228 réponses à ce sujet

[Ieldra]

Xilizhra wrote...

You ask why Paragons should occasionally pay a price for misplaced trust and sentimentality? Here's why: because an even remotely believable universe is like that.

I agree. Paragon Shepard is smart enough not to misplace trust or sentimentality.

Se he is prescient? The thing is, some decisions are about thing you cannot know. You cannot know what the Rachni queen will do, what Balak will do or not do. You cannot know whether you will need the Collector base to defeat the Reapers or not. Yet somehow, all these unknowable factors (will) turn out in Shepard's favor in every single decision he makes. That's not believable. That's first-class Marty Stu material.

[Xilizhra]

The rachni queen has done nothing at all threatening to anyone, Balak I've talked about before (primarily him losing all of his resources and being a known threat now), and the Collector base has been done to death. There have been rational reasons for all of these decisions beyond absolutist morality.

[Liesel12]

Being either Paragon or Renegade, or a little of both is how you would honestly make choices. I have done that through both games. While keeping nearly all Paragon, I have some Renegade decisions in there. Both pay a price in certain plot lines that weave into the overall story. Paragon's are not without some sacrifice or consequence from their choices. Despite saving the Council in ME1, in ME2, oh, they recognize you being alive and even offer your Spectre status back but from that point, they want you to stay out in the Terminus Systems with no help but your own wits and whatever allies you can gather. Anderson wants to help but not as long as you are with Cerberus. And face it, you can't trust Illusive Man as far as you can toss him.



Also, listen to the news in the game. Shepard's name was dragged through the dirt by some of the media. A hero is faded and quickly forgotten, and come to be despised by some of the colonists. The ideal of being an Alliance and Council hero has been tarnished. Shepard does the best he/she cans. Whether you play at being ruthless or stick the path of the good soldier, is up to you. Both sides though will have their stories and how they are perceived for their choices.



Certainly, even a Paragon will be hated by the merc groups, Shadow agents, rebel Krogan that don't go with Wrex's ideas, and in the end, even the Illusive Man will go against Shepard. For personal side, Shepard has to deal with missing two years of their life and being treated like a pariah because they are trapped in a situation to work with Cerberus in order to stop the Collectors. After all, the Alliance and Council will not help Shepard in ME2. After destroying the base, frankly, I liked it as a Paragon in telling the Illusive Man to shove it.



Yeah, I think for ME3, things will have to come together to face a galactic threat. Shepard will need all the allies he/she can get. This isn't really about humanity, as was stated in the first speech in ME1 but about all life in the galaxy. I never saw anything really black and white in ME and a Paragon has made sacrifices to get the job done. There is enough doubt and suspicion in Shepard to give some leeway to certain people but I don't think there is blind trust.



Again, it is all about choices in what you do. There is enough sacrifice in some plots for both Paragon and Renegade to weave a unique story experience. You choose Anderson as Councilor, well, after Shepard's death, he took a hit to his standing. Then it is another hit to his political standing to find out Shepard is working with Cerberus, and thus Shepard is treated with suspicion. It would be nice to see what happens from the glimpses of intel on the vids you go through at the Shadow Broker lair, or even the info in the dossiers.



SPOILER: What is Udina doing on Omega? What is up with the Keepers killing? Why did Anderson hit that one guy? Will Alliance Navy IA manage to detain Shepard for questioning?



So many little things to work with...

[RiouHotaru]

Ieldra2 wrote...
You ask why Paragons should occasionally pay a price for misplaced trust and sentimentality? Here's why: because an even remotely believable universe is like that. There may be a perfect solution where everyone lives *and* you achieve your objective here and there, but most solutions aren't like that. If a pattern of perfect solutions appears, the universe becomes artificial and less believable.

Playing Paragon in ME, that's comparable to having the guarantee everyone survives the suicide mission. You can have your cake and eat it. Free lunch for everyone.

Examples? Here are some:
*you let the Rachni queen live in ME1, and *of course* she's friendly in ME2.
*you let Balak go in ME1, and *of course* we never hear from him again as having commited any more crimes in ME2.
*you save the Council in ME1, and of course the remaining fleet is still strong enough to defeat Sovereign with Shepard's help (OK, that was unavoidable given the plot structure, but it still adds to the pattern).
*you let Fist go in ME1, and of course he won't get in your way again.
*you give Samesh Bhatia the body of his wife, and of course there are absolutely no negative consequences for the research efforts.
*You let Dr.Wayne live in ME1, and of course he will completely reform and act as a witness against Cerberus instead of continuing his research.


Every one of these, taken separately, poses no problem at all. But if *every* decision goes like that, the world becomes more and more artificial and less believable, because, well, the real world isn't like that.

Also, you can't compare the Renegade decisions 1:1 because the Renegade decisions are about making sure that there are no bad consequences, and paying the price. In the Renegade path, the Rachni queen can't be friendly or hostile because she doesn't exist anymore. There can be neither an added enemy nor an added friend. The Paragon hopes for the best but risks the worst. It's not believable that the worst *never* happens.

Each of your examples is also inherently flawed in that for the Paragon they have no consequences for logical reasons, NOT because the universe is bending to match Shepard's decisions:

1) Letting the Rachni Queen live: This has been argued to death, but the decision of whether to spare her or not is a player/Shepard's judgment call, and isn't inherently right or wrong.  Just because the Queen's plea for mercy and promise of assistance turned out to be true isn't a weakness of the P/R system  Paragon players took a risk by not killing her outright and were rewarded for that risk.  But the decision to spare her has logic behind it.  As does killing her.

2) Letting Balak go is again, another decision where there are logical reasons for a lack of consequences, which Shepard specifically states: Balak's face and name will get out, patrols will be warned, people will be prepared.  Not to mention he's lost all his credibility, other Batarians won't necessarily want to team up with him since he's got a reputation for not telling them the whole mission.  It would've been nice to hear that he'd been captured or killed trying again though rather than him simply vanishing into thin air, but again, not a weakness of the system

3) Saving or not saving the Council doesn't even count.  You admit it's an unavoidable plot device.  The game cannot keep you from defeating Sovereign just because you chose to save the Ascension or not.  The "consequence", hilariously, is part of the premise of the sequel.  If you save the Council, the Alliance fleet is spread thin and can't investigate the colonial disappearances because they lost ships.  If the Council dies, the Fleet is too busy trying to help reorganize the galactic hierarchy.  Either way they can't help.  So this example can't be used regardless.

4) Of course Fist won't get in your way.  You ruined him, his reputation, and his ability to do business.  The fact he betrayed the Shadow Broker means he likely can't do real business again or risk more mercs being sent to kill him, which his is own fault.  He has no reason to get in your way.

5) Giving Samesh's wife's body back to him or not is a flawed example because the consequences for EITHER choice never produce anything tangible in terms of in-game benefits.  All you get is a changed news-clip about the Alliance's recruitment quotas.  But otherwise nothing at all is changed or altered.  So how exactly is it a consequence-free decision for Paragons, and therefore a weakness of the system, when it's also consequence-free for Renegades as well?

6) Dr. Wayne testifying against Cerberus isn't a "consequence-free" decision either.  It makes perfect sense that, charged with with performing inhumane experiments on human beings, that he makes a deal in exchange for his testimony against those who ordered the experiments done.  This happens all the time in the real-world legal system.

So really, none of these decisions except possibly the Rachni Queen is a decision made in the hopes of a good result.  As some people have pointed out, there are logical, rational explainations why these decisions turn out the way they do.  Arguing that the Paragon is getting the best of both worlds is quickly becoming a broken record.  It's not unrealistic or against suspension of disbelief that they situations turn out the way they do...because situations can and DO turn out this way in reality.

[JamieCOTC]

To be realistic for a moment, I highly doubt any of the past choices from either ME1 or ME2 will really matter. When it came down to it, there wasn't one choice made in ME1 that shifted the direction of ME2 in any significant way. All that mattered was what the player did during the game. The rest of the ME1 references were just window dressing. ME3 will be a totally new game just as ME2 was because as we all know the power of the potential new player trumps all of Shepard's decisions.

[Cerberus Operative Ashley Williams]

JamieCOTC wrote...

To be realistic for a moment, I highly doubt any of the past choices from either ME1 or ME2 will really matter. When it came down to it, there wasn't one choice made in ME1 that shifted the direction of ME2 in any significant way. All that mattered was what the player did during the game. The rest of the ME1 references were just window dressing. ME3 will be a totally new game just as ME2 was because as we all know the power of the potential new player trumps all of Shepard's decisions.

This sadly is the truth. I think decisions from previous games will have a little bit more impact on ME3 than ME2, but probably not much more.

[GodWood]

RiouHotaru wrote...
Why should Paragons have to pay a price?  Why should they be made to feel as bad, or worse, than Renegades? 
This isn't Dragon Age where the world is a panoramic of seamlessly blending shades of gray.  There are some moral complexities, but it isn't nearly as pronounced as DA, which is one thing I didn't like about it. Too much moral complexity is just as bad as too little.

I don't know what to even say to this....
The moral complexity was the best thing about DA and i personally was hoping for so much more (especially when they were citing A Song of Ice and Fire as an influence)
Seriously man, grow up. You can't really expect a game thats meant to be an adult game to be some childish fairy tale where none of your good deeds come back to bite you on the arse.
Because as it stands right now, Paragon Shepard is a Mary Sue.

Modifié par GodWood, 27 novembre 2010 - 12:08 .

[Xilizhra]

I'm not entirely sure that most people know what a Mary Sue is anymore, and for most of the people who play this game, it doesn't even matter because they enjoy the game. If your standards mean that this is a "childish fairy tale," it seems that most of the fans of the series do in fact want that, or at least don't mind its presence. In fact, I'm one of them; I enjoy saving the galaxy and able to brighten other peoples' lives along the way. Of course, I could do pretty much the same thing in Dragon Age, so I'm not completely sure where you're getting such a big contrast.

[Tyrannosaurus Rex]

No matter what. Bioware really needs to reconsider the way they approach the Paragon vs Renegade dilemma in ME3. As it is now. Paragons gets extra content, along with far more succses and everything turning out in their favor. While renegades get to enjoy less content, and have most choices blow up in their face.

Either paragons need to have a few failures as well, or renegade need to have some rewards.

Both happening would be preferable.

[Epic777]

Dave of Canada wrote...

I'd want my Paragon to see the devastation he caused by being too idealistic, I want to see planets burn and entire people get indoctrinated. Though he'd win and the galaxy would be at peace (with everybody praising Shepard), I'd like to know that the galaxy suffered for my choices.

On the other side of the spectrum, I want my Renegade to be the ultimate hero in terms of stopping the Reapers. A lot less damage but with a more fragile universe in the end.

So would I, if my renegade suffered the same fate.

[RiouHotaru]

Xilizhra wrote...

I'm not entirely sure that most people know what a Mary Sue is anymore, and for most of the people who play this game, it doesn't even matter because they enjoy the game. If your standards mean that this is a "childish fairy tale," it seems that most of the fans of the series do in fact want that, or at least don't mind its presence. In fact, I'm one of them; I enjoy saving the galaxy and able to brighten other peoples' lives along the way. Of course, I could do pretty much the same thing in Dragon Age, so I'm not completely sure where you're getting such a big contrast.

I don't get this either.  Mass Effect isn't the same game as Dragon Age.  It has a completely different premise and a completely different setting.  Just because something in one game works doesn't mean it works in the other, or vice versa.  Mass Effect is the way it is because that's the kind of game it is.  Don't call it a "fairy tale" because it lets you win like that.  There are plenty of games out there that work the same way and they rarely get called 'fairy tales'.

Eh, no one will ever be satisfied.  Unpleasable Fanbases abound.

[Arijharn]

Epic777 wrote...

So would I, if my renegade suffered the same fate.

I think as things currently stand, this is far more likely. Also, I hope it does as well in any case if only to get a sense of realism. The game can harp on to you on explaining in overt detail how exactly a mass effect field works to make it 'believable' (aka; scientific).

While by Undertone's own admission in his lack of eloquence, I think he has a point. No one really should be able to just talk to a mass murderer type character and get him to repent after just a quick dialogue check.

To me; the biggest problem, the biggest break is if you tell Zaeed 'screw loyalty,' rescue the workers and lose Vidal (or whatever his name is) you have a frank heart-to-heart with him and suddenly he says: "You're right." I made my decision to 'screw loyalty' so to speak, I expected that me losing his loyalty for my deed to be a consequence of my action. I didn't have any consequence and to me; that's a failing. I can imagine that I now know what Jolee Bindo felt when the council said that I had learnt 'wisdom the hard way'

[Xilizhra]

Then... why did you choose the blue instant win option?

[Arijharn]

Because it was there?



And it's because it was there in the first place that I have a problem with it. I escaped my consequence because I was allowed to escape my consequence, so yeah I'm going to take my way out because I like to feel good about myself.

[GU1LD3NST3RN]

Is it even possible to get a "fairy-tale" kind of ending here? I mean yes, Mass Effect is rather idealistic in its presentation but look at the end of the first game: you can let the council die (bad) which of course results in the loss of the heads of Galactic government, or you can save them (good) although that incurs a very high casualty rate among the arriving Arcturus fleet. Either way you spin it, a bunch of people die. 

Then you've got the second game, where you can either save the Collector Base (bad) which we see Cerberus use for... really twisted experiments (which we should have expected what with them being a terrorist extremist group after all) or we can destroy the base (good) which I think we can be reasonably sure will hurt us in terms of resources when it comes time for the final battle. 

So the endings of the first two games seem to do a somewhat decent job of portraying the "earn your happy ending" idea and the image of the galaxy taking on a fleet of Reapers with minimal casualties and then everything is sunshine and rainbows from then on seems.... well, a bit preposterous, quite frankly. Yes, having all the various allies you've accrued across the games for an epic showdown does seem incredibly awesome and I can't wait for it. But even so, there's no way that this fight will go down without a metric crap-ton of people dying in the process. The Protheans were a cohesive society that spanned the galaxy and did more to hamper the Reaper's progress than anybody else (yes, including humanity: without the Prothean's work to close the Citadel relay we would have been toast no matter what). These guys got absolutely destroyed, and from all indications they were about on par if not more advanced than galactic society of 2185. Yes, we know the Reapers are coming and that'll help a lot... but we're still gonna get pounded, regardless. 

Honestly, I hope that there is an option to lose the final confrontation. You could die at the end of ME2 if you were careless, why not allow for that some possibility but on a galactic scale? That won't be my first playthrough, mind you, but I'd like to know the (entirely reasonable) possibility exists. For my paragade-styled main save I genuinely want to see some losses on my side. Example: no, I would not commit genocide on the Rachni.... but I could justify sending them off to a heroic sacrifice-style death to buy time for a Turian battle group to do some serious damage. These are the kind of choices I want my Shepard to face. 

No, it won't be pretty, but where is the sense of victory without loss? To echo Ashley Williams and her eerily appropriate selection of Tennyson: "Death closes all, but some 'ere the end, some work of noble note may yet be done. Not unbecoming men who strove with gods" 

[Epic777]

Arijharn wrote...

Epic777 wrote...

So would I, if my renegade suffered the same fate.

I think as things currently stand, this is far more likely. Also, I hope it does as well in any case if only to get a sense of realism. The game can harp on to you on explaining in overt detail how exactly a mass effect field works to make it 'believable' (aka; scientific).

While by Undertone's own admission in his lack of eloquence, I think he has a point. No one really should be able to just talk to a mass murderer type character and get him to repent after just a quick dialogue check.

To me; the biggest problem, the biggest break is if you tell Zaeed 'screw loyalty,' rescue the workers and lose Vidal (or whatever his name is) you have a frank heart-to-heart with him and suddenly he says: "You're right." I made my decision to 'screw loyalty' so to speak, I expected that me losing his loyalty for my deed to be a consequence of my action. I didn't have any consequence and to me; that's a failing. I can imagine that I now know what Jolee Bindo felt when the council said that I had learnt 'wisdom the hard way'

But that leads to only a renegade solution, only a renegade player would have a full set of survivors for me3. 
Pesonally I disagree with the notion that the renegade player has been punished but not the paragons. Non of the paragon or renegade desicions have really bitten them in the ass. At this stage you have destroyed/reprogrammed a mere 5% of the geth population. You saved/killed the last one rachni queen, its unlikely in 2 years the rachni would have an army to fight the reapers. The krogan - you have keep/destroy a partially developed cure unlikly to have much effect in fighting the reapers (no krogan horde for me3). These are fairly small in consquence on their own, they may snowball at the end of me3
Personally I would like bigger consquences but not so heavy that the player never chooses that option again leading to meta gamming (Personally I dislike). 

Modifié par Epic777, 27 novembre 2010 - 02:46 .

[Zubie]

Aigyl wrote...

I personally go with:

Paragon: Hero who saves the day and gets the praise

Renegade: Badass anti-hero who looks cool

I don't think Bioware meant for their average gamer to think much deeper than this. After all, if you just picked up ME2 for the first time and are choosing to go Paragon or Renegade, you're looking at which you think will be cooler and more fun, not closely analysing the philosophical differences between the two and the results they get.

This.

[PrinceLionheart]

GodWood wrote...

Paragon Shepard is a Mary Sue.

Are you seriously playing the Mary Sue card? 

A Blanket term like that applies to a Renegade Shepard as well. 

And honestly outside of a few less "Hey Shepard, you're totally awesome" encounters I really don't see how Renegade players have suffered as much as they make it out to be. Yes, I think the writers could've done a better job of showing the positive and negatives of some Paragon actions. But having played through again it is the Renegade interrupts that allows for some easier fights.

[Undertone]

If such is the case then Bioware better not aim for ME3 being stand alone as they did with ME2. Because that would be epic fail.

Content-wise and story-wise the Renegade clearly suffers compared to Paragon and whoever clames otherwise clearly hasn't played both sides.

Modifié par Undertone, 27 novembre 2010 - 04:53 .

[PrinceLionheart]

Lizardviking wrote...

No matter what. Bioware really needs to reconsider the way they approach the Paragon vs Renegade dilemma in ME3. As it is now. Paragons gets extra content, along with far more succses and everything turning out in their favor. While renegades get to enjoy less content, and have most choices blow up in their face.

How much has actually "blown up" in a Renegade's face though? So far the only thing I've seen is aliens being upset that the old council died and the crew being paranoid over TIM's intentions if you saved the base? The latter isn't even close to biting a Renegade in the ass.

[PrinceLionheart]

Undertone wrote...

If such is the case then Bioware better not aim for ME3 being stand alone as they did with ME2. Because that would be epic fail.

Content-wise and story-wise the Renegade clearly suffers compared to Paragon and whoever clames otherwise clearly hasn't played both sides.

Really? A Paragon doesn't get any extra missions. Outside of a few emails, the only people who pop up exclusively for a Paragon is Fist (who tells you to ****** off), The Rachni Queen Spokes Asari, Rana, and Shiala. 

Really, unless you're playing 100% Renegade, you're not missing out on anything.

[luakel]

Undertone wrote...

Content-wise and story-wise the Renegade clearly suffers compared to Paragon and whoever clames otherwise clearly hasn't played both sides.

Well, that's kinda inevitable, seeing as the Paragon path usually results in more people alive. If you killed off the rachni, then yeah, you're not going to get a rachni envoy talking to you on Illium. If you let the council die, they're not going to talk to you either. I don't know how you're going to really equalize it in this case. Yeah, renegades will get less content, but if the decision was between leaving someone alive or killing them (as so many choices seem to be), there's obviously going to be a reappearance by that person for one of those choices. Unless you mean content other than the cameos and emails paragons got that renegades didn't.

I don't know how it affects the story... both paragons and renegades are playing the same plot aside from a few comments by NPCs based on what you did in ME1. Not like any of those cameos really help the plot.

[Urazz]

Dave of Canada wrote...

luakel wrote...

I agree with all your points except for this... I want (and completely expect) the council to be just as stubborn as ever up until the moment I have to save them from a Reaper for the second time. Maybe even after that; this is a group of people that has been proven wrong by Shepard multiple times, literally owes their life to Shepard's personal decision, has no evidence against what Shepard has told them, etc. They're a bunch of blind, stubborn morons.

I'm actually fairly certain the Council believes Shepard, they just wouldn't support Shepard's accusations because it would cause mass panic and that's actually something you'd want to avoid at a moment of crisis.

We already know the Salarians are working against the Reapers (from Mordin).

Then they should've told Shepard they believe him/her but don't want the galaxy to know so as to avoid a mass panic would've made more sense then.  The salarians themselves aren't working against the reapers, it's the STG, which is a part of the reapers.  It wouldn't surprise me if the Salarian government itself is naieve to this and follows the council itself.

The turians themselves probably believe in the reapers based on the tech they got from Soveriegn for the thanix cannon but probably think they sre stuck in dark space.

We got no clue on what the Asari are doing or know about the reapers though.

Modifié par Urazz, 27 novembre 2010 - 05:12 .

[luakel]

Urazz wrote...

Then they should've told Shepard they believe him/her but don't want the galaxy to know so as to avoid a mass panic would've made more sense then.  The salarians themselves aren't working against the reapers, it's the STG, which is a part of the reapers.  It wouldn't surprise me if the Salarian government itself is naieve to this and follows the council itself.

The turians themselves probably believe in the reapers based on the tech they got from Soveriegn for the thanix cannon but probably think they sre stuck in dark space.

We got no clue on what the Asari are doing or know about the reapers though.

Well, I could understand the three aliens on the council being reluctant to tell Shepard about how things are being done, based on his Cerberus affiliation, but Anderson doesn't mention Reaper preparations either and acts utterly stonewalled. Maybe he's leery of Cerberus, but you'd think there would be at least a hint of Shepard not being on his own from him, instead of making it seem like the Council are as blind as ever. Add that to the fact that there's no war preparation at all, and that we see no Council response to the human abductions, and I'd be very suprised if they're actually preparing for the Reapers instead of just maintaining the status quo.

I definitely agree that the individual governments are doing things though... I bet we'll run into the STG at some point in ME3, and possibly an asari/turian special ops team as well. I remember reading somewhere that the quarians were completely aware of the reapers at this point (which makes sense given their history with the geth), but I forget where. It's just that the council's way too public and politically oriented to admit to the Reaper threat, whether to the galaxy or even to themselves.

[Arijharn]

Look, even if the Renegade kills miscellaneous Joes because he's a massive jerkwad that shouldn't mean he should get less content, it should mean he gets different content. Okay awesome, he can't have a group hug with the Rachni queen, but he should have some other mission somewhere that opens up to him because he's a ruthless bastard and people want to be on his side because they sure as hell don't want to not be on his side.

Epic777 wrote...

But that leads to only a renegade solution, only a renegade player would have a full set of survivors for me3.

And how is that any different to someone like Rio who in this very thread who has essentially said: 'tough' when we said that as Renegades we want both sides of this equation to have their consequences? Your explicit comment to Zaeed at the time was 'screw you' so of course you shouldn't have his loyalty... this is my entire point. The fact that the Renegades said 'sure' to Zaeed and went along with his demands and sacrificed those workers so Zaeed could get his revenge completely and utterly cheapens your decision in the first place.



What's even the point of having decisions in a game if the game doesn't penalize (or reward) you if the end result is the same, why not just make it completely linear with some dialogue and then just let players at it if your decisions don't mean anything.



Why should the Paragons throw the potential loyalty of one of his crew mates into the wind only to have his decision (and yes, when I got to that part I genuinely thought that I'd lose Zaeed's loyalty, but I decided to do so anyway) rendered entirely meaningless at the end? Honestly? It's bloody pathetic that we got away with it (sure I do it anyway because I like Zaeed, but I sorta sighed irl when I saw that I could get away with just a paragon statement in the end)