'Expanse' Co-Creator on Writing, Star Citizen, and Why He Hated Mass Effect 3
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It totally wasn't clear in (earlier release builds of) the game, and I didn't want to Google it because I was afraid of spoiling the ending. I felt like I had done a pretty good job getting the whole galaxy together under my banner, and my readiness score was quantified by the game in a way that made it seem decent, so I initiated the final sequence and found that I'd been denied the best outcome simply because I had never played multiplayer.
Whatever I thought about the actual ending, the fact that EA and Bioware decided to pull the rug out from under me at the last second after I'd spent something like a decade really invested in their story and universe was a real blow. To me, it demonstrated an astonishing lack of integrity as storytellers. I was so upset that I just couldn't get myself to go back in and replay the re-done ending or any of the DLC.
I did that.
I just Googled it and the general opinion seems to be that in the original release with no DLC, no multiplayer, and no messing around with phone apps (?) it was at best extremely difficult to do (scan every single planet, that sort of thing) and at worst impossible. People seem to disagree on the exact degree of impossibility, but it seems that some early DLC brought the threshold down into a more reasonable range.
I guess my mistake was being so excited to play it that I finished it before they "fixed" the ending.
Unlike most, I also enjoyed it quite a bit.
People only say the destroy ending was the best because Shepard seems to live at the end. But, for me, the beginning and entire content of ME3 said 'Shepard dies': it feels odd for him/her to live.
And I think this is ultimately why the game is so polarising: some people saw the game as being a chance for Shepard to finally 'win', whereas I and others expected (and got) a bittersweet ending.
Effective Military Strength = War Assets (single player) x Readiness Rating (multiplayer). Maximum War Assets is ~7500, so with no multiplayer, you get ~3750 EMS.
Former squadmates aren't worth much, like 25-50 War Assets each. Current squadmates are worth zero, but they can help in other ways (Rannoch). Kaidan/Ashley are only worth points if they don't join your squad. Garrus doesn't affect War Assets at all, and Wrex is actually worth more dead than alive.
Endings are unlocked by having a higher EMS score. The red ending requires no EMS, blue requires 1750, and green needs 2800. So if you are shooting for the green ending you can do it in single player no problem. However, EMS also affects some of the details of what happens in each ending: whether your squadmates survive, whether the Normandy is destroyed, what happens to the Earth... and whether Shepard lives.
Shepard lives if you pick the red ending and have 4000 EMS, which is not possible with single player, until the Extended Cut DLC lowered the requirement to 3100 EMS. This is what people were talking about, besides the fact that the ending is just awful in other ways.
And it was not only that the game promised it, the developers promised it. They literally said "There will be no ending where you choose between button 1, 2 and 3. All you decisions will influence the final outcome". And what had the game? Button 1, 2 and 3, and your decisions had no influence whatsoever. Liars.
I'm not at all interested in ME: Andromeda. I'll never play another Bioware game again, till they deliver a proper ending for ME3. And no, the extended video they delivered later on is not enough. Not even close.
Choices in life can have meaning, during your life and for others. In good games, even linear ones, your choices have meaning, take Witcher (though I didn't play the third game yet), Shadowrun, Baldur's Gate, Fallout (1, 2 and New Vegas). ME 3 just sucked.
So what I wanted to say (in a philosophical angle) is that your choices do matter to the people left after you are dead, and they can greatly affect how people remember you. But it is the choices that you make during the game - the journey - are the ones that have the biggest impact on you (or the character).
So to have made all these choices during the playthrough and then not experience the consequence after the end is quite disappointing to a lot of people.
That's probably the real reason they're going with Andromeda now - they completely blocked off the ability to continue Milky Way story.
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There's one thing I'd love someone to create though - a tool that would take all my saves from 1, 2 and 3, and use them to retell a story of my character. Some form of highlights; rendered comic maybe, or even the story to read - something to reflect my character biometrics and to remind me all the decisions I made during the course of the trilogy. All of that data is in the save files.
The issue with the "it's all points" thing is indeed an issue, and it's so silly, since to me it was so obvious what they needed to do in the end.
ME2 was a template. Once again, you go into a suicide mission, except this time instead of your team being people, it's fleets, troops, etc... You have to commit your resources to objectives during the battle until you run out. If you don't get enough, you run out too early and can't win (or lose more in the battle in other ways).
Suddenly all those 'collected points' would matter so much. They all had backstory of who/what they were, and if you had to commit them (with appropriate troops/fleets/whatever getting bonuses in the right roles/nerfs in the wrong roles) it would have made it feel worthwhile.
It's a realy shame, because if that had been the ending of the game, I think ME as a series would have been as close to perfect as it gets. As it is, people seem to forget the fact that the series was amazing otherwise, and that the third game was seriously great apart from those flaws.
It's clear to me that, like most studios bought by EA, Bioware has slowly gone downhill as they were subject to more and more pressure by EA to speed up development and to focus on things like the money-making multiplayer. EA have consistently been anti-consumer in a ton of ways, and they also have a real knack at ruining and eventually closing good studios.
If you want a story-heavy game with decisions that matter, I highly suggest you look at the Banner Saga, an indie series made by ex-bioware staff that is great. The first two are out and the third just hit it's KickStarter funding goal. Hopefully they close that one off well.
You can really notice that lack of thematic coherence and good writing when Drew Karpyshyn left the project.
I really liked ME2. The gameplay was the best, had really good quest lines and some ideas were really interesting (working for terrorists, the suicide mission). And it had Mordrin!
On the third game it goes all downhill.
Earth is, apparently, the most important planet on the galaxy. To the point that someone thought that it was a good idea to diverge troops that were defending the planet with the biggest and best fleet of the galaxy to defend the Earth.
ME2 and Mordrin spent a lot of time convincing me that, while the xenophage was something horrible, curing it would have unforeseen consequences and was a bad idea too. But now we're going to cure it, no choice in the matter.
Cerebrus turned from "amoral pragmatists" to "james bond villain".
My best bro Wrex still didn't return to the party.
And the dreadful awe of the reapers was simply squashed.
ME3 was a massive dissapointment. I don't see myself playing a multigame Bioware series ever again.
Two links: A massive Mass Effect Retrospective, which cemented some of my feelings on the series: http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=27792 Anon is still mad about ME3: https://i.imgur.com/5naFPuS.png (Strong language)
Earth being the most important isn't quite how it's shown - rather, it's turned into a point of last stand because Shepard rallies his allies around it.
Cerberus, yeah, they went a bit too far and deeply of the deep end. In general, I think that you are treating it too harshly, and probably the original ending embittered you towards the whole game, which in my eyes, was still really good.
Or maybe you just dislike where they went with it where I liked it, it's hard to say. I, at least, find it acceptable with the new ending.
If you are prepared to commit the time, I'd suggest https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hct5WeBmsUM - a look at the whole series that matches my viewpoint pretty well. It's an interesting watch in it's own right, although long and a bit lacking in production quality (towards the end, I'm pretty sure some of the commentary got repeating during cutting).
I've been engaged in stories with bad endings before. It's not the best but I understand why it happens. It's not going to completely sour my experience with the whole thing.
What I got was like if two final episodes of Game of Thrones were broadcast: one for people who have HBO through a cable bundle, and one for cord-cutting HBO Now users where more fan favorite characters die and the outcome for the realm(s) in general is worse. They don't tell you about these different broadcasts beforehand, so you get what you get and then are free to feel horribly betrayed at your leisure as you discover how your experience of the finale of a story you've been invested in for years is now irrevocably tainted.
Then, they release a Blu-Ray set that has both endings and some deleted scenes, and expect everyone to forgive them? Fuck no.
And in retrospect, indeed it does feel like "a gentle and humorous farewell". I still have a screenshot of the group photo actually printed out.
Mass Effect 2 forces the player to join a racist terrorist group and does nothing interesting, and then Mass Effect 3 is pure anticlimax. As Franck says, it just seems like they had no idea where to go after the first one.
The way I remember it - the universe was dying of entropy. The Reapers were created to solve the problem of entropy, but could not do so by the time of the events of Mass Effect. The purpose of the Reapers was to combine the intelligence of each species in order to attempt to solve the problem. Each cycle, species would be harvested to add to the computing power of the Reaper fleet.
The final choice of the series was to be: 1. Acquiesce to the demands of the Reapers, and join them in their quest to save the universe; or 2. Do not acquiesce, end the cycle of destruction, and trust that the races of the galaxy will be able to solve the problem.
This is an infinitely better ending than what we got. Although...the indoctrination theory would have been breathtaking as well. Too bad BioWare wasn't that clever.
I played with engineer class, and it kinda sucked, none of the engineer powers were that useful, and engineers couldn't use any decent weapon, in the end I finished the entire game with the starting pistol (yes, even the final boss I killed with the starting pistol).
Oh... and those elevators... but in a way I missed them in ME2 too.
Yeah the sequel was as long, boring corridor with virtually no freedom at all. That's a good example of how games have changed throughout the years.
Exploring a sandbox is only interesting when it's actually filled with something to find. Still, I think the game play of both ME1 and ME2 (and ME3) actually fit their respective points in the story line.
ME1: You don't really know what's going on, you have a vague feeling, but it's mostly "let's stumble around and see what we can find"
ME2: Okay, you know what will happen, but almost everyone else is in denial and doesn't want to help you, so you have to be laser-focused to fix the immediate problem with whatever you have at hand.
ME3: Denial is over, the problem is squarely in everyone's face and even if some people still want to ignore it your focus is more on showing people that your way to deal with the problem is in their best interest as much as in yours.
ME2 streamlined a lot of things but the game lost its RPG elements as a consequence. The scanner game was moronic.
ME3 struck a slightly better balance but the "side quests" were ridiculous.
The real problem is, story wise, the latter two games could never live up to the first. Hell, The Expanse demonstrates that very phenomenon. The first two books are fantastic, but Abaddon's Gate and Cibola Burn are only decent by comparison.
My favorite of all might be the novella The Churn, which explores the backstory of Amos, the Laconic muscle of the Expanse crew.
io9 has a nice writeup around this: http://io9.gizmodo.com/5886178/why-mass-effect-is-the-most-i...
Arguably in both Star Trek and Mass Effect, humans came from being relative newcomers to becoming legendary leaders and saviors of the universe.
That seems to be the case. Drew Karpyshyn, the lead writer of ME1 and ME2, admitted that his original planned ending wasn't "super fleshed out"
http://www.pcgamer.com/mass-effect-3-series-former-lead-writ...
Karpyshyn left BioWare shortly before the conclusion of Mass Effect 2, with Mac Walters taking over as lead writer for Mass Effect 3. Even so, Karpyshyn defended series' real ending, pointing out that his planned version was just as likely to disappoint.
"... because endings are so important – you better know what your ending is and you better be setting that ending up right from the beginning. Otherwise it just feels muddy and unsatisfying."
The point I took from both articles was that the Mass Effect series never had a solid vision for the ending (which Karpyshyn admitted), and it showed in the way many (most?) people reacted to ME3.
a racist terrorist group that lets you recruit aliens? that let's you protect human colonies when the council don't bother allocating any resources to their protection? this is about survival, like Shepard says himself.
Cerberus is a human-survivalist paramilitary group led by the enigmatic Illusive Man. Cerberus' core belief is that humans deserve a greater role in the galactic community, and that the Systems Alliance is too hamstrung by law and public opinion to stand up effectively to the other Citadel races. Cerberus supports the principle that any methods of advancing humanity's ascension are entirely justified, including illegal or dangerous experimentation, terrorist activities, sabotage and assassination. Cerberus operatives accept that these methods are brutal, but believe history will vindicate them. Nevertheless, both the Systems Alliance and the Citadel Council have declared Cerberus to be a terrorist organization and will prosecute identified Cerberus agents accordingly.
EDIT: Cerberus is xenophobic, not racist. I am fully aware of the existence of Cerberus.
After all, the question if it's right to use the resources of people you profoundly disagree with (if you do! You can be a mankind-first person in ME after all) if you have to to stop a greater evil is far more interesting than having all the resources you want without any strings attached.
> Cerberus is a human-survivalist paramilitary group led by the enigmatic Illusive Man. Cerberus' core belief is that humans deserve a greater role in the galactic community, and that the Systems Alliance is too hamstrung by law and public opinion to stand up effectively to the other Citadel races. Cerberus supports the principle that any methods of advancing humanity's ascension are entirely justified, including illegal or dangerous experimentation, terrorist activities, sabotage and assassination. Cerberus operatives accept that these methods are brutal, but believe history will vindicate them. Nevertheless, both the Systems Alliance and the Citadel Council have declared Cerberus to be a terrorist organization and will prosecute identified Cerberus agents accordingly.
- In ME1 they're a rogue bunch of moustache-twirling villains who feed humans to thresher maws to find out exactly how much of a crunchy sound they make. You're supposed to happily shoot them on sight without the slightest care.
- In ME2 they're a cynical and wealthy "the end justifies the means" organization of human patriots who trample over ethics in pursuit of a greater good, such as kidnapping kids to turn them into biotics and give humanity an edge. You're supposed to feel conflicted and hate the means they employ while recognising you do need to work with them.
- In ME3 they're back to moustache-twirling, but now they're also a giant army trying to take over the entire galaxy, and worst of all they also have Kai Leng as a poster boy. You're supposed to treat them as the secondary but unambiguous villain of the story (even if in ME2 you role-played as a fellow human supremacist).
In hindsight, Bioware should probably have kept the ME1 version as cannon fodder and put Martin Sheen in charge of a different, non-moustache-twirling but still ethically questionable human-first organization. What they actually ended up writing was a narrative trainwreck.
(ME 1: Drew Karpyshyn) Cerberus thinks humanity has to have the techonological edge, even when it comes to crossing the ethics line, a simple "for science!" taken to the extreme. Even before you figure it out you expect a blackop like that to exist.
(ME 2: Karpyshyn & Mac Walters) We need a fresh start for players who didn't play ME1, Cerberus is a little more ambigious and the overall tone darker-er, still agreeable (given aliens' and human governments do nothing about it) or at least understandable line of thinking "we can't save everyone let's focus on our kind". Weak but not horrible.
(ME3: Walters) WE WERE REAPERS ALL ALONG. WE COMMON HUMANOID ENEMY NOW. ALSO MARTIN SHEEN.
A fine return to form for SyFy.
https://arstechnica.com/the-multiverse/2017/02/the-expanse-i...
They planned to use Vulkan in the engine in general, but it seems that Lumberyard doesn't even support it yet (and Linux is only listed as an upcoming supported OS in Lumberyard FAQ).
Well it's way too late for them to make it in a short time.
If the drivers would just catch up...
Same here, I still have a backlog of Linux releases to play, though I'm using GOG for that. Picked up Owlboy recently.
the books are very good, too.
I loved Firefly. But I dropped BSG after two seasons.
Galactic readiness being half tied to multiplayer was a stupid idea, and the ending, which I thought was good, did feel like it was rushed. I also get the feeling that they wrote themselves into a corner with the Reapers, I mean how the hell is one man supposed to kill something that imposing without having to resort to the old "Destroy the single point of failure"? If they had have given the Reapers some kind of actual weakness, they could have avoided the ending they wound up with.
Finally someone who says clearly how embarrassingly bad the Lost ending really was.
What fascinates me is that there's another show that had a similar, contentious ending, but for some reason that one didn't bother me so much. I didn't like it immediately after, but the next day or so I changed my mind and thought it was a perfect ending, considering the themes and general approach.
And I can't quite put my finger on what it did differently.
Spoiler alert
(BSG)
Is it really ? I remember when the last Episode was out, everyone was like "wow it was awesome" and all, while I seemed to be the only one who did not like it one bit.
Did the same with Walking Dead early on. Too much fussing about in that show.
"Tales of the Sword Coast" is the Baldur's Gate I expansion[0] so that can't be it, anyone knows what they're talking about here? Sword Coast Legends maybe?[1]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldur%27s_Gate:_Tales_of_the_...
Sadly game stories are often an afterthought at best.
www.co-optimus.com