269 réponses à ce sujet

[cachx]

People hate the kid now because for them he (or his image) represents the ending they hate so much. The kid was also over exposed during the beta leak, the demo, and the trailers reducing the impact of that particular scene (you can go back and check how a lot of people were actually moved by it).

The dream sequences were pretty short and I really didn't mind them (though I did find them a little out of place). I think the only one that was really effective was the one were you hear voices of the dead characters.

I found the post-Thessia drama to be really powerful, specially when you fight Joker. It surprised me how well done it was.

One of the complaints from ME2 was that Shepard felt very plain and wasn't introspective or sentimental at all. Guess it backfired, uh?

[Chaoswind]

I agree with you OP

The whole nightmares with the kid felt forced, my Shepard is a paragade and I am a good guy, but I am enough of a Dick to dismiss that vent kid as just another one, if Bioware wanted to cause us stress and justify the nightmares they should had killed Anderson.

They only "death" in the game that made me yell "what? No Noooooooooo" was when Grunt threw himself to the abyss, and that was because I saw grunt as my hyperactive kid.

Anderson and Hackett: are like fathers to me, the dead of either would had caused a great response in me.
Ashley and Kaidan: Soldiers, I enjoy their company, but their deaths would never distress me a whole lot.
Garrus: My Turian pal and best friend, his death would destroy me (and shep)
Tali: Idk sometimes I feel like her father and sometimes I feel like I want to do dirty stuff with her :/
Wrex: My Krogan pal, second of Garrus, but don't tell him that.
Liara: My nerdy girl and girlfriend.

Jacob: idiot #6, I kill him and his dad 90% of the time.
Miranda: her complex personality intrigue me and I see her as a conquest to win, not like a GF.
Mordin: is a doctor, I like him, but he isn't my friend, maybe a pal like Kaidan and Ashley.
Grunt: My crazy friend that sometimes feels like my son, and I treat him as such.
Jack: a crazy and honest **** and I value her friendship.
Thane: my pal.
Samara: dunno, bellow pal, but I would save her if possible.
Legion: third best friend, he teaches me a lot and in turn I teach him as well.

Kasumi and Zaeed: don't care.
Vent kid: who gives a ****.

Modifié par Chaoswind, 01 avril 2012 - 03:08 .

[noxsachi]

cachx wrote...

People hate the kid now because for them he (or his image) represents the ending they hate so much. The kid was also over exposed during the beta leak, the demo, and the trailers reducing the impact of that particular scene (you can go back and check how a lot of people were actually moved by it).

The dream sequences were pretty short and I really didn't mind them (though I did find them a little out of place). I think the only one that was really effective was the one were you hear voices of the dead characters.

I found the post-Thessia drama to be really powerful, specially when you fight Joker. It surprised me how well done it was.

One of the complaints from ME2 was that Shepard felt very plain and wasn't introspective or sentimental at all. Guess it backfired, uh?

I like more options to define a character, but the keyword here is options. Take the Joker fight for example. Both the options you can take involve you snapping at him. There is no playing along, no taking a different view. You /always/ snap at Joker. That is why I dislike that sequence, not because you could fight with Joker(who to be fair took a turn for the worse in feel in ME3 imo). A forced squence like that does not add character to my Shepard, rather it rips away my Shepard from me and makes me stop caring.

Modifié par noxsachi, 01 avril 2012 - 03:06 .

[malra]

cachx wrote...

-snipped-
One of the complaints from ME2 was that Shepard felt very plain and wasn't introspective or sentimental at all. Guess it backfired, uh?

I think the complaints about the lack of introspection or sentimemtality was the lack of those kinds of options.  That is the point of all of this.  ME1 was an RPG which means the player is given myriad options to create characters that respond according to the type of character being played.  ME2 was the first step in removing player choice which I believe is why the reaction you state.  ME3 is the ultimate final step in which the player loses all control of a character that was initially an RPG created character. 

[Billabong2011]

malra wrote...

I agree that if we remove the endings and look at the game in a serious manner from beginning to the beam of light we begin to see it for what it is: a heavy handed attempt by the writers to move everyone into a single direction which they said they were not going to do. Heavy handed because because the player is constantly being beaten over the head with foreshadowing, heavy handed through all the emotional manipulation, heavy handed through the creation of secondary conflicts and psuedo-villians that are not properly fleshed out (Miranda's father/Sanctuary being a prime example)......I could go on and on, not to mention the problems with the journal, etc. But all of this would have just lain by the wayside if only the ending had not been broken......yes, I said it. The end of my game is broken because there is no option to reflect the storyline my Shepard was engaged in. Since it is missing, the game is broken.

Having said all of that, I agree that all of this needs to be discussed because the overall storytelling among other things is not what I expect to get from Bioware.  However, I mostly focus on the endings because the ending can be fixed.

-edited because I forgot half of my sentence in the epilogue

I think we have the same brain  Well said!! I agree completely with this and the OP.

[sorentoft]

njfluffy19 wrote...

In other words, this should have happened:

You made my day.

[Chaoswind]

I disagree when the vent kid died (in the trailer) I felt nothing, I tried to help him, and he ran off, too bad but is his fault, if I tell a 7 year old kid to stay put during a quake and he runs off to a building just for the building to give away and kill him, then I BET your ass I wouldn't let something like that have any effect on me, if he was family? Yes, but a kid I found in the street? Nope.

Is easy to dehumanise people you don't know even kids, and is one of the things you learn in the army, having the vent kid have such a HUGE effect on ALL the Sheps even the ruthless ones and amoral ones was a huge mistake.

Modifié par Chaoswind, 01 avril 2012 - 03:21 .

[Cosmar]

flamingplatypus wrote...

I do agree with this. I felt kind of like Bioware was just trying to say "LOOK A CHILD DIED! THIS IS SAD! GET REVENGE ON THE REAPERS!"
I think it would have been more effective to have the Virmire Survivor in the dreams.

Yeah! That would have been great. In at least one dream we hear the VS' voice a little bit, but it would have been more effective to see them or other dead friends instead of Nameless Child.

[Chaoswind]

Now that I think about it, if I take a step back of the universe and review as ME3 as a standalone game only the words Cheesy as hell seem to come out.

How comes the game has a lot more gore, yet feels childish and cheesy?

[EAadembroski]

noxsachi wrote...

Thessia is more of a case where you lose via cutscene magic, so the loss does not actually feel devastating. In the fight the cutscene only triggers when you reduce Kai Leng to a certain percentage...which in video game terms means you won! How am I supposed to be upset about that? If you want me to lose...actually make me lose. Have Kai Leng show up with four gunships, instantly kill your squadmates, get you in that little melee battle sequence, then they blow up the temple. It is as cutsceney...but something like that would convey the fact that you actually lost.

I actually disagree on the dream sequences. I thought they were well done. I believe the point was not to disturb, but to convey a sense of helplessness. 

Anyways, the paragraph I quoted, on the other hand, is spot on. What makes it worse is contrasting it with Arrival, which caused you to fail without being crowbarred in through a cutscene.

In other words, they'd already done it right once, but failed on this attempt.

[malra]

Billabong2011 wrote...
-snipped-
I think we have the same brain  Well said!! I agree completely with this and the OP.

I have been trying to get people to discuss this for weeks and no one has wanted to look at the other serious issues in the over all storytelling. 

If you go back just a couple of posts, the OP and I actually posted two responses to the same person at the same time, so if your sharing that brain I don't think we have any left to spare

[malra]

Chaoswind wrote...

I disagree when the vent kid died (in the trailer) I felt nothing, I tried to help him, and he ran off, too bad but is his fault, if I tell a 7 year old kid to stay put during a quake and he runs off to a building just for the building to give away and kill him, then I BET your ass I wouldn't let something like that have any effect on me, if he was family? Yes, but a kid I found in the street? Nope.

Is easy to dehumanise people you don't know even kids, and is one of the things you learn in the army, having the vent kid have such a HUGE effect on ALL the Sheps even the ruthless ones and amoral ones was a huge mistake.

This is the actual reaction I had as a played the game.  I told that kid to come here and he didn't, I didn't feel bad at all.  I was actually very annoyed when he showed up in my paragon maleshep and my paragade femshep's dreams.

[EnerPrime]

Chaoswind wrote...

I disagree when the vent kid died (in the trailer) I felt nothing, I tried to help him, and he ran off, too bad but is his fault, if I tell a 7 year old kid to stay put during a quake and he runs off to a building just for the building to give away and kill him, then I BET your ass I wouldn't let something like that have any effect on me, if he was family? Yes, but a kid I found in the street? Nope.

Totally. I just stopped caring when the kid said the 'you can't help me' bull****. I'm COMMANDER FREAKING SHEPARD (gotta actually use that as a Shepard's first name sometime). I'm headed for an awesome spaceship that's going to a place that is not a reaper infested Earth. I damn well can help you, but the writers won't let me because you're nothing more than a hack attempt by the writer to tug on my heartstrings.

[InHumanTurtle]

I agree competely. Way too many forced emotions.

The part that did impact me however on Thessia was the commander we met earlier desperately calling for help, who we then hear scream and die. That was well done in that I as a person felt directly responsible for her death (me and Javik encouraged her to fight) - the same went for those gunships, they died trying to help you...

But again, far too much of the game forced you into caring for something. I had no empathy with Earth whatsoever. We barely saw anything of it, and what we did see was a bland, industrial mess populated by uninteresting and dare I say, ugly, people.

When you listen to the background speech of the nightmares they are genuinely creepy, however the focus being on the kid jarred mke quite a lot. I didn't care for this one child. Later dialogue options force you to either act sad about it or ignore it. We should have been able to say something along the lines of "Why the hell am I having nightmares over one stupid kid!"

That links with autodialogue, which also forces emotions. I know people say "Well it's bette rthan ME1 where all the coices where the same" - but that is a moronic statement. What Bioware should have done is MAKE all those choices matter, not simply remove them!


Lazy development choices which, along with the terribly written ending, make it impossible for me to want to make another playthough.

[iamthedave3]

Grasich wrote...

Austin N wrote...

Grasich wrote...

For that matter, why are we even trying to retake Earth when the bulk of the Reapers are there? I would've just detonated the Sol relay and been done with it.

You might be asking for a wee much there.

Well, you're able to sacrifice part of the human fleet in ME1 just to save the council, and in ME2 you blow up a system with 300,000 Batarians just to delay the Reapers for a few months. So why not be able to obliterate Earth to take out the bulk of the Reaper forces?

Kill 5.5 billion to save hundreds of billions

Yeah,  but those were Batarians.

I'm almost dead certain that's the reason.

One good thing they could have done with the dream sequences was use Shepherd's backstory. I don't know how many people even bother reading the details on Shepherd's 'famous action' be it Mindoir or Torfan or whatever, but they're almost always really unpleasant. They could have made a series of three different dream sequences based on whichever background you had and used those to build some character, with Shepherd thinking back over old horrors as the new bears down on him/her.

You could say that Shepherd's obviously buried whatever ghosts are involved, but then there's no friggin' reason for one random dead kid to bother my ruthless Shepherd when she tried to help him and he refused, and she's coldly sacrificed anyone and anything that gets between her and the mission. In fact, she'd sacrifice that very kid in a heartbeat if she had to.

Really the biggest mark against the dream sequences is that they're just uninspired. Oh a child's dead. That's emotional. Let's go with that. Why? BECAUSE A CHILD IS DEAD!!!!!!

It's a lazy thing to reach for. Same as it's lazy when developers desperate to be profound reach for a stock biblical allegory. IT REMINDS ME OF THE BIBLE IT MUST BE DEEP!!!!!!!

Modifié par iamthedave3, 01 avril 2012 - 03:56 .

[Grasich]

iamthedave3 wrote...

Grasich wrote...

Austin N wrote...

Grasich wrote...

For that matter, why are we even trying to retake Earth when the bulk of the Reapers are there? I would've just detonated the Sol relay and been done with it.

You might be asking for a wee much there.

Well, you're able to sacrifice part of the human fleet in ME1 just to save the council, and in ME2 you blow up a system with 300,000 Batarians just to delay the Reapers for a few months. So why not be able to obliterate Earth to take out the bulk of the Reaper forces?

Kill 5.5 billion to save hundreds of billions

Yeah,  but those were Batarians.

I'm almost dead certain that's the reason.

BioWare, you humans are all racist.

[malra]

InHumanTurtle wrote...

-snipped-
Lazy development choices which, along with the terribly written ending, make it impossible for me to want to make another playthough.

So there has been a lot of name calling of people who say they can't replay the game.  So far that name calling has been along the lines of being a wimp because the ending is bleak or dark.  And it maybe that people think they can't replay because of the ending.  However, I wonder if you don't have an excellent observation.  Perhaps the inability some people are having in replaying the game is really because the broken story telling becomes more obvious.  For myself, I stopped after two character builds and actually deleted the rest.  The more I tried to play the more I noticed all the really bad, bad points other than just the broken ending.

[Nenomitrosis]

I think emotional manipulation is there, but "horrible gameplay sections" are not

[weltraumhamster89]

I agree with everything, especially this:

noxsachi wrote...

Lastly the nightmare sequences are both desperate attempts to move you emotionally and horrible gameplay segments. They are a huge pain to get through and they do little to nothing to the player. Shepard having nightmares is a good conceit given what is going on, but the opportunity to do anything interesting with them is lost. If you want to have a nightmare, actually make it disturbing. Referance Shepard's backstory, what you saw in the beacon, or at the Collector base. Or hell, have a new sequence where you think you are awake, only things go horribly wrong and you wake up and it is a nightmare. Have us have to do something disturbing, like see our LI get huskified and we have to kill them. Something like that would impact both Shepard and the player, while running slowly after a stupid annoying kid just wastes your time.

Basically the point of this long discussion is that Shepard has been connected to the player, but in all of these circumstances the game says that something affects Shepard without it impacting the player at all. This is utterly against the point of a blank character like Shepard because you as a player are supposed to react as Shepard would, something the series had accomplished very well til this point.

[Chaoswind]

This is what happens when Mr. Hudson (sp?) thinks he can pull a great game out of his ass in 2 years, what was the last good RPG game that took 2 years to make? Yeah I should had seen this comming.

[BatmanPWNS]

ME3 hardly gives you any freedom.

[Skirlasvoud]

Well spoken OP.

The game does a terrific job at playing the heartstrings, but only the first time and not when you have eight characters imported like I did. It seems Mass Effect 3 wanted to be more like Uncharted or a hollywood movie, instead of an RPG with player choice. All control over how your character is supposed to feel, is taken away from you in an attempt at sentimantality. Even my worst, most merciless renegade is forced to into an actor instead of my avatar.

That would only been acceptable if I had been playing an on-the rails adventure game, or if the story itself hadn't been handled so horribly in the last five minutes.


For all their talk of Artistic Integrity, ME3 fails at both being an RPG and a properly written story. It's laughable that they hide behind the defence of art when the game does a horrible job at being just that.


Like the rest have stated however, we can only win one battle at a time. THe rest of the game we can no longer fix, but we can the ending.

[Ashilana]

noxsachi wrote...

Thessia is more of a case where you lose via cutscene magic, so the loss does not actually feel devastating.

I "won" that fight swiftly so the disconnect with the cutscene defeat wasn't as shocking for me.  My boyfriend on the other hand was playing a vanguard and lost several times.  When he finally won...his anger was palpable.

I think you are onto something important here, that moment was a huge narrative failure.  Shep is supposed to be upset at failing...but as a player you know you could never have won, so you don't care.

noxsachi wrote...
 If you want to have a nightmare, actually make it disturbing. Referance Shepard's backstory, what you saw in the beacon, or at the Collector base.

That would have been awesome.  Three different dream sequences depending on what formative moment you chose for your character.

[Ashilana]

malra wrote...

Perhaps the inability some people are having in replaying the game is really because the broken story telling becomes more obvious.  For myself, I stopped after two character builds and actually deleted the rest.  The more I tried to play the more I noticed all the really bad, bad points other than just the broken ending.

I made it past Tuchanka on my second playthrough... but now I have petered out.  The glaring mistakes and rushed bits are just too much to ignore.

[VigilancePress]

Brilliant observation, OP!

If the dreams had been truly interactive, allowing me to express *my* Shepard's emotions the way I wanted to, they would have been far better. A Renegade Shepard's dreams would be completely different from a Paragon's. This is one of the huge disconnects between the first two games and the third game. It establishes your psyche as being the same, no matter what kind of character you play, which is absurd in the extreme. This is a glaring problem with the narrative, unless the dreams are being imposed on Shepard as part of 'Indoctrination'... in which case, we should have some scene in there that explains our reaction to them.

For instance, it would be great for our Love Interest to chat us up about our nightmares ("Something's bothering you, what is it?"). That would give us the opportunity to explain our reaction to these sequences in the way *we* want our Shep to experience them. A Renegade might question his attachment to the dreams, or the meaning of the child's presence, while a Paragon might question her sanity or her ability to save the Earth.