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[Sable Phoenix]

Nightwriter wrote...

Sable Phoenix wrote...

Nightwriter wrote...

This seems like a great thread, and I love discussing the writing, but I feel like many of my points of interest are not really "unfired guns" per se.

Well, the unfired guns were just an illustration.  If you have something you feel is related to the writing and story, please share it!

Okay.

Something I would like to know is why BioWare chose to put Shepard with Cerberus in ME2. It's something I've never quite understood, and really, most of my thoughts about the story are a result of that decision.

Acknowledging the fact that a BioWare dev is probably not going to just pop in and answer this question for me, can anyone provide any input or conjecture on why they chose to do this? I honestly would like to know.

It seems they wanted to show off the Illusive Man.  That's really the only explanation I can come up with, otherwise there seems to be no story-based reason to take Shepard out of the Alliance and the Spectres and hook her up with the very organization she fought against so often in the first game.

As sagequeen mentioned earlier, if Cerberus had been presented as a ruthlessly unethical organization that inflicted high collateral damage but got results, as compared to the Alliance as a democratic, mostly ethical body that had low collateral damage but was largely impotent, there would have been a good reason to have them as Shepard's benefactor.  The tension in that situation would have allowed for a lot of good player choices that really make the most of the Paragon/Renegade mechanic.  Sadly this remains a lost opportunity.

Modifié par Sable Phoenix, 20 novembre 2010 - 01:48 .

[Googlesaurus]

Sable Phoenix wrote...

Googlesaurus wrote...

Nicodemus wrote...

Thats the whole point, when the reapers turn up, they cull ALL space faring races. Those that are deemed useful got turned into a new reaper, those that aren't get destroyed or repurposed. It's how the Reapers seem to propogate thier own species. Humans have been deemed worthy of being made into a new reaper, the other species fall into other categories.

We only know what they did with the Protheans. 

The Keepers as well.  Vigil hypothesizes that the Keepers were the very first race harvested.

Hypothesized. We don't know exactly what they did to the Keepers and where to place them on the galactic genocide trail. They could be the latest group to assume the Citadel role. 

Modifié par Googlesaurus, 20 novembre 2010 - 01:44 .

[Sable Phoenix]

Googlesaurus wrote...

Sable Phoenix wrote...

Googlesaurus wrote...

Nicodemus wrote...

Thats the whole point, when the reapers turn up, they cull ALL space faring races. Those that are deemed useful got turned into a new reaper, those that aren't get destroyed or repurposed. It's how the Reapers seem to propogate thier own species. Humans have been deemed worthy of being made into a new reaper, the other species fall into other categories.

We only know what they did with the Protheans. 

The Keepers as well.  Vigil hypothesizes that the Keepers were the very first race harvested.

Hypothesized. We don't know exactly what they did to the Keepers and where to place them on the galactic genocide trail. They could be the latest group to assume the Citadel role. 

Yet they were there when the Protheans inhabited the Citadel too, by all indications, since they opened the relay for the Reapers 50,000 years ago.  We do at least know they are a bionic lifeform by this point, a technorganic fusion that is obviously artificial.

You're right, though, in that there are still too many questions about why the Collectors even exist.  If the Protheans were unsuitable for making Reaper milkshakes for some reason, why not just wipe them out completely?  What ultimate purpose do the Collectors serve that couldn't be accomplished by the Keepers or the geth heretics?

[Googlesaurus]

Sable Phoenix wrote...

Yet they were there when the Protheans inhabited the Citadel too, by all indications, since they opened the relay for the Reapers 50,000 years ago.  We do at least know they are a bionic lifeform by this point, a technorganic fusion that is obviously artificial.

You're right, though, in that there are still too many questions about why the Collectors even exist.  If the Protheans were unsuitable for making Reaper milkshakes for some reason, why not just wipe them out completely?  What ultimate purpose do the Collectors serve that couldn't be accomplished by the Keepers or the geth heretics?

There could have other caretakers of the Citadel prior to the Keepers. The Reapers' habits date back millions of years; we have no idea what happened between their beginnings and now. 

Well, the Collectors were created when those options weren't available. The Keepers would have been tied to the Citadel by then and the geth weren't created at that time. The Reapers needed a backup plan if Nazara couldn't open the relay manually. Not a bad idea overall, but I wish Plan B wasn't so simplistic and counterintuitive. 

Modifié par Googlesaurus, 20 novembre 2010 - 01:58 .

[Nightwriter]

Sable Phoenix wrote...

It seems they wanted to show off the Illusive Man.  That's really the only explanation I can come up with, otherwise there seems to be no story-based reason to take Shepard out of the Alliance and the Spectres and hook her up with the very organization she fought against so often in the first game.

As sagequeen mentioned earlier, if Cerberus had been presented as a ruthlessly unethical organization that inflicted high collateral damage but got results, as compared to the Alliance as a democratic, mostly ethical body that had low collateral damage but was largely impotent, there would have been a good reason to have them as Shepard's benefactor.  The tension in that situation would have allowed for a lot of good player choices that really make the most of the Paragon/Renegade mechanic.  Sadly this remains a lost opportunity.

I still don't quite understand why they did it. I mean, in ME1 I thought I knew where we were. I thought we were on track, had the beginning of a pattern going. You, humanity, Spectrehood - why did they decide to throw all this away?

[GuardianAngel470]

Sialater wrote...

I'm hesitant to pick apart the plotting in an on-going trilogy. We don't know what the end-game is yet. (Don't shoot me for that pun.)

I honestly don't know or care who wrote what or what personality conflicts there were. None of that matters.

ME2's strong points outweigh its weak points for me, though.

POW...

[Aurica]

Nicodemus wrote...

Sable Phoenix wrote...

spacehamsterZH wrote...

adneate wrote...

I still don't get what the Collectors were trying to do other than turn colonists into goo to make a Reaper for some vague reason. The whole Collector . . . everything never really went anywhere.

Did they even have a long term goal? Why could only Shepard take care of them? How were they going to hit Earth if their one ship can't even beat a frigate?

I don't get it.

More importantly, why were they after Shepard? The game just somehow seems to forget between the crew abduction and the suicide mission that it was building this mystery about "the same ship dogging me for two years." I guess since ultimately the Reapers were behind the Collectors and Harbinger hasn't been destroyed, this could still be cleared up in ME3, but it's very odd how this plot thread just disappears towards the end.

This came up a while back in the FemShep fan thread too.  Why is Shepard so unique that they target her specifically?  Why do they seem to forget about her after blowing up the Normandy, instead of blanketing Alchera till they find her body?  Illusive Man posits a vague and largely unsupported theory, and that's the only mention of it from then on.

I'd suggested that they were planning to use Shepard as the "mother" (or "father" if it's the default male Shepard) of the new generation of Reapers, using her DNA as the sort of operating system to install the rest of the Reaper software into.  If they really are going that route with the story, then the Lazarus Project, with all its cybernetics, will still play a huge role, and quite frankly, that's the only way I see it being satisfactorily resolved.

Lazarus and the Reapers' obsession with Shepard had better be explained and integral to the plot and the resolution of the trilogy or it'll all feel cheap.

I would suggest that the Reapers are after Shep, not because of wanting her to be a genetic model for Reaper offspring or that they want to defeat an annoying thorn in thier side, but much more likely it's because they know she has gathered Prothean knowledge and are wanting to know what information she is in possesion of. Does she know of Prothean weaponry that maybe dangerous to Reapers? Has she found information that the Protheans thought were weak spots of the Reapers?

That would be of importance enough for them to pursue her.

Hmm here is what I don't understand.   Shephard despite his/her pivotal role that she played in ME1... is still but one person.  
I mean all Shepard has at this point is the support of her squad & Cerebus.  The Council races at large remain unconvinced at the reaper threat.  What can Shepard with a small team do against an entire fleet of Reapers?

I mean Sovereign was already in the galaxy for quite some time prior to the events of ME1.  Harbinger could control the collector general remotely, doing their stuff..     Wouldn't there be other reapers that are doing something else to set the motion for their invasion plan? 

I mean theres an entire fleet of them & if they are hyper advanced, intelligent & been around for such a long time.  Wouldn't they have contigency plans for every situation that might have occurred.  I mean I would think that they would learn from the previous experience, given the amount of extinction cycles they gone through.  

Also Sovereign alone took out the entire council fleet and destroyed almost half of the 5th Fleet when they arrived later.   What more can be said about an entire fleet of Reapers.
If the Reapers are as indeed so powerful & unstoppable why so much importance on Shepard?   There has to be something special about Shepard?

[GuardianAngel470]

Nightwriter wrote...

Sable Phoenix wrote...

Nightwriter wrote...

This seems like a great thread, and I love discussing the writing, but I feel like many of my points of interest are not really "unfired guns" per se.

Well, the unfired guns were just an illustration.  If you have something you feel is related to the writing and story, please share it!

Okay.

Something I would like to know is why BioWare chose to put Shepard with Cerberus in ME2. It's something I've never quite understood, and really, most of my thoughts about the story are a result of that decision.

Acknowledging the fact that a BioWare dev is probably not going to just pop in and answer this question for me, can anyone provide any input or conjecture on why they chose to do this? I honestly would like to know.

Well, there's the rather plausible idea that they had this concept of a Dark middle chapter due to the Star Wars movies and they needed a way to fit that profile. This would be a result of top down marketing, as opposed to bottom up. They came up with how they wanted to market the game, and then wrote the game around that instead of making the game and then working the marketing around it.

There's also the possibility that Bioware wanted to incorporate Cerberus in order to add depth to the game but when implemented, they simply created an arbitrary situation that felt cheap instead of deep.

Beyond that, I don't really know.

[GuardianAngel470]

Aurica wrote...

Nicodemus wrote...

Sable Phoenix wrote...

spacehamsterZH wrote...

adneate wrote...

I still don't get what the Collectors were trying to do other than turn colonists into goo to make a Reaper for some vague reason. The whole Collector . . . everything never really went anywhere.

Did they even have a long term goal? Why could only Shepard take care of them? How were they going to hit Earth if their one ship can't even beat a frigate?

I don't get it.

More importantly, why were they after Shepard? The game just somehow seems to forget between the crew abduction and the suicide mission that it was building this mystery about "the same ship dogging me for two years." I guess since ultimately the Reapers were behind the Collectors and Harbinger hasn't been destroyed, this could still be cleared up in ME3, but it's very odd how this plot thread just disappears towards the end.

This came up a while back in the FemShep fan thread too.  Why is Shepard so unique that they target her specifically?  Why do they seem to forget about her after blowing up the Normandy, instead of blanketing Alchera till they find her body?  Illusive Man posits a vague and largely unsupported theory, and that's the only mention of it from then on.

I'd suggested that they were planning to use Shepard as the "mother" (or "father" if it's the default male Shepard) of the new generation of Reapers, using her DNA as the sort of operating system to install the rest of the Reaper software into.  If they really are going that route with the story, then the Lazarus Project, with all its cybernetics, will still play a huge role, and quite frankly, that's the only way I see it being satisfactorily resolved.

Lazarus and the Reapers' obsession with Shepard had better be explained and integral to the plot and the resolution of the trilogy or it'll all feel cheap.

I would suggest that the Reapers are after Shep, not because of wanting her to be a genetic model for Reaper offspring or that they want to defeat an annoying thorn in thier side, but much more likely it's because they know she has gathered Prothean knowledge and are wanting to know what information she is in possesion of. Does she know of Prothean weaponry that maybe dangerous to Reapers? Has she found information that the Protheans thought were weak spots of the Reapers?

That would be of importance enough for them to pursue her.

Hmm here is what I don't understand.   Shephard despite his/her pivotal role that she played in ME1... is still but one person.  
I mean all Shepard has at this point is the support of her squad & Cerebus.  The Council races at large remain unconvinced at the reaper threat.  What can Shepard with a small team do against an entire fleet of Reapers?

I mean Sovereign was already in the galaxy for quite some time prior to the events of ME1.  Harbinger could control the collector general remotely, doing their stuff..     Wouldn't there be other reapers that are doing something else to set the motion for their invasion plan? 

I mean theres an entire fleet of them & if they are hyper advanced, intelligent & been around for such a long time.  Wouldn't they have contigency plans for every situation that might have occurred.  I mean I would think that they would learn from the previous experience, given the amount of extinction cycles they gone through.  

Also Sovereign alone took out the entire council fleet and destroyed almost half of the 5th Fleet when they arrived later.   What more can be said about an entire fleet of Reapers.
If the Reapers are as indeed so powerful & unstoppable why so much importance on Shepard?   There has to be something special about Shepard?

If you play renegade that's the case, but a paragon or paragade has more military might under his/her command than the council does. Between the geth, which have already sworn to fight for him, the rachni, which own him their existance, the Krogan, which are always up for a good fight, and the quarians, which not exactly the best fighters do still have a formidable fleet, Shepard commands billions of lives.

[AusShep]

One thing that continues to bother me is the design of the Collectors. I know its a minor thing but I can't seem to get it out of my head.



We know that, according to the codex, the Protheans and the Collectors look very different, and this is explained through the Protheans undergoing extensive genetic and cybernetic modification. However, this does not account for their look. The only reason this bothers me is that they seem to have been modified to more closely resemble Reapers. Their large, flat head design seems to resemble the profile of a Reaper.

The most striking example, however, is with the Collector General. There is a remarkable resemblance between him and Harbinger. We know that each Reaper takes, to some extent, the form of the species it was made from, but why do this in reverse?



I guess it could come down to a god complex, but I just wish this was given more attention or explanation.

[Nightwriter]

GuardianAngel470 wrote...

Well, there's the rather plausible idea that they had this concept of a Dark middle chapter due to the Star Wars movies and they needed a way to fit that profile. This would be a result of top down marketing, as opposed to bottom up. They came up with how they wanted to market the game, and then wrote the game around that instead of making the game and then working the marketing around it.

There's also the possibility that Bioware wanted to incorporate Cerberus in order to add depth to the game but when implemented, they simply created an arbitrary situation that felt cheap instead of deep.

Beyond that, I don't really know.

That's actually a more refreshing explanation than the "they had no clue what to do between ME1 and ME3 so they just threw something in there to kill time with" one.

Modifié par Nightwriter, 20 novembre 2010 - 02:44 .

[chris025657]

GuardianAngel470 wrote...

If you play renegade that's the case, but a paragon or paragade has more military might under his/her command than the council does. Between the geth, which have already sworn to fight for him, the rachni, which own him their existance, the Krogan, which are always up for a good fight, and the quarians, which not exactly the best fighters do still have a formidable fleet, Shepard commands billions of lives.

Shepard doesn't command the Quarian fleet, the Krogan don't have a fleet and aren't unified, the rachni are still trying to get established, and I don't think it would be accurate to say Shepard commands the Geth.  

Even with the combined fleet of the galaxy, any conventional pitched battle with the Reapers would likely be one-sided. 

[Aurica]

I'm going to avoid quoting that big block of text...

Despite Shepard's ability to unite these factions into a single force which have the potential to stop the reapers... Shepard can't be everywhere at the same time to stop the Reapers plot.
Given their numbers, superior intelligence & experience. They could find other way to invade the galaxy w/o the need to focus so much on Shepard. I mean we are up against only Sovereign in ME1 and only Harbinger in ME2. What if every Reaper out there is carrying out a plan somewhere?

How is Shepard alone going to stop all of them? And it seems like the Wrex has issues with trying to unite the krogan clans.
Quarians don't look like they are good position to commit so much resources into combating the reaper threat.
Council can't be half-arsed about it.
Rest of the galaxy is busy killing each other, pirates mercs etc... mostly still ignorant about the Reaper threat.
Rachni still rebuilding, maybe they might help a little I'm not sure.
That leaves only the re-written Geth...

Modifié par Aurica, 20 novembre 2010 - 02:53 .

[Nightwriter]

I don't like the way the game tries to create the illusion of choice without successfully selling you on that illusion. And the choice itself feels kind of bogus and hard to believe in the first place. But this is completely ignored and we go through the story as if pretending none of this is going on, increasing the glaring obviousness of the holes in the game.

But I feel like I can't say any of this without sounding really, really negative, and am considering actually shutting up on the topic altogether and just having discussions about what the best casual outfit is from now on, and what's to be done about "the batarian situation". Anyone else arrived at this place?

[Zan51]

Well, there is what else does Shepard have in her head from the Protheans? As a Deu ex Machina, Bioware can make it be any thing they want because what she has there has never been detailed. Maybe it just takes time for her to make sense of all that has been put there. and in the intervening time between ME2 and 3, she, through perhaps dreams, or working with Liara, begins to understand what is actually in her subconscious...

And is anyone else reminded of the stinging drones that paralyze folk on Horizon when they look at the kind of crab-like/insectoid shape of the Collector General that Harbinger inhabits on the Collector ship? He looks really different from the 2 legged ones on the planet.

[Iakus]

My two biggest "unfired guns" in ME 2 are at the very beginning and the very end:



1) Lazarus Project. Apparantly "cutting edge" medical technology that revives Shepard from the dead. Somehow, I would have thought that after taking such a drastic action to kick off ME 2 (killing Shepard) then ressurecting him/her, we should get some insight into what the process was. I know some people simpy say "it's science fiction" and think nothing of it. But to me, it has nothing to do with mass effect fields. Therefore it's something strange to this universe and I want to know more about it.



In addition, it could have also been a great way to examine what it means to be human. After all, is Shepard still "Shepard"? Cyborg? Clone? AI that thinks it's human? And in the end, does it matter? I'm hoping there'll be DLC concerning it or more details in ME 3.



2) The Reaper larva. THis gun still has a full clip in it. It really raises more questions than it answers. (not the least of which:"WTF?") Among them: What is the "smoothie" stuff the humans are rendered into? Why does the Reaper need it? Why does the Reaper take the form of its "host" species? And most of all: Why are the Collectors building it now? Personally, I think the Collectors building a new dark space relay they can open themselves would have made a lot more sense. But then, Shepard couldn't fight a relay.

[sagefic]

Nightwriter wrote...

I don't like the way the game tries to create the illusion of choice without successfully selling you on that illusion. And the choice itself feels kind of bogus and hard to believe in the first place. But this is completely ignored and we go through the story as if pretending none of this is going on, increasing the glaring obviousness of the holes in the game.

But I feel like I can't say any of this without sounding really, really negative, and am considering actually shutting up on the topic altogether and just having discussions about what the best casual outfit is from now on, and what's to be done about "the batarian situation". Anyone else arrived at this place?

ha! i'm practically there.

best casual outfit? modded all-black cargo pants and top. batarians? nuke 'em. (i play colonist)

but yes, choices without choices.

ME1, i must remind myself, did this. Shepard never saw saren kill nihilus, some guy did. sure, WE the player saw the murder, but we're not shep. WE saw benezia talk to saren, but shep didn't. it was weird to me that shep believed the murder story, belived the visions on the beacon, and took to catching saren and being a spectre with this radical fervor. that was a blatant slap in the face of the 'choice' - couldn't even have shep question the dreams or something.

but at least taking orders from the council and alliance made sense in the given context of shep's established military standing. shep being "forced" to do cerberus' bidding made no sense at all to me.

i will suspend disbelief for a while, but to be waiting all game long for TIM's "you always have a choice, shepard" to actually turn into a choice (blow base or not) is pretty annoying.

[sagefic]

iakus wrote...
But then, Shepard couldn't fight a relay.

ooooh! but you could fight a collector ship guarding a relay. and blow it like star wars. but then there would be no human abductions, right? unless they were labor?or liquefied into relays. wow, how creepy would that be.

*dances off into wild speculation*

[adam_grif]

sagequeen wrote...

The problem with saying "the guns will get resolved in ME3" is that if
that's they case, why were these introduced in the second act (ME2) and
not ME1?

Why is this a problem? Checkov's guns is not a dogmatic assersion that things must be introduced in Act 1 if they are used in Act 3,  but rather a principle that states that you should introduce elements and concepts that will be important to the resolution of a story before their use in said resolution. To put it another way, Checkov's guns says: "Don't pull things out of your ass in the conclusion".

Introducing elements in the second act prior to the third is just as good as introducing them in Act 1, especially in a trilogy of distinct stories where there is a lot of time between part 2 and part 3 (as opposed to introducing a concept 10 minutes before you use it, which will still feel a bit cheap).

Sable Phoenix wrote...

I really dislike the Lazarus project.  There are numerous reasons why. 
Resurrection is impossible, for one, and Mass Effect had established a
nice veneer of hard science fiction over its space opera in the first
game, which all got blown up along with the Normandy when BioWare
decided to kill Shepard and ressurect her.  That annoys me. 

I would contest the assersion that Mass Effect 1 was "Hard Science Fiction". It's about as hard as Star Trek, which is to say not very hard at all. I don't necessarily bring this up as an insult to the game, but I think it's a valid comparison. Like Trek, the technology is explained with things that sound somewhat plausible to the average man, but which are total nonsense to anybody with a real science background in that field.

The physics are not internally consistent, either. The Mass Effect fields as described in the codex give no explanation for Biotic powers and their apparently ability to remotely generate mass effect fields, even though we are given no reason to suspect that this is possible given the codex explanation.

The universe is essentially a fantasy setting with SciFi furnature.

Sable Phoenix wrote...

But what
bothers me the most about the Lazarus Project is that it is treated as
nothing but a reset button for the game mechanics, trying to justify
bringing up a new face editor screen.  As such its potential is totally
wasted.

I agree that this is worisome. Although please note that there were two additional functions of the resurrection in addition to face creator justification - the first is that it provides the "you now work with Cerberus" explanation, and secondly it justifies the 2 year skip and breaking up of your old team. Now, they could have (and should have) found other ways to do those things (pretty trivial actually) but the writers, for whatever reason, decided that this was a better idea.

Ungh.

Moiaussi wrote...

Ok, so a ship large enough to carry 650k humans is rated as a 'cruiser?' And could house that many even though it didn't seem that
much bigger than the Normandy in any cut scene (in fact the scale
seemed pretty consistant). The collectors have some sort of tesseract
tech and noone seems to notice or care? It also didn't take hours to
walk through. It was not thaaaat big a ship.

The chamber with the pods is easily over 1 km in length. I would put it closer to 1.5, but that's just a guestimate. And yes, the classification as a cruiser is VERY strange and highly suspect. What happened in real life is that the Writers didn't know crap about the codex and did whatever they wanted.

In-universe, there is no adequate explanation. It's longer than most dreadnoughts, yet they say "it appears to be some kind of cruiser." Really? Because Dreadnoughts start at 800 meters long. The Destiny Ascencion is also an "unusual shape" (i.e. not like human dreads) but it is classified as a Dreadnought. And Sovereign is giant and definitely not "all gun", yet the Citadel races consider it to be a "giant dreadnought" too!

A wizard writer did it

Googlesaurus wrote...

I doubt any stasis pods in the ME universe are designed to last
50,000 years. They would require power sources for one. The Reapers
don't need the Collectors either, as they've been doing the same routine
for millions of years.

The Reapers certainly have the tech for seemingly-indefinite power sources, (Reaper still active 37 million years later.... It's mass effect core was preventing it from falling into a star for that whole time ), as well as the ability to last indefinite periods of time without maintenance (same again).

However according to the lore the Collectors were active since pre-mass effect 1.

Googlesaurus wrote...

If their DNA was completely rewritten how could EDI accurately identify
them as Protheans, much less match thousands of genetic markers and
trace the ancestral pedigree of a single individual? The change itself
was gradual, not the cloning process.

EDI did not match them with genetic markers and such, but by noting that they had the same DNA structure (Quad strand or something she said), and that the Protheans are the only race ever known to have that. Technically, she can't PROVE that they are Protheans (they might just be another race with the same structure), but it's a fairly reasonalbe inference given what they know.

Googlesaurus wrote...

The Thanix Cannon rivals a cruiser's firepower, that's it. By direct
comparison the Collector ship would have been wrecked by anything
resembling a fleet. You really believe it could stand up to a
dreadnought?

I agree here. The Collector ship only managed to achieve it's kills by ambushing ships, it did it to the Normandy and presumably to the Turian ships it destroyed (before somebody brings it up, the DISTRESS CALL was fake, but the Turian Ships were there, you can see their destroyed hulls in the cutscene). It was noted as ambushing ships in the region for weeks, which is why the SR1 went to investigate in the first place.

If they actually directly launched an attack on a defended world, they would have been instantly obliterated. A cruiser is all that is needed to destroy them, and even frigates/fighters can blow them up with disruptor torps/Javelin missiles.

The idea that "they're going after Earth" is totally hilarious, because Earth is behind the Arcturus relay, and an entire fleet. The next colony they attacked after Horizon would have had the defense guns operational before they got there, and the Collectors would have been totally stopped, forever.

They could do nothing more. All colonies would be secure, they can't touch Earth or any other major human stronghold. Whoops, no more threat! Stopping the Collectors was irrelevant after that point. This is one of my biggest gripes with the story - there was no consequence for failure in your mission.

[Iakus]

adam_grif wrote...

Sable Phoenix wrote...

I really dislike the Lazarus project.  There are numerous reasons why. 
Resurrection is impossible, for one, and Mass Effect had established a
nice veneer of hard science fiction over its space opera in the first
game, which all got blown up along with the Normandy when BioWare
decided to kill Shepard and ressurect her.  That annoys me. 

I would contest the assersion that Mass Effect 1 was "Hard Science Fiction". It's about as hard as Star Trek, which is to say not very hard at all. I don't necessarily bring this up as an insult to the game, but I think it's a valid comparison. Like Trek, the technology is explained with things that sound somewhat plausible to the average man, but which are total nonsense to anybody with a real science background in that field.

The physics are not internally consistent, either. The Mass Effect fields as described in the codex give no explanation for Biotic powers and their apparently ability to remotely generate mass effect fields, even though we are given no reason to suspect that this is possible given the codex explanation.

The universe is essentially a fantasy setting with SciFi furnature.

I wouldn't call Mass Effect "hard" science fiction either, but I do have to say that even in a fantasy setting, the rules of what can be must remain internally consistent.   The existence of eezo and mass effect fields are pretty much established laws in the ME universe (thus the name of the series)  What they can and can't do is pretty much established, even if how they're done is vague/ridiculous based on "real world" physics.  It's internally consistent within the laws of the ME "reality"

The Lazarus Project, however, is not internally consistent.  It's a level of medical technology that isn't even hinted at in-game.  The really high-tech "science fictiony" technology is all based on mass effect technology, and we haven't seen any application of mass effect fields or biotics that can do anything even remotely like what Lazarus did for Shepard.

EDI did not match them with genetic markers and such, but by noting that they had the same DNA structure (Quad strand or something she said), and that the Protheans are the only race ever known to have that. Technically, she can't PROVE that they are Protheans (they might just be another race with the same structure), but it's a fairly reasonalbe inference given what they know.

EDI:  "I have already matched two thousand alleles to recorded fragments.  This Collector likely descends from a Prothean colony in the Styx Theta cluster"

Not bad for the cyberwarfare AI

Modifié par iakus, 20 novembre 2010 - 05:29 .

[khevan]

AntiChri5 wrote...

The biggest problem with the resurrection is......well.....WHY? Seriously, what is wrong with a coma? Why open such a big can of worms, then spend all your time pretending you didn't?

I think Bioware tried to seperate Shepard from the Council and the Alliance, to try to create a sense of "Shepard against the universe," in ME2.  Trying to go for that darker, harder edge to the story.  Shepard knows the truth of the Reapers, but only he and an organization with a very dark past are trying to do anything about it.  If Shepard were in a coma, or injured in the destruction of the SR1, the Alliance would have had every reason to try to recover him/her, and that whole sense of being the only sane man in a universe of lunatics would have been gone.  As much as I've criticized Bioware's handling of ME2's story, this one narrow slice of things actually kinda made sense to me.  I just wish it had been handled better.

I also think that it was to try to tie Shepard closer to Cerberus and TIM.

"We raised you from the dead, you owe us, go do this stuff for us."

From that very simplistic viewpoint, it makes sense, in a nonsensical kind of way, if you get my meaning. 

I personally don't have any issue with the resurrection itself.  We can perform miracles compared to medical knowledge even a century ago, who knows what's possible in a couple hundred years from now? 

However, I agree completely that the way it was handled in-game was clumsy at best.  There are all kinds of implications to such a resurrection that were never even mentioned, much less explored.  Is there an afterlife?  What affect on Shepard would actually dying have, even if he/she was brought back?  It would open up all kinds of conversational opportunities with squadmates, crewmembers, etc, and give us a great subplot.  I think Bioware (intentionally or unintentionally) has explored (briefly) the idea of what is life, with the geth and other AI's, and this was a perfect opportunity to go all out with that kind of exploration, especially if Shepard were now an AI imprinted in a neural chip embedded in a reconstructed Shepard replica.  I almost think I would have prefered that as a "HOLY ****" moment about two-thirds of the way thru ME2, almost like Luke learning that Vader was his father.  A whole examine your existance moment that was totally ignored, and therefore wasted.

[SwordsmanofShadow]

Nightwriter wrote...

Sable Phoenix wrote...

It seems they wanted to show off the Illusive Man.  That's really the only explanation I can come up with, otherwise there seems to be no story-based reason to take Shepard out of the Alliance and the Spectres and hook her up with the very organization she fought against so often in the first game.

As sagequeen mentioned earlier, if Cerberus had been presented as a ruthlessly unethical organization that inflicted high collateral damage but got results, as compared to the Alliance as a democratic, mostly ethical body that had low collateral damage but was largely impotent, there would have been a good reason to have them as Shepard's benefactor.  The tension in that situation would have allowed for a lot of good player choices that really make the most of the Paragon/Renegade mechanic.  Sadly this remains a lost opportunity.

I still don't quite understand why they did it. I mean, in ME1 I thought I knew where we were. I thought we were on track, had the beginning of a pattern going. You, humanity, Spectrehood - why did they decide to throw all this away?

I'm so with you on this. When you actually sit back and look at the story, you realize just how unnecessary Cerberus is. Whats even more infuriating is how they intentionally dumbed down the Council/Alliance just to make Cerberus look better. As Sable pointed out: instead of two differing- but well thought out groups, you get two sides seemingly composed of jack*sses.

And don't get me started on the whole 'They're going to target Earth! Oh noes!!' A frigate with the combat capability of a heavy cruiser brought thier ship down. The moment the Collectors took as step in Alliance space, they would have gotten raped sideways.

I don't even want to talk about how flat a character they kept Shepard. We had to wait till Lair of the Shadpw Broker for any kind of character development for him.<_<

The worst part is, at the end of it all all we get from this is: a) we know how Reapers reproduce, and The Reapers are taking the long way here. We know about option b after ME1, sooo...

Shepard lost two years of his life, his credability, his love intrest, maybe even his Spectre status, just to work with an incompatent terrorist group to find out how Reaper babies are made. Yeahhhh....

Granted he did save millions of human lives. But he could have achieved the same result without losing everything mentioned above. I can understand some decisions have to be made for us due to gameplay reasons. But as others have pointed out: it could have been so much better.

To be fair though, Mac and the other did very well on tone and dialog. The characters and the overall setting were much improved over the first in my opinion. I just feel like if they didn't try to be so 'dark' and 'edgy', they could have gotten a better story with all of the 'dark second chapter' vibe.

[Nightwriter]

sagequeen wrote...

ha! i'm practically there.

best casual outfit? modded all-black cargo pants and top. batarians? nuke 'em. (i play colonist)

but yes, choices without choices.

ME1, i must remind myself, did this. Shepard never saw saren kill nihilus, some guy did. sure, WE the player saw the murder, but we're not shep. WE saw benezia talk to saren, but shep didn't. it was weird to me that shep believed the murder story, belived the visions on the beacon, and took to catching saren and being a spectre with this radical fervor. that was a blatant slap in the face of the 'choice' - couldn't even have shep question the dreams or something.

but at least taking orders from the council and alliance made sense in the given context of shep's established military standing. shep being "forced" to do cerberus' bidding made no sense at all to me.

i will suspend disbelief for a while, but to be waiting all game long for TIM's "you always have a choice, shepard" to actually turn into a choice (blow base or not) is pretty annoying.

I agree.

But I believe it was still a lot better in ME1. For instance, if we had third person omniscient scenes where we see the Council or Alliance failing to help the colonies at a crucial moment, and Cerberus comes swooping in to save the day, my feelings about Cerberus would be totally transformed, even though technically Shepard saw nothing.

So those third person omniscient scenes really help.

[adam_grif]

If they wanted to have Shepard indebted to Cerberus, they could have had Shepard in a coma as proposed after the destruction of the SR1 (but have him survive), and had Cerberus spend it's resources trying to wake him up, something that the Alliance did not spare the funds to do. Or perhaps the Alliance deliberately withheld treatment because Shepard was more useful as a symbol, but would be problematic when he was cured and started yelling around about the Reapers again. That's if you wanted to portray "the darker side of the Alliance", of course.

iakus wrote...



EDI: "I have already matched two thousand alleles to recorded fragments. This Collector likely descends from a Prothean colony in the Styx Theta cluster"



Not bad for the cyberwarfare AI

Did she really say that? I don't remember that from the game :S

I wouldn't call Mass Effect "hard" science fiction either, but I do have to say that even in a fantasy setting, the rules of what can be must remain internally consistent. The existence of eezo and mass effect fields are pretty much established laws in the ME universe (thus the name of the series) What they can and can't do is pretty much established, even if how they're done is vague/ridiculous based on "real world" physics. It's internally consistent within the laws of the ME "reality"

What I'm saying is that the description of Eezo's behavior and Mass Effect Fields does NOT match the abilities that Biotics provide. Eezo currents create local Mass Effect Fields, immediately around the Eezo with the current passed through it.



Now, we know that Eezo behaves a certain way with positive or negative currents passed through it. HOWEVER, Biotics are said to have "Element Zero Nodules in the brain", which presumably activate when electrical transmissions pass through certain areas of said brain.



So how does activation of Eezo in a brain create biotic fields that are distant? That doesn't make sense. And how can both mass increasing AND lowering field be created by the brain's electrical activity? There is no polarity reversal switch inside a human brain!



And how does the ability to raise or lower the mass of objects give abilties such as PUSH and PULL? These abilities impart kinetic energy somehow, but how? This has nothing to do with Eezo fields!



Contrary to popular belief, Mass Effect fields are NOT the only magical technology in MEverse. Kinetic Barriers don't make sense for the same reason that Biotic push/pull doesn't, and apparently has the magical ability to render kinetic energy of objects inert.



Also, Chakwas directly mentions the existence of "Inertial dampeners" on starships. Another pure magic that is not Eezo related!



And how do the Mass Relays work? They can apparently (via magic) make a "corridor of space" "massless". How does that imply instantaneous travel? It doesn't, but in MEverse that's what it does, for no explained reason.



And how does being able to reduce your mass to "near zero" allow you to travel faster than light, as it is claimed in the game? It doesn't, because even a particle with zero mass will travel at exactly C, it will not exceed it. But it's just magic!



Then in ME2, we get the Quantum Communicators (directly violates the No-Communication Theorem) and Lazarus project. Lazarus is comparatively tame compared to the other severe violations of consistency and physics!

[Lord Nicholai]

adneate wrote...

Talogrungi wrote...
My point is that, bottom line, they need a Reaper to open the Citadel relay to dark space. With Sovereign gone, what choice do they have but to create a replacement? .. how exactly they were planning on getting to the Citadel to open the Relay, well I guess we'll never know given that they never got that far.

But then at the end of ME2 they just turn on their engines and fly towards the galaxy anyway so WTF? Couldn't they just do that after Sovereign got fragged and save themselves the hassle of having to work through the Collectors and making a brand new Reaper?

And attacking the exact same point in exactly the same way with exactly the same force after you've already totally failed once seems so incredibly moronic that I just can't believe anything with any level of intelligence would ever do it. If you stick your hand into fire and burn yourself you don't immediately do exactly the same thing again hoping this time you won't burn yourself.

Who said they would have used the same plan that Sovereign had?