Mass Effect 1 rant

[thespyder]

Man, Countdown to Doomsday. There was a game ahead of its time. You could get into a random spaceship battle, blow off the enemies weapons, disable it's engines, then board, fight through the crew to engineering and the bridge and take the ship. Still haven't found another game that would let you do that.

It's too bad it's so totally connected to the cheesy TV show. It was an interesting setting, and I'd love to see an ME style game in that universe.

I have never heard of Countdown to Doomsday. Which is a shame because it looks like it was built using the same engine as the Gold Box SSI D&D games (which I loved).

 

[Anteaus]

Well if you want to play all these old games they are available out there. Just use Dosbox. I'm not sure if abandonware is technically legal, so I won't link to any sites. That being said, search for abandon and mania...except combine them before searching. I personally still have my original discs. I'm glad I backed them all up to harddrive before disk drives when out of style. Some other great ones were Space Rogue, Starflight 2 and Metatraveller.

 

[makken]

I guess it depends on the target audience. There are many scifi fans out there who have been looking for a space opera that isn't Star Wars or Star Trek while at the same time not be tainted by the JRPG community. Fantasy RPGs are a dime a dozen, but an truly well written future space based RPG hasn't been around in ages. It is difficult to do without making things cheesy, but Bioware managed to hit it out of the park.

Also, there are many of us who remember Sentinel Worlds, Planet's Edge, Buck Rogers Countdown to Doomsday and Matrix Cubed, Star Control.....there were tons of great sci-fi RPGs back in the day....today, not so much.

I always thought the story in ME1 was pretty decent. Not awestruckingly amazing, but still better than most other games out there. It always felt like a mashup of Halo and Freespace's stories to me.

I have to agree that the inventory system is absolutely horrible though. I actually quit playing 1/3 of the way through at first because I found that I was spending more time managing my inventory than actually playing the game. Eventually I found the only way to make any progress in ME1 was to have my laptop next to me with this open on it:

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

I have never heard of Countdown to Doomsday. Which is a shame because it looks like it was built using the same engine as the Gold Box SSI D&D games (which I loved).

Both it and it's sequel, Matrix Cubed, were definitely gold box engine. Suprisingly hard sci-fi too, especially considering that Buck Rogers was cheese central. No FTL. Mars and Venus are terraformed, but still pretty unpleasant. Cat-people and Lizard-people - but in this case, cause they were people spliced with useful cat or lizard traits.

Lots of before their time game features too. Protective grenades that created fields certain weapons couldn't fire through. Space combat where the entire crew takes part, manning weapons or repairing.

If you feel like digging it up, probably best to find the Genesis version - no need to go digging to find old manuals to understand the plot on that one. But turn the sound off - game had the most annoying combat 'music' I've ever heard.

 

[DrunkenSano]

I rather have no inventory system than a shitty one, I wasted so much time clearing out my inventory in ME1. The skill system in ME2 is much more simplified which is fine by me. I had more crew members who in a way is an extension of the skill system because you can pick the ones that will fit the mission profile. I also don't see how combat in ME1 was better than ME2, I always saw Mass Effect more as a FPS than a RPG, but a good mix. What ME2 did well was quicken the pace a bit.

 

[Anteaus]

I didn't find the ME1 inventory too be that bad. I would just wait until i hit the warning for near 150 items, then spend about 5 minutes at the lockers handing out the best stuff to all the members, then just sold everything that was left. Once you pass 1 million credits you get access to Spectre gear which I then purchase and hand out. The ship and C-sec will each sell a set of Spectre gear, so once I buy it all virtually all items from that point except for certain armor and upgrades will just get sold off until I hit max money which is 9999999. After that, its gel city. I agree it's probably more trouble than its worth, but it wasn't that bad.

I do wish armor wasn't such a linear upgrade though. Then again, I can't think of any other non-mmo RPG that actually makes armor choice meaningful. Even Skyrim is pretty much a linear progression. The vast majority of drops are unusable, especially if you Smith.

It's hard to fault ME for an inventory system that works like virtually every other one out there. I can see why they removed it in ME2. It was superficial at best.

 

[thespyder]

I rather have no inventory system than a shitty one, I wasted so much time clearing out my inventory in ME1. The skill system in ME2 is much more simplified which is fine by me. I had more crew members who in a way is an extension of the skill system because you can pick the ones that will fit the mission profile. I also don't see how combat in ME1 was better than ME2, I always saw Mass Effect more as a FPS than a RPG, but a good mix. What ME2 did well was quicken the pace a bit.

See, I have to go the exact opposite. ME2 gave us no inventory. And i would rather have a poor inventory system than none. Because no inventory meant no choices. Your choice of weapons at the beginning of each missioin was meaningless and therefore useless.

And the skill system was useless as well. When I play, I have 'My team'. I don't want to have to switch out one person just to get someone that has the right skill. Playing style, i agree, but that is the way I play.

And my main complaint was that ME series as a whole was supposed to be a spiritual successor to KoTOR, which it is by and large. But ME2 ripped out a lot of what made KoTOR an excellent game. And took it away from RPG which is where it's roots are.

Not saying I didn't enjoy ME2. just saying that it wasn't anywhere near as good a game as it should have been in my estimation.

 

[2Dead]

In ME1, you could increase the size of your inventory... You didn't have to stick to 150. You had to edit one of the config files, I forget the exact file and line though.

 

[alent1234]

See, I have to go the exact opposite. ME2 gave us no inventory. And i would rather have a poor inventory system than none. Because no inventory meant no choices. Your choice of weapons at the beginning of each missioin was meaningless and therefore useless.

And the skill system was useless as well. When I play, I have 'My team'. I don't want to have to switch out one person just to get someone that has the right skill. Playing style, i agree, but that is the way I play.

And my main complaint was that ME series as a whole was supposed to be a spiritual successor to KoTOR, which it is by and large. But ME2 ripped out a lot of what made KoTOR an excellent game. And took it away from RPG which is where it's roots are.

Not saying I didn't enjoy ME2. just saying that it wasn't anywhere near as good a game as it should have been in my estimation.

was there any point to the choice in ME1?

equip your characters with the best and dump the rest. same with ammo, keep a few types on hand and dump the rest

 

[DrunkenSano]

That was my experience in ME1 in regards to inventory, it is there as a sham and a waste of time since there is no reason to keep different weapons. In ME2, the developers saw the problem in ME1 and basically saved us the trouble of doing extra clicks to equip the best weapons.

Now if it was a real RPG with items of random generated stats, then inventory would have a meaning.

 

[SLU Aequitas]

was there any point to the choice in ME1?

equip your characters with the best and dump the rest. same with ammo, keep a few types on hand and dump the rest

Correct. A pointless choice really isn't a choice at all. Now, if the weapons or armor had something to distinguish itself in a different way that meant you actually made choices about your loadout (e.g. Higher armor rating or significantly decreased CD), it would have been worthwhile; in ME1, it was a pointless timesink. ME2 was right in removing the ME1 inventory/item system--it was wrong in not trying to implement a worthwhile system instead.

 

[thespyder]

Correct. A pointless choice really isn't a choice at all. Now, if the weapons or armor had something to distinguish itself in a different way that meant you actually made choices about your loadout (e.g. Higher armor rating or significantly decreased CD), it would have been worthwhile; in ME1, it was a pointless timesink. ME2 was right in removing the ME1 inventory/item system--it was wrong in not trying to implement a worthwhile system instead.

I take the point that the choices you had weren't vast or varied in ME1. But at least there were choices. ME2 didn't "Fix" anything in my estimation by removing the choice. By far the better way to go (IMHO) would have been to diversify some of the stuff you picked up, not remove all drops except amo.

I say again, where ME2 should have been an RPG, it ended up being a poor man's FPS with a significantly better storyline. In that it failed on both fronts. FPS players don't want story and RPG players don't want zero choice.

 

[SLU Aequitas]

Oh, Spyder, I agree with you. However, my point is that there wasn't any real choices (regarding inventory items) in ME1 to begin with. The removal of a bad system was a plus, if you regard it in a vacuum, however a far better solution would have been to FIX the system by implementing meaningful gear choices. Instead, Bioware took the (easier) route of removing the broken system.

I'm not as distraught over the changes, as I really saw through ME1's thin veneer of RPG elements and took it as a TPS/Sci-Fi Adventure game, and I was OK with that. I would have preferred MORE RPG elements, and I enjoyed both games regardless, but I totally understand that the design choices would make some people disappointed.

 

[thespyder]

Oh, Spyder, I agree with you. However, my point is that there wasn't any real choices (regarding inventory items) in ME1 to begin with. The removal of a bad system was a plus, if you regard it in a vacuum, however a far better solution would have been to FIX the system by implementing meaningful gear choices. Instead, Bioware took the (easier) route of removing the broken system.

I'm not as distraught over the changes, as I really saw through ME1's thin veneer of RPG elements and took it as a TPS/Sci-Fi Adventure game, and I was OK with that. I would have preferred MORE RPG elements, and I enjoyed both games regardless, but I totally understand that the design choices would make some people disappointed.

So a slightly different take. I see "Any" step away from RPG as a negative regardless of what ills it solves. In that, removal of choice (even bad choice) was bad (IMHO). So, no. Removal of the inventory was just plain dumb and put me of a mind of games like BF or CoD/MW (not high praise in my mind). But that may have been what they were going for.

At the end of the day, ME2 didn't have the physics engine or the mechanics of a FPS, so it had no business trying to be that. But it had no business trying to be an RPG either, given that every significant choice about your character were taken from you.

But with all that having been said, there was fun to be had in the game. It wasn't half the game it should have been, but it was fun to play. I "Hope" ME3 developers learned from their mistakes and reverse direction. Otherwise it will be merely a different type of game entirely than I want it for.

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

You did play the ME3 Demo right?

It's actually considerably deeper then ME1 was, in both skills and weapons. A skill tree that involves decisions beside "Put point in this skill", so you do have to make meaningful decisions about how you want your skills to work. Considerable variation between the weapons, and then the weight system on top of it.

 

[raasco]

I finally downloaded this game today and fired it up for the first time. Whats with the low resolution? No 1920x1080 option?

 

[Via]

No single quest chain in ME2 can hold a candle to any of the major ones in ME1. That's a pretty big deal for me.

 

[AznAnarchy99]

I finally downloaded this game today and fired it up for the first time. Whats with the low resolution? No 1920x1080 option?

Make sure you're on patch 1.2 i think and when you change resolutions in game, there's an arrow to move the resolutions down. I missed it the first time.

 

[Red Hawk]

I finally downloaded this game today and fired it up for the first time. Whats with the low resolution? No 1920x1080 option?

You have to go into the configuration utility and make sure it's set to 16:9 aspect ratio, or the 1920x1080 option won't appear in-game. [Mass Effect's install location]\Binaries\MassEffectConfig.

 

[raasco]

You have to go into the configuration utility and make sure it's set to 16:9 aspect ratio, or the 1920x1080 option won't appear in-game. [Mass Effect's install location]\Binaries\MassEffectConfig.

Thanks

 

[AstroManLuca]

F6

God damn it, developers, when will you learn that F5 is and always will be the quicksave button? NO EXCEPTIONS!