I am noticing…well, a good deal of combat in ME3, more than in past Mass Effect(s). if your typical sidequest before consisted of 4 fights with 3 waves of 4 enemies each, now in ME3 there are 5 fights with 4 waves of 5 enemies each. If you multiply, you will see in total there is a lot more of enemies per mission.
Well, this is sort of the other shoe dropping from DA2; barring that game’s other issues, and more specifically “beaming enemies down from the Enterprise” right in front of you, how intrinsically tiring do successive waves of enemies get? It certainly makes for less static encounter designs and a sort of “pretend AI by the backdoor” by making flanking happen via reinforcements. But there may be something irreducibly wearying about mowing down “one too many” waves of enemies in any given encounter.
I didn’t think about this. I’m using an Adept so I don’t worry about ammo as much. I’m bringing an assault rifle along this time to see if I can still enjoy the shooting a little. I like the combo powers a lot more but I’m worried they’ll get old too fast.
I’ve been AR+SMG the whole time, which still has a positive value for power regen. I certainly have occasion to use it (although of course my powers are slower than those of a pistol only adept). If there’s a shielded opponent and no one has Overload cooled down, headshots are often expedient.
Different strokes but I’m confused. Do you feel this about all of the ME series? I was a pretty stalwart defender of DA2, but the mechanics, above all camera mechanics, were an absolute fussy nightmare, trying to target stuff and then wrangle all of the characters into selected mode so they wouldn’t tear off on their own. ME2’s far less of a hassle and brings up radar (and, fwiw, 360 degree rotation of the camera) on pause.
Ok, the game just got something in my eye. Fucking game and sweeping music and explosions and …shit.
This is a SPOILER. Don’t click on this if you don’t want part of the game SPOILED.
Note to many people in this thread: if you expect us to read whatever mental regurgitation you’ve placed in a spoiler tag, you’re going to need to describe what it’s about and when it occurs so we know whether it’s safe to click on it.
If you’d just like to talk to yourself, then please carry on.
walTer
2045
So happy I restarted last nite. My Femshep just looked wrong…her head seemed hig, buggy eyes and a funny shaped mouth. Anyway I did far fewer tweaks this time and she looks much better- enough that playing is not actually bothering me anymore.
I am barely in but I want to chime in for kudos on the combat. Sure it’s not a shooter but but it is really nice to enter a corridor and actually work your way up from cover to cover while shooting and ducking. I realize it just means adding a few walls in a corridor to take cover behind but it makes your progression seem that much more realistic.
And it is really nice to see these areas so much more fleshed out…lots going on, clutter, things to find and just a feeling that you are actually where people just were, not an long empty corridor.
Good stuff…this game is gonna take me forever to finish, heh.
ShivaX
2046
All I have to say is Cal’s graphics look completely fubar. Try playing with lower settings, it might be one of those things where maxxing everything actually makes stuff look worse or some setting you’re dinking with is doing it. That actually looks like the lowest possible graphics. Just don’t do anything fancy and play with the default settings and maybe you can find the culprit.
Oh, and I can’t find my last model on the Normandy and its driving me slowly mad. Whoever moved them all over is going out the airlock.
walTer
2047
So happy I restarted last nite. My Femshep just looked wrong…her head seemed hig, buggy eyes and a funny shaped mouth. Anyway I did far fewer tweaks this time and she looks much better- enough that playing is not actually bothering me anymore.
I am barely in but I want to chime in for kudos on the combat. Sure it’s not a shooter but but it is really nice to enter a corridor and actually work your way up from cover to cover while shooting and ducking. I realize it just means adding a few walls in a corridor to take cover behind but it makes your progression seem that much more realistic.
And it is really nice to see these areas so much more fleshed out…lots going on, clutter, things to find and just a feeling that you are actually where people just were, not an long empty corridor.
Good stuff…this game is gonna take me forever to finish, heh.
There, I updated my post. Hopefully, it’s clearer, now.
Hey, I can accept some passive-aggression if everyone else gets the message!
You didn’t say anything I want to respond to directly, but it gives me an excuse to talk about it more.
I mentioned earlier that it’s cheap to create flanking via magical reinforcements behind you. I remember some people tried to make that case for DA2. For one thing, I’m not that thrilled about being flanked all the time. Once in a while is great in a “clever girl” kind of way. But I don’t want to react to enemies at my rear every time. I want everything to be visible so I can do a little dance with the AI and possibly outflank them. The dance and the victory is the fun part.
This is similar to how AI needs to be dumbed down to be fun. In this case it’s not AI but encounter design. And it’s not that encounters need to be dumbed down, but that letting them cheat into flanking position provides absolutely no value. The good news is enemies do a pretty good job flanking on their own in ME3. They don’t need to teleport on the edges of an open arena like they did in DA2. It sounds like sometimes they do anyway, but that’s okay.
Like you said, there are other issues with waves, such as tedium. So far it’s pretty good. I haven’t felt too much rage (so it’s better than DA2) and too much boredom (so it’s better than ME2). We’ll see though.
jeffd
2050
My room sure got randomly dusty last night. Twice.
This game is so fucking good.
Also: whoever said vanguards were going to suck is a fool. I’m currently a level 46 vanguard and I am tearing shit up. Charge on like a 1.5 second cool down with giant shields is hilarious.
BDGE
2051
I’m having that internal debate in my head right now. My FemShep looked great at the customization screen, but in-game looks dreadful for some reason. I’d restart and create a new face, but that means replaying that terrible introduction sequence again, which I was already sick of from the demo alone.
Also, the lack of gun holstering was an awful omission. So goddamn silly watching my squadmates lower their firearms after combat, but I’m still pointing my gun with fire in my eyes, all the while hitting door switches, solving minor progression puzzles, picking up datalogs, running around in circles ensuring I didn’t miss a gun mod. It’s absolutely stupid. Especially when looking around the environment for interaction points. The FOV is terrible in combat mode compared to the good old days when it pitched back and let me observe my settings properly with my gun holstered.
walTer
2052
Seriously these guys do emotions so well…My daughter and I both got dust in our eyes and that was just in the intro! Plus, when I spoke to Liara for the first time, I opted not to choose the "love interest " dialogue choice. Thought I would let her stew a bit.
Well a bit later on, she gave me a look, just a look but it was filled with “don’t you love me? Why have you forsaken me? Do you need time? Just tell me!!!” It was pretty nifty. But her fault- she did pretty much treat me like shit in Lair of the Shadow Broker so I figured turn around was fair play. I might take her back.
But seriously, Ashley is gonna get tossed off the ship.
I thought the intro was really bad. Bad execution that made what it should be something important in something emotionally flat.
Well, this is just it. John Walker’s spoiler-free review seemed to suggest that he’d gotten frustrated with the combat by the end of the game, and that it became a slog for him in the last half of the game. I’m thinking different people will have more or less tolerance for waves, particularly mini-“horde mode” defensive set-pieces.
Also, some game design ideas start out pretty clever but turn out to have a short shelf life. When I first ran into “infinitely respawning baddies until you progress past a certain point” in CoD4, I thought “Wow, that’s kind of a good idea. It makes me feel like I’m cut off behind enemy lines. If I could just sit back and wipe out the 20 enemies in the area then progress at my leisure I might be tempted to do so, and the whole encounter wouldn’t be as overwhelming and hectic.” And for the duration of CoD4, that feeling lasted. Nowadays that game mechanic is notorious. I’m not sure if people just find it arbitrary, or if they feel that running and gunning to the required checkpoint makes it just as game-able as finite enemies that can be camped. Point being, I wouldn’t say “infinitely respawning baddie checkpoints” had much of a shelf-life. Jury’s still out on “putting lots of enemy hitpoints into a lot of small buckets in several waves.”
I’m with you there - above all the council discussion, but initially also the end of the prologue. But there’s follow-up. And the various reports of dusty eye conditions are not exaggerated.
walTer
2055
True. I was actually referring to that single instance…otherwise, I agree, the entire council scene seemed rather forced and well, small for planetary invasion. Especially after seeing all the pre-release trailers.
Well, I was pre-disappointed from the demo. And the other thing…
the thing at the end of the prologue
Which initially seems like a fairly formulaic emotion-jerker, Newt from Aliens meets the Dead Island trailer - gets followed up - I imagine you’ve seen at least the first follow-up if you’ve played a little further. Assuming those callbacks continue as they’ve started, they constitute part of the whole “Bioware being brave about what it can get away with in terms of serious emotiveness.” Which has also been a part of various other pretty well-written exchanges with other characters.
The first dream (spoilers?) of
dream
Shepard in some kind of forested area where he saws the little kid from the intro lost, and then fire is superimposed made roll my eyes. What a cheap, ineffectual way to try to stir up my sentimentality and make me care about the poor Earth. It didn’t work, i only met the kid for 10 seconds for ffs. I know they were trying to make the war more “personal” instead of something detached but they failed.
Giaddon
2059
Is there a reason why in a world where all the aliens are speaking the same language (? or something) James speaks Spanish? I guess I could dig through the codex to see how language works in Mass Effect.
flyinj
2060
How do the “bonus character skills” work? Can I buy and use as many as I want of them? Can I choose to unslot one later? I don’t want to get stuck with just the first two I bought if more open up that I want…
