120 réponses à ce sujet

[Mlady]

Oh shoot! I remember now! She WAS loyal but I didn't have a high Paragon/Renegade when her and Jack fought and I told her off. I forgot to redeem our "friendship" before the SM!

[themikefest]

Oh shoot! I remember now! She WAS loyal but I didn't have a high Paragon/Renegade when her and Jack fought and I told her off. I forgot to redeem our "friendship" before the SM!

That will do it.

 

Just a suggestion. I usually do MIranda's loyalty mission right after Horizon followed by completing Jack's loyalty mission right away. That way I get both the red and blue dialogue letting me keep both loyal

[LineHolder]

Miranda just kept dying on me, though she was loyal. I only kept her alive by shooting her sister. I just don't get why the other options weren't working. I gave her the data, talked to her each time, talked about Kai Leng. She would always die unless I shot the sister. I must have messed up somewhere. 

 

In my latest playthrough, she was loyal in ME2 and I kept her loyalty, I missed her on the Normandy Docking Bay (trying to rush through the game), chatted with her on the Spectre terminal after the Citadel coup, warned her about Leng, gave her the resources she asked for, took the Renegade option on the left to talk down her father and she still died (she wasn't my LI in this playthrough). Made me ragequit out of this playthrough (and of any subsequent 'complete ME3 runs').

 

The only time I've been able to save her is when I romanced her in ME2 and 'continued' with it in ME3.

[StarcloudSWG]

You NEED to talk to her all three times in ME 3, you need to tell her about Kai Leng which means you have to have read the email or codex entry about Kai Leng after getting the information from Anderson, and you need to give her access to Alliance resources in the third conversation.

 

If she was also loyal during the Suicide Mission, she will survive Priority: Horizon.

[Iakus]

You NEED to talk to her all three times in ME 3, you need to tell her about Kai Leng which means you have to have read the email or codex entry about Kai Leng's after getting the information from Anderson, and you need to give her access to Alliance resources in the third conversation.

 

If she was also loyal during the Suicide Mission, she will survive Priority: Horizon.

Also if you were in a romance with her in ME2, don't break up in ME3

[themikefest]

Miranda can also die even if all those things have been done. Don't choose the red or blue dialogue and ignore the interrupt.

[Mlady]

In my latest playthrough, she was loyal in ME2 and I kept her loyalty, I missed her on the Normandy Docking Bay (trying to rush through the game), chatted with her on the Spectre terminal after the Citadel coup, warned her about Leng, gave her the resources she asked for, took the Renegade option on the left to talk down her father and she still died (she wasn't my LI in this playthrough). Made me ragequit out of this playthrough (and of any subsequent 'complete ME3 runs').

 

The only time I've been able to save her is when I romanced her in ME2 and 'continued' with it in ME3.

 

I remember the first time I nearly ragequit so I used Gibbed and made my poor FemShep her temp romance. It was so awkward to see that scene... then after that I switched back to just friends.

[LineHolder]

You NEED to talk to her all three times in ME 3, you need to tell her about Kai Leng which means you have to have read the email or codex entry about Kai Leng's after getting the information from Anderson, and you need to give her access to Alliance resources in the third conversation.

 

If she was also loyal during the Suicide Mission, she will survive Priority: Horizon.

 

So, the only thing I did wrong was not meet her on the Docking Bay (1st meeting). Do I have to scroll down to the bottom of the Leng dossier (or is it enough to scroll to the message and having it marked read) as well? Shepard told her about Leng, she expressed surprise at the 'slippery bastard still being alive', Shepard gave her the resources, she was loyal throughout ME2.

 

Also if you were in a romance with her in ME2, don't break up in ME3

 

Right, she survives in the playthrough where she is the LI. I didn't break up in ME3. However, in the playthrough I am talking about, she wasn't the LI in 2.

 

Miranda can also die even if all those things have been done. Don't choose the red or blue dialogue and ignore the interrupt.

 

Are you sure about that? I chose the colored renegade option, she killed Henry Lawson and died.

 

I remember the first time I nearly ragequit so I used Gibbed and made my poor FemShep her temp romance. It was so awkward to see that scene... then after that I switched back to just friends.

 

Awkward! But yeah, it's infuriating to see Miranda die.

[themikefest]

Are you sure about that? I chose the colored renegade option, she killed Henry Lawson and died.

Yes I am.

 

You said you chose the renegade option. I posted to ignore the red and blue dialogue. and not use the interrupt. Right?

[LineHolder]

Yes, I read what you wrote. Typically the colored options are an automatic I-win button. I assumed they would have the added benefit of saving Miranda as well. By this point in the game I have never had a shortage of reputation to unlock those options.

[themikefest]

Yes, I read what you wrote. Typically the colored options are an automatic I-win button. I assumed they would have the added benefit of saving Miranda as well. By this point in the game I have never had a shortage of reputation to unlock those options.

Have Miranda loyal and everything else. Make a save before seeing her and her father. Choose the dialogue on the right ignoring the dialogue on the left when the wheel pops up. Then ignore the interrupt and watch what happens. Once you've done that, come back and tell me I was correct in what I posted.

[Daemul]

Nah OP, you only need to go to the ME2 subforum and look at the threads dating back to Mass Effect 2's release, complaints about ME2 not advancing the plot have been there since day one, you can also check out Smudboys videos from back then if you're interested. It was painfully obvious to many of us that ME3's narrative was going to be a train wreck because it was given the impossible task of doing the job of two games plot wise, due to ME2 not pulling its weight.

When you have Bioware making brainless decisions like making all 12 squadmates killable, having little focus on the collectors, killing Shepard for no logical reason when putting him in a coma would have been as effective and then completely ignoring the implications of him coming back from death and, this is the biggest one, giving the option to destroy the collector base(why the **** did they do this?!!!), it was easy to see that Mass Effect 3 was already doomed to failure. Gameplay wise ME3 turned out excellent, but storywise it was already fucked before its conception.

[Linkenski]

A common criticism about ME2 is that it didn't advance the central story of the trilogy, the Reaper War. Isn't this hindsight? How can ME2 be blamed for not advancing the story if ME3 did not utilize the 2nd game's plot points AT ALL? I know I'm personifying the two games but really they don't feel related. Is it the fault of the preceding game or the sequel?

 

I am playing through the trilogy again and having started ME3, I see Cerberus being active in every frakking theater of war like they're some super convenient super organization that can do everything. Yes, there is the explanation at the end that TIM has been indoctrinated but I personally feel it was a cop out and very contrary to Cerberus' paranoia shown in ME2.

 

However good ME2 is, I now wish that the 'schism' with Cerberus was resolved in ME2 itself, with the 'save or destroy' Collector base in the middle of the game and an assault on TIM towards the end. Something like Witcher 2 with it's two branching storylines finally converging again at the end.

 

I play ME2 with all these great characters and marvel at the potential that was squandered going into ME3. IF Shepard can have plot armor, why not Miranda? Jack? Grunt? Garrus? Tali?

 

ME3 is a poorer game just by comparing its squad roster to that of its predecessor.

My local review outlet in my country, GameReactor posted a review of ME2 on launch making a con bulletpoint being "Does not meaningfully advance the main story of the trilogy".

 

It's not hindsight. Anyone who steps back and thinks about how a trilogy arc should be structured will realize this.

[Iakus]

My local review outlet in my country, GameReactor posted a review of ME2 on launch making a con bulletpoint being "Does not meaningfully advance the main story of the trilogy".

 

It's not hindsight. Anyone who steps back and thinks about how a trilogy arc should be structured will realize this.

Bioware tried to have it both ways, a direct sequel with choices that carry over, and an entry point for new players to hit the ground running.

 

It didn't work.  Like, at all.

[Linkenski]

Bioware tried to have it both ways, a direct sequel with choices that carry over, and an entry point for new players to hit the ground running.

 

It didn't work.  Like, at all.

About this, my biggest frustration is how I feel like the "this is for newcomers!" mantra ME3 had and the extent of dialogue that was written specifically for newcomers and alienating you as a fan felt like a response to IGN giving ME2 a minus for "referencing the previous game too much".

 

That anyone would listen to that is beyond me... oh wait. This is the games industry where the AAA developers and publishers listen to the professional media sites and patronize their anonymous users because status is apparently more credibility than reasoning and logic. I bet they never even bothered to see any of MrBtongue's content for ME3 or Smudboy for that matter for feedback. Smudboy may be too blunt sometimes taking time out of his analysis to say "Mac Walters is stupid" or something but MrBtongue at least make concise and really well-formed arguments and video-feed that supports what he's talking about, and typically he gets into the core of an issue when he decides to address one instead of immediately going "I hate X, you suck!" like some user-reviews often do.

[LineHolder]

Review and games media websites are finished. Bioware would be stupid to cater to what some irrelevant 'journalists' think.

Make games that your players like, make money and watch the positive press roll in automatically. But this sort of common sense is too much to hope for.

Even after seeing what happened to titles like DmC and ME3, the collective hubris of the industry just doesn't seem to go away.

[Daemul]

My local review outlet in my country, GameReactor posted a review of ME2 on launch making a con bulletpoint being "Does not meaningfully advance the main story of the trilogy".

 

It's not hindsight. Anyone who steps back and thinks about how a trilogy arc should be structured will realize this.

 

You just reminded me of back in the day on NeoGAF during the lead up to Mass Effect 3, when the moaning about Mass Effect 2 and how it was proof that Mass Effect 3's story was going to suck had gotten so bad, that Mods had to create a specific Mass Effect Franchise bitching thread to house the moaning because every Mass Effect 3 news thread would always get derailed within a couple of pages. 

 

I'll try and find the thread if I can but I did save my favourite post from that thread in a word file since it spawned some good discussion, it was;

 

Originally Posted by Sennorin

You know, I'm still a junior so I cannot create new threads, but it would be interesting to have a thread that goes like "Who believes that ME3 will have a satisfying ending? - aka The Anti-Lost".

 

We were discussing Mass Effect 3's disappointing ending long before the game or even the script leak came out. Mass Effect 2 had torpedoed the plot so bad that we saw a bad ending as inevitable. 

[LineHolder]

That's hyperbole to an extreme. No plot threads (however stupid seeming) are unsalvageable. You need to be creative.

 

Did the PC personally have to resolve centuries long conflicts of the Genophage (how silly is it that a virus that alters the genes can be reversed in seconds/days/weeks) and the Quarian-Geth war along with personally resolving the Reaper problem? Time spent on those two issues could easily have been spent on fighting Reapers but no ... gotta be the god-of-all-the-things.

 

I haven't argued against anyone in this thread who holds (and gives reasons for) ME2 not doing much to advance the Reaper plot. But I still believe that the story structure of resolving the Collector threat (with(out) the help of TIM and Cerberus) was well done (just as good as ME1, I say) and the premise(s) ME2 put forward were not realized to their full potential. Nothing in the game explicitly told us that *this thingamajingy* will help fight the Reapers. But that doesn't mean that some working of the Reapers was not revealed. Doing a u-turn at the start of the 3rd game not only detaches it from the rest of the series but also makes the previous ones look stupid.

[von uber]

I always imagine it would be like Tolkien saying "books 5&6 are the best place to start the story ".

Incidentally it's a shame no one has ever made a film version of lotr. Or a sequel to The Matrix for that matter.

[LineHolder]

Interesting you mention LOTR because I thought about invoking it.

 

Consider LOTR, one of the most highly regarded pieces of English literature. Half of the 2nd part of its trilogy is devoted to dealing with an agent of Sauron. The other half is continuing the journey of two of its primary characters. What the 2nd book did is flesh out the world of the central and south eastern parts of Middle Earth. The good thing about LOTR is that the means to destroy Sauron is discussed (at length) and decided in the first book itself. But we rarely see stories with that amount of forward planning and cohesion anymore so it's best not to expect it from a video game of all things.

 

Consider a more recent (and also) popular series; Harry Potter. The method to destroy Voldemort is not discussed at all in the middle third of its 7 books. It is only brought up towards the end but also cleverly references actions of the past books that were key in destroying him (Riddle's diary etc).

 

ME3 didn't have a such a monumental problem on its hands AT ALL. Instead, what we got is a device that

 

1. Is made ... somehow

 

2. Does ... something

 

3. Plans for it made by ... someone

 

4. Plans for it found ... somewhere (and by somewhere I mean conveniently found in Mars without any foreshadowing in the previous games)

 

The what, who, how and why are never addressed. I find it insulting that the only explanation given was, "there are some blueprints we found on Mars that describe a device that releases energy that might destroy the Reapers". If that doesn't solely make the entire third game shitty I don't know what does. This doesn't even take into account the endings.

 

Harping on that the middle of a story *should always* present us with a means to the destruction of a foe is not only formulaic, but also naive. You do not encounter and resolve the problems in your life by suddenly discovering solutions while dicking around. Instead, more often than not, your past experiences help you in coming up with solutions to problems as they come along.

[ajlueke]

I think the problem was definitely that ME3 didn't really take into consideration anything that happened in the previous games.  While I think it is also fair to say that ME2 didn't advance the state of affairs as Mass Effect 1 left them, it didn't do anything to invalidate the plot of the first game, while Mass Effect 3 certainly does.  It almost seemed to me, when I played through Mass Effect 3, that whoever wrote it never even played the first two games.  It really is that bad.

 

In the first game, we discover that the citadel is in fact a giant mass relay into dark space, by which the reapers ultimately invade.  They take control of the citadel first, shut down all the mass relays, and use the information contained within the citadel to find all the technologically advanced species and destroy them one by one.  We also learn that Sovereign, the reaper left behind in the galaxy to signal the next invasion, had his signal blocked by the Protheans.  Who used the conduit to beam aboard the citadel and reprogram the keepers.  He installs himself as a Geth god in order to utilize them as a proxy army in an attack on the citadel, and them busies himself with finding the conduit so he can beam his force on board to open the citadel for manual manipulation..  The information to find it he eventually discovers is housed in the Prothean beacons, which require an organic makeup to interface with.  He finds his willing pawn in the Turian spectre Saren, who believes that assisting Sovereign is the only way to save anyone at all.  They then go from world to world, following the beacons to the conduit, which eventually brings them in contact with Shepard and reveals the nature of the Prothean extinction and Reapers to the wider galaxy.  Also, one of the central plot points of the first game is Shepard's status as the first human spectre.  Whether or not he/she serves the galaxy as whole or only human interests, a thread which echoes in the final moments of the game where the player either chooses to let the all alien council die, or sacrifice human ships to save them. 

 

More to the point, Sovereign's actions in this game imply, that the Reapers are trapped in dark space, and the invasion cannot begin without opening the citadel relay.  While else would Sovereign gather the Geth, find an organic agent to follow the beacons, and potentially expose the reaper existence?  The invasion simply can't begin otherwise.

 

The second game echos these themes.  Following Sovereigns defeat, in the beginning of Mass Effect 2, Shepard is killed and the Normandy destroyed by a mysterious alien vessel.  Shepard is then resurrected by Cerberus, a pro human extremist organization that appeared in several side missions in the first game.  Shepard is sent to investigate human colonies that are disappearing, which expands upon the thread from the first game, only this time from the other end.  Does that galaxy as a whole care about human only disappearances?  Or is humanity again best served by taking care of their own?  Ultimately, Shepard assembles an eclectic team and discovers the identity of the mysterious Collector's.  They are essentially what is left of the Protheans.  They are gathering humans, to build a new Reaper.  Reapers are typically built from the combined genetic material of the civilizations harvested, but in this instance humanity is chosen, as they are the most genetically diverse race in the galaxy and thus most suited for a reaper.  The intent of the collectors is to replace Sovereign and once again attempt to open the citadel gateway.  Again, this implies the invasion cannot begin without the opening of the relay to dark space.  The end of the game again offers a similar style choice to the first.  Turn the collector facility over to a human extremist group or destroy it in the wider interest of the galaxy.  Again, the theme of serving your own race or the combined galaxy is central as in the first game.

 

Does ME2 advance the plot of ME1?  Not really.  At the end, the reaper invasion is thwarted as in the first game and the villainous Collector's dispatched.  So essentially nothing else has happened other than the introduction of new characters.  We hear the reaper Harbinger tell the collector commander "You have failed, we will find another way!"  Implying the reapers will seek another avenue in beginning the invasion of the galaxy.

 

So enter the third game.  ME3 begins with the reapers just showing up.  Yup, that's right, they just fly in from dark space and it takes them about 1 year after the events of ME2.  Well, wait a minute now, if the Reapers can just show up from dark space in a year, why did Sovereign spend all that time finding the reason the keepers didn't obey his commands and hatching a decades long plan to open the relay?  If the other Reapers can just fly in, he could have sent them a message "Hey, keepers unresponsive, start flying" and joined the main invasion when the other Reapers arrived without anyone being prepared?  Why risk exposing yourself to an organic agent and potentially your entire plan to the galaxy if all you gain is a 3 year head start?  The risk reward doesn't seem to add up here.  Sovereigns actions imply that either  the invasion cannot begin without the relay or there isn't time to wait 3 years (Time between ME1 and ME3).  Neither of these things turn out to be true.

 

Similarly, why did Harbinger have the collector's start building a human reaper?  EDI indicates that it took hundreds of thousands of humans to get the reaper to an embryo state and millions more to complete.  If you do the math, the human reaper won't actually be done before the main reaper invasion begins a year later.  So why do they bother?  Again, all it does is expose them to the galaxy and get the base commandeered or destroyed depending on your choices.

 

So that is the crux of the problem with the third game.  Due to the reapers just arriving from dark space, the actions of the major villains of the first two games is rendered not only completely unnecessary, but ultimately detrimental to their own cause.  If Sovereign and the collector's had both done nothing when the keeper signal didn't work, the other reapers would still have arrived exactly when they did but with the galaxy still unaware of their existence.  What did the reapers gain by starting the invasion a couple of years earlier?  Nothing.  The only advantage was apparently that they gate in right at the citadel.

 

Speaking of which, when they arrive from dark space in ME3 there is nothing preventing them from doing this anyway.  Why don't the reapers just fly to the citadel using the relays, take it over first, shut down the relays and then use the computer databases to find all the technologically advanced species?  There is nothing preventing them from going to the citadel immediately.  In fact, they would want to so that they can learn what species are present in the current galaxy and where to find them.  But they don't.  The only reason seems to be to allow Shepard to fly around the galaxy and gather up the resistance.  If the reapers immediately went to the citadel and shut down the relays as they have done every other time, Shepard wouldn't have been able to leave the system he was in, and the game wouldn't work.  So, they just go their last.  Because...well because.  

 

Then there are of course other issues, like the Starchild.  If the citadel is in fact, controlling the reapers and sentient itself, why did Sovereign need to send a signal to the keepers?  Why didn't he just tell the Starchild to open the gateway and begin the invasion?  etc. etc.

 

So really, while ME2 didn't advance the story in ME1, things were more or less the same.  It also didn't invalidate everything that came before it.  And ME2 was a least consistent with what was established in ME1, both in the overall story and thematically of choosing ones own race over the wider community.  ME3 largely abandons all these things.  And equally invalidates the actions of ME2 and ME1, which would make it the outlier in the series.  Seriously, it doesn't seem like the writers of ME3 ever played the first two games.