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Khuutra on 27 October 2010
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leatherhat said:
Khuutra said:

You have to understand that some people don't give a whit about the battle system, and that it's there primarily as a hurdle to getting to the part of RPGs that they enjoy: interactions. For a lot of people, RPGs find their essence in their interactions with characters in the world, and battles are just a way to fill the time between interactions to lend them gravitas. Probably the best example of a game where nobody cares about the combat is Planescape: Torment.

For people who care primarily about the interactions as the lynchpin of the RPG experience, what they do with the combat is immaterial, and what DA2 is doing (which I'm not clear on, I still haven't seen any gameplay footage) may be a legitimately superior alternative.

Even on the story side you get stuck with commander shep- hawke which severely limits the way in which you can interact with the world. How great would mass effect be if you could play through the game as a turian or Krogan or one of the other races. It would give you an entirely different world view. 

Mass Effect wouldn't be legitimately improved by the ability to play as a turian or a krogan or an asari or a volus or whatever. There's still only a certain amount of content that could be crammed in, and the vast majority of NPCs would treat you exactly the same as they did before.

Commander Shepard, like Revan and the Exile, is a partially-defined character exactly because it allows you to put your own thumbprint down on an archetype that makes for effective storytelling. You determine how Shepard reacts to situations, which is what I'm tlaking about here; the interactions would not be enhanced by being able to run around skinned as a krogan. Shit, it wouldn't even allow you the same insight into krogan culture as you already get from Grunt, Wrex, and Mordin.