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Rumor: Mass Effect 4 details leak through survey
- Thread starter Lakitu
- Start date
TrouzzzerSnake
Banned
Is no one else getting intense Dragon Age Inquisition vibes here? Oh man... just when they described the size of the world... all I can think are barren collect-athon missions with 'press A' to complete objective gameplay.
I just feel an intensely bad vibe right now reading that summary...
I just feel an intensely bad vibe right now reading that summary...
Dandy Lyin
Member
Quite the opposite -- it's been mentioned many times in the thread that it sounds like it could be very Inquisition-y.
StoppedInTracks
Member
I think we all do. I love it and find nothing wrong with it.
Seriously, this is a plus, not a minus. I just finished my second 100+ hour playthough of Inquisition and I'm still finding new things.
Banjo-Kazooie
Member
Same here. If this is like Inquisition, and it certainly sounds like it, then I'll be very pleased
Markitron
Is currently staging a hunger strike outside Gearbox HQ while trying to hate them to death
People enjoy one of last years highest-rated games, what do you find so surprising?
I love the Battlestar Galactica vibes from this plot outline.
I'm on my third play through at a total of 280 hours and I'm uncovering new lore myself.
TatteredHat
Member
I've seen enough of Bioware's story premises to know that this will likely just end up disappointing me, if it's going to be anything like Inquisition that'll definitely be the case.
ArchedThunder
Banned
You'll be happy to know that the Bioware that made the previous Mass Effects and Inquisition are not the same Bioware making this game. That was Bioware Edmonton, this is Bioware Montreal, so we'll just have to wait and see how it goes.
I'm not surprised that people found the game enjoyable, I'm surprised they apparently want more of the meaningless Ubisoft fetch/collect/checklist tasks in their RPGs rather than actual sidequests.
Scientificreason
Banned
I thought it was everything wrong with aaa development. Shallow, lacked substance, combat was terrible.
TatteredHat
Member
That does give me a little bit of hope. Is this a new studio, or have they made any games prior to this one?
ArchedThunder
Banned
They did the DLC for ME2 and 3 and I'm pretty sure they did ME3's multiplayer, but I could be wrong on that one. This will be their first full game.
JeffG
Member
Give me more of that shallow substance and terrible combat.
(On 9th playthrough...440 hrs and counting)
Most of the Inquisition sidequests were just that, sidequests. e.g. uncovering the lost temple of dirthamen The "ubisoft fetchquests" are just tales from the ass.
Inquisition was everything but that. Shards are the least relevant things in the game.
No, Krogan reproduction is fine, the Genophage brings their birth rate in line with the rest of the species in the galaxy(1 child per mother per year), it's the Krogan themselves who are the problem, they're a bunch of violent brutes who constantly kill each other for no logical reason. They nuked themselves back into the stone age ffs.
If it was up to me I wouldn't even bring them to the new galaxy, they have nothing to contribute but violence.
EatChildren
Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
I know it sounds Inquisitiony, but it really doesn't sound exactly like it. Not to that extreme.
Excluding Skyhold and Val Royeaux, Inqusition had 10 locations that more or less followed the same formula in checklist shit
- Find and set up camp travel points
- Find Ocularums, then find Shards
- Find and mark all Landmarks
- Find and complete Astrariums
- Kill the High Dragon
- In addition to hunting down Mosaic Pieces, Bottles of Thedas, Treasure Maps, Glyphs, and so on.
And what did all this busy work feed into? What were the currency metagames?
- Levelling your character
- Levelling the Inquisition
- Earning Inquisition points
Levelling the Inquisition is a neat gimmick but loses steam quickly, takes a long time to do, and has no significant impact on the game world. Earning Inquisition points is used to unlock new locations, but earning points is also easy, and with only ten locations to access quickly become superfluous if you're doing a lot of said busy work. So in the end it all feeds into one thing, your player levelling. And this is alongside still having narrative driven quests and a large number of them. I can dig people disliking the combat because I don't really like it, but that's an isolated problem not really relevant to the busywork design.
My point is Inquisition was a weird extreme in its distribution of tasks and busywork. Ten locations densely packed with stuff to collect and find, almost all of which funnelled towards a single objective: raising your character's level. Hence why it gets boring, and all objectives and busywork blend together.
Mass Effect 4 seems more like it's trying to take these ideas and expand them into more developed concepts that are beneficial in multiple ways, particularly in the reach of your exploration and where you can travel, rather than two dimensional "you found the thing/marked the spot, here's some points, goodbye". It sounds like it has a more interesting feedback loop of progression and growth.
Explore galaxy, looking for planets with points of interest, that can include habitable surface, rich in resources, and who knows what else.
Build settlements on habitable planets, decide what kind of settlement it is and how that feeds back into your adventure (remove fog of war on map? funnel in additional resources?)
Find blueprints, combine with resources to build new equipment that lets you traverse new areas (eg: jetpack)
Upgrade ship, upgrade Mako, upgrade player, to explore previously inaccessible, hazardous areas
It could be a disaster, but the feedback loop of play and development is certainly a lot more interesting than anything Inquisition was doing, which borderlined on nothing. Even something like the Remnant Vault Raids. How many dungeons did Inquisition have? Mass Effect 4 is doing them, with rewards, leading you to a second tier of dungeons with more rewards.
Excluding Skyhold and Val Royeaux, Inqusition had 10 locations that more or less followed the same formula in checklist shit
- Find and set up camp travel points
- Find Ocularums, then find Shards
- Find and mark all Landmarks
- Find and complete Astrariums
- Kill the High Dragon
- In addition to hunting down Mosaic Pieces, Bottles of Thedas, Treasure Maps, Glyphs, and so on.
And what did all this busy work feed into? What were the currency metagames?
- Levelling your character
- Levelling the Inquisition
- Earning Inquisition points
Levelling the Inquisition is a neat gimmick but loses steam quickly, takes a long time to do, and has no significant impact on the game world. Earning Inquisition points is used to unlock new locations, but earning points is also easy, and with only ten locations to access quickly become superfluous if you're doing a lot of said busy work. So in the end it all feeds into one thing, your player levelling. And this is alongside still having narrative driven quests and a large number of them. I can dig people disliking the combat because I don't really like it, but that's an isolated problem not really relevant to the busywork design.
My point is Inquisition was a weird extreme in its distribution of tasks and busywork. Ten locations densely packed with stuff to collect and find, almost all of which funnelled towards a single objective: raising your character's level. Hence why it gets boring, and all objectives and busywork blend together.
Mass Effect 4 seems more like it's trying to take these ideas and expand them into more developed concepts that are beneficial in multiple ways, particularly in the reach of your exploration and where you can travel, rather than two dimensional "you found the thing/marked the spot, here's some points, goodbye". It sounds like it has a more interesting feedback loop of progression and growth.
Explore galaxy, looking for planets with points of interest, that can include habitable surface, rich in resources, and who knows what else.
Build settlements on habitable planets, decide what kind of settlement it is and how that feeds back into your adventure (remove fog of war on map? funnel in additional resources?)
Find blueprints, combine with resources to build new equipment that lets you traverse new areas (eg: jetpack)
Upgrade ship, upgrade Mako, upgrade player, to explore previously inaccessible, hazardous areas
It could be a disaster, but the feedback loop of play and development is certainly a lot more interesting than anything Inquisition was doing, which borderlined on nothing. Even something like the Remnant Vault Raids. How many dungeons did Inquisition have? Mass Effect 4 is doing them, with rewards, leading you to a second tier of dungeons with more rewards.
giant_frying_pan
Member
I only finished the first Mass Effect and didn't play much of 2 beyond the intro sequence. The leaked details have me interested though.
Fiery Phoenix
Banned
I don't think they did any DLC for ME2. However, they were fully responsible for the Omega DLC in ME3, as well as the multiplayer component of the game.
shinobi602
Member
This is what's most exciting. Implementing upgrades and resources into actual gameplay mechanics (like you said, reaching previously locked-off areas) sounds fantastic. The biggest factor for me is the narrative pay-off seemingly in place for much of these side activities in this new Mass Effect. Just see some of the descriptions:
On vault raids: Gain rare loot, narrative acclaim and huge rewards for completing these daunting challenges.
On Khet outposts: Your allies will reward you with praise and increased narrative options as you fight to remove the Khet presence from the region.
One of my biggest gripes about Inquisition was the narrative detachment from the majority of sidequests. I still loved the game, it was my GOTY lasy year, but unfortunately feel like I didn't gain much after completing the side missions. Just a pop up message and that was that. I loved how sidequests worked in prior ME games pre-ME3. Like finding Dr.Saleon for Garrus, or Wrex's family armor or Major Kyle for the UNC. I felt like I was going off into space as a buccaneer and just doing side activities of my own volition, and they paid off narratively, dialogue exchanges and convos and actual character development.
More Major Kyle, Dr. Saleon, Wrex family armor, less collect 30 Thedas bottles please
I've played the game for around 25-30 hours, and so far I have to disagree. Like scientificreason said, the game feels very shallow.
I admit I have yet to finish it though, which is something I'll do this summer. Or as soon as someone releases a mod that triples damage dealt universally.
prag16
Banned
I don't think we played the same game, like at all.
Don't get me wrong, I still liked DA:I overall, but most of the charges against it with regard to filler/fluff, Ubisoft nonsense, grindey/MMO-ish crap, etc. are pretty much accurate imo, and are in no way "tales from the ass".
EDIT: I like the direction EatChildren and shinobi are talking about here. Sounds much more potentially interesting.
I loved Inquisition and think it's by far the best Dragon Age, but the side quests are at best a wash. If you are someone who likes completing zones then Inquisition feels exhausting. On the other hand, it's easy to stick to story-based quests for zones getting Power along the way.
I know the "optional" defense is only partly true for Inquisition, but I will say that the most egregious examples of fetch questing (shards, caches, murals, etc) are indeed completely optional, and skipping them entirely has made my current second playthrough much better.
Jaws of Hakkon also did a much better job at tying story to zone exploration than many of Inquisition's base zones, so I'm encouraged by this.
I am a little wary of "100 planets" though. I don't really know the context of that within the game, but as someone who prefers ME2 and ME3's tight gameplay structure to ME1's barren worlds, I would at least hope that BioWare makes it obvious which worlds have a narrative and which are purely exploration-based.
I do think Inquisition has at least as much story content as the previous DAs, but it's accompanied by a LOT more pure gameplay/collection content, so it feels diluted. It's also too uneven, with so much dialogue and character development taking place in Skyhold and very little out in the field.
I know the "optional" defense is only partly true for Inquisition, but I will say that the most egregious examples of fetch questing (shards, caches, murals, etc) are indeed completely optional, and skipping them entirely has made my current second playthrough much better.
Jaws of Hakkon also did a much better job at tying story to zone exploration than many of Inquisition's base zones, so I'm encouraged by this.
I am a little wary of "100 planets" though. I don't really know the context of that within the game, but as someone who prefers ME2 and ME3's tight gameplay structure to ME1's barren worlds, I would at least hope that BioWare makes it obvious which worlds have a narrative and which are purely exploration-based.
I do think Inquisition has at least as much story content as the previous DAs, but it's accompanied by a LOT more pure gameplay/collection content, so it feels diluted. It's also too uneven, with so much dialogue and character development taking place in Skyhold and very little out in the field.
Florida_Man_5000
Member
But that would ruin one of my ME4 hopes & dreams, to have two Krogans as my teammates. I want Krogan bodyguards to have my back when I go around being a space prick and selecting the renegade actions everytime.
I know it won't happen.
Night Hunter
Banned
So much this!
From what we know this game could be an absolute disaster or progression in an RPG done right. It certainly has the potential to be either one of thos things. I for one don't want to precondemn this new BioWare studio but on the other side I don't allow myself to get hyped until we heard and saw a lot more about it.
FlammableD
Banned
Scientificreason
Banned
Where is the depth? Combat was brainless and shallow. Who said anything about shards? Most quests ate cookie cutter with zero story or depth. Main story was dull and a cliche.
It was like they checked off a check list of every open world and fantasy game and decided to put it all in inquisition.
Combat has depth by necessity as long as you're not playing on casual. As for the quests, they generally had great and interesting back stories to them, particularly Varric's and the Lost Temple of Dirthamen.
DagnastyEp
Member
One of my biggest gripes about Inquisition was the narrative detachment from the majority of sidequests. I still loved the game, it was my GOTY lasy year, but unfortunately feel like I didn't gain much after completing the side missions. Just a pop up message and that was that. I loved how sidequests worked in prior ME games pre-ME3. Like finding Dr.Saleon for Garrus, or Wrex's family armor or Major Kyle for the UNC. I felt like I was going off into space as a buccaneer and just doing side activities of my own volition, and they paid off narratively, dialogue exchanges and convos and actual character development.
More Major Kyle, Dr. Saleon, Wrex family armor, less collect 30 Thedas bottles please
I feel the same. I loved Inquisition, it's one of my favorites from 2014. But my motivations for completing quests and exploring was primarily leveling up (my character and the inquisition), where as my motivations for completing quests in ME has always been to expand on the story, lore, and characters. For me, that's simply based from how the stories in the games were created.
As long as the next Mass Effect has that similar focus on narrative to drive quests and exploration, I'll be happy.
I enjoyed inquisition, but I'm usually against collecting stuff and going out of the way to get 100% etc, but I think it was more the fact most of these things were on the way to doing other stuff.
What I liked most about DA:I is they really did think about the type of player who goes "Hmm, what's that in the distance, looks like there could be some ruins/caves/secret passages arounds".
Although it ultimately fell flat on it's face as barely any of them gave me that climax of sweet loot because all my crafted gear outshone everything like halfway through the game, so it felt like all I was doing was the story from then on. Combat even on hardest was very quick to finish and draogn fights has to be the worst examples of combat in a game for a long time, it just wasn't fit for purpose.
Oh and not having a chain of events to take you through the proper order of lands to visit and ending up at low levels areas at like, 20 or something :|.
I still liked the game though, surprised why I even did...as long as they can improve on some of these things and get rid of the others I'm excited.
What I liked most about DA:I is they really did think about the type of player who goes "Hmm, what's that in the distance, looks like there could be some ruins/caves/secret passages arounds".
Although it ultimately fell flat on it's face as barely any of them gave me that climax of sweet loot because all my crafted gear outshone everything like halfway through the game, so it felt like all I was doing was the story from then on. Combat even on hardest was very quick to finish and draogn fights has to be the worst examples of combat in a game for a long time, it just wasn't fit for purpose.
Oh and not having a chain of events to take you through the proper order of lands to visit and ending up at low levels areas at like, 20 or something :|.
I still liked the game though, surprised why I even did...as long as they can improve on some of these things and get rid of the others I'm excited.
Same.
Trust me. I'm a PhD
Member
No, it doesn't. It makes them produce still births. That is why they became so messed up as a society when they are trying to rebuild after their nuclear war, but almost all of their females are giving birth to already dead children. It was gross, and demoralizing, which is why that one scientist in Mass effect 2 switched sides to help them, but was willing to perform such horrific tests on Krogan females because he saw it as no worse than what was already forced on them. Read the wiki; there is nothing "normal" about what the Genophage did to the Krogan...
I personally loved every minute of Inquisition. Loved the pace of it. It was such a nice game to come home to and get immersed in. I always felt there was enough interesting things to see and do and read about in the game. Could it have been better? Sure, but I don't often put 100s of hours into a bad game without feeling like a slog. It never felt like a slog. My girlfriend is currently about 100 hours into it now, too, and she's just loving it.
So, if Mass Effect moves in that direction, I wouldn't mind, though I kind of loved the more deliberate, corridor shooter space opera sort of thing it had become. I'm not sure how well that mixes with Inquisition's gameplay. If anything, though, I think they'll do what Inquisition couldn't. I think Inquisition was held back on a lot of features they wanted to put into those zones, but ultimately couldn't because they had to do a PS3 version, too. There's also the fact that Mass Effect has always been the better seller, so they can put more money and effort into that series than they could with Dragon Age. DA: I was always kind of a big risk coming off DA: 2. ME4 doesn't have that same risk factor. So, I don't think there's much to worry about.
So, if Mass Effect moves in that direction, I wouldn't mind, though I kind of loved the more deliberate, corridor shooter space opera sort of thing it had become. I'm not sure how well that mixes with Inquisition's gameplay. If anything, though, I think they'll do what Inquisition couldn't. I think Inquisition was held back on a lot of features they wanted to put into those zones, but ultimately couldn't because they had to do a PS3 version, too. There's also the fact that Mass Effect has always been the better seller, so they can put more money and effort into that series than they could with Dragon Age. DA: I was always kind of a big risk coming off DA: 2. ME4 doesn't have that same risk factor. So, I don't think there's much to worry about.
Vincent Grayson
Member
Yeah, this is my feeling. DAI was my game of the year, but it absolutely could have improved in those areas. Designing several regions with few, if any reason to go to them for story purposes is a huge mistake, as was making the largest region the first one you visit (and then not making it abundantly clear that the player should leave, progress some, and then come back later).
The crafting stuff was also just way too powerful compared to finding cool stuff in the world. I might be alone in this, but I kind of wish crafting in single-player RPGs would go away. It's always either the route to the best equipment, so you must do it, or *not* the route to the best stuff, so any time spent on it is wasted. In MMOs, it makes sense, because people pick crafting trees they want to focus on and it fits into the larger economy. In SP games, it just makes you wonder how any blacksmith/tanner/etc even stays in business.
This is really exciting. It does seem like it could be similar to Inquisition - which is perfectly fine by me - but I doubt they will outright copy the formula. Exploring space is very different in nature to exploring land, since it would most likely consist of a large number of smaller zones (planets) rather than the handful of large explorable zones in DA:I. As far as collectibles are concerned, they have always been in Mass Effect in the form of Matriarch's Writings etc. but hopefully they will be easy to ignore (and less abundant than in Inquisition).
In any case I'm super-excited for a greater focus on exploration and more control over dialogue Hopefully we get some more info at E3, because this really whets my appetite. Can't wait to jump back into the world of Mass Effect.
In any case I'm super-excited for a greater focus on exploration and more control over dialogue
Hopefully we get some more info at E3, because this really whets my appetite. Can't wait to jump back into the world of Mass Effect.Make it like Metroid Effect. Non-linear, finding resources and gaining xp to build new weapons or gear to access previous unreachable areas or planets. For example, the Mako's default tank is too weak to punch a hole into a cavern system entrance so you go to a different planet to get some iridium or whatever to upgrade your tank, go back to the other planet and blow a hole. Then that new cavern unlocks a mission or two and lots of loot.
And these are just side missions
And these are just side missions
Nathan_Drake
Member
Edit: commented before reading entire post. My bad
shinobi602
Member
That's just EatChildren's summary lol. The actual survey bits are underneath.
Nathan_Drake
Member
Thanks I should not post before reading it all. my bad
There are also a bunch of people working on this Mass Effect who have worked on at least ME2-3, including myself.
EatChildren
Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
It should be colonise because I'm not a stinky yank.
Hyperzephyrian
Banned
Does the knowledge that 80% of all native English speakers use "colonize" make you mad?
The circle is complete. Now we are the real English.
VanCityGamer
Member
Haha but think about it logically. How does an "s" make sense given the pronunciation of the word. "z" clearly makes more sense.
Actually it is the other way around 80% outside the US say colonise. British English has a tendency to keep the spelling of many words of French origin. Americans try to spell words more closely to the way they sound phonetically and they tend to omit some letters.
The British and others pronounce z, zed, owing to the origin of the letter z, the Greek letter Zeta. This gave rise to the Old French zede, which resulted in the English zed around the 15th century.
As to why people in the United States call z, zee, it is thought that this is likely simply adopted from the pronunciation of the letters bee, cee, dee, eee, gee, pee, tee, and vee.
Back of topic
WOOOOOO Mass Effect