Board 8 > Exdeath Plays Every Game in the GotD 2020 Contest

(+) Yeah! (+)

Okay, it's time to get started on the next chapter in the life of Agrafena Shepard.

Toby Fox's Deltarune begins by having you go through a mock character-creation system, and then elaborately destroying your creation and forcing you to play the default character. Bioware beat Toby to this idea in a way with the intro to Mass Effect 2, where the Commander Shepard you spent so much time following in the first game dies a hideous death through exposure to the void of space, all in the name of saving Joker (a character so dynamic and fascinating that I forgot to mention him in either of the character round-ups I wrote for the first game.)

This is where the previously-enigmatic Cerberus Group takes center stage. They perform a technological resurrection of Commander Shepard at the cost of billions of dollars. Apparently this is because Shepard is a symbol of humanity's importance to the galaxy, but it's also because she has one of the rarest and most valuable skills there is: the ability to make friends.

A traitor infiltrates the facility where the so-called Lazarus Project is held and the newly-reborn and still disoriented Shepard has to make her way through a tutorial level to escape. The controls and core gameplay have been revamped a great deal since the last game: you now press X to get into cover, instead of the left analog stick, thank God, and equally welcome is a dedicated melee button. Health and shields both regenerate instead of only shields and medi-gel is now exclusively used to revive fallen teammates, and the whole weapon overheating thing has been done away with in favor of a standard ammo system. Headshots are also a new feature, unless I'm mistaken and they were in the first game, and most debuffs only work on enemies once their shields have been lowered. I will say that I definitely prefer this control scheme.

The Lazarus Project begs a question: are we still playing as Commander Shepard, or are we playing as some construct of meat and metal that merely thinks it is Commander Shepard? Accordingly, we have the option to change our physical appearance and class specialization at the start of this game. Against my better judgement, I chose to go with Infiltrator again. I was curious to see if the tech abilities were revamped to be more fun in the way I remember the biotic moves were, and I also wanted to find out if a Sniper Rifle specialization would be as overpowering in this game. Each class now has an exclusive special ability, and appropriately enough, the Infiltrator gets temporary invisibility. You also get an extra ability for importing from the first game, but they don't tell you what each one does on the selection screen. I chose the Geth Shield boost because it was one of the only moves that I still found useful by the end of the last game and I knew what it would do.

To reinforce those doubts about the new Shepard, I toyed with the idea of switching to renegade this time around, but the game gave me a bunch of Paragon points for importing my character, which was enough to dissuade me.

Once we're out of the tutorial, we meet Jacob and Miranda, our two human squad mates for this game, who parallel Kaidan and Ashley: the more specialized girl and multi-talented boy, the girl cynical and the boy more idealistic, and both of them unpopular among the fanbase. We don't know much else about them so far, but the game will explore their characters quite extensively as time goes by.

We also meet the appropriately-named Illusive Man, Cerberus' leader. He fills us in on the reasoning for Shepard's resurrection and the developments in the universe over the two years we've been dead: all our former squad mates have scattered, the council and alliance still deny the reaper threat, and some mysterious bug-like aliens called the Collectors are now abducting humans en masse in fringe worlds. It's this last issue that he wants Shepard to investigate and for this reason we go on our first mission to a deserted colony, where we encounter Tali for a second time. This theoretically demonstrates why Shepard in particular is so valuable, because she is able to broker some co-operation with Tali, who is hostile to Cerberus, because they know each other. But really, the odds of an encounter like this in such a massive universe are infinitesimal and it's just a storytelling device. Tail doesn't join up just yet, sadly, so we're stuck with Jacob and Miranda as our squad for now.

We also fight our first little mini-boss in the form of a big mech, which I found pretty easy. I mostly just circled around a stack of crates shooting at him until he went down. The Sniper Rifle still one-shots all regular enemies so far, but ammo limits seem more relevant to it than most guns. I'm playing on Veteran from the start this time, by the way.

I stopped shortly after this, when we meet Joker again and gain access to the refurbished Normandy. All the characters suggested I immediately go recruit Mordin next time I play, which sounds just fine to me since he was one of my favorite characters.


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Didn't play too long today. I toured the new Normandy to familiarize myself with the layout (it's significantly different from the original I would say) and then talked to my crew members. Jacob and Miranda didn't have much to add, but I got to know some minor characters in EDI and the ship's cook.

When Shepard arrived on Omega the asteroid-borne colony where Mordin was supposed to be, a greeter insisted that she go see an Asari named Aria, who is supposed to be the big cheese of the area. Not wanting to make enemies, Shepard obliged, but Aria didn't seem to want anything in particular from her, and (while insisting that information was power and she didn't give it away lightly) she instead filled Shepard in on the locations of Mordin and another potential squad mate called Archangel. I decided to recruit Archangel first because I remembered that he's Garrus.

Garrus' recruitment mission really just involves hunkering down in a small area holding off several waves of enemy mercenaries, who had all become irate enough at the actions of his Archangel persona to gang up and try to kill him. The mission gets a bit boring by the end due to only really involving combat, which creates a certain sense of monotony. It was a nice chance to learn about some of the new mechanics relating to the different types of shields and armor and which skills are best against them. It turns out the Infiltrator's main fire-based combat skill melts armor. This also means that, unlike the first game, there's a very direct reason to balance out your squad.

It was definitely nice to see Garrus again and have him trading jokes with Shepard like old friends, and I imagine I'll have him accompany me on most of the next few missions.

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Still stuck on The High Road in Crash Bandicoot. Darn bridge levels!

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Before starting the mission to recruit Mordin, I had another chance to talk to my three squad mates. Garrus caught me up on what he had been doing for the past two years - he formed a merc squad to hunt down some of the criminal elements on Omega, but eventually fell for the betrayal of one of the group and got them all killed. It's a showcase of the game's writing at its best. The way Garrus talks about his fallen comrades conveys the genuine affection he had for them, which strengthens the feelings of guilt he has for losing them. It definitely makes you feel for the guy.

So far what I find most interesting about Miranda is watching her relationship with Shepard develop. Miranda is cold and aloof, especially at first, but by taking the time to try and understand her as a person, Shepard is slowly earning her respect.

Mordin's recruitment mission is about a rapidly-spreading airborne virus causing quarantines, so it perhaps hits a little close to home these days. In gameplay terms it mostly means slowly marching through a quarantine zone shooting the dudes as they pop up. I'm definitely finding the shooting monotonous so far. The enemies don't stand stock-still any more but it's still pretty easy to line up headshots. They mostly waddle. I think the cover mechanics and regenerating health serve to make the game a lot easier. The sniper rifle is still really good. One major change to the mechanics that I haven't mentioned yet is that using any given ability puts all your abilities on cooldown, but the cooldown is very short in comparison to ME1. I've mostly been using Incinerate frequently as a way of saving ammo. Of all the upgrades I can imagine, I think the one I would want most is increased ammo gain upon picking up a thermal clip.

Upon meeting Mordin I was immediately reminded of why I liked him so much. I find his rapid-fire speech pattern amusing and it's a good depiction of the fast-thinking nature of his species. What's especially cool about the character is the juxtaposition between his pragmatic and ethical sides. He shows no remorse for killing the raiders who attacked his clinic but he makes a concerted effort to cure the plague in the quarantine zone and shows a lot of concern for the people working under him, including asking Shepard to save his protege, who is being held up by some batarians. Shepard Paragons her way through that situation with no problem and saves the kid, and there was also a memorable encounter with a sick batarian near the start of the area, who she helped against his expectations.

My overall impression of the game so far is that its strengths and flaws line up similarly to the first game: the dialog and characterization are good but I'm generally bored by the gameplay.

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it did not occur to me how Mordin's recruitment is basically COVID-19: the mission

here's a fun fact: you can go the entire game without recruiting anyone but Mordin (he's plot-critical), so in theory if you wanna hardcore roleplay as xenophobic loner Shepard you definitely could

i'm pretty sure that's the case unless the game forces someone else on you that I forget. i really like that they give you the freedom to skip squad members though, like if someone REALLY hated Garrus for some reason they could go the entire game without seeing him

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Yeah, the game is really open-ended, probably even more so than the first! I don't have anything against a more linear experience personally, but I do think that works, and makes sense, for a game like this one.

Of course, if you really hated a character you could also make a point of recruiting him but then skip his loyalty mission so that he would die during the suicide mission.

The idea of a xenophobic loner Shepard is interesting because I've always felt that the need for acceptance of different peoples and the value of team-work were major themes of Mass Effect and that Shepard being good at making friends was the most fixed part of her identity. How badly would the suicide mission go with just Shepard, Jacob, Miranda, and Mordin? You could have Mordin do the hacking in the vents successfully and Miranda could provide the psychic barrier, right?

Thinking of that brings to mind how people will sometimes complete Final Fantasy VI with only Celes, Edgar, and Setzer. That game won't kill off your characters as punishment for insufficient sidequest completion, but I imagine going through the final dungeon with three teams of one is still really hard.

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I can't even imagine Shepard doing the suicide mission planning scene with just those three in the room, that's nuts. Jacob would have to lead the fire team I guess. I think Mordin and Miranda die regardless if you do their loyalty missions if you put them on hacking/barrier because they are not suited for those tasks. not 100% sure on that one though

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ZenOfThunder posted...

I can't even imagine Shepard doing the suicide mission planning scene with just those three in the room, that's nuts. Jacob would have to lead the fire team I guess. I think Mordin and Miranda die regardless if you do their loyalty missions if you put them on hacking/barrier because they are not suited for those tasks. not 100% sure on that one though

Yeah, that's right. Miranda's biotics aren't powerful enough for her to succeed at the barrier part. I'm not certain about Mordin but that would make sense given that he's more specialized to the medicine end of tech. If we follow my analysis on the themes of Mass Effect, I would say that's a good thing since it means the mission gets compromised when Shepard is unwilling to build alliances with the other species.

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I wanted to give the game's sidequests a shot, so I did one mission about finding a missing Cerberus agent, which was just a single shootout really, and then the Overlord DLC. The DLC was more extensive with some exclusive mechanics, notably an open-ended area and a vehicle section, which I'm a little bit surprised Bioware had the guts to include after the Mako was so poorly received. The basic mechanics of this glider thing are definitely better than the Mako's, but I wouldn't say I was particularly impressed with it. The more open area also feels like something of a wasted effort since nothing goes on there and you only commute to three different places through it. Otherwise it's just more shooting. There is a section in a virtual space near the end that has some neat visuals, especially "corrupted" versions of effects like the door icons, but it doesn't change the game mechanics. Most of the enemies here are Geth which gave me a nice chance to try out Shepard's AI hacking skill, which turns one enemy on the others for a few seconds. Usually this led to the turned enemy immediately getting mowed down by multiple guys at once, but it was still kind of funny. Higher ranks cause it to give the hacked enemy a shield, which is kind of odd because the fact that the others will kill it isn't strictly a bad thing.

The story for Overlord appears to be another take on the rogue AI concept at first but turns out to be about abuse of people with disabilities (though that isn't the most accurate term,) when we learn that the Overlord project's director forced his autistic brother David to fuse with AI. This understandably caused the poor guy to go berserk and hack the automation of the facility to kill the other workers. Shepard has to slowly fight her way to David and when we finally do meet him he's naked and hooked up to a machine that deliberately looks like a torture device, with tons of needles in his skin and his eyes forced open Clockwork Orange-style. They definitely did a good job making that horrific, but then oddly the give you the option to leave him like that! Because it was part of an effort to develop technology that would avoid war with the Geth, I guess the question it poses is whether torturing someone can be ethical if it saves more lives in the end, but I don't think anyone I know would choose that and I would probably distrust anyone who confessed that he did. You can also have Shepard ice David's brother, which I admit I was tempted to do, but the call of Paragon points prevailed in the end.

On a lighter note, I had some chats with Jacob and Mordin. Jacob seemed to think I was flirting with him but I tried to steer the dialog options away from that, because I have my eye on someone else already. Mordin shared a bit of his past working with the Salarian Special Forces team to modify the Krogan Genophage as the Krogan were evolving enough to render the original disease ineffective. This of course led to some disagreement between him and goody two-shoes Shepard, but Mordin stuck to his guns at least for now.

You get a lot of resources at the start of any given file if you've beaten the game before, which is nice because it reduces the need for the very tedious planet scanning minigame that you have to do for upgrades. Nonetheless, I did a bit of planet scanning in the systems I had to travel to for a mission, and it was boring as ever. I doubled my stores of Platinum and Palladium, so I can probably leave off on it for a while. I think I'll recruit Grunt next time I play.

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Is there a handy list anywhere of the contest games in release order?

I hadnt played video games in a few months but this thread inspired me to play Bayonetta which Im enjoying so far

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I made one back when this started, I think it's accurate. It is missing the added games like ME1 and TitS 1

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gkGULHXG4fDkeOzVPjzMzuzsBRCRZDmIYTtfN30H5Cg/edit?usp=drivesdk

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I made a list like that as a text file on my computer before I started, but I hadn't thought to share it. I guess tangy has rendered such an effort redundant now though.

I played for a little longer than usual today, rounding up some minor sidequests and doing the recruitment missions for Kasumi, Grunt, and Jack. Incidentally, my plot mission in the journal was "build a team" until I finished Jack's mission, and only after that was I allowed to go on to the mission where you stop the Collectors as they attack that colony Kaidan is on. So it seems like you have to at least recruit Jack, and possibly Garrus as well. I assume you also have to do the mission for Grunt but you can leave him in his tank if you want.

Kasumi's recruitment was super fast and basically just involved talking to her on the Citadel. It looks like we can go do her loyalty mission right away, much faster than we can earn the loyalty of anyone else. She lacks any dialog trees on the Normandy, but will talk to you if you examine certain items in her room, which I don't mind as a storytelling device. She does feel kind of under-implemented as a DLC character though. While I was in the neighborhood I met with Anderson and got Shepard's Spectre status reinstated, as well as doing some minor quests on the Citadel, most notably endorsing all the shops for discounts. Since it's a charm option, you get Paragon points for doing it, which meant going out of my way to endorse every single shop to farm up that precious resource.

Grunt's and Jack's missions make nice parallels with one another because they both involve shooting a bunch of guys in blue armor while a megalomanical idiot yells over a comm system, and then fighting said idiot as the boss. The idiot in Jack's mission was particularly noteworthy. He operated a private prison in outer space, which really emphasized the game's dystopian side, and decided to imprison Shepard to sell her off as a slave, since her fame would make her valuable. He picked this unwinnable fight when Shepard was extremely close to a big button that releases Jack, who started ripping the entire station to shreds with her all-powerful biotics. Just to top it off, when he actually confronted Shepard he sat behind a big barrier while his minions fought her, isolating himself from the fight until he was the only guy left and Shepard's squad could easily defeat him. Another parallel is that both of these squad mates are so mentally unstable that one questions the wisdom of recruiting them in the first place, but Shepard's people skills prevail and both of them will work for her without any real problems.

I guess that the most interesting part of what I played today was encountering the Krogan scientist who created Grunt and hearing him discuss his philosophy. I also brought Mordin on that mission since he's heavily involved with the Krogan and I did like the commentary he brought to events. I re-encountered an Asari scientist I met on Virmire in Mass Effect 1 here, and she was working for another insane project, which really seemed like a refusal to learn from past mistakes.

Although I was disappointed by how little of the Citadel we get to explore this time, I do think the dialog writing of minor NPCs in there is quite good, particularly one character bringing up the concept of a drunk Elcor singing karaoke, which was funny.

For all the complaints I had about the Mako, I'm starting to understand why Bioware felt it was necessary, because it broke up all the shooting galleries with something else. I find each mission gets a little boring before the end when it's only shooting. I'm considering bumping up the difficulty once again to see if the challenge makes it a little more fun, but I have my doubts and I don't want to die a lot and deal with more loading screens.

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BetrayedTangy posted...

I made one back when this started, I think it's accurate. It is missing the added games like ME1 and TitS 1

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gkGULHXG4fDkeOzVPjzMzuzsBRCRZDmIYTtfN30H5Cg/edit?usp=drivesdk

Thank you! I just requested access.

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My bad here's a new link

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gkGULHXG4fDkeOzVPjzMzuzsBRCRZDmIYTtfN30H5Cg/edit?usp=drivesdk

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wallmasterz posted...

I hadnt played video games in a few months but this thread inspired me to play Bayonetta which Im enjoying so far

This is really encouraging to hear, by the way, so thanks for posting! I hope you like Bayonetta!

BetrayedTangy posted...

My bad here's a new link

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gkGULHXG4fDkeOzVPjzMzuzsBRCRZDmIYTtfN30H5Cg/edit?usp=drivesdk

Thanks for posting this. The only correction I notice is that Binding of Isaac was in the contest under the Rebirth remake's title, so I have it in 2014. You posting that also made me realize that I had Persona 4 Golden listed under its Japanese release date on my own list, so that has been corrected.

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Yeah no problem I went ahead and fixed Rebirth and made editable in case anyone wants to keep track of progress

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I got up a little late today and only had time to finish the mission on Horizon. It's the first proper encounter with the Collectors and the first time I fought enemies who mainly use biotic barriers. I used Grunt and Garrus, but if I remember who counters what correctly Jack might have been the most efficient choice. The Husks returned, confirming the Collectors' reaper affiliation, but in gameplay terms they basically do the same thing as the robot dogs we encountered on the very first mission: try to run up and flush you out of cover. More threatening were the enhanced Scions, who have a cheap homing attack that does a ton of damage if you're out of cover, but are otherwise just big damage sponges.

A fellow named Harbinger periodically empowers and takes control of single Collector soldiers. He's quite the chatterbox when in combat, which I eventually found annoying enough that it made me prioritize him as a target. It might have been wise to reduce the voice clip frequency just a little.

There was also a boss in the form of some giant flying bug. I hadn't found much need for heavy weapon ammo for a while so I mostly just unloaded on him with my newly acquired Collector Particle Beam. He could regenerate his barrier quite a lot, though, which was a pain.

Shepard reunited with her Kaidan on this planet, and they had a bit of a lovers' quarrel over her working with Cerberus. I guess Kaidan will be sleeping on the couch for a while. Incidentally, this is exactly the same thing Ashley does in this game if you kept her alive instead.

This is a sort of unofficial halfway point in the game, and we now have access to the recruitment missions for a lot of new characters, including Tali!

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Even in the absence of interesting combat, I like the enemy variety in this game. Random enemies on the battlefield getting possessed and powering up is a cool idea that more games should use.

Ashley didn't even join my squad after chewing me out. I assume they join only if you actually played the first game and got them to trust you.

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There's no way to get Kaidan or Ashley to join your squad in Mass Effect 2. My bad, I can see where that joke about Kaidan sleeping on the couch would've led to that impression.

They will join your squad in Mass Effect 3 though! Interestingly Kaidan also becomes bisexual in the third game, which makes me curious to know what kind of experiences he must have had between then and ME1.

Yeah, I agree that the idea behind Harbinger is kind of cool. I guess to improve the implementation it would be nice if the power-up was more significant, since the Drones he possesses usually aren't much more threatening than the regular ones.

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Evillordexdeath posted...

This is really encouraging to hear, by the way, so thanks for posting! I hope you like Bayonetta!

Thanks for posting this. The only correction I notice is that Binding of Isaac was in the contest under the Rebirth remake's title, so I have it in 2014. You posting that also made me realize that I had Persona 4 Golden listed under its Japanese release date on my own list, so that has been corrected.

@BetrayedTangy I noticed Binding of Isaac and Rebirth are both on the list. Thanks again for compiling that, its awesome!

I love Bayonetta. Not a lot of time to play yet but I finished chapter 2 last night. I should be able to play a ton this weekend.

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Ah thank you, I just forgot to delete the original. And yeah no problem dude.

I actually gotta jump in and get some Mass Effect 2 playtime in.

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exdeath if you finish this topic series and this site is still here i am going to send you another shirt

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Question: have you decided which "additional" games (like Mass Effect 1 and Trails 1) you are going to play? Because I've been trying to compile a list, but it kept getting longer and more ridiculous. Like apparently all 7 Tekken games are part of a linear, continuous storyline.

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wallmasterz posted...

I love Bayonetta. Not a lot of time to play yet but I finished chapter 2 last night. I should be able to play a ton this weekend.

That's great! Feel free to post some thoughts in here once you've played a little more!
BetrayedTangy posted...

Ah thank you, I just forgot to delete the original. And yeah no problem dude.

I actually gotta jump in and get some Mass Effect 2 playtime in.

Nice. Is this your second time playing it, or have you played it multiple times before?

ZenOfThunder posted...

exdeath if you finish this topic series and this site is still here i am going to send you another shirt

Damn, I can't imagine a better motivation boost than that!

Gall posted...

Question: have you decided which "additional" games (like Mass Effect 1 and Trails 1) you are going to play? Because I've been trying to compile a list, but it kept getting longer and more ridiculous. Like apparently all 7 Tekken games are part of a linear, continuous storyline.

Not fully. I'll make that a task for this weekend. I will do Trails 1 and I'll probably have to do something with Danganronpa 1, even if it's watching the anime or just reading a plot synopsis. I'm definitely not playing all 7 Tekken games though, or any extra Mortal Kombats. I guess part of the difference is that I wouldn't see those two franchises as ones where the story is especially important to the overall experience.

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I didn't have a ton of time to play today. I've been having trouble getting to sleep lately, followed by trouble getting out of bed. I talked to the crew around the Normandy and gained access to both Jacob's and Miranda's loyalty missions. This was also my first chance to get to know Grunt and Jack a little better, of which Grunt came off as the considerably more sane. He was only 'raised' to kill and is now looking for some kind of meaning in life, where Jack is mostly concerned with revenge and killing. She says that for every person she kills, her chance of survival increases. I can think of a few problems with that idea!

I started Jacob's loyalty mission but didn't have the time to finish it up. No combat so far, just the beginnings of learning about the general situation, which I like. I'll have to talk about it in more detail tomorrow.

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Evillordexdeath posted...

Nice. Is this your second time playing it, or have you played it multiple times before?

First time actually! I finally got around to playing ME1 last year and it was way better than I expected so I'm looking forward to what's supposed to be the best one


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Hope your sleep gets better

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BetrayedTangy posted...

First time actually! I finally got around to playing ME1 last year and it was way better than I expected so I'm looking forward to what's supposed to be the best one

LOL my bad. Apparently the idea of someone who hasn't played ME2 yet just doesn't compute with me.

pezzicle posted...

Hope your sleep gets better

Thanks. I got up at a more reasonable time today so let's hope that turns into a trend.

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Jacob's loyalty mission turns out to be something of a Apocalypse Now situation with his dad as Kurtz. Ten years before ME2, Jacob's dad and his crew crash landed on a hostile planet where the only food causes impaired brain functionality. As an emergency member, the rations on their ship were made exclusive to the captain and a few officers while they repaired an beacon to ask for help, but eventually these higher-ups started abusing the now addled crew, with direct references to sexual abuse in the dialog. Jacob understandably finds this deeply disillusioning and is violently enraged toward his dad by the time you finally meet him. His dad doesn't quite have Marlon Brando's charisma though, and meekly accepts that what he did was wrong when confronted. Shepard decides to bring him into an alliance court and high tails it out of there once the authorities are alerted. As a result, Jacob is our first fully loyal crew member, and gained a new move that will probably go unused as I leave him on the bench for the rest of the game.

After that, Jack asked me to go on her loyalty mission to blow up some abandoned Cerberus base that she was tortured in growing up, as an experiment to turn her into a super-biotic. Her reasoning is purely for closure. That's going on the back burner for the time being, since it lacks the urgency of some other missions.

While in the neighbourhood I checked in on Grunt, who shared a memory about a naked turian from his pod dreams. Specifically, he has decided that he hates Turians for what they did to his species and was delighted in seeing this particular individual get killed and then mutilated. I don't think we can call this progress!

I started Tali's recruitment mission. I got to the point where we make contact with Tail herself before I had to call it a night.

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I've done a run where I brought Legion to Tali's recruitment

the fact that it's possible with its own dialogue is a testament to how well thought out the game is

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I've culled my list down to series where the story is (in my view at least) important enough to matter. Use it as you will.

Starcraft 1
Fallout 2
Dead Space 1
Portal 1
Arkham Asylum
999
Bioshock 1
Danganronpa 1
Dragon Age 1 and 2
Witcher 1 and 2
MGS 3, Peace Walker, and Ground Zeroes
Trails 1
Uncharted 1-3
Kingsglaive FFXV
Nier 1
Ys 1-5
God of War full series
Kingdom Hearts full series

In Mass Effect 2 news, I've reached what seems to be the endgame and am busy going through the loyalty missions and sidequests. Anything I should make sure not to miss?

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I love the krogan. They're cliche, but it's a good cliche.

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Apparently the level I'm stuck on in Crash 1 is notoriously hard, good to know.

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Finished up recruiting Tali and then played Mordin's loyalty mission. That was really great! So great I got caught up in finishing it and now have to run to work. I'll post a more substantive update in the morning.

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I played NieR Automata having not played Nier and don't feel my enjoyment or understanding was affected at all.

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ZenOfThunder posted...

I've done a run where I brought Legion to Tali's recruitment

the fact that it's possible with its own dialogue is a testament to how well thought out the game is

Yeah, that's really cool. I wish I had thought to do that!

Gall posted...

I love the krogan. They're cliche, but it's a good cliche.

I think that for me, the most interesting part of the Krogan is the genophage and how it changed the rest of the galaxy. I definitely agree that their general attitude is pretty familiar from other sci-fi, but that part isn't so cliche! Well, at least not that I know of. I'm not the biggest sci-fi conosseur there is, admittedly.

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All that was really left of Tali's recruitment mission was a longer fight against a Geth Colossus, which is one of the enemies we would have fought in the Mako in ME1. That was definitely the toughest shooting section so far, and I died thrice. The colossus itself wasn't so much the problem as finding a good chance to target him, with all his buddies popping up to support him. He will also regenerate all his shields and armor if left alone, which was rather galling but only happened the once for me. Losing in this fight was a bit of a test of patience because it meant working my way through several waves of geth to get another shot at him.

Now Tali is on our crew, and both Joker and the squad shrink are happy to have her! I look forward to bringing her along for some missions myself. There hasn't been much time for catching up, so far - she's mostly talked about how she distrusts Cerberus, who wronged the Quarians in the past.

Mordin's loyalty mission became avaliable after that, and I decided to clear it right away because it was on the Krogan homeworld of Tuchanka, which I was interested in visiting. Naturally, I brought Grunt along with me beside Mordin. He didn't seem to impressed with the place.

The most immediately appealing thing to do on Tuchanka is catch up with Wrex, who has become the planet's ruler since the old days. He's trying to push some less militaristic reforms on the Krogan, emphasizing agricultural research for example, where the curmudgeonly lead scientist would prefer to study weapons. What I like about this section is that even though Wrex is trying to soften things up in a way, there are still a lot of details about the brutal ways he has to go about that task, to get anything done among Krogan.

I would say that Mordin's loyalty mission is the highlight of the game so far. The purposes of these missions is to characterize the individual squad members, and Mordin's does a wonderful job revealing him to be both a complex and sympathetic character. The crux of it is that Mordin was part of a team that modified the Krogan Genophage because the species was naturally adapting to it, and though he still believes this was the right call to prevent even greater amounts of death through war, he's troubled by the ethics of the project and the consequences it has on the species. The mix of tough pragmatism and honest concern for life that he shows is really compelling. The icing on the cake is that his feelings on the matter are complicated further by pride for the technical scientific achievement that modifying the genophage represented. An important part of the mission is his conflict with a former student of his who now opposes his ideals, but for me what really made it great were the scenes where Shepard just listened to what Mordin had to say.

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I got the complete opposite impression of Mordin from that mission. You can straight-up ask him and he'll claim to be okay with the prospect of a united krogan empire, but when he finds Maelon trying to actually cure the genophage he freaks out, says the krogan are too dangerous, and even tries to kill Maelon and delete the cure data if you don't stop him. To me he seems like a coward and a hypocrite.

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I guess I can see why you'd think that. Mordin's apparent conflicted feelings on whether adapting the genophage was right could look like a kind of hypocrisy. I think there's a distinction between the krogan uniting akin to what Wrex is doing in this game and curing the genophage, which Mordin assumes will cause galactic expansion from the Krogan. I think he's consistent on that matter, saying that it would lead to more suffering than the genophage itself would cause.

It should be remembered, though, that the whole idea that curing the genophage = new Krogan rebellion goes against the central themes of the series and is essentially disproved by Shepard in the third game.

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Today I only had time to run through Grunt's loyalty mission, which he told me about after I had left Tuchanka and returned to the Normandy, so that I had to immediately go back to do it. Grunt was feeling a kind of directionless anger and was worried something was wrong with him, so we asked Wrex who said that it was essentially normal Krogan adolescence, but that we might be able to sort him out by going through a Krogan coming-of-age ritual. The resulting mission was a survival battle in a single small area against waves of Tuchanka wildlife and eventually a Thresher Maw, which was another tank enemy in ME1. You only have to survive for 5 minutes against the Thresher Maw and killing it is an optional objective, but it's very easy to do because the cover mechanics make the Maw far from deadly. It just shoots some caustic spittle at you once in a while and then burrows into the ground so your shields can come back.

Grunt is now an accepted member of the Urdnot clan, which apparently satisfies him.

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Gall posted...

I've culled my list down to series where the story is (in my view at least) important enough to matter. Use it as you will.

Starcraft 1
Fallout 2
Dead Space 1
Portal 1
Arkham Asylum
999
Bioshock 1
Danganronpa 1
Dragon Age 1 and 2
Witcher 1 and 2
MGS 3, Peace Walker, and Ground Zeroes
Trails 1
Uncharted 1-3
Kingsglaive FFXV
Nier 1
Ys 1-5
God of War full series
Kingdom Hearts full series

After looking over the full list of games, I think this is more or less accurate. Ultimately my goal is to avoid dragging on the project for even longer than it already will be. So for starters, I think I'll eliminate any games I've played before, as long as I feel I know enough about them to understand the later games:

Starcraft
Fallout 2 (last game I played before starting this project)
Arkham Asylum
999
Bioshock
MGS3 & Peace Walker
Kingdom Hearts 1 & 2, Chain of Memories, Days (also watched Ventus' story from Birth by Sleep on Youtube.)

I'll also remove any that are really long, or really numerous:

Witcher 1 & 2
YS 1-5
Remaining Kingdom Hearts games

Then I'll get rid of a couple that I just honestly don't want to play:

Dead Space
Uncharted 1-3

And lastly, I'll ask for some clarification on a few remaining ones:

• Kingsglaive FFXV: Isn't there a summary of this film at the start of FFXV? How necessary is it, in light of that?
• God of War 1-3: Is the 2018 game something of a soft reboot? How often does it rely on the stories of the previous games?
• Nier: There has already been some dispute on this one. I had the impression that Automata was set in the same world, but so far in the future compared to the first game that their overarching stories weren't very connected. Are there enough references to the original that I'll be missing out if I skip it?

After all that, we're left with these:

Portal
Danganronpa
Dragon Age 1 & 2
Trials in the Sky
Ground Zeroes

Just to quickly go over these individually:

Portal: I was thinking of "sneaking in" this game without posting about it, but if there's any interest among you guys in reading about my playthrough, I can do it for the topic.

Danganronpa: I guess I'll just play this game itself rather than resorting to a synopsis. It looks like the earliest American release for both Danganronpa games was on the Vita in 2014, so I'll play it once the topic reaches that point.

Dragon Age: I've played part of the first one, but never really liked it enough to finish. I don't mind the thought of revisiting it, though, so I'll at least do that if people here are interested in it.

Trails in the Sky: I'll probably play the first one when the topic is in 2011, after thinking about it more. I think it will be nice to have some space between the parts.

Ground Zeroes: Should be a nice quick one.

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Evillordexdeath posted...

Kingsglaive FFXV: Isn't there a summary of this film at the start of FFXV? How necessary is it, in light of that?

To be honest FFXV's story isn't even its strong suit, but from what I remember it does give you brief summary. Also if we're jumping into its lore,I'd say Brotherhood is way more relevant tbh. Regardless, I really don't think any of it's vital.

Evillordexdeath posted...

Nier: There has already been some dispute on this one. I had the impression that Automata was set in the same world, but so far in the future compared to the first game that their overarching stories weren't very connected. Are there enough references to the original that I'll be missing out if I skip it?

I never played the original Nier and I adored Automata, I'd say it's pretty standalone. There's some references I didn't get, but it really didn't affect my enjoyment.

Evillordexdeath posted...

Danganronpa: I guess I'll just play this game itself rather than resorting to a synopsis. It looks like the earliest American release for both Danganronpa games was on the Vita in 2014, so I'll play it once the topic reaches that point.

Yeah this is probably the best call. As inferior as DR1 is to the other games, it is pretty vital to understanding the story of DR2. Plus the anime sucks and playthrough topics of DR are always fun.

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I'm at a bit of a disadvantage here considering I haven't actually played most of these, but going from what I know:

• May I ask why you don't want to play Dead Space 1? It's fairly short and Dead Space 2 is a direct sequel.
• Frankly, the FFXV storyline confuses and confounds me. Apparently it's less of a "summary" and more of "footage from the movie inserted into the game." In fact, I will paste this post I just found:

IMO if you wanna get the whole experience in the right order you should do this:
- Play the game till you have to sleep in Galdin Quay due to a main story quest(just before the end of Chapter 1). IMPORTANT NOTE: don't watch/read any game dialog/scene after sleep or you're gonna spoil the movie
- Watch Kingslaive
- Read the novel (very short, aprox 15 minutes reading)
- Play the game till you have the quest to go to Caem
- Watch the anime series (short too aprox 1hour to see all chapters)
- Continue playing the game.
As for DLC just google when to play it because i don't remember exaclty when but i think its:
- Gladio DLC in chapter 7
- Prompto DLC at 12 (not pretty sure about this one)
- Ignis DLC when you finish the main story
- Comrades DLC after Ignis

In light of all that I recommend just playing FFXV completely blind and puzzling it out yourself. That would probably be more entertaining anyway.

• The 2018 God of War is indeed a soft reboot but it relies on the characterization of Kratos established in the previous games. You probably don't have to play the three prequels (they just flesh out Kratos's backstory more) but I would say the numbered trilogy is required.
• You're right about the Nier stories not being very connected, but there are several important characters that carry over and reference Nier 1's events. Also, in my opinion Nier 1's story is even better than Automata's and worth experiencing regardless.
• I would be quite interested in reading about a first playthrough of Portal.
• Definitely do play Danganronpa 1 instead of reading a synopsis. The second game is much better if you've played the first one. Avoid spoilers for the series as best you can.
• I plan to finally do a first playthrough of Dragon Age 1 myself when it gets to that point. I've heard that 2 is bad though.

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In Mass Effect 2 news, the suicide mission is complete.

Roles:
Tali hacked the door.
Thane created the biotic field.
Jacob escorted the survivors.
Garrus led both fire teams.
Grunt and Legion were with me for the first two legs, then Thane and Mordin for the last.

Results:
Legion died holding off the last wave of the seeker swarms.
Everyone else survived, even Harbinger somehow. Thane gave me a scare twice, from the strain of the biotic field and from almost falling off the platform after the final boss, but he made it.
I let the Illusive Man have the base. I don't intend to play Mass Effect 3 to see what he does with it.

I'll post more detailed thoughts later after you're done, but suffice to say this game did not live up to the hype.

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Regarding God of War, it's probably fine to just read a synopsis.

Though all three are fun games and none are very long.

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Did Garrus' loyalty mission today. It wasn't all that interesting. He had tracked down a former member of his band of vigilantes, who had betrayed him, resulting in the deaths of the rest of the squad and Garrus transforming into the more grizzled version of himself we've come to know in this game. We had to spend some time fighting a guy named Harkin to learn where this betrayer, Sidonis, was hiding. Harkin was apparently a character from the first game but I can't remember who he was or where we met him.

When Shepard and Garrus ultimately confronted Sidonis, he claimed that he had been coerced into his betrayal with threats of violence and expressed intense guilt over it. Shepard managed to convince Garrus not to kill him for this reason. Garrus wasn't entirely satisfied with this result and asked to talk to Shepard later.

Since we were on the Citadel, we also met that one reporter from the first game, who gave a tough pointed interview to Shepard. That was a long encounter in the first game, but in this one it feels like more of an encounter intended to give the player some quick satisfaction as Shepard immediately shuts her down. You can even deck her if you're playing as a renegade, which is kind of funny. I thought the interview in ME1 was more interesting, though.

I brought Tali along with Garrus to have an ME1 reunion team on an ME1 area, and they had some dialog about the old times, specifically the space elevators that the first game used to disguise load times. That was cute.

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At the start of today's session the Illusive Man called me to go poke around what he called a derelict Collector ship, though in actuality it was just an obvious trap. Shepard and co. went inside hoping to find a way into the Omega-4 relay beyond which the Collector homeworld allegedly lies, and succeeded, but then had to battle their way out through a horde of enemy soldiers. The toughest part was a repeat of the boss fight from the colony, now with minions assisting. I didn't have the Collector Particle Beam as my heavy weapon this time, which made things slightly trickier. I feel like that's the best heavy weapon and makes the big boys a lot easier to deal with. This mission also gives you a chance to pick a new weapon specialization, and I went for assault rifles, because they seem like a nice "standard" weapon to play with and it's a little frustrating how they're normally exclusive to the Soldier class. So far I've been getting some decent use out of the assault rifle, but it isn't as effective as the Sniper.

Importantly, we learned that the Collectors are actually Protheans which have undergone extensive genetic modification at the hands of the Reapers, and are now a hive-mind intelligence that shows no regard for its underlings.

After that, I took the time to talk to Mordin again on the ship (and hear him sing,) and hit on Garrus - unfortunately picking the dialog option to do so too early in the conversation and missing out on some dialog with him as a result.

I started Tali's loyalty mission. There was quite a lot of talking at the start, so I didn't end up having time to finish it. It deals a lot with Quarian politics, which is why the dialog is a bit thick on the ground. Tali has been accused of treason for sending Geth parts to her father for research purposes. Although she was careful not to send any parts that might self-repair or autonomously activate, the ship her father was on has been taken over by Geth. We also learn about the Quarian leadership having debates over whether to go to war with the Geth and retake their homeworld soon. Shepard and the gang go out to retake this lost ship, and I stopped after we found out that Tali's dad was taking the research to the point of rebuilding and reactivating Geth and then found his corpse.

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It turns out I was right at the end of Tali's loyalty mission. There was only one encounter with 3 geth left, and then we found full confirmation that Tali's dad was deliberately reactivating Geth with the parts Tali sent him. It seems like his primary motivation was to retake the homeworld for his daughter's sake, and he consciously tried to avoid tangling her up in the resulting politics - though he failed in that regard. Tali asks Shepard not to tell the Quarian Admiralty Board about this in her upcoming trial, because it will lead to her father being remembered as a traitor. I like this as a decision. You can either do as Tali asks at the cost of seeing her exiled (which would make her miserable) or go against her wishes for her own good. Of course, with enough Paragon points you can get the best of both worlds, which is what I went for. For the record, I see Shepard as the surrogate mom to her crew, and in line with that interpretation I would've chosen to tell the truth if I'd actually had to choose.

Next I went to Illium, where the Shadow Broker DLC and the recruitment missions for both Thane and Samara are located. I figure at this point in the game I should make a concerted effort to recruit everyone I can, because you need to have them around for a while to unlock their loyalty missions and extra dialog, so I'll go on a recruiting spree next time. Tonight, though, I had no time to start any missions. I spent a lot of time just walking around Illium listening to the NPC dialog and doing some speech based sidequests - I'm now a tiny notch away from maxing out my Paragon score, which is a relief, because I remember the game will remove loyalty from characters if you're paragon isn't high enough.

Illium is an Asari free-trade planet complete with corporate espionage, drug running, and slavery, but perhaps more compelling is the fact that it serves as a hub for a lot of the follow-up to minor events in the first game. We meet an Asari who has psychically bonded to the Rachni Queen, who gives us a cryptic update on what they're doing, as well as the one Saren sold out to the Thorian, who is now working to solve some issues with the physical health of the colonists as Zhu's Hope, who are experiencing some after effects of plant-based mind control. The girl who helped us bust a corrupt Salarian on Noveria also shows up, and I helped her out again for old times' sake. Of course, to complete this Asari-centric set of flashbacks to the former game, we also had a chat with Liara, who is now working her as an information broker. She told us where to find Thane and Samara, and we agreed to help her out with a jam she's found herself caught in as part of the high-stakes game of knowledge trading.

I think this is one of my favorite areas of the game. I like Western RPGs when they focus on talking to people and sorting out varied problems, rather than getting mired in the combat. It's also lively and showcases some of the game's good writing. One thing I especially liked was an ad for a film about a Hanar Spectre. That was quite funny, and it showcases the depth of the series' lore, because it has enough in-universe concepts to be able to combine them in amusingly absurd ways like that. In contrast to Gall's disappointment with the game, I'd say I'm starting to get more on board with it and definitely feel a strong sense of improvement from the first game, both in terms of game design and storytelling.

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I ended up deciding to recruit Samara first. Samara is what's called an Asari Justicar, which is a somewhat vaguely defined religious enforcer. She's hunting an Ardat-Yakshi, which is essentially a promiscuous Black Widow spider. Her presence on Illium is a bit of a political minefield because she is oath-bound to kill wrongdoers where she finds them and the diplomatic consequences if she targets a non-Asari are worrying, at least to the police there. Shepard helps out an Asari policewoman by recruiting Samara before she can cause too much trouble. You can kind of tell that the terms of the Justicar Oath were written with this particular story in mind. When the cop initially takes Samara into custody, Samara tells her that she will wait one day before violently breaking out, because it's in the oath, but it's hard to imagine that being a useful clause in many situations except this one where the hyper-competent Shepard happens to be passing by. Likewise, there happens to be an arrangement by which a Justicar can subordinate the terms of her hyper-restrictive oath to the will of a commander, so that she can join our crew without attacking us if we pick Renegade options or whatever.

After that, I did the mission to acquire the Reaper IFF, which I think is the penultimate story mission. It's really boring, because the only enemies are husks, so the game tries to make the mission challenging by spawning in tons of the bastards, but it just leads to a really long time mowing down worthless enemies. If I found that kind of gameplay engaging, I would play Dynasty Warriors!

I did this mission because it doubles as the recruitment for Legion, our Geth hivemind buddy. He helps the crew out by sniping some Husks, but then gets knocked out, and it's up to Shepard to decide whether to reactivate him or send him to Cerberus for research. After finishing Tali's loyalty mission, activating him seems kind of foolish, but I have the benefit of having played the trilogy before and knowing that Legion is no threat. Legion fills us in a little about the Geth, particularly how they now have two opposing groups fighting over whether to submit to the reapers or fight against them. Legion represents the side who chose the latter option, and consequently views Shepard as an ally.

Tomorrow I will recruit Thane, who will be the last squad mate to join as I'm apparently missing some of the DLC. After that, I'll clean up the rest of the loyalty missions and then go on to the end of the game.

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What happens in the paragon choice for Tali's loyalty mission? I didn't have enough points so I withheld the information since I figured she'd be fine with getting exiled, which turned out to be right.

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Bayonetta: I beat it on normal today. Really fun game. I kind of sucked at it I got Stone for each chapter except the prologue (gold), chapter 7 (bronze) and chapter 14 (bronze).

I definitely got better at it by the end though. The beginning of the fourth Jeanne fight was probably the toughest part for me, especially since I had no healing items. My least favorite part of the game was the QTE, especially when it occurred just before a new checkpoint. Once or twice I did something after a few tries, but wasnt expecting a QTE in a cutscene and had to do stuff all over again. Oh yeah I should also mention that the first two verses before the aforementioned fight gave me a serious headache, the first time thats really happened to me during a video game. Those are the only negatives for me though.

The good - the gameplay, atmosphere and character design, music, story are definite highlights. There something really satisfying about the combat. Also, Angel Attack is fun!

I found all the journal entries but gave up on getting all the crows, and I never even tried getting all the portals. I also missed an LP. Im sure I hurt myself by not getting the bat/crow within power-ups. Im guessing those are mandatory for some collectibles.

Im currently at 24/50 trophies/in-game achievements. Im considering grinding halos to get the climax bracelet and then just wipe the floor with the remaining trophies.

Thanks again for doing this @Evillordexdeath , I wouldnt have played Bayonetta if you hadnt.

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Gall posted...

* May I ask why you don't want to play Dead Space 1? It's fairly short and Dead Space 2 is a direct sequel.

Maybe I'm sleeping on the game, but it just doesn't look very impressive to me. I don't think I'll find the gameplay very fun and I'm not too interested in the story, so I think I'll just read a synopsis for that one, and if the second game changes my mind I might go back to it once the project is done.

In light of all that I recommend just playing FFXV completely blind and puzzling it out yourself. That would probably be more entertaining anyway.

I will say that after reading the post you shared, I feel more convinced than ever that this is the right call.

* You're right about the Nier stories not being very connected, but there are several important characters that carry over and reference Nier 1's events. Also, in my opinion Nier 1's story is even better than Automata's and worth experiencing regardless.

Yes, I've definitely become interested in playing the OG Nier, so I don't mind adding it here.

* I plan to finally do a first playthrough of Dragon Age 1 myself when it gets to that point. I've heard that 2 is bad though.

Dragon Age 2 is a little lackluster by most accounts, yeah. I think most people who enjoyed the first would still say it's alright, but decidedly a step down. If I did play the first Dragon Age for this thread, I would probably complain about the game even more than I did playing ME1, so I imagine I wouldn't be a massive fan of 2.

Gall posted...

What happens in the paragon choice for Tali's loyalty mission? I didn't have enough points so I withheld the information since I figured she'd be fine with getting exiled, which turned out to be right.

Shepard convinces the admiralty board to pardon Tali without giving up the evidence, by arguing that she represented the Quarian species during the fight against Saren and this proves her loyalty. The Paragon dialog choices are essentially akin to speech checks in a real RPG, so they mostly involve bullshitting your way through things like that.

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wallmasterz posted...

Thanks again for doing this @Evillordexdeath , I wouldnt have played Bayonetta if you hadnt.

Thank you too, man! This is probably the best response I could hope for in this thread! Helps me feel motivated to keep going.

Your experience with the game sounds pretty similar to mine. I agree with the QTEs and the missile section being some of the weaker parts. I also scraped by with stone on most levels, but the sense of improvement that you get as you play is very satisfying. At first I had no idea which combos were appropriate to which situations, but I felt a certain pride in getting the hang of that by the end, to a limited extent. Are you thinking of re-playing the game for higher ranks?

You were more completionist than I was. I missed out on a lot of collectibles. I know there are some that you need the Crow Within to get your hands on. The Bat Within is more of a combat-oriented skill that improves your dodge and makes it easier to activate Witch Time.

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I went and recruited Thane. Shepard meets him in the middle of a hit on a minor quest-giving character from the first Mass Effect: an Asari diplomat whose sister used to be a slaver. Shepard helped her cover up that information last time around, but apparently the ruthlessness runs in the family, because she's slaughtering her own workers when we meet her again. There's a brief dialog exchange before Thane breaks into the room and murders her, but I don't think there's any way to save her life. You can choose to spare a mook halfway through the mission, though. I took that option, but the Renegade response, where you kick him out the window and then make snarky comments, was a lot more fun.

Thane is kind of a cool character - I wish I'd picked him up before Samara. There's a deliberate contrast between his work as an assassin and his very spiritual personality. He parallels Mordin to a certain extent, since he's suffering from a terminal illness, whereas Mordin is old enough to know he's in the final stage of his life. I also found it interesting to read a little about his species, the Drell, in the codex. They made the mistake that humanity is poised to make in real life, ruining their planet through overdone industrialization, but the Hanar, of all species, swooped in and saved them, and now they have a certain symbiotic relationship.

Incidentally, Thane is a romance option for a female Shepard, but suffers a bit from joining so late. I could've picked him up around the same time as Tali, but instead he's joining at a time when I've already nearly sealed the deal with Garrus.

Now I'm onto pure loyalty missions. I'll probably start with Miranda's, just because I've made her wait so long. I also have the Shadow Broker DLC, but I'm saving that to be my last task before the suicide mission.

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Are you thinking of re-playing the game for higher ranks?

I enjoy going for trophies, so Ive been doing that instead. I earned 20 in Bayonetta today by completing the game and doing all the miscellaneous ones. Im now at 38/50 Umbran Tears of Blood. The remaining can be earned by:

* Just beating the game again (higher difficulties)
* Finding the remaining witches resting places (treasure chests)
* Discover and complete all portals

Those difficulty ones sound like a doozy, but I could see myself playing on normal to get the remaining chests and complete the portals.

Also, I just bought VVVVVV.

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Once you do the Reaper IFF mission and get Legion you can only do 1 mission before the suicide mission or the non-essential crew dies when you find them

i always hated this because if you want a "perfect" run of the suicide mission where everyone is saved that means you can't get legion until the very end of the game and the only mission you can do with him before the suicide mission is his own loyalty mission. this is a very large flaw in a game that I otherwise love. you can tell it wasn't the original plan as legion has dialogue in some missions he technically can't go on, like the mordin recruitment or the colony that got collected.

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