413 réponses à ce sujet

[BabyPuncher]

If it doesn't mean anything by itself, then there's not much to really oppose.

What are you talking about? The point is just having a successful heroic character isn't good enough.

[Vapaa]

 

ME3 in parts has poignant and interesting themes, but doesn't really tie its more interesting scenarios into a coherent narrative. And ME1 has a largely nonsensical plot, with absurd and illogical politics, impossible timelines, and incoherent character motivations.

 

In its defense, ME3 had to clean up the mess left by ME2; it hasn't got a coherent narrative because ME2 decided to wipe its ass with ME1's narratives and then introduce unresolved narratives of its own...as someone once said on the BSN, "ME1 and ME3 are all the trilogy you need".

 

ME1 has no excuse for its ludicrous plot though.

[KaiserShep]

What are you talking about? The point is just having a successful heroic character isn't good enough.

 

Well, since nobody actually said that, I guess there's no issue then. The Consortium of Negative Nancies would not be pleased with this performance. 

[Youknow]

In its defense, ME3 had to clean up the mess left by ME2; it hasn't got a coherent narrative because ME2 decided to wipe its ass with ME1's narratives and then introduce unresolved narratives of its own...as someone once said on the BSN, "ME1 and ME3 are all the trilogy you need".

 

ME1 has no excuse for its ludicrous plot though.

But ME2 had good things: it made Cerberus less of a "evil Alliance" and gave them some competence that actually showed why they could be a realistic problem for the Alliance. It allowed us to see the outer planets outside of council space... Let's not pretend like ME2 was some abomination that just ruined any chance of a good trilogy. ME3 had plenty of foolish things in it. Kai Leng, the beginning of just not giving a crap about decisions the players made-- and no, that's not just the ending either. I'm not here to spit on the trilogy, but none of these plots are exactly Pulitzer prize winning stories. 

[Vapaa]

But ME2 had good things: it made Cerberus less of a "evil Alliance" and gave them some competence that actually showed why they could be a realistic problem for the Alliance. It allowed us to see the outer planets outside of council space... Let's not pretend like ME2 was some abomination that just ruined any chance of a good trilogy.

 
It wasn't an abomination and it's one of my all time favorites.
 
It just does a terrible job at being the second third of a trilogy
 

ME3 had plenty of foolish things in it. Kai Leng, the beginning of just not giving a crap about decisions the players made-- and no, that's not just the ending either. I'm not here to spit on the trilogy, but none of these plots are exactly Pulitzer prize winning stories.

 

And that started right with ME1.

Yeah ME3 had bad things of its own, but most of the game actually tried to patch up ME1'narratives with ME2's narratives.

 

The cheated fight with Kai Leng actually reminded me of the first fight with Saren, minus the contrieved VS choice.

[Hanako Ikezawa]

But ME2 had good things: it made Cerberus less of a "evil Alliance" and gave them some competence that actually showed why they could be a realistic problem for the Alliance.

Competence? Almost every operation Cerberus had in ME2 either failed or turned against them. 

[Youknow]

 

 

It wasn't an abomination and it's one of my all time favorites.
 
It just does a terrible job at being the second third of a trilogy

Mine too TBH. I can't even blame ME2 for that. If anything, I'd blame ME3. I knew I was going to have problems from the start when we were told that you wouldn't need to play ME1 or ME2 to make sense of ME3. It's supposed to be the finale to a series! What do you mean it should be able to stand alone! it's like going to a play's third act instead of watching the whole thing. ME2 seems like the odd man out, but ME3 could have made ME2 important, but they didn't. They took the easy route and pretended it didn't happen. 

 

 

And that started right with ME1.

 

Not a single argument here. 

 

 

Competence? Almost every operation Cerberus had in ME2 either failed or turned against them. 

 

They managed to not only revive Sheperd, but somehow preserve any resemblance of the original before death. Gave him upgrades to assist with the revival that did not fail, essentially making an enhanced cyborg. They somehow got enough engineers to reverse engineer the Normandy, and not only recreate it, but surpass the original version. Were able to find and obtain information on a set of people in the huge galaxy that had some of the best odds to do a Suicide Mission with the possibility of every crew member leaving alive. Created an advanced AI that was created competently enough to not go insane like the original version from the Alliance. It may have left, but at least it left after it did its main job. 

 

That's far more competent than "make monsters and get people killed" machines that they were in ME1 where you're left reading the codex and thinking "WTF...?" or laughing. 

[Vapaa]

ME2 seems like the odd man out, but ME3 could have made ME2 important, but they didn't.

And it was a good thing, because nothing ME2 did mattered in the grand scheme of things, the whole Crucible lark should've been what ME2 was about, instead you just muck about with mercenaries. Again, ME2, while a fantastic game, is an abysmal second third of a trilogy.

[Fixers0]

But ME2 had good things: it made Cerberus less of a "evil Alliance" and gave them some competence that actually showed why they could be a realistic problem for the Alliance.

 

You gotta be kidding, right? Cerberus' incarnation post ME1 was absolutly terrible. There's no reason why a splinter group would aquire anywhere near the resources to be a problem to an interplanentary government, it's completely unbelievable. Mind you, Cerberus was doing it's super secret just a couple years after first contact. Without any substantional government or ngo funding there's absolutly no way TIM would be able to mobilise  the money, manpower and raw resources to construct space stations and spaceships, setup programs, conduct high end R&D, assasinate people all the while evading any type of scruity by the authorities and without having any form of public support. To put it simple terms: TIM going from nothing at the end of the FCW to commanding vast interstellar conspiracy with intelligiance capablities beyond any governmont is nigh unbelievable and incredibly stupid.

[Dantriges]

They managed to not only revive Sheperd, but somehow preserve any resemblance of the original before death. Gave him upgrades to assist with the revival that did not fail, essentially making an enhanced cyborg. They somehow got enough engineers to reverse engineer the Normandy, and not only recreate it, but surpass the original version. Were able to find and obtain information on a set of people in the huge galaxy that had some of the best odds to do a Suicide Mission with the possibility of every crew member leaving alive. Created an advanced AI that was created competently enough to not go insane like the original version from the Alliance. It may have left, but at least it left after it did its main job. 

 

It was one the most ill planned mission ever seen.TIM and Shepard always talked about stopping the Collectors and assaulting their homeworld...with a frigate and 12 men (11+Shep - Legion, no one expected him to join). And all the other stuff, like no intel at all.

[Amplitudelol]

                                                                                                <<<<<<<<<<()>>>>>>>>>>

 

"good riddance"  may be equal to game delay.

 

RGB solves them all, no delay no matter what.

[Vapaa]

It was one the most ill planned mission ever seen.TIM and Shepard always talked about stopping the Collectors and assaulting their homeworld...with a frigate and 12 men (11+Shep - Legion, no one expected him to join). And all the other stuff, like no intel at all.

Given the circumstances, it was as much planned as it was humanly possible.

Cerberus did exactly two things right: the Lazarus project and the Normandy SR2 (and even then, it needed non-Cerberus enhancements), EVRYTHING ELSE either backfired or went rogue...even ME2 which contains the entirety of Cerberus's achievements is still packed full of epic failiures.

[Dantriges]

Well then the mission profile was wrong and should have been recon if nothing else was possible.

[Hanako Ikezawa]

Given the circumstances, it was as much planned it was humanly possible.

Cerberus did exactly two things right: the Lazarus project and the Normandy SR2 (and even then, it needed non-Cerberus enhancements), EVRYTHING ELSE either backfired or went rogue...even ME2 which contains the entirety of Cerberus's achievements is still packed full of epic failiures.

They didn't even do those two things right in the long term. Both the revived Commander Shepard and the Normandy SR2 backfired when they went rogue, even being instrumental in destroying Cerberus. 

[The Arbiter]

Some clarification from Bioware either way would be good. It does seem somewhat suspicious. 

 

A writer leaving (or being sacked) this late in development can't be a good sign, regardless of whatever one thinks about his writing ability. I'm not familiar with his work, so I have no opinion on that. 

yep... maybe Starbrat indoctrinated him

[SolNebula]

Well if they removed him from the staff introduction post then there is something up. He seems (according to Twitter) to be working from home. Probably (my speculation) he is going to leave BW after his pending work is done/game is released.

From my office managing experience people generally start working from home when they are about to leave the Company they are working for but have to finish first the job that has already been assigned to them. I can imagine Schlerf having an issue with someone big inside BW and decided to leave. Of course he will have to finish his job for ME:A first.

 

IMO if these speculations are to be believed once the game is released he will announce his departure and BW will hire a new lead writer. I do not know Schlerf nor how professional writing do work but generally I know from experience that  people who are about to leave tend to focus and work with less energy and attention to the details. I do believe though that Schlerf is a professional writer and will do an appropriate work.

[In Exile]

Hmm. This seems pretty clear to me. This doesn't seem pretty clear to you? Perhaps it's your inability to parse English.

You know, I think we should have a little chat about this science in question. Isn't it quite amazing just how many posters crawl out of the woodwork qualified in esoteric scientific topics that are at minimum undergraduate senior and often graduate level collegiate knowledge as soon as physics is mentioned? That seems quite amazing to me. Does that seem quite amazing to you?

So what is it, exactly, that you think makes element zero 'gibberish'?

Nope, you're clearly unable to actually parse English. And apparently a big fan of cherry-picking quotes out of context to win internet arguments. Let's revisit our conversation. In fact, your ability to parse English is in doubt even in this thread, as I said nothing about Bioware's nonsense physics in my original post: 

 

I agree - at least on the plot and execution - but that's why I liked ME2. The substance in ME was always B-movie territory at best. Often it was bargain bin sci-fi. Moving away from that benefited the series, IMO. The Suicide Mission - which was a silly gimmick, lacked any real build-up in the plot and ultimately amounted to nothing even in the games own story DLCs - was just an awesome experience from start to finish. 

 

Please point to me where I speak of the science. I don't bring it up. You do, by reference to an off-topic exchange we've had days ago in another thread. Let it go. 

 

Here is our original exchange: 

 

And why exactly is it stupid?

 

I do hope you're not going to tell me because it's 'made up' or it's 'space magic.' It ought to be rather obvious that if a writer could explain a mechanism for FTL travel based on real phenomena and in compliance with modern scientific understanding, he'd be sprinting to a patent office, not writing fiction.
 

 

It's stupid because it misses the point of science fiction. It's always been the case that the "fiction" part of science fiction comes in by taking advantage of the unknown in our base of knowledge. There needn't be an explanation for the premise at all - Foundation, for example, doesn't provide a mathematical justification for the idea of psychohistory. If it did, and the result was a geometry proof that wasn't even internally consistent, then we'd all be well within our rights to mock it silly.

 

The problem is that the "mass effect" is explained with reference to things we know, and can very easily rule out and discret. It's the equivalent of someone saying that a 1984 graphing calculator acquired sentience because it had "brilliant" transistors.

 

There are plenty of ways to handwave away FTL without embarassing oneself. Magic neutrons isn't the answer.

 

Beyond that - even if I say that the mass effect isn't stupid - the other comical scientific errors (relating to e.g. AI and machine learning, biology, evolution and immunology) have no point. While the AI we can handwave away - that's still a nascent area IRL - everything else (e.g. Quarian immunology) can have an IRL explanation, which Bioware gets comically and completely wrong. That's what makes ME science a joke. It doesn't quite get the premise of science fiction, explains what it doesn't need to explain using total and utter nonsense, and otherwise comically fails at applying - and even mentioning - existing science which does justify a part of the premise.

[JeffZero]

Well if they removed him from the staff introduction post then there is something up. He seems (according to Twitter) to be working from home. Probably (my speculation) he is going to leave BW after his pending work is done/game is released.
From my office managing experience people generally start working from home when they are about to leave the Company they are working for but have to finish first the job that has already been assigned to them. I can imagine Schlerf having an issue with someone big inside BW and decided to leave. Of course he will have to finish his job for ME:A first.

IMO if these speculations are to be believed once the game is released he will announce his departure and BW will hire a new lead writer. I do not know Schlerf nor how professional writing do work but generally I know from experience that people who are about to leave tend to focus and work with less energy and attention to the details. I do believe though that Schlerf is a professional writer and will do an appropriate work.

Good insight. I agree that the is quite possible. Thanks!

[In Exile]

In its defense, ME3 had to clean up the mess left by ME2; it hasn't got a coherent narrative because ME2 decided to wipe its ass with ME1's narratives and then introduce unresolved narratives of its own...as someone once said on the BSN, "ME1 and ME3 are all the trilogy you need".

 

ME1 has no excuse for its ludicrous plot though.

 

But a lot of the problems with ME3 don't have anything to do with ME2. The Reapers suddenly invading and oblierating everyone and everything is entirely an issue that arises in ME3. It's the introductory premise, but Bioware could easily have gone another way. The endings fly out of nowhere, and that's a different problem, and really the problem I was focusing on. Bioware can't decide on what theme ME3 is supposed to have, and actively contradicts itself depending on the segment. Even ME1 and ME2 had this problem, but it was never as pronounced because of the style vs.. substance. 

[Youknow]

They didn't even do those two things right in the long term. Both the revived Commander Shepard and the Normandy SR2 backfired when they went rogue, even being instrumental in destroying Cerberus. 

Which ME3 basically says that they expected Sheperd to leave after (s)he was done with the suicide mission. There are videos you can watch where they say that. I distinctly remember that part because it was the only way to make TIM not look like a complete idiot. That said, even with that happening, they were STILL more competent in ME2 and ME3 than they ever were in one-- which says a lot considering how cartoony they were in ME2 and more so ME3. 

You gotta be kidding, right? Cerberus' incarnation post ME1 was absolutly terrible. There's no reason why a splinter group would aquire anywhere near the resources to be a problem to an interplanentary government, it's completely unbelievable. Mind you, Cerberus was doing it's super secret just a couple years after first contact. Without any substantional government or ngo funding there's absolutly no way TIM would be able to mobilise  the money, manpower and raw resources to construct space stations and spaceships, setup programs, conduct high end R&D, assasinate people all the while evading any type of scruity by the authorities and without having any form of public support. To put it simple terms: TIM going from nothing at the end of the FCW to commanding vast interstellar conspiracy with intelligiance capablities beyond any governmont is nigh unbelievable and incredibly stupid.

That was something that was established by ME1 though. ME2 just showed what ME1 was talking about. Silly? I agree with that being completely unbelievable, but they were supposed to be that way from the start. A poor decision, I'll agree, but once you say something and publish it, you can't renege on that. 

 

It was one the most ill planned mission ever seen.TIM and Shepard always talked about stopping the Collectors and assaulting their homeworld...with a frigate and 12 men (11+Shep - Legion, no one expected him to join). And all the other stuff, like no intel at all.

You're also forgetting the crew itself was handpicked as well to be the best set of odds that they knew so far. Considering how little they knew about the mission, there wasn't much that could be done. Some of the mission was actually finding out what was going on. 

[Eryri]

But a lot of the problems with ME3 don't have anything to do with ME2. The Reapers suddenly invading and oblierating everyone and everything is entirely an issue that arises in ME3. It's the introductory premise, but Bioware could easily have gone another way. The endings fly out of nowhere, and that's a different problem, and really the problem I was focusing on. Bioware can't decide on what theme ME3 is supposed to have, and actively contradicts itself depending on the segment. Even ME1 and ME2 had this problem, but it was never as pronounced because of the style vs.. substance.

Agreed, particularly the bolded. I think that ME2 was rendered unimportant in the overarching plot because ME3 raised the stakes far too high for the sake of spectacle. If the plot of ME3 had been about continuing to hold the reapers at bay in dark space then it would have been a natural continuation of ME1 and ME2.

I've said this quite often before, but having the Reapers turn up en masse was, with hindsight, a terrible development for the overall plot - although I admit to have been as excited as everyone else at the initial trailers. If the Reapers were only a few months travel away, then neither ME1 or ME2 make much sense.

Sovereign should have waited until he had back up from the Reapers before assaulting the master relay at the citadel. Even had he failed to get inside it would have meant far less risk to himself. His actions only make sense if the Reapers were so far away that by the time they got here the galaxy's evolving technology would have made the harvest too hazardous for them.

Similarly, secretly building a new vanguard from human colonists makes sense if you need it to make another assault on the master relay to let in the other reapers. But it makes no sense if you can fly in a few months later and capture Earth itself, and have access to billions of humans all in the same place.

These problems could have been avoided if the Reaper invasion was incipient, or smaller, or took place many years later. But the marketing department needed a big, bombastic, war-to-end-all-wars, it seems.

[JeffZero]

No way. I can't agree with that. I was hyped for a full-scale Reaper invasion all throughout the first two games. It's what I wanted. Sometimes -- oftentimes -- I really do want the "cliche" finale. And I got it, in spades. Intermingled with some truly subpar writing, sure. But holding the Reapers at dark space... I mean, I'm sure it could have been done in a fashion that'd win me over, if done really well, but as a hook I'd feel disappointed.

[Killroy]

But a lot of the problems with ME3 don't have anything to do with ME2. The Reapers suddenly invading and oblierating everyone and everything is entirely an issue that arises in ME3.

...because ME2 did nothing to further the plot ME1 laid out for the franchise.

It's the introductory premise, but Bioware could easily have gone another way.

Such as? Padding out the beginning with filler to delay the Reapers showing up? What would that accomplish?

The endings fly out of nowhere, and that's a different problem, and really the problem I was focusing on. Bioware can't decide on what theme ME3 is supposed to have, and actively contradicts itself depending on the segment. Even ME1 and ME2 had this problem, but it was never as pronounced because of the style vs.. substance.

Well ME2 has no themes and ME1 only has generic themes. ME3's problem is not with it's themes, but with execution. They were aimless, having never bothered to plot out the franchise's trajectory until they were already developing the final installment. That's why ME2 is pointless and so different in tone from ME1. It was lazy game development propped up by style and flash.

[Killroy]

No way. I can't agree with that. I was hyped for a full-scale Reaper invasion all throughout the first two games. It's what I wanted. Sometimes -- oftentimes -- I really do want the "cliche" finale. And I got it, in spades. Intermingled with some truly subpar writing, sure. But holding the Reapers at dark space... I mean, I'm sure it could have been done in a fashion that'd win me over, if done really well, but as a hook I'd feel disappointed.

Even if you don't want a big spectacle, the first 2 games foreshadowed a Reaper invasion. The Harvest was imminent. Saying they should have never started the Harvest just because ME2 had such a throwaway, nothing plot is beyond dumb. It would be like if Star Wars had never shown what the Death Star could do before they blew it up.
"This station can destroy a planet. Probably."

That's bad storytelling for the sake of propping up bad storytelling.

[dreamgazer]

The Reapers suddenly invading and oblierating everyone and everything is entirely an issue that arises in ME3. It's the introductory premise, but Bioware could easily have gone another way.

Thing is, that's the image at the very end of ME2, and the Reapers have been doing the bold every 50k years for countless millions of years. Those are the cards that ME3 was dealt. Not sure how easy it would've been to simply go another way.