Was Mass Effect 2 really that Much Better than MEA?

May 18, 2017 15:19:22 GMT Rochrok said:

May 18, 2017 14:52:38 GMT @carefull said:

Well, it worked for me. I've never played Citadel, so I liked it for once to have friendly folks on the crew. But I would not mind it to grow and add more drama queens. I love or love to hate drama queens too.  Also, it is completely in character for Liam to try to get to know everyone right away. He is remarkably real that way, there are quite a few people like that irl, particularly in the States where being an extrovert is a virtue. And that's his character's core development, crewmates, Angara, settlers on Eos, anyone he sees, he needs to know better and add to his sphere of connections. Some, like Bailey live it about him, some like Drack, hate it. Which is, again, natural reaction to folks like that.

The problem is not that there are friendly companions but that the game never gives you the chance to define what your Ryder's relationship with the companions are. The writers try too hard to make you like them to the point where they eliminate any chance of having any other experience with them.  And variety is the spice of life after all, if every companion provided almost the same type of relationship then it becomes bland.  

Granted BW did this with Garrus and Liara.  Even if you hated them personally and didn't recruit Garrus for ME1, BW took over and made them your BFF. But at least I could get Garrus killed off and rebuff Liara in ME3 and make it clear that she is not my Shepard's friend.  It seemed like BW learned their lesson about these forced comrades only to turn around and make the same mistake in MEA.  

As for Liam and companion to companion relationships.  Liam did more than just try to get to know people, he passed judgement on their choices that really wasn't his business but I'm not saying it's wrong to have Liam be this way as some people are this way. The problem is that it feels like the writers wanted a divisive character in the group and decided to choose Liam for the job rather than create a story that defined the NPC to NPC interaction.  Everyone just simply liked each other except for Liam's judgmental pestering.  In DA2 the hate between Anders and Fenris was well defined, it felt like being in the center of two friends who hated each other, something I've experienced myself.  I wanted some variety in companion relationships, not just with my Ryder but with each other, too.

Oh, I agree. It's 6 companions only, and tbh, I don't remember being able to really get into much emotional/confrontational dialogues in the smaller crews (ME1 and ME3). Inquisition openly reserved three characters that will always stay with you, and made the cast bigger, so you could express yourself. Maybe that what MEA2 will do.

I hope to see more diverse characters and relationships coming as the game grows. till then I get my spice of the ship with Reyes, and yeah, I do take my chance to upset Drack and Jaal, even if it is way too subtle.

May 18, 2017 15:45:36 GMT hobocommand3r said:

May 18, 2017 13:44:48 GMT Fen'Harel Faceman said:

And her collar/outfit. Ugh. This pixelated low rez crap is all over the place in the OT.

Who cares about her stupid collar? Look at her face and compare it to meA asari, both she, liara, aria and samara/morinth look better than all asari in andromeda. That imagine isn't doing you any favors if you are trying to defend meA. Besides me2 is a 2010 game, andromeda SHOULD be way better graphically. Yet somehow this asaris face looks better in me2 while in andromeda they got collar upgrades. Personally I'd prefer good looking faces and shitty collar textures.

When I played andromeda I didn't stop to stare at the asari's collars at all, I was to busy being annoyed that they all have the same ugly cloned face. Didn't have that problem when I played through me2 the last 2 weeks. 

i1.wp.com/www.oneangrygamer.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Image4.jpg?resize=585%2C300
i.ytimg.com/vi/QrQfgLFxF4I/maxresdefault.jpg

To be fair, that's a really crappy shot of an Asari. While which face you like more is purely subjective -  fwiw, I like the look of that one and only face we see on every Asari in Andromeda and I love how Pee bee looks - it is perfectly understood that having only one face for the entire race, be that Turians, Asari, Angara, Kett, Krogan or Voluses is limiting the gameplay. But, apart from one screen capture in the entire gameplay where Asari shown en masse, Asari are mixed with other species to create some sort of a diversity.

There are 18 human faces that create diversity among the humans, nine of them female. I do not know if they can do the same thing they essentially did in SWTOR in putting human faces on all the playable aliens.  In the first game of the series, we only saw two Asari up-close, iirc, Benezia, and Liara.

So, chances are, just like ME2 added more Asari (and Turians) vs ME1, Andromeda 2 (if it stays with Frostbite) will also have more resources to dedicated to facial diversity of other species.

Or resolves it by adding more species and avoiding the shots where multiple members of the same species are shown all together.

This is neither new, nor unique problem to Andromeda, and they do tend to get resolved if the game is serialized and more assets are produced.

Yes, it was a badly done cutscene that did not account in its design for the lack of assets to pull it off. Every game has those. They should have had one Asari spokesperson and others shown in a pan over the blurred background.

EDIT: Please, tell me this is an actual complain about graphics, not one of those "girls must have oval faces, luminous eyes, pointy chins, full lips and glorious hair falling in rolling waves past their ample perky breasts to their waists." Because I never know with male posters. Seriously, I am PO'd that male elves lost two feet of height between DA2 and Inquisition and went from attractive men to shotas, which I personally do not dig, so I say so outright, not veil it.