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anilEhilated posted:Not to bar the tides of righteous anger, but one other thing sticks out of that video like a sore thumb for me: that dream sequence. We know Bioware aren't exactly subtle, but that thing wouldn't be out of place in a loving JRPG. I haven't played the third game, but I think the problem with that scene is the developers assuming too much about your character. After two games most players probably had a pretty solid idea of what 'their' Shepard was like. Not all of them would care about some kid beyond 'well that sucks'. The kid's probably supposed to be a symbol of everyone on Earth, but I think it falls flat - there's no real emotional connection to Earth in Mass Effect games, since you're always off interacting with everything else in the galaxy. I think I recall someone suggesting that the kid should have been the deceased party member from Virmire - that might've been a more reasonable haunting, even if you hadn't played the series before. In that case Shepard would have direct responsibility for their fate and not just be a witness of it. e: silly me not reading new posts
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Jul 28, 2014 12:31
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| # ¿ May 29, 2024 15:55 |
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I think it's mostly a question of the tonal shift Bioware apparently tried to do in the third game. The first two are pretty lighthearted. Even though Shepard & co. kill hundreds of guys they're all nasty bandits or mercenaries. In the second game mercenary groups recruit people very casually, implying that it's largely accepted and pretty much just adventuring. All the fights in the games are against overtly evil folks or people who decided to take up risky jobs, and they are fought in places where no bystanders are in danger of getting hurt (with a couple of exceptions, I seem to recall). Fun and games with little meaning or consequence. Sure, you could lose people in the second game, but you probably didn't if you didn't want to. The third game immediately jumps into 'war is hell and innocents are dying'-territory, which is a jarring change.
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Jul 28, 2014 21:05
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anilEhilated posted:Bioware is not good at serious. Period. I agree that the attempt seen here is clumsy, I haven't played many of their other games. It's almost like they were overcompensating to re-establish the reapers as a threat, since the player had beaten them twice already. How did they even get here? I wonder if the feeling of desperation they were trying to convey would have flowed better if the invasion of Earth would have occurred later in the story. Have Shepard blast a couple of reapers out of the sky when they attack (since at the end of the second game it pretty much felt like you could do that) but show that it's not enough, we need a superweapon. Earth being attacked might add some urgency to the final parts of the main quest, now it seems like the battle on Earth will be left awkwardly hanging in the background for the entire game. Another thing that came to my mind: did they drop the humanity first/galactic co-operation choice of the first two games? Earth being ruined at the start kinda seems to put an end to the whole human supremacy thing Cerberus endorses, and it looks like rallying the other species ('playing politics' that Shepard doesn't have time for  ) is the only option left.
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Jul 29, 2014 06:59
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The Prothean mission was really interesting, and it's a shame it's DLC. I know one person who bought ME3, and that was from a sale after all the negative press, so no Javik for them. I didn't get any DLC for the second game but I don't think I missed anything important. I think I get the basic idea of the Crucible being a anti-Reaper weapon based on Reaper-guided technology constructed by successive species, but I don't understand how it works. What information do successive builders actually bring into it? Does it exist as a physical construct somewhere, or is it always built from scratch? Why don't the Reapers reset its progress? If the Reapers aren't aware of it, how has it been kept secret? What if a species never finds out about the Crucible and doesn't add any meaningful progress to the thing? Also, doesn't the construct cheapen the player's role? I mean, aren't the people who came up with the idea in the first place the real heroes of the story? Of course, it might be entirely intentional and a logical extreme of the 'problem and solution both inherited from the past' theme that was there already in the first game, where Shepard used the preparations of the Protheans to win. Yet the player is not just another link in the chain (which might've been an interesting take) but gets to actually use the thing and decide things. It's in a weird place. It does create another parallel between Shepard and Javik, though, with both being heroes (commanders ) of their time but irrelevant in the Reaper cycle.
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Aug 13, 2014 07:53
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People are citing a lot of story information from the DLCs. Having not played any I have no idea what happens in them. If I had gotten the third game, I probably would not have gotten DLCs for it either and would have been even more confused. I'm starting to wonder if the story's problems result more from marketing/business decisions than from the writing team.
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Aug 14, 2014 10:15
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| # ¿ May 29, 2024 15:55 |
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That video got confusing pretty quickly. I get that trawling through the dark corners of Bioware fan threads might have inspired some hatred, but there's hardly need to unleash it on your viewers. I agree with FullLeatherJacket, you began to sound like there are only two ways to approach the story and its characters. One parallel to the 'expanded universe' stuff you talked about in the beginning is the Halo series. Since the first game introduced a couple of mysteries, people who got into the story did a lot of speculation. I suppose this fed the creation of a lot of spin-off books that were all incorporated to the story. By the third game I started to have trouble following or caring about the story, since so much of it happened outside of the games in the books I didn't read. Of course, none of the huge buildup eventually went anywhere as far as I recall. I'm curious where you'll be going with Grunt being dead. It certainly fits better with the 'there will be casualties' -theme you emphasized in the beginning, but I wonder what else you think it might signify. 'The krogans are destructive' seems like a small problem when someone else is already taking over the galaxy.
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Aug 18, 2014 08:26
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