Why Does Shepard Forget Her Biotics?

[Storm Dragon]

(This does not directly relate to the ending of ME3, so let's just avoid that particular subject, shall we?)

I think I've mentioned this once or twice previously in responses to other threads, but I wanted to create one to directly address the subject.

I always played as a biotic Shepard in every ME playthrough because fuck yeah I want telekinesis. It was a lot of fun in combat to throw enemies around like ragdolls with a flick of the wrist, launch myself at opponents in a headbutt that breaks the sound barrier, and FALCON PAWNCH! my foes across the room. But whenever a cutscene started, all of these awesome powers were taken away. It was like cutscenes are Commander Shepard's Kryptonite.

Like a number of the series's flaws, it wasn't as bad in the first game, but got worse as things went on. ME1 didn't have much action in the cutscenes, when something exciting happened, it was usually during gameplay, so there were few situations where I was wondering why Shepard wasn't using her biotic powers. But ME2 and especially 3 had more and more action scenes in the cinematics, and I thought a great deal of these situations could have easily been solved with a liberal dose of telekinesis.

Spoiler: Let me just list some examples off from memory:

Let me just list some examples off from memory:
ME2
-I bet Shepard could have bioticly propelled herself into the escape pod at the beginning of ME2
-Why couldn't Shepard generate the shield in that one part of the Suicide Mission?
-It would have been easy for her to slow her fall from that window near the beginning of the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC
-She also could easily have flung that table at Vassir herself
ME3
-Thanks to Biotic Charge, I headbutted that robot chick about half a dozen times during the chase on Mars, but I couldn't grab her afterward because reasons
-Biotics could have been used in any number of ways to catch up with Kai "Aren't I Just So Cool?" Leng while chasing him during the Citadel attack
-"I'm clinging to the edge of this pit and having trouble pulling myself up, if only there was some way I could make myself weightless!" Seriously, fuck Kai Leng and his stupid plot armor

I'm sure I could find more if I refreshed my memory, but you get the point. It just annoys me that my choice of class has no effect on the plot when, logically, it totally should.

 

[votemarvel]

Quite simply because the games are mostly scripted for a Soldier Shepard.

Beyond the occasional throwaway lines, Bioware pretty much ignore that Shepard can be a biotic.

 

[DoPo]

Spoiler: One of the ME2 examples

-Why couldn't Shepard generate the shield in that one part of the Suicide Mission?

Spoiler

Actually, I think that one is excusable - for several reasons even:

First, the force field is supposed to be some top notch stuff that only the elite can pull off. And I don't mean just pull off as in "create" but "maintain enough to fucking survive" type of pull off. Only a couple of your companions can even manage that - if I recall correctly, it was the Asari (the race of space elves, remember, who are supposed to be absolutely awesome with biotics) and Jack - Mirana buckles under the stress and drops the shield, I think the other two (were they two?) who had biotics weren't even options. While Shepard is good, I don't think the commander was ever referred to as top of the line biotic user.

Second, even if we assume Shepard COULD maybe do it, Sheppard is still the commander. There is a fight going on all around - a very literal matter of life and death, something the commander might want to pay attention to and...well, you know - command. That would be a problem if one tries to keep the shield in order to keep everybody from being ripped to shreds.

But other than that - yes I agree it is happening and it's too much. Why it's happening? I'd call it BioWare. While they are OK with writing a story but...that means they are OK with writing a story. Singular. Taking into account all of the character's abilities makes it too chaotic.

 

[spartandude]

This did always annoy me to a great deal. But im more concerned that when ever a cut scene starts Shepard essentially starts doing this.

 

[Treeberry]

Why does Shepard forget their biotics?
Why does Jack forgo clothes in space?
Why did Traynor wear her undies in the shower?

Why is everything so half-assed?

They just didn't care.

 

[Doom972]

Story trumps rules. In order to tell the story, the game's rules don't always apply. It's understandable if you find it annoying (you're not the only one), but that's just how they decided to do it - as do many other game designers.

Shepard isn't as good as a biotic as some of the other characters (Samara, Morinth, Jack), so it's understandable if Shepard couldn't generate the shield in the suicide mission. Besides, just walking while the squadmates do all the fighting wouldn't be very epic.

Kai Leng's ridiculous immunity annoyed me as well. It didn't make sense for him to be that powerful - Saren wasn't that tough.

 

[Requia]

Because cutscenes are expensive, they didn't want to redo shepards animations for every possible class (also see that soldier shep forgets she has an assault rifle).

 

[AD-Stu]

But other than that - yes I agree it is happening and it's too much. Why it's happening? I'd call it BioWare. While they are OK with writing a story but...that means they are OK with writing a story. Singular. Taking into account all of the character's abilities makes it too chaotic.

From memory with the suicide mission bubble either Jack, Samara or Miranda can do it successfully (though various loyalty / previous issues might still result in them failing) - you can get Jacob or Thane to do it too, but they're not strong enough and from memory it always collapses at the end.

I'd forgive that one on the basis that if Shepard did the sheilding, he/she couldn't shoot or direct the action or whatever else. Along with the obvious metagame reasoning that it'd reduce the player's involvement in the mission to just walking very very slowly.

Issues with the cutscenes is just something we've had to accept as Mass Effect fans (because I guess if they did scripted versions that took into account all Shepard's possible combinations of powers they... wouldn't have had time to write a good ending?) The one that's always irked me is the way weapons just get changed randomly. Particularly in ME2, when an M8 Avenger would just magically appear in Shepard's hands - even if Shepard was an engineer or some other character class that didn't carry an assault rifle.

 

[Storm Dragon]

Spoiler: One of the ME2 examples

-Why couldn't Shepard generate the shield in that one part of the Suicide Mission?

Spoiler

Actually, I think that one is excusable - for several reasons even:

First, the force field is supposed to be some top notch stuff that only the elite can pull off. And I don't mean just pull off as in "create" but "maintain enough to fucking survive" type of pull off. Only a couple of your companions can even manage that - if I recall correctly, it was the Asari (the race of space elves, remember, who are supposed to be absolutely awesome with biotics) and Jack - Mirana buckles under the stress and drops the shield, I think the other two (were they two?) who had biotics weren't even options. While Shepard is good, I don't think the commander was ever referred to as top of the line biotic user.

Second, even if we assume Shepard COULD maybe do it, Sheppard is still the commander. There is a fight going on all around - a very literal matter of life and death, something the commander might want to pay attention to and...well, you know - command. That would be a problem if one tries to keep the shield in order to keep everybody from being ripped to shreds.

But other than that - yes I agree it is happening and it's too much. Why it's happening? I'd call it BioWare. While they are OK with writing a story but...that means they are OK with writing a story. Singular. Taking into account all of the character's abilities makes it too chaotic.

Honestly, I knew the answer to that one when I asked it, still would have been nice if there had been an option to offer to try even if someone points out exactly what you said.

As for Shepard's strength as a biotic, she seems pretty damn strong to me, especially in ME3, where a Vanguard Shepard is basically a human artillery shell.

 

[The Madman]

One of the things I actually found improved in Mass Effect 3 over the previous two was that occasionally it did bring up your class, whereas the previous two games never did. However it's only ever brought up in dialogue and never has any impact whatsoever on story, even when it would make sense for it to.

Still of all my nitpicks of the Mass Effect series that's one of the smaller ones.

 

[TheIceQueen]

It's the game's way of telling you that you're playing it wrong. Everyone knows that Infiltrator is the best. Geez.

 

[BathorysGraveland2]

First off, OP, you should refer to Shepard as "their", seeing as though their gender is not set in stone.

Anyway, the cutscenes are one of my gripes with the series. A lot of it is rather nonsensical. Why can someone die from a single shot in a cutscene, yet it takes several in-game? Do they have their shields turned off during cutscenes? That wouldn't make sense either.

Shepard not using powers in cutscenes is the same shit. However, I assume it's more out of laziness here. Not every Shepard can use biotics, so they'd have to adapt the cutscenes based upon what class you're using, then there's the issue that you may not have that certain power opting to have gotten another instead. They could have worked it in to make cutscenes more fluid and give the different classes even more of a differentiated feel, but that would have been too much work, I suppose.

 

[Mikejames]

While I like when they do acknowledge the different classes/skills, I think the division between cut-scenes and gameplay is a bit inevitable.

Heck, if Jack maintained her cut-scene powers our group could go through mechs like paper.

 

[MysticSlayer]

As for Shepard's strength as a biotic, she seems pretty damn strong to me, especially in ME3, where a Vanguard Shepard is basically a human artillery shell.

Keep in mind, Asari were generally stronger biotics than humans, and Samara was strong even by Asari standards, so we can assume that she is stronger than Shepard. There's also the fact that both Miranda and Jack had been put through different tests, implants, conditioning, etc. to make them unusually strong human biotics, so it also seems reasonable that they would be stronger than Shepard as well. If I remember correctly, Jack was barely able to make it through, so I doubt Shepard could have made it.

Anyways, I will say that it was a little awkward when I started playing a Vanguard class and realized that Shepard always went for her gun rather than use her biotic powers. At times I was able to say that it would have been very hard to account for the use of biotics with the story. Other times, though, it felt like a minor touch that Bioware just forgot to put in. In the grand scheme of things, it was sort of a minor gripe, but I was also never dedicated to the biotic classes, so it might have been less of a problem to me than someone who vastly preferred biotic classes.

 

[Xeorm]

First off, OP, you should refer to Shepard as "their", seeing as though their gender is not set in stone.

Their is a plural pronoun. It's completely ok to refer to a single entity as either he or she if the person in question can be both genders. It doesn't happen often, usually with deities, but that's how it's referred to in English.

OT: I hate when there's anything obvious putting me on rails that don't make sense. I can understand why they do it, but I find it's a royal pain if it's too obvious.

I for sure wouldn't want to do the biotic shield myself though. I mean, would you trust your AI allies to kill anything, much less defend you? It'd be a reverse escort mission. Worst idea ever.