Silent Hill 3. They need heather to birth god but they keep trying to kill her. I know they need her tu feel pain and suffering and if she dies valtiels resurrects her but in that case she could just chill the hell out.
Biggest plot holes in games
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Don't worry about continuing to reply, it's good to have a civil conversation with someone about ME3 who has an opposite view and more perspective, half the time I have people calling me an idiot, or false, or a filthy casual, or they just shout at me, hahaha. I see what you're saying about ME1, and I probably should play it again so as that I can pay more attention to detail. I understand that most people were expecting the 'Dark Energy' plot in ME3 due to the hints in the second game, but I really didn't know ANYTHING about the whole Dark Energy thing until I started reading people talking about it. Maybe it's cause I really didn't like Tali, maybe because it was too subtle for me, whatever the reason, I honestly never had the whole 'Dark Energy killing the universe' going through my mind. My assumption when playing Mass Effect 2 was that the Reapers were focusing on humans because it was a human who screwed the pooch for their plans. The Human Reaper at the end of the game just meant to me that Reapers used other species to create Reapers, and initially I did not realise that it was only the core and that it would eventually be covered in squid armour once built.IronMit said:
I also didn't mind the direction they took with ME2 being more filler gap before ME3 as it had served a few purposes for the players. It gave us new and more interesting squad members (Kaiden, Ashley and Tali in my opinion were somewhat dull in the first game) such as Jack, Mordin, my main man Grunt, Legion, and to a certain extent Miranda. I liked the begining as it was the perfect way to make the enemy of the game look threatening. I justified the Reapers using the Collectors to attack human colonies as they (the Reapers) wanted humans out of the way due to a human halting their plans. I also enjoyed the more streamlined levels and areas were, as in ME1 I would find myself getting lost or bored in areas such as the Citadel and Feros (if Feros is where you fight the Thorian).
So yeah, I was one of the players (along with a lot of my mates) who had the Dark Energy foreshadowing blow straight over my head. So when Mass Effect 3 came around I just assumed that the Dark Energy plot (after reading about it pre release ME3) was a red herring and was ready to kick some Reaper...um, metalic backs? anyway... Mass Effect 3 focusing more on Earth made sense to me due to my inability to understand that Tali's mission hinted at a different story for the Reapers, and I reasoned their focusing on Earth was due to a human ruining their plans twice, so this was payback for being awesome at stopping ancient synthetic/organic space ships. I understood that some people were angry because they wanted to explore other planets, and Earth seemed dull to them, but I felt that really drove home the fact that just because we killed 1 Reaper, a bunch of mutated Protheans, and a baby Reaper, Humanity and the rest of the space races were hopelessly outmatched.
While I still love the series, I can see how Bioware kinda screwed the pooch when it came to Mass Effect 3 as they had built up so much hype and expanded on the universe with novels and comics. But I just got really annoyed when people started demanding a new ending and picking apart thngs, especially when some people started pointing fingers at ME2 even though weeks prior to ME3 they liked the game.
Seconded. I loved Bioshock right up until the point of the "Reveal". Then the great villain disappears and is replaced by this prat, whose plot and character come straight from a Saturday morning cartoon.Marik Bentusi said:
It's been a while for me, but doesn't that have something to do withalphamalet said:
Minato using the Universe Arcana? Or, the promise they made overpowering the memory loss? The eternal bonds of friendship?
OT: In the Sly Cooper series, Carmelita's voice changes every game, but everyone else's stays the same.
Why is this? Is there some sort of vocal disorder that may be the cause? Why does she have a different accent in Sly 2? (Personally, I prefer that one over the others.)
So many questions.
Also,
how reconstructing Clockwork even happened. He fell into a volcano; who fished him out and stuck his then-broken-now-simply-detached parts in a museum? Why does his consciousness not come back once reconstructed? How exactly did Constable Neyla combine with Clockwork? Is there a cockpit in there? Did she get some kind of cyborg surgery?
My biggest one at the moment would be in Halo 4, why did the forerunners kill every single reasonable member of their race but decide to keep the most maniacally murderous shithead of their number alive and untouched by the halo array?
Thats like if humanity irradicated itself but left Hitler in cryostasis to act as an ambassador for anyone that comes across our legacy in the future.
Also Gears 3, apparently Prescott had known about the deus ex machinaomatic for years before the events of gears 3, so what the fuck guys really?
EDIT: Bloody hell there is a lot of ME3 stuff, here I need to check this out for myself.
Thats like if humanity irradicated itself but left Hitler in cryostasis to act as an ambassador for anyone that comes across our legacy in the future.
Also Gears 3, apparently Prescott had known about the deus ex machinaomatic for years before the events of gears 3, so what the fuck guys really?
EDIT: Bloody hell there is a lot of ME3 stuff, here I need to check this out for myself.
Regardless of whether or not you count the terminals as part of the story or not, they were, it still counts as an explanation, perhaps a poorly delivered one, but one none the less; and while I agree you shouldn't have to read a book to understand the story to game, you don't, it gives insight and better back story, but it is not required to understand what's going on. I do wish they would have included his motives as something in the campaign though. I have read several Halo books, and enjoyed them, but if you rely on the book to explain motives for the villain in the game, that's just getting lazy imo, and I have been caught up in other books, I would rather read, so I still have no idea why the Didact did anything in Halo 4.wolf thing said:
Another quick note on hiding story from the player, they still aren't required to understand "The big orange vampire looking dude is trying to destroy all of the humans" plenty of games have hidden collectibles that give insight to the universe, given they usually don't contain a huge plot point for the next game, but still.
I don't know if it's a plot hole or a side effect of the terrible writing which, among other things, resulted in a two dimensional caricature of a villain, but Lazarevic in Uncharted 2 really should have used his helicopters to search the area where Flynn thought Shambhala was located instead of wasting them on Nate. Somehow, I don't think the big glowing gobs of resin would have been all that difficult to see from the air.
But then the adventure couldn't have happened of all these insensible impossible things didn't happen! No, it couldn't have. Now where did I put that shoehorn polish...
But then the adventure couldn't have happened of all these insensible impossible things didn't happen! No, it couldn't have. Now where did I put that shoehorn polish...
In dishonored why does killing weepers raise chaos? I can get that It would count as a kill but why does killing plague infected zombie people spread the plague?
In uncharted how did the diary end up in Francis drake coffin? Francis drake faked his death he actually died on that island thanks to those zombie things so how did his diary get in that coffin?
In shin megami tensei devil survivors how did the government ever managed to cover everything up. Hundreds of people were killed the entire sky turned red and a giant tower came from the sky and crashed right into a building you can?t cover that all up by saying it was a mass hallucination caused by a gas leak there has to be evidence somewhere.
there are so many plotholes in touhou its impressive I play the game for the gameplay sure but I don?t skip the story for the same reason why most people don?t look away from a train crash.
In uncharted how did the diary end up in Francis drake coffin? Francis drake faked his death he actually died on that island thanks to those zombie things so how did his diary get in that coffin?
In shin megami tensei devil survivors how did the government ever managed to cover everything up. Hundreds of people were killed the entire sky turned red and a giant tower came from the sky and crashed right into a building you can?t cover that all up by saying it was a mass hallucination caused by a gas leak there has to be evidence somewhere.
there are so many plotholes in touhou its impressive I play the game for the gameplay sure but I don?t skip the story for the same reason why most people don?t look away from a train crash.
The fact that you can become the leader/head/commander of every faction in every Elder Scrolls game despite having only been a member of said group for a few hours/in-game days.
What's that? You saved the Mage's Guild in Cyrodil from Mannimarco, King of Worms? Without using a single spell? You don't even know any magic? Well who cares! You killed our biggest threat so you MUST be qualified to LEAD our guild. Our guild of magic users, of which you are not one.
Please. At least give us an option to graciously turn the offer down and hand control over to someone who's actually worthy of the title.
What's that? You saved the Mage's Guild in Cyrodil from Mannimarco, King of Worms? Without using a single spell? You don't even know any magic? Well who cares! You killed our biggest threat so you MUST be qualified to LEAD our guild. Our guild of magic users, of which you are not one.
Please. At least give us an option to graciously turn the offer down and hand control over to someone who's actually worthy of the title.
ME3. Pretty much the whole core plot, though individual parts like Tuchanka were great. How would all those scientists and engineers not only build the crucible, but improve upon it with whatever weird tech you found and finish a design that didn't work when the Protheans did it, but fail to figure out what it was doing? They weren't just following somebody else's design blindly, they has to reverse engineer the failed project and then make their own design based on continuing that. For that matter, how did the Protheans even work on the Crucible? ME1 established that they were hit from the Citadel first, and barely had time to leave a warning behind before they were isolated and under total control of the Reapers. I won't even go into the ending (nature of the Reapers being flipped for no reason, idiot child plot, okayI'mshuttingupnow) because that's less of a plot hole and more of a gaping, festering abcess, but the central macguffin to the whole story of the third game just does not work.
And they didn't even need it; you proved in the first game that even Sovereign, the most powerful of the Reapers, can be killed but it takes a good distraction and the combined firepower of the combined pre-war Council fleet to do it. The Reapers relied on surprise and total control of the Relay network for every previous invasion; without Sovereign and the Citadel they're incredibly powerful, but nowhere near enough to make fighting them hopeless. They could totally have done the whole game as a conventional war, with Shepard's missions being to recruit more allies, develop/discover new technologies to lessen the power gap between the sides, hitting targets of opportunity, etc. instead of making the whole story about this shitty magic rock that's suddenly the only hope of the galaxy even though nobody has any idea what it does. The game could have been the story of one man uniting the galaxy against a common foe and beating impossible odds through sheer power of getting shit done. Instead they made it about the entire galaxy heroically running and hiding while the big damn hero does some irrelevant (but heroic) stuff on the side and then the magic Crucible that can't possibly exist anyway ends everything without your input.
Don't get me wrong, outside a few tiny annoyances (thermal clips, [space] to do everything, most sidequests are just fetching something, shoehorning in gay options with people you've never heard of and barely interact with to try to make up for removing them from the first two games for no good reason, just dropping all the Dark Energy foreshadowing, Vega, etc) everything that didn't touch the core plot was beautiful. They clearly had a lot of brilliant writers on this, and they made one of the best games I've seen in a long while... for 90% of it. And then the Crucible gets mentioned or I think about the ending and it all turns to shit. Honestly it would be easier if the whole game was just crap so I could pretend it didn't happen and keep playing the first two, but ME3 was so much fun and it's so obvious that they were doing it right until somebody came along with too much power and too little sense and screwed everything over.
Two years of slow, non-relay based travel later the Reapers got to the nearest mass relay with their normal drives (about twice as fast as the best ships currently being built, but not as good as a Relay) and prepared for a conventional invasion, but Shepard got there in the Arrival DLC and destroyed the relay with hours to spare. This forced them to take several months getting from there to the next nearest relay the slow way, which the Council could use to finally act on Shepard's advice... but instead chose to arrest him for killing the Batarians in the system with the relay.
They arrive at the next relay at the start of ME3, and can suddenly get anywhere on the network almost instanlty, but since they didn't take the Citadel first and everyone was warned (even if the biggest governments ignored it) the Reapers had to actually fight, giving you enough time for the events of the third game.
Everybody calls Shepard 'Commander' either out of habit (he was an Alliance Commander before he became a Spectre), or technical accuracy (he's the one in command, the commanding officer, regardless of rank). Except Tali, who calls him Captain because that's the highest non-Admiral authority to a Quarian. And Ash, who calls him Skipper (which is technically an acceptable term for the owner/operator of any ship, but rarely used in military context).
The one thing that I really do hate about Cerberus's involvement in the second game is that you can't even bring up their activites from the first game except for the Rachni. Admiral Hacket, Toombs and your unit on Akuze... all of it is never even brought up.
Like I said, 90% of the game is beautiful and there are few if any real problems that don't touch on the Crucible or the ending if you pay attention to the background and think about things.
And they didn't even need it; you proved in the first game that even Sovereign, the most powerful of the Reapers, can be killed but it takes a good distraction and the combined firepower of the combined pre-war Council fleet to do it. The Reapers relied on surprise and total control of the Relay network for every previous invasion; without Sovereign and the Citadel they're incredibly powerful, but nowhere near enough to make fighting them hopeless. They could totally have done the whole game as a conventional war, with Shepard's missions being to recruit more allies, develop/discover new technologies to lessen the power gap between the sides, hitting targets of opportunity, etc. instead of making the whole story about this shitty magic rock that's suddenly the only hope of the galaxy even though nobody has any idea what it does. The game could have been the story of one man uniting the galaxy against a common foe and beating impossible odds through sheer power of getting shit done. Instead they made it about the entire galaxy heroically running and hiding while the big damn hero does some irrelevant (but heroic) stuff on the side and then the magic Crucible that can't possibly exist anyway ends everything without your input.
Don't get me wrong, outside a few tiny annoyances (thermal clips, [space] to do everything, most sidequests are just fetching something, shoehorning in gay options with people you've never heard of and barely interact with to try to make up for removing them from the first two games for no good reason, just dropping all the Dark Energy foreshadowing, Vega, etc) everything that didn't touch the core plot was beautiful. They clearly had a lot of brilliant writers on this, and they made one of the best games I've seen in a long while... for 90% of it. And then the Crucible gets mentioned or I think about the ending and it all turns to shit. Honestly it would be easier if the whole game was just crap so I could pretend it didn't happen and keep playing the first two, but ME3 was so much fun and it's so obvious that they were doing it right until somebody came along with too much power and too little sense and screwed everything over.
The Citadel was a shortcut, a way to go straight from their lair beyond the galactic rim to the core of civilization, cet all the communication lines and throw people into a panic, and then kill or experiment at their leisure like they did to the Protheans. In ME1 Shepard cut off their plan A and killed the one they left behind to keep a watch on things and open the door for them.canadamus_prime said:
Two years of slow, non-relay based travel later the Reapers got to the nearest mass relay with their normal drives (about twice as fast as the best ships currently being built, but not as good as a Relay) and prepared for a conventional invasion, but Shepard got there in the Arrival DLC and destroyed the relay with hours to spare. This forced them to take several months getting from there to the next nearest relay the slow way, which the Council could use to finally act on Shepard's advice... but instead chose to arrest him for killing the Batarians in the system with the relay.
They arrive at the next relay at the start of ME3, and can suddenly get anywhere on the network almost instanlty, but since they didn't take the Citadel first and everyone was warned (even if the biggest governments ignored it) the Reapers had to actually fight, giving you enough time for the events of the third game.
Kaiden's rank is 'Major'. Shepard's rank is 'Motherfucking Spectre'. Spectre outranks everyone in council space except Councilor (and until they revoke your status you don't even need to take orders from them) and other Spectres, and has full diplomatic privilige toward all foreign governments. Shepard technically has the authority to order around anyone from a raw recruit to a Fleet Admiral to a corporate private security guard if they're under the rule of the Council, and only common sense, politness, or the contrary nature of those around you prevents this. And most of those who specifically deny you things end poorly (the old admin on Noveria, for example) because a Spectre in a hurry can literally cut them down without legal repurcussions and a Spectre with morals is now very interested in any illicit dealings they've had.Devoneaux said:
Everybody calls Shepard 'Commander' either out of habit (he was an Alliance Commander before he became a Spectre), or technical accuracy (he's the one in command, the commanding officer, regardless of rank). Except Tali, who calls him Captain because that's the highest non-Admiral authority to a Quarian. And Ash, who calls him Skipper (which is technically an acceptable term for the owner/operator of any ship, but rarely used in military context).
After the end of ME2, Shepard is a high end cyborg. Your bones are reinforced, your skin is armored, your muscles are up-powered, everything. To the point where if you headbutt a krogan, you come away clean and he staggers. It would take a lot more than falling off a building to hurt you. It might take more than the building falling on you to kill you. The downside is of course that if your implants were removed you would die faster than a naked Quarian in a Batarian latrine, but it does make you very good at taking suicide missions and coming back unharmed.Devoneaux said:
Anderson retired his post as Councilor between 2 and 3, partly because he was as tired as you of the "ah yes, 'Reapers'" and partly because he always hated paperwork and politics and wanted a military position. Udina was his best option for a successor on the Council because all the others were worse, and say what you will about the asshole but he's good at politics. I was actually a bit more surprised by the jump from Captain Anderson to Admiral Anderson, but I guess the Alliance can't exactly drop the first human Councillor down to command of a single frigate without it being the talk of the galaxy for months.Mikeyfell said:
Not a plot hole. Cerberus was always evil, and the continued to be evil (blatantly) through ME2 (they try to hide it from Shepard while he's working with them, but it's still pretty obvious in a lot of side missions, loyalty missions, and DLC). However, they rebuilt Shepard, gave him a ship, and destroyed the Collectors while being evil, making them a distasteful but valuable ally in the short term while the Council was ignoring everything and the Alliance was refusing to do anything to help, because all of their evil was motivated at the time by extremism and the good of the human race regardless of consequences to the rest of the galaxy. Then, after Shepard stole the Normandy 2, flipped TIM the bird, and recruited away about a third of their best (and least evil on an individual basis) agents, Cerberus decided to go full monster. TIM got himself indoctrinated, they abandoned the covert system where they have three projects and a few dozen agents at a time to prevent info leaks and just hired a merc army, they started rewiring and augmenting their soldiers into little more than partially organic robots to increase combat efficiency and prevent more personnel losses to little things like 'morals' or 'logic', and started fighting you directly.Joseph Harrison said:
The one thing that I really do hate about Cerberus's involvement in the second game is that you can't even bring up their activites from the first game except for the Rachni. Admiral Hacket, Toombs and your unit on Akuze... all of it is never even brought up.
Like I said, 90% of the game is beautiful and there are few if any real problems that don't touch on the Crucible or the ending if you pay attention to the background and think about things.
Would it be cheap to say the ending of ME3?
I didn't notice any plotholes in Fallout 3, dat game was amazing.
Maybe I should mention the ending of Far Cry 3 when you choose a certain option and a certain event follows which kinda contradicts the fact that you can continue to play?
I didn't notice any plotholes in Fallout 3, dat game was amazing.
Maybe I should mention the ending of Far Cry 3 when you choose a certain option and a certain event follows which kinda contradicts the fact that you can continue to play?
Way too many responses in this thread are arguing over inconsequential details. Too many problems pointed out are not actually plot holes. ME3 especially is getting so much flak for some details it introduces to the franchise that seem not to be adequately explained. Here's the thing:
An inadequate amount of exposition does not fit the definition of a "plot hole." It does not even fit the definition of "bad writing."
A plot hole, as has been earlier established in this thread, is an occurrence of events in the plot that cannot have logically happened based on the information we have been given. It is no more and no less than this. So, Shepard and Vega being buddies at the beginning of ME3 is not a plot hole as nothing before or after establishing this directly contradicts it.
So many of the complainers are total hypocrites as well. I see many people aiming their criticism at ME3 for not dumping exposition on us to explain every little detail and cover all possible character actions and motivations. They point this out as bad writing because "the job of a writer is to explain what his characters do and why they do it."
Bullshit. This is meant to make you sound like a cultured consumer of quality fiction and highly aware of the way writing "is supposed to work," and are thus qualified to criticize what "doesn't work." The problem here is that these same people, if they really are aware of the conventions and techniques of writing, would realize that most novels and films that people consider "good" do not waste time on laying out all possible plot avenues and all possible character motivations just to make the reader/viewer more comfortable.
A great deal of great writing comes in the form of ambiguous events and characters. Whether you love or hate Ernest Hemingway, he is a highly respected and extremely talented writer. His stories are never exposited on, ever. The motivations for his characters are a mystery, until you think about the story, analyze its structure and consider the author's intentions.
It is not the resposibility of an auther of any work of fiction to make sure everyone experiencing it can grasp everything about it. Ambiguity and confusion can be intentional tools used by the very best of writers. Even when you are writing an adventure story, such as ME3, you don't have to flat out explain every detail that the viewer may come up with, nor do you have to dumb your prose down so far that everyone can understand it in the simplest terms. Allow your audience to prove to you that they are stupid, don't just assume it from the start and tailor your style to please the lowest denominator. ME3 gives you just enough information in the opening to explain what Vega is doing there and what his relationship with Shepard is. Obviously, since nearly everyone seems to have picked it up without any deep thought required. This is about the stupidest complaint of a "plot hole" I've ever heard.
An inadequate amount of exposition does not fit the definition of a "plot hole." It does not even fit the definition of "bad writing."
A plot hole, as has been earlier established in this thread, is an occurrence of events in the plot that cannot have logically happened based on the information we have been given. It is no more and no less than this. So, Shepard and Vega being buddies at the beginning of ME3 is not a plot hole as nothing before or after establishing this directly contradicts it.
So many of the complainers are total hypocrites as well. I see many people aiming their criticism at ME3 for not dumping exposition on us to explain every little detail and cover all possible character actions and motivations. They point this out as bad writing because "the job of a writer is to explain what his characters do and why they do it."
Bullshit. This is meant to make you sound like a cultured consumer of quality fiction and highly aware of the way writing "is supposed to work," and are thus qualified to criticize what "doesn't work." The problem here is that these same people, if they really are aware of the conventions and techniques of writing, would realize that most novels and films that people consider "good" do not waste time on laying out all possible plot avenues and all possible character motivations just to make the reader/viewer more comfortable.
A great deal of great writing comes in the form of ambiguous events and characters. Whether you love or hate Ernest Hemingway, he is a highly respected and extremely talented writer. His stories are never exposited on, ever. The motivations for his characters are a mystery, until you think about the story, analyze its structure and consider the author's intentions.
It is not the resposibility of an auther of any work of fiction to make sure everyone experiencing it can grasp everything about it. Ambiguity and confusion can be intentional tools used by the very best of writers. Even when you are writing an adventure story, such as ME3, you don't have to flat out explain every detail that the viewer may come up with, nor do you have to dumb your prose down so far that everyone can understand it in the simplest terms. Allow your audience to prove to you that they are stupid, don't just assume it from the start and tailor your style to please the lowest denominator. ME3 gives you just enough information in the opening to explain what Vega is doing there and what his relationship with Shepard is. Obviously, since nearly everyone seems to have picked it up without any deep thought required. This is about the stupidest complaint of a "plot hole" I've ever heard.
In Crysis 2.
Where was Psycho when New York was getting invaded? I understand that Nomad was handwaved by being killed in a graphic short that came out right before the game was released, but shouldn't Psycho have been working with Prophet?
Can I join in? I really like polite, thoughtful arguments because they bring up things I haven't thought of or forgot about and help everyone figue things out, but every time ME3 comes up you have lots of mindless fanboys, lots of mindless raeg, and almost no real discussion. I should probably hide most of this so people can scroll past the off-topic bits tho...bug_of_war said:
I knew about the Dark Energy thing (I love Tali [no not like that, she's just a fun character with a good development arc]), but I never really though it was a big part of the Reapers' motivation. If this was an ongoing natural thing they were trying to stop, it seems like it would have been more widespread and normal astronomical study would consider it normal, instead of being the big mystery to investigate. I figured it might be a trick by the Reapers or the Geth or some other faction that you'd have to deal with, or maybe something you could harness as a weapon against them, or maybe just a weird thing that doesn't enter the plot except as an explanation for Tali's presence there.
Based on what Sovereign said in the first game, I figured that maybe the Reapers were studying the younger races' development. Or maybe they lacked that creative drive of the young races, being ancient and mechanical and immortal, and harvested whatever new technologies were developed by the little mayflies every 50,000 years while being careful not to let them get powerful enough to pose a serious threat. Or maybe they had some motivation incmprehensible to us mere mortals, being the timeless eldrich monstrosities they were. The only things that were certain were that there was nothing above them, they acted only on their own inscruitable interests, and they were confident in their own power to the point where failure was inconceivable to Soverein. But Shepard managed to kill one of them, through trickery and playing on his hubris and impressive leadership and a hell of a lot of luck, so Humanity (and Shepard in particular) got their attention.
The second game gave their reason, or at least one of their reasons: they use the galaxy and the young races to reproduce. While wiping out anyone who might become a threat, they ascend the dominant race, or the best of them in the case of a balance like in the current cycle, to Reaperhood. They're effectively the ultimate social darwinists, giving whoever competes best in the galactic arena immortality and a place in whatever society they have out beyond the rim and exterminating everyone else. Humanity got picked this time around because Shepard proved their potency when he killed Sovereign, and because of all the nice special qualities that took humanity from the first rockets to full Council race status in a couple centuries. If you bring alien squadmates to the final battle in ME2 Harbinger will even tell you why each other race wasn't chosen: the Krogans would have been great if they won their war but the genophage makes them worthless, the Quarians are brilliant but their physical frailty disqualifies them, the Asari's long life and superpowers stagnate their development and their reproduction makes them dependant on other races to produce anything but inbred idiots, etc. Some people thought it was silly (probably because all you see of this process is a giant metal skeleton fetus), but I thought the end of ME2 explained the Reapers pretty well in an incomplete way that would be built on by the third game when you face more of them and have more sources of information; they had a believable motivation that could be added to but didn't need more, and it easily allowed for the same superiority and conceit that Sovereign displayed in the first game.
Then of course the ending of ME3 threw everything away and made them the mindless pawns of a retarded glowing infant, but I choose to believe that didn't happen since it contradicts all of the lore and the major themes of the story until then.
I definitely agree on all of this. ME2 is a prefect example of a second act. The basic stage was set and the big players had been introduced by ME1, but we didn't know much about them. The first big conflict was over and there was hope, but the threat was far from gone. ME2 did what the second in a trilogy should: it progressed but did not resolve the main plot, it grew the hero from where he was in the first act (needing the combined forces of the entire Council and then some plus an overconfident enemy and a lot of luck just to take one target) to where he needed to be for the third act (capable of fighting a desparate, not quite hopeless war on a galactic scale), and it did that well. It introduced all the real players who hadnt been in the beginning, and gave you much more information and development for those who didn't have much of a chance the first time around (the Geth, the Rachni, the Quarians, the Krogan, Aria, The Illusive Man, all your new squadmates, all your old squadmates except for the boring human ones, etc.).
Maybe most importantly, it introduced a real villain to rally against. Sovereign was powerful, but so full of himself that he went into solo combat in a borrowed corpse against someone who killed every opponent he faced on a scale smaller than a dropship. He had no subtlety, no careful plans, nothing in his toolbox but a really big hammer and he got killed in the first act because of it. Harbinger, on the other hand, seems silly on the surface but gets dangerously genre savvy when you look closer. His first action when he takes command is not to brag, or make a show of force, or even to move forward with the invasion. His first action is to find the man who killed his predecessor, and apply enough power to qualify as overkill on any other target to the ship he's on. Then (if you read the comics, or just look closely enough at Liara's story between the first and second games) he does not just count you as dead after your ship was disintegrated around you. He dedicates all the resources at his immediate disposal to confirming the kill, and it's only the combined efforts of Liara, Aria, and Cerberus that manage to recover your body before the Collectors do. And when you come back and do start fighting him, he's learned from the previous villain's mistake: despite the memes he never actually takes direct control and fights you himself, because that's what made Sovereign vulnerable for the moment it took to destroy him. Instead, he always goes through the intermediary of the Collecter General and lies to you at every turn. Then when you complete the main plot of ME2 and somehow make it through the suicide mission? You accomplished next to nothing. You exterminated a handful of second-rate minions, and prevented them from making a human reaper until they could fully subjugate humanity, but all his important plans are intact. And you've alienated the Council, used a lot of resources, and probably gotten several of your friends (the best in the galaxy for fighting Reapers) killed in the process. When Arrival comes you manage to set him back... by a few months, at the expense of immobilizing yourself for those same months, driving every civilized race furthr against you, and all but declraring a personal war on the Batarians. Harbinger might not have as much direct force to bring to bear as the dragon in the first act, but he's smart and he's patient and he does not underestimate you, making him a huge threat and a sort of evil opposite to Shepard in the war; as you scramble to unite the races and organize things against the Reaper invasion, he would match your every move arranging his already overwhelming forces to even more lethal effect and braking apart your fragile alliances.
Until of course the third game appears, Harbinger reads the script, and opts out of the whole mess.
I believe every major race's capital/homeworld recieved similar treatment as a major invasion and harvesting point, but it does make sense for Earth to get special attention; if Shepard, TIM, Joker, Anderson, and all those other big time players came from humanity, Earth is a source of many potential threats, and if they're still the best choice for this cycle's new baby Reaper you need your biggest harvesting operation where the human population is biggest. And personally I was kind of hoping for more missions on the surface, sabotaging reaper operations or extricating VIPs with the Normandy's stealth drive.
What doesn't really make sense is using Earth for the ending, or trying to rally the galaxy to take back your planet specifically instead of generally beating back Reaper forces, but nothing in the ending and little in the core plot makes sense.
I still love Bioware. You can see the old brilliance and talent they made so many classics with throughout ME3, and they actually lived up to the hype for the most part... outside of that 10% containing the ending and the Crucible. And then you can see EA's bloody handprints all over that part, after the lead writer of the first two games was replaced. So as much as I hate to say it and as much fun as I've had, I don't think I'll ever be buying another Bioware game.
Why would they have land vehicles on a heavily colonized planet, vehicles that drive you from one place to another. Hmm thats a tricky one, perhaps they drove there?Devoneaux said:
Vegas was eiher assigned to Shepard somehow or worked with him during his detention, the dialogue made that quite clear.Devoneaux said:
Because of artistic intent, making the intro/demo to a game more exciting than using stairs is a fair enough reason.Devoneaux said:
Not a plot hole at all just an unresolved question, its an interesting question sure but its not a plot hole.Devoneaux said:
Actually try listing some plot holes then, the game has enough of them but these are not plot holes.Devoneaux said:
SNIP
Did you also notice how starchild's chaos/order (technological singularity) contradicted the Rannoch story arc.
They spent 2 games convincing us the geth are misunderstood and can co-exist with organics...just to say...ermm no disregard everything you have learnt and experienced... they will kill you because starchild said so in 10 lines of dialogue.
This is what happens when you change the entire point of the reapers at the end. It would be like when Luke gets to the Emperor in Return of the jedi. Then the emperor says 'The dark side has to keep the light side in balance or the universe will implode...No you can't argue this is now fact.'
Did you also notice how starchild's chaos/order (technological singularity) contradicted the Rannoch story arc.
They spent 2 games convincing us the geth are misunderstood and can co-exist with organics...just to say...ermm no disregard everything you have learnt and experienced... they will kill you because starchild said so in 10 lines of dialogue.
This is what happens when you change the entire point of the reapers at the end. It would be like when Luke gets to the Emperor in Return of the jedi. Then the emperor says 'The dark side has to keep the light side in balance or the universe will implode...No you can't argue this is now fact.'
I wasn't aware off the Dark energy theory at the time either. But the chaos/order explanation still felt contrived because it didn't fit with everything else that happened in the storybug_of_war said:
The starchild explanation directly contradicts the geth rannoch story arc. 2 games convincing us the geth can co-exist peacefully with organics, just for starchild to say 'ermmm no we were right the first time'
I think people wanting a 'new ending' were confused at what happened..They wanted an explanation of what the writer's meant. Thing is there were so many plot holes and contrivances in the ending and the run up to the end, the audience could not distinguish what was supposed to be open ended and what was just poor writing. There are times to leave things open ended and this wasn't it anyway . The funny thing is they got an explanation for an ending that doesn't make sense in the first place.
Here's a brilliant vid analysing what went wrong if you have not already seen it (it's doesn't go into detail about specific plot elements but still the best vid I have seen)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MlatxLP-xs