Mass Effect, I'm not even sure I can enjoy it.Follow

I've been hearing about how good Mass Effect from both players on this forum and my personal friends. From what I heard I believed everyone. So I started playing today, and wow was I surprised. I don't believe any game has managed to frustrate me so quickly.

Being a veteran RPG player I was expecting some tricks. RPGs seem to have this annoying obsession with forcing you to make irreversible decision that significantly effect the 40+ hours of your entire game experience without telling you the consequences of your actions. Wow was it annoying to find out I couldn't get the ultimate weapon in FFXII because I didn't magically know which four chests throughout the entire game I wasn't supposed to open, especially considering that the game never even hinted that I shouldn't open chests. Expecting this I did a little research. One of my friends had lost Wrex, who was him main support character, because he was just playing for fun without planning, and that screwed him over the rest of the game. So I knew which class I wanted to play because I found information about what they actually did instead of the game's explanation of the cosmetic flavor of each class. I knew that I would be forced to choose between Ashley and Kaidan so I made sure not to ***** up my party and plan it with both of them. I knew I needed either high charm or high intimidate. All of this I researched before because I knew that if I just jumped into attempting to have fun I would end up screwed at one point and have to restart or continue crippled.

So I go to create my character. The faux ID retrieval system was a little lengthy, but I found it acceptable because it set the atmosphere for immersion.

Immediately I was hit by the first issue that made me groan--character design. Western RPGs have an strange obsession with designing your own characters' appearance. I have nothing against purely aesthetic game features, but the problem is that they are largely inconsequential. Shifting your jaw line, slightly changing the angle of your ears, and moving your eyebrows a maximum of .1 cm up or down is just ridiculous. Why not give me an option to adjust toenail length? Only 4 options really matter: hair style, hair color, and skin color, and eye color. Holding those constant characters looks mostly identical no matter what else you change. The majority of the time you will be looking at the back of your characters' head. Designing a character is like having to discuss with one's spouse whether "Sea Blue" or "Deep Sea Blue" would be best for the baby's room.

Fine, I finish that and move on to problem number 2: back ground. Here begins the greatest flaw of any RPG. Irreversible decisions that significantly effect game play without telling you the consequences of your decision. I get to choose a childhood and exploit to define my background. Luckily I had read a guide ahead of time and made sure to pick the correct choices for the affect I wanted to achieve--paragon in this case.

Finally I get to the opening cut scene that exposes the setting of the game. The story looks promising. Then problem number 3 occurs. I get into my first conversation and have to make a conversational decision. Joker is unhappy with the spectre. I hadn't looked up this part ahead of time, but I wasn't too early. Cliched binary decisions of good versus evil are generally easy to guess in Western RPGs. Joker seemed little insubordinate so I thought that as a paragon of good I should tell him to get in line. After all a paragon would want to follow rules and regulations right, and a renegade would condone his insubordination? Apparently not. Apparently the designers interpreted paragon in this particular instance to mean someone who gets along with others (condoning Joker) and renegade to be someone who rocks the boat (telling him to get his act together). Less than a minute into actually playing the game and I'm already hit with a mistakes.

So I reset, go through the lengthy character creation process again--ignoring minor details--and try again. This time I had looked up the correct answers in a guide to make sure. I finish with Joker getting the paragon bonus and explore the ship. I find a conversation opportunity with Jenkins and engage him. I had made sure to look this conversation up as well, but the guide was a little vague and simply said "be supportive of Jenkins" for the paragon path. So the doctor is chiding him and I tell her to lay off. He is concerned about an upcoming mission and I tell him not to worry. Bam, renegade again. I don't understand how.

So rather than go through character creation again I call it the quits for the night. I'm done. No other game has forced me to quit after so little actual play time.

I really would just like to enjoy the game. I'd like to be able to pick the background I think sounds cool and say the things that I think sound funny, but the developers decided to tie real game effects to cosmetic decisions. If I tried to just have fun at the start bad thigns would happen later on. Wrex would die on me. I might not be able to do a specific mission or get a powerful item. I probably wouldn't get the ending I want either. It's just stupid.

I still think Mass Effect may be a good game. Maybe in time I'll actually be able to say that having played the game. But it will be a good game despite many of its features, not because of them.

Allegory, to achieve paragon you must in no way get every set of points available. Personally, I think you're approaching it the wrong way: for example, while I would have been pissed off if I had lost Wrex (i had a high charm skill anyway on my first play through), I was geniunely sad when I lost Kaidan. Knowing it was going to happen ahead of time would have severely detracted from the experience. But anyway, if you want to know these things that's fine. Just remember that western games are often a little more forgiving, and every decision must not be perfect for your desired outcome.

This only proves that you are entirely to **** about the things in your life.

Character design, if you hate it then just select whatever it defaults to, doesn't have any impact in the play of the game.

Background doesn't change anything about whether you go Paragon or Renegade, your choices in the story do. Paragon is easy to achieve without getting every single Paragon point available.

Losing Wrex...no big deal...I used him very little anyway.

Kaidan or Ashley, only thing that really does is ***** up the Paramour achievement, depending on your choice of sex, and which character you were pursuing it with.

Games shouldn't be researched like term papers. It has replayability, so why worry about which class you choose initially? You can have multiple careers going at the same time.

Honestly, pull the stick out of your *** and just play the game.

To be honest I miss the old menu-style RPGs, I love picking commands from a menu to determine actions. Hell even FFXII had that to a degree. I would love to see a good, turn based, menu style rpg for the PC.

I didn't read through everything everyone else said, but thought I should say this.
there are usually 3-6 choices.

2 upper, 2 middle and 2 lower.

When making choices, the upper ones are usually the ones that give Paragon, and the lowers give renegade (at least from my experience with the game).

Tales of Vesperia is fantastic by the way. I'm on my second game.

There are only two endings to mass effect (and you can see them both regardless of your actions in the game; it's literally a single choice at the end), you can't build your characters wrong, and the only character that you can lose is wrex on virmire.



It's small enough that it's completely inconsequential. You'll have so many paragon or renegade points at the end that your background ends up meaning less than nothing.



All of the classes are good, and the class change on the moon tells you exactly what you're getting afterwards. The only thing that your class will affect is the achievements that you can get with the weapons and talents.

I think that if you try to stick with this game and force yourself to avoid this mentality of perfection that you will have a good experience with it. Really, you're not even past eden prime.

Edited, Dec 5th 2008 12:42pm by Pensive

It's not a mentality, it's a real flaw. If I set out to take a jaunty jog through the forest and you stabbed me in the leg then it's not a mentality that you've hurt my jogging experience. I can't pretend the throbbing pain away. I can still enjoy a walk through the forest, but I'd enjoy it a lot more if you didn't stab me in the leg.

I might still like Mass Effect, and it is probably still a good game. But it would be a much, much better game if these problems were fixed.

Edited, Dec 5th 2008 2:13pm by Allegory

I don't get annoyed by how severe problems are. I get annoyed by how severe they are in comparison to how easily they are fixed. The U.S. economy isn't doing so great right now and I am fine with that because there is very little I can do about it. But if someone had a magic button that could instantly fix it and chose not to press it I would go insane. It bugs me when developers take extra effort to implement features of poor game design. The only things the developers had to do to make Mass Effect a better game was to not take the time and spend the money to make it a worse game.

Edited, Dec 5th 2008 2:53pm by Allegory

I do understand what you're saying, but what i'm saying is that those problems didn't bother me when I was playing the game. In some cases, they added to the experience, like with wrex.

It might just not be the game for you, but if you stick it out and try to ignore the mako (the mako is imo, the only real consistent problem with the game) you'll explore a vast galaxy with a good story and pretty damn cool characters. I'd suggest waiting until you get past the citadel (it's kinda anticlimactic compared to eden prime, but the game picks up again immediately afterward). Normally I'd suggest going something like...

eden > citadel > blue chick (dawwwww) > all availible sidequests > plant world > virmire > cold world > other sidequests > end

Really the immediate post-citadel part might overwhelm you, but the galaxy isn't as big as it first seems. There is about one explorable planet per system.

Edited, Dec 5th 2008 8:53pm by Pensive

Actually if you don't like missing stuff then tales of vespi might not be good either. There are no irreversible choices, but there is a metric ton of **** to do, and a lot of the sidequests can be missed. I like the story though; it's not good versus evil: it's chaotic good versus lawful good.

Isn't it out for PC now? I'd assume that's what he's playing it on if so.

Apparently you didn't read, you just skimmed. It's not my fault that the game is poorly designed. I'm sorry I hurt your fanboi feelings.