50907 réponses à ce sujet

[mrbeavis19]

Hey guys, figured I'd share this piece I found. It's sort of Liara-related and I thought it was really good...and true.



http://www.destructo...ex-165715.phtml

[Nozybidaj]

JPfanner wrote...

I think TIM's goals are to stop the reapers at the most cost to everyone else. He thinks Cerberus is humanity, and guess who Cerberus is? That one Renegade option when Shepard lets the Council die and then says that they saw the chance to take them out and took it pretty much sums up TIM's whole gameplan. Stop the reapers but make sure he's in the top position when the smoke clears.

I wouldn't be surprised to find out that TIM's goals all along were rather limited to getting his hands on the Collector Base.  With the fairly complete case of willfully stupid the rest of the galaxy seems infected with it wouldn't shock me if we found out TIM doesn't believe the Reapers are coming either.

[Nozybidaj]

mrbeavis19 wrote...

Hey guys, figured I'd share this piece I found. It's sort of Liara-related and I thought it was really good...and true.

http://www.destructo...ex-165715.phtml

The following quote in particular is very visibly highlighted by comparing the scene from ME1 to DA:O and ME2:

Developers in general need to back away from this idea that sex somehow automatically makes games "mature" (the same can be said about swearing in videogames). There's nothing wrong with including sex in videogames, but it needs to be handled in such a way that the game industry doesn't look as though it's ashamed. 

Sex has a place in games, but it has to make sense within the context of what is happening. Relationships can be more than road maps to awkward sex, and to suggest otherwise demeans not only videogames, but the people playing them.

Modifié par Nozybidaj, 06 mars 2010 - 02:44 .

[Sharn01]

Nozybidaj wrote...

Sharn01 wrote...

I think they just went over the top on the portrayal to keep Shepard working for Cerberus, the same way they went over the top in not allowing Shepard to call out Cerberus for their actions or have proper dialog choices with Liara.

Yeah I have the feeling that the whole "amped up" slogan was thrown around so much that it really did come to the point that it hurt the story overall.  Of course with the new customer bsae they were targetting maybe they felt sacrificing story consistency and believabilty was an acceptable trade off to make things "cool".

I am patient enough to wait until ME3 before I pass final judgement, but my faith is definately shaken.  If Bioware sell's there will be no company left that reliably makes good RPG's.  It would sicken me to see them toss away the customer's that have kept them in business for well over a decade to make a little extra cash off a few games. 

They may be counting on their loyal fan's to always buy their games so they feel free to attract new customer's, the question is how many times can they burn the old fan's who buy every single game they make before we turn out backs on them.

Modifié par Sharn01, 06 mars 2010 - 02:44 .

[Nozybidaj]

Sharn01 wrote...

I fully expect the council to be playing dumb and be given a better portrayal in ME3, if they do not it is an injustice to them, they are quite competent in every medium outside of the games.  Do not forget that they will give you back your Spectre status even if Udina is on the council, he hates Shepard and they out vote him, so they do want Shepard on thier side.

To me though that just makes the whole consistency of ME2 even worse.  "Oh we see them here in ME1 and they are perfectly sane and rational.  Oh now we see them in ME2 acting like complete idiots and jack asses.  Oh now we see them in ME3 and they are completely back to normal".  And its not just to Council, but the whole situation with Liara and even Shepard himself underwent a fairly hefty transformation from ME1 to ME2 to make him docile and dumb enough to just accept everything that happens to him without questioning it or giving it a second thought.

I don't know what else to call it except poor writing.

[Driveninhifi]

I actually thought the council's reaction made some sense. They didn't see anything other than a mess of Geth ships attack, lead by a huge freaking warship. Sovereign gets blasted into a billion pieces, so there's no evidence (and what evidence there is gets stolen or cleaned up by the keepers). So they can either freak out the entire galaxy on the word of one dude/gal (even though Shepard is pretty much the most powerful individual in the galaxy) or they can remain in charge.



There's also the implication that they are being slowly indoctrinated - I thought I saw that somewhere. That's kind of ridiculous though.



As for relationships - what BioWare has yet to show is a relationship that isn't just the buildup to a love scene at the end of the game. ME3 has a chance to do that though. If Shepard didn't romance anyone in ME1, it's possible he/she will have a loyal lover at the start of ME3. Why would Jack leave Shepard after ME2, for example. Shepard's the only person she's ever had care about her, she has nowhere to go!



There's also the issue that Shepard probably would want to reunite with his/her ME1 love interest soon after dealing with the Collectors. I'd actually think there would be more reason to immediately go see Liara since she likely has useful information and she'd probably be very interested in what Shepard learns during the course of ME2.

[Nozybidaj]

Driveninhifi wrote...

I actually thought the council's reaction made some sense. They didn't see anything other than a mess of Geth ships attack, lead by a huge freaking warship. Sovereign gets blasted into a billion pieces, so there's no evidence (and what evidence there is gets stolen or cleaned up by the keepers). So they can either freak out the entire galaxy on the word of one dude/gal (even though Shepard is pretty much the most powerful individual in the galaxy) or they can remain in charge.

Judging by the end of ME2 Sovereign the "warship" was just a shell for whatever race of creatures he was "made" from.  So what happened to this giant organic creature that would have been left over?  Did a keeper just drag it away and stuff it in a trash can without anyone seeing?  I find it hard to believe that no trace of Sovereign would have remained, a simple hand wave across the screen "oh we didn't have any pieces big enough to study and, uh, yeah, the uh Keepers cleaned up the rest of it". <_<

I should make a list of how many times BW tries to insult my intelligence in ME2.

[mrbeavis19]

Nozybidaj wrote...

mrbeavis19 wrote...

Hey guys, figured I'd share this piece I found. It's sort of Liara-related and I thought it was really good...and true.

http://www.destructo...ex-165715.phtml

The following quote in particular is very visibly highlighted by comparing the scene from ME1 to DA:O and ME2:

Developers in general need to back away from this idea that sex somehow automatically makes games "mature" (the same can be said about swearing in videogames). There's nothing wrong with including sex in videogames, but it needs to be handled in such a way that the game industry doesn't look as though it's ashamed. 

Sex has a place in games, but it has to make sense within the context of what is happening. Relationships can be more than road maps to awkward sex, and to suggest otherwise demeans not only videogames, but the people playing them.

Yeah I think this is like the main point of the whole article. Sex can be more than sex in videogames. Although I agree that BW handled DA:O romances better than those in ME series (i.e. you can actually continue the relationship after the sex scene ) there's still a lot of improving to go. Making these "relationships" so shallow (a series of conversation options leading to a sex scene) is as they said, insulting to the developers and everyone playing the game. It's immature if anything to handle them in that way.

[Driveninhifi]

Nozybidaj wrote...

Judging by the end of ME2 Sovereign the "warship" was just a shell for whatever race of creatures he was "made" from.  So what happened to this giant organic creature that would have been left over?  Did a keeper just drag it away and stuff it in a trash can without anyone seeing?  I find it hard to believe that no trace of Sovereign would have remained, a simple hand wave across the screen "oh we didn't have any pieces big enough to study and, uh, yeah, the uh Keepers cleaned up the rest of it". <_<

I should make a list of how many times BW tries to insult my intelligence in ME2.

I dunno if it was just a shell - the human reaper is huge. And they're like pumping genetic material into it or something. It's mainly a giant robot with organic goo inside, I think.

Although I did think the human reaper was super lame. It just made me want to play Contra 3.

[JPfanner]

Nozybidaj wrote...

Driveninhifi wrote...

I actually thought the council's reaction made some sense. They didn't see anything other than a mess of Geth ships attack, lead by a huge freaking warship. Sovereign gets blasted into a billion pieces, so there's no evidence (and what evidence there is gets stolen or cleaned up by the keepers). So they can either freak out the entire galaxy on the word of one dude/gal (even though Shepard is pretty much the most powerful individual in the galaxy) or they can remain in charge.

Judging by the end of ME2 Sovereign the "warship" was just a shell for whatever race of creatures he was "made" from.  So what happened to this giant organic creature that would have been left over?  Did a keeper just drag it away and stuff it in a trash can without anyone seeing?  I find it hard to believe that no trace of Sovereign would have remained, a simple hand wave across the screen "oh we didn't have any pieces big enough to study and, uh, yeah, the uh Keepers cleaned up the rest of it". <_<

I should make a list of how many times BW tries to insult my intelligence in ME2.

They probably use imbedded nanodisassemblers to degrade like the codex entry mentions praetorians do.  The Reapers may wipe out galactic civilization every 50,000 years, but that doesn't mean they can't be green!
I gave the Council a pass in ME2.  They were as much a victim as Shepard of being a handpuppet to the narrow confines of the story.  Although I did sniffle a bit when the asari Councilmember mentioned executing me for treason.

[Sharn01]

Well, I imagine the first priority after the battle was to reestablish order to the citidel, make sure those still alive where safe and account for the dead, during that time a lot of looting was done, yes, some of it was the keeper's doing clean up, but we know from the books that Cerberus used it as an opprotunity to get Reaper tech.



They added some of that tech to EDI, and in one of the novel's they are kidnapping an ex-cerberus agent who betrayed them to keep them from performing experiment's on his daughter so that TIM can have his revenge by implanting him with Reaper tech to see what kinds of combination of Reaper/human he can make.

[bjdbwea]

Yeah, that article is pretty good. I wouldn't need any depiction at all, though I also don't mind it at all if it's done as beautifully as in ME 1. Much more important is the relationship part, as it's that which, if done well, adds a great amount of atmosphere and to some extent realism and believability to a game (just like a movie). It's also a good way to make characters actually seem alive.

The main problem with ME 2 is not the obvious caving in as far as depiction is concerned. It also portrays the romances in a superficial way, as someone said: As if it's all geared towards "the scene" as a prize for the player. The one with Garrus is probably the worst in this regard. Are his fans happy with what they got, I wonder - I'm just happy that Liara's romance wasn't like that. But even that is not the main point. Many games treat women like that, the only somewhat new thing would be that now there are also male characters available as prizes. The main point is once again that BioWare themselves have done better in in the past - ME 1, and (to a lesser extent) in DA - but now seem to not only simplify the gameplay for their new audience, but apparently also the content.

[Driveninhifi]

I dunno, the romances in ME1 seemed pretty similar to the ones in ME2. I mean, Liara basically falls in love with Shepard no matter what. It's not like you have to do anything to win their favor in either game - you basically just have to be nice. As long as you don't pick the "NOT INTERESTED GO AWAY" option, you end up with the love scene. At least, that's what I remember from ME1.

[JPfanner]

General Stubbs wrote...

I don't think TIM is as well connected as he seems though, something about his whole organization seems iffy to me.
Humans have only been in the galatic community for 28 years during ME2 and BioWare is trying to make Cerberus rival the SB (who knows how long the SB has been around for). I just don't know if Cerberus would be capable of protecting someone from the SB at all.

Yeah, I went over last night the problems I had with the whole "nearly 3 decades versus nearly 3 millenia" problem with Cerberus being anything but some scrub minor player in the galactic scene.  It also gets more absurd when you're told by EDI that Cerberus activities are directly overseen by TIM.  And that they currently have 3 cells operating, including Project Lazarus.  Or that they've just spent the last several years either losing entire bases and lots of people to Shepard personally during ME1, and then spending billions and billions constructing the Normandy SR2 and reanimating Shepard.
In ME1 you really get a sense of humanity being the newcomers and underdogs to the galactic scene.  And it really emphasizes how much Shepard is doing to show the rest of the galaxy what humanity can do.  "The Council saw something in you Shepard, you are the best and brightest of what humanity has to offer." is how Liara herself puts it I think.
Honestly it really seems like a Mary Sue situation.  Cerberus has all these books about them, and they're so totally awesome in ME2.  Like Mass Effect isn't Shepard's story, but Cerberus's story if you go by the books and ME2.

[vigna]

Well, if Liara brings up Shep's eyelashes in ME3 we'll have alot to talk about.

[Corti78]

JPfanner wrote...

Yeah, I went over last night the problems I had with the whole "nearly 3 decades versus nearly 3 millenia" problem with Cerberus being anything but some scrub minor player in the galactic scene.  It also gets more absurd when you're told by EDI that Cerberus activities are directly overseen by TIM.  And that they currently have 3 cells operating, including Project Lazarus.  Or that they've just spent the last several years either losing entire bases and lots of people to Shepard personally during ME1, and then spending billions and billions constructing the Normandy SR2 and reanimating Shepard.
In ME1 you really get a sense of humanity being the newcomers and underdogs to the galactic scene.  And it really emphasizes how much Shepard is doing to show the rest of the galaxy what humanity can do.  "The Council saw something in you Shepard, you are the best and brightest of what humanity has to offer." is how Liara herself puts it I think.
Honestly it really seems like a Mary Sue situation.  Cerberus has all these books about them, and they're so totally awesome in ME2.  Like Mass Effect isn't Shepard's story, but Cerberus's story if you go by the books and ME2.

To me that was the only point of the novels. To build up Cerberus as some huge threat so they could eventually place them in a important role in the games. Its too bad it came at the expense of making Shepard a brain dead idiot when dealing with them. I still can't get over how Bioware won't let Sole Survivor Shepard's call TIM out about Akuze...

[bjdbwea]

Driveninhifi wrote...

I dunno, the romances in ME1 seemed pretty similar to the ones in ME2. I mean, Liara basically falls in love with Shepard no matter what. It's not like you have to do anything to win their favor in either game - you basically just have to be nice. As long as you don't pick the "NOT INTERESTED GO AWAY" option, you end up with the love scene. At least, that's what I remember from ME1.

If you view it from the gameplay perspective, perhaps. All you ever do is click on the "right" choices in dialogue. That could and should be improved somehow. DA is a bit better there, as it involves a (small) sidequest too. But what I really meant was that the ME 1 romances feel more natural, as the developers invested more time to show the development of feelings, to involve them in the story. Of course it helped that there were less romancable characters, and in my opinion that's how you should do it if you don't have endless resources (ME 2 has too many companions anyway). But maybe I'm also a bit biased against the ME 2 characters, as characters like Jacob, Garrus, Thane, Tali or Jack aren't interesting to my Shepards in the first place.

Modifié par bjdbwea, 06 mars 2010 - 03:33 .

[Sharn01]

AsariC: Shepard, what has your investigation of the missing colonies turned up?

Shepard: The investigation is not going well, I discovered a quarian survivor who had footage of the collector's abducting the colonist's using some type of swarm to paralyze them while they carry them off in pod's.

SalarianC: This is most disturbing new's, we know very little of the collector's, we would like you to forward this evidence to us, perhaps more can be gleaned from what you found.

Shepard: It get's worse, Cerberus is also investigating the missing colonies, I ran into two of their agent's, for the sake of the mission I worked with them and it went well.

Anderson: I don't trust Cerberus, I doubt they would take such an interest solely for the sake of the colonist's.

AsariC: Cerberus are terrorist's Commander, you should have apprehended them.

TurianC: I agree, what  where you thinking Shepard?

Shepard: I really was not in the position to do so, the quarian survivor was left mentally scarred by the ordeal and had all the security mech's attacking us, if I had not worked with them we would not have survived.  They also extended an invitation to work with us to discover what the collector's want with the colonist's.

SalarianC: It is strange for Cerberus to extend a hand of cooperation, they must have some altier motive.

AsariC: Still, this may be an opprotunity to discover what their plan's are, and they may be able to help you complete your mission, we can not extend many resources outside of Citidel space.

TurianC: Agreed, you should work with them temporarily Shepard, we give you our permission to do so, but you must not make it public knowledge.

Anderson:  Keep working on your mission, we need to discover what the collector's are up to, but do not trust Cerberus, if you discover what they are really after do what you must and contact us when you are able.

Shepard: Understood, I will contact you again when I have more information.


Just thought I would add this post to show one of many way's to get Shepard working for Cerberus without the contrived death and resurrection.  I think its a much more realistic way to get Bioware's favorite little pet into the game.  Granted it does not go over all the possible dialog option's for Shep, its just an example.

[Nozybidaj]

Corti78 wrote...

JPfanner wrote...

Yeah, I went over last night the problems I had with the whole "nearly 3 decades versus nearly 3 millenia" problem with Cerberus being anything but some scrub minor player in the galactic scene.  It also gets more absurd when you're told by EDI that Cerberus activities are directly overseen by TIM.  And that they currently have 3 cells operating, including Project Lazarus.  Or that they've just spent the last several years either losing entire bases and lots of people to Shepard personally during ME1, and then spending billions and billions constructing the Normandy SR2 and reanimating Shepard.
In ME1 you really get a sense of humanity being the newcomers and underdogs to the galactic scene.  And it really emphasizes how much Shepard is doing to show the rest of the galaxy what humanity can do.  "The Council saw something in you Shepard, you are the best and brightest of what humanity has to offer." is how Liara herself puts it I think.
Honestly it really seems like a Mary Sue situation.  Cerberus has all these books about them, and they're so totally awesome in ME2.  Like Mass Effect isn't Shepard's story, but Cerberus's story if you go by the books and ME2.

To me that was the only point of the novels. To build up Cerberus as some huge threat so they could eventually place them in a important role in the games. Its too bad it came at the expense of making Shepard a brain dead idiot when dealing with them. I still can't get over how Bioware won't let Sole Survivor Shepard's call TIM out about Akuze...

Agreed, I hadn't thought about it specifically but pretty much everything in ME2, including Shepard, pretty much took a back seat to showing "how great and honorable" Cerberus is.  Shepard as a character really took just as much a hit in ME2 as Liara did.

[JPfanner]

Corti78 wrote...

To me that was the only point of the novels. To build up Cerberus as some huge threat so they could eventually place them in a important role in the games. Its too bad it came at the expense of making Shepard a brain dead idiot when dealing with them. I still can't get over how Bioware won't let Sole Survivor Shepard's call TIM out about Akuze...

I just found Admiral Kahoku's body a few hours ago in my ME1 playthrough and I had to stop playing for a bit because all I could do is scowl and shake my head.  And right before that I had done Colony of the Dead.  So my anti-Cerberus fervor is all freshly rekindled.

[Nozybidaj]

Sharn01 wrote...

AsariC: Shepard, what has your investigation of the missing colonies turned up?

Shepard: The investigation is not going well, I discovered a quarian survivor who had footage of the collector's abducting the colonist's using some type of swarm to paralyze them while they carry them off in pod's.

SalarianC: This is most disturbing new's, we know very little of the collector's, we would like you to forward this evidence to us, perhaps more can be gleaned from what you found.

Shepard: It get's worse, Cerberus is also investigating the missing colonies, I ran into two of their agent's, for the sake of the mission I worked with them and it went well.

Anderson: I don't trust Cerberus, I doubt they would take such an interest solely for the sake of the colonist's.

AsariC: Cerberus are terrorist's Commander, you should have apprehended them.

TurianC: I agree, what  where you thinking Shepard?

Shepard: I really was not in the position to do so, the quarian survivor was left mentally scarred by the ordeal and had all the security mech's attacking us, if I had not worked with them we would not have survived.  They also extended an invitation to work with us to discover what the collector's want with the colonist's.

SalarianC: It is strange for Cerberus to extend a hand of cooperation, they must have some altier motive.

AsariC: Still, this may be an opprotunity to discover what their plan's are, and they may be able to help you complete your mission, we can not extend many resources outside of Citidel space.

TurianC: Agreed, you should work with them temporarily Shepard, we give you our permission to do so, but you must not make it public knowledge.

Anderson:  Keep working on your mission, we need to discover what the collector's are up to, but do not trust Cerberus, if you discover what they are really after do what you must and contact us when you are able.

Shepard: Understood, I will contact you again when I have more information.


Just thought I would add this post to show one of many way's to get Shepard working for Cerberus without the contrived death and resurrection.  I think its a much more realistic way to get Bioware's favorite little pet into the game.  Granted it does not go over all the possible dialog option's for Shep, its just an example.

Agreed, I always thought something similar would have made much more sense if it was somehow written in stone somewhere that Shepard just "had" to work with Cerberus.  We could keep coming up with these little nitpicks, plotholes, and mischaracterizations all day long, but the fact is all that stuff is the way it is because they had to be to make the main points of the story work (dieing, working with cerberus, abandoning your whole team and former life).

At some point in development someone should have made a huge list of all these things and then asked themselves if the foundations of the story were really necessary.  The things they have had to do to make it all not completely fall apart just don't seem worth it in the end.

[Nozybidaj]

JPfanner wrote...

Corti78 wrote...

To me that was the only point of the novels. To build up Cerberus as some huge threat so they could eventually place them in a important role in the games. Its too bad it came at the expense of making Shepard a brain dead idiot when dealing with them. I still can't get over how Bioware won't let Sole Survivor Shepard's call TIM out about Akuze...

I just found Admiral Kahoku's body a few hours ago in my ME1 playthrough and I had to stop playing for a bit because all I could do is scowl and shake my head.  And right before that I had done Colony of the Dead.  So my anti-Cerberus fervor is all freshly rekindled.

haha, I just found Kahoku a few minutes ago.

[JPfanner]

@Sharn01



That was nice to read. I think the problem is that "Shepard gets, like totally killed, and then reanimated with cybernetics that, like totally change to an evil red if you're Renegade!" kind of won out at some point in the design phase. Especially considering you have stuff like "Asari are all like totally hot telepathic space babes, but you know what would be cooler? Totally hot telepathic space babe sex vampires!"

[Nozybidaj]

JPfanner wrote...

@Sharn01

That was nice to read. I think the problem is that "Shepard gets, like totally killed, and then reanimated with cybernetics that, like totally change to an evil red if you're Renegade!" kind of won out at some point in the design phase. Especially considering you have stuff like "Asari are all like totally hot telepathic space babes, but you know what would be cooler? Totally hot telepathic space babe sex vampires!"

/sigh  Why do I get the feeling that isn't far from the truth?