Mass Effect is brilliant.

 

 

Yes, it is. This is going to be one huge post so you might as well get yourself a drink. I did. I feel compelled to write about it because none of you blighters seem to have done. And that's something I don't quite understand. The critics have. The haters have (really, what kind of men complain about lesbian sex?). It's quite an accomplishment for the gaming medium. It's a game I will hand over to my kids when I teach them about right and wrong. If some of you didn't pick this game up it probably must have been because of the Box art, which made it look like something of a generic space opera. Mark Vanderloo looks generic, just another model in spacemarine armour. They should have put an icon on the box. Like one of the alien races.

It's been a long time since I dumped the multiplayer RPGs for what they were back when, and started playing single player RPGs. That's not because I don't have any time left to get lost in an MMO but because I am a huge selfish prick who only thinks about himself and the world relating to me, rather then myself relating to the world. By the way this isn't irony, it's a Vanilla flavored milkshake.

This is me thinking like a renegade. And you know when you've played to much ME when you start thinking about real life responses in terms of paragon and renegade. So, time for the ceremonial blogpost intervention to mark my third play-through. In all, I think this game has taken about 120 hours of my time already. Don't read this as something bitter, I just couldn't find a shorter Bioware RPG. And I needed a break away from anything Star Wars related. So why not find something better?

The more perceptive readers might be discerning something of a pattern here. Bioware has been the dealer to my addiction and what you are reading is a love letter. Or maybe it's like an open solicitation. But I doubt they have an opening. Or read blog posts. Or care. But rest assured, I carry a key-chain with Canadian Flag on it.

The big deal about ME is that it makes you choose not between Good or Evil, but between Polite (selfless, paragon) and Rude (selfish, renegade). Needless to say, 2 of my characters are rude space bastards and one is a big softy. The point is, that as far as moralistic games go this one is quite refreshing. I played an evil megalomaniac lunatic in Kotor2 and Fable and the deeds were cartoonishly villainous. Mass Effect doesn't go to such extremes and rightly so. It would be quite unbelievable for Shepard (the protagonist) to join up with the bad guys or aspire to some other cliche. The games where you can solve an argument with an uppercut are far and few between. I for one applaud the game for allowing me to develop an otherwise neglected character trait.

ME is a linear game, that's because it's story driven. However the tracks are relatively broad and your actions directly influence how certain elements of the story play out. So it's not as if your actions are ultimately reset and the only difference is the way you got there. Because of it's linearity you might think you'll be done with it after one play though. But that's not the case. The biggest reason for this is that after you finish the game, you can pick that same character and start another play-though with it. Not only will the game be upscaled to fit your level, the level cap will increase after you finish the game. It's also good to play the hardcore or insane difficulty level, since combat will become that much harder, interesting and rewarding. Part of ME is a tactical third person shooter. There's a cover mechanic that slows the pace of the combat down and gives it the breathing room for the actual tactics. In addition to this there's a pause function! Which allows you give orders to your team mates about. A game mechanic that goes way back when RPG's were at the isometric stage of their evolution, and has lost none of it's brilliance. The opposition is hard so don't expect to barge in, shoot every bad guy in the face and walk away unscathed. If you don't take cover you'll probably get one hit killed by an enemy sniper or rocket. Only as the game reaches the crescendo at the end will you feel like a right bad-ass about to lay down the law, stamping peons left and right.

The main quest is clearly outlined, and you can get on with things rather quickly, there's no real need to do any of the side-quests. So you could blast through the story as if it were a regular shooter. I'll admit that's not quite how it was intended to be played but the option's there. You're free to take your ship and zip around the galaxy as you see fit. Side-quests will show you the broader scoop of the universe, and tell stories that don't directly relate to the main storyline. There are quests about your companions, investigating companies, crimes, abductions, extortion, crime syndicates, you name it.
There's even the downloadable content "bring down the sky", which takes place on an asteroid on it's way to crash into a planet. It's a shame Bioware hasn't released more DLC for the game. Since this one was of premium quality if rather short. It has a lot of fun combat scenes. Some moral choices and in the end, there's even a special item loot reward.

"But what about the flaws of this masterpiece?" I can hear many of you ask. Well, there are a few, but none of these are game breakers, but some rather archaic ways of dealing with things. Like the inventory system. It's taken right out of KOTOR. That is to say, all your inventory items are shown in one, big, long list. If your list is crammed with items, you'll loose oversight. This is all rather mind boggling since KOTOR2 had fixed the Kotor inventory simply by adding tabbed sorting options. Like Weapons, armour, upgrades, miscellaneous, etc.
Anyway, a lot of your weapons and items will be replaced by newer, more powerful versions. So you'll want to sell all the old crap after every sortie anyway. A inventory purge might take some setting up every mission, but in the long run, you'll be glad you did. It won't only save you time and fill up your coffers but it'll also guarantee you've got all the latest equipment. Comparing items has been made easy since there is an on the fly statistics comparison. With colours. Red means bad, Yellow means good. This also goes for weapon and armour upgrades too. Of which every armourset and weapon has a few slots for.
But the most frustration I had was with the driving sections. Not that driving is bad in itself, but a few of the planets you're driving on are ridiculous. Apparently some planets in our galaxy have landscapes with mountains that look like they were drawn by a 5 year old. Imagine a military troop transport climbing a 75 degree mountainside. At times I would really hate mountaingoating with the thing. Of course, there were some designated areas where the designers clearly intended for you to ride. But in my logic the shortest route from point A to point B still is a straight line. Even if it means scaling mount Zork.

ME is an innovative game for a number of reasons. And while these are not the sole reasons for playing the game, it would be good if people took note. The production values are unlike any you'll see for some time. The game is polished, the story and universe work, there are no annoying inconsistencies. This makes the ME universe so believable. The animation is clearly motion captured, and to great effect. Characters tilt their head, blink when their eyes move, shift their stance, make gestures while talking. Sometimes they will almost move out of frame. All of this makes them look very much alive. There's next to no sign of the Uncanny Vally effect. Of course, having aliens talk further bypasses the effect. That's not to say that these characters are photo realistic, there's a subtle styling, like the shading in the GTA4 concept drawings. Which ensures the game will keep looking good.
The soundtrack is impressive too. Synthesizer sounds done in a good way. Winking to Vangelis and the blade runner soundtrack. Let's not mention the voice acting in this game, it's so good that it warrants it's own blog post. Suffice to say, there's some A-grade voice talent in ME. Jeniffer Hale, Seth Green, Lance Henriksen, Marina Sirtis, Raphael Sbarge are some of the better known names.
Bioware has made a good innovation with the dialog wheel. It gives oversight and quick selection, which keeps the dialogs at a steady pace. I hope this feature makes it into future RPG's. It's so much faster and dynamic then the usual "list of answers". It also adds to the cinematic feel of the dialogs, in which the camera cuts to different viewing angles. Keeping it interesting to look at. Options are there to drag conversations out, but these are hardly mandatory.

ME is a third person action RPG. So it ditches some pure RPG burdens. For instance. Every character in your team has 4 weapons at it's disposal. The Pistol, Assault Rifle, Shotgun and Sniper Rifle. These are, like in an FPS, freely selectable. So you won't be digging into your inventory and swapping weapons out on your paper doll. You'll be selecting weapons suited to the tactical situation. This might seem like a trivial thing, but some modern "shooter-RPGs" haven't leaned this. I'm looking at you Fallout 3. Even Kotor2 had two different weapons sets... The controls and combat system are fluent, and characters feel like as if they have some weight to them. Another example is the statistic screen. In ME you won't be adding points to strength, dexterity, intelligence etc. Every class has a distinct talent tree and you'll be adding points to those. Your ability to, for instance, hit an opponent will be determined to how good you can aim and shoot. However, your ability to aim and shoot is influenced to how steady you can hold your weapon. Thus, Adding points to your sniper rifle talent tree will lessen the sway with the rifle, increasing your accuracy. Of course it will also increase the damage. Weapon mods can further influence these statistics, or grant side effects like a poison or burn status.

I think it's safe to say that Mass Effect has become one of my favorite games ever. It's up there next to Sacrifice. It's become a comfort game and nostalgia will have me coming back in years to come. It's like a book you read once a year. It will make me play my characters through the insane difficulty. I only hope my skills will keep up when the time comes. I can't wait for more Mass Effect titles. Be it games, books or movies. I hope Bioware and it's writers continue to pursue and expand the Mass Effect universe. Because, frankly it stands above the likes of Star Wars and The Matrix.

Game of the year 2008. Surpassing among others: Bioshock, CoD4, Orange Box, Kotor2, Crysis Warhead, Company of Heroes. Now, on to another game where I can be a moral reject. Fallout 3, here I come.

Bioware's The Old Republic and storytelling in an MMO.

In an MMO, everybody shares the same gameworld, there can be no definitive change. Not only does the environment have to stay the same, the storyline and quests have to remain the same aswell. It's pretty much a one way street, from the gameworld to the player.
So in the past, MMO's haven't bothered much with story. Which leads to fetch quests and "kill x-amount of this or that"-quests. I think we can all agree that it's time to pull the MMO genre out of the hunter gatherer stage of it's evolution.

Bioware is next up to have a go at pulling the blade from the stone Blizzard put there.
They will inject the element story to the MMO genre to enthrall the player. I hope they do this at the expense of the tedious grind quests mentioned above. It goes without saying that yours truly won't be having with those. Grinding reminds me of the sound of time slipping through the hourglass, reminding that my life is getting shorter by the millisecond.
A meaninfull story on the other hand, might have some merit.

Some proof of the importance of story can be found, for instance, on 1up where Anthony Gallegos did an interview with Bioware founders Dr. Ray Muzyka, Dr. Greg Zeschuk, principal lead writer Daniel Erickson and studio creative director James Ohlen.

Some people have been scratching their heads about how they will let players progress along their own "unique" storyline.
Fear not my loyal readers, all two of you, for I have stared deeply into this cup of coffee and have come up with a satisfying and likely solution to this mystery.

Every player will choose their own path of quests through a series of actions and choices.
These choices will string together the many quests that will shape the story of each player. Some quests will be shared, and so will some story elements. But as a whole, the experience will be quite unique.
Proof in favor of this statement is Greg Zeschuk saying there will be real concequences for players in SW:TOR.
Players will encounter less and less players "sharing" their quests because with every fork in the road, the available players will be cut in half.
Given the fact that this is Star Wars there is a basic division between Light and Dark side. Unique quests could be available to each seperate character class. Choices in the quests themselves could further influence future quests.
Companions have long been a staple of bioware RPG's, so I think we can count on some companion related quests as seen in Baldurs Gate, Mass Effect...

The character creation will set up the basic game, the big picture.
Proof of earlier signs of this development, we can find in, again, Mass Effect, where players select a personal history and a psychiological profile for their character. These choices eventually introduce their own sidequests into the main story.

So there you have it, the cat's out of the bag.
Fortunatly for Bioware it's not easely copied, since you need good writing in the first place to make this work well. This isn't a problem since Bioware is leading the pack when it comes to storytelling.
It also staggers the mind how much quests and dialogs will have to be written. The pitfall here is that quests could become really isolated or rather, really stand-alone. Opportunity exists however, to reward players with unique skills tied to said quests.
Bioware has licenced the HeroEngine, which is said to allow for easy updating and modification. Which could suggest that TOR might be rather short when it's first released, but constantly updated with new content and new quests. Like reading a book while it's still being written.
This might also be in line with the business model they plan to use. No monthly fees, but micro-payment for unique items. Players might let the "lack of content" slide just because there are no monthly fees - and thus no pressure or obligation ( "why else did I pay for this?" ) to play.

We might also come to expect personalised instancing of parts of the ingame world. Just like Blizzard has done with WOW. They call it "phazing". A simple and elegant solution. An evolution that is likely here to stay. Frankly, it's a mystery why no MMO developer has thought of it before.

Next post will not be related to Star Wars. And less speculative.
Unless I'm lying.

Coup de force.

I used to think that when the first force-feedback joystick was put on shelves, it would be the perfect controller for a lightsaber. And it would be just perfect for Dark Forces2: Jedi Knight. Which, admittidly, I played with a Joystick. At the time I felt there was similarity between holding a lightsaber and holding a joystick.
Only later did I adopt the mouse. You must understand, I was a huge Flightsim buff before that. Either way, that game was awesome. Even with my rather unusual control style.
But I was wrong. About 10 years later the Wii came into being, and along it the Wiimote. It has been said over and over. The Wiimote would make for a perfect lightsaber. At last all the pieces were poised to fall into place. But I was wrong again. At least for now. Let's make amends.

Let us use our most remarkable human gift of reason to try and solve this problem.
Here goes.

We all remember Lucasarts much maligned Star Wars: The force unleashed and The Clone Wars: Lightsaber duels, yes? They are lacking, to say the least.
Krome Studios made both said games in respective order.
Logic would have you think that the second go would be a better one then the first, right? Wrong.

What I think happend is, Lucasarts dropped the ball. Into a toilet. Then accidentally flushed it. On the long way down it got shittier and shittier. Eventually an aligator ate it. The aligator commended himself on being able to digest anything, very slowly.
Since then, Lucasarts and it's variable minions have prodded the austere aligator for a long time in hopes it would regurgitate the ball. Often the reptile would crap into the wet sand behind it and the minions would scoop up the seeping waste, mistaking it for the much coveted ball. Then they release it in gamestores everywhere.

So Listen up Lucasarts and Krome.

A bit of free time and a sugared up coffee has produced this little brainstorm session.

The lightsaber combat game works like Metroid Prime 3, "lock-on" viewpoints with 1 on 1 movement (Wii motion plus included if it helps).
Locking on sets the player in "guard/fight mode" allowing for combat moves. The lock keeps the opponent dead center in view, this eleminates the need to manually adjust your character's direction, or the camera's, on the opponent. I honestly can't imagine a viewpoint in a duel where you'd want to have your opponent somewhere in the corners of your eyes while fighting.
Locking off makes the player more mobile. This so he can better move around and reposition, jumping on platforms, running away, etc. If Third person, this also makes the camera zoom out a bit.

Further controls.
A pointer or Crosshair controls the camera and look direction - pitch and heading when not locked on. Not locking on puts the saber and the sword arm in an idle state. That way you don't have arms waving every which way when controlling the camera.
Strafing and forward and backward movement are controlled with the analog stick. Lock on button is mapped to the Nunchuck's Z button. You don't want to press and hold a button on the controller you're waving about.

The game might not be able to know just where your hand is, nor where your arm is.
The wiimote and the wii are not equipped to gauge the absolute position of the wiimote in space. The player will have to adjust his movements to the "hand position" shown on screen. This opens the door for additional gameplay, we might be able to set the hand of the character on screen via combat styles. A bit like the combat stances in Jedi Knight 2. For instance a more defensive position has the saber placed in front of the viewpoint, allowing for easier blocking. The trade-off here is that the player is unable to make huge swings, making for weaker attacks. Reverse the previous situation and we have an agressive combat style.

First person view might work for this concept but third might be better.
Perhaps a view not too far out as not to be disconnected from the battle. Something of a closer view Jedi Knight 2 had. Over the shoulder might work too, but only if overview remains.
The reason third person works well is that it's {the "narrative of the combat"} focussing on the characters, their "bodies". As opposed to the first person view that makes the body something of an afterthought.
Third person gives a player more awareness of their environment right away. Mirrors Edge made a solution but it didn't incorporate combat all that much. For instance Metroid Prime had people jumping out of good faith, rather then exact knowledge. And it became something of an instinct. But again, MP has no melee combat.
In a lightsaber fight though, it might be necessary because of acrobatics, force jumps, etc.
Maybe this is one of the reasons Jedi Knight played so well in third person view, limited though it might have been. In it Gunplay didn't work well because it lacked a more zoomed in view, like the "over the shoulder" viewpoint we see so much and works so well.

In multiplayer though, I can see why a conservative studio might want to place the fighting on a 2D plane. But in order to coordinate exact movement, it's best to have the camera squarely behind the character.
So might I suggest a split screen? Preferably a vertical split.
Online play is a must. No more excuses.

Setting.
Personally I'd rather see the game in a timeframe where there's more then just a handfull of hero characters. Which brings about my next point.

High customization.
Players choose their race, gender, clothing combinations (robes or armor - mobility, defensive trade-offs?).
player gets to create a lightsaber, customise it's properties, choose the colour of the blade. To keep it fair, offer the "canon" colours in different shades.
Add chrystals and mods. More power - less defense. More speed, less damage. The usual.
Unlocks might be considered, though not along the lines of "unlock a more powerful version of this modification" rather "unlock a different kind of modification".

Force powers are there, but limited. Force push sounds like a given. If you must include more then that, stick to force choke, lighting and healing. Also, blinding as a light side power could be cool. Force power could be stored and accumulated like the power meter in the Street Fighter series. On a side note: super moves on a full powerbar could be cool, if they are not overpowered. This would be a good risk-reward move. Or when the fight starts to favor one player it might even the odds a bit.
Jumping and running could be a possibility, but have a stamina limitation, this to prevent people from endlessly running and jumping around. Keep the game about the duel!

Hurdles to overcome.
-Multiplayer lag.
-Possibilties for Local multiplay. (split screen?)
-Noobs slashing their way to victory (link stamina meter?).
-Huge expectations could jeapordise the gameplay, the game doesn't have to make you Darth Maul to make it fun.
-Graphics on Wii are a problem for some. As always choose style over technique. Cartoony graphics with a very limited polygon budget will work best. Have background that are functional first, and look pretty second - like making them in grey or earthy tones. A lot can be done with very rudimentairy geometry and simple textures. That way the combatants and their coloured lightsabers stand out more. Silhouettes are important, stance of the feet, positions of the arms tells the player their combat style, etc.
Photorealism is so far out of the Wii's reach, don't even think about getting there. Think World Of Warcraft rather than Doom 3.
-If there are no canned animations to count on, putting the movement of the player into animation might give a huge disconnect between the movement of the saber and th that of the character. Which in turn might favor a first person viewpoint.

Under- or overambitious? You might have similar ideas. Feel free to sound off.

Additional References:
Wii Controller for Virtual Reality