1765 réponses à ce sujet

[wolfhowwl]

DeinonSlayer wrote...

Why would Cerberus troops need to vocalize at all? Wouldn't they be networked?

Yeah, it would be something like Sons of the Patriots from MGS.

[Tyrannosaurus Rex]

Nightwriter wrote...

George Costanza wrote...

Nightwriter wrote...

Stargazer scene should get honorable mention, at least.

I totally forgot about that scene. Whenever I get to the end of the game I turn it off before it gets to that point. Dreadful work.

I imagine many do.

Stay calm my sweet. Wanna hear another story about the Shepard? Might make you feel better!

[Nightwriter]

Lizardviking wrote...

Nightwriter wrote...

George Costanza wrote...

Nightwriter wrote...

Stargazer scene should get honorable mention, at least.

I totally forgot about that scene. Whenever I get to the end of the game I turn it off before it gets to that point. Dreadful work.

I imagine many do.

Stay calm my sweet. Wanna hear another story about the Shepard? Might make you feel better!

[RangerSG]

starlitegirlx wrote...

How about the galaxy's worst shadowbroker ever? She could barely get intel on the one mission she gives you. She doesn't have a clue about the beacon on thessia which if the shadowbroker had all the information they implied in the DLC, I would think that might have been in there. She doesn't think to get off the ship broker's ship before cerberus comes after her. Okay for the Yahg who had that huge crew but she was with one person and glyph. The only useful intel she gives you is a small group of mercs that comes through Barla Von and they aren't even worth that much. Glyph is much more useful than she is. You can use your intel to get upgrades. While the prothean expert seems to have forgotten all things prothean, sucks at her job, and it turns out traynor is far more on the ball and sussing out intel than Liara is. That is the worst writing EVER.

Well, in her defense, she's obsessed with the Crucible, and more or less has everything else on cruise-control. The "normal" interests of the Shadow Broker don't matter as much when the day-to-day matters of the galaxy are pretty much crushed.

Yes, she ought to have been made more 'up to speed.' Especially when they gave her cutscreen incompetence with TIM too. Really? Not enough to make Shepard Cutscreen Incompetent?

[themikefest]

My question to Liara, when you first meet her on Mars, is why didn't she forward the data to Hackett when she realized it was somrething that could stop the reapers? She knew before the reapers invaded Earth by Hackett telling you to go to Mars that T'soni may of found something to stop the reapers.

Had she of done that, the Thessia mission would be different than what we got.

[congokong]

starlitegirlx wrote...

How about the galaxy's worst shadowbroker ever? She could barely get intel on the one mission she gives you. She doesn't have a clue about the beacon on thessia which if the shadowbroker had all the information they implied in the DLC, I would think that might have been in there. She doesn't think to get off the ship broker's ship before cerberus comes after her. Okay for the Yahg who had that huge crew but she was with one person and glyph. The only useful intel she gives you is a small group of mercs that comes through Barla Von and they aren't even worth that much. Glyph is much more useful than she is. You can use your intel to get upgrades. While the prothean expert seems to have forgotten all things prothean, sucks at her job, and it turns out traynor is far more on the ball and sussing out intel than Liara is. That is the worst writing EVER.

The whole thing with the Shadow Broker is absurd. It begins with the points I made in my OP but it doesn't stop there. How is one person able to juggle all the secrets of the galaxy regarding trillions of lives. Try imagining one person trying to manage all the secrets just on earth. It wouldn't matter what VI is helping you. No organic mind could handle it. No wonder Liara misses so much. lol

Also, everyone seems to know Liara is the Shadow Broker except people like Barla Von who specialize in the information trade. I suppose Liara would give it up when the reaper war is finished. At least in the meantime she's relatively safe on the Normandy but someone might want to take her out later on.

Modifié par congokong, 20 février 2014 - 06:22 .

[DeinonSlayer]

@congokong
I thought it'd have been a nice twist if the "shadow broker" was actually Reaper.

Vigil: "Information is power, and they knew everything about us."

Barla Von: "Every day he trades secrets that could topple governments. Yet, somehow, he never disrupts the natural order. Everything manages to balance out. Nobody ends up with the advantage in the end... Nobody knows who he is. He could be any race, any gender. I have a theory that the Shadow Broker is actually a group of people. How else could they juggle so many contacts at the same time? How else could they keep all that information from getting crossed?"

Sovereign: "You evolve along the paths we desire."

Imagine breaking into the yahg's office, getting a good first-ever look at that big bastard, then just when you go to attack he seizes up, starts glowing a sickly yellow and bellows out "ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL."

[DeinonSlayer]

Fuggin' iPhone won't let me edit my post... I meant "was actually a reaper."

Or Feron. That would've been a hell of a twist.

[Bob from Accounting]

That would have just have been silly.

I would suggest several posters be a little less obvious in attempting to disguise their dislike for Liara as something else. It's not convincing in the slightest.

Modifié par Bob from Accounting, 20 février 2014 - 07:00 .

[DeinonSlayer]

Bob from Accounting wrote...

That would have just been silly.

The yahg thing would be silly, yeah. But really, a Reaper behind the scenes pulling the strings, with access to every military and diplomatic secret in the galaxy both directly serves their purposes and makes far more sense than a single organic (from a previously unheard-of non-spacefaring race, no less) being able to keep all of that in his head. Right on the eve of the cycle, they could orchestrate a half-dozen "give me five minutes and I could start a war"-style data leaks and watch as the cycle's leading militaries tear each other apart as a prelude to the Reaper invasion.

[Bob from Accounting]

That would have been an unimpressive narrative dud. Having the Broker be a Reaper is just about as generic and uninspired as it gets.

[Zazzerka]

themikefest wrote...

My question to Liara, when you first meet her on Mars, is why didn't she forward the data to Hackett when she realized it was somrething that could stop the reapers? She knew before the reapers invaded Earth by Hackett telling you to go to Mars that T'soni may of found something to stop the reapers.

Had she of done that, the Thessia mission would be different than what we got.

She didn't actually have the data at that point. Hence her request to Hackett for backup. Hence the "race to the archives."

C'mon, now.

[DeinonSlayer]

So, one fat alien from an unheard-of species keeping an entire galaxy's worth of secrets in his brain is preferable? At least if it were Feron all along he'd have the whole "perfect memory" thing going for him. Unless Yahg have that, on top of the brains of a salarian and the brawn of a krogan... which, together, would make the Yahg something of a Mary Sue race. A drooling, spikey Mary Sue race which spends less time dancing on tables.

The only reason I threw in the "direct control" thing is because the format of a video game demands that players get something to shoot at. The big terminator skeleton thing was already done.

Modifié par DeinonSlayer, 20 février 2014 - 07:28 .

[Bob from Accounting]

Vastly preferable, yes. As the yahg, the Broker and his network remain an interesting chunk of the Mass Effect galaxy and universe. As a Reaper, it's all reduced to little more than the monsters who control everything predictably controlling a little bit more of everything.

[DeinonSlayer]

I'd hardly call the yahg "interesting." They transplanted something from Dragon Age to shoot at and provided only the scantest motives for his alliance with the collectors. Guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.

[Bob from Accounting]

I would be appreciate if you ceased the attempts of passive aggression by implying Lair of the Shadow Broker is compromised narratively because players 'shoot at things.' They're quite ineffective and more importantly, irrelevant.

The yahg is not particularly interesting. That's fine. The position of the Broker itself and Liara's takeover certainly are. I doubt either of things would be in place if the Broker turned out to be nothing more than a finger of the Reapers.

That doesn't even touch the considerable backstepping this would require.

[DeinonSlayer]

It's simply a fact that a storytelling medium is limited when it has to throw a gaggle of faceless mooks in the protagonist's path every five to ten minutes to hold the player's interest. They have toconstantly find reasons to justify firefights, however flimsy (see the alphabet soup merc groups in ME2 and Cerberus in ME3). Leviathan is the closest we've come to breaking this pattern.

The trilogy is tied off. Anything "what if" we discuss now is purely speculative. Everything that already exists is fair game.

One scenario I read before LotSB came out was that the Broker was actually three people - an Asari, a Drell, and a Volus. Each would have skills which contribute to the work they do, each trains an apprentice as their successor. Nyxeris was the apprentice to the Asari broker. The idea in the alternate scenario was that Liara was trying to eliminate all three and recruited Shepard's help.

The way I see it, we're free to speculate about how certain parts of the story could have been better written. Some of the alternate scenarios I've seen written on this site blow the canon story clean out of the water.

Modifié par DeinonSlayer, 20 février 2014 - 07:43 .

[Bob from Accounting]

Do they now? Are they on the level of this?

Because I'm struggling to see how that contributes anything at all. It just diffuses the Broker's character into three people. Could you explain to me how this benefits the story at all for me? How it 'blows the canon clean out of the water'?

Modifié par Bob from Accounting, 20 février 2014 - 07:43 .

[Bob from Accounting]

DeinonSlayer wrote...

It's simply a fact that a storytelling medium is limited when it has to throw a gaggle of faceless mooks in the protagonist's path every five to ten minutes to hold the player's interest. They have toconstantly find reasons to justify firefights, however flimsy (see the alphabet soup merc groups in ME2 and Cerberus in ME3). Leviathan is the closest we've come to breaking this pattern.

It is a fact.

It's also a fact that assuming that a general focus on combat and other such activities in the video game industry is a result of inept developers and lazy players without considering the underlying principles of games is, to say the least, very shallow and shortsighted. Even more so to assume that breaking free of this constraint would be simple or that other mediums aren't similarly constrained by patterns.

Modifié par Bob from Accounting, 20 février 2014 - 07:49 .

[DeinonSlayer]

Bob from Accounting wrote...

Do they now? Are they on the level of this?

Because I'm struggling to see how that contributes anything at all. It just diffuses the Broker's character into three people. Could you explain to me how this benefits the story at all for me? How it 'blows the canon clean out of the water'?

Relax, OK? I'm simply pointing out an alternate scenario. I'm not calling it one of those that "blows canon out of the water;" I'd have to dig up Dean_The_Young's thread for that. I only think it's better than vanilla LotSB in the sense that the entire network isn't contingent on a single individual. It's more believable for it to be managed by multiple people with disparate skills instead of "Drooling Ogre Hates T'Soni!" *more dakka*

[Bob from Accounting]

Am I to assume you're incapable of speaking on this topic without resorting this sort of thing? The only thing you're convincing me of is that your points are too weak to stand without it.

I really see no problem at all with a single individual managing the Shadow Broker network.

[DeinonSlayer]

Bob from Accounting wrote...

DeinonSlayer wrote...

It's simply a fact that a storytelling medium is limited when it has to throw a gaggle of faceless mooks in the protagonist's path every five to ten minutes to hold the player's interest. They have toconstantly find reasons to justify firefights, however flimsy (see the alphabet soup merc groups in ME2 and Cerberus in ME3). Leviathan is the closest we've come to breaking this pattern.

It is a fact.

It's also a fact that assuming that a general focus on combat and other such activities in the video game industry is a result of inept developers and lazy players without considering the underlying principles of games is, to say the least, very shallow and shortsighted. Even more so to assume that breaking free of this constraint would be simple or that other mediums aren't similarly constrained by patterns.

Huh. What was that about passive-aggression?

See, to me it seems the ME trilogy walked backwards in this area. Firefoghts got harder and harder to avoid, options were streamlined. In ME1, for example, it was entirely possible to get through Port Hanshan without a shot fired if you approached from the right angle. There were encounters like the corporate espionage with Manuel Vargas that gave you no less than six ways to handle the situation. As the trilogy progressed, we saw less of this. The investigative portions of Leviathan, as I said, were an interesting break.

It's entirely possible to write an intelligent RPG without reducing villains to moustache-twirling buffons (Illusive Man, Kai Leng).