93 réponses à ce sujet

[Frotality]

i see where the OP is coming from, but consider:

if saren just walked up to the citadel master control unit;

1. people, like hidden snipers and c-sec would wonder wtf he was doing

2. when a gaint squid came up to it and the arms started closing, they would stop him immeadiately.

3. sovereign, with no other geth ships with him this time, would be pwned even faster.

thus, the best plan for saren is to assault the citadel since he cant really infiltrate to the middle of citadel tower, the condiut insures he and his geth dont get blown up before they ever dock, and between an ambush on the citadel and an army of geth ships, he has the best chance of success. he could go all benezia and sneak geth onto the citadel sure, but the condiut isnt the only option, its just the best one, and more importantly, its a loose end that allowed us to foil the reapers plan thanks to the protheans building it, so sovereign having its location for future getting-rid-of is necessary.

[Andorfiend]

There is no plot hole in ME 1. Sovereign had tried to activate the Citadel by signal and failed. He knew that the protheans had done something but not what. He knew that the conduit was involved but not how. Since he couldn't just waltz into the Council room and start pulling up control panels no one knew about without tipping his hand, and he didn't know how the signal had been sabatoged Sovereign had no choice but to find out what had gone wrong before he risked alerting the whole of Citadel space to his existence. Once they get to Ilos they discover that the Protheans had messed with the Keepers and not the Citadel itself, and they could have simply waltzed in from the start, had they but known. There was probably much banging of foreheads. Then they said to hell with it as long as we have this backdoor let's use it. And it nearly worked.

[coinop25]

Look, let's be frank here: Neither of these games represent impenetrable narrative masterpieces, but both present fun, action-packed stories in their own way. We'll be here all day if we're picking apart and patching up plot holes.

(Just to toss out a few more: Why would Saren sink so many resources in a krogan army, for instance, when he already has enough geth to take over the city, and it's not as if Sovereign is clamoring for more organics? Why do we have characters early in ME2 remarking that husk technology came from the reapers, not the geth, and then saying again later, "oh, we weren't sure whether that was from the reapers or the geth"? Why does an evil cosmic intelligence that cares nothing for mortals even bother telling you its plan on Virmire or take time to trash talk you every time it possesses a collector to kill you? etc.)

I think it's worth noting, though, that ME2 is a different kind of story form ME1, but that doesn't make it worse. Each side mission has its own plot, and each holds together quite nicely and dramatically. (Well, most of them. Jacob's is kind of weak, and Grunt's is mostly an excuse for a fight with varren. Garrus's and Miranda's are particularly good, though.)

Anyway ... ME2 is more like a TV series with a focus on character drama, whereas ME1 is more like an epic movie with a bunch of irrelevant tangential stuff on the side. I liked them both, personally, but whatever you feel about the respective structure of one over the other, I think it's hard to argue that the writing is worse. If anything, at least the dialog is much snappier.

[Paeyvn]

Cpl_Facehugger wrote...

There was a distinct lack of well-armed turian/asari/salarian corpses in the council chamber when you duel Saren though. You'd expect those "hidden snipers" would have been killed already, otherwise they would have helped you against Saren.

Anyway, I disagree with the OP on one thing: Urgency. For me, the plot picked up urgency after the crew was taken. 

Dead, hidden snipers would have dead, hidden bodies out of the way of main sight =P

[Nozybidaj]

Eain wrote...
Thankfully, Mass Effect 2 is absent of any such gaping plot holes.

You mean of course aside from a human being brought back to life after being dead for two years.  And the whole working for Cerberus without even wondering why.  And of course simply accepting the fact that your dependable team that brought down a reaper is somehow just all unavailable based on the word of the leader of a terrorist organization without even checking for yourself.  I could go on and on here.

So, that one plot hole in ME1 is somehow greater than all the ones in ME2 put together?  I don't mean to be rude here, but you really sound like a frothing at the mouth fanboy (or girl as the case may or may not be).  ME2 is a good game but to suggest that the plot and story is not only strong, but better than ME1?  I just have to laugh, or consider how likely it is you worked on the project and are just tired of seeing it ripped apart on the forum.

[Nozybidaj]

Mox Ruuga wrote...

Nautica773 wrote...

There aren't any plot holes in ME2, because there's almost no plot.

Lol. Funny, but true.

Haha, agreed.

[Doug84]

Frotality wrote...

i see where the OP is coming from, but consider:

if saren just walked up to the citadel master control unit;

1. people, like hidden snipers and c-sec would wonder wtf he was doing

Maybe, but given he is a Spectre, I think he'd be allowed to go "Council Business" and strug them off for long enough to activate the gateway.

[Cpl_Facehugger]

[quote]pedal2metal wrote...
He might not have acquired the knowledge of what the control panel did until after he spoke w/the Ilos AI, Vigil.[/quote]

Vigil wouldn't speak with him. Vigil said it could detect the taint of indoctrination upon him.  It didn't detect this taint on Shep, which is why he talked to Shep.

[quote]was because incomplete knowledge was all Sovereign had.[/quote]

Why would Sovereign have incomplete knowledge? Its species designed the citadel and it was left behind precisely so that it can open the way for the reapers again. If the reapers had the forethrought to put a manual override into the citadel, there's no reason for them to not also have the forethought to inform Saren of this plan.


[quote]You mean of course aside from a human being brought back to life after being dead for two years.[/quote]

How is that a plot hole? It's all explained; billions of credits, cutting edge science, and cybernetic implants.

[quote]And the whole working for Cerberus without even wondering why.[/quote]

Uh, what? This is directly addressed the first time you speak to the Illusive Man.

[quote]And of course simply accepting the fact that your dependable team that brought down a reaper is somehow just all unavailable based on the word of the leader of a terrorist organization without even checking for yourself. I could go on and on here.[/quote]

What do you mean not checking for yourself? You can do precisely that for Ashley/Kaidan by speaking to Anderson on the citadel, and even Joker tells you they aren't available.

Your plot holes are nothing of the sort. 


[quote][quote

Modifié par Cpl_Facehugger, 06 février 2010 - 10:54 .

[Myrmedus]

Nautica773 wrote...

There aren't any plot holes in ME2, because there's almost no plot.

This.

A generally well-written and sumptuous plot with a couple of plot holes is better than a threadbare plot with none.

Modifié par Myrmedus, 06 février 2010 - 10:53 .

[neubourn]

Frotality wrote...

i see where the OP is coming from, but consider:

if saren just walked up to the citadel master control unit;

1. people, like hidden snipers and c-sec would wonder wtf he was doing

2. when a gaint squid came up to it and the arms started closing, they would stop him immeadiately.

3. sovereign, with no other geth ships with him this time, would be pwned even faster.

thus, the best plan for saren is to assault the citadel since he cant really infiltrate to the middle of citadel tower, the condiut insures he and his geth dont get blown up before they ever dock, and between an ambush on the citadel and an army of geth ships, he has the best chance of success. he could go all benezia and sneak geth onto the citadel sure, but the condiut isnt the only option, its just the best one, and more importantly, its a loose end that allowed us to foil the reapers plan thanks to the protheans building it, so sovereign having its location for future getting-rid-of is necessary.

Not really. Think about it, if you were a C-Sec Sniper in the room, and the Citadel was under attack by a huge alien ship, and the most well known Spectre comes in and starts messing with controls, would you shoot him, or would you think "hey, Saren is here to save the Day!!"

I dont think the Snipers would have taken him out because they would expect him to help if anything. Its not as if there is some big red button that says "do not touch" or something. If he was messing with controls, they would assume he was there to help.

[Katarian]

Cpl_Facehugger wrote...

The point wasn't that Saren didn't need an army or anything, it's that he didn't need to get to the conduit at all since he  just had to access the council chamber - which he had clearance for before his spectre status was revoked.

I guess you can say that Saren had no idea what the conduit was, but that's rather thin because that, by extension, means that Sovereign didn't, when Sovereign was of the race that built the citadel and was left to ensure the reapers' return. There's no reason for Sov to lead Saren on a wild goose chase through the galaxy looking for clues to the conduit when the conduit is just a back door into the presidium. Just have Saren make his way to the council chamber while Sovereign and the geth heretics attack.

Okay it's been a week since I replayed ME1 so my memory is a bit sketchy. Didn't the conduit lead to Citadel Control where the Keepers control the closing process. Saren needed to get there to transfer all Citadel controls to the council chamber. Even if I've got that wrong there is no indication that, even as a SPECTRE, Saren had the authority to use the Citadel Controls in the Council Chamber. I'm not even certain Sovereign knew what the Conduit was. It was built by the remaining Protheans after the Reapers had left and Sovereign was "sleeping". A bigger plot hole is Vigil said the conduit led to a control room closed off from the rest of the Citadel where only keepers went yet you appear on the Presidium

The start of ME2 has several massive plot holes. Even given the Lazarus project how is it possible to change your class? Even if you retain your class how come you lose all abilities, and even forget 7-8 completely. How do you suddenly become a master hacker / security bypass expert? Not even mentioning you joining Cerberus, your reinstated SPECTRE status. The whole start of ME2 is one massive plot hole (it's even worse if you were a Paragon in ME1), that comes from deciding to redesign the classes and restart you at level one again.

The biggest mystery is not the plot holes but how the horrible Mako exploring sections of the game got axed and replaced with Surveying which is ten times worse.

Modifié par Katarian, 06 février 2010 - 11:24 .

[DaeJi]

Cpl_Facehugger wrote...


Why would Sovereign have incomplete knowledge? Its species designed the citadel and it was left behind precisely so that it can open the way for the reapers again. If the reapers had the forethrought to put a manual override into the citadel, there's no reason for them to not also have the forethought to inform Saren of this plan.

Here's the thing; the Reapers designed the Keepers to resound to a signal that they ignored this go around. It has no idea why. What if the station was changed? What if the mass relay no longer worked? What did the Protheans do? Before it could proceed, Sovereign needed to know what happened in the last 50,000 years. And it did not discover what happened until right before the end game of Mass Effect.

[DeathCultArm]

ME1's story >> ME2's

[Anticitizen1]

pedal2metal wrote...

You're assuming that Saren had the knowledge that you had by finishing ME1. This is always an issue w/narrative. He might not have acquired the knowledge of what the control panel did until after he spoke w/the Ilos AI, Vigil. So it's no less a gaping hole what you're suggesting than going through the Conduit. Plausibly-speaking, I actually think the Conduit path is more plausible as presumably the only reason the Conduit was being pursued was because incomplete knowledge was all Sovereign had. So to imply that despite that incomplete knowledge, Sovereign had revealed his entire plan to Saren, that's rebutted within the story itself. Sovereign only fed the next step in it's overall plan to open the pathway to the Reapers, not the whole show.

He's exactly right.
Sovereign didn't know what had gone wrong. He probably had an idea, but wasn't going to risk just showing up at the Citadel with Saren and not have his "hunch" workout. He's the Vanguard for the rest of the Reapers. He can't be taking a huge chance like that.

He needed an organic (Saren) to understand the Prothean beacon. And all the info in the beacons lead to Ilos. Where it is finally revealed why the Reapers are trapped.
So yes, in hindsight it's easy to see how he could have just had Saren infiltrate the Citadel all along, but as always hindsight is 20/20. At the time he didn't know what was going on.

Also, Saren sought out Sovereign. More or less to put Turians on top of the galaxy and to also wipe out humanity. It just so happened that Sovereign was in need of exactly the kind of person Saren was.
So, I find it very possible that the army of Geth were Saren's doing because he does contain some of his consciousness while still being under indoctrination.

EDIT:
Sorry, just want to give credit to someone who said exactly the same thing I did. I didn't even see this post:

Andorfiend wrote...

There is no plot hole in ME 1. Sovereign had tried to activate the Citadel by signal and failed. He knew that the protheans had done something but not what. He knew that the conduit was involved but not how. Since he couldn't just waltz into the Council room and start pulling up control panels no one knew about without tipping his hand, and he didn't know how the signal had been sabatoged Sovereign had no choice but to find out what had gone wrong before he risked alerting the whole of Citadel space to his existence. Once they get to Ilos they discover that the Protheans had messed with the Keepers and not the Citadel itself, and they could have simply waltzed in from the start, had they but known. There was probably much banging of foreheads. Then they said
to hell with it as long as we have this backdoor let's use it. And it nearly worked.

Modifié par Anticitizen1, 06 février 2010 - 11:47 .

[MICHELLE7]

Nautica773 wrote...

There aren't any plot holes in ME2, because there's almost no plot.

This

[Ulicus]

Yeah, the conduit stuff was a bit silly -- even if it can be rationalised. It'd have been much more effective a plot device had it linked to an otherwise unreachable area of the Citadel, with the central control unit (or whatever it was) being similarly hidden away.

Also a bit silly is Shepard's repeated failure to actually record his missions. In the first ten minutes of ME1, we're shown that alliance helmets have in-built cameras (through which we see sovereign for the first time)... and yet Shepard never thought it might've been a good idea to flick the "on" switch while conversing with Sovereign or Vigil.

(Though, were I to be an apologist, I suppose I could argue that any significant Geth presence "jammed" any attempt he might have made at this )

Modifié par Ulicus, 06 février 2010 - 11:51 .

[Obadiah]

From the ME1 ending, I got the impression that taking over the Citadel so that the Reaper could interface with it required some extensive hacking and hardware. That's why Saren needed to take Citadel station by force and hold it for an extended period of time; not, say, go to some extranet terminal and quietly hack the system the keep the arms from closing.

[Obadiah]

Katarian wrote...
...
The biggest mystery is not the plot holes but how the horrible Mako exploring sections of the game got axed and replaced with Surveying which is ten times worse.

I have to agree with this. I'm playing ME1 now, and I always enjoyed the MAKO missions. I especially like sniping enemies from a hilltop with my sniper rifle, even when it shakes. But then, I think I'm part of the minority that actually liked driving that thing over terrain.

The only thing I though they should have fixed in those missions was the dungeon variety.

[Nozybidaj]

Obadiah wrote...

I have to agree with this. I'm playing ME1 now, and I always enjoyed the MAKO missions. I especially like sniping enemies from a hilltop with my sniper rifle, even when it shakes. But then, I think I'm part of the minority that actually liked driving that thing over terrain.

The only thing I though they should have fixed in those missions was the dungeon variety.

I was never a fan of the Mako, in fact I found it excessively aggravating at times.  That said, it was 10x's more engaging and enjoyable then the mind numblingly boring planet scanning.

[Ulicus]

Since it takes me about three minutes to deplete a rich planet and it took a great deal longer to navigate the jagged terrain in the mako - not to mention comb the map for the resources - I'm going to have to disagree.



Neither are particularly enjoyable, so I'll go with the one that's over fastest.

[Eain]

Nozybidaj wrote...

Eain wrote...
Thankfully, Mass Effect 2 is absent of any such gaping plot holes.

You mean of course aside from a human being brought back to life after being dead for two years.  And the whole working for Cerberus without even wondering why.  And of course simply accepting the fact that your dependable team that brought down a reaper is somehow just all unavailable based on the word of the leader of a terrorist organization without even checking for yourself.  I could go on and on here.

None of these are plot holes. As I said, questionable elements at best. The Conduit is not a questionable element. It's something that invalidates the entire story. Saren together with Benezia and an Asari Commando unit would've been able to claim the Citadel tower with relative ease. Or simply a direct Geth invasion would've done, too. As the final battle showed, the Turian and Asari fleets got stomped pretty bad before the Alliance showed up. The Citadel wouldn't have stood a chance against a Sovereign + Allies surprise attack.

So, that one plot hole in ME1 is somehow greater than all the ones in ME2 put together?  I don't mean to be rude here, but you really sound like a frothing at the mouth fanboy (or girl as the case may or may not be).  ME2 is a good game but to suggest that the plot and story is not only strong, but better than ME1?  I just have to laugh, or consider how likely it is you worked on the project and are just tired of seeing it ripped apart on the forum.

This is the first time I've come to this forum to read up on ME2. Worked on the project, lolwut. Dude, you've never been to other internet forums? Games get ripped apart all the time no matter how good they are. I just read some of the criticisms on ME2 here and couldn't quite believe what I was reading however. ME2 is now listed as the best game I've ever played for me, a throne previously occupied by Operation Flashpoint from 2001. So that's no small feat.

I loved ME2's story and how it works as a setup for ME3.

Modifié par Eain, 07 février 2010 - 11:25 .

[Benethyarr]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who felt let down by the massive plot hole at the end of ME1 - I was getting a bit tired of people telling me how great the plot was, without anyone else having spotted that problem.

That said, ME2 is *full* of plot holes and there isn't really much plot to begin with. There's no epic threat to stop, just some stand-in bad guys to give us something to do while we wait for the real story to arrive in ME3.

Rather than ramble on about every plot hole, I'll just cut to the big one - when you figure out that the Collectors are the bad guys and are using the Omega 4 relay to come and go - why not just ambush them there and end the threat once and for all? (and/or destroy/disable the relay itself) There's really no need for the Reaper IFF and it's associated problems.

Modifié par Benethyarr, 07 février 2010 - 12:19 .

[Ulicus]

I don't think the destruction of a relay is within the means of the peoples of the galaxy and I wouldn't be surprised if the Omega-4 relay was impossible to "deactivate". It is very obviously different to every other relay encountered, after all.



The ambush idea makes perfect sense in hindsight, because we learn that the Collector's only have one ship... but Shepard, Cerberus and Co. don't know that until after they've gone through. And even if they destroyed the ship in an ambush, that'd probably just prompt the Collectors left at the base to construct something bigger and better. And maybe a lot more of them.

[Benethyarr]

I agree that destroying or disabling the relay might be beyond the means of standard Citadel tech, but then again so is passing through the relay - and you find a way to do that.

As for the ambush plan, it doesn't only make sense in hindsight - all the available intel supports it. You only have evidence of one collector ship, and you know it can be damaged by conventional weapons (it's chased off by a handful of GARDIAN laser batteries). Yes, there could be more of them, or larger ships you haven't seen - but equally this theoretical fleet could be waiting for you on the far side of the relay.

Now if you ambush the Collector ship and gain solid intel that there's something on the far side of the relay that (a) you can feasibly destroy and ( you have a compelling need to destroy, then maybe going through the relay would make sense as a follow-up operation. But really, ambushing the Collector ship is just a logical first step whatever the situation.

Modifié par Benethyarr, 07 février 2010 - 01:16 .

[huntrrz]

It's also a recurring goal for paragon Shepard to not only stop someone, but to find out what they did and why. He repeatedly says this to Garrus regarding Saren and Dr. Saleon in ME1 and to Miranda regarding Wilson in ME2. It makes sense that he'd want to learn the same about the Collectors, especially when understanding their goals could be vital in developing defenses against them.