1634 réponses à ce sujet

[CDRSkyShepard]

Hey guys! Sorry I've been a bit scarce lately, but my computer's keyboard decided to die, so I've been in the process of trying to make it usable for the time being (right now I'm typing on a cheap USB keyboard, lol) and getting it ready to send back to HP for service. Thank goodness it's only a few months old!

In the meantime, I'm updating the OP in its google document form so that I can do one more update before I send the computer in for service. I found a lot of good links over at HTL that I'll be adding, and I think I'll also be posting it over there so we can have a corresponding thread to this one. I hope everything is going well for you all...at least better than it is for me right now. XD Hold the line!

[Sanrei]

Ouch, sorry your computer is sick. HP has a decent turn around time for repair last I checked.


Bump!

[Madecologist]

I been working on a series of Blog for the BSN, my goal is to address the problem of dissonance the endings have with the themes in the game and the sudden subversion of the central conflict. My first blog is up, talking about the core problem.

I may write others later that explains how this could be easily fixed and yet still maintain the 'artistic vision' of the original endings. Each entry will give me more libterty in those ideas, but the point is the first of that series will be very much in line with what Bioware seems to want to do now with EC.

By the end I am hoping these will express just how badly Bioware dropped the ball, how easily it can be fixed (even with the confines of EC), how it should have been fixed with as little change to the 'artisitic vision' as possible.

I actually believe Bioware is not actually defending artisitic vision but the ego of the lead writer and designer. The two things are very different, they are using the term artistic vision as means to make those that heavily criticise the endings look bad... but in the end they only make themselves look pretentious.

Some people do youtube videos, some create epic awesome threads of grievances *winks at CDRSkyShepard*, some of us write essays. Warning if you do check out the first one, it is rather long. I waited this long because I wanted to 'soak it all in' before I touched the subject.

Modifié par Madecologist, 28 avril 2012 - 06:51 .

[Oni Changas]

Link to your blog?

[Madecologist]

I don't have private blogs, there are here on the BSN (each user has a Blog Section). Also this lets Bioware see them if they so choose to. Just click on my picture and then select the blog tab in the profile view.

Here is a direct link to the first one, Theme versus Central Conflict:

social.bioware.com/336501/blog/212881/

I finished writing my second one, The Only Choice:

social.bioware.com/336501/blog/212903/

This one focuses more on how the end choices fail because in some regards it doesn't give you a choice. Too many players outright reject two of the three options and it leaves them with only one, even if the outcome of that one is considered very bad. It addresses why these two options tend to get rejected.

In short, taking the lesser of three evils is not a choice. A proper choice is where each choice has a clear merit and a clear drawback, and in the end you always question if it is the best one.

Modifié par Madecologist, 29 avril 2012 - 05:13 .

[TheOptimist]

Hey, this topic is handy. Here's a post so I can find it later.

[Sanrei]

Is everyone turning ME on today? I played a little bit around 1am, for the first time in about a month and a half. It was hard, I couldn't do it for very long, but I participated and that at least feels good.

[Madecologist]

I seen quite a few ending defenders use the term interpretative art as a defense. I find this both troubling and even hypocritical. Here is why:

Interpretative art cannot be used as a defense. Interpretive Art is that many people will have many different interpretation of your work. Hopefully none of the dominant ones are shocking or too divergent unless that is what you were aiming for.

When you have a significant number of people having the same interpretation and this interpretation seems to indicate that they believe something to be immoral. Then you need to ask if this is what you expected people to conclude, and if the answer is no… you have an issue.

From what I seen, Bioware did not want people to be morally or ethically disgusted by Synthesis. Yet many are, and I am pretty sure they wanted us to feel all three choices were valid, not feel they were all evil and we end up picking the least evil one.

Is it that hard to imagine a lot of people who want to destroy the Reapers don't want to destroy all Synthetics. That they don't see the Reapers as a solution to anything, and they are just a monstrous force that needs to be stopped?

It is extra insulting when someone does point out these 'negative interpertation' and the best they can say to it is, "that is not how I see it." Because that suddenly makes it all better, the person who has these negative interpertation is suddenly wrong? Or that their duress means nothing? What if the shoe was reversed, would they still defend it as interpretative?

I am willing to bet... no. Not many people are happy or like being upset or disappointed.

This is pretty much the double standard and hypocricy I hate in people that use the 'Interpretative art" defense.

[Sanrei]

One final bump before my midnight. See you guys on Monday.

[Spyre2001]

Madecologist wrote...

Interpretative art cannot be used as a defense. Interpretive Art is that many people will have many different interpretation of your work. Hopefully none of the dominant ones are shocking or too divergent unless that is what you were aiming for.
.....
It is extra insulting when someone does point out these 'negative interpertation' and the best they can say to it is, "that is not how I see it." Because that suddenly makes it all better, the person who has these negative interpertation is suddenly wrong? Or that their duress means nothing? What if the shoe was reversed, would they still defend it as interpretative?

I am willing to bet... no. Not many people are happy or like being upset or disappointed.

This is pretty much the double standard and hypocricy I hate in people that use the 'Interpretative art" defense.

Most people who use the interpertation or relative type defenses don't actually believe them. That is they believe you are free to interpert something anyway you want as long as it agrees with their interpertation.

Also the interpertation/relative defense is used in a lot of things where it doesn't actually apply, like morality. Just because different cultures come up with different rules doesn't mean that it is relative. There are plenty of examples of such things throughout history that are immoral but were acceptable/legal in the societies at the time. It's like giving a bunch of people a math test and a bunch of the people get different answers. It doesn't mean the answers were open to interperation it means some of the people got the WRONG answer.

And when it comes to art I think interpertive art is the laziest form of art. It's basically grabbing a bunch of imagery that you think looks kind of cool or completely unrelated. Then asking your audiance to do all the work by filling in the blanks of what it means. ANYONE can do that. Heck just grab a bunch of kids finger paintings and sell them as interpertive works of art. You could even claim the simplistic style is a statement of how overly complex the world is that we can't appreate the simple things. See it's not that hard to make up some BS on interpertive art.

This is basically what Bioware has done. They have even admitted it in how they say the rest of the game's missions and story went under review by much of the development team before going forward. But when it came to the ending the two lead writers took it upon themselves to write something and keep it secret from everyone else then rush it through at the last minute in order to prevent "the ending from leaking". Which I think seems more like the act of an immature people who waits until the last minute so the team has to go forward with their plan and there is no time left to deal with changes that maybe needed. I've had to deal with several people like that in college, various community events, works, and etc. And let me just say no one on the team likes working with them when they pull those kind of stunts.

[Phaedros]

This is basically what Bioware has done. They have even admitted it in how they say the rest of the game's missions and story went under review by much of the development team before going forward. But when it came to the ending the two lead writers took it upon themselves to write something and keep it secret from everyone else then rush it through at the last minute in order to prevent "the ending from leaking". Which I think seems more like the act of an immature people who waits until the last minute so the team has to go forward with their plan and there is no time left to deal with changes that maybe needed. I've had to deal with several people like that in college, various community events, works, and etc. And let me just say no one on the team likes working with them when they pull those kind of stunts.

QFT


"Artistic Integrity" would have stuck with the original vision.

Not changed it for whatever reason... 

[Sanrei]

Happy Monday!

[CDRSkyShepard]

Happy Monday, indeed!

I'm still without computer, so I will be scarce until the end of the week. Keep this thread going strong, guys! I'm also in the middle of finals, so that's eating a ton of time. I hope all is well for everyone here! I'll get to reading everyone's posts Thursday evening after my last final!

[Ultra Prism]

sigh everytime I look at Rachni consequence ... what a fail being paragon

[Spyre2001]

Ultra Prism wrote...

sigh everytime I look at Rachni consequence ... what a fail being paragon

Not really sure what you mean.

Though I'm guessing it has to do with it not mattering if you saved the Queen since there is always a Queen. Which I think was one of the many Railroading parts where it's like, "Wow if you were just going to blow up everything at the end why not give us the freedom in the other areas?"

Dragon Age 2 was the first sign of this Railroading where characters showed up that you could of killed off in the previous game. ME3 tried to be more descret about it by saying it's a "different" queen.

[Reptilian Rob]

The Retake banners and sigs are FUBAR right now, Sky sent me to tell you guys!

If you want the banners, they can be found here on this site! http://onima.org/ME3/index.php?zone=3

[GuardianAngel470]

Spyre2001 wrote...

Ultra Prism wrote...

sigh everytime I look at Rachni consequence ... what a fail being paragon

Not really sure what you mean.

Though I'm guessing it has to do with it not mattering if you saved the Queen since there is always a Queen. Which I think was one of the many Railroading parts where it's like, "Wow if you were just going to blow up everything at the end why not give us the freedom in the other areas?"

Dragon Age 2 was the first sign of this Railroading where characters showed up that you could of killed off in the previous game. ME3 tried to be more descret about it by saying it's a "different" queen.

Technically speaking there isn't another queen. The abomination that the Reapers mocked up to serve their purposes, generating husks, isn't really a Rachni. The race is still extinct, for all the difference that makes.

[Half_Moon]

GuardianAngel470 wrote...

Spyre2001 wrote...

Ultra Prism wrote...

sigh everytime I look at Rachni consequence ... what a fail being paragon

Not really sure what you mean.

Though I'm guessing it has to do with it not mattering if you saved the Queen since there is always a Queen. Which I think was one of the many Railroading parts where it's like, "Wow if you were just going to blow up everything at the end why not give us the freedom in the other areas?"

Dragon Age 2 was the first sign of this Railroading where characters showed up that you could of killed off in the previous game. ME3 tried to be more descret about it by saying it's a "different" queen.

Technically speaking there isn't another queen. The abomination that the Reapers mocked up to serve their purposes, generating husks, isn't really a Rachni. The race is still extinct, for all the difference that makes.

Another choice that didn't really have much bearing in the end. They could have done many things for players who killed the Rachni queens.

They could have a mission where there is a Cerberus facility cloning Rachni and the reapers turning the facility into a Ravager production base.

Or maybe your reward for killing the queen is not having to face Ravagers.

But if they couldn't even muster the resources to finish the ending, it's not surprising they couldn't give us a proper Rachni quest. Which is disappointing especially with that teaser in ME2 where the Asari on Illium promised the Rachni's aid if you saved the queen.

[mirage2154]

you are the sight of awesomeness man, thank you so much!!!!!!!

[Spyre2001]

But if they couldn't even muster the resources to finish the ending, it's not surprising they couldn't give us a proper Rachni quest. Which is disappointing especially with that teaser in ME2 where the Asari on Illium promised the Rachni's aid if you saved the queen.

It just goes back them railroading us on the story because of time constraints due to EA and laziness on the creativity part. Most of the stuff they did "right" in the minds of the fans was that way because it's what we expected to see. Once a story gains enough momentium, especially if there is even the slightest hint of foreshadowing, the audiance can reasonable predict what is going to come next on the large scale but it is the minor details they want fleshed out.

Like with the Genophage back in ME1 I'm sure many people figured they were going to cure that as an element to help raise the Krogon as a fighting force against the Reapers. Then in ME2 you find the research on the cure. Leading to the obvious, your potentially going to get the option to cure the genophage to help fight the reapers in ME3. The topics of old, that Krogon are warmongers, will be brought up again. Exact Dialog and what chars are involved are unknown. But most likely Wrex, Grunt, Wrev, Mordin, and/or Some new Scientist will likely be involved. The only thing left at this point is to write good Dialog and believable resolution on the details of how the cure is developed/distributed. All of that I had already figured out before any word of ME3 had come out.

One thing that kind of annoyed me and you could almost tell their mindset was how many times in interviews they talked about how hard it was to have all these different story lines going because it lead to hundreds if not thousands of possible variations. While this is true in most regards each of them are self contained variations that accumulate on the whole.

What I mean by this is take another game with a lot of player choices, Fallout New Vegas. There are more varied and meaniful endings in that than ANY of the ME games. First off you have 4 basic endings depending on if you sided with NCR, Legion, House, or No one. Then you have the ending of some of the specific cities you were involved in and their epoluge depends on both the main story and what you did in them. Lastly you have your companions which depending on what you did for them can have varied endings. The ending then simply plays video A,B,C, or D for the overall region. Then it plays which ever video for the individual cities. Lastly they play which ever of the Companion videos you got. The result is a fairly limited number of outcomes but a huge variety in the different combinations. It's this unique set of combinations that help give the player the illusion of freedom and choice while providing an ending that feels very unique to them.

We know Bioware is capiable of doing this as they have done it in the past with Dragon Age: Origins which imployed a similar ending model as Fallout NV. In fact it's been a fairly standard ending model in western RPGs for over a decade, I could name of tons of series that do it. Mass Effect has gotten away with not having to do an Epilouge because we knew the story was going to continue which makes it hard to have an epilogue of where everyone went since that is the time frame of the next game. And in some regards is the problem Dragon Age 2 faced since the history of the local region was spelled out at the end of DA:O.

It's not that hard to give the player the freedom to shape the world. It's just a matter of planning and scale. Like in Fallout 3 you could destroy a whole town in the game. It ultimately didn't effect much outside of that town and hear some other NPCs mention it from time to time. But gives the player a real sense of power in the world. None of the other story or quest NPCs need to check if the town is or isn't there, unless the designer specifical wants some connection, so overall it has little impact on things. And at the end there is even an epilouge mention whether or not the player destroyed the town leading again to the player's sense of choice that actually impacts the world.

A good designer should have all of this planned out ahead of time. Then regardless of the number of combinations at the end of the game since much of the stuff is self contained it does to impact the rest of the project. It's the same when designing an Object Oriented Program as you outline what values need to be passed in and returned. As each self contained story returns results to the higher level story or ending but don't directly interact with each other. I'm a programmer so I tend to think in those terms and know how to map out different data structures for tracking large amounts of information. It's not that hard it just requires PLANNING. If you don't plan then things are hard because you often are forced to redo stuff multiple times.

EDIT: I don't know if EA or BW even bothers to read this. But if EA really wants to get ME, DA, and other franchises on a more regular release schedule like their other sports games they are going to have to change their whole mind set. 

Games like these often do take 2 years to make and throwing a bunch of software engineers at them for quick release like they do with other titles are not going to work because these titles are more like movies than simple sports games. No movie if going to go from first script draft to theaters in under a year. You need forward planning for this kind of thing like with the Avengers movie.

EA needs to setup a staggered development team/cycle. What I mean is they should have a team that starts on say ME4 now, then about a year from now they get a team working on ME5 even before ME4 is released. Then a year after that ME4 has been in development for 2 years and is ready for release. Then that team goes to work on ME6 and so on. They can even have the teams be more focused and bonus between the games as one is maybe more focused on quality control and testing.

I had a professor in College who worked at EA and this is actually sorta what they do for their sports games. They have a next release line of code and a long term changes line for features that can't be developed in the 1 year time frame.

The main difference is the sports games only require an update to the roster and they are ready to ship with the improved mechanics they teams has been working on for a long time. While an RPG requires a lot more planning with the story and check of the various writing and dialog. So it naturally requires more time to properly develop which with proper planning they could account for.

Modifié par Spyre2001, 01 mai 2012 - 06:48 .

[Reptilian Rob]

"Victory at any cost." - Victus.

[Spyre2001]

Reptilian Rob wrote...

"Victory at any cost." - Victus.

Even at the cost of Victory itself? That makes no sense

Bump

[Reptilian Rob]

Spyre2001 wrote...

Reptilian Rob wrote...

"Victory at any cost." - Victus.

Even at the cost of Victory itself? That makes no sense

Bump

Hey man, he's a young Turian! Cut the boy some slack! 

[Sanrei]

Bump!

[CDRSkyShepard]

*Curls up in a ball in the corner*

Finals...finals...

Hopefully after tomorrow's onslaught of two finals in a day, I'll be able to edit the banners in the OP and get some new stuff for you guys to look at. I think I'm just going to go with the links for the banners instead of having them all listed there. They look snazzy that way, but it takes up space and there's a bandwidth issue there, too. So, when the banners disappear altogether, don't panic...I'm consolidating. Lol.

Hope you all are well!