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Mass Effect 3

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

Corporations lie to make money. :shrug:
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.
 
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?
 
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
 
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.
 
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.

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.

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.
 
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.
^Worse than I thought then.

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.
I'm willing to suspend disbelief *to a point* for the sake of drama and buy into her condition improving in the relatively small timespan that Ascension encompassed (a few weeks/months?) However, no amount of 1-on-1 care and hanging out with quarians is going to erase that entierly. It's quite literally part of who she is and always will be, right down the the neural pathways.

Think Dustin Hoffman in 'Rainman' or Summer Glau in 'Firefly' & 'Serenity' for good fictional comparisons. Both characters improved greatly over the course of their respective stories, but they were still who they were. If someone were to write a story featuring River (who BTW, I realise wasn't autistic) set some years after 'Serenity' and wrote her dialogue as if she was a perfectly "normal" young woman with no trace of her idiosyncrasies, it wouldn't be River and nobody familiar with the character would--or should--buy into it. The way she perceives the world around her never changes, only her ability to process and articulate changes.

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.
While I do recall some issues, I don't think any of them where particularly serious. In fact the only ones in ME2 I can recall have something to do with a news report regarding Sirta Foundation and whether you intimidated or charmed Conrad Verner. Admittedly the latter was a little annoying, but the difference was minimal with no impact on actual gameplay the latter was utterly harmless and I doubt most would even notice. As far as I'm aware all the major flags worked fine, as did most of the minor ones.

Dragon Age was a different situation since the development team (who I should point out are a separate team to the ME devs) made a conscious choice to run roughshod over several possible endgame permutations. Maybe because they didn't originally intend for any of the DA:O characters to figure much into any of the following games and so painted themselves into a corner in DA2 when they found they wanted to use some characters who were killable in the first game.

In the case of Mass Effect 4, moving things on eliminates any such conflict as just about everyone (who isn't an Asari or a Krogan) would be long dead. I'd be happy if the only carry over from my ME3 save is a statue of my Shepard on the Citadel, rendered with my custom appearance. ;)
 
While I do recall some issues, I don't think any of them where particularly serious.
In ME2, maybe not. I seem to recall that DA2 had some genuine bugs regarding party members/love interests, especially if you played Awakening or the DLC (above and beyond Leliana and Anders automatically being resurrected for the sequel).

In the case of Mass Effect 4, moving things on eliminates any such conflict as just about everyone (who isn't an Asari or a Krogan) would be long dead. I'd be happy if the only carry over from my ME3 save is a statue of my Shepard on the Citadel, rendered with my custom appearance. ;)
I think the bigger problem with a Mass Effect 4 is "how do you top the Reapers"? :vulcan:
 
Simple. You do not try and top the Reapers. Not every story needs to be some huge and epic tale with the entire galaxy at risk. I personally hope for a story taking place shortly after the Reaper invasion and dealing with the current state of the galaxy and its efforts to rebuilt. Maybe told from the point of view of someone non-military. We have already seen the galaxy from the point of view of a Soldier/Spectre, now lets see it from the point of view of the everyman. Maybe the crew of small cargo ship dealing with their own issues. Or maybe Mercs, or just some schmuck who sets out on an adventure. The Mass Effect Universe is so full and rich with possible story ideas that anything could be possible.
 
^While ones like that didn't add much to the overall game, I think it was nice to have some variety beyond "walking into room, shoot everyone. Then walk into next room, rinse and repeat until cutscene."

While I do recall some issues, I don't think any of them where particularly serious.
In ME2, maybe not. I seem to recall that DA2 had some genuine bugs regarding party members/love interests, especially if you played Awakening or the DLC (above and beyond Leliana and Anders automatically being resurrected for the sequel).

So do I, but the details elude me at the moment. Mind you that game had plenty of bugs to worry about besides the import flags. More to the point I think the source of such problems actually stemmed from the way Awakening saved it's data (or didn't, as the case may be) rather than there being an inherent problem with the import process. But like I said, ME & DA have separate dev teams and ME so far has a *much* better track record.

Simple. You do not try and top the Reapers. Not every story needs to be some huge and epic tale with the entire galaxy at risk. I personally hope for a story taking place shortly after the Reaper invasion and dealing with the current state of the galaxy and its efforts to rebuilt. Maybe told from the point of view of someone non-military. We have already seen the galaxy from the point of view of a Soldier/Spectre, now lets see it from the point of view of the everyman. Maybe the crew of small cargo ship dealing with their own issues. Or maybe Mercs, or just some schmuck who sets out on an adventure. The Mass Effect Universe is so full and rich with possible story ideas that anything could be possible.

Absolutely. I could totally get behind a ME game where you start off as some nobody colonist farmer, or a Terminus systems smuggler rather than as a soldier. More than anything I'd like to see a DAO approach where you get to pick your race and origin. Not sure how practical that'll be for a fully voiced game though.
 
Yeah, I'm willing to bet that whatever we get will still be told primarily from a human point of view. Which itself could be really interesting in the next game if there weren't many humans left thanks to the Reapers.

Still on the issue of Mass Effect 4. If they are suggesting people maintain their saves from ME1-ME3, does that not mean it would still be current generation. Giving Bioware a minimum time of 2 years development, that would put it out sometime in early 2014. Damn, the 360 just might get its 10 year life cycle.
 
Still on the issue of Mass Effect 4. If they are suggesting people maintain their saves from ME1-ME3, does that not mean it would still be current generation.
Not necessarily. Between the current generation's cloud storage capabilities, and their ability to copy saves to USB media, adding in support for bringing saves to the next generation is going to be trivial for console makers.

(While I don't think there was any way to bring original Xbox saves forward, PS2 saves could have been via memory card. Were there any games that actually did that?)
 
...and yet again they tease the new femShep. ;)

Nice to see the site updated. I had wondered why they'd stopped updating the N7ops section.
 
There are a lot of nice, shiny things in that trailer - even setting aside FemShep...

Jacob, Miranda, Samara, Legion, Kaiden...
Asari biotics protecting artillery
An interesting-looking assassin type attacking Shep's aircar
Quarian fleet attacking... something
Shep taking down a Reaper single-handedly!

Also, is anyone else having problems with the links in the page on the Bioware forums that bullethead flagged up? When I click on them, they just lead me to a 404 error.
 
^Nope, I just checked and they all work fine.

Defiantly worth the wait...not sure if I like the final look of the new default face though. The huge eyes make her look a little too doll-like for my taste. Rather prefer my own attempt if I'm being honest.

Also spotted Legion (in hologram form), some action on the presidium and what looks like shots from a different on-rails shooter section than I'd seen before. It's nice to know they've gone to some effort to vary the gameplay a little more this time around.
 
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