116 réponses à ce sujet

[Slayer299]

Panthro90 wrote...

Just finished Reach last night, and, yes, it is dark.

But, if you played through ME2 the first time cold, with no help and lost half your team mates and all of your crew (watching Kelly getting digested--dark) I think you would say ME2 was pretty dark.

Everyone here knows how to play it without losing anyone. In this case, not so dark. You tend to forget the feeling of failure and helplessness when you beat the game 4 or 5 times with no loses.

I think you're mistaken because the first time I played it (and the only thing I knew was Shepard dying) I had no foreknowledge about the game and I came through with everyone alive. The only thing that seemed "dark" to me was the lighting...

[JaegerBane]

horacethegrey wrote...

To be honest I never found ME2 to be as dark as the first game. Cause let's face it, as dated as it seems now, Mass Effect had some really dark **** and some of the missions nailed the nightmare atmosphere really well. There was a feeling of claustrophobia and hopelessness where it seemed like Shepard and crew wouldn't be able to get out of there in one piece. ME2? You didn't feel trapped or helpless, Shepard and co were now kicking ass and taking names with the sequel's focus on action rather than exploration and discovery. The shift in tone would be similar to how the first Alien movie (Ridley Scott) led to Aliens (James Cameron).

I have to admit that I never saw anything in ME1 that made me think it was a 'dark' piece of storytelling. It was a great sci-fi yarn that managed to blend the wonder and gadgetry of Star Trek and Babylon 5 with the kind of plausibility and realism of something like Space: Above and Beyond and Aliens, but I definitely wouldn't call it 'dark'. Yeah, there were creepy points, but nothing like the kind of feelings evoked in games like FEAR and, to a lesser extent, Doom 3.

Parts of ME2 such as Overlord and the Collector Ship, however, *were* dark. The point where the Collectors are exposed for what they are was, in my mind, quite a disturbing revelation and gave a lot more impetus to what Shepard and co were doing.

Don't get me wrong, I still think ME2 is miles better than the first game and much more fun to play. But it's unfortunate that Bioware lost much of the dark and dreary atmosphere they meticulously created. It didn't help that they made ME2 10x funnier than the first game, which I thought was a bit lacking in the humor department. 

As I say, I'm not really sure what you found about ME1 that you'd label it a 'dark' game, even in parts. Frankly I found it similar in tone to Star Wars. Yeah, ok, there's some pretty scary stuff out there, but it all turned out alright in the end.

And, similar to Star Wars, it didn't take long for the darker parts of the story to inflcit damage on the protagonists.

I can't really comment on Halo Reach, since I've not played it yet. Then again I've not played much of the Halo series. While I think Bungie has crafted some fine games, the Halo universe has never drew me in the same way Mass Effect does. 

I've actually always been a fan of the Halo universe. It just fell victim to Microsoft's media machine and the slavering hordes of ADHD-afflicted fan boys, as the story and development eventually got sidelined in favour of explosions and ******. It's still a cracking set of games - it just lost a lot of what made them stand out originally.

To be fair, I never thought the concept of the Forerunners and the flood and the Covenant etc was done with as much panache as the whole Prothean/Reaper/Citadel/Human Systems Allliance idea, but hey, you can't have it all.

[smecky-kitteh]

It feels like going through a suicide mission where everyone dies only I didn't really care for some of the characters in reach.

[Mayo_20]

@OP
Mass Effect is all about player choice. So if you are complaining that the story isn't 'dark' enough for you, then it is your own fault. Reach, while being a good game, just takes you by the hand and leads you through the story.

The methods of storytelling in these two games are so completely different I can't see any way to compare them on a fair scale. People are just going to pick the one they thought was better. (which is what they should always do) Saying one is 'darker' than another is all from your personal perspective.

For me, I will always prefer a game where my choices can impact the story in significant ways, 'dark' or not.

Modifié par Mayo_20, 17 septembre 2010 - 05:54 .

[ExtremeOne]

Mass Effect 1 had a much more dark tone than Mass effect 2 did and its clear that Halo Reach is the most darker game of the Halo franchise. why did Bioware not show us the darker parts of ME 2 instead of keeping them hidden.

[Mechanos689]

ExtremeOne wrote...

Mass Effect 1 had a much more dark tone than Mass effect 2 did and its clear that Halo Reach is the most darker game of the Halo franchise. why did Bioware not show us the darker parts of ME 2 instead of keeping them hidden.

look have you even read reach
 everyone dies thats the story theres nothing more to it
and thats the only story in halo where it doesent have a happy ending

mass effect 2 did have those dark parts it was up to us to find them
naturally if you do play renegade you will see them alot lol

Modifié par Mechanos689, 17 septembre 2010 - 05:57 .

[DashRunner92]

Clearly a troll post from this sentence: "its clear Bungie knows how to make a dark and gritty game. Mass Effect 2 was suppose to be a dark and gritty game but it failed on many levels."
Their two different developers who wanted to make their own game in their vision. Their's no set line for how dark a game has to be. 
Halo:Reach is suppose the be how Reach was glassed.. so obviously it's going to be darker than ME2. ME2 is dark, but you clearly missed the point of ME2. You talk like Reach was depressing and you expected ME2 to be depressing. In term of the setting, Reach is darker because the planet is doomed. In terms of game plat or cinametics or enemies, ME2 is way darker than Reach, you got reapers and collectors, you got children and parents turned into goo stuff for the reaper. You got a woman who's only beloved daughter was killed by Samara's daughter, you got a whole ship of people who had families stuck on a planet and slowly killed or gone made from the poison food on the planet. You got a facility were you find out kids were kidnapped and used for experiments, living in terrible conditions, abused, and eventually killed. But at the same time, you got this bad-ass hero who is going to fight for what he believes, he's going to plunge himself into a suicide mission. He is a symbol of good and will fight to save everyone even if he is to die.

Modifié par DashRunner92, 17 septembre 2010 - 05:58 .

[ExtremeOne]

Mayo_20 wrote...

@OP
Mass Effect is all about player choice. So if you are complaining that the story isn't 'dark' enough for you, then it is your own fault. Reach, while being a good game, just takes you by the hand and leads you through the story.

The methods of storytelling in these two games are so completely different I can't see any way to compare them on a fair scale. People are just going to pick the one they thought was better. (which is what they should always do) Saying one is 'darker' than another is all from your personal perspective.

For me, I will always prefer a game where my choices can impact the story in significant ways, 'dark' or not.

 



I am not complaining at all simply brining up a issue that should be discussed because are we just going to let a developer say things like our game will be a dark game and come to find out that the story is not exactly as dark as they said it would be. i like ME 2 but it does have some issues  

[Burdokva]

Some good points already brought up. To those I could add one more, there was a tonal inconsistency in Mass Effect 2. Both within the linearity and style of the story.

I honestly felt the game had a far better, atmospheric and dark start. Up until the point I was already on the Normandy and started recruiting; or after Omega, if you go there first, as Mordin and Garrus' acquisition missions, plus the entire setting of Omega, were darker and more realistic than the rest of the game.

Regarding tone, I think BioWare missed the mark when they structured the game with hard-coded Collector missions and somewhat linear recruiting order. I frequently lost motivation (not that I didn't run through it in one week, but curiosity isn't necessarily motivation) regarding the main plot. I loved the characters, but at some points, I get bogged down in side-missions. As has already been said many times, the Collectors were a fantastic enemy visually and had a great introduction, but after Horizon, they aren't an immediate threat until the very end of the game. On a side-note, on my subsequent runs, I leave most N7 missions for post-suicide mission.

What bothered me more was the far more pronounced shift in the style, or tone, of the setting itself. I feel Mass Effect (especially in the light of the comics) leaned a bit too heavily towards "super heroism" genre than sci-fi, even a space opera. A bit like Star Wars, actually. Jedi/Biotics evolved from interesting, rare, even mystique persons with powerful, but restrained skills to your average super-powered action heroes. Even if biotics didn't have an entire philosophy (or rather the far more effective subtle hint of such) as Jedi, there was some scientific justification of their powers in the original. In gameplay terms they were far more powerful, but story-wise, they were more restrained.

ME2 biotics are so overpowered, story-wise and visually, I've often had immersion destroyed. I just couldn't take it seriously that these technological implants make people fly, throw cars (and space stations around...) and make bubbles that allow them to survive in vacuum. It immediately makes me associate it with fairy tales, and light hearted fantasy* rather than a sci-fi setting. And while to the average Joe technology and the vast unknown of space can often by themselves create a sense of dread and awe, something which makes me think "magic in space!" doesn't.

As much as I like Samara as a character, for example, her mission did not have even a bit of the creepiness of Legion's, or the Collector ship (and it was a mission with fantastic virtual camera work, art design and music). Jack even less so, everything about her reminded me more of campy 80's movies like "Running Man" or "Tank Girl" rather than "The Empire Strikes Back". And sorry for the cheap comparisons, but English isn't a native language, it's late here and I'm tired and too lazy to express it in more detail.

* before anyone jumps at this - I myself am a fantasy fan and I know it can be a very dark genre too; just not when it's combined with automatic rifles, WMDs, space ships, aliens and such.

Modifié par Burdokva, 17 septembre 2010 - 06:05 .

[Mister Mida]

Mayo_20 wrote...
Mass Effect is all about player choice. So if you are complaining that the story isn't 'dark' enough for you, then it is your own fault. Reach, while being a good game, just takes you by the hand and leads you through the story.

Sorry, but I find that to be a bull**** argument for the so called lack of darkness. If Bioware promotes ME2 as being more dark, you can't blame the player for making the 'wrong' choices. Every choice has to have a certain dark edge to it.

[coinop25]

And Leisure Suit Larry is more sexually explicit than the sex scenes in Mass Effect. Not seeing how a single element in the content should imply anything about the quality of the game overall compared to other games.



Mind you, deciding that "dark" means "sophisticated" resulted in a decade or so of terrible comic books. Watchmen wasn't good because it was dark, but it did "dark" well in a medium that hadn't really seen it mastered yet. Now it's overdone. Video games already have plenty of "dark," so I don't think making Mass Effect 2 "darker" would have actually implied anything about superior quality or groundbreaking storytelling.

[JaegerBane]

stewie1974 wrote...
Really???

Are you refering to the video games? Or have you read the entire codexs from the actual rpg and battles.

The four lords of chaos are deeply disturbing, the video games fail to deliver the atmosphere true...... but the games and the resources are the darkest stuff you'd be likely to find... hell even the space marines themselves are sinister as hell once you read up on their backgrounds.

The horus hearsy, that's what I'd like to see...

Hell no, I'm used to play 40k a hell of a lot back when I didn't have a girlfriend (j/k )

Chaos was never what I called 'dark sci-fi' - to be honest I thought some of it was actually a bit silly (To this day I never could understand what on earth was supposed to be so scary or disturbing about things like a Lord of Change greater daemon, which I personally thought looked like The Great Gonzo from the bloomin' Muppets...)

The closest 40k got to genuinely disturbing was the whole Necron/C'tan thing but, even then, it was still just slightly more mature space opera.

[ExtremeOne]

DashRunner92 wrote...

Clearly a troll post from this sentence: "its clear Bungie knows how to make a dark and gritty game. Mass Effect 2 was suppose to be a dark and gritty game but it failed on many levels."
Their two different developers who wanted to make their own game in their vision. Their's no set line for how dark a game has to be. 
Halo:Reach is suppose the be how Reach was glassed.. so obviously it's going to be darker than ME2. ME2 is dark, but you clearly missed the point of ME2. You talk like Reach was depressing and you expected ME2 to be depressing. In term of the setting, Reach is darker because the planet is doomed. In terms of game plat or cinametics or enemies, ME2 is way darker than Reach, you got reapers and collectors, you got children and parents turned into goo stuff for the reaper. You got a woman who's only beloved daughter was killed by Samara's daughter, you got a whole ship of people who had families stuck on a planet and slowly killed or gone made from the poison food on the planet. You got a facility were you find out kids were kidnapped and used for experiments, living in terrible conditions, abused, and eventually killed. But at the same time, you got this bad-ass hero who is going to fight for what he believes, he's going to plunge himself into a suicide mission. He is a symbol of good and will fight to save everyone even if he is to die.

   



True they are games from 2 different developers but that does not mean the subject of ME2's dark story or lack their of can not be discussed.  Bioware said ME 2 would be a dark game well if it was then where is the dark parts of the game at. if you mean by showing in video form on freedom's progress of collectors taking humans or them landing on horizon and freezing people as being dark then thats not being dark at all. One thing Bungie does is it keeps the dark tone and feeling of Halo Reach through out the game. 

[Mechanos689]

ExtremeOne wrote...

DashRunner92 wrote...

Clearly a troll post from this sentence: "its clear Bungie knows how to make a dark and gritty game. Mass Effect 2 was suppose to be a dark and gritty game but it failed on many levels."
Their two different developers who wanted to make their own game in their vision. Their's no set line for how dark a game has to be. 
Halo:Reach is suppose the be how Reach was glassed.. so obviously it's going to be darker than ME2. ME2 is dark, but you clearly missed the point of ME2. You talk like Reach was depressing and you expected ME2 to be depressing. In term of the setting, Reach is darker because the planet is doomed. In terms of game plat or cinametics or enemies, ME2 is way darker than Reach, you got reapers and collectors, you got children and parents turned into goo stuff for the reaper. You got a woman who's only beloved daughter was killed by Samara's daughter, you got a whole ship of people who had families stuck on a planet and slowly killed or gone made from the poison food on the planet. You got a facility were you find out kids were kidnapped and used for experiments, living in terrible conditions, abused, and eventually killed. But at the same time, you got this bad-ass hero who is going to fight for what he believes, he's going to plunge himself into a suicide mission. He is a symbol of good and will fight to save everyone even if he is to die.

   



True they are games from 2 different developers but that does not mean the subject of ME2's dark story or lack their of can not be discussed.  Bioware said ME 2 would be a dark game well if it was then where is the dark parts of the game at. if you mean by showing in video form on freedom's progress of collectors taking humans or them landing on horizon and freezing people as being dark then thats not being dark at all. One thing Bungie does is it keeps the dark tone and feeling of Halo Reach through out the game. 

tell us what is your definition of "dark"

[JaegerBane]

ExtremeOne wrote...
When a developer says their game will be a dark game with a SM were everyone can die and they do not live up to any of that unless the everyone dies part is set up by the player its fair to call them out on that . Bungie backed up every bit of their talk with Halo Reach being a dark game with a dark ending. 

It's a game, not a movie. Virtually everything that happens is a result of the player's actions.

If you remember, they actually said that the end result could be 'bloodbath where everyone goes down, or the opposite, or anything in between'.

It was fairly clear from the get go that how sad the ending would be would have depended on the actions of the player.

And please, it was established in Halo: CE that Reach got glassed. It's not like it's a surprise as to what was going to happen.

[ExtremeOne]

Mister Mida wrote...

Mayo_20 wrote...
Mass Effect is all about player choice. So if you are complaining that the story isn't 'dark' enough for you, then it is your own fault. Reach, while being a good game, just takes you by the hand and leads you through the story.

Sorry, but I find that to be a bull**** argument for the so called lack of darkness. If Bioware promotes ME2 as being more dark, you can't blame the player for making the 'wrong' choices. Every choice has to have a certain dark edge to it.

   



i see your point 

[Whatever42]

I have read a couple things on which I want to comment.

First, if Bioware showed us a lot of the "darkness" in the game (children being torn apart to create the Reaper), no one except the most sick person would buy it. This is a space opera, not a Saw movie.

Second, I agree that there didn't seem to be a collective weight of darkness. Each mission was its own episode and all the dark things seemed to be put behind you and never raised again. However, is that a terribly bad thing? Did we want half the players to feel suicidal when finishing the game? There was a lot of bad crap happening in many of those missions.

Mass Effect is Star Wars, BSG, Blade Runner. Its not SAW, Hellraiser, Friday the 13th. Heck, its not even Riddick. Its space opera and this is the darker, Empire Strikes Back chapter. I doubt the writers sat down with the mission statement of creating a grim montage of death and creepiness.

Modifié par Whatever666343431431654324, 17 septembre 2010 - 06:08 .

[khevan]

coinop25 wrote...

 Video games already have plenty of "dark," so I don't think making Mass Effect 2 "darker" would have actually implied anything about superior quality or groundbreaking storytelling.

I'm not trying to connect dark to "superior quality or groundbreaking storytelling."  It's a drama thing for me.  Mass Effect is a story set in the proverbial "calm before the storm."  There's this huge apocalyptic event just on the horizon, and at any moment all life in the galaxy could be wiped out.

That type of setting demands a certain level of grittyness, a certain level of "darkness" to the story.  ME1 had a touch of it.  Virmire was a good example of this.  No matter what you did, someone was going to die. 

ME2 had a good bit of this as well, as I listed in my first post in this thread.  It's there, but as I've written since, it's weakened by ME2's storytelling style.  I just wish there had been a bit more emphasis on the "darkness" already present, not that I want more (ala FEAR etc...)

[Mechanos689]

Shandepared wrote...

Mechanos689 wrote...

specify use examples

Mordin's song.

Friendzoned turian on Ilium.

The news reports on Ilium.

The asari on Ilium.

Conrad Verner.

The email from the gay salarian.

Krogan and the fish.

HEY EVERYBODY! THIS SHOP DESCRIMINATES AGAINST THE POOR!

This is my favorite store on the Citadel.

The videos of miss Al'Jilani being punched/kicked.

Grunt's dossier from the Shadow Broker.

Admiral Zaal'Koris vas Qwib-Qwib (the alternative names he suggests are even funnier).

The guy trying to make the exchange at the warehouse on the Citadel (he finally got his refund).

Mordin thinking you're hitting on me.

"Your whining more than a quarian with a tummy ache!"



Need I go on?

i admit i laughed it took you a while but those made me laugh thank you for making my day

Modifié par Mechanos689, 17 septembre 2010 - 06:11 .

[JaegerBane]

Pacifien wrote...

This discussion would probably be more productive if someone would actually mention the qualities that define "dark." Is it the lighting? Is Halo Reach cast in shadows? Is it in relation to games from completely different developers with their own design goals? Is it in comparison to the first game? What elements from other games or the first game come across as equal or darker to Mass Effect 2? Give me something to work with here, all I can tell is that whatever dark is, Mass Effect 2 apparently is not it.

I would probably define a 'dark' story as something that was, essentially, psychologically disturbing - something that made you feel slightly uneasy but was, in itself, quite abstract.

Doom 3 had it's darkest parts not when you had to fight hordes of zombies and evil clawed babies in near-pitch black, but when you were frantically trying to find out what in christ's name was going on in the first fiew minutes of the game, and as you began to learn more about what was happening, seeing the history of the martians, the logs of the psychiatrists explaining what happend to marines and researchers, that sorry sonofab*tch who got lost in Hell... the realisation of what was going on. Same kind of schtick for FEAR. Lovecraftian, to give it a high-brow term

[Slayer299]

Okay then, when a developer says their game is *dark* and it's the 2nd part of a trilogy it means that the situation is bad for you and ultimately everyone else. To do this you have to see this in-game, through your choices/actions and what is communicated to you by NPC's within to promote that sense of oncoming doom. I didn't feel any of that in ME2.

The Collectors did not come across as the "big bad" who were paving the way for the Reapers to arrive. The only time I felt any pressure about them was onboard the Collector Ship, the Reaper hulk and the SM because they weren't a looming threat beyond their taking Human colonies. In ME1 I loved the fact that the Geth were always popping up and even occasionally ambushing Shep, it made them feel so much more an immediate threat. Where were the Collectors during the game and not including Horizon, the Collector Ship and the SM because I didn't see them anywhere else.

One example of where Bioware got it right was the colony that had the 2 missiles launched at it by the Batarians because there was no "right" answer (at least to my Sheps). More choices like that would have made it darker.

In the 2nd part of a "dark" trilogy things have gone from Bad to Worse all across the board. You get a few minor triumphs, but the light at the end of the tunnel looks to be an oncoming train....

[ExtremeOne]

JaegerBane wrote...

ExtremeOne wrote...
When a developer says their game will be a dark game with a SM were everyone can die and they do not live up to any of that unless the everyone dies part is set up by the player its fair to call them out on that . Bungie backed up every bit of their talk with Halo Reach being a dark game with a dark ending. 

It's a game, not a movie. Virtually everything that happens is a result of the player's actions.

If you remember, they actually said that the end result could be 'bloodbath where everyone goes down, or the opposite, or anything in between'.

It was fairly clear from the get go that how sad the ending would be would have depended on the actions of the player.

And please, it was established in Halo: CE that Reach got glassed. It's not like it's a surprise as to what was going to happen.
 

  



never said it was suppose to be a surprise i simply said that it is a very dark ending to a game and yes games are not on the same level as movies. 

[Exile Isan]

I don't know I think there is quite a lot of 'dark' things about ME2. Watching Kaidan give my Spacer/Sole Survivor Shep the finger was depressing, seeing what the Reapers turned the Protheans into was even more depressing. Watching Garrus be torn apart by his lust for revenge was particularly disheartening to watch especially for my Colonist/Ruthless Paragon Shep. She's been down that road and it wasn't pretty. Watching Tali be willing to give up everything to save face for a father that seemed to brush her off all her life was depressing. Thane's history with his son was depressing and the fact that my Earthborn/War Hero Shep fell for him and he's dying is depressing. Samara's having to kill her daughter was particularly depressing (saddest mission ever). And learning what happened to the colonists left me horrified.

The only really bright spots for me in this game were Garrus' romance, Grunt's loyalty mission (when he called Shep his battlemaster I was like d'aww), Miranda's loyalty mission (which was actually kinda bittersweet), and Joker vs. EDI.

Still one of my favorites, but a game doesn't need to have every freaking person in the game dying a horrible grisly death to considered 'dark' in my books.

Modifié par Exile Isan, 17 septembre 2010 - 06:20 .