Teletraan1
Banned
I don't think shep had an emotional attachment to that specific kid. The kid was the embodiment of what was happening at the time of the game. Earth just gets attacked, regrets of leaving earth, fear that shep cant save earth.
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Did the PTSD in Mass Effect 3 bother anyone more than the ending?
- Thread starter MormaPope
- Start date
It bothered me because yet again Bioware does not take into account what type of Shepard you are playing. Why would one kid dying affect Shepard any more than sacrificing hostages to go after Balak? Or letting the facility workers burn to death when helping Zaeed fulfill his revenge? Shepard can do a lot of horrible things and some forced interaction with some kid is not going to cause her to break down.
Teletraan1
Banned
Gamers are constantly clamoring for better writing/story in games and then take everything literal. As I said above I don't think Shepard had an emotional attachment to the one kid. The kid was a manifestation of the fear/doubt that Shepard had regarding possibly losing earth and the regret for leaving it at the time. The kids appearance at the end was just the reaper AI taking a form to communicate with Shepard as was done multiple times in this series and in any other science fiction.
I guess I could have taken it as "Daaaym my renegade lesbo femshep is a pedo too." while I swigged some mountain dew and ate some doritos and then got all mad about the 4-5 25s appearance of this kid in a 30h game but I decided not to care that much since I kinda saw what they were getting at. I weep in anticipation of the story response if and when a game ever comes out that has a story presented like Mulholland Dr.
The idiotic face he made when he watched the kid die in the beginning forever killed any chance of me finding it anything other than hilarious.
This series has some of the worst animations of any big budget title this generation.
Jibbajabbawockky
Member
Yes, the PTSD nightmare scenes bugged the piss out of me. Mainly because my Shepard did not give the slightest fuck about that kid. Yet BioWare deemed that the kid should be some hugely important thing for my version of Shepard.
It would have been more interesting if they had some conversation with another character earlier in the game about some choice or dead character that your Shepard felt regret about and then have them show up in the PTSD dream sequence. Maybe during some talk with Anderson before Shepard's trial that never happened. Instead we just had heavy handed BioWare trying to impose their authorship on the player's character.
It would have been more interesting if they had some conversation with another character earlier in the game about some choice or dead character that your Shepard felt regret about and then have them show up in the PTSD dream sequence. Maybe during some talk with Anderson before Shepard's trial that never happened. Instead we just had heavy handed BioWare trying to impose their authorship on the player's character.
Even so, that is still applying the same reaction across all Shepards which is my problem.
Didn't Dragon Age Origins technically do this better in one particular section? There's a part of the game where you have to talk to hallucinations of character's you've previously met, and it's actually determined by which origin you chose, as well as a few other choices you made afterwards I believe.
Whatever. There are honestly a lot of things wrong with the morality systems in Mass Effect, including its binary nature, all of it really only held together by the series' above-average writing.
Whatever. There are honestly a lot of things wrong with the morality systems in Mass Effect, including its binary nature, all of it really only held together by the series' above-average writing.
Teletraan1
Banned
Games as a medium simply aren't feasible to make a trilogy where every single decision impacts the story to that level. They would never come out if this was the case. There is no economically feasible way to program infinite possibilities to please everyone. Also, who is to say a Paragon Shepard wont have the same psychological response to earth being harvested as Renegade Shepard at a base level.
Jawmuncher
Member
Those dream sequences oh man, I love the game but even that was pushing it for me. It was so forced. I didn't give a crap about that little kid and yet I had to deal with that shit.
You know Shepard who had seen all kinds of shit but nope this one random kid is what messes with his mind. It was beyond dumb.
You know Shepard who had seen all kinds of shit but nope this one random kid is what messes with his mind. It was beyond dumb.
This is true, and I think they realized this when they were making the second game. Which is why we got the 3rd game that we did, where none of the characters from the second game came back in any meaningful way. Did they die in your save? Here is a random replacement of the same race.
I guess they were too ambitious with this series and it became harder to make all the treads as the games came out but if that is the case, they should have came up with a better solution than what they did, which is just lazy.They basically gave up in the third game with the rachni and everything.
Ultimadrago
Member
semiconscious
Member
y'know, even aside from the choice stuff: i played me2 over a year ago, & i'm just now playing me for the first time, & i'm thinking that, had bioware had their heads on straight, they should've either dropped the over-arching storyline altogether, or re-engineered it in such a way as to leave it in the background as some kind of shadowy, open-ended threat. which's to say, i think the mass effect games would've been better off had they been formatted as episodes in a continuing series (with each episode having it's own meta-story/resolution), as opposed to 3 parts of a trilogy centered on a single plotline. less ambitious, but a helluva lot more manageable...
BurnOutBrighter
Banned
Wait, there was supposed to be PTSD?
darth_infamous
Member
Fluoride!
He's suppose to represent the innocence of the human race as it's being annihilated by the Reapers. I could see a meeting where someone pitched that idea and it seemed high-minded enough for Walters.
D
Deleted member 17706
Unconfirmed Member
Isn't this just an assumption, though? I didn't necessarily get that feeling from playing the game.
Ghost_Protocol
Member
Everything about Shepard's persona feels forced, awkward, and unsympathetic. The PTSD crap is just more of the same.
He's the worst character in the series. If it weren't for the Garrus', Liaras', and Thanes' of the series, there's no way I would have tolerated such a terrible main character for this long.
He's the worst character in the series. If it weren't for the Garrus', Liaras', and Thanes' of the series, there's no way I would have tolerated such a terrible main character for this long.
Teletraan1
Banned
I think a trilogy were people are lead to believe that their choices truly matter is way too big of an undertaking. Linear corridor games take a fuckton of time to make. The outrageous expectations of choice and how it impacts the story even evident in this thread would take 100 years to make. People want different dream sequences tailored to their Shep's personality and the decisions they made over the course of a trilogy for something that amounts to 5 minutes worth of gameplay in a fairly long game. Now apply this for every little thing that you can think of and its a nightmare.
Has any plot point, minor or major, in the ME series ever been non-literal?
toastyToast
Member
My Shephard was a sick fuck that has never been to Earth
Playing a character which acted completely differently to the way the had for 2 whole games was pretty frustrating.
Playing a character which acted completely differently to the way the had for 2 whole games was pretty frustrating.
Littlegator
Banned
You know what I fucking hate in games that try to present you choices? Forcing your character's emotions on you. If I made some bad choices, make me feel bad about it. Don't force me through some shitty sequence that shows my character feels bad about it. If I'm supposed to be the character, why is the character showing any emotion at all? There's a very good chance that it could be totally contradictory to how the player feels.
Like in The Walking Dead.
Like in The Walking Dead.
Lee keeps on getting pissed and being a dick to Ben because he made a deal with the bandits. Well, I got over it pretty god damn fast because he was doing it to protect the group. But Lee hates him for it. It's the only time in the game so far where they've thrust Lee's choices onto you instead of your choices onto Lee.
UnluckyKate
Member
This a thousand times. That stupid brat showing up made me laugh/cringe. Someone from ME1-Me2 that was an actual character that died? Maybe I would have gave a shit.
Hasphat'sAnts
Member
You wouldn't have given two shits if it were Alenko.
Me either, I would love if I could have had him killed him ME1 and tell Ashley in ME3 that I don't want her on my ship.
That said Alenko would be a meh while the kid was basically the worst case scenario. A gif of a dog taking a poo would have been better than that kid.