What Video Games Have You Been Playing VI: Because There Are No Elections In Video Games

[Commodore]

At what point could you refuse to recruit any of the ME1 companions? Also, whilst you could indeed get various ME2 companions killed off quite deliberately, how many of those could you refuse to pick up in the first place?

In Mass Effect 1 you could turn down both Garrus and Wrex. It wasn't very obvious that you could do it, but it could be done. In Mass Effect 2, you are only forced to recruit the first 4 dossiers the Illusive Man gives you (and Miranda and Jacob of course). Even then, Grunt is optional because while you are forced to pick him up, you can go the whole game without letting him out of his tank. The other dossiers are completely optional. The only other one they kind of force you to recruit after the first 4 is Legion, but he can be turned over to Cerberus for study instead of keeping him on the Normandy for your squad.

In fact, I just completed another playthrough of Mass Effect 2 without recruiting Tali at all.

Yeah I don't remember being able to turn down companions ever.

Have you ever tried though? If you just recruit every squad member they throw at you, then it makes sense that you wouldn't remember being given the opportunity to turn them down.

EDIT: So to more clearly answer the question here are the optional squad members in each Mass Effect game:

ME1: Garrus, Wrex

ME2: Thane, Samara, Tali, Legion, Grunt, Kasumi, Zaeed, Morinth.

ME3: Javik

ME Andromeda: None

 

[hobbsyoyo]

That's fine and all but you can still leave your companions on the ship and never interact with them. I don't see this as a real problem with the game, particularly compared to all the other ones it has.

BTW stick with it more than 10 hours, it gets a lot more fun, particularly as you learn the loadouts/skill-swapping mechanic out and level up enough to use it to full advantage (level 20+).

 

[Commodore]

I don't see this as a real problem with the game, particularly compared to all the other ones it has.

Nor do I. It's just one of those minor things that annoys me.

BTW stick with it more than 10 hours, it gets a lot more fun, particularly as you learn the loadouts/skill-swapping mechanic out and level up enough to use it to full advantage (level 20+).

I'll probably go back to it once I've completed my playthrough of the original trilogy. If for no other reason than my wife wants to see me play through it. She loves Mass Effect, but doesn't want to actually play the games, she just wants to watch the story unfold.

 

[FriendlyFire]

I'll probably go back to it once I've completed my playthrough of the original trilogy. If for no other reason than my wife wants to see me play through it. She loves Mass Effect, but doesn't want to actually play the games, she just wants to watch the story unfold.

Renegade Fem Shepard ?

 

[Commodore]

Renegade Fem Shepard ?

She actually prefers me to play as a male Shep and doesn't really care about the Paragon/Renegade choices. The main thing that draws her to the series are the romantic subplots that are possible. I remember my first playthrough of Mass Effect 2, my wife yelled at me for romancing Tali. She thought Miranda was a better option because she, and I quote, "has the best boobs".

 

[candys]

I like Clash of clans, Candy Crash and Pokemon go

 

[Snerk]

Stop sending me candy crush invites, candys!!

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Playing through the Zero Hour campaigns, on the third China mission now. Game just basically told me "You want minimum casualties? Too bad! Here bomb! F*** you!". I have to attack a fortified city littered with ambushes and hidden troops without any artillery or air support.

And of course the rant about RTS unit stupidity. Anyone know the Mandarin for "Ah, a Rocket Buggy's attacking the base structure right next to me. Better just sit here and fiddle with my rifle."?

 

[EgonSpengler]

So for a half-second I was interested to learn that Call of Duty was going back to WWII.

This year's entry in the shooter franchise follows the US 1st Infantry Division as they fight their way through the European theater of the war. Missions include the D-Day invasion of Normandy and Battle of the Bulge.

[...]

As for co-op, little was shared, but it will apparently take the form of "a new and original story" featuring zombies.

Zzzzz... Nevermind.

Okay, that's the end of my interest in that game. But it got me to thinking, has anyone made a good RPG set during WWII? I mean, the true stories from that war are often amazing, and there's been a fair number of good novels and fictional movies set during the period. Why have PC games become so timid? I'm thinking of an RPG like The Witcher, Mass Effect or Deus Ex, where the player is a member of the Dutch Resistance, or a resident of Leningrad trying to survive. I mean, my god, one's brain fairly explodes imagining the possibilities, and here we are with Call of Duty giving us the 101st Airborne in Normandy and the Bulge and - oh, just go ahead and shoot me now - zombies.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Okay, that's the end of my interest in that game. But it got me to thinking, has anyone made a good RPG set during WWII? I mean, the true stories from that war are often amazing, and there's been a fair number of good novels and fictional movies set during the period. Why have PC games become so timid? I'm thinking of an RPG like The Witcher, Mass Effect or Deus Ex, where the player is a member of the Dutch Resistance, or a resident of Leningrad trying to survive.

This is an off the cuff, total speculation, gut feeling.

Good RPGs, the kind that immerse you in a really visceral emotionally engaged state, have to be set in some sort of fantasy setting to work. It can be "real like," as in 'feels like medieval Europe' or 'feels like some sort of cold war spin off dystopia.' But if it is a genuine historical setting it will engage real emotions that will get in the way of the state the game is trying to produce.

A novel is a much more controlled environment, so any conflict with emotions based on the reader's actual experience is easier to manage. But even with that relatively easy situation consider that a reader 'polluted' by nothing more than some vague stories from their Dutch grandparent might not be able to really enjoy that Ken Follett book. Even with a simple action movie that only requires suspension of disbelief for a couple hours I generally can't really enjoy things that involve submarines or prisons, because the clash with my real experiences is usually too strong to ignore. To get and maintain the kind of immersion that a good RPG requires literally every detail would have to be absolutely aligned with my impression of reality, and I doubt that could be done.

 

[EgonSpengler]

This is an off the cuff, total speculation, gut feeling.

Good RPGs, the kind that immerse you in a really visceral emotionally engaged state, have to be set in some sort of fantasy setting to work. It can be "real like," as in 'feels like medieval Europe' or 'feels like some sort of cold war spin off dystopia.' But if it is a genuine historical setting it will engage real emotions that will get in the way of the state the game is trying to produce.

A novel is a much more controlled environment, so any conflict with emotions based on the reader's actual experience is easier to manage. But even with that relatively easy situation consider that a reader 'polluted' by nothing more than some vague stories from their Dutch grandparent might not be able to really enjoy that Ken Follett book. Even with a simple action movie that only requires suspension of disbelief for a couple hours I generally can't really enjoy things that involve submarines or prisons, because the clash with my real experiences is usually too strong to ignore. To get and maintain the kind of immersion that a good RPG requires literally every detail would have to be absolutely aligned with my impression of reality, and I doubt that could be done.

An interesting hypothesis. So you think video games may have to meet a higher degree of verisimilitude than novels or movies? You may be right. I've grown wary of PC games set in cities, for example, because so far, no game has ever been able to give such a setting very much life. Lots of games send the player into what is ostensibly a bustling metropolis, and then restricts the area we can explore to a handful of depopulated city blocks made up of buildings we mostly can't enter.

I suppose the emotional content of an RPG is part of what I'm looking for, the interactions between characters and so on. I did find This War of Mine a little oppressive to play a lot, and I think I ultimately liked the idea more than the actual experience. It's possible an RPG set in Leningrad-under-siege that wasn't miserable might offend someone.

I also don't know what kind of investment is necessary for a game like those big RPGs I mentioned. IMDb says Verhoeven's Black Book and the film version of Charlotte Gray had estimated budgets of $21 and $20 million, respectively, Hacksaw Ridge cost $40 million, Spike Lee's Miracle at St. Ana cost $45 million, and Fury cost $68 million. So film studios don't exactly go 'all in' on WWII dramas. (Meanwhile, Ghost in the Shell with Scarlett Johansson cost $110m and Fate of the Furious cost $250m - of course, it could be maybe argued that Hollywood is not the measure of artistic courage that we should all aspire to. )

 

[Timsup2nothin]

An interesting hypothesis. So you think video games may have to meet a higher degree of verisimilitude than novels or movies? You may be right. I've grown wary of PC games set in cities, for example, because so far, no game has ever been able to give such a setting very much life. Lots of games send the player into what is ostensibly a bustling metropolis, and then restricts the area we can explore to a handful of depopulated city blocks made up of buildings we mostly can't enter.

I suppose the emotional content of an RPG is part of what I'm looking for, the interactions between characters and so on. I did find This War of Mine a little oppressive to play a lot, and I think I ultimately liked the idea more than the actual experience. It's possible an RPG set in Leningrad-under-siege that wasn't miserable might offend someone.

I also don't know what kind of investment is necessary for a game like those big RPGs I mentioned. IMDb says Verhoeven's Black Book and the film version of Charlotte Gray had estimated budgets of $21 and $20 million, respectively, Hacksaw Ridge cost $40 million, Spike Lee's Miracle at St. Ana cost $45 million, and Fury cost $68 million. So film studios don't exactly go 'all in' on WWII dramas. (Meanwhile, Ghost in the Shell with Scarlett Johansson cost $110m and Fate of the Furious cost $250m - of course, it could be maybe argued that Hollywood is not the measure of artistic courage that we should all aspire to. )

Fate of the Furious is the perfect example. 250 million, and c'mon, it's not like I walked in expecting any degree of realism...but from the moment the submarine appears I was just waiting for it to end. Had it been a game I'd have quit on the spot, because I literally couldn't have followed any path forward without having to actively ignore too much reality to be able to think.

You also might have hit on something with the misery part. My son and I disputed over Fallout 3, which he thought was great, because of the landscape. He is right that it is fittingly post apocalyptic. But I just couldn't keep myself from thinking "why am I even looking at this drab lifeless view?" Even a crappy game, like unmodified Oblivion, offers a certain amount of pleasurable immersion from just walking around, if it looks good enough.

 

[Hygro]

I've grown wary of PC games set in cities, for example, because so far, no game has ever been able to give such a setting very much life. Lots of games send the player into what is ostensibly a bustling metropolis, and then restricts the area we can explore to a handful of depopulated city blocks made up of buildings we mostly can't enter.

I love GTA and Saints Row. I tried playing a bit of Watch Dogs 2 and I was mostly really annoyed with how abridged San Francisco was, how much I couldn't run over hoards of tourists/locals on Market Street, and how I could be playing the same game of driving around in a 4zillion color/resolution, hardcore consequence, more immersive environment earning real money.

I wanted to show a couple of friends where one of my secret base bathrooms was in the presidio (western parkland SF near the golden gate) only to find it was somehow the Lucas Ranch, and when I cut right off Marina blvd to go flying around some hills somehow I was already on Van Ness which lead into the civic center bart and I was so annoyed.

 

[gay_Aleks]

Speaking of Saints Row...I had the good luck to acquire SR2 for free! on Steam. However, there's an issue with it: sound doesn't play out of my headphones, and instead out of my speakers, which is mighty unfortunate. Anyone got a fix?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Speaking of Saints Row...I had the good luck to acquire SR2 for free! on Steam. However, there's an issue with it: sound doesn't play out of my headphones, and instead out of my speakers, which is mighty unfortunate. Anyone got a fix?

Get the GoG version, which was also available for free at the same time, and probably only costs a couple bucks now.

 

[Chukchi Husky]

Saints Row 2 is a known bad PC port.

http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Saints_Row_2

 

[gay_Aleks]

Get the GoG version, which was also available for free at the same time, and probably only costs a couple bucks now.

[screams internally]

 

[Omega124]

She actually prefers me to play as a male Shep and doesn't really care about the Paragon/Renegade choices. The main thing that draws her to the series are the romantic subplots that are possible. I remember my first playthrough of Mass Effect 2, my wife yelled at me for romancing Tali. She thought Miranda was a better option because she, and I quote, "has the best boobs".

Honestly that is grounds for a divorce. Your wife has crap taste.

I am going to go home again on the 11th, which will mean I can finally video game again. The thing I am most exicited to do is sit down, get utopia, and play as my blue haired space feminist elves, now that they have actual flavor. :3

If only Pdox didnt require me to mod to make a female only species...

 

[Arakhor]

Get the Asari mod by princess stomper (I think). They sound pretty similar.

 

[Omega124]

Get the Asari mod by princess stomper (I think). They sound pretty similar.

Just because I like blue hair doesn't mean I like blue skin, mind you.