Review Mass Effect 3: A Narratological Review

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Holy shit!

MMXI

Menckenstein never called me back =(

EDIT: Oh well, at least cross-board posting is over!

What? I haven't read this thread. What's going on?

waaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh Phaedon mentioned RPGs and their definition and implied not considering new games RPGs is bad, you masturbate to this sort of thing, so I thought this could interest you

I think you're confusing our MMXI with Wizardry from another forum.

Thank fuck for this article.

I'm really tired with this bandwagon hate of the ME3 ending, as if the story was not entirely shit from day one. The nerds are doing fits because the ending makes no sense at all, which I suppose is legitimate, after all the game mostly made sense within the nonsense parameters it gave itself. But I'm really amused that logical fallacies give these untermensch genuine emotional distress. It's as if these people don't know anything about esthetic value, so they hold on to logic as a standard to what is worthy of their interest and emotional endorsement. It's really utterly pathetic how dead inside they really are. Like most of you of course, but at least you still know hate.

On the other hand you have a minority of hipsters who say that the ending was a stroke of genius, and I'd be kind of tempted to side with them since I am a hipster faggot, but really I find the lulz factor and all the crying surrounding this very enjoyable. The ending WAS a wild change of tone from the rest of the series, as TNO pointed out. Personally it just kind of amused me, I didn't really think about it. I was actually a bit surprised at the outrage that came from it, but then I suppose I really should have expected it, I'm getting rusty in my understanding of the good hard-working people

So am I the only one that keeps reading her name as Mylia Stench, or what

it can't be a she

No. I masturbate to oiled lesbians with big boobs. I don't masturbate to the droning of BioDrones.

Also, this:

sounds like I confused you with that Wizardry guy mentioned earlier, then

I know I do. If I ever met a girl with a name like that I would ask how much she douches.

I tried but I didn't have enough War Readiness score to get that ending.



edit: truth is... my work blocked bioware's forums with their web filter for pornography / sexual material.

Had a good laugh, then I wept.

BSN does have groups like this.

That's prolly the tip of the iceberg too.

Seboist Like a Loverslab splinter cell.

That doesn't seem so different from our own Tits Crowd (NSFW), though perhaps a bit more pretentious.

The key difference is that the 'Dex doesn't have a policy against nudity on it's main boards and ban people for it....

I took a peak at bsn replies and found them as disappoin6ting as expected... of course.
but... then one guy went on and claimed that Hyperion cantos.... is like ass effect... or ass effect is like Hyperion cantos... and of course totally missed what both are about because his brain is damaged.
I read a lot of stupid shit here almost every day but that... man... thats like singularity of stupidity.
Its beyond any words...

that was the last fucking straw.


Anyway, i quite like what smudboy does in his review and his and TNOs review are good companions.
The latest from smudboy:

I thought we did?

Amioran,

I would imagine an analysis of these themes was omitted from the review because they were deemed to be present in the narrative in such a superficial way that it didn't warrant specific mention, that it didn't lend to the game any merit beyond the concrete events of the story. In other words, because the game shouldn't be judged based on how well it deals with such themes, because it's primarily a goofy video game about fighting giant robots from space, and to even expect it to treat a larger theme like "order vs. chaos" in some meaningful way would be unfair.

It is relevant that the Starchild doesn't make sense in terms of the concrete narrative, even if his presence is consistent with a superficially present theme, when his presence isn't justified by his saying something meaningful about the theme with which he is (perhaps) consistent and when it's so out of the blue on the level of the concrete events and of the tone of the trilogy so far. All you're left with is the jarring effect of the concrete turn of events.

I don't know how to satisfy your requirement here without your first elaborating on the positive side of the argument. I'm baffled as to where you think the theme is treated meaningfully in the game. I can see it in other works, but not in Mass Effect except occasionally and on the most superficial level. Yes, the theme of order vs. chaos "is" there, a little bit, but how the narrative around it treats on the theme is beyond me - if anything, the more specifically I think of it, the more the story seems to fall apart as a treatment of any theme.

I'll try and present some of the issues with the story in terms of the dichotomy you talk about, even if it often seems like a forced and awkward way to go at it. Sometimes the dichotomy doesn't seem relevant at all, but perhaps it's a fault in my understanding of the theme. Again, these plot issues wouldn't be a problem if the story was accepted as a cheesy James Bond-y space opera, but I'd like to understand where you're coming from with this appeal to the overarching theme.

Perhaps you can try to do the same from the opposite side of the argument, and mention some specific instances where you can see the theme at work? (or we can just agree to disagree, that'll be fine too)

- Why do the Reapers come out of hiding every now and then, letting the vegetation grow as it pleases, rather than patrolling the galaxy, if their purpose is specifically to enforce order? Even if they wish to/have been created to allow freedom as long as it may continue without destroying itself, why do they destroy civilization in a chaotic, uncertain and destructive war that lasts centuries rather than developing better weapons while they are out in space? Why not use chemical warfare, readily available as just demonstrated in the magic genophage cure on Tuchanka, to cleanly end the war before it begins, also preventing stragglers from surviving or informing the next cycle? If the Citadel is a Reaper construction, why doesn't it indoctrinate everyone on board, shut down the other relays and bring in the armada by itself? Why was the Sovereign plot of ME1 necessary at all?
- Why did Shepard's making it into the Citadel at the end mean the Starchild's solution would no longer work, as it specifically says, especially as the Starchild itself had to help the unconscious Shepard reach it? Why not trap Shepard inside, or kill her, and just post some guards by the entrance next time, or stop the Star Trek beam for the duration of the assault, or consider taking the Citadel to safety in the first place rather than ridiculously bringing it into the warzone for the Crucible to to its magic?
- The Reapers must have known about the Crucible project from previous cycles, and about the potential in the Citadel to stop them, so why wasn't the Citadel properly defended and the Crucible sabotaged/attacked before its completion? How did the Reapers ever win a cycle in the past when they're this incompetent?
- The sudden appearance of the Crucible as a plot device. The Prothean communications about their plight were stored as flashbacks in the beacons, a format too sophisticated for the present cycle to understand without Shepard's cipher. Somehow the Crucible plans were stored in an understandable way so that they might show up on the nick of time, but it never dawned on the Protheans to give a plain warning in the same way about the Reapers despite the proliferation of ruins and artifacts they left behind (or to point out the location of the plans, or to hide more copies around, or to give a warning about the nature of the Citadel in all this, or...).
- Very relevant to our theme here, why does Shepard submit to the choices the Starchild offers, rather than allow the battle to play out to the end as it will, given that her nature has been to rebel against the Reapers at every turn? Why does she trust the Starchild, even? (Isn't Shepard's rebellion against the overwhelming force of the reapers a central theme until the last five minutes of the game, when suddenly this defining trait is tamed without explanation and in the most jarring manner?) If the Reapers are winning the fight so thoroughly that Shepard has no choice but to comply, then why do the Reapers need a new solution in the first place?
- The Starchild controls the Reapers. He says the Reaper solution won't work anymore, so why continue attacking the Crucible, and why require Shepard to do a thing on the spot, destroying herself and the Citadel and the relays, rather than simply calling off the Reapers himself? Why allow the previously rebellious Shepard to decide about, and potentially control, his legion of order?
- Also, the ending options seem to have been built into the Citadel, so how did the Crucible change the Starchild, and what was the point of the cycles if the magic of synthesis was available from the beginning? (I may have misunderstood the specifics of the ending, because it seems completely incoherent) If Shepard was the first to make it to the Starchild and the three options of the Citadel, how could the Crucible have been designed through the cycles to affect him? If the Starchild designed the original Crucible as a contingency plan (silly), how did the Crucible create "new possiblities" in him?
- The magical synthesis option makes no sense in the framework of the established "science". Yes, it is vaguely consistent with the underlying theme, but the concrete execution seems flawed because no mechanism of any kind was ever offered for how this might work. It's magic, introduced at the last moment, and seems to be in conflict with how the setting functioned until that point.

I don't see how the philosophical theme can be used to solve these (and other) issues with the concrete storyline, at all, or how these events of the concrete story serve the philosophical theme. None of it seems to make any sense.

Regarding the TSOM logo... respect.

Nice wall of text in response to the retards argument of "lol its too deep4u im not explaining here is a list of stuff".

Successful troll is successful.

Decent review. Tries too hard to portray the game in a negative light however, and you don't even have to look passed the first few paragraphs to notice several mistakes:

Except it wasn't anywhere even close to the combined might of the galaxy. It wasn't even the combined Citadel forces.

That's, uh, kind of the point. It's supposed to be a hopeless situation, how many times did Hackett say you can't beat the reapers conventionally? The catalyst is the only hope, and you've got to struggle to unite the galaxy.

Indeed they don't (though they do move it), and if you paid attention you'd know the reason for this is that they need the citadel and it is a very important part of continuing their cycle. But I guess you'd say that's just a silly excuse or something, like all explanations for things you deem 'plot holes.'

I disagree with your opinions in regards to the writing (I think it's fine, even very good in places) and the overall quality of the game, but that's just my opinion. I completely agree with your thoughts on the ending and C&C; in fact, I think you're a little too forgiving on that issue if anything. Any and all choices are made worthless by the idiotic ending - you might as well have 0 war assets, it doesn't matter.

Oh boy.... WELL WE CAN SEE BY THE FIRST PARAGRAPH THAT YOURE JUST STUPID!
It wasnt any forces of citadel at all because Sovereign went through those like hot knife through butter and it eventually went down BECAUSE the all mighty Shepard killed the ... what was his name... that guy rogue spectre... which then somehow, magically made Sovereign shields go down and whatnot.
Fuck off.

And yet you shoot one down by a single fucking blast from a handgun.
Duh.

Youre fucking stupid. Reapers need the citadel...somehow, to take control of the mass relays... although they made each and presumably can totally control that technology... otherwise they are subservient to their own technology. Which is totally retarded in the context that the first game provided. It was fucking retarded even in the first game.

And they then move it to fucking Earth while they leave one relay open so fucking Shepard and later whole galactic fleet can also get to the Earth.

Youre fucking not only stupid but a deranged moron.

oh boy oh boy