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Rayjenkins posted:Does he have any sort of investment in the story?
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| # ? Mar 26, 2012 21:30 |
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| # ? May 25, 2013 11:28 |
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Safari Disco Lion posted:And I admit to being just a bit hopeful that Bioware releases DLC that gives more ending options. They'd make a KILLING on it and at the same time please a lot of the unhappy fans (not everyone, but a large chunk if they did it right). Honestly they'd be stupid not to. The PR for releasing anything that improves on the ending would be nightmarish. It would be so bad that a significant boycott (on Bioware, probably not all of EA, though the nerds would try) could happen. "Did you hear that new Bioware RPG is going to be $80!? Yea, $60 for the game and then $20 for the ending when they finish it in 6 months!" Now, if they release the "ending 2.0" DLC for free, they'd come out looking pretty nice, but why not just wait a few more months until the game is finished and release it then? I guess they had to get it on the balance sheets for the right quarter.
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| # ? Mar 26, 2012 21:32 |
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Amateur Saboteur posted:Apparently Shepard who literally 5 minutes ago murdered someone for attempting the same endeavor he is now going to do is thematically consistent with the rest of the Mass Effect series. People have different expectations coming into games and obviously mismatches will be points of contention. It's not anything biologically defining like what you're thinking. I think personally all of my disappointment in the series went out to Mass Effect 2 and I wasn't really disappointed with the ending of Mass Effect 3. I can imagine people who put in much more effort into the prior games being disappointed though. VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV Pretty much. If you don't have a point of reference on why someone likes or dislikes something, it's hard to conclude why they have that opinion. Tezzeract fucked around with this message at Mar 26, 2012 around 21:41 |
| # ? Mar 26, 2012 21:32 |
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People also like Twilight and the Star Wars Prequels.
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| # ? Mar 26, 2012 21:37 |
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Geisladisk posted:Keep in mind though that is ONE Reaper, and the smaller kind of spacefaring Reaper, too. Of course the biggest fleet in the Galaxy can crush it relatively easily. The problem is that there's thousands of these fuckers (there seemed to be like one for every city block when they attack Vancouver at the start of the game), coupled with hundreds or thousands of Sovereign-like capital reapers. You missed my meaning, perhaps I was unclear - the Quarians violated the treaty and outfitted their whole flotilla, civilian ships included, with Thanix cannons (I'm still mad that those went from "secret Turian project that Garrus broke his society's code to supply you with in ME2" to "sharply discounted if purchased in lots of 10,000 or more, apparently") and it still took them four or five salvos of direct fire on the small kind of Reaper with its "I am on a planet" lower mass setting before it blew up. There are a ton of inconsistencies in how Reapers are presented, that's the one that bothered me the most in terms of combat capabilities. If the dreadnaught (Sovereign style) Reapers are killed by the dozens in daring battles you find out about in the Codex of Off-Screen Exposition, and they're in space where they have their full shielding and mass (again, the Codex says Reapers are more vulnerable on planets than when in space because they have to lower their mass and divert shielding to maintaining planet-viable mass)... Why does it take a fleet basically full of Quarian dreadnaughts equipped with Thanix cannons several hits to knock one planet-bound Destroyer down, except as a "check out this big fuckin' set piece we made, in between dodging the red beam" non-justification? That has inconsistent implications for all kinds of stuff, but that's ME3 in a nutshell I suppose.
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| # ? Mar 26, 2012 21:40 |
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Un-l337-Pork posted:Now, if they release the "ending 2.0" DLC for free, they'd come out looking pretty nice, but why not just wait a few more months until the game is finished and release it then? I guess they had to get it on the balance sheets for the right quarter.
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| # ? Mar 26, 2012 21:43 |
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Dreylad posted:The Reapers are still pretty much unstoppable. Hackett says they can't be beaten by conventional means. Even with their tech advantages, the asari get run over as quickly as any other race. You're able to accomplish what you're able to accomplish in ME3 because of the work Shepard did in the first two games, not despite it. You know, that's something I didn't get that much from with the whole "Thessia beacon" subplot. Sure, early Prothean uplifting would explain why the asari were narrowly first to the stars of their current cycle. But it didn't really bring any explanation for their cultural dominance that their long lives, diplomatic skill, tendency to marry themselves into all of the other cultures, and being the one race where everyone has biotic powers doesn't explain plenty on its own. It seems they always turned to the salarians for their science and the turians for their military: Aethyta complains on this, that the Asari should work on technological and military strength but don't. I'll be clear, it isn't that the fall of Thessia doesn't work as something dramatic in the setting: it's still easy to establish as an ancient homeworld, and a beautiful place that through the skill of its leadership has remained untouched by war for millennia. It's just that "Asari technological edge" never seemed to be much of it. They narrowly beat the salarians to space and ceded technological leadership to them ever since. While individually formidable they've left military leadership to the turians since they came along. The Protheans gave them some early knowledge and apparently engineered their whole race as biotics, and that's a big deal. It's also in the past: otherwise the asari don't seem to have any particular knowledge or secrets over anyone else, so it's a hard question what owning that Beacon all these years has done for them even if they were only able to get a little out of it.
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| # ? Mar 26, 2012 21:45 |
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If they released a Mass Effect: Director's Cut Trilogy with a better ending, some retooled stuff in ME1, and a bunch of the ME2 DLC how much would ya'll be willing to pay? I'd drop a solid $150, but I'm pretty bad with money. 
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| # ? Mar 26, 2012 21:46 |
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Safari Disco Lion posted:But I think one of my biggest disappointments of ME3 wasn't the endings or any of the huge characters or anything, it was Charr's death. Honestly, I think I would have traded Mordin's potential survival for his, Mordin's survival required loving over the entire Krogan race. Charr deserved better. :< I think it serves as a good example of the overarching issues with ME3; cheap tugs at your heartstrings without any real purpose or substance. What was Charr even doing there? Did the other Krogan on Tuchanka laugh at his poetry and give him wedgies so he decided to join the army? Charr was a lover not fighter. You would think with Wrex's goal of making the Krogan something other than grim thugs he would support Charr's artistic side.
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| # ? Mar 26, 2012 21:47 |
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NmareBfly posted:If they released a Mass Effect: Director's Cut Trilogy with a better ending, some retooled stuff in ME1, and a bunch of the ME2 DLC how much would ya'll be willing to pay? I'd drop a solid $150, but I'm pretty bad with money. I'd watch the ending on YouTube and spend the money on something else. I'm already sick of movies pulling this kind of poo poo.
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| # ? Mar 26, 2012 21:49 |
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Maybe Bioware didn't have enough control over the game's production so they opted to destroy the game instead. 
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| # ? Mar 26, 2012 21:49 |
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Agreed posted:Why does it take a fleet basically full of Quarian dreadnaughts equipped with Thanix cannons several hits to knock one planet-bound Destroyer down, except as a "check out this big fuckin' set piece we made, in between dodging the red beam" non-justification? That's justification enough for me  I just figured they weren't using their biggest guns because Shepard is only a few hundred feet away, but that thought did dawn on me, too. My only regret with how they handled the Reapers is letting them be conventionally defeatable at all, at least without some kind of hack like giving Sovereign the Vapors so his shields went down. A few going down here and there from just overwhelming force is fine since they're not supposed to actually be magical, but part of Mass Effect is recasting all these fantasy elements in hard(ish) sci fi terms, and despite the change in setting you still need the magic sword to beat the magic monsters. I mentioned it before, but just having the Reapers be driven away by huge conventional force and not destroyed would have been a good compromise that lets ground forces hold out and justifies Reaper ground troops without making them feel more mundane than necessary. It IS true you only hear about large Reapers being killed in the codex, though, which is helpful for understanding what's going on and adds flavor, but doesn't count for nearly as much as what you actually see happen, so eh.
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| # ? Mar 26, 2012 21:50 |
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There really only was one major victory in the Reaper war through conventional means that Shepard wasn't involved in and that was at the hands of the Turians - and it was followed by defeats. This is also not unprecedented since the 30 million year old Reaper dreadnought we investigate in ME2 was shot to pieces by a lost civilizations supercannon as well. The Reapers are hard but they're not unbreakable. Bonus codex entry; quote:When Taetrus fell, the turians knew little about the Reapers except that they wanted to enrage the turians. Staying calm, the turians massed force around Palaven, their homeworld. Fleet Admiral Irix Coronati, in what became known as the "Fifteen-Minute Plan," stationed only two carriers, Undaunted and Resolute, near the system's relay. When the Reaper fleet emerged, the carriers launched swarms of unmanned fighters and spy drones. These were quickly destroyed, but the drones transmitted vital data on the Reapers' effective range, fleet composition, and exact location. The turians' other ships then deployed to defend the system in earnest.
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| # ? Mar 26, 2012 21:51 |
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MH Knights posted:What was Charr even doing there? Did the other Krogan on Tuchanka laugh at his poetry and give him wedgies so he decided to join the army? Charr was a lover not fighter. You would think with Wrex's goal of making the Krogan something other than grim thugs he would support Charr's artistic side. I thought that note he left for his asari lover was really moving and everything, but I wondered the same thing. The last time I saw Charr, he was with her on Tuchanka in ME2. How did he get from that, to being a part of Arlakh company? I never really got it. I wish there was more to do with those two, that's a really sad end for them and I really liked them in ME2, for just being bit characters. Worse because I just can't figure why Charr was even there, instead of with her.
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| # ? Mar 26, 2012 21:52 |
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Killer robot posted:You know, that's something I didn't get that much from with the whole "Thessia beacon" subplot. Sure, early Prothean uplifting would explain why the asari were narrowly first to the stars of their current cycle. But it didn't really bring any explanation for their cultural dominance that their long lives, diplomatic skill, tendency to marry themselves into all of the other cultures, and being the one race where everyone has biotic powers doesn't explain plenty on its own. It seems they always turned to the salarians for their science and the turians for their military: Aethyta complains on this, that the Asari should work on technological and military strength but don't. Yeah, I don't have a good answer to that. You raise good points. The whole Thessia bit felt like it should have had several missions attached to it like the other homeworlds but never made it into the finished game.
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| # ? Mar 26, 2012 21:56 |
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Oh and there was this;quote:The Miracle at Palaven Basically Turians were all up in the Reapers face the whole war 
Zzulu fucked around with this message at Mar 26, 2012 around 21:58 |
| # ? Mar 26, 2012 21:56 |
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Aristobulus posted:How did he get from that, to being a part of Arlakh company? I never really got it. I wish there was more to do with those two, that's a really sad end for them and I really liked them in ME2, for just being bit characters. Worse because I just can't figure why Charr was even there, instead of with her. I don't think he was with Aralakh company, since Grunt didn't know what had happened to the guys before they showed up. I thought it was just a more routine scout patrol or something.
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| # ? Mar 26, 2012 21:57 |
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Zzulu posted:There really only was one major victory in the Reaper war through conventional means and that was at the hands of the Turians - and it was followed by defeats. This is also not unprecedented since the 30 million year old Reaper dreadnought we investigate in ME2 was shot to pieces by a lost civilizations supercannon as well. This whole Codex entry basically ignores how Sovereign pulls a turn that would have 'snapped a ship in half' back in ME1. Maybe he kitted himself out while waiting for the current cycle to end and he was the only reaper who could multi-track drift in space. Then again, the 'science' in Mass Effect is about as hard as the science in any other piece of pop-SyFy, which is to say, 'Not very loving hard at all, unless the plot/drama calls for it to matter in some significant way.' This is part of why I can't get behind all of these grim, detailed analysis of how poo poo is going to work when ALL three games basically ignore their own codex on a regular basis out of convenience.
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| # ? Mar 26, 2012 21:57 |
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Zzulu posted:There really only was one major victory in the Reaper war through conventional means that Shepard wasn't involved in and that was at the hands of the Turians - and it was followed by defeats. This is also not unprecedented since the 30 million year old Reaper dreadnought we investigate in ME2 was shot to pieces by a lost civilizations supercannon as well. Man, I love that entry. Especially because it implies that the Reapers' reaction to the Turian gambit was basically "those dirty-fighting mother fuckers."
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| # ? Mar 26, 2012 21:57 |
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Dreylad posted:Yeah, I don't have a good answer to that. You raise good points. I definitely think Thessia could've used more missions. It felt weird only getting one there, whereas you get multiple on Tuchanka and Rannoch, and hell while you only get one on Palaven directly, the entire bit with Tuchanka is about securing aid for Palaven. Meanwhile Thessia is just kindof thrown in at the end with one single mission disconnected from anything else. I do agree that Asari never really felt more technologically advanced than the other races - at least, not in ways that would help them directly maintain power, like better armies or something like that. I would buy that they were more advanced in general quality of life technology and such, though. But I think it's supposed to be that they maintained their position on top mostly through their diplomacy skills. No other race wanted to challenge them, even if they technically could. Why bother? Everyone liked the Asari, and the Asari ceded enough power to their main competitors through the Council so that no one ever really said "You know I think the Asari are tyrants and we should overthrow them". They didn't need to have better weapons and such than the Turians and Salarians so long as they could keep them happy and satisfied and not wanting to take them over.
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| # ? Mar 26, 2012 22:00 |
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Aristobulus posted:I thought that note he left for his asari lover was really moving and everything, but I wondered the same thing. The last time I saw Charr, he was with her on Tuchanka in ME2. I don't think Charr was part of Aralakh Company, the dead krogans in the tunnels were a part of a scouting team that Wrex sent out. Aralakh Company was dispatched only once that team failed to return and they wait for Shepard to arrive before heading in. As for why he was in the military, maybe all able bodied krogan men were pressed into service once the invasion began, or he chose to serve at a time of total war.
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| # ? Mar 26, 2012 22:00 |
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Shepard lands on Menae, not Palaven itself.
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| # ? Mar 26, 2012 22:03 |
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Aristobulus posted:But I think it's supposed to be that they maintained their position on top mostly through their diplomacy skills. And their mad bank.
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| # ? Mar 26, 2012 22:04 |
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ImpAtom posted:I really think the Crucible/Catalyst thing would have been more appealing if it hadn't been a Reaper invention that nobody knew how it worked. Generation after generation of Reaper victim secretly building up a super-weapon to counter them, with each generation adding their own knowledge to the mix, is a pretty reasonable concept. If the "Catalyst" had just been a final discovery (maybe based off the defeated Reaper from ME2 and Sovereign from ME1) instead of STARCHILD, the Deus Ex Machina stuff would have worked a lot better because it would have been an undeniable victory based off previous events (both in previous cycles and previous games.) The Crucible was essentially the ultimate test of Galactic Civilizaton which none ever have passed due to the lack of unity the galactic species had for one another.
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| # ? Mar 26, 2012 22:06 |
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Zzulu posted:Oh and there was this; Space Romans are tough sons of bitches. All that militarism and Latin made me expect that Victus would come to the Normandy with a laurel wreath. That would have been badass...
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| # ? Mar 26, 2012 22:09 |
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Do we know that the Crucible was a reaper invention? All Casper says is that it "changed" him, right?
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| # ? Mar 26, 2012 22:10 |
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Omnicarus posted:Who knows, the amount of batshit insanity generated by this debacle is absurd. If I were at Bioware I wouldn't eat them, for all we know they may be hoping to recreate Jonestown at Bioware via poisoned cupcakes. Don't worry. If they eat the red cupcakes, there's a chance they'll survive.
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| # ? Mar 26, 2012 22:14 |
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Transmetropolitan posted:Space Romans are tough sons of bitches. Or at least a fuckton of wine. The Asari thing never bothered me all that much since the "dominance" idea clearly came first, and the Asari are there to fill that role, but they could have illustrated it more clearly. I guess you see Illium as an example their actual cultural might, and no non-Asari planet like it, and they do have the biggest, toughest battleship, and feared commando units, but yeah, they miss a lot of opportunities to reinforce that as being the natural outcome, and it's only much later we get the "well, the Protheans made them essentially everything they are, giving them agriculture and mathematics, too, as well as just biotics" explanation in the temple. Maybe we're supposed to think they've gotten lazy and decadent?
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| # ? Mar 26, 2012 22:16 |
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Aristobulus posted:Everyone liked the Asari, and the Asari ceded enough power to their main competitors through the Council so that no one ever really said "You know I think the Asari are tyrants and we should overthrow them". Also, according to the Codex they have some of the best soldiers in the galaxy. As the Turian's say "The asari are the finest warriors in the galaxy. Fortunately, there are not many of them."
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| # ? Mar 26, 2012 22:18 |
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http://www.theverge.com/gaming/2012...t-3-ending-talk Hey guys, did you know that Mass Effect 3's ending was deeply humanistic, or that Control is the culmination of a Liara relationship, or that choosing anything other than Synthesis would make Tali's suicide pointless? Also, mob mentality, entitlement, vocal minority, etc.
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| # ? Mar 26, 2012 22:19 |
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Zzulu posted:Do we know that the Crucible was a reaper invention? All Casper says is that it "changed" him, right?
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| # ? Mar 26, 2012 22:19 |
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CrushedB posted:http://www.theverge.com/gaming/2012...t-3-ending-talk Ahahahaha what? I read that article to try to see how they got to those conclusions and they don't even explain at all. It's just stated as a fact. Anything other than Synthesis isn't fair to Tali. Control is how you wrap up Liara's romance arc. I don't even - I can't even figure what sort of logic they are using.
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| # ? Mar 26, 2012 22:22 |
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Zzulu posted:Do we know that the Crucible was a reaper invention? All Casper says is that it "changed" him, right? No, it was designed by people who had no idea what it does, and somehow interfaces with something no one has ever heard of before to do something no one ever thought of.
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| # ? Mar 26, 2012 22:23 |
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fivegears4reverse posted:This whole Codex entry basically ignores how Sovereign pulls a turn that would have 'snapped a ship in half' back in ME1. Maybe he kitted himself out while waiting for the current cycle to end and he was the only reaper who could multi-track drift in space. I think the logic behind it was that Sovereign put all power into engines/inertia dampeners/mass effect fields because there wasn't anything in the system that could threaten it while the Reapers being aimed at by dreadnaughts couldn't affort to divert power from shields. Or maybe that was just fanwank, who knows.
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| # ? Mar 26, 2012 22:27 |
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CrushedB posted:http://www.theverge.com/gaming/2012...t-3-ending-talk To be fair that's not utter bullshit, with the whole Eden thing at the end, if you wanna be a dirty hippie about it. "No you guys, ancient machines binding a pan-galactic civilization together really was constraining, because they told you it was designed that way so that makes it a symbol for that, and so we're better off eating berries and staring at the moon(s)," says a muddled computer-generated clip coming out of a knowledge machine connected to a worldwide network.
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| # ? Mar 26, 2012 22:28 |
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Aristobulus posted:Ahahahaha what? I read that article to try to see how they got to those conclusions and they don't even explain at all. It's just stated as a fact. Anything other than Synthesis isn't fair to Tali. Control is how you wrap up Liara's romance arc. Liara is blue. Her romance wraps up with the blue ending. Was that so hard to figure out? Honestly!
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| # ? Mar 26, 2012 22:28 |
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Someone at some point must have designed the Crucible to do the things it did. Destroy all synthetics or take control of the Reapers are things that generally make sense. Although why one affects all AIs and the other only a subset is silly. As usual, though, Synthesis is the nonsensical odd man out. I guess you could say that it required all the energy from the Relays to spread its space magic wave throughout the entire galaxy, but maybe that was just a design oversight. It's not like you get to test the thing out. "Oh, it destroyed all the Relays? gently caress. OK, just call it a feature. A symbol of our total freedom from the Reapers' shackles. Yeah. We'll go with that." Sacrificial Toast fucked around with this message at Mar 26, 2012 around 22:33 |
| # ? Mar 26, 2012 22:31 |
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Frogisis posted:To be fair that's not utter bullshit, with the whole Eden thing at the end, if you wanna be a dirty hippie about it. "No you guys, ancient machines binding a pan-galactic civilization together really was constraining, because they told you it was designed that way so that makes it a symbol for that, and so we're better off eating berries and staring at the moon(s)," says a muddled computer-generated clip coming out of a knowledge machine connected to a worldwide network. Yeah but it sets up an Adam and Eve shot and then thousands of years later your protagonist is deified as The Shepard and this is all because a literal Deus Ex Machina gave you three kinds of space magic to solve a metaphysical problem. A humanistic ending to Mass Effect 3 would be to have everyone (or nearly everyone) you've affected there on Earth on the eve of the final battle like in the final game, but way more fleshed out, and then as Shepard looks out and sees the culmination of their choices and actions and relationships from across the three games before them, and their destiny ahead, they turn around and the game suddenly ends.
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| # ? Mar 26, 2012 22:31 |
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Did anybody else replaying ME1 notice that upon departure from Eden Prime Sovereign leaves behind a large red cloud trail when taking off? Clearly he was forced to stay behind because of his flatulence.  No other reapers seem to have this.
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| # ? Mar 26, 2012 22:32 |
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| # ? May 25, 2013 11:28 |
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CrushedB posted:http://www.theverge.com/gaming/2012...t-3-ending-talk This is terrible! That is... wow. How can you be still at this point getting it wrong about why people hate the ending? By far the worst anything I've read on this.
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| # ? Mar 26, 2012 22:33 |
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