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ungulateman
Apr 18, 2012

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

Pops Mgee posted:

The structures of Mass Effect 2 and 3 should have been switched. It makes more sense for 2 to be Shephard's and the rest of the galaxy's lowest point where they get their poo poo wrecked, then make 3 the last ditch effort suicide mission to save the day. Would have been a much better note to end on.

this is certainly a better structure for a trilogy overall, but where do you end this alternate ME2 where the reapers are here but haven't won or lost yet? each entry has to function as its own thing too

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SlothfulCobra
Mar 27, 2011

skasion posted:

The best Mass Effect game is Star Control 2

I kinda thought a lot of Mass Effect takes a lot from Star Control 3 (the bad one), especially the Reapers, since SC3 focuses around the threat of the Eternal Ones, creatures from beyond our galaxy that cyclically allow galactic civilization to prosper before wiping it out because they feed on sentience. It sure seemed like that's what ME2 was leading towards when it showed a Reaper being created out of a weird emulsion of a sentient species. There was even a whole thing about dark energy buildup from Eternal One feedings or some poo poo that it seemed ME2 was hinting at.

The Eternal Ones also enslaved the last race who dared to oppose them to make into heralds, much like the Protheans were, although the Collectors actually look like dead ringers for Xchaggers. There's a number of race resemblances between the franchises, although there's some that are just sci fi mainstays in general.

A race of hot space babes that improbably can somehow breed with humans, like the Asari and Syreen.
The Geth gimmick of sentience in clusters is also shared by the Xchaggers.
The Krogan have some Thraddash energy.
The honorable Yehat seem like they might be echoed by the Turians.
Loquacious octopus people like the Owa and the Hanar
Dour slow-moving aliens like the Elcor and the Clairconctlar
Thank god there's no equivalent to the Harika or Yorn.

Also the whole dynamic of a lil' minigame of scooting around on a planet's service collecting resources is a very Star Control kinda thing.

Sleeveless
Dec 25, 2014

by Pragmatica
ME2 was the most popular entry story-wise because the dirty little secret of any trilogy/franchise is that the origin story and the epic conclusion are the least interesting parts and it's at its best when it can just tell a story without wasting time on those obstacles. I think it's pretty telling that before Mass Effect all of Bioware's popular games were adaptations of existing licenses like Star Wars and D&D because it let them skip all the boring setup and just tell a story set in that world and ME2 was the only time they really pulled that off with their own original IP to significant acclaim.

Punished Chuck
Dec 27, 2010

SlothfulCobra posted:

I kinda thought a lot of Mass Effect takes a lot from Star Control 3 (the bad one), especially the Reapers, since SC3 focuses around the threat of the Eternal Ones, creatures from beyond our galaxy that cyclically allow galactic civilization to prosper before wiping it out because they feed on sentience. It sure seemed like that's what ME2 was leading towards when it showed a Reaper being created out of a weird emulsion of a sentient species. There was even a whole thing about dark energy buildup from Eternal One feedings or some poo poo that it seemed ME2 was hinting at.

The Eternal Ones also enslaved the last race who dared to oppose them to make into heralds, much like the Protheans were, although the Collectors actually look like dead ringers for Xchaggers. There's a number of race resemblances between the franchises, although there's some that are just sci fi mainstays in general.

A race of hot space babes that improbably can somehow breed with humans, like the Asari and Syreen.
The Geth gimmick of sentience in clusters is also shared by the Xchaggers.
The Krogan have some Thraddash energy.
The honorable Yehat seem like they might be echoed by the Turians.
Loquacious octopus people like the Owa and the Hanar
Dour slow-moving aliens like the Elcor and the Clairconctlar
Thank god there's no equivalent to the Harika or Yorn.

Also the whole dynamic of a lil' minigame of scooting around on a planet's service collecting resources is a very Star Control kinda thing.

I always thought the Galactic Civilizations ripoff was stronger, the main plot of GalCiv 2 is about a race of giant biomechanical cephalopod (squid, vs cuttlefish) monsters returning to purge life from the galaxy after being away 10s of thousands of years. It also has the Iconian refuge, a race of aliens that were driven off their homeworld by their own robotic servants and strives constantly to take their planet back. The batarians also remind me of the Drengin--they're both warlike races of slavers who are humanity's nearest neighbors and bitter rivals. I think there's more than that but it's been a long time since I played either.

sassassin
Apr 3, 2010

by Azathoth

Sleeveless posted:

ME2 was the most popular entry story-wise because the dirty little secret of any trilogy/franchise is that the origin story and the epic conclusion are the least interesting parts and it's at its best when it can just tell a story without wasting time on those obstacles. I think it's pretty telling that before Mass Effect all of Bioware's popular games were adaptations of existing licenses like Star Wars and D&D because it let them skip all the boring setup and just tell a story set in that world and ME2 was the only time they really pulled that off with their own original IP to significant acclaim.

There was literally no need to make it a trilogy with a stupid conclusion they could have just kept pumping out cool adventures like ME2 for ages where (as promised in ME1's ending) the Reapers never arrive from a billion light years outside the galaxy because you're just so damned good at ruining their dastardly plans.

Sleeveless
Dec 25, 2014

by Pragmatica

sassassin posted:

There was literally no need to make it a trilogy with a stupid conclusion they could have just kept pumping out cool adventures like ME2 for ages where (as promised in ME1's ending) the Reapers never arrive from a billion light years outside the galaxy because you're just so damned good at ruining their dastardly plans.

There was a need in the sense that stories need to have conclusions but fandom isn't about stories it's about immersing yourself in media stasis for as long as possible so a forever franchise where nothing really changes and every year or two you get a bunch of new imaginary friends to obsess over and buy custom emotes of would be the best possible conclusion for people still fuming about ME3 almost a decade later.

Nucular Carmul
Jan 26, 2005

Melongenidae incantatrix
Mass Effect 3 should have cut and rolled credits when Anderson dies next to you.

In fact, when I played for the first time, I was monitoring the ME3 thread on these very forums and people were saying the ending was bad, and I thought the scene was going to end with both Shepard and Anderson dead and they'd give us a blurb about how you sacrificed yourself to save the galaxy and the thingie worked and yay! I hadn't read the spoilers but I was prepared to defend the ending I thought they'd go for. I thought they might not actually show what the thingie did and just tell us it worked because they couldn't come up with an explanation for what it was really supposed to be. I could see how that would ruffle feathers, and was prepared to discuss it.

Then "Shepard? Shepard? We can't get the thing to work?"

And the next ten minutes made me one of those people still fuming about ME3 almost a decade later

2house2fly
Nov 14, 2012

You did a super job wrapping things up! And I'm not just saying that because I have to!
There was also a need to end it because of carrying choices over between games. If they made like five games every new one would have more quest choices and ending choices and romance choices and it'd snowball to unmanageable levels

Tulip
Jun 3, 2008

yeah thats pretty good


Sleeveless posted:

There was a need in the sense that stories need to have conclusions but fandom isn't about stories it's about immersing yourself in media stasis for as long as possible so a forever franchise where nothing really changes and every year or two you get a bunch of new imaginary friends to obsess over and buy custom emotes of would be the best possible conclusion for people still fuming about ME3 almost a decade later.

This post rules for the level of internet brain poisoning.

2house2fly posted:

There was also a need to end it because of carrying choices over between games. If they made like five games every new one would have more quest choices and ending choices and romance choices and it'd snowball to unmanageable levels

As it stood things had basically become untenable even in the 3rd part.

Bioware is ultimately a for profit corporation and money/time spent on scripts and visuals and voice acting has to be justified, and the more previous choices you have players make the more stuff you end up making that few players see, which isn't generally considered justified. Its increasing work for decreasing rewards.

2house2fly
Nov 14, 2012

You did a super job wrapping things up! And I'm not just saying that because I have to!
The production values really hurt their ability to deliver. Like a game like Tyranny can have wildly diverging quest states and endings because they really only have to write dialogue for it a lot of the time, no voice acting or custom animations. Then you have a fairly simple mission in ME3 like the rachni cave, but it has two possible rachni queens either of which can be saved or killed, and two possible supporting krogan characters, and if you have Grunt then he either lives or dies at the end, and there have to be cinematic cutscenes for all of these variables

Tulip
Jun 3, 2008

yeah thats pretty good


Absolutely. Scaling a CYOA novel structure up to include visuals and voice acting is real rough and the more AAA you're trying to be the worse the problem gets.

Barudak
May 7, 2007

The Krogan were good fun and on an unrelated note don't look into my post history

Edgar Allen Ho
Apr 3, 2017

by sebmojo
I used to think ME was super cheesecake for giving you not one but TWO big tiddy aliens to gently caress, but I was sold when I learned Bioware doesn't judge and you can also bone down with your dinosaur space cop friend.

Cage Kicker
Feb 20, 2009

End of the fiscal year, bitch.
MP's got time to order pens for year year, hooah?


SKILCRAFT KREW Reppin' Quality Blind Made



Lipstick Apathy
I'm Commander Shepard and this is my favorite thread on the Citadel.

sassassin
Apr 3, 2010

by Azathoth

2house2fly posted:

There was also a need to end it because of carrying choices over between games. If they made like five games every new one would have more quest choices and ending choices and romance choices and it'd snowball to unmanageable levels

Galaxy brain: Maybe tie off some of the branching threads before creating more???

ME3 takes on too much heavy lifting wanting to finalise the entire setting in one production. There was no need. It's not like they stopped trying to make Mass Effect games. They were forced to soft reboot with Andromeda.

Stories can have conclusions without blowing up the entire galaxy in one of three colours. Mass Effect 1 and 2 have great conclusions.

Randarkman
Jul 18, 2011

Really I think they should have said themselves done with the Reapers in Mass Effect 1, like you stop them for the very much foreseeable future, and instead tried to do something else with (what I think) was a pretty fun sci-fi universe they created, rather than like keep trucking towards the point where they have to escalate to the point where they blow it all up. The Reapers were best in Mass Effect 1 in any case and you sort of did everything interesting you could do with them IMO. Even if you decided to not be completely done with them, Mass Effect 2 could have had almost the exact same plot it did have, just with the Collector plot not necessarily being directly tied to bringing all the Reapers back, but more of a nod to the Reapers in the first game that they are actually the indoctrinated Protheans and they were trying to build a Reaper. Just turn the Doomsday dial back a little.

Randarkman fucked around with this message at 18:48 on Feb 12, 2020

Cheesus
Oct 17, 2002

Let us retract the foreskin of ignorance and apply the wirebrush of enlightenment.
Yam Slacker
No Mass Effect, no Mass Effect Gamerpoop:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsz6PjeTvHI
And no "We'll bang, ok?"

SlothfulCobra
Mar 27, 2011

There's really never been a good answer for how to make sequels to a game where your big choices were supposed to matter. I think the hated second Deus Ex game tried splitting the difference and making all the endings to Deus Ex be true at once. The Fallout games constantly moved the setting so that whatever happened in the last game was a million miles away so plausibly any of the endings could've happened. Telltale's Walking Dead cheated by making most of the choices into closed loops so after a point there was no difference, but I think the least satisfying answer is just depressingly going the other way to say that all choices basically lead to the same conclusion and nothing really matters.



sassassin posted:

There was literally no need to make it a trilogy with a stupid conclusion they could have just kept pumping out cool adventures like ME2 for ages where (as promised in ME1's ending) the Reapers never arrive from a billion light years outside the galaxy because you're just so damned good at ruining their dastardly plans.

The galaxy really could've been more fertile ground for stories if they had gone for a smaller-scale plot instead of an existential threat that would completely wipe out everything, but ME1 pretty much implied that the Reapers would come one day, so things were kinda set in stone on that front.

I wish that the politics of Mass Effect weren't always just an obstacle to overcome but the actual focus and central problem that needed to be solved. Instead of needing to deal with these politics in order to get to shooting alien bugs, having to shoot alien bugs in order to get to the politics. That kinda thing.

sassassin
Apr 3, 2010

by Azathoth

SlothfulCobra posted:

The galaxy really could've been more fertile ground for stories if they had gone for a smaller-scale plot instead of an existential threat that would completely wipe out everything, but ME1 pretty much implied that the Reapers would come one day, so things were kinda set in stone on that front.

It outright stated that unless one of their wacky schemes pays off it will take them an incredibly long time to ever reach citadel space.

And then in 3 yeah they just flew in. The citadel relay would have saved them a few years or something. Even the tactical advantage of taking out all the leadership doesn't end up being important. They don't bother capturing the citadel in the end, focusing instead on home planets. The element of surprise was meaningless. Sovereign-tech made no difference. Nothing you did mattered at all, actually.

We built a macguffin that had an undefined purpose and a ghost child made Joker's hat sentient. What a legend. Buy DLC.

Randarkman
Jul 18, 2011

It's kind of shame that Mass Effect 3's story is so bad. Because it really is fun to play, even single player. I'd buy a remake of Mass Effect 1 that had Mass Effect 3 gameplay.

Edgar Allen Ho
Apr 3, 2017

by sebmojo
I'd be far more into remakes from Bioware at this point than trusting them to make a good new game. ME1 and KOTOR too.

Galewolf
Jan 9, 2007

The human gallbladder is indeed a puzzle!

Cheesus posted:

No Mass Effect, no Mass Effect Gamerpoop:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsz6PjeTvHI
And no "We'll bang, ok?"

That's a proclick Mass Erect right there, thank you goonfriend for your service.

Wild Horses
Oct 31, 2012

There's really no meaning in making beetles fight.

sassassin posted:

It outright stated that unless one of their wacky schemes pays off it will take them an incredibly long time to ever reach citadel space.

And then in 3 yeah they just flew in. The citadel relay would have saved them a few years or something. Even the tactical advantage of taking out all the leadership doesn't end up being important. They don't bother capturing the citadel in the end, focusing instead on home planets. The element of surprise was meaningless. Sovereign-tech made no difference. Nothing you did mattered at all, actually.

We built a macguffin that had an undefined purpose and a ghost child made Joker's hat sentient. What a legend. Buy DLC.

They went with the generic action movie style with them being under attack and no one being prepared.

They could’ve made the game where you prepare for a reaper invasion, but this is never actually done in any game, curiously enough.

Jazerus
May 24, 2011


Sleeveless posted:

There was a need in the sense that stories need to have conclusions but fandom isn't about stories it's about immersing yourself in media stasis for as long as possible so a forever franchise where nothing really changes and every year or two you get a bunch of new imaginary friends to obsess over and buy custom emotes of would be the best possible conclusion for people still fuming about ME3 almost a decade later.

sometimes a piece of media has an interesting world and good characters, but a bad plot. that's often a sign that an episodic structure would have suited its strengths more than a continuous narrative structure did. mass effect definitely falls into this category - much better suited to telling short stories, maybe with a small overarching plot in the background.

episodic structure has fallen out of fashion after the excesses of 80s/90s TV with the heavy limitations that were put on shows seeking syndication, but there's nothing actually bad or outmoded about it.

sassassin
Apr 3, 2010

by Azathoth

Wild Horses posted:

They went with the generic action movie style with them being under attack and no one being prepared.

They could’ve made the game where you prepare for a reaper invasion, but this is never actually done in any game, curiously enough.

They went with something bad and dumb and completely unsuitable for a 3rd person cover shooter. Why is the big enemy a hundred thousand evil space ships? You have to be very, very dumb to think "and then all the reapers arrived" is a good way to start off a game about shooting guns and spamming warp explosions (and sometimes rolling).

Nothing bigger than a krogan was fun to fight in those games.

SlothfulCobra
Mar 27, 2011

Jazerus posted:

sometimes a piece of media has an interesting world and good characters, but a bad plot. that's often a sign that an episodic structure would have suited its strengths more than a continuous narrative structure did. mass effect definitely falls into this category - much better suited to telling short stories, maybe with a small overarching plot in the background.

episodic structure has fallen out of fashion after the excesses of 80s/90s TV with the heavy limitations that were put on shows seeking syndication, but there's nothing actually bad or outmoded about it.

Most comedies and dramas are more serial these days, but weirdly the new Doctor Who is more episodic than the old Doctor Who, so it has to cram into 45 minutes all the buildup and tension that the old show would've strung out over 6 episodes. I think there's some period where episodic entertainment pushed out old serialization for various reasons.

Videogames have had a troubled history with becoming episodic between the very high profile game episode that never came out and the one big company that was trying to make episodic gaming into a thing went out of business horribly. Unless you mean episodic like Assassin's Creed was where it kinda forgot all about the overarching narrative and put out a bunch of very similar games with mostly the same mechanics at full price.

Sleeveless
Dec 25, 2014

by Pragmatica

sassassin posted:

It outright stated that unless one of their wacky schemes pays off it will take them an incredibly long time to ever reach citadel space.

And then in 3 yeah they just flew in. The citadel relay would have saved them a few years or something. Even the tactical advantage of taking out all the leadership doesn't end up being important. They don't bother capturing the citadel in the end, focusing instead on home planets. The element of surprise was meaningless. Sovereign-tech made no difference. Nothing you did mattered at all, actually.

We built a macguffin that had an undefined purpose and a ghost child made Joker's hat sentient. What a legend. Buy DLC.

I think you're getting your headcanon confused with the actual text of the games. The previous galactic genocide of the Protheans was something that took centuries even with the Reaper trap working flawlessly which is why the Prothean research center on Ilos was able to keep working in secret and do the research on them that let Shepard and co win the first game in the first place, it was never an essential tactic to winning but just a way of making it easier for them. Also you find things like the derelict Reaper in ME2 that show that past civilizations had been actively fighting them and been able to score a few wins, it was never instant and immediate subjugation and extermination against an infallible opponent but instant a prolonged occupation by a force that could outlast anything that was thrown at it and existed on a scale of time and space beyond our own where any losses they took ultimately didn't matter. The Citadel relay wasn't about tactical necessity or logistical convenience compared to space travel but about simple mechanical efficiency in the service of an arbitrary routine, it was never something they needed.

For all of Mass Effect 3's failings it being a reverse-Cthulhu story where it turns out some eldritch squid horror from the depths of the cosmos is actually just a bunch of dumb robots mindlessly following their ultimately arbitrary and meaningless orders over and over long after the people who gave them to them are gone and being unable to adapt to changes in that routine (like the Keepers evolving to the point where they were no longer susceptible to Reaper programming) was a really neat and unique take on something that a lazier writer could have just chosen not to explain or address at all. Especially with the wrinkle that they're still so powerful and numerous beyond our comprehension that they keep winning anyways through brute force and ultimately they're only undone by exploiting that same ancient programming they're beholden to via the Crucible. Finding out that the Protheans were themselves cruel stupid colonialist warmongers piggybacking off of the technology of their predecessors and the Leviathans were despotic slavemasters who set this whole thing in motion because they were terrified of technology being used against them by their slave races or evolving into something they couldn't control were also really good directions to go in when even to this day so much genre fiction and video gaming leans so hard on the trope of enlightened ancient races with technology far beyond our own.

Wild Horses
Oct 31, 2012

There's really no meaning in making beetles fight.
"actual text of the game" changes like every game, so it's basically irrelevant. The writers changed, the narrative changed.
Point we're trying to make is that most of the game plot is made irrelevant in ME3 too. ME1 didn't matter at all, ME2 didn't matter at all, Arrival DLC didn't matter either, they still "jump" and instakill the batarians and apparently Earth too. Nobody understands anything, it's like the tyranids just sprouted into the galaxy.


sorry for writing such a short refutation but drat. The writers could've made a radically different and more logical story if they felt like it, but went with some lowest common denominator stuff. It's sad.

SlothfulCobra
Mar 27, 2011

Also each of those bits you mentioned were snipped out of the main game to be DLC that doesn't go on sale.

It might've been impossible to really live up to the buildup to the Reapers as a threat, but there definitely should've been a way to still make them much less shallow.

Also what was the deal with those squidhead statues on Ilos.

Jazerus
May 24, 2011


SlothfulCobra posted:

Also what was the deal with those squidhead statues on Ilos.

they're the inusannon, i'm pretty sure, unless that's just a decade of fanon rotting my brain

Lt. Danger
Dec 22, 2006

jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

Wild Horses posted:

"actual text of the game" changes like every game, so it's basically irrelevant. The writers changed, the narrative changed.

you mean like Star Wars...?

RBA Starblade
Apr 28, 2008

Going Home.

Games Idiot Court Jester

Did we ever find out what the Mass Cause was?

Freaking Crumbum
Apr 17, 2003

Too fuck to drunk


RBA Starblade posted:

Did we ever find out what the Mass Cause was?

the mass cause was all of the crew members turned gently caress-buddies we made along the way

Wild Horses
Oct 31, 2012

There's really no meaning in making beetles fight.

Lt. Danger posted:

you mean like Star Wars...?

george is the one fixture that doesnt change until the sequels. and his works are definitely a more cohesive whole.
Mass effect is weird. they pivoted hard on the mood of every game.

Lt. Danger
Dec 22, 2006

jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

lucas makes a lot of changes to his own films: darth vader's identity, "there is another", when padme dies, darth as a name/as a title. and of course the prequels change mood by being a tragedy

Wild Horses
Oct 31, 2012

There's really no meaning in making beetles fight.
at least the trade feds didn't change from subversive enemy in ep 1, to being the number one heroic faction in episode 2, and then turning into evil henchmen in episode 3.

(like cerberus was handled, handwaving all the evil poo poo they did in 1, and then again blaming your character for "trusting cerberus" in 3)

Lt. Danger
Dec 22, 2006

jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

didn't they? isn't one of the throughlines of the prequels how our perspective of the trade federation changes from villains to patsies to victims who were (if only accidentally) correct about the Republic being a proto-fascist oppressor one crisis away from the Empire? "There are heroes on both sides," and such.

ME2 is at pains to point out that Cerberus are still bad guys, presenting a spiritual or moral jeopardy rather than a physical one, and almost plot beat with the TIM involves him lying to Shepard (pretending ignorance about Freedom's Progress, leaking Ash/Kaidan's location, the Collector Ship trap). the premise of the story is that everyone in the galaxy is compromised, including the space UN and their space cops. this goes right back to ME1, with the Citadel trap and the revelation that the Reapers orchestrated the last 50,000 years of galactic history and every 50,000 year period before that

Wild Horses
Oct 31, 2012

There's really no meaning in making beetles fight.
the feds never stop being the enemies of the "heroes" of the republic though. They view them as worse than trash. OUR view of them changes, but not the heroes.
The jarring shift in storyline in mass effect would be like obi wan just straight up okaying Count Dooku's request and joining him in ep2, except this part is in the beginning

Randarkman
Jul 18, 2011

Wild Horses posted:

the feds never stop being the enemies of the "heroes" of the republic though. They view them as worse than trash. OUR view of them changes, but not the heroes.
The jarring shift in storyline in mass effect would be like obi wan just straight up okaying Count Dooku's request and joining him in ep2, except this part is in the beginning

This reply (from me) is veering into prequel chat but I do kind of wish that the prequels (in addition to having someone other than Lucas actually write out the screenplay from his story beats) would have combined Qui-Gon and Dooku into one character that wasn't explicitly a Sith or serving Palpatine, but who was opposed to the Jedi and the Republic.

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SlothfulCobra
Mar 27, 2011

I think I'd be more hostile to the "working for the bad guys" twist these days, now that I know how many pro-nazis there are out there who would probably take all to well to the human supremacist angle of Cerberus and what it could be an allegory for, but at the time it was fun to see all those supervillain plots that obviously went horribly awry because how could they not and tell off the Illusive Man. Come to think of it, I sure hope they didn't start a new research project on the sex slave planet.

The game never really plays Cerberus as really being heroic, I'm not even sure if it has dialogue options to be a loyal Cerberus supporter, it's pretty much always presented as pragmatism to accept their help because for some reason they believe in the threat that the Council doesn't (which if you really try you can draw comparisons to real-world nazis being pragmatically allied with to stop an alleged threat can be uncomfortable, but it doesn't really fit).

It's a lot more grating that the Council is just burying their heads in the sand and refusing to acknowledge the possible danger of the Reapers and Collectors for no apparent reason. It kind of reminds me of how George Lucas stumbled on presenting the uselessness of the Galactic Senate in Phantom Menace, within the context of the work, it's not presented as a structural issue or corruption, or anything really, it's just the central government being incompetent and worthless for no apparent reason. It's got the air of being some kind of political commentary without actually saying anything.

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