164 réponses à ce sujet

[Bamboozalist]

Remus Artega wrote...

In ME1...they were interesting thx to Sovereign and Saren...in ME2 they became another generic "want to destroy all your mothers appliances and that will certainly hurt you" enemy thx to Harbinger...wondering if they manage to destroy at least one cooker in ME3

You know why Sovereign was interesting? We knew next to nothing about it, Sovereign would be no where near as interesting if it showed up and talked to us every 30 minutes and we got a big detailed back story on it. It worked for Saren because Saren was an understandable alien race we expected him to have good motivations and honestly he should have been a villain throghout the series. He was basically a Vader clone in ME1 anyway. Having him die in ME1 hurt the trilogy as a whole.

[dreman9999]

Chris Priestly wrote...

Dull? While I love Jon Irenicus, the Reapers want to destroy the planet and wipe entire civilizations from exixtance. Perhaps Gamespot needs a little more perspective?

To be fair, Irenicus did make it personal with the mindbreaking, the torture, the mind invading and the sould stealing. But in the end of the game he becomes pathatic, a man blaming others for his own mistakes.
At less the reapers are horrifing, but they are distante, it feels that your fighting a storm with them and you never really hate a storm.
With Irenicus you feel something toward him as a person, making him stand out more.
With the reapers, you just have feeling to what they are doing not who they are.

Modifié par dreman9999, 07 avril 2011 - 06:53 .

[Naltair]

Bamboozalist wrote...

You know why Sovereign was interesting? We knew next to nothing about it, Sovereign would be no where near as interesting if it showed up and talked to us every 30 minutes and we got a big detailed back story on it. It worked for Saren because Saren was an understandable alien race we expected him to have good motivations and honestly he should have been a villain throghout the series. He was basically a Vader clone in ME1 anyway. Having him die in ME1 hurt the trilogy as a whole.

Oh I agree but then again people would be complaining that BioWare is protecting Saren.

Modifié par Naltair, 07 avril 2011 - 06:25 .

[spacehamsterZH]

Chris Priestly wrote...
the Reapers want to destroy the planet

What... planet. I thought this was about the whole galaxy? You're confirming my worst fears.

Anyway, as for the thread topic, OP took a wrong turn at "should I give a crap what Game$pot thinks" and the road went all downhill from there. Screw this corrupt, badly written POS website.

[Almostfaceman]

dreman9999 wrote...

Chris Priestly wrote...

Dull? While I love Jon Irenicus, the Reapers want to destroy the planet and wipe entire civilizations from exixtance. Perhaps Gamespot needs a little more perspective?

To be far, Irenicus did make it personal with the mindbreaking, the turture, the mind invading and the sould stealing. But in the end of the game he becomes pathatic, a man blaming others for his own mistakes.
At less the reapers are horrifing, but they are distante, it feels that your fighting a storm with them and you never really hate a storm.
With Irenicus you feel something toward him as a person, making him stand out more.
With the reapers, you just have feeling to what they are doing not who they are.

I don't know, when I found out the Reapers wanted my corpse that made it very personal and creeped me right the F out.  I kinda like the Reapers the way they are now.  They're like a nightmare figure.  The kind of nightmare where you're running from a dark unstoppable force - you know this force bears you no good will - and you never seem to be able to run and hide from it.

[Fixers0]

Chris Priestly wrote...

Dull? While I love Jon Irenicus, the Reapers want to destroy the planet and wipe entire civilizations from exixtance. Perhaps Gamespot needs a little more perspective?

Perphaps that would be so if it hasn't been dozens of times before, the Reaper really lost all orginality.

In Mass effect 1 the introduction to sovereign and to the Reapers, was really well done, the tone was good and i was really atmospheric and it became clear that sovereign saw All the other Races as nothing, and in the conversation it vigil it's implied that Reapers can exterminate a planet population in minutes.

but now look a the Premise of Mass effect 3, the Reapers are doing a generic alien invasion plan, of course all capable military defenses are destroyed, it's very common that the military is utterly inept at defeating the invasion and that the earth can only be saved by one specific person, and the Invaders will grant the protaganist all time just until the very end.

There were two options for Bioware to make the Reapers still be believeable, 1. make the Reapers not arrive until the Very end, so we can prepare our 'super weapon' 2. give the Reapers a reason not to destroy earth within two minutes this reason should allready been given in Mass effect 2 with a clear exposition in the Naritive.

Another odd thing is that we spent two games preventing the Reapers from coming, yet the will arrive regardless in part 3. 

[Bamboozalist]

Wittand25 wrote...
A) Understanding their motive is enough, sympathy is a bonus. Both without at least giving the player clues or hints about their motives so that the player can try to understand them, they will be dull, not threatening and soon forgotten

Except the most memorable villains (in the opinions of the vast majority of both audiences and critics) in films, books, and video games are either sympathetic (once again Bioware already played that card with Saren) or not explained/work on a foreign series of motivations and goals that arent really suposed to be understood.

Also having their goals explained and having their motives explained are two different things.

Let's go with a really popular example - The Joker in the Dark Knight, whether you like the movie or not he's an iconic villain now.

His goals make sense, to break Batman/Harvey dent and prove his big chaos will always rule, when push comes to shove people are animals thing. His motives behind doing all that though? We're never told them and for the better, it doesn't matter why he's doing it. Less is always more (I'm not talking about less in the sense of absolutely nothing is given to you).

We know what the Reapers want, why they want it doesn't matter, what does matter is that it's really hard for the players to beat them (I don't mean in terms of TPS skill either, I mean in terms of making tough decisions and making any victory other then a completely pyrrhic one hard to attain).

Modifié par Bamboozalist, 07 avril 2011 - 06:36 .

[Whatever42]

Chris Priestly wrote...

Dull? While I love Jon Irenicus, the Reapers want to destroy the planet and wipe entire civilizations from exixtance. Perhaps Gamespot needs a little more perspective?

It's always nice to have a face to hate and a villian with some personality. That's why Star Trek introduced the Borg Queen. 

The Reapers are fine and Sovereign/Saren was awesome. But Harbinger just isn't up to that calibre. Perhaps if the Collector General would have had more dialogue and been more sinister, we wouldn't have a problem. But his lines were a little cheesy and there were all just taunts.

[Paragon Gabriel]

Pfff Gamespot...

[Ice Cold J]

"In the end, what does it matter? Your existence lies not in understanding them, but in stopping them."

- Vigil

[Bamboozalist]

Fixers0 wrote...
in the conversation it vigil it's implied that Reapers can exterminate a planet population in minutes.

No it's not! Vigil says it takes the Reapers several CENTURIES to harvest the galaxy.

"The extinction of an entire galaxy is a long and slow process" <- not the exact quote but that's how Vigil worded it.

Lets say there are a million planets in the galaxy populated by the races the Reapers are harvesting (there probably aren't) and let's say it takes 10 minutes to harvest a planet, it would take the Reapers ~19 years to kill one million planets. That's hardly 200+ years.

Modifié par Bamboozalist, 07 avril 2011 - 06:45 .

[Trandoshan]

I wouldn't call the Reapers dull, but they are another take on something that has been done several times over. We know very little about the Reapers or their motivations, and to me that makes them even more interesting, not dull. I also fully expect almost everything we don't know about the Reapers to more than likely come to light in Mass Effect 3. Really going to have to disagree with Gamespot on this one.

[Anacronian Stryx]

Chris Priestly wrote...

Dull? While I love Jon Irenicus, the Reapers want to destroy the planet and wipe entire civilizations from exixtance. Perhaps Gamespot needs a little more perspective?

If you guys like the Reapers so much then why the hell did you "forget" them for almost a entire game?

[Fixers0]

Bamboozalist wrote...

Fixers0 wrote...
in the conversation it vigil it's implied that Reapers can exterminate a planet population in minutes.

No it's not! Vigil says it takes the Reapers several CENTURIES to harvest the galaxy.

Lets say there are a million planets in the galaxy populated by the races the Reapers are harvesting (there probably aren't) and let's say it takes 10 minutes to harvest a planet, it would take the Reapers ~19 years to kill one million planets. That's hardly 200+ years.

The cycle it self takes centuries this also means hareversting technology, researching it, and clean the galaxy up, Sovereign is able to destroy a cruiser in 2-5 seconds, besides earth is a homeworld if would't just do a generic attack a city, but do something more akin to Warhammer 40k exterminatus a focus fire on earth, they are finished in a very short time. 

[Tazzmission]

Anacronian Stryx wrote...

Chris Priestly wrote...

Dull? While I love Jon Irenicus, the Reapers want to destroy the planet and wipe entire civilizations from exixtance. Perhaps Gamespot needs a little more perspective?

If you guys like the Reapers so much then why the hell did you "forget" them for almost a entire game?

 i admit me2's story was meh and alot couldve been done around the collectors but it didnt hurt to fight a new enemy and what you learn from it as well. if you look at it to an extent i think of it as a orgins explanation to the protheans

[dreman9999]

Fixers0 wrote...

Chris Priestly wrote...

Dull? While I love Jon Irenicus, the Reapers want to destroy the planet and wipe entire civilizations from exixtance. Perhaps Gamespot needs a little more perspective?

Perphaps that would be so if it hasn't been dozens of times before, the Reaper really lost all orginality.

In Mass effect 1 the introduction to sovereign and to the Reapers, was really well done, the tone was good and i was really atmospheric and it became clear that sovereign saw All the other Races as nothing, and in the conversation it vigil it's implied that Reapers can exterminate a planet population in minutes.

but now look a the Premise of Mass effect 3, the Reapers are doing a generic alien invasion plan, of course all capable military defenses are destroyed, it's very common that the military is utterly inept at defeating the invasion and that the earth can only be saved by one specific person, and the Invaders will grant the protaganist all time just until the very end.

There were two options for Bioware to make the Reapers still be believeable, 1. make the Reapers not arrive until the Very end, so we can prepare our 'super weapon' 2. give the Reapers a reason not to destroy earth within two minutes this reason should allready been given in Mass effect 2 with a clear exposition in the Naritive.

Another odd thing is that we spent two games preventing the Reapers from coming, yet the will arrive regardless in part 3. 

Except for the fact that we don't knowwhat they want.

[Bamboozalist]

Anacronian Stryx wrote...

Chris Priestly wrote...

Dull? While I love Jon Irenicus, the Reapers want to destroy the planet and wipe entire civilizations from exixtance. Perhaps Gamespot needs a little more perspective?

If you guys like the Reapers so much then why the hell did you "forget" them for almost a entire game?

Because classic trilogy structure. 2nd chapter is suppoed to get us attached to the characters (which admittedly most trilogies don't replace 60% of the characters for the 2nd act).

Ideally the Reapers wouldn't appear at all in the 2nd chapter the main villain would be Saren and we would slowly learn that he isn't a complete monster and start to sympathize with him, also that is where the "Join me!" speech would go.

But once again our sympathetic villain died in chapter 1 so...

Mass Effect's real problem with it's story is it's following classic trilogy format, but it's following videogame sequel format at the same time, and you can't have both without it feeling disconnected.

[Wittand25]

Bamboozalist wrote...

Wittand25 wrote...
A) Understanding their motive is enough, sympathy is a bonus. Both without at least giving the player clues or hints about their motives so that the player can try to understand them, they will be dull, not threatening and soon forgotten

Except the most memorable villains (in the opinions of the vast majority of both audiences and critics) in films, books, and video games are either sympathetic (once again Bioware already played that card with Saren) or not explained/work on a foreign series of motivations and goals that arent really suposed to be understood.

Also having their goals explained and having their motives explained are two different things.

Let's go with a really popular example - The Joker in the Dark Knight, whether you like the movie or not he's an iconic villain now.

His goals make sense, to break Batman/Harvey dent and prove his big chaos will always rule, when push comes to shove people are animals thing. His motives behind doing all that though? We're never told them and for the better, it doesn't matter why he's doing it. Less is always more (I'm not talking about less in the sense of absolutely nothing is given to you).

We know what the Reapers want, why they want it doesn't matter, what does matter is that it's really hard for the players to beat them (I don't mean in terms of TPS skill either, I mean in terms of making tough decisions and making any victory other then a completely pyrrhic one hard to attain).

As you wrote yourself:
We know what the joker wants  : Breaking batman
We know why he wants it            :To prove that he is right about the nature of mankind
What we do not need                   :An explanation for everything about him.
That is why it works.
Concerning the reapers we only know the answer for the first question and still need the second one answered, while the third should remain unresolved. And if this does not change in ME3 they will take their place amongst the second class, soon forgotten villains of video-games past. And that is unacceptable for a company whose strongest point in their games always have been the characters. Other game developers have better worlds, many have better graphics or better game play but the field in which Bioware shines is the characters of their games and  Bioware needs to make the main antagonist interesting (whether it is the reapers or someone else). So if the reapers still remain aloof enemies in ME3 they will be out shined by someone else, like they were in ME1 by Saren or the darkspawn were by Loghain.

Lesser might be better, but the minimum requirement must be met to prevent failure.

Modifié par Wittand25, 07 avril 2011 - 06:58 .

[Bamboozalist]

Fixers0 wrote...

The cycle it self takes centuries this also means hareversting technology, researching it, and clean the galaxy up, Sovereign is able to destroy a cruiser in 2-5 seconds, besides earth is a homeworld if would't just do a generic attack a city, but do something more akin to Warhammer 40k exterminatus a focus fire on earth, they are finished in a very short time. 

ME2 establishes they harvest organics so your point is completely moot. They already have a reason not to destroy Earth in 2 minutes, they want to harvest the people on it, they don't need a new one. Also hospitable planets aren't exactly a common occurance %wise of the number of planets in the galaxy so why in the hell would the Reapers want to destroy the planets where the race they're harvesting would likely colonize?

[Fixers0]

dreman9999 wrote...

Except for the fact that we don't knowwhat they want.

They had two games and a bunch of dlc to do that, but i don't see how that's i related to my post.

[Bamboozalist]

Wittand25 wrote...

As you wrote yourself:
We know what the joker wants  : Breaking batman
We know why he wants it            :To prove that he is right about the nature of mankind
What we do not need                   :An explanation for everything about him.

Incorrect. That's not why he wants to do it, proving he's right about the nature of mankind is part of him breaking batman, hence his plan to lure batman there to fight him and how he was ready to blow up both boats because they didn't give him a desired results. It was part of proving batman's ideolgy wrong.

We are never told why he wants to break Batman beyond "some men just want to watch the world burn".

[Fixers0]

Bamboozalist wrote...

Fixers0 wrote...

The cycle it self takes centuries this also means hareversting technology, researching it, and clean the galaxy up, Sovereign is able to destroy a cruiser in 2-5 seconds, besides earth is a homeworld if would't just do a generic attack a city, but do something more akin to Warhammer 40k exterminatus a focus fire on earth, they are finished in a very short time. 

ME2 establishes they harvest organics so your point is completely moot. They already have a reason not to destroy Earth in 2 minutes, they want to harvest the people on it, they don't need a new one. Also hospitable planets aren't exactly a common occurance %wise of the number of planets in the galaxy so why in the hell would the Reapers want to destroy the planets where the race they're harvesting would likely colonize?

Are you sure, i always tought that they just want to kill everything, did the narative ever said they were hareversting organics, i thought that t-8000 created out of human goo. was just a crazy plan brought up by harbinger to do something.

Modifié par Fixers0, 07 avril 2011 - 07:06 .

[Bamboozalist]

Fixers0 wrote...

Are you sure, i always tought that they just want to kill everything, did the naritive ever said they were hareversting organics, i thought that t-8000 created out of human goo. was just a crazy plan brought up by harbinger to do something.

EDI says that the Reapers are organic/synthetic hybrids. The T-8000 was an expirement to see if they could make a Reaper out of humans and Harbinger's "you have changed nothing" probably refers to the fact that humanity will still be harvested considering that the human-reaper wasn't made to help the Reapers get back into the galaxy.

[Tazzmission]

Bamboozalist wrote...

Wittand25 wrote...

As you wrote yourself:
We know what the joker wants  : Breaking batman
We know why he wants it            :To prove that he is right about the nature of mankind
What we do not need                   :An explanation for everything about him.

Incorrect. That's not why he wants to do it, proving he's right about the nature of mankind is part of him breaking batman, hence his plan to lure batman there to fight him and how he was ready to blow up both boats because they didn't give him a desired results. It was part of proving batman's ideolgy wrong.

We are never told why he wants to break Batman beyond "some men just want to watch the world burn".

if your discussing the dark knight it is said in the film by the joker and alfred that the joker wants to see the whole world burn, the point of joker vs batman in the film is to get batman to break his one rule wich is batman dosent kill. even when joker burns the mob money he says it's not about money its about sending a message

[Bamboozalist]

Tazzmission wrote...

if your discussing the dark knight it is said in the film by the joker and alfred that the joker wants to see the whole world burn, the point of joker vs batman in the film is to get batman to break his one rule wich is batman dosent kill. even when joker burns the mob money he says it's not about money its about sending a message

That's exactly what we're discussing. Villains having a motivation beyond being evil for being evil. Also another point that needs to be brought up is that memorable villains are memorable because of their actions not their motivations. You can have the most well written well motivated villain of all time but if he/she doesn't do anything, they're a crappy villain. Good actions can make up for "crappy" motives but good motives can't make up for crappy actions.