The ending didn’t make much sense… we’re saving the galaxy!! By killing the galaxy!
Oh and here are three button. Choose one.
As with previous BIOWARE (for fuck’s sake) RPG’s, the ending should have been directed by the player’s actions through out the games, at least in some way.
It was lazy as fuck. Nonsensical. Very disappointing.
This is the sort of thing that I expect they’ve gone to great trouble specifically not to do with Tides of Numenera. I like the odds.
Summed up well in this article:
[spoiler]The end of Mass Effect 3 disregards the player’s choices on both galactic and personal scales. In contrast to the exquisite, if occasionally opaque, ways the player’s decisions dictated the outcome of Shepard’s suicide mission in Mass Effect 2, Mass Effect 3’s finale is essentially a railroad. Provided a player has gathered enough military force, all three possibilities for dealing with the series-long villains, the Reapers, are available. The player can opt to control them, destroy them, or join with them in an organic-AI synthesis of some kind. The choice only determines the primary color and some other minor details of an ensuing cutscene. This denies the player any meaningful feedback about this decision, and the game’s refusal to elaborate in any serious way on what happens to the galaxy undercuts the importance of choices made in this and previous ME games.
However, these scenes also destroy the galaxy that the games spent so much time developing. No matter what the player chooses, the mass relays detonate spectacularly, releasing massive shockwaves. In the world of the game these relays are the lynchpin of galactic travel and commerce, and their removal separates its the various worlds by voyages that take years, rather than moments. Demolishing the paths of commercial and cultural exchange that defined the galaxy, however, is a minor problem compared to what the game itself states will be the result of the exploding relays.[/spoiler]
So… not really. It’s hard to say what was “saved”.
The fact that they kept trying to defend that garbage tells me that they willfully refused to learn anything about narrative structure or player agency.
Having said that, I’m willing to give it a chance – I’ll wait to see what the reviews say; if they don’t fuck up the ending, I’ll be willing to give them full price for it.
ETA: I’m talking about Andromeda, not Tides. Tides I’m definitely interested in 
What’s the first one ? Dragon Age 2 ?
You’re thinking of Obsidian, which while often associated or confused Bioware, isn’t Bioware. Bioware has never been really good about not railroading the player in the end. Let’s recap :
Baldur’s Gate : you kill the bad guy and save the realm. Oh, and figure out you’re Bhaal’s kid along the way. Whether you’re a saintly paladin or the most scum-sucking scumsucker that ever sucked scum doesn’t matter one iota (though you do get different flavours of Bhaal dreams along the way).
Baldur’s Gate 2 : you kill the bad guy and ultimately replace Bhaal. There are a few cosmetic options on the tone of your godly reign that hinge on your final reputation score, but you can’t not be Bhaal IIRC. BTW you can flat out buy reputation score.
Neverwinter Nights : haven’t played the expansions, but the main campaign is railroad from start to finish. Plot- and player choice-wise, it’s on par with Diablo.
**KOTOR **: you kill Malak and get the Starforge. Two options : either you’re goody good and destroy it, or you’re baddy bad and activate it.
Jade Empire : you kill your mentor and seize the water dragon. Two options : either you’re goody good and free it, or you’re baddy bad and take its power.
Mass Effect : you kill Saren & Sovereign. Minor cosmetic choices on how (i.e. did you save the Council or not ? It doesn’t cost you anything not to).
**Mass Effect 2 **: you kill the reaper fetus and seize the base. Two options : either you’re a goody good and destroy it, or you’re baddy bad and hand it over to TIM. But I’ll give it props regardless because the McGuffin isn’t what you care about in this game - it’s your droogs and the real challenge lies in saving (or losing !) them all.
Mass Effect 3 : push button, get ending. Again, that’s a bit reductive because along the way you get to tie up an enormous amount of loose ends the way you want them to (the Krogan vs. the Salarians, Geth vs. Quarians, TIM’s fate, your droogs’ fates…), but then again the ending does make it all moot.
Dragon Age:Origins : hey, actual meaningful player choice for once ! You can become king or not, heroic sacrifice or not ; and the choices you made along the way all get vignettes. It’s cool. We cool.
Dragon Age 2 : the mages revolt no matter what you do, you kill the inquisitor. Fuck you.
**Dragon Age Inquisition **: hush, y’all. Still haven’t got around to finishing it.
Now have a look at Obsidian’s record :
KOTOR II : complex, albeit thoroughly rushed & confusing ending. OK, nothing to see there.
**Neverwinter Nights 2 **: while the campaign itself is railroady, you can join the Big Bad in the end if you want to. Also every location & NPC gets a vignette that hinges on your choices, à la Fallout.
**Neverwinter Nights 2 : Mask of the Betrayer **- along with Planescape:Torment, possibly the most epic and narratively fascinating RPG experience ever. Player choice out the ass. You can kill **gods **if you want to.
**Alpha Protocol **: might as well be called “player choice:the game”. The gameplay itself is pretty crap, but literally every little choice you make and how you talk to people have some token influence on it. Endings galore. And once again, you can side with the main antagonist in the end.
**Fallout New Vegas **: four ways to go through the main campaign. Vignettes all around.
**Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny **: hush, you bastards ! Still not done playing !
It’s hard to find good reviews sometimes. Certainly all the mainstream places will simply gush because it’s a big AAA game, no matter how shallow.
Huh. I guess you’re right, especially about endings.
As you point out, they do tend to do good in terms of other plot points/sidequests with the player agency and the consequences (which is why I was so angry with Dragon Age Inquisition). Also I think you could also get Saren to stand down - at which point he’d kill himself.
Yes, you could either convince Saren he was being indoctrinated, or convince him he had no chance and might as well top himself now. Or just fight it out with him. But the end result is still dead Saren & Sovereign taking his body over.
It’s still quite cool to be able to talk him into blowing his brains out, I’ll admit that. Not unprecedented (you could talk your mortality into submission in the original *Torment *and outlogic the Master in Fallout) but still satisfying.
In the end Kriea gives you a summary of what happens to the planets you influenced and the companions you traveled with because of your actions. I’m sure they meant for there to be a cutscenes.
I forgot what the release date was, so I visited the official site. The release date seems to be nowhere on there. Seems like they’d have somebody who manages that.
February 28, according to Wikipedia.
It is listed in a couple places on the official site, as well as many news articles. There is a new story trailer which may be the pre-game cinematic as well, and you can pre-load the game now if you want to get involved in early-access shenanigans.
Nor should it. Why should how good you are inform your parentage - are you some sort of divine genetic determinist :D?
Think you’re factually wrong on that one - I believe you can choose to either embrace divinity or mortality. You also can either replace Bhaal per se or ascend as a good deity.
I actually really appreciate the BG series plotting - it is pretty much a classic AD&D campaign, all the way from level 1 orphan to godhood ( if you should so choose ). Not everyone may like it, but I think it still stands as an unimpeachable classic IMHO. Mind you I do agree Obsidian is better at plotting than Bioware in-house, generally. But the BG series is one of Bioware’s best moments.
Hacked to pieces by the rush job forced on the developers. The fan patch helps a little. It remains my favorite SW-themed game, much more so than KOTOR I. I’ve always had an issue with the peculiar idiocies of both the Jedi and the Sith and the character of Kreia is a welcome breath of fresh air in that regard.
You are correct. However, that actually undersells BG! & 2; it was one of thos games where your actiosn end up affecting a lot of lives along the way. They just didn’t have the Fallout-style ending clips to show it. But you could do some truly good or vile deeds.
I believe much of the brilliance came about because, while Black Isle (and Interplay) lacked the deep pockets of some developers, Black Isle had a lot of talent which undoubtedly helped polish and refine the Bioware formula. Black Isle also pushed quality over speed, and boy does their subsequent history as Obsidian show that those are definite trade-offs!
On the subject of the new Torment, there’ve been a lot of grief and tears shed over the recent decision to cut some advertised features, which were specifically part of the accomplished stretch goals. I am of two minds on the subject. That said, both minds are not exactly impressed with people who take money and fail to produce, and I don’t really care for their attempt to weasel out of it. I don’t care about the cut content - but when you promise a language pack you deliver a language pack. Even if there aren’t very many Italian kickstarters, this is a specific promise that was made and ought to be done, period, even if that version just isn’t available on launch.
Edit: news link here.
It’s almost here guys. I’m really hoping they stepped up their game since Wasteland 2. I liked that game a lot, but it had some significant problems.
Can’t wait to play though.
Downloading now. It’ll be ready when I’m out of the house. But, sometime tonight I’ll be able to fire it up.
Reviews so far are pretty good! The main issue is the console performance.
I think I’m going to be alternating between this and White MArch until I’m done with White March, starting tonight. Can’t wait!!
Checked my emails and looks like I Kickstarted this 4 years ago. About time to get to play it.
I wasn’t really feeling it when I tried the early parts ages ago when this was still in Early Access, but now that I’ve drudged past those and gotten through the early exposition it’s starting to get some of its hooks on me. The text flows better than I expected it to and most of the time it doesn’t take too much effort to concentrate on - that sort of complexity of language is easily mistaken for quality. Only piece that gave me trouble was a sort of mind trip I did to somebody else’s memories and I suppose you could argue that was by design.
Anyways it is very refreshing to play a RPG where you get excited when you gain more lore skills and bored when you check your combat options instead of the other way around. Almost 4 hours in and I’ve been in exactly one fight (which I lost) after the tutorial. It’s not like I’m averse to combat in general either, I didn’t mind plowing through all those hundreds of monsters in Pillars of Eternity. It’s just that’s been done a thousand times.
RPS said the game is 35ish hours if you take your time which sounds about right for this kind of thing.
Yay! I didn’t know it was out. I’ve played the original Torment about half a dozen times–one of my top ten games ever–and I gave a goodly amount to the Kickstarter. I played through the beta a year or so and enjoyed it (though I could never get the bug report system to work), then the next time I logged on they had made some significant changes and I had to start over. So I only played a bit of that iteration, and decided to wait.
Mr. Elemenopy and I are still working through the DLC for Resident Evil 7, so I’ll probably wait a couple weekends before springing Tides on him. One bad thing, though, is that we play games together from a PC hooked to the living room TV, and we found the Tides beta almost impossible to read without sitting on the floor 3 feet away. No bueno. I wonder if it will be possible to increase the UI/font size? Sucks getting old…
For those of you more familiar with the game because you played the beta - are there better classes to pick?
Wow. Wow.
I had forgotten this was in development. What a happy surprise.
How difficult is this game, for those who are into it? I kind of want to check it out.