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Patrick Spens
Jul 21, 2006

"Every quarterback says they've got guts, But how many have actually seen 'em?"
Pillbug

nine-gear crow posted:

Yeah, Control works as an ending because you are Commander Motherfucking Shepard, that's why.

Yeah, I picked Control because hey, that whole "Organic and Robotic life are bound to destroy each other" thing? I I already fixed that, on foot, with a sniper rifle. Give me a fleet of invincible space ships and I'll have this galaxy whipped into shape in no time.

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SlothfulCobra
Mar 27, 2011

The real control ending is you stop playing after killing Kai Leng and you go play Control instead.

Kesper North
Nov 3, 2011

EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY
I picked Synthesis, because I'd like to be a human sometimes (for sex obviously) and a Reaper sometimes (also for sex obviously).

MadDogMike
Apr 9, 2008

Cute but fanged

The Klowner posted:

organics and synthetics will inevitably conflict with each other.... Unless my army of omnipresent robotic space squid cops have anything to say about it

All (Robotic Space Squid) Cops Are Bad Renegade.

poisonpill
Nov 8, 2009

The only way to get huge fast is to insult a passing witch and hope she curses you with Beast-strength.


Commander Shepard was placed on administrative leave following the incident in which he reportedly struck a female reporter. The SPECTRE later settled with the journalist for an undisclosed sum and admitted no wrongdoing. Shepard was returned to duty but permanently relieved in an unrelated incident in which he destroyed an inhabited moon.

Sanguinia
Jan 1, 2012

~Everybody wants to be a cat~
~Because a cat's the only cat~
~Who knows where its at~



I came here to laugh at you

Bogus Adventure
Jan 11, 2017

More like "Bulges Adventure"

Sanguinia posted:



I came here to laugh at you

Our "collar popping" technology is lightyears beyond yours, human.

PoptartsNinja
May 9, 2008

He is still almost definitely not a spy


Soiled Meat
His torso is so long.

Sanguinia
Jan 1, 2012

~Everybody wants to be a cat~
~Because a cat's the only cat~
~Who knows where its at~

On the drive to work today I was thinking about that theory that Mass Effect using civilizations were creating dark matter and destroying the universe or whatever from that one planet in ME2, and the reveal of the Reapers was going to be that they were cultivating and controlling civilizations to prevent that. Then I realized that that would have been insanely dumb without some major changes to the lore because the Reapers creation of the Citadel, the Mass Relays and thereby encouraging sentient races to only develop technology along the lines which will lead to a galactic apocalypse the Reapers are actively making the situation WORSE. Because of the Mass Relays these races are almost certainly consistently developing Mass Effect technology much faster and using it on a much larger scale every cycle than they would be in their absence. Why are the reapers even allowing races to develop that far in this silly cycle of theirs instead of just using force to keep every species pre-FTL? Why are they providing the Mass Relay system to encourage every cycle to go all-in on ME drives instead of forcing them to either invent the things themselves and thereby make the problem exponentially smaller and stretched over a much longer period that will hopefully allow for a solution to be found, or find a totally different method of FTL travel that wouldn't bring about entropic Armageddon?

No wonder they dropped this plot point, it doesn't stand up to any scrutiny whatsoever.

SlothfulCobra
Mar 27, 2011

I think they could've found a number of ways to spin the dark energy buildup into good foreshadowing, but making all mass effect technology harmful to the universe seems like a bad one.

Robot Style
Jul 5, 2009

Also, Bioware's pretty clearly familiar with Star Trek, and TNG had an episode with the same plot, where they discovered that warp drives were damaging subspace. In the episode, they didn't decide to destroy civilization to prevent people from breaking the universe, they just made a speed limit so people weren't burning maximum warp all the time. Maybe someone just saw that episode and realized that their plan didn't actually make sense.

Jeza
Feb 13, 2011

The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.
Maybe they wondered if they ought to diverge from outright lifting the plot of Revelation Space but figured nah.

Bogus Adventure
Jan 11, 2017

More like "Bulges Adventure"
And much like poop returning to the butthole, Star Trek Picard lifted the main conflict from Mass Effect for its halfhearted attempt at hoovering up Trek nerd dollars.

The Klowner
Apr 20, 2019

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
Maybe the techno-eldritch abominations didn't need to have their motivations explained. Maybe any attempt to assign motivation would have been underwhelming. Maybe explaining the unknowable inevitably leads to disappointment.

nine-gear crow
Aug 10, 2013





Bogus Adventure posted:

And much like poop returning to the butthole, Star Trek Picard lifted the main conflict from Mass Effect for its halfhearted attempt at hoovering up Trek nerd dollars.

And it didn't even have the decency to copy the best scene from Mass Effect 1 and let Picard have a conversation with Sovereign.

Sanguinia
Jan 1, 2012

~Everybody wants to be a cat~
~Because a cat's the only cat~
~Who knows where its at~

The Klowner posted:

Maybe the techno-eldritch abominations didn't need to have their motivations explained. Maybe any attempt to assign motivation would have been underwhelming. Maybe explaining the unknowable inevitably leads to disappointment.

I mean, I was totally fine with just "they consume species to reproduce," as ME2 implied. I didn't really need a reason why they needed to limit themselves to FTL capable (and thus threatening) races, although I'm sure it wouldn't have been hard to conjure one, or like you say just leave it an enigma.

nine-gear crow
Aug 10, 2013





Sanguinia posted:

I mean, I was totally fine with just "they consume species to reproduce," as ME2 implied. I didn't really need a reason why they needed to limit themselves to FTL capable (and thus threatening) races, although I'm sure it wouldn't have been hard to conjure one, or like you say just leave it an enigma.

I'd like to think the Reapers are basically just massive gardeners and their job is to make sure the universe doesn't run out of resources too quickly, so they let civilizations reach the point where they can colonize other worlds and go "okay, that's enough living for you, now let someone else have a turn" and just wipe the slate clean before any one cycle of civilizations can cannibalize every usable resource in the galaxy. Then every few cycles they move the mass relays around and change what star clusters they connect with to give other emerging races a chance to use them in line with that "your civilization develops along the paths we desire" thing. Like farmer letting a field go fallow for a season or two to keep it from being ruined by continued farming.

Bogus Adventure
Jan 11, 2017

More like "Bulges Adventure"

nine-gear crow posted:

And it didn't even have the decency to copy the best scene from Mass Effect 1 and let Picard have a conversation with Sovereign.

Nope, it just decided to make the bright 24th Century dark and edgy, and somehow brought Captain Picard back to life in an even worse way than Captain Kirk in "The Return."

Sector Corrector
Nov 25, 2020

Been getting into this recently after getting it on a GreenMan sale. Ya'lx reccomend a fire or lightning build?

CaptainSkinny
Apr 22, 2011

You get it?
No.


Just play the engineer, level up the drones, and pretend you're Obama. Just sit behind cover as they do all the killing.

ungulateman
Apr 18, 2012

pretentious fuckwit who isn't half as literate or insightful or clever as he thinks he is

nine-gear crow posted:

I'd like to think the Reapers are basically just massive gardeners and their job is to make sure the universe doesn't run out of resources too quickly, so they let civilizations reach the point where they can colonize other worlds and go "okay, that's enough living for you, now let someone else have a turn" and just wipe the slate clean before any one cycle of civilizations can cannibalize every usable resource in the galaxy. Then every few cycles they move the mass relays around and change what star clusters they connect with to give other emerging races a chance to use them in line with that "your civilization develops along the paths we desire" thing. Like farmer letting a field go fallow for a season or two to keep it from being ruined by continued farming.

they're literally called reapers op

ungulateman
Apr 18, 2012

pretentious fuckwit who isn't half as literate or insightful or clever as he thinks he is
for real though the kind of obvious livestock/agriculture motif (character literally named shepherd fights bad guys literally named reapers) that gets unceremoniously dropped in the second game so that they can make some hilariously on-the-nose religious metaphors (character literally named shepherd dies and is reborn, goes to purgatory, meets an archangel, so on and so forth) is then abandoned again in the third game and we get Glowing Small Child scenes that suck and are bad

Sanguinia
Jan 1, 2012

~Everybody wants to be a cat~
~Because a cat's the only cat~
~Who knows where its at~

ungulateman posted:

for real though the kind of obvious livestock/agriculture motif (character literally named shepherd fights bad guys literally named reapers) that gets unceremoniously dropped in the second game so that they can make some hilariously on-the-nose religious metaphors (character literally named shepherd dies and is reborn, goes to purgatory, meets an archangel, so on and so forth) is then abandoned again in the third game and we get Glowing Small Child scenes that suck and are bad

I mean, is there any doubt that they named him Shepherd so they could have that post-credits scene in 3 where they had a small child in the distant future ask his grandpa to tell him about THE SHEPHERD. BECAUSE HE'S BECOME A MYTH YOU SEE. DEEEEEEEEEP.

Jazerus
May 24, 2011


Sanguinia posted:

I mean, is there any doubt that they named him Shepherd so they could have that post-credits scene in 3 where they had a small child in the distant future ask his grandpa to tell him about THE SHEPHERD. BECAUSE HE'S BECOME A MYTH YOU SEE. DEEEEEEEEEP.

absolutely nothing that happened in 3 was planned by the writers of 1. you can tell because the things that happen in 3 suck and make no sense, op

Bogus Adventure
Jan 11, 2017

More like "Bulges Adventure"
Mass Effect is the game you get when the writers are high on jenkem.

Tulip
Jun 3, 2008

yeah thats pretty good


ungulateman posted:

for real though the kind of obvious livestock/agriculture motif (character literally named shepherd fights bad guys literally named reapers) that gets unceremoniously dropped in the second game so that they can make some hilariously on-the-nose religious metaphors (character literally named shepherd dies and is reborn, goes to purgatory, meets an archangel, so on and so forth) is then abandoned again in the third game and we get Glowing Small Child scenes that suck and are bad

the livestock/agriculture metaphor is still a heavy handed religious metaphor but at least if they'd followed through on 'cain and abel, but instead of two dudes and few days its billions and billions of people across thousands of years' it'd be kind of cool

Bogus Adventure posted:

Mass Effect is the game you get when the writers are high on jenkem.

ME is what it is because of how bioware is managed: very badly

Lt. Danger
Dec 22, 2006

jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

the star child in ME3 explicitly says they harvest only advanced life to make room for new life to flourish, and they specifically harvest these civilisations because they keep trying to make robots that outcompete organic life

Sanguinia
Jan 1, 2012

~Everybody wants to be a cat~
~Because a cat's the only cat~
~Who knows where its at~

Lt. Danger posted:

the star child in ME3 explicitly says they harvest only advanced life to make room for new life to flourish, and they specifically harvest these civilisations because they keep trying to make robots that outcompete organic life

So the Reapers are all-powerful eldritch creatures that have guided the races of the galaxy for eons toward their own consumption by manipulating their technology and cultures along pre-determined lines... but are also totally impotent on the whole AI thing other than just destroying the races that invent them. Also didn't Jaavik make it clear that the Prothean's despised AI and stopped other races from developing it through force and their hegemony? And yet they harvested them anyway.

I think the Reapers might be dumb guys.

Robot Style
Jul 5, 2009

Once they introduced the Leviathans, things got even dumber:
  • Ancient sea aliens mind control other species to do their bidding.
  • The mind controlled species build robots to help them, but keep getting killed by them.
  • In order to prevent their servants from getting killed by AI, they create an AI to protect the servant races from AI.
  • The AI kills the Leviathans for some reason, uses them to build reapers, and becomes an AI that kills organic races to prevent organic races from being killed by AI.

Jazerus
May 24, 2011


idk i kinda like the leviathans. the reapers had to come from somewhere, and a species of extremely stupid but very powerful mind controllers that gave the reapers vague, stupid instructions and then said "alright, now go solve all of our problems so we can chill out and pop a cold one" is as good of an origin as any

even if it's a complete rip-off of star control 2

Sanguinia
Jan 1, 2012

~Everybody wants to be a cat~
~Because a cat's the only cat~
~Who knows where its at~

Jazerus posted:

idk i kinda like the leviathans. the reapers had to come from somewhere, and a species of extremely stupid but very powerful mind controllers that gave the reapers vague, stupid instructions and then said "alright, now go solve all of our problems so we can chill out and pop a cold one" is as good of an origin as any

even if it's a complete rip-off of star control 2

Also whatever Azimov story the Will Smith I, Robot was based on.

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?
They unironically should have gone the Star Control 2 route. Ur-Quan reapers want to destroy civilization and squash most of humanity into juice to fuel more reapers, Kohr-Ah reapers just want to exterminate everything and have done

Lt. Danger
Dec 22, 2006

jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

Sanguinia posted:

So the Reapers are all-powerful eldritch creatures that have guided the races of the galaxy for eons toward their own consumption by manipulating their technology and cultures along pre-determined lines... but are also totally impotent on the whole AI thing other than just destroying the races that invent them. Also didn't Jaavik make it clear that the Prothean's despised AI and stopped other races from developing it through force and their hegemony? And yet they harvested them anyway.

I think the Reapers might be dumb guys.

well, Reapers aren't eldritch though, they're modernists who believe they have "solved" physics/politics/economics etc. and like modernists they come a cropper when it turns out they haven't solved everything. and like modernists their response is to double down on what they've been doing all along regardless

the final sequence with the Catalyst is the Reapers admitting that they can't solve the AI problem and their "solution" of continually putting it off won't work anymore, so they hand it over to Shepard to decide

SlothfulCobra
Mar 27, 2011

Honestly, I think the overarching plot of Mass Effect already resembles something in Star Control 3, where it turns out in the end that all the sentient races of the galaxy are regularly harvested by a race of extragalactic beings and their repeated feedings have been damaging the fabric of reality.

Star Control 3 isn't a good game, its combat is broken, its visuals are ugly, the writers for Star Control 2 aren't involved and the writing that is there is a weird mess, but I don't think the core principle of its plot was necessarily garbage (although it runs into a similar thing as Mass Effect where the final enemy can't be confronted directly because the mechanics don't really support that).

I don't think that the way AI is handled in the earlier games really jives with trying to make that into the central premise of the final conflict, but then I think I may also just not care for the idea of musing over the inevitability for people to build AI that will inevitably surpass and rebel against them. It just feels stupid to me. Like I don't think I'd buy a book that openly had that as part of its premise, and I don't think any of the rest of the games encouraged me to think in those terms.

halokiller
Dec 28, 2008

Sisters Are Doin' It For Themselves


Jack2142 posted:

Make it so Sovereign is essentially an Ancient Killbot that helped wipe out the Prothean Civilization, no weird conspiracy on the cycles and honeypot development. It got reactivated by the Geth as an AI God figure, and Sovereign and realizes the Reapers failed and uses the Geth / Saren as patsies for the plan. Maybe make it so the attack on the Citadel was Sovereign trying to reactivate other hibernating/inactivated reapers. The end of ME1 is Sovereign dying, but managing to send out the signal to wake up the remaining Reapers who are dangerous, but not literally cataclysmically galaxy ending like they were in the actual game, and maybe some of the Reapers don't have giant superdreadnought bodies which could lead to some weird variety and explain why some are more subtle than others, you could even do stupid poo poo like TIM is a Reaper Android or some poo poo that Bioware would love. Also the weird humanoid Reaper stuff could just be a Reaper that wanted a rad mecha body to gently caress poo poo up with.

You just reminded me of Homeworld Cataclysm which did this story but better and wished it was included in the remaster.

Defiance Industries
Jul 22, 2010

A five-star manufacturer


You know what sucked worse than all of that?

ME: Andromeda.

Because they went to an entirely new galaxy and everything was still exactly the same. All the technology was the same, but there was one new kind of alien who was indistinguishable from the face aliens of ME. It wasn't just bad design, it was outright loving cowardice.

Bogus Adventure
Jan 11, 2017

More like "Bulges Adventure"

Defiance Industries posted:

You know what sucked worse than all of that?

ME: Andromeda.

Because they went to an entirely new galaxy and everything was still exactly the same. All the technology was the same, but there was one new kind of alien who was indistinguishable from the face aliens of ME. It wasn't just bad design, it was outright loving cowardice.

That's not entirely true...



They gave the Asari facepaint.

VinylonUnderground
Dec 14, 2020

by Athanatos
Is there a good intuitive save editor for ME1? I played it a few years after it came out. Tried replaying it recently but I liked my decisions. I don't want to play it again with different ones and I'd rather not replay it making the same (or at least similar) ones.

I never played ME2 and ME3. I'd be curious to play around with them.

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?
ME2 has (or used to come with?) a DLC that let you set choices for the major forks in ME1 and then import the result to ME2

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Sanguinia
Jan 1, 2012

~Everybody wants to be a cat~
~Because a cat's the only cat~
~Who knows where its at~

skasion posted:

ME2 has (or used to come with?) a DLC that let you set choices for the major forks in ME1 and then import the result to ME2

The sad thing is there are still some things you NEED to have actually played ME1 to see in ME2, like Conrad Verner.

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