431 réponses à ce sujet

[humes spork]

LeinadSemrig wrote...

I like you're point, but I disagree that the premise of all 3 games was sacrifice...

First, you're slightly misinterpreting my point. I said sacrifice was a theme, not the premise. Two completely different things, there. Neither is the emotions a story evinces in the audience a theme, though theme informs that...and in regards to emotions evinced in an audience, you understand a fundamental inspiration for Mass Effect's narrative and theme was Lovecraftian horror, right? Lovecraftian horror, as a genre, is about as devoid as hope as fiction gets. Though in the final analysis, emotions that are evinced by a particular story are personal and subjective matters...I can no more justifiably refute or argue with how you felt playing the game than you can my experience.

That has no impact on what the game is or is not, which is what I'm addressing.

In regards to Star Trek II, you're only interpreting and addressing part of my argument. The concept of the no-win scenario was only part of that. More importantly, and pertinent to the discussion at hand, is death, how one confronts mortality, and sacrifice.

Kirk had truly never faced death in a personal manner, and never faced sacrifice, and it made him prideful. It was Kirk's hubris and impetuousness that caused the no-win scenario in the film's end -- Spock's (and in a moment of foreshadowing, Preston's earlier in the film) death was ultimately on Kirk's hands. In the context of that, Kirk was forced to face death in a personal, visceral manner in which he had never faced it before. Yet, throughout everything that came before Kirk asked and ordered those sacrifices of others, and waxed philosophical about death and sacrifice ("how we deal with death is at least as important as how we deal with life"), having no personal knowledge of what he asked of others or spoke about.

Kirk didn't cheat death.

"I've cheated death, tricked my way out of death, and patted myself on the back for my ingenuity. I know nothing."

That's the point. Shepard (and perhaps more pertinently, by extension the player) makes the choices and orders, and sees others make the sacrifices, but doesn't confront death and sacrifice in that personal, visceral way. Shepard feels for the loss of crewmates and potentially, friends, but doesn't understand that as one who faces death and sacrifice would personally. That's to what the quote in the original post alludes.

Modifié par humes spork, 12 octobre 2012 - 11:11 .

[thefallen2far]

Mike1220 wrote...

A man on Youtube posted this to counter what someone said about the ending being bad.
"Then you completely missed the ending. The point of the
ending is not to make you feel like you won everything, but to make you
understand the meaning of sacrifice. Yeah, decisions in ME1 or ME2 may
not seem like a huge impact in the end, but ME3 makes you remember
everything that you did, your experience, your struggles, your
victories. In the end, you save the galaxy and let all beings be as they
have always been.
You pick how you want to live and be remembered by."

I 100% agree with him. What do you guys think

I guess I can see the theme of sacrificein the idea they sacrificed storytelling, resolution, mass appeal, respect as a solid game company, my faith in them as storytellers [especially with it's founders abandoning ship] and any meaningful theme or content created in the first 2.9 games all for it to fall apart. I guess I can see how sacrifice is in the ending, otherwise, there is no sacrifice. If I gave you a cup of blood, a cup of poison and a cup of acid and told you you had to drink one or else everyone on earth dies, it'snot a sacrifice to drink the poison. 1, you could just drink the blood and live ane 2. Youakre forced into a scenario you can't win and you're adhering to that higher power's will. A sacrifice would be you living or your love interest living. That's actually a choice. The ending is Sacrifice like Allanis Morrisset's Ironic song is about irony.

And I can see how it helps you remember your choices.... I remember thinking, wait, I garnered apeace between the Geth and the Quarians for absolutley no reason?" And "why did I cure the genophage again?". I remember how awesom it was to see Shepard decide whether to save the council in 1 or let them die, I remembered convincing Saren and the illusive man to kill themselves only to en up doing what tey did anyway....I remembered I ll, so yes, making a lackluster ending did make me remember how great he game was prior to the ending and hate it more.

aside from that, I disagree with him aing Shepard saved the galaxy... he didn't really do anything. The Crucible was made away from him and you never visited it. You spent the whole game gathering forces that didn't matter in the end.

[thefallen2far]

By the way, sacrifice is not a definative theme in ME3. All death is not sacrifice. It can be in certain plots, but you can always avoid it. Morlin can live at the end.... or you could kill him. Legion sacrificeshimself, but we don't know what his death means. Even Ashley and Kaiden wasnkt "sacrifice" you just failed to save one of them.

[frostajulie]

frostajulie wrote...

**** no
hell no
**** no
**** no

Hahaha to clarify

dudeepoops no
hell no
fornication no
female dog no.

Oh yeah and
duhn duhn duhn
QFT

[rymajn3]

thefallen2far wrote...

By the way, sacrifice is not a definative theme in ME3. All death is not sacrifice. It can be in certain plots, but you can always avoid it. Morlin can live at the end.... or you could kill him. Legion sacrificeshimself, but we don't know what his death means. Even Ashley and Kaiden wasnkt "sacrifice" you just failed to save one of them.

I don't think you know what sacrifice means.

[Chardonney]

Mike1220 wrote...

A man on Youtube posted this to counter what someone said about the ending being bad.
"Then you completely missed the ending. The point of the
ending is not to make you feel like you won everything, but to make you
understand the meaning of sacrifice. Yeah, decisions in ME1 or ME2 may
not seem like a huge impact in the end, but ME3 makes you remember
everything that you did, your experience, your struggles, your
victories. In the end, you save the galaxy and let all beings be as they
have always been.
You pick how you want to live and be remembered by."

That's just... just....



...just... hilarious.

No.

Modifié par Chardonney, 13 octobre 2012 - 01:03 .

[RogueBot]

The "sacrifices" were too contrived to have any impact on me emotionally. So, we can destroy the Reapers, but in order to do that, the Geth have to die, too? Why, exactly? We can survive, but only if we kill the Geth? Why exactly do we have to be disintegrated in order to do synthesis? I know they made up "story" reasons for this garbage, but it's still very contrived and bad storytelling.

Also, "sacrifice" is a worn out theme in storytelling IMO, so it resonates even less with me for that reason.

Modifié par RogueBot, 13 octobre 2012 - 12:48 .

[Squallypo]

No..

[LeinadSemrig]

humes spork wrote...

LeinadSemrig wrote...

I like you're point, but I disagree that the premise of all 3 games was sacrifice...

First, you're slightly misinterpreting my point. I said sacrifice was a theme, not the premise. Two completely different things, there. Neither is the emotions a story evinces in the audience a theme, though theme informs that...and in regards to emotions evinced in an audience, you understand a fundamental inspiration for Mass Effect's narrative and theme was Lovecraftian horror, right? Lovecraftian horror, as a genre, is about as devoid as hope as fiction gets. Though in the final analysis, emotions that are evinced by a particular story are personal and subjective matters...I can no more justifiably refute or argue with how you felt playing the game than you can my experience.

That has no impact on what the game is or is not, which is what I'm addressing.

In regards to Star Trek II, you're only interpreting and addressing part of my argument. The concept of the no-win scenario was only part of that. More importantly, and pertinent to the discussion at hand, is death, how one confronts mortality, and sacrifice.

Kirk had truly never faced death in a personal manner, and never faced sacrifice, and it made him prideful. It was Kirk's hubris and impetuousness that caused the no-win scenario in the film's end -- Spock's (and in a moment of foreshadowing, Preston's earlier in the film) death was ultimately on Kirk's hands. In the context of that, Kirk was forced to face death in a personal, visceral manner in which he had never faced it before. Yet, throughout everything that came before Kirk asked and ordered those sacrifices of others, and waxed philosophical about death and sacrifice ("how we deal with death is at least as important as how we deal with life"), having no personal knowledge of what he asked of others or spoke about.

Kirk didn't cheat death.

"I've cheated death, tricked my way out of death, and patted myself on the back for my ingenuity. I know nothing."

That's the point. Shepard (and perhaps more pertinently, by extension the player) makes the choices and orders, and sees others make the sacrifices, but doesn't confront death and sacrifice in that personal, visceral way. Shepard feels for the loss of crewmates and potentially, friends, but doesn't understand that as one who faces death and sacrifice would personally. That's to what the quote in the original post alludes.

I think I understand your point a little better now, and I am more in agreement with you.  I guess I got hung up on the first part of your analogy as I was reading it.  Still, I would say the analogy falls short in that while Kirk may not have had to face mortality like that, Shepard has in at least the Virmire choice.  I love the scene in ME2 with the Paragon response to the reporter as Shepard recounts the names of each vessel that fell when he ordered the Ascension saved (provided you did that).  I think it shows that Shepard does understand sacrifice and places high honors upon it.  Especially true if you take into account the conversations he has with his VS about the one he sacrificed. 

Regardless of the series' inspiration, Hope is a theme in Mass Effect.  I called it the emotion that was evoked in me, but it's the only thing keeping most of the characters going as well.  Just because the Reapers look like mini-Cthulu's and were suppposed to be vast and unknowable (something Bioware completely undermined in ME3 and only slightly redeemed in Leviathan) doesn't mean that the series is devoid of hope. 

I can agree that sacrifice is prevalent in ME3 but to me it was always an engine to add weight to what would otherwise be fairly easy choices.  To make it the focal point of the ending seemed off to me.  It came out of left field, like the Star Child and the unexplained science of the Curcible.  If indeed the point of the ending was to get the player to understand sacrifice, I would say Bioware failed in that the sacrifices feel forced.

[Apocaleepse360]

No.

And I'm not just jumping on the bandwagon when I say "no", I really mean it. If you want a good ending based on sacrifice, allow me to direct you to this, the saddest thing you'll ever see in your entire life. Okay, maybe not necessarily the saddest thing you'll ever see, but you have to admit, it was pretty good (no pun intended for those who get it).

Modifié par Apocaleepse360, 13 octobre 2012 - 01:29 .

[DrGunjah]

AlanC9 wrote...
You mean, like the way ME1's ending takes no notice of anything that happened before except your P/R score? Or the way getting an NPC killed on the SM gets you 15 seconds of death cutscene, and nothing more? OK, you can screw up the SM so bad that you get Shep kiled, but that takes a ton of work. And if that sort of thing counts then ME3 gets to count the low-EMS paths.

Although it's not made via the wheel, not doing a loyalty mission is a decision too and it likely leads to a dead companion. Same goes for not being able to resolve the conflicts between tali/legion and miranda/jack. And to some extent it's reasonable that people die because they are mad at you or because there is something left undone in their life that distracts them from the mission. Same goes for the bad decisions during SM and shepard being too mean to buy the shield, armor or cannon.
Though how is it reasonable that with low EMS your squad gets fried by harbinger but survives in the high EMS version? That just doesn't make any sense.
Then, no matter how low your EMS is, you will reach that beam and your
fleet will attach the crucible - damaged or not - to the citadel. How did they even manage to attach the crucible? There's a bunch of capital ships around the citadel and the crucible is a target the reapers hardly can miss, especially with those cool red reaper lasers that burn through alliance/turian/etc. cruisers like a knife through butter? And why do I have fewer choices with low EMS if the red/green/blue stuff
is clearly a part of the citadel and not part of the crucible?
It became even worse with leviathan - so uhm, we recruit those billion year old badass mindcontrol guys for our fleet but where the **** are they during the final battle? Just saying, they can KILL REAPERS WITH THEIR MIND. Just bring one of them to earth, mindcontrol or kill the destroyer in front of beam -> whole Priority:Earth is pointless. Leviathan brings along more issues in the story than it solves.

Another example - In ME2 you are not allowed to do any assignments or missions once the collectors kidnapped your crew. If you ignore that, your crew will die. But, in ME3 I can get the quarians on the normandy and everytime I talk to them they say something like "we have to hurry, our people are dying..." but doing other stuff will of course change nothing. It also doesn't matter which rannoch mission I do first, because Koris will still be alive if I prefer playing tron and vice versa. 

Imho the sad thing is, that most of your choices finally don't matter and those that kind of matter hardly make any sense. This was imho not true for the predecessors. And in the situations where it was, there was hope for the next game to solve it.

Mike1220 wrote...
well i guess not everyone can see the big picture. this ending has to be
one of, if not the best ending in a any video game. I'm just
disappointed that others can't see it like that.

Guess what, as an ending-hater I'm really disappointed that others can't see how flawed the end is (and probably the whole game when it comes to plot). Indeed the ending is "fine" if you ignore all the illogical circumstances and plotholes. But that's not one jot better than believing in IT or similar theories...

[Benchpress610]

Hell no

[palician]

RogueBot wrote...

The "sacrifices" were too contrived to have any impact on me emotionally. So, we can destroy the Reapers, but in order to do that, the Geth have to die, too? Why, exactly? We can survive, but only if we kill the Geth? Why exactly do we have to be disintegrated in order to do synthesis? I know they made up "story" reasons for this garbage, but it's still very contrived and bad storytelling.

This

[palician]

[quote]Mike1220 wrote...
well i guess not everyone can see the big picture. this ending has to be
one of, if not the best ending in a any video game. I'm just
disappointed that others can't see it like that.
[/quote]
Guess what, as an ending-hater I'm really disappointed that others can't see how flawed the end is (and the whole game when it comes to plot). Indeed the ending is "fine" if you ignore all the illogical circumstances and plotholes. But that's not one jot better than believing in IT or similar theories...
[/quote]
And This

[Archonsg]

Why did you think its a sacrifice at all?
To be a sacrifice, Shepard had to, on his own, come to the conclusion that he needed to put himself in the line of fire to save others.

The ending had someone TELL Shepard that he needs to do things that will get himself killed or be killed regardless.
That is a no sacrifice. It is a death sentence suicide.

The ending is bad. They sugar coated it with EC, and to some that is enough. It is still the same stinking piece of crap. Just made not to stink as much.

Modifié par Archonsg, 13 octobre 2012 - 04:49 .

[Devil Mingy]

I have one question, and I send sincere apologies if this was already answered and I missed it.

Let's say you play as a Shepard who killed off the Geth, doesn't see EDI as anything more than a mechanism, and has an EMS of over 3100.

What is the sacrifice in Destroy?

Modifié par Devil Mingy, 13 octobre 2012 - 04:58 .

[Suko Reia]

NYOOOO

[o Ventus]

Devil Mingy wrote...

I have one question, and I send sincere apologies if this was already answered and I missed it.

Let's say you play as a Shepard who killed off the Geth, doesn't see EDI as anything more than a mechanism, and has an EMS of over 3100.

What is the sacrifice in Destroy?

Nothing at all.

[AlanC9]

Except the relays. In destroy they get fixed....... when?

Does Tali live to see Rannoch again?

Modifié par AlanC9, 13 octobre 2012 - 05:22 .

[Noelemahc]

dreman9999 wrote...

Noelemahc wrote...
The worst part of it, you can just quote EDI's numerous monologues on human nature that she gives if you take the full-Paragon route through her doubts, and they ALL form a workable critique of how much the ending sucks.

Starting with "Moral decisions cannot be made in a vacuum. I should discuss this with my crewmates, to learn their opinions" as the biggest WTF directed at the RGB options themselves.

The thing here is that  you have no choice but to make the desicion on your own and you're no fully doing this in a vacuum. The factyou don't like any of the choices on hand means you considering what oher may feel about the choices on hand.
All the choice are made so you don't like them...But they all still lead to the servival andrestoraion of the races and galexy.

The "restoration" part didn't happen until after the EC was released. And the thing is, the ending is hated specifically for the "all the choices are made" part. The future is NOT what we make of it. The future is picking one of the options the benevolent Reaper God offers us.

Jade8aby88 wrote...

EDI's quote was; "Moral decision should not be made in a vacuum. If I do not ask the crew for their opinion. I may miss key context."

Thanks for correcting me. That stings a lot, don't it? A lot of people overlook that in Destroy, we're not only killing the Geth, we're killing the Quarians if we united the two races. Go listen to Tali's explanation of Geth runtimes installing in Quarian envirosuits, I'll wait.

Blueprotoss wrote...
To be fair characters will die in ME3 and if you want to reach certain goals then death is unavoidable like Mordin with the Genophage or Legion with the Geth.  Also ME was never about happiness even when the Reapers are coming couldnt be stopped like Skynet in the Terminator series or Winter in the Game of Thrones.

The big thing is that Mordin's death IS avoidable under certain circumstances. That's an example of choice-and-consequence DONE RIGHT. But then again, Tuchanka was the earliest finished plotline, that's why it's the most fleshed-out one, that's why it's the one that gets 17 possible ending slides (Rannoch has 9, while Thessia, Sur'Kesh, Irune, Kahje, Khar'Shan and all the other racial homeworlds get NONE).

AlanC9 wrote...

Except the relays. In destroy they get fixed....... when?

Does Tali live to see Rannoch again?

Wonderful point. In Control and Synthesis, the Reapers can and probably WILL be coerced to fix the relays. In Destroy... not so much. Plus, Destroy is very nonspecific about where it draws the line of how exactly are AIs discerned from anything else. Would any cyborgs die? EDI's lengthy foray into transhumanism in Salarians mentions lots of them go full cyborg; the Quarians themselves straddle the line between organic and cybronic. How about VIs? How does this thingamajig that got caught in a simple logic loophole of "slushie all organics advanced enough, kill all organics not advanced enough, so that no organics die at the hands of synthetics the advanced organics may have created in the future" discern what makes a VI less dangerous than an AI?

And if we accept the theory that VIs go the way of the dodo too... Well... Unless someone swiftly discovers an alternative to FTL, we're STILL not getting interstellar for the next half-century at least, because nobody knows how long reverse-engineering Reaper drives will take. We're right back in the grimdark hole that was the entirety of the vanilla endings.

[Blueprotoss]

Atherus wrote...

dreman9999 wrote...

But ME has always been about choices. The very reason they introduced the catalyst was to have a voice box for the reapers..They could of easily had any one else present the 4 choices in the end.

No, in my opinion the choices where exactly where they are, bacause they didn´t know where to put them otherwise.
As we know, they started to work for the ending literally at the last moment of development. that means that most of the retake earth mission was already finished. So to trigger the different endings (that were really just different after the EC) they must put it somewhere, where it not collidates with the retake earth mission. Their place right behind the point, where most people thought "That´s it folkes, was a nice ride, and now I´m gonna rest a little ...".

I think all decisicions that mattered for the outcome of your story should have taken place right before your way to earth.
Just like in DA: O  where you put all your decisions that mattered right at the phase before going to Denerim:

- Will you sacrifice yourself or Alistair?
- Or will you or Alistair make the dark ritual with Morrigan to save yourself?
- What Allies will you bring with you, who will help you, and what will happen afterwards?

That´s all decisions you make BEFORE the big final Battle with the Archdemon. The Battle itself is just what it should be: the culmilation of all your decisions you made in your story:

- Who will be your allies?
- What of a world will you left behind when you are gone?
- Was there a way to save yourself, that you just didn´t see?

Yes the execution in DA was a little bit clunky, but just imagine the same approach in the final Mission of Retake Earth:

- Krogans side by side with Turians fighting down the Reapers.
- Volus Bomber destroying enemy reinforcements to make your way through the ruins easier.
- Short intermezzos with some of your old squadmates.
- Will your efforts be rewarded, or will the reapers just crush you?

could write even more, but I think you get the picture.

The Finale should give your emotions and your adrenaline time to raise up, to boil over, so that you could releave them at the end, may it be sad, or happy emotions, but they should give you that time.

The choices at the ending where more like a :"Oh, before I forget it! Here are three very difficult choices you must make! Have fun with it!" that ripping you right out of this emotional state you were in after 5 years of laughing, griefing, mourning and fighting, to just let you behind ... confused ... helpless ... clueless.
Where ther were maybe two different emotions like happyness or sadness mixed with a little bit of accomplishment, of deserved rest, they now were replaced with so many totally unneeded ones.

That´s why for me, the part with the catalyst and his choices was just in the wrong place and unneeded.

Hindsight is 20/20 and I would to hear you say its easy to create the last arc of a trilogy with over 65,000 without DLC being involved.  You should look at the facts rather then using a strawman even when you created a glass house that was easily demolished.

Modifié par Blueprotoss, 13 octobre 2012 - 04:57 .

[Blueprotoss]

XqctaX wrote...

Blueprotoss wrote...

redcarpet26 wrote...

Nope. All it did was disappoint. I wanted a possible happy ending for shep, EDI, the Geth, and everyone else who didn't die previously, just like at the end of ME2. Call me stupid or infantile, but it's what I wanted and I didn't get it so it pissed me off. Even dragon age origins had the possiblity of genuine survival (shep-breath scene doesn't count).

To be fair characters will die in ME3 and if you want to reach certain goals then death is unavoidable like Mordin with the Genophage or Legion with the Geth.  Also ME was never about happiness even when the Reapers are coming couldnt be stopped like Skynet in the Terminator series or Winter in the Game of Thrones.

l To be fair the theme of the games was A sense of HOPE. overcomming things by working together.

then they spend every damn second in me3 trying to kill your hope.


Edit NO AND FU*****G NO!   i almost forgot
and thanks to op for calling me stupid for not enjoying the ending. as if  "not getting it" is why the ending is bad

Hope varies from person to person which means it can't be universally defined.  A girl could be hoping to get a sundae today while her dad is hoping for a promotion at work. In actuality Shepard didn't oversome the Reaper threat until ME3 because he/she couldn't stop their inevitable appearance.  This isn't an insult but it sounds like you're a Refusal ending person.

Modifié par Blueprotoss, 13 octobre 2012 - 05:04 .

[Blueprotoss]

Humanoid_Typhoon wrote...

Seival wrote...

Did you suggest Udina or Anderson?
If you suggested Anderson, he will be human consul in ME2. And there is nothing bad in returning to military life in ME3.

Did you save the Rachni queen?
If you killed the queen in ME1, then you will not see Asari saved by Rachni in ME2, or the same queen in ME3.

Did you save Feros or wipe them out?
If you didn't save Shiala and colonists, you will not see them in ME2, and will not take them as war asset in ME3.

Did you kill Wrex?
If you killed Wrex in ME1, then you will never see him again.

Did you save Ashley or Kaiden?
If you saved Ashley in ME1, you will never see Kaiden (again and vice versa).

Who survived the Suicide mission?
If someone died in suicide mission, you will not see her/him again. You can see "Legion backup", but it's not the Legion.

Did you keep the collector base?
If you kept Collector base, then EMS requirement for Control is reduced. If you destroyed Collector base, then EMS requirement for Destroy is reduced.


...The decisions matter. And don't even try to convince me otherwise.


...The endings are fine. L2respect the writers' work.

Everything you pointed out didn't actually change anything except whether or not they were there or not, in which case someone else replaces them and has almost all of the same dialogue, and EMS means nothing, so don't try and act like that counts.


Also FYI, killing someone generally means you won't see them again.

Its sad to see that more and more people are disliking the ignorance of some people puttting fingers in their ears to avoid the truth that choices do matter and were far from useless.  Btw choice was always in the player's hands even when all of them were written by Bioware.

Sauron001 wrote...

None of those decisions affected the outcome.....only some of the choices in ME2 really made a difference and Wrex thats about it. 

Endings are fine if Indoctrination otherwise No Shepard would not listen to a Starchild who is in the form of a  kid Shepard is having nightmares off. 

Lies, lies, and more lies but whatever makes you sleep at night.

Modifié par Blueprotoss, 13 octobre 2012 - 05:13 .