NOW IN ALL ITS GLORY.
I'm not terribly far into the story. Maybe 4-5 hours so far. I don't even have all my teammates yet. Some observations...
Small presentation issues, like the disc swapping are annoying. It's two discs (like Mass Effect 2) and from what I can tell, the side missions are on the second disc. So if you want to mix side missions in between story missions, you better be close to your Xbox (yeah, this is only the Xbox 360 version by the way).
The narrative is a lot more "on-wheels". Meaning a lot of the dialogue is automatically chosen (well, the irrelevant stuff), compared to earlier Mass Effect games where Shepard didn't cough unless you chose it as a dialogue option. I can't say I like it. It adds character to Shepard. While you may think "WHAT CHARACTERS SHOULD HAVE CHARACTER!" Shepard is meant as a stand in for you. Making him his own character really breaks that. While it definitely improves the flow of the game, allowing for a bit more interesting cinematography (considering previous dialogue would just be close up shots cutting back and forth with little movement). But I'd still prefer the older system of dialogue.
The story itself is what you'd expect: Reapers are reaping everything and you have to unite the races to defeat them. There's a whole thing called "Galactic Readiness" or something where basically, depending on the amount of missions and stuff you do (or multiplayer), you'll gain a higher Galactic Readiness. I'm assuming higher ratings means less people will die on the final mission or something.
Vega is by far the worst BioWare character ever. I'll give Carth, Kaiden, Jacob, everyone else a pass over Vega. He's just obnoxious and... boring. His backstory is standard (boohoo my previous commander made a risky decision and now I feel guilty boohoo) and his character design is fucking terrible. He's like goddamn Carlos Mencia but buffer than the Hulk. Just dumb.
This raises a question though: why is he a squad mate and character over your shuttle pilot, who is by far more interesting? One of your dialogues with him and he goes "My husband was killed on some battle". So A) he's gay (the first male BioWare character to openly show it) and B) he actually has an interesting tragedy behind him. I spend more time talking to him than goddamn Vega.
My other thing is that you get a bunch of great characters (from the past and new, if they survived) but they're not squadmates. Wrex comes back, Mordin comes back, Jack comes back (not a great character but I'd take her over Vega), etc.
Other than that, the rest of my part is from previous games (Liara, Garrus, and EDE) so you kinda know their stories. Garrus is fucking awesome and Liara is fine (I didn't romance her previously). EDE is EDE, now with a body.
Gameplay is fine. Considering the series, gameplay wise, went from a flailing, rough, and pretty much terrible TPS in the first one, it's a huge (and wonderful) evolution. Pretty much the same as Mass Effect 2 except for some class changes and the expansion of melee. The RPG stuff is fine. There's multiple weapons to equip as well as armor, all with pros and cons. You can get weapon mods to add stuff like scopes, stability, higher clip size, damage, etc. I'm rather familiar with this system from the multiplayer and it's basically the same in the single player. While people will baww that it's becoming "Gears of War", there's certainly nothing wrong with having a RPG that has, you know, non-shit combat. It's not a prerequisite.
Graphics are rather amazing. The demo wasn't a good representation. While the character models are a bit eh in some respects (mainly facial animations), the set pieces are amazing. One of the early story missions you do involves defending a Turian moon from Reapers. And when you look at the sky, you see the Turian homeworld, set ablaze by the reapers. And it looks so cool.
I haven't touched multiplayer since the demo but I played the demo to hell and back. I'm assuming this is just as good, but now with more maps and enemies.
Despite all my complaints, it's still a fantastic game. I'll be playing it a lot throughout the week and further.
I'm not terribly far into the story. Maybe 4-5 hours so far. I don't even have all my teammates yet. Some observations...
Small presentation issues, like the disc swapping are annoying. It's two discs (like Mass Effect 2) and from what I can tell, the side missions are on the second disc. So if you want to mix side missions in between story missions, you better be close to your Xbox (yeah, this is only the Xbox 360 version by the way).
The narrative is a lot more "on-wheels". Meaning a lot of the dialogue is automatically chosen (well, the irrelevant stuff), compared to earlier Mass Effect games where Shepard didn't cough unless you chose it as a dialogue option. I can't say I like it. It adds character to Shepard. While you may think "WHAT CHARACTERS SHOULD HAVE CHARACTER!" Shepard is meant as a stand in for you. Making him his own character really breaks that. While it definitely improves the flow of the game, allowing for a bit more interesting cinematography (considering previous dialogue would just be close up shots cutting back and forth with little movement). But I'd still prefer the older system of dialogue.
The story itself is what you'd expect: Reapers are reaping everything and you have to unite the races to defeat them. There's a whole thing called "Galactic Readiness" or something where basically, depending on the amount of missions and stuff you do (or multiplayer), you'll gain a higher Galactic Readiness. I'm assuming higher ratings means less people will die on the final mission or something.
Vega is by far the worst BioWare character ever. I'll give Carth, Kaiden, Jacob, everyone else a pass over Vega. He's just obnoxious and... boring. His backstory is standard (boohoo my previous commander made a risky decision and now I feel guilty boohoo) and his character design is fucking terrible. He's like goddamn Carlos Mencia but buffer than the Hulk. Just dumb.
This raises a question though: why is he a squad mate and character over your shuttle pilot, who is by far more interesting? One of your dialogues with him and he goes "My husband was killed on some battle". So A) he's gay (the first male BioWare character to openly show it) and B) he actually has an interesting tragedy behind him. I spend more time talking to him than goddamn Vega.
My other thing is that you get a bunch of great characters (from the past and new, if they survived) but they're not squadmates. Wrex comes back, Mordin comes back, Jack comes back (not a great character but I'd take her over Vega), etc.
Other than that, the rest of my part is from previous games (Liara, Garrus, and EDE) so you kinda know their stories. Garrus is fucking awesome and Liara is fine (I didn't romance her previously). EDE is EDE, now with a body.
Gameplay is fine. Considering the series, gameplay wise, went from a flailing, rough, and pretty much terrible TPS in the first one, it's a huge (and wonderful) evolution. Pretty much the same as Mass Effect 2 except for some class changes and the expansion of melee. The RPG stuff is fine. There's multiple weapons to equip as well as armor, all with pros and cons. You can get weapon mods to add stuff like scopes, stability, higher clip size, damage, etc. I'm rather familiar with this system from the multiplayer and it's basically the same in the single player. While people will baww that it's becoming "Gears of War", there's certainly nothing wrong with having a RPG that has, you know, non-shit combat. It's not a prerequisite.
Graphics are rather amazing. The demo wasn't a good representation. While the character models are a bit eh in some respects (mainly facial animations), the set pieces are amazing. One of the early story missions you do involves defending a Turian moon from Reapers. And when you look at the sky, you see the Turian homeworld, set ablaze by the reapers. And it looks so cool.
I haven't touched multiplayer since the demo but I played the demo to hell and back. I'm assuming this is just as good, but now with more maps and enemies.
Despite all my complaints, it's still a fantastic game. I'll be playing it a lot throughout the week and further.
