psychomaster

👁 my turgid scribblings

[jareckiworld]

Rose B. Simpson — “Tonantzin” (ceramic, steel, leather, brass, 2021)

[thevaultoftheatomicspaceage]

Metropolis by Robert McCall.

[thevaultoftheatomicspaceage]

Huron thermonuclear explosion, 250 kilotons, barge, Eniwetok Atoll, 6 12, 22 July 1956.

[gwarden123]

Anyway, it's a shame there was never a third Mass Effect game

[gwarden123]

I feel the conversation with The Illusive Man and the stupid ghost kid should have happened in the first act of the game. Not exactly as they are, naturally, but a lot of that information sets up the conflict, the cycle (stupid concept, but anyway) can't continue as it had because Shepard has changed the variables and the ghost kid can't come up with a solution because it's a piece of software designed by a long dead civilisation, and then the story should continue from there, you need to come up with a new solution before a certain time or the Reapers are going to harvest everyone. The Illusive Man is going to try gain control over the Reapers, but he's maybe already indoctrinated. Which you do have that conversation on Mars, but it sucks and could be handled better.

Yeah, this game sucks. I still might not have liked the Shepard sacrifices themselves for the greater good ending (because it doesn't fit with how the first to games were told) but a big part of why it sucks is because the story isn't told all that well. The tone is too bleak for too long and too many specific details about the plot get dumped way too far into the second half of the game. You only learn about the Reapers having a greater master on Rannoch! That's too late!

And the kerning on Commander Shepard's memorial plate is wrong, what the fuck?!

[gwarden123]

My apartment!

[gwarden123]

The Priority: Earth mission would have been better as the opener. Not the Crucible and having all the fleets there and everything. The fighting through No Man's Land, facing hordes of enemies in dark, bombed out cityscapes. It would have worked better as how the game starts and then you work your way up to a more powerful ending.

[gwarden123]

You know what you want your science fiction action game to be like? A fucking dirge. Like visiting your dying friend at the hospital. As the beginning, so the end.

[gwarden123]

Also, the idea of there being something else behind the Reapers, some true master pulling all the strings, also sucks as well. You don't need it. A player could come to the idea that the razing of civilisation when it gets too great is beneficial for sapient life as a whole on their own. It's fine if the Reapers just want to kill everything! They leave less developed species behind because they are a scuff on their shoe. Time doesn't mean the same thing to them, so they don't mind waiting rather than expending energy and attention trying to eradicate every single last trace of uncleanliness from the galaxy. It doesn't have to be part of a master plan!

[gwarden123]

Kai Leng sucks. Not in a "ooh, that villain! I want to kill him so badly!!" kind of way. He just sucks. Like, a guy wanting to kill you on foot with a sword, but then using a gunship when you actually start to win against him. A gunship you can't shoot at! Which you have before! He's a tourist. He's a guy pretending to be all tough, but pulling out air support when he's about to lose. If he wanted victory at all costs, he should just use the gunship from the start and don't even pretend that it's a fair fight.

Which, okay, might be intentional characterisation. But, especially when I'm fully leveled up and am using slightly over-powered DLC guns, it's a fight that the game has already decided that you can't win and it makes you hang around until enough time has passed before making you lose. "But it's fiction and any fight has already been decided as able to win or not before the player even hit start" yes, but there are better ways to do it that don't make the player notice that control has been taken away from them. Thessia is a warzone. You're in a temple with its shields down. Unending waves of enemies would be a perfect way of making you lose a fight without making it feel like you're playing out a predetermined cutscene. Ammo drops could even be tweaked for that particular section to ensure that the insane players who try to kill enemy NPCs for hours on end eventually have to give up and move on. The player shouldn't feel the reins being taken out of their hands when the story needs to do something. Not because gamers need to be coddled. Because that's the function of a game.

[gwarden123]

Mass Effect 3 should just have been about killing God

[gwarden123]

God, I swear, people who believe in god shouldn't be allowed to write science fiction

[gwarden123]

The Citadel DLC for Mass Effect is pretty fun ("I'm going to end you" vs. "I'm going to end you painfully" made me laugh) but it does almost feel like a mockery of the happy ending people wanted for 3.

[miciagalattica]

Micia galattica

[thevaultoftheatomicspaceage]

[gwarden123]

Like, I know the gun I'm using is OP and there are things that I could do to make the combat more difficult (I'm on the default difficulty) but that took less than five minutes. There is just no complexity to the mission.

The bases in the first game weren't all that complex, but they were designed as small dungeons, rather than multiplayer without a beginning and end, and you could generally go back to exploring whatever planet you were on after clearing out the base. A quick skirmish while you're doing something else. Even the ships you could sometimes encounter were dungeons that had an objective. You would usually get to the end and get a little screen saying "The bomb has been deactivated. The lives of the colonists on Ooblon have been saved". It's not a big faff Steve dropping you there and having a conversation with Admiral Hackett and then I walk two steps into a building, switch a computer on, then have to leave again. These N7 missions are a chore to play. It sucks.

[gwarden123]

Man, this sucks. This Noveria level is clearing designed as a multiplayer map instead of a cohesive, story-based mission. It sucks and is boring to play, because it's like playing against bots on a quite small multiplayer map. The mission is over before it even begins.