I wish Mass Effect games were made by people

Maybe this is more your speed:



...and I'm not saying that to be flippant either.

I'm enjoying the game, but I've listened to the audio book twice now and I'd argue that the book is more enjoyable than the game.

Drakensang 1 & 2 are for you mate. 

Yeah, I liked BioWare before they started to make games "for consumers" as part of the EA lifestyle. Frankly this was forced upon them as early as ME2. Bigger budgets and marketing = bigger risk so they had to go popular, but even non-publisher studios go for this and arguably BioWare were doing it too before EA got them since ME1 targeting a TPS-style combat was kind of BioWare realizing that TPS was getting popular.

Casey Hudson is and always was a cool kid that stood out from most of the BioWare creative leads in that he was forward thinking and seeking towards cooler concepts than the average DnD fare. His vision of KOTOR was based on how cool and popular the movies were and that same look for catchy and appealing is exactly how Mass Effect began too, and it's what made it so unique too, because the team that made it were so in on the ideas of just exploring ideas they loved. But to be fair, that was ME1 and while I love ME2 I've not felt completely at home in BioWare games ever since ME3.

What a weird thing to suggest.

"I hate that they've improved one aspect of the series to become the best it's ever been, even though it's independent of the rest of the game"

Haha, as much as I love ME1, the combat in that game was atrocious; if the story, characters, and dialogue didn't interest me as much as they did, I would have stopped playing ME after a couple of hours, because the combat definitely wasn't enough to keep me invested. I play mostly RPGs, very rarely do I ever play shooters (I've never touched games like CoD or Titanfall), but I definitely prefer ME:A's combat over ME1's. When going back and playing ME1, I just crank the difficulty down to its easiest setting and go from there so I can get to the story bits faster, which lets me get to ME2 with my new character faster.

I'm glad they improved the combat. I don't care how much RPG elements you have, the combat needs to be fun either way.

BioWare could have introduced racing into ME and it could have been the best racing in any game ever. But I wouldn't have cared because that's not what interested me in ME.

I didn't say you shouldn't be able to shoot aliens.  That's going from one extreme to another.  I'm saying it should be optional.  An RPG should be designed in a way so they player can avoid violent solutions if he chooses.

Ok, "RPG MASTER". 

Maybe a name change?

"RPGMASTERWHODOESNTLIKESTANDARDRPGELEMENTSSOMAYBEISNTAMASTERAFTERALL?"

Well, how come you're still with us four games later if you don't like combat?
Perhaps you thought that you could've reasoned with the Reapers by dialogue mechanics.

I didn't say it was. I'm more referring to the fact that it's a good thing that Bioware improved the combat from ME1, because ME1's combat was mediocre at best.

Combat has always been an important part if the ME games. In the trilogy you were playing as a special forces space marine for crying out loud. Not saying the non combat sequences aren't important but going in you had to know there would be plenty of combat.

Are there any others?