I was watching this clip, and they suddenly showed exactly what I hate about Bioware’s games (besides their “convince three judges” puzzles).*
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At 7:14 they show three outcomes of a single scene: If you play hardball, pacify or threaten a bartender to give up information. I’m sure the point of the clip is to show how cool the game is, but all I see is how obvious the outcomes are. They’re always the same. Knights of the Old Republic, their previous game, was in my opinion saturated with that exact feeling of sameness. That no matter what you answered you’d at most get a single response-specific line before they hooked you back into a linear conversation flow.
I’m not saying Mass Effect sucks, hell even if conversations really do suffer from that linear feel it still has the much-anticipated pseudo real time fighting and shooting. And story and characters to get into. And weapons to collect and upgrade. No I have plenty confidence that I’ll enjoy the game, I just really hope they’ve learned from Old Republic and have made conversations a much smoother experience. Even though that particular clip fails to inspire confidence :S