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Quarian who destroyed the Dyson Sphere posted:Oh, just the most important thing ever imagined, limitless, free energy, captured and ready for use? More importantly, a permanent harbor for our nomad fleet that would be our people's answer to the Citadel and the galactic community that shuns us? Yeah? I definitely remember Legion being a super prototype platform, and even in ME1, the Geth aren't shown to be active without ships or large platforms present, but Tali draws attention to the fact that the Geth society is basically a server bank. I guess we're supposed to now understand that to mean "Skynet", instead of a weird cloud software thing of individual programs forming physical bodies via bit torrent into communal platforms The other reason I say that they're software despite being a singular hivemind now, is because the Geth were born from a network of Quarian devices. A network of devices that grew to such a massive size that it gained sentience right underneath their noses, and an event that both races probably remember pretty well. If somehow, and this is going out on a limb here, the Geth were both into cyberwarfare and somehow came in contact with the entire Quarian fleet, there would be almost no way to stop Geth from migrating back onto Quarian hardware and starting over again if things go south As far as I can tell, my lemmings joke was on the money
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Sep 24, 2018 13:23
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You could make an argument that the writing of the Quarians is fairly realistic - they could coexist peacefully with the Geth if they'd stop trying to take Rannoch back by force but the people in charge are blind to every option except violence. They violated laws to create the Geth and now pretty much the whole galaxy hates them, so eradicating the source of their shame might bring them back into the fold, at least on a political level. Private attitudes probably wouldn't change much as species like the Asari and Krogan have long memories and there are plenty alive that were around back when the original fuckup happened. I don't know if this is intentional or if I'm putting my own spin on things and it's just a coincidence. In practice they're even more incompetent than 90% of the galactic population which is quite a feat.
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Sep 24, 2018 15:57
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I mean, no Quarian alive has ever interacted with a Geth except Tali (and a handful of higher-ups if you brought Legion to her trial), so their attitude is almost entirely informed by history, which was written by the Quarians exiled from Rannoch. You can see where they're coming from right up until they decide that the Reaper Invasion is the perfect time to start a total war, and Shepard picks up a benign Geth who says that there could easily be peace if the Quarians tried to negotiate instead of shooting them on sight.
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Sep 24, 2018 16:15
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Zulily Zoetrope posted:I mean, no Quarian alive has ever interacted with a Geth except Tali (and a handful of higher-ups if you brought Legion to her trial),  It would have been interesting if they could have incorporated that into the storyline; if the Admirals talked to him then maybe the Geth are under attack by Reapers and the Quarians have to decide to help or not as opposed to the idiocy we got. I give 'em a pass on this as it would have required writing an entire second Quarian storyline which would have been a huge use of resources and probably a giant pain in the rear end.
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Sep 24, 2018 16:45
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SubponticatePoster posted:You could make an argument that the writing of the Quarians is fairly realistic - they could coexist peacefully with the Geth if they'd stop trying to take Rannoch back by force but the people in charge are blind to every option except violence. They violated laws to create the Geth and now pretty much the whole galaxy hates them, so eradicating the source of their shame might bring them back into the fold, at least on a political level. Private attitudes probably wouldn't change much as species like the Asari and Krogan have long memories and there are plenty alive that were around back when the original fuckup happened. I don't know if this is intentional or if I'm putting my own spin on things and it's just a coincidence. That definitely frames it a lot better than the game itself does If you think about it, the abject nihilism angle even works really well for why they chose the Reaper invasion to start the battle. The galaxy is going to die, there's no time for peace, and there's no lines of communication in place to even attempt a peaceful solution if there was the time. This slowly decaying race of outcasts has their last chance to ever set foot on their home planet dangling in front of their faces, what's the real cost of tens of thousands of lives when everyone is going to die regardless? Of course, we have the hindsight(foresight?) of Javik, who tells us that the Reapers take hundreds of years to kill everyone, so the immediate rush is just stupid. And the admirals pull a massive heel turn and try to murder us for convenience, so it does make the Quarians look real lovely any way you slice it
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Sep 24, 2018 18:50
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this is the lowest point in ME3's story and yes I'm aware of several other kai leng related lows They just stretched too far despite the setup being pretty reasonable to start with: quarians being desperate and stupid about Rannoch, check. Tali being reasonable and smart based on learning from her past experience, check. The galactic stakes being so high it's plausible the quarian admirals would push for this attack, absolutely. That's all fine. These were reasonable outcomes from what we learned in ME 1/2 or even just from playing 3. But Legion and the Geth... oooof. ME2 did a tremendous job turning the geth from generic robot badguys to a unique and interesting species, but ME3 chose to more or less ignore all that and commit the worst character assassination since Anders. Despite the bones of the whole Rannoch plot setup working, nothing connects the pieces convincingly because of what they did to the geth. And I'm not really even referring to Reaper javascript literally making you eeeeeeeviilllllll, somehow, don't ask. I'd give that a pass because writing anything related to programming is near-impossible to make fun and entertaining The Door Frame posted:That definitely frames it a lot better than the game itself does see also this good post Psion fucked around with this message at 19:01 on Sep 24, 2018 |
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Sep 24, 2018 18:53
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SubponticatePoster posted:You could make an argument that the writing of the Quarians is fairly realistic - they could coexist peacefully with the Geth if they'd stop trying to take Rannoch back by force but the people in charge are blind to every option except violence. They violated laws to create the Geth and now pretty much the whole galaxy hates them, so eradicating the source of their shame might bring them back into the fold, at least on a political level. Private attitudes probably wouldn't change much as species like the Asari and Krogan have long memories and there are plenty alive that were around back when the original fuckup happened. I don't know if this is intentional or if I'm putting my own spin on things and it's just a coincidence. Also, if you follow Ashely's 'every race for themselves' view then the there's the chance the Geth are going to side with the Reapers, being synthetic themselves and because they've done so already (that was the Heretics, but still) So from that point, they're taking back their homeworld, wiping out their old shame, and also wiping out a potential army for the Reapers. Also, I'm the rear end in a top hat who tells the Quarians to keep fighting after the Dreadnought is disabled, since the Geth at that point are a lost cause when they gave themselves to the Reapers, and didn't punch Gerrel because I agree with him that Dreadnought had to go, though he could have given me like 5 minutes to get off the ship before he started blasting.
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Sep 24, 2018 20:07
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SgtSteel91 posted:Also, if you follow Ashely's 'every race for themselves' view then the there's the chance the Geth are going to side with the Reapers, being synthetic themselves and because they've done so already (that was the Heretics, but still) I did that in my first playthrough. I was full renegade, I have a soft spot for the Space Lemmings, and when I felt like my actions on Legion's quest didn't matter, I went all Johnny Rico on their asses. When my aggression mixed with decisions from past games, I ended up having to reload my save from just before the dreadnought mission. Which is amazing, since the Geth are such fun enemies to fight on high difficulties in singleplayer Primes don't have a sync kill, but they do usually have a dozen invisible little fuckers that can 2 shot you roaming the arena with them 
The Door Frame fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Sep 24, 2018 |
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Sep 24, 2018 20:44
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just wanted to pop in and say that I really like this LP a lot and i'm glad that it has returned. also slugging Gerrell in the gut for almost getting you and your party vapourized is cool, screw that dude. Durandal1707 fucked around with this message at 23:08 on Sep 24, 2018 |
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Sep 24, 2018 22:46
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Aw, thanks! I notice the thread gets lots of views with an update, but not a ton of new posts so I dunno if people are just lurking or what. One of the really good things about doing this LP has been that while folks may have differing opinions about various things in ME is that everyone is nice and respectful and it doesn't devolve into lovely slapfights like elsewhere on the internet. If you wanna talk about stuff, by all means do.
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Sep 25, 2018 00:02
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Durandal1707 posted:also slugging Gerrell in the gut for almost getting you and your party vapourized is cool, screw that dude. i really wonder if they put that in there just so otherwise-Paragon players who don't go punching reporters would have someone they could guilt-free punch the gently caress out of because really.
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Sep 25, 2018 00:31
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Psion posted:i really wonder if they put that in there just so otherwise-Paragon players who don't go punching reporters would have someone they could guilt-free punch the gently caress out of I know clocking Khalisah is great black comedy, but I just can't bring myself to do it any more, especially playing as BroShep. It's actually much more satisfying to rhetorically powerbomb her instead. Gerrel though, I deck that fucker and kick him off the Normany every drat time. Also I know people have been down on it so far, but I'm actually a big apologist for Rannoch as a story arc in ME3. Mostly because it has one of the best emotional high points in the series if you do everything right and score the homerun on the finale, and that's largely thanks to Tali and Leigon.
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Sep 25, 2018 01:20
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It does have that yeah, but to make that happen the writing for the rest of it really terrible, and that victory ends up being inconsequential and ignored as far as narrative and thematic weight goes.
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Sep 25, 2018 02:56
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nine-gear crow posted:I know clocking Khalisah is great black comedy, but I just can't bring myself to do it any more, especially playing as BroShep. It's actually much more satisfying to rhetorically powerbomb her instead. done this literally since 2007, so I - obviously - agree completely the end of Rannoch though, well, eh, let's get there when we get there
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Sep 25, 2018 03:37
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Psion posted:done this literally since 2007, so I - obviously - agree completely A lot of my memories about this arc are tainted by my own decisions, how I play video games, and the emotions associated with those playthroughs. I'm genuinely excited to see how well the one we're probably going to get holds up now that I'm not trying to 100% the series and am less emotionally invested in the world of Mass Effect
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Sep 25, 2018 04:31
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Quarians dumb. Dumb and squishy. Bad combination.
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Sep 25, 2018 05:59
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SubponticatePoster posted:Aw, thanks! I notice the thread gets lots of views with an update, but not a ton of new posts so I dunno if people are just lurking or what. One of the really good things about doing this LP has been that while folks may have differing opinions about various things in ME is that everyone is nice and respectful and it doesn't devolve into lovely slapfights like elsewhere on the internet. If you wanna talk about stuff, by all means do. Right on, thanks. I actually do like this part of the game as well, though on my recent playthrough of 3 it lost some of its luster for me. The initial setup is really cool, and it makes sense intuitively that the Quarians would try and start poo poo again with the Geth, while the rest of the Galaxy is too busy with the Reapers to get involved. But yeah, the point that they slid back on a lot of the stuff they were taking the Geth toward in 2 is true and unfortunate. I think my biggest issue with the whole Geth-Quarian arc is that the latter outside of Tali and Koris come across as imbecilic just 'cause. Gerrell nearly gets Shepard and co. killed on the dreadnought for basically no real reason and Xen's only really in it for the tech bounty anyway. And Raan mostly just goes along with all of it anyway. I dunno, I feel like they could've taken it in a few different directions that didn't involve the Quarians being as bloodthirsty to the point of total stupidity. But then you could say that's more or less consistent with the earlier games, so I dunno.
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Sep 25, 2018 22:30
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It's done abruptly but I do like Garrel's heel turn and Koris' change into a more sympathetic character. There's nothing building up to it in ME3 but it doesn't really come out of nowhere if you've played 2. It was emphasized and demonstrated repeatedly that no one but Raan actually cared about anyone outside the fleet. Garrel just made nice because, while he did mildly care about what happened to Tali, he cared more about going to war. Even in Shepard's final speech I always felt the "frustrated push away from leaning forward" Bioware animation was to show that she recognized that no matter what speech was given the admiral that agreed with her was just going to say pretty words to strengthen their position. Sacrificing Shepard and Tali to destroy the biggest (and apparently only?) big ship the Geth has isn't out of line with that. They aren't really in a tech war with Geth at that point in Garrel's mind but a shooting war.
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Sep 26, 2018 03:09
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Kibayasu posted:It's done abruptly but I do like Garrel's heel turn and Koris' change into a more sympathetic character. There's nothing building up to it in ME3 but it doesn't really come out of nowhere if you've played 2. It was emphasized and demonstrated repeatedly that no one but Raan actually cared about anyone outside the fleet. Garrel just made nice because, while he did mildly care about what happened to Tali, he cared more about going to war. Even in Shepard's final speech I always felt the "frustrated push away from leaning forward" Bioware animation was to show that she recognized that no matter what speech was given the admiral that agreed with her was just going to say pretty words to strengthen their position. Sacrificing Shepard and Tali to destroy the biggest (and apparently only?) big ship the Geth has isn't out of line with that. They aren't really in a tech war with Geth at that point in Garrel's mind but a shooting war. Yeah. If you go up and talk to Koris during the trial recess and afterwards he straight up says something to the effect of "Tali, you're like a daughter to me, but I'm doing this because you and your dad are leading us to open war with the Geth and it's gonna kill us all, and if getting you exiled is the only thing that can derail that then it's what I have to do, I'm sorry." And Tali realizes over the course of the mission that Koris was actually right and comes around to his line of thinking if you get her off the hook and force her to make peace with Legion.
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Sep 26, 2018 04:19
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Also, Garrel's little war story about him and Tali's father going in guns blazing against some pirates that got them medals slapped on their chest and kicked off to an early pilgrimage does explain both Tali's father willingness to commit war crimes to get an advantage over the Geth and Gerrel going in for the kill on the Dreadnaught, even if Shepard and Tali are still on the ship.
SgtSteel91 fucked around with this message at 05:41 on Sep 26, 2018 |
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Sep 26, 2018 05:32
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If anything you would expect Tali to be less surprised by the dreadnought attack especially considering what she saw her father do in ME2, what with the whole "if this is what it takes for my daughter to see the homeworld" recording. At least maybe tell Shepard "they may try to blow us up once the defenses are knocked out" Tali, I thought you were spacebros Let's face it, most of the people Shepard interacts with in the trilogy are too stupid to live
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Sep 27, 2018 00:16
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Well, there's a bit of difference between "let's experiment on our creations that we don't consider people" and "let's blow up a thing that has our only reliable ally and one of our Admirals on it!" It's a tad beyond the pale, even for morons.
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Sep 27, 2018 01:15
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I love your LP but I don't post as much because it would be essay's worth. I can talk about my love, disappointment and frustration with the series and the hyperbole used by the biggest haters a lot.
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Sep 29, 2018 17:12
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 There's that dude elsewhere on the internet who wrote something like 50 angry pages about how ME3 (and 2!) sucked balls. Just because ME3 jumps the shark in places doesn't mean we can't have a fun/healthy discussion about it.
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Sep 29, 2018 22:29
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That's a large amount of angry pages
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Sep 29, 2018 22:37
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SubponticatePoster posted:
The only thing I really don't like about ME3 is the ending, I liked pretty much everything else, but Mass Effect is dead so I don't really have to care about that ending
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Sep 30, 2018 07:08
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I know that Andromeda is beyond the scope of this thread, but the sequel to 3 should have been set in the First Contact War with the Turians. Not a new galaxy
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Sep 30, 2018 07:41
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SubponticatePoster posted:
The meltdown over ME3's ending really was the first warning sign of the coming unending entitled male outrage culture, wasn't it? nine-gear crow fucked around with this message at 08:31 on Sep 30, 2018 |
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Sep 30, 2018 08:29
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The Door Frame posted:I know that Andromeda is beyond the scope of this thread, but the sequel to 3 should have been set in the First Contact War with the Turians. Not a new galaxy You read the codex on that, right? "First Contact War" is overly grandiose. The turian description of it as an "incident" is much more fitting. Less than 700 people died. Zaeed calls something like that "spring break". Not much room for a game, you know?
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Sep 30, 2018 08:31
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nine-gear crow posted:The meltdown over ME3's ending really was the first warning sign of the coming unending entitled male outrage culture, wasn't it? Somewhat. Yeah. If it wasn't for  , and a theoretical world where the 'enhanced endings' either never came out or were the actual endings to begin with, things probably would have been more subdued.
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Sep 30, 2018 08:36
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The Door Frame posted:I know that Andromeda is beyond the scope of this thread, but the sequel to 3 should have been set in the First Contact War with the Turians. Not a new galaxy
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Sep 30, 2018 08:36
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I like what they tried to do with MEA. The ending(s) of 3 kind of painted them into a corner so taking the franchise elsewhere was logical. Andromeda falls down in its execution, not the storytelling. And that's mostly on EA, imo. First, they handed off development to BW Montreal. These are the guys who were responsible for 3's MP, so we know they can make gameplay fun. And the combat in MEA is really fun. But they'd never worked on a major title solo. On top of that, they started peeling off experienced people to go work on Anthem. The game had a 6+ year dev cycle, but the dude in charge spent something like 5 of that trying to get procedurally generated planets to work so the effective time to actually work on the game was closer to 2 years (DA2 should be an indicator of how well that goes). Then you have a new engine to deal with on top of everything else. I think if they'd had someone tell the first guy "no gently caress this it ain't working" after a year and made them actually focus on making the game it wouldn't have had the issues the internet went bugfuck about - bad lighting/animation and other problems like the Asari only having 1 face that came across as laziness. They started addressing those issues in patches, but the backlash was so bad that they cancelled any DLC and told people to buy a book instead. Combine that with 3's ending debacle and you have the franchise more or less dead at this point. For those of you interested there's a live LP on the forums of MEA that just started. I watched a bit of it but I'm kind of avoiding looking at what other people do in case I end up LP'ing the game which I'll probably do at some point because I'm a loving masochist
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Sep 30, 2018 18:44
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chiasaur11 posted:You read the codex on that, right? I know that it was very short, but I mean set in that period because it kind of mirrors ME1, where humanity is new on the scene and everyone is super suspicious of us. Sylphosaurus posted:No thanks, prequels are pretty much terrible in every way. Move the metaplot forward instead of answering questions that pretty much nobody were interested in learning the answer to. Definitely true, but ME3 has a pretty definitive ending, there's little else you can do besides a Halo 3: ODST style game in the actual meta plot of the Milky Way. Andromeda did try to escape the definitive ending, but it went... poorly SubponticatePoster posted:I like what they tried to do with MEA. The ending(s) of 3 kind of painted them into a corner so taking the franchise elsewhere was logical. Andromeda falls down in its execution, not the storytelling. And that's mostly on EA, imo. The new one is unfortunately a blind one, although I like the commentators so far. Bioware LPs last forever even if you know what you're doing, I don't know how long a blind one would last. I don't even know how long Andromeda is...
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Sep 30, 2018 19:27
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The Door Frame posted:The new one is unfortunately a blind one, although I like the commentators so far. Bioware LPs last forever even if you know what you're doing, I don't know how long a blind one would last. I don't even know how long Andromeda is... e: In an imaginary world where I got to choose what happens in the next ME game I'd put it post-ME3 and deal with the rebuilding. Synthesis never happened (because it's loving stupid) and either make Destroy or Control canon. And some spoilers for those who haven't seen the ending to 3: Shep's either missing or, uh, indisposed and the Normandy crew has to get her back. You could play as Garrus! Wrex! Whoever! Have some side stuff about how the races are doing and getting everyone back on their feet. SubponticatePoster fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Sep 30, 2018 |
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Sep 30, 2018 20:17
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The "side story" setting I was always partial to was "be Archangel on Omega" but it'd be a weird pitch to say, post Mass Effect 3, "let's go make a prequel game to Mass Effect 2 starring a squadmate which ends (probably) right before Shep shows up." But still I always thought it was compelling. First, Garrus. Second, you'd have his squad and their squad dynamics so the ME squad gameplay would be intact, the ticking clock of a Sidonis betrayal, it could've fleshed out Omega to be more than just a bar with a couch and 5 hallways, they could've gone into the tensions between the various crime syndicates, maybe done some show-not-tell with Aria ruling the heap to try and save that character, there's a lot of potential there. but if that was a hard pitch in 2011 it's a near-impossible one in 2018 so I keep waffling on Andromeda when it's on sale but I think I'm gonna grab it next time just to see what it does without any franchise fan investment since what's happened has happened. does the digital deluxe edition add literally anything of value? It might be three whole dollars extra, so that's the bar it has to clear. Psion fucked around with this message at 21:45 on Sep 30, 2018 |
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Sep 30, 2018 21:42
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SubponticatePoster posted:e: In an imaginary world where I got to choose what happens in the next ME game I'd put it post-ME3 and deal with the rebuilding. Synthesis never happened (because it's loving stupid) and either make Destroy or Control canon. And some spoilers for those who haven't seen the ending to 3: Shep's either missing or, uh, indisposed and the Normandy crew has to get her back. You could play as Garrus! Wrex! Whoever! Have some side stuff about how the races are doing and getting everyone back on their feet. After all these years how oddly straight forward this post ME3 sequel idea seems. Just forget about all the botched symbolism and finality of it all and crack on. It's not exactly high art, but in hindsight I think all I really wanted from ME3 was LOTR: Return of the king. You know, things get pretty dark, the big bad is defeated but leaves it's mark, one of the end cutscenes is Then Javik sings a song stood on top of the remains of the presidium. ME4 is then the returning to the shire and dealing with all the little shits who've used the chaos to exploit the universe.
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Sep 30, 2018 21:58
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Fwoderwick posted:It's not exactly high art, but in hindsight I think all I really wanted from ME3 was LOTR: Return of the king. You know, things get pretty dark, the big bad is defeated but leaves it's mark, one of the end cutscenes is All they really had to do was cruise in for a smooth landing. Crazy world-changing twists are for second acts, not finales.
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Sep 30, 2018 22:14
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My problem with Mass Effect Andromeda outside all the myriad actual issues is they kept with the only playing a human story, Andromeda should have at least let you play as a Krogan/Turian/Asari/Quarian in the main story, have it be any member of your crew is a playable character and like with the Ryder Twins there’s default personalities for when they’re NPCs. Because humanity being super special and important, and specifically Shepard being super special and important, is one of those consistent parts of Mass Effect that I think make the entire story more boring and one-note.
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Oct 1, 2018 01:05
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Psion posted:
yeah, that's the boat i'm in as well. I just finished replaying the trilogy again and I still have the itch for it, so i'm finally gonna take the plunge myself pretty soon.
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Oct 1, 2018 01:32
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Durandal1707 posted:yeah, that's the boat i'm in as well. I just finished replaying the trilogy again and I still have the itch for it, so i'm finally gonna take the plunge myself pretty soon. it has the Soundtrack, some casual outfits, and armor/weapons that you'll replace pretty easily. Also a pyjak that runs around your ship and you can click on.
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Oct 1, 2018 04:23
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