Mass Effect Legendary Edition remaster trilogy

[purupuru]

by delaying it far into the future

They already did this once. Yes you can repeat yourself but that's kinda lame and not a satisfactory finale for the trilogy at all. And yes it would have been better than the ending we got but that's a terribly low bar.
They made reapers way too strong, if ME was not a video game series but a novel, the obvious ending would be reapers winning and the protagonist go into hiding with a small resistance force or escaping far far away, and the readers would have been fine with it, but you can't really do that in a video game (unless it's pure adventure/visual novel stuff).

 

[rusty_shackleford]

by delaying it far into the future

They already did this once. Yes you can repeat yourself but that's kinda lame and not a satisfactory finale for the trilogy at all. And yes it would have been better than the ending we got but that's a terribly low bar.
They made reapers way too strong, if ME was not a video game series but a novel, the obvious ending would be reapers winning and the protagonist go into hiding with a small resistance force or escaping far far away, and the readers would have been fine with it, but you can't really do that in a video game (unless it's pure adventure/visual novel stuff).

Except it wouldn't have been the end of the trilogy, merely the end of ME1. They still had a ton of other things they could have done.
Collectors plotline alone would have worked fine without REAPERS.

 

[RNGsus]

Mass Effect was a good premise ruined by Bioware.

 

[Wunderbar]

by delaying it far into the future

They already did this once. Yes you can repeat yourself but that's kinda lame and not a satisfactory finale for the trilogy at all. And yes it would have been better than the ending we got but that's a terribly low bar.
They made reapers way too strong, if ME was not a video game series but a novel, the obvious ending would be reapers winning and the protagonist go into hiding with a small resistance force or escaping far far away, and the readers would have been fine with it, but you can't really do that in a video game (unless it's pure adventure/visual novel stuff).

Except it wouldn't have been the end of the trilogy, merely the end of ME1. They still had a ton of other things they could have done.
Collectors plotline alone would have worked fine without REAPERS.

you can't just start your grand trilogy with an otherworldly cosmic threat, and end it with lame bugmen.

 

[Bad Sector]

IMO they already had the grounds for an almost non-deus-ex-machina solution with the Geth and the way they were going on about AI. The Geth are connected with the Reapers and have a lot of data on them which can be taken advantage of (whether they like it -ala Legion- or not). In ME1 there are a bunch of rogue AIs (aside from Geth) made by essentially random weirdos but AI research is banned, meaning there isn't really any organized research on it. In other words, if Reapers cannot be (by their claims anyway) understood by mere humans (and other species' equivalents) then have the entire galaxy's best scientists build an AI that can. This can be framed in a way where Shepard needs to travel across the galaxy and collect information about the Reapers to build a database or whatever for the AI to crunch on and come up with ways to weaken the Reapers so that they can be defeated. And as a bonus it'd also provide means for more worldbuilding.

Yeah it is still a little deus-ex-machina, but you'd be the one building said machina instead of finding it hidden under the mat - and it wouldn't by shooting bugs, but by exploring the galaxy.

 

[Maxie]

BioWare shat the bed when they decided in a very Californian fashion to make the Reaper invasion cyclic, inevitable, fated etc. all those blurry concepts lifted from Oriental religions which appeal to crazies

 

[Nutria]

You are way way overthinking this. It's not about any philosophies or anything. It's all about the psychological needs of the people making it. They got Martin Sheen as a voice actor for ME2 and creamed themselves thinking they were great artists. So they made ME2 revolve around his character and the main plot was just making shit up off the top of their heads from that point on.

 

[dukeofwoodberry]

you can't just start your grand trilogy with an otherworldly cosmic threat, and end it with lame bugmen.

To be fair bugmen sold the best of the three. Again the problem is they wanted to make a trilogy but didn't plan beyond the first game. We'll figure it out as we move along. They wrote themselves into a corner because they made the Sovereign and the reapers too powerful.

A couple things they could have done:

Started with bugmen or something else and finished with Sovereign. Trilogy ends with the reapers being delayed for 100+ years. That leaves open the door for them to further address the threat in future games too.

Made Sovereign less powerful. Sovereign could have led a squadron of 10 reapers that were defeated instead of just him. That would have made defeating hundreds eventually more plausible. Even with this idea, there should have been 10+ years between 1 and 3. But that would mess with the character relationships, romances, ect

 

[dukeofwoodberry]

You are way way overthinking this. It's not about any philosophies or anything. It's all about the psychological needs of the people making it. They got Martin Sheen as a voice actor for ME2 and creamed themselves thinking they were great artists. So they made ME2 revolve around his character and the main plot was just making shit up off the top of their heads from that point on.

They didn't really have a good plan before they went with Sheen though. The dark matter plot would have been better than what we got but it still doesn't sound great and they came up with that on the fly too.

 

[Ravielsk]

Honestly Reapers as a imminent threat should have been shelved for the duration of the trilogy. Instead they should have focused on how the galaxy responded to their existence. Personally I would have refocused the second game on unifying the galaxy, either through conquest or diplomacy. To leverage the whole paragon vs renegade system the game would have revolved around Shepard and humanity knowing full well that the Reapers are a real thing but also that they will arrive only in a very long time(say a couple hundred years). So most other races and worlds either reject the notion or argue that something several hundred years into the future is not a relevant problem right now. So the questions faced would be more about using force or persuasion to get the galaxy to work together:

• Do you simply support your preferred candidate to be the next Turian leader or do you assassinate the other candidates?
• Will you share the Collector tech with everyone or keep it to yourself?
• Are you building an empire or a alliance?

That way you could still have personal stories with your companions but instead of having them as disconnected vignettes they would each be connected to some subplot surrounding the unification of the galaxy against the reapers. The trilogy would then with you achieving that goal in one way or the other or alternatively failing all-together. Either way then the fourth game would focus on the actual battle against the Reapers and its resolution.

 

[Jaedar]

They wrote themselves into a corner because they made the Sovereign and the reapers too powerful.

Not really though. "The ancient unstoppable evil is awakening" only for the heroes to seal it for another century is a pretty standard trope in fantasy. The reapers primary plan being defeated at the end of ME1 being followed by their backup plan activating makes perfect sense, and could have easily been turned into two games worth of sci-fi action spy shephard going against the infiltration and mind control of the reaper advance force*. The actual corner was deciding that ME3 should start with the reapers arriving, and making everything that happens in ME2 an inconsequential side story. That's like starting a lovecraft story with R'lyeh rising from the seas.

* Let the second game be mostly as it is, with shephard having trouble convincing the council that this needs to be taken seriously, while the reapers also distract her by wrecking human colonies, except instead of reaper baby have it end with the reaper infiltration successfully taking control of the citadel council and plunging the galaxy into a civil war. Then you can make the final game about unifying the galaxy into an anti-reaper alliance by visiting all the major capital planets and end on the promise that everyone working together for a century until the reapers show up in person will be able to produce countermeasures.

 

[RNGsus]

blurry concepts lifted from Oriental religions which appeal to crazies

All the ancients believed in a cyclic, eternal world. Christianity introduced the full stop, earth-ending apocalypse.

 

[Maxie]

blurry concepts lifted from Oriental religions which appeal to crazies

All the ancients believed in a cyclic, eternal world. Christianity introduced the full stop, earth-ending apocalypse.

they've also shat in the woods, not a very compelling argument

 

[J1M]

ME2 only hovers inbetween in that it has the worst elements of both. I don't really get how so many people consider it the best of the series, I assume it's a severe case of consolitis.

Even though the main story was relatively banal, it didn't offend people the way ME3's story did (and again it wasn't the main focus of the game while in ME3 it was.) I enjoy how ME2 felt like it wasn't really connected to the reaper plot (a frequent criticism) compared to the ME3 shitshow. I keep mentioning this but the dream sequences were so bad, such a hamfisted attempt at tugging at the players heartstrings and they have been widely panned. Nothing that cringe from ME2.

ME2 was supposed to be a middle part of a trilogy, an Empire strikes back of sorts. The way it should've been:

ME1: introduces the reaper threat
ME2: sets up a way to deal with the reapers
ME3: shows us the grand finale where Shepard defeats the reapers by using the solution from ME2

By ignoring the overarching plot, ME2 burdened ME3 with a bunch of additional bullshit to set up and explain.

Would vastly prefer if ME1 was the last of the reaper threat outside of some indoctrinated cultist side quest.

Investigating and solving a mystery involving missing colonists was a good enough A plot for ME2. It didn't need to be about a group working for the reapers.

If ME3 really needed to retread the reaper situation it could have done it through the leviathans returning to the galactic stage. Or focused on a new Krogan empire. Literally anything would be more interesting than the same antagonist again.

 

[RNGsus]

blurry concepts lifted from Oriental religions which appeal to crazies

All the ancients believed in a cyclic, eternal world. Christianity introduced the full stop, earth-ending apocalypse.

they've also shat in the woods, not a very compelling argument

Right, so "I'm sorry for being a retard, nobody lifted anything from oriental religions. I'm going to stop posting now." is what you meant to say. You may sniff ass glands like Maxie, but you're an even less compelling poster.

 

[Ravielsk]

Honestly Reapers as a imminent threat should have been shelved for the duration of the trilogy. Instead they should have focused on how the galaxy responded to their existence. Personally I would have refocused the second game on unifying the galaxy, either through conquest or diplomacy. To leverage the whole paragon vs renegade system the game would have revolved around Shepard and humanity knowing full well that the Reapers are a real thing but also that they will arrive only in a very long time(say a couple hundred years). So most other races and worlds either reject the notion or argue that something several hundred years into the future is not a relevant problem right now. So the questions faced would be more about using force or persuasion to get the galaxy to work together:

• Do you simply support your preferred candidate to be the next Turian leader or do you assassinate the other candidates?
• Will you share the Collector tech with everyone or keep it to yourself?
• Are you building an empire or a alliance?

That way you could still have personal stories with your companions but instead of having them as disconnected vignettes they would each be connected to some subplot surrounding the unification of the galaxy against the reapers. The trilogy would then with you achieving that goal in one way or the other or alternatively failing all-together. Either way then the fourth game would focus on the actual battle against the Reapers and its resolution.

Also to add to this I would rewrite Cerberus from a incompetent terrorist cell into a actual clandestine organisation founded by the Aliance Navy. With the twist that it was created in absolute secrecy right after establishing contact with the Council as a sort of last fail safe against a alien takeover. Nobody in the Aliance knows about this because right after creating Cerberus all contact with the Navy was cut and the organisation was from the point on effectively operate as a independent venture with its own private sponsors and agents.
Also instead of Shepard being taken down by the Collectors I would have changed it to be some assassin hired by some external actor with Cerberus knowing about the whole thing but doing nothing so they could stealthily recruit Shepard without exposing themselves directly to him and risk rejection or exposure. Essentially they would have nabbed him after Normandy was attacked, kept him on ice for a while and then reviewed him from cryostasis instead of the weird techno zombie shit they did in the original.
Their plot would the revolve more around the implications of them allowing the assassination attempt to happen despite knowing about it and who was it that tried to kill Shepard. For fun I would include a mission or two where you would be tasked with creating fake "screw up operations" where you get some dangerous material and intentionally fuck up with it to keep up the appearance of a small and incompetent operation, like it was in ME1. Also I would entirely remove the whole "indoctrinated" element of TIMs character simply to not muddy the waters by letting him write off his BS as "the Reapers made me do it".

 

[Ol' Willy]

I thought Bioware planned the reaper invasion from the start.

When you rip off the plot of Revelation Space you have no other options

 

[Roguey]

They probably did it like that for the same reason they did godawful sidequests in DA2 - lack of time.

With regard to DA2, this was something that Laidlaw wanted to do since Jade Empire 2 to free up the word budget so they can use those words on things that matter more to them https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...ands-reincarnation.104691/page-4#post-4227401

 

[Ol' Willy]

Reaper invasion cyclic, inevitable, fated etc

This is lifted up from Revelation Space as well.
Inhibitors cull civilizations that achieved too much technical progress and start starfaring. They lay down traps to awake them. Inhibitors do it to save the galaxy.
Reapers cull civilizations that achieved too much technical progress and start starfaring. They lay down traps to awake them. Reapers do it to save the galaxy.

 

[Padzi]

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I'd say bioware doesn't understand their audience, but the truth is that they've alienated people who used to be their audience and are now pandering to a much smaller overall market
interesting strategy

 

[dukeofwoodberry]

Reaper invasion cyclic, inevitable, fated etc

This is lifted up from Revelation Space as well.
Inhibitors cull civilizations that achieved too much technical progress and start starfaring. They lay down traps to awake them. Inhibitors do it to save the galaxy.
Reapers cull civilizations that achieved too much technical progress and start starfaring. They lay down traps to awake them. Reapers do it to save the galaxy.

How does he resolve it?

 

[RNGsus]

ME would have probably been better off with REAPERS becoming a background plot item after ME1 tbh.

was it ever in the cards? I thought Bioware planned the reaper invasion from the start.

There's an aborted plot in ME2 about dark matter. Gets brought up a few times and never again.
If you think back to Tali's ME2 recruitment mission, it's about a star that's maturing too fast. It's linked to it.

Does anybody else remember getting all turned around following ME2, before they realized the plot was back to reapers again?

 

[Ol' Willy]

How does he resolve it?

Deus Ex Machina as usual.

There is a distant planet far away. It is not remarkable but for one feature: it has dimension rift. Creatures (maybe humans, maybe not) on the other side know how to fight the Inhibitors and willing to help - with the condition that they will be let in. Inhibitors are already destroying human colonies with remarkable speed so protagonists decide to allow these creatures in.

Third book ends on humanity successfully fighting back Inhibitors but it is hinted that those creatures from the parallel dimension (or whatever it is) had brought a Greenfly with them: essentially a Gray Death like terraforming virus that will fuck up Galaxy for good this time.

 

[Jaedar]

I'd say bioware doesn't understand their audience, but the truth is that they've alienated people who used to be their audience and are now pandering to a much smaller overall market
interesting strategy

Bioware always had a pretty large audience of people so desperate for human affection / into "shipping" that they think romances is a super important part of an rpg. They definitely embraced it to the detriment of everything else for some of their games though.