T w e n t y S i d e d
So far our policy has been to include all gameplay – even the boring bits. But we do cut the inventory management screens. I don’t think anyone who has played the game would fault us for this. We could easily burn a several episodes worth of footage during the course of this series doing nothing but sorting and selling. There’s a reason the inventory is the most maligned part of the game. We might eventually do an episode where we talk through the system and demonstrate why it sucks. We’ll see. There’s a fine line between showing how boring and tedious something is, and passing along that boredom and tedium to the viewer.
A lot of people have noticed the short little “loading” pauses in the game. I gather these are not normal, and I’m assuming they’re an artifact of playing, recording, and streaming the game all at the same time.
Near the beginning of this episode I say, “If the Normandy can’t take on that thing, we shouldn’t trust ourselves in it flying through space.” Where “that thing” seems to be “Sovereign”. Uh. I have no idea what I was trying to say there? I don’t remember where I was going with that, but it came out as nonsense. (Really Shamus? You shouldn’t trust yourself in any ship not capable of taking on a Reaper? Well, good luck walking back to Earth, then.) The perils of this sort of series: Words are difficult to edit once spoken.
A Lack of Vision and Leadership
People fault EA for being greedy, but their real sin is just how terrible they are at it.
Netscape 1997
What did web browsers look like 20 years ago, and what kind of crazy features did they have?
Best. Plot Twist. Ever.
Few people remember BioWare's Jade Empire, but it had a unique setting and a really well-executed plot twist.
Silver Sable Sucks
This version of Silver Sable is poorly designed, horribly written, and placed in the game for all the wrong reasons.
This Game is Too Videogame-y
What's wrong with a game being "too videogameish"?
When I DM, I take as detailed notes as I can manage in this cool blank book I have.
The purpose is that I can go back, and remember what happened and who did it.
The problem is, the notes I make are ALWAYS in a context I don’t remember. So most of the notes come back to me as pure gibberish.
But it impresses the players, so I keep it up.
The loading pauses are quite common to me, actually. I guess I should put lower textures or resolution…
I really dig the credit music. Catchy.
I was going to say the same thing.
Re: the “Put You in Prison Button”
The idea of a defense system that encases you in a force field, unable to leave, isn’t entirely a new one. Wait, hang on…
*puts on beard*
In the “Ringworld” novels by Larry Niven, there’s a race referred to as “The Puppeteers,” who are overly cautious/cowardly. One of their ship defense systems is the automatic activation of a stasis field should the environment around the vessel become too hostile to survive.
The difference being that the Puppeteer stasis fields eventually shut off, whereas the Prothean one didn’t. Of course, it’s thousands of years old, so the “danger is past” control might be broken. It would also assume a level of conceptual design of the Prothean race that I’m not prepared to offer to Bioware.
I guess what I’m saying is that “Ringworld” is a cool series.
Ahh, Shamus, stop shouting in the microphone.
First too soft to hear you saying stupid things (paraphrasing you here :D) and now you’re the shouty one.
Although the entire meeting room scene was a little loud.
More adjustment please.
P.S. Now I can never unsee it. Thanks.
Hmm…imagine you pressing the wrong button when freeing Liara and getting stuck in there with her…that wouldn’t be all bad though… ]:->
Also: when back on the ship:
Joker, did you pick up the Mako? No? Oh sh… xD
I just played through the game, and I must heartily agree with your opinion on the inventory system. I just couldn’t believe how utterly primitive it is. I mean in FFVI you can have up to 99 of every item in the game and even sort them. Here, there is no ability to sort (although the game kind of arranges things by grade). You can only hold an arbitrary limit of 150 items which makes absolutely no sense! By the way, this isn’t explained anywhere until you actually get near the limit, which is probably in the middle of a mission where you can’t easily just sell off junk. (it might be in the manual but who reads that?) I know the game can allocate enough memory for more than 150 items, and if you can already hold that many it makes no sense as some sort of ‘realism’ (i.e. you can only carry so much.) And if you acquire more than your limit than you can’t open your inventory and omni-gel your junk, no, you have to omni-gel the good stuff you just got. And this becomes incredibly tedious since the game throws loot at you.
To make things worse, you can’t equip (not really unreasonable) nor compare (really irritating) items for those not in your party. And when on the Normandy between missions, you know when it’s most convenient to shop, you can’t have any members in your party!
Sorry for the long post, but I had to vent a bit. Anyways as I’ve said, there have been much superior inventory systems done by games in the early ’90s. This isn’t exactly innovative stuff here, there’s absolutely no excuse for it.
There are lockers in the cargo hold to allow you to equip all your group members while on the Normandy. They’re located between Wrex and Ashley.
True, but you cannot allocate skill points or view which weapons your allies are proficient with. I pretty much have to guess about Kaiden since I haven’t used him since the beginning (such a whinny baby).
Which reminds me, is there a way to allocate skill points to your crew in ME2 all at once? Since before the finale I wanted them all in tip-top shape and I hadn’t used some at all in combat. Meaning to get their skill points set in I had to dock at Omega and then use the ‘request new squad members’ thing to go through all of them.
I sometimes wonder if they NPC’s think I’m a lunatic. “I can’t help it! It’s the broken game mechanics that force me to act like a loony!”
Nope, there isn’t. You can only allocate points to teammembers that are in the current squad.
But I wouldn’t worry about it; having points unallocated on your teammates has no influence on the outcome of the suicidemission.
Seriously? I read somewhere that in the end where they hold the line and you go off to find T-1000 it tabulates some sort of over-all defensive score for ’em based on level and where the points are and bases on that who might die or live.
…So I heard.
I’ve heard that theory before on the BioWare forum, usually in response to how Mordin can die randomly at that point even though everyone’s loyal and you have all the upgrades, etc.
I had several characters that weren’t leveled beyond level 20 or even level 10 in the case of Zaeed as I never used them (besides for their loyalty mission) and everyone survived, so I don’t think it’s true.
If you want a sure way of keeping Mordin alive; remember that he’s not a ‘hold the line’ type of guy, he’d much rather just do the job and go home. So send him back home with the Normandy crew.
While I agree that the ME1 inventory management is pretty bad, I’ll take it over ME2’s non-inventory management.
I don’t see it as a problem. If all one is going to do is equip the gun that does the most damage and don the armor that soaks the most incoming fire, why make it something you have to mess with?
Besides, you can spend all that time mining for metals.
Gee, thanks.
It´s a matter of personal tactics. Maybe I prefer Wrex using an armor with lots of shields and send him in the open to get all the shots, while someone prefers him to have the one that reduces the most damage per hit.
Or maybe I prefer to use the low-power, low-overheating rifle instead of the mega-powered one that gets me the OVERHEATED message every two clicks.
Ah, I think we’re talking at cross-purposes.
I was referring to ME2’s system of inventory and equipping, which basically just has you upgrading your weapons most of the time for the entire squad, with newer weapons of a given category being clearly better than the one previous. In ME2, there really is no inventory management in the style you describe. One small difference are unique upgrades for given characters (in ME2, you can pay for a “Claymore Shotgun” for Grunt, your Krogan). While you can chose lesser weapons before embarking on a mission, there really is no reason to unless you like a challenge. Ammo is also universal, pretty much.
Armor is even less varied in ME2. You get one suit that you can customize with other bits you find or buy, or you buy upgrades that affect the whole squad’s armor at once.
The newer weapons aren’t universally better. The “upgraded” sniper rifle does significantly less damage, for instance.
Agreed about the sniper rifles. Well except the last one. Those ones are the only ones you really have to think about:
Damage
Accuracy
Shield-penetration
Which one do I prefer?
The shotguns are the same, as well – the PC can pick up a Claymore Shotgun of their own on the Collector ship, and although it’s powerful it only had a single shot before reloading, or overheating or whatever it is. Depending on how you use it, another shotgun can be much better.
The thing that bugs me the most is that I have to learn via trial-and-error which weapon is actually best suited to what I want, rather than being able to have some sort of statistics down to tell me which weapon is more accurate, which packs more punch, or which has more penetration.
Yeah such a stat summary, with damage per shot/shots per second/number shots of before reloading/approximate number of shots replenished per ammo cart – that would help the game tremendously.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who realized a SNES game made in 1994 was able to handle inventory better than this freaking game.
@ps238principal: Wouldn’t it be more like the emergency stasis field in World Of Ptavvs? In that one, the field does not and cannot shut off automatically, and because stasis fields stop time the occupant can’t press the switch himself. He survives the emergency as hoped, but because his intended rescuer wasn’t there to find him, he ends up being in stasis for a few hundred million years before anyone lets him loose.
One of the reasons it took so long is that it was never designed for such a length of time. While he was waiting around at the bottom of the ocean, the “off” button eroded away. Humans had to first evolve from primordial slime, and then develop highly advanced technology, before they had a crowbar fancy enough to open the box.
We might eventually do an episode where we talk through the system and demonstrate why it sucks.
I would love that, hell, I’d say that’s one of the reasons I’m watching this. (I’ve heard this game’s worse than RE5 when it comes to inventory… a claim I find hard to believe)
But only if you provide alternatives to how they did things that would work better.
For my money, they didn’t need to hokey up the game with this stuff. There’s absolutely nothing about looting and selling that has to be in an RPG. It was a game mechanic done in the early days because that’s all they could do at the time and it fit a wandering medieval fantasy adventurer kind of guy. An RPG like this doesn’t need any of that outdated mechanic, this guy’s a friggin’ Council rep. Throw him a Council Fund for reasonable expenses and ramp it up as he rocks out the missions, and you can just cut 99% of the pickup loot right out of the game.
Give me the ability to have a soldier mod up my weapons and an engineer mod up my armor with stuff I buy or occasionally salvage from places where it would be APPROPRIATE (f’god’s sakes, you get an arsenal of weapons looted from the pantry in this game) and all of the problems go away. And it’s a better RPG to boot.
They did that in Final Fantasy 8, approximately, but people didn’t like it.
Shamus, your comment made perfect sense: you were talking about the squid animal thing at Eden Prime. It wasn’t Sovereign itself, but it was something Sovereign used to control people.Oh. That Eden Prime. Heh. I’ll go hide back in my corner now.
Regarding the Quarians’ pilgramage, if you go further in the dialogue tree with Tali, Shepard asks how EVERY Quarian could come back with something of value, and Tali explains that a lot of times they bring back very token gifts, almost junk, and the giving of the gift is often more important than the gift itself. It symbolizes a commitment to the community. She also explains that those who DO bring back something truly valuable have a fair bit more social prestige and respect than those who bring a mostly symbolic gift.
For the love of… put some of those points into intimidate or we’ll never see those red choices in action.
Re: Liara and forcefield: I think I always assumed that the field she was trapped in was due to something she did wrong, like she turned on the force fields but then she switched something that locked her up and sent a message to the Prothean overlords “intruder has been caught on level 341/A feel free to inspect them at your leisure” (with the obvious problem of there being no Protheans around to actually answer). Though I wonder how many newbie technicians would get caught in this by mistake. On the other hand, we know that their technology could actually interact with their minds so maybe there is some sort of “codephrase” to turn it on/off but she doesn’t know about it and/or cannot even use it, maybe the “button” controls are only there for an emergency or something. Heck, for all we know it may not be a prison but a relaxation device, you pick a spot near a “window”, turn the thing on and doze off watching the sunset. Who knows what those critters found comfortable.
And Re: Quarians: I wouldn’t be surprised if most of them took this as a chance to “see the sights, meet the people” since only a few get actual tasks involving leaving the flotilla once they’re back. Most probably bring back a container of canned food or couple crates of solar batteries, hard enough for them since they have a difficulty getting a job anywhere with their reputation (have we actually seen a Quarian doing something that could be defined as a job?). Tali is rather patriotic, and she has the whole “a lot is expected of me, must live up to family name” thing. Also, most of them probably want to come back after a treatment that the galaxy generally gives them. In ME2 we also learn that sometimes “teenage troublemakers” are sent on their pilgrimages a bit early… so yeah…
I do like how it sets up both that the QUarians are distrusted by the galaxy at large, and that there is kind of a good reason for this: the only Quarians running around outside the flotilla are teenagers out on their own for the first time and exiled criminals. No wonder people get a bad impression.
The bad reputation is stated to stem more from the Migrant Fleet’s penchants for strip-mining whatever system they happen to be in at the time.
Given some of the codex entries and conversations from ME1, the fact that there are no planets or asteroids in the system with the Fleet makes sense – they’ve already consumed all the rocks in the system and are getting ready to move on when the disaster strikes.
Sure, but the fact that their highest punishment is exile probably doesn’t help. To start with, they got some bad press due to the whole “created Geth” thing, which probably isn’t earning them any good publicity now, and now pretty much all of their resources are focused on maintaining the flotilla, in other words in the eyes of outsiders they don’t really contribute anything. To top it it doesn’t seem like they have much of a diplomatic corps or PR specialists working on maintaining the image of their race. Which is sort of sad since I kinda like Quarians.
In ME1, if you talk to Tali while on the Presidium, She will mention that the Quarians used to have an embassy, but got booted from the Citadel after the Geth went rogue.
On intimidate, just a note, that some of the red options are simply a slight more hard-covered blue options, not necessarily “I’m too tough for you” or “stop being a couch parasite”. It’s totally worth using the red option on the diplomat during the “release mr. Bahtia’s wife’s body from the Alliance” Citadel side quest though. The little scene afterwards was several kinds of awesome! OK, maybe not *several* kinds, but I don’t think I’ve seen this particular character motion that happens before, and I’ve beaten the game once, soo…
As a note: the renegade options are always the right choice when dealing with Krogan. They don’t respect paragons.
Well, Wrex might. But he’s different.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sy-eRfupYbA
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PjTuSQNLI4
I think these are all the renegade options. First one is ME1, second is ME2. Commander Shepard is such a jerk, and it’s hilarious.
Shepard can be a jerk, it’s true. But look at Krogan reactions to those renegade things he does – after saying “point us at the target and it will be dead” and headbutting the rival, the Urdnot Shaman says “I like this human. He gets it.”
With regards to Quarians teenagers returning to the home fleet, you could compare their pilgrimage to the Amish tradition of Rumspringa for their adolescents. Not all communities practice it and some to various degrees, but the basic idea is for a period of time laxing the rules of the Amish faith and life for a teenager coming of age. Sometimes they will leave the community and live among the rest of the world, but I am lead to believe that despite experiencing a life without their tenants most return to their communities. The thought of being exiled from your family and everything you used to know is a pretty strong incentive to return.
I haven’t played ME or ME2 yet, so I’m ignoring this series, but I’m waiting for a reaction to this: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/02/17/you-maniacs/
Of course, I think you posted about this story once before, but worst fears confirmed and all…
“Alec experienced something similar yesterday, when Bioware/EA's servers suffering extended maintenance meant all his Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2 DLC was deemed unauthorised, which in turn prevented him from loading any savegames which used that DLC.”
Err, I played ME2 (PC version) yesterday; I just got a message saying the game couldn’t connect to EA’s servers and then could load up a save and use the DLC without any problems.
Heh, I enjoyed this.
Funny how I’d still find new dialog even after half a dozen run throughs.
Hey Shamus, have you seen the Mass Effect CSI video on youtube? A friend linked it to me and I immediately thought of your plot commentary. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPWs5xdAIRQ
Also, Mass effect was the worse game to come out of bioware in a decade? What about Jade empire?
I’d say ME tops Neverwinter Nights, but it’s their worst game since. I thought Jade Empire was pretty awesome, if only for one of the more original settings in a while.
It’s quite a compliment to Bioware that Mass Effect is one of their worse games.
I’m really enjoying this whole process. You guys are doing very well, though I notice that you never really bother to use jedi powers, instead relying on guns almost exclusively. I double-dog dare you to use the Force more often.
To Krellen and the others who comment on the videos: keep it up! You guys are also great! More, I want more!
If you guys are playing the jerk route.
Why did you grab Liara first?
Getting her last is the best jerk conversation is this game.
Do you guys have any idea what the row of hanging pods next to Kaiden in the ship is?
Best I could tell from the Codex I got by examining them, is that those pods are where everyone else sleeps. Makes no sense to me but I swear I go the bunking Codex from examining those pods.
Alos, playign a female Shepard and damn is Kaiden a whinny twit. Like a maybe you shouldn’t be looking for a long term relationship with a superior who’s also career military. Heck I even brought up the threesome to lighten the mood but no one seemed to get it.
Fairly sure those tubes are similar to cryo-chambers. Why one needs a cryo tube when there are virtually no travel time is beyond me.