Welcome to the third and last part of the Massive Interface Fail Trilogy. In this series of articles I’m discussing the manifold interface design shortcomings in BioWare’s Next-Gen RPG Sci-Fi blockbuster Mass Effect.
- “Ok, Artoo. Now zoom out. NO! Don’t close the galaxy map! Goddamn Artoo, if I only had a healthy hand, I’d smack you!
As previously stated, almost EVERY screen in Mass Effect contains at least one major interface design flaw. In previous parts (Part I here and part II here) we already discussed many parts of the interface – from extremely common screens such as the HUD to more obscure but not better-designed parts like the “Recovered Items” menu. This time, I would like to address the remaining parts of the interface. They are remarkable because they include what seems like the most commonly praised parts of the interface. In reviews of Mass Effect it is often the galaxy map and the conversation menu which receive some favorable mentions. While I do understand why, that doesn’t mean they are well-executed from the standpoint of interface design – sadly. So let us finish this epic saga by taking a closer look at those audience favorites.
Galaxy Map
Ooooh, beautiful. I almost forgot the interface screwup.
So Mass Effect does feature some quite enjoyable pieces of interface design. But this doesn’t mean they aren’t flawed. One of those more enjoyable parts is the galaxy map. Back on your space ship you can access a holographic map of the galaxy to travel between planets. The map looks actually nice. The team used images from the Hubble Space Telescope to construct quite striking 3D nebulae. Of course, scientifically speaking they are criminally inaccurate but why would I criticize the game’s scientific plausibility when it’s already spoiled by bad interface design anyway?
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Button layout inconsistency (again): So we had inconsequential button layout when dealing with Omni-gel. We even had sub-menus with no cancel buttons. What could BioWare have possibly done worse? Well, this one is my personal favorite. It is actually what started the entire article in the first place because I noticed it from the very first second and it never stopped bugging me, even after my 3rd playtrough or so.
So you enter the galaxy map by pressing the green button (A). In the galaxy map, you can actually zoom further in, also using the green button. There are 4 levels of magnification – galaxy, cluster, star system and individual planet. You zoom in using the green button just like you navigate deeper into other menu structures elsewhere. But pressing the red button (B) doesn’t actually zoom out to the previous level like in other parts of the interface – oh no. Pressing the red button will actually close the entire galaxy map altogether.
Lesson: Spelling out awful button layout choices doesn’t make them good.
This means you loose whatever position you’ve managed to navigate to. This also exposes you to painful seconds of loading times as the game re-loads the ship architecture you didn’t want to see in the first place. And of course re-entering the galaxy map also takes a short loading time. There is a zoom-out button but its the blue one (X). The blue button is used for a lot of things in the game but never to actually exit anything – except for this time.
Compared to the previous failures of the interface, this seems like a minor gripe. However, during my playtroughs it never failed to amaze me how much anger and frustration this arbitrary violation of basic menu navigation conventions was able to summon up. And no, even after tens of hours of play time, I could never get used to it. I don’t think I’m special this way.
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Missed chances for cross-referencing: And yet, there is still another problem. The galaxy map highlights individual systems that are vital for the main quest. It’s funny how that works exactly against the actual needs of a player like me. I had no problems remembering the 4 planets I had to visit to see the end credits. I had much more troubles keeping track of where the 30+ side-quests take place. I often (more than 30 times to be exact) found myself randomly landing on planets and having to figure out what I’m supposed to do as I go. At least some cross-referencing between my quest log and the galaxy map would have been tremendously helpful. You know, linking Google Maps to your Google Calendar is not very difficult even today. Do you think we will loose this kind of technology in the distant future?
Journal
Mass Effect tells the epic story of humanity’s struggle to recover the ancient, long forgotten technology of “show this address in Google Maps”.
Speaking of quest logs, I must admit that the quest log (call “Journal”) is one of the least broken interfaces in the game. I almost gave it the green light if it wasn’t for the already mentioned flaw.
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Missed chances for cross-referencing (again): So from within the galaxy map there is no cross-referencing to the journal. Is there such a linkage going the other way around? Of course not! So when browsing through your journal the process works like this: you have to pick out and remember the name of the cluster, star system and planet from the text the journal. I actually recommend writing this down on paper to prevent tedious backtracking in case your short-term memory looses the race with the game’s loading times. Then you have to exit the journal, walk up to the galaxy map, launch it and struggle with it’s interface while you are blindly trying each possible cluster to find the name you are looking for. Because the names of the clusters, systems or planets only pop up when you highlight them with your cursor. Obviously. And whatever you do, remember not to press the red button because you will have to do it all over again. If you are a game designer and this sounds like a reasonable modern RPG experience to you, I would recommend considering a different career – ESPECIALLY if you work for BioWare.
Conversation Menu
Ah, my Shepard. He has a face only his mother could love but a heart of made of gold…nah, just kidding. He’s actually an asshole, too.
The best comes last, right? The conversation menu has been often applauded as being one of the most remarkable things in the game. I must agree that the circular layout is a quite prominent and memorable interface element. So I can understand why people tend to recall it so often. The actual usability of said circular menu is actually noting remarkable. Circular menus have been tried numerous times in the brief history of interface design. While they occasionally have an unexpected feature that can be exploited for some exotic purpose, the benefits rarely outweigh the extra effort associated with integrating them into a layout scheme. In the case of Mass Effect, a regular menu would have done it just as well. The remarkable quality of conversations comes rather from the sharp writing. But it’s much easier to give the weird-looking gizmo all the credit, isn’t it?
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Not quite consistent menu layout: One of the quite interesting features of the circular menu is that all conversation is spatially structured. So all answers in the upper part are often “good” and all answers in the lower part are often “evil”. Answers on the left tend to investigate and explain certain points while answers on the right tend to lead a conversation to a conclusion. I already mentioned how I find this is actually a remarkable feature I would like to see developed further in other titles.
There is a certain systematic according which the answers are arranged on the circular menu. This is actually a good idea, if only…
But the conversation system stumbles quickly over the very structure it created. So for example, quite often you will find situations where more than one dialog choice investigates something without being morally colored. But the circular menu only allows for one such answer. So the developers chose to randomly ignore the system whenever they see fit. They also chose not to communicate that to the player in any way.
… if only the Mass Effect team was able to maintain consistency. The answers “C-Sec” and “Attitude towards humans” aren’t actually morally colored in this case. No hints that the system has changed.
This inconsistency undermines the entire system. Which is a pity because it was an idea with potential.
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Missing information (again): And again, you will often find yourself in situations where information is partially hidden from you. So in some cases your diplomatic skills and moral alignment can open up special conversation options. These options are highlighted by color to distinguish them from the “normal” answers. In some cases you may not meet the requirements for a certain answer. In such cases, the answer will be grayed-out.
The red answer is something I can say because I’m an asshole. The blue one is greyed-out because… nobody knows.
In neither case does the game actually communicate what the requirements for a particular answer are. So if you can’t select an answer, you have no clue as to why and what you can do about it. You will never know how to explore that possibility in a future playtrough. On the other hand, as we have already established, the stats screen is quite poor at communicating your moral stats anyway. So even if you knew the moral requirements for an answer, you couldn’t even check them against your current alignment. I guess if you do enough mistakes in interface design, you eventually get into an area of diminishing damage.
Conclusion
And that does it for this epic failure trilogy. I’m sure I missed a lot of flaws. If you have noticed any feel free to point them out in the comments.
As I already mentioned, considering the experience of the company and the magnitude of the game, the state of the interface is outright insulting. I believe many of the mentioned faults can be attributed to a lack of resources – especially time. This lack is quite apparent if you look at other parts of the game. However, at some mistakes don’t seem to have a rational explanation other than incompetence. The real Litmus test will be Mass Effect 2. I assure you I will be here to check whether BioWare actually learned from their mistakes. The outlook right now is not so good. I was able to play a demo very briefly at GamesCom 2009 and sadly, I re-encountered many of the mentioned problems.
I’m pointing out especially Mass Effect because as you saw, the sheer number and seriousness of mistakes is really outstanding. I also point it out because of the extreme contrast to the game’s reputation. Other blockbuster games – like Fallout 3 for example – may not have perfect user interfaces either. But the mistakes are often localized and the interfaces have redeeming qualities otherwise. Mass Effect is the only AAA game I have met with a consistently abysmal quality of interface design.
As such I believe it should be a reminder for aspiring game designers that interface design and information design, two fundamental cornerstones of successful game design, shouldn’t be taken for granted – not even in big-budget productions. They do not come out of nothing. They can’t be downscaled to cut corners. They can’t be covered up by flashy graphics. Even modest success in those disciplines is a never-ending process of thorough research, careful observation and diligent playtesting. This is true whether you are a small, newbie indie game developer or a huge, allegedly experienced studio like BioWare. Like with peace, the price of good design is eternal vigilance.
Note: This is part III of the Mass Effect: Massive Interface Fail trilogy.
Part I is here
Part II is here
This trilogy of criticism might seem brutally pedantic to someone who hasn’t played the game, but it’s absolutely right: Mass Effect suffers badly from its shitty interface. I never felt like I fully understood most of the game mechanics. Choosing items, which is usually one of the most satisfying parts of an RPG, was aggravating – especially because the reward for all this painstaking effort was invariably an unnoticeable improvement on a stat that couldn’t be identified anyway. The problem of accidentally closing the galaxy map screen is so bad that I would often do it twice in a row, because my muscle memory was so used to B being “back one level”. Finding a quest destination was infuriating; as a bare minimum, the galaxy map should have had an icon over destinations with sub-quests available, at each level of zoom.
One fault you skimmed over was the lack of explanation of some things. The game never really explained what effect most of the equipment upgrades would have. Is an armour penetration bonus effectively a damage boost, or what?
And the equipment menus… the horror…
The most galling part is that these menus, despite zooming in to only show a few items at a time, are not even easy to read. I played Mass Effect on a standard-definition television and I spent half the time squinting at menu items, even though they each had only a few words of text and took up a tenth of the screen. Outside of menus was just as bad: I did not know what literally half the combat HUD icons looked like until I saw the game on a HD TV.
For all these flaws, Mass Effect is a good game. Aside from the elevators. And some navigation problems. And some ambiguity in combat. And the way it seems designed to be played in less-fun ways, as with the achievements for sticking with particular characters. Actually, scratch all of that: Mass Effect is the alpha build of a good game, after it’s been designed by many talented writers and programmers, but before a single playtester or usability consultant has sat before it.
Mass Effect is the alpha build of a good game
That pretty much nails it! My relationship with the game is very ambivalent. There are things about it I adore, but there are moments when it’s the worst game of all time. I defiantly see the potential. Mass Effect 2 will show, I guess.
Magnificent set of posts.
The galaxy map button misconfiguration is the most annoying mistake I’ve ever experienced in any game ever. I must have done it 100 times.
The +150 limit menu is also terrible. You are being asked to make major inventory decisions almost totally in the dark. It feels like a slap in the face that you didn’t deserve.
One annoyance I’d like to add is a downside of the dialogue tree. If you’re on your second playthrough you are often likely to be skipping some of the dialogue, but if you press the button to skip and you are unlucky enough that the dialogue tree pops up at that exact moment, you will often make a dialogue decision that may be totally inappropriate but that you can’t then cancel. A different button to skip would have really helped there.
I’m about to fire up Dragon Age this minute – I will be looking out for similar inconsistencies.
I’m glad there are people out there, who also stumbled across the problems I’ve mentioned. Makes me consider I’m not mad after all.
Good point with accidentally selecting an answer in the dialogue interface. I’ve noticed it too, but wasn’t quite able to put my finger on it. I think the problem is that the menu appears a few seconds before a line is finished so you are more likely to trigger it by accident. One very cool solution would be to introduce a quasi mode – you would need to keep on pushing the stick in a direction AND press a button to select an answer. That way, skipping dialogue and selecting dialogue would be clearly differentiated. Also it would logically fit to the circular menu layout. Generally: quasi modes often make things better.
I was wondering if other BioWare games also suffer from the same problem. Just got Dragon Age as well. Might give it a spin!
This is not the only flaw if you’re replaying the game. Sometimes the spoken dialogue is exactly the same regardless which option you chose. (up, side, down, doesn’t matter)
Yeah but that’s technically not a bug – it’s done intentionally. And yes, you notice it only when replaying the game. And it IS quite disappointing.
[...] last for This Week In Game Criticism, Krystian Majewski has finished his epic (yes, epic) trilogy listing all of the interface design flaws of Mass Effect (which, coincidentally I’m replaying on [...]
Can some of the faults claimed for Mass Effect’s UI be attributed to ME having been designed for consoles?
For example, if I’m sitting on my couch several feet away from a relatively small TV screen, a single small icon is better than a seven-letter word. We can argue whether the icon effectively describes the concept it’s supposed to represent (I agree that it didn’t in ME), but the notion of icon > word seems at least plausible when the typical display environment of consoles gets factored in to the analysis.
The same argument applies to the apparently small number of menu items presented on most item management screens.
It doesn’t, however, apply to issues like having to bounce from locker to locker to optimize gear among party members, or being unable to do so except in particular locations. (I think it’s not a coincidence that BioWare’s latest game, Dragon Age: Origins, has exactly the same two flaws.)
I should add that I play games exclusively on the PC, but my primary interest here is from the standpoint of game design. I’m not here to knock consoles; I’m just curious to hear the degree to which others think the console display question factored into many of the UI implementation choices.
Yeah, I was also wondering if some of it is just problems with platform translation. I haven’t played the PC version so I can’t really tell.
Whether and icon is easier visible from afar than text is difficult to tell. It depends on the icon and the text. Generally, I would say text is more legible than icons. Icons need to be interpreted. This takes time and comes with potential for misunderstanding. Words rely on recognition. It happens quickly and is surprisingly robust (see: captcha). (Disclaimer: I’m talking about reading, not scanning.)
As for the limited number of menus due to small screen size: meh. There are a lot of old and contemporary counter-examples of RPGs capable of displaying longer lists on TV screens. It’s a question of efficient layout.
Either way, the PC/Console transition may offer an explanation but it doesn’t really excuse anything.
I concur with all of the highlighted issues. The UI was the primary reason I couldn’t face a second playthrough. There is one ‘feature’ I am surprised you didn’t mention as it was a show-stopper for me.
When deleting an object (i.e. converting it to omni-gel) in the equipment interface, the item highlight or cursor would flip back to the top of the list instead of to the previous or next item. This was bad enough to make the vein in my temple throb as this was a required chore. My vein It was further compounded by all of the items in the list being shuffled from one delete to the next and duplicate items not being contiguous, let alone stacked, ending up with:
Storm IV
Banshee III
Hurricane III
Storm III
Hurricane III
Banshee III
Storm III
Storm III
Hurricane II
As a programmer, I was trying to reverse engineer their list-handling algorithm by my expreriences with it. All I could conclude was the obvious fact that the list is sorted in reverse order by numerical suffix. Beyond that I couldn’t imagine how the items were shuffled on delete without intentionally doing so unless they rebuilt the list from scratch with an odd hashing scheme or something.
Thanks Krystian, I’m glad you wrote this piece.
YES! Oh God, yes! It totally slipped my mind. I guess it was amnesia due to rage blackouts. Thanks for pointing out this one!
I am no programmer. But even if so: how does it happen that they are therefor not sorted alphabetically? o.O
I guess this is one more reason why its such a great game, that even with all these UI flaws and more, people for the most part lived with it and finished the game anyway. Like a washed-out book with misplaced pages, bad printing offsets, but containing a great story.
As for the flaws, to add:
1) The Map Screen
a. No waypoints – most objectives would require you to go around steep “mountains”. You have no choice but to place a marker, and when you get there, go to the map screen again and move the marker on the next destination. Rise and repeat.
b. Y button – yes, it just takes me to the journal, not to the exact quest at hand where the cursor was located, which is what anyone would expect.
c. Topography mess – why not just a smooth gradient map instead of a predetermined height map? If a color in the map is made of 50% shade of blue, I expect the entire surface area to have that same level, not an average of the heights around it.
2) HUD, The Minimap
a. Lack of detail – when in the Mako, you have to rely on making a marker from the map screen. Otherwise your only frame of reference is what direction you are facing, especially when the mission locations/landmarks are far from each other. This makes the minimap almost useless. I had to go back to the map screen from time to time just to re-orient myself.
b. Zoom – Can I? At least it would make the above design flaw more palatable if I could zoom out and see the mission markers or landmarks.
c. Ally Color-coding – which ally is which?
3) Main Menu -The option menu is under the extras menu? Ok I may not have been playing games that long to know what is the common convention for that anyway.
4) Save & Load Screen – Lack of information. Who is the character in this save/load selection? What is his/her level? Giving the last played and time played values is nice and all for a linear playthrough, but what happens when I try to replay scenes and make alternate choices? This isn’t helped by the save/load image not being a thumbnail view either.
5) Character Creation, Choosing an existing ID – After playing finishing mass effect the first time, I replayed the last scene, and making alternate choices to get the whole experience. When I finally wanted to start a new game and wanted to use my existing character, I get half a dozen entries with the same name and level. The only difference: The “time played” value. What good does that do when the final scene takes about the same amount of time to finish no matter what choices you make? The Alliance database must be bugged as hell. Those entries aren’t called an “ID” for nothing.
Phew… and you know what? I still love this game! So bittersweet!
Wow, some excellent points you’ve got here. I remember also struggling with the save system. This is especially infuriating because the autosave is practically useless – save points are WAY to far apart. So save management is delegated to the player and the interface isn’t really up to the task. Recipe for murder.
Yeah, the Mako. Jesus, I didn’t even start there. It’s just so FUBAR, it’s daunting to start with a proper critique there. But I agree, the points you’ve mentioned are also things that struck me. I think the most confusing thing about the Mako was – as you pointed out – the general sense of disorientation. Where am I? Where do I have to go? Was I already here before?
what about “why the hell did I even enter this thing the feels like I’m driving a gravity-defying rubber ball?”
I played the PC version of the game and it suffers of the same flaws, not much differences.
There’s one thing I don’t agree with you, it’s about the weapons stats; your playstyle seems to have influenced a bit your judgement there. Just an example of why the overheat and precision stats are useful, the sniper gameplay: you shoot one guy and then 5 mobs start running toward you, with your maxed damage sniper rifle, you shoot 3 times before overheat, kill 2 and miss once because you are under pressure, with a sniper rifle with a bit lower damage but better precision/overheat, you shoot 4 times and kill 4.
Despite its flaws, the game was a big success, I think one of the reasons is because ME is not a true RPG but an hybrid RPG/shooter and so Bioware managed to attract people from both crowds.
The thing is some cornerstones are bigger than others, a RPG with perfect interface and informations presentation but with boring story, stupid gameplay and dumb AI is unlikely to sell well.
I don’t want to lower the interface design, ME would have sell more with a better interface and more people would buy ME2 too but as I write this, I realized that in all Bioware games I played, I had some troubles with part of their interfaces but I replayed them more than once while I never finished some other games I don’t remember having bad interface.
Yeah, you are right. I have rarely been using sniper rifles. The stats didn’t play any significant role for the other weapons. It may have been a smart solution to show certain stats contextually. But in the scenario you’ve mentioned – how can you know if the damage stats are enough to kill a guy with one shot?
I don’t think that better interface design will always sell more copies. But it interface design is important if you want to design a good product. People will buy a lot of flawed products for various reasons. And in the end, in there were a competitor to Mass Effect with a better interface, it could become a sales factor after all.
Also very annoying with the galaxy map was that even when you did see the names of each top-level destination, the actual planet(s) inside weren’t listed on the top menu. I think an ideal interface here would show a flag pointing to each destination with the cluster name, smaller flags for each mission-related planet within underneath, with a contextual info box that would include the info from your journal about those missions.
I just saw something I never noticed while playing myself, just now, looking at your screenshots — the mini-map from the in-person mode is still displayed on top of the galaxy map, despite being completely pointless at that moment! You just have to assume that no actual interface designer ever even looked at the game’s UI.
The location-map/mini-map has a ton of problems you didn’t even bring up. The icons on the location maps are just as bad as everywhere else. Transition points (elevators and stairs) aren’t marked with obviously useful info like “this is a staircase that goes up.” (I seem to recall you can’t flip between different maps of the same area, like if you want to figure out the full path to take through the Citadel, either.) Interacting with quest items doesn’t mark them on your map — so you can’t compare your Citadel map with a guide to see which Keepers you may have missed, because the ones you’ve found aren’t marked anywhere! And the directional checkpoint marker is a total patch — instead of just letting you select known locations and actually guiding you there, it just puts a dot on the map and gives you a useless arrow showing which way it is (even though you often have to go around corners and through wrong-direction passages to get there.) At minimum in “friendly” locations like the Citadel, why not just produce an arrow that walks you from checkpoint to checkpoint to get where you’re going, or even use in-world clues like having things light up on the path to show you the way to go?
Anyway, great series, a very thorough and effective breakdown of these interface problems. I deeply enjoyed ME despite these problems so I’m still hopeful that the sequel will fix up some of the worst parts.
Haha, yeah the radar is great. I believe the Galaxy Map is not a “real” interface but some sort of hack of the game engine.
Thanks for bringing up the minimap problems. To be honest I haven’t even used it too often or simply didn’t make any notes. I guess it was so screwed up that I didn’t feel like it was worth spending time on that screen. So I’m grateful you guys can help me out. It seems like there is some serious concerns. I might take a second look and summarize your input in an errata.
The Keepers thing is annoying but a problem that comes up in many games. Collectibles are treated very poorly on a regular basis. Especially when it comes whether they show up on the map and whether you can tell if you already collected them. I’ve got a post in the oven about that. Coming soon!
I have not yet looked at the collectibles article, but a tip for that would be Far Cry 2. It handles part of the collectibles very well, but parts of it are just neglected.
Good call. I haven’t played Far Cry 2 for too long but from what I’ve seen, especially the collectibles really surprised me. I’m looking forward to review this one.
[...] Crackdown and God of War II. With the possible exception of Mass Effect (which seems to have subsequently come under fire), these games were at the time admired but widely faulted, and ultimately overlooked when the [...]
[...] Crackdown and God of War II. With the possible exception of Mass Effect (which seems to have subsequently come under fire), these games were at the time admired but widely faulted, and ultimately overlooked when the [...]
The galaxy map was the biggest fail in Mass Effect in my opinion. I could write an essay on that.
First of all, why on earth would you make it 2D? Let’s take the scenes one by one:
Scene 1 – the Galaxy Scene
They could have easily done a 3D map using the same 2D image like in the NASA Planet Quest App http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/SIMGuide2Galaxy_launch_page.html
Give the user the same control to rotate, pan, and zoom the scene.
The Transition between scenes: When you select the location you want to go to from the Galaxy Scene, simply zooming a bit and then switching to the next scene isn’t enough. I think it would have looked really cool if it was done this way:
Right when you choose the location you want to go to(like Noveria, for example), the game takes control of the scene(meaning the user can’t move, rotate, etc anymore) and zooms in the chosen location(not a full zoom, just enough that you can see the next scene in relation to the galaxy scene), and then highlights the structure of the next scene. It can either be a cube (sector) or an irregular shape (like a nebula – saw that a lot of main regions in ME are nebulae). I think the user must know how big is one scene in relation to the next one at all times.
Scene 2 – again it would have looked incredible in 3D.
Scene 3 – the System
The system Scene looks pretty good, I really liked it. Would have looked great in 3D. Another thing that bothered me was diversity. Way too many Sun-like stars in all the Systems visited. G-type stars in the Milky Way have a very low percentage compared to let’s say M-type stars. The planets in Mass Effect were not all habitable, but there were terrestrial planets in almost if not all systems. I’m willing to bet rocky, desert, icy planets exist in most M,K,F,G,A – type stars. I’m not willing to bet earth-type planets exist though, just terrestrial ones
Also it would have been nice to see a binary system(ternary might be a bit much to ask, but binary systems are pretty common in the Milky Way).
Scene 4 – Planet scene
I liked this one and I’m not saying “It would have been looked better in 3D”
It might or it might not have, it can go either way. Maybe a non-controllable rotation of the planet would have looked better. I mean you enter the scene, get all the info on it in the panel, but you can also see it rotating, it’s not a static picture.
Totally missed your comment here.
Well actually the interface is 3D – it is displayed with 3D technology. Merely the navigation is 2D. To be honest I think I’m fine with they way they did it. Sure it’s super-unrealistic and super-unscientific but it does the job well.
You and I we both know what a pain in the ass it is to create a realistic star map. It is an interface challenge in itself.
But I do agree that it would have been a good idea to convey some sense of the scale relationships from one zoom level to another. It would be using realism to make the game appear even more epic.
Great series of articles (keep it up!).
I’m currently re-playing Mass Effect right now and all these GUI problems came flooding back to me.
Still a good game, but there is so much room for improvement.
Great series of articles, I recently replayed Mass Effect while waiting for the sequel to come out, and wrote some similar thoughts about my problems with the game and the UI in particular in these posts:
http://www.sinistersoups.com/2010/01/i-hated-mass-effect-i-will-buy-mass-effect-2/
http://www.sinistersoups.com/2010/01/final-thoughts-mass-effect/
It’s interesting to me that while the entire interface is terrible, different parts stick out as particularly bad to different people. For instance, I never had a problem with the B/X buttons in the Galaxy Map. It never even crossed my mind that anyone would find it confusing, since I thought of B as “Exit” not necessarily as “Go Back a Layer.”
Of course, I can tell I’m in the minority there, I’ve had friends in real life point the problem out to me recently (when they saw that it’s reversed in Mass Effect 2) and then here in your post and in the comment.
For me, the most annoying issues were the way the list shoots you back to the top when turning things to omni-gel, and the fact that the X button is used both to skip dialogue and select dialogue choices. In fact, the latter was probably my single biggest problem with the interface when I first played the game a few years ago, I hate the fact that I can accidentally choose something I don’t want when skipping through dialogue, which I will do since I can read faster than a VA can speak.
By the way, I was born in Warsaw too, though now I live in the U.S. and work as a game programmer.
Thanks! I just read your articles. I agree with you. Although the fact that you didn’t mind the map button layout is strange. Must do more research.
Your articles made me actually regret that I did not mention the two things in my review. But of course, the Omi-gel top-of-the-list-jump was infuriating. This was one of the reason why, by the time I had fairly good equipment, I started just throwing EVERYTHING away. It was quicker than selective management and only marginally less effective.
The dialogue skipping is something that started to bug me only by the time I got to the second playtrough. This one is again really puzzling. One should expect skipping dialogue to be one of the most-used functions during game development. They should have noticed that. :/
Anyway, cool blog. Will put it in my RSS reader! ^_^
Yeah, I think it’s strange that I didn’t mind the map layout either, since I seem to be the only one
And thanks! I’ll definitely be keeping up with this site as well, I love this kind of in-depth analysis.
You could prevent the accidental skipping of dialogue choice by keeping the stick to the top so that it points to a non-existing option. Still it was a pain that you have to use a workaround for a simple task like that.
Hey Krystian, I loved this, but your impact is significantly diluted by all the spelling errors. For instance, you spelled Shepard three different ways, even though the correct spelling is right there in your screenshot.
Are you planning on doing a ME2 review as well? I would greatly look forward to it.
Oh yeah. You’re right. I guess I took some liberties with the name in the first part. That’s because… uh… you see I was refering to the first name and I just so happen to call my character “Sheppard Shepard” and “Shephard Shepard” in two of my playtroughs.
Fixed that now, thanks for pointing it out. I wonder why so many people read these now. Is that because of ME2?
And yeah, I will at some point look into ME2 but I have a huge backlog to take care of first. On the other hand I’m tempted to check it out. We’ll see how that plays out. ^_^
Yup, I’d bet you’re getting more hits because of searches for ME2.
I don’t remember how I found it.. I think I might have been searching for some GUI reference material from ME1.
well.. I came here because I looked at a German blog where the author references this site as one of his favourites
“Loose for lose” doesn’t make him look very good, either. Dint relay in spall chick nixed tame!
Nice one – “Loose for lose” isn’t covered by spellchecking, you know. I don’t really understand what your problem is, DensityDuck. You mean you can actually TELL that English is not my mother tongue? *GASP*
I played the PC version and while it is a good port it has all those same problems you mentioned. What’s even worse is that in ME2 things are even worse (PC). Looking forward to your review of that.