Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Mass Effect New Mass Effect confirmed

Elttharion

Learned
Joined
Jan 10, 2023
Messages
2,812


Rumor: According to Jeff Grubb, the next Mass Effect will not come out until 2029. When they revealed Dragon Age: Dreadwolf in 2018, Jeff was told that this was similar in terms of timeline, which was announced in 2018 and we're not getting that game until maybe next year.

The guy is just speculating in the end and I am not sure if he is correct since DA was rebooted a couple of times but this game is really really far away anyway. Honestly, unless DA is a huge sucess I doubt Bioware will still be alive to finish Mass Effect.
 

La vie sexuelle

Learned
Joined
Jun 10, 2023
Messages
2,161
Location
La Rochelle


Rumor: According to Jeff Grubb, the next Mass Effect will not come out until 2029. When they revealed Dragon Age: Dreadwolf in 2018, Jeff was told that this was similar in terms of timeline, which was announced in 2018 and we're not getting that game until maybe next year.

The guy is just speculating in the end and I am not sure if he is correct since DA was rebooted a couple of times but this game is really really far away anyway. Honestly, unless DA is a huge sucess I doubt Bioware will still be alive to finish Mass Effect.


This is not speculation. This is the level of denial when pathology begins to be treated as the norm.
 

Narax

Learned
Joined
Aug 28, 2020
Messages
103
Location
Dacia
ME2 was a big ball of nothing, I literally remember nothing of it. The series could've been ME1->ME3 and it wouldn't make a difference in my eyes. In fact, during my playthrough of 3, I felt like there were more callbacks to 1 than 2.
ME2 was just a comfy space adventure with your crew, but the issue is that it was very inconsistent with the more bleak tone of ME1 and ME3, the stakes were a lot lower overall, and there was no sense of urgency except in the last mission.
 

Caim

Arcane
Joined
Aug 1, 2013
Messages
17,419
Location
Dutchland
ME2 was a big ball of nothing, I literally remember nothing of it. The series could've been ME1->ME3 and it wouldn't make a difference in my eyes. In fact, during my playthrough of 3, I felt like there were more callbacks to 1 than 2.
ME2 was just a comfy space adventure with your crew, but the issue is that it was very inconsistent with the more bleak tone of ME1 and ME3, the stakes were a lot lower overall, and there was no sense of urgency except in the last mission.
ME2 felt weirdly episodic and disjointed compared to the four planet structure of ME1 and the longer stories of ME3.
 

La vie sexuelle

Learned
Joined
Jun 10, 2023
Messages
2,161
Location
La Rochelle
ME2 was a big ball of nothing, I literally remember nothing of it. The series could've been ME1->ME3 and it wouldn't make a difference in my eyes. In fact, during my playthrough of 3, I felt like there were more callbacks to 1 than 2.
ME2 was just a comfy space adventure with your crew, but the issue is that it was very inconsistent with the more bleak tone of ME1 and ME3, the stakes were a lot lower overall, and there was no sense of urgency except in the last mission.
ME2 felt weirdly episodic and disjointed compared to the four planet structure of ME1 and the longer stories of ME3.

Why nobody remember main thing in this game, I mean people kidnapped for purpose build space terminator giant?
 
Glory to Ukraine
Joined
Nov 22, 2020
Messages
2,600
Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming!
TBH fam I remember the plot of ME2 pretty much completely - much more clearly than the stuff from ME3 for example, though that might be just because I played ME2 multiple times while I did only one playthrough of ME3. Yeah, stakes were lower, but I would say not everything needs to be the "save the universe" type of deal and I thought that the initial mystery of whole colonies getting kidnapped for unknown reasons was p. well done and contributed to the atmosphere nicely.
 

Narax

Learned
Joined
Aug 28, 2020
Messages
103
Location
Dacia
Yeah, stakes were lower, but I would say not everything needs to be the "save the universe" type of deal and I thought that the initial mystery of whole colonies getting kidnapped for unknown reasons was p. well done and contributed to the atmosphere nicely.
I agree, but i think the Reaper threat should have ended with ME1. ME2's storyline is fine as it is, but instead of the Collectors doing the kidnapping they could have made it the Batarians, Cerberus, or one of the Terminus Systems factions. ME3 could have focused on preventing a galactic war from breaking out the the Terminus Systems.
 

Morpheus Kitami

Liturgist
Joined
May 14, 2020
Messages
2,697
Here we are three years later and still there's nothing. What is it, a poster and the confirmation that the story is taking place hundreds of years after ME3? Modern development is so ass.

Irrespective of this, I'm interested to see what they do with this three years or so from now when they post something that didn't take an intern 5 minutes to whip up. Probably said this before, but I want to see where they go with this. On the surface, ME3 put the franchise into a position that can't easily be recovered from. So they have to pick one of three very different paths. If they had any balls they'd go for their preferred ending, synthesis and stick with it. Sadly, they'll probably end up picking control and recycling the premise of the first trilogy, by having the Reapers under Shepard secretly turn out to be up to their old tricks, and you have to gather all the galactic races together to stop them again.
Synthesis changes the setting too much to be viable, in addition to being a gay kumbaya "happy ending" implying everybody lives in peace and harmony.

Destruction and a few centuries of relative isolation while alternatives to mass relays are developed to slowly reconnect the galaxy has way better worldbuilding potential, and is the only sane choice if the game is supposed to be after ME3. Of course the problem is that bioware would need to utilize that potential properly, I wouldn't bet money on it.
Hence why I said if they had any balls. You could do some interesting stuff with that sort of thing, basically having the good guys be the borg. Explore the societal implications of that, and for conflict, throw in people for whom the synthesis didn't quite work right, or maybe aliens discovering what weird crap happened in the rest of the galaxy. Maybe the Yahg or whatever they were called. Sadly, that would require a group of writers with some interest in writing.
 

9ted6

Educated
Joined
Mar 24, 2023
Messages
903
Bioware still existing in 2029 seems like a bit of a stretch.
EA's killed equally popular companies for less than what Bioware's done and it's anyone's guess why they're still a company. ME3 and Inquisition may've been qualitatively shit but at least they sold well. Andromeda and Anthem sold poorly, everyone hated them, their next big game's in development hell, and yet Bioware shambles on.
 

Camel

Scholar
Joined
Sep 10, 2021
Messages
2,819
ME2 was just a comfy space adventure with your crew, but the issue is that it was very inconsistent with the more bleak tone of ME1 and ME3, the stakes were a lot lower overall, and there was no sense of urgency except in the last mission.
What? ME2 has a way bleaker and cynical tone compared to an optimistic and bright tone of ME1(noblebright). We explore seedy places and dark underbelly of the galaxy in ME2. ME3 stands out as it is Ragnarok happening before our eyes.
 
Last edited:
Joined
Dec 18, 2022
Messages
2,506
Location
Vareš
ME2 was just a comfy space adventure with your crew, but the issue is that it was very inconsistent with the more bleak tone of ME1 and ME3, the stakes were a lot lower overall, and there was no sense of urgency except in the last mission.
What? ME2 has a way bleaker and cynical tone compared to an optimistic and bright tone of ME1(noblebright). We explore seedy places and dark underbelly of the galaxy in ME2. ME3 stands out as it is Ragnarok happening before our eyes.
I'd agree with you if ME2 wasn't written like a shitty fan fic. Omega station had the potential to be one of the most interesting places in the setting but instead Aria who feels like the self insert of some obese 50 year old anger hair cat lady who thinks she's top shit.
 

Camel

Scholar
Joined
Sep 10, 2021
Messages
2,819
I'd agree with you if ME2 wasn't written like a shitty fan fic. Omega station had the potential to be one of the most interesting places in the setting but instead Aria who feels like the self insert of some obese 50 year old anger hair cat lady who thinks she's top shit.
Tali recruitment mission on Haestrom with a dying star is the best in the game and Tuchanka mission is fun. Omega station wasn't bad in my opinion. Making ME2 tone more grounded and cynical was Chris l'Etoile's idea. I regret how he left Bioware too early.
 

9ted6

Educated
Joined
Mar 24, 2023
Messages
903
I'd agree with you if ME2 wasn't written like a shitty fan fic. Omega station had the potential to be one of the most interesting places in the setting but instead Aria who feels like the self insert of some obese 50 year old anger hair cat lady who thinks she's top shit.
Tali recruitment mission on Haestrom with a dying star is the best in the game and Tuchanka mission is fun. Omega station wasn't bad in my opinion. Making ME2 tone more grounded and cynical was Chris l'Etoile's idea. I regret how he left Bioware too early.
Where ME2 went wrong to me wasn't the darker missions, but the generally much bleaker tone that came along with its retcons and expansions on the Reapers.

It was fine being dark but it didn't need to end in 3 with all of life being a series of cycles made by aliens who made a space ghost kid and some genocidal robots to wipe out each cycle and reset the universe whenever they felt like it. A space ghost kid and genocidal robots that the writers tell you are actually the good guys that you're punished for trying to fight too. It's stupid and disconnected from how ME1 portrayed Sovereign and way more cynical in tone.
 

Camel

Scholar
Joined
Sep 10, 2021
Messages
2,819
It doesn't work when the vast majority of the game is an amalgamation of disconnected fanfics
ME2 wasn't a bad game and it hardly merits being called "an amalgamation of disconnected fanfics". It was a dumbed down and streamlined RPG which relied too much on characters and voiceover. Andromeda and DA:I remind me of a bad fanfiction.
Where ME2 went wrong to me wasn't the darker missions, but the generally much bleaker tone that came along with its retcons and expansions on the Reapers.

It was fine being dark but it didn't need to end in 3 with all of life being a series of cycles made by aliens who made a space ghost kid and some genocidal robots to wipe out each cycle and reset the universe whenever they felt like it. A space ghost kid and genocidal robots that the writers tell you are actually the good guys that you're punished for trying to fight too. It's stupid and disconnected from how ME1 portrayed Sovereign and way more cynical in tone.
I quite liked Etoile's take on ME while Karpyshyn's noblebright take suits the franchise more in my opinion. ME3 retcon of the Reapers and introduction of Deus ex machina killed the plot, Karpyshyn's dark energy pitch was better. Bioware shouldn't have made the Reapers an unstoppable and invincible force in ME1, most of their problems with plot stem from that decision.
 
Last edited:
Joined
Dec 18, 2022
Messages
2,506
Location
Vareš
ME2 wasn't a bad game and it hardly merits being called "an amalgamation of disconnected fanfics". It was a dumbed down and streamlined RPG which relied too much on characters and voiceover. Andromeda and DA:I remind me of a bad fanfiction.
It was a bad RPG, if you can even call it that, and a mediocre cover shooter. ME3 was the game that actually did great in the general direction of gameplay they were going with. It really isn't a stretch to call it a mash of fanfics considering half the game is disconnected stories pandering to fans to get some personal information about their favourite character. That's fan fiction writing.

20 missions are just recruiting and loyalty missions. What are the good ones out of these?

1. Tali's recruitment mission: Great, and actually featured one of two fights on Insanity which required any sort of "strategy". The story part is bogged down by the fact that dark energy plot was not continued.
2. Mordin's Loyalty Mission: Just great overall. The only bad thing I can say about it is no matter what dialogue choice you choose, Sheppard gets all high and mighty about the genophage while Mordin calmly dismantles anything Shepard is crying about.
3. Legion's Loyalty Mission: The only impactful choice in the entire game. Unfortunately a little soured on that because of the "i wanna be a boy" direction they took with the Geth, some of the only good sci-fi writing in the entire franchise.

So out of all the missions, these are the only one's that connect to the actual story of Mass Effect in any way and 2 of them are broken story wise because of the direction the series took. That leaves 17 missions of self contained personal stories that have literally no connection to anything, and are essentially just pandering to fans, that seems like fan fiction writing to me. Don't get me started on the 5 "main story" missions.

As for the "good game" part, the discussion about gameplay is a whole other beast.

ME3 retcon of the Reapers and introduction of Deus ex machina killed the plot
The retcon of the Reapers already happened in ME2.
 

J1M

Arcane
Joined
May 14, 2008
Messages
14,741
Bioware still existing in 2029 seems like a bit of a stretch.
EA's killed equally popular companies for less than what Bioware's done and it's anyone's guess why they're still a company. ME3 and Inquisition may've been qualitatively shit but at least they sold well. Andromeda and Anthem sold poorly, everyone hated them, their next big game's in development hell, and yet Bioware shambles on.
What if I told you the salaries of Edmonton game developers are a rounding error and that the Montreal ones are subsidized 40% by the government? That the only real cost of a bioware game is the marketing?
 

La vie sexuelle

Learned
Joined
Jun 10, 2023
Messages
2,161
Location
La Rochelle
Andromeda's biggest problem was that the party members were so forgettable.
Did you mean to say insufferable?

I made it 30 minutes into andromeda before I uninstalled it. The dialogue is so terrible I couldnt justify continuing.

Ironically, closer to the end, the dialogue, characters, and plot get a little better. But they weren't worth playing through the entire game.
 

Atlantico

unida e indivisible
Patron
Joined
Sep 7, 2015
Messages
17,201
Location
Midgard
Make the Codex Great Again!
It's time to wake up Commander Shepherd, a new crew of diverse and inclusive newbies are ready to scold you and piss on everything you sacrificed for previously.
Even Bioware's idiot management knows they are very close to losing their jobs. Of course there will be a lot of woke stuff, but even they are not stupid enough to deliberately shit on previous games. If they overdo it, they can be sure that EA will kill the studio, unless it does so after the failure of Dreadwolf.
After the success of Baldur's Gate 3 I'm sure no effort will be spared to top its depravity. I also recall nobody in mainstream media dared complain about wokeness in Andromeda, just about its bugs and poor writing.

That aside I'm sure they want to make a good game, but that doesn't mean they'll be able to. Those that once were good may have left the company, or lost their inspiration, and those that are idiots certainly won't fire themselves.
Being woke was the least of Andromeda's problems.

Andromeda's biggest problem was that the party members were so forgettable. The companions are a core part of a Mass Effect experience, and they just weren't particularly memorable.

I have attempted 2 Andromeda playthroughs (one I was probably about 90% complete and burned out, and the other I burned out around 50-60% of the way through) over the years and even now I am having trouble even providing a critique about what specifically was wrong with the companions because they made so little of an impression on me I barely remember them.
I agree with that observation, however it is not *only* because they're bland and uninteresting, thought that's a contributing factor to many of them. The devs are trying to give these characters a long character arc and introduction. Contrast that to the original ME characters/sidekicks.

So in the original ME the characters had surprisingly little depth, they had archetypes. You didn't have to get to know them to know them, after their introduction you knew them. In MEA it is not like that, but that doesn't mean that their attempt at depth is interesting or successful. It's a mixed bag.

Characters like Peebee are actually quite deep and well thought out. The Krogan is a really nice character, he's an old veteran who has seen some shit that would turn you white. I like him. Granted the Angara character is just not good and the Turian is so smart and cool but she is never shown to be smart and cool. They just keep telling us she is. A mixed bag indeed.

It needed to hit it out of the park, instead it was a mixed bag. The writing in MEA is mostly serviceable with rather dramatic peaks and valleys, but the gameplay and game design is excellent. I still cannot explain the hatred it got, because everything it was criticized for and I mean everything should have been said about DAI — a singularity of shit. MEA was fine. Best sequel the original ever got.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom