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Party like it's 2023!
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Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, Mass Effect Andromeda
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Post by KaiserShep on Sept 20, 2018 12:51:21 GMT
The non-humanoids were under utilized and became joke species, yes. It's a problem with all scifi in that it's difficult to write actually alien characters that normie audiences can connect with, ergo you get planet of hats and Blasto They did a decent job with Legion, but even the geth's ultimate arc was to become robo pinnochio or scrap metal (72% polymer, whatever). Leaving them as they were in ME2 was too difficult, apparently. Either actually utilize the non humanoid aliens, or don't bother putting them in as window dressing at all, and just make your human(oids) in space setting.Exactly. I am getting tired of BioWare teasing us with aliens like the Rachni or (ME 2) Geth only to completely ignore them in favor of more human-focused drama and 'daddy issues'. If you are going to put forth time and effort into including things like the Elcor and Hanar then actually use them. It also doesn't help that the writer behind those unique, non-human insights (Chris Le'Toile) is no longer with the company and all we are left with is 'Rule of Cool' and Cerberus > Everything writers like Mac Walters. The fact that BioWare has also become more and more progressive over the years hasn't really helped in this department either; since it's rather difficult add in a Rachni focused campaign, or Elcor companion when they're too busy trying to make sure every little trending social commentary checkbox of humanity is "adequately represented". While I agree that BioWare abandoned some of its more intriguing ideas about the alien and synthetic species of the setting, the bolded portion here doesn't really make any sense. What social commentary of humanity really supplanted these things in a Mass Effect game? There's people of various ethnicity and sexual orientation roaming about, but none of that is really part of the narrative; it's just there. You get the bulk of it from ambient dialogue from NPC's or from your PC's personal choices. What really replaced these bigger ideas was the simple "humans are special" concept, which reared its ugly head in Mass Effect 2. Suddenly it's all about the humans being the focus of the reapers for some reason, and it just came down to us having greater genetic diversity, which really made no sense considering other species have been settling various colonies for centuries before humans even jumped out of their solar system.
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Post by Vortex13 on Sept 20, 2018 13:02:32 GMT
Exactly. I am getting tired of BioWare teasing us with aliens like the Rachni or (ME 2) Geth only to completely ignore them in favor of more human-focused drama and 'daddy issues'. If you are going to put forth time and effort into including things like the Elcor and Hanar then actually use them. It also doesn't help that the writer behind those unique, non-human insights (Chris Le'Toile) is no longer with the company and all we are left with is 'Rule of Cool' and Cerberus > Everything writers like Mac Walters. The fact that BioWare has also become more and more progressive over the years hasn't really helped in this department either; since it's rather difficult add in a Rachni focused campaign, or Elcor companion when they're too busy trying to make sure every little trending social commentary checkbox of humanity is "adequately represented". While I agree that BioWare abandoned some of its more intriguing ideas about the alien and synthetic species of the setting, the bolded portion here doesn't really make any sense. What social commentary of humanity really supplanted these things in a Mass Effect game? There's people of various ethnicity and sexual orientation roaming about, but none of that is really part of the narrative; it's just there. What really replaced these bigger ideas was the simple "humans are special" concept, which reared its ugly head in Mass Effect 2. You are correct that it was a human focus that drove those other elements away, but at the fore front of that the human focus was the push for more "representation" of every single niche group of humanity under the sun. Steve and Traynor, BioWare's touted "first homosexual companions" in numerous press releases, got more screen time in ME 3, than the Volus, Elcor, Hanar, and Rachni collectively got in all three games combined. If BioWare wasn't pushing so hard to meet that diversity quota, could we have possibly gotten to see more of those underrepresented species? And no, it's not just because they were part of the LGBT crowd that I disliked the disparity of screen time. It was the additional focus and diverting of resources and word budget to squeeze in extra human characters that I disliked. I feel the same way about James; though unlike Steve and Traynor he didn't become the poster child for BioWare's new special interest group.
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Sanunes
N6
Just a flip of the coin.
Games: Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, KOTOR, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda, SWTOR, Anthem, Mass Effect Legendary Edition
Prime Posts: 4392
Prime Likes: 882
Posts: 5,908 Likes: 8,941
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0
8,941
Sanunes
Just a flip of the coin.
5,908
Sept 13, 2016 11:51:12 GMT
September 2016
sanunes
Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, KOTOR, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda, SWTOR, Anthem, Mass Effect Legendary Edition
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Post by Sanunes on Sept 20, 2018 13:30:02 GMT
While I agree that BioWare abandoned some of its more intriguing ideas about the alien and synthetic species of the setting, the bolded portion here doesn't really make any sense. What social commentary of humanity really supplanted these things in a Mass Effect game? There's people of various ethnicity and sexual orientation roaming about, but none of that is really part of the narrative; it's just there. What really replaced these bigger ideas was the simple "humans are special" concept, which reared its ugly head in Mass Effect 2. You are correct that it was a human focus that drove those other elements away, but at the fore front of that the human focus was the push for more "representation" of every single niche group of humanity under the sun. Steve and Traynor, BioWare's touted "first homosexual companions" in numerous press releases, got more screen time in ME 3, than the Volus, Elcor, Hanar, and Rachni collectively got in all three games combined. If BioWare wasn't pushing so hard to meet that diversity quota, could we have possibly gotten to see more of those underrepresented species? And no, it's not just because they were part of the LGBT crowd that I disliked the disparity of screen time. It was the additional focus and diverting of resources and word budget to squeeze in extra human characters that disliked. I feel the same way about James; though unlike Steve and Traynor he didn't become the poster child for BioWare's new special interest group. So you want your special interests catered to instead? Because I think those characters were a complete waste of development time in the first game and they were just doing it to try and appease people. They never felt alien or important to the game world they were just exposition dumps for the information about their races while adding nothing interesting to the game or game world. I hate to break to to you as well, BioWare has been going down the inclusiveness for the characters in their games for years because that is the direction they feel they should go in. If you are that insulted that BioWare wanted to make people feel like they belong there are other developers for you because BioWare isn't the one.
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N7
Games: Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, KOTOR, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda
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Post by Iakus on Sept 20, 2018 13:34:58 GMT
Careful, your bigotry's showing. No. An anti PC viewpoint, maybe, but not bigoted. Humans, be they straight, gay, bi, trans, etc. are comparatively boring in a setting that has aliens like the Rachni or Hanar in it (IMO). That I don't want to see more human focused elements shoved into the game, at the expense of those 'alien' aliens is not being discriminatory its a matter of personal preference I have as a fan. To put it an other way: Humans, and all the niche pockets of diversity BioWare likes to keep showcasing, are like vanilla ice cream with rainbow sprinkles. All well and good, but boring when you realize that the dessert store is selling dozens of other ice cream flavors, frozen yogurt, italian ice, frosties, milk shakes; even several candy bars that aren't even in the same category as frozen treats but are present on the shelves. You want to go see those other options, to taste what all the different flavors and types of desserts have to offer, but the person behind the counter keeps shoving that same cup of vanilla with rainbow sprinkles in your face. They even begin removing those other flavors and separate dessert types from their inventory so that they can put up more advertising space for their special vanilla ice cream with rainbow sprinkles. This would be perfectly fine if the store only sold that one type of dessert to begin with, but the fact that they originally had a much larger variety to their menu and are now forgoing everything else for the all important vanilla flavor with rainbow sprinkles is beginning to become annoying. The thing is, that's why I don't mind playing a human in these games. Humans are relatable. I don't see playing one as "boring" because if we had the option to play as asari, turians, drell, etc, we'd just be playing humans with tentacles, chitin, or scales. Nothing would really chance but out cc options. What would be interesting would be to play a human learning about how alien the aliens around them are.to pull a couple of examples, Orson Scott Card's "Speaker for the Dead" or Jack Campbell's "The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier" A story about meeting aliens where they don't immediately know how to communicate with you, and you spend much of the game simply trying to figure out if they are friendly or not. Not teaching them how to perform oral sex on a human...
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Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, KOTOR, Jade Empire
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Post by Vortex13 on Sept 20, 2018 13:40:26 GMT
You are correct that it was a human focus that drove those other elements away, but at the fore front of that the human focus was the push for more "representation" of every single niche group of humanity under the sun. Steve and Traynor, BioWare's touted "first homosexual companions" in numerous press releases, got more screen time in ME 3, than the Volus, Elcor, Hanar, and Rachni collectively got in all three games combined. If BioWare wasn't pushing so hard to meet that diversity quota, could we have possibly gotten to see more of those underrepresented species? And no, it's not just because they were part of the LGBT crowd that I disliked the disparity of screen time. It was the additional focus and diverting of resources and word budget to squeeze in extra human characters that disliked. I feel the same way about James; though unlike Steve and Traynor he didn't become the poster child for BioWare's new special interest group. So you want your special interests catered to instead? Because I think those characters were a complete waste of development time in the first game and they were just doing it to try and appease people. They never felt alien or important to the game world they were just exposition dumps for the information about their races while adding nothing interesting to the game or game world. I hate to break to to you as well, BioWare has been going down the inclusiveness for the characters in their games for years because that is the direction they feel they should go in. If you are that insulted that BioWare wanted to make people feel like they belong there are other developers for you because BioWare isn't the one. I just want expansions on what was present in the series from game one. If Mass Effect had been flying the Rainbow colored LGTB flag high since day one and was focused solely on real world human social/political elements, I wouldn't complain. But as it stands now, the initial factors that were originally part of the setting are being reduced and/or straight up removed from said setting just so we can make more room for some all encompassing 'diversity quota'.
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Post by Vortex13 on Sept 20, 2018 13:44:07 GMT
No. An anti PC viewpoint, maybe, but not bigoted. Humans, be they straight, gay, bi, trans, etc. are comparatively boring in a setting that has aliens like the Rachni or Hanar in it (IMO). That I don't want to see more human focused elements shoved into the game, at the expense of those 'alien' aliens is not being discriminatory its a matter of personal preference I have as a fan. To put it an other way: Humans, and all the niche pockets of diversity BioWare likes to keep showcasing, are like vanilla ice cream with rainbow sprinkles. All well and good, but boring when you realize that the dessert store is selling dozens of other ice cream flavors, frozen yogurt, italian ice, frosties, milk shakes; even several candy bars that aren't even in the same category as frozen treats but are present on the shelves. You want to go see those other options, to taste what all the different flavors and types of desserts have to offer, but the person behind the counter keeps shoving that same cup of vanilla with rainbow sprinkles in your face. They even begin removing those other flavors and separate dessert types from their inventory so that they can put up more advertising space for their special vanilla ice cream with rainbow sprinkles. This would be perfectly fine if the store only sold that one type of dessert to begin with, but the fact that they originally had a much larger variety to their menu and are now forgoing everything else for the all important vanilla flavor with rainbow sprinkles is beginning to become annoying. The thing is, that's why I don't mind playing a human in these games. Humans are relatable. I don't see playing one as "boring" because if we had the option to play as asari, turians, drell, etc, we'd just be playing humans with tentacles, chitin, or scales. Nothing would really chance but out cc options. What would be interesting would be to play a human learning about how alien the aliens around them are.to pull a couple of examples, Orson Scott Card's "Speaker for the Dead" or Jack Campbell's "The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier" A story about meeting aliens where they don't immediately know how to communicate with you, and you spend much of the game simply trying to figure out if they are friendly or not. Not teaching them how to perform oral sex on a human... I'm actually the same way. I have no problem with a human protagonist as they are, like you said, relatable. I find them "boring" because in a universe filled with the strange and the alien the narrative wants to instead focus on 'daddy issues' and who finds what type of genitals are sexually attractive.
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Sanunes
N6
Just a flip of the coin.
Games: Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, KOTOR, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda, SWTOR, Anthem, Mass Effect Legendary Edition
Prime Posts: 4392
Prime Likes: 882
Posts: 5,908 Likes: 8,941
inherit
1561
0
8,941
Sanunes
Just a flip of the coin.
5,908
Sept 13, 2016 11:51:12 GMT
September 2016
sanunes
Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, KOTOR, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda, SWTOR, Anthem, Mass Effect Legendary Edition
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Post by Sanunes on Sept 20, 2018 13:44:33 GMT
No. An anti PC viewpoint, maybe, but not bigoted. Humans, be they straight, gay, bi, trans, etc. are comparatively boring in a setting that has aliens like the Rachni or Hanar in it (IMO). That I don't want to see more human focused elements shoved into the game, at the expense of those 'alien' aliens is not being discriminatory its a matter of personal preference I have as a fan. To put it an other way: Humans, and all the niche pockets of diversity BioWare likes to keep showcasing, are like vanilla ice cream with rainbow sprinkles. All well and good, but boring when you realize that the dessert store is selling dozens of other ice cream flavors, frozen yogurt, italian ice, frosties, milk shakes; even several candy bars that aren't even in the same category as frozen treats but are present on the shelves. You want to go see those other options, to taste what all the different flavors and types of desserts have to offer, but the person behind the counter keeps shoving that same cup of vanilla with rainbow sprinkles in your face. They even begin removing those other flavors and separate dessert types from their inventory so that they can put up more advertising space for their special vanilla ice cream with rainbow sprinkles. This would be perfectly fine if the store only sold that one type of dessert to begin with, but the fact that they originally had a much larger variety to their menu and are now forgoing everything else for the all important vanilla flavor with rainbow sprinkles is beginning to become annoying. The thing is, that's why I don't mind playing a human in these games. Humans are relatable. I don't see playing one as "boring" because if we had the option to play as asari, turians, drell, etc, we'd just be playing humans with tentacles, chitin, or scales. Nothing would really chance but out cc options. What would be interesting would be to play a human learning about how alien the aliens around them are.to pull a couple of examples, Orson Scott Card's "Speaker for the Dead" or Jack Campbell's "The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier" A story about meeting aliens where they don't immediately know how to communicate with you, and you spend much of the game simply trying to figure out if they are friendly or not. Not teaching them how to perform oral sex on a human... To me that kind of direction for a video game would be best served as a game that might do well with minor sales and not have huge expectations behind it such as along the lines of the smaller titles EA has released recently with No Way Out and Unraveled. I don't see EA giving that type of game to BioWare for it seems to be to help developers learn how to make a game without being thrown into the bonfire like the Montreal BioWare team.
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Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, KOTOR, Jade Empire
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Post by Vortex13 on Sept 20, 2018 13:55:52 GMT
The thing is, that's why I don't mind playing a human in these games. Humans are relatable. I don't see playing one as "boring" because if we had the option to play as asari, turians, drell, etc, we'd just be playing humans with tentacles, chitin, or scales. Nothing would really chance but out cc options. What would be interesting would be to play a human learning about how alien the aliens around them are.to pull a couple of examples, Orson Scott Card's "Speaker for the Dead" or Jack Campbell's "The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier" A story about meeting aliens where they don't immediately know how to communicate with you, and you spend much of the game simply trying to figure out if they are friendly or not. Not teaching them how to perform oral sex on a human... To me that kind of direction for a video game would be best served as a game that might do well with minor sales and not have huge expectations behind it such as along the lines of the smaller titles EA has released recently with No Way Out and Unraveled. I don't see EA giving that type of game to BioWare for it seems to be to help developers learn how to make a game without being thrown into the bonfire like the Montreal BioWare team. I would disagree. Mass Effect 1 and Dragon Age: Origins/Awakening clearly presented elements of the 'alien' and the 'other'. Why do we have to assume that wanting to explore more intellectual concepts are only the purview of low-end or indie games?
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N3
Posts: 614 Likes: 1,317
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Mar 23, 2018 18:30:38 GMT
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Post by Radec on Sept 20, 2018 14:37:10 GMT
Exactly. I am getting tired of BioWare teasing us with aliens like the Rachni or (ME 2) Geth only to completely ignore them in favor of more human-focused drama and 'daddy issues'. If you are going to put forth time and effort into including things like the Elcor and Hanar then actually use them. It also doesn't help that the writer behind those unique, non-human insights (Chris Le'Toile) is no longer with the company and all we are left with is 'Rule of Cool' and Cerberus > Everything writers like Mac Walters. The fact that BioWare has also become more and more progressive over the years hasn't really helped in this department either; since it's rather difficult add in a Rachni focused campaign, or Elcor companion when they're too busy trying to make sure every little trending social commentary checkbox of humanity is "adequately represented". While I agree that BioWare abandoned some of its more intriguing ideas about the alien and synthetic species of the setting, the bolded portion here doesn't really make any sense. What social commentary of humanity really supplanted these things in a Mass Effect game? There's people of various ethnicity and sexual orientation roaming about, but none of that is really part of the narrative; it's just there. You get the bulk of it from ambient dialogue from NPC's or from your PC's personal choices. What really replaced these bigger ideas was the simple "humans are special" concept, which reared its ugly head in Mass Effect 2. Suddenly it's all about the humans being the focus of the reapers for some reason, and it just came down to us having greater genetic diversity, which really made no sense considering other species have been settling various colonies for centuries before humans even jumped out of their solar system. Humans are special was sort of inherent to the setting, though. There were species that had been part of Citadel space since the time of the Roman Empire, yet it only takes humanity 30 years or so from being discovered to getting considered over them for a Council seat. Nevermind that you could have humanity usurping control of half the galaxy by the end of the first game (which they had to retcon in ME2 and 3).
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KaiserShep
Party like it's 2023!
9,233
August 2016
kaisershep
Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, Mass Effect Andromeda
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Post by KaiserShep on Sept 20, 2018 17:53:18 GMT
While I agree that BioWare abandoned some of its more intriguing ideas about the alien and synthetic species of the setting, the bolded portion here doesn't really make any sense. What social commentary of humanity really supplanted these things in a Mass Effect game? There's people of various ethnicity and sexual orientation roaming about, but none of that is really part of the narrative; it's just there. What really replaced these bigger ideas was the simple "humans are special" concept, which reared its ugly head in Mass Effect 2. You are correct that it was a human focus that drove those other elements away, but at the fore front of that the human focus was the push for more "representation" of every single niche group of humanity under the sun. Steve and Traynor, BioWare's touted "first homosexual companions" in numerous press releases, got more screen time in ME 3, than the Volus, Elcor, Hanar, and Rachni collectively got in all three games combined. If BioWare wasn't pushing so hard to meet that diversity quota, could we have possibly gotten to see more of those underrepresented species? And no, it's not just because they were part of the LGBT crowd that I disliked the disparity of screen time. It was the additional focus and diverting of resources and word budget to squeeze in extra human characters that I disliked. I feel the same way about James; though unlike Steve and Traynor he didn't become the poster child for BioWare's new special interest group. I think this overstates these characters’ impact on the overall game, as I don’t think they actually consume nearly enough screen time to affect other aspects of development like that. I’d say it’s a fair bet that even if Steve and Traynor existed as just minor NPC’s with no romance path whatsoever and just occasionally said something mission-specific, or even did not exist at all, the Elcor, Hanar and other third-tier species of the setting would get just as much (or little) attention. The writers just never seemed eager to do more with them regardless, and I don’t think any amount of word budget saved on a couple of the Normandy crew would have changed that. As for the rachni, that basically fell on BioWare’s mistake in allowing us to wipe out the last of their kind in the very first game without a clear path forward for the overarching narrative. Mass Effect’s main problem is that they seemed to be making up a lot of these threads’ continuation as they went along, not that word budget on certain characters meant sacrificing effort that could’ve gone into something else.
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Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, KOTOR, Jade Empire
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Post by Vortex13 on Sept 20, 2018 18:24:44 GMT
You are correct that it was a human focus that drove those other elements away, but at the fore front of that the human focus was the push for more "representation" of every single niche group of humanity under the sun. Steve and Traynor, BioWare's touted "first homosexual companions" in numerous press releases, got more screen time in ME 3, than the Volus, Elcor, Hanar, and Rachni collectively got in all three games combined. If BioWare wasn't pushing so hard to meet that diversity quota, could we have possibly gotten to see more of those underrepresented species? And no, it's not just because they were part of the LGBT crowd that I disliked the disparity of screen time. It was the additional focus and diverting of resources and word budget to squeeze in extra human characters that I disliked. I feel the same way about James; though unlike Steve and Traynor he didn't become the poster child for BioWare's new special interest group. I think this overstates these characters’ impact on the overall game, as I don’t think they actually consume nearly enough screen time to affect other aspects of development like that. I’d say it’s a fair bet that even if Steve and Traynor existed as just minor NPC’s with no romance path whatsoever and just occasionally said something mission-specific, or even did not exist at all, the Elcor, Hanar and other third-tier species of the setting would get just as much (or little) attention. The writers just never seemed eager to do more with them regardless, and I don’t think any amount of word budget saved on a couple of the Normandy crew would have changed that. As for the rachni, that basically fell on BioWare’s mistake in allowing us to wipe out the last of their kind in the very first game without a clear path forward for the overarching narrative. Mass Effect’s main problem is that they seemed to be making up a lot of these threads’ continuation as they went along, not that word budget on certain characters meant sacrificing effort that could’ve gone into something else. That is quite possible, though I think that BioWare's drive for inclusiveness serves as a perfect excuse to not further explore those elements. I mean, why would they bother writing more about the Elcor or Hanar when having "the world's first truly homosexual companions in an action RPG" was tantalizing the gaming headlines? Obviously, this is no guarantee that if Steve and Traynor weren't present that Elcor and Hanar would magically receive more screen time, but the relationship between those two portions of these games have followed a trend that is hard to ignore. Namely: the more human issues we get, the less 'alien' elements we have. Such correlations are plain to see when comparing the first title of both the Dragon Age and Mass Effect series to the most recent titles. From Elcor, Hanar, Rachni, Thorians, Geth, Werewolves, Golems, Sylvans, Mabari, Awakened, etc. having noteworthy, if admittedly small, roles in the narrative of the first games and their DLCs to being totally absent or reduced to practical nonexistence in the latest games. But hey, we get to have talks about proper gender pronouns and transgenderism now, our romancable companions have at least two sets of homosexual characters to choose from, and what alien or fantastical elements remain are so watered down to where they are essentially just humans in rubber masks rather than anything distinctive. The focus on being inclusive, to the detriment of the rest of the setting, is the problem not so much the content of said inclusivity. BioWare could celebrate hetrosexuals the same way and I bet you there would be a similar loss of the 'other' or 'alien' content. That's were my issue lies.
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Old Scientist Contrarian
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February 2017
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Post by alanc9 on Sept 20, 2018 18:31:38 GMT
Steve and Traynor, BioWare's touted "first homosexual companions" in numerous press releases, got more screen time in ME 3, than the Volus, Elcor, Hanar, and Rachni collectively got in all three games combined. If BioWare wasn't pushing so hard to meet that diversity quota, could we have possibly gotten to see more of those underrepresented species? That's silly. Dev time freed up by not doing those two NPCs would have been divided up among other design goals exactly the same way the rest of the dev time was. You can set up arbitrary zero-sum conflicts between any two design elements, but that doesn't make those hypothetical conflicts real.
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16,819
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Party like it's 2023!
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kaisershep
Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, Mass Effect Andromeda
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Post by KaiserShep on Sept 20, 2018 19:02:47 GMT
I think this overstates these characters’ impact on the overall game, as I don’t think they actually consume nearly enough screen time to affect other aspects of development like that. I’d say it’s a fair bet that even if Steve and Traynor existed as just minor NPC’s with no romance path whatsoever and just occasionally said something mission-specific, or even did not exist at all, the Elcor, Hanar and other third-tier species of the setting would get just as much (or little) attention. The writers just never seemed eager to do more with them regardless, and I don’t think any amount of word budget saved on a couple of the Normandy crew would have changed that. As for the rachni, that basically fell on BioWare’s mistake in allowing us to wipe out the last of their kind in the very first game without a clear path forward for the overarching narrative. Mass Effect’s main problem is that they seemed to be making up a lot of these threads’ continuation as they went along, not that word budget on certain characters meant sacrificing effort that could’ve gone into something else. That is quite possible, though I think that BioWare's drive for inclusiveness serves as a perfect excuse to not further explore those elements. I mean, why would they bother writing more about the Elcor or Hanar when having "the world's first truly homosexual companions in an action RPG" was tantalizing the gaming headlines? Obviously, this is no guarantee that if Steve and Traynor weren't present that Elcor and Hanar would magically receive more screen time, but the relationship between those two portions of these games have followed a trend that is hard to ignore. Namely: the more human issues we get, the less 'alien' elements we have. Such correlations are plain to see when comparing the first title of both the Dragon Age and Mass Effect series to the most recent titles. From Elcor, Hanar, Rachni, Thorians, Geth, Werewolves, Golems, Sylvans, Mabari, Awakened, etc. having noteworthy, if admittedly small, roles in the narrative of the first games and their DLCs to being totally absent or reduced to practical nonexistence in the latest games. But hey, we get to have talks about proper gender pronouns and transgenderism now, our romancable companions have at least two sets of homosexual characters to choose from, and what alien or fantastical elements remain are so watered down to where they are essentially just humans in rubber masks rather than anything distinctive. The focus on being inclusive, to the detriment of the rest of the setting, is the problem not so much the content of said inclusivity. BioWare could celebrate hetrosexuals the same way and I bet you there would be a similar loss of the 'other' or 'alien' content. That's were my issue lies. It's a mighty big stretch for it to come down to "It's either Cortez and Traynor, or that big mission on Irune to retrieve the Book of Plenix". A lot of the things being blamed for other parts of the setting being neglected take up mere minutes, or mere seconds in the case of the gender pronouns (one NPC in ambient dialogue no less). Putting aside this argument, the fact is that ME3 deals with the alien stuff in a major way, with threads that have started since the beginning. A bulk of the game is dedicated to the resolution of the krogan problem, as well as the geth/quarian conflict, and with the revelation of the asari's best-kept secret. That the joke species didn't get their time to shine is more an artifact of them being just that: joke species. The hanar, elcor and volus were doomed to be window dressing on account of their obnoxious manners of speech and punchline status since the very beginning of the franchise.
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Post by griffith82 on Sept 20, 2018 23:20:15 GMT
So you want your special interests catered to instead? Because I think those characters were a complete waste of development time in the first game and they were just doing it to try and appease people. They never felt alien or important to the game world they were just exposition dumps for the information about their races while adding nothing interesting to the game or game world. I hate to break to to you as well, BioWare has been going down the inclusiveness for the characters in their games for years because that is the direction they feel they should go in. If you are that insulted that BioWare wanted to make people feel like they belong there are other developers for you because BioWare isn't the one. I just want expansions on what was present in the series from game one. If Mass Effect had been flying the Rainbow colored LGTB flag high since day one and was focused solely on real world human social/political elements, I wouldn't complain. But as it stands now, the initial factors that were originally part of the setting are being reduced and/or straight up removed from said setting just so we can make more room for some all encompassing 'diversity quota'. Wrong. It was from day one but those elements were cut. You want them to cater to you and it won't happen.
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Post by N7Pathfinder on Sept 20, 2018 23:29:53 GMT
I'm not even sure if it is a good idea to talk about what I would like to see in a Mass Effect game. I don't want to give off the impression that "THIS is what Mass Effect has to be like and I will be mad if that's not how it goes." Personally, it's that kind of attitude that ruins franchises (look at what happened to Star Wars). I just want to get another Mass Effect game. What Bioware chooses to do with Mass Effect, I don't care, as long as I'm confident they can deliver a fun, engaging, and worth-it story with memorable characters and awesome world-building.
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Post by traks on Sept 23, 2018 11:34:28 GMT
I liked lots of stuff in all 4 games (which is the reason I'm still infected with the ME virus), but I have a few points I would like to see improved in future ones:
1) At the start of ME5 I want to be in a position I can relate to coming from either the trilogy or MEA or both. The game has to present a situation that makes sense to be in for both the galactic community and on a personal level. MEA not having a clear goal for the AI is one of the main problems IMO. If the game had started with the Milky Way presenting a problem that might have its solution in the Andromeda Galaxy (no matter how far fetched, as long as it is brought up well, like for example: we go there to solve the dark energy problem or we go there to flee before the Reapers come - with everyone knowing of the mission statement), I would have been more involved from the start.
To sum up: the next game needs a good premise.
2) More interesting dialogue with NPCs. Less daddy issues, less misfit talk, more talk about what's going on in the world, about (mission) strategy etc.
3) A bit related to the above: (at least some) competent leadership for once. I would like to be in a position where we are the outstretched arm of great leadership instead of going against nonsense orders (for no particular reason) again and again. Let us strategize together with leadership.
4) More control over the team put together, giving some options to choose from, or better reasons why people are important specialists that have to be on the team. In ME1 and ME2 we had some control about the squadmates and in turn could influence ME3 (which was great), but in MEA everything was a given.
5) No more drama - when it comes to factions - than needed. The Cerberus story arc in 3 (fighting them everywhere although they needed the Crucible for their plans) was as inconsequently from a story standpoint as people in MEA telling us that they didn't went to Andromeda to follow the orders of the AI. The whole exile group didn't make any sense for a first game in a new galaxy.
6) Different creatures on different planets. The different planets sometimes felt just like different regions.
7) No (or at least less) checkbox quests. More different puzzles at different stages and if we collect something (like the Remnant cores for example) then let that lead to something. Let that have a meaning. Let us find something out about the lore, that would be missed if we don't collect that stuff. Just a cutscene with scientists later in the game would do the trick in some instances.
8) Cities. Something totally missing so far in the series is the ability to explore big cities. I would like to see either bigger ancient ruins or even parts of some actual cities (on planets, not space stations) to wander around.
9) Double check on the lore. I think the example of the "Krogan fistfight" speaks for itself. That scene is so absurd when you think about how tough Krogans come at you as the player or when you think about what we know about Krogan characteristics. Or Sarissa's biotic shield being able to block rockets and destroy the Kett ship...
10) A more serious tone with high stakes.
11) Consequences of our actions rather than us making decisions that we shouldn't (have to) make.
12) In general: wonder and excitement. Always my wish for any ME game.
I'll let music speak for 12:
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Post by alanc9 on Sept 23, 2018 16:38:20 GMT
It's pretty clear why the Ryder family joined the AI. Alec had destroyed not only his own career, but his children's as well.
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Post by traks on Sept 23, 2018 18:35:38 GMT
I think you didn't understand what I meant. I'm talking about the AI having an important goal for the Milky Way - out in the open, a reason why they recruit and whom. That was lacking.
Usually when you go on an exploring mission, you do it to gain knowledge, bring it back and share it with the - in our case - world community to help solve problems in the future.
Coming up with a scientific problem that for example destroys planets in a few thousand years, a problem where some scientists of the Milky Way speculate that its solution lies in Andromeda. That would've been an interesting starting point for the Initiative itself.
The way it was presented? Not so much IMO.
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Post by alanc9 on Sept 23, 2018 21:53:27 GMT
It's not clear why that's a problem. People wanting out from under the Citadel and Alliance governments was a thing in the trilogy. If you want a way to build your own society without their interference, this is it.
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Post by ahglock on Sept 23, 2018 22:52:42 GMT
It's not clear why that's a problem. People wanting out from under the Citadel and Alliance governments was a thing in the trilogy. If you want a way to build your own society without their interference, this is it. They could literally fly like 4 solar systems over and do the same thing in the MW galaxy. There might be a reason to leave the galactic government, but its not a reason to fly 600 years to another galaxy. The shoddy reason behind going at least gives an excuse for the craptastic collection of colonists you have when you arrive.
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Post by griffith82 on Sept 23, 2018 23:29:31 GMT
It's not clear why that's a problem. People wanting out from under the Citadel and Alliance governments was a thing in the trilogy. If you want a way to build your own society without their interference, this is it. They could literally fly like 4 solar systems over and do the same thing in the MW galaxy. There might be a reason to leave the galactic government, but its not a reason to fly 600 years to another galaxy. The shoddy reason behind going at least gives an excuse for the craptastic collection of colonists you have when you arrive. The point was to survive the invasion.
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Post by alanc9 on Sept 24, 2018 1:03:25 GMT
It's not clear why that's a problem. People wanting out from under the Citadel and Alliance governments was a thing in the trilogy. If you want a way to build your own society without their interference, this is it. They could literally fly like 4 solar systems over and do the same thing in the MW galaxy. There might be a reason to leave the galactic government, but its not a reason to fly 600 years to another galaxy. The shoddy reason behind going at least gives an excuse for the craptastic collection of colonists you have when you arrive. It's conceptually impossible for a distance to be easy for the settlers to cross without it also being easy for the government to impose control across that distance.
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Post by Hanako Ikezawa on Sept 24, 2018 1:05:51 GMT
I recall one of the AI vids that was shown before the game came out talking about one of the long term goals of the Initiative was to develop a connection between the two galaxies.
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Games: Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, KOTOR, Baldur's Gate, Shattered Steel, Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda, SWTOR, Anthem
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Post by ahglock on Sept 24, 2018 3:06:42 GMT
They could literally fly like 4 solar systems over and do the same thing in the MW galaxy. There might be a reason to leave the galactic government, but its not a reason to fly 600 years to another galaxy. The shoddy reason behind going at least gives an excuse for the craptastic collection of colonists you have when you arrive. It's conceptually impossible for a distance to be easy for the settlers to cross without it also being easy for the government to impose control across that distance. You can go a difficult distance one easily in the not worth following you range, especially how little they hassled human colonies near the terminus system without a 600 year journey to another galaxy.
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Games: Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, KOTOR, Baldur's Gate, Shattered Steel, Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda, SWTOR, Anthem
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Post by ahglock on Sept 24, 2018 3:09:58 GMT
They could literally fly like 4 solar systems over and do the same thing in the MW galaxy. There might be a reason to leave the galactic government, but its not a reason to fly 600 years to another galaxy. The shoddy reason behind going at least gives an excuse for the craptastic collection of colonists you have when you arrive. The point was to survive the invasion.
Not the upfront one, which is I believe the original posters point about this. There was no real upfront reason for the journey. In the game you find out the benefactor was concerned about the reapers, but upfront there wasn't a benefactor, and there wasn't a concrete thing to solve in going.
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