Mass effect Trilogy

[Cariannis]

Vega and Allers I hated.

 

Jessica Chobot (as Diana Allers) was to me the worst character in the game. Why didn’t we get Emily Wong? I just wanted to throw Allers out an airlock.

 

I also didn’t like the sexbot version of EDI…

[GhostofAnakin]

The concept of the Diana Allers character was, IMO, a good one. A war journalist tagging along for the ride, etc. What fell apart was the actual character of Diana Allers, in large part because Jessica Chobot has the acting skills of a dead rodent.

 

If Emily Wong (and the voice actress who portrayed her), or if that chick with the long name that Shepard likes punching, was used instead of Allers, I think it would have been a really neat addition.

 

But I can't stress enough how much of a waste of space Chobot is.

[Calax]

Now that I think about it...

 

Mass Effect 4, James Vega Chronicles!

[Nepenthe]

At least the Kaidan guy wasn't too bad (and less whiny than Ashley) once you got him on board the Normandy. Vega was like something out of a bad comic (only Kai Leng was worse), Liara isn't my thing, nor is Garrus. Leaving those behind I dislike means Javik wins by default and the empty second party member slot becomes a toss up between EDi and Kaidan. I think I mentioned something similar a long time ago (e.g. Master Wade in DA:O and others), but the guys writing the "incidental" characters, like the refugees etc. seems to have more fun/creativity when it comes to creating characters.

I agree, and yet my standard team in ME3 was Liara and Garrus, because they were the least annoying characters available for most of the game (ok, I actually sort of like Garrus, he suffers somewhat from having been hit with a major reset button between every installment, but he does make for a decent bromance, better than Jacob ever did).

 

The concept of the Diana Allers character was, IMO, a good one. A war journalist tagging along for the ride, etc. What fell apart was the actual character of Diana Allers, in large part because Jessica Chobot has the acting skills of a dead rodent.

 

If Emily Wong (and the voice actress who portrayed her), or if that chick with the long name that Shepard likes punching, was used instead of Allers, I think it would have been a really neat addition.

 

But I can't stress enough how much of a waste of space Chobot is.

Yep. They actually killed Wong off-screen during the release press blitz. (She was supposed to be the voice on the official twitter feed which got *connection terminated*). Argh.

[HoonDing]

 

BioWare forums never disappoint.

[Fish Of Doom]

There are very few complaints about, say, Mordin or Legion dying precisely because their situations were set up well across multiple games with the main themes introduced in ME1 and expanded upon in ME2 leading to a fulfilling ending to the storylines in ME3.

*insert trend bucking here*

 

I was ok with Mordin. He went out well, and we'd gotten to know him fairly well. However LEGION I was kind of pissed about. Not because he died, but because we basically didn't get to interact with him all that much. He shows up on one mission, then you have just enough time to get his loyalty up and do that before you end the game in ME2. And ME3 has him pop up only as a non-squaddie who WILL die (in one form or another). Legion is, overall, my favorite character, and showing my bias I am annoyed that he gets so little screen time... especially in comparison to Tali. I don't mind that he went out overall... it's just that in comparison to MANY of the other characters in 2 and 3, he wasn't allowed to visit with the players nearly as much as any other squad member in the game.

I was okay with Legion at first. But it's one of those "until you sit down and start thinking about it" scenarios. Which probably would not have happened if the ending wasn't terrible.

 

Legion's death doesn't make any sense. I don't even know how to explain it to rebuke it. It just fails me fundamentally. And his entire character is a 180 from the Mass Effect 2 presentation.

We will make our own way without any shortcuts from the old machines (ME2)... unless they're really cool (ME3)

All must be judged on their own merits. Treating every species like one's own is racist. Even benign anthropomorphism.(ME2) I want to be a real individual. (ME3) And I think one of the reasons I will forever refuse to play the Extended Cut is EDI's "Now I am alive" line for that version of synthesis. What was she before?

 

He was a bit of a fan favorite and it's sad he didn't get a better part.

 

re: rebuking legion's death: it makes no sense because the geth are software, and are therefore made of code, that can be copied. legion therefore requiring "personality dissemination" is nonsensical to anyone with half a smidgeon of programming knowledge. It was done purely for emotional impact, and on that note, it worked (it was the only moment in the game that brought me close to tears, mainly due to the sheer magnitude of all the combined happenings in the scene), but logically it is a fail of galactic proportions.

 

also, vega was cool and gorth is a heretic for not being garrus' bro, but i totally agree with the allers dislike. al-jilani on board the normandy would have been hilarious, though.

[NOK222]

Chobot was just a bad choice period, there were some discussions against her personally.

 

I thought I would do a pictoral update on everything that has happened within the last 3 or so months…(and “NO” I haven’t finished ME3 yet. ” NO” I haven’t sexed Diana Allers (although I plan to) and “NO” I don’t want to know anything more about the babsolutly RIDICULOUS whine-fest that entitled gamers are having with Bioware).

 

That was Chobot, I'm going to try to find some more lulz.

Edited December 8, 2012 by NKKKK

[alanschu]

also, vega was cool and gorth is a heretic for not being garrus' bro, but i totally agree with the allers dislike.

 

I actually enjoyed Vega too. Garrus is probably my favourite character of the franchise, in large part because of the third game (I thought he was really well done).

 

I agree with Allers too. Seemed like an interesting concept, but ultimately wasn't a fan of Chobot's performance (at all) and to me it is quite evident that she is not a professional voice actor when held up to the rest of the crew (or game in general).

[Raithe]

I do think it would have worked a lot better with Emily Wong on board. But I can understand why they used her for that "Alliance Twitter Feed". They needed a character reporting on it that people could be emotionally connected to from the get go. That pretty much meant one that we knew , and if it's a toss up between reporters just how many of the fans would have felt that bad over the death scene of el-punchy-face?

[alanschu]

I actually didn't remember Emily Wong, nor did I know about her news feed twitter (which I have since seen, and have a hard time believing that, prior to the ending ire spreading over to other aspects of the game, fans wouldn't have mostly enjoyed).

 

 

Although I still get insane goosebumps just listening to Clint Mansell's piece at the end. (Enjoyed

homage video that uses it)

[Zoraptor]

I kind of regret referring to Vega as Lt Beefcake now since there's nothing much wrong with him, he's Jacob v2 in effect, someone without much to like or dislike especially. He certainly ain't a Mary Sue (almost always the most lazy of accusations) as there's no evidence he's an authorial insert, his 'purpose' is as noted an info dump for new players rather than to get an author into the story; he isn't better at stuff than the main character, quite the opposite; he doesn't get to sexxor teh Shepard (the classic Mary Sue behaviour) and lastly he is, presumably, a Gary Stu and not a Mary Sue.

 

I'd also disagree with criticism of Legion's death mainly on the grounds that he is clearly and explicitly unique, hence him referring to himself as "I" at the end. Much of the stuff both with him and with EDI is precisely about what makes something alive rather than being a machine or a tool. The obvious conclusion is that both EDI and Legion are 'alive' and are unique individuals, as such they are not just software and hardware (a point specifically raised by EDI) but more than the sum of their parts. In an alternative universe where everybody is synthetic there might be a parallel complaint that [organic] is just 4.2 litres of water and various amounts of carbon, phosphorus, calcium, nitrogen etc so why can't [organic] be brought back; after all Shep was once so we know it can be done!

[Raithe]

Although I still get insane goosebumps just listening to Clint Mansell's piece at the end. (Enjoyed

homage video that uses it)

 

Mansell is great with that style of music. I have to say, he did do a damn fine job with the music throughout.

[Gorth]

also, vega was cool and gorth is a heretic for not being garrus' bro

 

I'm sure there is a special hell set aside for me

 

But the walking wikipedia on steroids and best friend vigilante just didn't do it for me. Maybe I really just like my party members a bit more crooked and twisted. Heck, I even liked Kasumi once I got around to buy the DLC for ME2.

[Calax]

I kind of regret referring to Vega as Lt Beefcake now since there's nothing much wrong with him, he's Jacob v2 in effect, someone without much to like or dislike especially. He certainly ain't a Mary Sue (almost always the most lazy of accusations) as there's no evidence he's an authorial insert, his 'purpose' is as noted an info dump for new players rather than to get an author into the story; he isn't better at stuff than the main character, quite the opposite; he doesn't get to sexxor teh Shepard (the classic Mary Sue behaviour) and lastly he is, presumably, a Gary Stu and not a Mary Sue.

 

I'd also disagree with criticism of Legion's death mainly on the grounds that he is clearly and explicitly unique, hence him referring to himself as "I" at the end. Much of the stuff both with him and with EDI is precisely about what makes something alive rather than being a machine or a tool. The obvious conclusion is that both EDI and Legion are 'alive' and are unique individuals, as such they are not just software and hardware (a point specifically raised by EDI) but more than the sum of their parts. In an alternative universe where everybody is synthetic there might be a parallel complaint that [organic] is just 4.2 litres of water and various amounts of carbon, phosphorus, calcium, nitrogen etc so why can't [organic] be brought back; after all Shep was once so we know it can be done!

I liked him better than Jacob... because Jacob you give mildly supportive comments to and he thinks you want to bone.

[mr insomniac]

Garrus got better as the series progressed. I really wish there was a bit where he and Shepard tried to drink each other under the table somewhere, preferably with lots of asari dancers in the background.

[Nepenthe]

Mansell is great with that style of music. I have to say, he did do a damn fine job with the music throughout.

 

o_O

 

Mansell has one song credited entirely to him (Leaving Earth) and one to him and Sam Hulick (An End, Once and For All). All the rest of the music was done by somebody else (though I'm not sure about the track that plays during the nightmare sequences, I don't think it's on the soundtracks and thus isn't credited).

[Raithe]

o_O

 

Mansell has one song credited entirely to him (Leaving Earth) and one to him and Sam Hulick (An End, Once and For All). All the rest of the music was done by somebody else (though I'm not sure about the track that plays during the nightmare sequences, I don't think it's on the soundtracks and thus isn't credited).

 

Hm, for some reason I thought he had a couple more then that in the overall score.

[Nonek]

I thought us Shep's who died at the end of ME2 were going to play the Vincent Vega bloke. Wonder what happened to the galaxy without a Mr Protagonista? Everybody else seemed fairly unmotivated/incompetent.

[Malcador]

That might have been interesting, playing as Vega after Shepard dies again.

[anubite]

Vega is worthy of contempt given this is Mass Effect. In place of Vega, we could have literally had any fantasy space alien or human you could think of. And instead we got another token space marine. A mexican-american space marine. Whose only reason for being was to appeal to that audience of people (you know, Call of Duty players?). That's why people make fun of him, beucase it's like BioWare's shooting itself in the foot with that character design.

 

And before you rail me for saying that - go buy Black Ops 2, MW3, MW2.... or something. Anytthing. Put in the disc and start playing the campaign. James Vega would fit in perfectly in any of those stories. He's perfectly suited to deliver empty military jargon and the occasional nihilistic or mass-market-American-young-adult-male-commodified wise-crack. Would Liara or Garrus fit in with such games? Hell no! This is why Vega is so abhorrent. If I wanted to get a Call of Duty story, I would play call of duty. Give me characters that fit in a space opera BioWare. The characters people liked from KOTOR were HK47, Bindo, hell, even Carth fits in - even if nobody probably liked the guy. He at least contributed to the tone and heart of KOTOR1. Vega is like processed meat or cheetos. It's like, BioWare is realizing that its games have only appealed to a niche market of RPG gamers, and has decided, it would rather be Call of Duty, so one step at a time, it is casting off the things that made its game memorable - like the characters. Like their quirks or aesthetic. James Vega is an inoffensive light-brown man with a buzz cut, muscles, and a grey uniform. He is so generic and unpolarizing that he's designed so that your average consumer can't nitpick. He's a familiar face in what should be a world which at times seems unreal. And that role is unnecessary when we already have Ashley/Kaidan, Hackett, Human Military General X, and Shepard.

 

Vega, in a vaccuum, is... well he's not offensive. His character is flat and fails to evoke anything. So he's not as bad as Jacob, who just comes off as annoying to me. He's not as bad as Kasumi (who just feels out of place in an anime-ish way). Or even Ashley (ME1 Ashely was interesting ME2-3 Ashley was not). So sure, BioWare could have done worse by making Vega annoying or trite or full of one-liners, but he feels like a limp attempt at another true-to-life soldier.

Edited December 9, 2012 by anubite

[Nepenthe]

Good analysis. I don't agree with it fully, but still a thumb up.

[Zoraptor]

It's a complaint about a fictional space soldier behaving and looking something like other fictionalised soldiers, space or otherwise, and how having a space soldier on a military vessel, during wartime, is somehow a Bad Idea. I wish they'd used a different visual design for Vega but ultimately it's as peripheral as Liara or Ashley's breast augmentations, worth an eye roll and perhaps a quiet reflective facepalm, but not much more. Otherwise it's about as compelling as saying that Anderson is a Magical Negro and citing a bunch of Morgan Freeman movies.

 

If anything there's far too few space soldiers in all the MEs, discounting Pfc Deadmeat from the very start of ME1 there's three (?) alliance troops as companions in the whole series which makes basically no sense as, ME2 excepted, you are alliance military.

[anubite]

It's a complaint about a fictional space soldier behaving and looking something like other fictionalised soldiers

 

It's a complaint about a fictional space soldier behaving and looking something like modern US marines.

 

and how having a space soldier on a military vessel, during wartime, is somehow a Bad Idea.

 

It's not. What is, is making him a full-fledged party member.

 

I wish they'd used a different visual design for Vega but ultimately it's as peripheral as Liara or Ashley's breast augmentations, worth an eye roll and perhaps a quiet reflective facepalm, but not much more. Otherwise it's about as compelling as saying that Anderson is a Magical Negro and citing a bunch of Morgan Freeman movies.

 

Anderson is not a very good character for the same reason. He makes the whole tone of the mov- I mean, game, like Gears of War or Black Ops. Characters like Saren should be at the forefront of the game's story, giving us speeches about the nature of man or organic life or something. But instead, we get a 10%-futuristic-space-marine who serves no thematic purpose to the story or the world.

 

Yes, yes, it's logical to have soldiers on board a military vessel, to talk to soldiers during a war, but when has Mass Effect ever been logical? I mean, c'mon. The main alien races are blue people, slightly-less blue people, and frog-giants. But if you aren't going to make Vega's story gripping (every time he talked about his past, I was just waiting

for him to start talking like this:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjBdFPyxuak

 

...then don't include him. When we could have had another Garrus, another Liara - I mean, not those exact characters - but those kinds of characters, with such alien things to talk and learn about... are what drive one's interest in the game. Not talking to generic military machos.

Edited December 9, 2012 by anubite

[WorstUsernameEver]

It's kind of weird to hear that soldiers don't fit the tone of the game when one of the few things that are always true about your character is that he/she is a soldier in the space equivalent of the US army.

 

Just my 2 cents.

[anubite]

Shepard is a soldier and talks like one no matter how you want to play him/her. But Shepard is also more than a soldier due to his/her seeming Jesus-like quality of "doing the impossible" and the fact he/she was risen from the dead. This makes Shepard at least 10% more interesting than Vega and tolerable as a result. There is something supernaturai about Shepard. Vega is about as fantastical as a rat in a fantasy RPG.

 

Vega is not exceptional in any capacity and is so bland, were it not for his massive muscles, he'd be a wallflower.

Edited December 9, 2012 by anubite