269 réponses à ce sujet

[paxbanana3915]

OP: I agree with most of your statements. The only thing I disagree about is the emotional impact of the opening cut-scene the first time around. However, getting bombarded with that child, then its form being used as the Catalyst has really dampened the impact to the point that I don't care. The death of that child lost its symbolic impact because Bioware overused him.

The nightmare sequences as they are feel like a good way to throw on an extra half an hour of 'gameplay'.

I wouldn't have minded nightmare sequences as you suggest them: they would have been visceral and had an impact on the gameplay. I was hoping to see--when I realized it was a nightmare scene--Shepard's nightmare sequences reflect more of the uncertainty of her own humanity: Shepard herself becoming a husk or losing control of her body. (Blizzard did a very good job with the latter situation in Cataclysm.) It was a common theme through the game: how much, exactly, Cerberus made a mark on her when they rebuilt her, but that was resolved in only a couple lines during the Cerberus mission.

Basically, ME3 feels like it's full of a very cool ideas that were implemented very poorly or not at all.

[The Angry One]

MegumiAzusa wrote...

If you go with that I would still say there would be always two choices:
The choice of your action, what you say, and how do you behave.
And the choice of how you feel about it. For example: are you doing something because you know you have to do it but still feel bad about it while not showing that to the outside, or you don't care and the result is all that matters?
Without both options the inner character is always predetermined.

The problem with that is if Shepard were the latter, it would've come up before now. The squad she sent to their deaths? Leaving Ashley to die on Virmire? The colonists melted before her eyes? Etc.

Or if it all reached breaking point with the Reaper invasion, then I would be okay with showing them. In fact, showing Ashley/Kaidan in dreams would've been rather clever instead of some kid we don't know.

[ardias89]

Well its always hard to know how players will be affected by emotional scenes. I think some people even didnt care about the end just because its a video game but yes i agree it was not very well handled.

[The Angry One]

ardias89 wrote...

Well its always hard to know how players will be affected by emotional scenes. I think some people even didnt care about the end just because its a video game but yes i agree it was not very well handled.

It's not that hard.
Mordin, Thane and Legion are emotional because we know and care about these characters, we're given the opportunity to relate to them.

The kid on the other hand is just some kid. We don't know him, we don't talk to him. We don't know who he is or what he's done. In a storyline, emotion from a character death is earned, not forced. If you force it you end up looking cheesy and manipulative.

Modifié par The Angry One, 01 avril 2012 - 07:24 .

[Malevolence65]

I kinda feel like they could have somehow incorporated the kid into the suggested dreams about Shepard's backstory. So many things about the kid just ruin the impact, though. The face, the two retarded lines of dialogue, his voice, and of course the catalyst taking his form at the end.

[wright1978]

The Angry One wrote...

ardias89 wrote...

Well its always hard to know how players will be affected by emotional scenes. I think some people even didnt care about the end just because its a video game but yes i agree it was not very well handled.

It's not that hard.
Mordin, Thane and Legion are emotional because we know and care about these characters, we're given the opportunity to relate to them.

The kid on the other hand is just some kid. We don't know him, we don't talk to him. We don't know who he is or what he's done. In a storyline, emotion from a character death is earned, not forced. If you force it you end up looking cheesy and manipulative.

Yeah this.

[TekFanX]

On the dreams: I found the shadows and voices more disturbing than this kid.
You could make your own thing up, what they would do to your Shepard.

A child burns as a dramatic tool, while there is an achievement in the game to incinerate enemies?

And about the dream as a whole:

Shepard is one of those:
-Orphan that lost his/her parents in a batarian slaver-raid(Parents killed, friends of same age killed).
-Orphan from the streets of earth(I'm no insider, but I think this is a hard life)
-Spacer-Kid(the only choice your Shepard can have a relatively "normal" childhood)

mixed with:

-War-Hero(Has probably seen some cruel things in his/her times)
-Sole survivor(Saw all his squadmates getting eaten by something no one knew before)
-Ruthless(Just doesn't give a damn)

Suddenly this kid is so important.
If it's not an indoctrination-device from the reapers or something like that, it's a terrible flat thing.
A child becomes the symbol for billions Shepard couldn't save?
A child with no apparent boundaries to anyone on earth?
No mom, no dad, not even the people in the shuttle at the beginning seem to care about that kid?

Sure, a dead child is sad.
But as a plot-device?
So we see the home-planet of our race burning.
Billions of people die.
Anderson, a character who could be one of Shepards best friends in your game, could die any day.
People are getting transformed into monsters or molten alive.

All very good devices to make things dramatic and sad.
The child is pretty much like an air-fan in a hurrican, given the dramatic situation of the game.

And the setting: A park?
A forest-based park?
Why this?
There's no way I can identify Shepard with that.
Not only my Shepard, but the backgrounds you could choose.
Normally such nightmares occur in places that haunted you when you were a child.
Or were you had a terrible experience.

Here are some simple ideas for places, where the nightmare could happen, given Shepards background: 
-Spacer-kid: A ship with flickering lights. Red emergency-lights blink through the darkness. Shepard recognizes the ship as one of the ships he/she grew up on. Shepard reaches the bridge and get's spaced, because there is no bridge anymore as the doors open. While the air get's sucked out of Shepards lungs, we get to see how the reapers tear through the alliance-fleets and how earth burns. Screams build up even as Shepard is in the vacuum. 
The screams of billions of lifes being taken on earth.
As the volume of the screams reaches its peak, Shepard's view is completely filled by one reaper, just like we saw it in the prothean beacon.
Awakening.
-Colony-kid: Shepard runs through the colony where he/she was born.
Again, Shepard recognizes it.
Dead people everywhere. Burning habitats. Just as it must have been when the batarians left.
Suddenly dragonteeth emerge from the ground, piercing the dead bodies as they rise.
Just like it happens in the trailer, the people are turned into husks, rising from the spikes and charging at Shepard.
Some may even have shreds of their former colony-clothes on them.
Former friends or even family.
Shepard is swarmed by husks, beaten down. They start to tear him/her apart.
Then a red beam fills out the sky as Shepard looks up. 
It hits directly...and Shepard wakes up.
-Street-kid: Shepard walks through a street in casual clothes.
Nothing fancy, maybe a reskinned model of the London-level, without the debris-objects and more intact buildings.
Shepards eyes focus on a street-sign, showing us, that it is his/her old corner.
Shepard smiles.
Suddenly people scream. They melt away or are crashed by falling debris.
Flames color the former blue sky in a hellish red and Reapers descend from it.
Shepard looks around and is at once in armor and with an assault-rifle in his/her hands.
Firing, until a reaper-ray hits Shepard and results in waking up.

All could progress by adding ships or people from the other races over the course of the actions.
I'm well aware, that this would have taken excessively more work than the current single level.
Why not modifying the dream-level as it is?
Spacer-kid: Make the forrest look like the recreational area at grissom academy. Apparently part of a space-ship/-station. Flickering lights are still possible too.
Colony-kid: Put some burned habitats into the forrest and dark smoke-screens blowing from flamelit points in the distance.
Street-kid: Some stuff that makes the thing look more like a park. Skyscrapers towering in the distance, a kiosk for newspapers and snacks. A basketball-field.

The point that bothers me: There is no bound to earth for the player in the previous two games. Except for our own bound to earth, the game didn't create.
It's a miraculous place that's been mentioned and you can orbit it in ME2, but that's all.
Suddenly the game want's us to care. At such a flat and blatant level, that it's awkward, not sad.
A child no one cares about (even though the people help each other into the Shuttle) and a forest Shepard has never been to before, as far as the player knows.
Sure...that's far more depressing than the panorama of flames raining down on earth.

Sorry for the wall of text;)

Modifié par TekFanX, 01 avril 2012 - 09:14 .

[KelaSaar]

I couldn't agree more with the OP. The Thessia thing really bugged me. I can at least mentally headcanon the dreams with the kid as being indoctrination theory, but my Shepard did not care about losing Thessia. She kinda thought the Asari had it coming for being so obstructionist the whole game, so it was irritating that my Shepard was supposed to be oh so heartbroken.

[Ashilana]

The Angry One wrote...
It's not that hard.
Mordin, Thane and Legion are emotional because we know and care about these characters, we're given the opportunity to relate to them.

The kid on the other hand is just some kid. We don't know him, we don't talk to him. We don't know who he is or what he's done. In a storyline, emotion from a character death is earned, not forced. If you force it you end up looking cheesy and manipulative.

But the ewok that dies in Return of the Jedi... he totally deserved all that screen time!   (Wow, I think I am too old for the internet.)

[Chaoswind]

Not to mention the way I "lost" was a Joke.... I Javeline that punk ass and he didn't even took my shields down and I lost?

If a bunch of Reaper troops had come and distracted me while the pun ran was more acceptable than this

[The Angry One]

You know, now that I think about it, the forest/park of the dream is an odd setting.
What is it's meaning? Aside from looking creepy and cliche? The forest has nothing to do with anything.

[malra]

KelaSaar wrote...

I couldn't agree more with the OP. The Thessia thing really bugged me. I can at least mentally headcanon the dreams with the kid as being indoctrination theory, but my Shepard did not care about losing Thessia. She kinda thought the Asari had it coming for being so obstructionist the whole game, so it was irritating that my Shepard was supposed to be oh so heartbroken.

this is one of those big built up moments that just fizzled away.  there is no way the asari councilor gets a pass after acting like I was all crazy and making up reapers when they've built their entire society on prothean technology.  but hey, it just fizzles away.

[Evil Minion]

MegumiAzusa wrote...

Evil Minion wrote...

VigilancePress wrote...

Evil Minion-

I don't know that I can agree 100%. I agree with you in principle, but in the first game you are given background choices that include an option for a character who is very much 'do the job, doesn't matter who dies to get it done.' While I can see that same character might care enough about a single child to let it bother him (or let the child be a metaphor for the homeworld he wants to save) I still think he'd picture things differently from my Paragon for whom every life lost is a battle lost. I wouldn't mind every Shepard having nightmares about what's happening...

...I just think the game's dream sequences are just not nuanced enough to unify all those different emergent Shepards out there.

Again, another fair point. I think it would've been great if they could've differentiated the dream sequences in such a way as to reflect YOUR Shepard.

Personally, I'm a paragon in most of my play-throughs, so that's probably why I wasn't as bothered.

However, I'm wondering if all of these subtle nuances would be within Bioware's budget.

Why should the outward actions you take towards others correspond 100% how you really feel? Even if you have the most badass Shep, who says he is different inside compared to the most whiny Shep? You just can't tell if all that badassery is just a mask to play over your feelings you don't want to show?
If they made it the way you just said I too wouldn't have the opportunity to that. You can't just say badass Shep is always badass in his/her mind.

At some point, I think the writers just have to make a descision.

There's no way they can accomodate every permutation and subtle personality nuance in every incarnation of Shepard.

Personally, I loved the dream sequences and was glad my Shepard developed more of a personality.

[Ashilana]

Luc0s wrote...
I played ME1 like a dozen of times. I know for sure that there isn't any difference. But feel free to prove me wrong by showing me a video where Shepard says something else than: "I saw synthetics, geth maybe, slaughtering people, butchering them."

Well, it seems you were right (damn you youtube for being so useful). 

Oh well, maybe in ME1 & ME2 they were just better at hiding your limited choices.   <_<

Modifié par Ashilana, 01 avril 2012 - 09:45 .

[Thornne]

For me the dream kid wasn't that much of a problem. I took it as Sherpard feeling the pressure to save the Earth (and a good chunk of the human race), and the kid being symbolic of that, rather than Shepard being obsessed about that one kid, specifically.

On the other hand, I found the Thessia fight to be plain silly. When this fight started and I saw the gunship, I immediately retreated to the rear corner of the temple with my squad mates. I then proceeded to snipe and nuke Kai Leng without him (or the gunship) threatening me in any meaningful way. Suddenly I am treated to a cut scene where I am teleported to a different part of the temple and dropped through the floor, while Kai Leng strolls past me to win. It was so heavy handed I LOLed, and so annoying I quit playing until the next day. This whole thing should have been a cutscene -- there was no point pretending this was a fight scene when it never was.

[The Angry One]

Evil Minion wrote...

At some point, I think the writers just have to make a descision.

There's no way they can accomodate every permutation and subtle personality nuance in every incarnation of Shepard.

Personally, I loved the dream sequences and was glad my Shepard developed more of a personality.

What part of the dream sequences suggests personality to you?
Are you seriously saying dreaming about random children you've never met is superior to developing relationships with real characters?

[Ashilana]

The Angry One wrote...

You know, now that I think about it, the forest/park of the dream is an odd setting.
What is it's meaning? Aside from looking creepy and cliche? The forest has nothing to do with anything.

But a spacer born Shep should totally feel attached to forests... oh wait, that makes no sense.

[Evil Minion]

Ashilana wrote...

Luc0s wrote...
I played ME1 like a dozen of times. I know for sure that there isn't any difference. But feel free to prove me wrong by showing me a video where Shepard says something else than: "I saw synthetics, geth maybe, slaughtering people, butchering them."

Well, it seems you were right (damn you youtube for being so useful). 

Oh well, maybe in ME1 & ME2 they were just better at hiding your limited choices.   <_<

Exactly.

I was never convinced that we had much real "choice" in the ME universe.

The most "choice" we had involved how we choose to respond to our circumstances, not the circumstances themselves.

For example, whether I choose to destroy the Collector base or not, TIM still got the Reaper technology.

[Ashilana]

Evil Minion wrote...

Ashilana wrote...

Luc0s wrote...
I played ME1 like a dozen of times. I know for sure that there isn't any difference. But feel free to prove me wrong by showing me a video where Shepard says something else than: "I saw synthetics, geth maybe, slaughtering people, butchering them."

Well, it seems you were right (damn you youtube for being so useful). 

Oh well, maybe in ME1 & ME2 they were just better at hiding your limited choices.   <_<

Exactly.

I was never convinced that we had much real "choice" in the ME universe.

The most "choice" we had involved how we choose to respond to our circumstances, not the circumstances themselves.

For example, whether I choose to destroy the Collector base or not, TIM still got the Reaper technology.

Well, that isn't a strong example of it being present in the series... that is an example of ME3 not caring what you did previously.

[noxsachi]

Evil Minion wrote...

Ashilana wrote...

Luc0s wrote...
I played ME1 like a dozen of times. I know for sure that there isn't any difference. But feel free to prove me wrong by showing me a video where Shepard says something else than: "I saw synthetics, geth maybe, slaughtering people, butchering them."

Well, it seems you were right (damn you youtube for being so useful). 

Oh well, maybe in ME1 & ME2 they were just better at hiding your limited choices.   <_<

Exactly.

I was never convinced that we had much real "choice" in the ME universe.

The most "choice" we had involved how we choose to respond to our circumstances, not the circumstances themselves.

For example, whether I choose to destroy the Collector base or not, TIM still got the Reaper technology.

And how is choosing how to respond not a choice? Being able to define your response is the most important aspect of making a character your own, even more so than choosing what action to take.

[Evil Minion]

Ashilana wrote...

Evil Minion wrote...

Ashilana wrote...

Luc0s wrote...
I played ME1 like a dozen of times. I know for sure that there isn't any difference. But feel free to prove me wrong by showing me a video where Shepard says something else than: "I saw synthetics, geth maybe, slaughtering people, butchering them."

Well, it seems you were right (damn you youtube for being so useful). 

Oh well, maybe in ME1 & ME2 they were just better at hiding your limited choices.   <_<

Exactly.

I was never convinced that we had much real "choice" in the ME universe.

The most "choice" we had involved how we choose to respond to our circumstances, not the circumstances themselves.

For example, whether I choose to destroy the Collector base or not, TIM still got the Reaper technology.

Well, that isn't a strong example of it being present in the series... that is an example of ME3 not caring what you did previously.

1. Whether or not you choose to protect the Council, they still show up in ME2 and are just as dismissive of you.

2. The majority of the "choices" I made in ME1 came back to me as....e-mails.

3. You don't get to "choose" whether you work for Cerberus.

4. You are required to smash the Batarian's relay. Your "choice" is whether or not to warn them.

Ect.

I could go on.

[Evil Minion]

noxsachi wrote...

Evil Minion wrote...

Ashilana wrote...

Luc0s wrote...
I played ME1 like a dozen of times. I know for sure that there isn't any difference. But feel free to prove me wrong by showing me a video where Shepard says something else than: "I saw synthetics, geth maybe, slaughtering people, butchering them."

Well, it seems you were right (damn you youtube for being so useful). 

Oh well, maybe in ME1 & ME2 they were just better at hiding your limited choices.   <_<

Exactly.

I was never convinced that we had much real "choice" in the ME universe.

The most "choice" we had involved how we choose to respond to our circumstances, not the circumstances themselves.

For example, whether I choose to destroy the Collector base or not, TIM still got the Reaper technology.

And how is choosing how to respond not a choice? Being able to define your response is the most important aspect of making a character your own, even more so than choosing what action to take.

Exactly.

We had a "choice" in how we chose to respond to the things that happened to us.

We had much less control over the things that happened to us, which is why the supposed "lack of choice" at the end didn't bother me. Shepard never really did have much control over actual events, just his reactions to them.

[BatmanPWNS]

Renegade Shepard is pretty much non-existant in ME3. I am tired of praising Traynor after every mission, telling EDI she is part of the crew and one of us or telling Steve to take a break even though I clearly said "Keep working" to him, Bioware!

[Jimbe2693]

Yes I agree with your points OP (and many other peoples thoughts)

The dream sequences could've easily been made more personal by tieing it to your Shepards backround, and showing characters we actually know and care about in the dreams. (hearing the voices of the dead was nice though, but the setting was random and out of place)

[Skirlasvoud]

Luc0s wrote...

The Angry One wrote...

And we had control over Shepard's reactions, morality and persona. Do you get it now?

We never had full control over that. Shepard is Shepard. He is a character in his/her own right. We can influence how Shepard deals with situations and sometimes we can even influence his/her opinion on something, most certainly, no doubt. But Shepard as a character is always the same. Just like Geralt of Rivia (The Witcher) is always Geralt of Rivia, no matter how we play, no matter what decisions we make, Geralt is still Geralt, a character from Andrzej Sapkowski, not us the player.

Don't you dare bring an RPG into this that's actually sucessful at what it does.

Witcher never put on airs. Geralt's personality is well established from the beginning and the man consistently reacts in the way I expect him to, up to the point where I'm the more feeling one of the two behind my keyboard and loving every moment of it. The advertisement hasn't slapped us to death with "player choice" and just promises us an engaging story, which it does remarkable well. And yet, lo and behold, there's actually a wonderful gem to be found when it comes to story divergence.

Compare that to Mass Effect 3, the most hyped game I ever played. Shepard is a shell of a personality, which we're supposed to fill out. And yet, even that is torn from our hands in ME3 and suddenly this sham of a hero we're supposed to control, is living a life contrary to what we designed. ME3 fails at both depth of character AND player immersion. I feel nothing. The advertisement HAS slapped us to death, but what we got is a tepid on-the-rails uncharted adventure game, but with a for lesser storyarc.


Witcher is the complete reverse of ME3. CDProject gives us a set proagonist and guides it through an amazingly rigid story with suprising choice. Bioware doesn't know how the hell its supposed to do anymore, aims for to give us player choice, doesn't and then ruins the story. It comes short of what the Witcher does.

Modifié par Skirlasvoud, 01 avril 2012 - 10:06 .