232 réponses à ce sujet

[kalpain]

Ieldra2 wrote...

@OP:
Yes, but not in the way you think. I think ME3 could have been an absolutely awesome game redefining storytelling in video games with one year more development time. The problem was Bioware had to resolve too many little stories in too little time. Thus, autodialogue, thus, sloppy handling of the endings, thus, contrived drama with little grounding in in-world logic, thus, lack of depth in character conversations, thus, ignored character story arcs and cut off romances. No unifying vision because there was just no time to oversee everything.

The ME trilogy as a whole still redefines storytelling in video games, and ME3 is still a great game for me. But seeing what it could've been without those time and resource constraints, that hurts.

Agreed.  I have told friends many times I would have gladly waited another for a more polished and epic game.  I would have also installed 2 more discs on my Xbox as well...

[Delta_V2]

I'm not sure.  I think they could have pulled it off if they had handled it differently, but as they say, hindsight is 20/20.  Still, I think it was doable.

I think the issues in ME3 can be traced to two main causes:

1) Lack of planning.  BW has basically admitted they were making the story up as they went along.

2) Lack of time.  Just look at Priority: Earth and try and tell me with a straight face that that mission wasn't rushed.


Some of the issues could have been solved with more development time, but others were caused by what came before, and that could only have been avoided with better planning. 

As much as I enjoyed ME2, it helped set up ME3 for failure.  It introduced way more characters than it needed to, and combined with the whole "anyone can die" aspect of the Suicide Mission, created too many variables to keep track of in ME3, which led to so many of those characters getting sidelined in ME3. 

An even bigger issue was the fact that ME2, apart from revealing they were partly organic, didn't really deal with the Reapers at all.  This left too much to do in ME3 and caused things like "OMG Reapers! Hey, look, plans for a Reaper killing superweapon! How convenient!" 

I think another example of the lack of planning comes from Bioware's insistence on maintain the Reapers' invincibility right up to the very end.  I mean, you can start with a seemingly invincible enemy, but in order for them to be defeated, you have to show that they are not actually invincible.  They had so many opportunities to chip away at the Reapers' invincibility, and make their eventual defeat more believable, but squandered every single one. 

One example I can think of is the Thanix Cannon.  It could have been used to level the playing field a little, like "We still can't go toe-to-toe with them, but hey, we can actually hurt them now", but instead was almost completely neglected.  Or the galaxy could have used the six months you bought them in Arrival to prepare for the invasion, so they could at least give the Reapers a bloody nose when they show up.  Instead, everyone, including Shepard, sits on their asses the entire time.  Lots of little things like that could have chipped away at the Reapers' invincibility, but instead BW kept it intact right up to the last few minutes, and that meant the only way to beat them was through a crude plot device.

[AlanC9]

The Night Mammoth wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...

FlyingSquirrel wrote...
I can think of a number of other sci-fi/fantasy stories where the narrative struggles to establish its enormous sweep and still credibly have the hero be up to the task of winning a convincing and final victory. For example:

- Lord of the Rings (film version) - Frodo fails and succumbs to the ring's allure. He and Sam only survive because Gollum bites his finger off, along with the ring, and falls into the lava.

Book version too. Not a problem here, since Tolkein wasn't trying to have "the hero be up to the task of winning a convincing and final victory" in the first place.

Isn't the end of the book more to do with how small decisions end up mattering in the end, and fate? 

I don't remember since I read it years ago, but doesn't Gollum slip entirely of his own accord as opposed to falling off the edge because Frodo fights him for the ring?

Yep. That's what I thought you were saying. The only thing Frodo had to do with the Ring falling in was that he lost the fight to Gollum. Was the film different?

Modifié par AlanC9, 20 mars 2013 - 05:44 .

[AlanC9]

Delta_V2 wrote...
I think another example of the lack of planning comes from Bioware's insistence on maintain the Reapers' invincibility right up to the very end.  I mean, you can start with a seemingly invincible enemy, but in order for them to be defeated, you have to show that they are not actually invincible.  They had so many opportunities to chip away at the Reapers' invincibility, and make their eventual defeat more believable, but squandered every single one. 

(snip)
 
Lots of little things like that could have chipped away at the Reapers' invincibility, but instead BW kept it intact right up to the last few minutes, and that meant the only way to beat them was through a crude plot device.

This confuses cause and effect. Once Bio had decided that the game was about Shepard using the Crucible, chipping away at the Reapers' invincibility was not only unnecessary, it was positively undesirable. As it was, we had endless threads about conventional victory. It's not lack of planning, it's that you don't like the plan they had.

Unless you're only saying that ME3 was forced on Bio because they didn't lay groundwork for a Reaper conventional defeat in ME2. I suppose that's true, but again, it's not something that Bio seems to have wanted to do in the first place.

[SpamBot2000]

Of course people are right when they cite lack of time as one of the reasons why ME3 failed to deliver a satisfying conclusion. But given that, why is it that the Lead Writer was still messing around with ME2 DLC to establish the new direction of the plot (Arrival) mere months before the deadline for ME3?

As you no doubt can recall, ME3 had an original release date of "holiday" 2011, which got extended to March, the absolute latest EA were willing to wait for their "Q4 big hitter". Arrival was released at the end of March 2011, which means they were still working on it at the turn of the year. And Arrival was supposed to set up the starting point of ME3.

How's that for competent time management?

Modifié par SpamBot2000, 20 mars 2013 - 08:01 .

[LilyasAvalon]

samurai crusade wrote...

No. The problem was time, and being forced to spit out a game to meet EAs financial table

Dis. All of dis.

[AlanC9]

SpamBot2000 wrote...

Of course people are right when they cite lack of time as one of the reasons why ME3 failed to deliver a satisfying conclusion. But given that, why is it that the Lead Writer was still messing around with ME2 DLC to establish the new direction of the plot (Arrival) mere months before the deadline for ME3?

As you no doubt can recall, ME3 had an original release date of "holiday" 2011, which got extended to March, the absolute latest EA were willing to wait for their "Q4 big hitter". Arrival was released at the end of March 2011, which means they were still working on it at the turn of the year. And Arrival was supposed to set up the starting point of ME3.

How's that for competent time management?

Before Arrival: Reapers coming.

After Arrival: Reapers coming.

What's the difference?

[SpamBot2000]

AlanC9 wrote...

SpamBot2000 wrote...

Of course people are right when they cite lack of time as one of the reasons why ME3 failed to deliver a satisfying conclusion. But given that, why is it that the Lead Writer was still messing around with ME2 DLC to establish the new direction of the plot (Arrival) mere months before the deadline for ME3?

As you no doubt can recall, ME3 had an original release date of "holiday" 2011, which got extended to March, the absolute latest EA were willing to wait for their "Q4 big hitter". Arrival was released at the end of March 2011, which means they were still working on it at the turn of the year. And Arrival was supposed to set up the starting point of ME3.

How's that for competent time management?

Before Arrival: Reapers coming.

After Arrival: Reapers coming.

What's the difference?

Well, there's Shep twiddling his thumbs (and possibly other appendages) in jail for months for starters. And did ME2 really announce the Reapers were just going to cruise in, nevermind the centuries they had blown in setting up the Sovereign plan?

Come to think of it, the absurd reduction of Mass Effect to "Reapers coming" is exactly one of the things achieved by Arrival.

Modifié par SpamBot2000, 20 mars 2013 - 09:11 .

[txgoldrush]

Wow....planning a trilogy is OVERRATED. You put too much stock in things having to be planned in advance, in fact what if the plan was flawed and stubbornly you hold on to it. If you plan as you go, you can make alterations.

See the Dark Knight Trilogy....that series wasn't planned. But it still works. The Bourne Trilogy, not planned. The orginal Star Wars trilogy wasn't really planned when it first started, but the prequel trilogy was. Guess what, all the planning didn't prevent the prequel trilogy from sucking balls.

In fact all ME3 did was go back to ME1 for many of its themes, while finisihing ME2 plot threads.

Modifié par txgoldrush, 20 mars 2013 - 10:11 .

[Dean_the_Young]

SpamBot2000 wrote...

Well, there's Shep twiddling his thumbs (and possibly other appendages) in jail for months for starters. And did ME2 really announce the Reapers were just going to cruise in, nevermind the centuries they had blown in setting up the Sovereign plan?

That was the obvious intent behind the 'Reapers approaching the Milky Way' final scene, yes.

Of course, we also don't know how long the Reapers waited for Sovereign because we don't know when Sovereign tried to activate the signal. People speculated that it was the Rachni wars, but then Leviathan through in some mixed insinuations about who was responsible for enthralling them.

Come to think of it, the absurd reduction of Mass Effect to "Reapers coming" is exactly one of the things achieved by Arrival.

If you ignore ME1 and ME2's finales, which left little doubt about a coming confrontation, sure.

[Bleachrude]

AlexMBrennan wrote...

Not really - the problem is just execution.

Prior to Arrival, there was plenty of time to deal with the Reapers. Instead, they wasted ME2 on introducing a dozen new characters only to kill them off immediately and started ME3 with a full scale invasion (gotta have epic space battles or the sheeple won't buy the game) which just doesn't work.

THIS

Lots of people love ME2, but it introduced WAY too many variables I thought those variables (12 characters) could never be resolved to everyone's satisfaction and it didn't actually do anything with the fact that the rest of the reapers were coming. Remember, when we talked to Sovereign, he implied that the number of reapers would "darken the sky" in ME1.

ME2 does move the plot of the genophage and the morning war along and you'll notice ME3 was more than able to bring those two plots to a satisying conclusion...

The sad thing is I don't think a lot of other companies are even going to bother with the mass effect method of imports as they'll see it as "not worth the cost".

People point to the witcher, but Geralt has NEVER been presented as your character. I like his companions but I don't think anyone actually gets attached to Geralt or the world since Geralt is not your character....

Modifié par Bleachrude, 20 mars 2013 - 11:06 .

[Benchpress610]

OP, I think they are definitely more than capable of tackling any project no matter how big and complex it might be. Past experience had shown this. I think that BioWare did a masterful job on level design, stunning graphics, music and character development. That being said however, writing was weak in some parts and right down sloppy at the end. I think they needed more developing time.

If you asked me, apparently they didn’t fully understand the magnitude of their creation, and how it was being interpreted by the audience. I find this hard to believe, but it looks that they had no clue of the huge following their universe and story had created. Most fans weren’t following a philosophical story, but a simple sci-fi adventure / space opera based on character development. Therefore, if the writers dropped any hints along the way about the true nature of their story, most fans didn’t pick them up because they were not synchronized to the same frequency. Thus the huge WTF at the end.

[dointime85]

Yes, I believe it was a little bit too ambitious but I'm also with those who say that some more planning in advance couldn't have hurt as well.

Still, even given that they made the story up as they went along, I felt that there were some missed opportunities. Someone already mentioned the Thanix cannons but I also found it strange that they never made anything of the fact that the Reapers (probably for the first time since the beginning of the cycles) had to "walk" through dark space in order to get to the galaxy. If the speculation that they hibernate in dark space to conserve energy was right, they should have been low on energy or otherwise vulnerable. Otherwise, why would Sovereign have bothered to influence Saren and the Geth, a process that I believe to longer than the actual journey from dark space to the galaxy?

(edit)
The same holds true for Mass Effect 2: Its plot could have been made relevant to ME3 if the building of the human reaper had revealed some weakness in the reapers, but the only consequence is that you get control rather than destroy as the first option as you let it live. Furthermore, Haestrom (or however it is spelled) could have been the key not to a dark energy ending but to some new discovery in the field of physics that could have lead to better weapons or shields and thus some kind of conventional victory or a less miraculous device than the crucible.

Modifié par dointime85, 20 mars 2013 - 12:29 .

[Hendrik.III]

I don't think they bit off more than they could chew... but that they had too little time to swallow it all.
I think they were perfectly capable of making a coherent and conclusive ending, but just didn't do it for reasons we can only guess at. They should have postponed the title... it's done when it's done... only then would they have had right to claim artistic integrity.

[dsl08002]

Not really there was the time issue, but on the same time ME was also to much New player orientated, and also the whole story in ME3 was written to suit the terrible simple ending. unlike the story in ME1 and ME2 that was completkey forgotten,

you could say that they took a to small bite

[KingZayd]

No they could have chewed it, and were so close to success but they choked at the very end.

[Malchat]

I doubt the writing team even had a coherent, articulated vision on the themes and tone of the series, let alone a clear narrative path across three installments.

Take something major like the protagonist dying and being resurrected at the start of ME2: what was the point of that? Seriously? How does that tie into any of the series' themes? How does it impact the story or the other characters? It seems only Liara's character has a meaningful arc sparked by Shepard dying (but even so, her reunion scene in ME2 is truncated and laughable, they needed LotSB to make it work.)

In fact, Shepard's resurrection was just a 'cool' thing thrown at the wall and different writers tried different things to make it stick. That's how most of ME seems to have been made: big, cool, 'edgy' ideas thrown together and relying on the talent of the writing team to somehow make it work in the context of action set pieces (e.g. Reaper Baby, Cerberus being a superpower, the Citadel being cleansed of life and moved to Earth, the nature of the Catalyst, Adam and Eve on a garden planet, etc. etc. etc.)

Sovereign's monologue at the end of ME1 was chilling in its implications, suggesting a rich and mysterious backstory and an epic upcoming conflict... but I feel now it was never more than an empty cool idea that the designers thought they could flesh out later... I believe this attitude is what made the trilogy crash and burn towards the end.

The Star Child and 'it's really all about organics and synthetics being unable to coexist' concepts only make sense in this context: these weren't grand ideas driving the whole narrative but just spontaneous brainwaves that apparently made the design team go 'hell yeah, let's go with that!' without thinking of the implications.

Modifié par Malchat, 20 mars 2013 - 01:26 .

[thehomeworld]

No some moron at BW leaked 90% of the script with 0 context so everyone freaked out and BW had to rewrite everything in a matter of months so they kept the same scenes just rewrote the text like in the beginning you're suppose to be escorted by Vega from your cell Anderson meets you on the way to trial and talks to you about it the rewrite we got Vega doesn't get you from your cell its from your strange apartment/office/quasi-cell and he's not your guard but your friend, then Anderson meets you but its not to talk about the trial its to talk about the rumor of the reapers.

They also rearranged who you meet, why, and how like Tali was suppose to be right after the citadel meet up but she got pushed to the last. The DLCs we got were original to the games save Javik was suppose to replace shep as end hero by killing himself for the galaxy instead of shep then VS was suppose to betray shep because he/she kill VS's spector buddy after said buddy challenged Javik but all this was taken out. I'm glade Javik was taken out introducing a prothean when shep already was one was redundant and didn't help the series but hurt it BW also didn't think about curtain things they added in terms of did it help the series or hurt it like giving shep all lez options, having Vega apart of the crew, and killing off notable npcs they just thought of how much money can we make vs how much artistic integrity are we willing to lose?

[snipedn40]

I agree with many others here--Mass Effect 2 really didn't help things with the Suicide Mission concept and Arrival. This works well as a stand-alone game, but horrible as the middle part of a trilogy. I believe those contribute as much to the series' problems as Mass Effect 3 did.

However, Mass Effect Trilogy is still the most ambitious project in gaming history IMO, and I don't think BioWare gets enough credit for sticking with the original vision and incorporating saves through all three games, although there were missteps along the way. Even others games incorporating "choice" like The Walking Dead didn't really impact the story in a meaningful way either, and that was much smaller in scope than Mass Effect.

[FlyingSquirrel]

Delta_V2 wrote...
One example I can think of is the Thanix Cannon.  It could have been used to level the playing field a little, like "We still can't go toe-to-toe with them, but hey, we can actually hurt them now", but instead was almost completely neglected.  Or the galaxy could have used the six months you bought them in Arrival to prepare for the invasion, so they could at least give the Reapers a bloody nose when they show up.  Instead, everyone, including Shepard, sits on their asses the entire time.  Lots of little things like that could have chipped away at the Reapers' invincibility, but instead BW kept it intact right up to the last few minutes, and that meant the only way to beat them was through a crude plot device.

I still think that they were backed into a corner with the concept of the cycles and the amount of time they'd apparently been going on. If the Leviathan of Dis was indeed a Reaper and was a billion years old, 1 billion divided by 50,000 would indicate that this is Cycle #20,000. So in all the previous 19,999 cycles, nobody ever invented something like the Thanix Cannon? Nobody ever got a hint of what was coming and spent six months preparing for it? Nobody ever forged a galactic coalition of races to fight the Reapers?

They elevated the Reapers to just one step below the Q Continuum on Star Trek, and it's worth noting that none of the characters on TNG, DS9, or Voyager ever even considered that they could somehow get the upper hand over John DeLancie's Q when he started messing with them - they had to play along with his games and provocations.

I have mixed feelings about this because the cycles were, in and of themselves, a great concept - one of my favorite scenes in the trilogy is when the Prothean VI talks about the repetitions of galactic history in the temple on Thessia. But building them up to this extent made it almost impossible to believe that anything one group of people might do would make any difference. A concept like the Crucible, along with the notion that the cycles have been developing it for a while and only recently got to the point where it could be finished, was probably the only way they *could* make it remotely believable.

Modifié par FlyingSquirrel, 20 mars 2013 - 03:41 .

[RedBeardJim]

FlyingSquirrel wrote...

Delta_V2 wrote...
One example I can think of is the Thanix Cannon.  It could have been used to level the playing field a little, like "We still can't go toe-to-toe with them, but hey, we can actually hurt them now", but instead was almost completely neglected.  Or the galaxy could have used the six months you bought them in Arrival to prepare for the invasion, so they could at least give the Reapers a bloody nose when they show up.  Instead, everyone, including Shepard, sits on their asses the entire time.  Lots of little things like that could have chipped away at the Reapers' invincibility, but instead BW kept it intact right up to the last few minutes, and that meant the only way to beat them was through a crude plot device.

I still think that they were backed into a corner with the concept of the cycles and the amount of time they'd apparently been going on. If the Leviathan of Dis was indeed a Reaper and was a billion years old, 1 billion divided by 50,000 would indicate that this is Cycle #20,000. So in all the previous 19,999 cycles, nobody ever invented something like the Thanix Cannon? Nobody ever got a hint of what was coming and spent six months preparing for it? Nobody ever forged a galactic coalition of races to fight the Reapers?

Well, this is another instance of the Bioware writers either not really understanding just what a "billion" is, or counting on the fact that most other people don't either. That one scene in ME2, where they imply that a single cruiser-sized ship has enough space to carry off the entire population of Earth? Hilarious.

[SpamBot2000]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

SpamBot2000 wrote...

Come to think of it, the absurd reduction of Mass Effect to "Reapers coming" is exactly one of the things achieved by Arrival.

If you ignore ME1 and ME2's finales, which left little doubt about a coming confrontation, sure.

I'm talking about reducing everything to "we fight or we die!" here... Frankly, having the Reapers show up at the start of ME3 was a bad decision. Why make an RPG with that kind of an urgency? That stuff is more suited for a more unilinear game. It's not playing to the strengths of the genre.

As for people feeling that ME2 was somehow "a waste" of precious Reaper-fightin' time, I'd have to disagree. Recruiting the crew and doing the loyalty missions was a good excuse to explore the galaxy, and it was enjoyable. And the Collector plot was actually relevant to the big picture, until it was revealed that the Reapers can just cruise in in practically no time at all. The problem was not the collector plot, it was what takes place afterwards.

Modifié par SpamBot2000, 20 mars 2013 - 04:49 .

[AlanC9]

SpamBot2000 wrote...


Well, there's Shep twiddling his thumbs (and possibly other appendages) in jail for months for starters. And did ME2 really announce the Reapers were just going to cruise in, nevermind the centuries they had blown in setting up the Sovereign plan?

I read the last cutscene that way, yeah. Cruise in, relay in.... something in. What, you thought they wouldn't ever get to the galaxy? That ME3 would end with us.... locking them in dark space forever?

As for Shepard sitting in jail, it's not like he has the skillset for digging up Prothean ruins.

Modifié par AlanC9, 20 mars 2013 - 04:53 .

[SpamBot2000]

AlanC9 wrote...

SpamBot2000 wrote...


Well, there's Shep twiddling his thumbs (and possibly other appendages) in jail for months for starters. And did ME2 really announce the Reapers were just going to cruise in, nevermind the centuries they had blown in setting up the Sovereign plan?

I read the last cutscene that way, yeah. Cruise in, relay in.... something in. What, you thought they wouldn't ever get to the galaxy? That ME3 would end with us.... locking them in dark space forever?

As for Shepard sitting in jail, it's not like he has the skillset for digging up Prothean ruins.

Actually, that's the way you beat Cthulhu. You keep him (?) out. Makes a hell of a lot more sense than the green beam rubbish.

[AlanC9]

SpamBot2000 wrote...


I'm talking about reducing everything to "we fight or we die!" here... Frankly, having the Reapers show up at the start of ME3 was a bad decision. Why make an RPG with that kind of an urgency? That stuff is more suited for a more unilinear game. It's not playing to the strengths of the genre.

Urgency in RPGs is a bad thing? Always?