Do you think that the Mass Effect series has lost it's 'touch'?

[Sightless Wisdom]

No, it has not lost it's touch. ME2 won piles of awards for being incredibly well made and well received throughout the gaming community. This should be indication that the series still has lots of fans, myself among them, who think the trilogy has only improved as it's gone on. I'm looking forward to ME3 as are thousands of others, if it can live up to and even improve upon the past two games, it should be one of the best titles released in the past 10 years.

 

[MBergman]

Is it just me or don't you have to work really hard to lose one's touch in between 2 games?

 

[Richardplex]

Why are we having the argument about whether ME2 is a role-playing game or not again? Nobody can even agree what a role-playing game is in the first place.

I think that's the main part of Mass Effect, the story, how you fit into it, how you forge your destiny in it & the way you go about it, and the choices you make. All important parts of an RPG. So it is only logical (at least for me) that people would start discussing if these aspects have been lost throughout the sequel, and thus whether or not ME2 is an RPG and can lose these aspects. Personally, I think it's also silly because ME is as much RPG as any other non table-top WRPG.

 

[Smooth Operator]

EA wants the money, they don't give a shit what kind of game it is, if they could make money by selling you boxes filled with dog poop instead of games discs they would be doing that right now.

OT: Don't think Mass Effect found it's way yet, first one had great ideas but they were badly done, second one was well done but chopped off features until only the bare necessities remained, making it felt very wooden and mechanical.
Maybe the third one can bring it all together...

It looks like there are too many cooks at the broth again, noone with a clear picture what they are trying to do, mainly I blame EA because they don't give them time to create quality.

 

[spartandude]

After playing mass effect one and two as well as seeing almost everything to do with number 3, i wouldnt say its lost its touch but its feeling slightly numb, too much focus on action imo than on story

 

[Brandon237]

No, all they took out of ME2 that was a broken system of micro-management and an impossible inventory that could literally take hours of your game-time to sort. The rest was all improvements from there. And buying everything is less easy now, seriously, in ME1, I had at least 1 of EVERY LEVEL 5 WEAPON, ARMOUR OR MOD AND UP. EVERY ONE!

 

[stefman]

Personally, I don't think so; I enjoyed Mass Effect 1 & 2, and I am looking forward to ME3, but there has been a lot of buzz about how Mass Effect has lost it's RPG roots. Personally, Mass Effect I was a bit dreary and deep(in a good way!), and Mass Effect II has taken some of that depth away, but RPG elements were nver 'crucial' to me in an RPG, and if EA want it to be a hybrid, I say 'Why not?'.

Basically, what I'm trying to ask people on the escapist is why all the cynicism towards Mass Effect losing it's RPG elements?

EDIT: and has it lost it's touch?

not at all. the trend is that they are improving. lets hope it continues.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

Nope. ME 2 was better than the first game on every conceivable level.

I don't give a shit if I lose the ability to carry around eleventy trillion tonnes of arbitrary weapon mods.

It's not as though the amount of powers or abilities was cut down as well, or the ability to perform them cut down to small windows instead of being able to performed whenever you want. It's not like the story suffered in any way, and wasn't padded 80% by 'Rounding up the gang' and only 20% of it actively being stopping the enemy and doing what you had intended to do by undermining and defeating them. It's not like the massive amount of characters lead to much less depth and interaction for them individually so we were left with more hollow and short stories and arcs for each of them.

ME2 was good, but you can't just blanket it as being better that quickly. It had its problems. Some of the things that were cut were not for the better. While the tightening of the gunplay was good, the lack of selection between weapons, the chance to customize them, and the ability to use you powers and have more of them available to you in combat was also lost. I felt the story had also suffered during this time. While it was nice to see some new, more urban centres of the galaxy other then the Citadel, such as Omega, or Illium, the characters suffered I felt. While I felt that every character in the first game had been solid, well defined, and interesting (exception of course to Kaiden), I felt a lot more in the second game were just there for padding and didn't get the chance to be explored nearly with nearly as much depth as before. Jacob and Samara were probably the worst offenders, but Grunt didn't hold anything on Wrex, and Jack and Miranda each had a number of problems with them as well.

So to pretty well sum up, don't say that it's completely better then what came before it. Some of the things it lost were the most valuable. While the Mako was never that fun to drive, it at least allowed for some exploration of planets, and the ability to find side quests and stories. Do you really feel that Planet Scanning was a better replacement for that?

I can, and I shall.

I haven't touched ME 1 since I've played ME 2. I thought the characters were better, the world felt more alive and the loyalty missions were the main part of the game.

It's all opinion at the end of the day

 

[SpaceBat]

Yes, if you import a character from Mass Effect, you get a whole bunch of resources, but you still have to do so mining at some point; less than if you started from scratch, but some none the less; and it's still boring. Also I can't imagine how anyone could possibly think that a mineral scanning minigame could be a good alternative to driving a tank/ATV/APC-thing around. I mean c'mon, who didn't enjoy drivin' around doing doughnuts on alien planets? Now if only there had been more variety in the alien planets...

True, but is 15 minutes of mining really that awful? Sure, it's not enjoyable at all, with the only exception being mining on Uranus twice, but it honestly isn't as bad as the things a lot of other games make you do (Witcher with the fetchquests, RDR with gathering flowers and hunting huge amounts of animals and so on) as long as you do import a save game.

So I understood already why people don't like it, but not why people complain so often about it. And yeah, the Mako was indeed more fun, but it did become incredibly boring after having cleared a few planets and it takes many, many hours of roaming the same lifeless planets over and over again for you to do and find everything you need to do/find, compared to the 20 minute max amount of time needed to mine enough resources to buy everything.

 

[hardpixelrain]

I'm actually looking forward to it quite a bit. The branching paths for the skills seems to be making up for the lack of traditional RPG elements in the second one, but toning down the tedium that the RPG elements brought to the first game.

Honestly I didn't really enjoy the first Mass Effect. It went too over the top with unnecessary complexity that didn't add much to the game. I eventually just auto-leveled up everything. The level design as well was below par for both a shooter and RPG. It was a slog to play through, with interesting parts being far between points.

 

[inFAMOUSCowZ]

No, not even close partly because the games are great. Also there has only been 2 games, so ho could it lose its touch already.

 

[DustyDrB]

Mass Effect 2 was a massive improvement on my third most favorite game of all time (ME2 has the #1 spot for me). I'm keeping myself in the dark on ME3 news, having total faith in BioWare (they've never let me down). And I will be placing my pre-order of the Collector's Edition of ME3 tomorrow.

So no, it hasn't lost its touch. It's just hitting its stride.

 

[Zydrate]

I'll let you know after ME3. While I do agree ME2 did kind of god "sideways" in regards to the story and lore... I still enjoyed it and it wasn't a waste of my time.

 

[Nfritzappa]

I think the fans are the ones losing touch. ME3 isn't even out yet.

 

[JediMB]

From the looks of it, Rage will have more RPG mechanics (choices, customizable equipment, etc.) than Mass Effect 2 did, and id Software are trying to be very clear about that it is a First-Person Shooter and not an RPG.

I find that kind of funny.

But I'm looking forward to Mass Effect 3 immensely. The more in-depth looks at the E3 demo made me very happy about the level-up and weapon management systems, the improved action looked fantastic, the scenarios look like they have a lot more variety to them, and the confirmation of added romance options made many of my friends very happy.

 

[Pierce Graham]

I believe it's too early to tell, but I didn't enjoy Mass Effect 2 as much as I did the first. But hey, maybe the 3rd will be awesome. i hope so.

 

[Taham]

I don't think that Mass Effect has lost its touch, though it's hard to judge a series when that series consists of just two games.

 

[Pinkamena]

I hope they bring back some of the rpg elements of ME1. I really want to be able to customize my weapons and such... And more inventory stuff.

 

[Kryzantine]

I think the original Mass Effect never had a touch. The loot system was stupid and unnecessary, I didn't care enough to understand any of the alien races' back-stories, only a handful of choices actually mattered, and the whole gameplay experience was just passable. Yeah, it had a good story, but there's a reason a game is called a game, and Bioware was trying to be the snobby art-house directors[footnote]Note: I'm not calling all art-house directors snobby. Also, what I mean by this sentence is that Bioware was thinking that their game couldn't have good gameplay because they thought that it would "ruin the experience" or some other nonsense.[/footnote] of the video game world.

What interests me is that you said the gameplay wasn't good, yet never actually addressed what makes up 80% of the gameplay, which is Mako exploration and actual combat. Nor do I see any point in a game developer "driving down the gameplay" because it would "ruin the experience" - there is always a suspension of disbelief when it comes to gameplay interacting with the story. Actually, I'm a bit surprised you drive down the story - I think a story can make or break games, especially RPGs. Recognize that a story is more than a plot. The elements of a story include plot, atmosphere, character, style of narration or perspective; some of these elements are intertwined with the gaming experience itself, especially atmosphere. If you want an example of shooters that was significantly improved because of their atmosphere, see Bioshock, Metro 2033, System Shock 2, and the entire STALKER series. The point is that story is an integral part of the gameplay experience - you can have some amazing gameplay and have it go to shit if the story isn't good enough. Look at the COD campaigns if you want proof.

I thought the gameplay itself was quite good. Especially later on, once Shepard starts becoming more powerful, and once harder difficulties are unlocked, combat can become fairly entertaining. I am in the minority when I say I enjoyed the Mako, but that was more from being used to the movement controls thanks to the Halo Warthog. The backstories to some of the side missions and characters were interesting; not to all of them, but enough. Some choices mattered, some didn't, but it's hard to decide how good the choice system is considering ME3 hasn't come out yet, and we don't know how much the choices from the first two games actually matter in the third yet. So I can't judge that. But I thought that even though the game had a few flaws, it was still my favorite game that year. It stood up on its own.

Anyway, back to the OT, I think it depends on what we consider to be Mass Effect's touch. Sure, the sequel changed things up a bit, but if the game style is similar, then I don't see how its lost its touch.