T w e n t y S i d e d

I don’t know what to think of Horizon / Sanctuary. Did they install a gun out in the boonies, away from a population center in Mass Effect 2? Was that area the ONLY rural area? Or did the collectors invade the only rural area with a huge space-gun? Or was this new massive population center / Cerberus base built in the few months since the events of ME2? Or was this an existing Alliance base that Cerberus took over so they could build a secret underwater husk factory?

If Horizon had been built around characters the way Zhu’s hope had been, I might have felt like there was an emotional stake in this place. But at the end of Mass Effect 2, we don’t even know what happened to the colonists. Did we rescue them? Did any live? Did some escape? Going by what was shown us, it seems reasonable to assume everyone was turned into Reaper slush. But then why is this place so much bigger?

It doesn’t matter. None of it matters. It’s not connected, nobody thought about it, nobody cared enough to give a name to a single person on Horizon. The writers just re-used the name of the place without bothering to explain what happened here. Re-using the name just serves to make the galaxy feel smaller without taking advantage of that smallness to build characters, relationships, or stories.

Well, we got Miranda’s sister. There’s that.

Behold, the nunchuck gun!

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.

Josh talked about the FOV thing in this episode. This is one of those usability issues (like invert mouse) that’s either crucial or completely irrelevant, based on your gaming habits, history, play style, muscle memory, eyesight, and equipment. One person finds the thing to be almost unplayable, and another can’t imagine a situation where they would even notice, much less care.

I played shooters back in the days when an 85 degree field of view was standard. I don’t actively notice the tight FOV the way Josh does, but when I switch from 60 to 90, it does create an incredible sense of relief, like turning off a light that was shining in your eyes or silencing machine noise that had been going on for so long that you’d forgotten about it.

The Champions Online bit we were talking about can be found here.

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.

WARNING: There is an extended segment of this episode where we do not complain about the game. There is unqualified praise and positive things are said about the scenery. Viewer discretion is advised.

The mention of Elcor Jamie in this episode reminded me of the old Myth Effect joke Dan made last year:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Mass Effect 3 EP30: Playdate”

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.

Sooner or later we get to a bogged-down section of the game where all we can do is repeat previous criticism and watch Josh shoot things and scream over us when he sees a bug. This is perhaps not our show at its finest. When this happens, it comes up now and again in conversation:

Man, you guys don’t seem to be enjoying yourselves. You’re just nitpicking endlessly. Why don’t you quit this game, or skip over the boring parts?

Well.

If we quit whenever we hit a tough spot, we’d never finish anything, since just about all games have a point where they settle into the mechanics and combat for a while. My final take on Human Revolution was that the game “warmed my heart”. I was delighted to see a classic game revived with such care and maturity, and with so much faithfulness to the intent of the original. But even that game had a number of slow spots, rough points, logic holes, and sections where we couldn’t do anything but bitch & moan about the same problems we’d been covering for the last three hours.

As Chris said the other day:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Mass Effect 3 EP29: The Fall of Shepard”

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.