Mass Effect 3 Spoiler Thread [Spoiler tag free, beware]

[Mosesandstick]

I don't see how it's silly. You can call it tasteless but it's one of the strongest themes with respect to the Quarians - they want their homeland back. Stormwaltz probably should've found a better way of putting his point across but I imagine as this is probably around the 3rd time he's had to explain this he's probably trying a different tact.

On the flip side many people have found the Quarian actions to be believable within the confines of the ME universe. Yeah, it's stupid, but that's the point. They are not acting rationally.

[Sjofn]

People fighting to get their homes back is just not that outlandish a theme, either.

[ajax34i]

Ignoring the Reapers for a second, what if the Quarrians wipe out the Geth and regain their home planet?  I doubt they can switch from irrational to rational just like that.  Helping them is like giving a weapon to a madman.

[Merusk]

He's not using this as a point, Moses.  He's explained before that it was the actual inspiration for the Quarian longing to return to their home, despite the Geth and hardships of maintaining the migrant fleet.

Though I agree with Margalis in theory.  The Quarians were space-faring for how long prior to the Geth creation 300 years prior to ME's timeline?  No colonies in all that time? No expansion?   The culture was so homogenous that everyone just stayed on the homeworld or the migrant fleet all that time? That's at odds with a faction of pro-peace Quarians developing.   And if not, like any species that fails  to adapt their extinction was inevitable and not to be mourned.

[Sjofn]

They had colonies, the geth just booted them off those too.

[Sir T]

That kind of blows the whole "we need our homeworld back so our immune systems can recover in 60 years rather than 600" argument advanced by Tali in ME 2. If they had colonies before they could have set up another one.

Of course that soldier guy was pretty reigned to the tact that attacking the Geth was a goddam stupid idea but it would probably happen regardless in ME2. "If this fleet goes up against the geth all thats coming back is scrap metal" So that utterly futile war Between the Geth and the Quarians was a theme that went back at least that far

[amiable]

I love the trick that Stormwaltz has played. Now if you criticize aspects of ME you're effectively criticizing Jews.

Of course in reality Jews did settle in other parts of the world, so the comparison is kind of flimsy anyway.

  This is without question the stupidest thing I have ever seen written on this board.   Where did Stomrwaltz even imply that criticizing his story was in any way criticizing Jews?   

[Jeff Kelly]

They had colonies, the geth just booted them off those too.

The colonies they had during the morning war, yes. They never settled after the exodus though. The geth never left the Perseus veil.

[Jeff Kelly]

Well I can at least get why Margalis might say something like that.

I'm not intimately familiar with the present and prior affiliations of every board member. I knew that Stormwaltz worked for Bioware at some point and I knew he worked with the Mass Effect Team during 1 and 2 but I didn't know in what capacity.

So the way he answered was very confusing and somewhat offensive to me because he seemed to refute my argument by comparing it to the real life diaspora of the Jews. This seemed to imply that by critizising the Quarians as being irrational I by proxy accused the Jews of the same fallacy. Which I did not because I wasn't even aware of the similarities at the time.

He could have simply stated from the start that he modelled the backstory after the diaspora (which he finally did as a reply to me after I called him out on that) it would have taken less time and energy than editing my initial statement and including all of those strikethrough tags.

Even if he didn't intent to do it I've now lost any desire to debate him on the Quarian backstory. I'd now have to debate it on a factual level by comparing the historical similarities and/or differences between the real diaspora and the Quarian backstory or on a craftsmanship level by looking for bad writing or misrepresentation of events.

I'd basically need to prove that he made mistakes, that both stories are not that similar after all, either because he misunderstood or misrepresented the historic facts or because he was bad at his craft. If not I'd automatically direct any criticism I had also to the Jewish community because I'd need to argue that a fictional story accurately modeled after a real historic event is stupid. It's also unfair to the Jewish community because they are not responsible for being used as a template to a backstory yet any legitimate criticism I might have by design now falls back unto them.

So yeah it kind of killed the debate.

[caladein]

I don't see how laying out the metaphor/defamiliarization exercise/whatever explicitly can be seen as offensive and/or having an ulterior motive when people are making the argument that the actions in-fiction "don't make sense".

One is inviting real-life examples (or, with having the writer around, the inspirations) at that point.

[Tebonas]

I might have something to do with the fact that Germans are conditioned to go into fetal position and apologize as soon as Jews are mentioned, which makes discussing things tangential to it hard.

Really, the Quarians were chased away by the Geth because they were dicks to their suddenly sentient creations and to each other. That difference to the Jewish plight alone makes this a safe discussion up to the point historians discover that the Golem was abused by Rabbi Löw and in reaction kicked all the Jews out of Prag.

[tmp]

People fighting to get their homes back is just not that outlandish a theme, either.

Indeed. Can make a pretty good game, too.

[Jeff Kelly]

It was more the way he initially approached the explanation (pasting my comment, replacing every occurance of the word Quarian with QuarianJews) than the content of the explanation, it seemed to be rather passive-agressive.

Maybe I'm just overly sensitive, though.

[Rasix]

Just beat the game. What the holy fuck is going on here?

[Mosesandstick]

It was more the way he initially approached the explanation (pasting my comment, replacing every occurance of the word Quarian with QuarianJews) than the content of the explanation, it seemed to be rather passive-agressive.

Maybe I'm just overly sensitive, though.

I think Stormwaltz could've responded more appropriately but you did lambast pretty much everything plot-related in Mass Effect.

[Jeff Kelly]

Hey, the reasons why you can and will be called an anti semite over here are just ridiculous and it always provokes a major shitstorm. We can't even debate Israel's foreign policy or the fact that we build them a fleet of first-strike/second-strike capable submarines without the discussion turning from the topic to supposed or real Jew-hating. The last person that tried that nearly lost his Nobel price for literature and that's even though he had quite a bit of support from public figures in Israel and didn't say anything that wasn't already debated lively in Israel itself.

Our Chancellor even stated that we're 100% committed to being a friend of the Israeli nation and that we'd support them no matter what, if they are ever attacked again. Which means German troops could even be called upon to support Israel's agenda or war efforts if - god forbid - it should ever come to that. The last time we did something similar it led to two world wars.

Being a friend of Israel and supporting the Jewish right to a homeland is basically part of the mission statement of every major corporation. The biggest news publisher even requires potential employees to sign an affidavit in which they state their support for the nation of Israel.

To call it a sensitive issue would be a massive understatement. You could perhaps compare it to the US obsession with and sensitivity to the topic of racism.

So yeah as I already conceded I might be a tad too sensitive there.

[Jeff Kelly]

I think Stormwaltz could've responded more appropriately but you did lambast pretty much everything plot-related in Mass Effect.

No, only in Mass Effect 3. I stand by my initial premise, though, Bioware is exceptionally good at crafting bevlievable characters but the plot always felt a bit bland to me though.

Just look at what  people on message boards, on reddit on blogs and tumblrs keep reposting. It's always character moments or favourite interactions or Shepard quotes etc. They are debated and liked, ranked and shared and memes are built around them. Almost never cutscenes that advance the plot, though.

In Fallout and Skyrim they debate scenery, easter eggs, or favourite missions in Bioware they debate characters. That's why the end generated such a huge shitstorm because people cared much more about the characters than the story. There's a reason for that.

The most often reposted scenes that don't involve character moments have been ending related.

[Tebonas]

Jeff is not exaggerating here. You stand behind everything Israel does or you an Antisemite. There is no middle ground in the public discussion.

[Lakov_Sanite]

This thread is almost as retarded as the ME3 ending now....almost.

[Tebonas]

You can always send the admins cupcakes to change the thread. 

[bhodi]

You created your own mess. Now you get to sleep in it.


As a side note, I found the "Quarians = Jews" pretty obvious in ME2 as well; it's clear where the inspiration came from. I sort of assumed everyone got the reference and I am very confident it's been brought up before here.

[Jeff Kelly]

You know what's retarded? Now that I know I'll probably never be able to side with the Geth ever again. Totally and utterly stupid but unfortunately I'm not kidding, not even a little.

[amiable]

You know what's retarded? Now that I know I'll probably never be able to side with the Geth ever again. Totally and utterly stupid but unfortunately I'm not kidding, not even a little.

What? Why?

[Lantyssa]

I'm surprised you'd play the game again with how much you seem to hate it...

[Sjofn]

I think Stormwaltz could've responded more appropriately but you did lambast pretty much everything plot-related in Mass Effect.

No, only in Mass Effect 3.

Dude, you have gone off about all three Mass Effects and how stupid they are plot-wise. That you're only currently complaining about ME3 at the moment doesn't change the huge blocks of text you've typed about the other two games in other threads. Especially since you're complaining about something that had its groundwork pretty firmly laid in the first two games.

I'm with Lantyssa, I don't get why you keep playing a series of games you seem to hate.




Rasix: So? What did you think?


edit: Wanted to add more grump to the part directed at Jeff. <3

[Rasix]

Rasix: So? What did you think?

Everything up until the Kings Quest IX blue themed outro was OK.  The choice of injured bloody crawl sequence, Fallout 1 style talk-him-to-death-literally, and Deus Ex 3 ending machine weren't my favorite, but I can live with them.  

The post credit stuff was just a bit baffling, however.  I didn't spoil myself so it was all a bit of a shock.  It felt rather cheap and it had me looking sideways at my monitor for the rest of the night.   The game experience itself aside from that? Really good, IMO.  I enjoyed it all immensely.

The Liara romance was really well done.  I'm not sure about the others, but they did about as well as I could expect with it.  I had another thought to put here and then someone messaged me at work.  

[Sjofn]

Which color ending did you pick! It was killing me not telling you that unless you pick red (destroy), your readiness was fine. :P

[Rasix]

DESTROY.  So, I picked red and got a blue ending.

My readiness was over 5000 in the end. It took me getting galactic readiness to about 77% to pull that off, which wasn't hard at all.

[Sjofn]

I picked GREEN my first time through, although I have come to regret that decision. But I didn't wanna kill the geth (didn't give a fuck about killing EDI, though) and control seemed really dumb, so transhuman wankery was a go!

Second time through, Manshep picked RED because fuck you, little kid, I'm taking you down with meeeeee!

[Rasix]

Ohhh, I forgot about the Geth.  Oops. 

[Sjofn]

It's alright. You were there to kill Reapers, it makes sense that you killed some motherfuckin' Reapers! Plus if you picked either of the other two endings you would've had to watch your Shepard die horribly on screen (Sally Shepard melted with a smile on her face, it was kinda fucked up).

[Rasix]

Ohh, that reminds me of my thought I blanked on earlier: I probably should have told Kelly to change her name.  OOPS.

Watching her get turned into human slurry in a ME2 play through was rather traumatic.  I'd rather not see that happen to Shep.

[Sjofn]

It's not quite that bad, but it was pretty . Of course I was mostly busy going "seriously what?" so that helped dampen it a bit.

I never ran into Kelly on my LadyShep playthrough, I think because Sally and Kelly never had dinner together. She was there for MANSHEP though, and seemed like she really wanted on his junk for whatever reason. I did (luckily!) tell her to change her name, so dodged a bullet there!

[Lantyssa]

I wasn't given the option that I recall.  I came back through the Citadel and was mortified.

(I was actually wondering how they could do that and why couldn't I save her.  It didn't help that Kelly was my only love interest through all play throughs.)

[Sjofn]

It's not hugely obvious, it's when you can either say "awesome, keep on keepin' on helping these people, Kelly!" or not. The paraphrase was something like "are you crazy?" or some shit, not very obvious.