242 réponses à ce sujet

[smudboy]

davidt0504 wrote...

So apparently some people don't get the concept that the part of recruiting your team is just as integral to the plot and overall story as the missions with colletors.  Not just the recruiting but even the loyalty missions are integral to the story.  I present evidence of this in that if you just breeze through as little squad stuff as possible to tackle the collectors, you die and that game can't be used in me3.  This game is not all about shepard fighting the collectors.  Just like mass effect 1 was not all about shepard hunting saren.

How is it integral?  Because Shepard says "I'll need an army, or a really good team?"  And TIM just starts making up dossiers?

Okay?  So why are we given choices to recruit people?  Shouldn't they all be integral?  Shouldn't every single person you pick up have a key role?

The ME2 answer is no.  Because it's up to us to recruit said people and solve this mission however we like.

But we don't know why, nor do we get the option of how: we only get the option to recruit people.  There's no reason why we need these guys.  The only one that has any meaning is Mordin; it appears the plague on Omega was a Collector plot: but we don't know what that plot is, why it's there, or what has caused it to be.  We just know Mordin can come up with some defense against Collector attacks, so we can investigate an attacked colony, which is the next major plot point forced by TIM.  (After picking up Mordin, the story nosedives.)

So why do we need the other 10 people?  Supposedly to attack their base/homeworld/planet in some fashion?  How?  How come after upgrading our main gun on the ship do we not just start attacking the Collector ship when we finally get to that major plot point forced by TIM?  (Whether Collector ship is sitting on Freedom's Progress?)

You see, a story is a linear thing.  Picking flowers could be a linear thing, and integral to a story, but in ME2 it is not.  Whether a character has daddy issues or not means nothing to Shepard: but apparently that makes said character "loyal" so they can do something "better" on our mission, which we don't know of till we get there.  If we knew we needed certain flowers for a certain arrangement, that would have been rather helpful...

And when we get there, we discover most characters are replaceable, and some are completely useless.

[Shockwave81]

Funnily enough, the loyalty mission buzz isn't even a fresh concept for the series.



In ME1, Garrus, Tali, and Wrex all had side quests related to the advancement of their relationships with Shepard.



There were also achievements for playing the majority of the game with each character - this required more effort than a 40 minute loyalty mission. I felt more attached to Liara in ME1 than I did to Miranda by the end of ME2, but in saying this, I wouldn't have minded being rewarded more substantially for the effort.



Doesn't matter.

[Knoll Argonar]

Of course, because we know exactly what you will find when you get to the collector's base/reaper factory.



Personally, I would hate that in the final mission you don't know how EVERYONE plays a major plot in it. I would find that ridiculous.



You are building a Team to deal with almost everything, in almost every situation, because you just DON'T know what you will need once you get there. That's realistic to me. You need biotics, engineers, soldiers, assassin's and more because you don't know what does your enemy have, and what will you really need.



The fact that in a mission you only need some specialists and leaders, and not everyone, means that you really recruited a hell of a Team.

[DogPark]

There are many kinds of stories, from fables to novels to theatre to teleplays to screenplays. Depending on the genre, you have different rules and different expectations. The biggest influence on us culturally right now is the screenplay format, which demands economy -- nothing is wasted. Every action, every dialogue, on-screen moment must move the plot forward. Characters or scenes that do not are removed from the film. Audiences know that every interaction and little bit of conversation that seems out of place is actually foreshadowing for the main plot.



While computer ROLE PLAYING games are their own, unique sub-genre -- because they are designed to have flexible stories that allows chapters to be in different orders and allow for different subplot resolutions, it is my opinion that Mass Effect is most like a teleplay, which is something that we're all familiar with.



Television episodes are all subplots. Each one it's own subplot. The subplots are tied together by one, big storyline that usually gets resolved (or redefined) in the season finale. Good television shows do not draw us in by their main plot, they draw us in with good writing and good characters. We often don't really care what the main plot is, we care a lot more about the characters themselves and each week we worry about the 'conflict of the week' more than we worry about the main conflict that holds the show together.



That's Mass Effect. A series of episodes. Character driven. And while I've read that Hollywood is excited about maing a Mass Effect movie, I pray that they don't. This game needs to be in TELEVISION format to get the entire story told, and get the right feel to the story.

[davidt0504]

i hope hollywood leaves mass effect alone entirely, we don't need either, the games are enough, they're better than any movie or show could do justice for

[frylock23]

I think that I lost out on the feel of the mission itself in ME2. First, I think the sheer volume of characters undermined the intent. We spend so much time recruiting new people and seeing little bits of their personal angst via their loyalty missions that the over-arcing purpose is lost. Plus, the way the game played out, I felt more like I was assembling a disaster movie cast: a lot of characters but not enough time to thoroughly develop them and make them compelling before you move on to the big game.



Between all the time spent assembling these characters and then the fact that all the time spent assembling these characters meant that their characterizations suffered in depth and meaning for me, I felt like ME2 was sort of aiming for two different things at once and not quite hitting either mark.



I think this would have been an excellent game and story had the work of assembling the team also involved little bits of the over-arcing plot at every turn. Mordin has an interest in the Collectors because the plague on Omega was partially their work. Who else has such a reason to be interested/involved in the Collectors that way, and as someone mentioned, why bother to bring in the plague at all if the issue is then precipitously dropped as soon as Mordin goes aboard?



I think BioWare's writing team on this one could have done themselves a service by re-watching some Babylon5 or Farscape (two shows that did an excellent job of driving an over-arcing plot without dwelling on it every single episode and without losing our interst in it - Farscape was even character driven). I felt in this case like BioWare started something much larger than what ME2 actually is and them editted it improperly when they realized that they had much more material than they needed.

[malres]

The claim ME2's story is about building the team for ME3 is baseless. The tagline is "Fight for the Lost", not "Build your team". The team is meant to fight against collectors, not reapers, and is told not to expect survival. There is no reason to believe this team will feature any more in ME3 than the team from ME1 did in ME2. (Saying that there will be a mostly new team for ME3, which is good.)

The deficiencies of ME2's story has been explained very skillfully and thoroughly. The failure of the opposing side (read: those who defend ME2's story) to come up with any argument other than "ME3 will explain it all" and "It's the middle of a trilogy" is effectively a declaration of rhetoric bancruptcy - a blank cheque to hold on to for two years: As long as it can't be redeemed, you can still deceive yourself into believing it's not bad.

ME2 surpasses its predecessor in graphics and gameplay, but not in story. I just don't want the ME trilogy to go the path of Matrix, Star Wars or Halo.

Modifié par malres, 15 février 2010 - 03:10 .

[davidt0504]

two out of three of those trilogies, the stories of the last two installments was better than the first. (star wars and halo)

[malres]

davidt0504 wrote...

two out of three of those trilogies, the stories of the last two installments was better than the first. (star wars and halo)

I was unprecise there. Star Wars Episode V and VI, I agree. But the prequels were horrible, that's what I meant.
Halo 2 and 3, well, I was disappointed and didn't bother anymore with ODST, that strategy game or now Reach.
My point is that the many substories of Halo, Star Wars and Matrix have by now been superseded by so many spin-offs. Star Wars is not anymore a cool trilogy (IV - VI), but a mess of prequels, TV series, books and computer games which bear the name and nothing more (KotoR being excluded, of course). Matrix is, uhm, a shadow of its former self. And Halo, well, not doing any better. Come to think of it, Highlander is another movie where the world would be a better place if no sequels or TV series had ever been created.

[davidt0504]

I disagree with Halo's story, but thats just my opinion. But yeah star wars prequels didn't exactly live up to the originals, I like the third one pretty well with the exception that it suffered from so much lucas dialogue and bad acting. Don't even get me started on the Matrix haha

[facialstrokage]

malres wrote...

The claim ME2's story is about building the team for ME3 is baseless. The tagline is "Fight for the Lost", not "Build your team". The team is meant to fight against collectors, not reapers, and is told not to expect survival. There is no reason to believe this team will feature any more in ME3 than the team from ME1 did in ME2. (Saying that there will be a mostly new team for ME3, which is good.)

The deficiencies of ME2's story has been explained very skillfully and thoroughly. The failure of the opposing side (read: those who defend ME2's story) to come up with any argument other than "ME3 will explain it all" and "It's the middle of a trilogy" is effectively a declaration of rhetoric bancruptcy - a blank cheque to hold on to for two years: As long as it can't be redeemed, you can still deceive yourself into believing it's not bad.

ME2 surpasses its predecessor in graphics and gameplay, but not in story. I just don't want the ME trilogy to go the path of Matrix, Star Wars or Halo.

How about the argument that building your team is actually a legitimate basis for a story??
I think some people either don't understand or simply don't appreciate the concept of story. Story isn't just about fighting bad guys. That's bland and pathetic. It's about Shepard. Even Bioware claims that Mass Effect 3 will end the story arc for Shepard. That includes his LI's, comrades, enemies, friends, and everyone and everything in between. It's about themes: innocents, love, loyalty, trust, etc. And lastly, it's about stopping the Reapers. You think if someone's gonna make a trilogy with reoccuring characters, their growth and adventures would be just as big a factor in the game as killing the bad guys. ME is really like a book, where Shepard is the protagonist. What he does is important, but who he becomes and how he interacts with others is just as, if not more, important.

The comparison with Matrix, Star Wars, and Halo is pretty shallow. ME and Matrix have nothing in common. Matrix is just a weird story with lots of slow-mo action. Halo has no story, at least nobody plays it for the story- it's just headshots, headshots, headshots. And as for Star Wars. Yes, I can definitely see ME taking that same route- hell, Bioware made the best Star Wars game ever.

In fact, I think Bioware based their story arc of a similar path. ME1 is like Ep. IV where the protagonist took out the temporary threat but not the real one (Death Star vs Saren). ME2 is like Ep V in both its darker environment and in depth inter and intra character developments. ME3 will likely be an epic battle between Shepard and the Reapers (Luke vs Sith). The real question is though: why is that bad? If you don't like Star Wars, you're the problem, not the story. Star Wars is possibly one of the best sagas ever made.

Modifié par facialstrokage, 15 février 2010 - 04:56 .

[malres]

facialstrokage wrote...
How about the argument that building your team is actually a legitimate basis for a story??
I think some people either don't understand or simply don't appreciate the concept of story. Story isn't just about fighting bad guys. That's bland and pathetic. It's about Shepard. Even Bioware claims that Mass Effect 3 will end the story arc for Shepard. That includes his LI's, comrades, enemies, friends, and everyone and everything in between. It's about themes: innocents, love, loyalty, trust, etc. And lastly, it's about stopping the Reapers. You think if someone's gonna make a trilogy with reoccuring characters, their growth and adventures would be just as big a factor in the game as killing the bad guys. ME is really like a book, where Shepard is the protagonist. What he does is important, but who he becomes and how he interacts with others is just as, if not more, important.

Building a team is a legitimate basis all right. A basis. A foundation on which further structure can be built. Not the be-all and end-all of a story at all.
I think some people don't appreciate the difference between interesting characters and a relevant context between them and an overarching story. You seem to be suggesting that all is well with the reavers always being out there, posing an eternal threat which is never resolved. Instead, all future ME incarnations should focus on a number of characters who would be tasked with changing the overall state of things if they weren't so busy with dealing with each other.
That's a soap opera, not a space opera.

The comparison with Matrix, Star Wars, and Halo is pretty shallow. ME and Matrix have nothing in common. Matrix is just a weird story with lots of slow-mo action. Halo has no story, at least nobody plays it for the story- it's just headshots, headshots, headshots. And as for Star Wars. Yes, I can definitely see ME taking that same route- hell, Bioware made the best Star Wars game ever.

What I am afraid Matrix, Halo etc. might have in common with ME one day is that the original concept got swamped under a heap of mediocre spin-offs for all kinds of media.

In fact, I think Bioware based their story arc of a similar path. ME1 is like Ep. IV where the protagonist took out the temporary threat but not the real one (Death Star vs Saren). ME2 is like Ep V in both its darker environment and in depth inter and intra character developments. ME3 will likely be an epic battle between Shepard and the Reapers (Luke vs Sith). The real question is though: why is that bad? If you don't like Star Wars, you're the problem, not the story. Star Wars is possibly one of the best sagas ever made.

(Edit)
ME2 is nothing like Ep. V. It does not have an ending any darker than Ep. V, for a start. Also, Ep. V progresses the story and sets the stage for Ep. VI, ME2 does not, because nothing changes or is added. (Oh, so EDI assumes that Reapers reproduce by melting organics, and the collectors tried to build a gigantic terminator for a purpose we never learn, apart that it was probably meant to somehow help the reapers in a fashin which is never disclosed, and at the end of ME2 we see the reapers out there instead of the ME1's end where Shepard tells us they are still out there...)

Modifié par malres, 15 février 2010 - 01:06 .

[Chief Savage Man]

It's a bridge to the epic finale. Standard fare for the 2nd of a trilogy.

[SL22]

Bioware even stated that ME2 is about your team as well as the collectors, if you skip most of the team based quests like what most of these people seem to have done when they claim they completed the game in such a short time then of course they're going to be disappointed.

There's not much you can do, haters are gonna hate because of their stupidity.

[WilliamShatner]

The problem with ME2 is that it's a 30 hour game that is simply a remake of the first act of ME1, which when you consider that the second act is suppose to be the act that increases the conflict is pretty damn bad in terms of storytelling.



We already recruited our team in the first act of ME1. Done. We didn't need to do it again. Maybe pick up two or three new recruits on story related missions but that's it.

[WilliamShatner]

Spear-Thrower wrote...

Character-driven stories are fine so long as they aren't predictable. ME2 was unfortunately.

Recruit1 --> loyalty mission

Recruit2 --> loyalty mission

Recruit3 --> loyalty mission.

And so on...

Doing them in a different order doesn't change the rigid structure. You expect a loyalty mission after a while. Very contrived.

Some of the best movies are character-driven. The classic "12 Angry Men" proves you don't need a 'plot' for good drama.

And considering three of those loyalty missions boiled down to "Daddy issues" there was a definite case of deja vu and recycling.  

[TheShady]

Also you didn't have to work for getting the loyalty missions at all. I remember in KoTOR 1 it was a major pain in the ass aka hard conversational work to get the character's individual stories. In ME2 it's just thrown at you. It's even a task that TIM gives you. It's so cheap, very unnatural.



In an act of narcissism, I will quote myself, as that early post already answers what most people have raised since then:

TheShady wrote...



Character driven is something else than what ME2 did....



First problem is the vast amount of characters. It's hard to really get into the characters with 3 or less conversations each. (The TV series Lost had/has a similar problem, which is why they continually kill people off and stopped paying attention to some fan favourites some time into the series. Lost, though, that was a prime example of character-driven at least in the first 2 (or 3) seasons. In comparison, Six Feet Under had ... say... 5 main characters, depends how you count.)



Second problem is the extreme lack of character interaction and connection (it's just Shepard keeping it all together, like Seinfeld being the link between George and Elaine (at least in that one episode...)).



Third problem is the complete lack of connection between the individual character stories. You hop from one recruiting quest to the other, then get kicked into a loyalty quest at the advice of Kelly. It's like in a sitcom. Lots of different sub-stories that often have little to do with each other.



So what keeps the whole thing, all the plot, all the dialogue, all the individual quests together? The suicide mission, so the suicide mission is the story. The suicide mission amounts for like 10% of the entire game.



Says so on the box too:

"Entire human colonies on many worlds are vanishing." That should be element number one of the story. We get to visit 2 such colonies and don't get much from that.

"As Commander Shepard, you must assemble the galaxy's deadliest team to save mankind against impossible odds." Element number two of the story. We got that covered. Though... Shepard really just picks up what TIM tells him to, so he's more the Luigi of the story.

"They call it a suicide mission. PROVE THEM WRONG." Element number 3. The proving wrong part took me less than an hour. And they put it in capitals too.



The trouble is: the weight of the elements is poorly balanced. I felt a strong lack of immersion.

The recruiting is just that, recruitment. Why not hang posters around the citadel: "Suicide mission with first human Spectre and hero of the citadel. Apply now and become an NPC in 2 years!"

[Lord Nicholai]

smudboy wrote...

it's up to us to recruit said people and solve this mission however we like.

But we don't know why, nor do we get the option of how: we only get the option to recruit people.  There's no reason why we need these guys.  The only one that has any meaning is Mordin; it appears the plague on Omega was a Collector plot: but we don't know what that plot is, why it's there, or what has caused it to be. 

You need the others because they are the best in the galaxy. TIM lets Shepard do it his own way because he saved the galaxy before by following his own rules. If he dictated to Shepard on what to do there would have been no point in bringing him back in the first place.

And to those disapointed by the lack of conversations with reapers: why? I don't really feel that it is 100% important to the plot that we speak to a reaper in every game. I know its been said a lot but... there is still another game left to answer questions. The second installment usually leaves more questions than the first in a trilogy.

[catabuca]

Schneidend wrote...

People are just upset because they don't understand anything but plot-driven stories. They claim ME2 was "dumbed down" for the masses and yet can't comprehend characters being the driving force in a story. ME2 is in fact too complicated for them, ironically, because they've evidently never taken any literature courses.

OMG, somebody better take back my literature PhD then.

[TheShady]

catabuca wrote...

OMG, somebody better take back my literature PhD then.

That was just showing off now, Doctor. 
Btw, a video game is, strictly speaking, not literature. Am I right, Doctor?

[JamieCOTC]

BioWare said this was going to be a character driven story at the beginning. Not to be snarky, but character driven stories often involve lots of characters. My fear is that ME3 will mostly be a plot driven story.

[TOBY FLENDERSON]

Myrmedus wrote...

davidt0504 wrote...

So apparently some people don't get the concept that the part of recruiting your team is just as integral to the plot and overall story as the missions with colletors.  Not just the recruiting but even the loyalty missions are integral to the story.  I present evidence of this in that if you just breeze through as little squad stuff as possible to tackle the collectors, you die and that game can't be used in me3.  This game is not all about shepard fighting the collectors.  Just like mass effect 1 was not all about shepard hunting saren.

A gimmick to produce consequences in the main plot if you don't exhaust side-content doesn't remove the fact that it IS side-content. Each loyalty mission has no direct relevant to the plot in of itself, therefore that constitutes a "side mission".

You CAN complete this game without doing a single loyalty mission, and you can even keep Shepard alive through doing so. If you can complete the game without doing something then it is side content.

You could argue that if you don't beat all the Weapons in FFVII you're not doing content integral to the main story because you might have a couple of characters die against Sephiroth in the end - sure, it's not permanent, but it still doesn't remove the fact that just because a side-mission causes consequences in the main story arc it doesn't make it core or integral content.

Plot: a story arc involving the evolution of events and characters.

You just got learned.

[Jzadek72]

Schneidend wrote...

People are just upset because they don't understand anything but plot-driven stories. They claim ME2 was "dumbed down" for the masses and yet can't comprehend characters being the driving force in a story. ME2 is in fact too complicated for them, ironically, because they've evidently never taken any literature courses.

Exactly. They should consider that all great stories are character driven, including Sci-fi - Hyperion Cantos is a great example of this. Would you really say that people who like Dickens are idiots?

Modifié par Jzadek72, 15 février 2010 - 03:54 .