kadayi

@hakunin said:

@AuthenticM said:

The Walking Dead is not even a video game, so why should it win the Game of the Year award ? It shouldn't.

I am getting so fucking tired of hearing this "argument". With it you're basically writing off a whole genre, one with a long and storied history, as "not real games" Day of the Tentacle, Monkey Island, Full Throttle, Grim Fandango. You know, some of the all-time classics? Yeah, they're not "real" games anymore. Bullshit, of course TWD is a video game and one of this years best. GOTY? That is up for discussion. It's legitimacy as a video game is not.

Seconded. I'm tired of this 'Not a game' meme as well. It's fucking moronic and doesn't even hold up to even the simplest scrutiny as a statement.

@haggis said:

The Catalyst was basically left to do its job, and because the Leviathans had such confidence in their tool, they were unprepared when their creation decided to do its job too well. That's exactly my point.

I'm sorry but repeating a lie doesn't make it any more true. The Catalyst harvested them. It was the first thing it did when it had the means and opportunity.

I'm not speculating that the Keepers have no relationship with the AI. I've said exactly the opposite. What I've suggested is, like the Leviathans that created it and like its relationship with Harbinger and Sovereign and (at the end of the game) the Crucible, the AI demonstrates a tendency toward allowing its creations to fulfill their jobs without intervention on its part. That's all. Of course the Catalyst created the Citadel, the cycle, and the harvest. But I'm struggling to see how that contradicts anything I've said so far.

The only thing your struggling with is losing an argument on the internet. If the catalyst created the Citadel, then it beggars belief on any level that as its creator it would leave itself unable to control in any way the very servants it assigned to maintain it (even more so given it betrayed its own creators) and that the Citadel is the very place where its effectively resided all this time. Feel to post more long winded explanations as to why that's not the case, and conjure up elaborate reasons as to why 'that ain't so' but at this point in time whom are you attempting to fool here but yourself?

@Neurotic said:

If the argument is about The Walking Dead and it's between Patrick/Alex on one side and Jeff on the other, I can see it getting spicy.

For my part, I hope Jeff wins that argument. I think he needs revenge for last year.

I'd rather the GoTY was decided upon by being the better agreed upon game than because it's a bone of contention in some grudge match.

Lovely looking game (the engine really is quite spectacular tbh), and the combat wasn't half bad but it suffered from essentially being 'Fallout-lite' Vs a full on RPG style experience. I got quite a way into it and enjoyed the combat, but there wasn't enough there to keep me gripped Vs moving onto newer titles at the end of the day.

@haggis said:

I think you're missing something here. First, the Leviathans set up the Catalyst to do a job, and then they left it to its own devices. They didn't interfere with it. That was what the Leviathans did. At some level, this is the same pattern that the Catalyst takes with everything. It sets up the keepers with a defined job, and the keepers do it without need for supervision. And it works. The Catalyst sets up Harbinger and Sovereign to do their jobs without micromanagement. They do their jobs. And it works. See the pattern? That's the Catalyst's logic. You're suggesting behavior that doesn't fit the pattern, and so that is why I'd like some evidence that your "cold logic" is actually logical. Because it doesn't seem logical to me at all.

You suggest that I'm speculating, but it seems you're speculating just as much. I'm saying "why would they?" and you're saying "why wouldn't they?" The problem is that my suggestions line up with past behavior, and yours don't. Or, at least, you've given me no reason to think so. Basically your position is that you don't need to offer evidence, but I do. I've offered my reasons for thinking the way I do, but you haven't. The game is perfectly consistent on these points. You may not like it, or find it satisfying, but they aren't inconsistent and they make sense from the perspective of the AI and its past behavior.

You also seem to misunderstand the harvest, at least from what the game tells us. You seem to think that the harvest is a scheduled thing, and that the Leviathans returning wouldn't trigger another harvest. There's no clock ticking down 50,000 years, after which the Catalyst says, "Time for another harvest!" That's not how the cycle works. Given what we're told about the Catalyst's purpose in monitoring the galaxy, the game seems to have already answered your question.

The Leviathans didn't 'leave the catalyst to do its job' it pulled a Skynet and harvested them first. Harbinger being the outcome and the design model for all future Reapers (thus why they all look like the Leviathans) .

Also going 'is this logical?' isn't quite the same thing as speculating. You're speculating that there's no relationship between the keepers and the AI because it suits your purposes to defend the catalysts existence on the Citadel during ME1 (a major plot flaw by any standard). I'm looking at it from a logical perspective and questioning whether that assumption holds up to scrutiny in a broader context, and it simply doesn't and so far all your weedling hasn't convinced yet either. The catalyst is the overseer of the entire cycle, it's the originator, it conceived of the whole plan of the harvest. Who do you think came up with the idea of the Citadel and the mass relays in the first place? The fucking werewolf?

Also the plot of ME1 is pretty explicit about how the cycle occurs. I'm not sure why you're attempting to refute that.

@Slag said:

That is a little different than what I was thinking your beef was, if they directly condescended you or talked down to you personally, than yeah you have every right to be pissed.

But if they were just writing their piece on ME3 (not directed at you personally) and happened to do a crappy job at that, well then I think you just have to shrug that off as the journo/blogger doing a crappy job on this particular story. And possibly remember that when choosing whose work to read the next time. Even pros have bad days.

I guess to boil my personal philosophy on things like this is basically this, don't take things online opinions personal that aren't personal in nature. Know what I mean?

fwiw I steered well clear of the ME3 discussion for the reasons you stated.

Have a read of this article by Arthur Gies that was ostensibly supposed to be a 'round table' discussion about the (original) ending of Mass Effect 3.

http://www.polygon.com/2012/10/5/3461080/reviewers-talk-mass-effect-3-the-ending-the-narrative-the-controversy

The entire article is a case of whitewashing and diminishment. It's not about gamer's hating the ending because it made no sense, or finding certain aspects illogical or narratively flawed. The uproar is portrayed simply as a case that a 'vocal minority' wanted a 'happy ending' and not getting it apparently.

Arthur: Do they dislike it because it didn't give them the Frodo laying in bed with all the hobbits jumping up and down on it ending? And I don't say that to be dismissive, but that's an ending to an epic trilogy in recent memory. This is the most successful trilogy narratively that I maybe have ever seen.

The whole thing reads like a bunch of Fox News 'Analysts' sitting around speculating on whether Obama was in fact going to build 'Death Camps' or some such. There's no sense of any real research into the subject in depth as to why gamer's were unhappy with the ending by any of the participants and there's no dissenting voices. Surely if you're going to have a round table you get in a few people who have different opinions no?

Really up to Brad openly recoiling at the paucity of the original ending and the BS nature of the choices in the podcast there's been little if anyone in the gaming press actually taking a contrary stance to the attitude of Gies and his cohorts in truth, which frankly has been rather frustrating. This whole denial that there was anything wrong or questionable with the ending felt like a case of the gaming press blatantly defending the absurdly high scores the game had been awarded. Right now ME3 has a metacritic of 93/100 making it one of the highest rated games ever, which is ludicrous given it's problems (and I'm not just talking about the ending here). Compare and contrast with Prometheus a film which although superbly constructed and shot from a highly regarded director also suffers from thematic problems and a risible ending. Metacritic average is 65/100. What is it that film critics are doing that game critics aren't?

@Mezmero said:

Similarly the Levia-thong DLC for Mass Effect 3 makes both the ending and the entire universe into a much richer experience overall. The notion that someone needs to play it if they like Mass Effect is both completely true and utterly ludicrous.

True that. There's some serious rectoning/ending addressing going on in that. I don't hold with the idea that it existed all along and was 'cut content' more that it's something that shouldn't be required in order to better understand the main story Vs simply extra missions. LoTSB added to ME2, but it wasn't essential information. Where as Leviathan is a massive reveal to the reaper background that puts the entire ending in context. Assholes...

I say go with Spec Ops:The Line. Certainly not the greatest game ever, or likely to win many GoTY awards in truth, however it does do some great things narratively and really surprises at times.

Certainly Dishonored is an interesting title, but in my view it's a little wonky in places and the story is painfully obvious in terms of the beats (everything is signposted to the extreme). The mechanics are certainly sound, but I found I was struggling to decide what to put points into even before I was halfway through the game because Stealth play really only require a few skills, and that's the optimal mode to get the better ending.

Personally I found the ending kind of abrupt. I was expecting a system beyond the Omega relay and a bit more story to explore so I rather surprised when the whole thing turned into a space battle.

As such it didn't really register with me too much at the time about the appearance of the reaper in terms of form, however afterwards I did think it seemed kind of dumb. There's not really any logic or rationale as to why an ostensibly space based entity would require a human appearance and it flew in the face of the cuttlefish look of the other reapers. The totem-ism just seemed like an unnecessary conceit.

@haggis said:

Like I said, the AI isn't helpless or powerless, and until you can at least offer even a tacit suggestion as to how Harbinger and Sovereign aren't capable of defending the Citadel, I'm not sure it's worth trying to get your point. You say it's farcical, but you haven't actually answered my arguments, let alone convinced me that my perspective doesn't make sense.

As for the keepers, you assert it's logical that the Catalyst would have access to them. But I think it's logical that it wouldn't. They have a limited skill set, and by all accounts do their job well without interference. So, why would the Catalyst have access to them, when such access would probably make it easier for intelligent races to trace such control back to the Catalyst itself? What your suggesting doesn't make sense to me.

You say I "fall back into" fortune telling, but you seem to forget that the Catalyst actually failed in the very first cycle to defeat the Leviathans. And so clearly there isn't just this binary "win or lose" scenario that you suggest. The game suggests that the Catalyst failed at least partially with the Protheans as well. So the game itself contradicts your assertion.

So, why is it so hard to accept? Because you're not actually being convincing.

Because your arguments are based around 'prove it or it's not true' Vs cold logic. That you're reduced to 'But why would the catalyst have control of the keepers?' and then stretching it to this notion that the keepers themselves might act as some kind of backdoor that it needed to safeguard itself from is frankly kind of......desperate. The central AI that's 'in charge' of running the entire cycle operation doesn't have any control over it's own creations? Really?

As regards the comment about the Leviathans, as they said themselves..it isn't a war, it's a harvest. The vast bulk of them were obliterated, that a few survived and hid in the depths of space to persist is hardly a victory. Same deal with the Protheans.

I mean what's been stopping the Leviathans from turning up and obliterating the catalyst to end the cycle and simply take control of the galaxy themselves in between harvests? No trigger, no reapers...and they're kings of the galaxy again.