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Post by Deleted on Jul 2, 2019 12:32:13 GMT
Personally, I don't call Voyager a failure. Well, sir, you and I have very, very different ways of appraising fiction. That's the source of our conflict here. Probably no way to see eye to eye. That's fine though. I actually would like to see the Mass Effect IP expand into many different media and genres. While Andromeda did not really appeal to me I certainly didn't want it to fail. I want the franchise to say alive and healthy but in my opinion it has been very ill since ME2. For the franchise as a whole to thrive it needed its core media to be solid, but other than the first game it really wasn't. Star Wars would not be what it is today (or what it was, anyway) if the first films were EPS 1, 2, and 3, or the modern JJ Abrams films. For me, the ultimate disillusionment with Andromeda was that my personal investment was in the Milky Way, in all that lore. There was so much of it and so much of it was so great. I wanted to continue on and explore all the conflicts between the species and factions. Andromeda pretty much through all that out (for understandable reasons), but what it replaced it with didn't grab it. It's not written as well as the first Mass Effect, which formed the core of the old lore. It left out my favorite races too and had some others around as glorified cameos. We differ in our base assessment of ME1 as well. IMO, the lore was never particularly sound in that game. It contradicts itself all over the place, but people really worked at developing head canon to rationalize it all... something they simply were not willing to do to accommodate Andromeda into the franchise. None of this franchise is Pullitzer material. It's pop culture, comic book fair... reasonably good pop culture comic book fair, but not great on the plane that I hold certain novels as being great. That's fine.
If Voyager was a failure... it would not have lasted 6 seasons. It lasted longer than the original Star Trek and nearly as long as Star Trek: TNG. It was a much superior Star Trek to Enterprise and beats Discovery all to H*l. I think I have a pretty good ability to assess fiction... carried a perfect A* average in all my Lit classes at university (albeit that was a long, long time ago now). It just disagrees with your assessment and a number of the people remaining on this site. That's also fine - critics disagree all the time.
We'll see what happens after ME5 releases... what it winds up being about and how the remaining people here end up receiving it.
ETA: Out of curiosity, I looked up the Metacritic scores for both Star Trek: TNG and Star Trek: Voyager. Professional critics gave TNG an averaged Metacritic score of 51 and Voyager a score of 66. While not a foolproof system of comparison, it does say something about how each series was initially received. While not a fair comparison (because we're dealing with two different media), it's interesting to note that both scores are lower than the critics gave ME:A.
ETA to my ETA: I also looked up Metacritic scores for Enterprise and Discovery. Both have higher scores than either TNG or Voyageur, but both also enjoy individual reviews that are far more negative (Enterprise having one negative review that gave it a score of 20 and Discovery having a few negative reviews that ranged in scores from 0 to a high of 2.
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Post by Phantom on Jul 3, 2019 1:31:34 GMT
Well If there was a faction within Citadel space that wants to push Citadel Economy into Socialism and becomes like Antifa overtime.
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Post by KaiserShep on Jul 3, 2019 19:14:14 GMT
To be fair, the Mass Effect trilogy has an established tone and archetype for the nature of its protagonist, so changing that is rightly going to peeve some people. It peeved me, in fact. However my ultimate gripe with Andromeda's tone isn't that it has younger crew with more upbeat personalities, but that I don't think it does anything interesting with that cast. I would find Andromeda a lot more compelling if the happy and upbeat crew, being younger and more naive, were forced to contend with the stresses of a desperate situation in which countless lives depend on them and no help from above from without is ever coming. Most optimistic people would break under such conditions... but the Andromeda crew might not. That would be one of the dramatic conflicts in the story; can these people hold it together and preserve their optimistic outlook in the face of such desperation? Can they maintain the fundamentally peaceful goals of the Initiative even as they fight a war for their survival? For me Andromeda falls to the same sad fate as Star Trek: Voyager, it is a great premise that is let down by its writers and directors. So much potential dramatic tension is lost and it is truly tragic because the possibilities were great. If only Andromeda had been a bit more imaginative. While I did enjoy playing a pragmatic and ruthless Shepard, who is a character I can personally identify with to some degree, I'd have just as fun a time role-playing a different sort of protagonist who must struggle to hold on to their lofty ideals in the face of such intense opposition. Another concept that should have been at play ought to have been that the main cast are not well acquainted and might not know or respect one another, clashing due to their insecuries at being thrust into a situation they were not prepared for, but learning to work together and trust one another as the story progresses. Basically, I think the main cast in Andromeda should have been the "B" team of the Initiative thrust into the role of leadership after all the real badasses and knowledgeable leaders got killed off at the start. Then again, re-writing Mass Effect is a hobby of mine at this point. ME:A's cast is the "B" team. Tann is the"H" team in fact, nicknamed #8 by Kesh because he was 8th in line to take the lead. That means 7 tiers of leadership were killed when the Nexus hit the scourge. Alec Ryder is killed on Habitat 7, so the Ryder twins are in the same boat. They did contend with the stresses of a desperate situation with the entire Initiative depending on them... Ryder could contend with it through the use of a form a "gallows humor" or by being patient, nice and professional. He/she could not be an aggressive royal jerkoff the way Shepard could be... that personality was outside the parameters set by the game.
Personally, I don't call Voyager a failure. It has some of my favorite episodes from any of the franchises. It lasted almost as many episodes as Star Trek: TNG. It's not generally held in as high esteem as TNG, but I would not go nearly so far as to say it was a failure. The same holds for my opinion of ME:A. I'm not denying that ME fans generally didn't accept it. I personally enjoyed it; and I certainly don't think it was the unmitigated failure that people like to exaggerate it into being.
That it did not develop the story fast enough or far enough is a fair criticism of it. They should have generated more of the cliche "excitement" to meet people preconceived expectations about what a Mass Effect game was going to be. It's not that what the fans were given was all that bad... it just wasn't what they wanted. As a result, a large number never approached it with an open mind, never truly explored the game with the same "heart" that they did with ME1 (when they had no such preconceived ideas about what they expected).
I remember reading somewhere some criticism about how a lot of characters who were supposed to be in leadership positions didn't seem very good at what they were doing, despite characters in game saying plainly that they may not know entirely what they were doing, or were never really prepared for the role.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 3, 2019 19:51:29 GMT
ME:A's cast is the "B" team. Tann is the"H" team in fact, nicknamed #8 by Kesh because he was 8th in line to take the lead. That means 7 tiers of leadership were killed when the Nexus hit the scourge. Alec Ryder is killed on Habitat 7, so the Ryder twins are in the same boat. They did contend with the stresses of a desperate situation with the entire Initiative depending on them... Ryder could contend with it through the use of a form a "gallows humor" or by being patient, nice and professional. He/she could not be an aggressive royal jerkoff the way Shepard could be... that personality was outside the parameters set by the game.
Personally, I don't call Voyager a failure. It has some of my favorite episodes from any of the franchises. It lasted almost as many episodes as Star Trek: TNG. It's not generally held in as high esteem as TNG, but I would not go nearly so far as to say it was a failure. The same holds for my opinion of ME:A. I'm not denying that ME fans generally didn't accept it. I personally enjoyed it; and I certainly don't think it was the unmitigated failure that people like to exaggerate it into being.
That it did not develop the story fast enough or far enough is a fair criticism of it. They should have generated more of the cliche "excitement" to meet people preconceived expectations about what a Mass Effect game was going to be. It's not that what the fans were given was all that bad... it just wasn't what they wanted. As a result, a large number never approached it with an open mind, never truly explored the game with the same "heart" that they did with ME1 (when they had no such preconceived ideas about what they expected).
I remember reading somewhere some criticism about how a lot of characters who were supposed to be in leadership positions didn't seem very good at what they were doing, despite characters in game saying plainly that they may not know entirely what they were doing, or were never really prepared for the role. Yes, I think that's a key part of the story. Taking the "B" and watching them cope despite their lack of training and, at times, being in roles they aren't the best suited for.
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Post by Iakus on Jul 3, 2019 20:45:30 GMT
That it did not develop the story fast enough or far enough is a fair criticism of it. They should have generated more of the cliche "excitement" to meet people preconceived expectations about what a Mass Effect game was going to be. It's not that what the fans were given was all that bad... it just wasn't what they wanted. As a result, a large number never approached it with an open mind, never truly explored the game with the same "heart" that they did with ME1 (when they had no such preconceived ideas about what they expected).
At what point was insulting people who disagree with you considered a good idea?
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Post by Deleted on Jul 3, 2019 21:09:44 GMT
That it did not develop the story fast enough or far enough is a fair criticism of it. They should have generated more of the cliche "excitement" to meet people preconceived expectations about what a Mass Effect game was going to be. It's not that what the fans were given was all that bad... it just wasn't what they wanted. As a result, a large number never approached it with an open mind, never truly explored the game with the same "heart" that they did with ME1 (when they had no such preconceived ideas about what they expected).
At what point was insulting people who disagree with you considered a good idea? How exactly is the underlined statement insulting to anyone? Did you not have any expectations about what the next Mass Effect game would be about before ME:A's release and base those expectations on what the MET had built itself into being about over those three games? Since ME1 was the first game in the franchise, no one had any expectations based on previous games in the franchise... they couldn't have. They might have had just some general expectation about Bioware RPGs, which as I understand it from you, ME didn't really meet.
If Shepard returns, don't you have some preconceived idea about what his/her personality should be at the start of that game (regardless of how you individually constructed the personality of your Shepard). If that Shepard doesn't behave as you expect him/her to behave, then I'm sure you'll be saying "that isn't Shepard" rather than saying "let's just find out what this sort of Shepard is all about" in quite the same way or same extent you probably did just that when playing ME1 for the first time.
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Post by Iakus on Jul 4, 2019 0:31:46 GMT
At what point was insulting people who disagree with you considered a good idea? How exactly is the underlined statement insulting to anyone? Did you not have any expectations about what the next Mass Effect game would be about before ME:A's release and base those expectations on what the MET had built itself into being about over those three games? Since ME1 was the first game in the franchise, no one had any expectations based on previous games in the franchise... they couldn't have. They might have had just some general expectation about Bioware RPGs, which as I understand it from you, ME didn't really meet.
If Shepard returns, don't you have some preconceived idea about what his/her personality should be at the start of that game (regardless of how you individually constructed the personality of your Shepard). If that Shepard doesn't behave as you expect him/her to behave, then I'm sure you'll be saying "that isn't Shepard" rather than saying "let's just find out what this sort of Shepard is all about" in quite the same way or same extent you probably did just that when playing ME1 for the first time.
You call the expectations that anyone who isn't you or agrees with your notions "cliché excitement" and not expect people to take exception to that?
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Post by sassafrassa on Jul 4, 2019 6:14:07 GMT
I remember reading somewhere some criticism about how a lot of characters who were supposed to be in leadership positions didn't seem very good at what they were doing, despite characters in game saying plainly that they may not know entirely what they were doing, or were never really prepared for the role. Yeah I've seen a little bit of that in reviews and I know that Ryder kind of gets thrust into his positions as Pathfinder, but this seems like a little bit of fluff. I mean that it's not core to the themes of the story or the tone of the setting. I think that Ryder's, and everyone else's, inexperience should be central. Also I'm not sure Ryder counts considering the Ryder twins are the son/daughter of the original hero. I get that Andromeda does have some of what I talked about, but it seems swept aside rather quickly while the story focuses on other things. Just not what I'd have done with the premise. I want lots of in-depth conversations between the squad and the rest of the crew about how stressful the situation is. About how much they are trying to learn and what a burden it is. I want some on the brink of cracking under that stress, only to be saved by the shared comradery of the crew which helps everyone pull through. Instead the primary tone I get from Andromeda is "casual". That's not meant as anything derogatory, but it suggests a calm, well handled situation that is fairly relaxed (most of the time). If I'd been in charge of Andromeda perhaps I'd have given it a more narrow focus.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 4, 2019 8:31:44 GMT
How exactly is the underlined statement insulting to anyone? Did you not have any expectations about what the next Mass Effect game would be about before ME:A's release and base those expectations on what the MET had built itself into being about over those three games? Since ME1 was the first game in the franchise, no one had any expectations based on previous games in the franchise... they couldn't have. They might have had just some general expectation about Bioware RPGs, which as I understand it from you, ME didn't really meet.
If Shepard returns, don't you have some preconceived idea about what his/her personality should be at the start of that game (regardless of how you individually constructed the personality of your Shepard). If that Shepard doesn't behave as you expect him/her to behave, then I'm sure you'll be saying "that isn't Shepard" rather than saying "let's just find out what this sort of Shepard is all about" in quite the same way or same extent you probably did just that when playing ME1 for the first time.
You call the expectations that anyone who isn't you or agrees with your notions "cliché excitement" and not expect people to take exception to that? I said Bioware needed to respond with some cliched "excitement" to mitigate expectations... you know, a "classic hook" at the beginning of the story. Were you not one of the people way back when who suggested such a hook was missing from ME:A? Bioware were the ones who knew beforehand they were not providing a Shepard-like character or story, but introducing new themes with a character very different from Shepard into the Mass Effect series.
May I borrow your tin-foil hat meme from the other thread here? As I said on the other thread, you obviously think insulting people who disagree with you is a good idea... and you also like to read insults into places where they just aren't. Also note that I put the term in quotations... which means "take it with a grain of salt." I also use ample cliches when posting... usually putting them into quotes. That's a cardinal sin I guess, but meming isn't?
Now, let's get down to brass tax... comparing the intros from ME1 and ME:A (one succeeded in reaching its audience and drawing them in and other did not).
ME1's Hook - A human colony falls under a surprise attack (we see the distress call and get a glimpse of Ashley in the process). A little later, we rescue Ashley (the classic damsel in distress, but with a personality twist) and then see Saren shooting Nihilus in the back (introducing our main antagonist). MEA's Hook - The human ark hits something in space that stops it dead (but there's no follow through with that, we don't see any sort of struggle to get the ship free of it... it's a problem that just sort of evaporates). Our destination is a bust (but that's readily solved by heading towards the Nexus instead). Alec Ryder dies on Habitat 7... and here the difference is that no one cared about Nihilus, but people had come to care about Alec. In ME1, the loss of Nihilus introduced an impediment to the PC that lasted a little while and he was killed directly by our main antagonist)... i.e. making it more difficult for Shepard to get a promotion. In ME:A, the death of Alec created the promotion of Ryder and Archon plays the role of scavenger in that he's not the one responsible for Alec's death).
ME:A's openers lacked impact . Why? They immediately dissipated that impact... and then topped it off by killing off the one character fans were looking forward to seeing more of to draw them into the actual story. Alec was the Shepard-like character. Bioware had to have known that. If they had not killed of Alec right away, they would not have instantly dashed the expectations of their audience. If Archon had killed Alec, there would have been more animosity generated towards the antagonist. If one of there two other hooks had remained an immediate problem farther into the game, they might have mitigated the effect of killing off Alec in the early going. If the problem for young Ryder had, say, been earning his/her stripes as pathfinder by struggling and finding a way to free the stuck Hyperion from the scourge... people may have (repeat ... MAY have) warmed up to young Ryder better.
ME:A's opener "missed" with its audience on a number of fronts. It just wasn't the "cliched excitement" or "classic hook" (if you prefer) that lead directly into the game itself. ME1's opener was, overall, more cliche... that's not necessarily a bad thing here though. Cliches become cliches because they work.
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Post by Iakus on Jul 4, 2019 16:35:30 GMT
You call the expectations that anyone who isn't you or agrees with your notions "cliché excitement" and not expect people to take exception to that? I said Bioware needed to respond with some cliched "excitement" to mitigate expectations... you know, a "classic hook" at the beginning of the story. Were you not one of the people way back when who suggested such a hook was missing from ME:A? Bioware were the ones who knew beforehand they were not providing a Shepard-like character or story, but introducing new themes with a character very different from Shepard into the Mass Effect series.
May I borrow your tin-foil hat meme from the other thread here? As I said on the other thread, you obviously think insulting people who disagree with you is a good idea... and you also like to read insults into places where they just aren't. Also note that I put the term in quotations... which means "take it with a grain of salt." I also use ample cliches when posting... usually putting them into quotes. That's a cardinal sin I guess, but meming isn't?
Now, let's get down to brass tax... comparing the intros from ME1 and ME:A (one succeeded in reaching its audience and drawing them in and other did not).
ME1's Hook - A human colony falls under a surprise attack (we see the distress call and get a glimpse of Ashley in the process). A little later, we rescue Ashley (the classic damsel in distress, but with a personality twist) and then see Saren shooting Nihilus in the back (introducing our main antagonist). MEA's Hook - The human ark hits something in space that stops it dead (but there's no follow through with that, we don't see any sort of struggle to get the ship free of it... it's a problem that just sort of evaporates). Our destination is a bust (but that's readily solved by heading towards the Nexus instead). Alec Ryder dies on Habitat 7... and here the difference is that no one cared about Nihilus, but people had come to care about Alec. In ME1, the loss of Nihilus introduced an impediment to the PC that lasted a little while and he was killed directly by our main antagonist)... i.e. making it more difficult for Shepard to get a promotion. In ME:A, the death of Alec created the promotion of Ryder and Archon plays the role of scavenger in that he's not the one responsible for Alec's death).
ME:A's openers lacked impact . Why? They immediately dissipated that impact... and then topped it off by killing off the one character fans were looking forward to seeing more of to draw them into the actual story. Alec was the Shepard-like character. Bioware had to have known that. If they had not killed of Alec right away, they would not have instantly dashed the expectations of their audience. If Archon had killed Alec, there would have been more animosity generated towards the antagonist. If one of there two other hooks had remained an immediate problem farther into the game, they might have mitigated the effect of killing off Alec in the early going. If the problem for young Ryder had, say, been earning his/her stripes as pathfinder by struggling and finding a way to free the stuck Hyperion from the scourge... people may have (repeat ... MAY have) warmed up to young Ryder better.
ME:A's opener "missed" with its audience on a number of fronts. It just wasn't the "cliched excitement" or "classic hook" (if you prefer) that lead directly into the game itself. ME1's opener was, overall, more cliche... that's not necessarily a bad thing here though. Cliches become cliches because they work.
You do know "cliche" is a rather derisive term, yes? A term you did NOT put in quotes. You're saying that people who don't like MEA are nitwits who can't appreciate "real" Art. As to your other comments: I never had a problem with the protagonist of MEA being "not-Shepard" quite the opposite. I never want to play Shepard again. That story is done, burned, and the ground sown with salt. That character is wrecked for me and I never want Bioware to put the same protagonist in the same game again. They clearly don't know how to do that right. As for the hooks: ME1, Commander Shepard was already an experienced special forces officer and second in command to one of the SA's top stealth ships as well as a Spectre candidate. Ryder is some nobody who's entire claim to fame (or infamy) is pure nepotism. The ONLY thing special about Ryder is SAM. He/she is nothing but a meat suit the get the AI hero where it needs to go to unlock the Remnant vaults. Alec has nothing to do with how Ryder was received (save perhaps in the stupid way in which he died) any more than Nihlus had anything to do with Shepard. And that's why people didn't warm up to Ryder: none of his or her abilities or accomplishments were earned. Everything was handed to them: Their spot on the AI, becoming Pathfinder, all of it. Shepard had the backstory to justify being a bad*ss Spectre. Ryder had an AI stuck in his/her head by daddy that can turn him/her into a super-soldier. It wasn't until the endgame where it was demonstrated that a human could (albiet with great difficulty) access Remtech unaided. Put THAT at the beginning rather than SAM and maybe MAYBE there'd have been a somewhat better reception.
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Post by melbella on Jul 4, 2019 16:39:40 GMT
And that's why people didn't warm up to Ryder: none of his or her abilities or accomplishments were earned. Everything was handed to them: Their spot on the AI, becoming Pathfinder, all of it. Shepard had the backstory to justify being a bad*ss Spectre. Ryder had an AI stuck in his/her head by daddy that can turn him/her into a super-soldier. It wasn't until the endgame where it was demonstrated that a human could (albiet with great difficulty) access Remtech unaided. Put THAT at the beginning rather than SAM and maybe MAYBE there'd have been a somewhat better reception. You do realize that badass Alec also couldn't access the Remtech without SAM?
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Post by Deleted on Jul 4, 2019 16:53:41 GMT
I said Bioware needed to respond with some cliched "excitement" to mitigate expectations... you know, a "classic hook" at the beginning of the story. Were you not one of the people way back when who suggested such a hook was missing from ME:A? Bioware were the ones who knew beforehand they were not providing a Shepard-like character or story, but introducing new themes with a character very different from Shepard into the Mass Effect series.
May I borrow your tin-foil hat meme from the other thread here? As I said on the other thread, you obviously think insulting people who disagree with you is a good idea... and you also like to read insults into places where they just aren't. Also note that I put the term in quotations... which means "take it with a grain of salt." I also use ample cliches when posting... usually putting them into quotes. That's a cardinal sin I guess, but meming isn't?
Now, let's get down to brass tax... comparing the intros from ME1 and ME:A (one succeeded in reaching its audience and drawing them in and other did not).
ME1's Hook - A human colony falls under a surprise attack (we see the distress call and get a glimpse of Ashley in the process). A little later, we rescue Ashley (the classic damsel in distress, but with a personality twist) and then see Saren shooting Nihilus in the back (introducing our main antagonist). MEA's Hook - The human ark hits something in space that stops it dead (but there's no follow through with that, we don't see any sort of struggle to get the ship free of it... it's a problem that just sort of evaporates). Our destination is a bust (but that's readily solved by heading towards the Nexus instead). Alec Ryder dies on Habitat 7... and here the difference is that no one cared about Nihilus, but people had come to care about Alec. In ME1, the loss of Nihilus introduced an impediment to the PC that lasted a little while and he was killed directly by our main antagonist)... i.e. making it more difficult for Shepard to get a promotion. In ME:A, the death of Alec created the promotion of Ryder and Archon plays the role of scavenger in that he's not the one responsible for Alec's death).
ME:A's openers lacked impact . Why? They immediately dissipated that impact... and then topped it off by killing off the one character fans were looking forward to seeing more of to draw them into the actual story. Alec was the Shepard-like character. Bioware had to have known that. If they had not killed of Alec right away, they would not have instantly dashed the expectations of their audience. If Archon had killed Alec, there would have been more animosity generated towards the antagonist. If one of there two other hooks had remained an immediate problem farther into the game, they might have mitigated the effect of killing off Alec in the early going. If the problem for young Ryder had, say, been earning his/her stripes as pathfinder by struggling and finding a way to free the stuck Hyperion from the scourge... people may have (repeat ... MAY have) warmed up to young Ryder better.
ME:A's opener "missed" with its audience on a number of fronts. It just wasn't the "cliched excitement" or "classic hook" (if you prefer) that lead directly into the game itself. ME1's opener was, overall, more cliche... that's not necessarily a bad thing here though. Cliches become cliches because they work.
You do know "cliche" is a rather derisive term, yes? A term you did NOT put in quotes. You're saying that people who don't like MEA are nitwits who can't appreciate "real" Art. As to your other comments: I never had a problem with the protagonist of MEA being "not-Shepard" quite the opposite. I never want to play Shepard again. That story is done, burned, and the ground sown with salt. That character is wrecked for me and I never want Bioware to put the same protagonist in the same game again. They clearly don't know how to do that right. As for the hooks: ME1, Commander Shepard was already an experienced special forces officer and second in command to one of the SA's top stealth ships as well as a Spectre candidate. Ryder is some nobody who's entire claim to fame (or infamy) is pure nepotism. The ONLY thing special about Ryder is SAM. He/she is nothing but a meat suit the get the AI hero where it needs to go to unlock the Remnant vaults. Alec has nothing to do with how Ryder was received (save perhaps in the stupid way in which he died) any more than Nihlus had anything to do with Shepard. And that's why people didn't warm up to Ryder: none of his or her abilities or accomplishments were earned. Everything was handed to them: Their spot on the AI, becoming Pathfinder, all of it. Shepard had the backstory to justify being a bad*ss Spectre. Ryder had an AI stuck in his/her head by daddy that can turn him/her into a super-soldier. It wasn't until the endgame where it was demonstrated that a human could (albiet with great difficulty) access Remtech unaided. Put THAT at the beginning rather than SAM and maybe MAYBE there'd have been a somewhat better reception. You do realize that my statement says nothing of the sort about people who don't like ME:A. It's how you are choosing to interpret it... insert your tinfoil hat meme here.
You do realize that one of Shepard's backstories and claim to fame was just basically being the only one to survive a thresher maw attack... something Krogan do as a right of passage, right? You do realize that one of Shepard's backstories also involves him/her being just the only child of a marine mom and dad, who were not N7's. So, if you play a spacer survivor, you basically have a Shepard with the same claims to fame as Ryder at the beginning of ME:A, right? The only difference there is that Ryder hasn't had the opportunity to be picked up for N7 training because dear old N7 dad became instead a pariah within the Alliance despite having been with Grissom when they went through the Charon relay. You do realize that a lot of pseudo-nepotism was involved in getting Shepard to the position of spectre on the part of dear old "dad" figures - Anderson and Hackett, right?
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Post by Iakus on Jul 4, 2019 16:53:54 GMT
And that's why people didn't warm up to Ryder: none of his or her abilities or accomplishments were earned. Everything was handed to them: Their spot on the AI, becoming Pathfinder, all of it. Shepard had the backstory to justify being a bad*ss Spectre. Ryder had an AI stuck in his/her head by daddy that can turn him/her into a super-soldier. It wasn't until the endgame where it was demonstrated that a human could (albiet with great difficulty) access Remtech unaided. Put THAT at the beginning rather than SAM and maybe MAYBE there'd have been a somewhat better reception. You do realize that badass Alec also couldn't access the Remtech without SAM? Yep. But he dies early, so that doesn't really factor into things.
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Post by melbella on Jul 4, 2019 18:46:49 GMT
Yep. But he dies early, so that doesn't really factor into things. Point being, if he hadn't died, it still would have been SAM doing the Remnant thing until Alec's brain got used to it. No different than Ryder, except Ryder also had to get used to SAM being in his head, whereas Alec was already used to it. Overall, I'd say younger Ryder had it way more difficult than Dad Ryder would have, yet still managed to succeed.
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Post by Hanako Ikezawa on Jul 4, 2019 18:55:21 GMT
and then topped it off by killing off the one character fans were looking forward to seeing more of to draw them into the actual story. Alec was the Shepard-like character. Bioware had to have known that. If they had not killed of Alec right away, they would not have instantly dashed the expectations of their audience. If Archon had killed Alec, there would have been more animosity generated towards the antagonist. I couldn't have cared less about Alec. He was nowhere near the "one character fans were looking forward to seeing more of".
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Post by Son of Dorn on Jul 4, 2019 19:16:45 GMT
and then topped it off by killing off the one character fans were looking forward to seeing more of to draw them into the actual story. Alec was the Shepard-like character. Bioware had to have known that. If they had not killed of Alec right away, they would not have instantly dashed the expectations of their audience. If Archon had killed Alec, there would have been more animosity generated towards the antagonist. I couldn't have cared less about Alec. He was nowhere near the "one character fans were looking forward to seeing more of". If I didn’t visit these forums, I wouldn't remember who the heck he was. He's that forgettable.
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Post by Cyberstrike on Jul 4, 2019 21:15:01 GMT
Well, sir, you and I have very, very different ways of appraising fiction. That's the source of our conflict here. Probably no way to see eye to eye. That's fine though. I actually would like to see the Mass Effect IP expand into many different media and genres. While Andromeda did not really appeal to me I certainly didn't want it to fail. I want the franchise to say alive and healthy but in my opinion it has been very ill since ME2. For the franchise as a whole to thrive it needed its core media to be solid, but other than the first game it really wasn't. Star Wars would not be what it is today (or what it was, anyway) if the first films were EPS 1, 2, and 3, or the modern JJ Abrams films. For me, the ultimate disillusionment with Andromeda was that my personal investment was in the Milky Way, in all that lore. There was so much of it and so much of it was so great. I wanted to continue on and explore all the conflicts between the species and factions. Andromeda pretty much through all that out (for understandable reasons), but what it replaced it with didn't grab it. It's not written as well as the first Mass Effect, which formed the core of the old lore. It left out my favorite races too and had some others around as glorified cameos. We differ in our base assessment of ME1 as well. IMO, the lore was never particularly sound in that game. It contradicts itself all over the place, but people really worked at developing head canon to rationalize it all... something they simply were not willing to do to accommodate Andromeda into the franchise. None of this franchise is Pullitzer material. It's pop culture, comic book fair... reasonably good pop culture comic book fair, but not great on the plane that I hold certain novels as being great. That's fine.
If Voyager was a failure... it would not have lasted 6 seasons. It lasted longer than the original Star Trek and nearly as long as Star Trek: TNG. It was a much superior Star Trek to Enterprise and beats Discovery all to H*l. I think I have a pretty good ability to assess fiction... carried a perfect A* average in all my Lit classes at university (albeit that was a long, long time ago now). It just disagrees with your assessment and a number of the people remaining on this site. That's also fine - critics disagree all the time.
We'll see what happens after ME5 releases... what it winds up being about and how the remaining people here end up receiving it.
ETA: Out of curiosity, I looked up the Metacritic scores for both Star Trek: TNG and Star Trek: Voyager. Professional critics gave TNG an averaged Metacritic score of 51 and Voyager a score of 66. While not a foolproof system of comparison, it does say something about how each series was initially received. While not a fair comparison (because we're dealing with two different media), it's interesting to note that both scores are lower than the critics gave ME:A.
ETA to my ETA: I also looked up Metacritic scores for Enterprise and Discovery. Both have higher scores than either TNG or Voyageur, but both also enjoy individual reviews that are far more negative (Enterprise having one negative review that gave it a score of 20 and Discovery having a few negative reviews that ranged in scores from 0 to a high of 2.
Star Trek: Voyager wasn't the best Star Trek show it's IMHO the most bat-shit crazy dumb fun series but it's nowhere near as good as Star Trek: The Next Generation and it's nowhere near as GREAT as Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (which has the greatest episode in all of TV history "The Visitor") was and Star Trek: Discovery is. Don't get me wrong Voyager had some great episodes but as I reflect back on it, the show never escaped the shadows of TNG and DS9 and had a lot of weak stories and it seemed like every step forward it took two steps backwards. Some of this was the show needed to be darker than it was and it never fully realized it's full potential.
Star Trek: Enterprise was doomed to failure from the start because it was a prequel and was boring as hell through the first two seasons and the third season finally started paying off that "Temporal Cold War" bullshit and season 4 was just bad fanservice that only served to answer questions that only hardcore Trekkies wanted to know and no one else wanted or gave a shit about.
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Post by themikefest on Jul 4, 2019 23:39:17 GMT
We'll see what happens after ME5 releases... what it winds up being about and how the remaining people here end up receiving it. Doesn't ME4 have to be released first before an ME5 is released? Did you not have any expectations about what the next Mass Effect game would be about before ME:A's release I had a couple. The power wheel to be in the game and the option to not recruit squadmates. If Ryder returns, don't you have some preconceived idea about what his/her personality should be at the start of that game (regardless of how you individually constructed the personality of your Ryder). If that Ryder doesn't behave as you expect him/her to behave, then I'm sure you'll be saying "that isn't Ryder" rather than saying "let's just find out what this sort of Ryder is all about". I couldn't have cared less about Alec. He was nowhere near the "one character fans were looking forward to seeing more of". I like Alec. He could have survived, but because of his injury, he wouldn't be able to continue as pathfinder. He tries to past the torch to Harper, but because of some blah, blah, it didn't work so it's decided that little Ryder would become the pathfinder. After each mission, child Ryder can talk with big Ryder to get advice about the previous mission on what to do/don't do if the same situation happens again.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 5, 2019 10:25:50 GMT
We'll see what happens after ME5 releases... what it winds up being about and how the remaining people here end up receiving it. Doesn't ME4 have to be released first before an ME5 is released? Did you not have any expectations about what the next Mass Effect game would be about before ME:A's release I had a couple. The power wheel to be in the game and the option to not recruit squadmates. If Ryder returns, don't you have some preconceived idea about what his/her personality should be at the start of that game (regardless of how you individually constructed the personality of your Ryder). If that Ryder doesn't behave as you expect him/her to behave, then I'm sure you'll be saying "that isn't Ryder" rather than saying "let's just find out what this sort of Ryder is all about". I couldn't have cared less about Alec. He was nowhere near the "one character fans were looking forward to seeing more of". I like Alec. He could have survived, but because of his injury, he wouldn't be able to continue as pathfinder. He tries to past the torch to Harper, but because of some blah, blah, it didn't work so it's decided that little Ryder would become the pathfinder. After each mission, child Ryder can talk with big Ryder to get advice about the previous mission on what to do/don't do if the same situation happens again. 1) Trying to be cute... and failing.
2) See item 1.
3) If Ryder returns a decade after the end of ME:A, I will expect him/her to have matured since he/she is 22 in ME:A. Since, with Ryder, we've been talking about expanding the range into the Renegade side of things, not eliminating the range that existed in ME:A;, I would expect though, dialogue options to be able that would enable me to construct the same sort of personality as he/she had in ME:A. As for Shepard, he is older and I expect his personality to be more set, so I will, no doubt, be disappointed, when a number of my various Shepards vanish to be replaced by your "destroy only" one. I only said I wouldn't backlash if that were the case. 4) No comment as your "fantasy" supports my analysis/theory/opinion as to why the opening of ME:A didn't grab a particular subset of ME fan. Even though killing off Alec was, I believe, an error from a literary perspective, I would expect that they wouldn't resurrect Alec now. However, they could and would be, IMO, on a similar cheese level as killing off and resurrecting Shepard at the beginning of ME2.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 5, 2019 10:33:07 GMT
We differ in our base assessment of ME1 as well. IMO, the lore was never particularly sound in that game. It contradicts itself all over the place, but people really worked at developing head canon to rationalize it all... something they simply were not willing to do to accommodate Andromeda into the franchise. None of this franchise is Pullitzer material. It's pop culture, comic book fair... reasonably good pop culture comic book fair, but not great on the plane that I hold certain novels as being great. That's fine.
If Voyager was a failure... it would not have lasted 6 seasons. It lasted longer than the original Star Trek and nearly as long as Star Trek: TNG. It was a much superior Star Trek to Enterprise and beats Discovery all to H*l. I think I have a pretty good ability to assess fiction... carried a perfect A* average in all my Lit classes at university (albeit that was a long, long time ago now). It just disagrees with your assessment and a number of the people remaining on this site. That's also fine - critics disagree all the time.
We'll see what happens after ME5 releases... what it winds up being about and how the remaining people here end up receiving it.
ETA: Out of curiosity, I looked up the Metacritic scores for both Star Trek: TNG and Star Trek: Voyager. Professional critics gave TNG an averaged Metacritic score of 51 and Voyager a score of 66. While not a foolproof system of comparison, it does say something about how each series was initially received. While not a fair comparison (because we're dealing with two different media), it's interesting to note that both scores are lower than the critics gave ME:A.
ETA to my ETA: I also looked up Metacritic scores for Enterprise and Discovery. Both have higher scores than either TNG or Voyageur, but both also enjoy individual reviews that are far more negative (Enterprise having one negative review that gave it a score of 20 and Discovery having a few negative reviews that ranged in scores from 0 to a high of 2.
Star Trek: Voyager wasn't the best Star Trek show it's IMHO the most bat-shit crazy dumb fun series but it's nowhere near as good as Star Trek: The Next Generation and it's nowhere near as GREAT as Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (which has the greatest episode in all of TV history "The Visitor") was and Star Trek: Discovery is. Don't get me wrong Voyager had some great episodes but as I reflect back on it, the show never escaped the shadows of TNG and DS9 and had a lot of weak stories and it seemed like every step forward it took two steps backwards. Some of this was the show needed to be darker than it was and it never fully realized it's full potential.
Star Trek: Enterprise was doomed to failure from the start because it was a prequel and was boring as hell through the first two seasons and the third season finally started paying off that "Temporal Cold War" bullshit and season 4 was just bad fanservice that only served to answer questions that only hardcore Trekkies wanted to know and no one else wanted or gave a shit about.
Was even Enterprise a failure though? It lasted four seasons. Perhaps it's finale could be considered a failure, but I'm not even sure about that since I don't know the numbers it pulled in when it aired. I don't think even Discovery is a failure, even though I personally don't like it. In television, failures are really defined by series that get cancelled within or after only one season. Beyond that, we're really just comparing the relative success of each and a lot of that is based in personal taste. (As I said, Voyager contains some of my favorite Star Trek episodes.)
Big Brother Canada is still running. It's a success. I personally hate the show and never watch it. The premise for it, of course, was based on the original concept for the Survivor series (based on an earlier reality TV show concept from Europe, I believe). I did watch Survivor for a full season but completely lost interest in it after that. Unfortunately, I don't think I can technically call either series a failure. There have been innumerable series created that are based on the "Survivor" premise/formula. Some indeed have been failures and quickly cancelled. Others have enjoyed varying levels of success.
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Post by themikefest on Jul 5, 2019 11:38:38 GMT
1) Trying to be cute... and failing. 2) See item 1. Cute? You're the one who mentioned ME5. Why not say ME4 or MEA2? Or were you trying to be cute? After a decade, I'm not sure what I would expect from Ryder. Likely be a new main character with a time gap like that. Alec dying wasn't what didn't grab me about the opening act of the game. When Ryder leaves the medbay, a generator shuts down. Apparently Ryder is the only one who has a scanner to locate and fix the problem. Why didn't the maintenance personnel have a scanner? So if another problem were to happen, they sit around waiting for Ryder to return to fix the problem? The other is meeting Kosta while heading to Habitat 7. Why wasn't the pathfinder team waken up earlier to get to know each other, something that should have happened before leaving the Milky Way, to do an equipment check, and run through a couple of scenarios if they were to run into some trouble?
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Post by Iakus on Jul 5, 2019 14:50:41 GMT
1) Trying to be cute... and failing. 2) See item 1. Cute? You're the one who mentioned ME5. Why not say ME4 or MEA2? Or were you trying to be cute? After a decade, I'm not sure what I would expect from Ryder. Likely be a new main character with a time gap like that. Alec dying wasn't what didn't grab me about the opening act of the game. When Ryder leaves the medbay, a generator shuts down. Apparently Ryder is the only one who has a scanner to locate and fix the problem. Why didn't the maintenance personnel have a scanner? So if another problem were to happen, they sit around waiting for Ryder to return to fix the problem? The other is meeting Kosta while heading to Habitat 7. Why wasn't the pathfinder team waken up earlier to get to know each other, something that should have happened before leaving the Milky Way, to do an equipment check, and run through a couple of scenarios if they were to run into some trouble?
Hell, if they were a Pathfinder "team" who were expected to go in and deal with all sorts of potential threats from first contact to hungry fauna to alien artifacts, wouldn't you think they'd have TRAINED together as a team, and actually already know each other?
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Post by themikefest on Jul 5, 2019 15:55:57 GMT
Hell, if they were a Pathfinder "team" who were expected to go in and deal with all sorts of potential threats from first contact to hungry fauna to alien artifacts, wouldn't you think they'd have TRAINED together as a team, and actually already know each other? I agree. One of the requirements was that they were dreamers. Maybe that's why Alec may have overlooked Kosta's suspension record.
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Post by Son of Dorn on Jul 5, 2019 19:14:28 GMT
1) Trying to be cute... and failing. 2) See item 1. Cute? You're the one who mentioned ME5. Why not say ME4 or MEA2? Or were you trying to be cute? After a decade, I'm not sure what I would expect from Ryder. Likely be a new main character with a time gap like that. Alec dying wasn't what didn't grab me about the opening act of the game. When Ryder leaves the medbay, a generator shuts down. Apparently Ryder is the only one who has a scanner to locate and fix the problem. Why didn't the maintenance personnel have a scanner? So if another problem were to happen, they sit around waiting for Ryder to return to fix the problem? The other is meeting Kosta while heading to Habitat 7. Why wasn't the pathfinder team waken up earlier to get to know each other, something that should have happened before leaving the Milky Way, to do an equipment check, and run through a couple of scenarios if they were to run into some trouble?
Maybe because their faces were tired? 😂 (couldn't resist).
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Post by Cyberstrike on Jul 5, 2019 22:49:39 GMT
Star Trek: Voyager wasn't the best Star Trek show it's IMHO the most bat-shit crazy dumb fun series but it's nowhere near as good as Star Trek: The Next Generation and it's nowhere near as GREAT as Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (which has the greatest episode in all of TV history "The Visitor") was and Star Trek: Discovery is. Don't get me wrong Voyager had some great episodes but as I reflect back on it, the show never escaped the shadows of TNG and DS9 and had a lot of weak stories and it seemed like every step forward it took two steps backwards. Some of this was the show needed to be darker than it was and it never fully realized it's full potential.
Star Trek: Enterprise was doomed to failure from the start because it was a prequel and was boring as hell through the first two seasons and the third season finally started paying off that "Temporal Cold War" bullshit and season 4 was just bad fanservice that only served to answer questions that only hardcore Trekkies wanted to know and no one else wanted or gave a shit about.
Was even Enterprise a failure though? It lasted four seasons. Perhaps it's finale could be considered a failure, but I'm not even sure about that since I don't know the numbers it pulled in when it aired. I don't think even Discovery is a failure, even though I personally don't like it. In television, failures are really defined by series that get cancelled within or after only one season. Beyond that, we're really just comparing the relative success of each and a lot of that is based in personal taste. (As I said, Voyager contains some of my favorite Star Trek episodes.)
Big Brother Canada is still running. It's a success. I personally hate the show and never watch it. The premise for it, of course, was based on the original concept for the Survivor series (based on an earlier reality TV show concept from Europe, I believe). I did watch Survivor for a full season but completely lost interest in it after that. Unfortunately, I don't think I can technically call either series a failure. There have been innumerable series created that are based on the "Survivor" premise/formula. Some indeed have been failures and quickly cancelled. Others have enjoyed varying levels of success.
In the case of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager each lasting 7 seasons and having over 100 episodes each and Enterprise lasting 4 seasons and only had 80 episodes it was a failure when compared to previous 3 shows which is I KNOW is not fare but that is life overall in Star Trek canon Enterprise is only known for being the only show to exist in both the Original Prime and Kelvin timelines and Scott Bakula's second major sci-fi TV show (the first being IMHO the superior and under-rated Quantum Leap).
To be fair I think the first seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Voyager, and Star Trek: Enterprise are pretty awful especially TNG it's one of those shows if you never saw it and watched the first season you could be forgiven on how this show got renewed for a second season. Yes, it gets a LOT better in the second and third seasons but man the first season is a mess. Only Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Discovery have the best the first seasons because they know the showrunners know the story they want to tell and got there.
The original series was from the 60s and while it had some clunker episodes it was also from a different era so I give it a pass since MOST TV shows from the era were done the same way, there were a few exceptions like The Rifleman (which did have some continuity in the first few episodes in it) and Have Gun, Will Travel which kept the origin of the main character pretty much a mystery throughout the series offering a few hints here and there to his backstory.
My problem with Enterprise is that it's an unnecessary prequel. As a general rule I don't care much for prequels especially when I know how the story will end and what the fates of the characters are, that is why I don't want a Mass Effect prequel video game set during the First Contact War for example I already know how the story will end so what's the point of telling it? I know people will bust out that old chestnut "it's about the journey, not about the destination" my answer is: if it's not a journey worth taking then neither is the destination worth getting too. Why do you think a lot people are still upset about the endings to Mass Effect 3 after all these years? The destination wasn't worthy of the journey to get there and it's the same with Enterprise. The only prequels that IMHO work are the Star Wars prequels (really only episodes 2 and 3) and Star Trek: Discovery and while I like season 1, I haven't seen season 2 yet, so the jury is still out if gets there.
TL;DR IMHO 98% of prequels and the first seasons of Star Trek live action TV shows, except for DS9 and Discovery suck.
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