The Witcher 3 and Mass Effect Andromeda thread

Yes, I am just saying that the hope actually started much earlier. It was not just ME3, it was the entire trilogy because everything ultimately got shattered. That is the work of an evil evil entity.


 What can I say, I like Yennefer for her bit*hy attitude. Life would be boring if I cant wake up everyday knowing that I can go pick a fight with the old lady for the fun of it and that she will bite back. She is so sexy when annoyed.  

Not exactly. The difference between good and bad endings is that one is prescribed when you were told otherwise and the other chosen. In TW3, you can screw up and get the worst possible ending because of your actions. In DA:O, your Warden can choose to sacrifice and die a hero's death.   Cos you can chicken out and bang the witch but all these are choices.

In ME OT, you are not given much of a choice, you are being killed and they try to trick you into believing that you are sacrificing yourself. Not to mentioned that all options are illogical.

Blue Option: Logically it goes like this, you have brain cancer and you are offered a brain transplant. After the transplant, you will no longer remember who you are. Your body is still the same. You can still bang your wife except your mind is something else and that something else is banging your wife using your body which biologically is still you. 

Green Option: Add your "essence" to the energy... and magically transform all beings, synthetic and organic into one. Everything will be part synthetic and part organic. Excuse me? What? You do know that AI like Geth are lines of codes. How does lines of code suddenly become "organic"? What is this "essence"? Essence of life? The Force? Life Force? Chicken Essence ? If that is the case, there should not have been any physical changes... the change would be spiritual  

Red Option: Destroy, the Catalyst wont fire... how to get it to work... well I will let Mr. Vega demonstrate:

Just so I'm following this, are you going full retard IT here?

Your description of Control is the complete opposite of the actual situation, but I presume that's just an attempt at humor.

I've heard witcher 3 lacks the gun play CoD Infinite warfare has and it falls short where Sims 4 and Forza 6 succeeds.

I want to get a care package att my 5th streak and trim my 2017 Ford Mustang while it's parked in my custom made mansion with unmatched floors and walls.

And why aren't the enemies as charismatic as those in GTA V? I wish Witcher could have meet those levels of gaming artistry!

I'm disappointed CD Project RED I can only hope they learn from their mistakes!

-Papa Franku PC Game Jornalist

Lol - your hatred for TW franchise is really weird.  And some of your comments about TW just seem downright delusional.  I could see you buying up the actual Witcher series books and burning them in your backyard.

*middle finger* j/k

You know I didn't mind the bleak outlook of the ending or Shepard dying, or Shepard not living happily ever after with the love interest.
It was how disjointed it all was. It was like they were 95% done with the game and then the director's 12 year old nephew came in and
edited the ending for the studio.

I always thought they just didn't know how to end the series.  So they all sat around one day saying "so what are some good ending in other video games?"  And Mac said "well I always liked Deus Ex 1's ending, really trippy"  then Casey said "okay well lets just do that".  And the rest is history.

Perhaps, but it is also going into a semantic argument now.

See, What would Shepard do at the end of Mass Effect 3, based on the previous actions of Mass Effect 1, 2 and 3? Did you roleplay the choices there?

If you did, the final choices matter a lot more?

That has been my standard argument in the end as to why the endings at least on a RP level work. A sheperd who supported Geth/Quarian peace just to use their strength, would probably go for Destroy, while one who supported Geth/Quarian peace because it was the right thing to do would go for Synthesis. It is splitting hairs a bit, but it is role-playing within the confines of the narrative presented. It then makes that final sacrifice more meaningful, at least to me. 

Andromeda has opened it up, where we got a lot of choices which will be used down the line, I suspect. So it's less shackled there I suspect and the narratives will follow what we see in Dragon Age, large scale choices mixed with small ones. 

The problem with your brain-transplant analogy, again, is that it's the opposite of what you're actually talking about. In a brain transplant the body goes on but the mind is replaced. In Control Shepard's body is explicitly destroyed, and a version of Shepard's mind goes on. I suppose that we can make the analogy work if we're talking about a brain transplant for the Catalyst, but in that case there's no problem, because nobody thinks the Catalyst survives in Control or wants it to.

As for whether Shepard survives in Control...

But you're asking the wrong question in the first place. Nobody thinks that Shepard survives in Control. The Sheplyst explicitly talks of Shepard's death.

As for whether transplanting my brain into an immortal robot body would kill me, it's interesting but not relevant here. Though FWIW, I'd take it.

I love this so much and never can get enough of it. All that's left of my ME3 experience...

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...