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aidenyx posted:Except that is exactly what they do with the little kid and the shuttles that get shot down. That one scene is in my opinion one of the worst parts of this game, because it feels so insanely forced, like the destruction that goes on around it wasn't enough already to make the player realize that poo poo is going real bad, real fast. Every big Hollywood movie, the kid survives. By having him shot down in the first 15 minutes Bioware is effectively telling you that poo poo is in fact About To Get Real. It's still hugely manipulative - did anyone really feel bad at the weird-looking kid getting chunked? - but in simple terms, it's as much a statement of intent as anything else in the intro: you can't save everyone, and not everyone is walking away alive.
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Jul 21, 2014 04:12
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JT Jag posted:Just because Mordin, Wrex and Legion are dead in the default settings doesn't necessarily mean that their death is canon. Or at least, that's not how I've taken it. I've always considered it an incentive to to a perfect run. ME2 states that he only has a few years left to live, so yeah, I guess he is  Same with Thane, but that's not as funny. Besides, the only true canon is the one that occurred during my playthrough and I'll fight anyone who says otherwise 
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Jul 22, 2014 12:54
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Green Intern posted:Mass Effect: Space Racists Everywhere. ME3 has the single best response to this. You know the line.
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Jul 22, 2014 22:25
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Aces High posted:I always found it funny that, outside of Shepard, pretty much every Human party member gets outclassed pretty quickly. I always laugh at Miranda in ME2 when she goes on about how she is perfect and makes special note that her biotics are "top notch", yeah, sure, that's why Jack can maintain the bubble and you can't I think the separation there is that Jack's loaded up with enough biotic-enhancing implants to technically qualify her as a cyborg. Genetic enhancements aside, Miranda's supposed to be the best 'natural' human biotic. She still gets outclassed by asari on a regular basis, but that's like putting a go-kart up against a tank.
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Jul 23, 2014 08:43
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Vega's kinda eh, but those other three are good. Kasumi quickly became a favourite of mine by the end of her DLC. I've always had a soft spot for devil-may-care daring thievery, and she more than filled the spot. How's Zaeed's DLC in ME3? I only played From Ashes (and the MP DLC) and I never see anyone talk about it.
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Jul 23, 2014 10:57
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Promontory posted:I haven't played the third game, but I think the problem with that scene is the developers assuming too much about your character. After two games most players probably had a pretty solid idea of what 'their' Shepard was like. Not all of them would care about some kid beyond 'well that sucks'. The kid's probably supposed to be a symbol of everyone on Earth, but I think it falls flat - there's no real emotional connection to Earth in Mass Effect games, since you're always off interacting with everything else in the galaxy. This is fairly spot-on. I remember after the third game came out, everyone would talk about who 'their' Shep was or what 'their' Shep would do, as though it was carved in stone from the very beginning. And while there was a lot of overlap (a given due to the nature of the game), everyone had their own vision of what he or she was like: my Shep stood up for the little guy, my Shep followed orders, right or wrong, my Shep was a staunch supporter of Earth, my Shep put her crew first and god forbid you get in her way. Call it confirmation bias, but most of the people I knew said that their Shep would regret the kid's death, but they'd mourn when they knew there'd be a tomorrow to mourn in. Assuming they remembered him at all. ME3 introduces a lot of new characters, most vital to the plot, but we're still supposed to agree with the writers that this one kid is more important than all of them combined. And it's one of those contrivences that just gets more and more aggravating as the game goes on. For what it's worth, I like to view the dream sequences as the early stages of PTSD rather than visions or indoctrination or anything like that. The idea that Shep's reaching their absolute limit, but is still determined to push on til death or beyond is far more compelling than what we actually get in the end.
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Jul 28, 2014 13:34
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Precambrian posted:As a trilogy continues, the game's profile increases with each installment, with awards won, friends telling friends, and every marketing campaign building off the one before it. Naturally, expected buyers of ME3 was a bigger number than ME2's playerbase, which was bigger than ME1's playerbase. Going the opposite direction, there are certainly some buyers who played 1, but skipped 2, or 2 who skipped 3. Then there are the people who only complete about half or so of the game, but buy the next in the sequel because they're buying it for a couple hours entertainment rather than to ~complete the saga~. In an ideal world, ME3 would've shipped with two modes: a text box pops up before the game starts and asks you how familliar you are with the series - "I have played Mass Effect 1&2" or "I am unfamiliar with the series". Pick the former and the game goes into full continuity lockout. There's the reminders for convinience, but other than that, we're all big boys and girls, and most of us probably played the last two games in the leadup to the third's release, treat us like we know the world. The other option would give us what we have here, with the handholding and so on. I would've gone for the full lockout in either case - say what you want, but if you're coming in to a 120 hour story at hour 80, that's your problem. A reminder or synopsis to bring you up to speed is always appreciated, especially if you've gone through the games before, but bending over backwards for the newcomers the way they did is detrimental. Hitlers Gay Secret posted:To be fair, Vega was poorly written for Male-Shep characters. He's a lot more fun hanging around Fem-Shep. The ironic thing is, at one point, he was supposed to be Male-Shep's gay love interest. I remember it being announced at one point, but for some reason it just fizzled out and Steve Cortez took his place.
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Jul 29, 2014 01:05
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I think most people can agree that ME3 is a good game (just see the popular multiplayer for proof) but it's a bad narrative (see... well, just about every discussion of the game, really). It'll be interesting to see if Lt. Danger is able to change any opinions on that.Revdomezehis posted:Yeah, after the fact that the scenes exist at all, this would be my next big complaint about it. Not to mention if this is what we're supposed to take away (Shepard now has PTSD) then why does it only show up during dream sequences and during the entire rest of the game he acts like he always has? The visions, IIRC, only happen when Shep's alone. It's not out of the question to say that they're putting on a brave face or focussing on the main problems when around others.
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Jul 29, 2014 14:38
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:What particularly sticks in my craw is that they're supposed to be, as you mentioned, limp and bureaucratic, but can also authorise agents with universal jurisdiction who are literally above the law. Is that supposed to be their way of off-loading responsibility, even though it would realistically result in infinitely more paperwork? In fact, the Council seems weirdly dictatorial for possessing that kind of authority in the first place, without any checks or balances. When Shep accuses Saren of murder in the first game, the Council refuses to believe her, not just because she's one of those annoying humans, but because Saren's a Spectre: they're above the law because they're supposed to be incorruptible. They're equally feared and revered because they're the pinnacle of their species. There's no checks or balances because the council trusts them so implicitly. The methods each one uses may be questionable, but the idea of one going totally rogue? Never going to happen. That's why there's such surprise when Saren's treachery is revealed, and why, in the second game, so many people are unwilling to believe it.
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Jul 30, 2014 11:53
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double nine posted:The problems with ME3 stem more from its predecessor and the infernal timescale EA forces on its studios than anything else. It inherited from mass effect 2 the problem that people expected a lot of their decisions to have an impact on the story which was impossible given the budget and timescale, and that ME 2 refused to set up the scenario for reapers returning - it should have been about shephard searching for a reaper-killing tool, not about this suddenly-appearing villain race that has no overall impact on the reaper conflict. I had much the same feeling about the second game. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it, just that in terms of its importance to the overall story, it felt like it should've taken a leaf out of Assassins Creed and been Mass Effect: Brotherhood of Revelations than an actual numbered sequel. Finding out what happened to the Protheans, the Collectors as a whole, that should've been a side game. All the details about the Reapers and Harbinger as a whole, that and the search for the Crucible should've been ME2, with ME3 as all-out war.
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Jul 31, 2014 02:37
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Geostomp posted:Because said superweapon was never hinted at before and has no defined function, which makes it an obvious deus ex machina in waiting for the writers to pull themselves out of the corner they wrote themselves in. It makes no sense for everyone to spend what few resources they have left on this thing with no guarantee that it even could help. Worse, it's unnecessary because they have other ways out that have been established or were at least plausible that are just ignored like the Citadel relay control, the 2000+ year delay on the invasion, and recovered Reaper weaponry. There was a mention of a superweapon mentioned in the codex for the second game (I think, it's been a while): one planet was mentioned to have a several-thousand-mile-long scar across it, which was theorised to have been made by a previously-unknown form of weapon. I've heard that this was supposed to be foreshadowing to the final game, having you looking for the creators of the weapon or hunting down lost tech, but it got dropped somewhere along the line or morphed into what we have now.
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Jul 31, 2014 13:47
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