Greedfall – A Good Ol’ RPG for Those of Us Who Miss Them

I beat Greedfall!

It took a month and a bit, which has to be some kind of record for me. Usually it’s more like six months to beat a game… Then about a week of jotting down thoughts with one hand as I wrangle my 9 month old with the other (I swear sitting at the computer trips some kind of alarm in his head) and we have a post!

I’m a bit on the dramatic side (if anyone who stumbles across this dusty blog had known me during my WoW blogging days, they’d say that was an understatement) so I was mourning the death of the single player, D&D style RPG genre. You know, the games with notable stories, when you can customize your character, switch up gear, play with stats, earn levels and skills, do all that micromanaging stuff that I adore without having to play an MMO. Even if you include not-quite RPG genres or MMOs, it feels as if all the mid-sized to big studios, if not crushed under their own weight, have given in to the easy cash flow of battle royale, arena or looting games.

There are some admirable attempts from small indie teams, I’m sure, but while I’m not necessarily craving a huge production, I do want something a bit fancier to spend 40+ hours on. (Yes, I have heard good things about The Outer Worlds which was released recently.)

I was over the moon, then, when Greedfall was released and received pretty decent reviews. I was familiar with a few games from the publisher, Focus. As a good Steam user I even own some that I’ve never played! The studio, Spiders, however, was new to me. It seems that they’ve released a number of RPGs over the years, though fans are saying Greedfall stands apart from their previous projects.

De Sardet, posing awkwardly in front of buildings in New Serene.

The Kingdoms of Amalur Wrap-Up

The last screenshot!

After six or eight or whatever (I can’t remember when I started) months and apparently 304 hours including AFK time, I decided that I’d gotten my full of Kingdoms of Amalur and clicked Exit Game for the last time. As the screenshot betrays, it was actually about a month ago, but some recent, happy changes in my life have me locked in one of two states: 1) at work 2) unconscious (I know it doesn’t sound happy, but I swear it is!), neither very conducive to game write ups.

I played through the whole storyline, did all the non-bugged quests I could find and completed both DLCs. I did Legend of Dead Kel before finishing the story and Teeth of Naros after. Apparently, I accomplished 82% of the achievements – I think most of the ones I didn’t do were the lawbreaking ones…I’m way too goodie-goodie for games with a crime system. According to the global stats page, 11.9% of players beat the game. Which is actually pretty good given that only 87.4% finish the intro and the game is LONG.

About the DLCs

If you’re reading this and are considering playing, I recommend not spoiling the DLCs for yourself. I had a blast playing through them but most of the fun came from having no idea what to expect and being constantly surprised, asking myself “what will they think of next?”. I bet the devs had a grand time designing the add-on content. The tone in both of them is definitely more…out there… than the regular game.

I’ll spoil this: Naros, where the best views are from the sewers.

Storywise the DLCs take place before the ending but tonewise, they feel better after the SRS BZNS of the war is taken care.

I was sad at the end

The main story kind of takes a backseat to you kind of, um, walking around and looking at stuff. Since I was adamant to do ALL THE QUESTS, toward the end (or more accurately, toward 2/3s in), I was itching for something to happen. I mean, there’s only so many ways to keep “help this village” fresh.

The story does climax and resolve nicely. I wasn’t overly invested since 98% of my time was spent killing spiders and breaking curses for villagers (you know how it is) so it would have taken something seriously awful to disappoint, but still. The game fed me line by the line the information I’d been digging for over the last 250 hours and while it doesn’t give up everything (I think at this point, the writers were still hopeful for a sequel), there was enough to quench my thirst. And as the ending bit played, I was surprised at the pang of sadness kicking me in the chest.

Was very impressed by the voice acting of Abby Craden as Alyn Shir, and really, the character of Alyn Shir as a whole. No fashion or practical sense whatsoever, but otherwise a character that I got quite attached too. Would have probably been way less sad if the game didn’t make her go foreshadow the Sequel That Will Never Be. (Was that a spoiler? Sorry if that was a spoiler.)

What’s up with all these gear sets?

Yes, that’s my ending thought on the game. Probably remnants from when the game was supposed to be an MMO, there are SO many gear sets. But by the time you get around to collecting enough pieces to wear, the gear is completely useless. (In fact, most of the pre-made gear is so inferior to what you make via blacksmithing that even early on, almost all the loot you find does nothing but take up room in your very limited storage box.)

Amalur gear – pretty but useless. Good for making collages that take way, like waaaay too long.

Overall, Amalur was a fun time. I don’t think I’ll be revisiting it soon (replayability is ehhhhh but YMMV!) but I’m glad to have explored all the zones, talked to all the farmers and kicked out evil invaders for a good 300 hours. It’s a shame the journey ends here. The game’s weaknesses mainly come from how we get a single player RPG in an MMO-intended infrastructure. A sequel with the right aim: to be a single player RPG in a single player RPG environment- would have the potential of creating that elusive exquisite gaming experience that I’m always looking for. It seems, however, that I need to keep looking.

The Failure of Destiny and Hopes for Anthem

I’ve been trying to finish Kingdoms of Amalur before posting again (great game but huge! You kind of reach a point where playing it feels like work) but as I browse Reddit and general gaming blogs (and their comments sections) some kind of post inspiration happened. Or at very least, I felt something akin to wanting to share opinions.

Now that my 3 hours a week of gaming time (and my high pressure customer service job) restricts me to single player games almost exclusively, I’ve become a pretty, um, dedicated Bioware fan. To where sometimes I feel I should rebrand the blog. Or rather, I probably would rebrand the blog if I logged into WP more than once every few months. Anticipating upcoming releases is new territory for me, but Bioware’s next title, Anthem is getting a lot of attention. I mean, beyond the fact that its getting pushed back so much that at this rate, the company is going to run out of money before release and we’ll never have good story games ever again. /dramatic

What I want to get to, though, is that I keep seeing the same statement from my fellow Mass Effect and Dragon Age fans: “I’m not excited about Anthem because I don’t like first person shooters nor multiplayer. That’s why I’ve never played Destiny.”

This hits home because a few months (a year? dammit, where does the time go?) ago, I would have said the same thing. In fact, I did say almost that, just with my usual eternal optimist twist. I don’t like strangers in my games, first person isn’t my thing, you can’t fit a good story into a multiplayer shooter, blablabla.

Then I played Destiny 2.

And I liked how the game handles solo play vs co-op vs PvP. Well, I never tried the PvP element, but that’s what I liked. It was never forced on me and there was no sense of missing out by not PvPing. I didn’t even mind the first person playstyle. I would have had more fun in third (strangely enough, this was the first time I really enjoy playing melee in a game, and melee weapons give you a third person camera angle), but the weapons were so fun that playing in first was fine. (Besides, the demo video for Anthem makes it look like the game isn’t going to be in first anyway.)

Destiny, IMO, however, failed on two fronts:

1- The entire game feels like a fancy storefront for virtual colours. (To colour the gear of the first person character I rarely see.)

2- The writing is terribad. Like it reminds me of the low-budget 90s Saturday morning cartoons of my youth. Like it made Mass Effect Andromeda, in its sorely unfinished state, feel like a literary masterpiece. I mean, I’m not that picky about writing. I’ll critique complex writing (think original trilogy Mass Effect) and ignore “context writing” (think World of Warcraft or Skyrim). But with Destiny I could do neither. In fact, I didn’t level a third character because there’s no way I could sit through that garbage without wanting to scream at the game about how dumb it sounds. It wasn’t the story – I was fascinated by the story. It was literally the writing. I don’t know who was hired to do the dialogue and the lore, but it was such an obvious case of “I don’t give a shit, so here’s some cliche lines with a few insults to the player mixed in. Done. And if you want background info on anything, you can kiss my ass.”

This is an amazing opportunity for Anthem.

Destiny with good writing? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!!

I know there’s a “that kind of gameplay doesn’t encourage storytelling” belief out there, but I assure you, I swear to you, Destiny could have included a rich, immersive, emotional experience. In fact, the setting actually encourages that. That’s why I was so angry about the writing. I wanted to role play my character, I craved good dialogue, I ached for deeper insight into the different aliens, I needed to build friendships and rivalries with the NPCs. The game could have offered all that but the writers said no. Or rather they said “forget everything you think you know” or some bullshit like that.

And let’s talk microtransactions.

Where (I felt) Destiny went wrong is that, if you make it through that awful storyline and are still playing, you can do a bunch of fetch quests and world events. These repetitive (but kinda relaxing, I have to admit) quests give you experience. After a certain amount of experience you get a lootbox which contains some dyes to colour your gear (which you rarely see anyway), maybe a new ship (which probably looks exactly like one of your other ships except this one might be faster, or have brighter colours or something) and if you’re lucky, you’ll get a ghost (which looks exactly like one of your other ghosts) that helps you find items on your fetch quests. Oh, and sometimes you’ll get a skin for a weapon you don’t own. All this junk takes up room in your inventory so you vendor/destroy it.

That’s it. That’s the game. An insufferable leveling process just to gain access to a giant, flashy advertisement that is somehow supposed to make you feel like buying more of those lootboxes.

The sad thing is that it probably works, since the devs seem to double down on pushing their game to be a storefront for useless items. WTF is wrong with people throwing money at this?

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind microtransactions. Shit, League of Legends couldn’t take my money fast enough. But League of Legends had a good system. They didn’t charge me 100$ for the base game. Their lootboxes only gave me decent stuff. Decent stuff and only for champions that I owned. If I wanted something specific, I could outright buy it by paying a little more. And it didn’t really affect the gameplay, nor did the game revolve entirely around collecting for lootboxes.

I had no problems buying cute pets or cool mounts in WoW. Especially since they made great gifts. And while Dragon Age: Inquisition didn’t have any microtransaction, I would have gladly handed over 10-15$ for some extra gear skins. There is a risk here, if the base game’s cosmetics are so bad that you need to buy new ones to enjoy the game, you’ll get angry fans (and let’s face it – for a game that was all about beautiful scenery, the playable characters and gear skins were pretty sad), but if the base game is good enough and the purchasable looks are for diehard players looking for some refreshment, I think it can go over quite well. I know that by my third playthrough, I would have paid good money to have my characters wear something other than the Skin That Stalks. And in Mass Effect 3, I would have happily paid for nicer casual wear.

So microtransactions, and even random lootboxes, can be implemented in ways that enhance the game instead of taking away from it.

The Bets Are On

Being a Bioware fan that gave Destiny as try, I totally believe that Anthem can deliver where Destiny failed. The gameplay and setting are fun and workable, believe me! Bioware aims to create story-first games while Bungie makes it clear that story is just a chore for them. It’s always possible that Bioware falters – Mass Effect 3 was a series of good ideas that weren’t well connected to each other (and really crashed and burned at the end), DAI had great moments separated by extensive flower picking, MEA was…not finished – but no matter how badly they trip up, the writing will still be more engaging and satisfying than Destiny, in a way that “a little bit” is more than “nothing”.

As for lootboxes and other “the 100$ you paid for this game isn’t enough” items, it could go either way. EA, with their ever increasing spite toward their customers, could think up ways to make microtransactions even more detestable. Anyone hear more about those live services? What does that even mean? Are they going to force us all to get monthly subs a few months after the game comes out if we want to keep playing it?

On the other hand, the goal of Anthem is longevity (aiming for 10 years of TLC as per interviews with the dev leads). To achieve that, they need a business model that is sustainable (ie doesn’t piss off players). So while microtransaction are unavoidable, there’s hope yet that the development team uses their immense talent and creativity to sell products that are pleasant bonuses to, rather than center points of, the game.

Will You Pre-Order?

I’ve been swinging back and forth on this for the past year. I know that love it or hate it, I’ll buy the game and play it thoroughly so it only makes sense to pre-order, pre-download and enjoy whatever pre-order bonus I get. On the other hand, I feel like buying games before honest(ish) reviews are released just contributes to the current trend of half-assed triple A games. So it boils down to my greed and impatience vs my idealism for the video game industry.

In the end, the scale will tip one way depending how good the pre-order bonuses are and how slimy “live services” are expected to be.

Into the Steam Backlog: Kingdoms of Amalur

I’m working reeeeallly hard to tear myself away from Kingdoms of Amalur long enough to stretch my out-of-shape writing muscles.

(Technically Kingdoms of Amalur: The Reckoning but the “:” is highly unnecessary given the franchise’s tragic standalone game fate. Then again, abbreviating to KOA:R prevents all sorts of confusion with campground chains.)

As if I wasn’t already struggling to write about games these days – I have no regrets walking away from social gaming but single player adventures are way less exciting to share – KOA (:R) is huge, has just the right amount of grinding (sweet spot juuuust between “not enough” and “what’s the point?” and is so ridiculously and unexpectedly fun that I find myself thinking “I could dust off the blog… OR! I could do ONE MORE QUEST!”

Kingdoms of Amalur: It’s not cutting edge, but it’s pretty.

For background info, it’s the usual story of I bought the game during a Steam sale. Black Friday I think. I can’t remember what I paid, but it was a good deal. Especially since, unlike most Steam purchases, I’m actually playing the game and staying focussed requires no effort on my part.

I had heard of it before. It made headlines a few years back, though it was less for its contribution to the industry and more for the unfortunate bankruptcy it inflicted on its creators. Flashback to the era of gaming companies racing to birth the “WoW killer” (which I always thought was stupid, but then again, for all my decade of serious WoW playing, I despise other people in my games and don’t care for MMOs so I’m kinda biased. I suppose it’s better than today’s trend of thinly veiled micro-transaction storefronts masquerading as games.) 38 Studios jumped into the race, ran out of money, wrapped up their MMO as a single player game, defaulted on their loan payment and crashed out of existence. The game got decent reviews but didn’t sell well, and when you play it you completely understand.

My memory circa 2012, the year it was released, is a little foggy but I feel like this is a game that plays better now as nostalgia fodder than it did as a new release.

It was came out early that year, a few months after giants Skyrim and SW:TOR and a few months before equally giant Mass Effect 3. There were other big games around the time, but those are the three I’ve played and they target a pretty similar demographic to KOA. And, poor KOA, didn’t perfect exploration and open world the way Skyrim had, the writing wasn’t as solid as SW:TOR and, well, you can’t really compete with the final installment of a beloved series in any circumstance, but compared to Mass Effect 3, the story is shallow and the graphics are shit.

So KOA is hardly the only game to do this, but it drives me absolutely bonkers. Dark to be edgy? Trashy but forgivable. So dark you can’t see anything? WHYYYYYYYY! And this is with brightness turned all the way up.

But played as an “old game” nowadays, it scratches the classic RPG itch I didn’t know I had. I’m constantly reminded of my first love (or at least one of my first loves) Might and Magic VI, but with smoother combat, better inventory management (not perfect by any means, I NEVER SAID PERFECT, but better), good voice acting (I hear Cullen’s voice everywhere, I can’t complain!), decent writing, less weird story. You can forgive the shitty graphics because old game! You can live with the bugs because, hey, unlike my other vintages games, it doesn’t crash every 15 minutes. The game-play is brilliantly flexible, one of my favorites ever. Possibly my favorite ever. I started off thinking I’d play a mage, then I ended up in warrior style and eventually settled as an uncommitted stabby, creepy rogue. I swap my weapons around by rolling my mouse wheel and I use all 12 of my thumb buttons. I don’t know if I’d want this in a modern game but in an “old game” the freedom is the best! And all the skills, talents trees, stats, collectibles! I feel like the game was designed by people who genuinely love old style RPGs yet totally respect modern gamers’ attention spans.

Oh, and there’s none of that dated D&D style rolling based combat. I know there’s still a market for that (they come out of the shadows when they overhear me complaining about I never finished SWOTOR 2 because I hated the combat so much – also Redbeard at Parallel Context even wrote a guide to it a few days ago in the Baldur’s Gate context – worth checking out if, like me, that style of play doesn’t come naturally) but, me, I sing high praise at whatever gives me that old RPG feel without that detested randomness.

Unlike some recent releases which may or may not have been flops for their creators (*cough* MEA *cough* Destiny 2 *cough*) you can totally tell where the money went. The scale of the game is HUGE. I don’t know if it’s Skyrim huge (it’s been awhile since I’ve played Skyrim) but I think the size is comparable. Yet each of the hundreds of NPCs has a story, a personality and a quality voice actor. The Amalur lore is interesting, Dragon Age Thedas interesting (clarification: the lore, not the story itself!). I hadn’t even made it out of the first zone and my mind was blown by how much TLC was poored into sweet Kingdoms of Amalur. The investment was probably misplaced: I think depth over sprawl could have secured Kingdoms of Amalur legendary game status and thinking about it makes me sad.

There you have it though, Kingdoms of Amalur (:Reckoning): a sad casualty of the WoW killer race, but still worth a few 100 hours of playtime. Would recommend. Am going back to playing.

Isn’t my character just adorable in her tribute to Mass Effect armour?

Oh hey, it’s N7 day!

Some part of my subconscious remembered, because I put on my N7 hoodie after not wearing it for a few days.

Me with my Mass Effect merch! Censored my face because I couldn’t be arsed to make myself presentable today. In the end, it took longer to achieve satisfactory censorship than it would have to brush my hair and slap on some powder. Selfie generation, I am not.

Both items from the official Bioware store. Official artworks (they call them lithographs which I guess describes how they are printed? My lack of art knowledge is embarrassing.) are limited editions as far as I can tell. This one was a gift Ed gave me years back. The most similar one currently available is the Mass Effect Saga Lithograph (which looks pretty cool, I must say – I’d buy it for our gaming room Ed if shipping to Canada wasn’t so outrageous). And the hoodie in the store today that is closest to mine is this one.

I see a lot of questions about merchandise quality and I have to say, my hoodie held up beautifully over the years. Yeah, the paint has thinned a little and I’d probably buy a new one if convention attendance was in the cards, but I wear it almost daily at home and I’ve washed it quite often (can’t have me perpetuateing stereotypes about unhygienic gamers). It’s still ridiculously comfortable, the inside is still surprisingly soft and it still looks good enough to please me when I see myself in the mirror. Only problem I have with the official store is that there’s no Canadian site, which means prices are doubled due to shipping and duty fees. If I were to ask anything of Bioware, it wouldn’t be a perfect Mass Effect game (although I admit that would be a close second) or more role-playable Dragon Age protagonists (third), it would be a more cost effective way for us Canadians to buy their merch. They could even just make a little front in the reception area of their headquarters. I GO TO EDMONTON ALL THE TIME! I WOULD SHOP THERE!

N7 Day

This year I predicted they’d make a video recycling interviews with people involved in making the game talking about how much they loved it. (I should really start keeping written proof of my predictions…)

There was a video, it showed people involved in making the game (as well as a few fans – which I loved, I’m especially happy they showed a clip of Biofan because I’m kind of obsessed with his videos these days) and they were all sharing their wonderful experiences. The interviews look new though. Or at least, I hadn’t seen them before. Despite being exactly what you’d expect, I still enjoyed watching it and savouring the warm fuzzies.

There’s some featured artwork, in high res even(!) so you can take them to Walmart for printing without having to spend an arm and a leg on shipping. I’m hungry for moar and moar artwork – it’s funny I never cared much for paraphernalia in the past yet lately I can’t get enough of Mass Effect related art – but I am very impressed at how excellent yet radically different their selection was. The one by Unoobang is my new desktop background. It totally captures the atmosphere of my Normandy. And that Space Hamster!

Mass Effect Archive

Buried in the middle of the N7 day page is the Mass Effect Archives. I almost missed it, thinking I’d talk a bit about the video and the art, then the streamers even though I don’t watch streamers, then hit the publish button.

In the nick of time, I noticed the link. I clicked it and OMG! WHY HAVEN’T THEY MADE A BIGGER FUSS ABOUT THIS? There’s nothing on the Bioware blog and even the Mass Effect subreddit was wondering if this was a new thing or an existing feature we’d all missed.

I’m a pretty big fan of the Dragon Age Keep. Sure, there are a few bugs and it can’t keep track of everything a save file can, but overall, it’s a great way to overcome game engine and console generation barriers. Plus the art is lovely and I had a lot of fun filling it out the first time. Actually, I still have fun messing with World States, and while I haven’t done so yet, I like how if you want to explore a specific world state in Inquisition, you don’t have to put in 100+ extra hours into the earlier games.

So I’m really excited about a Mass Effect version (I’m positive that at some point, I have wondered out loud why there was no Mass Effect Keep in production, but as usual, no written record).

You wouldn’t believe how long it took me to figure out how to upload my character. Maybe I shouldn’t have clicked through the tutorial…

It’s not as straightforward as the Keep (or maybe I’m just so used to it that I don’t notice the gaps in userfriendliness anymore) but perhaps I would have had an easier time had I used the tutorial. The Keep also doesn’t have an “upload appearance” feature, which is what I had the hardest time figuring out.

I hope this means we’ll be getting new Mass Effects in the future, and Mass Effects that care about our old Mass Effects (although the FAQ does specify that the Archives won’t affect future games) – unlike most vocal fans, I don’t think Andromeda was a death sentence and I do think we’ll revisit the universe, its world is so juicy and there’s an abundance of stories sitting there, waiting to be told. It would be way less time and money to return to Mass Effect than to create a brand new world.

I’m patient and I’ll be here, playing with my Tapestry while I wait.

Happy N7 day!

Dragon Age: Inquisition – Who to Support at the Winter Palace?

Yeah, I know.

Somehow I ended up playing Dragon Age: Inquisition again. Out of nowhere, I was itching to make a dwarf Inquisitor and, well, I feel like the game just gets better with every playthrough.

The Winter Palace Ballroom. Love the art that went into it.

I was working (or rather attempting to work) on a different post. It bored me (since not having WoW and its community anymore, I have to admit, video game blogging has become extremely challenging. Anything I write sounds utterly stale.) so I went and played the Winter Palace segment.

Whenever I do these in-game story decisions, I love seeing what other players choose and their rationale. Even on first playthroughs, I can’t resist. I don’t have that kind of trouble making decisions IRL, I swear!

Since we’re talking about a 3 year old game (in that shitty zone between “becoming less popular” and “classic”), though, all relevant discussions are dated. Plus I promised myself to never post on message boards (or Reddit or whatever the cool geeky kids use to socialize these days) again. I suck up too much internet time as it is and all I end up doing on message boards is making a fool of myself. Anyway, I figure I need content I actually want to write, so why not?

So here it is, how my Inquisitors decided to end the Orlesian civil war.

Spoilers so here’s a cut. 

Wrapping up Mass Effect 3

I lost count of the hours long ago, but they were up there. After so many of them, it’s time to say goodbye to my Shep again.

There’s Shep, looking at her team. I get a green screen instead of a picture most of the time. This was the only shot I got.

Much easier on the feels this time around, for sure. I used Citadel DLC as my finale which concludes with Shepard looking nostalgically at the Normandy while her party attendees board. I held on to that feeling for a few moments after the screen faded to “Hit Any Key To Continue“. Considering last time I bawled my eyes out and moped for months, I believe I’ve made progress. (It seems there’s even an Urban Dictionary entry for this phenomenon.)

Then I went back to Mass Effect 1 and started a MaleShep Insanity run.

We’ll see how long that lasts.

It was lovely to play the same character, with roughly the same choices. I ended up with a few differences: despite my best efforts, Kelly didn’t offer to feed my fish, nor did she show up in the third game, and somehow I passed that reputation check with The Illusive Man in the end. As stated above, I was less of mess of this time so although I covered up the ending with MEHEM out of curiosity, I think I would have accepted the base game outcome. Except the Synthesis-disintegrated-in-a-well part (like WTF is wrong with whoever thought that was a good idea).

Interestingly, there were plenty of times I felt my heart race and my arms shake and had to say “chill out silly, you know what happens“.

Speaking of knowing what happens, I’m not holding back on the spoilers so I’ll stick the cut here.

Let’s React to the Mass Effect: Andromeda News (Or Anti-News)

After months of speculation, it was made official a few days ago: There are no planned future patches for single-player or in-game story content for Mass Effect: Andromeda.

While they say patches and not paid DLC, I think it’s pretty clear they mean single player content period. They elaborate: “we will continue to tell stories in the Andromeda Galaxy through our upcoming comics and novels, including the fate of the quarian ark.”

Kotaku’s Jason Schreier called it in May and again in June and is now probably enjoying the biggest I-told-you-so of his career. Anyway, his posts caused the fandom to erupt in a “Is it true? Is he right?” explosion that took Bioware what feels like forever to confirm or deny. I feel like at this point, they’re just accepting all publicity as good publicity.

Speculating on the Why

I browse the Mass Effect subreddit pretty often. The audience seems younger and less thoughtful than the Dragon Age subreddit, but there’s sporadic decent discussion and frequent fantastic fanart.

Regarding Andromeda DLC, there are plenty of (relatively) long posts about how the game under-performed, how it was mocked by early reviews and how troubled the development process was (a topic also explored in depth by Schreier – I don’t normally endorse “professional” blog-like sites because I rarely like them, but if everything Schreier wrote is true, then that was some excellent reporting. And if it’s all made up, well, it was still one of the most interesting things I’ve read all year.)

All factors which most likely influenced the decision to abandon single player (for the foreseeable future).

What isn’t mentioned nearly enough though, is the less dramatic but probably main issue: in comparison to single player, multiplayer is really freaking lucrative.

Content DLC calls for a giant boatload of people: writers, voice actors, cinematics, animators, programmers, sound crew, testers, etc. A huge machine to put or keep in motion. All that to produce a few hours of story and gameplay that will sell for 10-15$ per player.

In multiplayer, players will throw 10-15$ at the game, over and over, for weapons and cosmetic items that already exist. They do have to keep the game fresh, but – and I admit to knowing very little about game development – it seems to me that APEX mission development requires a fraction of the team needed for single player DLC. Plus, it seems that the multiplayer team is sailing along smoothly, while the key single player developers, those who hung on until the end, are probably still trying to unlive the past few years.

Speculating on the future of Mass Effect

Will there be another Mass Effect game?

Everyone seems to think so. (Even Schreier posted Reddit that he guesses something would happen in 5-6 years)

I assume the game direction options are: 1) a prequel to the original games, 2) a sequel to the original games, 3) Andromeda 2, 4) a non-RPG game in the Mass Effect universe (think Blizzard’s Hearthstone).

Option 4 is the safest option from a business perspective – just like the current multiplayer, a card, an arena style or a MOBA would bring in the dough with minimal effort and risk. As an RPG player, I think this idea sucks massive donkey balls.

Option 1, a prequel, has been considered, I believe. Something about a focus group that revealed that fans adamantly want a sequel and not a prequel. I’ve seen fans say they’d like to play in a prequel world as another species, but believe it would never happen because apparently the larger player base only wants to play humans. Me, I think playing a non-human is trivial compared to a prequel’s bigger problem: one of the major joys in Mass Effect is discovering an unknown world and not knowing what will happen to it. A Mass Effect in known surroundings leading to a known outcome doesn’t sound very fun. In my humble opinion, of course.

A sequel, Option 2, would force some sort of backtracking on the endings. The meaning was a clear “fuck it, we’re done and we’re going to mess up the universe so they can’t force us back”. They all guarantee to leave the galaxy in one of several unplayable states. (So this recent tweet from former project director Casey Hudson made me chuckle.) While I would love to play some kind of investigator/explorer part of a galaxy rebuilding team, Synthesis Galaxy is awful and Refusal Galaxy would just be the same story with a different face. Destroy and Control could be worked with as a what-if, I guess. Cameos of beloved characters would also be a pain since pretty much everyone has the potential of being dead.

Then, Option 3, ME:A2. Popular opinion seems to be that the Andromeda setting is toxic. I disagree. The Andromeda setting is awesome. Going to a different galaxy totally blew my mind. At least for the first hour or so. It had, and still has, tons of potential. The weaknesses in the writing: the pathfinder’s progression, the shallow squadmates and new species, the sub-optimal placing of plot twists and the general lack of inspiration are all more due to the chaotic development forcing the game being published before it was finished. The bones of the story were interesting, they were just given to us without enough meat to sate our hunger. ME:A2, with a proper development team, using the first Andromeda’s loose ends could potentially be a exceptional gaming experience.

As for a time frame, I actually find 5-6 years to be short. Look at Dragon Age: Inquisition, a game that did well. It was released in late November 2014 and closed with its last DLC less than a year later. It’s been almost 3 years and almost 2 years since Trespasser, and while the team has made it clear that they’re actively working on DA4, there’s no formal announcement and probably won’t be until Anthem is released in (tentatively) Fall 2018. Which would set a Dragon Age release in 2019 or 2020, 5-6 years after DA:I. So for a franchise that has taken as many blows as Mass Effect, I don’t think 5-6 years is a long time.

What About These Comics and Books?

I wonder how they could wrap up the Quarian Ark story in a satisfying way via books or comics. While I doubt most of us are really attached to the bulk of our choices in ME:A, designating “cannon” pathfinders would ruin what little sense of ownership we felt over the universe. The other option, dodging the problem by not involving any pathfinders in the Ark retrieval, would be very, very difficult to pull off (yay APEX rescues the Ark! ….ugggg).

As for already published Mass Effect literature, I haven’t felt inclined to read any of original trilogy media, however I’m told the Drew Karpyshyn books are outstanding. I have read Nexus: Uprising (from Andromeda) and enjoyed it. (The selling point was that one of the authors, Jason M. Hough, hung out in the Mass Effect subreddit and made some very relevant posts. He seemed like a cool guy so I decided to read his book. I don’t regret it.) Supposedly the next book features Cora’s past. I’ll wait until it gets reviewed before deciding whether or not to get it. Same for any other Andromeda books. I am pretty unlikely to read comics though, just not my thing.

Looks like a grim future for us Mass Effect fans (and for us RPG fans in general, if the market keeps it’s current direction), but what can you do?

Mass Effect 3 Mid Game Post

Ok, I’m back. In the past month, I played until the end of my WoW subscription.

Not much to talk about there. I made it to Northrend and about level 70 before running out of time. Will have to go back and play again once I can commit to it so I can actually experience Legion (and Warlords of Dreanor for that matter, since I’ve never played that either). I do find that I like the “run around while listening to music/podcasts” aspect of the game the best, which is a little sad since the main reason I got WoW was because Ed kept saying how much he missed playing games with me. In the end, all I wanted to do was play by myself and listen to stuff. Maybe we’ll look into a different game to play together.

Also in the past the month, I posted pictures of my “forced” holidays. I feel like the world needs more harmless sharing of nature photos. (Not to be confused with au naturel photos which are a completely different matter.) Am always looking for recommendations. The travel and real life bloggers I follow either patter out or turn into advertisements for their “how to work from home” books and/or their sponsors. (Follow My Legs and the Giant Spoon! I have neither books to sell nor sponsors to promote!)

On Mass Effect 3

I’ve played up to Priority: Rannoch now. I supposed I should have good manners and put in a spoiler cut after the random screenshot. 

I freaking LOVE this poster. I tried to find a real life version (or even a windows wallpaper). No luck. Am bummed.

Mass Effect 2 Wrap Up

Got to the end of Mass Effect 2 a few days ago. I clocked in about 100 hours…a lot of which were AFK. My tendency to forget what I’m doing and just…wander off… makes it really hard to keep track of how long it actually takes me to play my games. The WoW subscription I paid for and have barely used is expiring in a few weeks so I figured I should do that before hurling myself at Mass Effect 3, but first things first, ramblings about my last and final ME2 session.

This is going to be all spoilers all the time, so even though this is a *checks* 7 year old game, I’ll be kind and hide the post behind a cut.