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Author Topic: Effects of Mass  (Read 66943 times)

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DestyNova

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Re: Effects of Mass
« Reply #860 on: April 05, 2012, 09:55:59 PM »

In regards to the 'Everyone is fucked'. A bioware twitter has posted some tweets about it. This is her twitter feed.

https://twitter.com/#!/JessicaMerizan

 She has said 'No body will starve' and it is possible to reunite with crew members, but as an rpg.netter has posted..

I should however STRONGLY EMPHASIZE that throughout this whole thing Merizan has had a very frustrating history of answering fan questions with coy tweets along the lines of "How do you know they're stranded?" and "Are you sure that's a plot hole and not intentional?" and stuff like that, and then, when people get excited and think she's hinting at IT or something, saying she was just speculating like any other fan and it's not her fault if people assume she knows something just because she's a well-known Bioware employee who's in charge of communicating with fans. It's totally possible that she's just doing more of the same here, and that by "you can reunite with the crew" she just means something like "we don't explicitly rule out the possibility that Shepard could, in theory, one day reunite with the crew." I wouldn't get my hopes too high. But it would be awfully nice to think that she's learned her lesson, and that she actually realizes what she's implying this time.
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Stush

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Re: Effects of Mass
« Reply #861 on: April 06, 2012, 01:00:33 AM »

We should talk about stuff other than the ending more often!

BEST WEAPON POLL:

Totally the M-99 Saber, Best weapon in the game, it's too bad you get it so late, but i'm really looking forwards to using it from the start for my next playthrough. >:D

Also, Best armour is Hahne Kedar, It looks so cool. And gives you bonuses to damage, which is pretty much what I focussed all my bonuses towards, which is why Stush shepard's M-99 saber was so murderous, I was one-shotting cannibals all over the place. I need to find the Hahne Kedar arm pieces, though, i must have missed them!

Second best weapon?



That one.
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Niku

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Re: Effects of Mass
« Reply #862 on: April 06, 2012, 01:55:12 AM »

Mongrel, here's the spoiler text of the biggest narrative problem:

[spoiler]In the game there is technology called a Mass Relay.  It's basically a giant slingshot that allows space ships to travel at super faster than light speeds, shooting them from galaxy to galaxy.  At the very end of Mass Effect 2, you destroy a Mass Relay -- and doing so wipes out the entire system it's in as the unstable energy ignites from it.  Your character is incarcerated for this being a war crime upon doing this, even though it was to prevent the villains from using that Mass Relay to quickly jump around the galaxy upon their arrival.

The end of Mass Effect 3 destroys every single Mass Relay in the galaxy, which essentially should mean that you just wiped out every single civilized world in existence.  Whether or not this is true is unconfirmed.

On top of that, the final 20 minutes are essentially The Architect from the second Matrix movie, dumping a bunch of exposition about heretofore unmentioned aspects of the villains and their ultimate purpose, but you're not even given the dubious satisfaction of a third movie which which to properly contextualize this new information.[/spoiler]
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Bongo Bill

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Re: Effects of Mass
« Reply #863 on: April 06, 2012, 03:20:11 AM »

A big part of the thing with the ending is the suddenness with which it goes bad. It's got one rather well-written and touching scene that would be a great way to kick off a conventional denouement, and then all of a sudden [spoiler]you're being moved into another room where a hologram babbles about the villains' idiotic true purpose[/spoiler], and it manages to keep going downhill from there.

The ending has a lot of problems, and it's difficult to summarize concisely, but I'll try: [spoiler]After the climax, it introduces a really lame new character, who expositions up an unforeshadowed and thematically questionable new motive for the villains which is largely less interesting than the one implied of them over the course of the last 2.9 games, and which is based on a premise that the events of the game have already demonstrated to be false. Based on this information - which, uncharacteristically, you can't question or reject - it offers you a choice with consequences so far-reaching that they overshadow all the events leading up to it. The mechanics of the choice are unclear and appear to violate the established rules of the setting; one of the options is outright nonsense when considered at any but the most abstract level. However, the consequences of the choice don't matter, because it never depicts them; it shows one of several almost identical brief cinematics including some (not all) of your party members, which leaves them in a situation that appears to totally overshadow the directions their lives had been going in as well (and it is possible to view a permutation of the scene which contradicts the stated effects of the choice you just made so what the fuck).[/spoiler] Then the credits roll and it shows an ambiguously distant epilogue narrated (poorly, I'm afraid) by Buzz Aldrin, and a message that if you want more adventures, DLC is available.

Notably, it does not depict [spoiler]what happened to anybody except your crew, and in the case of your crew it doesn't explain what the fuck they were even doing there[/spoiler], and therefore [spoiler]people have every reason to assume that the ending is not so much "bittersweet" as it is "nihilistic," with billions starving including everybody you grew attached to over the course of the series, and the setting as a whole never regaining its defining element of a huge and diverse galactic community[/spoiler]. Their promises to "clarify" the ending imply that this particular failure will be addressed, but that still leaves lots of others.

There's the kernel of a good idea in there, but the way it's presented, executed, and (not) depicted is about as unsatisfying as imaginable. When you build up players' emotional attachment to the story so well and then do... that... then is it any surprise that all those emotions will go nuclear?

Hey stupid question.

Is the rest of the game fun up to the ending? All this talk and hype has me vaguely interested in seeing the ending and wrapping up my FemShep adventure.


It's still Bioware, and that means laden with inconsistent quality and cut corners, but it's their A-team, not the B-team behind Dragon Age 2. Apart from the ending, its biggest failings are being occasionally dumb and having too few enemy types, but when it's good, it's got a strong claim to being the best they've ever produced.

Gameplaywise it manages to bring back the RPG-like weapon and build customization of the first game and apply it to the shooter-like streamlinedness of the second.
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Stush

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Re: Effects of Mass
« Reply #864 on: April 06, 2012, 03:46:28 AM »

I have to admit, the message that pops up after you finished really annoyed the heck out of me, Moreso than anything else. Advertising is annoying, and one popping up just after the last cutscene in a game series I really enjoyed? That's not cool.
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JDigital

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Re: Effects of Mass
« Reply #865 on: April 06, 2012, 06:08:33 AM »

You know your ending is bad when it borrows the plot from Master of Orion 3:

[spoiler]At the end of Master of Orion 2, you win by wiping out the aliens who threaten the galaxy, saving all of spacefaring civilization. At the start of Master of Orion 3, it turns out that you didn't wipe out ALL the aliens, and they immediately show up in great numbers to reduce all spacefaring civilization to a pre-warp state. It canonically wipes out your achievement.

Master of Orion 2 is the top rated game on gog.com after Planescape: Torment. Master of Orion 3 is the worst rated.[/spoiler]

There's also a tradition in American cinema where [spoiler]if the hero has been righteous, he survives; he can only be killed at the end if he sacrifices himself to redeem himself for previous evil or wrong actions. Since the player chose all Shepard's actions, he probably thinks Shepard has done nothing to deserve failure. Sometimes in movies the hero willingly sacrifices himself at the end to save everyone else, but in ME3 you don't get that choice, and it doesn't save galactic civilization.[/spoiler]
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Bongo Bill

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Re: Effects of Mass
« Reply #866 on: April 06, 2012, 06:11:58 AM »

Well, [spoiler]with a name that's a homophone of "shepherd," a martyrdom ending was always a reasonable expectation[/spoiler].
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Smiler

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Re: Effects of Mass
« Reply #867 on: April 06, 2012, 06:16:54 AM »

BEST WEAPON POLL:

The Javelin. Vwoop, PEW.
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Ziiro

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Re: Effects of Mass
« Reply #868 on: April 06, 2012, 08:31:18 AM »

Mass Effect 3: Resurgence Trailer

Looks like I'll be playing again on 4-10. All I ever wanted to play was Geth Infiltrator or Engineer, and now I have it.
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Niku

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Re: Effects of Mass
« Reply #869 on: April 06, 2012, 08:37:34 AM »

So do you get all of that with the DLC, or does it just seed those things into the booster packs?  Honest question.  I'm not sure just how scummy or not EA is being on this front.
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Ziiro

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Re: Effects of Mass
« Reply #870 on: April 06, 2012, 08:39:44 AM »

It's unclear. However, based on the systems they have in place; Yeah, I think they're just going to start putting them in packs. Which means time for me to buy funbucks until I get Geth.
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Beat Bandit

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Re: Effects of Mass
« Reply #871 on: April 06, 2012, 09:24:17 AM »

It's unclear.
Quote from: 0:22
Reinforcement Pack Expansions
Is it really, though?
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Ziiro

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Re: Effects of Mass
« Reply #872 on: April 06, 2012, 09:29:23 AM »

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Mongrel

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Re: Effects of Mass
« Reply #873 on: April 06, 2012, 02:13:39 PM »

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Smiler

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Re: Effects of Mass
« Reply #874 on: April 06, 2012, 03:05:45 PM »

Apparently the resurgence pack is free dlc. Which probably means that you just have to keep buying those booster packs until you get one of the new characters.
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Beat Bandit

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Re: Effects of Mass
« Reply #875 on: April 06, 2012, 03:06:28 PM »

add ending elements to booster packs

buy packs to make your dream ending
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Mongrel

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Re: Effects of Mass
« Reply #876 on: April 06, 2012, 03:59:07 PM »

Apparently the resurgence pack is free dlc. Which probably means that you just have to keep buying those booster packs until you get one of the new characters.

What I love is that the DLC is only free until April 24th... so if - in say six months - I decided "Oh hey, let's play this Mass Effect game all the kids liked" and buy it during a Steam bundle sale (or whatever), I'll then have to pay for the DLC frosting that covers up the shit-cake ending?
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Mongrel

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Re: Effects of Mass
« Reply #877 on: April 06, 2012, 04:00:30 PM »

Wait am I correct in understanding that the multiplayer game actually requires you to buy RANDOMIZED BOOSTER PACKS of DLC??!?!

:hurr:
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Beat Bandit

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Re: Effects of Mass
« Reply #878 on: April 06, 2012, 04:38:15 PM »

EDIT EDIT: didn't misread
1)
Quote
* OFFER EXPIRES APRIL 12, 2014
2) holy shit read a single post in this thread
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Bongo Bill

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Re: Effects of Mass
« Reply #879 on: April 06, 2012, 04:40:23 PM »

Apparently the resurgence pack is free dlc. Which probably means that you just have to keep buying those booster packs until you get one of the new characters.

What I love is that the DLC is only free until April 24th... so if - in say six months - I decided "Oh hey, let's play this Mass Effect game all the kids liked" and buy it during a Steam bundle sale (or whatever), I'll then have to pay for the DLC frosting that covers up the shit-cake ending?

If you look closely, it says April 2014. It's not even going to be released until summer.
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