Liara relationship spoilers or whatever, but I have a question, not sure which dialogue option to pick. The wording is really confusing and I don't wanna say something I don't mean
Liara: I wish we could spend more time together like this. Just.. friends.
My options are: I'd like that a lot, or, Lets keep it professional.
I don't wanna fuck her at all, I just wanna be bros. By saying, I'd like that, am I starting a romance?? I CAN'T TELL IF SHE ACTUALLY MEANS JUST FRIENDS, i've rejected her in ME2 already
You're fine.
I'd like that is, I believe, an indication that you're already on the Bro Path. If you were on the Romance Path, it'd be something like "Or more than friends."
Liara relationship spoilers or whatever, but I have a question, not sure which dialogue option to pick. The wording is really confusing and I don't wanna say something I don't mean
Liara: I wish we could spend more time together like this. Just.. friends.
My options are: I'd like that a lot, or, Lets keep it professional.
I don't wanna fuck her at all, I just wanna be bros. By saying, I'd like that, am I starting a romance?? I CAN'T TELL IF SHE ACTUALLY MEANS JUST FRIENDS, i've rejected her in ME2 already
You're fine.
I'd like that is, I believe, an indication that you're already on the Bro Path. If you were on the Romance Path, it'd be something like "Or more than friends."
Thanks!!
The wording of the second option made me think that the first option was not keeping it professional. And because I've used that line to turn down so many ladies so far.
Hey, what was it about the ending that was supposed to appeal to me specifically?
I thought perhaps you might like the fact that
TIM was right all along, about being able to control the Reapers.
I would have found TIM's side of things a lot more interesting if we knew anything at all about exactly how he's controlling them.
I mean, they's using some kind of...imitation reaper signal? I guess? I don't think that was ever really more than lightly hinted upon from Dr. Lawson's journals.
I know a lot of people complain that destroying the relays invalidated your choices or whatever, but I think that's pretty crucial to breaking the cycle. Wipe all that reaper tech out, remove the technological stagnation that comes with each cycle, let everybody start anew and keep going with the opportunities you gave them over ME3. Like, the genophage choice gains new significance once you realize the krogan are going to be isolated for a while after the ending.
ending
I think when people say that it invalidates choices they are moreso talking about thematically speaking.
You just spent the entire game and in some ways the entire series uniting the galaxy. Settling old grudges, making friends out of ancient enemies, and breeding trust and camaraderie where before there was selfishness and suspicion. You united an entire galaxy of people to come together for a common goal.
And then the relays are destroyed and that united galaxy is helplessly fragmented and isolated because the God proxy says so.
Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
Hey, what was it about the ending that was supposed to appeal to me specifically?
I thought perhaps you might like the fact that
TIM was right all along, about being able to control the Reapers.
But he wasn't, not really.
He just happened across a possible solution.
The DLC character shows, and the TIM convo at the end too, that the "WE CAN CONTROL THEM, NOT DESTROY THEM" is part of how reaper indoctrination works.
Cause then the people about control bicker and fight with the destroy people.
And then we are the synthetics (demons)
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
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TrippyJingMoses supposes his toeses are roses.But Moses supposes erroneously.Registered Userregular
edited March 2012
I'm curious, but where did that rumor that "the lead writer of ME3 writing the ending with zero feedback from the other writers" come from?
Hey, what was it about the ending that was supposed to appeal to me specifically?
I thought perhaps you might like the fact that
TIM was right all along, about being able to control the Reapers.
But he wasn't, not really.
He just happened across a possible solution.
The DLC character shows, and the TIM convo at the end too, that the "WE CAN CONTROL THEM, NOT DESTROY THEM" is part of how reaper indoctrination works.
Cause then the people about control bicker and fight with the destroy people.
And then we are the synthetics (demons)
ending
Yeah I mean
while it is technically possible to control the reapers
The Illusive Man didn't actually figure out how
The only way to do it is for The Catalyst to arbitrarily decide "yeah you're a cool enough protagonist, go for it"
Hey, what was it about the ending that was supposed to appeal to me specifically?
I thought perhaps you might like the fact that
TIM was right all along, about being able to control the Reapers.
But he wasn't, not really.
He just happened across a possible solution.
The DLC character shows, and the TIM convo at the end too, that the "WE CAN CONTROL THEM, NOT DESTROY THEM" is part of how reaper indoctrination works.
Cause then the people about control bicker and fight with the destroy people.
And then we are the synthetics (demons)
Yeah, that sounds about right.
I mean, did TIM really know there was a control device involved with the crucible? Did he honestly come to that conclusion alone purely from technical evidence, when hundreds of scientists could not?
I'm curious, but where did that rumor that :the lead writer of ME3 writing the ending with zero feedback from the other writers" come from?
EDITED
Indie Winter on
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
Some nonspoilery, very general thoughts on the ending. Prepare for an essay!
The frustrating thing with the ending for me is that it suffers from a problem so common in science fiction that the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction has an entry for it - "sense of wonder." The sense of wonder is the thing that appeals to people about sci-fi when they're young, and it's what a lot of sci-fi writers spend their careers trying to replicate. It's an addictive sensation. The problem is that while trying to blow your mind with the revelation of some heretofore unguessed-at universal truth is an awesome idea for a story, it's hard to just invent transcendent universal truths out of thin air.
Some sci-fi writers cleverly cheat a sense of transcendence into their stories through a dirty trick called "conceptual breakthrough," which is a flavor of plot twist that involves the sudden, shocking realignment of the narrative's perspective, so the story you thought you were reading becomes something else entirely. That moment in Book of the New Sun where the reader finally catches on that the castles and towers are actually old rotting spaceships is a good one - holy shit, this fantasy story is actually science fiction! The bit in ME1 where you find out Sovereign is actually a Reaper is a good example as well - suddenly, your sense of the entire plot and the stakes involved become completely realigned. Or there's an infamous last sentence in an otherwise not actually very good book called The Weapon Shops of Isher by A.E. van Vogt where the story, which to this point has been a third-person narrative about a heroic human space badass (kind of a proto-Shepard), suddenly ends with the line "This much we know: This is the race which will rule the Sevagram." Bear in mind that that is the first time that word has appeared in the book. It blew a bunch of 1950s kids' heads wide open as they argued about what it could possibly mean: was the story being told to us by a third party within the story? What is the Sevagram? Has someone been watching the hero this whole time?
Basically, the vibe you're going for with conceptual breakthrough is this:
It's a good way to generate the sense of wonder, but it suffers from the usual caveats involving any plot twist - it has to be surprising but feel fair, it can't invalidate what has come before, and so on. There are plenty of bad examples of it, like some of the cheesier Twilight Zone twist endings.
Other writers try to achieve the sense of wonder by sheer scale, often by literally just throwing a big object like a Dyson Sphere or Alderson Disk into the story. Which is cool, I like that crazy stuff as much as the next guy, but the sense of bigness and scale only works for so long, and often the actual stories being told are incredibly prosaic and don't reinforce that sense of bigness at all. Often they involve heroic space marines fighting evil aliens for control of the object.
Other writers try to go for the sense of wonder obliquely, deploying powerful symbols and appealing to the emotions with hints and suggestions rather than actually delivering explanations that can't possibly satisfy. I like this approach a lot, and I think it's part of the reason Dan Simmons' book Hyperion works so well - he used to be a horror writer, so he just sticks a bunch of vivid, memorable imagery in his sci-fi and leaves it to you to guess at the meaning rather than sitting down and going "well, robots and humans hate each other, and..."
very specific, spoilery discussion about the end:
I feel like with ME3 they felt some crazy pressure to deliver a mind-blowing ending and just kind of flailed at a bunch of ideas that hadn't really been given much significance up to that point. The sad thing is I don't think it was necessary! If the crucible had blown up the Reapers, Shepard had sacrificed himself, and there was a cutscene showing geth and quarians living happily together etc etc - if everything had fallen into place exactly as we all kind of expected it would - that would have been basically mission accomplished right there.
There were some moments in the main game of ME3 that did trigger that fantastic, tingling sense of wonder, and ironically they used all three techniques successfully on Thessia:
Learning that the Crucible wasn't a Prothean device but an ongoing project worked on by thousands of races over millions of years was fantastic. That was an example of the sense-of-scale approach actually working, because suddenly you're entrusted with not just a rinkydink Prothean laser but the collected heritage of all life in the galaxy ever.
The Asari were secretly hoarding Prothean knowledge to ensure their preeminence as a species? Wham. That's conceptual breakthrough - a plot twist that makes you reassess everything that's come before, but also makes perfect, seamless sense in context.
The cycles repeat each other down to something as specific as machine uprisings and deluded Reaper collaborators? That's a great example of the less-is-more, oblique approach. It's a suggestive idea that hints tantalizingly at a larger, unfathomable cosmic order behind events without actually explaining anything and ruining the magic.
The ending, though, is like a perfect storm of trying all those things at once and accomplishing none. Conceptual breakthrough: the Catalyst is actually the Citadel, and it's actually alive, and the Reapers are actually working for it? That's plot hopscotch. It's not that it's a bad idea - I firmly believe that there aren't really bad or good ideas so much as appropriate or inappropriate ones - the problem is that it's not suggested, hinted at, or supported anywhere in the text. It comes completely out of left field and doesn't illuminate anything that came before.
Sense of scale: EVERYTHING BLOWS UP. Including everything you had been invested in accomplishing for the previous thirty hours - effectively trading away all the personal, small-scale choices and relationships you'd made in hopes of impressing you with the apocalyptic scale of events. Except we've already gone through one apocalypse and fatigue has set in.
Oblique: it's a ghost kid and he's speaking cryptically and you're not actually going to get any meaty answers about motivation or even just the basic, nuts and bolts mechanics of what's going on. Why does taking choice A do this one thing that doesn't seem to logically follow at all, and taking choice B does this other thing that doesn't seem to logically follow at all? Why are these the choices being offered to us instead of other things? Who knows?
I need to emphasize that I did really, really love the game. I think in many ways it represents the apex and fulfillment of what Bioware have been trying to accomplish with their mode of storytelling since Baldur's Gate. The game was filled with payoff after payoff and made me think and feel. You can't ask for more than that.
In a way, that's kind of the irony here. All the ridiculous hatemongering and bullshit coming from the internet quarters turned out to be just bullshit and hot air. EA didn't ruin ME3: the multiplayer was great, Ashley having her hair down wasn't the end of the world, the DLC character didn't mug me in an alleyway and take my wallet, and the collectible preorder guns did not violate the essence of my being. The problem with ME3 was a problem of writing, straight up. No soulless corporate executive could have asked for that. Just as I give Bioware credit for their successes, the stumble at the end is theirs and theirs alone.
I missed this when it was first posted but it's super good and I agree with almost all of it.
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
Don't be a Judas, Indie.
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
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Indie Winterdie KräheRudi Hurzlmeier (German, b. 1952)Registered Userregular
indie, don't be a sponge with an old hair hanging off of it
End on
I wish that someway, somehow, that I could save every one of us
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
Are...
are you fucking with me?
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
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Blake TDo you have enemies then?Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered Userregular
If something was said by someone under the privacy of this forum it's best not to go around repeating it.
Hey, what was it about the ending that was supposed to appeal to me specifically?
I thought perhaps you might like the fact that
TIM was right all along, about being able to control the Reapers.
Yeah but I never liked that idea in the first place, even if it could work. Fuck the Reaps. We can use their tech when they're dead.
Ah.
Well I agree... destroy the Reapers is my choice as well.
And at this point, without Catalyst, I personally think indoctrination isn't an issue anymore. So yeah, gut those suckers for their technology. And I also agree that the mass relays had to go, so that technology won't be stagnant anymore. Now we'll have to learn to make our own, and those designs can be improved anb built upon to make new technology.
I think no matter what ending we got, destroying the mass relays would be a component of it. That's been laid out since ME1.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
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Indie Winterdie KräheRudi Hurzlmeier (German, b. 1952)Registered Userregular
no! maybe I'm missing something? or misremembering something? I don't mean to be a dick, just tell me if I got something wrong!
I'm curious, but where did that rumor that :the lead writer of ME3 writing the ending with zero feedback from the other writers" come from?
a reliable source.
Yeah, these words told me all I needed to know.
Indie...:v:
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
edited March 2012
I'll edit this in a second.
Munkus Beaver on
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
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Blake TDo you have enemies then?Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered Userregular
Munkus, can mods still edit other people's posts?
I mean I assume so. But I just haven't seen it done.
I know a lot of people complain that destroying the relays invalidated your choices or whatever, but I think that's pretty crucial to breaking the cycle. Wipe all that reaper tech out, remove the technological stagnation that comes with each cycle, let everybody start anew and keep going with the opportunities you gave them over ME3. Like, the genophage choice gains new significance once you realize the krogan are going to be isolated for a while after the ending.
ending
I think when people say that it invalidates choices they are moreso talking about thematically speaking.
You just spent the entire game and in some ways the entire series uniting the galaxy. Settling old grudges, making friends out of ancient enemies, and breeding trust and camaraderie where before there was selfishness and suspicion. You united an entire galaxy of people to come together for a common goal.
And then the relays are destroyed and that united galaxy is helplessly fragmented and isolated because the God proxy says so.
The unity served its purpose by allowing you to build and deliver the Crucible in the first place. I think the "helpless" factor is overblown. It's not like everybody is cavemen now, they have the tech to rebuild and even develop new methods of FTL eventually. It's not all sudden galactic unity after the Reaps are finished, but I never expected that anyway.
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Indie Winterdie KräheRudi Hurzlmeier (German, b. 1952)Registered Userregular
edited March 2012
well fucking fine
sorry I didn't read the ME3 primer or something because apparently we can't talk about the stuff we've been told
like, I get it, I don't want to be offensive or hurt anyone, I've edited it
but treating it like that is incredibly fucking stupid
Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
If you do the destory ending aren't the reapers all totally vaporized? doesn't seem like you'd have the option to salvage them
Maybe, I don't think it's a big deal if there's nothing left behind. Make new technology and all that. But long before I even knew of the ending, I knew it would be dumb to take advantage of the Reapers without killing them first. That's why I killed the Collectors before taking their base.
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Blake TDo you have enemies then?Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered Userregular
sorry I didn't read the ME3 primer or something because apparently we can't talk about the stuff we've been told
like, I get it, I don't want to be offensive or hurt anyone, I've edited it
but treating it like that is incredibly fucking stupid
Because it has been made abundantly clear multiple times.
That on occasion, we get an insight into the game, it can be seen as controversial, because at times it can show differing opinions of the bioware studio.
When these happen. It is stated that they will be up for an hour, then deleted. We are not to quote them.
Do you think someone may have work related issues if these things were permanently available?
Posts
You're fine.
Thanks!!
I thought perhaps you might like the fact that
I mean, they's using some kind of...imitation reaper signal? I guess? I don't think that was ever really more than lightly hinted upon from Dr. Lawson's journals.
I'll be really curious to hear why you think it isn't bad
Because after a while, I realized it was bad
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
ending
You just spent the entire game and in some ways the entire series uniting the galaxy. Settling old grudges, making friends out of ancient enemies, and breeding trust and camaraderie where before there was selfishness and suspicion. You united an entire galaxy of people to come together for a common goal.
And then the relays are destroyed and that united galaxy is helplessly fragmented and isolated because the God proxy says so.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
Satans..... hints.....
He just happened across a possible solution.
The DLC character shows, and the TIM convo at the end too, that the "WE CAN CONTROL THEM, NOT DESTROY THEM" is part of how reaper indoctrination works.
Cause then the people about control bicker and fight with the destroy people.
And then we are the synthetics (demons)
ending
while it is technically possible to control the reapers
The Illusive Man didn't actually figure out how
The only way to do it is for The Catalyst to arbitrarily decide "yeah you're a cool enough protagonist, go for it"
http://www.audioentropy.com/
a reliable source.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
I mean, did TIM really know there was a control device involved with the crucible? Did he honestly come to that conclusion alone purely from technical evidence, when hundreds of scientists could not?
EDITED
Faith in a just and caring God that the people who handled the series thus far would not punish me so.
It's all about me.
I missed this when it was first posted but it's super good and I agree with almost all of it.
EDITED
are you fucking with me?
Satans..... hints.....
Satans..... hints.....
Ah.
And at this point, without Catalyst, I personally think indoctrination isn't an issue anymore. So yeah, gut those suckers for their technology. And I also agree that the mass relays had to go, so that technology won't be stagnant anymore. Now we'll have to learn to make our own, and those designs can be improved anb built upon to make new technology.
I think no matter what ending we got, destroying the mass relays would be a component of it. That's been laid out since ME1.
Thanks forums.
Satans..... hints.....
Yeah, these words told me all I needed to know.
Indie...:v:
I mean I assume so. But I just haven't seen it done.
(now I feel this post will be edited)
Satans..... hints.....
sorry I didn't read the ME3 primer or something because apparently we can't talk about the stuff we've been told
like, I get it, I don't want to be offensive or hurt anyone, I've edited it
but treating it like that is incredibly fucking stupid
http://www.audioentropy.com/
I never talk about what I am capable of so I can always surprise you.
Like, for instance, falling off a climbing wall.
Because it has been made abundantly clear multiple times.
That on occasion, we get an insight into the game, it can be seen as controversial, because at times it can show differing opinions of the bioware studio.
When these happen. It is stated that they will be up for an hour, then deleted. We are not to quote them.
Do you think someone may have work related issues if these things were permanently available?
Satans..... hints.....
Wonder what is up with that. "There might be network issues" isn't a very useful error message