Destiny IS Mass Effect?

[Danny Dowling]

Except that one of the original RPGs, Final Fantasy I (and II and III, actually) all feature nameless, personality-less heroes plonked into the world with no real history or backstory to call upon.

Character development done right: Ni No Kuni. Yeah there's a lot of dialogue sometimes but it's generally split up but hours of actual game play and strategy with monsters and stuff.

Character development done wrong: Mass Effect, chatting for 70% of the game (that isn't an exaggeration either). Mass Effect is like a social sim with a side of underwhelming sci-fi shooting.

And don't ever "duhh" me your stupid little boy, it's quite rude and as you might have realised from feeling the need to call you a stupid little boy, I've taken some offense to it.

Most video game RPGs aren't RPGs because the actual role-playing aspect is not there. Video game RPGs mainly just copy the combat and leveling from RPGs and leave out the role-playing. Bioware and Obsidian are one of the few developers that actually try to implement role-playing into their games. Most JRPGs like the ones you've mentioned are basically adventure games when you take away the combat aspect. The characters in those games have completely set dialogue that you can't change or influence and you can't make any story related decisions either.

1) I bet that I'm older than you just from the fact you've called me a stupid little boy.
2) What's with people and getting offended? There is literally nothing you can say to me that will offend me because the whole concept itself is rather stupid.

Spoiler

"I don't take offense to things, therefore neither should you. and here is a quote from an educated man to back this."
No. Everyone is different.

I don't think you quite hold the influence enough in this business to call out games that are known as RPG's for not being that. You're playing a role, the role of the adventurers is to get from A to B with a crap load of stuff in the middle. Having conversations with NPCs for the purpose of relationship development is not a necessary part of role playing. And that's really the main issue; you're confusing relationship developmentation with role playing. I've played D&D, you don't need to build relationships with any NPCs at all.

Also, actually, there was never any point where I was against the conversations as a thing you do, the thing that I was highlighting was the sheer volume of it. I don't mind decent story or time spent building up to the next big thing, but the amount of time stood around talking outstayed its welcome.

Also let's look at something like Kindgom's of Amalur. Loads of running around killing things, loads of levelling and upgrading and getting items, and time spent talking to people either befriending or making enemies. That's how you do it right.

I know there's this weird cult thing about Mass Effect where any negatives have to be met with "duhhh" and other ridiculous justifications for the slop that it actually is ones the novelty of having a hot Shepard wears off. But this isn't the place to throw out that pointless drivel.

 

[Netrigan]

In fairness, Mass Effect cribbed a lot of its basic plot from Halo. Ancient civilizations building massive structures, external threat trying to over-run the galaxy etc.

All of which is cribbed from acres and acres of science fiction. There's this one guy who keeps going off about Watchmen ripping off an episode of The Outer Limits, but it's easy enough to find a dozen or so versions of the same bit dating back to the 30s, which was just a sci-fi twist on an even older story.

New ideas are few and far between. Always have been.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

"I don't take offense to things, therefore neither should you. and here is a quote from an educated man to back this."
No. Everyone is different.

I don't think you quite hold the influence enough in this business to call out games that are known as RPG's for not being that. You're playing a role, the role of the adventurers is to get from A to B with a crap load of stuff in the middle. Having conversations with NPCs for the purpose of relationship development is not a necessary part of role playing. And that's really the main issue; you're confusing relationship developmentation with role playing. I've played D&D, you don't need to build relationships with any NPCs at all.

Also, actually, there was never any point where I was against the conversations as a thing you do, the thing that I was highlighting was the sheer volume of it. I don't mind decent story or time spent building up to the next big thing, but the amount of time stood around talking outstayed its welcome.

Also let's look at something like Kindgom's of Amalur. Loads of running around killing things, loads of levelling and upgrading and getting items, and time spent talking to people either befriending or making enemies. That's how you do it right.

I know there's this weird cult thing about Mass Effect where any negatives have to be met with "duhhh" and other ridiculous justifications for the slop that it actually is ones the novelty of having a hot Shepard wears off. But this isn't the place to throw out that pointless drivel.

Stephen Fry is a comedian. The point is "being offended" is meaningless as all it boils down to is that you didn't like what someone said, that's it.

I never said anything about relationship development, and most of Mass Effect's conversations aren't building relationships either. You are defined as a person in real life by what you say and do, same thing with characters in fiction. If you take away the saying aspect, you're just left with the doing aspect, which can only characterize somebody so much. Most of a character's personality comes from what he/she says. It's about character building/development of your character, not NPC relationship building per se.

An RPG is not supposed have LOADS of killing enemies (that's like every fucking genre already; shooters, hack and slash, etc.). That's the main problem with video game RPGs, too much combat. You find yourself fighting more than anything and the combat is usually lackluster so why should I play an RPG when I can play an action/combat game and have better combat? If I want to play a shooter, I wouldn't play Mass Effect, I'd play a shooter. Also, RPGs don't require leveling either, there's plenty of 1-shot RPGs out there with no experience. And, once you reach max level, the game doesn't stop being an RPG because there's no leveling.

 

[BloodRed Pixel]

Destiny derives more or less losely from Halo, which derives quite diretly from Marathon - Bungie's big time game, and they pondered on that 'set' ever since.

If the Traveler from Destiny will not somehow be Durandal/Tycho I'll eat my shoes.

 

[XX Y XY]

Mass Effect IS a blatant rip off of Star Control 2... And a bit of Star Control 3... but mostly 2. It just gets away with it because Star Control 2 / Ur-Quan Masters is a lesser heard of title. Shame since it's the superior game by far. Which should be obvious since it's the best video game ever period. ME has a few things in common with several other Sci-fi games but play SC2 and you'll realize where the real inspiration for ME comes from. You can download the game for free at this site. http://sc2.sourceforge.net/downloads.php The original devs, Toys for Bob (Skylanders) released the game as open source.

 

[DarthUsopp]

The thread name made me think this was about some fan theory how Destiny and Mass Effect take pace in the same universe. But on topic, I'd agree with the people saying that the similarities are not due to one ripping off the other, but both drawing from te same wider culture.

 

[Danny Dowling]

"I don't take offense to things, therefore neither should you. and here is a quote from an educated man to back this."
No. Everyone is different.

I don't think you quite hold the influence enough in this business to call out games that are known as RPG's for not being that. You're playing a role, the role of the adventurers is to get from A to B with a crap load of stuff in the middle. Having conversations with NPCs for the purpose of relationship development is not a necessary part of role playing. And that's really the main issue; you're confusing relationship developmentation with role playing. I've played D&D, you don't need to build relationships with any NPCs at all.

Also, actually, there was never any point where I was against the conversations as a thing you do, the thing that I was highlighting was the sheer volume of it. I don't mind decent story or time spent building up to the next big thing, but the amount of time stood around talking outstayed its welcome.

Also let's look at something like Kindgom's of Amalur. Loads of running around killing things, loads of levelling and upgrading and getting items, and time spent talking to people either befriending or making enemies. That's how you do it right.

I know there's this weird cult thing about Mass Effect where any negatives have to be met with "duhhh" and other ridiculous justifications for the slop that it actually is ones the novelty of having a hot Shepard wears off. But this isn't the place to throw out that pointless drivel.

Stephen Fry is a comedian. The point is "being offended" is meaningless as all it boils down to is that you didn't like what someone said, that's it.

I never said anything about relationship development, and most of Mass Effect's conversations aren't building relationships either. You are defined as a person in real life by what you say and do, same thing with characters in fiction. If you take away the saying aspect, you're just left with the doing aspect, which can only characterize somebody so much. Most of a character's personality comes from what he/she says. It's about character building/development of your character, not NPC relationship building per se.

An RPG is not supposed have LOADS of killing enemies (that's like every fucking genre already; shooters, hack and slash, etc.). That's the main problem with video game RPGs, too much combat. You find yourself fighting more than anything and the combat is usually lackluster so why should I play an RPG when I can play an action/combat game and have better combat? If I want to play a shooter, I wouldn't play Mass Effect, I'd play a shooter. Also, RPGs don't require leveling either, there's plenty of 1-shot RPGs out there with no experience. And, once you reach max level, the game doesn't stop being an RPG because there's no leveling.

whether or not there is should ever be offense taken ever is a matter for a different thread.

As I've already said and yet you've failed to address; the conversations aren't the issue, it's the volume of it. But okay just give a long post instead that'll do good to fortify your point instead.

If you spend all your time character building for a small trickle of a moment putting that character building to good use, well what's the point?

Oh so an RPG is not supposed to have loads of enemy killing? The fact is that for most RPG's it's a necessary thing in order to take advantage of other things that RPG's have like levelling systems and to get newer/stronger items.

So you think the industry is putting games out that aren't true RPG's and I think Mass Effect wastes too much time being Coronation Street. Best to just leave it at that.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

As I've already said and yet you've failed to address; the conversations aren't the issue, it's the volume of it. But okay just give a long post instead that'll do good to fortify your point instead.

If you spend all your time character building for a small trickle of a moment putting that character building to good use, well what's the point?

Oh so an RPG is not supposed to have loads of enemy killing? The fact is that for most RPG's it's a necessary thing in order to take advantage of other things that RPG's have like levelling systems and to get newer/stronger items.

So you think the industry is putting games out that aren't true RPG's and I think Mass Effect wastes too much time being Coronation Street. Best to just leave it at that.

The volume of fighting is an issue with most RPGs as they just end up being lackluster action games because the majority of the game is sub-par combat. I never found the volume of conversations to be a problem in Mass Effect, I even did most of the option conversations as well. You need a certain amount volume so that certain moments have that impact like shooting a beloved team member in the back in ME3 wouldn't have nearly had the impact as the character wouldn't have been beloved then. I MADE THAT DECISION to shoot the character in the back, that's the big difference. Whereas in a JRPG, every cutscene is exactly the same for every player no matter what.

Kingdoms of Amalur had way too much combat, that's pretty much all you did in that game was fight, fight, fight. It actually had pretty decent combat though, unlike most RPGs. You can build an RPG around not fighting enemies quite easily. You can make an RPG platformer where you level up your platforming abilities and skills. There's many different ways to gain experience. Like I said before, there doesn't even need to be experienced gained as you can start an RPG as a character at their peak and their stats, abilities, skills, etc. actually drop (making due with your gained smarts that come from experience vs your physical ability like an athlete in the later stage of his career). The problem is you think an RPG is can only be a very certain type of game when, in fact, it can be just about anything. An RPG doesn't even have any required gameplay mechanics that it must have.

 

[BrotherRool]

The middle one is the only one that means much to me. The sentinel was a super generic design when it was used in ME3, I'm pretty sure they listed it whole from somewhere else. I've seen the whole thing, beam weapons included, before.

And the husks are just zombies. They move like zombies and act like zombies. Tech zombies aren't new either.

The collectors I'm more intersted in. The flat heads could just come from the insect design, but the head and the eyes? Apparently they were based on electron microscope images of insects, so it seems like an original idea. I wouldn't be surprised if Destiny ripped it off

 

[Trunkage]

If anything, what little I've seen of the game's multiplayer reminded me of ME3's multiplayer. A small team of players fighting hordes of monsters with a boss monster every now and then, in a sci-fi setting. Titan sounds like a vanguard with nova and shield. The warlock reminds me of an adept. And Hunter has some hints towards an engineer.

That being said, everything's been done before. So it's not THAT surprising this game looks like others.

Yes but ME3 multiplayer was fun, unlike most other multiplayers. I can't even pinpoint why (except I'm more of a PvE than PvP.)

The first aliens ever discussed was apparently a student of Copernicus. Everything since could be classed as derivative