216 réponses à ce sujet

[LinksOcarina]

 The reviewer is technically right in terms of what he said about the game. The story is a cliche, and we all know it.
But every story is a cliche, and anyone claiming otherwise is a fool. 

It depends on how the story is told, and this is where I disagree with the author, points were good, points were bad, but points overall made it story worth telling. For me, my biggest peeve is the charge that characters had no depth to them.  I have done several articles on the depth characters have had in Mass Effect, and why it's important to the entire franchise. Let's face it, most of us played the game because of the characters surrounding it. The story was always a throny issue following typical tropes of high-fantasy good vs evil and Space Opera logic, but the characters kept us coming back for the fives years. At least, for me.

So the reviewer is right in most respects as to what problems the series has, but for me, he is missing the point overall on what made the game worth playing. If he didn't like thats fine, but a lot of his charges are at best, subjective statements.

Modifié par LinksOcarina, 23 avril 2012 - 04:19 .

[Arngeld]

Ah yes, "RPG Codex." An obscure hive of elitists engaging in feigned highbrow criticism to mask its collective inability to enjoy any game newer than Fallout. We have dismissed this site.

I haven't read the article in question, but I've little doubt that some of its points hit home because, you know... low hanging fruit. We all have criticisms of the game(e.g. why do I have to click purchase in two different places on the screen in order to buy the thing that I indicated I wanted to purchase by clicking on the item? Just let me double click to buy). Give the source, however, I highly doubt I would agree with the author's conclusion.

Modifié par Arngeld, 23 avril 2012 - 04:27 .

[Pedrak]

LinksOcarina wrote...

. For me, my biggest peeve is the charge that characters had no depth to them.  I have done several articles on the depth characters have had in Mass Effect, and why it's important to the entire franchise. Let's face it, most of us played the game because of the characters surrounding it. The story was always a throny issue following typical tropes of high-fantasy good vs evil and Space Opera logic, but the characters kept us coming back for the fives years. At least, for me.

.

He mostly liked the characters though. With a few exceptions - and frankly, characters like Allers and Vega or Kai Leng I didn't love either. He obviously loathed the romances but that's not the same thing.

Modifié par Pedrak, 23 avril 2012 - 04:29 .

[shepskisaac]

BatmanPWNS wrote...

The fact that this review said Male Shepard and Aller are the 2 worst VA makes me wonder what the hell are they on about. Aller I can accept but Meer is not the worse at all.

Agree on mShep not being bad, but Allers is barely passable at the best. StarBrat is still #1 worst VA in the game though. Lawd I can't expess how much I hate bad child acting (which basically equalls 99% of all child acting...)

Modifié par IsaacShep, 23 avril 2012 - 04:35 .

[Mylia Stenetch]

Pedrak wrote...

He mostly liked the characters though. With a few exceptions - and frankly, characters like Allers and Vega or Kai Leng I didn't love either. He obviously loathed the romances but that's not the same thing.

I did not mind Vega much. I did though did not enjoy Allers and Kai Leng in the game. Hell of all the new characters they did add in the only one I really enjoyed was Cortez, since he did have some fleshing out done.


For the romance. They were not bad, I did enjoy the gay arc, I felt it was done fine. Lesbian, I felt was poor. Allers was absolute horrid. The others with the crew from the other game are good, if you built that emotional attachment to them through the other game or two.

[Pedrak]

Worst of all is Kai Leng, a cerberus henchman/space ninja who fell out of the metal gear solid tree and hit every cliché on the way down

[Amberion]

Odd. I thought the lesbian sex scene was the hottest one of them all. Though I was disappointed by the persistent presence of lacy black bras, but I accept that they just can't show naughty bits in a game that might conceivably be shown to minors.

[AkiKishi]

Amberion wrote...

Odd. I thought the lesbian sex scene was the hottest one of them all. Though I was disappointed by the persistent presence of lacy black bras, but I accept that they just can't show naughty bits in a game that might conceivably be shown to minors.

It's rated M in America and 15 in the UK. Witcher 2 is 18 and has naughty bits aplenty.

[Getorex]

Wow. Just, like, totally WOW! Yeah, the review is solid and critical (a critical eye is NOT an auto-bad-thing) but what I never read or heard was that Bioware actually had the GALL to call this "hard science fiction". This is "hard scifi" the way Star Wars was, which is to say, it is NOT hard scifi. You want hard scifi you have to go with speculative stuff extended from REAL science. You don't get to make up magic sh*t like "mass effect" and "eezo" and "biotics" and call that "hard scifi". No it is NOT.

Hard scifi = Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, Jack McDevitt, Stephen Baxter, and some Neal Stephenson. NOT Gene Roddenberry, NOT NOT NOT George Lucas. Space opera and space fantasy are in no way, shape, or form, hard scifi. They are as soft as a limp willy. They make bogus sh*t up from whole cloth and don't even begin to worry about physics, natural law, reality.

Mass Effect, the series, has NEVER been hard scifi. It is pure, unadulterated science FANTASY. It is precisely the same NON-science as all the other Bioware stuff with outright magic, dragons, wizards, etc.

Sheesh. Hard scifi my left testicle.

[Sgt Stryker]

Regarding the overall narrative of the trilogy, I think Bioware made three fatal flaws. One, not planning out the entire trilogy from its inception. They should have at the very least, fleshed out the setting, beginnings, and endings of all three games. All of this should have been kept in a master Story Bible. This is especially true if you're working in the game industry, where employees come and go on a regular basis.

Two, they should not have set spin-off media in the same timeframe as the games. This undermines player agency and leads to confusion from people who do not buy said media. "Who is this James guy?" "Why is Udina the human councillor, despite my choice at the end of ME1?" Questions like these come up because many people do not, and should not have to buy expanded universe material to make sense of the games.

Three, getting bought by EA. Enough said about that.

[Sgt Stryker]

Getorex wrote...

Wow. Just, like, totally WOW! Yeah, the review is solid and critical (a critical eye is NOT an auto-bad-thing) but what I never read or heard was that Bioware actually had the GALL to call this "hard science fiction".  This is "hard scifi" the way Star Wars was, which is to say, it is NOT hard scifi. You want hard scifi you have to go with speculative stuff extended from REAL science. You don't get to make up magic sh*t like "mass effect" and "eezo" and "biotics" and call that "hard scifi". No it is NOT.

Hard scifi = Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, Jack McDevitt, Stephen Baxter, and some Neal Stephenson. NOT Gene Roddenberry, NOT NOT NOT George Lucas. Space opera and space fantasy are in no way, shape, or form, hard scifi. They are as soft as a limp willy. They make bogus sh*t up from whole cloth and don't even begin to worry about physics, natural law, reality.

Mass Effect, the series, has NEVER been hard scifi. It is pure, unadulterated science FANTASY. It is precisely the same NON-science as all the other Bioware stuff with outright magic, dragons, wizards, etc.

Sheesh. Hard scifi my left testicle.

Strangely enough, I never heard that from any of the devs either. Anyone have a link? Regarding science fiction as a whole, I don't necessarily see it as falling into one of two categories. I prefer to see it as a sliding scale, and Mass Effect falls somewhere in between the two extremes, similar to Star Trek.

[Tigerman123]

I don't think that they can be described as elitists, they're just lonely nerds who spam smilies and reaction images from 4chan in an attempt to be funny. I finally read the review despite my initial trepidation and I enjoyed it, the author employed a nice vocabulary that never felt forced, why can't the rest of the site be like that?

[sf0749]

I agree with the review.

I think for video games to mature the developers need to spend money on writers who can craft a believable story, and for them to ship games that are not seriously flawed in execution and conception.. I think for some players spending sixty dollars on a beta version of a game is becoming harder to justify in the current economic situation.

Here is an article on the price of games:

http://games.yahoo.c...-181412574.html

For myself, I feel cheated by Bioware for they promised one thing, and I was given something else. Bioware was not alone. I am not happy with Bethesda. They released a game, Skyrim, that was clearly a beta version, and required many patches for the game to work properly. If I am playing a beta version of your game, pay me for the privilege.

[Amioran]

CrustyBot wrote...

Is there anything specific in the article or it's conclusions you want to address, Amoiran?

I've done so numerous times. Repeating always the same things have bothered me.

CrustyBot wrote...
Or are you content in claiming that others do not wish to debate the points you have yet to make because those who disagree with you lack the intelligence to acknowledge that they're wrong, or the humility to admit it?

I already made those points a lot of times. I explained everything in detailed ways. If you are a little interested I'm sure you can find those with just a little search.

CrustyBot wrote...
I'm genuinely curious, because you display the exact same behaviour that you excuse the Codex (or those who are simply negative towards Mass Effect 3) of having.

If you say so...
I always debated what I said and always replied to every concern, either the most obtuse. But you cannot expect me to repeat the same things 10 times.

If you really are interested, however, apart from my threads, just study the philosophical theme "order vs. chaos" (that, btw, it is at the root of the major occidental religions, as christianity and islam - an example of the same narrative can be find in the Paradise Lost of MIlton) it's all in there, really.

[Mylia Stenetch]

Amioran wrote...
If you really are interested, however, apart from my threads, just study the philosophical theme "order vs. chaos" (that, btw, it is at the root of the major occidental religions, as christianity and islam - an example of the same narrative can be find in the Paradise Lost of MIlton) it's all in there, really.

I will say this for you, on my news site I usually read, which pulls in tonnes of articles people can comment on. If you say something and you want it to be taken factual or put into a debate with someone always bring your full facts and opinions to the table. If not even if you "repeat yourself 10 times" they might of never seen that.

Also telling someone to search through the forums is a slap in the face also.


Also Crustbot, I repsect the reviewer's opinion on the game. I do feel he brings up some crucial points which hinder the game. I feel breaking into certain points of jumping the shark or rehashing cliches that been there since game one is nothing new to the field. Also I usually have an annoyance when people do reviews with arrogance (unless it is in a satircal way).

[Amioran]

beyondsolo wrote...
You seem to have a very strong position in this. Unfortunately, I've never had the opportunity to read one of your posts where you presented "evidence," or "proved someone wrong." All I've read so far from you in this thread are references to those events and your statement about how people's opinions turn them into elitist snobs. Would you please point me to one of your posts (or repost your argumentation here) so I can get an idea of the points you're making about the game? Thank you.

One thread was about the green ending. You can find it in the spoiler forum. I couldn't reply no more so some things got unanswered but it will at last give a good background (this is probably the most complete and with more details).

Another thread was "If You're Keeping The Endings in The Name of Integrity..."; you can find my explanations starting from page 3/4 to "aLucidMind" and others.

Still another thread was about having an happy ending instead of what we have (don't remember perfectly the name and I cannot find it in the cronology but it was of about 2 days ago).

Modifié par Amioran, 23 avril 2012 - 05:48 .

[Amioran]

Mylia Stenetch wrote...
Also telling someone to search through the forums is a slap in the face also.

So you are telling me that asking you to search through the forums (that it takes just one/two minutes, max five) it's a slap in the face and instead it's perfectly plausible to ask me to explain in the specifics an argument that has taken 5-6 (the first more than 10) pages of posts long half/full pages in various threads? Are you kidding me?

I am talking about a DEBATE, a full debate, with explanations, replies etc. not the usual "it's this because I say so" argument you find here.

Then the "order vs. chaos" thematic is really complex. With the little I wrote I just scrapped the surface and yet I've tried to arose interest for others to study about it (since you cannot expect me to write here everything about it, it would take a book - if it will suffice) and understand what I was talking about.

Modifié par Amioran, 23 avril 2012 - 05:42 .

[Mylia Stenetch]

Amioran wrote...
So you are telling me that asking you to search through the forums (that it takes just one/two minutes, max five) it's a slap in the face and instead it's perfectly plausible to ask me to explain in the specifics an argument that has taken 5-6 (the first more than 10) pages of posts long half/full pages in various threads? Are you kidding me?

Yes it is, it shows I may not agree with you, but I am not putting any energy into this dissagreement, you can find what I say. That does not work cause people will just disregard you.

[Getorex]

Sgt Stryker wrote...

Getorex wrote...

Wow. Just, like, totally WOW! Yeah, the review is solid and critical (a critical eye is NOT an auto-bad-thing) but what I never read or heard was that Bioware actually had the GALL to call this "hard science fiction".  This is "hard scifi" the way Star Wars was, which is to say, it is NOT hard scifi. You want hard scifi you have to go with speculative stuff extended from REAL science. You don't get to make up magic sh*t like "mass effect" and "eezo" and "biotics" and call that "hard scifi". No it is NOT.

Hard scifi = Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, Jack McDevitt, Stephen Baxter, and some Neal Stephenson. NOT Gene Roddenberry, NOT NOT NOT George Lucas. Space opera and space fantasy are in no way, shape, or form, hard scifi. They are as soft as a limp willy. They make bogus sh*t up from whole cloth and don't even begin to worry about physics, natural law, reality.

Mass Effect, the series, has NEVER been hard scifi. It is pure, unadulterated science FANTASY. It is precisely the same NON-science as all the other Bioware stuff with outright magic, dragons, wizards, etc.

Sheesh. Hard scifi my left testicle.

Strangely enough, I never heard that from any of the devs either. Anyone have a link? Regarding science fiction as a whole, I don't necessarily see it as falling into one of two categories. I prefer to see it as a sliding scale, and Mass Effect falls somewhere in between the two extremes, similar to Star Trek.

To an extent, sure.  Star Trek was never hard scifi.  If it was there would never ever have been a bunch of hot alien females for Kirk to shag, all human but with various "alien" skin hues.  Star Trek had magic dilithium crystals that did it all and ME had eezo that does similar magic.  Star Trek didn't make the fatal flaw of fleshing out some "physics" for dilithium the way Bioware did with eezo so it didn't get quite as far down in he trap of pure fantasy.  The details were left to the imagination and to speculation from the viewer (this stuff is some future high-tech that we don't have yet but that doesn't sidestep or ignore laws of physics).  Eezo and "biotics" are fleshed out enough to take it out of speculative into pure fantasy.

Really, ME is nothing more than the same old, same old fantasy story replotted into a sci-fi/spacey skin.  Instead of wizards or sorcerors you have biotics.  Instead of magic you have the "mass effect".  Instead of magical crystals or fluids or whatnot you have "eezo".  The characters are all IDENTICAL to Dragon Age or any of a GAZILLION fantasy stories but instead of silly Middle Age armor, swords and bows-and-arrows, they wear space armor and carry rifles.  Wizards and Sorcerors are now "Adepts" or basic "biotics".  Fantasy + space age trappings = science fantasy.  It isn't even in the same room as hard scifi.  Hard scif takes current theory and what theory allows (wormholes, black holes, quantum entanglement, cloning, AI, human-computer interface, etc) and extends it without breaking the Laws (of physics).  Mass Relays would be wormhole generators instead of magic mass effect thingies.  You could pull a "dilithium crystal" trick ala Star Trek and get by since no one today knows how to make a wormhole...we only know that it would be VERY energy/energy density intensive...so you speculate.  Each pair of relays would operate to "hold" either end of a wormhole (so one end doesn't drift around uncontrollably so you pop out in some broad, unknown area of space in the general vicinity of where you wanted to go - the far end relay "holds" the other end of the wormhole in place).  You dispense COMPLETELY with any magic (no biotics).  You can probably keep the "tech" stuff to a certain extent and have that be your "magic" but add to it nanotech stuff: nanobuilders, nanorepliators, nanomedicine, etc.  Aliens would all be actually ALIEN so there would be NO mixing and matching of penises and vaginas across the gulf of evolution between actual ALIENS (you keep it in-species like in the real world).  THAT would be hard scifi. 

Actually, as I think on it I REALLY wish Bioware had done a true hard scifi series instead of a fantasy series in space because it has never been done (thus far).  It would be a first.  Sure, the ME series could be perfectly OK as the fantasy space opera it is if they would have had the entire story written out, beginning, middle, and end BEFORE they finished the first game's development.  That way it wouldn't matter who came and went with the company, who got fired or hired, the story would be there to follow and obey to a clean follow-through in ME2 and a clean and acceptable ending in ME3.  They went entirely with a contingent story instead, making sh*t up as they went along, and that shows.  The end of ME3 is particularly glaring in that regard.  They literally had NO idea how they were going to end the series all the way up to well into ME3's development!  No idea!  You just don't DO that!  You have a fleshed out story and you damn well follow it, making only minor mods here and there as you learn that what was originally intended or considered doesn't really work or is too complicated for nature of the medium.  You don't go all contingency and make sh*t up as you go.  YOU DON'T DO THAT!

Modifié par Getorex, 23 avril 2012 - 05:47 .

[Amioran]

Mylia Stenetch wrote...

Amioran wrote...
So you are telling me that asking you to search through the forums (that it takes just one/two minutes, max five) it's a slap in the face and instead it's perfectly plausible to ask me to explain in the specifics an argument that has taken 5-6 (the first more than 10) pages of posts long half/full pages in various threads? Are you kidding me?

Yes it is, it shows I may not agree with you, but I am not putting any energy into this dissagreement, you can find what I say. That does not work cause people will just disregard you.

So be it, it's not my problem.

If you cannot trouble yourself to look on a thing that just take a moment then it problably means you are not really interested. If it was an argument that just take 1-2 paragraphs I would gladly repeat it here, but it's not.

[Sgt Stryker]

Getorex wrote...
Really, ME is nothing more than the same old, same old fantasy story replotted into a sci-fi/spacey skin.  Instead of wizards or sorcerors you have biotics.  Instead of magic you have the "mass effect".  Instead of magical crystals or fluids or whatnot you have "eezo".  The characters are all IDENTICAL to Dragon Age or any of a GAZILLION fantasy stories but instead of silly Middle Age armor, swords and bows-and-arrows, they wear space armor and carry rifles.  Wizards and Sorcerors are now "Adepts" or basic "biotics".  Fantasy + space age trappings = science fantasy.  It isn't even in the same room as hard scifi.  Hard scif takes current theory and what theory allows (wormholes, black holes, quantum entanglement, cloning, AI, human-computer interface, etc) and extends it without breaking the Laws (of physics).  Mass Relays would be wormhole generators instead of magic mass effect thingies.  You could pull a "dilithium crystal" trick ala Star Trek and get by since no one today knows how to make a wormhole...we only know that it would be VERY energy/energy density intensive...so you speculate.  Each pair of relays would operate to "hold" either end of a wormhole (so one end doesn't drift around uncontrollably so you pop out in some broad, unknown area of space in the general vicinity of where you wanted to go - the far end relay "holds" the other end of the wormhole in place).  You dispense COMPLETELY with any magic (no biotics).  You can probably keep the "tech" stuff to a certain extent and have that be your "magic" but add to it nanotech stuff: nanobuilders, nanorepliators, nanomedicine, etc.  Aliens would all be actually ALIEN so there would be NO mixing and matching of penises and vaginas across the gulf of evolution between actual ALIENS (you keep it in-species like in the real world).  THAT would be hard scifi.  

That's certainly true, and I'm cool with that.

Actually, as I think on it I REALLY wish Bioware had done a true hard scifi series instead of a fantasy series in space because it has never been done (thus far).  It would be a first.  Sure, the ME series could be perfectly OK as the fantasy space opera it is if they would have had the entire story written out, beginning, middle, and end BEFORE they finished the first game's development.  

You may want to check out Starlight Inception. If this project gets off the ground and works out, it may very well be the first hard sci-fi space combat game, at least to my knowledge.

Modifié par Sgt Stryker, 23 avril 2012 - 05:55 .

[SpiritWolf448]

Regardless of what I may think about the rest of the article (it had some good points and some I don't completely agree on), this one sentence nearly made me fall out of my chair laughing.

Worst of all is Kai Leng, a cerberus henchman/space ninja who fell out
of the metal gear solid tree and hit every cliché on the way down.

[Outamyhead]

Okay he might have some valid points with the plot holes, but to recommend not playing the third, and then to anyone thinking about the series to just avoid it all together is insane, ME1 definitely worth picking up, ME2 dunno haven't started on that one yet, but the demo was cool (also depends on what platform you played the demo on, as the PC and PS3 versions have different missions) , ME3 I dunno, all I ever hear about is the last ten minutes messing up the entire story, I'm still going to buy it once it has hit a low enough price.

[Getorex]

Sgt Stryker wrote...

Getorex wrote...
Really, ME is nothing more than the same old, same old fantasy story replotted into a sci-fi/spacey skin.  Instead of wizards or sorcerors you have biotics.  Instead of magic you have the "mass effect".  Instead of magical crystals or fluids or whatnot you have "eezo".  The characters are all IDENTICAL to Dragon Age or any of a GAZILLION fantasy stories but instead of silly Middle Age armor, swords and bows-and-arrows, they wear space armor and carry rifles.  Wizards and Sorcerors are now "Adepts" or basic "biotics".  Fantasy + space age trappings = science fantasy.  It isn't even in the same room as hard scifi.  Hard scif takes current theory and what theory allows (wormholes, black holes, quantum entanglement, cloning, AI, human-computer interface, etc) and extends it without breaking the Laws (of physics).  Mass Relays would be wormhole generators instead of magic mass effect thingies.  You could pull a "dilithium crystal" trick ala Star Trek and get by since no one today knows how to make a wormhole...we only know that it would be VERY energy/energy density intensive...so you speculate.  Each pair of relays would operate to "hold" either end of a wormhole (so one end doesn't drift around uncontrollably so you pop out in some broad, unknown area of space in the general vicinity of where you wanted to go - the far end relay "holds" the other end of the wormhole in place).  You dispense COMPLETELY with any magic (no biotics).  You can probably keep the "tech" stuff to a certain extent and have that be your "magic" but add to it nanotech stuff: nanobuilders, nanorepliators, nanomedicine, etc.  Aliens would all be actually ALIEN so there would be NO mixing and matching of penises and vaginas across the gulf of evolution between actual ALIENS (you keep it in-species like in the real world).  THAT would be hard scifi.  

That's certainly true, and I'm cool with that.

Actually, as I think on it I REALLY wish Bioware had done a true hard scifi series instead of a fantasy series in space because it has never been done (thus far).  It would be a first.  Sure, the ME series could be perfectly OK as the fantasy space opera it is if they would have had the entire story written out, beginning, middle, and end BEFORE they finished the first game's development.  

You may want to check out Starlight Inception. If this project gets off the ground and works out, it may very well be the first hard sci-fi space combat game, at least to my knowledge.

Thanks for the link.  I'll check it out.

There are any number of hard scifi novels I've read that I think would make either a good movie (series) or a good game series ("Daemon" and the sequel, "Freedom™", by Daniel Suarez, various based upon McDevitt stories/worlds...the story is there so there is a hard outline to follow without making any full retard missteps).  I'd like to see the original "Deus Ex" done to full modern spec (AI, graphics).  

I too would have been fine with ME as science fantasy if it had been done well, coherently, and rationally.  ANY and ALL stories/series would benefit from having a story written out a priori so developers ALWAYS know what to do and when, regardless of the genre.  Hire an actual author FIRST, have him/her do a story and then STICK TO IT without deviation.