id like to throw to that bag witcher trilogy, cp77 and expedition 33. Not the same impact because i was older, so my priorities were vastly different but those games also can leave a mark.
Never played W1 or 2 but agree on the other three, all fantastic. Others for me would be the OG Deus Ex and Final Fantasy X impact-wise, but honestly none quite on the level of ME for some reason.
that reason is simple for me, size of world U are "saving". It was epic/galactic in scale, rest are great but local in their scope.
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u/XGC75i5-6500+Z170A, MSI R9-390, 8GB 2600M/C16 DDR4, SATA 850 Evo5h ago
This is why ME3 is the best in the trilogy for me. ME1 introduced the scale of the problem, ME2 introduced subversion and increased the depth of the character relationships and ME3 leveraged those relationships to give the conclusion true meaning.
It's not enough to defeat universe's malevolent apex predator. You need a reason to do it, and that's what Mass Effect is all about.
I've played 3 so much Kai Leng just kinda slides right off my brain now, his presence no longer registers. But every once in a while a neuron gets fired again when he's on screen and I just sigh.
I hate it because I think he's not actually that far from being a decent character. The main issue I have with him is how he's treated as this hot shot rival to Shepard, but I just have such a hard time really buying a single guy as an equal to Shep on the battlefield. If instead he was the only one who saw himself as a rival to Shep but everyone else just saw him as this cockroach that's tough to kill, but fundamentally will always just be a nuisance.
And if we're min maxing getting Kai Leng to a shit character to a mildly interesting one, just change the one scene where TIM is suprised he wasn't able to beat Shep to TIM just not being suprised at all.
Idk, Kai Leng is just such an outlier in a series with otherwise really solid characters all around.
The easy thing to do would have been for Kai Leng to instead be whoever was left behind on Virmire, rebuilt from the ground up like Shepherd was after orbital re-entry. Gives a character, background, conflict, drama, the cybernetics are why they're an equal to Shep...
IIRC, a lot of the original outrage was because the lead dev very clearly said that it would NOT have an "A, B, C" ending, and then that's exactly what it ended up having.
it wasn't even an a b c ending. its was basically "blue A" "green A" and "red A" ending. and most of the ending didn't even make sense it seems like they wrote everything up till right before you get to the star baby thing with some degree of sense and cohesion, and then they just used a random word generator to spit ball ideas that had nothing to do with the rest of the story after that.
Wasn't there some sort of rumors about them having to rewrite the original ending from scratch last minute because parts of it got leaked? All I clearly remember from the time is that marauder shields tried to warn us and we killed him
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u/LuNoZzyInno3D RTX 4070 Super | i7-12700F | 32GB DDR4 3200mhz5h ago
Right after release as the ending drama was starting to ramp up one of the devs posted that they tanked the ending intentionally and killed Shepard so that there would be no feasible way to bring him back and have EA puppet Shepard and put him in everything for the next decade. They ended up having to quickly delete it because I assume some consequences found their way to them but I think memory of it got drowned out by the overwhelming amount of feedback the ending was receiving anyway. Looking back on it now I think they were right, the journey was fun and Shepard remains untarnished.
I tried giving Andromeda another shot after sinking another like 500 hours into the original trilogy. Didn't make it past the tutorial. It's fucking baffling how badly they mangled pretty much every single aspect of the gameplay.
Tbh I don't care about the movement in mass effect at all. The best parts of the original trilogy was the feeling of actually leading your squad and the more tactical aspects of the gameplay. Andromeda butchered all of those things beyond recognition.
Wtf are you talking about, you were leading your squad in Andromeda. Okay, you couldn't use their skills, but that had always been a minor feature, especially in ME3.
And tactical aspects? The games had always been action-rpgs, not something like XCOM or BG3.
Okay, you couldn't use their skills, but that had always been a minor feature, especially in ME3.
See maybe it's just me, but that's the part I disagree. In my opinion this is a huge part of the gameplay loop and essentially required on insanity. At the very least, it makes your life a lot easier. Like you'll do a lot better in 2 if you can coordinate which abilities you have on standby to deal with defenses/focus powers on one specific target over letting your guys do whatever they want. And in 3, coordinating priming/detonating abilities let's you increase your damage output significantly compared to doing everything yourself. Plus adds some more thoughts to who you bring and how you spec their abilities.
You're right that the tactical stuff is not a huge aspect of Mass Effect. But to me that crumb of tactics in the gameplay and squad/character coordination is what elevated the original trilogy to just a third person shooter, to one of the most consistently enjoyable third person shooter I've ever played. So removing even a few of those mechanics ends up having a much bigger impact on the gameplay experience.
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u/tentegesszmeges 7h ago
even with that botched ending i will remember ME trilogy /with all DLCs, andromeda no included/ as best player experience I've had in gaming.