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Did Bioware get the whole "trilogy concept" wrong? Is the ME games more of 3 seperate games rather than a trilogy?


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#101
Kaiser Shepard

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I don't have any beef with the current story structure, nor would I with the one Fhaileas talked about above. Problem however is, that most gamers would have a problem with the latter and will complain vocally if they don't agree with the tone on which the game ends (eveything should end happily ever after, until an event at the start of the sequel).

Just look at Halo 2 or Prince of Persia (2008), both amazing games and in my opinion the best of their respective series (PoP of course being the beginning of a new trilogy, but still). But many can't get over the fact that a sequel is inbound and thus the source of the plot conflict isn't permanently stopped yet, leading to stuff like "THIS GAME SUCKZ, EV3RYTHANG I DID WAS FUR NOTHING!" or "WHY DID I JUST PAY FOR HALF A GAME?"

Modifié par Kaiser Shepard, 29 août 2010 - 09:46 .


#102
SmokePants

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People need to stop confusing trilogy cliches with trilogy rules. There ARE no trilogy rules other than the rule of three. The only thing that seems to determine whether a trilogy is good or bad is the strength of the individual works. The over-arching narrative ties can be practically non-existent if desired.

#103
Mox Ruuga

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Fhaileas wrote...

Unfortunately no. At the end of the second game, the Reapers are out in dark space coming in towards the galaxy. If they'd actually flown over a colony and begun abducting people for their internal slushy machines then yes it might have been a nice cliffhanger that left me in trepidation. But they didn't. It wasn't new information, we already knew that the Reapers were out in dark space (being that they were too stupid to provide themselves with another garage door opener: read Citadel). Sure, now we've actually seen them but we knew they were coming eventually. It is a trilogy after all, the final act has to involve them trying to eat the galaxy somehow and Shepherd stopping them. 

Despite Bioware touting it as such, the ending of ME2 does not count as dark in any sense, in more ways than one it's a cop out on their promise. Especially after they compared it to Empire Strikes Back. (Note: this is a Bioware comparison, not one that I am making, people seem to keep missing that.) Well, the entire game is a cop out but that's already been debated to death. 

There were plenty of ways to make the ending dark. 1) Have the Collectors abduct either Kaiden or Ashley (depending on which one survived) and either convert or indoctrinate them in such a way that you are forced to kill them on the Collector base (or they will kill you). Double points if you use that as an example of what was going to happen to Shephard when they captured her/him. Triple if you do it in such a way that truly messes with Shephard's head. 

2) Have any party member who is not loyal to you when on the Dead Reaper become indoctrinated while on board and you are forced to kill them (or you die).

3) No matter how fast you get there you cannot save the Normandy crew.

4) Shephard destroying the base was actually a catalyst that the Reaper's needed all along to open a second jump gate (or send a signal that reactivates the Citadel) and have the entire Reaper fleet enter our galaxy. The Reapers have been playing Shephard all along. 

5) No matter what choices you make or upgrades you did there is no way for all your team members to survive the final assault on the Collector Base, the more you do the fewer die but you cannot save them all (or even most of them). And you should get an achievement if you managed to kill all of them off (on the same hand it should be difficult to do this). Just like you should if you fail ME 2's suicide mission.

6) Get rid of the human slushy machine and instead have the Collectors converting the humans they've taken into Reaper servants (read not husks) to send out as sleeper agents to begin deactivating the galaxy's defenses. But they are covering this by transforming the other colonists into husks as mindless foot soldiers and weapons of mass destruction. Then this becomes a plot thread in the third game.

7) Have one of the team members you collected already be an indoctrinated servant who turns on you at the last moment, killing Shepherd just as she has completed her mission. Have it on a rotating basis so the player cannot intentionally kill that person when they replay the game. (Don't reveal this in the player's guide) In the same vein, a writer could also make them turn on you at the Collector Base.

8) Do the Lazarus Project at the beginning of the third game instead of the second, leaving the player with the realization that Shepherd has died right as the Reapers are invading the galaxy. Bonus points if you have the Reapers clone Shepherd and fake out the player at the beginning of the third game with a Shepherd clone acting as the Reaper's messiah. Even more if Shepherd's remains were recovered by the Geth and that they are the first beings Shepherd sees when she/he wakes up (though not the only ones who brought Shepherd back). Stage One will be getting rid of Bionic Shepherd, Stage Two will be wiping out the Reapers. 

9) Have the Reapers shut down all technology based on the Mass Effect drives (not just the drives themselves.) They should be completely capable of doing it. This will explain why the guns now need ammunition as they must revert to an older and simpler kind of technology.

10) Etc. Etc. Etc.

There are many more possibilities, it just requires that the writers be cruel capricious gods of their universe. These are options that are actually dark and not that difficult to implement into the already existing structure of the story. There also might be ways to do it so that the player doesn't feel cheated but if you do it well enough, you can always say that they'll get their revenge in the third game because after all: that's what trilogies are about. But if you want to be dark and have consequences one must do it in a way that there are no take backs, which is why every single decision made about the story should be evaluated and plotted out so that it works within the whole of the narrative. When the story is cohesive, people will still complain but they will have less to complain about.


Great ideas Fhaileas.

Sigh. If only they had used any single one of those...

The PR meme for ME1 was the "interconnecting trilogy where your choices matter in the sequels". They didn't end up having much consequence, and now the games are talked of as being "stand alone".

The PR meme for ME2 was the "darker and edgier" story. It wasn't particularly dark or edgy (or even good) compared to many other games.

I wonder how they'll set themselves up for failure with the forthcoming PR meme for ME3?

#104
FlyinElk212

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To criticize the Mass Effect Trilogy, when the third portion of the trilogy isn't even out yet, is not only a ludicrous argument, but a hasty and flawed argument as well.

Don't bash the trilogy until the trilogy is completed. I understand that several things were wrong with ME2's story, but until ME3 comes out, stating that the trilogy is failing is a silly argument.

These words ring like the words of fans worried about other trilogy's second stories from the past--the most easily of which being your aforementioned "Star Wars" trilogy. In The Empire Strikes Back, the main enemy ALSO changed, the story's pacing was ALSO wildly inconsistent, several characters ALSO seemed irrelevant, and the plot was ALSO flawed.

And yet look how brilliant the series is as a whole, and how highly regarded the second movie is today. Don't rush to conclusions.

Modifié par FlyinElk212, 31 août 2010 - 07:04 .


#105
smudboy

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Fhaileas wrote...
Everything.

Yes.  Yes with puppies and kittens.

See, BioWare, how easy it is to conceptualize a proper sequel?  Put the writers in charge, dammit.

#106
gunswordfist

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JRCHOharry wrote...

gunswordfist wrote... There's 2 reapers in ME2 and you fight and

destroy both of them.


You destroyed one reaper but you broke the others heart.

Well yeah, the sun destroyed it but you get what I mean.

#107
Lunatic LK47

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Fhaileas wrote...

There were plenty of ways to make the ending dark. 1) Have the Collectors abduct either Kaiden or Ashley (depending on which one survived) and either convert or indoctrinate them in such a way that you are forced to kill them on the Collector base (or they will kill you). Double points if you use that as an example of what was going to happen to Shephard when they captured her/him. Triple if you do it in such a way that truly messes with Shephard's head.


Basically telling the players "Don't bother caring for the characters, they'll die anyway." I hated 24 Season 5 for that alone.

2) Have any party member who is not loyal to you when on the Dead Reaper become indoctrinated while on board and you are forced to kill them (or you die).


Uh, last time I checked, I thought we're supposed to shape the story the way the players want to shape it. This is no Reaper PC game with Christopher Walken (i.e. ending is always randomized).

3) No matter how fast you get there you cannot save the Normandy crew.


A main reason why I hated Fallout 3 besides the ****ty programming, no matter what we did, we'd almost always lose. What kind of gamer wants to have that experience?

4) Shephard destroying the base was actually a catalyst that the Reaper's needed all along to open a second jump gate (or send a signal that reactivates the Citadel) and have the entire Reaper fleet enter our galaxy. The Reapers have been playing Shephard all along.


Sounds good in theory, though didn't the final product have a similar effect? The Reapers just started entering the Milky Way after the Collectors were blown up/irradiated.

5) No matter what choices you make or upgrades you did there is no way for all your team members to survive the final assault on the Collector Base, the more you do the fewer die but you cannot save them all (or even most of them). And you should get an achievement if you managed to kill all of them off (on the same hand it should be difficult to do this). Just like you should if you fail ME 2's suicide mission.


Same problem as Fallout 3. You're basically telling the players "Do whatever you want, but you lose regardless." A lot of gamers would have avoided Mass Effect 2 if it ended up being the case.

6) Get rid of the human slushy machine and instead have the Collectors converting the humans they've taken into Reaper servants (read not husks) to send out as sleeper agents to begin deactivating the galaxy's defenses. But they are covering this by transforming the other colonists into husks as mindless foot soldiers and weapons of mass destruction. Then this becomes a plot thread in the third game.


I'll agree with this.

7) Have one of the team members you collected already be an indoctrinated servant who turns on you at the last moment, killing Shepherd just as she has completed her mission. Have it on a rotating basis so the player cannot intentionally kill that person when they replay the game. (Don't reveal this in the player's guide) In the same vein, a writer could also make them turn on you at the Collector Base.


Uh, no ***ing thanks. Again, this boils down to "don't care for the characters or the game if it ends up being the royal F---- you" to the player.

8) Do the Lazarus Project at the beginning of the third game instead of the second, leaving the player with the realization that Shepherd has died right as the Reapers are invading the galaxy. Bonus points if you have the Reapers clone Shepherd and fake out the player at the beginning of the third game with a Shepherd clone acting as the Reaper's messiah. Even more if Shepherd's remains were recovered by the Geth and that they are the first beings Shepherd sees when she/he wakes up (though not the only ones who brought Shepherd back). Stage One will be getting rid of Bionic Shepherd, Stage Two will be wiping out the Reapers.


No thanks. Like the others said, ME2's format is done so that we can play the DLC without having to replay the game multiple times.