The BioWare and Mass Effect Thread!

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While I like Lovecraft, I've never found anything particularly terrifying in anything I've read by him. Maybe only in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (the starving abominations in the pits).

If there are beings to whom we are but ants, the fact that our concerns are completely beneath them seems so natural to me that there can not be anything terrifying about it. The fact that your concerns are completely insignificant to those under whose heel you are but an ant seems merely natural, nothing terrifying whatsoever. Maybe the fact that humans are reduced to the role of ants could be seen as terrifying to some but for me it seems like - k, so someone's way higher up on the food chain than we are, tough luck I guess.

I never said I find Lovecraft terrifying, either - when I said terrifying, I meant it in context of the story, for the protagonist/narrator, not the reader. For me, it's unnerving at best, after all, the gap between the time of publication and time of reading is filled with all sorts of shit that's way scarier than most of what he'd written, and that shit exists for reals. Besides, I also agree that the "smaller" level horror works better, since, well, if a Space God crushes the Earth by accident, you've got no say in it anyway, it'll just happen. Yeah, it's scary and I'm p.sure I'd be pants-off terrified if that were about to happen, but it's a different sort of horror altogether.

Vaarna_Aarne , this is an interesting concept, though obviously both completely different from what Bioware intended to do and what their focus group would likely buy.

Personally I think the series would have been helped tremendously had Bioware actually designed (or at least outlined) the trilogy completely before the first game and then stuck to it. ME2 and ME3 are really just the writers using whatever they deem cool at the moment and it shows.
Much of the derp could have been prevented with a proper outline spanning the entire trilogy from the start.

Alternatively they should have dropped the entire Reapers idea in favour of an actual "Sheperd the Spectre" series - it would have been much closer to their prefered way of writing (i.e. pulling shit out of their ass and going with it, no matter if it fits with the rest) and probably offered more interesting and varied games, too.

By the time you have finished typing "Lovecraftian evil" you've already failed in your argument. "Cosmic horror" isn't evil, it is horrifying because you're not able to comprehend it. By claiming that Elder Things (TM) of Lovecraft mythos are somehow comprehensible and understandable you are already demonstrating a great lack of reading comprehension. Lesser beings always try to force meaning and reason on things they are terrified by. The reader and the protagonist both.

Lovecraftian horror is horror of scale. You may claim you comprehend the vast emptiness of the space, but we can feel your cock shrivelling all the way from here.

I think ME1 did a decent job at establishing the Reapers as a mysterious and powerful force.

The ME2 and 3 came with lolcollectors and stupid motivations shitting on everything the first ME created.

Hence why I say space gods exist to give superheroes and giant mecha something to beat up.

In regards to personal favourite scare in Lovecraft, I'd say three stories: Colour Out Of Space (no cookie for guessing), Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn And His Family (I just find its descriptions of people flipping the fuck out quite unnerving, and the image of the deformed retard children locked away in the dark room Jermyn walks into with a shotgun in hand sends the chills down my spine), and The Music Of Erich Zann (I once pulled a retake of Lovecraft's own semi-fanfiction thing with Outsider, and made a version of Music from Erich Zann's perspective). Generally I'd agree that Lovecraft's at his best when he keeps things lower key (though even his oft-credited cosmic beings are still pre-WMD scale). The Rats In The Wall is another good example of this. A human monster is always scarier than a monster (this is where his racemixing phobia came in handy I'd say, his hybridization horrors are often far more intriguing than his aliens and spacegods). tl;dr: Lovecraft's horror was good because of the very personal and individualistic element suffusing it, not because of spacegods and "cosmicness".

Pish-posh, most of his creations are blatantly evil. Claiming you aren't evil because of having a different moral code or a different scale is relativist bullshit, and often a misguided attempt at creating "depth" to a work (see: Reapers).

Also, [nerd]the Elder Things are a specific type of alien in the Mythos (they were the ones central to At The Mountains of Madness), and not godlike at all. The general reference term to the big spacegods is Great Old Ones.[/nerd]

Not really. The mysterious and powerful force turns out to be completely ineffective with their own creations, the creatures that have serviced the station for millenia suddenly do not work. Dunno, maybe this is because of Human Special Role - maybe some human stuck his special DNA into each one of them and so they went out of control, but be it as it may, that's the first sign of derp.

Plus the ineffectiveness of indoctrinating just Saren and a handful around him, as well as the "Universal baddies", the Geth. No sleeper agents, no shocking revelations of secret agents in highest ranks... I'm guessing they're mysteriously inefficient for a force that can wait millenia to set their plans in motion. Why not build things up for a hundred years, what's the rush?

I'm not saying they were TEH BEST VILLAINS EVER, ZOMG, but they worked pretty well. Powerful invaders you don't want to fuck with. One reaper was enough to almost destroy the whole citadel until Shepard did whatever he did to Saren.

They were functional and worked, to me.

It worked well enough for the duration of ME1 (although it could have done better, undoubtedly).
I agree that the motifs and story up to the end of ME1 have been salvageable, maybe with the exception of too large reliance on cliché. It became FUBAR after that.

Well, suppose that I could agree that they're inobtrusive in ME1, and kinda sorta work. My big problem with them is that they have all the time in the world but don't build a network of supporters that can stall the whole society. Which they could've done with ease. O well.

I might play that game if it was made. To fit it in and get past the ME1 REAPERS ARE COMING, you could simply have the reaper open the citadel (I havent played the game but from reading posts I think I have put together the plot piecemeal enough) and succeed in his job to open the portal, except the reapers never come, they all died/got wiped out by a random event. Poof there goes the super big bad, Spectre Shep then kills the last reaper in existence (super tought fight BOSS BATTLE EXTREME!, then goes on to pwn face for two more sequels as the first human collar grabbing spectre. Then he could do the Kirk 'fuck your way across the galaxy' and it wouldnt be so out of place because of 'impending doom!!!!'

http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/355/index/12758618#12758842

This is the key to understanding the emotional maturity of hipster class.

Hahahahah!

The most hilarious part is that not only is that grade Ö shlock, but the fact that one of the things ripped off had a far more moving relationship finale (anyone who has seen Gurren Lagann knows what I'm talking about).

Apparently there's a talk about a future DLC in which you would play as another character and rescue Shepard. EA strikes again

ARTISTIC INTEGRITY! Should that be Artistic MAJESTY!? MAJESTIC Integrity?

Naw nigga you'll play as LI of your choice. Or Conrad.

The "I want to be a dragon" jokes just write themselves.

ME3 WINS AGAINZ!

what

Pictures like these creep the hell out of me.

they're funny