Mass Effect 3

[HotRod]

RyuRoots wrote:

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I'm not sure what you've seen/heard, but sound was perfect for me on my PS3 playthroughs of ME2, and the game looked frigging great to me.

It is actually a very common problem with the ps3 version. People started to notice shortly after the first patch. The audio would become very out of sync at certain spots and would even cut conversations off mid sentence. I have seen this problem myself with my own version.

On the graphics note, as much as I love my ps3, the 360 version is far superior. Mostly due to the game being made more with it in mind.

[Reverend]

Wow, TBTB actually listened to the complaints about the novel. This is the first I've heard of a publisher mandated re-issue to fix continuity errors. I wonder what the rules are regarding author credit and royalties if someone other than the original author re-writes a book? I mean, that is assuming they'll get someone else to "fix" it.

Moreover, will they offer replacements to those who bought the (soon to be rare collectors items) original manuscripts or just make them pay for it a second time? I mean it's not like they're correcting misprints or some other production related typesetting error. They're talking about changing the substance of the text.

Not that I think it'll make things "better" (save perhaps for the wiki people) since a badly written story will still be a badly written story no matter how canon it's references are...still, it feels oddly appropriate that a gaming IP based book is getting a post launch patch.

[PsychoPere]

Good to hear, though I'm not thrilled with the idea of buying the book a second time.

[-Brett-]

Fans in general could stand to take tie ins a little less seriously. The idea that a tie in fiction could overwrite what it ties in to is ludicrous, but fans seem to have that idea anyway.

Personally, I think the Mass Effect tie ins could have been better if they'd abandoned all pretense of being canon and followed the between-the-games adventures of the Normandy crew. I found the Sanders/Grayson side story fairly tedious.

[Reverend]

I think things like this are generally seen by the parent companies as little more than advertising for the main game, with only one eye towards making extra merchandising profit from the die-hard fans.

I think the reason this has caused such a stink (yes, it even made it to Penny Arcade) is because up until this point, quality control has been fairly consistent (for obvious reasons.) The quality itself has never been exceptional so much as is has been acceptable, with this new entry straying totally off the reservation and into utter-garbage territory.

Still, I stand by my assertion that correcting factual errors won't suddenly make the book "better" (not that it coudl get any worse, if half of what I've read is accurate.) I mean how can they "correct" the way the main character is portrayed? How exactly does one grow out of autism? A factually correct load of crap is still a load of crap.

[PsychoPere]

-Brett- wrote:

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Fans in general could stand to take tie ins a little less seriously. The idea that a tie in fiction could overwrite what it ties in to is ludicrous, but fans seem to have that idea anyway.

We have that "idea" because BioWare has described their tie-ins as being part of an overarching universe. It's completely reasonable to expect that the material is consistent in such a case.

[ATimson]

-Brett- wrote:

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Personally, I think the Mass Effect tie ins could have been better if they'd abandoned all pretense of being canon and followed the between-the-games adventures of the Normandy crew. I found the Sanders/Grayson side story fairly tedious.

You may have found it tedious, but I enjoyed reading about Admiral Anderson. And I wouldn't have bothered reading about a Shepard who's a completely different gender from mine.

Reverend wrote:

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Still, I stand by my assertion that correcting factual errors won't suddenly make the book "better" (not that it coudl get any worse, if half of what I've read is accurate.) I mean how can they "correct" the way the main character is portrayed? How exactly does one grow out of autism?

Well, the character has been off of the experimental meds that Cerberus was giving her for 3 or 6 years (depending on whether you go by the calendar or by her age). It's quite possible that the autistic behavior was a side effect of those, rather than her actually having autism.

[-Brett-]

PsychoPere wrote:

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We have that "idea" because BioWare has described their tie-ins as being part of an overarching universe.

Corporations lie to make money.

ATimson wrote:

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You may have found it tedious, but I enjoyed reading about Admiral Anderson. And I wouldn't have bothered reading about a Shepard who's a completely different gender from mine.

To each his own I suppose. Wouldn't bother me to read someone elses interpretation of Shepard, so long as the games themselves continued to accomodate mine.

[PsychoPere]

-Brett- wrote:

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Corporations lie to make money.

That makes no sense in the context of what has happened here. If BioWare wasn't interested in maintaining a cohesive universe spanning games, novels, comics, and animation, then they wouldn't be bothering to fix the first work that has deviated in incredibly odd ways from their lore.

[Reverend]

ATimson wrote:

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Well, the character has been off of the experimental meds that Cerberus was giving her for 3 or 6 years (depending on whether you go by the calendar or by her age). It's quite possible that the autistic behavior was a side effect of those, rather than her actually having autism.

Bit of a disadvantage since I haven't actually read the book and don't really know exactly how she was written, but the the impression I've gotten is that the author basically shrugs the whole thing off as if it was "just a phase" rather than a lifelong emotional condition and is now completely "normal." I suspect that the writer either knew he didn't have the chops to portray autistic behaviour or was just lazy and couldn't be bothered to deal with it. From what I've read about the guy, either option (or both) are equally likely.

The way I see it, however much she may have opened up and improved over the last two or three years since 'Ascension', there's no way there wouldn't have left it's mark on how she thinks and behaves. That plus the impression I had was that Cerberus's medication had compounded an already existing condition, not created it. Even if it had, autism is a neural development disorder that has a very real physical effect on the way a person's neurons connect. Their brains are literally wired differently. While it's true that there are varying degrees of autism and some are functional enough that they can take care of themselves and pass for "normal" (for lack of a better term), whichever way you slice it, Gillian's condition was pretty damn severe--at times bordering on catatonic--for almost the entirety of her childhood. Drug induced or not that MUST have a noticeable impact.

[-Brett-]

PsychoPere wrote:

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That makes no sense in the context of what has happened here. If BioWare wasn't interested in maintaining a cohesive universe spanning games, novels, comics, and animation, then they wouldn't be bothering to fix the first work that has deviated in incredibly odd ways from their lore.

Well, if Bioware was truly interested in maintaining a cohesive universe across all these mediums, I would think they would have checked the book for these kinds of issues before it was released.

I also disagree with the assertion that it was the first work to have these issues. Retribution was terrible canon-wise. From what I hear, the comics do some pretty funny things to the lore as well. Deception might be the worst offender, but it wasn't the first.

[Reverend]

In other news, one of the producers of ME3 has been telling gamers it might be a good idea to hold onto their Mass Effect 3 saves. So it looks like whatever ME4 will turn out to be about, it'll still feature save game imports. Can we presume from this that it'll be a post reaper invasion game, rather than the often postulated 'First Contact War' prequel? I mean why else would we need a save game that keeps track of whether Conrad Verner is alive, dead or walking with a limp?

[Jax]

After ME3 you would expect a Galaxy in need of serious re-building and power vaccums appearing so a Civil War (in galaxy terms anyway) might be a nice route to take though I don't think ME needs a 2nd trilogy just a standalone or 2 part adventure after the Reaper trilogy.

I think after TOR we will see a Mass Effect MMO in 4 or 5 years

[Reverend]

My preference would be for them to jump any such story ahead at least a century or two, well after Shepard is dust. That way you have a nice blank slate on which to build a new saga. That way you don't need to come up with some conceit as to why Shepard is no longer involved in larger events.

One of the main things that bugged me about Dragon Age II is how it basically brushed off your DA:O character with some offhand remark about how The Warden had mysteriously disappeared. My warden didn't (nor could she) go through the mirror at the end of Witch Hunt and as far as I was concerned she'd retired back to Highever with Leliana. I imagine it was even more irksome for players that actually killed Leliana!

So yeah, I think giving the story some distance would be the best way to continue the story without disrespecting players' individual experiences.

[ATimson]

Reverend wrote:

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Bit of a disadvantage since I haven't actually read the book and don't really know exactly how she was written, but the the impression I've gotten is that the author basically shrugs the whole thing off as if it was "just a phase" rather than a lifelong emotional condition and is now completely "normal."

Shrugging it off would require some sort of reference, and I didn't see any.

Reverend wrote:

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That plus the impression I had was that Cerberus's medication had compounded an already existing condition, not created it. Even if it had, autism is a neural development disorder that has a very real physical effect on the way a person's neurons connect. Their brains are literally wired differently. While it's true that there are varying degrees of autism and some are functional enough that they can take care of themselves and pass for "normal" (for lack of a better term), whichever way you slice it, Gillian's condition was pretty damn severe--at times bordering on catatonic--for almost the entirety of her childhood. Drug induced or not that MUST have a noticeable impact.

In the real world, I'd agree. On the other hand, she'd opened up noticeably even by the end of Ascension (or whichever book it was), after spending time without the drugs. So it wouldn't exactly be unprecedented.

Reverend wrote:

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One of the main things that bugged me about Dragon Age II is how it basically brushed off your DA:O character with some offhand remark about how The Warden had mysteriously disappeared. My warden didn't (nor could she) go through the mirror at the end of Witch Hunt and as far as I was concerned she'd retired back to Highever with Leliana. I imagine it was even more irksome for players that actually killed Leliana!

I didn't necessarily mind the comments about the Warden disappearing. Characters coming back from the dead, though... that's a problem.

My concern with bringing our saves further forward again - I know that ME1 and DA:O both have a lot of save flag bugs that result in imports not getting all the right data. I don't exactly have confidence in ME2/ME3 not suffering the same fate.