Shamus Young talks nonsense!

[Dr Red]

I'm a long-time lurker who has finally surfaced to voice my annoyance at Shamus Young's recent article about Mass Effect. Prepare for nerd rage; Escapist mods, as I have observed you really seem to dislike it when someone gets the least bit rowdy so I will try to maintain my calm.

His entire article quickly glosses over the plot and chooses to not mention the well-written dialogue or interesting characters, which I feel were developed well. The roster of team members you rack up by end-game is diverse, with many different personalities present - sure, I hated some of them (Jacob, 2-D jarhead) but others I couldn't wait until I could advance their storyline and learn more about them (Thane, the awesome spiritual assassin dealing with his own mortality). He instead chooses to moan about how ridiculous it is that Shepard manages to kill so many Collectors on their own vessel, and how the Collectors could have easily done X, Y and Z to stop him. This is a pointless argument. Any form of entertainment set in a sci-fi universe must be taken with a pinch of salt. No one argues against any Star Wars story line when something utterly unreasonable happens and is attributed to the Force. Nobody churns out a 3-page article of half-considered ranting about the sonic screwdriver that the Doctor wields which functions only when it is in the plot's best interest to do so.

These kind of inexplicable things are often the only way writers can make a riveting story. Would it be that interesting to sit back and press 'A' to just blast the Collector ship out of space? Or would you rather charge in there, discover the tragic fate of the Protheans and kick the Collectors in the face?


N.B I enjoy the majority of Shamus Young's articles, but I feel he was really off the ball on this one. I'm aware that Bioware is an icon of evil for a lot of people right now after the travesty that was Dragon Age 2, but I think they did a good job on Mass Effect 2.

 

[Fr]anc[is]

To be fair, he does talk about the awesome characters, just elsewhere. He's got a whole lot of praise for Mordin in his blog. But yea, he's just venting again.

 

[Vault101]

hey you cant change peopes opinions but you CAN ignore them/not let them bother you

 

[MinionStarwind]

I missed that bit where we strapped people down to chairs and made them read things they didn't want to. We must have a supply of those 'Clockwork Orange eye-opener' things laying around.

 

[-Drifter-]

"Oh no, someone on the internet disagrees with my opinion!"

Spoiler: THE WORLD IS COMING TO AN END!

 

[Canadish]

Yeah, Shamus does give the game credit where its due in his other articles. You may have just picked one of his angrier ones. Over all he still seems to like the game.
But he is firmly in the more critical camp, if "Spoiler Warning" is anything to go by anyway.

I can see why, as much as I loved Mass Effect 2, it was a step down from the epic emotional roller coaster of Mass Effect 1.
I know what your saying about letting the writers off the hook with a few fudges, but Mass Effect, and Bioware as a whole, are usually smart enough to avoid ramming the plot into these daft situations. The theory behind this drop sensibility is that the A-team writers are busy working on Bioware's giant money sink, The Old Republic, leaving all their post Dragon Age Origins games with sub-par narratives.

 

[Vault101]

Welcome to the Escapist.

They claim to love games here, but more than half of the posts are full of hatred for some game that pretty much everyone else on the planet enjoys. Not dislike or indifference, I'm talking "This game killed my family and my dog, Albert" levels of hatred. Oh, and of course, they love to come up with some obscure game that they think was leagues better.

Criticism is one thing, but constant moping and whining are what get to me.

actually...yeah you do have a point

I loved ME2 and I think ill love ME3 I mean people are flipping out over it just you just have to ignore it if you ever really want to enjoy games

becaues thats all I want...to enjoy games!

 

[AlternatePFG]

If you watched Spoiler Warning, he spent a good part of a few episodes complimenting the loyalty missions and the characters. He pretty much ragged on everything else (most of which it deserved) in Spoiler Warning but eh.

 

[Agayek]

"Oh no, someone on the internet disagrees with my opinion!"

Spoiler: THE WORLD IS COMING TO AN END!

Edit: For you mods out there. This picture explains that many people feel the obsessive need to correct everyone, regardless of whether they are actually wrong or not. It's highly relevant to this thread, as that is what the OP is doing. Now, can we please dispense with the ridiculous "you must have a paragraph to explain an image" rule when the image alone perfectly expresses the concept or idea?

 

[Hristo Tzonkov]

Shamus is a geeky gamer.It's kinda natural for him to vent,whine and bicker about videogames on the forums.It just ticks a lot more people (including me sometimes because I hate whining about how something didn't meet someone's expectations or some shitty nitpick that's a ***** to counter) because he's one of the featured people on the Escapists.I'd suggest we live with it.

 

[Hristo Tzonkov]

Welcome to the Escapist.

They claim to love games here, but more than half of the posts are full of hatred for some game that pretty much everyone else on the planet enjoys. Not dislike or indifference, I'm talking "This game killed my family and my dog, Albert" levels of hatred. Oh, and of course, they love to come up with some obscure game that they think was leagues better.

Criticism is one thing, but constant moping and whining are what get to me.

Haha!Amen,bro.

 

[Aisaku]

That article was a shameless flamebait and you know it.

 

[Zukhramm]

Any form of entertainment set in a sci-fi universe must be taken with a pinch of salt. No one argues against any Star Wars story line when something utterly unreasonable happens and is attributed to the Force.

I'd like to tell you about the RedLetterMedia reviews.

Also, I don't like the idea that we should accept worse stories because it's science fiction, and very sad that there's a general acceptance for the same in video games as a whole.

 

[Slycne]

Any form of entertainment set in a sci-fi universe must be taken with a pinch of salt. No one argues against any Star Wars story line when something utterly unreasonable happens and is attributed to the Force. Nobody churns out a 3-page article of half-considered ranting about the sonic screwdriver that the Doctor wields which functions only when it is in the plot's best interest to do so.

I disagree with this point and it's something that comes up a lot across a lot of different media. There is a distinct difference between a work's internal rules/logic and hand waving something because it's sci-fi or fantasy. The Force and the sonic screwdriver are things that are defined internally, to various degrees, even if they are fantastical or stretch the bounds of science.

For instance, Lord of the Rings has wizards, ents, orcs, elves, magic, etc, and we are willing to accept that as it's presented. But everyone would be rightfully confused if suddenly Frodo pulled out sniper rifle and blew away Sauron with no explanation, because modern firearms were never introduced into the story, and arguing "well it's magic, you've got fireballs and stuff so anything can happen" strikes me as a poor excuse for bad writing.

 

[Yassen]

Yes he was very critical about the main plot of the game, and you're right that he didn't talk about the companion missions. But you know what? The main plot was the worst part of the game, no doubt, and Shamus has gone on record as saying he loved Mass Effect 2 and praised those companion missions. But Shamus follows the philosophy that just because the game was "mostly good" doesn't mean you overlook the parts that didn't make sense or weren't up to scratch. The worst thing you can ever do for someone is tell them their work is great when it isn't and if games are to grow they need constructive criticism.

The fact is, Shepard dying at the start was part of the marketing scheme of having Shepard reported as "dead" in the trailers and create speculation among fans. It was also a cheap story telling tactic to advance time forward and give the Normandy upgrades. I love Mass Effect 2 but even when I played it the first time I kept thinking how much of an idiot the Illusive Man was acting, how the main plot was sub-par and while the suicide mission was fun, the final "twist" was so absurd I was hoping it was a joke.

I have high hopes that Bioware will make ME3 the best ending to this series it can be, and everything I've been hearing I've been excited or cautiously optimistic about. But in the end, you're getting upset because someone on the internet has a different opinion to you. So get used to it.

 

[BGH122]

Any form of entertainment set in a sci-fi universe must be taken with a pinch of salt. No one argues against any Star Wars story line when something utterly unreasonable happens and is attributed to the Force. Nobody churns out a 3-page article of half-considered ranting about the sonic screwdriver that the Doctor wields which functions only when it is in the plot's best interest to do so.

I disagree with this point and it's something that comes up a lot across a lot of different media. There is a distinct difference between a work's internal rules/logic and hand waving something because it's sci-fi or fantasy. The Force and the sonic screwdriver are things that are defined internally, to various degrees, even if they are fantastical or stretch the bounds of science.

For instance, Lord of the Rings has wizards, ents, orcs, elves, magic, etc, and we are willing to accept that as it's presented. But everyone would be rightfully confused if suddenly Frodo pulled out sniper rifle and blew away Sauron with no explanation, because modern firearms were never introduced into the story, and arguing "well it's magic, you've got fireballs and stuff so anything can happen" strikes me as a poor excuse for bad writing.

This.

Part of the magic of The Force and the Sonic Screwdriver is that the creators didn't get so indepth as to their mechanism of function that it'd limit their scope. Why does The Force work in every situation? Because it runs through everything. How? That's not a question we'll even begin to debate without devolving into riddles.

Mass Effect had nothing even similar to this kind of over-arching deus ex machina. Their version of The Force was 'Shepard is awesome', but (as the article pointed out) he's either an, at best, very strong moron or a chronic self-defeatist. There were some pretty giant plot holes in ME2, but it was still enjoyable.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

When you spend an entire game devoted to building a fully constructed world, and describe the complete technical details of every item in the game, only to have those details glossed over in "streamlining" gameplay, then there is a reason to be cynical.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

I think he raised very good points in his article. Note how he did not rag on the characters--save for Illusive Man and Shep--because he believes those are well written. The plot in the game does have some serious logic flaws in it though. Pointing those out is how writers learn from their mistakes. A lot of them didn't even require the plot to be changed, simply tweaked a little.
Through in a dialogue scene where someone points out that blowing up the Mass Effect relay and killing hundreds of thousands of people is, in fact, a bad idea. Explain the Shep and her team need to go on the ship because they're looking for data and intel on the Collectors--wait, didn't they say that was the exact reason? Okay, that one was a little weak. "Shep, I'm sending you into what is likely a trap, but you need to spring it so we can get that data. Be on guard."
You raise a good point too. Anything set in any story must be taken with a grain of salt, because if it was all based in logic, Lord of the Rings would have only been one book (if that), the Death Star would have blown up Yavin, then the moon, the cops would have shot Joker on site, and Shep would never have worked with Cerberus, thus never giving us a second game.