@Zombie8814: My inference from him saying that was their femprotag, and a later line about the marketing on the first ME trilogy painting a male as the standard lead, was that they just wanted to also use the female lead in the marketing for this game. And outside of Sonic Chronicles and MDK2 I don't think Bioware has ever made a game without some gender options (the most restrictive being set male and female character templates in Jade Empire).
@Intellijosh: That it is a new team of leads taking their shot at the universe makes me a lot more interested in the game (as someone who played most of ME, all of ME2, and only a bit of ME3). The universe was never the problem, so fresh vision on how to use it thematically and mechanically is probably a good thing.
@vackillers2016: Probably just journo-developer chat that has come up. I'd imagine basically every game ever has had features, mechanics, and content cut from it, outside of stuff that the devs decide just doesn't fit or work well. It's the reality of any project that you will end up having aspirations that don't fit within the time and budget restraints that you have to work with.
Talking purely from what I've read over the years on the ending. If you parse through the wrath to get to what people are really trying to say, and what I've read many people with better clarity say, it was that people felt that they had made so many meaningful decisions over the course of three games, and at the end it boiled down to a multiple choice question that didn't really make it feel like those choices really mattered.
I've never actually finished ME3, I stopped playing after a few hours, but I'm okay when a character driven game, which is what I see ME as, has a lot of choice, but still funnels you into a just a few general variants of an ending. Because everything that I chose to do still shaped my character, their relationships, and their place in the world, and that is important to me (as someone playing that type of game). That's really how I feel about the 'your choices don't matter' argument heard about Telltale's games, for instance, as well.
For what it's worth, I know plenty of people who loved the conclusion and catharsis that ME3 gave.
@Frogster8: Not so old that it should be inaccessible to newer players. I played it on console back in the day and am happy to replay it on PC. And it may entice people who have come to gaming in the past decade, who maybe haven't thought to pick it up, or who haven't heard of it before, to give it a go.
@derceto: ~13,000 max concurrents on Steam alone today. Doesn't really need help. For some perspective, that's similar numbers to what BLOPS3 is doing on Steam. Though COD is a more console centric shooter, I daren't say those are bad numbers.
@Jinzo_111887: I read recently in a forum that the 2008 game was [usernames] favourite of the 3D bunch because it removed most of the combat (but the puzzles were a little too easy say another). Is that true? Because I never played it because I really can't stand the combat in these games, so if it stripped most of that out I shall give it a go.
@lostn: The combat and that awful camera have not grown in charm over the years. I remember when I got it back in the day, the combat almost put me off playing. But then I discovered that one of my best friends found he was sucking at the platforming. So we played our respective preferred sections of the game together on the couch and both ended up loving it. After playing the first few hours again today, I think I want my buddy back.
@razeandjadith: I am very much part of that group. Though I was leaning towards a Vive for the room scale aspect any way, Oculus' current strategy has effectively precluded them from consideration.
I think if Oculus Studios want to be paying bigger studios to create high quality VR, which the medium does need right now, they should still be selling them on every store - they get a cut any way. I could even probably stomach a short timed-exclusivity period, so long as they were upfront about it (though I would not argue too hard with anyone who disagreed with me on that point).
jecomans' comments