384 réponses à ce sujet

[BaladasDemnevanni]

iakus wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...

Well, it's kind of hard to imagine any amount of moving the plot forward in ME2 that would make hundreds of 2 kilometer space battleships solvable with an assault rifle. Although I suppose the old Secret Reaper Off Switch would have been workable.

Did they have to include order of magnitude more 100 meter long destroyers?

Or render preserving the relay network completely pointless (they're curb-stomping the galaxy even without hitting the Citadel)?

No, but I still think that's missing a key factor, being that ME3 did not create this problem alone, but is built off of ME1's portrayal of Sovereign as being virtually unstoppable and ME2's portrayal of the Reapers in the ending cutscene.

[SwobyJ]

StreetMagic wrote...

Saren warned us long ago what a pain in the ass this was going to be. And in our delusion, we thought we were heroes, and forced him to blow his brains out.

[Rasofe]

Well, my main Shepard fought him. Femshep talked him into blowing his brains out.

[FlyingSquirrel]

My problem with Citadel DLC is that it is way too "meta" for its own good.

I mean, really, can anyone seriously argue that the characters we came to know would behave in the following ways? And not in the sense of "well, *my* Shepard would never do X, Y, or Z and Bioware still made him/her do it," but in the sense of, "would they actually act like this if they didn't know they were in a sort of cartoon parody of themselves?"

• Two squads carrying on their "Team Mako" vs. "Team Hammerhead" schtick in the middle of a multiple firefights and Javik of all people chiming in with his "Team Prothean" wisecrack.
  
• Similarly, the Cat-6 soldiers (who are getting shot up pretty badly) finding time for lines like, "They have a krogan. Why don't we have a krogan?"
  
• Shepard becoming preoccupied with how (s)he sounds when saying "I should go" when trapped in a container with a declining oxygen supply.
  
• Wrex and Grunt demonstrating their 87 different ways of saying "Shepard" because...well, no reason really.
  
• Joker and Cortez possibly causing massive damage to the Citadel by drawing fire from the Normandy while flying through the wards. (And why doesn't the Normandy just go *up* in that scene, anyway?)
  
• All the ex-squadmates finding time to come to the Citadel for a party at the same time. The one point at which this *might* make sense is between Sanctuary and Cronos if you figure the forces are rendezvousing at the Citadel anyway, but that's also when the light tone is the least appropriate.
  
• The entire population of the strip seems to have a bizarrely easy time putting the war out of their minds compared to the rest of the Citadel - even the Purgatory bar doesn't have the same kind of atmosphere.
  
• Samantha's toothbrush saves the day.
  
• Grunt falling out the window or whatever's going on in the scene where he's been detained by C-Sec and Shepard has to get him out of trouble.

If the entire story were this sort of over-the-top, self-conscious camp, that would be one thing (though I'm not sure a trilogy could sustain itself), but as a diversion involving established characters, it sticks out like a sore thumb. I honestly don't even think of it as part of the "real" story any more - I've played it a couple times with reloaded Shepards with whom I'm otherwise done, and will do it after the ending with my current "canon" playthrough. And I don't have a problem with it in that context. But it definitely is *not* what I want from Mass Effect on any regular basis.

Modifié par FlyingSquirrel, 25 novembre 2013 - 10:14 .

[Iakus]

BaladasDemnevanni wrote...

No, but I still think that's missing a key factor, being that ME3 did not create this problem alone, but is built off of ME1's portrayal of Sovereign as being virtually unstoppable and ME2's portrayal of the Reapers in the ending cutscene.

Sure, their kinetic barriers are powerful.  But get past those they seem to die pretty easily.  Probably why they wanted us to develop along the paths of mass accelerated kinetic weapons.

So, build along new paths

Directed energy weapons.  Nukes.  Ship-sized Overload weapons

Heck the thanix is already a good first step, relying on heat transfer as well as the kinetic energy.

If we had a game where the war actually made sense rather than a trek down emotional manipulation and forced tragedy, maybe Citadel wouldn't have been needed for so many players.

[SwobyJ]

FlyingSquirrel, that's exactly what makes Citadel DLC so wonderful

EDIT: There you go Rasofe.

Modifié par SwobyJ, 25 novembre 2013 - 10:27 .

[Rasofe]

SwobyJ wrote...

Flying, that's exactly what makes Citadel DLC so wonderful

Falling, too.

[dreamgazer]

iakus wrote...

BaladasDemnevanni wrote...

No, but I still think that's missing a key factor, being that ME3 did not create this problem alone, but is built off of ME1's portrayal of Sovereign as being virtually unstoppable and ME2's portrayal of the Reapers in the ending cutscene.

Sure, their kinetic barriers are powerful.  But get past those they seem to die pretty easily.  Probably why they wanted us to develop along the paths of mass accelerated kinetic weapons.

So, build along new paths

Directed energy weapons.  Nukes.  Ship-sized Overload weapons

Heck the thanix is already a good first step, relying on heat transfer as well as the kinetic energy.

If we had a game where the war actually made sense rather than a trek down emotional manipulation and forced tragedy, maybe Citadel wouldn't have been needed for so many players.

Why wouldn't the Protheans have done these things, then, or some previous civilization?

[Rasofe]

iakus wrote...

BaladasDemnevanni wrote...

No, but I still think that's missing a key factor, being that ME3 did not create this problem alone, but is built off of ME1's portrayal of Sovereign as being virtually unstoppable and ME2's portrayal of the Reapers in the ending cutscene.

Sure, their kinetic barriers are powerful.  But get past those they seem to die pretty easily.  Probably why they wanted us to develop along the paths of mass accelerated kinetic weapons.

So, build along new paths

Directed energy weapons.  Nukes.  Ship-sized Overload weapons

Heck the thanix is already a good first step, relying on heat transfer as well as the kinetic energy.

If we had a game where the war actually made sense rather than a trek down emotional manipulation and forced tragedy, maybe Citadel wouldn't have been needed for so many players.

I don't know. The war making sense would still leave it as a war. There's gonna be emotional manipulation and forced tragedy. The best way would be to let it make no sense at all. A duneworm eating a spaceship for example was a great move. Wish we really made that gun that fired thresher maws.

[BaladasDemnevanni]

iakus wrote...

Sure, their kinetic barriers are powerful.  But get past those they seem to die pretty easily.  Probably why they wanted us to develop along the paths of mass accelerated kinetic weapons.

Under-exaggeration, a good bit. Sovereign survived sustained fire from a damned number of ships on his own.

So, build along new paths

Directed energy weapons.  Nukes.  Ship-sized Overload weapons

Heck the thanix is already a good first step, relying on heat transfer as well as the kinetic energy.

If we had a game where the war actually made sense rather than a trek down emotional manipulation and forced tragedy, maybe Citadel wouldn't have been needed for so many players.

This would make a great idea if ME3 didn't mind concluding the story outside of Shepard's lifetime. Hence my point about a lot of this being built off ME1's and 2's mistakes. The thanix cannon is actually a contradiction, being that it's built off of Sovereign's technology.

[dreamgazer]

We don't even know how many Reapers there are.

Could be hundreds, could be thousands, could be tens of thousands.

[Rasofe]

That's a contradiction? To what?
I think it's not a matter of mistakes. It's more to do with inevitable consequences once you try to write your story so that the galaxy will be doomed in the third game unless the hero saves the day. It means that - if that's your goal - your hero will not succesfully end the threat in the first two games.
The mistakes weren't so much of writing the particular first two games, it was in making it a trilogy with "the end of the world" in the last game.
The Reaper's wouldn't be so bad if they were as easy to kill as Geth and Collectors. It really didn't seem like such a bad concept until Joker's sister was killed by an Asari trying to survive a bunch of husks, or Palaven caught fire.

Modifié par Rasofe, 25 novembre 2013 - 10:49 .

[FlyingSquirrel]

Rasofe wrote...

That's a contradiction? To what?
I think it's not a matter of mistakes. It's more to do with inevitable consequences once you try to write your story so that the galaxy will be doomed in the third game unless the hero saves the day. It means that - if that's your goal - your hero will not succesfully end the threat in the first two games.
The mistakes weren't so much of writing the particular first two games, it was in making it a trilogy with "the end of the world" in the last game.
The Reaper's wouldn't be so bad if they were as easy to kill as Geth and Collectors. It really didn't seem like such a bad concept until Joker's sister was killed by an Asari trying to survive a bunch of husks, or Palaven caught fire.

Stories about "the end of the world" are incredibly difficult to pull off in serialized form, IMO.

Just look at The X-Files, for example -- I was in fact a huge fan, but the whole alien conspiracy got ridiculously drawn out and overcomplicated, and the series just sort of shrugged off the fact that Mulder and Scully could go back and forth so easily between "OMG THE ALIENS ARE COMING WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!" and "Let's go investigate the latest werewolf / ghost / mutant / whatever."

[Rasofe]

Hm. I was too young to understand X-Files back when I could view them.

But I'd just like you to consider that back before release, very few were expecting this to turn out this way. Sure, the Council had turned their backs to the Reaper threat and Cerberus looked like they were gonna do their next 180 to complete a 360. But remember the tag line for the game?
"Take Earth Back."
It was gonna be about putting together the entire galaxy to take down the enemy through sheer unity and strength. In the words of Udina or Anderson, we would drive them back into dark space.
Then reality struck. They'd made it clear from the get-go that the enemy was invincible. Not just in ME3. That spectacular finish in ME1 was highly dramatic and tense, but it came with a cost. Bioware had made the antagonist too bloody strong.

Was it a mistake? It didn't seem like it at the time. It seemed like no matter how big the mountain was, we'd get to move it in ME3. But somewhere that hope - or suspension of disbelief, if you want to call it that - cracked, and someone wrote an "I-Win" button to fix it. Mass Effect was never the same again; once you've admitted you'll never kill the enemy without a killswitch, you've made the war a slaughter.

Modifié par Rasofe, 25 novembre 2013 - 11:57 .

[Iakus]

BaladasDemnevanni wrote...


Under-exaggeration, a good bit. Sovereign survived sustained fire from a damned number of ships on his own.

Not after its barriers went down

This would make a great idea if ME3 didn't mind concluding the story outside of Shepard's lifetime. Hence my point about a lot of this being built off ME1's and 2's mistakes. The thanix cannon is actually a contradiction, being that it's built off of Sovereign's technology.

In part it is ME1 and ME2's mistake, spending so much time spinning our wheels.  But such technology already exists, it just has to actually be utilized

[Reorte]

iakus wrote...

In part it is ME1 and ME2's mistake, spending so much time spinning our wheels.  But such technology already exists, it just has to actually be utilized

I'll stick to my view that the odds are that a previous cycle would've almost certainly been more advanced and had more, bigger, and better guns - the problem wasn't in making the Reapers tough, it was making them having been around for long enough, with so much success, that any measn we'd have of defeating them would look very unlikely and contrived. That's partially ME1's fault (although could've been worked around by saying it was just Sovereign blustering). Give the Reapers a small number of cycles instead of billions of years, then the rest becomes easier to swallow, if done sensibly.

As for the OP (I'm not going back through this entire thread) , nah, a whole game like the Citadel DLC would've become incredibly annoying. I love it but it needs to be a little bit aside in the context of something else. It's the character interactions built on more serious stuff that makes it work.

[BaladasDemnevanni]

iakus wrote...

Not after its barriers went down

Which is still overlooking the sheer amount of firepower it took for Sovereign to be brought down to that point, not to mention his own firepower, extensive maneuvering, and apparent ability to plow through lesser ships unharmed.

Or if you follow the Saren's death depowered Sovereign theory, that makes his shield strength even more impressive.

In part it is ME1 and ME2's mistake, spending so much time spinning our wheels.  But such technology already exists, it just has to actually be utilized

I'm with Reorte on this one. There's nothing about this utilization which would come off as believable, given the limited time frame in which Bioware has us operating. Given an extensive amount of advancement with new technology? Given more insight into how and why our technology is superior? Sure, I could believe it. But your suggestion sounds too much like "well, if we just try our best, the plot demands that we win", which hasn't gone over too well for pretty much every other cycle.

I'm getting images of that scene in the first pirate movie where Will Turner suggests loading the cannons with literally every spare item available on the ship and expecting to be able to take on actual cannon balls from the Black Pearl. Except in this case, they actually do win.

Modifié par BaladasDemnevanni, 26 novembre 2013 - 01:11 .

[FlyingSquirrel]

Rasofe wrote...
Was it a mistake? It didn't seem like it at the time. It seemed like no matter how big the mountain was, we'd get to move it in ME3. But somewhere that hope - or suspension of disbelief, if you want to call it that - cracked, and someone wrote an "I-Win" button to fix it. Mass Effect was never the same again; once you've admitted you'll never kill the enemy without a killswitch, you've made the war a slaughter.

Oh, I agree. The premise of Mass Effect ended up amounting to, "There are these incredibly unstoppable superbeings who wipe out advanced civilizations every 50,000 years. They have been doing this for at least a billion years. They have barely suffered a scratch. Now go figure out a way to stop them."

In that context, the solution *had* to be something completely out of left field like the Crucible / Catalyst / Citadel scenario, because all the more logical options must have been tried and failed in the past. Whenever people talk about how the Reapers should have been stoppable with a strong enough galactic coalition, I can't help but think, "And none of the other thousands of cycles ever tried that? So we win because we just fire a few more lasers at them than any of the past galactic coalitions did?"

The one slightly-more-conventional scenario that *might* have worked, IMO, would have been for Shepard to be able to convince the Catalyst that it's wrong if there is geth/quarian peace, a cured genophage, and other comparatively diplomatic choices along the way. The Catalyst has probably seen these sorts of things before, but maybe interfacing with the Crucible and interacting with an organic directly could make a difference. But even that's probably stretching it.

[wolfhowwl]

Yeah, the series would have definitely benefited from better planning and little more thinking through of the Reapers.

[David7204]

These conventional victory ideas all suck.

[MassivelyEffective0730]

David7204 wrote...

These conventional victory ideas all suck.

In your opinion.

[The Night Mammoth]

David7204 wrote...

These conventional victory ideas all suck.

Keep it short and sweet next time, there's no need to elaborate so much.

Modifié par The Night Mammoth, 26 novembre 2013 - 02:45 .

[We'll bang okay]

i just wish we could have the clone live ya ya i know there can only be one but each time i think about it i can't stop and think about this

Modifié par Douglas n7, 26 novembre 2013 - 02:46 .