Sex Scenes In Mass Effect

Posted on 23 June 2008 by FoxTwo

One of the more notorious parts of the game is definitely the promise of “mature” or “adult-oriented” scenes. First off, let me just state that it’s nowhere near as raunchy as many would expect, and certainly “tame” compared to the infamous “easter eggs” of Grand Theft Auto.

Besides, Bioware is in the business of making RPGs, not sex games.

Below are a couple of video clips showing the “sex scenes” available in the game. They may not be the only ones, since I have never played through Mass Effect with a walkthrough. All my playthroughs have always been through exploration and trial-and-error.

This is a scene where you can get very early on in the game, even before you leave the Citadel on your maiden flight as the captain of the Normandy. In my experimentations, you don’t need a high charm or intimidate skill to trigger this scene – merely to choose the dialog that says “Uh, thanks I think”.

This clip shows the more “famous” scene in the game. You get to this part when you finally steal the Normandy and head out to the Mu Relay to stop Saren from getting the Conduit in Ilos. This is the part where some players may have female characters and it will still “happen” if you never stopped the romance sub-plot in the game. You can actually search Youtube for this sex scene and see all the various variations that can take place.

In both cases, you can see that the actual deed is “suggested” rather than shown, although in the second clip, it’s more obvious what was going on. It’s certainly gratifying to see that some mature themes are presented in games nowadays. We have certainly come a long way since the early days of Karateka and Lode Runner, where we push square pixels around on the screen.

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Why You Should Play Mass Effect 3 Times

Posted on 19 June 2008 by FoxTwo

Like most RPGs, you can play Mass Effect any way you want. Like most RPGs, no matter what your actions, the main quest is pretty “linear”. You can be good or evil and you’ll still complete the main quest in the intended way.

The added “push” for Mass Effect is that your character has a reputation at the start when you create him/her. Choose from “War Hero”, “Sole Survivor” or “Ruthless”. That is the basis of my statement, that you should play it 3 times. Yes the majority of the game will be the same, the sidequests will be the same, but with each reputation you choose, a different and unique sidequest will show up when you next dock at the Citadel after heading out to space.

It might be me just imagining things, but it appears that Mass Effect seems to be easier to resolve situations without bloodshed if you have a high intimidate skill early on in the game. For instance, this is my 3rd playthrough and this time around I’m playing a “ruthless” character. This time I slotted points into my Intimidate skill (to be “in character”) and when I ran across the same sidequests as before, suddenly I could resolve the situation without fighting or killing anyone, even if I intimidate them to be “in character” to be ruthless or a “bad ass”.

As an example (Spoiler alert!), there’s this mission to go to a biotic cult compound talk to Major Kyle. On my first playthrough, I had to kill him and then fight off the whole compound.  On my 2nd playthrough I was a “War Hero” so my character was “good”, and I had a maxxed out my “Charm” skill at the same point in this sidequest too. Even so, it still ended in a bloodbath at the compound. Only my 3rd time around, I intimidated him and the situation ended up with him surrendering peacefully.

My only gripe for now, is that it’s so hard to get “Renegade points”. To complete the quests in Feros for example, and to get xps, you need to finish the food, water and power sidequests. When you complete those, you get “Paragon points” instead. So if I don’t do those quests at all, how do I get the equivalent “Renegade points”? The quests just remain…. undone. No xps, no paragon points, definitely no renegade points.

Well I’m still trying to be a bad guy, or at the very least, “ruthless”, to get the job done no matter what the cost, but Renegade Points seem harder to come by than Paragon ones.

Mass Effect is one of the few games I replay more than twice. It’s definitely worth the money, and every time I replay through with a different character, I do find something new to do.

And before any of you suggest it, no I have not played it with any cheats yet. No I do not have a walkthrough. Yes it’s “less efficient” but you have more fun finding out stuff and exploring.

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Assassin’s Creed Performance, Revisited

Posted on 11 June 2008 by FoxTwo

A couple of months back, I was playing Assassin’s Creed and had major performance issues. I wrote a couple of posts about it, and resigned myself to the fact that I had to play with 7 frames per second at best.

To recap, here’s the video from the first time I installed the game, and lowered all settings to LOW (or minimum) in the game:

Here’s another clip, after an “eureka moment” where I increased the graphics settings to “Medium”, ie Graphics Quality 2, Graphics Detail 1. It was better, and the fights were “faster”.

So, after yesterday’s realisation that cleaning out the CPU heatsink and fan helped with Mass Effect, I went back into Assassin’s Creed to see how it fared. When I went in, I was amazed at how much better it had become. I even upped the graphics quality to 3 and detail level to 2.

Remember, all these, on a 5 year old Single Core P4 3.0Ghz.

Yeah you can say it’s very playable now. I only wished I had known or even thought about cleaning out the CPU heatsink and fan 2 months ago. I would have had a much better experience playing Assassin’s Creed. As it is, I spent a large part of yesterday just running around the cities killing guards on the profile that had completed all memory blocks (and hence had all weapons and skills unlocked).

So moral of the story – getting new drivers doesn’t always fix your problems. Cleaning out the CPU heatsink and fan does!

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