216 réponses à ce sujet

[Getorex]

KiddDaBeauty wrote...

Most of that review's criticisms are true to some degree, but I'd not be so quick to say they ruin the experience completely. ME3 is hardly a perfect game, even aside from the ending it cannot reach the greatness of BG2 and ME2. But it is by no means not worth playing for an RPG fan.

Still, something positive came out of the review. Lots of names in that rpgcodex list of "rpgcodex approved"-list of games and I intend to look through a few of them. Some, such as Torment, Fallout and Arcanum I've already played. But many are new to me.

Of course, seeing Eye of the Beholder listed makes me question just what it takes to make the list - Diablo does the plot-void, no deeper-than-numbered-armour-class-character defining, real-time-with-cooldowns dungeon delving thing much better and is nowhere to be seen on the list after all

EDIT: Flavour for those of the rpgcodex who venture here! Since bioware does too much Only the Chosen One has the Ability to Defeat One True Evil plots, apparently, what about them Dragon Age 2? Pretty welcome variation, I'd agree. Hm, though this is merely for rpgcodex people, please don't make this a DA2 thread now X)

EDIT2: For future reference, Menckenstein, you are the one who will have to PM me and not the other way around kkthx 

Yeah well YMMV I guess.  I looked at a lot of the titles listed and there are a LOT of ancient history games: ascii graphics and sprites and virtually every single one of them is a dungeons and dragons knockoff: swords, middle age armor, witches, wizards, dragons.  Same old same old.  Others were anime.  Sorry, I friggin' hate anime cutsey stuff too.  Not my thing.  I've been trying to start Alpha Protocol on my PC but the damn thing wont run on Windows 7 apparently (stuck in an endless loop of "you must activate online" to play but the game no longer needs to be activated but the game is requiring hat I activate...etc, etc.  Sigh).  I'll install a DOS emulator on my linux box and try the original Deus Ex again.

[Sgt Stryker]

Bleachrude wrote...

Since when was Me ever presented as hard sci-fi????

I'm almost 100% positive that ME1 was explicitly said by Bioware to be a homage to 70s space opera?

Am I mixing up another series?!?!?

So I'm not the only one still waiting on that link that shows the devs clearly stating Mass Effect is hard science fiction, then. Good to hear.

[Sero303]

The article was a bit nitpicky, for every point they made about something wrong with the game/trilogy/universe, the article itself was wrong about something else, or making a big deal out of something little that could be easily explained.
I will agree, hands down no argument,... we don't need "clarity" on the ending, we need a better ending!

[Kidd]

Getorex wrote...

Yeah well YMMV I guess.  I looked at a lot of the titles listed and there are a LOT of ancient history games: ascii graphics and sprites and virtually every single one of them is a dungeons and dragons knockoff: swords, middle age armor, witches, wizards, dragons.  Same old same old.  Others were anime.  Sorry, I friggin' hate anime cutsey stuff too.  Not my thing.

Haha yeah well let's just say I don't mind simple graphics -or- anime =) Hence the only game I had played on the list that I reacted to on that list was EotB. If I can get a sense that my character is a real character I care about and not just a stat block, in a world full of other creatures and individuals of the same kind, then an rpg has succeeded in my book. Hence why I loved ME2 so much ^^

[Getorex]

Sgt Stryker wrote...

Getorex wrote...

OK, I will extemporize.  You want a story that accomplishes the same result as the ME storyline with the Reapers cleaning the galactic slate on a regular basis but does so self-consistently AND without ever getting into why it happens (because that is beyond what can be understood) then read Jack McDevitt's "Engines of God".  Hard scifi (not science fantasy).  It has a long-lost alien race somewhat akin to the Protheans in it, called the "Monument Makers".  It has something akin to the Reapers (the "engines of god" in the title) that show up like clockwork (logically explained...the clockwork) and destroys any technical civilizations found.  Bioware could have/SHOULD have based their series on this book...or on Greg Bear's "Forge of God" and its sequel, "Anvil of Stars", which has a similar inexplicable civilization destroying/planet busting alien force in play...hard scifi again, no space magic at all.  BASE it (not flatout copy) upon either of those and you cannot go wrong because it makes sense within the context of the story.  It flows to an ending, in both cases, that pulls no deus ex machina crap out of anyone's @ss.  No space toddlers need apply.  No green, red, blue explosions.  No gratuitious demises.

No epic fail.

I could get behind this, provided that the ending is victorious and uplifting (Not Hudson/Walters "victorious and uplifting").

Mylia Stenetch wrote... 
I am not denying you point that it is looking into it the point of chaos vs order. To me the obession some people have who hate and love the game is not healthy. Where people are trying to find every piece they can find to show they hate it while people who love it are making what they want, it is an unhealthy ordeal that is spreading in other games also. 

To which I have to respond with this song. 

Well, the endings to both book/series are "victorious" to different degrees and "uplifting" in a mixed way.  The end of "Engines of God" is more of a partial victory rather than a route.  The "Reapers" aren't outright defeated, just put off for now.  "Anvil of Stars" has victory and uplifting in some ways but it also made me somewhat sick contemplating it such that even now, years after I read it, thinking about it disturbs me (so there's your "bittersweet" done right).  In NEITHER case did it go with a gratuitous and pointless "Shepard must die to get closure" style ending.  

Modifié par Getorex, 23 avril 2012 - 07:57 .

[Getorex]

Sgt Stryker wrote...

Bleachrude wrote...

Since when was Me ever presented as hard sci-fi????

I'm almost 100% positive that ME1 was explicitly said by Bioware to be a homage to 70s space opera?

Am I mixing up another series?!?!?

So I'm not the only one still waiting on that link that shows the devs clearly stating Mass Effect is hard science fiction, then. Good to hear.

Heh.  I guess we either need to hope there's a lurker here from there who can provide a link OR we need someone to post there asking for a link.  I too recall the homage to 70s space opera/scifi.

[Phaedon]

'ey, 'ey, don't be like that, man. It breaks my heart. Literally. It has something to do with thrombi and insane blood pressure within the coronary arteries which already happen to be clogged due to all that salted pop corn consumed during the reading of codex threads., I think.

The thing is:

The /v/ crowd endorses piracy and enjoys n***** jokes.
Redditors think that they are hot **** for playing videogames on a desktop PC.

You do both.

No, I mean, really. You top two of the most ridiculously inane things humanity has to offer.

Holy duck, that's almost impressive. Not in a good way, but impressive nevertheless.

[Getorex]

Found a reference to Mass Effect and "hard scifi"!  movies.ign.com/articles/121/1219777p1.html  Marc Walters:  "The entire writing team was constantly reading and researching and
reviewing anything we could," remembers Walters. "Everyone was
thoroughly immersing themselves in science at the time, and where these
things could really go."

Huh.  "where these things could really go"...I am racking my brain trying to find where you can get "eezo" and the "mass effect" out of current science, even SPECULATIVE science. 

Thinking.  Thinking.  Erm...nope.  Can't get there from here. 

I DID find one definition of "hard scifi" that makes it kind of weaselly - that it is "hard" scifi if it makes up some science and then sticks to that science even though it is fully made up.  I don't buy this definition because that makes Harry Potter stories "hard" scifi, makes Star Wars "hard" scifi.  All it takes is making up some "science factoid" and then sticking with that made up science consistently, thus making the rules of magic "scientific" (Potter) and the "force" scientific because it has (inchoate) rules.  

Hard scifi doesn't mean what I think they think it means.

[Phaedon]

Ι think we have to face the hard truth here.


The codexians who seem to be wholeheartedly be agreeing with even that part of the interview are massive fanboys of Mac Walters. 



Karpyshyn's writting experience before working with BioWare was writting descriptions for Might and Magic cards, if I remember correctly, so this puts things in a very horrific and irrational perspective.

Modifié par Phaedon, 23 avril 2012 - 08:21 .

[Temaperacl]

Getorex wrote...

Sgt Stryker wrote...

Bleachrude wrote...

Since when was Me ever presented as hard sci-fi????

I'm almost 100% positive that ME1 was explicitly said by Bioware to be a homage to 70s space opera?

Am I mixing up another series?!?!?

So I'm not the only one still waiting on that link that shows the devs clearly stating Mass Effect is hard science fiction, then. Good to hear.

Heh.  I guess we either need to hope there's a lurker here from there who can provide a link OR we need someone to post there asking for a link.  I too recall the homage to 70s space opera/scifi.

I don't know for certain (there may be other, more solid statements), but I think that belief is generally derived from statements made by Mac Walters to IGN (http://xbox360.ign.c.../1219568p1.html):

"Essentially, Mass Effect is a Hard Sci-Fi experience at the boundaries, and
what's in between is more of a lite Sci-Fi experience for people who want it to
be that as well. And that's the kind of fun of the Mass Effect Universe – it can
be what you want it to be."

At least, that seems to be the only origin of that that I can find from a quick search.


[Edit: Beat me to it yourself]

Modifié par Temaperacl, 23 avril 2012 - 08:27 .

[Getorex]

Phaedon wrote...

Ι think we have to face the hard truth here.


The codexians who seem to be wholeheartedly be agreeing with even that part of the interview are massive fanboys of Mac Walters. 



Karpyshyn's writting experience before working with BioWare was writting descriptions for Might and Magic cards, if I remember correctly, so this puts things in a very horrific and irrational perspective.

HAH!  I laugh my @ss off (refusing to use the lmao moniker).  "...this puts things in a very horrific and irrational perspective."

Indeed.  Indeed.  Explains a lot.

[Sgt Stryker]

I think the quote in question is this:

"Essentially, Mass Effect is a Hard Sci-Fi experience at the boundaries, and what's in between is more of a lite Sci-Fi experience for people who want it to be that as well. And that's the kind of fun of the Mass Effect Universe – it can be what you want it to be."

This is the only time that Walters (presumably) even mentions the phrase hard sci-fi. So, what exactly does this mean? It has some elements of hard sci-fi, but incorporates elements of what he calls lite sci-fi as well? I mean, that's certainly a valid assessment. Many of the ME1 codex entries do in fact have a legitimate scientific basis (the description of sensors and light-lag being an obvious example I can think at the moment). However, a large part of the Codex is not reflected well by the actual narrative, so where do we go from here?

Modifié par Sgt Stryker, 23 avril 2012 - 08:40 .

[Getorex]

My laugh so hard I vomited a little. Get THIS from the link I provided:

Marc Walters: "We do a lot internally to make sure that our science is based on plausible ideas, so it just isn't about magic in space."

So it isn't about magic in space! No space magic! HAH! No magic in space until the last 10 minutes or so, then it is all Harry Potter up the wazoo.

[Phaedon]

Harry Potter is actually the teenage version of Gordon Freeman before he went mute. It's got tons of science in it.

[Sgt Stryker]

From the article Getorex posted,

It's even got to the point where a procedure has evolved at Bioware to deal with those niggling situations when the science is at odds with story. "Say we want to introduce something new – be it a new type of ship or a new ability – and it doesn't quite fit into the IP: we have someone who is our IP science guy. We'll often pass off the idea to him and say, 'How would you explain this in 'our science'?' He goes away and comes back usually a day later, scratching his head, with a few ideas, and we make sure it's in there."

Anyone else think this approach is kind of, um... backwards?

[Phaedon]

Sgt Stryker wrote...
Anyone else think this approach is kind of, um... backwards?

If they're going with hard sci-fi, sure. But they aren't.

Try writting some sci-fi short stories by yourself. It's pretty fun. You'll come up with ideas, and when you think about 'how would this work with our modern understanding of physics?', you come up with excuses which in turn can improve the original fantastical concept and make the universe in general feel deeper.

No, really.

BioWare achieved this to the point of having an adult(?) think that their universe is 'hard sci-fi'.

PS. It doesn't always work. But it's pretty satisfying when it does.

Modifié par Phaedon, 23 avril 2012 - 08:55 .

[Getorex]

Here's a nice link that gets into hard vs soft scifi in a simple and amusing way: tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness  By this I would say ME games are a mixed bag of some hard scifi around the edges (as the interview says) but is science fantasy/soft scifi in its chewy center.  And, oh yes, it is chockablock FULL of space magic, Marc Walters' comment to the contrary.

[Deuxhero]

Please calculate the time needed for you to spot a single game released post-2004. I'll award you with cookies for it. Virtual cookies. That follow your browsing history forever.

30 seconds. Hi Geneforge series!

Not sure what your problem is either. If you asked what games people liked on BSN, BG2 and MAYBE a NWN expansion and KotOR would be the most universally praised, and none of them (well, Kingmaker was, but that was just a DLC bundle and doesn't count)

Modifié par Deuxhero, 23 avril 2012 - 09:25 .

[RebelGeth963]

Getorex wrote...

Sgt Stryker wrote...

Getorex wrote...

OK, I will extemporize.  You want a story that accomplishes the same result as the ME storyline with the Reapers cleaning the galactic slate on a regular basis but does so self-consistently AND without ever getting into why it happens (because that is beyond what can be understood) then read Jack McDevitt's "Engines of God".  Hard scifi (not science fantasy).  It has a long-lost alien race somewhat akin to the Protheans in it, called the "Monument Makers".  It has something akin to the Reapers (the "engines of god" in the title) that show up like clockwork (logically explained...the clockwork) and destroys any technical civilizations found.  Bioware could have/SHOULD have based their series on this book...or on Greg Bear's "Forge of God" and its sequel, "Anvil of Stars", which has a similar inexplicable civilization destroying/planet busting alien force in play...hard scifi again, no space magic at all.  BASE it (not flatout copy) upon either of those and you cannot go wrong because it makes sense within the context of the story.  It flows to an ending, in both cases, that pulls no deus ex machina crap out of anyone's @ss.  No space toddlers need apply.  No green, red, blue explosions.  No gratuitious demises.

No epic fail.

I could get behind this, provided that the ending is victorious and uplifting (Not Hudson/Walters "victorious and uplifting").

Mylia Stenetch wrote... 
I am not denying you point that it is looking into it the point of chaos vs order. To me the obession some people have who hate and love the game is not healthy. Where people are trying to find every piece they can find to show they hate it while people who love it are making what they want, it is an unhealthy ordeal that is spreading in other games also. 

To which I have to respond with this song. 

Well, the endings to both book/series are "victorious" to different degrees and "uplifting" in a mixed way.  The end of "Engines of God" is more of a partial victory rather than a route.  The "Reapers" aren't outright defeated, just put off for now.  "Anvil of Stars" has victory and uplifting in some ways but it also made me somewhat sick contemplating it such that even now, years after I read it, thinking about it disturbs me (so there's your "bittersweet" done right).  In NEITHER case did it go with a gratuitous and pointless "Shepard must die to get closure" style ending.  

As long as we're comparing literary SF novels, there's also The Hyperion Cantos by Daniel Simmons. Like ME, it also has Reapers (AI programs that monitor the evolution of organic life), and their primary operating agent, the Shrike (described as about 9-1/2 ft tall, four arms, spiked metallic carapace), is every bit the badass Harbinger wants to be: I'll just come out and say it, Shrike could kick Shepard's ass, not only does it have twice as many arms, it can SLOW DOWN TIME. It's heroic nemesis: a war hero with a troubled past (Colonel Kassad). Kassad is part of a 7-person team of diverse individuals (the Priest, the Professor, the Detective, et al) assembled for a suicide mission, though he is not the leader of the team, and they were recruited before the story proper begins. Each teammate has his/her own uninished business they eventually share with the rest of the team before they embark on their SM (it is expected that one will survive and get their greatest wish granted, while the rest die). It does, however, end with the primary method of interstellar travel (the Farcaster Network) destroyed. Sound familiar yet? The sequel, Endymion, takes place nearly 300 years later, when order has been restored (sort of), though a theocratic potentate, the Pax, rules with an iron fist (Ned Flanders would hate this series). The child of the Hyperion's female lead takes the center stage, and the title character becomes "the Shepherd" who must protect her as she is pursued by Pax assassins and the Shrike. We learn that Kassad himself was the basis for the Shrike, as the Reapers used Kassad's DNA and the more aggressive aspects of Kassad's personality to create the Shrike, then sent it back in time.

That could be your ME spinoff premise right there, minus the time travel: 300 years after ME3, the galaxy has rebuilt to some extent, but a corrupt Primacy has taken power. Liara's daughter has become important for some reason, and the new main character has to protect her from the Primacy. A Shrike-style monstrosity made from Reaper tech (even if you destroyed them, there would still be stuff you could salvage) could be the MC's primary nemesis, if the Control ending was chosen, then elements of Shepard's mind were the basis for the bad guy's programming.

[shepskisaac]

Ugh this is some 3rd level of forum inception but oh well.

@centurionofprix of course I'm reading. Where else am I suppoused to get my PST & KOTOR2 fanboism fix?


Now to the post, yes, it's established that they communicated via beacons and whatnot but then there was all the other data in Mars archives humanity discovered initially, before ME1, thanks to which it learnt about mass effect/Charon relay etc. So even if it doesn't really fit with the beacons, at least there's a precedence to that established in ME1 so it didn't bother me that much that Crucible plans were also stored in some 'standard/premitive' format.

@Xor and TNO

Yeah, I wish these choices had bigger impact. Still hope/delude myself that they will at least make it better it in EC, like IDK, have Rachni army save the Krogans during the Priority Earth level, have Volus bombardmenet fleet assist Elcor Tanks and stuff like that + maybe some different epilogue scenes showing some more consequences. Will see when EC comes out

[Phaedon]

Deuxhero wrote...

Please calculate the time needed for you to spot a single game released post-2004. I'll award you with cookies for it. Virtual cookies. That follow your browsing history forever.

30 seconds. Hi Geneforge series!

Not sure what your problem is either. If you asked what games people liked on BSN, BG2 and MAYBE a NWN expansion and KotOR would be the most universally praised, and none of them (well, Kingmaker was, but that was just a DLC bundle and doesn't count)

...you read half the list in 30 seconds, while remembering every single release date at the same time? Impressive.

My 'problem' is with the specific post at hand. No one suggested that RPGC doesn't like any games, but rather that they have a peculiar pattern of time of release and quality level.

But, tell me, they still think that DE:HR's art style is 'anime', don't they?

[Deuxhero]

I've never seen it referred to as "anime" (though I have seen the devs themselfs cite GitS as an inspiration for the art, and no one will argue that is anime, so it would be true if it did happen). "****** and ****" yes, "stupid" yes, "anime" no.

edit: 30 seconds to skm a half a sentence worth of text  while having a vauge idea of the era each game is released in is unusual? Hell, if I was paying attention, I would have said Knights of the Chalice is also new.

That list isn't the rule of what you can and can't like on the site either, it's just the ones that no one (sane) disagrees with. There is plenty of love for MotB, NV, MegaTen series(es), Mount and Blade (mods), STALKER, Demon/Dark Souls.

Modifié par Deuxhero, 23 avril 2012 - 09:45 .

[Phaedon]

Well, I remember reading that term 3-4 times in the HR leak thread.

You can start searching from here if you have time to kill:
http://www.rpgcodex....-2#post-1665433

[Amioran]

Getorex wrote...
Nonetheless this person IS investing a chaotic series of 3 games (THERE'S your "chaos" right there...the game series itself because the "story" was created on the fly as the game was developed rather than doing it the RIGHT way and having a story a priori and creating the game from that) with WAY more meaning and depth than it actually has or was actually even intended.  It's like taking the movie "Dumb and Dumber" and trying to invest it (via ex post facto argument) with deep meaning on the "human condition" when it never had that and was never intended to have that. 

For what I see I cannot find any proof that you stated that can attest this. All of this "evidence" is based on your pretence of it being so and that I'm "seeing things". But:

1. You don't know the theme (you dont' either know that the bible has it at its root).
2. Given 1 you cannot recognize it either if you would like to, so how can you pretend to know if it's there or not?

Since I know well the theme and I can recognize it I think I have more saying on this than you, isn't it? But still you continue to assume that for whatever motive I'm just making it all up and pretending ME to be deeper than it is.

As you like. Just a little thing however: I already did knew, for example, that something as the Starchild was to happen much before it did happen (I talked of it with a friend of mine about this, at the time of ME2). With the exclusion of another solution that could have been plausible, in fact, it was a thing perfectly recognizable very early. So I sometimes am astounded by the fact that people insist on saying that the SC just "come out of thin air". It's not so (or better, I can understand why they say so, but that's just because they lack the knowledge of the theme, it's not really "something not introduced").

And to sum it up:

1. The way synthetics are introduced and the way the narrative is created around them (i.e. the conflict against organics etc.) it is all a direct reference to the theme.
2. All the narrative in the background always report to choices etc. referred specifically to the theme. The way some of the "questions" are posed, the way the struggle is explained etc. all are foundable in the theme.
3. The way the Starchild behaves at the end is again a direct reference to the theme. "You cannot question God" is a fundamental aspect of it, as it is the way the Illusion Man behaves and the references of Shepard at "he was right all along". All of these are part of the theme. I explained this in other threads in detail.
4. The three choices in the end are, again, perfectly consistent with the theme, both in the direct aspect (i.e. in the formal choices) and both in the methaphorical one (as in the drawbacks of the choices themselves).

But If it does make you feel better that I "want to see what's not there" and give it more depth than the narrative really has then go on, I will not stop you.

Nor you nor the ones on RPGcodex that insist on telling I'm trolling and yet have to say anything of concrete that disprove what I say. It is too easy to say "you are wrong" when you have nothing to propose of concrete in support of it.

Modifié par Amioran, 23 avril 2012 - 09:54 .

[Deuxhero]

^^ And those eyes  and facial structure are VERY "Anime".

^There are MANY works that do Law Vs. Chaos FAR, FAR better than ME. Off the top of my head, the Shin Megami Tensei series (SMT 1, 2, 4 and Raidou 2 have it as the central conflict, while 3, DeSu and DeSu 2 have them as two of the many sides. Persona 1+2 is about negetive chaos while Persona 3+4 cover two flavors of negatively protrayed Neutrality) and any D&D fiction that covers the Blood War.

Modifié par Deuxhero, 23 avril 2012 - 09:53 .