Dude, I would have loved that in comparison to 'organics vs. synthetics'.
I would not. The idea doubles down on a great number of things people have issues with in the shipped ending, from the Reapers being the galaxy's saviors to broken, circular logic. And that ending decision? Bah, out of here with that garbage.
I was particularly annoyed by organics-synthetics because at the time I thought it infantile. Like a non-issue that they decided to implement as the crux of the series. 'Things will always fall in a gravitational field' sort of stuff.
I would have preferred literally any straight sci-fi mumbo jumbo to it.
Again, I do hope they either steer clear of these things, or if their game is up, give whatever philosophical theme they choose a proper treatment.
I was particularly annoyed by organics-synthetics because at the time I thought it infantile, like a non-issue that they decided to implement as the crux of the series. 'Things will always fall in a gravitational field' sort of stuff.
I would have preferred literally any straight sci-fi mumbo jumbo to it.
...
But to each his or her own.
Indeed.
I kind of didn't want it to be anything which could be debated or refuted because I thought that the motivations of billion year old super-intelligences shouldn't be subject to argument.
That was my drift.
I kind of didn't want it to be anything which could be debated or refuted because I thought that the motivations of billion year old super-intelligences shouldn't be subject to argument.
I wish this N7 character is shepard and he will be what anderson was in the original trilogy.
But I doubt this. I just hope they don't make it like DA:I - a bad story with a lot of places to go do nothing that really matters.
People seem unnaturally worked up about the RGB quality of the ending. DAO was an RGB ending, just camouflaged better - and really for each character it boils down to Dark Ritual or not so it is RG. Nothing you have chosen to that point matters. Then again so was ME1 -- there is no scenario where Sovereign doesn't die and the RGB choice is save the council or not and nothing you have chosen to that point matters a whit in what you pick.
Don't get me wrong, the ending was terrible for a lot of other reasons but the basic mechanics just exposed the wiring a bit too much. People lament the change of writers but frankly the dark energy ending I have read about was every bit as grim - reapers are trying to solve dark energy problems foreshadowed on Haestrom - and your choice is save lives now and doom the future by defeating reapers or let them win and doom trillions now to save the future. I don't think there was ever a sunny beach ending for this thing.
Yeah, I don't have an issue with the multiple choice ending: almost every Bioware game is a multiple choice ending that's largely divorced from everything that came before it. ME1 had its R/B (literally, paragon and renegade colours) ending with the council, ME2 had it with the Collector base, and so on.
The big difference is that ME1 and ME2 didn't have endings that were thematic gibberish, but that's totally different from them having particularly complex endings or having endings that actually incorporated anything you did before that point. I suppose ME1 sort of had the most reactivity - depending on your P/R scores you got some very different scenes, including the sheer unbridled insanity of an all-human council. That was almost as lol-worthy as the ME3 endings.
Such as why they encouraged and asserted the use of tech that's consuming the universe and forces them to exterminate civilizations in cycles? That's how they "impose order on the chaos of organic evolution"? LOL.
Like I said, that idea doubled-down on the issues.
Haha. Oh, I forgot about the insanity of that position. Bioware just had no way of explaining the reapers. Because the idea of industrial genocide is completely ****** insane. There's no good reason for it.
I hope this game doesn't have anything to do with Shepard or his/her crew, and treads a new path (as the frontier vibe implies). Leave Shepard's story in the Milky Way and the thrust of the original trilogy, along with the Reaper War. It's time to get to know some new people in that retro-futurist, semi-plausible universe.
I could get behind a DA:I-style world for MEA, as the perception of an open world was nicely done, if somewhat samey at times. As mentioned previously, ME1 felt like it did a better job of hiding the relentless fetch quests that plague most RPGs (including DA and ME). I hope that this is a new series of games that adds to the ME mythos, with a new protagonist that is the central thread to the series' tapestry.
It makes sense that it'd be set in the future, as the 2.5million LY distance to Andromeda from the Milky Way would take a long time to cross, if one assumes they have to use conventional FTL drive (oh the horror of that statement) to cover the distance. There would have to be a bit of handwaving (as ever) to get around the static buildup problem of extended Eezo drive use. Even using 5478.63c as a measure of maximum speed (based on extrapolation from the Reapers capabilites codex page) it would take 456.32 years for the ship to get there! I'd expect stasis chambers or something to put in an appearance... It would also explain why they have current-gen weapons, as they'd have left with the cutting edge tech of the time, and being in stasis/cryo-sleep does make it difficult to invent new things.
Tim
I hope this game doesn't have anything to do with Shepard or his/her crew, and treads a new path (as the frontier vibe implies). Leave Shepard's story in the Milky Way and the thrust of the original trilogy, along with the Reaper War. It's time to get to know some new people in that retro-futurist, semi-plausible universe.
It doesn't :
[...] We knew we wanted to start with a foundation composed of the best parts of any Mass Effect game: exciting new worlds to discover, great characters, and intense action. At the same time, we clearly wanted to expand the definition of what you should expect from a Mass Effect game. While we aren’t ready to go into too many details just yet, as you saw in the trailer and can tell by the name, this game is very much a new adventure, taking place far away from and long after the events of the original trilogy. You will play a human, male or female, though that’s actually not the character you saw in the trailer (more on that later). You’ll be exploring an all-new galaxy, Andromeda, and piloting the new and improved Mako you saw. And through it all, you will have a new team of adventurers to work with, learn from, fight alongside of, and fall in love with.
http://blog.bioware....fect-andromeda/
Such as why they encouraged and asserted the use of tech that's consuming the universe and forces them to exterminate civilizations in cycles? That's how they "impose order on the chaos of organic evolution"? LOL.
Like I said, that idea doubled-down on the issues.
That I didn't struggle with.
They might have said that it would happen anyway, and worse if not for them focusing and controlling how and when the technology would be developed and used, to what extent and for how long.
Whatever negative impact there was would have been a more precisely determined quantity that way, and could be more easily mitigated during the primitive non-Mass Effect epoch of every cycle in some preset manner.
Or they might just not have explained it at all.
I'd question how much the Two Towers was essential to that saga. Sure you beat Saruman but that was a side show. I guess the ring got physically closer to Mordor. Empire didn't actually "do" anything about the Rebel/Empire arc other than finding out about Daddy issues. Oddly both movies really didn't "do" anything but they were the best movies of the lot. The second act is always tough because it is connective tissue more than exposition or climax like parts 1 and 3.
Still in 2 you learn about the fate of the Protheans which is sort of a big mystery. You learn that Reapers use the races against themselves, which forshadows a lot of what happens in 3. You also obviously get a much closer view of Cerberus which does matter because unlike Saruman's horde Cerberus does matter a lot in the third part. You stop construction of another Reaper in a terribly bad boss battle and also save a whole lot of people. I will say I wish the Arrival DLC was integrated into the base game. It works perfectly as a bridging content but it would have added more umpf to the impact of the base game. To some extent if anything too big happened in 2 it would have undermined the effect of one. One was supposed to have thrown a major wrench into the Reapers plans but if they had shown up in 2 in a big way then the "what was the point" question could be asked.
Two Towers: Party splits, Boromir dies (in movies these were pushed up into the first one). Gandalf comes back from the dead. Saruman was a side villain yes, but he was helping the main villain, would have been another enemy to fight, and was trying to wipe out the help that Gondor ultimately needed. Frodo and Sam meet up with Gollum, who poisons Frodo's mind against Sam. setting the stage for the end, and Frodo is "killed".
Empire Strikes Back: Everything that happens on Dagobah. Han and Leia find and accept their romantic feelings for each other. (Though I suppose that's more character development than main plot.) The scene where Vader is in his pod with his helmet off is important in expanding on his character, which actually is important to the main plot.The duel between Luke and Vader, which included the temptation as well as the reveal that Vader is Luke's father, and ends with Luke accepting death over siding with Vader, though he luckily survives. Han goes to Jabba, which sets the stage for the 3rd movie's opening act. Also, the movie reminded us that the Empire was a real threat that wasn't defeated just because the Rebels destroyed their super-weapon.
Mass Effect 2: Nothing.
Shepard's death is meaningless. The Normandy's destruction and remake are meaningless. Collectors = Protheans; meaningless. Destroy or preserve base: meaningless. You get EDI,which could have been done anywhere and in any way, including as an addition between ME2 and ME3 and while she was plot critical in ME3, that had to do with fighting Cerberus, not stopping the Reapers. Her gaining personality and relationship with Joker could have been a great argument against the Catalyst's premise, but they didn't do that. Malon's data and the Geth Virus are optional side missions and are still not plot critical to ME3 since they just affect War Assets.
Vigil told us about the fate of the Protheans. They were annihilated. There was no mystery. Collectors = Protheans was just supposed to be sci-fi horror twist. Because we met Vigil, it didn't work. Had we never been told what happened to the Protheans; had they just disappeared, this twist could have worked. Vigil also already told us about Indoctrination so we knew the Reapers "use the races against themselves".
Cerberus was not important. They became the main antagonists of ME3 for no reason. There was no reason for the human Reaper to exist and destroying it didn't lead us closer to beating the Reapers. Arrival was cool but ME3 made it moot because nobody did anything with the extra time and they retconned what happens when relays get destroyed, which is why they changed the cutscene in the Extended Cut.
The Catalyst made us ask "what was the point of Mass Effect" because they had a consciousness on the Citadel that had no reason to not be able to control it and let the Reapers through the Relay. Nothing "big" had to happen in ME2, it just had to tie into the goal of "stop the Reapers".
People seem unnaturally worked up about the RGB quality of the ending. DAO was an RGB ending, just camouflaged better - and really for each character it boils down to Dark Ritual or not so it is RG. Nothing you have chosen to that point matters. Then again so was ME1 -- there is no scenario where Sovereign doesn't die and the RGB choice is save the council or not and nothing you have chosen to that point matters a whit in what you pick.
Don't get me wrong, the ending was terrible for a lot of other reasons but the basic mechanics just exposed the wiring a bit too much. People lament the change of writers but frankly the dark energy ending I have read about was every bit as grim - reapers are trying to solve dark energy problems foreshadowed on Haestrom - and your choice is save lives now and doom the future by defeating reapers or let them win and doom trillions now to save the future. I don't think there was ever a sunny beach ending for this thing.
The problem with the comparison is that Dragon Age Origins was a self contained story. Most of the choices had no plot impact but you got to feel like you influenced the future of Ferelden through the well written epilogues. Mass Effect 3, on the other hand, was a third chapter of a trilogy. In addition to being built on two past games, we were promised wildly different endings by the developers. Was such a claim made of Dragon Age: Origins or Mass Effect?
There is also a significant emotional and tonal difference between someone making the Ultimate Sacrifice and both Warden's returning alive. The same is true for the 3 possible endings to Mass Effect. (Council lives, New Council with human chairman, and new Human Council with human chairman.) There really was no such difference in the three endings initially. The narration of the Extended Cut helped a bit, but they were still all disappointing.
Well the Dark Energy plot was just a shell, so I'm sure they would have done more with it. The idea would be that saving lives now does not automatically doom the future. The races would try and find their own solution. Maybe they will fail, but maybe not.
I was particularly annoyed by organics-synthetics because at the time I thought it infantile. Like a non-issue that they decided to implement as the crux of the series. 'Things will always fall in a gravitational field' sort of stuff.
It was a B-plot they decided to make the main theme for no reason.
Yeah, I don't have an issue with the multiple choice ending: almost every Bioware game is a multiple choice ending that's largely divorced from everything that came before it. ME1 had its R/B (literally, paragon and renegade colours) ending with the council, ME2 had it with the Collector base, and so on.
The big difference is that ME1 and ME2 didn't have endings that were thematic gibberish, but that's totally different from them having particularly complex endings or having endings that actually incorporated anything you did before that point. I suppose ME1 sort of had the most reactivity - depending on your P/R scores you got some very different scenes, including the sheer unbridled insanity of an all-human council. That was almost as lol-worthy as the ME3 endings.
Such as why they encouraged and asserted the use of tech that's consuming the universe and forces them to exterminate civilizations in cycles? That's how they "impose order on the chaos of organic evolution"? LOL.
Like I said, that idea doubled-down on the issues.
I'm looking forward to all the new weapons I will be utilizing in the upcoming game. From the M-300 Claymore to the M-300 Claymore and possibly the M-300 Claymore on rare occasions.
An argument could be made, as the reapers we talked to said, that their goals cannot be understood by us. But I think that would be deeply unsatisfactory to most players.
Since they had to explain what the heck these genocidal robots were doing I guess almost any answer would sound bad. You look at a lot of your tippy top level mass muderers like Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot and I doubt their "reasons" look really reasonable. They are understandable within the framework of their messed up ideologies - killing people with glasses because they must be bourgeoise makes a kind of sense. I never felt like even by that low bar the reaper logic worked.
I really enjoy the idea of us learning more about the reapers' motives, but I do agree they should've remained a mystery. I think the player should be able to piece together a picture from outlying evidence in the story and surroundings, but when you get to the scale of something like the reapers they should never explain themselves.
Hopefully if we get another mysterious alien "thing" in Andromeda that they keep the mystery mysterious.
I really enjoy the idea of us learning more about the reapers' motives, but I do agree they should've remained a mystery. I think the player should be able to piece together a picture from outlying evidence in the story and surroundings, but when you get to the scale of something like the reapers they should never explain themselves.
Hopefully if we get another mysterious alien "thing" in Andromeda that they keep the mystery mysterious.
All they need to do is avoid the motivation being "genocide on such a scale that Hilter's Germany seems reasonable by comparison" and it'll be OK. I mean, seriously. You can't open with one of the most horrific and evil villains in RPG history and expect to put out some grey-and-grey plot about their reasons.
An argument could be made, as the reapers we talked to said, that their goals cannot be understood by us. But I think that would be deeply unsatisfactory to most players.
Since they had to explain what the heck these genocidal robots were doing I guess almost any answer would sound bad. You look at a lot of your tippy top level mass muderers like Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot and I doubt their "reasons" look really reasonable. They are understandable within the framework of their messed up ideologies - killing people with glasses because they must be bourgeoise makes a kind of sense. I never felt like even by that low bar the reaper logic worked.
That's because there was no logic. The premise of the Catalyst was not only not shown by the events of the story, it was affirmatively defied by them.
Mr. Btongue puts it best. The whole video is good but the relevant part is just over 2 minutes from that spot.
All they need to do is avoid the motivation being "genocide on such a scale that Hilter's Germany seems reasonable by comparison" and it'll be OK. I mean, seriously. You can't open with one of the most horrific and evil villains in RPG history and expect to put out some grey-and-grey plot about their reasons.
Right well IIRC the idea for the reapers came from the idea of why - if there's been so much time for life to evolve - would the universe show no signs of life? When you're starting there it's kind of hard to not go full-tilt on the whole "worst genocide ever" thing and explain it away with grey reasons and philosophy. That's why imo just don't explain it at all and treat them as if you were writing about a God, you can piece together a picture but you can't understand.
Yeah, I suppose what I mean is more that I hope they body swerve the whole ending, so as to avoid the inevitable wailing and gnashing of teeth over it. Send out the Andromeda fleet shortly after the arrival of the Reapers on Earth and sidestep the events of the 3rd game pretty much entirely.
Tim
The big mistake was trying to explain the motivation of the Reapers at all. Sovereign said that their motivation was beyond our comprehension, which, if Reaper psychology is radically different from our own, is totally plausible. Any explanation that we can understand just sounds nonsensical by definition.
Agreed. The threat they posed was real enough and was a reason to oppose them even if we didn't understand them. I initially figured they were just making sure no species ever arose to threaten them.
Right well IIRC the idea for the reapers came from the idea of why - if there's been so much time for life to evolve - would the universe show no signs of life? When you're starting there it's kind of hard to not go full-tilt on the whole "worst genocide ever" thing and explain it away with grey reasons and philosophy. That's why imo just don't explain it at all and treat them as if you were writing about a God, you can piece together a picture but you can't understand.
There are plenty of answers for that one that don't involve space Cthulu genocide. Life on earth's done an amazing job repeatedly running itself extinct.
The big mistake was trying to explain the motivation of the Reapers at all. Sovereign said that their motivation was beyond our comprehension, which, if Reaper psychology is radically different from our own, is totally plausible. Any explanation that we can understand just sounds nonsensical by definition.
Yep, I agree with this. I'd have left their justifications and motivations as unknowns - possibly with hints that even the Reapers themselves don't know why they do it. Any explanation for them was always going to be bad. So why even try?
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