1895 réponses à ce sujet

[Nerevar-as]

jumpingkaede wrote...

I didn't see the negative spin at all.

A lot of the answers were helpful.  I think we all KNEW there would be resource limitations.  That's obvious even to the most passionate/idealistic retaker/fan.  What we don't LIKE is that a man who should be aware of the resource limitations TOLD US that things would be in the game as late as January 2012 when they weren't.

Other than that, it was good to hear Weekes' take on this.  I do wonder how in touch he is with the Hudson/Walters ending duo though.  Weekes seems to believe there's no Mass Relay destruction and no Galactic Dark Age... which a lot of pro-enders also believe.

But that's directly at odds with Walters, who wrote the ending, penning in"Galactic Dark Age" in his ending notes. 

lol. 

With some luck he´s been overriden. It looks like he tried to torch the franchise and run...

[Shaigunjoe]

M0keys wrote...

Hooray for Patrick Weekes. We love you, buddy.

Sad to hear ME3 was so rushed...

Yea, lack of resources seemed to be a prevalent theme in ME2 and 3 (and probably 1 too, though I think they got what they wanted in, just lacked polish)

What can fans do about this?  ME is a huge franchise and and people want them to cram as much as they can into a 60$ game.  I wonder if cutting the resource harvesting in ME2 and the annoying fetch quests in ME3 would have resulted in a more coherent experience.

[Gibsn]

Is there a reason BW can't just do this officially? These interactions make me feel a lot.more positive about the company.

[jumpingkaede]

Shaigunjoe wrote...

M0keys wrote...

Hooray for Patrick Weekes. We love you, buddy.

Sad to hear ME3 was so rushed...

Yea, lack of resources seemed to be a prevalent theme in ME2 and 3 (and probably 1 too, though I think they got what they wanted in, just lacked polish)

What can fans do about this?  ME is a huge franchise and and people want them to cram as much as they can into a 60$ game.  I wonder if cutting the resource harvesting in ME2 and the annoying fetch quests in ME3 would have resulted in a more coherent experience.

Nothing, really.  They set up too ambitious a scheme with ME2 and all the branching storylines.

What really puzzles me is that they wasted all the resources they didn't need to.  Honestly,  I would've been happy if they just kept ME2 and added the ME3 storyline into it.  Something akin to a 40 hour expansion pack. 

Graphics were fine in ME2.  (Better in a lot of places, see Kelly Chambers ME2 vs. ME3).  Journal was much better.  Sidequest and N7 Missions were better.  Mining, while some people didn't like it, was at least an actual thing vs. the hide and seek thing with the Reapers. 

[Shaigunjoe]

jumpingkaede wrote...

I didn't see the negative spin at all.

A lot of the answers were helpful.  I think we all KNEW there would be resource limitations.  That's obvious even to the most passionate/idealistic retaker/fan.  What we don't LIKE is that a man who should be aware of the resource limitations TOLD US that things would be in the game as late as January 2012 when they weren't.

Other than that, it was good to hear Weekes' take on this.  I do wonder how in touch he is with the Hudson/Walters ending duo though.  Weekes seems to believe there's no Mass Relay destruction and no Galactic Dark Age... which a lot of pro-enders also believe.

But that's directly at odds with Walters, who wrote the ending, penning in"Galactic Dark Age" in his ending notes. 

lol. 

I think this is more about perspective.  I don't remember Weekes saying "No Galatic Dark age"  he did say galaxies were not destroyed by relay explosion.  To some people, relaying soley on FTL drive would be like a Galatic Dark Age, also, even though you can still go FTL, it is a step BACK from what was there before.  A Dark Age can be consider a step back in what was there before.  

[Skypezee]

Shaigunjoe wrote...

M0keys wrote...

Hooray for Patrick Weekes. We love you, buddy.

Sad to hear ME3 was so rushed...

Yea, lack of resources seemed to be a prevalent theme in ME2 and 3 (and probably 1 too, though I think they got what they wanted in, just lacked polish)

What can fans do about this?  ME is a huge franchise and and people want them to cram as much as they can into a 60$ game.  I wonder if cutting the resource harvesting in ME2 and the annoying fetch quests in ME3 would have resulted in a more coherent experience.

It probably would have given bw time to add more missions, assignments, and dialog if the had cut those out.

[jumpingkaede]

Shaigunjoe wrote...

I think this is more about perspective.  I don't remember Weekes saying "No Galatic Dark age"  he did say galaxies were not destroyed by relay explosion.  To some people, relaying soley on FTL drive would be like a Galatic Dark Age, also, even though you can still go FTL, it is a step BACK from what was there before.  A Dark Age can be consider a step back in what was there before.  

Oh, okay, so all Mass Relays are still gone but no star systems were wiped out.

So the starvation thing is still alive and real but now there are more people that will starve?  (Being a little facetious I know). 

You're right, relying solely on FTL would be a pretty significant step backwards.  In real life modern terms, it'd be like relying solely on travel by foot and getting rid of all other forms of transportation.   Or crawling actually.  Because it'd take 100s of years to get anywhere.

There really isn't a real life analogue, I guess.

[Shaigunjoe]

jumpingkaede wrote...

Nothing, really.  They set up too ambitious a scheme with ME2 and all the branching storylines.

What really puzzles me is that they wasted all the resources they didn't need to.  Honestly,  I would've been happy if they just kept ME2 and added the ME3 storyline into it.  Something akin to a 40 hour expansion pack. 

Graphics were fine in ME2.  (Better in a lot of places, see Kelly Chambers ME2 vs. ME3).  Journal was much better.  Sidequest and N7 Missions were better.  Mining, while some people didn't like it, was at least an actual thing vs. the hide and seek thing with the Reapers. 

Don't be so quick to say nothing, because that is the root cause of the problem, the Retakers are just trying to treat a symptom.

The reason I brought up ME2 was because I also though the human reaper was very, very lame.  What weekes described sounded very cool.  When I finished ME2 I was like, man, this series is on a downward slope, weak main villain (harby) and weak final boss.  Oddly, they fixed that in ME3 which I was happy for, but they screwed up the fetch quests and the mutlplayer/single player interaction.

Although, I did enjoy reaper hide and seek!  Darting around planets, trying to grab resources, that was better than resource scanning imo.

[frostajulie]

pikey1969 wrote...

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

Source.

DISCLOSURE PLEASE bear in mind the following tweets from Weekes regarding this interview before continuing



After that tweet, a few more tweets from him surfaced regarding the interview...

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, now 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.  

And there you have it. Everything in that quote box is the interview EXACTLY as it was posted on the SomethingAwful forums. Don't forget about the preceding section's additional Tweets from Weekes regarding this interview after this thread surfaced on BSN. Weekes, understandably, wanted to clarify some of the content in that interview as it was paraphrased from the interviewer's memory (before you send the fan hate mails, please note that he went through the trouble to share this information).

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 to me like most of the people at Bioware are coming around to the fact the endings were not quite complete as shipped (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 above, a LOT of promising stuff here for the coming Extended Ending content update.

ps. I Weekes too.

you know the loss of the relays and the idea that wrex would never see his babies Tali would not get to build her home on Rannoch, Garrus would never see his sister and Earth being ruined for my friends Kaiden and Vega really soured the replayability and the ends.  In a single interview  my biggest complaints have been addressed and confidence in the extended cut restored.  I still hate the starchild and not being able to tell that little SOB to get stuffed but  I think I can play ME3 again.

THIS IS AWESOME

[The Elite Elite]

jumpingkaede wrote...

Shaigunjoe wrote...

I think this is more about perspective.  I don't remember Weekes saying "No Galatic Dark age"  he did say galaxies were not destroyed by relay explosion.  To some people, relaying soley on FTL drive would be like a Galatic Dark Age, also, even though you can still go FTL, it is a step BACK from what was there before.  A Dark Age can be consider a step back in what was there before.  

Oh, okay, so all Mass Relays are still gone but no star systems were wiped out.

So the starvation thing is still alive and real but now there are more people that will starve?  (Being a little facetious I know). 

You're right, relying solely on FTL would be a pretty significant step backwards.  In real life modern terms, it'd be like relying solely on travel by foot and getting rid of all other forms of transportation.   Or crawling actually.  Because it'd take 100s of years to get anywhere.

There really isn't a real life analogue, I guess.

Perhaps a real life analogue would be losing flight. We can still drive across the country, but instead of a simple hours-long flight to go from California to New York, it instead takes days to drive there.

Modifié par The Elite Elite, 08 avril 2012 - 02:43 .

[Shaigunjoe]

jumpingkaede wrote...

Shaigunjoe wrote...

I think this is more about perspective.  I don't remember Weekes saying "No Galatic Dark age"  he did say galaxies were not destroyed by relay explosion.  To some people, relaying soley on FTL drive would be like a Galatic Dark Age, also, even though you can still go FTL, it is a step BACK from what was there before.  A Dark Age can be consider a step back in what was there before.  

Oh, okay, so all Mass Relays are still gone but no star systems were wiped out.

So the starvation thing is still alive and real but now there are more people that will starve?  (Being a little facetious I know). 

You're right, relying solely on FTL would be a pretty significant step backwards.  In real life modern terms, it'd be like relying solely on travel by foot and getting rid of all other forms of transportation.   Or crawling actually.  Because it'd take 100s of years to get anywhere.

There really isn't a real life analogue, I guess.

Haha, well a real life analouge would be to look at another fake series.  This would be more analogous to star trek.  The ships are capable traveling 15* speed of light?  Something like that, at least I read that in another forum.  Anyway, the closest star system to us is 4 ly away.  Galaxy wide travel would take a while though, but then there is all that reaper tech lying around.

[jumpingkaede]

The Elite Elite wrote...

Perhpas a real life analogue would be losing flight. We can still drive across the country, but instead of a simple hours-long flight to go from California to New York, it instead takes days to drive there.

1.  Losing flight wouldn't be devastating though.  There wouldn't be a "dark age" because we could still trade in goods with neighboring countries.  It might take days instead of hours, or weeks instead of months, but that's negligible.  Remember in Mass Effect we're talking about 100s of years via FTL to the nearest habitable star system.  Alpha Centauri is 4 light years away.  How fast is FTL?  Twice as fast as light?  Four times as fast?  That's still a year of travel.  

2.  Assuming Weekes and you are both correct, it's no longer a galaxy-dooming event, but it's still a storytelling failure.  Because this is how the story is now told:

ME2/Arrival:  Destroying a Mass Relay has grave, terrible consequences.  We're telling you, the gamer, it has star-system destroying consequences that are obvious to everyone.  Including Hackett and Shepard.  Even before the Mass Relay is destroyed they know that the Batarian colonies in the system will be wiped out that's why Shepard, and you, have to agonize over your decision.  Is it worth wiping out the star system and all Batarian life in this colony just to buy yourself a few months of time against the Reapers?  Because if you make this choice, the star system will definitely be destroyed because that's what happens when a Mass Relay is destroyed.

ME3:  ...but not every time because there are also 'controlled destructions' and then everything is fine.

Shaigunjoe wrote...

Haha,
well a real life analouge would be to look at another fake series. 
This would be more analogous to star trek.  The ships are capable
traveling 15* speed of light?  Something like that, at least I read that
in another forum.  Anyway, the closest star system to us is 4 ly away. 
Galaxy wide travel would take a while though, but then there is all
that reaper tech lying around.

How fast is FTL in ME?  I think the assumption that everyone in the Sol Relay is dead is still good especially anyone left on Earth.  Can't wait for the clarification on that one!

Modifié par jumpingkaede, 08 avril 2012 - 02:43 .

[pikey1969]

Isn't it something pathetic like 6 or whatever?

[Skypezee]

frostajulie wrote...


you know the loss of the relays and the idea that wrex would never see his babies Tali would not get to build her home on Rannoch, Garrus would never see his sister and Earth being ruined for my friends Kaiden and Vega really soured the replayability and the ends.  In a single interview  my biggest complaints have been addressed and confidence in the extended cut restored.  I still hate the starchild and not being able to tell that little SOB to get stuffed but  I think I can play ME3 again.

THIS IS AWESOME

I hate the starchild and wish we could actually have a choice rather than to go with what the Reapers are offering us... but if the Extended Cut can give me a reason to replay not just ME3 but ME1 and 2 again, then I can live with it.

[The Elite Elite]

Hey, I was simply trying to think of a possible real life analogue for you for losing the instant travel of the Relays. I'm not trying to explain why throwing an asteroid at a Mass Relay causes a star-system wide explosion while using the Crucible to deactivate them doesn't.

[Capeo]

No matter what they do with the DLC they've wrote themselves into too many corners. How is that energy from the relays isn't destructive when it destroys the Normandy? Despite what Weekes said you can clearly see the relays break up. Don't know how that isn't "rupturing". What is arbitrary line between what tech is effected by Destroy and what isn't? There's a lot of things with Reaper tech in it. There are people still alive on the Citadel? Even after it mostly blows up? Isn't it Reaper tech? If FTL is still viable what's the point of the epilogue? It strongly implies a dark age in space flight. I mean I could keep going but just one last thing: showing the Citadel get taken would have interfered with pacing? I'm sorry that's bs. There's no difference in pacing from seeing it to having Hackett tells us it happened. I think they couldn't come up with a convincing scene that would get the citadel to earth.

Modifié par Capeo, 08 avril 2012 - 02:49 .

[jumpingkaede]

The Elite Elite wrote...

Hey, I was simply trying to think of a possible real life analogue for you for losing the instant travel of the Relays. I'm not trying to explain why throwing an asteroid at a Mass Relay causes a star-system wide explosion while using the Crucible to deactivate them doesn't.

Haha, I know.

It's probably just getting rid of all forms of travel by foot, but even by foot it wouldn't take us a year to get somewhere.  I suppose for all practical purposes, that's the same as the current ME universe though.  Can't get to Europe (from North America) by foot.  Can't get to... Thessia from Earth by FTL.

[Shaigunjoe]

jumpingkaede wrote...


ME2/Arrival:  Destroying a Mass Relay has grave, terrible consequences.  We're telling you, the gamer, it has star-system destroying consequences that are obvious to everyone.  Including Hackett and Shepard.  Even before the Mass Relay is destroyed they know that the Batarian colonies in the system will be wiped out that's why Shepard, and you, have to agonize over your decision.  Is it worth wiping out the star system and all Batarian life in this colony just to buy yourself a few months of time against the Reapers?  Because if you make this choice, the star system will definitely be destroyed because that's what happens when a Mass Relay is destroyed.

ME3:  ...but not every time because there are also 'controlled destructions' and then everything is fine

Don't see whats wrong with this, something as complicated as a relay could have multiple ways to destroy something.  And we already know this is not the going to be the case in the extended cut so I don't know why it is still a point of contention.  Even The illusive man said humanity talked about destorying the relays earlier.

Also, even if we can only travel at 4x light, the people traveling experience time dilution so they won't age a day in transit, like the Forever War novel.  And thats just one possibility.  Yes, there is speculation, but making your own conclusions about endings is more fun anyway, like Blade Runner or Minority Report.

[Talogrungi]

I like Weekes, he's not scared to admit bugs, rushed timetables, lack of resources or mistakes (such as the fanbase intepreting the mass relay destruction wiping everything out).

If all developers and "PR people" could look past their egos and speak so plainly, the entire Retake movement could have been avoided.

[Shaigunjoe]

Ilgar92 wrote...

So EA didn't have resources for Rachni and neutral dialogue options, but they had resources to add Chobot in the game? wow...i have no words.

Haha, yea...there are always questions of why did someone do this instead of do that, I have no idea why they thought allers was important.

I think it was cool to put a reporter on the normandy, but I'm sure they could have gotten something cheaper than chobot.

[Action Bawstard]

Ilgar92 wrote...

So EA didn't have resources for Rachni and neutral dialogue options, but they had resources to add Chobot in the game? wow...i have no words.

Developer magic

[Jamie9]

"With a mass effect drive, roughly a dozen light-years can be traversed in the course of a day's cruise." - From the codex (from the wiki).

See. I guess everybody would be okay. It'd take a few months to get the Quarians back to Rannoch but they'd make it.

[byarru]

So... wait... new tweets... does it mean she DOEs survive or... she still doesn't?..
I'm confused

[Drimberly]

Thanks -Also if anyone can tell Mr. Weeks somthing tell him that a guy on the Internet thinks he did gewd. AAdn should be head writer.