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Post by samhain444 on Dec 11, 2018 17:26:45 GMT
I think that anyone that has played the trilogy more than a few times has the "ending" that they feel would be better than the one we got...not that it actually would be better but they'd like to think so at least. I think they were on the right track with the EMS and how doing more within the galaxy, gathering more resources, and acquiring the pieces necessary to complete the crucible helped determine how unstable/stable it was when hooked to the Citadel and how destructive it was once fired. Honestly, in my first playthrough, I thought we were going to be faced with a KOTOR-like decision of being able to "Control" the Catalyst/Reapers and use them to our will if the players Renegade score was high enough. I think the biggest mistake in the original concept of the ending was the "The End?"/cliffhanger aspect of allowing the player to fill in the blanks of a series that was rather literal to that point in what it was trying to say. While I didn't think the original ending was that good, I also didn't have the visceral reaction some others did and it didn't prevent from doing other playthroughs...to this day, with the added EC, it still doesn't, as I do a trilogy run each year (yes, I still play the original ME1 all the way through just minus Pinnacle Station). If the writing quality of the "Initiation" and "Annihilation" novels could be brought into the next "Mass Effect" game, I think you'd have something there. There will be more "Mass Effect"...it will be interesting to see where they take it from here. That may have been their intention but breaking everything down to a numerical value potentially devalues the ending to some degree. No matter who you saved or killed and no matter what choices you've made can still net you the best ending for which ever ending (RBG) you choose. Lets take the "HUGE" Rachni" decision...100 war assets. A drop in the bucket. They bit off more than they chew...it started with Mass Effect 2 and introducing an a shit-load of new characters. I loved "Mass Effect 2" and the world BioWare allowed me inhabit, so radiant in blues and oranges, but a lot of what it took to set it up was completely unnecessary. In the end, it created a scenario where they didn't have enough time and resources to address every dangling plot point, every ME1 and ME2 crew member...it was reduced to numbers to account for their inclusion in the overall ending but, yeah, it was transactional. It didn't ruin the series for me or prevent me from playing it as there were enough sequences that did end in a satisfactory way (Rannoch, Curing the Genophage). What's done is done...hopefully they plot it out better over multiple games next time.
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Post by SwobyJ on Dec 11, 2018 20:24:25 GMT
That's also kind of the point. Not exactly. The Catalyst believed the solution worked for a billion years. The thing is, anything that purports to be saving a person by killing said person isn't working. I mean that it is essentially the case in the games that the Reapers could even be basically correct in their grand scale of information and conclusions from that information, but still be wrong because they themselves lack crucial context about what is in front of their faces. Context that includes notions like 'ethics' or 'kindness' or anything EDI ends up valuing. I've said this before, but when a solution works, that doesn't mean it is a perfect or better solution. It doesn't mean we like the solution. It simply fits the parameters of success. -organic life continues to occur through the cycles, there's no AI that covers the galaxy preventing organic life -organic lives inevitably end, the Reapers just end it at a point they decide -deceased organic life continues to exist through InsertSciFi about DNA material containing the key to memories, identities (like it or not, that's what the series was getting at) -the Reapers (and in a sense synthetics generally?) think that Reaper-level of code is indicative of a form of life itself, so the DNA material all provides a world in a Reaper consciousness that all 'harvested' still have their 'souls' (in a sense) 'ascended', to a realm we can't visit but the Reapers clearly think is legitimate and not just a tombstone -Leviathan bias can also be said to taint this whole process, especially the creation of the Intelligence It is all layers, and each layer can have an organic go 'uh, wait a minute' about it, but organics are 'ignorant' in Reaper views. And the organics are indeed ignorant, but they are written to be indicated to understand more of the nature of life than machines that layer up their bullshit and double, triple, quarruple, etc down on it. The bullshit isn't the data the Reapers have nor exactly their particular conclusions from it, but the bullshit is the levels of shoddy justification for a process so horrifically flawed. MET is very 'this is how space Nazis would work', and it isn't talking just about Cerberus, but the Reapers and several of the species histories (thus stories like Quarian/Geth genocide). The Nazis being evil about it didn't prove all arguments and aspects of anything to do with eugenics wrong, and to this day we try to dissuade the worst of genetic 'dead ends'. But the Nazis were evil about it. Theoretically, someone dying and going through an advanced enough process to convert their genetic+mental 'essence' into a near entirely perfect copy is a way to 'save' them, and maybe that will be required because that death is something considered to be pathetically pointless and sad and unnecessary (as the Leviathans may see the whole synthetic/organic conflict, in their arrogant way), but the Reapers were still Mega Space Nazis about it and there's no way out of this that doesn't mean stopping them. What remains true is that the Reapers stopped synthetics from overwhelming organic life in the Milky Way. Killing whole planets of people, whole species, isn't eliminating all existence of organic life. We don't know the Leviathan experience, but I think it can be assumed that they had plenty of experiences where synthetics would wipe out or nearly wipe out organic creators until Leviathan intervention. And it may be that in something like MEA, we'll see that the Remnant 'Jaardan' are from regretful machines that are reviving their creator 'Angara' (just a theory, just an example). There's nothing that says the Reapers are right - there's everything that says that the Reapers formed a solution that accomplished its desired effect. Milky Way hasn't turned to grey goo, or converted to a machine mind. Even the Synthesis ME3 result is a loophole around that, where organic life itself is redesigned but arguably still a (new) form of organic life.
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Post by dmc1001 on Dec 11, 2018 20:44:11 GMT
I've said this before, but when a solution works, that doesn't mean it is a perfect or better solution. It doesn't mean we like the solution. It simply fits the parameters of success. Yeah, but here's the thing. Synthetics kill organics. Reapers kill organics. Organics dead regardless. We also have evidence that organics have been able to outwit organics and we know for a fact that the quarians would have eventually been able to destroy the geth (see: ME3). Therefore, the Reapers were wrong. The fact that the Reapers sabotaged relations between organics and synthetics made it worse. Happened with the zha, who lived in harmony with the zha'til until the Reapers took them over and turned them against their creators. Geth only wanted to be left alone until Sovereign came along and turned them against all organics. Sorry, but the Reapers made any problem that existed far worse. They weren't the solution.
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Post by arcanistranger on Dec 11, 2018 20:49:33 GMT
Well, here we go again -- people whining about the last 1% of a game not doing what the other 99% of the game already did.
I mean, BioWare knew that all you people needed was an epilogue that was literally nothing but repeating things players already knew.
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Post by SwobyJ on Dec 11, 2018 21:00:49 GMT
I've said this before, but when a solution works, that doesn't mean it is a perfect or better solution. It doesn't mean we like the solution. It simply fits the parameters of success. Yeah, but here's the thing. Synthetics kill organics. Reapers kill organics. Organics dead regardless. We also have evidence that organics have been able to outwit organics and we know for a fact that the quarians would have eventually been able to destroy the geth (see: ME3). Therefore, the Reapers were wrong. The fact that the Reapers sabotaged relations between organics and synthetics made it worse. Happened with the zha, who lived in harmony with the zha'til until the Reapers took them over and turned them against their creators. Geth only wanted to be left alone until Sovereign came along and turned them against all organics. Sorry, but the Reapers made any problem that existed far worse. They weren't the solution. Yes the Reapers are wrong. I'm not sure about them making any problem worse, only still terrible but better in ways. Sure it isn't detailed to us, but at least personally, I can imagine the Leviathan situation to be far more chaotic, with far more frequent genocides of organic people, and that it wasn't just 'yawn, this bad thing happened a few times, let's make an Intelligence ourselves to figure it out for us'. The impression I got was that the harvest cycles allowed 10ks years periods with relatively far less chaos between the two groups. Both in elevating organics to a level they could counter any AI uprising better in the meantime (through mass effect tech), and in cutting synthetics off from surpassing organics, at a calculated time/interval. With Leviathans it would be a far more disjointed and dangerous environment that the Leviathans are more constantly putting out the fires of (and frankly, may have had failures in the meantime). It is a guess, but an easy one.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 11, 2018 22:25:35 GMT
I already know well how you feel about Bioware's endings, but this statement is about gamer endings... and I've not seen any ones that are better than Bioware's. As we've discussed many times, chopping the ending off with Shepard dying at the console before triggering the crucible would have been your "no answer" ending... but no one seems to like that idea either. One reason is that it would also have to have been a definitive ending to the series... not sequels since the state of galaxy would have had to forever remain an unknown. MET was a story, IMO, destined to wind up in ending difficulty right from it's start in ME1.... mostly because Bioware itself did not have a clear concept themselves as to what the Reapers were and what their role in a Trilogy would be.... and then their ideas kept changing throughout the writing process.
Player answers for the endings vary in quality. But I reject that they were all worse than what we got. IMO anything, or nothing, would have been a step up.
Me, I would say ending the game at the start of the beam run would have been the best "no answer" ending. Let players figure out for themselves what the final act would have entailed.
But as I have said before, Bioware's first mistake was in not outlining the trilogy. And in doing so, utterly wasted the trilogy's potential.
My opinion is that they are all worse than what we got. I would not end the game prior to the beam because it's after that point where we get closure between Shep and Anderson and Shep and TIM. These are the major secondary characters (that are actually characters) in the game.
Still, my focus is on moving forward from where we are actually at... which is in Andromeda now. The rest is water under the bridge... said and done long ago. Redoing it won't make it go away. It's not going ot "fix" anything really. Let them move forward from where they have already planned to move forward. They chose to make Andromeda and a good story can be written from where we have left off in that game.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 11, 2018 23:22:38 GMT
Well, here we go again -- people whining about the last 1% of a game not doing what the other 99% of the game already did. I mean, BioWare knew that all you people needed was an epilogue that was literally nothing but repeating things players already knew. Here we go again, A player bitching about another player...
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Post by Cyberstrike on Dec 12, 2018 18:25:50 GMT
They should have had a clue before they even finished ME1! Okay? I mean, based on the schedule and release of the three games (from 9/2007 through 03/2012) they certainly thought they had a clue. Things don't always work out like you'd want.
People think that games are like movies in how they're made and that might be true for some games but I don't think if they had a hand-written outline locked in a bank security deposit box somewhere in middle of Canada there would have been changes to it just made because of scheduling, technology, money, resources, player feedback, the state of and changes to BioWare and of the larger video game industry, and many other factors.
I have ran a fantasy wrestling e-fed for over a decade and I always did an outline from major in-universe PPV to the next PPV with as 2-10 in-universe TV shows in-between them and I was constantly making changes to my shows adding, subtracting, combining, splitting apart matches and players trying to make the stories make sense due to any number of real-world reasons.
I once wrote an outline for close to 25 shows and by time that was done the final version was nothing like the original outline.
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Post by samhain444 on Dec 12, 2018 18:53:54 GMT
Okay? I mean, based on the schedule and release of the three games (from 9/2007 through 03/2012) they certainly thought they had a clue. Things don't always work out like you'd want.
People think that games are like movies in how they're made and that might be true for some games but I don't think if they had a hand-written outline locked in a bank security deposit box somewhere in middle of Canada there would have been changes to it just made because of scheduling, technology, money, resources, player feedback, the state of and changes to BioWare and of the larger video game industry, and many other factors.
I have ran a fantasy wrestling e-fed for over a decade and I always did an outline from major in-universe PPV to the next PPV with as 2-10 in-universe TV shows in-between them and I was constantly making changes to my shows adding, subtracting, combining, splitting apart matches and players trying to make the stories make sense due to any number of real-world reasons.
I once wrote an outline for close to 25 shows and by time that was done the final version was nothing like the original outline.
Especially with "Mass Effect". They transitioned from Drew to Mac leading the narrative between the first and second game and the contrast in styles shows. In "ME2", they obviously wanted to open up the universe more and have it feel more "lived-in". The "trunk" of the narrative became less important in comparison to the "branches" that hung off of it so missions that occupied big chunks of time in the first game like Feros or Noveria were changed to "Dossiers" and bite-sized chunks. It felt like Ridley Scott directing the original and Tony Scott directing the sequel and "Good" or "Bad" in that regard depended on personal preference.
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Post by dmc1001 on Dec 12, 2018 21:41:34 GMT
I'm not sure about them making any problem worse, only still terrible but better in ways. If the Reapers alter things so that synthetics that were previously at peace with organics now are in conflict, they have made things worse. Maybe they would have gone to war eventually. We don't know. What we do know is that the Reapers actively took control of at least some synthetics and turned them against organics. How is that in any way NOT making it worse? Even if you posit that "saving" races in Reaper form is acceptable, you cannot deny that the Reapers intentionally caused organic/synthetic conflict in some cases. By doing so, they have failed their mission. The object was to prevent conflict not foment it. FAIL.
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Post by SwobyJ on Dec 12, 2018 22:14:38 GMT
I'm not sure about them making any problem worse, only still terrible but better in ways. If the Reapers alter things so that synthetics that were previously at peace with organics now are in conflict, they have made things worse. Maybe they would have gone to war eventually. We don't know. What we do know is that the Reapers actively took control of at least some synthetics and turned them against organics. How is that in any way NOT making it worse? Even if you posit that "saving" races in Reaper form is acceptable, you cannot deny that the Reapers intentionally caused organic/synthetic conflict in some cases. By doing so, they have failed their mission. The object was to prevent conflict not foment it. FAIL. The object was not to prevent all conflict, but to ensure the existence of organic life in the galaxy. Conflict was not just not prevented, but encouraged at a regulated cosmic level. 'Chaos' that Shepard and organics brought wasn't the conflict, but conflict that the Reapers thought they could not control. Conflict that threatened the cycle solution, for worse (that the Reapers opposed) or better (that the Intelligence saw 'new possibilities'). They did their job. The issue is that saying you did your job is one of the worst defenses ever (again, Space Nazis), and the purpose you did your job for can still be massively ethically or even just functionally inadequate. The Reapers already accepted the Intelligences' and Leviathans' position, likely with much supporting (but perhaps not entirely proving data) that all organic and synthetic relations ends in conflict, conflict that the organics lose. They fed into it on their own, and were okay with that. It was an accepted order, but what the Reapers were to serve was the idea that all organic life need not be wiped out from the galactic region, nor that organics cannot exist again in some acceptable (to the Reaper mentality) form. So they 'save' them from something that is deemed to be inevitable. The Prothians had that ME3 thing of the strong dominating the weak and all the philosophy around that. The Leviathans seemed to see things similarly. The Reapers seemed to see it somewhat similarly, but that they do a service to organic life by preserving it in Reaper form. Shepard never escapes this thing either (strong dominate weak), as Shep is not actually some miracle worker, but they find some other way; briefly uniting the galaxy, strong and weak - something even the Reapers hadn't seemed to really do, no matter all their tech and manipulations. When something bad happens over and over and over again, you want to take preventative measures about it. The Reaper preventative measure was the harvest cycles, and it did its job. But the Reapers seemed to robotically (for several reasons) not question the job itself, once established. No organics went truly 'extinct' due to Reaper preservation. And the Milky Way didn't find itself covered in only synthetic material/life/entities with no organics, due to Reaper harvest cycles. Of course MEA proposes further that the Reapers were never entirely right - so far we see a synthetic race/faction that for whatever still pretty unknown reason, wants to encourage and support organic life. But there's a whole backstory there we don't know about. The Reapers took a faulty-enough premise and came to very-faulty actions with it, stupid machines!, but they did their job within this premise. There's a reason why our hero yells at the Leviathans, yells at the Reapers, etc, and it's not just because Shepard likes yelling. It is because for as ignorant as Shepard indeed is, they understand basics of humanity/organicity(lol), that the Reapers never have. Whatever organic life they may have preserved within themselves is likely in something of a stasis, a tomb prison controlled by several major layers of technology and (il)logic, unable to stop the nightmare of frequent extinction events. The Reapers are not good. But they did their job.
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Post by dmc1001 on Dec 13, 2018 1:40:56 GMT
Of course MEA proposes further that the Reapers were never entirely right - so far we see a synthetic race/faction that for whatever still pretty unknown reason, wants to encourage and support organic life. But there's a whole backstory there we don't know about. The Reapers never were right. They were stupid and they failed to be useful. If synthetics we create wipe us out, that's our business. Darwinism at its finest.
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Post by themikefest on Dec 13, 2018 2:06:55 GMT
Of course MEA proposes further that the Reapers were never entirely right - so far we see a synthetic race/faction that for whatever still pretty unknown reason, wants to encourage and support organic life. But there's a whole backstory there we don't know about. The Reapers never were right. They were stupid and they failed to be useful. If synthetics we create wipe us out, that's our business. Darwinism at its finest. Yep. Just destroy the reapers. If the chaos returns as Leviathan Jr. says, then let the galaxy deal with the problem. The reapers were never needed
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Post by dmc1001 on Dec 13, 2018 3:59:28 GMT
The Reapers never were right. They were stupid and they failed to be useful. If synthetics we create wipe us out, that's our business. Darwinism at its finest. Yep. Just destroy the reapers. If the chaos returns as Leviathan Jr. says, then let the galaxy deal with the problem. The reapers were never needed They were never useful in the first place, not even a billion years ago. Clearly, the Leviathan were able to handle mere synthetics that arose among the slave races. Problem was the slaves themselves were killed off. There was never any suggestion that the Leviathan were in danger. That only happened after they created the Intelligence using technology none of the slave races had access to. Synthetics from the slave races posed no threat to the Leviathan. Hence, the premise that synthetics were a danger to organics was already false from the very start.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 13, 2018 5:41:00 GMT
Yep. Just destroy the reapers. If the chaos returns as Leviathan Jr. says, then let the galaxy deal with the problem. The reapers were never needed They were never useful in the first place, not even a billion years ago. Clearly, the Leviathan were able to handle mere synthetics that arose among the slave races. Problem was the slaves themselves were killed off. There was never any suggestion that the Leviathan were in danger. That only happened after they created the Intelligence using technology none of the slave races had access to. Synthetics from the slave races posed no threat to the Leviathan. Hence, the premise that synthetics were a danger to organics was already false from the very start. The "danger" synthetics posed to Leviathan is clearly spelled out in the DLC - "Tribute does not flow from a dead race." Leviathan had become completely dependent on their slave races for everything in the form of tribute. By posing a danger to those slave races, they were indirectly a danger to Leviathan, who felt they could no longer fend for themselves and needed to receive tribute in order to survive.
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Post by dmc1001 on Dec 13, 2018 10:03:11 GMT
They were never useful in the first place, not even a billion years ago. Clearly, the Leviathan were able to handle mere synthetics that arose among the slave races. Problem was the slaves themselves were killed off. There was never any suggestion that the Leviathan were in danger. That only happened after they created the Intelligence using technology none of the slave races had access to. Synthetics from the slave races posed no threat to the Leviathan. Hence, the premise that synthetics were a danger to organics was already false from the very start. The "danger" synthetics posed to Leviathan is clearly spelled out in the DLC - "Tribute does not flow from a dead race." Leviathan had become completely dependent on their slave races for everything in the form of tribute. By posing a danger to those slave races, they were indirectly a danger to Leviathan, who felt they could no longer fend for themselves and needed to receive tribute in order to survive. Maybe, but the synthetics still never rose up to challenge the Leviathan. As I interpreted it, the synthetics were a hassle but not a direct threat to them. They must have repeatedly been crushing synthetics. It was a tedious process and, yes, it threatened their resources. Realistically, if they'd wanted to, they could have thrown their spheres all over and made sure the races never made AI. Simple solution but they couldn't see it.
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Post by Gileadan on Dec 13, 2018 10:10:16 GMT
The synthetic vs organics paradox: the only synthetics that are actually a danger to organics are those that kill organics so they can't build synthetics that would kill organics.
Hogwash Prime.
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Post by Cyberstrike on Dec 13, 2018 12:58:58 GMT
People think that games are like movies in how they're made and that might be true for some games but I don't think if they had a hand-written outline locked in a bank security deposit box somewhere in middle of Canada there would have been changes to it just made because of scheduling, technology, money, resources, player feedback, the state of and changes to BioWare and of the larger video game industry, and many other factors.
I have ran a fantasy wrestling e-fed for over a decade and I always did an outline from major in-universe PPV to the next PPV with as 2-10 in-universe TV shows in-between them and I was constantly making changes to my shows adding, subtracting, combining, splitting apart matches and players trying to make the stories make sense due to any number of real-world reasons.
I once wrote an outline for close to 25 shows and by time that was done the final version was nothing like the original outline.
Especially with "Mass Effect". They transitioned from Drew to Mac leading the narrative between the first and second game and the contrast in styles shows. In "ME2", they obviously wanted to open up the universe more and have it feel more "lived-in". The "trunk" of the narrative became less important in comparison to the "branches" that hung off of it so missions that occupied big chunks of time in the first game like Feros or Noveria were changed to "Dossiers" and bite-sized chunks. It felt like Ridley Scott directing the original and Tony Scott directing the sequel and "Good" or "Bad" in that regard depended on personal preference.
I think the whole "trilogy with decisions carrying over from game to game" was really a marketing gimmick because the Xbox 360 and PS3 now had large hard drives, and that was something BioWare did with the BG games and it was a way to complete with Halo and help sell Mass Effect 1 when Mass Effect 2 came out and to sell Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2 when Mass Effect 3 came out and then sell the Mass Effect Trilogy set when all 3 games were out.
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Post by Iakus on Dec 13, 2018 15:38:39 GMT
Especially with "Mass Effect". They transitioned from Drew to Mac leading the narrative between the first and second game and the contrast in styles shows. In "ME2", they obviously wanted to open up the universe more and have it feel more "lived-in". The "trunk" of the narrative became less important in comparison to the "branches" that hung off of it so missions that occupied big chunks of time in the first game like Feros or Noveria were changed to "Dossiers" and bite-sized chunks. It felt like Ridley Scott directing the original and Tony Scott directing the sequel and "Good" or "Bad" in that regard depended on personal preference.
I think the whole "trilogy with decisions carrying over from game to game" was really a marketing gimmick because the Xbox 360 and PS3 now had large hard drives, and that was something BioWare did with the BG games and it was a way to complete with Halo and help sell Mass Effect 1 when Mass Effect 2 came out and to sell Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2 when Mass Effect 3 came out and then sell the Mass Effect Trilogy set when all 3 games were out.
The BG games did NOT carry over decisions. Only your character sheet and a couple of specific items (if you even had them). It was, in fact, quite possible, even likely, to meet characters in the second game who died in the first. Complete with dialogue options that essentially said "I thought you were dead!"
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Post by Deleted on Dec 13, 2018 20:03:27 GMT
The Reapers never were right. They were stupid and they failed to be useful. If synthetics we create wipe us out, that's our business. Darwinism at its finest. Yep. Just destroy the reapers. If the chaos returns as Leviathan Jr. says, then let the galaxy deal with the problem. The reapers were never needed I still disagree with it as a canon ending to an existing trilogy where other endings were brought into existence and players were allowed to choose them. The Reapers were not a well defined antagonist and, IMO, that is a fairly sizable flaw in the ME story. If I were to wipe them out in a manner that destroys parts of the existing story... I would eliminate them from ME1 and go with Saren having some sort of arrangement with the Collectors and then run with ME2 pretty much as it is and rewrite ME3 to continue with the collectors as the principle antagonists. In principle though, I would not rewrite the existing series. My preference is still to just move forward from where we are at... in Andromeda about 634 years after the events of ME1. Redos don't actually fix anything. What's done is done.
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Post by SwobyJ on Dec 15, 2018 17:03:08 GMT
The "danger" synthetics posed to Leviathan is clearly spelled out in the DLC - "Tribute does not flow from a dead race." Leviathan had become completely dependent on their slave races for everything in the form of tribute. By posing a danger to those slave races, they were indirectly a danger to Leviathan, who felt they could no longer fend for themselves and needed to receive tribute in order to survive. Maybe, but the synthetics still never rose up to challenge the Leviathan. As I interpreted it, the synthetics were a hassle but not a direct threat to them. They must have repeatedly been crushing synthetics. It was a tedious process and, yes, it threatened their resources. Realistically, if they'd wanted to, they could have thrown their spheres all over and made sure the races never made AI. Simple solution but they couldn't see it. They did. It is called the Reapers. Just because the synthetics still serve their purpose (as Geth still maintain Rannoch), it doesn't mean they didn't rise up to challenge and slaughter/hunt the Leviathan. We have to face that this is a setting where either created synthetics turn against their creators (whether we can call it justified or not, and whether the Reapers more directly cause it or not), or the Reapers intervene in harvesting the organics before such a thing. Indeed, the Reapers never gave peace a chance. That's their problem. But they still fulfilled their purpose where no matter how many millions of years, the Leviathans, if they could rise up, would have a system of continuous organics that don't have AI wiping them out. (and the period in between cycles can be easy hibernation) The Leviathans already put their spheres all over. I thought it was easily implied that it was never enough, except for the Leviathans to have some alert that enough of a slave race developed synthetics. The actual solution, at least if you are AI-friendly in perspective yourself, would be to nurture a beneficial relationship between organics and AI from early on, and this is what MEA proposes (whether it does it perfectly itself or not). But Leviathans would suck at that, and likely not allow any organics not suck at that. And the Reapers sucked at that too, supposing that a forced merging into grotesque experiments counted as a synthesis. In terms of Zha'til, the fact that they were so easily hacked was already a danger point. The very existence of the Reapers themselves did push the idea that synthetics were a danger to organics, yes. They're the obstacle themselves. *For MEA, indeed SAM could be interrupted, co-opted, etc. But SAM is localized enough, and going through a gradual character development themselves, that along with the success and heroism of others, these become transformative experiences instead of crisis points that lead SAM to exterminate organics. I think the quick point about the zha'til is that an utter embrace of incorporating all things synthetic into all organics asap (btw this isn't exactly what I'd call Crucible Synthesis, but it's still concerning) is a very dangerous thing. Wow they get along so well, but regardless of that, even an outside factor will make a synthetic rebellion occur. Still counts. The Reapers never said exactly why the synthetics would rebel and defeat their creators, just that they would.
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Post by Cyberstrike on Dec 15, 2018 17:23:15 GMT
People think that games are like movies in how they're made and that might be true for some games but I don't think if they had a hand-written outline locked in a bank security deposit box somewhere in middle of Canada there would have been changes to it just made because of scheduling, technology, money, resources, player feedback, the state of and changes to BioWare and of the larger video game industry, and many other factors.
I have ran a fantasy wrestling e-fed for over a decade and I always did an outline from major in-universe PPV to the next PPV with as 2-10 in-universe TV shows in-between them and I was constantly making changes to my shows adding, subtracting, combining, splitting apart matches and players trying to make the stories make sense due to any number of real-world reasons.
I once wrote an outline for close to 25 shows and by time that was done the final version was nothing like the original outline.
Especially with "Mass Effect". They transitioned from Drew to Mac leading the narrative between the first and second game and the contrast in styles shows. In "ME2", they obviously wanted to open up the universe more and have it feel more "lived-in". The "trunk" of the narrative became less important in comparison to the "branches" that hung off of it so missions that occupied big chunks of time in the first game like Feros or Noveria were changed to "Dossiers" and bite-sized chunks. It felt like Ridley Scott directing the original and Tony Scott directing the sequel and "Good" or "Bad" in that regard depended on personal preference.
IMHO a LOT of the dialogue talking to the squad mates on the ship in ME1 was basically a kind of massive info dumps, especially with Tali and Liara on the cultures, history, and etc of their respective races than a lot of character depth (we get some character depth with Liara, Tali not so much) to basically an ultra super-condensed versions of those dialogues in ME2.
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Post by dmc1001 on Dec 15, 2018 17:59:45 GMT
They did. It is called the Reapers. Just because the synthetics still serve their purpose (as Geth still maintain Rannoch), it doesn't mean they didn't rise up to challenge and slaughter/hunt the Leviathan. They didn't make the Reapers. That's a fact. They made the Intelligence (Catalyst) to find a solution. It's solution was the Reapers. Even so, they were a worse solution than using their mind control spheres to prevent organics from creation synthetics in the first place. Worse, Reapers were meant to protect organics but instead they killed them and left the synthetics to run free. Ask the geth. Ask the zha'til. The Reapers were pro-synthetic no matter how you look at it. Even the Catalyst preferred sticking circuitry inside of organics. Plus, it was the only choice wherein it was able to continue to exist. The only thing it really wanted was to help itself.
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Post by ahglock on Dec 16, 2018 1:08:20 GMT
I think the whole "trilogy with decisions carrying over from game to game" was really a marketing gimmick because the Xbox 360 and PS3 now had large hard drives, and that was something BioWare did with the BG games and it was a way to complete with Halo and help sell Mass Effect 1 when Mass Effect 2 came out and to sell Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2 when Mass Effect 3 came out and then sell the Mass Effect Trilogy set when all 3 games were out.
The BG games did NOT carry over decisions. Only your character sheet and a couple of specific items (if you even had them). It was, in fact, quite possible, even likely, to meet characters in the second game who died in the first. Complete with dialogue options that essentially said "I thought you were dead!" Too be fair in the D&D universe its fairly affordable to bring people back from the dead for adventurer level wealth people.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 16, 2018 12:31:39 GMT
The "danger" synthetics posed to Leviathan is clearly spelled out in the DLC - "Tribute does not flow from a dead race." Leviathan had become completely dependent on their slave races for everything in the form of tribute. By posing a danger to those slave races, they were indirectly a danger to Leviathan, who felt they could no longer fend for themselves and needed to receive tribute in order to survive. Maybe, but the synthetics still never rose up to challenge the Leviathan. As I interpreted it, the synthetics were a hassle but not a direct threat to them. They must have repeatedly been crushing synthetics. It was a tedious process and, yes, it threatened their resources. Realistically, if they'd wanted to, they could have thrown their spheres all over and made sure the races never made AI. Simple solution but they couldn't see it. In order to be sustained by their slave races, Leviathan needed them to progress to a certain point, technology-wise... and that point included the use of AI. We see this same train of thought repeated in the Reapers, which are the AI created by the Leviathan's AI. Sovereign says it; "Your civilization is based on the technology of the mass relays, our technology. By using it, your society develops along the paths we desire." Leviathan did not distribute spheres to stop their slaves from creating AI because that would have not allowed them to develop far enough technology-wise, so that wasn't the simple solution either. Just as tribute doesn't flow from a dead race, the "right sort" of tribute doesn't flow from an underdeveloped one either. I'm also unclear how the spheres would stop their slave races from developing AI. The spheres have intermittent control to make a subject murder someone, but as a long-terrm control, they appear to only be able to separate the subjects from their reality. The flow of the experiments in the mine appear to be just gathering data on human and biotic behavior rather than controlling or directing the development of technology. Perhaps the spheres aren't really capable of exerting the sort of control you're asking for?
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