253 réponses à ce sujet

[epoch_]

They're all the top right choice.



/thread

[epoch_]

actually you didn't. Nevermind me.

Modifié par epoch_, 04 avril 2010 - 12:19 .

[The Elite Elite]

Some of those decisions you list don't even have the benefit of hindsight yet. (Destroying the Collector base and the Rachni) But as for your topic, I too would like to hear an explanation from the people who make those choices as their "official" playthrough as to why they do it that way.

[Exyle19]

Great topic.



I'll try to retrace my though processes on my first playthrough before I had the advantage of hindsight.



Letting Shiala go is a huge risk from a RP perspective, which basically points to a core belief held by Sheperd that everyone is essentially a good person and deserves a second chance. The interesting thing about this decision is that the order of missions the players chooses can legitimately affect the connotations of this choice. For example, if Sheperd went to recruit Liara or Noveria before traveling to Feros, he might be much more inclined to believe that Shiala was basically innocent.



From a personal perspective, I found letting Rana go perfectly reasonable. I had a hard time believing that anyone working at Saren's science facility would be kept fully advised of what exactly was going on. After all, what -sane- organic would knowingly aid the Reapers? On the subject of the cloned Krogan, I truly felt for Wrex and regretted that there was no option to try and salvage a cure for the genophage. I was willing to accept that Rana might have become involved on these sympathetic grounds, although the possibility was never explicitly suggested.



In terms of saving the council, I felt that the true overarching theme of this story was humanity learning to value those of other races/species as much as their own, a earn a role in the collective day to day lives of the galaxy. If humanity were not willing to sacrifice of itself to maintain this way of life, then surely we were not cut out to be a part of it. Despite the fact that the Council was a major pain in the ass most of the time, the remarks my Sheperd and his crew at the revelation that the Council directly represents millions of lives on the Citadel, and billions in the galaxy, I was more willing to accept the fact that I was not their top priority, or even anything special.



From a metagame perspective, I also realized now that this is probably the reason most players hate the original council so much upon visiting the forums. As gamers, we are used to being the center of the universe within our narrative, and the council truly acts as if this is not so. Kudos to BioWare for the subtle touch.



Destroying the Collector Base wasn't a terribly tough decision. Legion made an excellent point about species determining their own technological future, with which I fully agreed. The whole problem had its inception in falling prey to technological determinism, much of which MAY have been avoided had humanity and the other races never discovered/made use of the Citadel, assuming Sovereign and the other Reapers remained ignorant of this diverging path. I/Sheperd reached the conclusion that making use of the means of our enemy was not a strength, but a weakness the Reapers would exploit, by virtue of having done so before. Better to evolve in our own direction.



Having already learned of indoctrination from Benezia, letting the Rachni free is a calculated risk that seems to mostly hinge on the player's acceptance that this may have been the cause of the original Rachni warriors; that the Rachni were manipulated by Sovereign in order to shape the future of the current biological life, or just to make life more difficutlt in general.



From a metagame perspective on the issue, I realized after ME2 and reading some codex entries that if the Rachni were manipulated by the Reapers it was most likely in an effort to bring about the Rachni's extinction in order to 'prune' a divergent technological future that did not fit in with their blueprint, as it is made quite clear that the Rachni did not make use of the Mass Relays or Citadel.

[Pacifien]

My Shepard is big on second chances. Possibly even third chances. And not just for Shiala and Rana Thanoptis either. And I made those decisions a couple years before ME2 came out, so I don't know what hindsight has to do with it.



I told the Alliance to focus on Sovereign rather than save the Council, though.

[cachx]

Letting Shiala go
Letting Rana Thanoptis go
Saving the Council

I did the above 3 because it seemed like the good thing to do, I didn't really lost time considering consequences. If the game would have made a stronger point that saving the council would come with heavy human casualties I would had stop and think about it a little more. On ME2 when Shep screams to the council something along the lines of "I sacrificed human lives to save the council" I was like: Really, we did?

[BaladasDemnevanni]

Hmm, I do have a question, OP. Why exactly do any of those decisions necessitate meta-gaming? Are these simply examples you chose to focus on for context , or is there something particular about "saving the Council" as opposed to killing them which you believe would only be possible through meta-gaming?

[Bigdoser]

Exyle19 wrote...

Great topic.

I'll try to retrace my though processes on my first playthrough before I had the advantage of hindsight.

Letting Shiala go is a huge risk from a RP perspective, which basically points to a core belief held by Sheperd that everyone is essentially a good person and deserves a second chance. The interesting thing about this decision is that the order of missions the players chooses can legitimately affect the connotations of this choice. For example, if Sheperd went to recruit Liara or Noveria before traveling to Feros, he might be much more inclined to believe that Shiala was basically innocent.

From a personal perspective, I found letting Rana go perfectly reasonable. I had a hard time believing that anyone working at Saren's science facility would be kept fully advised of what exactly was going on. After all, what -sane- organic would knowingly aid the Reapers? On the subject of the cloned Krogan, I truly felt for Wrex and regretted that there was no option to try and salvage a cure for the genophage. I was willing to accept that Rana might have become involved on these sympathetic grounds, although the possibility was never explicitly suggested.

In terms of saving the council, I felt that the true overarching theme of this story was humanity learning to value those of other races/species as much as their own, a earn a role in the collective day to day lives of the galaxy. If humanity were not willing to sacrifice of itself to maintain this way of life, then surely we were not cut out to be a part of it. Despite the fact that the Council was a major pain in the ass most of the time, the remarks my Sheperd and his crew at the revelation that the Council directly represents millions of lives on the Citadel, and billions in the galaxy, I was more willing to accept the fact that I was not their top priority, or even anything special.

From a metagame perspective, I also realized now that this is probably the reason most players hate the original council so much upon visiting the forums. As gamers, we are used to being the center of the universe within our narrative, and the council truly acts as if this is not so. Kudos to BioWare for the subtle touch.

Destroying the Collector Base wasn't a terribly tough decision. Legion made an excellent point about species determining their own technological future, with which I fully agreed. The whole problem had its inception in falling prey to technological determinism, much of which MAY have been avoided had humanity and the other races never discovered/made use of the Citadel, assuming Sovereign and the other Reapers remained ignorant of this diverging path. I/Sheperd reached the conclusion that making use of the means of our enemy was not a strength, but a weakness the Reapers would exploit, by virtue of having done so before. Better to evolve in our own direction.

Having already learned of indoctrination from Benezia, letting the Rachni free is a calculated risk that seems to mostly hinge on the player's acceptance that this may have been the cause of the original Rachni warriors; that the Rachni were manipulated by Sovereign in order to shape the future of the current biological life, or just to make life more difficutlt in general.

From a metagame perspective on the issue, I realized after ME2 and reading some codex entries that if the Rachni were manipulated by the Reapers it was most likely in an effort to bring about the Rachni's extinction in order to 'prune' a divergent technological future that did not fit in with their blueprint, as it is made quite clear that the Rachni did not make use of the Mass Relays or Citadel.

My thoughts as well.

[Your Synthetic Superior]

JohnnyDollar wrote...

Meta Gaming http://en.wikipedia....wiki/Metagaming

It is often convenient at times for one to say that his/her decision was the right one to make from the benefit of hindsite. 

I want to hear the arguments from players that think the following decisions were the right ones to make from a non metagaming perpective without the advantage of hindsite.

I want to hear counter arguments to those arguments.

Letting Shiala go
Letting Rana Thanoptis go
Saving the Council

If you don't want to cover all of them at once, then that is fine.  Just pick a few out if you like.

Are most of the decisions I have listed above hard to justify and rationalize without the benefit of metagaming?

Shiala? What harm can she really do on a large scale at this point. Saen already got what he wanted from her. If she isn't indoctrinated then she should live. If she is making up indoctrination to get out of a bad sitauation, so what.  She is just one person who has done all she can for Saren.  I don;t think anyone would in their right mind would want to be in a coma-like like state serving a plant for the the rest of their lives.

Rana? The impression I get was that "leting her go" was letting her die by the blast. How someone outruns or outdrives (or whatever) a blast that, from orbit, looked like it could take out Texas doesn't register on my scale of possibility.

Some decisions like saving the council are presented in a different way than what actuall happens. Saving the council is not merely saving 3 individuals or a single dreadnaught, it's saving the entire citadel fleet and in the process making citadel space an overall less than safe space. But it isn't presented in that manner. Only the hindsight tells you are actually choosing. If Bioware is going to keep retconning everything then metagmming is the only way to decide.

Rachni queen is a gamble. Personally, I can see letting her live backfire if the Reapers send another tone through space and reindoctrinate them so ending that threat then and there seems OK. On the other hand you are killing someone who is as far as you know innocent and helpless. That decision is based solely on the type of character I happen to be playing during a playthrough.

I think there are going to be compound results in ME3. Save the queen but destroy genophage research =  ****ed galaxy. Save the queen and keep research = krogan redeeming themselves. Kill the queen and save the research equal ****ed galaxy. Similarly, save the queen but keep the collector base equal safe rachni. I have alot more speculation, but I don't feel like typing them out. We'll see.

[Internet Kraken]

I want to see some justification for hiding the evidence at Tali's trial that isn't metagaming. Tali's only reason for you to hide it is you so you don't show just how crazy her father was. She wants you to tell the every Quarian that you don't know what happened on the Alerai. You don't know how dozens of Quarians ended up dead. You don't know what Geth were doing on that ship. That always struck me as a very selfish request. Now there is justification for hiding the evidence in that the political implications of it may cause problems. But other than that I don't see any reason to hide it other than being selfish. Hoping someone can shed some light on this and help me see it from another perspective.

JohnnyDollar wrote...

@Internet Kraken
You want me to add Tali's trial to the op?

Sure, why not.

Modifié par Internet Kraken, 04 avril 2010 - 12:57 .

[BaladasDemnevanni]

Internet Kraken wrote...

I want to see some justification for hiding the evidence at Tali's trial that isn't metagaming. Tali's only reason for you to hide it is you so you don't show just how crazy her father was. She wants you to tell the every Quarian that you don't know what happened on the Alerai. You don't know how dozens of Quarians ended up dead. You don't know what Geth where doing on that ship. That always struck me as a very selfish request. Now there is justification for hiding the evidence in that the political implications of it may cause problems. But other than that I don't see nay reason to hide it other than being selfish. Hoping someone can shed some light on this and help me see it from another perspective.

Let's not confuse "metagaming" with playing a selfish Shepard. You can consider all the consequences of hiding the evidence, understand the dangers, and still choose to do it, but that does not mean you are meta-gaming. Depending on what you make out your relationship with Tali to be, you could be the sort of character who places his/her crew first or you could be the ruthless "get the job done" type who would reveal the evidence. Metagaming simply means that you are using logic which your character would not have access to at the time he makes a decision. Hope that helps somewhat.

[The Elite Elite]

Letting Shiala go
Letting Rana Thanoptis go
Saving the Council
Saving the Collector Base
Letting the Rachni Queen live

Shiala: I let her go in my official playthrough because after releasing her she does give me the Prothean knowledge without any kind of a fight, plus at that point I already know about indoctrination because of Noveria. (At least I think I went to Noveria first, I'm not sure it was several months ago when I did my official playthrough) So I was willing to give her a chance.

Rana Thanoptis: I kill her because she was working with Saren. She even admits to studying the effects of indoctrination on people. No way am I letting something like that slide.

Council: It always made sense to me to leave the Council to die. Fat lot of good it'll do the galaxy to save the Council only to then not have enough ships to stop Sov from letting the rest of the Reapers through. Plus I'm not sacrificing the lives of so many good men and women just to save those three clowns.

Collector Base: Too much can be gained by keeping it. Could be the key to learning something game-changing about the Reapers, so I can't let the fact that it'll be in the hands of TIM make me destroy it. I'll take TIM getting the knowledge from the base to try and use it to make humanity the ruler of the galaxy over there being no organic life left to fight over the galaxy.

Rachni: If I was given the option I would actually leave their fate to the Council, but because I'm forced to either kill her or let her go, I kill her. At that point in time all we know about them is that they were a huge threat to organic life. I'm not risking the galaxy having a war on two fronts against both Reapers and Rachni.

[BaladasDemnevanni]

JohnnyDollar wrote...

I have just noticed a lot of debates and arguments in the past about these decisions.  A lot of people that argue for the ones that I have listed, are doing so from the benefit of already playing the game, looking at youtube videos, reading the wiki, reading the forumns, etc. While others that are arguing against those that I have listed are usually not using this other infromation to influence their argument from what I have noticed anyway.  

Hmm, this is interesting. I would say that following your original play through, it's a great degree of meta-gaming. By this point, you have prior knowledge of all the consequences which can occur for Shepard and are unable to make a truly "in character" decision. Even decisions that you make during side quests are a perfect example of this. You could taking something critical like choosing to save the Council and have it be a central aspect of the plot. On the other hand, you can have a great number of seemingly unimportant side missions which people use as a means of filling their renegade/paragon bars. This is a perfect example of meta-gaming.

[Internet Kraken]

BaladasDemnevanni wrote...

Internet Kraken wrote...



I want to see some justification for hiding the evidence at Tali's trial that isn't metagaming. Tali's only reason for you to hide it is you so you don't show just how crazy her father was. She wants you to tell the every Quarian that you don't know what happened on the Alerai. You don't know how dozens of Quarians ended up dead. You don't know what Geth where doing on that ship. That always struck me as a very selfish request. Now there is justification for hiding the evidence in that the political implications of it may cause problems. But other than that I don't see nay reason to hide it other than being selfish. Hoping someone can shed some light on this and help me see it from another perspective.

Let's not confuse "metagaming" with playing a selfish Shepard. You can consider all the consequences of hiding the evidence, understand the dangers, and still choose to do it, but that does not mean you are meta-gaming. Depending on what you make out your relationship with Tali to be, you could be the sort of character who places his/her crew first or you could be the ruthless "get the job done" type who would reveal the evidence. Metagaming simply means that you are using logic which your character would not have access to at the time he makes a decision. Hope that helps somewhat.

I understand that completley. But prior to the trial your only reason to hide the evidence is to not show just how bad Tali's father was. You can't predict how the Quarians will react to it because you aren't given enough information about Quarian politics prior to this. You don't know that it will have dire political consequences. So your only reason to hide it is to preserve your relationship with Tali. You essentially valuing her more than letting the Quarians make an informed decisions about the Geth war, which always struck me as selfish. Maybe it's not really selfish, but that's exactly why I want to get some more opinions on this.

[ATKT]

• Saving the Council:

Any response that isn't "Focus fire on Sovereign" is basically stupid from a nonmetagame point of view, IMHO. Sovereign has been murdering civilizations for aeons, with super-duper lasers and armor. It isn't even about saving human lives, it's about making absolutely sure the greatest threat to ALL spacefaring civilization is destroyed.

Sovereign doesn't even bother shooting at the Citadel species' fleet, he just rams straight into them. He has the elements of surprise and superior firepower on his side. To kill this being takes EVERYTHING the Alliance has to offer; it already decimated the Council's fleet.

It becomes a bad choice if you later say "I did it to secure humanity's dominance." That takes a true Machiavellian heart of ice.

• Rachni:

You don't know that they are lying when they say "Oh, we're just gonna go find a quiet spot in the galaxy and reproduce in absolute peace and harmony with the universe." Nor do you know anything about the rachni being indoctrinated--for all you know, they chose to go to war with the galaxy because they wanted dominance, and their feigned pity is just an attempt to restart the old war machine. A long, bloody war which almost destroyed the Council is not good precedence; it is hard to believe that they are the victims of simple misunderstanding if they continued to fight a war for no reason for as long as they did.

Plus, surviving rachni (which breed like crazy, iirc) will inevitably begin taking up space which the current species already inhabit. Their survival will also make big problems for the Council and everybody else, since they are supposed to be dead and everybody believes them to be evil killing machines. In the interest of galactic stability--which I am to protect as a Spectre--I chose to kill them.

It was probably the absolute hardest decision I had to make so far in both ME1 and 2. My entire argument for killing the rachni is above, but against, my argument was simply: Genocide. You are exterminating a species, and I did not make the decision lightly.

[BaladasDemnevanni]

Internet Kraken wrote...

I understand that completley. But prior to the trial your only reason to hide the evidence is to not show just how bad Tali's father was. You can't predict how the Quarians will react to it because you aren't given enough information about Quarian politics prior to this. You don't know that it will have dire political consequences. So your only reason to hide it is to preserve your relationship with Tali. You essentially valuing her more than letting the Quarians make an informed decisions about the Geth war, which always struck me as selfish. Maybe it's not really selfish, but that's exactly why I want to get some more opinions on this.

You're right that we can't predict it. But based on what Tali tells us (who is much more experienced and knowledgeable in Quarian culture than Shepard) and on what we already know of the Quarians, it's unlikely that her father would have been forgiven for his actions, in addition to whatever political repercssions there might have been. But I still think here that we are missing the point about 'metagaming'. I could be misunderstanding your position, but how exactly is it metagaming if you choose to value Tali over the Quarians as a whole? It might not seem to be the most logical position, but humans aren't known for behaving logically all the time. Our emotional connections often impact our judgment.

[Pacifien]

JohnnyDollar wrote...
Shiala
On my first playthrough I killed her.  She was involved with the enemy.  She bought into Saren's beliefs.  Letting her go posed a risk that she would only revert back to what she was doing before, and that was help Saren.  There was no choice to arrest her.  Of course whenever I told her that I couldn't let her go, and she kneeled down and put her arms behind her back, I felt that she was honorable and that perhaps her death was unnecessary.

Ah. I've never killed her.

However, that does remind me of two decisions I've made where I went back to choose the other option to see how it would turn out. I let the Council die at first then reloaded to see how it was different if I let them live. Sovereign died the same way each time, which was a little disappointing. I've let the Council die pretty much every time since.

I also let Garrus kill Sidonis on one playthrough and then convinced him to let Sidonis go on another playthrough. I discovered I got Garrus's loyalty either way, so I've gone with my preference on the matter since then. It's probably my metagame decision then.

[cachx]

Hiding the evidence at Tali's trial

Now this was more interesting for me. My Shep just followed his "do the right thing even if it hurts" philosophy and handed over the evidence, I knew Tali was going to be upset but I was going to have the chance to make her see reason (that can't be done as far as I know). Also it was impossible for me to know that it was going to fracture the flotilla so badly.

This was the only situation in wich I ended up reloading the game and changing my decision.