Mass Effect

Looking good, though I'd love a longer trailer with more gameplay footage.

I admittedly haven't been following this game very much because I'm not a huge RPG guy but I liked the trailer last night. Is this a action-adventure shooter with RPG character building elements or is it KOTOR without the Star Wars license?

I think you can play it real time or turn based. My guess is that it would be more like KOTOR, what very little I've played of that.

I'm not much of an RPG guy either, but this one has already made me upset with release delays. Can't wait to see more in-game stuff.

It's a realtime RPG that acts like a squad shooter when in combat, however you can pause and issue commands to make it act quasi-turnbased. That said, it doesn't actually run off a turn-based system like KotOR.

I can't believe I just picked up the novelization (although it was only one cent....plus shipping....oh god what have I done?).

The ridiculous delay from April until June, then September, and now finally November has pushed me over the edge.

You mean the prequel novel? It was a decent read. Gave some very nice bits of backstory on the universe.

I dont think I've ever seen anything like that (yes, I've played Baldur's Gate and KOTOR and Jade Empire).

GWAR meets Chrono Trigger? A cinematic engine that actually adds to the experience? Real Time dialog bullshittery?

Ah man this is Game of the Year. Book it.

November?!

Oh, god damn it. I was set on September. I bought a 360 mainly to play this game, and it keeps getting further and further away from me. Balls.

I guess I'll have time to get into Blue Dragon then.

I'm gonna have to pick the novel up this week cause this is the one game i'm completely amped up for.....Even got the faceplate on my 360.

I'm going to get laughed right out of bed by Mrs. Chicken, but I kinda want to read this thing as well.

Not me....If Mrs. HiPPiE can read Anne Rice's Sleeping beauty till 4 in the morning then I better not hear shit for me reading Mass Effect.

Only a few pages in, but a decent read just far. It's the shame of buying a VIDEO-GAME PREQUEL NOVELIZATION that gets to me.

I was really hoping for September. Doesn't this happen every fucking year? We expect to see games nicely paced over 12 months, then every title gets friggin' delayed, or friggin' rushed, to the shelves between November 1st and December 19th.

They gave out copies at their E3 meetings. Saves me the shame.

Well, most of the shame. I think I see a bit clinging to the side of your shoe.

OMG! I thought my wife was the only one who read that shit. Glad to hear I'm not the only one who's suffered.

Isn't that the erotica she published under the name "A. N. Rocquelaire"? Have you guys perused the content of those books? You might find them... interesting.

The quality level of game novels has come a long way. There is still boatloads of junk, I'm certain, but it's on a level of your typical disposable fantasy novel now, as opposed to the unpublishable drek that we saw 10-15 years ago. And there are some (such as the Eric Nylund Halo novels) that are quite good.

My wife read them too. That was several years ago, when she was reading everything Rice ever wrote. She's completely gone off her now, in much the same way I've gone completely off Stephen King.

Yeah I peeked at the Sleeping Beauty one and FFS it was lewd. My wife reads some raunchy shit.

Make sure you flip through the sequels so you can see what your wife thinks of pony play.

Yeah I've seen it, my wife reads horridly bad chick-lit, IIRC she was wildly amused at the pony play. My wife reads, raunchy, RAUNCHY, shit.

My wife has the Rice books too. Then again, she is kinda freaky in the sack. It's why we work so well together.

We went from videogames to sex. That's quite the journey for such a short thread.

I can only hope that Mass Effect's branching conversations will lead down the same path.

I keep trying to figure out just what's so special about the Mass Effect dialog system, aside from the fact that the graphics and lip synch are both really great. It still looks like the same old canned dialog/response system we've seen time and time again. What makes people say this is a leap forward?

And a journey so rarely made in the real world.

It's not that it's anything revolutionary, just really well done. It's a fluid system that allows you to choose the direction of the conversation as it happens. There's a more natural flow instead of listening to a NPC talk, selecting generic sounding topics like A) Castle B) Gold C) Missing Elf, and then listening to the NPC's response.

Yeah, but a lot of games have been at that point for years now.

I'm typically not that into RPGs so maybe it is old hat to people who are. As popular as Oblivion was, the dialogue system was some of the dullest I've encountered in a game.

It's very pretty, but it's more or less the standard Bioware has been following their last three or four games.

A more interesting system will be the one 3DRealms uses for that new game that was in Game Informer (can't remember the name had to do with red veins taking over earth like in WAR OF THE WORLDS), where your dialog choices are timed, and you have to choose fairly quickly like in a natural conversation that might involve life and death.

But Mass Effect pretty much uses the same system Bioware always has, there is just a lot more of it.

Could be. Speaking as a non-RPG game player, this dialog system seems pretty great. I've played quite a few 1st/3rd person shooter games that had some half-assed version (a: tell me about this; b: tell me about that; c: take me to the next mission), but never something where the words I chose had any real effect on the game's outcome. To me, at least, Mass Effect seems to finally bring in the more interactive nature of RPGs with the more action-oriented shooter game. From what I heard KOTOR came close, but I never got around to playing that one.

Unless Jade Empire switched things around (never played it), this looks considerably different in execution from any of their previous games. They've always just let you cycle through a selection of specific replies. If you had high enough Intelligence you sometimes had seven or eight to choose from, it was kind of silly. This seems more reaction-based. It's still a conversation of course, but the feel is entirely different.

I don't think timed pass/fail responses would work in a huge RPG like this, either.

Again, how is this any different?

I'm not arguing that it's revolutionary, but the combination of directional selections (rather than scrolling through a list), paraphrased reactions (rather than literal dialogue), and interruptable responses seems to create a more natural feel than previous games.

Obviously it's not as revolutionary as, say, being able to invent your own responses.

Primarily, you're not cycling through specific replies. You're choosing a tone or general response -- you won't see/hear the actual lines of dialogue until they're spoken.

Sounds like a small difference, but in practice it makes for a more involving game. I always just quickly buttoned through the dialogue in similar games before, since I'd read the lines while choosing. This method adds some unpredictability.

Of course, I've only experienced the game in short bursts so far -- over the long run it's possible that the charm will fade.

So it's not any different, aside from the fact that the selections are on a little wheel thingy instead of a list.

It certainly looks well done, and I'm not decrying it, it just strikes me as really odd that this is something the press are calling a leap forward, rather than all the other cool stuff that looks like it's going to be in the game.

New things about it:

1)You can cut off the other person with the timing of your response and change the flow of the conversation; I can't recall that being done before.

2)You choose the general tone of your response, rather than the specific response; I haven't seen that before.

As for dialogue affecting the plot and relationships with your NPCs, that's been done, but perhaps it will be done better here.

The difference is that you only ever saw your own responses before; you didn't hear your character speak, ever. Before, you would choose your character's specific line, and it would move on to the other character's response. Now, you choose a type of response instead of the actual line of dialogue, your character delivers his line, and the NPC responds. It seems more conversational, since it won't have the gaps the other system did.

So no, that's not the same thing.

But isn't the only real difference that your dialogue isn't actually written on the screen? If I choose to respond "angry", isn't it pretty much the same thing as picking the "angry" response from KOTOR or Jade Empire?

I admit, the "cutting in while talking" is new, and could change conversation flow, but the rest doesn't seem all that different from what has been done before.

That said, the game looks amazing, and I've had it pre-ordered for months.

The cutting people off thing sounds like the only marginal change, because honestly, if you're trying to convince me that voice acting for the main character, and getting to choose between "Angry", "Sad" and "Horny" is a big leap up, then you haven't played many PC RPGs. BioWare's been doing this shit since they were called Black Isle.

At any rate, it's not a criticism of the dialog scenes, which look like the same high standard I expect from the company. The game looks great, and might be the impetus I need to buy a 360 later this year.

Gameplay vid, includes the dialogue system in action. No interruptions occur, but you can see how it would work.

http://www.gamespot.com/video/930279...meplay-movie-1

Extensive interview available too.

Kingpin for PC did this back in 99' and I always thought it was a great idea. It was fun never knowing what was going to spew out your mouth with a negative response.

I hope Mass Effect isn't disappointing. I've been let down far too many times by these epic games promising the world.

I'll probably have to upgrade my computer for this one.

It seems to suffer from the usual Bioware problem of "in the future, nothing ever gets dirty", but I suppose that can't be helped.

It's actually the reason I bought a 360 in the first place. There's just been a very long gap in between. And Oblivion wasn't filling it.

On the one hand, I'm disappointed that this was delayed until November. On the other hand, I'm now glad I'll have time to properly dive into Bioshock.

On the other hand, Mass Effect was my excuse for not reserving Halo 3 every single fucking time they bring it up at Gamestop. Now I'll have to come up with something else, like "Say Halo 3 again, motherfucker".

One copy of Mass Effect: Revelations purchased last night....Journey to the dark side is complete.

This is how it begins, you know. The next thing you know, you're reading movie novelizations and Star Trek novels. Then you're getting into the Star Wars Expanded Universe. Then one day, you're on the toilet, and you suddenly realize that you're holding a Dragonlance novel, and it's the seventh in a series. Where has your life gone? And that's when you put the gun in your mouth.