no bones about it posted:

Yes.


Im single and I make enough money that I can do dumb things like buy a crapton of video games and I dont have to drive a lovely dodge neon.

Lt. Danger posted:

Why?

no bones about it posted:

Yes.

Zzulu posted:

if you dont preorder then how will you get the cool preorder bonuses like this custom space jacket or this vase for your cabin??

Milky Moor posted:

^^^ Or that.

Even as far back as ME1, you had Vigil stating that the Reapers were probably using technology and raw materials of the galaxy to improve themselves (Husks were a part of this process). Why biomass? Well, ME2 says they use it to reproduce and Harbinger's dialogue indicates it's some sort of spiritual ascendance (but even ME1 plants the seeds that the Reapers aren't purely technological). All in all, the fifty thousand year timeline seemed to be the sweet spot to get a new Reaper and new stuff of worth without risking too many casualties. That has to be, after all, an element of necessity to the Citadel stratagem.

They didn't really need to go any further than that.

They could have borrowed from the Shivans. They wipe out species when they reach a certain point so species below them on the evolutionary ladder get their chance to rule the stars for bit - destruction and preservation are the one and the same.

They certainly didn't need to try for some misunderstood saviors idea.

BiohazrD posted:

there you go, they're the borg basically.

no bones about it posted:

Im single and I ... buy a crapton of video games

Milky Moor posted:

One's a game about the folly of hubris in a fundamentally hostile galaxy, where every element of the gameplay and narrative works to assist that, and the other is a bit more muddled. I'd still rate Mass Effect as one of my favorite sci-fi properties but I don't think its storytelling is as consistent - if I had to pick it, I'd say that Mass Effect is generally about the ability of all people to self-determinate regardless of the past - or, perhaps, the importance of children stepping out from under the shadow of their parents. When talking about consistency, though, it's unfair to not point out that Freespace was hardly consistent in the first installment, and a lot of the depth of its storytelling only came from the sequel. The original Freespace was, really, a somewhat derivative sci-fi flight sim with some writing that is so mindbogglingly weird that you wonder if the writers were ever all on the same page.

They're games I feel good about directly comparing because the broad strokes of the story are similar. The first game in each series could broadly be described as:

A terrifyingly powerful battleship is the harbinger of some sort of cosmic cleansing cycle. Through a combination of sacrifice, skill and secret knowledge obtained from the ruins of the last civilization to fall victim to the inscrutable destroyers, the battleship is destroyed although there remains the possibility that the worst is yet to come.

Freespace puts the player in the position of being nothing but a cog in that cycle. The player has no name, no gender, not even an age. They are just 'Alpha 1'. Frequently, they fly missions where the outcome is actually impossible to complete. In battles, it is entirely possible to get killed instantaneously by capital ship beam fire because the player is in the wrong place at the wrong time. There are maybe three characters who get names in the whole series, and they are distant figures who the player never encounters. The player is deliberately on a need-to-know basis and they are never in the need to know, something compounded by the fact that the people in charge make bad decisions - or decisions that are above the pay grade of the player. Whatever the player does, whatever the player's allies say, the universe is always there to kick them in the teeth and remind them that they are not prepared. The story culminates with a supernova, which the player will probably die in the attempt to escape.

The Shivans are the primary antagonists. They never name themselves, only known by a scientific designation taken from the deity Shiva. The only time any attempt to communicate with them transpired it ended in murder and abduction and the player has no idea what was said, if anything. Their best ships dwarf any ship the GTVA can field, can annihilate them in a single volley, and number in at least the hundreds. Whatever stratagem the GTVA deploys, the Shivans deftly counter or simply bulldoze through. Their goals are never stated and only theorised. As mentioned, the Shivans seem to show up when species hit some sort of threshold (apparently conflict related) and proceed to wipe out everyone before vanishing. Freespace - but particularly the second installment - is this terrifying cold and alien game which points out that the familiar tropes (the one of a kind super ship, the player as super protagonist, the alliance of former enemies taking on a greater evil) are nothing when put on an galactic timescale. The GTVA gets its teeth kicked in and, like a terrified mutt creeping to its kennel, retreats to try and repair the damage to their fleets, people and, ultimately, their pride.

It's one of the best-told stories in gaming and a lot of it comes down to how perfectly it works within the constraints of a sci-fi flight sim.

The parallels with the Reapers are obvious. They're known by a designation that came from the Protheans. Attempts to communicate with them are seemingly fruitless (and Indoctrination might actually render it impossible). A single Reaper seems to be a match for an entire fleet. They show up every fifty thousand years and blow everything up before vanishing. The problems are that these godlike battleship-beings are rendered down to a personal level in the first two games before going with the force of nature approach in the third and that their goals are directly stated which invites players to question their methods and strategies while not actually letting the players question any of the mechanism behind it. This source is also the godhead of the antagonists who, ultimately, routes the player into picking the three options he lays out. To make this work would have required alterations to the Reapers and their methods - making them less openly sadistic, for example.

In a cold, terrifying galaxy, this kind of story might make more sense. The problem is, the Mass Effect universe is quite warm and personable. Bad things happen but they are the result of intolerance or misunderstandings (or the direct intervention of the Reapers). With mutual respect, understanding, trust and empathy, the player - and the galaxy - is always able to move forwards and improve. Shepard isn't a cog in a hostile universe, he's basically a sci-fi messiah who can talk down anyone, pull his team through impossible situations, and spit in the face of power and (always) live to tell the tale. When he turns, the galaxy turns with him. And that's fine, because ME is basically a sci-fi action film. There's no threat that Shepard can't shoot down or talk down. Every part of the series reflects the ability of Shepard to choose and, frequently, to choose a better option than the two provided.

That's kind of a key thing. Shepard - and the player - interacts with the world through either shooting or talking and both of these options have clear win/loss outcomes in the eyes of the player. In that sense, the Reapers had to be brought down to Sovereign and Harbinger to give Shepard someone to talk to and interact with. But ME3 really prevents the player/Shepard from doing either of those things (if they shoot the Catalyst, they get the worst possible ending, too, which smacks of someone being upset over the ending's reception). Part of that is because the Reapers themselves - a race of sentient super-battleships - aren't exactly suited for a three-person squad combat game. If the Reapers were defeated by having enough war assets in a space battle outside Shepard's control, that'd be unfulfilling. If the Reapers were brought down by killing Harbinger, or convincing them to leave the galaxy with a Paragon interrupt, that'd also be unfulfilling. Sometimes, I think Bioware had a fundamental conflict between their antagonists and the scale of their gameplay and that ME3 was doomed to have a poor ending.

A lot of the problem with ME3 is that it does not neatly fit into ME1 and ME2. I won't rehash the points here. As an isolated game, I think ME3's ending works much better, as does the beginning. I think a lot of the worst parts of ME3 are the parts which try to combine the Reapers as presented in ME3 with the two previous games. For example, the Reaper conversation on Rannoch which feels like a naked attempt to ape the Sovereign and Harbinger conversations but comes off as utterly bizarre in light of the ending. While we know that the ending was constructed in a vaccuum of Hudson and Walters, I think it's also quite clear that, whatever overarching plan they had for the Reapers, they didn't share their intentions at any point previous.

The thing that is always brought up is the Geth/Quarian conflict. "Why is the biggest example of organic/synthetic conflict something that Shepard can solve with a few sentences?" everyone says. Now, of course, the idea is that the Catalyst simply can draw upon aeons of knowledge and is operating on a timescale of hundreds of thousands of years, where any probability resolves to one. But Shepard is never exposed to this before the ending. If ME is about stepping out from the shadow of the past, this is the shadow of the past suddenly becoming a solar eclipse. This is additionally complicated by the fact that Javik points out that the Reapers were responsible for corrupting the synthetic race in his time, as well as Legion pointing out that Sovereign turned the Geth against the rest of the galaxy. It's a mess.

But, again, ME3 as standalone means that the conflict can't be resolved. Sort of like how Harbinger is just not mentioned in ME3 if you don't import. ME3 as a whole seems to be more set on putting Shepard in situations where the player loses due to things out of their control (for example, Kai Leng on Thessia) but doesn't do it as elegantly as they should and doesn't obey the rules the games have set up, even simple ones like that a gunship is really not threatening to the player.

A lot of the issues with ME3's ending revolve around the execution of it as much as they do the content but, mostly, I think it is because the Reapers in their entirety are just something too big for Shepard to solve and for the players to confront with their existing toolkit, an utterly out-of-context problem for a squad sci-fi shooter. To their credit, Hudson and Walters gave the out-of-context problem and out-of-context solution. They aimed for some kind of higher art, which is good, but when your game only really gives the player options like 'shoot' and 'persuade nicely/persuade forcefully' maybe it's okay to embrace the fact that the player probably wants villains they can shoot to pieces or defeat in a conversation battle.

Milky Moor posted:

One's a game about the folly of hubris in a fundamentally hostile galaxy, where every element of the gameplay and narrative works to assist that, and the other is a bit more muddled. I'd still rate Mass Effect as one of my favorite sci-fi properties but I don't think its storytelling is as consistent - if I had to pick it, I'd say that Mass Effect is generally about the ability of all people to self-determinate regardless of the past - or, perhaps, the importance of children stepping out from under the shadow of their parents. When talking about consistency, though, it's unfair to not point out that Freespace was hardly consistent in the first installment, and a lot of the depth of its storytelling only came from the sequel. The original Freespace was, really, a somewhat derivative sci-fi flight sim with some writing that is so mindbogglingly weird that you wonder if the writers were ever all on the same page.

They're games I feel good about directly comparing because the broad strokes of the story are similar. The first game in each series could broadly be described as:

A terrifyingly powerful battleship is the harbinger of some sort of cosmic cleansing cycle. Through a combination of sacrifice, skill and secret knowledge obtained from the ruins of the last civilization to fall victim to the inscrutable destroyers, the battleship is destroyed although there remains the possibility that the worst is yet to come.

Freespace puts the player in the position of being nothing but a cog in that cycle. The player has no name, no gender, not even an age. They are just 'Alpha 1'. Frequently, they fly missions where the outcome is actually impossible to complete. In battles, it is entirely possible to get killed instantaneously by capital ship beam fire because the player is in the wrong place at the wrong time. There are maybe three characters who get names in the whole series, and they are distant figures who the player never encounters. The player is deliberately on a need-to-know basis and they are never in the need to know, something compounded by the fact that the people in charge make bad decisions - or decisions that are above the pay grade of the player. Whatever the player does, whatever the player's allies say, the universe is always there to kick them in the teeth and remind them that they are not prepared. The story culminates with a supernova, which the player will probably die in the attempt to escape.

The Shivans are the primary antagonists. They never name themselves, only known by a scientific designation taken from the deity Shiva. The only time any attempt to communicate with them transpired it ended in murder and abduction and the player has no idea what was said, if anything. Their best ships dwarf any ship the GTVA can field, can annihilate them in a single volley, and number in at least the hundreds. Whatever stratagem the GTVA deploys, the Shivans deftly counter or simply bulldoze through. Their goals are never stated and only theorised. As mentioned, the Shivans seem to show up when species hit some sort of threshold (apparently conflict related) and proceed to wipe out everyone before vanishing. Freespace - but particularly the second installment - is this terrifying cold and alien game which points out that the familiar tropes (the one of a kind super ship, the player as super protagonist, the alliance of former enemies taking on a greater evil) are nothing when put on an galactic timescale. The GTVA gets its teeth kicked in and, like a terrified mutt creeping to its kennel, retreats to try and repair the damage to their fleets, people and, ultimately, their pride.

It's one of the best-told stories in gaming and a lot of it comes down to how perfectly it works within the constraints of a sci-fi flight sim.

The parallels with the Reapers are obvious. They're known by a designation that came from the Protheans. Attempts to communicate with them are seemingly fruitless (and Indoctrination might actually render it impossible). A single Reaper seems to be a match for an entire fleet. They show up every fifty thousand years and blow everything up before vanishing. The problems are that these godlike battleship-beings are rendered down to a personal level in the first two games before going with the force of nature approach in the third and that their goals are directly stated which invites players to question their methods and strategies while not actually letting the players question any of the mechanism behind it. This source is also the godhead of the antagonists who, ultimately, routes the player into picking the three options he lays out. To make this work would have required alterations to the Reapers and their methods - making them less openly sadistic, for example.

In a cold, terrifying galaxy, this kind of story might make more sense. The problem is, the Mass Effect universe is quite warm and personable. Bad things happen but they are the result of intolerance or misunderstandings (or the direct intervention of the Reapers). With mutual respect, understanding, trust and empathy, the player - and the galaxy - is always able to move forwards and improve. Shepard isn't a cog in a hostile universe, he's basically a sci-fi messiah who can talk down anyone, pull his team through impossible situations, and spit in the face of power and (always) live to tell the tale. When he turns, the galaxy turns with him. And that's fine, because ME is basically a sci-fi action film. There's no threat that Shepard can't shoot down or talk down. Every part of the series reflects the ability of Shepard to choose and, frequently, to choose a better option than the two provided.

That's kind of a key thing. Shepard - and the player - interacts with the world through either shooting or talking and both of these options have clear win/loss outcomes in the eyes of the player. In that sense, the Reapers had to be brought down to Sovereign and Harbinger to give Shepard someone to talk to and interact with. But ME3 really prevents the player/Shepard from doing either of those things (if they shoot the Catalyst, they get the worst possible ending, too, which smacks of someone being upset over the ending's reception). Part of that is because the Reapers themselves - a race of sentient super-battleships - aren't exactly suited for a three-person squad combat game. If the Reapers were defeated by having enough war assets in a space battle outside Shepard's control, that'd be unfulfilling. If the Reapers were brought down by killing Harbinger, or convincing them to leave the galaxy with a Paragon interrupt, that'd also be unfulfilling. Sometimes, I think Bioware had a fundamental conflict between their antagonists and the scale of their gameplay and that ME3 was doomed to have a poor ending.

A lot of the problem with ME3 is that it does not neatly fit into ME1 and ME2. I won't rehash the points here. As an isolated game, I think ME3's ending works much better, as does the beginning. I think a lot of the worst parts of ME3 are the parts which try to combine the Reapers as presented in ME3 with the two previous games. For example, the Reaper conversation on Rannoch which feels like a naked attempt to ape the Sovereign and Harbinger conversations but comes off as utterly bizarre in light of the ending. While we know that the ending was constructed in a vaccuum of Hudson and Walters, I think it's also quite clear that, whatever overarching plan they had for the Reapers, they didn't share their intentions at any point previous.

The thing that is always brought up is the Geth/Quarian conflict. "Why is the biggest example of organic/synthetic conflict something that Shepard can solve with a few sentences?" everyone says. Now, of course, the idea is that the Catalyst simply can draw upon aeons of knowledge and is operating on a timescale of hundreds of thousands of years, where any probability resolves to one. But Shepard is never exposed to this before the ending. If ME is about stepping out from the shadow of the past, this is the shadow of the past suddenly becoming a solar eclipse. This is additionally complicated by the fact that Javik points out that the Reapers were responsible for corrupting the synthetic race in his time, as well as Legion pointing out that Sovereign turned the Geth against the rest of the galaxy. It's a mess.

But, again, ME3 as standalone means that the conflict can't be resolved. Sort of like how Harbinger is just not mentioned in ME3 if you don't import. ME3 as a whole seems to be more set on putting Shepard in situations where the player loses due to things out of their control (for example, Kai Leng on Thessia) but doesn't do it as elegantly as they should and doesn't obey the rules the games have set up, even simple ones like that a gunship is really not threatening to the player.

A lot of the issues with ME3's ending revolve around the execution of it as much as they do the content but, mostly, I think it is because the Reapers in their entirety are just something too big for Shepard to solve and for the players to confront with their existing toolkit, an utterly out-of-context problem for a squad sci-fi shooter. To their credit, Hudson and Walters gave the out-of-context problem and out-of-context solution. They aimed for some kind of higher art, which is good, but when your game only really gives the player options like 'shoot' and 'persuade nicely/persuade forcefully' maybe it's okay to embrace the fact that the player probably wants villains they can shoot to pieces or defeat in a conversation battle.

8-bit Miniboss posted:

Javik as a preorder DLC was dumb too. He's a god damned Prothean that commented on poo poo you did or explained how some parts of Prothean society worked! Why lock that behind a preorder or DLC at all? He should have also been in the base game. Just dumb decisions all around for 3 I swear.

Lt. Danger posted:

Whoa nelly

exquisite tea posted:

Actively torpedoing your own franchise via the ME3 ending was about the most impressive and ballsy thing you could say about it, and it's really Andromeda that's the craven and completely unambitious cash-in here.

no bones about it posted:

Yeah, that's a lot of words.

YA BOY ETHAN COUCH posted:

The thing I liked about mass effect 3 was that it had the guy from the west wing

Zzulu posted:

Yeah the Javik thing was just a real bad combination of greed and stupidity. He was great! Only a fraction of the playerbase ever saw him! good job

Alain Post posted:

Imagine how lovely Mass Effect would be if Sorkin wrote it.

exquisite tea posted:

The Illusive Jed dramatically cursing in Latin at the end of ME2, instead of in a church he's swearing at some statue of a Krogan on the presidium.

Pattonesque posted:

"The only thing you have to do to make me happy, Shepard, is come home at the end of the day."

"If you haven't seen Shepard dance, then you haven't seen Shakespeare the way it was meant to be seen."

A Buff Gay Dude posted:

Actually that's a good effort post

Lt. Danger posted:

The question "Can you describe the Reaper cycle as 'to clear a crowded sky'?" is a [2] mark Understanding & Comprehension question and does not require 1600 semi-relevant words to answer.

Psion posted:

you of all people do not get to criticize long posts on ME3, my friend

Lt. Danger posted:

The question "Can you describe the Reaper cycle as 'to clear a crowded sky'?" is a [2] mark Understanding & Comprehension question and does not require 1600 semi-relevant words to answer.

Pattonesque posted:

lots of words are good if I agree with them and very bad if I don't!

Zzulu posted: