TheGreatDave said:
I accept that you need a delay where the player picks a response in Mass Effect. But even with that the script and the acting in the game seem incredibly disjointed, and it's nothing that they couldn't overcome if they'd thought it through a bit. Like I said, if you have Shepard do a little bit of talking on his own and make the conversations themselves more believable and less "Question/Long Response/Question" you can overcome the issues to a degree. The fact is Mass Effect is forcing me to watch little movies, and if they're not going to be done in a high quality way I'd rather they not bother.
Jesus christ.
Have you ever played a bioware RPG before? Have still not understood that you don't have to wait to talkt? Haven't you understood that most of what you see of the NPC talk is the same thing you see in any other RPG when you talk to a NPC, and if you want to ask a question you have to select something at the end of the npc speech? But just worlds better? Because here even a shitty NPC conversation can at least be fun!?
More important moments will allow for a greater degree of acting, but you can't do it for everything.
Seriously, it's starting to sound that you are bitching just to bitch. Go read some impressions, go check cutcenes where the dialogue of another character is cut in the middle by Shepard, and actually sees him take an offensive stance as he grabs the other characters and gives him an order.
What Mass Effect is doing is allowing you to develop your character fully, and that means your personality and what you say in realtime. I get this feeling that you still haven't understood that, that this is an RPG, that the way you talk to other characters affects the game, and you can in fact manipulate some of the flow of the conversation.
But i don't think you've grasped that concept, i mean you even made an hilarious comparison to Gears of War. Hey maybe this just isn't for you, but please, stop comparing this to scripted cutcenes in a 8 game, its painfull to read.