yeah i get the impression you would dig 2 way more
yeah i was thinking about eraser when writing that post because I also thought about the saints row 4 railgun but I was at work and forgot to post again. Railguns were a cultural moment
Kotor is definitely not the best anything, it’s more like the first time a western RPG felt enough like a jRPG (due to bioware getting the star wars license after baldur’s gate, and making their already lite-D&D that much lighter) for people to mentally mark it as comfort food which is what “RPG” means to a massive amount of the gaming press that canonized Chrono Trigger forever and ever
very enjoyable game though. 2 is the classic obsidian design wherein they took something very conservative and tried to make it less so and the result is a lot worse than most CRPGs outside of the gap between troika and witcher 2 in which everything else was bad but still pretty cool
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just go for it. play two! its one of my favorite games!
i got recommended a fucking TWO HOUR YOUTUBE VIDEO called the ‘philosophy of kreia’ by the algorithm right after i finished it
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this makes sense! when i first played mass effect 2 (before pausing to go back and play 1 first) i very much recall thinking about how it felt a bit like a jrpg if only in terms of how it focused on characters and building a party, having a kind of home base, a very light focus on anything resembling stats/abilities, etc. i feel like the mass effect games are probably just better than kotor 1 now (still reserving judgement somewhat), but i am really looking forward to playing 2–and finding the more divided opinions on it interesting.
p.s. what if obsidian made a mass effect
kotor 2 is a great time and its also the last time chris avellone wasnt annoying as all shit
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Kotor is definitely foundational Bioware Brain but somehow the stupidity of the shallow and nonreactive Choices & Consequences feels a lot more fun in the simplistic moral world of Star Wars than the edgy adult Trekkiverse of Mass Effect (and I say this as the forum’s resident ME fan who definitely likes it way more than Kotor).
It’s also very jrpglike in that the world is extremely discrete and you can get and do everything with careful foreknowledge. Pick up every land mine. Hack every console. There are a limited amount of these things placed in the world and they each give you xp. This is in stark contrast to the simulationist crpg tradition and probably contributes a lot to the comfort food feeling.
Alpha Protocol is better than all these games.
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Mask of the betrayer, alpha protocol, and new vegas are all great and after kotor 2!
Its only after that that he became annoying imo
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go to tatooine first ok
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Anyway the mass effect trilogy is a neoliberalism simulator where unlike star trek, bioware couldn’t imagine a future without consumer capitalism. Every part of the game is aesthetically and culturally just walking around a shopping mall and defending shopping malls from destruction
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im playing New Vegas right now! and just want to say that the perk that lets u say some extreme hard badass shit and start combat with everyone quaking in terror is still my favorite perk in an rpg
So it’s Babylon 5?
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In all seriousness I’ve been confused why I’ve never seen Mass Effect compared to B5 because it’s either the biggest influence on ME, or it’s a weird case of Parallel Evolution that arises from attempting to make a ‘realistic’ Star Trek.
And all of B5 looks like it’s in a shopping mall, and is about defending shopping malls.
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Macross is also basically that and with manichean sexism and everyone still loves Macross
Christ help us if we turn another thread into me and Felix talking about why we like ME but Tulpa is correct about ME
But also Tulpa likes ME1 the best so their opinions can be safely disregarded
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Macross Usually has better character writing and the shopping mall aspect is part of the statement the show is making about postwar japan.
Also 80s Shoji Kawamori mechanical designs count for a lot, especially compared to the smoothed over look of ME.
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totally agree, just didn’t want to elide the “it’s fine except when americans do it” angle
tulpa’s right but i also like mass effect (and i think there are reasons to like it which tulpa omits!)
so yeah i became a jedi in kotor and the first quest i took from an npc outside the enclave was a distraught woman seeking her lost droid companion. questions i was able to ask her clearly insinuated the droid is her fuckbot. because of course
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oh this is sort of like boomer’s adventure in asmik world
I played the hell out of that game as a child
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oh yeah gotta get that 2000s whedon sexuality, the same reason that every prestige TV show for the past 20 years has had some token cunnilingus bit
at some point you’d figure it stops being a PSA