Why Mass Effect Andromeda is Well written.

I meant the people who don't like the game. There's a subsection that seems that can't accept that people enjoy the game.

I know which is why I framed my post up there like that.  

I always actually found ME 2 to be the worse offender in this regard as far as the OT is concerned.  We know that the Collectors are abducting human colonies, if you listen to some of the ambient crew dialogue its happening as you are doing your adventure...lets go on an adventure solving everyone's daddy issues!  I mean yes you need to prepare, and yes the LMs were top notch, and yes ME 2 is my favorite Mass Effect, but still...oi ve.  

I actually, and the game even kind of supports this with the story reasons, that the Normandy was going in for refits and repairs from all the drama it has been on over the years and Hackett ordered Shepard in for R&R for the week or so this happens while the rest of the Galaxy makes its preperations for the attack on Earth/ Cronus.  How I justifiy my Paragrade doing it. 

Its worse offender was its sense of scale, but then a LOT of writers I feel get this wrong and even some very good ones like JMS (of Babylon 5 fame)  Ryder should have been a tad older and the Kett should have arrived in Heleus about ten or so years ago, not eighty.  

That and I've often wondered if the Kett shouldn't have been the main bad guys in the game, I wonder if the Roekar would have made a better main antagonist and the Kett should have been a 'remnant' faction whose prescence in Heleus was limited, we heard of the Archon and the Kett, we've seen the scars of his war on the Angarra, we know of their emotional presence as an omni present force and then BAM either at the end of the game or the popular bridge DLC that I hope we'll still get (think Tresspasser, Witch Hunt, Legacy, Arrival) the Kett arrive in force, the Archon has summoned reinforcements and is waiting to prove himself a huge, competent threat. 

I really fucking hope he doesn't. I hate him more than I hate Cerberus.

....it's not about the good guy winning. It's called a Boring Protagonist. It's the challenge of writing Superman to be an interesting or relatable character. Sure, it worked in the 70's and 80's because that was a different era in storytelling, but it's the reason Batman has taken over DC comics. Because he is flawed. Because he isn't always winning and he isn't always right. He's not indestructible and it's put in front of us that he can and has lost.

A boring protagonist will often rely on the villain to drive the plot, which is a fundamental mistake when dealing with a character driven work because it forces the viewer to identify with the villain INSTEAD of the hero.

There's another equally relevant character in the MEOT that many players hated for the same reason though they might not realize it: Kai Leng. It's because, aside from his retreat from the Citadel, he doesn't lose and there's no explanation for it. He just ninja's his way around and uses plot convenience to survive until the writer is ready for him to die. We're given Shepard, who can take down Reapers, but can't take down this stealth ninja assassin? It felt like TIM could have just dispatched KL to go kill him some reapers and the whole mess of choosing red, blue or green could have been avoided.

And, before anyone says that Shep falls into this category, that's actually false. Shepard fails. The first act of ME: 1 is a mission that Shepard fails. Followed by a failure to convince the council of what actually happened on that mission. He fails and it humanizes him to the eyes of the viewer. In ME: 2 Shepard dies. Even though he is rebuilt, this works on a subconscious level to help the viewer to identify with Shepard.  Ryder doesn't lose or even fail...in the slightest bit.



But I think the real issue is with a change in storytelling. While the above stands true, that Ryder is given no chance to fail, I think that's just a symptom to the overall problem. The game is designed with a character driven narrative in mind, but the story itself is written with the plot driving it. Making it more comparable to a Michael Bay movie than the MEOT.  And Michael Bay Movies can be entertaining, but you can't go into one expecting a deep storyline and 3 dimensional characters.

This concept is, IMO, backed up by the divide.  You have fans of the trilogy that WANT ME:A to be good and, for whatever reason, refuse to admit the game has flaws as if wishing that it was a great game/story would make it so.  While other fans are put out by the change in storytelling, so much so that they pick the game's flaws apart.  Flaws that CAN be ignored if overall satisfaction is achieved (as proven by the MET).

It's...fun to observe.

How do you leave the Archon's ship and come to that conclusion? The entire cluster gets exalted if not for Ryder, aside from the ones who don't starve to death on the Nexus or kill each other on Kadara.

That isn't a plothole. People didn't survive. There's literally even several quests and artifacts on Eos's surface covering this subject to hammer the point home.

Nation of Advent? Obviously well established.

Maybe it's the idea that he doesn't fail significantly.  There's no struggle other than shooting people.  There is the mission involving your sibling (at the very end of the game) where the Archon DID finally get the upper hand in his own way, but by then, it's more of a "too little; too late" scenario.  There's no surprise that Ryder comes out of it generally unscathed.

I'm sorry I've offended your delicate sensibility.  I didn't realize that my classification meant that EVERYONE EVERYWHERE FITS INTO THESE TWO CATEGORIES.  I will try to be more specific next time.

And you know that how?

One can always grab at straws to close plotholes.

Dude, you didn't offend me, I would hope I didn't offend you, you simply put out a well-reasoned argument but I disagreed with it for the reasons I stated. I'm not trying to pick a fight and I'd ask you to extend me the same courtesy.

As for Ryder... the problem is that if we're extending the definition to 'failing significantly' then it becomes a No True Scotsman fallacy. Ultimately if what defines this is based on one person's idea of what counts as significant then the argument loses a lot of its point. The idea that a hero has to fail for them to be an interesting is itself compelling, but if there is an ability to positively or negatively affect an overall situation then I don't think you can argue that is 'isn't significant'. Raeka and the scouts, the Elaaden colony, the situation with the Asari pathfinder.... they're not technically the main mission objectives but they undoubtedly have a huge effect on the overall situation which Ryder, as Pathfinder, is literally the person's whose job it is to fix.

Indeed...

The problem is that a lot of people play an RPG(ish) game with only the game play (thus lots of shooting) in mind.

It's a trend you most clearly can observe in several (tho be honest - the majority) of those Let's Play video's. Those players do not even try to read what is told or said. They click all the text and choices away as fast as possible (while mumbling "Yeah, Yeah, whatever - stop talking and let me play"), and then wonder why things turn out strange and weird, and they cannot understand what the hell is happening (and next blame the game for inconsistency and "plot holes").

ME:A is just as bad (or good) written as games from the older ME series. Those older games had certainly there (big) share of plot holes and inconsistency's (and cringeworthy dialogues), but they are now obviously invisible for people that wearing these rosy glasses. I played the Mass Effect Trilogy countless times for hours and hours, but I never was blind for the shortcomings these games had. I am also not blind for the shortcomings ME:A has, but they are not worse than the older series.

The dialogues ME:A have a lighter tone, because Ryder is a younger (and thus less cynical by experience) person. He believes more in "high spirit, we going for it" than "we had enough, get those bastards". This "high spirit" is the kind of lightly tone that can pull people trough rough situations, where the "do your duty and no nonsense" would let them fail. I know that out of experience. Seen in this light, lots of the light tone dialogue, or outright humor (what is in fact  gallows humor), gets understandable.

All of this is, of course, a personal opinion. (I am not one of those people that speaks in absolute terms, as if everything what I say is a fact.)