265 réponses à ce sujet

[Wintermist]

KainrycKarr wrote...

Wintermist wrote...

That's bull, because who do you really think would be better, a trained military or some rogue thug? The missions you do require the bottom layer of society because what? I need to hear this myself.

Because the alliance isn't doing jack diddly squat about it, despite you being back, telling them about it, and having an operative of theirs(Kaidan/Ashley) be a firsthand witness to it?

Just because the top brass sais no Shepard didn't hang back, did he? Why would anyone else he asks do it? Joker comes, Chakwas comes. Why would anyone of his old friends not come and help? There's no reason they wouldn't. The only thing is that it's not how they wanted it to be in the game, there's just no real logial reason why they wouldn't.

Modifié par Wintermist, 01 février 2010 - 10:33 .

[elucid07]

I smell too much blind, unrealistic and naive idealism in the OP and subsequent supportive responses.



No central power in any situation, fact or fiction, is good or evil. They simply act in their best interests (as they perceive them), and even a paragon will bend the rules if presented with less than stellar options.



You're ranting about recruiting murderers and such. Well sunshine, some of the hardest people in the world are stone cold killers, and in this context, they are the ones with the nerve to pull off the task presented. And I think that your view is a little skewed, like it or not Shepard is a murderer. (S)he has killed. Hundreds. Thousands. More. Even if it is legally sanctioned, it's still murder. Anyone that has taken the life of another intentionally is a murderer, regardless of whether they committed the act in the back streets of their local neighbourhood, or whilst running through a combat zone.



I think you need to pull your head out of you arse, and stop being so naive and literal. No on is innocent, and life simply isn't ideal. Which is displayed well in ME2.

[Wintermist]

elucid07 wrote...

I smell too much blind, unrealistic and naive idealism in the OP and subsequent supportive responses.

No central power in any situation, fact or fiction, is good or evil. They simply act in their best interests (as they perceive them), and even a paragon will bend the rules if presented with less than stellar options.

You're ranting about recruiting murderers and such. Well sunshine, some of the hardest people in the world are stone cold killers, and in this context, they are the ones with the nerve to pull off the task presented. And I think that your view is a little skewed, like it or not Shepard is a murderer. (S)he has killed. Hundreds. Thousands. More. Even if it is legally sanctioned, it's still murder. Anyone that has taken the life of another intentionally is a murderer, regardless of whether they committed the act in the back streets of their local neighbourhood, or whilst running through a combat zone.

I think you need to pull your head out of you arse, and stop being so naive and literal. No on is innocent, and life simply isn't ideal. Which is displayed well in ME2.

You aren't exactly saying anything here. Shepard is a military man. He has been doing his job. Many more in the military are like him in that regard. What IS the reason, in your book, he has to bust criminals out of jail for this mission? What is so different with this mission to require such an act that is any different from any normal military operation?

[LucidStrike]

ModernDayMoriarty wrote...

Oh come on, you knew I had to reply to that one!

She's a deranged killer - she wouldn't be there otherwise. How is it insane for a character of good principles to not want to let such a person out of jail, much less recruit her - especially when they have to release all the other crazies to do so? Or do you think that my character should have assumed that they just locked her up for nothing?

The warden (and one of the other inmates) tells you how crazy and dangerous Jack is. That confirmed my suspicion that this was a sensentionally bad idea. I didn't want as the last poster so rightly put it, to recruit psychos and mentally unstable criminals.

Yeah, the right thing to do is to leave the victim of forced experimentation and a lifetime of abuse, betrayal, and disappointment to a lifetime of slavery. Yeah, THAT's Paragon. THAT's morally sound.

Come off it. Shepherd's a murderer anyway, so let's consider that before pointing fingers at others. So many judgemental hypocrites. =/

I'll do you a favor and give you a bit of info about your precious prison:

Mass Effect WIki

Owned by the notorious Blue Suns
mercenary company, the Purgatory was once an "ark ship" used to hold
agricultural animals. Now it is used to hold prisoners, whether taken
in battle or sold by unscrupulous politicians under the name of
subcontracting and outsourcing. Rumors abound that the Blue Suns turn
skilled or fit prisoners over to batarian
slavers, but few have ever seen the transaction and lived to tell about
it. Its population is listed at 4,350, but independent journalists
estimate that it is nearly three times that in periods of overcrowding.

Did you actually try getting to know Jack at all?

Modifié par LucidStrike, 01 février 2010 - 10:45 .

[Lmaoboat]

Sweet Krogan balls, what kind of twisted compulsion would drive a man to write such a monolithic thread. I can imagine some half-starved gibbering madman, huddled over is computer in a darkened room, muttering to himself as he writes day after night with no concern to his own health. His higher brain functions not concerned with analyzing plots have since atrophied to the point where he can no longer function as a human. Finally, after weeks without food or water, all life leaves his body which has been kept alive solely on unholy determination to completed a thread so long that to take in its entirety all at once would shatter the strongest of minds.

[elucid07]

Wintermist wrote...

elucid07 wrote...

I smell too much blind, unrealistic and naive idealism in the OP and subsequent supportive responses.

No central power in any situation, fact or fiction, is good or evil. They simply act in their best interests (as they perceive them), and even a paragon will bend the rules if presented with less than stellar options.

You're ranting about recruiting murderers and such. Well sunshine, some of the hardest people in the world are stone cold killers, and in this context, they are the ones with the nerve to pull off the task presented. And I think that your view is a little skewed, like it or not Shepard is a murderer. (S)he has killed. Hundreds. Thousands. More. Even if it is legally sanctioned, it's still murder. Anyone that has taken the life of another intentionally is a murderer, regardless of whether they committed the act in the back streets of their local neighbourhood, or whilst running through a combat zone.

I think you need to pull your head out of you arse, and stop being so naive and literal. No on is innocent, and life simply isn't ideal. Which is displayed well in ME2.

You aren't exactly saying anything here. Shepard is a military man. He has been doing his job. Many more in the military are like him in that regard. What IS the reason, in your book, he has to bust criminals out of jail for this mission? What is so different with this mission to require such an act that is any different from any normal military operation?

I was questioning the all too literal interpretation of being a paragon as stated by the OP - for anyone to be in a military position, they have to at least understand that whilst their eventual goal may be correct (the ends), they may have to take morally ambiguous steps to achieve it (the means). No war was won with flowers. Whining about whether murderers should be recruited and how the paragon Shepard should act blah blah blah, just comes across as pointless idealism that is great coming from an outside viewer.
Given the context, however (which I feel the OP has completely missed), anyone that has experienced what took place in the first game (let's just assume this is actually reality for a moment), would understand that whilst the situation is not ideal (you're dead, resurrected by an entity which may or may not be the wolf in sheep's clothing), and you are an idealistic person, you are presented with the harsh reality that your position is not one with much choice.

Arguing that everything is BS because a true paragon Shepard would never do this or that is shortsighted and oblivious to the context. In this situation the imperative is the looming threat, and anyone with a rational mind would be able to place the Collector/Reaper threat (which is no longer just a threat) as a higher priority than their own personal moral standing, thus being able to set aside personal emotions in the light of the obvious greater good. Especially with the knowledge that the correct channels will neither support or acknowledge your claims.

But then again, common sense and idealism never really go hand in hand.

Sorry for going on a tangent though. To answer your question in all honesty, the options for recruitment presented were the best available, so it's a matter of making do with what you have. There's no way of knowing whether straight edged people without a tarnish to their names would have been better in the situation as they were not part of the choices to be made.

The difference in this mission is clearly outlined in the story. No government or military would authorize an operation such as the one detailed in ME2, because it's based purely on speculation with little hard evidence. Bureacracies tend to be very sketchy on commiting time, money and manpower to something without correct analysis of potential gains and losses. Given that everything is conducted outside official channels, for a not so legal paramilitary corporation.

And I only count one team member that was busted out of prison, and that was Jack. The rest were either friends, mercenaries or specialists in certain fields. Simply put - in her particular case, she was bought from a prison ship, and is possibly the most powerful human biotic in existence. When you want the best of the best, you don't always have a choice as to their personalities being on the straight and narrow.

Anyways... 


/rant

[Terraneaux]

 I agree wholeheartedly with OP - I have been a longtime fan of bioware's games (played all of em since BG 1) and appreciate them as a company, and usually there is a good job of combining flexibility of character choice with a strong narrative, but here I think there was a bit of a breakdown.  Honestly, I like ME2, but coming to it straight out of ME1 left me a little... confused as to what the writers were doing.  

So my Paragon character gets resurrected by Cerebus - she's a naive xenophilic warrior princess, but even she can figure out that Cerebus is Bad News, plus she saw all of their experiments from the first game.  The situation with the council seems *very* engineered, considering you pulled their asses out of the fire when you could have just let them die.  They should understand now that you're a competent, reliable operative that will get things done, and the level of distrust your PC receives from the council stretches the bounds of credibility.  

My Renegade character is a bit of a special case - he had the Sole Survivor background, so he's been personally wronged by Cerebus.  He murdered the last person involved in that incident in utterly cold blood.  The idea that this character, who doesn't balk at engineering the deaths of the collective head of state of the galactic government if it serves his purposes, would jump on board is ludicrous.  

Both these situations could have been alleviated if, say, near the beginning of the game you have a conversation with Tali or Garrus, away from the ship because you know it has monitoring devices, about how you're going to work with Cerebus for the time being, as it's expedient, and then **** them hard later once they're no longer useful.  Instead we're left with the idea that our character feels the need to work with Cerebus *despite* being essentially one of the worst enemies of that group.  

There's a concept that gets thrown around in tabletop rpgs a lot, and I don't know if it's used in computer gaming.  It's called 'deprotagonization.'  It's used when the characters who are supposed to be the center of a story (the PCs) are not, and instead either the character is swept along by events outside of their control, or the focus is on NPCs to the detriment of the play experience.  I think that's a pretty accurate summation of what's happening here - the game world 'breaks' to accommodate what's going on (come on.  an all-human council, headed by Anderson, not doing something about human colonies disappearing, even when the guy who put them in power shows up and tells them it would be a good idea?), the player has some IMPORTANT choices made for them, and it's the actions of an NPC that dictate the flow of things.  This NPC is the Illusive Man.  He's the one calling the shots, he's the one who makes things happen, he's the one with knowledge and capabilities that *all* the other characters in the setting mysteriously lack.  I thought ME2 was going to be about Shepard.  

THAT SAID, I'm still playing the game, I still like it, I'm thrilled to see Garrus and Tali back ( especially Tali ), and while I think that the cameos of characters from previous games could have been handled much better, I don't consider ME2 a waste of my money and I'm hoping that ME3 is a wonderful third act (and there's plenty of room for them to fix the problems I see).  I just had some high hopes for this game that didn't play out, and I think some other people feel the same way.  

Modifié par Terraneaux, 01 février 2010 - 11:06 .

[Thrakkesh]

All I can say is there's an awful lot of Paragons that think Paragon = lawful stupid. Seriously, how many of you played Paladins that 'refused' to let the Rogue be in the party because he was a criminal?

[Wintermist]

Alright That's a viewpoint I can see and comprehend.

[Shady314]

Terraneaux wrote...
Both these situations could have been alleviated if, say, near the beginning of the game you have a conversation with Tali or Garrus, away from the ship because you know it has monitoring devices, about how you're going to work with Cerebus for the time being, as it's expedient, and then **** them hard later once they're no longer useful.  Instead we're left with the idea that our character feels the need to work with Cerebus *despite* being essentially one of the worst enemies of that group.   

Or since you ARE Shepard maybe you could just KNOW THIS?

[Wintermist]

Personally I would be much more accepting to this story if the Geth war was still a major threat and neither Alliance nor anyone else affiliated with any military force could be spared officially. Though that is not the case here, the Geth are merely stragglers now.



That would leave Shepard and his crusade in a very different position and he would have to take what is given because all other resources are unavailable.

[Terraneaux]

Shady314 wrote...

Terraneaux wrote...
Both these situations could have been alleviated if, say, near the beginning of the game you have a conversation with Tali or Garrus, away from the ship because you know it has monitoring devices, about how you're going to work with Cerebus for the time being, as it's expedient, and then **** them hard later once they're no longer useful.  Instead we're left with the idea that our character feels the need to work with Cerebus *despite* being essentially one of the worst enemies of that group.   

Or since you ARE Shepard maybe you could just KNOW THIS?

Roleplaying games are very much about choices.  In games like ME2, you don't get to decide what your character thinks unless they also say it.  There needed to be a choice that represented this kind of mindset for me to be satisfied with the situation as it unfolded.  Remember in KOTOR 1 when you go to train at the Jedi academy?  And you're like 'I'm a jackass who wants to shoot force lightning, what am I doing here?'  But there were those dialog options where you character lied to the Jedi council about your intent?  That would have been *perfect* here.  But we didn't get it.  

[Terraneaux]

Wintermist wrote...

Personally I would be much more accepting to this story if the Geth war was still a major threat and neither Alliance nor anyone else affiliated with any military force could be spared officially. Though that is not the case here, the Geth are merely stragglers now.

That would leave Shepard and his crusade in a very different position and he would have to take what is given because all other resources are unavailable.

Another way that working with Cerebus would have been made workable for me is if ME2 had opened up with a 'battle of hoth' style moment where it was very clear at the beginning that **** was very serious, the alliance/council had their asses up against a wall and had no resources to spare, so working with Cerebus would have been totally rational.  In the situation as presented in the game, I would have though my time would have been better served convincing the council to send a goddamn fleet in.  And before you say that Shepard isn't persuasive enough, this is the same Shepard that can talk people into committing suicide in the middle of a firefight.  

[Dr. Peter Venkman]

OP refuses to accept that the Council and Alliance wrote Shepard off as a crazed-loon. His loss.

[Thrakkesh]

Again, you can voice your distrust and hatred for Cerebrus at every turn. You can tell nearly every party member you talk to, at some point, that you AREN'T working for Cerebrus. That you're making your own decisions. TIM essentially tells you that you can do whatever the HELL you want with the information he's giving you--it's your choice (partially because he thinks he can manipulate you). Nobody is 'forcing' you to do anything.



From an 'RP' standpoint, Cerebrus is the ONLY organization that will listen to you. You are dead to the Citadel. You say it's out of character, look at it from there perspective. You're 'dead'. You've been gone for two years, suddenly you're back in a Cerebrus ship, claiming we have to kill the Reapers. You're approaching an Alien council with backing from an Anti-Alien group. Furthermore, they're scared. They've got a galaxy to keep in line, and the Reapers are big bad boogeymen--real problems are all around them. Honestly, why are you surprised by this behavior? The Council has done NOTHING to prove to you they are the 'good guys'. They've battled you at every turn. At no point in ME1, no real point, do they suddenly become 'good guys'. They only congratulate you after you've done the work, and go right back to basically ignoring you.



You are given dozens of options to basically tell Cerebrus and TIM man to eff off--chances are, some of the people in this thread skipped them because they gave you Renegade points. Ironically, that is missing the whole damn point of an RP game. But what exactly are you going to do? Beg the Council for a brand new ship? The Alliance? They're not interested. You say it's not fair that 'convincing them' is the option, but real life doesn't work like that and fiction shouldn't--and nothing in the game suggests that they would do anything but what they do.

[Shady314]

Terraneaux wrote...

Shady314 wrote...

Terraneaux wrote...
Both these situations could have been alleviated if, say, near the beginning of the game you have a conversation with Tali or Garrus, away from the ship because you know it has monitoring devices, about how you're going to work with Cerebus for the time being, as it's expedient, and then **** them hard later once they're no longer useful.  Instead we're left with the idea that our character feels the need to work with Cerebus *despite* being essentially one of the worst enemies of that group.   

Or since you ARE Shepard maybe you could just KNOW THIS?

Roleplaying games are very much about choices.  In games like ME2, you don't get to decide what your character thinks unless they also say it.  There needed to be a choice that represented this kind of mindset for me to be satisfied with the situation as it unfolded.  Remember in KOTOR 1 when you go to train at the Jedi academy?  And you're like 'I'm a jackass who wants to shoot force lightning, what am I doing here?'  But there were those dialog options where you character lied to the Jedi council about your intent?  That would have been *perfect* here.  But we didn't get it.  

No you can also express it in the actions you take. Like making use of every opportunity to screw TIM over. THAT's roleplaying. Not SAYING you are going to do something but doing it.

Yes this is limited in a CRPG sadly but you do the best you can with what's presented to you.

[Wintermist]

But the whole council denial business is insanely poor. Shepard worked through Mass Effect 1 claiming there was Reapers coming, and that the Geth was their goons. What happened? The council didn't believe him.



And then, the Geth AND a strange ship comes and attack the Citadel. Isn't that proof enough that Shepard was on to something and that in fact what he was saying was true? OOOOOOR, noooooo.... it must have been pure chance. Shepard's a fool and can't be trusted for anything. Yeah, that's the logical assumption here.



And then, in Mass Effect 2, he comes back from being dead, what's the reaction? The hero of the Citadel is just brushed off and no one cares what happened to him. Why is that so? They should be banging the party dums and throwing a big celebration.



The whole thing just stinks when you really sit down and think about what is going on.



It's a good thing the game is fun anyway, you just have to play along with it.

[Terraneaux]

They're not interested. You say it's not fair that 'convincing them' is the option, but real life doesn't work like that and fiction shouldn't--and nothing in the game suggests that they would do anything but what they do.

I refuse to believe that their gratitude at the end of ME1 combined with Shepard's public appeal and *stellar* ability to browbeat people into doing what he wants (or paragon sheps niceness) aren't believable solutions to the 'council hates you again' problem.  It smacks of lazy storytelling.  There's no reason they should be holding the Idiot Ball on this one.  If they wanted to use a 'morally questionable but helpful ally' they should have used the shadow broker instead (not that that works with how the story turned out, but still).  I know Drew Karpyshyn can write good stories, but it seems he choked here.

[CastorKrieg]

Didn't you listen to Miranda telling you that the Cerberus you encountered in ME1 went rogue or went offshots, and their experiments were not supported by everyone in Cerberus?

I'm a Paragon, but I had no trouble playing on Cerberus team. It is as the Illusive Man said - they want humanity to survive and advance at any cost. Yes it goes against other races, but right now Shepard doesn't have anyone else. I went Paragon in ME1 because I role-played Shepard as a dedicated soldier, who sees that galactic community is important and humanity cannot simply shut itself to all other races and cultures. I didn't care so much for the annoying Coucil because in the end they allowed me to catch Saren.

Now FF to ME2. You come back after two years, nobody believes your story, the COuncil doesn't even recognise Reapers as a threat (check the Codex entry for the Reapers). It seems clear that as you were using them, they were using you in ME1 - fight whatever you want, as long as you get Saren. Now Saren is gone and they don't care about you anymore.

Here comes Cerberus. Nobody rivals Cerberus on the Alliance side. They have unlimited funds and only they (and not the Council) believe the Reapers are real. They are not going to sit on their ass and negotiate while Reapers are slowly trying to destroy all life! I'm sorry, but you have to be a guy who likes to be hit over and over to try and sell Cerberus out, when it's obvious they are your best shot at stopping the Reapers. I played ME2 imagining Shepard is a disillusioned man, having learned that he's been used but nevertheless determined to stop the Reapers even if he gets all sort of crap from all righteous f***s like Ashley nad the Council. That allowed me to continue playing as Paragon, while in some instances acting as a Renegade, showing the edgier side of "new" Shepard.

The OP wants the whole story to be on the extreme. Everyone remember 100% Paragon or 100% Renegade in ME1? You were either a moron, or a jerk. That's not real-life. I got the achievement, and then played again keeping it in the middle and going with what my responses would've been personally.

Modifié par CastorKrieg, 01 février 2010 - 11:40 .

[RandomPot322]

Funny thought, Cerberus is Evil so it means it's more or less Paragon to use them?

Cause using someone to get to your goals sounds kinda Renegadey personally.

[Thrakkesh]

Terraneaux wrote...

They're not interested. You say it's not fair that 'convincing them' is the option, but real life doesn't work like that and fiction shouldn't--and nothing in the game suggests that they would do anything but what they do.

I refuse to believe that their gratitude at the end of ME1 combined with Shepard's public appeal and *stellar* ability to browbeat people into doing what he wants (or paragon sheps niceness) aren't believable solutions to the 'council hates you again' problem.  It smacks of lazy storytelling.  There's no reason they should be holding the Idiot Ball on this one.  If they wanted to use a 'morally questionable but helpful ally' they should have used the shadow broker instead (not that that works with how the story turned out, but still).  I know Drew Karpyshyn can write good stories, but it seems he choked here.

Refuse it all you want, it's internally consistent.  They've fought you every step of ME1 regardless of the evidence they've presented.

[Rogue Eagle]

Cerberus was seen as the lesser of evils.

Commander shepard doesn't have to approve of them or their methods, but in the moment it was an alliance of convenience.

Perhaps in future Shepard wants to perhaps steer Cerberus in a less dangerous direction (like benezia tried to do for saren). Perhaps it'll be something that creeps up on the player, the more they help out this suspect organisation, the more they realise they're actually siding with the wrong team.

Modifié par Rogue Eagle, 01 février 2010 - 12:13 .

[gethsemani87]

I personally feel that the justification for working with Cerberus provided in ME2 is satisfactory enough, even for a Paragon Shepard. Let's face it, who else is going to help you? Your mission can be summed up in the following statement:



"Hey, I am going through a Mass Relay that leads to an unknown place from which no ship has ever returned, despite hundreds of ships having used it over the years. I am doing this because I am fighting a race that is abducting human colonists and I believe that these abductions have something to do with the Reapers. You know, the boogeymen who's plan I claim to have thwarted two years. Nevermind that you have found no evidence that Sovereign was actually not just a fancy Geth-ship, or that you have no jurisdiction or care for the Terminus systems where this is happening. Also, please forget that I was supposedly killed two years ago and make my reappearance now, in a ship registered to a pro-human organization widely considered to be terrorists. Also, I would like for you to re-instate me as a SPECTRE/Marine Commander, hand me an expensive military ship and some of the best soldiers and provide me with unlimited funding for this mission. Oh yeah, I know all indications point to this being a suicide mission, but come on? I took down Saren and stopped the Reapers (who you don't believe in anyway, I know), remember?"



Would you listen to Shepard if s/he came to you and asked this? As it is Cerberus at least acknowledges that you are right and are ready to trust in your intuition to save humanity. Not only that, they trust you so implicitly that they give you free reign to do whatever you like and whatever it takes to complete this mission. Even if it means they lose a gigantic fortune in the process (4 Billions for Project Lazarus and God knows how much for the SR-2).



Shepard is back from the dead and all out of options in a galaxy that at best thought s/he was slightly unstable at best and dangerously psychotic at worst. But you'd rather turn down the offer of near unlimited help and free reign because the organization offering it to you has a bad rep?

[Lanparth]

Cerberus is certainly a double edged sword to wield, I personally blew up the Station at the end and basically told the IM to screw himself. And MIranda and Jacob were cool with that as well, so everyone won out in the end. Except the Illusive Man... and the Collectors/Protheans... and the Reapers...



Come to think of it, really only me and my crew made it out looking good. Good, ****** on you Cerberus, Collectors and Reapers! You can eat my Sh*t!

[Bantros]

Having read the original post, you probably have got a reason to be annoyed if you feel so strongly about being a beam of shining Paragon light but... your "what if you could do this and that" would make a pretty boring game.



Who wants to see Shepard filling out paperwork to hand the the Council? Instead of a hacking minigame there could be a rubberstamping one!



The reason the Council won't back Shepard isn't just because they are working for Cerberus, that's why they refuse to believe in the Reapers and blamed the Geth for the Citadel attack