Mass Effect in Numbers - 6.76 GB and 2.5 Million Words
SpaceGhost2k over at the TeamXbox Forums has some hands on impressions and a behind the scenes look at the Mass Effect launch party at Bioware's headquarters in Edmonton Canada.
A few interesting bits of information has come out; the size of the finished game is 6.74GB and the game has over 2.5 million words worth of dialog that are voiced. There are some details on the save system as well which helps those of you in making difficult decisions in the game.
Quote:
They also changed the way the game saves are handled. There is an autosave setting as well as being able to do manual saves. But most importantly, you can go back and forth between characters of your creation and game save points. To illustrate, let’s say you have a light side Jill Shepard and a dark side Jack Shepard. You play a point in the game as the light side character. You want to see how the same point would play out as a dark side character, all you do is change characters and replay the point. This is HUGE over only having the option to just replay the whole game again as “the other side.”
2 weeks until this massive title hits. The game looks like it's going to meet expectations!
Good luck with that. How long did it take for Jade Empire to get to the PC?
On topic: The ability to switch out the main character at save points is pretty frickin' awesome. I can finally have my badass baby killer trail my saintly missionary diplomat and undo all the good he does.
I'm not sure about this character switch feature. Yeah, it's great in that it allows you to see how situations would play out differently for good vs. evil without having to replay the whole game... but it seems sorta like it's making things too easy that way. This is the kind of thing that I want to replay the game for, and making this too easily accessible may kill that desire to replay for some people.
You really think this game needs a demo to know if you're going to like it? Come on, Gorvi.
For some people, yes. Hype does not equal greatness. In a perfect world, maybe. It's funny how high-profile games never receive demos. They might destroy the hype machine.
Plus, I haven't found Bioware stellar since their PC-centric days. Still good, but they lost something in the transition.
I'm not sure about this character switch feature...and making this too easily accessible may kill that desire to replay for some people.
How can anyone complain about more features and more freedom to play how you want? It's this kind of backwards thinking that results in checkpoint-only saves and save features as evidenced in games like Dead Rising.
Willpower is the key. You want to replay the whole game from a different perspective? Don't use the feature. Simple as that. Honestly, think of it this way: what if there is more than two options for a given situation? What if it's not just 'light vs. dark?' Then we'd all have to play the game 3 or 4 full times - but wait! What if certain decisions then affect later options? Then the permutations could be countless!
Sorry, I have a lot of games to play. I don't need to play Mass Effect 30 times to experience it all. Put more power in the hands of the gamers that bought the game, not less.
__________________
GamerTag: National Kato
PSN: National_Kato
[360] NHL09 / Tales of Vesperia / PGA09
[PS3] God of War 2 / Shadow of the Colossus!!!
[PC] R.I.P.
Mass Effect literally makes me happy. I'm happy just thinking about it. So I guess you could say that I've "swallowed the hype". . . except the thing is, I've seen so much video of the game that I really know what I'm getting. It is going to be a fairly easy shooter/RPG with great graphics, story, characters, and a sci-fi setting. The game world is enormous and there are multiple endings.
So how much of that is hype? The only thing we don't really know is how good combat feels, and since this is Bioware, I already know it will be the low point of an otherwise great game.
Now, Assassin's Creed. . . that game is one that I'm not sure about. They have a great track record, but the game is single-player ONLY, and it might be short and it might contain ridiculous jump puzzles or bad stealth puzzles (stealth puzzles are hard to do well). Mass Effect isn't a sure thing, but I've seen enough to know that it will meet my expectations. . . all it really can do is exceed them.
2.5 million words? I bet some of the Final Fantasy games, (X, XII) meet that.
I'm sure they're at least knocking on that number, if you include the random townsfolk who aren't voiced. This is 2.5 million voiced words. That's very impressive.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kelegacy
For some people, yes. Hype does not equal greatness. In a perfect world, maybe. It's funny how high-profile games never receive demos. They might destroy the hype machine.
Right, demos certainly hurt Guitar Hero 3 and Bioshock.
Bottom line, America: hype is a function of marketing budget, but a demo will only hurt a bad game and only help a good one.
Mass Effect, Assassins Creed, Guitar Hero 3, Ace Combat 6, Kane and Lynch and to a lesser extent the new Need for Speed all arrive on the same day in the UK...
I think I'm going to pop into Gamestation here when we take our shipment to take advantage of my employee benefits, heh. It's going to be a massive hole in the pocket of an awful lot of gamers, especially with Super Mario Galaxy and Call of duty 4 hitting in the short few weeks beforehand. Delays have just had a compression effect, and now loads of major titles are hitting within close striking distance of one another.
