SDCC: Mass Effect 3
While I was at SDCC I bought the exclusive 2011 SDCC Penny Arcade t-shirt that reads "veni vidi degi," or, "I came, I saw, I waited." We had no plans of doing that last one since we pretty much wanted to see as much of the place as we could on our one day there and waiting in huge lines seemed counterproductive to that. I should also mention that the Penny Arcade guys are great; Mike (Gabe) and Jerry (Tycho) are both incredibly easy and fun to talk to, and I think I even managed to flatter Jerry by telling him that his writing is absolutely gorgeous, even when it's about the most mundane things. He repeated that back to himself a couple times and chose to not, as previously threatened, render us all into a primitive primordial ooze. (I don't have the flair for exaggeration that he does.)
Anyway, we had resolved not to wait, so the first time we saw the line for playing Mass Effect 3 (the last in a series of truly spectacular games; their world-building is enviable and Bioware is one of the few game companies that values good writing) we noticed that it was very long and also outside in the sun so we said "Nope! We're not doing that." Then, after I'd spoken to Patrick Rothfuss and we'd bought everything we really felt the need to buy (except for the Transformers, which Adric still regrets), we went back outside and noticed that the line was much shorter now and it appeared to be more of a twenty-minute wait. This was amenable to us so we queued up.
It turned out that the little line out front was merely a cruel joke, as we went inside and waited in line there for another two hours, heavy bags cutting into our fingers, shuffling forward a bit at a time as the line wound around enigmatic corners and some disinterested television personalities coached us to cheer at key moments. There was some cosplay. Some of it was cool. Oh! We got to hold some replica Mass Effect guns!
I don't know what I was looking at here. Adric is always that insane but only cameras can capture the glimpses of pure madness always lurking in between the flashes of normalcy.
This is the really important part of that photo. What is this? Some kind of brick with a convenient carrying mechanism affixed to it?
Eventually we made it almost all the way up to the mysterious room where they were playing Mass Effect 3, and like deer peeking shyly out from the forest, a few Bioware employees lingered in that dark hallway. Among them was a level designer from the Dragon Age 2 team, and one of the producers from that same game. The guys behind us began talking to them, bitching about the repetitive levels in DA2 (the level designer was sympathetic but there hadn't been much that they could do), and then they fixed their sights on the producer.
They asked him over and over again why they couldn't customize their character and follower colors, why they couldn't have follower uniforms so they all looked like a ~team~, why the grass was different, why they couldn't have this and that and this and every time the producer tried to answer them - "well," he would say, "it's all a matter of memory allocation," or "the characters all have to look distinct so that you can tell them apart during fights" - they would interrupt with some new inanity.
Finally I got sick of listening to this - after all, these Bioware people didn't have to be there - so I broke in with, "You know what would fix all those problems? Loading screens every fifteen seconds," and the Bioware people laughed and agreed and Adric started talking to them about Bioware's attention to writing so that those guys behind us couldn't start up again.
Which brings me to the fact that we played Mass Effect 3!
I guess there's not much I can say that's not in some gameplay footage somewhere, but I was playing for about half an hour and, while it's clearly still a work in progress, it's still pretty awesome. It plays a lot like ME2, and while the new Omniblade isn't exactly revolutionary, it does get the job done. The most important awesome thing, though, is OMG KROGAN FEMALE.
I have long complained about the lack of alien females, other than the Quarians and Asari (although I am still so glad that I can play femme!Shep, and that they're looking to include a female Shepard in the next round of ads), and it looks like we'll finally get to solve at least a little bit of that mystery because there was a Krogan female, and she was awesome and had a dirty, wry sense of humor and was all veiled and regal and AWESOME.
So that's my in-depth review of playing Mass Effect 3. It was cool.
Anyway, we had resolved not to wait, so the first time we saw the line for playing Mass Effect 3 (the last in a series of truly spectacular games; their world-building is enviable and Bioware is one of the few game companies that values good writing) we noticed that it was very long and also outside in the sun so we said "Nope! We're not doing that." Then, after I'd spoken to Patrick Rothfuss and we'd bought everything we really felt the need to buy (except for the Transformers, which Adric still regrets), we went back outside and noticed that the line was much shorter now and it appeared to be more of a twenty-minute wait. This was amenable to us so we queued up.
It turned out that the little line out front was merely a cruel joke, as we went inside and waited in line there for another two hours, heavy bags cutting into our fingers, shuffling forward a bit at a time as the line wound around enigmatic corners and some disinterested television personalities coached us to cheer at key moments. There was some cosplay. Some of it was cool. Oh! We got to hold some replica Mass Effect guns!
I don't know what I was looking at here. Adric is always that insane but only cameras can capture the glimpses of pure madness always lurking in between the flashes of normalcy.
This is the really important part of that photo. What is this? Some kind of brick with a convenient carrying mechanism affixed to it?
Eventually we made it almost all the way up to the mysterious room where they were playing Mass Effect 3, and like deer peeking shyly out from the forest, a few Bioware employees lingered in that dark hallway. Among them was a level designer from the Dragon Age 2 team, and one of the producers from that same game. The guys behind us began talking to them, bitching about the repetitive levels in DA2 (the level designer was sympathetic but there hadn't been much that they could do), and then they fixed their sights on the producer.
They asked him over and over again why they couldn't customize their character and follower colors, why they couldn't have follower uniforms so they all looked like a ~team~, why the grass was different, why they couldn't have this and that and this and every time the producer tried to answer them - "well," he would say, "it's all a matter of memory allocation," or "the characters all have to look distinct so that you can tell them apart during fights" - they would interrupt with some new inanity.
Finally I got sick of listening to this - after all, these Bioware people didn't have to be there - so I broke in with, "You know what would fix all those problems? Loading screens every fifteen seconds," and the Bioware people laughed and agreed and Adric started talking to them about Bioware's attention to writing so that those guys behind us couldn't start up again.
Which brings me to the fact that we played Mass Effect 3!
I guess there's not much I can say that's not in some gameplay footage somewhere, but I was playing for about half an hour and, while it's clearly still a work in progress, it's still pretty awesome. It plays a lot like ME2, and while the new Omniblade isn't exactly revolutionary, it does get the job done. The most important awesome thing, though, is OMG KROGAN FEMALE.
I have long complained about the lack of alien females, other than the Quarians and Asari (although I am still so glad that I can play femme!Shep, and that they're looking to include a female Shepard in the next round of ads), and it looks like we'll finally get to solve at least a little bit of that mystery because there was a Krogan female, and she was awesome and had a dirty, wry sense of humor and was all veiled and regal and AWESOME.
So that's my in-depth review of playing Mass Effect 3. It was cool.