Mass Effect discussion

>for years people went on about mass effect 2 being best
>now people say mass effect was the best

So what happened? Why this sudden change?

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>diffrent people have diffrent opinions
FUCKING WOW

what people?

>for years people went on about mass effect 2 being best
This never happened.

For many years after the second released people widely regarded it as the best game in the franchise. Especially after 3 was a blunder. Now it seems the ME1 contrarians came out in full force over the past couple years here saying 1 was always the better game and 2 was shit or overrated.

>people
Who? Which people? Where? Stop with the weasel words, fuckbrain.

Maybe gameplay wise but I've literally never heard anyone claim ME2 has a better story

After the ME3 controversy only a stellar sequel could save the franchise- we got Andromeda instead, which caused even bigger scandal.
Is there a way to save ME? Another 5 year wait and a reboot?

All over youtube, reddit, Sup Forums, etc.

Most story threads from ME2 were relying on a sequel to wrap them up, but the sequel hand waved them away.

Name ONE thing ME2 does better than 1.

You literally can't.

From the start I liked 1 the most, but 2 is amazing as well. I even liked 3, but it's the only one I couldn't replay, because I'd get bored after a few hours.
But yeah, I remember most people liking 2 better than 1 in the past, like 3-5 years ago.

Combat and characters but everything else is worse story missions and rpg elements

People who were on this site, well into their teens and 20s when ME1 released, and knew the series was flawed have largely left. Now we have people who were much younger when ME1 came out and have a skewed perception of its quality. It's the same reason you'll see unironic CoD threads, with each "acceptable" series entry going from one to the next as each year passes.

Fluidity of movement in combat, and that's it.
Ammo thing is worse, story is worse, the way characters are handled is worse, dialogues are worse etc

>Better gunplay
>Better graphics
>Better dialogue options

If you go and play both games back to back, you'll realise that the difference in combat is non-existent. All they did was change weapon handling from an RPG stat on the weapon to a generic cover shooter recoil system. Movement is actually dumbed down and WORSE.

>Better gunplay
>Thermal clips

You may only pick one.

Could be, I'm always too bored with 2 or 3 to replay them fully every time I start them

Can we finally agree that MEA wasn't that bad if you ignore character design? It's been a year, time to let memes go.
Music - good
Locations - good
Combat- best in any ME game
Graphics - good
Mako - better than ME1-2 by a mile
Ship - I honestly think tempest is better than Normandy SR1, those windows are magic
Vaults - were fucking great.

Bad things - character design, half the crew is unbearable but aliens as usual the best, face diesgn, dialogue script and animations.

Game is solid 7/10.

It has better writing for sure but the story is pretty non-existent in ME2
ME1 writing is basically just a expository dump and every character feel like a encyclopedia than an actual character

some kids who were 8 when they got their 360s think it's the pinnacle of the genre when really it's a half-baked RPG and an even worse shooter with shit writing, copypasted buildings, and managed to make exploring space boring almost a decade before No Man's Sky made that a hot topic.

>sudden
People have saying that for years. Where the fuck have you been?

ME1 and ME2 are both kinotier, just very different levels of kino.
ME3 is fan fiction tier unfortunately

>generic cover shooter recoil system
As opposed to a generic number on the gun? Numbers are not smart or complex. Pick the green bar.

you sound like one of those kids

>People who were on this site, well into their teens and 20s when ME1 released, and knew the series was flawed have largely left.

So most that come to Sup Forums are actually just normalfags? K got it.

I've always preferred 1 to 2. I can agree, however, that 3 is abysmal.

Characters are handled worse in ME2.
The worst was the assassin guy and the bald chick, in animations they are presented like half-gods, all those great abilities and skills are shown, than you get them in combat and they have 3 skills which are nothing like anything in animations, they can't do anything special, which was implied in the animations.
I hate this divide between animations and gameplay when you get a new character.

ME1 is space opera kino. ME2 is action-adventure set in a sci-fi setting kino.

That's the problem in pretty much every RPG though
Characters are rarely accurate to their gameplay equivalent

I don't care what anyone says.

The Mordin Solus / Krogan plotline in the Mass Effect series is the BEST video game writing in the history of video games.

Doesn't matter what other problems 2 and 3 have. They gave us the best character ever and the best sub-story ever. That's gotta be worth something.

>fan fiction tier

you guys never play them 123? It's war novels writing 101.
whispers of threat- nearing threat- war.
1-2-3
Play it in a row game makes perfect sense if you look at it as one game.

Planet scanning ruined the aesthetics and scope of planet flyovers

Decryption/Electronics even if it was just for 'caches', in 2 everyone is top hacker no matter if retarded soldier/vanguard, average infiltrator/sentinel or expert engineer. Tech also felt like Tech and Biotics like Magic, now both is Magic.

In ME2 you could probably solve this by having the option for a generic home-brand counterpart to the characters. Like, you can bring a ranged crewman with light biotics from the Normandy crew, but he's absolutely BTFO in unique abilities once you recruit Garrus. You need to have some mechanical way to give a frame of reference for how OP your team should be.

Sure, but the divide can be much smaller if handled right. I didn't get that feeling in ME1, in Baldurs, in Witcher (that much) and many more

>Music
2/10 I can't even remember a single track and I've got like 60+ hours

>Locations
8/10 some planets are beautiful and the ancient ruins actually feel like ancient ruins

>Combat
9/10 Better than anything in the ME franchise by miles

>Graphics 8/10
Frostbite 3 so it's hard to go wrong here

>Mako
One of the best things about the game. Made getting around places actually fun and is a useful mobile shield in combat.

>Tempest
I liked it, but the Normandy SR1 has better aesthetics.

>Vaults were great
I agree

>Bad things
Bugs, the dumb map UI, masking long loading screens with transition movies. Liam. Less Multiplayer modes and options.

7.5/10

ME > ME:A > ME3 > ME2

I never see people talk about this series anymore. Was Andromeda THAT bad? Is Bioware finally dead?

No memes. I genuinely think ME3 was the best, and although I definitely thought the ending was underwhelming, it wasn't that bad.

>Ship - I honestly think tempest is better than Normandy SR1, those windows are magic
>Vaults - were fucking great.
I agree with these two points completely tbqh. The guns also felt nice, HOWEVER:
>removed squad controls and replace them with braindead ai
>garbage characters with joss whedon levels of quip
>terrible voice acting for every npc character
>sameface syndrome for every no
>uninteresting sidequests that amount to "go here and kill this to retrieve item"
The game is still shite fampai

Tech side was always stupid and underutilized, whatever they did with it they did it wrong.

I think 3 had the best gameplay, and 1 had the best atmosphere. 2 stripped away RPG elements from the first and feels clunkier to me than 3, so I don't understand how people could consider it the best of the series, but I liked the whole team-building aspect and it has some great characters.

ME1 will forever be best
console fags will always say 2 is the best
ME3 will always be the worst of the three
Only masochists play Andromeda

Nah I disagree. 2 does have better combat for the most part but it still could have been better even with that. The movement is bad in both games. It doesn't feel as fluid as it should.

I still maintain the opinion that Gears did 3rd person shooters best. It doesn't have realistic movement at all and is better for it. Where as the standard for 3rd person shooters is to make them as real as possible in movement or at least fast with some realism. That is fine for certain games but not when everybody fucking does it. Gears ridiculous movement is pretty fucking perfect imo and is probably largely the reason they are my favorite 3rd person shooters ever. It put the gameplay above all as all games should.

MEA tried to bring this back but it did it in a way that didn't work and became annoying after a while.

But there was a point to it as stated in the games lore. It also made sense in an RPG aspect.

Turning it into generic recoil and thermal clips was a step in the wrong direction.

Mass Effect always felt to me like a game that was released halfway through development. I don't think there's a single part of the game that is satisfying, every piece is unfinished.

MAXIMUM FUCKING COZY

For a long time, PlayStation had only 2 and 3

>3 had the best gameplay
If I wanted to play an arena shooter full of the same mobs and annoying end-game bullet sponges, I'd go play Serious Sam. Its much more fun.
Infact, Gears games have better shooting gameplay than ME3.
ME3 was a disappointment in every area. Mass Effect 1 was clunky, and poorly paced, and you sort of give up on it about 2/3 of the way through but the RPG worldbuilding and character interactions are top notch.
Mass Effect 2's alright. I think going shooter over RPG was the biggest design mistake.

I always used the elevators to look at asses

>But there was a point to it as stated in the games lore. It also made sense in an RPG aspect.
And that made it an interesting or satisfying game mechanic? Why are RPGs better than shooters, also? Do you just want a generic RPG instead, or the halfassed fusion that ME1 was? Do you think that ME1 having "potential" makes it better than actually complete games?

Elevators were the best way to mask load times. Beats .bik movies playing on loop and don't break immersion.
Speaking of immersion, seriously FUCK the mission complete screens in ME2,give me ME1 star trek debriefings any day

>but the RPG worldbuilding and character interactions are top notch.
literally my main thought going through ME1 the first time was how bad the RPG aspects were and how shitty the characters were, especially your party

>now people say mass effect was the best
I've been saying this since 2 came out though, my opinion did not change.

>you lived to see the day people defended ME1 elevators

I was thinking, do you guys think the lack of a dodging manuever hurt ME2? I gave it more thought and I'm thinking that perhaps it wasn't so bad since ME series isn't supposed to be action shooters anyways. They are supposed to be RPG shooters.

I actually think action RPG games shouldn't try hard to be like a standard action game since they are too different. Let action games perfect combat stuff. What makes action RPG games fun is the role playing aspect. As long as they got that down and a decent action gameplay I could forgive faults it may have since the RPG mechanics are most important here.

I think this is also why so many games are feeling so shit lately. They are trying to do both things well and it just can't work well since it will then feel as if the RPG mechanics are lackluster since the action just has to be good and devs focus more on that.

I never minded it because you got a little bit of character interaction and minor developments. Sort of like Tales' skits.
It could have been done a little better though, maybe put them in situations where it would build tension or expectations, or even throw in a fakeout one where you get attacked in an elevator and it blows up and you head straight into action and it makes you paranoid it will happen again later.

What is wrong with them exactly?
They serve as a way to listen to your team members banter or hear some news about a recent events.
It's a fantastic way to deal with level transitions.
Maybe you played on shitsole and it took you half an hour to load, but that's your fault entierly.

>since the RPG mechanics are most important here.
Why? "Action RPG" is two terms side by side, why does one have precedence over another?

They should have given Mass Effect a top down tactical skirmish mode like they gave Dragon Age Origins on PC a mode to play it like Baldurs Gate.

I hate this series so much now and I used to be so in love with it. The last third of ME3 was so bitterly disappointing it ruined my enjoyment of the entire franchise, something that had not happened before and has not happened since.

Normalfags who praised ME2 over the years forgot it existed, or got gud and played first one and liked it more. ME1 didn't deviate as much from RPG formula and thus was superior, not to say it was more coherent than sequels. ME2 nailed aesthetics and characters, but gameplay was weakest in the series. Those two alone can't carry the game.

90% of what you hear is uninteresting. It also felt like a replacement for party conversations that were absolutely gutted compared to its Bioware predecessors, it was your sole chance to hear party members interact with each other outside of special circumstances. And it doesn't matter what you play on, the elevators take too long.

ME1 has by far the best story but the gameplay is pretty wonky and stupid and didn't really work.
ME2 has a pretty uninteresting story but has some good side characters and some fairly decent gameplay, for being a cover based shooter at least.
ME3 has a god awful story, fairly boring side characters, but genuinely fun if a bit repetitive cover based shooting.

I kinda like all of them for different reasons, even ME3 shitty as it was, I just wish it wasn't so god damn fucking repetitive.

I think the only game that was a bigger disappointment to me was Fable 3.
At least I didnt buy ME3. My friend was playing it and I was watching him play, and I was like: Wtf? This game's gone to shit.
And when we got to the ending, my friend looked so disappointed and confused, and for a long time clung to the indoctrination fan theory because he couldnt believe the bullshit he was seeing.

It would have been better than the shit we got, at least Bioware had experience with that type of gameplay. They were never ready to make a real time action combat system, Jade Empire showed this too.

...

Best theme

This was also before the revised ending, so it was watching someone play a game they love and it suddenly goes batshit, turns around and screams: "Fuck you! You shitlord cunt! You dont get shit! and shits itself off permanently"

The only people who ever said ME2 was the best were Johnny-come-lately normalfags who'd never even played the original. They've all long-since moved on and forgotten about Mass Effect given that it's been six years since the last game, so all that remain are people of taste who see that the series was all downhill.

Whereas with Fable 3, it was like "Hey you know everything you liked about that comfortable casual romp Fable 2? Well get a load of this: Phhhhffffffhhhpphhhhhhhppphhhhffffffffftttttttpppphhhhllllllppllplllplllphhhrrrrrrrrttttttt!"

As someone who only played the revised ending, what was so incomprehensibly awful about the old one?

The star child shit was pretty stupid of course, but I got the sort of happy ending I wanted and while it could have been better I never really felt particularity short changed either.

Initially people got distracted by the upgraded gunplay and waifus, though people still mocked the wheel spinning plot at the time.
When ME3 brought people back to reality with a bang, they looked back and realised everything that later killed the series was introduced with 2.

LIES

I'm pretty sure the consesus is the first being more engaging with great world building, but having ass combat mechanics and that fucking dumbass mako.
The Second makes up for this with great characters and fun gunplay, even though it's very linear and has a shitton of chesthigh walls.

Both are fucking amazing together and I'll never stop being mad that they fucked it up so badly as they did with 3 and andromeda.

The Mako is amazing, nigger.

Because nothing you or Shepard has done actually matters to the plot. Choices mean fuck all and its like the main point of the series.

Hell even a bad ending where you always fail would be better. Like if your choices bought X amount of time before you fell, that would at least be more interesting and make more sense to the plot than the fucking Star Child bullshit.
Like if the Star Child decides the ending why dont we play as that little fucker instead?

Because usually what this means is that developers go hard on making the action part good while stripping RPG mechanics. Most action RPG games whether melee or shooting oriented pretty much always feel inferior to dedicated action game anyways. I guess the more I see an RPG play like an action game the more fault I see within it since it isn't an action game in the first place. Its a hybrid. I think the hybrid ratio should favor the RPG side of things. Quick example for my point.

In regards to combat
Ninja Gaiden, Bayonetta and DMC > Kingdom Hearts, Witcher, SoulsBorne and so on
Gears, Max Payne, etc > Mass Effect and Fallout

However Mass Effect 1 for example has more RPG mechanics than 2 and 3. Yet a game like Max Payne 3 will destroy all of them anyways in combat. So playing 2 or 3 just feels like an inferior shooter by comparison because of the stripped mechanics. Same with how Borderlands 2 felt tedious to people. They tried too hard making the FPS combat fun and then tried adding more numbers on top of that for 2. Ruining things in the process.

Nigga why you pooling hack and slash with shooters

The endings were literally all the same, just different colours. Also it provided zero closure to the setting and characters players had spent hundreds of hours in. The game literally just ended and it reminds you to buy DLC. Bioware was either incompetent, retarded or both.

I played the trilogy on a PS3, the first game is a really good action sci fi RPG with some strategy elements in it. ME2 is a straight up third person shooter, thing that made me stop playing the game for 2 weeks.

I agree the elevators take too long, but I still greatly prefer them to load screens. They dont break immersion and give you a sense that this place is big, and youre actually going somewhere.

To put it simply, I think they should have a solid playable base level mechanics for the gameplay side of things. Once they have a passable build for gameplay they then should try hard to make the RPG side of things really robust and fleshed out. Instead we seem to get the reverse since its assumed that is what more people want. Which is why I say they just become inferior action games at that point. Its also where the tedious nature can come in. Its a tricky balance to get right unless if they do what I said.
I'm talking action RPG in general. Both slashers and shooters. People on Sup Forums loved going on and on about hot great Bloodborne was but it doesn't hold a candle to the games I mentioned in regards to melee combat. What the Souls games do get right however is builds. That is what makes them good. The combat itself is secondary really to the build potential.

>ME2's story is non-existent
when will this meme die? ME2 had a strong central narrative and worked as a story that wasn't about saving the universe. the collectors were targeting humans and the council didn't have the resources or inclination to investigate so a pro-humanity group bankrolls a hero to try to solve the problem

my major gripe is how laughably midhandled the entire Spectre thing was in 2. save the day in 1 and now you're just some asshole as far as the council is concerned

Grey Wardens were sick and Spectres were sick, and they ditched them both

Eh. Reapers got destroyed, Shep survived to go live out his life with his waifu Tali and help rebuild on Rannoch or whatever it was called. Infrastructure was fucked up but got repaired pretty quickly and the galaxy was more or less back up to speed in a few years, Minus the billions dead during the war of course.

I guess the only sort of downside is all the AI's died but I won't loose any sleep over that, might even be a good thing since that ends that stupid as fuck Joker romance.

Guess I just didn't have any illusions that the choices would actually end up mattering too much. I've played too many RPG's to expect that stuff.

Though your choices do have an impact in that war assets determines how the ending plays out, and your choices in the previous games changes how you can and lose that. However for some reason they made it pointlessly easy to get war assets, even without ever touching the multiplayer so in the end nothing matters.

Fair enough. I think they fixed that a bit with the revised one.

You had a point until you said sick you stupid twat

Mako was too much fun. Fuck the fags who shitted on it. It just needed better worlds to explore with.

Mass Effect 2's plot doesn't advance the plot of the series at all, though. It's more of something that should be relegated to a spinoff rather than a main series game. It's really important for the second game of a series to really advance the narrative to prepare for the climax instead of diddling around with its thumb up its ass introducing a wide variety of characters that get either a lot of payoff or none at all. Also fuck the collectors.

ME3 has the most polished combat if you play as Adept, Engineer or Vanguard.
Just equip a SMG (and shotgun if Vanguard) and spec into reduced cool downs.

Vanguard was hilariously broken as you could immediately charge again after your initial shotgun blast.

>discussing mass defect
GO BACK TO MAKING HORIZON THREADS YOU CANCEROUS FAGGOT

ME2 is a soft reboot of the series.
That's why it gives you a new Normandy, and focuses on recruiting characters.

ME2 plot is basically this: you find what is making humans disappear - Collectors.
Why? To make baby human Reaper
Why? Because fuck you
The rest is shameful padding: recruitment and loyalty missions that take almost as long as main quests and don't advance the story at all.
Coming into ME3, all these efforts are for naught: squadmates come back as cameos because fuck you

It was decent, but the fact that it was so pointlessly simple and the driving sections went on for so long made it pretty tedious. It needed like it's own upgrade system where you could add new weapons armor and shit like that.
That and as you said, planets that aren't just a randomized hightmap that makes the driving system shit itself completely.

That hovercraft thing in ME2 was the superior vehicle though, they just needed it in a game where maps weren't so linear.

>posting the thread derailer
Beat me to it, been doing it for a week

>Fair enough. I think they fixed that a bit with the revised one.

Nah fuck that. I could forgive a bad ending if it was earnest and ambitious but that DLC pitch to conclude the original ending made it clear Bioware ended this series in the laziest way possible on purpose; partly because they were too creatively bankrupt to devise a decent ending to the series but also because they thought it would sell no matter what so fuck it. That shit attitude tainted the product and cannot be fixed with DLC.

Obligatory
youtu.be/7KWkao73HuU?t=11m28s

I always thought they killed Shepard in the beginning of the game to explain how you can change his face
Funny how resurrection is so trivial that it never gets brought up

pardon me, my dad was a surfer. hard not to pick it up. have a nice day my friend

what should the player have had to do? what story befits a middle entry in a trilogy? Shepard stops a civil war before the reapers come?