The plot is full of holes to some because they don't know the details that fill these plot holes. That's my point. The narrative is brilliant. BioWare is one of the best storytellers in the gaming industry. The characters are decent and the gameplay mechanics got better as the games went ahead but the gameplay is somewhat irrelevant if the story is decent.
"Mass Effect" was essentially the same story as "The Inhibitor Trilogy" by Alastair Reynolds.
Can't say I was blown away by ME's "story."
Guest_AugmentedAssassin_*
"Mass Effect" was essentially the same story as "The Inhibitor Trilogy" by Alastair Reynolds.
Can't say I was blown away by ME's "story."
I have never heard of this "Inhibitor" trilogy, But i rather doubt it really.
I think thats called "Inspiration". Is it not?
All game stories are inspired by other great stories, books, shows etc. Even Game Of Throne's original books are inspired by others.
It's hard to find anything really new since everything has been covered already.
The art is to mix everything to an atmosperic composition with great characters and a believable world.
So anyone who believes the trilogy has plot holes is because They don't know the detailsThe plot is full of holes to some because they don't know the details that fill these plot holes. That's my point. The narrative is brilliant. BioWare is one of the best storytellers in the gaming industry. The characters are decent and the gameplay mechanics got better as the games went ahead but the gameplay is somewhat irrelevant if the story is decent.
Why would You rather doubt it?I have never heard of this "Inhibitor" trilogy, But i rather doubt it really.
ME's also got a bunch of similarities to Peter Hamilton's Commonwealth Saga, particularly Pandora's Star/Judas Unchained.
Heathen, I haven't read Reynolds, though I've often heard that those books resemble ME. Could you give a brief list of the similarities?
A race of ancient machines returns to our galaxy every few "cycles" to "inhibit" the growth of space-faring civilizations.
The reason: the people that invented "The Inhibitors" decided that, if enough races on enough planets achieved space flight, they would inevitably get into a big war and wipe each other out. Therefore, "The Inhibitors" have to come back when enough cultures achieve space flight, and they then proceed to smash these civilizations back to pre-space flight levels in order to maintain "peace."
In other words, pretty much the same thing "The Reapers" do in order to maintain "peace" between Organics and Synthetics.
Actually, It's quite the contrary. Most of the fandom don't even know Many of the details that make the ME franchise great. In other words, They don't pay much attention to the game.
Well, I speak as someone who is intimately familiar with all of the details of the Mass Effect franchise, so I feel qualified to say you are wrong. A lot of the details are, by nature, self-contradictory, making them, by nature, not-great.
The plot is full of holes to some because they don't know the details that fill these plot holes. That's my point.
Well, I know the details, and they don't even begin to fill the plot holes. Like, at all. In fact, sometimes the details only serve to make the holes bigger.
The narrative is brilliant.
A simple comparison between Mass Effect and other works (including games) whose narrative is universally lauded shows this statement of yours to be untrue. From an objective standpoint, of course, to you it may be the most brilliant narrative in the history of man, but all that shows is an innocent ignorance to the existence of vastly superior works.
BioWare is one of the best storytellers in the gaming industry.
While this may have been true once, it is no longer the case. They may have pioneered the story-driven gaming experience, but they've since long been surpassed by companies considerably better at writing game stories. Their reputation as master storytellers is riding on the reception of their older games, much how lauded artists who made masterpieces in decades past are still considered masters even though their recent works pale in comparison.
The characters are decent and the gameplay mechanics got better as the games went ahead but the gameplay is somewhat irrelevant if the story is decent.
Calling gameplay irrelevant in a game is about as ignorant as calling cinematography irrelevant in a film. Gameplay is a part of the overall experience and should not be ignored when evaluating the work in question.
Guest_AugmentedAssassin_*
So anyone who believes the trilogy has plot holes is because They don't know the details
Also, Bioware is generally good in the execution of their stories, but they're Not exactly good in creating main plots. They're often weak (ME2) or generic ones/rehash of previous ones (ME with KOTOR).
Why would You rather doubt it?
I never said so. I said that the basis of most of the fandom's criticism is faulty. And are a result of you not paying much attention.
I rather doubt it because i have seen similar comparisons before on the forums here and they all were faulty and i proved them faulty. So, I don't think that one would be any different. That said, There were similar elements in ME1 and KOTOR for a particular reason that I'd go off-topic if i discussed.
Well, I speak as someone who is intimately familiar with all of the details of the Mass Effect franchise, so I feel qualified to say you are wrong. A lot of the details are, by nature, self-contradictory, making them, by nature, not-great.
Well, I know the details, and they don't even begin to fill the plot holes. Like, at all. In fact, sometimes the details only serve to make the holes bigger.
A simple comparison between Mass Effect and other works (including games) whose narrative is universally lauded shows this statement of yours to be untrue. From an objective standpoint, of course, to you it may be the most brilliant narrative in the history of man, but all that shows is an innocent ignorance to the existence of vastly superior works.
While this may have been true once, it is no longer the case. They may have pioneered the story-driven gaming experience, but they've since long been surpassed by companies considerably better at writing game stories. Their reputation as master storytellers is riding on the reception of their older games, much how lauded artists who made masterpieces in decades past are still considered masters even though their recent works pale in comparison.
Calling gameplay irrelevant in a game is about as ignorant as calling cinematography irrelevant in a film. Gameplay is a part of the overall experience and should not be ignored when evaluating the work in question.
Probably the best comment I've read on BSN in quite awhile. Nice to know there are still some non Muppet's here with a brain.
Um... Why can't we have both? A great SP story and a robust MP game?
Guest_AugmentedAssassin_*
Well, I speak as someone who is intimately familiar with all of the details of the Mass Effect franchise, so I feel qualified to say you are wrong. A lot of the details are, by nature, self-contradictory, making them, by nature, not-great.
Well, I know the details, and they don't even begin to fill the plot holes. Like, at all. In fact, sometimes the details only serve to make the holes bigger.
A simple comparison between Mass Effect and other works (including games) whose narrative is universally lauded shows this statement of yours to be untrue. From an objective standpoint, of course, to you it may be the most brilliant narrative in the history of man, but all that shows is an innocent ignorance to the existence of vastly superior works.
While this may have been true once, it is no longer the case. They may have pioneered the story-driven gaming experience, but they've since long been surpassed by companies considerably better at writing game stories. Their reputation as master storytellers is riding on the reception of their older games, much how lauded artists who made masterpieces in decades past are still considered masters even though their recent works pale in comparison.
Calling gameplay irrelevant in a game is about as ignorant as calling cinematography irrelevant in a film. Gameplay is a part of the overall experience and should not be ignored when evaluating the work in question.
Riiiiiiiiiight. Even i haven't read the full codex yet and i discover more details every now and then and you know it all. Riiiiiiight.
A comparison based on details that you think are similar because you're not digging into the depth and taken things by their looks and surface is NOT a valid comparison.
As for BioWare, I have only played some of their old games and Mass Effect and the narrative is still solid. Well, ME3 had its problems but the core concept was still great.
Another example of taking things by the looks of it, I never said that gameplay is irrelevant. I said that if the story is good and the gameplay is bad, It's kinda irrelevant. As the story redeems it. But if the gameplay is perfected, Then the experience is complete.
You actually didn't say that. You were specifically talking about plot holes, and people Not knowing the details to fill the plot holes. Criticism can go beyond plot holes And be about many different things.I never said so. I said that the basis of most of the fandom's criticism is faulty. And are a result of you not paying much attention.
I rather doubt it because i have seen similar comparisons before on the forums here and they all were faulty and i proved them faulty. So, I don't think that one would be any different. That said, There were similar elements in ME1 and KOTOR for a particular reason that I'd go off-topic if i discussed.
Guest_AugmentedAssassin_*
You actually didn't say that. You were specifically talking about plot holes, and people Not knowing the details to fill the plot holes. Criticism can go beyond plot holes And be about many different things.
What i have seen so far is people ripping the lore apart and contradicting themselves in order to look "Smart" or for whatever reason they have. But criticism-wise, It's very natural to criticize the game and its details as long as you have all the info to do so. And as long as your criticism is constructive and actually has a point and not just negative aggressive destructive criticism. Hell, Even i have criticized several plot elements of ME3.
SP and MP appear to be separate teams. So there's no need to focus on one over the other.
I have never heard of this "Inhibitor" trilogy, But i rather doubt it really.
http://revelationspa...hibitor_trilogy
From Revelation Space, released in 2000 (7 years before ME1):
The book opens in the year 2551 on Resurgam, a planet considered a backwater on the edge of colonized human space. Dan Sylveste, an xenoarchaeologist, leader of the colony, and wealthy scion of a prominent scientific family, leads a team excavating the remains of the Amarantin, a long-dead, 900,000-year-old civilization that once existed on Resurgam. As a violent dust storm threatens to temporarily shut down the excavation, Sylveste discovers new evidence that the entire Amarantin race achieved a much higher level of technological sophistication than was previously known, before they were wiped out in a single mysterious cataclysm.
Emboldened, Sylveste makes a deal with the crew—he will attempt to cure their captain in exchange for them using their ship to take him closer to Cerberus, a planet near Resurgam that carried particular significance for the Amarantin civilisation.
As Sylveste and the crew of the Nostalgia for Infinity approach Cerberus, Sylveste realizes the massive celestial body isn't a planet at all—but rather, a massive technological beacon, aimed at alerting machine sentience to the appearance of new star-faring cultures. It is this beacon, Sylveste belatedly realises, that alerted a machine intelligence known as the Inhibitors to the presence of the Amarantin, and ultimately caused the demise of that race.
From Redemption Ark, released in 2002 (5 years before ME1):
The novel begins in the year 2605, where Skade has been tasked with investigating a Conjoiner ship that has returned to the Conjoiner headquarters, the Mother Nest. It is revealed early on that Skade is a Conjoiner woman who appears to be in touch with secret circles of control within the theoretically egalitarian Conjoiners society. In the ship, she discovers Galiana, the original founder of the Conjoiners, who left Conjoiner space decades previously on an exploration mission. In space, she encountered the Inhibitors, who have unleashed an agent into her ships which has taken control of it and killed her crew. It now controls her mind as well. Galiana requests that Skade kill her, but Skade only places her in suspended animation in the hope that she can be helped in the future.
In addition to the two plot lines there are occasional asides explaining the history and motivation of the Inhibitors. These asides explain the galaxy was once filled with star faring civilizations. Those civilizations were largely destroyed in the "Dawn War", a galaxy wide conflict over the galaxy's scarce resources. One of these civilizations determines that a collision between our galaxy and another will occur in 3 billion years and create/become the Inhibitors in order to shepherd intelligent life through this cataclysm. They had determined that collision could be most easily dealt with if intelligent life was kept isolated to individual star systems, leaving the Inhibitors to perform any necessary manipulations of stars and planets to reduce the damage caused by the collision.
The asides also reveal that the Inhibitors were not as brutal in their past, but their performance has degraded over the millennia. They have been detecting civilizations at later stages, and required to commit wholesale extinction more often.
Clavain and Felka learn of this history during communication with the Inhibitors in Galiana's head. Clavain, however, is not convinced that the Inhibitors are right about the coming catastrophe and believes that their degrading performance may give humanity a chance for survival that other species have not had. As such, he rejects the Inhibitor requests to stand down.
And from the Wikipedia page about the races in Revelation Space:
The Inhibitors are the intelligence left over from a massive war — the Dawn War — that occurred between the first few civilizations that arose in the Milky Way galaxy. Initially an organic race, they later made use of extensive cybernetics to enhance themselves, and eventually discarded their organic forms entirely to become wholly machine. The hints of a quadrupedal, warm-blooded vertebrate (also known as mammalian) past can be faintly discerned in their architectures.
They are non-sapient machinery, referring to themselves as post-intelligent. They function on unknown principles speculated in the novel to be femtotechnology or "structured" spacetime and are capable of self-replication. Their technology often manifests as black cubes of "pure force" and is immune to conventional human weaponry; the machinery is easily capable of dodging most weapons thrown at it (usually temporary holes will appear and allow the shot to pass through) or is simply unaffected by it. The machinery can only be defeated by alien weapons supplied by the Hades Matrix or the Nestbuilders. They were created by the survivors of the Dawn War and their task is to inhibit the spread of intelligent life beyond individual planets or solar systems: the purpose, stated in Redemption Ark, being to shepherd the galaxy through a crisis 3 billion years (or 13 Galactic Turns) in the future: the Andromeda–Milky Way collision. By confining sapient life to only a few planets, they make the process of moving stars and systems (for collision avoidance during the crisis) far easier and more centralized, thus preserving life. Consequently, they show little interest in non-sapient life, or civilisations that have not progressed beyond their own star system. However, when they have no choice, they will commit acts of xenocide in order to prevent life from spreading further.
They are not sapient; however, in order to supervise and control the process of xenocide, they are capable of forming a sapient overseer from many less-than-sapient machines. They also have some very advanced technology, and know about fifteen ways to kill a star, including one that allows the core material of a star to gush out and be used as a sort of solar flamethrower on planets (shown in Redemption Ark). This is the exception rather than the rule however, as being forced to destroy an entire system to cull a single species is viewed as a moral defeat. Normally it is much preferred to exercise (relative) restraint and preserve the long-term ability of the affected worlds to support life.
They do not actively monitor the galaxy in their wait for a new star faring culture to suppress, instead they plant a series of triggers near interesting phenomena or structures in the galaxy and wait for sapient life to activate those triggers. The Cerberus object around the neutron star Hades was one such object, and it was inadvertently activated by Dan Sylveste at the end of the book Revelation Space, thus triggering the events in the rest of the series.
They are called wolves by the Conjoiners, because they lurk in the blackness of interstellar space and attack in packs.
In the novels it becomes apparent that the Inhibitors are starting to fail in their mission as civilisations are getting further and further into space before being found and destroyed. In fact, in the last book Absolution Gap, in the epilogue, it is shown that humanity, with technological assistance from other star faring, albeit hidden, cultures (for example, the Nestbuilders), were able to push back the Inhibitors and establish an Inhibitor-free zone around human space. However, this introduced the problem of Greenfly, a terraforming-replicator gone wrong that ravaged systems.
Riiiiiiiiiight. Even i haven't read the full codex yet and i discover more details every now and then and you know it all. Riiiiiiight.
I have read the full codex more than once. I've read and own all the books except Deception, which is completely wrong on all levels and deserves to be burned. I've read all comics and own most comics released before ME3. I also own the artbooks. Prior to ME3's endings completely destroying the franchise, Mass Effect was the closest thing I had to a religion. Even before ME3, I knew there were plotholes in the franchise, but I was devoted to a point where I didn't care and chalked it up to human error. After ME3, I am no longer so forgiving.
Well no MP period would certainly free up resources...
Well no MP period would certainly free up resources...
I see this come up so often and then ask myself, would there have been any more SP content had there been no MP? Nope. The story was what the story was. It ran its course. The addition of MP was a test bed and used as a method to allow PS3 users a way to boost readiness levels since imports from both the previous games were not an option.
EAs multiplayers and their microtransactions are a giant source of revenue. They add resources on a scope that's hard to comprehend. It's up to the studio to deliver. MP included or not.
Well no MP period would certainly free up resources...
Aka no resources
Guest_AugmentedAssassin_*
http://revelationspa...hibitor_trilogy
From Revelation Space, released in 2000 (7 years before ME1):
From Redemption Ark, released in 2002 (5 years before ME1):And from the Wikipedia page about the races in Revelation Space:
Interesting. There are certainly some similarities. But, There are many scenarios to why they're are similar. As you can see the case is not quite similar with the reapers and that there are some differences. And as you dig deeper into the unhighlighted details, You can see that there are things that are far distinctive from the reapers. My guess is that it's just a similar mentality as me myself did have a similar concept to the reapers long before i played Mass Effect. It's kinda of a possible scenario of how the future might be that might cross people's minds. To better explain the idea, For example, When you have a force like the reapers that wipe out life every certain period of time, That'd explain why it's hard to spot and find alien life. The concept of the reapers is actually much deeper than it seems.
I have read the full codex more than once. I've read and own all the books except Deception, which is completely wrong on all levels and deserves to be burned. I've read all comics and own most comics released before ME3. I also own the artbooks. Prior to ME3's endings completely destroying the franchise, Mass Effect was the closest thing I had to a religion. Even before ME3, I knew there were plotholes in the franchise, but I was devoted to a point where I didn't care and chalked it up to human error. After ME3, I am no longer so forgiving.
Good. Glad to see someone is finally speaking out of a background. I never really spotted any plotholes. I spotted things that were left there deliberately because the narrative of the game demanded it. Like for example, The origins of the reapers. It made sense that it doesn't get explained just yet in ME1 as you have no means to explain it. From a realistic Point-of-view, It makes sense. Other than that, I don't see much of a problem with mass effect lore. That if we don't consider ME3 problems.
Well no MP period would certainly free up resources...
Did someone believe that Not knowing the reapers' origins before ME3 was a plot hole?
I guess, for me. Not really. Just play ME1 and ME2 and you get the feel that the Reapers are just really, really almost God like uber powerful and intelligent killing machines that only want self preservation and... More reapers and less everything else. I didn't really need an origins story. But I did think Leviathan added tons of very important things for ME3's main narrative, when viewed though a certain perspective that is.
I would have been content with Reaper's gonna Reap. I agree that they were better when they were "eldritch space horrors."
I still can't help but like the reapers a lot though (except, of course, the babby terminator reaper from ME2). Just wish things had shaken out differently.
"Mass Effect" was essentially the same story as "The Inhibitor Trilogy" by Alastair Reynolds.
Can't say I was blown away by ME's "story."
So Mass Effect 1 "borrowed" Revelation Space's story and copy-pasted it into BioWare's standard narrative design document.
Maybe Drew Karpyshyn is overrated by the fanbase after all. Oh god, txgoldrush was right.
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