1895 réponses à ce sujet

[pikey1969]

General Battuta wrote...

awwnuts07 wrote...

Anyone know if there's a non-paraphrased version of the interview

Weekes is awesomesauce.

There was no 'interview'. We just stood around talking. We had no idea it was going to happen - it was nothing formal.

After it happened I was at PAX for several more hours before I got home and wrote this up. I did see someone with a video camera, but I don't think she was there for the entire conversation.

If she was cute, all is forgiven.

[Hexley UK]

Shallyah wrote...

I think this proves that, as many of us suspected, what destroyed your ME3 (and my Tali's face/game model, among other things) wasn't Bioware being lazy, but EA pushing a strict schedule and budget.

I really think Bioware shouldn't take any hate. Sure, they still put the godchild in there, but I bet if the Extended Cut had been originally in the game (as I bet Bioware would've wanted), most of the protests wouldn't have happened. Yes, there would be unhappy people, as there are unhappy people with about everything in this world. But definitely wouldn't have existed any uproar or anything similar to a "Retake Movement" and we'd be all arguing about who's the best LI or what's the best ending while agreeing that Mass Effect 3 totally blew us away as the awesome game it is.

Good post and most likely very true.

[AxisEvolve]

I'll say this. I'd feel a lot more confident about purchasing a future Mass Effect game if Weekes was the lead writer. Good guy.

[pikey1969]

Shallyah wrote...

I think this proves that, as many of us suspected, what destroyed your ME3 (and my Tali's face/game model, among other things) wasn't Bioware being lazy, but EA pushing a strict schedule and budget.

I really think Bioware shouldn't take any hate. Sure, they still put the godchild in there, but I bet if the Extended Cut had been originally in the game (as I bet Bioware would've wanted), most of the protests wouldn't have happened. Yes, there would be unhappy people, as there are unhappy people with about everything in this world. But definitely wouldn't have existed any uproar or anything similar to a "Retake Movement" and we'd be all arguing about who's the best LI or what's the best ending while agreeing that Mass Effect 3 totally blew us away as the awesome game it is.

[tractrpl]

So, the Destroy option officially doesn't necessarily kill EDI, so I have to guess it may not necessarily kill the Geth.

[pikey1969]

AxisEvolve wrote...

I'll say this. I'd feel a lot more confident about purchasing a future Mass Effect game if Weekes was the lead writer. Good guy.

Correction, I'd feel a lot better about purchasing Bioware products in the future if they go 'rogue' Bungie style.

[Helmchen2010]

As pathetic as this may sound, I now actually feel like replaying M1-M3, knowing that things didn't quite end on as bleak of a note as the actual endings (so far) imply, and hopeful that there will be more individualized outcomes (crew member epilogues, etc.) to look forward to.

[bmg2]

Patrick Weekes's work on ME3 was awesome! Bioware should give him a raise. Hopefully he's heavily involved in the extended ending dlc.

[Hexley UK]

tractrpl wrote...

So, the Destroy option officially doesn't necessarily kill EDI, so I have to guess it may not necessarily kill the Geth.

Or maybe only those Geth that had Reapertech installed.

[M0keys]

AxisEvolve wrote...

I'll say this. I'd feel a lot more confident about purchasing a future Mass Effect game if Weekes was the lead writer. Good guy.

Same here!

[Aurvant]

Hexley UK wrote...

Aurvant wrote...

@Hexley:

Granting context to events that shouldn't happen doesn't make them better.

But your ranting over paraphrased answers to a casual interview, just chill and enjoy the fact that someone is actually speaking to us (however indirectly)

Theres plenty of other threads to express your concerns in. 

The fact is we won't really know how it's all explained until the EE comes out.

Yeah, yeah.

Im just concerned about it is all. I'll just wait and see what gets sent our way this summer. Weekes is pretty awesome for taking the time out.

Also, Geth Infiltrator in MP? Yes, thank you!

[gill2k]

Fun read and thanks to the OP for posting that. Main thing I got from that is that Weekes (and the writing team as it is implied) seems like he's/they've got ideas already locked and loaded on what to put on the extended cut and how to make sense of everything.

This is why I want to give the extended cut a chance before raging over it. The collective writing team at Bioware is damn good. If only EA or the Bioware overlord(s) gave them a chance to be as a team for the ending...

[PsyrenY]

NO, I WON'T BELIEVE IT! THE GALAXY WAS SUPPOSED TO IMPLODE AND THERE'D BE NO MORE MASS EFFECT!!!

To the folks that left, goodbye, you won't be missed.

[Whybother]

Bioware definitely has a talent in Patrick (and John!), may they have long careers there.

[Hexley UK]

Aurvant wrote...

Hexley UK wrote...

Aurvant wrote...

@Hexley:

Granting context to events that shouldn't happen doesn't make them better.

But your ranting over paraphrased answers to a casual interview, just chill and enjoy the fact that someone is actually speaking to us (however indirectly)

Theres plenty of other threads to express your concerns in. 

The fact is we won't really know how it's all explained until the EE comes out.

Yeah, yeah.

Im just concerned about it is all. I'll just wait and see what gets sent our way this summer. Weekes is pretty awesome for taking the time out.

Also, Geth Infiltrator in MP? Yes, thank you!

Bah Krogan Vanguard 4tw! 

[Zhuinden]

I love Patrick Weekes, at least he's honest and awesome.

[Skvindt]

This gives me hope!

Great insight and a great read. My thanks to Weekes, the interviewer, and pikey for posting this.

Modifié par SRX, 08 avril 2012 - 02:44 .

[pikey1969]

Hexley UK wrote...

Aurvant wrote...

Hexley UK wrote...

Aurvant wrote...

@Hexley:

Granting context to events that shouldn't happen doesn't make them better.

But your ranting over paraphrased answers to a casual interview, just chill and enjoy the fact that someone is actually speaking to us (however indirectly)

Theres plenty of other threads to express your concerns in. 

The fact is we won't really know how it's all explained until the EE comes out.

Yeah, yeah.

Im just concerned about it is all. I'll just wait and see what gets sent our way this summer. Weekes is pretty awesome for taking the time out.

Also, Geth Infiltrator in MP? Yes, thank you!

Bah Krogan Vanguard 4tw! 

hmm.. UK ey?

less ramblings from you, more Steak Pies and mushy peas in the mail for me.

[Oldbones2]

The Angry One wrote...

Oldbones2 wrote...

Look at least Weekes is TRYING. He's trying to give us answers about the story, about the production, about why some things HAD to happen the way they did.

More than any other BW staff member has done so far.

True enough, but I just get a bad vibe when anyone at BioWare says "you should assume this or that."
Show, don't tell.

I'm not saying forgive and forget Bioware.

Chances are I will NEVER say forgive Bioware. 


But I might say forget.

ZING!

"Somebody get call the fire department.  That man's on fire!"

But we shouldn't paint Weekes and some of the others with the same brush as we paint Casey.

[xsdob]

Bioware being rushed sounds about right. Between mass effect 1 and 2, the development time was about 3 years 2007-2010. The time between mass effect 2 and 3 was 2 years or less, 2010-2012.

And games aren't like many animated media, where you can still be almost done with the current season and already working on the next few episodes and the pilot of the next season. MLP and it's very transparent and open to the fans creative process taught me that, it's a miracle any cartoons manage to pull it off at all.

Anyway, point is the time between these two games was short, so no wonder everything but the ending in mass effect 3 was only somewhat better instead of leaps and bounds ahead.

But that's not important, becasue what is important is that this needs to be not only stickied, but posted everywhere people say that bioware isn't listening or that the new extended cut wont do jack should see this, because this is some actual evidence as to whether that dlc may be good or not, rather than just a gut feeling.

[MegaSovereign]

Why does EDI survive the destroy ending? This was never explained even in the interview.

[pikey1969]

gill2k wrote...

Fun read and thanks to the OP for posting that. Main thing I got from that is that Weekes (and the writing team as it is implied) seems like he's/they've got ideas already locked and loaded on what to put on the extended cut and how to make sense of everything.

This is why I want to give the extended cut a chance before raging over it. The collective writing team at Bioware is damn good. If only EA or the Bioware overlord(s) gave them a chance to be as a team for the ending...

Thank the poor guy that actually posted the 'interview' got crap from everyone for 'paraphrasing'

[clos]

I wish I could give that fan a job at a gaming website. He is far better than any of the so called professionals are at delivering what the fans want to hear.

Weekes should move over to PR because he is the only likable guy right now at Bioware. He doesn't seem proud and stated how much he disagreed or agreed with decisions in the right manner.

[Mcfly616]

garf wrote...

Okay the cuttle fish was a joke but I had to have an ABC of criteria.

I don't think it's impossible for an 'extended cut' that's 3 months in development to achieve that. But I also don't know if it will be achieved or IF achieved make anyone other than me happy.

You know what would save bioware a lot of money. an regain my fandom instantly? Some honest talk and an unsolicited 'sorry'

I'd totally accept their apology. I'm not unreasonable. I understand people make mistakes....though it will definitely affect how I view Bioware from here on out...I've bought every release on day 1 since KotOR came out in 03....

However, let's be honest....the endings were a Monumental failure....Halo 2 didn't even get this backlash...why? Because it was the second part of a trilogy....there was more to come....the finale of the final installment of a trilogy should tie up all plotlines, answer series long questions, and provide closure....Bioware dropped dead at the finish line of a Marathon....they fumbled on the goal line in the final seconds of the Super Bowl....they had a brilliant run, just to choke when it mattered most....


The ending is only one part of a story....but The Ending of a Trilogy specifically, well, that can Make or Break not just the final installment, but all 3....the entire trilogy, tainted....this is not just true of videogames, but movies as well....

And unless this Extended cut shows all the consequences of our choices played out in atleast 5-10 minutes of cinematics, I wont even be mildly satisfied....unless that happens, then the Extended Cut just makes it an even worse failure....they get a mulligan....its practically a re-do

But....don't expect anything....why? Well, not that I have a problem with anything that's FREE, but considering Bioware won't be profiting from this at all, don't expect the Extended Cut to be lengthy or of high quality....

Expect some "DA:O" type epilogue....text b.s.....do you think Mass Effect deserves that kind of ending....do you think thats a worthy conclusion to a trilogy such as this?

....I didn't think so.

Modifié par Mcfly616, 08 avril 2012 - 02:54 .

[soulprovider]

pikey1969 wrote...

A fan on SA forums just posted a relatively casual Q&A with Patrick Weekes.

Source.

Personally, I still won't be fully satisfied with the RGB options that I feel were clearly artificially/arbitrarily weighted by 'moral dilemmas' (they REALLY need to at least add another option on top of the three), but it looks like most of the people at Bioware at least coming around to at least admitting to themselves that the endings are currently too ambiguous and simply not well presented (caused by EA being pricks with deadlines/funding in my personal opinion). It also sounds like they'll have the full writing team dedicated to this project now, on top of some of the revelations from below, a LOT of promising stuff here.

DISCLOSURE some thoughts from Weekes regarding the interview before continuing



And then a few more tweets from him...

James isn't there to be dumb. He's often used as a voice for people new to series. That was one joking aside presented as my response. 

Also doesn't include second half of my response in re EDI: I WAS nervous, but I thought Chris Hepler aced her continuing character arc.

And second half of James was that I expected a basic marine and was blown away by what FPJ brought to the character. 

So please take that with a grain of salt.  (This was in response to the original interviewee's apologetic tweet)

Thanks, @sethjdickinson, no harm done. They were great questions. Just didn't want anyone to think I was slamming EDI/James. 





Sooooo, on to the good stuff, the informal interview is 'quoted' below. 

Okay, here is what I asked Patrick Weekes, and his answers as best as I can remember them. I've paraphrased but I'm doing my best to stick to what he said rather than introduce any interpretation.

THESE ARE NOT DIRECT QUOTES.

-Is there still a setting to explore after the ending? Is everything ruined?

The setting is definitely not ruined. We still have a big, lively galaxy.

-Will long-distance superluminal travel still be possible post-Ending? (will Tali or Wrex or Garrus see their homeworlds again? Will everyone starve?)

Galactic civilization will rebuild. The mass relays were not necessary for interstellar flight. Remember, what does it say in the Codex about the speed of ships? That's right, 12 lightyears per (day? hour? minute?). And that's only the cruising speed, not the maximum speed.

People have never needed to research basic FTL improvements before because they have mass relays. With the relays gone, new technology will increase that speed. Additionally, the element zero cores of the dead/controlled Reapers can be used to improve FTL drives. Starflight will continue using conventional FTL.

-Why did Joker leave Shep behind?

Joker would never abandon Shep without a good reason. Hopefully this will be clear in the Expanded Cut.

-Why can EDI survive the Destroy ending?

We argued a lot about this, I said that she was made of Reapertech and should therefore be destroyed, but (unclear, don't remember - wish I'd been able to ask a followup as his response doesn't make much sense)

-Did anyone on the Citadel survive?

Yes. We would never, ever do anything that made the player feel, on replay, that it would be better for everyone on the Citadel if they just died. The Citadel has emergency shelters and kinetic barriers - even if it blows up, millions might survive.  You should assume that everyone plot-important on the Citadel survived. 

-Is it better for Kelly Chambers if we talk her into suicide?

No, see above.

-Who wrote the death of Joker's sister?

I did! We intentionally did not connect the dots. We were very interested to see how fast gamers figured it out.

-Whose idea was it to make the Rayya fall out of the sky if you destroy the Quarian fleet?

Someone in the audio department, it was brilliant.

-Did the mass relays pull an Arrival and go supernova?

No, they didn't. (i'm paraphrasing here, please don't interpret this too hard) They overloaded, they didn't rupture. We really didn't mean to imply that the whole galaxy had been destroyed. People interpreted the ending in ways we really didn't expect. 

(Mr. Weekes dropped a lot of hints that he really didn't like the ending. He also said something that was almost 100% verbatim from the Penny Arcade Forum post often attributed to him)

-Why did Legion pull a 180 from his Mass Effect 2 philosophy?

He and the Geth were backed into a corner. They'd been made a lot dumber by the attack on the Dyson swarm. There was no other choice for Geth survival.

-What was up with the Rachni story? Why did we get railroaded?

Welcome to game development. In some games (Alpha Protocol) they make a bold choice where some decisions can knock entire missions out of the story. At BioWare, we never want people to be locked out of content due to a decision several games ago. We just didn't have the resources to do an alternate for the Rachni mission, so we decided that the Rachni mission could occur whether or not players saved the Queen.

-Why didn't (X squadmate from ME2) return?

There was a very ugly month of development where we fought out who would return. We knew we had to have a smaller cast so we could fit in more squad banter. Eventually we decided to bring Garrus and Tali back, so they could be squadmates in all three games. We also knew we'd have Vega in order for new players to have someone dumber than they were.

I was very resentful of Vega at first because I thought he was taking a slot that could've gone to a ME2 character, but he grew on me.

-Why did EDI have cameltoe?

We don't get a lot of feedback from the art department but (unclear, wish I remembered this better  )

Lots of discussion about how he was uncomfortable doing Pinocchio stories for both Legion and EDI because 'EDI was fine, she was an AI, she was cool - do we really need her to turn into Commander Data? We had seven seasons of Data, that was enough.'

-Why did you write Pinocchio stories for all the synthetic characters?

See above

-What was up with the Human Reaper in ME2? Why did it look so dumb?

We wanted to use the Suicide Mission to show several steps of the Reaper development process, from human reaper embryo all the way to cuttlefish. But the mission grew too complicated so it was cut for time.

Do the Reapers really only generate one capital ship per cycle? How do they ever break even?

Well, we never totally pinned that down. But this cycle was really anomalous. They don't normally take any capital-size Reaper losses at all.

-What was up with Kai Leng? How do you feel about him?

We really wanted to have a recurring antagonist for Shep, a 'Darth Maul' (his words). But I feel like there was some definite conflict between cutscene and gameplay there, and I think it's something we have to work on.

'He was a great antagonist in the books' 

-Why did we only get top and bottom dialogue choices, no middle?

Part of it was resources. Part of it is that Mass Effect 3 is a war story and it's really hard for Shep to feel middling about the Reapers.

-How did YOU feel about the ending?

(I didn't ask this, but he seems to have gone to GREAT lengths to think ways around a lot of stuff the ending implied.)

Why no female (alien X?)

Resource limitations. They have a very strict budget for how many different characters they can use in a given area. Some are basically free - if you have human males you have Batarians because they're humans with funny heads, if you have human females you have asari, etc.

Where was Harbinger? Can we ASSUME DIRECT CONTROL of him?

I definitely want more closure on Harbinger. That'd be hilarious. Stop punching yourself, Harbinger.

How did the Reapers storm the Citadel? Why didn't they shut down the relays as per their original plan once they had control?

Originally we planned to have a cutscene of Reapers taking over, Reaper monsters punching buttons, et cetera. But we cut it, partially for resource reasons and partly because it disrupted the pacing.

The Reapers didn't shut down the mass relays because the Keepers interfered with that. (I wish I could've asked a follow-up here, it doesn't make much sense.)

Why don't Ken and Gabby have more dialogue?

They actually have a bunch more on disk, but we somehow introduced a bug where their dialogue is tied to your approval level with Ash. If Ash has low approval, or isn't present, most of Ken and Gabby's dialogue won't play.

Why do you guys do Star Wars style space battles instead of the battles described in the codex?

We want to provide a familiar, compelling visual experience for people who grew up on Star Wars and stuff like that. These are some of our favorite parts of the game.

***

Things I wish I'd asked:

Why the drat Starchild?

What was up with the Stargazer? (He touched on the Stargazer once and pretty much said 'oh, yeah, the Stargazer.'

Again: NOT DIRECT QUOTES. These are NOT OFFICIAL BIOWARE STATEMENTS. Please don't gently caress Patrick Weekes over by posting these as 'official BioWare PR' or whatever. Please feel free to ask me follow-up questions, as I definitely didn't cover the whole conversation with him.

My takeaway was: the epilogue DLC is probably going to do a lot of good and be pretty well written, and Patrick Weekes should've been lead writer on ME3.  

ps. I Weekes too.

Atleast he sounds like hes hugely invested with the series, his answers make sense as to why some things weren't in the game and point directly to bad budgeting and business decisions it also shows that whoever wrote the ending has a blatant disregard for the mass effect universe the writing team has to now fix. sad. Thank god the writing team is working on the extended cut dlc atleast they know what the universe needs to fix the ending, heh maybe we'll get that indoc theory ending after all.