Am I the only one who absolutely fucking loved hearing the ME1 Galaxy map theme as the music for this video?
[QUOTE=Canuhearme?;45068974]I'd argue the franchise started going to shit since Mass Effect 2, or at the very least from the very start of ME3, but alright.[/QUOTE]
It improved as a game, but got worse as a story.
ME1 gave us a grand enemy to fight that would be unrelenting and ultimately, unstoppable. It was our job to prevent them from even wanting to come here.
ME2 changes that into, they're already here and have been for a long time, we gotta stop them! Which made ME1 feel strangely insignificant. They didn't do us any favours by showing us how reapers are made either as that was also really quite stupid.
ME3 killed the remains of the story by having so many reapers in a war and not just roflstomping everything. We saw what a reaper could do on it's own, just one reaper could wreak havoc across a planet, and yet we manage to decimate a few of them in the story alone, let alone across the galaxy.
It just got boring and made the enemy less and less powerful for no real reason.
[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;45069086]It improved as a game, but got worse as a story.
ME1 gave us a grand enemy to fight that would be unrelenting and ultimately, unstoppable. It was our job to prevent them from even wanting to come here.
ME2 changes that into, they're already here and have been for a long time, we gotta stop them! Which made ME1 feel strangely insignificant. They didn't do us any favours by showing us how reapers are made either as that was also really quite stupid.
ME3 killed the remains of the story by having so many reapers in a war and not just roflstomping everything. We saw what a reaper could do on it's own, just one reaper could wreak havoc across a planet, and yet we manage to decimate a few of them in the story alone, let alone across the galaxy.
It just got boring and made the enemy less and less powerful for no real reason.[/QUOTE]
I kinda disagree about Mass Effect 3, at least before we got to the ending. Yeah, we took down a handful of them throughout the game but there were just so goddamn many of them that it never felt like we were having any significant impact. Sure, you could take one out with multiple ships and hyper-advanced weaponry or by a full-scale orbital bombardment, but there were 10 more to take its place. One thing I felt the game actually did rather well was emphasize and even demonstrate that all of our efforts against them, even our minor victories, were merely a stall. We were still completely and totally fucked, but we managed to give ourselves just a [I]little[/I] more time to try our last ditch effort.
Then the ending tossed all that into a gutter, but up until that point I was still genuinely intimidated by the Reapers: maybe not so much on an individual level like I was with Sovereign, but more now by the sheer number of them.
[QUOTE=JeanLuc761;45069126]I kinda disagree about Mass Effect 3, at least before we got to the ending. Yeah, we took down a handful of them throughout the game but there were just so goddamn many of them that it never felt like we were having any significant impact. Sure, you could take one out with multiple ships and hyper-advanced weaponry or by a full-scale orbital bombardment, but there were 10 more to take its place. One thing I felt the game actually did rather well was emphasize and even demonstrate that all of our efforts against them, even our minor victories, were merely a stall. We were still completely and totally fucked, but we managed to give ourselves just a [I]little[/I] more time to try our last ditch effort.
Then the ending tossed all that into a gutter, but up until that point I was still genuinely intimidated by the Reapers: maybe not so much on an individual level like I was with Sovereign, but more now by the sheer number of them.[/QUOTE]
I guess. I don't disagree, but I just found Sovreign to be such a good villain, that the Reaper horde became less intimidating
[QUOTE=haloguy234;45069066]
Here's how the series [I]should have[/I] gone:
ME1: Keep it as is
ME2: Researching and understanding the Reapers. Perhaps even learning about the Crucible and beginning construction on it and forging alliances.
ME3: Stopping the Reapers. The culmination of all of your choices from both the first and second game.
Instead we just got a convoluted mess in ME3, where learning about the Reapers, forging all those alliances, and then trying to stop them all happened at once. It made everything feel rushed and confusing.[/QUOTE]
Personally it would've been real neat-o if Mass Effect 1 was essentially ME2, only with Shepard as an N7 Agent, the entire game being his "exam" and Nilhus being your mentor (oh, and replace the dead Reaper with a Cerberus base that had abominable technology.)
Also replace Harbinger with Sovereign because fuck his Hammy voice. And also introduce Saren as a racist ass Spectre that gets results. He joins you in the Suicide Mission because below.
Saren discovers something in the Collector Base that starts his path down to evil. Instead of building a Reaper they're building a Conduit.
Mass Effect 2 would be like, shit I dunno man. Probably something like what you said, maybe uniting the Terminus Systems while Sovereign does sinister things in the background. Probably fight syndicates and governments propped up with Indoctrination. Shepard is a Spectre now, we learn a bit more about the setting and get a boat-load of insinuations on not just what the Reapers are, but why they're doing what they're doing.
Mass Effect 3 would be Mass Effect 1's plot in Mass Effect 3's setting, only replace the Reapers with Geth. Nilhus gets whacked, Saren goes rogue, the Conduit is found, Sovereign reveals himself and the Citadel's purpose is revealed. Sovereign is the only Reaper you meet in-the-flesh throughout the series, the rest deactivated and hibernating in Dark Space.
[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;45069140]I guess. I don't disagree, but I just found Sovreign to be such a good villain, that the Reaper horde became less intimidating[/QUOTE]
Well, Sovereign was good mostly because he was the only Reaper we had met up until that point, and he had both a voice and an intimidating presence. Most importantly, the motivations of the Reapers was left up in the air, with no real explanation given as to why they do what they do. Hell, even the Protheans didn't have a good explanation for it. Harbinger also did this, but he wasn't as interesting.
Once you remove the face and voice and drop in thousands of identical Reapers...even if they're just as deadly as Sovereign is, yeah, I can see how it loses impact.
"We're starting by asking the fans what they want"
Yeah? Did you fucking hire a [b]writer[/b]? Because fans wanted you to do it since ME2.
[QUOTE=JeanLuc761;45069190]Well, Sovereign was good mostly because he was the only Reaper we had met up until that point, and he had both a voice and an intimidating presence. Most importantly, the motivations of the Reapers was left up in the air, with no real explanation given as to why they do what they do. Hell, even the Protheans didn't have a good explanation for it. Harbinger also did this, but he wasn't as interesting.
Once you remove the face and voice and drop in thousands of identical Reapers...even if they're just as deadly as Sovereign is, yeah, I can see how it loses impact.[/QUOTE]
I found it funny how ME3 not just "defeated" the Reapers in its plot. It also killed them off as a concept, by revealing the horrible example of self-fulfilling prophecy by which they operate. It just killed the ME plotline.
ME(4) [b]can[/b] possibly work, I think, but it would require a reboot, nothing less. The universe is great and interesting, but the whole Reapers-Shepard thing just shits on it. It has to be removed.
[QUOTE=Canuhearme?;45069176]Personally it would've been real neat-o if Mass Effect 1 was essentially ME2, only with Shepard as an N7 Agent, the entire game being his "exam" and Nilhus being your mentor (oh, and replace the dead Reaper with a Cerberus base that had abominable technology.)
Also replace Harbinger with Sovereign because fuck his Hammy voice. And also introduce Saren as a racist ass Spectre that gets results. He joins you in the Suicide Mission because below.
Saren discovers something in the Collector Base that starts his path down to evil. Instead of building a Reaper they're building a Conduit.
Mass Effect 2 would be like, shit I dunno man. Probably something like what you said, maybe uniting the Terminus Systems while Sovereign does sinister things in the background. Probably fight syndicates and governments propped up with Indoctrination. Shepard is a Spectre now, we learn a bit more about the setting and get a boat-load of insinuations on not just what the Reapers are, but why they're doing what they're doing.
Mass Effect 3 would be Mass Effect 1's plot in Mass Effect 3's setting, only replace the Reapers with Geth. Nilhus gets whacked, Saren goes rogue, the Conduit is found, Sovereign reveals himself and the Citadel's purpose is revealed. Sovereign is the only Reaper you meet in-the-flesh throughout the series, the rest deactivated and hibernating in Dark Space.[/QUOTE]
That's an interesting idea, but I have the feeling that a lot of the trilogy would feel like stalling for time before we get to the main threat. I do like the idea of basically fighting the effects of the Reapers for ME1 and ME2 as opposed to the actual Reapers themselves, but I can't help but feel they need more presence.
Personally, here's how I would have done it:
[quote][B][U]Mass Effect 1: [/U][/B]Effectively the same as it was given to us, with more emphasis on Cerberus and their...interesting past. Would be nice if they gave us two sides of Cerberus as well, as opposed to the "these guys are fucked in the head" side. Clues as to the Reapers existence would be littered on the planets you went to, giving an actual reason to visit uncharted worlds beyond the occasional copypasted minor missions. Additionally, introduce the Collectors in a significant way so they don't feel like they're coming out of left field in ME2. Keep Sovereign as is, Saren as is, and end the game as it did. For the most part, ME1 set the stage just fine.[/quote]
[quote][U][B]Mass Effect 2: [/B][/U] Badass as the Suicide Mission was on its own, and as awesome as each squadmates personal stories were, this one needs a lot of revision if it wants to be relevant. Option 1 is to keep the Collectors in the storyline, much as they were, but with a lot more shady stuff going on instead of just the abduction of human colonists. There were allusions to black market deals going on, but this only got a mention. It would have been nice to see the Collectors acting more as Reaper agents rather than peons. Option 2: Fuck the Collectors, they never existed. Instead, Cerberus presents Shepard with the discovery of the Alpha Relay, which is guarded by a Reaper-controlled line of defenses and buildings as opposed to the scientific group we had in the DLC, and the destruction of this relay (as well as getting through the defenses) becomes the new Suicide Mission. Shepard recruits the squad we know and does their personal stories (because I loved them), but instead of Collectors, they're planet hopping and taking out/exorcising political and military leaders who have been subverted by Reaper indoctrination as well as Reaper agents. Each one you assist/kill gives you more information on the Reaper defense at Alpha Relay, yadda yadda. Suicide mission plays out roughly the same way in a different setting, because hot damn that mission was close to perfect. Story ends with the reveal of the MASSIVE Reaper fleet and their being delayed by Alpha Relay's destruction.[/quote]
[quote][U][B]Mass Effect 3: [/B][/U]Starts out the same way with Shepard on trial for the (necessary and unnecessary) crimes they committed in Mass Effect 2. Shepard tries to talk his way out of it, but fails, and it's up to Admiral Hackett to save the day and introduce to the group that they've been noticing some bizarre events out in the fringes of the galaxy. For the sake of impact, the Reapers aren't even seen until halfway through the game, though nuggets of information are dropped sporadically on missions taking place near the outermost outposts. People on the Citadel become more unsettled and fearful as more settlements start disappearing, some of them major, and the Citadel itself begins exhibiting strange behavior.
Once the Reapers have established a strong perimeter of the outermost relays (visualized on the galaxy map as "DISABLED" or whatever), they arrive en masse, spreading quickly to major population centers as well as homeworlds and cutting off escape routes one by one. Panic erupts, and the Council is in disarray as each tries to keep to the needs of its own people as well as the galaxy as a whole. Revolts start as citizens question how the Council did nothing to prevent this once they realize they're under attack by similar beings to the big fuck-off creature that attacked them 3 years ago. A couple radical groups form with the intentions of joining with the Reapers, believing it their only chance for survival. Surprisingly, I'd keep the Tuchanga and Rannoch arcs largely the same because it felt logically consistent for those races to act as they did, with the only significant alteration being that the Geth completely reject the Reaper code in order to chart their own path, something Legion discussed strongly in Mass Effect 2. Shepard and his team unite these people despite the galaxy wide panic, and effectively become the face of the resistance, taking out pockets of Reaper forces.
Now, all the while, Cerberus is in the background doing its own shady shit and a lot of missions deal with this. It's revealed that Cerberus has been experimenting with hyper-advanced weaponry and control technology since before the events of Mass Effect 1, with big advancements coming after Sovereign and Alpha Relay. Other factions, like the Turians, have also developed advanced weaponry like the THANIX cannon which is capable of significant impact, even against Reapers. Now of course, Illusive Man being who he is, is indoctrinated and his ego makes him think he can control the Reapers. I like this idea, and it's a fine allusion to Saren's tragic character arc. For all intents and purposes, I think we can keep all of that and end his character in much the same way.
Now then, the tricky part is resolving the Reaper's cycle of destruction, and I'll admit I don't have a concrete idea. Best I can come up with based on what I said above: The advanced weaponry that Cerberus and other factions have been working on prove to be an effective weapon against the Reapers, but not enough to emerge victorious, even with all of the races working together. The ace in the hole ends up being based on Cerberus' prototype methods of controlling the Reapers, but significantly repurposed. As I said before, Reapers can't be controlled and I want to hold true to that idea because it gives them more menace. Early in the game it's revealed that while Cerberus would not be able to achieve what The Illusive Man so vehemently believed (and was deluded) into thinking they could achieve, they did have some interesting insights into the networking structure of the Reapers, as well as more detail on the "Pulse" that Sovereign attempted to send back in Mass Effect 1 which, at the time, would have given control of the Citadel and the Relays to the Reapers. Shepard gives this information to the appropriate parties as well as EDI, and the whole game deals with learning more about the Reapers infrastructure as well as reenginering the Citadel's pulse to disable the Reapers, even if only temporarily, or at the very least to maintain control of the Citadel and the Relay network to launch further guerrilla attacks if things got desperate. Assuming you do things right, this pulse does work as intended and the Reapers are disabled long enough for our forces to win conventionally through superior tactics, if not superior firepower. Heavy losses would still be incurred though, with the severity of this being determined by prior actions, including how many races are working together and what happened to individual characters in the trilogy.
[/quote]
It's far from perfect, but I think it would have all flowed a lot better and would have resulted in a triumphant (if a bit cliche) ending.
I remember someone coming up with the idea of replacing the ghost kid with Avina, the tour guide VI on the Citadel. And instead of being the controller of the reapers or what the fuck ever, she was simply and AI created to oversee the cycle. And as the Asari discovered the Citadel, and have proven that they hide shit from the rest of the galactic community, understood that what she knew could be dangerous knowledge and told her to disguise herself as a standard VI.
Would have made more sense than the fucking ghost of a kid you saw for a total of 3 minutes at the start of the game.
[QUOTE=Skyward;45069419]I remember someone coming up with the idea of replacing the ghost kid with Avina, the tour guide VI on the Citadel. And instead of being the controller of the reapers or what the fuck ever, she was simply and AI created to oversee the cycle. And as the Asari discovered the Citadel, and have proven that they hide shit from the rest of the galactic community, understood that what she knew could be dangerous knowledge and told her to disguise herself as a standard VI.
Would have made more sense than the fucking ghost of a kid you saw for a total of 3 minutes at the start of the game.[/QUOTE]
That would mean Asari forgot about imminent [b]the end of the world[/b]. Then again, they forgot why they're so advanced.
[QUOTE=gudman;45069439]That would mean Asari forgot about imminent [b]the end of the world[/b]. Then again, they forgot why they're so advanced.[/QUOTE]
They didn't forget it, they just covered it up to maintain their assumed superiority.
[QUOTE=haloguy234;45068929]Actually, Synthesis has been mentioned in the narrative before. Saren was obsessed with the idea. Not a whole lot of people seem to have picked up on it though. At one point in ME1, he states verbatim "The relationship is symbiotic. Organic and machine intertwined. A union of flesh and steel. The strengths of both, and the weaknesses of neither. I am a vision of the future, Shepard. The evolution of all organic life. This is our destiny. Join Sovereign and experience a true rebirth." Saren didn't want to kill all organics in the galaxy. Saren was duped into believing that by following Sovereign's word, organic civilization would be "synthesized" into superior lifeforms. Hence the whole "union of flesh and steel" thing. And it makes perfect sense, too. In ME3 we're told that Synthesis is one of the things that the Catalyst/Reapers wish to ultimately achieve.[/QUOTE]
Wrong.
Saren's isn't talking about synthesis at all, he's talking about a reaper arbited independent gestalt, which is what a husk already is. Sovereign mentioned nothing about synthesis, ever.
What Saren is talking about is the turians replacing the Collectors as the Collectors replaced whatever race was servited in the last cycle. The catalyst says this is the only way to achieve a non apocalyptic solution, he never mentions it as a reaper endgame, and Leviathan says directly the reapers were NEVER created to ensure harmony of jack shit other than avoiding singularity to begin with because it means the loss of their entire hierarchy. The only KIND of mention of anything like Synthesis is with Legion, and it's all speculative. The Catalyst simply states the Reapers will no longer see fused begins as inferior.
[QUOTE=gudman;45069439]That would mean Asari forgot about imminent [b]the end of the world[/b]. Then again, they forgot why they're so advanced.[/QUOTE]
The Asari r dum as dicks tho
[QUOTE=JeanLuc761;45069444]They didn't forget it, they just covered it up to maintain their assumed superiority.[/QUOTE]
That was a joke. Plus their superiority isn't assumed, they are superior. They just covered up why. Covering up the end of all intelligent life is too much though still.
[QUOTE=Egon Spengler;45069082]Am I the only one who absolutely fucking loved hearing the ME1 Galaxy map theme as the music for this video?[/QUOTE]
wrawr + music = hope
A hope for not sucking.
[QUOTE=27X;45069468]
What Saren is talking about is the turians replacing the Collectors as the Collectors replaced whatever race was servited in the last cycle.[/QUOTE]
Ugh no, Saren knew nothing of Collectors. His ideas weren't even about turians, it was very simple: Join me and live as a Reaper puppet (which he didn't really know), or die. In the end it doesn't really matter all that much what he was talking about: he was indoctrinated, so according to what we know of indoctrination from the first game alone, these ideas weren't really his own.
Uh no, he says very clearly the turians will be a new vanguard.
The old vanguard is the Collectors.
Previous knowledge doesn't have to be assumed or even given, specially as we see Marauders operating as literal command and control and Collectors moved to blitz troops seeded behind enemy lines, complete with report by Hackett that Collectors are laying ambushes out of slow moving civilian transports.
Saren's offer isn't general, it's directly to Shepard.
[QUOTE=27X;45069543]Uh no, he says very clearly the turians will be a new vanguard.
The old vanguard is the Collectors.
Previous knowledge doesn't have to be assumed or even given, specially as we see Marauders operating as literal command and control and Collectors moved to blitz troops seeded behind enemy lines, complete with report by Hackett that Collectors are laying ambushes out of slow moving civilian transports.
Saren's offer isn't general, it's directly to Shepard.[/QUOTE]
I had to go look up the speech, and Saren's major quotes were as follows:
- "Is submission not preferable to extinction?"
- "If we work with the Reapers, if we make ourselves useful, think how many lives could be spared! Once I understood this, I joined Sovereign, though I was aware of the...dangers."
- "I'm not doing this for myself, don't you see? Sovereign will succeed, it's inevitable. My way is the only way any of us will survive. I'm forging an alliance between us and the Reapers, between organics and machines, and in doing so I will save more lives than have ever existed."
Nothing about that implies Turians will be the new vanguard, but rather that Saren is under the (incorrect) belief that by submitting to the Reaper's will and making themselves useful that they can be spared absolute annihilation.
After Virmire and Noveria and Anderson's backstory, it's pretty clear Saren has little regard for anyone but his own people.
I never got the feeling from the rest of his stuff that he had any regard for anyone but the turians, especially after Virmire and Noveria.
I saw him and Pressly as essentially two sides of the same coin, Pressly came to understand his bias, and Saren did not, especially where Anderson's backstory is concerned.
I never got the feeling anything would be magnanimous, nor did he intend for it be.
[QUOTE=27X;45069543]Uh no, he says very clearly the turians will be a new vanguard.
The old vanguard is the Collectors.
Previous knowledge doesn't have to be assumed or even given, specially as we see Marauders operating as literal command and control and Collectors moved to blitz troops seeded behind enemy lines, complete with report by Hackett that Collectors are laying ambushes out of slow moving civilian transports.
Saren's offer isn't general, it's directly to Shepard.[/QUOTE]
Yeah as JeanLuc already said, I don't think Saren ever said anything about Turian, he only said "we". And not only Shepard - anyone who can be useful, see Asari matriarch in his team.
And I insist that previous knowledge matters, because Saren couldn't know about Collectors, for the simple reason there weren't any in ME universe at that point.
[editline]11th June 2014[/editline]
[QUOTE=27X;45069585]After Virmire and Noveria and Anderson's backstory, it's pretty clear Saren has little regard for anyone but his own people.
I never got the feeling from the rest of his stuff that he had any regard for anyone but the turians, especially after Virmire and Noveria.
I saw him and Pressly as essentially two sides of the same coin, Pressly came to understand his bias, and Saren did not, especially where Anderson's backstory is concerned.
I never got the feeling anything would be magnanimous, not did he intend for it be.[/QUOTE]
I'm not sure I remember anything that would give a clue that Saren even cared about his own people. It's not to be automatically assumed, considering what his character is.
Taking that tact would say that only Destroy mattered at all then, because the other two were never assumed to be an option other than the barest of hints with a renegade choice of keeping the collector base, much the same as saying Yoda never existed until ESB, so anything he did before that is irrelevant.
[QUOTE=27X;45069610]Taking that tact would say that only Destroy mattered at all then, because the other two were never assumed to be an option other than the barest of hints with a renegade choice of keeping the collector base, much the same as saying Yoda never existed until ESB, so anything he did before that is irrelevant.[/QUOTE]
But there was no indication that Saren somehow contacted the Collectors. If I remember correctly, he had no way: Collectors weren't really much active before Sovereign's downfall, they were simply backup plan and silent observers. Sovereign was the vangard by himself, no one else was needed. His only purpose was to activate the Citadel relay, one way or the other. Collectors never came into play and weren't intended as a vanguard for the invasion.
I don't mean vanguard as spearhead, I mean vanguard as "first among equals", much akin to what Saren regarded his station within Spectres.
[QUOTE=27X;45069693]I don't mean vanguard as spearhead, I mean vanguard as "first among equals", much akin to what Saren regarded his station within Spectres.[/QUOTE]
Oh, yeah, right. But still he didn't know of Collectors. At least couldn't know what they actually are and how they're connected to the Reapers - nobody knew that, and Sovereign hardly had a reason to share such knowledge. But I still think he couldn't care less about his own people, as long as he and those [b]he[/b] deemed worthy would survive. He was ruthless and individualistic to begin with, and Saren just made him think he's somehow more important that Saren actually was, and that did the trick.
You're absolutely right in that there was no Synthesis in Saren's vision of future. One could argue that he himself was the epitome of it - a cyborg, but that's far-fetched.
I fucking loved mass effect 1
I fucking loved mass effect 2
I fucking loved mass effect 3
I fucking [U][B]LOATHED[/B][/U] the ending of 3
anyone know the soundtrack that starts at 1:18?
[QUOTE=Xephio;45070252]anyone know the soundtrack that starts at 1:18?[/QUOTE]
[url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hV1pPgpcAVw[/url]
[QUOTE=Fayez;45066169]I could write paragraphs on how shit ME3 was. The combat, story, new characters, ending, general focus, previous game retconns, copy paste Gary Stu villains, were all awful.
Priority Tuchanka and the Citadel DLC are the only thing that ME3 created that were good.
The multiplayer was the funnest part of the game, and for a single player RPG, that is fuckin [I]sad.[/I][/QUOTE]
I could also write paragraphs on how Mass Effect 3 was not that bad and how Video Game story, being a piece of art, should not be about pleasing the fans at that moment. I could write paragraphs about how idiotic all the hate hype was about a game that although far from perfect wasn't bad at all. Personally I didn't even find the ending that bad.
The only problem I saw in the game that I can relate to is seeing how every choice you had in the previous games affect little or nothing of the story.
Seriously, ME3 wasn't bad at all. They didn't want to make your generic bioware game with a cliche boss fight at the end. They wanted to focus on a more action cinematic approached that focuses on Sheppard's struggle against this overwhelming threat and they nailed it. Of course they could do a less casual game, but that wasn't even the goal of ME2.
People expected ME series to be something it's not and that was the major thing about it.
Ass Effect
If you were to look at Mass Effect and Mass Effect 3 without knowing they're in the same series you could easily assume they're unrelated games. They wrote cheques with ME1 that they didn't cash with ME2 or 3.
It went from 80s style space opera to dark 90s style action and stayed there, and that isn't what a lot of people signed up for. And the story suffered for it.
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