14 réponses à ce sujet

[Rainbowhawk]

Everyone knows the short comings of the final battle in Mass Effect 3 and how it was a step back from the Suicide mission. So I came up with a concept that could improve the mechanics of it.

(And just so you know, I'm not one of the haters who wants to scream my anger for what ever good it'll do to BioWare all the time and get nothing in return. I thought the ending was good the with EC even with the short comings of the final battle mechanics that I'm addressing)

So I thought the design of the War Assets was interesting with Multiplayer and Mobile games affecting things and I thought the plot of ME3 was fantastic with those emotional moments for the Genophage and Rannoch. The final battle and the actual ending on the other hand are the main source of hate from the fans. I will say that the final battle was indeed a short coming but it didn't ruin the experience since I had the Extended Cut. But I had an idea to make things better and more variable.

First off, the War assets are divided into three sections:

Fleet strength
Ground Strength
Crucible Strength

(The citadel war asset contributes primarily to Fleet strength.)

If you have a good crucible and ground strength but a bad fleet strength, the ground strength will be weakened and so will the crucible's strength when it's brought into the fray. Ground Strength determines the survival of characters on the ground not in your squad. And you have minor direction of troops at certain intervals of the push to the beam. And when you get to the beam, the overall strength of what is left of the forces determines the fate of the squad mates if they're killed by harbinger or if they're pulled out by Joker. Then after you get up to the Citadel after you barely survive dodging harbinger's beam and after you take down the Illusive man, you're still given the same choices as the Extended Cut. And after everything, the Crucible strengths determines the choices and the severity of the choices like the total assets do in the vanilla. The only thing that's different is that when you choose destroy with the best strength possible, you'll get a blink and you miss it hint in the epilogue that EDI and the Geth might have survived but just barely.

So I know that people are upset with the design choices. Many are angry that there wasn't a boss fight at the end. But here's why I felt the regular design was a good concept but under executed.

So if Shepard had to fight another boss at the end, he'd need to be fully equipped and everything to fight it. And I know people wanted that boss to be the illusive man. But here's what I believe BioWare wanted to do what they did.

It is confirmed that Bioware had planed an Illusive man Boss battle like the Saren boss battle in the first game but they scratched that Idea because it wasn't the Illusive man's character to be all brawn. And I figured that they scrapped the Boss battle because they wanted to do something different with Shepard.

In the end of the first two games, Shepard was a kicking badass with his squad mates bringing up the rear in the final boss and they gave their opinion on Shepard's big choice before the final shoot out (Save the fleet or let them burn and Destroy or save the collector base.) But in this instance, with the stakes so high, Shepard is in the opposite position. S/he's no longer strong and confident with his people behind him. S/he's severely wounded and on his/her last legs. This makes him/her feel desperate and uncertain about things because s/he's alone with no support. And when it comes down to the final choice, the writers wanted to put the player between a rock and a hard place where a blue dialog button won't fix it. And when you're presented with these choices, you don't have insight from your squad mates to tell you what they'd choose. It makes you think about all that you've seen and experienced through the trilogy and for you to weight the costs and benefits.

But anyway that's my idea on how to make the end battle better. What are you're thoughts about it?

[DeinonSlayer]

My thoughts are that they didn't make their case for inevitable synthetic-organic conflict. Putting autodialogue in Shepard's mouth concurring with glowbrat's babble ("there must be another way!" in response to the assertion that the chaos would come back if you choose Destroy) doesn't do anything to strengthen their case, it simply drives a wedge between the player and their avatar.

It's a case which could have been made with some smarter arguments. Putting words in Shepard's mouth and expecting us to roll with it was the lazy way out.

[ImaginaryMatter]

The problem with the Illusive Man in the ending is his very presence in the ending. He shouldn't have been included at all (although Cerberus shouldn't have been in ME3... or ME2). He should have been killed off on Cerberus station (which I include in the ending sequence as that is the point where no more side content can be completed). I don't want to get too into it because Cerberus makes me very angry -- more angry than the ending -- and I think their elevation was the biggest mistake made in entire series (and it's off topic I guess). But it boils down to the Reapers being the main enemies of the entire trilogy, with Cerberus being an obnoxious secondary antagonist. Having TIM present creates a climax right before meeting the actual one, it's extremely jarring.

 

Which brings me to the main problem of the ending, which only partly includes star kid and all his accompanying frustrations. The Suicide Mission after all isn't a paragon (har, har) of logical coherence, but it did do a lot of things right. It did adhere to things like a traditional dramatic structure, was well paced, reflected upon the themes, etc. There were large hiccups like the human Reaper but over all it was an enjoyable experience. Then there's ME3. Which has large amounts of very sloggish and exhausting fighting, awkwardly intruded upon by exposition of saying good bye to the squadmates... and then we head into the rollercoaster that is everything after the beam. The War Asset's could have been handled in a better way, and by that I mean implementing them into the gameplay. But that topic can be covered elsewhere on this thread and I want to tackle the pre-beam problem from a different angle. And this is by fixing that pacing problem by combining the good-bye bits with the shooting bits (which I think would help a lot).

 

So, since our attachment to this series is our beloved squadmates (and not the plot) the ending sequences should include them in a very large and personal role. Perhaps, the ending fight could be divided into segments of sorts (sort of like the SM or DA:O), with the combat theme focusing around a particular squadmate or maybe that squadmate and whatever race they belong to. Let's take Garrus for example. Garrus is a sniper, maybe there is a game segment where Shepard fights in the streets of London as Garrus picks enemies off from the rooftops. Before, the fighting gets too deep Garrus and Shepard share their goodbyes over radio contact; what they talk about varies depending on their friendship, past dialogue options, that C-Sec vs Spectre thing back from ME1. Ultimately, Garrus's arc is concluded and Shepard walks into the next theme. Liara involves biotic stuff, EDI hacks stuff, James bulldozes into things, Ashley and Kaidan complain (just kidding), Javik gets all the Vengeance a Prothean could ever ask for, and maybe the ME2 squadmates get evolved.

 

I'm not trying to say this is definitely how it should have been done. But the story telling of saying our final goodbyes should be tied into our gameplay, instead of keeping the two separated. Besides adding some variety it would make the fighting in London much easier to wade through. Instead of adding one brute, two brute, three brute, four brute; or doing something impersonal like defend a missile truck it would add some depth to gameplay.

 

My thoughts are that they didn't make their case for inevitable synthetic-organic conflict. Putting autodialogue in Shepard's mouth concurring with glowbrat's babble ("there must be another way!" in response to the assertion that the chaos would come back if you choose Destroy) doesn't do anything to strengthen their case, it simply drives a wedge between the player and their avatar.

It's a case which could have been made with some smarter arguments. Putting words in Shepard's mouth was the lazy way out.

 

The story almost says the exact opposite, like this conflict existed in the story but it's nature was completely different than anything the Catalyst was talking about (i.e. conflict exists because Organics are bigoted jerks). I agree with you that the ending might have been better if the ending was written more intelligently, with Shepard/player actually engaging in a dialogue with the Catalyst about the nature of the conflict in Mass Effect, reflecting on past experiences, dialogue trees, etc with no frustratingly ambiguous platitudes, metaphors, or explanations. The problem with this path though is that there isn't much to say, because the conflict was only a small facet of a much larger story.

[KaiserShep]

My thoughts are that they didn't make their case for inevitable synthetic-organic conflict. Putting autodialogue in Shepard's mouth concurring with glowbrat's babble ("there must be another way!" in response to the assertion that the chaos would come back if you choose Destroy) doesn't do anything to strengthen their case, it simply drives a wedge between the player and their avatar.

It's a case which could have been made with some smarter arguments. Putting words in Shepard's mouth was the lazy way out.

 

I wish I could've told the Catalyst what Shepard can tell The Illusive Man at Cronos.

 

Bullsh*t!

 

It's like the Architect tells Neo in The Matrix Reloaded.

 

"Denial is the most basic of human responses."

[dreamgazer]

I think it'd be as simple as allowing the selection of ground-based assets (a la Dragon Age: Origins) and cutscenes featuring the surviving squadmates resisting the Reapers.  Same end result, but with a taste of variety. And for the love of the Maker, ditch that turret. 

[SporkFu]

I think it'd be as simple as allowing the selection of ground-based assets (a la Dragon Age: Origins) and cutscenes featuring the surviving squadmates resisting the Reapers.  Same end result, but with a taste of variety. And for the love of the Maker, ditch that turret. 

That's a really good idea. I'd love to send in a unit of krogan to defend the thanix missile site. Like, Aralakh company, with Grunt in the lead. 

[Farangbaa]

More explosions

[AlanC9]

First off, the War assets are divided into three sections:

Fleet strength
Ground Strength
Crucible Strength

(The citadel war asset contributes primarily to Fleet strength.)

I mentioned the problem with this in the other thread. You'd need a wholesale restructuring of how WA points are awarded to make this meaningful. In a completionist game you'd max all the categories anyway, and if you missed assets the effect of the new system would just be random, since you typically don't know what type of asset is being awarded for a particular action. (Getting caught sabotaging the Genophage is one of the rare exceptions; even then, it's not like Shepard's planning to get caught.) The scanning game, for instance, can't be anything but random because you don't know what the assets are until you scan them. The "fetch" quests are effectively random too since you don't take particular actions to accomplish them; you get them while doing other stuff.

I'm not saying that it makes the idea unworkable, just that you need to work out how the awards would work too.

[von uber]

The turret section is the apex of the creative bankruptcy of the last mission.

[dreamgazer]

The turret section is the apex of the creative bankruptcy of the last mission.

 

I guess they felt that running across that exposed bridge without some kind of Reaper incursion would've been silly, so they threw it in there.

[AlanC9]

Honestly, I think the real problem with Priority:Earth is that it's just so damned ugly. ME1 ends in a long combat slog too, except that instead of some difficult horde mode it ends with a fairly dull boss fight. (And then some cutscenes and a silly boss fight, but I think that's more like an endgame than the final mission.) The difference is that ME1's slog looks kinda cool, and ME3's doesn't.

[KaiserShep]

The map did look like it was a bit rushed. I think the thing that always bugs me most though, is that we needed a reminder that we were in London with anachronistic telephone booths.

[TurianRebel212]

aaaahhhh the ending of ME3..... Still going at in huh BSN. Lol.

 

Yeah, it's bad. Or "off" I guess I should say.

[AlanC9]

aaaahhhh the ending of ME3..... Still going at in huh BSN. Lol.

It's what we do.

[Excella Gionne]

The only boss enemies were the two Reaper Destroyers.