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Post by Battlechantress on Aug 5, 2010 2:58:53 GMT 1
Given how hard they pushed Miranda and Jack onto the guys (but especially Miranda), definitely.
On the plus side, the fangirls got Garrus. (I like him purely for the personality and sarcasm. I could care less about the looks. It's a good thing too, because we definitely didn't have much to choose from!) The closest I will ever get to Jacob is that hysterical Jacob/Harbinger mash up video on Youtube.
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Post by jklinders on Aug 5, 2010 3:02:07 GMT 1
But...but the priiiiiizze....
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Post by Battlechantress on Aug 5, 2010 3:57:54 GMT 1
I was thinking today that the number one reason Bioware had us do all of those freaking loyalty missions was because they didn't have enough content for ME2. They basically said, "To hell with the story, we'll just add more plot to ME3 since it's supposed to be a trilogy anyway." Which is a shame, because the game still has its bright spots (such as Matriarch Ayethia. I honestly think that, given the choice, I'd have replaced half of the frigging squad with just her. If I ever get around to finishing my ME2 meme and posting it on DA, she's definitely getting at least one mention!).
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Post by jklinders on Aug 5, 2010 4:04:32 GMT 1
Matriarch Ayethia for council!!! I will only mind all the loyalty missions if they end up dumping most of the squad in the next game for a couple of lame cameos. Because if they do that then about half of the games content will be pointless. Put the ultimate squad together...why? just 'cause. If the squad is dumped for new team members in act three than act 2 will be a waste and the whole big choices schtick will be a lie.
I'm done for now off to bed.
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Post by ommadawn on Aug 5, 2010 4:44:14 GMT 1
The Mass Effect comics go into a lot more detail about Liara and Shepard's body, and why she's so hardass vengeful in ME2. Well worth reading for all you completists (like me).
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Post by Nemonus on Aug 5, 2010 7:16:12 GMT 1
Er, I just thought the loyalty missions were an excuse to get to know the characters more. Yes they could have been more creative besides just chucking family members at us, but they never seemed to be making up for missing content to me. They were the content. As for the other part, Shepard went through a lot of trouble to avoid saying he was dead throughout the game. I would in his place. I don't see how it is possible to preserve brain function and memory after brain death. I would like to think he found a big piece of the Normandy's wreckage to ride down to the planet with and stayed just barely alive long enough for a salvage team to find him and put him in stasis. While I love the idea of "riding down on the Normandy", I think the whole story is more meaningful if Shepard actually died. Then one can explore all sorts of themes of resurrection, mortality, and humanity. I'm okay with them making up pseudoscience (and I think Reaper technology implanted on Shepard would make for some nice angst. I guess liking anything this game did isn't cool any more, but...I still think there's a lot that can be gotten out of it. </woke up on the wrong side of the bed> Okay, the thing about Cerberus and/or the Shadow Broker has been cleared up, but if the Shadow Broker knew about Shep's death first, and s/he was working for the Collectors....that still points toward near-death, not actual death, being their goal, doesn't it?
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Post by Battlechantress on Aug 5, 2010 11:56:12 GMT 1
Probably, but that still begs the question of if/how they saved Shepard's brain.
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Post by ommadawn on Aug 6, 2010 1:57:24 GMT 1
The loyalty missions always seemed to me a way to bond more with the team members, and have some sort of connection to them so their deaths or survival actually meant something in the end-game. In that way, it worked, even though the loyalty missions made up half the game.
As for Shepard's brain, I had no trouble suspending disbelief. If medigel can magically repair bullet wounds in real time, fixing frozen brains shouldn't pose much of a problem either (and the cost keeps it from becoming a common miracle).
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Post by Clint Johnston on Aug 6, 2010 2:27:37 GMT 1
Whenever I begin to ask myself these questions, I always look back on this little comic, and remind myself that.... ...no one cares.
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Post by Nemonus on Aug 6, 2010 6:02:50 GMT 1
Yeah, in a universe containing medigel, some mumbo-jumbo about brain rescuing technology should be sufficient for fanfic purposes.
(nice comic btw)
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Post by jklinders on Aug 6, 2010 13:59:14 GMT 1
Just because I feel like being a pest and since I am on short term disability and have nothing else to do I will point out that medigel does not fix wounds. Codex basically describes it as a liquid bandage that tosses in a painkiller and antiseptic that hardens instantly over wounds. Frankly we are not far from something like that already so medigel does not bother me at all.
But the real reason that the whole resurrection thing is a pest for me is that the entire narrative ignores the life after death thing. the entire universe acted like Shep was just sleeping and forgot to change his voice mail to "I am in a coma and won't be available for 2 years". Even the captain in charge of security at the supposedly hyper secure Citadel completely trusts that his scanner was not hacked and gives Shepard full access to the Citadel with no questions asked or surveillance. So it's not so much the tech that bothers me as the narrative.
After all element zero already breaks half of our understood laws of physics as it is. But that is part of the narrative. People coming back from the dead isn't. Summer blockbusters by comparison remain completely true to their own ridiculous narrative by no one questioning whether the hero could cling to the side of a jet moving at mach 2 while lighting a stick of dynamite on his pant leg and then free falling to the ground.
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Post by Battlechantress on Aug 6, 2010 22:20:56 GMT 1
Yeah, I addressed this in an as-yet-unpublished chapter of "Me, Myself..." in which Shepard actually asks Aria how the hell everybody knows she's back from the dead, how the $*%& the Normandy is found in the Terminus systems (hello? It had stealth tech, yes?!), etc.. Aria, being the "I'm so superior because I am asari" type, doesn't directly answer the question, but I do wonder what future reviewers will make of that whole exchange, as well as wonder what others think happened (or didn't happen).
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Post by ommadawn on Aug 9, 2010 4:59:06 GMT 1
Okay, I can see the point about the narrative treatment of Shepard's death, and agree with it. I'd have liked to see more interaction and response to this aspect of the story, and admit I found it a little strange that everyone was so blase about it in the game. I guess we're meant to simply nod our heads, move on as there's nothing to see here.
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Post by jklinders on Aug 9, 2010 13:12:10 GMT 1
Of coarse we are I am just not going nod my head and say yeah, that made perfect sense.
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Post by moonlight on Aug 19, 2010 18:00:27 GMT 1
I think my biggest problems with Mass Effect remain with the fact that there appears to be no conversation between the writers and the visual director... or the unexplained retcons that BioWare just pretends aren't there.
I mean, let's take defending Horizon. You activate the GARDIAN defense laser, only to see that instead of the scientifically correct fast as light laser beams that rendered traditional missile engagement cost-inefficient... we get turbolasers. Or even more glaring is the fact that kinetic barriers are suddenly Halo plasma shields. Kinetic barriers are described as activating only at the speeds that gunfire typically reaches. In ME1, melee hits and slow-moving projectiles bypassed your shields directly... and it was explicitly stated that lasers and particle beams would entirely ignore the shield; but come the 'Collector Particle Beam' and instead of cutting straight past the sensors and failing to activate the shields.
Or the Thanix Cannon apparently propelling liquid metal at relativistic velocities (which caused many people to mistake Sovereign's guns as death-rays) and the cutscene portraying it as slower than a typical mass accelerator shot. This type of thing was acceptable during ME1, but when BioWare actually admitted that stuff like the Battle of the Citadel didn't match up with the Codex, you'd think that even recognizing this, that they'd at least start to bridge communication with the writing staff and the graphic artists.
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