923 réponses à ce sujet

[CronoDragoon]

Ravensword wrote...
The romances are indeed part of the juvenile power trip.

They can be, if you are a juvenile who plays games for power trips. They don't have to be.

[Grand Admiral Cheesecake]

Ravensword wrote...

David7204 wrote...

Interesting to hear the person who likes to talk about all the fictional women in video games he's 'had' speak about 'juvenile power tripping.'

What the hell are you talking about, Davey? The romances are indeed part of the juvenile power trip. No officer in any military is having female subordinates just throw themselves at him or is always the smartest person in the room that everyone, even high ranking officers suck up to or grovel at their feet.

But if people didn't grovel before The Shepard how would anyone know of his unstoppable heroism?

Modifié par Grand Admiral Cheesecake, 05 août 2013 - 08:42 .

[Seboist]

CronoDragoon wrote...

Seboist wrote...

And as another sign of her incompetence, she abandons her position at a critical time for her people so she can play action sidekick with Shepard.

Are you suggesting that quarian civilians adjusting to life on Rannoch is more important than what Shepard is doing?

Seeing as how Tali is superflous to Shepard's squad, yes.

CronoDragoon wrote...

Ravensword wrote...
The romances are indeed part of the juvenile power trip.

They can be, if you are a juvenile who plays games for power trips. They don't have to be.

What else can they be? They serve no narrative,thematic or gameplay purpose.

Modifié par Seboist, 05 août 2013 - 08:44 .

[CronoDragoon]

Seboist wrote...

Seeing as how Tali is superflous to Shepard's squad, yes.

Par for the course in Mass Effect, where because of characters dying in previous games virtually none of them could be considered critical. However superfluous she may be to Shepard's squad, she's still doing more good there than doing something vague on Rannoch to help with...something.

[Ravensword]

CronoDragoon wrote...

Ravensword wrote...
The romances are indeed part of the juvenile power trip.

They can be, if you are a juvenile who plays games for power trips. They don't have to be.

Many do. In fact, one of the reasons why so many people were outraged by the endings, but not the rest of ME3 was b/c the player had no control over the outcome beyond red, green or blue.

[Steelcan]

Finn the Jakey wrote...

Seboist wrote...

CronoDragoon wrote...

Seboist wrote...

And as another sign of her incompetence, she abandons her position at a critical time for her people so she can play action sidekick with Shepard.

Are you suggesting that quarian civilians adjusting to life on Rannoch is more important than what Shepard is doing?

Seeing as how Tali is superflous to Shepard's squad, yes.

Well...yeah. So is every basically every character except Liara (lol). They could just as easily be replaced by two nameless Alliance grunts.

<_< You have got to be kidding about Liara

[CronoDragoon]

Seboist wrote...

What else can they be? They serve no narrative,thematic or gameplay purpose.

No narrative or thematic purpose? I refer you to my lengthy post that no one read a few pages back because everyone was busy arguing. Her character arc enriched Shepard's story for me.

[David7204]

It's clear how idiotic these complaints have become if we have people trying to clumsily claim that romances and characters have 'no purpose.'

Modifié par David7204, 05 août 2013 - 08:51 .

[Jorji Costava]

If we're being fully honest, virtually every game made (certainly every AAA game) largely trades in power fantasy elements. Look at the premises of most games: "You take on the role of a supernatural assassin/cybernetically enhanced security expert/super soldier/etc." They're all characters who can do things (usually violent things) that you can't do in real life. You don't see premises like, "In this game, you take on the role of a frustrated cubicle worker who is struggling with impotence," or "You are a single mother in a lower income bracket with three kids struggling to make ends meet. Will you be able to pay the bills on time?"

Also, notice the prevalence of violence as the primary gameplay mechanic. Surely this has something to do with a certain kind of masculine power fantasy: Killing someone in combat is taken as a sign of your mastery over that person, your way of signifying that you are a badass alpha-male not to be messed with. So I don't think the romances need to be singled out as the one objectionable power fantasy element in all of gaming.
 
Having said all of that, I skip the romances, as I think they have a long way to go to be convincing storylines. (Here I'm just going to copy and paste from a previous post in another thread, as my posts have a remarkable tendency to end up on the bottom of the page.) For one, I've always felt that the NPC's should just get bored of Shepard; it's always them having to talk about their stories to him or her, and almost never the other way around. That seems like a pretty one-sided way to conduct conversation, and makes it hard to see what draws the character to Shepard, other than the fact that Shepard is the PC, or the Hero of the Citadel, etc. That's hardly the basis for a healthy relationship.

Second, there ought to be more ways for these characters to turn Shepard down. Tali and Garrus should probably not be romancing pro-human radical Shepard, Miranda probably wouldn't want to have much to do with boy-scout Shepard, etc. In order to make the mechanic fully convincing, you'd probably want to make it possible for NPC's to turn down Shepard on the basis of much more trivial reasons than this (an irritating personality, unfunny jokes, etc.). After all, I don't say yes to everyone who I don't currently suspect of having committed war crimes or something like that. "Well, you're not on trial at the Hague right now, so why don't we go out on a date?"

[David7204]

No, it has utterly nothing to do with a 'masculine power fantasy.'

It has to do with violence being something the player can easily be given legitimate control over.

Modifié par David7204, 05 août 2013 - 09:36 .

[Jorji Costava]

@David7204:

I'll just post this here.

@StreetMagic:

I actually had an idea very much like that in my previous post, but which I chopped out above for length: Suppose you could have a scene where Liara or somebody asks Shepard something like "What was it like on Torfan?" (Yes, it's cheesy action movie dialogue. Shut up!). Shepard could then do a spiel describing what Torfan was like, and the player could interject at various points to dictate the general tenor of the description (think of the big speeches that Shepard gives after taking command of the Normandy in ME1, or during the suicide mission in ME2).

So you could either say something like "It was horrible, and I hope I never have to make decisions like that again" or "It was totally worth it to kill those Batarian SOBs." Some NPC's would be freaked out by you telling them that killing Batarians is totally worth losing most of your unit, while others might be intrigued by your badassery. One possible problem is that it might be rather repetititve to tell the Torfan story to each of your squadmates. But the point is to make the dynamic between PC and NPC more give-and-take than just "pick the top dialogue option in a handful of conversations, get sex as a result."

I'm not sure I'd want to handle things exactly like the conversation with Morinth, since that consists largely of Shepard talking about stuff he just found out about as if he'd been familiar with it for years; basically, he or she is trying to 'fake it.' The stuff you can bring up should probably be stuff that's more critical to the character, like tidbits from major plot missions, Shepard's background, etc.

[Sir DeLoria]

CronoDragoon wrote...

Seboist wrote...

Seeing as how Tali is superflous to Shepard's squad, yes.

Par for the course in Mass Effect, where because of characters dying in previous games virtually none of them could be considered critical. However superfluous she may be to Shepard's squad, she's still doing more good there than doing something vague on Rannoch to help with...something.

Superflous? I can't count how often she saved my Infiltrator's life throughout the series.

[David7204]

is this video supposed to prove something to me?

[Bionuts]

I actually play female characters a ton more than male characters, because it helps disconnect from the game.

Have no interest in playing santa claus fantasy.

[CronoDragoon]

Necanor wrote...

Superflous? I can't count how often she saved my Infiltrator's life throughout the series.

In the interest of fairness I'm not counting gameplay, because then someone could never use her and thereby assert her "uselessness" or whatever.

[David7204]

The quality of a character is not measured by how much they move the 'main' plot along.

Nearly every friendly side character in every story in existence could be eliminated or compressed without the story significantly changing. 

Modifié par David7204, 05 août 2013 - 10:38 .

[Ravensword]

Finn the Jakey wrote...

Steelcan wrote...

Finn the Jakey wrote...

Seboist wrote...

CronoDragoon wrote...

Seboist wrote...

And as another sign of her incompetence, she abandons her position at a critical time for her people so she can play action sidekick with Shepard.

Are you suggesting that quarian civilians adjusting to life on Rannoch is more important than what Shepard is doing?

Seeing as how Tali is superflous to Shepard's squad, yes.

Well...yeah. So is every basically every character except Liara (lol). They could just as easily be replaced by two nameless Alliance grunts.

<_< You have got to be kidding about Liara

She's the most important information broker in the galaxy, and like it or not, she's still the most plot relevant squadmate in the series. Miranda too, but only in ME2.

Actually, scratch that, you don't even need her for the squad (EDI either). As I said, two nameless grunts.

Yeah, she's the most important information broker in the galaxy, yet all she does is read other people's e-mails. Samantha Traynor was doing all the work that Liara should've have been doing.

[wolfhowwl]

Seboist wrote...

Darth Brotarian wrote...

Ravensword wrote...

Seboist wrote...

Not only is Tali incompetent as a leader(needless to say she's a bad fireteam leader on the SM) but the fact that she was made freaking Admiral when she's never even been the captain of a rowboat is pretty damn laughable.

The admiralty board flipped a coin. Heads: Tali is made admiral; tails: Jor'Tan the ****** boy is made admiral.

I thought she won the "admiral for a day" prize from the lottery and just happened to be made admiral during the rannoch arc.

And as another sign of her incompetence, she abandons her position at a critical time for her people so she can play action sidekick with Shepard.

They were thinking of Admiral Tali not being a squadmate but reconsidered.

I don't know if that was also discussed for Shadowbroker Liara but that is another character that would have made sense to move to an off-Normandy role, perhaps with an encore temporary return on Thessia.

Modifié par wolfhowwl, 05 août 2013 - 11:13 .

[Sir DeLoria]

wolfhowwl wrote...

They were thinking of Admiral Tali not being a squadmate but reconsidered.

I don't think she kept the position after Rannoch. She didn't even have command over any part of the fleet, she was just a high ranking advisor like Uber-General Garrus.

[o Ventus]

Ravensword wrote...

David7204 wrote...

Interesting to hear the person who likes to talk about all the fictional women in video games he's 'had' speak about 'juvenile power tripping.'

What the hell are you talking about, Davey? The romances are indeed part of the juvenile power trip. No officer in any military is having female subordinates just throw themselves at him or is always the smartest person in the room that everyone, even high ranking officers suck up to or grovel at their feet.

I don't recall any single romance "throwing themsleves" at Shepard/Revan/the Warden, etc.

[MassivelyEffective0730]

o Ventus wrote...

Ravensword wrote...

David7204 wrote...

Interesting to hear the person who likes to talk about all the fictional women in video games he's 'had' speak about 'juvenile power tripping.'

What the hell are you talking about, Davey? The romances are indeed part of the juvenile power trip. No officer in any military is having female subordinates just throw themselves at him or is always the smartest person in the room that everyone, even high ranking officers suck up to or grovel at their feet.

I don't recall any single romance "throwing themsleves" at Shepard/Revan/the Warden, etc.

Liara? Tali? Kelly?