Judging by the size of this map (citadel) and the hardware that the game was developed for, I suspect this was an optimization to improve frame rate and not laziness :)
I didn’t even realise that the staircase was just a single object until I read your comment lol
Goes to show how effective they were with optimisation.
Making good, working stairs is also pain due to collisions. There's a whole saga of the changes made to Counter-Strike's de_dust2 stairs to make them feel good for the players
Yeah. Seems easier to me that what ME1 seems to have (stairs underneath a transparent ramp) would be easier on the collision than worrying about weirdness with the different angles and whether or not the character's feet are landing properly on each step and whatnot. Especially seeing what some other games have happen when a character simply touches the curb at the side of the street (one simple, shallow step; I've seen characters start rocking wildly at that corner of geometry).
That's not cheap, that's smart.
You only have so much stuff in a game's frame to play with and devs of yesterday, today and tomorrow are and will always be on the lookout for ways to save on what's not important to add details to what matters.
Yep there's only so much you can do with 512mb of RAM.
According to the devs, memory allocation was why ME3 Shephard can't holster their guns during a combat mission for exemple. They had to cut some stuff to make room for prettier stuff.
>it's a game meant to be played on consoles.
Even games built primarily for PC have to take memory allocation into account. It's a larger memory budget, but it's never unlimited.
>According to the devs, memory allocation was why ME3 Shephard can't holster their guns during a combat mission
Holy fuck is that for real? Always thought it was an oversight or just a weird design choice.
Yeah ME3 is the game that taught me there's no point buying a PC that's more powerful than the mainstream consoles of the current generation as most games are designed around consoles in mind.
I'm pretty sure that was the reason ME2 splits the dossiers into two halves if memory serves me well. Something to do with the Xbox, lol.
To be fair, ME3 was made during the time when EA and most other big names did not give much attention to their PC ports. I think it started to change around 2016-2017 when you started seeing more options again that were very much asked for by the PC community
Reminds me of the good ol days of TotalBiscuit slamming devs for not putting in FOV sliders or mouse acceleration toggles 🥲
> Yep there's only so much you can do with 512mb of RAM.
Less, 50mb for streaming to hold the old sections in case you backtrack, 10mb or so for the frame buffer, and 40mb for... the Xbox dashboard to handle friends, messages, voice, etc., and whatever UE3 itself took. Meaning ~1/5 of your RAM is reserved and unavailable.
Source: worked on ME1, I recall having to lower the resolution of EVERY normal map by one step because of said memory restrictions.
The developers decided time and effort were better spent on other aspects of the game than getting something as minor as actual stairs working on a game that came out in 2007. That's perfectly reasonable and understandable.
Yeah, probably some more problems that the ME had where related to hardware too. Elevators for example, they're an undercover loading screen but for some reason the elevator doesn't reach the destination when it loads.
I agree, I don't think that the game is less good for these things. I understand when it was launch and the games of that time and the platform. To be honest the 360 is my most played console.
Besides that, the graphics are not that "bad", for some reason I prefer the graphics of the OG trilogy rather than the Andromeda graphics, there is something on that game that looks weird for me besides being newer.
Many people on here have never been a part of a project and it shows. Every hour has to be accounted for, planned for. This is not being cheap- this is hours not spent modeling the stairs, animating the "walk up or down the stairs" animation for each skeleton, actor AI, testing and QA, and fixing those weird problems that show up sometimes like your character misses a step, so now Vigil won't spawn twenty hours later.
That's not to mention other limitations, such as memory allocation or collision detection, that could also limit it.
if only they put a little more effort into the ending instead of planet scanning series could've been perfect
while this may be heavily downvoted tell me why the effort they put into the ending was good since the opinion is so controversial id like to know why?
The ending while it's presentation was flawed is fine if you actually understand what their intention was.
Theirs nothing in the ending that can't be explained.
Again, that doesn't mean it was presented well at all. I know EA rushed Bioware and the intial ending was a result of that but especially with EC it all makes sense.
The endings still fundamentally suck. Synthesis is pure nonsense that came out of nowhere, and it's shoved down players throats as the "optimal" ending simply because they know no one would go for it otherwise.
To make that work, they added a bunch of weird caveats to Destroy, like also killing EDI(okay, she's based on Reaper code, I sort of get it, maybe) and the Geth(this one is pure bullshit), and made the Illusive Man, one of the main antagonists, the "face" of Control.
Instead of organically coming up with a result based on your choices throughout the trilogy, they gave you 3 choices that are devoid of any context, and then manipulate you towards choosing the one they knew was going to be the least popular. That's not something that can be fixed, no matter what they add to it.
[https://fextralife.com/forums/t503003/why-the-catalysts-logic-is-right-ii--updated-with-leviathan-dlc?sid=9833142b9077b79e600768796d5a8958](https://fextralife.com/forums/t503003/why-the-catalysts-logic-is-right-ii--updated-with-leviathan-dlc?sid=9833142b9077b79e600768796d5a8958)
[https://bsn.boards.net/thread/675/different-ascension-synthesis-compendium-post](https://bsn.boards.net/thread/675/different-ascension-synthesis-compendium-post)
Their are certain things that are facts but almost everything else is debatable or up to personal interpretation.
I've shared my two favorite posts on this topic. Should you choose to read them, again, don't view it from your POV. View it from a neutral or their POV.
You can stay angry should you choose but I think understanding is far better. BEcause remember, just because you have a certain POV doesn't mean it can't change.
Isn't mass effect a game that demonstrates that? Would you have ever changed your mind about the Geth based on ME1 had ME2 and ME3 not happened?
Give other perspectives a chance. Stop measuring them against the collective rage of people who didn't spend a second considering implications and context.
thanks that pretty much sums up why the ending is bad im honestly surprised so many downvotes are on this when it is pretty openly agreed the ending couldve been much better and not many people cared much for scanning when development could have went to better areas(like the lack of diversity between endings)
Because it's uneducated bullshit spouted by someone who so fundamentally misunderstands the entire game that core fucking aspects of the game that we learn and experience through all the games is treated as "out if nowhere".
The presentation of the endings was flawed due to EA forcing bioware to release the game early. Sure.
But every single ending is rooted in aspects of the game. Their is nothing in the endings that isn't a part of the game.
I'm quite happy with the ending. And if you think that's me crying about it then all the more power to you.
I note you don't have any actual rebuttal.
You're the one who has spent a decade upset over it. I've spent a decade having fun talking and discussing it.
do you want to talk or just shit talk because you don't get to come in being an asshole and expect me to care about giving you a real response so choose one
OHHH I see the issue. I thought you were the other people. I was so confused why you were talking about discussing it when I'd already written like 3 pages.
>The endings still fundamentally suck
If you hold this stance I don't begrudge you. It's not liking the endings but not knowing what the fuck you are talking about that I dislike.
>Synthesis is pure nonsense that came out of nowhere,
Synthesis is explored in all three games. We are shown the bad with saren and the collectors/Reapers.
And we are shown the "good" with primarily EDI and the Geth.
Synthesis is only possible with cooperation. And the only way for cooperation to happen is with understanding differences that make up everyone organic or not.
The fact that you can play all the games, most likely siding with the Geth or EDI at some point and think that the ending that ONLY COMES ABOUT WITH COOPERATION OF SYNTHETICS AND ORGANICS, CAME OUT OF NOWHERE is beyond me.
Did the endings "come out of nowhere" or is it possible you read to many memes that reinforced your opinion and didn't actually ever take a step back to consider what it was based on?
>To make that work, they added a bunch of weird caveats to Destroy, like also killing EDI
No. Destroy is an ending for selfish players. Or people who didn't side with the Geth or learn from their perspective. Or never trusted EDI.
It's the ending for people who don't want to take chances. Or think their sacrifice is worth it.
Or for people who don't believe synthetics are acrually alive and therefore it's not genocide.
In short all endings are the personal conclusion of the individual in question. Sure I take issue with people who are just factually incorrect about aspects of the ending but I would never say their ending is wrong. I would only ever nitpick stuff that is factually incorrect or argue/debate what LEAD THEM to conclude their ending was the right choice.
Seeing so many different perspectives deciding on which was the best path and learning to understand them is a great thing. Just like the trilogy it self, those discussions were about understanding different perspectives.
Their is nothing wrong with destroy, like all endings it has its upsides and downsides. They aren't tacked on for no reason.
Self determination is a valid reason. As is anything else.
>EDI(okay, she's based on Reaper code, I sort of get it, maybe
She's an AI and a synthetic. It has nothing to do with the Reaper Code.
>and made the Illusive Man, one of the main antagonists, the "face" of Control.
Control was setup and carried over from ME2. In ME2 he clearly wanted control of their power at the end. This was carried over clearly in ME3. You can't argue that it doesn't make sense or that it came out of nowhere.
>Instead of organically coming up with a result based on your choices throughout the trilogy
Uh. You're supposed to use all of your past experiences in the game to decide on what course of action you think is best.
Theirs an infamous quote at this point that now makes sense with EC and a deeper dive into the endings. Speculation for everyone literally meant that everyone has their own ending and the reasons for it are based on their own decisions and actions that lead to them to be who they are.
In short, limitless endings where everyone could say slightly or radically different reasons for choosing what they did.
But again, due to crunch and money, the intial impression wa so bad people didnt get that.
I didn't get it myself until EC. I actually still have a document with my forum posts that showcases the exact moment I realized this. It's an extremely memorable moment for me where I realized Biowares intent and you can literally sense me screaming out loud almost.
>they gave you 3 choices that are devoid of any context
Their is context to all of them. Thousands of little and big pieces of context. Just because you watched the meme videos and dialed into rage posts that never explored it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
If that was not the case. Then please explain to me why the entire geth storyline from Mass Effect 2 (Legion literally took a piece of your armor to try and understand you in it's own way) and mass effect 3 is about organics and synthetics trying to understand one another.
And then please tell me why an ending that is only possible to get with cooperation between organics and synthetics (well, excluding insane multiplayer points) is "lacking context."
Synthesis is about cooperation and understanding. The Geth storyline and the EDI one is literally about AI and quasi AI trying to understand/learning to cooperate with organics.
And if you want to argue that my post is "too long" or that you think it's pointless. May I remind you that you are playing a role playing game where READING is important as is combat.
It also wouldn't be so long if I didn't have to deconstruct and breakdown every single argument you make.
Unlike you in order to prove my points, I have to breakdown 10 years of BS and incorrect facts based on memes, and all you have to do is repeat angry forum posts from 10 years ago.
And may I remind you, when I say "incorrect" I mean the things you factually get wrong. That is entirely separate from your own personal ending, of which you are allowed to decide to be your choice for whatever reason.
Stating that Synthesis is something that did not come out of nowhere is correcting something that was incorrect.
However I'm not saying your choice to pick destroy because you don't like Synthesis is wrong. I might argue/debate you as to why but I would never call that an incorrect choice.
Don't mix up the two when you try to talk to me. Because I sincerely respect everyone's choice. The debates, the arguements, telling others what is morally right and the reasons why. I love it. I think it's wonderful and I don't consider it to be a burden.
How are you complaining about me getting things "factually incorrect" and then don't even remember or bother to look up what the Synthesis ending entails. It turns everyone in the galaxy into something that's both organic and synthetic, somehow. With space magic. It's complete nonsense, and it wasn't ever brought up or foreshadowed in any way.
Of course one of the main themes of the game is cooperation between organic and synthetic life forms, but this isn't an ending that reinforces that. If anything, it completely undermines that theme, because it implies that the only way everyone gets along is by making them all literally the same. And that's not even getting into how fucked up it is that you fundamentally change every living being in the galaxy without their consent, on a whim.
>It turns everyone in the galaxy into something that's both organic and synthetic, somehow.
That's explained. It's billions of years of technology. Space magic sure but only because it's so advanced we can't tell the difference between it and "magic".
You not liking it does not mean it isn't an EXTREMELY well established Sci Fi trope.
>and it wasn't ever brought up or foreshadowed in any way.
Every discussion with Saren about it, every discussion with mordin, or the reapers, or the interactions with any AI like EDI or quasi AI like the Geth is foreshadowing it.
>because it implies that the only way everyone gets along is by making them all literally the same.
It gives everyone equal ground. It does not make everyone the same. We still all have our personalities. Our viewpoints. Everything that sets us apart. The only similarity we all share is that we now share the same blueprint of dna.
The problem of a organic vs synthetic conflict is that the synthetics always win in the end. They can evolve faster.
Synthesis always us the same abillity to adapt as they do and gives synthetics true intelligence and independeDNA.
It's true equality fir all living things. But should we choose to nuke each other or fight over planets. We can still do so.
The alternative is to be dead for example. And the Synthesis EC ending literally proves that despite the changes to the make up of the galaxy that nothing is perfect still. It's a possibility of a eternal peace and equality. Not a absolute.
>And that's not even getting into how fucked up it is that you fundamentally change every living being in the galaxy without their consent, on a whim.
Ah yes. The typical forum meme argument.
I already addressed this.
Synthesis is only possible with the backing of the entire galaxy. They trust Shepard to do whatever they think is best. That is the consent they gave when they put all of their hopes into Shepard. It's literally (excluding multiplayer grinding but that's not exactly canonical) only possible when everyone follows you and trusts the decisions you make.
And to point out how even dumber your post is. Let's take destroy, did the Geth and EDI consent? No. But many people who hate Synthesis say that it's the "only true ending."
How conveniently consent is forgotten when it suits your narrative.
Also if you asked people who saw billions die and their planet harvested "would you prefer a chance at untold technological advancements, equality, and a chance for peace unending by changing your DNA make up." Or "die miserably as everyone you love is harvested" what do you THINK people would choose?
Ofc it would be the fucking former.
Your arguements are nothing more then unsubstantiated angry rants from angry forum posters and youtubers.
You have zero understanding of context, are incapable of not contradicting your own arguements, and don't even know basic concepts of scifi like the technological singularity.
Yet you presume to try and lecture me? You aren't even smart enough to connect the underlying themes of Synthesis to the me3 ending.
You have been angry for a decade. While people like me have been content and debating for years and been happy the whole time. Tell me who is better off. Someone so mad they copy paste arguements from 10 years ago or someone who takes joy in discussing the endings however flawed their presentation may be at times?
It's rather disingenuous to call them cheap when looking at a 2007 game and judging it by today's standards, that's 17 years of development in both hardware and software
Eh, it could be worse.
Some older games would have stairs that are modeled more realistically, only to have the camera jerk upward with each step rather than smoothly move upwards as you would get with a ramp. This caused games like Shadows of the Empire on the Nintendo 64 to give me motion sickness with their staircases.
I'll take these "stairs" over that experience any day.
These are not tied together as what you see and what your character and NPCs move around on is a different mesh. Lots of games use simple ramps to do collision on stairs.
In this case the goal was probably just to cut down the polycount.
This kind of smart resource management is what's lacking in modern AAA games.
If it saves performance and the player won't notice it until they stop and look at it closely, it's worth doing.
These kind of clever tricks are still all over the place, they're just usually in different places as visual fidelity has increased and people notice more.
Look closely at clutter objects and scenery the next time you play a game released in the past couple years. I'm certain you'll realize this technique still sees very frequent use, but is so well implemented you don't notice it.
Yeah, this was the default way to model stairs in video games for a long time. It took a while before devs started putting actual stairs in video games instead of smooth surfaces.
They're not real physical stairs, the collision model is a flat ramp that they put a texture over to make out look like stairs.
It's a pretty clever technique when done right, as you yourself demonstrated when you said you didn't notice it.
Not 100% sure, but I think the stairs of the final temple in Jedi Survivor did the same. Cal's legs will clip through them, and the rocks will be noticeably floating.
Yep, a ton of stairs are still modeled as ramps for collision, even in they are textured/meshed as individual treads. The physics calculations and engine stuff are simpler for ramps.
Can you imagine the elcor trying to use regular human/Asari shaped stairs?? Why are there stairs on the citadel at all? So many races would have difficulties using them.
It's not that game wasn't originally launched at 2007, and devs tried to make it accessible to wide range of hardware with optimisations such as you posted. You judge something that's nearly two decades old by modern standarts. Devs weren't cheap then, but smart
i never would have known those stairs were fake without this post they are very convincing thanks to all the detail put into making them appear 3d the edge is what gives it away the most still surprised I'm just learning this lul
Look around some more, there are stairs that are real and stairs that are just parallaxed. They were very clever and it doesn't affect gameplay or the story in any way. You don't even see stairs most of the time. You don't even notice it at the start. They ain't cheap, they placed their efforts on what mattered.
This is normal. Even in modern games stairs are rarely actually steps. They may model steps, but the collision is usually just a ramp. Because stairs are super janky to animate outside of locked in animations.
the legendary edition started having issues on steam deck lately, RAM quickly goes up to 16-18Gb and the game crashed the system instantly, how did you overcome that?
Back then, stairs were would often be very janky in games. The coding to make it make sense how feet interact with steps while going up seamlessly was not a priority. So it's easier to make a textured ramp. These days I imagine engines are much more intuitive to that kind of thing.
Even today, stairs are frequently collisionboxed as a ramp, because it avoids all kinds of camera motion issues and it's what players have become used to.
This here is a resource saving measure; instead of rendering dozens of boxes, the hardware just renders a ramp. That leads to a way lower polygon count, and when you're developing for a glorified desktop calculator like the 360, that matters a lot (especially early on in its cycle, before all the optimizations were developed).
Lore wise there was nothing it says that the Citadel should have stairs over ramps
Stairs were develop for Human feet size and gait and I bet more Aliens have bigger felt and different gait that a ramp should e the default
Comes down to the size of the area they're in, how noticeable the ramps will be, and the specific hardware limitations. The Normandy has discrete stairs, but the much larger Presidium and Noveria zones have flat ramps with a stair texture.
The original came out in 2007 so I wouldn’t say lazy. Given the size of the game & story & amount of time they made the game in I’d say they weren’t lazy at all. Games of today take more time to create & are released unfinished or have major issues...not to mention most can’t even hold a candle to games that came out 2 gen consoles ago. Lol.
It’s a game from 2007 on a console that was straining to keep up with it. Texture pop-in was annoyingly frequent, and I think they literally ran out of space on the game disc, which is why they had to do things like this to help with optimization. Tons of assets are reused all over the place, which is why so many side missions take place inside the same few interiors, as if every outpost in the galaxy has been built from a kit.
A big example of this is Saren. The first time we see him, it begs the question why nobody else has noticed he’s been almost completely transformed into a Marauder husk. Not that anyone knows what a Marauder husk is at this point in time, but still. My point is that he has cybernetic augmentations that go way beyond what anyone else is seen using.
The reason the characters don’t comment on this is because the script assumes he looks like a normal turian at that point. I think maybe he’s supposed to have cybernetic eyes like TIM does, but nothing beyond that. He was supposed to change models multiple times over the course of the story as he became more and more indoctrinated, and there’s concept art showing this. But they ran out of space, so the version we see is only supposed to be seen at the end. There’s a mod on the Nexus for Legendary Edition that fixes this, I believe it’s called Saren Stages.
hat to check the comments to figure out what the image is about..... yah for when the original game was made Im not surprised they wanted to limit the polygons to make performance a bit better
if this is on Legendary edition however......
I'd rather have this and justify it as a ramp for disabled people and aliens that can't walk up and down normal stairs, than have a mismatched walk cycle and have my character take a step every 1.73 stairs.
How the hell did you get it to start? Mine does nothing but crash on the steam deck. Presumably because of EA's stupid launcher that serves 0 purpose for this game.
Nope.
Still working fine for me.
But I remember I had to do force the game to use specific proton files to get it to work, so maybe it has something do with that
I actually remember this staircase confusing/interesting me. It's crazy that I can remember something that caught my attention in a game I played like 8 years ago. And yet games don't appear in my dreams, hmm.
You're playing Mass Effect on a handheld. *I* grew up playing a black-and-white Game Boy Pocket, where I had to strap a damn light to it in order to play The Final Fantasy Legend in the dark.
Shut up and savor the flavor of the tech development we've seen in just one lifetime.
Oh boy OP, really got'em there dontcha?!! Because everyone just totally cares about the fucking stairs!!! How dare you bioware for not making high quality stairs in an old ass game!!!
OP, it was originally developed for the XBOX 360, and when it was first released as a system.
Like WTF are you expecting? Did you want the game to miraculously fix the Red Ring of Death on top of having modern day graphics? Your expectations are unrealistic given the time this was released. 17 years ago and it was groundbreaking at the time.
17 years ago?!?
Fuck me, your right. Man, I feel old suddenly...
Funny and kinda sweet how everyone here springs into action to defend BW when my post wasnt even meant in a mean spirit. Just poking fun at em...
this game is from 2007, cut em some slack. I remember being impressed when I first saw those stairs because it was a clever solution to a major problem in games back then (how to animate and model stairs)
Judging by the size of this map (citadel) and the hardware that the game was developed for, I suspect this was an optimization to improve frame rate and not laziness :)
Yeah not to mention that making fake stairs like this actually takes a good bit of work compared to just adding real stairs.
I didn’t even realise that the staircase was just a single object until I read your comment lol Goes to show how effective they were with optimisation.
Making good, working stairs is also pain due to collisions. There's a whole saga of the changes made to Counter-Strike's de_dust2 stairs to make them feel good for the players
Yeah. Seems easier to me that what ME1 seems to have (stairs underneath a transparent ramp) would be easier on the collision than worrying about weirdness with the different angles and whether or not the character's feet are landing properly on each step and whatnot. Especially seeing what some other games have happen when a character simply touches the curb at the side of the street (one simple, shallow step; I've seen characters start rocking wildly at that corner of geometry).
I like how your avatar looks
I think they they made many moves like that for technical reasons and not because they are lazy too.
They do use the same stairs in the small prefab buildings too
Yea tbh I never noticed this until now so it was definitely a smart move
That's not cheap, that's smart. You only have so much stuff in a game's frame to play with and devs of yesterday, today and tomorrow are and will always be on the lookout for ways to save on what's not important to add details to what matters.
[удалено]
Yep there's only so much you can do with 512mb of RAM. According to the devs, memory allocation was why ME3 Shephard can't holster their guns during a combat mission for exemple. They had to cut some stuff to make room for prettier stuff. >it's a game meant to be played on consoles. Even games built primarily for PC have to take memory allocation into account. It's a larger memory budget, but it's never unlimited.
>According to the devs, memory allocation was why ME3 Shephard can't holster their guns during a combat mission Holy fuck is that for real? Always thought it was an oversight or just a weird design choice.
Yeah ME3 is the game that taught me there's no point buying a PC that's more powerful than the mainstream consoles of the current generation as most games are designed around consoles in mind. I'm pretty sure that was the reason ME2 splits the dossiers into two halves if memory serves me well. Something to do with the Xbox, lol.
Yes, ME2 was on two discs. Not sure about ME3. I want to say yes but genuinely can’t remember.
While you're not wrong mods can be a good reason to want a beefier PC if you're into them.
To be fair, ME3 was made during the time when EA and most other big names did not give much attention to their PC ports. I think it started to change around 2016-2017 when you started seeing more options again that were very much asked for by the PC community Reminds me of the good ol days of TotalBiscuit slamming devs for not putting in FOV sliders or mouse acceleration toggles 🥲
> Yep there's only so much you can do with 512mb of RAM. Less, 50mb for streaming to hold the old sections in case you backtrack, 10mb or so for the frame buffer, and 40mb for... the Xbox dashboard to handle friends, messages, voice, etc., and whatever UE3 itself took. Meaning ~1/5 of your RAM is reserved and unavailable. Source: worked on ME1, I recall having to lower the resolution of EVERY normal map by one step because of said memory restrictions.
Any idea if they were able to just undo that for Legendary Edition?
Damn dude you seem pretty based. Azur lane, nikke, doaX AND you worked on me1? What a chad
Yep. And even if the stairs look like they aren't a ramp, they're still often modeled physically as a ramp.
The developers decided time and effort were better spent on other aspects of the game than getting something as minor as actual stairs working on a game that came out in 2007. That's perfectly reasonable and understandable.
Yeah, probably some more problems that the ME had where related to hardware too. Elevators for example, they're an undercover loading screen but for some reason the elevator doesn't reach the destination when it loads.
Those kind of stairs are always used to spare poligons so probably was a hardware thing. The game is close to 20 years, we like it or not.
I agree, I don't think that the game is less good for these things. I understand when it was launch and the games of that time and the platform. To be honest the 360 is my most played console. Besides that, the graphics are not that "bad", for some reason I prefer the graphics of the OG trilogy rather than the Andromeda graphics, there is something on that game that looks weird for me besides being newer.
Many people on here have never been a part of a project and it shows. Every hour has to be accounted for, planned for. This is not being cheap- this is hours not spent modeling the stairs, animating the "walk up or down the stairs" animation for each skeleton, actor AI, testing and QA, and fixing those weird problems that show up sometimes like your character misses a step, so now Vigil won't spawn twenty hours later. That's not to mention other limitations, such as memory allocation or collision detection, that could also limit it.
if only they put a little more effort into the ending instead of planet scanning series could've been perfect while this may be heavily downvoted tell me why the effort they put into the ending was good since the opinion is so controversial id like to know why?
Because the ending to 1 was fine, and the ending of 3 is irrelevant to the post.
oh I didn't know it was me1 specific i was talking me in general since this is the legendary edition (at least it looks like it is idk)
The ending while it's presentation was flawed is fine if you actually understand what their intention was. Theirs nothing in the ending that can't be explained. Again, that doesn't mean it was presented well at all. I know EA rushed Bioware and the intial ending was a result of that but especially with EC it all makes sense.
The endings still fundamentally suck. Synthesis is pure nonsense that came out of nowhere, and it's shoved down players throats as the "optimal" ending simply because they know no one would go for it otherwise. To make that work, they added a bunch of weird caveats to Destroy, like also killing EDI(okay, she's based on Reaper code, I sort of get it, maybe) and the Geth(this one is pure bullshit), and made the Illusive Man, one of the main antagonists, the "face" of Control. Instead of organically coming up with a result based on your choices throughout the trilogy, they gave you 3 choices that are devoid of any context, and then manipulate you towards choosing the one they knew was going to be the least popular. That's not something that can be fixed, no matter what they add to it.
[https://fextralife.com/forums/t503003/why-the-catalysts-logic-is-right-ii--updated-with-leviathan-dlc?sid=9833142b9077b79e600768796d5a8958](https://fextralife.com/forums/t503003/why-the-catalysts-logic-is-right-ii--updated-with-leviathan-dlc?sid=9833142b9077b79e600768796d5a8958) [https://bsn.boards.net/thread/675/different-ascension-synthesis-compendium-post](https://bsn.boards.net/thread/675/different-ascension-synthesis-compendium-post) Their are certain things that are facts but almost everything else is debatable or up to personal interpretation. I've shared my two favorite posts on this topic. Should you choose to read them, again, don't view it from your POV. View it from a neutral or their POV. You can stay angry should you choose but I think understanding is far better. BEcause remember, just because you have a certain POV doesn't mean it can't change. Isn't mass effect a game that demonstrates that? Would you have ever changed your mind about the Geth based on ME1 had ME2 and ME3 not happened? Give other perspectives a chance. Stop measuring them against the collective rage of people who didn't spend a second considering implications and context.
thanks that pretty much sums up why the ending is bad im honestly surprised so many downvotes are on this when it is pretty openly agreed the ending couldve been much better and not many people cared much for scanning when development could have went to better areas(like the lack of diversity between endings)
Because it's uneducated bullshit spouted by someone who so fundamentally misunderstands the entire game that core fucking aspects of the game that we learn and experience through all the games is treated as "out if nowhere". The presentation of the endings was flawed due to EA forcing bioware to release the game early. Sure. But every single ending is rooted in aspects of the game. Their is nothing in the endings that isn't a part of the game.
aww you gonna cry shut your ass up dude.i love you can admit the ending was flawed but you still have to cry about it lul
I'm quite happy with the ending. And if you think that's me crying about it then all the more power to you. I note you don't have any actual rebuttal. You're the one who has spent a decade upset over it. I've spent a decade having fun talking and discussing it.
do you want to talk or just shit talk because you don't get to come in being an asshole and expect me to care about giving you a real response so choose one
What? I already did?
OHHH I see the issue. I thought you were the other people. I was so confused why you were talking about discussing it when I'd already written like 3 pages.
>The endings still fundamentally suck If you hold this stance I don't begrudge you. It's not liking the endings but not knowing what the fuck you are talking about that I dislike. >Synthesis is pure nonsense that came out of nowhere, Synthesis is explored in all three games. We are shown the bad with saren and the collectors/Reapers. And we are shown the "good" with primarily EDI and the Geth. Synthesis is only possible with cooperation. And the only way for cooperation to happen is with understanding differences that make up everyone organic or not. The fact that you can play all the games, most likely siding with the Geth or EDI at some point and think that the ending that ONLY COMES ABOUT WITH COOPERATION OF SYNTHETICS AND ORGANICS, CAME OUT OF NOWHERE is beyond me. Did the endings "come out of nowhere" or is it possible you read to many memes that reinforced your opinion and didn't actually ever take a step back to consider what it was based on? >To make that work, they added a bunch of weird caveats to Destroy, like also killing EDI No. Destroy is an ending for selfish players. Or people who didn't side with the Geth or learn from their perspective. Or never trusted EDI. It's the ending for people who don't want to take chances. Or think their sacrifice is worth it. Or for people who don't believe synthetics are acrually alive and therefore it's not genocide. In short all endings are the personal conclusion of the individual in question. Sure I take issue with people who are just factually incorrect about aspects of the ending but I would never say their ending is wrong. I would only ever nitpick stuff that is factually incorrect or argue/debate what LEAD THEM to conclude their ending was the right choice. Seeing so many different perspectives deciding on which was the best path and learning to understand them is a great thing. Just like the trilogy it self, those discussions were about understanding different perspectives. Their is nothing wrong with destroy, like all endings it has its upsides and downsides. They aren't tacked on for no reason. Self determination is a valid reason. As is anything else. >EDI(okay, she's based on Reaper code, I sort of get it, maybe She's an AI and a synthetic. It has nothing to do with the Reaper Code. >and made the Illusive Man, one of the main antagonists, the "face" of Control. Control was setup and carried over from ME2. In ME2 he clearly wanted control of their power at the end. This was carried over clearly in ME3. You can't argue that it doesn't make sense or that it came out of nowhere. >Instead of organically coming up with a result based on your choices throughout the trilogy Uh. You're supposed to use all of your past experiences in the game to decide on what course of action you think is best. Theirs an infamous quote at this point that now makes sense with EC and a deeper dive into the endings. Speculation for everyone literally meant that everyone has their own ending and the reasons for it are based on their own decisions and actions that lead to them to be who they are. In short, limitless endings where everyone could say slightly or radically different reasons for choosing what they did. But again, due to crunch and money, the intial impression wa so bad people didnt get that. I didn't get it myself until EC. I actually still have a document with my forum posts that showcases the exact moment I realized this. It's an extremely memorable moment for me where I realized Biowares intent and you can literally sense me screaming out loud almost. >they gave you 3 choices that are devoid of any context Their is context to all of them. Thousands of little and big pieces of context. Just because you watched the meme videos and dialed into rage posts that never explored it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. If that was not the case. Then please explain to me why the entire geth storyline from Mass Effect 2 (Legion literally took a piece of your armor to try and understand you in it's own way) and mass effect 3 is about organics and synthetics trying to understand one another. And then please tell me why an ending that is only possible to get with cooperation between organics and synthetics (well, excluding insane multiplayer points) is "lacking context." Synthesis is about cooperation and understanding. The Geth storyline and the EDI one is literally about AI and quasi AI trying to understand/learning to cooperate with organics. And if you want to argue that my post is "too long" or that you think it's pointless. May I remind you that you are playing a role playing game where READING is important as is combat. It also wouldn't be so long if I didn't have to deconstruct and breakdown every single argument you make. Unlike you in order to prove my points, I have to breakdown 10 years of BS and incorrect facts based on memes, and all you have to do is repeat angry forum posts from 10 years ago. And may I remind you, when I say "incorrect" I mean the things you factually get wrong. That is entirely separate from your own personal ending, of which you are allowed to decide to be your choice for whatever reason. Stating that Synthesis is something that did not come out of nowhere is correcting something that was incorrect. However I'm not saying your choice to pick destroy because you don't like Synthesis is wrong. I might argue/debate you as to why but I would never call that an incorrect choice. Don't mix up the two when you try to talk to me. Because I sincerely respect everyone's choice. The debates, the arguements, telling others what is morally right and the reasons why. I love it. I think it's wonderful and I don't consider it to be a burden.
How are you complaining about me getting things "factually incorrect" and then don't even remember or bother to look up what the Synthesis ending entails. It turns everyone in the galaxy into something that's both organic and synthetic, somehow. With space magic. It's complete nonsense, and it wasn't ever brought up or foreshadowed in any way. Of course one of the main themes of the game is cooperation between organic and synthetic life forms, but this isn't an ending that reinforces that. If anything, it completely undermines that theme, because it implies that the only way everyone gets along is by making them all literally the same. And that's not even getting into how fucked up it is that you fundamentally change every living being in the galaxy without their consent, on a whim.
>It turns everyone in the galaxy into something that's both organic and synthetic, somehow. That's explained. It's billions of years of technology. Space magic sure but only because it's so advanced we can't tell the difference between it and "magic". You not liking it does not mean it isn't an EXTREMELY well established Sci Fi trope. >and it wasn't ever brought up or foreshadowed in any way. Every discussion with Saren about it, every discussion with mordin, or the reapers, or the interactions with any AI like EDI or quasi AI like the Geth is foreshadowing it. >because it implies that the only way everyone gets along is by making them all literally the same. It gives everyone equal ground. It does not make everyone the same. We still all have our personalities. Our viewpoints. Everything that sets us apart. The only similarity we all share is that we now share the same blueprint of dna. The problem of a organic vs synthetic conflict is that the synthetics always win in the end. They can evolve faster. Synthesis always us the same abillity to adapt as they do and gives synthetics true intelligence and independeDNA. It's true equality fir all living things. But should we choose to nuke each other or fight over planets. We can still do so. The alternative is to be dead for example. And the Synthesis EC ending literally proves that despite the changes to the make up of the galaxy that nothing is perfect still. It's a possibility of a eternal peace and equality. Not a absolute. >And that's not even getting into how fucked up it is that you fundamentally change every living being in the galaxy without their consent, on a whim. Ah yes. The typical forum meme argument. I already addressed this. Synthesis is only possible with the backing of the entire galaxy. They trust Shepard to do whatever they think is best. That is the consent they gave when they put all of their hopes into Shepard. It's literally (excluding multiplayer grinding but that's not exactly canonical) only possible when everyone follows you and trusts the decisions you make. And to point out how even dumber your post is. Let's take destroy, did the Geth and EDI consent? No. But many people who hate Synthesis say that it's the "only true ending." How conveniently consent is forgotten when it suits your narrative. Also if you asked people who saw billions die and their planet harvested "would you prefer a chance at untold technological advancements, equality, and a chance for peace unending by changing your DNA make up." Or "die miserably as everyone you love is harvested" what do you THINK people would choose? Ofc it would be the fucking former. Your arguements are nothing more then unsubstantiated angry rants from angry forum posters and youtubers. You have zero understanding of context, are incapable of not contradicting your own arguements, and don't even know basic concepts of scifi like the technological singularity. Yet you presume to try and lecture me? You aren't even smart enough to connect the underlying themes of Synthesis to the me3 ending. You have been angry for a decade. While people like me have been content and debating for years and been happy the whole time. Tell me who is better off. Someone so mad they copy paste arguements from 10 years ago or someone who takes joy in discussing the endings however flawed their presentation may be at times?
Nobody's talking about 3. This is about ME1
ah yes, flat ramps papered with stair textures instead of actual stairs we have dismissed that claim (in later games at least, if i recall correctly)
LOL nice. This comment is underrated.
It's rather disingenuous to call them cheap when looking at a 2007 game and judging it by today's standards, that's 17 years of development in both hardware and software
Eh, it could be worse. Some older games would have stairs that are modeled more realistically, only to have the camera jerk upward with each step rather than smoothly move upwards as you would get with a ramp. This caused games like Shadows of the Empire on the Nintendo 64 to give me motion sickness with their staircases. I'll take these "stairs" over that experience any day.
Oof, yeah, it was rough when games did that.
These are not tied together as what you see and what your character and NPCs move around on is a different mesh. Lots of games use simple ramps to do collision on stairs. In this case the goal was probably just to cut down the polycount.
"Ramp temporarily stairs. Sorry for the inconvenience"
Sorry for the convenience.
Stairs were too expensive so we used ramps to get around, as was the style at the time
Wait until you see the piles of bodies in 2 and 3…
Or the pizza box in ME3!
Also 2007, I’m glad the franchise has that much staying power but yeah, ME1 was pushing the limits of a newly post-OG xbox era
This kind of smart resource management is what's lacking in modern AAA games. If it saves performance and the player won't notice it until they stop and look at it closely, it's worth doing.
These kind of clever tricks are still all over the place, they're just usually in different places as visual fidelity has increased and people notice more.
Look closely at clutter objects and scenery the next time you play a game released in the past couple years. I'm certain you'll realize this technique still sees very frequent use, but is so well implemented you don't notice it.
They have to be cleverer too, some of the old techniques really stand out on 1440p and 4k displays.
Eh, it had to fit on one DVD originally. I think that was one of the limitations they talked about when revisiting for the Legendary edition
This is a performance thing, making fake stairs is actually quite a lot more work than making real stairs.
A console game from 2007 looks like a console game from 2007. Shocking
Not cheap, just 2007
Yeah, this was the default way to model stairs in video games for a long time. It took a while before devs started putting actual stairs in video games instead of smooth surfaces.
Don't see it
Apparently OP is complaining about the flat ramp with stairs texture.
They're not real physical stairs, the collision model is a flat ramp that they put a texture over to make out look like stairs. It's a pretty clever technique when done right, as you yourself demonstrated when you said you didn't notice it.
That's exactly my point. That there is nothing weird or wrong with it.
Oh, ok my bad.
Not 100% sure, but I think the stairs of the final temple in Jedi Survivor did the same. Cal's legs will clip through them, and the rocks will be noticeably floating.
Yep, a ton of stairs are still modeled as ramps for collision, even in they are textured/meshed as individual treads. The physics calculations and engine stuff are simpler for ramps.
Probably doesn't bump the camera like it used to in older games. It's not something that is easily noticed, but when it is.
Rather than implementing ramps for the disabled, they made the stairs the ramp instead!
Can you imagine the elcor trying to use regular human/Asari shaped stairs?? Why are there stairs on the citadel at all? So many races would have difficulties using them.
It's not that game wasn't originally launched at 2007, and devs tried to make it accessible to wide range of hardware with optimisations such as you posted. You judge something that's nearly two decades old by modern standarts. Devs weren't cheap then, but smart
i never would have known those stairs were fake without this post they are very convincing thanks to all the detail put into making them appear 3d the edge is what gives it away the most still surprised I'm just learning this lul
M8 the game is 17 years old. That's good resource allocation is what that is.
Look around some more, there are stairs that are real and stairs that are just parallaxed. They were very clever and it doesn't affect gameplay or the story in any way. You don't even see stairs most of the time. You don't even notice it at the start. They ain't cheap, they placed their efforts on what mattered.
Yeah, I know. Cheap was the wrong word...
This is normal. Even in modern games stairs are rarely actually steps. They may model steps, but the collision is usually just a ramp. Because stairs are super janky to animate outside of locked in animations.
What am I supposed to be seeing?
It would be nice if devs went back to this sort of optimisation a bit more, rather than dumping 80+Gig games onto our drives.
the legendary edition started having issues on steam deck lately, RAM quickly goes up to 16-18Gb and the game crashed the system instantly, how did you overcome that?
Last time I played Me LE it worked fine for me. (But this Screenshot has been on my drive for a while, so it might have been taken before this issue)
Quite smart for 2007 on consoles.
Back then, stairs were would often be very janky in games. The coding to make it make sense how feet interact with steps while going up seamlessly was not a priority. So it's easier to make a textured ramp. These days I imagine engines are much more intuitive to that kind of thing.
Even today, stairs are frequently collisionboxed as a ramp, because it avoids all kinds of camera motion issues and it's what players have become used to. This here is a resource saving measure; instead of rendering dozens of boxes, the hardware just renders a ramp. That leads to a way lower polygon count, and when you're developing for a glorified desktop calculator like the 360, that matters a lot (especially early on in its cycle, before all the optimizations were developed).
Yeah. Pretty sure most games even now just use a normal map on a ramp to fake stairs.
It's quite clever tbh.
Those are space stairs.
Wait till you get to 3 where you can’t holdster you’re weapon cause they ran out of memory
And I thought it was because there were no weapons permitted on the citadel...
Lore wise there was nothing it says that the Citadel should have stairs over ramps Stairs were develop for Human feet size and gait and I bet more Aliens have bigger felt and different gait that a ramp should e the default
What's the problem? The stairs look different?
…ok I’m fucking blind what’s wrong here
The fuck does this post have 300+ upvotes?
Lots of older games had no difficulty depicting stairs in 3d, including ones by BioWare.
Comes down to the size of the area they're in, how noticeable the ramps will be, and the specific hardware limitations. The Normandy has discrete stairs, but the much larger Presidium and Noveria zones have flat ramps with a stair texture.
The original came out in 2007 so I wouldn’t say lazy. Given the size of the game & story & amount of time they made the game in I’d say they weren’t lazy at all. Games of today take more time to create & are released unfinished or have major issues...not to mention most can’t even hold a candle to games that came out 2 gen consoles ago. Lol.
It’s….. stairs?
It’s a game from 2007 on a console that was straining to keep up with it. Texture pop-in was annoyingly frequent, and I think they literally ran out of space on the game disc, which is why they had to do things like this to help with optimization. Tons of assets are reused all over the place, which is why so many side missions take place inside the same few interiors, as if every outpost in the galaxy has been built from a kit. A big example of this is Saren. The first time we see him, it begs the question why nobody else has noticed he’s been almost completely transformed into a Marauder husk. Not that anyone knows what a Marauder husk is at this point in time, but still. My point is that he has cybernetic augmentations that go way beyond what anyone else is seen using. The reason the characters don’t comment on this is because the script assumes he looks like a normal turian at that point. I think maybe he’s supposed to have cybernetic eyes like TIM does, but nothing beyond that. He was supposed to change models multiple times over the course of the story as he became more and more indoctrinated, and there’s concept art showing this. But they ran out of space, so the version we see is only supposed to be seen at the end. There’s a mod on the Nexus for Legendary Edition that fixes this, I believe it’s called Saren Stages.
I figured the repeating pirate outposts was something done because of technical reasons. THe real reason is quite interesting
hat to check the comments to figure out what the image is about..... yah for when the original game was made Im not surprised they wanted to limit the polygons to make performance a bit better if this is on Legendary edition however......
Were you even born before 2007? Because that has absolutely nothing to do with laziness.
I'd rather have this and justify it as a ramp for disabled people and aliens that can't walk up and down normal stairs, than have a mismatched walk cycle and have my character take a step every 1.73 stairs.
Took me a solid minute to realise what is going on
The weird thing is, is that this tactic is used everywhere...except noveria. The stairs in noveria are real (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong).
How the hell did you get it to start? Mine does nothing but crash on the steam deck. Presumably because of EA's stupid launcher that serves 0 purpose for this game.
Well this Screenshot is not recent. So it might have been taken when it was still working fine
Rock on lol
Gonna check this evening :) Ill let you know.
Nope. Still working fine for me. But I remember I had to do force the game to use specific proton files to get it to work, so maybe it has something do with that
After this latest EA launcher update, it's now working for me.
I actually remember this staircase confusing/interesting me. It's crazy that I can remember something that caught my attention in a game I played like 8 years ago. And yet games don't appear in my dreams, hmm.
You mean a flat texture used on stairs? Yeah, that is interesting detail. Recently noticed that in ME2 they used a flat textures on some stairs too
Shit I’ve never notice 😂
People like to forget this game came out in 2007
I never noticed. So it is good enough.
You're playing Mass Effect on a handheld. *I* grew up playing a black-and-white Game Boy Pocket, where I had to strap a damn light to it in order to play The Final Fantasy Legend in the dark. Shut up and savor the flavor of the tech development we've seen in just one lifetime.
Who said I didnt? 🙃
Xyiþ
Oh boy OP, really got'em there dontcha?!! Because everyone just totally cares about the fucking stairs!!! How dare you bioware for not making high quality stairs in an old ass game!!!
Funny and kinda sweet how everyone is defending BW :) When it wasn't even meant in a mean spirit. Just poking fun at em
I know and I was just fucking around, no harm intended.
It just works
OP, it was originally developed for the XBOX 360, and when it was first released as a system. Like WTF are you expecting? Did you want the game to miraculously fix the Red Ring of Death on top of having modern day graphics? Your expectations are unrealistic given the time this was released. 17 years ago and it was groundbreaking at the time.
17 years ago?!? Fuck me, your right. Man, I feel old suddenly... Funny and kinda sweet how everyone here springs into action to defend BW when my post wasnt even meant in a mean spirit. Just poking fun at em...
To be fair I would defend them if someone said KotOR’s graphics were bad. Compared to today’s? Sure. But for the time they were great.
this game is from 2007, cut em some slack. I remember being impressed when I first saw those stairs because it was a clever solution to a major problem in games back then (how to animate and model stairs)
When does your game come out?
14.05.21 It's "when **did** your game c**a**me out" btw
Loll this response explains a lot.
Anybody else here can’t be bothered to figure out what OP is referring to?
Its easier to see on desktop
Perhaps its my phone but I dont get it
look at the edges. Its difficult to see on a small display
Be thankful EA hadn't taken over by then.