407 réponses à ce sujet

[dreamgazer]

AlanC9 wrote...

dreamgazer wrote...

And no, I think your "drug 'em up just enough to curb-stomp 'em in a way so we still feel like badasses" scenario is more contrived.  100%, Indiscriminate Overload Beam > that. 

Well, that's the thing about "contrived".... it's more a feeling than an objective concept.

While true, I think manufacturing the Reapers' disorientation into a very specific, narrow state for the sake of explosive triumph more closely adheres to the textbook definition.  But yes, it's subjective. 

[AlanC9]

See edit above. I'm with you on the substance here, but it's just personal taste on both sides.

I mean, anyone who doesn't like contrivance per se wouldn't have made it through ME1. We put up with stuff like Tali's preposterous voice recording and the Council's incoherent reaction to that recording because... hey, why did we put up with that?

Modifié par AlanC9, 26 novembre 2013 - 06:59 .

[CronoDragoon]

AlanC9 wrote...
 We put up with stuff like Tali's preposterous voice recording and the Council's incoherent reaction to that recording because... hey, why did we put up with that?

I know I keep mentioning this half-jokingly, but seriously Saren gets away with everything if some slacker doesn't take a nap behind boxes (and somehow doesn't get detected by swarms of geth). It's pretty much the definition of bailing out the heroes through coincidence.

Modifié par CronoDragoon, 26 novembre 2013 - 07:01 .

[Cainhurst Crow]

To be honest the ending stopped being good around 6 months after i beat the game, when the high of victory faded and the rose tinted glasses came off.

[Ryzaki]

EntropicAngel wrote...

CynicalShep wrote...

Doesn't apply to me. I'm a renegon and I can't say I dislike Anderson. 

Renegon =/= renegade. You would be indifferent.


Although, to be fair, you don't have to agree with someone to like them as a person. I like plenty of people whose views are wildly, wildly disparate from mine. However, in a video game I suspect it's a bit more one-dimensional.

To be fair a proper renegade hates everyone.

[The Sarendoctrinator]

For me, it was when Shepard was hit by Harbinger's laser. The way Shepard slowly limped from that point on just felt wrong, like Shepard was already broken before the end scenes. I already knew what was going to happen, but I wanted to play through the last conversation with TIM and Anderson.

The worst part though was when Shepard was speaking with the Catalyst. Again, it just felt like Shepard was broken. For three games, Shepard spoke out against the ideas of Synthesis and Control - regardless of Paragon/Renegade dialogue, this was always the same. And now Shepard can choose these things, after they had to talk two of my favorite characters into suicide for attempting something similar? If they wanted to make those choices, they should have made a better case for them and allowed Shepard to express more of an interest previously so it's not coming out of nowhere. Destroy was the only one that seemed like something the established character would have chosen, and even then... Shepard just accepts what the creator of the Reapers tells him/her without questioning or rejecting its logic, and accepts that the only options will end in death (as described by the Catalyst, and also what happens in the base game without multiplayer or patches). Shepard's fighting spirit was gone in those last few minutes, almost like I was watching a different character.

I just turned the game off without playing through any of the choices. Whenever I get around to a second playthrough, I'll turn it off right after the talk with Anderson. It's worth playing up until that point, but past that there are no enjoyable or redeeming qualities to me.


And to add my opinion to the Anderson debate -
I like Anderson. He'll always believes in and speak up for Shepard, and he was willing to break the rules when necessary for Shepard to escape at the end of ME1, even punching out the human ambassador. In a galaxy where Shepard has to fight for people to believe him/her about the Reaper threat, that means a lot. He's also an interesting character to read about in stories that don't involve Shepard.

[Han Shot First]

The minute glow boy said hello.

[Eryri]

dreamgazer wrote...

iakus wrote...

Br3ad wrote...

And you somehow want it to have an awesome button that helps you kill the Reapers but not things weaker than them. Seems a little contrived for the player to me.

Except it wouldn't kill Reapers

And it's still less contrived than shooting a pipe to activate a galactic Synthetic Off Switch

or "organic energy"

Synthesis is ridiculous, but it's also not the topic at-hand here.

And no, I think your "drug 'em up just enough to curb-stomp 'em in a way so we still feel like badasses" scenario is more contrived.  100%, Indiscriminate Overload Beam > that. 

While any easy victory against the Reapers is in danger of feeling contrived, vanilla Destroy is guilty of that as well. It does discriminate between self-aware and ordinary technology. If it bore any relation to a real-world EMP, it wouldn't stop to check if a piece of electronics was running sentient software or "Reaper code" before frying it.

But of course if it had behaved in a way consistent with real physics, then that would mean that all the Alliance ships would be left dead in space, and a slow death from suffocation and hypothermia for all concerned would likely follow. Bit of a downer.

TBH it's probably not possible to end a story like this without some sort of silly contrivance, so you may as well go for a crowd pleasing power fantasy - nothing wrong with those in moderation. Synthesis, of course, was both silly and depressing. Most sci-fi franchises use made-up space magic to pull the hero out of the fire, not throw him or her in! I suppose Bioware deserve some credit for swimming against the tide at least.

Modifié par Eryri, 26 novembre 2013 - 10:19 .

[dorktainian]

Han Shot First wrote...

The minute glow boy said hello.

wait.... he said hello?

he told my shep to 'wake up'






of course the dreams have no significance...

[spockjedi]

I was already disappointed since Vendetta revealed that the Catalyst was the Citadel. The Earth mission was very weak, especially when compared to the Suicide Mission.
Until then, the ending was only mediocre. It started to become bad after Shepard being hit by Harbinger. Everything since the beginning of the bad trip just made me think "WTF?"

[BaladasDemnevanni]

dreamgazer wrote...

iakus wrote...

Br3ad wrote...

And you somehow want it to have an awesome button that helps you kill the Reapers but not things weaker than them. Seems a little contrived for the player to me.

Except it wouldn't kill Reapers

And it's still less contrived than shooting a pipe to activate a galactic Synthetic Off Switch

or "organic energy"

Synthesis is ridiculous, but it's also not the topic at-hand here.

And no, I think your "drug 'em up just enough to curb-stomp 'em in a way so we still feel like badasses" scenario is more contrived.  100%, Indiscriminate Overload Beam > that. 

Gonna have to go with this, I'm afraid. While still leaving questions of how a civilization was able to build something capable of taking down the Reapers, this does seem like an excuse to watch how awesome our forces are, without any logical structure behind it.

Barring some idiotic techno-babble, I would expect any EMP to not only disable the Reapers, but all technology period. In a sense, we're lucky that Bioware confined this mostly to the Geth/EDI/Relays.

[Rasofe]

I never felt Anderson was so much Paragade as Neutral. Like Taylor or Samara. He doesn't have enough Charm or Intimidate points either way.
Doesn't mean any of my Shepards don't like him, but some like him more than others.

On the topic of contrived: contrived writing is only really bad when it results in too much long term damage to the plot. A sense of an undefeatable enemy is just that. But that's a chicken or the egg statement: were the Reapers undefeatable first or was the Crucible the only way to beat them first?

Up untill ME3 I naively believed that the other characters complaining about how the Reapers would be indestructible (Hackett explaining the battle against Sovereign) was just them being chicken. In ME3 they made one of the above decisions, which led to the other, and resulted in a really downbeat game.

Modifié par Rasofe, 26 novembre 2013 - 11:21 .

[Pee Jae]

I never said the Reapers should be easy to beat, I said a few cruisers should be able to beat one Reaper *sigh* conventionally easy, given the cutscene where one or two cruisers blow off a Reaper's legs. While an EMP or something of that sort that would wipe out the Reaper's shields sounds contrived, it's no more contrived than a super weapon that wipes out all Reapers. Or Shepard becoming the new Catalyst or combining his dna with an energy beam.

What I'm saying is, an ending where we win conventionally (I really hate this word now) should have been an option and I don't mean curb stomping the Reapers with our combined military badassery. OORAH! Heavy casualties would happen on all sides, obviously.

As for Anderson... well, I've liked Keith David since The Thing, so there's no way I'm not going to like Anderson. Same for all my Sheps.

[Rasofe]

People are just harping on the EMP part and forgetting "or something of that sort."
Sovereign was destroyed because destroying Saren killed its shields. Maybe... maybe the thing Shepard would shoot is some fuse that connects the Catalyst to the Reapers, and at the same time the explosion causes the Citadel to overheat because of the Crucible power source, which kills the Catalyst.
Then all the other Reapers malfunction because the fuse is busted and the effect we saw earlier with Sovereign, despite their failsafes, is transmitted directly to them. Reaper shields overload and the cruisers of the galaxy tear them to peices.
It makes sense. There's really no point arguing about it because that isn't what happened. But it was foreshadowed and the techno-babble isn't that hard to justify it.

Modifié par Rasofe, 26 novembre 2013 - 12:10 .

[ImaginaryMatter]

For a conventional victory kind of ending, perhaps Sovereign could be retconned a little bit. Maybe, at some point a character lampshades that the current batch of Reapers have much weaker shields than Sovereign. At that point some technician blurts out some techno-babble about how Sovereign was drawing power from the Citadel to strengthen it's shields (maybe through the cables it had attached?) and when Saren was destroyed is caused some sort of power surge, thus stunning Sovereign. Just a thought.

Modifié par ImaginaryMatter, 26 novembre 2013 - 12:28 .

[David7204]

You don't need any of this nonsense to make a conventional victory work. None of it. No silly and pointless weaknesses. No magical EMPs or shield busters.

[Iakus]

Br3ad wrote...

Anything that is strong enough to disable a Reaper should destroy just about anything else based off of their technology, whcih every single thing is. It's a lot more contrieved

And anything powerful enough to destroy  a Reaper should pretty much fry anything in its path, synthetic or organic.  

Face it, the Crucible is contrived, everything about it from its discovery (on Mars, just as the Reapers are attacking), to its construction (Once translated, the plans are simple and elegant, but not so simple or elegant that we can actually figure out what it does) to it's multiple choice effects to it's range (how does the enegy wave reach Reapers in systems without relays?)  One contrivance after another.

So I say, how about providing a contrivance that allows the galaxy to actually stand and fight?  Level the playing field so the reapers are no longer invicncible space Cthulhu.  If people are to die, let them die fighting Reapers.

[David7204]

How about no contrivance at all?

In any case, the Crucible as it as has one tremendous thing in it's favor your version doesn't. The fact that things don't go as planned. Which, as I elaborated in the other thread, is very poor writing.

Modifié par David7204, 26 novembre 2013 - 02:37 .

[MassivelyEffective0730]

David7204 wrote...

You don't need any of this nonsense to make a conventional victory work. None of it. No silly and pointless weaknesses. No magical EMPs or shield busters.

Then you would have no victory against the Reapers. Unless you had a lot of nukes, and even then that's only going to go so far for you. It's very clear that you aren't going to beat the Reapers without some kind of superweapon, unless you want to make an asspull, which really sounds like what you want to do.

[David7204]

Don't assume everyone is as helpless as you.

[MassivelyEffective0730]

David7204 wrote...

Don't assume everyone is as helpless as you.

Well, I know you sure as hell are.

[Obadiah]

CronoDragoon wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...
 We put up with stuff like Tali's preposterous voice recording and the Council's incoherent reaction to that recording because... hey, why did we put up with that?

I know I keep mentioning this half-jokingly, but seriously Saren gets away with everything if some slacker doesn't take a nap behind boxes (and somehow doesn't get detected by swarms of geth). It's pretty much the definition of bailing out the heroes through coincidence.

I put up with it because right afterwards Shep gives that awesome speech when he takes over the Normandy, and pretty mich everything that came before fades into a distant memory.

Modifié par Obadiah, 26 novembre 2013 - 02:44 .

[David7204]

Some people apparently don't have a good understanding of 'coincidences' in stories.

[MassivelyEffective0730]

David7204 wrote...

Some people apparently don't have a good understanding of 'coincidences' in stories.

Oh look, another smug comment with no substance to it that was made to make one seem artificially credible. Especially when it intentionally vague so that when the argument inevitably turns against you, you can run back and change the meaning of your statement on a whim. Can you say 'moving the etymological goalpost fallacy?'

You should trademark these David. Make some $$$.

Modifié par MassivelyEffective0730, 26 novembre 2013 - 02:48 .

[dreamgazer]

iakus wrote...

And anything powerful enough to destroy  a Reaper should pretty much fry anything in its path, synthetic or organic.  

Disagree there, when you consider overload surges in the universe and the Crucible's tier of construction integrity.