Pumping Irony

As in the previous article, beware traveler! Beyond this point be spoilers!

I completed Mass Effect 2 last week, and it was glorious! I wanted to check a single part of the UI in Mass Effect to compare to Mass Effect 2 and ended up getting so engrossed in the game that I completed an entire second play-through of Mass Effect in 3 days! My first ME (and ME2) play-throughs were as a male Soldier class who took the Paragon path. So this time I played the exact opposite: a female Adept (biotic) Renegade. Boy, was that some devilish fun being no-nonsense, shooting important NPC’s in the head and slinging biotic powers all over the place. It was almost like playing a Sith, sans the red lightsaber. I’m looking forward to taking her through ME2 doing all the Renegade actions and seeing her glowing facial scars from the Lazarus Project become more pronounced. (See? Spoiler!)

On a positive note, playing both games back-to-back has brought the stark contrast between the two games into clearer light.

Every technical aspect has been dramatically improved upon for Mass Effect 2. Character models, animations, world design and architecture, textures, lighting and particle effects, controls, UI… you name it, it’s better in ME2 and with much better performance!

From an overall story perspective, I would without hesitation recommend playing ME before going into ME2. There are too many mentions of events that occurred in ME and several brief appearances of characters that Shepard interacted with in the first game that wouldn’t make sense or have meaning to players who skipped ME. Do yourself a favor and play them both for the full effect.

In addition to the other positive aspects I’ve already mentioned both here and in the previous article, I’ll add the new cover mechanic as well. There was a cover mechanic to ME as well, but it only worked by running into a large object like a wall. Anything smaller than Shepard would not work. ME2 improves by not only making Shepard crouch behind smaller objects but also adds more direct interaction to enter/leave cover by pressing the A button. Also, once covered behind a smaller barrier, moving forward and pressing A tells Shepard to jump over the barrier, and the game uses this new mechanic to move from cover point to cover point as well as for climbing. As I said in the first article, ME2 is very derivative of the Gears of War series in several areas, cover mechanic being just one.

ME2 has an improved auto-save as well, should you choose to use it (it’s on by default). There are frequent auto-save points, and all saves are completely seamless whereas in ME the game would freeze during the save process. First, the save points are a tremendous boon, and I became so accustomed to this that it cost me over an hour of playtime I had to repeat during my replay of ME a few days ago when I hit a snag and wanted to reload. I also noticed that ME does not allow you to manually reload an auto-save; you have to exit the game then resume to do that. ME2 lets us re-load an auto-save from the Load menu, which is a huge convenience.

Another positive in ME2 is that each mission has its own cinematic, in contrast to ME which re-used the same scene constantly. For example, in ME every time you land on a planet, it’s the exact same scene of the Normandy sweeping down and dropping off the Mako rover, the only change being the sky and terrain graphics are unique for each planet. ME2 has extremely well-rendered cinematics for every single mission which are not only enjoyable to watch on their own but also serve to improve the overall sense of immersion in the game’s universe.

To avoid being a drooling Mass Effect fanboy, I’ll give some negatives and things that I am still undecided how I feel about in ME2. Nothing’s perfect, after all.

The Mission Complete screen. This is a minor — indeed, a shallow — thing, and on the one hand I suppose it’s convenient to have one screen that shows all the XP, credits, etc. I gained during that mission. On a negative side, it makes an already streamlined RPG feel more like “merely” a game, like Peggle or something where you see the “Level Complete!” screen.

The XP Table. Mass Effect 2 does not use a gradually increasing XP curve, like we’ve become accustomed to over the years in every single RPG. Each level in Mass Effect 2 requires 1,000 XP and never changes from that. Unlike ME, no XP is earned for kills, hacking, resource recovery, etc. Completing a Story Mission rewards 1,000 XP so automatically completing a Story Mission means you gain a level. Completing a Loyalty Quest for your crew members rewards 750 XP each. Anomaly Detected missions discovered while scanning a planet for resources reward 125 XP upon completion and then side missions acquired from dialogue with NPC award 40 XP. I am undecided how I feel about this change. It is convenient knowing exactly what is required to level up, and many (not all) RPG’s, including MMORPG’s, have a leveling curve where it requires exponentially more XP to gain each new level, but kills also reward more XP so it works out that the curve is barely noticeable in practice.

Some story elements were questionable. One that stands out is during the mission to recruit Mordin, you encounter people looting the dead bodies. This apparently offends Shepard, for there is a dialogue scene to dissuade them (or probably threaten them if you’re playing renegade) from looting the corpses and offices. Meanwhile what is Shepard doing the entire game? Looting corpses and offices. The few areas of “exploration” in ME2 is solely for the purpose of looting. Practice what you preach, Shepard.

I was not a fan of ME2’s particular method of content gating. Similar to ME, each NPC crew member has a particular area of the Normandy they can be found. It’s the same in ME2 but now the door to the NPC’s area is locked until you recruit them. Uh, sorry, but Shepard is the commanding officer and there is no reason he would be locked out of part of his ship. Maybe it’s just close to home since I’m a captain at work and there is no part of the jet I’m “locked out” of for any reason. Regardless, next time I’d prefer a more logical and story-based means of content gating.

The audio mixing was poor during dialogue scenes. BioWare is hardly the only game developer guilty of this, but it just amazes me that audio engineering and production has been around for how long now? And games still don’t lower the volume of the background music and ambient sounds during dialogue so that we can, you know, hear what is being said? Bargain basement radio shows know how to do this; there is no excuse for development studios with multi-million dollar budgets to be this clueless.

Finally, I did encounter two glitches during the game that required re-loading. At the Normandy crash site, I walked too close to a cliff while exploring and triggered a z-axis glitch which elevated Shepard a few pixels in the air. Suddenly he could walk on air out over the cliff but couldn’t get back down onto the actual terrain. Also on Tuchanka during Grunt’s loyalty quest, at one point we’re fighting waves of klixen and one large flying klixen. Once we’d killed all the smaller klixen, the big flying one disappeared. My AI squadmates continued shooting into the air where the klixen was supposed to be, but it never reappeared so we could kill it and continue the mission.

I’ve read a few reviews that complained about the mission structure, saying they were all similar. Um, duh? Every mission will have some exploration, some dialogue, some story, and some combat. It was the same in ME, and it’s the same in every single RPG I’ve ever heard of. I’m a little confused why ME2 is being singled out for the same act all RPG’s (or any game with a story) are guilty of? The one thing during missions that became somewhat predictable was that if you ran into an area and suddenly notice low walls or other short barriers, you know you’re about to enter combat because those low barriers are to take cover behind or jump over. If you’re paying attention to that, you have a heads-up that combat is coming but there are also other clues. But the actual maps for each mission is unique each time, unlike ME with its horrid planet design and only a handful of building layouts which were repeated ad nauseum.

I will agree, to an extent, with the complaints over the length of the actual story arc itself compared to the number of recruitment missions. ME2 is a much more focused and tighter experience, and while the actual story arc defeating the Collectors is condensed to a few missions, what the game did from an overall perspective was to drastically improve the lore to Mass Effect in an immersive and visual manner. In ME we learned about the Quarion flotilla in dialogue and from reading the Codex (You did read the Codex right? No? Me either.) but in ME2 we actually get to see that migrant fleet and board two of its ships. So much of what we only heard of in the first game we actually experience, to varied degrees, in the second. ME2 spends a lot of time letting us expand our experience and knowledge within the Mass Effect universe. Instead of just reading the Codex for lore (and there’s plenty of that, too, unfortunately) ME2 also gives us the chance to live out little bits of it. Mass Effect 2 had record-setting sales of over two million units its first week, and the most January sales to date, no small feat considering ME2 launched on January 26th. Mass Effect is becoming a big-name IP, right up there with the Star Trek’s and Star Wars of yesteryear, and you can officially count me among those who firmly believe without a doubt that BioWare fully intends on expanding the Mass Effect IP into the massively multiplayer realm within the next decade. ME2 serves to further that goal by showing us more of that universe and letting us play in it, in addition to merely reading about it, which not only improves the “immersion” of ME2 but also draws us into the concept of the IP as a whole so we yearn for more. The lore already has everything we’d possibly need for an awesome space adventure MMORPG: multiple races, multiple opposing factions to support PvP, governing bodies, galactic threats, law enforcement, criminals, mercenary groups, etc. The potential is there for either the greatest sandbox-with-a-story MMO or the greatest sci-fi themepark MMO. I’m hoping for the former, myself… :grin:

I’ve been very curious on people’s opinions on this, so I installed a poll plugin so I could ask. I’m hoping I did this correctly…

Many of us loved BioWare’s recent epic fantasy adventure RPG Dragon Age: Origins and lamented that it was a single-player only game.

So my question to you is: Would you play and enjoy a multiplayer cooperative Dragon Age RPG if it continued to use the same control scheme as found in Origins?

What I’m getting at is DA:O is fairly traditional in the you, the player, issue commands, including movement, etc. to the character(s) and they follow those commands. The closest multiplayer game I can think of would be Guild Wars where your character will move to points or enemies, and will continue to follow if the enemy runs (ie. mobs can and will kite you if you let them). Would this be acceptable in a Dragon Age multiplayer RPG or since you would only be actively controlling a single character, would you prefer more direct interaction of that character, such as you’d see in an MMORPG?

This question is based on the stance that pausing a multiplayer game is out of the question, so the pause mechanic would be disabled during multiplayer, which means the skill selection, etc. UI would be during live play. I’m only curious about preferences for the actual direct control of your single character in co-op versus the traditional RPG controls found in DA:O.

 Loading ...

Warning: High Likelihood of Spoilers!

As always, due to my job I am nowhere near finished with Mass Effect 2 yet. I’m possibly not even halfway finished, not really sure since I’ve been avoiding storyline spoilers, etc. for the most part, though I’ve heard rumors it’s a shorter game. I have recruited the first batch of NPC squad-mates — Archangel aka Garrus from Mass Effect 1, “Jack” the biotic psychotic convict, Professor Mordin, Grunt the Krogan super-soldier prototype, and the DLC mercenary Zaeed  — and have completed the first mission for the Illusive Man where Shepard fights some Collectors — the new galactic enemy for Mass Effect 2 which look like a cross between Turians and the aliens Will Smith fought in Independence Day (I’m secretly hoping Shepard spazzes out shouting “Who’s the man? Huh? Who’s the man? Wait til I get another ship and I’ma line your friends up beside you! *whap!* Welcome to the Citadel!”) — then has a brief reunion with Ashley Williams, who gives him an earful for, in her eyes, betraying the Alliance (and her?) and working for Cerberus. The two Cerberus personnel Shepard begins the game with, Jacob and Miranda, have given Shepard their personal stories leading to their Loyalty quests but I’ve not yet deviated the Normandy off-course to begin either of them.

For this first Mass Effect 2 article, I will give my impressions of the game so far as well as seeing how I fared on my Mass Effect 2 Wishlist a few weeks ago.

I imported my Mass Effect character, a male Soldier Paragon who I completed one playthrough of Mass Effect with. I still intend on doing a second playthrough to get him to level cap and complete a few extra achievements, as well as playing a biotic class to re-play as a Renegade someday. But for now I was most comfortable with the Soldier class in Mass Effect as well as being comfortable with the Shepard I’d already played, so I wanted to continue his story in Mass Effect 2 rather than starting a fresh character.

Let’s start with my Wishlist items:

1) Make it fun from the start.

I’ve had a real problem with Western RPG’s in that, while they may be stylistically more appealing to me than JRPG’s, they have been intrinsically boring as well. I’m still nowhere near finishing Fallout 3, and haven’t even played in months. Oblivion? I did the initial quest to escape the castle and get into the world and haven’t played since. Checking the timestamps on my Mass Effect achievements, I completed Eden Prime in July, 2008 then didn’t play again until November, where the game finally picked up pace and retained my interest and I completed the first playthrough at the end of January, 2009. (Who says achievements are useless?)

Compare that to Dragon Age: Origins which was immediately fun and intriguing and for the most part kept up the pace the entire game. The only break I took from playing Dragon Age was due to the deluge of heavy-hitting AAA titles that released back-to-back from September through December, and even then I’d still stop in DAO to run a quest or few in between the new shiny games.

Mass Effect 2 has done a great job so far of being cool, fun and interesting the whole time I’m playing and I actually look forward to my next session whereas the other RPG’s I mentioned, obviously that has not been the case. The opening CGI cinematic with the Normandy crew frantically ejecting before it was destroyed while Shepard staying behind to fight through the floating wreckage to save Joker as the Normandy is in her final, fiery death throes, then ultimately giving his life as he ejects Joker’s escape pod while the enemy ship fires its final blast (hey, I did warn about spoilers!) was very gripping and I think I even made a few “oooooh’s” out loud. Even though BioWare made no secrets about the whole “death of Shepard” thing, I never knew how true that was or how and when it would happen, so starting the game that way had me reeling in shock and kept me riveted to the screen.

2) Improved dialogue animations.

Oh, my! I stated in the Wishlist how the characters were mostly stiff mannequins during dialogue scenes with only a few animation frames. Mass Effect 2 dramatically improves that with character shifting between idle stances, pacing back and forth, NPC’s looking at whomever is speaking, NPC’s continuing their activities in the background and so forth. All the character textures and animations have been improved and are utilized well during dialogue scenes. However… Occasionally there are times during dialogue scenes when the new higher-polygon-count and more complex character models appear a little strange during their close-up scenes, especially when the facial animations for emotional portrayal are used. One recent close-up of Shepard had him open his eyes wide, probably to appear amazed or shocked, but they opened so wide with his bright white round eyeball models hanging in the sockets that he looked more like a Halloween mask. Jacob is even more noticeable because his facial expressions get a bit wonky fairly often. Sometimes he’s Jacob, former Alliance grunt turned Cerberus soldier. But other times he answers that age-old question “What would Marty Feldman look like if his corpse was put through the Universal Soldier program?” What, no one else ever wondered that? No one? Anyone? Hmph!

3) Improved usage of Unreal Engine 3.

Mass Effect was, I believe, BioWare’s first time using UE3. It showed. UE3 is well-known for texture loading and pop-in issues, and those reared their head in Mass Effect more than any other UE3 title I can think of. In addition, there were a lot of performance issues where the framerate would suddenly start chugging along, sometimes making it difficult to control for brief periods. Auto-saves would freeze the game. Memory usage was inefficient with frequent load spots that would freeze the game momentarily. During dialogues, characters would randomly jump from position to position rather than smooth animation cycles. All in all, Mass Effect was one of the worst offenders I have personally played when it comes to the laundry list of UE3 technical issues.

I am pleased to say that BioWare has certainly taken the past couple of years to adequately familiarize themselves with the engine. Every single UE3 issue present in the first Mass Effect has been addressed in the sequel. I’ve yet to have even a single noticeable framerate drop, even in busy locations. I loaded up Mass Effect for comparison and just jogging through the Citadel the engine was having difficulty and sprinting nearly made it a slideshow a few times, the framerate dropped so badly. Mass Effect 2 handles its asynchronous streaming fantastically. Manually save your game and you’re right back to controlling Shepard while the “save” icon does its thing. If it weren’t for that “saving” icon you’d never even know you’d reached an auto-save point, and even in the largest areas I’ve seen so far the game never stops to load new parts of the same map. All this is with even better graphics, more detailed environments and the full arsenal of lighting and particle effects that are UE3’s specialty. Kudos to the BioWare team!

Even more amazing, I think Mass Effect 2 is the first and only UE3 game I’ve seen where the initial texture loading isn’t plainly obvious. Epic’s own Gears of War 2 does it. Borderlands does it, and it’s only a few months old. I have no proof of this, but I suspect BioWare uses the pre-mission character loadout screen as a buffer of sorts, or perhaps as a distraction, while the textures load in the background so that when the screen shifts to the game, everything is already loaded and ready to go. If I was a betting man, I’d say BioWare got some assistance and consultation from Epic this time, as they are known for providing those services for their engine, but regardless the results seen in Mass Effect 2 are damn impressive.

4) No elevators, please.

To a small degree, I am actually torn on this. In Mass Effect those torturously lengthy elevator rides were an opportunity to pan the camera around and check out the gear of Shepard and his team without them moving around. Some of the elevator conversations were humorous, sort of a pre-cursor to the conversations heard in Dragon Age: Origins, as was some of the news announcements over the radio. On the other hand, the elevators were torturously lengthy and I don’t miss that at all. To be fair, the elevators were a roleplay-ish compromise to the technical issue of having UE3 live-stream the new level. Mass Effect 2 does technically have a few elevators, but entering an elevator simply presents a level selection screen, then a loading screen while the new level is loaded. The loading is pretty fast, and the loading screens themselves are animated so it’s not that bad, really. On the Normandy it’s nice because the loading screen is a sort of 3D wire-mesh of the ship showing the elevator progress to the selected level.

5) Moral ambiguity.

Ok, I struck out on this one, though it was more of a hope based on other RPG’s such as Dragon Age: Origins which had shades of grey and I actually had to read the responses to see which was appropriate to the character I was playing. Mass Effect was pretty simple in it’s Good (Paragon) or Bad (Renegade) and you always know that the top choice is Paragon, the middle is neutral and the bottom is Renegade. It’s the same in Mass Effect 2 and honestly, while there was a ton of changes streamlining to the actual gameplay and mechanics in Mass Effect 2, the dialogue circle is a big part of the Mass Effect “feel” and it’s probably for the best that it was kept intact to avoid breaking too far from feeling like a Mass Effect game.

So, 4 out of 5 on my wishlist, number 5 being a bit on the bogus side to begin with, so not bad! Now for some general impressions of the game so far.

The first Mass Effect was a bit of genre-blending on BioWare’s part as a relatively full-blown RPG disguised as a third-person shooter. On the downside, that disguise was rather flimsy since if you so much as fired a shot in the general vicinity of an enemy it was considered a hit and the RPG die rolls took over to determine the actual result. This was even more obvious in the Mako which would only hit within a specific range, regardless where the targeting reticule was capable of aiming. BioWare said that among the many improvements for the sequel that they wanted to step up their game on the shooting aspect. They’ve done just that. If there is any RPG die roll combat resolution occuring, it’s very well hidden. Weapons don’t have stats, and armor only has a mild bonus to a single aspect of combat. If I may be so bold, I will compare Mass Effect 2 to Borderlands. Gearbox may have pioneered the acronym “RPS” for Role-Playing Shooter and they did an excellent job of providing a solid first-person shooter based solely on player skill with a few (mostly passive) RPG abilities. With Mass Effect 2, BioWare has seemingly reversed the roles of the first game, delivering a solid third-person shooter with some RPG features; BioWare’s own take on an “RPS.”

On that note, I mentioned above that I suspected BioWare got some assistance from Epic on the Unreal Engine 3. I also suspect the BioWare guys have been playing a lot of Epic’s Gears of War games, because an awful lot of the new controls and abilities in Mass Effect 2 are derivative of the Gears of War series. In Mass Effect 1 holding the A button put Shepard into a mild sprint. In Mass Effect 2 the camera actually bumps along like a sort of “follow cam” you’d see in chase scenes in a movie. Exactly like Gears of War, which also uses the A button. The Gears of War series is a cover-based shooter where pressing the A button near a wall or short barrier would put Fenix into cover then pop his head out to aim a shot then safely fall back under cover. Mass Effect 2 has the exact same controls. In Mass Effect 1, either the LT or RT would draw weapons and the B button would stow them. Now, in Mass Effect 2 pressing the Back button stows weapons while the B button is now a melee attack. Exactly like Gears of War. In fact, the only perceivable difference control-wise between the two is that Gears of War uses the X button to interact with objects while Mass Effect 2 uses the A button. Otherwise, it’s not too far a stretch to say that Mass Effect 2 is essentially BioWare’s version of Gears of War with a strong story (they’re all about that Fourth Pillar, remember?) and RPG character progression.

This shift has rubbed some people the wrong way, but I approve. For the most part. Mass Effect 2 has been highly streamlined from the first game. Skills, for example, is one obvious area that this shows. Mass Effect had a whole screen of skills for each character to assign points. Mass Effect 2 has a much smaller choice of skills per character, and only 4 “levels” per skill but achieving that 4th level will “evolve” that skill into another selectable higher skill. For example, as I said earlier, I imported my Mass Effect character who was a Soldier class. In Mass Effect 2 one of the Soldier class skills is Combat Mastery. Achieving level 4 in combat mastery will evolve the Soldier class into either a Commando or Shock Trooper class, which has a few different abilities and bonuses, especially bonuses to Paragon/Renegade points. Also each individual point I assign to any skill is immediately noticeable whereas the effect was much more subtle in the first game, if it was even noticeable at all.

Some aspects have gone far beyond mere streamlining, though. The unholy mess that was the inventory system has been completely removed, for example, and replaced with weapon loadout lockers. One is located in the Normandy’s armory and most locations where missions or combat can occur will have one. Those are the only points you can choose which specific weapon within each weapon category that Shepard and his team will carry with them.

There is very little in the way of acquiring better gear either, though personally I don’t see that as a downside for the type of RPG that the Mass Effect series is. In an MMO or RPG-ish games like Diablo clones (including Borderlands) enemies are little more than loot piñatas and the constant urge to acquire better gear is what keeps players coming back for more. Mass Effect and Dragon Age: Origins are the only two BioWare RPG’s I’ve ever played (and completed) and in both of those the characters themselves and the storyline is what kept me playing, not gear. While gear dropped constantly in DA:O I very rarely found anything that was actually worthy of using and all my characters kept their gear they acquired mid-game throughout the rest of the game and its conclusion. Same with Mass Effect, I had tons of “stuff” in my inventory but most of it was vendor trash and there was very rarely any reason to upgrade. If I found any armor for my NPC team, I’d usually equip it based on looks because they almost always had equivalent stats. While having few actual sets of armor, Mass Effect 2 actually has more customization available, but only for Shepard. Your NPC companions get one “upgrade” upon completion of their respective Loyalty quest but from what I’ve heard it’s nothing more than a color change on the same armor.

Mass Effect 2 did add some cool MMO-ish features like casual appearance. Think of LOTRO’s (and EQ2) “appearance tab” and you’ve got the gist of it. In Shepard’s quarters on the Normandy you can choose which set of armor he wears while out and about and choose from a few choices of non-combat appearances while aboard the Normandy. You can also choose background music that plays while in your room, and buy fish for the aquarium, though you have to stop by to feed them rather frequently or they die.

Planetary exploration is another feature that so far seems to have been put on the chopping block. The first game had the Mako rover, which was cool in concept but between the horrible controls and gawd-awful physics, just didn’t work at all. The planets’ landscapes in Mass Effect were uninspired at best, and downright atrocious at worst. Rather than fixing things up for the sequel, BioWare outright removed them, giving us planetary scanning instead. Now, at first I was excited about this because someone in the beta tweeted how fun scanning was, and I thought there would also be some planetary exploration. I was looking forward to having a Lt. Data moment proudly exclaiming “I’d be happy to, sir! I just love scanning for life forms!” then singing “Life forms! You tiny little life forms! My precious little life forms! Where are you?” But alas, that is not to be. Rather than something that actually makes, you know, sense and simply having EDI (the onboard Cerberus AI) automatically scan the planet and display the locations of resources, etc. we have to manually scan a small circle of the planet’s surface waiting for a spike on the meter then launch a probe to gather the resources. This involves holding the LT to actually run the scanner, which moves rather slowly during scanning. I’ve taken to simply rapid-firing the LT while moving the scanner reticule up and down the planetary grid, only slowing when I feel a spike (which displays graphically but also uses the gamepad’s rumblers) then launching a probe. Needless to say, scanning is nothing more than a boring time-sink, but one that is required because the various resources are currencies spent on researching upgrades.

Speaking of pointless time-sinks, let’s talk about hacking. In Mass Effect 1 hacking was a simplified quick-time-event (QTE) version of the old Simon game only rather than repeating the sequence by memory, you had to quickly press the appropriate button when it illuminated on the Simon screen. In Mass Effect 2, bypassing and hacking each have their own mini-games. Bypassing (usually used to open a door) is accomplished on a circuitboard screen. Several nodes are shown, each with its own icon that displays upon mouseover. Find an icon then mouseover the other nodes until you find the matching node to close the circuit. Simple enough, and fairly quick. Hacking, on the other hand, shows a scrolling grid of segments of “code” and a target segment. You simply sit back and watch the grid scroll along until hopefully the target segment appears before the timer runs out and you click it. Three or four segments in total. Both bypassing and hacking feel very unfinished, tacked on, and obviously a shallow time-sink to expand the total playtime by a few minutes at a time. They’re both quite boring as well, though if I had to choose one, I’d much prefer the bypassing mini-game. I think I prefer scanning planets over hacking, and believe me when I say that I am not enjoying scanning planets. At all.

I’ve mentioned how the graphics have improved, performance improved, and all the UE3 eye candy is out in full force already. My initial impression is that the actual maps themselves are smaller than in Mass Effect 1 but so far they are more immersive. There’s usually more actually going on than before. Sure, in the first game the Citadel was a huge area, but considering it was supposed to be this huge multicultural melting pot, it was mostly empty. The parts of the Citadel I’ve seen so far in Mass Effect 2 seemed smaller in comparison but much more lively and more representative of what the Citadel is supposed to be. Remember the nightclub Chora’s Den in the first game? Now the Citadel has a new club called Flux and there’s an even bigger club called Afterlife on the Omega station that are far more believable even though they don’t offer any more actual interaction than before. BioWare did have some actual exotic dancers come in for motion capture (I’ll bet that was a fun session!) and comparing the animations of the dancers in Chora’s Den to those in Afterlife is practically night and day. The Flux club has a dance floor where patron NPC’s are dancing and there’s an interactive spot for Shepard to show off his oh-so-white-boy moves. In full armor and weapons, mind you. He’s such a bad dancer you just can’t help but laugh.

Finally, I’d like to mention the Mass Effect dialogue system in general. I just finished Dragon Age: Origins last week then immediately started Mass Effect 2 and the difference in systems is shocking. I much prefer the Mass Effect way of doing things. In DA:O the dialogue choices don’t appear until the character speaking finishes what he or she has to say. Then you choose your response, to which there is no voice acting whatsoever for your own character. The Mass Effect system is to present your upcoming dialogue choices well in advance of the NPC completing his statements so you can prepare your choice ahead of time, and choosing quickly enough will allow for a seamless dialogue delivery. Not to mention Shepard is fully voice-acted for both male and female. Sure, DA:O would have required male and female recordings for each playable race but it would have made a huge difference in bringing some on-screen personality to your own character. The dialogue in Mass Effect 2 has increased dramatically over the first title, with over 31,000 lines of written dialogue that if listened to non-stop start to finish would total over 25 hours. While I stated above for #5 on my wishlist that I feel Mass Effect 2 is better off without all the grey areas, etc. I do hope for the Dragon Age sequel BioWare displays the dialogue choices ahead of time like they do in Mass Effect. I also hope Dragon Age sold enough to become an important enough IP for BioWare to warrant the expense of providing voice acting for the player character next time.

On today’s episode of Kotaku Talk Radio, BioWare developer Greg Zeschuk said that the Mass Effect IP – a planned trilogy – will not end with the release of Mass Effect 3. In other words, BioWare EA plans to milk the franchise for all it’s worth.

“We’re actually going to continue to use it for stuff and we’re going to continue to make games there. Believe me, we have our work cut out for us for the next little while getting Mass Effect 3 done after this. Don’t worry if you love Mass Effect, there will be more Mass Effect in the future.”

Kotaku’s article gave example’s such as the Halo universe spreading to other genre’s like Ensemble’s swan song title Halo Wars. Not sure that I foresee a “Mass Effect Wars” RTS game on the horizon, but stranger things have happened.

What I could certainly foresee (may as well start a rumor while I’m at it!) is a Mass Effect MMORPG. A multi-platform MMORPG, for that matter, though not cross-platform. Mass Effect is a huge name on consoles and it’s shooter-esqe approach is appealing to many console gamers, myself included.

To use the Warcraft analogy that once upon a time was applied to World of Warcraft, it took three Warcraft games until there was enough Warcraft lore, story, etc. to deserve a MMORPG. That is often used as a counter-argument for why people said there would not be a “Worlds of Starcraft” MMORPG because there’s currently only the one game, with the second game in development. (I could see a Starcraft-based MMOG that was a hybrid RPG and shooter (both first- and third-person, switchable) but Blizzard says their new MMOG is also a new IP, so that theory is out the window. Using the “three games first” theory, it could certainly stand to reason that the Mass Effect IP would have enough interest and sales behind it to warrant development of a MMOG in that universe. I would be interested, but only on the condition they use BioWare-developed RPG systems for it, not the anti-social DIKU mechanics.

The other little tidbit in the podcast was that Mass Effect 3 will also use the same “persistent” save game concept that Mass Effect 2 will be using, checking which decisions were made in Mass Effect 1 to affect how your Mass Effect 3 game will play.

The main reason I find this interesting is that it directly implies Mass Effect 3 will be made during the current console generation. The current generation has already been stretched longer than any previous generation, and both Microsoft and Sony have implied, if not outright stated, to not expect the next hardware generation until at least 2012, most likely 2013 or 2014. I’ve read several “MMOG’s on consoles” blog posts recently and they all cited console generation lifespans as a con, but that argument hasn’t applied this time around, and if I shake my Magic 8 Ball, the next generation will be similar. Quote Everquest all you want, and sure it runs on modern multi-CPU PC’s but I’ve tried several games from the single-core days that are newer than Everquest and they don’t work at all on multi-core CPU’s. Between shifts in CPU’s, GPU’s and DirectX versions, PC’s also have “generations” even if they usually strive to maintain backwards-compatibility most of the time.

However, I would not expect a Mass Effect MMOG to appear within the current console generation. There has been too much feet-dragging on the part of Microsoft, Sony, and every development studio that has ever claimed to be “working on” a console MMOG. The only two I actually expect to see the light of day at all within the current generation is DUST 514 and Final Fantasy XIV. The Magic 8 Ball tells me the next generation of consoles will blur the line a little further between console and PC and will have MMOG’s in mind peripheral-wise, and then we’ll really start seeing some serious development – and releases! – in the massively multiplayer realm.

BioWare has been going crazy saying how much better the shooting part of the game, and how much better animations and cinematics will be. I’ll take them at their word for that.

My personal short wishlist is:

1. Make it fun from the start, don’t make me wait until the latter part of the game before it gets fun and interesting. They pulled it off with Dragon Age: Origins, but no other Western RPG is coming to mind as I write this that grabbed me from the get-go and kept up the pace the whole game.
2. We know there’s more in-game animations and better cinematic cameras, but I hope they also added some facial expressions this time. In the first game, characters were practically mannequins and depended on listening to the voice acting to convey the emotions. For the sequel, show us the emotions on their face and in their voice.
3. Unreal Engine 3 is being used again, so here’s hoping BioWare has a better grip on it this time than they did on the first game, which was pretty damn rough performance-wise. To make a comparison, look at how Gearbox improved from their first UE3 title, Brother’s in Arms: Hell’s Highway to their recent Borderlands.
4. No elevators. Worst case, if we must tolerate elevators again, at least make them equivalent in speed to the turbolifts from Star Trek.
5. Moral ambiguity. The first Mass Effect was right up there with every other RPG with “choices” in the dialogue that were very obvious in the “good; neutral; bad” morality scale. Again, Dragon Age: Origins played with more grey areas, and I hope that also carries over to Mass Effect 2.

I still haven’t gotten the new PC working yet. No idea what’s wrong with it. The motherboard LED is lit, showing it has power, but the thing just won’t turn on. I thought it was a broken PSU but I did what the Corsair tech told me and the PSU is functioning properly. Someone on Twitter — @BlueKae I think? — suggested I reset the motherboard. Other than that,  SmartPC charges $59 for diagnostics and repair.

The thing is, I’m just not motivated to actually fool with the damned thing! Maybe it’s the whole getting older gradually maturing thing, but I’ve really become spoiled by the 360. I never have to worry about new drivers, buggy third-party services that crash the system, virii or malware, etc. I just turn it on and it works, and everyone I game with gets the same performance.

I’ve always built my own PC’s but this time around, I just wasn’t into it. Not that I’d necessarily be into buying a prefab PC with specs I don’t approve of. I just want to turn the thing on and it works. I’ve lost the thrill of constantly tweaking, working for every ounce I could get out of the PC, and generally jumping through hoops. If I wanted to do all that I’d still be using Linux for games.

The other issue in the back of my mind is the RSI I keep harping about. When I was back in LOTRO and Battlefield 2142 for a couple weeks in November before my PC died, I could feel the mouse wrist tingling after only 30 minutes or less. Hell, even while writing this or doing anything at all on the PC if I don’t make a constant effort to keep my mouse wrist elevated off the desk, I start getting those aching tingles pretty quickly.

The main thing about MMOG’s I miss? Chatting. Kin-mates or guild-mates and friends first, general chat second. I’ve never allowed things to get as bad as they were in the height of my WoW addiction where I’d login because “I just had to” but I had absolutely nothing to do so I’d shift into kitty form and auto-run laps around Ironforge while chatting. But still, in most MMO’s I find that I don’t necessarily play the game all the time; there’s a lot of time idling (or just running, and running, and running) while chatting. Sometimes I just read the chat while running. (Note: riding a mount = running in this respect.) Maybe find a pretty view in the landscape, and pan the camera around, while chatting.

It’s nice, but all that chatting — not to mention using the mouse to move or pan the camera — means my wrist is at constant risk of firing up the RSI again. It’s hard to get motivated to get a new PC working when I know I’ll want to login to LOTRO to see the better performance, better graphics, etc. then spend all day and night running, panning and chatting my way to the doctor again…

I really wish someone would get a fun and high-quality MMOG on the 360 already. One that was built for a console from the ground-up, not a PC MMOG trimmed down because that just won’t work. If a console Age of Conan, for example, ditched the RPG hotbar combat and went to a more action-context-based system (think Batman: Arkham Asylum) I’d be all.over.it!

I’ve had an Xbox 360 pretty much since they came out, but have never managed to unlock 100% of the achievements in a single game before. There are myriad reasons; among the top are replaying at the hardest difficulty, something I’m not usually into doing, and games that have multi-player achievements (GRAW2 is still a sore spot with me, buying every single DLC for the co-op stuff then a week later the guys moved to a new shiny game), not to mention my infamously short attention span.

Today, however, I got my first 100%! I thought it would be Borderlands (and I’m darn close there, not counting the additional DLC achievements) but it turned out to be The Saboteur, which I recently wrote about.

From the Stats page, I’m showing 100% Mission Progress and 100% Freeplay Progress with a total game time of 65:04:25!

While I am excited to finally get my first 100% Unlocked status with a game, I am also a bit sad because The Saboteur is truly an enjoyable experience; it’s a shame there’s nothing left to do now. Pandemic’s WWII Nazi-occupied Paris and its surrounding countryside was a fantastic place to adventure and explore. I will miss it.

I’ve wondered recently if an open-world game of that type would be do-able as a multi-player game on consoles. Not massively-multiplayer, mind you. I’m thinking two modes: the first being the standard Listen server mode that could support 4 players, perhaps a few more, then a persistent Dedicated server mode that could support (picking an arbitrary number) up to 64 players. Similar to Neverwinter Nights? The caveats would be the necessity for an even larger game world, and more activities to actually do besides shoot bad guys and blow things up. Maybe a combination of an open-world game with The Sims allowing for some progression without being an RPG?

I’d love to see someone try it anyway…

I recently finished Pandemic Studios‘ swan song title, The Saboteur and thought I’d write a bit on my experiences. As usual with me, don’t treat this as an official “review.” There are plenty of those out there already; hit up Metacritic. As a disclaimer, any screenshots I include were obtained from the game’s website; I do not have the capability of taking my own screenshots from my Xbox 360.

It’s no secret that Pandemic Studios hasn’t been their usual selves the past few years. Their recent games have been a bit on the sub-par, glitchy, and unpolished side of things, and in the case of The Lord of the Rings: Conquest utter trash. It’s also no secret that all their games with the aforementioned reputation are games released since their acquisition by EA. Coincidence? I’ll leave that for you to decide. The Saboteur does show a lack of polish in certain areas but overall it’s minor and I’d have to guess a good portion of it could have been worked out if EA hadn’t shuttered the studio and forced an early launch.

Before launch I was undecided on the game. I loved the film noir visuals but I was concerned about two issues. First, support. EA announced they were closing Pandemic three weeks prior to launch. I wasn’t sure at the time if there would be any post-launch patches (they call them Title Updates on consoles) or additional DLC. Since then, EA has kept a team of former Pandemic members attached to the project, already working on patches for the PC edition, etc. No idea if the game will see additional content in form of DLC however. Second, I was concerned that an open-world single-player game would not hold my attention. I never finished any of the GTA3 series; I haven’t finished GTA4 yet (I’m on the last mission, which kicks my ass every time); I own GTA4: The Lost and Damned but haven’t even started playing it yet; I find myself getting frustrated (this is putting it nicely) and quitting because I die so often in Red Faction: Guerilla that I don’t know I’ll ever manage to finish it. But take an open-world game like Crackdown, Mercenaries 2, or Saint’s Row 2 that allows co-op and now we’re talking! Aaron and I have done a bit of Crackdown and quite a bit of Mercenaries 2 in co-op and those sessions are enormously fun with crazy moments of mindless, wanton destruction accented by our own pitched laughter. From a difficulty standpoint, I feel RFG could use a co-op mode, though I won’t completely dismiss the notion that maybe I simply suck at the game. Nah, couldn’t be that. But when thinking of The Saboteur, there are two things in gaming that we just never tire of killing: Nazis and Zombies. The Left 4 Dead series and Borderlands‘ first DLC “The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned” have the co-op zombie killing covered quite well. I was hoping for some co-op Nazi slaying adventures but it’s not happening here — The Saboteur has a story crafted around a specific character, and those types of games only work in single-player. In the end, after reading tweets and forum posts from Pandemic developers who worked on The Saboteur, combined with my fond remembrance of their pre-EA products, I felt I owed it to myself to get the last “real” Pandemic game. Turns out, it’s a great game, so I’m doubly glad that I did!

Read the rest of this entry »

I meant to post this earlier but this trip started off a bit wonky and we ended up at bare minimum rest time last night, so here we go!

Thanks to James Egan over at Massively for catching this two-article interview at Edge Online (a site I don’t read which is why I rely on Massively to do it for me) with CCP Shanghai about DUST 514! Great information and I’m really looking forward to the game. Oh, and I’ve discovered that it’s officially DUST 514 (all capitalized like EVE) not Dust 514…

Part One: Core concepts and mechanics behind the game.
Part Two: How EVE and DUST 514 will (hopefully) interact.

I’ll do my usual bullet-point thing of bits I found interesting.

• The map size has been revealed to be 5 square kilometers. That’s roughly 3.1 square miles for us metric-impaired Americans. Anyone who plays shooters with me knows that I love huge maps, as it provides more real estate for the developers to create multiple objectives.
• The Commander will be located in the Mobile Command Center (MCC) which flies above the map, similar to the Titans in Battlefield 2142. The Commander can issue orders to the mercenaries on his team in an RTS-like fashion, again similar to Battlefield 2142. The Commander also has a full 3D voyeur mode to see the action from a closer perspective. Players have to earn the right (presumably from ranking up via XP like in the Battlefield or Call of Duty games) to be Commander, and if no one is eligible an AI Commander will be assigned. I do hope CCP includes a voting system to oust ineffective Commanders, however; no one likes getting stuck with an incompetent leader who earned the spot simply by playing long enough rather than knowing what he’s doing.
• Prior to the match, the Commander chooses his team’s vehicle and installation loadouts, as well as placing preliminary spawn points. There are ten vehicles and fifteen installations in DUST 514 but a Commander can only choose five of each per map. CCP compared it to Magic: the Gathering where you prepare your deck ahead of time, not knowing precisely what your opponent will be bringing to the battle.
• Once the mercenary infantry has brought down the shields of the enemy MCC, the Commander has missiles, etc. to destroy it; another similarity to Battlefield 2142’s Titan mode that DUST 514 looks to improve upon.
• CCP is still fiddling with the number of players per map but Edge says it’s unlikely to go as high as 256, like MAG is doing, because of the “elaborate firepower” available to each team. Regardless, it’s still being billed as an MMOFPS so they’ll have to exceed 64 players per map to earn that acronym.
• During play, mercenaries earn War Points which can be used to purchase vehicles on-the-fly. Literally, as the vehicles are flown to your location via dropship. This aspect is similar to Section 8 where you earn points to spend in the purchasing menu to have custom items such as turrets, tanks, or mech-like heavy armor dropped to a location you specify.
• Each battle is obviously instanced with a population cap, but it sounds like the pre/post game lobby is a “single shard” setup like EVE where players can chat, etc.
• The final sentence in Part One implies (at least it does to me) that DUST 514 will ship with clan support in the form of Mercenary Outfits. This will be a huge boon for the game, as the only console shooter I can think of that has actual clan support is Section 8.
• CCP plans on two updates per year. Since DUST 514 will be using a microtransaction model rather than subscription, I suspect each update or expansion will be marketed as premium DLC as well but we’ll see what type of deal CCP makes with Microsoft and Sony.
• Player progression will be achieved through an “achievement matrix” unlock system which sounds like an expanded version of the Battlefield unlock scheme. (Possibly like COD too; I’ve never managed to have enough fun in COD multi-player to see any unlocks.) Some of the combo unlocks will provide persistent attribute enhancements for weapons and vehicles, which is certainly an intriguing twist.
• EVE provides DUST 514 with persistent, dynamic battlefields. The example given was that one time you fight on a certain planet it may be lush and green. Then in an EVE space battle, someone nukes the planet from orbit. The next time DUST 514 mercs fight on that planet, it will visually show the devastation from the EVE battle.

A primary concern I have for DUST 514 is how CCP integrates microtransactions. Shooters are player-skill-based games and I strongly oppose the ability to buy better weapons which hand spending players an “I Win!” button. There was already quite the upset over Battlefield Heroes raising prices and adding new weapons that have the potential to tip the balance in favor of premium players. All I’ve read so far is that they plan to sell blueprints for weapons, etc. While it is true that console players are far more accustomed to, and accepting of, microtransactions than PC players are, if the “item shop” isn’t balanced properly the console crowd may unleash an unholy Jihad of a shitstorm if they feel forced to constantly spend cash to be competitive.

One of the more memorable games of the past decade or so was Tomb Raider way back in the PlayStation / Saturn days of 1996. It was one of the first games to feature a strong female lead character (which, in addition to my tabletop RPG background, made me willing to play female characters when MMORPG’s came around) but also had some mind-wracking puzzles, some fun action sequences, and some fantastic locations, some of which meant climbing to dizzying heights. I still remember both myself and my then-wife getting a bit queasy watching my Lara climb and climb and climb then take a look around. Overall a very memorable experience that I’ve always cherished.

In 2006 Eidos released Tomb Raider Anniversary which was a re-imagining of the original game, in a similar vein to how Tim Burton re-imagined the Planet of the Apes and Sleepy Hollow stories. In Tomb Raider’s case, there was enough of the “old and busted” there to make me remember some of those Good Ol’ Days but it also had that re-imagined layer of “new hotness” that not only added the obvious graphical improvements of the Legends engine but also the new moves Lara has learned in the decade since her first appearance, which in turn meant the Anniversary game required all new content for her to use those moves.

Moving from the 5th generation consoles (PS1 and Saturn) to the 7th generation (Xbox 360) was a huge leap in technology, and I will concede that it’s a potential issue for my current wish list for Anniversary Editions of two games (actually, two series, each containing two games) that are less than ten years old. Only a single console generation has passed in that time and in the PC the only major difference would be that DX10/DX11 is around, as well as wide-screen and higher resolution displays being commonplace.

First, as much as I tend to bash the Halo games, I did sit down recently and complete the single-player campaigns (normal difficulty only) of both Halo 3: ODST and Halo Wars. I wouldn’t mind seeing the original two games get an Anniversary treatment, even if they both just used the existing Halo 3 engine. Update the graphics and textures, fix any glaring issues, fix any story and gameplay elements and we’re good to go. Fixing some of the story elements (Halo 2 in particular felt like the campaign wasn’t quite finished in favor of the multiplayer game) would be enough of a “re-imagining” for me.

Second, I’d love to see a Knights of the Old Republic (1 and 2) Anniversary Edition. This could be major! Not only include all the fixes and additional locations that were added after the fact but a “re-imagining” could also fix one of the most common criticisms of the original game: that it was a LOTRO clone, ie. way too much time wasted traveling back and forth. Turbine has been actively revamping (or “re-imagining”) the low-levels zones in LOTRO and working their way up to mid- and high-level zones eventually, making the leveling and quest story curve flow more naturally as well as eliminating a good deal of the traveling. BioWare has come a long way in the six years since KOTOR; I see no reason why a re-imagined game with modern tech, graphics and sound wouldn’t be equally successful, if not moreso, plus the original would still be around for those whiny purists. Sound would be a huge benefit to an update as well; I’d read Jeremy Soule saying how he had to construct the soundtrack to “fool” players into thinking there was a full orchestra playing the soundtrack because at the time, state of the art tech was 8mbps MIDI. Now everything’s on DVD and Blu-Ray, if not outright installed to a hard drive, so he could get a full orchestra to play his soundtrack so players could finally hear it the way it was intended to be heard.

Do you guys have favorite games you’d like to see updated? Would you rather a faithful remake, simply with newer eye candy, or would you rather enjoy a re-imagining so you could not only still remember the original fondly but also have a new experience at the same time?