Then comes the writing, while it has its moments, so much of it has that canned BioWare style to it. Where NPCs are very artificial and are more like walking filing cabinets with a face - you're given a list of hard topics and can run down the bullet points fired at them, collect the information you want from them, and then discard them and every single one always has the information you seek in very wordy format. If an alien approached you and asked you the entire history of your race, would you just stand there and robotically drone it out? No, you'd probably recommend them to some useful reference material and give a very generalized "from within" perspective, with your own personal biases and experiences describing it. Not every person would realistically have all the information you seek, or wish to fully explain it with such a lack of personality. There's no real life-like qualities to them, especially with their hard sentences that have no flow from one to another.

Not only does this undermine the experience of the game, it is just very very boring. There is no personal intrigue or any driving element to continue discovering more, because you essentially had someone read out the novel in their head about whatever you asked about and got a full educational course. Is it really that awful to have a sense or mystery, or personal discovery?

Finally, Shephard is one of the most boring and unenjoyable main characters I've had to play in an RPG, but he is not the only one of his casting. I am just really really really tired of playing the same stone faced monotone voiced overly serious "hero" characters. Would it really be awful to have a character that shows some interest or excitement at anything they do? React to things in any sort of emotional form? Granted, the point is to let the player direct their in-game vessel, but can they not decide their colorful response?

Not only is it hard to find a connection to the character as you yourself become excited at what you discover while they stare on dead eyed with a straight mouth, it's just so fucking boring and really destroys the personality of the game as a whole. Not only is it detrimental, it is just so over done in RPGs.

I really would like to play an RPG one day where the main character actually gives a fuck about what's going on.

I hope this shit gets better.

>>47856401
BioWare's lost its touch. Mass Effect on a story level is hardly better than the Phantom Menace.

This is a delicious troll thread. You must eat it.

Welcome to BioWare.

>words
what is this, homework

>>47856566
Wouldn't have been more obvious even if OP had said it himself.

Yeah it's not that fantastic. The most interesting bit is when you speak to the Reaper for the first time, but I doubt Bioware has the imagination to make anything of what they foreshadowed.

>>47856491
>I am just really really really tired of playing the same stone faced monotone voiced overly serious "hero" characters.
then play female shep dumbass

>>47856566
>>47856695

>SOMEONE DOESN'T LIKE THE GLORIOUS BIOWARE?! THEY MUST BE A TROLL!

>>47856491
Yeah, soldiers should be eccentric.

trolllineeveryonepostingunderhereistrolled.jpg

>>47856974
I'm not saying he should get out the confetti and tassles and dance around in a rainbow, but it would be nice to share some sort of human response with him over what happens in front of him. Surprise, genuine interest, happiness, disappointment, etc.

Instead everything is met with him staring blankly. Responding in a flat voice and never changing the delivery or word usage on who he's talking to or over what subject. You can be talking with a pal and he'll still be all "I WILL BE LEAVING NOW." at the end.

>>47857390
Mass Effect 2 fixes this, not that it was that bad in the first place.

Hell, look at every one of these goddamn screenshots. It's the same fucking expression in every single one of them.

He's not even a fucking human, he's a god damn robot.

tl;dr

PS. ME2 is so much better than ME

>>47857505

I wonder if it is possible to make someone have a crazy expression all the time like Tyrone's eternal frown.

>>47856401
My favorite part of this troll is the misuse of the word droll. Actually, I stopped reading after that. At the off-chance that this isn't intentional then let me give you a lesson. Droll means amusing. There, you learned something. Now at least Mass Effect has done something good for you.

It's unfortunate that there are no exciting weapons. 2 weapons in each category your class can use and rarely used heavy weapons.

Only the Soldier has a weapon that can actually kill an enemy. Infiltrators get a dope ass sniper rifle that comes with all of 15 shots, the rest of the classes can only use crappy SMGs and a crappy pistol with no ammo.

Harder difficulties make using classes like Adept, Engineer, Sentinel and Vanguard rediculously annoying as you have to play like a Soldier until you kill off enough enemies until you can use your powers without dying in seconds.

doesn't droll mean amusing?
ya, I stopped reading there, dude needs to learn that brevity is the heart of something something

>>47857767

Haha, partly true. You can use your squad's abilities and pop out and use biotics/tech when enemies aren't firing. playing sentinel on insane atm, shit's pretty challenging.

>droll
>droll
>droll
>droll
>droll
>droll
>droll
>droll
>Thinks it means boring
>Huge faggot

>>47857767

>rediculously

Oh christ I hate you. It's not even pronounced like that.

>OP makes a good point
>misuses a word
>TROLL STFU LOL ALL HAIL BIOWARE

>>47857678

You've got me on misuse of the word, but I don't see how that makes the rest of my argument invalid. Perhaps you just do not wish your opinion challenged.

I am not a troll, and just wanted to discuss the qualities of this game.

@OP ignore the trolls, well made posts and all valid points but I - and pretty much everyone else on /v/ it seems - enjoyed the shit out of ME1+2.

>>47857767
>15 shots
What does this mean? Until you have to pop your heatsink?

>>47858084

It means the best sniper in the game has 13 shots in total, reload after every shot.

>>47858068
>@OP

Get the fuck out of here.

>>47858161

Intimidating.

>>47858133
In total? What do you mean?

>>47858035

I always thought whether it was possible to have a customizable main character that was able to retain emotions, development, and humanity of a protagonist.

>>47857390
one of the main draw backs of motion capture, you need a really good system to capture the minute facial expressions along with the broad physical movements.

That or you could animate all the subtle facial expressions that illustrate character emotions for every single situation by hand.

Bioware obviously didn't have a budget for either of these for the first game. Considering all the other systems they were tackling for an entirely new franchise, that they even had some left over time to add "grimace-face" and "smile-face" to appropriate sines should be lauded.

This thread is now about the best face in gaming history.

>>47858262
it's not just the visual expression, it's the writing and acting

The game is passable, but it feels very small. For some reason it feels like you're driving Shepard around rather than running. He's very sluggish and stiff. Compare it to BG2 or even KotOR and see how weak Mass Effect seems.

Sup OP,
Welcome to every bioware game ever.
Dont get me wrong, they are good and fun to play. But nothing like the GOTY material that /v/ makes it out to be. 1 or 2 playthroughs and thats it.

>>47856566
>>47856695
>>47857106
>BAWWWWWWWWWW HE DOESN'T LIKE THE SAME GAMES AS ME BAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
>>47858068
Welcome to /v/. You click the 'No.591519' next to 'Anonymous' in posts. I like how you actually said something nice. Ignore the faggots crying because you've not been on /v/ for over 9000 decades.

Dull surprise!

>>47858084

Until you run out of ammo, although the second rifle you get pretty quickly and it has a lot more ammo.

>>47858414

I know, I was too lazy to scroll all the way up again. My scrolling-finger is weak.

>>47858262

Or they could do it like San Andreas, where the characters have almost immobile faces, and do their acting with their bodies and voices and are very effective. Bioware characters are always stiff as a board except for their faces.

>>47858345
A challenger appears!

>>47858591
In Me2 Characters move around a lot. Mordin likes to pace, for example.

>it's not just the visual expression, it's the writing and acting

Exactly. I could actually bear stone faces if the rest didn't seem to support that choice of animation.

Not only does it completely bring down Shephard but it makes the game so uninteresting to continue experiencing with every single NPC being totally devoid of personality as they all talk in the same robotic word usage and sentence structure, acted out woodenly, with terrible flow from one sentence to the next.

Not only is it not very enjoyable, it's just so archaic. We're in the late 2000s now, let's try to make our games like it.

Here's some more B|

>>47858772

Asari?!
Krogan?
.....TURIANS?

>>47858591

The method of communication in ME2 makes that very hard to do. If the characters keep the same expression while you read each choice it would look hilarious.

>>47858035

I've never played Mass Effect. Well, I played to the big hub and then found it boring. I was just skimming and saw the misuse of a word and flew into a neckbeard frenzy of correcting others. I didn't know it wasn't a troll thread, but in my skimming saw others saying that it was. Rather than investigating further I made an error myself. I apologize. Good day.

>>47857767

I can agree with this.

When I started off with Infiltrator class the poor excuse for an SMG that you are given pissed me the fuck off. Its not even an SMG its a god damn three shot "machine pistol".

What made it worse is that it has a close resemblance to the heavy pistol and every time I was in the middle of a firefight I would find myself shooting a three round burst all around the enemy instead of delivering the direct head shot I was expecting.

Then the SMG which you do get half-way through the game after the Tali rescue mission is nothing more then a fire hose of bullets, forcing you to empty half a clip to down one enemy.

God damnit, when I would see that my SMG had 500 fucking rounds but my two main weapons, the heavy pistol and sniper rifle, had an average of 30 I would rage like a motherfucker.

>>47858945

If Bioware didn't insist on jamming the camera right into the npc's face, it would be fine. You could have them reacting with their bodies, like an actor in an actual film.

>>47858591
Well, here's the thing they have the characters standing mostly still during character interaction because they need to control facing and eye contact during the conversations.

I mean, think about it. How many interactions does Shepard have throughout the game? 80? 90? 100 or more? And in every single one of those, they need to face each other, and maintain eye contact. So instead of mocaping 100 unique animations, you do about 25 to 35 generic actions that start and end in a "neutral" pose and you know will always maintain a posture and eye direction that looks appropriate for the situation when you play them against each other.

>>47859118
SMG = close range
Pistol = long range

B|

And you guys complain about B^Uckley.

>and then on top of that being cast as the typical HEROIC BADASS that nobody can get enough of... it's just so... old. I wouldn't mind having an NPC with these qualities, to observe the arch-type externally, but being one is very very boring.

stop playing renegade and chose a different origin

problem solved