347 réponses à ce sujet

[CynicalShep]

Insulting the "medium"?

[David7204]

The players who enjoy the medium, not the medium itself. And I wouldn't call it an insult, exactly.

[CynicalShep]

I used air quotes for a reason. It is pretty obvious that it is not the medium that you are insulting

[Ieldra]

David7204 wrote...
Stories are made better by the inclusion of decisive themes. Not worse. And it's incredibly tragic that the mere inclusion of such themes is derided as 'blugeoning.' A terrible waste of narrative potential for role playing games, and hopefully an attitude that will vanish as the medium matures.

Mass Effect takes a very open stance towards cybernetics, artificial intelligence, and biological augmentation in general. I really fail to see how the series as a whole supports 'traditionalism.'

Themes are never "decisive". Including specific, well-defined themes does indeed tend to make stories better, but decisive messages about the themes presented do the opposite, especially if you're asked to actively explore them as a player. Had ME3 just put the themes forward and asked me to think about it, asked me to consider how they make me feel, that would've been very desirable. ME2 wasted potential when it failed to bring up Shepard's "biosynthetic fusion", especially since it was the most open part of the story. ME3, however, didn't just present the themes. It bludgeoned home a traditionalist message about them. 

And most notably in contrast to DAO, not once is there a subplot where the revolutionary is right, regardless of whether the issue is social, political or technological.  

Modifié par Ieldra2, 25 septembre 2013 - 11:34 .

[andy6915]

Speaking of DAO, that is still probably my favorite Bioware game. Excellent writing and characters, choices matter FAR MORE then they ever did in ME, a main character that truly feels mine and doesn't feel like an established character like Shepard does or Revan did or the Spirit Monk did (never played Balder's Gate or its sequel, so no opinion on the main characters there) thanks to there being more dialogue options on average then any other Bioware game to date allowing you to truly mold your character and their personality, interesting world, tons of different options about your characters origins and backstory... The combat being a bit dull and awkward and some parts being a boring crawl (fade segment...) are my only complaints.

I really hope DAI leans more toward DAO then DA2.

[elrofrost]

Thanks Ieldra2. That review is spot on. I know that took some time.

andy69156915: I also hope DAI leans more toward DAO and DA2. Frankly, considering ME3 and the disgust still out their among gamers DAI is turning out to be VERY important for Bioware.

I hope Bioware devs read reviews like Ieldra2's and take them to heart.

[Ieldra]

andy69156915 wrote...
Speaking of DAO, that is still probably my favorite Bioware game. Excellent writing and characters, choices matter FAR MORE then they ever did in ME, a main character that truly feels mine and doesn't feel like an established character like Shepard does or Revan did or the Spirit Monk did (never played Balder's Gate or its sequel, so no opinion on the main characters there) thanks to there being more dialogue options on average then any other Bioware game to date allowing you to truly mold your character and their personality, interesting world, tons of different options about your characters origins and backstory... The combat being a bit dull and awkward and some parts being a boring crawl (fade segment...) are my only complaints.

I really hope DAI leans more toward DAO then DA2.

Indeed, DAO has a place of honor in my mind, but DA2 has really good roleplaying, arguably better than in DAO which had more options all in all but many were about background. DA2's characters are more noticeably archetypes and more one-sided so they came across as less real than DAO's who were more noticeably individuals, but they were still good. The only place where DA2 failed was presentation and combat.

The juxtaposition is odd, really. ME3 has perfect presentation and its combat is very good, but it failed hard in roleplaying. The creation of compelling characters remains Bioware's main strength, though I get the impression that they often don't know what they should do with them once they have them. Here, DA2 stands out by creating good character-related quests well related to the main plot and its themes. After ME2's character missions were disconnected from the main plot, ME3 attempted the same as DA2 but with much less success in my view because of the paring down of conversation options.
 

[Ieldra]

As I went to adapt the thread-internal links to the new forum structure, I'm also bringing this topic up for the last time just in case someone who missed it might be interested to read it.

I've also read through the whole thing again and found that after almost a year I am still behind everything I said.

[themikefest]

I just finished rereading your post.

 

After the Thessia mission you mentioned you're fine with the conversation with the Asari councilor. I disagree. I don't see any reason why Shepard would say sorry. There is no reason for Shepard to say that. It should be the councillor saying sorry. If anything I would've added a renegade interrupt when talking with the councillor.

 

The one good thing about that mission is that once you gain control of Shepard you can ignore everyone and go to the next mission. That's what I do.

[Ieldra]

I just finished rereading your post.
 
After the Thessia mission you mentioned you're fine with the conversation with the Asari councilor. I disagree. I don't see any reason why Shepard would say sorry. There is no reason for Shepard to say that. It should be the councillor saying sorry. If anything I would've added a renegade interrupt when talking with the councillor.
 
The one good thing about that mission is that once you gain control of Shepard you can ignore everyone and go to the next mission. That's what I do.

Do you really say you're sorry? I seem to recall we could avoid that by choosing a lower option somewhere. What I meant is that the mission failed on Thessia - even if it most emphatically was not to save Thessia, but to get the data from the Prothean AI - and of course that adversely affects Shepard's emotional disposition. That part is ok. What is missing is an option to call the asari councillor out for not having revealed that information earlier.

[AlexMBrennan]

The amount of stupidity shown by people in power in the ME trilogy is beyond all credibility.

Not really - the quarians leadership has been shown to be consistently incompetent (to the point where the entire quarian military can't deal with a single hijacked ship), so this is perfectly in character: The quarians are literally too dumb to live unless a Shepard is there to feed them and change their nappies. 

[themikefest]

Do you really say you're sorry? I seem to recall we could avoid that by choosing a lower option somewhere. What I meant is that the mission failed on Thessia - even if it most emphatically was not to save Thessia, but to get the data from the Prothean AI - and of course that adversely affects Shepard's emotional disposition. That part is ok. What is missing is an option to call the asari councillor out for not having revealed that information earlier.

Shepard says I'm sorry 4:15

[ImaginaryMatter]

Shepard says I'm sorry 4:15

 

I'm just pretending he said, "I'm aSari." and that he was actually mocking the councilor.

[Barquiel]

Do you really say you're sorry? I seem to recall we could avoid that by choosing a lower option somewhere. What I meant is that the mission failed on Thessia - even if it most emphatically was not to save Thessia, but to get the data from the Prothean AI - and of course that adversely affects Shepard's emotional disposition. That part is ok. What is missing is an option to call the asari councillor out for not having revealed that information earlier.

 

The asari councilor didn't know about the beacon until right before she told Shepard about it (at least Tevos tells you after Tuchanka that her goverment has just informed her, I don't know if Irissa's dialogue is different). It would be rather pointless to blame her for not revealing that information earlier.
 

[PwrdOff]

I think part of the reason the ending came off as so disappointing was that the story constantly massaged your ego throughout the trilogy, so that your lack of agency during the Catalyst sequence comes off as quite a huge letdown.  The game never stops pushing the idea that Shepard, and by extension the player, is the bright center around whom the entire universe revolves.  Even though the series presents you with plenty of supposedly tough choices, with a few exceptions it's quite easy for Shepard to "have it all" so it's natural to approach the ending with the mindset that everything will work out perfectly if you just pick the colored dialogue options whenever they show up.  That this wasn't the case certainly didn't jive well with the mentality that the game had sort of goaded you into.

 

I also found that the big organic vs. synthetic conflict that supposedly lay at the center of everything wasn't terribly compelling because the game seemingly drew a clear distinction between the two sides even though that could have been explored more.  For example, the game clearly regards Miranda as an organic by virtue of being flesh and blood, but seeing as she was clearly created and not begotten, and hence the product of "intelligent design," she would be more sensibly classed as a synthetic.  The game does sort of pay lip service to the idea of Shepard and Project Lazarus embodying synthesis to a degree, the player is clearly in the organic camp when it all comes down to it.

 

One topic the game seemed to want to touch on more but never quite got around to was addressing the nature and true purpose of war.  The scale of the military industrial complex in the Mass Effect universe puts everything we see in the modern world to shame, and it's quite clear that Shepard primarily exists to serve as its ultimate propaganda tool.  As the series progresses this seems to be portrayed more and more unironically, perhaps to appeal to the Call of Duty crowd that will lap this kind of stuff right up.  Nevertheless, I think the ending at least reinforces the notion that war is ultimately a flashy diversion that resolves nothing by design.

[Bob from Accounting]

Wow. I've heard crazy theories here, but this is the first time I've heard that Shepard 'primarily exists' to serve as a 'ultimate propaganda tool' for the 'military industrial complex.'

[DoomsdayDevice]

@RioutHotaru:
That's just it. I can reason my way through things and differentiate between goals and methods, but the picture itself is simplistic - there aren't any factions with the same goals and different methods, you always get the "evil package" - so the message comes across as "trying to overcome the traditional boundaries of the human condition is evil" not just to the average gamer but to me as well. It annoys me, and casual players and those who aren't interested in thinking about this are either conditioned into the same view or their prejudices are confirmed.

That's why I think it's important to present things in a way that players are asked to take a position towards things instead of bludgeoning them with a pre-conceived message. The DA games have been rather good at this in spite of some heavy-handed storytelling. ME...not so much, even though it started much more moderate in ME1 and only got blatant in its traditionalism with ME3.

 

I strongly disagree with this. the message is not that overcoming the boundaries of tradition is somehow bad. Throughout the trilogy the point driven home is that as far as overcoming boundaries goes, people should follow their own path. The point is that in the ME universe, patterns of galactic extinction keep repeating themselves for a billion years because using Reaper technology forces species to develop along the paths the Reapers desire. You could even say the same thing about the Crucible. It was left for us by a previous civilization, it's remarkably easy to use and build, yet no one has any idea what it does or how it even works. It's just like every other piece of technology we ever found that we believed to be 'Prothean'. For all we know, it could still be a Reaper device. Even if that's not the case, it's telling how much it goes against the theme of achieving our own future. It's the age old theme of giving nukes to primitives. Uplifting a species with technology before its culture is ready is disastrous, see what happened to the Krogan.

 

The relays, the Citadel, all part of the same Reaper trap. Legion explains this very well. He says the true Geth refuse the gifts of the Reapers because they want to achieve their own future, not the Reaper's. Yet as soon as Legion's been hooked up to a Reaper, he's suddenly turned around. He suddenly sees the Reaper code as a beautiful "growth", he admires it, like everyone else who became fascinated with a Reaper artifact and decided to 'listen to it' / sleep next to it until they were transformed into husks. The Reaper code opens up new possibilities for them, and they can't seem to resist.

 

I can't see how people can ever choose to keep the collector base and give it to Cerberus. Aside from the fact that Cerberus is the single most unreliable faction to entrust that kind of power to, even on my first ME2 playthrough it was obvious to me that studying the human Reaper would result in an indoctrinated Cerberus faction in the next game. No big surprise to me when I saw the remains of the human Reaper in the Cerberus base.

 

In my opinion it's obvious that Legion in ME3 is not the same as in ME2. He's abandoned his previous ideal. He must have been rewritten when hooked up to the Reaper, because he's obviously coming to different conclusions now. I really think allowing the upload is another great example of repeating the mistakes of the past cycles. Hell, Javik even says it. It's even more beautifully illustrated by the story about the Zha'til, a species in danger of not being able to live on their homeworld any longer, who upgraded themselves with AI to have a better chance of survival. The Reapers then took control of the AI and morphed the two species into another beautiful Reaper monstrosity. The parallel to the (now Reaper code based) Geth uploading themselves into the Quarian suits to help adapt them to their homeworld is absolutely striking and far from coincidental.

 

The most beautifully ironic and devious aspect is that it's all in the name of peace. Of course peace between synthetics and organics is the most desirable outcome. That goes for both Rannoch and the synthesis ending. It's just that the Reapers are so damn cunning, that they ensure we can't establish peace without their solutions. We always want to save everyone, and that is the weakness the Reapers exploit. Another great illustration of this is the conversation between EDI and Shepard where EDI says the Reapers have ordered human leaders to enter their superstructures to "negotiate peace". She then says "It is likely that the governments of Earth will soon enact laws punishing those who attack the Reaper occupiers. Again, this will be done in the name of peace."

 

The problem is not the overcoming of traditionalism, it's that we need to stop repeating the mistakes of the past cycles. Stop trying to save everyone, and reject the Reaper solutions and start finding our own, overcoming our boundaries on our own terms. Making peace on Rannoch is not on our own terms, it's on the Reapers' terms, because the single most important condtion is to allow the upload of the Reaper code.

 

Same goes for the synthesis ending. The problem is not transhumanism, the problem is that it's a Reaper solution.

[Jorji Costava]

Wow. I've heard crazy theories here, but this is the first time I've heard that Shepard 'primarily exists' to serve as a 'ultimate propaganda tool' for the 'military industrial complex.'

 

I'd hardly use the word 'propoganda,' but I see no denying that there's a strongly militaristic subtext throughout the ME series (it's actually one of the few things that remains consistent from game to game). Politicians are greedy and inept, and so we need the military to cut through the red tape and get things done. Incompetent civilian leaders (Udina, the Council, etc.) are consistently contrasted with humane and efficient military figures (Anderson, Hackett, etc.). I've often joked that the real world equivalent to ME's overall plot would be to have a highly skilled member of DEVGRU singlehandedly resolve every major extant political conflict (Israel-Palestine, Ukraine, etc.). Leaving aside the implausibility of that setup, there's a subtext to this about how the military is needed to do the things that civilian leadership can't.

[Argolas]

I'd hardly use the word 'propoganda,' but I see no denying that there's a strongly militaristic subtext throughout the ME series (it's actually one of the few things that remains consistent from game to game). Politicians are greedy and inept, and so we need the military to cut through the red tape and get things done. Incompetent civilian leaders (Udina, the Council, etc.) are consistently contrasted with humane and efficient military figures (Anderson, Hackett, etc.). I've often joked that the real world equivalent to ME's overall plot would be to have a highly skilled member of DEVGRU singlehandedly resolve every major extant political conflict (Israel-Palestine, Ukraine, etc.). Leaving aside the implausibility of that setup, there's a subtext to this about how the military is needed to do the things that civilian leadership can't.

You need to put those aspects in context though. Diplomacy and peaceful solutions have a great story of success when we manage relationships between generally peaceful people, and the Citadel council has been very successful with that. A threat like the Reapers, however, can't be faced with diplomacy, so naturally the military leaders would be more fit to face it than a civillian government. A real-world analogy to the Reaper threat would be the Nazis: The other powers attempted to stop them diplomatically ("Appeasement Policy") but such attempts are futile if your enemy is that hostile. You simply need the military to deal with such threats, that does not make it perfect though. Sure there is a patriotic feeling to it in certain moments, the music reflects that as well, but I don't see the Alliance or other militaries portrayed in the ME games like propaganda does.

[DeinonSlayer]

Shepard says I'm sorry 4:15

Needed to be able to throw her own words back at her.

"The cruel and unfortunate truth, Councilor, is that while the Reapers focus on Thessia, we can prepare and regroup."

[grey_wind]

You need to put those aspects in context though. Diplomacy and peaceful solutions have a great story of success when we manage relationships between generally peaceful people, and the Citadel council has been very successful with that. A threat like the Reapers, however, can't be faced with diplomacy, so naturally the military leaders would be more fit to face it than a civillian government. A real-world analogy to the Reaper threat would be the Nazis: The other powers attempted to stop them diplomatically ("Appeasement Policy") but such attempts are futile if your enemy is that hostile. You simply need the military to deal with such threats, that does not make it perfect though. Sure there is a patriotic feeling to it in certain moments, the music reflects that as well, but I don't see the Alliance or other militaries portrayed in the ME games like propaganda does.

I think the real point of contention though is that every diplomat and politician that we meet in the ME series comes across as useless and incompetent. In fact, the only one who does not is Primarch Victus, but the reason he's touted as so competent and great is precisely because he's a military man. In fact, other than making you a Spectre, no politician in the game actually ever does anything useful.

 

Sure, a threat like the Reapers needs a military response, but that doesn't mean politics and diplomacy are unnecessary when uniting the galaxy.

[Jorji Costava]

I think the real point of contention though is that every diplomat and politician that we meet in the ME series comes across as useless and incompetent. In fact, the only one who does not is Primarch Victus, but the reason he's touted as so competent and great is precisely because he's a military man. In fact, other than making you a Spectre, no politician in the game actually ever does anything useful.

 

Sure, a threat like the Reapers needs a military response, but that doesn't mean politics and diplomacy are unnecessary when uniting the galaxy.

 

Indeed. There's also the Collectors in ME2, who are not a galaxy-wide threat but can only be stopped by Cerberus, an illegal organization with no ties to any civilian government whatsoever. And there's also the total absence of any questioning of Spectre authority (save for that final conversation with Vasir in LotSB).

[AlanC9]

Incompetent politicians and competent military members is a pretty common trope, especially in SF. SG-1 does this all the time. TOS-era Trek too.

[wolfhowwl]

Needed to be able to throw her own words back at her.

"The cruel and unfortunate truth, Councilor, is that while the Reapers focus on Thessia, we can prepare and regroup."

 

No it was not needed.

 

She was right about Earth even if it hurt the player's feelbads and the series has already wallowed in enough stupidity with letting Shepard make oh so witty remarks to powerful people.

 

I was shocked and quite pleased that Bioware didn't listen to the children who wanted to taunt the Turian Councilor with "hilarious" comments about "ah yes reapers" in ME3.

[Steelcan]

The asari councilor didn't know about the beacon until right before she told Shepard about it (at least Tevos tells you after Tuchanka that her goverment has just informed her, I don't know if Irissa's dialogue is different). It would be rather pointless to blame her for not revealing that information earlier.
 

Irissa's dialogue is even worse, she basically admits that they should have revealed it earlier.

 

 

And nothing Tevos says implies she was unaware of the beacon, she says "known only to the highest levels of my government", the Citadel Councillor is pretty freakin high.