Things DA3 and Mass effect 3 did better then there past versions.

[Leoofmoon]

So when I do think about Bioware I do think there games did improve somewhat over time. Mass effects combat in the first game was just... horrible from my memory but its writing was vary tight and vary interesting as well had some good ideas going and I feel that improved a lot with each new version. Mass effect 2 was more loose and allowed you to go from place to place getting a deeper look into the characters and the world around you and ME3 I feel did even better at it. As well the combat (white adding roles I didn't like) I feel did feel improved in 2 and more or less stayed the same in 3. Making you gun selection smaller because why does a engineer need a sniper rifle and making the guns ammo based instead of cooled down.

The same goes with Dragon age. While I feel DA:O was amazing I do think DA2 improved some (Don't kill me yet) the combat become more involved yet also boring... but I do feel there writing was better. I did enjoy all the characters in DA2 and I can admit made me go though a few runs before finally stopping. Then DA3 comes along and I feel it is a mass improvement over the sires as a whole. Combat is much more improved and your powers feel powerful and you can pause to take a moment to pull off a tactical move. As well each class in the game felt useful unlike in 2 where it seemed like being a mage was the only good option. As well the writing seemed to want to flesh out the world more, Where in DA:O you learned more about the demon world in DA3 you look more into the world itself.

 

[Barbas]

Graphics, definitely. By gum, those were some harsh textures. The weapon variety was also a step forward in both ME3 and DA3, I thought. In Inquisition the world was certainly bigger, though some maps like the Hinterlands were considerably more sprawling than others to an almost bewildering degree. I can tell you that amount of wide open space was certainly welcome after several hours of tramping around Kirkwall. It even had goats and stuff living in it.

 

[Strazdas]

I havent played DA3 but i have played all 3 Mass Effects so ill comment on those. I think the overall theme design for ME3 was better than the first two games. It truly made me feel hopeless regardless of what i do. The theme started by the Shepard not being able to save the kid wasnt a one-off like it was in other games when we got thematic elements. I think that really helped get the narrative focused without removing choices. And i do think the ending played into that theme as well.

Combat was vastly improved over ME2 and especially ME1.

Graphics, definitely. By gum, those were some harsh textures.

I disagree. I think ME3 graphics was pretty much identical to ME2. They used same engine with same settings, they just used a bit more post processing crap that id rather turn off anyway. ME3 was shit level graphics for the year it released anyway, the engine that was never good to begin with was starting to show its teeth. It also kept those small enviroments with loading screens between them (though on an SSD the loading screens were just a few seconds) so no improvement there.

 

[Barbas]

I havent played DA3 but i have played all 3 Mass Effects so ill comment on those. I think the overall theme design for ME3 was better than the first two games. It truly made me feel hopeless regardless of what i do. The theme started by the Shepard not being able to save the kid wasnt a one-off like it was in other games when we got thematic elements. I think that really helped get the narrative focused without removing choices. And i do think the ending played into that theme as well.

Combat was vastly improved over ME2 and especially ME1.

Graphics, definitely. By gum, those were some harsh textures.

I disagree. I think ME3 graphics was pretty much identical to ME2. They used same engine with same settings, they just used a bit more post processing crap that id rather turn off anyway. ME3 was shit level graphics for the year it released anyway, the engine that was never good to begin with was starting to show its teeth. It also kept those small enviroments with loading screens between them (though on an SSD the loading screens were just a few seconds) so no improvement there.

Did it have as much horrible use of red and orange lighting (like on ME2 Omega and the Prison Ship?

 

[Strazdas]

I havent played DA3 but i have played all 3 Mass Effects so ill comment on those. I think the overall theme design for ME3 was better than the first two games. It truly made me feel hopeless regardless of what i do. The theme started by the Shepard not being able to save the kid wasnt a one-off like it was in other games when we got thematic elements. I think that really helped get the narrative focused without removing choices. And i do think the ending played into that theme as well.

Combat was vastly improved over ME2 and especially ME1.

Graphics, definitely. By gum, those were some harsh textures.

I disagree. I think ME3 graphics was pretty much identical to ME2. They used same engine with same settings, they just used a bit more post processing crap that id rather turn off anyway. ME3 was shit level graphics for the year it released anyway, the engine that was never good to begin with was starting to show its teeth. It also kept those small enviroments with loading screens between them (though on an SSD the loading screens were just a few seconds) so no improvement there.

Did it have as much horrible use of red and orange lighting (like on ME2 Omega and the Prison Ship?

Well it had plenty of colorful lighting, but then i Omega didnt stuck to me so perhaps i just dont notice it.

 

[votemarvel]

Personally I've always prefered the combat in the first Mass Effect compared to its sequels. As I've gone on about this before I shall try and be brief.

Yes you need to put points into your accuracy, is this a shocker for role playing games, but the enemies were tied to the same system and they could actually miss. Unlike in later games where they had pinpoint accuracy unless they were using heavy weapons.

Of course that wouldn't have been an issue if shield were still effective. They went from something that could actually protect you from enemy fire to being less effective than being wrapped in wet toilet paper.

You could use cover without the need to be pressed against it. You didn't stand straight up when exiting low cover (thereby exposing yourself to all their supernatural aims). Not once in Mass Effect have I ever entered cover when I didn't mean to, it's all too common in the two sequels for Shepard to fling themselves against an exposed wall if you go anywhere near it (thanks to the awesome button.)

Which fool thought turning ammo mods into powers was a good idea. My main Shepard using nothing but Cryo-Rounds throughout the first game but upon waking on the Lazarus Station knew instantly what thermal clips were but had forgotten how to use ammo mods.

In the first game all the classes could become godlike but in the next two the balance had swung heavily in favour of the gun based classes thanks to all enemies having protections (I play at the higher difficulty levels) and ME3 introducing a weight limit. Adepts were limited to hiding behind chest high walls and spamming biotic combos.

I could go on for a while but suffice to say I do like ME2 and ME3 but I enjoy playing ME1 the most, combat included.

So I don't end on a complete negative, I do like how they added a separate melee button for the sequels. The distance sensitive melee of the first game was a pain when faced with Creepers and charging Krogan.

I havent played DA3 but i have played all 3 Mass Effects so i'll comment on those. I think the overall theme design for ME3 was better than the first two games. It truly made me feel hopeless regardless of what i do. The theme started by the Shepard not being able to save the kid wasnt a one-off like it was in other games when we got thematic elements. I think that really helped get the narrative focused without removing choices. And i do think the ending played into that theme as well. .

I hated the kid, it was a shallow attempt to try and get the players to invest in the horrors of war without putting any real effort in.

For me it just didn't work. Especially if you were a colonist Shepard for example. You spend the game worrying about that one child you couldn't save but don't give a damn about your own home world. The only time it is mentioned is in a throwaway line in an optional DLC.

What about people who played completely ruthless Shepards, are we meant to believe that they would give a damn about a kid who was too stupid to come with the famous Commander Shepard.

I disagree. I think ME3 graphics was pretty much identical to ME2. They used same engine with same settings, they just used a bit more post processing crap that id rather turn off anyway. ME3 was shit level graphics for the year it released anyway, the engine that was never good to begin with was starting to show its teeth. It also kept those small environments with loading screens between them (though on an SSD the loading screens were just a few seconds) so no improvement there.

All three games used the same graphics engine. They all used the Unreal Engine 3.

Personally speaking I do think that Mass Effect 2 is the best looking of the three games, vanilla that is.

Install the texture mods that are about and all three can look fantastic.

Got to go fix a PC now, so will comment about Dragon Age later.

 

[votemarvel]

The same goes with Dragon age. While I feel DA:O was amazing I do think DA2 improved some (Don't kill me yet) the combat become more involved yet also boring... but I do feel there writing was better. I did enjoy all the characters in DA2 and I can admit made me go though a few runs before finally stopping. Then DA3 comes along and I feel it is a mass improvement over the sires as a whole. Combat is much more improved and your powers feel powerful and you can pause to take a moment to pull off a tactical move. As well each class in the game felt useful unlike in 2 where it seemed like being a mage was the only good option. As well the writing seemed to want to flesh out the world more, Where in DA:O you learned more about the demon world in DA3 you look more into the world itself.

The combat in DAII is the same as in Origins, just on the consoles you had to hammer a button in order to do basic attacks until they patched auto back in. You won't hear me argue that it is visually more appealing but it plays the same (minus the tactical camera.)

I found the story in DAII to be quite dull to be honest and it peaked in the second act. The final part of the game was where everyone turned into morons. A big part of why I didn't like the story were the time-jumps between chapters, I felt like I was missing out on really important moments in Hawke's life. Companion banter though was brilliant.

To be fair I must admit I've not completed Inquisition, I've barely reached outside the opening area but I really can't bring myself to continue. The controls are absolutely terrible, controller and keyboard & mouse both, they feel like a really bad auto-lockon shooter.

Controls have been gutted. I never controlled Origins or DAII with WASD, it was click to move or holding down LMB+RMB. The tactical camera is a horrible mess compared to its Origins incarnation.

For future games in the franchise Bioware really needs to decide if they want real time combat or stats based, the hybrid they have created isn't very good. Origins and DAII both realised that what works on a console doesn't work on the PC, and vice versa, yet Inquisition tried to create a system that worked on both and failed dramatically at it.

 

[Strazdas]

You could use cover without the need to be pressed against it. You didn't stand straight up when exiting low cover (thereby exposing yourself to all their supernatural aims). Not once in Mass Effect have I ever entered cover when I didn't mean to, it's all too common in the two sequels for Shepard to fling themselves against an exposed wall if you go anywhere near it (thanks to the awesome button.)

Oh yeah, the ME3 one specifically had awful cover movement that was forced on you way too often.

I hated the kid, it was a shallow attempt to try and get the players to invest in the horrors of war without putting any real effort in.

For me it just didn't work. Especially if you were a colonist Shepard for example. You spend the game worrying about that one child you couldn't save but don't give a damn about your own home world. The only time it is mentioned is in a throwaway line in an optional DLC.

What about people who played completely ruthless Shepards, are we meant to believe that they would give a damn about a kid who was too stupid to come with the famous Commander Shepard.

I didnt like the kid either, but i liked the thematic choice it represented and chose that to give a low-spoiler example since it happens in the very beginning tutorial mission. The salarian scientists for example or what Wrex did are better, but spoilerful, examples. Its not about horrors of war. Its about futility of Shepards efforts.

All three games used the same graphics engine. They all used the Unreal Engine 3.

Personally speaking I do think that Mass Effect 2 is the best looking of the three games, vanilla that is.

Install the texture mods that are about and all three can look fantastic.

Yes, which is what i said with the engine getting old by the time 3 hit.

edit: fixed quote shenanigans.

 

[votemarvel]

Oh yeah, the ME3 one specifically had awful cover movement that was forced on you way too often.

Bioware wanted to go full shooter but they simply didn't have the skill to pull it off. They wanted Gears of War but got Binary Domain.

I didnt like the kid either, but i liked the thematic choice it represented and chose that to give a low-spoiler example since it happens in the very beginning tutorial mission. The salarian scientists for example or what Wrex did are better, but spoilerful, examples. Its not about horrors of war. Its about futility of Shepards efforts.

The problem is that it goes against the entire rest of the game, well maybe not the ending.

Throughout the rest of Mass Effect 3 we can and do pull off the impossible, we show that victory against Cerberus....sorry I meant the Reapers isn't just some dream but entirely possible.

Hell in the previous two games we also pulled off the impossible and Shepard walked into ME3 after surviving a suicide mission.

That is why for me the vent scene doesn't work. We are meant to believe that saving the kid is futile when we've pulled off missions with far greater odds, and will continue to do so throughout ME3.

Less said about the dreams featuring the kid the better. Suffice to say they would have been far more effective if they'd been about the crew member(s) who died on Virmire. Oh but of course, according to Bioware the best place to start the trilogy was the third game, so they couldn't do that.

Yes, which is what i said with the engine getting old by the time 3 hit.

Sorry about that. I just tend to end up in arguments with people who believe that Bioware changed game engines between 1 and 2, rather than just changing the combat system.

 

[Strazdas]

The problem is that it goes against the entire rest of the game, well maybe not the ending.

Throughout the rest of Mass Effect 3 we can and do pull off the impossible, we show that victory against Cerberus....sorry I meant the Reapers isn't just some dream but entirely possible.

Hell in the previous two games we also pulled off the impossible and Shepard walked into ME3 after surviving a suicide mission.

That is why for me the vent scene doesn't work. We are meant to believe that saving the kid is futile when we've pulled off missions with far greater odds, and will continue to do so throughout ME3.

Less said about the dreams featuring the kid the better. Suffice to say they would have been far more effective if they'd been about the crew member(s) who died on Virmire. Oh but of course, according to Bioware the best place to start the trilogy was the third game, so they couldn't do that.

Well no, we dont. spoilers ahead for those reading: We end up with a lot of dead end leads, sacrifices, loss of old friends and in the end it all pointless as reapers beat the shit out of your united 100% galactic readyness fleet. Even the ending is futile regardless of what you choose. you cant save people you care about. you cant save friends. you cant even save yourself. and you cant save earth either. I dont know, maybe its just me but for me that worked very well.

I do agree that the dreams were shit and game would have been better without it.

 

[votemarvel]

What dead end leads? The only times we fail in ME3 are when the game tells us we have to fail.

Behind a spoiler tag on the off chance people haven't played the game in the four years it's been out.

Spoiler

Take for example the Kai Leng fight on Thessia.

On this world a three man squad fights easily through a terrain where the all biotic Asari are getting their bottoms kicked. We reach the temple and activate the Prothean VI. Then Kai Leng appears and he's easily beaten. However then the game takes away control and makes us lose.

Yet at other impossible moments,

Spoiler

such as the Reaper fight on Rannoch

, we again defy the odds and win the battle with ease. The game repeatedly shows us, and lets us experience, that the impossible is possible...until it decide it is not and forces us to lose.

The Mordin part at the end of Tuchanka is a truly great moment, it shows us that sometimes even when you win, you lose as well. Something the other moments in the game really failed to put across.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

I have to say that ME3 and DA3 both managed to make their respective gamespaces feel massive. ME3 actually made the reapers look/feel like planetkilling unstoppable machines (note: I'm not going to discuss storyline) and planets themselves felt bigger. DA3 actually made me feel more part of a world than Origins (I still praise DA2's attempt at making a localized story, just wish they'd made some more variety in local maps).

 

[votemarvel]

I don't know what it is but I tend to be on the opposite side to people in this thread.

Mass Effect 3 felt cramped to me. On the Citadel I could kind of understand because of all the refugees but for a game about open war, there was hell of a lot of narrow corridors filled with chest high walls which you are funnelled down in one direction.

Dragon Age Inquisition gets praise for what the first Mass Effect got complaints about. Huge open maps but with precious little to do in them.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

The reason people took issue with combat in ME1 wasn't an issue for me. It was simply and RPG with Action elements. What this meant was that our character could hold the gun but might not be very good with it until some skill points were invested. In contrast, the sequels were action games with RPG elements. Here, we were experts with every weapon and skill points had minor effects. Deus Ex was famously the former, where JC Denton could unload a magazine at an enemy in front of him and miss every round. The blending of Action and RPG started by Deus Ex has been done a lot since then.

I don't think ME1 did it badly per se. It did clearly have issues tho, mostly that enemies were bullet sponges even when using skilled weapons. I personally don't like sticky cover and thought the heat mechanic was better than reloads and in-lore. But EA wanted a mass-market shooter, so that's what ME2 was. Sticky cover, reloading and generic weapons. I must admit the gunplay was good, particularly with Vanguard. Biotic Charge makes my spine tingle and claymore to the face doesn't get old. But it had issues. The armour/shield/barrier thing was badly executed. Disabling biotics entirely makes the combat much worse for adepts/vanguards and should have been better thought ought. I don't mind a rock, paper, scissors but this wasn't that...this was a binary biotics work, biotics don't.

ME3 writing, ending and story were dire. But the gameplay, characters and locales visited were great. It is remembered fondly for giving us more of the characters we liked from prior games, despite how little choices mattered in it. DA2 and DA:I were both worse than one, excepting graphically. In terms of scope, story, characters, gameplay, setting and any other measure, DA:O is a better game, a better story with a better cast and more; the Origins should have been the franchises unique selling point, I think they were brilliant but instead we got voiced protagonist in the sequels.

 

[DrownedAmmet]

The reason people took issue with combat in ME1 wasn't an issue for me. It was simply and RPG with Action elements. What this meant was that our character could hold the gun but might not be very good with it until some skill points were invested. In contrast, the sequels were action games with RPG elements. Here, we were experts with every weapon and skill points had minor effects. Deus Ex was famously the former, where JC Denton could unload a magazine at an enemy in front of him and miss every round. The blending of Action and RPG started by Deus Ex has been done a lot since then.

I don't think ME1 did it badly per se. It did clearly have issues tho, mostly that enemies were bullet sponges even when using skilled weapons. I personally don't like sticky cover and thought the heat mechanic was better than reloads and in-lore. But EA wanted a mass-market shooter, so that's what ME2 was. Sticky cover, reloading and generic weapons. I must admit the gunplay was good, particularly with Vanguard. Biotic Charge makes my spine tingle and claymore to the face doesn't get old. But it had issues. The armour/shield/barrier thing was badly executed. Disabling biotics entirely makes the combat much worse for adepts/vanguards and should have been better thought ought. I don't mind a rock, paper, scissors but this wasn't that...this was a binary biotics work, biotics don't.

ME3 writing, ending and story were dire. But the gameplay, characters and locales visited were great. It is remembered fondly for giving us more of the characters we liked from prior games, despite how little choices mattered in it. DA2 and DA:I were both worse than one, excepting graphically. In terms of scope, story, characters, gameplay, setting and any other measure, DA:O is a better game, a better story with a better cast and more; the Origins should have been the franchises unique selling point, I think they were brilliant but instead we got voiced protagonist in the sequels.

Oh my God dude the origins! How could I forget those, baby? Definitely missed them the most. I still sometimes go back and play through just an origin to run a new character through it and see he they would react to it. I think I did them all except for Dwarf Noble, which I will probably do one of these days.

Probably the reason why my first Warden feels like an actual person. He has such a well defined and unique personality, it really feels like my own character.
Same with my Hawke, though she doesn't feel as unique, she still feels like a more developed person

I don't know dick about my Inquisitor. I don't even know what the fuck we are inquisiting!

 

[votemarvel]

The silent Warden worked for me because it was easier for me to add in context behind the lines. Was my Cousland Warden saying she loved Alistair because she was genuine about it or because she saw him as a path to the throne?