I wasn’t even going to touch ME1again out of fear that it wouldn’t hold up, and I was afraid of being disappointed after Alex hyped up the ME1 on the cast. I’m 10 hours in and I haven’t regretted a single second. Alex is smarter than I expected, fascinating.
i dont think they really understand it not trrying to meme or anything but unless you really relate to the main characters you will not appreciate that show
What I mean is that Evangelion is one of those shows you either 'get' or dont get, and from what they have said in the past they dont really seem to 'get' it
@@nueks_2764 Yeah as someone who has yet to be grabbed by it, really can't explain it, just couldn't get into it. Though I did like how nightmarish one of the movies is haha
I remember reading that in ME1 the devs designed the Normandy's interior to deliberately echo that of a submarine (given its stealthy credentials), so I think your comments on it being a warship in comparison to ME2's glossier private Normandy are spot on.
this game has a special place in my heart, even tho I played 2 and 3 before it. one comment (under the noveria soundtrack video here on yt) always stuck with me when talking about this game : "in mass effect 1, they don't drop you on a combat zone, they drop you *in a place.* a livin breathing world." you get a sense of context and intimicy for the place, it's people, why you are here and what you're fight for. even the enemies serve some purpose to be there and aren't *just* random mooks to mow down
I think that the combat in ME1, with the exception of the encounter outside of Liara's dig site, is genuinely excellent. I always play as a soldier and the different weapons feel great when you get good ones and figure out the idiosyncrasies. I love it.
Keyboard and mouse is also definitely the definitive way to experience the game, regardless of the people in the community who insist controller is as good.
The story is easy to describe: It's about a dude/lady named Shepard who's flying around the galaxy with their alien buddies/ potential lovers trying to stop a space racist from bringing space lobsters to our galaxy and ending all life as we know it.
My understanding was the reapers make a reaper out of each species they wipe out, which is why they all look different etc. So there would be a human, krogan, asari reapers etc
Nah, for the most part, only the history and knowledge of a species that has been harvested is uploaded in the form of a new reaper. The physical form almost always embodies their original creators, as its the most efficient form to serve their purpose. With the exception of the human reaper that was being built in ME2, to my understanding its because humans have had the greatest impact on the cycle in Reaper history, inspiring the reapers to give one a human form until it was promptly destroyed before completion.
Your Gift video made me realize that your room isn't actually dark and sleep-inducing It's just the lighting on your main camera The smartphone footage looked cozy and bright imo Edit: This video has nicer warmer lighting imo but it's still very flat and dark, I think it's the camera settings
5:33 I get what Alex means but I find this very interesting. I'd argue that, past the 64 generation, most games are on even footing with their modern competition but maybe that's only true of certain genres. RPGs and Rhythm games from the ps2 era certainly compete with their modern counterparts but that's probably not true of the old COD games. I feel that it's true of NES games that very few actually hold up by modern standards so maybe it's just in the eye of the beholder.
If you guys read (like a nerd) Dune is a sci-fi series i think you would both enjoy. Its been incredibly influential and has a depth of worldbuilding and complexity on par with lord of the rings if not more. It explores everything from agriculture, free will, religion, to long term evolution and genetic modification. From what you guys were saying with the later, there is clear inspiration in mass effect
Hey hey hey.... Dune is definitely more complex and deep than mass effect... its DUNE. And i dont feel like Dune inspired mass effect... because Dune should've inspired mass effect because of the AI vs humanity stuff of the bulterian jihad etc, but in the end Mass Effect is really more like the Matrix movies in terms of how it addresses the AI problem. I mean, in my opinion Dune touched the AI problem best of any science fiction, and its not the main plot of the series.
@@johanretard3615 Well YEAH i just wrote that from a general comparison stand point for deep worldbuilding and dont actually think Mass Effect is on the same level as Dune (Im actually upto God Emperor at the moment so still got a fair bit to go) Dune is so influential you can trace its lineage into things that likely dont know their being influenced and theres some general weighty sci-fi concepts carried across, if done fairly differently. Mass Effect does seem alot more like a space opera The Matrix but hey, i wouldn't know havent played it
Unsure if I wish they would have let you skip the boss fight after talking saren into ending himself. Feels thematically satisfying but they probably would have wanted so alt boss which would have taken too long to make or establish
Back for another comment. I just love this trilogy so excuse my repeated involvement. The galaxy-exploration in Mass Effect 2 scratches my astronomy-loving itch. Exploring systems is quick and easy, central stars are visibly different from each other (they're all a white sphere of the same size in ME1, whether the star is referred to as a red dwarf or a blue giant), and every planet shows a usually-interesting description alongside cool stats like distance in AU from its parent star and what the atmosphere composition and pressure is. You can't land on as many planets as before, but ME1 didn't have the ability to really pull it off in 2007 so it was probably wisely scrapped in ME2. Also, in ME1, orbital distance in AU isn't listed for 95% of planets, and there's no real in-game way to track which planets and systems you already checked out. Planet listings look less polished and consistent than they do in ME2 I might be the only person alive who was thrilled with the quality increase with regards to discovering planets in ME2 versus ME1, but I had to get this off my chest nonetheless. Astronomy fascinates me and the detail and intricacy with which planet descriptions are handled in ME2 is no small reason why I love that game
Yep. This will always be a classic. For how saturated that generation was with generic shooters, it was a really fresh game. Also did you guys ever do a female Shepard run? Wish more games had that option.
Hmmm, don't quite understand why they feel like ME3 was a downside in the series (other than Andromeda). Maybe if you only play the base game I guess I can understand somewhat, but with all the DLC I'd say ME3 stands proudly with ME1 and 2.
Mass effect is a star trek game if you removed everything proprietary to star trek, and added more depth. Every quest has the same moral quandaries as an ST episode, and is just as delightfully corny.
mass effect probably is the best iteration of the star-trek style sci-fi reality, and that's in spite of its major flaws and possibly because its one huge deviation from the star trek formula in having a classic totally evil unhuman enemy force who is threatening all life. Because the reapers are cool (their name is lame) until the 3rd game DLC explains them. They were best as something really creepy and foreboding that could really personify a threat to all living potential, structure, and progress like the forces of evil in Lord of the Rings and the Others in ASOIAF or the flood in halo. And I think having a quintessential force of evil is a good point for a story (even though its like completely against the ethos of the star trek style diversity equality empathy centric setting), but the problem is modern story tellers can't figure out how to have good win against evil, and so they epic fail or severely underperform at the finish line. But mass effect 1 is really good at establishing an epic evil civilizational threat. Mass Effect 1 does have the best villain and plot generally. BUT the fact that you have to pragmatically be all renegade or all goodie boy to get the best options at the end of the game is really lame, because thats not how real-life works or even fiction, its just a bad quality that's been tied to the medium. People can do badass things and merciful things, especially great characters in history and fiction, who have great acts of wrath and mercy that are based on more complex things that the general trend on if they have done nice things or mean things before, and ESPECIALLY sci-fi characters. A game about having choice limitting your agency to make choices with a red bar/blue bar symbol is just completely awful. I think it would be better if a game's choices were just philosophically and morally challenging compromises that stick with how you characterize the character you are playing. If you don't make all blue choices or all red choices, and hunt down as many red and blue choice side missions, you miss out on content or moments you get with red bar blue bar system. So the game isn't about making choices, its about cultivating red bar or blue bar and following the red bar blue bar system pragmatically, and if you don't min-max red bar blue bar, you are playing the game wrong. But also, cultivating red bar blue bar for pay offs is sometimes really cool, like the saren paragon suicide pay off. The biggest choice in ME 1 is if you save Wrex, but thats not a choice between two complex alternatives, its missing content if the player fails to complete side missions or cultivate their red bar blue bar system. Mass Effect 2 is actually the most disappointing because even though you are going on an "impossible suicide mission", you can just save everyone in your crew and get cool alternate costumes, and if you don't check the side mission or red bar blue bar boxes to do that, then you are a moron who isn't experiencing all the game content and will miss game content from all the returning characters in the next game. And the game literally doesn't allow you to have everyone die. On the "impossible suicide mission", the only impossibility is failure or even giving up everything for success. That's just so weak, i think. I think in Mass Effect 2, having everyone live should've been impossible, and having everyone die at the cost of victory should've be a possibility, and you would've had to make actual choices about this. Maybe I'm crazy and I could be the only one who felt this way, but I was excited for mass effect 2 because i saw it as a chance for a sci-fi universe to transition from the hope and progress of star trek to a bleak militaristic fight for survival against an existential threat that might be closer to starship troopers, and for character choice to become more dynamic and complex along with this. And I really like all 3 of the games, but i just saw the choice systems and philosophy of the choices in the games as lackluster. And im only ranting about this, because when mass effect came out, I thought other triple A western RPGs would be made that explored and built on the story interactivity aspect of the Mass Effect games, because continuous series story interactivity was such a huge exciting thing and i don't think there was a game before then that carried your choices across games and at the end of mass effect 3, i still felt like "okay, that had its problems, but it was just the first iteration of this huge interactive narrative RPG experiment" so i was excited for what was next in this new trend that i thought had alot more potential, and it never progressed passed that. The bright sides of mass effect 1, and i played the original on the hardest difficulty a few times, was rag-dolling enemies with biotic attacks or with the buggy running over the giant 4 legged creatures, or shooting the little guys with the cannon. And the ME 1 was pretty revolutionary and did raise the bar for modern western rpgs in a cool new direction...
There are over 5 ways to get the garage pass on Noveria. That quest is the best example of RPG choices and ramifications in the entire game
I wasn’t even going to touch ME1again out of fear that it wouldn’t hold up, and I was afraid of being disappointed after Alex hyped up the ME1 on the cast. I’m 10 hours in and I haven’t regretted a single second. Alex is smarter than I expected, fascinating.
Is Garrus as good at calibrations as they say?
No, he’s better.
0.32% better than what is even possible
For the ships and female Shepard, yes.
this kinda makes me wanna see a "Is Evangelion as good as they say" episode
Evan
i dont think they really understand it not trrying to meme or anything but unless you really relate to the main characters you will not appreciate that show
What I mean is that Evangelion is one of those shows you either 'get' or dont get, and from what they have said in the past they dont really seem to 'get' it
@@ratman8112 true i guess
@@nueks_2764 Yeah as someone who has yet to be grabbed by it, really can't explain it, just couldn't get into it. Though I did like how nightmarish one of the movies is haha
Whoever was in charge of BioWare when this trilogy was made really loved what they were doing
I remember reading that in ME1 the devs designed the Normandy's interior to deliberately echo that of a submarine (given its stealthy credentials), so I think your comments on it being a warship in comparison to ME2's glossier private Normandy are spot on.
that's actually a nice fun fact and makes sense
this game has a special place in my heart, even tho I played 2 and 3 before it.
one comment (under the noveria soundtrack video here on yt) always stuck with me when talking about this game :
"in mass effect 1, they don't drop you on a combat zone, they drop you *in a place.*
a livin breathing world."
you get a sense of context and intimicy for the place, it's people, why you are here and what you're fight for. even the enemies serve some purpose to be there and aren't *just* random mooks to mow down
I think that the combat in ME1, with the exception of the encounter outside of Liara's dig site, is genuinely excellent. I always play as a soldier and the different weapons feel great when you get good ones and figure out the idiosyncrasies. I love it.
Keyboard and mouse is also definitely the definitive way to experience the game, regardless of the people in the community who insist controller is as good.
You guys have to do 2 and 3 now. We all would love to see it
Is Mass Effect as good as they say?
Yes.
Never played Mass Effect. I know nothing about it. I’m only here for Jim’s stylish headwear.
The story is easy to describe: It's about a dude/lady named Shepard who's flying around the galaxy with their alien buddies/ potential lovers trying to stop a space racist from bringing space lobsters to our galaxy and ending all life as we know it.
@@averyaustin1 Did James write that plot?
bought legendary edition because of your discussion, on me2 now and loving it cheers for the recommendation
My understanding was the reapers make a reaper out of each species they wipe out, which is why they all look different etc. So there would be a human, krogan, asari reapers etc
Nah, for the most part, only the history and knowledge of a species that has been harvested is uploaded in the form of a new reaper. The physical form almost always embodies their original creators, as its the most efficient form to serve their purpose. With the exception of the human reaper that was being built in ME2, to my understanding its because humans have had the greatest impact on the cycle in Reaper history, inspiring the reapers to give one a human form until it was promptly destroyed before completion.
Loving these extra uploads
jamie looks strong af ngl
It isn't as good as they say
ITS EVEN BETTER
Your Gift video made me realize that your room isn't actually dark and sleep-inducing
It's just the lighting on your main camera
The smartphone footage looked cozy and bright imo
Edit: This video has nicer warmer lighting imo but it's still very flat and dark, I think it's the camera settings
Is VGHS as good as they say?
5:33 I get what Alex means but I find this very interesting. I'd argue that, past the 64 generation, most games are on even footing with their modern competition but maybe that's only true of certain genres. RPGs and Rhythm games from the ps2 era certainly compete with their modern counterparts but that's probably not true of the old COD games. I feel that it's true of NES games that very few actually hold up by modern standards so maybe it's just in the eye of the beholder.
I'd love a "is skyrim as good as they say?" Video
No
Maybe I missed something but why are there comments from like a week ago?
If you guys read (like a nerd) Dune is a sci-fi series i think you would both enjoy. Its been incredibly influential and has a depth of worldbuilding and complexity on par with lord of the rings if not more. It explores everything from agriculture, free will, religion, to long term evolution and genetic modification. From what you guys were saying with the later, there is clear inspiration in mass effect
Hey hey hey.... Dune is definitely more complex and deep than mass effect... its DUNE. And i dont feel like Dune inspired mass effect... because Dune should've inspired mass effect because of the AI vs humanity stuff of the bulterian jihad etc, but in the end Mass Effect is really more like the Matrix movies in terms of how it addresses the AI problem.
I mean, in my opinion Dune touched the AI problem best of any science fiction, and its not the main plot of the series.
Hey Nut 👋
@@johanretard3615 Well YEAH i just wrote that from a general comparison stand point for deep worldbuilding and dont actually think Mass Effect is on the same level as Dune (Im actually upto God Emperor at the moment so still got a fair bit to go) Dune is so influential you can trace its lineage into things that likely dont know their being influenced and theres some general weighty sci-fi concepts carried across, if done fairly differently. Mass Effect does seem alot more like a space opera The Matrix but hey, i wouldn't know havent played it
You boys would enjoy Babylon 5! Mass Effect took a lot of stuff from that series.
Unsure if I wish they would have let you skip the boss fight after talking saren into ending himself. Feels thematically satisfying but they probably would have wanted so alt boss which would have taken too long to make or establish
Back for another comment. I just love this trilogy so excuse my repeated involvement.
The galaxy-exploration in Mass Effect 2 scratches my astronomy-loving itch. Exploring systems is quick and easy, central stars are visibly different from each other (they're all a white sphere of the same size in ME1, whether the star is referred to as a red dwarf or a blue giant), and every planet shows a usually-interesting description alongside cool stats like distance in AU from its parent star and what the atmosphere composition and pressure is. You can't land on as many planets as before, but ME1 didn't have the ability to really pull it off in 2007 so it was probably wisely scrapped in ME2. Also, in ME1, orbital distance in AU isn't listed for 95% of planets, and there's no real in-game way to track which planets and systems you already checked out. Planet listings look less polished and consistent than they do in ME2
I might be the only person alive who was thrilled with the quality increase with regards to discovering planets in ME2 versus ME1, but I had to get this off my chest nonetheless. Astronomy fascinates me and the detail and intricacy with which planet descriptions are handled in ME2 is no small reason why I love that game
Shepard.
Wrex.
I remember using mission maker in IT at school is it even a thing anymore ?
Port hanshan's music is brilliant
Are you ok pal?
28:43
durr plant
Paragon and Renegade XLR cables
Short answer.
*YES*
Yep. This will always be a classic. For how saturated that generation was with generic shooters, it was a really fresh game.
Also did you guys ever do a female Shepard run? Wish more games had that option.
FemShep is the best female protagonist in video games
@@therealMrA honestly yeah, she can renegade interrupt me any day.
Yes. I should go.
It’s not only that in 2007 mass effect looked amazing, it was one of the few quality rpgs on 360.
I don’t even know what mass effect is but I listened to the whole thing 😔❤️
Now's a great time to pick it up
u really should’ve lowered the audio for gameplay
1:13:01 Not short enough imo.
Why is the same bunker on every planet?
Its actually laughable how much better ME1 gameplay is compared to ME2
Omni gel
"Remember when we could slap omni-gel onto anything?"
"That security upgrade made a lot of people unhappy..."
Yes. Next question.
regardless of whether or not it's as good as they say, there's no denying it had a Mass Effect on the Industry...
The answer is yes. Objectivley.
I really shouldn't have watched this now I want to impulse buy the Mass effect trilogy lol!
Alex has his shorts not short enough, definitely
Yo jar, you ever played Resident Evil 4?
Best rpg I've ever experienced. not played. Experienced. it's the most immersive realistic game I've ever experienced
Hmmm, don't quite understand why they feel like ME3 was a downside in the series (other than Andromeda). Maybe if you only play the base game I guess I can understand somewhat, but with all the DLC I'd say ME3 stands proudly with ME1 and 2.
objectively a downgrade
Is Brexit as bad as they say?
Mass effect 1 is a movie. Mass effect 2 and 3 are TV shows.
I'd describe them other way around, actually.
me1 is much more talky, nerdy and episodic while 2 and 3 are way more cinematic
Mass effect these nuts
The tunnel base on the Uncharted worlds are cring
Mass effect is a star trek game if you removed everything proprietary to star trek, and added more depth. Every quest has the same moral quandaries as an ST episode, and is just as delightfully corny.
Eh, not really. None of star trek's tone or themes are really here.
You guys have to do the other games i hope you didn’t shelve the idea
not gonna watch it rn just gotta play the games first
I dont know but it had a mass effect on me
mass effect probably is the best iteration of the star-trek style sci-fi reality, and that's in spite of its major flaws and possibly because its one huge deviation from the star trek formula in having a classic totally evil unhuman enemy force who is threatening all life. Because the reapers are cool (their name is lame) until the 3rd game DLC explains them. They were best as something really creepy and foreboding that could really personify a threat to all living potential, structure, and progress like the forces of evil in Lord of the Rings and the Others in ASOIAF or the flood in halo. And I think having a quintessential force of evil is a good point for a story (even though its like completely against the ethos of the star trek style diversity equality empathy centric setting), but the problem is modern story tellers can't figure out how to have good win against evil, and so they epic fail or severely underperform at the finish line. But mass effect 1 is really good at establishing an epic evil civilizational threat.
Mass Effect 1 does have the best villain and plot generally.
BUT the fact that you have to pragmatically be all renegade or all goodie boy to get the best options at the end of the game is really lame, because thats not how real-life works or even fiction, its just a bad quality that's been tied to the medium. People can do badass things and merciful things, especially great characters in history and fiction, who have great acts of wrath and mercy that are based on more complex things that the general trend on if they have done nice things or mean things before, and ESPECIALLY sci-fi characters. A game about having choice limitting your agency to make choices with a red bar/blue bar symbol is just completely awful. I think it would be better if a game's choices were just philosophically and morally challenging compromises that stick with how you characterize the character you are playing. If you don't make all blue choices or all red choices, and hunt down as many red and blue choice side missions, you miss out on content or moments you get with red bar blue bar system. So the game isn't about making choices, its about cultivating red bar or blue bar and following the red bar blue bar system pragmatically, and if you don't min-max red bar blue bar, you are playing the game wrong. But also, cultivating red bar blue bar for pay offs is sometimes really cool, like the saren paragon suicide pay off.
The biggest choice in ME 1 is if you save Wrex, but thats not a choice between two complex alternatives, its missing content if the player fails to complete side missions or cultivate their red bar blue bar system. Mass Effect 2 is actually the most disappointing because even though you are going on an "impossible suicide mission", you can just save everyone in your crew and get cool alternate costumes, and if you don't check the side mission or red bar blue bar boxes to do that, then you are a moron who isn't experiencing all the game content and will miss game content from all the returning characters in the next game. And the game literally doesn't allow you to have everyone die. On the "impossible suicide mission", the only impossibility is failure or even giving up everything for success. That's just so weak, i think. I think in Mass Effect 2, having everyone live should've been impossible, and having everyone die at the cost of victory should've be a possibility, and you would've had to make actual choices about this. Maybe I'm crazy and I could be the only one who felt this way, but I was excited for mass effect 2 because i saw it as a chance for a sci-fi universe to transition from the hope and progress of star trek to a bleak militaristic fight for survival against an existential threat that might be closer to starship troopers, and for character choice to become more dynamic and complex along with this. And I really like all 3 of the games, but i just saw the choice systems and philosophy of the choices in the games as lackluster.
And im only ranting about this, because when mass effect came out, I thought other triple A western RPGs would be made that explored and built on the story interactivity aspect of the Mass Effect games, because continuous series story interactivity was such a huge exciting thing and i don't think there was a game before then that carried your choices across games and at the end of mass effect 3, i still felt like "okay, that had its problems, but it was just the first iteration of this huge interactive narrative RPG experiment" so i was excited for what was next in this new trend that i thought had alot more potential, and it never progressed passed that.
The bright sides of mass effect 1, and i played the original on the hardest difficulty a few times, was rag-dolling enemies with biotic attacks or with the buggy running over the giant 4 legged creatures, or shooting the little guys with the cannon. And the ME 1 was pretty revolutionary and did raise the bar for modern western rpgs in a cool new direction...