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TheCosmicMuffet posted:Edit: \/\/ Ah yeah. Then Crew. If it's what I think you're talking about, they all deserve to die. And if Tali can't see how cool legion is, then she *should* fall off a cliff. What a drama queen. You do realise that Legion will die no matter what decision is chosen right? By the flip of a coin it looks like: Samara will live Miranda will live The Admiral will die Also we should romance Steve just cause
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Aug 26, 2014 00:30
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I miss Legion.
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To answer your questions: Samara: It's been a long time since I played this game, but I always felt Samara was someone who was not supposed to be wavering in her beliefs. She joined Shepard on a suicide mission because Justicars are attracted to impossible quests: she did it because of duty, not her own desire. She makes it clear she keeps a cold, in-human distance between her work and her emotions. She doesn't consider her victims as people, but as tasks that need execution. Chances are, considering she is alive now, she killed her own daughter in the name of duty. IIRC, she always kept her emotional distance from Shepard. I would never say that she really "opened up to Shepard" like other characters did. You could learn alot about her, but it always felt like you were talking with a machine, more so than when you talk with EDI. She felt coldly logical and single minded. A person completely defined by her job, not by her self. What I'm getting at is that she doesn't seem like the type Shepard could convince -- in a manner of seconds -- to betray her duty. Shepard could explain to her in extreme detail how killing herself would be an overall bad decision for everyone involved -- with diagrams and flow charts -- and she would still consider death necessary because of her job. In her own mind, if she can't fullfill her duty -- if she can't kill her last daughter -- then she deserves death for not living up to the title of Justicar. Also, thematically, you want a "victory through sacrifice," right? I think, as a side effect, things became darker and created a new theme. I don't know a good word for it, but your version feels like a rejection of the previous game, in a way. Instead of meeting new people every few missions and growing a cast, it feels like we are losing the old cast piece by piece. It feels like the story is trying to say this war is going to take from every world and everyone. By taking away the characters we know and love, the story allows us to feel the loss the people of the galaxy are feeling as they lose people to war by having us suffer the same. That said, it is possible to also argue that perhaps things are too dark. Curing the genophage -- even in the manner that we did do it -- was not enough of a "win" to make up for all the dark parts. If things are too consistently dark, then the dark bits start to lose meaning: the audience becomes numb to the whole affair. So, maybe a touching mother/daughter moment, might be for the best. That said, I think that emotional boost is best left for... Miranda:Miranda's story is the better candidate for the "pick me up" your story needs. Like I said, too much sadness has gone on and the genophage was such a grey affair -- especially with Eve's death and Wreav's clear irresponsibility -- to be the big "win" the audience needs right now. Too much sadness, like I said, and your audience is numb to the whole affair. All Miranda wanted was for her sister to have a happy life safe from her father. Joining Cerebus, helping Shepard, etc. has all been tied to this task in some regard. In a way, wanting a love one to be safe, would be a common fear in a galactic war where people have to send their loved ones off to battle or flee sporadically from reaper occupied planets. Everyone is worried about those they care about in such hazy times. Getting to see one case of this turn out well is a good bit for the audience. It hints that, as dangerous as these times are, when the threat is over, the wounds of war can begin to heal and some people will be reunited with their loved ones. It's a good, positive message to break up all the bleakness. Of course, from all the prior bleakness, we know that not everyone will be reunited, but it does show that some lucky ones will be. If nothing else, it fits her story more. Her story never really felt like it was some bleak affair that was destined to end in failure. It felt more like a quest she had to overcome to get the life she wanted. And, as a quick little extra note, she was hard to kill in Mass Effect 2. She could survive from wounds that would kill Grunt. It doesn't seem like she was meant to die in this story, know what I mean? Of course, you could kill her. Make her victory a bitter-sweet one. In its own vacuum, it would have some impact. Be a bit powerful too and fit with your "victory through sacrifice" theme. But, I feel, at that point the audience will just get used to the idea of everything going badly all the time and expect it. If you want to avoid that, then Samara must live so the audience still feels the fate of these people are not always going to be the darkest possible result. Admiral or Crew: If this were real life, this would a tough one to answer, morally. Thematically, you are going for a darker tale and a theme of "victory through sacrifice." In that vain, an admirals life is more important than his crew. His knowledge, expertise, and leadership will likely serve a better purpose in the war than a few extra soldier and the cost of the soldiers jives with the theme. I should mention that it's been forever since I played so I don't know exactly what you are referring to. Cortez: Normally, I might say that I'm tired how romance gets stuck in everything because it's so "universal" and go on how I feel that, in such a big war, it feels out of place. But we really don't get to see too many same-sex relationships in gaming so, in that regard, I'd say go for it. Edit: This was kind of a fun way to play along, by the way. Though, my post now looks like a classified government document.
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Aug 26, 2014 00:41
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The "perfect" Tuchanka ending, the culmination of two games worth of setup, is your reward for taking Shepard through the entire trilogy while making the right decisions. When you decide that your thematic analysis essentially ignores the interactions between Shepard and the other characters, you're kinda missing the point - Shepard as the agent of change that can lead the galaxy into a better future is a major theme, one of the tropes borrowed most wholesale from Star Trek / Campbell. The "golden" ending very much works in the context and is one of the few things in this all-too-cinematic game that function in a manner unique to gaming in general and the conclusion of a trilogy in particular. I am, however, actually looking forward to what you have to say about the Geth arc, and other priority missions, which are just as blatant about milking character drama for bathos - but based on an emotional connection you're unlikely to have. ... You realize you're basically describing remakes, right? Infinite syuzhet variations on the same fabula - telling the same story in different ways - is a function of game limitations, not an actual goal. It's a stage we're trying to pass, as there's very little of interest to be discovered there. ... Grunt has a fascinatingly Bioware plot arc. We have a typical A more traditional, nay even cliched story, would have had Grunt (possibly at Shepards prompting) demonstrating some virtue that a mere gun, something without a brain / soul / connection to the past could not. Or possibly convincing the krogan that there are other ways to measure someone's worth. Not that path for Bioware, master storytellers that they are. ... No, the signifier isn't the same as the signified, and the Reapers and the various generational conflicts aren't freely converted back and forth as equivalent. Call it symbolic logic 101. Or, if you'd like, the paradox of a set containing itself. quote:Samara will attempt suicide so that she won't have to execute her sole remaining daughter for having a predatory genetic condition. Live or die? She died as a Matriarch when her daughters turned out to be quote:Miranda can potentially die while rescuing her sister from Cerberus and her father, in the process giving us a lead that will take us to Cerberus HQ. Live or die? quote:[*]What's more important: the life of an Admiral or the lives of his crew? quote:Steve Cortez. Romance? Edit - Apparently I have even more stuff to say. Wah. For one thing, I believe it can't be emphasized enough that one brilliant bit of genuinely good writing and gameplay / player agency / storytelling integration is how an absolutely successful Shepard - Galactic Hero and savior of the galaxy - works in a satisfying thematic way. For another, though I already mentioned I disliked the way the game simplifies the fairly complex moral issues from the previous installments into simple black/white affairs, I believe that the golden ending is the least blatantly simplistic and moralizing of the lot. It feels like the result of Shepard's actions - player agency - and has a lot of thematic resonance. Meanwhile, claiming that the choice is that much harder when a brutish leader and a lack of moderating influence are at hand is basically just repeating the same strawman railed against in the video - "if they didn't have fancy sculptures, would they be less worthy of Xander77 fucked around with this message at 07:53 on Aug 26, 2014 |
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Aug 26, 2014 00:45
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/\/\ Golden? You mean red/fire/death one?Aces High posted:You do realise that Legion will die no matter what decision is chosen right? I MISS HIM. Also, you're a mean jerk, because *OBVIOUSLY* what really happens is that every Geth is Legion so you get to have your friend forever.  I do get way overly stoked at central theme of mechanical life as the progeny of organic life. Legion is just great, though. He's got like... he's a cyclops with 4 articulate eyebrows. His superiority is demonstrated; your mere human one eyebrow per eye, and 2 unnecessary eyes are clearly inferior. And he's so cute when he isn't sure how to answer a query. I think Turing didn't bet on my Lenny-like capacity to hug rabbits. You know. Metaphorically. TheCosmicMuffet fucked around with this message at 02:15 on Aug 26, 2014 |
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Aug 26, 2014 02:02
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I thought the idea behind failshep was to kill everyone?
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Aug 26, 2014 03:41
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Arglebargle III posted:That thread lead to the line "It smells like sweat. Why would anyone even ask that?!" line in ME3. And the actress ruined the delivery by placing accent on "smells", not "sweat". My theory is that everyone was too scared of telling her what it was alluding to for fear she'd just get up and quit.
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Aug 26, 2014 03:41
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Morroque posted:I have to admit, given the route you were taking, I didn't think you would actually make the decision you did at the very end. It seemed like you were preparing to pull the rug out from under them, but then did not, for whatever reason. He kind of did pull the rug in that he built that expectation in his viewers and then did the unthinkable. He had a NPC persuade the player character instead of the other way around. Nihilarian posted:I thought the idea behind failshep was to kill everyone? To be fair, it's kind of included in the goal of massive fuckup that manages to screw everything up, but somehow still saves the day
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Aug 26, 2014 04:19
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In defense of the "perfect" ending to that mission, I will say this: it's consistent. The trilogy is always full of "easy ways out" that reward the player for making the "right" decisions, usually determined by how many Paragon/Renegade (usually Paragon) points they have. And I'll also say that the absence of Wrex/death of Eve/etc. doesn't really make the moral choice all that more grey. You have two "optimal" solutions, either Genophage is cured and the krogan join the galaxy under Wrex's leadership and Eve's guidance, or the cure is sabotaged and Mordin/Wiks lives to tell the Dalatrass, meaning full salarian support and slightly reduced krogan support. Any middle ground between this is, mechanically, failure in some regard. You lose Mordin/Wiks to stop the cure, the krogan discover the sabotage and pull support, etc. You make the wrong decision. Hell, I'll take this a step further; Cure is the Max Points Paragon option, Sabotage is the Max Points Renedage option. Taking anything inbetween is, in a meta perspective, "wrong." Funnily though, your mention of the player going out of their way for storycrafting, such as in the case for FailShep, brings me to an RPG that's many things that Mass Effect is not. Pokemon. Specifically, a method of play known as Nuzlocke, a self-imposed challenge that operates on a number of rules with many variations, but the core ones usually being things like "If a Pokemon faints, it is dead. You cannot use it again. Box/release it." and "You must catch the first Pokemon you see in an area." This is intended to turn a regular game of Pokemon into a "hard mode" of sorts, where you have a lot of risk and reward, a lot of actual choice and a lot of that choice that matters. Players end up bonding with their monsters in unique ways, because with every single battle there comes the chance that they won't see them ever again. It's similar to those low percentage runs in Metroid I mentioned a while back, but with a more narrative focus, one reason why a number of Nuzlocke challenges end up as comics made by the players in some form or another, retelling those tales, the good and the bad, the victories and the losses. But really, with all this in mind, I'll present these responses for the questions you've posed. Lt. Danger posted:Samara will attempt suicide so that she won't have to execute her sole remaining daughter for having a predatory genetic condition. Live or die? Live. Why? Because the "sacrifice" already happened. Samara's daughter killed herself in order to stop the Reaper forces invading her quote:Miranda can potentially die while rescuing her sister from Cerberus and her father, in the process giving us a lead that will take us to Cerberus HQ. Live or die? Live. Why? Because the "sacrifice" necessary to stop the experiments comes not from her, but from the refugees that Cerberus was tricking into coming to Horizon. Miranda dying brings no real benefit to the narrative. Also Kai Leng's string of failures should always be present and he should be made fun of at every opportunity. quote:What's more important: the life of an Admiral or the lives of his crew? Admiral. Why? Because sacrificing his crew in order to save him, one of the few level-headed quarians in a high position, fits in with the best of results coming from drastic costs. The quarians need him, the galaxy needs him. quote:Steve Cortez. Romance? Romance. Why? STEEEEEVE!
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Aug 26, 2014 04:30
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I'm fairly certain that only Wrex notices the sabotage. I believe Wreav remains in the dark about it for the rest of the game. So, the krogans never pull their support if you screw Wreav over.
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Aug 26, 2014 04:40
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Covok posted:I'm fairly certain that only Wrex notices the sabotage. I believe Wreav remains in the dark about it for the rest of the game. So, the krogans never pull their support if you screw Wreav over. That's what I meant. You lose some potential Wartime Funbux, er, "Galactic Readiness" points, if you stray beyond the "optimal" paths. However, here's something to chew on: I believe there's implications that Wrex got his info on the betrayal from the Shadow Broker.
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Aug 26, 2014 04:55
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Wrex will notice the sabotage no matter who does it. Wreav will not. Mordin will leave some "in case of my death" bread crumbs for Wrex to follow. If both Wrex and Eve are dead you can convince Mordin to sabotage the genophage as Wreav will pose a threat to the galaxy without Eve to reign him in. Otherwise he insists on doing the right thing.
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Aug 26, 2014 04:58
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Your thread doesn't have low effort jpg, so here is one: And some votes also: Samara will die. Miranda will live. I don't care about the other choices.
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Aug 26, 2014 05:27
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Samara should live. Miranda should live. Admiral > Crew. I find the Cortez romance deeply offensive and cringingly awkward even by BioWare's standards, so the answer is obvious: YES on romancing Cortez.
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Aug 26, 2014 06:14
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Iamblikhos posted:Samara should live. Me too space brohamster.
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Aug 26, 2014 06:31
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Tuchanka is probably my favorite area design from ME3. It basically takes everything wrong with ME2's Tuchanka levels and fixes it. Complete with a pit stop on a random road somewhere and a couple chances to just wander around and listen to Shepard & Crew chat about the environment. That may seem unimportant but it's really not. Kairos is a good example of how payoff is enhanced by setup. Ironically Menae does exactly the same thing but it's a terminally boring environment full of blatantly reused assets. Playing the game again has given me more appreciation for Thessia as is, but it's still an enormous disappointment considering we've been hearing about Thessia for 50 hours at that point and we get something that's almost indistinguishable from a smashed-up Illium and finish it off with possibly the laziest "puzzle" and laziest "boss fight" in the series back to back. Before I called Thessia a travesty; now I think that Menae is worse from a visual standpoint but Thessia is more disappointing.
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Aug 26, 2014 06:42
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Iamblikhos posted:Samara should live. I've never seen that romance. What's so hilariously awful about it that it could be bad even by Bioware standards? Because Bioware standards are already pretty super bad.
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Aug 26, 2014 06:46
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Night10194 posted:I've never seen that romance. What's so hilariously awful about it that it could be bad even by Bioware standards? Because Bioware standards are already pretty super bad. Take all the usual awkwardness, combined with overly self-conscious desire to both have you notice how they were ballsy and progressive enought to make Cortez REAL GAY (all the while trying to offend as few people as possible). Also, watch the back of naked Cortez
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Aug 26, 2014 06:50
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Samara Die. The reason Samara should die is because she has been living unwaveringly by a code for centuries. Sheppard is just a mayfly compared to her and a 30 second conversation is not going to convince someone so dedicated, fanatical, and rigid to change that. The human hero swiping away those arguments so easily with a grandiose, feel good speech seems "unrealistic" and downright condescending. Miranda Die. With the exception of Thane and Grunt, characters introduced in ME2 didn't seem very interesting. I didn't find them compelling as ME1 characters. ME2 was all about family issues, but I didn't find those story arcs very engaging. Grunt was interesting because he had no family. Miranda was probably the least interesting character of ME2 of all. I don't care if she lives or dies so just let her die. Steve sure, why not?
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Aug 26, 2014 07:11
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You guys are all misreading Samara. She became a Justicar about 400 years ago after a normal life because her daughter escaped and started racking up a body count. Her Justicar-ness is very much wrapped up in her family issues. She's also really torn up about killing Morinth in ME2; she calls Morinth the bravest and smartest of her daughters. She's always been personally ambivalent about the Justicar Code and has a long history of offering people technical loopholes to get out of being biotically smeared across the floor. In her introduction she offers (sincerely) to spare the merc protecting the Eclipse boss and only kills her after she refuses to talk. Samara then gives the cop who's afraid of arresting her 24 hours to hold her before she has to try to escape. She talks a good game about the Code but her actions depict someone in a constant negotiation between the Code and doing the right thing in real life. So, I think if Shepard offered her a loophole so that she wouldn't have to kill her only surviving offspring she would take it. Suicide isn't in character either.
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Aug 26, 2014 07:26
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I wish you could kill steve and gently caress samara.
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Aug 26, 2014 07:33
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Waltzing Along posted:I wish you could kill steve and gently caress samara. I could live with this.
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Aug 26, 2014 07:39
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Covok posted:I'm fairly certain that only Wrex notices the sabotage. I believe Wreav remains in the dark about it for the rest of the game. So, the krogans never pull their support if you screw Wreav over. Garrus notices it too.
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Aug 26, 2014 08:56
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Automatic Slim posted:Samara Die. The reason Samara should die is because she has been living unwaveringly by a code for centuries. Sheppard is just a mayfly compared to her and a 30 second conversation is not going to convince someone so dedicated, fanatical, and rigid to change that. The human hero swiping away those arguments so easily with a grandiose, feel good speech seems "unrealistic" and downright condescending. Samara's mission talk: Shep doesn't give a speech. If you take the interrupt to stop Samara, all Shep does is grab Samara and go "WTF?". The daughter is the one who convinces Samara that she doesn't have to kill herself.
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Aug 26, 2014 09:34
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Raygereio posted:Samara's mission talk: Shep doesn't give a speech. If you take the interrupt to stop Samara, all Shep does is grab Samara and go "WTF?". The daughter is the one who convinces Samara that she doesn't have to kill herself. I misremembered then. I still stand by the rest of my argument, though.
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Aug 26, 2014 09:51
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Arglebargle III posted:You guys are all misreading Samara. She became a Justicar about 400 years ago after a normal life because her daughter escaped and started racking up a body count. Her Justicar-ness is very much wrapped up in her family issues. She's also really torn up about killing Morinth in ME2; she calls Morinth the bravest and smartest of her daughters. She's always been personally ambivalent about the Justicar Code and has a long history of offering people technical loopholes to get out of being biotically smeared across the floor. In her introduction she offers (sincerely) to spare the merc protecting the Eclipse boss and only kills her after she refuses to talk. Samara then gives the cop who's afraid of arresting her 24 hours to hold her before she has to try to escape. She talks a good game about the Code but her actions depict someone in a constant negotiation between the Code and doing the right thing in real life. Yeah. This is why I went with that unwed teenage mom thing. (One of) The problems with Asari, narratively, is that they're all bisexual supermodel wizards who live forever. But they act like what teenagers think that means. It's just like all the vampire/immortal/angel/whatever YA literature characters. I remember that idiotic movie where the lady who did Twilight had some plot about a teenage girl hosting an ancient alien intellect. Because, you know, those 2 entities are about on par and can cohabitate. If it's possible to write what it's like to be someone that can live for 100s of years in a way that makes sense, then it certainly doesn't happen much. Sovereign has the same problem, somewhat. A robot race that lives long enough to manipulate whole generations of civilizations? 'Graah, human, you are dumb! You can't fathom how much I think you guys are dumb and gross'. Babylon 5, in contrast, had this really great relationship with the older and wiser races in its sentient millieu. A lot of the time, they just couldn't give a poo poo about explaining themselves. A lot of the time they would blow someone up or vivisect their brain or whatever, because the analogy was 'how much do you care about an ant?'
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Aug 26, 2014 18:08
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To be fair we actually have no idea what a multiple centuries old intellect would be like because as far as we know they don't exist.
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Aug 26, 2014 18:13
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TheCosmicMuffet posted:(One of) The problems with Asari, narratively, is that they're all bisexual supermodel wizards who live forever. But they act like what teenagers think that means. It's just like all the vampire/immortal/angel/whatever YA literature characters. Liaara's Father was pretty okay, as is post LOTSB Liaara.
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Aug 26, 2014 18:19
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TheCosmicMuffet posted:(One of) The problems with Asari, narratively, is that they're all bisexual supermodel wizards who live forever. But they act like what teenagers think that means. It's just like all the vampire/immortal/angel/whatever YA literature characters. I remember that idiotic movie where the lady who did Twilight had some plot about a teenage girl hosting an ancient alien intellect. Because, you know, those 2 entities are about on par and can cohabitate. This is classic, "This story elements isn't what I think it should be, therefore it's bad," criticism and it's terrible. I just thought you should know that. The Asari are fine; they're an archetype (a really obvious one) that the series spends a fair amount of time deconstructing. That you want them to be something else is not Mass Effect's problem. Your criticism is like someone saying, in total seriousness, "Well I think Pegasus Ponies should behave like this, so My Little Pony needs to change." Lt. Danger, after the end of the game would you be willing to do an episode on the Citadel DLC? Not the party, just the gameplay sections. It's basically just the ME3 team making fun of the series and veering dangerously close to the 4th wall. I don't know if you know anything about the Citadel quest but they managed to make Specialist Traynor finding her toothbrush into a major plot point. The quest is basically a farce in three acts. And I mean that literally, it is written as a farce.
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Aug 26, 2014 19:23
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Lt. Danger, I don't really agree with your sentiment that there is no dilemma to the "ideal" Tuchanka run - with Wrex alive, Eve surviving, and the genophage being cured. I would argue that, within the context of the series at least, curing the genophage is a morally correct choice, regardless of who's alive during or immediately following the mission. Notwithstanding Okeer's extremist survival-of-the-fittest philosophy (which, admittedly is interesting, and coincidentally reminds me of the views expounded by your Twi'lek Sith mentor in KotOR), it is made evident even in ME2 that the genophage is not a thing to be celebrated. The sins of the krogan's forefathers are visited upon them, generation after generation, indefinitely. Ending such injustice, in itself, must surely be a moral course of action. Additionally, curing the genophage means fulfilling a promise; not curing it means betrayal. Therefore, sabotaging the genophage is clearly immoral. But the immediate moral aspect only describes part of the issue. The other matter demanding attention is what curing the genophage will mean for the rest of the galaxy. If the war against the Reapers is won, should the people of the galaxy expect another catastrophic war against all krogan next? Everyone seems to be settled on "no" for an answer, if both Wrex and Eve are alive. But why is that? What reason does the player really have to believe that these two krogan can keep their entire species reined in? And if they can, for how long? They could still die in the war. After the war, they might well be targeted by assassins. And even if fate does not have unnatural deaths in store for them, presumably they'll die of old age eventually. What happens then? My point is this: Wrex and Eve are the only reason why peaceful coexistence with krogan not afflicted by the genophage would seem plausible. Eve says it all when she remarks that technology made things too easy for the krogan, so they had to look elsewhere for a challenge, and found it in themselves. Combined with the speed at which krogan can procreate, it's a very powerful recipe for violent disaster. Remove Wrex and Eve from the equation, and it's easy to imagine the krogan igniting another galaxy-wide war. Curing the genophage merely because they happen to be alive and well is naive, short-sighted, and precisely what the salarian dalatrass is quite understandably driving at. Yes, it's easy to buy into the happy picture that ME3 appears to paint, to see Wrex, Eve, Mordin and Shepard being chummy as proof that the dalatrass is being unfair and wrong; but that is a fallacy, because there is no evidence at all that this bright vision of the future can be made real and lasting. ME3 is fooling the player. The dilemma, then, is deciding between two kinds of moral choices: that of loyalty and justice in the here and now, or that of safety for future generations. It's about high ideals versus minimising risks. Faith versus logic. And it is present even when Wrex and Eve live - perhaps especially so, because they make it so tempting to believe that this dilemma doesn't exist anymore. After all, deciding to sabotage the cure seems to be considerably easier for players when only Wreav is left standing. If the player considers that Wrex and Eve may well be succeeded by another Wreav, betraying them and sabotaging the cure may not seem like such a bad decision anymore. The dilemma is there either way, but Wrex and Eve serve as a foil for what is arguably the more sensible choice. Incidentally, I'd also say that in Citadel's case it's not a problem at all that everyone in it may seem unrealistically amicable, because it's clearly intended to be a big non-confrontational feelgood send-off for the series. In fact, I'd say it's necessary to illustrate/prove the point that the primary mission makes about Shepard specifically; I don't think it'd really work if we'd saw Shepard's buddies fighting amongst themselves afterwards. That point being made about Shepard is also a reason why you should perhaps consider covering the main mission after all (I would agree that the extraneous bits, the party included, aren't really relevant).
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Aug 26, 2014 20:59
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Neruz posted:To be fair we actually have no idea what a multiple centuries old intellect would be like because as far as we know they don't exist. I don't think it's worth being fair. I'm not saying don't write it. But if you do, it obviously has different purposes depending on what you do with it. Is the Asari mental retardation despite being ancient wizards just meant to remind us that human beings are 250000 years old, but apparently just barely getting our act together? (e.g. Thorium reactors--can you believe that we're actually using WTO to hamstring chinese development--we are idiot apes) Does the omnipresence of their strippers act as a deliberate method to remind us that no matter how ancient, high tech, wizardly, and wise they're supposed to be, they're still basically dumb animals who spend a disproportionate amount of time thinking about sex? When they pick the semi-isolationist tack in the story, I don't think everyone's first reaction should be 'oh that's the wise, moderate course'. It's more like they're supremely arrogant and completely useless. Probably the strongest players in the alliance (even over the Turians), and all they care about is their own rear end. It also goes to how they're constantly looking to hamstring the power of humanity in the first couple games. We had that episode about Turians recently, and what's interesting about them is that there's also a weird gender element. Turians aren't *actually* all guys. But all the ones we see are. There's one lady Turian and she's a multiplayer-only thing (I think? Oh right, there's DLC, too right?--Whatever, point is she's like Mon Mothma). So what are Turians. Functionally perfect, basically, right? Because they're short lived enough to be personable. They understand duty and pragmatism as well as Krogans without being psychotic. They are arrogant, but can be reasoned with. Whatever their inherent flaw that Saren is supposed to represent, they could be an intermediate stage between imperfect humans and decadent asari. Maybe their all maleness is some kind of message about being homogenous, and the asari all femaleness is meant to be some kind of bittersweet improvement on that. One of the things that's interesting about Asari is that they can mate with anyone, but who gives a poo poo, because all you get out of it is another asari. Just because they're 'aggressive' or whatever because dad was a krogan doesn't really count for much when you've got someone physically and culturally the same as their 'mother'. Is the message that the Asari are, in general, culturally smothering? Is any ancient superior race culturally smothering? Are they 'mom'? Are the Turians 'dad'? Are the Krogan your screwed up uncle who's in jail? Are the Salarians your aunt with too many cats? Are the Rachni your grandfather, who supposedly smuggled liquor during the depression, and was last seen in Honduras? Arglebargle III posted:I just thought you should know that. Man. And I thought you were cool.
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Aug 26, 2014 21:15
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I always thought we were seeing female and male Turians both and humans just had a really hard time telling them apart. Was I incorrect in this?
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Aug 26, 2014 21:24
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Night10194 posted:I always thought we were seeing female and male Turians both and humans just had a really hard time telling them apart. Was I incorrect in this? We do see one female Turian in a DLC and, uh... yeah she pretty much just looks like other Turians.
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Aug 26, 2014 21:29
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Night10194 posted:I always thought we were seeing female and male Turians both and humans just had a really hard time telling them apart. Was I incorrect in this? You were incorrect. Bioware claims it was too costly to model female Turians and female Krogans back in the first game and just kept to it in ME2. They eventually threw down the bucks for them in ME3 (Eve in the main game and, apparently, a female Turian in the Omega DLC).
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Aug 26, 2014 21:30
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Flytrap posted:We do see one female Turian in a DLC and, uh... yeah she pretty much just looks like other Turians.
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Aug 26, 2014 21:31
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Sombrerotron posted:The dilemma, then, is deciding between two kinds of moral choices: that of loyalty and justice in the here and now, or that of safety for future generations. It's about high ideals versus minimising risks. Faith versus logic. And it is present even when Wrex and Eve live - perhaps especially so, because they make it so tempting to believe that this dilemma doesn't exist anymore. After all, deciding to sabotage the cure seems to be considerably easier for players when only Wreav is left standing. If the player considers that Wrex and Eve may well be succeeded by another Wreav, betraying them and sabotaging the cure may not seem like such a bad decision anymore. The dilemma is there either way, but Wrex and Eve serve as a foil for what is arguably the more sensible choice. Mordin as well. I wouldn't even say it's about faith versus logic; when all three are dead, then it's purely about the morality of the genophage. (Perhaps some players betray for the extra "war assets" but the game all but tells you that the Salarian military isn't made up for a straight-up fight.) Only Wreav alive makes the decision to cure the genophage closer to the ME1 decision on what to do with the Rachni queen. As someone else mentioned earlier, the game does punish you for sabotaging the genophage with Wrex in charge and Mordin alive - you have to actively shoot Mordin with a QTE, later you have a confrontation with Wrex where either you kill him or let someone else do it, and you lose a significant number of war assets. Wrex even taunts you by telling you what you should have done to successfully sabotage the genophage and not have the Krogan find out.
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Aug 26, 2014 21:33
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Sombrerotron posted:"You turians all look the same to me." Not my fault the modelers are lazy. There is some difference, when I first saw her I squinted and asked myself "is that what a Turain woman looks like"? But it wasn't a major difference. I think she's just a bit thinner maybe? It's been a while since I played Omega.
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Aug 26, 2014 21:35
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monster on a stick posted:Mordin as well. I wouldn't even say it's about faith versus logic; when all three are dead, then it's purely about the morality of the genophage. (Perhaps some players betray for the extra "war assets" but the game all but tells you that the Salarian military isn't made up for a straight-up fight.) quote:As someone else mentioned earlier, the game does punish you for sabotaging the genophage with Wrex in charge and Mordin alive - you have to actively shoot Mordin with a QTE, later you have a confrontation with Wrex where either you kill him or let someone else do it, and you lose a significant number of war assets. Wrex even taunts you by telling you what you should have done to successfully sabotage the genophage and not have the Krogan find out. Flytrap posted:Not my fault the modelers are lazy. There is some difference, when I first saw her I squinted and asked myself "is that what a Turain woman looks like"? But it wasn't a major difference. I think she's just a bit thinner maybe? It's been a while since I played Omega.
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Aug 26, 2014 21:58
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Morroque posted:I have to admit, given the route you were taking, I didn't think you would actually make the decision you did at the very end. It seemed like you were preparing to pull the rug out from under them, but then did not, for whatever reason. The meaning I wanted to craft with that particular course of events was "it's easy to do the right thing when everyone agrees with you, it's even easy to do the right thing when it's a tricky dilemma with good arguments all around... but it's hard to do the right thing when what you know is right is going to make things harder down the line." This Shepard is a moral absolutist. Maybe he'll regret that, though? Hitlers Gay Secret posted:I can't even recall who the gently caress Wilks is, that's how little he matters to the story. He is just a replacement for Moridin if he already died in ME2. If he actually mattered at all he'd still be around even with Moridin in the picture. Wiks is the commander of the uplift base on Sur'Kesh, and like Sydin I kind of respect Padok's arc more than Mordin's. It'll come up in the next update, but being a martyr to change the world and being a martyr to atone for your mistakes are two different things. Plus Mordin is basically three days from retirement and has a yacht called the Live-4-Ever throughout his appearance. All we need is for Shepard to scream "MENDOZAAA!" while cradling his broken body and we'd be set. Xander77 posted:The "perfect" Tuchanka ending, the culmination of two games worth of setup, is your reward for taking Shepard through the entire trilogy while making the right decisions. Which is why I can ultimately forgive Tuchanka. It might undercut the big dilemma, but the big dilemma only means something to itself. Rannoch is less fortunate. But I have to admit I don't understand the perspective that a story outcome is a "reward" for hard work or difficult decisions (well, I do, I just don't really follow it). Was Mass Effect 2 so tedious? Was the suicide mission that difficult? Games are a leisure activity and while many games are fundamentally yes/no number machines, they don't have to be that way. I didn't earn a particular ending - I just got it, it was there and it's the outcome that I got. Once you 'master' the game, you don't need to earn anything - you can just choose. quote:You realize you're basically describing remakes, right? Infinite syuzhet variations on the same fabula - telling the same story in different ways - is a function of game limitations, not an actual goal. It's a stage we're trying to pass, as there's very little of interest to be discovered there. You think so? For games, I thought the goal du jour was to integrate constructed narratives into emergent ones - to get the story and the gameplay to mesh and reinforce one another. Bioware's usually pretty bad at this. I think there's value to be had in comparing the variations, too - to see what's so important that it carries across all versions, and to see what the differences say about themselves and the authors. quote:No, the signifier isn't the same as the signified, and the Reapers and the various generational conflicts aren't freely converted back and forth as equivalent. Call it symbolic logic 101. Or, if you'd like, the paradox of a set containing itself. I think I get what you're saying here - if the Reapers are a metaphor for the genophage and the genophage is a metaphor for Reapers, neither actually mean anything at all - but I think there's enough in the similarities to make hay. Javik condemns the cure as useless because the krogan ruins are evidence they are just trapped in a self-destructive cycle; Eve is relieved the krogan can finally stop fighting their children all the time. I think these point towards something greater. StrifeHira posted:Any middle ground between this is, mechanically, failure in some regard. You lose Mordin/Wiks to stop the cure, the krogan discover the sabotage and pull support, etc. You make the wrong decision. Hell, I'll take this a step further; Cure is the Max Points Paragon option, Sabotage is the Max Points Renedage option. Taking anything inbetween is, in a meta perspective, "wrong." Yes, for all the high-minded talking I can do about player narrative agency, Bioware does a pretty good job of sabotaging themselves. I think this is indicative of a split in the writing team's priorities. Lt. Danger fucked around with this message at 22:33 on Aug 26, 2014 |
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Aug 26, 2014 22:02
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Sombrerotron posted:Lt. Danger, I don't really agree with your sentiment that there is no dilemma to the "ideal" Tuchanka run - with Wrex alive, Eve surviving, and the genophage being cured. I think the way the game presents it, though, it's implicit that there aren't going to be any problems going forward. The representative of the conservative krogan, whether that's Wreav (literally Wrex's brother literally unable to put family before petty bloodymindedness) or Jorgal Thurak, gets eaten by a thresher maw. They don't even survive to get anywhere near the actual genophage cure. Wrex is a paradigm shift (remember his breeding camp) and once he's written out of the story, he's out - the krogan are set, they're done, they're saved. The sin of the genophage is wiped clean from the galaxy's soul, and that's that. quote:Incidentally, I'd also say that in Citadel's case it's not a problem at all that everyone in it may seem unrealistically amicable, because it's clearly intended to be a big non-confrontational feelgood send-off for the series. In fact, I'd say it's necessary to illustrate/prove the point that the primary mission makes about Shepard specifically; I don't think it'd really work if we'd saw Shepard's buddies fighting amongst themselves afterwards. That point being made about Shepard is also a reason why you should perhaps consider covering the main mission after all (I would agree that the extraneous bits, the party included, aren't really relevant). I suppose I could squeeze it in. I wouldn't take the same tack as the other videos - there's no point whining about theeemes because that's not what it's for, like you and Arglebargle say. Some of the jokes grate on me, but the premise of the main quest is funny, some of the character moments are quite good and I like a lot of the smaller details.
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Aug 26, 2014 22:13
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Lt. Danger posted:Yes, for all the high-minded talking I can do about player narrative agency, Bioware does a pretty good job of sabotaging themselves. I think this is indicative of a split in the writing team's priorities. Lt. Danger posted:I think the way the game presents it, though, it's implicit that there aren't going to be any problems going forward. The representative of the conservative krogan, whether that's Wreav (literally Wrex's brother literally unable to put family before petty bloodymindedness) or Jorgal Thurak, gets eaten by a thresher maw. They don't even survive to get anywhere near the actual genophage cure. And while it is true that in the ME games things typically do seem to work out for the best if you do the "proper" (i.e. Paragon) thing, it's not always a given. Letting the rachni queen live causes more trouble in ME3 (ignoring for the sake of argument the fact that she's conveniently resurrected if Shepard does kill her), revealing what Tali's father did in the trial against her makes it likelier that she'll die in the suicide mission and harder to broker a peace between the quarians and geth in ME3, as does rewriting the heretical geth in ME2, and of course believing that one asari mercenary in ME2 and letting her go turns out to be a really silly thing to have done. So even if you apply game logic, there's reason enough to consider the possibility that curing the genophage might yet become a problem in the future. quote:I suppose I could squeeze it in. I wouldn't take the same tack as the other videos - there's no point whining about theeemes because that's not what it's for, like you and Arglebargle say. Some of the jokes grate on me, but the premise of the main quest is funny, some of the character moments are quite good and I like a lot of the smaller details.
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Aug 26, 2014 22:56
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