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Games Entertainment

Mass Effect's Aftermath 82

Posted by Zonk from the all-the-ui-developers-horribly-mangled dept.
1up is republishing a short interview with BioWare's Casey Hudson, the Project Director for their sci-fi epic Mass Effect. The piece originally ran in EGM, and covers a few nagging details left behind by the project, things like "What happened to the ability to interrupt people?", or "What's up with the UI?". "Hudson: Well, the item comparison is probably a lot better than KOTOR's because we now show you a graph that compares [the stats] of one weapon to another. As you can imagine, the inventory-management system for a role-playing game is probably one of the biggest and most complicated systems. It's actually one of the drawbacks to giving people so much to do and so many things. We didn't get much negative feedback during development with the inventory screen, although [if stuff doesn't work right], that's definitely something we want to fix in the future." That's a really deft way of handling that question, but I have to say: despite my deep and abiding love for the game, the user interface is an affront to Tufte.
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Mass Effect's Aftermath More

Mass Effect's Aftermath

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  • I got laid 4 times in Mass Effect (Score:5, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Friday January 18, 2008 @12:50PM (#22096428) Homepage Journal

    Had to play it through twice for it. 2x by the consort on Citadel then once each by Ashley and Liara. Doing the blue chick made me feel cool like Captain Kirk.

    • You can score with the consort?

      • Re:I got laid 4 times in Mass Effect (Score:4, Informative)

        by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Friday January 18, 2008 @01:13PM (#22096938) Homepage Journal

        You can score with the consort?

        You bet!

        When you get your initial reward after finishing her mission it's just some new-age touchy-feely speech. One of the replies is something to the effect of "That's it?!" Choose that and it's SEX WITH A BLUE CHICK!!!!111````

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Peil ( 549875 )
          The trick is to have more renegade points by that point - if your ahead at that point and ask for payment, you get the blue schmoo

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by grub ( 11606 )

            The trick is to have more renegade points by that point

            Ah, good to know. I had lots of renegade points as I was playing like Dirty Harry. Killed everyone I could, got that junkie his drugs, backed the racist "Earth Party" or whatever they're called, asked for a threesome with Liara and Ashley first time through ("In your dreams, Commander!" -Ashley) etc.

            It's great to have a game in which I can be a bigger asshole than I am in real life.

            • asked for a threesome with Liara and Ashley first time through ("In your dreams, Commander!" -Ashley) etc.
              Wow, I totally missed that on my renegade playthough.
              • You need to have been nice to both of them, nice enough that they both want to jump your bones. If that's the case, they'll confront you and ask you to choose.

                On my renegade playtrhough I was a jerk to both of them and only managed to barely salvage things enough to nail the blue chick, (After which I returned to renegade mode with "Time for round two.") But I didnt get the demand to choose between them. I do think Ashley is a way better match for a Renegade character though, she's human centric and an assk

                • Re: (Score:1)

                  by Curze ( 1166985 )
                  I went for Ashley at first on my renegade play-through, but when ya find out she's a jeebus freak, I disengaged faster than mass relay travel. Just like what I do IRL upon discovering this oh-so common feature.
                  • But the beauty of it is that as a Renegade, you're just agreeing with her to bed her. You're cynically using her. Bwahahaha.

                    That said, some of the negative options are damn hilarious, like when she says her dead father is still watching over her, "He's not a zombie, is he?"
    • Doing the blue chick made me feel cool like Captain Kirk.

      Did you give your character a toupee, too?
  • Personally, after only about an hour of play, I kind of liked the way that the inventory and barter system worked...the interface is quite easy to work with. In my opinion, the ONLY two things missing is the ability to filter/sort your stuff, and a raise on the relatively low item cap limit (towards the end of the game, you start seeing the message telling you that you are close to capacity rather frequently) Other than that, I think the inventory system was quite effective and easy to use (yes, even with
    • It wasn't criminally bad, but they could have learned a lot from, say, Oblivion on how to do it. Oblivion's map/inventory interface was better in pretty much every way, and it's a couple years old now.
    • Couple of glaring omissions:
      1. No page-up/page-down functionality. Those lists got really, really long.
      2. No way to cancel out of the upgrade screen without 're-upgrading' the current mod. Which is at the top of the list you have probably just scrolled to the bottom of.
      3. No indication of how much stuff you have relative to your limit. A simple ###/150 somewhere on the screen would work.
      • A lot of the problems with the inventory system would have been solved by the Pg Up/Dn functionality. Especially since that is a standard function in the 360 interface-- using the Right and Left triggers to Pg Up/Dn in lists. The upgrade screen wouldn't have been a problem since it would have been easy to scroll back up to the top. Selling items would have been far easier because of a faster scrolling speed. I'm used to many other 360 games using the Dashboard standard for Pg Up/Dn, so I ended up being
    • I didn't have any problem with the inventory or barter system until about 60% of the way through the game. As you mentioned, I started getting the messages about having too many items. From that point on, I'm pretty sure I spent almost half my gameplay time trying to sell items or convert them to omni-gel just so I could collect more stuff. It's the worst with the gel conversion, because every time I convert something, it kicks me back to the top of the list, and I've got to scroll all the way down (and scr

  • More sex scenes! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Cornflake917 ( 515940 ) * on Friday January 18, 2008 @01:04PM (#22096722) Homepage
    I just hope they make more sex scenes, and make them more detailed, vivid, and kinky. I'll show a video of the scenes to Kevin McCollough and Jack Thompson, and tell them that I let my 5 yr old son play the game.
  • Mass Effect's inventory system works pretty conveniently after about a half hour of getting to know what's going on. It is certainly better than KoTOR's . I hope they include party influence in ME2 like Obsidian put into KoTOR2. Mass Effect was probably the coolest and most innovative game I have played since KoTOR, since they both redefined the pinnacle of console gaming. Anybody who gets a chance to play Mass Effect should definitely play it, but be warned, playing Mass Effect will control your life as lo

  • Crystallization (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dj_tla ( 1048764 ) <<tbekolay> <at> <gmail.com>> on Friday January 18, 2008 @01:20PM (#22097106) Homepage Journal

    The paraphrases were opportunities to replace a well-written, well-crafted sentence with something that makes the player chuckle -- but also tells them exactly what will happen if they make that choice.
    I found that there were a significant number of times where my expectation of what Shepard would say didn't quite match what he/she ended up saying. And even more annoying, sometimes I would agonize over a choice, only to later find out that the resulting dialogue was the same for either choice. Why are we given the ability to decide what's going through Shepard's head if it doesn't make a difference?

    Anyway, I'm really looking forward to seeing how the engine evolves for the next game. Any improvement is going to seem really significant if most of the engine is the same.
  • Mass Effect's effect?

  • EGM: It must have been a challenge to crystallize the dialogue down to the brief summaries the player chooses from during conversations.

    Yes, the dialog system does look interesting... it is lacking an important feature [ctrlaltdel-online.com], though.

  • Ironically, I just started playing Mass Effect last night (yeah, I put off purchasing a 360 for a long time. Finally broke down and picked up the Arcade package + ME on the way home from work yesterday).

    I've put about 45 minutes to an hour into the game so far, but I can agree that to someone new to the game, it's a bit of a confusing interface. Then again the *only* game I've played in the last year and a half is WoW (which I'm taking a break from now), so just about anything different feels odd at this

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Alexpkeaton1010 ( 1101915 )
      The problem is not that it is confusing, the problem is that after about 10 hours in you start getting the "Inventory Almost Full" message. Then you spend 30 minutes cleaning out the inventory because there is no sort-by-item-level when you are at a vendor. Plus the scrolling speed is extremely slow. Consoles games stink for inventory management, but this game was the worst of the worst. Just give me a mouse and some bags.

  • My take (Score:3, Interesting)

    by hansamurai ( 907719 ) <hansamurai@gmail.com> on Friday January 18, 2008 @01:43PM (#22097606) Homepage Journal
    I'm actually in the process of writing my review for Mass Effect right now, I've found it's one of the hardest reviews to write in a long time. The game does a lot of things really, really well: story, universe, history, characters, dialogue, graphics. But in pretty much every category I review I can pick out some really big blemishes.

    Take the graphics for instance, the game is beautiful and the characters look relatively real, their facial structure is complicated enough to basically do any kind of movement realistically. The environments are large and well textured... when all the textures are there. The game (maybe more Unreal Engine 3) suffers from some really nasty texture draw-in as it layers the textures. Some cutscenes will start and the characters will look nothing like their actual appearance because all the textures and bump/normal mapping hasn't been performed yet. A few seconds in and finally everything will look "right," but that's after some obtrusive pop up was performed that can be quite distracting. I would rather have had a few longer loading screens than that, honestly.

    A lot of people complained about the elevators serving as load screens in the game, I never really had a problem with them. In most, your fellow party members will talk amongst themselves or you'll hear a radio report. The problem I had was they put an elevator on your ship that was a mandatory ride! This elevator must only travel about 15 feet but it takes at least a minute to ride. And if you want to buy anything on your ship or talk to most of your crew members, you must ride the elevator (and then of course ride it back up). Annoying, and I really only think it was necessary because of all the particle and graphical effects they were doing in the engine room.

    Another complaint I have is with the inventory system. It's not that bad when you're equipping people, usually you only have a few shotguns or sniper rifles to pick from. The problems start when you have a lot of a certain type of item. Like upgrades. You'll usually carry a lot of different upgrades around because you never know if you'll need them. The item are arranged in basically a non-sorted order (I think sorted by when you obtained them...) so you'll find yourself scrolling through scores of items to find the one you need. Scrolling is NOT fast, either. This issue is multiplied when you go to a shop. If you want to buy or sell something, the items are not organized in a way that you can easily buy only pistols or only armor. No, they're ordered in ascending order according to price if you're selling and descending order if you're buying. There's no other way to sort them. It's incredibly obnoxious and makes item management the single worst thing about this game.

    My final complaint is about the Mako ground transport vehicle and the subsequent side missions. Well, really my complaint is more about planet/level design than anything. Every planet is riddled with high mountains and usually the items of interest are stuck in these mountains. The Mako vehicle is surprisingly capable of climbing peaks, etc. but it is still really annoying to go from point A to point B. This is a little harder to describe if you haven't played the game but imagine playing Halo and driving the Warthog (a much looser version at that) over all the mountains in your way to get to your next checkpoint.

    Okay, even though that was a lot of complaining, Mass Effect was still awesome. Those are my stand out issues with the game and I have some confidence they will fix most of them with its impending sequels. Mass Effect is still a must play game, especially for science fiction fans.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Gulthek ( 12570 )
      Dude, "Offworld Offroad Mining Survey Action Racer" is one of my favorite games within Mass Effect. I love it! Every peak is a fun challenge.

      I spent thirty minutes last night running (sans Mako!) from one edge of the map to the other on a windy, red planet just because it was awesome. I felt like a character in "Red Mars".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Sciros ( 986030 )
      Hmmmm...

      1) The UE3 engine as far as I know gives you a choice -- load times or texture pop-in. As bothersome as the texture pop-in is, I think I prefer it over load times. So it was a design choice, and I'm not sure it's a bad one. Some people prefer one way, some prefer the other.

      2) The items are sorted according to Level from what I could tell. The VIIs, then the VIs, then the Vs, etc. That roughly corresponded to price if you were Buying/Selling. Also, folks that ran into inventory size issues kept waaaa
      • Right, but when you're first playing the game it seems safer to hoarde things as you figure out what they do. After a while you realize you don't need to keep anything you aren't using, and you generally don't need to buy anything but med-pack/grenade upgrades until you can afford spectre weapons.
    • Am I the only one who experienced very noticeable screen tearing with this game? I've never had as much screen tearing with a 360 game as I did with Mass Effect. Most times, I'd get screen tearing any time I panned the camera around the Shepard. It happened most noticeably on the citadel.
  • Mass Effect, like Final Fantasy XII, has the behind-the-character camera in way the wrong place.

    All you can see of Cmdr. Shepard or Vaan is their butt. The rest of the world might be the most wonderfully realised piece of CG art you'll ever see, but if you can't detach the camera from the hero's backside, it's all for naught.

    I'd been on the Citadel for three hours before I realised I'd never looked up. Do you have any sense of how tall the the room leading towards the council panel in the Citadel Tower is?
  • I agree that they really dropped the ball when it came to the inventory system. I liked the game a lot, but that was despite great annoyance with the inventory. Why can't I find out the number of items I have before you start complaining that I'm running out of room? Why is there a pause at each item so I can't quickly scroll through a list?

    I think the bigger problem though, is that the whole system of money and items is just broken. The only things I ever bought were the Specter guns and the MediGel/Grenad
  • When I began playing Mass Effect, I knew it was mostly very well reviewed, but I hadn't read any specifics (on purpose, to avoid spoilers). And I agreed with the numerical values in said reviews at first glance; the game is definitely a lot of fun, and well done overall. However, after having watched my brother play his "good" character most of the way through the game then playing my evil character through on my own, I was certain the thing it'd be losing points for every time was the dialogue system. H
    • Paragon/Renegade doesn't affect dialog choices. Your Intimidation/Charisma skills do. It's simply that using those skills tend to accrue renegade/paragon appropriately.

      I don't think the system was suppposed to be Good/Evil. Shepard is a hero. (S)he is, at the core a good guy, fighting the good fight. Paragon/Renegade simply define the character a little more deeply. The best definition of Renegade is that you accomplish your goals no matter what the cost. You're ruthless, but not evil.

      I find it int

      • Paragon/Renegade doesn't affect dialog choices. Your Intimidation/Charisma skills do. It's simply that using those skills tend to accrue renegade/paragon appropriately.
        They do actually affect your dialog choices indirectly, as your Charm/Intimidate skill is capped according to your Paragon/Renegade score respectively.
        • Ahh, was not aware of that. Boo. I swear, I've gotten renegade points after using charm to coerce someone.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Cecil ( 37810 )
      Oh, and while we're at it, whomever decided to make the "skip spoken dialogue" button also automatically select the middle option needs to be fired.

      You know, you can just hold the joystick in whatever direction you want to choose in advance. If you want paragon, top left. If you want renegade, bottom left. Then there's no issue.
  • One of the more frustrating things I've found on my 2nd/3rd playthrough, is that there's many instances where you choose the paragon/renegade option, and it makes zero difference on what is actually said. Ditto when you've got a left/right choice (if you know what I mean). I do like the way it's done, when it's done, but I hate that it appears as though you can change what Shepard says at all times.

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