LordSteev

A new Deus Ex would absolutely blow my mind. Can't believe they've let this series lie dormant for so long. When the first one came out, waaay back, it instantly became my favorite game. Is Warren Specter even still alive?

I'm going to buy this. The question is when.

I went Liara, she's the only girl who will sleep with my FemShep.

As for crew I see I'm in the minority, but I went with the O.G.

Here comes Starfield!

PlayStation 6 will come sooner than GTA6

@TheArt Naaahh, Skyrim loves me!

@gollumb82

Congrats man! Glad to hear it!

Why would I do this to myself?

@gollumb82

Posted before I read, but yea, same thing. Love it when someone new gets into these.

@TheArt I'm sorry man, I'll stop pushing.

@DrJames

It makes me happy when I hear someone's playing these for the first time. Love these games, and I wish I didn't know what was coming next! I'm envious of you. Enjoy!

@Jimmer-jammer

Unasked for, I know, but here's some pluses and minuses of bringing a companion along.

Pluses:

For a game of this age, they are actually coded quite well. Lydia, for example, will turn in to a pretty great fighter on her own.

They can wear armor of different sizes and quality that you find, or even make and improve for them.

Oddly, you can end up growing attached to them, even though it's not as sophisticated conversation-wise as a lot that comes out today.

The biggest and best positive, they carry stuff. Not as much as you can, but still, I always wanted more carry capacity in this game! It's only an extra 150 lbs. or so at first, but as you level yourself up, so do they.

Negatives:

They are not very stealthy, (though later you can craft them rings, items, etc. that make them more so, they still aren't near as stealthy as you can be on your own.)

Enemies can't kill them, but YOU can. This sucks if you've grown to like them. If you're using a bow, for instance, Lydia will run forward and get to sword fighting for you, but as she battles with foes, their positions end up changing with the ebb and flow of battle, and if she's almost unconscious and you accidently hit her with an arrow, or blade, or even spell effect, she's dead and gone for good if it's you that lands the decisive blow.

I found myself going solo if I was on a thieves guild or Dark Brotherhood mission, but taking her along for traveling. You can also just take her along and feed her inventory to carry 'till she's full, and then tell her it's time to part ways. She'll go back to your house in Whiterun and be available again from there, and she'll still have all the stuff you gave her. Convenient!

@TheArt Hey bud, do yourself a favor and pick it up! I think you'd like it more than you think. You were less bothered than I was by some of Red Deads idiosyncrasies combat wise, and I won't lie, ME1 has a few of it's own, but do yourself a solid and experience the full story arc of all three of these strung together. I think in the end, you may end up enjoying it more than most.

@ThroughTheIris56

👍 😊

@Juanalf

I agree with you, how much better could you make an Unreal 3 engine game look?

@ThroughTheIris56

Your points are good, and well taken, but seriously, this game released in good shape. Barking up the wrong tree with this.

Mass Effect LE has been perfectly playable for me, even prior to the patch.. The point of "back in MY day" is completely moot here. Frankly, I was surprised to hear there was even a patch, everything has been far smoother and bug-free than any game I can remember playing since The Last of Us 2. It sounds like the only serious bug there might be is with audio on some high end surround systems.

Yes,, and they should learn more colors.

@Jimmer-jammer

Glad you're enjoying it! No problem, I get to re-live the game through your questions! The first time I went after the hag, she blew me off that log you have to use to get to her with a fireball, and I landed below in an electric ward trap and was dead instantly, lol...

So do you have Lydia with you? She's nice, and carries stuff.

@Jimmer-jammer Good! ok, that's the one I was thinking of. Nothing will trigger it now, but much later in the game, if you're following all the side quest paths, it will be usable at some point. Did you already get nettlebane? That old hag gave me some trouble when I first went there, had to do some other stuff and come back stronger. Have you been to High Hrothgar yet? There's a road just to the east of where the hag is that is probably the easiest way to get there. (Just North, or uphill, from Helgen) Not to rush you! Man, now I want to dig out the game and play again.

@Jimmer-jammer

Hmm...you're not talking about the 3 standing stones are you? Mage, Thief, Warrior?

Let me think...if you've been playing as long as I think you have, and you've been to Whiterun, would I be right in guessing that you've killed your first dragon and are angling for a way up the mountain to High Hrothgar? Are you behind Riverwood? Like, on the opposite side of Riverwood then where Bleak Falls Barrow is? There are only about 3 places I can think of where that could happen, and one of them IS back there. If it's where I'm thinking, (could you be more descriptive?) it is probably one of the places where you have to follow a questline and have in your possession an item which lets you activate it. More details?

Sad? Sad.

@Deanster101

Not really clear on how a game made you sell your system, but like you say, to each their own. If you really gave Fallout 4 a fair shake and didn't like it, then I'm sure I wouldn't like whatever games you like, either. To each their own.

@Korgon

Fingers crossed. It's amazing how much better they've made ME1 look, and they've made some real improvements on getting around in the Mako, too. I hope that can translate into a more positive future for ME5!

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

@Blacksmith1985

No Skyrim, my thoughts exactly. I just can't see that many people wanting to go back to this game to make it financially feasible. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm sure I won't be revisiting this, didn't really even care for it the first time around.

I haven't played it yet, because I'm impressed with it's graphics and want to wait to see it on PS5.

That said, since when have you had to actually play a game to spew some mindless babble about it on PushSquare? Therefore, I give it a 7. It's too short. Not enough tall lady. Over all, I would rank it somewhere between 1 and 8 in the overall cannon.

@KingPev 😎

Mom passed along her great taste in games. Shame about the shipwreck, though..

@KingPev

You are my long lost twin.

I try to track Starfield rumors, and it seems like a pretty safe bet that it's going to be shown at E3 in a month. Most of those same rumors have it pegged as a holiday release THIS year. Some factor in Covid and say early 2022. Either way, right around the corner.

How do you measure how successful Starfield will be? I loved the post (#160) by @Richnj on this, great post and you saved me a lot of typing. I'd add a few things, though.

Bethesda has always been a PC/Xbox developer first, dedicating most of their original development time on the old single player classics to that platform, and then porting over to PlayStation, with mixed, and I admit, sometimes horrible initial results. Their games are big, rich, complex system driven affairs that will always be a bit buggy on release. That's ok. There are bad games that are bug free, and great games that sometimes due to their complex systems and multiple play methods and sheer scope and ambition, tend to stumble out of the starting gates.

Bethesda is returning to single player, and Todd has acknowledged in multiple interviews that ESOL and 76 were experiments into MMORPG territory, and the team didn't know what they were getting into. In some of these same interviews, he stressed that Starfield was a return to Bethesda's heyday, in the grand old single player form.

Some zealots won't believe it, but Bethesda for a large chunk of the masses IS a system seller. Maybe not yet, because there is no game yet, but once Starfield releases, it's going to persuade many people, myself included, to buy an Xbox. It will also up the subscription membership. Just because Microsoft is big doesn't mean they are stupid, and I'm willing to bet they had a pretty good idea of what they were getting into when they bought Zenimax.

@clvr
👍
"There are many who pretend to despise and belittle that which is beyond their reach."

@Salt_AU Hope you remember this thread after the games come out. You can use it to shame yourself with.

@most of you

We'll see how well Starfield and ES6 sell. You are an idiot if you don't think they will do well.

@ApostateMage

I wanted blonde too, but when creating, it seemed like the hair color went from brownish into grey, instead. I'm thinking now I should have turned it up to the lightest, maybe it would have looked blonde once I got to the Citadel. Now I've got a Shepard with a hot face, mousey brown hair, and glow in the dark skin. Playing as a Vanguard, and I'm thinking I've got to do better when I go for a tech-ish playthrough.

@KingPev

Haha, glad it wasn't just me! I'm playing as a space vampire at this point.

@RavenWolfe81

Fallout 4 is great, you should play it.

@Westernwolf4 You and me both.

That's just going to make it the most expensive game I'll ever buy at a whopping $570.00.

@ApostateMage

Yeah, I think mine's a little too pasty white when I look at her now, but I'm too far in to want to do it over. Hoping there's a chance for some revisions at the start of 2,. She looked great on the ship, but she don't like sunlight at all.

@RaZieLDaNtE Hey Bud!

You really have to hand it to some of those old Bioware writers. Some of the stuff they come up with just sticks with you! Glad you're jumping back in, I have to say, it's actually better than I thought it was going to be, everything's been beautiful compared to the original release, and it runs like butter. And it really just brings back warm feelings from more than a decade ago. A real pleasure to play. Have a good weekend!

@gollumb82

Thanks! Now HURRY UP, THE SHIP'S LEAVING!

I've taken passage on the Frigate class Starship Nostalgia. Hearing the crew speak of places like the Attican Traverse, or the Skillian Verge, or even the Perseus Veil, it's hard to describe the emotions and memories that go through me.

Good Gaming to you, folks!

Big. Fat. Yes.

To those of you saying you're waiting for a sale, these are 3 of the best AAA games ever made with the best Science Fiction story in all of gaming. For $20 each. The way I look at it, they're already on sale, and priced to move!

@naruball

Yeah, in the long run, our best friends may end up being the people who DO spend money on costumes and the like, if that helps blunt the cost for the rest of us.

@naruball

I agree with most of your points. It's just scary how close these things are to becoming absolute monopolies. XBox just recently tried to double the price of their subscription, and it kind of shows you how they're thinking. As each of these giant companies coax more and more people into their digital universes, they gain more and more control over their pricing situation. Sure, there's a limit the market will bear, but if that limit ends up being higher than you or I are willing to pay, the end result is we've been priced out of the market and have to choose our games very carefully. I don't know. It's a fun argument, anyway, so thanks for that.

@naruball

Thanks for clarifying. What I meant is that if Sony is allowed to conduct a digital monopoly in the future, they will see no reason not to test just how much people WILL pay for games. And that number might end up being surprisingly high. Everyone complains about high prices. Heck, as consumers it's almost our responsibility to. But not many people when pressed would give up gaming. They'll make a lot of noise, but they'll end up paying.

@ORO_ERICIUS Thanks

I broke my own rules, and bought this digitally, and on a pre-order too. Usually I don't like to buy full-price games digital, and only use it for super sales. Also, I try to resist hype and not pre-order anything. So much for all of that on this one!

@Weebleman

Thanks, that seems to be the solution. I don't have the app, but I guess I should look into getting it. I understand I can claim PS5 games that way, too, even though I don't have one yet.

@naruball

Sorry, that makes no sense. Edit: It makes a little more sense now that you edited it.

As everything turns more towards digital sales, it plays itself perfectly into a home-brewed monopoly for Sony on the PS Store. If that ends up being the only place you can buy, they can charge pretty much whatever they want, 'cause where else are you going to go?