230 réponses à ce sujet

[spirosz]

MegaSovereign wrote...

If the premise is standalone/smaller scale then the timeline won't really matter as much as you guys think.

Bioware's focus should be making a great game with solid storytelling.

Easier said than done. 

[Rasofe]

sH0tgUn jUliA wrote...

Rasofe wrote...

Sorry, Shotgun, but your post essentially reduces to two things, one of which I agree with and the other not.
1. ME scifi principle is the Relays.
2. There should be canonisation of the ME trilogy.

I can't agree with the second because - given time is available and the gamer cares at all - no one in their right mind would make only one playthrough of the trilogy. So canonising the choices (and Shepards gender) can only lead to disaster.

As a writer you are going to have to make certain canon choices. I never said Shepard's gender had to be made canon -- this one is easy. The others are not. You are going to have to make canon certain choices like the Geth, and the Genophage, and the survival of the Quarians because it will affect every single game from there on. You'll have to make two separate versions for each of them.

The same with the endings. All three of the ending choices are going to have to be tossed and one chosen that is not what we got just because you can't write three versions of every game. 

OR you are left with writing an Alternate Mass Effect Universe without the reapers. 

OR you canon the Destroy ending, set it in the year 2700 when everything is repaired, and the Quarians rebuilt some of the Geth, and AIs have been built. Canon - the genophage is cured and Wrex's first born son is in power. Your new characters won't notice.

Shepard has a statue in the Citadel that's in orbit over Earth. They have pigeons on the Citadel now. 

Orly, and what makes Destroy the best option? And what gender is the statue of Shepard? What hairstyle?

[MegaSovereign]

spirosz wrote...

MegaSovereign wrote...

If the premise is standalone/smaller scale then the timeline won't really matter as much as you guys think.

Bioware's focus should be making a great game with solid storytelling.

Easier said than done. 

Which is precisely why justifying the premise's position in the MEU timeline should be a secondary concern.

At least for me, a bad game with a weak story would be more of a deal breaker than whether the game is actually a prequel or sequel.

Modifié par MegaSovereign, 22 novembre 2013 - 12:03 .

[Deathsaurer]

Okay let's take the destroyed relays thing. That absolutely can't work in Control. The Reapers will probably have all the major relays up and running in a few months while Destroy could take years or decades. Synthesis is iffy because they could fix the relays but they never seem to bother doing it in the slides.

[spirosz]

I'm still hoping for Synthesis to be canon.

[AlanC9]

Zan51 wrote...

Oh, so he sees ME4 with us as a space engineer, traveling where we can to salvage parts to fix 1 ME Relay? And it takes 1 year to travel a light year of 6 trillion miles. Gonna be an interesting

This is the dumbest thing I've read on this board all month. FTL drives work without relays.

Edit: seriously, dude, what did you think was going on when you flew the Normandy to a system without a relay?

Modifié par AlanC9, 22 novembre 2013 - 12:21 .

[dreamgazer]

[insert obvious destroyed relays and "going nowhere" joke here]

[spirosz]

dreamgazer wrote...

[insert obvious destroyed relays and "going nowhere" joke here]

Yo dawg, I heard you were stuck, so I got you stuck even further.   

[Rasofe]

Deathsaurer wrote...

Okay let's take the destroyed relays thing. That absolutely can't work in Control. The Reapers will probably have all the major relays up and running in a few months while Destroy could take years or decades. Synthesis is iffy because they could fix the relays but they never seem to bother doing it in the slides.

Just another reason why a sequel isn't such a great idea.

[GreyLycanTrope]

MegaSovereign wrote...
Which is precisely why justifying the premise's position in the MEU timeline should be a secondary concern.

At least for me, a bad game with a weak story would be more of a deal breaker than whether the game is actually a prequel or sequel.

Yo MegaSovereign, I'm really happy for you and Imma let you finish but ME4 will have the weakest story of all time.

[AlanC9]

Deathsaurer wrote...

Okay let's take the destroyed relays thing. That absolutely can't work in Control. The Reapers will probably have all the major relays up and running in a few months while Destroy could take years or decades. Synthesis is iffy because they could fix the relays but they never seem to bother doing it in the slides.

Agreed. I think the idea is biased towards Destroy. This doesn't strike me as a problem.

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

Rasofe wrote...



Orly, and what makes Destroy the best option? And what gender is the statue of Shepard? What hairstyle?

Destroy is the best option because it's the easiest to deal with. Let's get real here. The reapers aren't exactly suited to manual labor. You really think the reaper actually built the Citadel and the Mass Relays? Talk about space magic. Bioware took Clarke's Third Law to the extreme. And the statue is abstract art called "The Shepard Monument".

Or take the purple ending option with the canons. Your choice.

Deal with it. To continue a story you have to bring the divergent paths back together. If they write a good story you'll buy the game anyway.

Modifié par sH0tgUn jUliA, 22 novembre 2013 - 01:08 .

[Cainhurst Crow]

Killdren88 wrote...

Pull Shepard out of the Rubble Bioware. That is all I ask. Pull Shepard out and I'll accept new protag story or whatever you have to offer. Just please. Pull Shepard out of the rubble.

"Admrial, we've found shepard...they didn't make it."

*Opening credits commence*

[Cainhurst Crow]

Beerfish wrote...

My 'Ark' concept for the next game:

Due to the possible pending extinction of all organic life in the galaxy a secret project is undertaken that sends a large ship at top speed out of the galaxy with a representatives of most major species, just in case the war is lost and the Reapers spend the next 100 years exterminating things.

Essentially a blank slate once out of the galaxy no matter what ending is chosen and a pretty open ended story as to what might happen next.

War. War never changes. 

When reaper ships consumed the galaxy, those who survived did so in great, intersteller arks. When they opened, their inhabitants set out across ruins of the old galaxy to build new societies, establish new villages, form new tribes.

  As decades passed, what had been the council spaces southwest region united beneath the flag of the New Palavan Republic, dedicated to old-world values of democracy and the rule of law. As the Republic grew, so did its needs. Scouts spread east, seeking territory and wealth, in the dark and merciless expanse of space. They returned with tales of a garden world untouched by the reapers that had scorched the rest of the galaxy, and a great city spanning it's surface.  The NPR mobilized its fleet and set it east to occupy the planet Illium, and restore it to working condition.

But across the Attican Traverse, another society had arisen under a different flag. A vast army of slaves, forged in the conquest of 86 tribes: Urdnot's Legion.  Four years have passed since the Republic held Illium - just barely - against the Legion's onslaught. The Legion did not retreat. Across the traverse, they gathered strength. Shipyards produced, training drums beat.  Through it all, the Nos Astra Strip has stayed open for business under the control of its mysterious overseer, Mr. House, and his army of rehabilitated Tribals and police robots.

You are a courier, hired by the Terminus Express, to deliver a package to the Nos Astra Strip. What seemed like a simple delivery job has taken a turn…for the worse.

[Artifex_Imperius]

yay he says alot of people are also interested in a prequel the events that happened before mass effect. "1st contact war". @ 36:10

[SwobyJ]

StreetMagic wrote...

Everything you need to know about the First Contact War is in the ME: Evolution comic. Shanxi was a spot with a Reaper artifact, and the Turians knew of it.. Humans came out of nowhere and started settling. Turians thought they were attacking the humans for everyone's good. It was barely a war. They just wanted to secure the artifact. Turns out one of the Turian generals had ulterior motives though. It was Saren's brother.

Basically, it's the beginning of the Reaper story.

Yeah...

[cap and gown]

Just write off the Trilogy and be done with it. If they can turn Shepard into a puddle of red goo scattered across the surface of a planet and then bring him back, they can do whatever they like. Like forget the disaster of the Reaper plot line and start fresh. Don't cannonize anything, just dump it.

Keep the races, keep the space magic, keep all the things EXCEPT THE BLOODY REAPER WAR.

You say you have to have something cannon about the genophage? Why? It could easily be dealt with by having someone else cure it at some point. You say something has to be done about the Rachni? Why? Maybe there is another egg out there somewhere. There does not need to be any continuity at all. Start fresh, a new beginning. Whatever you want your start state to be, find a way to explain it without relying on the events of the Reaper War.

And never, ever, try to have Chthulu as an enemy again.

[dorktainian]

Darth Brotarian wrote...

Killdren88 wrote...

Pull Shepard out of the Rubble Bioware. That is all I ask. Pull Shepard out and I'll accept new protag story or whatever you have to offer. Just please. Pull Shepard out of the rubble.

"Admrial, we've found shepard...they didn't make it."

*Opening credits commence*

wins the internetz 

[The Sarendoctrinator]

I can't watch the video. Did he say more than being interested in a world where the relays aren't working, or was it a short interview? And as far as I know, he's not working on the next Mass Effect... so it's just something he'd like to see rather than something that's actually going to be in the game, right? I don't have any strong feelings one way or the other about the idea. The mass relays are one of the things that make the setting unique, so it would be kind of strange if they were completely absent, but it would really depend on how the story played out.

Killdren88 wrote...

Pull Shepard out of the Rubble Bioware. That is all I ask. Pull Shepard out and I'll accept new protag story or whatever you have to offer. Just please. Pull Shepard out of the rubble.

Alive. Just wanted to add that. You can never be too specific with this sort of thing.

[SwobyJ]

-It's a podcast, not a video

-Yes, a world where they're not working, and how that impacts the galaxy, and getting the network working again. Not whether they'd stay that way or not. Part of him wants Shepard to return, but it's difficult if that doesn't work for what they're trying to do.

-He puts that, or the idea of seeing past events mentioned in the Codex (First Contact War for example) as things he'd like to see.

-He says that he's not part of the team, but doesn't disclose how much he knows or doesn't know about the future game other than that he's not *sure* what they're going to do

-A lot of different ideas out there that could make a great story or game

[The Sarendoctrinator]

^ Thanks. I'd be fine with either of those ideas. The relays would still be a part of the story, and in that case I guess they would be going with the Destroy ending. I agree with what he says about Shepard. First Contact War has always interested me too, but I'm a little biased because some of my favorite characters are in that war (and no longer alive after the trilogy).

[Rasofe]

sH0tgUn jUliA wrote...

Rasofe wrote...



Orly, and what makes Destroy the best option? And what gender is the statue of Shepard? What hairstyle?

Destroy is the best option because it's the easiest to deal with. Let's get real here. The reapers aren't exactly suited to manual labor. You really think the reaper actually built the Citadel and the Mass Relays? Talk about space magic. Bioware took Clarke's Third Law to the extreme. And the statue is abstract art called "The Shepard Monument".

Or take the purple ending option with the canons. Your choice.

Deal with it. To continue a story you have to bring the divergent paths back together. If they write a good story you'll buy the game anyway.

Here's a better idea. Why don't we NOT try to undermine one of the chief intellectual selling points of the ME trilogy and instead do what was suggested by cap&gown and simply not continue this story? In the words already mentioned here, "Write it off". The Reaper War was an unfortunate disaster for the MEU both literally and figuratively. And I'm not suggesting a parallel universe.

I'm suggesting that the next MEU game be set it in the same timeframe as the trilogy (particularly interesting are the two years between ME1 and ME2), but have nothing to do with any of its plot. We don't need to worry about the impending threat of the Reapers because we KNOW that we've already beaten them. Let ME4 just be about fun.
There's NO way or reason to make a sequel for a game that's already divergent. I can see why we would want more MEU, but let's face it - for any ending, the immediate future of the MEU is basically postapocalyptic. After that it may become largely unrecognisable. If we want to see more of the MEU that we actually wanted to protect so badly when we stoodup to the endings, we have to backtrack to ME2 or right before ME2.

Modifié par Rasofe, 22 novembre 2013 - 09:26 .

[KaiserShep]

Rasofe wrote...
Orly, and what makes Destroy the best option? And what gender is the statue of Shepard? What hairstyle?

Destroy leaves the fewest questions in the end. Whatever the next game is about is best served with zero reapers, as their presence would taint the atmosphere. Control establishes that they stick around, presumably forever. Of course, you could have them simply not be there (same for Synthesis), but there's always that question as to where they went, provided they don't continue to linger about doing nothing in the background. The same goes for the monsters they created, which just retreat and we never see them again. With Destroy, it's pretty simple, as they've been eradicated. Synthesis is a particularly weird one as it leaves an indelible mark on every being in the galaxy, with glowing eyes and circuit skin. Whatever the next game will be about, cannot include this, as it would just be a weird design element that would leave newcomers (of which there will be plenty again) wondering why the hell everything looks like a weird cyborg. Of course, this can be retcon'd away, and that it's all internal now and the connectedness is still there, but it wouldn't really add anything meaningful to the gameplay, and likely nothing to the story itself. The whole transcendence of evolution leaves nothing particularly useful to follow up on in the story, so it's no more meaningful than control.

A statue doesn't really need any fine details. All it needs is gender, which shouldn't be difficult. Slap a helmet on it, and make sure to emphasize the N7 logo.

Honestly, I still think making a new game at all is kind of a bad idea. Set in the past, or set in the future, I think it's all comes off as just a way to get as much out of the franchise as the company can before it's finally put to rest for good. Closing out the trilogy the way ME3 did gives the impression of finality that can't really be dealt with. There's always the prospect of an in-between story, but frankly, I find that particularly undesireable. Unless they cut out the whole galaxy-wide news network, there's no real way to fully disconnect from the original trilogy, because Shepard's name is in there all the time.

Modifié par KaiserShep, 22 novembre 2013 - 10:13 .