185 réponses à ce sujet

[Nohvarr]

RaduM wrote...

P.S. : And yes, if Bioware takes away your squadmates in ME3, they will,indeed, have made an entire game (ME2) for naught.

Depends on what they do with them, and if you can still interact with them. For example, if part of ME 3's plot has you kicking TIM out of his chair and installing Miranda in his place, I'd call that valid. You can still talk with her, do missions for her (cleaning house at Cerberus) and she provides you with gear and equipment with which to fight the reapers. Same goes for Mordin, he's really better off in the lab figuring out ways to improve your gear and chances vs. The Repears.

[Tasker]

I've said it before and i'll probably say it it again.

If you disregard ME1 and base it on it's own merits then ME2 is a good game - ( Not brilliant and probably Biowares worst game to date, but it's not complete rubbish. But then that's just my opinon and has nothing to do with this thread. )

As a sequel following on from ME1 however, ME2 is awful. The hud, the inventory and the skills systems are terrible, they have no continuity with the first game and on top of that, there's no story progression other than to try and convice people that Cerberus aren't evil, ( despite the first game doing everything to prove that they are, ) and totally changing characters personalities from the first game.

ME2 feels more like a stand alone game based in the Mass Effect universe than a follow up and chances are that anyone that hasn't played ME2 could go straight from ME1 to ME3 and not notice ME2 was missing.

Modifié par Orkboy, 23 janvier 2011 - 06:06 .

[Shotokanguy]

Lair of the Shadow Broker is part of ME2.



And if the final DLC is what I want it to be (takes place immediately after the Collector base and deals with the Council and the Alliance and whatever, to set up ME3) then the story could still be great and important for ME3.

[Lumikki]

Well ME1 did advance main story more as it was beging of the story. How ever, I could say play ME2 and then ME3 and not miss anything else than beging of the story. ME2 was more about characters, but also it open alot of more detailed information many things. Example after Mass Effect 1 what would you know about Cerberus? After ME2? Exactly, ME2 wasn't just about characters, It touched many details in Mass Effect universe too. I know alot more about Mass Effect races and universe now than after ME1.

So, saying that You could go from ME1 to ME3 without missing anything could be totally wrong, without knowing what ME3 does explain to us?

I consider ME1 as beging as what opened the what this story was all about. ME2 was more like gather your forces to work with and learn more about Mass Effect universe. I'm gonna ques that after ME3 we finally understand what this was all about and most pieces falls in places. The end of story. Beging, middle and end.

Modifié par Lumikki, 23 janvier 2011 - 06:40 .

[RaduM]

Orkboy wrote...

-snip-

As a sequel following on from ME1 however, ME2 is awful. The hud, the inventory and the skills systems are terrible, they have no continuity with the first game and on top of that, there's no story progression other than to try and convice people that Cerberus aren't evil, ( despite the first game doing everything to prove that they are, ) and totally changing characters personalities from the first game.

-snip-

Hud, inventory and skills systems are terrible ? That's an...unconventional opionion. Care to elaborate?

Also, I wouldn't classify ME2 gameplay as "a quest to prove Cerberus aren't evil" at all. I would say you gravely misunderstood what you experienced. From Jack's backstory, to the Cerberus incidents with the Quarians, to the Illusive Man willingly sending you into a Collector trap at one moment and last,but not least,the tense stand-off during the last discussion with the Illusive man. Regardless of the final decision made, Shepard and the Illusive Man do not see eye-to-eye.

Finally, character personalities being changed. Are you perhaps refering to Liara's radical change? Given she's Matriarch Benezia's daughter,I do not find this surprising at all. Liara's time aboard the Normandy,her participation in the fight against Saren and Sovereign is impossible not to have changed her.

That's she's now a badass as opposed to a vulnerable doe...  seriously, that's your gamebreaker?

"It's different from what I like,so it's ****". Yeah...

Let me tell you something.

I'm not at all enamored with the idea that Shepard has to resort to electronic thievery to get money. And really, especially in ME1, you would think SPECTRES would be,you know... funded! instead of being forced to, as Conrad Verner puts it in ME2, "poke around crates". I mean,seriously, SPECTRES have to scavange ??

Then there's the 400m weapon range limit. Present-day guns, big and small, have more range than in the 22nd Century? Rockets that move at the fraction of the speed a real-life AT rocket does?

There's a good essay waiting to be written about how classic RPG mechanics creak in ME when they meet Mister Common Sense.

But do these awkward seams make Mass Effect rubbish? Hardly.

[hawat333]

Collider wrote...

If the characters we recruited do not matter in ME3, then yes, it will probably essentially be useless.

Or more importantly if the allies/enemies you've made won't matter in ME3, then will it be useless.

[Raizo]

Well the whole entire point of ME2 was to gather the best squadmates in the Universe to stop the Collectors.

The debate on whether ME2 was really important to the trilogy all depends on how many of those squadmates come back for ME3, if you get rid everone or most of them then you really have to ask yorself what was the point of ME2 anyway. Also, since the main plot was lacking ME2 can really earn it's place in trilogy by making sure alot of your decisions from the 2nd game will have a major impact on ME3.

[Getorex]

Raizo wrote...

Well the whole entire point of ME2 was to gather the best squadmates in the Universe to stop the Collectors.
The debate on whether ME2 was really important to the trilogy all depends on how many of those squadmates come back for ME3, if you get rid everone or most of them then you really have to ask yorself what was the point of ME2 anyway. Also, since the main plot was lacking ME2 can really earn it's place in trilogy by making sure alot of your decisions from the 2nd game will have a major impact on ME3.

One thing...

ME2 is/was absolutely critical to the trilogy.  See, without ME2, the trilogy would be a...two-agy?  A double-header? 
Whatever, you can't have a trilogy without a middle part to fill in between the beginning part and the end part.  So yeah, ME2 was critical and necessary to the trilogy.

Besides all that, you needed ME2 so you could check out the bods on Jack and Miranda and even Tali.  Think about it, no ME2 no skin-tight suits up to and including being able to make out navels through the clothes (Miranda and Tali)!  That's gotta count for something.

Modifié par Getorex, 23 janvier 2011 - 08:37 .

[Talogrungi]

Impossible to say 'til we see ME3.

If everything that happened in ME2 is glossed over and unimportant then we have an obvious answer: ME2 was just filler. If the events of ME2 weigh heavily on the storyline of ME3 then it will be equally obvious that ME2 was an integral part of the plot. My instinct is on the latter; it's quite a common storytelling tool.

[Evil Johnny 666]

Not at all. Like it was already said here, it's all about your squad rather than continuing the ME story or even Shepard's - besides the dumb Shepard dying plot device, which all hapened in the beginning of the game anyway. What's more, what is highly ironic is that the whole ME2 squad was designed to be expendable. Bioware already told us they'll play minimal roles in ME3 since they can die and there's just so many of them. Then why make the game almost exclusively all about an expandable squad which will have no consequences whatsoever in ME3? Even if some survive, they can mostly all die.

Then what is left, is shallow, short missions about the collectors and deepening the universe a bit. Even if any good sequel should explore the universe that was introduced in the first outing, it has to have a good story that has a certain important impact in the series - and an interesting one too. The collectors are barely explored, we didn't progressively found out about them like ME1 would do with the geth, Saren and the Reapers, instead, everything is thrown at us, TIM already knew of everything and then we get to attack the collector base and kill a terminator reaper, when reapers are not supposed to be cybernetics - like the ghenophage wasn't supposed to alter fertility, but make stillbirths, which is of course not affecting fertility at all. There's just so many things wrong with ME2's story.

As for reboot, I do think the lack of expanding on ME1's story helps ME2 to feel like a reboot, but it doesn't do so alone. The other big factor - and essential to me - is how so many important gameplay elements were heavily altered or scrapped althogether, instead of building, improving on top of them.

Modifié par Evil Johnny 666, 23 janvier 2011 - 08:41 .

[Getorex]

Talogrungi wrote...

Impossible to say 'til we see ME3.
If everything that happened in ME2 is glossed over and unimportant then we have an obvious answer: ME2 was just filler. If the events of ME2 weigh heavily on the storyline of ME3 then it will be equally obvious that ME2 was an integral part of the plot. My instinct is on the latter; it's quite a common storytelling tool.

Your HOPE is on the latter, not your instinct.  You instinct might be to do it the way you say but that is not necessarily the way corporate HQ sees it.  They see $$ and nothing else.  If $$ means turning it into a throw-away filler, then it will be a throw-away filler.  As you say, we wont know until ME3.

Please keep in mind that ME2 was designed/written to be playable as a totally separate and independent game from ME1.  It was designed so that a newcomer could dive right in and start at ME2 and never see ME1.  That doesn't provide much of a guarantee that it will have any importance towards ME3. 

Just sayin.  Not trying to ****** in anyone's coffee, just trying to innoculate against disappointment.

Modifié par Getorex, 23 janvier 2011 - 08:48 .

[tonnactus]

Khayness wrote...

Well, a human-reaper hybrid (I refuse to call it a human-shaped Reaper, it's just silly) finishing the job of Sovereign could have been bad.

And how that reaper would do that when the keepers didnt respond to the signal anymore?

[Talogrungi]

Getorex wrote...

Talogrungi wrote...

Impossible to say 'til we see ME3.
If everything that happened in ME2 is glossed over and unimportant then we have an obvious answer: ME2 was just filler. If the events of ME2 weigh heavily on the storyline of ME3 then it will be equally obvious that ME2 was an integral part of the plot. My instinct is on the latter; it's quite a common storytelling tool.

Your HOPE is on the latter, not your instinct.  You instinct might be to do it the way you say but that is not necessarily the way corporate HQ sees it.  They see $$ and nothing else.  If $$ means turning it into a throw-away filler, then it will be a throw-away filler.  As you say, we wont know until ME3.

Please keep in mind that ME2 was designed/written to be playable as a totally separate and independent game from ME1.  It was designed so that a newcomer could dive right in and start at ME2 and never see ME1.  That doesn't provide much of a guarantee that it will have any importance towards ME3. 

Just sayin.  Not trying to ****** in anyone's coffee, just trying to innoculate against disappointment.

Hmm. Nope, I'd definately say that instinct was accurate. Hope too though, no doubt.

I'm a huge fan of literature, you see. I've read a lot (and I do mean a lot) of books including many trilogies, quadrilogies, etc and am very familiar with how narratives flow when they are designed from the get-go to be an expanded story spanning multiple books.

Knowing that the Mass Effect series is professionally written, my immediate thought is that it will follow a similar pattern. But yeah, it's pretty useless to speculate 'til ME3 hits 'cos it's all just conjecture.

[Getorex]

Talogrungi wrote...

Getorex wrote...

Talogrungi wrote...

Impossible to say 'til we see ME3.
If everything that happened in ME2 is glossed over and unimportant then we have an obvious answer: ME2 was just filler. If the events of ME2 weigh heavily on the storyline of ME3 then it will be equally obvious that ME2 was an integral part of the plot. My instinct is on the latter; it's quite a common storytelling tool.

Your HOPE is on the latter, not your instinct.  You instinct might be to do it the way you say but that is not necessarily the way corporate HQ sees it.  They see $$ and nothing else.  If $$ means turning it into a throw-away filler, then it will be a throw-away filler.  As you say, we wont know until ME3.

Please keep in mind that ME2 was designed/written to be playable as a totally separate and independent game from ME1.  It was designed so that a newcomer could dive right in and start at ME2 and never see ME1.  That doesn't provide much of a guarantee that it will have any importance towards ME3. 

Just sayin.  Not trying to ****** in anyone's coffee, just trying to innoculate against disappointment.

Hmm. Nope, I'd definately say that instinct was accurate. Hope too though, no doubt.

I'm a huge fan of literature, you see. I've read a lot (and I do mean a lot) of books including many trilogies, quadrilogies, etc and am very familiar with how narratives flow when they are designed from the get-go to be an expanded story spanning multiple books.

Knowing that the Mass Effect series is professionally written, my immediate thought is that it will follow a similar pattern. But yeah, it's pretty useless to speculate 'til ME3 hits 'cos it's all just conjecture.

Where is the evidence of it being "professionally written"?  It is a video game written by video game designers, not professional authors.  This wasn't written by Neal Stephenson or Greg Benford.  Are all the other role-playing games "professionally written"?  Dragon Age?  All the rest? 

Now, I was delighted by ME1.  I thought it was a very good story fleshed out by a very good game.  I enjoyed playing ME2 but the story wasn't anywhere near the quality or depth of that of ME1.  It was also written as a (practically) standalone game quite apart from ME1 (so said the company itself).  The fact that one could jump right into ME2 without even knowing about ME1 BY DESIGN tells a lot about the story and its depth and quality in ME2. 

I hope that ME3 is more in the vein of ME1 but then again, these are game designers, not professional authors.

I say this as someone with some distance between being caught up in the game (and being in some way invested in it) and being able to view it more objectively (I haven't played it for months...how many times can you really play it for Cthulhu's sake?  After a mere handful you have essentially seen all there is to see - there's no mysteries still waiting to be uncovered). 

Just spent more time playing Modern Warfare and Sniper.  Getting into something else clears the pallette and unclouds the mind. 

Modifié par Getorex, 23 janvier 2011 - 09:10 .

[Khayness]

tonnactus wrote...

And how that reaper would do that when the keepers didnt respond to the signal anymore?

By coming up with something like Sovereign did. Did you play ME1?

He didn't lurked around for ages, contacted the Geth, indoctrinated all those people and attacked the Citadel just for the lulz.

Modifié par Khayness, 23 janvier 2011 - 09:10 .

[Evil Johnny 666]

What the hell dude? You question someone's instincts? You know what, his instincts could be wrong. They could be right. They are HIS instincts. I suggest you check up the definition...

[Evil Johnny 666]

Khayness wrote...

tonnactus wrote...

And how that reaper would do that when the keepers didnt respond to the signal anymore?

Like the way Sovereign planned to do. Did you play ME1?

But he can't anymore. Did you play ME1?

[Piecake]

ME2's focus on characters instead of plot was definitely a positive in my eyes since I find characters infinitely more enjoyable/interesting than plot. I thought ME2 did what it needed to do in terms of plot, bridge the gap between ME1 and ME3, but just went with a much more interesting story structure than just sticking a bunch of twists and turns, political intrigue, or what-have-you into the plot.



Of course, I realize I am probably in the minority who prefer characters over plot, but whether its movies, TV, and especially literature, the thing has to have interesting characters to keep my interest. Heck, some of my favorite novels have the most simplistic plots you've ever seen

[Da_Lion_Man]

At the moment, I don't get the impression ME2 was vital. It felt like filler to be honest.



ME3 could easily change that though. I'll finish the game first before drawing any real conclusions.

[Piecake]

Getorex wrote...

Where is the evidence of it being "professionally written"?  It is a video game written by video game designers, not professional authors.  This wasn't written by Neal Stephenson or Greg Benford.  Are all the other role-playing games "professionally written"?  Dragon Age?  All the rest? 

Now, I was delighted by ME1.  I thought it was a very good story fleshed out by a very good game.  I enjoyed playing ME2 but the story wasn't anywhere near the quality or depth of that of ME1.  It was also written as a (practically) standalone game quite apart from ME1 (so said the company itself).  The fact that one could jump right into ME2 without even knowing about ME1 BY DESIGN tells a lot about the story and its depth and quality in ME2. 

I hope that ME3 is more in the vein of ME1 but then again, these are game designers, not professional authors.

I say this as someone with some distance between being caught up in the game (and being in some way invested in it) and being able to view it more objectively (I haven't played it for months...how many times can you really play it for Cthulhu's sake?  After a mere handful you have essentially seen all there is to see - there's no mysteries still waiting to be uncovered). 

Just spent more time playing Modern Warfare and Sniper.  Getting into something else clears the pallette and unclouds the mind. 

They are professional writers since the people who write Bioware's stories sole job is to write, and they get paid for that writing

[MassEffect762]

Da_Lion_Man wrote...

At the moment, I don't get the impression ME2 was vital. It felt like filler to be honest.

ME3 could easily change that though. I'll finish the game first before drawing any real conclusions.

/thread

[Khayness]

Evil Johnny 666 wrote...

But he can't anymore. Did you play ME1?

Ilos was merely a setback.

I don't have to write a fully detailed fanfic in order make a point.

The Reapers were around for quite a while, maybe this wasn't the first glitch in the Cycle, who knows.

[bjdbwea]

Orkboy wrote...

I've said it before and i'll probably say it it again.

If you disregard ME1 and base it on it's own merits then ME2 is a good game - ( Not brilliant and probably Biowares worst game to date, but it's not complete rubbish. But then that's just my opinon and has nothing to do with this thread. )

As a sequel following on from ME1 however, ME2 is awful. The hud, the inventory and the skills systems are terrible, they have no continuity with the first game and on top of that, there's no story progression other than to try and convice people that Cerberus aren't evil, ( despite the first game doing everything to prove that they are, ) and totally changing characters personalities from the first game.

ME2 feels more like a stand alone game based in the Mass Effect universe than a follow up and chances are that anyone that hasn't played ME2 could go straight from ME1 to ME3 and not notice ME2 was missing.

As I said before, it could also be that you will be able to go from ME 2 to ME 3 and not notice that ME 1 was missing. Because if the reason why they dicarded so much from ME 1 was that the PS 3 gamers should not be at a disadvantage, then this reason is gone for ME 3. So perhaps ME 3 will be a continuation after all, just unfortunately a continuation of ME 2, and not of ME 1.

Anyway, continuation or not, at least ME 3 as a game itself should be of the quality that one can expect from BioWare, which unfortunately ME 2 was not, at least as far as the main story is concerned.

Modifié par bjdbwea, 23 janvier 2011 - 09:20 .

[Getorex]

Piecake wrote...

ME2's focus on characters instead of plot was definitely a positive in my eyes since I find characters infinitely more enjoyable/interesting than plot. I thought ME2 did what it needed to do in terms of plot, bridge the gap between ME1 and ME3, but just went with a much more interesting story structure than just sticking a bunch of twists and turns, political intrigue, or what-have-you into the plot.

Of course, I realize I am probably in the minority who prefer characters over plot, but whether its movies, TV, and especially literature, the thing has to have interesting characters to keep my interest. Heck, some of my favorite novels have the most simplistic plots you've ever seen

Must it be one or the other?  Character OR plot?  The two must not, cannot mix? 

What I see is developers "playing" with a game concept and a story concept, seeing what they can do with it.  ME1 explored a cool, pretty well thought out story with a fairly new game mechanic.  ME2 has them playing a bit more with the mechanics and graphics (at the expense of story).  Not bad in and of itself, you gotta play with your toys to see what they can do, but to fill the entire enterprise with an wise, knowing, overwatching genious is too much.  The story wasn't licensed from some bigtime author who ONLY cares about story and logical development, leaving the game developers to work THEIR craft on the story of a book.  It was a story developed by committee (ME2 certainly more than ME1) with some corporate exec lording over the process saying, "Money!  Show me the money!  Here's your deadline!  Give us SOMETHING by then.  Do what you need to in order to make the deadline!  MONEY!"