87 réponses à ce sujet

[Linkenski]

Just between Vancouver and Mars, I noticed more and more as I replayed the game that a lot of the writing seems to be way ahead of the pace of the story.

 

The conversation Shepard has with Anderson when they're on their way to find the Normandy is just way too overdone for such an early point in the game as they're already trying to make statement about what war is about before we even got time to sink in what is going to happen. It' something like: "It's bad enough fighting a war, but it's worse knowing no matter how hard you try, you can't save them all", and then when jumping aboard the Normandy Shepard is like "I'll be back for you, and I'll bring every fleet I can!" and it just seems super unrealistic for anyone in the story to anticipate this at such an early point in the story.

 

What's worse is on Mars where the Crucible and Cerberus in ME3 are both established. It goes all-in and just blatantly reveals what everything is in the most banal way possible and again, it feels way too early to reveal all the cards.

 

Admiral Hackett: (with crackling audio)"Dr. Liara T'Soni has been researching in the Prothean Archives, she's found a weapon to stop the Reapers. The only way to stop them!"

 

I look at my gametime and see... Wow... only 30 minutes in and the game out of nowhere tells me "we have found a weapon that is designed to kill Reapers". No matter how they implemented the Crucible it would always be Deus Ex Machina, but they could've revealed it in a way that doesn't come as such a slap in the face to anyone who's been following the plot so far.

 

...But I'm not done yet:

 

The Illusive Man: "Where you see a means to destroy, I see a way to control, to dominate and harness the Reapers' power."

 

Looks at gametime again: Oh... 1.5 hours? And The Illusive Man reveals his motives? What's worse about this is how every single conversation with TIM is about the same thing. He preaches about controlling and Shepard keeps telling him how wrong it is, all the while I'm thinking "Can you at least make controlling the reapers seem plausible at least?". An analogy for TIM in ME3 would be like if a couple of guys decided to climb a mountain with climbing gear and one of them comes over and says "What are you losers doing!? You think climbing gear is going to get you up there? I'm going to find a way to fly up there!" and the other people laugh thinking he's just being silly, then go "Wait, for real? How?" And he responds "You guys are blinded by your pride in sports, you have no ambition! My way is the only way anyone can get up there!".

 

Constantly sidetracking the actual issue to instead talk about meaningless fluff, just like TIM in ME3 keeps telling Shepard how he's blinded by ideals and doesn't believe. That's a meaningless argument. Excuse TIM's behaviour all you want to with Indoctrination (AKA. MGS4 Nanomachines 2.0) but it doesn't make him a good villain.

 

The point is, because they reveal too much early on, conversations later in the game tend to be padding, at least in TIM's case. The rest I mentioned seems like a case of the writers trying too hard to outdo themselves and pull all the stops before those stops are actually ready to be pulled at a natural pace.

 

One of many reasons why ME3's introduction is terrible. It seems like all major players in ME3's overarching plot are poorly revealed and poorly written... and on a side note I really disliked how quickly the characters adjusted to using the term "war" as events started unfolding. We're barely even past the intro before Shepard says "If it [the crucible] helps us end this war!"...this is why I dread it when people say that ME3 has much more mature or better writing than the other two. Hell no. At least ME1 and ME2 weren't full of idiotic ramblings and empty platitudes back and forth. (never mind Harbinger!)

 

Nitpickery? Maybe, but to me it seemed to be way ahead of itself and way too quick in trying to go above and beyond with everything.

[MrFob]

Well, this is the third part of the trilogy. A lot of the pre-exposition for this stuff has been established before (although one can argue how well). I didn't think the lines were that much out of place.

 

One problem is that ME2 didn't pick up the trilogy's plot at all and therefore, ME3 does have some serious pacing problems.

[Ithurael]

ME3 is teh best place to start!!!

 

Speculations from Everyone!!

[cap and gown]

I'm pretty sure if you do that with ME 1 (which is apparently untouchable on these forums) and ME2 you will get a similiar result (like Shepard believing that the reapers are coming just because of a vision and thats only one example)
 

 

Postulates:

The latest game in any series is always the worst game until the next game in the series appears.

The older a game is, the more perfect it is.

Any changes in the development team between games is always for the worse.

 

Conclusion:

Pong is the only decent video game ever made.

[dreamgazer]

1) The Crucible is a Sword of Plot Advancement, not a Deus Ex Machina or a MacGuffin.  It's addressed all across the game, and it has a clear purpose. 

 

2) Conversations with the council and TIM in ME1 and ME2 are chock full of "idiotic ramblings" and "empty platitudes", if you must label them as such.

 

3) The Illusive Man at the beginning of ME2: "We're at war."

[SimonTheFrog]

I agree with OP.

 

I especially dislike the mixture of heavy emotional onliners that make utterly no sense if you look at the context and the complete disregard of proper story telling.

[Anacronian Stryx]

20 minutes into the game.

 

Anderson :"Every minute these machines are here thusands of innocent people will die - I won't be responsible"

 

Really Anderson you're thinking about that now?

[dreamgazer]

Postulates:

The latest game in any series is always the worst game until the next game in the series appears.

The older a game is, the more perfect it is.

Any changes in the development team between games is always for the worse.

 

Conclusion:

Pong is the only decent video game ever made.

 

Bah, Pong totally stole and dumbed down the concept from Tennis For Two.  

 

[Maniccc]

 

One problem is that ME2 didn't pick up the trilogy's plot at all and therefore, ME3 does have some serious pacing problems.

 

Ding ding ding.  ME2 was a fun game, and decent as a stand alone, but as a part two of a three part story it was trash.  It did absolutely nothing to move the story forward, or prepare for the final volume.  Hence, ME3 is so badly paced and presented, and the writing is so abrupt.

[RoboticWater]

Ding ding ding.  ME2 was a fun game, and decent as a stand alone, but as a part two of a three part story it was trash.  It did absolutely nothing to move the story forward, or prepare for the final volume.  Hence, ME3 is so badly paced and presented, and the writing is so abrupt.

I don't believe that. I can accept that ME2 might not have moved the plot forward, but it laid down extensive cultural and character groundwork which set the stage for ME3's story. Without ME2 we wouldn't have had the brilliance that was Rannoch and Tuchanka.

 

ME3 had no right to be so poorly paced. it had plenty to work with, but the writers tossed it all away. Rather than focus its attention on the true antagonists of the franchise, ME3 decides to loose Cerberus on us. Regardless of how anyone might feel about the organization, making them the central antagonist was not an effective use of time. All the seconds Kai Leng wasted being on screen could have gone towards a cogent conversation with a Reaper and all the missions spent highlighting how evil Cerberus is could have gone towards a less contrived Crucible.

 

I half expected Harbinger to take Saren's place after his various interruptions in ME2. Now that I've played ME3, I wish he had. There was practically nothing tying the disparate conflicts together, no singular villain to guide the plot, remind the players about the ultimate threat, and gradually give shape to the mysterious Reapers. 

 

ME2 might not have given its successor the absolute perfect foundation, but ME3 wasn't destined for failure.

[Ithurael]

God forbid we have a reaper antagonist in a game focused on the final battle against the reapers...

 

Silly thing that is. Too video gamey methinks...needs to be deeper...more..complex

 

Didn't you know Cerberus was always meant to be the main villain?

 

ME1: We first encounter them and disrupt their plans for galactic domination

 

ME2: We work with them to stop an opposing faction from ousting them on their way to galactic domination. At the same time this give cerberus a chance to gain popularity and increase their membership (secretly, the collector threat was fabricated by cerberus and was never really a threat to begin with. They were just using it to get shep on board and gain popularity with the galaxy)

 

ME3: We launch our war against cerberus and unite the galaxy behind us to stop their evil plans for galactic domination.

 

Now, why there were reapers in the game is beyond me...

[dreamgazer]

One of the first images of the game:



Folks, use your brains a little bit here.
 

God forbid we have a reaper antagonist in a game focused on the final battle against the reapers...

Good thing the Reapers, both directly and indirectly, were still the central antagonists throughout the game then.

[Linkenski]

damm you REALLY hate ME 3 huh?
you already had a few threads nitpicking about everything in ME3
but here we go again

I'm not saying that Me3 is perfect I still hate the ending and few other things could have been handeled better no doubt
but just taking every freaking piece of Dialogue and overanalayzing it is just silly

I'm pretty sure if you do that with ME 1 (which is apparently untouchable on these forums) and ME2 you will get a similiar result (like Shepard believing that the reapers are coming just because of a vision and thats only one example)

don't be so bitter man move on

As silly as it is they always grinded my gears in every playthrough, but I suppose I could pick a better stance than to make an entire topic about it

But yeah. There was always something about ME3 in general I just never liked. I guess there are several reasons, like auto dialogue, but it was especially the overdone emotional stuff and dumb one liners as well. I'm sure I could nitpick everything out of ME1 and ME2, like you say as well, but like I said... There's just something in the vibe of ME3 that changed, with heavy emphasis on one liners and trailer fodder, like "we fight or we die". I have no qualm with TIM saying "we're at war, humanity is under attack" in ME2.

I can't really argue it's different than the "War war war" talk of ME3 so point taken. Somehow it just felt different to me though, probably because I had Casey's" this is all out galactic war" *SMH* in my head as Shepard was delivering his line.

The middle chunk of ME3 is pretty great. It starts right after Mars and ends before Thessia with some good and bad in between, but everything else was pretty poorly done IMHO.

[Ithurael]

Good thing the Reapers, both directly and indirectly, were still the central antagonists throughout the game then.

 

Wat?

 

There is the story and there is the gameplay/design. From a story perspective it seems like the reapers are the main villains. But from a design perspective it is clearly cerberus. Look at the mission antagonists:

 

God I hope that imported correctly. EDIT...it did not

 

FOE NAME              Count of Foe       
**Cat5                                1       
Cerberus                       19       
FETCH                           38       
Geth                                 4       
NA                                    3       
*Reapers                          10    
 

*Technically I will count Priority Earth as Reapers as TIM was fully controlled by the Reapers at this point.

** Technically it was Cerberus by proxy as it was the clone and Mya (who both worked for Cerberus) but I will count this as an independent faction as they left Cerberus by this time.

 

 

Leaving out fetch quests it seems the Reapers are short of Cerberus by 9 whole missions...srsly. Look who we are fighting most of the time? And this doesn't even take into account the branching missions (eg Omega pt1, Omega pt2, etc).

 

The reapers, at least via game play, were never opposing us as much as TIM and cerberus were...cerberus was. If you really want to get nitpicky, we actually only fight reapers in three missions:Tuchanka, Rannoch, Priority:Earth. And those were all destroyer reapers. The rest were husks.

 

Cerberus was always the central antagonist of ME3. ME3 just happened to have reapers in it for some reason...

 

That is why having a Reaper antagonist as the central antagonist in a game centered on the battle against the Reapers (the antagonists from the entire series) is not only good story design, but good game design. If the story is saying "Reapers Reapers Reapers" and the game is going "Cerberus Cerberus Cerberus", it tends to be a bit confusing.

 

I mean, if it was March 5th 2012 and I was telling you that the game was centered around the final battle against the reapers, but you spend the majority of time fighting cerberus. What would you think?

[Linkenski]

Cerberus did seem like the main antagonist in ME3, despite of the Reaper threat (althrough, their actions are due to indoctrination so... It all comes full circle). The idea was clearly to not diminish the scope or danger of the reaper invasion I think. It kind of backfired, but at the same time, if every mission of ME3 had backdrops of reapers shooting things, you'd start to wonder why you were never in danger. The alternative would've been constantly having reapers head-on like on Rannoch, and while that would've been a cool action game it would've probably been too much

[JTG.1983]

For an individual who's first interaction with the ME universe came in the form of ME3, the intro could perhaps be called a bit heavy, but not glaringly so.   

 

ME 3 WAS my first encounter with this series and I was able to pick up on the framework of the storyline relatively quickly.   Provided one spends some time actually engaging in the copious amounts of optional dialogue, a shape is given to the story fairly quickly.   Once you acquire Liara and subsequently make it to the Citadel, one should then understand the bones of the overall story.

[dreamgazer]

I mean, if it was March 5th 2012 and I was telling you that the game was centered around the final battle against the reapers, but you spend the majority of time fighting cerberus. What would you think?

That there'd probably be a pretty good reason for clashing with Cerberus as a diversion instead of getting thoroughly blitzed by the Reapers in head-on confrontations. BioWare already did it once with the Collectors.

The Reapers were, indeed, the central antagonist in ME3. They were there at Tuchanka. They were present in the geth during Rannoch, which included an actual on-foot boss battle with a Reaper. Their tech coursed through Cerberus' veins every step of the way. And they're the reason why we're building the Crucible in the first place, and gathering forces to stall their advances while it's under construction.

[dreamgazer]

Cerberus did seem like the main antagonist in ME3, despite of the Reaper threat (althrough, their actions are due to indoctrination so... It all comes full circle). The idea was clearly to not diminish the scope or danger of the reaper invasion I think. It kind of backfired, but at the same time, if every mission of ME3 had backdrops of reapers shooting things, you'd start to wonder why you were never in danger. The alternative would've been constantly having reapers head-on like on Rannoch, and while that would've been a cool action game it would've probably been too much

Bingo, though I personally don't feel as if it backfired.

[Vazgen]

Comparing Reaper and Cerberus quests

 

Main quests only

Prologue, Palaven, Tuchanka, Thessia, Horizon, Earth, - 6 Reaper missions. 

Mars, Sur'Kesh, Citadel Coup, Cerberus HQ - 4 Cerberus missions

 

N7 missions

Cerberus Abductions, Cerberus Attack, Cerberus Fighter Base, Cerberus Lab, Communication Hub - 5 Cerberus missions

Fuel Reactors - 1 Reaper mission

 

Large side missions

Ex-Cerberus Scientists, Grissom Academy, Tuchanka: Bomb, Eden Prime (From Ashes), The Invasion of Omega (Omega DLC), Talon Territory (Omega DLC), The Mines (Omega DLC), The Assault on Afterlife (Omega DLC) - 8 Cerberus missions

Krogan Team, Ardat-Yakshi Monastery, Turian Platoon, Mahavid (Leviathan DLC), Namakli (Leviathan DLC), Desponia (Leviathan DLC) - 6 Reaper missions

 

For a completionist, Cerberus has a much higher presence in the game. For someone who pushes through the game only doing main quests, Reapers are the main enemy they are going to face.

[God]

Granted, Cerberus was maybe a bit too prominent as the Reapers pawns in ME3. 

[themikefest]

Doing only main story

 

Reapers

Earth - prologue

Palaven

Rachni or Turian Platoon(pick one) If Rachni mission is completed, Turian Platoon and Turian Bomb missions do not have to be completed

cure sabotage genophage

Thessia 

sanctuary

Earth

 

Cerberus

Mars

Sur'Kesh

Turian bomb - does not have to be completed. If the Rachni mission is done, Turian Platoon and Turian bimb missions do not have to be completed

Citadel coup

sanctuary at the beginning of the mission

Chronos

[Linkenski]

Granted, Cerberus was maybe a bit too prominent as the Reapers pawns in ME3. 

I agree, but I think Bioware was trying to mirror the Geth/Saren pawn idea, but because there wasn't really any mystery (TIM reveals his motives way too early IMO) I think that contributes to the fact that Cerberus had too much emphasis... or rather, because there is no longer the factor of not knowing that the Reapers are the real threat Cerberus can sometimes come across as a mere distraction, as opposed to Saren and the Geth in ME1 whom we really thought were the main evils at the time.

 

I have sometimes thought, what if they'd just given us some more mercs to kill like in ME2? But yeah, that would have been dumb. Perhaps indoctrinated alliance soldiers could've been a good idea... maybe not becuase I think it would make the story too convoluted or confusing, but IDK.

[CroGamer002]

Entire Crucible plot was just poorly done.