512 réponses à ce sujet

[AresKeith]

dreamgazer wrote...

tevix wrote...

ME3 is great as a self-contained story, terrible as a sequel. Unfortunately, it was written to be the former.

Sounds like you're talking about ME2 to me.

Sounds like each game to me

[Grand Admiral Cheesecake]

It's all just terrible.

Do I win? Because it sure makes me feel powerful.

[KaiserShep]

tevix wrote...

ME3 is great as a self-contained story, terrible as a sequel. Unfortunately, it was written to be the former.

You can blame the disconnect squarely on Mass Effect 2. The Collector plot was fun and all, but the existence of the final decision ensured that the fate of the Collector base had no bearing on the resolution of the third game outside of the low-EMS state, and at ME2's conclusion, the reapers were headed for the galaxy with absolutely no progress to solving the reaper threat. If anything, ME3 connects better as a sequel than ME2 does, and more or less makes the best of a tricky predicament for the overarching plot, especially now that the writers have amended a fair amount of content to it.

Modifié par KaiserShep, 15 octobre 2013 - 11:07 .

[Seboist]

ME1 works as a self-contained story if you rewrite some bits of the ending(ie have the reapers trapped in dark space forever and Shepard not mentioning that they're coming).

[The Night Mammoth]

ME2 works well if you think of it as the TV show sequel to a film. It's like a series of Doctor Who, where the finale is yet another old enemy returning through inexplicable means.

ME3... I don't know what to do with 3.

[Cainhurst Crow]

Grand Admiral Cheesecake wrote...

It's all just terrible.

Do I win? Because it sure makes me feel powerful.

But admiral, you can never be powerful. David said so.

[Reorte]

Seboist wrote...

KaiserShep wrote...

but I think that ME3 often gets more hate than it deserves.

True, it has the best gameplay in the trilogy and unlike ME2 has a focused plot that advances the overarching one.

Unfortuantely those aren't the things which created the appeal of Mass Effect (which is just as well really).

[dreamgazer]

The Night Mammoth wrote...

ME2 works well if you think of it as the TV show sequel to a film. It's like a series of Doctor Who, where the finale is yet another old enemy returning through inexplicable means.

ME3... I don't know what to do with 3.

It's a game that tries to make the prowess of the Reapers and the lack of preparation/relevance in ME2 somehow work, while also not alienating old players. The execution is clumsy, but it could definitely be worse. 

[tevix]

The failure of a conclusion of any plot to ME2 is the fault of ME3. ME3 was written to ignore essentially any reaper-related events from 2, thus making 3 a self-contained story. ME1 and ME2's dots could have been connected if a third game had taken both into account.

I do not hold a prequel responsible for a sequel.

[Grand Admiral Cheesecake]

Darth Brotarian wrote...

Grand Admiral Cheesecake wrote...

It's all just terrible.

Do I win? Because it sure makes me feel powerful.

But admiral, you can never be powerful. David said so.

The Messiah was WRONG!

[Reorte]

tevix wrote...

The failure of a conclusion of any plot to ME2 is the fault of ME3. ME3 was written to ignore essentially any reaper-related events from 2, thus making 3 a self-contained story. ME1 and ME2's dots could have been connected if a third game had taken both into account.

I do not hold a prequel responsible for a sequel.

The only Reaper-related plot event in ME2 was the Human Reaper (Arrival being DLC) and quite honestly that's best forgotten. ME2 failed to do anything useful with the overall plot. The failure of ME2 in the plot department left ME3 far too much to do, even if the best people in the world had worked on it.

Modifié par Reorte, 15 octobre 2013 - 11:28 .

[Cainhurst Crow]

Grand Admiral Cheesecake wrote...

Darth Brotarian wrote...

Grand Admiral Cheesecake wrote...

It's all just terrible.

Do I win? Because it sure makes me feel powerful.

But admiral, you can never be powerful. David said so.

The Messiah was WRONG!

YOU DARE INSULT THE PROPHET OF HEROISM!?

[dreamgazer]

Cthulhu42 wrote...

dreamgazer wrote...

The Night Mammoth wrote...

ME2 works well if you think of it as the TV show sequel to a film. It's like a series of Doctor Who, where the finale is yet another old enemy returning through inexplicable means.

ME3... I don't know what to do with 3.

It's a game that tries to make the prowess of the Reapers and the lack of preparation/relevance in ME2 somehow work, while also not alienating old players. The execution is clumsy, but it could definitely be worse. 

The Reapers were probably the best-handled enemy faction in ME3.

That's not saying much anything, though.

That's only really possible because of the Cerberus ideological and battle distraction. The longer Shep and Co. are around the Reapers without getting zapped, the more implausible the story's progression becomes. 

[tevix]

@Dream

So all the people on earth who survived since you left should be dead?

[dreamgazer]

tevix wrote...

@Dream

So all the people on earth who survived since you left should be dead?

A metric ton did die. 

It's a miracle that the soldiers there haven't, yeah.

[Tyrannosaurus Rex]

To the current endings credit, it certainly is better than the dark energy ending.

Better as in being driven over by a car at 100 kilometers per hour hurts less than getting driven over at 110 kilometers per hour.

[KaiserShep]

tevix wrote...

The failure of a conclusion of any plot to ME2 is the fault of ME3. ME3 was written to ignore essentially any reaper-related events from 2, thus making 3 a self-contained story. ME1 and ME2's dots could have been connected if a third game had taken both into account.

I do not hold a prequel responsible for a sequel.

No, the failure of ME2's plot is basically in ME2, and it all really comes down to the Collector base decision. The fact that this choice exists presents a huge problem for the sequel, because it should basically create two completely different states for the game no matter what you do, but that isn't the case. The impact of this choice is constrained heavily by how widely a game's plot can realistically diverge, so when coming up for a way to solve the reaper problem in ME2, it had to be a solution that exists regardless of this choice, with only the easy to avoid low-EMS scenario as the exception.

As for the dark energy plot, it was essentially a dud that was doomed from the start, because it was underdeveloped and rife with contradiction. This was one thing that should have been planned before completing that game, and because ME2 went ahead with an incomplete idea, the only other viable option ME3 had to go with was one of the side themes of ME1, being organics vs. synthetics.

Modifié par KaiserShep, 15 octobre 2013 - 11:48 .

[Jorji Costava]

KaiserShep wrote...

No, the failure of ME2's plot is basically in ME2, and it all really comes down to the Collector base decision. The fact that this choice exists presents a huge problem for the sequel, because it should basically create two completely different states for the game no matter what you do, but that isn't the case. The impact of this choice is constrained heavily by how widely a game's plot can realistically diverge, so when coming up for a way to solve the reaper problem in ME2, it had to be a solution that exists regardless of this choice, with only the easy to avoid low-EMS scenario as the exception.

I think you could say the same about the Council decision in ME1. Realistically, an all-human council should have dramatic implications for the plot of the next two games; but of course, there was simply no way for the series to carry this decision and all the changes that would go with it through two games. I also argued back in this old thread that from an in-universe perspective, the choice just didn't make much sense. For instance, if the representatives of every country in the UN security council except the US all died, it's not very likely  that all the replacement representatives would end up all being from the US.

EDIT: Fixed formatting

Modifié par osbornep, 15 octobre 2013 - 11:55 .

[Jukaga]

I would have liked an opportunity to explain to the 2nd council that I didn't abandon the council for human interests, I made the correct military decision to concentrate all firepower on Sovereign. If the DA can't fend off a dozen Geth destroyers then it wasn't much use to begin with anyways.

ME2 retconned both 'concentrate' and 'abandon' to the same end; the all human council which the rest of ME2 promptly forgot then abandoned entirely in ME3. It was a stupid idea anyways, and not the decision any of my renegades made.

[tevix]

"Underdeveloped and rife with contradiction".

It was rife with contradiction because it was underdeveloped. That's what happens when you don't finish something.

If finished, it would have likely been less absurd than what we got, along with the bonus of connecting all the dots.

[dreamgazer]

tevix wrote...

"Underdeveloped and rife with contradiction".

It was rife with contradiction because it was underdeveloped. That's what happens when you don't finish something.

If finished, it would have likely been less absurd than what we got, along with the bonus of connecting all the dots.

This is what Drew calls "vapourware".

"I find it funny that fans end up hearing a couple things they like about it and in their minds they add in all the details they specifically want," he explained. "It's like vapourware - vapourware is always perfect, anytime someone talks about the new greatest game. It's perfect until it comes out. I'm a little weary about going into too much detail because, whatever we came up with, it probably wouldn't be what people want it to be."

[tevix]

No ending was going to satisfy everyone. It's for this reason that I stress that *IMO*, letting the baseline idea behind the dark energy idea mature would have been a better call. Of course, that would require that it matured into what I currently think would make sense.

ME2 was not unsalvageable. They simply chose not to salvage it because they were too busy salvaging ME3's reaper plotline, along with overreacting to harbinger hate, putting a character writer in charge of overarching plots and so on.

[Seboist]

osbornep wrote...

I also argued back in this old thread

They should have ditched all choices and made the trilogy a straight up TPS with spellcasting with no pretense of choices since they've completely failed at it.