245 réponses à ce sujet

[Erez Kristal]

Shepard's situation...  

 - knowledge is on a need to know basis... i feel like making a mass effect trailer that feels like tom clancy... 

Modifié par erezike, 14 octobre 2013 - 07:50 .

[silverexile17s]

erezike wrote...

Shepard's situation...  

 - knowledge is on a need to know basis... i feel like making a mass effect trailer that feels like tom clancy... 

First vid is no longer up for viewing -- was removed for copyright.
Second, It's the Alliance that's being kept on a need to know basis about Shepard's actions, not the other way around. I thought that was the whole point of ME2.

Modifié par silverexile17s, 15 octobre 2013 - 05:17 .

[General TSAR]

IllusiveManJr wrote...

spirosz wrote...

David7204 wrote...

No Alliance means no Cortez, no Traynor, no James, and no Adams. 

I wish. 

Me too. 

Me three, minus James because he's cool in my POV.

[Erez Kristal]

silverexile17s wrote...


First vid is no longer up for viewing -- was removed for copyright.
Second, It's the Alliance that's being kept on a need to know basis about Shepard's actions, not the other way around. I thought that was the whole point of ME2.

thats an american thing, but look at the bright side you can see full episodes of robot chicken.:happy:
Thats too bad. because the first link is damn terrific.  

As for the second part of your answer, you dont really believe that. do you?

Modifié par erezike, 15 octobre 2013 - 05:22 .

[wright1978]

StreetMagic wrote...

By the end ME2, Shepard wasn't so forced into gung ho Alliance loyalty though. At the end of LotSB, you can brush off Liara's dog tags from Hackett and say how that was a different life.. Then she comments how everyone wants something from Shepard. Alliance, Council, Cerberus. It would have been nice to see a transition from this particular train of thought. Shepard is a helluva lot more complicated than simply being an Alliance soldier. The best I get is if I play ME3 with the Genesis 2 comic. It kind of ends with Shepard in a very introspective mode before he sees the kid playing with the toy ship on Earth. Otherwise, it doesn't work (and even then, that Genesis bit is tiny.. doesn't work well either).

Yeahby the end of ME2 Shep can have diverged quite a bit from the Alliance loyalist, it's just such a shame they didn't even bother to build any means to carry forward this Shep in ME3 & replaced him/her with auto-shep.

[tevix]

All of that is basically part of the forced "Hate cerberus, love the alliance. Forget ME2, didn't happen."

[IanPolaris]

KaiserShep wrote...

I never quite understood the point of being able to kill Joram Talid. Crooked or not, it just seems like a crazy thing to do right in front of C-Sec with zero repercussions. It's worth it to see Kolyat's reaction though.

Not if you are a spectre (which you might be).  If you said that Thane's mental health was worth more than Talid's life, then that is that.

-Polaris

[tevix]

That also could be a logical course of action for someone role-playing a pro-human/pro-cerberus shepard.

[silverexile17s]

erezike wrote...

silverexile17s wrote...


First vid is no longer up for viewing -- was removed for copyright.
Second, It's the Alliance that's being kept on a need to know basis about Shepard's actions, not the other way around. I thought that was the whole point of ME2.

thats an american thing, but look at the bright side you can see full episodes of robot chicken.:happy:
Thats too bad. because the first link is damn terrific.  

As for the second part of your answer, you dont really believe that. do you?

Robot what?!

As to the second part -- the events of ME2 speak for themselves, now don't they? Anderson himself said he'd keep the Alliance off your back. That means making sure they don't know Shepard's running with Cerberus until well after the Commander's done what he/she has to in order to stop the Collectors.
So, yes, I believe that -- namely because Anderson told us that was exactally what he was going to do:  keep the Alliance in the dark about us until the Collectors were taken care of.
I mean, surely you must have wondered why the Alliance responce to throwing Shepard in the brig for Cerberus association took nearly six months to actually happen, right? That's because Anderson -- and Hackett as well -- covered your back. Liara minipulating info from her info broker (and later on, Shadow Broker) position likely helped too.
In short -- no, the Alliance was the one in the dark about Shepard's actions. Not the other way around. Anderson and Hackett both verbally confirm that they will make sure of that.

Modifié par silverexile17s, 15 octobre 2013 - 09:11 .

[Erez Kristal]

I am not going to derail this thread. but i advice taking a look at this old thread. it has a lot of valid points. even if cerberus and the alliance werent together in 2185.
http://social.biowar.../index/1600890/

Modifié par erezike, 15 octobre 2013 - 01:12 .

[Kataphrut94]

tevix wrote...

All of that is basically part of the forced "Hate cerberus, love the alliance. Forget ME2, didn't happen."

How is that any different from the "Love Cerberus, everyone else is incompetent for no good reason. Forget ME1, didn't happen" of the previous game?

[MassivelyEffective0730]

Kataphrut94 wrote...

tevix wrote...

All of that is basically part of the forced "Hate cerberus, love the alliance. Forget ME2, didn't happen."

How is that any different from the "Love Cerberus, everyone else is incompetent for no good reason. Forget ME1, didn't happen" of the previous game?

Because that's the only thing you get out of ME3. ME2 still allows you to be pro-alliance and hate Cerberus. If you deny that, then you're lying to justify why ME3 went where it did.

[MassivelyEffective0730]

General TSAR wrote...

IllusiveManJr wrote...

spirosz wrote...

David7204 wrote...

No Alliance means no Cortez, no Traynor, no James, and no Adams. 

I wish. 

Me too. 

Me three, minus James because he's cool in my POV.

I'm good with that. James is a smart enough kid though. He'll come around.

[Kataphrut94]

MassivelyEffective0730 wrote...

Kataphrut94 wrote...

tevix wrote...

All of that is basically part of the forced "Hate cerberus, love the alliance. Forget ME2, didn't happen."

How is that any different from the "Love Cerberus, everyone else is incompetent for no good reason. Forget ME1, didn't happen" of the previous game?

Because that's the only thing you get out of ME3. ME2 still allows you to be pro-alliance and hate Cerberus. If you deny that, then you're lying to justify why ME3 went where it did.

If you were pro-Alliance, (and everyone in ME1 was pro-Alliance and/or pro-Council) you shouldn't have been working for them. It was bad railroading to work with Cerberus in ME2, and the fact that the game did nothing to fix their previous depiction as incompetent evil scientists did not help. Mass Effect 3 did absolutely right by putting an axe in their head.

[MassivelyEffective0730]

AlexMBrennan wrote...
For the last time, Shepard is an Alliance soldier, so it's not railroading to have Shepard be pro-Alliance - if you want to play an Omega crime lord, well, too bad you because you can't.

Classic false dichotomy here.

My Shepard certainly wasn't an alliance soldier in ME2, or even ME1 for that matter. In ME2, I had the ability to very heavily criticize and reject the alliance, and in ME1, I could make it perfectly clear that after becoming a Spectre, the alliance didn't matter and I could completely disrespect alliance command personnel. 

You're basically saying that since Shepard is, or was, a part of an organization, he must be loyal to them and hold them in high regard and believe in them. That's not true. It seems more like you don't like Cerberus and don't like how people can be for them. It seems more like you like the alliance and don't like how people can be against them.

[MassivelyEffective0730]

Kataphrut94 wrote...

MassivelyEffective0730 wrote...

Kataphrut94 wrote...

tevix wrote...

All of that is basically part of the forced "Hate cerberus, love the alliance. Forget ME2, didn't happen."

How is that any different from the "Love Cerberus, everyone else is incompetent for no good reason. Forget ME1, didn't happen" of the previous game?

Because that's the only thing you get out of ME3. ME2 still allows you to be pro-alliance and hate Cerberus. If you deny that, then you're lying to justify why ME3 went where it did.

If you were pro-Alliance, (and everyone in ME1 was pro-Alliance and/or pro-Council) you shouldn't have been working for them.

Well, narrative expansion aside (I'll explain that next), I wasn't pro-alliance or pro-council in ME1. I showed verbal disdain for the Council, constantly disrespecting and threatening them, and I publically disrespected alliance command personnel.

As for narrative expansion, you being forced to work with Cerberus can be seen as an alliance of necessity. They're giving you resources, a crew, a clear goal to work towards, and authority to work towards that goal in any way you see fit. Most importantly, they believe in you, and they believe in the Reapers. They're doing something about it. The alliance and the Council don't. They'd have you quietly assigned to some backwater system to keep you out of the way while they use your image as a propaganda and recruiting mechanism. And really, if you try to turn tail to the alliance, I'm certain TIM has some kind of measures to keep you in place, or to take you down back to them. 

As I see it, and RP it, my Shepard is initially apprehensive of them - he doesn't trust an organization that spends billions on resurrecting a person from the dead and 'mad science'. But they prove their own competence and skill to him, and they do take the Reapers very seriously. And the way I see them and their methods, and thus by extension the way my Shepard sees them (until ME3 takes away my ability to RP) is that they have a grim necessity to the galaxy. They're dark, and violent, and underhanded, and they're exactly what the galaxy needs. My Shepard realizes this and sympathizes with it. And TIM honestly does give the opportunity to go back to the alliance - and it is a bit underhanded and manipulative, but he doesn't lie, and he doesn't do anything himself. He simply shows me what the alliance and the Council have been doing about the Reapers and about their own philosophy's and MO's. Shepard, at least mine, sees first hand how incompetent and arrogant and ignorant and obtuse the system really is. And it disgusts him. He wants nothing more to do with it. 

It was bad railroading to work with Cerberus in ME2, and the fact that the game did nothing to fix their previous depiction as incompetent evil scientists did not help. Mass Effect 3 did absolutely right by putting an axe in their head.

It wasn't bad railroading. It wasn't even bad railroading to work with the alliance in ME3 in my opinion.

However, there's a difference between working with and working for. In ME2, you can be anti-Cerberus. You can hate TIM, Miranda, Jacob, Kelly, Cerberus, whatever. The game lets you do this. 

But the game also lets you be supportive of them as well. And this is the option I prefer. I honestly judge Cerberus to be the best faction to side with, at least in ME2. I'm supportive of their goals and ideals, and to a relatively lesser extent, even their methods and operations. I will admit that TIM has a problem with keeping his scientists in line and having them constantly resort to senselessly violent actions in their experiments to achieve their goals. It's not due to any moralistic sense of ethics, which I happen to believe are completely relative. It's simply excessive. Overkill. If a situation requires it, I have no problem at all killing innocents to achieve my goal. But you don't have to wipe out an entire colony to study husks. It's sloppy, and raises too many eyebrows, and generates a bad image for yourself. I never did see any actions that Cerberus did as evil. As I said, I don't believe in an objective evil. I have my own, subjective and relative definition, and nothing Cerberus did qualifies to meet it, beyond their recklessness in ME3 to become indoctrinated by the Reapers. Same with incompetence. I only saw a few experimets that 'failed', and almost all were due to unforeseen circumstances that were out of Cerberus' control.
The only one that really seemed like a real mistake to me, and which Miranda admitted too, was the Rachni. 

To get back to railroading though, no, forcing the player to work with one faction isn't railroading (well it is, but it's technical; you'd have to make a completely different game to explore other views). What is negative railroading is how I'm able to interact with the universe through my PC (Shepard). I can be pro-Cerberus or anti-Cerberus in ME2. I can be pro-council or anti-council. I can be pro-alliance or anti-alliance. I can't do that in ME3. The best I can do is tell TIM to stop fighting me and join me against the Reapers. Though I have indoctrination to blame for this, it still seems as if the writers wanted to make it clear to the players that you weren't supposed to actually enjoy working with Cerberus. It just seems so hamfisted to make you love the alliance.

Aside from some rather obscure dialogue options regarding them, I can only be pro-alliance. The game admittedly does an ok enough job of tempering the level of that. I can be much more neutral towards them, but, unless dealing with the VS personally, I can not be overtly against them. This is jarring for me, as I am against them completely. I am against the Council. It's out of character for my Shepard, a character that BW acknowledged in the past was up to the player to define (which was then excised and filled with the 'we didn't realize people would take so much ownership of their characters'). It makes the game less interesting, and it's frustrating to not be able to realize my own idea of what Shepard is and should be for my game.

The same though with working for Cerberus, I have no real issue with working with the alliance from a macro-perspective outside the game. As I said for people who hated Cerberus in ME2, working with the alliance in ME3 is an alliance of necessity for my Shepard. While he doubtlessly would have had to work with them (to unite the galaxy against the Reapers), he would have done it while under an independent Cerberus banner with much of his same crew from ME2. As it stands, the alliance is really all he has in ME3. And as much as he is disgusted by them, he knows he has to stop the Reapers. Cerberus has been compromised by them. He'll keep their idea's and goals alive post-war, but for now, they've got to go. Though their goals are still inspired, their true loyalty's and agenda are covered by a thin veneer over the Reaper control that lies beneath. 

Modifié par MassivelyEffective0730, 15 octobre 2013 - 02:26 .

[Erez Kristal]

Kataphrut94 wrote...

If you were pro-Alliance, (and everyone in ME1 was pro-Alliance and/or pro-Council) you shouldn't have been working for them. It was bad railroading to work with Cerberus in ME2, and the fact that the game did nothing to fix their previous depiction as incompetent evil scientists did not help. Mass Effect 3 did absolutely right by putting an axe in their head.

in mass effect 1 you could be a pro humanity type and towards the council and alliance. pissing in the direction of officers like hackett and malkovich.

You simply never roleplayed mass effect that way.
Its the kind of attidue you get after serving in the army... for some time.

Modifié par erezike, 15 octobre 2013 - 04:27 .

[MassivelyEffective0730]

erezike wrote...

Kataphrut94 wrote...

If you were pro-Alliance, (and everyone in ME1 was pro-Alliance and/or pro-Council) you shouldn't have been working for them. It was bad railroading to work with Cerberus in ME2, and the fact that the game did nothing to fix their previous depiction as incompetent evil scientists did not help. Mass Effect 3 did absolutely right by putting an axe in their head.

in mass effect 1 you could be a pro humanity type and towards the council and alliance. pissing in the direction of officers like hackett and malkovich.

You simply never roleplayed mass effect that way.

Its the kind of attidue you get after serving in the army... for some time.

YEEEEEEEEEUUUUUUUPPPPPPPP!

[Barquiel]

There are more options to be anti-cerberus in ME2 because the experiments/operations conducted by Cerberus are much more controversial (to put it mildly). But why do you want to be anti-alliance in ME3? Anderson shoots husks on Earth. Hackett leads the team making the crucible. I am not entirely sure what the other alliance fleets are doing, but at least they don't sabotage the war effort. Now I understand that Ashley's/Kaidan's self-righteous attitude can be annoying, but I see absolutely no reason to hate the Alliance in ME3. They aren't doing anything questionable.

[MassivelyEffective0730]

Barquiel wrote...

There are more options to be anti-cerberus in ME2 because the experiments/operations conducted by Cerberus are much more controversial (to put it mildly). But why do you want to be anti-alliance in ME3? Anderson shoots husks on Earth. Hackett leads the team making the crucible. I am not entirely sure what the other alliance fleets are doing, but at least they don't sabotage the war effort. Now I understand that Ashley's/Kaidan's self-righteous attitude can be annoying, but I see absolutely no reason to hate the Alliance in ME3. They aren't doing anything questionable.

Because it took so much to actually listen and acknowledge the threat. They stuck their collective heads in the sand right up until the Reapers quite literally pulled them out. Their ineptitude and arrogance and reluctance to even try to prepare for the Reapers pretty much disgusts me. It's hatred for everything they never did before. Bitterness over how badly I was treated only for them to come crawling over to me to fix their mistakes. It's pathetic.

[tevix]

Massively took the words right out of my mouth.

Cerberus DID bring shepard back, and offered to help him stop the reapers. When you go to the council they say FU. Even anderson doesn't trust you (justified or not). It makes perfect sense for shepard to be willing to say F it and work with cerberus as long as they are trying to stop the reapers.

Cerberus was written in ME3 so that there's no way shepard would accept their actions, so you were railroaded into hating them. In ME2 you had more of a choice. It's the same level of attitude choice you have in 1 regarding the council or alliance.

[wright1978]

MassivelyEffective0730 wrote...

Barquiel wrote...

There are more options to be anti-cerberus in ME2 because the experiments/operations conducted by Cerberus are much more controversial (to put it mildly). But why do you want to be anti-alliance in ME3? Anderson shoots husks on Earth. Hackett leads the team making the crucible. I am not entirely sure what the other alliance fleets are doing, but at least they don't sabotage the war effort. Now I understand that Ashley's/Kaidan's self-righteous attitude can be annoying, but I see absolutely no reason to hate the Alliance in ME3. They aren't doing anything questionable.

Because it took so much to actually listen and acknowledge the threat. They stuck their collective heads in the sand right up until the Reapers quite literally pulled them out. Their ineptitude and arrogance and reluctance to even try to prepare for the Reapers pretty much disgusts me. It's hatred for everything they never did before. Bitterness over how badly I was treated only for them to come crawling over to me to fix their mistakes. It's pathetic.

Even ignoring the Alliance's sheer level of incompetence, there should have been choices to carry forward Sheps who expressed that they no longer viewed themselves as Alliance soldiers. After being an independent agent i find it laughable that Shep is railroaded into being an unquestioning saluting alliance loyalist. Why when Anderson throws Shep the dogtags does he/she just accept them, why aren't there a dialogueresponses ranging from 'dream come true' to 'needs must'.

[silverexile17s]

erezike wrote...

I am not going to derail this thread. but i advice taking a look at this old thread. it has a lot of valid points. even if cerberus and the alliance werent together in 2185.
http://social.biowar.../index/1600890/

As I said, no -- Anderson and Hackett (and likely Liara as well) made sure the Alliance was kept in the dark about your actions. That was why you were able to move with such freedom in the first place -- because they weren't able to bring the hammer down on you with both Hackett and Anderson stalling.

[AlexMBrennan]

. It makes perfect sense for shepard to be willing to say F it and work with cerberus as long as they are trying to stop the reapers.

Assuming Shepard has no moral code, sure. Reasonable people might want to try other options before signing up with space!Bin Laden (never mind the fact that Shepard quits the Alliance by going with Miranda rather than, you know, shooting an armed terrorist wearing enemy colours on sight, before learning any of that which you claim would convince him)