DA fan gives ME:A a second chance (Text Based Let's Play)

I'm usually surprised by how Thorough Games can be. TW3 was solid, no complaints-- well, except for it being overhwlemingly dark and sad, I suppose. Complicated. ME2 and ME3 got me more attached to the characters than I would have thought I'd be capable of, it was surprising. But I hadn't thought I'd missed them at all. Then I walked into the Engine room on the Tempest and didn't see Garrus tinkering there with his his line about calibrations to both amuse and irritate me. I think of Jack and Kaidan when Cora is being a jackass and blaming her terrible behavior on her biotic implants. I think of Wrex and Grunt when I find Drack to be a rather uncreative Krogan narratively. PB is a like/dislike relationship, her character...odd. I wish she'd just been weird and not had this obvious big hurt I have to unravel to "explain it all."

They, the ME team, do things differently from the DA team for sure. Do I want to write fanfiction about the world in the RP threads? no. The world is kind of uninteresting to me. The characters are Bioware's focus...

My irritation of the day: they imply this giant open world (not to mention solar systems and galaxies) and then impede your getting where you want to with Radiation. Don't much like that at all. In TW3, plot relevant places they didn't want you to get to had political reasons attached to why you couldn't get there at that time. But I have to make up my own reason for why I can't travel beyond a certain point. That the shielding that protects ships like the Tempest just aren't available for attaching to the Nomad. but it's a pretty weak reason... then there are points that are just obviously "you're going off the map, turn around". I find this really odd- and ENTIRE planet with Nomad, small ships, and the Tempest and you can't go over certain hills. Even HZD, which I loved, had boundaries but I had to climb a while to get to them, so it felt ...okay for those boundaries to be there.

I really wish DA would get into Letter Writing as a mirror to the Email writing. That's one thing I know for sure I wish they'd bring over the gap. They were kinda exploring it on the WT missions, with inter character banter sneaking into the "official" stuff. I had this thought when I played ME2/3 as well. If they got into Edit-able letter writing, it'd be even better. Where we could write letters to loved ones, kinda thing.

Knowing that I have to restrict my character a bit to a certain kind... caused me to go into the game with more appropriate expectations. That helped a lot. It's too bad you can't grieve Alec Ryder the same way Hawke grieves Leandra. It's a missed opportunity that despite that on screen loss, they give you no ability to RP it. I am actually liking the game, once I get over the idiotic beginning. This is also the first time I've ever enjoyed scanning planets. It's pretty. I have no shame. It's also interesting to see the amount of time they spent on all this artisticly.

Anyway, I don't feel like this world is very much like the Trilogy at all. I feel like it's more like a Bioware version of Star Trek in the Mass Effect Universe. I can see why huge fans of the Trilogy would be massively disappointed.

Reyes