Variety Piece: 5 Things That Could Make Mass Effect 3 an Amazing Game

To anyone who follows my Variety Friday articles, they're changing a bit.  They are no longer scheduled to be posted every Friday, but instead every week or two, adding more "Variety" to the articles.

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While Mass Effect1 and 2 were pretty great games, there were a few things that just felt...missing. Couple that with Bioware's tendency to screw sequels up (I'm looking at you Dragon Age 2!) and then you have a nice amount of things that could improve Mass Effect 3, as well as hinder it. This article is to focus on the main features that I feel, if added and done right in Mass Effect 3, could make it one of the best games ever.

Number 1: Meaningful Combat

In Mass Effect 2, if you really sit back and take a look at it, the combat seems more of a filler between story than an actual needed game mechanic. The majority of the time combat is simply allowing Bioware to call the game “A 3^rd Person Shooter/RPG combo” instead of an “Interactive Narrative” and half the time combat is just used as a means to get from point A to point B. Now I'm definitely not saying that they should have taken out all the combat in Mass Effect, god no, but what I am saying, is that combat should have more meaning with story.

What we've seen: With the addition of many more large enemies, Reapers, and a more “apocalyptic” feel in the world, the fights seem to be a lot more dynamic, epic, and useful for the story.

What could be added: Choices from within combat, Bioware has really made an effort to separate story choices from gameplay, but what if some choices were embedded within the gameplay? One example being how in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, *minor spoilers* when your pilot crashed, her survival depended on how fast you could kill all the enemies around her, and the majority of the time she would die. What if Bioware had moments similar to this in Mass Effect, where your combat skills affect the story, or how you can choose what path to take and who to kill.

Number 2: Bringing Back The Scale of The Universe

In Mass Effect 1, actually being able to drive around land on planets gave the game a sense of scale, showing that the game universe is actually large and expansive. I would really like to see them add some sort of “feeling of scale” into Mass Effect 3, beyond simply looking at a map.

What we've seen: Bioware has talked about their “search and rescue” missions which change as The Reapers conquer more of the galaxy, depending on how this is executed, it really could show not only a sense of scale, but a better sense of progression.

What could be added: If beyond “search and rescue” missions, you could explore planets that actually had secrets which could help, or hurt you later on in the story, that would definitely help make the galaxy feel alive. I would also like to see the addition of world exploration/travel again, whether it be with a better controlling Mako, the hover-tank from Mass Effect 2, or a whole new vehicle.

Number 3: Combat Options

One thing many shooters do to help make gameplay more interesting and engaging, is giving the player a choice of how to tackle problems in game (gameplay wise, not story wise) each with their own benefits. For example, with the original Deus Ex, you could choose to go head-on, hack hidden security systems, or be stealthy. A similar idea could be applied to Mass Effect gameplay to make it more diverse, although I'm not sure how you would be rewarded by taking a Stealthy vs. Head-On approach. Perhaps you could use the lives of a boss's employees as a bargaining chip if you sneak by them, and on the hardest difficulty, sneaking by would definitely make life easier.

What we've seen: In The Arrival DLC, you could go through a whole section of a mission without killing anyone, and you would get an achievement for it. The Mass Effect 3 Demo's Multiplayer also shows how level design is more based on levels, and verticality, which can allow for multiple paths to choose from.

What could be added: If they took the stealth aspect of The Arrival DLC and added it to certain sections of Mass Effect 3, it would definitely improve the game experience, and it wouldn't hinder anything since it would be completely optional. Hacking could also play a larger role in the game, such as opening up sniper perches, and alternate routes, or possibly turning a turret against the enemy.

Number 4: A Real Possibility of Failure

In Mass Effect 2, while the developers did say Shepard could actually end up dying at the end of the game, in reality, the only way for that to actually happen, was if you specifically wanted it to. You had to piss off your teammates, do absolutely no upgrading to The Normandy (which, even if you didn't do any mining, you could get ore in other ways), and then some. In Mass Effect 3, there really needs to be a possibility of failure, not only depending on how well you upgrade or make people happy, but also by the choices you make through out the game, and not the obvious ones either. There needs to be choices that, over the course of the game, would evolve and could, quite possibly, screw you over.

What we've seen: The developers have come out and said that in Mass Effect 3, The Reapers can win.

What could be added: As I mentioned earlier, I want all of my choices, from Mass Effect 1 and onwards, to fully contribute to whether or not The Reapers win, not just the straight forward actions in Mass Effect 3.

Number 5: Bioware, Don't Suck Money out of Us Twice.

Bioware is a game company, which means they like making money, and that has been seen with the DLC they produced for Mass Effect 2, most of which was quality and well worth the money. Now, the only thing I hope is that they don't over-do it, and force us to buy an additional pack of DLC for Mass Effect 3, to continue a story or see the effects of our choices from Mass Effect 2 DLC we played. I would ultimately feel like I would be getting ripped off, and that Bioware didn't make a full game and took content out of it, if to have Kasumi as a team mate in Mass Effect 3, I had to buy a whole new DLC pack.

A Personal Number 6: Bring Kasumi Back

Out of all of the characters in Mass Effect 2, the one who I liked the best has to go to Kasumi Goto, she is the only character who I actually felt fully interested in with their back story, as well as she had some unique skills. Besides Thane, she was the only other one with an enigmatic personality which made having her on your team, always “interesting”. If Bioware brings anyone back, I would love to see Kasumi return as an actual squad mate.

What we've seen: Bioware said they would bring major characters back, and according to the Mass Effect 3 wiki, that includes Kasumi.

What could be added: Bring her back as a full fledged squad member, not only with more full voice acting, but also playing a larger role in the game.

Variety Friday: Moral Choices Need Repercussions

After over 5 weeks of variety-less Fridays, I’m Back!  This week I am going to focus on something mentioned in my Deus Ex review, which was how the moral choice of killing or disabling people didn’t have any repercussions, so I’m just going to broaden that into how moral choices in games need to have repercussions, or they are meaningless.

Now, first we must define what actually constitutes as a “Moral Choice”.  I would describe it as a choice which plays upon the morals of a person, usually without clear outcomes so they are solely up to the player.  You can find a lot of these within the Mass Effect series as well as Dragon Age: Origins.  Those games base their story on moral choices, right and wrong, and etc.  One thing Dragon Age did well was that many choices didn’t have obvious answers, and only at the end of the game did you get to see a glimpse of what came from them.

Now, on to one of my main examples, Deus Ex; the original game based moral choices on a simple two answer choice which was present throughout the entire game, and that was the choice between lethally killing people, or non-lethally taking them down.  Now at the beginning you were simply told “You shouldn’t kill them” and then you got to choose to take the advice, or ignore it.  But, later on certain people with certain values either liked that you didn’t kill them and gave you bonuses, while if you did kill a lot of enemies other people would believe you did what was right, while others would give you shit about what being a citizen really means.  For me it was that talk with the general-looking guy who mans the armory, he simply said that he remembered when being a good citizen came first, and that reminded me that people are people (even if they are made of polygons without fingers) and then I decided to play a bit more on the nice side.

But, this isn’t about my experiences, what’s important is how the moral choice was present throughout the whole game, and while it was essentially a choice of the player, the game rewarded you for taking certain actions, whether good or bad, which is a great way to make choices meaningful and still up to the player.  Now as I briefly mentioned in the Deus Ex: Human Revolution review, there were almost no repercussions to killing or disabling people.  Depending on the player this could still be a moral choice for them, but for others (such as myself) I found myself thinking “Why not just kill everyone?  It’s not like anything bad will happen and it’s much easier” and nothing bad did happen, not even one fuck was given, I even killed half of the Detroit PD and a minute later all was forgotten and no one cared, there wasn’t even any faction like/dislike type of stuff going on.

Now when no repercussions are added to moral choices, two main things occur; one is that the sense of realism and immersion into the world is hindered, because you know people should have an opinion and act upon some of your actions (for better or worse).  And two being that there is a big gap in the story.  For the players, killing an important person in the plot or sparing his life should have a big effect in the game, though in Human Revolution, there were two occurrences in which I didn’t hear a thing from either saved character through the whole rest of game.  For the player they don’t get to see if they did something good or bad, while also not being able to simply see a possible back story.  On the developer side, they missed great opportunities to give the player advantages and disadvantages for being merciful or not.  Now these points don’t just apply to Deus Ex but for all games, since a lot of story based games have moral choices.

A very different example is Catherine.  The moral choices are essentially in the form of what is the player’s opinion on cheating and marriage.  While many games directly relate to your choices, Catherine instead showed your overall choice play-out in the dialog, without actually giving the player an idea of what could come upon his choices, so the player knows something is happening, but doesn’t know what until later in the game.  If Catherine didn’t have moral choices, almost all of the story would be gone and it would simply be another game such as Super Meat Boy.  Games need moral choices to not only have players question themselves, but to provide deeper story.

Now back to Deus Ex, I brought up a problem now it is only fitting that I propose a possible solution.  One of the main characters, David Sarif (Adam Jenson’s boss, Adam being who the player plays as) is represented as an evil person through advertising, but is actually a very rational person with some very different beliefs, if they could have built upon those beliefs and leaned Sarif to one side or another (supporting lethality or non-lethality) it could have not only altered the story in that you could keep Sarif happy or do your own thing, he would be second guessing you since you talk to him a lot anyway.  If you did something he specifically didn’t like, he should give you shit about it, revoke a bonus or something, while also losing some trust in you.  Simply giving just one of the characters an opinion in morality could have drastically changed the game.  This is true for many games as well, sure you could keep characters neutral, or you could experiment with alignments and developers would probably find this brings a more satisfying experience.

Variety Friday: Looking Back, Deus Ex

Okay, first off, yes, I didn’t put up a Variety Friday last week, but I doubt any of you actually look forward to these articles, so deal with it, people get busy.  Anyway;

There have been a lot of great games from years ago that have been overlooked or simply missed by a lot of people, while also loved by many others.  Well this article is to look back on one of those great, industry changing games, Deus Ex.  Deus Ex was released in 2000 for Windows and Mac, was developed by Ion Storm, and released by Eidos.

What makes Deus Ex so great is how it combined RPG and shooter elements, better than most games nowadays do.  Deus Ex’s main focus is giving the player the ability to choose how he would like to complete each objective.  You can lock pick your way around enemies and into rooms with some rare items.  Could use your computer knowledge to hack into cameras and find where enemies are located, as well as turning the cameras off, or even turn the enemy turrets and bots against them.  You could use your electronics knowledge to hack into other rooms and safes.  Sneak around the majority of enemies, pick them off from a distance with a silenced sniper, or just go in guns and explosions blazing!  The game gives you near unparalleled freedom to do what you would like. 

The main RPG element the game boasts is its skill system.  The skill system is made up of 11 different skills which you can level up with “Skill Points” which you get for playing the game.  They aren’t from solely killing enemies though, but also finding creative solutions and discovering new areas.  The skills you choose directly reflect the way you’ll end up playing the game.  Do you choose swimming and lock picking to try and get around most enemies?  Computers and Electronics to turn the enemies own security against them?  Or Rifles and Explosives to blow through everything and one in your way?  Those are just a few examples of how the skills in Deus Ex can be used, and what’s great about the game is experimenting with different trained skills.

The other RPG element is the augmentations.  Augmentations allow you to improve many different attributes such as being able to carry heavier items and taking large falls and jumping 10 feet in the air, to turning invisible and regenerating health.  You gain these augmentations by finding augmentation canisters throughout the game (a lot of which require you to use skills to get to) and then choosing one of two options from the canister, for a specific augmentation slot (which represent different parts of the body, such as eyes, arms, brain, etc.). But the real choice is how you will upgrade each augmentation.  Throughout the game you will also find upgrade canisters which you can spend on upgrading a single augmentation, a maximum of 3 times.  Since these canisters are limited you really need to choose which augmentations to upgrade depending on your play style.

Augmentation Screen

The game plays as a first person shooter, but is different from traditional shooting mechanics because you need to hover over your target for a few seconds (if using a ranged weapon that is) to lock on to him and to get better accuracy.  And the game also uses health packs instead of the lame “Wipe blood of face” method we have come to know today.  As far as weapons go, you have a large selection from shot guns, flame throwers, rocket launchers, pistols, smgs, and many different melee weapons (including the iconic crow bar, which is the first weapon you find lying next to you when you start the game).  But, due to your limited inventory space, you need to choose which weapon(s) are your mains, and then make sure to keep stocked up on the correct type of ammo.  You can also improve weapons with findable upgrades such as lasers, scopes, and silencers.  The game also throws in moral choices into the combat, because you have an array of lethal and non-lethal weapons, so you need to choose if you are going for the quick kill shot, or the more difficult non-lethal takedown.

As far as the story goes, it is like Bioware games in that there is a full dialog system, and that your choices do have consequences, but it goes more than that, because you can feel free to kill just about anyone at anytime, and sometimes choices aren’t clearly presented and you just have to try your idea out and see how it works out.  You play as a UNATCO (United Nations Anti-Terrorist Coalition) agent named JC Denton (though they never explain what JC stands for)who is first sent out on a mission to clear out terrorists from an island to try and find a vaccine for a deadly virus.  But as you progress you uncover many conspiracies and need to choose where your loyalties lie.  The other main character is JC’s brother who plays a large part in the story as well.  I don’t want to spoil anything, but it is government conspiracy heavy, also, you get to go to Hong Kong.

Ultimately this is probably the best game I have ever played, even surpassing DA: Origins and Heavy Rain.  But, even when you beat the game it doesn’t need to end there, because there are a few great mods for the game that are worth checking out, specifically the best which I found to ne the cleverly named “Nameless Mod” which is a completely different story spanning hours upon hours of gameplay.  The Nameless Mod takes place in a “physical embodiment” of an internet forum, similar to Tron or The Matrix.  The Nameless Mod is probably one of the best mods I have played for any game, since besides different story arcs and endings; it also features 59 maps, 20 new weapons, over 14 hours of voice acting, and near 100 unique tracks of music.  Hell, this mod would be a better sequel to the game than the actual sequel, Deus Ex: Invisible War was.  But anyway, what I am saying is if you haven’t played Deus Ex yet, GO DO IT!  It is amazing even by today’s standards, 11 years later. 

You can find the complete collection including Deus Ex, and the (not as good) sequel, Invisible War for less than $20 physically, or for $20 on steam.

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Also, just to anger John Callahan (Who I just noticed has the initials JC like the character in Deus Ex) I would just like to point out I DID try Diablo 2 and it looked HORRIBLE and was near unplayable looking like that with its horrendously small resolution.  Deus Ex was released before Diablo 2 and it still looks perfectly playable and fine, and naturally supports higher, widescreen resolutions, while also having some nice mods to upgrade the graphics even more (which I am not sure if Diablo 2 has or not), so yea, Just Sayin.

Variety Friday: Sequels

E3 is just around the corner, and I could be doing another one of those “E3 Prediction” articles which are all over the internet as this week’s Variety Friday….well I’m not.  Instead I am going to talk about a more general topic, Sequels, how they can be good, and how they can be bad.  Seemed appropriate with all the sequels being announced in the next week.

As far as sequels go, you can pretty much classify them into three categories, ones that are made solely by studios for money, ones to continue a story in a trilogy or etc., and long overdue sequels.  So, first I will talk about the sequels which are mostly done for money.  In my personal opinion, these include Call of Duty, and even Assassin’s Creed.  What makes this type unique is how there is nearly always a new title every year, and how the mechanics usually don’t differ that much.

The reason these are generally made is because they are a well known IP and the developers, and more importantly, the publishers and investors, knows that they will make money.  Why these are bad for the industry is that these types of games can only advance so far, add so many features before they pretty much are reskinning the same game over, and over again.  Also, as more and more of the same, repetitive game comes out; the market will grow less and less, an example being Call of Duty.  I’ve been talking to a few friends who aren’t getting MW3 because they have had enough of the same repetitive game, and I agree with them.  But I have also talked to other people who are buying the game solely because it is a Call of Duty game.  Basically, COD is no longer just a shooter, but more of a sports game, because a new one comes out yearly with small changes and a large fan base who buys every game.

The second type is games which require sequels, such as the Mass Effect and Half-Life.  What makes these games different is how  people want the sequels, because they advance the story and the game, or in other cases, the lore of the world.  But, unlike the previously mentioned sequels, these have more room for innovation and changing the game, such as in Mass Effect.  The original was a lot more RPG based, while the 2^nd one was more shooter based and open to other gamers, and it worked to bring more into the series.  But, it doesn’t always work, like in the case of Dragon Age 2.  They tried to open the game up to more players, but ended up screwing up all the hype there was for the game, and not delivering on bring back the lore of the original Dragon Age.

As long as they don’t overdo these games, or completely screw them up, they can make great games and series’ and they really show what sequel should be.  They should be an expansion of the original game’s world, focusing on the story and the lore.  These are good for the industry as they help not only advance in forms of innovation, but story telling.  Yet, they can be very bad when you screw up a pre-existing series, a good series.

The third type can either end up as great or horrible games and there usually isn’t that much room for a middle ground.  These are series to games that were released years ago and have been in large need of a new game, these are usually great hits because fans have been dying for more, and not only is there much more time for development and polished, but also a lot of time and advances in technology and ways of doing things in the industry.  New examples are Duke Nukem, and Deus Ex: Human Revolution (since Invisible War doesn’t count as a sequel, in my opinion).  These types of games can almost be as good for the industry as new IPs.  Because they pretty much reinvent great games, and usually/hopefully, become another great game.  But the problem results in if the revamped game becomes a success and then they start milking it for money.  What makes it successful is it being one great sequel to a great game, and either quit there and wait a few years before making another game, or just taking years to make sure you make one great game.

Though there can be combinations of two of these sequel types.  The Assassins Creed series is a mix of yearly releases along with having an advancing story.  Or Ghost Recon which is similar to the Call of Duty method, but is more story based and does have more innovation.  There are also mixes of progressive story games and long needed sequels, such as The Witcher, the first game came out 4 years ago, and the second recently came out continuing the story, but also advancing on basic elements such as combat.  Even games like Batman Arkham City and Prototype 2 fall into the category of continuing the story and lore, but not being instant sequels.

So to recap, I’m not necessarily saying one type of sequel is superior to the other (but the COD type is not) I am just pointing out that the COD version will only hurt itself in time.  Older games need to come out with well made sequels, and trilogies need to continue to be what they are, as long as they are good.  Next week’s Variety Friday will probably have something more to do with E3, and we will see what that is.