So I'm playing Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and I really like it. But you know what pains me? To know that BioWare goes from making great games like KOTOR (and before that Baldur's Gate) to Mass Effect 2. Why, oh why didn't they leave the RPG elements in. Why did they feel the need to 'streamline' it? So, I played it and found that Mass Effect was actually okay regardless (BioWare called it an RPG, but it really wasn't). Yes it was streamlined but it was still a good story. And so I enjoyed Mass Effect (even though BioWare was slandering every other good RPG in the market) and let the RPG monikor slide. Through the course of the game I visited several planets, met lots of aliens (and even recruited them along the way) and had an over all good time.
But along comes ME2 and not only did the they get rid of anything that remotely resembled a decent skill tree, they took away my weapon stats and armor stats and pretty much anything that resembled an RPG. Oh and the story sucked too. I think I spent about 5 hours actually playing the core story. The rest of the game was 'gathering my team'. Yes, that was the plot device used. "Hey, Shephard, go get people!" Gathering my team was a lousy plot device, that ended up being a huge time filler. Let me be clear, gathering your team doesn't make a story, it just makes for a lot of boring sidequests where I have to gain the loyalty of characters that I really couldn't care less about. It's not that I don't want to learn my characters backstories, but it's better when I discover it as I go (like with KOTOR) rather than have it cookie cuttered in and served up in nice neat pieces.
Oh and someone needs to let BioWare know that a buttload of dialog choices does not make a game an RPG, that makes it an adventure game, like the old
Choose Your Own Adventure books.
So why am I ranting about this now? Because deep in my soul, I want Mass Effect 3 to be good, to be a return to the BioWare that gave us KOTOR and Baldur's Gate or even just Mass Effect. BioWare created a really rich universe with a nice setting and tons of aliens all fleshed out with planetary history and inter-species conflict. But from the preview videos I've seen, it looks like Mass Effect 3 will be another serving of RPG lite for the COD masses (especially since you can actually turn off the 'RPG' parts and play in 'action' only mode).
Well I can still hope I guess.
Well, I initially said to you when I first started it that KOTOR seems more like a COYA book than the FF/JRPGs I've played...the dialogue content and use of a conversation decision tree brings about that experience, especially since a lot of it will decide Light/Dark side pts.
ReplyDeleteThe saving factor is that the battling still uses a lot of RPG base, from armor and health packs timed in a fight right down to weapon range/hit potential...and the need to strategize between gunning someone down with a blaster and pulling out the melee weapon is key...otherwise you'd just shoot everything.
Even Han Solo benefited from the help of Luke and his lightsaber now and again...
And that's just it. When they take the 'chance to hit' or dexterity or whatever you want to call it out of the game and turn it into a twitch shooter, where your skills with the joystick determine whether you land a hit, it changes the game considerably.
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