Poll: Your thoughts about the ME 3 ending extension.

[Mikeyfell]

I dunno, it still sounds like you're offing a person that you don't like specifically because of their personality, seems like a major overreaction if you ask me, especially considering that she goes through quite a bit of character development and softens up and then flat out tells TIM to go screw himself if you take her with you at the end of ME2...but you wouldn't know that now would you? Hell, at some points she's a freaking saint compared to Renegade Shep, at least she doesn't punch random civilians in the face and shoot people with little to no provocation.

If you're not allowed to get that worked up over someone's personality, what are you allowed to get that worked up over?
I don't really see her soften up throughout her arc, because every other dialog you have with her she jumps back and forth between "You don't impress me Shepard." and "I respect you so much."
If anything her arc shows just how childish she is, the more you try to be nice to her the more pompous she gets and the more you disagree with her the more she throws a hissy fit.
And I do know that she turns on the Illusive Man in the final mission (Because the only way to get her killed is to maker sure she's not loyal and bring her to fight the human reaper) It just reinforces why I hate her even more, that she would turn on TIM, who protected her and her sister from her father and treated her with all the respect she always wines about not getting, for the sake of someone who, in my particular case, never sided with her once.

You also misunderstand why I hate her in the first place, it's not her violent nature. It's her conniving nature. (Her often times poorly executed conniving nature) because occasionally she'll say things like "If I had my way, you'd have a control chip in your head." and the next time you talk to her she all happy and friendly with you. She'll lord her perfection over you in one scene then complain about it in the next.She's either schizophrenic or conniving, take your pick.
She'll tell you "I've had issues with Cerberus's past actions"
Jack confronts her and suddenly "Cerberus has never done anything wrong!"

(I could fill a dissertation with all the stuff I hate about Miranda)

Also that comment you made in another post about "heh, I thought that this thread was supposed to be about the DLC) yeah to don't have any right to criticize considering your significant contribution to the derailment of this thread. It takes two to argue.

You get me wrong, I just love watching the train of thought that got us here.
Stuff like this happens in face to face conversations I have, we'll say something and I'll say "What were we talking about 5 minutes ago?"
It's fun on forums because you have the subject line and can go back and read all the previous posts.
And this isn't even the worse of it.
Once I was in a thread about Halo: Reach breaking preorder records that turned into a discussion about whether Portal was better than Left 4 Dead 2.

 

[Mikeyfell]

ME1: This is the only one I'm not sure of
Tali Recruited: Yes
Tali Loyalty Mission (Got the Pilgrimage data?): Yes

It's impossible not to recruit Tali
and the pilgrimage data isn't necessary. (I got peace without it)

Tali's loyalty mission: successful, Tali is NOT exiled (As far as I'm aware, you can't achieve a successful conclusion in 3 if Tali was exiled.)
Legion's loyalty mission: successful, doesn't matter what you do
Tali and Legion Crisis Moment: Successfully resolved losing the loyalty of neither
Tali and Legion both survive the suicide mission

You can get peace if Tali was exiled
I've never seen peace with re-written Heretics (Not saying it can't happen, I just haven't seen it)
Not sure about this one I always resolved it.
I have seen peace with dead Legion. Never with dead Tali.

ME3: You must do ALL the missions pertaining to the Geth and the Quarians. You cannot skip any of them. Admiral Koris(sp? Yes it was wrong, it's been a bit >.>) of the Civilian Fleet must be rescued (you cannot leave him and save his crew instead), the Geth Primes must be freed and recruited. You must do both the Quarian and the Geth main missions.

Being Geth positive probably doesn't hurt, but I don't think it's exactly necessary. Basically: if you want to resolve the Quarians and the Geth resulting in neither side's genocide, you have to do every step in each game exactly right or it's not going to happen.

I've done peace without rescuing Koris
and I've done it with out shutting down the server.
And I've done it with out being Geth positive.


A friend of mine came up with something called the "Points system"

Giving Tali the Pilgrimage data in ME 1 is a point
Resolving the Legion/Tali moment is a point
Clearing Tali of treason charges is a pint
Destroying the Heretics is a point
Tali and Legion surviving are both points
Rescuing Koris is a point
Saving the Primes is a point
and so on and so forth.

and you need a certain amount of points to get peace.
So none of those things are necessary but you have to do a lot of them.

I think Tali surviving the suicide mission is mandatory though.

 

[Vault101]

[snip.

I wouldnt call their writing brillaint

I also wouldnt call it bad...but that varies

 

[Crazy Zaul]

I don't expect it to be any good, but I'm still looking forward to it out of curiosity.

 

[theparsonski]

Bioware have done a lot for me in gaming over the years. I'm willing to give them an unbiased chance to set right. If they don't, well, thats that.

Finally, someone who's not a complete asshole about this whole thing.

Bioware have made 2.95 games that have taken us to amazing places, given us amazing choices and provided us with amazing gameplay. I'm not going to let that 0.05 of a game ruin the entire series, or Bioware's reputation for me.
I am personally hoping for the indoctrination theory to be true, because I would be insanely happy that Bioware didn't seriously consider leaving the game like it is. I'll forgive them the mistake if the ending is average-decent, but being honest, if they screw this up again, then I'll be slightly pissed off by it.

All in all, I'm not going to dismiss Bioware completely because they made one (albeit rather large) mistake.

Give them a chance, guys.

 

[Starke]

snip.

I wouldnt call their writing brillaint

I also wouldnt call it bad...but that varies

But that's the problem: outside of maybe a little bit of dialog here and there, mostly there, their writing is bad. I mean as a general statement, not just in the context of video games.

It's better than a Saturday morning cartoon... most of the time, but it's still bad writing.

 

[Vault101]

It's better than a Saturday morning cartoon... most of the time, but it's still bad writing.

and again....I disagree

 

[Starke]

It's better than a Saturday morning cartoon... most of the time, but it's still bad writing.

and again....I disagree

And this is where the industry runs off the rails. We have fans who will gleefully defend franchises that are so irredeemably stupid as to include the Starchild, the Giant Space Terminator Baby, and of course scientific details that make most Manga look well researched. To say nothing of a company that has re-released the exact same story, with a rotating cast of the same characters in different settings for over a decade.

If this what passes for "good writing" in the industry... yeah, we're fucked.

 

[Vault101]

]And this is where the industry runs off the rails. We have fans who will gleefully defend franchises that are so irredeemably stupid as to include the Starchild, the Giant Space Terminator Baby, and of course scientific details that make most Manga look well researched. To say nothing of a company that has re-released the exact same story, with a rotating cast of the same characters in different settings for over a decade.

If this what passes for "good writing" in the industry... yeah, we're fucked.

I'd rather you explain it and be specific rather than

"the writings bad"
"no it isnt"
"yes it is"

the giant space terminator baby? some peopel thourght it was silly I guese..aparently the original design looked more "fetus" like which perahps would have seemed less rediculous. I didnt mind it so much...its not like it comes out of nowhere plot/context wise

the reaper starchild was...well pretty bad considered the enite ending, Im still somwhat confused as to what exactally the catalyst is but its pretty stupid if we are suposed to take it all at face vaule, the starchilds logic is flawed and its uncharachteristic of shepard to simply accept it all

scientific details?....not realistic enough or somthing? that depends on how hard you like your sci fi..I see no issue with the lore surrounding mass effect drives and all that...theyre not going into "hyerdrive" or whatever..then again its not like I spent hours going over the codex...

All in all, I'm not going to dismiss Bioware completely because they made one (albeit rather large) mistake.

Give them a chance, guys.

I agree....

 

[Starke]

And this is where the industry runs off the rails. We have fans who will gleefully defend franchises that are so irredeemably stupid as to include the Starchild, the Giant Space Terminator Baby, and of course scientific details that make most Manga look well researched. To say nothing of a company that has re-released the exact same story, with a rotating cast of the same characters in different settings for over a decade.

If this what passes for "good writing" in the industry... yeah, we're fucked.

I'd rather you explain it and be specific rather than

"the writings bad"
"no it isnt"
"yes it is"

Okay, here's some meat for thought, when you played Mass Effect 2, why didn't you tell the Vermire survivor you weren't working for Cerberus? For that matter, why are you working for Cerberus? You can swing by the council, and say "Hi." Why didn't you, while you were there, say "fuck Cerberus, I want to work for you guys again"?

the giant space terminator baby? some peopel thourght it was silly I guese..aparently the original design looked more "fetus" like which perahps would have seemed less rediculous. I didnt mind it so much...its not like it comes out of nowhere plot/context wise

The problem with the giant space terminator baby is it is stupid. Really stupid. No, that's too intelligent, it's way dumber than even that.

Ever play Alan Wake? He makes a comment once, in-between some really gawd-awful prose, and some narration that sounds like Raphael Sabarge just downed a gallon of Valium, he blithers that a story must have consistency. You can't end your story by saying "and then a walrus, and they all lived happily ever after." But, that is, in a nutshell exactly how Mass Effect 2 ends. And then a space terminator walrus baby of stupid.

The problem with the Reaper Baby isn't even that it's stupid. As you said, it's not too irredeemably stupid on it's face. The problem is, it is fairly stupid and comes out of nowhere, with no explanation. It's a sloppy form of deus ex machina, that Tropes dubs the Space Flea from Nowhere, if I remember correctly. In other words, bad writing.

the reaper starchild was...well pretty bad considered the enite ending, Im still somwhat confused as to what exactally the catalyst is but its pretty stupid if we are suposed to take it all at face vaule, the starchilds logic is flawed and its uncharachteristic of shepard to simply accept it all

The problem with the Starchild is this, it wasn't written by their writers. All the incoherent rambling bullshit that follows stems from this single issue. Hudson wrote it. Hudson, as we have learned, cannot write his way out of a paper bag. Hudson chucks everything off the deep end to create, what he believes is a genuinely intelligent thought provoking piece of art. Sort of like every David Lynch fanfic writer out there (honestly, I hope such a thing doesn't exist, but this is the internet, it must).

scientific details?....not realistic enough or somthing? that depends on how hard you like your sci fi..I see no issue with the lore surrounding mass effect drives and all that...theyre not going into "hyerdrive" or whatever..then again its not like I spent hours going over the codex...

Oddly enough, no. Scientific accuracy in the background I could care less about. That's just part of the setting, and like it or not, part of the general conceit of some flavors of Science Fiction, Mass Effect included.

The problem is when those scientific details are plot points. Sit on this one and think for a while, see if it comes to you.

All in all, I'm not going to dismiss Bioware completely because they made one (albeit rather large) mistake.

Give them a chance, guys.

I agree....

I'm not going to storm their offices and force them to stop working on it, but this isn't some struggling artist or underdog who just needs that one push to reveal their true mettle. This is a major corporation, giving them "one more chance" is kinda pointless because, quite frankly, they've already shown exactly what they're capable of.

 

[Vault101]

Okay, here's some meat for thought, when you played Mass Effect 2, why didn't you tell the Vermire survivor you weren't working for Cerberus? For that matter, why are you working for Cerberus? You can swing by the council, and say "Hi." Why didn't you, while you were there, say "fuck Cerberus, I want to work for you guys again"?

shepard had the illusives mans backing (money rescources, people) weather that counts as "working for" or not is up to how you see it.What WAS clear was that shepard had connections to cerberus, he/she couln't have just outright denied that to the virmire survivor, doing that would have confirmed what ashley/Kaiden were rambling on about

shepard actually did pretty much say that it was like he/she had "joined" cerberus out of belivng in their "cause" it was out of nessecity, and that Kaiden/ash should know that Shepard would never join a terrorist group without and damn good reason...and even they would never belive their bullshit

Kaiden/ash did overeact, which sucked. you would think after all you've been through with those charachters...however you could argue that Kaiden/ash are VERY loyal to the Alliance...to see somone they care about run off and join "the enemy" would be a real shock, also if they did come back from the dead then (as kaiden kind of said) who's to say its really shepard? or that shepard isnt being controlled be cerberus (I actually think "killing" shepard was a bit extreme)

second point

[i/]ah yes.."reapers"...we have dismissed that claim[/i] <- thats pretty much why, the council doesn't want to know about it, as far as they concerned the Geth are the problem (because as they said, theres no evidence to suggest otherwise..and giant space "reapers" thats too far fetched), I think even in the opening scene Miranda comments on how the council "sent comander shepard after Geth". I guess you could say that makes the council really really strupid..but then again thease days you have climate change skeptics, and from their perspective why WOULD it be giant space mosnters? as opoased to the geth?

Now had Shepard not died, I don't really know what assignments the council would have sent him/her on...but if it was anything Reaper related I doubt they would have indulged shepards "ideas"....I don't know how much input the council has in SPECTRE missions, so mabye shepard could have gone off on his/her own to invesitgate reaper related stuff (as in Collectors) however if you have a rouge spectre running around chasing bogey men....mabye they would have even shut shepard up themselves...like kicking him/her out of the spectres or having him/her commited

also in ME2 shepard is working in the terminus systms..thats outside the council duristriction, not sure if they send spectres there or not but thats somthing to consider

now the Alliance...I don't know what the Alliance was doing or thourght about reapers, again, the collectors was a terminus systm issue, aslo perhaps it would be best for the Alliance not to piss off the council...just speculating there

anyway, my point is cerberus was gvivng shepard a ship and everything he/she needed, the amount of redtape and sutff he/she would have had to go through to get council/alliance help would have wasted valuable time (I mean for crying out loud in ME3 the comander is locked in a room for 6 months for being a bad boy/girl)...colonies were getting abducted and a little bad PR wasnt going to stop comander shepard

I mean did you play ME2?

[quote/]The problem with the giant space terminator baby is it is stupid. Really stupid. No, that's too intelligent, it's way dumber than even that.

[Ever play Alan Wake? He makes a comment once, in-between some really gawd-awful prose, and some narration that sounds like Raphael Sabarge just downed a gallon of Valium, he blithers that a story must have consistency. You can't end your story by saying "and then a walrus, and they all lived happily ever after." But, that is, in a nutshell exactly how Mass Effect 2 ends. And then a space terminator walrus baby of stupid.

The problem with the Reaper Baby isn't even that it's stupid. As you said, it's not too irredeemably stupid on it's face. The problem is, it is fairly stupid and comes out of nowhere, with no explanation. It's a sloppy form of deus ex machina, that Tropes dubs the Space Flea from Nowhere, if I remember correctly. In other words, bad writing. [/quote]

I thourght it was suposed to be a surprise/twist....."what are they doing with human juice?"..SURPRIZE human reaper, I dont see any issue with how its set up, I would have thourght the main issue was with is apearance/execution

and I don't think that counts as deus ex machina the reapinator doesnt come in out of nowhere to rescue or solves or our heros problems, its just there to be destroyed, that whole last act was about "go in, destroy collectors" thats what happned, the Reapinator does not help them in anyway

(better example of deus ex machina would be the cuicible wouldnt it? even though it is introduced at the start of ME3....and I even think a better example of giant space flea from nowhere would be the yahg in lair of the shadow broker...I think they obviously wanted to have a big cool monster for you to fight, so they add this species in and make up some thing on how they are restricted to their home planet (in fact the story there seems like anotehr example of the council retardedness) anyway the fact that the yahg are nevermentioned before is kind of noticable)


[quote/] The problem with the Starchild is this, it wasn't written by their writers. All the incoherent rambling bullshit that follows stems from this single issue. Hudson wrote it. Hudson, as we have learned, cannot write his way out of a paper bag. Hudson chucks everything off the deep end to create, what he believes is a genuinely intelligent thought provoking piece of art. Sort of like every David Lynch fanfic writer out there (honestly, I hope such a thing doesn't exist, but this is the internet, it must).[/quote]

the starchild seauquence is stupid..no one is denying that

however...I actually don't have a problem with the starchild itself, I'm not 100% sure what the catalyst is, but ok I can get the Idea that this super AI thing "scans" shepards mind and takes the form of the thing thats been haunting him/her since earth

what I do take issue with (as peopel have said a million times) is the fact that the starchild is obviously bullshting shepard and he/she eats that up no questions...completly uncharachterstic...and everthing that follows after shepard makes his/her choice



[quote/] Oddly enough, no. Scientific accuracy in the background I could care less about. That's just part of the setting, and like it or not, part of the general conceit of some flavors of Science Fiction, Mass Effect included.

The problem is when those scientific details are plot points. Sit on this one and think for a while, see if it comes to you.
.[/quote]

the Cruicible?....the whole thing with the ending? in that if you know about the world then you know how truly fucked everyone is after whatever choice you made?(that is if youre taking the ending at face value) Im not sure what you mean

 

[Vault101]

[
I thourght it was suposed to be a surprise/twist....."what are they doing with human juice?"..SURPRIZE human reaper, I dont see any issue with how its set up, I would have thourght the main issue was with is apearance/execution

Well if by appearance you mean that it didn't look anything at all like what the other Reapers looked like. I mean I guess the general idea of using it to create a new Reaper is okay, but there was nothing at all leading up to the form it had. And imagining it flying in space... Reapers are all cuttlefish, they don't look like their previous species... Unless they were all harvested from cuttlefish...

Other than that, totally agree with you.

what I ment was some people might have thourght it looked "silly" its skeletal because obviously they are building this thing from the group up..its far from finished

in fact the original design was alot more fetus like..that would have been cool

 

[Vault101]

Though admittedly, if it looked like a fetus and was pulled off well that might be creepy enough that I wouldn't care.

huh...now that I didn't know

another thing that interested me was Aria having the Assari councillor "in her favor"

now why was that?...do they personally go back some time? is this some assari thing of "we look after our own" does the assari government get some kind of benefit from Omega so they would want to keep Aria happy? sounds like an interestign story

 

[Starke]

Okay, here's some meat for thought, when you played Mass Effect 2, why didn't you tell the Vermire survivor you weren't working for Cerberus? For that matter, why are you working for Cerberus? You can swing by the council, and say "Hi." Why didn't you, while you were there, say "fuck Cerberus, I want to work for you guys again"?

shepard had the illusives mans backing (money rescources, people) weather that counts as "working for" or not is up to how you see it.What WAS clear was that shepard had connections to cerberus, he/she couln't have just outright denied that to the virmire survivor, doing that would have confirmed what ashley/Kaiden were rambling on about

shepard actually did pretty much say that it was like he/she had "joined" cerberus out of belivng in their "cause" it was out of nessecity, and that Kaiden/ash should know that Shepard would never join a terrorist group without and damn good reason...and even they would never belive their bullshit

Right, so we're going to have to take a step back now. Go look up the word "rhetoric", it's your vocabulary word of the day. Then look up the phrase "rhetorical question".

You've done that? No? Then do it, I'll wait.

...

...

Back? Okay, so, what was the original question I asked? Oh, right, why can't you sign back on with the council after coming back from Cerberus filling you with half a Terminator? Because shitty writing and a plot that is so glued to the rails it doesn't move the entire game.

Kaiden/ash did overeact, which sucked. you would think after all you've been through with those charachters...however you could argue that Kaiden/ash are VERY loyal to the Alliance...to see somone they care about run off and join "the enemy" would be a real shock, also if they did come back from the dead then (as kaiden kind of said) who's to say its really shepard? or that shepard isnt being controlled be cerberus (I actually think "killing" shepard was a bit extreme)

Killing Shepard at the beginning of 2 is a flat out pacing failure. The time jump is fine, the ship being destroyed is fine, but starting 2 off by killing Shepard basically negates the value of the "suicide mission" at the end, we've already seen that death is irrelevant, and it makes the end of 3 utterly meaningless because we've already killed off and resurrected Shepard once, and if leaks are to be believed, will do so again.

second point

[i/]ah yes.."reapers"...we have dismissed that claim[/i] <- thats pretty much why, the council doesn't want to know about it, as far as they concerned the Geth are the problem (because as they said, theres no evidence to suggest otherwise..and giant space "reapers" thats too far fetched), I think even in the opening scene Miranda comments on how the council "sent comander shepard after Geth". I guess you could say that makes the council really really strupid..but then again thease days you have climate change skeptics, and from their perspective why WOULD it be giant space mosnters? as opoased to the geth?

I'm sorry, you seem to have a hard time, "ah yes, logic, you have dismissed that claim", but let's try to stay in the same zip code as the issue.

The question was, why not sign on with the Council again. The Council doesn't have a huge issue with Shepard's obsession with the reapers, or they would have benched him a long time ago, because he gets results. They don't have a problem with him chasing after the colony abductions. The colony abductions have nothing to do with Shepard's belief in the reapers. Just like the Turian Councilor's comment in ME2 has nothing to do with his belief that the reapers exist at the end of ME1.

This is, by the way a hallmark of really fuck-awful writing: Characters randomly changing what they know/believe to suit the plot.

Characters or plot elements who change randomly in ways that cannot be accounted for by the setting Mass Effect: Shepard (Cerberus), Kaiden/Ashley (Shepard), Udina (Cerberus), Turian Councilor (Reapers), assari (sex, biology, genetics), Genophage, Quantum Entanglement Communications, geth, quarian (history & biology), Joker (medical condition), Tali, Liara, Timmy, Jack (though, technically this is mostly internally in ME2), Mass Relays (damage capacity), and so on.

Now had Shepard not died, I don't really know what assignments the council would have sent him/her on...but if it was anything Reaper related I doubt they would have indulged shepards "ideas"....I don't know how much input the council has in SPECTRE missions, so mabye shepard could have gone off on his/her own to invesitgate reaper related stuff (as in Collectors) however if you have a rouge spectre running around chasing bogey men....mabye they would have even shut shepard up themselves...like kicking him/her out of the spectres or having him/her commited

And the relevance to your own daydreaming to what pops up in the actual text of the games? Oh, yes, none at all. Please, continue to pretend it's relevant, and I'll pretend to actually care about how you would have improved this pile of shit.

also in ME2 shepard is working in the terminus systms..thats outside the council duristriction, not sure if they send spectres there or not but thats somthing to consider

Except, they can and do. Also, it's "jurisdiction". One of those pesky things the Spectres tend to ignore.

now the Alliance...I don't know what the Alliance was doing or thourght about reapers, again, the collectors was a terminus systm issue, aslo perhaps it would be best for the Alliance not to piss off the council...just speculating there

And wrong. The Alliance was already investigating the colony attacks.

anyway, my point is cerberus was gvivng shepard a ship and everything he/she needed, the amount of redtape and sutff he/she would have had to go through to get council/alliance help would have wasted valuable time (I mean for crying out loud in ME3 the comander is locked in a room for 6 months for being a bad boy/girl)...colonies were getting abducted and a little bad PR wasnt going to stop comander shepard

I mean did you play ME2?

Yes, six or eight times. Did you ever play the first one?

Here's something you should consider. In the original game, Shepard ran into Cerberus in a couple mission strings, or dealt with the aftermath of their actions. Without fail, every single Cerberus mission involves Cerberus inflicting atrocities on civilians or Alliance personnel in the name of "progress". Moreover if the player takes the default backgrounds, they get Sole Survivor, where Shepard was victimized by Cerberus as well.

Something which might be somewhat relevant when Timmy pops up and says "I'm going to make you an offer you can't refuse, because I bribed the writers."

[quote/]The problem with the giant space terminator baby is it is stupid. Really stupid. No, that's too intelligent, it's way dumber than even that.

Ever play Alan Wake? He makes a comment once, in-between some really gawd-awful prose, and some narration that sounds like Raphael Sabarge just downed a gallon of Valium, he blithers that a story must have consistency. You can't end your story by saying "and then a walrus, and they all lived happily ever after." But, that is, in a nutshell exactly how Mass Effect 2 ends. And then a space terminator walrus baby of stupid.

The problem with the Reaper Baby isn't even that it's stupid. As you said, it's not too irredeemably stupid on it's face. The problem is, it is fairly stupid and comes out of nowhere, with no explanation. It's a sloppy form of deus ex machina, that Tropes dubs the Space Flea from Nowhere, if I remember correctly. In other words, bad writing.

I thourght it was suposed to be a surprise/twist....."what are they doing with human juice?"..SURPRIZE human reaper, I dont see any issue with how its set up, I would have thourght the main issue was with is apearance/execution [/quote]

No, the main issue with the Giant Space Terminator Baby is that it is stupid. Surprise only gets you so far. If they'd been turning the colonists into a new strand of collector, that would have been a surprise, suitably horrifying, and in the tone for the game. That they had to go back and retcon the reapers into cybernetic organisms instead of "inorganic" was a mistake, compounded by the sheer stupidity of fighting something that looks that damn stupid.

and I don't think that counts as deus ex machina the reapinator doesnt come in out of nowhere to rescue or solves or our heros problems, its just there to be destroyed, that whole last act was about "go in, destroy collectors" thats what happned, the Reapinator does not help them in anyway

Yes, oddly enough I do understand some Greek, and do know what the term means. I even know how to pronounce it, "DAI-us", not "duce". In this case the problem "the machine god on a string solves" is not the characters' but the writers'. In point of fact, the term is certainly applicable simply because the image in question is far too damn close to the original application of the term.

(better example of deus ex machina would be the cuicible wouldnt it? even though it is introduced at the start of ME3....and I even think a better example of giant space flea from nowhere would be the yahg in lair of the shadow broker...I think they obviously wanted to have a big cool monster for you to fight, so they add this species in and make up some thing on how they are restricted to their home planet (in fact the story there seems like anotehr example of the council retardedness) anyway the fact that the yahg are nevermentioned before is kind of noticable)

The Shadow Broker is another example of that trope.

[quote/] The problem with the Starchild is this, it wasn't written by their writers. All the incoherent rambling bullshit that follows stems from this single issue. Hudson wrote it. Hudson, as we have learned, cannot write his way out of a paper bag. Hudson chucks everything off the deep end to create, what he believes is a genuinely intelligent thought provoking piece of art. Sort of like every David Lynch fanfic writer out there (honestly, I hope such a thing doesn't exist, but this is the internet, it must).

the starchild seauquence is stupid..no one is denying that

however...I actually don't have a problem with the starchild itself, I'm not 100% sure what the catalyst is, but ok I can get the Idea that this super AI thing "scans" shepards mind and takes the form of the thing thats been haunting him/her since earth

what I do take issue with (as peopel have said a million times) is the fact that the starchild is obviously bullshting shepard and he/she eats that up no questions...completly uncharachterstic...and everthing that follows after shepard makes his/her choice [/quote]

"Why hello Timmy, you want me to go jump down that well over there? Okay."

[quote/] Oddly enough, no. Scientific accuracy in the background I could care less about. That's just part of the setting, and like it or not, part of the general conceit of some flavors of Science Fiction, Mass Effect included.

The problem is when those scientific details are plot points. Sit on this one and think for a while, see if it comes to you.
.

the Cruicible?....the whole thing with the ending? in that if you know about the world then you know how truly fucked everyone is after whatever choice you made?(that is if youre taking the ending at face value) Im not sure what you mean[/quote]No, you're thinking ME3, go back and think about ME2, when it hits, you'll shit bricks... though, I'm not holding out a lot of hope on that front.

 

[Vault101]

snip.

forgive me if it wasnt 100% clear that question was rhetorical...

ok, so you don't like the fact shepard has to work with cerberus...I don't know what to say about that, I explained why shepard might have to work with cerberus and I stand by that. I don't think its "rail-roading" anymore than shepard not being able to turn into a psycho terrorist in ME1,

mabye shepard was more inclined to work for cerberus because as extreme as the illusive man was..he belived in the reapers, and seemed willing to give shepard whatever he/she needed, collectors is one thing, but I doubt the council was willing to listen about anything concerning reapers

while I think killing shepard was a bit much (there were better ways to get him/her out of the action for a while) I don't think it completly "made death meaningless" shepard coming back from the dead was due to a very lucky and specific series of events (and a fuck-ton of money/rescources) you smply couldnt do that to every person who dies in the suicide mission or in combat...even if you could find their body and it was salvagable

also I don't know if thease so called "leaks" are for the extended cut or whatever but please keep spoilers in mind,

[quote/]And the relevance to your own daydreaming to what pops up in the actual text of the games? Oh, yes, none at all. Please, continue to pretend it's relevant, and I'll pretend to actually care about how you would have improved this pile of shit. [/quote]

It was just speculation, I don't know how things would have turned out had shepard not died, it if shepard didn't work for cerberus...theres no need to be like that

[quote/]No, the main issue with the Giant Space Terminator Baby is that it is stupid. Surprise only gets you so far. If they'd been turning the colonists into a new strand of collector, that would have been a surprise, suitably horrifying, and in the tone for the game. That they had to go back and retcon the reapers into cybernetic organisms instead of "inorganic" was a mistake, compounded by the sheer stupidity of fighting something that looks that damn stupid. [/quote]

Im not entirly sure what "in-organic" is but I thourght reapers were always some "organic-synthetic" hybrid

[quote/] Yes, oddly enough I do understand some Greek, and do know what the term means. I even know how to pronounce it, "DAI-us", not "duce". In this case the problem "the machine god on a string solves" is not the characters' but the writers'. In point of fact, the term is certainly applicable simply because the image in question is far too damn close to the original application of the term. [/quote]

did I accidently type it as "duce"? did I in anyway indicate that I didn't know how to pronounce it? because hey! I knew how to pronounce it too! arnt we clever?


[quote/] No, you're thinking ME3, go back and think about ME2, when it hits, you'll shit bricks... though, I'm not holding out a lot of hope on that front. [/quote]

sorry, I have no Idea what youre talking about, youre going to have to tell me

EDIT; wait...was it the original intended ending involving Dark matter destroying the universe or somthing?

 

[GoGoFrenzy]

They already said they're not changing the ending so why bother? They already ruined the series.