ME3: Thessia and Kai Leng (Spoilers)

RJ 17

The Sound of Silence
Nov 27, 2011
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Lupus80 said:
When he jumped onto the top of your air car in the Citidel I kept thinking "Pull up into that overhang!" and the wonderful vision of Leng's head smacking it.
That's exactly what I thought as well "Ummmm, Shepard? Simple fix to your current problem: pull up." :p

I've got nothing against the Phantom as a standard enemy unit...but giving a main(ish) villain a sword when the hero can potentially be using an anti-matter sniper rifle is just plain silly. I've never, not once, been hit by KL in any of his fights, and I've played through the game 3 times now. He's just so worthless, and yet unappologetically arrogant and full of himself...I really do hate the fucking guy, and like I said I'm almost positive that was Bioware's intention. He's just so such an over-the-top jackass that his personality/worthlessness had to be intentional.
 

Tono Makt

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Lupus80 said:
Tono Makt said:
ME1 - Saren - Vyrmire.

Sorry dude, can't quite sympathize with you on this point. I can see it, just don't agree with it,
The difference is that with Saren is that you got to know him. You got to understand his motives and actually argue/interact with him. Another difference is that your actions actually matter on Vermire (which squad mate dies, if Wrex dies, if the Sarlian task force is slaughtered, etc.)as opposed to the mission on Thessia where you have no choice in any matter.

I understand the comparison and admit to it; but at least you got to knock Saren off his hover platform (by the way why haven't we seen more of those things? They seem like they would be useful), and you got to ruin his plan to create a krogan-clone army. Yes, I know, you suriving and destroying the facility is just as forced as the destruction of Thessia, but maybe it was just the execution of it all that got to me.
Oh I'll give you all of that, no argument here. The scene in ME1 with Saren has a far better build up and far more emotional content than the scene in ME3 with Kai Leng on Thessia, and the overall mission on Virmire is far more affecting than the mission on Thessia.

But unfortunately what you're doing with this post is to move the goal posts - your original post was a complaint that no matter how well you did in the gameplay scene with Kai Leng, you lost in the cut scene. My response is to point out that this is not new for Mass Effect, and indeed it was done in ME1. (I don't think it was done in ME2.) Now, if you want to widen your argument to include the decisions leading up to the particular scene, and the ramifications of the entire scene (ie: move the goal posts), that's fine. And in the wider argument, I understand your point and have more sympathy for it. I don't believe that losing in a cut-scene regardless of the actual game play actions you've taken is enough of an issue by itself to form a legitimate complaint. But as the cherry on top of an already bad mission, I have far more sympathy for the entire argument.

(the entire Thessia mission is... bleh. admittedly I'm biased - I had a FemShep in a relationship with Liara and entertained a faint hope that if I got a Perfect Ending, I might end up having little blue FemShep T'Soni daughters running around one day, so I had hoped for far more time on Thessia. 'Course I expected that Shep would die a martyr's death to save the Galaxy and there would be no little blue or purple or green FemShep T'Soni's, but a fool can dream, can't he?)
 

mireko

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Sep 23, 2010
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God, don't get me started. Kai Leng is the worst character they have ever written (yes, this is an open challenge to anyone who thinks they know of a worse BioWare character). Literally everything about his character is incongruous in the setting. He's a space ninja. He's dressed like a Final Fantasy character who spent a week's vacation in Human Revolution, and he's got a bit of Resident Evil-level dialogue thrown in for good measure. He's the ultimate Mary Sue.

And that boss fight on Thessia.. it only took one bullet to break his shields. Throughout the fight, he looked like he'd lost his mind, running to the ship to become invulnerable (what?) before turning around- then turning back and kneeling again. Nonsense. Then after the fight, he's the one who gets cocky? And everyone just goes along with it? Fuck off.

I hated him so much more than the ending. Honestly, every stupid element (yes, the T-1000 too) in the entire series pales in comparison.
 

Eddie the head

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Feb 22, 2012
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Kaulen Fuhs said:
Fair enough, but I think that has more to do with the vanguard class than with Kai Leng
Where you using mouse and keyboard or a controller? Because I did notice that playing a Vanguard is much much easier with a controller. Maybe not for multiplier but defiantly for single player.
 

Adam Jensen_v1legacy

I never asked for this
Sep 8, 2011
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tippy2k2 said:
See, I thought the reason he looked like that was because of what the Illusive Man did to him. From the sound of it, he was just as killed as Shepard was but the IM brought him back from the dead just as he brought Shepard back. However, this time he went with Miranda's idea for a puppet rather than free-will and put the control chip into him, hence the weird...sun-glass thing? Honestly, I thought he kind of looked like Adam Jensen with Raiden (Metal Gear Solid 4) attributes...both characters that I wouldn't blink an eye to if they showed up.

I thought that was what made Kai Lang a good bad guy; this is what Shepard could have become, a mirror to show a different path.
He just looks so out of place in my opinion. The fact that he looks like a character from another game IS the issue. I don't have a problem with him being there, but he could have looked like a normal person from Mass Effect universe. Saren, even with all of his synthetic parts still managed to look unique, and not like he stepped out of a different video game. Not to mention that Saren is just a cool bad-ass villain you could respect. In my opinion, Saren was one of the best characters Bioware has ever written.
 

Zen Toombs

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I actually liked Kai Leng, but the "plot armor" stuff of Eva and Kai Leng really bothered me. Also, I felt like Shepard's reaction to the kid was a bit overwrought and I didn't like Shep's reaction to Thessia. My reaction to the first was "okay, people die. Now we need to make it STOP, not dwel on those we cannot save." and for the second, I wanted to say "okay, so let's take the fight to Cerberus! Hunt them down, get back the VI, do what we have to do. Failures happen, but dwelling helps noone. Deal with the situation we have, not the situation we could have had."
 

Tono Makt

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Zen Toombs said:
I actually liked Kai Leng, but the "plot armor" stuff of Eva and Kai Leng really bothered me. Also, I felt like Shepard's reaction to the kid was a bit overwrought and I didn't like Shep's reaction to Thessia. My reaction to the first was "okay, people die. Now we need to make it STOP, not dwel on those we cannot save." and for the second, I wanted to say "okay, so let's take the fight to Cerberus! Hunt them down, get back the VI, do what we have to do. Failures happen, but dwelling helps noone. Deal with the situation we have, not the situation we could have had."
Huh, good point there. I'd forgotten about the Eva scene even though I just played it two nights ago. Tried to use Energy Drain and Overload on her to absolutely no effect, just rolled my eyes and thought "I wonder if they'll try to turn this into a DLC cut scene sometime, and save us the trouble.". Then totally forgot about it when posting on this thread.

Nice catch.
 

Zen Toombs

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Tono Makt said:
Huh, good point there. I'd forgotten about the Eva scene even though I just played it two nights ago. Tried to use Energy Drain and Overload on her to absolutely no effect, just rolled my eyes and thought "I wonder if they'll try to turn this into a DLC cut scene sometime, and save us the trouble.". Then totally forgot about it when posting on this thread.

Nice catch.
Yeah, it was pretty annoying. I thought it was cool at first when she was dodging the warps and stuff, but when you had to take two overloads to take down a ***** of her shields it irritated me. It is avoidable though - when my brother played that section, he just tried to run after her and didn't notice she was all plot armored.
 

Seraph556

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Sep 18, 2010
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When I pump six heat clips worth of 25mm grenades into his torso and the POS doesn't die, I get a little annoyed. Even an Atlas (Hell, even an Atlas BattleMech would) takes pause at that much HE coming in its general direction. Plus, the fact that the bastard can apparently shrug off multiple direct headshots from an M99 Saber (One playthrough, I scored 24 direct headshots on Kai Leng on Thessia) in one battle, but in the next, two or three pops his gourd. And then he magically gets back up for one last attempt.

It seems less like a battle to 'make your blood boil' and more like an 'oh shit, we need to pad the story out another hour or so with some bullshit plot twist'. Also, the invulnerable gunship suddenly having a headlight equal to a sun is kinda bullshit, especially after I uncorked the Hydra launcher I had specifically saved into it and nothing happened.

Doesn't seem so much an issue with 'my Shep is human and fallible,' but more of an issue with BioWare skull-screwing not only gameplay, but also plot. To Hell with you know, ADDING things, they just have to make you chase the bastard until some retardedly contrived battle.

Side note. I'm packing a Paladin X with High-Cal and Scope. Why in Satan's Glorious Name does he pull out the weakest, 'starter' pistol for cutscenes? He's carrying a Talon, A Paladin, and a Freaking Graal! And why can my Shep only hit things when I control him? Does he\she completely forget how to shoot without the omniscient hand of the player hovering above him?
 

Valanthe

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Jaeke said:
Well if you play Insanity exclusive like I do, Yes, it did feel like a defeat.

I wanted to rip that bastard in half. And I did.

I don't care how full Paragon you are but if you didn't take that renegade action to kick that jackass's... ass... then you have reached a new level of will my friend.
That was one of the two I just couldn't resist. Playing Insanity does actually narrow the disparity between cutscene Shepard and Game Shepard by a wide margin. (Or maybe I'm just not as cut out for insanity as I'd like to believe)

But honestly, Kai Leng kicked my arse on Thessia, I barely got his shields down and his bloody gunship took down both Garrus and Liara, so when he made off with the VI, I was pissed, but it did feel like a defeat, so when I got that renegade interrupt later on, I took it without even blinking, and I was fist pumping at "This is for Thane you son-of-a-*****."

If you're wondering, the other interrupt was Khalisah bint-Sinin Al-Jilahni, I'd just fled Earth and Ash was nearly killed, so "Is that the best we can expect from the Alliance?" Made me finally give into the temptation I'd successfully resisted in the first two games.
 

pearcinator

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Apparently in the leaked script you were supposed to lose one of your squad mates there...so you would either feel more cheated (because Kai Leng killed one of your squadmates) or you would actually feel like you failed and Shepard's agonizing scene would have more effect.
 

Agayek

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Oct 23, 2008
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Lupus80 said:
Maybe if the game handled it a bit differently I would have shared Shepard's agony in defeat. If they made it so you could save someone important, or give time for people to flee the planet, but make it really, really hard to do so than that would give me something to latch onto emotionally.

It was not a complete failure though. It was still satisfying to skewer Kai Leng a new one in the end (Renegade interupt or not). Compared with the other villians of Mass Effect Kai Leng fails on so many levels to intimidate me or leave a good impression in any way.
Completely agree. It would have been a lot better if you actually lost because of game mechanics, not because of a retarded cutscene. It wouldn't have been fairly easy too, all they'd have to do is give Kai Leng a stupid high shield amount, and the gunship should move around so you effectively can't be behind cover from both it and Kai Leng. If they'd done that and made him hyper-aggressive to take advantage of it, to the point where he "kills" you, ala the supposed-to-lose fight in ME2 Arrival, the whole thing would have felt far more effective for what they were clearly going for. That way, the player would be defeated, not just Shepard, and it would evoke the feelings they were going for.
 

CleverCover

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Nov 17, 2010
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no...I can say I never got that feeling fighting against him in that cut scene. I expected him to pull out something super cheap because he was fighting Commander fucking Shepard. If he came to that with a fair fight, he'd be dead. Hell, in that last fight he lasted...two minutes even with his buddies to back him up.

And he was actually kind of difficult on hardcore the second time...that *****. He kept going after Liara and Garrus and one-hit killing them. >_> Felt wonderful to stab him in the end.

Only reason he bothered me was his pretentiousness. He lost to a dying drell and won because he targeted weaker players and brought a fucking gunship. Stop pretending you are actually something. Has the nerve to send me a email the bastard...
 

Ares Gandhi

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Oct 2, 2011
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Yeah, I hated this guy as well. Like a lot of people have pointed out, it's like he's from a different universe entirely. He's like some amalgamation of all JRPG and anime villain clichés with some Metal Gear thrown in for good measure, in both appearance and mannerisms. His complete ineptitude and failure to be at all intimidating or challenging doesn't help. I hear he's also in the newest Dietz book, his most noted accomplishment being stealing some cereal from Anderson. For real. It's like they wanted to make him look like a complete joke.

As for his look, I don't recall him being a space ninja with a sword in the book - ME: Retribution I think? Sure, he was still an annoying asshole, but he was just a normal hit man who used guns like anyone else. But I guess the BW artists thought it would be a good idea to make him a space techno-ninja because he's Asian. Ignoring the utter impracticality of using a sword in a universe like ME. I can understand omni-blades, since they're secondary CQB weapons, but forgoing guns altogether? That's just stupid.

On a side note, I'm thinking a lot of the lesser problems in ME3 like this one are going to be popping up soon enough, now that the shock from the ending is starting to wear off.
 

Grygor

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Oct 26, 2010
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Ares Gandhi said:
Ignoring the utter impracticality of using a sword in a universe like ME. I can understand omni-blades, since they're secondary CQB weapons, but forgoing guns altogether? That's just stupid.
Except he doesn't forgo guns altogether. Just like Cerberus Phantoms, he has a firearm of some sort integrated into his arm.
 

Ares Gandhi

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Grygor said:
Ares Gandhi said:
Ignoring the utter impracticality of using a sword in a universe like ME. I can understand omni-blades, since they're secondary CQB weapons, but forgoing guns altogether? That's just stupid.
Except he doesn't forgo guns altogether. Just like Cerberus Phantoms, he has a firearm of some sort integrated into his arm.
Never noticed that. I'm sure that thing would've come in handy in situations like taking out the Salarian Councilor. Or shooting at Shepard rather than trying to run at him and get his ass kicked as a result. Or taking Shepard out from behind when he and his teammates are (very conveniently) looking elsewhere. The only reason I can think of for using the sword like that is because he must think it's "so coo", as the OP said.