(XL) Was the Ending a Hallucination? - Indoctrination Theory Mark IV!

It's happening...
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/bioware-dev-wants-ideas-for-mass-effect-trilogy-re/1100-6423431/?ftag=YHR28b9ce3

Well, I've waited too long for real news.

Shadow Realms officially shut down.

SwobyJ wrote:Shadow Realms officially shut down.

Wasn't Shadow Realms that game they were hinting at with multiple fantasy style trailers for that we though were about IT or something?

Ah, they're gearing up for more Star Wars and had to shift personnel around. https://shadowrealms.com/blog/an-important-update-on-shadow-realms

ZerebusPrime wrote:Ah, they're gearing up for more Star Wars and had to shift personnel around. https://shadowrealms.com/blog/an-important-update-on-shadow-realms

Jesus Christ, will they finally fucking give us KotOR 3 (which everyone has wanted for the last decade or so)? That would make my day. I should probably try TOR at some point, but what I really want is another SP romp through the early SW universe. Is that too much to ask for, BioWare, IS IT?!?! (okay, rant over, lol)

That BioWare still has its Star Wars license is a sign of good things, frankly.  Most Star Wars videogames went up in smoke when Disney nuked the expanded universe. Assuming the next Mass Effect hits things out of the park, the scent of money will probably lead Disney to demand a single player Star Wars epic.

Somehow this news makes me happy. Quality over quantity of IPs.

But somehow I also fail to understand how stuff like this works. Isn't it incredibly stupid to spend months on development and promotion only to make a decision you could've made right at the start of things?

ZerebusPrime wrote:That BioWare still has its Star Wars license is a sign of good things, frankly.  Most Star Wars videogames went up in smoke when Disney nuked the expanded universe.  Assuming the next Mass Effect hits things out of the park, the scent of money will probably lead Disney to demand a single player Star Wars epic.

Either that or some F2P multiplayer abomination where you need to collect action figures to get in game items, with the PC version being an awful mobile port.

Disney Infinity 3.0 is going to be... interesting. Also hideously expensive.

smash016 wrote:Somehow this news makes me happy. Quality over quantity of IPs.

But somehow I also fail to understand how stuff like this works. Isn't it incredibly stupid to spend months on development and promotion only to make a decision you could've made right at the start of things?

Sometimes ideas just don't work out. Cutting your loses and switching to something more profitable is, in those situations, the best thing to do.

Dwailing wrote:

ZerebusPrime wrote:Ah, they're gearing up for more Star Wars and had to shift personnel around. https://shadowrealms.com/blog/an-important-update-on-shadow-realms

Jesus Christ, will they finally fucking give us KotOR 3 (which everyone has wanted for the last decade or so)?  That would make my day.  I should probably try TOR at some point, but what I really want is another SP romp through the early SW universe.  Is that too much to ask for, BioWare, IS IT?!?! (okay, rant over, lol)

I think that with all the new Star Wars hype, we will get a SW RPG. And as the license to all SW games lies with EA for the next time, I can´t really see them giving it to anyone else than Bioware. Only question is whether it will be Kotor 3 or more related to the movie.

shadow realms? Was this ever a real going into development game, or just some way to piss off mass effect 3 players?

An RPG related to the new movie? So who owns "Knights of the New Republic"?

ZerebusPrime wrote:An RPG related to the new movie?  So who owns "Knights of the New Republic"?

EA got the rights for every Star Wars RPG for at least the next 10 years, so this made by Bioware is definitely possible!

Edit: Would probably be the first time I´d be thankful that Bioware is with EA...

Well that's new.

Can't say I'm too cut up about Shadow Realms, aside from it being rough on all those Bioware Austin employees who've spent so much time on it. Multiplayer's not my thing. And on a related topic...

http://www.vg247.com/2015/02/12/mass-effect-4-multiplayer-on-the-cards/

Not really surprising news. It was very successful in ME3. Just so long as it doesn't affect the SP campaign in any way, then I don't have a problem with it.

Eryri wrote:Can't say I'm too cut up about Shadow Realms, aside from it being rough on all those Bioware Austin employees who've spent so much time on it. Multiplayer's not my thing. And on a related topic...

http://www.vg247.com/2015/02/12/mass-effect-4-multiplayer-on-the-cards/

Not really surprising news. It was very successful in ME3. Just so long as it doesn't affect the SP campaign in any way, then I don't have a problem with it.

Best news I've heard thus far for ME4. ME3's MP was the best part of the game. It was actually very good. Hopefully they build upon that.

Yes, the multiplayer was really good, but I won't give a rat's ass about multiplayer in ME4 if the single player story is retarded.

feck multiplayer.  how about they concentrate on the core game mechanics of Mass Effect 4 instead of trying to be a complete halo rip off.

I would be pretty sad if Mass Effect Next was Mass Effect Halo. Bring some of the experience of working on Halo with you, sure, but if I can easily go "Oh, this is X from Halo, and that is Y from Halo", that'd suck.

Mass Effect 2 and 3 really came close to doing the same thing, but with Gears of War. Just never to the point of distraction (other than in parody videos of ME3 though, haha).

I'm in two minds about MP. It's never going to something that I'll enjoy, but if EA think that it will be a money spinner for them, maybe they'll feel justified in allocating more budget and time to the SP campaign...

Or maybe I'm just hopelessly optimistic.

In other news IGNorant have actually done something moderately useful, for once, by making Mass Effect Infiltrator their free game of the month (if you have a iOS device, sadly not for Android). I've no idea if it's any good but I thought I'd give it a go. Link to follow.

http://uk.ign.com/prime/promo/mass-effect-infiltrator-free

How is Mass Effect like HALO???

HALO is a mix of an arena and military tactical FPS with a high focus on competitive MP, in which the Holy Trinity of FPS is exposed to the outmost- (Twitch, nades, and melee skills)

HALO is.... Well it's HALO. Nothing in gaming and especially FPS is like HALO.

Mass Effect is an action RPG that has heavy elements of cover based third person shooter in it. If any thing, Mass Effect's gameplay is more like Gears of War or Resident Evil 4 or something like that. I guess. Although it's still an action RPG (ME1 and ME2 are.... ME3.... Is a pure Gears of War wannabe tho).

But I fail to see any gameplay related similarities to HALO. The tactical cloak is an exact rip off of Crysis.... Yet another EA title that actual has a... Wait for it.... Wait.... A TACTICAL Cloak... LOL.*Crysis came out in 2007* The cover mechanic of ME2 and ME3 are blatant rip offs of Gears of War, as is the Horde Mode of ME3's MP (as great and fun as it is) it's still a rip off of Gears of War. The weapons and stuff are all very HALO esque in design maybe. If any correlation can be drawn with HALO or Mass Effect it's within the aesthetics and to a degree.... The narrative. Mass Effect nearly copies many elements of HALO's aesthetic design, (Geth drop ships come to mind and the use of lens flares and the color over saturation of the use of the purple....)

But gameplay wise......

Mass Effect couldn't carry HALO's gym bag. Very few games can. Very few (Counter Strike, a great Battlefield and Quake 3 Arena come to mind, but that's about it). If. And it's a big if, somehow ME4's gameplay and more specifically gunplay, hit boxes, player feed back and netcode, are half as good as HALO's...... My God, it just might be an amazing game too play. As much as I love ME3's MP (And I do mean love, well over 250 hours in it) The hit reg, De-synced hit boxes, and obviously low tick rate of EA scrub servers, is very problematic. So if they somehow make ME4 play and be as responsive as say a HALO..... I mean, man.... It just might be the defacto third person shooter of this gen.

(don't fool yourself tho, ME4 is gonna be a third person shooter first and RPG second... Just like ME3 was. I don't buy it for a second that ME4 is gonna be some huge expansive RPG, like ME1 on steroids or Sky Rim in space or something like that. No way. It's gonna be a lot like Warframe (great game BTW) and.... Sadly, Destiny. Because shooters are vastly more lucrative than RPGs.


And EA knows this.

What the hell are you talking about, Turian? At least on my part, I was addressing the Halo 4 writer being ME4's lead writer, and the possibility of there being a much greater Halo-like tone and even story then before. Maybe even elements of gameplay.

I feel the next Mass Effect may be just as shooter as before, but PLUS a much more open environment and battlefields, and less 'setpiece-y' non-combat areas.

Playing the trilogy again, it looks and feels more and more like a super limited stage of what could instead be presented as a much more 'living' world. The next Mass Effect can move towards that as a goal.

I never considered ME1 to be a huge expansive RPG, just relatively more older-school RPG than the other two games. We're certainly not getting Skyrim in Space, but I do expect much more openness than before - much of it being nearly empty (save for maybe some collection quest items...ew....) but available to zoom past on our 'improved' Mako.



So far, Mass Effect hasn't been VERY Halo. Maybe ME and Halo draw upon some similar (especially religious) artistic inspirations, but the identity of each franchise has so-far kept separate. ME3 at times does give me a semi-Halo feel, but only occasionally. But things like the High Destroy ending and the Omniblade and Glyph roaming around.. all of that rings a bell, to say the least, haha.

So what I meant by my last post was that while I have no problem with there being some similarities between two games of the same or similar gameplay and story genres, I'd be sad if things went 'off balance' and Mass Effect becomes but an extension of what Halo 4 was.
An example would be if the 'new species' in Mass Effect Next end up looking and acting very Covenant/Halo 4 alien-ish, and the so-far prominent species from ME1-ME3 get sidelined. Or if the MP gameplay ends up being as Haloish as possible while still being co-op and third person. There's a lot of things Bioware could theoretically do to make Mass Effect a Halo game in much of its spirit, but I wouldn't support such a thing, and if it goes too far, it may be enough to get me to walk away from the franchise entirely.