Fans Tear New Mass Effect Book to Shreds

[Al-Bundy-da-G]

http://social.bioware.com/uploads_user/741000/740385/30367.gif
"Ah yes 'fact checking'. The act of checking factual assertions in a text intended for publication to determine the veracity and correctness of statements made there in. The job requires general knowledge and the ability to conduct quick and accurate research. We have discontinued this practice"

What is that human saying? "A little education is a troublesome thing."

Dear God, Bhudda, Shiva, Allah, Moses, Jesus, and Thor please grant me the ability to shoot the Turian Council member in the head as soon as I reach the Citadel in ME3

 

[Godhead]

Hahaha, thats nothing. These people have clearly never read anything by C.S. Goto. His work has been declared purgatis hereticus extremis in 5 sectors.

This much is true. That Deathwatch series. My brain... WHYYYYYYY???? (I'll stick with Dan Abnett)

OT: As somebody who most of the times prefers to get immersed in the atmosphere and world(s) of a game this thing sounds like a downright deal breaker for anybody who even half enjoys listening to the codex entries. (Which are awesome)

 

[ErgoCSS]

Theoretically speaking:

I just thought what would those uber-hardcore fans would do if EA sold the movie rights to Uwe Boll? Mass Suicide Effect..

 

[BoredRolePlayer]

Spent the last few days of my time compiling a list of everything that's wrong in a half-baked video game tie-in novel. [Error: Life]

I can understand the frustration of said tie-in books being so poor quality, and setting it on fire is pretty funny, but the list seems pretty far. That said, however they deal with it is up to them.

I heard fans who bought Tales of Vesperia in lit their copies of the game on fire out of rage of a PS3 version coming out. So it's not a shock to me .

 

[The Lugz]

sorry, but i find the errors doc as poorly researched as the book

"there are a handful worth mentioning that have very legitimate reasons for being upset over. This includes a character ?growing up? from being autistic"

firstly I'm going to point out I haven't read the book and nor will i
so I can't tell the context this is meant in, however
this sentence demonstrates a poor grasp of the idea of autism, it's causes and the MANY and vastly varying types
it is entirely possible to 'grow out' of autism, it has plagued my family for generations
knowing they have a problem is the biggest hurdle in the process, they're awesome if you ask them and to be fair they usually are because the part of the brain that does the logical thinking is doing double shift because the communications and relations portion is not functioning correctly
in lower functioning autistics this causes a rather large slowdown in some ( but not all ) mental processes and makes them a bit dozy, confused, needy or angry
in higher functioning autistics this causes them to weigh every word carefully, because of years of misinterpretation and confusion, they organise every action they take and factor in every problem to a situation, including their own problems resulting in nothing short of genius
they feel your stupid because you cant see what they mean at all times and cant put two and two together the way they can and find it highly ironic that you think they have a problem
and that is why you can grow out of autism, it is a life long condition but your brain is capable of factoring it into its calculations if you're smart enough

 

[katsa5]

I write short stories as a hobby. Occasionally, I dabble in fanfiction as well. I only had one Mass Effect project; an ongoing saga about Jael Shepard. This was a gift to my husband. I know this kind of work is small potatoes compared to a novel; but I can confidently say that mine was more informed than this novel. At least I got the politics right! "Batarian pirates invade Palaven" HA! All I had was a wiki, working for free, and love for the game. What's your excuse, sir!

 

[JohnDoey]

And the thing is, as someone who read a 55 page excerpt of the novel, the errors are glaring at times. Some on that list are nitpicky, but others are simple facts. Example:

- Two characters are now 18 when they were 12/13 at the end of ME1, which is said to have taken place two years prior
- One of those characters was also Autistic, now they aren't
- Biotics are now suddenly ranked by power level and can level up if they gain enough experience
- A character who was dead is now alive
- A character who is known as a racist and was introduced to us by talking about how much he hates the Asari now thinks Asari are hot
- Many others (Just look how long that list is!)

Believe me, the list also ignores the simply amateurish writing (Characters getting killed by a sharpened toothbrush, another character stealing cereal to prove how much of a badass he is). It takes actual effort to have this many errors. You have to intentionally ignore the source material when it's staring you in the face.

There's hitting the mark, missing the mark, and shooting yourself in the foot. This book picks the third option.

bwuh? Gillian is no longer autistic? But that was one of her major characteristics , they made a whole point about the fact that she got picked on because she ate her food in parts for goodness sake.

There's not doing the research and then there's just writing with your head in the sand.

According to Dietz you can just get over autism.

 

[Foxblade618]

This is certainly breaking news. What book based in a video game universe shouldn't be torn to shreds? I mean, they are all bloody awful. I remember reading a Resident Evil book and almost throwing up because it was so god awful.

True, except that Bioware just apologized for Deception on their website.

 

[Loop Stricken]

Like that one guy who tried to find out what that quarian's (i don't know how to spell her name) sweat smells and tastes like..

Call me crazy but I thought that it was quite interesting. If I recall correctly, quarian sweat acts as a mildly addictive performance enhancer to humans.
Pretty awesome, I think!

Anyways, I had a read of this list, and yes, some of the errors are astoundingly bad. An old batarian ship equipped with a Tantalus drive core is bad enough, but to have quarians give it up without any trouble whatsoever? Ahahaha no.

 

[Beryl77]

-snip-

Well color me surprised.
Bioware actually responded to the fans about Deception. They said that they're in the process of making some changes to the book which will be included in the next editions of the novel.
http://social.bioware.com/forum/Mass-Effect-3/Mass-Effect-3-General-Discussion/Del-Ray-and-BioWare-comment-on-Mass-Effect-Deception-9150901-1.html

 

[Warachia]

sorry, but i find the errors doc as poorly researched as the book

"there are a handful worth mentioning that have very legitimate reasons for being upset over. This includes a character ?growing up? from being autistic"

firstly I'm going to point out I haven't read the book and nor will i
so I can't tell the context this is meant in, however
this sentence demonstrates a poor grasp of the idea of autism, it's causes and the MANY and vastly varying types
it is entirely possible to 'grow out' of autism, it has plagued my family for generations
knowing they have a problem is the biggest hurdle in the process, they're awesome if you ask them and to be fair they usually are because the part of the brain that does the logical thinking is doing double shift because the communications and relations portion is not functioning correctly
in lower functioning autistics this causes a rather large slowdown in some ( but not all ) mental processes and makes them a bit dozy, confused, needy or angry
in higher functioning autistics this causes them to weigh every word carefully, because of years of misinterpretation and confusion, they organise every action they take and factor in every problem to a situation, including their own problems resulting in nothing short of genius
they feel your stupid because you cant see what they mean at all times and cant put two and two together the way they can and find it highly ironic that you think they have a problem
and that is why you can grow out of autism, it is a life long condition but your brain is capable of factoring it into its calculations if you're smart enough

Okay, two problems there, 1. that isn't growing out of autism, that's learning how to effectively live with it, and 2. the book doesn't even mention the character as having autism in the past, and from what we see of the character, they work just like everybody else, meaning the author barely glanced at the previous novel let alone read it.

 

[Beryl77]

-snip-

I don't know much about autism. So is it possible to be exactly the same as everyone else, with no symptoms at all?
In the second book Gillian is 12 and in Deception, she's 18 and no one in the book even mentions that she was autistic. Now it seems like she only had some anger issues, like a phase she went through as a kid, although in the second book she had been diagnosed with autism.
Like I said, I don't know much about autism, is this possible?

 

[Lieju]

-snip-

I don't know much about autism. So is it possible to be exactly the same as everyone else, with no symptoms at all?
In the second book Gillian is 12 and in Deception, she's 18 and no one in the book even mentions that she was autistic. Now it seems like she only had some anger issues, like a phase she went through as a kid, although in the second book she had been diagnosed with autism.
Like I said, I don't know much about autism, is this possible?

It depends on how badly impaired they were in the first place.
Also diagnosis can be a problem, it's not like it's always easy to tell if someone has autism or not, and different psychologists might get different diagnosis.

And terminology, Aspergers(and other disorders) is included into the autism spectrum, and I believe it was at some point considered the same.

So basically, if someone is diagnosed 'autistic', it alone doesn't tell that much about the condition.
How high-functioning the character was? And how reliable the diagnosis was?

Okay, two problems there, 1. that isn't growing out of autism, that's learning how to effectively live with it, and 2. the book doesn't even mention the character as having autism in the past, and from what we see of the character, they work just like everybody else, meaning the author barely glanced at the previous novel let alone read it.

It's possible for a child to lose the autism-diagnosis when they grow up.
But I haven't read the books, so I have no idea how high-functioning the character was, or how she 'recovered'.

 

[Oroboros]

Not surprising. A lot of Video game tie-in books tend to be quite awful. The real tragedy is that this sort of Dross usually becomes 'canon' and as a result is very likely to show up in sequels to the video game said awful literature was based off of. For examples of this, there was the Elder Scrolls book, I think the name was 'The Infernal City' which is responsible for Morrowind being a wasteland in Skyrim, and also the Revan book which is canon for TOR. I wouldn't be suprised if some of this stuff shows up in Mass Effect 3 or in another Mass Effect game down the line.

 

[Eldritch Warlord]

Dietz is a decent author, but his attention to detail is lacking. When writing novels in already established sci-fi universes attention to detail is the most important quality a writer can have.

Or they could just pay some random fan a small sum to fact-check the book before publication

 

[The Lugz]

-snip-

I don't know much about autism. So is it possible to be exactly the same as everyone else, with no symptoms at all?
In the second book Gillian is 12 and in Deception, she's 18 and no one in the book even mentions that she was autistic. Now it seems like she only had some anger issues, like a phase she went through as a kid, although in the second book she had been diagnosed with autism.
Like I said, I don't know much about autism, is this possible?

short and confusing answer, yes.
long and convoluted answer, sort-of, occasionally, nobody really knows...

it is entirely possible for a highly effected autistic to mimic you or any personality very well, but then have sudden breakdowns when they don't know what someone expects of them it's like a bug in a computer program that just reboots the whole program, they get embarrassed confused and angry very easily at this point

ive seen an autistic cook an egg, be perfectly happy and look exactly like anyone else, then burn it flip out and throw the pan at a wall then cry in a corner for 5 minutes because they know what they did was wrong, but not why.

it's complicated, really and it varys so much from person to person
it's actually a good plot device for a story, because you can almost get away with anything, super intelligence, total breakdowns and inability to act, physical ticks, memorising books, numbers ect depending what is needed at the time.
it's all possible, but you cant just throw it all at a wall and hope it sticks


back on topic, it's entirely possible for an autistic that is learning to cope with the issue to focus outbursts of rage at things, hardly healthy of course but possible

 

[Hawk of Battle]

Hahaha, thats nothing. These people have clearly never read anything by C.S. Goto. His work has been declared purgatis hereticus extremis in 5 sectors.

His Most Holy Inquisition reminds you that the works of the heretic C.S. Goto are to be expunged from all records in accordance with Inquisitorial decree 545967/481/Epsilon49. No mention shall be made, by name or deeds, of the heretic C.S. Goto in any recorded files, datalogs or vox recordings under said decree. All physical copies of the works of the heretic C.S. Goto are to be burned on sight and the ashes sanctified under Ecclesiastic supervision according to the proper disposal rituals.

Any individual who deviates from the subject of this decree is to be deemed Excommunicate Traitoris and executed on sight.