Invalid characterset or character set not supported Time to eat crow.





Time to eat crow.
December 25, 2010

So, to survive Christmas, I went looking for something I haven't played, that would also work on the laptop. And after I was surprised very positively after playing the Mass Effect 2 demo, I picked up Mass Effect 1.

How to put this.. I've read a few reviews about the game. I've played parts of the Citadel myself. Watched parts of other gameplays. People wax poetically about the shallow, shallow and extremely superficial nonsense. And then there are these gems of writing and gameplay hidden down under the pole of a solid ice-planet.

I mean, why didn't anyone write about this?

Sorry. Point was - I haven't played Mass Effect until now because it was a 360 exclusive. I thought it was only a bastard simulation for kids, with shooting instead of rpg-elements, and then it goes ahead and surprises me with more of that extremely good writing hidden away on the sidequests..

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zippdementia zippdementia - December 25, 2010 (08:12 PM)
Yeah, this was part of my problem with Dragon Age that I still struggle with. There are reams and reams of bland text in that game that I feel obligated to listen to because every once in a while something brilliant comes of it.

Playing the Mass Effect 2 demo was a pleasant experience, however. And it felt much more natural to play a bad-ass who didn't care to listen to everyone's back story there than it does in Dragon Age. Probably because the setting seems to keep a really good pace up while in a fantasy world... well, you know... everyone does a lot of traveling and has a lot of time.
fleinn fleinn - December 26, 2010 (01:41 PM)
Hehe. Yeah.. I don't know for sure, but I think Bioware has a couple of writers assigned to different sub-parts of the plot, or extra characters, and so on. And some of them come up with these extremely good parts. I mean.. the Mass Effect universe is pretty neat. The pacing on the different segments on the story-board... you can see that it's very well laid out, even if it's possible to kind of.. break it along the way a few times.

Still, most of the talking is not very interesting. It's a bit sad to say so, but it's something you pick up on very quickly.. people call it "bad acting", but it's just that the dialogue is pointless. It's just talk while some necessary story-element happens in the background, without the writers being very aware of the need to connect the dialogue to what actually happens, and the extremely neat opportunity to let the player pick the direction him or herself to some degree.

Meanwhile the pointy dialogues, and the conscious use of the ambiguity to let the player choose a motivation rather than be led by the ears into saying what the game wants you to - ...you know, the HK-47 and Canderous type of parts.. those are (literally) left on some cold asteroid (x57) or on a small side-mission or transition sequence. ..curious use of writing talent..

Take the general in the bar, for example. There's a Turian general in a bar on Citadel Station. He's fallen pretty badly for an Asari courtesan, and it's implied he wanted to marry her. But she won't do that, and the general starts setting out rumours about her. Clichés abound fantastically like that.

But that rumour involves an Elcor diplomat's secret, one that the courtesan would be the only one to be able to come by. So it's the perfect revenge, and appropriately soppy and emotional for a military guy - it's forcing the Asari to drop her business, etc.

You can then choose to unravel all of this while using it as an excuse to learn something more about the races, meet the Asari courtesan. And end up making sure the general mans up and stops behaving like a spiteful boy, etc. While he may or may not take a liking to you, or exploit you in the process. Maybe you can tell him to do his own laundry when you've gotten what you want. Which may or may not be the Asari courtesan's favour. There's only one path to take in all of this. But the writing is good, it makes sense all the way, and there's a story being told indirectly via multiple characters. While you help write your own in terms of the intentions you have and means you use during the confrontations, and so on.

There's not many quest-clusters like that, but they're there at least.

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