RPG Thread XV Will Hunt and Kill His Brothers and Absorb Their Essence

[TheLongshot]

[quote name='GhostShark']Captain America started the whole "wings on a head" trend.[/QUOTE]

Not quite:

 

[The Crotch]

[quote name='pete5883']About as useful as an appendix, amirite?[/QUOTE]
The appendix would be useful if we were herbivores.

And even with our present diet, there's some debate as to whether or not it is actually useless, anyway. Might be important to the immune system.
[quote name='kainzero']you mean like chickens and flamingos?[/QUOTE]
Panzer hypothesized that the wings are used for magic flight, but that is (so far - maybe one of these ers will start flying later on) not the case. Comparing it to real-world vestigial limbs is off-base. Though to the game's credit, they actually kinda addressed this, as apparently

Spoiler

dudes are trying to breed their head-wings out, and each successive generation has smaller and smaller head-wings.

As for why I keep going on this? Partly because y'all are responding to me, and partly because it just strikes me as ing bizarre from a character design standpoint, and I'm wondering where it comes from. Might as well have a race of humans with tiny legs sticking out of their heads.

And yeah, I figure best bet is it's either inspired by the winged helmet of Hermes (see above) or some depictions of valkyries.

Dunno.

 

[kainzero]

[quote name='The Crotch']As for why I keep going on this? Partly because y'all are responding to me[/QUOTE]
i find it amusing!
carry on!

 

[pete5883]

[quote name='The Crotch']The appendix would be useful if we were herbivores.

And even with our present diet, there's some debate as to whether or not it is actually useless, anyway. Might be important to the immune system.[/QUOTE]
I think I've got it figured out - they use the wings to brush flies away from their ears.

 

[GhostShark]

[quote name='TheLongshot']Not quite:

[/QUOTE]

Touche. It's like Cap and Namor's baby.

 

[Rodimus]

Or Thor & Namor's baby. Just have him holding a tuna instead.

 

[panzerfaust]

Mass Effect 3 progress:

Spoiler

After 15 hours I feel like I've gotten nearly all possible war assets from every race, but my terminal still says I'm only a little over the minimum. I don't much care though, as I think I certainly knocked out all the game's primary highlights so far. The smaller side missions really aren't worth grinding through, but I'm trying to do anything available. I can only take so much of running from terminal to terminal through Cerebrus grunts at a time.

And Cerebrus, I really dislike their cartoon-villain like presence in this game. They're just meddling everywhere and I've learned nothing about them throughout the course of the game. Just the same grunts shouting "Get Shepherd!" and making my plans difficult. This Leng guy only further solidifies this silly image of them. Ninjas...come on.

It also seems every race has a heroic icon to sacrifice in the fight against the reapers. I'm wondering if other people found these very moving, or a bit too heavy on the hollywood melodrama to be emotional? The Turian segments got it right, I feel, but others felt rather forced.

The genophage and Geth decisions were some of my favorite segments so far, and the combat set ups I feel are much more dynamic compared to Mass Effect 2. I'm on hardcore and having a fun time, though it seems the definitive experience may be on Insanity. I don't know how anyone could enjoy this game on anything below hardcore -- kind of takes all the intensity out of the game.

Pretty excited to solve the Reaper mystery, but then again, the uproar over the ending should have me worried.

 

[The Crotch]

Posting the same thing in two threads, Panzer? That's a paddlin'.

[quote name='The Crotch']Sounds pretty similar to my experience, Panzer.

Spoiler

Cerberus has always bugged. They were evil scientists with a few guards in the first game, and okay their sidequest was fairly long, but it wasn't all that interesting (and it had some annoying bugs, too). Then there was a book that expanded on them or some shit and game two comes around and now they've got spies and agents, which... okay, I'll buy that, I guess. Now game three comes out and they've got this awesome army and shit.

It's like a group's capabilities are inversely proportionate to their feelings towards you. You're working for the Alliance? They need to call up their best soldier to kill a couple angry training dummies. You work for Cerberus? Now the Alliance is crashing meteors in to relays and taking the Reapers all serious-like. Back to the Alliance? Okay, now Cerberus can have giant mechs and animes and shit.

This didn't really need a spoiler tag.

Though I would have thrown a "'combat rolling' can burn with the Whore of Bablyon in a lake of shit until time itself cease to be" in just for good measure.[/QUOTE]

 

[panzerfaust]

Combat rolls win wars.

And you should reply to my other post as well.

EDIT: appreciate it

 

[The Crotch]

I'd have no problem with the combat roll if!

1: They weren't so awkwardly applied to enemies. Cerberus troops have really clumsy roll animations, and both they and marauders have terrible AI. Shoot a couple times, wait for them to roll away from cover, shoot a couple more times. Jesus.

2: Everything wasn't mapped to the god damn spacebar. Eat my ten-inch-long, polished marble, PC-using dick, you ing console port.



Still a respectable game, of course. On my Grand Ranking of Bioware Games, all three entries in the Mass Effect series occupy the same slot.

 

[panzerfaust]

The first remains my favorite, but I feel the 2nd is probably the best entry.

And the ninja flip is easily the stupidest A.I. maneuver I've seen in the game. I actually have a hard time keeping a bead on them, but then they decide to stop and flip and I happily rip them to pieces. Some Goldeneye N64 shit here.

The A.I. doesn't respond well to flanking either. They usually don't understand I'm behind them.

 

[voltanis99]

Ugh Persona 4 Golden is finally being localized to NA. Might have to eventually get a Vita for this game.

 

[panzerfaust]

Crotch I need immediate discussion on the ME3 ending.

Spoiler

What the hell just happened? Why couldn't I choose the blue path? Did I just wipe life from the universe? Although, it's implied Joker survived? I assumed the kid wasn't real for the entire game considering his awkward presence, but apparently he's God?

It's confusing but it felt pretty final, and epic. Can't say I was let down, what exactly pissed people off? Besides what may have been the most amateur cut to credits I have ever witnessed.

edit: okay credits ended i saw the last bit. didnt add much though.

 

[The Crotch]

Immediate discussion as soon as I can type things out. This is hard for me, because 1: it's so grandly and colossally wrong that I don't know how to format it properly, and 2: I have to keep getting up to split wood and feed a fire to dry out some beaver pelts, so I can't keep a consistent train of thought.

 

[panzerfaust]

hurry hurry hurry

 

[The Crotch]

Alright, fire fed. Beaver pelt status: hanging there. Resuming typing. Go play a flash game or something; this might take a while.

 

[The Crotch]

Mass ME3 ending spoilers in this bitch:

Spoiler

Alright, first, the technical side.

There are three endings - control, synthesize, and destroy. Depending on your EMS rating or whatever the it was called, certain options are locked out. At the lowest level, only destroy is available. At the highest level (5000+), all three are available, and the destroy option gives you a little "Shepard breathing in a pile of rubble" cutscene.

Now, aside from the fact that those are the choices from Deus Ex, a major problem is how they work with EMS. Everything that you did - all the alliances that you built, all the dinosaurs you brought back from the dead, everything - affects whether or not a hologram allows you to do something entirely unrelated. Having a fleet of volus bombers should have no bearing on whether or not you're allowed to choose synthesis instead of destroy, yet it does. It's like if, say, saving/killing the council in ME1 was dependant on how many thresher maws you had fought, or if the choice keep/destroy the collector base at the end of ME2 was based on whether or not you had done the poison drink pseudo-quest on Omega.

That's the very first bit of it. In the interest of your time, I'll just put that up now and keep typing.

 

[panzerfaust]

Sound points so far.

In the mean time, I'm making a quesadilla.

 

[cindersphere]

[quote name='The Crotch']Mass ME3 ending spoilers in this bitch:

Spoiler

Alright, first, the technical side.

There are three endings - control, synthesize, and destroy. Depending on your EMS rating or whatever the it was called, certain options are locked out. At the lowest level, only destroy is available. At the highest level (5000+), all three are available, and the destroy option gives you a little "Shepard breathing in a pile of rubble" cutscene.

Now, aside from the fact that those are the choices from Deus Ex, a major problem is how they work with EMS. Everything that you did - all the alliances that you built, all the dinosaurs you brought back from the dead, everything - affects whether or not a hologram allows you to do something entirely unrelated. Having a fleet of volus bombers should have no bearing on whether or not you're allowed to choose synthesis instead of destroy, yet it does. It's like if, say, saving/killing the council in ME1 was dependant on how many thresher maws you had fought, or if the choice keep/destroy the collector base at the end of ME2 was based on whether or not you had done the poison drink pseudo-quest on Omega.

That's the very first bit of it. In the interest of your time, I'll just put that up now and keep typing.[/QUOTE]

Spoiler

If I remember correctly, if you destroyed the base in one, the destroy ending is the lowest ending possibility. If you handed it to Cerberus than the control ending is the first ending you can get. Getting Andersons fireside chat will let you get the breath scene with 4000 ems.

Also replaying ME2 now.

 

[The Crotch]

Part Two: Part One Returns

Spoiler

Okay, so everything you'd done prior to the ending has only the most bizarre and inane connection to what happens at the end. Lame, but not enough to shatter a good French-Catholic boy's faith.

But before we get in to the really weak stuff, let's look at the why and the how of all of this.

The starchild is an AI built in to the Citadel, created by the same people who created the reapers. Both the starchild and the reapers exist to cultivate and harvest intelligent life before it can create synthetic life which would inevitably go out of control and destroy all life.

This is... problematic. Partially because it renders Mass Effect 1 pointless (Why did Saren and Sovereign have to do all that shit with the conduit when the Citadel already had a reaper-aligned AI built in to it?). But more so because it makes less sense than the price of beaver pelts these days. Seriously, it's a lot of ing work trapping those things, and for not much money. Such bullshit.

Why did the creators of the Reapers fear that synthetics would kill all life? This was never a motive for anyone in the entire series (because foreshadowing and universe-building), and saying that it's inevitable makes these hypothetical synthetics cartoonish caricatures; 1950s-style alien robots who clank around a suburb yelling "DESTROY ALL HUMANOIDS" shooting death rays because background and motivation.

But nevermind that "why" makes no sense - does "how"? If you're willing to concede that synthetics will eventually turn stupidly evil and try to eradicate all organic life (note: don't concede this), then what good does creating a bunch of synthetics do? Won't they just try to kill all life because that's a thing robots like to do, apparently? And if reapers are special 'cause they're made from people-juice, then why give them such a needlessly difficult task? Instead of killing and harvesting people to prevent them from making evil synthetics, why not just kill any sufficiently advanced synthetic? If that's cutting it too close, then why "guide civilizations along" in the first place? If you're worried about terminators escaping their home planet and destroying the galaxy, then why provide everyone with cheap and easy interstellar travel in the first place? If they really wanted to do their job, they could monitor all life-bearing planets, cut off any attempt at interstellar travel, and intervene only as necessary. Why make some overly elaborate plan that could be stopped by some douchebag with an invisible ship?

Or, you know, they could use their super-powerful mind control shit that they all have and that's super-powerful ing mind control.

That would work.

EDIT: Could be, cinder. I didn't look in to it too closely because it's stupid, regardless.

 

[panzerfaust]

I think my simple mind was too distracted by the explosions. Thinking about what you said, though -- that's quite the hack job. The last two games did poor jobs of rewarding player choice, too, so it's interesting to see that they pushed that habit all the way to the end.

But I mean,

Spoiler

The suicide run to the tractor beam was pretty baller

EDIT: Also,

Spoiler

the face off with the Illusive Man was a real let down. No new information was given on his incredibly unrealistic motivations. It was as predictable as it was from the very start. Felt very cartoonish, again.

 

[The Crotch]

Part Three: Return of the Electric Boogaloo

Spoiler

Alright, so we've established that the link between the first 95% of the game and the last 5% makes no sense. And we've established that the motivation of the series' primary antagonists makes no sense. Let's look at how ing terrible those three choices are.

When a developer tells you to make a choice, they have to be very careful about how much information they give you. Sometimes they intentionally and explicitly tell you all the ramifications of your choice (Dragon Age Origins: kill the werewolves, free the werewolves, kill the elves. You know what you're getting in to regardless of what you pick.). Sometimes they leave it vague as (there's a certain bit of Planescape Torment that I won't spoil for you here, but if you ever sit there thinking, ", I don't know what to say. !" you've probably hit that part, and it's beautiful). Often it's something in between.

The choices at the end of ME3 are incredibly vague, and they shouldn't be. This is not the time to be vague. This is the time to explain ing everything. They are asking - forcing - you to make this enormous, galaxy-changing choice, but you don't know a ing thing about any of them. And because you don't know how any of them are different, they really might as well all be the same.

Say you choose to control. What does this mean? Do the reapers just off? Will they follow your last thoughts? Does your mind permanently merge with and override theirs? What about husks and banshees and marauders and the indoctrinated; do you "control" them? Why do you have to die? Why are you allowed to do this; are they no longer worried about space-Skynet?

Or you choose to synthesize. Since when is "combining the DNA of organics with the components of synthetics" even a thing? What does it mean for organics? Is everyone immortal? Every man, krogan, dog, and paramecium? Every tree and every fungus? What does it mean for synthetics? Can they reproduce? Do they have fleshy bits and living cells? How does this create lasting peace? And if the answer is, "It just does, asshole," then why didn't you s do it in the first place since you've got this combine-all-life-and-non-life machine sitting around? And why do I have to die, again?

Or destroy. Alright, so all synthetics die. What's a synthetic? All AIs, presumably. So the reapers. And the geth. And EDI. Does this mean the Normandy is destroyed, since she was part of it? If I put an AI in a toaster, would the toaster blow up? Do all VIs get destroyed? They mentioned Shepard dying since he has machine bits in his head, so I guess it's more than just AIs and VIs. Does this thing, like, destroy all electronics? tons of creatures - humans, krogan, asari, virtually all quarians - have cybernetic bits and pieces in them; do they all die? If you're worried about synthetics destroying all life, and you have a machine that can destroy all synthetics, then what was the point of the reapers? And if we can still make new synthetics, what does this solve? They're still destined to kill everything, right?

Also, all these choices destroy the mass relays. I know better than to ask "why?" (answer: you), but we've already established that destroying a mass relay also destroys the star system that houses it. If I grab that lever/jump in to that beam/shoot that thing, am I killing, like, 90% of the people I ever met, including all of Earth and the entire allied fleet?

But you couldn't ask any of those questions, because the endings completely de-fanged Shepard. Which is the topic of the next post.

 

[panzerfaust]

I'm totally compiling these for future reference.

 

[The Crotch]

Part Four: Shepard Loses Her Balls

Spoiler

Combined with the previous post, this is the biggest what the was going on with the entire ending. Parts one and two? Moronic, but I could overlook that were it not for these two.

Remember when you're driving your tank through that big underground tunnel with the trees and the water and the geth at the end of ME1? And you stop to talk to Vigil? You are, like, ten minutes behind your arch-nemesis. The dude about to destroy all of galactic civilization. He's right ahead of you.

But you're given the chance to learn secrets that have eluded the greatest minds for thousands of years, so it, let's ask this VI some god damn questsions.

This happens all throughout Mass Effect, albeit not quite as dramatically. Bioware's known for its writing, and Mass Effect shows that off. Shepard asks a lot of questions. There's a bomb on Tuchanka? Tell me everything about it. You talked to the rachni queen? Where were you born and what's your blood type? You're dating a krogan? Well, what's he like?

But then at the end... nothing. Shepard apparently decides it doesn't matter. The most important choices anyone has ever had to make, and she doesn't give a what any of them mean. She might as well have bet the galaxy on a game of three-card monty. It's like Bioware realized that they were about to run out of hard-drive space part-way through recording the end and had to dump half the script just to fit it on the disk.

So Shepard doesn't give a about what happens. This is a rather dramatic turn of events given her questioning of ing everything up to that point, and I can think of only one explanation: surrender.

Shepard has given up. Shepard doesn't care about forcibly rewriting the genetics of every living thing or enslaving a sentient species or committing genocide or maybe destroying every single noteworthy planet in existence, because Shepard ing gives up. That's why you aren't allowed to contradict a single piece of bullshit the starchild says. That's why you aren't allowed to ask a single question about the significance of red/blue/green. That's why you aren't allowed to say to the starchild, "This is ing moronic. you and your spaceship, I'm beaming down to the surface, telling 'em this plan is ed, and we'll put that EMS - the volus ships, the dinosaur mounts, the batarian cannon fodder, the rachni swarms, the characters that I kept alive over three games and 80+ hours of gameplay - we'll put all that shit to use and I'll probably die and maybe we'll all die and maybe Earth will die and maybe and every other planet will die too, but it, it make more sense than anything that has happened in the last ten minutes and it actually fits the themes of the series."

Nope. Shepard just gives right the up because the starchild said so. She then goes on to commit genocide or blow up the galaxy or something but she doesn't care.

 

[panzerfaust]

I'm making ice tea now, over tears of joy.

 

[The Crotch]

Part Five: You

Spoiler

Welcome to the miscellaneous section.

Where the do your squadmates go during the charge on the beam?

Why do they show up on the Normandy later?

Where the is the Normandy, and why did it leave?

Holy , where did The Illusive Man come from? Was he here the whole time? How is he controlling you and Anderson?

If destroy is supposed to kill Shepard, what's with the breathing scene?

Why was there no pay-off to the Shepard:Harbinger "rivarly"?

Why was there no pay-off to the human reaper reveal from ME2?

Should I be relieved that there was no pay-off to the human reaper thing, because god damn that was stupid anyway?

Am I going to talk about the "indoctrination theory"?

Spoiler

I'd rather not, but I probably will.

What ing cynical son of a bitch thought of the "stargazer" scene? I don't care if he was voiced by an American hero, you just ended 80+ hours of games with a you, and now you're telling me, "Don't forget to drink your ovaltine!"?

And if you explain all of this - not just part five, but everything that I just posted and whatever complaints I missed, all of it - with some future DLC, does that make the ending "good"? Is it "fixed"?

Spoiler

No. It makes it you.

That's all for now. More bitching later, perhaps.

 

[panzerfaust]

Not to dent the display of brilliance, but a minor note:

Spoiler

Where the do your squadmates go during the charge on the beam?

I noticed both corpses (I chose Garrus and Liara) of my squadmates when limping to the beam. If that's what you're referring to, anyways.

 

[Halo05]

So I finally got around to grabbing Xenoblade. I'm only about 35 minutes in so far but it's pretty good thus far. Whoever said it reminds them of FF XII seems to be pretty spot on, at least as far as the combat and general character design goes.

ME2 keeps taking up most of my time though. I decided to femshep 1 and 2 before playing 3 for the first time. The final 20% of ME1 blew me away again.

Spoiler

Talking to that Prothean VI on Ilos as it recounts the very final days of the species is haunting, even if you already knew basically what it was going to say.

Any quick opinions on the difficulty of insanity in ME3? Harder or easier than ME2?

 

[zewone]

[quote name='panzerfaust']Not to dent the display of brilliance, but a minor note:

Spoiler

I noticed both corpses (I chose Garrus and Liara) of my squadmates when limping to the beam. If that's what you're referring to, anyways.

[/QUOTE]

The best part is

Spoiler

their corpses are there (& there is a cut video showing your squadmates being killed by Harbinger's beam), there is still a chance of them showing up in the ending on the stranded planet, especially if it's a love interest.

[quote name='Halo05']
Any quick opinions on the difficulty of insanity in ME3? Harder or easier than ME2?[/QUOTE]
Easier.

 

[panzerfaust]

ME3 hardcore was pretty forgiving. I'll play it again on Insanity someday.

 

[The Crotch]

I'd just like to point out that only four minutes passed between panzer making a post asking me for a discussion on ME3 and me posting. It's not like I was sitting here refreshing my subscribed threads or anything. Just, like... he posted, and bam, there I am.

I would also like to point out that pine sap is the most foul substance in existence. I mean, I knew this already, but I re-learned this today at the expense of a fairly respectable sweater. It takes forever to get off your hands and it never comes out of clothing. And if you get it in your eye or in a cut, it hurts more than the time Lindsay Chunick turned you down at the costume dance in the ninth grade.[quote name='panzerfaust']Not to dent the display of brilliance, but a minor note:

Spoiler

I noticed both corpses (I chose Garrus and Liara) of my squadmates when limping to the beam. If that's what you're referring to, anyways.

[/QUOTE]
You had a lower EMS than I did. I couldn't find 'em, and damn did I look.

Spoiler

They showed up with Joker on the planet in the ending. Dammit, Garrus and Liara. I thought we were bros and chick-bros!

I figure I can do two more bits on ME3's ending - the miscellaneous part was pretty light since I was in a hurry, anyway - but first I have to get some food in my belly.

On a semi-related note, you know what sap is way better than pine? Birch. That stuff is ing delicious. Don't even need to make it in to a syrup; it's great as a drink.

 

[panzerfaust]

Well I've been drinking since 5 pm so I may be out of the conversation for a bit. Preparing for finals next week and all, you know.

 

[The Crotch]

Part Six: This Section Narrated by an Indoctrinated Ron Howard

Spoiler

It explains a lot of the -ups. Damn near everything that doesn't make any sense (which is... damn near everything) can be explained away by "the indoctrination theory". In short: Shepard's been slowly getting indoctrinated from his time spent around reapers and reaper shit over the course of the series, especially the reaper countdown timer thing in Arrival. Everything post-beam-of-light - Anderson, The Illusive Man, the starchild, the three choices - were in Shepard's head. Under this hypothesis (I ing hate calling it a theory, a theory is supported by testing, you s), the "destroy" ending is "the good one"; it doesn't destroy the reapers, it destroys their control of you (see: the "breath in the rubble" bit if you have a high EMS and choose "destroy", despite the fact that it's supposed to kill you).

But even though it explains away most of the total god damn bullshit, it creates a few problems as well. For example, if the "destroy" choice runs contrary to the reaper's goals, then why is it the easiest to get? You'd think building up the willpower to resist their mind dickery would require more work, not less.

Far more importantly than that, though? The indoctrination theory only works so long as Shepard's viewpoint and the player's viewpoint are the same. This is the case for the vast majority of the game, but it breaks away at the very end, and we see things at the very end that Shepard can not see. Joker flying away, the asshole stargazer and his asshole kid, etc. The indoctrination theory works by giving us an unreliable viewpoint and presenting it as undeniable truth. This doesn't work when, at the end, we are wrenched in to a separate, all-seeing viewpoint, entirely removed from our unreliable perspective.

Now, it's bad writing either way. And either way, Bioware knowingly released a game with no ending so that they could milk hype and speculation for some ten dollar "real ending" DLC. If you really think that we'd be getting the free epilogue this summer without the "fan uproar", you are too god damn stupid for me to bother with an appropriate simile to describe how ing simple-minded you are.

But since I'm talking ending speculation, here's a bit you probably haven't heard, panzer. Couple nice rumours for you.

First rumour, on how the ending came to be: Casey Hudson and one writer locked themselves in a room, hammered out the ending, and said the the rest of the staff, "Alright, this is how shit goes down." No input, no peer review, nothin'; a massive change from how the rest of the game and the rest of the series was done. I can buy this rumour; it certainly aligns with the PAX interview where a Bioware employee expressed shock at some of the content that was cut from the endgame.

The second rumour is on what was originally planned. The actual explanation for the reapers was supposed to tie in to Tali's recruitment mission in ME, with the rapidly decaying sun on Haestrom. What was happening on Haestrom would soon be happening across the galaxy; depending on the version of the rumour you go by, either for unknown reasons occurring on a ~40,000 year cycle, or due to excess use of element zero. The reapers were created to stop this from happening. Again, depending on the version of the rumour, either something about the process of making reapers temporarily halted the process, or they were just killing advanced civilizations off to stop element zero use and allow the galaxy to heal. At the end you'd have the choice of surrendering for the greater good or going, " you, we'll find our own way to deal with this shit. Wrex, headbutt that space hermit crab."

I'm not entirely convinced that the reapers needed explaining, but that would have done pretty well, I think.

 

[blueshinra]

Just completed Parameters a little while ago. It's a super bare-bones doujin action RPG, which I had learned about here. It's... also pretty addictive.

 

[Zmonkay]

Well said across the board Crotch!


Also, anyone have an opinion of The Witcher 2 on 360 vs PC? In the next week or two I'll get the last components of my new PC which should handle anything I can throw at it, so I should run Witcher 2 on max specs. However, I generally prefer a controller to keyboard/mouse (just find it more comfortable). Both options would be played from my recliner on my hdtv, so theres not a huge difference.

Mainly wondering if the graphics are significantly different or if there are any control benefits to playing on PC (ala how Dragon Age plays significantly different, and much much better, on PC)?

 

[The Crotch]

[quote name='Zmonkay']Well said across the board Crotch![/QUOTE]
There's a part seven to all that, but I'm too damn busy. Beavers won't trap themselves.

 

[panzerfaust]

Not sure I follow the indoctrination theory, for all those characters to be made up the entire time... I guess I don't remember my ME history too well.

--

Did a few side quests around The Hive and picked up Dak'kon. Should be enough to take down the necromancer in the mausoleum. Blackrose ed me up, though

 

[kainzero]

[quote name='blueshinra']Just completed Parameters a little while ago. It's a super bare-bones doujin action RPG, which I had learned about here. It's... also pretty addictive.[/QUOTE]
that was fun.

i can imagine trying to time attack it though. would be interesting...

 

[The Crotch]

[quote name='panzerfaust']Not sure I follow the indoctrination theory, for all those characters to be made up the entire time... I guess I don't remember my ME history too well.

--

Did a few side quests around The Hive and picked up Dak'kon. Should be enough to take down the necromancer in the mausoleum. Blackrose ed me up, though[/QUOTE]
Yeah, the Alley of Crooked Angles is a bitch at a low-level. Thanks a lot, Annah. The necromancer's a lot easier.

Did you talk to O and the bartender when you picked up Dak'kon?

 

[panzerfaust]

Talked to the burning man's lover and the war vet, I'm still in the bar though so I'll talk to the others when I log back on.

 

[Rei no Otaku]

[quote name='The Crotch']Part Six: This Section Narrated by an Indoctrinated Ron Howard

Spoiler

It explains a lot of the -ups. Damn near everything that doesn't make any sense (which is... damn near everything) can be explained away by "the indoctrination theory". In short: Shepard's been slowly getting indoctrinated from his time spent around reapers and reaper shit over the course of the series, especially the reaper countdown timer thing in Arrival. Everything post-beam-of-light - Anderson, The Illusive Man, the starchild, the three choices - were in Shepard's head. Under this hypothesis (I ing hate calling it a theory, a theory is supported by testing, you s), the "destroy" ending is "the good one"; it doesn't destroy the reapers, it destroys their control of you (see: the "breath in the rubble" bit if you have a high EMS and choose "destroy", despite the fact that it's supposed to kill you).

But even though it explains away most of the total god damn bullshit, it creates a few problems as well. For example, if the "destroy" choice runs contrary to the reaper's goals, then why is it the easiest to get? You'd think building up the willpower to resist their mind dickery would require more work, not less.

Far more importantly than that, though? The indoctrination theory only works so long as Shepard's viewpoint and the player's viewpoint are the same. This is the case for the vast majority of the game, but it breaks away at the very end, and we see things at the very end that Shepard can not see. Joker flying away, the asshole stargazer and his asshole kid, etc. The indoctrination theory works by giving us an unreliable viewpoint and presenting it as undeniable truth. This doesn't work when, at the end, we are wrenched in to a separate, all-seeing viewpoint, entirely removed from our unreliable perspective.

Now, it's bad writing either way. And either way, Bioware knowingly released a game with no ending so that they could milk hype and speculation for some ten dollar "real ending" DLC. If you really think that we'd be getting the free epilogue this summer without the "fan uproar", you are too god damn stupid for me to bother with an appropriate simile to describe how ing simple-minded you are.

But since I'm talking ending speculation, here's a bit you probably haven't heard, panzer. Couple nice rumours for you.

First rumour, on how the ending came to be: Casey Hudson and one writer locked themselves in a room, hammered out the ending, and said the the rest of the staff, "Alright, this is how shit goes down." No input, no peer review, nothin'; a massive change from how the rest of the game and the rest of the series was done. I can buy this rumour; it certainly aligns with the PAX interview where a Bioware employee expressed shock at some of the content that was cut from the endgame.

The second rumour is on what was originally planned. The actual explanation for the reapers was supposed to tie in to Tali's recruitment mission in ME, with the rapidly decaying sun on Haestrom. What was happening on Haestrom would soon be happening across the galaxy; depending on the version of the rumour you go by, either for unknown reasons occurring on a ~40,000 year cycle, or due to excess use of element zero. The reapers were created to stop this from happening. Again, depending on the version of the rumour, either something about the process of making reapers temporarily halted the process, or they were just killing advanced civilizations off to stop element zero use and allow the galaxy to heal. At the end you'd have the choice of surrendering for the greater good or going, " you, we'll find our own way to deal with this shit. Wrex, headbutt that space hermit crab."

I'm not entirely convinced that the reapers needed explaining, but that would have done pretty well, I think.

[/QUOTE]

Spoiler

As for destroy being the easiest to get, it's actually hardest to get the ending where you see Shepard breathing in the rubble. Also, by making synthesis seem like a special choice it fits the illusion the reapers are trying to create by having it seem like more of an attractive choice than destroy.

With the viewpoint switch I just took that as more of Shepard's almost indoctrinated mind extrapolating on what would happen.

 

[The Crotch]

[quote name='Rei no Otaku']

Spoiler

As for destroy being the easiest to get, it's actually hardest to get the ending where you see Shepard breathing in the rubble. Also, by making synthesis seem like a special choice it fits the illusion the reapers are trying to create by having it seem like more of an attractive choice than destroy.

With the viewpoint switch I just took that as more of Shepard's almost indoctrinated mind extrapolating on what would happen.

[/QUOTE]

Spoiler

You're not necessarily wrong, but more... off-point.

If you grant that going with synthesis/control amounts to giving in to the reapers and becoming fully indoctrinated, and going with destroy results in you shaking off the indoctrination, then the breathing scene is irrelevant. Indoctrination requires less effort on your part to break than it does to give in to. Whether or not you survive it is irrelevant; that's just kinda dumb. Lazy people are immune to mind control, I guess.

And for the viewpoint switch: it occurs even in the case of destroy, where presumably you're free of indoctrination, so... no, it doesn't work.

 

[The Crotch]

Okay, final part of my god damn monologue. Less focused on the game this time; more about all the shit since its release. Lots of quotes, so it's the longest one. Some of it might be petty/uninteresting to you, but... eh. Completeness, motherers.

Part Seven: Adrian's Revenge

Spoiler

Alternate, more informative title: Fans, Media, and Bioware.

If you've beaten all three Mass Effect games, you've put a minimum of, like, 80 hours in. Now, I've got a of a lot more than 80 hours in to the series because I can get a little completionist sometimes and it's a good series and it's not like I'm doing anything important with my life, anyway. And there are books and graphic novels and smartphone games and all that shit I haven't touched. It's big time investment, is what I'm getting at.

So given that investment of time, and given how the ending is not only demonstrably terrible, but demonstratively, instructively terrible, negative fan reaction was guaranteed. But there are a few other things that have fed some of the nerd rage.

And a big part of it is how happy gaming media has been to dismiss it as "nerd rage". A bunch of angry virgins mad they didn't get to put a saddle on Wrex and ride him in to the sunset while Tali and Liara take turns giving blowjobs and Anderson gives a speech about how great they are. They didn't get the fanfiction ending they had created in their heads that they thought they were entitled to because they played a ing game, so now they're throwing feces at the people responsible for the games they loved.

For their part, fans were confused and disappointed with the gaming media. It seemed like there was this bizarre silence: not a single 10/10, game of the year, best thing ever review mentioned the fact that it ended with five or so minutes of the player watching someone heat up a fist-full of their own shit in a microwave. Was the "gaming media" stupid? Were they corrupt? Did they just not give a about anything?

Spoiler

In order: most of them, some of them, and often.

The fact that fans and media can now semi-reliably communicate didn't help things at all. There are a lot of great people on the internet, sure, but there are also a lot of neckbeared wits who don't understand that filling someone's twitter account with accusations of stupidity, corruption, and laziness is a Bad Thing. And those writers and reviewers and journalists - not just the stupid and the corrupt, but people I actually kinda like, like Penny Arcade's Ben Kuchera - didn't realize that legitimate frustration wasn't a good excuse for insulting anyone who actually gives a about competent storytelling.

Also, I'm still way better at Tribes than you are, Ben. Get out of the gen room and fight me on the stand like a man.

In fact, with the rather odd exception of Forbes, I can't think of any positive coverage the "fan backlash" got. The best explanation for all of the above - this weird divide between professional media and common consumers - came from an article by The Escapist's Shamus Young called "The Story Doesn't Matter". It gets in to various things - deadlines, reviewer reticence to discuss story/writing, etc. - and it's worth a read.

But you know what? the media for a moment. What's really interesting is how Bioware has acted in regard to all this.

First, let's see some of Bioware's marketing-talk about the ending. Some of this is from relatively early in the development of the game (when the ending was presumably still in its non-gas-huffing "dark energy destroying stars" incarnation), and some of it is from after the game went gold and the ending was locked in. Pre-gold stuff first; any emphasis mine.

[quote name='Casey Hudson']For people who are invested in these characters and the back-story of the universe and everything, all of these things come to a resolution in Mass Effect 3. And they are resolved in a way that's very different based on what you would do in those situations.[/quote]

[quote name='Casey Hudson']
Interviewer: [Regarding the numerous possible endings of Mass Effect 2] “Is that same type of complexity built into the ending of Mass Effect 3?”

Hudson: “Yeah, and I’d say much more so, because we have the ability to build the endings out in a way that we don’t have to worry about eventually tying them back together somewhere. This story arc is coming to an end with this game. That means the endings can be a lot more different. At this point we’re taking into account so many decisions that you’ve made as a player and reflecting a lot of that stuff. It’s not even in any way like the traditional game endings, where you can say how many endings there are or whether you got ending A, B, or C.....The endings have a lot more sophistication and variety in them... We have a rule in our franchise that there is no canon. You as a player decide what your story is.”[/quote]

[quote name='Mike Gamble, Eurogamer Interview']
“Every decision you've made will impact how things go. The player's also the architect of what happens."

Whether you're happy or angry at the ending, know this: it is an ending.
BioWare will not do a "Lost" and leave fans with more questions than
answers after finishing the game, Gamble promised.

“You'll get answers to everything. That was one of the key things. Regardless of how we did everything, we had to say, yes, we're going to provide some answers to these people.”

“Because a lot of these plot threads are concluding and because it's being brought to a finale, since you were a part of architecting how they got to how they were, you will definitely sense how they close was because of the decisions you made and because of the decisions you didn't make”[/quote]

[quote name='Mike Gamble']And, to be honest, you [the fans] are crafting your Mass Effect story as much as we are anyway.[/quote]

Alright, so that's pretty clearly not what we got. How did that change post-gold?

[quote name='masseffect.com']Experience the beginning, middle, and end of an emotional story unlike any other, where the decisions you make completely shape your experience and outcome.[/quote]

[quote name='Casey Hudson']There is a huge set of consequences that start stacking up as you approach the end-game. And even in terms of the ending itself, it continues to break down to some very large decisions. So it's not like a classic game ending where everything is linear and you make a choice between a few things - it really does layer in many, many different choices, up to the final moments, where it's going to be different for everyone who plays it.[/quote]

I wanted to bold something in that one above, but everything about it is wrong, so I didn't know what to highlight because if I did one thing I'd have to do everything.

[quote name='Mike Gamble']There are many different endings. We wouldn’t do it any other way. How could you go through all three campaigns playing as your Shepard and then be forced into a bespoke ending that everyone gets? But I can’t say any more than that…[/quote]

[quote name='Mac Walters'][The presence of the Rachni] has huge consequences in Mass Effect 3. Even just in the final battle with the Reapers.[/quote]

Seriously, I wanted the rachni to matter so ing much. More than the krogan or the geth or anything. I wanted to see rachni bursting up out of the ground and suicide bombing a ing dreadnought. But they got their one mission where you ed around with one of the worst weapons in the game through a bunch of caves. Then they left forever. Awesome.

[quote name='Casey Hudson']

Hudson: “Fans want to make sure that they see things resolved, they want to get some closure, a great ending. I think they’re going to get that... Mass Effect 3 is all about answering all the biggest questions in the lore, learning about the mysteries and the Protheans and the Reapers, being able to decide for yourself how all of these things come to an end.”

Interviewer: “So are you guys the creators or the stewards of the franchise?”

Hudson: “Um… You know, at this point, I think we’re co-creators with the fans. We use a lot of feedback.”[/quote]

[quote name='Mac Walters']From very early on we wanted the science of the universe to be plausible. Obviously it's set in the future so you have to make some leaps of faith but we didn't want it to be just magic in space.[/quote]

[quote name='Casey Hudson']The whole idea of Mass Effect3 is resolving all of the biggest questions, about the Protheons and the Reapers, and being in the driver's seat to end the galaxy and all of these big plot lines, to decide what civilizations are going to live or die: All of these things are answered in Mass Effect 3.[/quote]

Many thanks to whoever the it was who collected all those quotes so I didn't have to. Total boss, that guy.

So all that is... unpleasant. There are three possibilities here (none necessarily mutually exclusive). Perhaps Hudson, Walters, and Gamble were simply mistaken, which would be pretty ed up, because how the does the director of the game not know how it ends? Perhaps they knew what the ending was but didn't understand how it differed from what they described, which is again pretty worrying, because one of those guys is the lead ing writer and I'd prefer not to think that the lead writer of the biggest franchise of one of the most important developers around doesn't know what words mean. The third possibility is that they were simply lying.

And just like in ME3, all those choices ing suck. Funny how that works.

Anyway, we're almost done. Just two more points, one bad, one good. Bad first. Night is darkest before the dawn, and all that.

Spoiler

That's a myth.

Chris Priestly is Bioware's "Community Manager". Forums and PR and shit. That's his job. About a month back back, he made this Twitter post.

Now, at first, this depressed me. Did he not understand foreshadowing? Did he not understand symbolism, allegory, or themes? But of course, he's just a community manager. He doesn't need to know a single thing about storytelling. That's not his job.

But then another wave hit me. Did he not understand people? Did he not understand that they do not like being mocked and insulted? As a community manager, he really should know those god damn things, because dealing with people is the entirety of his ing job Jesus Christ.

But, hey, lots of people are ing terrible at their jobs. So nevermind the fact that it displays complete ignorance of How Fiction Works, because he doesn't have to worry about that. Nevermind that it betrays ignorance of and disdain for the community he's supposed to manage, because... I dunno, at least he hasn't murdered anyone, so he's got that going in his favour.

No, this might be petty of me, but you know what really gets me? Dude is just plain wrong. You are an Albertan, Mr. Priestly. "Canada's America". You should know your ing Bible. It does not end with Jesus dying on the cross. Jesus dies then he comes back a few pages later and there's closure everywhere in that bitch with a huge focus on his companions and what happens next and what will come to pass. Chapters and chapters of it! It keeps going on about it! Why are you trying to compare your game to a book that you have never read?

...

Alright. I promised something positive, didn't I? I think I did.

Someone at somethingawful.com did a quick-like interview with Bioware's Patrick Weekes. And while not everything Weekes said was great - likes I said, no post-ending "ending building" makes it not suck; it's like trying to build a house with no foundation - it was still the single best thing to come out of the company in ages. No press release, no PAX panel, no commercial, no "Hey guys, get hyped about our new DLC!" bullshit... nothing can really equal good questions getting straight answers, can it?

Here, then, is the exact post, stolen from Something Awful (some post-ending spoilers, though no real specifics):

Possibly interesting new information here

Okay, here is what I asked Patrick Weekes, and his answers as best as I can remember them. I've paraphrased but I'm doing my best to stick to what he said rather than introduce any interpretation.

THESE ARE NOT DIRECT QUOTES.

-Is there still a setting to explore after the ending? Is everything ruined?

The setting is definitely not ruined. We still have a big, lively galaxy.

-Will long-distance superluminal travel still be possible post-Ending? (will Tali or Wrex or Garrus see their homeworlds again? Will everyone starve?)

Galactic civilization will rebuild. The mass relays were not necessary for interstellar flight. Remember, what does it say in the Codex about the speed of ships? That's right, 12 lightyears per (day? hour? minute?). And that's only the cruising speed, not the maximum speed.

People have never needed to research basic FTL improvements before because they have mass relays. With the relays gone, new technology will increase that speed. Additionally, the element zero cores of the dead/controlled Reapers can be used to improve FTL drives.

Starflight will continue using conventional FTL.

-Why did Joker leave Shep behind?

Joker would never abandon Shep without a good reason. Hopefully this will be clear in the Expanded Cut.

-Why can EDI survive the Destroy ending?

We argued a lot about this, I said that she was made of Reapertech and should therefore be destroyed, but (unclear, don't remember - wish I'd been able to ask a followup as his response doesn't make much sense)

-Did anyone on the Citadel survive?

Yes. We would never, ever do anything that made the player feel, on replay, that it would be better for everyone on the Citadel if they just died. The Citadel has emergency shelters and kinetic barriers - even if it blows up, millions might survive.

You should assume that everyone plot-important on the Citadel survived.

-Is it better for Kelly Chambers if we talk her into suicide?

No, see above.

-Who wrote the death of Joker's sister?

I did! We intentionally did not connect the dots. We were very interested to see how fast gamers figured it out.

-Whose idea was it to make the Rayya fall out of the sky if you destroy the Quarian fleet?

Someone in the audio department, it was brilliant.

-Did the mass relays pull an Arrival and go supernova?

No, they didn't. (i'm paraphrasing here, please don't interpret this too hard) They overloaded, they didn't rupture.

We really didn't mean to imply that the whole galaxy had been destroyed. People interpreted the ending in ways we really didn't expect.

(Mr. Weekes dropped a lot of hints that he really didn't like the ending. He also said something that was almost 100% verbatim from the Penny Arcade Forum post often attributed to him)

-Why did Legion pull a 180 from his Mass Effect 2 philosophy?

He and the Geth were backed into a corner. They'd been made a lot dumber by the attack on the Dyson swarm. There was no other choice for Geth survival.

-What was up with the Rachni story? Why did we get railroaded?

Welcome to game development. In some games (Alpha Protocol) they make a bold choice where some decisions can knock entire missions out of the story. At BioWare, we never want people to be locked out of content due to a decision several games ago. We just didn't have the resources to do an alternate for the Rachni mission, so we decided that the Rachni mission could occur whether or not players saved the Queen.

-Why didn't (X squadmate from ME2) return?

There was a very ugly month of development where we fought out who would return. We knew we had to have a smaller cast so we could fit in more squad banter. Eventually we decided to bring Garrus and Tali back, so they could be squadmates in all three games. We also knew we'd have Vega in order for new players to have someone dumber than they were.

I was very resentful of Vega at first because I thought he was taking a slot that could've gone to a ME2 character, but he grew on me.

-Why did EDI have cameltoe?

We don't get a lot of feedback from the art department but (unclear, wish I remembered this better

)

Lots of discussion about how he was uncomfortable doing Pinocchio stories for both Legion and EDI because 'EDI was fine, she was an AI, she was cool - do we really need her to turn into Commander Data? We had seven seasons of Data, that was enough.'

-Why did you write Pinocchio stories for all the synthetic characters?

See above

-What was up with the Human Reaper in ME2? Why did it look so dumb?

We wanted to use the Suicide Mission to show several steps of the Reaper development process, from human reaper embryo all the way to cuttlefish. But the mission grew too complicated so it was cut for time.

Do the Reapers really only generate one capital ship per cycle? How do they ever break even?

Well, we never totally pinned that down. But this cycle was really anomalous. They don't normally take any capital-size Reaper losses at all.

-What was up with Kai Leng? How do you feel about him?

We really wanted to have a recurring antagonist for Shep, a 'Darth Maul' (his words). But I feel like there was some definite conflict between cutscene and gameplay there, and I think it's something we have to work on.

'He was a great antagonist in the books'

-Why did we only get top and bottom dialogue choices, no middle?

Part of it was resources. Part of it is that Mass Effect 3 is a war story and it's really hard for Shep to feel middling about the Reapers.

-How did YOU feel about the ending?

(I didn't ask this, but he seems to have gone to GREAT lengths to think ways around a lot of stuff the ending implied.)

Why no female (alien X?)

Resource limitations. They have a very strict budget for how many different characters they can use in a given area. Some are basically free - if you have human males you have Batarians because they're humans with funny heads, if you have human females you have asari, etc.

Where was Harbinger? Can we ASSUME DIRECT CONTROL of him?

I definitely want more closure on Harbinger. That'd be hilarious. Stop punching yourself, Harbinger.

How did the Reapers storm the Citadel? Why didn't they shut down the relays as per their original plan once they had control?

Originally we planned to have a cutscene of Reapers taking over, Reaper monsters punching buttons, et cetera. But we cut it, partially for resource reasons and partly because it disrupted the pacing.

The Reapers didn't shut down the mass relays because the Keepers interfered with that. (I wish I could've asked a follow-up here, it doesn't make much sense.)

Why don't Ken and Gabby have more dialogue?

They actually have a bunch more on disk, but we somehow introduced a bug where their dialogue is tied to your approval level with Ash. If Ash has low approval, or isn't present, most of Ken and Gabby's dialogue won't play.

Why do you guys do Star Wars style space battles instead of the battles described in the codex?

We want to provide a familiar, compelling visual experience for people who grew up on Star Wars and stuff like that. These are some of our favorite parts of the game.

Why didn't we get a bunch of different cinematics showing off our various forces fighting in the ending?

Resource and time constraints. It would've been awesome, but we just don't have the resources to create the Volus bombing fleet, the Volus dreadnought Compensator (he actually said this), etc.

Things I wish I'd asked:

Why the drat Starchild?

What was up with the Stargazer? (He touched on the Stargazer once and pretty much said 'oh, yeah, the Stargazer.'

Again: NOT DIRECT QUOTES. These are NOT OFFICIAL BIOWARE STATEMENTS. Please don't gently caress Patrick Weekes over by posting these as 'official BioWare PR' or whatever. Please feel free to ask me follow-up questions, as I definitely didn't cover the whole conversation with him.

My takeaway was: the epilogue DLC is probably going to do a lot of good and be pretty well written, and Patrick Weekes should've been lead writer on ME3.

 

[panzerfaust]

The Crotch Column, Vanity Fair.

 

[The Crotch]

God damn so many typoes and I forgot to close that tag fuck[/B]. Vanity Fair, fire yo... comes off well from that. Go Patrick Weekes!

 

[panzerfaust]

Rubbed half of the Nier review out today, may have time to finish tomorrow. Have a few hours to study before belligerent drunks take over the house tonight.

Because it's ing Cinco de Mayo

 

[j-cart]

[quote name='Zmonkay']Well said across the board Crotch!


Also, anyone have an opinion of The Witcher 2 on 360 vs PC? In the next week or two I'll get the last components of my new PC which should handle anything I can throw at it, so I should run Witcher 2 on max specs. However, I generally prefer a controller to keyboard/mouse (just find it more comfortable). Both options would be played from my recliner on my hdtv, so theres not a huge difference.

Mainly wondering if the graphics are significantly different or if there are any control benefits to playing on PC (ala how Dragon Age plays significantly different, and much much better, on PC)?[/QUOTE]


PC. PC version also supports controller.

 

[The Crotch]

[quote name='panzerfaust']Rubbed half of the Nier review out today, may have time to finish tomorrow. Have a few hours to study before belligerent drunks take over the house tonight.

Because it's ing Cinco de Mayo [/QUOTE]
I know I've asked you before, but did you play/watch the final two endings?

 

[panzerfaust]

Played to get ending B. Watched endings C and D. A shame because those were very fulfilling, but required some bullshit about collecting all the game's weapons.

 

[The Crotch]

Ending D was ing glorious, but yeah, too much ing around to get to C and D. Cavia finally made a good game, but god damn they hated completionists until the day they died.

EDIT: The game does sell most of the weapons though, I think.

EDIT2:[quote name='panzerfaust']Not sure I follow the indoctrination theory, for all those characters to be made up the entire time... I guess I don't remember my ME history too well.[/QUOTE]
To clarify,

Spoiler

Anderson and The Illusive Man were real people throughout the entire series. However, they were not in the Citadel after the charge on the beam. What you saw as Anderson and The Illusive Man were basically the angel-and-devil sitting on your shoulder.

Whether or not the kid was ever real is irrelevant, though it's commonly claimed that he died right after you first saw him run in to a building and from the scene in the vent to the time his shuttle explodes he's a hallucination.

Like I said, I don't really buy it.