"New" infos: Grey morality and crafting...

It was in a video interview with Game Informer, if I'm not mistaken. If it wasn't a video interview, it was a GI online interview. He may not have been speaking of a cure, but the genophage is definitely going to be an elephant in the room that must be addressed. That could be what he was acknowledging. We shall see.

It's been interesting observing the discussion in this thread. I'm excited for MEA, but this issue is one more reason for me to regret the move away from the Milky Way. I'd have liked to have faced the repercussions of the Reaper War, and the post-war changes, whatever BioWare chose them to be. I realize they'd have had to pare down the variables, since the myriad possibilities had become too many. I'd have been 100% supportive of their doing so.

I'll always view it as unfortunate that they were unwilling to pick a baseline, post-war galaxy and continue the ME story from that point. The fact that we won't see the Milky Way again (any time soon, at least) has actually made me very apathetic about replaying the OT, of late. I'd not anticipated feeling that way.

Oh, well. I'm not trying to take this thread in that direction. Let's hope whatever genophage story that is told is a good one. I don't want this to be a major theme, whatever they do. We've already experienced this as a major theme; so, no matter what they do, it needs to be concise.

Stories have always been formulaic in various ways. For instance, having acts, intro, rising action, climax, epilogue etc. And there are good reasons for that, since that structure is built to deliver an emotionally satisfying story.

I think the one of the main reasons stories appear formulaic these days is simply a product of the fact that we have more stories, across various media, than ever before (and obviously that will keep happening if we don't lose records). The more stories there are, the more times you're going to see similar things happen in them. The more stories there are, the less original each will appear.

I don't know which ways you're talking about specifically, though, so without more info I can't say much.

It depends on the system. I believe it was impossible to reach level 60 in ME1 without a newgame+, and I found it tedious and annoying to play the beginning at a low level, so that was a nice feature (low-level play after experiencing high-level play is often annoying in many games, not just ME1). Newgame+ might also unlock higher levels (I believe ME3 did this if you didn't import), so it would make sense for XP to carry over in that case. We need to know more.

Yeah, it's pretty weird. Stuff like that is very common in games, like having to gather materials yourself in DA:I even after becoming the Inquisitor instead of using the Inquisition's supply. You wouldn't think making a weapon or even an entire suit of armour would take so many resources that you'd need to find them yourself in ME:A and instead use what was brought and already gathered by people specialized in resource-gathering.

That's like saying allocating your skill points is optional, or having conversations. I mean, sure, technically it is... But you're going to put yourself at a large disadvantage if you don't do it and you'll most likely miss out on a lot of stuff, and it's not how the game is meant to be played.

"Oh, but you can ignore it" is no excuse for making a crappy system. It's obviously a feature they want to be used as standard, just like DA:I, so of course people want it to be good an make sense.

Actually, I think the numbers balanced out, as they usually did for choice-based consequences. The Alliance fleet may have reduced assets, but you get the Destiny Ascension instead. So that's not a case of paragon losing, really.

A high rating does not a mature story make. In fact, I find a lot of the content of an R rating is often used in an immature manner. Conversely, you can have a low-rated story that is good and does have mature themes. Basically, rating is inconsequential to that.

Yeah, I never understood the decision to remove DA2's tone icons from conversation (even when they added a toggle for them to appear!) when they're clearly organized in the same way in DA:I: Diplomatic/empathetic on top, sarcastic/neutral in the middle, direct/aggressive on bottom.

In fact, removing the tone icons was a bad move since there were at least 6 in DA2 despite 3 options at a time (for instance purple had the sarcastic icon or charm icon depending), which gave you an indication of how the line would be said. Removing that added clarity is counterproductive, especially since (as I said) they added a toggle for those to appear if you didn't want them.

Well, having not run or seen the calculations myself, I don't know if what was presented in the movie exactly would happen in real life, but the basic concept is sound. Maybe the wave was still exaggeratedly large. But it's worth noting that even though we don't feel the gravity of the moon when walking around, it still affects the entire ocean on Earth in a noticeable manner. The moon can still do that even without having the same pull as Earth, so the black hole should be able to pull on the water as well, even if the planet had more influence on it.

Think of it like a perpetual game of tug-of-war where the water is the rope and it ends up somewhere between the two contestants (moon/black hole and Earth/Miller's planet). It's still closer to Earth/Miller because it has stronger pull (at that distance), but the moon/black hole affects it too.

Hopefully that helps.

Also you're welcome!

Edit: Oops, forgot some stuff

Why? It adds replay value doing a playthrough like that. I've done it in DAI and ME
They don't. To get the highest number of assets, the council needs to be alive. To get the lowest number of assets, the council needs to be alive.

I'd just like to point out that determining whether an action is paragon or renegade depends more on the (assumed) mentality behind it rather than the consequences, immediate or otherwise. I'm definitely not saying that I always agree with Bioware's determination of which is which, but I wouldn't say that not harming anyone is grounds alone for not being renegade, and I don't think the consequences of that choice in the next game (which even Bioware may not have known at the time) are either.

I understand why Bioware made saving Maelon's data renegade; they were using the logic that an extremely moral person would not use data obtained unethically (like evidence obtained illegally) and a pragmatist would. I think that's where I'd categorize them if I was locked into a binary system as well.

In real life, I'd definitely use the data (if I was trying to cure the genophage) because I feel like not using it would be morally worse, especially because it would render the deaths of the krogan who died for that data pointless.

As for ME:A, I'd bet it'll be like DA:I where it's more of an invisible morality system, at least as far as dialogue options are grouped. Whether the game keeps track of your personality, I don't know. It might be like DA2 where autodialogue is chosen based on your most used type of line. As an aside, I'm quite sad that opinionated autodialogue is making a return after DA:I made even neutral autodialogue a very rare occurrence

Because materials tend to be more or less in your path while adventuring, it makes it a lot harder for many people to resist picking them up, since they're close. This got very tedious very fast. If they were in specific areas of a map, it might be different, but that has its own problems.

The genophage doesn't even need to be cured in the Andromeda saga, in theory. If the krogan who went along with the expedition are smart enough not to want to kill each other too much (which you'd think the Initiative would want in its members), they should have exactly the same possible birth rates as humans. If those krogan teach their offspring correctly, the genophage would be a non-issue. Going to Andromeda is a second chance for krogan culture more than population growth, and it'll be interesting to see how that's handled.

Javik was an interesting character. He was one of the biggest advocates for the destroy option, other than Anderson. As far as I'm concerned, he was perfectly right about that.

1. For you, I guess, and that's good. But I don't get replay value out of purposely gimping myself just so I can gimp myself differently next playthrough Weren't you the one who played a run with only a pistol? I'm all for a challenge, but I don't get much enjoyment out of intentionally handicapping myself. So I'll try to always have the best gear every playthrough for whatever playstyle I'm using... unless there's something low-level that looks much better

2. Are you confirming what I said? That the war asset numbers are equal or near-equal?

I like crafting, and DA:I's system was pretty good. While I stick by my assertion that foregoing crafting will put you at a disadvantage, it's the resource-gathering that I was mostly talking about being annoying, which indirectly made crafting more annoying than it needed to be. It was also only really optional if you had an easy time with the game. If you didn't, you had to craft the best gear constantly, which meant farming for resources, because looted gear just couldn't keep up to crafted stuff. If that's not an issue in ME:A, I'll agree it's more optional.

But there are other factors. Resource-gathering didn't only allow crafting of weapons and armour, but also potions (which are game-changers) and even Skyhold upgrades. It's likely we'll need to gather resources to upgrade the Nomad and Tempest, like we did for the Normandy, so if the system sucks, people will still complain and rightly so. We might need materials for consumables as well. Basically, we need more info and probably just need to play the game before coming to any conclusions

I also disagree with the idea that "saying how horrible something is when it's completely optional is asinine". Romances are optional, but that doesn't mean people shouldn't complain if they suck. Crafting will be an important feature, and in my opinion less optional than romances, so it should be good.

Drack, yeah. This is Drax

While we did see krogan as bodyguards already, we'll likely have to wait until launch to see whether that's all they're relegated to doing and what their general mentality is.

Yes I did do a playthrough using only a level 1 pistol. A lot of my playthroughs I've done is using only one weapon. I even done a few playthroughs using no weapons, except when forced to.
No. If they were, getting the highest and lowest ems wouldn't matter if the council is saved or not

I looked it up. If you save the council:

First Fleet = 65
Third Fleet = 65
Fifth Fleet = 65
Destiny Ascension = 70

Total 265

If you don't save the council:

First Fleet = 90
Third Fleet = 90
Fifth Fleet = 90
Admiral Mikhailovitch = 25
Authorize Civilian Consultant at Spectre Terminal = 10

Total 305

Although I wasn't really speaking strictly from a numbers point of view. I was pointing out that sometimes Paragon choices can have consequences that paragons would consider negative. Meaning that the choices aren't as black and white as they seem.

Since you posted those numbers, why not include the salarians as well? It makes a difference if the council is saved or not

So it does, missed that one, thanks!


Here are the Salarian entries:

If you save the council:

Salarian Third Fleet - 125

If you don't save the council:

STG Task Force - 70

So final total: Saving the council = 390, Not saving the council = 375

Unless there's anything else I've missed

It's an abstraction. it's fine.

It only really mattered in my first playthrough which was with a vanilla ME3 character, not an import. Since I wasn't playing multi-player I had to use an iphone app to increase Galactic Readiness and even then I don't think I unlocked the Synthesis ending.

After that, with all the DLC and imported characters it was never a problem getting max assets even without using the app.

I googled for info on the war assets and found this page:

uk.ign.com/wikis/mass-effect-3/Alliance_War_Assets

In there is an entry under the Alliance Fifth Fleet heading:



To be honest I have no idea why that would only be available if the Council died but that's what the article says!