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I forgot that we spent this episode with Shepard and Wrex dressed in apricot armor. I guess it’s good that it isn’t pink. This is one place where I think Mass Effect 3 has a great advantage over the original: You can customize your armor piecemeal to suit your playstyle. These choices have a clear visual impact. On top of this, there are a lot of cosmetic pattern and coloring options.
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I really like the touch of the actual colonists having names that pop up when you target them. Makes it much easier to know where to send the flowers.
What’s that you say? We’re out of flowers? Oh, well.
There used to be a ginormous flower living right under Zhu’s Hope.
Of course, we had to murder it…
On the downside, while ME2 and 3 give you more customization for Shepard’s armour, it takes away your ability to alter what your companions are wearing. Some of whom really, really need to put on a shirt.
You do get alternate outfits either via (PAID!) DLC or from their loyalty mission. Jack’s loyalty mission is notable for the fact that it does give her a shirt.
Also the only way to fix Garrus’ armour in ME2 is to buy DLC. :|
I know about the alternate outfits, but it doesn’t actually fix the problem. Jack may get a shirt, but Samara leaves her armour unzipped (still don’t understand how that works) for strategic bust exposal, Miranda continues to wear a skintight jumpsuit with plunging neckline, and Garrus’ armour still has a big hole in it.
She leaves it open to distract her foes, giving her the opportunity to take them out with stripperific lethality.
Kind of like the emblem Batman wears on his chest. Cool!
Since when is a thin layer of bodypaint considered a shirt?
Garrus damaged armor on the other side didn’t bother me much. Rockets are still delicious and you just can’t stop at one, plus there’s always an especially juice rocket that spills on your cleaned armor. Damn these All Rockets You Can Eat buffets the food mercenaries offer.
I’m ashamed to say that I bought the armor DLC purely for Miranda. I was never really bothered with Jack’s outfit because it fit her character. Miranda actually gets (IMO) much more tolerable when her absurd ass is covered in armor. I was actually shocked that I didn’t automatically hate her (as much) with the armor.
It’s true, that armour looks way better. I say this even as an intransigent Miranda-hater.
Knowing Jack, telling her to put on a shirt would only result in her not wearing her belt-bra or pants or both. That’s why you have to win her loyalty before she puts something on her back. OR you can pay for some juicy DLC wink wink nudge nudge.
In principle though, I’m happy that I can’t customize appearance of my companions in DA2 for example. They are grown up people and I’m not their nanny picking out their clothes. If that means Fenris will charge into battle bare feet so be it. At least designers could design a signature look for him and he does not look like a clown because armor I got for him has awesome bonuses but is pink and avocado.
Edit: Damn ninjas!
“On top of this, there are a lot of cosmetic pattern and coloring options.”
I wouldn’t say Shepard actually gets that much more customization. True you can piecemeal out your armor bits and pick from a dozen colors; but only two colors at a time. Also there are only two armor patterns, three if you count blank as a pattern. You may not have been able to customize colors before, but you had dozens of actual armor models in multiple colors to choose from. More total models than in 2 & 3, the only downside being too much loot.
Also that half of them sucked. And actually, I’m pretty sure the models were all the same (well, light medium and heavy were different), just the colors changed. So there’s that.
Yes, I will concede that some of the armor looked stupid. As a counterpoint, the best armor in the game, the Colossus Armor was absolutely badass looking. As a corollary, yes, you look pretty dumb and/or generic for most of the game, but Josh spent all of ME2 and so far all of ME3 in equally stupid and ridiculous armor.
I thought the best armor was Wrex’s Geth Armory Warlord set with ‘Glowy Bits”(TM). Too bad there was only the one set and none for the rest of your group.
I liked the heavy male Onyx armor better.
Face it, Shamus. You DO want it to be pink…
This armor isn’t pink! It’s Strawberry Fuschia! Don’t judge me!
It’s lightish red!
“It’s salmon!”
I would like to note that “salmon” is an actual colour and also a decent shade of pink.
I would like to note that “Wreck-It Ralph” is a really good movie that you (and pretty much anyone reading here) should see, if you haven’t already.
(And that this observation isn’t as much of a nonsequitur as it might seem.)
I want to, but it hasn’t premiered in my country yet!
Twilight 4, on the other hand, is freaking everywhere…
I guess it is punishment for having had Avengers earlier than the US…
+1 for Donut.
My FemShep rocked pink/white camo. My multiplayer characters are even worse- I have a paladin with teal and yellow armor.
Just apply the Guild Wars2 naming scheme for colors and name it “Shame”. Then tell everyone asking that you’re colored/dressed/armored in shame, to which they will slowly nod and agree. Trust me. Everything will be fine.
Wait, is Shepard actually pumping his AMMO FREE shotgun, or is that just a weird recoil animation?
Yea, Conan is pumping the shotgun.
In the fanfiction I’m working on, he’s actually just running his hand down the barrel and making “ch-chock!” sounds with his mouth.
Fun fact – during the filming of The Phantom Menace, Ewan McGregor subconsciously made lightsaber noises with his mouth while filming the fight scenes. They had to be edited out in post-production.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120915/trivia?tab=tr&item=tr0795044
That little piece of trivia only confirms that Ewan McGregor is, in fact, alive. Honestly, who doesn’t do that? You’d have to be dead inside not to.
*looks around accusingly*
Hayden Christensen?
George Lucas?
So that’s what your new novel will be about!
I could so see Shamus’ self-insert character being this frustrated science officer who goes through the logs, highlighting text and screaming his reports off to star fleet: “THIS DIDN’T MAKE ANY SENSE! Why is THAT how we approach a planet?! HOW IS THIS IDIOT STILL IN COMMAND?! How can we HEAR EXPLOSIONS in SPACE?!”
He eventually becomes a super-villain who builds a giant machine that enforces the laws of physics, causality, and rational decisionmaking. To his incredible annoyance, it’s based on technology that shouldn’t logically work.
Somebody needs to do a self insert fanfic starring the entire Spoiler Warning cast in-universe. That would be something truly amazing/terrible.
I always wanted to make them an XCOM squad. Don’t know Josh’s appearance or Mumbles’ real name.
It rhymes with ‘smelly’. *tee hee*
And Josh’s appearance was made known during Shamus’ PAX posts.
My post below (still in moderation…) gives the linkies for that.
ILL KILL YOU.
Using our advanced technology, you can reconstruct Josh’s appearance from the snippets of it Shamus showed here: http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=15678
Result here.
Alternately, just see the photo at the end :P which would be /twentysidedtale/images/pax2012_josh6.jpgOn Mumbles (
hipster pronunciation: Mumblés):http://digitalmumbles.com/about/
http://digitalgumballs.com/about/
——
EDIT: moderation : me : : Grass : Water/Ground
Well, in that case…
No Randy? But WHYYYY?!
In other news, that’s really funny.
I considered having Randy and then putting him in a helmet. Didn’t have a good nickname, though, and somehow all my people in that save were at least sergeant.
‘Conan’
‘AWOL’
or perhaps ‘BCWW’ :PAlso, I like how Ruts is the lowest ranked of them all. You know, because he’s only 12.
The Chris shaved?Betrayal!
Anyway,great work.Though its a shame that you cannot make a baby in a robot suit,because anything else is too old to be the real the Rutskarn.
As for randy,how about ‘The Man’?
Btw,shouldnt the Shamus and the Rutskarn have their roles reversed?The Rutskarn did play a lot of hitman,hence the sniper,and the Shamus should be the same role as the Chris.
Yeah, totally forgot about Chris’ beard. Unfortunately, the only non-Ironman save I had has a very limited number of troops, so I’m unlikely to get class right.
No, Shamus should be Sniper. Remember how he identified with Mordecai from Borderlands?
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/comics/stolen-pixels/6711-Stolen-Pixels-138-On-the-Borderbus
So he’s gonna become the Discworld Auditors, then?
So, by turning it on, it would turn off?
I’m not sure, but part of the way you activate/deactivate it involves shooting something… we think.
Obviously he’s preparing for the heat-sink-filled future.
Or he needs to practice this motion for some reason…
Did you just give a complement to ME3? I think the internet nearly imploded.
So that’s why the video wouldn’t load the first time I tried.
At the start of the series I remember Shamus saying held didn’t hate ME3 but was just very disappointed. I wonder if that’s still the case.
If you weren’t mentally prepared for what ME3 became by the end of ME2, then there isn’t any hope for you. You’re just doomed to an endless cycle of anticipation and disappointment.
It’s been said before; when you expect the worst, it’s hard to be disappointed.
I was expecting the worst myself,yet I still got really pissed off by me3.If anything,it managed to do something I thought impossible:Sink lower than my already low expectations.
Except at the end, where a little kid turns up and tells you that you need to choose what colour to paint your disappointment.
It’s even more depressing if your favorite color isn’t one of the three choices.
I wanted orange.
It gave you lemon-lime.
On the plant thing, it’s not so uncommon for sci-fi worlds to postulate sentient life evolved from plants. A lot of the time, the difference is only apparent at the microscopic level (the key difference between animal and plant cells being the presence of a cell wall). Farscape comes to mind in this regard. It just underscores the alien-ness of the life form. It never bothered me, here.
And on shotguns, semi-automatic shotguns have been around for a while, yes, but pump-action shotguns still have a lot of modern applications, even in tactical environments. They have fewer moving parts and are generally thought to be more durable and reliable than the semi-automatics, they are cheaper to produce and maintain, and they are less prone to an accidental follow-up discharge. Now, why the pump itself has become shorthand for shotguns in videogames is an open question akin to the ubiquitous red explosive barrel. It doesn’t make much sense in ME1 when there’s no cartridge to cycle and the ammo is supposedly sheared off dynamically, just like the other weapons.
I think it’s because the pump helps make the weapon stand out from other weapons. Also, I think because it’s easy to make good, uh, game feel for a shotgun with the pump.
It’s also generally a balance issue.
If you could just rattle off shell after shell from a shotgun (like, at assault rifle speed), you’d never need any other weapon. And you’d never need any combat tactics. Just stand still, let all the baddies close in to knife fighting range and use the shotgun like a flamethrower to hose them all down with rapid instakill fire. Goodbye problems. Ranged weapons? Who needs ranged weapons?
The pump effect forces a delay between shots, so you actually have to think about how many guys you can let get close (and how close) before you start shooting. You have to think about whether you need to pick guys off at range. You have to, y’know, use some actual combat tactics. Same reason applies to the (typically longer-than-most-weapons) shotgun reload speed trope.
None of the above should be interpreted to suggest that this makes in-world sense in all games (especially in Mass Effect).
It’d have to be a game balance issue. Because we already have full-auto shotguns in real life.
Rifles would still be really useful if the game had combats in environments other than narrow corridors and mid-sized rooms and caverns. In ME1, my Infiltrator often got out of the Mako to snipe Geth from the top of the next mountain.
Well, we also have AA12’s in video games too :D (see frex Spec Ops, though I’ve heard it’s not a precisely accurate portrayal? There’s also the Piranha in ME3.)
Autoshotguns tend to have ludicrously low damage/range in games though. (Spec Ops’ is spectacularly OP, but then you only get it for like 5 minutes at the end.)
Mass Effect guns don’t have actions. They break bits off a block of homogeneous material and launch them with gravity manipulation. Why are Shotguns different?
Have you ever seen Garrus calibrating your shotguns? No? Well there’s your problem right there.
With the amount of enthusiasm for calibrating Garrus is known for he would most likely turn your shotgun into a second sniper rifle.
*nitpick*sapient*/nitpick*
Yes,it didnt bother me either.Besides,there are moving plants already,so smart ones could appear maybe.It all depends on what we think a plant is.Is it the lack of brains,photosynthesis,roots,cellulose,…?
I forgot how much I missed the ‘Level Up’ noise in this game. It’s really cool.
You’re definitely right about the ME1 armor being ridiculous. However I think it’s worth mentioning that the armor evolved into the cliche space marine “refrigerator” armor in ME2 & Me3. Aside from being stupid colors, the ME1 armor is sleek and more in line with the tone of the universe. I suppose you could argue that the armor of the later games works with their tone, but I still wish they had kept with the first’s aesthetic.
I dunno, even in ME3 it’s better than the Shootguy armor that Shooty McShootsalot uses in Gears of War. (Which, while enormous, neglects to provide coverage for his face or MASSIVE BICEPS. Even though it’s POWER ARMOR)
Yeah, most ME3 armor isn’t that bad- aside from Turians and Krogan, most armor is about as big as stormtrooper armor.
Shamus! You have to keep buying organic tomatoes! Because if you don’t buy organic tomatoes then the synthetic tomatoes will destroy the organic tomatoes so in order to stop that when the tomato plants get to a certain age we’ll have other synthetic tomato plants come along and destroy the organic tomato plants and…
Yeah, this is a foolproof plan.
Today on Spoiler Warning! Shamus, Josh and Randy massacre the English language! And also thousands of colonists.
I had this problem with a set of human light armor that was very red. It would have been okay for human use, but that’s not what I needed it for and it really clashes with blue.
Speaking of which, I think it would have been a nice touch if human armor from non-human manufacturers was labeled as asari armor, since that’s how they would probably think of it.
It would have been especially awesome if, as Male!Shep, the Asari armor kept the feminine shape.
The counter went down! We’re definitely doing it right!
– Randy Johnson, uttering the line that would prevent a short but distinguished career in bomb disposal.
“STOP PUKING ON ME!”
So Josh just adapted Randy’s phrase?
You know what would have made the kill/incapacitate the colonists choice better? Add an optional fetch quest to get the magic grenades. “This gas will incapacitate them, but you have to go *all* the way back and fight a bunch more geth to get it!” Then it would be justifiable to not waste time by going to get grenades that no one is actually sure will work.