Okay that's... pretty goddamn suspect. But... I know BioWare, so I won't judge that until I see how they execute on it.
I didn't talk to Manveer Heir about Mass Effect 3, we were just talking about BioWare and getting a job there. Apparently because they get money from the local governments for their hires, but foreigners are only funded if they're highly qualified, BioWare never hires junior level people from outside Canada. If I want to get a job at BioWare, you have to have 5-6 years of professional experience somewhere else, so they can hire you into a senior position and get that sweet government money
Manveer recommended I get a job at Ubisoft since they're staffing up like crazy in Toronto and Montreal, and apparently they're a lot more willing to hire junior-level people from outside Canada.
Also it is not possible to be both a designer and a writer at BioWare. The design department is split into 4 divisions: gameplay designers, level designers, cinematic designers, and story writers. So... that's a shame.
On the plus side he did say my English was easily good enough not to be an impediment
Joker has brittlebone syndrome; I can't imagine how tricky getting laid would be with that.
To be honest, banging an AI is probably closer to masturbation than sex anyway....and I can imagine even that wouldn't be without risks.
Anyway, Shepards been able to bang aliens for several games now. Why is a robot so revulsive? Having sex with a machine seems much more amenable than having sex with a turian.
Of course, that's all besides the point. EDI is voiced by miss longlegs from battlestar galactica, and the cross-section of fans of that series and the mass effect games is going to be massive. Not utilizing such an actress to deal with this kind of thing would be a blatant waste.
Either way that Artbook has come under some level of criticism...I read the entry ot Liara. Apparently the design for how she looks in lair of the shadow broker is based loosely on what a scientist in a labcoat would look like, if the labcoat was power armor. That's one of the most silly concepts I've ever heard of, and of course it's going to bother any hard-sci-fi nerds outthere.
Well I think I'll take it with a grain of salt. It wouldn't be the first time "leaked" info didn't end up in a game. Sex with an AI doesn't fit with how Bioware have handled the mature relationship angle either.
Growing old is inevitable.......Growing up is optional
Jonas wrote:
Also it is not possible to be both a designer and a writer at BioWare. The design department is split into 4 divisions: gameplay designers, level designers, cinematic designers, and story writers. So... that's a shame.
"Cinematic designers" is its own department? Interesting. Also kinda odd that gameplay and level designers are separate instead of LD being a subset of gameplay. But then again, Bioware level design has always been very thoughtless, imo, just kinda loose boxes and corridors meant to show off the art, rather than engage the player mentally in any sort of layout design. Actually, Dragon Age 1 was alright about it, for what I've played (I've never gotten super far into it because the friendly fire and the AI inability to avoid running into already active friendly damage zones kinda killed it for me). But NWN, Kotor, ME1 and 2, DA2, all environments built from prefab art with no interesting layouts, just corridors and arenas in a line.
Also, hey, if you get a job in Montreal you can spy on the Thief 4 team.
I agree that one of biowares biggest problems right now is designing interesting gameplay environments. The art pieces are consistently amazing, so the environments themselves are very good when you're in one of the good ones, but they're rarely particularly exciting from a gameplay perspective...the central mechanic is to decode which choke points are good and where you'll be exposed, and then slowly advancing through the right areas, which is cool, but it doesn't have a very large amount of variety.
And they also do have other problems. I think another big issue is the balance of the activated abilities. As it is, either they murder things, or they're completely ineffective, or they take down barriers. That's not a lot of depth. There's no ability to disable 3 enemies for 15 seconds and deal with the 2 remaining enemies. There's no smokescreen to allow atypical advancements, and rarely do you have good abilities for retreating. They seem to be almost completely disconnected from the environment you're fighting in.
There are exceptions; the AI hacking is a brilliant ability, and singularity is great fun, and the barrier abilities add a lot of tactical depth (although I wish they were much more powerful, and had much longer cooldowns)...but this is another area where Mass Effect could stand to improve.
Of course, these two problems of mass effect are immensely more pressent in the dragon age games. I honestly think bioware should cut down on variety for variety's sake; I think Mass Effect 2 would've been significantly better with no class being a given at all, and cutting down the number of activated abilities per. branch (soldiering, engineering, wizardry) to 5 abilities or so, and allowing the player to pick out 6 to take with him and 3 or so to be at their maximum power level.
I reckon it's the same deal with the dragon age games; just bloody well make the protagonist of the entire game a wizard, a warrior, or a rogue. The old fallout games didn't need a weird class system to generate a sense that your character served a certain role or fit a certain archetype, biowares games don't either.
In the perfect world, I would be staunchly against giving up these freedoms, but this isn't the perfect world, and right now, those freedoms come at the expense of good gameplay design and late game balance, because they just can't handle the job of keeping all these disparate options from creating degenerate gameplay once you get further into the game.
That post seems like I hate a lot on bioware; I don't mean to. ME2 is my favorite game of the past 3 years. I absolutely love it, and the problems I talk about are many times worse in the dragon age games, games I also love.
It's just...they could stand to improve things here and there...and the degenerate gameplay where you only use the same 5 tools in the toolshed in every situation, regardless of environemtn? that's really quite bad, and I do not think the variety we get during character selection is worth it.
Of course I want to work at Obsidian. A BioWare guy was at the game jam and I had a chance to talk to him, I'd love to live in Canada, especially Montreal (or Vancouver, but that's irrelevant), but I'll definitely be shooting a job application off to Obsidian too - they don't get any government money that I know of, so there should be nothing but a work visa preventing them from hiring me, if they want to
Also, level design isn't a subdepartment of game design because both departments are subdivisions of design. It sounds like they're on roughly equal footing, and that's a pretty normal way to handle things to be honest.
AEMer; So your plan to add diversity and more tactic is... taking away even more options. Inventory, skills, armor... exploring. All gone from ME1 already. How more "streamlining" can a game get...
Can somebody tell me how I can get a custom avatar?
Oh wait, I already got one...
Hassat Hunter wrote:AEMer; So your plan to add diversity and more tactic is... taking away even more options. Inventory, skills, armor... exploring. All gone from ME1 already. How more "streamlining" can a game get...
Mass Effect 2 is the game the developers always wanted to make, but due to lack of technology they were not able to do so. Inventory is just a bad design element, a remnant from a time when games weren't as good. Just like manuals and having to figure out where to go where improved by adding quest compasses and turning the entire game into a tutorial, so must inventory be removed.
Stop clinging to the past and get with the times Hassat.
"Delays are temporary; mediocrity is forever."
odio ergo sum
Hahah! As much as I like ME 2 those pop up tips and achievements do get annoying. I have no issue with quest compasses (Fallout: NV and Borderlands confusing ones aside).
@Jonas: Good luck with the job hunting.
Growing old is inevitable.......Growing up is optional
Jaedar wrote:
Mass Effect 2 is the game the developers always wanted to make, but due to lack of technology they were not able to do so.
What? ME1 and 2 are both made on UE3, the same technology base. The difference between them is a on the level of design philosophy (and an extra dose of sexy alien waifu from the writing staff), not tech.
Hassat Hunter wrote:AEMer; So your plan to add diversity and more tactic is... taking away even more options. Inventory, skills, armor... exploring. All gone from ME1 already. How more "streamlining" can a game get...
Why don't you go play spore then. Infinite diversity that's infinitely meaningless; that oughta suit your tastes!
