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Kaboom Dragoon posted:When Shep accuses Saren of murder in the first game, the Council refuses to believe her, not just because she's one of those annoying humans, but because Saren's a Spectre: they're above the law because they're supposed to be incorruptible. They're equally feared and revered because they're the pinnacle of their species. There's no checks or balances because the council trusts them so implicitly. The methods each one uses may be questionable, but the idea of one going totally rogue? Never going to happen. That's why there's such surprise when Saren's treachery is revealed, and why, in the second game, so many people are unwilling to believe it. I'm pretty sure the justification for Spectres being above the law was that they still have to answer to the Council for their actions. So the "Lalala, not listening!" response is kind of stupid considering it's solely their job to keep their agents in control, when the representatives of an entire species is telling them one has gone rogue.
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Jul 30, 2014 13:23
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BioMe posted:I'm pretty sure the justification for Spectres being above the law was that they still have to answer to the Council for their actions. So the "Lalala, not listening!" response is kind of stupid considering it's solely their job to keep their agents in control, when the representatives of an entire species is telling them one has gone rogue. No Spectres are above the law because they are supposed to be better than the law. Saren was literally the first Spectre to ever go rogue in the entire history of the Council since its founding. Until Saren happened Spectres were trusted implicitly because all Spectres had been trustworthy. Being a Spectre was supposed to be a position of great honor and responsibility and the idea of someone abusing that power to go against the Council was literally unthinkable.
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Jul 30, 2014 13:35
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Spectre's are above the law because they allow the Council to have them preform any number of what would ordinarily be considered war crimes while claiming plausible deniability. They aren't technically giving them any orders or resources, so nobody can prove that their activities can be blamed on the Council. Neruz posted:No Spectres are above the law because they are supposed to be better than the law. Saren was literally the first Spectre to ever go rogue in the entire history of the Council since its founding. Until Saren happened Spectres were trusted implicitly because all Spectres had been trustworthy. Being a Spectre was supposed to be a position of great honor and responsibility and the idea of someone abusing that power to go against the Council was literally unthinkable. Nah, Anderson says that some Spectres have gone rogue before. It's just rare since most do respect the office too much to abuse their power unnecessarily. When it happens, the Council does exactly what they did in ME1 and sends another agent to take them out after stripping their status.
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Jul 30, 2014 14:09
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Neruz posted:No Spectres are above the law because they are supposed to be better than the law. Saren was literally the first Spectre to ever go rogue in the entire history of the Council since its founding. Until Saren happened Spectres were trusted implicitly because all Spectres had been trustworthy. Being a Spectre was supposed to be a position of great honor and responsibility and the idea of someone abusing that power to go against the Council was literally unthinkable.
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Jul 30, 2014 14:10
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Huh really, must have missed that. The only reason I could see for the council absolutely refusing to believe Saren went rogue in ME1 was because it was a thing that literally never happened but if it has happened in the past then welp ME writers are bad at making sense.
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Jul 30, 2014 14:15
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Also assuming that Spectres are just such great guys not one would abuse being legally untouchable and the hilariously lax oversight is even stupider, no matter how handpicked they are supposed to be.
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Jul 30, 2014 14:23
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Kaboom Dragoon posted:When Shep accuses Saren of murder in the first game, the Council refuses to believe her, not just because she's one of those annoying humans, but because Saren's a Spectre: they're above the law because they're supposed to be incorruptible. They're equally feared and revered because they're the pinnacle of their species. There's no checks or balances because the council trusts them so implicitly. The methods each one uses may be questionable, but the idea of one going totally rogue? Never going to happen. That's why there's such surprise when Saren's treachery is revealed, and why, in the second game, so many people are unwilling to believe it. BioMe posted:Also assuming that Spectres are just such great guys not one would abuse being legally untouchable and the hilariously lax oversight is even stupider, no matter how handpicked they are supposed to be. It really highlights how terrible the whole system is when the only balancing factor is the ethical standing and competency of its individual members. Not to mention how space black op operatives are supposed to be the "pinnacle of their species" instead of, say, philantropists, social reformers, scientists, explorers, or idol singers. "You have proven your ability to participate in military and intelligence operations that would be illegal without our unilateral sanction, welcome to the galactic community." I also got curious and looked some stuff up: The Mass Effect wiki posted:The Council is an executive committee composed of one representative each from the member species. Though they have no official power over the independent governments of other species, the Council's decisions carry great weight throughout the galaxy. No single Council race is strong enough to defy the others, and all have a vested interest in compromise and cooperation.  Even with all the time Bioware must have spent on its Encyclopedia Galactica, I don't think the setting was very well thought out.e: I think I misread it: maybe it means that they have no official authority over non-Council or associate species (i.e., "other")? But wait, how would they then make any decisions over Citadel space? Did they have authority over humanity before the end of ME1? If it means non-Citadel species, then that's a given, so why mention it in the first place? Ugh, maybe I shouldn't spent less time figuring out the jurisdictions of fictional alien supragovernmental entities. BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 16:08 on Jul 30, 2014 |
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Jul 30, 2014 14:33
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Neruz posted:Huh really, must have missed that. The only reason I could see for the council absolutely refusing to believe Saren went rogue in ME1 was because it was a thing that literally never happened but if it has happened in the past then welp ME writers are bad at making sense. To be fair, Shepard wasn't just accusing a respected Spectre of going bad. S/He was accusing him of allying with a race of robots that have never worked with organics for 300 years to destroy an entire human colony. All while it was well known that Shepard was mentored by a man who had a grudge against Saren who also made similar accusation against him 20 years ago with no evidence beyond the testimony of a couple of scared colonists who couldn't identify him as anything other than a heavily armed turian. As soon as s/he got some actual evidence, they stripped Saren and hired Shepard to go get him.
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Jul 30, 2014 14:34
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:
If you think about it, it does give an excuse for why their decisions tend so heavily towards "do nothing." I've always wondered if the council is indoctrinated. They do live in a massive Reaper artifact, after all. Of course, the stronger the indoctrination, the quicker you get mental degradation, so it would have to be very subtle, especially with a long-lived species like the Asari. But if it were something like "Reapers are scary, I wish they didn't exist -> Reapers don't exist" using their own fear and natural aversion to convince them of something, I think it would explain a lot about their behavior in ME2.
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Jul 30, 2014 15:07
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Personally I'd suggest that a lot of Council incompetence is the fault of Udina, specifically, and I think later developments in ME3 back that up. Remember how angry Udina was in the earlier games that you were talking to the Council without involving him?
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Jul 30, 2014 15:20
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Is it possible you're all giving the writers too much credit when it comes to the council? It could be that they were just created to be simple strawman politicians who act as nothing more than a plot obstacle to the action-based solutions of the player. Not that the theories aren't interesting, but I just don't have the faith in Bioware's writing team that they would plan it out to such a degree.
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Jul 30, 2014 18:23
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A Curvy Goonette posted:Is it possible you're all giving the writers too much credit when it comes to the council? It could be that they were just created to be simple strawman politicians who act as nothing more than a plot obstacle to the action-based solutions of the player. I'd agree with this. They really only seem to be there to reinforce the POLITICIANS BAD SOLDIERS GOOD theme. I mean, do we ever see them actually do anything? I find it kinda telling that the default ending of ME1 (ie starting from ME2 like I'm doing now) states that Shepard saved Citadel but let the Council die.
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Jul 30, 2014 18:26
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A Curvy Goonette posted:Is it possible you're all giving the writers too much credit when it comes to the council? It could be that they were just created to be simple strawman politicians who act as nothing more than a plot obstacle to the action-based solutions of the player. Plus that the reasons the Spectres operate as they do are mostly a construction that explains away why you're able to be a character who is primarily a naval officer but answer to no real chain of command beyond, "we'd sure like it if you'd go to the moon and kill robots, Shepard, but we understand if you've got a bunch of cryo ammo mods to sell at the Citadel first"
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Jul 30, 2014 19:41
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A Curvy Goonette posted:Is it possible you're all giving the writers too much credit when it comes to the council? It could be that they were just created to be simple strawman politicians who act as nothing more than a plot obstacle to the action-based solutions of the player. I think the game is more fun played from the perspective of 'let's come up with an explanation of why are these characters behaving like this', even if you have to fill in some gaps yourself. The 'because the creators suck' answer is a pretty surefire way to suck enjoyment out of your play experience when consuming basically anything.
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Jul 30, 2014 20:43
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anilEhilated posted:I'd agree with this. They really only seem to be there to reinforce the POLITICIANS BAD SOLDIERS GOOD theme. I mean, do we ever see them actually do anything? In a manner of speaking, the Council does do stuff to help you, they make Shepard a Specter which gives him/her free reign to do whatever, but officially, they do nothing, balance of galactic power and all that. Kinda funny that the Turian Councillor, who's always been the rear end in a top hat of the bunch, was the first one to assist you in ME3 though.
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Jul 30, 2014 22:32
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Judge Tesla posted:In a manner of speaking, the Council does do stuff to help you, they make Shepard a Specter which gives him/her free reign to do whatever, but officially, they do nothing, balance of galactic power and all that. The Turian councilor was the best in ME1 too though. Of course, I'm sure him constantly questioning Shepard was suppose to just make him an annoying bureaucrat jerk or whatever, especially when he does it regardless of how you handled a situation. But I don't think he ever actually says you did the wrong thing, he just grills you to justify your actions. Which seems like a fairly reasonable approach when you are supposed to keep tabs on your ridiculous above-the-law agents.
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Jul 30, 2014 22:51
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Yeah that was a lot of my problem with ME1 and the council, there were some things they did that were dumb but a lot of it seemed pretty reasonable and the fact that the game seemed to act like they were committing unspeakable acts of pure evil because they were asking for things like 'evidence' or 'logic' made me feel kinda weird about the whole affair.
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Jul 30, 2014 23:00
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let's be honest here: bioware does not write subtletly. It's not in their MO. They may do one neat plot twist and call it a day, but never more than that. Also you get Saren convicted on the basis of an MP3 file acquired from a race "known" to consist only of thieves, crooks and liars, who in turn allegedly got it from the data core from a geth. A machine race whose data cores have never survived their selfdestruct. (also an eyewitness account from a very confused human settler and an ambitious human under the tutelage of Anderson, known for his antagonistic relationship with Saren) If anything the Council in ME1 is incredibly trusting of the "evidence" you present them with. double nine fucked around with this message at 23:38 on Jul 30, 2014 |
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Jul 30, 2014 23:33
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double nine posted:let's be honest here: bioware does not write subtletly. It's not in their MO. They may do one neat plot twist and call it a day, but never more than that. I figured the same thing too. Plus you can be a total douche with your decisions like saving the Rachni Queen to them and as upset as they are about it, they still respect your Spectre authority of executive decision. In the same way Udina is there to provide some plot antagonism for you, the Council fulfills that role as well to a certain, slightly different extent. They're also cool with you being associated with Cerberus enough to reinstate your Spectre status anyway if you opt for it in ME2.
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Jul 31, 2014 00:01
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If you don't like the Council, just do this at the end of ME1. Spoilers I guess. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbXepxOFw9k Udina owns. double nine is right, the whole "uh we don't believe you, random human" is just another quest to collect enough space plot to get yourself on the road to Saren once they make you a for Bioware, subtlety is the layout of the Council chambers, not what goes on in there. Psion fucked around with this message at 00:10 on Jul 31, 2014 |
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Jul 31, 2014 00:03
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Fun fact: I was working at BioWare during the development of ME3. While I wasn't on the project, we often heard about its progress at company meetings. This was during the period that DA2 was being pushed out the door, HARD, and ME3 was on a particular time-table, too, to fit into a launch calendar. EA gave Mass Effect an enormous extension on its original ship date to continue working on production (though nowhere near the extensions it would eventually give SWTOR). Even still, it didn't have nearly enough production time and all available resources were being allocated to ME3. I even considered a move to Edmondton to work on cinematics, and I'm eternally grateful that my wife refused to live somewhere with an average temperature of 40 degrees. Jump to whatever conclusions you'd like about that, I'm way too tired to defend developers for their heinous crimes anymore. Though at this point "Game is a big production, takes a long time to make, goes over budget, ships before it's the best it can possibly be" shouldn't be a shocking story to anyone.
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Jul 31, 2014 00:18
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I don't even think that their crimes were particularly heinous, ME3 was a fun game, it just didn't gel together quite right and didn't quite live up to the expectations that I had for it.
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Jul 31, 2014 00:23
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Zeroisanumber posted:I don't even think that their crimes were particularly heinous, ME3 was a fun game, it just didn't gel together quite right and didn't quite live up to the expectations that I had for it. For the record, I didn't enjoy ME3, I never even finished playing it. Compared to ME2 which I played through twice.
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Jul 31, 2014 00:29
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The problems with ME3 stem more from its predecessor and the infernal timescale EA forces on its studios than anything else. It inherited from mass effect 2 the problem that people expected a lot of their decisions to have an impact on the story which was impossible given the budget and timescale, and that ME 2 refused to set up the scenario for reapers returning - it should have been about shephard searching for a reaper-killing tool, not about this suddenly-appearing villain race that has no overall impact on the reaper conflict.
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Jul 31, 2014 00:36
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double nine posted:ME 2 refused to set up the scenario for reapers returning - it should have been about shephard searching for a reaper-killing tool, not about this suddenly-appearing villain race that has no overall impact on the reaper conflict. Until they showed up in multiplayer. But about your idea, what would ME3 have been, in that case? Just running around nuking every Reaper you see? Doesn't sound like a particularly interesting or tense story.
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Jul 31, 2014 01:08
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double nine posted:The problems with ME3 stem more from its predecessor and the infernal timescale EA forces on its studios than anything else. It inherited from mass effect 2 the problem that people expected a lot of their decisions to have an impact on the story which was impossible given the budget and timescale, and that ME 2 refused to set up the scenario for reapers returning - it should have been about shephard searching for a reaper-killing tool, not about this suddenly-appearing villain race that has no overall impact on the reaper conflict. I personally liked ME2 the best because it had very little to do with the main reaper plot which is, let's face it, pretty generic and not especially interesting. The Dirty Dozen in Space was more engaging and played more to Bioware's strengths IMO. It's also a real shame DA2 was so rushed and ended up having so many issues because I really liked the idea of an RPG set in a single city and its environs that wasn't about saving the world but instead political and personal issues. Aside from Bloodlines, which is a very different type of RPG, I can't think of any RPG that has done something like that. It's a shame because I think taking away the automatic high stakes that averting the apocalypse stories automatically have forces the writers to put more effort into the characters and world so that the player understands their problems and cares about them as opposed to just understanding that the world blowing up is bad.
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Jul 31, 2014 01:22
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Chewbot posted:Jump to whatever conclusions you'd like about that, That your wife is the only reason you're still sane? 
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Jul 31, 2014 01:24
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We should have discovered the Crucible in ME2 and started building it then, instead we got Mass Effect: Random Pointless Intermissions.
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Jul 31, 2014 02:01
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From what I remember they lost ME1s writer so 2 was basically them just getting some random writers to do a filler.
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Jul 31, 2014 02:06
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double nine posted:The problems with ME3 stem more from its predecessor and the infernal timescale EA forces on its studios than anything else. It inherited from mass effect 2 the problem that people expected a lot of their decisions to have an impact on the story which was impossible given the budget and timescale, and that ME 2 refused to set up the scenario for reapers returning - it should have been about shephard searching for a reaper-killing tool, not about this suddenly-appearing villain race that has no overall impact on the reaper conflict. I had much the same feeling about the second game. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it, just that in terms of its importance to the overall story, it felt like it should've taken a leaf out of Assassins Creed and been Mass Effect: Brotherhood of Revelations than an actual numbered sequel. Finding out what happened to the Protheans, the Collectors as a whole, that should've been a side game. All the details about the Reapers and Harbinger as a whole, that and the search for the Crucible should've been ME2, with ME3 as all-out war.
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Jul 31, 2014 02:37
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double nine posted:The problems with ME3 stem more from its predecessor and the infernal timescale EA forces on its studios than anything else. It inherited from mass effect 2 the problem that people expected a lot of their decisions to have an impact on the story which was impossible given the budget and timescale, and that ME 2 refused to set up the scenario for reapers returning - it should have been about shephard searching for a reaper-killing tool, not about this suddenly-appearing villain race that has no overall impact on the reaper conflict. I agree, but feel that ME2 could easily have made real strides to giving everyone a fighting chance against the Reapers along the way to beating the Collectors with just a few extra side-quests or some mention of usable data being recovered from the Collector base. If nothing else, they could remember all the setback the Reapers have suffered this cycle and have them weakened enough that they'd need time to gather resources to begin a full invasion. All they'd have to to is give a decent time-skip between the games to allow for the galaxy to start arming itself for the coming dark age and we'd be ready for the big epic war story they were so intent on showing. Anything would have been an improvement over the giant Dues Ex Machina device that nobody understand at all, but are desperate to build and just hope it somehow solves their problems. Geostomp fucked around with this message at 03:16 on Jul 31, 2014 |
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Jul 31, 2014 03:12
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Yes, the best game in the series should have the most successful element in it changed because it didn't contribute to the plot.
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Jul 31, 2014 06:38
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So I don't bring this up very often, but Mass Effect seems to have literally been about taking the antagonists from this, stripping out most of the Hard Sci-fi (because it takes some serious effort to understand the books and you really couldn't have Sheppard flying around a galaxy that ages 100-200 years minimum between system hops, of which the crew experiences maybe a third of, and expect that to work in this format), mashing it together with elements of Starflight, and molding it into an action RPG.
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Jul 31, 2014 07:09
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RickVoid posted:So I don't bring this up very often, but Mass Effect seems to have literally been about taking the antagonists from this, stripping out most of the Hard Sci-fi (because it takes some serious effort to understand the books and you really couldn't have Sheppard flying around a galaxy that ages 100-200 years minimum between system hops, of which the crew experiences maybe a third of, and expect that to work in this format), mashing it together with elements of Starflight, and molding it into an action RPG. Yeah, I think I already mentioned that in this thread, apparently no one caught it. Seriously, folks, if you like the ME Reaper plot for whatever reasons, go read Reynolds. He's great. I think I'm in a bit of a unique position here in never having finished ME1 despite trying twice (the actual gameplay is just bad) and not having beaten ME2 yet, but I'm liking ME2's writing and plot a lot more. I mean, okay, it pits us against generic insectoid aliens, but it manages to be way more engaging than anything that went on with Saren. The fact we're out of Council space helps a lot too since you get away from the completely nonsensical establishment that constantly ruins your immersion by telling you there's no way in hell it could work in reality and is just a game/plot mechanic. I obviously can't comment on the spacing of the plot in the trilogy, but given the overall quality of it (or lack thereof), pacing would be the last of my worries.
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Jul 31, 2014 08:52
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quote:ME 2 refused to set up the scenario for reapers returning - it should have been about shephard searching for a reaper-killing tool, not about this suddenly-appearing villain race that has no overall impact on the reaper conflict No! quote:We should have discovered the Crucible in ME2 and started building it then, instead we got Mass Effect: Random Pointless Intermissions. No! quote:I agree, but feel that ME2 could easily have made real strides to giving everyone a fighting chance against the Reapers along the way to beating the Collectors with just a few extra side-quests or some mention of usable data being recovered from the Collector base. If nothing else, they could remember all the setback the Reapers have suffered this cycle and have them weakened enough that they'd need time to gather resources to begin a full invasion. All they'd have to to is give a decent time-skip between the games to allow for the galaxy to start arming itself for the coming dark age and we'd be ready for the big epic war story they were so intent on showing. Anything would have been an improvement over the giant Dues Ex Machina device that nobody understand at all, but are desperate to build and just hope it somehow solves their problems. No! Bad! Bad bad bad! quote:Is it possible you're all giving the writers too much credit when it comes to the council? It could be that they were just created to be simple strawman politicians who act as nothing more than a plot obstacle to the action-based solutions of the player. There's a slightly more sophisticated reason for the Council's actions than "politicians bad, soldiers good" - well, at least, there's a fairly decent reason for Bioware writing "politicians bad, soldiers good" that isn't just crypto-fascism.
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Jul 31, 2014 09:10
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 Part 4: Class Further Reading Reaper Sounds: http://youtu.be/qd3sD17Ovyk?t=1m16s Tripod Sounds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtZSdCqTmhI Strider Sounds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KUaeyXP3Tw
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Jul 31, 2014 09:10
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With every installment, I'm more impressed with this LP, Lt. Danger. Care to elaborate on why the arguments you quoted are wrong?
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Jul 31, 2014 12:03
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My objections are largely to do with engaging with a work on its own terms, and how Mass Effect is about Reapers in the same way that zombie films are about the undead. For what it's worth, the next few videos will be about story and characters and not mechanics - Sunday should be about EDI, next week Mordin, and after that one of the main motifs.
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Jul 31, 2014 12:07
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Lt. Danger posted:My objections are largely to do with engaging with a work on its own terms, and how Mass Effect is about Reapers in the same way that zombie films are about the undead. I find that an interesting statement. And it makes a bit of sense to me. The zombie threat is simple on the individual scale. But you'll never defeat the horde. You just don't have enough bullets. Which is much the same when it come sto the Reapers. The foot soldiers are easy. The threat is overpowering. And so you don't face the threat head on and the story becomes more about the characters than the threat itself, which provides a backdrop to tell a story. I'm a bit mystified at what sort of arc those who think ME2's time was wasted on the Collectors would expect from a ME3 where we already have the super weapon. Because once you have the means to defeat the Reapers themselves, it becomes a giant space battle. Perhaps someone who shares this view can elaborate on exactly what would make ME3 better if it were laid out that way. I'm curious.
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Jul 31, 2014 13:10
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MidnightVulpine posted:I find that an interesting statement. And it makes a bit of sense to me. The zombie threat is simple on the individual scale. But you'll never defeat the horde. You just don't have enough bullets. Which is much the same when it come sto the Reapers. The foot soldiers are easy. The threat is overpowering. And so you don't face the threat head on and the story becomes more about the characters than the threat itself, which provides a backdrop to tell a story. Because said superweapon was never hinted at before and has no defined function, which makes it an obvious deus ex machina in waiting for the writers to pull themselves out of the corner they wrote themselves in. It makes no sense for everyone to spend what few resources they have left on this thing with no guarantee that it even could help. Worse, it's unnecessary because they have other ways out that have been established or were at least plausible that are just ignored like the Citadel relay control, the 2000+ year delay on the invasion, and recovered Reaper weaponry.
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Jul 31, 2014 13:25
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