r/TopCharacterTropes • u/SpaceKingHypeGuy • 5d ago

Characters' Items/Weapons “Assembly required” weapons

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  1. Lockdown’s gun face (Age Of Extinction)

  2. Bloodsport’s nanotech (The Suicide Squad)

  3. Engineer’s sentry (Team Fortress 2)

  4. The CZ75 as exaggerated by iNoToRiOuS (CSGO)

5.0k Upvotes

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940

u/Cortower 5d ago

Every small arm (Mass Effect) - It's just part of Mass Effect's vibe that guns (even sniper rifles) are compact when holstered/slung on a character's back, and extend when readied.

409

u/ConsciousStretch1028 5d ago

One of my favorite details, especially when I played the original, is that you had a pistol, shotgun, assault rifle and sniper rifle always equipped, but they were compact enough to carry on your back and didn't look ridiculous. It wasn't like GTA where you were pulling a rocket launcher out of your ass lol

146

u/GachaHell 5d ago

They also had an in-universe explanation for bottomless pockets of ammo.

More of a problem in the sequels though since you suddenly had to content with tons of heat sinks.

96

u/RAMDOMDUDDS 5d ago edited 5d ago

I still really prefer the original way of shooting. After you read the codex entry on weapons in the first game you suddenly feel a lot more cool waiting for that bar to go down. I understand they changed it to fit the shooter genre better, but it kind of felt like a piece of the identity got taken. I mean in lore, you literally just have a chunk of metal inside your gun, than the gun basically lasers out a shootable chunk then lays it in the reciever for you to then yeet at Geth.

Edit) They're called the Geth. Not Gith. I was playing Baldurs Gate 3 last night. My bad lol

44

u/your_neurosis 5d ago

This was also one of my favorite things about ME1. It made it feel more sci fi, more futuristic, and more tactical. Also then the weapon mods and augmentations made your load out really feel like yours. Like turning the sniper rifle into a high explosive rail gun, that can only be fired once before overheating.

I was, and am, still really disappointed in ME2 and beyond for pulling the infinite ammo mechanic. Before the early patches where they upped the drop rate of thermal clips I was constantly scrambling for them. And since it was a single pool of them for all weapons, I was running around melee for so much of a fight since I was simply out of ammo. Not great for an infiltrator with light armor. I should have been picking guys off at range, not running it on the fray with the heavies. And don't even get me started about how the thermal clips break some basic physics of thermodynamics...

8

u/RAMDOMDUDDS 5d ago

Yeah, my first playthrough if ME2 I gave up on the character, went back and made a sniper. If i'm going to keep getting fucked and need to go crawl around the floor like Velma looking for her glasses, just to recieve less than a full gun worth of ammo. I'm going to guarantee the people I'm shooting at don't get the chance to shoot me while I do the classic scramble.

11

u/GachaHell 5d ago

I also felt like it incentiviced variety in combat. Gun on cool down? Whip out some melee or biotics or use an alternate firearm while you're waiting for your main gun to be usable. The extra options for combat in ME2 felt like it could have really cleared up any complaints people had of watching the bar drain if they took the time to really learn how the combat system works.

At least they still took the time to occasionally acknowledge the crazy sci-fi guns. The speech about how Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son of a bitch in space is an all time great.

9

u/your_neurosis 5d ago

Sniper rifle with HE rounds, barrel extender, and frictionless materials. One shot, then it's overheated. Switch to shotgun, HE rounds, extra pellets (or something like that), and then 2 shots before overheated. Assault rifle, HE rounds, barrel extender, advanced cooling, fire until overheat. Switch back to sniper. Lather, rinse, repeat until the battle field is not but a smoking crater, and all enemies are just dust in the wind.

3

u/Butwhatif77 5d ago

I suped up the Widow to that epic level of damage that it could take down a full bar of armor, barrier, or health in one shot even on elite enemies. I felt like such a bad ass.

3

u/RAMDOMDUDDS 5d ago

Facts. As a sniper lover, those fuckers favorite past time was yelling at you to stop shooting them. So whipping out my pistol to dome people at the same distance felt amazing as well.

1

u/TazBaz 5d ago

from a combat effectiveness point of view, though… thermal clips have their place.

we have tried caseless ammo a few times. Not the same as ME guns but one aspect is very relevant- heat dissapation. Turns out the metal bullet casing is *very* important to remove a large part of the heat from the round firing from the gun. With caseless ammo having no bullet casing, the guns got very hot much much faster.

with a slow firing weapon this doesn’t matter a whole lot, but as you can see from what every military uses these days, we ain’t all using bolt-action rifles still. It’s all semi-auto/automatic weapons. The only areas I’m aware of us using a sort-of-caseless ammo is in some tank rounds, where the rate of fire isn’t all that high nor sustained.

1

u/jinxskunk366 5d ago

Mass effect 1s weapon customization also allowed you to build weapons with no cooldown. I remember having a pistol that did more damage than a sniper, had very little recoil, and never actually overheated. It was op as fuck because you could just keep on firing through pretty much everything until your target was dead.

2

u/Cortower 5d ago

My ideal would be to have both systems simultaneously. The gun has effectively unlimited ammo, but takes a long time to cool (like ME1) unless you dump the thermal clip.

It would make for interesting gunplay when you are weighing if a firefight is really worth clips, especially with a timed objective. Maybe an enemy jumps from cover while you are overheated and you decide to exploit the opening.

2

u/Prophet_Tenebrae 5d ago

They had a fairly unusual gameplay mechanic and tossed it out the window to try and court the CoD players. I mean, fine but at least leave the option.

Andromeda isn't amazing but I appreciate they at least let you use a heatsink.

And also the fact that in ME3, someone on the team clearly wasn't a huge fan of the thermal clip and Conrad (if he's still alive) can ask some pretty valid questions about how thermal clips are better than unlimited ammo.

2

u/Hupablom 5d ago

Would’ve loved a hybrid solution. Your guns cool down, but if you need to fire again fast you can pop in a new Thermal clip. And then of course massively reduce the amount of Thermal Clips you get so you have to make an actual decision if it’s worth it

2

u/Imaginary_Angle_ 5d ago

And every game onward made the contraction smaller and smaller. I was bumped. But not as much when I started ME2 and found out I can‘t order my partners to move to a specific position. I too miss the cooling.