Game News What if Shepard dies?

[Grunker]

I hate to admit it, but Lesifore's right.

Not that this dicussion becomes anymore legitimate because of it.

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

I guess the main point of threatening Shepard with death is to pad out the game by strongly encouraging players to complete all the recruitment/loyalty quests

which makes sense...because otherwise the game would be 1 hour long. i liked the game alright but felt a bit robbed by this cheap contrivance.

 

[Gylfi.Fenriz.Conquests]

I just realized that albeit gaining loyalty of the companions being MAYBE not very challenging, if i hadn't known that the whole system is infact based on that i would have played the game more unprepared hence me having a harder time getting a good finale.

That information then is a big spoiler, knowing it's the foundation of the C&C system naturally makes it less challenging, but it's because i actually cheated, no?

 

[Gylfi.Fenriz.Conquests]

This is misinformed. I finished the game yesterday. Simply finishing all the side missions does not guarantee loyalty from your squad members. Even good choices (paragon choices) can FAIL to gain loyalty from your squad mates. Sometimes you have to choose between loyalty to your squad mate or your own morale compass.

Sounds better. Now as i said i regret that i already know where "the secret to not dying" lies, i know that to get the good ending i have to get companions to be loyal, and making the choice will not be a challenge. If i didn't know it, i'd have to actually think about it, now i don't have to. See the importance of a VERY bad finale, the important of risking something? It forces you to consider your role, other people's role, the plot so far, and the story as a whole. Beautiful. Needless to say i hope AoD includes this "choice modifier" so to speak... otherwise why should a player make a choice instead of another? His own moral codes? Nonsense.

Additionally, members also have a chance of randomly dying during the final mission(you are fighting hordes of baddies, people are bound to get shot) Also, ship upgrades are important as you have a chances to lose members due to various combat scenarios regarding the Normandy.

That sounds like battle efficiency and powerplay, which i despise. You suck and you die, you rock, you live. No good. Where is the challenge in it? Since even paragon leads you to death(which is a GREAT way to confuse players), even being a weak fighter or, hell, loosing willingly a battle should have good repercussions. Maybe in a battle or 2, when you die, instead of a gameover please reload screen, you're transported to a hospital and the adventure goes on... obviously it shouldn't be clearly hinted that "hey you have to die now", like the classic enemy god-mode you find in some arcades when you know you have to die(Deus Ex and that old mod situation [anna navarre]), remember?)".

Squad mates dying also doesn't depend solely on their loyalty. They can still die even if they are loyal if you make the wrong decisions. They can still survive even if they are disloyal. One I've heard has a chance to die regardless of any of the above criteria, loyal + right choices or otherwise.

Also, it's not only limited to a simple check flag of doing certain quests or gaining loyalty. The fate of your crew is time sensitive. This isn't like DA where the blight waited patiently with their thumbs up their asses waiting for the Grey Wardens to assemble their army. Prancing around the universe assuming there is no consequence for such carries harsh penalties.

that's good too, it should spice things up. They prolly added this because they realized getting loyal companions would become too straightforward. Good move. They have to avoid making it feel like Sonic and mario collecting stars or a child collecting figurines. But we all know accessibility is a bitch, and BW have to make action-boys appee.

No, it's not fixable at the last minute. These are decisions that carry on from the beginning of the game.

You can't fix things up before the last mission? Are you sure? Splendid.

Also, the codex is currently so hung up on Shepard dying. The characters imo in ME2 are much more fleshed out and better designed than the first game. Whether Bioware succeeded in making you care about them or not is subjective. But ideally, losing *any* squad mate permanently should be emotionally taxing.

ah very well... of course we focus on the dying feature because it's the main feature. Naturally after we've established that the the BIGGEST consequence is well concocted, we will pass on to minor consequences

Just simply having them die permanently is a nice step or return to the right direction.

Im not sure about this. Does it mean that you should mechanically and conveniently eliminate those companions that you screwed up too far already? As it were a bad kid playing in a cabinet of Gauntlet with you? The question is always to make it challenging. Is it?

Simply having Shepard survive isn't what constitutes a good ending. There are many, many more bad endings than good endings.

Oh that's good too.

 

[Luan]

Also, it's not only limited to a simple check flag of doing certain quests or gaining loyalty. The fate of your crew is time sensitive.

Uh, yes, yes it is. Upgrades and loyalty missions = flag ticked. The end. "Time sensitive" just means that when the crew is kidnapped, you've to go after them. It is fixable at the last minute and nothing you do at the beginning means jack shit.

I'm not referring to the upgrades and loyalty here. I'm speaking specifically about the fate of your crew being time sensitive. Perhaps i'm misinterpreting you, but I didn't see how you could prevent your crew from being liquified in a last minute quick-fix.

Additionally, if you don't gain particular squad members loyalties, they have a pretty good chance of dying. How do you suddenly gain their loyalty? What is this quick-fix you speak of?

Also regarding your renegade/paragon tangent, I think you were misinterpreting me or simply looking for something to argue about. I was not stating or even suggesting that loyalty has some correlation with paragon.

Just simply having them die permanently is a nice step or return to the right direction.

Im not sure about this. Does it mean that you should mechanically and conveniently eliminate those companions that you screwed up too far already? As it were a bad kid playing in a cabinet of Gauntlet with you? The question is always to make it challenging. Is it?

No, i'm not talking about meta-gaming at all. Sorry if it wasn't clear but I was speaking about game development itself. Sure, allowing everyone the potential to die is nothing new, but it's a breath of fresh air to the watered down and streamlined games which are mainstream.

All in all, I didn't have any difficulty with the game. I played on Insane simply because I enjoy shooters. I appreciated ME2 for what it is.

 

[made]

"Simply having Shepard survive isn't what constitutes a good ending. There are many, many more bad endings than good endings."

Which bad endings are those? Shep either lives/dies, station is either preserved or destroyed, nothing else matters afaik. Nobody gives a damn how many crew members died in the end, you can merrily continue surveying planets thereafter with an empty ship.

 

[Spectacle]

If you think that losing a couple of squad members while successfully completing a mission to save humanity and the galaxy constitutes a bad outcome, you're an emo fag and should go back to playing pokemon.

 

[snoek]

*spoilers* shepard will become a reaper hell bent on destroying the other reapers, thus saving the galaxy.

 

[Lesifoere]

If you think that losing a couple of squad members while successfully completing a mission to save humanity and the galaxy constitutes a bad outcome, you're an emo fag and should go back to playing pokemon.

But one of those squad members was his true love! It's so tragic. :'(

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

But one of those squad members was his true love! It's so tragic. :'(

well, only Thane and Grunt died in my game...and i...*ahem*...uh...never...eh...

 

[Stereotypical Villain]

If you think that losing a couple of squad members while successfully completing a mission to save humanity and the galaxy constitutes a bad outcome, you're an emo fag and should go back to playing pokemon.

But one of those squad members was his true love! It's so tragic. :'(

James T Shepard will always find new xeno ass to hit.

 

[Lesifoere]

But one of those squad members was his true love! It's so tragic. :'(

well, only Thane and Grunt died in my game...and i...*ahem*...uh...never...eh...

Oh, girlfriend, admit it: you want that hot green ass. Or Grunt's... frog... ass, I guess.

 

[Gylfi.Fenriz.Conquests]

Im not sure about this. Does it mean that you should mechanically and conveniently eliminate those companions that you screwed up too far already? As it were a bad kid playing in a cabinet of Gauntlet with you? The question is always to make it challenging. Is it?

No, i'm not talking about meta-gaming at all. Sorry if it wasn't clear but I was speaking about game development itself. Sure, allowing everyone the potential to die is nothing new, but it's a breath of fresh air to the watered down and streamlined games which are mainstream.

All in all, I didn't have any difficulty with the game. I played on Insane simply because I enjoy shooters. I appreciated ME2 for what it is.

I agree, allowing permanent death of companions is good, but are they relevant to plot or simple action fun? what difference does it really make? Is it hard to do it, or is it as hard as tearing one of the figurines? Everything should be a challenge, and it doesn't sound like it is in this game, regarding companions and the finales.

If you don't understand that everything should provide a satisfying challenge for the intellect, how can you give useful informations to the codex wagh-boys?

The key to give a challenge is that solutions to problems are indirectly given to the player. Say you're having a conversation with this companion of yours, one that will save your life somehow at the end:

let's say that you're about to tell him of a man you killed. There's many false steps you can do:

-Dialogue options can be too predictable and straight to the point: love me/hate me, so there's no challenge, the game fails at indirectness within your own character.
-you may know the converser's thoughts too well, you already know that he loved that man, and he'll let you know at once how he feels about it after you tell him/her, the game fails at indirectness between you and your character, you're omniscient.
-and finally there's no narrative distance between the companion and the man you hit, in this case the game fails at indirectness between PLOT and the character you're talking to.

How you fix this.

-you don't control everythng your character feels and says, you can't control his heart, he speaks only of facts YOU did, as they are. No messing with free-will, it'd be a deus-ex-machina.
-with the same procedure you don't know the companion's thoughts as if you're God. You must grasp those informations off of third party situations and persons, they're WHISPERED in a very FEW cases during the whole game's length. And naturally that companion won't reveal too clearly how he feels about what you did until the ending scene, when you are "judged" for all your actions.
-Last: the person you just hit is not of the same race as the companion, and is not clearly his/her father(both too direct hints). Say instead that the killed man belonged to a faction that was indirectly involved in a war and during it his group helped the family of the companion you're talking to. Also in this case the information isn't directly reachable and it's only given by indirect hints: his log might say briefly "we helped a family of this outpost", and you have to find this log off historical documentations among many others, IN TURN obtainable only inside ONE SHIP that's lying HIDDEN in an abandonned hangar beside the house of the man you killed.

Add to all this that the "loyalty checks" conversations and the "hints" given don't occur every minute, they're carefully mixed and mashed in all other events and informations, they appear once, you don't even know how to use 'em as if they are items of a puzzle adventure, and from character to character they shift shape to be harder to spot... because naturally one may say that after you solve one problem you know the mechanism, that would repeat itself.

This is indirectness, all of this HIDES the presence of a narrator and his "will" to help you overcome the problems providing solutions. In the end it doesn't seem like Bioware are doing their best to HIDE solutions to problems from players.

 

[MetalCraze]

Additionally, members also have a chance of randomly dying during the final mission(you are fighting hordes of baddies, people are bound to get shot)

That's funny, when they are shot during the whole other game before the final mission where it won't matter at all they seem to be quite bullet proof and immortal.

So I don't get it - is this some kind of an achievement of design?

 

[Crooked Bee]

This is indirectness

to HIDE solutions to problems from players.

Not next-gen Bioware-style.
Next-gen Bioware-style = press the top right or top left blue button for Paragon, OR press the bottom right or bottom left red button for Renegade. Just so you don't mess it up accidentally.

 

[Gylfi.Fenriz.Conquests]

This is indirectness

to HIDE solutions to problems from players.

Not next-gen Bioware-style.
Next-gen Bioware-style = press the top right or top left blue button for Paragon, OR press the bottom right or bottom left red button for Renegade. Just so you don't mess it up accidentally.

Accessibility is a bitch.

Couldn't Bioware make 2 game modes, one with a lot of triple-fold puzzles, one with just the action and none of the obstacles?

 

[Luan]

Additionally, members also have a chance of randomly dying during the final mission(you are fighting hordes of baddies, people are bound to get shot)

That's funny, when they are shot during the whole other game before the final mission where it won't matter at all they seem to be quite bullet proof and immortal.

So I don't get it - is this some kind of an achievement of design?

Nah, it's exactly what you think it is. It's nonsensical.

 

[Twinkle]

Additionally, members also have a chance of randomly dying during the final mission(you are fighting hordes of baddies, people are bound to get shot)

That's funny, when they are shot during the whole other game before the final mission where it won't matter at all they seem to be quite bullet proof and immortal.

So I don't get it - is this some kind of an achievement of design?

Uh, they said they aimed to reach Modern Warfare crowd. :wink:

Sure. Save when they're kidnapped. If shit goes wrong, reload. Look, this bullshit isn't even remotely threatening or tension-causing and is not at all affected by anything you do in the game before this point.

The fun thing is that ship operates A-OK without a crew (including extreme suicide mission). Apparently, Joker and EDI are more than enough. What's the point of having useless junk on board?

 

[circ]

What I want to know though is, why can't Shep just solo the Normandy 2 into Collector territory and release the Death Blossom like in The Last Starfighter?

 

[burrie]

There's one thing about all of this that confuses me as well...

In Dragon Age, it is quite possible to sacrifice your character and die at the end of the game, much like ME2. With the expansion coming up in March, they've revealed that this choice has a big consequence. If you didn't sacrifice yourself, you can import your old character, while if you did, you'll have to build a new character with a new origin story and everything. You can, most likely, even import your post-epilogue savegame to reflect some of your actions in the expansion, even if you DID have your character sacrifice him/herself.

This is the best way to handle it, I think. Although I'm not expecting that you will be able to bring in your DA character into a theoretical DA2, it is nice that they're giving you this option for the expansion pack. It's easier as well, of course, seeing as how the PC doesn't have a voice and everything.

Now why wouldn't Bioware be using that fact in their previews as well? Their marketing slogan for ME2 seems to be that "YOU CAN DIE AND IT WON'T HAVE A CONSEQUENCE IN ME3, BECAUSE YOU WILL BE DEAD!", while they haven't been making a big deal out of it in Dragon Age where it *does* have some sort of consequence.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

This is the best way to handle it, I think. Although I'm not expecting that you will be able to bring in your DA character into a theoretical DA2, it is nice that they're giving you this option for the expansion pack. It's easier as well, of course, seeing as how the PC doesn't have a voice and everything.

also because people don't call you by your name and gush over your awesomeness every five seconds, unlike Mass SHEPARD Effect SHEPARD 2 SHEPARD

 

[Volourn]

Again, it's simple. The ME trilogy has always been about Shepard and HIS story. It even tells you this in ME2 load screens. Don't forget to keep your ME2 saves for ME3... if you survive.

They tell you up front in the fuckin' LOAD SCREEN that if you die derp derp in ME2 you will not be able to use that save in ME3. They've been stating this for fuckin' years for fuck sakes.

If Shep dies the game is over. The story is over. The trilogy is over. FFS FFS FFS

 

[burrie]

Why would the marketing focus on this particular plot point for ME2, and not for DA where something similiar could happen AND is in an easier position to actually acknowledge in later content?

 

[Jim Cojones]

If Shep dies the game is over. The story is over. The trilogy is over. FFS FFS FFS

That's harsh! I guess you won't be even able to play ME3 if your Sheppard didn't survive.

 

[Lesifoere]

They should let you import your dead-Shepard ME2 save into ME3. Once this is done, the game locks you out of playing it forever. Consequences!