If they go the multi-game route again it might be better to do a duology than a trilogy. They'd only have address the variables from one game rather than two.
Let's see if they can even do divergent content in a single game before we talk about duologies or trilogies.
Let's see if they can even do divergent content in a single game before we talk about duologies or trilogies.
The color change you mention would have been very interesting if the reapers used it to mind control. That reminds me of the Stephen King short story called "The Raft", where a huge, carnivorous, lake algae uses it to ensnare victims.
Yes, by attracting victims through curiosity, so that they were then close enough to be indoctrinated.
In 2010 the film Monsters had giant amphibious space Octopuses invading the Americas. Using light as a means to communicate and being nocturnal. They roamed the landscape mostly ignoring humans, unless they or their young were attacked. Then, quite understandably, they got really pissed at all humans in the area. They were mostly used as a backdrop to the human story. Not quite Reapers but still, considering the budget the film had, they were really well done and interesting "aliens" albeit based on a common Earth animal.
The reaction to the ME3 ending approached 8.8 levels of embarrassing.
I really liked Ashley's ME3 look.
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::hides::
Another opinion I never see touted on the forums.
I think that the ME trilogy might have shown unpractical trilogies in gaming can be, at least for games that strives to be about "choices and consequences". I believe that if Bioware ever should try go create something like the ME trilogy again, they would be far better off making a duology instead of a trilogy. I imagine having a story only consist of two games would make it more possible for Bioware to have choices create a truly divergent storyline depending on what happened.
I thought it showed what happens when you never fully plan things out
Of course, the endings completely trivialize this each in seperate ways (destroying the geth anyway because reasons, dominating them and everyone else with an even more advanced machine race, or....whatever the fuсk nonsense synthesis does), but you don't know that at the time you are making the decision to allow the Reaper code upgrades. A more sane option of getting the needed resources would have been to threaten the geth with destruction via Xen's weapon if they do not submit to your control and allow themselves to be reprogrammed. Then you still get most of their useful contributions to the war without as much of the danger (because without upgrades they are helpless and can be easily destroyed anyway if they manage to reneg) or the assurance of appeasement to eventual machine dominance.
I like your thoughts but what I want to comment on is that I agree that Xen should have been more prominent. One of the problems with the endings to ME3 is that Control was never set up properly as a viable option. The Xen and her desire to Control the Geth should have been central to the Quarian/Geth conflict, thus setting it up as a sensible possibility at the end. Instead, it was only pushed by someone we knew to be a power-hungry, indoctrinated, mad man.
Destroying the Collector base and the "refuse" ending are far more moronic.
As for the Geth, I wiped them out right then and there on Rannoch. The piper had to be paid over their being a reaper client race for several years and since there wasn't an option to control them via Admiral Xen's and/or Gavin Archer's research, well, they had to go.
There are logical reasons for destroying the Collector base, such as the potential risk of indoctrination via contact with Reaper tech or inability to verify that Cerberus actions will be in concert with your objectives, not that I think they outweigh the gains. The reason Shepard gives, though, is utterly cringe worthy so yeah, there's a point to be made there.
Refuse.... you got me, but it's more a developer troll of all the self-righteous Paragon drones whining about the endings requiring too much compromise than a serious option, evidenced by the fact that it doesn't even exist without DLC.
I destroyed the Collector base because I didn't trust Cerberus with it. We already had a main plot mission that showed us what happens when Cerberus finds Reaper tech. However, this only makes sense after the fact, and not when I originally made that decision. The reason, which I forgot at the time, is that the Normandy should be the only ship capable of even getting there, and I'm taking it back to the Alliance. It's only after choosing to keep the base that I see Cerberus magically get ships there.
On the Refuse ending, my problem with it is that we lose. Yes, I know the game told us we couldn't win without the Crucible, but that's all part of the larger problem. The series was about facing tough odds and finding a way through them. Self-determination was a major theme. Yet at the end, we can't find our own way but have to go along with options given to us by the antagonist.
That still not good enough reason to destroy the only thing that could potentially provide us with a means of stopping the Reapers(as of ME2).
It's bad enough that the galaxy is no better prepared than it was at the end of ME1 and that Shepard spent most of ME2 playing spectre therapist for inane daddy issues and fighting inconsequential sesame street mercs and with the game ending with the reapers arriving at the galactic gates. Destroying the CB makes an already pointless middle entry, even more pointless.
I'd also like to point out that in Bioware's infinite wisdom, making the capture of the CB optional is what ultimately lead to the crucible, and we all know how the fanbase loved that.
But the galaxy did make advances from Sovereign, namely the Thanix Cannon. That could have been what made this cycle different. It was now using the Reapers own technology against them, making them a bigger threat than they had ever faced. With this in mind, ME2 might have actually had something to do with stopping and defeating Reapers.
True, but BioWare had already committed to making Cerberus a full-fledged (and in some cases player supported) faction. It would have made more sense for them to continue to be frienemies than to completely go to the dark side in six months.
I wouldn't have trusted them as far as I could throw them, but it would have at least been a more logical continuation of their arc than simply going: "We're bad now."
Mandatory preservation of the base would also mean mandatory acceptance of the threat of Reaper-tech indoctrination on a massive scale, such as what happened with the derelict carcass. Deciding to detonate the Collector base, when I do, has little to do with Shepard's auto-dialogued "sacrifice the soul of our species" ramblings.
I think the fact that they over-exploited Reaper technology in hopes of better understanding the galaxy's enemy, and thus suffered the negative repercussions of that, makes it more complex than "We're bad now". There's a little sympathy earned there.
Outlandish opinion: Cerberus' development (and expansion) into indoctrinated agents of the Reapers, regardless of the ending chosen in ME2, never really bothered me. They were going to tap into what they could find no matter what, and they sure as hell had access to manpower.
That never really bothered me either.
Playing through Mass Effect 2 completely unspoiled I was expecting an indoctrination reveal for the Illusive Man anyway, with the creepy closeup shots of TIM's mechanical eyes, and the weird stab-in-the-back during the derelict Collector ship mission.
My only issues with Cerberus in ME3 were that they were overused, that TIM being indoctrinated was practically revealed at Mars instead of being a late game twist, and that Cerberus somehow conjured up a private fleet/army out of thin air. The indoctrination itself I was fine with.
I didn't mind Cerberus being pure antagonists with their own motives, namely Control. My problems were that it was too obvious right away that TIM was Indoctrinated and that they were the primary antagonists, not the Reapers. This doesn't work because the Reapers are everywhere. in Origins, you could have Loghain as the primary antagonist with the darkspawn as a distant threat because they were in a different part of the country and had to actually walk rather than zip around with instantaneous travel.
I would have liked a bittersweet finale to the suicide mission as well. I think the finale of ME2 loses some of the emotional impact it might have otherwise had by giving the player an option to get everyone out unscathed. I consider the end game of ME1 to be superior in that regard, because Shepard's victory there isn't without cost. (Virmire)
Having said that, putting a suicide mission at the end of the second game at all was a mistake. It created way too many variables, guaranteeing that in the next game many of the ME2 squad were going to have small and disappointing cameos. From a design perspective its best to save your suicide mission for the final mission of the final game.
I was ok with it being possible to get everyone out, but not with how easy it was. The only reason I lost one person, Mordin, on my first try was because I didn't know the magical "Last Stand" formula and had sent Grunt back with the crew thinking he was a good candidate to send on a solo mission. I had no idea it didn't matter.
That's a start, but I would go a step further and say that any future titles, and the choices that the player makes in those games need to be 'smaller'.
No more giving the player the power of God to decide if this species lives or dies, or if this galaxy is affected by this outcome. Keep the choices contained to one area, and only have them affect a system at most. Instead of giving the player the ability to sway the outcome of billions of lives, allow them to only determine the fates of close allies, or personal rivals.
That was one of the core problems with Mass Effect, and one that tied directly into the imported world states: Epic Bloat.
I like to point to Dragon Age Origins. Your choices didn't impact the plot of the game, but they did impact the world and the future of the groups and characters you met. This was explained through well written epilogues, something ME3 sorely needed. However, it was a self contained story and you didn't really have to worry about going forward, so this would present some problems for the first game of a trilogy.
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