350 réponses à ce sujet

[crimzontearz]

Which is ... ? They're both terribly written, and, yes, Benezia is absolutely as annoying, from her rant on motherhood and the fact that she's closed off a part of her mind to indoctrination (lol) to "No light ...".
 

No, but you can defeat him just as quickly as you can defeat Saren on Virmire, and he still stalls the plot long enough to kill Ash or Kaidan. I didn't like the letter either.
 

That's not actually the writing's fault. That's a problem with visual assets, which, I agree, weren't the greatest. It'd be easy to tweak one or two things during the battle to make it a very fitting death for either character, though.

1: no she is not, I have been here since ME1 wasannounced and I have NEVEr seen the level of hatred  generated by Leng in regards to Benezia. Sure, poor writing, bt no way near as annoying. Also...why exactly take her rant on motherhood seriously given her state?

 

2: Non sequitur, Kai Leng defeats you and foils your plan to get Vendetta (which later causes basially the entirety of priority earth) while you foil Saren's plan....entirely different

 

3: uhhhhhh....WHAT??? My Shepard turned into a freaking MORON for the whole scene. I take Garrus (Ubersniper armed with a Widow X), Liara  and my Shepard toting a Sabre rifle (being a vanguard). At 5 meters distance NO ONE takes the goddamn shot? at all? even when he postures Thane? I mean Iam no N7 operative but I have competed agonistically in shooting tournaments and at 5 meters with ALL that time I could have planted several rounds with nearly no risk of missing. But nope....Kai Leng's powers must really be to make people go derp around him.

[AlanC9]

Is the question who was more hated, or who was worse written?

[crimzontearz]

Is the question who was more hated, or who was worse written?

hated...my point was that poor writing is alleviated/aggravated by other factors (like emotional payoff/a good ending/a goddamn crappy one)

[AlanC9]

I think you're on to something here. Lore arguments are always proxies for a real issue that has nothing to do with the lore, and plausibility arguments are almost always proxies for a real argument about emotional fulfillment. The problem with the Kai Leng fights isn't that they're contrived, it's that Shepard doesn't win them.

[dreamgazer]

1: no she is not, I have been here since ME1 wasannounced and I have NEVEr seen the level of hatred  generated by Leng in regards to Benezia. Sure, poor writing, bt no way near as annoying. Also...why exactly take her rant on motherhood seriously given her state?

Oh, good. Then we can dismiss Kai Leng's letter, too, since he was in an indoctrinated state as well.

And I bet Benezia would have received the same beating had she been the henchman in ME3, given how adamant certain BioWare fans were to pick on anything and everything ME3-related. Yep, both are bad, and Boobs Benezia is just as annoying, even if she wasn't more "hated".
 

2: Non sequitur, Kai Leng defeats you and foils your plan to get Vendetta (which later causes basially the entirety of priority earth) while you foil Saren's plan....entirely different

Not entirely different at all. Both lead to forced negative repercussions in the plot after a lopsided battle, and that's after you've already located the Prothean Beacon and spoken with Vendetta. Leng got away with him before he could explicitly explain what the Catalyst was, but it wasn't a total "foil".
 

3: uhhhhhh....WHAT??? My Shepard turned into a freaking MORON for the whole scene. I take Garrus (Ubersniper armed with a Widow X), Liara  and my Shepard toting a Sabre rifle (being a vanguard). At 5 meters distance NO ONE takes the goddamn shot? at all? even when he postures Thane? I mean Iam no N7 operative but I have competed agonistically in shooting tournaments and at 5 meters with ALL that time I could have planted several rounds with nearly no risk of missing. But nope....Kai Leng's powers must really be to make people go derp around him.

Yep. Tweak one or two things about the battle, and defending the Dalatress would've been a noble way for either of them to go. And no, that's still not the writing's fault, because the scene was likely written without the precise action beats. You also have to remember that Leng's at about Shepard's level of physical resilience, due to his own upgrades. But I guess they should've given you the chance to fire off a few at Leng, or instead hit Thane or Kirrahe in the process.

[AlanC9]

Not entirely different at all. Both lead to forced negative repercussions in the plot after a lopsided battle, and that's after you've already located the Prothean Beacon and spoken with Vendetta. Leng got away with him before he could explicitly explain what the Catalyst was, but it wasn't a total "foil".

But I think he's right about the overall feel of the scenes. Thessia is supposed to feel like a defeat, and does. Shepard doesn't get anything useful from Vendetta, and the trace to Horizon only comes up later. Virmire is pitched more along the lines of a costly victory, since Shepard gets away with the imprint from the second beacon and destroys the krogan breeding facility.

Note that the original Thessia script outline was pretty explicit about Shepard losing:
 

Shepard must convince A/K he's not a murderer and that Kai Leng is the true enemy, or he'll have to kill her. With A/K resolved, Shepard then has an epic battle with Kai Leng and Cerberus reinforcements over who gets the Prothean (still frozen a trance). The war outside intensifies, with windows, roofs, walls, etc. blowing out in bomb attacks, giving a spectacular view of Thessia under fire. Kai Leng wins the fight regardless, sending Shepard crashing down through a stain-glassed window. The last thing Shepard sees before he blacks out is Kai Leng leaving with his new Prothean prize.

I don't know where this gets us, though. In Wing Commander 3 mission Loki-3 is just as unwinnable as Thessia and has even worse consequences, and I don't remember fans freaking out back then.

[wolfhowwl]

His writing is deeply flawed and bends lore, too, along with being guilty of "Rule of Cool".  

 

From Vigil's info-dump to the Saren-Sovereign link, there are plenty of problems and contradictions to pick at in ME1's ending.

 

ME1 certainly had some issues and I think it suffered from using the four area "BioWare formula," but its story while not the greatest is still much better than its successors. Also after reading Final Hours of Mass Effect 3, I have the strong impression that the dominance of Cerberus from ME2 on that sucked up so much oxygen in the series was the doing of Mac Walters. Perhaps under a different lead writer their role and some of their more extreme aspects would have been toned down.

 

Then again, ME1 has an ancient evil trying to kill us, a precursor race knows how to stop them, only the PC can understand them, throw in a healthy dose of Revelation Space...this stuff writes itself. Who knows how Drew would have been able to guide the ship when they moved into uncharted waters with the sequels. Regardless of who was in charge, the trilogy still would have suffered from a failure to lock down basic plot arcs and obvious things like the Reaper's motives early on, a failure which does rest on Drew and the others in leadership positions at the start of the trilogy.

[Sanunes]

 

I don't know where this gets us, though. In Wing Commander 3 mission Loki-3 is just as unwinnable as Thessia and has even worse consequences, and I don't remember fans freaking out back then.

 

I think there are several key factors, social media becoming more prevalent, EA's current reputation, the attachment people had to Shepard and company, and what felt (at least to me) the lack of conclusion in the first two Mass Effect games.

 

The thing I find funny is the ending to Assassin's Creed 3 felt like it had the same issues a lot of people around here talk about having with Mass Effect 3, but it also didn't get the same criticisms either.

[shepskisaac]

ME1 certainly had some issues and I think it suffered from using the four area "BioWare formula," but its story while not the greatest is still much better than its successors. Also after reading Final Hours of Mass Effect 3, I have the strong impression that the dominance of Cerberus from ME2 on that sucked up so much oxygen in the series was the doing of Mac Walters. Perhaps under a different lead writer their role and some of their more extreme aspects would have been toned down.

 

Then again, ME1 has an ancient evil trying to kill us, a precursor race knows how to stop them, only the PC can understand them, throw in a healthy dose of Revelation Space...this stuff writes itself. Who knows how Drew would have been able to guide the ship when they moved into uncharted waters with the sequels. Regardless of who was in charge, the trilogy still would have suffered from a failure to lock down basic plot arcs and obvious things like the Reaper's motives early on, a failure which does rest on Drew and the others in leadership positions at the start of the trilogy.

Except that Drew was the lead on ME2 and left for TOR at the point no huge changes to the plot could happen anymore. So yeah.

 

 

 

The thing I find funny is the ending to Assassin's Creed 3 felt like it had the same issues a lot of people around here talk about having with Mass Effect 3, but it also didn't get the same criticisms either.

 

Lol I don't even wanna remember that one. At least ME3 attempted something, good/bad/horrible results regardless. AC3 ending was basically "huh, guess we need to end Desmond story, ok, bam, done, buy AC4".

[wolfhowwl]

Final Hours made it sound like a lot of ME2's story had been developed without him.

 

 

If Mass Effect was the wake-up call about the pending Reaper invasion and the third game was to become an all-out war against them, he, Karpyshyn and Mac Walters needed a good second act to the story. (Karpyshyn left the team shortly after Mass Effect 2 began production to focus on the development of BioWare's latest release, the massively multiplayer game Star Wars: The Old Republic.)

 

Walters and Hudson centered in on a dirty dozen story in which Shepard would spend the second act of the game canvassing the galaxy to recruit what he called "commandos" in his notes. This diverse group of characters - including familiar faces from the first game - would team up with Shepard to fight a mysterious force known as the Collectors. Somehow tied to the Reapers, these aliens were wiping out human colonies around the galaxy. The second game would culminate in a massive battle, a so-called suicide mission in which many of the characters could perish - including the player's Commander Shepard.

 

The sequel also gave Walters a chance to bring back his idea for the shadowy organization of Cerberus, only briefly hinted at in the original game. Hudson ran with this idea and suggested that the organization be run by a character he imagined would look like Anderson Cooper from CNN and act like Jack Baur's brother Graem from 24, a rogue charlatan who had enough power to tell the president of the United States what to do. The character would be known as the Illusive Man, a self-appointed protector of humanity who would do whatever is necessary - even outside the political system - to ensure the race survives and controls the Reapers. Martin Sheen was selected as the voice of the character.

[dreamgazer]

Hmm.  Makes you wonder what Karpyshyn actually wrote in ME2, though I'm still inclined to believe he's responsible for Lazarus, given the group of ideas he abandoned over Shepard's identity in the second game.  And I wonder if a lot of the responsibility was passed off on Walters since he was the one left around in the credits, even though Karpyshyn's ideas were likely in there and fleshed out already.

 

The thing I find funny is the ending to Assassin's Creed 3 felt like it had the same issues a lot of people around here talk about having with Mass Effect 3, but it also didn't get the same criticisms either.

 

The Ubi forums went ablaze after it, but yeah, it was a different situation.

 

And yes, ACIII's was easily worse (my pick for worst ending and by far my least-favorite game in 2012), but two factors differ between them: player agency and power-fantasy. 

[dreamgazer]

But I think he's right about the overall feel of the scenes. Thessia is supposed to feel like a defeat, and does. Shepard doesn't get anything useful from Vendetta, and the trace to Horizon only comes up later. Virmire is pitched more along the lines of a costly victory, since Shepard gets away with the imprint from the second beacon and destroys the krogan breeding facility.

 

I suppose, but they're still guilty of largely the same things on a mechanical level. 

[AlanC9]

Agreed, but the whole argument is about feelings, not facts.

[CptFalconPunch]

His writing is deeply flawed and bends lore, too, along with being guilty of "Rule of Cool".  

 

From Vigil's info-dump to the Saren-Sovereign link, there are plenty of problems and contradictions to pick at in ME1's ending.

 

I wouldn't say it is deeply flawd and in ME1 there are no lore bends that I can recall. Rule of cool means that he will sacrifice good writting for cool scenes. Are you reffering to ME1 or ME2 here?

 

What is badly written about the vigil info dump and the saren sovereign link anyways? One contradiction about ME1's ending is how shepard can have control of "all" systems while sovereing needs saren to gain access to the citadel code. I'm sure there are more but are they anywhere close to breaking the suspense of disbelief?

 

Really, when you're making up a story in a book you don't have to take into account environemnts, mechanics, dialogue options, branching story paths etc. It is a lot more expansive and difficult to process. Frankly the sheer fact that they managed to pull it off is shocking. I think your opinion of him may have been tainted by his work for ME2, but he wasn't there the whole time and there is no coherent plot or story within it. If he made lazarus happen and he'd stuck around perhaps he would have given it more context.

 

But comparing him to.... come on.

[Stigweird85]

I'm still optimistic

 

The short "teaser" Casey Hudson mentioned that they listens to fans and they wanted to "move forward" I hope this means that whatever the next Mass Effect is that is isn't a prequel and that it takes place after the events of Mass Effect 3(even if it is 10,000+ years later) but I may be reaching with interpretation on that one.

 

I've been saying for ages the next one should take place in a post war world, millennia after the events of the Reaper War - long enough for even the Asari and Krogan survivors to die and for the events of the war to become no more than a myth or a legend.

 

I would have "The Shepard" become a deity to some(this could explain the N7 armor in the concept trailer as it became a symbol of "The Shepard" and there is more than enough Messianic comparisons in the three games)  To reflect the arguments in the community a war could be fought between those who believe he was the saviour and those who who believe he was indoctrinated and an agent of the Reapers. Couple that with the general power vacuum of having large chunks of species being wiped out and an interesting story is just waiting to be told.

 

TL:DR Version

 

Holy war between believers and non believers of The Shepard

Political war between different species trying to reclaim/gain power after Reaper War

 

Also isn't the team who are working on the next Mass Effect the same ones who did the fan service loaded Citadel DLC..

[crimzontearz]

Oh, good. Then we can dismiss Kai Leng's letter, too, since he was in an indoctrinated state as well.

And I bet Benezia would have received the same beating had she been the henchman in ME3, given how adamant certain BioWare fans were to pick on anything and everything ME3-related. Yep, both are bad, and Boobs Benezia is just as annoying, even if she wasn't more "hated".


Not entirely different at all. Both lead to forced negative repercussions in the plot after a lopsided battle, and that's after you've already located the Prothean Beacon and spoken with Vendetta. Leng got away with him before he could explicitly explain what the Catalyst was, but it wasn't a total "foil".


Yep. Tweak one or two things about the battle, and defending the Dalatress would've been a noble way for either of them to go. And no, that's still not the writing's fault, because the scene was likely written without the precise action beats. You also have to remember that Leng's at about Shepard's level of physical resilience, due to his own upgrades. But I guess they should've given you the chance to fire off a few at Leng, or instead hit Thane or Kirrahe in the process.

1: No, they are both "dismissable" but one passes as a "nanna nanna nanner" moment to ****** you off once you are forced to lose and the other passes as a crazed rant....TOTALLY different.

[crimzontearz]

Double post

[KaiserShep]

Regarding Benezia and Kai Leng, I can't help but weigh them primarily on the quality of their deaths, and Benezia's death is corny enough to give someone pellagra. Leng may have been a cyberninja mixed with the Noid (sans pizza sabotage), but omniblading him in the gut kind of makes it all worth it. It kind of helps that he doesn't really say much, and certainly does not suddenly lament the lack of a clear path to the afterlife. That stupid letter does kind of serve against him. Like, he just logged in on someone's terminal...to send this? In his place, if I'm gonna just be a puerile dick in space, I'd might as well just go for gusto and send selfies too.

[HenkieDePost]

Regarding Benezia and Kai Leng, I can't help but weigh them primarily on the quality of their deaths, and Benezia's death is corny enough to give someone pellagra. Leng may have been a cyberninja mixed with the Noid (sans pizza sabotage), but omniblading him in the gut kind of makes it all worth it. It kind of helps that he doesn't really say much, and certainly does not suddenly lament the lack of a clear path to the afterlife. That stupid letter does kind of serve against him. Like, he just logged in on someone's terminal...to send this? In his place, if I'm gonna just be a puerile dick in space, I'd might as well just go for gusto and send selfies too.

If Mass Effect 3 was created in 2014 we probably would have gotten a Kai Leng selfie with the Illusive Man after Thessia.

[crimzontearz]

Oh, good. Then we can dismiss Kai Leng's letter, too, since he was in an indoctrinated state as well.

And I bet Benezia would have received the same beating had she been the henchman in ME3, given how adamant certain BioWare fans were to pick on anything and everything ME3-related. Yep, both are bad, and Boobs Benezia is just as annoying, even if she wasn't more "hated".


Not entirely different at all. Both lead to forced negative repercussions in the plot after a lopsided battle, and that's after you've already located the Prothean Beacon and spoken with Vendetta. Leng got away with him before he could explicitly explain what the Catalyst was, but it wasn't a total "foil".


Yep. Tweak one or two things about the battle, and defending the Dalatress would've been a noble way for either of them to go. And no, that's still not the writing's fault, because the scene was likely written without the precise action beats. You also have to remember that Leng's at about Shepard's level of physical resilience, due to his own upgrades. But I guess they should've given you the chance to fire off a few at Leng, or instead hit Thane or Kirrahe in the process.

No, they are both "dismissable" but one passes as a "nanna nanna nanner" moment to ****** you off once you are forced to lose and the other passes as a crazed rant....TOTALLY different. BUT you are now both right and sustaining my point. The bad writing of Benezia would have taken more of a beating from us in ME3 because of the context of ME3....just as I was saying. Emotional payoff lets you ovelook bad writing which leads me to...

Virmire is a costly victory, Thessia is a loss

Allow me to simplify. On Virmire you are supposed to stop Saren from breeding an army. You do so sadly at the cost of one of your friends' lives. But you win, your mission is accomplished.

On Thessia you are supposed to retrieve Vendetta. You DO NOT. On top of that you would have had, in the original vision of the scene, to lose one of your companions in a slow possibly heart wrenching way (you know the whole crawling to them thing). You are saved by an 11th hour hail Mary trace.

NOW...if that was not different enough Virmire (if played at the same overall plot progression level as Thessia) leads to Ilos, the epic showdown with Sovereign and Saren and an epic victory. Thessia leads to the Chronos station and priority earth and to the train wreck of an ending ME3 had. Now had ME3 ended with Shepard flying off in the sunset wielding a rifle in one arm and Liara -holding a blue baby- in the other after having kicked Harbinger in the daddy bags I am fairly sure the whole thing would have not even remotely as despised.

An example. I find the idiotic way we are forced to work for Cerberus pretty idiotic especially given how Shepard, in my run, gets re-instated immediately and has the human councilor and Hackett at his back (would have turned them in immediately) as well as how idiotic I found the "LALALALALA CAN'T HEAR YOU LALALALA CERBERUS TERRORIST" attitude of the VS in ME2....BUT...I won in the end and got back my woman in LOTSB, so it can be happily overlooked. If that happened in ME3 tho...oh boy

[KaiserShep]

If Mass Effect 3 was created in 2014 we probably would have gotten a Kai Leng selfie with the Illusive Man after Thessia.

 

Don't forget duck lips. It's just not complete without 'em.

[dlux]

I believe in Drew Karpyshyn.

 

I don't. Not much (any?) more than Mac Walters, at least.

How so?

His writing is deeply flawed and bends lore, too, along with being guilty of "Rule of Cool".  
 
From Vigil's info-dump to the Saren-Sovereign link, there are plenty of problems and contradictions to pick at in ME1's ending.

The Catalyst is the Citadel respectively the Catalyst controls the Citadel, correct? Yet the Cataylst can't open the mass relay in the Citadel to let the Reapers re-enter the galaxy.   
 
Making all of the events that lead up to the Reaper invasion seem completely pointless and grossly illogical is a feat that is really (isn't) hard to beat.
 
Just sayin'.

[crimzontearz]

The Catalyst is the Citadel respectively the Catalyst controls the Citadel, correct? Yet the Cataylst can't open the mass relay in the Citadel to let the Reapers re-enter the galaxy.

Making all of the events that lead up to the Reaper invasion seem completely pointless and grossly illogical is a feat that is really (isn't) hard to beat.

Just sayin'.

but...he wears an artist's hat!

[breakdown71289]

 



The Catalyst is the Citadel respectively the Catalyst controls the Citadel, correct? Yet the Cataylst can't open the mass relay in the Citadel to let the Reapers re-enter the galaxy.   
 
Making all of the events that lead up to the Reaper invasion seem completely pointless and grossly illogical is a feat that is really (isn't) hard to beat.
 
Just sayin'.

 

Wasn't that because the Citadel needed the Crucible in order for the Catalyst to be "turned on" though? I don't remember every detail about the ending, so I could be wrong on that, but that is what I remember.