Mass Effect General Thread

[regalterry]

Bioware were always progressive

The only reason they didn't go further with their older games is that the Overton window hadn't shifted that far left yet, so they had to restrain themselves least they overreached.

ME1's sex scenes were already boundary-pushing, as was the gay romance in Jade Empire. People forget, or were simply too young to experience/remember it, to realize just how quickly things went to shit in the late 00s, and kept ramping up.

That's why the argument of Bioware A or B team makes no sense, the same writers work on ME and DA.

Modern BioWare (and really, BioWare for the past 15 years or so) hasn't been capable of making a good game, and hasn't made a good game.

Why anyone believes the new ME will be any less gay than Veilguard is beyond me. Frankly speaking, the best the new Saudi owners could do is shitcan the project, fire and blacklist everyone working at BioWare and either bury their IPs for good, or let them rest for 5 to 10 years, and then do a reimagining of both Dragon Age and Mass Effect, excising all the gay race communist filth in them.

It's probably not going to happen, but they'll be shutting BioWare down once the latest ME comes out and flops regardless.

 

[Super Hans v2]

ME1's sex scenes were already boundary-pushing,

If you watched Fox News, sure. There was harder shit on broadcast tv during prime time. The whole thing reeked of paid controversy, especially when CDPR was releasing their own games close to Bioware's and were getting actual pushback with actual censorship and bannings from countries that weren't just complete shitholes.

 

[regalterry]

If you watched Fox News, sure. There was harder shit on broadcast tv during prime time.

There was harder shit in games before that, but that was before games started getting mainstream.

Maybe BioWare was playing it up for the free publicity, which wouldn't be strange considering EA's marketing campaign for Dead Space 2, but I do think it was a watershed moment for the medium.

This was still back during the era where the MSM was making people believe that conservative sticks-in-the-mud like Jack Thompson were holding back freedom of expression and not allowing games to bloom into the artistic medium they were always meant to be.

If only we knew how bad things would truly get when gaming stopped being a commercial/technological product, and became the domain of molested theatre kids.

 

[Disdainer of the Plebs]

ME1's sex scenes were already boundary-pushing, as was the gay romance in Jade Empire. People forget, or were simply too young to experience/remember it, to realize just how quickly things went to shit in the late 00s, and kept ramping up.

No need to lecture me, I watched it happen in front of my face. In fact, I consider March 5, 2012 (the day before ME3 released) to be the "High Water Mark" of gaming. After that all of the video games industry's skeletons started coming out of the closet. The ending debacle was a proto-Gamer Gate, actual Gamer Gate followed not 2 years after, and so on. Mass Effect 3 taught me to not pre-order in general (a rule ive only broken 3 times since, for Witcher 3 and the 2 numbered Ace Combat releases), By 2016, pretty much any game developed under any sense of 2000s era normalcy had been released and since then the social justice insanity we've seen metastasize since the Obama era has come to be the norm. Add in game-destroying levels of low-effort corporate monetization and utter contempt for the paying customer and his money and you get to where we are: an industry that deserves to suffer die, and I will laugh and cheer as they reap what they have sown.

 

[Prophetic Spirit]

Hey, seeing a nice woman brown ass or a blue asari ass is wonderful.
The same year when GTA IV was released and had more highly suggestive sex scenes with prostitutes.

 

[soda pimp]

I've been playing me2 for the first time and here are my thoughts so far.

The ugly (mostly nitpicking):
- It's really hard getting over the combat changes. I've installed some mods to make it more like me1 but the way Shepard moves is so slow and I hate the new gimmick of vaulting over things. Half the time I forget you even do that.
- I decided to play on insanity difficulty for my first playthrough and damn is it hard compared to me1.
- The story is a downgrade from 1 and I don't have any real attachment to Harbringer as a villian.
- Hearing Wrex say 'Diversity is our greatest strength' was pretty cringe. I felt off about the new krogan lore. It just doesn't make sense but I don't feel like doing the research.
- Femshep's renegade voice lines suck. She sounds like a space Karen or a try hard. Also hate her grunts when she gets hit.
- The companions don't seem to have banter compared to 1. I thought this game was the fan favorite because of the companions.
- I don't like the shop menu. It is very annoying since you have to confirm your purchase then go back into the shop menu. They figured this out in 1. I also hate that they got rid of menu shortcuts.
- The hammerhead sucks as a vehicle. It's to delicate and you can't even see it's health bar or ammo. You can't even save when you're inside it so if you die you have to restart the whole mission.
- Navigating in the Normandy is also annoying since you navigate it with the mouse. It's easier to control it with wasd. Every time I land on a galaxy, I always go out of the circle and that wastes fuel and that annoys me so much.
- That glitch where Shepard turns to the side when you're in combat is still present has happened to me way more than me1.

The good:
- I like the new companions, especially the dlc ones. Kasumi is fun to use with her shadow strike and Zaeed has great lines. It's a shame they aren't utilized in 3
- Punched the journalist again. Worth it. Also, the citadel renegade options for a discount were funny, especially the one for the Asari giftshop. Peak Karen moment.
- the ship crewmates are also a nice touch and help it feel more alive.
- Wrex's reaction when he sees you is very sweet.
- Space hamster and fish.

Those are all my thoughts on it now. I'll still keep playing even though I find combat frustrating because I am a masochist real gamer. I'm guessing the real story is the friends we made along the way but the first game will always be the best one to me story wise and gameplay.

Also, after completing Mordin's loyalty quest, I am now in more favor of not curing the genophage. Throughout the game, Krogan are proven to be violent and a threat. I encouraged him to help cure it though, since I like our Krogan companions. What are your opinions on it?

 

[ArthuriusMartyrius]

Also, after completing Mordin's loyalty quest, I am now in more favor of not curing the genophage. Throughout the game, Krogan are proven to be violent and a threat. I encouraged him to help cure it though, since I like our Krogan companions. What are your opinions on it?

It makes Wrex upset and stops you from getting the Krogan as allies during the final Reaper fight so I cure it. Though as American Krogan once pointed out, Wrex's "enlightened" new system of Krogan governance is basically a form of polyandry where Krogan females run the show and Krogan males are forced to share their wives with every other dude around so perhaps just letting them go extinct instead of becoming a race of cucks is a mercy.

 

[Miller]

- It's really hard getting over the combat changes. I've installed some mods to make it more like me1 but the way Shepard moves is so slow and I hate the new gimmick of vaulting over things. Half the time I forget you even do that.
- I decided to play on insanity difficulty for my first playthrough and damn is it hard compared to me1.

I've done countless insanity runs times back in the day but when I replayed ME2 LE last year I got stuck in the Collector ship mission where you have to move from platform to platform while being attacked by the Collectors. I kept dying every time so I abandoned my Insanity run and moved to ME3
One day I'll come back to ME2 to get that achievement on PC, lol.

 

[Hatewerfer]

Also, after completing Mordin's loyalty quest, I am now in more favor of not curing the genophage. Throughout the game, Krogan are proven to be violent and a threat. I encouraged him to help cure it though, since I like our Krogan companions. What are your opinions on it?

The correct move is to kill Wrex on Virmire for chimping out and pointing a gun at you, and having Wreav around makes the genophage decision much easier. Funny thing is Wreav isn't even a complete moron, he's just a normal krogan with normal beliefs, planning on the great galactic takeover from his radioactive broken concrete hellpit of a planet.
It's a shame because Wrex is a cool dude, but one must make difficult decisions with the galaxy on the line. Also the confrontation on the Citadel when Wrex figures out you sabotaged the cure is pure kino.

 

[Cave Fisher]

It makes Wrex upset and stops you from getting the Krogan as allies during the final Reaper fight so I cure it. Though as American Krogan once pointed out, Wrex's "enlightened" new system of Krogan governance is basically a form of polyandry where Krogan females run the show and Krogan males are forced to share their wives with every other dude around so perhaps just letting them go extinct instead of becoming a race of cucks is a mercy.

I feel like they really fumbled the genophage plotline by providing you with two games worth of reasons not to cure the shit, then suddenly turning around and saying that actually now you have to do it or betray (and kill) wrex and murder Mordin. You can at least talk Mordin out of it in the third game by pointing out "hey maybe we shouldn't unleash a super strong, long lived species that breeds like rabbits and has a grudge against the entire galaxy and has spent years as disposable violent mercs onto a society that'll spend decades recovering from the biggest galactic war in history?", but only if Wrex and Eve are already dead because apparently one guy and the krogan women, who with one exception are just always offscreen and awkwardly alluded to as totally existing, are enough to fix krogan society when a couple of asshole wannabe warlords who don't want to get with the program can just go to Omega, breed themselves a whole army, and overtake the place in like a month (Which is Deserved for space detroit, honestly. The Omega dlc should have had a grissom academy-style countdown where everyone fucking dies if you stay put)

Anyway, I cure it everytime, 'cause fuck the citadel, but also the scene of Mordin curing it is probably one of the most kino ones in the series.

 

[Snekposter]

but also the scene of Mordin curing it is probably one of the most kino ones in the series.

"Would have liked to run tests on sea shells."

 

[Green Kitbash]

Honestly I always thought shooting Mordin and then Wrex getting gunned down for trying revenge was so cold that it was cool. I go with that outcome because of it

 

[The handsome tard]

Bioware knows that the moment the new M.E game flops (and it will at this point), they are basically dead, so I cant help if there is this intense level of apathy towards the project because unless its the next coming of ME 1, it will mean they will get fired.

Not that I feel any pity towards modern Bioware devs, of course. They unironically had the "non-binary" line and need to be severely punished for it. But then again, I doubt they ultimately care for the IPs they are contaminating.

Its just difficult not to find intense apathy anywhere these days.