6970 réponses à ce sujet

[Seboist]

They fumbled a bit with the Cerberus moral ambiguity though like with the bizarre Overlord contraption and the Michael Vick-esque dog fighting ring in Teltin in some inane attempt at shock value.

[Dave of Canada]

Cerberus was representative of being the "best and worst" of humanity.

Until ME3 decided "who cares about the best!".

[JosephDucreux]

Dave of Canada wrote...

Cerberus was representative of being the "best and worst" of humanity.

Until ME3 decided "who cares about the best!".

And thus, Bioware decided to f*ck logic up its ass in the name of fanservice and pandering to the little children.

[Dean_the_Young]

Xilizhra wrote...

Like the Geth, the only moral ambiguity the Council gets is the inadverdant sort. Bioware has been consistently sympathetic, if not approving, towards them. Their sins and flaws are not a plot point, or a focus of their characterization.

Really? I thought their flaws were the prime point of their characterization, i.e. not seeming to do very well with the geth/Collectors issues.

That's not a moral flaw, Xil. That's indifference, and even if you extend it all you'll get to is incompetence, not malevolence. (Moral) Good and Evil aren't judged on the basis of efficiency.

While the Council's effectiveness is regularly called into question, it's moral authority is not.

[Cerberus was the keystone focus of moral ambiguity in ME2. The only subplot that got a fraction of the focus on ambiguity was the genophage in Mordin's loyalty mission.

In ME3, I meant.

ME3 should build on ME2 and ME1 in themes and plot points.

[Dean_the_Young]

Seboist wrote...

They fumbled a bit with the Cerberus moral ambiguity though like with the bizarre Overlord contraption and the Michael Vick-esque dog fighting ring in Teltin in some inane attempt at shock value.

I never understood either of those, to be quite honest.

Besides the absurdity of the David contraption when you can get far more subtle forms of horror with respectful treatment, the whole 'let's condition Jack to fight humans' seemed counter-productive on a very basic level.

If you're a Human-first group creating a superweapon to even the odds with the aliens, condition the subject against Aliens. They should have 'rewarded' her for fighting aliens, and punished her for hurting humans.


Jack would have been improved had she been an outright xenophobe/xenocidal character.

[Seboist]

JosephDucreux wrote...

Dave of Canada wrote...

Cerberus was representative of being the "best and worst" of humanity.

Until ME3 decided "who cares about the best!".

And thus, Bioware decided to f*ck logic up its ass in the name of fanservice and pandering to the little children.

Bioware is steadily revealing itself to be a very depraved company to the gaming mainstream. We already saw signs of this with the Hawkesexual dating sim nonsense in DA2 and now we have the EDI sexbot and Jessica "PSP licker" Chobot subplots in ME3 that are transparent attempts at inane fanservice/nerdbaiting.

Jubileus knows what BW will come up with next. 

[Seboist]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

Seboist wrote...

They fumbled a bit with the Cerberus moral ambiguity though like with the bizarre Overlord contraption and the Michael Vick-esque dog fighting ring in Teltin in some inane attempt at shock value.

I never understood either of those, to be quite honest.

Besides the absurdity of the David contraption when you can get far more subtle forms of horror with respectful treatment, the whole 'let's condition Jack to fight humans' seemed counter-productive on a very basic level.

If you're a Human-first group creating a superweapon to even the odds with the aliens, condition the subject against Aliens. They should have 'rewarded' her for fighting aliens, and punished her for hurting humans.


Jack would have been improved had she been an outright xenophobe/xenocidal character.

It's one of those things the devs didn't properly think through like Samara's hypocrisy in scolding Renegade Shepard or Legion's moronic stance against using foreign tech. By the looks of things they didn't put much thought into the whole Akuze thing either beyond "CERB DID EVUL" which is why they didn't even try to explain the rationale behind it in ME2.

[shepskisaac]

Dave of Canada wrote...

Cerberus was representative of being the "best and worst" of humanity.

Until ME3 decided "who cares about the best!".

You talking about what's in the leaked script, or marketing quotes? 'Cause those are 2 quite different things

[Xilizhra]

Dave of Canada wrote...

Cerberus was representative of being the "best and worst" of humanity.

Until ME3 decided "who cares about the best!".

To combine the best and worst of humanity is to create an extremely dangerous, clever and committed villain.

[Dean_the_Young]

Xilizhra wrote...

Dave of Canada wrote...

Cerberus was representative of being the "best and worst" of humanity.

Until ME3 decided "who cares about the best!".

To combine the best and worst of humanity is to create an extremely dangerous, clever and committed villain.

Or extremely inspiring, resourceful, and dedicated Hero.

Or simply an anti-Hero.

It works both ways.

Modifié par Dean_the_Young, 12 février 2012 - 05:22 .

[Xilizhra]

I don't think so. Logically speaking, there are two possible senses in which "best" and "worst" can be used: effectiveness and morality. To have all of the best and worst qualities of morality would be blatantly contradictory, as would that being the case for effectiveness. Thus, it makes the most sense for the two words to refer to different senses. Since TIM isn't an ineffective wide-eyed idealist, he's clearly not best in morality and worst in effectiveness, so it seems most logical to me that he is, by and large, best in effectiveness (intelligent, resourceful, ideologically consistent) while being, by and large, worst in morality.

[Ultai]

Seboist wrote...

Another TIM caricature concept (Spoilers)

Hey, when did Wesker show up in Mass Effect?  I suppose they thought a cross-over wouldn't hurt the series,  what with Tali and Garrus, EDI and Joker and other such nonsense, why the hell not.

[Dean_the_Young]

Xilizhra wrote...

I don't think so. Logically speaking, there are two possible senses in which "best" and "worst" can be used: effectiveness and morality. To have all of the best and worst qualities of morality would be blatantly contradictory, as would that being the case for effectiveness. Thus, it makes the most sense for the two words to refer to different senses. Since TIM isn't an ineffective wide-eyed idealist, he's clearly not best in morality and worst in effectiveness, so it seems most logical to me that he is, by and large, best in effectiveness (intelligent, resourceful, ideologically consistent) while being, by and large, worst in morality.

Only if you insist on projecting absolutes and simplicity on complexity. By the same argument, a mountain range can't have high peaks and low valleys. Neither of these would be logical: humans are not uniform ethical beings, anymore than terrain is fixed at an elevation.


The argument you make is a false dichtomy. Moral virtues and flaws exist simultanously in the same individual. It may seem contradictory to you, but it's also a fact.

[Seboist]

Ultai wrote...

Seboist wrote...

Another TIM caricature concept (Spoilers)

Hey, when did Wesker show up in Mass Effect?  I suppose they thought a cross-over wouldn't hurt the series,  what with Tali and Garrus, EDI and Joker and other such nonsense, why the hell not.

The sad, yet funny thing about this is that we(Dave in particular) predicted TIM would turn into Wesker.

Now I'm confident that my prediction that Elnora will run an orphanage that gets burned down by Cerberus will come to fruition. Hell, my theory that femshep would get dumped for being barren was proven right(more or less). If they're going to turn the most ridiculous fanwanks into canon then they might as well do the same for the joke ones.

[GodWood]

Xilizhra wrote...
Of course they can write moral ambiguity. Look at the Council.

Xilizhra wrote...
And people disagree about the Council, and on ways to handle it. See? Glorious ambiguity.

Amusingly the only people who acknowledge the Council's moral ambiguity and actively challenge it are the 'few people' you mentioned on the page before...

Xilizhra wrote...
Basically, TIM turned out to be what nearly everyone outside a few people in this thread could see coming from ten miles away.

And in response to this post.

Don't you find it curious that the 'everyone' who supposedly predicted this never posted an intellgent, logical, non-meta reason for believing this?

Modifié par GodWood, 12 février 2012 - 09:58 .

[Xilizhra]

The argument you make is a false dichtomy. Moral virtues and flaws exist simultanously in the same individual. It may seem contradictory to you, but it's also a fact.

It's not absolute, more of a general trend. It's true that it's possible to possess contradictory traits that you express towards different people, but I believe that deliberately doing harm carries far more weight in determining one's character than doing good.

Amusingly the only people who acknowledge the Council's moral ambiguity and actively challenge it are the 'few people' you mentioned on the page before...

I've seen people who dislike both the Council and Cerberus.

Don't you find it curious that the 'everyone' who supposedly predicted this never posted an intellgent, logical, non-meta reason for believing this?

Since it's your standards that are determining what would be intelligent/logical/non-meta here, not really.

[Blacklash93]

Dave of Canada wrote...

Cerberus was representative of being the "best and worst" of humanity.

Until ME3 decided "who cares about the best!".

"Best" in that it was clever, intelligent, and resourceful.

"Worst" in pretty much every method it used to achieve its ultimate goal.

[General User]

If TIM really was the best humanity had to offer in terms of being clever, intelligent, and resourceful wouldn't you expect to see more of his projects come to successful conclusions?

I mean it's hard to claim TIM is the best of anything when he's constantly portrayed as a viscous bastard for whom everything he touches turns to crap.

Modifié par General User, 12 février 2012 - 01:56 .

[Dean_the_Young]

Xilizhra wrote...

The argument you make is a false dichtomy. Moral virtues and flaws exist simultanously in the same individual. It may seem contradictory to you, but it's also a fact.

It's not absolute, more of a general trend. It's true that it's possible to possess contradictory traits that you express towards different people, but I believe that deliberately doing harm carries far more weight in determining one's character than doing good.

Which is irrelevant to the makeup of one's character, or their role.

I've seen people who dislike both the Council and Cerberus.

They are not a major forum demographic by any means, any more than Samara fans are.

Since it's your standards that are determining what would be intelligent/logical/non-meta here, not really.

How about mine?

Your arguments, in the past, have rested on: a smile, the ME3 trailors, and the ME3 spoilers. When challenged to provide something more substantial to support claims that TIM was loyal to the Reapers or (and I still laugh) that TIM wanted to make Humanity a Reaper, you repeatedly were unable to point towards anything but personal impression and backed down.

[Xilizhra]

True, at that point we didn't have enough information to come to an exact conclusion about what would happen in a future game, and certainly not enough to convince those who believed otherwise.

[Blacklash93]

General User wrote...

If TIM really was the best humanity had to offer in terms of being clever, intelligent, and resourceful wouldn't you expect to see more of his projects come to successful conclusions?

I mean it's hard to claim TIM is the best of anything when he's constantly portrayed as a viscous bastard for whom everything he touches turns to crap.

Overly ambitious experiments hoping to control forces beyond our grasp tend to turn to crap.

I'm seeing a recurring theme with TIM's demise.

[General User]

Blacklash93 wrote...

General User wrote...

If TIM really was the best humanity had to offer in terms of being clever, intelligent, and resourceful wouldn't you expect to see more of his projects come to successful conclusions?

I mean it's hard to claim TIM is the best of anything when he's constantly portrayed as a viscous bastard for whom everything he touches turns to crap.

Overly ambitious experiments hoping to control forces beyond our grasp tend to turn to crap.

They certainly do in bad (or at least mundane) science fiction.  The thing is, Mass Effect in general and TIM in particular had the potential to be better than that.

Blacklash93 wrote...
I'm seeing a recurring theme with TIM's demise.

Aye.  And I daresay that's the problem.  It's a tired theme.  One that TIM is only superfically a match for to start with.

Modifié par General User, 12 février 2012 - 03:32 .

[John Renegade]

Xilizhra wrote...

True, at that point we didn't have enough information to come to an exact conclusion about what would happen in a future game, and certainly not enough to convince those who believed otherwise.

So much for 'seeing it from ten miles away.'

[Blacklash93]

I'd say it's more of timeless theme than tired. Science Fiction uses many cautiionary tales like that. It's the nature of the genre to envision what people will do in the future with greater tech.

Mass Effect is no different and I don't really see a problem with that in the context of Cerberus. They're only a black ops organization and there's nothing they can do to make change happen without resorting to trying to achieve ambitious things that can be done on a small scale but have effects on a large one. That's been obvious since the start.

Modifié par Blacklash93, 12 février 2012 - 04:05 .