I wont buy another ME till those two jackasses quit, get fired or stop writing .
I am sure infinetly more resources was used on the Crucible per day than on Shep. Just saying
"At a football club, there's a holy trinity - the players, the manager and the supporters. Directors don't come into it. They are only there to sign the cheques."Have you ever seen Dirty Harry Guns and money are best diplomacy
Bill Shankly
"Not badly, considering I was seated between Jesus Christ and Napoleon"
David Lloyd George was pleased with his performance at Versailles.
For all we know shep was cloned. That is plausible. The space magic at the end of the game is not plausible.
Indeed, the only plausible things in the game are Shepard being brought back from the dead, a supersentient terminator race of machines, and there being a race of insect einsatzgruppen sending people to their secret base in the center of the galaxy.
Eh. It's about as plausible as FTL. If the FTL is plausible then what happened is plausible. There's a difference between plausibility and bad writing. While we're being honest with ourselves let's remember we don't know what the mass relays are actually capable of. Those things are huge facilities that can hold god knows what technology if the Reapers(read: writers) want them to. Those things are a black box for poor writing precisely because nobody ever explains how they do anything and what their limits are. Just that all they're used for by society is Greater FTL Travel because that's all they've figured out. Cthu-...sorry. Reapers were also a black hole for poor writing as well. Having something that apocalyptic and that unbeatable in a medium that typically has victory as a requisite need for an ending was going to have them pulling something out of their ass.
One thing is for certain: the more profoundly baffled you have been in your life, the more open your mind becomes to new ideas.
-Neil deGrasse Tyson
Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.
This is largely important. When you introduce aCthulurace of Alien cyborgs that can shrug off the attacks of the most powerful ships in the Galaxy, you need an equally powerful solution.
I mean, you have a mission where you have to kill a destroyer, a smaller Reaper. This is while it is on a planet and has to lower it's mass, making it much weaker, and having an advanced warship and a fleet shooting at weak spot and taking several volleys to take it down. With an opponent that powerful, conventional means aren't possible. However, those kinds of solutions are begging for piss poor writing.
FREE THE NIPPLE!!!
I'd prefer they take a break.......but frankly I'm not buying day one....my trust is gone....plus with the old guard gone....meh
I'll pick it up when it's on sale.....or watch it on youtube
Why do people talk about the plausibility of specific things in the ME-verse?
The point is that it's an author's job to set up rules regarding what can and cannot happen in the universe. Brandon Sanderson has a very good post about this on his blog where he talks about how he designs his magic systems and specifies abilities' drawbacks and bonuses and how they affect the world. Limitations are important, because if you give a universe limitations then you also automatically challenge your heroes to solve the problems of the plot within the scope of what they can do. If they can do anything whenever they want because the author is not interested in suspension of disbelief but only in plot resolution, there can be no tension.
The Crucible and Space Magic at the end are perfect examples of a situation in which the player thinks to have a reasonable understanding of the way the universe works and then suddenly discovering that it doesn't work that way after all. Now if you're into that sort of stability-negating mental masochism then that's all well and good but let's not forget that the reasons stories work is because they play by rules. Stories without rules are stories without tension.
Indeed, being resurrected from Shepard goo is plausible.
That would be an interesting plot twist, only if the main character learned of it later in the story, not right off the bat.
Honestly, if they want to start fresh from the Shepard trilogy of ME, they need to use a clean slate for the sake of story originality, while still giving a nod to Shepard for his/ her accomplishments. It might also to better to start off a few decades after the events of ME3, giving the galactic races some time to recover and repair infrastructure (i.e. mass relays), before the rise of the next great threat.
Mass Effect was a black hole for rules until the end of Mass Effect 3 effectively because the Reapers were either not under control or were not destroyed. Every major piece of cthulu-tech was basically a reaper-con, including the end Crucible and Space Magic, all set up in a special case of "just in case they get this far" by the Reapers. Here's the good news. Bioware can actually take Sanderson's advice now.
They can effectively write the Reapers out of any story. They're either destroyed, or they're so under control and following a protocol that is only strict observation, essentially let evolution take its course. They've literally got a fascinating universe here they can fill with fascinating characters. They can have epic wars both inter-species and intra-species. They can have corporate spying. They can have the mob vs the cops on the Citadel(this is now just a facility instead of a reaper-tool). Any sci-fi or urban story you can think of, they can literally adapt right into this and have a total blast with. Forget the past. We've got the future. We've got a future without the reapers. We've got a future with just whatever characters we see fit to drop in there. But they've got to lock one of ME3's endings in as canon and set up Cthulu such that he isn't a part of it except maybe as window dressing.
Last edited by Gaidin; November 04, 2012 at 11:08 AM.
One thing is for certain: the more profoundly baffled you have been in your life, the more open your mind becomes to new ideas.
-Neil deGrasse Tyson
Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.
It would have been great if they had picked that up in ME2 already. Reapers or no reapers ME2 was a major filler episode and e.g. the death of Shepard entirely pointless.
They could have made a great spy/under cover story of how Shepard has to figure something out without any aid from outside. Instead you just switch a reasonable entity like the Systems Alliance for a caricature entity like Cerberus to provide him with everything and elevate him to Jesus status.
Overall the only way you could have probably finished the reaper story was by not having them show up at all. Have it end with them remaining in stasis in dark space as the great bogeyman lingering there and Shepard just managing to cut of all the ties that made them come back via their own tech (mass portals, citadel hidden backdoors etc.) and all actors that for crazy reasons want to help them come back.
I also hope - but greatly fear - is that they actually give the non humans more credibility. The Asari are always just the big hotties, despite you finding them everywhere in positions of power which would be more interesting since they somehow held the Citadel together for thousands of years and for them every other race are essentially shortlived puppies. You has Salarian special forces in ME1 which was great. You get little about Turians or Krogans. More indication that the other, strange looking guys and gals are extremely clever themselves. There was too much exceptionalism for humans when the whole melting pot idea would have been the bigger story.
I like those kinds of mechanics, too.
"Sebaceans once had a god called Djancaz-Bru. Six worlds prayed to her. They built her temples, conquered planets. And yet one day she rose up and destroyed all six worlds. And when the last warrior was dying, he said, 'We gave you everything, why did you destroy us?' And she looked down upon him and she whispered, 'Because I can.' "
Mangalore Design
I agree in a way but it won't matter because EA owns Bioware. Once that happen the chance of good thoughful games decreased dramatically.
This is a game with literal magic like Star Wars.
Well there are things like FTL which will probably have solutions due to aliens so advanced their technology seems like magic, which explains a lot of things in the ME universe. If an alien race can be so advanced to think of humans as insects or think of galaxies as power sources IDK how you can write off near "magic" seeming tech as most futurists do. They literally have no imagination at all, they just want to down the human race as some kind of nothing while creating some magical entities with godlike power yet say any kind of different or strange technology is impossible.
The problem with ME is that its so filled with soap opera plot armor and ridiculous machines of the gods plot devices that it becomes no longer a plausible storyline due to just that. Magical technology or sorcery is OK but there is a lot of ridiculous in ME that are well beyond that as we all well know. Such tropes should be avoided or rarely used otherwise its simply bad writing.
Also what is with Bioware lately and world threats and apocalypse level villainry? Have they forgotten how to write even a basic storyline? I don't understand why we can't have plots like in Ultima or Pools of Radiance anymore, everything has to be like a JRPG these days.
Valkaria Chronicles is a game that comes to mind when it comes to a plot that doesn't use such overused idiotic story concepts. Surprisingly its a Japanese game who seems to rehash Final Fantasy 7 every 4 months with their RPGs.
Last edited by Kanaric; November 10, 2012 at 10:52 AM.
Swear filters are for sites run by immature children.
One thing is for certain: the more profoundly baffled you have been in your life, the more open your mind becomes to new ideas.
-Neil deGrasse Tyson
Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.
You have a certain mentality, a "you vs them" and i know it is hard to see, but it is only your imagination which makes up enemies everywhere. I haven't professed anything but being neutral so why Do you feel the need to defend yourself from me?. Truly What are you defending? when there is nobody attacking?