My first thought when I saw the pic was 'who the fuck let that in a professional product?'. Bloody thing looks like it belongs on a geocities page.Grape_Bullion said:
Escapist Podcast: 036: Mass Effect 3 & Tali Stock Photos
- Thread starter The Escapist Staff
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I disagree with you guys about the Tali picture. It's a fucking main character for Christ sake...how can you not see that O_O She was supposed to be important enough to warrant the effort...but she wasn't even worth an hour or two in photoshop.
Edit: at least you addressed the weird question about the tali picture. >.>
Edit: at least you addressed the weird question about the tali picture. >.>
Does Shepard face look like a 5 minute photoshop hack job of Mark Vanderloo?Diana Kingston-Gabai said:
The clear difference is time. Yes Mark Vanderloo is used as a clear reference point and that's perfectly fine. Its fine because its not a 5-10 minute hack photoshop job.. that was still badly done.
There is a clear difference between the two.
Oooh, that would have been pretty cool actually.krellen said:
Or - they could have gotten one of the many, many fan-artists to draw it up, and then used a filter to make it look like a photo. I mean, there are some really good fan-arts of Tali's face, and the final photo looks a LOT like several of them. Hell, to get his or her version in ME3, I bet the fan artist chosen would have been willing to draw it for free. ^^
I totally would have. If I was any good at drawing, I mean.
I am! I hate Mark Vanderloo. Jackass. It's all his fault that my FemShep can't romance Tali!
... but admittedly I hate him for reasons that don't necessarily apply to your point.
Also, this:
Agreed. I mean, they clearly could have done better (see above) but... really, who cares? We have a basic idea of how she should look (that is, she has hair, certain facial markings, etc) so the way I see it, the shitty photo is just a "template" for all future Fan Art to be based on.Kristian Fischer said:
And there will be future fan art. Oh yes. ^^ THAT I am looking forward to.
25:40 "The combat is really challenging"The Escapist Staff said:
It doesn't help that 90% of that challenge comes from the A button never doing what you want it to. ME 3 would be playable if they put Run and Roll on a different button.
Or conversely ditch the Roll command all together.
Every one of my deaths on Insanity can be attributed to Shepard rolling away from cover like an idiot or failing to run away from a grenade if there's a flat wall to take cover on.
This is just a general question that I'd like answered, because Susan didn't bring anything like it up in the review. And no one else seems to be bothered by it.
Question
Did everyone in the podcast play either a straight Paragon or Renegade Shepard throughout the first two games?
Because I thought Mass Effect 3 was a travesty (I'm talking worse than Dragon Age 2) for the simple reason that there was no Neutral option. Bioware effectively killed 4 of my Shepards by not including that Neutral dialog response. (Thus robbing me of the conclusion to what must have been 300 hours of emotional attachment to these people I created. From ME 1 to 2 and now I can't take them into 3 with their personalities intact)
29:00
I'm the exact opposite of Susan. The end is what everything hinges on. Clannad and Lost were great, then they ended, and then they sucked.
And, unfortunately, the same thing happened with Mass Effect 3. Even worse Mass Effect 3 had the first two games riding on it. The final installment being as bad as it was I can't go back and enjoy the first two games any more because I know that is how the third act plays out. ME 3 wasn't just a disappointment in it's self, it tainted two of my favorite games in the process.
39:30
I wouldn't mind that actually. I'd look forward to a Mass Effect 4 where Shepard wakes up on the way back from the Omega 4 Relay and says "I just had this crazy dream where the Reapers invaded earth." It would be like Bioware saying "HA, we got you good, here's the real Mass Effect 3."
44:20
Showing Tali's face makes me question everyone at Bioware's judgment.
They had the opportunity to show her in ME 2 and they chose not to. Doubling back on that now is proof that they don't care about their own creative license.
Really this is the thing that bothers me most. I remember playin Mass Effect 1 and 2 multiple times to try out multiple different ways of playin. I literally can not do that in Mass Effect 3 because all 3 endings completely invalidate every single choice you have ever made in every single game before hand.Mikeyfell said:
This was a series that was touted for so long as a game where your choices mattered. The endin does not live up to that ideal and because of that it completely taints every single moment before then.
To point out a small thing that it seems no one else cares about...
I'd prefer MMOs to be less specialized because I hate forced multiplayer. And having role specific classes pretty much requires that you will have to group to play the game. Because a person who is completely a healer will not be able to do anything by themselves.
That being said, I don't play MMOs. Because I hate forced grouping. So I guess my opinion on the matter holds no weight.
I'd prefer MMOs to be less specialized because I hate forced multiplayer. And having role specific classes pretty much requires that you will have to group to play the game. Because a person who is completely a healer will not be able to do anything by themselves.
That being said, I don't play MMOs. Because I hate forced grouping. So I guess my opinion on the matter holds no weight.
This photo should be considered as easter egg, not as something official
It doesn't angers me, but rather disappoints that it was handled this way
But as I wrote already ME2&3 disappointing me in general
On the side note, are there finally Krogan and Turian females appearing in ME3?
It doesn't angers me, but rather disappoints that it was handled this way
But as I wrote already ME2&3 disappointing me in general
On the side note, are there finally Krogan and Turian females appearing in ME3?
No, even in ME1 and 2 I would always end up like 30/70 paragon to renegade. For instance, using a grenade that could instantly incapacitate the colonists at Zhu's Hope didn't seem out of character for my direct approach Shepard, despite being mostly renegade.Mikeyfell said:
We didn't mention it, but in The Secret World you can change your build of the skills you've unlocked at any time. You can actually save the skills and items into a template to quickly swap back an forth. So you can quite easily switch between something that might be better for grouping to something better for soloing as the need arises.Eric the Orange said:
What? Bioware fans getting all in a tiff over incredibly small issues? What is this world coming to?!
Look, I can pretty much guarantee you nobody is more creepily attached to Tali as a character in this thread more then I, and frankly, the picture isn't what I was expecting but I don't have a problem with it. It was obviously an afterthought, they reused the picture frame and animation from ME2, and the picture itself is pretty low-res. I'm sure Bioware was poised to leave her faceless throughout the entire series, but the fans demanded it, so the fans got it.
Also (this is a spoiler by the way), you only get the picture if you romance Tali AND allow her people to return to Rannoch where they can take their masks off with minimal risk, the picture was obviously taken there as a memento.
Just seriously people, how come every single aspect of this game sends you into a blind rage, I don't envy Bioware for having to deal with their fanbase.
Look, I can pretty much guarantee you nobody is more creepily attached to Tali as a character in this thread more then I, and frankly, the picture isn't what I was expecting but I don't have a problem with it. It was obviously an afterthought, they reused the picture frame and animation from ME2, and the picture itself is pretty low-res. I'm sure Bioware was poised to leave her faceless throughout the entire series, but the fans demanded it, so the fans got it.
Also (this is a spoiler by the way), you only get the picture if you romance Tali AND allow her people to return to Rannoch where they can take their masks off with minimal risk, the picture was obviously taken there as a memento.
Just seriously people, how come every single aspect of this game sends you into a blind rage, I don't envy Bioware for having to deal with their fanbase.
As a person who romanced Tali and wished it had been possible to do so from the first game, I think it would have been really cool if we had given a general picture of what the quarian look like without their suits and never let you look at what Tali specifically looks like.
As for whether I'd think the Tali picture is good, stock-photoness aside, I think it's alright. Other than confusing things about the sunset and how this picture was taken in the first place, she does look alien enough to be an alien. At least from the outside, she looks a bit more human than other races, but not much moreso than the asari. Although, the guy who mentioned that he imagined the quarian people to have short hair had a really good point.
....wait, hold it. Tali's blue in the picture? I didn't notice that. [looks up picture] Oh lord, why is she only blue around the edges?!?
As for the "changing the difficulty when you're having trouble" thing... I admit I did that once in Mass Effect 3, as detailed in the spoiler below. Also Mass Effect 2, I did turn the difficulty down once because I was playing it at 6 in the morning after playing it for nearly 10 hours, and I was TIRED. Freaking Praetorian.
As for whether I'd think the Tali picture is good, stock-photoness aside, I think it's alright. Other than confusing things about the sunset and how this picture was taken in the first place, she does look alien enough to be an alien. At least from the outside, she looks a bit more human than other races, but not much moreso than the asari. Although, the guy who mentioned that he imagined the quarian people to have short hair had a really good point.
....wait, hold it. Tali's blue in the picture? I didn't notice that. [looks up picture] Oh lord, why is she only blue around the edges?!?
As for the "changing the difficulty when you're having trouble" thing... I admit I did that once in Mass Effect 3, as detailed in the spoiler below. Also Mass Effect 2, I did turn the difficulty down once because I was playing it at 6 in the morning after playing it for nearly 10 hours, and I was TIRED. Freaking Praetorian.
So I was fighting the Reaper on foot with the guiding lazer, and I couldn't manage to get it to work. I died around thirty times before I just gave up and bumped it down to Narrative difficulty. I then avoided the [Reaper]Lazer of DOOM by walking back and forth. Not my proudest moment, but I wanted to keep playing the game. What was irritating is that I only died one other time in the whole game.....
Thank you for being a bastion of reason on this thread amid all the other crazed Talimancers. I romanced Tali, I care about her character and thought it was the best presented romance in Mass Effect, but I really couldn't imagine working myself into a frenzy over this.Gigatoast said:
I thought that BioWare handled the issue of mask/no mask pretty tastefully. I'm sure that they was fully aware that there were plenty of fans who wanted the mask to stay on. And that's why they didn't work her face into any of the romance scenes that both sides wanted to see in the game. They put her picture off to the side; it was there if you wanted to see it, BUT YOU DIDN'T HAVE TO SEE IT!
And, really, it's not a bad picture, either. I was happily satisfied with it. I think it does justice to the character. And, really, one of the main complaints I've heard is that she doesn't look "alien enough". People love talking about romancing Liara for that "true blue alien love", but aesthetically she no different from a human AT ALL except that she's blue and has head tentacles instead of hair. I'd say that Tali is even further from a human than Liara, or at least on the same level of alienness. SPOILER! Tali has different extremities and luminous eyes, along with those folds of skin that look like gills down her neck and upper chest. END SPOILER
Meh, it's just incredibly disappointing, to be honest.
Making her look too human-like isn't too much of an issue (though it really is completely unimaginative), it's the fact that the picture doesn't even blend in with the environment that it could be captured in. It's completely unrealistic in the Mass Effect universe and coupled with how lazily edited it was, that's the problem.
What matters is that this was a highly anticipated event from thousands of Mass Effect fans, and no time nor effort went into the resulting product. That's the problem. It gives off the impression that BioWare really don't give a crap for their fans, or even their own creations, and that main characters like Tali really don't mean much to them other than plot-fillers and money-makers.
That's why it's disappointing.
I also don't see how this does justice to the character or the Quarian race as a whole. Every major race in Mass Effect are of a humanoid structure, but none of them actually look like humans, they just resemble them in shape and form. Every race has very clear definitions... except Quarians, apparently, who look so much like humans that you may as well call them a human.
Whilst that's wholly possible (especially since none of us actually know what any real alien looks like, if they exist), it just doesn't go down too well with me. It reeks too much of an "easy way out" and it simply doesn't fit. We've got a plethora of variety when it comes to the other races, but Quarians are the uncreative lot? Blegh.
Even this would've been marginally better, if still somewhat unoriginal to my tastes (would love to know who created this piece though, it's bloody well-done):
http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2010/098/1/3/Tali_by_FruitLoop360.jpg
Making her look too human-like isn't too much of an issue (though it really is completely unimaginative), it's the fact that the picture doesn't even blend in with the environment that it could be captured in. It's completely unrealistic in the Mass Effect universe and coupled with how lazily edited it was, that's the problem.
What matters is that this was a highly anticipated event from thousands of Mass Effect fans, and no time nor effort went into the resulting product. That's the problem. It gives off the impression that BioWare really don't give a crap for their fans, or even their own creations, and that main characters like Tali really don't mean much to them other than plot-fillers and money-makers.
That's why it's disappointing.
I also don't see how this does justice to the character or the Quarian race as a whole. Every major race in Mass Effect are of a humanoid structure, but none of them actually look like humans, they just resemble them in shape and form. Every race has very clear definitions... except Quarians, apparently, who look so much like humans that you may as well call them a human.
Whilst that's wholly possible (especially since none of us actually know what any real alien looks like, if they exist), it just doesn't go down too well with me. It reeks too much of an "easy way out" and it simply doesn't fit. We've got a plethora of variety when it comes to the other races, but Quarians are the uncreative lot? Blegh.
Even this would've been marginally better, if still somewhat unoriginal to my tastes (would love to know who created this piece though, it's bloody well-done):
http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2010/098/1/3/Tali_by_FruitLoop360.jpg
