713 réponses à ce sujet

[DigitalAvatar]

AndroLeonidas wrote...

I think Gigamantis is actually Casey Hudson's alter ego account and this is where he defends his debacle of an ending. lol!

I don't think I've seen  anyone try so hard to rationalize and explain away the plotholes and endings and do such a horrible job at it. It has to be Casey. lol!

I was thinking it might be Mac Walters, butI guess it could be either of them.

[Kanner]

DigitalAvatar wrote...

AndroLeonidas wrote...

I think Gigamantis is actually Casey Hudson's alter ego account and this is where he defends his debacle of an ending. lol!

I don't think I've seen  anyone try so hard to rationalize and explain away the plotholes and endings and do such a horrible job at it. It has to be Casey. lol!

I was thinking it might be Mac Walters, butI guess it could be either of them.

Mac can at least write, even if he can't stick to a setting or write a videogame.  I buy the Casey theory *slightly* more. =P

[RoninTX]

Gigamantis wrote...

It's fair to accuse Bioware of overstating the variety in the ending, but that's about it.  It was misleading, as hype often is, and if that kind of exaggeration is something that might cost Bioware your patronage I'm sure they would be interested to know that. 

Don't make grandiose legal accusations about fraud and false advertising, because it makes you look like a sensationalist who is trying to vent or wants bad attention.  Be intelligent and people will respect you enough to listen to you. 

First I like to agree with you on the legal accusations, it has no use other then alienating both parties even further then the current situation.
I would also like to point out to the bolded part of your text. I do not know where you live, but in the Netherlands it is illegal to have misleading advertisement it is called fraud. Hype or no hype that is a fact which does not change.

Though I am also smart enough that in the end it all comes down on semantics of what is said and written down. More importantly how it was ment.

Is it worth going to court for it? I do not think so. ( ridiculous even in my opinion)

Is it worth going to Bioware with my honest felt complaints? I DO think so.

[Destr1er]

EA should fire all the paid posters / shills that are trying to do damage control and instead re-invest that money into game development.

[Drake_Hound]

http://social.biowar...61/106#11346262

Already explained why the ending will not work .
No matter how much cinematics or explanation you throw at it .

It is just the wrong serie for it .

Sorry I don´t want to waste more time on explaining it .
Cause we all have beter things to do , IF bioware does not wish to issue a statement or change resolve soon.
Not cause I want it , Not cause raging FANS want it , Not cause ego not able to do it .

Then Just do the Franchise Justice , Do it cause of Mass Effect .
Future Past and Present .

If that is not enough reason , think of all the money you can make to satisify the Publisher .
And all the postive PR you will be getting .

[Terror_K]

The ending(s) aren't ME3's only flaws, they're just one of the biggest, most detracting and the ones everybody is going on about.

For one thing, there's the character face import, which has gone beyond a fiasco. Given the promises from BioWare and intent of the trilogy, the fact that it was broken at launch was unforgivable as it is, but to make matters worse we've since been given a patch that claims to fix the issue but just outright doesn't, and not only that, people have discovered that some Shepard faces are literally impossible to create or recreate in ME3 because the facial options are simply not there. That is beyond ludicrous and to state how mind-boggingly bad that is can't be put into words. You've got a series based entirely around carrying a completely customisable character through a trilogy, and not only do you guys not have this working at launch, but whoever designed the CC cut out options entirely? Seriously?! The term "WTF?!!" does not even come close to covering how poorly planned, programmed and designed this major fubar is. So right out of the box, before the player is even into the game, if they're importing in the manner the series was designed for, they're already screwed over. It's the equivalent of trying to build a world class soccer team to take on the best in the world, but not even picking a goalie and leaving it completely undefended for the entire game. That's how bad the planning was here and how outright stupid whoever was in charge of the CC design was. What's the point of wasting time making a brand new default Femshep and adding more hair options if a quarter of the options from the previous titles aren't even there.

And that's before we even get into the gameplay. ME3 nailed the shooter mechanics and combat, I'll give it that, but at the cost of pretty much everything that made the original games what they were. I'd even go so far to say it was the core gameplay that suffered and was greatly reduced in ME3, which is NOT the combat, but the roleplaying, dialogue and choices.

For starters, only two dialogue options 90% of the time, even with "Full Decisions" on. Why "Full decisions" is so damn simplified and watered down compared to just the default way things were in ME1 and ME2 that "Full Decisions" is supposed to represent is beyond me. The third neutral option barely makes a showing at all, not to mention that the amount of Charm/Indimidate options in the entire game equates to such a pitiful amount I could probably count them on both hands and not run out of finers. As I've said before, there were more Charm/Intimidate opportunities on Noveria in ME1 alone than in ALL of ME3.

Then there's the autodialogue, with Shepard running his/her mouth off without me, the player, doing a damn thing. This happens far too often, so much so I wonder why there's any dialogue choices at all. I'm never going to touch "Action Mode" but I get the strong feeling that given how much Shepard yammers on without me picking a damn thing and the amount of times I'm just given two options that are either not that different or simply "Jesus or Hitler" that I'd barely be missing out on anything. Why you guys wasted your time programming the different game styles (Narrative, RPG, Action, etc.) is beyond me given how little effort seemed to be put into the dialogue itself.

Then there's the fact that 80% of the time you talk with your crew, they're Zaeed and Kasumi all over again. Here's a test for you Stanley (or any other BioWare employee who may be reading) to see how much BioWare supposedly "listens" to its fans: while Zaeed and Kasumi were generally enjoyed by fans as DLC companions for ME2, what was the most commonly griped about aspect about them? Here's a clue... it's something you did to the entire Mass Effect 3 crew whenever you talk with them more often than not! I go to talk with my L.I. after a long absense for the first time, and do I get a proper cutscene with a dialogue wheel and choices? No... I just get her standing there saying something I have no control over as I click on her, pressing her like a button. I finally get Ashley back after her accident and onto the Normandy again, and does she have anything to say and do I get a dialogue wheel and a cinematic scene? No, I just get, "Hey, Shepard" and that's it. With the rare exceptions here and there, my crew have become less like squadmates, friends and companions and more like talking plush toys I can go around and squeeze or yank the pull string on every so often. I enjoyed that they moved around a little more, there was inter-party banter and we got the odd moment on The Citadel with them, but it wasn't worth it to get "Tickle Me Garrus" and "Speak and Say Liara."

On top of it all, the ship ended up becoming boring in the end, as you had to run all around it every visit from top to bottom and back again, just to make sure you'd found everything. The Citadel had the same issue. For example, if you speak to everybody else aboard the Normandy before coming across drunk Tali at the bar and you have to go back and revisit them all just to see if it unlocks some drunk Tali banter, because it won't happen if you don't see her first. And then you slog all the way back just to find that all that happens is James say, "hey" again. *sigh*

The Citadel and the Normandy were highlights in the other games, but the execution of them in ME3 made them into a chore I was sick of dealing with. Not to mention all the samey fetch-quests that took up 90% of the sidequests (with the rest pretty much just cheap rehashes of MP maps as you just kill guys). It was the most tedious and hamfisted, lazy-ass pieces of DA2 all over again, as you hunted down every race's lost artifacts from random scans and brought them back. What's this? An interesting quest to the elcor homeworld to rescue some elcor? Wow! That actually sounds like... oh wait, it's just another fetch-quest where you click on the planet and it's all done for you. Oh, and half of them are just found sitting in the Spectre terminal. All in all, ME3 sidequests were the worst of the trilogy.

Not that the main quests were much better. The writing was fairly solid, they had some great epic and emotional moments and the level-design was definitely better than ME2's. But damn... were they linear as all hell. Not only were there barely any choices during them so they ended up almost all playing out the same, but the entire structure was linear throughout the entire game. No freedom for the player to go where they want when they want... it has to be Mars, Palaven's Moon, Sur'Kesh, etc. in that order without fail in every playthrough. As much as some people may moan about the BioWare pattern of, "Tutorial Place, Forced Secondary Place and then 3 to 5 Locations You Can Do In Any Order" at least that pattern gave the player some freedom. That's non-existent in ME3. Yes... players said they wan't a more focused story than ME2's was, but that doesn't mean completely on the rails from A to B to C to D, etc. ME1, KotOR and DAO all proved you can have a focused story that unfolds without forcing the players where to go. BioWare said this was supposed to be the most diverse of the trilogy and give players the most freedom since it was the last part, but were' restricted far more than in ME1 or ME2 in ME3.

Which leads to another promise that was broken: our choices mattering. They just outright didn't. ME2 was already guilty of BioWare's lazy way of dealing with variations: either trivialise it, sweep it under the rug or offer a weak substitution. ME3 suffered this even worse, and it was, again, supposed to be the part where all our choices were shown to matter and had real diversity. Save the Rachni Queen or kill her? Doesn't matter, same result. How about those people who lived or died in ME1 and ME2? Doesn't matter, somebody will just step in and take their place and dialogue on the exact same mission. This goes for the likes of The Council, Wrex, Mordin, Grunt, etc. It doesn't matter what you did in ME1 or ME2, it's still exactly the same game with the same missions done in the same order and the same outcome and same ending. Even the Virmire Survivor was cut out of half the game so the devs didn't have to put any effort into their return it seems. No wonder the endings didn't reflect our choices, because they never matter in any of the rest of the game either, so why should they at the end. All they countered towards was a stupid, arbitrary number called "Galactic Readiness" that has no real bearing on anything and is just a counter to indicate whether once the end comes you're "Kind of Screwed," "Really Screwed" or "Totally Screwed." Again, this was the final part where BioWare said they could "go nuts" and that our choices would be really diverse. Another lie.

And then there's the endings. 'Nuff said there. It's all been covered more than enough times.

The point is, ME3 has major issues even without the endings, and it seems largely because the focus has shifted away from what really mattered and when to other things that were less important. Kinect Support, Multiplayer, Different Game modes, etc. and even the combat all seemed to be far more crucial than the factor that to me (and thus I'm sure many other Mass Effect fans) was supposed to be the most crucial, key and core of the series: the dialogue, the roleplaying, the choices and satisfying consequences that should come from those things.

And yes, I was calling for more statistical RPG elements, such as power evolutions and diversity, weapon modification and more customisation as a whole. But that was because despite my concerns about the direction ME3 was going, I didn't really think for one second that the dialogue, choices and other roleplaying elements were going to take as much of a hit and be watered down as much as they were. I suspected after ME2 that the choices and consequences weren't going to be as fulfulling as I'd hoped and we were promised, but I still expected a far better job than this. I didn't expect things like the Rachni Queen choice to be so utterly pointless as they turned out to be. But I certainly didn't expect as much autodialogue as we got, the ME2 DLC Squaddie treatment we got for the whole crew and the complete lack of dialogue choices, not to mention so few Charm/Intimidate opportunities.

ME3 took all the things I loved most about the other two games and watered them down, and as much as I complained about ME2's lack of hardcore, statistical RPG mechanics, it at least didn't skimp on the roleplaying and dialogue choices. ME3 just felt so half-assed and dumbed down in this regard. And that's why I think it's the worst of the trilogy, even if it did nail the combat, have better designed levels, bring back modding, diversify skills more, get rid of Mission Complete screens, arbitrary XP gains and other annoying aspects of ME2.

Modifié par Terror_K, 13 avril 2012 - 08:22 .

[Drake_Hound]

Terror you have to be realist games are not made for you anymore .
Sorry It is game over for you , cause only way those games are made , is with your money .
And then over 7 years of support or more .

The games you want , will never be made by any developers , I wish so much for a jagged alliance 2 game , Sadly I do not think modern day programmers can do it .
Not cause the skills are not there , but more cause there devotion are not there .
Sorry If a game you wish so perfected came out , it would take 7 years of development time .
And what age would you be ?

Sadly we already given bioware another 6 months , and those 6 months was well invested into closure of our old companions . sadly we do not get closure of the serie .

And to be truthfully , at this moment I just want a ending that fits the serie , so I can move on .
And put my energy and money into Kickstarter projects games , that support my vision of gaming and fun .
You cannot debate with that kind of reasoning for any game , perfection cannot be easily reached.
Even skyrim while near the perfection of singelplayer MMO . still has it flaws .

[kalle90]

DA2 was so bad I didn't even care. Some claim to like the new combat etc. but IMO it was abysmal downgrade in every way.

ME3 was passable in most ways, but the ending really kills the entire trilogy. It's as if in Halo 3 the Halo would have fired (and there was a starchild explaining we need to kill everyone so Flood doesn't) - the end. "What?!"

ME2 was still dissapointing compared to ME1, but atleast I could easily complete it multiple times and look forward to the last episode.

[LohnPondai]

AndroLeonidas wrote...

I think Gigamantis is actually Casey Hudson's alter ego account and this is where he defends his debacle of an ending. lol!

I don't think I've seen  anyone try so hard to rationalize and explain away the plotholes and endings and do such a horrible job at it. It has to be Casey. lol!

Lmao. I was about to post that same thought yesterday night (in Europe). He almost has a reply post to every poster.

[Veloric Wu]

I didn't rage when DA2 was out. Until today, I still believe its stories make sense.

I didn't rage when I saw the conclusion of ME2. In fact, I saw a lot of potentials in there.

I rage at ME3 because it destroys all the potential its predecesors have created. Worse, the devs think it's just another cycle of mindless fan rage. I rage because now I see BioWare is just like the other companies. You're just another business group who cares only about yourselves while pretending to be caring for the community.

edit: and do you realize that you nearly violated the copyright of Deus Ex Human Revolution by copying their best endings ever? You should feel lucky that they havn't sued you so far.

Modifié par FeriktheCerberus, 13 avril 2012 - 09:11 .

[Hevilath]

Maybe OP is right, but I have played KOTOR, BG, MDK2, NN and all three Mass Effect titles and the only game that made me to register to BSN was ME3. I was dissapointed with ME3 (not only the ending) so I decided that it's fair to say developers that I will never pre-order game from EA or Bioware - not to mention Collectors/Super Limited Editions. 

Modifié par Hevilath, 13 avril 2012 - 09:54 .

[AlanC9]

Wait a second....

Terror_K wrote...
Then there's the fact that 80% of the time you talk with your crew, they're Zaeed and Kasumi all over again. Here's a test for you Stanley (or any other BioWare employee who may be reading) to see how much BioWare supposedly "listens" to its fans: while Zaeed and Kasumi were generally enjoyed by fans as DLC companions for ME2, what was the most commonly griped about aspect about them? Here's a clue... it's something you did to the entire Mass Effect 3 crew whenever you talk with them more often than not! I go to talk with my L.I. after a long absense for the first time, and do I get a proper cutscene with a dialogue wheel and choices? No... I just get her standing there saying something I have no control over as I click on her, pressing her like a button. I finally get Ashley back after her accident and onto the Normandy again, and does she have anything to say and do I get a dialogue wheel and a cinematic scene? No, I just get, "Hey, Shepard" and that's it. With the rare exceptions here and there, my crew have become less like squadmates, friends and companions and more like talking plush toys I can go around and squeeze or yank the pull string on every so often. I enjoyed that they moved around a little more, there was inter-party banter and we got the odd moment on The Citadel with them, but it wasn't worth it to get "Tickle Me Garrus" and "Speak and Say Liara."

This strikes me as being just wrong. The ME3 companions seem to have as many if not more distinct conversations than their ME1 counterparts -- while somewhat shorter, that isn't a bad thing, since they aren't info dumps the way the ME1 convos tended to be. (Certainly more convos than ME2.) Plus the Citadel convos. Plus special scenes. And if a character doesn't have anything to say at this time, it's a lot better to get a Kasumi-style conversation than to get the dialog wheel, etc., only to find out that the character doesn't actually have anything to say.

On top of it all, the ship ended up becoming boring in the end, as you had to run all around it every visit from top to bottom and back again, just to make sure you'd found everything. The Citadel had the same issue. For example, if you speak to everybody else aboard the Normandy before coming across drunk Tali at the bar and you have to go back and revisit them all just to see if it unlocks some drunk Tali banter, because it won't happen if you don't see her first. And then you slog all the way back just to find that all that happens is James say, "hey" again. *sigh*

And this is different from ME1 and ME2.... how? Though I agree it's a problem. I haven't seen a game get this right since Wing Commander 4, of all things.

The Citadel and the Normandy were highlights in the other games, but the execution of them in ME3 made them into a chore I was sick of dealing with. Not to mention all the samey fetch-quests that took up 90% of the sidequests (with the rest pretty much just cheap rehashes of MP maps as you just kill guys). It was the most tedious and hamfisted, lazy-ass pieces of DA2 all over again, as you hunted down every race's lost artifacts from random scans and brought them back. What's this? An interesting quest to the elcor homeworld to rescue some elcor? Wow! That actually sounds like... oh wait, it's just another fetch-quest where you click on the planet and it's all done for you. Oh, and half of them are just found sitting in the Spectre terminal. All in all, ME3 sidequests were the worst of the trilogy.

I actually liked this better. N7 missions aside, all of the sidequests weren't really quests per se. They're things you accomplish while trying to do something else. And if the N7 missions used MP maps, what of it? The MP players might as well complain that they're just getting N7 maps.

I guess I like this because I'm not a big fan of the "sidequest" concept in the first place. It's a CRPG artifact that I've never had any fondness for.

But damn... were they linear as all hell. Not only were there barely any choices during them so they ended up almost all playing out the same, but the entire structure was linear throughout the entire game. No freedom for the player to go where they want when they want... it has to be Mars, Palaven's Moon, Sur'Kesh, etc. in that order without fail in every playthrough. As much as some people may moan about the BioWare pattern of, "Tutorial Place, Forced Secondary Place and then 3 to 5 Locations You Can Do In Any Order" at least that pattern gave the player some freedom. That's non-existent in ME3. Yes... players said they wan't a more focused story than ME2's was, but that doesn't mean completely on the rails from A to B to C to D, etc.

Why not? I get that you don't like linearity, but there's no real argument here. This may be one of those cases where my PnP background leaves me ill-equipped to follow you. PnP games are often quite linear, and certainly never have a KotOR-DA:O structure. No GM's going to prepare his game that way.

Which leads to another promise that was broken: our choices mattering. They just outright didn't. ME2 was already guilty of BioWare's lazy way of dealing with variations: either trivialise it, sweep it under the rug or offer a weak substitution. ME3 suffered this even worse, and it was, again, supposed to be the part where all our choices were shown to matter and had real diversity. Save the Rachni Queen or kill her? Doesn't matter, same result. How about those people who lived or died in ME1 and ME2? Doesn't matter, somebody will just step in and take their place and dialogue on the exact same mission. This goes for the likes of The Council, Wrex, Mordin, Grunt, etc. It doesn't matter what you did in ME1 or ME2, it's still exactly the same game with the same missions done in the same order and the same outcome and same ending. Even the Virmire Survivor was cut out of half the game so the devs didn't have to put any effort into their return it seems. No wonder the endings didn't reflect our choices, because they never matter in any of the rest of the game either, so why should they at the end. All they countered towards was a stupid, arbitrary number called "Galactic Readiness" that has no real bearing on anything and is just a counter to indicate whether once the end comes you're "Kind of Screwed," "Really Screwed" or "Totally Screwed." Again, this was the final part where BioWare said they could "go nuts" and that our choices would be really diverse. Another lie.

You've noticed.

Did you actually expect anything different? When did Bio ever have choices that changed anything down the road, made different gameplay available, any of that? For example, in KotOR going DS gets you a couple of different cutscenes, but the endgame's gameplay is all identical except that you don't confront Bastila. And you get a couple of different lines in your final convo with Malak. Our choices didn't matter in ME1 either. I don't see ME3 as being particularly weak in this regard. It's standard Bio product all the way.

If you're just talking about the marketing, OK. But I didn't think you listened to that stuff any more than I do.

I guess what I'm really asking is..... are you sure you ever liked what Bio does? Or did ME1 just fool you into thinking they were doing something that they weren't actually trying to do?

Modifié par AlanC9, 13 avril 2012 - 09:54 .

[Terror_K]

Drake_Hound wrote...

Terror you have to be realist games are not made for you anymore .
Sorry It is game over for you , cause only way those games are made , is with your money .
And then over 7 years of support or more .

The games you want , will never be made by any developers , I wish so much for a jagged alliance 2 game , Sadly I do not think modern day programmers can do it .
Not cause the skills are not there , but more cause there devotion are not there .
Sorry If a game you wish so perfected came out , it would take 7 years of development time .
And what age would you be ?

Sadly we already given bioware another 6 months , and those 6 months was well invested into closure of our old companions . sadly we do not get closure of the serie .

Aside from the fact that Alpha Protocol and both Witcher games did it and the likes of Skyrim and even DAO had the scope to do it, even if we ignore the request for more varied consequences and the like, the fact that both ME1 and ME2 had proper conversations most of the time, more conversation options as a whole, more Charm/Intimidate options, a non-linear story structure, etc. just proves that it can be done. Most of my issues with
ME3 that I've listed beyond the choices just never paying off like they should have are to do with stuff that was present in both prior Mass Effect titles, but was massively curbed back in ME3. When you factor in the time wasted on largely superfluous factors like Kinect, Multiplayer, different game modes and even wasting time of things like Diana Allers, it could have easily been accomplished. Just another year of development could have seen ME3 as an amazing game. But as a whole, it's biggest failures are that it didn't do the dialogue, roleplaying and choices and consequences even as good as its predecessors did.

[Il Divo]

AlanC9 wrote...

You've noticed.

Did you actually expect anything different? When did Bio ever have choices that changed anything down the road, made different gameplay available, any of that? For example, in KotOR going DS gets you a couple of different cutscenes, but the endgame's gameplay is all identical except that you don't confront Bastila. And you get a couple of different lines in your final convo with Malak. Our choices didn't matter in ME1 either. I don't see ME3 as being particularly weak in this regard. It's standard Bio product all the way.

If you're just talking about the marketing, OK. But I didn't think you listened to that stuff any more than I do.

I guess what I'm really asking is..... are you sure you ever liked what Bio does? Or did ME1 just fool you into thinking they were doing something that they weren't actually trying to do?

I think the issue (for me, at least) is that Bioware games don't usually have the same degree of hype, typically consisting of a single work. KotOR, Jade Empire, DA:O, etc were all stand-alone.

As the conclusion to a trilogy, and an ambitious trilogy at that, ME3's endings comparatively-speaking fall flat. I personally didn't need 16 different endings or a million different consequences. But if you're looking for the best example of why the ending feels so bland, the side by side youtube comparison does the best job of capturing it. As the conclusion to their three part epic, the point where Bioware can let our decisions spin out into wildly different conclusions, to see three color copies of the exact same thing is anti-climactic, since they seem to have even less visual variation than other Bioware endings; remember, KotOR at least presented the player with two completely different cut-scenes after they kill Malak.

[Drake_Hound]

Look once you come under publisher control you don't have the luxury of another year .
Sorry that is the truth , you are getting paid to work under pressure you do get a bonus on early completion time .

But a game is never complete , look at NWN DragonAge origins ,Mass Effect 2 .
There is enough money to be had nowadays on fanbase who want to pay for DLC .
In the end what is 60 nowadays or even a 100 ?
What is the consumption rate of going to dinner , paying for your internet bills .

Sorry some people are stuck in the oldmindset , some people cannot afford entertainement .
Some people think the world owes them everything for free , but there services are expensive .
Well sure ME3 was in a lot of expectation lower then ME2 but companion wise character wise .
Story wise it was much beter , even for camo appearance I really had closure with a lot of my old squad mates .

That is one of the reason the ending doesn't fit , sorry all those hardwork of the team should not be taken away , cause of 10 min ending , that does the serie injustice .

Modifié par Drake_Hound, 13 avril 2012 - 10:37 .

[Terror_K]

AlanC9 wrote...

Wait a second....

Terror_K wrote...
Then there's the fact that 80% of the time you talk with your crew, they're Zaeed and Kasumi all over again. Here's a test for you Stanley (or any other BioWare employee who may be reading) to see how much BioWare supposedly "listens" to its fans: while Zaeed and Kasumi were generally enjoyed by fans as DLC companions for ME2, what was the most commonly griped about aspect about them? Here's a clue... it's something you did to the entire Mass Effect 3 crew whenever you talk with them more often than not! I go to talk with my L.I. after a long absense for the first time, and do I get a proper cutscene with a dialogue wheel and choices? No... I just get her standing there saying something I have no control over as I click on her, pressing her like a button. I finally get Ashley back after her accident and onto the Normandy again, and does she have anything to say and do I get a dialogue wheel and a cinematic scene? No, I just get, "Hey, Shepard" and that's it. With the rare exceptions here and there, my crew have become less like squadmates, friends and companions and more like talking plush toys I can go around and squeeze or yank the pull string on every so often. I enjoyed that they moved around a little more, there was inter-party banter and we got the odd moment on The Citadel with them, but it wasn't worth it to get "Tickle Me Garrus" and "Speak and Say Liara."

This strikes me as being just wrong. The ME3 companions seem to have as many if not more distinct conversations than their ME1 counterparts -- while somewhat shorter, that isn't a bad thing, since they aren't info dumps the way the ME1 convos tended to be. (Certainly more convos than ME2.) Plus the Citadel convos. Plus special scenes. And if a character doesn't have anything to say at this time, it's a lot better to get a Kasumi-style conversation than to get the dialog wheel, etc., only to find out that the character doesn't actually have anything to say.

It's the execution of it that's more at fault than anything. While I agree with your last point, if they've got nothing then that's a far better way of doing it than instigating a cinematic conversation scene complete with a wheel for nothing. But if my companions do have something to say I should get some dialogue choices and the cinematic styings that were set as the standard in the previous two games. When they have something to say is so inconsistent and random, and your Shepard has no real interaction with them most of the time (and whenever he/she does it's just him/her automatically saying something with no input from the player). I shouldn't just go walking up to them to have them ****** on four of five sentences like this until they run dry and I get the generic, "hey Shepard" or "not now" response. And it just seems wrong that my L.I. won't give me a proper, distinct conversation during our first reunion on the ship, and the same goes for getting the VS back again after a long absence. Because of Mass Effect 1 and 2, when I go up to my companions to talk to them, I expect a cinematic conversation with a dialogue wheel and a chance to have some input. That's the precedent that the other games set, and what ME3 did was so half-assed and limiting.

On top of it all, the ship ended up becoming boring in the end, as you had to run all around it every visit from top to bottom and back again, just to make sure you'd found everything. The Citadel had the same issue. For example, if you speak to everybody else aboard the Normandy before coming across drunk Tali at the bar and you have to go back and revisit them all just to see if it unlocks some drunk Tali banter, because it won't happen if you don't see her first. And then you slog all the way back just to find that all that happens is James say, "hey" again. *sigh*

And this is different from ME1 and ME2.... how? Though I agree it's a problem. I haven't seen a game get this right since Wing Commander 4, of all things.

What do you even mean? This never happened in ME1 and ME2. In those games if I went to speak to somebody, I got everything they had to say there and then. I didn't have to talk to Companion A first and then Companion B and then have to return to Companion A to see the banter between A and B, and then move on to C and discover I have to go back to A again and then return to C, etc. Same with The Citadel and its quests: in ME1 and ME2 I never had to visit everywhere and scour every corner both up and down each visit to get what I needed. Though perhaps this is just as much due to how awful the quest and journal system is done in ME3. About the only thing that came close to this was scanning The Keepers and finding the signal leading to the A.I. in ME1, but even they didn't have you running about so much, and certainly not as often or as long, or on every visit. I loved The Citadel in ME1 and the Normandy in both ME1 and ME2. In ME3 towards the end I was just getting frustrated at having to scour every room two to three times per visit and was just going, "let it end!"

I actually liked this better. N7 missions aside, all of the sidequests weren't really quests per se. They're things you accomplish while trying to do something else. And if the N7 missions used MP maps, what of it? The MP players might as well complain that they're just getting N7 maps.

I guess I like this because I'm not a big fan of the "sidequest" concept in the first place. It's a CRPG artifact that I've never had any fondness for.

I think this is just a point where we'll have to disagree based purely on taste. I like sidequests, because they broaden the scope of the universe, make the setting feel more real and natural, and provide more distinctive content that allows you to stray away from the main plot for a while, because I personally find the main plot can sometimes become a drag in an RPG if that's all you focus on.

I also miss exploration as well, because to me it made the universe and setting feel vast and genuine, and also gave me an epic sense of exploring the unknown and a gimpse of what it would be like to be out there on uncharted worlds. Again, something I know you don't care for from past conversations with you.

But all in all, the sidequests in ME3 were extremely tacky and lazy. Collecting the same thing over and over not only got tedious and felt slapdash and half-assed, but all in all felt gamey as all hell, and even made the universe feel less real. Especially all that silly nonsense along the lines of, "every face suddenly needs to find Holy artifact #4 at the same friggin time." It's like no effort was put into them at all and they were simply there to keep adding to the stupid, arbitrary "War Assets" counter and be there to simply be some sidequest content so BioWare could say it had some.

As for the N7 Missions, again, it's just laziness and next to no effort to just take multiplayer maps and tack on a mission to them. As much as I complained about the N7 Missions in ME2 being gimmicky, linear affairs with no proper set-ups that felt tacked on, at least some degree of effort was put into them and they weren't just recycled Multiplayer areas with a half-assed mission tacked on revolving around combat. The only thing the N7 Missions in ME3 had over the ones in ME2 was the fact that they at least had better designs as far as layout went (but then they'd had to stand up well in mutiplayer, and you can't really have straight-line A to B MP horde style maps) and the fact that at least there was proper set-up with dialogue this time with Hackett, Cortez and your companions weighing in, etc. (which were almost non-existent in ME2).

All in all, the sidequests in ME3 were too few and far between, and felt lazily tacked on and devoid of any real effort. There were a few exceptions, such as Conrad Verner's cameo mission, but all in all pretty weak.

Why not? I get that you don't like linearity, but there's no real argument here. This may be one of those cases where my PnP background leaves me ill-equipped to follow you. PnP games are often quite linear, and certainly never have a KotOR-DA:O structure. No GM's going to prepare his game that way.

I play PnP too, and have for years, but the difference with PnP is that the story isn't quite as set, and you actually get to write it to a degree based on your actions. You're never limited like to are with a cRPG, and don't usually do multiple playthroughs with different characters and take on different approaches to see different outcomes. PnP has near on unlimited freedom, and can go wherever you decide to take it. With a CRPG you plan to play multiple times, you need more variety as a whole. And again, the previous two ME titles set a predecent this didn't follow. And again, we were told this was the part where there'd be more freedom and chances to change things up and go nuts since there's nowhere to go.

For one example, while the Turians, Salarians and Krogan are tied together, there's no reason at all the Geth/Quarian conflict couldn't have come up at the exact same time as Palaven did. Thessia does kind of have to come last, but it's so short, linear and pretty much exactly the same every time you do it, there's no reason we couldn't have had Illium or some other asari world beforehand. The story structure as a whole was somewhat similar to DAO, a game that did allow us to deal with the Mages, Dwarves and Elves in a manner of our choosing and had The Blight spread as each was tackled. ME3 could have easily followed the same pattern, albeit with The Reapers instead of The Blight.

You've noticed.

Did you actually expect anything different? When did Bio ever have choices that changed anything down the road, made different gameplay available, any of that? For example, in KotOR going DS gets you a couple of different cutscenes, but the endgame's gameplay is all identical except that you don't confront Bastila. And you get a couple of different lines in your final convo with Malak. Our choices didn't matter in ME1 either. I don't see ME3 as being particularly weak in this regard. It's standard Bio product all the way.

If you're just talking about the marketing, OK. But I didn't think you listened to that stuff any more than I do.

I guess what I'm really asking is..... are you sure you ever liked what Bio does? Or did ME1 just fool you into thinking they were doing something that they weren't actually trying to do?

I liked pretty much all BioWare games up until DA2 (and yes, that includes ME2, despite my many misgivings about it). The most succinct way I can think of putting this is to simply say, if you're going to try and claim something like BioWare did with the Mass Effect trilogy (i.e. an epic trilogy where your choices matter), then either stand up tall, put in a good effort and making those claims true, or don't try and all. Basically, either do it right, or don't bother doing it. Granted many BioWare titles didn't have really big variations, but I don't recall them even trying to claim that they did until Mass Effect came along. I think DAO did it a little bit to a degree actually, though it's a completely contained game. I certainly found by the ending my choices matter to me personally far more than they did at the end of ME3, and I never remember thinking a previous BioWare title had a cheap, cop-out consequence for an earlier choice. But in many ways, Mass Effect was unique in its trilogy style.

I personally didn't expect much of it in ME1, since it was the game that's supposed to set things up more than anything. Granted that gives it a little bit of a free pass from me I know, as it would never come under the same fire that the other parts did for being the first. ME2 as a whole had some pretty weak and half-assed consequences, but did do a few things okay, usually smaller ones funnily enough. ME3 was supposed to be the IP free from the chains it was once shackled with, but for the most part did an even worse job than ME2 did, IMO. The consequences were filled with so many trivialisations, rug-sweepings and weak substitutions that it wasn't funny. The latter even felt like an insult to the original characters in most cases, because BioWare seemed to say, "these people you loved from the prior games doesn't matterand isn't unique or special, 'cause generic paste-in #2 can just slot in with the same result!"

The way they went about it just seemed to be so half-assed and like they didn't even want to put in any real effort whatsoever. And the comment recently from Patrick Weekes in response to The Rachni Queen about how while other games like Alpha Protocol choose to make a "bold move" by having very different content for players based on choices, they didn't want to have some players missing content due to a decision from the first game, three games back. With that attitude it's pretty damn clear they were never intending to give us proper consequences, despite all their claims to the contrary, which just adds to the lies and deception. They claim to be building a game around choices and consequences, but have an overall philosophy that's completely counter to it?!! That's ****king stupid, dishonest and a cop-out.

The fact that games such as the aforementioned Alpha Protocol and The Witcher games have managed to do it proves that it's not only possible, but very doable with a far lesser budget and resources than EA/BioWare has. It also proves that these companies care more about RPG players and respect them more, as well as the fact they're actually willing to put in the effort, unlike BioWare who half-ass things along the way. I honestly can't believe that they expected most of the outcomes in ME3 related to prior choices to be even remotely satisfying. Especially stuff like The Rachni Queen which is just plain insulting. At least now I know not to waste my time having big debates how a choice will pay off in a BioWare game. Not that I'll be playing any more new BioWare games in the future.

Modifié par Terror_K, 13 avril 2012 - 11:16 .

[tiger-tron]

Gigamantis wrote...

Kuari999 wrote...

Gigamantis wrote...

There is context, they just didn't show extensive details.  In context it was obvious that they retreated and why they retreated.  Filmed narratives imply things they don't show all the time.  You can't be absolutely everywhere when you're offered limited perspective in a story, and you don't have to be.  It's not a plot hole. 

And yet the Normandy was the only ship shown running and if you looked outside the Crucible, they were still fighting.  No indication of retreat...  sounds less like they were implying something and more like you're assuming, especially after all the shouts of "NO RETREAT!  THIS IS OUR ONLY SHOT!"  I'm done talking to you...  I'll just thank god you're not a writer if you think this is good practice.

There was a long sequence in the crucible where they were likely forced to retreat where you couldn't see or know.  They didn't want to retreat but they did.  Sorry if characters changing with their situations scares and confuses you, but it's pretty common in writing and reality to portray people like that.  You're just being pissy and irrational.  You clearly know nothing about writing. 

So why if Joker was retreating with the squad, did he fly away from Earth? what logical explanation could you possibly give that Joker would flee the battle and be a coward? it still doesn't make sense.

[Terror_K]

Il Divo wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...

You've noticed.

Did you actually expect anything different? When did Bio ever have choices that changed anything down the road, made different gameplay available, any of that? For example, in KotOR going DS gets you a couple of different cutscenes, but the endgame's gameplay is all identical except that you don't confront Bastila. And you get a couple of different lines in your final convo with Malak. Our choices didn't matter in ME1 either. I don't see ME3 as being particularly weak in this regard. It's standard Bio product all the way.

If you're just talking about the marketing, OK. But I didn't think you listened to that stuff any more than I do.

I guess what I'm really asking is..... are you sure you ever liked what Bio does? Or did ME1 just fool you into thinking they were doing something that they weren't actually trying to do?

I think the issue (for me, at least) is that Bioware games don't usually have the same degree of hype, typically consisting of a single work. KotOR, Jade Empire, DA:O, etc were all stand-alone.

As the conclusion to a trilogy, and an ambitious trilogy at that, ME3's endings comparatively-speaking fall flat. I personally didn't need 16 different endings or a million different consequences. But if you're looking for the best example of why the ending feels so bland, the side by side youtube comparison does the best job of capturing it. As the conclusion to their three part epic, the point where Bioware can let our decisions spin out into wildly different conclusions, to see three color copies of the exact same thing is anti-climactic, since they seem to have even less visual variation than other Bioware endings; remember, KotOR at least presented the player with two completely different cut-scenes after they kill Malak.

That's all very well, but I'm not just talking about the endings (in fact, I wasn't talking about the endings at all). I'm talking about the way things like killing/sparing The Rachni Queen just doesn't matter because you still have to deal with things in almost exactly the same manner. How saving/leaving The Council doesn't matter due to copy/paste replacements. How the VS is cut out of most of the game rather than explored further or even seen as two different people beyond "Guy who doesn't trust Shepard after Cerberus stuff" and "Girl who doesn't trust Shepard after Cerberus stuff." How if Grunt dies, you just get replacement krogan and same mission. If Mordin dies, replacement salarian and same mission. If Wrex dies, replacement krogan, same mission. If Miranda dies, it's literally her clone and the same mission. Giving Legion to Cerberus changes nothing except some dialogue and how he's referred to. Destroying/Saving the Collector base only changes the near-ending in an extremely, almost non-existent subtle manner. Telling or not telling the quarians to go to war with The Geth doesn't matter, they still just do anyway. Anderson or Udina as Councilor is the worst of all... that's just outright retconned.

The list goes on. Nothing matters, nothing changes. BioWare put next to no effort at all into giving us proper variations that had so much as a dent on things. Same circumstances, same situations, same outcomes and same lack of choices. Playing ME3 through 12 times would be like visiting a museum every month for a year and the only thing different being a different art exhibit each visit (and even then some of the paintings are the same). Every other exhibit in the place is just like every other time, and the exit is always in the same place.

[fruton]

Terror_K wrote...
snipped to save mouse wheels

Wall of Text crits you for 99999.

Just kidding


You're bang on the money with most of that.

[Drake_Hound]

I agree with Terror , but sadly Terror this is no longer a issue for you.
Other then pitty revenge , you feel betrayed in big way , there is no more coming back.
Yes I know you still want to settle the score , but what score ?

Even if they change the game in every detail you want , it still will not be enough for you .
For those people it is best to move on , sadly there is nothing much to move onto .
Since no matter Alpha Protocol or any other game , they will fall into the same hype .
The more success you get , the bigger audience your 2nd game will be .
Thus you need to streamline .

Sorry you cannot make the game for the casuals , without making it simplified .
That returns the question to the developers , who are they designing the game for ?
The money or the fans ?

[Kanner]

Talking of budget and such issues, how much money and time was wasted on the brand new graphics engine? Y'know, the one where you can't import an accurate face from ME2, can't holster your gun, and where shep runs like a retarded monkey.

Frankly, the ME2 engine was easily beautiful enough to stretch to a third game.

Add to that a redone, half-assed, and broken quest system, a pointless and silly upgrades system that added nothing but irritation, and the least interaction but most dialogue we've ever had from shep. (Also, giant red circles on everything and an ugly converstion interface).

There are a few decisions that are clearly focused on building bridges between ME and the bros playing Halo. But... there is so much more stuff that really doesn't make any sense at all. =/

[fjun]

physics.

Modifié par fjunj, 13 avril 2012 - 12:18 .

[Dexi]

I'd shake Stanley Woo's hand right now, and in any case, I applaud him!

You deserve a raise, man!

[crazyrabbits]

Terror_K wrote...

That's all very well, but I'm not just talking about the endings (in fact, I wasn't talking about the endings at all). I'm talking about the way things like killing/sparing The Rachni Queen just doesn't matter because you still have to deal with things in almost exactly the same manner. How saving/leaving The Council doesn't matter due to copy/paste replacements. How the VS is cut out of most of the game rather than explored further or even seen as two different people beyond "Guy who doesn't trust Shepard after Cerberus stuff" and "Girl who doesn't trust Shepard after Cerberus stuff." How if Grunt dies, you just get replacement krogan and same mission. If Mordin dies, replacement salarian and same mission. If Wrex dies, replacement krogan, same mission. If Miranda dies, it's literally her clone and the same mission. Giving Legion to Cerberus changes nothing except some dialogue and how he's referred to. Destroying/Saving the Collector base only changes the near-ending in an extremely, almost non-existent subtle manner. Telling or not telling the quarians to go to war with The Geth doesn't matter, they still just do anyway. Anderson or Udina as Councilor is the worst of all... that's just outright retconned.

This is true. While the series has always been focused on choice (or, rather, the illusion of choice), I don't think I've ever seen a game that dragged the player into a specific circumstance kicking and screaming (regardless of their choices in the past).

In ME2, there was a feeling that even though events and situations were being played offscreen or in e-mail form, your actions in the first game were having a significant impact on the world around you. When you got to the SM, even though there were only two choices, you had multiple paths to get there (who you picked at each stage of the mission, whether you upgraded everything or not, when you started the mission, who you took to the final battle, how you responded to Illusive Man).

Now, most of the events from the previous game are rendered pointless, regardless of what you do. I had expected that LOTSB would have far bigger consequences than Liara standing in a room making the odd comment about her work. I expected that Arrival would have resulted in more than a wounded Batarian in the Citadel refugee ward ragging on me for blowing up the relay (and I expected Balak to do something about it too). David Archer's cameo was nice, but that's all Overlord amounted to.

Honestly, the only thing that really changes are a handful of War Asset values. I like the writing, but it's apparent to me that they cut a lot of corners in this.

[Naivor]

Gigamantis wrote...
The catalyst was only introduced in the final game and didn't need to be hinted at previously to work in this context.  What your argument here boils down to is "I don't like surprises!"  That's not literary critique, that's just personal taste.  There are a lot of ways to introduce a plot-twist; not just the "everyone can see it coming" method. 

Also, there's nothing in Shepard's past that would indicate he would argue when it's ABSOLUTELY POINTLESS to do so.  Add the fact that he's probably minutes away from bleeding to death, and he's pretty much accepted the crucible was the galaxies only way out, and you have a reasonable decision to act rather than converse. 

The fact that the Catalyst was introduced at the end of the last game was whats wrong with it. The whole story was really one huge deus ex machina, starting from the finding of the Crucibles blueprints just after the reapers attacked and people needed some superweapon to defeat them.

Surprises work, if made properly. This time it wasnt really about the surprise, but about how the surprise wasnt even hinted at before Thessia, and that was almost at the end of the main game already. Then players got some sort of super AI, which isn't explained in any way. Plot-twists in general should be built, not just thrown out there, independent. It just leaves people hanging and strips the personal connection right out.
Imagine Dragon Age: Origins ending with the same sort of thing. Suddenly a man comes out of nowhere and tells you the Old Gods were his idea all along, and you were fighting him all that time! Gasp, what a tweest! The Maker was the Reapers!

And as for your last point, there is a reason why Shepard should argue.
Because Shepard is largely made by the player. You choose his personality and actions, not the game. Thats the core part of an RPG. My Bram Shepard would have gladly sacrificed the rest of the fleets if that would give him a chance to talk the undoubtedly intelligent AI into hope. That chance was still there, seeing as an AI like EDI could be reasoned with. There was no reason to just accept what the little bastard said. Bleeding to death or no, Shepard was still concious and apparently fully sensible, the way he kept on yammering and asking logical questions.