King of Crokinole

So ironically due to #Bioware being shut down and the new #MassEffect being cancelled, I started the original #game back up (ME1) and finished it yesterday. And yes there are issues and things that could be better, but the overall experience was amazing...story, characters, rpg and yes I even liked the gameplay (better than the sequels and Legendary edition). And I started ME2 up, expecting the same excitement I felt back then ... but it somehow felt flat on all aspects. Perhaps it was because back then there were a few years in between and this time I played them back to back... but it is a huge downgrade from going from a galaxy spanning conflict as a Spectre, to being a Cerberus employee running side quests. Also the way the controls worked and lack of RPG elements in equipment and character level up was just ...well less. From what I remember from ME3 they brought back some RPG elements to equipment, but as a game overall it was no longer a real RPG anymore, not like ME1 and more or less forced teh paragon path and none of the choices you made were really incorporated and let's not forget about that terrible ending. Yes production quality went way up, got some famous a-list actors to voice characters , but as a RPG and a game it was diminished Add day 1 DLC, forced multiplayer to the mix and I think that in hindsight Bioware was already slipping back then. Especially if you consider the broader picture where for instance they turned KOTOR into that shit MMO ...and to me it was shit (hate MMO's), instead of KOTOR3 The woke stuff ultimately was just the final culmination of a business failing to being able to deliver games their audience wanted into a business simply not wanting to deliver to their core audience anymore. I for one hope that Mass Effect wil continue, just not by Bioware , but by say a @larianstudios or @CDPROJEKTRED and I hope they will continue from the core elements that made ME1 great. And as a suggestion : storywise I would say to start with a new protagonist who is immune to indoctrination and gets picked up by a ragtag of species from other universes who are also immune and are fighting the reapers . You then run missions parallel to that of Shepard and in the end you can choose to save him from teh rubble or let him die... from thereon out you can expand teh story to othe runiverses and perhaps even an elitist civilization behind the reapers who basically remove all threats to their dominance. The problem with Andromeda and this new ME5 leaked game, is that both avoid the issue and try to work around what ultimately is a dumb ending, by either moving to a different part of teh universe or by placing it far in the future and make it some obscure part of a vague history

I always felt that the next ME game should be with a new protagonist immune to indoctrination (vaccine perhaps?)that runs missions parallel to that of Shepard as (s)he increasingly got more indoctrinated and you then could choose to save him/her in the end or not... from there on out perhaps go to new galaxies and fight reapers or perhaps ultimately a civilization that make the reapers who erase to stay on top. Either way I don't think that this Bioware could have delivered, simply by track record of the past 10 years (shit games)... and the real Bioware has died over a decade ago #Bioware #MassEffect

We are living in strange times. We have governments who do nothing for their people in a positive sense yet still maintain power. We have big businesses who are not taking a customer first approach yet still continue to exist.