Games Inbox: Best Mass Effect character, Xbox portable console, and waiting for The Elder Scrolls 6

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Romance not essential
I’ve been playing through Mass Effect Legendary Edition and really enjoying it, especially now I’m on Mass Effect 2. I played them all the first time round but I basically remembered nothing of the first one, so that’s been cool even if the combat is pretty janky. But it’s got me thinking about the obvious question anyone asks when it comes to Mass Effect: who are the best characters?

The worst are obviously Ashley and Kaidan, no questions asked, but if you asked me who the best was I would’ve normally said Liara. But she’s actually really boring. I didn’t realise till now how she’s basically just a female Mr Spock, with her boring, monotone voice and dry, scientific way of looking at things. She’s no fun and I much prefer Tali in terms of female characters.

Legion is also good, as I remember him, but I haven’t got to him yet. So at the moment I’d say it’s a choice between Garrus and Mordin. Mordin’s not a romance option, as far as I know, but I think he might be the winner. He’s funny, gets some great moments (does Garrus really have any effect on the story?), and has a good voice actor. What does everyone else think?
Acra

Xbox on the move
Count me as someone that has never heard of the Surface Duo before and, given the price, never wants to again. Touchscreen controls suck anyway though, so I find it hard to get excited about it. I also find it impossible to imagine that Nintendo are going to let Game Pass onto the Switch. It’s nothing personal to them, it’s just not how they roll.

So I think Microsoft are going to have to make their own equivalent, their own portable console – even if it’s only designed for streaming. The important thing is that we need proper controls. The thought of playing modern games on a touchscreen is repellent to me and nobody’s going to wander around with an Xbox controller in their pocket, so it has to be a dedicated device.

I don’t see this as a problem. It wouldn’t have to be expensive, since it’d have hardly any innards, and it’d be a good way to focus Microsoft’s promotion of Game Pass and xCloud. Knowing Microsoft, it’ll probably be an ugly great brick that barely counts as portable, but here’s hoping they’ll get someone sensible to design it.
Hurst

Best of the worst
So what is the now the best movie adaptation of a video game? Is it Detective Pickachu? I quite enjoyed the film but felt the second half of the film was weaker than the first.

I haven’t brought myself round to watching Sonic the Hedgehog movie despite liking James Marsden and I know he can be divisive but I like Jim Carey as well. I am guessing the recent Mortal Kombat movie is as bad as you can get.
Alek Kazam

GC: We agree with you on Detective Pikachu. Sonic the Hedgehog is okay, but it’s not a great film. To be honest it’s probably still the first Mortal Kombat – and certainly not the new one.

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Sonic 64
Looks like we’re going to find out about that next Sonic game this Thursday as Sega has said they have a livestream planned (does that count as Inbox magic?). We already know about the compilation and the Sonic Colours remaster but I hope there’s a big new game as well, something that can help rejuvenate the series as I couldn’t even remember what the last one was. Not so much because it was so long ago but because they all blend into each other with their badness. (It was Sonic Forces, if you were wondering yourself.)

Sonic has never had its Super Mario 64 moment and so I don’t feel has never really entered the modern era. It needs to either do that, with a big budget, high quality new game, or just concentrate on Sonic Mania like retro titles. I’m fine with either but if this is the 30th anniversary we cannot make do with another decade of bad 3D Sonic games. It’s just getting embarrassing.
Gascoigne

Anything but that
Ha, that wooden PlayStation 5 console is amazing! Although it always makes me feel depressed when I see people like that, that are so good at DIY, and I can barely put up a shelf. Still, he did a good job there and personally I’d much prefer the PlayStation 5 looked like that. Not that that would be my first choice of a design but basically anything is better than the current design.

I don’t even understand how it’s supposed to work because when you put it horizontally it’s so wobbly on the stand it’s pretty worrying. You don’t usually move it, sure but it just looks like a bit hunk of ugly plastic, rather than just blending into the background.

Ultimately it doesn’t really matter, and clearly I bought the console anyway, but I hope that there is a slim model it has a completely different design.
Coop

Game-friendly shell
I think a few people may have pointed it out before but Valve are such a weird company sometimes I don’t think they’re even real. Considering all their past hardware efforts who is going to be crazy enough to buy a Valve console? Even if it’s basically just a laptop in a game-friendly shell.

Valve get bored of their own projects quicker than Google! I remember being quite interested in the Steam Machines, since I’d never owned a gaming PC at the time, and then the whole thing fizzled out almost immediately and never even got released in the UK.

The only positive is if this convinces them to release some new games but if they are they going to end up as console exclusives to their own hardware? That totally sounds like something they’d do.
Austin

Beautiful destruction
I’ll admit I’ve broken more than one controller in my time, but for me the split second of satisfaction gained from seeing the controller explode against the wall is quickly replaced by prolonged feelings of regret and disappointment.

Thankfully the older I got the less it happened. GTA: San Andreas was the last game to enrage me this way.
Russell

GC: The increasing cost of new controllers probably helps too.

The wait continues
Saw a tweet today about how it’s now exactly the same length of time between Skyrim and now as it was between Morrowind and Skyrim. That is some slow progress. Morrowind was the third game in the series, although really the first proper Elder Scrolls as we know it today. It came out in 2002 and then we had Oblivion in 2006 and Skyrim in 2011. And when will we have The Elder Scrolls 6? Who knows, Bethesda has implied at least two years and it could well be more than that.

Apart from making me feel old I’m not sure what this says more about: Bethesda’s slow speed as a developer or how much longer, and more expensive, it’s getting to make triple-A games. I’m sure the new game is going to cost a fortune, especially as Microsoft is now involved, but boy is it taking a long time to make.

Hopefully Bethesda are trying to make sure they don’t continue their reputation for broken games at launch but whatever the exact breakdown of reasons it is all adding up to only one The Elder Scrolls per decade – even Nintendo put out games quicker than that!
Oskar Mike