5087 réponses à ce sujet

[BigglesFlysAgain]

If you read Vegas "homeworlds" issue (I know why would I do that?) It is the "daddy issues" thing again, but he does just about overcome that by the end of the story though....

[deliphicovenant42]

The earlier references to Wing Commander brought back memories of having to write custom bat and config.sys files to load elements into HIMEM in order to get the game to boot. Ahh, the joys of DOS.

I also think of the first time I booted the game after getting a Soundblaster card installed (and worrying about freeing up the necessary IRQs, another headache long gone) and how blown away I was by hearing "actual" music in that opening orchestra cinematic to the game...music that would probably make me cringe/laugh if I were to hear it today.

WC3 does have a special place in my heart too as one of the first times I truly felt like my choices had any impact in the flow of a game beyond a binary suceed/fail, and feeling like I was shaping a story the way ME did so well. Not to mention getting Mark Hamill as your avatar, with Biff Tannen as a sidekick seemed pretty great. I still remember the sting of Hobbes' betrayal, and the impact of realizing the love triangle that you could create through your choices had implications on the last few missions of the game (ridiculous as the mechanics/quality seems now). And who could forget the overrought voice recordings Mark Hamill did 'previewing' each choice point's dialogue. My only regret about the game was finding out about the collectors edition long after the game was retired. I did manage to track down the extra footage on youtube however.

While I don't know how much Bioware may have been directly inspired by the series, there's a definite connection there, at least in my mind.

Edit: Delayed edit now that I'm no longer on my phone and I spotted some errors/things I wanted to change.

Modifié par deliphicovenant42, 14 juin 2012 - 10:05 .

[Seijin8]

@delphicovenant42: Oh, that HIMEM stuff really takes me back.... Every time a new game came out, there was a 50/50 chance I was going to have to work some kind of DOSVoodoo to make it work at all. Seemed like I had to upgrade some component every other week.

Ah, those were the days.

[FamilyManFirst]

Regarding the exploding relays, I wonder if part of the reason for them was a holdout from the original notion of the main plot of ME3. As I've read, the original intent (foreshadowed in ME2) was that usage of the Mass Effect magnified Dark Energy, which in turn threatened the very existence of the galaxy. That would potentially make the destruction of the Mass Relays necessary to preserve the galaxy. Perhaps the idea became ingrained so hard that nobody really thought it through after the plot was changed.

Not that this is much of an excuse. They *should* have thought it through. It might explain, however, why there appears to be some backpedaling by the devs on whether or not the Relays can be repaired/reactivated.

[KitaSaturnyne]

I just keep having images of broken mass relays held together with duct tape and wooden splints, massive metallic zombies in space reminding us all of a galaxy gone by.

Sorry, I just finished editing my short story for what I hope is the final time. I'll be running it by some close friends of mine before I release it into the wild here.

EDIT: Apparently, I thought I had nothing else to add.

FamilyManFirst's post relates to something a little while back, that the need for the relays to be destroyed needed to be established. With the removal of the dark energy storyline, or something like it, all we're getting is empty explosions, not the wonderful 'splosions drayfish, myself and many others in this thread long for.

Modifié par KitaSaturnyne, 15 juin 2012 - 01:46 .

[Seijin8]

@FamilyManFirst: Thats is an interesting notion of the "entrenched idea" having been rendered meaningless to the audience, but maintaining importance to the narrative team. We've already seen some elements of castaway plot devices, no reason to think this isn't the reverse of that; a plot element that was to be important, if not for several layers of narrative that didn't make the cut or failed to create the connections necessary for this part to make sense.

I get that the "true" purpose was to break the chains created by the Reapers to keep us in these defined killing fields. But - as has been mentioned repeatedly here - tools are not inherently evil. For this part to feel thematically correct would require the understanding (not just knowledge) that the relays were part of a greater control mechanism that could always be abused, and that the scale of events transcended the interpersonal connections and even the civilizations of the "now". Destroying the relays preserves the future for everyone, or so the message was intended to be. But it didn't resonate at all. Our focus throughout the game had always been individual and personal and (I felt) we were unprepared for the sudden jump to an enormous decision timespace. I can see the need to take a wider view of events, move beyond the "squad leader" mentality into that of a general. Earth could have been the place to do so, assigning assets in a bigger overall battlespace, etc.

With that field of view established, step wider into a scale that the Catalyst perceives: eons and galaxies.

But it didn't happen. The sudden break into galaxy-large scale was jarring and poorly set up. Plausible (hell, even necessary) within the story as told, but poorly delivered.

EDIT:  Because complete sentences are

Modifié par Seijin8, 15 juin 2012 - 01:58 .

[drayfish]

@ FamilyManFirst: I agree, the Dark Energy thing definitely should have been addressed, even if not revealed to be central to the main Reaper storyline. Of all of the discarded or explained away narrative threads that one really stood out to me. Again, I know I mentioned it back aways, but in ME2 it was eating a freaking sun! Tali, my go-to for pseudo-sciencey engineer stuff, even thought that was weird – galactically dangerous weird – and important enough to risk investigating; and yet nothing comes of it in ME3. As far as I recall not even a passing mention?
 
 
@KitaSaturnyne: Love the image of the Relays held together with splints. Now I have the image of a galactic plumber standing beside a re-cobbled Relay shaking his head.
 
'Yep. You've had some cowboys in here haven't you? Look at all this Dark Energy build up. You've got that right through your universe, mate. That's going to be a complete strip down job. Let me give you this card. It's some fellas I've worked with before – they'll do you a good deal. Very thorough. They're called The Reapers. You speak to their manager – his name is Harbinger, Murray Harbinger – and you mention my name. He'll do you a good deal. ...Why are you crying?'

[Seijin8]

With asscrack exposure the size of a dreadnought.

[drayfish]

@ Seijin8: Love the image. Also, great observation about that disconnect between the Relay/Reaper's practical 'purpose' and the individual biological imperative to survive, to assert one's validity to live. I think, handled elegantly, that premise could have been extremely powerful, with Shepard emblematic of the willingness to throw of the constraint of a misapplied technological harness; but as you say, the game's narrative certainly isn't communicating that yet...

[KitaSaturnyne]

Hah! Murray Harbinger! Harby's one and only son with his wife Sarah, who ended up growing up to be more successful than his dad.

"I KNOW YOU-"

"Dad, shut up."

"THIS HUR-"

"Dad, seriously."

[Jorji Costava]

Just wanted to add to the growing number of voices pointing to Wing Commander as a sort of spiritual predecessor to ME. In a way, it makes sense that the old space flight simulators were the earliest games to have a reasonably sophisticated choice & consequence system, since no matter what path you took, you knew the missions were going to take place in outer space, which looks pretty much the same no matter where you are (unless you're in a nebula or something). The only things that had to be different were the between-mission cutscenes and briefings. My only caveat here is that I was a huge non-fan of the whole "Hobbes is a traitor" plot twist in WC3 (got a couple reasons for this, but don't want to list them right here). Also, there's a little known game from 1994 called Star Crusader that did a similar sort of thing. Somewhere around the first third of the game, you had the opportunity to switch sides from the Gorene Empire to the loosely cobbled-together coalition of aliens fighting to drive them out of their space. The choice resulted in completely different path through the game.

Also, thought I'd mention what seems to be the other prerequisite to being an ME squadmate, besides daddy-issues: Getting your whole squad wiped out. There's Ashley, Garrus, Tali, Zaeed and even Shepard himself if you chose the sole survivor background.

Murray Harbinger and his son? That's fantastic. I'm picturing a Dr. Evil-and-Scott Evil relationship here. Next time Harbinger utters one of his trademark phrases, maybe he should put one of those metal tentacles (the smallest one, of course) underneath his face, or whatever he's got there.

[Seijin8]

Do Reaper teenage years last several cycles? That could be awkward, but also explains the older reaper's need to annihilate EVERYTHING.

[edisnooM]

Estranged for years due to Harbinger being unable to tell Murray he loved him, they were both reunited on Emily Wong's new day time talk show "Wong and Right". Not a dry eye in the house as Harbinger finally accepted Murray's choice to fix things instead of destroying them.

[KitaSaturnyne]

@Seijin8

Their teenage years do indeed last a long time. I remember seeing many a Reaper in ME3 in the background, perpetually texting on their iReap.

@Mani Mani

"Wong and Right" definitely makes up for "Reaperduction"! Hilarious!

[Heiwa no Senso]

Seijin8 wrote...

There are many therapists for such things found in Korea (or so I understand).

You know, that's kind of scary. its one thing to not like an ending, but to be psychologically scarred by it is something else entirely.

[delta_vee]

@delphicovenant42 & Seijin8

Ah, the days of DOS, HIMEM, boot disks, IRQs, and driver wrangling. I miss those, in a twisted, masochistic way. My father was rather ambivalent about videogames, so he insisted I learn to do boot disks and hardware upgrades and the like on my own if I wanted to play. This started when I was, oh, eight. And it worked, too - it kickstarted my interest in computers. Score one for my dad.

I wonder if Murray Harbinger's father took his son on colony purges, just the two of them. "First, kiddo, you've got to hit their spaceport, then let 'em wriggle around a little before you land. And make sure you don't assume direct control when you're already on the ground, or somebody'll play Shepard and you'll end up like your grandpa Sovereign."

@FamilyManFirst & drayfish

What I was sorta-vaguely-kinda expecting was the reveal that eezo was created and seeded between cycles by the Reapers making a few suns go Haestrom. I mean, if each cycle gobbles up all the eezo they can find, you'd have to replenish that somehow.

Still, if the relay-explodo were a remnant of the old story, FamilyManFirst is right in that they should've thought it through.

@seijin8 (again)

I can only speak for myself, of course, but I don't think I could accept any permutation of the reasoning behind the relays' destruction. CulturalGeekGirl's right - it's all about the connectivity. Without it, without the relays, the setting itself ceases to be interesting, at least in the manner which drew us to it. I don't think I could take relay-explodo as anything but punitive.

@osbornep

I didn't like the Hobbes betrayal, but I didn't hate it. I found out later it was at Chris Roberts' insistence.

[CulturalGeekGirl]

I can actually imagine a really interesting story... told perhaps as an epilogue, in which everyone uses the relays to get where they're going one last time, before regretfully agreeing to shut them all down or blow them all up (because they'd actually been established to be explicitly dangerous during the story, of course.)

It would be interesting if the Crucible destroyed, say, all the Reapers in the Sol system, but the rest of them just hightailed it out to Dark Space to regroup. Shepard learns that blowing the Relays would destroy the Reapers in their "waiting place..." without that, the spectre of a new Reaper invasion would darken any potential future.

The gradual parting of ways, the plans to stay in touch, the decisions you'd have to make. Wrex and Grunt would pretty much have to stay behind on Tuchanka. You'd leave Tali behind on Rannoch (or if you romanced her you could choose to stay behind with her.)

Jane would have taken the rest of her crew and their families (if they wanted to come) to some moderately established but largely depopulated colony somewhere fairly central to things (like Horizon or Eden Prime). She would have encouraged a bunch of refugees of various races to join her, and set up a nice multicultural colony with the Normandy packed in the back yard, waiting for a new generation of superscientists to improve conventional FTL or recreate the technology of the Relays without whatever downside we'd discovered, be it Dark Matter or indoctrination or just some kind of intrinsic tie to the Reapers.

That would have felt like a goodbye, a real goodby, and truly bittersweet. They'd have to plan out a bunch of choices: stay on Earth, stay on Rannoch, stay on Tuchanka, or go somewhere and start a colony. (I exclude Thessia and Palaven because those particular squadmates don't really seem to have as strong a connection to their homeworlds, and would probably be fine following Shepard wherever she goes. I would insist on the idea of starting or shoring up some kind of idealistic multicultural experimental colony before everything goes dark, just to give at least a nodding acknowledgment to the value of the integrated civilization we are being forced to give up.

Imagine, leaving the people who need to be with their people behind, breaking the band up a little but then, in a final cutscene, watching the fireworks in the sky as the relays blow, while Shepard digs into some infrastructure building with whatever segment of the team she was able to convince to come with her on whatever path she's chosen. Some goodbyes, some 'til next times, but there's still family there, and the rebuilding is both symbolic and hopeful.

[drayfish]

delta_vee wrote...

@FamilyManFirst & drayfish

What I was sorta-vaguely-kinda expecting was the reveal that eezo was created and seeded between cycles by the Reapers making a few suns go Haestrom. I mean, if each cycle gobbles up all the eezo they can find, you'd have to replenish that somehow.

Still, if the relay-explodo were a remnant of the old story, FamilyManFirst is right in that they should've thought it through.

@ delta_vee: When you said 'seeded' do you mean...?  Ewww.  Reaper poop.  And I got it all over my biotics!

[Jorji Costava]

@delta_vee

I've heard the same thing about Roberts and the Hobbes betrayal. From what I understand, although I could easily be wrong, Roberts had little to do with WC2. WC2 introduced some ambiguity into the war, with Hobbes, Kilrathi rebels on Ghorah Khar, Confed traitors, etc. Apparently, Roberts didn't like any of these elements, and decided to transition to a much more black-and-white, good vs. evil approach in WC3. And that's really too bad, because I liked most of the stuff they included in WC2.

@CulturalGeekGirl

That does sound like a much better way to handle the destruction of the relays. It reminds me of the ending of Chrono Trigger, where Chrono's buddies say their final goodbyes, then use the gates one last time to return to their place of origin before the all gates close.

[KitaSaturnyne]

drayfish wrote...

delta_vee wrote...

@FamilyManFirst & drayfish

What I was sorta-vaguely-kinda expecting was the reveal that eezo was created and seeded between cycles by the Reapers making a few suns go Haestrom. I mean, if each cycle gobbles up all the eezo they can find, you'd have to replenish that somehow.

Still, if the relay-explodo were a remnant of the old story, FamilyManFirst is right in that they should've thought it through.

@ delta_vee: When you said 'seeded' do you mean...?  Ewww.  Reaper poop.  And I got it all over my biotics!

Does that mean that if the eezo gives you massive tumors, that it was BAD Reaper poop? "Damn Sal, I tell ya. The Reaper feces these days just aren't what they used to be."

@CGG

Yes. A billion-and-a-half times, yes.

[drayfish]

@ CulturalGeekGirl: That would be a magnificent farewell. Slowly turning off the lights of the universe, saying our goodbyes, but already beginning to make preparations to someday ignite them again. What an exquisite image! I like also the suggestion that Shepard herself is central to that image of rebuilding.

...I'm extrapolating wildly, but that 'individually crafted ending' we were all promised would roll out nicely in the circumstance you describe if we also had options to choose where Shepard ends up. Personally I love your picture of a new colony founded by Shepard and crew, but I imagine there would be some Talimancers out there keen to follow their love back home to a re-emerging Rannoch; some Virmire-Survivor romancers who might feel particularly attached to helping sweep up the small burnt shell of Earth; or hell, even a Renegade Shepard who just wants to tear things up with the Krogans...

The thought of genuinely being able to place your Shepard on a new land, already with a new mission, all the wonderous potential of a life left to live and a universe still to explore would be sublime...

Modifié par drayfish, 15 juin 2012 - 04:35 .

[KitaSaturnyne]

@drayfish

Agreed. That would be something worth speculating.

[memorysquid]

delta_vee wrote...

@seijin8 (again)

I can only speak for myself, of course, but I don't think I could accept any permutation of the reasoning behind the relays' destruction. CulturalGeekGirl's right - it's all about the connectivity. Without it, without the relays, the setting itself ceases to be interesting, at least in the manner which drew us to it. I don't think I could take relay-explodo as anything but punitive.

Well it is an odd point for a space opera, but they've made the point since ME1 that getting tech ahead of time wrecks societies.  Rachni/Krogan/Genophage atrocities are all caused by mass relay technology being utilized by people not ready.  Of course the Rachni being Reaper tools muddies the water, but the shaping of galactic society through technology is a main theme.  Yeah it is an interesting setting but think about it in real terms; due to various snafus, misunderstandings, etc., how many lives have been exterminated thanks to the mass relays?  How many people has Shepard had to put down?  His personal kill count is in the thousands.

[delta_vee]

@CulturalGeekGirl

That would indeed be a lovely sendoff...if and only if the destruction of the relays were established as a thematic necessity, not just a narrative one (and here I admit that for some, it was). I could live with an end such as yours, but I still don't think I would be quite satisfied.

What I said upthread about the interleaving of people and place, the use of one to connect to the other, forms the core of my objection to any enforced isolation. When I look at that galaxy map, I don't just see planets, I see characters. Here's Wrex, here's Tali, there's Aria. Mordin's line about his favorite nephew is true enough, but I fought for the quantum superposition of large and small. Both people and places. Saving one and losing the other still feels like some degree of failure. Perhaps I'm simply stubborn, but I don't see it necessary, can't see it as anything else but some level of authorial insistence.

[memorysquid]

drayfish wrote...


@ CulturalGeekGirl: That would be a magnificent farewell. Slowly turning off the lights of the universe, saying our goodbyes, but already beginning to make preparations to someday ignite them again. What an exquisite image! I like also the suggestion that Shepard herself is central to that image of rebuilding.

...I'm extrapolating wildly, but that 'individually crafted ending' we were all promised would roll out nicely in the circumstance you describe if we also had options to choose where Shepard ends up. Personally I love your picture of a new colony founded by Shepard and crew, but I imagine there would be some Talimancers out there keen to follow their love back home to a re-emerging Rannoch; some Virmire-Survivor romancers who might feel particularly attached to helping sweep up the small burnt shell of Earth; or hell, even a Renegade Shepard who just wants to tear things up with the Krogans...

The thought of genuinely being able to place your Shepard on a new land, already with a new mission, all the wonderous potential of a life left to live and a universe still to explore would be sublime...

It wouldn't have been quite the heroic sacrifice that they wanted from Shepard.  If you don't have to make the ultimate sacrifice you aren't as big a hero.  Maybe they count your goodbye walk and phone calls as that personalization factor?  You can't call your ME2 buddies if they're all dead right?