99 réponses à ce sujet

[AlanC9]

StreetMagic wrote...

It also depends sometimes how close you are to the "oily shadows", I think. You can walk back from group of shadows to another and hear different lines.

I only heard intelligible lines today for the first time. In all my other playthroughs I found the kid so fast that all I heard was the  whispers.

[Reigned]

StreetMagic wrote...

Don't compare Kojima to Walters. As far as game writers go, he excels at the type psychological stuff this was going for.

Oh trust me Kojima takes the cake in comparison to Walters, just speaking more on the comparison of dream like states of protagonists in vidja games...

[TuringPoint]

That MGS sequence could've been interesting in ME3, maybe instead of a boss fight, taking place while he's unconscious.

It also would have been a total rip-off, but oh well.

The series was always a little disappointing when it came to big, emotional pay-offs. I enjoyed the journey immensely but I also find that for every good moment, there's something about it or the context of the moment that is lacking.

[Reigned]

Alocormin wrote...

That MGS sequence could've been interesting in ME3, maybe instead of a boss fight, taking place while he's unconscious.

It also would have been a total rip-off, but oh well.

The series was always a little disappointing when it came to big, emotional pay-offs. I enjoyed the journey immensely but I also find that for every good moment, there's something about it or the context of the moment that is lacking.

It worked extremely well in MGS3, I mean as I walked though, i couldn't help but feel like total poop as the blood curdling screams of my victims as they talked about the feeling of their head feeling as though it was falling off...it was something else. ME3 could have made those sequences more, but just placing the chase of the kiddie with some whispers intelligible or not was just lazy IMO

Edit: In the end, it was their vision in which they were going for, I just feel more could have been done to really get that PTSD/depression/all hope lost feel

Modifié par Reigned, 07 février 2014 - 07:31 .

[TuringPoint]

StreetMagic wrote...

It won't be remembered because the timeline is over, and no game setting there to comment on it. There won't be any games post ME3 apparently. Nothing matters, except what you're happy with "in the moment".

I see what Daemul is saying.  He's talking about the final sequence, after the galaxy has recovered some and looks back at Shepard's story.  

There is no game setting that would be interesting, or truly follow in Shepard's wake immediately after the ending of ME3.  There is, however, a future because of Shepard's actions.  It's not a game setting, and there's no way to continue in the same style or with the same type of storyline except for setting it far in the future.  In which case, you'd have three possible games.

Bioware did what they could with the resources they had.  The dream sequences had a lot of effort put into them, for being lazy.  There isn't anyone you can hold specifically accountable for that.  Would've made it a better experience if they'd put more into it though, that's for sure.

Modifié par Alocormin, 07 février 2014 - 07:35 .

[Daemul]

StreetMagic wrote...

Daemul wrote...

StreetMagic wrote...

Daemul wrote...

" And somewhere deep in the fabric of reality that choice will be remembered for eternity."-Padok Wiks

Don't worry. He's full of ****. Because, y'know, Shepard's dead and there will be no sequels or consequences, right?

Padok doesn't mean that there will be consequences for Shepard's actions, just that even if everyone forgets what Shepard did in that moment, it was always be rememebered in space and time. It's metaphysics. 

It won't be remembered because the timeline is over, and no game setting there to comment on it. There won't be any games post ME3 apparently. Nothing matters, except what you're happy with "in the moment".

Whether the choice ever comes up in another game or is completely forgotten about is irrelavent, that's not what Padok was talking about. He was being philosophical, "Your choice will be remembered in the fabric of the cosmos", that's all there is to it. It was poetical, not literal. 

Modifié par Daemul, 07 février 2014 - 07:58 .

[TuringPoint]

Hmm. You've talked about liking books though, and those don't involve play or interaction.

Just an observation... I'm not sure if I understand what you mean.

Modifié par Alocormin, 07 février 2014 - 07:41 .

[CronoDragoon]

CrutchCricket wrote...
The shadows and voices are background. The kid is always front and center. You do the same thing in the dreams, regardless of how many shadows and voices there are. So how is it not about the kid?

If it was really about death and destruction, you'd see the places that got destroyed and the people that died

But you do: that's what the forest of ash represents (destruction) and what the shadows represent (those that have been killed). As for the kid, do you dispute that he is used as a symbol? If you do there's no point continuing this discussion. If you accept that he is being used as a symbol, the question becomes for what?

In my interpretation the kid represents the current galaxy. Running from a threat it can never hope to escape (notice the Reaper blares when he tries to hide) and ultimately trusting in Shepard (Crucible) in the last dream, running into his arms. Then they both burn up, revealing Shepard's worst fear that the path on which he has set the galaxy has doomed them.

I mean if you hate symbolism as StreetMagic does, then fine. Personal taste and all. If you don't think they executed the symbolism well then fine, maybe they should have done the dreams a bit differently (for one, they should be freaking skippable in subsequent playthroughs. Slow-mo sucks to replay). All I want is to establish that Shepard is NOT having these nightmares just because he saw the kid die.

Modifié par CronoDragoon, 07 février 2014 - 07:42 .

[CronoDragoon]

Daemul wrote...
Whether the choice ever comes up in another game or is completely forgotten about is irrelavent, that's not what Padok was talking about. He was being philosophical, "Your choice will be remembered in the fabric of the cosmos", that's all there is too it. It was poetical, not literal.

In other words, if a tree falls in a deserted forest, it still fell. The galaxy has a state of being that has changed in reaction to Shepard's action, even if no one knows it.

[TuringPoint]

I don't think the best stories were actually made with unlimited resources.  That's an illusion.  It's an excuse to ask for more.  The first Star Wars trilogy was quite good; the second had a more unlimited budget, and wasn't as good.  It wasn't as unique; but it was higher budget and they did more things with it.

In short, I suspect this maybe what you're thinking.  This is, anyway, what I'm thinking:  They focused so much on interactivity, they didn't have the resources to make it truly believable at the next level.  If they just made a story, we could've bought into it, it would've motivated the game play.

I hope the next installment of Mass Effect is better motivated, and has a richer context for the world; I feel like the world itself was given less weight than the PC's ego as the central player.  As a result... the central character died with the world he was a part of.

They focused on making an interactive story, the player being the central character, instead of making an interesting world and putting players in it.  I also feel they went a little far in changing the story and background in order to adjust the balance in the gameplay.  That would seem to be done for the sake of efficiently using resources.  As well, the War Asset system to account for choices.

What destroyed the War Asset system for me was the multiplayer.  If you play enough, it won't matter what choices you make in the end, save for a small choice with TIM where you might be able to convince him to off himself.  

Sure, you can get by without it.  But if you play multiplayer, your choices literally have no meaning.  If they'd put something in for all those choices, they would be exponentially increasing the expense and time to make the game.  So it's also a resource management thing.

Big part of what was wrong with DA 2 was resource management, but they seemed to still have richer dialogue than mass effect.  Dialogue that felt like conversation, rather than trappings for an action movie.

Modifié par Alocormin, 07 février 2014 - 08:05 .

[Pee Jae]

Heh. Welcome to my world. I already headcanoned that he doesn't exist. It's a vision the Catalyst puts in his head to gain sympathy with him/her. Else, why appear as the kid at the end?

So are the dreams.

[Daemul]

CronoDragoon wrote...

Daemul wrote...
Whether the choice ever comes up in another game or is completely forgotten about is irrelavent, that's not what Padok was talking about. He was being philosophical, "Your choice will be remembered in the fabric of the cosmos", that's all there is too it. It was poetical, not literal.

In other words, if a tree falls in a deserted forest, it still fell. The galaxy has a state of being that has changed in reaction to Shepard's action, even if no one knows it.

Modifié par Daemul, 07 février 2014 - 08:00 .

[TuringPoint]

I do feel, however, some of the best dialogue in the series was seen in ME3 and later in ME2. Even though certain things were attempted that were inadequately addressed.

To be clear I've always seen any number of things as inadequate, but I disagree with any decision that it's laziness. It could be bureaucratic laziness, but I don't really know.

In any case, I'm looking forward to ME4, if they can pull it off. And we've gone way off topic on this.

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

Well this is a case of "show the kid in the beginning" and "show the kid in the end." The kid obviously was Harbinger according to the rules, considering they showed the kid constantly through the entire story in Shepard's dreams of voices and oily shadows. But wait! We scrapped indoctrination theory!

So now the kid has to become something else. Let's see.... artistic symbolism! That's it! The kid symbolizes all those Shepard wasn't able to save. But then no one noticed the kid at any time. Anderson didn't notice or hear the kid; the soldiers didn't even acknowledge the kid's existence. And the dreams were of voices of the dead and oily shadows. And somehow the Intelligence was able to peer into Shepard's brain and extract an image of the kid and manifest as "the kid's ghost." But they dumped indoctrination theory. So this becomes very bad artistic symbolism, and a huge stretch on the part of the writers at this point: the ghost of the kid becoming some big guilt trip for Shepard not to kill the Geth and other synthetic life, and instead sacrifice him/herself for a more reaper-friendly ending. But that sounds so much like indoctrination theory, and they dropped that.

This means only one thing. Shepard is going crazy. Shepard was confined to a room having to watch a kid play with an aircraft for six months with this muscle bound meat head outside saying, "Hey," every five minutes. Shepard was playing solitaire on a table in front of the window with the only view of that rooftop and the kid every day for six months. They gave Shepard drugs during interrogations to extract the truth. And the drugs had a side effect on his/her brain. So Shepard imagined the kid in the shaft, and imagined the kid getting on the craft that got blown away, and imagined the kid in dreams. And eventually Shepard decides to snuggle up to the kid in the dreams just to make them stop. The message and symbolism of the last dream was this: "you're gonna die and join me." I mean how could it have been any more obvious? Here you just finally had your love scene with your waifu, and they interrupted it for this.

And listening to that last demotivational address to the troops, I've got to say that Shepard was definitely not fit for duty. They didn't even give Shepard a last cigarette. Come on Bioware. 

So I'm subscribing to the new one: CST - Crazy Shepard Theory. This is the only alternative to BWT or Bad Writing Theory since Indoctrination Theory is off the table.

Modifié par sH0tgUn jUliA, 07 février 2014 - 08:28 .

[Han Shot First]

The kid in the beginning was real.

Evidence for this is that the kid appears to be a real flesh and blood person, while the Catalyst does not. In contrast the Catalyst only looks like a V.I. hologram imitating a real flesh and blood person. If the child was some sort of Reaper mind trick all along, than why do the child from the beginning and the dream sequences and the Catalyst look different?

The Catalyst was simply playing a mind game by taking a form that was psychologically significant to Shepard. The child was real, the Catalyst's form was not.

Modifié par Han Shot First, 07 février 2014 - 08:32 .

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

The kid in the shaft and the ghost kid don't look different. They're the exact same model. The ghost kid just has a different effect applied to it. Bioware also used a doubling effect, but if you look closely, they have the same facial features, the same hoodie, and the same pants and hair. The lighting tricks also make them appear to be different.

[pattywagon]

Well the kid was tied to the indoctrination theory. In the codex you hallucinate people and voices, and have weird dreams which is tied to the kid. So the question is the ending, was Shepard imagining all of that after the explosion that had him black out for a few seconds? Or did everything happen, but destroy was the true ending as Shepard lives and the other options were tied to indoctrinated protagonists, Saren and the Illusive Man.

[Han Shot First]

sH0tgUn jUliA wrote...

The kid in the shaft and the ghost kid don't look different. They're the exact same model. The ghost kid just has a different effect applied to it. Bioware also used a doubling effect, but if you look closely, they have the same facial features, the same hoodie, and the same pants and hair. The lighting tricks also make them appear to be different.

They do look different. One looks like a real person. The other looks like V.I. hologram. They might have the same facial features or height and so forth, but they aren't identical.