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Mass Effect LE is outstanding, but there were some missed opportunities.

Kirazuki_01

Neo Member
I'm about 2/3 the way through ME2 and loving it. ME1 hasn't aged well in comparison but it was still good to play through.

What really stands out to me playing these back to back is just how much bigger ME2 is. I finished ME1 in 22 hours and did pretty much everything. I'm 30 hours into ME2 and still have plenty to do.

Even after all these years ME2 has held up incredibly well with an amazing universe and a whole roster of characters that give life to every corner.

I'm having an absolute blast going through these again.
 

Rikkori

Member
Playing through them again what's weird is that I enjoy ME1's combat more and more, and was quite disappointed with it in 2. Kinda on pause atm, so we'll see if 3 holds up better when I eventually get to it. That was surprising to me. It's absolutely pathetic that basic things like 5.1 support and FOV weren't fixed for this LE though, but thank god for PCs & modding.

Honestly the big thing is that I'm playing through 'em and enjoying them as much as ever but I get sad running around and knowing they'll never meaningfully make another ME game worth of the name. They could've gone in a more open world direction but keep the strong RPG elements a kind of Witcher 3 (Writing & Story) meets The Division (Combat & Overworld). Doing the whole Illium run I'm looking at it and imagining how awesome it would've been for them to realise the city at a wider scale, sorta like a Coruscant for ME, but which you can explore (Citadel in ME3 was also going in that direction). So much potential for this franchise and it was all just wasted after the trilogy, and even this "remaster" was barely a half-hearted attempt. A real shame.

Blade Runner Film GIF
 
I completely forgot that after you finish ME1 you cant go back and clean up the other sidequests leftover 🤦‍♂️ . I cant believe they didnt change that archaic mechanic especially since ME2 and and ME3 throw you back to a mission before the ending to let you continue with sidequests...I mean sure, most of them are boring in ME1 and just same reused rooms on planets but Ikind of still had a few where I was interested in what happens to the crew etc.
 
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
I completely forgot that after you finish ME1 you cant go back and clean up the other sidequests leftover 🤦‍♂️ . I cant believe they didnt change that archaic mechanic especially since ME2 and and ME3 throw you back to a mission before the ending to let you continue with sidequests...I mean sure, most of them are boring in ME1 and just same reused rooms on planets but Ikind of still had a few where I was interested in what happens to the crew etc.
Unless it's a canned linear game or let's say a strategy game with a winner, I never understood why devs make games that cant keep going just have an abrupt ending. As you said, even if it's leftover missions, allow it. Skyrim allows people to do repeated fetch quests and clearing out the same dungeons with respawning monsters. If it's a side shooter, let the gamer keep rolling it over with extra difficulty.

Fallout 3 ending was bad. You got so much to explore, but if you finish the game, the game is over.
 
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JohnnyFootball

GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
Just started Mass Effect 3. The combat is good, but man is the story bad in that game. Gameplay wise Mass Effect 3 is outstanding. The tools they give you to tackle scenarios in any class is great, but it's obvious that Mac Walters is not a great story teller in the grand scale. I forgot how much I hated the subplot with the kid and the dream sequence. Never made one damn bit of sense and it makes less sense now.

I still can't get over how convenient it is that there happens to be a Prothean weapon unearthed on Mars JUST in TIME. I made an effort to pay attention to the dark energy subplot in Mass Effect 2 and I very much believe it would have been a better direction to go than the Crucible/McGuffin.

Those that say Mass Effect 3 had a great story despite the ending weren't paying attention. Wayyy too much lazy writing in ME3.

That's not to say Mass Effect 2 had a perfect story by any means.
 

EverydayBeast

thinks Halo Infinite is a new graphical benchmark
I love BioWare as an institution. ME2 had the moments and ME3 tried to plant new seeds while also ending. Andromeda just got boo’d.
 
I’m using default Male Shep, I liked the way they used the third games face for the first game. I’ve started ME2 and I find it slightly off putting they didn’t do the face adjustment for 2, his face looks gaunt a bit.
 

Sub_Level

wants to fuck an Asian grill.
Am I the only giga Chad on this site playing all three games on Insanity?

Just got Tali in me2. Geth are easy compared to Collectors.
 

Sub_Level

wants to fuck an Asian grill.
The Collectors are so much easier with Dominate as a bonus power and having Jack provide squad warp ammo.

Thats a good idea. My bonus power ended up being the flashbang grenade lol. I forgot that mid-way through the game you get a bonus talent so I ended up picking Sniper training. Those things shred Collector armor.

Done with loyalty missions, gonna do Overlord, then Suicide Mission, then Shadow B0rker, and finally Arrival.

Mass Effect 2's greatest strength being that anyone can die on the suicide mission ended up being a significant weakness in the long run, in that it limited story telling opportunities especially in part 3.

There's a quote floating out there that some of the devs had to fight just to get Tali & Garrus in there. Imagine not even having them in ME3's squad. We'd end up with more new folks that nobody cared about like Beef McHugeLarge (who is actually at least better than Kaiden & Jacob imo, but thats a low bar).
 

JohnnyFootball

GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
Just finished Mass Effect 3. Gameplay wise it is outstanding. All of the freedom you get with weapons and powers is outstanding.

1. The story in ME3 is pretty weak. It's clear that Mac Walters is not the writer that Drew Karpyshyn is. Too many retcons/inconsistencies from previous games.
2. The rachni was the main part of the story that was hideously bad. They needed to have a much bigger impact.
3. The DLC (its not really DLC anymore) is really good, but sadly they could have been so much more. Leviathon should have had a much bigger impact on the main story. Omega should have been a 2nd hub world.
4. Things that used to bother me but didn't as much, was the Quarina/Geth are still fighting subplot was so stupidly awful, but I wasn't bothered. Same with Thessia and Sanctuary. I didn't mind them
5. Priority Earth is still complete and utter crap. That section was a trashy bland corridor shooter.
6. And yes, the ending was still awful even with the extended cut. The worst part was not the Starchild, but the part on the way to the beam that was not in the original where Shepard calls in the Normandy to pick up the injured squadmates did not make ANY sense in that moment. Itg would have been easier to have created a scene where the squad doesn't join the run the beam. Marauder Shields was still a pain if only because of the awful forced slow walk. I hated that so much.
7. However, if you treat the Citadel DLC as the true ending then the game ends on a much better note. It was bad and cheesy storywise but it worked in that moment. My only disappointment is that you couldn't choose Grunt, Samara, Miranda or Jacob to join. They only appear at the party. The Citadel DLC doesn't remove the bad ending, but it does end the game on a much higher and more fun note.
 

Braag

Member
Can you holster your weapons in ME3?
I remember how mad people were when they had to cut that off because apparently the PS3 and XB360 ran out of memory or something and they had to cut some corners.
 

nowhat

Member
Honestly, some of the stuff that got past QC are crazy. If you play in 5.1 on PS5/4 - all the dialogue and SFX are blasted out of the rear speakers at full volume. A problem that not only made it past QC, but has yet to be mentioned or fixed by EA.
Yeah, that was really distracting - luckily though, that issue is present only in the first game. Still doesn't explain how it ended up in the released product though.
 

MaKTaiL

Member
They should have added a post game for ME1. I just completed it and only now found out there is none and the only trophy I had left to complete was the Bring Down The Sky DLC. I'll be basically forced to start a NG+ to do only this mission. I'm kind of pissed. They should of at least added a warning before the last mission so I would know to complete everything else before doing it.
 
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Krappadizzle

Gold Member
I sort of feel we should have gotten a true remake rather than a "modded" "HD" Re-release/Remaster.
This is where I'm at too. I could more or less have the same experience with the original releases and a few mod packs.

It just wasn't enough for me to justify a purchase. Granted, if I was a new player and was interested in the series, it's a tremendous package, but seeing as I'm not, it's just not enough for me.
 
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nowhat

Member
This is where I'm at too. I could more or less have the same experience with the original releases and a few mod packs.

It just wasn't enough for me to justify a purchase. Granted, if I was a new player and was interested in the series, it's a tremendous package, but seeing as I'm not, it's just not enough for me.
As I hadn't played any of the DLC (nor own any system to play my 360 discs anymore), this was an obvious buy. And fairly good value for money still for someone in my situation, you get a ton of content to play (some of it completely new), even if it is an older game.

But as far as remasters go, while this isn't just a resolution and/or framerate bump, I think it's still a rather low-level attempt. For example, there are improved textures. Apparently AI upscaled from original assets, then tweaked by artists afterwards if needed. Nothing wrong with that, but it's not like they were done from scratch Bluepoint style (and at least on PS5, there still is the occasional "eww" texture here and there despite the facelift). But while the resolution and textures have had an upgrade, as far as I can tell no such thing was done to the 3D models of the characters. The faces, ehh, they're fine enough; rather unnatural in some scenes and there seems to be a galaxy-wide infection of crazy eyes going on, but that's to be expected from an older game and especially one with tons of dialogue and different story paths so most of the conversations will not be mocapped. It's the gear you have and clothing/armor in particular. While this does improve somewhat across the trilogy, especially in the first game most people look like they're wearing wetsuits. If there are any substantial changes, I'm not seeing them. Making comparisons to Bluepoint may be unfair, but take something like Nathan Drake Collection. It was a remaster, not a remake, but despite that they for example changed a rope in a cutscene, it got new geometry and a position that makes physically sense. Or an archway in another cutscene, instead of angular PS3-era style make it nice and round. In both cases we're talking about a cutscene, so not really essential stuff (of course there are so many in-game improvements as well), but the (Blue?)point is that in both the new and improved asset is visible for like a few seconds in an entire game. Yet it was something that was done, and I think it speaks for the amount of effort that went into the collection. I'm not seeing nearly the same level of effort on display here; it's not just a different ballpark, it's completely different league.

Perhaps BioWare didn't have enough resources to put into this project, or EA didn't give them enough budget, or Covid, or or or. There can be several reasons why we got this kind of a remaster, but I reckon that's all we're getting, no need for a change.org petition. Still, at the very least one would expect your settings would carry over from game to game, this is meant to be played through entirely right? For me that would be invert Y (yes, I'm one of "them"), subtitles on and slight adjustments to audio mixing. Does it take a long time to do those changes? No. Should I need to do so for every game? Also no, a reasonable assumption would be that they're copied from the previous game with ability to adjust them if needed. But no such thing here. No attempt to "integrate" the games (like a single main menu instead of a launcher for each) either. Anecdotally, I started playing ME2 really late after already long gaming session and getting to the end of 1, so I was only half-awake and annoyed that I had to modify the settings. Few taps on the controller later, back to game for a while, then the sensible move of going to sleep. Next day really giving it a go, and pretty soon I was thinking to myself "it's been a while so I don't remember everything, but HOLY FUCK these checkpoints are so much more brutal than I recall". It took me some 10 hours of playing to get the idea of checking out the settings - and lo and behold, there's an option for autosave which I had accidentally disabled. Yes, I'm an idiot and it was my fault (I blame sleep deprivation, late night whisky shots may have also played a part), but it wouldn't have happened if I didn't need to go into the settings, which I really shouldn't have needed to.
 
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Sub_Level

wants to fuck an Asian grill.
Insanity II done. Just some leftover DLC & then onto Insanity III.

The suicide mission is still so hype no matter how many times I play it. This playthrough I didn't play optimally so I had a couple people die. It was interesting cuz I'm used to doing everything by the books but that gets boring after a while. Miranda has some unique dialogue where she quits Cerberus if you take her to the final boss, that was a nice touch.
 

JohnnyFootball

GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
Been doing an insanity run as a soldier on ME1, pleasantly surprised at how not difficult it is. I pretty much shred through anything.
The only parts that I’ve had difficulty are the Geth colossus and the Listening Post side mission where you go into the mine after the arachnid. I’ve still got the Saren fight and the Thorian keeper but so far I’m enjoying it and I’ve had to check the difficulty to make sure I’m playing on insanity.
 

K' Dash

Member
Honestly, some of the stuff that got past QC are crazy. If you play in 5.1 on PS5/4 - all the dialogue and SFX are blasted out of the rear speakers at full volume. A problem that not only made it past QC, but has yet to be mentioned or fixed by EA.

most of the QA stuff is already documented, for any software development project, specially as big as a complete game, there are compromises being made, generally if it doesn't break the game, or the requirements to get the bug are very specific, they're sent to the backlog to be fixed at a later date.

Stuff doesn't get past QA.
 

M1chl

Currently Gif and Meme Champion
Been doing an insanity run as a soldier on ME1, pleasantly surprised at how not difficult it is. I pretty much shred through anything.
The only parts that I’ve had difficulty are the Geth colossus and the Listening Post side mission where you go into the mine after the arachnid. I’ve still got the Saren fight and the Thorian keeper but so far I’m enjoying it and I’ve had to check the difficulty to make sure I’m playing on insanity.
ME1 Saren last fight was really tough for me on that diff.
 

mhirano

Member
How is the game on PS4 Pro after patch 1.03?
I've heard that vanilla teared a lot.
Should I get it on PS4 Pro or settle with PC? I tend to buy on the ps4 because of the trophies.
 
My main complain coming from 1 to 2 is that I finished ME 1 with about 9 millions in my bank account but when you import the save into 2 it only gives you 100k. Someone in the galaxy must be making good use of this money 😂
 
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