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[Pwner1323]

GodWood wrote...

Pwner1323 wrote...

Crimmsonwind wrote...

Pwner1323 wrote...
Something I've learned in these Forums: ME fans are a bacstabbing bunch. They complain about everything and always are quick to discredit others instead of simply disagreeing with them.

I loved ME1 and 2 to the point of them being my 2 favorite games ever (until ME3 comes ot of course).

They're some of my favorite, most beloved games as well. That doesn't mean they're perfect.

But not to the point of making them look like utter **** storytelling like this thread does (with all due respect of course).

ME2 has a lot of plot issues and flaws.
How does pointing them out make one a backstabber?

That's not what I meant. I was referring to others I've seen. I should have said that. Anyway, there are some real extremists in these forums...

[Crimmsonwind]

Pwner1323 wrote...

Crimsonwind, you obviously did not read one of my earlier posts. I've been here longer then you in fact and ME fans complain about EVERYTHING. Even why the Normandy has cerberus logos on it. Really, just some real dumb stuff.

How do you know I haven't been here just as long as you? My BioBoards account didn't exactly carry over to BSN. My point is, it's not JUST ME fans. It's humanity in general that complains. Forgive me for not hanging on your every words and dying to read every one of your posts. Also, you spelled my already incorrectly-spelled name wrong. There's two ms.

[Nightwriter]

Pwner1323 wrote...

That's not what I meant. I was referring to others I've seen. I should have said that. Anyway, there are some real extremists in these forums...

There are. Let's not let them ruin another discussion.

Phaedon wrote...

The SM? No. Saying that the story of the game starts in the final 45
minutes is wrong. Now, if you say that ME2's story was 'Stopping the
Collectors', then that's correct, and I don't see what's wrong with it.
Both games have, what, around 5 story based missions? If you consider
them the main event in both games, then I don't see how you were
disappointed by ME2's plot.

A story is told by a series of events that act as turning points. Once a turning point is revealed on the path, the audience waits to reach that turning point so that more of the story can be unlocked, and they can ask
"okay, what happens next?"

In ME2, the final - and only - turning point is revealed to us ten minutes into the game. Everything is simply preparation for that turning point. I want to reach it so I can find out what happens next, but there is no what happens next; that's the game. Compare this to ME1, which had several turning points. We went on a journey.

[Phaedon]

Oh, and to make this clear, I don't say that ME2 wasn't a recruitment game. ME1 was one too, but not that much. But it was not an exclusively recruitment game. I have concluded that it had as much story as ME1 had, and I'd love to be proven wrong.

[Crimmsonwind]

ME2 was like a bridge between ME1 and ME3, albeit a very enjoyable bridge. Yes, I know, obviously it's a bridge it's the game in the middle. I just felt like it was more of a set up for ME3. I can't really find the words to describe what I'm trying to say.

Modifié par Crimmsonwind, 09 janvier 2011 - 04:34 .

[Phaedon]

Nightwriter wrote...
In ME2, the final - and only - turning point is revealed to us ten minutes into the game. Everything is simply preparation for that turning point. I want to reach it so I can find out what happens next, but there is no what happens next; that's the game. Compare this to ME1, which had several turning points. We went on a journey. 

How so? Don't you consider Horizon a turning point? Or the first colony where you find out who is abducting the colonists? Or the ship where the true nature of the Collectors is revealed?

[Fiery Phoenix]

Crimmsonwind wrote...

ME2 was like a bridge between ME1 and ME3, albeit a very enjoyable bridge. Yes, I know, obviously it's a bridge it's the game in the middle. I just felt like it was more of a set up for ME3. I can't really find the words to describe what I'm trying to say.

Well, it did end at exactly the same point as ME1; it might as well not have happened. LOTSB really is the one true continuation to the ongoing / overarching plot, and it had a lot of things the main game of ME2 desperately lacked.

[Lewie]

Phaedon wrote...

Nightwriter wrote...

Phaedon, ME2's story is the suicide mission. That's really the whole thing. The main event. Therefore characters only start becoming involved in the story during the suicide mission. Everything else is preparatory, and we'll never feel like events that happen in preparation of the story are part of the story, especially when those events feel so disconnected from it.

The SM? No. Saying that the story of the game starts in the final 45 minutes is wrong. Now, if you say that ME2's story was 'Stopping the Collectors', then that's correct, and I don't see what's wrong with it. Both games have, what, around 5 story based missions? If you consider them the main event in both games, then I don't see how you were disappointed by ME2's plot.

The SM was the main plot but that doesn't take away that it was a huge story from start to finish, look how much you learn about salarians, krogan, quarians, the different mercenary groups etc. In ME1 the plot was take Saren down and once that started you didn't look back but the same applies, a great story all the way through. The writers have to decide what to cram into the game so we get great characters, great combat and levels, decisive plots on loyalty missions, great writing all building up to the end. Its not without faults obviously, but the story is massive you just need to see the debates in here to know that .

[Phaedon]

Err guys, I think that you are mistaking the SM with taking down the collectors. It's one thing to prepare for it, another to take down the collectors, and another to actually do the SM.

[glacier1701]

Nightwriter wrote...

glacier1701 wrote...

 The main problem here is that while trying to make ME2 a character driven story they forgot about the importance of the MAIN character. After all the one mantra that BioWare (including Casey) has thrown at us time and time again is that the whole trilogy is SHEPARD's story - the story of the first Human Specter. Yet in ME2 we get nothing that explores or expands on any of Shepard's character. By now we've said all we have to on how its possible to have had the background of losing a unit on Akuze due to Cerberus but not being able to say anything about it, how you've been dead for 2 years and so that means you couldnt contact people yet cant tell the VS on Horizon that or even discuss the whole concept of being dead and now alive. ME2 basically threw out Shepard and tried to substitute all these other characters. That is where the critism about no story comes from in that the MOST IMPORTANT CHARACTER in ME2 was ignored. And since this is the PLAYER you've immediately relegated the player to someone along for the ride and not the primary instigator for the story and thus alienated them from the game. Is it any wonder that there is that critisism about there being no story? 

 We know that Casey is really the master of doubletalk and we've had many examples of this from his interviews. The one trait that any good game developer should have is to be able to see things from the PLAYER POINT OF VIEW. Casey seems incapable of doing that and thus has tried to turn critisism of ME2 by the players as being the players fault and not that of those working on the game. Mistakes can be made and admitting to them would not make us unhappy. In other words he seems incapable of admitting to problems. Personally I would almost say that for anyone who was thinking about getting into the game developing business Casey could be the example of the person you would NOT want as your boss. NOTE: I am saying ALMOST - lets see what comes up in the next few months from Casey before making any final determination on that side.

 In summary while using a character driven story is not a bad idea it was flawed as it was shown in ME2 as the most important character, Shepard, was completely left out. Casey seems not to recognise that and how players feel about how that leads to them being pushed off to the side. He compounds that by blaming players for a mistake made by BioWare whereas admitting to a mistake would have given us all much greater hope of seeing an absolutely fantastic game in ME3.

... I don't know, glacier.

While the lack of focus on Shepard is a problem, I don't think it's ME2's main problem. Its main problem seemed, to me, that its character-focused story didn't focus on characters. It did not tie them together, work their identities and backgrounds into the plot, make them interact, or make them come together as a team.

I also think you're being unfair toward Casey. He's just doing his job, and he's not criticizing fans in any way here. It is his responsibility to say "we made a good game", and I'd love him as my boss - he's always keeping up on fan feedback and he makes reasonable arguments in this article.

 I think we'll need to agree to disagree here. I am sure that you know by now that I also play EvE which is a hradcore science fiction MMO (and have been doing so for OVER 6 years). CCP, the company that develops EvE, is like any other company. It is out to make money and to produce the best game(s) it can and to be the leader in the field. It also makes mistakes. What it has also done is that it has admitted to the mistakes and 2010 saw them make the biggest mistake in their corporate history and the CEO publically admitted to that fact. Quite literally CCP was telling us how great EvE was and bringing out stats to show us players and we players voted our displeasure by cancelling subscriptions and not participating in major new portions of the game. While things are still not where we players would like much of the goodwill that CCP lost by their actions has been regained by them admitting to mistakes and showing what the action to avoid them in the future would be. Quite simply put the players are not adverse to the fact that CCP is in the business to make money nor that they have their vision of what they want for EvE yet ignoring customers or trying to blame them for problems is NOT the way to suceed.

 This is where I feel BioWare is going wrong. We are aware that BioWare has to make money to survive and that what they do is their perogative. Yet ignoring the customer or blaming the customer for faults that occur at the company is not the way to sucess. Casey continually does this and while it has not yet had a MAJOR effect it has had an effect in so far as other PR releases and interviews do show that ME2 did not reach the figures that they had hoped it would. This is not saying that ME2 did not make a lot of money but I suspect that internally expectations of the audience that had been hoped would be attracted to ME2 did not materialise and in part due to fluffing off of many ME1 fans who pushed out a negative picture of the way things might go in the ME universe.

 We do know that BioWare WANTS to produce a game (or games) that sell 10 million units (or higher). ME2 looks like it was their best attempt to date at doing that yet it is still far short of that 10 million figure. Yet what we get is that criticism of the game by players is, in the eyes of Casey, due to the players not playing the game right or do not understand what was attempted. As you yourself have said Nightwriter, it does feel a bit insulting to be told that somehow the problems (if we think they exist) are due to how WE play the game and not due to a problem with the game. After 40 years of playing games and 20 years of playing computer games I am not exactly unaware of what is a fault of my gameplay style and what is a fault of the game itself. So yes I think that there is justification to say that Casey is somewhat at fault for some (not all by any means) of the problems with ME2. And yes it is his responsibility to admit to both good points in the game and to those parts which have not played well with the customers of the product.

Modifié par glacier1701, 09 janvier 2011 - 04:55 .

[Badpie]

Pwner1323 wrote...

Crimsonwind, you obviously did not read one of my earlier posts. I've been here longer then you in fact and ME fans complain about EVERYTHING. Even why the Normandy has cerberus logos on it. Really, just some real dumb stuff.

I complain when there are things I don't like.  There are awesome things about this game, but that's not what this thread is about.

The writing was sub par.
The characters weren't integrated into the story properly.
Shepard was a robot.

These are all criticisms that people are allowed to have.  I'm not gonna sit around and pat Bioware on the back just because they're Bioware.  There is no such thing as the perfect game and people who claim that they loved absolutely every single thing 100% about this game are blinded by fanboyism.  Simple as that.

[Mr.House]

No I do not Night. I only liked five out of the 12 for one. There was hardly any squad interaction with each other. Nothing pushed the overall story at all(excluding LotSB) Plus not to mention Ash/Kai/Liara(before LotSB) got such crappy treatment some people don't even care for the game, hell depending on my Shepard I can sometimes hate ME2.

The point of the second chapter in a trilogy is to advance the overall plot and bring in a huge revelation. ME2 did not do anything at all, all it did was introduce a crapload of characters, most I don't care for. Plus the Suicide mission, the thing Bioware kept on marketing was a huge letdown.

And then there is the Lazarus project <_<

Modifié par Mr.House, 09 janvier 2011 - 04:59 .

[Nightwriter]

Phaedon wrote...

Nightwriter wrote...
In ME2, the final - and only - turning point is revealed to us ten minutes into the game. Everything is simply preparation for that turning point. I want to reach it so I can find out what happens next, but there is no what happens next; that's the game. Compare this to ME1, which had several turning points. We went on a journey.

How so? Don't you consider Horizon a turning point? Or the first colony where you find out who is abducting the colonists? Or the ship where the true nature of the Collectors is revealed?

I'm actually glad you said this. The answer is "no".

Ultimately, Horizon and the Collector ship and such do not change the mission, and this is why I don't consider them turning points. The prerogative is still the same: build the team, beat the Collectors. Even the derelict Reaper, which is probably the most important plot mission because of the IFF, does not change the goal or main mission in any way. Plot points must change the story.

[Gibb_Shepard]

Phaedon wrote...

Oh, and to make this clear, I don't say that ME2 wasn't a recruitment game. ME1 was one too, but not that much. But it was not an exclusively recruitment game. I have concluded that it had as much story as ME1 had, and I'd love to be proven wrong.

Okay, this will be a long post, i think.

First, ME2 was a recruitment game. The whole basis of the game was to recruit people for a suicide mission. The point was to recruit the most deadly and intelligent life forms to take on a seemingly impossible task. The whole story of the game revolved around recruiting these people, the game could not be completed without recruiting these people. With ME1, recruitment was not at all necessary, and was no part of the overarching plot. 12 recruitment missions were in ME2. These were specific missions meant for specific recruits. There were no such missions in ME1, they were only options, side quests if you will. Now don't say Liara T'soni. Liara was not intended to be recruited onto the team, she was sought after for information. Shepard never intended her to be part of the crew, so the Therum mission was not a recruitment mission.

Now to summarize.
-In ME1, it was not necessary to recruit.
-It was not at all part of the overarching plot, it was not needed to recruit these individuals, purely up to you.
-In ME2, there are specific missions for 10+ individuals
-Each was NEEDED to advance the "plot". The plot of the game IS to recruit these individuals for a mission. The game cannot be finished without a large amount of recruitment.

That is why ME2 is a "recruitment" game, and ME1 is not.

Now to the story.

If you really stretch things, maybe ME1's amount of time in story missions and ME2's can come relatively close. But the substance mate, the substance. There was so much more learnt and explored in ME1's main missions, ME2's story missions were non stop "go-go-go don't stop get the **** out of there now or you'll get juiced" ALL the time.

And, ME1's was just better. With Sovereign, Saren and the whole mystery of the reapers, the story was just great. In ME2 there's the silent and completely unterrifying collectors, and Harbinger, the villain with the least amount of dialogue in all of villain history.

Now before i'm labelled an ME2 hater, i love ME2. So i kinda just pre-emptively burst your bubble.

[Phaedon]

Nightwriter wrote...
I'm actually glad you said this. The answer is "no". 

Ultimately, Horizon and the Collector ship and such do not change the mission, and this is why I don't consider them turning points. The prerogative is still the same: build the team, beat the Collectors. Even the derelict Reaper, which is probably the most important plot mission because of the IFF, does not change the goal or main mission in any way. Plot points must change the story. 

Well the examples that I posted do change the story imho, not the goal ofcourse (that doesn't happen in ME either). I guess that it's a matter of personal taste then.

Modifié par Phaedon, 09 janvier 2011 - 05:00 .

[Pwner1323]

Mr.House wrote...

No I do not Night. I only liked five out of the 12 for one. There was hardly any squad interaction with each other. Nothing pushed the overall story at all(excluding LotSB) Plus not to mention Ash/Kai/Liara(before LotSB) got such crappy treatment some people don't even care for the game, hell depending on my Shepard I can sometimes hate ME2.

The point of the second chapter in a trilogy is to advance the overall plot and bring in a huge revelation. ME2 did not do anything at all, all it did was introduce a crapload of characters, most I don't care for. Plus the Suicide mission, the thing Bioware kept on marketing was a huge letdown.

ANd then there is the Lazarus project <_<

So finding out the fate of the Protheans, what Cerberus is and the Reaper's true motives is irrelevant. Somebody does not know what the hell they are talking about.

[Mr.House]

Phaedon wrote...

Well the examples that I posted do change the story imho, not the goal ofcourse (that doesn't happen in ME either). I guess that it's a matter of personal taste then.

Virmire changes everything. You're main focus is not Saren now, that's a change in story.

[Crimmsonwind]

Pwner1323 wrote...

Mr.House wrote...

No I do not Night. I only liked five out of the 12 for one. There was hardly any squad interaction with each other. Nothing pushed the overall story at all(excluding LotSB) Plus not to mention Ash/Kai/Liara(before LotSB) got such crappy treatment some people don't even care for the game, hell depending on my Shepard I can sometimes hate ME2.

The point of the second chapter in a trilogy is to advance the overall plot and bring in a huge revelation. ME2 did not do anything at all, all it did was introduce a crapload of characters, most I don't care for. Plus the Suicide mission, the thing Bioware kept on marketing was a huge letdown.

ANd then there is the Lazarus project <_<

So finding out the fate of the Protheans, what Cerberus is and the Reaper's true motives is irrelevant. Somebody does not know what the hell they are talking about.

They weren't irrelevant. Actually, that's the problem. They were treated in-game as though they were irrelevant. We barely touched on these points. These should have been explored more, but they weren't.

[Mr.House]

Pwner1323 wrote...
So finding out the fate of the Protheans, what Cerberus is and the Reaper's true motives is irrelevant. Somebody does not know what the hell they are talking about.

Compared to the relevation in ME? The "relevations" in ME2 where poor, cheap and badly written. Plus when you already had a feeling that the Collectors where protheans that "twist" does not really hit you at all, I had a feeling so that part did nothing for me.

Plus as Crimm said, it is not even talked about.

"Oh Collectors are protheans, let's move on."

Never to be talked about again, and don't even get me started on the Terminator.

Modifié par Mr.House, 09 janvier 2011 - 05:05 .

[Gibb_Shepard]

Pwner1323 wrote...

Mr.House wrote...

No I do not Night. I only liked five out of the 12 for one. There was hardly any squad interaction with each other. Nothing pushed the overall story at all(excluding LotSB) Plus not to mention Ash/Kai/Liara(before LotSB) got such crappy treatment some people don't even care for the game, hell depending on my Shepard I can sometimes hate ME2.

The point of the second chapter in a trilogy is to advance the overall plot and bring in a huge revelation. ME2 did not do anything at all, all it did was introduce a crapload of characters, most I don't care for. Plus the Suicide mission, the thing Bioware kept on marketing was a huge letdown.

ANd then there is the Lazarus project <_<

So finding out the fate of the Protheans, what Cerberus is and the Reaper's true motives is irrelevant. Somebody does not know what the hell they are talking about.

The reveal of the protheans was so anti-climactic i didn't even care when i found out. That could have been put into ME3 so easily. We still don't know what the reapers true motives are, and we knew what Cerberus was in ME1; a Human Centric band of extremists. Nothing has changed.

[Val Seleznyov]

I don't think that the first Mass Effect's plot was especially strong. ME1's strength was the atmosphere and feeling that it generated. I think that specifically the distrust and suspicion of humanity helped to create a sense that you were playing through a grandiose Space Opera. That plus the fact that the story introduced a lot of the ME lore and essentially created this amazing universe.



The better story-moments in ME2 were the ones that expanded on the history of the ME galaxy - such as the re-purposing of the Collectors.



I remember seeing an interview on the xbox dashboard in which one of the voice actors said the game is like 24 in space, and i think that's a good summation.

[Nightwriter]

glacier1701 wrote...

 I think we'll need to agree to disagree here. I am sure that you know by now that I also play EvE which is a hradcore science fiction MMO (and have been doing so for OVER 6 years). CCP, the company that develops EvE, is like any other company. It is out to make money and to produce the best game(s) it can and to be the leader in the field. It also makes mistakes. What it has also done is that it has admitted to the mistakes and 2010 saw them make the biggest mistake in their corporate history and the CEO publically admitted to that fact. Quite literally CCP was telling us how great EvE was and bringing out stats to show us players and we players voted our displeasure by cancelling subscriptions and not participating in major new portions of the game. While things are still not where we players would like much of the goodwill that CCP lost by their actions has been regained by them admitting to mistakes and showing what the action to avoid them in the future would be. Quite simply put the players are not adverse to the fact that CCP is in the business to make money nor that they have their vision of what they want for EvE yet ignoring customers or trying to blame them for problems is NOT the way to suceed.

 This is where I feel BioWare is going wrong. We are aware that BioWare has to make money to survive and that what they do is their perogative. Yet ignoring the customer or blaming the customer for faults that occur at the company is not the way to sucess. Casey continually does this and while it has not yet had a MAJOR effect it has had an effect in so far as other PR releases and interviews do show that ME2 did not reach the figures that they had hoped it would. This is not saying that ME2 did not make a lot of money but I suspect that internally expectations of the audience that had been hoped would be attracted to ME2 did not materialise and in part due to fluffing off of many ME1 fans who pushed out a negative picture of the way things might go in the ME universe.

 We do know that BioWare WANTS to produce a game (or games) that sell 10 million units (or higher). ME2 looks like it was their best attempt to date at doing that yet it is still far short of that 10 million figure. Yet what we get is that criticism of the game by players is, in the eyes of Casey, due to the players not playing the game right or do not understand what was attempted. As you yourself have said Nightwriter, it does feel a bit insulting to be told that somehow the problems (if we think they exist) are due to how WE play the game and not due to a problem with the game. After 40 years of playing games and 20 years of playing computer games I am not exactly unaware of what is a fault of my gameplay style and what is a fault of the game itself. So yes I think that there is justification to say that Casey is somewhat at fault for some (not all by any means) of the problems with ME2. And yes it is his responsibility to admit to both good points in the game and to those parts which have not played well with the customers of the product.

You know I don't like what they did with ME2 anymore than you do. But I've always maintained that that's only my subjective opinion. How can I expect BioWare to objectively apologize for something I subjectively perceived? Much as it confounds me, there are people out there who were happy with ME2, and my opinion isn't any better than theirs. You can only apologize to a room that is unanimously unhappy. The ME fanbase isn't.

[Pwner1323]

Crimmsonwind wrote...

Pwner1323 wrote...

Mr.House wrote...

No I do not Night. I only liked five out of the 12 for one. There was hardly any squad interaction with each other. Nothing pushed the overall story at all(excluding LotSB) Plus not to mention Ash/Kai/Liara(before LotSB) got such crappy treatment some people don't even care for the game, hell depending on my Shepard I can sometimes hate ME2.

The point of the second chapter in a trilogy is to advance the overall plot and bring in a huge revelation. ME2 did not do anything at all, all it did was introduce a crapload of characters, most I don't care for. Plus the Suicide mission, the thing Bioware kept on marketing was a huge letdown.

ANd then there is the Lazarus project <_<

So finding out the fate of the Protheans, what Cerberus is and the Reaper's true motives is irrelevant. Somebody does not know what the hell they are talking about.

They weren't irrelevant. Actually, that's the problem. They were treated in-game as though they were irrelevant. We barely touched on these points. These should have been explored more, but they weren't.

First off, The Reaper's motives were introduced at the end and thus could not be elaborated just like the beacon in Illos in ME1. Cerberus is explained throught the entire game, no point in a single conversation about it. As for the Prothean's fate, after the revelation it is mentioned all over the rest of the game, specially by mordin.

[Mr.House]

We still don't know the Reapers motives at all, all we found out is that they where making a baby Reaper and that Reapers are are cyborgs. This was poorly written.



The only thing we learn after the suicide mission is the Reapers are coming...which we found out in ME :/

[Pwner1323]

Gibb_Shepard wrote...

Pwner1323 wrote...

Mr.House wrote...

No I do not Night. I only liked five out of the 12 for one. There was hardly any squad interaction with each other. Nothing pushed the overall story at all(excluding LotSB) Plus not to mention Ash/Kai/Liara(before LotSB) got such crappy treatment some people don't even care for the game, hell depending on my Shepard I can sometimes hate ME2.

The point of the second chapter in a trilogy is to advance the overall plot and bring in a huge revelation. ME2 did not do anything at all, all it did was introduce a crapload of characters, most I don't care for. Plus the Suicide mission, the thing Bioware kept on marketing was a huge letdown.

ANd then there is the Lazarus project <_<

So finding out the fate of the Protheans, what Cerberus is and the Reaper's true motives is irrelevant. Somebody does not know what the hell they are talking about.

The reveal of the protheans was so anti-climactic i didn't even care when i found out. That could have been put into ME3 so easily. We still don't know what the reapers true motives are, and we knew what Cerberus was in ME1; a Human Centric band of extremists. Nothing has changed.

Cerberus wasn't explained in ME1, what are you talking about???

The reapers want to reproduce and anhiliate everything.

You have no idea what your saying,