63 réponses à ce sujet

[Iakus]

Just to focus on the concept of consistency rather than the ending (though I guess it is a bit about the ending):

 

The reason why maintaining consistency is so imported is that this was supposed to be a choice-based narrative.  And more so, on where choices are supposed to matter across three games.  If the game is inconsistent in the universe's "rules" and the lore behind the story, then our own choices become arbitrary.  What's the point in making a decision when the very universe may change to render that choice obsolete?

[Linkenski]

I think having such a big team of writers contribute so much to the main story scenarios for individual missions also created a few problems. Clearly Bioware never fully defined the parameters for Reapers and what they could do and couldn't do or how their process of creating husks worked. In ME2 I thought it was consistent because you'd see those spikes that created husks in the levels where you met husks like in ME1 but in ME3 I don't particularly remember seeing any spikes at all and somehow Reapers throw down their husk-ified creatures through orbit in "meteor" packs... and then there was some stupidity with EDI talking about footage about a Reaper concentration camp where reapers... interrogated prisoners... I mean, c'mon man, clearly the leads hadn't been strict enough about how to define the Reapers in the game.

 

Some of the same problems happened in DA:I too with the Breach and such. It was never really clear to me how mages and templars would weaken it either, but apparently it's just common knowledge that they can... and I know this is in the wrong topic but that's one of my main arguments against Bioware having good "attention to detail".

[angol fear]

As a critic

 

May I know what kind of critic you are?

edit : no need to answer, I've seen that your favourite Mass Effect is the second one, I know what kind of critic you are.

[fraggle]

Then again, I strongly dislike Mac's comics and his story missions in ME3 and I've heard people say Drew Karpyshyn's solo works are shitty too, yet I really enjoyed ME1 2 and 3 as a whole still, even characters Mac wrote and stories Drew K wrote... Schlerf combined with the rest of the legacy Bioware writing staff that still remains should be good.

 

Out of curiosity who wrote what, is there any page that has a combined list who wrote which story arc and characters? I checked some of my favourite characters in the ME Wiki before, but I'd much prefer if there was a list somewhere to directly look at If that doesn't exist, nevermind

[Linkenski]

http://forum.bioware...?hl=+who +wrote

 

There's that but it's not completly filled out. For example The Illusive Man was partly written by Patrick Weekes and Drew Karpyshyn as well with peer reviews and whatnot. After reading some of Drew K's novel work I'm pretty convinced he had a big hand in writing TIM in ME2 because he honestly writes him more "elusive" than Mac does.

[angol fear]

Oh! I just take a look very quickly at the post 51. What is consistency? I think that a lot of problem come with that word.

[Linkenski]

Yeah, but in general ME is kind of known to be inconsistent in the same way Dragon Age is super inconsistent between games. Retcons are made and previously established characters change appearances or even character Coryphenus for instance, Cerberus between all three games in the trilogy, the Reaper's constantly changing plot, Thermal clips retcon, continuity problems like the missing trial post Arrival DLC or "ah yes, the reapers, we have dismissed that claim", shepard's resurrection that has no arc to it, the god-damn ending.

 

Consistency is not a word you can associate the Mass Effect Trilogy with... but to be fair, it is a space opera... and then again, it could've done better if BiowarEA didn't constantly insist on changing the overall direction between every game they make.

[angol fear]

So Mass Effect is inconsistent because there are changes in the trilogy? So from Mass Effect 2 the players should have stopped playing it. And we could say that Mass Effect 2 is the most inconsistent : Mass Effect 1 and 3 are based on a story and a narration, while Mass Effect is based on its characters (the narration is very poor, the story is very basic).

But for the changes between each mass effect, we can explain it by the fact that Mass Effect is written like a trilogy of film, not written like a serie. I mean a serie try to create a continuity while a trilogy of films is mostly based on discontinuity. Two films like Terminator 1 and 2 are very different, the same with Die hard 1 and 3 etc...

I'll develop later.

 

edit : Mmmh, I think that I will waste my time so I won't develop it.

[wolfhowwl]

I think having such a big team of writers contribute so much to the main story scenarios for individual missions also created a few problems. Clearly Bioware never fully defined the parameters for Reapers and what they could do and couldn't do or how their process of creating husks worked. In ME2 I thought it was consistent because you'd see those spikes that created husks in the levels where you met husks like in ME1 but in ME3 I don't particularly remember seeing any spikes at all and somehow Reapers throw down their husk-ified creatures through orbit in "meteor" packs... and then there was some stupidity with EDI talking about footage about a Reaper concentration camp where reapers... interrogated prisoners... I mean, c'mon man, clearly the leads hadn't been strict enough about how to define the Reapers in the game.

 

Some of the same problems happened in DA:I too with the Breach and such. It was never really clear to me how mages and templars would weaken it either, but apparently it's just common knowledge that they can... and I know this is in the wrong topic but that's one of my main arguments against Bioware having good "attention to detail".

 

Well with how much content they're making you're going to need a decent team to keep people from being stretched thin. If there is an issue of coordination it might be a management or design issue. Less too many cooks in a kitchen and more a problem with the chef.

 

Some of your examples seem a little dubious. Just because the spikes create husks doesn't mean you are somehow prevented from making husks elsewhere,  transporting them to the combat zone, and then airdropping them onto the battlefield. ME2 shows that the Collectors bring husks to Horizon with them and ME3 has a codex entry on Reaper transport ships being specifically used to move legions of husks from occupied planets to the frontlines. This makes more sense because since when does anyone train (or in this case create) their troops on the actual battlefield?

 

Also why wouldn't the Reapers interrogate prisoners? If they have information you might want to talk to them and the Reapers surely have indoctrinated thralls that could do that.

[nos_astra]

Some of your examples seem a little dubious. Just because the spikes create husks doesn't mean you are somehow prevented from making husks elsewhere,  transporting them to the combat zone, and then airdropping them onto the battlefield. ME2 shows that the Collectors bring husks to Horizon with them and ME3 has a codex entry on Reaper transport ships being specifically used to move legions of husks from occupied planets to the frontlines. This makes more sense because since when does anyone train (or in this case create) their troops on the actual battlefield?

Thismay be a minor problem but it ME1 they did use these Dragon Tooth devices (and I don't know if that name is canon) and it had an influence on the overall atmosphere. There was an effort made to create these as opposed to just havin husks pop upwhenever this enemy type was needed in later games. While you can easily explain this away there is still the tiny elephant in the room. Where did the spikes go and why did they disappear?

Certainly not because the Reapers were on their way to becoming the good guys considering there were screaming humans that seemed to be decaying quickly and painfully.
 
 

Also why wouldn't the Reapers interrogate prisoners? If they have information you might want to talk to them and the Reapers surely have indoctrinated thralls that could do that.

What for? What information does an indivdual have that couldn't be found out by means of indoctrination and ... or taking over the galactic givernment and accessing all information available on the Citadel.

I suspect they interrogate for the most part because it is a common practice in shooter-like games with military missions. There modus operandi was established in ME1 ... then tossed out of the window without explanation in ME2 and 3. Sometimes they indoctrinate, sometimes they kill, sometimes they interrogate, sometimes they experiment. And it doesn't depend on the Reapers ultimate goal ... it depends on what sort of mission the devs/writers/producers they wanted Shepard to do next.

[StarcloudSWG]

The husks don't interrogate anyone. What they do is drag them off, fondle them to collect DNA samples from skin, and then either return them for later conversion, dump them into an indoctrination pen for a while and release them, or kill them.

[Display Name Owner]

I'm not a writer but I do work in a creative industry and there's no advantage to leaving anything until the last minute as far as I can see. If you do it early you can always change it and build upon it and if you come up with something better you've got time to implement all that. I never do it early, that's how I know...

Not to say you can't get lucky and come up with the best idea right from the start.

 

All that said though, game development just isn't something you can do on the fly from what I can tell, with all the stages and processes involved. In the case of ME "as they went along" would boil down to one game at a time I assume, which is still a year or two a pop. But when you're talking about 2 games that are meant to flow into each other, that was probably not the optimum way to handle it.

[angol fear]

I'm not a writer but I do work in a creative industry and there's no advantage to leaving anything until the last minute as far as I can see. If you do it early you can always change it and build upon it and if you come up with something better you've got time to implement all that. I never do it early, that's how I know...

Not to say you can't get lucky and come up with the best idea right from the start.

 

All that said though, game development just isn't something you can do on the fly from what I can tell, with all the stages and processes involved. In the case of ME "as they went along" would boil down to one game at a time I assume, which is still a year or two a pop. But when you're talking about 2 games that are meant to flow into each other, that was probably not the optimum way to handle it.

 

Quick answer so maybe I misread what you wrote. But if you're talking about the ending, the Klencory planet in Mass Effect 1 and 3 show that they didn't wait the last minute to think about the ending. But They developed it with all that came from Mass Effect 2 and 3. The structure of the games shows it.

I'm a writer and an ending like that is impossible to write at the last minute. You can be incredibly lucky that's impossible : they use and create coherence with so many themes in this ending, they use the logic that was developed in the three games, everything is bound in the ending. It's far from being the rushed ending people want it to be, it's far from being lazy writing.

[Valipour]

Everything written by Stephen King is written on the fly - ie starting with a 'what if' question, with a handful of characters, and allowed to grow organically from there.

 

The key is good editing afterwards.

 

Having a general idea of where a plot is headed is always a good idea, but being too prescriptive can lead to stale stories that feel forced or contrived and are not led by the characters' actions. When you have this problem, it often pays off to shake things up. King's 'The Stand' did this - he got bored with where the story was going midway through, didn't know what he wanted to do, so got the story moving by setting off a bomb (literally) and killing off his favourite characters.

 

He may not be a very literary writer, but he's a damn good storyteller.