Mass Effect, Online? (Art Discussion)

[Coleman]

I know I'm probably going to get flamed to death by die hard trekies who might be round these parts, but the recent screens make this game look a lot like mass effect.

I obviously know it is very different but the artistic style is very similar. Which to me, is awesome, but does anyone else get the same feeling, and what are your thoughts on the current art direction of the game?

[bjwalle1]

I know I'm probably going to get flamed to death by die hard trekies who might be round these parts, but the recent screens make this game look a lot like mass effect.

I obviously know it is very different but the artistic style is very similar. Which to me, is awesome, but does anyone else get the same feeling, and what are your thoughts on the current art direction of the game?

In my opinion Mass effect was just a cheap imitation of Star Trek lol.. not trying to bash you, but star trek has been around for over 50 yrs. How long has Mass effect been around??

But you are right they are probably very similar.

I hope that STO learns from any failures Mass Effect had. :)

[Swea]

cant coment on mass effect only seen maybe one clip of it and only reason i saw that was cause it was linked to me. As to what i think of the art style of STO, looking very good thus far especially for something thiey're trying to get to run on a variety of systems. Looks very good IMO :)

[Whoppin]

In Mass Effect you weren't able to fly your ship, just specify destinations. I wish you could get in a dog fight in Mass Effect.

[horzaman]

To be honest i don'tsee how long trek has been going is relevent to how this unreleased game's art style does look kinda similar to a (great) game that has allready been released :P

To me the art direction is very "pastelly" if you guys catch my drft. My impression is they are turning away from any gritty feel to this game. Which is a good think, for a bright new future we should get more pastel shades, rather than dark 'n grim.

Which to be honest is why the two games look similar, they ar eboth trying not to look so serious perhaps?

Also i don't think Mass effect is that similar to Trek, only if that they're both based on star ships. Mass effect is far less utopian, what with Sheppard trying to make humanity more of a player in th eintergalactic powerstruggle (well my sheppard did anyways :D)

howeve ri love all the screen shots that have been produced so i am happy :D

[andrewprofit]

I know I'm probably going to get flamed to death by die hard trekies who might be round these parts, but the recent screens make this game look a lot like mass effect.

I obviously know it is very different but the artistic style is very similar. Which to me, is awesome, but does anyone else get the same feeling, and what are your thoughts on the current art direction of the game?

I get that feeling to from the foot combat 5 man teams with personal shields. I dont really see how you could make it look different from mass effect. If you are settled on 5man teams and personal shields.

Anyway mass effect is a great game much much smaller in scope than what STO is doing. Mass effect lacked ship battles, it also only had some 30 ish missions. STO has over 200 poi at this point from what I have heard and who knows how many proceedurally generated worlds to explore.

Mass effect is probable a good model for a Space mmorpg since all the missions are pretty much like tutorials like wow missions. If you failed a mission in Mass effect just go back to the last save. If you fail in STO just go back to the closest respawn point.

One thing I will miss from mass effect that will not be in STO is the voice acting. Its too bad its so resource intensive to do voice acting efficently I found it to be very enjoyable.

[DarkShrike]

This sort of strikes me the same as people claiming that "The Vampire Diaries" is a rip-off of "Twilight". Yeah they both have teenagers and vampires but guess which one has been around longer? (not that The CW ISN'T capitalizing on the current success of Stephanie Meyers works by utilizing something that has been around a bit longer. But what are we all to do in a post-Buffy world??? )

In general I find that a lot of SF related art borrows heavily from previously available content. Just be glad it's not based on the tv sets of the original series :)

[cipher_nemo]

Mass Effect came out on the Xbox 360 first. There was no initial PC release. They came out with a PC version later, but I made a personal pact years ago to refuse to play any game that was initially designed for a console.

That was its failure in my book. PC is the only way for me... I don't want anything to do with console games.

[Unshra]

What I find funny is how the original poster was talking about the "artistic style" in reference to the graphics and yet most of the posts are talking about how the IPs are different. Please do not let your inner fan boy cloud your eyes regarding the question, it is not a Star Trek Online is like Mass Effect comment it is the graphics of STO remind the original poster of Mass Effect and seeing how artistically Mass Effect was a beautiful game that should be taken as a compliment.

As for my opinion I will go as far as saying no I do not see the similarities as and I will reserve why as I am not in the mood to deal with others that would twist the reasoning into some form of attack even if it is not. :p

Glad you like the art direction Coleman and with beta starting soon (tm) we should start seeing more screen shots. ^_^

[cipher_nemo]

Please do not let your inner fan boy cloud your eyes regarding the question (...)

That's just not necessary.

[Pyrceval]

Man, folks round here definitely could stand to learn some reading comprehension skills, and I don't mean just the replies to this post but others as well. He was referencing the artistic style on the ground, and he is right, there is a similarity in the art style Cryptic chose here to the game Mass Effect (which, was a fantastic game, btw, just so you all know) ARTISTIC STYLE not IP or anything like that, the two IPS are vastly different.

[cipher_nemo]

Man, folks round here definitely could stand to learn some reading comprehension skills, and I don't mean just the replies to this post but others as well. He was referencing the artistic style on the ground, and he is right, there is a similarity in the art style Cryptic chose here to the game Mass Effect (which, was a fantastic game, btw, just so you all know) ARTISTIC STYLE not IP or anything like that, the two IPS are vastly different.

I think others went off into IP and other areas because they're just expanding the discussion within the thread. I don't see any problem with others doing that, and I certainly wouldn't insult them about their "reading comprehension" skills as you did. That's uncalled for.

[mezlabor]

I think the art direction sucks. It looks like WoW in space.

[cipher_nemo]

I think the art direction sucks. It looks like WoW in space.

Mass effect or STO?

Sort of a simplistic comment either way.

[DarkShrike]

I think the art direction sucks. It looks like WoW in space.

hmmm.... while I don't believe that this is really a fair comparison there is some reason for the style of art used in the game. Keep in mind that, like WoW, they want to make this game accessible to as many levels of player hardware as reasonably possible.

I actually think the graphics look MUCH better than WoW. It's kind of like they took ST:THe Animated Series and updated the art to be more in line with anime today (note - not AS good as anime mind you since that would cause hardware requirements to creep up). Plenty of eye candy for me to take in and enjoy!

[Cormoran]

Artistically i think they look very different, particularly on the ground. You could see the pores on shepherds skin, in sto the faces dont seem to be nearly so textured. Theres a more artistic feel to the STO character models aswell whereas ME went for a more realistic look to body shape. The same applies to the ground, Mass effect the worlds look almost real, in sto it's more artistic. About the only place i find any similarities are in space where they both seem to be going for a somewhat real look. However thats an easy thing to do with mechanical looking things, a sheet of metal tends to look like another sheet of metal in games.

In my opinion Mass effect was just a cheap imitation of Star Trek lol

That's like saying any sci fi space show/game is a cheap knockoff of trek, if you'd actually bothered to play it you'd see how different the two are. For one mass effect isn't about a hopeful future, mankind isn't exactly master of his domian, other species hold more power than them and all of them are trying to use technology that they can barely comprehend . to me that seems very different to trek.

[ETSstarfleetromulan]

If the game seems to look a bit like mass effect hurray for the team that made this game. When I played Mass Effect it had a very polished atmosphere and space-like atmosphere.

[AaronH]

One of the things I liked about Mass Effect is that it took certain typical trekkisms and turned them on their head. For instance: Earth is considered an overpopulated poluted slum, while many alien worlds are pristine paradises.

Overall though the look of Mass Effect and that of Star Trek are very different. Mass effect ground architecture is based around thick stoney architecture and towering spires. Overall mass effect interiors tend to be minimilist with very fiew decorations and displays, most of their monitors and signage is holographic.

In STO we have scene movement towards some of these trends, and their are definately similarities between the animation styles. The use of personal shields, the melee attacks, they do bear some similiarities, but that is about where it ends.

[thefrayl]

The ground based portion of STO does remind me of Mass Effect, but only a little bit. Which is to be expected, because in the beginning Cryptic said that ground would be similiar in style to ME or Tabula Rasa (Without the aim to shoot mechanics, though).

Space is a completely different story. As others have said already, you can't literally fly your ship in ME. All you have is a star map that you hop around to get to the ground based locales.

[thefreshjedi]

I know I'm probably going to get flamed to death by die hard trekies who might be round these parts, but the recent screens make this game look a lot like mass effect.

I obviously know it is very different but the artistic style is very similar. Which to me, is awesome, but does anyone else get the same feeling, and what are your thoughts on the current art direction of the game?

I think this is almost a compliment, since I thought Mass Effect was a very nice game, that being said it also was lacking a lot of stuff too, that I wish the Bioware team had added. Like ship-to-ship combat, or even different ship choices. Then it would have been a Star-Trek rip off in my opinion. But the game was pretty solidly built.

-avery

[Flatfingers]

Interesting question.

I played the PC version of Mass Effect, and so far the artwork for STO hasn't reminded me of ME.

"Minimalistic" is pretty common in games when it comes to "stuff" other than buildings, trees, and mobs -- it's hard to justify putting "someone lives and works here" kinds of things in an area if you're making an action game, since most players will just run-and-gun past it all to get to the next shiny thing. (Plus there's the usual frame rate issue.) So ME and STO both showing few signs of being a lived-in environment is probably more a natural coincidence than an imitation.

Simplistic gameplay as a direct consequence of being designed to support console controllers -- if STO winds up being guilty of that -- will probably also be just a coincidence.

Personally, I'm wondering whether the main difference will be in the maturity of the storytelling. Despite its console origin, ME contained a deep and emotionally mature story. We don't know that STO won't also be enjoyable by adults, but so far nothing beyond action-oriented gameplay has been revealed. So that might or might not be a point of difference between the two products.

At this point, I don't see any reason to think that any distinctive elements of Mass Effect have been copied by Cryptic for Star Trek Online, but STO's not out yet.

(Side note: I'm pretty much with you on the console thing, cipher_nemo. There's a lot I could say about this, but not without serious thread driftage, so I'll just say that ME was one of the rare games that was both designed for consoles and unforgivably delayed for the PC that IMO still wound up being worth playing on the PC.)

--Flatfingers

[Trowa824]

Can we move this thread to the right place where it post to be.

[Admiral-Darren-Wright]

Well off topic, i saw the normandy get destroyed and the new ship for the new game and its awesome

[Gadebalran]

Interesting question.

Personally, I'm wondering whether the main difference will be in the maturity of the storytelling. Despite its console origin, ME contained a deep and emotionally mature story. We don't know that STO won't also be enjoyable by adults, but so far nothing beyond action-oriented gameplay has been revealed. So that might or might not be a point of difference between the two products.

--Flatfingers


I hear you about the storytelling side there. In my experience in various MMOs though, alot of players just grab missions and hit the objectives as fas as they can without bothering to slow down to read the story elements, which is a bit sad. I really noticed this in CoH when grouped up with random people. When new content came out, most folks just tried to race through it as fast as possible and I was always getting yelled at for taking the time to read to story elements. Alot of the missions and story arcs were pretty fun and interesting, and you could tell they put some time into fleshing those out.

[DanaDark]

Well, quite honestly, if you make ANY game, it WILL always look like some other game that is already out. It is completely unavoidable.

Graphics so far are decent in my mind. Not too realistic since they seem to be wanting to go for a lasting appeal (although I still prefer realism). And the colors are a bit too bright for me, I still enjoy the idea of a darker space, not jam packed with pastel colored nebulas, look at our night sky... pretty simple... not picasso.

But, these to me, are minoor things, nothing thats going to make me hurle the game out the window. I will give it a shot no matter where they take the game. In the end, it depends how I like the FINISHED product.

I cannot, will not, and shall not, make a final judgement based on a couple of screenshots and a rare video here and there all from ALPHA stage.

Near end of Open beta... then I can give a better judgement.

Eitherway... dudes... its Trek... what has always made Trek great? The Fans. So the REAL quality of this game kinda depends on us.

[mirkrim]

Mass Effect came out on the Xbox 360 first. There was no initial PC release. They came out with a PC version later, but I made a personal pact years ago to refuse to play any game that was initially designed for a console.

If you've got the Xbox version that's cool, but if you only game on your PC and haven't played Mass Effect, you're seriously missing out. I promise you it is an excellent game.

[mirkrim]

Personally, I'm wondering whether the main difference will be in the maturity of the storytelling. Despite its console origin, ME contained a deep and emotionally mature story. We don't know that STO won't also be enjoyable by adults, but so far nothing beyond action-oriented gameplay has been revealed. So that might or might not be a point of difference between the two products.

Having deep, compelling, mature stories is Bioware's strength. I think this area is where Cryptic needs to break new ground if they want to truly compete with SWTOR - especially when you consider that Bioware is putting full voice acting into their game.

Exciting ship combat and bridge officers do not Star Trek make, IMO. In the end it's about the quality of the story.