|
Waltzing Along posted:Well that sucks. I wanted to shoot him in the foot. Weird that it screwed up the save and hit two conflicting flags. That's actually been a bug since launch; even if you were nice to him, Conrad will always think you went all Renegade on him when you see him on Illium in 2. They even reference the mistake in 3. No idea why your game thinks he's straight-up dead, though, unless you failed to pick Blue or Red dialogue options in that final conversation with him on the Citadel in ME1, in which case I think he goes and gets himself killed.
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2014 17:44
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 04:56 |
|
|
There are three flags. Charm, Intimidate and the middle one. Middle he goes and gets himself killed. I have two flags checked. An impossibility, but a bug.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2014 17:53
|
|
|
Waltzing Along posted:There are three flags. Charm, Intimidate and the middle one. Middle he goes and gets himself killed. I have two flags checked. An impossibility, but a bug. Do you have a save from before you went to Ilium? If so, try fixing the flags in that one and see if Conrad shows up.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2014 17:57
|
|
|
Raygereio posted:That's Bioware's save import for you. I do, but I am done w/ Thane, Samara and Miranda...so don't think I will go back.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2014 17:58
|
|
|
Cross-Section posted:Fairly sure that any modifications to the ME1 imported world state in Gibbed don't actually take effect until you start a new ME2 game. Sorry. I'm pretty sure this is correct. It reads in all the ME1 import choices at the start of a game - one of the first things Miranda and TIM say is a direct reference to an import variable. Any edits you want to try and make on the fly have to be the ME2 variables.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2014 19:09
|
|
|
Psion posted:I'm pretty sure this is correct. It reads in all the ME1 import choices at the start of a game - one of the first things Miranda and TIM say is a direct reference to an import variable. Any edits you want to try and make on the fly have to be the ME2 variables.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2014 19:40
|
|
|
I always liked exploring the galaxy and the species in it, but even though people like Garrus, I always thought turians were the most underdeveloped species in the series. Basically all the species are pretty one-note characters, like the asari are the space elves, krogan space barbarians, batarian are space orcs etc. but I have no idea what the characteristics for turians are supposed to be. Like they just are.. there. In a fantasy setting "one-notedness" is more acceptable because you can talk about "the people of the north" or whatever and they are really just a bunch of people, you have a couple of million of them at most and they have their own culture and that's alright, but you're supposed to have like 10 billion salarians or some other space race who have been evolving and living for millions of years and you meet them in a setting of far far future and then you classify them with few quips of "like science, die young, taste like chicken" which is just a tad boring and kinda wasted potential. If they would be real species, that kinda classification would be racist!  I'd rather have one or two fully realized races with more complexity and depth than ten one-dimensional races. I got absolutely sick of the krogan dilemma because every time you are in a room with one every line of dialogue is about war and battles for three games straight so jesus christ I get it you like to fight please shut up.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2014 10:17
|
|
|
I see that problem as being part of a broader one of Bioware having boxed themselves into running the same 'save the world/galaxy from x' over and over again. It means that even really big things like the genophage still manage to become irrelevant in the context of the broader plot - who didn't get pissed off over the Salarian ambassador thinking that curing the Krogan was worse than the Reaper invasion come to kill everyone? The thing is that if the Mass Effect story didn't include the Reapers at all and was just about the first Human Spectre uncovering a conspiracy to re-engineer the genophage that had stopped working then that would still be a big amazing story with lots of moral depth and scope for exploring the universe.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2014 12:27
|
|
|
ManOfTheYear posted:I'd rather have one or two fully realized races with more complexity and depth than ten one-dimensional races. I got absolutely sick of the krogan dilemma because every time you are in a room with one every line of dialogue is about war and battles for three games straight so jesus christ I get it you like to fight please shut up. The worst was the Krogan science doctor in ME2 whose entire personality was "science is poo poo I'd much rather be shooting guns." That was the most wasted opportunity I've ever seen with regards to fleshing out a fantasy race.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2014 13:10
|
|
|
Kajeesus posted:The worst was the Krogan science doctor in ME2 whose entire personality was "science is poo poo I'd much rather be shooting guns." That was the most wasted opportunity I've ever seen with regards to fleshing out a fantasy race. lmao
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2014 13:23
|
|
|
Kajeesus posted:The worst was the Krogan science doctor in ME2 whose entire personality was "science is poo poo I'd much rather be shooting guns." That was the most wasted opportunity I've ever seen with regards to fleshing out a fantasy race.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2014 13:34
|
|
|
It's the same with planets - there's the desert planet, and the jungle planet and the snow planet etc. The scale of planets is never really demonstrated with multiple cities on a planet with varying populations and climates. The galaxy feels very sterile most times.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2014 14:14
|
|
|
Kajeesus posted:The worst was the Krogan science doctor in ME2 whose entire personality was "science is poo poo I'd much rather be shooting guns." The idea of somebody forcing himself to study for decades and sitting in the university lecture hall while thinking literally this is hilarious. But you're right. If you think about the movie Predator there literally is no way to have a a species that's stuck in the tribal stage of "blood for the blood god" and live for the thrill of the battle/hunt and have space travel and future tech, you would still live in mud huts and poo poo and not evolve further as a society without a real society with econony and health care and education and infrastructure. I know the krogan got the tech from the salarians but it still breaks the concept of the krogan: you can't just dump a bunch of people crazy tech and say there you go and the people go from there to independent space travel, they'd have to be educated about it and their society would have to be at a level that it would be possible to educate them and if the krogan still think like they do in the series they clearly haven't reached that. Also it begs to question why the salarians decided to give them tech in the first place if it's clearly evident that this is what they are as a species. At some point the salarians would have to go like "This is just impossible" and leave the krogan by themselves. This also underlines the fact that while everybody laughs at the idea of a krogan scientist the actual krogan scientist in ME2 has to be the most intelligent scientist in the universe because how the gently caress did he achieve that level of skill and knowledge? There are no krogan universities or brain trusts or anything. I don't think that any otheruniversity in the world would take a krogan in. Did he just study by himself? If so, how amazingly intelligent would he have to be? I get that a person would discover steam power or something by himself but space cloning tech is a different thing entirely. Combined with the fact that he would rather be killing things at any given time just makes it even more inplausible. I saved the krogan in ME3, I just can't make myself to put an end to an entire race, even if it is fictional, but honestly the only argument for saving them is the idea of the sanctity of sentient life because the krogan really don't seem to have any redeeming qualities: it's a species of 900-pound super strong, cunning and cruel prison thug space monsters that are genetically programmed for violence. It's like sentient honey badgers. Basically Bioware wanted to make the most polarizing dilemma possible where you are arguing whether to execute a savage war criminal or not but executing him would actually mean killing babies. It works but honestly it's more than a bit cheap. There wouldn't be that much of a problem if the krogan would have been more realized where there would be more depth and diversity with the species. I guess the problem is in the difficulty of writing an alien species that's sentient but distinctly not human, and this time you can't go with the robot-AI route because it's already set for another species. I wouldn't even know where to start to write that. Bottom line is that even though there are many species in ME, most of them are just different loking humans stuck with one-dimensional traits and characteristics.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2014 14:40
|
|
|
The Krogan used to be more well-adjusted until the Genophage and stuff meant that the crazy ones (with Blood Rage, I think they call it) were existing in greater numbers. As for why the Salarians gave them technology? Needed them to fight the Rachni.
|
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2014 14:48
|
|
|
Milky Moor posted:The Krogan used to be more well-adjusted until the Genophage and stuff meant that the crazy ones (with Blood Rage, I think they call it) were existing in greater numbers. As for why the Salarians gave them technology? Needed them to fight the Rachni. The Krogan before the Genophage are... ambiguous. They do have a civilisation, but they also nuke themselves out of civilisation before they are uplifted. The Krogan Rebellions happen, but then it's pretty clear that the Council incompetences themselves into the rebellions (no surprise there). The Krogan are an alright and not-unrealistic depiction of a species that's stuck in a permanent malthusian trap - they reproduce so fast that they can't escape needing to be violent and aggressive because of resource competition. So they evolved those traits.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2014 15:02
|
|
|
Alchenar posted:The thing is that if the Mass Effect story didn't include the Reapers at all and was just about the first Human Spectre uncovering a conspiracy to re-engineer the genophage that had stopped working then that would still be a big amazing story with lots of moral depth and scope for exploring the universe. I would have loved that, personally. It's a reason I'm hoping the next ME game doesn't try to out-epic Shepard. I really didn't get much out of the war itself, what I enjoyed was all the conflicts that allowed me to see the various alien races and their cultures and problems explored. The war really took away from that because exactly as you say, what could be huge scale problems are downplayed when you have the Reapers attacking. The reapers were kindof a generic doom-bringer monster race and I really just wanted more of the smaller scale conflicts. It's more personal and easy to get immersed in and involved with too. E - Hell, that's a reason I love Citadel DLC so much. It barely involves the Reapers at all, and I think it's better because of it.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2014 15:08
|
|
|
The Reapers provide the necessary backdrop and inertia for the characters in Mass Effect to address the questions that people in real life prefer to avoid. Questions like, "What if the things that actually happened, happened in the future?"
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2014 15:13
|
|
|
Milky Moor posted:The Krogan used to be more well-adjusted until the Genophage and stuff meant that the crazy ones (with Blood Rage, I think they call it) were existing in greater numbers. As for why the Salarians gave them technology? Needed them to fight the Rachni. Oh yeah, the rachni. I am very bad at absorbing huge amounts of information via spoken dialogue and when we are talking about lore spread across three games and many years, I've forgotten or missed probably most of it. Also I honestly don't have almost any memories of playing ME games for some reason, restarted 3 today and I might as well be playing a brand new game. Don't know what's up with that. Like I honestly have no idea what Cerberus is supposed to be. I always thought it was some sort of collobration of extremely wealthy humans pulling their recources together or something? What is it? Why do they have so much money and tech?
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2014 15:48
|
|
|
Milky Moor posted:The Krogan used to be more well-adjusted until the Genophage and stuff meant that the crazy ones (with Blood Rage, I think they call it) were existing in greater numbers. As for why the Salarians gave them technology? Needed them to fight the Rachni. Yeah. The krogan we've met are two or three generations removed from the survivors of a nuclear war that essentially destroyed all their civilization. After that, the forces of the galaxy used them as a blunt instrument against the rachni, then betrayed and neutered them after they got too uppity due to their absurd birth rates requiring ever escalating resources that nobody could possibly afford to give them. They're severely screwed up, but the species has spent the last 2000+ years bouncing from catastrophe to catastroph which is a lot more meaningful to the individual krogan when you consider their ridiculous life spans turning that into almost recent history. It's not too surprising that they've devolved into such barbarism after everything they've been through. Visionary leadership and the morale boost of removing the genophage would certainly help them slowly recover, but they've still got some massive population control problems to deal with.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2014 17:48
|
|
|
Geostomp posted:Yeah. The krogan we've met are two or three generations removed from the survivors of a nuclear war that essentially destroyed all their civilization. After that, the forces of the galaxy used them as a blunt instrument against the rachni, then betrayed and neutered them after they got too uppity due to their absurd birth rates requiring ever escalating resources that nobody could possibly afford to give them. They're severely screwed up, but the species has spent the last 2000+ years bouncing from catastrophe to catastroph which is a lot more meaningful to the individual krogan when you consider their ridiculous life spans turning that into almost recent history. It's not too surprising that they've devolved into such barbarism after everything they've been through. The thing is (and this is the problem with the story), I saw all of that as being something to be dealt with after sorting out the thing with the dreadnought-robots who want to kill everyone. The whole Krogan backstory is incredibly interesting because it's also really the history of the whole galactic community up to that point (note you learn the Salarians still haven't learned their lesson when you visit their base in ME3), but the Reaper thing pushes it all into irrelevance.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2014 17:58
|
|
|
Alchenar posted:The thing is (and this is the problem with the story), I saw all of that as being something to be dealt with after sorting out the thing with the dreadnought-robots who want to kill everyone. The whole Krogan backstory is incredibly interesting because it's also really the history of the whole galactic community up to that point (note you learn the Salarians still haven't learned their lesson when you visit their base in ME3), but the Reaper thing pushes it all into irrelevance. Undoubtedly, but somebody at Bioware and/or EA was dead set on this being a trilogy, despite not really making any progress in the second game, so they had to contrive reasons to wrap up as much as possible right then and there. Just like the quarians vs geth and Cerberus. Everything had to be stuck together with the robo squids, so much so that said robo squids were shunted into the background, to make the game "final".
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2014 18:11
|
|
|
It's really a problem with a lot of science fiction. Alien races are treated as though they are all just one distinct culture. Romulans are emotionless and logical, Klingons are warriors, Ferengi are all ruthless capitalists. These are races of billions of individuals that all seem to have the same cultural identity. Whereas there are thousands of languages and cultures within human society alone. But writing alien races as being as culturally diverse as humanity would be a tall order. Speaking "Klingon" would be the same as speaking "human". So I can forgive Mass Effect falling into that old sic-fi trope.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2014 18:36
|
|
|
AlliedBiscuit posted:It's really a problem with a lot of science fiction. Alien races are treated as though they are all just one distinct culture. Romulans are emotionless and logical, Klingons are warriors, Ferengi are all ruthless capitalists. These are races of billions of individuals that all seem to have the same cultural identity. Whereas there are thousands of languages and cultures within human society alone. But writing alien races as being as culturally diverse as humanity would be a tall order. Speaking "Klingon" would be the same as speaking "human". So I can forgive Mass Effect falling into that old sic-fi trope. Did you just switch Romulans with Vulcans? Get the gently caress out.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2014 06:36
|
|
|
Kibayasu posted:Did you just switch Romulans with Vulcans? Get the gently caress out. Goddammit, that's what I get for not re-reading my own post. I'll show myself out.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2014 20:59
|
|
|
Hold on, the Star Trek races are NOT treated as one distinct culture. They are treated as very seperate HUMAN cultures, just with funnier looking faces. The whole drat show is a corollary for the Cold War. Star Trek 6 is basically Space Chernobyl and the fall of the Berlin Wall...in space. Oh, and Ferengi are Space Jews. Gene basically admitted that.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2014 21:04
|
|
|
I hope Mass Effect 4 is you playing a reaper trying to save a galaxy from Shepard.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2014 07:49
|
|
|
Geostomp posted:Yeah. The krogan we've met are two or three generations removed from the survivors of a nuclear war that essentially destroyed all their civilization. After that, the forces of the galaxy used them as a blunt instrument against the rachni, then betrayed and neutered them after they got too uppity due to their absurd birth rates requiring ever escalating resources that nobody could possibly afford to give them. It's not betrayal when the krogan were already attacking other species colonised planets.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2014 10:18
|
|
|
Drifter posted:daddy issues. The first game had a consistent and accurate enough focus that I wonder if the writers weren't military brats. They certainly got enough of that right with Spacer Shep, Garrus and Ash, although I could be projecting.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2014 11:49
|
|
|
Axe-man posted:I hope Mass Effect 4 is you playing a reaper trying to save a galaxy from Shepard.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2014 23:54
|
|
|
*use dubstep to ruin everyone's day*
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2014 00:22
|
|
|
SubponticatePoster posted:Dialogue choices: R- HOOOONK P - HOOOOOOONK Neutral - "I have to go" Neutral should be "We are beyond your comprehension." then you rocket off into space.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2014 00:54
|
|
|
Imagine being the poor Reaper that got picked to go to Tuchanka. Like "gently caress that, I'm a REAPER and everything wants to kill me there." Playing thru ME1 again, boy is the UI more clunky compared to 2 and 3. And no curving biotics.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2014 02:53
|
|
|
On the other hand you can get most of your kills by lift/throwing fools out of the skybox. So there's that. except when this glitches out and makes progress impossible but that's the risk you take as a Space Wizard.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2014 05:26
|
|
|
Bit late on the Mass Effect train since I had 1 and 2 from a steam sale years ago and finally got around to playing them and picking up 3. ME 1 was clearly ground breaking when it came out but of course looks dated now but the game play is still fun and the writing is still good. Of course when jumping straight from 1 into 2 there is a huge leap in how combat and movement work as well as your squad mates being more chatty. Saren was a very 2D villain however even with the fact he was being controlled he still started on this path. In later games when you find a bit more you can be more sympathetic but at the time of playing it he was just a jerk who needed to kick to the balls. ME 2 had the next gen graphics, better combat and more little bits and pieces outside the main story. I liked the loyalty missions since it made the characters more rounded and with a history rather than generic assassin or space paladin. However the pace was a lot slower. Sure you wanted to save more colonies from being attacked but there wasn't the shadow of something that was going to destroy everything hanging over you. Oh and the mining minigame was just so bad. I am a Commander of a crack team of galactic badasses and I am mining planets to get materials to upgrade when I am working for an organisation that using space magic brought be back from the dead and gave me a replacement for my lost spaceship. What were Cerberus broke after that? The final mission however was a lot of fun and provided a sense of urgency and it was nice to see how earlier choices impacted the outcome. ME 3 is where while when the game was released and the poo poo storm about the endings was happening I looked them up on youtube and could see why they were bad (apart from being the same thing with different coloured explosions) but after playing through the game I can understand why a lot of people were upset. They had spent time playing this one character through a decent chunk of content, I think my play time for all 3 came in at about 60 hours and more questions were asked than answered. The endings to Baldurs Gate were better in that they provided closure even if they were just an image, scrolling text and narration. Ignoring that there was a sense of urgency added but it was a bit artificial because the reapers on the map only took over more space when you moved the plot along, there was no time limits on how long I could just fart about the galaxy finding knick knacks for people on the Citadel. The other part that seemed off was that it took the Reapers centuries to clear out the Protheans in the last cycle but in a matter of weeks they have pretty much taken the whole map. Now we can assume that the initial assault just crushes all organised response and it takes them that long to deal with the left overs in hiding. The writing of the individual characters was good again and your squad moving about the ship and interacting was a nice change with the added back and forth and the small scenes on the Citadel amusing. I haven't bought the Citadel DLC but I might since it seems to be more of the same. ALso Javik's comments about the Salarians were always amusing. Movement and combat were refined some more in a positive way and the fact everyone wasn't walking around with 5 guns strapped to their body made sense but playing a Vanguard there were a few points that I wished I still had a sniper rifle, but it did mean I had to lean on my squad more. There was one change that did annoy me which was needing to choose an ammo power every mission. In ME 2 I could set Warp Ammo on and leave it there, this time I had to turn it on every time which wasn't a huge thing but I did forget since I was used to not doing it. All in all they were fun games but... the ending to ME 3 needs some more time since it just is so bad and I hope I am going to cover points that I haven't seen elsewhere rather than rehash the same old points. * If the Reapers/Catalyst were part of a system to stop conflict between Organic and Synthetic life and were created to preserve organic life then why not just stop synthetic life research and development either covertly or overtly? The issue I have here is that if a reaper is created to hold the memories and data of an organic race and then they go into combat with the races of the current cycle and take losses then for each Reaper lost is not a part if not the whole archive of knowledge about the race the Reaper was created from lost? Fighting an open all out war seems to be the opposite of what they claim they are doing since they are risking that which they claim they were created to preserve and if they had just say gone to the Quarians and been all "hey guys don't create the Geth k? They will totally fight you eventually. Peace out" and if they had ignored them harvested them and waved a death laser armed tentacle at other races as a warning for creating synthetic life? Quarians are preserved, synthetic/organic conflict averted. Of course there are other unknowns with this but if a bunch of metal space squid turned up and nicely asked you to not do something and provided good reasons not too you would hope that at least a decent number of those races contacted would agree and only those who were hostile and thus deemed a risk to other organic races as well turned into goop. Which leads into: * If the Reapers/Catalyst were designed as the solution to preserve organic life why are they such jerks about it? Colonists taken by the collectors die in agony as they are broken down into organic soup, They turn organic life in to troops in rather graphic ways (Dragons Teeth is the one we see) and bring total war and misery and it is unnecessary for their stated goal. If someone says they are trying to save me while attacking me I might question their motives and fight back. *Could they be loving with you in that whole indoctrination theory thing, truly believe that they are doing good which would mean the Catalyst is insane/sadistic or just going for the path of least resistance? Why gently caress with you and indoctrinate you? They have won already unless you do something and with the EC ending you can take a shoot at the AI and it takes the choice away from you. If the AI is mad then surely it is one half of the problem and it is taking an I,Robot style logically leap to come to the conclusion that it is still helping. How can open war be the path of least resistance when it means they have to replace losses which as previously discussed means potentially losing the collective knowledge of the organic life the Reapers are supposed to preserve. They could go all Illuminati which they have shown they can with Saren and The Illusive Man to stop organic/synthetic conflict but still come charging in killing everyone while claiming they are saving them. The only conclusion that would seem to make sense given the information provided is that if the Reapers were more Gardeners who go around to harvest races every 50k years to allow younger races to develop without fear of being attacked and destroyed by either the bad or good intentions of more advanced races (Salarians uplifting the Krogan is a good example) and preserve the harvested races in the same way someone preserves plant samples or presses flowers and leaves. The Catalyst could instead of some jerk AI is instead some kind of higher intelligence that views the galaxy as its property and views what is happening as nothing more than mowing the lawn before the grass gets too long and unruly then composting the cuttings. Maybe it knows it is causing suffering but it doesn't care because organic life is so below it? Maybe it doesn't know because it cannot comprehend intelligent organic life until you fight your way into the Citadel and reason with it? Maybe it isn't immortal and is just the latest in a line of intelligences and is doing this out of a sense of routine and is happy to be freed from the task if one wants to replace it. Maybe you destroy the intelligence itself meaning the Reapers are now running on auto pilot and rather than being stopped at just highly advanced civilisations go and cleansed the entire galaxy of all life before going to drift off to find a new galaxy to harvest in a similar way the Tyranids in WH40K do. So you get refusal, destroy, control and synthesis endings with a small change in the writing and presentation that at least to me makes more sense. Anyway 
|
|
#
?
Oct 14, 2014 14:45
|
|
|
Whoa. Kinda wish you had showed up while in the midst on 1 so you could chat as you went through. Also, don't try to make sense of the third game. Bioware didn't. It's a huge terrible piece of utter poo poo writing masked in a AAA interface and relatively fun combat and missions. E: but please vent more. It's about time someone spun this thread up again.
|
|
#
?
Oct 14, 2014 15:34
|
|
|
Yeah, I certainly don't mind you venting, but really - trust me. Getting wound up about the ending of 3...it's just a mess. It's best to just forget about it. Play Citadel DLC and pretend that's the ending. I'm not even kidding.
|
|
#
?
Oct 14, 2014 16:31
|
|
|
Citadel DLC was hilarious and gently caress the haters Invite everyone but Jacob to the party Shep's line about Jack and Miranda had me laughing my rear end off.
|
|
#
?
Oct 14, 2014 17:58
|
|
|
Play Citadel and forget about it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 14, 2014 17:58
|
|
|
BigPaddy posted:Why are the Reapers such stupid assholes? Turns out the guys who made them aren't very good at software design.
|
|
#
?
Oct 14, 2014 18:02
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 04:56 |
|
|
Ehh I guess it was a bit of a vent but it was less rage and more wow this writing is terrible. If I can come up with something that is at least somewhat plausible off the top of my head I do have to wonder what Bioware were doing. Probably going to get Citadel this evening and give it a run since it does sound like a laugh with my squad getting drunk and shooting up my apartment.
|
|
#
?
Oct 14, 2014 19:43
|
|