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Post by alanc9 on Oct 12, 2019 3:19:46 GMT
I didn't intend to sound like I was judging Young's proposal harshly. The "analysis" was so bad that I didn't bother to do a full workup on the proposal. But I don't think this is a case where GIGO applies
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Post by Sanunes on Oct 12, 2019 4:01:22 GMT
The story should start and end with Shepard on ME3, so they should create a sequel that takes place after the Reapers. However, they should give the trilogy a hard reboot to fix the story, especially ME2. Because killing Shepard and bringing him/her back to life doesn't make any sense, and the Collectors kidnapping humans because the Alliance fought alongside with the Citadel Fleet destroying Sovereign is very silly. And most important of all: Fix the ending where choices and the actions that carried over the end of the Trilogy. And make it memorable experience just like RDR2, and TWD (Telltale). What did you find memorable about Telltale? All of their games just funneled us to the exact same dialogue with the exact same characters. If you pick one character to survive or make a choice a hour or so later its nullified and doesn't matter anymore. I haven't played RDR2, but I haven't heard a lot of praise for the game come from people that I go to for their impressions of a game I haven't tried and unsure about.
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Post by griffith82 on Oct 12, 2019 16:46:29 GMT
Young's (Only one I saw; links on this board sometimes don't display properly on my phone.) Guy comes up with a plan, and then concludes that Bio must have come up with the same plan because... his plan is so good, or something. Moving from "they should have done this" to "they must have intended to do this" is never a great idea, and it's outright silly when the dev in question has always designed around emotional beats rather than using a more intellectual process. Yeah it's the old "my way is better." I hate those.
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Post by Iakus on Oct 12, 2019 17:46:11 GMT
The story should start and end with Shepard on ME3, so they should create a sequel that takes place after the Reapers. However, they should give the trilogy a hard reboot to fix the story, especially ME2. Because killing Shepard and bringing him/her back to life doesn't make any sense, and the Collectors kidnapping humans because the Alliance fought alongside with the Citadel Fleet destroying Sovereign is very silly. And most important of all: Fix the ending where choices and the actions that carried over the end of the Trilogy. And make it memorable experience just like RDR2, and TWD (Telltale). What did you find memorable about Telltale? All of their games just funneled us to the exact same dialogue with the exact same characters. If you pick one character to survive or make a choice a hour or so later its nullified and doesn't matter anymore. I haven't played RDR2, but I haven't heard a lot of praise for the game come from people that I go to for their impressions of a game I haven't tried and unsure about. Telltale actually got better with that as they went on. Endings became more divergent, more exclusive content became available based on your choices.
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Post by alanc9 on Oct 12, 2019 19:57:37 GMT
For ME2, I'm fairly confident that someone on the writing team watched the movie The Dirty Dozen and had an idea for how to make a game based on the same sort of concept... rounding up a suicide squad and then doing a suicide mission. I don't think it was really written to be a great second book of a Reaper Trilogy. They figured out a way to bring forward a couple of choices and thought they could establish some continuity by re-using Shepard as the lead character. Think more of a pair of Hardy Boys books rather than an actual Part 1 and Part 2 of the same story. Somewhere going into ME3, someone decided they could possibly work it into a Trilogy... even though the task was made nigh impossible because of the differences between ME1 and ME2. Overall, I thought they did a credible job at that. The story in ME3, for the most part, flows rather logically and they did work in appearances by all of the possible survivors of the ME2 squad and most of the crew. There is a difference though between forethought and afterthought. While at times it seems like Bioware foreshadows things, what they did was more likely scatter "possible" continue threads throughout the games and then decide later to pick up some (definitely not all) of those threads and work them into their newer ideas. What I've read suggests that a trilogy was always the plan, with ME2 as the "dark" middle chapter. Cerberus was a convenient tool to impose that darkness, even though we often talk as if the cause-and-effect ran the other way.
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Post by Buckeldemon on Oct 12, 2019 22:29:02 GMT
I didn't intend to sound like I was judging Young's proposal harshly. The "analysis" was so bad that I didn't bother to do a full workup on the proposal. But I don't think this is a case where GIGO applies
I have no idea what you want to say beyond that you hate it.
For ME2, I'm fairly confident that someone on the writing team watched the movie The Dirty Dozen and had an idea for how to make a game based on the same sort of concept... rounding up a suicide squad and then doing a suicide mission. I don't think it was really written to be a great second book of a Reaper Trilogy. They figured out a way to bring forward a couple of choices and thought they could establish some continuity by re-using Shepard as the lead character. Think more of a pair of Hardy Boys books rather than an actual Part 1 and Part 2 of the same story. Somewhere going into ME3, someone decided they could possibly work it into a Trilogy... even though the task was made nigh impossible because of the differences between ME1 and ME2. Overall, I thought they did a credible job at that. The story in ME3, for the most part, flows rather logically and they did work in appearances by all of the possible survivors of the ME2 squad and most of the crew. There is a difference though between forethought and afterthought. While at times it seems like Bioware foreshadows things, what they did was more likely scatter "possible" continue threads throughout the games and then decide later to pick up some (definitely not all) of those threads and work them into their newer ideas. What I've read suggests that a trilogy was always the plan, with ME2 as the "dark" middle chapter. Cerberus was a convenient tool to impose that darkness, even though we often talk as if the cause-and-effect ran the other way.
Any source for this? Well, I don't know if they played with the idea to bring up the Shadow Broker instead. The SB was established in ME, but unlike Cerberus who are descibed as pretty evil, stupid/incompetent (most of their stuff backfires) bunch of racists, the SB would be merely "evil" or higly morally questionable, but otherwise rather impartial, compared to TIMs constant ramblings about humanity.
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Post by alanc9 on Oct 12, 2019 22:47:14 GMT
Huh? I didn't think about it enough to hate it or like it. Young's premises were so obviously wrong that I didn't take his proposals seriously. I was admitting that this might have been a mistake, because bad premises don't necessarily make the proposed alternative bad.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 12, 2019 22:49:44 GMT
For ME2, I'm fairly confident that someone on the writing team watched the movie The Dirty Dozen and had an idea for how to make a game based on the same sort of concept... rounding up a suicide squad and then doing a suicide mission. I don't think it was really written to be a great second book of a Reaper Trilogy. They figured out a way to bring forward a couple of choices and thought they could establish some continuity by re-using Shepard as the lead character. Think more of a pair of Hardy Boys books rather than an actual Part 1 and Part 2 of the same story. Somewhere going into ME3, someone decided they could possibly work it into a Trilogy... even though the task was made nigh impossible because of the differences between ME1 and ME2. Overall, I thought they did a credible job at that. The story in ME3, for the most part, flows rather logically and they did work in appearances by all of the possible survivors of the ME2 squad and most of the crew. There is a difference though between forethought and afterthought. While at times it seems like Bioware foreshadows things, what they did was more likely scatter "possible" continue threads throughout the games and then decide later to pick up some (definitely not all) of those threads and work them into their newer ideas. What I've read suggests that a trilogy was always the plan, with ME2 as the "dark" middle chapter. Cerberus was a convenient tool to impose that darkness, even though we often talk as if the cause-and-effect ran the other way. I have heard that as well, but it is a bit of conundrum; because I've also consistently heard that they did not plan things ahead (like Drew essentially stated in his interview). There's planning for three Hardy Boys books (i.e. a group of stories with the same protag(s) where the story in each just stands alone with no essential progression through them on a timeline) and then there's planning for a story in three parts.
If they were planning the latter from the start, they didn't plan it out very well, IMO. They needed a clearer idea about what the Reapers were and their actual function as antagonists amd tjeir functional relationship with the geth for one thing... then they would not have ended up subbing in the Collectors and Cerberus midstream. We wouldn't have had things like - Surprise, this Reaper is shaped like a human... which then would evidently get covered over so they all look the same... because they are modeled after Leviathan... but wait, they are all archives of different species... and then surprise, there's this kid...
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Post by griffith82 on Oct 12, 2019 23:05:24 GMT
What I've read suggests that a trilogy was always the plan, with ME2 as the "dark" middle chapter. Cerberus was a convenient tool to impose that darkness, even though we often talk as if the cause-and-effect ran the other way. I have heard that as well, but it is a bit of conundrum; because I've also consistently heard that they did not plan things ahead (like Drew essentially stated in his interview). There's planning for three Hardy Boys books (i.e. a group of stories with the same protag(s) where the story in each just stands alone with no essential progression through them on a timeline) and then there's planning for a story in three parts.
If they were planning the latter from the start, they didn't plan it out very well, IMO. They needed a clearer idea about what the Reapers were and their actual function as antagonists amd tjeir functional relationship with the geth for one thing... then they would not have ended up subbing in the Collectors and Cerberus midstream. We wouldn't have had things like - Surprise, this Reaper is shaped like a human... which then would evidently get covered over so they all look the same... because they are modeled after Leviathan... but wait, they are all archives of different species... and then surprise, there's this kid... I agree that more planning could have been done but I'm overall happy with what we got.
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Post by sjsharp2010 on Oct 12, 2019 23:25:24 GMT
I have heard that as well, but it is a bit of conundrum; because I've also consistently heard that they did not plan things ahead (like Drew essentially stated in his interview). There's planning for three Hardy Boys books (i.e. a group of stories with the same protag(s) where the story in each just stands alone with no essential progression through them on a timeline) and then there's planning for a story in three parts.
If they were planning the latter from the start, they didn't plan it out very well, IMO. They needed a clearer idea about what the Reapers were and their actual function as antagonists amd tjeir functional relationship with the geth for one thing... then they would not have ended up subbing in the Collectors and Cerberus midstream. We wouldn't have had things like - Surprise, this Reaper is shaped like a human... which then would evidently get covered over so they all look the same... because they are modeled after Leviathan... but wait, they are all archives of different species... and then surprise, there's this kid... I agree that more planning could have been done but I'm overall happy with what we got. As am I
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Post by Cyberstrike on Oct 12, 2019 23:25:39 GMT
You're completely missing the point... What Drew is saying is that they had no defined plans but rather that they consider and rejected several general ideas when moving from one game into the next. Also, you're clearly hinting that Mac insisted on Cerberus and TIM, but the fact that people seem to forget is that Drew was lead right up until very near the end of ME2's development.
I don't know -who- was responsible. It could be Karpyshyn or Walters, but it does not matter. The game was already out a few years when I got wind that Mass Effect existed as franchise. To me, the "how" Cerberus is included in ME2 appears like a fanfiction author forcing their overpowerd pet factions on us. In order to make that work, a lot of stuff is dismissed and people are required to act as if they went nuts a.k.a. "idiot plot". Why does the alliance not care about their colonies anymore? Instead we get some barely explained subfaction (who in ME were downright evil and rather ineffective at what they did) of boring racist humans (Well, at least I started playing ME for the intriguin sci-fi aspects like aliens, cultures and characters. If I want to meet a run-off-the-mill-Nazi, I just need to step out the door ) getting some uplift and "becoming everybody saviour". Yeah, it almost feels like a "Ron the Death Eater" fanfiction. "The Alliance/Council does not want Shepard because Shepard has become Cerberus mook. Shepard has become a Cerberus mook because the Alliance/Council does not want Shepard." That is circular reasoning to me. I guess I'm more forgiving about that in case of the Catalyst, as it is just a faulty computer program with a veahvy does of Leviathan arrogance.
IIRC the colonies that the Collectors were attacking were in the Terminus Systems a region of space that wasn't under the jurisdiction of the Council and the Alliance (to a certain degree) and the people living on those planets knew that and choose to live away from the Council and/or the Alliance because they don't like and/or trust them or they feel "oppressed" or whatever reasons.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 12, 2019 23:45:38 GMT
I have heard that as well, but it is a bit of conundrum; because I've also consistently heard that they did not plan things ahead (like Drew essentially stated in his interview). There's planning for three Hardy Boys books (i.e. a group of stories with the same protag(s) where the story in each just stands alone with no essential progression through them on a timeline) and then there's planning for a story in three parts.
If they were planning the latter from the start, they didn't plan it out very well, IMO. They needed a clearer idea about what the Reapers were and their actual function as antagonists amd tjeir functional relationship with the geth for one thing... then they would not have ended up subbing in the Collectors and Cerberus midstream. We wouldn't have had things like - Surprise, this Reaper is shaped like a human... which then would evidently get covered over so they all look the same... because they are modeled after Leviathan... but wait, they are all archives of different species... and then surprise, there's this kid... I agree that more planning could have been done but I'm overall happy with what we got. I think I said already that I think they did a credible job with ME3... connecting ME1 and ME2 together into somewhat coherent parts 1 and 2 of a continuous story.
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Post by griffith82 on Oct 13, 2019 0:18:08 GMT
I agree that more planning could have been done but I'm overall happy with what we got. I think I said already that I think they did a credible job with ME3... connecting ME1 and ME2 together into somewhat coherent parts 1 and 2 of a continuous story. Sorry must have missed that post.
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Post by Iakus on Oct 13, 2019 15:51:41 GMT
For ME2, I'm fairly confident that someone on the writing team watched the movie The Dirty Dozen and had an idea for how to make a game based on the same sort of concept... rounding up a suicide squad and then doing a suicide mission. I don't think it was really written to be a great second book of a Reaper Trilogy. They figured out a way to bring forward a couple of choices and thought they could establish some continuity by re-using Shepard as the lead character. Think more of a pair of Hardy Boys books rather than an actual Part 1 and Part 2 of the same story. Somewhere going into ME3, someone decided they could possibly work it into a Trilogy... even though the task was made nigh impossible because of the differences between ME1 and ME2. Overall, I thought they did a credible job at that. The story in ME3, for the most part, flows rather logically and they did work in appearances by all of the possible survivors of the ME2 squad and most of the crew. There is a difference though between forethought and afterthought. While at times it seems like Bioware foreshadows things, what they did was more likely scatter "possible" continue threads throughout the games and then decide later to pick up some (definitely not all) of those threads and work them into their newer ideas. What I've read suggests that a trilogy was always the plan, with ME2 as the "dark" middle chapter. Cerberus was a convenient tool to impose that darkness, even though we often talk as if the cause-and-effect ran the other way. ME1 and ME3 were both WAY darker than ME2. Cerberus in ME2 was at its lightest. A bunch of bumbling, well-meaning scientists with poor safety protocols and more money than sense. Hardly the space Nazis of the first game or the would-be Sith Lords of ME3.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 13, 2019 16:25:30 GMT
I think I said already that I think they did a credible job with ME3... connecting ME1 and ME2 together into somewhat coherent parts 1 and 2 of a continuous story. Sorry must have missed that post. Well, if it's not up a few posts in this thread, it probably means my internet cut out and it never actually posted. I've had that happen a few times. My kingdom for some ADSL... but that won't happen until a few thousand more people decide to settle out here... and then I'll probably want to move farther away from such urbanized environments. I like living in the country... just now watching several deer grazing just outside my living room window. Saw another moose a few days ago, coyotes, badgers, rabbits... I don't think I'd die off pretty quickly living in a city.
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Post by alanc9 on Oct 13, 2019 18:57:52 GMT
@ Iakus: Sure, but Bio was kind of operating at their darkness limit as it was. Imagine how bad the whining would have been if Shepard had been forced to work with Original Recipe Cerberus.
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Post by Iakus on Oct 13, 2019 19:53:48 GMT
@ Iakus: Sure, but Bio was kind of operating at their darkness limit as it was. Imagine how bad the whining would have been if Shepard had been forced to work with Original Recipe Cerberus. You still can't have a "dark second act" if it is, in fact the lightest chapter.
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Post by Phantom on Oct 13, 2019 20:13:45 GMT
@ Iakus: Sure, but Bio was kind of operating at their darkness limit as it was. Imagine how bad the whining would have been if Shepard had been forced to work with Original Recipe Cerberus. You still can't have a "dark second act" if it is, in fact the lightest chapter. well a soft reboot might be in order.
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Post by alanc9 on Oct 13, 2019 21:43:59 GMT
@ Iakus: Sure, but Bio was kind of operating at their darkness limit as it was. Imagine how bad the whining would have been if Shepard had been forced to work with Original Recipe Cerberus. You still can't have a "dark second act" if it is, in fact the lightest chapter. I was only agreeing WRT Cerberus. I don't see ME2 as the lightest chapter; honestly, I didn't think you were being serious there.
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Post by cipher on Oct 17, 2019 10:55:54 GMT
The story should start and end with Shepard on ME3, so they should create a sequel that takes place after the Reapers. However, they should give the trilogy a hard reboot to fix the story, especially ME2. Because killing Shepard and bringing him/her back to life doesn't make any sense, and the Collectors kidnapping humans because the Alliance fought alongside with the Citadel Fleet destroying Sovereign is very silly. And most important of all: Fix the ending where choices and the actions that carried over the end of the Trilogy. And make it memorable experience just like RDR2, and TWD (Telltale). The only way I see something like this happening, is if certain writers were brought back to work on the story, of whom were actually in favor of a more hard sci-fi approach. However, I have to correct you on one point: Humans were kidnapped because they became the special race in Mass Effect, just like how Shepard became the chosen one. If it were up to me, I'd have human colonies targeted because the Reapers found them the most pathetic (space-faring wise), and therefore the most to gain from "ascension." Indoctrination of sleeper agents (like Saren) kinda does make the Collectors themselves pointless, even though I did like them as mindless enemies/entertainment. Would not have Shepard killed hunting for Geth, when they needed to be looking for ways to combat the Reaper via Prothean research. The Crucible itself should have actually been a big hinted at focus of ME 2, and Shepard understanding Prothean language/thinking like one given a stronger narrative while tracking the device. I'm pretty sure Chris L'Etoile's writing approach has been discussed pretty thoroughly within the ME fandom, but I do feel like had he been given more reigns over ME 2 + 3 and the writing team in general, then things would have turned out differently: www.resetera.com/threads/old-gem-chris-letoile-former-bioware-writer-on-writing-ai-for-mass-effect.29024/I still love ME 2 as a game and more down to earth Cyber-punkish approach to the ME universe, but it came at the cost of a more "enlightened" and hard sci-fi story arc to conclude the Reapers.That is actually quite different from the Reapers we got, and what I originally thought Sovereign/Nazara was. They could have been like something out of the Orion Arm's universe, though that requires careful writing and an understanding of the framework within hard sci-fi to adequately accomplish. Otherwise, you get multi-color space-magic and an angry fandom not satisfied with the conclusion of the story to their space avatar.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 17, 2019 11:45:51 GMT
The story should start and end with Shepard on ME3, so they should create a sequel that takes place after the Reapers. However, they should give the trilogy a hard reboot to fix the story, especially ME2. Because killing Shepard and bringing him/her back to life doesn't make any sense, and the Collectors kidnapping humans because the Alliance fought alongside with the Citadel Fleet destroying Sovereign is very silly. And most important of all: Fix the ending where choices and the actions that carried over the end of the Trilogy. And make it memorable experience just like RDR2, and TWD (Telltale). The only way I see something like this happening, is if certain writers were brought back to work on the story, of whom were actually in favor of a more hard sci-fi approach. However, I have to correct you on one point: Humans were kidnapped because they became the special race in Mass Effect, just like how Shepard became the chosen one. If it were up to me, I'd have human colonies targeted because the Reapers found them the most pathetic (space-faring wise), and therefore the most to gain from "ascension." Indoctrination of sleeper agents (like Saren) kinda does make the Collectors themselves pointless, even though I did like them as mindless enemies/entertainment. Would not have Shepard killed hunting for Geth, when they needed to be looking for ways to combat the Reaper via Prothean research. The Crucible itself should have actually been a big hinted at focus of ME 2, and Shepard understanding Prothean language/thinking like one given a stronger narrative while tracking the device. I'm pretty sure Chris L'Etoile's writing approach has been discussed pretty thoroughly within the ME fandom, but I do feel like had he been given more reigns over ME 2 + 3 and the writing team in general, then things would have turned out differently: www.resetera.com/threads/old-gem-chris-letoile-former-bioware-writer-on-writing-ai-for-mass-effect.29024/I still love ME 2 as a game and more down to earth Cyber-punkish approach to the ME universe, but it came at the cost of a more "enlightened" and hard sci-fi story arc to conclude the Reapers.That is actually quite different from the Reapers we got, and what I originally thought Sovereign/Nazara was. They could have been like something out of the Orion Arm's universe, though that requires careful writing and an understanding of the framework within hard sci-fi to adequately accomplish. Otherwise, you get multi-color space-magic and an angry fandom not satisfied with the conclusion of the story to their space avatar.
The Reapers, however, were never written to be "a post-Singularity evolution of organic races"." In this aspect, L'Etoile is at odds with his own ideas. and those presented at the outset of the ME1. Reapers ARE a "race of sentient machines" in ME1. The only way a "singularity" would cause them to be an evolution of anything organic wsi through a form of synthesis... an ending that was presented in ME3 and was the most rejected ending by the fan base. The Crucible generates a massive singularity (just colored 3 ways in ME3's endings. From what I can tell from this statement, the MEU eventually went exctly where L'Etoile wanted it to have been all along. IF the game proceeds from Synthesis now, then we are set up for the descendants of the Andromeda Initiative (who were unaffected by that singularity) to fight a "post Singularity evolution of organic races."
I'm not a fan of L'Etoile's. I think he did a lot of damage to the franchise with that interview and I don't think his own thoughts on the matter were as well thought out as people credit them for being. I think the above quote proves that. I also think it is way beyond time for the fan base to let it go and move past their anger... and allow the franchise to just move forward instead on continually miring it down in this "redo everything" mentality.
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Post by themikefest on Oct 17, 2019 13:30:01 GMT
The only way I see something like this happening, is if certain writers were brought back to work on the story, of whom were actually in favor of a more hard sci-fi approach. Which ones? A lot of folks left Bioware between the release of ME1 and ME3. From what a poster said, shortly after ME3 was released, that about 75% of the people who worked on ME1 didn't work on ME3. Yep. I've posted in the things that don't make sense thread about Shepard and the cipher. With the crucible, I would have had the plans found during ME2. When TIM mentions the weapon that disabled the reaper and caused the great rift, I would have had a mission for Shepard to investigate the weapon to see if its something that could be copied to deal with the reapers. During the investigation, Shepard comes across the plans. I've posted a similar link on other threads in the past.
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Post by cipher on Oct 17, 2019 14:33:28 GMT
The Reapers, however, were never written to be "a post-Singularity evolution of organic races"." In this aspect, L'Etoile is at odds with his own ideas. and those presented at the outset of the ME1. Reapers ARE a "race of sentient machines" in ME1. The only way a "singularity" would cause them to be an evolution of anything organic wsi through a form of synthesis... an ending that was presented in ME3 and was the most rejected ending by the fan base. The Crucible generates a massive singularity (just colored 3 ways in ME3's endings. From what I can tell from this statement, the MEU eventually went exctly where L'Etoile wanted it to have been all along. IF the game proceeds from Synthesis now, then we are set up for the descendants of the Andromeda Initiative (who were unaffected by that singularity) to fight a "post Singularity evolution of organic races."
I'm not a fan of L'Etoile's. I think he did a lot of damage to the franchise with that interview and I don't think his own thoughts on the matter were as well thought out as people credit them for being. I think the above quote proves that. I also think it is way beyond time for the fan base to let it go and move past their anger... and allow the franchise to just move forward instead on continually miring it down in this "redo everything" mentality.
Depends on the context. If we achieve a technological singularity, as said machines displaced us, would they not be considered an evolutionary step in comparison to ourselves? Many thinkers on the subject, such as Ray Kurzweil actually do view it on these terms. An alternative to that quote is to mean that they are machines, but with uploaded minds from a past organic race (Leviathans). Whether that makes them the same as "synthesis" or not depends on the view. In this sense, they would be a continuation or "evolution" of whatever race proceeded with the mind uploading, and L'Etoile actually does mention "destructive scanning" though it's in regards to the human reaper. I'd call Ryder's relationship with SAM a form of Synthesis also, I don't think tech singularity should be limited in scope in ME to one (space magic) method. I mean, knowledge or information can only do as much damage as one's reaction to it. I only get the feeling that his thoughts were a direction he wanted to influence Mass Effect in taking. I agree that moving on is best, though I appreciate his knowledge and attempt at harder sci fi. How he wrote the Geth for example I think is a unique and philosophical take on A.I., at least as far as the gaming industry goes.
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Post by SirSourpuss on Oct 17, 2019 14:35:34 GMT
I'd call Ryder's relationship with SAM a form of Synthesis also, I don't think tech singularity should be limited in scope in ME to one (space magic) method. But wouldn't that be invalidating the Synthesis ending?
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Post by Deleted on Oct 17, 2019 15:33:42 GMT
The Reapers, however, were never written to be "a post-Singularity evolution of organic races"." In this aspect, L'Etoile is at odds with his own ideas. and those presented at the outset of the ME1. Reapers ARE a "race of sentient machines" in ME1. The only way a "singularity" would cause them to be an evolution of anything organic wsi through a form of synthesis... an ending that was presented in ME3 and was the most rejected ending by the fan base. The Crucible generates a massive singularity (just colored 3 ways in ME3's endings. From what I can tell from this statement, the MEU eventually went exctly where L'Etoile wanted it to have been all along. IF the game proceeds from Synthesis now, then we are set up for the descendants of the Andromeda Initiative (who were unaffected by that singularity) to fight a "post Singularity evolution of organic races."
I'm not a fan of L'Etoile's. I think he did a lot of damage to the franchise with that interview and I don't think his own thoughts on the matter were as well thought out as people credit them for being. I think the above quote proves that. I also think it is way beyond time for the fan base to let it go and move past their anger... and allow the franchise to just move forward instead on continually miring it down in this "redo everything" mentality.
Depends on the context. If we achieve a technological singularity, as said machines displaced us, would they not be considered an evolutionary step in comparison to ourselves? Many thinkers on the subject, such as Ray Kurzweil actually do view it on these terms. An alternative to that quote is to mean that they are machines, but with uploaded minds from a past organic race (Leviathans). Whether that makes them the same as "synthesis" or not depends on the view. In this sense, they would be a continuation or "evolution" of whatever race proceeded with the mind uploading, and L'Etoile actually does mention "destructive scanning" though it's in regards to the human reaper. I'd call Ryder's relationship with SAM a form of Synthesis also, I don't think tech singularity should be limited in scope in ME to one (space magic) method. I mean, knowledge or information can only do as much damage as one's reaction to it. I only get the feeling that his thoughts were a direction he wanted to influence Mass Effect in taking. I agree that moving on is best, though I appreciate his knowledge and attempt at harder sci fi. How he wrote the Geth for example I think is a unique and philosophical take on A.I., at least as far as the gaming industry goes. To the best of my knowledge, evolution of organic beings has historically been limited to changes in their "genetic composition" (per Oxford Dictionary). When changes in technology occur that affect the advancement of civilization, it is the technology that is said to evolve, not the organic beings themselves. I think ME3 presents us with a literal interpretation of L'Etoile's words... but those words were at odds with other ideas he stated in the interview. As presented in ME1, the Reapers had not "genetic composition." They were described only as a "race of sentient machnies."
SAM correctly identifies his relationship with Ryder as "symbiotic"; not synthesis. Symbiotic relationships can be mutual (which is what SAM believes their relationship to be), commensal (where only one of the two organisms benefits but the other is unharmed by the relationship), or parasitic (where one organism benefits by harming the other organism). Ryder's DNA has not been changed, but neither can actually "live" without the other. Ryder has obviously benefited from the relationship, but it is more ambiguous as to whether SAM has benefited. There is also a question of why Ryder finds it painful to communicate with Remnant without SAM... which may ultimately reveal it as being a parasitic relationship.
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