User blog:TheUnknown285/Things You Do and Don’t Want from ME4

For me:

Want


 * A good, compelling story.
 * A compelling premise. ME3 was the first and only game that I stood line for at a midnight launch.  I did that not for graphics or gameplay but to experience the Reaper War.  By comparison, my biggest problem with Dragon Age II was that there was no real impetus tying everything together.  Have a real purpose that goes beyond just being a day in the life.
 * Emotion. Mass Effect has made me laugh, given me goosebumps, and almost made me cry.  I want more of that.
 * Great characters. One of the biggest draws about Mass Effect and Dragon Age is in the interesting characters that you fall in love with.
 * Dialogue. Mass Effect is full of great lines from the funny, to the badass, to the epic, to the touching, to the profound.


 * Dragon Age: Origins-style morality where each squadmate has their own personality and will react differently to your actions and words. (I don’t mean to scrap paragon and renegade but to add to it so that your squadmates have their own preferences).


 * Hazardous environments. I thought Haestrom in ME2 was so cool.  Same for the hazard version of Firebase Ghost in ME3.  Take it ever farther.  Have cold slow down your reflexes to the point where you freeze.  Have heat cause hallucinations.  Have wind affect your aim.


 * Do something with dark energy. Tie up that dangling plot line.


 * Bring back Lift.


 * The way buffs for enemies stack in ME2. For one thing, I liked the way the bars looked stacked on top of one another.  I also liked how you could use skills like Throw on Geth Primes once you’ve destroyed their shields and armor.
 * On that note, severely limit enemies that are immune to inertia-based powers like Throw and Pull, those that have armor bars representing health. Why can’t I throw a Geth Prime anymore when I was able to do it in the previous games?  Why can’t I throw a Banshee?
 * Maybe make it so your Throw/Pull/Lift ability has to be at a certain level before it will affect a given enemy.


 * Bring back heavy weapons from ME2. I missed my Collector Particle Beam in ME3.


 * Diversity of character models and skins. Show us more females, more children, fat salarians, drawf krogan, etc.


 * Side missions that are a hybrid between ME2 and ME3. ME2 was great about having side missions that were different in terms of visuals and objectives while ME3 was great about tying them into the purpose of the main story (instead of being an unrelated detour).


 * Different mission types. Add in things like stealth missions, space combat, hand to hand combat, vehicle chases, detective work, puzzles, etc.


 * Loyalty. Incorporate ME2’s system where squadmates have outside concerns that must be addressed in order to help them achieve their greatest potential and help ensure the best outcomes.   Add in Dragon Age: Origins where companions can reach a crisis point where they may walk out on you or even attack you if you’re not making good enough progress or do something they find unconscionable.


 * Squadmate interactions. I love the party banter in the Dragon Age games.  I also liked how squadmates will move around on the Normandy in ME3 or through Kirkwall in DAII.


 * Music. I absolutely fell in love with the music of the ME series and listen to tracks from it on a daily basis.


 * Epicness. Stuff like the conversation with Sovereign in ME1, the Reaper fleet in ME2, or the fleets arrive scene in ME3.


 * Mixture of weapon systems. Have some weapons be able to run on only heat sinks while others use the auto cooldown feature.  Also have some newer (more expensive) weapons be able to use both.

Don’t Want:


 * ME1-style “exploration.” It was the same damn environments over and over again with little meaningful variation.


 * ME1-style “customization.” I hate inventory management and having to check all the time to see if this gun or armor is marginally better than the one I have and then having to do it for all of my squadmates.   It also killed the individual looks of the


 * First Contact War. It was a brief conflict with few real battles limited to a certain area and a certain enemy faction.


 * Playing as Shepard’s kid. This cuts out all gay Shepards and all unromanced Shepards (because there would be no child), all female Shepards except for those that romanced Liara (because the child would have otherwise died with Shepard and Liara is the only one that could carry female Shepard’s child), Miranda romances (because she’s sterile), and Taliromancers (because genetics).  So we’re left with Liara romancers and male Shepards who romanced either Ashley or Jack.


 * Bringing back Shepard. You’ve already resurrected Shepard and cloned Shepard.  Don’t be cheap and keep doing it.


 * The Reapers somehow surviving Destruction. Don’t make this like the fifth movie of a horror series where the monster comes back again despite killing him before.


 * Dragon Age II’s morality system. People are most likely to follow you when you either agree with them on everything or are the antithesis of everything they stand for.


 * Dragon Age II’s romance system. Just like the morality system, your companions are most willing to jump your bones when you go against everything they stand for or agree with them 100%.
 * All romance options being bisexual. I don’t have a problem with there being bisexual or gay romance options, but have variation.  Take the time to craft characters with different desires.


 * Swords, whips, and bows. It’s a sci-fi game with guns.  It’s one thing to have an omniblade as a backup weapon.  It’s another for enemies to charge at people who have guns while carrying bionic whips.  It seems like something where making a cool design overrode logic.


 * More focus on multiplayer than single-player. I have gotten the feeling that Halo games are overly geared toward multiplayer while single-player is too short.  I am not a big multiplayer person, and I certainly don’t like having single player end after 15 hours.


 * Hubs. It seemed a little cheap they way they were done in ME2.  There are probably trillions of planets in our galaxy and somehow two recruitment missions, a loyalty mission for another character, and most of an entire DLC take place on a single planet.


 * Unskippable cutscenes. One complaint that seemingly got lost in the furor over ME3's ending was how annoying the last spot of gameplay was.  My ass got owned by Marauder Shields or the Three Husketeers multiple times.  So I had to go through that damn loading screen and cutscene over and over again.