@aetius_ Many MMO's have to follow this design for a few reasons:
The more players they have on the screen, the greater the risk of a crash would be. It's a compensation between graphics and performance.
Cartoons have lasting appeal. If you've ever noticed...it's a lot easier to watch a 20 year old cartoon than it is to watch a 20 year old sci-fi flick. One admits to being a fabrication, while the other attempts to wow the audience with outdated special effects that aren't believable.
MMO's do not generally have extraordinarily high system requirements. The object is to be able to create a large, populated world...and that'd just be hard to do if Bethesda demanded 8gb of memory minimum from players. The game would be gorgeous, yes, but Bethesda would lose profit and not be able to market to as many gamers.
All of that said...I agree with you. If they built an MMO with truly astounding graphics...I'd get it in a heartbeat. But for the stated reasons...I don't think any developer will.
@toddx77 Nice idea! We know that Reapers are created from harvested advanced species...over and over again in different cycles, but who made the Reapers? Who first programmed that AI? They might be pretty pissed off if they found out what happened to all of their pets, future antagonists for the series, or maybe past antagonists in a prequel?
Very true, but anything's possible for their writers.
Shepard destroys Reapers -
Shepard takes Control -
Shepard merges Synthetic/Organics -
Shepard does Nothing -
As a writer myself, I've been thinking of ways to merge these into a single prologue for a continuing game. The Krogan have been brought back (or not) the Rachnii have been brought back (or not) the Reapers survive (or not)...it seems like they finally brought all of the decisions together and you don't even get to traverse the new galaxy you've created. There's just too many loose ends.
I think it's the end of Shepard as a first person character, it's the end of his trilogy, but he played a role in much larger events and his actions should reflect the next game...otherwise Mass Effect kind of loses its edge, doesn't it?
It shouldn't be a prequel. Some gamers saw a living Shepard at the end of Mass Effect 3...the story should pick up from there, with a new and different character, and ME3's Shepard would be plugged into the new one, exactly as you raised him, except as a supporting character...and his physical and emotional make-up could be based off that. (e.g. Paragon or Renegade).
If you raised a Renegade Shepard who constantly bullied and intimidated everyone, your interactions with him would be rather difficult. You'd be put into everyone else's shoes for once. That'd be pretty cool. As for plot though...I have no idea what they'd do with it.
What if they went with that one fan's concept and decided that Shepard never actually beat the Reapers, and that he had been indoctrinated? Then, you wake up in that rubble after what you believe to be a victory over the Reapers, only to realize that the entire war had been a battle for your mind, and that your victory only allowed you to fend off the indoctrination?
Of course, I do think that they should end Shepard as a playable character. Your choices should be transferred over and the galaxy dramatically affected by all of them...but you should be a new character. How aout being able to choose an Origin story from Krogan/Turian/Human/Salarian/Asari, like they did in Dragon Age Origins?
Well...since I'm considering going into the art department of a major developer at the moment...this isn't very reassuring for me at all.
This does seem to be a major implication that gamers in general are fed up with DLC. What we are seeing is a fall in console gaming, not necessarily all types of gaming. To those who have mentioned CD Projekt: You're absolutely correct, CD Projekt Red is an outspoken developer that absolutely detests DLC. But even they wouldn't have the resources to fight a buyout by...say...Activision or Electronic Arts. And when there's only two conglomerates competing with each other in a market, and tiny developers are either bought if deemed useful or destroyed if deemed threatening, there will be no room for any innovation whatsoever. CD Projekt Red is awesome, and I truly love what they've done for the Witcher series, but they need to be careful when talking big to people like Bobby Kotick and John Riccitiello.
Awesome. Looks like Call of Duty: Medieval Warfare
How extensive do you think the customization will be? That'll be the deciding factor in whether or not I get into this. Take a look at that "Monster Death" class...it looks as if armor unlocks may also be a factor in the game. I hope so at least.
@erMonezza Nailed it with the Acti-Blizzard merger...I think at that point Blizzard ceased to become anything more than a tool for corporates to generate funds. And after what happened with Infinity Ward and all that's surfaced about the secret missions that Activision CEO Bobby Kotick was issuing to get his best guys fired...I think Blizzard took a big step back and asked themselves this: "Is Diablo worth our jobs?" The answer was no, it was not...and it really shows too. They took the favorite part of Diablo 2...randomized itemization, and somehow twisted it into a real money auction house. It was clearly a business strategy, and it's very sad that independent developers really can't survive in this day and age without being under the wing of an enormous finance team. Newsflash Gamers: To make a game is considered to be a type of art, yes, but the reason it has been in peril in so many new games is because the motivations of artwork and finance are complete opposites. Of course a studio needs to make money, but there is a delicate balance between the two views that a company like Blizzard needs to have.
I probably wouldn't be able to tolerate it. Diablo is historically a point and click game...it helped sculpt this entire generation of Blizzard games as well as God's Eye View RPGs. Would the PS3 version require a permanent connection to play as well? I was against that decision and after witnessing the server issues that ActiBlizzard has I wouldn't trust putting an entire console's worth of gamers on it + the PC and Mac users. Diablo 3 was watered down compared to Diablo 2...and a console version would only be more of a shell of D2 than anything else.
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