542 réponses à ce sujet

[CrutchCricket]

It's not acknowledged because it isn't true. Jack is suspected of being the most powerful codex-wise. I wouldn't doubt Shepard might be the most badass Alliance soldier though. Gameplay wise though, definitely.
 
Dossier: Jack is rumored to be the most powerful human biotic ever encountered. 
 
War Asset: Jack, formerly known as Subject Zero, may be the most talented biotic of her time
 
 
 
On a sidenote, I hope they improve the physics and stuff for biotics in the new game. Make it as badass as it is in books or cutscenes.

Easy there. Suspected is not confirmed.

My vote would be for Shepard as well, for the greater variety of powers he can wield, to start. And rogue cell or not, Cerberus would've had whatever useful data came out of Pragia on hand for Lazarus. I'd say it was almost a given some extra upgrades went under the hood, especially with Miranda in charge.

But while that's idle speculation, Shepard bing the most effective human biotic is self evident I think. Even if we agree that Jack can output more energy, that doesn't mean much without proper control.

[CrutchCricket]

"Variety of powers" is a gameplay thing. You have to separate it from story. Jack fires off and teaches Singularity at Grissom, but she doesn't actually have the power in ME2 or Armax.

 

Shepard is already a galactic wide celebrity. They're not some mystery person that people haven't analyzed yet. They've been studied in and out by Cerberus. Miranda is a scholar of everything Shepard related and had to genetically reconstruct the personality as well as talents. Their "best biotic" status would be mentioned somewhere, if it really was true.

 

It isn't just about energy output either. It's control and endurance. Shepard can't even levitate or do the biotic bubble. Like if you take Kaidan to the Ardat Yakshi monestary, both him and Kaidan admit they can't do this. People like Samara and Jack are a different level of biotic talent.

 

Also, the story of Jack's dossier was added to later where it was Maya Brooks that wrote it. She has firsthand experience watching Jack nearly take down a whole station and scaring the crap out of Kai Leng. It wasn't data all from Pragia. While the War Asset description is just developer jargon. It's about as official as it gets.

 

It doesn't mean Shepard is worse or losing anything. Shepard is a complete package. A leader. Jack is a specialist. 

What's that thing, about those who can't do...

 

Variety of powers is not a gameplay only thing. Notice how I didn't reference damage or cooldowns. Those are gameplay things. But if you can do more things, then lore-wise you can do more things.

 

As for what is or isn't said about Shepard his combat skills are almost never referenced anyway. He's not listed as the best shot, or the best tech power user either. So this doesn't stand out. He's most notable for his leadership and charisma. People like to categorize, and to focus on one thing. That does not exclude other characteristics or achievements.

 

I don't have an adept Shepard, much less Kaidan alive so I never saw that dialogue. Question is when has Jack levitated? All I've seen her do is raw outbursts of power.

She can hold the bubble in the suicide mission sure. But so can Jacob. The thing is, the latter falters because he doesn't have the strength and endurance. But this does indicate the control needed for that bubble is nothing special, relatively speaking. You need trained biotics to do it, of course. But not superhuman biotics (at least, not if you only need it for a short while. Personally from what I know of the lore only Samara should've been able to do it flawlessly. But that's just opinion. Further speculation: would adept Shepard have been able to hold the bubble? Control we know for sure he's got. But the endurance? Could've been interesting if biotic Shepards were given that as a choice. Or even tech Shepards the choice of going in the vents. How much do you really trust your team?

 

"Data from Pragia" refers to useful results from the research used to create Jack, such that they might be theoretically replicated. Battle data would only be marginally useful. As for Jack tearing up a base, we know she can do that. Wild raw bursts of power are indeed her specialty. But again, when has she demonstrated fine control?

[CrutchCricket]

She's got a cool vid in the Shadow Broker surveillance where she jumps like 20 feet in the air, slowly turns upside down and pulls two Blue Suns out of cover... as well as levitating down to meet you at Grissom. 

 

Anyways, do what you want. I'd rather just take the dossier and war asset description to mean what they say. I don't need to hear rationalizations on how it all means something else entirely. KISS rule.

To quote a certain memorable Pixar movie, "that's not levitating, it's falling with style"

 

I must admit though, it's more Jack's control in the temperament department I'm not impressed with, rather than the actual control of her powers. I guess I might be inclined to agree that biotically, she's "the strongest one there is". But in a fight, I'd probably put money on Thor over Hulk, if you get my drift.

 

What do you think about the idea that Shepard could do the specialist roles themselves if they're of the applicable class though? I don't think I've seen that discussed yet, and I've been here a while lol.

[CrutchCricket]

I would put my money on Thor too.

 

But there is no Thor in Mass Effect. It's not Shepard, I'll say that much.

 

If Shepard could do the roles, they'd give them to Shepard. I think that's the whole point of the suicide mission.. To build this Dirty Dozen of specialists and badasses who are the best at what they do. They all have their niche. Master Assassin, Best Pilot, Thief, Biotic, Scientist, Pure Krogan, advanced Geth platform, etc..

 

If this was a heist movie, it'd be similar. You'd have the badass safecracker, the technician, explosives expert, the chameleon, femme fatale, etc.. So it's kind of uncool, if say, you made the main dude (say, George Clooney ) potentially better than all of them.

Samara=Thor. At least in this context.

 

And Shepard wouldn't be better than all of them since he can't be all classes at once. But if he's say an engineer, he can go in the vents, and if he's an adept he could do the bubble. That'd make choosing the fire team leaders even more important.

 

In heist movies, the planner isn't typically just quarterbacking the whole thing, he's in there too, usually with a specific responsibility. Unless he's the mob boss type in which case he's not involved in the actual operation as well, he just hires the crew.

[CrutchCricket]

Fair enough. Sometimes that works. In the case of Clooney, I think he was just the "glue", and the negotiator, conman, and wheeler/dealer... and some action.

 

I think Samara is more powerful, yeah.. but mostly, I think she's there as a "middle" path (or bypassing path) with the friction between Miranda and Jack. I think the game is more interesting without her (funnily, she's written by the guy who wrote Jack).

Need to rewatch those movies. Don't know if I saw the latest one, either.

 

The only way Samara "bypasses" Jack  is that she provides redundancy for the specialist role, a redundancy all roles have. And I have to disagree. I think Jack's contribution to things is the unnecessary redundancy. Conflict with Cerberus? Shepard can do that himself, or any of the aliens Cerberus is supposed to "discriminate" against. Showing us Cerberus is nasty and cruel? We have the entirety of their appearance in ME1 for that and Illusive McShiftyEyes Man isn't a catalyst to forgetting it, no matter how many nice chats with Kelly we have, or how many times we see Miranda's ass-ets.

 

Samara on the other hand provides something that's still unique- a brief glimpse at asari culture. For all their prominence in the series, the asari are still just blue space babes, strippers and dancers, mercs and occasionally scientists. Never mind how we barely get any truly alien qualities or perspectives as a result of those qualities from anyone, but we don't even see much cultural differences between the races. Everyone on the Citadel is just one amalgamated North American ideal of civilization. Even the asari's Hat doesn't save them. You can at least say the turians are more militaristic or the salarians are more crafty. But asari? What's their Hat? Space babes. Getting any insight into how their society functions, even if it's from a Dredd wannabe warrior monk chasing a space vampire is a treat not to be discarded lightly.

 

Also dem eyes...

[CrutchCricket]

I didn't say bypass Jack. I said bypass Jack and Miranda.

 

This might get a bit convoluted.. it's hard to articulate. I care about the friction between Jack and Miranda.. I'd rather work through and hash out all of the ugliness between them and get them both to a better place, without any distractions. Turning my attention to the wise, ultra competent alien is bypassing all of it. It's the safer, "transcendent" solution. She's obviously got her sh*t together better than both of them --- but I don't want that. I want resolve the problem in a human way. 

 

If that makes sense. Samara just kind of screws with all the narrative "beats" I like in the story.

What's stopping you? Samara has nothing to do with Miranda or Jack from a character perspective. The only way she's remotely related is that she provides another option for the bubble (a logically and lore-wise better option but again, that's a different discussion). But that shouldn't matter since what you're describing is a character/roleplay issue.

[Quarian Master Race]

 

But asari? What's their Hat? Space babes. 

That's what they were designed for from the beginning, unfortunately, as ME's Orion girls. Oh, they also are one of two species to still practice slavery, the other being the one dimensional four eyed pantomime stock villans...so I guess that's interesting? Liara doesn't really explore them all that much, in fact we learn more about the Protheans from her than asari. Samara could have been an oppurtunity to do so, but more ended up a gratuitous blue boob window in combat heels with a slight arc on some outdated asari order and a sect of undesirables they were trying to keep under wraps. For shame, because there's some potential in the long lifespans and effects of being monogendered on cultural values.
 

It's more about my general dislike of "third options". I always focus on the more polarized ones. I don't want anything to distract me from them.

 

It's kind of like the ME3 ending too. I tend to focus on the differences between Control and Destroy. Synthesis is the transcendent one. And I don't care to transcend anything.

What about Kasumi? She can perform a similar role in Legion/Tali's spat, assuming that you even wake up the former.

 

[Quarian Master Race]

Yeah, she qualifies. I like Kasumi, just like I like Samara. It's just what they represent in the narrative structure that kind of annoys me.

 

Lately, I hadn't played the DLC on my 360. On the new PS3 version I got, it's preinstalled with ME2. Not sure what i'm gonna do.

I like Kasumi, though I never put her in the vents role. Usually it's Tali to get the unique dialouge about it on the dreadnought. Occasionally it's Legion if I want to kill it off because I only reactivated it to get extra quarian war assets and slightly modified dialouge in the 3rd game. I like sending Kasumi back with the crew. I figure being an infiltration specialist she'd be better at the role of avoiding or silently taking down collector death squads better than anyone else. Plus she's OP and using her in the actual squad feels like cheating.

Jack always does the bubble. I don't do Samara's loyalty because I hate it, and prefer her to be chasing Morinth after the war than trying to murder my usually renegon Shepards if they survive.

My ps3 disc came with Kasumi, Zaeed, LotSB and Overlord already installed, but I had to buy all the rest. Generally do all of it because why would one ignore the ME2 squaddies while they're still around to be used?

[themikefest]

 

Kasumi kind of bums me out for another reason... she's like the only person who looks unhappy with Destroy.   She's a little crazy, still carrying around Keiji's greybox.

She's also the only one to ask about jacob 

[Quarian Master Race]

I didn't know Tali got unique dialogue. Maybe I'll try that out.

 

 

Kasumi kind of bums me out for another reason... she's like the only person who looks unhappy with Destroy.   She's a little crazy, still carrying around Keiji's greybox.

yeah, a short exchange with Shepard about going in the vents, but only if you sent her back at the collector base. I believe it is just after you get the Arc Pistol, though I think you can miss it if you start moving too quickly.

Eh, probably for the best. That bit of her character always seemed a little strange to me. I destroy the greybox data because I like her lines in her side mission with the hanar and Bau a lot more more without it.

[KaiserShep]

Jack always does the bubble. I don't do Samara's loyalty because I hate it, and prefer her to be chasing Morinth after the war than trying to murder my usually renegon Shepards if they survive.

 

I usually do Samara's loyalty mission, but I can't not pick Jack to do the biotic bubble. I find that her personal story arc is far more rewarding if the thing that's caused her nothing but pain plays a bigger role in the final mission. Samara just doesn't have the same impact, because from the very start she's all selflessness this and righteousness that. 

[CrutchCricket]

That's what they were designed for from the beginning, unfortunately, as ME's Orion girls. Oh, they also are one of two species to still practice slavery, the other being the one dimensional four eyed pantomime stock villans...so I guess that's interesting? Liara doesn't really explore them all that much, in fact we learn more about the Protheans from her than asari. Samara could have been an oppurtunity to do so, but more ended up a gratuitous blue boob window in combat heels with a slight arc on some outdated asari order and a sect of undesirables they were trying to keep under wraps. For shame, because there's some potential in the long lifespans and effects of being monogendered on cultural values.

What slavery do the asari practice?
 
And do you mean the imps from Doom 3?
 

 
I only just now realized imps have more eyes. But otherwise that's all I could think of the first (and subsequent) times I saw batarians.
 

I like Kasumi, though I never put her in the vents role. Usually it's Tali to get the unique dialouge about it on the dreadnought. Occasionally it's Legion if I want to kill it off because I only reactivated it to get extra quarian war assets and slightly modified dialouge in the 3rd game. I like sending Kasumi back with the crew. I figure being an infiltration specialist she'd be better at the role of avoiding or silently taking down collector death squads better than anyone else. Plus she's OP and using her in the actual squad feels like cheating.

Jack always does the bubble. I don't do Samara's loyalty because I hate it, and prefer her to be chasing Morinth after the war than trying to murder my usually renegon Shepards if they survive.

The vents are environmentally hazardous. I have a machine that can pretty much ignore most hazards that aren't the melting point of whatever alloy it's made of and with obviously faster reaction times.  No brainer. Legion always goes in the vents.
 
I always pick Samara for the bubble because I'd rather have the utterly self-controlled thousand year old matriarch-level asari sworn to my service covering my ass, rather than the unstable, compulsive, nigh-psychotic ex-con with absolutely zero plausible reason for being there. But maybe that's just me. I would use Jack if we needed a very noisy, very destructive distraction. I always do everyone's loyalty missions and while for the most part I feel like I helped them accomplish something, I'm not sure that's the case for Jack. She wants to blow Teltin up... and she does. Woo....hoo? And while it does feel like she's calmer if you convince her to spare Aresh the mission overall feels more like "how over the top mad science can we make this place" rather than character development for Jack.
 
As for Kasumi, she's always with me. Fun, quirky thief with plenty of quips? Yes please. Being OP is just icing on the cake.
 

Kasumi kind of bums me out for another reason... she's like the only person who looks unhappy with Destroy.   She's a little crazy, still carrying around Keiji's greybox.

She's also the only one to ask about jacob

Ugh. Don't remind me.
 

 

I destroy the greybox data because I like her lines in her side mission with the hanar and Bau a lot more more without it.

Probably because she doesn't sound like an emo nutcase that would deny the end of the world to curl up with her dead boyfriend's hologram.
 
Excuse me while I void my lunch. Again.

[Quarian Master Race]

What slavery do the asari practice?

They call it indentured servitude but it's exactly the same thing.

[Livi14]

Humans have slavers too, so do the turians, salarian, krogan, volus - probably all species have slavers. Slavery is illegal in council space, but it seems to be a common practice in the terminus systems.

[Quarian Master Race]

Humans have slavers too, so do the turians, salarian, krogan, volus - probably all species have slavers. Slavery is illegal in council space, but it seems to be a common practice in the terminus systems.

Sure, individuals. What they don't have is an proxy territory of 100 million inhabitants that was created solely to circumvent those laws and engage in such practices. The fact that such a massive example of regulatory capture as Illium is allowed to exist points to slavery being an acceptable practice by at least part of the culture.

[CrutchCricket]

Ah yes. Forgot about Ilium.

Well at least they're not dicks about it. Mostly. But yes the extent of the institutionalization of slavery at Ilium does suggest they have a different view on the matter.

[Livi14]

Sure, individuals. What they don't have is an proxy territory of 100 million inhabitants that was created solely to circumvent those laws and engage in such practices. The fact that such a massive example of regulatory capture as Illium is allowed to exist points to slavery being an acceptable practice by at least part of the culture.

 

I always imagined that all council species have such colonies. Isn't Noveria basically the same? Both worlds were founded by individuals and corporate interests that were looking for places to operate where they wouldn't be constrained by Council law.

I mean I guess it's possible that Bioware has set it up as a kind of culture difference, but there isn't any codex entry or in-game dialogue to support this.