Random Stuff

[Ysne58]

I guess I just never saw the appeal of Mass Effect.

I'm also not convinced Bioware is as great about story and characters as people think. What they ARE good at though is somehow making you care about the outcome.

Some of that taint from EA might explain why things in DAO:Awakening felt so forced and predictable.

It was so forced and predictable, I didn't bother with the second DA game.My son is working on another playthrough of Mass Effect 2 in anticipation of the release of no. 3.

[Thomas Kaira]

Never tried DA:O, but I got a lot out of the infamous "Premium Content" quest givers who tell you up front in the game that you need to buy a DLC component to play their quest. THAT is shameless, making players feel they bought an incomplete product to try and attract DLC sales is despicable, and Dragon Age has gone downhill since then. You can obviously tell that it is getting the short end of the stick to Mass Effect, considering DA2's design philosophy was "let's make Dragon Age as much like Mass Effect as we can!" Yes, Mass Effect is a good game, but I would like for Dragon Age to at least try to stand out. DA2 was a major step backwards for the series not just with the inferior graphics for modern tech, but also with how badly it wanted to be Mass Effect and failed. You play as a race-locked guy or gal with a pre-set last name, combat is in real-time with pausing to use powers or command your squad to use theirs, the conversation wheel has been copied verbatim... come on. :headbang:The reason I prefer Mass Effect over Dragon Age is because I don't get the impression that the game is secretly ashamed of itself. That and I'm a sucker for Sci-Fi.

[Arthmoor]

I haven't bothered with DA2 because I was able to sample the demo they released, and man was I glad for that because it was just oozing console port all over the place. People complain about Skyrim dumbing down. They know nothing of dumbing down until they've seen the abortion of a game that is DA2.That said, I'll probably still pick it up when it reaches its own "Ultimate Edition" because I learned that lesson very well with DA:O and their shafting of the consumers with the UE of that being less than half the cost of the original game alone.

[Dwip]

One of these days I'll get around to ME1+2. They've been sitting in my Steam list for almost a year now, and people keep raving about them. So much Skyrim, so little time.While the DLC quest givers were (almost) the dumbest thing in the history of life, DA:O was pretty worth the time. Good story.

[Arthmoor]

Good story, yes, but crediting Bioware with that level of genius is ludicrous when they didn't even write the material it was drawn from. Which has been their MO for years. Which is why I don't get the sycophantic treatment of them. Bethesda may not be the world's best story tellers, but at least they're doing it with their own original material. Bioware DID succeed in making you care about the adaptation's outcome though.

[Thomas Kaira]

And that's what I credit Bioware for. They made me care about what's going on in the universe, even if it's not very original. Take the story of the Quarians for example:The Geth were created by the Quarians...They rebelled...They evolved...There are many copies...And they have a plan.I'm just waiting for the planets named after the Zodiac to come along now...To me, it really doesn't matter how much of the material is borrowed so long as the execution is good. And Bioware knows how to execute a storyline, and write meaningful dialogue that you would expect to hear in the real world.As for Mass Effect 2, yes it was dumbed down considerably from 1, but it is actually better for it. Everything from 1 that got axed was, quite frankly, terribly done, and made the game feel scatterbrained. ME2 feels more focused, and although there are less skills and talents than before, more work was put into making each of the six specializations feel unique. And it worked, you get a dramatically different playstyle depending on if you are an Infiltrator vs. an Adept, for instance. Although continuing to call it an RPG is a bit of a stretch.

[prettyfly]

On that note, Minecraft is one hell of a sandbox experience. Particularly spelunking and dungeoneering; I don't think I've ever been so stressed out and scared than I have in any other game before (well, partly because I tend to get lost after loading up fully on gold, diamond and redstone). The environments are interesting and varied enough to keep you occupied, despite being randomly generated (there's lots of different types now), shitloads more activities than I though there would be, and there is even being some RPG elements being subbed in (namely an experience bar). Its a completely different sandbox to TES, but its bloody good one anyway.

[Thomas Kaira]

So, I've just gone through Mass Effect 2's Shadow Broker DLC, a $10 add-on for the game. In my opinion, it was worth it. Here's what you get: - A single new, very long mission. Its length is comparable to the Suicide Mission. > Two boss fights, and one VERY interesting location. - Rekindle your old friendship/romance with Liara - A new hub location with a nice assortment of goodies: > Dossiers containing some extra information on characters in the universe. > A spot for you to redistribute skill points for your squadmates. > Some interesting small videos (watch Jacob performing bare-chested sit-ups, a Krogan punching our favorite news reporter, etc...) > Income sources for Credits and elemental resources.Total clock on the content is about 2 to 3 hours, depending on how you pace yourself. There's also a few in-jokes for those who played Mass Effect 1 thrown in for good measure.And with that, my interest in Mass Effect 3 has seen a definite spike. This is what has been revealed so far:The game will start with Shepard back on Earth, being tried for his actions in the previous games. In the middle of the trial, the Reapers make landfall and begin their assault. After fighting through their armies of Husks, Shepard gets rescued by the Normandy and Captain Anderson, who was defending you at the trial, tells you to get moving and get help. From there, you will (as I expected) be paying visits to the homeworlds of the various alien races the game has introduced to try and rally them to aid Earth.For an intro hook, that's much better than ME2's. But then, you don't really have to try very hard to beat 2's intro, so I'm reserving judgement here.

[Ysne58]

So' date=' I've just gone through Mass Effect 2's Shadow Broker DLC, a $10 add-on for the game. In my opinion, it was worth it. Here's what you get:

- A single new, very long mission. Its length is comparable to the Suicide Mission.

> Two boss fights, and one VERY interesting location.

- Rekindle your old friendship/romance with Liara

- A new hub location with a nice assortment of goodies:

> Dossiers containing some extra information on characters in the universe.

> A spot for you to redistribute skill points for your squadmates.

> Some interesting small videos (watch Jacob performing bare-chested sit-ups, a Krogan punching our favorite news reporter, etc...)

> Income sources for Credits and elemental resources.

Total clock on the content is about 2 to 3 hours, depending on how you pace yourself. There's also a few in-jokes for those who played Mass Effect 1 thrown in for good measure.

And with that, my interest in Mass Effect 3 has seen a definite spike. This is what has been revealed so far:

The game will start with Shepard back on Earth, being tried for his actions in the previous games. In the middle of the trial, the Reapers make landfall and begin their assault. After fighting through their armies of Husks, Shepard gets rescued by the Normandy and Captain Anderson, who was defending you at the trial, tells you to get moving and get help. From there, you will (as I expected) be paying visits to the homeworlds of the various alien races the game has introduced to try and rally them to aid Earth.

For an intro hook, that's much better than ME2's. But then, you don't really have to try very hard to beat 2's intro, so I'm reserving judgement here.[/quote']My son is playing through that right now. Apparently that came as an addon for pre-ordering through Gamestop. He likes it as well.

[Thomas Kaira]

I swear, those chickens are planning something.First we get chickens reporting crimes in Skyrim, and just now I had a rooster go renegade on me and try to peck me to death!Ahh, TES4Mod, how we love your zany antics.

[Arthmoor]

Ever have one of those moments where you realize you should have kept better track of the lore you've generated in your mods?EDIT: Post # is a sign btw.

[Dwip]

75 pages later...And yeah, there's a reason why I try to keep moderately copious notes. I spend an awful lot of time re-reading dialogue and books and things when I do new quests though.

[Arthmoor]

You ever use D&D character sheets to keep track of NPCs? Or would that be overkill?

[Dwip]

Re: previous conversation about RAM and hard drives, that was pretty fun.I don't generally give a crap what my NPCs have for stats or clothes or whatever on a regular basis, so it's really not worth it for me to keep any sort of track of that. What IS useful to me as far as NPCs go is keeping track of their schedules and relationships. I mostly keep the relationships in my head (which I can 'cause I've had the same bunch for ages), but the schedules I keep as a table in an MS OneNote doc (used to be Excel and Notepad). 0-23 on the Y axis, names of people on the X axis. Then I fill in what they're doing. Not the pack names, but generic stuff like sleep or tavern or whatever.Since I fairly heavily pre-write my quests most of the time, I also keep pretty good logs of who does what when in which quest and why they're doing. I also try to make notes on character motivations and such, all of which starts becoming handy 7 quests into the mod when I'm suddenly like "Wait, Elahai wants to do what with the who again?"I should really get cracking on the Weye thing I was going to write, since I talk a fair bit on this sort of thing therein.

[AndalayBay]

I don't care so much about NPC stats either, but I do have AI package sheets for them. We actually have a lot of training schedules and I had to get into an ungodly amount of detail on who was using what apparatus at what time. Ugh, I don't want to go through that again. Incredibly tedious. But quite funny when I forgot to link a heading marker to the target. The NPC shot another NPC in the back of the head with an arrow. He died immediately and the first NPC just stood there staring at me with a stupid grin on her face. Couple that with the fact that the two NPC's in question where actually the characters of team members who already had a pretty good rivalry going and that was icing on the proverbial cake. I didn't even know about the rivalry ahead of time...

[Arthmoor]

I was actually thinking more along the lines of the parts that usually hold the character's background info. But I guess those aren't used much. Me, I don't really care to keep track of the minutia of their schedules, but since I often have cross-talk between mods about some of them it starts to get painful when there's no central info file on them. Which I think I need to fix at some point.

[AndalayBay]

Cross-talk between mods: Heh, yeah I noticed that.. :grinning:Character background isn't my thing, but it is for other members of the team. They've actually got complex backgrounds and try to work some of that into rumours and stuff. They were using forum threads to track most of that stuff. So similar to character sheets I guess.

[Thomas Kaira]

RIP Steve Jobs.

[AndalayBay]

Shit. Sorry, I loved Steve Jobs. We've owned an Apple since the Apple II and would like to continue to do so, but without Steve, I don't know.

[prettyfly]

I'd say its probably a relief for the poor guy. He was looking like a skeleton in the last picture I saw of him. Still, he pulled through and kept working until the very end. A model CEO, anyway.EDIT; oh, and Westboro Baptist Church is threatening to protest at his funeral. Classy (sarcasm).

[Arthmoor]

Indeed. Think what you will of the man, he did help pioneer the networking revolution we're all enjoying today. He also did the honorable thing toward the end by ensuring an orderly transition of the company.As for Westboro, screw them. I'm all for free speech but those guys are the embodiment of the exception to the rule.

[AndalayBay]

Yeah, he did look pretty ill, didn't he. Poor guy.And if the Westboro guys think they are going to garner support... *pathetic*

[Ysne58]

Yeah' date=' he did look pretty ill, didn't he. Poor guy.

And if the Westboro guys think they are going to garner support... *pathetic*[/quote']I feel nothing but contempt for the Westboro jerks. I'm not even sure they qualify as human.

[Thomas Kaira]

Dear Dwip: I have a friend who is being harrassed by a form of Demented Rabbit known as a Plotbunny. Symptoms of harassment include sudden extreme urges to write incredibly silly stories. Do you have any suggestions that might help him?

[Dwip]

Unfortunately no. Bunny's gonna do what a bunny's gonna do, y'know?I find that vast amounts of Cherry Coke help with the coping process, but that may just be me.