Further to the Normandy ambience video link I posted in the Homework Help thread (btw Kay there are plenty more available from the same channel), I just remembered one of my biggest *chills* moments from my first ME playthrough: the moment in ME2 when Shepard is back on the Normandy after the crew are abducted. It sounded so wrong. I hadn't noticed the crew's chatter and movement sound until suddenly the ship was super empty.
People making posts about how it's 'Joker's fault Shepard died' and I just want to scream. I mean yes, he was desperately trying to save the ship, but given that we get to play a level where he is physically incapable of running, the fact that Shepard is shown having to drag him with Joker's legs not working makes me think that maaaaaaaaaybe that little 'I was born with glass bones and paper skin' thing was like. Relevant. Just a little. It's so aggravating because there's even a whole mission about hunting out the dogtags of the people who died. Bioware could have, at any point, just vented Shepard into space without a heroic save right before. The ones who killed Shepard were not the VS who sassed them into trying to leave or Joker for being too broken to run, but the fucking Collectors who shot the Normandy in the first place.
@PRelations it's especially awful because Joker canonly feels responsible for her death and it eats him up for at least all of ME3. Shep has to basically absolve him and confront him so he can let it go. let's not blame him please :// While moving is harder for him, i'm not sure it's so much the fact that Joker would have trouble leaving but that this ship is his freedom and his life. he's an amazing pilot and a cripple and being an amazing pilot gives him freedom that he could never have without The Normandy. The Normandy is a part of Joker even more than it's a part of Shepard, of course he can't bring himself to leave. I haven't seen people blaming the VS but that just seems so ridiculous. i can't even see the justification for it.
So uh. How about that Andromeda trailer at E3? (I am genuinely a little worried about the state of this game tbh.) Spoiler: the trailer Spoiler: bonus SUPER UNCANNY VALLEY asari
A lot of people seem to be concerned about the state of MEA. I'm not sure what to think, but I definitely understand people's concerns. If it's mediocre, then I figure I'll just write a great big fix-it fic :D The firs 2/3's of that asari are adorable, then the really sudden face change is so bizarre. Hopefully it'll look better in the scripted scenes.
Yeah, it's not the overall quality of the game I'm worried about, it's the possibility of it being stuck in development purgatory for the rest of my life (or until they officially drop the game altogether). Constantly cutting with NASA clips, never really talking about what they're planning for plot, cutting down the promises until it's looking less and less like their original ideas (playable alien races > humans only playable, but new aliens! > well have some krogan and asari I guess) is... worrying? This is like, year three or four with a ME:A trailer that tells us NOTHING and I'm worried. I think the eyepaint is what really makes the asari so jarring though. You go from mostly purple lower face (which is detailed) to a dark blue head (which is less detailed) with this abyss of black between them where all the details on the eyes get eaten up, so it stops feeling like one face with a gradient of color, and ends up feeling like three faces spliced together. Fingers crossed it was just a bit of a bad point to cut in the cinematic though.
hm. I guess I can see why we would be worried about it getting stuck in dev hell, but ... i dunno. i'm hopeful. the trailer still gave me chills, and the hints of story sound awesome. (but then I am an eternal optimist.)
There'd been discussion wrt to dev tweets and the like about ME4 for about two years before it was named. That's when a lot of the speculation was happening-- Bioware made it pretty clear they wanted to continue the story, they just weren't 100% on how that was going to happen. fakeedit: Yeah, it looks like this has been openly in the works since 2012, developed on the Frostbite engine alongside Inquisition.
More stuff about Andromeda! I am more hopeful now than I was yesterday, though I'm still puzzled by EA's decisions on the E3 floor. Why they have never managed a decent presentation, the world may never know.
Yeah... I just sort of shrug and say, it's EA. I like a lot of what we're hearing from the team. I know most of it is just vague crap, but i'm excited that they're trying to avoid just having Shep 2.0. And focusing on a character driven story would be great. ME3 is my favorite because we got to see so much of the strain of the war on Shep and the crew. I know some people didn't like it because it sort of limited how they played the character, but to me it felt organic and made me feel closer to canon Shep than I do to any of my DA PCs. Because with the possible exception of Hawke, all their internal struggles and sads and ptsd are just in my head, where as we got what I felt was a gorgeous portrayal of that stress in ME3. But I am notorious for projecting all my own issues onto my OCs, so seeing a character who can easily be read to be dealing with depression, ptsd, suicidal thoughts, and STILL save the universe meant so much to me. I know it's a lot to ask, but I really hope they continue letting our PCs deal visibly with immense trauma.
Fave paragon ME1 quote to date: (On seeing the Thorian) "That does not look like any plant I've ever seen. This may be... problematic."
Callout Post for the Thorian doesn't check its non-plant passing privilage somehow makes clones with clothes nonconsentually dyed that Asari's skin mind controls people
Btw, for any of you who also like Hamilton, check out this fun blog! I may have queued most of that blog. Goodbye all five of my non-spambot followers
I've played this damn game three or four times through and every single time when Spoiler Shepard punches Saren on Virmire I make this face Spoiler: This dumb face
Yes hello I just recently started playing Mass Effect with my moirail (actually I've played about ten hours of Mass Effect before now but that wasn't nearly as interesting as this playthrough) The thing is, Moirail and I have both been in kinda depressive funks lately, so we decided to do a silly playthrough so we could have laughs. This may have been somewhat influenced by Monster Factory. We created Shepard Shepard. Spoiler: Terrifying faces He doesn't look too bad from the front, other than having serious resting bitch face. He constantly looks like you've just insulted his mother. And then he turns his head. Mass Effect isn't great with its customization sliders, but for some reason it will let you completely remove the cheeks, bones and all. We decided that Shep Squared is either a soldier from a long line of (potentially inbred) soldiers, or else was created by an alien to be a superior soldier. An alien that only had a vague idea of how human faces work. Shepard Shepard has serious heart eyes for Garrus. If we make it to Mass Effect 2 without dying of laughter, we're going to play on my computer so I can mod it so we can romance Garrus. Because we accidentally seriously started shipping them and got legitimately sad when we remembered Garrus isn't romanceable by males. I WILL UPDATE AS WE PLAY
