Farbautisonn wrote...
Dean_the_Young wrote...Probably because that's been par-for-course for a series that has had some pretty serious narrative flaws throughout the entire trilogy.
-You could argue that. But either this game has its flaws in the places where it mattered the most (to me that would be in the introduction and ending... fail both as a writer and it really doesnt matter how good the main body of your product is), or they are more visible. I am basicially not able to maintain suspension of disbelief, no matter how hard I try. And even if there were issues during ME1 and 2, none of them were crippling to the storytelling.
That is your perogative, but it is lso a personal one. For many, Project Lazarus was something they couldn't look past. For others, it was the import-imbalances and handling of ME1 events in ME2. A number of people never really accepted the Human Reaper.
Personally, my suspension of disbelief has been on hold ever since I read the timeline of Mass Effect.
From schizophrenic and unbalanced morality systems to numerous recast/retconned plot threads and complete absence of the main plot from the middle of the series, the Mass Effect trilogy has been successful despite its flaws, not because of any absence of them. While it's tempting for many to give ME1 a pass on nostalgia and being the first in the series, even it's flaws were only magnified by how the carryover took it, revealing the ME trilogy to being only loosely planned at best.
-I agree completely. The morals/ethics and indeed the "roleplaying" of said concepts are not executed very well... if at all. I have found bioware to be slightly better at it than most of its compeditors though. Only the "Witcher" series and the FO3 dlc "The pitt" has outperformed. I found to my dismay that FO:NV has outdone Bioware and reveiled that whilst Bethesda (I know Obsidian did NV, but I think they learned from it) has learned to hold on to their sandbox crowd they have also begun a journey toward better storytelling. I know some will disagree, but that is my sentiment.
Morality systems come in three general types: ideological (alignment A corresponds with argument position
, factional (alignment A favors group
, or tonal (alignment A represents tone
. All three are valid, and you can even have multiple ones in the same game: Dragon Age basically has X ideological moralities, where X is the number of companions, while FO:NV had both factional and tone (good-evil axis) alignment.
The problem with Mass Effect is that it never decided what it wanted to be. ME1 mixed factional (polical stances) with tonal, ME2 focused on tone, and ME3 rebalanced them. Being a Renegade never meant the same thing even in the same game, let alone across all three.
As for consequences, even though Bioware flopped I actually give them credit for writing the book on how to do it... if only because they wrote how not to do it first. ME3 is actually an excellent example of how games can facilitate carry-over into game-plots as part of a multi-game series. While ME1 had poor choice set ups in general, with every choice a variation of 'kill for no gain or save for positive validation', and while ME2 was horrible in reflecting the choices, ME3 will probably set a industry standard.
The Witcher is in a class of its own, of course, but in some ways I set it to a different standard as a single game versus a trilogy.
And yes the game does bear very hard signs of not being a coherent body of a narrative. The retcons and the "revisions" only add to the confusion and immersion problems. The endings ram this home with a wrecking ball.
That said, the themes of organics and synthetics really did become a key part of the trilogy in ME3. Synthetics, Organics, and the hybrids really did become a key writing focus... after the Human Reaper was revealed.
A shame, but from the Human Reaper, to Overlord, to ME3, they really did build up that plot. Too late, but still.
-Indeed it can. If we only observe the "main body" of the game, and then only observe the things that work/are bug free. However War assets seem to have little practical consequense to the casual gamer, and to me even less so. I percieve there to be no real benefit from my scroounging up support and making sacrifices. The endings pidgeonholes me into making 3 choises that leave me feeling that my entire game and indeed entire effort throughout the game series was for naught. The three choises are even so similar in effect that they might have been just been put into one. Daggerfall had 6 endings and did one hell of alot better in making the player get a sense of achievement. And thats a bethesda game from 96 that was buggy as hell and used copy/paste fed-ex quests as a rule rather than an exception. That is not ok with me.
Don't knock Bethesda too much: they write entirely different forms of RPGs, which have to be held to a different ruberick. FO:NV is an entirely different setting and game than any ME game, after all.
I do agree that the endings didn't have enough differentiation in their visual effects, both between themselves and between levels of Galactic Readiness. I don't find it as horrific as some, given that every other ME game had virtually identical endings no matter what changes, but that might just mark me as a cynic for pattern recognition. It certainly could be improved, and I enjoy reading the (less happy-ending for the sake of happy-romance-babies) alternate endings people devise.
BUT-
Not all forms of 'consequence' need to be game-changers. It's never happened before, nor should it. I love the War Assets system, because it gives a good sense of progress, the alterations in-game give a sense of continuity and consequence between actions and discoveries, and the mutually exclusive choices give their own sense of consequence.
Does the fact that all war assets mean the same thing rather mitigate the distinctions? Yes. Just like the Warden's allies in DAO were utterly irrelevant. But War Assets were a
reflection of the plot, rather than the claim to drive it, so they stand by far more modest intents.
And that plot of ME3 was significantly reflective of the things that could be expected to be reflected by any reasonable standard. The ME3 scenario was always going to be largely the same regardless. The validation you should expect, the 'meaning', should exist for its own sake, not for major story changes.
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