462 réponses à ce sujet

[lolwut666]

@Clonedzero

You are.

[AdmiralCheez]

Saphra Deden wrote...

A dick is the best thing in the world to be because it means I get to screw the ****** and the ****s.

Definitely not a lot of them with that attitude.

Anyway, what you are doing here is blaming the player for doing something the game forces you to do anyway.  In the context of mook-slaughter, preaching the evils of taking life does seem a bit silly.  However, you really never get the option to avoid the mook-slaughter, nor did you know it was coming.

At the very least, look at it like this: the Blue Suns are a gang of dangerous crooks who would have killed you if you didn't fight back and never considered surrendering even though you clearly had their asses kicked.  Sidonis was one guy, out in the open, unarmed, and in the grand scheme of things, harmless.

It's one thing to shoot a charging bear.  It's another to shoot a washed-up old bear passed out by his swimming pool at the zoo.

[Someone With Mass]

Eradyn wrote...
I really, really wish I could frame this somewhere.  I know you know your stuff and it's a damned shame this was wasted on a mere troll because you've hit the nail on the head.

Same here. 
Talent like that is rare on this forum. 

[Someone With Mass]

So choices are suddenly bad now?

[CulturalGeekGirl]

Saphra Deden wrote...

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

Why do some gamers hate subtext? Why does all character development have to be stated loudly, in monologue? Why must all decisions be explicitly explained to the camera?

I hope you aren't talking me about this.

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

By the time you get to Garrus's loyalty mission (one of the later ones you unlock, if I recall correctly), the "killing mercs to get to a thing" ship has already pretty well sailed.

I knew it. Why don't you set aside your fangirlism for a couple of minutes and think about this?

The difference here is context, the goal, and Shepard's reasoning. Killing for revenge is wrong, but killing to teach someone that kill for revenge is apparently right. That's what you are saying.

No, it isn't. Maybe at some point you'll reach the point where you can read an entire post, rather than single lines of it. It's called context - live it, learn it, love it. Did you see the part in my post about professionals killing other professionals for work? It's the central premise, here.

I'm saying that if you take a job killing people (like all those mooks did), you are acknowledging that you might get killed while doing that job. And if another person whose profession is killing kills you, it's just two blokes doing business. We're both in the killing business, and by engaging in this firefight (rather than surrendering or retreating) you're making killing you a normal business transaction. You can surrender, and then, by the code of our business relationship, I don't kill you. Professionalism. Standards. It doesn't matter why we're engaging in this transaction. You shoot at me, I can shoot back at you. It's the entire freaking BASIS for the paragon morality in this game - kill anyone who shoots at you, let anyone who surrenders live. Bing bam boom. I don't see how it's so hard to understand that as a moral stance - it makes perfect sense to me! 

If you surrender and I kill you, then we're no longer two professionals engaging in a professional transaction.

It's all explained very clearly in the video I linked. Very clearly.

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

The idea behind stopping Garrus from killing Sidonis isn't that killing is wrong.

Yes, it is. Throw "revenge" in there. Apparently killing Sidonis will make Garrus a worse person but killing dozens of people to learn that won't. You are wilfully ignoring the contradictions here.

Stop being a fangirl. You don't serve anyone that way, least of all the game you claim to be a fan of. Be willing to criticize.

But inserting "revenge" into the statement entirely changes the statement! 

If I say "killing is wrong." that's one thing. If I say "killing for pop tarts is wrong." That's an entirely different statement. You can't just add words into sentences and claim that the meaning doesn't change at all! that's not how language works!

I'm saying killing angrily and rashly is wrong. Bludgeoning your wife to death with a bowling trophy is wrong. Taking out an enemy leader with a well-placed, calmly and politely delivered sniper shot to the head? Not wrong. The point isn't that Garrus wanting revenge is wrong. The point is that being motivated by anger rather than rationality makes him act dumb. If he'd been calm and professional the entire time, I would have let him take the shot, but he wasn't. He was getting back into a bad pattern, and that needs to be stopped.

And yes, it is there in the subtext. In the rest of the game, on missions, even when advising renegade scenarios, Garrus is calm. He doesn't drive angry. He doesn't do things for no reason. During his mission he's angry, he does stuff that's unnecessary and irrational.

It's the difference between a sniper and a crazed gunman. One is a job and the other's mental sickness.

We're trying to keep it as a job, and not let it get to being crazy.

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 06 mai 2011 - 11:31 .

[Clonedzero]

lolwut666 wrote...

@Clonedzero

You are.

wonderful rebuttle there.
care to explain how?

your shepard is cool with killing sidonis according to you. then after hearing sidonis out (after killing dozens of people simply to get to him) you find out he feels bad so he deserves to go free? please explain to me how that makes sense? i mean i could understand arresting him instead of killing him, but just letting him go? really?

its just poorly written from the paragon perspective. garrus tells you he wants your help to track down and kill sidonis. you AGREE, because thats how you get hte mission. you agree to track down and kill sidonis. lemme just restate that again. you agree to track down and kill sidonis.

you chase the lead and find out he's protected by dozens of blue suns mercs. so instead of using that as a "lets talk, i dont think this revenge killing thing is right" bit, you decide that killing dozens of people to get info to track down sidonis is worth it. because, well you agreed to help garrus kill him. so at this point if your shepards plan is to talk garrus out of it, then well it makes no sense because you'll look like a moron for telling him not to kill sidonis since you just killed dozens of rent-a-cops.

now, for your shepard to get to the point of actually finding sidonis, he/she still has to be in the mindset of agreeing to kill sidonis with garrus. otherwise it makes no sense what-so-ever. so after beating an answer out of harkin you go meet up with sidonis. sidonis admits he feels bad.  so that fact is what changes your shepards mind? it makes no sense.

for your shepard to go through the entire mission wanting to talk garrus out of killing sidonis then i cant see any logical explaination why shepard would let it go that far before attempting to talk to garrus about it?

what you're saying. is that sidonis admitting he feels bad is the thing that makes him worth letting live. it makes no sense.

[AdmiralCheez]

Saphra Deden wrote...

I'm not blaming the player for anything. What I'm doing is blaming the writers for writing the situation that way and also blaming anybody tasteless enough to defend what the writers did.

Well, to be honest, it wasn't that bad.

Really, the only thing you know about Sidonis is that he sold out a dozen of his closest friends for some unknown reason, then changed his name and hid, so how could you know he was a worn-out loser unless you met him?  You didn't know the Blue Suns would ambush you at that warehouse, or that you'd pretty much be stuck there until you got to Harkin, so it's not like you killed them all for fun or something (or that you had a choice at all).

And like CGG said, it's not a "killing is wrong" issue, it's doing your job as that one galactic hero what shoots bad guys versus going out of your way to kill someone for the sake of personal gratification.  One is sort of a necessity, and the other is, well, questionable.

[Clonedzero]

Someone With Mass wrote...

So choices are suddenly bad now?

no, absolutely not. they're great.

we're just trying to point out how illogical and nonsensical the paragon route of this mission is. the renegade version makes sense. the paragon one makes no sense though.

there should have been an option to talk garrus down at a MUCH earlier moment. maybe resulting in some other combat scienario to make the mission length equal to the renegade version.

the paragon version is so illogical that its utterly immersion breaking.

[-Skorpious-]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

I don't know about the OP's opinion being unpopular, but I do disagree with it. I think Garrus flopped in terms of character development during ME2 as a whole, and a mediocre

ME2 was effectively a giant 'reset' on the development that marked Garrus in ME1. At the start, Garrus was a compassionate Renegade, and Shepard served as a mentoring figure for how that should go. By the end, whether he went Paragon or Renegade, Garrus established his own position and was moving forward with it, and even had the overtures of going Spectre.

Putting him on Omega with the exact same rational either way mooted all that: there was no real reason for him to be there, as opposed to being a vigilante elsewhere, and it never reflected his prior development. His fixation on Sidonis, and a near total lack of dialogue about any of the choices or happenings anywhere else regressed his development, and at the end of his loyalty we were re-making the exact same choice that was supposed to mark him in ME1: do we push him Paragon or Renegade?

At the end of ME2, Garrus as a character is exactly where he was at the end of ME1, with the exception that you could re-do the ME1 Paragon/Renegade inclination if you wanted. It was poor, wasted opportunities at characterization, mitigating all prior development, and since Loyalty Missions are supposed to expand and reveal a character, a decent combat mission couldn't salvage that.


I mean, really. They should have worked within the ME1 development to determine how Garrus would respond, and then they could have turned the Sidonis choice into a variable loyalty decider in order to work and further development. The 'right choice' would have depended on ME1's characterization, as opposed to no wrong choice ever.

For example:

If Garrus was paragonized in ME1, then Sparing Sidonis is the choice that will put Garrus at ease, cementing his development into a Paragon. Having already adopted a Paragon mindset, murdering Sidonis won't sit well with Garrus. In Paragon's mindset, killing wouldn't solve anything, and doing so would eat at Garrus's thoughts. WIthout being able to move, and still fixated on Sidonis's death, Garrus is 'unloyal' (though not Personally hostile to Shepard) and suffers in capability.

On the other hand...

If Garrus was made Renegade during ME1, then killing Sidonis is the good option: Garrus's emotions are sated, his sense of justice fulfilled, and he can move on. But if Sidonis is spared, then Garrus's already developed Renegade morality is in turmoil: Sidonis was allowed to escape justice while good men and women died, and nothing Sidonis can do will right the wrongs he did. Sidonis's survival troubles and turmoils Garrus, who is thus 'unloyal' because he can't focus on the mission.

And finally, if Garrus's ME1 mission was not done, or if he was not recruited, either option is acceptable to the 'neutral' Garrus.



This minor change to the loyalty mission would have made Garrus's development actual development, rather than repition, and would also have brought in a choice from ME1 in a 'choices matter' perspective.

Why has this been ignored for 5 pages?! 

[RunicDragons]

Clonedzero wrote...

lolwut666 wrote...

@Clonedzero

You are.

wonderful rebuttle there.
care to explain how?

your shepard is cool with killing sidonis according to you. then after hearing sidonis out (after killing dozens of people simply to get to him) you find out he feels bad so he deserves to go free? please explain to me how that makes sense? i mean i could understand arresting him instead of killing him, but just letting him go? really?

its just poorly written from the paragon perspective. garrus tells you he wants your help to track down and kill sidonis. you AGREE, because thats how you get hte mission. you agree to track down and kill sidonis. lemme just restate that again. you agree to track down and kill sidonis.

you chase the lead and find out he's protected by dozens of blue suns mercs. so instead of using that as a "lets talk, i dont think this revenge killing thing is right" bit, you decide that killing dozens of people to get info to track down sidonis is worth it. because, well you agreed to help garrus kill him. so at this point if your shepards plan is to talk garrus out of it, then well it makes no sense because you'll look like a moron for telling him not to kill sidonis since you just killed dozens of rent-a-cops.

now, for your shepard to get to the point of actually finding sidonis, he/she still has to be in the mindset of agreeing to kill sidonis with garrus. otherwise it makes no sense what-so-ever. so after beating an answer out of harkin you go meet up with sidonis. sidonis admits he feels bad.  so that fact is what changes your shepards mind? it makes no sense.

for your shepard to go through the entire mission wanting to talk garrus out of killing sidonis then i cant see any logical explaination why shepard would let it go that far before attempting to talk to garrus about it?

what you're saying. is that sidonis admitting he feels bad is the thing that makes him worth letting live. it makes no sense.

Please note, that when you are talking to Garrus while you are doing the mission, you can try to talk him out of this.. But he won't listen, until when he finally sees him and truly SEES that Sidonis really felt bad about it. 

Garrus begins to feel symphaty for him.

[AdmiralCheez]

Saphra Deden wrote...

So what part of Shepard's job involves preaching morality to people? Hypocritically, I might add.

Well, the same part of the job that involves a war veteran telling his kids not to beat people up for saying mean things to them, I should say.  I'm not going to go tell some soldier that he should be encouraging his daughter to go kill people because they wronged her since it's his job to kill people.  Are you?

[lolwut666]

@Clonedzero

The point is that Sidonis did what he did because he is a coward. It was not for personal gain.

More importantly, Shepard DOES question Garrus several times about killing Sidonis (even before the mission starts, when you talk with Garrus to activate the mission), and Garrus will have none of that.

It's only when Garrus is face-to-face (so to speak) with Sidonis that Shepard has a *real* shot at convincing him. If you actually got off your high horse and tried to understand what happened, you'd know that Shepard did *not* forbid Garrus to kill Sidonis. The dialog is more or less like this:

Shepard: "You gotta let it go, Garrus. He's already paying for his crime."

Garrus: "He hasn't paid enough. He still has his life."

Sidonis: "Tell Garrus... I guess there's nothing I can do to make it right."

Garrus: "Let him go..."

Garrus saw with his own eyes that Sidonis regretted what he did, and that's why he chose not to pull the trigger.

And you meta-gamed when you said that Shepard should have predicted what the Sidonis/Garrus interaction would've been like, and that we should've arrested Sidonis because he turns himself in later.

First of all, Sidonis committed his crime outside of C-Sec jurisdiction, so arresting him is not an option.

Second, stop with this stupid argument of "LOL YOU KILLED A BUNCH OF PEOPLE TO GET TO HARKIN", because it doesn't hold water. They were armed and hostile. IT COULD NOT BE HELPED.

[AdmiralCheez]

Saphra Deden wrote...

I think it is pretty ****ing terrible considering the only real defense players can come-up with is "oh, well it's a game". Losing immersion like that is a bad thing. It is a sign of a flaw in the product. It's takes us out of the experience.

And the professionalism/self defense vs. personal vendetta means nothing to you?

As horrible as a soldier killing an enemy soldier is, it's a wee bit different from that same soldier hunting down and killing someone who wronged him.

[AdmiralCheez]

Saphra Deden wrote...

Garrus is not you ****ing son. You see? This is the arrogant Paragon-ness I was talking about. You think you are so much better and more mature than your squad that you regard them as mere children. I don't. I think they're adults and I think they can make their own decisions.

Uh, no.  That was only an example.  I consider Garrus an equal and a friend, and I'd damn well give a close friend the same advice.

[AdmiralCheez]

-Skorpious- wrote...

Why has this been ignored for 5 pages?!

It wasn't.  I responded.  But then Saph came in and started insulting everyone.

[AdmiralCheez]

Saphra Deden wrote...

No, it doesn't. The reason it fails to have an effect on me is because it is hypocritical. If it was unprofessional to kill Sidonis then it was also unprofessional to kill all those people just to prove that point.

Well, you didn't know you had to kill them until it was too late, and you didn't know you had a point to prove until you met Sidonis in person.

[Someone With Mass]

Clonedzero wrote...
no, absolutely not. they're great.

we're just trying to point out how illogical and nonsensical the paragon route of this mission is. the renegade version makes sense. the paragon one makes no sense though.

there should have been an option to talk garrus down at a MUCH earlier moment. maybe resulting in some other combat scienario to make the mission length equal to the renegade version.

the paragon version is so illogical that its utterly immersion breaking.

I think that's entirely a matter of opinion and perspective.

[CulturalGeekGirl]

Saphra Deden wrote...

AdmiralCheez wrote...

Well, the same part of the job that involves a war veteran telling his kids not to beat people up for saying mean things to them, I should say.

Garrus is not you ****ing son. You see? This is the arrogant Paragon-ness I was talking about. You think you are so much better and more mature than your squad that you regard them as mere children. I don't. I think they're adults and I think they can make their own decisions.

The last time Garrus went down this road, he basically decided to commit "suicide by army of mercs." When I see my friends engaging in dangerous addictive behavior, I might try to get them to stop, same as I would if I had a friend who was an alcoholic or drug addict, or if I had a friend who was failing out of college because he was playing too much World of Warcraft. I'd want my friends to tell me "hey, log off that druid and study for this Calc exam we have in two days," rather than have them just say "enh, after she fails out of college she'll figure out what she did was wrong. We have to let her make her own decisions." Sometimes your friends have to point out when you're being an idiot, and the fact that you trust them to do that and respect their opinions, that's part of friendship.

(Note: it was to avoid exactly this kind of situation that I quit MMOs while I was in college. MMOs and school do not mix.) 

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 06 mai 2011 - 11:43 .