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Random Number posted:Hey man I'm just giving you my schizophrenic reading of this videogame. The fact that my reading resembles a loosely assembled bowel movement composed of tvtropes nonsense and 100 level critical reading courses is secondary to the subtext. 
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Aug 22, 2014 05:14
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Random Number posted:Mass Effect 3 is a game I haven't played so I don't know what's going to happen next. Why don't you play it? It's really fun.
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Aug 22, 2014 11:38
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Sydin posted:To be fair to the writers, I don't think "The Reapers are the Anti-Spirals" would have changed much in terms of the negative reaction to the Reaper's motivations. I think Bioware kind of wrote themselves into a corner in the Sovereign conversation where he pretty much tells you that the Reaper's reasons are so complex that the human mind can't begin to comprehend them. It certainly made for an incredible narrative hook (who doesn't love the Sovereign conversation?) but it hypes the poo poo out of the Reapers because any motivation that you can understand just ends up falling flat. "Mass effect energy is destroying the universe so stop it you dicks", as well as the motivation actually used in ME3, are both perfectly logical and easy to understand. I actually figured Sovereign was bullshitting you all along. The conversation reads like an attempt at psychological warfare, and if Reapers are as god-like as they say, then why would they bother trying to intimidate you?
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Aug 22, 2014 13:00
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BioMe posted:I actually figured Sovereign was bullshitting you all along. The conversation reads like an attempt at psychological warfare, and if Reapers are as god-like as they say, then why would they bother trying to intimidate you? I thought it was Sovereign being annoyed that three meatsacks were bothering it by calling the line it set aside to communicate with its intended puppet, Saren. It answered Shepard's questions (sort of), but made it clear that it honestly does not care what s/he says in response because it considers all organics beneath it. The Reapers are nothing if not arrogant.
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Aug 22, 2014 15:09
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Geostomp posted:I thought it was Sovereign being annoyed that three meatsacks were bothering it by calling the line it set aside to communicate with its intended puppet, Saren. It answered Shepard's questions (sort of), but made it clear that it honestly does not care what s/he says in response because it considers all organics beneath it. The Reapers are nothing if not arrogant. A machine-god beyond organic understanding... who likes to get into verbal fights with people who annoy it?
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Aug 22, 2014 16:00
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BioMe posted:A machine-god beyond organic understanding... who likes to get into verbal fights with people who annoy it? Well that's the thing, it's not actually beyond understanding. It's just a cocky prick.
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Aug 22, 2014 16:04
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Would make sense if they'd ever picked up that "we are each a nation" ball and run with it. Even by the ending of ME3 it's pretty vague in what sense the Reapers embody the species of previous cycles. But hey, why bother with characterizing your antagonist over the next 40 hours when you can do it in the last ten minutes of the game.
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Aug 22, 2014 16:17
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Arglebargle III posted:But hey, why bother with characterizing your antagonist over the next 40 hours when you can not do it in the last ten minutes of the game.
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Aug 22, 2014 16:48
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To the best of my knowledge, its not out on PC yet and I don't own a console.Lt. Danger posted:Why don't you play it? It's really fun.
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Aug 22, 2014 17:55
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ME3 is out on PC, it's just on Origin.
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Aug 22, 2014 17:56
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Rogue0071 posted:ME3 is out on PC, it's just on Origin. vvvv :P Xander77 fucked around with this message at 18:26 on Aug 22, 2014 |
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Aug 22, 2014 18:17
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Rogue0071 posted:ME3 is out on PC, it's just on Origin. It might as well not be out on PC, then.  BioMe posted:I actually figured Sovereign was bullshitting you all along. The conversation reads like an attempt at psychological warfare, and if Reapers are as god-like as they say, then why would they bother trying to intimidate you? This is actually a really solid point, and I like because if that's the case, it worked on me. I bought Sovereign's bullshit and was in awe of the Reapers.
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Aug 22, 2014 18:17
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Lt. Danger posted:Is this really what's important here? e: To clarify, your posts tend to read as if you're completely indifferent to the story making any kind of internal sense or having any plausibility. I do not agree with this position, if it is the one you hold. Cycloneman fucked around with this message at 18:40 on Aug 22, 2014 |
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Aug 22, 2014 18:20
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Cycloneman posted:If the Turians walked around doing handstands and held their guns between their thighs, would that be dumb enough for you to care? Beyond a basic level of intelligibility I just don't think it matters. Plausibility is fairly arbitrary anyway.
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Aug 22, 2014 18:57
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Flytrap posted:Well that's the thing, it's not actually beyond understanding. It's just a cocky prick. It's also extremely irritated, having failed twice already (Rachni, Keepers) and looking to potentially fail a third time unless it can convince Shepard to kindly gently caress off.
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Aug 22, 2014 19:23
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Lt. Danger posted:Beyond a basic level of intelligibility I just don't think it matters. Plausibility is fairly arbitrary anyway. *Also, how many people honestly complain about the utter madness of Star Trek's high-ranking officers, who happily beam themselves down into completely unknown environments (often ones where someone's just died under mysterious circumstances) again and again and again? Some things you just have to accept for the sake of the story being told. Cryohazard posted:It's also extremely irritated, having failed twice already (Rachni, Keepers) and looking to potentially fail a third time unless it can convince Shepard to kindly gently caress off.
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Aug 22, 2014 19:50
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Lt. Danger posted:Plausibility is fairly arbitrary anyway. You're just saying that. Seriously though, everything is arbitrary. Plausibility has to do with the construction of a narrative that tracks arbitrary events and attempts to offer a hypothesis about the Brontosaurus by Anne Elk, Phd. So in a narrative context, it seems valid to say 'this seemed arbitrary, because the narrative was insufficiently constructed to make me 'buy' that a series of events constituted a pattern other than that derived from the lunatic ravings of a bourbon drinker.' You know how grog was rationed to the crew of warships? It's like that. You can have grog every day, but if you're caught drunk before the mast, it's the lash for you. Also no buggery. Which, obviously, is not relevant to a bioware game. Edit: I'm in favor of what the dude above said regarding the idea that Reaper's aren't assholes--they're just completely committed to the extermination of life, and hey, if that means that saying something insulting and confusing to a creature might make it sad and less inclined to fight you--then so much the better. It costs so little to try, you might as well.
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Aug 22, 2014 23:29
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We know for a fact that Turians can't process rum due to their body chemistry, and Mass Effect: Refenestration mentions that their fleet abolished the practice of lashing shortly after the First Contact war. Therefore, the Turian fleet runs on sodomy and sodomy alone. QED. Edit - vvv. Yeah, I'm sure :wrex: was a smilie at some point. Xander77 fucked around with this message at 00:58 on Aug 23, 2014 |
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Aug 22, 2014 23:58
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This makes sense. Garrus does spend a lot of time recalibrating the weapons. And he's a more plausible gay liason than Kaiden. edit: oops, forgot  edit 2: huh? How is there    and  but not ?\/\/ edit 3: thanks! TheCosmicMuffet fucked around with this message at 01:18 on Aug 23, 2014 |
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Aug 23, 2014 00:46
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So, Mr. Danger, you posit that Mass Effect is the sci fi version of a good zombie movie. In which the zombies aren't the stars, they're the plot device that sets the scene and provides the overarching conflict while poking in now and then to be a more direct and immediate threat. But ultimately it's about the people and the world. I would say I agree. I've never given it much thought before, to be honest. I simply took the game as it presented itself and never paid a lot of attention to the subtext. So I am quite willing and even eager to give your opinions some thought. There's still a lot of game to go through. That's a lot of commentary to give. Thinking about some past posts about how things should have been done to be better, I find myself glad they didn't go that way at the moment. To focus more on the reaper war and a less fanciful or deus ex machina way to deal with the big bad would have made a very different game overall. And not necessarily one that was as interesting as this one was.
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Aug 23, 2014 01:15
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TheCosmicMuffet posted:This makes sense. Garrus does spend a lot of time recalibrating the weapons. And he's a more plausible gay liason than Kaiden. It's , based off of his famous "Sick Nasty!" line he'd spout in Mass Effect 2.
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Aug 23, 2014 01:17
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Xander77 posted:We know for a fact that Turians can't process rum due to their body chemistry, and Mass Effect: Refenestration mentions that their fleet abolished the practice of lashing shortly after the First Contact war. Therefore, the Turian fleet runs on sodomy and sodomy alone. QED. ...but enough about your fanfic.
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Aug 23, 2014 01:59
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I think you've misunderstood the role of rum in the operation of warships.
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Aug 23, 2014 04:39
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I don't understand how anyone could like this game.
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Aug 23, 2014 07:25
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TheCosmicMuffet posted:You're just saying that. Yes, but I think in that scene the meaning intended was that the turians were getting killed off and Tarquin needed Shepard to defend him, rather than going helmetless in a combat zone is a legitimate authentic tactic in C22. It's silly, yeah, but the whole story is silly and the whole premise for the setting is silly. Also the turian navy does indeed run on sodomy, hence the constant references to Garrus having "a stick up his rear end". This is canon.
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Aug 23, 2014 08:07
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Lt. Danger, I just wanted to mention that I'm finding this LP very interesting so far. I'm not sure I agree with you 100% of the time but this is a (to me) fresh perspective on the game and one that is greatly appreciated. On "Cerberus is more fun to fight than the Reapers": - If the Reapers weren't so much of a pain to fight between husk rushs and tough-to-kill long range artillery and other tough enemies, then the gameplay would be incongruous with what we are directly told, that Reaperized forces have been wiping things out for however-many-cycles. - All of this is also necessary for the player to understand that conventional forces aren't enough, and that while defeating Cerberus seems all but certain, the defeat of the Reapers is much less so. - Reaper forces tend to be much more efficient at getting you out of cover. Cerberus may be able to lock something down with a turret, but the roughly equivalent Ravagers are marching towards you and trying to flank you. This takes the concept of "cover", a safe place where you can pick at enemies for a few minutes, and turns it on its side - cover is temporary, cover is illusory, and what happens is the feelings of safety that you get with cover in (say) ME2 or most cover shooters is replaced with unease, that even if you ran to the back of the battlefield and tried to hide in the best cover possible it would only be a matter of time. There's no cover, anywhere, not on this battlefield or any other. Cover is, like the Relays and the Citadel, a trap. This may counteract your point about ME3 not being about the Reapers per se, but I nevertheless think it is good gameplay-and-story integration. monster on a stick fucked around with this message at 08:33 on Aug 23, 2014 |
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Aug 23, 2014 08:31
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Teledahn posted:I don't understand how anyone could like this game.
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Aug 23, 2014 12:05
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Teledahn posted:I don't understand how anyone could like this game. I don't understand how anyone could like you!
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Aug 23, 2014 12:32
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Teledahn posted:I don't understand how anyone could like this game. I mean, the game has issues, but the gameplay is solid.
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Aug 23, 2014 16:49
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Teledahn posted:I don't understand how anyone could like this game. As vocal as I am about this game's many plot holes and pretentious pseudo-artistic scenes, the gameplay is the best in the series and the story is better than many other videogames on the market (low bar, but still). It's hardly a crime to like it.
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Aug 23, 2014 17:11
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Not inside the city walls, anyway. *listens nervously to to ever-louder battle chants of the besieging RPG Codex army*
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Aug 23, 2014 17:15
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The Vanguard playstyle is also pretty much perfected in ME3, so long as you turn your brain off and don't listen to what people are actually saying you can have an amazingly fun time teleport-punching people.
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Aug 23, 2014 17:18
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I liked the game but will I play it again? Probably not.
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Aug 23, 2014 19:07
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So, uh, this LP sold me on buying the ME series again (properly this time). Just completed ME1 again. After playing through its ending again, I find it hard to believe anyone can defend the Green ending of ME3. Who looks at End-Boss Robo-Saren and thinks "Well, clearly if this was Shepard instead all the problems would be solved and this would be a satisfying ending to the series!"? When the series' first and most obvious reference to it is so easy to revile, who can blame people for assuming Synthesis was 'wrong' or 'bad'? Even speaking from a thematic, subtextual standpoint, Saren encapsulates everything wrong with the Reapers - how does a critic reconcile this ugly, horrendously flawed view of synthesis with what Mass Effect 3 promises us under the same name? Not to get ahead of myself here, though. This LP's barely begun, and my re-journeying through the Mass Effect series has hardly started too. There's plenty more to enjoy. (Keep up the good work!)
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Aug 23, 2014 23:49
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ungulateman posted:So, uh, this LP sold me on buying the ME series again (properly this time). Just completed ME1 again. Answer: Videogame reviewers are a complete joke. Not only are they unqualified and easily swayed by gimmicks and "deep" imagery, but they are under heavy pressure to provide good reviews for big name developers/series (handily explaining why Final Fantasy keeps getting good scores). Geostomp fucked around with this message at 23:55 on Aug 23, 2014 |
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Aug 23, 2014 23:53
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I meant 'critic' in the more general sense than a reviewer specifically - a video game critic, in my mind, is anyone who cares enough to put actual thought into discussing it. You're a critic. I'm a critic. Lt. Danger is the critic who holds the conch in this Thread of the Flies. Ironically, videogame journalists who churn out a meaningless number upon a game's release under a sense of obligation? They're probably the least critical of us all. (Although others take their job seriously/far too seriously, which causes a whole other host of problems unrelated to this post and/or thread.)
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Aug 23, 2014 23:58
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ungulateman posted:So, uh, this LP sold me on buying the ME series again (properly this time). Just completed ME1 again. Maybe. The Saren/Sovereign synthesis was one born on a master/slave relationship. The two sides were not equal. Saren was Sovereign's agent, or proxy, for affairs that a spaceship sized alien could not do. Saren was a puppet just like a character will be later in this LP. Syntehsis, however, is atleast sold as an equal merger of organic and inorganics. At least as it is sold to the player, no one side is the master and no one side is the servant: the two are now equal by being the same type of being. If anything, the Saren/Sovereign relationship is much more like the Control ending than the Syntehsis ending. Sovereign -- who "knows better" as he is a reaper -- controls Saren and makes him do as he is told for the "betterment of the galaxy." Shepard -- who knows better because he is the player character or, in-universe, because he was able to unite the species -- controls galactic society and guides it down a particular path for the "betterment of the galaxy." Thematically, those two things are more linked since they work on a master/slave relationship. After all, once Shepard is one with the reapers, no one can deny him out of fear.
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Aug 24, 2014 00:01
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ungulateman posted:So, uh, this LP sold me on buying the ME series again (properly this time). Just completed ME1 again. Uhh.. That's the Blue ending, not Green. Green is Shepard forcibly turning everyone everyone into a cyborg and absolutely no one having a problem with it E: Arglebargle III posted:How could anyone have a problem with it when it's so vague and meaningless? You all have circuit board tattoos, war is over! I love how before the extended edition the culmination of Shepard's ultimate sacrifice was "EDI and Joker can bone now." Kurieg fucked around with this message at 04:18 on Aug 24, 2014 |
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Aug 24, 2014 04:04
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Kurieg posted:Uhh.. That's the Blue ending, not Green. Green is Shepard forcibly turning everyone everyone into a cyborg and absolutely no one having a problem with it How could anyone have a problem with it when it's so vague and meaningless? You all have circuit board tattoos, war is over!
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Aug 24, 2014 04:12
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Kurieg posted:Uhh.. That's the Blue ending, not Green. Green is Shepard forcibly turning everyone everyone into a cyborg and absolutely no one having a problem with it It's not actually clear what the Green ending does exactly, it unifies organic and inorganic life which apparently gives everyone glowy green circuit board tattooes. What does that actually mean from the physical standpoint? No clue, the game doesn't say. You can feel free to hypothesize about what exactly Green does but all we know for sure is that it breaks the cycle by unifying organic and inorganic life to create a single united form of life that is both organic and inorganic. I like to imagine it cyborgs everything (including synthetics) at a cellular level; so now everyone is made up of little cyborg cells with little glowy red (or green) HAL eyes. Neruz fucked around with this message at 04:57 on Aug 24, 2014 |
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Aug 24, 2014 04:55
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