T w e n t y S i d e d
We’ve given composer Kevin McLeod credit in the video for the groovy credits music, but I don’t think I’ve ever given him a proper link… UNTIL NOW!
I think I’m starting to get beige fatigue. Really. How many brown tunnels can a team of artists make before they all decide to commit ritual mass suicide? We must be nearing that threshold by now. Throw some colored lighting in there. Some greenery. Maybe give the colonists non-brown clothes? Maybe they paint their cargo container houses? The monotony really struck me when I re-watched this episode prior to posting. I guess the pervasive brown makes sense here in a world of ruins. But after Noveria it just feels like too much. Since Noveria was a modern inhabited place, they should have added some color, particularly to the bunker-like hotel and lounge area. It makes the races of the galaxy feel sort of culturally dead.
So, I guess I’m complaining about the brown, even though this is the one place in the game where it actually makes sense. I’m unreasonable like that sometimes.
Starcraft: Bot Fight
Let's do some scripting to make the Starcraft AI fight itself, and see how smart it is. Or isn't.
Lost Laughs in Leisure Suit Larry
Why was this classic adventure game so funny in the 80's, and why did it stop being funny?
Trashing the Heap
What does it mean when a program crashes, and why does it happen?
Black Desert Online
This Korean title would be the greatest MMO ever made if not for the horrendous monetization system. And the embarrassing translation. And the terrible progression. And the developer's general apathy towards its western audience.
Top 64 Videogames
Lists of 'best games ever' are dumb and annoying. But like a self-loathing hipster I made one anyway.
On the Rakinie, I think they where Sovereigns first attempt to take over the citadel. If you listen to the full conversation with the queen she talks about a sickly yellow sound. Could be in reference to sovereigns mind control at work on her species. Then again it could just be a cleaver ruse by the rackni queen to save herself.
Keep forgetting how to spell that species name.
Aw, I wanted to comment on your creative spelling of the name but you did it yourself. Rachni, I think. Also yeah, in the ME2 there’s a bit where uh… heh, realized this should be under spoiler tags probably. Yeah, a part where a liaison sort of Asari – maybe that commando? who knows – comes to talk to you about the Rachni eventually helping you or something and through the conversation it’s sort of inferred that Sovereign was probably behind the Rachni War which is pretty neat.
Thought it was a neat touch. Also totally want a Rachni teammate, I mean I’ve already got the Geth.
Edit: and apparently I repeatedly fail at spoiler tags. Bollocks.
Really? Oh damn it! I played ME2 on the XBox and ME1 on PC, so I wasn’t able to port my character in… thus ME2 assumed I shot the asari commando – she never showed up in ME2 and I never got that info. I always thought “maybe Sovereigns signal is what the Rachni queen was talking about?”. Thanks for posting that, I might have never got that piece of knowledge.
(Also: I really like my avatar here. Even though it should be randomly assigned when you write your first post, it seems to fit me. I’m wearing glasses and always eating while watching Spoiler Warning. ^^)
Yep, that’s what always struck me about a lot of science fiction. The scenery folks are so focused on making things alien looking that they completely forget the normal sorts of things that happen in living buildings (and once living buildings) that identifies them as inhabited.
Just for starters, military bases should have institutional art (Generic picture of military hardware 1-10, along with Generic sunrises and sunsets, pictures of iconic military propaganda, etc), awards for nothing in particular (Lt. Bill was Best Dressed on the ship six years ago! This is a serious looking certificate to show this. Good job Bill, we couldn’t find anything else to give you an award for), an annoying level of identification and warnings (“Low pipe. Duck.” and “Rear of spaceship is hot. Cooking and reheating is prohibited”) and the like.
You know how when you drive through a completely foreign, sometimes literally, subdivision or place of residence and you can tell something about the people who live there? That should happen in science fiction too. Instead we get weirdly impractical looking architecture that’s either so fresh looking that if we saw it in real life we’d be looking for the sod crew scampering off in the distance and wondering why anyone says anyone lives there yet, or we’re left with ‘what does everyone in space have in common? They use the same crates and containers and like to stack large ones very high with some sort of heavy equipment that never shows up in game. In games like Mass Effect they build their colonies in linear mazes where people have to wander through each other’s bunk bed sleeping quarters to get to important places in the rest of the colony. I won’t even speculate where they use the restroom or shower. I guess it’s a pretty empty planet – and stinky in little piles outside of the colonies.
One of the best things about Fallout is that it’s at least made an effort to push the idea that people leave around a lot of unimportant garbage.
Actually, I think this is one of the things I really like about the movie Fifth Element. The bits were you see Corben Dallas’ apartment? It’s wildly impractical with the sliding down shower and all that stuff, but it also managed to look sci-fi AND like someone lived in that apartment. I mean the movie is as silly as it is great, but it’s one of the best sci-fi movies (for me at least) visually because it’s so rich and vibrant.
Rather than looking like someone forced an Apple design team to build them the city of the future.
I would love to see a spaceship with all those random signs around. I think my favorite sign (that I’ve seen in real life) is on the eyewash station down the hall from my horticulture classroom: “This is an emergency eye wash. The drinking fountain is by the restrooms.”
The sign was not there at the beginning of the semester.
(I’m very late to the party, I know- just catching up after finals.)
Lovely episode, even though you guys did seem a bit fatigued in general at the start. I do love how Shamus and Randy are talking about gradual deterioration of cities and what would be left and Josh is just sort of chillin’ and killing some Varren while this is going on, I’m not sure why but I found that rather amusing.
You have me and Josh confused. I am the one playing, Josh and Shamus are the ones that go on long tangents about the downfall of modern society.
Aw, buggery. And it’s not like you make it clear at the start of each episode who’s who and what your names are or anything.
/sarcasm
Oh, no, they just say, in their own voice, “hey I’m Randy Johnson” “I’m Josh Viel” and “and I’m Shamus Young”.
/sarcasm
Ha! Found it! The credit song is “Enter the Party”, style Funk.
Delicious episode, as always.
So I’m guessing you probably just hit the halfway point in your series.
2 or 3 more for Feros, probably 3 for Virmire. And 4 to do all of Ilos and the citadel…so about 10 more episodes total.
You could probably do it in as few as 8 if you keep cutting off the council chats and don’t talk with the crew much.
I think unfortunately you skipped Ashley and Liara’s last set of dialog, so you probably can’t finish the romance sequence unless you do a couple of side quests.
Hopefully you’ll accumulate enough Renegade points to buff up Intimidate so that you can save Wrex on Virmire. Not sure you’ve got enough right now.
After Feros I will be taking the time to off scene do side quests to ensure that our intimidate is high enough to save Wrex. I loveses him and won’t let him dead.
I’m sure you can make an episode out of “Randy does sidequests and organizes his inventory”.
I would make an entire episode out of inventory management. I am a scavenger at heart, and love inventory management in games, albiet ME’s is pretty bad.
Actually, you can take less time (apparently) if you talk to Wrex and finish his “family armor” side quest… I had to look this up for a friend, so it’s second-hand (haven’t tested it myself), but it’s apparently the easy way to get past the charm / intimidate check.
:edit: per the wiki, the quest is in the Phoenix system of Argus Rho, and you can complete it without first “unveiling” it by talking to Wrex.
Remember this comment when you see episode 13
Legend has it that the Protheans made elevators on their homeworld that still work after 50,000 years. But these tales come from madmen and wanderers.
Dont know what y’all have against elevators. They can be very up lifting….(had to do it. The loading screens compelled me to do so.) :) :)
Disconnecting on the Council: The next time’s even better. However, the Noveria report is worth it for this exchange:
“Do you enjoy committing genocide, Commander?”
“Depends on the species. Turian.”
You still get the chance to cut off when the turian Councilor yells at you for that.
Geth Stalker cutscenes: There’s also that they didn’t know whether you’d first meet them on Noveria, Feros, or Therum. So they just covered their bases by putting in a cutscene for each.
We record these things in 3-4 episode batches, and its incredible frustrating when one of our favorite parts gets revealed early….. *wink*
I wonder if it would be much hassle to make a bunch of code to see if you had already had a “Stalker First Sight” cutscene before each of them playing.
I think you guys are talking about the armatures/colossi. Stalkers are those annoying little things that jump around a lot.
Doing the basement before the tower leads to some amusing comments.
I got lost and Garrus pointed it out. “Don’t we need to go back that way, Commander?” Kept going, and Tali: “If you wish me to follow you, I will, but I believe we are going the wrong way.”
Dunno what the others say, haven’t done the quest since then.
Also get the shotgun. I can’t stress this enough; the shotgun is AWESOME. Sure it’s short range but unless you play the game like I play when I have a sniper rifle then nearly all of it is CQB and the shotgun dominates, I was actually waiting for you to pull out the shotgun during the Rachni part since they’re melee opponents.
With the shotgun skill fully pipped you’ve got one of the most ridiculously good weapons in the game. The shotguns in ME2 aren’t bad either:
Most of my combat as a Vanguard in ME2 consists of charging into the biggest cluster of enemies, hitting the pause key to tell my team mates to utilize some handy biotics, blast everything and then melee what’s left — great fun.
I am going to quote myself here because of how much it applies yet again.
“We record these things in 3-4 episode batches, and its incredible frustrating when one of our favorite parts gets revealed early….. *wink*”
On Saren and the mercs: You know, I always wondered why Saren hired all those mercs and send them on seemingly useless missions. It wasn’t until Virmire when I hit upon the reason why he’s likely doing it; if the mercenaries were other Krogan, he may have been using those missions as a way of “evaluating the stock”. He wants only the best Krogan specimens: the toughest, the strongest and the most skilled, to use as breeding stock for his Krogan army. Obviously, none of those Krogan on that mission met his high standards. :P
Random note: The star maps are really beautiful. I always find myself marvelling at how visually appealing some of the clusters are.
On a comment during the video: Dr Zanzabar, I know you probably didn’t mean it that way, but when you said exploding was a cool way to go, I totally thought of suicide bombers. >.>
On monster cutscenes: The cutscenes are probably to showcase “new monsters” like the Geth Stalker or the Armature. We’ve met them before, but remember that we can do any of the mission-critical planets in any order, so it kinda makes sense from a developer’s perspective.
“Protect the heart of the colony!”: Yeah, it was very subtle, and very well done. The first time I heard Fai Dan, I NEVER suspected anything. I thought the area they were protecting was literally the central hub of the colony, with its living quarters and such. It wasn’t until I went back and talked to all the colonists after repelling the initial wave that I began to suspect something was up.
On the “Help the Villagers” sidequests: All we need now is the classic “Oh no! I have rats in my cellar! … I’ll give you 5 gold to get rid of them.” ;)
On the doors that aren’t doors: You run into these in every RPG, really. Dozens of doors, but all save a few are unbashable/unpickable/barred from the other side.
actually, fairly sure intimidate is unlocked by the moon side quest.
Furthermore, in a static environment (ie. no weather, earthquakes, wind etc.) there wouldn’t be any need for solid structures. especially since the protheans were not particularly warlike.
I’m not 100% certain on this, but don’t you need to put points into the Spectre tree in order to unlock the higher levels of Intimidate/Charm?
Or does just becoming a Spectre unlock those levels?
Either way, keep up the good work. It’s fun watching you guys have fun.
You unlock three ranks for becoming a Spectre, then the last six are for reaching milestones (10%/25%/75%) in Paragon/Renegade.
hmmm, just checked wiki. My bad.
Didn’t you just totally forget to turn in the water quest? Oh noes, the lost XP! :)