Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
If you have an email ending in @hotmail.com, @live.com or @outlook.com (or any other Microsoft-related domain), please consider changing it to another email provider; Microsoft decided to instantly block the server's IP, so emails can't be sent to these addresses.
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
Comments
Right.
Because we talk about stories and human beings the same way.
But I'll indulge you.
See, the thing is that in most narratives deliberate choices lead the character to a deliberate end. In Mass Effect there are deliberate choices, but they're not the players. The important part is the fight against the reapers. The choices you make might have interesting skits and character pieces but the main narrative remains intact no matter what you do. Mordin dies? Another salarian to help. Tali dies? Hey look, another Quarian engineer.
Because the story is about Shephard and not them. It might give him more angst, but it doesn't change the narrative or even the fundamental actions or choices of Shephard.
Your choices have major outcomes on political relationships, the lives (and deaths) of major characters and humanity's place among the alien species of the galaxy. It's the difference between enslaving or wiping out the Geth, allowing the Krogan genophage to continue, whether the original Council is alive or dead, who of the original team is left remaining and more. The games still boil down to the same combat encounters, and they boil down to the same essential plot (since it's driven by the villains, conveniently), but these are pretty major aspects. Narrative isn't plot, after all -- it's literary derived from "narrate" and describes how a work goes about just that. And the narrative can certainly be very different depending on the choices you made. The absence of Wrex sets the scene for Shepard's relationship with the Krogan species, for instance, and Shepard's intervention on that matter is one of the biggest elements of the final game.
Malk, I think what you're looking for is choices that alter the plot rather than choices that alter the narrative, and in that case you're better off playing the Witcher games. The Mass Effect games are more about providing context for the discussion of heavy issues in a space opera video game, and that's a part of how they draw an audience in. This isn't the kind of thing you can experience, entirely, from the outside -- you have to consider those choices and scenarios.
I can think of a lot of games that have worse moral choices than the worst Mass Effect has to offer, and many of them are prior BioWare games to begin with, so it's not like I even have to look very far. KotOR is one example, and while Neverwinter Nights' use of the D&D two-axis system was promising, it still went between "goody two-shoes" and "spiteful prick". I've already mentioned inFamous, what was beyond awful in its attempt to combine grit with a level of moral simplicity that reminds me of Silver Age stereotypes. Fallout 3 is another game that used a single-axis system and suffered for it. The list goes on.
The point is that even if you consider the Geth choice in ME2 the worst ME has to offer, it still stands head and shoulders above most other games on the market. It's hurt by the fact that it's quantified within the mechanics, but that doesn't change the fact that it poses a question to the player -- would I rather kill off a people and let them maintain their freedom while I do so, or would I rather indoctrinate them for my own purposes and spare their lives in the process? That's great, and I don't see many other games at all providing that kind of challenge to the player. The admittedly major flaw is that such choices are attached to morality points, but I don't think that diminishes the concept of what BioWare was trying to provide -- the quality, yes.
ME2 and ME3 are very different on two major grounds. Firstly, the latter is the third act and the conclusion of the story, so this is where everything has to come to a head in the way ME2 didn't. Secondly, ME2 is more character-driven, and much of the content deals with the team dynamic. Given that the conclusion of ME2 can end the lives of multiple characters and asks the player to organise and guide them, I'd say it actually makes good on its promises, even if it does so very imperfectly.
I take exception to the idea that Mass Effect isn't "genuinely philosophical". It's hamfisted and BioWare don't have the writing chops to pull it off in any other context, and made plenty of mistakes even in this context, but it's clear that one of the major aims of each Mass Effect game was to provide players with moral choices that had actual significance beyond whether you want to be good or evil, even if the mechanics fucked that up. It's a heavily flawed execution, but that doesn't change the fact that there's a significant amount of philosophical content. To take another example, we don't disqualify Atlus Shrugged from being a work of philosophy even though it's awful, and I daresay Mass Effect is a few shades better, even on paper.
If interesting character pieces don't matter to you, why do you care about any story? I mean, you wouldn't watch, say, Reservoir Dogs just to see some guys shoot each other.
Gah, I was going to go to bed three and a half hours ago. I'll be back in the morning.
>Malk, I think what you're looking for is choices that alter the plot rather than choices that alter the narrative,
That's the whole thing though. If we're to say that the ending for ME3 was really that bad because it doesn't account the choices, then we are talking about plot in this semantics game. The choices don't affect the plot and as such, the lack of differing endings shouldn't have been a shock.
>That's great, and I don't see many other games at all providing that kind of challenge to the player.
I don't see where the challenge is. Maybe if it hadn't been a clear PvR choice I'd agree but as is the game fucks up by giving us the easy way out and then disingenuous saying it's a genuine choice.
>I take exception to the idea that Mass Effect isn't "genuinely philosophical".
Take exception all you like. Your defense is that ME isn't as bad as Atlas Shrugged and if that's your defense that 'it's bad but not as bad as Atlas Shrugged' then time is genuinely spent better on the works of Kant or Sartre.
>If interesting character pieces don't matter to you, why do you care about any story? I mean, you wouldn't watch, say, Reservoir Dogs just to see some guys shoot each other.
Where did I say they don't matter to me? It's certainly fun to see what the result of choice is. My point is that they lack any true consequence.
no
The choices do affect the plot. Or, that is to say, there is much more than a single plot within a story; that is what a subplot is. And those are what the choices affect; the subplots within the game.
And while ME3 ties up the main plot of the series in one of the worst ways possible, it does not taking into account anything you have done over the series. You can exile the Quarians, you can keep the genophage on the Krogans, you can do anything you goddamned want, and as long as you don't get Shepard killed in the ending to ME2, you will literally receive the exact same ending.
The ending to the main plot is bad enough, but there is no resolution to anything else either.
this is bullshit
i quit
>The choices do affect the plot. Or, that is to say, there is much more than a single plot within a story; that is what a subplot is. And those are what the choices affect; the subplots within the game.
That is not -the- plot though.
The main plot concerns the story and journey of Shephard which is unaffected by your choices which is why the subplots are irrelevant to your journey.
And nice consistency criticizing how I phrased something in the beginning of the argument and then continuing on to end comments with dismissive, terse responses.
Except this was the point everything was leading up to. The endings of the other games, and the games that came afterwards, acknowledged the different choices the player made, even if they weren't in ways that significantly altered the course of the game. But this isn't about altering the course of the game -- it's about validating those prior choices. In Mass Effect 3, the prior choices you made didn't alter the challenges you were going to face, but they did alter who was around, how people reacted to you and where you stood in relation to everything else going on. They effectively altered the context for what was coming up.
But the endings of ME3 don't even acknowledge anything. For instance, you'd think having a resources bar you could fill up would alter the difficulty of the final confrontations; it's the implicit promise in the mechanic. It doesn't do this, though, and the difference comes down to "completely full" and "not completely full". I don't think anyone is looking for dozens of significantly different endings that reflect their choices, but perhaps between three or five that summarise all the major choices and their consequences while nodding towards the minor ones. It's not like this hasn't even been done before, such as in Silent Hill.
I hate to pull out the "subjectivity" argument, but it essentially is. While the design elements draw players along two preset paths, there's nothing to say that any individual player will necessarily adhere to those, and there's nothing to say that an individual player won't stop to consider the merits of both sides of the argument. It's a fine line between choice and mechanical guidance, and I certainly dislike that Mass Effect threw its lot in with the latter, but that doesn't prevent anyone from taking the choices as actual considerations.
But how many gamers read philosophy? Philosophical literature isn't nearly as powerful as it once was, I think the philosophers of this age are going to be remembered for how they expressed such things via their works of entertainment. The Discworld is a perfect example; it's as silly as they come and works with a variety of fantasy cliches, but that doesn't prevent it at all from expressing philosophy -- it simply does it in a way that's more accessible and contextualised. Mass Effect is partially an attempt at a similar thing for a new audience. It's a stepping stone towards greater things.
I don't exactly think Mass Effect is the greatest thing ever -- in fact, I wasn't even excited for any of them. I wouldn't exactly call myself a "fan" and I'm not waiting for BioWare to announce a new tie-in or anything, and I might not even play the upcoming DLC that alters the ending. But I think what Mass Effect provided was a very positive step in the right direction and rightly deserves acknowledgement for the strides its taken in the medium of video games (even if the Witcher games outclass it in those respects). It's definitely a high point in providing moral and political choices for a wide audience of mainstream gamers, and its flaws reduce its effectiveness rather than the fact of what it is.
Look at me still commenting on this thread when I should be playing the game.
>Except this was the point everything was leading up to. The endings of the other games, and the games that came afterwards, acknowledged the different choices the player made, even if they weren't in ways that significantly altered the course of the game. But this isn't about altering the course of the game -- it's about validating those prior choices.
But that's the thing, the tip of spear needs to have a deliberate point, to use an old metaphor. This was the very very end. It's ending needed to be particularly deliberate.
And the thing about difficulty, well it's got a difficulty set bar and never was the most challenging of game so..
>I hate to pull out the "subjectivity" argument, but it essentially is. While the design elements draw players along two preset paths, there's nothing to say that any individual player will necessarily adhere to those, and there's nothing to say that an individual player won't stop to consider the merits of both sides of the argument. It's a fine line between choice and mechanical guidance, and I certainly dislike that Mass Effect threw its lot in with the latter, but that doesn't prevent anyone from taking the choices as actual considerations.
I can't disagree, but you can't predict how any player will react. What you can judge is how well the designers did to guide to a certain reaction. In this (and many other) cases the game failed.
>But how many gamers read philosophy?
Irrelevant. If we want games to stand as high as prose or other visual media we need to hold it to the same standard. It might be baby's first moral choice simulator, but it does not ask genuine moral questions other than the one we both agree ended up being bullshit.
Again, I don't hate Mass Effect. I wouldn't have sunk two games and a third of a third into it if I did. I do agree it's a step in the right direction, but not on the level it should be. It's an elevation of action and character, rather than gaming as whole, and a rather small one at that.
And the sad thing is I doubt the industry will take note of the good things it does.
You were trying to discuss something; I am quitting the discussion. If you wish to discuss something, you don't phrase it dismissively. Ragequits, on the other hand, are a staple of mine.
Editted out because discussion was getting off track and nasty.
Yeah, but then you can re-enter at any time without looking like a fool.
Let's not let this get out of hand, guys. What happened here is that both of you had a very minor conduct failure each, and it's exacerbated because the topic at hand is hotly debated. Given the current tone, I'm willing to agree to disagree at this stage if it'll allow things to cool down. Usually, the two of you get along just fine and I think it'd be silly to allow a vidya argument to create so much tension, so I'm asking the both of you to take five on this as a moderator. To make it clear, this is not an official warning (why would it be?) and I'm not locking the thread, because I can trust both of you to be reasonable, but at the same time I'm watching for escalation and will intervene if necessary. You've both made your points about the conduct of the other clear, and I think it'd be more conductive to closure if you both agreed to consider said points rather than debating the details.
Sorry if this came across as aggressive or anything, and I think both of you are pretty great, but if I end up having to take mod action concerning personal insults then I'll do that. That's very definitely the last thing I want to do, though, so let's nip this in the bud.
I already quit though
It ain't over until the Asari sings, and I don't hear no singin'.
I apologize. I wasn't particularly angry until a certain post and I -do- think Cygan's a pretty hoopy frood. It might have just been a combination of disagreement, having to argue three different positions at once but I did lose my cool for a seond.
By the whole I think the conversation won't ever result in any personal breakthroughs but hearing other thoughts does make me at least slightly better at making my own clear.
Again, I apologize for my own poorly worded statements.
And considering they're the space jews, I'm a Quarian so I sure as hell can't sing. =P.
Oh hey I just reunited with Tali! Hi Tali! I missed you!
Re: FFVII
One of the things I liked about that game was the whole Cloud/Zack subplot but the whole Cid plot annoyed me
Tali was my romance option. I am kind of a sucker for that kind of character, I must say.
And You say you hate moe. =P
To say this, because very few people ever understand this without having it explained.
I don't have a lot of willpower, and I have a tendency to get sucked into arguments whenever I have one with someone. This particular combination makes it quite difficult for me to just leave no matter how annoyed I am getting.
As such, whenever I look back over an argument and see how I've been getting progressively annoyed and that this isn't going to change soon, I ragequit. This is characterized by me swearing, usually saying something like "Right, fuck this, I quit", or "Whatever, this is fucking bullshit", or something like this.
This helps me to vent, so I can go elsewhere and not be annoyed because of the argument, and it also prevents me from re-entering the argument when I come back, as I'd look like a fool.
As it was, once I decided to go back and edit my post with my ragequit message, I immediately signed out and went elsewhere. I came back when I felt calm enough to be able to read the thread without being tempted to backslide into the argument again.
Maybe it's just me and maybe it's because she's my romance but damn everything Tali says sounds suggestive to me.
tali is like, the memetic sexy woman from the series.
Which is kind of weird in a series with characters like Miranda, Jack, and Liara.
I guess Tali is more waifu-y.
From what I have seen, Liara takes the same role for fem!shippers. Mostly because she's like, the only real fem!ship anyway.
@Nova: Don't sweat it. As far as my perspective is concerned, it's over. Although I think you should work on that, because most people won't understand where you're coming from and consider it a dismissal rather than an agreement to disagree.
@Malk: My major issue with moe is generally as context for an entire show rather than as a character element. Ergo why I got bored of Mouretsu Pirates; while some episodes were fantastic and I loved the concept and plot, I felt the moe stuff was much stronger as a side element, and it ended up taking time away from space pirating and stuff. So it's about efficiency -- have all the moe you like in a show as long as something's happening. But if the moe stuff takes time away from plot progression and other important stuff, I begin to resent it.
I got bored of that show pretty fast because it was just... pointless. There was rarely any action, which in a pirate series is dumb, and the whole concept behind it was shakey anyway.
then i was told there were confirmed lesbians and now im conflicted
I understand your issue with moe (even if I feel if the cutesy comedy is strong enough it can carry a show, but discussion for another day) I just like busting chops. =P
Also I stuck with it because despite POTC's popularity pirate fiction isn't what you'd call common and the rewarding parts are excellent.
They're privateers, not really pirates.
^^ Yes, but I like typing. So I shall type some more:
So Tali was endearing because she was that kind of character in a context that conflicted with it. She starts off on her journey to adult womanhood and, verily, ends up fucking Shepard becomes a special operations agent as things get more desperate and is eventually set to inherit vast political power -- little of this suits her character, and I think that's a part of what's so appealing. Essentially, she's the wrong kind of person to be putting in control of the hard decisions because she's a moral perfectionist who will always do the right thing. In that respect, she was a really positive presence aboard the Normandy and its resultant internal political machinations from the crew members across all three games.
There's this one moment in the second game that I consider her defining character moment. You bring Legion back to the Normandy and activate him. After getting back from his sidequest, you find Legion and Tali at odds. Legion was trying to scan confidential Quarian data and send it back to the "good" Geth. If you settle the matter neutrally, Tali offers to give Legion some data anyway as an act of good faith. Keep in mind that Legion represents an existential threat to Tali. I liked Tali from the outset, but that pretty much cemented her as my favourite alongside Garrus. And for the bulk of all three games, that was pretty much it -- me, Tali, Garrus and a galaxy full of danger.
Good times.
It's dumb in a privateer series too
that explains so much