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Fedule posted:Arrival DLC: In the time it took everything in Mass Effect 2 to happen, the Reapers have gotten from dark space to the edge of the galaxy. The Alpha Relay happens to be the outermost Mass Relay in the galaxy by a big margin and will therefore give the Reapers a massive foothold. The Council is massively unprepared to defend the galaxy, so Sheperd blows up the relay to buy some time. There was some slight collateral damage consisting of, uh, the Batarian homeworld and most of their race. Feelings on the subject are mixed. Not quite correct. It wasn't the Batarian homeworld, it was just a colony of a few hundred thousand people.
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Jul 29, 2014 19:47
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StrifeHira posted:ME2 has a grand total of ONE batarian that isn't hostile towards the player/humanity. ME3 is at least a bit more balanced, does help reinforce their government's position as "Space North Korea" though. Yeah, another thing about that colony Shep blew up, it was some piece of poo poo planet that the Batarians only colonized because the humans decided it wasn't worth it. So the Batarians poured tons of resources into a worthless planet just to prove that they're better than the humans. It had half of Earth's atmospheric pressure, an average surface temperature of 55 C, and was only about .4 Earth masses. Too hot, air too thin, and tiny. It was basically this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNaXdLWt17A&t=0m20s
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Jul 29, 2014 20:55
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:
If you think about it, it does give an excuse for why their decisions tend so heavily towards "do nothing." I've always wondered if the council is indoctrinated. They do live in a massive Reaper artifact, after all. Of course, the stronger the indoctrination, the quicker you get mental degradation, so it would have to be very subtle, especially with a long-lived species like the Asari. But if it were something like "Reapers are scary, I wish they didn't exist -> Reapers don't exist" using their own fear and natural aversion to convince them of something, I think it would explain a lot about their behavior in ME2.
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Jul 30, 2014 15:07
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Even with all the time Bioware must have spent on its Encyclopedia Galactica, I don't think the setting was very well thought out.
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double nine posted: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. Until they showed up in multiplayer. But about your idea, what would ME3 have been, in that case? Just running around nuking every Reaper you see? Doesn't sound like a particularly interesting or tense story.
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Jul 31, 2014 01:08
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Waltzing Along posted:Killing the Praetorians in ME2 without the particle beam on insanity was not fun. I'm not even sure if it was possible. It's possible. It just takes the extended runtime of an LOTR film to do. Hey, Lt. Danger, will we get to hear anything about the wisdom or lack thereof of designing a game with ridiculously tanky damage sponge enemies?
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Jul 31, 2014 22:52
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I think there's a good reason for Palaven looking and being worse off. According to the codex, only one Sovereign-type Reaper is made each cycle (though how anyone could possibly know that is beyond me) and every other species is made into destroyer-types. Presumably, the big ones take a lot more "material" to put together. So the Reapers captured Earth, devastated its cities but left the population relatively intact so they could be harvested, which I believe takes place at a rate of several million a day. Over the course of the game, that's a pretty impressive death toll, but surely nothing compared to the devastation seen on worlds where the Reapers don't have to hold back. Now, as for what the game says, I don't recall anyone specifically saying that Earth is worse off than other planets, only that it's taking the brunt of the attack. The majority of the Reaper fleet is there, so I guess in a certain way that's true, if very easy to take the wrong way. It has to do with their strategy with the Crucible. They don't know what it will do, but they know they have absolutely no chance without it, so winning battles to temporarily save individual planets is ultimately pointless. With most of the Reapers at Earth, that's the first place to try to use it. If you have to use it more than once, an enemy as intelligent as the Reapers will start to adapt. So the presumption goes. This is my explanation for the apparent discrepancy.
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Aug 2, 2014 16:07
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Neruz posted:iirc the way it is explained is that 'major' species like the Council members become Sovereign types while 'minor' species become the lesser destroyer types. Normally a cycle only has one species that is viable for Sovereign types (last cycle that would have been the Protheans but something went wrong and they were unable to be Reaperized) but presumably that isn't always the case. From the codex: * CAPITAL SHIPS are Sovereign-class Reapers two kilometers in length. They typically target the dreadnoughts, defense installations, and industrial cities of organic civilizations. Experts believe the Reapers harvest a single species of organics during each cycle of extinction to create these massive ships. Some capital ships are capable of launching small drones equivalent to fighters. As to their numbers, the Reapers have been at this for at least a billion years. Possibly a lot more. That's a minimum of 20,000 cycles, and given how multi-layered their strategy is, with isolating individual sectors by turning off the mass relays, compromising defenses through indoctrinated infiltrators, and bolstering their ground forces with the enemy's dead, I think it's safe to say that barring the occasional extremely strong species, like the Protheans, it was probably very rare for them to lose any ships at all.
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Aug 2, 2014 17:48
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Arglebargle III posted:This is something that gets thrown around all the time, at science fiction especially. Could you explain how Garrus is a power fantasy, and how he could serve his role in the story without being a power fantasy? Or are we supposed to only consume fiction in which the protagonists are equal to or weaker than the reader? What if I'm in Afghanistan with the special forces and play Mass Effect 3 on my xbox 360 in my downtime. Is Garrus a power fantasy then? He's not supposed to not be a power fantasy. Like Neruz said, there's nothing wrong with Garrus being like that. I'm just going to link a short article here, since this is a pretty common hangup that's likely to come up in discussions like this many times. Tropes Are Not Bad The tldr of it is, you can't think of descriptions like power fantasy as inherently negative. They are what they are, and all tropes may be used well or poorly. Montegoraon fucked around with this message at 18:46 on Aug 6, 2014 |
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Aug 6, 2014 18:36
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Arglebargle III posted:So tell me this It doesn't. Because I read to the end of the post. Neruz posted:There's nothing wrong about power fantasies by the way, enjoying them is a sign that you are a perfectly normal human being. I also don't mean to sound like Garrus is a bad character because he is a power fantasy; he's a fairly well written and well executed power fantasy and I give the writers credit for that but let's not pretend Garrus isn't what he is. e: And about the video, I disagree very strongly with the idea that Eve is presented as simply a baby making machine. Whether Shepard treats her like that is dependent entirely on how much time you spend talking to her. Even though her role happens largely off-screen, she acts as a political figure and leader, like the scene where she stops Wreav and Wrex from fighting and rallies the Krogan to attack the Shroud. And if she survives to the end, she has enough political clout to keep Wrex in check if necessary. So saying that she's passive just because she doesn't take part of the direct action is simply wrong.
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Aug 6, 2014 18:44
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Mordin, at least, keeps it real. Wrex, Eve, or both of them together are important ingredients in this situation. A pair of leaders of messianic stature, who would be able to keep the Krogan from expanding unchecked. Without them, it's much more risky. That's why if they're both dead you can talk him out of it. So he hasn't lost his pragmatic understanding, he's just trying something new. Now, the optimal solution to this situation in terms of war asset points is to have Wrex dead, Eve alive, and shoot Mordin. It's a good thing reaching the limit of the assets you need is so incredibly easy. That's really the gameplay element that bugged me most. Unless you're incredibly lazy and don't do the missions and the scouting, you can't actually fail to get most of the war assets you need. And another thing. The assets really ought to have been divvied up into Sword (ships), Hammer (ground forces), and Crucible divisions. Considering the galactic situation, I'd've liked to have seen a system where the more Crucible assets you acquire, the faster the weapon gets built, with Sword and Hammer assets getting slowly whittled down with each mission you do, so you actually do need to get those assets early unless you're on a pretty much perfect run. That would make the Dalatrass's deal an awful lot more appealing in regards to the "hard choices" theme they try to have. But that's just my opinion, so never mind.
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Aug 7, 2014 00:27
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Precambrian posted:Morinth is better read as an attachment to Asari culture as a whole, as an Ardat-Yakshi rather than as an individual character. It's Bioware's "reasonable" conservativism: the Asari are portrayed as an entire race of Sex Positive strong female characters, who are, of course, sexually available and desirable to the rest of the universe (it's homage, or ironic, or lampshaded, whatever). This has to be paired with a warning. "Be Reasonable," Bioware says, "there are drawbacks to excess licentiousness!" Nef's story is basically a lurid, 50's "Your daughter and motorcycle clubs!" rather than just homosexuality (though certainly, homosexuality has been a major subject/association of such material). Things outside heteronormative values are acceptable and cool, but you can't go too far before Bioware yanks the rug out from under you. Merrill, for instance, is a variation on the theme, only hetero and looking from the opposite direction (the naive virgin rather than the seductive despoiler). I think you're reading way too much into it. I don't see that message in the Ardat-Yakshi at all. Not everything has to be a parallel to the real world. Sometimes aliens are meant to be just alien. For example, how purity is usually seen as a positive trait in human culture, but for Asari, calling someone pureblood is a terrible insult. Likewise, I don't see how Morinth is meant to be anything more than what she is portrayed as: a roving psychopath who seduces her victims and kills them in the course of her species' rather unusual style of sex. You can say that it speaks to an adult fear, of one's children meeting someone dangerous out in the world, but just because her killing method involves sex, that doesn't mean it's making a point about Asari sexual behaviors and attitudes in general.
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Aug 7, 2014 02:37
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Okay, so maybe Morinth can be seen as a gay panic type of character, since apparently a lot of people do. But it's irrelevant. That kind of thing is problematic if you make your only gay character a serial killer, or your only black character a gangster, or your only hispanic character a drug runner. But in Mass Effect there's an entire species of omnisexual characters, some of whom are promiscuous, some of whom are soldiers like you'd see in any other species, some of them are part-monk part-Punisher. And in ME3 there are homo- or bisexual characters outside that species, and it can be presumed that there are the appropriate number more beyond them for whom it just never gets brought up. Out of all of those, one of them just happens to be a serial killer. Well, gay/bi/omnisexual people are as likely to be serial killers as anyone else. Morinth isn't the only such character, so I can't agree that Bioware shouldn't have written her, or should have written her in a different way, just because in a different context where she was the only character with her orientation it would have been offensive. And the Volus are Jewish? Why? Because they're short and associated with banking? That does not a Jewish stereotype make. Do they have stereotypical physical traits attributed to Jews, other than shortness? Probably not, though it's hard to tell. Do they have unusual speech? Maybe, if you count the rasping breath, but I wouldn't. Are they sneaky and untrustworthy? No more than any other species. Greedy? Not particularly. In fact, they're favored as financiers because they're very good and reliable at it. Nit-picky? No. Stingy? No. Scapegoats? No. Associated with the entertainment industry? No. Associated with legal professions? No. Secretly in control of the galaxy? No. (e: Though if the Shadow Broker had been a Volus instead of a Yahg, that would have been hilarious. And disappointing.) Presented negatively in general? No. The game treats them pretty neutrally for what they are. I don't see a problem here. e: And to make it clear, this is a list of stereotypes that I looked up on wikipedia. I don't actually believe any of this crap. Montegoraon fucked around with this message at 16:31 on Aug 7, 2014 |
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Aug 7, 2014 15:47
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Lt. Danger posted:Whoa. Look at all this antisemitism here. Not okay. Now hold on. I was listing stereotypes. I had to look them up on wikipedia.
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Aug 7, 2014 16:26
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EricFate posted:(I hate the fact that this thread is making me actually want to dig through the closet, find my Mass Effect 3 disc, and finally sit down to play more than just the MP portion.) Well, that's the whole point of the thread, isn't it? To resell everyone on the game.
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Aug 8, 2014 03:41
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In ME1, on Noveria, there's a spot, if I'm remembering correctly it's when your confronting a group of corrupt security guys ransacking that one Turian's corporate offices. You can threaten them to get them to leave, and they express disbelief that you'd actually shoot them. If Tali is with you, she says something like "How certain of that are you? Ninetieth percentile? Is a ten percent chance of death really acceptable?" I thought of this line often when listening to the Catalyst's argument. It made me a lot more accepting of it. But my opinion was always that the Catalyst's problem was that it created the system that exists in the galaxy because it was programmed to create a system. I place all the blame on the Leviathans, because they seem stunningly lazy, all things considered. Back in their time, the galaxy was probably filled with intelligent life, much more than the current cycle, so these organic-synthetic conflicts might have popped up every few thousand years or so. Even still, the Leviathans didn't want to bother with the problems of their tribute races themselves. They styled themselves as gods, but just coming down and nipping the problem in the bud by simply saying "don't make synthetic life, it never ends well" was too much work for them. These things don't happen overnight. It takes decades, maybe centuries. Instead, the impression I got was that they created the catalyst to find a single solution that would solve the problem 100% of the time, forever. With a requirement like that, what is an AI with no apparent free will to do? Hence, the Reapers, and the galactic history-spanning system that allows them to do their work. But again, that's just the impression I got. I don't have a mountain of evidence to support my interpretation, but it makes sense to me. Still, at least it kept trying alternatives. Like it says about Synthesis, "We have tried a similar solution in the past, but it has always failed." It doesn't elaborate, so we don't know exactly how it failed, but when I heard that I immediately thought that it was talking about Husks. That they were failed attempts at Synthesis, which were eventually repurposed as infantry. Did anyone else leap to that conclusion?
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Aug 14, 2014 17:01
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Lt. Danger posted:What other sci-fi is referenced by Mass Effect? What other influences did Bioware throw into the pot? All that talk about the rachni and intertextuality, and you didn't mention Ender's Game even once? Well, I suppose the parallels in that case are much more important in ME1 than ME3.
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Aug 14, 2014 20:18
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The Ender's Game series is a book series about a boy born and raised to be the greatest fleet commander humanity has ever known. His is a story filled with regret, trauma and abuse, so naturally it is by far the author's most famous work. (It actually is quite a good book. Not so great as a movie.) But that's not the relevant part. The rachni are pretty clearly based on the formics, also known derogatorily as buggers. The formics were an insectoid race, with a society centered around queens, also with psychic abilities, including the ability to take over the minds of members of other species remotely - similar to the orbs used by the Leviathans, just without the orbs. They could do it from lightyears away. They were a naturally peaceful species that came into conflict with humanity despite that nature (Though instead of being manipulated into it as in Mass Effect, the formics wiped out a human colony because they didn't understand that every human was an individual life. The formics took the hive mind concept a lot further than the rachni do.) The formics also presented such a formidable military threat that the most desperate measures were called for in beating them back. Peace on Earth was attained because of the threat they posed, but just like with the Krogan rebellions ending an era of cooperation between the species of the galaxy, that peace only lasted for as long as the threat remained. And humanity did defeat them eventually. We even blew up their homeworld, Death Star-style. Here's where things get really familiar. In the end there's only a single queen left, trapped and helpless in an egg found by the main character, (In ME, that would be the capsule connected to the acid tanks) who must make a decision as to whether or not to kill her or let her repopulate her species. The important parallels are in the moral dilemma - finalize a genocide, or risk a future war - and the traits immediately relevant to reproducing that dilemma as it existed in the book. The rachni queen is designed to be sympathetic, but also suspicious, in the same way the formic queen was. The last reproducing member of a species that claims to regret the war that led to them being the last. Seems convenient. It didn't get all that much play in Mass Effect, but this is by far the most weighty choice the game gives you up until the Crucible. Of course, there are several key differences. The rachni would likely not have made the same mistake that the formics did, since the worker rachni are more or less sentient too. The rachni are also a lot more capable in the "communicating with other species" department. Also, I just realized today that "rachni" comes from "arachnid." 
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Aug 14, 2014 21:00
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anilEhilated posted:As someone who only played ME2, I was about to ask that - Grunt made a reference to not going through the initiation rite, is that the only effect it has? Thwomp posted:I'm more interested in why have a save where Grunt's loyalty mission was not completed (and now we're missing one of the best moments in ME3) and yet Lt. Danger opted to also have Mordin dead in ME2 to get his replacement's super-funny ME3 moment. I believe he explained earlier that the point was to show content that people otherwise wouldn't have seen, because they only do playthroughs with more or less perfect survival records. And actually, I could be wrong, but I believe that Grunt's loyalty mission is one of only three that you can actually fail. Fail to gain his loyalty, that is. The other two are Zaeed's and Tali's. I think you can stop midway through, in which case the rite is incomplete.
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Aug 14, 2014 21:28
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Lt. Danger posted:What baffles me is when people have a particular attachment to the Mass Effect setting in particular. It's a summary of sci-fi from 1979 through to the present day, and the setting changes massively from game to game in order to encompass the breadth of genre. But I'm getting on to a topic for the next video. "Breadth of genre" would be the key part there. I love the setting of Mass Effect because it does a bit of everything. Lots of diplomatic solutions, lots of undiplomatic solutions. Some hard science, some cool technomagic. Delightful speeches and badass one-liners. Corruption and hope. Space opera and cosmic horror. I love the setting because it feels more complete than those other ones from which it is derived.
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Aug 16, 2014 01:17
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I have a response to Lt. Danger's point, which in no way invalidates or refutes what he was saying because I agree with it. While reading into and understanding the themes of the story is important, there's no reason you can't enjoy a work on multiple levels. Your argument in the last video seemed to say that only themes matter and are worthy of attention or consideration, period. That's how it came across. Maybe that is what you're saying, in which case I disagree with that part.
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Aug 18, 2014 00:32
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I remember one odd joke... or, a half joke from ME1. If I recall correctly, it's after the Therum mission where you recruit Liara. Joker makes some flippant comment, and Liara complains. Shepard responds either (again, this is from memory): Paragon: "Don't worry about it, he's just lightening the tension." Renegade: "Joker's an rear end in a top hat, just ignore him." In either case, Liara responds "I see. It must be a human thing."  Well, except choosing the paragon option makes it just a neutral comment. So that's what I mean by a half joke. Maybe it was a bit of lazy writing, not giving Liara two different responses, but to me that's a prime example of Mass Effect's humor.
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Sep 22, 2014 21:31
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Doesn't the codex say that the Quarian flotilla ships (and most other warships) have been retrofitted with the same kinds of guns you use in ME2 to blow up the Collector ship? Not that such an upgrade is reflected in the cutscenes, but it would be a pretty major increase in power over what they had before.
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Nov 5, 2014 06:03
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