342 réponses à ce sujet

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

Monster20862 wrote...

I cared about the kid...

Why didn't you rescue the kid? I thought that would have been better. Script the kid to keep his head down. You take him back to the Normandy, and to the Citadel and place him with a family on deck E24.

[Apocaleepse360]

greghorvath wrote...

I wouldn't call it a failure but they did overestimate the mental capacities of the fanbase. They should have given the mindless masses of drooling morons what their entitled little intelligence could handle. So I guess it is kind of a failure.

Wonderful, so just because the plot IS too complex, the people who didn't like just how unnecessarily complex it was get called 'drooling morons'.

Allow me to introduce you to the Matrix. Everyone loved the first one, it had a basic plot. Then along comes the sequel and over-complicates things. It also introduced a major antagonist within the last 10 minutes of the movie. Sound familiar? Well, people didn't like that so much as it detracted from the plot as a whole, not because they are 'too dumb to understand it'. It's like adding pepper to your favourite meal. Add too much and it's not going to taste great. Having complexity just for the sake of complexity is never a good thing when it comes to a plot.

[Apocaleepse360]

sH0tgUn jUliA wrote...

Monster20862 wrote...

I cared about the kid...

Why didn't you rescue the kid? I thought that would have been better. Script the kid to keep his head down. You take him back to the Normandy, and to the Citadel and place him with a family on deck E24.

Oh, lord. I can just imagine it now.
Civilian 1: "Oh man, I wish we had a kid to look after."
Civilian 2: "Yeah, that'd be just the thing we need in our lives."
Shepard: "Excuse me, I couldn't help but overhear your conversation..."

[greghorvath]

Ksandor wrote...

greghorvath wrote...

Jassu1979 wrote...

You can tell an awful lot about the intelligence of a person who mistakes a pretentious failure for high art, basically parroting the PR-brochure.

"But it said in the commercial that this was the best thing ever!"

Very true.

I am sure you will agree that not being able to cope with a different scenario than what was expected is also indicative of intelligence or a lack thereof.

We just refuse bat taste and poor writing man. I don't have to cope with a different thing if it is not worth it. Besides this is beyond subjective view points, likes or dislikes. ME3 endings are below industry standart. I was not making fun of you. In United States there are undergraduate programs on how to write Western style novels. Ask the professors what they are thinking about introducing a totally new villain in the last pages of a novel out of blue. Just ask. It is an objective error. You do that and you will fail your essay exam in high school. Just like that.  

I can cope with being made fun of, mate. No worries.

I remember my course in academic writing. It was very simple: write the way the university wants you to or fail. I wrote what they wanted at the exam (got max grades btw) and never again since. I wrote my final exam in literature in my own style and a teacher came up to me to congratulate. I wrote my thesis in a topic that the head of the department literally told me was like the colour red to a bull. I wrote it in my own style and logic and received a verbal commendation and max grades. Sometimes you just have to do what you feel is right without knowing what will come out of it.

The catalyst is just like Vigil in terms of character introduction. It is not a villain but actually a source of information, a catalyst giving you the choice to determine the direction in which the Mass Effect Universe will develop. And its real sad that people are aggravated by the fact that the endings seemed to be differed only in colour. They were fundamentally different in terms of what will follow but it seems most would not like to employ their imagination to actually figure out what and how will happen. They would be much more content with something that a 5 year old would have thought up just to be able to fit that into their neat little expectations.

[jetfire118]

Apocaleepse360 wrote...

sH0tgUn jUliA wrote...

Monster20862 wrote...

I cared about the kid...

Why didn't you rescue the kid? I thought that would have been better. Script the kid to keep his head down. You take him back to the Normandy, and to the Citadel and place him with a family on deck E24.

Oh, lord. I can just imagine it now.
Civilian 1: "Oh man, I wish we had a kid to look after."
Civilian 2: "Yeah, that'd be just the thing we need in our lives."
Shepard: "Excuse me, I couldn't help but overhear your conversation..."

+100 war assets points
+5 paragon

[Monster20862]

jetfire118 wrote...

Monster20862 wrote...

I cared about the kid...

I did to....until i found out he was some space kid....

Don't blame the kid for the catalyst taking his image.

[Katosu]

 I still think PTSD should've been handled differently. I think there's a number of ways they could've handled it if they wanted it as a potential pushing/breaking point for Shepard. For example, what about those of us who play War Hero shepards and focus on keeping as many people alive as possible?
What they could have done-
1. Developed Vent Child more. We don't have a name, he's a kid we've only seen for a few seconds. As an audience, we're expected to care about something that had 0 development. We needed some sort of interaction with him beyond Shepard's, 'Hello little boy. One day, You Will Be Mine (www.youtube.com/watch.) Instead, every time we see him, Vent Child should have had a bright neon sign on him saying 'You're going to care about me.' and 'I'm just here to be a redshirt you care about!'

With better development, that still isn't enough of a reason to give Shepard PTSD. We've had entire colonies we could've lost that probably had children in them. The missile targeting the colony or the military institution, destroying thousands of batarians by destroying the relay in Arrival, hell even the kids on the citadel that probably died. All were something Shepard fought for, and while not necessarily shown in such an obvious slap-you-in-the-face manner, would've worked equally well. 

So, to develop PTSD as I mentioned for people who focused on everyone living, they would need a system where the player is given the chance to input their feelings into shepard on the situation. Let's say we create a neutral dialogue wheel - left/right choices, instead of up/down (To prevent instant-choosing of Paragon/Renegade misconceptions.) Now, let's say after the events on Earth, the doctor aboard the Normandy decides to give Shepard a psyche evaluation on the way to the Citadel (Akin to how Miranda/Jacob give you a memory/Shepard check on the way to Cerberus in ME2)

They could ask you simple questions, if they chose to. Or they could make it more complex. I'm no writer, nor am I a psychologist. However, the main goal of the questions would be to bring about questions and answers that relate to your questions. Remember when Jacob/Miranda asked you how you felt about losing your squad member on Virmire? You could have a more remorseful/sad response that would add to a PTSD 'counter', and would 'tag' them as people you would be haunted by within the dream sequence we're currently presented with.

There could be more/less questions depending on how you've played. Did you lose a lot of members during the Suicide Mission? Maybe you'd be asked why you chose them for it, why you sent them in. Questions could become branching and more complex with answers. Each one with a different # towards your count / adding more people to your trauma. 

The last question should always be about the child. Rather than your analysysist prompting it, shepard could mention them. Perhaps even disguise it in a way that says, literally, 'Shepard, how are you holding up after the attack on Earth?' maybe asked in a more personal manner. Shepard would then have the choice to mention Star Child (Effectively flagging him for all the scenes we saw, and giving us the input about the child to mold our shepard) or to not talk about it - a simple statement of it not mattering or how he needs to get back to the fight as soon as possible.

Effectively, this would've allowed us to mold our shepards mind, without the repercussion of making us feel forced to care about something. It's something simple that could've been added to flag the PTSD sequences, and let's face it - the story is not less for not having those sequences. The dialogue could very easily be changed so they were never there. In their current form, no one cares about them because of how forced they are. They need to be something we care about - and yes, Star Child can be one of them. 

[Ieldra]

@OP and others:
I do not agree. The "standard formula" would have been predictable and boring. To a large degree, the flaws in ME3 lie all in the execution and in not finding the right balance, not the concepts:

Autodialogue: is a good way to make scenes flow, but the half dozen or so scenes where Shepard is out of character because of it ruins the whole concept, and the way it makes writers avoid controversial issues where they'd have to write a forked dialogue reduces character depth. ME1 could have used more of it, ME2 had the balance about right and ME3 went overboard.

Dreams: it makes sense that Shepard has nightmares. However, the writers shouldn't have tried to give anything shown there a personal face since no Shepard can be said to canonically have a personal stake in the fate of anyone who died. Or, if it absolutely had to be a specific person, make it one connected to important events in Shepard's story. For me, Lilith from Horizon (the one you see dissolving at the CB in ME2) would have worked far better, since I really wished I could have saved her. Death by random attack, that doesn't work.

Open Endings: the openness is OK to some degree since none of us wanted their headcanons destroyed by the endings. However, the ending was so vague that there was literally no firm ground from which to speculate from, and the things that were *not* open painted a depressing picture.

Themes and symbolism: Those were ok as well. Only in some cases, they were not rooted firmly enough (sometimes not at all) in in-world logic. Thus, we perceive Mordin's sacrifice as valid and believable but Shepard's as making no sense.

@Katosu:
Yes, I agree that would have a great way to root the dreams in Shepard's character as established by roleplaying!

Modifié par Ieldra2, 23 août 2012 - 11:34 .

[The Angry One]

Predictable and boring? Because what we have isn't?

I'll take standard formula over an attempt at being deep that certain writers clearly do not have the ability for.

[dbt-kenny]

It is good to push the bounders now and then or all game will be the same.
But I do feel you have a point Binary_Helix 1 the game is far off what we used to get from Bioware is was going to unset some fans.
A lot of fans are not happy as we feel we cannot WIN the game. And the sales advertisements lied to us, at the end of the day not one of our choices effected the ending of the game in a big way.

Then you add in the feeling that game was push out the door to boost EA share price. The Day one download is proof of this I feel.

IT IS only good business to give your customers what they want after all or they not going to be your customers.

[Katosu]

Ieldra2 wrote...

@OP and others:
I do not agree. The "standard formula" would have been predictable and boring. To a large degree, the flaws in ME3 lie all in the execution and in not finding the right balance, not the concepts:

Autodialogue: is a good way to make scenes flow, but the half dozen or so scenes where Shepard is out of character because of it ruins the whole concept, and the way it makes writers avoid controversial issues where they'd have to write a forked dialogue reduces character depth. ME1 could have used more of it, ME2 had the balance about right and ME3 went overboard.

Dreams: it makes sense that Shepard has nightmares. However, the writers shouldn't have tried to give anything shown there a personal face since no Shepard can be said to canonically have a personal stake in the fate of anyone who died. Or, if it absolutely had to be a specific person, make it one connected to important events in Shepard's story. For me, Lilith from Horizon (the one you see dissolving at the CB in ME2) would have worked far better, since I really wished I could have saved her. Death by random attack, that doesn't work.

Open Endings: the openness is OK to some degree since none of us wanted their headcanons destroyed by the endings. However, the ending was so vague that there was literally no firm ground from which to speculate from, and the things that were *not* open painted a depressing picture.

Themes and symbolism: Those were ok as well. Only in some cases, they were not rooted firmly enough (sometimes not at all) in in-world logic. Thus, we perceive Mordin's sacrifice as valid and believable but Shepard's as making no sense.

@Katosu:
Yes, I agree that would have a great way to root the dreams in Shepard's character as established by roleplaying!

Much appreciate the compliment, and just wanted to pop in and say that the person you mentioned would've been a -great- character to add to it too. Something so horrific happening RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU to a non-combatant (gasp!) was really horrifying. To be honest, when I saw the 'worst ending - everyone dies (ME2)' video where that actually happened to kelly chambers... for some reason, to me as a player, it was truly horrifying. It legitimitely scared the **** out of me, sent shivers down my spine, and actually gave me a nightmare (I'm easily scared.) 

'course, that was from a YouTube video. In my playthrough everyone lives. XP But you can get how that, yes, that'd be another amazing person to add to the list, and could easily be scripted to be for Chambers or for Lilith. 

[C9316]

Mass Effect 3 failed simply because it was half-assed.

[The Angry One]

Basically ME3 had the elements to be great and unique had it been led by a competent writer.

I have seen so many great ideas on how to handle the concept of Shepard's PTSD and the hopelessness of war for example without forcing it. This isn't even going into the endings, the whole of ME3 suffered from forced emotions and motivations for Shepard.

[TK Dude]

ME3 failed for a lot of reasons but simply because EA forced them to appeal to the clueless and retarded mass audience.

[fchopin]

For me the game did not fail, the only problem i see is how it can continue with an ME4.

[Ieldra]

fchopin wrote...
For me the game did not fail, the only problem i see is how it can continue with an ME4.

Post-EC, neither does it fail for me, but it still has major failings. As TAO said, fixed emotions and motivations are one of those because it forces many of our Shepards to be out of character. Maybe we can't always determine what Shepard does, but Shepard's emotions should be the player's to set, and any fixed motivation apart from "Stop the Reapers" should be avoided.

[Baa Baa]

The Spamming Troll wrote...

liggy002 wrote...

They just tried too hard with the ending and it simply didn't work.

not tried hard enough.

how does one make a bad deus ex machina? isnt that supposed to be the easy way out?

[N7Gold]

Binary_Helix 1 wrote...

By failed I mean the fan backlash at a time when the  trilogy was suppose to be at it's apex it hit it's low point instead.

ME3 didn't need PTSD sequences, nihilism, an unbeatable foe, or transhuman nonsense, it just needed a conventional victory with a few varying end choices based on player morality. Nothing fancy but who cares? Stick with what works.

Those aren't ME3's failures. PTSD for Shepard proves that he's/she's human, like Vega, Ashley, Kaidan, Hackett, Anderson, everybody. Despite his/her strong will and his/her experiences that would emotionally and mentally break down other people, he/she is no god/goddess, even he/she has a breaking point at some time in a war.  Being renegade has its pros and cons, even paragons. If you become a ruthless person only caring about results of your acitons no matter how callous they are, you'll end up looking like a monster to some people if you lose touch with the paragon side. If you become a bleeding heart unable to make the tough choices, a lot more innocent lives will die than you fear about if you aren't in touch with the renegade side. It's best to maintain a good balance between paragon and renegade to get through a war. It's been stated that the Reapers can't be beaten by conventional methods. Was the fact that it took the entire Alliance fleet and the Normandy SR-1 to take down one Reaper not enough evidence?

Modifié par N7Gold, 23 août 2012 - 12:39 .

[spirosz]

Or you know, longer development time - I wouldn't try to advertise "most ambitious project with shortest development time" to a lot of fans who think it was rushed.

[Memnon]

[quote]DuckSoup wrote...

If they had done what you just spoke of, the forums would be ablaze with how generic the ending was, how bioware never takes any risks, and "what happened to the thought provoking themes of ME1"

ME3 is the story of a civilization faced with imminent, unavoidable extinction. So yeah, it gets pretty bleak. It ramps up the emotion from the first two. It attempts to tackle more thematic depth than the previous games, and I love it for that. Sure, it doesn't do everything perfect, and some of its passes at depth fail somewhat miserably, but at least BW tried to do something more with their narrative, which is more than you can say for 99% of games out there.[/quote]

[/quote]

I don't recall the forums being ablaze in anger at the endings of Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate 2, NWN, KOTOR, ME1, ME2 ...

[spirosz]

Stornskar wrote...
I don't recall the forums being ablaze in anger at the endings of Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate 2, NWN, KOTOR, ME1, ME2 ...

Ahaha, so true. Well, maybe ME2, lol. Yet, those are still different generations of gamers also, so that might of had an influence on how and what they were expecting during that time of gaming and what type of games were being released. 

Gamers today are nitpicky as ****.

Modifié par spirosz, 23 août 2012 - 12:46 .

[BatmanPWNS]

The problem is that the ME series is not consistent.

None of the games are.

ME2 is hardly anything like ME1. And ME3 is hardly like ME2/1. They bring too much change after every game. Not to mention they just make up stuff as they go along and really had no idea what they were making.