426 réponses à ce sujet

[Seboist]

J. Reezy wrote...

HiddenInWar wrote...

 Mass Effect 2 wasn't even about the collectors. It was about the struggle that the characters faced and how the relationship between those characters can make it through anything. Mass Effect is subtly one of those "by the power of friendship, we can conquer anything!" venues, and ME2 was to explore that even further. 

As far as the squadmates are concerned, their only relationship is with Shepard. There are no relationships between the different characters.

Word, it has FF12's problem of characters not even recognizing each other's existence. "Character driven story" my ass.

[KingZayd]

No.

Because then I imagine people would more easily notice the conflicts between ME1 and ME3.

[Steelcan]

Seboist wrote...

J. Reezy wrote...

HiddenInWar wrote...

 Mass Effect 2 wasn't even about the collectors. It was about the struggle that the characters faced and how the relationship between those characters can make it through anything. Mass Effect is subtly one of those "by the power of friendship, we can conquer anything!" venues, and ME2 was to explore that even further. 

As far as the squadmates are concerned, their only relationship is with Shepard. There are no relationships between the different characters.

Word, it has FF12's problem of characters not even recognizing each other's existence. "Character driven story" my ass.

. Except for conversations such as Jack/Miranda or Tali/Legion.  Or how about Kasumi's input on the ship? Joker's comments about the people you recruit?

but this is still an area ME3 improved on.

[warblewobble]

Seboist wrote...

J. Reezy wrote...

HiddenInWar wrote...

 Mass Effect 2 wasn't even about the collectors. It was about the struggle that the characters faced and how the relationship between those characters can make it through anything. Mass Effect is subtly one of those "by the power of friendship, we can conquer anything!" venues, and ME2 was to explore that even further. 

As far as the squadmates are concerned, their only relationship is with Shepard. There are no relationships between the different characters.

Word, it has FF12's problem of characters not even recognizing each other's existence. "Character driven story" my ass.

The story is still character-driven if it's a character study of those individuals. I agree that they didn't interact with one another. I was always especially annoyed that I could bring Garrus and Tali to see Liara and none of them even acknowledged one another's existence. ME3 rectified that problem and deserves credit for it.

Edit: Okay, at times your squadmates interacted a little, but there was still a lot of missed potential there.

However, ME2 is still about the individual characters. The personal stories of your squad members are more important to the narrative than the battle with the collectors, which is really just there as a backdrop to give Shepard some motivation to go around finding these people.

Modifié par warblewobble, 25 janvier 2013 - 12:01 .

[fr33stylez]

Seboist wrote...

J. Reezy wrote...

mosesarose wrote...

EpicBoot2daFace wrote...

Kabraxal wrote...



There were the hints of the dark energy story that was dropped, there was some hinting at what the Reapers could be, and there was a sense of a growing understanding and ability to resist.  For a middle entry into a sequel, that is actually a lot.  Very few middle entries tend to progress as much as the first entry and final entry.  I can't actually name one that does off the top of my head.  It's meant to be the transition from the starting point to the end.  If ME3 had actually taken some of those hints and used them then we wouldn't even be arguing this.  But ME3 took very little of either of the last two games and ran with it... of course, we should have realised this when they said "then end of the trilogy is the perfect starting point for new fans" essentially <_<

Hints are not outlines.

Hint, outline, it doesn't matter. We knew that ME2 was setting up the dark energy theory, and ME3 failed to incorporate it into it's story.

A few mentions and that's a set up?

A few easily missable mentions no less. Parasini could be dead in ME1 and Reegar killed on Haestrom before he says anything about it in Tali's LM(on top of THAT mission being optional).

The Dark energy plot was obviously dropped sometime during ME2's production. That's why we have a hanging Baby Terminator Reaper that served no purpose and was never explained AT ALL in ME2.

ME2 is basically a gigantic side mission, like Overlord X10.
- The Collectors were introduced and eliminated all in the span of ME2
- The purpose of kidnapping hundred of thousands of humans for 2 years is never explained
- The Human-Reaper is never explained and why they needed to build it now all of a sudden
- The Reapers would arrive before the Human-Reaper was even completed
- Nothing what the Collectors did is of any urgency.  You could ignore the kidnappings and nothing changes

[BleedingUranium]

No. ME2 is the best video game of all time.

[Meltemph]

After going through the trilogy again(almost done with ME2) and staying as objective as I can... Outside of the setting pieces(Going to all the different locations and learning about them) the story in ME2 was quite literally terrible(but the gameplay was so good, and the characters were well done).

The main plot to that game though, was just bad. While I liked how they tried to "moral grey" cerberus, it still doesnt fix how evil they made them in ME1 and didnt give a very good reason as to this massive "shift".

The Lazarus project(and the events right before his reconstruction) was quite awful, not just because it was terribly contrived, but because they did absolutely nothing with this plot point. No introspection no, "who was Shep really now", nothing, just a big massive "this happened dont worry". The whole "oh and we have the normandy 2.0 as well", just made it even worse and just wreaked of hamfisting to "reset" your character.

The complete lack of political dealings within the alliance/council and your dealings with cerberus. Near 0 blow-back outside of some non-sequitur excuses. Seriously, any real feeling of a galactic community in ME2 is gone. Oh, and if you do get your specter status back? Ya, pointless(same with ME3 too, essentially).

The reaper motivations in ME2 were just terrible. The idea of reapers being created from the "essence" of the species was just terrible metaphysical/spiritual mumbo jumbo that quite literally explained nothing, with EDI making wild(baseless really) speculation as to why they need this organic goo, to create a reaper; only to never explain the necessity of them doing this or even a hint as to "why"(outside of them be make'n babies).


And then one of the worst "excuses" and reasoning I have ever seen with a story, with the whole "lets all jump in a kodiak(umm, ya cause those are so huge) and go wander off into the sunset for an "apparent" mission that needed doing...instead of just sitting on the ship and waiting, or actually creating a real event to make this not look like amateurism(cause we all know the gaming industry needs more of this in their stories).


That said.... All this doesn't say to me that the problem was ME2(since most of these people made ME1), but says to me someone or some people who ended up with more power and direction for the game, was the problem(with ME2 and 3).

Only thing I can think of is that leadership got changed starting after ME1 and just had issues from there, because the differences in how the story was handled after playing the trilogy like a critique, instead of just a gamer is astounding.

Before blaming the games, I would definitely take a look at all the credits changes from game to game...

TL;DR - The biggest issues, imo, with ME2/ME3 was not the game itself, but all the lead changes and all the "extra" new people at the top(of the credits).

Modifié par Meltemph, 25 janvier 2013 - 05:20 .

[CronoDragoon]

I thought the Lazarus product was a great plot device: I loved seeing how the squad had evolved in the two years since Shepard was gone. How they reacted to his death, what they decided to do with their lives, etc. Made for some pretty great drama I think.

I never thought ME1's plot was that good. Sorry. It had pretty good characters and a few great ones, but ME2 is where the characters really start to shine, and BioWare doesn't do anything as well as it does character and dialogue.

Modifié par CronoDragoon, 25 janvier 2013 - 05:31 .

[Meltemph]

CronoDragoon wrote...

I thought the Lazarus product was a great plot device: I loved seeing how the squad had evolved in the two years since Shepard was gone. How they reacted to his death, what they decided to do with their lives, etc. Made for some pretty great drama I think.

But the lazarus project itself was not paid any attention too.  That would be a pretty big plot point to expound on, instead it was nothing more thant a hamfisted way to reset Shep and the crew without nuance.  If they would have properly used the issues that would have naturally come up from the lazarus project I would tend to agree, but they didnt, and instead seemed liek a cheap way to go the direction they wanted.

I'm fine with gobblygook explinations in scifi, but atleast give some nuance, details, and drama to what should have been a very big deal.

[XXIceColdXX]

Mass Effect 2 was great, but maybe Bioware shouldn't have promised a trilogy. It felt like we needed at least one more game in between ME2 and the Reaper invasion.

Even two more games. It would have been cool to keep reapers in the background as a looming threat for a bit longer. 

Modifié par XXIceColdXX, 25 janvier 2013 - 05:42 .

[Meltemph]

I never thought ME1's plot was that good. Sorry. It had pretty good characters and a few great ones, but ME2 is where the characters really start to shine, and BioWare doesn't do anything as well as it does character and dialogue.

You are kinda evading the talking points and sticking to vague explanations on why you personally didnt like ME1.  It had a more cohesive main plot then all the other mass effects by far, and did a much better job explaining things, and wasn't afraid of details.

The production values weren't quite as high, but I doubt the budget was near the same. Either way, that still didnt address the point that the ME2 main plot was quite bad(and this is from someone who liked ME2 the most).

Modifié par Meltemph, 25 janvier 2013 - 05:41 .

[dirtdiver32318]

Just throwing this out there it wouldn't be called a "trilogy" without the second me it would be me2 haha just saying. But it does kind of suck that me2 is kind of meh being based in dark energy then me3 original ending was leaked. So sad

[thehomeworld]

YES! ME2 was a step back and down for the series and it was all errelavent ovisously a filler episode the only good thing to come out of ME2 team dextro romances, Overlord, SB, and Arrival.

Modifié par thehomeworld, 25 janvier 2013 - 05:47 .

[TurianRebel212]

XXIceColdXX wrote...

Mass Effect 2 was great, but maybe Bioware shouldn't have promised a trilogy. It felt like we needed at least one more game in between ME2 and the Reaper invasion.

Even two more games. It would have been cool to keep reapers in the background as a looming threat for a bit longer. 

I agree Mass Effect should have been a 4 part series. ME3 should have been Shepard on trial for his actions in ME2. Then If you did the right things he gets pardoned, if not then you have to escape or get broken out of the brigg by loyal friends like Miri, Tali, Garrus, Grunt or whatever. Then the game branches from two paths either going back to working with alliance or siding in with Cerberus, or if you have enough Paragon points going back to being a Spectre and working for the Council, uncovering more about the Reaper threat- leviathan, and Javiks story Arc could have been more explored in greater detail as would have the cerberus Arc.

Mass Effect 4 would have been much like ME3 is, but with alot more background in the story- Shep gaining alliances to combat the Reapers. Also, I like the dark energy sub-plot. And based on your path in ME3, Cerberus in ME4 would be either a terroist group or your employer. lol. Now that's replayability. And it makes not only ME2, more important but also  ME3 because of the the branching paths. ME3 felt very linear, compared to ME1 or even ME2. 

Modifié par TurianRebel212, 25 janvier 2013 - 06:20 .

[JBPBRC]

XXIceColdXX wrote...

Mass Effect 2 was great, but maybe Bioware shouldn't have promised a trilogy. It felt like we needed at least one more game in between ME2 and the Reaper invasion.

Even two more games. It would have been cool to keep reapers in the background as a looming threat for a bit longer. 

The funny thing is, they still could have promised a trilogy while releasing other games in between major installments that supplement the story. Assassin's Creed for instance, has a total of 5+ games in its franchise when they decided to build up off of the events of AC2 instead of just jumping straight to AC3 (In hindsight, THANK GOD they didn't jump to the disappointing AC3 right away). Mass Effect could've been done in a similar manner. Hell, the Tuchanka arc could've been its own decent game in the ME universe, were it not stuffed into the confines of a few missions in ME3. I'm sure even the EA overlords would approve, what with the potential cash rake-in.

[RiouHotaru]

ME2 was fine.

[XXIceColdXX]

JBPBRC wrote...

XXIceColdXX wrote...

Mass Effect 2 was great, but maybe Bioware shouldn't have promised a trilogy. It felt like we needed at least one more game in between ME2 and the Reaper invasion.

Even two more games. It would have been cool to keep reapers in the background as a looming threat for a bit longer. 

The funny thing is, they still could have promised a trilogy while releasing other games in between major installments that supplement the story. Assassin's Creed for instance, has a total of 5+ games in its franchise when they decided to build up off of the events of AC2 instead of just jumping straight to AC3 (In hindsight, THANK GOD they didn't jump to the disappointing AC3 right away). Mass Effect could've been done in a similar manner. Hell, the Tuchanka arc could've been its own decent game in the ME universe, were it not stuffed into the confines of a few missions in ME3. I'm sure even the EA overlords would approve, what with the potential cash rake-in.

Agreed. Win-win, a more fleshed out story for us, and millions of dollars for EA, and we know EA luvves da money.

[FlamingBoy]

honestly it would have been a better experience if me3 did not exist

[TurianRebel212]

FlamingBoy wrote...

honestly it would have been a better experience if me3 did not exist

Damn. 

[Skullheart]

I think the trilogy is better without me3.

[ElementL09]

The trilogy seems better off without Mass Effect 3 to be honest. I don't see how taking away the events of Mass Effect 2 makes Mass Effect 3 more bearable.

[EpicBoot2daFace]

warblewobble wrote...

I understand the criticism that ME2 feels like more of a 'side story' in terms of its relevance, but boy is it one excellent diversion.

I'd say ME1 and ME3 have plots that are more story-driven (the overarching impending/ongoing conflict with the reapers) while ME2's story is character-driven. It's more about the individuals who compose your squad and their smaller, more personal stories than the larger problems of the galaxy.

I really enjoyed the game's structure- adventuring around recruiting your dirty dozen hardcore squadmates was great fun and the loyalty missions were optional side quests that nevertheless felt like they completely belonged plot-wise and had a lot of meat to them.

Also, the whole last mission was one of the best I've ever played in a game and it really let you feel like all your time and preparation paid off. (Even if you didn't do so well, it drove home the point that there were consequences to your choices.)

I'll even go so far as to say that ME2 does matter to ME3 because it gives you the potential to have many personal connections to former comrades who are now embroiled in the conflict one way or another.

I would argue that being a diversion is the problem, regardless of it's quality. It brings up another question. Do we really need trilogies to tell a convincing and complete story in a video game?

[Dragon_Claw]

How can it be a troligy if there is only ME1 and ME3?

[Seboist]

Dragon_Claw wrote...

How can it be a troligy if there is only ME1 and ME3?

There never was a genuine trilogy. Both ME2 and 3 were as much sequels to ME1 as Final Fantasy 7 and 8 were sequels to FF6(in a narrative sense).