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Mass Effect Franchise bitching thread

The problem with Ashley's new look is quite simple: she looks derpy as fuck.

She looks like she's had too many facial surgery and can no longer move her facial muscles, and as a result, looks derpy as fuck.
 

scarybore

Member
Hey shitty. I'm almost done with Retribution... so I shouldnt get Deception?

I'd advise against it unless you want a chuckle or two, there's a 172 page thread on Bioware's forums and I've not seen a positive comment yet. Seriously, nothing worth mentioning happens and what does happen makes no sense.
 

Dresden

Member
I like how they hit Ashley with the ugly stick. Must be the same group of people who thought Miranda had a pretty, non-chunky face.
 

Lothars

Member
I'd advise against it unless you want a chuckle or two, there's a 172 page thread on Bioware's forums and I've not seen a positive comment yet. Seriously, nothing worth mentioning happens and what does happen makes no sense.
That's dissapointing, I enjoyed the previous books and was hoping deception would have been decent.
 

Enduin

No bald cap? Lies!
The problem with Ashley's new look is quite simple: she looks derpy as fuck.

She looks like she's had too many facial surgery and can no longer move her facial muscles, and as a result, looks derpy as fuck.

Exactamundo.

Im still clinging to my unreasonable belief that theyve redone her, or hopefully un-redone her, due to her complete and absolute absence from the main website.

I am still really pissed Deception was so bad, I was really looking forward to a new foray into the ME universe right before ME3 came out to help recharge my batteries. I honestly dont think I could replay ME and ME2 another time, Im pretty sure 12 is my limit for both. I have enough saves all set for every possible outcome, I dont even need to mess around with a save editor to try out different scenarios. Its obscene.
 
yrc7j.jpeg

That is kinda gross. Glad I killer her off...before she became this creation.
 
Eh, I'll play the game until passing judgement on Ashleys redesign.

And I'll never forgive the inFamous fans that wanted to keep the old down syndrome Cole design, instead of the new more interesting one. Suckerpunch shouldnt have listened.
 
Eh, I'll play the game until passing judgement on Ashleys redesign.

And I'll never forgive the inFamous fans that wanted to keep the old down syndrome Cole design, instead of the new more interesting one. Suckerpunch shouldnt have listened.

ya because a metro Cole would have been oh so cool /facepalm
 

Petrichor

Member
No, the first had story and newness. The second was filler with a bunch of lame side quest and a bad main story. The combat may have been better, but everything else was worse. I plowed through ME2 and traded it in ASAP, was even happy when chars started dying. I'll be skipping ME3, the hype and reviews will not fool me again.

The story was better in the first one? Nah, I'm not buying it. The story is terrible in both entries, at least the second one has interesting characters.
 
No, the first had story and newness. The second was filler with a bunch of lame side quest and a bad main story. The combat may have been better, but everything else was worse. I plowed through ME2 and traded it in ASAP, was even happy when chars started dying. I'll be skipping ME3, the hype and reviews will not fool me again.

Exactly. ME2 seems way too long for me and I am just at about 27h. I still have 4 loyalties to do, Overlord DLC and about to go for the Reaper IFF. So I figure I still got a little ways to go. Not looking forward to the shitty "play as Joker" mission either. I hated that piece of shit.

I am doing my best to mull through this game but it just seems long.

Another thing I have noticed since replaying both is ME2 really has little Epic moments going for it. There is little I can think of in that game where I am like "I can't wait to play that part again." Only a few come to mind:
-The beginning, including the break out
-Tali's rescue mission(shields frying in the hot sections..rip off Gears but still cool)
-LOTSB DLC, Overlord DLC

Those are just fresh in my mind.. there could be more but those are all I can think of. Everything else was just stop and pop.. stop and pop and just trying to end the mission asap.

Whereas I actually look forward to my 2nd playthrough of ME.
 

Zen

Banned
*Loves* People would freak out at me and be all like, "OH MAH GAWD. SHE'S A XENOPHOBIC BITCH!!!1"

Then I posted this and a lot of people shut the hell up:
tumblr_lt29k9TUmx1r1z0c0o1_500.png

So in other words she's somewhat of a bigot that has some decent reasoning to back up her up rational apprehension, but it's taken a few steps too far. It wasn't just' someone who was only distrusting of those that treated humanity like crap'. I still remember when she equated aliens to dogs that one time, now she was making an analogy (and quote literature), but it highlighted her superiority streak that was born from protectionism. All things equal, while she did say and act in some fairly bigoted ways, she still didn't like the Terra Firma party. I think people are keen to attribute outright racism to her because she's the closest in your party to fitting that bill, and she can be a bitch to some of your non human party members.

Whatever she's labeled as, she still needed to grow the fuck up and get her head out of the past.

Still it makes he are much more interesting character than Kaiden.
 

Enduin

No bald cap? Lies!
So in other words she's somewhat of a bigot that has some decent reasoning to back up her up rational apprehension, but it's taken a few steps too far. It wasn't just' someone who was only distrusting of those that treated humanity like crap'. I still remember when she equated aliens to dogs that one time, now she was making an analogy (and quote literature), but it highlighted her superiority streak that was born from protectionism. All things equal, while she did say and act in some fairly bigoted ways, she still didn't like the Terra Firma party. I think people are keen to attribute outright racism to her because she's the closest in your party to fitting that bill, and she can be a bitch to some of your non human party members.

Whatever she's labeled as, she still needed to grow the fuck up and get her head out of the past.

Still it makes he are much more interesting character than Kaiden.

Uhh the past isnt exactly the past as it is the not so distant present. Ashley was born exactly 1 year after first contact, a first contact which resulted in a heated war and the disgrace of her family. I could never hold it against her that she didnt fully trust aliens, and it was made pretty clear she didnt hate aliens or think humans were objectively superior, just that when shit hit the fan each species would protect their own interests even at the expense of others. All and all whether thats defined as bigotry or not its a rather natural and reasonable view to have given the setting. Plus she only ever brought it up because theyre on the Alliance's brand new super expensive and high tech space ship. Even the US doesnt let the aliles its had for over 100 years and gone to multiple wars for have unfettered access to their latest and greatest military tech. Its just smart security.

In any event it kind of always bothered me how quickly humanity came into the Citadel fold and accepted the fact that there were dozens of other highly advanced sentient species in the Galaxy. I mean 26 years isnt exactly sufficient time to process everything thats occurred. The "Mass Effect" that greatly propelled humanity technologically is one thing but social, political and culture changes take a long time. Especially after a first contact that results in war. You would think Humanity would close itself off and keep the Citadel and other species at arms length, bolstering our military and focusing on at least matching if not surpassing them militarily before wholesale buying into their way of life.
 
No, the first had story and newness. The second was filler with a bunch of lame side quest and a bad main story. The combat may have been better, but everything else was worse. I plowed through ME2 and traded it in ASAP, was even happy when chars started dying. I'll be skipping ME3, the hype and reviews will not fool me again.

Lol, "no, your opinion is wrong."
 
No, that is clearly just her face on a slightly different angle, while scowling. If you think eye shadow and a different haircut make someone look like "a different person", I don't really know what to say.


Honestly, I hope it looks better when I play the game. One thing I've learned is that ME faces can change drastically from scene to scene depending on the lighting and other odd Bioware graphical quirks.
 

Nista

Member
It was more that Kaiden was a character people were completely neutral on while they actively disliked Ashley.

That's how it was for me.

Though my character is a soldier femShep, so Ashley was recruited and stuck in the ship the entire game, making her wholly disposable to me. I believe most of my male friends let her die as well.
 
Zen said:
I still remember when she equated aliens to dogs that one time, now she was making an analogy
That quote is pretty often misinterpreted due to Ashley directly using a human as part of her example, but in the analogy she uses the dog is humanity and the human is the citadel council.

Notice how, immediately before the analogy, she claims the Council races would have no trouble abandoning the Alliance if they felt they were in danger, the same way the human in her example abandons the dog when endangered by a bear?

And then immediately after the analogy she says this: “Members of their species will always be more important to them than humans are.” The subject of that conversation was always that humanity should be ready to stand on their own feet in case of a betrayal(one that she saw as likely, or even inevitable), not that they should be abandoning the council.
 

Enduin

No bald cap? Lies!
For those interested this is an extremely well done and borderline psychotic analysis of a number of major plot points and aspects of ME universe, namely the Arrival DLC, Protheans, Collectors, Cerberus and the Alliance and some other things. Its extremely well written and layed out, but crazy long, but still well worth the read.

It does a really good job explaining a number of the apparent conflicts between ME and ME2 and some of the DLC. Pretty much all of it makes sense and is never just baseless conjecture but constantly and always back up by info from the games and books. Ive seen a lot of really shitty fan analysis stuff before, but this is really top notch, well presented work.
 

EatChildren

Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
For those interested this is an extremely well done and borderline psychotic analysis of a number of major plot points and aspects of ME universe, namely the Arrival DLC, Protheans, Collectors, Cerberus and the Alliance and some other things. Its extremely well written and layed out, but crazy long, but still well worth the read.

It does a really good job explaining a number of the apparent conflicts between ME and ME2 and some of the DLC. Pretty much all of it makes sense and is never just baseless conjecture but constantly and always back up by info from the games and books. Ive seen a lot of really shitty fan analysis stuff before, but this is really top notch, well presented work.

There's a lot of obvious clashes, but they don't bother me unless they're painfully stupid (see: Deception and Evolution). The whole idea of humans living all throughout the galaxy with established businesses and organisations so early into their space faring existence is itself silly, and that was established in the first game.

I guess, despite loving the franchise, I don't take it anywhere near serious enough to be offended by a lot of the clashes, not unless they're the aforementioned really stupid stuff (Evolution's handling of the First Contact War was awful). Otherwise even with the occasional lore confusion and clash, I love nearly everything of what ME2 added to the universe.

Sometimes I think, and I'm not pointing a finger here, but sometimes I think people's dislike of BioWare's direction with ME2 manifests as hatred for everything in the plot, even the stuff that 'makes sense' and fits into the universe. I've heard some people, for example, complain about the Collectors being Protheans, as if it is a stupid, nonsensical twist that doesn't fit into the established canon, when it is in fact the exact opposite, and ties nicely into established lore from ME1.

But I bought and read the books/comics so clearly I'm insane.
 
Oh boy a Mass Effect bitching thread eh? GAF why you make me so happy?

Let's see here I personally prefer the DA series over the ME series (even though DA2 personally made me take upon the act of never buying a BioWare game again [suck it SW:TOR]) but I did play both ME1 and ME2.

I enjoyed ME1 for its part, around 7-8 playthroughs. After ME2 came out however I couldn't bring myself back to redo ME1 due to how piss poor the gameplay is (tedious armor management) compared to ME2.

But this is of course before I played the The Witcher series.

After playing TW1 and TW2 (when it came out) I realized that BioWare games quite frankly, sucked ass. Now I've no experience with previous BioWare titles such as KotOR, JE, and BG but frankly I couldn't care less about those games because I had TW and multiple (an imo, better) PC titles such as StarCraft 2, Diablo, etc.

I mean if you take TW2 (hell even TW1) and compare to any recent BioWare game it is mediocre in the illusion of choice, gameplay, character progression, characterization, basically in any category.

So my final verdict was the ME1 was average overall and ME2 was below average overall (despite having better gameplay).
 
^Fuck, you enjoyed a game so much so that you played it over again 7-8 TIMES, and even liked the sequel more than first, and now because you like another RPG more than them, they suck ass now? That bad?

Sometimes I think people just love to hate Bioware for no apparent reason.
 

Enduin

No bald cap? Lies!
There's a lot of obvious clashes, but they don't bother me unless they're painfully stupid (see: Deception and Evolution). The whole idea of humans living all throughout the galaxy with established businesses and organisations so early into their space faring existence is itself silly, and that was established in the first game.

I guess, despite loving the franchise, I don't take it anywhere near serious enough to be offended by a lot of the clashes, not unless they're the aforementioned really stupid stuff (Evolution's handling of the First Contact War was awful). Otherwise even with the occasional lore confusion and clash, I love nearly everything of what ME2 added to the universe.

Sometimes I think, and I'm not pointing a finger here, but sometimes I think people's dislike of BioWare's direction with ME2 manifests as hatred for everything in the plot, even the stuff that 'makes sense' and fits into the universe. I've heard some people, for example, complain about the Collectors being Protheans, as if it is a stupid, nonsensical twist that doesn't fit into the established canon, when it is in fact the exact opposite, and ties nicely into established lore from ME1.

But I bought and read the books/comics so clearly I'm insane.

Agreed, a thousand times agreed. If it was a hundreds years after first contact, sure I could buy it, but literally immediately after first contact, no way. When the events of ME started it had only been 26 years since first contact, thats insane.

This dissertation though is worth a read. It doesnt attempt to use mental jujitsu or magic to try and reconcile various conflicts or claim to be definitive in any way, but its an extremely thoughtful analysis on matters that should hopefully in most cases be resolved or come to light in ME3. Its again an extremely careful examination of the documents and information found in the games, rather than random speculation and fan wishes.
 
Enduin said:
Agreed, a thousand times agreed. If it was a hundreds years after first contact, sure I could buy it, but literally immediately after first contact, no way. When the events of ME started it had only been 26 years since first contact, thats insane.
Humans are special and naturally the best at everything, don’t you know?
 
For those interested this is an extremely well done and borderline psychotic analysis of a number of major plot points and aspects of ME universe, namely the Arrival DLC, Protheans, Collectors, Cerberus and the Alliance and some other things. Its extremely well written and layed out, but crazy long, but still well worth the read.

It does a really good job explaining a number of the apparent conflicts between ME and ME2 and some of the DLC. Pretty much all of it makes sense and is never just baseless conjecture but constantly and always back up by info from the games and books. Ive seen a lot of really shitty fan analysis stuff before, but this is really top notch, well presented work.

Excellent read. Really goes to show that the ME games aren't really seeping with plotholes like many are making them out to be.
 

Enduin

No bald cap? Lies!
Humans are special and naturally the best at everything, don’t you know?

We could definitely use some of that right now.

I mean the Batarians have been a part of the Citadel sphere for nearly two thousand years, the Turians for a thousand and change, and yet we have a space force that rivals both of them both in size and quality? Plus the Batarians are just now, when humans arrive, starting to expand into the Skyllian Verge. The fuck have they been doing for 1700 years.

Also is the human population way larger than the other races? Because we make up a disproportionate amount of mercs and such. Especially considering only like a half a billion humans at best dont live on earth. Our largest colonies only top around like 5 million people.
 
There's a lot of obvious clashes, but they don't bother me unless they're painfully stupid (see: Deception and Evolution). The whole idea of humans living all throughout the galaxy with established businesses and organisations so early into their space faring existence is itself silly, and that was established in the first game.

I guess, despite loving the franchise, I don't take it anywhere near serious enough to be offended by a lot of the clashes, not unless they're the aforementioned really stupid stuff (Evolution's handling of the First Contact War was awful). Otherwise even with the occasional lore confusion and clash, I love nearly everything of what ME2 added to the universe.

Sometimes I think, and I'm not pointing a finger here, but sometimes I think people's dislike of BioWare's direction with ME2 manifests as hatred for everything in the plot, even the stuff that 'makes sense' and fits into the universe. I've heard some people, for example, complain about the Collectors being Protheans, as if it is a stupid, nonsensical twist that doesn't fit into the established canon, when it is in fact the exact opposite, and ties nicely into established lore from ME1.

But I bought and read the books/comics so clearly I'm insane.

Again, this a very good read about how secret squadmate #2
The Prothean
and other plot points will make perfect sense in ME3:
http://nothing-is-irreversible.com/2011/12/06/mass-effect-3-a-dissertation-38/

It will be shitted on anyway.
 

Enduin

No bald cap? Lies!
We could definitely use some of that right now.

I mean the Batarians have been a part of the Citadel sphere for nearly two thousand years, the Turians for a thousand and change, and yet we have a space force that rivals both of them both in size and quality? Plus the Batarians are just now, when humans arrive, starting to expand into the Skyllian Verge. The fuck have they been doing for 1700 years.

Also is the human population way larger than the other races? Because we make up a disproportionate amount of mercs and such. Especially considering only like a half a billion humans at best dont live on earth. Our largest colonies only top around like 5 million people.

On the same token though, isn't it cliche as well that humans in sci fi are automatically dubbed the weakest species with the lowest tech and least intelligence, while other space faring, elusive alien species are revered and mystical and their tech will of course outmatch our own tenfold?
 

Enduin

No bald cap? Lies!
On the same token though, isn't it cliche as well that humans in sci fi are automatically dubbed the weakest species with the lowest tech and least intelligence, while other space faring, elusive alien species are revered and mystical and their tech will of course outmatch our own tenfold?

For sure, its not that we shouldnt be as advanced, or possibly more so, based on principle or anything, but that the time scale is just seriously out of wack. The whole "mass effect" which was a result of finding the Prothean cache on Mars is fine by me, but the social, economic and political leaps that also occurred immediately following first contact are just a bit far fetched. For the way things are humanity doesnt even have the 26 years between first contact and ME1 to warm up to everything, but rather something like 5 years to fully process all this new information, accept it and then dive right into fully embracing this new community so that by the events of ME they are already fairly established in the galactic world.

Which is why again I think it would have been more believable if the game took place more towards a hundred years after first contact and there was a long period of isolation and military build up along with industrial build up as a whole. Then after nearly a hundred years of limited interaction with the Citadel species humanity finally started to accept the greater galaxy and began taking strides towards entering the Citadel fold, cue the events of ME1. Humanity would arrive in a position of power with a stronger military and self sufficient industry and economy that wouldnt be easily overtaken by the already long established and entrenched alien industries.
 
^Fuck, you enjoyed a game so much so that you played it over again 7-8 TIMES, and even liked the sequel more than first, and now because you like another RPG more than them, they suck ass now? That bad?

Sometimes I think people just love to hate Bioware for no apparent reason.

Call it blissful ignorance. I enjoyed Call of Duty back when I was into consoles, recently I got into Counter Strike (old school), TF2, and Half Life. I despise CoD with a passion now and only fondly look back on CoD 4: Modern Warfare.
 

Snuggles

erotic butter maelstrom
Hale's is just as flat without the funny part.

Wow, that's interesting. I think she brings a lot to the role, she delivers even the corniest of lines with genuine conviction. ME just wouldn't be the same without her, if Meer Shep was the only choice I wouldn't like it nearly as much.
 
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