322 réponses à ce sujet

[Mathias]

That might explain why ME2 is my favorite. Pizza and wings.

But come on man you will never survive the apocalypse if you can't handle bad Chinese food.

Oh I can certainly handle good Chinese food. There's a place a few streets down from me that makes the best General Tsao chicken.

But ME3 was baaaad Chinese food.

 

 

Dragon age origins was a bland meal in a plastic plate at the company's restaurant, DA2 was a tasty but small sandwitch at a decent bakery.

 

To each their own.

 

Well as Gordon Ramsay would tell ya, your pallet is in desperate need of work.

And then I think he'd call you a donkey or something.

 

Mass Effect did give the humans a superior racial trait. They were said to be more adaptable than other species as well as more determined. That is in addition to having a meteoric rise to power, controlling more territory than many species that have been space-faring for far longer, having super special genetics, and their home planet being the focus of the entire war effort for no other than reason than it being Earth.

No I agree, the Mass Effect series is not a good example of how to handle the humans are special thing. However I really enjoyed the way ME1 handled the "humanity thing" because it emphasized our flaws as well as our strengths. The reasons why the other races would fear us are also the same reasons they'd find value in us, and I really liked that.

 

Then ME2 and ME3 came along and we're the chosen species. I love ME2, but yea I didn't like that. 

[Gothfather]

Which was a bit of egregious problem, in my opinion, since it seemed to be assumed that there would be an emotional attachment to the planet for the sole reason of it being Earth which I consider to be a bit flawed as Mass Effect 3 was the first time the player ever saw it from anywhere but orbit and even then only for a short while before having to leave. 

 

Personally, I had a greater emotional attachment to the Citadel because it was something I'd seen and been to throughout all of the games and where moments, important and personal, had happened. I met people who lived there and explored it so thoroughly that I knew it like the back of my hand in more than one game. 

 

Earth seemed nice and potentially interesting setting but I looked at it with the eyes of a stranger or a tourist even: Never had I met any of the people who lived there and never had I explored any of it's cities like I had the people of the Citadel and the Citadel itself.     
 

 

Stories are written for the reader/player/viewer not the characters in the story, including rpgs. You are never actually the character in an rpg.  You are lying to yourself when you say "Personally, I had a greater emotional attachment to the Citadel because..." You have far greater emotional attachment to EARTH because you live here, everyone you ever loved, currently love or will love is from here. All your frames of reference are formed on earth. This idea that you are more attached to a fictional setting that you saw for less than 0.01% of your existence isn't possible. Showing your home even a fictionalized version of your home invaded means far more than any imaginary location. It was good story telling to make earth the focal point of emotional threads of the story because we are all from here all our emotional investment is here. unless you are delusional you can't help but be emotionally attached to earth.

 

This is why almost all "aliens" be it in a sci-fi or fantasy setting are humanoid and basically "guys in suits" or humans with funny ears. Because we can't relate to something truly alien because we have never met anything truly alien. Stories are written for the reader/viewer not the characters in the story. While RPG games are an interactive media the principles are the same every emotion, intellectual discovery and experience a character can have in a story will be through the prism of earth and the human experience because all of the player's emotional and intellectual experience is from earth and the human condition. The only way to tell good stories is to acknowledge this and tie every story to this. It is why 'middle earth' is basically earth, why all fantasy settings are pretty much historical earth settings with magic. It is why even alien planets in sci-fi are earth like, or have an environment found on earth. Hoth, tatooine take an earth like environment something we can relate to and just make it planet wide and slightly more intense. When sci-fi creates a truly alien environment is it almost always in the context of it being the central theme "man vs nature." Why? because we can relate to a strange environment being dangerous we can't relate to a strange environment being mundane, even if it is mundane for the characters in the story.

[Fredward]

Why? because it is one of those "truths" that people could observe and not have tested for most of the span of humankind. The facts are that the pragmatist, the person willing to frak you over for their own self interest doesn't actually have the advantage over the "nice" guy, the opposite in fact. The experiment of the 'prisoner's dilemma' is proof of this "truth." Statistically speaking you get far better results on average by NOT being pragmatic but idealistic, this is statistical proof that being nice, actually has a tangible advantage. That it isn't a weakness. Which explains why almost every society believes that being the "good" guy is better, because they have observed this time and time again. Moral beliefs do not happen in a vacuum and while people may not have had the evidence to assert this position until the 20th century, it is something that could be observed and explains why most cultures have stories of the hero doing the right thing and "winning" because you are more likely to "win" by not being a jerk/pragmatic.

 

So it only makes sense that the paragon path gives you better results, because we have evidence to show that this will create better outcomes than being pragmatic despite the fact that it is unintuitive, the evidence doesn't lie. Now if you want to talk about how the game can create cost free victories, then yeah that is a problem but that is the nature of the stupid "I win" button be it paragon or renegade. Not a failing that he paragon path give better results.

 

Hero stories or stories which feature someone traditionally 'good' are popular because they generally feature net gains for the community in the story, which is nice for the community telling the story since it encourages pro-social behavior. Smart decisions and 'goodness' aren't mutually exclusive either, for instance in ME an example of this might be choosing to save the council since it pays dividends on longterm goodwill from other alien species for all of humanity instead of short-term military/politic gains. That doesn't make morally questionable decisions bad either though, for instance a smart decision that is not necessarily 'good' or nice in the traditional sense (put might be if you take the long term view) is killing the rachni queen in ME, technically speaking that should have resulted in no ravagers being faced in ME3 cuz that's a reasonable thing to assume but no.

 

Anyway, point is smart decisions have nothing to do with morality. They might have something to do with being pro-social though. Maaaybe. Except when you're being parochially 'good' and you wind up shooting everyone in the dick later down the line cuz you were too caught up in your own morality system.

[Shechinah]

Stories are written for the reader/player/viewer not the characters in the story, including rpgs. You are never actually the character in an rpg.  You are lying to yourself when you say "Personally, I had a greater emotional attachment to the Citadel because..." You have far greater emotional attachment to EARTH because you live here, everyone you ever loved, currently love or will love is from here. All your frames of reference are formed on earth. This idea that you are more attached to a fictional setting that you saw for less than 0.01% of your existence isn't possible. Showing your home even a fictionalized version of your home invaded means far more than any imaginary location. It was good story telling to make earth the focal point of emotional threads of the story because we are all from here all our emotional investment is here. unless you are delusional you can't help but be emotionally attached to earth.

 

Nope, because the Earth in the Mass Effect universe is not the Earth I live on and therefore the Earth in the Mass Effect universe is not where I live and is not where everyone I love and will love lives.

 

Furthermore, the Earth in the Mass Effect universe did in no way resemble the Earth where I live with the exception of a lovely blue sky and some green trees meaning that they could have slapped the label of Earth on a planet like Illium and it would have been to the same effect in terms of my emotional attachment to it.

 

My lack of emotional attachment towards the fictional Earth in the Mass Effect universe is possible as evident by my lack of emotional attachment towards the fictional Earth in the Mass Effect universe.

 

As a note; I would advise you to be careful about how your phrase your arguments and counterarguments since accusing someone of lying and especially being delusional based on subjective reasons can be taken as making personal insults towards another poster which is against the forum rules and is additionally very disrespectful in a discussion.

[Vortex13]

Ugh.

 

As much as I enjoy ME3's Tuchanka arc, Wrex in ME3 is a great example of how the writers in ME2 only seemed to have a passing acquaintance with the character arcs they wrote in ME2.

 

In ME1, Wrex's character arc is built around how the genophage is a red herring for his people's fall- that it's not the genophage that's destroying the Krogan, but the Krogan themselves. That they've been too short-sighted, too violent. It's not surprise that Wrex's death or survival depends on him overcoming the allure of a cure- of destroying Saren's facility and research for the good of everyone else.

 

And you know what? ME2 actually carried that forward in a good way. Wrex, if he survived, was going to change things- not by chasing cures, but by reforming the culture and focusing on breeding. The Krogan didn't necessarily like him- even his own clan has its grumbles- but they had to listen to him because he controlled the females. Don't reform, don't access the females. Less breeding, more fighting, and eventually you'd die off. Wrex's reforms were based on coercion of reproduction. Wrex's reforms were based on coercion.

 

 

Then came ME3 and the genophage cure blows Wrex's support base apart- replacing it with a dependence on gratitude and good will. Wrex- the 'mutant' by Eve's own admission- is supposed to be listened to and be able to control the Krogan firmly because... Eve likes him? Magical shamanism? Something like that.

 

Eve's political support depends on two things: the Krogan who agree with her ideals, and her value as a breeding female. Krogan who agree with her ideals are already going to go along with Wrex- he's the only game in town, and if Wrex can't unite the people who do agree with him, then there's no way he can unite the people who don't.

 

But Eve's value as a breeding female is obsolete if the genophage is cured. Wrex's entire breeding control system is obsolete. No one needs to listen to Wrex anymore because he doesn't control access to breeding. Not all the females agree with Eve in the first place- and not all the mystic shamans like Eve oppose the old bloody ways- and while Wrex can certainly claim popularity and heroism, he no longer stop other clans from doing what they want by withholding the breeding stick. He's either going to have to crush them, or tolerate them- and that includes any reluctance or refusal to go along with reforms by the Krogan who think, hey, it really was the genophage all along, and now they're free and strong again.

 

Wrex and Eve are either going to find themselves a well-intentioned, even respected, leader but powerless over the many different agendas of the different clans... or they're going to have to suppress the other clans by force to prevent them from escaping and acting naughty. And that will entail quite a bit of suppresion.

 

 

Very well said and this just adds more reasons to why I find the Tuchanka arc to so infuriating. It's not that I hate Wrex and the Krogan; though I do find them to be one of the setting's biggest hypocrites; but I do hate the narrative agenda in ME 3 to paint them as a totally blameless, and unjustly repressed people.

 

Forget that the Krogan destroyed three garden worlds via redirected asteroids during their Rebellions, or the irreparable damage they did to many other planets' ecosystems because of unrestricted development and industry. Forget that its the Krogan that turned their own world into a hellhole with self imposed nuclear holocaust, or that it was the Salarian's efforts with the Shroud that makes Tuchanka even remotely livable in the current setting. Forget that the general Krogan population has had nothing but disdain for the Turians and Salarians for over two thousand years, and that your average Krogan would gladly kill said alien(s) and their families if they could get away with it; not much goodwill or even passable integration with galactic society there.

 

Forget all of that. The Genophage was deployed by a bunch of evil, racist, jerk-holes that only want to see dead Krogan babies.    

 

Seriously. ME3's sabotage choice shouldn't have been about convincing Mordin- it should have been about convincing Wrex that he was dooming his reforms. And Eve- rather than the basis of a cure- should have been the one fertile female who could use that exclusivity for power.

 

 

Nah, we should have had the option to side with the Krogan or the Rachni for the united allies' ground forces. The way we would get Wrex to back off would have been essentially telling him that the galaxy doesn't really need his race's help. The fight would go better with both armies assisting the galaxy, but if Wrex is going to be belligerent and try to put everything else on hold for the a cure than he needs to know where his people really sit in terms of importance to the rest of the Milky Way. 

 

"Work with the alliance Wrex, help save lives and we can work on a cure when our armies don't have their backs up against a wall, or stay on Tuchunka and pout, because we have an army that is willing to work with us, we don't need you."

[Majestic Jazz]

because America is the country of "cheese". way too theatrical and cliched for my liking.

 

Well I do not have to care what you think because well.....I'm an American! Western Civilization revolves around us whether your like it or not. Hell, where do you think Bioware/EA gets most of their sales from?

 

 

As for the thread, the main cliche that I hate in Bioware games is that when playing as a renegade/non-goody two shoes, we as the player normally gets punished for playing such ways. Content is cut because of our decisions, party members leaves us etc. That isn't realistic.

 

Hopefully MEA does a better job at this. 

[BabyPuncher]

Ditch the attempts at moral absolutes.

 

No human is pure good or pure evil. Trying to distill every choice to moral absolutes will result in either really unrelatable options (reprogramming geth being paragon even though practically everyone tells you they'd rather die than be changed by external party) or forcing you to choose between 'stupid good' and 'chaotic stupid'. If all choices are distilled to only moral absolutes, the protagonist will come off as either a flat character, or as having a mental disorder (when randomly picking choices). series hats still give me nightmares.

 

I don't think you have much of a clue what 'moral absolutes' actually means at all.

 

Thinking it somehow has anything to do with a demand that every human must be 'pure good or pure evil' is a dead giveaway.

[BabyPuncher]

As for the thread, the main cliche that I hate in Bioware games is that when playing as a renegade/non-goody two shoes, we as the player normally gets punished for playing such ways. Content is cut because of our decisions, party members leaves us etc. That isn't realistic.

 

Hopefully MEA does a better job at this. 

 

...What on Earth are you talking about?

 

As I've now said on many occasions, Mass Effect, like pretty much any game that offers large scale choices, is a world with incredibly feeble resistance and nonexistent consequences to outrageous acts of evil. The player character does whatever he wants to whoever he wants scot-free because he's Just That Badass. There are never any genuine obstacles that arise because genuine obstacles are not fun. At worst, a character makes a scene and is promptly and immediately executed and tossed aside because the player character is Just That Much Better And More Awesome Than Anyone Else.

 

And your line of thinking on that is that 'realistic' means the player character has more people bowing down and meekly standing aside and accepting whatever the player character says because he shouts and waves a rifle around? That's what 'realism' looks like to you? That's what you think 'realistic' looks like?

 

Are you sure about that?
 

[KaiserShep]

As for the thread, the main cliche that I hate in Bioware games is that when playing as a renegade/non-goody two shoes, we as the player normally gets punished for playing such ways. Content is cut because of our decisions, party members leaves us etc. That isn't realistic.

 

I don't really see it as punishment. Personally, I think it's more fun when characters have stronger reactions to certain decisions, and could possibly leave if it starts to compound to a certain degree, or there's one key decision that a particular companion is scripted to have a particularly strong reaction to. As it is, it's pretty unrealistic that any of these characters gets away with the crazy sh** they do in the game. Just having someone complain or having fewer assets is less than even a slap on the wrist. I'd say a mild noogie or something. 

[Dean_the_Young]

I don't really see it as punishment. Personally, I think it's more fun when characters have stronger reactions to certain decisions, and could possibly leave if it starts to compound to a certain degree, or there's one key decision that a particular companion is scripted to have a particularly strong reaction to. As it is, it's pretty unrealistic that any of these characters gets away with the crazy sh** they do in the game. Just having someone complain or having fewer assets is less than even a slap on the wrist. I'd say a mild noogie or something. 

 

My criticism comes to how ME2 handled things: cameos if you kept people alive, and absolutely nothing if you didn't. That... never made sense to me, because there was never a reason why we couldn't have an equivalent cameo in most cases. Whether or not the rewards were identical, there could have been something.

 

Take the Rachni cameo- you get the Rachni Ambassador who gives thanks and a momento and says the Queen will remember in the future. Good stuff- by why not have a Noveria Executive, or even a Krogan, on stand by if you did kill the Queen? Give you a token of appreciation/thanks for killing the Queen, preventing a bigger problem for many/ensuring so many Krogan didn't die in vain.

 

Another example is Shiala. Shiala is the Asari you can spare from the Feros colony in ME1. If she lives, she's your cameo in ME2. If she doesn't- then a nameless schmuck. But why? We already had a named survivor who fit the 'making up for my actions' motive, and corporate experience: Elizabeth (IIRC), the daughter we rescue from the ruins of Binary Helix. She never dies- and has an established motive for helping the colonists- and has as much grounds for being awed/grateful/even flirtatious with Shepard as Shiala. Who, you know, tried to kill us.

 

You can take it further. The fist Cameo. Why not someone who likes us, or hates us, for killing him? Imagine if he had a son. "Hello. I am Iniago Fist. You killed my Father, prepare to-" -RENEGADE INTERRUPT-

 

 

And so on. Even if the mechanicle rewards differ, there's no reason for an absence of cameo content to reflect carryover.

[Addictress]

Maybe it's because you're 15 and don't get it. The re-used environments in DA2 actually served to SHOWCASE the evolution of the story. By providing a consistent world, the change that you saw was 100% character development and narrative and also change in the world as affected by your character's actions. As in a movie where your character's might be in the same town - the same neighborhood - the entire time, but you witness an evolution within that town.

I thought it worked marvelously.

[Dean_the_Young]

Maybe it's because you're 15 and don't get it. The re-used environments in DA2 actually served to SHOWCASE the evolution of the story. By providing a consistent world, the change that you saw was 100% character development and narrative and also change in the world as affected by your character's actions. As in a movie where your character's might be in the same town - the same neighborhood - the entire time, but you witness an evolution within that town.

I thought it worked marvelously.

 

?

 

I have no idea if you're talking towards me and made a typo about DA2, or talking to someone else.

 

On the off-chance you intended me, I'll ignore the insult and make a counter-argument based on what I was talking about: an absence of content (no cameos at all) isn't the only way to reflect changes in the world.

 

I'm an advocate of equivalent content for major choices- that when you have a choice that you're going to show in one way, you should be prepared to spend equivalent effort showing the other. Some choices I think fall outside this (choosing not to recruit a companion, for example), but for story-critical choices the writers should be willing to go both ways.

 

Cameos don't have to be just the survivors of a choice- after all, the Rachni Queen herself didn't return in ME2. We can get proxies who show up and are affected by the choices, or recognize and provide acknowledgement of them. That's what the Rachni Ambassador was, after all- not a returning character, but a new character who was affected by our choice. If we can produce a new character to recognize Shepard's actions in one route, we can (and, I'd argue, should) produce an equivalent character to recognize Shepard's actions in the other route.

 

And this is when cameos are based on 'killable' characters at all- I'm perfectly happy to let non-killable characters be the returning facets of a series. Writers already have to do that anyway for characters that move the plot, so why bother with the 'are they dead?' characters? The girl we rescue from Exo-Geni is a perfectly valid carryover reflection choice- change her dialogue as appropriate, and bam. Don't have to worry.

 

As a general principle, I feel a setting's evolution from choices is better shown by showing something in both routes- not having stuff in one route, and then wiping your hands of the other and saying 'well, that's the difference.' That's a treatment people only find acceptable when it's their favored choices and paths that get the content.

[Jorji Costava]

Has anyone mentioned the Hero's Journey yet? That's an epidemic in Bioware games, and it really needs to go.

 

Beyond that, I'd say the main cliché I would not miss is the tendency to rely almost always on dehumanized villains during combat. We're mostly fighting robots, drones, faceless mercenaries, Cerberus soldiers who have been stripped of all personhood by crazy experimentation, and the inhuman, mutated freaks that make up the Reaper army. Hell, we're explicitly told that the Collectors have no history or culture at all.

 

I get that in a TPS game, it would get to be a drag to spend 90% of the time killing people with families, but at a certain point you either have to reduce your reliance on combat or be willing to raise the emotional stakes within combat (or both). If ME is going to be a game of high stakes and morally difficult decisions, then I don't think it's best to relegate those aspects of the game solely to its dialogue portion.

[dreamgazer]

Has anyone mentioned the Hero's Journey yet? That's an epidemic in Bioware games, and it really needs to go.

 

I think they should keep their options open to any and all "tropes" that work with their story ... except this.  Throw it out the frellin' airlock.

[Jorji Costava]

I think they should keep their options open to any and all "tropes" that work with their story ... except this.  Throw it out the frellin' airlock.

 

Wait, has anyone mentioned daddy issues yet? That could probably go too.

[Vortex13]

Wait, has anyone mentioned daddy issues yet? That could probably go too.

 

 

I am curious, are there any companions that have not had horrible parental issues in BioWare's more recent games?

[dreamgazer]

Wait, has anyone mentioned daddy issues yet? That could probably go too.

 

They could still work in very small, smart doses for motivation. All depends on how they're used. 

 

Daddy issues as loyalty missions that determine the mortality of the focal characters, or command the bulk of the narrative? Oh, yes.

 

[Il Divo]

I am curious, are there any companions that have not had horrible parental issues in BioWare's more recent games?

 

Or old games for that matter. Daddy issues is pretty consistent across Bioware games: Carth, Bastila, Zaalbaar, Mission is technically brother issues, though Griff is kind of a father figure.

[Vortex13]

You know what would be a nice troupe inversion for ME:A?

 

A companion that has a strong, loving relationship with both his/her parents, and grew up with a happy childhood, and yet is still a complete bada** soldier when it comes to combat.

[GaroTD]

Ashley Williams?

[Vortex13]

Ashley Williams?

 

 

Well she had grandfather issues, that shaped her backstory. Her actual father was a minor bullet point in ME 1. Subsequent titles fleshed out her immediate family more, but the base foundation behind her motivation for joining the Alliance and having a (semi) death wish was to prove granddaddy wrong. 

[Han Shot First]

You know what would be a nice troupe inversion for ME:A?

 

A companion that has a strong, loving relationship with both his/her parents, and grew up with a happy childhood, and yet is still a complete bada** soldier when it comes to combat.

 

It is amazing how many characters in the series either came from broken homes or had outright hostile relationships with parents, some of which ended in murder. 

 

A little less of that in the next game would be nice.

[Vortex13]

It is amazing how many characters in the series either came from broken homes or had outright hostile relationships with parents, some of which ended in murder. 

 

A little less of that in the next game would be nice.

 

 

Agreed. 

 

 

If we consider the average BioWare companion to be normal, then I must be some freakish alien (well moreso than I already am  ) as I love both my parents and grew up happy and well adjusted. 

[Iakus]

Or old games for that matter. Daddy issues is pretty consistent across Bioware games: Carth, Bastila, Zaalbaar, Mission is technically brother issues, though Griff is kind of a father figure.

Cernd was a daddy issue 

[Iakus]

Has anyone mentioned the Hero's Journey yet? That's an epidemic in Bioware games, and it really needs to go.

 

Beyond that, I'd say the main cliché I would not miss is the tendency to rely almost always on dehumanized villains during combat. We're mostly fighting robots, drones, faceless mercenaries, Cerberus soldiers who have been stripped of all personhood by crazy experimentation, and the inhuman, mutated freaks that make up the Reaper army. Hell, we're explicitly told that the Collectors have no history or culture at all.

 

I get that in a TPS game, it would get to be a drag to spend 90% of the time killing people with families, but at a certain point you either have to reduce your reliance on combat or be willing to raise the emotional stakes within combat (or both). If ME is going to be a game of high stakes and morally difficult decisions, then I don't think it's best to relegate those aspects of the game solely to its dialogue portion.

There's nothing wrong with the Hero's Journey as such.  Heck part of it's appeal is that it's so versatile.  But yes, the battle for the power to shape all of reality needs to be toned down.  Especially if they insist on continuing with save imports.

 

And they should also learn that there are more ways to raise stakes and set up morally difficult decisions than "Do this morally questionable thing or someone/many someones die"  Holding a gun, figuratively or literally to an NPC's head gets old really fast.  Got to be more creative in raising tension.