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Post by hulluliini on Mar 29, 2023 11:30:30 GMT
That video has very Mass Effect-y music. Btw I'm friends with one of Sagan's friends. I'm almost famous!
The video actually reminds me a lot of Andromeda.
But I think it's really difficult to combine immersion with vast landscapes with an engaging story. You have the problem where you have a sense of urgency on the one hand but the possibility to wander around endlessly on the other.
In ME1 the main quests are described in a way that they don't sound urgent. You don't know that the colony on Feros is under attack, you don't know that Liara is caught in a bubble, and you don't know about the rachni on Noveria. So you can truly start exploring and taking your time, investigating, not running to rescue anyone. I think this is why the open world concept worked so well with the more scripted and straightforward main missions.
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Post by hulluliini on Mar 30, 2023 7:24:00 GMT
But I think it's really difficult to combine immersion with vast landscapes with an engaging story. You have the problem where you have a sense of urgency on the one hand but the possibility to wander around endlessly on the other. In ME1 the main quests are described in a way that they don't sound urgent. You don't know that the colony on Feros is under attack, you don't know that Liara is caught in a bubble, and you don't know about the rachni on Noveria. So you can truly start exploring and taking your time, investigating, not running to rescue anyone. I think this is why the open world concept worked so well with the more scripted and straightforward main missions. Well, yes, that is exactly how an exploration segment could work within the overall story arc - being at a point of the story where you can take your time to look for clues, collect additional information and wander/drive around for a bit in a wide area on a planetary surface. As to Andromeda, I'd say that game coud have profited from reducing the number of planets where you can drive around to maybe 3 or even 2 and in return increasing the number of scripted missions in various places on top of spending time to refine various encounters and "dungeons" on said planets.
As I really liked Nomad in ME:A, I'd like to see a nice big open area(maybe 1,5 times of a ME:A planet) with exploration type of gameplay - but exploration as in visiting ancient ruins, ships wrecks, discovering underground laboratories/facilities etc aimed more at letting you piece together comprehesive story in an interesting environment(IE that isn't a wasteland largerly devoid of vegetation and non-hostile animal life) and less at forcing you to collect 10 space rat wiskers of different colours over and over again where you have stop your vehicle every ten meters to scoop some poop. Also being able to have a gun on the vehicle again, just like in ME1 would be pretty cool.
But even if we should completely go back to ME2/3 style of level design, I'd like to see some spectacular skies and views into space that leave no doubt that you have a sci-fi game on your screen.
This would be perfect, except that I like having many planets since they are always based on the trope of "desert planet/ice planet/jungle planet" instead of having very different regions on the same planet like we have on Earth. Having just 3 would mean very little variety in terms of environments. I still like roaming the planets in ME1 even though they're largely empty. It simply adds to immersion. It's actually really strange that developers are still making these fetch quests that are so boring. I suppose the point is to encourage exploration of the maps but in MEA there was plenty of motivation to explore without having mineral or plant fetching quests.
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Post by hulluliini on Apr 5, 2023 10:58:11 GMT
Ok WHERE are you getting all this gorgeous art?? *proceeds to save them all into the desktop background folder*
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Post by hulluliini on Apr 6, 2023 7:24:27 GMT
Ok WHERE are you getting all this gorgeous art?? *proceeds to save them all into the desktop background folder* I get most of my stuff from artstation.com, which focuses on digital art of generally professional artists. The pictures for three endings are about 10 years old, I think I've got them either from twitter or from the old forums, some other stuff is from simple image searches. There is also deviantart.com, which seems a more generalist place with a wild mix of amateur art, cosplays and pros - IE you can just search for "sci-fi" and will find some of the pictures I've posted. I guess some artists prefer to maintain a presence on several plattforms at once.
I generally prefer artstation because it seems less cluttered with stuff that isn't sci-fi or beautiful concept art.
I've visited Artstation occasionally but I think you can't ctually download pictures from there? Or can you? Deviantart is difficult to navigate and indeed what you said, not the primary venue for this kind of work.
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Post by AnDromedary on Apr 19, 2023 18:18:46 GMT
Came upon a couple of starship designs, that I really liked:
That one could use some scaling up, to the size of Nomandy/Tempest, but in terms of general outer design this looks like something fitting into ME setting some time in the future.
Another one I think would be just pefect as a traditional long-range space vessel:
I am not sure what exactly about this one feels so right - maybe because it is fairly similar to Normandy and Tempest just a bit more streamlined - but IMO this is just a perfect ship to hop in onto for some long range space flights and ME-like discovery journeys. Gives off a feel of a space yacht but at the same time leaves an impression of a proper space-faring vessel. There is something I would change, though, to keep ME tradition:
Basically changing the marked parts into trasparent ones like done with the Tempest(transparent metal alloy) and thus giving the player a better opportunity to look outside, for a better immersion, just like I described in the very first post.
Those are all a bit too bulky for ME human ship design IMO. They look more like Star Wars ships.
Human military ships in ME all kinda look almost like blades, flying through space. Personally, I'd like to see a new iteration of the Normandy design, ideally with moving parts again like the SR1 had.
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Post by hulluliini on Apr 20, 2023 6:51:27 GMT
Came upon a couple of starship designs, that I really liked:
That one could use some scaling up, to the size of Nomandy/Tempest, but in terms of general outer design this looks like something fitting into ME setting some time in the future.
Another one I think would be just pefect as a traditional long-range space vessel:
I am not sure what exactly about this one feels so right - maybe because it is fairly similar to Normandy and Tempest just a bit more streamlined - but IMO this is just a perfect ship to hop in onto for some long range space flights and ME-like discovery journeys. Gives off a feel of a space yacht but at the same time leaves an impression of a proper space-faring vessel. There is something I would change, though, to keep ME tradition:
Basically changing the marked parts into trasparent ones like done with the Tempest(transparent metal alloy) and thus giving the player a better opportunity to look outside, for a better immersion, just like I described in the very first post.
Ah, the Cyclops.
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Post by Hanako Ikezawa on May 25, 2023 0:11:39 GMT
Saw a pretty neat video today:
I especially liked the part where he mentions that most of the stars we see, when looking in all of the sky directions, are those from our own galaxy. The video reminded me of something, that I would like to see realized in a Mass Effect game in a competent, impressive way: a look on our own galaxy not from our Earth, but from a planet somewhere else, where we can see Milky Way in all of its beauty, stretching in all of the directions of the sky. Same for Andromeda, too.
There may be planets found above or below the galactic plane - and I am fairly sure that there were actually a couple of such planets already identified in such locations by the currently employed instruments. The skies there could be mind-bogglingly beautiful.
That would be really nice to see. I still remember the awe in seeing that for the first time in Halo 3 when you go to the Ark, with a marine even commenting on it.  They could do it any number of ways, from what you said to it being an orphan world/system to even being in one of the dwarf galaxies that orbit the Milky Way. |
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Post by hulluliini on May 26, 2023 8:29:08 GMT
Andromeda did a good job with the galaxy map, it's so beautiful to look around when you park on the orbit of a planet.
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Post by skekSil on May 29, 2023 19:59:08 GMT
As I really liked Nomad in ME:A, I'd like to see a nice big open area(maybe 1,5 times of a ME:A planet) with exploration type of gameplay - but exploration as in visiting ancient ruins, ships wrecks, discovering underground laboratories/facilities etc aimed more at letting you piece together comprehesive story in an interesting environment Kind of like Anthem had it been finished? |
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Post by Unicephalon 40-D on May 30, 2023 8:15:00 GMT
As I really liked Nomad in ME:A, I'd like to see a nice big open area(maybe 1,5 times of a ME:A planet) with exploration type of gameplay - but exploration as in visiting ancient ruins, ships wrecks, discovering underground laboratories/facilities etc aimed more at letting you piece together comprehesive story in an interesting environment Kind of like Anthem had it been finished? Visioning ME5 with Anthem style maps. Huh, wow.
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Post by hulluliini on Jun 12, 2023 8:14:16 GMT
Sometimes you just need hot babes.
But honestly I find Peebee quite beautiful, it's just the wonky animations giving her weird faces. And that idiotic tattoo over her eyes makes anyone look ridiculous. With the right mods she's so pretty except when animators decided to contort her face into the weirdest expressions.
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Post by Unicephalon 40-D on Jun 12, 2023 8:58:37 GMT
I think the animations are more of a fact that the change into CI pipeline happened at the end of the developement, where they had to change 3D animation software package to one new FrostBite supported. The previous support was dropped, where the work was done. Now dont hit me, I'm just a messenger, this is what I've heard/read back in the day. Anyway, I dont think all of the Asari ever were beautiful babes, there were few with Liara but most of NPC look quite.. awful in OT, when in Andromeda they look actually good but just the same in case of Asari. LE added massive amount of black eye make-up to everyone to hide the fact there is no realtime shading going on. For Art, I really hope they just keep the arc and keep on doing what Syd Mead had done  - and it seems like that at least in Andromeda they continued it. |
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Post by hulluliini on Jun 13, 2023 7:25:42 GMT
Sometimes you just need hot babes. But honestly I find Peebee quite beautiful, it's just the wonky animations giving her weird faces. And that idiotic tattoo over her eyes makes anyone look ridiculous. With the right mods she's so pretty except when animators decided to contort her face into the weirdest expressions. Peebee is clearly made somewhat unsightly by design - her tattoo, her clothing, her manners are quite an opposite to what we are used to coming from Asari. I have a suspicion she was made at first to play a role of an "ugly duckling" of sorts who then later would grow into a beautiful swan, so to say. But we got a bit too much of the duckling and most certainly hardly anything of the swan.
Anyway, I dont think all of the Asari ever were beautiful babes, there were few with Liara but most of NPC look quite.. awful in OT, when in Andromeda they look actually good but just the same in case of Asari. LE added massive amount of black eye make-up to everyone to hide the fact there is no realtime shading going on.
Asari in ME1 and also 2 had a certain aura of mystery, grace, dignity that somehow got lost in later ME installments. We had Benezia, The Consort, Shiala, Asari Ambassador, Samara and Morinth, even Aria with her calm badassery, LotSB Liara, who was simply incredibly pretty, - and then Asari turned into mundane, average "everyday" blue humans. None of the Asari from ME:A had a charisma together with the appearance anywhere close to the ones I named. And I'd like to see that changed at least for the "important" ones in the next game.
What? Peebee's clothes are really cool! As for her mannerisms and personality - since she is the scientist type in the game, they had to make her personality really different from Liara or she would have been just a carbon copy. So they went a bit overboard to avoid that. Anyway, I do agree the Asari were much like humans and the ageless superiority aspect was somehow lost. It's down to writing. We'll see if they've learned from their mistakes. It is quite possible that none of the returning writers are even aware of details that we argue over here in the forums.
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Post by hulluliini on Jun 15, 2023 8:53:37 GMT
Yes, I agree Peebee's outfit doesn't fit the visuals of previous games. I liked Asari dresses in the trilogy but I did not like the bulkier, militaristic suits and gear in ME3. Yes, it was more realistic I guess, but aesthetically I prefer the ME1 jumpsuit armor lol.
It's quite funny in Jedi Fallen Order how you can just land on a planet and walk straight out and be able to breathe the air. The gravity is exactly the same as on Earth. All the alien races can also breathe the air on every planet and they get along with Earth gravity perfectly. But you don't really think about it because the gameplay is so cool and fun.
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