Mass Effect News Thread

For sure it would happen, eventually. That was the explicitly stated plan of the Ai. I just think linking the unknown to the heart of your civilization is madness.

We don't even know if true relays can connect at intergalactic distances. I wouldn't have much confidence in the protheans' mini-relay. Maybe the Asari were advanced enough (hoarding knowledge) to consider trying something like this. What we actually had was one matriarch suggesting as much and having "the blue laughed up her ass". I like the way she thinks; but we can't assume it was feasible just because Aethyta thought it was a good goal.

I hope that, if we ever get to see the MEA story continued and reconnected with the Milky Way, they use a more believable, less obvious MacGuggin. Whether they discover a way, invent a way, or whatever, I don't think it should be that they brought half of the Conduit.

This discussion actually makes me ponder whether the benefactor ever thought the MW species would be going home. We know so little. We do know that the Reapers were the true motivation, rather than those reasons given via Ai propaganda. From a real-world standpoint, it only makes sense that BioWare would eventually bring things home, had the IP remained a money-maker for a long enough time.

How about finding billion year old Leviathan relays?

They don't explicitly say they use relays.  But given the Reapers created the network, I'd say it's not a stretch that the Leviathans had the technology before, and the Reapers improved and capitalized on it.

As to why they lost dominance...plague, war with another precursor race, disaster, or even general ennui.  Heck maybe the Andromeda races are too different for their mental powers to work properly on them?

Where's Minmei when we need her...

cdn.animeherald.com/aniheraldcdn/2017/09/Macross-Minmay-Dance-gif-002-20170918.gif

/robotech

Unicephalon 40-D please tell me you copied and pasted that and didn't write it from memory or I'll be scarred forever 

Yep I copy pasted it from my shell, which has the textfile ... the thing is I cannot remember it correctly probably ever, because the first version I ever saw was dubbed in Swedish, as my friend bought the VHS from sweden. That messes up completely what I remember as the words, but I will always remember the melody.

In ME2 not have Shepard dead at the beginning. Have it where Shepard survives. After two years of trying to find a way to stop the reapers, Shepard is approached by Miranda who says that human colonists have gone missing and the Alliance refuses to do anything. Once Shepard learns the Alliance doesn't care about their own species by not investigating what's going on, she/he works with Cerberus to find out what has happened to the colonists.

I will add one more thing. Not a change, but a removal. I would remove the broker dlc from ME2

I would change to what Bioware originally had, Thessia before Citadel coup. If not, I would redo the whole priority Earth, at least from the suicide run until Shepard chooses whatever ending

All I know is that I miss Mass Effect. I thought I'd be half way through my second dlc by now. Speculations would begin about where the franchise would be going. Playful, teasing tweets from the devs...sigh.

I mean, there really is no reason it can't happen. It only takes the decision to make it happen. They could surprise us one day with an expansion..yes, expansion because we're going to need it at this point to bridge the gap to the next installment. heheh. Whether, it's back to the future in the MW, or Andromeda 2 with a turned up narrative, there's nothing stopping it from happening except the opinion of a few that hold the purse strings...

There's nothing wrong with a diverse portfolio of games. I mean, if it were me, I'd have the Anthem-y, open world MT friendly....without being abusive...games, as well as the strong narrative, SP oriented, dlc incoming type of games. I'd want all the money, not just one market.

But, eh.

As far as the dlc bundles, well, I already own all the dlc stuffs. Wanted to buy some more, but I guess I'll just fold that money up and put it back in my pocket. You don't want my money, EA? Fine!

I agree about the battle above Earth being....whatever. If I was to do Priority Earth, I would have it similar to this

When I say suicide run, I mean the beam run. All that just to have Anderson and Shepard on the Citadel for the touchy-feely scene. 

"Believe real hard. And clap three times. Magic is real, Baby!" I love it 

Well hopefully Casey Hudson coming back is a good omen!!!! 

Part of a larger discussion...

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Jana Sloan van Geest‏ @janamakesgames
Even though I knew, in theory, that there might be significant time gaps between the player's triggering of quest steps, I often still wrote as though the story beats would be experienced in direct sequence.

Jo Berry @joanna_Berry
To return to this: managing information flow and exposition in games is a tricky balance, because of the aforementioned potential time gaps and because players can choose their level of engagement in the narrative.

Some players skip through conversations, or don't read emails, or miss dialogue because they happened to be speaking to their Twitch audience. Other players read EVERYTHING. Your quest has to work for both.

Or the player got your quest and then decided to play multiplayer or explore the open world for ten hours. Not just the journal but the dialogue needs to reinforce "what was I doing last time, again? Oh right".

You can't write a story for a player who's deliberately ignoring the narrative and characters--they're likely playing for other reasons. But it's courteous to give reminders for a player whose attention is simply split between in-game or IRL demands.

Plus--storytelling opportunity! Who gives those reminders? (i.e. SAM reminding Ryder is straightforward, but there's added weight if Director Tann or Kandros calls them about it.) How does the player character feel about picking a plot thread up again? Excited? Wary?



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Jo Berry @joanna_Berry
One of my absolute favourite examples of worldbuilding is from @ursulakleguin's The Left Hand of Darkness, and it's a one-line description of a piece of cutlery.

Wil Sterling @shadowvasterra
This is precisely why I have a fanatically irrational love of the Turian mandible twitch from the ME 'verse.

It’s an entirely throwaway animation initially, but it instantly humanizes this hardass of a bird man you meet for all of a minute. Then Garrus and Vetra start using it once they melt and my heart explodes.

Jo Berry @joanna_Berry
Definitely. Seeing it as Nihlus's reaction to Sovereign struck me as subtle but very alien while being instantly sympathetic. Great stuff. (And avoided any localisation issues too. 🙂)

Wil Sterling @shadowvasterra
I imagine it was also far easier to animate than the equivalent expression on a human given the facial skeleton rigs the team was working with back then. And let’s face it, neither Shep nor Anderson are the type to drop a jaw when it hits the fan.

Jo Berry @joanna_Berry
There's a lot of neat little touches like that in the original Mass Effect. Benezia's eye movements when she's reporting to Saren after Eden Prime are very telling.



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