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[PatT2]

Conway044 wrote...

From a writer's perspective, a faceless villain always needs a character to embody it so the emotional pull of the story can take hold.  In Star Wars, you have Darth Vader.  In Lord of The Rings, you have Gollum.  You need a nemesis to humanize the enemy.  It just makes the story more powerful.

I disagree with most of your first post and your odd view of the plot of ESB.  However this jumps out at me even more.  You think Gollum is the face of the Villain in the Lord of the Rings?  Seriously?  You're going to skip over Saruman, whose fall mirrors that of Sauron, and choose Gollum?  Have you read Tolkien?   Gollum is portrayed as a tragic figure in LotR, not as a villain. The Witch King and Saruman are the face of the enemy (Sauron).

Thank you, Conway. Sauron, the main enemy in LotR, is embodied by the ring! The main enemy is the ring, which symbolizes and encapsulates all of Sauron's wrath, hate, and other evil stuff. Sauroman, he's a tragic minion or Sauron who fancies himself more than that, somehow believing Sauron will share power (but as Gandalf...movie version...says..."there is only One Lord of the Ring, and he will never share power." All 3 books/stories have the same focus. The ring/Sauron. The ring is its own character, and I think Peter Jackson did right by it in his trilogy of movies. Fact is, it took 8 years to make the movies and the dvd's.

It took 15 years to write LotR. It took even longer, when you consider that, the LotR was only written to give reason to the Languages that were developed by Tolkien, who then started working on the Lore. The Silmarillion really fleshes out How Sauron happened, and by the time that LotR is published, the characters are extremely well developed. however, the entirety of the LotR universe, to give Bioware and anyone else credit, were the LIFE WORK of Tolkien, a linguist and expert on certain ancient mythologies, and a Cambridge professor. It took him, what, 50+ years to develop the entirety of the lore as it exists now.

There's no way that Bioware, or even George Lucas, could hope to compete with that. Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit (There and Back Again) and the Silmarillion and it's stories, are the kind of writing that only happens upon the scene only once every couple of centuries. Bioware and it's stable of writers can't hope to compete on this scale. Tolkien, to me, very much belongs in the same vaunted and hallowed halls as people like Shakesphere. My opinion-- Shakesphere may have written more, but his works didn't include two well developed languages, Evlish and Dwarven. Or two entire societies, including underlying mythos and even creation myths/pantheon of gods, etc.

So, credit where credit is due. Lord of the Rings is on a level that will doubtless not be matched for a very long time. I wouldn't dream of comparing the writings of corporately employed authors (who are given deadlines and expectations that Tolkien never suffered under)...to someone with the resources, education and background and the time to develop something so fully as Tolkien. We just don't have that kind of time in corporate game industry. There are  quarterly dividends to consider, after all. 

I wouldn't suffer to compare these works.

That said in far less brevity than I'm sure most folks would like...this is a thread of very long posts...but perhaps it acutally takes time to express a complete opinion (or storyline); I just felt, playing this game, that things were missing. Big things. Necessary things. I spent the entire game wondering where the N7 missions were. Finally, when thrown into the endgame, I looked up a guide and found out that a few of the miniscule errands I had done were, in fact, N7 missions, but I never realized it (and how could I?)

Plot? Suspense? Suspension of disbelief? Remember being back on Virmire and that second beacon, and that reaper...the vanguard of your destruction... umm...now that was awesome. Where was that? What happened to that thing? It wants to be human now? And if it turns enough humans into some kind of paste and eats it, that is supposed to help?  If you eat enough people, you'll get their memories? Our minds, our memories, our essence; it isn't in our physical bodies! That's just laughable. which makes the whole Collectors thing laughable.  Not very well thought-out. Unless you're a major corporation, concerned with making a profit at the expense of all else, which makes you like Cerberus, or whatever-geni corporation in ME1. By the way, what ever happened to bashing the big, inhman corporation in ME2?

They changed writers, story arcs, and apparently all else...between Me1 and ME2. they delivered ME2 because ME1 was profitable and they promised. But I don't know if you could call it anything more than a "product." Like Wendy's or McFood. I don't eat product....I eat food. And this isn't a story, it's a McStory.

I'll shut up now. I guess you can tell I'm disappointed.

[Kerilus]

I think they want to build a Human Reaper because of Shepard. Shepard, as the Harbinger mentioned, got the attention of the Reapers. That's why they killed Shep in the first place. Shepard is aknowledged by the Reapers, thus the Collectors, that he/she has the capability to stop them, and Shepard is a human.



Since it is revealed that first, Reapers eliminate sapient species whenever they're advanced enough; and second, Reapers are a hybrid of organics(conquered) and mechines. Therefore, we could logically assume that the reason why Reapers have to perform such sort of elimination cycle is to reach a better perfection of any sort through absorbing the experience of thousands of species that reached to the peak of civilaztion.



While the Reapers had been performing this cycle for countless times, they expected this time it would work too. But no, there's a Human out of no where who screwed their inevitable cycle. At this point, the Reapers would have to think a bit more than they expected. For Shep, a Human, proved that Humanity as a race might hold elements that could be superior to the current Reapers. Thus, the logical solution to beat Humans and proceed with their plan would be to absorb Humans, so they could be sure to have what Humanity has, as well as gaining a better understanding of the species that stopped them.

[PatT2]

Interesting idea. That does make the reapers a bit like the Borg, doesn't it. You will be assimilated and your uniqueness will be added to our own. Hah!



But why the intermediaries? And why take what was a super-bad, sapient, non-understandable enemy and water it down to something we are now able to get our head around. I think it could have been done differently, and with more suspense.



I guess my opinions are just opinions. I will, in defense of Bioware, say there's plenty of good things about the game and story. I would done some things very differently. More teasing with dribs of information, changed what the collectors were or don't include them at all, or something. Since I'm not writing the story, I guess I don't have it worked out in my head exactly what I would do differently.



One thing I would do, is keep all the team members but add more "story planets" (to use a term from ME1) before the finale, so that you could feel that the story had developed more fully, and got to play your team more fully. Perhaps that will happen with dlc, I don't know.



Perhaps I should start putting my ideas down in into a format that might interest someone like bioware or a publisher and send them off. For, while conventions of writing not withstanding, there's more to a good story than following a formula or not, it's about suspense. It's the pacing that makes you forget you're turning pages. It's the "wanting to know what happens next" so badly that you forget to eat or sleep. When someone successfully does that, I can't tell you why by dissecting the story or scholarly analysis that it's great. I can only tell you that I missed so many meals and forgot to go to bed and realised it was sunrise but I just couldn't put the book down. Those books, those stories... I wanted ME2 to be one. I think it has the potential, but I think it missed the mark in some ways. Maybe my expectations were off. It's just that this franchise had *so* much potential, and I feel it rather dropped the ball and lost some of the steam, and I am saddened and disappointed by that. If it didn't have the potential, I suppose I wouldn't care at all.



There's still hope though.

[Allaiya]

I wholeheartedly agree with most of the OP's points except on a few things.
I didn't mind the elevators rides. I liked them more than long loading screens as long as teammates talk to each other or news is played.

I don't mind the thermal clips and I like how the solider can use all the weapons now.

And I thought the cliff hanger at the end of ME2 was better because I definitely did go "holy crap, I need to find out what happens next". I didn't feel that way after ME1, even though the story was definitely better in that game imo.

And I agree with Kerilus's post above. That's my thoughts on the subject too.

Modifié par mrfinke, 16 février 2010 - 01:19 .

[Sanadrix23]

While I can see the OP's points in the way in which these revelations were handled, they were there for the player--they just weren't spelled out.

The Reapers are still the overarching threat of the trilogy.  In fact, the whole second game was directly related to them.

#1. Collectors were genetically modified Protheans, indoctrinated by the Reapers.

#2. Collectors were harvesting humans at the behest of the Reapers

#3. While this next point is not blatantly stated, I think it can be inferred from various bits of dialogue throughout the game : Humans are being harvested because of the events of the first game--A human managed to destroy a reaper.  This brought humanity to the attention of the Reapers.

#4. EDI postulates that Reapers use the members of species they have conquered to "reproduce". 

From this, it can be assumed that the Reapers, in their 50,000 year cycle of destruction, wait for a specific civilization or civilization(s) to emerge as the pinnacle of organic life, harvest members of said civilization(s), and incorporate these"primary organics" into the new generation of Reapers made at that time.  

Therefore, the second game was HUGELY important to the overall plot--it told us what Reapers are (organic--machine hybrids), gave us the Reapers' motivation for their "cycle of destruction", and it showed that they have noticed Shepard and, consequently, humanity.

[Orange Face_]

No new drama was added to this game... did the writers get furloughed? Felt like a cheesy Holly Wood sequel aimed at my $60 rather than hit another one outta the park... After ME1 I was blown away and couldn't wait to see what happened in part two, now I'm waiting for three because two fell flat and they gotta make it right, (I hope)

[Wildecker]

My two cents on this: ME2 fleshed out the different races of the galaxy for me.

It was a surprise that Quarians need their environment suits even on board of their own ships of the Migrant Flotilla where they should be in total control of the environment.

It was chilling to speak with Mordin and hear him explain that the Genophage was a very difficult solution to the Krogan problem compared to just wiping them out once and for all like the Rachni.

Okay, I did not really need the Drell as addition to the galactic patchwork of civilisations, but I can live with them.



The Collector solution "Let's build a giant out of humans" fell a bit flat on me. With the background information gained during the raid on the Collector Cruiser I might just as well have bought into "Collected humans will be processed/refitted and then replace the Prothean-based Collectors as Harbinger tools".

Something that didn't quite work out for me was the apparent lack of coordination between the operations of Harbinger and Sovereign/Nazara. If Sovereign was the watcher left behind to blow the whistle when the galaxy was ready to be harvested again (as was laid out in ME1), it would have made sense to have Nazara run the Collector General and its network - after all, Harbinger is somewhere Far Away. A more logical explanation would be that Sovereign indeed ran the Collectors until Saren located the Conduit on Ilos and then woke Harbinger and transferred control of the Collectors to it in case things went very, very wrong at the Citadel - just like they did.

Then Harbinger, fresh in charge, decided to take out Shepard first, then ran some benchmark performance tests on the Collectors and came to the conclusion that the Collectors might as well be phased out for some "fresh blood", so it tried to acquire Shepard's remains though the Shadow Broker's network.

[SurfaceBeneath]

Attack of the Necropost!

[Wildecker]

SurfaceBeneath wrote...

Attack of the Necropost!

Eeeeek. If you can forgive one who has not played the game right from release day +0, needed some time to blow Collector Grand Central to shards and then felt like adding to an existing thread rather than re-inventing the wheel all over again ...

And after all, in the words of one of my most favoured writers:
"That is not dead which can forever lie
  and with strange aeons even death may die."