876 réponses à ce sujet

[durasteel]

Deathsaurer wrote...
How are they getting past Harbinger's kinetic barriers when Joker couldn't extract them from the derelict Reaper?

Maybe it takes time to raise barriers after exiting a mass effect corridor. 

Deathsaurer wrote...
Why does Harbinger have an opening on his hull that allows access? 

They seem to be sheathed in articulated plates. I was thinking in terms of the "lobstered" plate armor of the early rennaisance, which had gaps in the armpit. It might not be a wide open hole, but it could be weaker and possible to breach.

Deathsaurer wrote...
Why isn't he making a jump for the nearest star the moment they reach the core room? 

Arrogance. Harbinger doesn't know that they have defenses against indoctrination, so it is confident that its exposure to risk in infinitessimal.

Deathsaurer wrote...
Why is a destroyer the only thing that comes to help and not a few dozen dreadnoughts?

The destroyer was in the neighborhood, everything else is too far away for an immediate response. Another possibility is that the Alliance reinforcements bring with them an ability to temporarily block incoming calls to the relay. We know the Asari were working on building new relays, and that manipulation of the network is possible (the Reapers supposedly do it when they activate the Citadel relay in previous cycles) so it isn't too great a stretch to imagine they could put something together to "jam" the relay and limit Harbinger's reinforcements to whatever can get there under its own thrust.

Modifié par durasteel, 11 décembre 2013 - 08:00 .

[durasteel]

eyezonlyii wrote...
...
The rest of the squad splits into two teams: Hammerhead and Mako, and you get to choose leaders and teammates. As the mission progresses, you'll switch between the two leaders, and your choice of those two and the squad you put together, determines how many teammates return from this suicide mission. Also, the game, unlike ME2 wouldn't beat you over the head with who to put where, it would be a hidden point system, with the higher points allowing for more squaddies to make it. The rest of the game plays out as is. 

I always love splitting the team up and switching perspectives, it really adds to the scale of the conflict. I liked it so much in DA:O for the fight in Denerim that I was really baffled that they didn't go that route for the Vigil/Amaranthine fight in Awakening.

Anyway, what I posted was obviously nothing more than the roughest of outlines off the top of my head. A handful of us could sit around for a couple hours with a few beers and polish it to the point that it was 10 times more coherent and rational than the ending in the game. That's my point. 

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

Also durasteel, the DA could take out a destroyer easily in one shot with its main gun. It actually could take out a reaper capital ship with a single shot from its main gun. "That thing has more fire power in its main gun than the entire asari fleet combined." -- this is Joker from ME1. The asari fleet has 20 dreadnoughts.

The problem is that there is only one Destiny Ascension.

In fact it is in the codex that a cruiser can easily take out a reaper destroyer.

[durasteel]

sH0tgUn jUliA wrote...

Also durasteel, the DA could take out a destroyer easily in one shot with its main gun. It actually could take out a reaper capital ship with a single shot from its main gun. "That thing has more fire power in its main gun than the entire asari fleet combined." -- this is Joker from ME1. The asari fleet has 20 dreadnoughts.

The problem is that there is only one Destiny Ascension.

In fact it is in the codex that a cruiser can easily take out a reaper destroyer.

Yeah, I was thinking in terms of a one-shot kill from the DA whereas without it the destroyer would have time to get off a last "goodbye" and toast a squad member. Obviously that bit would need a lot of fleshing out to make sense and not leave the player screaming "WTF?!" 

It might even be better to eliminate the destroyer from the scenario altogether and let Harbinger take that last shot himself unless the DA can plug that metal bastard first.

Modifié par durasteel, 11 décembre 2013 - 08:14 .

[durasteel]

SR72 wrote...
 Your plan to board Harbinger doesn't really work. It was stated during the game the Reapers tried to hammer a "peace treaty", but then Shepard states "anyone aboard a Reaper is going to be indoctrinated". 
People seem to forget this.  

Hence the need for the defenses against indoctrination. When Shepard made that statement, there was no known way to protect someone from being indoctrinated, but if  Lawson was able to replicate the effects he should have had enough info on the mechanics of it for TIM to figure out countermeasures.

The ending of Mass Effect 3 was, in point of fact, an incoherent mess. It is always difficult to admit that you totally bollocksed a very important assignment at work, therefore "artistic integrity." 

I submit to you that the last thing BioWare wants is for its fans to move on with their lives. The moment we do that, they lose the pre-orders that their bean-counters love so very much.

I would also like to point out that you are as wrong as you could possibly be about this being insulting to the people that wrote this game. The biggest failure of the ending was that it did not live up to the standards of the rest of the game, the rest of the franchise, and the BioWare body of work in general. What would be terribly insulting would be to suggest that this incoherent mess was somehow the best that BioWare's writers were capable of.

Modifié par durasteel, 11 décembre 2013 - 08:28 .

[Iakus]

SR72 wrote...

A handful of us could sit around for a couple hours with a few beers and polish it to the point that it was 10 times more coherent and rational than the ending in the game. That's my point. 

To say that the people who wrote this game had some sort of incoherent mess is insulting to them. This is one more reason Bioware has refused to listen to any more ending requests from fans. 

They said it themselves, your feedback is becoming more
destructive than constructive. That if still displeased, you should move on with your lives.

It is in incoherant mess.  And if that hurts feelings, well, sorry, but the truth hurts sometimes.  Pointing that out is not "destructive criticism"

And taking a high-handed, dismissive attitude towards disillusioned fans only added to the backlash. 

[Deathsaurer]

Eh durasteel, I have trouble imagining why Harbinger would forgo the Reapers main advantage if he carries such an important secret and is so easy to board. That's beyond arrogance. Arrogance was the Reapers broadcasting the destruction of the Turian colonies to Palaven. Numbers is where the Reapers tech advantage actually matters. Alone they can be ganged up on and overpowered and they know that. Just 10 of them in a group would take most races entire fleet to deal with. A little more than 12 of them completely bum rushed the Alliance.

I already have trouble with silly stuff like the Rannoch destroyer as part of a serious narrative. As a lol video game fight it's meh. As an actual part of a story it's laughable.

[durasteel]

Deathsaurer wrote...
Eh durasteel, I have trouble imagining why Harbinger would forgo the Reapers main advantage if he carries such an important secret and is so easy to board.
...

He's not easy to board, in fact he would normally be impossible to board. The main advantage and the most powerful weapon of the Reapers is indoctrination, and without countermeasures there is no way to board a Reaper.

The idea that the Reaper's biggest strength becomes their weakness has an elegance that I like.

[Deathsaurer]

Their biggest strength is obviously their superior tech in large groups. Around 20 of them completely steamrolled the Alliance fleets. You only ever see 1 Sovereign class Reaper off by itself in the entirety of ME3 and that was the one tracking you while you looked for the Leviathans away from all the actual combat. This is something they just don't do and for good reason.

[durasteel]

Deathsaurer wrote...

Their biggest strength is obviously their superior tech in large groups. Around 20 of them completely steamrolled the Alliance fleets. You only ever see 1 Sovereign class Reaper off by itself in the entirety of ME3 and that was the one tracking you while you looked for the Leviathans away from all the actual combat. This is something they just don't do and for good reason.

No, brute force is not their biggest strength. Since each Reaper is a special snowflake and they cannot be replaced, their biggest strength is the indoctrination which allows them to avoid most of the conflict that would otherwise put them at risk. 

Even if you completely discount the possibility of isolating Harbinger, you simply change the parameters of the trap and address the challenge of distracting his friends long enough to get in close. The Normandy is designed to have stealth properties, it shouldn't be an insurmountable task to figure a way to present this within the player's suspension of disbelief.

I want to point something out here--this process of challenging the logic and consistency of a plot point or the believability of the set-up for a scene or encounter... that pretty clearly never happened with regard to the end sequence of the game and the entire Catalyst encounter. That's why rumors of the thing being written by one or two people behind closed doors, refusing all input from the other writers, are believable.

There is no way I could BS my way to a better version of Tuchanka. No way for us to spitball a superior Rannoch. While the scenes with Thane were not all perfect, they were better, I believe, than I could do.

Give me a couple of bright folks to bounce ideas off of, and I could totally have written a better ending. For that matter, I could have written a better opening sequence, too.

Modifié par durasteel, 12 décembre 2013 - 01:05 .

[Deathsaurer]

Indoctrination is certainly useful but saying brute force isn't their biggest strength when it's their answer for everything tried on them in ME3 is... I dunno. Mass a fleet in defense? Brute force it. Hit and run tactics? Brute force your home world. Suicidal charge? Brute force your home world. There is no subtlety involved, just plowing over everything in their path. The Turians even comment on this.

Indoctrination probably should have been a bigger plot point. Plenty of people will argue that. The portrayal we got is totally the opposite though. The Batarians got trolled by indoctrination. The Geth ran to them to be saved. Everyone else just got shot and shot and shot some more. I get that you like the idea better but I think the entire game would need rewrites for it to gel with me. Like the Reapers walking up to everyones militaries and beating them in the face repeatedly couldn't happen. They'd have to be impared from within via indoctrination which may have made for a more interesting game.

durasteel wrote...

I want to point something out here--this process of challenging the logic and consistency of a plot point or the believability of the set-up for a scene or encounter... that pretty clearly never happened with regard to the end sequence of the game and the entire Catalyst encounter. That's why rumors of the thing being written by one or two people behind closed doors, refusing all input from the other writers, are believable.

I'm not going to argue that. Everything starting at Thessia felt rushed to me.

[durasteel]

You have a point with regard to ME3, but everything in the first two games was all about indoctrination. Saren's indoctrination was the major plot point for his arc, the Collectors were a special kind of indoctrinated, and TIM was always making you wonder about how indoctrinated he was.

Then we reach the third game and all themes in the main story arc are swept aside to make room for artistic integrity type things.

I'll concede your point that more of the game would need to be rewritten for indoctrination to be elevated to the major theme of the Reaper conflict, but I think that it fits perfectly as the end of the trilogy overall.

[Deathsaurer]

Well that probably goes to show they structured themselves right into a corner. Too many Reapers running around attacking too many things at the same time exploiting the numbers disparity and no apparent weaknesses found.

[durasteel]

Deathsaurer wrote...

Well that probably goes to show they structured themselves right into a corner. Too many Reapers running around attacking too many things at the same time exploiting the numbers disparity and no apparent weaknesses found.

Would have been a lot easier if the Reapers had spread out to handle the whole galaxy at once, instead of concentrating their forces on Earth because humans have to be special.

[AlanC9]

Yeah, but the Reapers control their own dispersal. They don't have to disperse unless it serves their interests

[Deathsaurer]

It's not even that they hit Earth en mass that was the problem. It's that so many could park on Earth and they could still hit Palaven and Thessia AND be patrolling all those systems they were in.

[Legion of 1337]

Back on Topic:

Seriously though, now that I think about it, the idea of having the Reapers be life in a supremely advanced form being on some epic, universe-bending quest to fight the laws of nature and stop the universe's heat death sounds exactly like the kind of thing that would concern hyper-advanced, galaxy-hopping beings. It's more towards the space-Chthulu thing that they were in ME1. I actually like it.

Of course, such an ending would still ****** people off because virtually no one does Lovecraft anymore and people aren't used to it so they'd complain about how it was "stupid" because they'd see no reason to let the Reapers continue.

I would've gone with it. Though what I just put down isn't exactly what Drew said - but then again they didn't iron it out very much before they ditched it completely.

Modifié par Legion of 1337, 12 décembre 2013 - 02:16 .

[durasteel]

I still think dark energy becomes an elegant motivation if you change the Reaper's objective to surviving the death of the galaxy instead of preventing it.

[Legion of 1337]

durasteel wrote...

I still think dark energy becomes an elegant motivation if you change the Reaper's objective to surviving the death of the galaxy instead of preventing it.

I'm pretty sure you can't survive the death of the universe.

[Sion1138]

Legion of 1337 wrote...

durasteel wrote...

I still think dark energy becomes an elegant motivation if you change the Reaper's objective to surviving the death of the galaxy instead of preventing it.

I'm pretty sure you can't survive the death of the universe.

How come?

Maybe there is a way to migrate to another universe which requires a complete understanding of one's own circumstance, which would be why the Reaper harvests, it's looking for that last piece of the puzzle. 

Modifié par Sion1138, 12 décembre 2013 - 04:06 .

[LinksOcarina]

iakus wrote...

SR72 wrote...

A handful of us could sit around for a couple hours with a few beers and polish it to the point that it was 10 times more coherent and rational than the ending in the game. That's my point. 

To say that the people who wrote this game had some sort of incoherent mess is insulting to them. This is one more reason Bioware has refused to listen to any more ending requests from fans. 

They said it themselves, your feedback is becoming more
destructive than constructive. That if still displeased, you should move on with your lives.

It is in incoherant mess.  And if that hurts feelings, well, sorry, but the truth hurts sometimes.  Pointing that out is not "destructive criticism"

And taking a high-handed, dismissive attitude towards disillusioned fans only added to the backlash. 

There was a quote by Neil Gaiman that kind of resonates with this idea, it comes from a documentary called The People vs George Lucas.

"I don't have any problem at all with fan edits, fan remixes. It's an absolutely legitemate and really cool response to the art. But I also don't believe that any of those fans has the right to go and knock on my door and say 'I don't like this character I want you take him out of your book.' cause it's like 'no, I got to make this, this came out of my head. Leave me alone."

Back in the day, the criticism was destructive because the fans were demanding things that were, once again, not going to be changed. The constructive stuff would be pointing out the problems, not demanding their removal, there is a difference in the end. I frankly don't blame them for being dismissive towards fans because of this either, but that is something people are going to have to square with on their own. 

[AlanC9]

Legion of 1337 wrote...

durasteel wrote...

I still think dark energy becomes an elegant motivation if you change the Reaper's objective to surviving the death of the galaxy instead of preventing it.

I'm pretty sure you can't survive the death of the universe.

The Dark Energy plot is ripped off from Frederik Pohl's Heechee Saga, and that's pretty much what the enemy is planning there.

[Legion of 1337]

Sion1138 wrote...

Legion of 1337 wrote...

durasteel wrote...

I still think dark energy becomes an elegant motivation if you change the Reaper's objective to surviving the death of the galaxy instead of preventing it.

I'm pretty sure you can't survive the death of the universe.

How come?

Maybe there is a way to migrate to another universe which requires a complete understanding of one's own circumstance, which would be why the Reaper harvests, it's looking for that last piece of the puzzle. 

I thought you meant in terms of being able to exist in a dead universe - which won't happen ebcause eventually it will create another Big Bang and end this universe in favour of a new one; you can't survive that.

There's no guarantee you can escape, though. Perhaps the Reapers know, but as far as I'm aware no one is sure of any way to escape the universe we exist in as we may only exist in it because of the laws of physics governing this universe.

[durasteel]

Legion of 1337 wrote...

durasteel wrote...

I still think dark energy becomes an elegant motivation if you change the Reaper's objective to surviving the death of the galaxy instead of preventing it.

I'm pretty sure you can't survive the death of the universe.

Death of the universe? Maybe not. Death of the galaxy, though... sure, why not? All you have to do is have an escape plan to get to another galaxy, and have some measure of when it is time to git on along with it.

If you are an immortal machine capable of generating power more-or-less eternally and with FTL capability built in, I imagine it's just a matter of pointing yourself in the right direction and going.