@andrewb:

No way. I still maintain that the combat in ME1 is way more fun than that of either of its sequels. It turned into a bad Gears clone with hotkey powers. It was clunky, to be sure, but the fact that all of your abilities had separate cooldowns allowed you to stack the abilities in some cool ways. Also, the enemies became way too spongey in the sequels.

If it is only the combat and the inventory then yes I would ... leave my mako alone :3

I like a lot of Mass Effect 1. Some of the complexities were lost when they streamlined the gameplay. I think there's a happy medium between customization and playability. Mass Effect 2 was fantastic, but it just didn't capture the whole "this is my Shepard" thing from a gameplay aspect as it did from the narrative aspect. You were just kind of all soldiers with different particle effects on your powers. The basic tactics didn't really change based on how you built your character, though I think ME1 could have been better with this too.

Either way, I would absolutely play a remade version of the game. Despite some of the flaws in the series, and I'm not even referring to the ending, I have a lot of love for it. But, I doubt we'll see anything too drastic in a remake.

Absolutely.

Never happen, but boy do I wish it would.

Nah, no way. Global cooldowns on powers are the devil. I don't really think the combat in 2 is that great, 3 is where it finally became passable as a pure TPS.

If they made the shooting aspect(as well as small technical enhancements) in all games as good as 3's, that would be wonderful, there's not much else I would change really. Keep the other parts of the battle system in each game the same (well besides the obvious stuff in 3 that was just a more polished version of 2's) as well.

I don't want it to be 100% homogenized, unless they are trying to totally merge the 3 games into one crazy big one, then I'd like to see some of the complexities of 1 (the way your powers worked) meshed with how good the shooting worked in 3(as well as the gun mods and such.) I wouldn't mind them gutting the loot system(it was mostly useless and overhauling it to make it matter would be way too much work for a remake) and similar stuff from 1, again as long as the interesting stuff from the combat (i.e. not the shooting, like not being able to look down the scope of a sniper rifle as a Vanguard? wtf) were kept intact. That being said it would be a massive undertaking, so I doubt it will come out that cleanly and cohesively.

I dunno, I guess I cant remember well enough to argue with you. I will say KOTORs combat Is far more memorable to me now as being enjoyable, to be fair that could have more to do with the loot, characters, enemies etc than I remember.

For some reason Neverwinter nights is completely forgettable to me. I can't remember a single thing about that game.

mmmmm, I'm reminded ME3 had better controls but still was walking down a funeral of a game that used to be fun.

I was about to say "I'd buy an ME2/3 rerelease in the ME1 style" but then I remembered that the story was garbage too.

I think people remember me1 gameplay as worse than it actually was... Even the mako stuff. I know it's not a popular opinion but I think I prefer the 1st game in every way.

Completely. I've been scared off of buying the Mass Effect 1 on PSN for $15 purely because I've heard it's a game I don't want to play. I will talk mad shit on Mass Effect 3 forever as a narrative but man, that game was FUUUUUUUUN to play.

But the mechanics of 2 are super boring and frankly kind of annoying. And there is next to 0 character development on the combat side. At least Mass Effect 1 had some kind of specialization and variety in combat, and none of the move limiting enemies that wouldn't let you use the majority of your stuff for arbitrary bullshit reasons.

I loved the way Mass Effect 1 played. It felt like an actual RPG in shooter fancy dress making it feel all the more tactical than the latter two with their endless waist high covers. I felt like I could apply RPG strategies within it rather than just endlessly pressing onward. ME2 and ME3 have great combat too, more engaging and exciting than most third person shooters, but they still feel more like third person shooters than RPGs (at least where combat is concerned). I'll volunteer myself to be the freak that suggests they should make 2 and 3 more like 1

@tobbrobb: I thought the different layers over enemy health made me use the different abilities more. The limited ammo also made using the abilities more of a priority. In ME1, you could take down most enemies easily with just guns so I didn't use my abilities nearly as much. This made the combat way less engaging than in the sequels.

I would buy it, but it wouldn't replace the original version. The Mako is just too dumb to completely remove from the series.

@ulquiokani: I want to use my abilities out of choice for style or choice for strategy. I do not want the game to force me into a style of play. I create variety well enough on my own, limiting the options to artificially create some just pisses me off.

So after a bit more research, apparently KOTOR's combat was actually modeled after an officially sanctioned fork of the D&D 3rd edition ruleset designed around the Star Wars universe, but it still feels like an even more janky port of a system that never translated well to a video game format. Even the best RPGs like Baldur's Gate felt a little bit hampered by the never perfect translation of a role-playing system which was meant for decidedly less combat and more role-playing. I guess it just felt slightly more weird to be applying a much more narrow weapon and power base to a D20 system inside of a video game. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed KOTOR a bunch (though it does feel hard to go back to; more of a presentation thing than anything else), but I feel like the biggest reason it would stick out was if you were big on Star Wars to begin with.

Side note - I'd agree on the Neverwinter Nights thing, and the only reason it holds a good amount of nostalgia for me is because it was more designed around co-op play and I spent a lot of good sessions playing with my brother back before our schedules prevented much in the way of online multiplayer gaming. Also suffered from the same issues of being a polygonal game from an early era and not aging quite so well.

If we're talking about stupid times with glitches/cheats in Mass Effect, it definitely takes the cake on that one. I'll refrain from posting a wall of hilarious Youtube videos though.

It also wouldn't replace the original for me, but I still feel like it is the one game in the series which would stick out the most as being different in a one-package compilation for this generation of hardware, and it would just be a breath of fresh air to revisit the game with some tweaks that would make it a fresh experience. Sort of a Mass Effect remix.

I need to go back to ME1, again (which I plan to do as a Fem Shep) to really be certain....but, I didn't like the updates made to ME2 to make it less like a RPG. So, I'm with a lot of the other commenters that liked ME1 the best. Based on my previous experience, I would have wanted ME2 and ME3 to be more like ME1 and not the other way around.

I also want to note that I played on PC with a mouse and keyboard. ME1 may have felt worse with a controller, but with a mouse and keyboard, I didn't feel like the game was clunky.

I disagree, this game was pretty amazing in it's own right, the star wars thing is just kind of a side bonus if you are into it. It's one of the best star wars games ever made, yet it was probably one of the most departed from the typical star wars characterisation, time and setting. I think that was some of it's genius. It wasn't rehashing content, everything it did expanded the universe. While the presentation doesn't hold up today so well, at the time it was the best seen in an rpg as far as voice acting, characterisation and overarching plot.

I wouldn't mind the combat mechanics changing but I LOVED the micromanagment inventory system of the first game. Hate the way it is streamlined in 2 and 3.

Yep. This is what I want.

At this point I think I'm done and I just want a new Mass Effect game where I can visit all the planets.

@sterling said:

Exactly. ME1 was the superior game, easily the best of the series.

You know... you're right. I'm probably too far removed from what it was at the time. It wasn't just Star Wars translated to an RPG - it did take the fiction in a fresh direction, even if the graphics and gameplay don't quite hold up today and some of the story beats were a Bioware cliche staple at the time (also, the first instance of a lesbian romance in a Bioware game, even if it was possibly an unintentional bug).

Still, I can't help but be colored by hindsight. At the time I was psyched by the idea of Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying being merged with the Star Wars universe, and the game was great. When I try to play it now, I feel like it's just such a broken shoehorned system compared to the latter Bioware games which embraced being a video game merely influenced by those systems. Dragon Age: Origins was a kind of brilliant mashup of D&D and the more modern MMO character role style with spell combos tossed in. Mass Effect was third-person shooter merged with strategic positioning and power usage. They were the kinds of systems that fit more naturally with the medium.

On my first playthrough, I had no problems with the inventory until the game decided to tell me I was nearing a limit.

the game never mentioned that my inventory had a limit. Did you know it had a limit? I had to spend 15 solid minutes busting everything down to hacking goo. But man do I ever love that game.

And honestly the process of busting stuff down into Omnigel would be greatly alleviated by a steady framerate/memory load time and minor interface tweaks, so I suppose the worst part about the inventory system from the first game could be fixed without such a drastic change to the gameplay.

Preach!

I'd like them to revamp the combat system from ME 1 and 2 to be like ME 3. Something about it just plays so much better than 2, but yeah, I'd also agree that changing the combat in ME 1 would really change ME 1. Still, I can dream.

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes. Are you reading this BioWare?

@mackgyver: No offense meant to you at all, but I think there are an equal number of us saying that we prefer ME1 the way it is more than ME2 or ME3, even. :) So, if they're reading this, I don't know if it is really conclusive. :D

What? No.

Mass Effect was fine the way it was, down to the Mako and ignoring the long elevator rides.

ME1 is the superior game of the three minus the color palette which in 1 was mostly grey.

So, no.

QFT!

This guy knows what's up.