Haven't played it yet and I had to skim read because I wanted to comment on some stuff, expectations and things. I'm trying to avoid any more spoilers than what I already know, (Boom! Headshot!) though I suspect it will all be stuff I've seen before, again.
I'm oddly looking forward to seeing if I'm going to hate the game mechanics or not. They look a bit of a mix up between action and pseudo turn-based combat. I think I might be bored by it, but I thought that about Jade Empire and adored the simplistic joy of beating the crap out of things with a character I liked.
Your fem!shep is oddly reminiscent of your really interesting fem!Revan whose name I have completely forgotten (Min.. something? I fail, I know), but I think that's interesting since, presumably, there's more options than different head swapping (though the grease face thing is annoying from the screen shots I've seen, but I love that everyone seems to be making dark skinned ladies). Male!shep looks like Daniel Craig became a white supremacist and took up steroids and being hit with an ugly stick. I hope the facial expressions are better in game than what I see here, because they look like they are thinking about doing laundry.
I really like what I've heard from Hale's voice work (I think she tends to not use her full range in things, which is why I have trouble liking her work sometimes), but I wish they had used a new voice actor for the Kaiden guy. Not another one that's in stuff all the time (Cam Clarke, Grey De Lisle), or a mimic of someone who's a better voice actor (I always though that B. J. Ward was trying to be both Lisle and Hale and inferior to both) but some new voice we hadn't all heard before.
Actually what I really want is proper male love interest character voiced by Louis Mellis who doesn't want to just slay the main character (yes I know Sion's motivation is more complex than that, I just love that voice).
I did buy the game yesterday, which isn't what I originally planned to do.I was going to hold out until I could be sure there was a sure-fire way of removing that version of Securom, or dummying it, without damaging the game or my system (if that ever happens). But there's so few copies in the stores in the UK (at least in my city), partly because it's a direct PC port of a successful console title, mostly because it's a bit nerdy compared to the casual games the ds and the wii that are the biggest commercial game platforms right now, but also because of the bad press with copy protection. I decided I'd buy it now (and I had a big discount to use up on a reward card) and not install it.
That way I don't mind taking the aaaargh path because I did buy the game. If it was any other company I wouldn't care at all (I recently flashed my ps2 to make it do my bidding entirely, instead of half-way), so it's only a question of my own peace of mind. And the way I'm feeling right now, I think my peace of mind is more important than not very much money. And now I've got it, I can't wait to *get* it, if that makes sense.
I didn't mean for that to be so long or turn into my thoughts on yaoi copy protection, sorry about that, Pris.
Minuet Avery Revan. I have to say, I love her as well; maybe that's why the name comes to me so easily.
(Back to Pris' original post from here.)
First off, I must admit, I'm disappointed in Bioware/EA. I've really wanted to get ME for the PC, but am preventing myself from doing so. Why? The DRM copy protection. Basically, it's only allowing people to install it three times, and uninstalling it doesn't give you an install back. Once your installs are up, you either have to buy a new game license (read: game) or contact EA and beg for more installs. No thanks on either count.
/soapbox
Back on topic, the game really does sound awesome. I've heard there are quite a few shortcomings to it (even more asides from what you mentioned, Pris), but I hope the game itself is worth dealing with those issues. I have to wonder how I'll feel about hearing Sbarge as Kaiden; hopefully as good as I felt hearing his voice as Carth. I've also heard a lot of negative about Ashley, and I agree with you 115%, Pris. In KotOR, I seem to remember that a Fem!Revan could have some kind of friendship with her female crewmates; it sounds like in ME, they just wanted Shepard to have her romantic interest and little else. Oy.
I'm hoping they get rid of the draconian DRM protection so I can actually buy the game without having to worry about being treated like a criminal. Until then, no more EA purchases for this girl.
I think they did try and put a token attempt at making some kind of friendship with Ashley, but it just doesn't fly. Partially because Shepard is a hard ass and her commanding officer, which naturally puts them at a distance, and partially because Ashley is just kind of annoying. It's like she tries so hard to be tough, which makes her look kind of like a lame poser.
As far as Kaiden goes, it's just that Sbarge is so identified as Carth in my mind, that it's really really difficult to separate the voice from that character - especially since Sbarge doesn't even try to make him sound different than Carth. I find it very distracting, which is a shame because I like Kaiden as a character.
EA seems to be putting this that DRM protection on all of their stuff because I remember people bitching about it with the newer Sims expansion packs. When I installed the latest expansion for the sims, I didn't even realize that it had that kind of copy protection (I found out about it after the fact). I figured that since it didn't mess up my computer then, that installing Mass Effect wouldn't mess it up now (and it appears that I've been right about that so far thankfully).
Oh yeah, she totally looks like the way I pictured my female Revan, which wasn't my intention when I started out, but by the time I'd realized what I'd done I decided to keep it anyway. This is probably half due to my subconscious physical preferences for a player character and half due to wanting to avoid the melty face effect. I don't know what it is about the lighting in the kotor games and in Mass Effect, but for some reason the darker skintones look so much better.
But that aside, it definitely says something about what I find aesthetically appealing. Actually, now that I think about it, in other games when given a choice about portraits and skintones, I almost always pick dark skinned player characters (I think I did it in both Baulder's Gate games too), with the only exception being Kotor 2 when I played the blonde exile with a bun. A lot of it's probably due to the fact that I'm short, fair skinned and blonde - so this is my chance to look as different from myself as it gets.
I have no excuse for my ugly ass male!Shep other than I truly suck at making faces. I went through about four different versions that looked even worse than this one (oh god... super blonde nordic male shep with a beard, which is what I really wanted, was a total disaster).
As far as Kaiden goes, I guess I should just be grateful that he wasn't voiced by Cam Clarke (the mess that was Sky still makes me cringe) or even worse, the dude that did Anomen. Still some variety would have been nice. They should have switched Garrus's voice with Kaiden's or made Sbarge the voice of the male!Shep, although I don't know if Sbarge could pull that off considering what a hard ass Shepard is.
See... him making Anomen sound like Pinky would have been all kinds of awesome. They should have done that instead of the whiny, passive aggressive voice that he seemed to have (or maybe it was just the dialogue - hard to say).
He actually also voices the Baldur's Gate character Kivan who was modded into my personal favourite BG2 romance mod, if not my favourite gaming romance so far. Kivan of Shilmestria - you'd probably hate it, whiny elves, Greyelvish and angst. But I like it because it was written with the idea in mind that the PC knows she loves the character and him being oblivious to her interest, because he's not really living for anything except revenge. Nice change from the female PC being well, pretty passive (hairless wookieeing doesn't count, naturally), except to play mommy.
It actually spans right across the entire series: With companionship and the beginnings of trust in the first Baldur's Gate, a more intimate friendship and the possibility of choosing to resurrect his dead wife instead of being with him in the second game (which is a very hard choice if you get attached to him), and finally a romantic relationship in the Throne of Bhaal. Most game romances feel rushed (the "canon" romances in Baldur's gate were written in a week, apparently), because of time constraints, as well as the sort of instant gratification aspects that destroy natural character development.
It was nice to see something that developed slowly because it's more realistic than fighting a few battles and falling into bed together (though that can be fun too), but this made the PC work to get her man, because its completely scripted differently than a 1 hour lovetalk timer.
Anyway, he's got a completely different feel to his voice than Anomen. He's more like an emo Aragon, but you don't want to smack him in the head every time he talks about his daddy issues.
It's a fan-made mod by a a lovely lady called "Domi" (she also wrote a really great multi-pathway romance for Coran in the first game, I think she wrote the Dynaheir romance mod as well, but I don't tend to play male characters in BG.) It's much more creative than anything the game developers put out, because she had the advantage of time. She also understands how to trigger really creative script events that means Kivan "knows" the player character much better. He will ask her opinion on things and remember what she "said". And he does listen to her, rather than being ram-roded through set events.
Example: if you've played the first BG game you might remember that Sarevok has an underling called Tazok, in the unmodded game Kivan is looking for Tazok because he murdered his wife (because of this he also has racial prejudice towards ogres, in addition to being a bit of a stuck-up eleven pillock, for which the PC can give him a hard time about, including going about how he's really attractive looking as a drow, in whatever that drow city is called and eventually he will realise she's right). In the unmodded BG2, you find Tazok working with the red dragon guy.
Kivan's reaction to finding out that he is still alive is to kill him and then cut his heart out. This is important because it means he can't be raised ever and it's a desecration of nature that is against everything elves and rangers believe in. That's how damaged he is by the death of his wife, he will completely destroy himself and his principals for revenge she wouldn't even want. He's so tortured he makes Carth look like a shiny happy bunny with pink slippers. The main character can talk him out of it, but if you let him do it, he carries the heart around as a trophy and it unlocks another little mini-arc of the friendship/romance.
She's always tweaking things and finding bugs and releasing updates, which I'm love forward to, but she's going to get someone to revoice Kivan's lines (because Kivan is not an OC his romance dialog is not voiced, but in BG that doesn't matter so much and you can fill it in from what his basic soundset is like anyway), so I'm a bit conflicted about it.
If you can get past the occasional cliche and the fact he uses Elvish like oxygen (it's all translated though and is justified because he calls the character different epithets regarding how he feels about her), it's really fun. If you're interested in playing it you need a bunch of other stuff to get the full series spanning experience, but I won't go into it right now, because its techy and this is long enough already.
I'm oddly looking forward to seeing if I'm going to hate the game mechanics or not. They look a bit of a mix up between action and pseudo turn-based combat. I think I might be bored by it, but I thought that about Jade Empire and adored the simplistic joy of beating the crap out of things with a character I liked.
Your fem!shep is oddly reminiscent of your really interesting fem!Revan whose name I have completely forgotten (Min.. something? I fail, I know), but I think that's interesting since, presumably, there's more options than different head swapping (though the grease face thing is annoying from the screen shots I've seen, but I love that everyone seems to be making dark skinned ladies). Male!shep looks like Daniel Craig became a white supremacist and took up steroids and being hit with an ugly stick. I hope the facial expressions are better in game than what I see here, because they look like they are thinking about doing laundry.
I really like what I've heard from Hale's voice work (I think she tends to not use her full range in things, which is why I have trouble liking her work sometimes), but I wish they had used a new voice actor for the Kaiden guy. Not another one that's in stuff all the time (Cam Clarke, Grey De Lisle), or a mimic of someone who's a better voice actor (I always though that B. J. Ward was trying to be both Lisle and Hale and inferior to both) but some new voice we hadn't all heard before.
Actually what I really want is proper male love interest character voiced by Louis Mellis who doesn't want to just slay the main character (yes I know Sion's motivation is more complex than that, I just love that voice).
I did buy the game yesterday, which isn't what I originally planned to do.I was going to hold out until I could be sure there was a sure-fire way of removing that version of Securom, or dummying it, without damaging the game or my system (if that ever happens). But there's so few copies in the stores in the UK (at least in my city), partly because it's a direct PC port of a successful console title, mostly because it's a bit nerdy compared to the casual games the ds and the wii that are the biggest commercial game platforms right now, but also because of the bad press with copy protection. I decided I'd buy it now (and I had a big discount to use up on a reward card) and not install it.
That way I don't mind taking the aaaargh path because I did buy the game. If it was any other company I wouldn't care at all (I recently flashed my ps2 to make it do my bidding entirely, instead of half-way), so it's only a question of my own peace of mind. And the way I'm feeling right now, I think my peace of mind is more important than not very much money. And now I've got it, I can't wait to *get* it, if that makes sense.
I didn't mean for that to be so long or turn into my thoughts on yaoi copy protection, sorry about that, Pris.
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(Back to Pris' original post from here.)
First off, I must admit, I'm disappointed in Bioware/EA. I've really wanted to get ME for the PC, but am preventing myself from doing so. Why? The DRM copy protection. Basically, it's only allowing people to install it three times, and uninstalling it doesn't give you an install back. Once your installs are up, you either have to buy a new game license (read: game) or contact EA and beg for more installs. No thanks on either count.
/soapbox
Back on topic, the game really does sound awesome. I've heard there are quite a few shortcomings to it (even more asides from what you mentioned, Pris), but I hope the game itself is worth dealing with those issues. I have to wonder how I'll feel about hearing Sbarge as Kaiden; hopefully as good as I felt hearing his voice as Carth. I've also heard a lot of negative about Ashley, and I agree with you 115%, Pris. In KotOR, I seem to remember that a Fem!Revan could have some kind of friendship with her female crewmates; it sounds like in ME, they just wanted Shepard to have her romantic interest and little else. Oy.
I'm hoping they get rid of the draconian DRM protection so I can actually buy the game without having to worry about being treated like a criminal. Until then, no more EA purchases for this girl.
Reply
As far as Kaiden goes, it's just that Sbarge is so identified as Carth in my mind, that it's really really difficult to separate the voice from that character - especially since Sbarge doesn't even try to make him sound different than Carth. I find it very distracting, which is a shame because I like Kaiden as a character.
EA seems to be putting this that DRM protection on all of their stuff because I remember people bitching about it with the newer Sims expansion packs. When I installed the latest expansion for the sims, I didn't even realize that it had that kind of copy protection (I found out about it after the fact). I figured that since it didn't mess up my computer then, that installing Mass Effect wouldn't mess it up now (and it appears that I've been right about that so far thankfully).
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But that aside, it definitely says something about what I find aesthetically appealing. Actually, now that I think about it, in other games when given a choice about portraits and skintones, I almost always pick dark skinned player characters (I think I did it in both Baulder's Gate games too), with the only exception being Kotor 2 when I played the blonde exile with a bun. A lot of it's probably due to the fact that I'm short, fair skinned and blonde - so this is my chance to look as different from myself as it gets.
I have no excuse for my ugly ass male!Shep other than I truly suck at making faces. I went through about four different versions that looked even worse than this one (oh god... super blonde nordic male shep with a beard, which is what I really wanted, was a total disaster).
As far as Kaiden goes, I guess I should just be grateful that he wasn't voiced by Cam Clarke (the mess that was Sky still makes me cringe) or even worse, the dude that did Anomen. Still some variety would have been nice. They should have switched Garrus's voice with Kaiden's or made Sbarge the voice of the male!Shep, although I don't know if Sbarge could pull that off considering what a hard ass Shepard is.
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He actually has a big range, Anomen was just a huge insecure prick.
He's Pinky from the Pink and the Brain Cartoon, which is pretty hilarious.
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It actually spans right across the entire series: With companionship and the beginnings of trust in the first Baldur's Gate, a more intimate friendship and the possibility of choosing to resurrect his dead wife instead of being with him in the second game (which is a very hard choice if you get attached to him), and finally a romantic relationship in the Throne of Bhaal. Most game romances feel rushed (the "canon" romances in Baldur's gate were written in a week, apparently), because of time constraints, as well as the sort of instant gratification aspects that destroy natural character development.
It was nice to see something that developed slowly because it's more realistic than fighting a few battles and falling into bed together (though that can be fun too), but this made the PC work to get her man, because its completely scripted differently than a 1 hour lovetalk timer.
Anyway, he's got a completely different feel to his voice than Anomen. He's more like an emo Aragon, but you don't want to smack him in the head every time he talks about his daddy issues.
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Example: if you've played the first BG game you might remember that Sarevok has an underling called Tazok, in the unmodded game Kivan is looking for Tazok because he murdered his wife (because of this he also has racial prejudice towards ogres, in addition to being a bit of a stuck-up eleven pillock, for which the PC can give him a hard time about, including going about how he's really attractive looking as a drow, in whatever that drow city is called and eventually he will realise she's right). In the unmodded BG2, you find Tazok working with the red dragon guy.
Kivan's reaction to finding out that he is still alive is to kill him and then cut his heart out. This is important because it means he can't be raised ever and it's a desecration of nature that is against everything elves and rangers believe in. That's how damaged he is by the death of his wife, he will completely destroy himself and his principals for revenge she wouldn't even want. He's so tortured he makes Carth look like a shiny happy bunny with pink slippers. The main character can talk him out of it, but if you let him do it, he carries the heart around as a trophy and it unlocks another little mini-arc of the friendship/romance.
She's always tweaking things and finding bugs and releasing updates, which I'm love forward to, but she's going to get someone to revoice Kivan's lines (because Kivan is not an OC his romance dialog is not voiced, but in BG that doesn't matter so much and you can fill it in from what his basic soundset is like anyway), so I'm a bit conflicted about it.
If you can get past the occasional cliche and the fact he uses Elvish like oxygen (it's all translated though and is justified because he calls the character different epithets regarding how he feels about her), it's really fun. If you're interested in playing it you need a bunch of other stuff to get the full series spanning experience, but I won't go into it right now, because its techy and this is long enough already.
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