Star Wars The Old Republic going Free to Play.

[vlad321]

Scoobes said:

vlad321 said:

Scoobes said:

Was NWN an original title? It was more an evolution of Baldurs Gate in 3D. And I disagree about the Mass Effect series. They moved in a different direction to there older titles but they executed them very well and that's reflected in the widespread critical acclaim. As an RPG/shooter hybrid there are few games that compare.

NWN was definitely a more evolved version of BG. Yeah they are both Forgotten Realms, but heck, NWN didn't even have to be a party game (whether that's good or bad, I can debate either way). Also, BG was D&D2 while NWN was 3.5, I would say that's a nice enough of a difference.

As for your "the later games moved in a different direction... RPG/shooter" I will just play my Deus Ex card right here. I can't directly compare DE to ME1, but I sure as hell can compare it to what BW did witht he other two (and what they did was definitely not pretty). If you can even call them shooters because... How many guns exactly did you have in ME2? From my count, far too few for it to be a worthwhile shooter. As for an RPG, how many differing armors/skills did you actually have to call it a proper RPG?

No, the best thing about the ME series after ME1, was the story and basically the dialogue. I prefer to think of it as an old-school adventure game, though with absolutely atrociously bad puzzles, because calling them RPGs or Shooters is frankly insulting to both genres.

Edit: Forgot the really big BG/NWN difference.

Deus Ex really does stand on its own in the shooter/RPG genre. There's nothing quite like it, but that doesn't take away from Mass Effect. ME2 was streamlined, arguably too much but your complaints were both fixed in ME3. Plenty of guns and a much greater use of abilities and stats. Having said that, I don't think ME2 was light on guns. It had 5 different normal weapon classes with two weapons in each class (3 in asault rifle) with 6 different heavy weapons. Add the biotics, tech abilities and the story aspects and you have your RPG elements (albeit light). It might not have been to everyones tastes but they listened to the criticisms of ME2 and fixed both of your compliants in ME3.

As for NWN, I'm not sure those can count as major evolution; more doing the expected with network technology advances and following D&D rule changes.

Well DE is basically what a shooter/RPG should be if done right. Also I fully disagree with you, "just a D&D rule change" is actually a pretty big difference considering it's the very core of the game.

I'd like to point out that the entirety of ME2, I spent firing 2 guns, basically. A sniper and a sub machine gun (or whatever they were called). At one point I was allwoed to upgrade my sniper... to a sniper that just happened to hit harder (it was an awesome widowmaker though). I don't know about you, but that sounds like an atrocious shooter to me.Also regenerating health.

At one point I was also allowed to change my helmet, and the best I found was -5% to health regen time, or something like that. I am not sure but i did get to choose skills and stuff out of a total of around 20 skills (could have been less, could have been more). That also sounds like a terrible RPG to me.

ME3 was better than ME2, but as I said by that point I only saw ME as just an adventure game with shitty puzzles (still played on the hardest) so the bad ending really put the nail in the coffin for that one. ME1 was oretty awesome thuogh.