21 réponses à ce sujet

[Cam080493]

 I agree with what your saying. Saren really comes off as holding the best interest of the galaxy by joining the reapers in the game, but the book implies that he wants to use the reapers for personal gain. When I read the book, I sort of ignored Saren at the end.

[The RPGenius]

With the hopes that this doesn't count as link-spamming attention-whoring since it's topic-relevant, I do an RPG rant blog periodically, and I did a rant on this issue back in February. If anyone's interested: http://wwwthinkingin...er-villain.html



TL;DR Version of the Rant: Yeah, there's just a world of difference between Game Saren and Book Saren. Game Saren is a fairly decent villain. Book Saren...well, I wouldn't call him a comic book villain, because most comic book villains these days tend to have some depth. Book Saren's got all the characterization, personality, and worth as a villain of a sci-fi Snidely Whiplash.

[The RPGenius]

Edit: Whoops, sorry, first post wasn't showing up so I submitted it again.  My bad.

Modifié par The RPGenius, 05 avril 2010 - 07:18 .

[Pacifien]

I didn't really think much about how Saren was portrayed in the book. I mean, it's just kind of a blur, as if my mind chooses only to remember Saren from the game.

However, I kinda thought Anderson came off a little worse after reading the book. Every time I hear him explain to Shepard what happened on his mission with Saren, I keep smirking at the thought that Anderson left a lot of details out.

[J-Ster]

Indoctrination could explain the difference. It's possible that when he found Sovereign, Saren planned to use it (without knowledge of other Reapers?) to dominate humanity and all that. But Sovereign indoctrinated him and caused Saren to actually believe surrendering to the Reapers would save organics.

[DecayingLight]

J-Ster wrote...

Indoctrination could explain the difference. It's possible that when he found Sovereign, Saren planned to use it (without knowledge of other Reapers?) to dominate humanity and all that. But Sovereign indoctrinated him and caused Saren to actually believe surrendering to the Reapers would save organics.

This.

I took it as Saren was this comicbook villian as you guys(gals) are calling him.
He then finds the tech or whatever you wanna call it and becomes controlled.
His views and goals slowly change etc etc. until you see him in the game as is.

[DOYOURLABS]

I read it too and I took it as he was mostly curious in what the artifact was, but when he found out about the reapers he tried to save organics.

[SovereignT]

Someone needs to learn a thing or two about character progression it seems...

[The RPGenius]

SovereignT wrote...

Someone needs to learn a thing or two about character progression it seems...

Going to assume the "someone" you're referring to are the people who think the difference is a contradiction, and not Bioware.  If this assumption's wrong, apologies.

Saying that the difference between Book Saren and Game Saren is a matter of character progression or the effects of Indoctrination is all well and good for a quick, seemingly logical defense of the personality gap, but it's kind of grasping at straws.  I mean, first of all, calling it character progression for a lethal bully who kills unnecessarily under the guise of it being his job to turn into a misguided protector of all organic life without any explanation or events in that progression mentioned or shown is...illogical, to put it nicely.  It's like people who defend the character changes to Yuna from Final Fantasy 10 to Final Fantasy 10-2 as realistic and a good example of character development.  Yes, people change, but people don't become a new, drastically different person altogether out of nowhere.  If you're going to develop a character into a totally new one, you have to develop the character.  Believably, if possible.  Yuna and Saren are not examples of developing characters; they're examples of a personality being completely destroyed and replaced (retroactively, with Saren).

Now about Indoctrination being a possible cause for the change...yes, I suppose that COULD be an explanation, and is really all we have, but it's really not a very good one.  First of all, the game itself more or less rules it out--we're told that Indoctrination is noticeable by a decrease in the general abilities of the Indoctrinated individual, and Saren, we're told, is still in peak form.  Now I'll grant you that we're told this by Saren, who might just not be 100% right, and that he has his own doubts.  So he probably is at least a little doctrinated, as Shepard believes.  But the character change we're talking about is nearly a complete 180--Saren's gone from ruthless killer to self-imagined savior.  That's a BIG change there.  It's a little hard to believe that a small amount of Indoctrination--small enough that he would still stay in possession of his mental and physical capabilities nearly completely--could produce so complete and total a change in personality.

There's also the problem of whether it's reasonable that Sovereign would WANT to Indoctrinate Saren that way.  Making someone believe that they could save at least some organics by following Sovereign and proving their worth might be a believable way to Indoctrinate someone like, say, Shepard (Paragon or Renegade, really), or Anderson, or most reasonably sane people with an interest in other people, but when you have someone like Book Saren, who kills needlessly and indiscriminately anyway, wouldn't it be easier and more effective to Indoctrinate him to just want it that same wanton destruction on a genocidal level, and thus have his loyalty with more ease?  I mean, it would have resulted in a BETTER servant for Sovereign.  Compare:

ACTUAL POSSIBLE GAME SCENARIO:
Saren: OMG shep u n00b i r save ppl y u no can see what r u blind
Shepard: (Blue Paragon Option) lol d00d ur indoctrinated! u got reaper spyware in ur brainz
Saren: nuh uh after we talked last time u made me worried so i clicked on Sovereign Implants Software ad to protect myself
Shepard: (Blue Paragon Option) wtf dude u just agreed 2 download malware
Saren: omg srsly
Shepard: (Blue Paragon Option) ya but dont worry bullets can delete it from ur system
Saren: kk  *Shoots Self*

GAME SCENARIO IF SOVEREIGN HAD INDOCTRINATED SAREN TO WANT LARGE-SCALE WANTON 
SLAUGHTER LIKE HE ENJOYED ON A PESRONAL LEVEL ALREADY:
Shepard: (Blue Paragon Option) Saren!  You've been indoctrinated!  You're going to lead to the complete end of all organic life!  The Reapers don't want us to serve, they just want us dead!
Saren: Yeah, I know.  It's pretty cool.
Shepard: (Influence Check FAILED) Damn.  I guess you're not going to shoot yourself to save your soul, and I'll have to actually beat you, huh?
Saren: Yes.

The smaller leap in personal beliefs to Sovereign's way of thinking would have made Saren a BETTER puppet.

Indoctrination causing Saren's total change is the only explanation we've got to go on unless Bioware wants to officially provide another, so it's what we'll have to accept it.  But just because it's what we have to take, that doesn't mean it's not still a bad discrepancy.  If the explanation for the contradiction isn't reasonable or believable enough, it still qualifies as a plot hole to me.

Modifié par The RPGenius, 06 avril 2010 - 05:38 .

[Timerider42]

Is the book worth it?

[TuringPoint]

RPG:  Way too complicated.  Simple fact is, Saren is the same guy in the books as he is in the game.

Bioware tends to do slightly comic-bookish villains, even in DragonAge.  So what?  They're still decently compelling.

I need to cite my sources and I don't know if I'll do that tonight, but anyway, I never considered it a change of character for Saren to be saying he was simply doing what he thought was best for everyone.  The fight with the reapers is a different context from what was going on in revelation, a more desperate context.

Also, Anderson tells you what Saren is like in the game.  It is quite consistent.  Whatever his reasons, power, the greater good, or both, Saren ended up an indoctrinated serveant. I would say Saren was alittle racist, but we all know he didn't go to eden prime because he hates humans.

Modifié par Alocormin, 07 avril 2010 - 06:18 .

[TuringPoint]

The RPGenius wrote...
Indoctrination causing Saren's total change is the only explanation we've got to go on unless Bioware wants to officially provide another,

No.  Absolutely not.  I don't mean to be aiming for a flame war, sorry - but it's not just the only explanation.

Saren starts out as basically a good spectre.  He doesn't like humanity much, he might entertain thoughts of dominating them and putting the council against them.  He probably believes humanity is bad for the galaxy, and that they need to be put in their place.  This doesn't mean he wants to go comic villain and take over the universe, so much as find some way to sway events so the Turians remain on top.  


You might not like someone in real life, you might also not dislike them enough that you want them to meet something as terrible as total genocide, or you might be forced to help them survive if your combined survival depends on working together.  Such is Saren when he finds out what the Reapers really mean for the galaxy, his reasoning becomes less a matter of destroying humanity and more a matter of saving organics as much as he can.  He might not be humanity's or the council's best friend, but something deep inside knows what's going on is wrong, much more than he would realize if Sovereign were just a simple tool.

[The RPGenius]

I understand that canonically-speaking, Saren is Saren whether or not we like it. I'm just pointing out that it doesn't make sense. I'm not arguing that facts aren't facts; I'm arguing that the facts add up to a (very unexpected, given the general quality of ME's creative aspects) plot hole.



Anderson's opinion would be a good source, but his take on Saren is contradicted by the actual actions and words of Saren himself in the game, or at least made irrelevant. If Anderson were the best evidence on Saren's personality we had to go on, that would be that, but the best evidence is Saren himself, not Anderson's take. The discrepancy between THEM would have been easily and understandably explained as Anderson's point of view on the past being biased by the results and the long-term shame he suffered at Saren's hands--as you say, it's consistent with what Saren was, now that Revelation has backed it up. Unfortunately, the fact that it reinforces what happened in the past, which I never denied, does not change or even have anything to do with the fact that the difference between Saren's past and present is inexplicable.



As for the other reason you mention, that would hold more water with me if it were at all clear that it's just humanity that he's out to bother. Then I could buy your reasoning for the rest. But Book Saren, as I said, is a murderous bully. Oh, he's shown to really dislike humanity, to be sure. But he also needlessly kills practically everyone he meets--that Batarian woman in the hospital he murdered in cold blood, for example. She posed absolutely no threat to his mission, and she wasn't human (in fact, Batarians are often antagonistic to humans), but he purposefully caused her to die after he'd gotten what he needed from her. He just likes to kill; doesn't have to be humanity.



As for the progression you mentioned, yes, sure, him being a lethal jerk doesn't mean he wants all life to die. But wanting all life to die is a more reasonable jump of logic for Book Saren than wanting to be the savior of as many organics as he can. Whatever conclusions and role would be reasonable for him to take after finding Sovereign, the misguided savior that he wants to be in the game just isn't one of them. It's just not a sensible development of his character. I'm not saying it could NEVER happen--RPGs show crazy changes in personality often that are impressively done and believable, like, for example, Ryudo's transformation from funny **** to great hero in Grandia 2--but a change that big, that unbelievable under regular circumstances, really doesn't have a good explanation in and of itself, and Bioware hasn't got a book or comic or anything to personally develop it. So as it stands now, Book Saren becoming Game Saren doesn't add up. I don't deny it's a fact that it happens, because, y'know, it is, but I do have to maintain that it doesn't make sense.

[Lake88]

One way this Saren can be canon.



Revelation is the same in-game book you can buy in ME2. It is written by an in-game human named Drew Karpyshyn based on his research and interviews. However it is as factual in the MEverse as Da Vinci's Code. It is biased and inaccurate, since information and accounts of Saren are limited. It paints Saren as a rogue spectre and big jerk, since commoners in the MEverse only know him as such. So this actual book you're holding right now is a 'work of fiction' published in the ME universe.



Are your brains screwed yet?

[Fiery Phoenix]

^ Totally.

Anyway, I didn't have the pleasure to read Revelation (though own and have read Ascension), but I never really thought of Saren as a truly bad guy at all. He simply did what he thought was best, but his best wasn't good enough. It all turned against him in the end, and he got what was coming for him.

Modifié par FieryPhoenix7, 07 avril 2010 - 07:42 .

[jgomezish]

Timerider42 wrote...

Is the book worth it?

Yeah it is.  I enjoyed both Ascension and Revelation there quick reads but I do agree with the mischaracterization of Saren.

[The RPGenius]

Lake88 wrote...

One way this Saren can be canon.

Revelation is the same in-game book you can buy in ME2. It is written by an in-game human named Drew Karpyshyn based on his research and interviews. However it is as factual in the MEverse as Da Vinci's Code. It is biased and inaccurate, since information and accounts of Saren are limited. It paints Saren as a rogue spectre and big jerk, since commoners in the MEverse only know him as such. So this actual book you're holding right now is a 'work of fiction' published in the ME universe.

Are your brains screwed yet?

Wow.  I...wow.  I doubt Bioware would actually ever endorse this idea and would prefer to just say that the book is intended to be totally accurate, but...I think you've actually come up with something I could accept and get behind there.  I don't even care if you came up with this to make a joke, I like it.  Clever!

[demongirl420]

click for tokenshttp://social.bioware.com/brc/967354

[Zaxares]

Very, VERY clever, Lake88. I like it. The in-game description of Revelations in ME2 even specifically states: "A dramatised version of events leading up to the Battle of the Citadel."



Dramatised. The same way that 300 was a dramatised version of the Battle of Thermopylae. So basically, let's all take Revelations and Ascension with a grain of salt.