157 réponses à ce sujet

[Iakus]

 The central conflict will be solved via the power of friendship.

 

If that were true Synthesis would be the most popular ending.

[Killroy]

Nah, this fanbase hates hard decisions. Look at the furore over the endings. If you don't give the ability for people to have their cake and eat it too simply by being a self righteous Paragon drone, people cry about it.

I expect more magic blue dialouge and kumbaya nonsense in ME: A. The central conflict will be solved via the power of friendship.

If you think everyone who hated the ending hated it because it wasn't happy then you don't have a handle on the situation.

[Xen]

If that were true Synthesis would be the most popular ending.

Friendship and Orwellian eugenics mindrape programs forcing people to stop fighting and learn to love their toaster overlords are the same thing? I've been doing this all wrong.

 

If you think everyone who hated the ending hated it because it wasn't happy then you don't have a handle on the situation.

Which is why the most popular mod to alter it isn't literally called the Happy Ending mod or anything.

 

People like disguising dumb opinion behind ostensibly less dumb excuses to increase their chances of being taken seriously by the uninformed. It's classic dog whistle politics.

[AlanC9]

I can see where Tali's Sweat got the idea. It'd help if people didn't keep proposing fixes that just happen to make things happier. I'm sure that's a pure coincidence, but it does give the wrong impression.

[Shechinah]

Which is why the most popular mod to alter it isn't literally called the Happy Ending mod or anything.

 

This seems to carry the assumption that all people use the MEHEM mod for the same reason as oppose to different reasons.

 

The thing is that some people use the MEHEM mod not because they desire a happy ending but because the mod allows them to replace a segment of the game that they have negative feelings or thoughts towards. There are even some who are not even fond of MEHEM but consider it better than the alternative that is the unmodded ending. 

 

TL:DR: MEHEM mod is used by people for different reasons. With some, it has nothing to do with wanting a happy ending and everything to do with not wanting to see the Catalyst.   
 

[Killroy]

Which is why the most popular mod to alter it isn't literally called the Happy Ending mod or anything.
 
People like disguising dumb opinion behind ostensibly less dumb excuses to increase their chances of being taken seriously by the uninformed. It's classic dog whistle politics.

What can be done by players to alter the ending is extremely limited so it's not as though ANY mod is going to be able to change the game enough to make the ending good. MEHEM is also stupid(as are most people, but I digress). The ending is objectively poor(it violates basic tenants of storytelling) and it was designed to be quick and easy to develop, not to be a satisfying conclusion.

[Iakus]

Friendship and Orwellian eugenics mindrape programs forcing people to stop fighting and learn to love their toaster overlords are the same thing? I've been doing this all wrong.

 

 

According to Bioware, yes.  It is, after all, the "ideal" solution 

 

 

 

Which is why the most popular mod to alter it isn't literally called the Happy Ending mod or anything.

 

You haven't seen the Low EMS version, have you?

 

 

I can see where Tali's Sweat got the idea. It'd help if people didn't keep proposing fixes that just happen to make things happier. I'm sure that's a pure coincidence, but it does give the wrong impression.

Because one way to fix the problem of too many depressing outcomes is to add more of them, amirite?  

[wright1978]

This seems to carry the assumption that all people use the MEHEM mod for the same reason as oppose to different reasons.
 
The thing is that some people use the MEHEM mod not because they desire a happy ending but because the mod allows them to replace a segment of the game that they have negative feelings or thoughts towards. There are even some who are not even fond of MEHEM but consider it better than the alternative that is the unmodded ending. 
 
TL:DR: MEHEM mod is used by people for different reasons. With some, it has nothing to do with wanting a happy ending and everything to do with not wanting to see the Catalyst.

Agree with every word, allows the removal of the trainwreck section of the game. In early versions of mehem I kept the geth death as I didn't overly mind the tough consequence even if I thought the implementation was utterly horrendous. By no means the perfect multilayered ending with variants of choice and consequence from earlier decisions I would have preferred but a laudable but limited fan made effort.

[von uber]

I can't think of any tough decisions in Mass Effect. Most of the time you know you'll have a dialogue option that negates any difficulty in choice, and the rest you know it is inconsequential.

For example, there has never been a decision in mass effect that has made me literally stop and agonise like, for example,

Spoiler

in LIS the decision to kill chloe or not

.

Most of the decisions come down to which bar you want to fill and whether you think the scars look cool.

[wright1978]

I can't think of any tough decisions in Mass Effect.

Really, I found virmire very tough first time round, equally I found the geth heretic destruction/rewrite very tough, even personally found the whole cure the genophage tough

[von uber]

Really? Virmire wasn't tough, I never warned to kaidan so it was quite straightforward.
Heretic destruction just left me cold as it was just flicking a switch and my first playthrough of genophage arc I had Wrex and his everything will be wonderful charms which neutered it.
Mordin dying was emotional but it wasn't a tough choice to cure at the time.

[Seboist]

Virmire wasn't tough for me either, my femshep wanted D, and Ashley couldn't provide it, so....

[wright1978]

Really? Virmire wasn't tough, I never warned to kaidan so it was quite straightforward.
Heretic destruction just left me cold as it was just flicking a switch and my first playthrough of genophage arc I had Wrex and his everything will be wonderful charms which neutered it.
Mordin dying was emotional but it wasn't a tough choice to cure at the time.

 

Suppose if you don't care about one or either of the characters its less tough.

Equally if you don't consider the geth alive its less tough to wipe them out or rewrite them.

I had wrex in genophage arc. Even with him the krogan future is problematic.

[KaiserShep]

As one who likes both Kaidan and Ashley, that choice did give me a moment of pause. Since then, however, I didn't consider any other decisions to be difficult at all. Destroying the heretics was easy, especially considering that Legion was partially in favor of the option, and so was destroying all synthetics, because f*** the reapers, man. 

[von uber]

Suppose if you don't care about one or either of the characters its less tough.

Equally if you don't consider the geth alive its less tough to wipe them out or rewrite them.

I had wrex in genophage arc. Even with him the krogan future is problematic.

 

I was not given enough time or reason to wonder if the Geth were alive. Literally one mission? Whoop-de-woo.

And on your first playthrough of Mass Effect you get hit with the feels hammer so hard you forget about all the issues with the genophage. It's only on reflection and subsequent playthroughs that's it is more nuanced I think.

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

Really? Virmire wasn't tough, I never warned to kaidan so it was quite straightforward.
Heretic destruction just left me cold as it was just flicking a switch and my first playthrough of genophage arc I had Wrex and his everything will be wonderful charms which neutered it.
Mordin dying was emotional but it wasn't a tough choice to cure at the time.

 

Right, because I'd chosen Liara. Kaidan or Ash filled the same role. One had to be sacrificed. It made no real difference. Sacrifice the one with the bomb. It only made sense. Sorry ____, but there are a bunch of Salarians who need rescuing. The thing is that no matter where Kaidan is, he says "You know it's the right choice, Commander." Even if you choose to save the one with the bomb and let the Salarians get slaughtered. See he was supposed to arm the bomb and Ash was supposed to go with the Salarians. You were supposed to save Ash because of male Shepard possibly being in a romantic relationship. In any event, "You know it's the right choice, Commander" completely neuters the results of the choice.

 

The Heretic decision - it was simple. The Geth have been shooting at us for the past umpteen months. The rewrite wouldn't change that fact. It would simply align them to Legion's faction... sort of.... but there was a non-zero probability of Legion's anti-virus program not working properly. If it didn't work properly, that virus could infect all the Geth and bring them over to the reaper's point of view.

 

Also Geth are not like organics. Don't apply our morality to them. Even Legion agreed. Simple decision. You have chance to nuke a **** ton of your enemy with the blessing of your enemy. Do it.

 

Mordin's dying was emotional, but it was his choice. Wrex still left problems, but he and Bakara were supposed to solve everything. Now with Wreav and a dead Bakara? I talk Mordin into leaving and fake the cure.

[wright1978]

Mordin's dying was emotional, but it was his choice. Wrex still left problems, but he and Bakara were supposed to solve everything. Now with Wreav and a dead Bakara? I talk Mordin into leaving and fake the cure.

 

Dialogue in game plus, reproductive patterns hardly suggest its a solution but rather a mitigation imo. If it wasn't for prothean history(length of war) i might not cure it even with affection for Wrex.

[ACika011]

If you think everyone who hated the ending hated it because it wasn't happy then you don't have a handle on the situation.

I don't think people hated the ending because of that. I would be completely fine with a ending where Shepard and all our squad mates die in a glorious charge fighting the Reapers while a enormous battle is taking place in the skies above, hell that would be epic. Most people i feel dislike it because all resources we collected dont matter in the end. It doesn't seem satisfying enough not to mention the star child and space magic. IT aside its just dumb, with it its a different story but either way still leaves a lot of question unanswered.

[Aimi]

As somebody who has made something of a career out of studying difficult military decisions, BioWare's ones are not that great, and neither, honestly, are the ones in this thread.

[ACika011]

As somebody who has made something of a career out of studying difficult military decisions, BioWare's ones are not that great, and neither, honestly, are the ones in this thread.

I'm really glad that you provided reasons for your opinions, and gave your own fantastic suggestions.

[von uber]

As somebody who has made something of a career out of studying difficult military decisions, BioWare's ones are not that great, and neither, honestly, are the ones in this thread.

 

Ah, Waterloo - the battle where mostly Germans did the fighting and dying and the British took all the credit

[Xen]

Heretics is especially easy. Nevermind the completely viable conclusion that they're lifeless violent toasters of no moral worth, and that rewrite is simply strengthening the enemy even if it does work (which is not at all certain). Repace them with organics while applying the same moral standard ( Legion says this is racist but W/e) and they are violent cultists who have down to the last individual knowingly committed war crimes and crimes against humanity on a massive scale in pursuit of a genocidal ideology that would have made those tried at Nuremburg blush. In this case if you've any sense of justice, they are guilty and must be punished.

 

Then you add in the knowledge that it is objectively the worse decision as far as the overall Reaper war is concerned (thousands if not millions of irreplaceable quarians suffer and die instead of replaceable toasters, and it makes acquiring both armies extremely difficult) and the only reason not to blast some virtual asses into actual dust is shilling Paragon points.

[Aimi]

I'm really glad that you provide reasons for your opinions, and gave your own fantastic suggestions.

You're welcome!

See, the important word there is 'military', and not paying close attention to that word probably gave you a misapprehension of the point of the post. I have a history of quibbling with the way the subject of warfare is presented in media, so I emphasize stuff like that. And it's unquestionable that military logic rarely makes an appearance in either Mass Effect or Dragon Age. Hence, there are rarely, if ever, difficult decisions that deal with military topics in the games; usually, the decisions involving military topics are framed badly, with strange choices, and the consequences of choosing one or the other have no material impact on the fighting. Even difficult military decisions made by NPCs in those games are the same way: the events at Ostagar in DA:O, for example.

Instead, the games emphasize character choices. On Virmire, specifically military considerations like the bomb's detonation, or the presence of enemy troops, or the status of the salarian unit or really any other soldiers apart from Kaidan or Ashley, are taken out of the equation. All that matters is choosing between the character Kaidan and the character Ashley. From a storytelling point of view, that is not a bad choice! For many people, it is a tough decision. (For others, it isn't. That's the way these things go.) But it's not a difficult military decision, hence my post.

[ACika011]

You're welcome!

See, the important word there is 'military', and not paying close attention to that word probably gave you a misapprehension of the point of the post. I have a history of quibbling with the way the subject of warfare is presented in media, so I emphasize stuff like that. And it's unquestionable that military logic rarely makes an appearance in either Mass Effect or Dragon Age. Hence, there are rarely, if ever, difficult decisions that deal with military topics in the games; usually, the decisions involving military topics are framed badly, with strange choices, and the consequences of choosing one or the other have no material impact on the fighting. Even difficult military decisions made by NPCs in those games are the same way: the events at Ostagar in DA:O, for example.

Instead, the games emphasize character choices. On Virmire, specifically military considerations like the bomb's detonation, or the presence of enemy troops, or the status of the salarian unit or really any other soldiers apart from Kaidan or Ashley, are taken out of the equation. All that matters is choosing between the character Kaidan and the character Ashley. From a storytelling point of view, that is not a bad choice! For many people, it is a tough decision. (For others, it isn't. That's the way these things go.) But it's not a difficult military decision, hence my post.

You are right, i didn't pay close attention, sorry. Claiming that you are a expert can you suggest some?

[WarGriffin]

Right, because I'd chosen Liara. Kaidan or Ash filled the same role. One had to be sacrificed. It made no real difference. Sacrifice the one with the bomb. It only made sense. Sorry ____, but there are a bunch of Salarians who need rescuing. The thing is that no matter where Kaidan is, he says "You know it's the right choice, Commander." Even if you choose to save the one with the bomb and let the Salarians get slaughtered. See he was supposed to arm the bomb and Ash was supposed to go with the Salarians. You were supposed to save Ash because of male Shepard possibly being in a romantic relationship. In any event, "You know it's the right choice, Commander" completely neuters the results of the choice.

 

Well thats kinda been the whole issue with Kaiden and Ashley... Its very clear that at least in ME2 Ashley was the preferred choice to save on Vimire due to how the confrontation on horizon goes fits her personality better then Kaidan's "Ashley Feels and Reacts, Kaidan Thinks and Responds"

 

If they had left the save both in...They'd have had to differentiate Kaiden and Ashley alot sooner instead of waiting to ME3 -where Kaidan pretty much comes off as Garrus does... having grown while Ashley comes off as though she still needs Shepard to guide Her