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Waltzing Along posted:I think this thread illustrates pretty well why ME3 is a bad game. I'm going to disagree with you here. ME3 is a good game. It is, and this is a big point, a good game with a capably told story. Just not the story people want. But we're not here to rehash the arguments about why ME3 is a bad game. Lt. Danger is probably trying to delve, in a way, into the minds of the developers, and explore why they made the choices they did. The problem with that is that you really can't do that when your first response to the game is 'this is bad and why is it bad.' Instead you have to start from the perspective that the game is, well... good. That it's something that you're proud of, regardless of how others think about it. I'm going to wait for Tachunka and Lt.Danger's response before I say anything, but I would like to make sure that everyone remembers the discussions concerning Star Wars. They are useful for multiple reasons, the first being that it helps understand why people didn't like ME3.
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Aug 6, 2014 01:57
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Torchlighter posted:I'm going to disagree with you here. ME3 is a good game. It is, and this is a big point, a good game with a capably told story. Just not the story people want. I agree with your points, and I am trying to maintain the same mentality. I passed up the third installment due to the overwhelming internet backlash. I played the poo poo out of the first two games, and was very curious to see where the third one went. Then the internet convinced me it was another Dragon Age II. Admittedly, nothing I have seen so far in the lp proves to me that Mass Effect is A)A bad game, B)A bad Mass Effect game or C)A bad story. Goons seemingly just want to hate this game. I don't get it.
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Aug 6, 2014 02:35
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Earnestly posted:I agree with your points, and I am trying to maintain the same mentality. I passed up the third installment due to the overwhelming internet backlash. I played the poo poo out of the first two games, and was very curious to see where the third one went. Then the internet convinced me it was another Dragon Age II. Admittedly, nothing I have seen so far in the lp proves to me that Mass Effect is A)A bad game, B)A bad Mass Effect game or C)A bad story. We have yet to reach the points that really pissed people off. Or the points that, in retrospect, make others worse by association (i.e. the end). I'm not saying that a lot of the complaints, my own included, aren't often overblown, but the story does earn some of its scorn. Though, I admit disappointment over what the game could have been drives the hate more than what it actually was.
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Aug 6, 2014 02:42
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Earnestly posted:Goons seemingly just want to hate this game. I don't get it. The first time though it seems a lot better than it really is. Subsequent playthroughs are when it really starts to stink. Other than the end, I thought the game was great the first time. No longer.
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Aug 6, 2014 02:44
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I don't know anything else about the game beyond what we have seen and the endings that are impossible to avoid. I know I'm in the minority in that I don't let bad and stupidly vague endings get my goat, as one of my favorite games is Beyond Good and Evil. So I don't have any beef against ME3 thus far. I will let the thread know the instant I do.
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Aug 6, 2014 02:58
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Waltzing Along posted:The first time though it seems a lot better than it really is. Subsequent playthroughs are when it really starts to stink. Other than the end, I thought the game was great the first time. No longer. The sheer ambition carries the first playthrough but you really start to notice how lazily plotted it is on the second pass.
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Aug 6, 2014 03:17
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After watching the videos, I'm definitely noticing how weird and disjointed the dialogue exchanges are. I didn't think they were that bad when I was actually playing but I may have just been numb to it.
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Aug 6, 2014 03:31
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I don't know if this was brought up or not, but are you playing the original ending or the Extended Cut?
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Aug 6, 2014 03:42
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theCalamity posted:I don't know if this was brought up or not, but are you playing the original ending or the Extended Cut? I can't imagine there being any way it is the original. That would ... actually fit the LP, I think.
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Aug 6, 2014 03:47
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If the story was capably or well told then people wouldn't feel the need to "fill the gaps" or think about "could have been" scenarios, though. That's mistaking the symptom for the cause, people naturally start trying to problem solve when faced with something that doesn't work. Games don't have the luxury of art forms to say that people just "didn't get" things, games are interactive and need to be built for the player first. If a user misunderstands then it's the game's problem, just like any other form of design or storytelling. I think Lt. Danger is doing a great job and fulfilling a really necessary task in letting people know that, even when only moderately successful, creative works like this are constructed with thought and deliberation, and that ME3 hits the marks that it's creators wanted/needed to along the way. Despite any flaws the game realizes a setting and cast of characters that most titles never even aspire to in a functional and fun way. At the same time, ME3 suffered in its creative process, can be just as sophomoric in parts as the much-maligned analysis in this thread, and ultimately failed to turn the ticking off of each beat and arc into a successful execution. Until we get to the meatier bits of the game there probably won't be much to talk about other than the problem-solving brought on by those issues.
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Aug 6, 2014 03:51
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One area that I think ME3 suffers is it follows up two of the greatest games ever made. Each of which had an epic ending and each of which really pushed the boundaries of what games could be. ME3 wasn't epic, though it tried to force it. I didn't break any ground, because that ground had been broken. When the best thing about the game is a tacked on multiplayer element, that the designers also tried to force the user to play...yeah. I wonder what ME3 would be like for a new player who had no idea of what had come before.
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Aug 6, 2014 04:55
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Waltzing Along posted:One area that I think ME3 suffers is it follows up two of the greatest games ever made. Each of which had an epic ending and each of which really pushed the boundaries of what games could be. ME3 wasn't epic, though it tried to force it. I didn't break any ground, because that ground had been broken. When the best thing about the game is a tacked on multiplayer element, that the designers also tried to force the user to play...yeah. The ending sequence was literally the worst part of ME2 what are you smoking.
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Aug 6, 2014 05:53
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Waltzing Along posted:I wonder what ME3 would be like for a new player who had no idea of what had come before. Speaking as someone who has only watched an LP of a bit of the first game, it would probably come down to gameplay before anything else. Most of the story making sense seems to be predicated upon knowing what happens in the previous games. From what I can tell, they're not stopping to explain anything that Commander Shepard should canonically already know. For example, I doubt a new player to the series would immediately pick up what the genophage is, nor would know who Garrus is and why he is important. They'd probably need to rely on the codex quite often to fill in the gaps, and that would probably slow things down a bit. Having a general look at the second game, I attribute this largely to how the narrative is structured. For example, if I were to start on the second game having not played the first, after a certain point you are given free range to explore the galaxy and pick a series of missions at your own pace. If you don't know who Garrus is, that doesn't matter, since you get to meet him all over again and he fills you in on the details when he gets the chance. If you don't know what the genophage is, you have all of Grunt's mission to find out. Mass Effect 1 had the option of opening mission, 4 of the story missions can be played in any order, then the final mission. Mass Effect 2 had the same, but in a three act structure. The ability to just happen upon things while poking around led to a more relaxed understanding of the story, characters, and setting. We don't have that here in 3, since so far everything has been one thing after another -- we must approach it on its own terms and not really at our own leisure. Going in blind to the third game would result in a lot of unfamiliar characters quickly throwing around unfamiliar terms, at least for the first long while without any break. I don't know if the ability to do sidequests later on will alleviate the regimentality of the story or not. I think they definitely wrote for a prepared player in mind, so all that's left for the new player would be how well the gameplay fares.
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Aug 6, 2014 06:15
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Neruz posted:The ending sequence was literally the worst part of ME2 what are you smoking. I don't even know how to respond to this. What part of the game after you go through the relay is bad? How is it not epic?
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Aug 6, 2014 06:47
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probably around the time you have to fight a human-looking proto-reaper as a final boss? Sure the parts where you have to choose who lives or dies leading up to the final boss is tense and kinda epic in nature but that boss just sucks
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Aug 6, 2014 06:57
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Aces High posted:probably around the time you have to fight a human-looking proto-reaper as a final boss? Well yeah, the boss is kinda silly. But that's just a couple minute fight. The end cinematic afterwards is great and everything that comes before is great, too. It's still an epic finale.
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Aug 6, 2014 07:00
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Aces High posted:probably around the time you have to fight a human-looking proto-reaper as a final boss? How could you not enjoy fighting the 3rd boss from Contra 3 again? 
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Aug 6, 2014 07:04
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ME had a three act structure as well, don't forget that a TON of stuff on the Citadel was mandatory after New Eden and that Virmire to the end credits is locked down. ME2's ending was legitimately bad because it has very little bearing on ME2's own story, to say nothing of its irrelevance to the trilogy. The vast majority of ME2 is about characters. You could go to the Collector base, or any final location, for literally any reason, the climax is the team fighting together. The Collectors and Harbinger and the skeleton monster are so irrelevant, except as targets, that they might as well be a bunch of Batarians and a horny space squid. You're right in saying the Final Mission part leading your team was the good part, because that WAS the ending to ME2. That's the climax to which the whole story has been leading, because the whole story has been about these characters. The final boss feels flat because it's not important at all. And they made it visually and conceptually ridiculous on top of that. If you counted the references to Sovereign and the references to the Collector Base in ME3 I don't wonder which one would come up more often.
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Aug 6, 2014 07:16
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Waltzing Along posted:Well yeah, the boss is kinda silly. But that's just a couple minute fight. The end cinematic afterwards is great and everything that comes before is great, too. It's still an epic finale. The giant human reaper completely and utterly ruined the ending sequence for me: I just cannot enjoy it when I know that it is leading up to that loving thing.
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Aug 6, 2014 07:24
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Neruz posted:The giant human reaper completely and utterly ruined the ending sequence for me: I just cannot enjoy it when I know that it is leading up to that loving thing. It does make sense, though. It's a surprise but not one that comes out of nowhere. If the reaper babby looked like Sovereign, no one would have batted an eye.
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Aug 6, 2014 08:32
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Waltzing Along posted:It does make sense, though. It's a surprise but not one that comes out of nowhere. If the reaper babby looked like Sovereign, no one would have batted an eye. No it does not make sense there is absolutely no reason why that thing should have been shaped like a human, none. The justification that all the Reapers have a smaller form inside their main body that looks like the original species that was mushed up to make them is thin and holds no water because the entire goddamn thing makes no sense at all. The only reason that thing existed is because they decided they wanted a way for Shepard to fight a Reaper personally and that was their way of achieving it. Their stupid, stupid way.
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Aug 6, 2014 08:36
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Neruz posted:No it does not make sense there is absolutely no reason why that thing should have been shaped like a human, none. The justification that all the Reapers have a smaller form inside their main body that looks like the original species that was mushed up to make them is thin and holds no water because the entire goddamn thing makes no sense at all. That's not what I meant. What I meant was it made sense that you fought the reaper at all. You knew they were harvesting people and they were using those people to create a new reaper.
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Aug 6, 2014 09:10
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Waltzing Along posted:That's not what I meant. What I meant was it made sense that you fought the reaper at all. You knew they were harvesting people and they were using those people to create a new reaper. Oh yeah no I have no problem whatsoever with a Reaper being the boss of ME2; going from Saren in ME1 to a Reaper in ME2 to hundreds of Reapers in ME3 is a perfectly acceptible progression of escalation. It's the execution that I have a problem with. A gigantic, immersion ruining problem that retroactively destroyed the fun I had been having.
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Aug 6, 2014 09:38
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Oh I forgot to mention that ME2's final boss was mechanically bad as well. You're confined to a small platform, physically separated from the boss. You avoid his telegraphed doom attacks and pop out and do a little more damage to the bullet sponge between them. You can't interact with the boss any other way or even move beyond a couple predetermined points of cover. Saren's boss fight from ME may not have been great, but at least it was frenetic and encouraged constant use of the shooting, squad command and power use skills the player mastered throughout the game. The ME2 boss fight pretty much jettisons every combat innovation that made ME2's fights better than ME, except for the need to always be in cover which makes the fight worse, not better.
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Aug 6, 2014 10:28
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The worst part about the ME2 final boss is if you have been funhaving with a Vanguard all game up till then. Nope none of your Vanguard powers are any loving use at all on this guy and if you didn't replace your pistol with an assault rifle I hope you enjoy doing no damage because all the targets are too far away for the shotgun to do any real damage. Boss design! 
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Aug 6, 2014 10:31
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Not to defend ME2's terminator baby (why they chose that design over all the better ones they had drawn up in concept art, I'll never know), but I can't see that being the big deal breaker while ME3's ending gets a pass to anyone.
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Aug 6, 2014 12:22
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Geostomp posted:Not to defend ME2's terminator baby (why they chose that design over all the better ones they had drawn up in concept art, I'll never know), but I can't see that being the big deal breaker while ME3's ending gets a pass to anyone. I don't think anyone here has said ME3's ending gets a pass. I certainly never did, ME3's ending is terrible. The 'updated' version is only marginally better.
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Aug 6, 2014 12:36
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We're jumping the gun a bit here, but I think one of the charitable things Lt. Danger is likely to say about the ending is that it had potential, but was so rushed that they never had time to develop that potential. A lot of ME3 shows signs that they ran out of time when you go back over it, but the ending was so incredibly rushed that it was immediately obvious even before the player put down the controller in shock as the credits rolled. They didn't even have time to generate three proper cutscenes for the ending, much less integrate their (belated) ideas for the ending into the story. The idea of a final conversation, rather than a boss fight, with the Reapers hashing out the big-picture problems with the universe has a lot of potential in my opinion. It's just that it doesn't fit, and the reason it doesn't fit is that they came up with the ending at the last minute. On this point I expect to be sympathetic with Lt. Danger that Casey Hudson's idea of what Mass Effect 3 is about, as expressed in the ending, is interesting and valuable. The sheer production reality of coming up with those ideas at the last minute make Mass Effect 3 muddled and disjointed about that message, and critically leaves those ideas undeveloped both as they reach the player and as they appear suddenly near the end of the narrative. It's small wonder that their first big paid DLC explores exactly the ending-related issues shoehorned in late in the writing process. This is just speculation but, for example, if they'd had more time to figure it out I would imagine that the Crucible and its associated Prothean mystery would have been less about technology fetch quests (who's doing paint-by-numbers storytelling here?) and more about revealing the Reapers' motivation and the big picture synthetic-organic-stagnation-annihilation problem along with the purpose of the Crucible. That way the ending wouldn't seem to be the ending to a different game which, again, due to production realities isn't far from the truth. How true is it that they lost their writer after Mass Effect? There's a ton of exciting stuff that Sovereign lets slip in his chilling first appearance that just doesn't get any development. Or when it does get development moves in boring and uninspired directions. Like "each of us is a nation" developing into tubes full of people-goop being inexplicably turned into Reapers, instead of for example interacting with any stored knowledge or personalities that might have been interesting and made the Reapers a little more complicated than I've ventured way off topic now though so I'll just stop. ME3's ending had a lot of potential, I just wish they'd made a game to go with it! Interesting thought experiment -- if you played the ending first, and then the rest of the game, would you be mad about the ending or about the rest of the game for being wrong and bad? Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 13:15 on Aug 6, 2014 |
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Aug 6, 2014 13:11
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Arglebargle III posted:Saren's boss fight from ME may not have been great, but at least it was frenetic and encouraged constant use of the shooting, squad command and power use skills the player mastered throughout the game. The ME2 boss fight pretty much jettisons every combat innovation that made ME2's fights better than ME, except for the need to always be in cover which makes the fight worse, not better. The only reason the Saren fight wasn't the worst part of the game was because the sidequesting was even more horrible. He was literally just a giant mound of shields and hp that took forever to kill and posed no threat to you if you merely ran in circles. He's just kinda boring.
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Aug 6, 2014 16:13
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 Part 6: Challenge Further Reading Wrex: http://youtu.be/qbzo_qsKiO4 Mordin: http://youtu.be/flgdzFjD6oo Let's talk about characters that challenge us - and those that don't.
Lt. Danger fucked around with this message at 16:53 on Aug 6, 2014 |
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Aug 6, 2014 16:38
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Garrus is popular because he is well-written and snarky and nerds love well-written snarky characters because they like to imagine that is how they would sound if they were a super awesome space knight.
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Aug 6, 2014 16:40
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I dunno... do they? Morrigan is snarky, but people find her irritating because she keeps turning that snarkiness on the PC, the player and the game itself until she becomes frustrating. But you could be right, there's definitely a bit of wish-fulfilment in Garrus. He's proof you can be awkward and awesome at the same time!
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Aug 6, 2014 16:50
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Arglebargle III posted:Interesting thought experiment -- if you played the ending first, and then the rest of the game, would you be mad about the ending or about the rest of the game for being wrong and bad? I started playing the series very late, and I went in knowing a lot of the spoilers, including the ending. It didn't really help. Conflict between Synthetics and Organics is noticeable as a bit of a recurring theme, with the rogue AI on the moon in the first one and the lore around that as to why people use VIs instead of AIs, the reapers (although until that one ME3 DLC you don't know they fit into the rebellious servant role), and obviously the Geth/Quarian conflict, but honestly the most prominent thematic conflict in the story is probably the one between political bureaucracy and military efficiency. It makes a lot of sense when you think about it, because although the writers obviously know that you've seen multiple synthetic/organic conflicts, the player's story is actively shaped by authority figures telling them what to do throughout the series with much more immediate effects on the player's experience. Can't speak much for the third game though, since I quit right after you first get to the citadel.
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Aug 6, 2014 16:52
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Wiks' insistence that the process of evolution must have some kind of underlying motivation or goal is absolutely infuriating. It's also a sterling example of the classic science fiction problem of authors not understanding the science they're writing about.
Crigit fucked around with this message at 19:32 on Aug 6, 2014 |
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Aug 6, 2014 16:55
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Lt. Danger posted:I dunno... do they? Morrigan is snarky, but people find her irritating because she keeps turning that snarkiness on the PC, the player and the game itself until she becomes frustrating. Morrigan was annoying for completely unrelated reasons. Refuse to ritually sacrifice your father? Morrigan disapproves (-10). Agree to do a mutually beneficial job for someone? Not the spirit of the free market, Morrigan disapproves (-10).
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Aug 6, 2014 16:57
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Lt. Danger posted:I dunno... do they? Go read TvTropes (wait actually no don't) and you'll find pages upon pages of tropers describing themselves as "deadpan snarkers" (also turns out there are way more spergy subcategories of being snarky than I ever knew about). I assume this actually translates to "completely insufferable" in real life.
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Aug 6, 2014 16:58
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I don't agree with the idea of Garrus as loyal dog to Shepard/Player's master. I was actually really hoping to be able to play as Garrus at some point in the series. For me he was often a bit of a player surrogate, since Shepard can't spontaneously give opinions. Garrus is able to go, "No, gently caress you, gently caress this, we have a mission to accomplish," to the more annoying NPCs without having to be given a dialog wheel prompt. He seems to say what the player is thinking too often for this to be a total accident. To me Garrus was pretty much Shepard's brother-by-another-species. He would have been able to seamlessly take over had Shepard died. Even in his first appearance when he's less confident, he's presented more as a natural ally than a natural subordinate. His situation is an obvious parallel for Shepard's. The point about Shepard being asked to judge him should be seen in the light of Mass Effect's first act, where your dialog choices are as much about defining Shepard as they are about effecting change in the game world. I can't overstate how much I wish Garrus had been a playable character or even had his own game. The game may set him up as your Number One but he seems virtually identical to Shepard in skillset and leadership quality. If they had released Mass Effect: Archangel or something where Garrus is the player character I would have bought it in a heartbeat. I don't think I would have been as excited about getting in the driver's seat, so to speak, with any other character. Making Joker the only other PC of the series was such a tease. 
Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 17:22 on Aug 6, 2014 |
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Aug 6, 2014 17:13
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Neruz posted:Garrus is popular because he is well-written and snarky and nerds love well-written snarky characters because they like to imagine that is how they would sound if they were a super awesome space knight. Blunt... But correct. I really couldn't have put it better myself. BioMe posted:Morrigan was annoying for completely unrelated reasons. Morrigan is actually an Objectivist. 
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Aug 6, 2014 17:16
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Mr. Soop posted:Morrigan is actually an Objectivist.
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Aug 6, 2014 17:23
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Neruz posted:Garrus is popular because he is well-written and snarky and nerds love well-written snarky characters because they like to imagine that is how they would sound if they were a super awesome space knight. I think this is a pretty unfair. The player can react naturally to a scene without having delusions of being a "super-awesome space knight." The player is genre-aware, and knows that, for example, Shepard and Garrus are going to wreck whatever NPCs are standing in their way, the villain is a jerk and/or doofus, sidequest givers aren't as important as they think they are, and that comic relief characters exist to be comic relief. Garrus gets to voice these certainties. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Aug 6, 2014 |
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Aug 6, 2014 17:28
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