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  1. - Top - End - #151
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    Default Re: (Spoilers)Mass Effect 2 ruined the Franchise, 3 was continuation of that

    Count me as another who found the ending acceptable. Not great, but well within the norm and nothing too out there. I played through it after hearing all the fuss, and remember thinking "what was the big deal? Seems normal enough to me."

    Edit: then again, I didn't think any of the games or the world-building was anything particularly special. It was competent and interesting, but not amazing. And Andromeda wasn't bad, although it felt unfinished.
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  2. - Top - End - #152
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    Default Re: (Spoilers)Mass Effect 2 ruined the Franchise, 3 was continuation of that

    Quote Originally Posted by Douglas View Post
    Finally, if Control is a trap, then why wouldn't Destroy also be a trap? The choice isn't really "Control, Synthesis, or Destroy", it's "Action A that will supposedly result in Control, action B that will supposedly result in Synthesis, or action C that will supposedly result in Destroy". Yes, the Star Child doesn't verbally tell you what the actions are, but you see visions of them as it's describing the outcomes, and the only way Shepard could know what to do is if those visions aren't just an out of character thing to inform the player. If you don't trust that at least something the Star Child told you is true, then you don't even have the ability to choose an ending at all.
    [...]
    And if it is an Indoctrination attempt regardless? Then you can't trust that the "Destroy" action will actually do anything you want, much less what the Star Child said it would, either.
    Thank you - was going to point that out myself until I saw you already had.

    If you don't trust anything that the Catalyst tells you, then your only option is Refuse, since it's the only course of action that you know for a complete certainty that the Catalyst isn't manipulating. But that's just choosing to fail and let the Reapers win. So you have to place at least some amount of trust that the options it presents are in fact options in order to pick any of them - at which point, arguing that you don't trust, on its own, ceases to be a good reason not to pick any one particular option.

    I'd also point out, in response to remarks I saw a couple of people make about how Synthesis somehow validates the Catalyst's argument: no, it doesn't. All it requires is that you believe that the Catalyst is being honest when it explains its motivations. If it is, then picking Synthesis means the Reapers will stop their attacks, because their motivation for them will be gone. You can fully believe that the Catalyst and Reapers are idiots and their arguments are bunk and still decide to take Synthesis, so long as you buy that they actually believe all of that nonsense.
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  3. - Top - End - #153
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    Default Re: (Spoilers)Mass Effect 2 ruined the Franchise, 3 was continuation of that

    Quote Originally Posted by Zevox View Post
    Thank you - was going to point that out myself until I saw you already had.

    If you don't trust anything that the Catalyst tells you, then your only option is Refuse, since it's the only course of action that you know for a complete certainty that the Catalyst isn't manipulating. But that's just choosing to fail and let the Reapers win. So you have to place at least some amount of trust that the options it presents are in fact options in order to pick any of them - at which point, arguing that you don't trust, on its own, ceases to be a good reason not to pick any one particular option.
    Refuse wasn't an option when the game shipped. I do consider it the only option that makes any sense from Shepard's perspective but since I was forced to make a decision I chose destroy.

  4. - Top - End - #154
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    Default Re: (Spoilers)Mass Effect 2 ruined the Franchise, 3 was continuation of that

    Quote Originally Posted by Callos_DeTerran View Post
    Count another I suppose, I just grew tired of defending an ending I outright enjoy seven years ago when it first happened. Psyren obviously hasn't and more power (and respect) to him for that.
    Quote Originally Posted by PhoenixPhyre View Post
    Count me as another who found the ending acceptable. Not great, but well within the norm and nothing too out there. I played through it after hearing all the fuss, and remember thinking "what was the big deal? Seems normal enough to me."

    Edit: then again, I didn't think any of the games or the world-building was anything particularly special. It was competent and interesting, but not amazing. And Andromeda wasn't bad, although it felt unfinished.
    Thank you.

    Quote Originally Posted by Callos_DeTerran View Post
    Count another I suppose, I just grew tired of defending an ending I outright enjoy seven years ago when it first happened. Psyren obviously hasn't and more power (and respect) to him for that.
    Quote Originally Posted by Douglas View Post

    *snip*
    All great points that I've made before, and look forward to making 7 years from now. Even after we have ME5/6 and people still haven't gotten over this one.

    (One bright spot to Bioware folding would be an end of these threads at least.)
    Quote Originally Posted by The Giant View Post
    But really, the important lesson here is this: Rather than making assumptions that don't fit with the text and then complaining about the text being wrong, why not just choose different assumptions that DO fit with the text?
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    Default Re: (Spoilers)Mass Effect 2 ruined the Franchise, 3 was continuation of that

    Quote Originally Posted by Douglas View Post
    The Reapers are the only AIs that Shepard has encountered that have been violent without provocation. The Star Child's goal and logic is based on millions of years of history, against which the current cycle is one tiny blip on the record.
    But the story is about Shepard and the current cycle. If the issue didn't crop up in the current cycle, if Shepard has seen no evidence of it, than, narratively speaking, it's not an issue.
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  6. - Top - End - #156
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    Default Re: (Spoilers)Mass Effect 2 ruined the Franchise, 3 was continuation of that

    Quote Originally Posted by PhoenixPhyre View Post
    And Andromeda wasn't bad, although it felt unfinished.
    Andromeda was unfinished. This is a known reality of the game's development. The Bioware subgroup tasked to develop the game spent years trying to build a No Man's Sky/Elite Dangerous style procedural cluster for the party to explore only to realize the project was hopeless. So they scrapped it and stamped out a game in 18 months on a huge rush, which led to all the problems like the animation engine not working properly and the story being immensely truncated. The game's actually surprisingly good, considering those constraints, with the key caveat of if it runs properly. The amount of errors, animation failures, and other bugs varied drastically from player to player ranging from barely evident to cripplingly unplayable.
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  7. - Top - End - #157
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    Default Re: (Spoilers)Mass Effect 2 ruined the Franchise, 3 was continuation of that

    Quote Originally Posted by Douglas View Post
    Because its primary motivation has nothing to do with its own survival, or the survival of the Reapers. It is trying to solve a specific problem, currently has only a temporary patch job solution, and that patch job is failing. You getting to where you are is not some incredible fluke, or at least not just that, it's the continuation of a general trend - cycle after cycle, the design for the Crucible gets discovered, refined, improved, and hidden away for the next cycle to find, while attempts to build and use it get closer and closer to success. The Reapers failing, and failing soon on the time scale of their cycle, is inevitable. It needs a new solution, it doesn't have one, and it's not likely to come up with one before the Reapers get outright defeated. If you pick Synthesis, that's its perfect ideal solution from its perspective. If you pick Control, then maybe your fresh perspective will think of something it did not. If you pick Destroy, then at least the organics of the already technologically advanced current galactic civilization will have some breathing room to figure something out, with all existing synthetics gone.


    The Reapers are the only AIs that Shepard has encountered that have been violent without provocation. The Star Child's goal and logic is based on millions of years of history, against which the current cycle is one tiny blip on the record.

    The premise is based on facts that you cannot verify, not false. The conclusions are observations of facts that you cannot verify, not purely logic, flawed or not. The Star Child's goal is not to protect organic life, but to protect the existence of organic life - to prevent 100% genocide of all organics - and if it allowed organics to develop without limit then they would eventually develop technology capable of producing synthetics that the Reapers are unable to stop.

    The Star Child has a great deal of historical knowledge that you do not, and a set of values and priorities fundamentally different from yours. That is not the same as it being insane or divorced from reality.

    Finally, if Control is a trap, then why wouldn't Destroy also be a trap? The choice isn't really "Control, Synthesis, or Destroy", it's "Action A that will supposedly result in Control, action B that will supposedly result in Synthesis, or action C that will supposedly result in Destroy". Yes, the Star Child doesn't verbally tell you what the actions are, but you see visions of them as it's describing the outcomes, and the only way Shepard could know what to do is if those visions aren't just an out of character thing to inform the player. If you don't trust that at least something the Star Child told you is true, then you don't even have the ability to choose an ending at all.


    The Reapers have not been trying to genocide the entire galaxy - they only target spacefaring races. There's quite a bit of evidence from earlier in the series that this isn't just a matter of not having gotten around to the rest yet, too. The Asari, Salarians, Quarians, and Yahg all already existed in the previous cycle, and were all left untouched even when the Reapers gained total control of the galaxy and completed the cycle.

    Indoctrinating Shepard at an earlier point, especially at the start of ME3 or before, would indeed have been an incredibly valuable achievement. At the point of meeting the Star Child, however, it would be entirely superfluous. The pan-galaxy fleet is already assembled, already there, and already locked in battle with the Reapers, it's too late to derail that. An Indoctrinated Shepard would not meaningfully help the Reapers win that battle, and once the battle is won then there's little use for him because the resistance forces committed the bulk of their military to that single battle. It's a case of a single battle deciding the war, because whichever side loses will have too little left to continue to pose a threat. The window of opportunity for Indoctrinating Shepard to be useful has already passed.

    And if it is an Indoctrination attempt regardless? Then you can't trust that the "Destroy" action will actually do anything you want, much less what the Star Child said it would, either.
    Of course all of the options could be a trap. That's one of the reasons people hate the ending so much. It has nothing to do with thinking destroy is any more reliable than control and everything to do with the ending being complete nonsense. The only way any of it makes sense is if the entire thing is an indoctrination attempt. If the ending were written at higher than a 3rd grade level you'd be able to tell Star-Child to shut up and actually go do something instead of standing around and waiting to die. Since it wasn't, you get people choosing destroy simply because it's the least offensive of the incredibly poor options you're offered, and the only option that doesn't directly contradict the theme of the entire series.

    To your other point...Indoctrinating the highly effective super soldier who has been almost single handedly stopping your galactic genocide and is currently an elevator ride away from your self destruct button is worthless? That's an...."interesting" viewpoint I guess.

    Quote Originally Posted by Psyren View Post
    All great points that I've made before, and look forward to making 7 years from now. Even after we have ME5/6 and people still haven't gotten over this one.

    (One bright spot to Bioware folding would be an end of these threads at least.)
    I'm still waiting for you to actually make any points at all instead of just intentionally misrepresenting mine.

    Quote Originally Posted by Zevox View Post
    If you don't trust anything that the Catalyst tells you, then your only option is Refuse, since it's the only course of action that you know for a complete certainty that the Catalyst isn't manipulating. But that's just choosing to fail and let the Reapers win. So you have to place at least some amount of trust that the options it presents are in fact options in order to pick any of them - at which point, arguing that you don't trust, on its own, ceases to be a good reason not to pick any one particular option.
    Except that literally the entirety of the series has shown you over and over that controlling the Reapers won't work. Literally dozens of examples. Even if you're willing to use meta-knowledge that it's a video game and accept that Star-kid is being straight with you, it's incredibly poor writing to spend 400 hours establishing themes of a story and then expecting the player to go against those themes in the last minute of the game based on a 30 second conversation with their greatest enemy.

    "Well, we've seen thousands of examples of organics cooperating with synthetics, and hundreds of examples that listening to the Reapers always ends in disaster, but screw it. We'll just blindly buy the premise that we can't cooperate based on the words of the guy the entire series told us we shouldn't trust!" Wonderful writing there Bioware. Just fantastic. It doesn't matter if any of the options make more sense than the others. The problem is that the entire thing is a poorly written piece of garbage.
    Last edited by Anteros; 2019-03-12 at 10:13 PM.

  8. - Top - End - #158
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    Default Re: (Spoilers)Mass Effect 2 ruined the Franchise, 3 was continuation of that

    Quote Originally Posted by Anteros View Post
    I'm still waiting for you to actually make any points at all instead of just intentionally misrepresenting mine.
    What did I misrepresent - your unsupported belief that Shepard controlled the elevator, or your unsupported belief that Shepard could activate the Crucible on his own?

    Quote Originally Posted by Anteros View Post
    Except that literally the entirety of the series has shown you over and over that controlling the Reapers won't work. Literally dozens of examples.
    And how many of those examples involved the person seeking to control them sacrificing their lives in the process for the good of everyone else?
    Quote Originally Posted by The Giant View Post
    But really, the important lesson here is this: Rather than making assumptions that don't fit with the text and then complaining about the text being wrong, why not just choose different assumptions that DO fit with the text?
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    Default Re: (Spoilers)Mass Effect 2 ruined the Franchise, 3 was continuation of that

    "All the options are a trap" would imply that the Crucible didn't do anything, and all of the work from the previous cycles and all of the work in the existing cycle to finish it was entirely pointless and was never going to do anything at all.

    Yes, you have to accept that the super weapon you've spent so much time and energy on making sure it got completed actually did something and wasn't just some elaborate plot by the Reapers. Either way though, it isn't like you've got a better choice. Without the Crucible the Reapers win no matter what and the point at which they could "indoctrinate" Shepard and have it mean anything is long gone. The races have already lost by the end of the 3rd game, they might not be finished with the clean-up any time soon, but without the effects of the Crucible the rest of the galactic civilizations might be lucky to take out a couple more Reapers at most before they're finished off.

    And yes, "control has a very high chance of going wrong" is pretty much the point and why I say it is the Renegade option, because most of the other Renegade options throughout the game leave situations messy and not really controlled and resulted in potentially a lot of people dying as racial conflicts flare up again. It is ending the current conflict but not really fixing or changing anything long term, it is the "now is more important than the future" option. It's very parallel to the genophage.

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    Default Re: (Spoilers)Mass Effect 2 ruined the Franchise, 3 was continuation of that

    Quote Originally Posted by Anteros View Post
    Except that literally the entirety of the series has shown you over and over that controlling the Reapers won't work. Literally dozens of examples. Even if you're willing to use meta-knowledge that it's a video game and accept that Star-kid is being straight with you, it's incredibly poor writing to spend 400 hours establishing themes of a story and then expecting the player to go against those themes in the last minute of the game based on a 30 second conversation with their greatest enemy.

    "Well, we've seen thousands of examples of organics cooperating with synthetics, and hundreds of examples that listening to the Reapers always ends in disaster, but screw it. We'll just blindly buy the premise that we can't cooperate based on the words of the guy the entire series told us we shouldn't trust!" Wonderful writing there Bioware. Just fantastic. It doesn't matter if any of the options make more sense than the others. The problem is that the entire thing is a poorly written piece of garbage.
    Oh, I certainly don't disagree with you there, it very definitely is bad writing, on so many levels. I simply felt the need to point out the gaping flaw in arguing against Control specifically because of not trusting the Catalyst when that reasoning applies to all three options.

    You're simply put in a position by the ending where no matter what choice you make, you can be criticzed as being an idiot and/or (probably and) an awful person. Refuse is blatantly stupid as it should be obvious that it amounts to giving up and letting the Reapers win. All three others involve trusting the Catalyst when you have no good reason to. Destroy, unless you've already screwed up badly enough that the Geth died at Rannoch, is voluntarily committing the same atrocity that you're supposedly trying to prevent: genocide. Control is something you've repeatedly argued against throughout the series for various reasons and, even if it works perfectly initially, carries the major danger that it may not last forever, or that someone else with less than noble intentions may be able to usurp control of the Reapers in the future, at which point things may go right back to hell. And Synthesis is largely unexplained and a massive change to every living thing in the galaxy that you're foisting on them against their will, all because it happens to negate the incredibly stupid motives of the Catalyst and Reapers.

    There's no good option, just selecting the least of the evils - and unfortunately, not in the kind of way that leaves the decision feeling interesting or enjoyable for it, just in a way that leaves the whole thing feeling dumb and unsatisfying.
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    Default Re: (Spoilers)Mass Effect 2 ruined the Franchise, 3 was continuation of that

    Quote Originally Posted by Zevox View Post
    And Synthesis is largely unexplained and a massive change to every living thing in the galaxy that you're foisting on them against their will, all because it happens to negate the incredibly stupid motives of the Catalyst and Reapers.
    Synthesis is also the ending to Beast Machines, like, exactly, to the point that a huge number of people who had seen that terrible and unfortunate show make the exact comment online (type mass effect 3 beast machines into google) in the immediate aftermath. While originality is overrated in storytelling, the fact that ME3 idealized ending was exactly the same (the dialog and visuals even match up) as the much derided at the time hackneyed and cheesy conclusion to a Transformers show that had aired ten years earlier makes it impossible for me to take the option seriously even now.
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    Default Re: (Spoilers)Mass Effect 2 ruined the Franchise, 3 was continuation of that

    The main problem that people had with the ending was simple - they were promised that the choices that they had made throughout the entire trilogy would affect the ending.

    They did not.

    You could have played ultra-Renegade and exterminated the Rachni, sacrificed the Council and formed a human council, wiped out the Thorian colonists, killed Wrex, killed the Geth heretics, and yet you are given the EXACT SAME OPTIONS as somebody who allowed the Rachni to survive, saved the original Council, spared the Thorian colonists, and rewrote the Geth heretics (those are just off the top of my head to Mass Effect 2, but that list could go on for a long time, as I'm sure everybody is aware).

    That is what made a lot of fans angry (myself included). For 2 full games I'd actually gone to the trouble of keeping 2 full game completion saves with Pure Paragon/Renegade choices maintained throughout, thinking that they might be necessary to access the final endings for each path. It was utterly pointless.

    NOTHING you do matters or changes the endings. The endings are flat and fixed. The Mass Relays explode, incidentally devastating every major world actually visited throughout the games and presumably killing just about every major character not on the Normandy. No choice you make actually changes anything, and what really set players off was they were too lazy to even make actual distinct cutscenes for each one.

    That's the problem at its core. BioWare promised fans something they pretty unambiguously did not deliver. And you can still think that the endings were good (I thought a couple were decent ideas but utterly refuse to accept that there was no option to reject the core premise that AI are inherently evil), while acknowledging that BioWare did not keep their promise.
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    Default Re: (Spoilers)Mass Effect 2 ruined the Franchise, 3 was continuation of that

    Quote Originally Posted by Zevox View Post
    All three others involve trusting the Catalyst when you have no good reason to.
    And for the umpteenth time I say, you do have a reason to trust it. Namely, that if it simply wanted you dead and the war won, all it had to do was nothing. With Shepard unconscious at the bottom of an elevator shaft mere moments away from the Crucible being destroyed, the only logical conclusion for it bringing you up there was that winning the war was no longer its goal. That's more than enough to prove to me that attaching the Crucible did something to its programming, and that I have nothing to lose by hearing it out.
    Last edited by Psyren; 2019-03-13 at 12:43 AM.
    Quote Originally Posted by The Giant View Post
    But really, the important lesson here is this: Rather than making assumptions that don't fit with the text and then complaining about the text being wrong, why not just choose different assumptions that DO fit with the text?
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    Default Re: (Spoilers)Mass Effect 2 ruined the Franchise, 3 was continuation of that

    Quote Originally Posted by Olinser View Post
    The main problem that people had with the ending was simple - they were promised that the choices that they had made throughout the entire trilogy would affect the ending.

    They did not.

    You could have played ultra-Renegade and exterminated the Rachni, sacrificed the Council and formed a human council, wiped out the Thorian colonists, killed Wrex, killed the Geth heretics, and yet you are given the EXACT SAME OPTIONS as somebody who allowed the Rachni to survive, saved the original Council, spared the Thorian colonists, and rewrote the Geth heretics (those are just off the top of my head to Mass Effect 2, but that list could go on for a long time, as I'm sure everybody is aware).

    That is what made a lot of fans angry (myself included). For 2 full games I'd actually gone to the trouble of keeping 2 full game completion saves with Pure Paragon/Renegade choices maintained throughout, thinking that they might be necessary to access the final endings for each path. It was utterly pointless.

    NOTHING you do matters or changes the endings. The endings are flat and fixed. The Mass Relays explode, incidentally devastating every major world actually visited throughout the games and presumably killing just about every major character not on the Normandy. No choice you make actually changes anything, and what really set players off was they were too lazy to even make actual distinct cutscenes for each one.

    That's the problem at its core. BioWare promised fans something they pretty unambiguously did not deliver. And you can still think that the endings were good (I thought a couple were decent ideas but utterly refuse to accept that there was no option to reject the core premise that AI are inherently evil), while acknowledging that BioWare did not keep their promise.
    You're missing a lot if you are only counting the last cut scenes as the end of all the story arcs. So many of the big side plots are wrapped up before you get there. If you saved the Krogan or killed them that is going to be the case no matter which way you handle the Reapers. Finishing the Reapers doesn't change who's in charge of the Council and what that means. You already know the end results, the "ending" that you've helped accomplish across the many conflicts in the games by the time you get to the final confrontation with the Reapers at the Crucible. Just like most movies and books, not everything is restated in the last few pages/minutes because they don't need to be. You're choice to control the reapers or cause the singularity doesn't change whether or not you killed the Rachni.

    There is also *nothing* supporting your implication that AIs are portrayed as inherently evil, they are in fact portrayed to be very similar to other life forms. They just want to survive, and some will fight and kill for it, but others will try for peace. The Reapers even aren't portrayed as just killing for the sake of killing, they're just trying to maintain balance, they've just picked a "tough love" approach that no one else appreciates. It isn't like their idea is entirely without real world parallels. "We're killing these things for their own good" has been used a lot and that line of thinking is still being used today by a sizable portion of the population.

    I'm also under the impression that the synthesis option is only available to some players, if you've stayed high paragon. But I think not having the choice, having it pre-determined by what you've done previously and simply showing you the matching ending, would not make anyone happy either and we would have more complaints about that.

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    Default Re: (Spoilers)Mass Effect 2 ruined the Franchise, 3 was continuation of that

    Quote Originally Posted by Erloas View Post
    I'm also under the impression that the synthesis option is only available to some players, if you've stayed high paragon. But I think not having the choice, having it pre-determined by what you've done previously and simply showing you the matching ending, would not make anyone happy either and we would have more complaints about that.
    Synthesis was limited, but by War Assets, not Paragon or Renegade. If I'm correct, it was impossible to get without playing multiplayer. If you had no DLC anyways.
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    Default Re: (Spoilers)Mass Effect 2 ruined the Franchise, 3 was continuation of that

    Quote Originally Posted by Anteros View Post
    To your other point...Indoctrinating the highly effective super soldier who has been almost single handedly stopping your galactic genocide and is currently an elevator ride away from your self destruct button is worthless? That's an...."interesting" viewpoint I guess.
    Indoctrinating the exhausted and crippled soldier with damaged armor and armed only with a pistol, who has no idea where your "self destruct button" even is - assuming that such a thing even exists - or how to activate it, whose entire plan for beating you has already played out to its end and exhausted 99% (or whatever the fraction actually is) of the resources he could possibly draw on? Yes, I would call that nearly worthless.

    Suppose Shepard staggers off, trying to find a way to activate the Crucible. He doesn't know what he's looking for, or where to find it, or what to do with it. 5 minutes later, the Reapers have damaged the Crucible enough that it no longer matters.

    Suppose Shepard miraculously escapes somehow. The Systems Alliance Navy is gone. The Turian fleets are gone. The Asari fleets are gone. The Salarian fleets are gone or in hiding. The Geth are destroyed. The Quarian Migrant Fleet is gone. The Krogan are greatly reduced, and they're specialized as ground troops anyway. Even the Batarian fleet is gone. What's he going to do, rally the Hanar to oppose you?

    Suppose you do Indoctrinate Shepard and send him out as your agent. The Systems Alliance Navy is gone. The... I won't bother repeating the list. What's he going to do, sabotage the Hanar forces? Why bother?
    Quote Originally Posted by Forum Explorer View Post
    Synthesis was limited, but by War Assets, not Paragon or Renegade. If I'm correct, it was impossible to get without playing multiplayer. If you had no DLC anyways.
    Having both Control and Destroy available was also limited by War Assets, and if you didn't have enough then which one you got was decided by whether you salvaged or destroyed the Collector Base in ME2. Paragon/Renegade did not affect it, aside from which one each option for the Collector Base corresponds to.

    Paragon/Renegade does affect some of the ending cutscene stuff, though. The detail that I know of offhand is the attitude of the phrasing Ascended Shepard uses in narrating the Control ending.
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    Default Re: (Spoilers)Mass Effect 2 ruined the Franchise, 3 was continuation of that

    Quote Originally Posted by Douglas View Post
    Paragon/Renegade does affect some of the ending cutscene stuff, though. The detail that I know of offhand is the attitude of the phrasing Ascended Shepard uses in narrating the Control ending.
    Wow. Well, that makes all the difference--all the choices you made over hundreds of hours of gameplay makes the narration of one of the fixed endings slightly different. All objections are hereby withdrawn, ME3 ending is fantastic!

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    Default Re: (Spoilers)Mass Effect 2 ruined the Franchise, 3 was continuation of that

    Quote Originally Posted by Douglas View Post

    Having both Control and Destroy available was also limited by War Assets, and if you didn't have enough then which one you got was decided by whether you salvaged or destroyed the Collector Base in ME2. Paragon/Renegade did not affect it, aside from which one each option for the Collector Base corresponds to.

    Paragon/Renegade does affect some of the ending cutscene stuff, though. The detail that I know of offhand is the attitude of the phrasing Ascended Shepard uses in narrating the Control ending.
    Well yes, they were also limited by War Assets. But they were also much easier to get.
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    Default Re: (Spoilers)Mass Effect 2 ruined the Franchise, 3 was continuation of that

    Quote Originally Posted by Erloas View Post
    You're missing a lot if you are only counting the last cut scenes as the end of all the story arcs. So many of the big side plots are wrapped up before you get there. If you saved the Krogan or killed them that is going to be the case no matter which way you handle the Reapers. Finishing the Reapers doesn't change who's in charge of the Council and what that means. You already know the end results, the "ending" that you've helped accomplish across the many conflicts in the games by the time you get to the final confrontation with the Reapers at the Crucible. Just like most movies and books, not everything is restated in the last few pages/minutes because they don't need to be. You're choice to control the reapers or cause the singularity doesn't change whether or not you killed the Rachni.
    Thing is, blowing up the mass relays, which happens in every scenario, renders pretty much all of that completely irrelevant in the short term. In all three scenarios the current iteration of galactic civilization is shattered. The choices you made won't matter because people will have to decide everything again decades later when society finally recovers from having it's primary communication links obliterated. Destroying the Mass Relays is an apocalyptic event from the perspective of everyone living in the galaxy.

    And this was all tacitly admitted in that, at least in the initial construction, the only 'after the end' shot was of a handful of characters stepping off the Normandy in an unknown location. The ending overrode choices made by the player, and that's one of the reasons people found it so upsetting.
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    Default Re: (Spoilers)Mass Effect 2 ruined the Franchise, 3 was continuation of that

    Quote Originally Posted by Erloas View Post
    You're missing a lot if you are only counting the last cut scenes as the end of all the story arcs. So many of the big side plots are wrapped up before you get there. If you saved the Krogan or killed them that is going to be the case no matter which way you handle the Reapers.
    But the way you resolved the other main plot is. Because if you chose the Geth or brokered peace then that decision is rendered moot by the Destroy ending because it also magically kills all the Geth. (Not to mention that the fact that a peace option even exists completely undermines the alleged motivation of the Reapers.)

    And if the Krogan are rewritten into new part-synthetic organisms does the genophage even still work? So does it matter what we did there, because even if it was immediate genocide on Tuchanka there are enough Krogan not there that it wouldn't matter.

    The endings as presented have concepts in which break and devalue the other side stories.

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    Default Re: (Spoilers)Mass Effect 2 ruined the Franchise, 3 was continuation of that

    Quote Originally Posted by Mechalich View Post
    Thing is, blowing up the mass relays, which happens in every scenario, renders pretty much all of that completely irrelevant in the short term. In all three scenarios the current iteration of galactic civilization is shattered.
    In one of the DLCs blowing up the mass relay destroys the entire star system and everyone in it...so it's a bit worse than just losing your communications.

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    Default Re: (Spoilers)Mass Effect 2 ruined the Franchise, 3 was continuation of that

    Quote Originally Posted by factotum View Post
    Wow. Well, that makes all the difference--all the choices you made over hundreds of hours of gameplay makes the narration of one of the fixed endings slightly different. All objections are hereby withdrawn, ME3 ending is fantastic!
    It also wasn't part of the original ending. Which was just the cutscene and then fade to black.

    So it's not actually part of the ending that people hated.
    Last edited by Name_Here; 2019-03-13 at 06:57 AM.

  23. - Top - End - #173
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    Default Re: (Spoilers)Mass Effect 2 ruined the Franchise, 3 was continuation of that

    Quote Originally Posted by Serenity View Post
    But the story is about Shepard and the current cycle. If the issue didn't crop up in the current cycle, if Shepard has seen no evidence of it, than, narratively speaking, it's not an issue.
    The issue DOES crop up in the current cycle with the quarians and the Geth, y'know one of the big over-arching story lines? Cause without Shepard intervening and even then they have to do all the right things, the Catalyst is exactly right about the path the Geth/Quarian conflict goes. One side or the other is completely annihilated and if you DO choose the Geth, its a fairy tale to believe the rest of the galaxy is just going to accept the Geth after fighting the Reapers (whom the Geth have aided in the past) and finding out securing their aid killed off the quarians.

    You want to talk about being foolish, its Shepard thinking the Geth won't be in a fight for their lives once the other races have caught their breath.

    And if you choose quarians and the Geth died? Congrats, every AI able to access the Extranet has shining examples that coexistence is impossible and the only options are either to hide from organics or fight them. Which you already see with the gambling AI. The game flat out tells you that true understanding between synthetics and organics is very difficult if not impossible because what the two desire is so different from one another just at the base level. What a synthetic might view as the most important thing in the world, an organic might not value at all because its meaningless to them and vice versa. Which makes diplomatic relations between the two very difficult when its starting base is basically nonexistent and this is before you go into the very real fear organics have about creating AI and what that means for the world and for them.

    The Catalyst at the core of its argument, before you account for Shepard, is not wrong about the cycle it describes because it is panning out as of the start of the trilogy. The big difference is that Shepard can make the Catalyst wrong over the course of the games which, imagine that, is crucial for opening up different endings! Especially Synthesis.

    Quote Originally Posted by Forum Explorer View Post
    Synthesis was limited, but by War Assets, not Paragon or Renegade. If I'm correct, it was impossible to get without playing multiplayer. If you had no DLC anyways.
    You are incorrect. Its entirely possible to get Synthesis without ever touching multiplayer, you just had to make the correct choices and be thorough enough with side quests. Its close, but multiplayer adding to war assets basically existed to make it EASIER to get access to the best endings or as a means to make up the difference for players who (intentionally or not) made some bad choices throughout the trilogy. And I know you can do it because I didn't touch multiplayer until after I finished the main story and I got Synthesis before any DLC was released.
    Last edited by Callos_DeTerran; 2019-03-13 at 10:33 AM.

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    Default Re: (Spoilers)Mass Effect 2 ruined the Franchise, 3 was continuation of that

    Quote Originally Posted by Callos_DeTerran View Post
    The issue DOES crop up in the current cycle with the quarians and the Geth, y'know one of the big over-arching story lines? Cause without Shepard intervening and even then they have to do all the right things, the Catalyst is exactly right about the path the Geth/Quarian conflict goes.
    Except, of course, that 100% of it is the Quarians' fault.

    The Geth only ever acted in self defence.

    So the Starbrat is still wrong. Synthetics are not the problem.

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    Default Re: (Spoilers)Mass Effect 2 ruined the Franchise, 3 was continuation of that

    Quote Originally Posted by GloatingSwine View Post
    So the Starbrat is still wrong. Synthetics are not the problem.
    It never said they were. Or at least, it never said they were the initial aggressors, just what the outcome would (eventually) be.
    Quote Originally Posted by The Giant View Post
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    Default Re: (Spoilers)Mass Effect 2 ruined the Franchise, 3 was continuation of that

    Quote Originally Posted by Callos_DeTerran View Post
    You are incorrect. Its entirely possible to get Synthesis without ever touching multiplayer, you just had to make the correct choices and be thorough enough with side quests. Its close, but multiplayer adding to war assets basically existed to make it EASIER to get access to the best endings or as a means to make up the difference for players who (intentionally or not) made some bad choices throughout the trilogy. And I know you can do it because I didn't touch multiplayer until after I finished the main story and I got Synthesis before any DLC was released.
    Well done. Do you remember what you had for choices? Because I made pretty decent choices, but I was still a decent way away from Synthesis when I looked it up later.

    Quote Originally Posted by Psyren View Post
    And for the umpteenth time I say, you do have a reason to trust it. Namely, that if it simply wanted you dead and the war won, all it had to do was nothing. With Shepard unconscious at the bottom of an elevator shaft mere moments away from the Crucible being destroyed, the only logical conclusion for it bringing you up there was that winning the war was no longer its goal. That's more than enough to prove to me that attaching the Crucible did something to its programming, and that I have nothing to lose by hearing it out.
    Shepard gets up and has a long conversation afterwards, and then goes on to actually activate the Crucible, so it's not like they would've remained unconscious for long. Also not being able to figure out how to work the elevator is bad writing considering the alliance built the bloody thing. This isn't some ancient warmachine they rediscovered. It was built from ancient blueprints, but you know, actually built. If they couldn't figure out how to work the elevators they would've put in a ladder.

    The whole Star Child sequence is just plain bad, and really drags down the whole ending. You know what else might've worked better? A video phone call with your allies. They explain how to use the Crucible, and start arguing for you to pick the various options. TIM/Salarians argues for control, and isn't obviously indoctrinated, Anderson and/or, I don't know, Wrex argues for destroy, and if you reached the appropriate level EDI/Geth might argue for Synthesis. They don't know if they are correct, and don't know what the consequence will be. You can even end up locked out of certain routes if you kill TIM and cured the Genophage for example. Or locked out of Synthesis if you don't solve the Geth-Quarian war.

    And in the end they agree on a compromise. You decide. They trust you and feel you're the best person to decide how to use the Crucible. The only person even.
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    Default Re: (Spoilers)Mass Effect 2 ruined the Franchise, 3 was continuation of that

    Oh yeah, having all your friends explain all this totally makes it better. They're now experts on this ancient alien technology they never worked on and know how it works when no one else does and their just sitting around waiting to Skype with you during the giant galaxy spanning war. That's so much more believable and fitting than the enemy having a leader that has seen the error in their methods.

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    Default Re: (Spoilers)Mass Effect 2 ruined the Franchise, 3 was continuation of that

    Quote Originally Posted by Callos_DeTerran View Post
    The issue DOES crop up in the current cycle with the quarians and the Geth, y'know one of the big over-arching story lines? Cause without Shepard intervening and even then they have to do all the right things, the Catalyst is exactly right about the path the Geth/Quarian conflict goes. One side or the other is completely annihilated and if you DO choose the Geth, its a fairy tale to believe the rest of the galaxy is just going to accept the Geth after fighting the Reapers (whom the Geth have aided in the past) and finding out securing their aid killed off the quarians.

    You want to talk about being foolish, its Shepard thinking the Geth won't be in a fight for their lives once the other races have caught their breath.

    And if you choose quarians and the Geth died? Congrats, every AI able to access the Extranet has shining examples that coexistence is impossible and the only options are either to hide from organics or fight them. Which you already see with the gambling AI. The game flat out tells you that true understanding between synthetics and organics is very difficult if not impossible because what the two desire is so different from one another just at the base level. What a synthetic might view as the most important thing in the world, an organic might not value at all because its meaningless to them and vice versa. Which makes diplomatic relations between the two very difficult when its starting base is basically nonexistent and this is before you go into the very real fear organics have about creating AI and what that means for the world and for them.

    The Catalyst at the core of its argument, before you account for Shepard, is not wrong about the cycle it describes because it is panning out as of the start of the trilogy. The big difference is that Shepard can make the Catalyst wrong over the course of the games which, imagine that, is crucial for opening up different endings! Especially Synthesis.
    No, it is not panning out at the start of the trilogy. The Geth let the quarians go in the Morning War, after the quarians shot first. They were then perfectly content to remain in peaceful isolation until *the Reapers* stirred them up, and even then, most wanted nothing to do with that. And even if the Geth do wipe out the Quarians--because the Quarians *forced* them to--they *stop there* and immediately join the effort to preserve organic life from the Reapers, even though they've just been given every provocation to go wholly isolationist again or even join the Reapers. At every turn, the Geth demonstrate that they want peace.

    And the alternate ending unlocked by proving the Catalyst wrong involves--not making even a token effort to point out how you have proved it wrong, and then accepting the premise that making peace with difference is not enough, that the Geth can't pursue the self-determination they value so highly, they have to become the same as everyone else.

    Incidentally, how does Synthesis even solve the problem, from the Reaper's perspective? Nothing stops the new hybrid beings from making new fully synthetic servants--in fact, one would imagine that their new hybrid capabilities would only speed the process of them being able to 'create synthetics that the Reapers couldn't stop' (not that the Reapers have ever actually tried to 'stop' synthetics, of course...).
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    Default Re: (Spoilers)Mass Effect 2 ruined the Franchise, 3 was continuation of that

    Quote Originally Posted by Erloas View Post
    Oh yeah, having all your friends explain all this totally makes it better. They're now experts on this ancient alien technology they never worked on and know how it works when no one else does and their just sitting around waiting to Skype with you during the giant galaxy spanning war. That's so much more believable and fitting than the enemy having a leader that has seen the error in their methods.
    Except they haven't seen the error in their methods. That would involve them *stopping*.

    What I find unbelievable is the fact that no one knows what the Crucible does. There were blueprints, those ought to give you some idea of how it works. And if we didn't know what it does, why would we think it would even be useful in the first place?
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    Default Re: (Spoilers)Mass Effect 2 ruined the Franchise, 3 was continuation of that

    Quote Originally Posted by Erloas View Post
    Oh yeah, having all your friends explain all this totally makes it better. They're now experts on this ancient alien technology they never worked on and know how it works when no one else does and their just sitting around waiting to Skype with you during the giant galaxy spanning war. That's so much more believable and fitting than the enemy having a leader that has seen the error in their methods.
    Experts? Not at all. That's part of the point. They don't really know what's going to happen and it's why each reason is so vague. They are giving you what little they've figured out from scanning the Crucible now that it is complete and what they've figured out before.

    But it's not like we don't have very smart people among our friends. Particularly Liara who is an expert on Promethean technology to begin with. And they aren't sitting around either. Have Joker be desperately evading and dogfighting Reapers in the background. Try to choose characters where is would actually make sense to not be in the thick of battle.

    But I'm not arguing that it would fix the ending, I'm just saying that it would be better then the Star Child dialogue that we got.
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