841 réponses à ce sujet

[In Exile]

I don't remember a lot of people complaining about Saren generally being tougher than Shep in ME1.

I think it's because Kai Leng was an insufferably obnoxious ass.

 

I complained about that cutscene all the time. It's just that a lot of people thought that Saren was - for reasons that are honestly a bit beyond be - a better soldier than Shepard. I suspect that part of it is that everyone talks up Saren as one of the Council's top Spectres, and not everyone is going to assume by default that their protagonist is the top dog around. Whereas I never saw Saren do anything all game - so his skills were more of an informed ability - until I turned him into paste on Virmire the first time we met. 

 

Plus, if you weren't up to date on the ridiculous level of spoilers Bioware told everyone pre-release, you could justifiably believe that Saren was the Big Bad ™ of the game, so losing to the final boss potentially middway through the game wasn't so hard for people to swallow. In ME3, we know that Kai Leng is the lackey to a lackey of the Reapers. 

[In Exile]

I think the only mistake they made with Kai Leng is having to rewrite him. The original version sounded better. He was deceptive and posing as an Alliance operative, working with Ash/Kaidan. He fed ideas into their heads that you were still Cerberus. It was a mix of Maya Brooks and Saren. When you're forced to scrap and rewrite and pressed with schedules, it's never going to be as inspired as the first time.

 

That does sound cool, and actually sounds like a dangerous threat for Shepard: someone who doesn't immediately open himself up to get bullets in the face, which is #1-#9 on the list of "How Shepard Solves All Problems!" Some choice entries:

 

1. Shot it in the face with a hyper-velocity round.

2. Shot in somewhere else besides the face with a hyper-velocity round.

... 

15. Smash it in the face with a weapon. Because hyper-velocity rounds are for wimps. 

...

...

19. Omni-blades exist! Smash it in the face with that thing we used to smear all over doors and jars to open them. 

[Lady Artifice]

I think the only mistake they made with Kai Leng is having to rewrite him. The original version sounded better. He was deceptive and posing as an Alliance operative, working with Ash/Kaidan. He fed ideas into their heads that you were still Cerberus. It was a mix of Maya Brooks and Saren. When you're forced to scrap and rewrite and pressed with schedules, it's never going to be as inspired as the first time.

 

I want this storyline. I want this to be retroactively inserted into ME3.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Fair enough. That's what I end up doing. I'd prefer to find a way to not burn that bridge right away though (because Bull turns out to be pretty openminded with Dorian, for example. But my character doesn't know everything yet). It's like they just expect every possible character to just be so enamored with him to not even think about any of this. That annoys me.

In a situation like that, what I have to do is build a new character specifically around that choice. For example, none of my DAO characters would annul the circle, but I wanted to see how that would go, so I imagined the sort of character who would do that, and then I worked out from that to build the rest of the personality. That character proved to be remarkably risk-averse, and quite interesting to play.

edit: Not Recruiting Blackwall or not keeping him later? The latter I understand.

Recruiting. Grey Wardens are like a wildcard. Even without considering the plot events that make Grey Wardens look more than a little unreliable, they already have tremendous legal power. It's hard to control and direct someone who could turn around and decide to conscript the entire Inquisition.

[WidePaul]

I only know kai leng from game and what I've read on the forums, not read any of the books, but as I understand it, he was an N7 like Shepard. How? If it weren't for his super shields/ plot armour we'd have wiped the floor with him on the citadel. Was he just that much better in the books?

[Dantriges]

I complained about that cutscene all the time. It's just that a lot of people thought that Saren was - for reasons that are honestly a bit beyond be - a better soldier than Shepard. I suspect that part of it is that everyone talks up Saren as one of the Council's top Spectres, and not everyone is going to assume by default that their protagonist is the top dog around. Whereas I never saw Saren do anything all game - so his skills were more of an informed ability - until I turned him into paste on Virmire the first time we met. 

 

Plus, if you weren't up to date on the ridiculous level of spoilers Bioware told everyone pre-release, you could justifiably believe that Saren was the Big Bad ™ of the game, so losing to the final boss potentially middway through the game wasn't so hard for people to swallow. In ME3, we know that Kai Leng is the lackey to a lackey of the Reapers. 

 

I found this cutscene in ME 1 odd, too. No idea why they had to let Saren grab you and dangle you over the roof and then leaving you be. But it was over fast and I could rationalize it away with "somehow he surprised me, probably BW wanted to hype him a bit and show the villain in person before th showdown, whatever."

 

Kai Leng was a long and painfully drawn out affair where BW didn´t do a short cutscene but it was this small movie where BW handed you the idiot ball. Citadel: You just stand there, when Thane fought him (heard that he looks halfway competent if Thane isn´t present but who cares) then you follow him, doing this stupid Hollywood shooting thing where you hit everything but the dude you wanna shoot like you are a mook in Arrow or Die Hard, totally ignoring your powers. After that you let him sit there on your car and you get out your pistol out of nowhere again instead of doing something sensible like accelerating the car and hitting the brakes or not providing a level stable surface for Mr. "I wanna be as cool as Kasumi" or trying to fly close under one of these walkways.

 

Then you dominate the Thessia fight and have to let him enter cutscene land. Dude, vasir had the decency to regenerate her shields in cover like Shep does all the time. And afterwards you get all mopey and everyone is going like "oh Shep, please don´t take it too hard, it´s ok, don´t cry. " This was really the annoying part. And we somehow lost Thessia because Shep lost to Kai Leng. Breaking News guys, if Thessia is lost so fast after the mission, even succeeding in obtaining the data wouldn´t have helped.

 

And Saren is a confident Spectre who tries to kill you because you messed up his plans and even if you lose, to him personally, he couldn´t stop you from blowing up his home. Ok he doesn´t care much because he got everything he wanted. He felt like a competent adversary. Kai Leng is a whiny wannabe ninja with a stupid mask, who tries to kill you because daddy TIM compared him to Shep. The most dangerous thing he did was sending you this mail. It was hard to breathe because I couldn´t stop laughing.     

 

In short, the Saren cutscene was annoying but it was over fast, the show goes on and doesn´t dwell on it, Kai Leng was a long painful affair and Bioware told you to feel sorry for yourself because you lost but not too much because Kai Leng is super awesome.

[DaemionMoadrin]

I don't enjoy real-time combat.  I doubt I ever will.  real-time combat is a challenge for the player.  The player is the one doing the fighting, and that's not ever what I want from a game.

 

I want the characters to be doing the fighting.  My objective in a fight is never to win the fight.  My objective to to roleplay my characters' approach to combat authentically.  If they win, they win.  If they lose, they lose.  But I never lose, because I'm not the one fighting.

 

Real-time action combat is incompatible with my gameplay objectives.  If I mishit a button during action combat, I've broken my character, because now he's not doing what he wants to do.  He's being impeded by an event that didn't even take place within his reality, and that makes no sense at all.

 

You're in the wrong genre then. You should give Pillars of Eternity a try, that's more like the game you want.

[Sylvius the Mad]

You're in the wrong genre then. You should give Pillars of Eternity a try, that's more like the game you want.

And it's an excellent game.

However, given that ME has never forced real-time combat on the player, why do you think I'm in the wrong genre?

[DaemionMoadrin]

And it's an excellent game.

However, given that ME has never forced real-time combat on the player, why do you think I'm in the wrong genre?

 

Mass Effect is all real-time combat. I doubt the developers had the intention of making the player pause to line up every single shot. I believe you're part of a tiny minority here. If it works for you, fine.

 

Let's be honest... the Mass Effect trilogy is easy. Combat was never particularly hard and at some point they even added a casual difficulty. They were adjusting to players who don't care for combat and played the games for the story. I kind of doubt that they will skip combat completely or make it turn based or whatever.

 

Mass Effect simply isn't that kind of game. You know that, too.

[themikefest]

I think the only mistake they made with Kai Leng is having to rewrite him. The original version sounded better. He was deceptive and posing as an Alliance operative, working with Ash/Kaidan. He fed ideas into their heads that you were still Cerberus. It was a mix of Maya Brooks and Saren. When you're forced to scrap and rewrite and pressed with schedules, it's never going to be as inspired as the first time.

I've said this before on one of your posts. The times you've posted of what the original version was. especially about the coup, I would like to of had in the finished product.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Mass Effect is all real-time combat. I doubt the developers had the intention of making the player pause to line up every single shot. I believe you're part of a tiny minority here. If it works for you, fine.

Let's be honest... the Mass Effect trilogy is easy. Combat was never particularly hard and at some point they even added a casual difficulty. They were adjusting to players who don't care for combat and played the games for the story. I kind of doubt that they will skip combat completely or make it turn based or whatever.

Mass Effect simply isn't that kind of game. You know that, too.

Did I ask for turn-based?

I really like how ME's combat worked. I've said many times that it was the best implementation of RPG combat with a shooter interface that I'd ever seen. The only other that came close was a modded VATS.

I don't need them to change ME's combat. I do need them not to change it in some specific ways, however (like eliminating pause-to-aim).

ME's combat is RTwP, just like all of BioWare's other RPGs (except Jade Empire).

[AlanC9]

As usual, I have to ask how Kai Leng is any worse than Darth Malak.

[Wulfram]

As usual, I have to ask how Kai Leng is any worse than Darth Malak.

He's got a katana.

Malak has a lightsaber, but that's setting appropriate.

[DaemionMoadrin]

As usual, I have to ask how Kai Leng is any worse than Darth Malak.

 

Darth Malak wasn't great, okay. But at least he wasn't a whiny poser who had to taunt his enemy in an email.

[In Exile]

As usual, I have to ask how Kai Leng is any worse than Darth Malak.

I was young enough that the scene was just funny. I thought I broke my game. I actually Ctrl+alt+del'd my way to the internet to see if I didn't have a bug that triggered the wrong cutscene.

[Lady Artifice]

I think they had to scrap it, because so many little things were interconnected and they didn't have time to do it all justice.. Javik was originally part of this, so they cut that out and turned him into a more self-contained DLC. The Citadel Coup was different. And you wouldn't recruit Kaidan or Ash until Thessia.

 

I'm not as much in love with recruiting the VS even later in the game, but if it meant a more involved arc around that conflict, then I think it it would have been worth it. 

 

Darth Malak wasn't great, okay. But at least he wasn't a whiny poser who had to taunt his enemy in an email.

 

 

I didn't hate the email as much as the rest. I mean, I hated it. I wanted to find him and throw him out an airlock for it, but that was the "right" kind of hate. That was the kind of love to hate it sort of thing that I think the writers intended. 

[AresKeith]

I'm not as much in love with recruiting the VS even later in the game, but if it meant a more involved arc around that conflict, then I think it it would have been worth it. 

 

I was already meh about Tali being recruited so late, having the VS be more later would just be ugh

[Natureguy85]

FFS...

 

I am suggesting the possibility of Leng beating Shepard in a fair fight to probe whether people are unhappy about the fight because it was badly done or because they're opposed of the idea of 'their' protagonist losing to a human opponent, period. It did not happen in ME 3. That is why I'm suggesting it. Is that clear enough?

 

Actually you earlier flatly declared that someone complaining about the fight sounded like they were complaining that anyone could beat Shepard.one on one. The answer is that while there might be some that would complain at the idea that Shepard loses ever, the scene was, in fact, poorly done. However, as Natashina and In Exile pointed out, the series gives you good reason to wonder how any one person could defeat Shepard.

 

I don't remember a lot of people complaining about Saren generally being tougher than Shep in ME1.

I think it's because Kai Leng was an insufferably obnoxious ass.

 

I suspect that some didn't really complain about Saren either because that encounter didn't really affect the outcome of the mission. I do think though that Saren is viewed through some rose-colored glasses, because he has that same inconsistent invulnerability thing as Kai Leng. The only difference is that Leng does it more often, spamming that stupid forcefield whenever Shepard fires on him. This is problematic when you're dealing with a character we ultimately get to fight head-on in the end, because if they're so invulnerable to our attacks, we shouldn't be able to pummel the crap out of them once the final showdown commences. 

 

I complained about that cutscene all the time. It's just that a lot of people thought that Saren was - for reasons that are honestly a bit beyond be - a better soldier than Shepard. I suspect that part of it is that everyone talks up Saren as one of the Council's top Spectres, and not everyone is going to assume by default that their protagonist is the top dog around. Whereas I never saw Saren do anything all game - so his skills were more of an informed ability - until I turned him into paste on Virmire the first time we met. 

 

Plus, if you weren't up to date on the ridiculous level of spoilers Bioware told everyone pre-release, you could justifiably believe that Saren was the Big Bad ™ of the game, so losing to the final boss potentially middway through the game wasn't so hard for people to swallow. In ME3, we know that Kai Leng is the lackey to a lackey of the Reapers.

 

 

I found this cutscene in ME 1 odd, too. No idea why they had to let Saren grab you and dangle you over the roof and then leaving you be. But it was over fast and I could rationalize it away with "somehow he surprised me, probably BW wanted to hype him a bit and show the villain in person before th showdown, whatever."

 

Kai Leng was a long and painfully drawn out affair where BW didn´t do a short cutscene but it was this small movie where BW handed you the idiot ball. Citadel: You just stand there, when Thane fought him (heard that he looks halfway competent if Thane isn´t present but who cares) then you follow him, doing this stupid Hollywood shooting thing where you hit everything but the dude you wanna shoot like you are a mook in Arrow or Die Hard, totally ignoring your powers. After that you let him sit there on your car and you get out your pistol out of nowhere again instead of doing something sensible like accelerating the car and hitting the brakes or not providing a level stable surface for Mr. "I wanna be as cool as Kasumi" or trying to fly close under one of these walkways.

 

Then you dominate the Thessia fight and have to let him enter cutscene land. Dude, vasir had the decency to regenerate her shields in cover like Shep does all the time. And afterwards you get all mopey and everyone is going like "oh Shep, please don´t take it too hard, it´s ok, don´t cry. " This was really the annoying part. And we somehow lost Thessia because Shep lost to Kai Leng. Breaking News guys, if Thessia is lost so fast after the mission, even succeeding in obtaining the data wouldn´t have helped.

 

And Saren is a confident Spectre who tries to kill you because you messed up his plans and even if you lose, to him personally, he couldn´t stop you from blowing up his home. Ok he doesn´t care much because he got everything he wanted. He felt like a competent adversary. Kai Leng is a whiny wannabe ninja with a stupid mask, who tries to kill you because daddy TIM compared him to Shep. The most dangerous thing he did was sending you this mail. It was hard to breathe because I couldn´t stop laughing.     

 

In short, the Saren cutscene was annoying but it was over fast, the show goes on and doesn´t dwell on it, Kai Leng was a long painful affair and Bioware told you to feel sorry for yourself because you lost but not too much because Kai Leng is super awesome.

 

TL:DR. The Saren scene is very different from the Kai Leng scene and mostly works.

 

I’m lumping these 4 quotes together because they are all related. I want to attempt to explain why the Saren scene works and why Kai Leng doesn’t, or at least why the former works better than the latter. The main reasons are the characters’ introductions, their roles, the fights, and the characters themselves. Some of it will probably be YMMV.

 

Our first sight of Saren is him murdering Nihlus but Shepard is only told about that and “meets” Saren over a communications channel in the Council Chamber. From then on, we are told in several different ways that Saren is extremely skilled, tough, and ruthless. As In Exile said, this is an Informed Ability, which can hurt how believable it is for you. However, recall that Shepard’s status that gets him to be considered and ultimately chosen for the Spectres is also informed ability, though we’ve seen Shepard do things by the time we get to Virmire. The important thing is that Saren is introduced early.

 

IIRC, we first see Kai Leng walking behind TIM. Where Saren looked strange, sinister, and perhaps cybernetic compared to Nihlus, Leng looks like a total clown that belongs in a different game. 

Shepard’s first face to face contact with Saren is on Virmire. While they exchange a few shots, what is important about this scene is the conversation the two have before the real fight. This encounter is the Mass Effect version of the first duel between Luke and Vader in Empire Strikes Back.

 

Shepard’s first contact with Leng on the other hand, is during the Cerberus attack on the Citadel, an event we are already questioning as totally ridiculous. He kills someone while Shepard stares (most ridiculous with Thane) and then runs away. More on that when I get to the fights. He later jumps down onto an aircar, yet again looking ridiculous with the way he sits still and then looks up at Shepard. For some reason Shepard shoots rather than dumping Leng off the car or splatting him on one of the overhangs, like Dantriges mentioned.

 

As for roles, Saren is the primary antagonist, even though Sovereign is the Big Bad. We knew we had to face him at some point and Virmire was a great place for the two to verbally spar. Kai Leng is just an annoying boss mook and has nothing of value to say.

 

As to the fights themselves, you don’t  “melt” Saren on Virmire. Sure, you shoot him a bunch but there is no indication that you’re having any effect other than you see his health bar go down.  He lands, grabs you, you punch him, and he runs because of the bomb. I don’t know where the comment about him also becoming invincible comes from. I don’t recall that happening.

 

Kai Leng on the other hand runs from your first encounter, and in the next two he needs to get help while he becomes invincible and recharges. Where Saren is running from the bomb and you’ve handed him the loss of his breeding facility, Kai Leng “beats” you and sends you a smug email.

 

Finally, while they hurt it by telling you that Saren was always a horrible ******, I’ve always found that Indoctrination and the final conversation made him somewhat sympathetic. Also, he tries to convince you of his way of thinking. Kai Leng is just a jackass.

 

 

The only story that matters to me is the emergent narrative, and that's driven in large part by the roleplaying I do during conversations.  If I don't know what I'm choosing, then I can't roleplay.

 

So by my reckoning, the story wasn't just bad in DA2 and ME2 - it didn't really exist, because I never got to make one.  I legitimately think that those were both terrible games.

 

The story BioWare writes is just flavour-text for the setting.  It's important flavour-text, but experiencing it is not why I'm playing the game.  And that's why I'm able to enjoy DAI.  I'm on record declaring it BioWare's second-greatest game (after only BG1).  BioWare had, in my opinion, been heading largely in the wrong direction for over a decade - only DAO deviates from that trend - and then DAI comes along and sets everything right again.

 

That's an interesting view. I definitely agree that the poor dialogue summaries make it hard to roleplay. I do like that aspect but I do want to be told a good story also. I wouldn't call ME2 a bad game, but both ME2 and DA2 had terrible main plots.

 

In a situation like that, what I have to do is build a new character specifically around that choice. For example, none of my DAO characters would annul the circle, but I wanted to see how that would go, so I imagined the sort of character who would do that, and then I worked out from that to build the rest of the personality. That character proved to be remarkably risk-averse, and quite interesting to play.
Recruiting. Grey Wardens are like a wildcard. Even without considering the plot events that make Grey Wardens look more than a little unreliable, they already have tremendous legal power. It's hard to control and direct someone who could turn around and decide to conscript the entire Inquisition.

 

This is intriguing to me. Rather than designing a character in your head and making decisions that character would make, you picked a decision and then went about making a character who would do that thing.

[KaiserShep]

I didn't hate the email as much as the rest. I mean, I hated it. I wanted to find him and throw him out an airlock for it, but that was the "right" kind of hate. That was the kind of love to hate it sort of thing that I think the writers intended. 

 

I like to think that Kai Leng was a BSN user that managed to manifest himself in video game character form and trolled us via email. Makes it more fun to kill him. 

[Dantriges]

If he sent something like "Hi Shep, I am not dumb enough to engage three people with guns with a sword only, did you like my little surprise," or so, it would be less like a troll post.

[DuskWanderer]

The Liara effect - Don't make the PC automatically like some character who shows up in game just because. 

 

 

That's a great place to start.