Not for me its not, brand means nothing. But I loved ME1 and ME2 and ME3 even more, so I hope the core team stays together for the next one, as I for one cant wait for it!

Looks Faboo :D I'm liking the destruction going on.

Seriously, all 3 games were great. The ending being something that people didn't expect, or that it didn't end like everyone wanted, is enough of a reason to be pissed, sure, but it doesn't take away what a quality experience the whole game was. At least, that's how I see it. It has nothing to do with brands, if a game is good, it's good. Who cares that some people weren't involved that I would have liked to have been? For example, you all know I'm a big Sakaguchi fan. If Mistwalker, or a team you expect to work with Sakaguchi, somehow made a Blue Dragon 2 without him, would I be bummed? Yes (in fact, I'd fucking hit the roof in anger lol), but I would still give the game a fair chance, even without Sakaguchi being onboard. People willing to give something they're interested in a chance doesn't mean they care about brands. Sometimes you have to be willing to remove the emotion from the equation and judge a game, regardless of who's making it, on its merits, same as you would if the game were made by all the people that you wanted to design it. Prior to this gen, Fable was one of the primary MS first party titles I was looking forward to seeing on the 360, and it was an utter disappointment on the 360, and I accepted that. However, if a team that is decidedly different from Lionhead ends up making an even better Fable game than Lionhead does, then I'd have no trouble supporting that game.

I assume they bowed out for the same reasons CliffyB bowed out. The bigger picture was looking grim, not just what was going on in their own offices

I liked ME1 because I like RPGs. I disliked 2 and 3 because they entered into a trend I don't like these days. Action movie trend

A lot changed about ME2 and ME3 from the first one, but in some cases, those changes were absolutely necessary. Not all of them, mind you, but some needed to be much more improved, like for example, improving your ability to equip all of your characters with the best possible gear necessary.

The actual combat gameplay received huge improvements compared to the first game. if you're going to have cover shooting, might as well make it feel and look amazing in execution. I like that you no longer had to do the boring and unnecessary backtracking in some instances if you didn't have to. I enjoyed that they cut to the chase and kept things flowing in a lot of instances. If we're going to backtrack for whatever reason, just make it more worthwhile, no need to force something into a game for the sake of purity when you'd be much better served using the available playtime much more wisely. I don't like every change, but the original Mass Effect was a game in need of some streamlining, and I think they did a good job with it. I also thought doing a better job with those action segments was a blessing for the game. Let's be honest, they tried that stuff in the original Mass Effect as well, just not all of it came off looking nearly as strong as it could have. Either way, I will always have fond memories of that game.

I'm personally glad that Bioware ended up going to EA, because I don't feel that Microsoft might have provided the proper environment where that franchise could go on to continue flourishing as it did. Somehow I think it might have been derailed away from the great game that so many people like now. I liked, for instance, that Bioware had the guts to end the game the way they did. It's their story and they should tell it however they want, even if it pisses me off.

Problem is, they never improved it, they just took it out, which was shit. Now you don't even give your party armour or accessories at all, you switch out guns if you really want to, but even that isn't needed. Same was the case for the mako. Rather then fix it, they ditched it, and instead replaced it with the amazingly exciting planet scanning. The only element they improved was the combat itself, and you could argue those improvements are what shifted the games focus, it stopped being an RPG, and became a shooter with VERY minor stat management and character progression.

ME2 and 3 where shite imo. One of the most dissapointing things to happen this gen for me, because i absolutely LOVED the first one. And that isn't ever starting on the direction the story went and inevitably ended....badly.

EDIT: same was true for dragon age. They "streamlined" the game to the point it wasn't even worth playing. Had no depth at all. Whatever bioware had last gen, and entering into current gen, i feel they've lost. I'm not excited by the prospect of future projects from them at all. Which i would never had said straight after playing jade empire, KOTOR, mass effect or dragon age origins.

That's understandable, but I still loved 2 and 3, so a next-gen Mass Effect, i'm in.

I thought this was going to be a BF4 thread...

So as a BF nut with about 500h sunken into the last 2 games, each, I was pretty excited about the reveal. But oh well, I should have known better, since the SP is oh sooo important.

Anyway, the graphics look nuts, a bigger step up from BF3 than I expected. That heli crashing just looked like it was out of "Black Hawk Down". I wonder what kinda machine you'd need to run the demo as we've seen it. And I hope that grenade launcher won't find its way into the MP. There are conflicting reports about the suppression mechanic returning to the game. I suppose it doesn't make much sense to speculate about since it'll get changed a few times until the beta anyway.

Well, considering the type of game Mass Effect was, I think some of the changes, although certainly not all, needed to be made. You can get to a point where certain things are just a distraction, and while I don't think that everything they changed or removed was necessarily a distraction, some of the decisions made were likely in line with a clear and understandable goal to make Mass Effect a more easy to pick up and playthrough style of game in hopes of improving its sales potential and making it easier to market. I thought they were bound to fall into that unavoidable trap the moment the game included guns lol.

I know, I know, we hate to hear things like that, but it's a business, too. That doesn't mean they aren't making great games that they are passionate about, or that everything they did was against their will. However, decisions have to be made and sometimes I can't blame developers for making those choices, because the alternative of not appealing to more people at times might be that the viability of their project or even studio are put at risk due to lackluster sales, possibly leading to a situation where the publisher loses enough confidence in the project to cancel or cut the budget, or future projects are approved, but on terms less favorable to the dev.

If I'm faced with a choice of possibly seeing a great game or franchise from a team I think deserves to do well die, or try to do a few things that could help the mass market appeal of the project, I'll usually be happy to entertain whatever those changes might be. If I think they are shitty and ruin the game, I'll be just as pissed as anybody, but I think it's always been the responsibility of the developer, when they make these types of decisions, to do their best to make it work, and Bioware have done so about as well with Mass Effect as I thought they ever would, given the balance they had to strike from the onset with the foundations of their game. Personally, Bioware with the Mass Effect franchise has easily made the strongest trilogy of games of any developer this generation.

Of all the franchises that have seen at least 3 releases this gen, Mass Effect is collectively the best of the pack.

Oops no more off topic for me!!They were probably running that on a Titan or something, hard to say lol. Damn 500hrs each. Only game where I racked up that kind of time is, well, I won't say. :)

7990. Hadn't realized it was out. It sure as hell looked the part. Looks incredible with silky smooth performance. Hell, I think it's safe to say that the next time I upgrade my pc's gpu, I will likely never need another upgrade for years to come. Then again, I once remember bragging in that same way about my 32MB voodoo graphics card. I was so confident back then that I would never need anything larger than a 32MB voodoo graphics chip, now we're talking 6GB GPUs.

As long as it runs on a single core GPU I'm fine with that.

Yeah, 500 hours is a lot. But then I don't play much else, so I'm not as ashamed of that as I probably should be. ;)Thinking about it, wasn't there some weapons in BF3 SP that didn't make it to the MP? I don't want to see that shit in MP just as much as I don't like seeing shotguns as secondaries.

We'll see, I guess. I'm especially curious about the weapon/class customization aspect. I fear that they'll try to shove in as much choice as possible akin to the pick 10 system in COD, including the two things mentioned above...

LOL that video is hilarious. Even while people are screwing around, it still comes off as easily one of the best MP games out there, if not the best. LOL, loved the Rambo part. Rambo 2, one of my all time favorites. I think that's from when he was flipping out on Murdoch for screwing him on that extraction. :)

I remember being quite the troll in BF2, rigging jets with C4 and then waiting for friends to try and enter one, then boom! I had an almost unhealthy number of creative ways to kill with C4. Btw, you guys see that bizarre interview with Crytek? Either EA has some kind of major deal with Microsoft, or they are acting weird for no reason, but it certainly sounds like there's something going on. It comes up at around 1:40. They almost can't even say PS4 or even acknowledge that the thing exists for some odd reason.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncORtSTpEAI

Your user photo change just ruined my history of GSY. My reality is breaking like that French thread in Off Topic

I was going to post that! lol.

Even me, a spammer, knows Tinks has no right to complain.

these are the weirdest spam messages i've ever seen. usually they follow with a link to some arbitrary shitty asian knock off store or something. this...this is just weird.

Yeah there are no links or anything??

Help me choose my dress!!