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Who is your favorite bad guy? (Destiny)

by MacAddictXIV @, Seattle WA, Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 12:14 (2971 days ago)

Korny's post made me think about this because it kind of goes along with the plot theme. Now this could be the MAIN bad guy or really any bad guy.

I will start by saying that my favorite bad guys in games are the ones that THINK they are actually doing good, but are really just twisted monsters. This perfectly describes my favorite all time bad guy Handsome Jack from Borderlands 2. What makes him great is how much he truly believes he is the good guy in the story yet he is an absolutely horrible person.

For the same reasons I also like Guilty Spark, most people hated him (it?), but I really liked him/it.

Finally, for reasons I can't explain I really liked GLaDOS from Portal

1. Handsome Jack: Borderlands 2
2. Guilty Spark: Halo
3. GLaDOS: Portal

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BL2 did it well.

by ProbablyLast, Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 12:21 (2971 days ago) @ MacAddictXIV

Jack
Professor Nakayama
Piston/Pyro Pete

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Cartoons Count?

by Durandal, Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 12:25 (2971 days ago) @ MacAddictXIV

David Xanatos from the old Gargoyles series. In a world of magic, superpowers and giant conspiracies, here is a guy who went from nothing to the richest man in the world through sheer plotting and genius, and always comes out ahead no matter what the heroes do.

Admiral Thrawn from Star Wars is also good.

Basically I like my Villains to have intelligence and a coherent motivation/philosophy. That way you avoid the randomness of the villain of the week.

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Cartoons Count?

by MacAddictXIV @, Seattle WA, Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 12:27 (2971 days ago) @ Durandal

David Xanatos from the old Gargoyles series. In a world of magic, superpowers and giant conspiracies, here is a guy who went from nothing to the richest man in the world through sheer plotting and genius, and always comes out ahead no matter what the heroes do.

Oh man I forgot about that guy! He was amazing. Also he was a suave SOB as well.

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Thrawn is amazing. Good call.

by ZackDark @, Not behind you. NO! Don't look., Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 12:32 (2971 days ago) @ Durandal

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Thrawn is amazing. Good call.

by cheapLEY @, Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 13:13 (2971 days ago) @ ZackDark

Admiral Thrawn is basically the only part of the Legends EU that's worth anything, as far as I'm concerned. I'm happy Disney put it all aside.

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I'm quite partial to Jacen's arc, to be honest

by ZackDark @, Not behind you. NO! Don't look., Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 14:44 (2971 days ago) @ cheapLEY

Traitor and Destiny's Way are my favorite pieces of EU, including Thrawn's Trilogy.

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Agreed

by Blackt1g3r @, Login is from an untrusted domain in MN, Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 18:14 (2970 days ago) @ ZackDark

The way that Jacen turns to the dark side was well done. I like how they setup a universe in which he thinks the Dark Side is needed to save the galaxy. I was never much of a fan of the yuuzhan vong though.

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I'm quite partial to Jacen's arc, to be honest

by Chewbaccawakka @, The Great Green Pacific Northwest!, Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 19:05 (2970 days ago) @ ZackDark

I loved the X-Wing series. A great "boots on the ground" take of Star Wars in my opinion.

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Thats the only series I haven't read.

by cheapLEY @, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 01:13 (2970 days ago) @ Chewbaccawakka

):

I should do that.

I just picked up The Force Awakens novelization tonight, so I'm going to jump into that.

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Thats the only series I haven't read.

by Chewbaccawakka @, The Great Green Pacific Northwest!, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 16:06 (2969 days ago) @ cheapLEY

Fun! Haven't read that yet. I only read maybe the first ten books of X-Wing. But teenage me absolutely loved them.

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I'm quite partial to Jacen's arc, to be honest

by CruelLEGACEY @, Toronto, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 02:04 (2970 days ago) @ ZackDark

Traitor and Destiny's Way are my favorite pieces of EU, including Thrawn's Trilogy.

Jacen from NJO-Legacy of the Force is my favorite EU character. Traitor is such an incredible novel, and it does such an amazing job of redefining his character. I'm not a fan of the Swarm War or LotF series over all, but I found Jacen thoroughly fascinating the whole time.

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I'm quite partial to Jacen's arc, to be honest

by cheapLEY @, Thursday, February 11, 2016, 01:44 (2969 days ago) @ ZackDark

The series where Jacen actually turns is pretty decent, but I'm not really a fan of any of the Yuzhan Vong stuff. I do like the stuff with Ben facing that struggle.

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Who is your favorite bad guy?

by CruelLEGACEY @, Toronto, Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 12:58 (2971 days ago) @ MacAddictXIV

I loved the original Prophet of Truth in Halo 2, before they changed voice actors (sadly the original voice actor wasn't used in H3 or H2 Anniversary). It was a fantastic performance, and added a layer of subtlety that the character lost in H3.

David from The Last of Us is one of the most frightening videogame characters I've ever seen. He manages to walk the fine line between despicable and sympathetic in a way that is very unnerving.

It's probably a bit too early to say for sure, but so far Kylo Ren is very near the top of my all-time favorite movie bad guys. I love the character Adam Driver has created.

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Who is your favorite bad guy?

by Durandal, Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 13:26 (2971 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY

It's probably a bit too early to say for sure, but so far Kylo Ren is very near the top of my all-time favorite movie bad guys. I love the character Adam Driver has created.

Vader:

[image]

Ren:

[image]

One exudes menace, the other looks like he missed his nap time.

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Who is your favorite bad guy?

by Korny @, Dalton, Ga. US. Earth, Sol System, Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 14:01 (2971 days ago) @ Durandal

It's probably a bit too early to say for sure, but so far Kylo Ren is very near the top of my all-time favorite movie bad guys. I love the character Adam Driver has created.


Vader:

[image]

Ren:

[image]

One exudes menace, the other looks like he missed his nap time.

That's kind of the point, I think. Kylo sees himself as the next Vader, but he's nothing like him. He's weak, highly emotional, and a poor swordsman. He wants to get past all of his faults in order to be seen as someone who had that kind of power, influence, and respect.

All of his faults are likely why he turned to the dark side in the first place; he wanted to overcome his own limitations, but has only been highlighting how weak he truly is as a result. When he's trying to convince Rey to join him, he doesn't have the confidence in his voice that Vader had when he did the same to Luke. Instead, his words are filled with desperation, and Rey turns that against him.

I think he's a pretty good character who happens to be the antagonist.

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Who is your favorite bad guy?

by Durandal, Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 14:53 (2971 days ago) @ Korny

I think he's a pretty good character who happens to be the antagonist.

As a proper foil for the heroine of the movie, he fails. Measured against any of the other characters he doesn't seem intimidating much at all, and certainly doesn't seem like as big a challenge to overcome. It's bad enough Rei is just a mary sue pilot/mechanic/fighter who multiclasses into Jedi master half way into the film and our plucky POV stormtrooper is lovably incompetent, but their interactions with Ren are like a videogame cutscene where you would wipe the floor with some mooks but because it's a cutscene you lose to one blow to the head or something.

Darth Vader is never seen at a disadvantage in a fight until Revenge of the Jedi. He never seems troubled by Kenobi in III, and only gets shot by Han because he's focused on Luke. In Empire he pretty much kicks everyone's butt. Going up against Vader, or even failing him, is a serious proposition that adds tension and gravitas to the plot.

The latest movie needed someone similar. Phantoma could have been the icy competent Boba Fett, but she gets all of two lines and is never used to good effect. There was really no one to be afraid of.

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Who is your favorite bad guy?

by Korny @, Dalton, Ga. US. Earth, Sol System, Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 15:16 (2971 days ago) @ Durandal

I think he's a pretty good character who happens to be the antagonist.


As a proper foil for the heroine of the movie, he fails.

I think the problem is that you're looking for him to fill a role. A black to counter the white, but he's very much his own gray wanting to be black, which is independent of the other characters or structure of a movie. This is very much part one of three, and we've only seen the character in the position that his master has placed him, without knowing why that piece was played that way.

Measured against any of the other characters he doesn't seem intimidating much at all, and certainly doesn't seem like as big a challenge to overcome. It's bad enough Rei is just a mary sue pilot/mechanic/fighter who multiclasses into Jedi master half way into the film and our plucky POV stormtrooper is lovably incompetent, but their interactions with Ren are like a videogame cutscene where you would wipe the floor with some mooks but because it's a cutscene you lose to one blow to the head or something.

Finn seemed to have more trouble against Nines than he did against Kylo, and that's pretty telling about Ren, I think. He's not intimidating, he's an emotional kid.


Darth Vader is never seen at a disadvantage in a fight until Revenge of the Jedi. He never seems troubled by Kenobi in III, and only gets shot by Han because he's focused on Luke. In Empire he pretty much kicks everyone's butt. Going up against Vader, or even failing him, is a serious proposition that adds tension and gravitas to the plot.

Again, he's not Vader. He's not supposed to be Vader. He wants to be Vader, but he's nothing like him, and so will not be anywere near as menacing or as threatening. You're essentially complaining that Anakin in Episode I wasn't as scary as he was in Episode IV.


The latest movie needed someone similar. Phantoma could have been the icy competent Boba Fett, but she gets all of two lines and is never used to good effect. There was really no one to be afraid of.

It didn't need any one specific thing. Again, going into the film with a checklist is a lousy way to approach part 1 of a multi-part story. And Phasma wasn't a big player in Episode VII, but she's going to return in VIII, so I'd wait a bit before dismissing the character altogether.

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Who is your favorite bad guy?

by Xenos @, Shores of Time, Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 15:21 (2971 days ago) @ Korny

Finn seemed to have more trouble against Nines than he did against Kylo, and that's pretty telling about Ren, I think. He's not intimidating, he's an emotional kid.

Also, I feel like a broken record saying this, but if you watch that scene Ren is playing with Finn. The second Finn gets a glancing hit on him he DESTROYS Finn.

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I just want to say...

by DiscipleN2k @, Edmond, OK, Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 16:29 (2970 days ago) @ Korny

Finn seemed to have more trouble against Nines than he did against Kylo...

Thanks for not calling him TR-8R. It irks me to no end that that name has caught on. HE'S NOT A FREAKING DROID!!!

/rant

-Disciple

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Who is your favorite bad guy?

by MacAddictXIV @, Seattle WA, Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 15:24 (2971 days ago) @ Durandal

I think he's a pretty good character who happens to be the antagonist.


As a proper foil for the heroine of the movie, he fails. Measured against any of the other characters he doesn't seem intimidating much at all

Wait... Do you mean characters with the force? or just anyone? Because I'm pretty sure he beat the shit out of anyone with a gun. I mean he could stop a blaster shot in mid air, how is that not intimidating?

and certainly doesn't seem like as big a challenge to overcome.

You have to give Ren some credit. The only time he lost a fight was once in the movie. And he was fighting with a blaster hole in his gut. And he was fighting against Rei, who was getting strong in the force fast just like Luke.

It's bad enough Rei is just a mary sue pilot/mechanic/fighter who multiclasses into Jedi master half way into the film

Compared to Luke the pilot/mechanic/farm boy who multiclasses into a Jedi half way into the first film?

our plucky POV stormtrooper is lovably incompetent, but their interactions with Ren are like a videogame cutscene where you would wipe the floor with some mooks but because it's a cutscene you lose to one blow to the head or something.

Of course he is incompetent! he is a storm trooper, he is the redshirt of star wars! The only reason he is a somebody is because he decides he doesn't want to be a storm trooper anymore and I believe he has some force in him.


Darth Vader is never seen at a disadvantage in a fight until Revenge of the Jedi. He never seems troubled by Kenobi in III, and only gets shot by Han because he's focused on Luke. In Empire he pretty much kicks everyone's butt. Going up against Vader, or even failing him, is a serious proposition that adds tension and gravitas to the plot.

The latest movie needed someone similar. Phantoma could have been the icy competent Boba Fett, but she gets all of two lines and is never used to good effect. There was really no one to be afraid of.

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Who is your favorite bad guy? *SW7 Spoilers*

by CruelLEGACEY @, Toronto, Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 15:38 (2971 days ago) @ Durandal

I think he's a pretty good character who happens to be the antagonist.


As a proper foil for the heroine of the movie, he fails. Measured against any of the other characters he doesn't seem intimidating much at all, and certainly doesn't seem like as big a challenge to overcome. It's bad enough Rei is just a mary sue pilot/mechanic/fighter who multiclasses into Jedi master half way into the film and our plucky POV stormtrooper is lovably incompetent, but their interactions with Ren are like a videogame cutscene where you would wipe the floor with some mooks but because it's a cutscene you lose to one blow to the head or something.

Darth Vader is never seen at a disadvantage in a fight until Revenge of the Jedi. He never seems troubled by Kenobi in III, and only gets shot by Han because he's focused on Luke. In Empire he pretty much kicks everyone's butt. Going up against Vader, or even failing him, is a serious proposition that adds tension and gravitas to the plot.

The latest movie needed someone similar. Phantoma could have been the icy competent Boba Fett, but she gets all of two lines and is never used to good effect. There was really no one to be afraid of.

There's so much more to Ren. First of all, the guy is clearly a powerhouse. Freezing blaster fire in mid air? Taking a shot in the gut from Chewie's bowcaster and not only surviving, but running out into the freezing cold and fighting for his life in a saber duel? Remember how we spent half the movie watching Chewie's bowcaster obliterate things? That was on purpose. They were making a point of how freaking powerful that gun is. So when we see Kylo get hit and not drop dead instantly, we understand it is taking some serious power and control of the force just to keep his guts inside his body. It's very obvious. The movie just expects the audience to pay attention.

What makes that final battle so brilliant is that all 3 main characters come out of that scene looking better, even though 2 of them get their butts kicked. Fin stands alone against the person he fears most. Ren shows his determination and strength, fighting through an injury that should have killed him. And Rey takes a major step towards accepting and understanding her power. (Side note: your use of the term "Marry Sue" really bothers me here. We've seen plenty of male characters in Star Wars and other franchises make great leaps in power. But because Rey is female you can't accept it? Not cool.)

Finally, when it comes to Ren's bursts of rage... Yes, he is losing control. But if you think Vader never lost control, you're fooling yourself. Vader killed subordinates at the drop of a hat, often for reasons beyond their control. Anytime anything went wrong, someone gets force-choked. But look at when Ren loses his temper; when he realizes that Fin had made off with BB8. When Rey escapes her cell. Both events were directly his own fault, and he knows it. He sensed something was up with Fin, right at the start of the movie, but does nothing about it. He left Rey in her cell with just a single guard after he realized how powerful she was. He is consumed by rage due to his own failures, his own lack of perfection. And that drives him. It motivates him to make himself "better". It's what pushes him to kill his own father, despite the conflict he feels. THAT is what makes him such a fantastic antagonist. It's not that he's the most powerful or established. Precisely the opposite. We're watching a character who is in the process of becoming more than they already are. To me, that is far more interesting than Vader ever was.

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Actually, about his bouts of rage...

by ZackDark @, Not behind you. NO! Don't look., Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 17:30 (2970 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY

On both accounts, it was related directly to Rey.

When he is informed BB-8 was not found/escaped, he wrecks the panel, sure, but only when the dude mentions a girl helping out does he harm the officer. The second bout of rage is more obviously linked to Rey, of course.

I find the paths this opens to the story quite exciting.

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Awesome analysis!

by Quirel, Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 17:32 (2970 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY

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+++++1

by kidtsunami @, Atlanta, GA, Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 17:48 (2970 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY

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+1 exactly what I was thinking

by Chewbaccawakka @, The Great Green Pacific Northwest!, Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 19:16 (2970 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY

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Who is your favorite bad guy? *SW7 Spoilers*

by Kermit @, Raleigh, NC, Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 19:34 (2970 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY

(Side note: your use of the term "Marry Sue" really bothers me here. We've seen plenty of male characters in Star Wars and other franchises make great leaps in power. But because Rey is female you can't accept it? Not cool.)

Enjoyed your discussion, but I'd have to disagree here. At least in the core movies (the ones I care about), I don't think there are great leaps in power. Luke's progression, for instance, is rather bumbling. (The only exception being his piloting skills, but womprats and such make that credible.) I like Rey, but her omnipotence does seem nearly instant. Finn, by comparison, sometimes seems to exist only to provide contrast. I think there is an explanation for Rey's abilities, but it's not in this movie.

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Who is your favorite bad guy? *SW7 Spoilers*

by MacAddictXIV @, Seattle WA, Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 19:47 (2970 days ago) @ Kermit

(Side note: your use of the term "Marry Sue" really bothers me here. We've seen plenty of male characters in Star Wars and other franchises make great leaps in power. But because Rey is female you can't accept it? Not cool.)


Enjoyed your discussion, but I'd have to disagree here. At least in the core movies (the ones I care about), I don't think there are great leaps in power. Luke's progression, for instance, is rather bumbling. (The only exception being his piloting skills, but womprats and such make that credible.) I like Rey, but her omnipotence does seem nearly instant.

What vast powers of Rey are you referring? I can only think of two instances where she actually uses the force. When she told the storm trooper what to do and when she force grabs the light saber.

She is powerful in the force and she has no formal training in it. The only course for her IS to bumble into her powers. Which she seems to be doing just that. To me it seems perfectly logical that she has had serious events happen to her suddenly and her abilities in the force have manifested because of that. And she has indeed struggled with them. Like when she had the vision after touching Luke's light saber.

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Who is your favorite bad guy? *SW7 Spoilers*

by Kermit @, Raleigh, NC, Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 20:05 (2970 days ago) @ MacAddictXIV

(Side note: your use of the term "Marry Sue" really bothers me here. We've seen plenty of male characters in Star Wars and other franchises make great leaps in power. But because Rey is female you can't accept it? Not cool.)


Enjoyed your discussion, but I'd have to disagree here. At least in the core movies (the ones I care about), I don't think there are great leaps in power. Luke's progression, for instance, is rather bumbling. (The only exception being his piloting skills, but womprats and such make that credible.) I like Rey, but her omnipotence does seem nearly instant.


What vast powers of Rey are you referring? I can only think of two instances where she actually uses the force. When she told the storm trooper what to do and when she force grabs the light saber.

She is powerful in the force and she has no formal training in it. The only course for her IS to bumble into her powers. Which she seems to be doing just that. To me it seems perfectly logical that she has had serious events happen to her suddenly and her abilities in the force have manifested because of that. And she has indeed struggled with them. Like when she had the vision after touching Luke's light saber.

I'm not just talking about her use of the Force, but her omnicompetence in general. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, but this aspect of it did strain credibility for me, and not because of her gender. It did make me think about the screenwriters' motivations. I understand wanting a strong female character (I always thought Leia was), but maybe they oversold it a tad?

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Who is your favorite bad guy? *SW7 Spoilers*

by CruelLEGACEY @, Toronto, Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 20:06 (2970 days ago) @ Kermit

(Side note: your use of the term "Marry Sue" really bothers me here. We've seen plenty of male characters in Star Wars and other franchises make great leaps in power. But because Rey is female you can't accept it? Not cool.)


Enjoyed your discussion, but I'd have to disagree here. At least in the core movies (the ones I care about), I don't think there are great leaps in power. Luke's progression, for instance, is rather bumbling. (The only exception being his piloting skills, but womprats and such make that credible.) I like Rey, but her omnipotence does seem nearly instant. Finn, by comparison, sometimes seems to exist only to provide contrast. I think there is an explanation for Rey's abilities, but it's not in this movie.

I think there actually is an explanation in the movie: the turning point is when Ren invades her mind. He's so focused on finding the answers he seeks, he doesn't notice the "2-way street" until it is too late. Rey is feeling what Ren is doing to her, and is strong enough to resist it and then mimic it when she mind-controls the guard.

As far as the rest, I had no problem accepting her force-grabbing the saber away from Ren, or her combat skills. But I've read loads of expanded-universe novels, which I'm sure shape my expectations. In the EU, sudden displays of astonishing power are not unheard of, and often come out of situations of intense emotional stress or obsessively single-minded determination. Darth Bane's first display of force power came at a young age, when he was so filled with rage towards his abusive father that he unknowingly crushed his heart. In Revenge of the Sith (the novel), when Vader awakens from his injuries and learns of Padme's death, he obliterates the room around him in an attempt to kill the emperor. In the New Jedi Order series, we see Jacen Solo achieve a moment of such understanding and clarity that he literally disintegrates the evil mastermind behind the Yuzen Vong.

So yes, this is all reaching outside of the film, which is a bit of a problem. But I think whether one has read the expanded fiction or not, it isn't that big a stretch to understand people are sometimes capable of feats well beyond their usual skills in moments of extreme necessity.

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Who is your favorite bad guy? *SW7 Spoilers*

by Kermit @, Raleigh, NC, Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 20:14 (2970 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY

(Side note: your use of the term "Marry Sue" really bothers me here. We've seen plenty of male characters in Star Wars and other franchises make great leaps in power. But because Rey is female you can't accept it? Not cool.)


Enjoyed your discussion, but I'd have to disagree here. At least in the core movies (the ones I care about), I don't think there are great leaps in power. Luke's progression, for instance, is rather bumbling. (The only exception being his piloting skills, but womprats and such make that credible.) I like Rey, but her omnipotence does seem nearly instant. Finn, by comparison, sometimes seems to exist only to provide contrast. I think there is an explanation for Rey's abilities, but it's not in this movie.


I think there actually is an explanation in the movie: the turning point is when Ren invades her mind. He's so focused on finding the answers he seeks, he doesn't notice the "2-way street" until it is too late. Rey is feeling what Ren is doing to her, and is strong enough to resist it and then mimic it when she mind-controls the guard.

As far as the rest, I had no problem accepting her force-grabbing the saber away from Ren, or her combat skills. But I've read loads of expanded-universe novels, which I'm sure shape my expectations. In the EU, sudden displays of astonishing power are not unheard of, and often come out of situations of intense emotional stress or obsessively single-minded determination. Darth Bane's first display of force power came at a young age, when he was so filled with rage towards his abusive father that he unknowingly crushed his heart. In Revenge of the Sith (the novel), when Vader awakens from his injuries and learns of Padme's death, he obliterates the room around him in an attempt to kill the emperor. In the New Jedi Order series, we see Jacen Solo achieve a moment of such understanding and clarity that he literally disintegrates the evil mastermind behind the Yuzen Vong.

So yes, this is all reaching outside of the film, which is a bit of a problem. But I think whether one has read the expanded fiction or not, it isn't that big a stretch to understand people are sometimes capable of feats well beyond their usual skills in moments of extreme necessity.

Agreed, but in fiction those moments are more gratifying after a failed attempt or two (her mind control of the guard is 100x more enjoyable because it doesn't work at first). I don't mean to overstate my thoughts here. I like Rey and the movie. Many of her instincts and skills seem fully formed from the start, though, and we don't know how or by whom. Not a showstopping issue by any means.

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Who is your favorite bad guy? *SW7 Spoilers*

by Robot Chickens, Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 20:54 (2970 days ago) @ Kermit

Many of her instincts and skills seem fully formed from the start, though, and we don't know how or by whom. Not a showstopping issue by any means.

My suspicion is that her competence comes from learning how to survive alone on a hostile planet. Life was her teacher. She takes her spelunking-into-old-abandoned-ship skills into her escape from captivity. She already possessed combat skills because she had to have them to stay alive against people stealing her property.

I guess I just don't see a problem with her defeating an already-wounded Kylo, or using the force on two occasions. The only one that is a bit of a head-scratcher for me is her piloting skills. It may be part of her life that we haven't seen, but that one pushes it for me a bit.

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Yeah, they took a weird direction with that *EU spoilers*

by ZackDark @, Not behind you. NO! Don't look., Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 21:05 (2970 days ago) @ Robot Chickens

She salvaged a training sim computer from one of the crashed Star Destroyers and played that more than we have ever played our videogames. However, there was absolutely no indication whatsoever of that in the movie... Like, half a scene would've been enough... Or at least leave it for Ep8 to explain, as opposed to settling it in the EU.

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Yeah, they took a weird direction with that *EU spoilers*

by Robot Chickens, Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 21:11 (2970 days ago) @ ZackDark

She salvaged a training sim computer from one of the crashed Star Destroyers and played that more than we have ever played our videogames. However, there was absolutely no indication whatsoever of that in the movie... Like, half a scene would've been enough... Or at least leave it for Ep8 to explain, as opposed to settling it in the EU.

Ahh- that is helpful to know. Wish it'd been referenced in the movie like Beggar's Canyon.

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I accidentally wrote a review. *SW7 Spoilers*

by Leviathan ⌂, Hotel Zanzibar, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 03:01 (2970 days ago) @ Kermit

Agreed, but in fiction those moments are more gratifying after a failed attempt or two (her mind control of the guard is 100x more enjoyable because it doesn't work at first). I don't mean to overstate my thoughts here. I like Rey and the movie. Many of her instincts and skills seem fully formed from the start, though, and we don't know how or by whom. Not a showstopping issue by any means.

It wasn't those events alone that showstopped it for me, but it did add to it. By about two thirds of the way through the movie I was pretty disconnected from it and I had started to lose grasp on character/faction motivations, what planet they even were on, and just in general why things were happening, besides as an homage to all the previous films. I still don't understand what an Awakening in the Force is...

It's worth noting that I went in completely dark, so that might explain some of my experience. I didn't really know anything about the movie besides a few thumbnails indicating Harrison Ford was involved in the film. Oh, and that there was a ball-droid! (On a side note, I think I should win an award for this - it was REALLY difficult, hah! ;) I even waited until last week to see it, as to not have the chance of a distracting audience.)

Maybe there was just too much to take in with no previous knowledge of it? There was a lot of blink-and-you'll-miss-it world building and exposition. A Stormtrooper was starting to have doubts about his career choices when I had to run (and I did RUN) to the bathroom. I came back 60 seconds later and he was firing on his former comrades. "Okaaay, let's just stay focused," I told myself and kept myself invested. Although I prefer (and am still inspired by) the more coherent and graceful space battles of the original films, I still had fun with the Falcon chase. I got a smile on my face when they said "that one's garbage!". I also really appreciated the fact that the Falcon had a new radar dish, as Lando broke it off inside the Death Star II. Nice attention to details!

But after they left Not-Tatooine and went to Not-Yavin IV, I started to get distracted by the special-edition CG aliens and Firefly-esque gangs (if this was Han's last movie, why weren't those some bad-ass bounty hunters?!), and the X-wings zipping around like the prequel battles (slow down for a second so I can see and care about what's happening!).

I got REALLY confused when the bad guys, who I still didn't really know anything about, committed the worst atrocity in the galaxy (and all the films) to a planet I also knew nothing about. But the X-wing pilots were yee-hawwing five seconds later so I guess it wasn't that bad? I still don't understand why the new Republic and the Resistance are two different things. No one talked about that in the film. Didn't Return of the Jedi accomplish something? Why hit the reset button on everything?

So when Ray started using a Jedi Master mind trick with no previous indication of even knowing such a technique existed, it was another big dose of confusion. Being good with a lightsaber distracted me as well, but you could at least maybe explain that by saying her staff-skills were comparable.

People were taking down shield generators, X-wings were doing trench runs, and father-figures were getting killed by the bad guy. Having seen that plot happen around four times on the screen (and if you watch them in order, now twice in a row), it felt more like the movie was trying to tell me "THIS IS STAR WARS" instead of capturing the nuances and atmosphere of the originals and using those traits to tell a new story. I was 90% unimmersed at that point...

But then Leia walks right past Chewie after the shared love of their lives had just died, without even a word, and hugs Ray, a character she had never met before. I was 100% gone and now my heart was even confused. :(

Maybe if Luke had said something at the end like "Ray, you've returned.", I might have been pulled back in a little, as I would have had an explanation for her abilities and some of the coincidences that had happened.

Sorry for all the negativity - I really don't enjoy being disappointed by Star Wars! I've felt weird and debated myself over it constantly since seeing it. I actually want to LOVE the film with all my heart. There was a lot of potential there. I actually really liked Ray and Kylo Ren, Fen was funny, BB-8 was creative and cute, Han felt like Han. I loved all the re-uses of Ralph McQuarrie designs! I usually really enjoy JJ Abrams, too! I might be in the minority, but I thought his Star Treks actually injected the franchise with a lot of the adventure, color, and inspiration that the 90's had slowly zapped out of it. I was totally ready to love this new film - I was even worried it might re-ignite the SW action figure collector in me and drain my wallet for some new vehicles!

Maybe a second viewing (without a bathroom trip!) will help me wrap my head around some of those parts that confused me. Maybe there'll be an extended edition of The Force Awakens someday that fills in the gaps and gives the pace a chance to breathe! Maybe the next one will knock it out of the park. :)

Avatar

I accidentally wrote a review. *SW7 Spoilers*

by Quirel, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 03:51 (2970 days ago) @ Leviathan

Maybe a second viewing (without a bathroom trip!) will help me wrap my head around some of those parts that confused me. Maybe there'll be an extended edition of The Force Awakens someday that fills in the gaps and gives the pace a chance to breathe! Maybe the next one will knock it out of the park. :)

I think that The Force Awakens is a movie you have to see twice. This is weird, because it's not an intricate movie with a ton of subtext like Inception or The Prestige. There's foreshadowing, yes, but I picked up on a lot of it on the first watch.

Somehow, the movie was better the second time I watched it. The stuff that annoyed me was less annoying, and the stuff I liked I enjoyed more. Maybe it's like a Daft Punk or a Pink Floyd album, most of which I had to listen to twice to really enjoy.

Avatar

This

by ZackDark @, Not behind you. NO! Don't look., Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 03:59 (2970 days ago) @ Quirel

I won't go as far as say it gets better the second time, because the wonder was a great deal of fun for me the first time around, but it definitely helps you pick up on everything that is going on (which is quite fast paced, as you noticed).

And no more bathroom breaks! :p

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The more I saw it, the worse it got.

by Funkmon @, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 05:11 (2970 days ago) @ ZackDark

- No text -

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You're an outlier, then.

by Quirel, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 15:32 (2970 days ago) @ Funkmon

- No text -

Me too, I guess. :(

by Claude Errera @, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 17:52 (2969 days ago) @ Quirel

- No text -

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Outliers can be a good thing?

by Quirel, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 18:07 (2969 days ago) @ Claude Errera

- No text -

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Let me get this straight...

by Ragashingo ⌂, Official DBO Cryptarch, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 04:35 (2970 days ago) @ Leviathan

You stayed dark for like a thousand years only to take a bathroom break 15 minutes in?!

[image]

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Haha

by Leviathan ⌂, Hotel Zanzibar, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 04:45 (2970 days ago) @ Ragashingo

You stayed dark for like a thousand years only to take a bathroom break 15 minutes in?!

I know! I was ignorantly drinking a gatorade beforehand and almost needed to pee before the text crawl was done. "Okay, go now and miss character setups? Or miss a space battle later? Or miss the movie entirely while I debate when I should go pee in the back of my head the whole time?!?!?"

Avatar

Haha

by bluerunner @, Music City, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 15:31 (2970 days ago) @ Leviathan

You stayed dark for like a thousand years only to take a bathroom break 15 minutes in?!


I know! I was ignorantly drinking a gatorade beforehand and almost needed to pee before the text crawl was done. "Okay, go now and miss character setups? Or miss a space battle later? Or miss the movie entirely while I debate when I should go pee in the back of my head the whole time?!?!?"

You went when there wasn't a crowd. Just use the bottle.

Avatar

Haha

by MacAddictXIV @, Seattle WA, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 15:38 (2970 days ago) @ bluerunner

You stayed dark for like a thousand years only to take a bathroom break 15 minutes in?!


I know! I was ignorantly drinking a gatorade beforehand and almost needed to pee before the text crawl was done. "Okay, go now and miss character setups? Or miss a space battle later? Or miss the movie entirely while I debate when I should go pee in the back of my head the whole time?!?!?"


You went when there wasn't a crowd. Just use the bottle.

Or use the StadiumPal

Avatar

runpee.com

by Funkmon @, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 15:32 (2970 days ago) @ Leviathan

- No text -

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I accidentally wrote a review. *SW7 Spoilers*

by Kermit @, Raleigh, NC, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 15:13 (2970 days ago) @ Leviathan

Agreed, but in fiction those moments are more gratifying after a failed attempt or two (her mind control of the guard is 100x more enjoyable because it doesn't work at first). I don't mean to overstate my thoughts here. I like Rey and the movie. Many of her instincts and skills seem fully formed from the start, though, and we don't know how or by whom. Not a showstopping issue by any means.


It wasn't those events alone that showstopped it for me, but it did add to it. By about two thirds of the way through the movie I was pretty disconnected from it and I had started to lose grasp on character/faction motivations, what planet they even were on, and just in general why things were happening, besides as an homage to all the previous films. I still don't understand what an Awakening in the Force is...

It's worth noting that I went in completely dark, so that might explain some of my experience. I didn't really know anything about the movie besides a few thumbnails indicating Harrison Ford was involved in the film. Oh, and that there was a ball-droid! (On a side note, I think I should win an award for this - it was REALLY difficult, hah! ;) I even waited until last week to see it, as to not have the chance of a distracting audience.)

Maybe there was just too much to take in with no previous knowledge of it? There was a lot of blink-and-you'll-miss-it world building and exposition. A Stormtrooper was starting to have doubts about his career choices when I had to run (and I did RUN) to the bathroom. I came back 60 seconds later and he was firing on his former comrades. "Okaaay, let's just stay focused," I told myself and kept myself invested. Although I prefer (and am still inspired by) the more coherent and graceful space battles of the original films, I still had fun with the Falcon chase. I got a smile on my face when they said "that one's garbage!". I also really appreciated the fact that the Falcon had a new radar dish, as Lando broke it off inside the Death Star II. Nice attention to details!

But after they left Not-Tatooine and went to Not-Yavin IV, I started to get distracted by the special-edition CG aliens and Firefly-esque gangs (if this was Han's last movie, why weren't those some bad-ass bounty hunters?!), and the X-wings zipping around like the prequel battles (slow down for a second so I can see and care about what's happening!).

I got REALLY confused when the bad guys, who I still didn't really know anything about, committed the worst atrocity in the galaxy (and all the films) to a planet I also knew nothing about. But the X-wing pilots were yee-hawwing five seconds later so I guess it wasn't that bad? I still don't understand why the new Republic and the Resistance are two different things. No one talked about that in the film. Didn't Return of the Jedi accomplish something? Why hit the reset button on everything?

So when Ray started using a Jedi Master mind trick with no previous indication of even knowing such a technique existed, it was another big dose of confusion. Being good with a lightsaber distracted me as well, but you could at least maybe explain that by saying her staff-skills were comparable.

People were taking down shield generators, X-wings were doing trench runs, and father-figures were getting killed by the bad guy. Having seen that plot happen around four times on the screen (and if you watch them in order, now twice in a row), it felt more like the movie was trying to tell me "THIS IS STAR WARS" instead of capturing the nuances and atmosphere of the originals and using those traits to tell a new story. I was 90% unimmersed at that point...

But then Leia walks right past Chewie after the shared love of their lives had just died, without even a word, and hugs Ray, a character she had never met before. I was 100% gone and now my heart was even confused. :(

Maybe if Luke had said something at the end like "Ray, you've returned.", I might have been pulled back in a little, as I would have had an explanation for her abilities and some of the coincidences that had happened.

Sorry for all the negativity - I really don't enjoy being disappointed by Star Wars! I've felt weird and debated myself over it constantly since seeing it. I actually want to LOVE the film with all my heart. There was a lot of potential there. I actually really liked Ray and Kylo Ren, Fen was funny, BB-8 was creative and cute, Han felt like Han. I loved all the re-uses of Ralph McQuarrie designs! I usually really enjoy JJ Abrams, too! I might be in the minority, but I thought his Star Treks actually injected the franchise with a lot of the adventure, color, and inspiration that the 90's had slowly zapped out of it. I was totally ready to love this new film - I was even worried it might re-ignite the SW action figure collector in me and drain my wallet for some new vehicles!

Maybe a second viewing (without a bathroom trip!) will help me wrap my head around some of those parts that confused me. Maybe there'll be an extended edition of The Force Awakens someday that fills in the gaps and gives the pace a chance to breathe! Maybe the next one will knock it out of the park. :)

I don't really disagree with much here, except I think I saw what was unexplained as a strength in some cases. (I love the ending, and not knowing what thoughts are behind Luke's face.) Now that you mention it, the walking past Chewie part just makes me sad and takes the film down a notch. You're right! It's just weird that Chewie isn't who she'd comfort first!

All in all, though, I really did enjoy it more the second time. I'd recommend it.

Avatar

I accidentally wrote a review. *SW7 Spoilers*

by MacAddictXIV @, Seattle WA, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 15:24 (2970 days ago) @ Kermit

All in all, though, I really did enjoy it more the second time. I'd recommend it.

I enjoyed it a second time (on my works dime) then I watched it a third time in IMax 3D, it was 10x better that way.

Avatar

I accidentally wrote a review. *SW7 Spoilers*

by Kermit @, Raleigh, NC, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 15:35 (2970 days ago) @ MacAddictXIV

All in all, though, I really did enjoy it more the second time. I'd recommend it.


I enjoyed it a second time (on my works dime) then I watched it a third time in IMax 3D, it was 10x better that way.

I saw it first that way, and then in 2-D. Wish the order had been reversed. As Levi said, it was a lot to take in, and the big screen 3-D magnified that.

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I accidentally wrote a review. *SW7 Spoilers*

by MacAddictXIV @, Seattle WA, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 15:40 (2970 days ago) @ Kermit

All in all, though, I really did enjoy it more the second time. I'd recommend it.


I enjoyed it a second time (on my works dime) then I watched it a third time in IMax 3D, it was 10x better that way.


I saw it first that way, and then in 2-D. Wish the order had been reversed. As Levi said, it was a lot to take in, and the big screen 3-D magnified that.

It wasn't so much the 3D that made it awesome the third time, it was the IMax theater (I don't know if this is a NorthWest thing), because everything was so big and high definition, I saw things I never saw the first time. Like storm troopers on the turbo lasers.

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I accidentally wrote a review. *SW7 Spoilers*

by cheapLEY @, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 17:06 (2969 days ago) @ Kermit

I don't really disagree with much here, except I think I saw what was unexplained as a strength in some cases. (I love the ending, and not knowing what thoughts are behind Luke's face.)

I think Luke saying anything would have absolutely ruined that scene.

Now that you mention it, the walking past Chewie part just makes me sad and takes the film down a notch. You're right! It's just weird that Chewie isn't who she'd comfort first!

For whatever reason this actually doesn't bother me. In the films, we never really see any indication that Leia and Chewie are close at all. Their only connection is Han. I'd assume they became close because of that connection, but it doesn't have to be true. I think it also goes towards showing that Rey is an important character, and possibly a known quantity to the big players in the Star Wars universe. As much as I want her to be someone with no connection to anyone else, I don't foresee that happening. There's too many hints that everyone else already knows who she is.

Avatar

I accidentally wrote a review. *SW7 Spoilers*

by Kermit @, Raleigh, NC, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 17:45 (2969 days ago) @ cheapLEY

I don't really disagree with much here, except I think I saw what was unexplained as a strength in some cases. (I love the ending, and not knowing what thoughts are behind Luke's face.)


I think Luke saying anything would have absolutely ruined that scene.

Now that you mention it, the walking past Chewie part just makes me sad and takes the film down a notch. You're right! It's just weird that Chewie isn't who she'd comfort first!


For whatever reason this actually doesn't bother me. In the films, we never really see any indication that Leia and Chewie are close at all.

Come on!

[image]


[image]

[image]

[image]

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Empire is too ingrained in my heart & brain.*SW7 Spoilers*

by Leviathan ⌂, Hotel Zanzibar, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 18:59 (2969 days ago) @ cheapLEY

I don't really disagree with much here, except I think I saw what was unexplained as a strength in some cases. (I love the ending, and not knowing what thoughts are behind Luke's face.)


I think Luke saying anything would have absolutely ruined that scene.

What did you get out of the scene? Serious, not rhetoric question. I didn't get the point. I thought all that time climbing up the hill could have been spent on a funeral or some sort of grieving for Solo. I certainly wasn't ready to move on from one of my childhood heroes dying yet.

Now that you mention it, the walking past Chewie part just makes me sad and takes the film down a notch. You're right! It's just weird that Chewie isn't who she'd comfort first!


For whatever reason this actually doesn't bother me. In the films, we never really see any indication that Leia and Chewie are close at all. Their only connection is Han. I'd assume they became close because of that connection, but it doesn't have to be true.

One of the best scenes of the originals (alongside the rest of Empire's finale) is Han's imprisonment in carbonite.

"The Princess... you have to take care of her."

[image]

As Han is lowered into the pit, Leia reaches out for Chewie.

[image]

As the process happens, she buries her head into his coat.

[image]

When he's raised up in carbonite, they're holding hands.

[image]

AFTER this scene, for the rest of the movie, Chewie's right with her, doing as she says, like she's just as much a partner as Han was, now that they've both lost him.

Maybe it isn't super-explicit, but personally, the above is just too burned into my heart to take that said scene in TFA as anything but untrue, especially with Leia ignoring Chewie for a character she hasn't met. Maybe if there was a deleted scene right afterwards, with Leia and Chewie interacting in some way, I could accept it, but as it stands, it just takes me out of the movie.

Avatar

Empire is too ingrained in my heart & brain.*SW7 Spoilers*

by MacAddictXIV @, Seattle WA, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 19:11 (2969 days ago) @ Leviathan

Maybe it isn't super-explicit, but personally, the above is just too burned into my heart to take that said scene in TFA as anything but untrue, especially with Leia ignoring Chewie for a character she hasn't met. Maybe if there was a deleted scene right afterwards, with Leia and Chewie interacting in some way, I could accept it, but as it stands, it just takes me out of the movie.

That is the one thing about Episode VII, it's far enough in the future that you are unsure what their relationships are about since the last movie. Until they told me, I never would have guessed what Han and Leia's relationship was like. If there hadn't been dialogue between them, I would have been SO confused about their relationship. Leia and Chewie don't have that dialogue. I have no idea what their relationship is like in Episode VII. That scene helps me to define their relationship now.

I went into Episode VII assuming that anybody in the last movies weren't necessarily going to be the same people as they were before.

Empire is too ingrained in my heart & brain.*SW7 Spoilers*

by marmot 1333 @, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 21:52 (2969 days ago) @ MacAddictXIV

I agree with you. Even with the dialogue, there are tons of unknowns about their relationship.

Avatar

I accidentally wrote a review. *SW7 Spoilers*

by CruelLEGACEY @, Toronto, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 16:03 (2970 days ago) @ Leviathan

But then Leia walks right past Chewie after the shared love of their lives had just died, without even a word, and hugs Ray, a character she had never met before. I was 100% gone and now my heart was even confused. :(


That right there is probably the most important criticism of SW7 I've seen. Strangely enough, it didn't even occur to me when I watched (and rewatched) the movie. I think in my case, my attention was so completely fixated on Rey by that point that the other characters had slipped into the background of my mind. I came away seeing it as a strength of the movie; it made me care about Rey and Kylo more than I care about any of the original cast. But seeing you point it out this way, it is clearly a significant oversight in terms of portraying these much-beloved characters and how they would react in such a situation.

Avatar

I accidentally wrote a review. *SW7 Spoilers*

by MacAddictXIV @, Seattle WA, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 16:47 (2969 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY

But then Leia walks right past Chewie after the shared love of their lives had just died, without even a word, and hugs Ray, a character she had never met before. I was 100% gone and now my heart was even confused. :(

That right there is probably the most important criticism of SW7 I've seen. Strangely enough, it didn't even occur to me when I watched (and rewatched) the movie. I think in my case, my attention was so completely fixated on Rey by that point that the other characters had slipped into the background of my mind. I came away seeing it as a strength of the movie; it made me care about Rey and Kylo more than I care about any of the original cast. But seeing you point it out this way, it is clearly a significant oversight in terms of portraying these much-beloved characters and how they would react in such a situation.

I felt like that IS how they would have reacted. I know Chewy and Solo have been a duo for a while, but Chewy, I'm sure, has been with a lot of partners in his lifetime. I don't feel like chewy would have wanted a hug or a pat on the back. I feel like Chewy would have wanted to take Kylo in a back room and use him as a punching bag.

And I feel like Leia kind of looked at both Chewy and Ray and said "Yeah, she needs it more"

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+1 to all points.

by CyberKN ⌂ @, Oh no, Destiny 2 is bad, Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 15:48 (2971 days ago) @ Durandal

- No text -

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Who is your favorite bad guy?

by Kermit @, Raleigh, NC, Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 16:33 (2970 days ago) @ Durandal

Nurse Ratchet
Hal 9000/Durandal
Vito Corleone/Tony Soprano
Heisenberg
Frank Booth

The Traveler?
The Speaker?
Eris Morn?

Avatar

Handsome Jack and Hans Gruber

by Schedonnardus, Texas, Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 13:28 (2971 days ago) @ MacAddictXIV

others;

Prophet of Truth (H2)
Guilty Spark
Blue Duck (Lonesome Dove)
Heath Ledger's Joker
The Traveler (dun dun duuun) :)
Activision :)

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Alan Rickman--Any Antagonist Role...

by rellekh, PNW, Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 17:52 (2970 days ago) @ Schedonnardus

Oh come on. Sheriff of Nottingham much?

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Favorite Evil Organization/faction/whatnot

by dogcow @, Hiding from Bob, in the vent core., Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 13:32 (2971 days ago) @ MacAddictXIV

H.A.R.M. They're freaking hilarious.

I'll have to think about my favorite villain.

Avatar

Who is your favorite bad guy?

by Xenos @, Shores of Time, Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 14:31 (2971 days ago) @ MacAddictXIV

The Joker is probably my favorite in most of his incarnations.

As far as video games:
Sephiroth, mysterious, and even sympathetic. Too bad the final fight doesn't really live up to him.
Andrew Ryan. Charming and idealistic, and you assume a thoroughly terrible person.
Magus. What a jerk for creating Lavos...
GLaDOS. No explanation needed I assume.

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Who is your favorite bald guy?

by unoudid @, Somewhere over the rainbow, Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 16:44 (2970 days ago) @ MacAddictXIV

Verne Troyer as Mini Me

[image]

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Who is your favorite bald guy?

by CyberKN ⌂ @, Oh no, Destiny 2 is bad, Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 16:46 (2970 days ago) @ unoudid

[image]

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Who is your favorite bald guy?

by Robot Chickens, Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 17:29 (2970 days ago) @ CyberKN

over this guy?

[image]

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/me hangs head in shame

by CyberKN ⌂ @, Oh no, Destiny 2 is bad, Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 17:36 (2970 days ago) @ Robot Chickens

brain fart

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Sisko > Picard

by MacAddictXIV @, Seattle WA, Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 17:36 (2970 days ago) @ Robot Chickens

- No text -

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You = Wrong ;P

by Chewbaccawakka @, The Great Green Pacific Northwest!, Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 19:19 (2970 days ago) @ MacAddictXIV

- No text -

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Who is your favorite bad guy?

by Korny @, Dalton, Ga. US. Earth, Sol System, Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 18:14 (2970 days ago) @ MacAddictXIV

Video Games:

Catherine (Catherine): A physical representation of the fear of commitment and maturity, Catherine proves to be an appealing character despite the countless red flags around her. The fact that I felt compelled to choose her over Katherine (the character you're in a relationship with) didn't go over too well with Sammy, who hated her throughout her playthrough. I haven't met such an obvious antagonist that I still felt drawn to in a game, which led to more than one morally bad choice throughout the game (and one really ticked off Sammy). :P

The Stalker (Warframe): There are very few enemies in video games that I'd consider truly terrifying, but the way the Stalker was implemented into the game genuinely causes fear. He sends you a threat, then you forget about him as you continue playing the game (with a sense of anxiety and dread lingering in the back of your mind), until you're doing a random mission and the lights begin to flicker... Up until a recent update, depending on your mistakes, he could even lock you out of the entire game completely for the rest of the day, adding real-world consequences that I haven't seen anywhere else (outside of Catherine, heh).
Though you know nothing about him at first, there are bits and pieces scattered throughout the lore that hint at what/who he is, and once you get to the Second Dream quest, you find out much more about his motivations and why he hunts you and other Tenno (you might actually be the real bad guy), and you have to fight a much stronger version of him from then on.

Mentions:
GLaDOS (Portal),
Wheatley (Portal 2),
Harbinger (Mass Effect 2)
Nemesis (Resident Evil 3)
The Boss (Metal Gear Solid 3)

Handsome Jack is overrated. Boom Bewm are where it's at...





Multimedia:

The Beast (Over the Garden Wall): An ever-present threat throughout the entire miniseries, The Beast rarely interacts directly with any of the characters, acting more as an influence and a sense of looming despair. Despite the show being targeted at a younger audience, The Beast proves to be way more than a boogeyman, because as a character notes, he is "the absence of hope". I don't want to spoil too much, but people have said that the Beast might be a symbol of suicide, given all of the clues strewn throughout. Again, this is a children's show...

Hayley Stark (Hard Candy): Ostensibly a naive 14-year old girl, she proves to be very manipulative and calculating. Despite the fact that she is toying with a potential pedophile, her actions and demeanor show her to be the true "bad guy" in a film devoid of a "good guy". The more you learn about the character, the less you really know (is anything she says true?), which I thought made her a fascinating protagonist/antagonist. Plus, she's played by Ellen Page with short hair, so...

Mentions:
Wilson Fisk (Daredevil series)
Tyrannosaurus (Jurassic Park)
The Joker (The Dark Knight)
Annie Wilkes (Misery)
Walter White (Breaking Bad)

Avatar

Who is your favorite bad guy?

by Cody Miller @, Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 18:54 (2970 days ago) @ Korny

The Boss (Metal Gear Solid 3)

But the boss isn't a bad guy!

Avatar

Who is your favorite bad guy?

by Cody Miller @, Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 18:57 (2970 days ago) @ MacAddictXIV

Korny's post made me think about this because it kind of goes along with the plot theme. Now this could be the MAIN bad guy or really any bad guy.

In video games?

Sephiroth
Dr. Wily
Klaus Kerner and Dr. Hans Ubermann
Ghaleon
Mr. Jefferson

Avatar

Mass Effect: Sovereign

by CyberKN ⌂ @, Oh no, Destiny 2 is bad, Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 19:27 (2970 days ago) @ MacAddictXIV

Rudimentary creatures of blood and flesh, you touch my mind, fumbling in ignorance, incapable of understanding.

There is a realm of existence so far beyond your own you cannot even imagine it. I am beyond your comprehension. I am Sovereign.

Organic life is nothing but a genetic mutation, an accident. Your lives are measured in years and decades. You wither and die. We are eternal, the pinnacle of evolution and existence. Before us, you are nothing. Your extinction is inevitable. We are the end of everything.

Your civilization is based on the technology of the mass relays. Our technology. By using it, your civilization develops along the paths we desire. We impose order on the chaos of organic life. You exist because we allow it, and you will end because we demand it.

Squeeeeeeee :D

Avatar

Yes.

by ZackDark @, Not behind you. NO! Don't look., Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 20:29 (2970 days ago) @ CyberKN

Sovereign approaching completely overshadowed losing Kaidan/Ashley. Mass Effect's build-up to the very last battle is exciting as hell and Sovereign sells it so goddamn well.

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I got chills thinking about that again.

by BeardFade ⌂, Portland, OR, Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 21:48 (2970 days ago) @ CyberKN

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Yep. One of the best villain speeches ever.

by Ragashingo ⌂, Official DBO Cryptarch, Tuesday, February 09, 2016, 22:06 (2970 days ago) @ CyberKN

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That is when the Reapers are at their best.

by Quirel, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 01:20 (2970 days ago) @ CyberKN

Sovereign doesn't want to communicate with you. The conversation only happened because it thought that Saren was calling. The conversation only continues in order to distract you while it turns around and comes back.

Sovereign isn't boasting. It is simply stating the facts.

The cycle has repeated itself more times than you can fathom. Trillions of sentient beings before you have stood up to the Reapers and lost. You are not important.

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That is when the Reapers are at their best.

by narcogen ⌂ @, Andover, Massachusetts, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 06:11 (2970 days ago) @ Quirel

Sovereign doesn't want to communicate with you. The conversation only happened because it thought that Saren was calling. The conversation only continues in order to distract you while it turns around and comes back.

Sovereign isn't boasting. It is simply stating the facts.

The cycle has repeated itself more times than you can fathom. Trillions of sentient beings before you have stood up to the Reapers and lost. You are not important.

Funny how that game so clearly communicates that message, and yet we still get an outcry at the end of the trilogy that the universe didn't properly take into account all the protagonist's choices.

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That is when the Reapers are at their best.

by CyberKN ⌂ @, Oh no, Destiny 2 is bad, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 06:41 (2970 days ago) @ narcogen

Sovereign doesn't want to communicate with you. The conversation only happened because it thought that Saren was calling. The conversation only continues in order to distract you while it turns around and comes back.

Sovereign isn't boasting. It is simply stating the facts.

The cycle has repeated itself more times than you can fathom. Trillions of sentient beings before you have stood up to the Reapers and lost. You are not important.


Funny how that game so clearly communicates that message, and yet we still get an outcry at the end of the trilogy that the universe didn't properly take into account all the protagonist's choices.

The game doesn't communicate that. Sovereign does.

The player then proceeds to tear him a new one.

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That is when the Reapers are at their best.

by Ragashingo ⌂, Official DBO Cryptarch, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 07:24 (2970 days ago) @ narcogen

Funny how that game so clearly communicates that message, and yet we still get an outcry at the end of the trilogy that the universe didn't properly take into account all the protagonist's choices.

For some reason what you said here rubbed me wrong. The implication I got was something along the line of "people complaining about the ending shouldn't have because the bad guy already told us what was coming."

I just don't think the two have anything to do with each other.

I think most people's expectation, even with Sovereign's original speech being as good and chilling as it was, was that the Reapers were somehow wrong, were somehow fallible, were somehow defeatable. Just neither they or we knew how yet. I'd wager that most people figured that we'd eventually get to be the clever and competent hero who would defy the impossible odds and find the weakness or flaw that nobody in millions of years had found.

For me at least, the outcry wasn't because the game didn't respect my choices. It was because none of the original three outcomes were satisfying. In the end I didn't so much get to be that clever hero as I was forced to choose which way I would die while solving the problem of the Reapers with solutions that had very little backing with the rest of the series.

Ultimately, I think Sovereign's original speech can stand as one of the greatest "you have no chance" villain speeches of all time and players can have legitimate complaints about the series screwing up its ending without it being "funny."

(All that said, I really liked the "everyone loses and the cycle continues" ending they added in later because while it still didn't satisfy that "being the clever hero" itch, it was at least consistent with the rest of the series and Sovereign's original speech.)

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That is when the Reapers are at their best.

by narcogen ⌂ @, Andover, Massachusetts, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 08:55 (2970 days ago) @ Ragashingo

Funny how that game so clearly communicates that message, and yet we still get an outcry at the end of the trilogy that the universe didn't properly take into account all the protagonist's choices.


For some reason what you said here rubbed me wrong. The implication I got was something along the line of "people complaining about the ending shouldn't have because the bad guy already told us what was coming."

I just don't think the two have anything to do with each other.

So, you think Sovereign is an actual entity separate from the fiction created to house him?


I think most people's expectation, even with Sovereign's original speech being as good and chilling as it was, was that the Reapers were somehow wrong, were somehow fallible, were somehow defeatable. Just neither they or we knew how yet. I'd wager that most people figured that we'd eventually get to be the clever and competent hero who would defy the impossible odds and find the weakness or flaw that nobody in millions of years had found.

I'm not implying the above, I'm flat out stating it. People get used to discounting what villains in fiction say because they assume that they're always wrong about everything, or at least wrong about enough. And while Sovereign turned out to be wrong about some things, the player is also wrong about some things-- namely that they are big, important, and bulletproof enough to change the universe to a great extent AND come out unscathed. Or that the changes would be entirely palatable.


For me at least, the outcry wasn't because the game didn't respect my choices.

Then my message was not addressed at you, nor were you lumped in by me with the rest of the complaints, most of which were about exactly that issue, phrased in exactly that manner.

It was because none of the original three outcomes were satisfying. In the end I didn't so much get to be that clever hero as I was forced to choose which way I would die while solving the problem of the Reapers with solutions that had very little backing with the rest of the series.

Which means, in a sense, Sovereign was right. The forces at play are too big for one person, or even one species, to simply dictate that they go away for their own comfort, and all the solutions acknowledge those forces in some way. The ending(s) were quite intentionally designed to be less than fully satisfying. Nothing is gained for free. There is no change without real compromise, and seemingly getting everything you want can be looked at as becoming your enemy.


Ultimately, I think Sovereign's original speech can stand as one of the greatest "you have no chance" villain speeches of all time and players can have legitimate complaints about the series screwing up its ending without it being "funny."

I would suggest that both the speech and the ending were intended to get you to look past your own usual narrative expectations, and you would instead like to reinforce them by liking one aspect of it, and disliking the other.

It sort of strikes me like criticizing The Stanley Parable for not having a clearer win state, for instance. The difference is that The Stanley Parable is more clearly signposted as a little indie novelty sort of game, whereas Mass Effect is a bit action RPG tentpole that people expect to behave according to-- well, to expectations, I suppose.


(All that said, I really liked the "everyone loses and the cycle continues" ending they added in later because while it still didn't satisfy that "being the clever hero" itch, it was at least consistent with the rest of the series and Sovereign's original speech.)

You can also read that as a big middle finger to the complainers-- saying to them that if they considered the previous options limiting because they didn't take into account player freedom, how do you like this-- NOTHING has changed!

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The ending failed to do the reapers justice

by Durandal, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 10:52 (2970 days ago) @ narcogen

The reapers were defeated because of a cut scene, a deus ex machina. The monstrosities presented in ME1 and 2 are horrifying creatures of near supernatural power that farm sentient life in the universe as part of their life cycle. The idea that mankind is nothing more then livestock awaiting the slaughter, just as all life before them is a powerful plot point.

Up to ME3, humanity has bought some breathing room. You delay the invasion by defeating Sovereign, you further delay it when you defeat the collectors. While individually powerful, the Reaper's plan in part relies on surprise and domination of easy interstellar travel and communication. Without those things they can be fought. You've proved they are mortal, still bound by physics in the prior series.

ME3 pissed everyone off because you have in theory united the forces of the galaxy (paragon) or forged humanity into a shield (renegade) in preparation for this conflict. They add in this mysterious weapon that has been passed down by the generations of races before you, each iteration improving it before succumbing. Humanity is the Dune "supreme being", fulfilling a darwinian struggle against the implacable machine foe.

Except a wizard did it. The computer just kind of says "oh, everything everyone's done up to this point is part of my plan. I will now allow you to press an easy button to select one of my 3 chosen paths. Oh, and those paths really only differ in the color people glow at the end."

ME1 and 2 had spot on endings. ME3's is a joke, a last ditch attempt to be artsy and hip because they felt they had written themselves into a cliche corner. Shepard might as well have asked Tali to reverse the polarity of the Citadel's deflector dish. That's why people hated it.

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The ending failed to do the reapers justice

by narcogen ⌂ @, Andover, Massachusetts, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 11:34 (2970 days ago) @ Durandal

The reapers were defeated because of a cut scene, a deus ex machina. The monstrosities presented in ME1 and 2 are horrifying creatures of near supernatural power that farm sentient life in the universe as part of their life cycle. The idea that mankind is nothing more then livestock awaiting the slaughter, just as all life before them is a powerful plot point.

Up to ME3, humanity has bought some breathing room. You delay the invasion by defeating Sovereign, you further delay it when you defeat the collectors. While individually powerful, the Reaper's plan in part relies on surprise and domination of easy interstellar travel and communication. Without those things they can be fought. You've proved they are mortal, still bound by physics in the prior series.

ME3 pissed everyone off because you have in theory united the forces of the galaxy (paragon) or forged humanity into a shield (renegade) in preparation for this conflict. They add in this mysterious weapon that has been passed down by the generations of races before you, each iteration improving it before succumbing. Humanity is the Dune "supreme being", fulfilling a darwinian struggle against the implacable machine foe.

Except they really weren't, which was kind of the point. What I personally find unfulfilling is that kind of ethnocentrism-- the idea that there are all these interesting life forms in the galaxy, but humanity is the important one. Human supremacism is also a big theme in the games as well, and I think it would be kind of weird, especially given the events of ME2 and ME3, to expect that all you needed was the right kind of human supremacism and everything would be OK.


Except a wizard did it. The computer just kind of says "oh, everything everyone's done up to this point is part of my plan. I will now allow you to press an easy button to select one of my 3 chosen paths. Oh, and those paths really only differ in the color people glow at the end."

From a technical and aesthetic viewpoint, yes, all that changed was "the color of the people". If you think about all the conflicts presented in Mass Effect as being racial conflicts, that statement means something else. The conflicts in ME are presented as irresolvable at least in part because they are based on membership in groups, and that membership is static and unchanging. Geth are Geth; Quarians are Quarians; Turians are Turians, Asari are Asari, Krogan are Krogan, and Humans are Humans. As long as the members of each group align their interests with members of their group and solely with the members of that group, conflict is inevitable.

People keep complaining that the game didn't let them solve it another way because the game is there to tell you that there isn't. That's what it was leading up to all along. That was the point of it. The only way the problem is solved-- the only ways those problems have ever been solved, historically, is by one side so defeating the other that only the victors exist, or have any autonomy. Problem solved; there is no conflict between Group A and Group B because Group B no longer exists in a meaningful way.

You can create this scenario either by genocide or by complete assimilation; whether you view the Reaper solution as one or the other depends largely on your perspective. The ending where humanity takes the place of the Reapers is just a modification of this.


ME1 and 2 had spot on endings. ME3's is a joke, a last ditch attempt to be artsy and hip because they felt they had written themselves into a cliche corner. Shepard might as well have asked Tali to reverse the polarity of the Citadel's deflector dish. That's why people hated it.

I really don't know what to say to you. What would you have liked? What kind of ending would have satisfied you, but also been true to the exploration of the themes all three games were trying to explore?

Because this complaint sounds a lot to me like someone who watches Evangelion until the end and then wants to know why the final episodes didn't show you what happened to the giant robots. The point is that it was never about the giant robots (yes I know they aren't robots, I'm being reductionist on purpose).

If you haven't seen the show this comparison won't mean much, but the parallels are there: a popular story that plays with a lot of standard narrative tropes, and then the ending reveals that the surface layer wasn't the important thing, the underlying themes were-- and that's where the resolution needed to happen.

ME3's fusion ending suggests that the only way to eliminate perpetual conflict between synthetic and organic life was to disallow any member of the group "life" from siding entirely with one side or the other. This also ends up solving the conflict between different species of organic life, since presumably they also now have something in common, something they could never have in common outside of that ending-- the synthetic side of their natures.

Lots of choices in Mass Effect take their effect contextually. They're not on-screen, it's the information you're given through other channels that contextualizes what you see.

Bioware didn't screw up. They didn't paint themselves into a corner, they didn't screw the pooch. They executed on a plan people didn't like because they got so caught up in the surface nature of the story-- pew pew and robots and aliens-- that they didn't care about the real ending when it came.

I not only liked ME3's ending, I sort of can't imagine that story ending any other way that wouldn't feel like cheating.

Failed to do the Reapers justice? Quite the contrary. To suggest that they could have been placated or defeated if you had just shot a few more in the face-- you know, to give the player agency-- is not doing them justice.

That's how I felt about it, anyway.

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What I would have written

by Durandal, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 13:19 (2970 days ago) @ narcogen

While I like the "humans are superior" trope, that isn't the central theme of the ME universe. The main question seems to be if various phila of intelligent life can coexist. The Reapers postulate that it cannot, and the risk is universal extinction.

Up till the point that Shepard enters the reaper operated Citadel, the plot is fine even though I felt the secret crucible weapon is a bit far fetched. I would have preferred that they included a bit more on why earth had been sitting on the data for a massive superweapon, even after they knew the reapers both existed and were active.

If anything, I would have changed the ending from the point where the reapers attempt to intercept Shepard's team from entering the teleport beam. In my version, they would enter the beam before the reinforcements arrive. This would lead to a running battle inside the Citadel as Harbinger possesses and leads husks, collectors and indoctrinated foes against you as your team tries to make it to the tower and pull the same stunt as ME1 to link it to the Crucible.

Along the way you would have the option of encountering Cerberus, and the Illusive man, who are hiding out there and attempting to control the reapers.

As a faction, Cerberus is all about acquiring power in order to survive. Philosophically they are identical to the reapers in that no action is beyond them. Shepard would have a "control" type ending where he agrees to assist them in hardwiring the crucible signal to subvert control of the reapers to a central mind, either himself or the illusive man.

He could chose not to, and fight on himself to the tower, using his companions along the way much like the last mission of ME2.

Upon reaching the tower and seizing control, he opens the citadel only to have Harbinger fly in directly to destroy him. Depending on what "war asset" ships Shepard acquired, Harbinger is driven off, with some destroyed in the process. Here the science team with Shepard will start to activate the cruicble, but they realize that there are two different settings, one which affect the reapers (destroy) or everyone else (synthesis).

Admittedly, this still is a bit forced. There really isn't much build up for the synthesis ending in the ME lore. You only shepard's rebuilding into a hybrid as a basis, but some good writing at the end could make that a salient point. I would follow up with Harbinger contacting Shepard afterwards with a "what have you done" speech, where Shepard tells him point blank that he's found a better solution then periodic genocide. That would tie nicely into the main philosophy of the Reapers, turning their horror back on themselves.

So yes, I could get the same endings Bioware wanted, just with a better logical and thematic flow that also made players feel their choices in the prior game affected the outcome. Didn't save people in ME1 or 2? You might not have that path available in the end game of 3.

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What I would have written

by Ragashingo ⌂, Official DBO Cryptarch, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 16:31 (2969 days ago) @ Durandal

I don't have an exact ending in mind, but I wouldn't have taken the series anywhere near where it ended up. A few things bugged me about how everything played out and wrapped up:

- The full sized Reapers were shown to be effectively completely invincible in Mass Effect 3. Yes, we killed a couple of the little ones in unique ways but in all the glorious fleet battle cutscenes I don't think we were ever shown anyone so much as damaging a Reaper.

- I really hated the Crucible. Over and over and over we are told that we don't know what it will do yet we pour every resource we have into building it. How do you even build something without an end goal in mind?!

- While its a game and I'm the hero, I didn't really like how it came down to one choice by one person at the end. I would rather have had victory depend on the galaxy fighting back as a unified force or fail because of cracks or gaps in that unity.

So for my endings, there would still be a "you lose" ending where the cycle continues. There would be variations of partial wins where some races came through the war intact and others were completely defeated and scattered based upon your choices throughout the series. And finally, the solution to the Reapers would have been some sort of inversion of Sovereign's revelation that they continued beating the galaxy because it evolved according to their design. We'd beat them because we would know their expectations and act contrary to them. And hopefully that solution would involve, you know, the mass effect.

A couple possible solutions that make sense in universe:

- Investing everything in laser technology. Mass effect fields don't do anything to lasers and even ships with the most powerful mass effect shields are vulnerable to them. Maybe the galaxy could invest in a fleet of fast agile Normandys that defied the status quo of deflecting small, heavy, fast moving kinetic projectiles and instead dodged them and tore through the "superior" reapers with short range lasers.

-Do something with the static charge buildup that comes along with using element zero mass effect drives. As I recall, the fiction was if a starship continued using its mass effect core the electrical charge imbalance would eventually be unmanageable and the core would discharge into its host ship badly damaging it or outright destroying it. And the established ways to discharge a ship were to interact with the atmosphere or magnetic field of a planet or other large object. Well, who has the biggest, most power mass effect cores? The Reapers! Sure, make them invincible and unstoppable but with a weakness that nobody ever had the smarts or guts or forces to exploit. Maybe the big plan would be to have enough forces and tactics to keep the Reapers fighting and using their mass effect shields and drives while somehow denying them the ability to discharge their static buildup. This could be a galaxy wide hold the line scenario where not having gotten a race's or group's support would cause massive losses, especially for that race, and allow for everything from a total loss to various partial wins to an outright win depending on your success throughout the entire series. To keep the player involved in gameplay, maybe it's your fleets that keep each Reaper occupied and away from planets while ground teams have to go in and destroy critical discharge hardware or something...

I don't know... maybe combine the two... maybe something else. Like I said, I don't have a clear idea of exactly what should have been done. But, in the end, the way we delayed the Reapers in ME1 was great because it exploited a small flaw in their plans. The way we stopped the Collectors in ME2 was great because it put the emphasis heavily on teamwork and good team choices while still letting the player's moment to moment actions matter. Mass Effect 3? It pretty much did neither. It didn't utilize its own fiction effectively and as much as I love ME3's core gameplay loop, the ending wasn't even close to as effective exploiting and building off of gameplay as ME2's was.

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Massive Space Battles

by Durandal, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 17:22 (2969 days ago) @ Ragashingo

Frankly I would have preferred the massive space battles and left the crucible out of it. I loved the scene where several dreadnoughts are teaming up to take apart one of the class 1 reapers, and the codex indicates that the Asari were doing that as well until the reapers just started an all out assault on their homeworld.

It seemed to me that Bioware had written themselves in a corner in ME3 by having the reapers full strength appear right at the start. They probably felt that they needed to add the crucible to give a reason that Shepard and the forces of the galaxy could defeat the reapers while gallivanting across the galaxy, and to make the endings something other then some alliance of races killing all the reapers.

I disagree of course. They could have written about how Shepard unites the galaxy and leads the combined forces in an attack on the reaper fleet wasting their time at earth, all the while leading smaller containment actions on any reapers that break out, but that was not to be.

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Massive Space Battles

by Ragashingo ⌂, Official DBO Cryptarch, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 18:44 (2969 days ago) @ Durandal

Agreed.

I liked the idea that the Reapers were tough but not invincible. That, like Sovereign said, they were able to win decisively over and over because organic life inevitably found the Mass Relays and the Citadel and developed along similar lines. As much as I like Mass Effect (I think it is easily one of the top series of the 360 / PS3 generation and rivals any other series of that time) in some ways it was a series marked by a string of plot based betrayals.

- Wasn't the original idea put forth that stopping Sovereign would strand the Reaper fleet in darks space? And, to me at least, the implication of "strand" meant more than "have them have to do an extra two years of easy, no consequences flying."

- One of the biggest ones, where the Council completely turned its back on you and pretended the huge battle at the Citadel simply did not happen. The disavowing of the Reapers was maybe one of the biggest let downs of the 360 generation. I'd have been ok with them publicly blaming the Geth, a known boogeyman, while preparing for the actual extinction they knew was coming... but instead they spent Mass Effect 2 in complete lala land after I sacrificed my friends and colleagues of the Alliance fleet to save them.

- The start of Mass Effect 2 with the temporary, inconsequential death of Shepard. They barely touched the subject of death and it meaning to Shepard or Shepherd's allies. All that really happened was I got a bigger Normandy.

- The new Normandy too was bad. That anyone could expand upon what had been said to be the most advanced ship in the entire galaxy, let alone replicate it in the first place just didn't fit with the first game.

- As I mentioned before, they replaced half my squad and forced them to sit all of Mass Effect 2 in a corporate office or had them not put any trust in me or had them busy with their own things for half the game. I can forgive the last one, a bit, but I'd really hoped to pick back up with my squad and continue kicking ass and saving the galaxy... Having some of them tell me that being an information broker, for instance, was more important... Meh.

- Rebuilt baby reaper = giant terminator?? Poetic. Dumb. Especially after the Suicide Mission that pretty much nailed what I thought Mass Effect should be.

- The way the series proceed at the tale end of ME2 (blowing up the mass relay basically did nothing) through to ME3's terrible ending. As noted... I just didn't like how everything played out with the Reapers and their motivations.

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Massive Space Battles

by narcogen ⌂ @, Andover, Massachusetts, Thursday, February 11, 2016, 00:51 (2969 days ago) @ Ragashingo

Agreed.

I liked the idea that the Reapers were tough but not invincible. That, like Sovereign said, they were able to win decisively over and over because organic life inevitably found the Mass Relays and the Citadel and developed along similar lines. As much as I like Mass Effect (I think it is easily one of the top series of the 360 / PS3 generation and rivals any other series of that time) in some ways it was a series marked by a string of plot based betrayals.

- Wasn't the original idea put forth that stopping Sovereign would strand the Reaper fleet in darks space? And, to me at least, the implication of "strand" meant more than "have them have to do an extra two years of easy, no consequences flying."

- One of the biggest ones, where the Council completely turned its back on you and pretended the huge battle at the Citadel simply did not happen. The disavowing of the Reapers was maybe one of the biggest let downs of the 360 generation. I'd have been ok with them publicly blaming the Geth, a known boogeyman, while preparing for the actual extinction they knew was coming... but instead they spent Mass Effect 2 in complete lala land after I sacrificed my friends and colleagues of the Alliance fleet to save them.

Is the problem that you don't think that was plausible, or that you didn't like it, as a character?

I don't think you're supposed to like it, but it seemed fairly plausible to me. Admitting the existence of Reapers publicly would undermine nearly every political authority in existence, and might still achieve nothing that you can't do in secret.

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Massive Space Battles

by Ragashingo ⌂, Official DBO Cryptarch, Thursday, February 11, 2016, 01:46 (2969 days ago) @ narcogen

Agreed.

I liked the idea that the Reapers were tough but not invincible. That, like Sovereign said, they were able to win decisively over and over because organic life inevitably found the Mass Relays and the Citadel and developed along similar lines. As much as I like Mass Effect (I think it is easily one of the top series of the 360 / PS3 generation and rivals any other series of that time) in some ways it was a series marked by a string of plot based betrayals.

- Wasn't the original idea put forth that stopping Sovereign would strand the Reaper fleet in darks space? And, to me at least, the implication of "strand" meant more than "have them have to do an extra two years of easy, no consequences flying."

- One of the biggest ones, where the Council completely turned its back on you and pretended the huge battle at the Citadel simply did not happen. The disavowing of the Reapers was maybe one of the biggest let downs of the 360 generation. I'd have been ok with them publicly blaming the Geth, a known boogeyman, while preparing for the actual extinction they knew was coming... but instead they spent Mass Effect 2 in complete lala land after I sacrificed my friends and colleagues of the Alliance fleet to save them.


Is the problem that you don't think that was plausible, or that you didn't like it, as a character?

I don't think you're supposed to like it, but it seemed fairly plausible to me. Admitting the existence of Reapers publicly would undermine nearly every political authority in existence, and might still achieve nothing that you can't do in secret.

Like I said, I'd be ok with that being the public story to maintain galactic order while the council sent you, their top Specter, out with full support to try and find the solution to the real threat. Instead, they withdraw their support to you as well. On top of that, it was one of the first game's final major choices, to save the council by sacrificing lives for them or to let them die in the hopes of having the forces necessary to kill Sovereign. That those exact same three turn on you in public and private so dramatically feels completely wrong in a series who's stated goal was to respect player choice across games.

Massive Space Battles

by marmot 1333 @, Thursday, February 11, 2016, 16:54 (2968 days ago) @ Ragashingo

That's not player choice, though, that's a fictional non-player-character's choice.

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A character who is controlled by the player... so...

by Ragashingo ⌂, Official DBO Cryptarch, Friday, February 12, 2016, 10:45 (2968 days ago) @ marmot 1333

- No text -

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Isn't he talking about Starchild?

by ZackDark @, Not behind you. NO! Don't look., Friday, February 12, 2016, 11:09 (2968 days ago) @ Ragashingo

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A character who is controlled by the player... so...

by marmot 1333 @, Friday, February 12, 2016, 15:46 (2968 days ago) @ Ragashingo

That those exact same three turn on you in public and private so dramatically feels completely wrong in a series who's stated goal was to respect player choice across games.

I took "those three" to mean the council. The way I interpreted your statement, you said, the player chose to save the council, then the council turned on the player, so that isn't respecting the player's choice. But that's fallacious. You don't control the choices of the council, only Shepard.

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A character who is controlled by the player... so...

by Ragashingo ⌂, Official DBO Cryptarch, Friday, February 12, 2016, 16:50 (2967 days ago) @ marmot 1333

Ah, I see. I meant that I do think it was a fair expectation to expect that choice be given more weight than it was. It's been a long time since I did not save them, but my recollection is that any changes involving the council in Mass Effect 1, including replacing them all with humans, are quickly compressed back to a baseline unhelpful Turian, Assari, and Salarian even as soon as the start of Mass Effect 2 and certainly by Mass Effect 3. I had hoped for more dramatic and lasting storyline changes is what I meant to get across.

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My take:

by Quirel, Thursday, February 11, 2016, 06:00 (2969 days ago) @ Durandal

You know what the difference between a Mass Relay and a mass driver is?

Programming.

That's the flaw in the Reaper's plans, and it's one they know about. The Mass Relays they built to allow interstellar civilizations to flourish and constrain the galaxy's technological development can be used against them. If the Relays were reprogrammed by a cultivar race and fed with accurate targeting data, the Reaper fleet could be torn apart with FTL projectiles.

This is a known flaw, and the Reapers have taken it into account. Considerable effort has gone into protecting the Relays from tampering, and only the control terminal on the Citadel can reprogram the Relays. Every Reaper invasion begins with a decapitation strike that captures the Citadel. Complete operational surprise is achieved each time.

This is why Sovereign was so desperate to assume control of the Citadel, even though a Reaper fleet is only two years away from the galaxy. The Prothean team from Illos managed to disable the Mass Relay without alerting it, and it didn't know what else they had done. As it turns out, they did some of the preliminary work in opening up the Citadel's control network, but died before they could complete the work.

Fortunately, previous cycles have worked on the problem, and the most complete Prothean archives available speak of ancient plans to turn the Mass Relay network into a weapon. The Protheans themselves were interested in this project as a tool to maintain compliance throughout the galaxy, but were ignorant of the weapon's intended target. The Mars archives speaks of other Prothean research installations that were working on the project. Perhaps more information could be hidden there?

Just when it looks like the game is winding up for a repeat of the original game, it's revealed that you don't have to go hunting all over the galaxy. The Council dispatched research teams shortly after your death, and didn't tell you of their plans to combat the Reapers because of, you know, Cerberus.

You just have to pick them up and bail them out of trouble, but that's more of a side quest. The galaxy is falling apart, the Reapers are assaulting home systems and pushing toward the Citadel, and Shepard is the best bet to reunite everyone. Cue the missions we had in Mass Effect 3, with some rewriting to make Cerberus less stupid. Oh, and Kai Leng is going to be reworked into a less annoying stress ball.

Hell, you know what? Forget swords. Forget the trashy JRPG design. Forget making Kai Leng the anti-Shepard. We've already had an anti-Shepard, and his name was Saren. By this point, Shepard has waded through armies. Hotshots and criminal warlords and the galaxy's best assassins have tried to kill her and failed spectacularly. Kai Leng should be a villain who acknowledges that. Kai Leng should be a villain who fights asymmetrically, who avoids direct conflict with Shepard, who books it when it looks like he might get trapped in the same room as Shepard.

The Reapers capture the Citadel after a long and shut down the relay network. Fortunately, by this time the Reaper IFF you captured in ME2 has been distributed among the Council, so entire fleets are passing through the network unhindered. You've got the same buildup to retake the Citadel that there was to retake Earth in the original ME3, you've built a coalition with diplomacy and bravery and offering seats on the Council, and Reaper offensives are stalling across the board.

Side note: Keep the Reapers weird. They aren't here to make synthetics and organics play nice. The cycle does not repeat itself for any reason you can wrap your head around. If you make certain decisions, the Illusive Man turned himself into a husk hybrid trying to understand the Reaper's motives, and when you find him, he's eaten his gun. There are multiple conflicting answers as to what the Reapers were doing with the genetic paste in ME2, and when asked if the Reapers have anything to do with Dholen, credible sources answer yes and no, independently.

And when the Reapers take the Citadel, they activate something. Not a Mass Relay, but it's firing superluminal masses of dark matter out of the galaxy. Telemetry data suggests that they're launching these pulsed masses at dark portions of the sky. Even at superluminal speeds, these masses won't encounter a galaxy for billions of years.

So the coalition comes in hard to retake the Citadel. The Reapers are outnumbered, but they might be outgunned as well. But not for long.

You see, locking down the Citadel really did strand the Reapers out in darkspace. It would take hundreds if not thousands of years for them to return, but they had a contingency plan in place. And that plan was Harbinger's fleet, stationed relatively close to the galaxy. If the sentinel, Sovereign should fail, Harbinger and his fleet would rush in and open the doors.

And that there? That's the doors opening right now.

So the last level is a race through the Citadel to deliver the Crucible (A handheld device that will hack into the Citadel's control terminal and grant access) while Reapers pour through the Citadel's Mass Relay. And you aren't alone. Asari commandos and Salarian STG operatives are racing to other parts of the Citadel with their own Crucibles as mixed units of Turian infantry and Krogan Kakliosaur cavalry eliminate the Reaper ground forces and Geth artillery embeds itself on every flat surface available and pummels the Reaper small craft. It's ME2's suicide mission all over again, only instead of individual squad members, it's all the people you've united under a common banner.

I think there's got to be a boss battle, and Harbinger is the best candidate. He was underutilized in ME3 anyway. The fight should be to protect the Crucible as waves upon waves of Reaper troops descend upon your position. Harbinger is ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL of whatever he can, and argues with you in between waves.

You are, of course, going to survive with the Crucible intact. That doesn't mean that the Reaper invasion will be successfully averted. In order to control the Mass Relay network, dozens of Crucibles have to be in place and functioning, and if your forces are weak (Killing the Rachni, Quarians, or Geth incurs a massive penalty) then they might be wiped out. Even if they are successful, they may be delayed long enough for the Reapers to tear the Citadel apart, or destroy the Widow Mass Relay, or anything else that might cripple galactic civilization. The targeting of the Mass Relay turned Mass Driver might be shody enough that the Citadel itself is all but obliterated in the crossfire.

There isn't necessarily a happy ending. But victory and unity can be achieved, and the result respects your choices.

Avatar

What I would have written

by narcogen ⌂ @, Andover, Massachusetts, Thursday, February 11, 2016, 00:49 (2969 days ago) @ Ragashingo

I don't have an exact ending in mind, but I wouldn't have taken the series anywhere near where it ended up. A few things bugged me about how everything played out and wrapped up:

- The full sized Reapers were shown to be effectively completely invincible in Mass Effect 3. Yes, we killed a couple of the little ones in unique ways but in all the glorious fleet battle cutscenes I don't think we were ever shown anyone so much as damaging a Reaper.

...and?

- I really hated the Crucible. Over and over and over we are told that we don't know what it will do yet we pour every resource we have into building it. How do you even build something without an end goal in mind?!

- While its a game and I'm the hero, I didn't really like how it came down to one choice by one person at the end. I would rather have had victory depend on the galaxy fighting back as a unified force or fail because of cracks or gaps in that unity.

Those are two really valid points. The Crucible struck me as a really obvious MacGuffin, and the way it was handled felt wrong to me in a similar way.

On the second point... yes, the distinction between the Reaper solution and the Synthesis ending is basically really small-- synthesis is voluntary in the sense that Shepard, standing in for all of humanity, chooses it. Our right to do so was apparently earned by shooting lots of aliens in the face. Sometimes.


So for my endings, there would still be a "you lose" ending where the cycle continues. There would be variations of partial wins where some races came through the war intact and others were completely defeated and scattered based upon your choices throughout the series. And finally, the solution to the Reapers would have been some sort of inversion of Sovereign's revelation that they continued beating the galaxy because it evolved according to their design. We'd beat them because we would know their expectations and act contrary to them. And hopefully that solution would involve, you know, the mass effect.

I honestly think that the entire point of ME's story to that point is the idea that there is no such easy solution to this problem. There's no clever trick, no simple ruse, no device-- even the Crucible turns out to be nothing like what anyone expects, and instead of enabling a shortcut past tough choices, just forced you into making one.

You want a way out of a choice that the makers of the game wanted you to make. It wasn't an oversight by BioWare that they didn't leave that opening there, the point of the story was to close it. The Reapers are invincible and have imposed their solution to the problem. The answer is either defeating them or destroying them or becoming like them in some way or other. Having some trick or a super secret weapon is just a narrative crutch, and I appreciated the ending tremendously for not allowing the player a cheap out like that.


A couple possible solutions that make sense in universe:

- Investing everything in laser technology. Mass effect fields don't do anything to lasers and even ships with the most powerful mass effect shields are vulnerable to them. Maybe the galaxy could invest in a fleet of fast agile Normandys that defied the status quo of deflecting small, heavy, fast moving kinetic projectiles and instead dodged them and tore through the "superior" reapers with short range lasers.

That again is just a cheap plot device. It's different than the crucible, but not better. The primary problem in ME is not fighting the Reapers. They are incidental. They are the visual manifestation of the larger problem, which is about the coexistence of different life forms. They are a force that have imposed their solution, and the challenge is not to overthrow or become them (although it could be if you want) but to choose a different solution (synthesis).


-Do something with the static charge buildup that comes along with using element zero mass effect drives. As I recall, the fiction was if a starship continued using its mass effect core the electrical charge imbalance would eventually be unmanageable and the core would discharge into its host ship badly damaging it or outright destroying it. And the established ways to discharge a ship were to interact with the atmosphere or magnetic field of a planet or other large object. Well, who has the biggest, most power mass effect cores? The Reapers! Sure, make them invincible and unstoppable but with a weakness that nobody ever had the smarts or guts or forces to exploit. Maybe the big plan would be to have enough forces and tactics to keep the Reapers fighting and using their mass effect shields and drives while somehow denying them the ability to discharge their static buildup. This could be a galaxy wide hold the line scenario where not having gotten a race's or group's support would cause massive losses, especially for that race, and allow for everything from a total loss to various partial wins to an outright win depending on your success throughout the entire series. To keep the player involved in gameplay, maybe it's your fleets that keep each Reaper occupied and away from planets while ground teams have to go in and destroy critical discharge hardware or something...

I don't know... maybe combine the two... maybe something else. Like I said, I don't have a clear idea of exactly what should have been done. But, in the end, the way we delayed the Reapers in ME1 was great because it exploited a small flaw in their plans. The way we stopped the Collectors in ME2 was great because it put the emphasis heavily on teamwork and good team choices while still letting the player's moment to moment actions matter. Mass Effect 3? It pretty much did neither. It didn't utilize its own fiction effectively and as much as I love ME3's core gameplay loop, the ending wasn't even close to as effective exploiting and building off of gameplay as ME2's was.

ME3 used its fiction amazingly; just the parts of it that many people ignored in favor of clever ways of, well, shooting aliens in the face.

Avatar

What I would have written

by Ragashingo ⌂, Official DBO Cryptarch, Thursday, February 11, 2016, 01:41 (2969 days ago) @ narcogen

I don't have an exact ending in mind, but I wouldn't have taken the series anywhere near where it ended up. A few things bugged me about how everything played out and wrapped up:

- The full sized Reapers were shown to be effectively completely invincible in Mass Effect 3. Yes, we killed a couple of the little ones in unique ways but in all the glorious fleet battle cutscenes I don't think we were ever shown anyone so much as damaging a Reaper.


...and?

Do you really not understand or are you just being ultra reductionist? I wanted Mass Effect to be a series where playing the hero and uniting the galaxy allowed much more of a true victory. Sure, there's a certain neatness to a series that commit totally to an inevitable bad ending, see Life Is Strange for a very recent example, but I don't think Mass Effect as a series made that commitment. Instead it lead players on to believing that their choices mattered then abruptly those choices didn't.

- I really hated the Crucible. Over and over and over we are told that we don't know what it will do yet we pour every resource we have into building it. How do you even build something without an end goal in mind?!

- While its a game and I'm the hero, I didn't really like how it came down to one choice by one person at the end. I would rather have had victory depend on the galaxy fighting back as a unified force or fail because of cracks or gaps in that unity.


Those are two really valid points. The Crucible struck me as a really obvious MacGuffin, and the way it was handled felt wrong to me in a similar way.

On the second point... yes, the distinction between the Reaper solution and the Synthesis ending is basically really small-- synthesis is voluntary in the sense that Shepard, standing in for all of humanity, chooses it. Our right to do so was apparently earned by shooting lots of aliens in the face. Sometimes.

One, each ending was shown to affect all races. So, if anything, Shepard was standing in for the entire galaxy. Two. I am very very much not interested in continuing this if you're going to reduce it down to "shooting aliens in the face." Yes, that was the primary gameplay loop, but it was not the point of the game's story. Reducing it down that far feels like you are ignoring very present themes within the game, as well as other poster's arguments. It kinda feels insulting and like you don't care to have an actual discussion, you know? I think the Mass Effect series was about a lot more than simply shooting aliens in the face and there's not much more to be said if you are going to return to that no matter what...


So for my endings, there would still be a "you lose" ending where the cycle continues. There would be variations of partial wins where some races came through the war intact and others were completely defeated and scattered based upon your choices throughout the series. And finally, the solution to the Reapers would have been some sort of inversion of Sovereign's revelation that they continued beating the galaxy because it evolved according to their design. We'd beat them because we would know their expectations and act contrary to them. And hopefully that solution would involve, you know, the mass effect.


I honestly think that the entire point of ME's story to that point is the idea that there is no such easy solution to this problem. There's no clever trick, no simple ruse, no device-- even the Crucible turns out to be nothing like what anyone expects, and instead of enabling a shortcut past tough choices, just forced you into making one.

But remember, I already consider the Crucible to be a horribly flawed plot device that itself introduced new characters and dumped out new backstory within the last fifteen minutes of gameplay. The "starchild"and the Reaper's true purpose to name two of the big ones. I really don't mind unhappy endings but I do think that games need to commit to them and embrace them and support them, and I don't feel as if Mass Effect as a series did any of those things.

Remember, my favorite ending of Mass Effect 3 is the everybody loses ending because it is the most strongly supported... of the four. But that it is the most strongly supported is a travesty to me because all three games spend the whole time telling you that you can make a difference.


You want a way out of a choice that the makers of the game wanted you to make. It wasn't an oversight by BioWare that they didn't leave that opening there, the point of the story was to close it. The Reapers are invincible and have imposed their solution to the problem. The answer is either defeating them or destroying them or becoming like them in some way or other. Having some trick or a super secret weapon is just a narrative crutch, and I appreciated the ending tremendously for not allowing the player a cheap out like that.

Except you're reducing my ending to a cheap out when I adamantly do not want it to be. I would want any such winning solution to be foreshadowed at from very early on. To have it demonstrated in a small scale as the series moved forward. Have it become important enough to be noted on more as things really heated up. And have it been a solution that could work but at great cost perhaps of sacrificing entire worlds or sections of the galaxy. To put it simply, I want any such solution to be very strongly supported both in subtle ways and direct ways as the series progressed. At that point it no longer would be the crutch you are making it out to be and would instead be the plot of the game.

Does that mean I wanted a different game? Sure. Like I said up top, I would not have taken the series anywhere near where it ended up. Because I didn't like where it went. But not only did I not like where it went, I do not think the did a good enough job to support the "all choices had to be bad" ending that we got, if that was actually the intention along.


A couple possible solutions that make sense in universe:

- Investing everything in laser technology. Mass effect fields don't do anything to lasers and even ships with the most powerful mass effect shields are vulnerable to them. Maybe the galaxy could invest in a fleet of fast agile Normandys that defied the status quo of deflecting small, heavy, fast moving kinetic projectiles and instead dodged them and tore through the "superior" reapers with short range lasers.


That again is just a cheap plot device. It's different than the crucible, but not better. The primary problem in ME is not fighting the Reapers. They are incidental. They are the visual manifestation of the larger problem, which is about the coexistence of different life forms. They are a force that have imposed their solution, and the challenge is not to overthrow or become them (although it could be if you want) but to choose a different solution (synthesis).

No. It is very much a better solution than "pour all our resources into a device who's end goal literally nobody understands." If I'm going to stand behind any point in this discussion it's that the Crucible was the absolute stupidest part of the entire Mass Effect series. We spent all of Mass Effect 3 searching for "the catalysts" but that didn't turn out to be an exotic gas or material or type of energy... it turned out to be the freaking huge space station that the Crucible docked with, a station that every race working on the Crucible knew about. It was facepalm your head into a bloody pulp against the wall stupid and almost any solution consistent with the game's lore is better.

Beyond that, one of the last major accomplishments you are able to make in Mass Effect 3 before the ending sequence and battles is convincing the Quarians and Geth to coexist without controlling, destroying, or merging with each other. Why show peaceful separate coexistence between organic and synthetic life if the three choices you intended to present to players all along did not include that choice? It does not make any sense.

(Yes, in some cases a Geth mind would temporarily exist within a Quarian's environmental suit to help speed the immune system adaption to their homeworld but that was temporary, voluntary, and the goal was to allow the Quarians to stop needing their suits so it has very little relation to the synthesis ending which was permanent and involuntary for all the trillions of life forms who were not Commander Shepard.)


-Do something with the static charge buildup that comes along with using element zero mass effect drives. As I recall, the fiction was if a starship continued using its mass effect core the electrical charge imbalance would eventually be unmanageable and the core would discharge into its host ship badly damaging it or outright destroying it. And the established ways to discharge a ship were to interact with the atmosphere or magnetic field of a planet or other large object. Well, who has the biggest, most power mass effect cores? The Reapers! Sure, make them invincible and unstoppable but with a weakness that nobody ever had the smarts or guts or forces to exploit. Maybe the big plan would be to have enough forces and tactics to keep the Reapers fighting and using their mass effect shields and drives while somehow denying them the ability to discharge their static buildup. This could be a galaxy wide hold the line scenario where not having gotten a race's or group's support would cause massive losses, especially for that race, and allow for everything from a total loss to various partial wins to an outright win depending on your success throughout the entire series. To keep the player involved in gameplay, maybe it's your fleets that keep each Reaper occupied and away from planets while ground teams have to go in and destroy critical discharge hardware or something...

I don't know... maybe combine the two... maybe something else. Like I said, I don't have a clear idea of exactly what should have been done. But, in the end, the way we delayed the Reapers in ME1 was great because it exploited a small flaw in their plans. The way we stopped the Collectors in ME2 was great because it put the emphasis heavily on teamwork and good team choices while still letting the player's moment to moment actions matter. Mass Effect 3? It pretty much did neither. It didn't utilize its own fiction effectively and as much as I love ME3's core gameplay loop, the ending wasn't even close to as effective exploiting and building off of gameplay as ME2's was.


ME3 used its fiction amazingly; just the parts of it that many people ignored in favor of clever ways of, well, shooting aliens in the face.

Again. Too reductionist for me. Either have a conversation or don't.

Avatar

What I would have written

by narcogen ⌂ @, Andover, Massachusetts, Friday, February 12, 2016, 06:57 (2968 days ago) @ Ragashingo
edited by narcogen, Friday, February 12, 2016, 07:08

I don't have an exact ending in mind, but I wouldn't have taken the series anywhere near where it ended up. A few things bugged me about how everything played out and wrapped up:

- The full sized Reapers were shown to be effectively completely invincible in Mass Effect 3. Yes, we killed a couple of the little ones in unique ways but in all the glorious fleet battle cutscenes I don't think we were ever shown anyone so much as damaging a Reaper.


...and?


Do you really not understand or are you just being ultra reductionist?

I'm not, particularly-- at least, no more than the game is. ME has two (three if you count deus ex cutscene) ways of resolving conflict: action scenes and conversations. If the conversation is insufficiently heroic compared to previous resolutions, then mostly what you're suggesting is that you either wanted it replaced with an action sequence, supplanted WITH an action sequence, or solved by some clever rabbit being pulled out of a hat (cutscene).

I wanted Mass Effect to be a series where playing the hero and uniting the galaxy allowed much more of a true victory.

Yup. You wanted it to be something different than its creators intended. I think the way the game ended in all of its permutations was far more than adequately foreshadowed from the start of the series, but you obviously feel differently. So what you're really faulting the game for is allowing you the freedom to fight the direction it was moving in, but not at the very end. But if you'll allow that as the maker of the game and its story, how it ends, or at least the boundaries of how it ends, should be properly within Bioware's control, then what you'd be arguing for is not more freedom in the ending, but less freedom everywhere else.

Even then I'd argue that many of the ways you resolve problems are inelegant, forced compromises. Often you're forced to kill people you might actually sympathize with a little bit (until you've maxed out persuasion and intimidation and/or paragon/renegade options) or else accept a less than ideal resolution.

For instance, I just finished off an ME1 sidequest that started out with you confronting (that is, shooting) some criminals, only to find out that the person who hired you is also a criminal.

If you attempt to arrest them, it starts a firefight where either you die (and reload) or they die, and that's it. So you were duped into killing some people and then ended up making up for it.. by killing more people. Hurray, you're a multiple murdering vigilante!

You can also converse your way out of it, convincing the criminal to give up the life of crime, which she will do-- but only if you agree not to arrest her! Try that, and it's back to square one with the gunfight.

So you either let a known criminal who tricked you into murder get away, or you commit another murder. Which of those resolutions was "playing the hero and uniting the galaxy" or a "true victory"? I'd say this sidequest is much more typical of how events go in the series than anything like what you say you want.

ME1 ends with the defeat of Saren and a single reaper, but at the cost of massive loss of life and serious damage to the Citadel.

ME2's mission could end up costing the lives of part of your crew, depending on how you play it. You spend most of the game working for a human supremacist group that you either hate or probably SHOULD hate. If you do a certain DLC mission, you end up causing the deaths of 300,000 aliens, supposedly justified by saving millions or billions more. Necessary, perhaps yes. True victory of a hero? Very debatable.

Sure, there's a certain neatness to a series that commit totally to an inevitable bad ending, see Life Is Strange for a very recent example, but I don't think Mass Effect as a series made that commitment. Instead it lead players on to believing that their choices mattered then abruptly those choices didn't.

ME1 was showing you that some choices you made didn't stick right from the start. Save the council or kill them? Doesn't really matter, at least not in a gameplay sense. Stack the council with humans? Again, doesn't affect a thing, gameplay-wise. Udina or Anderson? Ditto. Those choices, like the one at the end of the series, are less about what actually happens and more about how your character feels about what happens. It's not about how or to what degree your Shepard saves the universe, but what kind of Shepard your Shepard is.

- I really hated the Crucible. Over and over and over we are told that we don't know what it will do yet we pour every resource we have into building it. How do you even build something without an end goal in mind?!

- While its a game and I'm the hero, I didn't really like how it came down to one choice by one person at the end. I would rather have had victory depend on the galaxy fighting back as a unified force or fail because of cracks or gaps in that unity.

Well, it does, but only up to a point. You can't get anything but the bad ending if you fail to achieve that by doing the readiness missions and/or playing the multiplayer. What we're talking about is success (or failure, depending) over and above that. Given the credible and near-invincible threat posed by the Reapers, I never-- not for a second-- supposed a military victory was possible, so I was not surprised when things did not end that way. Given the massive effort required to bring down, what, a total of 3 Reapers in the series-- one of which was unfinished, and one of which required the efforts of an entire fleet to dispatch-- the idea that the Reapers, once they arrived, could be defeated even by the unified military efforts of all factions was not believable to me. So when that turns out just to be to gain time and access for Shepard to seek out what was really behind it all, I was not unsurprised, nor was I disappointed.


Those are two really valid points. The Crucible struck me as a really obvious MacGuffin, and the way it was handled felt wrong to me in a similar way.

On the second point... yes, the distinction between the Reaper solution and the Synthesis ending is basically really small-- synthesis is voluntary in the sense that Shepard, standing in for all of humanity, chooses it. Our right to do so was apparently earned by shooting lots of aliens in the face. Sometimes.


One, each ending was shown to affect all races. So, if anything, Shepard was standing in for the entire galaxy.

Yes, that's true. I suppose it's just a necessary compromise with the nature of being a video game. You could have called the star child into a council meeting, and had everybody vote, although we've already sort of gotten that kind of scene on the Flotilla, so it'd be repetitive. The difference between this cycle and all the others is you-- Shepard-- so the thing that breaks the cycle has to be a thing the Shepard can do. And while Shepard is a very, very good soldier, that's not what is special about them, and it's not what makes them the protagonist.

Two. I am very very much not interested in continuing this if you're going to reduce it down to "shooting aliens in the face." Yes, that was the primary gameplay loop, but it was not the point of the game's story. Reducing it down that far feels like you are ignoring very present themes within the game, as well as other poster's arguments. It kinda feels insulting and like you don't care to have an actual discussion, you know? I think the Mass Effect series was about a lot more than simply shooting aliens in the face and there's not much more to be said if you are going to return to that no matter what...

By that I meant what I said at the top-- resolutions are either conversations or combat, of which there is already plenty and to spare in the game. That's the very real binary the game presents, and the source of much dissatisfaction by fans and detractors alike, despite the games complex treatment of a lot of themes. For myself, I fully expected the final resolution of the game to be a conversation, as it was in the previous two games. All the games have a climactic action sequence, but that's not really the resolution of those games. ME1 leads up to and ends with your decisions about what to do about the Council; in ME2 its mostly about determining what your relationship is to Cerberus and its goals.

So what I'm saying by harping on "shooting aliens" is saying that I not only expected, but wanted, ME3 to end with a conversation and not a fight. Once that's agreed upon, the question is, who should the conversation be with, and what should it be about? I think Bioware decided, and correctly, that the conversation could not be with the Reapers themselves, but a force that could potentially mediate between the approach to the conflict represented by the Reapers and some possible alternatives. I think it's also necessary to recognize that some solutions are not permanent-- brokering peace between the Quarians and the Geth, for instance, is difficult, but possible, but the game underscores the idea that the balance is unstable.

So the fact that the conversation ended up being about what those big picture alternatives might be is fitting-- do you usurp the reapers, destroy them, or unify them with you and everyone else, removing the underlying reason for the conflict?

So for my endings, there would still be a "you lose" ending where the cycle continues. There would be variations of partial wins where some races came through the war intact and others were completely defeated and scattered based upon your choices throughout the series. And finally, the solution to the Reapers would have been some sort of inversion of Sovereign's revelation that they continued beating the galaxy because it evolved according to their design. We'd beat them because we would know their expectations and act contrary to them. And hopefully that solution would involve, you know, the mass effect.


I honestly think that the entire point of ME's story to that point is the idea that there is no such easy solution to this problem. There's no clever trick, no simple ruse, no device-- even the Crucible turns out to be nothing like what anyone expects, and instead of enabling a shortcut past tough choices, just forced you into making one.


But remember, I already consider the Crucible to be a horribly flawed plot device that itself introduced new characters and dumped out new backstory within the last fifteen minutes of gameplay. The "starchild"and the Reaper's true purpose to name two of the big ones. I really don't mind unhappy endings but I do think that games need to commit to them and embrace them and support them, and I don't feel as if Mass Effect as a series did any of those things.

Remember, my favorite ending of Mass Effect 3 is the everybody loses ending because it is the most strongly supported... of the four. But that it is the most strongly supported is a travesty to me because all three games spend the whole time telling you that you can make a difference.


You want a way out of a choice that the makers of the game wanted you to make. It wasn't an oversight by BioWare that they didn't leave that opening there, the point of the story was to close it. The Reapers are invincible and have imposed their solution to the problem. The answer is either defeating them or destroying them or becoming like them in some way or other. Having some trick or a super secret weapon is just a narrative crutch, and I appreciated the ending tremendously for not allowing the player a cheap out like that.


Except you're reducing my ending to a cheap out when I adamantly do not want it to be.

I know you don't want it to be, but I think it is, and I think the authors of the scenario considered it to be, and I think that's demonstrated by the way they hierarchically structured them. The "lose to the reapers" ending you can get by simply charging into the final battle and losing, sort of like botching the Omega relay mission in ME2. I think the message there is clearly that a military-only solution is doomed to failure. For Shepard to have lived through the scenario to that point and still think enough violence would solve everything I think is naive. That ending is the one that least explores the themes the game has brought up, and I think that's why you like it. What you don't like is the result; it's the only ending that is military only in its nature, but it's a loss, not a win, because within the structure of the fiction there is no credible military victory possible. In fact, there are conversations where Shepard addresses this very point, and I always saw the responses to those as ranging from an admission that the situation was impossible, to false bravado. Nothing about how hard it was to kill a couple of Reapers suggested that anything the combined fleets were actually going to be able to win, and they aren't.

I do find it interesting that within the context of war stories people are more than willing to accept an implacable enemy, but rarely willing to accept an invincible one. I suppose that is a healthy viewpoint for a culture to have, from one perspective, but that doesn't necessarily make it accurate.

I would want any such winning solution to be foreshadowed at from very early on. To have it demonstrated in a small scale as the series moved forward. Have it become important enough to be noted on more as things really heated up. And have it been a solution that could work but at great cost perhaps of sacrificing entire worlds or sections of the galaxy. To put it simply, I want any such solution to be very strongly supported both in subtle ways and direct ways as the series progressed. At that point it no longer would be the crutch you are making it out to be and would instead be the plot of the game.

You wanted an entirely different game. Not a different ending. Not a different sequence. You want a fundamentally different game, and for me, one that would have been philosophically unsatisfying because it would allow you to "win" without addressing the fundamental questions that the final sequence poses.


Does that mean I wanted a different game? Sure. Like I said up top, I would not have taken the series anywhere near where it ended up. Because I didn't like where it went. But not only did I not like where it went, I do not think the did a good enough job to support the "all choices had to be bad" ending that we got, if that was actually the intention along.

I think it was, and I think you ignored the parts of the series that presaged that, either because you were constantly fighting or ignoring those choices, or because you avoided thinking about them, or because you didn't like where the game was going and so you blocked those portions out.

A couple possible solutions that make sense in universe:

- Investing everything in laser technology. Mass effect fields don't do anything to lasers and even ships with the most powerful mass effect shields are vulnerable to them. Maybe the galaxy could invest in a fleet of fast agile Normandys that defied the status quo of deflecting small, heavy, fast moving kinetic projectiles and instead dodged them and tore through the "superior" reapers with short range lasers.


That again is just a cheap plot device. It's different than the crucible, but not better. The primary problem in ME is not fighting the Reapers. They are incidental. They are the visual manifestation of the larger problem, which is about the coexistence of different life forms. They are a force that have imposed their solution, and the challenge is not to overthrow or become them (although it could be if you want) but to choose a different solution (synthesis).


No. It is very much a better solution than "pour all our resources into a device who's end goal literally nobody understands."

You're conflating in-world with out-of-world. I'm not saying that making some super-mega-weapon thingy would, in the context of the gameworld, for the characters making that decision, would be a worse solution.

What I am saying is that for Bioware to allow such a solution would be an even worse Deus Ex Machina than the one they used, because it specifically allows for a resolution that I think Bioware made clear was not going to be possible: conventional military victory.

If I'm going to stand behind any point in this discussion it's that the Crucible was the absolute stupidest part of the entire Mass Effect series. We spent all of Mass Effect 3 searching for "the catalysts" but that didn't turn out to be an exotic gas or material or type of energy... it turned out to be the freaking huge space station that the Crucible docked with, a station that every race working on the Crucible knew about. It was facepalm your head into a bloody pulp against the wall stupid and almost any solution consistent with the game's lore is better.

Yeah, dumb, I agree. I suppose the only thing one can believe is that within the story, the characters were desperate enough to cling to any hope whatsoever, and that is what they got. For the purpose of the story, it's just a bridge that gets us to the real final confrontation.


Beyond that, one of the last major accomplishments you are able to make in Mass Effect 3 before the ending sequence and battles is convincing the Quarians and Geth to coexist without controlling, destroying, or merging with each other. Why show peaceful separate coexistence between organic and synthetic life if the three choices you intended to present to players all along did not include that choice? It does not make any sense.

I'll refresh my memory when we reach the last game in our LP series, but if I recall, achieving that was not one of the easier things in the game, on a par with saving Wrex in the first one, and I seem to remember it being underscored at the time that the peace was not a permanent solution.


(Yes, in some cases a Geth mind would temporarily exist within a Quarian's environmental suit to help speed the immune system adaption to their homeworld but that was temporary, voluntary, and the goal was to allow the Quarians to stop needing their suits so it has very little relation to the synthesis ending which was permanent and involuntary for all the trillions of life forms who were not Commander Shepard.)


-Do something with the static charge buildup that comes along with using element zero mass effect drives. As I recall, the fiction was if a starship continued using its mass effect core the electrical charge imbalance would eventually be unmanageable and the core would discharge into its host ship badly damaging it or outright destroying it. And the established ways to discharge a ship were to interact with the atmosphere or magnetic field of a planet or other large object. Well, who has the biggest, most power mass effect cores? The Reapers! Sure, make them invincible and unstoppable but with a weakness that nobody ever had the smarts or guts or forces to exploit. Maybe the big plan would be to have enough forces and tactics to keep the Reapers fighting and using their mass effect shields and drives while somehow denying them the ability to discharge their static buildup. This could be a galaxy wide hold the line scenario where not having gotten a race's or group's support would cause massive losses, especially for that race, and allow for everything from a total loss to various partial wins to an outright win depending on your success throughout the entire series. To keep the player involved in gameplay, maybe it's your fleets that keep each Reaper occupied and away from planets while ground teams have to go in and destroy critical discharge hardware or something...

I don't know... maybe combine the two... maybe something else. Like I said, I don't have a clear idea of exactly what should have been done. But, in the end, the way we delayed the Reapers in ME1 was great because it exploited a small flaw in their plans. The way we stopped the Collectors in ME2 was great because it put the emphasis heavily on teamwork and good team choices while still letting the player's moment to moment actions matter. Mass Effect 3? It pretty much did neither. It didn't utilize its own fiction effectively and as much as I love ME3's core gameplay loop, the ending wasn't even close to as effective exploiting and building off of gameplay as ME2's was.


ME3 used its fiction amazingly; just the parts of it that many people ignored in favor of clever ways of, well, shooting aliens in the face.


Again. Too reductionist for me. Either have a conversation or don't.

Sorry, I don't think I'm required to meet your arbitrary standard for reductionism. All of the above reads to me like "have a different McGuffin that lets me win the battle" and that, to me, sounds cheap and silly.

How does static buildup explore the theme of race relations? You're dealing with this on the level of plot devices, and I don't care about that because I'm discussing the themes. Finding some trick that wins the battle means you resolve the conflict the same way Illusive Man wants to; the only difference is the nature of the trick. In fact, turning Indoctrination to your benefit is exactly the kind of trick you're suggesting. If that's your thing, what's wrong with that ending? It also conveniently means that the central question-- can organic and synthetic lifeforms coexist without conflict-- is either unaddressed entirely, or answered by "yes-- as long as I'm on the winning side"! And that's the part I find cheap, because while I think Bioware wanted to allow players to choose that, they didn't want to allow them to feel good about it.

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What I would have written

by Ragashingo ⌂, Official DBO Cryptarch, Friday, February 12, 2016, 10:40 (2968 days ago) @ narcogen

Yup. You wanted it to be something different than its creators intended.

Indeed. Because sometimes the creators get it wrong. I firmly believe that Mass Effect is one of those cases because the ending completely and utterly failed to live up to the rest of the series.

ME2's mission could end up costing the lives of part of your crew, depending on how you play it. You spend most of the game working for a human supremacist group that you either hate or probably SHOULD hate. If you do a certain DLC mission, you end up causing the deaths of 300,000 aliens, supposedly justified by saving millions or billions more. Necessary, perhaps yes. True victory of a hero? Very debatable.

I played Mass Effect 2 taking command of Cerberus' resources, turning its people to my side, and ultimately defying its leader and stealing its most advanced starship. I never, ever, worked for them. And those 300,000 Batarians? I seem to recall a Codex entry in Mass Effect 3 that states that an Alliance team undertakes the same mission if you don't but does not warn the nearby colony and results in millions of additional deaths and the complete loss of that commando team. So yeah, I was a hero.

I'll refresh my memory when we reach the last game in our LP series, but if I recall, achieving that was not one of the easier things in the game, on a par with saving Wrex in the first one, and I seem to remember it being underscored at the time that the peace was not a permanent solution.

I'm working my way there myself so I'll have exact quotes in a few days, but from what I recall, you are absolutely wrong. The Geth were extremely conciliatory. They didn't just end their blockade of the Quarian homeworld, they actively suggested the best places for the Quarians to resettle, they helped build infrastructure for the Quarians, and had already begun to play an active role in helping to repair the Quarian's atrophied immune systems with the result that the Quarians alive at that moment would have a chance to live without their suits instead of the acclamation process taking generations.

Saving both the Geth and Quarians is the hardest thing in the game. I believe it requires having taken the correct actions in Mass Effect 1, 2, and 3, and holding out when hope of ending the conflict between the two fleets seems lost, and finally using a reputation interrupt in the final seconds of the upload countdown. It is the best example of the player's choices mattering and an example of organics and synthetics coexisting which is why it is such a travesty that your actions get completely wiped out roughly an hour later by the ending.

How does static buildup explore the theme of race relations? You're dealing with this on the level of plot devices, and I don't care about that because I'm discussing the themes.

Wrong. My example solutions are only viable if you spent the three games of the series confronting those themes. A victory wouldn't be achieved is spite of or by ignoring those themes, it would be the reward for interacting with them and addressing them over and over and over again.

Throughout Mass Effect you are constantly dealing with races who at a minimum don't like each other (Humans vs Turians), who are locked in an eternal stalemate (Quarians vs Geth), and at worst who, if given the chance, would commit xenocide on a galaxy wide scale (Krogran vs everyone). Ultimately, any victory vs the Reapers in my examples requires three games worth of caring about and dealing with those themes. If you don't save every race and have the correct leadership in charge of every race then my solutions result in either a total fail or a devastating partial fail.

Rewarding the player with a partial or total victory based on them interacting with the theme of race relations and coexistance seems a lot better to me than wiping all the player's choices out at the very very very end of the series. Remember, the four potential endings were: Destroy (Reapers & Geth & EDI all die), Synthesis (Geth no longer exist as a distinct race after the player spent three games working to save them), Everyone dies (all the player's work is undone) or Control (a solution that was extremely heavily implied to be both morally wrong and not actually possible).

Sorry, I don't think I'm required to meet your arbitrary standard for reductionism. All of the above reads to me like "have a different McGuffin that lets me win the battle" and that, to me, sounds cheap and silly.

Your idea that Bioware always intended the series to end badly ignores that the player spent the series interacting with and potentially resolving several major race relation based conflicts, could save several races from extinction, and can prove the Reapers' entire grand idea about synthetics always destroying organics wrong. If all you see is a McGuffin in suggested solutions that reward the player for engaging with the philosophical and technological themes present in the games then you clearly aren't putting effort into looking. I think you're far too busy reducing others' ideas into insultingly simple statements like "have a different McGuffin that lets me win the battle."

And you know what? You do have to meet my standards if you want to talk to me. You haven't, so this is the last time I engage you on anything. Worse, you have now shown repeatedly that you are incapable of having a discussion without reducing other's arguments until they are completely unrecognizable and completely different from their intent. This thread is just one of the milder examples of you doing so and I see now that I should have never responded to you based on your past history alone, much less on your conduct in this thread.

In the immortal words of Willy Wonka:

"You lose! Good day, sir!"

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What I would have written

by narcogen ⌂ @, Andover, Massachusetts, Friday, February 12, 2016, 12:32 (2968 days ago) @ Ragashingo

Yup. You wanted it to be something different than its creators intended.


Indeed. Because sometimes the creators get it wrong. I firmly believe that Mass Effect is one of those cases because the ending completely and utterly failed to live up to the rest of the series.

I think it did. Do you happen to think this is some kind of objective fact that can be determined?

Saving both the Geth and Quarians is the hardest thing in the game. I believe it requires having taken the correct actions in Mass Effect 1, 2, and 3, and holding out when hope of ending the conflict between the two fleets seems lost, and finally using a reputation interrupt in the final seconds of the upload countdown. It is the best example of the player's choices mattering and an example of organics and synthetics coexisting which is why it is such a travesty that your actions get completely wiped out roughly an hour later by the ending.

Indeed. A very satisfying mission. If your criticism is that the finale fails to live up to that, then I'd concede the point, but sometimes that is just how things turn out, especially in a complex work.

How does static buildup explore the theme of race relations? You're dealing with this on the level of plot devices, and I don't care about that because I'm discussing the themes.


Wrong. My example solutions are only viable if you spent the three games of the series confronting those themes.

The games do. If you, as a player, did not, then that was your choice, but it seems to me that the creators of the game wanted you to.

A victory wouldn't be achieved is spite of or by ignoring those themes, it would be the reward for interacting with them and addressing them over and over and over again.


Throughout Mass Effect you are constantly dealing with races who at a minimum don't like each other (Humans vs Turians), who are locked in an eternal stalemate (Quarians vs Geth), and at worst who, if given the chance, would commit xenocide on a galaxy wide scale (Krogran vs everyone). Ultimately, any victory vs the Reapers in my examples requires three games worth of caring about and dealing with those themes. If you don't save every race and have the correct leadership in charge of every race then my solutions result in either a total fail or a devastating partial fail.

Rewarding the player with a partial or total victory based on them interacting with the theme of race relations and coexistance seems a lot better to me than wiping all the player's choices out at the very very very end of the series. Remember, the four potential endings were: Destroy (Reapers & Geth & EDI all die), Synthesis (Geth no longer exist as a distinct race after the player spent three games working to save them), Everyone dies (all the player's work is undone) or Control (a solution that was extremely heavily implied to be both morally wrong and not actually possible).

To meet the work on its own level you'd have to accept its premises but desire a different conclusion. The relevant characters, and the framework of the fiction itself, indicates that all other things being equal, conflict between organic and synthetic lifeforms is inevitable. Since Bioware defines and controls the universe, I think it's necessary to accept that premise, and once accepted, I think the possible endings, as outlined above, necessarily follows.

To wish for some other victory condition, to ask that everyone "just get along" is naive. It is wanting something for nothing. And again, look at the race relations metaphor, these are exactly the outcomes we see: destruction, assimilation, subversion, revolution. As cultures coexist and commingle (as intermarriage is made legal, becomes acceptable, and perhaps even desirable) cultures become less distinct from one another. Sure, I'll grant that the Synthesis ending is both an extreme and literal example of that, but there you have it.

Sorry, I don't think I'm required to meet your arbitrary standard for reductionism. All of the above reads to me like "have a different McGuffin that lets me win the battle" and that, to me, sounds cheap and silly.


Your idea that Bioware always intended the series to end badly

Who said it ends badly? The Synthesis ending, to me, is not "badly". What I think Bioware intended was that positive resolution would not come without perceived cost, because there's no magical doohicky that's going to let you issue a monologue and go kick Reaper ass and then chew bubble gum.

ignores that the player spent the series interacting with and potentially resolving several major race relation based conflicts, could save several races from extinction, and can prove the Reapers' entire grand idea about synthetics always destroying organics wrong. If all you see is a McGuffin in suggested solutions that reward the player for engaging with the philosophical and technological themes present in the games then you clearly aren't putting effort into looking.

All you suggested was static buildup. All the other stuff you mentioned is already in the game, it just comes before the final conversation.

As for "proving that the Reaper's grand idea about synthetics always destroying organics wrong" you can't prove that wrong outside of Synthesis because in that universe it is not wrong. You can say you don't like that, you can say it's not an accurate reflection of the world or the universe we live in, but that's established as a fact in the canonical universe by the only relevant authority-- that all other things being equal, this is what happens. and Synthesis is presented as the only remedy with the potential to work because it is the only thing that changes the fundamental reasons for the conflict-- membership in exclusive groups. People being both Geth and Quarian is looked upon by the game's fiction as superior and preferable to continued coexistence of forever separate Geth and Quarian for those reasons. It is necessary to bring the organic-synthetic conflict down to the level of race relations as we know them, because despite every other difference they might have, members of different races in the world we know are members of the same species, can intermarry, can interbreed, can blend the social groups they are in in a real and primal way that is not possible for the different species we meet; it is an intellectual and philosophical process only. I might also imagine a world where organic and synthetic life need not ever come into conflict. If I were to predict the future of our own world, I might also be so idealistic as to say such conflict need not arise, or that should it arise, it could be remedied by measures far less drastic as presented.

But that is not the universe of Mass Effect as presented by the creators of the Mass Effect universe.

I think you're far too busy reducing others' ideas into insultingly simple statements like "have a different McGuffin that lets me win the battle."

I wasn't reducing anything. You literally had no other suggestion. You said it yourself, you defeat the Reapers through a technical process. That was it. As for the answer to the central conflict-- how is the inevitable conflict between organic and synthetic life resolved, I see your solution now is a non-solution, since you don't accept the premise, but I think that's a poor interpretation unsupported by the primary work.


And you know what? You do have to meet my standards if you want to talk to me.

In that case you better be sure not to reply, because this is me, not meeting your standards.

You haven't, so this is the last time I engage you on anything.

Okey dokey.

Worse, you have now shown repeatedly that you are incapable of having a discussion without reducing other's arguments until they are completely unrecognizable and completely different from their intent.

Stop, don't, come back.

It's not my job here or anywhere else to attempt to tease your intent out of your argument. I asked for what you would write, and you literally suggested static electricity. Before that, the thread's suggestion was space battles. I don't need to reduce these ideas, they came that way. You've literally suggested that the alternative to an (admittedly forced) racial combination of synthetic and organic life was STATIC ELECTRICITY to basically do something that defeats the Reapers. I wasn't asking for the mechanism, because one is as good as the other for the purpose at hand.

The work says organic-synthetic conflict is inevitable. Your answer is to say "no it isn't" which isn't an answer. The answer has to be in the form of what, on a fundamental level, you would change about the reality of this universe to make that not true. The game has a very strong suggestion. You've offered criticism of that suggestion with no credible alternative.

This thread is just one of the milder examples of you doing so and I see now that I should have never responded to you based on your past history alone, much less on your conduct in this thread.

My conduct in this thread? Are you joking, or are your feelings hurt? I'm sorry man, I'll go easy next time.

In the immortal words of Willy Wonka:

"You lose! Good day, sir!"

Whatever, man. I never addressed anything to you whatsoever, I was suggesting to Quirel to the effect that the ending of ME3 can be accurately predicted from just paying attention to Sovereign-- and it absolutely can. You chose to write that monologue off as standard villainous puffery, but it wasn't. It was the author speaking to the audience about what the theme of the work is-- what the essential conflict that needed to be resolved was going to be, and that such resolution was going to come at great cost.

Static electricity indeed.

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What I would have written

by narcogen ⌂ @, Andover, Massachusetts, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 23:48 (2969 days ago) @ Durandal

While I like the "humans are superior" trope, that isn't the central theme of the ME universe.

Really? I'd have argued that it absolutely is. You play a human character and are given two human crewmembers who are suspicious to the point of xenophobia about aliens. Your military commander points out that he believes you about Saren being the bad guy because he's known to hate humans. The ambassador's primary thought and motivation is that humans don't get the respect they deserve.

You'll soon encounter a shadowy group of "humans first" activists with flexible morals, and they'll become much more important in the next game, essentially becoming the real antagonist by the third.

The main question seems to be if various phila of intelligent life can coexist. The Reapers postulate that it cannot, and the risk is universal extinction.

The main question is, for me, under what conditions intelligent life can coexist. Their method is assimilation; they justify it by saying it's the same as uplifting. Races aren't destroyed, they are preserved and improved. The Reapers postulate that beyond a certain point, organic and synthetic life cannot coexist without destructive conflict.


Up till the point that Shepard enters the reaper operated Citadel, the plot is fine even though I felt the secret crucible weapon is a bit far fetched.

Of course! You're supposed to. You're supposed to suspect it. The Citadel, the Mass relays-- everything so far has actually just been part of the rat maze.

I would have preferred that they included a bit more on why earth had been sitting on the data for a massive superweapon, even after they knew the reapers both existed and were active.

Eh... there are plot holes to be sure. I'll have to wait until our playthrough reaches ME3 to refresh my memory on the circumstances there.


If anything, I would have changed the ending from the point where the reapers attempt to intercept Shepard's team from entering the teleport beam. In my version, they would enter the beam before the reinforcements arrive. This would lead to a running battle inside the Citadel as Harbinger possesses and leads husks, collectors and indoctrinated foes against you as your team tries to make it to the tower and pull the same stunt as ME1 to link it to the Crucible.

Right. So, shoot more aliens in the face. Got it. At what point do you stop, though, and what happens after that? Or are you saying that once you've shot enough aliens in the face, the problem of coexistence is resolved somehow?


Along the way you would have the option of encountering Cerberus, and the Illusive man, who are hiding out there and attempting to control the reapers.

As a faction, Cerberus is all about acquiring power in order to survive. Philosophically they are identical to the reapers in that no action is beyond them. Shepard would have a "control" type ending where he agrees to assist them in hardwiring the crucible signal to subvert control of the reapers to a central mind, either himself or the illusive man.

He could chose not to, and fight on himself to the tower, using his companions along the way much like the last mission of ME2.

Upon reaching the tower and seizing control, he opens the citadel only to have Harbinger fly in directly to destroy him. Depending on what "war asset" ships Shepard acquired, Harbinger is driven off, with some destroyed in the process. Here the science team with Shepard will start to activate the cruicble, but they realize that there are two different settings, one which affect the reapers (destroy) or everyone else (synthesis).

Admittedly, this still is a bit forced. There really isn't much build up for the synthesis ending in the ME lore.

If you mean the word is never used, yes. From a thematic standpoint it is the exact idea the series has been orbiting around the entire time. Racial hatred and the eventual conflict between organic life and the synthetic life it gives rise to are introduced from the very start, and shown over and over again. The synthesis ending is essentially a kind of interracial marriage, a suggestion that racial hatred only truly ends when the lines between groups are blurred to the point where no one can call themselves exclusively members of a single group. And when the hatred isn't just interracial, but interspecies, the introduction of synthetic elements to everyone is the only unifying factor possible.

You only shepard's rebuilding into a hybrid as a basis, but some good writing at the end could make that a salient point. I would follow up with Harbinger contacting Shepard afterwards with a "what have you done" speech, where Shepard tells him point blank that he's found a better solution then periodic genocide. That would tie nicely into the main philosophy of the Reapers, turning their horror back on themselves.

He who?


So yes, I could get the same endings Bioware wanted, just with a better logical and thematic flow that also made players feel their choices in the prior game affected the outcome. Didn't save people in ME1 or 2? You might not have that path available in the end game of 3.

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A quibble

by Durandal, Thursday, February 11, 2016, 11:11 (2969 days ago) @ narcogen

While I like the "humans are superior" trope, that isn't the central theme of the ME universe.


Really? I'd have argued that it absolutely is. You play a human character and are given two human crewmembers who are suspicious to the point of xenophobia about aliens. Your military commander points out that he believes you about Saren being the bad guy because he's known to hate humans. The ambassador's primary thought and motivation is that humans don't get the respect they deserve.

You'll soon encounter a shadowy group of "humans first" activists with flexible morals, and they'll become much more important in the next game, essentially becoming the real antagonist by the third.

I think it's pointed out fairly commonly that humans are not superior. Wrex's comments about being spaced aside, Asari live for thousands of years, are tougher and are born with space magic. Krogan are nearly impossible to kill. Turians have metal laced skin. Even Quarians are hinted to be physically tougher but have their immunity issues. So at best humans have parity with Baterians and Salarians and some advantage over the Volus.

Mostly the human government has an attitude because despite being the third largest military power and significant economic might they get treated as a 2nd tier race like the subservient Volus, to the point of having to share an Embassy rather then get one of their own. Top it off with the first major alien encounter being an assault by the Turians on a human colony and of course you are going to have a bunch of ill will from humans to the rest of the galaxy. Of course the Council is full of morons who can't lead there way out of a wet paper bag, and is revealed to be full of Orwellian Big Brother types who hide the true history of the galaxy for their own benefit, so humanity's distrust is somewhat justified.

the only real "humans are special/superior" comments I saw where naval tactics, where the human fleets use a different strategy from everyone else (and far more carriers), and ME2 with them being chosen to make a new reaper, which is in part because Shepard defeated Sovereign in ME1.

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A quibble

by narcogen ⌂ @, Andover, Massachusetts, Friday, February 12, 2016, 07:13 (2968 days ago) @ Durandal

While I like the "humans are superior" trope, that isn't the central theme of the ME universe.


Really? I'd have argued that it absolutely is. You play a human character and are given two human crewmembers who are suspicious to the point of xenophobia about aliens. Your military commander points out that he believes you about Saren being the bad guy because he's known to hate humans. The ambassador's primary thought and motivation is that humans don't get the respect they deserve.

You'll soon encounter a shadowy group of "humans first" activists with flexible morals, and they'll become much more important in the next game, essentially becoming the real antagonist by the third.


I think it's pointed out fairly commonly that humans are not superior. Wrex's comments about being spaced aside, Asari live for thousands of years, are tougher and are born with space magic. Krogan are nearly impossible to kill. Turians have metal laced skin. Even Quarians are hinted to be physically tougher but have their immunity issues. So at best humans have parity with Baterians and Salarians and some advantage over the Volus.

Mostly the human government has an attitude because despite being the third largest military power and significant economic might they get treated as a 2nd tier race like the subservient Volus, to the point of having to share an Embassy rather then get one of their own. Top it off with the first major alien encounter being an assault by the Turians on a human colony and of course you are going to have a bunch of ill will from humans to the rest of the galaxy. Of course the Council is full of morons who can't lead there way out of a wet paper bag, and is revealed to be full of Orwellian Big Brother types who hide the true history of the galaxy for their own benefit, so humanity's distrust is somewhat justified.

the only real "humans are special/superior" comments I saw where naval tactics, where the human fleets use a different strategy from everyone else (and far more carriers), and ME2 with them being chosen to make a new reaper, which is in part because Shepard defeated Sovereign in ME1.

Perhaps I've not been clear. I'm arguing against the idea that the game pushes the idea of humans as superior. It exposes that theme for the lie it is. It puts those words in some of your allies and many more of your enemies. The game is there to explore and debunk that idea, not glorify it-- which the many things you point about above demonstrate.

It's also worth noting that if you sympathize with Cerberus and spend the series hanging out with Kaidan and Ashley, you're going to get an earful about Those Damn Aliens, and you may well discount what the others say. After all, the game does let you kill the council, replace them with humans, and put Udina in charge. I forget to what extent it lets you side with Illusive Man through 2 and 3 because it never, ever occurred to me to do it, but he ends up being the primary source for the "humans first" viewpoint.

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I don't think that means what you think it means...

by Durandal, Friday, February 12, 2016, 14:23 (2968 days ago) @ narcogen

"I'm not deficient. I'm SUPERIOR! Humans. Are. Superior."
— John Crichton, Farscape

The humans are superior trope is that humans are objectively better then aliens in the factors that matter. Not that they have racist attitudes against non-humans, although that tends to be present to some degree.

You seem to conflate the distrust and dislike of humans with the trope. Bioware looks at the politics of the universe at large, where humans are not special or superior, and other aliens reactions to humans are explored.

Saren hating humans is a big point of ME1. The earth first groups and attitudes are a foil to that. Is there a difference between him and Ashley/Kaiden? Why? Given how manipulative and disrespectful the Asari, Turians and Salarians are, is some suspicion of their motives justified? We see several instances of racism against humans from other aliens throughout the series.

When I invoked the trope, I was not referencing these politics or attitudes, just the Collectors specifically targeting humans to the exception of other races due to plot mcguffins.

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I don't think that means what you think it means...

by narcogen ⌂ @, Andover, Massachusetts, Saturday, February 13, 2016, 02:25 (2967 days ago) @ Durandal


When I invoked the trope, I was not referencing these politics or attitudes, just the Collectors specifically targeting humans to the exception of other races due to plot mcguffins.

I wasn't even thinking about that.

I actually didn't mean to invoke that particular trope, the idea that humans are better, but more the tendency of many works to make humans somehow special-- to make the works about humanity, and to make a universe in which humans are somehow special. The way Halo eventually did, first by hinting that Humans were the same as, or descendants of, the Forerunners, and then by turning them into something even better than that in the distant past. Or the way ME sort of does, by virtue of the fact that even though the Reapers are eventually foiled by a coalition of all races, the one person who gets to make the call about how things end is a human, and there's no option to play a non-Human Shepard.

I'd say it's a variation on the trope, where although humans are clearly not in a superior position in ME's status quo, there are those who believe that it is OK to put the good of your race above the good of all others, or above the need to adhere to certain standards of behavior.

One can argue that the humans are no more racist than some of the non-human races are. It just seems to me that some of the aliens you meet dislike humans, and some don't, but nearly all the humans except Shepard and Anderson are either suspicious of other races (Alenko) or downright xenophobic (Williams).

Humans appear to be the last spacefaring race to the party, and yet many (Udina, Illusive Man) feel they deserve better treatment for some indeterminate reason, despite the fact that other races that are presumably more advanced and have been spacefaring for longer also don't have seats on the council (Volus, Hanar, Batarian, Elcor).

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That is when the Reapers are at their best.

by Cody Miller @, Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 17:52 (2969 days ago) @ narcogen

Funny how that game so clearly communicates that message, and yet we still get an outcry at the end of the trilogy that the universe didn't properly take into account all the protagonist's choices.

That's such a cop out. It's fine to do it once, but at this point it's all so annoying. Choice in games should mean my choices matter.

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That is when the Reapers are at their best.

by narcogen ⌂ @, Andover, Massachusetts, Thursday, February 11, 2016, 00:53 (2969 days ago) @ Cody Miller

Funny how that game so clearly communicates that message, and yet we still get an outcry at the end of the trilogy that the universe didn't properly take into account all the protagonist's choices.


That's such a cop out. It's fine to do it once, but at this point it's all so annoying. Choice in games should mean my choices matter.

Your choices DO matter. But not in the way people expected, and that was fully and completely the point.

What people really wanted was a way to "solve" the problem with their trigger finger. They didn't get it and that was the real complaint.

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Mass Effect: Sovereign

by stabbim @, Des Moines, IA, USA, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 19:42 (2969 days ago) @ CyberKN

That conversation is the only time in my life I can remember feeling genuinely intimidated by an imaginary character. I don't know how to communicate exactly why or how they did it, but they managed to convey such a terrifying sense of utter contempt and superiority from Sovereign. Most villains sound like they're putting on a front to be scary, Sovereign didn't. It sounded so completely sure that you started to believe it.

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It ain't a proper villain without a good monologue.

by Quirel, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 02:13 (2970 days ago) @ MacAddictXIV

Frank Fontaine:

Andrew Ryan:

Xykon:

[image]

General Tarkin:

[image]

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Does Darth Revan count?

by Leviathan ⌂, Hotel Zanzibar, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 03:26 (2970 days ago) @ MacAddictXIV

As others have said:

-Sephiroth in FFVII
-Prophet of Truth in Halo 2
-Reapers in Mass Effect 1

Also:

-Liquid Snake in MGS (every time I say "brother!", I say it in his voice)
-Lynx from Chrono Cross
-The Joker in the Arkham trilogy
-A number of villains in the GTA series (and Red Dead), though none of them really stand out in particular.

Speaking outside of video games:

-The One Ring
-Henry Fonda in Once Upon a Time In the West
-Magneto - when he's in the moral grey and not painted as purely maniacal.
-Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner
-All of the Dark Knight Trilogy's villains, plus the foes in Burton's two Batmans.
-The villain in Unbreakable
-Darth Vader, pre-children-murdering
...and let's say Darth Maul too, because he was pretty cool, despite not being in the film much.
-Alan Moore's Joker
-The Corinthian from Sandman
-Walter White

I guess I just love villains you find yourself agreeing with at times (the Joker), or have the same motivations of the protagonist but are going about solving the problem in a different way (like Ras in Batman Begins). I also love when the lines aren't so decisively drawn and you find the hero and villain working together (Magneto or The Master from classic Doctor Who).

Kefka

by Avateur @, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 03:43 (2970 days ago) @ MacAddictXIV

Some people just want to watch the world burn.

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Destiny Category.

by Morpheus @, High Charity, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 05:41 (2970 days ago) @ MacAddictXIV

Sepiks Prime, Tanniks, and The Warpriest. And Alak-Hul. S.A.B.E.R.-2, Phogoth, Zydron, etc. I love those guys!

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Who is your favorite bad guy?

by stabbim @, Des Moines, IA, USA, Wednesday, February 10, 2016, 20:04 (2969 days ago) @ MacAddictXIV

What makes him great is how much he truly believes he is the good guy in the story yet he is an absolutely horrible person.

Thus leading to his brilliant "bad guys" monologue:

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Who is your favorite bad guy?

by MacAddictXIV @, Seattle WA, Thursday, February 11, 2016, 13:22 (2969 days ago) @ stabbim

What makes him great is how much he truly believes he is the good guy in the story yet he is an absolutely horrible person.


Thus leading to his brilliant "bad guys" monologue:

That's my favorite Handsome Jack line in the game :-)

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