Kai Leng is dreadful in comics. However, he wasn't in comics until after ME3 came out.
He was great in books, until Deception.
He was only in 1 book before Deception. He was a decent enough character in Retribution, but all subsequent portrayals pretty much ruined him as a character.
[meanwhile, at Cerberus HQ, North Wing, Sector 3, watercooler 73B]
Cerberus intern: Hey, what's the deal with that guy wearing the delumcore overlay. He kinda creeps me out, and I think he's been eating my Oaty bars.
Cerberus secretary: Shut up! Do you have a death wish?
Cerberus intern: What are y..GURK! [blade through chest]
"Cerberus thanks you for all your hard Oaty Bars."
"Cerberus thanks you for all your hard Oaty Bars."
Can someone make an image or artwork of Kai Leng chasing the Lucky Charms Leprechaun?
Or him being chased by the Silly Rabbit?
He was only in 1 book before Deception. He was a decent enough character in Retribution, but all subsequent portrayals pretty much ruined him as a character.
Ah, I forgot.
Can someone make an image or artwork of Kai Leng chasing the Lucky Charms Leprechaun?
Or him being chased by the Silly Rabbit?
Now I have to do this. I'll be back soon lol.
I disagree. He was given a bit more characterization and background that was pretty much undone completely by Deception, and non-existent in ME3. ME3 didn't have him doing much of anything at all beyond plot armor and whining.
Don't really disagree with the Deception part given what I've read, but I think there's very little to latch onto in Retribution, and he is, after all, at least partly influenced by indoctrination in ME3 ("indoctrinated presence detected"). He's also not the first boss to bounce back after a curb-stomping (Saren on Virmire), and I do appreciate the context his conversations with TIM adds to the story through the Cronos videologs.
The email is, and forever will be, unfortunate. Much like Benezia's "light" comment.
Don't really disagree with the Deception part given what I've read, but I think there's very little to latch onto in Retribution, and he is, after all, at least partly influenced by indoctrination in ME3 ("indoctrinated presence detected"). He's also not the first boss to bounce back after a curb-stomping (Saren on Virmire), and I do appreciate the context his conversations with TIM adds to the story through the Cronos videologs.
The email is, and forever will be, unfortunate. Much like Benezia's "light" comment.
The big thing about Saren is that he isn't portrayed in the combat itself as being in trouble versus the 'DAMN, I need to recharge my shields, cover me!' Saren does his own work, whereas Leng never really physically beats Shepard himself (who, in cut-scene grabs the idiot ball, and as an aside, watching David squirm over this was a day-maker), having to rely on the gunship to do the dirty work by unleashing a full missile salvo on Shepard while Leng has to walk by casually.
He's also not the first boss to bounce back after a curb-stomping (Saren on Virmire), and I do appreciate the context his conversations with TIM adds to the story through the Cronos videologs.
I'm not a fan of that in ME1 either but the cutscene on Thessia was much more overindulgent.
I didn't read the books, so I only heard of things like cerealgate through the forum, but I'd say everybody got a good impression of him from his email if not from his baffling plot-armor. In an ideal Mass Effect rewrite Kai Leng would be played entirely for laughs (a one-shot dead enemy in some minor side mission) or maybe a pro-Cerberus squadmate. There's room for an anti-Shepard (Dean the Young's Lanius rewrite does this well with the Butcher) as a human face for the enemy, but an absurd ninja with an inferiority complex ain't filling it.
I didn't read the books, so I only heard of things like cerealgate through the forum, but I'd say everybody got a good impression of him from his email if not from his baffling plot-armor. In an ideal Mass Effect rewrite Kai Leng would be played entirely for laughs (a one-shot dead enemy in some minor side mission) or maybe a pro-Cerberus squadmate. There's room for an anti-Shepard (Dean the Young's Lanius rewrite does this well with the Butcher) as a human face for the enemy, but an absurd ninja with an inferiority complex ain't filling it.
That's actually exactly what I'm doing in my rewrite.
That's actually exactly what I'm doing in my rewrite.
It's been a while since Praetor/Regenesis were publicly available, but I remember you had a lot of good ideas for missions and gameplay (there was a SPECIAL style system, cool new squadmate ideas, and missions for each background/squadmate in each game).
It's probably not close to finished yet, but have you considered making it public again? Peer review can always help, and it would be cool to see it again.
It's been a while since Praetor/Regenesis were publicly available, but I remember you had a lot of good ideas for missions and gameplay (there was a SPECIAL style system, cool new squadmate ideas, and missions for each background/squadmate in each game).
All of those are still in there.
It's probably not close to finished yet, but have you considered making it public again? Peer review can always help, and it would be cool to see it again.
At some point, yeah.
Let's look at the evidence shall we?
Mass Effect 1 - They feature in a small, villainous role in a side mission. They are not shown being unfeasibly wealthy or powerful. They use subtlety to achieve their goals, and try to suppress any evidence of their existence.
Bullshit. They got Rear Admiral from Alliance spooked and on the run and still managed to assassinate him. They have three different research labs (though presentation of those labs was as poor as any other ME 1 copy-paste building) and they research specimens like Rachni and Thorian husks there. Specimens not even mighty Council was aware of before Shepard and his friends.
Then any rational being would make a question how they gained those highly classified specimens without them being in cahoots with ExoGeni Corporation and Binary Helix.
They had a lot of reach, power and wealth as was presented already in ME 1.
Bullshit. They got Rear Admiral from Alliance spooked and on the run and still managed to assassinate him. They have three different research labs (though presentation of those labs was as poor as any other ME 1 copy-paste building) and they research specimens like Rachni and Thorian husks there. Specimens not even mighty Council was aware of before Shepard and his friends.
Then any rational being would make a question how they gained those highly classified specimens without them being in cahoots with ExoGeni Corporation and Binary Helix.
They had a lot of reach, power and wealth as was presented already in ME 1.
They key word here is "unfeasibly". They always had funding from political and corporate interests, but ME2 turned them into an organization richer, smarter and more influential than most of the galactic governments put together. Shepard cost 4 billion credits to bring back to life, and the original Normandy's Tantalus Drive Core already cost 120 billion credits, not including the remaining cost of the ship. Since the SR2 and its new drive core is about twice as large as the SR1's, the cost should be at least twice as high. That's not accounting for all the highly experimental technology that further drives up the price.
So a terrorist organization is good for something like 400-500 billion credits? And they still have the resources and funding to operate their other insanely expensive cells? Truly an asspull of epic proportions.
Also, how the hell Cerberus got Udina to work for them and assassinate entire Council?
They key word here is "unfeasibly". They always had funding from political and corporate interests, but ME2 turned them into an organization richer, smarter and more influential than most of the galactic governments put together. Shepard cost 4 billion credits to bring back to life, and the original Normandy's Tantalus Drive Core already cost 120 billion credits, not including the remaining cost of the ship. Since the SR2 and its new drive core is about twice as large as the SR1's, the cost should be at least twice as high. That's not accounting for all the highly experimental technology that further drives up the price.
So a terrorist organization is good for something like 400-500 billion credits? And they still have the resources and funding to operate their other insanely expensive cells? Truly an asspull of epic proportions.
ME2 also established that Cerberus had a hand in the SR1's construction as well.
Personally, I don't mind it too much, since just about every major corporation, and even the Alliance, continues to keep their hands dirty funding them in exorbitant sums.
I always found it amusing how this highly secretive organization felt the need to brand everything they touched.
I'm guessing Shepard him/herself was likely branded with a logo to the skin during the Lazarus project... it's probably located in the lower reaches, near the bottom.
I always found it amusing how this highly secretive organization felt the need to brand everything they touched.
I'm guessing Shepard him/herself was likely branded with a logo to the skin during the Lazarus project... it's probably located in the lower reaches, near the bottom.
It's likely nobody knew or understood what the logo stood for, or that it represented something else entirely.
The only people who knew what it was were people who had acute dealings with Cerberus, like Jack, and the Quarian fleet.
I think shepard docking the sr2 with a big **** off cerberus logo on it at the citadel in me2 might have just been a clue as to what the symbol meant.
Especially when you bring Jacob and miranda with their corporate get up too.
Hell might as well have handed out leaflets.
I disagree. I doubt the people of C-Sec or the mainstream alliance knew or cared about the Cerberus logo. Cerberus didn't really become a big galactic boogeyman until ME3. If I remember right, the logo was actually used by one of their engineering companies that serve as a front for Cerberus. Most people would likely assume it's some kind of prototype-vessel being used by corporate powers.
Miranda and Jacob were probably seen as employees.
I think the Alliance was still pretty cozy with Cerberus during the events of ME2. Why else would an "avowed enemy of the Council" be permitted to have any kind of presence on the Citadel, and Anderson can freely converse with nameless Cerberus peons on the Presidium?
I think the Alliance was still pretty cozy with Cerberus during the events of ME2. Why else would an "avowed enemy of the Council" be permitted to have any kind of presence on the Citadel, and Anderson can freely converse with nameless Cerberus peons on the Presidium?
I think Cerberus in ME3 was meant to be a much more complex villain with a lot more of a complex ideology and strategy. Sort of like SEELE or NERV from Evangelion.
Lack of time, resources, and a questionable writing ability from Mac Walters got us what we got instead.
Cerberus having a huge amount of resources isn't necessarily the problem. From what I remember, it was pretty clear in ME1 that corporations like Exogeni essentially owned the Alliance. Cerberus was a lot like Blue Sun from Firefly, a shady coalition of secret labs, military leaders, politicians, and elite operatives doing things the Alliance needed done unofficially. I think it would have been cool if it had stayed that way. Imagine ME2 if there were hints all throughout that, rather than the Alliance just allowing your actions, you had never actually stopped working for them. The human carry-over into the sequel trilogy (akin to the Genophage choice or Geth-Quarian peace) would be how you handled Cerberus (their continued presence/exposure/takeover changing both the reputation of humans in the galaxy and how we actually operate).
Instead they all turned evil in a quest to control the Reapers. No moral dilemmas, no shades of grey. If we had been allowed to agree with Cerberus then Control might not have seemed so out of nowhere.
The only problem being the SB doesn't fulfill the same ethical role that Cerberus does in the trilogy. Cerberus' views about human dominance and such are as important as anything else about them to the story.
The Shadow Broker would have made a plausible ally in ME2, while Cerberus could have very well filled the role of personal antagonist/darkside of humanity by playing the role of the Collector's proxy rather than opponents.
As for the idea of Cerberus in retrospect-
I enjoyed the concept of Cerberus far more than I enjoyed the particulars of the execution. There were always flaws with how they were presented (namely most of what was intended to make them morally dubious instead came off as incredibly stupid), but there were also some solid strengths. I don't think Mass Effect would have been as good without them, but I don't think it needs them going forward.
The most notable of which was the Illusive Man. As a foil, quasi-antagonist, and independent actor, he carried the trilogy further than any other antagonist character. Martin Sheen was an excellent casting for the role, and his performance in ME2 went a long way in establishing the tone, the tension, and the style of sleek danger and gain that ME2 relied on. I believe he was also important in ME3 because the Reapers have always been more of a context for the drama rather than the primary actors in the series. The Reapers, whether as a force of nature or looming danger, have been the backdrop against which everyone else acts, rather than the personalities themselves, so Cerberus and TIM having a hand in the drama of ME3 was consistent.
In ME1, Cerberus was a minor party and there's not much more to say. Their role and identity, as a rogue Black Ops group, made sense. If Cerberus didn't already exist, I would have demanded the setting create one. This was also the period at which they made the most sense in terms of scope and style: they relied on subterfuge and secrecy, covering their tracks, and their experiments were aimed towards potentially game-changing weaponizable breakthroughs. It fit the xeno-political tensions of the setting and the idea of Humanity as a rising/catch-up power that was challenging the status quo.
In ME2, Cerberus was expanded in a lot of ways. It was at it's ideological peak, in that it could articulate an ideology that many different sorts of people could agree with sincerely (including the Normandy crew), it wasn't blinded to the benefit of working with aliens and outsiders, and we had a number of good thematic points at which the premise of greater good for Humanity was both reasonable and terrifying when taken further. You didn't have to be a super-bigot to be willing to work with them, and while I dislike how we were made to work with them I feel it made sense that a private extremist group would be willing to focus on something smaller that the Alliance couldn't/wouldn't.
On the other hand, other parts of the Cerberus expansion made little sense. While the intelligence arm was interesting and semi-plausible in the 'it takes crazies to see the data in different ways', the financial and technological capability stretched disbelief. But the worst part of ME2 was that while Cerberus was ideologically sound, it was tactically incompetent. Instead of an organization of frightening competence and ability, the constant slew of disasters, failures, and resulting clean-ups by Shepard made Cerberus out to be a group of mad scientists and incopetents who could only succeed because of Shepard. Which applied to everyone, including the Alliance, but for a group that was supposed to be impressive it, well, wasn't.
ME3 flipped it all. Cerberus became tactically competent: a feeling not only reinforced by the well-balanced combat system and balanced enemies and military precision, but the way they fought in most of the missions encountered. The missions generally had a clear goal with an obvious gain, Cerberus success was plausible and even likely until Shepard intervened, and there were the other little things. Little pieces like Cerberus sabotaging the lift on Mars to hinder pursuit and falling back when defending the archives, or the suicide mission on Surkesh in which they call out positions as they track the target, and the entire propoganda effort on Grissom Academy. They fought and felt like a real danger that you had to take seriously when the bullets started flying. I even liked the idea of using the Collector Technology implants to make all their forces out of random people- that was an idea I think should have been coopted as a potential war asset gain or something.
But the ideology and strategy... it was a mess. Ideology was largely thrown out for the crutch of indoctrination, except apparently some undertones that the indoctrination was ideological in some manner. The Illusive Man claims a strategy, but precious little in the game ever clarifies how it was supposed to work or what most of the Cerberus missions had to do with achieving it. Cerberus lost all the ambiguity to become totally evil, down to the point of making all those willing volunteers of ME2 hired useful idiots to the 'real' Cerberus, while very few of their actions ever fit into any presented or plausible game plan for anything approaching a short or long term strategy. Control is never treated as a credible alternative, Cerberus goes around picking fights that only put more distance and resistance between them and their goal of Control, and Kai Leng made a terrible foil to Shepard. (Clone Shep was far better at that, even if it was just for the Power of Friendship.) No one else benefits from anything they do, not even other humans or some vague idea of human interests, as every act of sabotage or weakening other factions they do will become moot if they succeed (or fail) at controling the Reapers.
And the most galling point of it all was that there was no real need for Cerberus to be an antagonistic fighting force. Mars could have been the set up for Cerberus trading the Cruible plans to the Council in exchange for a seat on the Crucible project, and even most of the Cerberus combat missions could have remained with Cerberus being in a tense frenemy situation as a sorta-ally but not really of the Alliance. Cerberus in the Genophage arc could have been them working a secret deal with the Dalatrass to keep her hands clean, etc. etc. Look in my story corner for more.
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