Video Games Thread - Gamertags in 1st post

[Apoc]

Does that mean Rex didn't play it the way the makers intended?

[CaptainHenreh]

Nah, my first playthrough I didn't realize I'd cut missions off by doing Tuchanka.

Second playthrough is well underway.

edit: it's the mission with Kasumi I missed. Not sure if you even get that one if you didn't import a save from ME2...

edit 2: Military assets: 6093, going into the assault on TIM's base. You get a few more after that, BUT that's the point where your Galactic Readiness is calculated and frozen.

[G.Irish]

Finally got the pedals to go with my Fanatec GT2 steering wheel and fired up Forza again last night. It was like my first session on track all over again. It's just so much more engaging and intense when you're feathering the throttle with your foot instead of your thumb. The load cell on the brake cell feels great. It actually gives you resistance like a real brake pedal, although it's a good bit stiffer than a real life pedal (at least in any car I've driven). Will have to work on getting a feel for trail-braking with it.

My whole set up is kind of heavy so I don't know that I'll be taking it up two flights of stairs to play on the PC anytime soon but at the least I'm gonna rack up a lot more hours on Forza 4. Especially when the Porsche pack drops.

[Mike]

5400. Made blue babies. Going for this shit.

[CaptainHenreh]

I will remain optimistic. It is a little bizarre to me that *nobody* at bioware saw this coming. The ending goes (quite literally) against the very base philosophy of the entire saga, and to call a set of palette-swapped 'splosions (I don't think I am spoiling anything here) the "endings" of a 5 year epic is just, well, absurdly disappointing.

Warning, below be spoilers:


Seriously, I know that Justin has seen the ending, Mikey is about to, and anyone else who cared would already have done it.

So, spoilers.


Anyway, on the penny-arcade forum, Patrick Weekes, a writer for Bioware and specifically for Mass Effect, goes by the name of 'Takyris', who allegedly wrote the following:

I have nothing to do with the ending beyond a) having argued successfully a long time ago that we needed a chance to say goodbye to our squad, b) having argued successfully that Cortez shouldn't automatically die in that shuttle crash, and c) having written Tali's goodbye bit, as well as a couple of the holo-goodbyes for people I wrote (Mordin, Kasumi, Jack, etc).

No other writer did, either, except for our lead. This was entirely the work of our lead and Casey himself, sitting in a room and going through draft after draft.

And honestly, it kind of shows.

Every other mission in the game had to be held up to the rest of the writing team, and the writing team then picked it apart and made suggestions and pointed out the parts that made no sense. This mission? Casey and our lead deciding that they didn't need to be peer-reviewe.d

And again, it shows.

If you'd asked me the themes of Mass Effect 3, I'd break them down as:

Galactic Alliances

Friends

Organics versus Synthetics

In my personal opinion, the first two got a perfunctory nod. We did get a goodbye to our friends, but it was in a scene that was divorced from the gameplay -- a deliberate "nothing happens here" area with one turret thrown in for no reason I really understand, except possibly to obfuscate the "nothing happens here"-ness. The best missions in our game are the ones in which the gameplay and the narrative reinforce each other. The end of the Genophage campaign exemplifies that for me -- every line of dialog is showing you both sides of the krogan, be they horrible brutes or proud warriors; the art shows both their bombed-out wasteland and the beautiful world they once had and could have again; the combat shows the terror of the Reapers as well as a blatant reminder of the rachni, which threatened the galaxy and had to be stopped by the krogan last time. Every line of code in that mission is on target with the overall message.

The endgame doesn't have that. I wanted to see banshees attacking you, and then have asari gunships zoom in and blow them away. I wanted to see a wave of rachni ravagers come around a corner only to be met by a wall of krogan roaring a battle cry. Here's the horror the Reapers inflicted upon each race, and here's the army that you, Commander Shepard, made out of every race in the galaxy to fight them.

I personally thought that the Illusive Man conversation was about twice as long as it needed to be -- something that I've been told in my peer reviews of my missions and made edits on, but again, this is a conversation no writer but the lead ever saw until it was already recorded. I did love Anderson's goodbye.

For me, Anderson's goodbye is where it ended. The stuff with the Catalyst just... You have to understand. Casey is really smart and really analytical. And the problem is that when he's not checked, he will assume that other people are like him, and will really appreciate an almost completely unemotional intellectual ending. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it.

And then, just to be a dick... what was SUPPOSED to happen was that, say you picked "Destroy the Reapers". When you did that, the system was SUPPOSED to look at your score, and then you'd show a cutscene of Earth that was either:

a) Very high score: Earth obviously damaged, but woo victory

b) Medium score: Earth takes a bunch of damage from the Crucible activation. Like dropping a bomb on an already war-ravaged city. Uh, well, maybe not LIKE that as much as, uh, THAT.

c) Low score: Earth is a cinderblock, all life on it completely wiped out

I have NO IDEA why these different cutscenes aren't in there. As far as I know, they were never cut. Maybe they were cut for budget reasons at the last minute. I don't know. But holy crap, yeah, I can see how incredibly disappointing it'd be to hear of all the different ending possibilities and have it break down to "which color is stuff glowing?" Or maybe they ARE in, but they're too subtle to really see obvious differences, and again, that's... yeah.

Okay, that's a lot to have written for something that's gonna go away in an hour.

I still teared up at the ending myself, but really, I was tearing up for the quick flashbacks to old friends and the death of Anderson. I wasn't tearing up over making a choice that, as it turned out, didn't have enough cutscene differentiation on it.

And to be clear, I don't even really wish Shepard had gotten a ride-off-into-sunset ending. I was honestly okay with Shepard sacrificing himself. I just expected it to be for something with more obvious differentiation, and a stronger tie to the core themes -- all three of them.

(emphasis mine)

This in fact boils down the entire fan complaint about the ending, but hearing that Mac Walters and Casey Hudson locked themselves in a room to write it surprises me not at all. It's just funny to hear the same shit (allegedly) from a Bioware writer...

If you've been paying attention at all during the story, the ending is really really jarring in both tone and theme. I'm curious to hear what Mikey says about it...

[Mike]

Outstanding game. I went ahead and watched all the endings on YouTube upon completion. I don't have any problem with how the story ended, but shit, the final three hours was a chore, and that makes sense based on what you quoted above. Questionable design decisions, far too drawn out, and at the end I was left wondering WTF each path did (I saw little bits when it was explained to me, but fuck if I remembered three small details and their associated decisions). So yeah, amazing game, but they fucked up the ending. Not the story ending, but the game ending. Still, one of the best games ever.

Rex, I feel bad that you weren't able to experience all the game developers intended for you. I know you're going back to do it again, but it's just not the same on a second play through. You should do it the right way next time.

No chance I'll be playing again, but I do wish I could have experienced it as something other than a soldier.

[CaptainHenreh]

Rex, I feel bad that you weren't able to experience all the game developers intended for you. I know you're going back to do it again, but it's just not the same on a second play through. You should do it the right way next time.

:bootyshake:

I'm holding off on my second playthrough until some of the dlc has settled.

[Mike]

This is pretty much my review of the experience: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ncGrFHCI7U">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ncGrFHCI7U</a><!-- m -->

[B1MM3R]

Essej Enyab-gamertag

Forza, madden, ncaa football, nba 2k12, tiger woods 09, halo 3, battlefield 3

[Apoc]

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassin%27s_Creed_III">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassin%27s_Creed_III</a><!-- m -->

Thoughts? I've never played any of the others, but something about the Revolution in this one really interests me. Shame it comes out just a week or two before CoD and Halo.

[WRXtranceformed]

I have bought and played every game in the AC series and each one has been amazing. I already have this one on preorder.

[Mike]

I've tried two ACs and had trouble finishing both. Managed to get through the first, but the second is still waiting.

[Apoc]

So what's the word, CoD and/or Halo?

I'll probably buy both, just curious in what order I'll end up playing them.

[Mike]

Also probably both. Are they out soon? I'll CoD a lot harder. May even skip Halo as the past few have turned into chores.

[JustinG]

Both Nov 4th I believe.

[G.Irish]

Halo 4 = November 6
BLOPS2 = November 13

I preordered Halo 4, I might skip BLOPS2 since I bought MW3. But that could change if the first non-Bungie Halo game sucks. From what I've read they've made a good number of changes to speed up gameplay (including removing armor lock which a lot of people hated) and the graphics have received another boost. My worry is that it may not have the same level of polish, balance, and lack of bugs that Bungie usually delivers.

[WRXtranceformed]

I lost interest in Halo multiplayer years ago. I will probably rent it to beat the single player campaign because those are usually fun.

I have AC3 and black ops preordered. I just dont have time anymore to sit down and session multiplayer, so I doubt I will get much into BO2 multiplayer.

[Apoc]

I have AC3 and black ops preordered. I just dont have time anymore to sit down and session multiplayer, so I doubt I will get much into BO2 multiplayer.

Black Ops will forever live in infamy as the perfect storm of ass kicking in all our lives. :lol:

[Mike]

You mean "doing work"?

[WRXtranceformed]

RIP doing work

I will forever cherish the memories of teaming up with you guys and raining death and destruction with my shottie, lightweight pro and marathon pro