T w e n t y S i d e d

Like Feros, Noveria is a two-location planet, with a Mako drive between them. Port Hanshan has the corporate offices, while the labs are up the snowy, hilariously steep mountain path. The people of Hanshan evidently know how reckless and sketchy their research work is, since they put all of their labs and experiments on the other side of a glacier.

Port Hanshan

Well it wouldn’t be a proper RPG if we didn’t run into a plot-driven door at some point.

This is a simple quest that feels long because of the elevators we have to ride. Administrator Anoleis is a corrupt jerkfaceWouldn’t this quest be more interesting if he was a nice and funny guy, and was only an asshole to the people he had power over? You’d need a different reason to oppose him, but “Guy who is cool to the player but a tyrant to everyone else” might be a fun hook. who won’t grant you a pass to access the garage, which you need in order to reach the Mako and drive up the mountain to Saren’s lab. You go from Administrator Anoleis, to Agent Parasini, to Lorik, where each of them tells you their particular agenda. Then you have a little scuffle at Lorik’s office, and you decide which of the previous three people you want to work with in exchange for a pass. If it wasn’t for all the walking and elevator-riding the whole thing would be over in less than five minutes. But that’s not a very good reason to have all the walking and elevator riding.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Mass Effect Retrospective 6: Noveria”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Feros is the most “Classic BioWare” of the planets. It’s packed with story beats, themes, and plot elements ripped from earlier games. You’ve got the bog-standard optional “help these villagers gather resources they need to live” type questing, you’ve got some charmingly lame puzzles, and you’ve got a little bit of local politics and personal drama for flavor. This would be my favorite location in the game if it wasn’t all the same unendurable shade of beige.

A lot of games from this time period made the mistake of making a world of tan and grey, but this particular example really bothers me. I can tolerate it if the people developing the Military Manshoots of 2007 thought that concrete dust and rubble was just the “most realistic” and therefore “best”, according to the artless simplistic tastes of the day. But here? On a strange and distant world meant to evoke a sense of wonder and alienation? I can’t help but feel like the people who designed this place should have known betterAnd perhaps they did, but were pushed to make it “more realistic” by some hack who doesn’t deserve his job..

You could go either way. You could make the old parts of the planet – the ruins and underground caves – look vibrant and full of color, and make the prefab human housing look drab and boring. This would make the human stuff look ordinary and pedestrian in contrast to this alien backdrop. Or you could go the other way and have the human structures be bold and garish against the understated backdrop of the ruins and nature. Perhaps human stuff would be painted, or made of colored plastic. This would make the human structures stand out as new and out-of-place, like building a McDonalds in the Greek Parthenon. Either way, there should be stark contrast between new and old.

And no matter what, the Thorian should have some kind of green or yellow motif, even if it doesn’t photosynthesize with chlorophyll like Earth plants. It’s mind boggling that the exact same color palette is used for the human colony, the Prothean ruins, the ExoGeni Offices, and the Thorian caverns. What a wasted opportunity.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Mass Effect Retrospective 5: Feros”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.