Mass Effect 3 - 13: Bet you could really go for a bottle of cool, refreshing Tupari!

[SiuiS]

Palindromes must be hard to scan, visually.

Unless, of course, you address the still obvious point. That is to say that Javik's stuff wasn't just one teams work. It was accounted for at the base stage and intentionally left out. You don't throw an entire follower out over a weekend,

Really? Because we were flat out told "Team x finished early, narrative changes left them with nothing to do. They decided to begin work on a side project which was planned early on as a fun addition."

You cannot complain that since it was planned early it should have been part of the base game. For one, that's not how design works. Someone could have literally said "we should have a frozen prothean show up!" And get told "yeah yeah, maybe DLC, focus." An they clung to that idea. We also see this happen all the time in other mediums, even roleplaying. How often does a PC choose a prestige class choice or build that had the DM suddenly spinning ideas and inserting foreshadowing for that character. And we don't get mad at the DM for not just making all that clear from the start.

The game is complete without Javik and his story. That the game seems more complete with Javik is a sign of quality design.

Not really. Explain to me exactly what makes those fetch quests essential.

I'm not going to buy into your worthless comparison in the first place. The problem is you honestly think fetch quests designed solely to give you busy work, pad your levels, grant you credits and feed you a steady sense of minor accomplishment is equivalent. The problem is you are glossing something with nuance and detail down to 'another fetch quest' when your own rhetoric defeats the idea. If it was just a fetch quest then it wouldn't matter and you wouldn't care. But you also think it's important and vital for the full story, which just a fetch quest is not.

You've failed to equate the DLC with fetch quests at all. If I told you why fetch quests were important it wouldn't drive home how silly that comparison is in the first place.

Well there's the obvious fact that "broader muscle groups" often line up exactly with human muscle groups, or at least have obvious parallels that can only really work in one way.

Such as the cheetah's elastic spring spine? Or the comparatively massive arm strength of a chimpanzee? Or how the bone structure of an ape's foot is pretty close to a human's, but they get opposable toes? Or how slight hormonal differences between sexes apparently drastically affect strength output, glycogen store usage, and recovery time of muscular exertion? Or how the subtle shortening of bones in the arms of particular kind of dwarf human allows them to lift massive amounts by basically giving them a more efficient lever?

Small changes are important. The Origin, insertion, composition, vasculation and striations of a muscle aren't piddling details, any more than the difference between helium isotopes being just some electrons is a piddling detail. These are important.

Except their skin isn't armor, this is kind of made explicit in the codex. It's just radiation shielding of the sort Javik may or may not also have.

A crocodile's skin isn't armor, but is still going to react differently to getting punched and will hurt your hand.

Which raises the obvious question as to why Bioware decided you needed to apparently do all of that all over again for more fetch quests.

?

Of course, this is made apparent visually literally nowhere

As Shepard shakes off the human-slaying poison, no worse for the wear. As Shepard's head rebounds off a Krogan that actually gets knocked back with a look of surprise on it's face. As Shepard catches the falling door and holds the blast bulwar for his friends. As Shepard stands in front of the holo terminal, reading about interstriated metal wire to be inserted into the musculature, and improved response time chips designed to attach to and enhance the nervous system's response times. As Shepard lays into the Ymir or Atlas mech, first two knuckles resounding again and again, shattering it's reinforced steel playing. As Shepard engages inhuman reflexes, shattering a reinforced steel free-hanging blade wih a casual backfist. As Shepard stands, burnt to hell but functional, holding in intestines and whatever else, gun in hand, shuffling towards the citadel beam. As Shepard outperforms a lifelong dedicated sniper who can calibrate fine weapons systems beyond the understanding of a supercomputer. As a krogan übermensch slams Shepard to a wall with bone-crunching force, forearm across the windpipe.

I refute the idea that it's never showed. I supply instead the idea that Shepard's amazing performance has become so constant that you've become numb to it.

Even the other N7 marines or candidates aren't that much weaker when you see them do stuff.

Anderson and James are not seen doing anything near Shepard's level. Neither are any of the N7 multiplayer operatives, with the sole exception of the actual N7 operatives who have access to stress tested technology which might have serious and lasting harm as a cost.

I mean yeah, if Shepard is so damn strong, it'd kind of be a game changer. Why are we waiting so long to hack a door, if he can just kick it down just as fast or faster? Why can't we actually headbutt a Krogan, and make it hurt, if we're supposed to be comparable or in excess charge wise? I mean, why doesn't Miranda just out and say "you can lift ten tons now, congrats!" when you talk to her?

The first, because physics and efficiency don't work that way. The second, that does happen. The third, because it's not politic and you haven't finished the healing process or the upgrade process.

Does this really happen? How long does it take?

About ten minutes I think.

Not to mention that, unless I'm forgetting dialogue, there aren't thousands of reapers. The end of ME2 shows a few hundred, and we never see thousands on earth(given the size of earth, that many would be super visible unless they were hiding on the other side around china for some reason).

Actually, no. There are tens of thousands of reapers. Capitals alone. EVERY star system in the game is occupied by reaper forces at that point. That and just given the timeline laid out (admittedly, you need DLC for this which is bad design) there are at least ten thousand capitals IFF the reapers make a single capital per cycle.

You can make up as many excuses as you want. We're flat out told "we're losing" "it's just a matter of time" "we can't win" over and over and over again. If you want to just ignore the entire narrative of the trilogy then fine, but almost no one else agrees with you.

Show says one thing, Tell says another. That's a well-known problem with the sequence.

Yep - it even has a special game over screen.

I don't remember how long you have to stand around to get it, but it does happen if you don't choose.

Man that's crap, they couldn't even put any money into it exploding? Terrible endings, BIoware. You make me sad.

Hey, what happens, happens. I'm not saying it didn't happen, that'd be denying the cause and effect. I'm just saying there's heavy dissonance. Direct observation doesn't match up with what you're being told.

I mean hell, look at Psyren's loading screen. You're just told that the crucible has been destroyed. The Crucible being that thing you're standing directly on that's totally solid with no build up. You can look out the window and not feel too urgent, since you can just see all those ships hanging out lazily in that Reapers giant ass blind spot, with it unable to do a single goddamn thing, because reapers only have like one Cannon on the front and there's three more behind it, with it still being outnumbered. Even when you're about to lose the obvious weaknesses of the reapers is right there on full display.

The reapers are supposed to be all powerful and ominous. But they totally fail at selling the idea visually.

This i completely and wholeheartedly agree with though.