Which is why later installments hurt he earlier ones. The answers we figured we'd get either weren't forthcoming, or turned out to be stupid.
This has unfortunately turned out to be the case with Metal Gear as well, in my opinion. Metal Gear Solid 3 is how you do it, I think: it contributes to the overall narrative but it works first and foremost as a self-contained story. I think Dragon Age does this well, too.
And what are these plotholes for ME1? Just asking, those that say it's a plot hole doesn't mean it is one. The main one of these are if STG team is saved and magically end up on your ship if you saved the one with bomb. But I imagined it as Ashely or Kaidan where injured and thus choice to hold them off for the salarians team to get away.Are you for real, man? If any part of a series has the possibility of being plothole free, it's the first.
Meaning that you would have liked the Reapers better if Bio just threw up their hands and left them making no sense? I don't see how that's better, but this is a taste thing.
I would have preferred that BioWare do a good job with ending the series as opposed to doing an awful one.
But you know, if I had to never see an ME3 versus what happened, yes, I actually would have liked that a lot better. Maybe BioWare could have never been bought out by EA and then gone bankrupt. As a consumer, I would have been better off.
Edit: And yes, pulling the plug out of your computer/console after "The best seats in the house" line still leaves the series in a better place, never knowing about the Reapers. Because that is how bad the explanation is.
Meaning that you would have liked the Reapers better if Bio just threw up their hands and left them making no sense? I don't see how that's better, but this is a taste thing.
well how they were written, it just makes them a bunch of idiots. Well Sometimes it is better to not explain them and let your imagination flow than be poorly written and facepalm.
Don't you think it's awfully convenient that a randomly picked geth (among billions) happened to one of the maybe half-dozen to witness the conversation?
She was also working extremely fast - in the ten hours it took Shepard to reach the Citadel, Tali disabled the geth, found the memory, travelled to the Citadel, got shot, went into hiding for a week and tried to sell the recording via Fist to the SB who dispatched Wrex to deal with the betrayl.
The only way I can reconcile this is that 1) Tali was on Eden Prime; 2) She was hiding in the security bunker pulling a Veetor; 3) The conversation between Saren and Benezia "Eden Prime was a major victory..." was done right after Saren had the geth set the bombs before he left, was overheard by the geth unit and that unit was one sent to reinforce, and it was not killed and Tali got the thing by pure luck. Tali killed it. Shepard didn't see Tali on Eden Prime.
Otherwise the irrefutable evidence is something that Tali could have pieced together from sound clips in her basement apartment. It could not have been one that Tali just happened to run into on a random planet, disabled the geth, found the memory, traveled to the Citadel, got shot, gone into hiding for a week, tried to sell it to the SB via Fist, etc. The numbers just don't add up. It is a huge plot hole.
But without this irrefutable evidence Shepard remains a nobody, and the reapers get into the galaxy and reap. This make Tali the most heroic character in the series.
Are you for real, man? If any part of a series has the possibility of being plothole free, it's the first.
Well done, champ. Ignore the suspension of disbelief explanation and focus on saying your thing. Ryriena pretty much cleaned up the topic, ME1, and ME2 for that matter, DO HAVE plot holes, but OVERALL EXPERIENCE they offer is brilliant so you don't care too much. ME3 has more bad stuff in it (throughout the entire game) and ends with a trainwreck, which BREAKS this will to overlook inconsistencies or fill them up with headcanon. It's really simple.
ME3 has more bad stuff in it (throughout the entire game)
Nah.
and ends with a trainwreck, which BREAKS this will to overlook inconsistencies or fill them up with headcanon. It's really simple.
Yep. If the ending was satisfying people wouldn't care.
You didn't explain how the Catalyst is "a walking plot hole". All you did was just extensively explain why you disliked it and how you would've preferred it to happen.
The whole point of my OP and this topic was to shed light on a major contradiction between the StarChild and Sovereign's role in the first game. A contradiction which can't be resolved without head-cannon, hand-waving or outright disregarding the first game.
If we are really to accept the Star-Child's existence then it means that the entire plot of ME1 never should have happened. Remember that the entire premise of the plot was centered around Sovereign trying to retake control of the Citadel so that he could open the Hidden Mass Relay inside of it. But the Star-Child is apart of and lives on the Citadel this entire time. It also created the citadel, reapers and mass relays which means that it knows everything about them and controls the reapers. It makes no sense for him to sit back and do nothing to correct an error in his carefully laid-out plan to prevent organics from being wiped out by synthetics.
Why can't he open the Mass Relay to dark space himself before or after ME1? Why couldn't he correct the keeper signal? Why didn't he disable the other half of the conduit that the prothean scientists used? Why not command the reapers to start on the long road early instead of waiting till after Sovereign blew their cover? Who designed the Crucible and also knew about the Star-Child (The catalyst needed to complete the Crucible)? How does the Catalyst know to take the form of a little boy that it never would have known about? Can it read minds? Then couldn't it read the minds of the prothean scientists and find out where they had come from and send Sovereign there? If the Reapers are meant to preserve advanced species, then how many species could not be preserved in reaper form like the protheans?
Since the Star-Child is part of the Citadel, what's stopping it from activating the relay with a thought if we go with the idea that he can't physically do anything himself? The signal disruption only targeted the connection between Sovereign and the keepers, the keepers are noted to still respond to the Citadel and who described the Citadel as being apart of him? If he were to activate the dark relay at any given time, how would he risk discovery? Especially if has the keepers do it? Or considering that the incoming reapers will leave no witnesses and therefore, no survivors who could pass on this information to future cycles? Star-Child states the Shepard is the first organic to ever meet him since the cycles started and even past cycles who happened to find out about the reapers never found about about the Citadel trap or the Catalyst. Was he ever even in danger of being discovered?
And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
The contradiction can't be answered with "He can't" or "He won't" because neither answer makes sense in the context of the Star-Child's presentation or the information that we are given. Even the most plausible explanations require a good deal of hand-waving or headcannon for them to work and there some decent ones within these 37 pages. They're just not enough, which is the point.
But come on. You introduce a major antagonist (or protagonist) of the story in the last ten minutes and have him change the context and central conflict of the whole story in one conversation and expect nothing to go wrong?
That's why I say it's best if he was just dropped altogether. Don't try to splice in foreshadowing or give him extra scenes, just get rid of him. If the EC had listened to the majority of fans who said to lose the Star-Child, then the EC would have been gloriously improved by this change alone. Because most of the major problems with the game can be traced back to this single character.
He embodies the abandonment of the series' Genre (Action-RPG Space Opera), the abandonment of the Central Conflict (The main conflict which drives the plot, ie, the fight against the reapers), the abandonment of Second World Integrity (Combination of suspension of disbelief, secondary belief, and immersion) and the destruction of Narrative Cohesion (How strong is your story flow after any plot holes or confusing things are added in?).
So yeah. I dislike Star-Child because he breaks the story.
Because of the ending people now go back and nit pick the entire series.
I think ME3 was worse.
But Cronodragon (Edit: and Julia are) onto this: People are willing to forgive you for your plotholes if your game rpg is satisfying. And when it is an abomination, they go back and start talking about all the things wrong with it and being merciless. Basically because the producers betrayed the point of why they were giving the benefit of the doubt in the first place.
(...) I asked you to explain how the Catalyst is a walking plot hole, as you said.
Catalyst is completely incompatible with preestablished game lore, namely the Reaper trap Sovereign needed to activate back in ME1. That's what this whole thread was about in the first place! If there was some sort of Reaper God or a Super AI sitting on the Citadel the whole time, and this God/AI designed the whole thing with cycles, then having a Reaper that needs to stay behind after all the rest of them have gone to dark space in order to activate the Citadel relay to let all the remaining Reapers in is idiotic.
Apart from that, the Catalyst is not foreshadowed in any way. It's a character with an absurd amount of supposed importance and power which appears Deus Ex Machina in the last 15 minutes of a 100h + trilogy.
The choices it presents are revolting. Its appearance is revolting - the idea that this AI presents itself to Shepard in the form of the vent kid, which suggests Shepard is more emotionally connected with this kid than with any other character in the series. It's logic is insane troll logic. It's an indefensible, shoehorned, rage-inducing piece of bull, and I cannot conceive of a mind of man who thinks it's ok to end a series with an abomination like it. Alenko out.
Are you for real, man? If any part of a series has the possibility of being plothole free, it's the first.
The question isn't whether a plothole exists, it's whether the plothole actually bothers somebody. I'm starting to think that expecting a rational argument to back up such feelings is just a mistake. The argument is there to justify the feeling, rather than the feeling being derived from the argument.
Because of the ending people now go back and nit pick the entire series.
Yeah, the ending's the root. People hate the ending, criticize the rest of ME3. In turn people criticize people criticizing stuff in ME3 that was also a problem in the first two games, proceed to criticize first two games. At the end of the day everyone feels worse about everything they like.
Nah.
Well, here's a quick list of things I disliked in ME3 other than the ending:
1) Cheap forced drama and attempts at amplifying it with sad piano music. Example - Grunt's Disney Death scene.
2) No neutral dialogue options. Seriously, WTF?
3) The fact that Diana Allers even appeared in the game.
4) Too much arcade stuff - arrows that appear when you are about to leave cover, stupid combat rolls and CoD-like little X marker every time you hit a target.
5) The beginning. Keeping Shepard locked up for 6 months and not doing anything about the imminent Reaper invasion just makes everyone in the Galaxy look like idiots. It also ties with...
6) ...overpowering the Reapers and...
7) ...making the war look like a lost cause from the beginning, with all planets and colonies getting annihilated and so on. It would have been cool, sensible and easy to use the preestablished lore and elements from the story so far to create feasible and dramatic solution to make the Reaper War incredibly hard and dramatic, but winnable in the end. I could really keep right on going on points 5, 6 and 7, but in the interest of keeping it brief...
8) Turning Renegade actions from action movie gold to sadistic evil psycho stuff.
9) Thane's death. Not that it happened, THE WAY it happened. Which brings about...
10) ...Kai Leng.
11) Cerberus Evil Sith Empire on Rocket Boots.
12) EDI's body.
13) Javik. Seriously, I hated him. I bought From Ashes without knowing what it was, there were rumours of a Prothean squadmate but I thought they were a joke, and then... Blaargh.
14) Multiplayer having effect on the story.
15) GODAWFUL weapon upgrade system. Seriously, I hated it. These 21st century silencers and optics look horrible on ME weapons. And they are 21st century optics, with one optic sight they just used a shape of a real life combat sight called ACOG and put it on a pistol... backwards.
16) The vent kid playing with Normandy model at the beginning, the vent kid in a vent, then dreams about vent kid. Although that falls into "forced drama" category.
So here you go, just of the top of my head. Not in order, not sorted from worst to least worst, just what I remembered now. And none of these were in previous games, except maybe for streamlining the dialogue at times in ME2. So yeah, there's a lot to dislike about ME3.
Edit: And yes, pulling the plug out of your computer/console after "The best seats in the house" line still leaves the series in a better place, never knowing about the Reapers. Because that is how bad the explanation is.
An obvious copout, a whole bunch of foreshadowing evaporating into nothingness....I would have hated that myself. At least, I think so; it's difficult to judge such a counterfactual. But I've been pretty consistent throughout my life in really disliking "mystery." Mysteries are fine, as long as they're solved.
I still could have looked over most of that stuff, Staffsgt, if, you know, the ending was satisfying. I would have complained about it, but I wouldn't have stopped buying BioWare products
An obvious copout, a whole bunch of foreshadowing evaporating into nothingness....I would have hated that myself. At least, I think so; it's difficult to judge such a counterfactual. But I've been pretty consistent throughout my life in really disliking "mystery." Mysteries are fine, as long as they're solved.
I don't know why it is a copout. I'm not a programmer. If I was I'd just go in there and rewrite the ending.
If something sucks, it isn't a copout to walk away from it. Are you coping out if you don't eat food that gives you diarhea? Or are you just smart?
Edit: It is fine with me if you want answers instead of not knowing. But let's face it, plenty of series have ended without satisfaction and haven't damaged the prior work done to it. Deadwood, the series, is a perfect example of an enforced constraint and an aborted series. But while the 3rd season just isn't much good, it doesn't ruin the prior enjoyment of the first two seasons, nor leave a swath of people who never want to watch an HBO series again.
On the other hand, the way Game of Thrones goes just might....
I still could have looked over most of that stuff, Staffsgt, if, you know, the ending was satisfying. I would have complained about it, but I wouldn't have stopped buying BioWare products
Oh, I'm with you on that one. Sadly, the ending acts as an amplifier for all these 
Actually, I just thought of three more:
17) The way the conflict between geth and quarians begins (because it completely omits Admiral Xen's mail from ME2, and it seemed to be very significant - it suggested that Rael'Zorah's research gave quarians a way to control the geth)
18) Tali's photoshopped face,
19) Filling the game with a crapload of ascended memes. Calibrations being randomly brought up at least three times etc. That stuff's cool and funny when fans do it on the internet, but shoving it into the game proper just damages immersion, IMHO.
Tali's photoshopped face, just awful.
The question isn't whether a plothole exists, it's whether the plothole actually bothers somebody. I'm starting to think that expecting a rational argument to back up such feelings is just a mistake. The argument is there to justify the feeling, rather than the feeling being derived from the argument.
For the first time I agree with what you said. That is how it works. Nevertheless, it doesn't make the arguments any less valid.
Ahahah, that video is hysterical
Made me remember soothing the ending pain with this:
EDIT: Damn, the audio went shoddy with time.
I don't know why it is a copout. I'm not a programmer. If I was I'd just go in there and rewrite the ending.
If something sucks, it isn't a copout to walk away from it. Are you coping out if you don't eat food that gives you diarhea? Or are you just smart?
Edit: It is fine with me if you want answers instead of not knowing. But let's face it, plenty of series have ended without satisfaction and haven't damaged the prior work done to it. Deadwood, the series, is a perfect example of an enforced constraint and an aborted series. But while the 3rd season just isn't much good, it doesn't ruin the prior enjoyment of the first two seasons, nor leave a swath of people who never want to watch an HBO series again.
On the other hand, the way Game of Thrones goes just might....
I meant that it would be a copout for the designers to throw their hands up like that, not that a player has to keep going on with something he doesn't like.
And yes, just because I think ending at "best seats in the house" would have been far worse than what we got doesn't mean that I expect you to agree. But I don't think that ending would have gone over very well.
For the first time I agree with what you said. That is how it works. Nevertheless, it doesn't make the arguments any less valid.
Or any more valid, which is why I still bother to engage with this stuff.
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