157 réponses à ce sujet

[themikefest]

In the trilogy I didn't find any decision that was tough. The toughest decision I made is trying to decide if Shepard would have red hair, brown hair or be a blonde for whatever playthrough I was starting

[themikefest]

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

I would still pick destroy.

[Aimi]

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

Well, it kinda depends. Since Mass Effect is in a futuristic setting, there are some constraints.

Modern militaries have doctrine to help deal with the decision-making process. There are often multiple applicable responses to any given situation (in addition to inapplicable ones) and doctrine is designed to get individual leaders to choose the one that the military believes is best for it. The appropriateness of a given response is conditioned not only by battlefield or geographical conditions, but also by the relative strengths and weaknesses of the military units engaging in combat themselves. Doctrine and training are inextricable from the decision-making process.

Invariably, doctrine also deals with intensely technical questions. A hundred years ago, this meant that it dealt with things like the specific distance between individual infantrymen in a skirmish line, the conditions under which it should be denser or less dense, and the mechanism for adjusting density. Or, it would be about how to set up a unit's organic artillery, and what situations were appropriate for uncovered, half-covered, and fully covered batteries. For a more modern example, Russian combat engineer doctrine specifies things like the degree of incline for a slope under which certain prepared defenses will be employed. (Antitank ditches, for instance, are prescribed for slopes between zero and fifteen degrees; from fifteen to forty-five degrees of slope, escarpments and counterscarps are preferred instead.)

Expecting devs to create doctrine that makes sense - let alone expecting players to learn it and understand it and be able to apply it - is not realistic. Look at the statements to that effect that we got in Mass Effect. Turian "doctrine" is apparently based on things like "destroy the enemy with overwhelming force" (Primarch Victus in ME3, on the Normandy after leaving Menae), which doesn't even freaking mean anything. They also like firepower, which is similarly meaningless, because infantry tactics for the last century and a half have been based on the fundamental interaction between fire and movement; saying that the turian military likes firepower is like saying that cooks like ovens. And they like discipline, which is also one of those things that is kind of inextricable from the actual experience of being a soldier in a first-line military. The glimpses we get of everyday life in the turian military, like that combat sparring conversation with Garrus in ME2, are interesting! But the doctrine is goofy.

Unquestionably, the absence of conditioning doctrine for a player's choices make the creation of militarily sensible decisions difficult. So does the lack of a failure state. Unless it's horrendously, blatantly obvious (like, say, sexing Morinth), Mass Effect is not going to give you a critical mission failure based on a dialogue choice; it certainly isn't going to give you one based on something like "how many soldiers do I send to this location".

Sure, you could have dialogue that makes combat harder in certain areas based on what decision you make. There are two problems, though. Firstly, the games have already done that, and few people cared or noticed. Secondly, almost regardless of how difficult the games make the combat, it will still result in winnable scenarios (especially for good players), which reduces the impact of the decision.

All of which is well and good, but doesn't really answer your question.

There are plenty of concepts in warfare that makes for interesting decisions. It is difficult to know when and how to concentrate force, and when to disperse it. The possession of the initiative and how to maintain it is another, and balancing that with the concept of the "culminating point" of offensive action is a difficult task. The spectrum between micromanagement and lack of management, and the best location on that spectrum for a commander, is a subject that often receives a great deal of attention. None of these topics by itself, however, suffices to make for what I would consider a good 'tough military decision'. If the subject of how closely Hackett has to monitor Shepard's activity, and the granularity of his orders, is addressed, but those orders are nonsensical, the effect is lost.

[OdanUrr]

Perhaps more than ME1's Virmire choice I would pick the one from Legion's loyalty mission in ME2 as more representative of the hard choices I'm looking for. In ME2 you learn that the Geth are not all out for Shepard's blood as in ME1. In fact, there are some Geth who are looking out for Shepard. So when you're eventually thrust into deciding the fate of the heretic Geth who have been chasing you for two games straight an interesting choice presents itself. You can just destroy them, and that'll be the end of it, or you can instead reprogram them and effectively remove their drive to kill your character. Both choices achieve the desired outcome, you have no personal stake that'll steer you towards one or the other, it all comes down to what you (as in you, not Shepard) believe is best. It reminded me at the time of Stargate's "The Ark of Truth," as our protagonists in the film are given the choice of using a weapon (the Ark) that can brainwash people into believing whatever you want them to. Using the Ark, or reprogramming the Geth, prevents further death but at the cost of erasing the subjects' beliefs. So, in the end, what I did was put myself in the Geth's shoes, as it were. Would I rather be brainwashed or go down fighting? Once I asked myself that question my choice was made clear but it took a while.

 

As a matter of fact, Extra Credits made a video of this choice. You should check it out:

 

[ZipZap2000]

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.

Unanswered would have been fine by the end of the first run. I just wanted it to be over, the need for a sense of finality was that strong.

I would have taken best seats in the house as an ending. I thought it was at first and I was surprised the game kept going after that. I thought Shep would probably die but we'd made it, it was over and it was worth it.

Then the Citadel turned into Metroplex from Transformers and I lost an argument to a 7 year old, who somehow manages to convince me to kill myself.

Who didn't think was going to end well?



Follow ups.

TFOC was brilliant.

Multiplayer saved the franchise.

The ending outcry had nothing to do with Shepard dying.

Making your nemesis one of your favourite locations is dumb.

Suicide is not a valid ending option.

Let alone giving you a choice between:

Blowing yourself up.

Electrocuting yourself.

Or jumping into a giant green laser beam that literally melts your face off.

(This takes me back.)

[Han Shot First]

The Mass Effect series could use more tough decisions. That old 'Many decisions lie ahead, None of them easy' advertising slogan was really only true at Virmire. It was the only time in the entire series where Shepard had a decision that had no outcome where he/she could win without consequence, other than perhaps the endings of ME3, but the less said about those the better.

 

It also adds an element of realism and aids in suspension of disbelief. It's a cold hard reality of combat leadership that sometimes casualties cannot only be avoided, but are sometimes necessary. A combat leader has two main priorities: Mission accomplishment and the welfare of the troops under his/her command, but the former is always the first priority. Had I lived during the American Civil War I would have been a Union man, but Robert E. Lee has a great quote that sums up the harsh reality of combat leadership. "To be a good soldier, you must love the army. To be a good commander, you must be willing to order the death of the thing you love."

 

I love Virmire for that.

 

That said, the devs also have to be careful to keep those decisions mostly small scale. Put the protagonist into scenarios where his/her choices have consequences that affect the protagonist and his or her team members, but don't have it affect the survival of entire species. If you do have the protagonist encounter choices that affect the fates of whole civilizations, have it be more similar to DA:O than ME3. Playing kingmaker in Orzammar has massive impact on the dwarven city-state's future, but neither outcome implies the dwarves are headed towards extinction.

[SlottsMachine]

I found the Rachni choice pretty agonizing at the time and I'm sure there were a few others as well. But none of the games follow up on your decisions at all really, so even if the player found a choice difficult over time any impact that choice may have had is lost because you are not seeing or experiencing repercussions (positive or negative) later on. There are outliers but most choices in ME led to a more or less neutral outcome, I understand why they had to do that from a development standpoint but the end result left a lot to be desired.

 

As for what I would like to see going forward I find that choice in games works best when you have a variety. As an example The Pitt choice in Fallout 3 really stood out to me because it was a more or less neutral choice in a sea of good/evil choices that represented the main game. But say take the Telltale Walking Dead games where everything is neutral for the most part I ended up not really caring what I chose, basically just flip a coin. So yeah, give me a little of everything. Be that soul crushing choices, pat yourself on the back choices, or flip a coin choices. 

[KaiserShep]

In the trilogy I didn't find any decision that was tough. The toughest decision I made is trying to decide if Shepard would have red hair, brown hair or be a blonde for whatever playthrough I was starting

 

This decision was easy for me. Badass brunette. 

[Seboist]

This decision was easy for me. Badass brunette. 

Nothing tops having a blue eyed raven for a femshep.

[Aimi]

This decision was easy for me. Badass brunette.

 
Represent.
 

Nothing tops having a blue eyed raven for a femshep.

green and brown eyes are also cool

[Aimi]

It also adds an element of realism and aids in suspension of disbelief. It's a cold hard reality of combat leadership that sometimes casualties cannot only be avoided, but are sometimes necessary. A combat leader has two main priorities: Mission accomplishment and the welfare of the troops under his/her command, but the former is always the first priority. Had I lived during the American Civil War I would have been a Union man, but Robert E. Lee has a great quote that sums up the harsh reality of combat leadership. "To be a good soldier, you must love the army. To be a good commander, you must be willing to order the death of the thing you love."

Lee might not be a great example there, because he was very successful at causing the death of his army - one of the many reasons why he was a failure. I wonder if Haig or Zhukov made similar 'glorious butcher'-style comments, because as poor as their generalship was and as horrendous as the casualties their armies absorbed were, they at least managed to be lucky enough to be on the winning side.

Casualties happen in war, obviously, and a key aspect of command is the willingness to absorb casualties to accomplish objectives. The unit that sustains zero KIA/WIA/MIA over the course of a campaign is quite the unicorn indeed. That does not mean that piling up casualties is an indicator of the ballsiness of command and the willingness to make difficult choices. Taking large numbers of avoidable casualties is a mark of a failure of command. That doesn't mean that a commander should be able to avoid any casualties at all over the course of a campaign. A colder and harder reality of warfare is that no matter the decisions a soldier makes, and no matter how skillful she is, sometimes she will do everything right and still get killed. Most things in war are out of a soldier's or commander's hands, and randomness shapes the battle as much as orders do. Indoctrinating soldiers to the opposite - to the belief that training can keep you alive - is most of what makes warfare possible.

I don't see much promise in getting that particular cold hard reality into Mass Effect, though, because random unavoidable player death is one of those things that's not very conducive to the game aspect.
 

That said, the devs also have to be careful to keep those decisions mostly small scale. Put the protagonist into scenarios where his/her choices have consequences that affect the protagonist and his or her team members, but don't have it affect the survival of entire species. If you do have the protagonist encounter choices that affect the fates of whole civilizations, have it be more similar to DA:O than ME3. Playing kingmaker in Orzammar has massive impact on the dwarven city-state's future, but neither outcome implies the dwarves are headed towards extinction.

Yes.

[Helios969]

I would like fewer "outs" for the tough decisions. In ME1 it was either Ashley or Kaidan, not both. Save the Council or focus your efforts on the Reaper, not both. But after ME1 you always had outs, making the hard decisions easy.

Quarians or Geth? Why not both!

Not everyone will survive this suicide mission. But actually they pretty much always all survive! 

If you cure the genophage the Krogan might become a massive threat to the galaxy. Unless they don't, because Wrex is 2cool4you!

 

The premise of "hard choices" shouldn't have workarounds.

I tend to agree, but if it is done Bioware should make any such work around nigh impossible.

 

I'd like to see Bioware move away from purely binary choices and rather have a series of decisions culminate in something more profound.  Each decision (the more important ones) should provide both benefit and consequence short term as well as long term.

[SardaukarElite]

I really don't like Virmire style 'realities of war' choices framed in dialogue. Because it's a writer creating a military situation to force the choice and often that situation will make no sense. I've only read a little military history but my impression is that in war people die mostly because of stupid mistakes or blind chance, skill can minimize that but it's rarely a case of saving one person or the other. Tactical games (XCOM, MechComamander) offer a better representation I feel, where persistent characters die from your actions in combat governed by mechanics. The loss stings because it's your fault (not a writer's) and you know why you made the decision. Not that I expect ME to do that because they put so many resources into characters, I'd favor ME2 Suicide Mission death-gates as an alternative though I feel they could be improved. 

 

I would like ME to explore something its trailers have pitched but the games haven't touched which is mission selection as a choice. You can respond to one of multiple distress signals, what do you value more? 

[Daemul]

One thing I want the series to move away from is giving the protagonist decisions that he has no business making. Things like the Rachni Queen, why the **** is Shepard the one making the decision to let her go or not? Even as a Spectre this is way above his paygrade and the decision should fall directly to the council. It's not like the Rachni Queen is going anywhere, she was locked in there.. Another one is the council choice, why is Hackett asking Shepard what to do when Hackett is with the fleet and has clear visuals on the developing situation whilst Shepard is in the Council Chambers and can't see what's happening?

 

Bioware got carried away with adding massive life/death decisions to the games even though many of them were completely illogical, and they actually caused trouble for Bioware themselves in a development sense since they had to take those decisions into account in future games. If they had kept the decisions smaller and more personalized, like the Virmire choice, we wouldn't have had stupid **** like clone Rachni, hopefully Bioware realize this and avoid these same traps in Andromeda. 

[WarGriffin]

One thing I want the series to move away from is giving the protagonist decisions that he has no business making. Things like the Rachni Queen, why the **** is Shepard the one making the decision to let her go or not? Even as a Spectre this is way above his paygrade and the decision should fall directly to the council. It's not like the Rachni Queen is going anywhere, she was locked in there.. Another one is the council choice, why is Hackett asking Shepard what to do when Hackett is with the fleet and has clear visuals on the developing situation whilst Shepard is in the Council Chambers and can't see what's happening?

 

Bioware got carried away with adding massive life/death decisions to the games even though many of them were completely illogical, and they actually caused trouble for Bioware themselves in a development sense since they had to take those decisions into account in future games. If they had kept the decisions smaller and more personalized, like the Virmire choice, we wouldn't have had stupid **** like clone Rachni, hopefully Bioware realize this and avoid these same traps in Andromeda. 

 

 

Shepard seems have  the inability to deal with something outside of Kill it or Let it go. Shepard could deal with alot of problems if they just brought zipties!!

 

The Rachni Queen should have been turned over to the council or the alliance... Now if you want to make it a Paragon/ Renegade choice

 

The Rachni Queen is convinced that the Citadel species will deem her too much of a threat and not believe her whole an ancient evil took over my race and caused the war X years ago and just have her outright killed in a kangeroo court

 

Trying to convince her to surrender peacefully since that would back up the whole rachni aren't inherently violent argument alot better and offering protection in the Alliance as a backup plan if the Council does seem unwilling to let bygones be bygones.

 

Renegade would be something along the lines of if it all goes to hell the Rachni OWE  The Humans a debt and it be like some under the table deal where She'd be turned over but 'Escape' and Now the alliance has a secret alliance with a race of bugs

[Seboist]

Renegade would be something along the lines of if it all goes to hell the Rachni OWE  The Humans a debt and it be like some under the table deal where She'd be turned over but 'Escape' and Now the alliance has a secret alliance with a race of bugs

 

In my vanilla run of ME1 I let the Queen loose in a vain hope she'd help humanity overthrow the three council races down the line. Was hoping for such with the Krogan and other disenfranchised aliens as well, would've made Shep the human "Saren".

[Sartoz]

 Big Snip

Sure, you could have dialogue that makes combat harder in certain areas based on what decision you make. There are two problems, though. Firstly, the games have already done that, and few people cared or noticed. Secondly, almost regardless of how difficult the games make the combat, it will still result in winnable scenarios (especially for good players), which reduces the impact of the decision.

 

Snip
 

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I must say, that is a well articulated response. Thank you.

 

 

Off-topic.

No offense intended but ...ahh... using firstly and secondly threw me off.  Especially after reading such a clearly expressed reply.

 

Oddly enough, I took a gander and the Wall Street Journal,  Globe and Mail even the Financial Times use them... very odd. So I continued and the use of  and third..blah..blah used by the New Republic, fourth... by the Irish Times, and fifth... by The Economist. ... I'm just not used to seeing the -ly added to ordinal numbers like first, second, third because they function as both adjectives and adverbs.

 

Again, a well articulated response.

[themikefest]

One thing I want the series to move away from is giving the protagonist decisions that he has no business making. Things like the Rachni Queen, why the **** is Shepard the one making the decision to let her go or not? Even as a Spectre this is way above his paygrade and the decision should fall directly to the council. It's not like the Rachni Queen is going anywhere, she was locked in there.. Another one is the council choice, why is Hackett asking Shepard what to do when Hackett is with the fleet and has clear visuals on the developing situation whilst Shepard is in the Council Chambers and can't see what's happening?

I agree about the rachni. I would've left it up to the council to make the decision.

The council decision should never of been in the hands of Shepard. Before Shepard can say yes or no to saving the council, there were two opportunities for the council to live. Once the Alliance came through the relay, a third opportunity was presented to save the council. Hackett knows how many ships he has. He can override what Shepard suggests. To make it interesting, I would have Hackett's decision based on the player's playthrough to save the council or not.

 

Hackett never asked Shepard about saving or letting the council die. It was Joker asking Shepard.

If I were to rewrite the trilogy, I would have the council live every time.

The other decision is who to be councilor. Why is up to Shepard?
 

Bioware got carried away with adding massive life/death decisions to the games even though many of them were completely illogical, and they actually caused trouble for Bioware themselves in a development sense since they had to take those decisions into account in future games. If they had kept the decisions smaller and more personalized, like the Virmire choice, we wouldn't have had stupid **** like clone Rachni, hopefully Bioware realize this and avoid these same traps in Andromeda.

The life and death thing in ME2 was lame. Its funny that if a squadmates loyalty mission isn't completed, they can't perform to the best of their ability. How pathetic. In a life and death situation, having your loyalty mission not completed should be the furthest thing from your mind. The other thing is that if they can't focus on the mission, why would you want them as a squadmate?

[wright1978]

 

The life and death thing in ME2 was lame. Its funny that if a squadmates loyalty mission isn't completed, they can't perform to the best of their ability. How pathetic. In a life and death situation, having your loyalty mission not completed should be the furthest thing from your mind. The other thing is that if they can't focus on the mission, why would you want them as a squadmate?

 

Personally don't agree, i thought the concept was very good. Being distracted going into a mission may be a simplistic but not a completely false element. Also don't think every mechanic has to be 100% realistic if it leads ti interesting permutations which the suicide mission most certainly did. I'd definitely like to see the concept revisited and refined with added complexity.

[Iakus]

Personally don't agree, i thought the concept was very good. Being distracted going into a mission may be a simplistic but not a completely false element. Also don't think every mechanic has to be 100% realistic if it leads ti interesting permutations which the suicide mission most certainly did. I'd definitely like to see the concept revisited and refined with added complexity.

Yeah in concept it was interesting.  Too bad most of the personal quests weren't.

 

And one of the funny permutations is a distracted fire team leader means the "focused" tech expert flubs and takes a rocket to the face 

[themikefest]

Personally don't agree, i thought the concept was very good. Being distracted going into a mission may be a simplistic but not a completely false element. Also don't think every mechanic has to be 100% realistic if it leads ti interesting permutations which the suicide mission most certainly did. I'd definitely like to see the concept revisited and refined with added complexity.

That's fine.

 

Instead of having it a life or death situation, if the loyalty mission isn't completed,  I would've had it effect the relationship between the squadmate and Shepard

[Xen]

In my vanilla run of ME1 I let the Queen loose in a vain hope she'd help humanity overthrow the three council races down the line. Was hoping for such with the Krogan and other disenfranchised aliens as well, would've made Shep the human "Saren".

This is actually what I wanted to do. Get the krogan, quarians, rachni, batarians and any of the permanently disenfranchised Citadel races like volus, hanar/drell and elcor together with a promise of some actual representation, and overthrow the racist Council. After that we could divvy up their worlds amongst us, and sell the previous Council into slavery for the batarians and thus stop their raids on the other species. All the galaxy's organic problems solved, we could then focus on  building Xen's weapon and eliminating the geth threat (preferably by control, though destruction if that is unattainable) and finally the Reapers.  No sitting around for years doing nothing. Hell, we'd probably have the crucible finished before they even got out of Dark Space. It's just too bad that not only was this not possible, but even my human power grab got retconned out of existence.

 

Hopefully the change in power structure brought about by uprooting and moving to another galaxy means some revenge fuelled counter-oppression is due.

[wright1978]

Yeah in concept it was interesting.  Too bad most of the personal quests weren't.

 

And one of the funny permutations is a distracted fire team leader means the "focused" tech expert flubs and takes a rocket to the face 

 

Personally i enjoyed many of the personal quests. Maybe they should have been called focus missions rather than loyalty missions.

The idea that distracted leaders cost lives isn't bad but implementation could of course be refined.

[Ahglock]

I'd of been fine with them just leaving in most cases. I asked for one bleeping thing in order to go on this suicide mission with you and you said we don't have the time. Half the team were not really do it for the good of others types.

[AlanC9]

The Mass Effect series could use more tough decisions. That old 'Many decisions lie ahead, None of them easy' advertising slogan was really only true at Virmire.

And in the trailer itself. Let's hope ME:A is the game that finally breaks away from misleading previews.