232 réponses à ce sujet

[AlanC9]

SpamBot2000 wrote...

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.

Not a Cthulhu fan. I would have found such an ending quite unsatisfying.

Anyway, I asked if that was what you expected, not if that was what you wanted.

[SpamBot2000]

AlanC9 wrote...

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?

Urgent scenes are one thing, but basing an entire RPG around "OMG! There is no time!" is just going to make taking your time poking around the world seem ever so slightly stupid. Why have a rich, explorable world when the game keeps yelling at you to rush through it?

[SpamBot2000]

AlanC9 wrote...

SpamBot2000 wrote...

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.

Not a Cthulhu fan. I would have found such an ending quite unsatisfying.

Anyway, I asked if that was what you expected, not if that was what you wanted.

By the time I played it in June, I knew the ending was deeply controversial, just not exactly how. So I'm sure I wasn't expecting anything so sensible.

[AlanC9]

SpamBot2000 wrote...

Urgent scenes are one thing, but basing an entire RPG around "OMG! There is no time!" is just going to make taking your time poking around the world seem ever so slightly stupid. Why have a rich, explorable world when the game keeps yelling at you to rush through it?

And taking your time poking around the world is one of those key RPG features or something? I'm starting to think that maybe I like Bio's games in spite of them being RPGs, not because of them being RPGs.

Anyway, Shepard's not really on the clock in ME3. Unlike ME1, where how fast he catches Saren could be up to him, he's got to wait for the Crucible to be built no matter what he does. ME3 obscures this a little because the clock only advances when you do a Priority mission. Pity; we wouldn't have so many silly arguments about Citadel if there was a clock. But the fight for timed quests in RPGs was lost a couple of decades ago. I don't think there's been a serious clock since the FO1 timer got nerfed. 

Unless MotB's Spirit Meter counts. That was also a bad RPG, right?

Modifié par AlanC9, 20 mars 2013 - 05:27 .

[FlyingSquirrel]

RedBeardJim wrote...

FlyingSquirrel wrote...
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.

Or maybe they did understand it, but realized that they had to introduce some huge, out-of-left field game-changer to make it realistic for this cycle to have a chance when so many others had failed.

I don't know what went on in Bioware writers' conferences, but if I had been there and heard some of these ideas being thrown around, I'd have been the guy raising my hand and saying, "Okay, but how would this [Thanix cannon, better preparation, unity despite differences, etc.] be fundamentally different from what previous cycles tried?"

Modifié par FlyingSquirrel, 20 mars 2013 - 05:30 .

[RedBeardJim]

AlanC9 wrote...

SpamBot2000 wrote...

Urgent scenes are one thing, but basing an entire RPG around "OMG! There is no time!" is just going to make taking your time poking around the world seem ever so slightly stupid. Why have a rich, explorable world when the game keeps yelling at you to rush through it?

And taking your time poking around the world is one of those key RPG features or something? I'm starting to think that maybe I like Bio's games in spite of them being RPGs, not because of them being RPGs.

It's not necessary, but if part of the game design process includes building a world to poke around *in*, then the game design should also not punish the player (literally or metaphorically) for choosing to do so. I actually think they did a decent job with this in ME3, where there are no missions (as opposed to fetch-quests) that you can pick up by exploration, somewhat fitting for the more urgent "it's wartime go go go" atmosphere. Everything you have the opportunity to do, you are assigned to do by someone before you can do it. Compared to ME1 or ME2, where there are plenty of side-missions that can be simply stumbled upon.

[SpamBot2000]

AlanC9 wrote...

SpamBot2000 wrote...

Urgent scenes are one thing, but basing an entire RPG around "OMG! There is no time!" is just going to make taking your time poking around the world seem ever so slightly stupid. Why have a rich, explorable world when the game keeps yelling at you to rush through it?

And taking your time poking around the world is one of those key RPG features or something? I'm starting to think that maybe I like Bio's games in spite of them being RPGs, not because of them being RPGs.

Anyway, Shepard's not really on the clock in ME3. Unlike ME1, where how fast he catches Saren could be up to him, he's got to wait for the Crucible to be built no matter what he does. ME3 obscures this a little because the clock only advances when you do a Priority mission. Pity; we wouldn't have so many silly arguments about Citadel if there was a clock. But the fight for timed quests in RPGs was lost a couple of decades ago. I don't think there's been a serious clock since the FO1 timer got nerfed. 

Unless MotB's Spirit Meter counts. That was also a bad RPG, right?

Well yes, the Spirit Meter sucked, and was widely disliked. And yes, it is possible that you do not like RPGs.

Anyways, methinks people mistake urgency for drama. The "24" syndrome.

Modifié par SpamBot2000, 20 mars 2013 - 05:58 .

[Dorrieb]

Dude_in_the_Room wrote...
Was the feat to big to be able to create a worthy enough ending?

Actually they had it. Up until the confrontation with the Illusive Man and Anderson's death, they had aced it, and there was no reason why it couldn't have ended there. But they got overly ambitious and went for a last-minute twist that came out of nowhere. It must have seemed to them at the time that they were being oh-so-clever, when they were in fact being too clever for their own good.

[Deathsaurer]

FlyingSquirrel wrote...

If the Leviathan of Dis was indeed a Reaper and was a billion years old

There really isn't any doubt it is a Reaper, both Balak and the Leviathan DLC say as much. It's exact age is more dubious. The initial test said nearly a billion years old, the Batarian recording in Leviathan said at least 30 million. It's worth noting the Catalyst claims to be eons old so the original date may indeed be accurate and still be far off the mark for the Reapers exact age. Yeah...

[AdmiralCheez]

RE: Thread Title

Dear Dude_in_the_Room,

Yes. Yes, they did.

Sincerely,
AdmiralCheez

[clarkusdarkus]

NeonFlux117 wrote...

Nope. The problem was time and the departure of Drew Karpyshyn. Also, EA's buisness model taking precedence over quality of final product. Furthermore, having Casey Hudson directly involved in the creative process hindered the final product.

Did Bioware bite off more than they can chew with Mass Effect? No.

Did the ME3 writing team and Casey Hudson bite off more than they could chew with ME3's narrative? Absolutely.

This, the concept was there and the success of ME1 was there, But a main writer leaving along with the involvement of " MP everywhere " EA meant the series not only got worse( ME2 being pointless) but also got confusing what genre they were targetting.

[Reorte]

FlyingSquirrel wrote...

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.

I agree with all of that. It's the fundamental reason why the Reapers seem unbeatable - it's simply impossible to defeat them without arrogantly claiming that we're somehow just that special (or everyone who's gone before was that stupid), or that we're ludicrously lucky.

The Crucible idea suffers from it being impossible to believe that it could've survived through enough cycles without the Reapers managing to wipe it out for good. I could probably accept it if it had been a small number of cycles, say half a dozen at the most but it lessens the impact of the concept of the cycles going on for so long. What was needed was some convincing game changer but I'm not really sure what that could've been. ME1 seemed to be trying to do that with the Protheans on Ilos but again it's hard to believe that one of the huge number of past cycles wouldn't have tried something similar, and that the Reapers wouldn't have taken precautions against it.

Even if a convincing way of defeating the Reapers had been thought of it would always be a failure to me if it boiled down to building a big Stop the Reapers With One Button Press machine.

Modifié par Reorte, 20 mars 2013 - 07:18 .

[Giga Drill BREAKER]

I would say no op, the problem as I see it is one of planning, there was none in this trilogy and the ending shows it.

[txgoldrush]

Dorrieb wrote...

Dude_in_the_Room wrote...
Was the feat to big to be able to create a worthy enough ending?

Actually they had it. Up until the confrontation with the Illusive Man and Anderson's death, they had aced it, and there was no reason why it couldn't have ended there. But they got overly ambitious and went for a last-minute twist that came out of nowhere. It must have seemed to them at the time that they were being oh-so-clever, when they were in fact being too clever for their own good.

No, the Reaper master was foreshadowed on Thessia and alluded to by the Vendetta VI.

A lot of fans are taking by suprise because they weren't paying attention. The only "suprise" event that was not clued in on in ME3 was the Citadel moving to Earth.

[txgoldrush]

DinoSteve wrote...

I would say no op, the problem as I see it is one of planning, there was none in this trilogy and the ending shows it.

The Dark Knight trilogy wasn't planned, the film Bourne trilogy wasn't planned....trilogies don't have to be planned.

The prequel Star Wars trilogy was planned....and look how that turned out.

[Bleachrude]

AlanC9 wrote...

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?

Personally, I think ME3 hit the right speed with how they handled things like Grissom Academy and the Tuchanka bomb mission...you're told about them  and given enough time to complete them and you only have yourself to blame if you skip them....

To me, those missions showed that your actions (or inaction) had consequences.

I always thought it weird in ME1 how Saren simply did absolutely nothing while you did every side quest...same thing with Dragon Age origins...the archdemon is very helpful in that you can literally walk from one end of Ferelden and back multiple times and the game doesn't see to acknowledge it

[SpamBot2000]

Bleachrude wrote...

I always thought it weird in ME1 how Saren simply did absolutely nothing while you did every side quest...same thing with Dragon Age origins...the archdemon is very helpful in that you can literally walk from one end of Ferelden and back multiple times and the game doesn't see to acknowledge it

Yeah, that's RPGs for you. So it makes no sense for their plots to insist on urgent timing. An individual mission, sure. But not the whole thing.

I mean, what's the alternative? Not allowing you time for side quests and traveling around? There are different games for that.

Modifié par SpamBot2000, 20 mars 2013 - 08:52 .

[Dorrieb]

txgoldrush wrote...

Dorrieb wrote...

Dude_in_the_Room wrote...
Was the feat to big to be able to create a worthy enough ending?

Actually they had it. Up until the confrontation with the Illusive Man and Anderson's death, they had aced it, and there was no reason why it couldn't have ended there. But they got overly ambitious and went for a last-minute twist that came out of nowhere. It must have seemed to them at the time that they were being oh-so-clever, when they were in fact being too clever for their own good.

No, the Reaper master was foreshadowed on Thessia and alluded to by the Vendetta VI.

Thematically out of nowhere.

[txgoldrush]

Dorrieb wrote...

txgoldrush wrote...

Dorrieb wrote...

Dude_in_the_Room wrote...
Was the feat to big to be able to create a worthy enough ending?

Actually they had it. Up until the confrontation with the Illusive Man and Anderson's death, they had aced it, and there was no reason why it couldn't have ended there. But they got overly ambitious and went for a last-minute twist that came out of nowhere. It must have seemed to them at the time that they were being oh-so-clever, when they were in fact being too clever for their own good.

No, the Reaper master was foreshadowed on Thessia and alluded to by the Vendetta VI.

Thematically out of nowhere.

Wrong again.....

The Reaper motives were foreshadowed by the dying Reaper on Rannoch who uses the quarian geth conflict in his argument for bringing order to the chaos.

[Giga Drill BREAKER]

txgoldrush wrote...

DinoSteve wrote...

I would say no op, the problem as I see it is one of planning, there was none in this trilogy and the ending shows it.

The Dark Knight trilogy wasn't planned, the film Bourne trilogy wasn't planned....trilogies don't have to be planned.

The prequel Star Wars trilogy was planned....and look how that turned out.

You can tell the Dark knight trilogy wasn't planned, but they at least are good films and please the Bourne series were books first.

Mass Effects problems is one of planning.

[AlanC9]

SpamBot2000 wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...
And taking your time poking around the world is one of those key RPG features or something? I'm starting to think that maybe I like Bio's games in spite of them being RPGs, not because of them being RPGs.

Anyway, Shepard's not really on the clock in ME3. Unlike ME1, where how fast he catches Saren could be up to him, he's got to wait for the Crucible to be built no matter what he does. ME3 obscures this a little because the clock only advances when you do a Priority mission. Pity; we wouldn't have so many silly arguments about Citadel if there was a clock. But the fight for timed quests in RPGs was lost a couple of decades ago. I don't think there's been a serious clock since the FO1 timer got nerfed. 

Unless MotB's Spirit Meter counts. That was also a bad RPG, right?

Well yes, the Spirit Meter sucked, and was widely disliked. And yes, it is possible that you do not like RPGs.

Anyways, methinks people mistake urgency for drama. The "24" syndrome.

OK, so we just have a difference in tastes here. (MotB was great.) Which I guess leaves us with nothing much to talk about regarding urgency.

[AlanC9]

SpamBot2000 wrote...

Bleachrude wrote...

I always thought it weird in ME1 how Saren simply did absolutely nothing while you did every side quest...same thing with Dragon Age origins...the archdemon is very helpful in that you can literally walk from one end of Ferelden and back multiple times and the game doesn't see to acknowledge it

Yeah, that's RPGs for you. So it makes no sense for their plots to insist on urgent timing. An individual mission, sure. But not the whole thing.

I mean, what's the alternative? Not allowing you time for side quests and traveling around? There are different games for that.

You're right... I don't like RPGs, if this is how you define RPG.

[txgoldrush]

DinoSteve wrote...

txgoldrush wrote...

DinoSteve wrote...

I would say no op, the problem as I see it is one of planning, there was none in this trilogy and the ending shows it.

The Dark Knight trilogy wasn't planned, the film Bourne trilogy wasn't planned....trilogies don't have to be planned.

The prequel Star Wars trilogy was planned....and look how that turned out.

You can tell the Dark knight trilogy wasn't planned, but they at least are good films and please the Bourne series were books first.

Mass Effects problems is one of planning.

No, the Bourne books and films have different plots.

And with the Dark Energy plot being a disaster, I am glad its less planned.

[Iakus]

Did Bioware bite off more than they could chew?

Is water wet?