Why is the Defence Council full of useless idiots? The dialogue in this scene is awfully cheesy as well. "We fight or we die" indeed...
Politics are always a sketchy subject, people cannot act openly without inviting a "Political Shitstorm".
The Reapers shouldn't be invading Earth so early in the game. We've had no opportunity to develop an emotional investment in the location and population beyond what we already possess innately as humans.
Isnt that enough? your whole planet is being destroyed, your home, your family, your friends, your culture.
Because of this and because the invasion has been so heavily hyped in the marketing, the actual moment is frightfully dull. There's just no impact to it, no sense of surprise.
Ill agree to this partly because we dont get to connect with the modern times earth.
Oh look, they've killed everyone attending the Defence Council session, making the previous scene pretty much pointless except to showcase the invasion. I don't even care that everyone died because, once again, we have no attachment to them. I also don't buy that the only survivors were Shepard and Anderson. It's just too convenient that the two named characters escaped with a few scratches and some bruising while everyone else got pulped. We should see people pulling themselves to their feet, screaming for help, trying to clear the doorway.
And now you know why there will never be a good faithful videogame movie adaptation, the story always has retarded plot points. Im being serious here, every game has at least 3 WTF moments. Its like in the first game, where Shepard and co dont die from the giant Shrimp tentacle landing on top of them. or on ME2 when the team survives the fall just because you completed the loyalty mission.
Why is all the cool stuff happening in the background? Sure we get a few stray blasts headed in our direction but for the most part all the major action is seperate from the player. We should be on the streets, not wandering about atop a skyscraper. We ought to be in the thick of things, fighting through waves of husks, leading survivors to safety, fleeing and hiding, dodgeing the concrete shattering steps of a Reaper. The sort of thing that might actually generate some excitement. In it's current state the opening manages to feel very rushed, whilst paradoxically lacking any real urgency. The lack of emotional investment I mentioned earlier? Being removed from the action like this doesn't help.
While I do agree that going out to the streets would have been more exciting, I fail to see how it would have been set up, Shepard was for all intents and purposes arraigned in a military base.
So heat sinks are being reffered to as ammo now? It was annoying enough when they were introduced in a pointless attempt to make the gunplay feel more like a traditional shooter. Now it's as if the writers don't even care enough to keep up the pretense.
Agreed, its an annoyance, but I hope they at least put something in the codex to reference the change.
The scene with the kid is a weak and obvious attempt at tugging on our heart strings. It fails because his dialogue and behaviour doesn't really gel with the image of a terrified child.
"Everyone's dying" the kid whines, and yet we've barely seen anyone since before the invasion. Look off the edge of the skyscraper and aside from the collossal Reapers (which I'll admit are really cool) and a handful of painfully low resolution 2d humans, the streets look deserted. Where are all the vehicles, the mobilising soldiers, the crowds of fleeing civillians, the wreckage, or the corpses?
Caught with their pants down? I mean we do see transport ships flying around and you do help those wounded soldiers near the gun ship. You did help them right?
Why is Shepard acting so Earth-centric? Paragon Shepard has always recognised that the Reapers represented a threat to the entire galaxy, not just to Humans, and that we couldn't stand by ourselves and expect to survive. I
really hate that I'm not allowed to pick what Shepard is saying. Apparently a lot of dialogue options were cut from the demo to save space, but the result doesn't represent what I expect from a Mass Effect game. Couldn't they have cut Character Creation instead? I certainly wouldn't have minded.
Its a Demo, looking at the dialog wheel, it seems there might be more options.
This whole gameplay sequence feels too quiet. Aside from the distant explosions, occasional set-pieces and the infrequent action sequences, there are long stretches where not a lot is happening in the audio department. Couldn't we have had some pulse-pounding background music, maybe some panicked radio chatter from the beleaguered defenders? At the very least that might have helped with the urgency problems.
Again its a demo, if the main game doesnt have radio chatter and the like then it will be an actual grievance.
Ashley says over the radio that the Reapers are about to take down a dreadnought. We then see a Reaper blow up what looks to be a relatively small Alliance ship. Certainly it doesn't look much larger than the Normandy. In previous games dreadnoughts were described as being a kilometer long and incapable of generating a mass effect field strong enough allow entry into a planet's atmosphere.
Im hoping that wasnt the dreadnought, but yeah I agree.
Why does Anderson want to stay ground side? He's too old to be worth much fighting on the front lines, while his high level of military and political experience makes him more valuable in an administration position. He should be taken to the Citadel in order to organise the other races, or otherwise taken to an Alliance millitary installation where he can rally and direct Earth's defenders. Is he still on the Citadel Council? I've heard some sources claim he resigned, but the demo never mentions his position.
The leaks suggest he resigns over Shepards trial, its uncertain if this is a thing or if it will be affected by choice.
And that kid shows up again, and shortly thereafter gets vaporised by a Reaper. Again, an attempt at creating emotional impact, but again it fails because we have no reason to care about him. We barely know him. He had maybe three lines of bad dialogue. We don't even know his name for pity's sake.
Im hoping that it isnt part of the reaper negotiation subplot that was leaked, that it might be a link between Shepard and the reapers after being exposed to the artifact on the Arrival DLC, but everything seems to be pointing to Shepard imagining the kid or it being implanted into Shepards brain.
Why didn't the child-killing Reaper or any of the others in the area even try to shoot down the Normandy during that overly soppy sequence? It got the shuttles easily enough, and the Normandy was virtually stationary in front of it the whole time. Surely Harbinger has labelled Shepard and the Normandy as high priority targets after the events of the previous games. And why prioritise the civillian targets over the Normandy anyway? I thought the Reapers goal was to harvest organic life, especially humanity if Mass Effect 2 was any indication. I suspect that organics become significantly harder to harvest when they're reduced to so many vaporised particles drifting in the wind. The Reapers should be performing surgical strikes on millitary targets while limiting collateral damage. Instead it almost looks like they're doing the opposite.
Agreed that was a contrived scene, and If I had to defend it I would say that the Normandys stealth fields were active, but the game will have to mention that for it to be a worthy defense.
Okay well that grew into something rather more...thorough...than I'd intended, but I hope I got my feeling's across. I know some of those point's look rather nitpicky, but as they say, the devil is in the details. While I did enjoy the combat, I can't really say that I've got high hopes for the story quality after this.
