Ismail

You're back! Yay

BTW why do most men I know play as Female Shepard??? I still need to find a woman playing as Male Shepard ;-)

It's the voice acting.

I mean, Mark Meer went from "The fate of this fool has been sealed!" to the main character like, overnight... and it shows.

Not the point. The point is characterization on release, or "canon characterization" if you wish. Sure, BG2 has a bunch of awesome mods, but they're as canon as the average doujinshi is. And the lack of modding tools for ME I already pointed out.

The story of the saga:

Oh no! You're an orphan!

Oh no! There are evil people who want you, and you specifically, dead!

Oh no! You're the son of an important, evil figure!

Oh no! You can't advance the plot without falling into a trap so obvious that my grandchildren saw right through it, and I'm not even a father yet!

Oh no! You had a major bad thing happen to you and now you have to suffer the indignities from the game engine, having to comply with the ludricous rules of some dolts you could overpower with a flick of your wrist!

Oh no! You have to go on a badly contrived and rushed quest to get to the real bad guy!

And the last Oh no! You have to choose to become an eeeeeeevil bastard with power, or a good gimp that gets kicked around by puppies!


... You know, I just realized that, while intending to summarize the plot of BG saga, I ALSO summarized both Kotor games. Go figure.


And let's not forget the saga's NPCs, who are just as stereotypical and shallow as those of ME, and sometimes more so, in BG2. In BG1, none of them have any depth and they're about as much "persons" as the party in IWD. True, a FEW of them have actual depth in the second installment. And Imoen COULD have a lot of depth, but we never see it. It is true that the sheer number of joinable NPCs is, obviously, much bigger in BG than in ME, which also means you HAVE to play through several times if you want to get the idea of them all. Yes, BG has, as a tactical combat RPG, more replayability value; BG2 adds the value of having different NPC-related plots (some of which are absolutely ridiculous) to that.


Now, you also mention PS:T and I'll agree readily: yes, that was, as an RPG, a superior game to... well, just about everything. You also bring out Fallout - great games, but total 0 NPC character depth, or, well, 0.1 for Sulik and Myron. Fallout 3 is just weak - it's pretty and with a good system, but it's... empty. There's nothing to do in the whole wide Capital Wasteland and the ending is worse than "Jurassic Park" on SNES. Well and Warcraft doesn't really count in this case, because, y'know, totally different genre. Oh, and Morrowind is like single-player World of Warcraft.

So... out of those games you listed, only PS: T is clearly, undeniably superior to Mass Effect on the categories you brought out.


Edit: OOh, didn't notice your second post the first time around.

You post out "a plot the average Joe would understand". Well.... tbh, I'm not opposed to complex plots and complex settings. But it's also worth noting that PS: T was... well, not QUITE a commercial failure, but it sure didn't make Interplay stinkin' rich either.

Okay, grats, NC Croft. You managed to drag me out from under my rock where I've spent the last 4 or whatever years.


I don't know what exactly you play, generally, but I can tell (by your presence here) you play, or at least have played extensively, Baldur's Gate II.

You critize the story of Mass Effect, while that of BG2 is weaker; you criticize NPCs, while those of BG2 are almost all weaker; you critize the aliens, while every single non-human race in BG 2 (well, DnD and fantasy in general, tbh) is the personification of one or two human traits, and nothing more. The only fair criticism is the weakness of side-quests, while the main quest-line in Mass Effect is far stronger than in... hmm, just about any Bioware game I've played, to be honest. Well, and also about the Mass Effect combat system (vs BG2 combat system) if you suck at controlling the character personally and want the computer to roll things for you. As for the "hollywood movie" comparison... Well, BG2 would be an Uwe Boll movie or something, honestly.

The criticism in the article, however, is fairly valid. There's no modding tools or anything, only one DLC etc. Not so sure what to think of patches, because I never ran into any sorts of problems with Mass Effect, except a few times when I didn't get to sleep before half past 11 am or so

but... Mass Effect "a failure"? Uhh... No? The only "failure" about it was that it wasn't released for PC right away, the same idiocy that currently plagues Fable 2, for example. But Mass Effect was easily the most enjoyable sci-fi RPG in the past years - yes, better than Fallout 3, sadly.