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I was v annoyed that you couldn't gently caress over Cerberus or even express much displeasure of them until the end of 2, when roughly 90% of exploration side missions in 1 featured Cerberus doing Josef mengele stuff around the galaxy
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Feb 23, 2021 06:34
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Some Goon posted:I remember hearing the PC port of ME1 was in some way hosed, but I don't remember why or the context. Is it, or is it an ok way to replay it? I played it all the way through about 17 times since release, and never had any issues with it.
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Feb 23, 2021 06:36
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Best Friends posted:I was v annoyed that you couldn't gently caress over Cerberus or even express much displeasure of them until the end of 2, when roughly 90% of exploration side missions in 1 featured Cerberus doing Josef mengele stuff around the galaxy Yeah I think one of the reasons I never completely loved ME2 as much as some folks was that I was a die hard ME1 player with double digit completed games and then when 2 rolled around I was like "working for who now? what the gently caress?" It's still a better game in hindsight and I'm very much looking forward to getting back there but I think they could have just come up with something better honestly, or at least something that gave the player more input.
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Feb 23, 2021 06:56
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PC ME1 has a little jank but at this point the persisting annoyance would be dealing with the DLC for the Steam version If you have that you should probably just copy the cd key over to Origin and run it from there
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Feb 23, 2021 07:02
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Getting the DLC to work with the Steam versions is no joke some PC gaming time machine poo poo. You have to find an obscure page that is only linked through old labyrinthine FAQ's for DA:O, which has all the ME 1 and 2 DLC available for download. Once you download it you have to activate it by logging into the EA servers from within the games using an EA account that owns that DLC. Except half the time it doesn't work, and also apparently if you have special characters in your password like !'s or *'s or whatever even though you'll log in properly, the DLC won't activate for, uh, some reason.
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Feb 23, 2021 07:15
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That is why Jacob is there, to try and sell that Cerberus isn’t that bad, but it does come off as him being just as dumb about it.
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Feb 23, 2021 07:17
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Jacob is an enigma. You're a decently adjusted chill soldier guy, so you joined space isis? Also Kelly Chambers. All the Cerberus people should have been reactionary freaks like Miranda.
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Feb 23, 2021 07:28
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Funky Valentine posted:Shepard. *drinks whiskey* Fifteen minutes ago, I placed an order at Korlak's, a volus pizzeria on the Citadel. I need you and your team to retrieve it for me, *takes drag from cigarette* and grab a bottle of Space Sprite while you're there. Is this a volunteer mission, or am I being volunteered?
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Feb 23, 2021 07:30
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I've had it in my head that instead of finding Jacob's father for his loyalty mission, it would instead tie into what he believes Cerberus is and how that conflicts with how it really is. Like, he says that he left the Alliance to join Cerberus was because Cerberus "Got Things Done." So there's a minor crisis that Jacob wants to go in a solve because the Alliance bureaucracy is taking to long. So he and Shepard fly in and... it all goes bad. There wasn't enough intel, there were misunderstandings, people got hurt or killed, and the rest of the mission is trying to salvage this boondogle. You somehow manage (or make it worse), but you find out at the end of the mission that not only did TIM expect the mission to go poorly, he's managed to turn it into Cerberus (but really his) favor. And that leaves Javob in a weird position where his preconceived notions of Cerberus' "get things done" attitude bit him in the rear end and he's left wondering if he was used by TIM. Which can allow Shepard to either nudge Jacob to thinking more critical, and even leave Cerberus to [Renegade] work for Shepard or [Paragon] fight for his own beliefs, or convince Jacob double down that Cerberus is ultimately doing 'good'
SgtSteel91 fucked around with this message at 07:36 on Feb 23, 2021 |
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Feb 23, 2021 07:33
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It seems like prior to the events of ME3 Cerberus had more mixed PR in the alliance. I believe a codex says that it was even secretly supported by some high ranking alliance officials, as a way to do things that can't officially be done. And I don't think Shepard's discovery of their crimes in ME1 was made public knowledge, so it seems reasonable that some people would join because they don't know how shady it is Come to think of it, in ME3 there's a conversation you can overhear on the citadel, where a person talks about how their brother joined cerberus without really knowing who they are, just before the reapers invaded. It's likely that normal people knew little about them until they began openly fighting a war against the council
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Feb 23, 2021 08:53
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VostokProgram posted:It seems like prior to the events of ME3 Cerberus had more mixed PR in the alliance. I believe a codex says that it was even secretly supported by some high ranking alliance officials, as a way to do things that can't officially be done. And I don't think Shepard's discovery of their crimes in ME1 was made public knowledge, so it seems reasonable that some people would join because they don't know how shady it is Yeah, Cerberus was meant at one point to be the Alliance's answer to STG. Their name comes from their original mission statement: to be a guard dog standing by to make sure no threat makes it through the Charon relay and makes it to Earth, a veritable Cerberus. After they went rogue, they kept doing what the Alliance set them up to do--defend Earth like a mad dog--just on their terms. Mass Effect 2 is all about "hey, human colonies are going dark and the Alliance and the Council aren't doing poo poo about it, but guess who is? Cerberus!" so yeah it makes sense that most folks would be pro-Cerberus because they wouldn't know what its origins were or what kind of poo poo they got up to in ME1 and you can bet the Illusive Man had all sorts of PR poo poo in place to get people on their side. Hell, look how well Sanctuary worked out... until everyone turned into Husks and died.
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Feb 23, 2021 09:06
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ME2 tries to make the player really feel a sense of frustration and infuse that into Shepard: they saved the galaxy and yet they've been reassigned to backwater space to hunt Geth so that the Council and Alliance can pretend the Reapers are fake news. As a result Shepard and a good chunk of his original crew get killed, by the time Shepard is brought back the galaxy is now multiple years behind the ball in preparing for the Reapers, and humans are getting abducted en masse while the Alliance shrugs. If you try to play things by the book you can't really get far beyond the Council rolling their eyes and reinstating your Spectre status to get you to shut up, and a curt email from the Alliance reinstating you. You're ultimately railroaded into working with Cerberus, but the game tries really hard to spell out that taking a higher road would just get you stonewalled at best, and shut up more forcefully at worst. So even the paragon Shepards have to face that while they hate Cerberus and all it stands for, they're the only ones with any actual resources or military power that believe Shepard about the Reapers, so it's either bite the bullet and work with them to save the galaxy, or let the galaxy burn for the sake of your principles. Which is all cool and good on paper, there are just two key problems. The first is that Cerberus are just Dick Dastardly level moustache-twirling villains in ME1, killing indiscriminately, blackmailing the Admiralty board, and committing mad science experiments that served basically no purpose besides being evil. Had they just been the ultra-fringe pro-human terrorists they're depicted as in ME2 then you could spin it with good writing, but because you spent a whole game having them set in stone as Saturday morning cartoon villains it's hard to take them seriously as a credible source of help at all, even with TIL's presence. The second problem is that ME2's writing for Shepard's feelings on Cerberus is really inconsistent and makes it hard to roleplay a consistent justification for Shepard. Paragon choices range from "I'm not working for Cerberus, I'm just using their resources until I can jump ship" to "I'm working with them but I have no choice" to "I'm working with them because they actually care, unlike the Alliance". Renegade choices range from approving of Cerberus to just being happy that you're free of red tape regardless of how, to just being a hyper-aggressive jackass who mouths off about the whole situation to anybody who asks. And it's not even a per conversation thing, sometimes these perspectives flip within a single conversation with a single character. It's like Bioware themselves couldn't really decide on why Shepard would be okay with this after everything that went down in ME1. Also because ME3 was a goddamn trashfire it throws all the nuance around Cerberus out the window and regardless of what you did in 2 they just all end up indoctrinated to the last man and woman anyway, and TIL shows up at the final hour to twirl his moustache and force Shepard to shoot Anderson with his super Reaper implants. So what was the loving point of twisting the narrative into knots trying to make them more nuanced in the first place?
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Feb 23, 2021 09:45
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ME2 really drops the ball in a bunch of ways with Cerberus, but one thing I never really see discussed is the way someone like Shepard joining Cerberus acts to legitimise their views in the public conciousness. Shepard gives them good PR, and it's the kind of thing they could have used the series' reporter characters to discuss.
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Feb 23, 2021 09:46
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Imagine if Anthem was the sort of game that generated this sort of character or writing discussion. I mean... I guess you'd have to imagine pretty hard 
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Feb 23, 2021 11:07
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DancingShade posted:Imagine if Anthem was the sort of game that generated this sort of character or writing discussion. Remember when Andromeda dlc was cancelled to get more hands on Anthem? Good times. We'll be seeing that Anthem rebirth any day now, no way EA abandons it!
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Feb 23, 2021 13:59
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Cerberus are like Ashley in that they're not racist, but they are opposed to the Council's multiculturalism - and the Council shows that it's possible to be multicultural and racist at the same time, in its treatment of the krogan, the quarians, the volus etc. then ME3 shows us that the Council aren't just quietly racist, they're also hypocrites who abandon any pretence of a united galaxy when the Reapers invade honestly I'm not sure Cerberus ever went rogue... or at least rather than "going rogue" they just went private, getting funding directly from human industrialists and politicians. they're supposed to be the bad guys from the X-Files, complete with their very own Cigarette-Smoking Man; the unaccountable "deep state" of the Alliance. they really suffer from the half-baked ME1 writing where they run around doing nonsense things so the player has an excuse to fight more rachni and husks
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Feb 23, 2021 15:08
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All I want from a new Mess Effect is to be able to play as a Volus bureaucrat or a Krogan merchant. Is that too much to ask?
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Feb 23, 2021 15:38
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Sydin posted:ME2 tries to make the player really feel a sense of frustration and infuse that into Shepard: they saved the galaxy and yet they've been reassigned to backwater space to hunt Geth so that the Council and Alliance can pretend the Reapers are fake news. As a result Shepard and a good chunk of his original crew get killed, by the time Shepard is brought back the galaxy is now multiple years behind the ball in preparing for the Reapers, and humans are getting abducted en masse while the Alliance shrugs. If you try to play things by the book you can't really get far beyond the Council rolling their eyes and reinstating your Spectre status to get you to shut up, and a curt email from the Alliance reinstating you. You're ultimately railroaded into working with Cerberus, but the game tries really hard to spell out that taking a higher road would just get you stonewalled at best, and shut up more forcefully at worst. So even the paragon Shepards have to face that while they hate Cerberus and all it stands for, they're the only ones with any actual resources or military power that believe Shepard about the Reapers, so it's either bite the bullet and work with them to save the galaxy, or let the galaxy burn for the sake of your principles. IIRC the original plan in ME2 was to have Shepard's corpse found and resurrected by the Geth; This would have made a lot more sense in my opinion since Cerberus could have been more consistent antagonists for ME2 and 3 and the justification for Shepard being happy to work with the main antagonists of ME1 is pretty much covered by Legion's explanation of the heretics (noting that the Geth had not been seen beyond the Perseus Veil since the Migrant Fleet was formed, until Sovereign showed up). It also would have meant that Legion would have likely been a squadmate from the beginning of the game  I can't remember if there was ever an explanation for why they went with Cerberus/the Lazarus Project instead, but I guess introducing 'relatable' human squadmates would have been trickier and I'm not sure whether Ashley/Kaiden or Wrex/Garrus/Tali would have had a better or worse reaction to discovering Shepard working for/with the Geth as opposed to Cerberus. cell fucked around with this message at 15:49 on Feb 23, 2021 |
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Feb 23, 2021 15:40
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Best Friends posted:Jacob is an enigma. You're a decently adjusted chill soldier guy, so you joined space isis? Also Kelly Chambers. All the Cerberus people should have been reactionary freaks like Miranda. I mean.... Jacob was a state sponsored space pirate for the Alliance so its not that far of a strech that after enough missions he would get fed up and join Cerberus.
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Feb 23, 2021 15:52
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BexGu posted:I mean.... Jacob was a state sponsored space pirate for the Alliance so its not that far of a strech that after enough missions he would get fed up and join Cerberus. Hardly anyone sees this because it only occurs in specific circumstances, but there's a line in ME2 where Jacob calls Garrus a space racial slur. If you romance Jacob, then break up with him for Garrus, then tell him that you broke up with him for Garrus, his reaction is: "That cuttlebone?!". So yeah, he seems like a nice enough dude but I guess at least one writer felt that his motivations for joining Cerberus were xenophobic in part. Weird that you never see it outside of this specific circumstance, but he is at least canonically the kind of person who gets bigoted when he gets angry.
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Feb 23, 2021 16:02
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Android Blues posted:Hardly anyone sees this because it only occurs in specific circumstances, but there's a line in ME2 where Jacob calls Garrus a space racial slur. If you romance Jacob, then break up with him for Garrus, then tell him that you broke up with him for Garrus, his reaction is: "That cuttlebone?!". there better be a renegade interrupt right after that to give jacob a good ol' fashioned Shepard Punch
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Feb 23, 2021 20:12
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I forget if the game confirms this or not but I once read a theory that TIM deliberately staffed Shepard's crew with seemingly normal people as a tactic to keep Shepard on his side. A sort of selection bias, if you will.
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Feb 23, 2021 20:22
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Everyone Shepard works with is a loving weirdo though. Do they mean just the regular no name ship crew?
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Feb 23, 2021 20:26
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So not only is Jacob boring, he's a space racist Lol
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Feb 23, 2021 20:26
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Also, I've beaten ME2 like 15 times and I had no idea you could romance one person and then break up with them for someone else Now I need to know all those dialogues
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Feb 23, 2021 20:28
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A talking coyote posted:Everyone Shepard works with is a loving weirdo though. Do they mean just the regular no name ship crew? Just enough of a weirdo to not be suspect, and all with issues for Shepherd to solve. Shepherds need a flock, after all.
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Feb 23, 2021 20:33
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SettingSun posted:I forget if the game confirms this or not but I once read a theory that TIM deliberately staffed Shepard's crew with seemingly normal people as a tactic to keep Shepard on his side. A sort of selection bias, if you will. Yeah that's straight from the game. It seems like TIM tried to strike a balance between a carefully orchestrated pro-Cerberus voyage (because he planned almost every aspect of it) and one that would actually be useful against the Collectors/Reapers. Even stuff that technically paints Cerberus in a bad light like Jack's stuff, he went in and scrubbed all his involvement clean and made it all "rogue cells."
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Feb 23, 2021 20:36
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TIm turning a big dial labelled "space racism" and looking expectantly at shepard
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Feb 23, 2021 20:39
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Even my most Renegade ME2 characters don’t play nice with Cerberus
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Feb 23, 2021 21:07
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Julius CSAR posted:Even my most Renegade ME2 characters don’t play nice with Cerberus All Cerberus Are Bastards
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Feb 23, 2021 21:18
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SettingSun posted:I forget if the game confirms this or not but I once read a theory that TIM deliberately staffed Shepard's crew with seemingly normal people as a tactic to keep Shepard on his side. A sort of selection bias, if you will. That's the retcon you come across in ME3 during the Cerberus space station mission I believe. Or maybe their meat colony.
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Feb 23, 2021 21:25
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Zeron posted:Yeah that's straight from the game. It seems like TIM tried to strike a balance between a carefully orchestrated pro-Cerberus voyage (because he planned almost every aspect of it) and one that would actually be useful against the Collectors/Reapers. Even stuff that technically paints Cerberus in a bad light like Jack's stuff, he went in and scrubbed all his involvement clean and made it all "rogue cells." yeah this. Cerberus are evil sick fucks but TIM is a cunning mother fucker that has enough money that he can have like 9 out of 10 projects will be gently caress ups but the projects that do work, work well. the dude is the monster who takes the long view of horrible poo poo and he is fine supporting and doing horrible xenophobic poo poo but also knows how make a nice set up to "trick" a not bigoted space hero that cerberus is all THAT bad. he does genuinly want to stop the reapers(least in 2) he is just fine with using that as a way to but a boot on the galaxys neck. TIM is a good villian.  basically its this. but TIM instead of hitler. someone should edit it to be TIM and Shepard. Dapper_Swindler fucked around with this message at 21:47 on Feb 23, 2021 |
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Feb 23, 2021 21:39
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Dapper_Swindler posted:I never have either. i always viewd my shepard as using them to fight a greater threat and the second they try poo poo, they get hosed up and if he comes across bad poo poo. he ends it. I hate the Renegade option in Project Overlord because it's clear that Archer is elbow deep in the "Throw science at the wall and see what sticks" phase and TIM gets snooty at you for shutting it down regardless. And I love just... conveniently forgetting to tell him that his brother is safe in 3.
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Feb 23, 2021 21:46
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Kurieg posted:I hate the Renegade option in Project Overlord because it's clear that Archer is elbow deep in the "Throw science at the wall and see what sticks" phase and TIM gets snooty at you for shutting it down regardless. And I love just... conveniently forgetting to tell him that his brother is safe in 3. thats what alot of cerberus science seems to be. loving brooks basically says that. TIM tosses money into whatever t space Mengele 34's projects and sometimes it works and most of the time it doesn't. I like that for all his flowery bullshits, TIM is just a rich reactionary who wants to use the reapers as a big gun/club to use against everyone else. like when he finally does get "control" the only thing he can do is hold an old man in place and make you shoot them, like thats it, thats all he is deep down. Dapper_Swindler fucked around with this message at 21:54 on Feb 23, 2021 |
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Feb 23, 2021 21:49
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Kurieg posted:I hate the Renegade option in Project Overlord because it's clear that Archer is elbow deep in the "Throw science at the wall and see what sticks" phase and TIM gets snooty at you for shutting it down regardless. And I love just... conveniently forgetting to tell him that his brother is safe in 3. I didn't tell Archer about David in ME3 once and felt like an asswipe about it afterwards. The Paragon version is better because you get the best of both worlds, you can see that Gavin has changed for the better and is relieved and happy that his brother is safe, and you also get to crush him emotionally all over again by reminding him that oh, by the way, he's in an undisclosed location and the Alliance is going to make drat sure he never sees him again. See ya, rear end in a top hat!
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Feb 23, 2021 21:53
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They should have included another paragon interrupt to punch him in the face again. gently caress that guy.
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Feb 23, 2021 21:56
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Is it possible to do a ME2 suicide run where only Shepard survives? If so what happens in ME3 if literally no one is around. A part of me wants to do a maximum fuckup / fatality run to see what happens but another part of me things that would be way too bleak.
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Feb 23, 2021 22:01
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Bloody Pom posted:They should have included another paragon interrupt to punch him in the face again. gently caress that guy. 8 Hit paragon combo.
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Feb 23, 2021 22:01
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Soylent Pudding posted:Is it possible to do a ME2 suicide run where only Shepard survives? If so what happens in ME3 if literally no one is around. A part of me wants to do a maximum fuckup / fatality run to see what happens but another part of me things that would be way too bleak. No, at least two squadmates have to survive the suicide mission in order for Shepard to survive.
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Feb 23, 2021 22:03
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SlothfulCobra posted:I don't think I've heard much about 2077 as an actual game though, it's all been a bunch of bugs and technical issues, which is the most understandable flaw in the business, and games that are extremely buggy at release will often get fixed in a few months. A bad story will usually be broke forever. The problem with Cyberbug 2077 is that there just isn't any "there" there, and although the story is fine many of the bugs are consequences of the fact that the world is a facade and breaks as soon as you step off the beaten path and discover that the systems just aren't there. It's sub Mass Effect 1 levels of background NPC tech and came out more than 10 years later. Or, more accurately, sub ME1 levels of background mechanics that pretends to be more and leads to comedy and bad gameplay. Those NPCs milling around the Citadel (or Novaria) without voice lines, whether sitting, walking, or dancing - I'm pretty sure everyone's aware they aren't anything more than graphical models with simple animations and nothing much to them. They're there for the ambience. Because Cyberbug 2077 wants to pretend to be a bustling city instead of using hand placed NPCs for the background it has NPCs randomly generated from a set list and doing things, frequently involving walking. They've little more AI than the ME1 NPCs. But. Because Cyberbug 2077 is a mess there's no duplication check on these NPCs so you occasionally see e.g. clones of the same shirtless guy in a bright gold jacket and purple fedora a second apart. Also because it's on foundations that make Andromeda seem good these NPCs will literally disappear if you look away from them a few seconds and look back. And if you somehow block the road (e.g. with an abandoned car) the driving AI is so pathetic that the cars can't work out a way round the parked car and just pile up indefinitely - or rather until you look away for a few seconds at which point the traffic jam you have created despawns. This sounds like (and to be fair is) hilarious fun and games even if it weakens the worldbuilding and immersion, but the systems being so superficial have a knock-on effect on the gameplay of what is supposed to be an open world RPG. An obvious thing is that being a GTAV influenced open world being attacked by the cops should be a thing, and it is in Cyberbug 2077. However remember that the AI is so stupid it can't drive round a car blocking the road and so lacks in persistence that NPCs and cars despawn when you turn away. So the cops can't do what I'd expect, which is spawn half a mile out and negotiate traffic to get to you - and chase you if you run away. Instead the cops have to spawn in just out of sight of you and can't really chase you. More obnoxiously they'll spawn just about anywhere nearby out of your sight, come towards you, and start shooting. Anywhere out of sight including in garages with only one entrance that you can see - or right behind you.
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Feb 23, 2021 22:05
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