419 réponses à ce sujet

[AresKeith]

Versus Omnibus wrote...

AresKeith wrote...


this proves that Bioware does even try to improve things anymore and just cut it out

Not to be rude, but it took you this long to figure that out?

no, I been knew about this

I was telling it to the person above me

[Ticonderoga117]

Because "To hell if we spent an entire game building up a confrontation with Harbinger, leader of the Reapers. Our new lead writer wants to flex his writing prowess and do something COMPLETELY different because good stories are NEVER consistent with themselves. Also, he believes foreshadowing is a stupid technique."

[plfranke]

Savber100 wrote...

Seeing how you all are literally overreacting to her comments, I would say yeah... she's right.

Honestly reread her statement, it's NOT saying that stories are unimportant just that it really shouldn't be the ultimate factor in deciding whether a video game is good or not.

If I had been asking why Kal'reegar got the treatment he did, the answer would have been somewhat understandable, but I was asking why the leader of the Reapers who talked throughout the entire second game, didn't talk in the 3rd.
What should be the ultimate factor in deciding whether a vg is good or not, an epic conclusion? Nope we don't have that. Closure with the characters you grew to love? Nope we don't have that.
The day when major plots such as Harbinger can just be cut without any explanation other than "we had other ideas", even though those ideas completely spit in the face of everything the series showed us before, storytelling has reached an all time low.

[Isichar]

oh if only the fans shut up and felt what they were told to felt then things would be so much simpler for bioware.

Modifié par Isichar, 19 août 2012 - 08:29 .

[Jamie9]

Assuming this isn't out of context, is this not PR suicide?

The entire point of a franchise is to suck you in, in order to gain your continued finances.

Seriously. Reorganise your PR team BioWare. It is awful. Almost all of your problems have their starting point within your terrible PR.

Modifié par Jamie9, 19 août 2012 - 08:31 .

[jackkel dragon]

plfranke wrote...

@Jackkel
Actually it is pretty much like they're saying the story doesn't matter, because they cut out the primary antagonist in favor of exploring other ideas.

The community manager saying that the writers wanted to explore different plotlines instead doesn't mean that she's saying the story doesn't matter. Whether the story makes sense is not relevant to her comment.

Again I don't understand what you mean. Were you expecting them to talk non stop throughout the game about Shepard coming back to life?

Not the whole game, but I'd have liked some more exploration on what it would be like to return from being "dead" beyond the hidden recordings in the tutorial level. That everyone accepts that Shepard was alive again is fine in the big picture, it just misses an opportunity for conflict. However, I do understand it wouldn't fit with the "fight the Reapers" theme of ME2, and why it was dropped. I just felt that the writers could have used a different opening if they didn't want to work with the death to revival thing.

And that comparison is so invalid. Harbinger was constantly present throughout the game, shown to be in front of the Reapers, it would have been really hard to assume he's not the leader of the Reapers. Yours on the other hand is one guy who showed up once in the game in a minor siderole.

I wasn't trying to compare Schells to Harbinger. I was giving an example of a plotline I got attached to and was summarily dissappointed by the lack of closure on. Schells is and always will be a minor character, while Harbinger is much more. I wasn't trying to challenge that.

[Dean_the_Young]

plfranke wrote...

essarr71 wrote...

plfranke wrote...

Cainne Chapel wrote...

Maybe line could be taken out of context?

I'd have to see what the conversation was above as its all to easy to take one simple line and destroy the context that said sentence was placed in.

Care to post the whole thing so i can get a better understanding?

Sure. I can even link it to you if you want. https://twitter.com/...758994482499584
Me: Can you give an answer to why Harbinger never spoke in me3?
Jessica: we know that's what you hoped to see, but sometimes we have other ideas we want to explore - never get too attached to a plot

Aaaand suddenly it's a relevent response.  

I don't really see how what else she said makes it okay. She is talking about the primary antogonist.

Harbinger was never the primary antagonist, any more than Sovereign was.

The Reapers, as a whole, were the primary antagonist. Individual Reapers just fill a particular role: Harbinger's role was controlling the Collectors, and they were defeated. Role closed.

For instance, what if mass effect 1 and 2 had been all the same and in the 3rd one the Reapers just suddenly didn't want to harvest humanity, but instead you had to deal with the dark energy problem. Would that be acceptable, because you shouldn't get too attached to a plot?

More or less. The Dark Energy theory would have certainly been an improvement over the handling of the Synthetic Menace.

[plfranke]

@Jackell
You know what the sad thing is. After re-reading your posts I think we're on the same side, arguing about things we agree on. I'm not saying Jessica Merizan is saying Harbinger is unimportant, my point is that we know he was important, yet totally thrown out of the story, This was wrong and her explanation was not a good one for the question I asked, bottom line. Also, you're right about mass effect 2, they should not have opened that way, certainly not if they were not going to expand on that plot line. My point is this Jackell. Writers cannot introduce major points of a story such as the rebirth of Shepard or Harbinger, without proper expansion, because while in the short run it may seem harmless. In the end we're left with mass effect 3, a completely wasted opportunity.

[LucasShark]

Jamie9 wrote...

Assuming this isn't out of context, is this not PR suicide?

The entire point of a franchise is to suck you in, in order to gain your continued finances.

Seriously. Reorganise your PR team BioWare. It is awful. Almost all of your problems have their starting point within your terrible PR.

SO PR is inept, it has been for months, how is this news?

Also: "Hey man, don't get so attached to things, learn to let go" - whiplash, ironman 2.

[Dean_the_Young]

KENNY4753 wrote...

"don't get too attached to a plot" then what is the reason for playing the games

For the plots as a whole, rather than fixating on one plot in particular.

Focusing on a subplot is like fixating on a character: it's all fun and fine so long as it matches your personal desires, but the moment the author's direction diverges from yours you're going to have problems.

[FlamingBoy]

its a bit of a logical fallacy isn't it


bioware has the worst PR team I have ever seen
this and "i intended the endings to be polarizing" are among the very terrible lines

[TookYoCookies]

LucasShark wrote...

"Don't get to attached to the central aspect of a story!"

I feel a great disturbance in the force... as though millions of facepalms all occured at once, followed by silence.

[M0keys]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

KENNY4753 wrote...

"don't get too attached to a plot" then what is the reason for playing the games

For the plots as a whole, rather than fixating on one plot in particular.

Focusing on a subplot is like fixating on a character: it's all fun and fine so long as it matches your personal desires, but the moment the author's direction diverges from yours you're going to have problems.

but harbinger was the bad guy

starchild is a total non-commitment to having an antagonist.

[Mr.House]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

KENNY4753 wrote...

"don't get too attached to a plot" then what is the reason for playing the games

For the plots as a whole, rather than fixating on one plot in particular.

Focusing on a subplot is like fixating on a character: it's all fun and fine so long as it matches your personal desires, but the moment the author's direction diverges from yours you're going to have problems.

If Bioware didn't want to do anything with Harbinger, they should have done nothing with him in Arrival. Simple as that.

[Jamie9]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

KENNY4753 wrote...

"don't get too attached to a plot" then what is the reason for playing the games

For the plots as a whole, rather than fixating on one plot in particular.

Focusing on a subplot is like fixating on a character: it's all fun and fine so long as it matches your personal desires, but the moment the author's direction diverges from yours you're going to have problems.

Yep, you should always keep in mind a main plot and have all your side plots tie into in some way. Getting carried away, you can lose focus very quickly.

The only thing here is that Harbinger is the leader of the main antagonists. It's not as if BioWare killed him off like they did Sovereign. It's a HUGE hanging thread, and it should have been addressed.

[LucasShark]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

KENNY4753 wrote...

"don't get too attached to a plot" then what is the reason for playing the games

For the plots as a whole, rather than fixating on one plot in particular.

Focusing on a subplot is like fixating on a character: it's all fun and fine so long as it matches your personal desires, but the moment the author's direction diverges from yours you're going to have problems.

Except this wasn't a sub-plot: Harbinger was framed, up to and indeed into ME3 as the primary antagonist, or as close to personifying the reapers as it got.

[ObserverStatus]

lol, "too attached to a plot"

*spam image removed*

Modifié par Selene Moonsong, 20 août 2012 - 08:34 .

[KENNY4753]

Mr.House wrote...

Dean_the_Young wrote...

KENNY4753 wrote...

"don't get too attached to a plot" then what is the reason for playing the games

For the plots as a whole, rather than fixating on one plot in particular.

Focusing on a subplot is like fixating on a character: it's all fun and fine so long as it matches your personal desires, but the moment the author's direction diverges from yours you're going to have problems.

If Bioware didn't want to do anything with Harbinger, they should have done nothing with him in Arrival. Simple as that.

Exactly. If Harbinger was the main bad guy in ME2 then they shouldn't have kicked him to the curb like they did

[Dean_the_Young]

Ticonderoga117 wrote...

Because "To hell if we spent an entire game building up a confrontation with Harbinger, leader of the Reapers

Where in ME2 was Harbinger ever set up as the leader of the Reapers?

Also, he believes foreshadowing is a stupid technique."

There are many flaws that can be applied to ME3, but a lack of foreshadowing isn't one of them.

[jackkel dragon]

@plfranke: I think you may be correct about us agreeing that BioWare's writers should not have dropped the plotlines they did. My original post in the thread wasn't defending said plotlines being dropped; I was simply trying to keep people from twisting Jessica's response into something I don't believe she intended to say. While the writers may have made some mistakes and Jessica may have chosen her words poorly, I didn't want this thread to become a sensational hatefest becuase of those errors.

[SubAstris]

plfranke wrote...

This was Jessica Merizan's response to me when asked why Harbinger was silent in mass effect 3. What does everyone think about this?

F*** ME, this ain't real, right?

[Dean_the_Young]

M0keys wrote...

Dean_the_Young wrote...

KENNY4753 wrote...

"don't get too attached to a plot" then what is the reason for playing the games

For the plots as a whole, rather than fixating on one plot in particular.

Focusing on a subplot is like fixating on a character: it's all fun and fine so long as it matches your personal desires, but the moment the author's direction diverges from yours you're going to have problems.

but harbinger was the bad guy

Correction: Harbinger was a bad guy. One of many. Of the many Reapers, his only distinguishing role was puppet master of the Collectors, which Shepard killed.

[plfranke]

Jamie9 wrote...

Dean_the_Young wrote...

KENNY4753 wrote...

"don't get too attached to a plot" then what is the reason for playing the games

For the plots as a whole, rather than fixating on one plot in particular.

Focusing on a subplot is like fixating on a character: it's all fun and fine so long as it matches your personal desires, but the moment the author's direction diverges from yours you're going to have problems.

Yep, you should always keep in mind a main plot and have all your side plots tie into in some way. Getting carried away, you can lose focus very quickly.

The only thing here is that Harbinger is the leader of the main antagonists. It's not as if BioWare killed him off like they did Sovereign. It's a HUGE hanging thread, and it should have been addressed.

Exactly. Tying the side plots in some way is exactly what I'm asking for. He's the leader of the Reapers who's been chasing you down since Mass Effect 2, it was absolutely necessary to have closure with Harbinger.

[Dean_the_Young]

Mr.House wrote...

Dean_the_Young wrote...

KENNY4753 wrote...

"don't get too attached to a plot" then what is the reason for playing the games

For the plots as a whole, rather than fixating on one plot in particular.

Focusing on a subplot is like fixating on a character: it's all fun and fine so long as it matches your personal desires, but the moment the author's direction diverges from yours you're going to have problems.

If Bioware didn't want to do anything with Harbinger, they should have done nothing with him in Arrival. Simple as that.

If by 'simple as that' you mean 'my opinion.'

Harbinger works as a good voice for the Reapers in ME2 because Harbinger is the only Reaper with a presence or role in ME2. He is, after all, the Harbinger: a person that announces or signals the approach of another.

Once the other arrives, a Harbinger's role has already been fulfilled.

[M0keys]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

M0keys wrote...

Dean_the_Young wrote...

KENNY4753 wrote...

"don't get too attached to a plot" then what is the reason for playing the games

For the plots as a whole, rather than fixating on one plot in particular.

Focusing on a subplot is like fixating on a character: it's all fun and fine so long as it matches your personal desires, but the moment the author's direction diverges from yours you're going to have problems.

but harbinger was the bad guy

Correction: Harbinger was a bad guy. One of many. Of the many Reapers, his only distinguishing role was puppet master of the Collectors, which Shepard killed.

But we needed a good bad guy if there was going to be one.

Sovereign was the bad guy until he got killed
Harbinger was the bad guy until he was forgotten

Illusive man didn't count because he was just a flanderized lackey of the reapers, and starchild was just a total mind freak non-antagonist. the entire conflict of the story fell apart because suddenly there were no challenges to the protagonist that Bioware wanted to recognize at the end