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