Lhynn
Arcane
- Joined
- Aug 28, 2013
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In what way?Mass Effect is a Star Wars derivative, by the way.
In what way?Mass Effect is a Star Wars derivative, by the way.
One could argue that the setting has enough differences, but it's still very much based on KotOR in almost every aspect. The universe was also inspired by Star Wars, admittedly so.In what way?
How? i simply cannot see any parallel between the two, at all.One could argue that the setting has enough differences, but it's still very much based on KotOR in almost every aspect. The universe was also inspired by Star Wars, admittedly so.
Maybe that was the initial idea, but other than the paragon/renegade crap i just dont see it.Uh..by BioWare devs? Ever since the game was first shown in the X05/06 and E3 06 they said they were building on what they'd created with KotOR but wanted their own universe. Not that ME is derivative per se, my point was that he said Alpha Protocol was based on Mass Effect, but then Mass Effect was based on a previous game (KotOR) as well.
Force powers, hot blue aliens. ShrugMaybe that was the initial idea, but other than the paragon/renegade crap i just dont see it.
ME1 structure is pretty much the same as well. Shamus explained it better than I could:Maybe that was the initial idea, but other than the paragon/renegade crap i just dont see it.
AP takes a lot out of the dialogue from bioware, especially the basic mechanics, but also the storytelling style, like the 3 big missions you can do in any order (tho mass effect allowed you to skip all of them i think, or at least 2). You can see how a lot of ideas from ME went to AP, where they were improved upon for the most part.
The other thing I find interesting about the location structure of Mass Effect is how similar it is to Knights of the Old Republic. You have a brief section aboard the (Endar Spire / Normandy) followed by the tutorial area. (Taris / Eden Prime.) Then you go to the area of MASSIVE WORLDBUILDING AND EXPOSITION DUMP (Dantooine / Citadel) where you become a (Jedi / Spectre). Then you’re finally free to move around in your own ship and choose to do three mandatory locations in any order. Once those are done, you have the stakes-raising chokepoint mission on (Leviathan / Virmire). Then you go to the hidden mystery world of (Rakata / Iilos) where the BIG SECRETS ARE REVEALED, which leads to the final battle on the (Star Forge / Citadel).
It’s not an exact matchup. Taris was massive compared to Eden Prime, and KOTOR has an extra location to visit between the chokepoint and the endgame, but the similarities are still really blatant. (Jade Empire also has a similar structure, but it doesn’t map quite as neatly as the other two.)
Thats just standard bioware storytelling, theres even a table somewhere that someone will undoubtedly post again.ME1 structure is pretty much the same as well. Shamus explained it better than I could:
The force is not comparable in any way with biotics tho, not even a practical one. Also the force is more of a philosophy. biotics on the other hand is more of a mutation enhanced by technological implants and even medicine.Force powers, hot blue aliens. Shrug
I dont think that word means what you think it means.I don't think you can draw a bright line between 90's sci-fi serials and Star Wars
Babylon 5 is essentially fantasy
Not really, the central conflict of star wars is that of good vs evil, what shapes they take is irrelevant. Now while i didnt really watch much of babilon 5, what i did see showed none of that bullcrap you are making up, tho there is a possibility it was there, it certainly wasnt the central theme of the story. As it went for a more grounded approach, visiting themes like religion, and social, political and racial problems.Star Wars at least refrained from making it's central conflict one between space angels and space demons.
Again, you dont seem to understand what fantasy implies and what sci fi implies. But basically if theres an attempt of explaining shit in any scientific way, its sci fi. How plausible or grounded that explanation is doesnt matter, it only has weight on how good it as a representative of the genre.Star Trek TOS veered wildly in tone from one episode to another, meaning that there were quite a few episodes that were as much space fantasy as Star Wars. How many sword fights should a space captain plausible have?
Sure, but its those differences that change the entire genre. One tries really hard to justify all the stuff thats happening, the other is a made up line in a movie that was made like 20 after it would have been of any relevance.The differences between the pseudoscientific justification for powers granted by whatever it is biotics claim to do and midiclorians are pretty superficial. Either way, it's techno-babble offering some kind of explanation for mind powers.
I dont think that word means what you think it means.
Not really, the central conflict of star wars is that of good vs evil, what shapes they take is irrelevant. Now while i didnt really watch much of babilon 5, what i did see showed none of that bullcrap you are making up, tho there is a possibility it was there, it certainly wasnt the central theme of the story. As it went for a more grounded approach, visiting themes like religion, and social, political and racial problems.
Again, you dont seem to understand what fantasy implies and what sci fi implies. But basically if theres an attempt of explaining shit in any scientific way, its sci fi. How plausible or grounded that explanation is doesnt matter, it only has weight on how good it as a representative of the genre.
Sure, but its those differences that change the entire genre. One tries really hard to justify all the stuff thats happening, the other is a made up line in a movie that was made like 20 after it would have been of any relevance.
How are you fucks even arguing this shit? its right fucking there, maybe if it was Athelas playing devils advocate, but you are outright being wrong on purpose for no fucking reason.
Or maybe I'm just being wrong on purpose to watch people throw fits on the internet.
Babylon 5 is essentially fantasy
All BioWare games from KOTOR follow the same procedure more or less.ME1 structure is pretty much the same as well. Shamus explained it better than I could:
It does have Star Trek elements, specially in the mid-game missions, Shepard himself and some of the crew, but it doesn't have nearly as much "real" science and toned down fantasy elements.All BioWare games from KOTOR follow the same procedure more or less.
(Brief unskippable tutorial area (optional, for DA:O and KOTOR) > long unskippable tutorial area > info dump and you become a member of a cool organization/you become aware you are the chosen one > world opens up > go to these initial places (usually four) and find a thing from each > game eventually ends after fighting a boss fight you don't give a fuck about
I'd say Mass Effect was more inspired by Star Trek however. There's space magic/force powers in the form of bionics but other than that there's really not a lot of space fantasy elements to the game, IMO. It's very focused on being "real" and gritty as opposed to the "fairy tale style" of something like Star Wars.
This is underinclusive. You're missing the paradigm that is most relevant here -- the main one that has worked its way into gaming -- which is the Known Space/Uplift model*: lots of eccentric, sentient alien species, each with its own territory, in large alliances waging interstellar wars. This is basically what gamers know -- it's Starflight, Star Control, MOO, Warhammer 40k, to some degree Starcraft and Halo and Homeworld and Freespace -- and it is the foundation (yuk yuk) of Babylon 5, which is another major inspiration to contemporary space opera. (I loved B5 as a teen, but found it unwatchable by the time I was in my 20s. There's a good article about its shortcomings on the blog Asking the Wrong Questions.) Some other examples of this would be Zahn's Conqueror's Pride series, Scalzi's Old Man universe, Foster's Humanx series, Ringo's Aldenata series (though he takes a very different approach). I'm sure I could come up with more looking at my list.When I think of space opera, the main "styles" are the Foundation series, Star Wars, Flash Gordon, Ender's Game and maybe the Vorkosian saga. They're all very different, but still emphasize the same things with different themes and more or less science.
While I could see them starting mechanically from how they used the force in KOTOR (which, bear in mind, is not really that similar to how the force works in the original Star Wars trilogy), biotics draw as much, if not more, from the monstrous-telepath tradition of space opera. They take imagery and whole plots from the Psi Corps in Babylon 5, which in turn has roots in some Alfred Bester books (which B5 name checks by having the evil telepath named Alfred Bester), in particularly Demolished Man. There are a bunch of other sources for this (Perry Rhodan jumps to mind), but I'd have to consult my notes. Maybe Sector General (which clearly helped inspire B5). IIRC, there was a telepathic organization in it.Biotics aren't just a minor element, they're a big, constant part of the game and the setting.
You have a fair point about Known Space and Uplift, but I'm not really sure I'd call them space operas. Known Space has a strong focus on the impacts of techs on society, which is a fairly realistic and more serious worldbuilding effort (even if some of the techs are not). That's very unusual for space opera settings, and more common in cyberpunk. Star Wars never had any actual worldbuilding until the first tabletop RPG, when the people involved actually gave a fuck about it and the EU was born.This is underinclusive. You're missing the paradigm that is most relevant here -- the main one that has worked its way into gaming -- which is the Known Space/Uplift model*: lots of eccentric, sentient alien species, each with its own territory, in large alliances waging interstellar wars. This is basically what gamers know -- it's Starflight, Star Control, MOO, Warhammer 40k, to some degree Starcraft and Halo and Homeworld and Freespace -- and it is the foundation (yuk yuk) of Babylon 5, which is another major inspiration to contemporary space opera. (I loved B5 as a teen, but found it unwatchable by the time I was in my 20s. There's a good article about its shortcomings on the blog Asking the Wrong Questions.) Some other examples of this would be Zahn's Conqueror's Pride series, Scalzi's Old Man universe, Foster's Humanx series, Ringo's Aldenata series (though he takes a very different approach). I'm sure I could come up with more looking at my list.
What all of these series share -- and what Star Wars, particularly the original triology but really the whole thing, lacks -- is having a large number of competitor alien powers (usually a different tiers). They often feature a kind of alien UN, and also often also involve old enemies having to ally to face a greater threat. Themes like uplifting undeveloped aliens often show up over and again. I would situate Star Trek within this genre except that Star Trek doesn't like war (DS9 notwithstanding), doesn't really have economy (which is always important), or meaningful power-level differences among the core players (again, this is why the show feels so much more like space opera when, say, the Borg show up). Some of the Star Wars EU draws from these themes, but that's not Star Wars leading the way, it's Star Wars following. While these stories have a smattering a science in them, they're mostly about romantic, somewhat fantastical Great-Game style diplomacy and World War-style space battles. (The original Star Wars is totally uninterested in that kind of politicking, though it shows up to some degree in the prequels.)
Again, I didn't mean derivative in a derogatory way. Flaws above aside, I loved the world depicted in Mass Effect 1 (didn't love the game, but that's another story). Still, I agree. Over-reliance on Star Wars was not one of the game's flaws, but whenever they did rely on Star Wars/KotOR, it feels forced and unnecessary, like biotics and the extremely stupid paragon/renegade system.While I could see them starting mechanically from how they used the force in KOTOR (which, bear in mind, is not really that similar to how the force works in the original Star Wars trilogy), biotics draw as much, if not more, from the monstrous-telepath tradition of space opera. They take imagery and whole plots from the Psi Corps in Babylon 5, which in turn has roots in some Alfred Bester books (which B5 name checks by having the evil telepath named Alfred Bester), in particularly Demolished Man. There are a bunch of other sources for this (Perry Rhodan jumps to mind), but I'd have to consult my notes. Maybe Sector General (which clearly helped inspire B5). IIRC, there was a telepathic organization in it.
I'm telling you: ME may have a bunch of flaws, but I don't think that overreliance on Star Wars is one of othem. (Overreliance on KOTOR for structural things might be a fairer charge, but everyone agrees that KOTOR isn't really Star Wars so much as a different kind of story with Star Wars wrapping on it.)
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Incidentally, though I fully recognize that this conversation is an absurd use of time, it is at least giving some purpose to the 30,000 pages of space opera I inflicted on myself. Humanx. Need I say more.
I'll tell you, it was a pretty crushing one-two punch to play ME and then FTL and realize that basically the content and form of my idea were both already chewed up by someone else.
Yes, but not in the way you're suggesting: none of that sounds like the force at all. It sounds a little bit like the retconned force of the Star Wars prequel, but only a little. It is much more like psionics in classic space opera / pulpy science fiction, particularly in Babylon 5, maybe bits of Slan and Lensman, and a fair portion of anime like Akira thrown in (Akira, with its "espers," owes a lot to classic western scifi).Biotics. People embed element zero in body tissue and then get an implant so they can channel all thatmagicelement zero into actual powers. Sounds familiar?
First, I seem to vaguely recall that there actually was quite a bit in Mass Effect about how the telepaths were oppressed and manipulated and so on. Like you went to some moon base, and also there was the whole Jack plot, and so on.And we don't really see the consequences of having that kind of thing in all these societies. . . . That's the kind of thing that would never be absent in hard sci-fi, regular sci-fi or whatever one likes to call non-space-opera works in space.
Incidentally, these are taken straight from Babylon 5 (traceable perhaps to Gateway), and everything you say about them is exactly the same in B5. Also, IIRC, there actually was a fair amount of lore about the role they played, which tied into one of the better twists in the series.Then the mass effect relays. How come nobody has tried to seize them? Who controls and regulates their use? Do people make money on it? Who or what protects them? They're not indestructible, as ME3 has shown. Has anyoned tried to rig or hack them? Conflicts seem to take place fairly close to the relays, why isn't anyone concerned? If a relay is destroyed is not like they can make a new one.
Not really, Star Trek has plenty of technobabble (so does Mass Effect), but it doesn't really rigorously examine its magic technologies at all -- what can a holodeck do and not do, what can a replicator make and not make, why does going faster than Warp 10 take you back in time but then in later episodes it doesn't, why are lips synched on the viewscreen when the universal translator is running and why does the translator replicate accents, why in a world of universal translators do aliens learn to speak English at all, why are transporters so seldom used in combat (e.g., to transport mines directly in front of an enemy ship), why is accelerating asteroids to warp speed and flying the into planets not a traditional military strategy, etc., etc.It's also the perspective we'd see in Star Trek, Known Space, and so on.
This is exactly true of every space opera featuring psionics, too. Even the ones that try to grapple with it a little basically assume an identical society, even though telepathy would change everything.The ME1 world looks exactly as it would without the Force-like powers and everything that surrounds them.
No, but in his horrible hairline I see my own grim future.Is your last name Henkel, by any chance?
The system is not the same as Star Wars, which is why I didn't say it was, but it's completely derivative and purely magical. It is much like magic in Pillars of Eternity. They wanted it to be there as a mechanic, but they didn't bother to consider the effects of having it in their setting, even though it's too much of a big deal to be ignored like that.Yes, but not in the way you're suggesting: none of that sounds like the force at all. It sounds a little bit like the retconned force of the Star Wars prequel, but only a little. It is much more like psionics in classic space opera / pulpy science fiction, particularly in Babylon 5, maybe bits of Slan and Lensman, and a fair portion of anime like Akira thrown in (Akira, with its "espers," owes a lot to classic western scifi).
As I said, it is something they address later on, but I'm talking about the first game because the other two are way too different in everything except the soundtrack - actually, scratch that, the third game has a different style there as well - and it's the only one I liked. It was also a considerable omission for their first game regardless, much like the lack of females in some races.Yes, but not in the way you're suggesting: none of that sounds like the force at all. It sounds a little bit like the retconned force of the Star Wars prequel, but only a little. It is much more like psionics in classic space opera / pulpy science fiction, particularly in Babylon 5, maybe bits of Slan and Lensman, and a fair portion of anime like Akira thrown in (Akira, with its "espers," owes a lot to classic western scifi).
First, I seem to vaguely recall that there actually was quite a bit in Mass Effect about how the telepaths were oppressed and manipulated and so on. Like you went to some moon base, and also there was the whole Jack plot, and so on.
Second, I think you're making a (significant) logical error here. Though I haven't played the last Mass Effect game, in the first two, the "mass effect" is really not especially important to the plot. It's a classic, "Ancient space evil returns, turning fight against lesser space evil into a meaningless squabble. Wildly different aliens must set aside bickering or face annihilation." The mass effect stuff is totally secondary to this, while the diverse alien factions are utterly central. While you might be right that Known Space is (somewhat) more rigorous (it's hard for me to stand up and saluate the originator of catman aliens*), Uplift isn't, and in any event the (sub)genre they spawned isn't rigorous at all: Starflight, Star Control, MOO, Babylon 5, Old Man's War, etc. are all about rolicking fun and not really about scientific rigor. (That's why I didn't include either the Culture series or Vinge's stuff, even though it bears superficial similarities: those feel much more about hard scifi to me, even though it takes place against an alien zoo and space war backdrop.) Mass Effect fits squarely in the middle of this genre.
(* You have no idea the suffering that it caused me to read this book on public transportation.)
The points of connection with Star Wars are much more tenuous. The mass effect powers aren't tied to Jedi, the Sentinels (was that what they were called?) aren't really like the Jedi (they're a bit more like Lensmen, if anything), the villain is not an evil human empire but an impersonal alien force, aliens are primarily important as exemplars of alien factions rather than as once-off monsters, etc. You really have to push hard to fit it into Star Wars, while it takes only a tiny nudge to get to B5.
Again, can't say anything about Babylon 5.Incidentally, these are taken straight from Babylon 5 (traceable perhaps to Gateway), and everything you say about them is exactly the same in B5. Also, IIRC, there actually was a fair amount of lore about the role they played, which tied into one of the better twists in the series.
But the holodeck is not as vital to the Star Trek universe and story as the mass effect field is. You could still have Star Trek without a holodeck or even the transporters (which you're completely right to criticize), but you can't have Mass Effect without the mass effect fields. The relays and biotics as concepts and tools in that universe should be a pretty big deal, and biotics does get more attention and quests later on, but everyone remains oblivious to the relays.Not really, Star Trek has plenty of technobabble (so does Mass Effect), but it doesn't really rigorously examine its magic technologies at all -- what can a holodeck do and not do, what can a replicator make and not make, why does going faster than Warp 10 take you back in time but then in later episodes it doesn't, why are lips synched on the viewscreen when the universal translator is running and why does the translator replicate accents, why in a world of universal translators do aliens learn to speak English at all, why are transporters so seldom used in combat (e.g., to transport mines directly in front of an enemy ship), why is accelerating asteroids to warp speed and flying the into planets not a traditional military strategy, etc., etc.
Known Space has a lot of shenanigans too, but I'd have to wrack my mind to bring them all up. I seem to recall quite a bit of foolishness in the Man-Kzin War offshoots.
Correct. That is a problem with psionics as a concept in a hard sci-fi/realistic perspective. It's too supernatural in nature and requires the creator(s) to build the world from the ground up with the consequences of having that in mind. It didn't have to exist in the Mass Effect universe, should change everything, and doesn't.This is exactly true of every space opera featuring psionics, too. Even the ones that try to grapple with it a little basically assume an identical society, even though telepathy would change everything.
No problem. I just googled and found that your studio made Primordia, which was a really cool take on the genre (sci-fi and point-and-click both). It's nice to see you put so much effort in the research, looking forward to Technobabylon.BTW, I'm sure I'm coming across as more impassioned/self-righteous than I mean to -- it really just is that I never thought I'd be able to call upon this encyclopedic knowledge for any purpose, so seeing a chance, I feel obliged to seize it. It's not like there's something wrong with comparing ME to Star Wars, and all of your criticisms of the game are reasonable.