257 réponses à ce sujet

[General Douchington]

Samuel L Shepard wrote...

Walter-Drew Hybrid in ME3 FTW!!

BY THEIR POWERS COMBINED...

[nutshell43]

ME1 had a lot of weak dialogue, cliched plots and tired stereotypes. But frankly that's part of good space opera for some reason and ME1 did something right that overcomes all its weaknesses:



It feels epic, it feels coherent, it's a lot stronger than the sum of its parts.





The second part in a trilogy is always difficult, but many think that the Empire Strikes Back is the best Star Wars movie because it has character, it is coherent, it develops the world of the first movie while feeling like it's part of a greater whole.



ME2 fails horribly at that. For the most part you're collecting your 12 pokemon and evolving them to their true form and the turnaround on the world of Mass Effect to make it more "dark and gritty" is just silly and juvenile.

Perhaps it's because I lived through the same thing with Warhammer 40k but all those plot devices (oooh, you're working for Cerberus, ooooh Omega is sooo dark and gritty) feel cheap.



Don't get me wrong the plots of the missions and the characters themselves are often superior (sometimes far superior) to everything ME1 had to offer but it's just weaker as an overall experience.



Oh and all the female characters run around like ****s, Bioware continues their proud tradition of having one utterly bland male sidekick, Grunt's just a plot device to tell us more about the Krogan (he works brilliantly in that role) without any character at all and ME2 is a worse game storyline because you feel a lot less in charge than in ME1. (The difference in actual impact on the storyline isn't that big, but your dealings with TIM or the way you meet Thane; it just feels more forced than ME1)

[Oblarg]

nutshell43 wrote...

ME1 had a lot of weak dialogue, cliched plots and tired stereotypes. But frankly that's part of good space opera for some reason and ME1 did something right that overcomes all its weaknesses:

It feels epic, it feels coherent, it's a lot stronger than the sum of its parts.


The second part in a trilogy is always difficult, but many think that the Empire Strikes Back is the best Star Wars movie because it has character, it is coherent, it develops the world of the first movie while feeling like it's part of a greater whole.

ME2 fails horribly at that. For the most part you're collecting your 12 pokemon and evolving them to their true form and the turnaround on the world of Mass Effect to make it more "dark and gritty" is just silly and juvenile.
Perhaps it's because I lived through the same thing with Warhammer 40k but all those plot devices (oooh, you're working for Cerberus, ooooh Omega is sooo dark and gritty) feel cheap.

Don't get me wrong the plots of the missions and the characters themselves are often superior (sometimes far superior) to everything ME1 had to offer but it's just weaker as an overall experience.

Oh and all the female characters run around like ****s, Bioware continues their proud tradition of having one utterly bland male sidekick, Grunt's just a plot device to tell us more about the Krogan (he works brilliantly in that role) without any character at all and ME2 is a worse game storyline because you feel a lot less in charge than in ME1. (The difference in actual impact on the storyline isn't that big, but your dealings with TIM or the way you meet Thane; it just feels more forced than ME1)

This pretty much hits the nail on the head.

In addition, the major plot motivations of ME2 have no logical relation to what you spend most of the game doing, which is a pretty big misstep if you're planning a great three-game story arc.

[davidshooter]

Who makes the overall game plot decisions?

The minute it was decided that the game would have 10 squadmates - all of whom could die or survive - with recruitment missions and loyalty missions that were seperate from the main story the plot of ME2 was doomed regardless of the writer. There is just no way to write an epic (ME1 style) story under those restrictions. The failure of ME2's storyline (and it was a complete failure) was the result of the above decision - not any specific writer in my opinion - unless the above decision came from one of the writers.

Modifié par davidshooter, 23 octobre 2010 - 11:12 .

[nutshell43]

Oblarg wrote...

This pretty much hits the nail on the head.

In addition, the major plot motivations of ME2 have no logical relation to what you spend most of the game doing, which is a pretty big misstep if you're planning a great three-game story arc.

Thanks.

Imho they should have made your relationship with TIM the overarching storyline of ME2, all culminating in one big final confrontation (verbal) over what to do with the collector base and your relationship with Cerberus.
It's already there in snippets and remarks. Many of the recruiting and loyalty missions relate to Cerberus in some way or another. Make those overtones stronger. Make the game about you transferring the loyalty of your crew and your Cerberus squad mates to you personally and in the end you can choose between Cerberus ("the end justifies the means") and the Alliance ("we might be retarded but we're the good guys"); with consequences both positive and negative (a big problem with both MEs. Paragon or Renegade makes no difference it's just about whether you're naive or a douchebag).
As I said, a lot of it is already there but it's just woefully underdeveloped. Even though it would have offered the easiest way to tie all those relatively small scale stories into a greater whole.

[Oblarg]

nutshell43 wrote...

Oblarg wrote...

This pretty much hits the nail on the head.

In addition, the major plot motivations of ME2 have no logical relation to what you spend most of the game doing, which is a pretty big misstep if you're planning a great three-game story arc.

Thanks.

Imho they should have made your relationship with TIM the overarching storyline of ME2, all culminating in one big final confrontation (verbal) over what to do with the collector base and your relationship with Cerberus.
It's already there in snippets and remarks. Many of the recruiting and loyalty missions relate to Cerberus in some way or another. Make those overtones stronger. Make the game about you transferring the loyalty of your crew and your Cerberus squad mates to you personally and in the end you can choose between Cerberus ("the end justifies the means") and the Alliance ("we might be retarded but we're the good guys"); with consequences both positive and negative (a big problem with both MEs. Paragon or Renegade makes no difference it's just about whether you're naive or a douchebag).
As I said, a lot of it is already there but it's just woefully underdeveloped. Even though it would have offered the easiest way to tie all those relatively small scale stories into a greater whole.

That would have been a really cool way to have handled the plot, I agree.  In order to do that, they'd obviously have to flesh out Cerberus a bit more (at the very least there should have been justification for their previous actions, which are pretty damn evil).  The collectors should have been made into a stronger foe, too - it's pretty anticlimactic (and somewhat plot destroying) when you head through the omega 3 relay (alone, mind you, which is another plot misstep) and find that they have a grand total of one ship to defend the base.

[nutshell43]

davidshooter wrote...

Who makes the overall game plot decisions?

The minute it was decided that the game would have 10 squadmates - all of whom could die or survive - with recruitment missions and loyalty missions that were seperate from the main story the plot of ME2 was doomed regardless of the writer. There is just no way to write an epic (ME1 style) story under those restrictions. The failure of ME2's storyline (and it was a complete failure) was the result of the above decision - not any specific writer in my opinion - unless the above decision came from one of the writers.

Not necessarily. The fact that all are disposable also opens up a big opportunity to offer you choices where you can't make everyone on your crew happy. A decision that pits half your crew against the other half. *Real* deaths, not a "suicide mission" where it's trivial to keep everyone alive. They just would have had to make clear *who* you condemn to death by your choices instead of just killing off random characters if you didn't install some upgrades (actually that's kind of realistic but makes for bad role-play =)
The problem is that the recruiting and loyalty missions have no overarching plot and are just small scale family troubles (they have a common theme outside the game but no connection within). Whoever failed to provide that plot (as I said, imho one where everyone takes a stand on Cerberus could have worked) did ME2 a major disservice.

[davidshooter]

nutshell43 wrote...

davidshooter wrote...

Who makes the overall game plot decisions?

The minute it was decided that the game would have 10 squadmates - all of whom could die or survive - with recruitment missions and loyalty missions that were seperate from the main story the plot of ME2 was doomed regardless of the writer. There is just no way to write an epic (ME1 style) story under those restrictions. The failure of ME2's storyline (and it was a complete failure) was the result of the above decision - not any specific writer in my opinion - unless the above decision came from one of the writers.

Not necessarily. The fact that all are disposable also opens up a big opportunity to offer you choices where you can't make everyone on your crew happy. A decision that pits half your crew against the other half. *Real* deaths, not a "suicide mission" where it's trivial to keep everyone alive. They just would have had to make clear *who* you condemn to death by your choices instead of just killing off random characters if you didn't install some upgrades (actually that's kind of realistic but makes for bad role-play =)
The problem is that the recruiting and loyalty missions have no overarching plot and are just small scale family troubles (they have a common theme outside the game but no connection within). Whoever failed to provide that plot (as I said, imho one where everyone takes a stand on Cerberus could have worked) did ME2 a major disservice.

None of what you've said here changes my mind whatsoever.  ME2's biggest failure was having 10 squadmates with recruitment and loyalty missions seperate from the main story.  It left too little time for any writer to tie the whole thing together.  Bioware's decison to persue this recruitment/loyalty gameplay mechanic doomed the story.  Unless someone can show that this idea originated with any one of the writers - which I think unlikely - I blame the lame story on what the writers had to work with - not with any of the writers themselves.

Someone approved this loyalty/recruitment mechanic (Chud? someone else?) that is where the blame lies.

[Kogaion]

first time i played ME1 i felt like i was playing a real SF novel(not reading it but playing it), that being the motive i become a fan of ME series ...it had epicness ..atmosphere; then ME2 came and i was impressed of combat mechanics and charactes(better then in ME) ...so i think the games complete echother ech having something that the other doesent ...even tho i prefer ME1 since i favor a epic story more than a "hollywood like " set



so Drew Karpyshyn is the favorite...and i liked very much his novels too ..Revelation (saren char made the book ) and Retribution (i read that in 1 day since i HAD TO KNOW what will happen with grayson at the end) being my favorites and i found them very well written ( i read my share of SF books in my life)



...from the very bad things i realy hate in ME2 : miranda and samara coming in high heels at war? big cleavages at war? that is as unrealistic as it can be ..ME1 had all squad members regardles of gender dressed in FULL BODY ARMOR..thats how you go to war ...that was 1 of my biggest issues that made me never take those members whit me ..ofc lack of helmets in space was another ..etc. ..the point is ME2 lack not only in story but in all those details that ruins the whole experiance...so yeah ME1 is superior to ME2 om many levels still...i hate Walters vision of ME if thats his vision

[Khem]

Which one is to blame for the obsessive focus on fatherhood issues in ME2?

[Trix-Rabbit]

they need to let mac walters go, guy is a hack! And give drew a Senior lead Writer position.... Liara and tali are probably the two most in depth characters in the game, save commander shepard.. Someone also dropped the ball with story writing in regards to how the game plays out. In ME1 you can complete everything in just about any order you like....save doing virmire first... You were more or less forced into doing all the missions in a particular order, and to top it off, nothing fits together properly....

[Nightwriter]

imaDEVIENT wrote...

Nightwriter wrote...

Me not think much to day. Brain hurts.

Just tell me who was responsible for the story of ME1 and who was responsible for the story of ME2.

Drew was ME1 and Mac was ME2.
I think they both were involved in both as well.

I lke both but the grittier ME2 just edges ahead in my book.

Then I'll go with Drew!

Though honestly, I don't feel like I can safely say that Drew was responsible for everything good about ME1 and Mac was responsible for everything not good about ME2...

Fans like to simplify complex things when it comes to the developing world. Fans like me! I'll try not to though. I mean I come from a position of total ignorance, but at least I know it's total ignorance, right? That means something, right? Right...

[Chignon]

Deviija wrote...


There were many weak and poor parts to Mass Effect 1, in terms of story and character development and overall game pace. However, I enjoyed Mass Effect 1's more hard sci-fi and atmosphere of our galaxy as a mysterious and awe-inspiring place much more than ME2. It captured that feeling of sci-fi, of space the beautiful and clandestine frontier, and the sense that women and men were on equal footing without a need to have the female sex run around in two strips of clothing and receive camera shots up the arse (Hellu, Miranda).

I saw real potential in Mass Effect 1. That's why I stayed with it and was willing to purchase ME2, hoping that everything from the story, atmosphere, characters, and Shepard would evolve and be improved upon in the sequel. I gave many of my ME1 gripes a pass because I thought they would be fixed and turned into something special by ME2. After all, we kept hearing how it was supposed to be a trilogy and ME1 was just setup to a greater epic story.

...it horribly failed. ME2 was horrific for me. Everything wrong about it became even worse, with very few positive aspects. I'd rate it even lower if we were going to include the marketing and PR debacles for the second installment. Anyway, ME2 crushed my interests in the series to the point where I have no intention of following the series any further.

QFT

[Ieldra]

Assuming the universe of ME1 was mostly Karpyshyn's vision, I prefer that one, but not without changes. That vision gave us, in ME1:

(1) + the impression that space was big and we were exploring (quote from above) "a mysterious and awe-inspiring place". It was grand, it was epic, it gave you the feeling that a human who was physically lost in those empty spaces nonetheless meant something in the end. It embodied the spirit of what Johannes Kepler envisioned as early as 1610: "Let us built ships that travel the celestial aether, and there will be those who do not fear the empty spaces." The scenes that captured this for me were those where I stood on an empty world, the beautiful alien suns above me, alone with the universe for a moment before the fighting continued.
ME2 fragmented the universe and removed empty spaces completely. I always felt confined.

(2) + A harder Sci-Fi. Not that ME1 is anything but ultra-soft by the standards of written Sci-Fi, but those elements that were I could easily forget (well, apart from the interspecies romance, but people want that for some mysterious reason). The scene that captured this in ME1 for me was Shepard's adaption to the changed gravity vector as she left the elevator on the Citadel after going through the Conduit.
ME2 gave us exploring space without helmets and fantasy abilities like Dominate and Reave (just examples).

(3) + an engaging storyline with believable antagonists (Sovereign and Saren both count)
ME2 gave us an incarnated Reaper that managed to be cheesy (now that's an achievement) and a Terminator lookalike


BUT:
Karpyshyn's vision was marred by absolutely horrible stereotyping and unconvincing sidequest villains (Cerberus, anyone), which is also the main flaw of his first two ME books. That needed to be changed.
Walter's vision is influenced by his history as a writer of comics. That gave us more ambiguous and interesting characters (Yes, I actually prefer the ME2/not in ME1 cast with one exception), but also superhero fantasy instead of Sci-Fi, an almost non-existing plot and an absolutely horrible final boss.

Solution:
Make Karpyshyn write the lore and the plot, and Walters write the characters. Let them work together to keep characters' outfits and general appearance believable but still cool.

Modifié par Ieldra2, 04 novembre 2010 - 07:33 .

[Ryzaki]

Deviija wrote...


There were many weak and poor parts to Mass Effect 1, in terms of story and character development and overall game pace. However, I enjoyed Mass Effect 1's more hard sci-fi and atmosphere of our galaxy as a mysterious and awe-inspiring place much more than ME2. It captured that feeling of sci-fi, of space the beautiful and clandestine frontier, and the sense that women and men were on equal footing without a need to have the female sex run around in two strips of clothing and receive camera shots up the arse (Hellu, Miranda).

I saw real potential in Mass Effect 1. That's why I stayed with it and was willing to purchase ME2, hoping that everything from the story, atmosphere, characters, and Shepard would evolve and be improved upon in the sequel. I gave many of my ME1 gripes a pass because I thought they would be fixed and turned into something special by ME2. After all, we kept hearing how it was supposed to be a trilogy and ME1 was just setup to a greater epic story.

...it horribly failed. ME2 was horrific for me. Everything wrong about it became even worse, with very few positive aspects. I'd rate it even lower if we were going to include the marketing and PR debacles for the second installment. Anyway, ME2 crushed my interests in the series to the point where I have no intention of following the series any further.

Well...I have to say I agree with this. It went from decent to horrible. Random retcons (Hello Good Cerberus guys!) facepalm worthy conclusions ("Ah yes 'Reapers'.") Shep not being able to curse some people out that need it (same Cerberus "good guys" and crazy teammebers) and forced companions that made no sense (Hello Jack!) and ending up at the almost the exact same place you were at the end of the first game.

So...I guess I don't favor one writer as much as one story.

And yes the whole "gotta catch em all and make em loyal!" was a ridculous gimmick from the get go.

Modifié par Ryzaki, 04 novembre 2010 - 07:35 .

[pacer90]

kraidy1117 wrote...

While I like Drew as a story writer, I don't like his characters. The only Drew character I like is Liara. I find Drew's characters are Marry sues, bland, boring or mustach twirling villians. While Walters is not good at a plot(ME2 anyone) he is good at making characters. Let's look at TIM. Walters made TIM in ME2 fantastic, better then in the book. Also Midna, Walters didn't write the script in the comics, he just wrote the outline which was good, it was Miller who wrote the script. I think you should maybe add that just to be safe.

Anyways both are good writers, they are good at two diffrent fields, Drew is good at stories and Walters is good at characters.

While I agree with this for the most part...


Sovereign was had the greatest villan speech ever, regardless of how mustach twirling it was. ME2 characters > ME1 by far... except Liara. BTW who was in charge of the LotSB DLC writing? They deserve to run the show in ME3, it was outstanding.

[The Smoking Man]

Judging from ME1, Drew seemed to know where he was trying to go with the story, and the general areas that would have to be explored to get there. Seemed to have a little trouble with adding details, though. His version of Liara was great, but ironically, the part about her character that contributed the most to her depth was the lack of a whole lot of details, at least through the dialogue and actions you get to witness. But that was kinda the idea; she was intended to be portrayed as timid, leaning toward observing and studying the environment of the universe and more away from participating a whole lot. His vision of the future was also interesting, but too optimistic (aside from the whole "supersized death machines are coming to burn and pillage" part)... that, or it's just not having enough nooks and crannies that I'm sensing.
By contrast, ME2, which Mac had the predominant influence over, is loaded with details, but suffers in continuity; the whole "story" seems pretty disjointed. As far as the flavoring goes, there may have been too much detail in some regards. Some of the stuff added on to some things makes it look like it was forced and/or convoluted. Or a base concept itself would be convoluted even before fleshing it out. I liked the presence of grittiness, but it felt like you could never get away from it, not even... superficially, I guess is the word.
Both presentations had their cheesiness. ME1's came from the sci-fi cliches; ME2's came from the comic book cliches.
I would've liked to see a universe that, on the surface, resembled the bright Drew-driven vision, but if you peeled away the layers (or explored places that such layers would reasonably not exist), especially in the right places, you'd often start seeing something more like the universe as presented by ME2.
Overall, I think the two writers complement each other and make up for the other's major weaknesses. Unfortunately, Drew's gone from ME now, so one half of the equation is missing.

Going back to Liara, her change in character between ME1 and ME2 (due to the two lead writers' differing styles) was pretty drastic, but I think most of the change could be reasonably justified, given the events between ME1 and ME2, and even the events during ME1. The problem is that you can find barely any evidence of who she used to be no matter which angle you approached her character from. I can see her personality being "shaken around" by what happened to Benezia, finally figuring out the Prothean's fate (that was what she was interested the most in, but now that she found it, what to do with herself next?). Oh, and possibly confidence she probably would've gained by working with Shepard in ME1 and what was accomplished then. You can add in the whole thing with the Shepard's death, Shadow Broker and Feron that happened after ME1, too. Add in a couple of years to let the effects of her mother's tragedy, pride from helping to stop the Citadel invasion, her commander's death, being mixed up with Cerberus and the self-doubt she had from giving Shepard's body to them, and gradual surfacing of guilt over what happened with Feron (gradual, as she didn't seem all that fond of Feron when they were working together, but given some time to reflect on everything after the fact, she could feel guilt, and the fondness would in turn grow), and it's not surprising there'd be a lot of change. Especially seeing as the old Liara was timid and obviously didn't get out a whole lot, meaning less interpersonal interaction, meaning all the guilt and whatnot would be new and unfamiliar to her. Still kept the "observer" trait, but now she started feeling as if she had a personal stake in doing that, and not just simple intellectual interest. I could keep trying my hand at dissecting more, but this paragraph is already huge and TL;DR anyway.

Modifié par The Smoking Man, 06 novembre 2010 - 01:19 .

[tonykart34]

Comic books suck. Drew Karpyshyn FTW. ME1's story was a million times better than ME2 which lacked character development, story flow and seemed too formula based.

[snfonseka]

Hate the recent novel, but the initial novels are good. I hope to see much more creativity from the next novel (if there is one). Comics are fun, but I really don't understand the purpose of the last comic (Mass Effect: Inquisition).

[SimonTheFrog]

I want more continuity, psychology and philosophy underneath the dialogs and story and less x-men style comic action. Whoever makes that happen is my darling!

[Maelora]

I absolutely hated ME2, aside from LotSB.



I can sum up the ME2 plot in a line stole from Mr Harbinger: 'Assuming control of the liquor cabinet!'



Please God bring back Drew for ME3. Please.

[MColes]

They're both awesome. It's a team effort.

[Commander.John.Shepard]

Oblarg wrote...

Drew Karpyshyn, no contest.  ME1 may not have had the greatest plot or writing in the world, but it was definitely good enough and when coupled with the fantastic atmosphere of the game it had great results.  The reveals were, to a point, predictable but they were still done well enough that nothing ever felt overly-simplistic or forced, and the ending left the player wanting more while still providing a satisfactory resolution to the immediate threats.

ME2s plot, aside from being completely absent from the majority of the game (thankfully, I guess), was paper-thin and nonsensical.  It literally felt like an afterthought, as if BioWare had made all these missions already and just decided to slap on a narrative at the last minute.  The character writing was good enough (ignoring, of course, the horrible scene on Horizon with your former crew member), but the overarching plot becomes comically absurd if you bother to pay attention to it.  Here you have the collectors, who are supposedly a threat to all of alliance space and even to Earth, yet they have a grand total of one ship which is defeated in a one-on-one fight with the Normandy, which isn't even a particularly powerful warship (it is described as having cruiser-class firepower if you upgrade it, but is still a frigate, and keep in mind that the alliance has an entire fleet).  The council's incompetence went from a slightly annoying plot device to flat-out absurdity, and Shepard never bothers to show them evidence even when they find an actual derelict reaper.  Throughout the game you're working for The Illusive Man, even though no explanation is given to reconcile this with the fact that Cerberus was unambiguously evil in the first game.  Worse than all this, though, is the utterly absurd approach you take to the "suicide mission."  Here you have a potentially  dangerous IFF that you've just retrieved from a dead reaper (without bothing to show the reaper to anyone, because obviously having allies wouldn't be right), and instead of studying it and attempting to send probes through the relay, or outfitting an entire fleet with them, or doing anything logical at all with it, you strap it straight on to your ship and head through the relay alone.  Is this supposed to be plausible?  Then, you get to the finale, in which we figure out that the entire Collector plan (which couldn't have possibly worked for reasons stated above) involves building a human reaper.  This makes no sense, on many levels.  For one, it's unclear why an ancient machine race that considers itself to transcend organics would model themselves on organics - what's the advantage to shaping a reaper like a human?  Humans didn't evolve to be giant sentient spaceships, last I checked.  Second, and even worse, it's unclear what this human reaper (if they actually managed to finish it) would be able to do that Sovereign couldn't, especially when the Alliance starts ramping up its military once more colonies go missing (though they really wouldn't need to, because the collectors only have one ****ing ship).

So yeah, ME1 had a fairly good plot.  ME2 had a poorly thought out mess.

Read this comment by Oblarg ( just look what i quoted...)! It is pretty awesome! However, it may break your allusions about the game, so if you don't want to hate ME2, don't READ IT! XD Really, after this comment, ME2 sounds as a mess! I did not play Mass Effect 1, I played ME2 first, then played ME1; so for me ME2 was a better game because I enjoyed gameplay and graphics, and romanes, and effects..., and it was hard to turn back to old stuff... However, when I became a fan-boy of Mass Effect series and read every novel of Drew and, some comics of Mac Walters, I became kind of dissapointed with ME2 and its actions of reapers, Shepard, team, etc...

The most disappointing are Reapers... I really can't get why they would make a reaper looking like a human... So assuming this, all other reapers that are existing now are composed of squids, bugs, and octopus? They were soluting bugs, squids, etc to build reapers that would look like this sh*t? According to this nonsense of ME2... It shows that there were no other humanoid races (except for the hanar of couse, they have more than 4 limbs) that can predate Protheans; then why they did not assimilate "human-looking" Protheans, to built prothean reapers??? Their race was more advance than the present in ME and ME2... I know it is a game, but this bullsh*t is unbearable...

[Skilled Seeker]

The Reaper wasn't going to look like a human. The art book shows the finished human reaper would look similiar to the rest with the human skeleton curled inside and with a squid exoskeleton.

Also the moaning and ****ing here is ridiculous. This is the only site where people call ME2's story a mess. Have you guys looked at other game's storylines recently? Everyone else agrees ME2 has a superb story. You are expecting the second coming of Christ.

Modifié par Skilled Seeker, 11 novembre 2010 - 02:26 .

[Shadesofsiknas]

Well at least the second coming of Drew if Christ is busy on the day.