Mass Effect: How Can I Go Back to Fallout 3?
I can’t imagine myself playing Mass Effect three years ago, but I’m thoroughly awed now.
Greg supplied me with a video of Mass Effect‘s heroine being a badass last week and I mentioned that it convinced me to install and fire up the game. Excellent choice.
Unfortunately, I’m not done with Fallout 3 yet, and ME is such a better game.
Mostly.
That is, if you leave off the vehicle driving, which often ends up with me careening up the sides of roads, cliffs, and mountains like a drunken BMXer.
Even if I’m not as consistently mean as the Fem Shepard in the video–I always worry about closing off game/dialog options by being too mean–I love playing her. The voice acting is excellent. I love the little blooming romance I’m crafting, although I always wish for more open options in video game romance: why can’t I romance Tali, Ashley, or Garrus? As a genuine question, would that have been difficult to develop in the game?
Greg was quick to point out one of the flaws of Fallout 3: we kinda sorta don’t really give much of a damn about finding our father. Like, I’m totally interested in that project thing that I won’t spoil but that offers hope to humanity, but all the mitty-itty-bitty fiddly quests and death and walking along the way? Meh. The bounty (in booty or new plot) in random locations isn’t enough to keep me exploring, either.
Mass Effect‘s plot and world are both surprisingly gripping. Despite the method of traveling on planets (that vehicle) and my initial difficulty in figuring out how to get off the ship, I want to find cool stuff and galactic history. I also want to get this Prothean artifacty stuff before Saren does. Rawr!
ME is very vibrant in comparison to Fallout. Part of it’s the colors: the galaxy navigator is gorgeous and the game doesn’t shy away from bright colors. Fallout, of course, being a post-apocalyptic game, has no color. The nukes irradiated the color in the world.
Combat’s different, too, though. Sneaking in Fallout means running in a hunch across an open gray field and making precise combat with VATS. Pkeuw, pkeuw.
Sneaking in ME means crouching and running up or down stairs with motion blur and snapping quickly to a rock and shooting around the side while your allies throw geth or hoist them in the air. Much more dynamic.
If it weren’t for that damned vehicle, I’d have this game’s child.
Well, alright. Lady Commander Shepard’s child.
4 Comments
Mark Konieczny
Spoiler alert,.. the 2nd game is fun but now quite as good as the first. Replaying the first one after beating it is AWESOME b/c while your people are weak again, you have very advanced weapons & armor,.. they kinda cut that back in the 2nd game
Melissa Avery-Weir
Do you feel like there’s anything fresh in a replay? I’m not sure what I’d
do differently in a replay other than pick a new class/career (which
wouldn’t start advanced, I assume?).
Mark Konieczny
You can make a few choices you weren’t sure about, or think you would have liked to at least venture into one a replay. I know many people were amused with making a very goody-goody character and then going pure evil on the replay just for the lulz. I personally played it pretty much the same with the noticeable exception of a few side-quests in different order, but I cranked up the difficulty to max and enjoyed myself to no end blasting everything away with my advanced weapons!
guyblade
Honestly, I think that Jennifer Hale (the voice of FemShep) has been good in most all of her video game outings. Notably, she was Naomi Hunter in Metal Gear Solid and Bastila in Knights of the Old Republic.