I don't think she was supposed to be pretty. Yeah, she was given the "best looks," but I think it needs to be kept in the perspective that her father wanted her to carry on his dynasty. She was designed to look strong (and she's actually only made of his genetic material).
Of course, there's also the fact that she's modeled after her voice actress.
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IDrownFish wrote:
Anyways, you all are horrible, @#%^ed up people
lolgaxe wrote:
Never underestimate the healing power of a massive dong.
She's also butt-naked, outside, despite belonging to a race where an environmental suit breach means a massive cold, if not death.
That was my first reaction. Where and when did she take that picture? Some people say on her home world but she clearly states after you retake it that it will be years before her people can live there without the suit. She risked her life for a picture? That doesn't make any sense.
tl;dr: One of the main writers at BioWare is a regular poster on the Penny Arcade forums. Well, on the 11th, he allegedly posted about the development of the ending - specifically that it was done behind closed doors with only two people involved as opposed to the normal whole team, like the rest of the game. What's funny is that he later starts trying to cover his tracks. People on that forum know who he is, and it's very easy for his bosses to learn about this, especially once a lot of gaming news outlets pick it up. Which of course, they do. Anyway, he's literally asking people on the PA forums to not talk about what he posted (I assume he took down his posts). The guy's an idiot. You don't whistleblow your company on something like a forum, especially one in which you are well known and in absolutely no way anonymous.
Now, it probably wasn't his intention to "whistleblow." He was probably just answering some fans and providing detail on the process. But still, the things that were posted... they're pretty damning. Here's the full transcript (major ending spoilers, by the way):
Quote:
I have nothing to do with the ending beyond a) having argued successfully a long time ago that we needed a chance to say goodbye to our squad, b) having argued successfully that Cortez shouldn’t automatically die in that shuttle crash, and c) having written Tali’s goodbye bit, as well as a couple of the holo-goodbyes for people I wrote (Mordin, Kasumi, Jack, etc).
No other writer did, either, except for our lead. This was entirely the work of our lead and Casey himself, sitting in a room and going through draft after draft.
And honestly, it kind of shows.
Every other mission in the game had to be held up to the rest of the writing team, and the writing team then picked it apart and made suggestions and pointed out the parts that made no sense. This mission? Casey and our lead deciding that they didn’t need to be peer-reviewe.d
And again, it shows.
If you’d asked me the themes of Mass Effect 3, I’d break them down as:
Galactic Alliances
Friends
Organics versus Synthetics
In my personal opinion, the first two got a perfunctory nod. We did get a goodbye to our friends, but it was in a scene that was divorced from the gameplay — a deliberate “nothing happens here†area with one turret thrown in for no reason I really understand, except possibly to obfuscate the “nothing happens hereâ€-ness. The best missions in our game are the ones in which the gameplay and the narrative reinforce each other. The end of the Genophage campaign exemplifies that for me — every line of dialog is showing you both sides of the krogan, be they horrible brutes or proud warriors; the art shows both their bombed-out wasteland and the beautiful world they once had and could have again; the combat shows the terror of the Reapers as well as a blatant reminder of the rachni, which threatened the galaxy and had to be stopped by the krogan last time. Every line of code in that mission is on target with the overall message.
The endgame doesn’t have that. I wanted to see banshees attacking you, and then have asari gunships zoom in and blow them away. I wanted to see a wave of rachni ravagers come around a corner only to be met by a wall of krogan roaring a battle cry. Here’s the horror the Reapers inflicted upon each race, and here’s the army that you, Commander Shepard, made out of every race in the galaxy to fight them.
I personally thought that the Illusive Man conversation was about twice as long as it needed to be — something that I’ve been told in my peer reviews of my missions and made edits on, but again, this is a conversation no writer but the lead ever saw until it was already recorded. I did love Anderson’s goodbye.
For me, Anderson’s goodbye is where it ended. The stuff with the Catalyst just… You have to understand. Casey is really smart and really analytical. And the problem is that when he’s not checked, he will assume that other people are like him, and will really appreciate an almost completely unemotional intellectual ending. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t love it.
And then, just to be a ****… what was SUPPOSED to happen was that, say you picked “Destroy the Reapersâ€. When you did that, the system was SUPPOSED to look at your score, and then you’d show a cutscene of Earth that was either:
a) Very high score: Earth obviously damaged, but woo victory
b) Medium score: Earth takes a bunch of damage from the Crucible activation. Like dropping a bomb on an already war-ravaged city. Uh, well, maybe not LIKE that as much as, uh, THAT.
c) Low score: Earth is a cinderblock, all life on it completely wiped out
I have NO IDEA why these different cutscenes aren’t in there. As far as I know, they were never cut. Maybe they were cut for budget reasons at the last minute. I don’t know. But holy crap, yeah, I can see how incredibly disappointing it’d be to hear of all the different ending possibilities and have it break down to “which color is stuff glowing?†Or maybe they ARE in, but they’re too subtle to really see obvious differences, and again, that’s… yeah.
Okay, that’s a lot to have written for something that’s gonna go away in an hour.
I still teared up at the ending myself, but really, I was tearing up for the quick flashbacks to old friends and the death of Anderson. I wasn’t tearing up over making a choice that, as it turned out, didn’t have enough cutscene differentiation on it.
And to be clear, I don’t even really wish Shepard had gotten a ride-off-into-sunset ending. I was honestly okay with Shepard sacrificing himself. I just expected it to be for something with more obvious differentiation, and a stronger tie to the core themes — all three of them.
Except it was posted from his account. My first link has screenshots of him asking people not to talk about his posts.
The whole thing is just pretty funny.
Edit:
idiggory, King of Bards wrote:
I don't think she was supposed to be pretty. Yeah, she was given the "best looks," but I think it needs to be kept in the perspective that her father wanted her to carry on his dynasty. She was designed to look strong (and she's actually only made of his genetic material).
Of course, there's also the fact that she's modeled after her voice actress.
Yeah, the Mass Effect characters are just too stylized for this to work well. You can really tell when they model someone after their voice actor, and I don't mean that in a good way. I'd say Joker is one of the only good examples. And he's sitting in a chair with a hat on his head for most of the game.
It's really freaky when you see Miranda's voice actor in videos. It's legit just Miranda, but blonde. On that note, she does look better with dark hair.
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IDrownFish wrote:
Anyways, you all are horrible, @#%^ed up people
lolgaxe wrote:
Never underestimate the healing power of a massive dong.
Yvonne (Did I call her Yvette earlier? Damn you, little blue Twi'lek girl) has a pretty face (reminds me of Elisha Cuthbert), but they sort of messed up the Miranda model.
You can clearly see that it's Yvonne's face, but they just turned it... weird. They exaggerated the masculine jawline and messed up the hairline, lips and nose, or something. She looks too square.
Match Maker Quest: Shepard can encourage EDI and Joker to become a couple and can do the same for Ken and Gabby.
I apparently missed that second one in my first playthrough.
Quote:
According to Dusty Everman from Bioware, a programming error in Mass Effect 3 causes the banter and argument between Gabby and Ken only to occur if Shepard is "good friends with Ashley," meaning that the player must frequently converse with Ashley and take her out on several missions to hear the two banter back and forth. If Ashley is dead, the banter cannot be activated.
Match Maker Quest: Shepard can encourage EDI and Joker to become a couple and can do the same for Ken and Gabby.
I apparently missed that second one in my first playthrough.
Quote:
According to Dusty Everman from Bioware, a programming error in Mass Effect 3 causes the banter and argument between Gabby and Ken only to occur if Shepard is "good friends with Ashley," meaning that the player must frequently converse with Ashley and take her out on several missions to hear the two banter back and forth. If Ashley is dead, the banter cannot be activated.
Edited, Mar 24th 2012 11:08am by Poldaran
I've been detouring down to the engineering department every chance I get.
Also, I don't think I'm made for an Engineer (in multiplayer). I feel so weak. And I suspect drone kills only count for assists, and I do not like that at all.
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IDrownFish wrote:
Anyways, you all are horrible, @#%^ed up people
lolgaxe wrote:
Never underestimate the healing power of a massive dong.
I been playing all of my multi-player characters and trying out new weapon combo's to force myself out of my comfort zone. It's fun for variety, plus I have promoted 3 squads now.
And I suspect drone kills only count for assists, and I do not like that at all.
Pretty sure they count as kill if the drone fires the killing shot. I played a lot as an engineer (promoted once and now lvl 15) and I get kills sometimes when I'm not doing anything. The only explanation is my drone at the other end of the map firing its rockets.
Pretty sure I have gotten kills for hacked Geth on my Quarian Infiltrator as well. Everytime it comes up Geth on her I am like "Awww yeah it's on now". Hacking a Pyro, Rocket, or a Prime is pretty much the greatest thing ever.
I just made a human level 10 Engineer for multi just to try the drone. My other engineer was Salarian. I was level 10 to start but had enough points to max Drone with rockets. Lot's of fun, that little drone does kick ***** I saw it one shot some bronze Cerebus. Also I did get the kill credit. I ended up with 10 tech kills, 50 kills, 1 grab, 5 melee etc for number 2 rank.
My most successful build thus far is an Asari Vanguard. By maxing stasis, & equipping the sniper rifle that behaves more like an assault rifle, she's pretty good at killing the fodder mobs. No problems clearing bronze with her, but she's not to great at silver+ as she's got nothing to take down armor or barriers and gets eaten by Banshees, Brutes, & the like.
Quarian engineer is kinda fun, as is my Drell Adept, but I haven't unlocked anything else that really fits my play style.
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"The Rich are there to take all of the money & pay none of the taxes, the middle class is there to do all the work and pay all the taxes, and the poor are there to scare the crap out of the middle class." -George Carlin
If you like the Asari Vangaurd you will love the Asari Adept. All you need is a good heavy pistol like a scoped Carnifex. Then stasis headshot any normal mobs. On heavies warp to throw for the biotic detonation and you rip chunks off their armor and shield all the while capping away at them with your Carnifex.
It's disgustingly good.
I have also developed a great fondness for my Krogen Soldier. Widow Sniper Rifle and Geth Plasma Shotgun (GPS). Put everything into Fitness + Berserker and Foucault Current Armor. Turn on Foucault armor and then forget powers. Eventually you have extra points to throw into carnage or grenades but since your load of weapons is so heavy, powers are not really important. You are an unholy wrecking machine. Dangerous at any range, and crazy melee.
Special fondness for the GPS. Mine is level 2 now and that thing is just all kinds of sick.
If you like the Asari Vangaurd you will love the Asari Adept. All you need is a good heavy pistol like a scoped Carnifex. Then stasis headshot any normal mobs. On heavies warp to throw for the biotic detonation and you rip chunks off their armor and shield all the while capping away at them with your Carnifex.
I'd kill for a Carnifex. The starting pistol sucks horribly at anything but headshots.
Also, my roommate's been playing through the main story again with the audio in German. Mordin singing does not sound right at all in German.
I've only unlocked Quarian/Salarian Engineer, Drell Adept, Asari Vanguard, & Turrian Soldier/Vanguard and am quite limited on weapons (1 Rifle, 3 Snipers, 2 Shotguns, 2 H. Pistols (neither carnifax), & 2 S. Machine Guns). Bronze is pretty easy for me now, but again, I have no successes after wave 9 in silver+.
Oh, Omegavegeta on Origin btw.
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"The Rich are there to take all of the money & pay none of the taxes, the middle class is there to do all the work and pay all the taxes, and the poor are there to scare the crap out of the middle class." -George Carlin
2-3 hours on my soldier testing out multiplayer got me to 17, so it shouldnt be that hard. I've got like, 4 characters 14-17 after about 4 days (Maybe 12 hours?) of multiplayer.
I'm also playing ME3 single player again, this time as my renegade I took through ME1 & 2. Then I got EDI and my Shepard got de-leveled to 1, as was EDI, but Garrus and the enemies were 35+. Now I have to start over, but was only 3 hours in. Odd.
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"The Rich are there to take all of the money & pay none of the taxes, the middle class is there to do all the work and pay all the taxes, and the poor are there to scare the crap out of the middle class." -George Carlin