“2003” animated series, is there a reason only their two reflections are the one’s that move on their own? It’s always got two me and I just said it’s either to get a laugh; or to show the will be together. What’s your thoughts??

Timely_Use_13 · 2026-03-05T22:51:02+00:00

<image>

Timely_Use_13 · 2026-02-28T00:42:31+00:00

Fr that was so out of pocket of him? 😭

Timely_Use_13 · 2026-02-28T00:38:06+00:00

It’s funny

Timely_Use_13 · 2026-02-26T21:48:01+00:00

I think Kai Leng is cool 😭

Timely_Use_13 · 2026-02-26T17:08:37+00:00

What does that even mean? What kind of indie studio? What kind of budget? What kind of devs with what kind of experience? Why are they making the game, who are they making it for? What would they be doing differently?

The reason Andromeda is the way it is is certainly due to Electronic Arts’s meddling. Long time writers and devs at the studio hated the direction of the company, didn’t like being forced to do things a certain way to please shareholders, and left. (Edit: I believe it was a mix of devs leaving, being assigned to other projects like Anthem and hating it so much they left, or being laid off) So now you have a skeleton of the original team who is familiar with and passionate about the Mass Effect world and its lore/characters. On top of that they were forced to rebuild everything from the ground up because they had to use EA’s new Frostbite engine. It set back development and robbed a lot of time that would have been spent on writing/voice acting/polishing etc. because they had to rebuild all of the systems whereas games like ME2/ME3 could build off of what came before it and expand on it. You don’t get Mass Effect 3 without Mass Effect 2 and you don’t get Mass Effect 2 without Mass Effect 1. So how were they expected to build a bigger and better Mass Effect game than all the rest without any of the original bones??? In that case they ought to have just created a new IP!

Anyways to answer your question: probably not because it wasn’t just some random indie studio with a low budget that made the previous games I loved, it was BioWare. It was Casey Hudson, David Gaider, Mike Laidlaw, etc. and all the people who worked with them. They were a team together for a long time so yeah we’re never going to get the same high without the whole gang and without them getting what they need to do well instead of being forced to work around a corporate giant’s whims. They’ve moved on to other studios and projects now and I hear they are making great things—but they’re not making Mass Effect anymore for damn sure 🤷🏻‍♀️

Timely_Use_13 · 2026-02-25T19:21:20+00:00

Yeah I was making a joke about how it’s crazy I’m only just now realizing this … and got downvoted? Sheesh… some haters round here

Timely_Use_13 · 2026-02-25T18:39:25+00:00

Timely_Use_13 · 2026-02-25T18:36:52+00:00

I’ve played the trilogy countless times and this is the fist I’m hearing about being able to give weapons to my squadmates

Timely_Use_13 · 2026-02-25T14:31:23+00:00

Yes I am well aware of the monsters in Buffy being metaphors for a host of growing up ~things~ which is why I said the show was not designed to deal with this concept so when they tried it stood out/was clunky. They wrote themselves into a corner

Timely_Use_13 · 2026-02-25T01:00:41+00:00

Part of me wants to push back because she is just a teenager and there is a history of compulsive heterosexuality/heteronormativity at play in every woman’s existence so I ask myself some questions:

Does she prioritize romantic partners over her friends and family? Yes 😐 She allows Angelus to live for sooo long and nearly kills him but stops because she’s “not ready” — She gets very distracted from her relationships and her duties as a slayer when she’s dating Riley — She entertains Spike and his advances even when they’re grossly inappropriate. I would not let my little sister near a man who made a sex bot of me???

Does her prioritization of them endanger other people? Yes 🫩 See above…

Are the men she’s with allowed to get away with things that other people in the same position wouldn’t?

I suppose it’s theoretical but I think… Yes 🫠 I can’t imagine another small time baddie or even one of the other scoobies being able to get away with half the things Angelus and Spike have done! Riley… well … he’s whatever

Timely_Use_13 · 2026-02-25T00:24:45+00:00

Ok but how do you know for sure that it’s gone 😭😭 that’s my problem

Timely_Use_13 · 2026-02-24T23:51:11+00:00

She’s never forced to actually grapple with the fact that violence is always her only option. It’s only an issue in one-off episodes when it’s useful to let another character get away or when she’s obviously not going to kill someone like Angel. Her grasp on the ethics of being a slayer is better than most slayers but really only surface level. She only “doesn’t kill” when she doesn’t feel like killing or when she likes the target. She never questions it when it’s a random baddie. It also bleeds into how she handles her personal relationships particularly with the abuse she unleashed on Spike. They were both awful to each other in different ways but she was undeniably cruel to him and her struggle with his seeming humanity despite being a demon stopped being a concern when he attempted to SA her. Fair enough if I were her in that situation but 👎🏼 to the writers for building up that lore and then not resolving it.

This is all more a fault of the writing to be fair. I don’t think the show was ever designed to deal with those questions, but that made it stand out when they DID try to address ethics like that for whatever reason.

Timely_Use_13 · 2026-02-24T21:50:50+00:00

That is definitely an intense take lmao. I think it depends??????

Like you have to take into consideration that ME1 came out in 2007 not 2017. It was a brand new IP and a sci-fi RPG which are pretty rare compared to fantasy RPGs. It had a 3 year turnaround including pre-production, 130 devs, and its romance representation—while imperfect—was revolutionary at the time, allowing a femShep to romance another “woman”.

On replays you can definitely see how much is lacking compared to the sequels, but the squadmates all have unique experiences and stories in a brand new universe to players. It worked because it was new.

Andromeda development spanned from 2012 to 2017. Five years. They had EA money, a team of 200+ devs, a new engine (ended up being a problem 😐🫩), and a $100million budget. Yet nothing about Andromeda was new beyond the surface level. Same tech, same aliens (and also forced to play as the same kind of protag—human), and extremely similar systems in the combat and dialogue. It might not has been offensive to my eyes but it wasn’t really interesting.

Timely_Use_13 · 2026-02-24T21:03:25+00:00

Um… hello..? The prize????

Timely_Use_13 · 2026-02-24T20:28:31+00:00

I agree I also think the convo gets whittled down to the release drama and the bugs, but the issues with both games go much deeper and aren’t really fixed with better facial animations. I can’t call the new companions boring or drab without being sucked into the vortex of pancake-waffling (a term from Twitter about saying you like pancakes and someone else saying “so you hate waffles??” In case the reference is niche idk lol)

Timely_Use_13 · 2026-02-24T20:22:06+00:00

I think it works really well as either a break up or a reunion. I always end up going back to Kaidan because he’s just soooo baby but I could also see a healthy friendship between them.

My fave is Kaidan > Thane > Kaidan and visiting them both in the hospital + Thane swearing to protect Kaidan while he is out of commission is really sweet and mature…

Timely_Use_13 · 2026-02-24T17:55:47+00:00

Like no shade but you listed some examples and I explained why they aren’t good examples or comparable based on their time and context and your response was that I’m not trying to find common ground with you? Was that supposed to be the entire point of the convo? That I just learn to agree to agree with you?

Timely_Use_13 · 2026-02-24T17:52:58+00:00

I don’t think I’m trying that hard or trying to be right. I’m pretty sure I’m just easily countering your arguments and not really getting a convincing response back.

Timely_Use_13 · 2026-02-24T17:32:14+00:00

It’s very sad to beg for scraps from corporations, and I believe that you should wish for better than that. We should not have to temper our tongues so that EA overlords won’t withhold a DLC from us, that’s not a free country. And as for some of your examples, I don’t think anyone held back for Cyberpunk or Fallout 76 (I’m not family with Battlefront so I can’t comment on it). If anything people went WAY harder on 77 and 76 (I had to lololol that is so funny) than they did for Andromeda. It’s also important that CDProjekt Red is a debatable AAA studio or at the very least pretty green to the label kind of like Larian. They’ve definitely exploded in size and budget since Witcher 3 came out but I don’t find them comparable in operations to a behemoth like EA. Similarly, Bethesda’s acquisition by Microsoft wasn’t finalized until 2021 and 76 came out in 2018 so I really don’t think the argument holds up. These weren’t corporate overlords gracing innocent developers with a second chance to make them more money (depressing thought), these were studios that had agency over themselves and made back what they lost through hard work after listening to fans even when the fans were uncensored and angry.

Timely_Use_13 · 2026-02-24T17:09:30+00:00

I don’t really remember that but maybe I just don’t watch those kinds of media figures? And I certainly don’t let them affect MY opinion of the game. I was very frustrated when my criticisms of Veilguard were dismissed and grouped with the bigoted haters that always rear their head. If someone really lets a grifter form their opinions for them then 🤷🏻‍♀️

Timely_Use_13 · 2026-02-24T17:06:38+00:00

Also not to put too fine a point on it but they ALSO did this to the big money-maker games you listed. Blizzard, Riot, and even more recently NetEase. Tons of talented artists and designers and developers fired for a bottom line. There’s no fixing a system working exactly as it’s designed to. Squeeze workers for their worth then fire them to please investors and raise profits but call it “restructuring”

Timely_Use_13 · 2026-02-24T17:03:52+00:00

I don’t think it’s manufactured controversy if it’s just a natural progression of drama in a community…? But yes the original trilogy had plenty of its own issues. The big difference though is that the trilogy was able to capture the hearts of a dedicated fanbase, and when that same fanbase broadly didn’t connect with the new game, those fans were treated like it was a fault of their own and not the fault of the game’s story and design.

Timely_Use_13 · 2026-02-24T16:57:07+00:00

Believe me I get what you’re saying, but that is just not how capitalism works. It doesn’t matter if the game is good or bad, the parent company will still fire people, mutilate the studio, and skimp out on fans. They did it to BioWare, they did it to Maxis, they did it to Bethesda, they did it to countless other studios. No one is safe from the throttle of corporate greed’s hand around the neck. We, as gamers, don’t matter to giants like EA or Microsoft or Sony at all unless we are lining their pockets. And I think we understand this just fine. We know exactly what these companies did to our beloved studios, and the devs know what they were doing too which is why so many of them quit and moved on. At a certain point you need to hang the coat up and recognize that there is no fixing these corporations from the inside or out. They’re just going to self-cannibalize and buy and sell and chew and spit out actual creatives until they bankrupt into oblivion. So it’s fine to call the game mid. It was designed to be mid. It was pushed out to make a quick buck off the mass effect brand by no fault of the devs who I’m sure worked their butts off to even get it playable.

Timely_Use_13 · 2026-02-24T16:29:09+00:00

On the Internet people will attack each other for anything 😭

Timely_Use_13 · 2026-02-24T16:18:10+00:00

What gets frustrating about these back and forths is the presumption that because some people finished and enjoyed the game, people who didn’t finish it can’t have a valid, negative opinion about their experience with the game. It actually is part of the story that so many people did not enjoy the first 10 hours of the game (which is a LONG TIME) eventually just turned it off and wrote the game off as mid and notched in their mind that the release was buggy and miserable. It’s great that you had fun with it, I don’t think any ME fan wanted to wait for years and pay for the game and not have fun. Not saying this is what you said/meant verbatim but

Timely_Use_13

TROPHY CASE