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I always took the general mood of mass effect 2 and 3 to be heavily pro-militarism and generally held democratically elected servants in absurd contempt. you being a tom clancy shadow figure with unlimited extralegal killing capacity doesn't help either. the entire mass effect saga, played straight through as paragon shepard, is a fascist power fantasy. You can fix the problems with some corporation by giving the correct guy power, or trusting the system here and there, sometimes you take shortcuts, military matters can be solved by the local people on the ground, no need to have accountability. Lots of honorable sacrifice and suicides in this story (ME3 has like, one every mission. Death Cult is strong)
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Feb 14, 2020 00:47
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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. yes? that's one of the tragic failing of the prequel characters - they get suckered into fighting the wrong people while the true villain profits what exactly is the complaint here? that Shepard, the literal audience-insert character, reflects the changing perspective of the audience? that characters aren't allowed to change, or that characters aren't allowed to notice other characters changing? that writers changing their ideas between installment inevitably leads to a bad story, e.g. notorious cinematic failure Star Wars (Original Trilogy)?
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Feb 14, 2020 00:56
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i dunno, i felt the initial argument was about the way lucas changed the story from movie to movie and i felt it wasn't as substantial as the Mass effect's brutal shifts in tone and substance. Lt. Danger posted:that writers changing their ideas between installment inevitably leads to a bad story, e.g. notorious cinematic failure Star Wars (Original Trilogy)? unironically sorta yes. Star wars OT is basically 1.5 good movies (ANH and half of ESB) you can feel the different directors, vision and limitations of the production taking their toll on the cohesive whole. They turned into this juggernaut, but the movies themselves became secondary to the enjoyment of the massive franchise. the prequels hold up a lot better because they're tightly directed with one firm plot that goes with confidence from one idea to the next. Truly unwavering movies.
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Feb 14, 2020 01:02
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I think sequels by their nature are commentary on previous installments and can never have perfect congruity with them. their nature is to develop and revise what went before, otherwise they don't say anything. see also the reveal in ME2 that the geth were secretly good all along also to be fair ME1 is the one that casts you as a space cop and super-elite military enforcer for the galactic hegemony. ME2 is the one where you reject all that to hang out with the traditional enemies of cops and fascists: criminals, ex-slaves, the stateless, the mentally ill, heterodox religious members, intelligentsia
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Feb 14, 2020 01:18
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ME1 was incredibly pro-military too, and I'm not even sure it's established anywhere that any of the Council races have real democracy. According to the codex, Salarians are a feudal matriarchy. Turians are an outright autocracy, and a good part of Garrus's arc in ME1 is grappling with his place in things which good Turians shouldn't question. The Human Alliance also seems entirely led by military officials. I had my own discomforts about that, but I just kinda mentally filed it as one of the big ways that Bioware was trying to reach out to shooter fans. When Mass Effect first came out, it seemed like a blatant attempt at appealing to fans of shooters, what with being another seemingly boilerplate space marine plot setup before you start sinking into things and spending at least 10-20 minutes talking to people on the Citadel. And honestly, it's not that uncommon for big sci-fi stories to wind up with a big military focus. Star Trek usually has the bulk of the cast enlisted into the military. Babylon 5 starts the same way, but it actually manages to work in some commentary on the issues each society has from its political structure. Also Return of the Jedi was fun on a bun.
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Feb 14, 2020 01:36
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the ME "box art" depiction of Shepard always makes me think of FOOTBALL PLAYER for some reason and i can never shake the suspicion that someone, somewhere, somehow thought that the right boxart could snare Madden players
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Feb 14, 2020 01:42
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maybe it's just the huge shoulder pads. idk
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Feb 14, 2020 01:43
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armor design went from slim space suits to super bulky pauldrons. i think it was a conscious decision to make your guy seem more buff and cool.
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Feb 14, 2020 02:01
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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 less that ME2 can tell a story without worrying about those beats and more it can just step away from the story and explore the characters and setting. The main story of ME2 doesn't get nearly as much praise as its companions and their missions. And I think ME3 is a fine conclusion to the series as a trilogy. They could've certainly gone with a more episodic approach and avoided all the problems that come with trying to make a pleasing and suitably epic conclusion to the series. And they didn't really deliver that. But I think they delivered generally good conclusions to the subplots, and I enjoy the game's high-level D&D vibe where you're an insanely competent badass and just take victory laps until the mechanics give way to set pieces.
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Feb 14, 2020 03:23
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PeterWeller posted:I enjoy the game's high-level D&D vibe where you're an insanely competent badass and just take victory laps until the mechanics give way to set pieces. I hate that. Everything about it. It's poo poo and boring. Namaste.
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Feb 14, 2020 11:33
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I really liked ME2 and frankly Mass Effect could be rebooted to remove the reapers entirely and be just as fun. Or you could reboot it without the reapers and gently caress up every single thing when you change it and make a terrible game due to extremely unfocused project design and mismanagement.
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Feb 14, 2020 13:11
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I really didn't like being shoehorned into going with Cerberus the first time through ME2 but there's a lot of dialogue options to cover that say you're just faking it, and you can be officially designated a Spectre working for the council again anyway if you didn't blow them up. It really only stops with that when you actually talk to the Illusive Man where it mostly just defaults to "whatever you say boss" and "gently caress you I won't do what you tell me! ok I'm going to go do it now", but everywhere else you usually can say "yep, I love Cerberus", "nope I hate em" or "no they work for ME"PeterWeller posted:I think it's less that ME2 can tell a story without worrying about those beats and more it can just step away from the story and explore the characters and setting. The main story of ME2 doesn't get nearly as much praise as its companions and their missions. It importing your character stats then drawing the bars out to get Even Bigger was pretty satisfying, especially as a vanguard because you start off at "unstoppable*" and just keep going from there. *Until you charge into a sync kill anyway RBA Starblade fucked around with this message at 16:31 on Feb 14, 2020 |
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Feb 14, 2020 16:28
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Barudak posted:I really liked ME2 and frankly Mass Effect could be rebooted to remove the reapers entirely and be just as fun. Honestly, there’s nothing stopping them from making a cool new game in the same universe (okay, it’s after the reapers and everyone is rebuilding) with a new big threat and a new protagonist that’s a double secret Spectre; except for all the things that made Andromeda the failure it turned out to be.
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Feb 14, 2020 16:40
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You might be able to do a neat game set before the Reaper war. Like maybe something during the Rachni or Krogan wars. You wouldn't be able to play as a human then, but that's not much of a price. Or they could have a game during the first contact war where you could play as a human discovering all the council races for the first time. Or even not have a story about a wide-scale threat and do a more personal story about a mercenary company trying to find its way in a big complicated political and corporate landscape.PeterWeller posted:I think it's less that ME2 can tell a story without worrying about those beats and more it can just step away from the story and explore the characters and setting. The main story of ME2 doesn't get nearly as much praise as its companions and their missions. I guess that's fair. There's only really 6 "main story" missions in ME2, and none of them really have much exposition or storytelling on their own. I guess the Derelict Reaper has the most because they're trying to pretend it's not a main story mission and just a one-off weird thing to explore. One of the unique things about videogames as a medium is that you often get the choice of how much material to engage with, and ME2 with its shorter missions and large amount of optional sidequests really lets you beeline the content you want, as opposed to ME1's big sprawling main missions and entirely barebones slapdash sidequests. The suicide mission even does a decent amount of going over the crew you spent all that time building, better than the more generic "war preparation" of ME3. I wonder what it would've been like if you actually managed to recruit Okeer.
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Feb 14, 2020 17:00
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Or just set it in the setting and pretend the Reaper War never happened. The Mass Effect Series was just a series of dumb, bombastic action movies loosely based on the story of the first human Spectre, that received alot of funding from the Alliance military.
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Feb 14, 2020 17:02
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Set it anywhere, it's a big galaxy
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Feb 14, 2020 17:06
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Saints Row games, but in space.
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Feb 14, 2020 17:11
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the mass effect fanbase was extremely tetchy following The Endings and explicitly hostile to any market research test questions about new prequels or sidequels. despite popular belief Bioware was always very sensitive to audience responses and got stuck between moving the franchise forward and respecting all possible ending choices (including stuff like the krogan, the geth/quarians, squadmates) hence Andromeda
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Feb 14, 2020 17:18
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Andromeda could have been fine, but the initial premise it has is undercut by the very first thing that happens after its tutorial mission and that lack of design vision never lets up.
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Feb 14, 2020 17:23
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Remember the badass ninja guy
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Feb 14, 2020 17:23
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Wild Horses posted:Saints Row games, but in space. Done and done.
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Feb 14, 2020 17:38
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andromeda's major problem was that it was very clearly contrived as a back-up galaxy so that the status quo adventures of the milky way can persist despite the fact that everything about the new setting rubs against the status quo, for e.g. you transition from first contact to everyone already knows each other and we've settled into routine so hard it'll give you whiplash hell, just the fact that everyone in the milky way had roughly comparable technology was justified by the tech funnel trap the reapers left behind to help sustain the cycles so that species that evolved tens of millions of years ago in earlier cycles wouldn't be ridiculously more advanced (or even alive) in the modern era
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Feb 14, 2020 18:08
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This super long retrospective does a good job of explaining what went wrong with Mass Effect: https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=27792 The change of story from 1 to 2 kind of screwed everything up.
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Feb 14, 2020 18:19
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i've read it before and i'm always skeptical of arguments that try to retroactively remember me2 as some kind of failure given that the vast majority of the problems with the trilogy, as cited by most fans anyway, were problems invented almost exclusively in me3 the enthusiasm for the franchise as a whole was at fever pitch moving into me3, thanks in a large part to how me2 was handled and some of the set-up it provided; at the time it seemed like you weren't just building up a team/crew/ship/alliances for a one-and-done suicide mission but these were things that could last and serve as a template for the coming reaper war and seed later events, there were hints of how shepard was going to have to intervene in bigger galactic politics to unite a galaxy to confront a threat it pretends doesn't exist and you did gain insight into the nuances of the reaper cycle along the way - the articles on shamusyoung have take a very narrow view on how the story should've gone starting from the end of me1 to critique me2 and that rubs me the wrong way because it's like he's using some idealized fanfiction to critique a story instead of the story's own actual content i get that some people argue that me3 had all the problems it had because me2 didn't do enough work in the set-up but honestly imho it did do a lot of set up that was just subsequently ignored for one reason - e.g. the soft-reboot that happens between games so new players don't get lost - or another - e.g., the closet 11th hour plot revisions - so the third game ultimately volunteered to lift everything itself and then buckled under the pressure the me trilogy articles on shamusyoung are nonetheless still well-written and worth a read even tho i don't necessarily agree with the gist of them
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Feb 14, 2020 18:57
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Sorry, ME2 was always bad. It just papered over it with the character-based side-missions everyone remembers.
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Feb 14, 2020 19:39
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MonsieurChoc posted:Sorry, ME2 was always bad. It just papered over it with the character-based side-missions everyone remembers. I recently replayed it and still enjoyed it greatly
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Feb 14, 2020 19:41
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The main plot is just so incredibly dumb and bad it ruins everything for me. Also going less rpg instead of mroe rpg but that's a personal taste thing.
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Feb 14, 2020 19:42
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MonsieurChoc posted:The main plot is just so incredibly dumb and bad it ruins everything for me. The collector attack on the Normandy 2 is very stupid to be fair "ok everyone, cram onto the shuttle"
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Feb 14, 2020 19:43
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MonsieurChoc posted:Sorry, ME2 was always bad. It just papered over it with the character-based side-missions everyone remembers. this may blow your mind but stories are ultimately about people and how they confront problems from the narrative so solid character-driven plots are aces
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Feb 14, 2020 19:55
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ME2 is one of the best games ever made, and a brilliant first instalment of a trilogy (following the promising standalone title ME1).
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Feb 14, 2020 19:58
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hard counter posted:this may blow your mind but stories are ultimately about people and how they confront problems from the narrative so solid character-driven plots are aces Yes, but ME2 isn't a character driven plot. It's a terrible plot with good individual character episodes awkwardly stapled onto it.
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Feb 14, 2020 20:40
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MonsieurChoc posted:This super long retrospective does a good job of explaining what went wrong with Mass Effect: this is a good read. the ME2 opener is hosed
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Feb 14, 2020 21:05
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MonsieurChoc posted:Sorry, ME2 was always bad. It just papered over it with the character-based side-missions everyone remembers. the plot is stupendously bad and most of the things involved with main plot are just as bad but the game is still pretty fun. Or it was when it came out. The biggest upside is the fact that the environments look ten times better than ME1 in my opinion.
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Feb 14, 2020 21:44
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MonsieurChoc posted:Yes, but ME2 isn't a character driven plot. It's a terrible plot with good individual character episodes awkwardly stapled onto it. the climax - the part that's almost universally beloved - is an elaborate grading system for how well you developed your guys and if you subsequently understood them enough from your experiences to put them where they're needed most to survive a harrowing mission ... i don't think the integration is stapled, it's pretty solid and it comes together pretty neat there despite all the moving pieces and iirc people wanted more of it?
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Feb 14, 2020 22:10
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Ten years later, Mass Effect 2 is one of the greatest sequels I have ever played. Still.
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Feb 14, 2020 22:23
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ME 2 should've been ME 1, story-wise where you get recruited by Cerberus to uncover why Collectors abducting human colonies and later learn that they're bunch of cockbags working for the mysterious Harbinger. The first ME story makes more sense after second ones Oceans Eleven-esque ensemble adventure.
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Feb 14, 2020 23:00
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Technowrite posted:Ten years later, Mass Effect 2 is one of the greatest sequels I have ever played. Still. on the one hand i didn't like how it felt like there were far fewer options to customize your crew's look (since fashion is always the most important part of any game) but on the other hand it didn't make you hoard 40 different pairs of pants that were slightly incrementally better than each other in various ways, always believing that you'd switch your gear up based on the mission parameters but ultimately just picking the best middle-of-the-road option and never deviating from that also the SMG weapon class was very nearly 100% useless so having so many of your crew locked into that as 1 of their 2 options was horse poo poo
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Feb 14, 2020 23:02
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"clips" being a thing is loving criminal in its execution. have clips be a resource, but keep the guns cooling. Having to scrounge poo poo sucks dick. let me play the way i want. Also the clips dont spawn until you're low so you can never top off. sucks. they introduced a cooling gun in the citadel dlc and its the loving best.
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Feb 14, 2020 23:05
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I preferred the physical feedfack of reloading tbh.
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Feb 14, 2020 23:07
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As i said, have both systems, at the same time. would make it feel like poo poo has evolved. if your gun overheats, pop the clip out.
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Feb 14, 2020 23:08
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