Fabricant451

What Are You Listening To?

Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

And no, I don't draw an arbitrary line between the first three games and Andromeda. BioWare's descent has been slow and gradual, because swallowing the "SJWs buy games so we should cater to them instead of our core audience" meme didn't happen all at once.

@pugbutter

BioWare was a niche developer for most of their time until EA took them in. Their core audience was DnD and CRPG people which is a dwindling market. KOTOR was their first real title that put them on more radars because it hit at a time when Star Wars was in the public eye (for the wrong reasons). Jade Empire didn't exactly set the world on fire and it was Mass Effect that brought them out of the niche. BioWare's core audience shifted from the Dnd/CRPG crowd to literally fuckin everyone right around the time Mass Effect 2 came out and stripped everything down to generic shooter with ammo and arenas. Dragon Age Origins was their return to their niche and that even had gay characters in it as well as bisexuals.

Their whole representation thing didn't suddenly happen and it was never a pandering thing. Sky and Silk Fox from Jade Empire are bisexual. It was only their recent games that included strictly gay or lesbian romance options with actual preferences like a person might have. Sera is a lesbian and not really into elves but loves qunari. Dorian's entire character is how fabulously gay he is. And both of these characters came after Steve "Hey I'm gay" Cortez and Samantha "I wanna fuck EDI's voice" Traynor. You could make an argument that Cortez is pandering but it's less pandering and more BioWare didn't know how to write a gay person without having him say "I'm gay".

BioWare having queer characters in their games isn't pandering to the SJW crowd no matter what the internet machine says. This is the same machine that claimed having a black dude and a woman in Star Wars was pandering. People that don't like BioWare or who can't let go of Mass Effect 3/Dragon Age 2 like to scream about BioWare and it's the current climate of internet commentary that turns criticism of their choices and designs into shit slinging shout matches of "CUCKWARE PANDERING TO THE SJWS THEY HATE WHITE PEOPLE REEEEEEE." It absolutely IS a meme when people say "BioWare caters to SJWs". Because they don't. Even in Andromeda the lesbian and gay character are characters before sexuality. Suvi isn't just "I'm the lesbian" and Renley Baratheon isn't just "I'm the gay man" and in both cases you'd have to flirt with them as the opposite gender to even find that out. It's okay for there to be lesbians and gays and trans characters in video games. But they need to be characters first. That's the difference.

There are problems with Andromeda as a video game. They don't have to do with its representation. Other than Hainley. Because what the fuck.

Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

But it's not "pandering" if a character just happens to be Black or gay, and if he has more traits to define his personality than just being from a certain demographic. So even though ME1 still has bad writing and is a game for poopooheads overall, no one is being hypocritical for "forgetting" the Black and butch-lesbo characters in the first game, while lambasting Andromeda for seemingly doing the same thing. The fact that you can't see the difference, @Dynamo Frokane, proves that you're approaching this debate at a laughably superficial level.

@pugbutter

Having played a bit of Andromeda, the only real pandering is their laughably atrocious trans 'character'. Their token lesbian and gay crew members are less "HEY I LIKE THE MEN" than their attempt in ME3 but at this point they don't deserve medals for crossing the finish line well after the fact. But then, when a certain subset of people are desperate for any sort of representation they flock to it, like they did with Dragon Age Inquisition's trans character and one note flamboyantly gay character. Are there better options out there for people that care about representation? Yes. But not so much so in the AAA scene. BioWare has carved out a niche for themselves only now their diversity and representation is finally being shown for how shallow it actually has been.

Describe your favourite game in a nutshell

Local Man Ruins Everything.

Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

I'm more amazed by the fact that anyone thinks ME was ever good, and that 3 or Andromeda somehow defiled the series' glorious legacy or some shit.

Most of what @Fabricant451 says about the mechanics of horror is correct and all, but just because the Reapers are "unknowable" doesn't mean this was an artistic decision. Honestly BioWare's writers are so incompetent, it could just as easily be due to serendipity, not a conscious choice, that the antagonistic force of the story just happens to match up with some Lovecraftian tropes. Looking at how clumsy and awkward this passage is: ...

<Snipped quote>

How many times can one incompetent buffoon of a "writer" say the exact same fucking thing over and over, just in slightly different words? Well, five times per paragraph, apparently. Jesus Christ. This actually hurt to read. Never mind the fact that it's Telling instead of Showing us that the Reapers are "unknowable"; the prose is just fucking dreadful in so many ways.

@pugbutter

To be fair, and it's not like it's going to change anything but still, in the game that speech is broken up after almost every sentence by the player. And a lot of the game is asking variations of the same thing instead of getting to the point. You know. For immersion or something.

The Coalition

I'm in.

Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

Metacritic has its flaws, but I think it's safe to say that EA's board is not happy about this.

@tanderbolt

Then maybe they shouldn't have let an unproved roster of C-Team developers handle the development of a franchise so beloved.

Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

Witcher 3 is a whole other can of worms and it's a game people hold to an impossible standard because people are obsessed with "IT'S MORALLY GRAY REEEEEE" and they forget that there's large chunks of Witcher 3 that are fucking boring as sin and the combat and movement were atrociously clunky. BioWare games and The Witcher 3 are for very different audiences, it's just that people put them both under the WRPG umbrella along with Elder Scrolls and Fallout.

Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

@Dynamo Frokane I feel like I've said my piece for now. But I will step in to offer a view on something right now.

over crazy robot cthulhu beasts that aren't even particularly intriguing because they're so unknowable in their unknownness

@Ace of Hearts

This right here is what makes the Reapers so good and what made Leviathan such an upsetting piece of content. The Reapers are essentially cosmic horror in a sci fi fashion. The conversation with Sovereign in the first game sums up all you NEED to know about them.

Rudimentary creatures of blood and flesh, you touch my mind, fumbling in ignorance, incapable of understanding. There is a realm of existence so far beyond your own you cannot even imagine it. I am beyond your comprehension. [...] My kind transcends your very understanding. We are each a nation - independent, free of all weakness. You cannot grasp the nature of our existence. We have no beginning. We have no end. We are infinite. Millions of years after your civilization has been eradicated and forgotten, we will endure.

Cosmic horror works at its best when people don't know exactly what it is they are seeing/dealing with precisely because they can't possibly conceive of such a thing existing to begin with. It's a similar concept to horror in general, that fear of the unknown and why when you start to explain something it becomes less and less frightening and menacing; that obsession horror movies had with gore and blood was because the cavalcade of slasher movies and horror movies explaining things meant that the genre had to resort to new ways to frighten. Gore porn movies aren't exactly scary. It's why the found footage genre saw a rebirth within horror because while Paranormal Activity might come off as boring, the first one explained very little and played on that fear of the supernatural and unknown. And then sequels went on to try and explain things and thus ruin it.

It's the same with the Reapers and, well, cosmic horror. When you only know that the Reapers are a cosmic entity beyond any possible understanding that this galaxy can know, it's harrowing. It's a legitimate threat because how the hell is anyone supposed to stop something they can't begin to know? Look at the effort it took to take down ONE of them. Nor multiply that by thousands. The Reapers are a constant threat because their whole existence is terrifying.

Leviathan then came along and pulled the curtain back and ultimately made them less interesting because they felt the need to boil it down to digestible chunks of understanding, which is exactly the OPPOSITE of effective horror, cosmic or otherwise. The Reapers are intriguing BECAUSE of their unknowability and taking that away ruins them as antagonists and cosmic beings. Not everything needs answers.

I know that has nothing to do with this particular discussion but I thought it needed saying.

Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

[quote=@Dynamo Frokane]
[quote=@Fabricant451]

<Snipped quote by Fabricant451>

Mass Effect 2 is fun filler with a witty script and a thrilling-ish final mission a 'great' game does not make.

I didn't say Mass Effect 2.

I said "There has been one great Mass Effect game". I stand by that.

Maybe 20 seconds wasnt convincing enough.

Its not mass effect 3's ending so its a good game.....right?

No no, I've seen the meme videos and everything and I still think the game isn't a dumpster fire of a disaster of a travesty because it's not Witcher 3 or whatever it is the popular gaming culture subreddits and boards cream the jeans over while spouting off about cuckoldry.

Andromeda is on par with what BioWare has been putting out since, oh, Dragon Age 2. Except the shooty shooty bits are an improvement. When a new team comes together and deals with leavings and layoffs and the collective pressure of people that put 10/7/5 year old games they put on pedestals breathing down their necks well here we are. That people are being all "7/10 WORST EVER" speaks to why gamers are the worst people with the worst hobby.

Do you think the first one is the best? The action aspect of the gameplay is barely functional but its my favorite out of the trilogy. I wouldn't say its a great game but its definitely an important game to the genre. 3 has the best gameplay but the plot is extremely newcomer unfriendly and some of the story telling is a bit weird.

I dont think for second ME Andromeda is a shit game, I think its an average to enjoyable game that has more problems than it really should. I do think Dragon Age 2 is a piece of shit though but thats a discussion for another time.

@Dynamo Frokane

I do indeed think the first one is the best. Mass Effect 1 had the most...let's call it realized...vision. It's not perfect, no game is, but there was nothing quite like it in video games at the time. That sense of exploration, that sweeping space opera style narrative and presentation, the way the world felt realized and lived in with politics and conflicts showing that this idyllic looking galaxy wasn't exactly pristine. The story was the most consistent and contained with things like the conversation with Sovereign and the use of the song Vigil being highlights not just for the series but gaming as a whole.

Mass Effect 2 comes off as a filler arc in its own trilogy with no real purpose or relevancy other than the Collector reveal. It introduces concepts and lets them go nowhere. It improved the shooting but at the expense of dropping the deeper RPG mechanics and exploration. It offered a view of the non-Citadel aspects of the galaxy but all the areas felt less...immersive since they were clearly divided into combat arenas and not. That the game pretty much forced players to stick to Paragon/Renegade to ensure the best possible result turned interactions and roleplay into a binary option. Why would Miranda or Jack not give it their all because the other hurt their feelings and you didn't invest enough Blue/Red points to say something? It made a lot of the decisions hollow. ME2 has some okay character moments but it's pretty inessential as far as sequels go.

Mass Effect 3 improved upon the gameplay and the paragon/renegade system but sort of neutered the conversation aspect further. Mass Effect 3 attempted to tie up pretty much everything even if it meant it came at the expense of established characters and plots. Illusive Man became just a simplified villain. Ashley/Kaiden returned to their "DON'T TRUST YOUUUU" ways for most of it. Their attempts to add depth to Shepard's struggle was laughable. But it also had genuine moments that were only possible because of the characters built up over the games. Like Mordin and the elevator or just shooting guns with Garrus. It is a deeply flawed game but like ME 2 it has good character moments, which is why Citadel is such a wonderful piece of DLC and the perfect coda to Shepard and Friends.

Both 2 and 3 lost, to me, what made Mass Effect 1 such a fantastic experience. It improved the moment to moment gameplay but it came at the expense of the charm and sense of awe that came with every location in Mass Effect. You lost that in 2 when side quests were just shuttles down to a combat arena and in 3 side quests boiled down to scanning and eavesdropping. 2 and 3 felt less like Mass Effect and more like a shooter in space. They are both good games in their own right, it's just that Mass Effect 1 is such a great experience.