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Ravenfood posted:The entire Alliance 5th Fleet. They have six of them, and that's before they got upgunned with Thanix cannons that explicitly are stated (in the Codex) to basically let each ship punch ~rank above their class. So all those cruisers the humans have? Now hit like dreadnaughts. Their dreadnaughts all hit like the Destiny Ascension. And then the humans swarm everything with fighters, which will have the biggest effect of increased weaponry. I would have done it something like that. Try to outfit your ships with as much advanced tech as possible then possibly have some sort of lite-MacGuffin like a Prothean cannon that increases damage but in no way can win the battle like the Crucible does.
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| # ? Mar 15, 2012 14:52 |
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| # ? May 20, 2013 02:40 |
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Jblade posted:I thought the intro of ME3 made it clear that most of the Alliance fleet had it's poo poo pushed in by the reapers, and only scattered survivors are left to form one fleet? Hackett sacrificed one fleet (the third, as I recall, to give the others a chance to fall back and regroup).
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| # ? Mar 15, 2012 14:53 |
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ME2 is weighed down a lot by the premise. The collectors appear out of thin air and we spend the entire game focusing on them. ME1 ended with this big notion of "THE REAPERS ARE COMING!" and then ME2 ends the exact same way "THE REAPERS ARE COMING". The entire story felt pointless. The execution of everything makes up for this though, except the last bossfight which is really bad.
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| # ? Mar 15, 2012 14:53 |
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Anal_Foam posted:Spacewizard kid does somewhat invalidate the entirety of the ME1 plotline. It is so full of plotholes that it is quite futile to think about it. It was a fun universe to play in, but they smashed it to pieces in just five minutes.
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| # ? Mar 15, 2012 14:54 |
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Zzulu posted:The entire story felt pointless. I'll never understand this complaint and I'll never agree with it. The Reapers are still 'just coming' but the idea that every entry in a trilogy has to constantly advance every facet of the main, over-arching plot instead of exploring other avenues just seems utterly bizzare to me. I think ME2's lowered, slower-burning focus was absolutely the right choice after ME1.
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| # ? Mar 15, 2012 14:55 |
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The one big inconsistency that pissed me off about the Reapers' "motivation" is that they have repeatedly admitted that they deliberately guide organic civilizations down the same technological development path. For all the little glowing prick's preaching about the dangers of synthetics, he completely forgets that the whole Cycle depends on his Reapers setting organics up on the path where they'll fail by getting killed by synthetics either of their own creation or their so-called "guardians". The more I think about this ending, the more convinced I am that the writer never played either of the previous two games and just wanted to seem "deep" and "philosophical" without any understanding of what either word meant.
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| # ? Mar 15, 2012 14:56 |
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I know I said this like 50 pages back, but I'm not entirely convinced that the endings ruined the game for the MAJORITY of people. I'm pretty sure it's ruined for the majority of Mass Effect superfans, but let's face reality here - that's not the majority of Mass Effect players. I'm really, insanely curious about how the sales of the first single-player DLC pack are going to go, because that's really the moment that extent of the ending's damages will become clear. If it doesn't meet expectations (and believe me, EA has sales data and DLC attachment rates from all of Mass Effect 2 and their other franchises as well, so the expectations ARE there), and the gap is large enough, it won't matter what the ME3 team thinks about their ending: the suits will step in and demand action. On one hand I know that internet nerds (myself included) sometimes waver on their commitments if the content is good enough. On the other hand I know that a terrible ending really does destroy franchises (see: The Matrix). So I'm intensely curious about how this will all turn out.
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| # ? Mar 15, 2012 14:57 |
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Zzulu posted:ME2 is weighed down a lot by the premise. The collectors appear out of thin air and we spend the entire game focusing on them. ME1 ended with this big notion of "THE REAPERS ARE COMING!" and then ME2 ends the exact same way "THE REAPERS ARE COMING". The entire story felt pointless. The execution of everything makes up for this though, except the last bossfight which is really bad. It's much more of a self-contained story than ME1 and 3, so it gets less bogged down by the horseshit ending of the series. Maybe it feels pointless in the grand scheme of things, but at least it can stand alone as a great game when the dust settles.
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| # ? Mar 15, 2012 14:58 |
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Sky Shadowing posted:An interesting point I just read on BSN. The problem with the approach, if it is true Shepard is indoctrinated, is that there's nothing made of it within the game itself. I personally don't think DLC endings would solve this problem, because if BioWare wanted it to be more tenable they would have included some sort of payoff in the "finished" product. As it is, Shepard's indoctrination is a very important subtext in search of grounding. I've written in this thread before about how the ending has a half-clever but poorly implemented deconstruction of the "player choice" aspect of the Mass Effect series and videogames in general -- in this way the indoctrination theory makes ME3 like (not gonna spoiler this because come on) BioShock. The problem BioShock had is that it deconstructs the player experience -- masterfully -- but then expects you to keep playing for another hour or two as if that hadn't happened. ME3, as it stands, abruptly deconstructs (intentionally or not) the player experience without context and with no payoff. This whole angle seems to be the current favorite tactic for proving games are art, but the problem with it is that it's really goddamn difficult to regain cohesion and/or justification after exploding the primary selling point of your medium. I'm not going to say it's a wrong-headed move for gaming to look in this direction, because it may yet work out, but I think it requires more deep thought than is generally assumed given constraints of budget/development time/publisher demands.
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| # ? Mar 15, 2012 14:58 |
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Geostomp posted:The one big inconsistency that pissed me off about the Reapers' "motivation" is that they have repeatedly admitted that they deliberately guide organic civilizations down the same technological development path. 
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| # ? Mar 15, 2012 14:58 |
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Dan Didio posted:I'll never understand this complaint and I'll never agree with it. The Reapers are still 'just coming' but the idea that every entry in a trilogy has to constantly advance every facet of the main, over-arching plot instead of exploring other avenues just seems utterly bizzare to me. I think ME2's lowered, slower-burning focus was absolutely the right choice after ME1. The real villain is what is interesting to fight against. In the ME universe this is the Reapers. In ME2 they introduce a henchman without personality that we spend the entire game fighting (We already did this in ME1 with the Geth, why are we doing this again...) The only part of it I liked was the fact that they were former Protheans but no one seems to care and the subject is dropped almost as quickly as it is brought up. Zzulu fucked around with this message at Mar 15, 2012 around 15:03 |
| # ? Mar 15, 2012 14:59 |
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Geostomp posted:The one big inconsistency that pissed me off about the Reapers' "motivation" is that they have repeatedly admitted that they deliberately guide organic civilizations down the same technological development path. There's a really interesting avenue to explore as well in that Javik notes that there was a similar conflict to the Geth/Quarian debacle in his cycle and he points out a couple of times that synthetics are completely untrustworthy and will never be able to live side by side with organics. There's a crazy big wealth of opportunities there. The ideas could have been awesome. The Reapers renegade tactics unwittingly informing each of the cycles synthetics like how they subverted the Geth and encouraging them to do exactly what the Reapers are supposed to stop, because of the endless, cyclical nature of both the synthetics/organics and the cycles themselves constantly repeating. All while Javik is unwittingly adopting the exact philosophy the Reapers adhere to. Instead everything that's set-up is swept away in a torrent of 'but thou must!'. Zzulu posted:The villain is what is interesting, in the ME universe this is the Reapers. In ME2 they introduce a henchman that we spend the entire game fighting.. The only part of a story that's interesting is the villain? Or the only part of the Mass Effect story that's interesting is the villain? Because I don't agree with either of those. In fact, the first interpretation is downright absurd.
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| # ? Mar 15, 2012 15:00 |
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Is it stated anywhere that all/any Alliance ships have Thanix cannons now though? Do even Turian ships have it? From what I remember the cutscenes showed them all firing just normal Disruptor missiles or whatever they are. From what it looked like in ME2 it was a beam weapon like the Reapers but blue instead of red. I don't remember seeing anything like that in the ME3 spaceship battles.
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| # ? Mar 15, 2012 15:01 |
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Kind of funny how the Geth fought to determine their own future, then Shepard comes along and invalidates all of that by killing them all/turning them into organics against their will. In a deeper narrative, there would be a message to be found there.
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| # ? Mar 15, 2012 15:01 |
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Jblade posted:Is it stated anywhere that all/any Alliance ships have Thanix cannons now though? Do even Turian ships have it? From what I remember the cutscenes showed them all firing just normal Disruptor missiles or whatever they are. From what it looked like in ME2 it was a beam weapon like the Reapers but blue instead of red. I don't remember seeing anything like that in the ME3 spaceship battles. The guy who wrote the ME1 codex made a few snarky remarks about how the art/cutscene guys at BioWare just don't give a gently caress about the lore.
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| # ? Mar 15, 2012 15:02 |
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General Battuta posted:The guy who wrote the ME1 codex made a few snarky remarks about how the art/cutscene guys at BioWare just don't give a gently caress about the lore. The guy who wrote the ME1 codex should have written a sci-fi universe that catered more to awesome ship battles.
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| # ? Mar 15, 2012 15:03 |
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Mass Effect 1 does have some pretty dodgy writing in parts. The whole opening sections with proving Saren did it have some real contrivances that form a "Jaws 2" situation where you're meant to sympathize with the poor Cassandra protagonist being called crazy by the DUMB POLITICIANS, even though the only real evidence that they're correct is A) it's a story, we wouldn't be watching/playing otherwise, and B) we're shown things from the bad guy's perspective that the protagonist does not see. That, and I remember that even while playing it I was sure Tali's recording would be a fake designed to discredit Shepard because it makes no logical sense for a variety of reasons.
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| # ? Mar 15, 2012 15:03 |
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quote:The only part of a story that's interesting is the villain? Or the only part of the Mass Effect story that's interesting is the villain? Because I don't agree with either of those. In fact, the first interpretation is downright absurd.
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| # ? Mar 15, 2012 15:04 |
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Dan Didio posted:The guy who wrote the ME1 codex should have written a sci-fi universe that catered more to awesome ship battles. This is incredibly  but I think he did; the idea of distant mass accelerator exchanges closing in and then collapsing into apocalyptic knife fights is really cinematic and gorgeous if you're not married to the classic Star Wars 'world war 2 in space' visual paradigm.The codex battles sound way more structured and exciting than what we got in practice, which is a bunch of ships scattered about at random exchanging color-coded laser blasts.
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| # ? Mar 15, 2012 15:05 |
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CrushedB posted:Mass Effect 1 does have some pretty dodgy writing in parts. The whole opening sections with proving Saren did it have some real contrivances that form a "Jaws 2" situation where you're meant to sympathize with the poor Cassandra protagonist being called crazy by the DUMB POLITICIANS, even though the only real evidence that they're correct is A) it's a story, we wouldn't be watching/playing otherwise, and B) we're shown things from the bad guy's perspective that the protagonist does not see. That, and I remember that even while playing it I was sure Tali's recording would be a fake designed to discredit Shepard because it makes no logical sense for a variety of reasons. One of the councillor's, I believe the Asari or the Salarian actually makes a really good point. At one point you have the opportunity to say, "Christ, when are you fucks going to believe me!?" after a spate of visions and stuff you don't really have concrete evidence of and the Councillor basically retorts, in the politest way possible with, "Are you loving kidding me? Our decisions decide the fate of every sentient lifeform in the galaxy, grow the gently caress up and come to us with actual evidence." General Battuta posted:This is incredibly I'm pretty sure the codex stuff doesn't really suit 'apocalyptic knife fights', does it? I thought it was all 'firing at extremely long ranges where neither ship is particularly visible or can be framed together and occasionally you have to retreat just because the technology can't support it, also no fighting near planets'.
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| # ? Mar 15, 2012 15:05 |
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Zzulu posted:The real villain is what is interesting to fight against. In the ME universe this is the Reapers. In ME2 they introduce a henchman without personality that we spend the entire game fighting (We already did this in ME1 with the Geth, why are we doing this again...) The only part of it I liked was the fact that they were former Protheans but no one seems to care and the subject is dropped almost as quickly as it is brought up. I understand the point of the Collectors coming out of nowhere and the 2nd game feeling like it's pointless, but to say the Collectors have no personality is a stretch. The reveal they're the Protheans is huge, especially because it ties into the 3rd game where the Reapers use the races to form various troops. And the 2nd game feels like a conflict with Harbinger. You're fighting against him just through his army of former Protheans. He "assumes direct control". A lot.
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| # ? Mar 15, 2012 15:06 |
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H.P. Shivcraft posted:The problem with the approach, if it is true Shepard is indoctrinated, is that there's nothing made of it within the game itself. I personally don't think DLC endings would solve this problem, because if BioWare wanted it to be more tenable they would have included some sort of payoff in the "finished" product. As it is, Shepard's indoctrination is a very important subtext in search of grounding. But, as lovely as it would be, it would tie in with Mass Effect 3 being the conclusion of Shepard's story. Not the universe. To think about it, it would actually be clever writing- "Shepard's part in the story is done, now the others have to step up to the plate. If you did well enough in the main game, you can save Shepard from indoctrination." I would not even bat an eye at paying for DLC if it continued post-ending, especially if it wasn't oriented around Shepard.
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| # ? Mar 15, 2012 15:08 |
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Zzulu posted:I edited my post to make it clearer I see. I still don't agree. Mass Effect 2 still has you fighting the Reapers, just indirectly. Hell, I'd argue Mass Effect 1 does the same thing. I don't think either particularly has you fighting a different war or anything. It's the same fight, it's just on different fronts. I'd much rather that than retreading what came before or leaping right into full-blown war with the Reapers.
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| # ? Mar 15, 2012 15:09 |
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I know I'm going against almost every person here, but I honestly enjoy the idea of a bleak ending. I'm not at all saying I like what we ended up with, but I enjoy the idea that the relays are gone and the galactic fleet is, more or less, stranded in the Sol system. Sure, we won, but the cost is immense. I'd love another game where we play in this broken universe, trying to rebuild the galactic community and/or trying to find new means to reunite it. All of the endings are still bullshit, though.
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| # ? Mar 15, 2012 15:10 |
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General Battuta posted:The guy who wrote the ME1 codex made a few snarky remarks about how the art/cutscene guys at BioWare just don't give a gently caress about the lore. Judging from the way the series went, it's pretty obvious the gatekeepers of the ME science lore left the writing staff one by one, until it culminated into the end of ME3 where we got TIM making people dance like puppets and then a space wizard.
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| # ? Mar 15, 2012 15:10 |
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Yeah, Harbringer is the villain in 2, and the Collectors are just avatars for him. He takes direct control of one of them throughout the whole game, taunting you. They have more personality than the Geth or random husks/Cerberus troops by far, due to this.
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| # ? Mar 15, 2012 15:10 |
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Darko posted:Yeah, Harbringer is the villain in 2, and the Collectors are just avatars for him. He takes direct control of one of them throughout the whole game, taunting you. They have more personality than the Geth or random husks/Cerberus troops by far, due to this. Yeah, see, I just don't get it. If anything you're more directly fighting the Reapers in 2. Or at least, an argument could be made for that. I found the Collectors design, history and the missions centered around them infinitely more interesting than ME1's Geth as well.
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| # ? Mar 15, 2012 15:12 |
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omg car crash posted:I know I'm going against almost every person here, but I honestly enjoy the idea of a bleak ending. I'm not at all saying I like what we ended up with, but I enjoy the idea that the relays are gone and the galactic fleet is, more or less, stranded in the Sol system. Sure, we won, but the cost is immense. I'd love another game where we play in this broken universe, trying to rebuild the galactic community and/or trying to find new means to reunite it. I also liked that the relays blew up and the whole "fleet stranded near Earth" is an interesting premise for future content. But all of it was just not presented in a satisfying way
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| # ? Mar 15, 2012 15:13 |
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My theory is that the events of Mass Effect are Shepard's unconscious brain interpreting the beacon's signal at a slower perception of time, and the reaper horns on the soundtrack are Ashley's drawling voice in the real world telling him to wake up.
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| # ? Mar 15, 2012 15:13 |
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omg car crash posted:I know I'm going against almost every person here, but I honestly enjoy the idea of a bleak ending. I'm not at all saying I like what we ended up with, but I enjoy the idea that the relays are gone and the galactic fleet is, more or less, stranded in the Sol system. Sure, we won, but the cost is immense. I'd love another game where we play in this broken universe, trying to rebuild the galactic community and/or trying to find new means to reunite it. I like it too, I would have loved an ending that turned the paradigm on it's head and had the answer to 'beating' the Reapers effectively be wiping the galaxy free of all technology 'tainted' by them in order to fulfill the whole idea of galactic, cosmic self-determination. It's just that the endings that do have that outcome, or an approximation of it, aren't presented in that way and in fact agree with the opposite idealogy.
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| # ? Mar 15, 2012 15:13 |
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omg car crash posted:I know I'm going against almost every person here, but I honestly enjoy the idea of a bleak ending. I'm not at all saying I like what we ended up with, but I enjoy the idea that the relays are gone and the galactic fleet is, more or less, stranded in the Sol system. Sure, we won, but the cost is immense. I'd love another game where we play in this broken universe, trying to rebuild the galactic community and/or trying to find new means to reunite it. I like it too. Not everyone wants an Ewok celebration. Even the current endings, plot-wise, are fine. It just needs a conversation with the Starchild where you discover the MAGICAL SECRETS of the Mass Effect universe; a different, longer cinematic depending on the player choice; and to show the results of choices made throughout the game. Bam. Satisfying ending.
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| # ? Mar 15, 2012 15:15 |
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Anal_Foam posted:Spacewizard kid does somewhat invalidate the entirety of the ME1 plotline. Why did sovereign need the keepers to activate the Citadel trap, if the entity that controls the reapers is the citadel. Why couldn't it just activate it's mass relay, send an invite to dark space, and start the cycle anew? Because the lead writer is a hack. It makes all the sense in the world that the Citadel would be the Catalyst in a machine designed and improved over countless cycles to destroy the Reapers, as it is the biggest common link between every civilisation so far, and is already established as a massively powerful device. It also makes all the sense in the world that - having been told about the Crucible and the Catalyst by President Bartlett - the Reapers would swarm it, kill everyone on it, and move it some place safe while they get on with their harvesting. But it doesn't make any sense for some AI commander of the the Reapers to have been living on board the whole time, or for the controls for the Crucible device to be on board the Citadel. Once you hit that lift the whole loving thing falls apart. (Unless the Crucible was a Reaper device/design or something. Even though human/salarian etc. scientists are working on it, most of their knowledge is based on Reaper tech after all.)
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| # ? Mar 15, 2012 15:15 |
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Something of a reaction from Bioware at the BSN:quote:On the Mass Effect 3 endings. Yes, we are listening.
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| # ? Mar 15, 2012 15:15 |
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omg car crash posted:I know I'm going against almost every person here, but I honestly enjoy the idea of a bleak ending. I'm not at all saying I like what we ended up with, but I enjoy the idea that the relays are gone and the galactic fleet is, more or less, stranded in the Sol system. Sure, we won, but the cost is immense. I'd love another game where we play in this broken universe, trying to rebuild the galactic community and/or trying to find new means to reunite it. I agree with you and I think the problem with the movement to change the ending is the premise that we want something happier. Not everyone wants a happy ending. I think the vast majority of people want an ending that makes more sense though.
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| # ? Mar 15, 2012 15:16 |
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Charlie Mopps posted:Something of a reaction from Bioware at the BSN: They're blatantly stalling for time until they've got some kind of concrete answer to the fan response in place, I don't know what it could be, proper press statement, developer quote, DLC. I don't know. But 'we're waiting for more people to finish the game' is an absurd line to be toeing to straight-faced.
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| # ? Mar 15, 2012 15:17 |
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omg car crash posted:I know I'm going against almost every person here, but I honestly enjoy the idea of a bleak ending. I'm not at all saying I like what we ended up with, but I enjoy the idea that the relays are gone and the galactic fleet is, more or less, stranded in the Sol system. Sure, we won, but the cost is immense. I'd love another game where we play in this broken universe, trying to rebuild the Galatia community and/or trying to find new means to reunite it. That's fine, here's the thing: most of us in this thread absolutely unequivocally support a bleak ending as a possible ending. The problem is that this is an interactive story game, and the story can be anywhere from: 1) Shep the hardass space marine who shoots one of his own teammates for insubordination, sacrifices the Council to stop Sovereign, gets most of his team killed on a Suicide Mission, fucks a sickly alien babe (making her sicker) and then watches her jump off a cliff after he backs the robot destroyers of her race, and dooms another race to extinction. 2) Shep the peacemaker who never backs down from his principles, is wracked with guilt over the one teammate he did lose, beats impossible odds again and again such as: having his ENTIRE TEAM survive a Suicide Mission, brokers peace to a 300 year old war, and giving a future to a dying race. Yes, Game #1 absolutely should have the option of a bleak ending. But it is Totally Stupid to give a bleak ending to Game #2, in the same manner that it would be wrong to have Luke die on the Death Star and then the explosion blow up the Rebel Alliance Fleet and the falling debris kill Han and Leia. It simply does not work with the tone of the story.
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| # ? Mar 15, 2012 15:17 |
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omg car crash posted:I know I'm going against almost every person here, but I honestly enjoy the idea of a bleak ending. I'm not at all saying I like what we ended up with, but I enjoy the idea that the relays are gone and the galactic fleet is, more or less, stranded in the Sol system. Sure, we won, but the cost is immense. I'd love another game where we play in this broken universe, trying to rebuild the galactic community and/or trying to find new means to reunite it.
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| # ? Mar 15, 2012 15:18 |
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Dan Didio posted:But 'we're waiting for more people to finish the game' is an absurd line to be toeing to straight-faced. I honestly think that they didn't know how to end the game, and just burped out this unclear & incoherent crap. The ending? Make your own ending!
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| # ? Mar 15, 2012 15:19 |
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Batham posted:Especially considering they have a special spoiler subforum. Yeah, they're probably the best set-up game developer forum in the universe to host one of these discussions immediately on their forums.
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| # ? Mar 15, 2012 15:21 |
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| # ? May 20, 2013 02:40 |
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Dan Didio posted:They're blatantly stalling for time until they've got some kind of concrete answer to the fan response in place, I don't know what it could be, proper press statement, developer quote, DLC. I don't know. I'm sure the thinking is going one of two ways depending on if DLC endings are coming: 1) DLC endings are NOT coming: We've developed a bunch of apps and portals that directly transmit our social media feeds. We shouldn't really talk about the ending in fear of spoiling it for people still playing through no fault of their own. If we started talking about it, it'd ruin the game for them (and kill off support for finishing the games). 2) DLC endings ARE coming: If people knew the ending wasn't the real one, you'd get 1) Blowback from everyone for not including the proper endings the in game (in addition to leaving a pretty well integrated and important character as Day 1 DLC) and 2) players would probably stop playing just to wait for the DLC. What kind of developer wants to stop people from playing their own games? It's still moronic in both cases to say "We're waiting for people to finish" but BioWare put themselves in this position.
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| # ? Mar 15, 2012 15:23 |
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