T w e n t y S i d e d
Thanks to Krellen, Neothoron, and Dr_Zanzabar for adding commentary to the previous installments. I always look forward to seeing the white dots appear and reading what everyone has to say. This is odd, I know. We get lots of feedback here on the site in the form of comments. But seeing them attached to a timestamp gives them a context that makes them feel more like collaboration than a response.
I did find this part of the game to be kind of frustrating. After having everyone make such a big deal out of how important and powerful a Spectre is, it felt pretty stupid to wander around a hotel, being jerked around by the staff and getting involved in their petty infighting. Can you imagine Saren putting up with this crap?
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Overthinking Zombies
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I am really enjoying this series. Thanks.
Damn! I thought I would be first this time for sure! >.<
Only a couple of points to add this time:
1. Prior to the fight with Sgt. Stirling… Come on, Shamus! As a D&D player/DM, you KNOW that the villain has a right to their evil monologue/diabolical exposition/trash talk before weapons get drawn. It's a TRADITION! Break it at your own risk.
2. I didn't notice the safe in Anoleis' office until my second playthrough too!
3. The First Contact War between humans and turians was very much a case of excalating warfare. When the turians first attacked Shanxi, they defeated the human garrison easily because it was small and it wasn't expecting trouble. The turians themselves were only a standard patrol force, but they had starships and pretty much just sat in orbit bombarding the defenders on the planet below. The turian force at Shanxi was nowhere near the bulk of their military forces.
One of the main human fleets then went through the mass relay to Shanxi and soundly trounced the smaller turian force. That led to the turians gearing up for their "Total War" approach in which they mobilise their ENTIRE military forces throughout the galaxy, which is when the Council stepped in and brokered a peace between the two sides.
4. I'm keenly interested to see how you guys do in the Noveria labs. To be honest, I don't think you've got the best choice of squadmates for it; you, Liara and Kaidan all have only light armor and rely heavily on shields for defense, but the Rachni's attacks go right through shields. Given that everybody only has light armor, it's quite possible the Rachni will one-shot everybody.
Still, all those biotics in the party means you've got lots of crowd control skills, so I could be wrong! I only ask that if Randy gets TPK'ed multiple times by the Rachni, that you let us see the footage. XD
5. Oh yes! That skill that made the guy 'explode' was Kaidan's Overload skill. Damn, I've played the game enough times now that I can recognise special attacks by their animation…
Come on, it’s common knowledge that you should allow the villain to monologue until his buffing spells expire.
I don’t think that works. Talking is a free action after all.
Kill the badguy before the exposition comes, and you lose the exposition.
At least, that’s how it should work.
I actually think that the Turian- Human conflict is a remarkable bit of back story. It really sets the tone for human alien interaction throughout the game. Nifty really.
So when is the rest of your ME2 review going up, Shamus?
I’d just like to point out that during all my playthroughs with new characters I’ve had enough Intimidate and/or Charm to choose the red or blue options in the conversations in Noveria.
Just so you know how wrong you’re doing this.
Also, isn’t there a law that practically says Spectres are allowed to punch people they don’t like? It doesn’t make much sense to have to run errands just to get through a door because “ultimate authority” only means that you don’t get spaced for being rude to the Council.
I can’t watch it yet (procrastination go!) but I agree, the white dots are actually the reason I keep tuning in. As terrible as that sounds to the producers of the show.
Can’t help it. Critiques are interesting. ):
This is the first time I’ve seen a lot of these “no Charm, no Intimidate” conversation options. Shepard is full of incompetent rage!
It would have been faster to just talk to the hanar merchant, agree to help him smuggle a package and bring it to Anoleis instead. He gives you a garage pass as a reward and you’re off.
Although the last time I did that, it completely closed the Qu’in dialogue path about the evidence, and I had this ‘Talk to Qu’in’ quest stuck incomplete in my journal for the rest of the game…
You probably can’t influence all those people because game doesn’t expect you to head straight to Noveria. It’ Feros that game considers as next after Liana.
Feros actually has the single hardest Charm/Intimidate check in the game: Talking down Ethan Jeong instead of having to kill him requires either 12 Charm or 10 Intimidate. Convincing Wrex to stand down on Virmire without doing his sidequest only requires 8 Charm/Intimidate, and getting Saren to
shoot himselfrequires 9.Which means
indoctrinationis nothing compared to the power of corporationism.I always wondered why I couldn’t ever get the persuade options with that guy, no matter when I went to Feros.
The Wrex stand-down and Saren scene are the primary reason I put points into Charm.
Even if I had the skill to talk Jeong down, I wouldn’t. It’s better to shoot him, really.
You can get Saren to do WHAT?!?
Seriously, I didn’t know that.
Wow! And I thought all RPG gamers maxed out their Charm/Intimidate/Diplomacy/Speaking/etc. scores. Why even put points anywhere else?!
I admit I’m a bit of powergamer, but how anyone could go through ME and miss even one Charm/Intimidate option … I’m just shocked, really. I could never pass up on a juicy Choice & Consequence.
I guess a core component of RPGs to me are the choices, since they always make for a much more interesting story (and make it more personal) — you always want to have the most options available to you.
You’re missing tons of content in ME1 alone by neglecting your Charm/Intimidate (like the Saren bit). I get those to max to the exclusion of all else ASAP — and similar skills in other games.
(edit: meant to hit reply on the thread one up from this one)
Whoa, wait a sec. Wrex can give you an extra sidequest if you don’t have enough Charm or Intimidate at Virmire?? Damn you, Bioware, you Evil game-maker, why can’t you let me complete all the side-quests in your behemoth of a game! T_T
edit: also, are you saying there’s no point in getting the last 2 initimidate skill ups? My Infiltrator needs as much skill points as she can get, with almost every skill being useful one way or another :|
No, Wrex doesn’t give a second sidequest; but if you help him recover his armor before Virmire, you can use that to convince him you’re on his side without using Charm/Intimidate.
As for the last two Intimidate points, you do get a slightly better bonus from selling items to merchants. Also, what I was looking at before was just a guide to getting Paragon/Renegade points, so there may be options that require 12 Intimidate but don’t give points.
Just noted yesterday that 11 Intimidate wasn’t enough to taunt Saren into
shooting himself, so yep, redid the return to the now ruined Citadel to get the last intimidate point at level 52 :)Interesting. I know I’ve successfully persuaded him with only 10 Charm. Did you use either option on Virmire?
Here’s what I’ve been using as a reference, in case anyone’s curious.
Something that always rubbed me the wriong way is how the humans could have possibly beaten the Turians in the First Contact War. Humanity was only just finding out there was something ‘out there’ when they found the Prothean stuff on Mars in 2148 and the Mass Relay in 2149. Then, even though all they have found so far is stuff from an obviously long dead civilazation, they decide to build a fleet to defend themselves. And by 2157 they sweep the floor with the Turians?
The Turians however, had already been fighting interstallar wars since 500BC! And that was just with their own people. And then when 800 comes along, they are at war with the Krogan. By 900 the Turians are psoitioned in the Council as the galactic peace keeping force. And yet, over 2600 years after the Turians invented interstellar conflict for themselves, 1300 years after the Turian’s First Contact War, and 1200 years after they have been galactix peace keepers…. humanity sweeps them up?
WTF?
(Check it out, I’m not pulling these numebrs out of my ass: http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline )
Well, they could have been borrowing a page from “Babylon-5.” In that series, we became “the cockroaches of space” by optimizing our fighters (Starfuries) to work in zero-g whereas most other races had dual-environment craft (making them less effective in interstellar combat). Then there’s the idea that older empires don’t have the drive to expand or hold territory like a new one, etc.
I’m not saying Bioware just didn’t pull stuff out of their asses, but given that so many of their other plot bits resemble parts of existing sci-fi TV shows…
I think it has something to do with that, yeah. The codex mentions that human tactics were so foreign to the galactic standard that the Turians, who were used to fighting conventional wars, were caught completely off-guard. Nobody had even thought of using tiny, one man craft before humans showed up on the galactic scene with carriers and their fighter wings.
It’s also sort of implied that military technology seems to stagnate when a race joins the galactic community, seeing as humans apparently had already come up with comparable mass driver weapons before they’d ever met aliens before. Which could actually explain a few things about Mass Effect 2 and the Collectors’ sudden and keen interest in humans.
It was a very small turian fleet meant to occupy a world, not fight a massive orbital battle.
It doesn’t surprise me at all that the first things humans did with their space fleet was build huge warships. I mean really, we find this vast array of mass relays obviously built by a pretty advanced race…who is to say they’re completely extinct? Who’s to say there isn’t someone else out there? We wouldn’t know that until we ran into them, so best to be prepared.
Plus we’re really good at building weapons. The basic weapon of fleet combat is just a really huge railgun, and once we figured out mass effect technology, it stands to reason that we’d have implemented such a technology pretty easily. Sure it wouldn’t be as advanced as a turian model, but all it had to do was beat down a small occupation fleet.
I like to think the elevator sequences were inspired by Bioware employees trying to return to their hotel rooms at a con when the dealer room had just let out.
By publicly thanking us, Shamus, you have created a monster of comments.
I would like to point out to people the ability to reply to previous comments – that allows you to comment on someone’s comment without flooding the bar with more bubbles, making it difficult to see previous comments.
Also, how did you guys completely miss commenting on the fact that Parsini herself lampshades her ridiculous outfit when she arrests Anoleas?
It’s all well and good to use the reply function, but I found that you and I seemed to be watching the video at the same time as whenever I added comments more kept appearing behind me!
Also, I seem to seeking to try and break into the video comments scene via my spam of fairly pointless information (I think a lot of it came across very boring).
Is there a way to make viddler sort the comments by video timestamp rather than chronologically? Sometimes they’re hard to read in the video and it’s better to just look down in the comments to read the full text…but viddler sorts comments as they were posted rather than by the timestamp they’re tagged to, which strikes me as really stupid.
Shamus it’s interesting you say you wished you could just punch someone during a conversation and just end it there, as (I’m sure you’ve noticed by now) in Mass Effect 2 you can (forgot what they’re called) take advantage of paragon and renegade opportunities during conversations.
I think that was brilliant as it’s completely optional. It can be a tad confusing at first as you may get a renegade moment or a paragon moment only, but sometimes you’ll get one and then the other a short moment later. No idea if BioWare implemented that based on player feedback or not (most likely they did).
I’m just glad they did it the way they did and avoided doing *shudder* Quick Time Events. *puke*
I actually really enjoy them, they add a whole new dynamic to the conversations and cutscenes that I haven’t experienced before. It gives you a feeling you have more of an effect on things. They’re fun until you become determined to get them all. Then? Then you’re just staring at the corners of the screen waiting for them to pop up.
You miss one, you find yourself reloading the whole god damn mission and speedrunning to that point just so you can do what? Shoot a friggin’ droid. This is the great Renegade option. Shoot a droid with a sniper rifle. SINCE WHEN IS SHOOTING THE FRIGGIN ENEMY CONSIDERED RENEGADE?! IT MAKES SENSE, THEY’RE GOING TO ATTACK, PERHAPS YOU SHOULD SHOOT THEM!?
Can’t believe I just replayed fifteen minutes of game for that. God damn OCD. Man that one has been eating at me for a week now.
The one where you shoot the Krogen and light him on fire was one I thought made sense. It’s clear you’re going to fight him. Is it really RENEGADE to just shoot someone you’re about to shoot? I even took that one in my paragon game. (His speech is long, too.)
Yeah! That kinda seemed like a tactical choice rather than Renegade if you ask me. Things like this is what I hope they streamline in ME3 (as I mention in the comment further down)
I do feel sorry for the guy(s)/gal(s) overseeing the dialog trees and choices in ME3, not sure I’d want to do that. (well, a chance at working for BioWare would change that but heh…)
I think that in Mass Effect 2, “renegade” and “paragon” quick actions are shorthands for simply “war/hate” and “peace/love” actions. There are at least several actions (putting the Krogan on fire, environmental shooting at the start of Miranda’s loyalty mission) that don’t add any renegade points – proof for me that doing that was not characterizing my character as a jerk.
That is one of the best features of ME2. Loved them. Wanted more of them.
Me too, the bad thing though is by choosing one you throw away a lot of dialog that brings more depth to the plot. Then again that’s the drawback such a flexible system I guess. At least folks can choose their playing style much more this way.
BTW! Shamus, you’ll probably love Heavy Rain then I assume it’s based around that very concept. (amusing that BioWare beat them to it though :P
The only improvement I can foresee for ME3 would be if choosing a dialog moment is that it could also alter the dialog branching to give you a new dialog tree than normally. I haven’t really checked ME2 that well if it actually did that, I think some of the Paragon moments might have done that.
All dialogues go the same way. You can ask stuff, and then you have between 1 and 3 options to make the dialogue continue, one per “alignement” (paragon, neutral, renegade). That´s dialogue in ME2. Every single time it will follow the same set up. It would be nice if in ME3 they make dialogue options a bit less predictable and a more naturally structured conversations. They just seem to artificial to me.
No no, I meant the new Paragon/Renegade moments aka events that are optional, Renegade usually involve shooting something, Paragon the opposite, but I never payed attention to if Paragon opportunity changed the dialog much from just ignoring the event.
Yeah, I liked the Paragon/Renegade interruptions too.
Most of the renegade ones are either funny or just darn brutal, and I was wondering how well they could do paragon interrupts, and some of them took me by surprise at how well done they were, and often unexpected. (Including one of the most heartwarming actions I’ve ever seen being given as an option to do in a game, avoiding naming the incident to avoid spoilers, as spoilers are bad bad things).
Tali’s loyalty mission?
*sighs* That’d be the one.
DANG that helmet. DANG!
Oh and guys I agree with you that Mass Effect (ME1 in particular) has really odd dialog for Paragon and Renegade.
If I was the game director I would have done things slightly different.
I’d have allowed the player to choose whatever dialog they wanted. (still kept the Paragon/Renegade extra dialogs though).
but I would have given points based on the result rather than the dialog choice.
So you would have gotten Renegade points if the result is selfish, and you’d get Paragon points if the result is selfless.
So if Shepard is the only one that gains anything that would be Renegade,
but if others also gain then that would be Paragon.
At least it would lessen the ambiguity on the Paragon and renegade style dialog options.
Another issue is that the player may have different motives than BioWare or the game assumes, they game has no way of knowing if you are actually lying/faking it. (except the few odd situations where the game dialog has [Lie] at the start that is.
A lot of times when choosing dialog I mumbled to myself that “Um. that idiot has no clue I’m just going along with this to get what I want, I don’t actually mean anything of this”.
I think ME3 will be kinda like ME2 just a bit more streamlined and tweaked, no major change in how dialog works or the way of choices.
(they’ll still keep the optional Renegade and Paragon moments though I hope as I found those really nice)
Still, it’s more about how you’re generally perceived than your underlying motivation. The only benefit you get from Renegade or Paragon points are the ability to put points in Charm or Intimidate and a small shopping bonus – what sort of person you are deep down doesn’t matter, since both of these would be controlled by a mixture of your reputation and your experience at acting/being nice or nasty.
Here’s an interesting tidbit. on my most recent play through of ME1+ME2 (was going for a Tali only LI save ending this time) I ended up almost purely doing renegade choices.
But ironically enough, looking back I find that 90% of the dialog choices I either lied or humored them to get what I wanted, in fact now that I think about it some of the Paragon choices are more deceptive than some Renegade choices (which may seem rude but is actually quite honest at times unlike Paragon ones)
I’m not saying the Paragon/Renegade system is flawed, just that I think the dialog options should have been shifted around a little as far as Paragon and Renegade points go.
Here I am spamming the comments again. I just read Yahtzee latest article at the escapist, and he pointed out something important that I hope makes it back into ME3. He says in ME1 you walk to the airlock and clicked it, then you existed it. In ME2 you just magically shuttle down.
I hope that in ME3 you get to walk down to the shuttle and enter it, then it shuttles down to the surfaces and vice versa. Ditto with docking at a station, by walking through the airlock. Heck I even miss the elevators (only ones where the squadmates ended up in conversations that is).
Btw! Shamus, why don’t you guys invite Yahtzee for an episode? He’s familiar with both Mass Effect games so should fit in as a guest on an ep.
I have to say while I fancy the idea of thirty minutes of Yahtzee I do sort of fear it would turn into exactly that; thirty minutes of Yahtzee. Just a bit too much of a Large Ham for this.
If anything I’d suggest one of the blokes off of Unskippable be somehow kidnapped for this. The tall one, get the tall one.
Yahtzee a Large Ham? Well, I suppose that would explain his ham-fisted reviews. (knee-slapper, sorry!)
I both love and detest viddler comments.
On the one hand, having the ablitiy to place comments directly in the video makes it feel more like you’re saying something meaningful, and people who read it get more information and opinions than those provided by the commentary withour having to pause the video and scroll down to the comments.
But then, I also hate it cause it can cause situations where I’m trying to read the comments while I’m trying to listen to the commentary while I’m trying to listen to the game characters, which is annoying as hell and requires repeated watching; also, new comments can cover up old comments and pop up when they show up rather than when you’re finished reading the old comment, so trying to find an older one that’s placed a couple of seconds earlier on a timeline of 40 minutes means I can’t unless I play the video and pause at exactly the right time. (you can get around that by reading the comment on the viddler page, but this isn’t the viddler page, is it?)
They seem to work best with a small handful of people commenting, rather than a bunch of people.
Hence the reason why I don’t make comments, even though I might be tempted at parts. :-)
Looks like you won’t have to worry about me making comments any more. Viddler seems to have removed my account (and my comments) without any notification of what happened. And I can’t re-register, either. Odd.
That sucks. What the crap?
Maybe they thought you where a bot.
Or maybe you used one of the 7 dirty words, “Oh won’t somebody think of the poor children.” The poor 17+ or 18+ children that is… (ESRB and PEGI ratings)
Another good video. Maybe this has already been answered, but are you guys planning on doing the side-quests, or are you going to just run through the main quest as fast as possible? Oh, and are we going to get to see Conan in ME2 at some point?
One thing I want to try to answer that came up was around the twenty-first minute mark about how the first species (the Asari, I think) managed to get to the Citadel in the first place beyond opening up random Relays: I’ve always understood that the entire network works like, if I may steal a metaphor from Carl Sagan, the New York subway, with a lot of different endings all leading up to one single ‘Grand Central Station’–in this case, the Citadel.
Maybe I’m just an idiot (in fact, I can pretty much guarantee that) and that’s not at all what the writers intended, but Contact put the idea into my head before I played ME.
I think BioWare was actually inspired by that movie and Stargate etc.
I love how, after spending the entire episode whinging about the lack of intimidation points, Randy… failed to put his points into intimidation.
Because I don’t have a Viddler account and don’t want to add to the mess of dots (thank God for fullscreen mode and widescreen monitors), I’m placing my comments here:
Re: Nassana Dantius: She shows up again in Mass Effect 2 (
“Tell your assassin to aim for the head, because she doesn’t have a heart.”), which might also be why you recognize the name.Re: Lorak Qui’in agreeing to testify: You hold on to the evidence after he agrees to testify, so he has no real reason not to. Unless you give it to Anoleis, of course, in which case he’ll probably not get the chance.
How you solve the Lorak Qui'in and Anoleis (which path you take) will be referenced in ME2. Also the secretary (fraud agent?) may give you a tiny side-quest in ME2 as well. And if you helped her out in ME1 she’ll thank you with a kiss on the cheek after helping her in ME2.
It’s tiny things like this that BioWare have really impressed me with.
I can only imagine what the second Mass Effect Trilogy might hold. (yeah I know, ME3 isn’t even finished yet, but common, with the success of the first trilogy they just gotta do another right? Right!) *laughs*
I’m still waiting for someone clever to make the equivalent of a ‘ragdoll physics plot modifier engine” or somesuch. Much in the same way that when you propel a body away from you, it’s path and destination are determined by variables, it’d be interesting if someone could do the same for player choices in an RPG, giving one plot results (who would ally with you, what options are available later, etc.) based on an amorphous blob of data called “what the player has done and how.”
As a simple example, if someone you nearly kill manages to escape, when encountered later, some combination of that outcome (how badly you hurt the guy, what your intimidate/charm stats are, actions taken against those he’s allied with, perhaps even what mission you’re on) determines if he’s afraid of you, respectful, hostile, etc.
This also probably requires better voice modulation technology, perhaps a combination of voice acting and computer modification, allowing for a wider range of vocal responses as needed without having to record every possible combination in-studio.
Don’t take my word for it, but doesn’t KoTOR2 kinda do that?
But in any case, no it’s not that common.
In fact I wonder if Mass Effect 3 might be the first to really make an impact storywise like that.
I got a endsave in ME2 where Shepard romanced Liara in ME1 and Tali in ME2 that should be usefull to check out the “cheating consequences” BioWare mention, maybe I’ll loose a squadmember due to this?
This is why ME2 is great – Renegade Interrupt the Krogan’s exposition. Fun!
Bah, still no points going into intimidate, not going to see the red options available, ever. Other than that, still fun.
Holy crap, the comments on the video are starting to make it look like Pac-Man vomited on the player.
So, uh, any particular reason why Randy didn’t hand over the evidence to Anoleis to get one of the (imho) truly Renegade-as-in-evil, as opposed to Renegade-as-in-jerk cutscenes in the game, as well as a heckload of Renegade points?…
I’ve never understood why a Renegade would pick this. There is a similar quest in KOTOR where you can side with Zalbar’s brother, simply because he’s evil. In both cases you’ve got someone who has been a complete pain in the ass, and the “evil” option is to let them live instead of getting revenge. Is this like, professional courtesy between evil jerks?
Union rules actually! *laughs*
I thought it was the “you magnificent bastard” principle.
No, more like respect for the operation he’s managed to build and sustain for himself. He was a bit annoying to me but his extremely business tone made up for that, so he didn’t feel as bad as a complete pain in the ass. I’d even say it was nice to hear an NPC that wasn’t a damsel in distress, a nice guy sympathizing with your grand quest, or a one-dimensional evil villain – I feel like 95% of the secondary NPCs(I’d call capt. Anderson and ambassador Udina primary NPCs) in Bioware’s games fit one of the above descriptions.
In a Bioware game, if you want to play a villain your hands are tied. You can be a jerk here and there, but all the situations are somewhat irrelevant on the grand scale of what you do. You may taunt the fan on the Citadel with your gun to make him a crybaby or you may persuade him it’s more important that he stays home, but the end result is the same. You may shout at Saren that it’s not too late to fight Sovereign’s influence and that he can still help, or you may taunt him saying it’s his fault and that he was weak, but the end result is the same. You are always bound to fight an ancient evil and triumph over it.
However, in this particular cutscene, the Renegade choice can depict the illusion of making a difference in the world you inhabit well enough(I’m saying illusion because I’m still bound to defeat the ancient evil, and to me that overshadows all the other choices I make in the game). Surely getting the good guy, er. investigator killed is an evil enough option for us roleplayer wannabes? When I was on my first playthrough in Noveria I was fumbling around confused, and after I convinced Qu’inn to testify I went to Anoleis to see if he’d have any new dialog options, so I accidentally went for the evil option. I had a mixed bittersweet feeling at the cutscene. Bitter because I felt really sorry for the secretary, she was one of the good guys like Shepard after all, and sweet because, while in a Hollywood movie this would be an ordinary scene, it was rather impressive to see it in a game.
[/nerd analysis out] :)
hmm… Shamus, have you played any of the player made mods for NWN?
Some of the best stories I have ever seen are hidden in those little gems (yes, some are far better than even falloutesque classics)
It took me annoyingly long to realize you were complaining about NWN2 again when you were talking about the door.
I’m kind of curious as to whether bioware also decided to steal the featureless caves full of boredom for 4 hours.