Lastly, - for the rest of your post I'm not going to bother, because it's just the same vitriol you constantly spew out at the mention of this character's name and the Asari in general. (issues there I reckon) Not to mention EDI, Legion, Andersen, Garrus, Joker .. and on and on.
Makes you wonder why some people even play the damn game, if they hate everything about it so much...
Oh ho, this is turning into a Liara hate thread. Not had one of those for a while!
Just like old times.
All that said, I agree with Han, the dramatic change in her character was a surprise at first, but when you think about it a lot can happen in two years and Liara losing her mother then her bondmate as well could change anyone. And it's all done between games.
Bondmate? For you, not for me. My femshep wanted to throw her back in the volcano. So why would that change her in anyway about femshep dying?
Lastly, - for the rest of your post I'm not going to bother, because it's just the same vitriol you constantly spew out at the mention of this character's name and the Asari in general. (issues there I reckon) Not to mention EDI, Legion, Andersen, Garrus, Joker .. and on and on.
The game hasn't given me any reason to like those characters. The game has given me reasons not to like them.
Guest_Trust_*
I've been playing DA2 recently and I enjoyed it. I never heard of any "EA derped Dragon age" or anything like that, so why is that not the case for Mass Effect.?
Too bad you weren't around when DA2 was released. It was the worst sh!tstorm until the ME3 ending.
Eh, the SM Mechanic was a derp altogether (I'm using it because everyone else is dammit!)
That said, I'd say that BW does play favorites with their characters, and they always viewed the ME1 team as 'your team' for some reason. I disagree entirely with it.
Guest_john_sheparrd_*
Bondmate? For you, not for me. My femshep wanted to throw her back in the volcano. So why would that change her in anyway about femshep dying?
The game hasn't given me any reason to like those characters. The game has given me reasons not to like them.
so true especially when I replay ME3 I hate Liara simply because she is shoved down my throat at every opportunity
Worst case of a writer's pet if there ever was one
Oh ho, this is turning into a Liara hate thread. Not had one of those for a while!
Just like old times.
All relays lead to Thessia.
I was slightly dissapointed in the lack of player control in DA2, the mages for example. But from a DA3 perspective it makes sense if they really wanted to change things up in the next game.Too bad you weren't around when DA2 was released. It was the worst sh!tstorm until the ME3 ending.
I miss David. He could spice up threads like this.
Well rather than screwed over considering that shepard was placed under arrest I doubt most of the team was going to just stick around, plus if you think them as people not just as teammates then they have their own lives to live. But anyway, considering their approach to the ME3 was to give new players the same amount of content then I am surprised that we had some teammates returning at all.
so true especially when I replay ME3 I hate Liara simply because she is shoved down my throat at every opportunity
Worst case of a writer's pet if there ever was one
Guest_john_sheparrd_*
lol of course you didn't mind Liara's role in ME3
Guest_john_sheparrd_*
Post Mars.
Pre-monastery.
Thessia.
Yep, shoved. Face it, you hunt her out to talk to her
what about the capsule convo? or "Shepard are you ok?" conversations?
What about the fact that she is the only squadmate who can't die?
that she finds the crucible? that she is the Shadow Broker (albeit useless one)?
Who else can you romance in every game? Who has the best LI content?
saying that there wasn't too much Liara (especially with ME2 LI's getting shafted) is just silly
Well, Citadel did improve several of the ME2 LI's considerably. Miranda arguably has the best content for a male Shepard now. Meanwhile, other characters like Ashley were still more or less ignored even by Citadel. Not that I'm complaining. Something actually tells me the devs. didn't care for her much.
- what about the capsule convo? or "Shepard are you ok?" conversations?
- What about the fact that she is the only squadmate who can't die?
- that she finds the crucible?
- that she is the Shadow Broker (albeit useless one)?
- Who else can you romance in every game?
- Who has the best LI content?
- saying that there wasn't too much Liara (especially with ME2 LI's getting shafted) is just silly
Oh this is always fun.
Oh this is always fun.
- The first is optional, the second was covered in my original post. Who else would you have? James?
- She can die
- She is investigating Prothean archives as a Prothean archaeologist. Again, who else would you have find the plans?
- That could be seen as a stretch if you like (like a massively disturbed criminal becoming a teacher..). And she is only 'useless' (apart from, you know, finding the crucible) as they had to give Samantha a function.
- Kaiden / Ash, with exactly the same as Liara if you don't buy her DLC
- I don't know? Who does? Liara (if you don't buy the DLC) has zero in ME2. You have to pay for it.
- I'd say that Citadel vastly improves ME2 love interests, and in fact ME1 (LI) content is exceptionally sparse in comparison with the later games. So if you don't buy her DLC (i.e pay for more content featuring her) then you have the meh ME1 interactions where they are pretty much walking codexes, a brief cameo in ME2 (I note you don't complain about that) and 3 conversations in ME3. So no, it's not. Sure, she has some good points, but her romance in ME3 is really nothing special at all (Good to see you!). Samantha's is better
1. True, and this is one of the things I actually don't mind. What I do mind is the way its presented as a very intimate setting. It's one of those scenes that I think was made with the romance with Liara in mind and in which they didn't make an alternative.
2. But the circumstances of her death make it very contrived to kill her; You basically have to fail the game to do it. The only other characters where its like this are with James and Javik. You have no option of really not dealing with her at some point in the series. Now, you can and have made the argument that she is a necessary character as it is quite possible to have an ME3 game where there are no survivors from ME2 and ME1 to bolster the team (and not recruit Javik) and have 3 characters with you at all (being James, Liara, and EDI). But as I said, there is no way for her to die at any point in the series prior to a failure ending. And in that regard, actually only James is like that (and with him having only been introduced in the last game, it's not nearly as egregious as Liara's example). You have the option of not recruiting Javik and leaving him frozen forever (or until his pods power dies). And EDI can be destroyed through, well, the Destroy ending at high EMS. Every other character can be wasted at some point. You can have the squad wiped out in ME2, with only two survivors (such as thane and legion), and they both die in ME3. Tali and Garrus being dead from ME2, you can also put a round in the Virmire survivor on the Citadel.
3. I think (at least for me) that this issue comes down to her role in the plot being used as a device of exposition that accomplishes whatever the writers want her too at any moment. Liara was their go-to character for that. She was a Prothean researcher, then she became an intelligence broker, then she went back to being a Prothean researcher on a remote Prothean ruin while maintaining her galactic wide information organization while coordinating with allied military units on strategic planning, while researching advanced science on the Crucible, all while following you onto ground ops. She was a plot device used to fulfill the whims of whatever the writer needed at the moment.
4. Well, it's more of the inverse. Liara becoming the Broker is like a Kindergarten teacher that likes things nice and happy and innocent becoming a sociopathic criminal mastermind. And I do mean that unironically. I think that entire plot development was rather unrealistic in regards to Liara's character, and especially after how arbitrary the switch became after as the series progressed. This ties in with my last point on her being used as a plot device: the writers changed her role to be whatever was needed, and in the process made her come off as insufficient and even incompetent at some points to justify another character. They had Liara being a character who was a supposed expert at a variety of things, then having her be outpaced by some other character, all while being shilled to the player as 'very good at what she does'.
5. This point shouldn't necessarily be about quantity of the romance per se, as it is about the quality of the romances. In ME1, the quality was Liara, Ashley, and Kaidan, in that order. In ME2, Liara was the only one who could be romanced, with Ashley and Kaidan having a turbulent development in the relationship. Even outside of LotSB, you could nominally maintain a relationship with Liara in ME2, what with her not condemning you for working for Cerberus. And in ME3, the quality was Liara, Kaidan, and then Ashley. And even in DLC, as Liara got more content, Kaidan got slightly more than originally, while Ashley's romance was given a perfunctory acknowledgement even in the Citadel DLC.
6. Liara would probably be considered the character who got the most in content quantity and technical quality (though not general quality, which is a bit more subjective and harder to define). I mean, she practically gets a nude scene whereas others get fade-to-blacks at best in ME3. In ME1, all the love scenes are the same, except for Liara's having additional scenes the other two lack. As far as who had the best LI content, Liara, no contest, was the best romance for a FemShep as far as the two parameters I listed above. For Male Shep, she is still likely the most prominent, though after Citadel, one could make a case that Miranda actually has the best content.
7. On this note, I will say that Liara's content was definitely disproportionate to all the other characters. As far as FemShep content goes, she's untouchable. For Male Shep, Miranda is the only LI I might put against her, and that's only after Citadel considerably improved that romance in ME3. Maybe the vanilla content is more sparse, but overall, Liara did have a focus on her that other characters lacked, and which showed as even in the vanilla, she had considerable content that the ME2 characters especially lacked. I mean, only Garrus and Tali didn't have fade to blacks. Shoot, two LI's from ME2 were downright dropped entirely (with the devs actually admitting that they 'forgot' about Thane).
Liara's scene with the capsule is optional. The player can still talk with her and if that player doesn't want her in the cabin, ignore the email
I don't mind the capsule scene. What bothered me is that its her telling the story about Shepard when she barely knows anything about Shepard depending on the player's playthrough. I would've had her be seen asking the crew to share their thoughts about Shepard and add them to the capsule.
I would rather call Liara a Shepardmancer because she is actually the initiator most of the time. Also, she effectively "necroed" Shepard before ME2, so Shepardmancer is a fitting term here.
On topic, I agree with you Valmar. Only got two additions:
1. lakus has a good point. The resources that would have been sunk here are not insignificant.
2. I disagree about some squad mates not having a good reason. In fact, I think the only one who has a really dumb reason to decline is Jacob (and one can argue that even that is in character). Grunt's unit, even if wiped out is not gone completely and is being rebuilt. Also, in ME2, he finally gets to terms with being a Krogan and an Urdnot. It makes sense that he is no longer isolated from his peers, especially after he apparently impressively managed to get their respect between ME2 and 3. Samara only swore herself to Shep for the ME2 mission. In fact, she explicitly states that after the SM is over, she will no longer be bound to Shep. While she has no particular reason not to join the Normandy crew again, it makes sense for a character, so routed in Asari society to fight with her people. Also, I realize a lot of people wanted to romance her but seriously, it would not have fit her sombre and distantly wise character at all IMO. I already think the Citadel scene is quite a stretch. It's another one of those instances where you have to weigh character development vs. fan service and BW made the right choices here IMO.
I just tell her to make me inspiring via the Renegade option. As I said, the problem with the scene is that it feels very intimate. I think the devs. had the romance in mind when they made the scene.
Guest_john_sheparrd_*
1. True, and this is one of the things I actually don't mind. What I do mind is the way its presented as a very intimate setting. It's one of those scenes that I think was made with the romance with Liara in mind and in which they didn't make an alternative.
2. But the circumstances of her death make it very contrived to kill her; You basically have to fail the game to do it. The only other characters where its like this are with James and Javik. You have no option of really not dealing with her at some point in the series. Now, you can and have made the argument that she is a necessary character as it is quite possible to have an ME3 game where there are no survivors from ME2 and ME1 to bolster the team (and not recruit Javik) and have 3 characters with you at all (being James, Liara, and EDI). But as I said, there is no way for her to die at any point in the series prior to a failure ending. And in that regard, actually only James is like that (and with him having only been introduced in the last game, it's not nearly as egregious as Liara's example). You have the option of not recruiting Javik and leaving him frozen forever (or until his pods power dies). And EDI can be destroyed through, well, the Destroy ending at high EMS. Every other character can be wasted at some point. You can have the squad wiped out in ME2, with only two survivors (such as thane and legion), and they both die in ME3. Tali and Garrus being dead from ME2, you can also put a round in the Virmire survivor on the Citadel.
3. I think (at least for me) that this issue comes down to her role in the plot being used as a device of exposition that accomplishes whatever the writers want her too at any moment. Liara was their go-to character for that. She was a Prothean researcher, then she became an intelligence broker, then she went back to being a Prothean researcher on a remote Prothean ruin while maintaining her galactic wide information organization while coordinating with allied military units on strategic planning, while researching advanced science on the Crucible, all while following you onto ground ops. She was a plot device used to fulfill the whims of whatever the writer needed at the moment.
4. Well, it's more of the inverse. Liara becoming the Broker is like a Kindergarten teacher that likes things nice and happy and innocent becoming a sociopathic criminal mastermind. And I do mean that unironically. I think that entire plot development was rather unrealistic in regards to Liara's character, and especially after how arbitrary the switch became after as the series progressed. This ties in with my last point on her being used as a plot device: the writers changed her role to be whatever was needed, and in the process made her come off as insufficient and even incompetent at some points to justify another character. They had Liara being a character who was a supposed expert at a variety of things, then having her be outpaced by some other character, all while being shilled to the player as 'very good at what she does'.
5. This point shouldn't necessarily be about quantity of the romance per se, as it is about the quality of the romances. In ME1, the quality was Liara, Ashley, and Kaidan, in that order. In ME2, Liara was the only one who could be romanced, with Ashley and Kaidan having a turbulent development in the relationship. Even outside of LotSB, you could nominally maintain a relationship with Liara in ME2, what with her not condemning you for working for Cerberus. And in ME3, the quality was Liara, Kaidan, and then Ashley. And even in DLC, as Liara got more content, Kaidan got slightly more than originally, while Ashley's romance was given a perfunctory acknowledgement even in the Citadel DLC.
6. Liara would probably be considered the character who got the most in content quantity and technical quality (though not general quality, which is a bit more subjective and harder to define). I mean, she practically gets a nude scene whereas others get fade-to-blacks at best in ME3. In ME1, all the love scenes are the same, except for Liara's having additional scenes the other two lack. As far as who had the best LI content, Liara, no contest, was the best romance for a FemShep as far as the two parameters I listed above. For Male Shep, she is still likely the most prominent, though after Citadel, one could make a case that Miranda actually has the best content.
7. On this note, I will say that Liara's content was definitely disproportionate to all the other characters. As far as FemShep content goes, she's untouchable. For Male Shep, Miranda is the only LI I might put against her, and that's only after Citadel considerably improved that romance in ME3. Maybe the vanilla content is more sparse, but overall, Liara did have a focus on her that other characters lacked, and which showed as even in the vanilla, she had considerable content that the ME2 characters especially lacked. I mean, only Garrus and Tali didn't have fade to blacks. Shoot, two LI's from ME2 were downright dropped entirely (with the devs actually admitting that they 'forgot' about Thane).
I wanted to reply to @ von uber but you explained it already perfectly !
Stuff
To avoid mass quote, I agree with your points to an extent - and certainly that for Femshep she is the best option. Which says more about the attitude to Femsheps LI's than anything else.
The thing about Liara is this - as an import playthrough (due to her neglect in ME2, she is the ONLY character guaranteed to be alive. hence from a developmental point of view it makes sense for scenes to be done with her.
Where i think the problem lies, is that were not three slightly varying versions:
1) as a LI
2) as a friend
3) as a new start / themikefest playthrough where she is largely ignored.
Guest_john_sheparrd_*
I felt the smaller squad size was better because of one of my biggest grips about ME2. The plot and excellent Character stories was spread too thin. And because of so many choices persented, the Character's involvement in the plot are modular and segregated. Only Miranda, Jacob and Mordin are shown in after the main missions to discuss the events happening. (You only see Jacob, Miranda and Mordin enter the Shuttle to head out to the next mission before the Collectors abduct the crew.) And you focus so much in one particular character during their loyalty mission that you almost forget what you're out and about in the galaxy to do sometimes. So I'm afraid to say it, ME2 was about quantity over quality.
And I believe that's why BW condensed it down in ME3. In ME3,the characters you have on board are given a good amount of recognition without deviating from the main plot too much. Plus, the characters actually interact with each other and have more interesting things to say:
- Garrus and James's bragging contest in the mess hall
- Tali's drinking habit after Horizon
- Liara and Garrus catching up in the lounge (Did Archangel really kill 3 mercs with 1 bullet?)
- Tali and Garrus caught in the act if none were romanced.
- Garrus's 10 billion for 20 billion question
- Liara's emotional breakdown after Thessia and the crew's reaction to it
- As the main plot progresses, the characters don't run out of things to say. ("Can it wait for a bit, I'm in the middle of some Calibrations.")
- The much more rich and unique Dialog during missions (EDI's dialog during the Geth Dreadnought was very interesting. And Javik's dialog greatly alters the Thessia mission dialog.)
Plus the only characters I cared about are back: Garrus, Tali and Liara and even Kaiden/Ashley. So I wasn't upset that Bioware gave the ME2 characters a reason for leaving. Allows more focus to be had with your smaller crew while at the same time giving a sense of a conflict larger than just one ship. And that's what my hope is for ME4. Please have a good balance of Character development with plot and even protagonist progression.
I couldn't agree more about ME2's squad size they could have toned it down (cut Kasumi, Zaeed, Jacob etc.)
Of course if you liked the ME1 squad a lot more then ME3 is great we see those characters interacting with each other which is awesome
but I liked the ME2 squad a lot more so I was just pissed couldn't care less about Liara, EDI or James (especially the latter two were just wasted resources)
I would rather have Miranda, Grunt and Jack back
Retour en haut