Just beat Mass Effect 3

Chris, your issues are the ones that could be applied to almost every other game I can think of, AAA titles with much worse quality and less compelling actions and consequences as well as less smoothness and sheen.

Okay, what's your pinnacle of an RPG experience then? Because I'm sure I could compare ME to it on a number of occasions.

 

The difference is that those games are nowhere near as long as Mass Effect 3. There's also the fact that Mass Effect 1 and 2 weren't nowhere near as repetitive as ME3.

I am generally not a big fan of western RPGs, so I would have to go with good old Final Fantasy IX in that case, my favourite RPG to date. Please do compare it to the arguements I have used.

 

Meh, ME1 has the worst mission structure I think out of them all.

I know nothing about FF games apart from 13 and I guess that might not be the best example. I would argue if I knew it.
But there are a number of differences between WRPGs and JRPGs like Japanese game leading you on a closed path story adventure, Westerners usually use open world areas, with choices and more independence.
JRPGs are a dying breed in terms of frequent quality, you're lucky if you get one exported to the rest of the world, since they don't sell as much as they use to. Western games are dominating the market more so then ever before, with more unique ideas being branched out then Japanese games, which focus on similar art style and gameplay.

I can't really say more on the two, since I know so little. And i'm starting to lose a fight for it as well.

 

[video=youtube;GDflVhOpS4E]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDflVhOpS4E[/video]

How can this song be fitting in two sequential threads.

 

Uh, yeah, some WRPGs are more open, but Mass Effect is not a good example of this. Honestly, Mass Effect is closer to a JRPG in structure than it is a WRPG. Just because it has choices that slightly changes a conversation does not mean it. Infact, games like Chrono Trigger have the same choices as Mass Effect, choices that slightly alter the story at some point.

It's true that western RPGs sell more, but I disagree with the whole "WRPGs are more unique than JRPGs", why? Both Persona 3/4 and Demon's Souls/Dark Souls are much more unique than anything that has come out from the WRPG front. Elder Scrolls is continuing to be fundamentally the same as Morrowind and Mass Effect is in no way unique. To just say that WRPGs are fundamentally more unique than JRPGs is wrong. It is true that JRPGs are often stuck in the past, but that is not always the case by any means.

Lose a fight for what?

 

I said WRPGs because I was encompassing them all, not just Mass Effect. I find ME like a combination of both styles in a way.

You don't seem to understand the overarching style of the ME trilogy, your choices are not contained to one game, or one situation, what you do can affect everything in the future, the choice between Ashley and Kaidan is an example of this, few games in general make you choose the life and death of your team, and also your input in the games can affect how things turn out, for example, if you save Captain Kirrahae from ME1 he can come to the rescue of a diplomat in ME3, but only if you save him in ME1. How many games have such overarching interactions with each other? I know of none.

Deus Ex, Dragon Age, Neverwinters Nights, Fallout, Fable, Baldur's Gate, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Elder Scrolls.
Just a few names I can think of are simpler very different from each other, unique in their own rights, and are all Western. They are all unique takes on RPGs, and all have different gameplay ends to them.
JRPGs are more predictable, they are likely turned based, include an anime art style, feature stock characters, involve magic. What are the conventions of a WRPG?

Saying Mass EFfect is no way unique is a silly claim, and false. It has many unique qualities that you don't seem to agree are unique. Like the whole universe of ME is just a big rip off of another game and names are changed around so they don't look the same.

A sense that you see some of the design reasons and ideas behind much of the Mass Effect Universe. In three games, you have lore established for every creature, and race that you encounter, as well as character background, personalities, planets, design of weaponry, application of the sci fi genre, etc.
I know I won't convince you of anything at this point, I can tell. So why fight a battle like this.

 

And I did agree with WRPGs being more open, but not Mass Effect.

That situation with the choice between Ashley and Kaidan is the perfect example on what I mean. You don't really have a choice, Bioware are the ones who decide for you. If I had the choice, I would have told them that both should go, since I thought both Kaidan and Ashley were horrible characters that I really could have done without. But I couldn't, because that was not my choice. That is how it is with most of these choices, sure you get to decide to an extent, but that is a small extent. I would have rather just not had any choice at all in that case, and I would have turned on the "no-choice" thing too, if I hadn't found out about it way into the game. Yes, Mass Effect is unique in that way, that some choices do change things in later games. However, no matter what you pick, the game is really not that much different. Whatever you pick is pointless in the end, which is mostly proved by the endings to most of the games.

Deus Ex is over a decade old. Dragon Age plays like an old MMO and it has the age old Tolkien syndrome. I've never heard of Neverwinter Nights. Fallouts, 3 and New Vegas anyway, are barely different from Oblivion and especially Skyrim. They just have a different feel, but the games are fundamentally the same. Baldur's Gate and KOTOR are really old. Elder Scrolls I already covered.

Conventions of a WRPG? Looking super realistic (Deus Ex, Mass Effect, Elder Scrolls, Fallout), involve magic (Elder Scrolls, Fable, Mass Effect, Dragon Age), having a choice between male and female main character, while there's no difference really (Elder Scrolls, Mass Effect, Fallout), having the main character be dull so that everyone can pretend they are the character (Elder Scrolls, Fallout, tons of other games)

It is unique in the way it combines WoW with CoD to make a sci-fi RPG.

When the game has a race of all females, who have breasts for some reason and get pregnant through their mind, you kinda realise that the whole lore is just silly. I did say I liked the characters, it's just that the whole story is more like Modern Warfare than it is a sci-fi epic.

 

Just a little question: why keep saying Mass Effect is a combination of Call of Duty with World of Warcraft? There are much better shooting games that it could be compared to (haven't played World of Warcraft, so I can't say for that one).

If anything, the shooting aspect is closer to Halo in my opinion because it doesn't have the auto-aim BS of Call of Duty, and enemies last a lot longer.

Just curious.

 

Can you imagine a truely free game of choices? Impossible, it would be like trying to remake human life as it is. But the fact Bioware treatment each dialogue option with characters with their own voice and personality, how many interactions with NPCs in other games can you say that happens?

Age doesn't matter about the quality of a game, and shouldn't ever. Metal Gear Solid to me has barely aged much at all and can still quite easily play them again. KOTOR is the same age as FFIX which you said is your favourite. This proves to me that age doesn't matter for quality of a game, if you can still like an 8 year old game. And I'm not getting at the gameply, I'm getting at their more unique features such as story or setting or art style and such. They offer more unique features then a JRPG would, which is what I'm arguing for.

I can't believe you are comparing the idea of a third person, cover based, sci fi squad shooter is being compared to a modern day first person shooter. And that the walls of text of WoW are being compared to the fully cover cast of veterans. Never could imagine games much further apart.

And just because you don't get the lore of it, doesn't mean that it's silly.
The asari are not female, they are mono gendered meaning they have no gender in their people, they are more akin to plants that can be asexual. However, they still need a partner in order to reproduce, using a mind melding technique bonding on, not only a mental level but a physiological one, means that the chromosomes of the partner can be used as part of the impregnating process.
It is because of their higher brain functions as a species that allows them to do this, and as a result are the wisest and most intelligent species in the galaxy on average.
The likely reason they are designed as female is because of the mainly male species that are present in the series and a female one would be good, whilst also being able to promote the idea of a dominant species being female.

 

Halo doesn't suit it at all, Halo is not as over the top as CoD and Mass Effect 3 are. If you play Modern Warfare 3, then jump right into the attack on Earth in ME3, then you will see how similar they really are. You just get attacked by tons of the same enemies, over and over, with bad AI to boot. And all the while there's "epic ****" going on all around you. That is the spirit of a dumb action game, which both of these games seem to have gotten down. I am talking more about the feel, not the technicalities.

There are not many games with similar dialouge trees, which I believe most people would agree is better. Why? Because if there's no choice, then the dialouge is more "condenced", more concentrated on making it better. While in Mass Effect the quality is spread out, forced at times even, since most of the dialouge has to say the exact same thing, despite if you are renegade of paragon. Besides, you won't even get to hear the other options, unless you are obsessed with the games and want to waste 60+ hours of your life just to see slight changes. I would gladly have them take away the choices in dialouge, as it is they don't add much.

But you were talking about how the JRPGs are not selling well recently, due to not branching out ideas and what not. If you weren't talking about recently, then it was false what you said about WRPGs selling more than JRPGs, as this trend has only started in this generation. We were talking about the new quality, which was why I disregarded the old ones. And I never said FFIX was a new game, just that it was my favourite RPG. You are mixing up discussion here. Everything else you've said is subjective, so I won't comment on those things.

You are taking everything at face value, you can read my response to Hayabusa about the CoD thing. The WoW comparision is due to the feeling of grinding that the ME3 sidequests have. Look around the Citadel for missions, eavesdrop on someone's conversation, go search for the planet he's talking about, scan it, go back and complete your mission. Then you look around the Citadel more for missions and repeat the process. It is extremely similar to WoW's "Go kill eight of ____".

You're wrong, I do get the lore. However, you did not understand the point I was making. The point is that there is only one reason they made a race of blue skinned sexy ladies. The reason is to please sweaty nerds, which is most of Bioware's fanbase. Why do the Asari have breasts? And curves in general? Because they are based around fanservice. And once you realise that, the lore is, in general, questionable at best.