David Hingtgen

Zoe's mom is an idiot.

It's still faster than the Mako, where you might need to spend 5 mins going around/across a mountain, just to find one tiny deposit. I can scan multiple planets in 5 mins. Also--mid 20's completion? I'm sure it can be done, just like ME 1 can be done in 7 hours, if you skip EVERYTHING that you don't HAVE to do. But skipping all the major sidequests and characters and upgrades kinds of defeats the whole "RPG/story" aspect.

There is, but it's not THAT much faster. Just to make sure--you don't scan WHILE moving the cursor? That is very slow. The best method is to move cursor, scan real quick, move cursor, scan real quick. Kind of "dot" around the planet. If there's anything worth actually probing you'll get a spike, THEN move the cursor while scanning to maximize the spike. Anything that method will miss, will only be a small deposit anyways. Or in short---I constantly move the thumbstick, but only briefly "blip" the L-trigger for a split-second scan. Scanning is instantaneous---if there's anything in the area worth getting, it'll show up in .0001 secs and the "trace" takes several seconds to fade. I would say a planet is 4 or 5 "blips" tall. I just constantly rake the cursor up and down, blipping the L-trigger along the way. And with a small amount of R-thumbstick often to rotate the planet, so that my vertical tracks cover different swaths. Also, a small factor that adds up---the planets naturally rotate. So rotate WITH them, not against them with the R-thumbstick. And of course, if the planet doesn't start out as rich or good, don't even bother. (unless Element Zero is mentioned in the description---eezo is like 1 in 15 planets or so, so if you find any, scour the planet and strip it bare even if there's not much to start with)

I'll keep it short. 1. Xenogears. Best story, best music. 2. Valkyrie Profile. 2nd best story, tied for best music. Maybe 3 could be Mass Effect (as a whole) for story/gameplay.

I think it's second only to Macross Plus. As for 13-year-old? Maybe. You'll know by the 1st ep if you think it's ok.

I haven't heard much yet, but I've only done 3 loyalty missions. Having played ME 1 sveral times, there really never was THAT much dialogue between characters outside of cutscenes. DA:O had much more. I figure ME 2 will be like ME 1 in that regard. Also, there's a lot more characters to choose from, so it'd be harder to write for EVERY possible combination. A decent exchange between Tali and Grunt starting his (though I think that was more simply arriving on the planet the first time than actually his mission) 32 hours? Hmmmn. I've got a ways to go to get to that "ultra-cool revelation" then. (the big one today just couldn't be the BIG reveal of the entire game, it simply wasn't enough--and it was too quick IMHO)

New ep tonight, Mandalorians.

Stupid question I thought of. British pronunciation of "pad". Will iPad and iPod sound near-identical when spoken with a British accent?

No Legends Dev, but found Animated Arcee.

I think CoryHolmes may be talking about the big reveal I just got today. 'cuz I had never even suspected such a thing, and no one had even whispered a guess AFAIK. It's the first really big reveal of the game. BeyondTheGrave---the game is apparently very picky about profiles/consoles/HDD. If anything was changed at any point during the run or since that save was made, ME 2 probably won't accept it. (thus, I'm not sure my Paragon Shep will be accepted--I'll see later) PS---a full install takes 12.4 gigs. Which is quite a lot for us 20GB HDD users! (since only 13.7 or so are usable). I was clearing out Oblivion saves to make room (they're 17MB each)

It's got little fins. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mp0yd6no7B4...player_embedded

I might have to do an ultra-quick "female paragon" play of ME 1 to set up what I want to do. (casual+level 60=enemies die quick) PS---if someone comes across a pic of a FULLY Renegade Femshep, I'd like to see it. (I bet someone's got one already, but I dare not search for it, for I'm certain it'd be in a thread/forum just full of spoilers)

Armor options are still very limited, and I have every party member now. Anyways--I don't think I'm going to be able to see how max Renegade looks. Paragon seems to "counter" it. And it's almost impossible to avoid ALL Paragon points. Mainly, I got a big boost just from importing an ME 1 character, where it's quite easy to have a LOT of points in both categories. Anyways, I must have JUST gone over the threshold for one full "bar" of paragon points, as my FemShep now looks like she did a few hours ago. Thus, I think it's clear that's there's only a few distinct "stages", and that it's the sum of Renegade and Paragon. (thus, even if you maxed Renegade but had a lot of Paragon points, you wouldn't look very Renegade). Maybe I should have used my level 51 character--she was PURE renegade I think and thus wouldn't have had any Paragon points to start and I could probably have gotten so few it'd never "count". PS--I'd heard that starting from scratch is actually a fairly renegade story, with the council dying in ME 1. True?

It's faster, I'll say that. Anyways---I want Eclipse armor too. All the enemies have the cool-looking armor that I want.

Scan planets, you'll get 10x from them what you get on missions. And don't bother with anything other than a "big" hit on the scanner.

Yeah, there's a few VERY expensive things on Omega. Anyways---I still haven't found alternate gauntlets or shoulder armor yet. I'd like to have the Blue Sun's armor. It looks awesome---and the female version is almost a perfect hybrid of "typical" light/medium armor from ME 1. I just hit the next "stage" for "how a Renegade looks" and it took a surprising turn, and is much more obvious---to the point that I'm surprised there's no dialogue lines about it. (true, only KOTOR 2 even mentioned how your appearance can change when you're evil, and that wasn't even a Bioware game). I may go "all the way to see how it looks, but pay to fix it right before the last mission."

Yeah, ME 1 had a crouch toggle. Didn't use it much then, but now it'd be much appreciated.

I've heard it's possible, but VERY difficult. Like if you miss 1% of enemies/codex/sidequests through either of the runs it won't happen. A LOT of people (like me and probably you) end up at level 59 in run 2. Know what's REALLY annoying? Start your third run at 59, and just blow through plot as fast as possible. Ignore ALL sidequests, just acquire Liara as fast as you can. You'll be amazed (and irritated) at how much XP is heaped on you just for the beginning plot points (yet not given at the end for killing Geth Colossi). You can get like 200,000 pts in an hour, and have Liara in your party. Then the entire rest of the game is another 200,000 or so. I think someone calculated that 59 to 60 (or 58 to 60) was the same as going from 1 to 42.

Yeah, that's why I PM'd you when I saw you were getting close. Odds are there's not enough enemies left in the game to get it. And see my post above for what you'll get. (there may be more, but I haven't heard of anything)

Cam Clarke doesn't do the codex---that's Michael McConnohie(spelling?) PS---gah, total voice identification fail for me. Um, let's see, non-spoiler way to describe. "The artificial voice you hear the most" is quite famous to modern/recent sci-fi fans, but I totally didn't recognize it despite knowing that person was voicing someone in the game. I'll blame the fake echo/distortion effect. Spoiler version: PPS---gah, voice ident fail two for me. Fairly early game spoiler (generally the first planet you visit once you have a choice) ME 1 save initial bonuses list, as far as I've found out: Winning at level 40/50/60 will give you 2/3/5 levels to start out with. and 3/4/5 extra squad points. Having the rich achievement (AKA SPECTRE gear) gives you 100K credits to start with, and possibly the 5000 materials. Having a relationship with someone may/may not alter the opening scene.

Yeah, I think "voice actor guest appearance" is pretty much not a spoiler. It wasn't even mentioned who the character was. But in the future I guess we should spoiler those too in the future. Anyways, I wanted to mention more but the site went down: 3. Dialogue. It just rocks. If you liked DA:O banter etc, this is better. Truly LOL a lot of times. (well, if you're a renegade at least---some people REALLY hate you) Also, ScreamMan--where'd you hear that? I've already skipped some dialogue from "right before a fight I kept dying in". If anything dialogue goes slightly faster, since there seems to be a glitch where the last word or two is occasionally clipped by another character starting their line early.

Might as well start discussing positives: 1. Characters look better. If you import a Shep, they'll look better than they did. Might be just the hair, maybe they smoothed out some polygons, maybe the revamped the basic textures. But they look better. 2. Going Renegade is "visible". I won't describe/spoil any more than that, other than to say, a certain something I first thought was a graphical glitch, I think will become more prominent as my Femshep continues punching out reporters. And it's cool.

The helmet used to auto-remove for important dialogue if you had it equipped, so you could actually see Shep talking. Now it doesn't, it always stays on if you have it equipped. (I'm talking standard N7 armor---DLC armor always has it on period--which I also don't like---Shep would look very cool in Blood Dragon armor with the helmet off) So I'm playing without a helmet. PS---already a game update, but I didn't notice anything different. Only real issue/bug I've seen is that scrolling some text boxes with right-stick is IMPOSSIBLE to read all the lines--it just jumps from top to bottom, if the box is a certain size. (also, left-stick and d-pad is too slow to scroll through the codex)

I like ME 1 better, gameplay-wise. ME 2 blows it away for cinematics, but I much prefer the powers/armor/weapons style of the first. I think asides from Shepard, everyone is "locked" into their default armor/appearance. I liked altering my party's appearance and stats. Also, so far, every armor upgrade for Shep has sucked, appearance-wise. I want LESS bulky and sleeker armor, not even bigger and more angular. It already looks like heavy to start with, I want medium/light not "massive". (not as light as what Miranda's wearing, but what Femshep has now would practically be overkill for Ashley).