833 réponses à ce sujet

[Vorathrad]

As a Power Point presentation, it's great. As a comic, horrible. As a briefing of ME1 story, sloppy and confusing. I really shouldn't care as I'm an Xbox 360 player, but it disappoints me a bit as I'm used to far higher standards for anything coming from Bioware.



I am so informed on the ME universe and ME1 story that it wouldn't be realistic for me to judge whether a PS3 player with no previous knowledge would at least understand the story. But I know that it felt quite confusing even with all my background.



Retcons and inconsistencies discussions apart, to me at least one fault is clear: bad time distribution. Ok, conveying a 30 hour game in a 15 minute comic is extremely difficult. But one entire "page" telling how amazing Liara is and not one mention of Feros? I call that bad prioritizing (sorry if that's not the right word)



Again, I could just dismiss this as not being part of my playing experience. I just hope none of this writing style and approach to ME gets into ME3.

[Pacifien]

JamieCOTC wrote...
One thing you have to understand about comic art is that companies like Dark Horse, Marvel, DC, etc will hire artists who are "acceptable and on time" over "masters of the craft and late" every time.

Which might be fine (it's not) if we were talking about a monthly comic here, but we're talking about something that's been in the planning stages since they started working on the PS3 version, which goes back to September at least. That's a few months for an artist to think about design, layout and storytelling.

As much as I would like BioWare to learn how to use comic book design to its advantage, that's not going to happen so long as they work with Dark Horse. Franchise comic books have always been disappointing. And to work with them is completely unnecessary, as BioWare has amazing concept artists already in house. If BioWare takes the time to teach themselves how to best use cinematics in their games, they can take the time to learn how to create a decent interactive comic.

[Fiery Phoenix]

Bourne Endeavor wrote...

AuggyDoggysan wrote...

A Virmire Survivor DLC would make up for it somewhat. But only if it's well written. In other words, don't let the guy who wrote this terrible comic anywhere near it.

Apparently, Mac Walters was apart of the writing team. Yes, the same guy who wrote ME2's plot and will be writing ME3's. In other wards, don't hold your breath. Coincidently, if I recall, LotSB was not written by Walters. Probably why it was better.

Exactly my thoughts.

[axl99]

Some of us obviously haven't seen just how fast professional videogame concept artists can actually paint, or sculpt.

Mikko Kinnunen? He did environment concepts for Illium, Pragia, Purgatory, Omega, Korlus, among others. ME art director Derek Watts would say some of the preliminary concepts took just an hour or two! 

This is more than I can say for artists who have a couple weeks at a time to get pages to a colourist to breeze through for a monthly title. This is -unfortunately - the norm for comics, and it's simply unacceptable to sacrifice time for quality for an adaptation of a big property like ME. Certain areas of the script didn't let any of the art breathe and allow for actual visual storytelling, instead it points out the obvious in whatever's going on in the panel.

The art direction in the comic is completely different to the videogame. No offence to the Dark Horse art team, but what they have doesn't do the game or its concept artwork any justice. 

Modifié par axl99, 18 janvier 2011 - 06:04 .

[Babli]

Fiery Phoenix wrote...

Bourne Endeavor wrote...

AuggyDoggysan wrote...

A Virmire Survivor DLC would make up for it somewhat. But only if it's well written. In other words, don't let the guy who wrote this terrible comic anywhere near it.

Apparently, Mac Walters was apart of the writing team. Yes, the same guy who wrote ME2's plot and will be writing ME3's. In other wards, don't hold your breath. Coincidently, if I recall, LotSB was not written by Walters. Probably why it was better.

Exactly my thoughts.

Mine too.:/

[TMA LIVE]

Pacifien wrote...

JamieCOTC wrote...
One thing you have to understand about comic art is that companies like Dark Horse, Marvel, DC, etc will hire artists who are "acceptable and on time" over "masters of the craft and late" every time.

Which might be fine (it's not) if we were talking about a monthly comic here, but we're talking about something that's been in the planning stages since they started working on the PS3 version, which goes back to September at least. That's a few months for an artist to think about design, layout and storytelling.

As much as I would like BioWare to learn how to use comic book design to its advantage, that's not going to happen so long as they work with Dark Horse. Franchise comic books have always been disappointing. And to work with them is completely unnecessary, as BioWare has amazing concept artists already in house. If BioWare takes the time to teach themselves how to best use cinematics in their games, they can take the time to learn how to create a decent interactive comic.

Technically, they already know what to do. Just look at Mass Effect Galaxy, since that was all artwork.

[Victor Ferreira]

Fiery Phoenix wrote...

Bourne Endeavor wrote...

AuggyDoggysan wrote...

A Virmire Survivor DLC would make up for it somewhat. But only if it's well written. In other words, don't let the guy who wrote this terrible comic anywhere near it.

Apparently, Mac Walters was apart of the writing team. Yes, the same guy who wrote ME2's plot and will be writing ME3's. In other wards, don't hold your breath. Coincidently, if I recall, LotSB was not written by Walters. Probably why it was better.

Exactly my thoughts.

Actually, he kinda was involved with LotSB. Weekes wrote the Liara bits and banter, Jay Watamaniuk handled Illium and Vasir, and Sylvia Feketetuky did the Shadow Broker part. Walters was the one supervising the whole thing (aka doing what the Lead Writer does).

Source

Honestly, Mac Walters may be guilty of a lot of things - especially the disconnect between the two games, and probably this comic, too -, but I think people just think he just picked up the series Kevin J. Anderson-style. He was always part of the writing team. Not only that, he wrote two of the most popular characters in the game, one who came back as a party member, and the other whose survival will probably count for something in the last game. To imply he's just a hack who picked up and trashed Drew's and the other writers' vision is oversimplifying things.

[Siansonea]

I don't know why they didn't just do a "comic" with screenshots from ME1. They could have been newly rendered and shown from different angles, to appease those Microsoft jerks, but BioWare does own the visual design of the ME universe and characters.

[EpicBoot2daFace]

JamieCOTC wrote...

EpicBoot2daFace wrote...

Jacen987 wrote...

Now that i actually get a second look at it,its not to bad.I guess thats partly thanks to Hales voice.I mean Meer acting was never troubled me,but here it really sucked.This and it was the first side by side comparison of the two for me,and she definitely outguns him on every level, making even some of the ****ty dialog seem good.

I have to disagree. I think she makes everything sound overly dramatic.

I have to disagree slightly.  I thought Meer was pretty good and his inflections were dead on.  I could listen to Hale read the phone book, but neither could overcome the bad writing, however. 

Yeah, the writing wasn't the best, but I still think Meer did a better job here. He sounded more authentic.

[bjdbwea]

It has to be someone's fault. I mean, there has to be some explanation why the story of ME 2 is so much worse than in ME 1, and also why this comic is so bad. Time should not really be the issue, because as someone else said, they had months to write and draw this comic. And even though time constraints obviously reduced the amount and scope of what could possibly implemented, of course it would still easily have been possible to write a better story. Given that LotSB has an amazing story, I would say that it's quite likely that the difference are the people responsible for the writing.

[EpicBoot2daFace]

LotSB is not a full game. Whole different ball game.

[Bourne Endeavor]

Victor Ferreira wrote...

Fiery Phoenix wrote...

Bourne Endeavor wrote...

AuggyDoggysan wrote...

A Virmire Survivor DLC would make up for it somewhat. But only if it's well written. In other words, don't let the guy who wrote this terrible comic anywhere near it.

Apparently, Mac Walters was apart of the writing team. Yes, the same guy who wrote ME2's plot and will be writing ME3's. In other wards, don't hold your breath. Coincidently, if I recall, LotSB was not written by Walters. Probably why it was better.

Exactly my thoughts.

Actually, he kinda was involved with LotSB. Weekes wrote the Liara bits and banter, Jay Watamaniuk handled Illium and Vasir, and Sylvia Feketetuky did the Shadow Broker part. Walters was the one supervising the whole thing (aka doing what the Lead Writer does).

Source

Honestly, Mac Walters may be guilty of a lot of things - especially the disconnect between the two games, and probably this comic, too -, but I think people just think he just picked up the series Kevin J. Anderson-style. He was always part of the writing team. Not only that, he wrote two of the most popular characters in the game, one who came back as a party member, and the other whose survival will probably count for something in the last game. To imply he's just a hack who picked up and trashed Drew's and the other writers' vision is oversimplifying things.

That is this problem though. Evidently, by your own admission, Walters did not write LotSB. Overseeing does not equate to writing after all. He is however responsible for ME2's main plot. While we may not be certain of the extent. We can determine it would be a sizable amount. The difference between the two is astonishing; night and day even. LotSB may not be perfect but it clearly has a cohesive plot, which was nonexistence in ME2.

Obviously Walters can write, we have seen evidence of this in the character missions. So either his abilities are limited to episodic story arcs or he was not writing by himself. This comic only further leads to speculation. If it is his work, ME3's future has an overcast lingering. If he merely supervised, then hire a better editor. In the case of the latter, I would fault him less given it is plausible BioWare simply did not care about the comic and rushed it. The former well...

[didymos1120]

Victor Ferreira wrote...

Honestly, Mac Walters may be guilty of a lot of things - especially the disconnect between the two games, and probably this comic, too -, but I think people just think he just picked up the series Kevin J. Anderson-style.

It's not even that clear cut.  Here's how ME2 came together (from an interview with Walters):

Well speaking of that, you know the second game and third game are being written together, whereas the first game was sort of written off by itself. Do you ...

Ah, not quite. That's not really true with the way we handle that sort of thing. Like, I mean we had, essentially, with the first one we said, "Here's the art for the three games." Now obviously what's in Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 wasn't really fleshed out. We said, "We know basically where we want to go with it." But we wrote Mass Effect 1 with that in mind. You know, we said, "Here's where we want it to go." If you ask Casey Hudson, the producer, he knew where he wanted Mass Effect 3 to eventually end up. Obviously we had [Mass Effect 1] behind us. We still don't know where [Mass Effect 3's] going to go, and maybe it's shifting and changing a little bit based on where you want to be flexible too. But we still wrote it within that framework.

and:

Well what is the actual process when you set about writing a game like this. Do you just sit down in your room at a typewriter and bang out the overall story for Mass Effect? You have a lot of planning meetings? How does it work?

So, generally what happens is that early in the projects -- so early Mass Effect 1 or early Mass Effect 2 -- myself, Lead Designer, Preston Watamaniuk and then Casey Hudson, the producer, we'll sit down and we'll work on the big picture stuff. What's the art? Where do we want Shepard to start? Where do we want him to go? What are the obstacles that he's going to face? And we'll bash that around for a bit and then I'll take that back to the writing team and get feedback, and they get to contribute to it as well. But once that gets hammered down, then we start looking at "What are the different levels? What are the smaller areas?" And a lot of times that's when each individual writer starts. You've got control over that level, make it work. And then overall I'm just making sure that it all fits a theme.

So if you're just dead set on finding someone to blame for ME2, who is that exactly?  Hudson?  Walters?  Watamaniuk? All those other writers who threw in their two cents on that intitial outline of the game?  All of them?  Were things in the story subsequently changed after the design and art people started making their contributions?  If so, is it their fault too?

Modifié par didymos1120, 18 janvier 2011 - 07:14 .

[CroGamer002]

didymos1120 wrote...

Victor Ferreira wrote...

Honestly, Mac Walters may be guilty of a lot of things - especially the disconnect between the two games, and probably this comic, too -, but I think people just think he just picked up the series Kevin J. Anderson-style.

It's not even that clear cut.  Here's how ME2 came together (from an interview with Walters):

Well speaking of that, you know the second game and third game are being written together, whereas the first game was sort of written off by itself. Do you ...

Ah, not quite. That's not really true with the way we handle that sort of thing. Like, I mean we had, essentially, with the first one we said, "Here's the art for the three games." Now obviously what's in Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 wasn't really fleshed out. We said, "We know basically where we want to go with it." But we wrote Mass Effect 1 with that in mind. You know, we said, "Here's where we want it to go." If you ask Casey Hudson, the producer, he knew where he wanted Mass Effect 3 to eventually end up. Obviously we had [Mass Effect 1] behind us. We still don't know where [Mass Effect 3's] going to go, and maybe it's shifting and changing a little bit based on where you want to be flexible too. But we still wrote it within that framework.

and:

Well what is the actual process when you set about writing a game like this. Do you just sit down in your room at a typewriter and bang out the overall story for Mass Effect? You have a lot of planning meetings? How does it work?

So, generally what happens is that early in the projects -- so early Mass Effect 1 or early Mass Effect 2 -- myself, Lead Designer, Preston Watamaniuk and then Casey Hudson, the producer, we'll sit down and we'll work on the big picture stuff. What's the art? Where do we want Shepard to start? Where do we want him to go? What are the obstacles that he's going to face? And we'll bash that around for a bit and then I'll take that back to the writing team and get feedback, and they get to contribute to it as well. But once that gets hammered down, then we start looking at "What are the different levels? What are the smaller areas?" And a lot of times that's when each individual writer starts. You've got control over that level, make it work. And then overall I'm just making sure that it all fits a theme.

So if you're just dead set on finding someone to blame for ME2, who is that exactly?  Hudson?  Walters?  Watamaniuk? All those other writers who threw in their two cents on that intitial outline of the game?  All of them?  Were things in the story subsequently changed after the design and art people started making their contributions?  If so, is it their fault too?

Agreed.


P.S.
Still miss your old avatar.

[Victor Ferreira]

See, I think the whole idea of putting it in comic format with only Shepard as the point of view character was wrong. For one I don't think comics work that well with a media like video games, especially since the whole "illusion of movement" has to be acted out. And with only Shepard's voice, you lose the other characters'. We have to be told things about your squadmates, not let them come out on their own.



Again, if they did something like "The Story So Far" in the demo, with footage of the first game showing us why Wrex is awesome and shouldn't die, or what are the LIs personalities and who to leave on Virmire brings a lot more weight than just the ramblings of a wo/man just about to be cooked by a planet's atmosphere. I think the narration would be nice, but more as a complement than anything else.



Let's be fair: I hardly think a 2 hour movie of Mass Effect can be done and not make the story seem rushed, so a 15 minute prologue would be underwhelming no matter what. But it could have been made in a much better fashion.



As for ME2, I guess didymos post nails it.

[bjdbwea]

didymos1120 wrote...

So if you're just dead set on finding someone to blame for ME2, who is that exactly?  Hudson?  Walters?  Watamaniuk? All those other writers who threw in their two cents on that intitial outline of the game?  All of them?  Were things in the story subsequently changed after the design and art people started making their contributions?  If so, is it their fault too?

That's BioWare's task to find out. And while it would be nice to learn who exactly was responsible, it's not really our business. What does matter to us as the customers is that the writing in ME 2 (and now again in this comic) isn't up to the standards that could be expected from BioWare. We can also clearly recognize that whoever wrote LotSB did a much better job. So BioWare would be clever to try and find out what the reasons were for these outcomes, and try to make sure that the writing for ME 3 will be of higher quality.

Modifié par bjdbwea, 18 janvier 2011 - 08:03 .

[EpicBoot2daFace]

bjdbwea wrote...

didymos1120 wrote...

So if you're just dead set on finding someone to blame for ME2, who is that exactly?  Hudson?  Walters?  Watamaniuk? All those other writers who threw in their two cents on that intitial outline of the game?  All of them?  Were things in the story subsequently changed after the design and art people started making their contributions?  If so, is it their fault too?

That's BioWare's task to find out. And while it would be nice to learn who exactly was responsible, it's not really our business. What does matter to us as the customers is that the writing in ME 2 (and now again in this comic) aren't up to the standards that could be expected from BioWare. We can also clearly recognize that whoever wrote LotSB did a much better job. So BioWare would be clever to try and find out what the reasons were for these outcomes, and try to make sure that the writing for ME 3 will be of higher quality.

Sounds reasonable.

[ZLurps]

bjdbwea wrote...

It has to be someone's fault. I mean, there has to be some explanation why the story of ME 2 is so much worse than in ME 1, and also why this comic is so bad. Time should not really be the issue, because as someone else said, they had months to write and draw this comic. And even though time constraints obviously reduced the amount and scope of what could possibly implemented, of course it would still easily have been possible to write a better story. Given that LotSB has an amazing story, I would say that it's quite likely that the difference are the people responsible for the writing.

For the comic itself, I guess they just wanted to make introduction to ME universe to be as easy as possible for PS players. For that purpose I guess it suits the purpose very well.

For outsourcing production of comic to Dark Horse. Doesn't EA and Dark Horse have a deal for Old Republic comic as well? Maybe there are just economical reasons and/or logistical reasons behind their decision to use Dark Horse.

Modifié par ZLurps, 18 janvier 2011 - 07:54 .

[tonnactus]

Lol.That made me laugh and sad at the same time.

[didymos1120]

bjdbwea wrote...

didymos1120 wrote...

So if you're just dead set on finding someone to blame for ME2, who is that exactly?  Hudson?  Walters?  Watamaniuk? All those other writers who threw in their two cents on that intitial outline of the game?  All of them?  Were things in the story subsequently changed after the design and art people started making their contributions?  If so, is it their fault too?

That's BioWare's task to find out. And while it would be nice to learn who exactly was responsible, it's not really our business.

And yet people continually go "IT WAS WALTERS!"  And, you're right: it's not our problem.  Precisely why I asked those questions: to point out how foolish is the attempt to mark out some one single person as THE problem.  If that'd be anybody, it'd be Casey Hudson, but even that's a ridiculous oversimplification. It just doesn't work like that.  The game's not a novel or a short story, banged out by one person at a keyboard.  It's the product of so many different hands and external and internal factors that trying to assign blame for all but the most trivial of elements is a sucker's game.  There are more useful things to discuss.

Modifié par didymos1120, 18 janvier 2011 - 08:28 .

[Lvl20DM]

These games are written by committee, which makes them more like most TV shows than movies or books. Beyond that, technical limitations can suddenly cut sections of the game out - balancing that would be very difficult.

That said, I think the writing was better in ME2 than in 1. The story was less interesting, maybe. ME2 is also more episodic, and needs to keep the story in a holding pattern until ME3. Still, stronger characters and better dialogue, imo.

The comic is strangely inconsistent, but accomplishes what it was made to do in a workman-like manner. <shrug> I wouldn't view any if this as canon, or anything.

[AuggyDoggysan]

LiamN7 wrote...

Babyblue wrote...

LiamN7 wrote...

So question for bioware.
Do you go out of your way to ****** off Ash and Kaidan fans or has it just become second nature after doing it for so long ?

I agree with this statement. But I dont think Bioware will pay any  attention to it..

I expect they will ignore it. But even if you think someone wont pay attention, sometimes you just gotta ask the frelling question. : )

''Why is it that whenever someone says with all due respect, they really mean kiss my ass?"
"With all due respect, bioware."
 

[Nerevar-as]

ZLurps wrote...

For outsourcing production of comic to Dark Horse. Doesn't EA and Dark Horse have a deal for Old Republic comic as well? Maybe there are just economical reasons and/or logistical reasons behind their decision to use Dark Horse.

More likely it´s part of their deal with Lucasarts. Sad thing is DH has made some really good comics from Aliens (some of the early series, and the first Aliens vs Predator), Predator, and SW series have been quite good for some years. Yet ME has been average at best. Art doesn´t fit the universe IMHO, and JJM can do much better than that.

[bjdbwea]

didymos1120 wrote...

And yet people continually go "IT WAS WALTERS!"  And, you're right: it's not our problem.  Precisely why I asked those questions: to point out how foolish is the attempt to mark out some one single person as THE problem.  If that'd be anybody, it'd be Casey Hudson, but even that's a ridiculous oversimplification. It just doesn't work like that. The game's not a novel or a short story, banged out by one person at a keyboard.  It's the product of so many different hands and external and internal factors that trying to assign blame for all but the most trivial of elements is a sucker's game.  There are more useful things to discuss.

I disagree. The story is in my opinion the most important element in video game, certainly in a video game such as this. And the writing in the main story of ME 2 doesn't even get the most trivial of elements right. It starts with the killing of the protagonist without ever mentioning it again or allowing him to reflect on that after the intro, and it ends with a terrible and ridiculous idea of the last boss enemy. And between that it's rarely much better. Only some scenes during the companion quests are written as well as one could expect from BioWare. Mordin's loyalty mission for example is a fine example of really good writing. As you said, different people write these different things, but in the end, the name BioWare is written on the box, so they should try to release a coherent product instead of a collection of short stories of varying quality.

Modifié par bjdbwea, 18 janvier 2011 - 09:34 .