Mass Effect 3 - Mass Effect 1 and 2 "just a preamble"
 

This is a throw-away piece but Eurogamer has some comments from BioWare Edmonton General Manager Aaryn Flynn, who says Mass Effect 3 is the "Superbowl" while the first two entries were "regular season of American Football matches". Anyway, a bit on creating the finale:
More information.

:rolleyes:

Mass Effect 2 was the best game they ever made, according to themselves - and now it's just one part of a preamble?

That would mean Mass Effect 3 will change the world as we know it, right? ;)

Well he's quite right about ME2 - the story didn't go anywhere, you end up pretty much exactly where you left off in ME1.

Should that surprise us though? They did the exact same thing to DA:O when they started hyping DA2.

Oh nonononononono.

At the end of ME2 you ended up in bizarro land.

The game was actually a bit of fun. Not really an RPG, but still not bad…….until that ending.

ME2 was entertaining as a predictable "experience" shooter, but let's just say I don't agree with Bioware that it was the best game they'd ever made.

I liked ME2 overall, but there's no denying the story is very thin. It doesn't really lead anywhere.

There was a story?

(and that's coming from somebody who have 6 different character playthroughs with the game.)

Technically, absolutely. The rest is very subjective. I'm sure they're proud of their work.

There were many small stories. Then there was the climax, which personally I didn't think was that bad. But the main story arch did not move forward very much, true.

So if ME3 is the superbowl, what is the halftime show?

If they'd said "it's our best technical achievement", I suppose it would make more sense.

Personally, though, I think something like NWN is much, much, much more technically impressive.

The Unreal engine seems to work quite well for most developers, and I didn't see much in ME2 that stood out.

Won't deny that it looked great, but I didn't see anything that went beyond games like Gears of War, Bioshock, Batman AA, and games like that.

To me, they're all similar on a technical level and from an art direction viewpoint.

Very competent and smooth, but that's ultimately not my primary concern when playing a game.

10 years? I must have missed Mass Effect Zero.

Any time a company comes out with a new game it's their best game ever….until the next game comes out. Somehow I don'tthink a game would sell that well if they marketed it as "kind of ok, but not as good as our others".

Presumably they started developing ME 1 quite a while before it was released to the public … ;)

Yeah, I can see them going "Well, umm…it didn't quite turn out the way we envisioned it, there wasn't enough time to make the new dialogue system work properly so we removed it. I mean…nobody really cares about dialogue anymore right? And some other content had to be removed too, basically umm…most of the game. But yeah, it's still playable. Kind of."

Working on ME1 since 2001? Come on.

Only way that statement makes sense is if that guy considers KOTOR's production to be part of the ME line.