eddieoctane wrote...
Lord Aesir wrote...
spotlessvoid wrote...
" I'm not being tricked, I'm being told that my choices don't matter. I don't really care that you choose to interpret the narrative as nonsensical to the point where an absurd theory like IT makes more sense, but don't pretend IT wouldn't violate the one thing most Bioware fans can agree to wanting for their choices."
But your choice DOES matter. Your Shepard got indoctrinated. They aren't going to retcon that away. Your story is just over. Like Sheps who die in the suicide mission.
Exactly, my choices don't matter because there is only one "correct" choice. If I do anything else, if my Shepard's ideas stray an iota from the "correct" path, it becomes a failure path.
Multiple outcomes each with their own drawbacks and benefits are what an RPG should aspire to. The suicide mission punished Shepard for rushing and not making sure the team's mind was on the mission. This would punish Shepard for being the Shepard I have roleplayed instead of the Shepard you have roleplayed on the grounds of ideology.
So the problem is that there are more incorrect decisions as opposed to correct ones in some variations of IT for you? Becuase if you made too many wrong choices in ME2, you die and cannot continue your game. But there are technically more ways of getting Shep to survive ME2, more permutations of what crew members are sent on which tasks, of who is loyal and who is not, of who may or may not have been recruited. But there are decidedly wrong ways to go about it. And not every iteration of IT requires that you don't get to see the rest of the game unless you pick destroy (ala NWN). You could wake up after every choice but have different final ramifications based on choice aboard the dream Citadel (killing the Reapers outright, partially giving into indoctrination and suiciding before crewmate kills the Reapers, fully going dark side and being put down by a crewmate before they activate crucible and end the Reapers, just to give some examples).
So don't hate on IT because of some self-constructed "wrong choice" premise. It doesn't have to be that way. And BioWare was more than capable of pulling this off in the past.
I was actually saying that ME2 did it right, if you didn't catch on. I also said that what ME2 did right was to base failure upon how well Shepard prepared and got to know her crewmates rather than ideology. Under most IT variations I'm familiar with, would be as if success or failure depended on keeping or destroying the base rather than preparation.
All the versions of the IT theory I've read seem to be based on the idea that the only path to true victory resides in destroy, with everything else being suboptimal if not an outright failure. Here's something from poster Aurora313 in the synthesis thread that gets across why I like the current setup.
Aurora313 said...
It is still my standing opinion that each ending is chosen to suit that individual Shepard's ideals and personality.
People
who agree with TIM, take the control. Shepard becomes a literal god and
benevolence or malevolence is up for debate. The Reapers become
protectors with God!Shepard at the lead, purely because it respects
everything the organic Shepard had to sacrifice to make it happen.
People
who agree with Anderson, Take destroy. The Reapers are destroy but the
immediate problem that the Catalyst was constructed to deal with is not
solved, though if Rannoch is any indication, then it just proves that
the Catalyst and the Leviathans were completely wrong in their
assessment in the first place.
People who agree with Legion's
sacrifice, take Synthesis. The Galaxy becomes augmented in a way that
allows a higher level of understanding with each other, including the
Reapers. The races gain an explination to the Reapers' actions and
whether they maintain peace or turn to warfare is completely up to the
individual race leaders.
People who call the Catalyst out on it's
hypocritical BS, they can refuse and allow the next cycle to finally
win and break free forever. Shepard's forces die on Earth and he's
around long enough to see it happen while slowly dying himself, but he
goes out with the satifaction of knowing he did not compromise his
humanity nor his morals like TIM did.
IT takes that away.