T w e n t y S i d e d

Ah, the Elcor. As I’ve mentioned in our Mass Effect 3 series, I’m sad they didn’t get more focus in the later games. In Mass Effect 3, I think you talk to one.

Please note: 25 minute episode, and not one shot was fired. There’s another 15 minutes of non-combat on the end of the previous episode. That’s a long time to go without killing anybody in an action game. And of course, if you hung around to do all the little Citadel side-quests you could end up going even longer. Compare this to the section in Mass Effect 3 where we rescued the Primarch’s son, and it felt like the game was throwing long combat sections at us just to kill time and stall the plot.

Having said that, this change might be a winning design choice. I know a lot of people complained that the Citadel section was “too long and boring”. This is a tough thing to judge. If players are getting restless, does that mean you need more combat, or does it mean the story itself is too slow?

Some people don’t like the talky bits constantly interrupting their shooty funtime. Some people get bored with too much combat unless it’s moving the plot forward. But sometimes “the combat went on too long” really means “the combat is too simple and one-dimensional”. And sometimes “there’s too many long cutscenes” means “the plot was stupid and I didn’t care”. I’d hold up Homefront as an example of the former, and Resident Evil 5 or Final Fantasy XII as an example of the later.

Obviously your mileage may vary, which is probably why these complaints come up so often. It’s impossible to get the story vs. gameplay balance right, because everyone has different tolerances. And even if you do get it right it might seem wrong because one or the other isn’t polished enough.

In conclusion: I’m glad I’m a critic and not a developer.

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.

Let us pause for a moment of silence for poor Rutskarn. He died as he lived: Screaming puns. In the show I joked that we murdered him. Obviously that’s not true. If we’re being honest, it was more like euthanasia.

As mentioned in the show, Electronic Arts no longer develops any games as single-player experiences. So that’s a story that’s going on. And on a completely unrelated note that has nothing to do with that last story, I just wanted to point out that back in April EA closed a bunch of multiplayer servers. Again, these two news items are entirely divorced from one another. I don’t even know why I put them in the same paragraph, really.

Going back to the discussion about gaming in the 90’s:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Mass Effect 3 EP14: Hacket Unit”

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.