The Witcher 3 and Mass Effect Andromeda thread

That is the difference between people who can stomach the ending choices and those who cannot.

I cannot role play anything because I need to know. How to you make line of codes aka synthetic "organic"? Space Magic? The choices must be logical, if they are not logical, you will need to explain the science to me. The only logical objective fact I can imagine is that Mass Effect 3 was rushed and the ending was a patched job done by a lazy bum.

I believe there is a really great discussion to be had comparing MEA and New Vegas actually in terms of missed opportunity...

I played New Vegas for the first time last Christmas with all the DLC. And modded, it still plays very nicely and even looks good. It was my first Fallout (AND Obsidian) game and I was incredibly impressed with the writing and quest design. It terms of roleplaying, NV outclasses them all easily. You can literally enslave everyone and become the world's biggest tyrant.
To me, NV is the best most realistic contemplation of power I've ever seen in a game. How very hard it is to mediate between opposing factions, there is NO easy solution that will please everyone. And if you want some kind of order you HAVE to enforce it somehow. Even tyranny establishes a kind of order. The big bad wolf makes the lesser scum fall in line. Cut the head of the beast off and everything falls into chaos rather than bring peace. But I digress...

Compared to Bethesda's writing in Skyrim, NV is much better. The voice acting was pretty good too for many characters. It's the overall presentation where Bioware and CDPR are much more alike. Also the emotion. At least in W3. W2 left me emotionally cold, it was a political plot. NV is arguably similar to W2 in that it's more about the world and what's happening to it, rather than how you feel about it. But silent protagonists in general are usually not something I get that attached to. Did not care all that much about my warden, either. May not be the same for others.

I felt like CDPR beat Bioware at their own game in terms of writing and emotional cinematic storytelling with W3. This was not the case with W2, a game I really enjoyed playing at the time. Far superior plot to anything Bioware ever did, save for ME1 perhaps. But it didn't give me that trademark Bioware emotion I loved. Bioware were storytelling masters to me. Not masters of plot or gameplay, mind you. Total roleplaying freedom is not something I associate with Bioware either. Not something I would ask of them.

And yet there never was a better opportunity for Bioware to use a character like Ryder in a new galaxy to break out of that semi-set character model. I know many people have been asking for this. Would have been interesting as an experiment. (Hawke was an experiment breaking with the power fantasy and I appreciated it.)
To present real roleplaying choices to shape the future similar to New Vegas. While I do not enjoy playing evil, I would have welcomed the opportunity. Shepard had to be a hero. And Bioware used to be really good at writing inspiring hero tales.
However, they did not do anything interesting or new with that clean slate.

You can totally tell Horizon Zero Dawn hired a New Vegas writer. The game plays as if Bethesda, Obsidian, Bioware and CDPR had a baby. And an incredibly beautiful one.
It's perhaps the closest example to me of a feasible direction for Bioware to blend storytelling and open world. W3 being the only other example I have played where it just worked. New Vegas was different from, say, Skyrim, in that it had a strong story focus. It's not a game to roleplay anything you like. In Skyrim, running around picking flowers and decorating your home without caring about the dragonborn plot could make you happy for hundreds of hours. The open world of NV is the story. Everything you do in it is about the central conflict. Setting gears in motion, working towards a specific final world state. Once you complete the main story there is no reason to stick around. Nor is there much to do outside charming the different factions. As a storytelling concept it's certainly worth discussing here! But the focus is story/choices, not a beautiful narritive like with Bioware and also CDPR, if that's making sense?

Horizon Zero Dawn streamlined all this into a linear narrative with a very personal story. It's something I can totally picture working for Bioware. Add CC and A FEW romance options and you've got Bioware's trademark strengths blended with open world.
Because Horizon cut out all the boring filler and limited the sidequests to a very pleasant amount. And all the people Aloy helps are there in the end to support her. I got serious Shepard feels from the whole ridiculously heroic setup. It felt so satisfying and earned to ride into battle with so much support.

Of course, the factions in Horizon are a watered down version of NV, like SERIOUSLY watered down. They serve the linear narrative rather than provide options. But all this streamlining serves the storytelling well. Storytelling is old Bioware good, but the open world is also really really fun.

So... perhaps, as my personal suggestion, Bioware could look into Horizon's open world design which is limited compared to Bethesda sandboxes but engaging. I have no idea what the budget was for that game. I understand that CC and choices and romances eat the budget. Which is why I don't believe Bioware could make a game of the interactive and roleplaying scope of New Vegas with a presentation of W3 or HZD or the trilogy. But I can very well picture a streamlined blend such a Horizon offers, which boasts colorful visuals very similar to DAI. It's overall a very bright game with diverse characters. Lots of SJW stuff in it if you're looking for it. But not on the nose at all.
Maybe even lean a bit more towards actual choices and RP, and Bioware would achieve an evolution of their formula without sacrificing their cinematic narrative.

...which brings me back to the missed opportunity of Ryder as an actual aggressive imperialist as an opportunity. Why not? Be a bit NV and offer the choice NOT to be leader of the rainbow teletubbies club? Giving options does not mean endorsing them. Some of renegade Shepard's actions were pretty evil. When I heard a lighter explorer tone I was thinking Firefly, not boy scouts.
Andromeda as a setting freed the writing from the constraints of council space, and yet Ryder ended up more by the book than Shepard.

As I said, I don't mind set characters at all. Recently I have emoted much better with Geralt and Aloy than Bioware's protagonists, being a story junkie, not an RP junkie. But ditching renegade/paragon for something bland makes me very unhappy. Either do a proper touching set character story or offer better roleplaying. I don't see the point of Ryder. Even less than the inquisitor.

Apologies this got so long, my point might have gotten lost halfway through...

IF you think that ME was ever serious about its science, you weren't paying attention.

You're going to have to explain the difference better than you've managed so far. Bad science is bad, and we either tolerate the games despite it or we don't.


Why is bad science in the endgame more troubling to you than bad science elsewhere? I'm equally troubled by it everywhere. Though obviously not very troubled, since I'm still here.

New Vegas however is an anomaly.

It is the type of game that will only appeal to us hardcore Role-players. It's probably why it was less successful than Fallout 3, but has aged better than it. Unless BioWare totally revamps their RP systems and creates a quasi-tabletop ruleset like the SPECIAL system was in New Vegas, that will not happen again for a AAA-title in a long time. 

I WANT BioWare to do that with  their games again. Dragon Age: Inquisition was a more abstract game in terms of it's RP systems, but retained just enough of it's progression to be ok. Other titles are not so lucky, and frankly most titles are moving towards a more abstract design, Witcher 3 included. Only Obisdian has stepped back with Pillars of Eternity and Tyranny on that one, while InXile has struggled with it on Wasteland 2.  I did a whole article about this, actually. 

It's why Mass Effect: Andromeda is the most RP heavy game in a while in terms of mechanics, at least. It just didn't translate well to the story and it was still very abstract. 

If BioWare created a new tabletop system I think it would go well for the hardcore crowd, but I just don't see it really fixing things around the game, not due to writing or implementation, but due to scope and use of environments. It is all about philosophy of design in the end. 

How did they not cross a line when they resurrected Shepard from possibly the deadest state a human being can be in?
Or cross a line when they invented a magical element and effect that removes all problems with FTL?

Why did they cross a line when they used that exact same effect to solve the problems with long distance viewing?

I just don't get it, at all. It's like they gave you the steak on a slightly different platter and you throw a tantrum about it.

That said, I was never particularly upset about the ending. I knew it would have to be some kind of bullshit deus ex machina. I was mostly disappointed with the lazy color coding endings. Then again if Bioware was really forced to rewrite the ending on the fly after the leak, I guess they did what they could with limited time and resources... still not a good ending to an amazing journey, of course.

Someone suggested back then, all they need to do, is to cut out star brat. Anderson dying beside Shepard, Shepard looking out the windows and see the crucible firing and the battle plays on.

Depending on your readiness and the forces you have gathered, switch to some cinematic cut scenes and play it out like how they did the Suicide Mission.

- All possible allies recruited: The joined forces were able to defend the Crucible long enough and Reapers defeated.

- Not enough allies recruited: The Crucible was damaged, Reapers defeated but allies hurt as well. -or- Crucible heavily damaged and blew everything up when fired.

How much resources would they need to do something like this?

Also... I didnt believed the leaks. I cannot imagine Bioware would do such a lazy lame arse thing to the their most anticipated title at that time. 

Why did they cross a line when they used that exact same effect to solve the problems with long distance viewing?

Your not thinking like a computer.

The leviathan made the ai to solve the problem of ai going to war and destroying organics. The ai they made concluded the problem was organics, so they destroyed them and started a cycle to systematically "purge" the system so ai can't become a threat and destroy everything.

The leviathans didn't know what to do, so they ask the reapers to solve the problem.

Now the reapers see for thousands of cycles the creation of the crucible, the defiance of organics, the struggle and destruction they wrought by doing their function. They see one organic in Shepard do the impossible and lead the charge on a finished crucible, and it makes the reapers re think their strategy.

The catalyst is in the same spot as the leviathans. They don't know what to do with the cycle, so they ask Shepard to help fix it for them.

The reapers are not about self preservation, they are about their function thay the leviathans began millenia ago. In that respect it's come full circle, the cycle that the reapers created doesn't work anymore, and it needs to change to preserve life in the galaxy.

Made sense to me, on both a philosophical level and a logical one.

I never read the leak. At the time I didn't want any spoilers. I had no way of knowing we'd get something completely different. It just makes sense to me this rumor that they changed the ending because it leaked. If that leak was genuine, I cannot comment on. Never saw it. However, it explains why it's so lazy in the last five minutes. Just a different color. And why it doesn't connect well at all with everything that happened before. Nobody would design a game around making peace between synthetics and organics only to kill them off anyway. Total slap in the face. Something unplanned happened with the story, for sure.

So you don't understand your own thought processes well enough to explain why your b.s. threshold changes for the endgame? OK. Can't ask a man for knowledge he doesn't have.

This means that you'll always be taking your chances with an ME game. The science is always going to be lousy, and every so often bad science will come up in the ending, where your vulnerability is high. (How did you get through the ME2 endgame? I would have thought that either the space Terminator or the contrived final choice would be enough to trigger you.)

Incidentally, the people who like ME3 best often have low b.s. thresholds, not high ones. If you thought that ME science was always nonsense, nothing changes in the endgame.