Spoiler: It gets better.
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Golden sentence, if taken out of context.
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Was replaying Mecha Ace recently to get my first Hawkins rivalmance fix in a while, and it kind of reminded me of another general gameplay pet peeve I have.
While the route itself was fine and the game was just as enjoyable as ever, can I just say that I hate when a game forces you to pick specific options just to trigger the right flags to romance a character in the first place?
And I don’t mean “Oh, X character only vibes with X character trait or worldview in the MC”, because I’m fine with that and it makes sense. No, I genuinely mean like “You have to pick this very specific set of options if you want the flags to trigger and the romance path to start, otherwise you’re completely locked out of it”. It’s just super frustrating to me, because I want to be able to enjoy the game and the roleplaying experience as a whole and be able to romance a character; I don’t want to be forced to choose between one or the other just to get what I want, if my character wouldn’t naturally do or say certain things.
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At least there’s an alternative path for sealing the deal… too bad same isn’t a thing in chapter 8.
Yeah; I remember one game where I couldn’t get with my chosen RO, despite having the highest relationship stat with him, and the only time I could think of that could have caused it was when, in a very time-sensitive, low-profile mission, I chose to “concentrate on the mission” rather than “talk about our relationship”, on the grounds that it really wasn’t the time or the place (and I naively assumed there’d be more chances to later… 
)
As you said, it’s one thing when the RO just doesn’t like the MC due to their actual decisions, but you should never have to choose between romance and the plot.
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I couldn’t find the pic but it reminded me of a mobile game ad where the choices were “kiss her” and “Save Latinoanerican economy”. That’s the vibe I’m getting from this sort of thing.
Another thing I was discussing with some friends elsewhere: I don’t like Prime Directive style laws where you have to wait until a civilization invents FTL or smth before you interact with them. And the idea that it’s to prevent imperialism is idiotic. You can contact other cultures that were relatively isolated without subjugating them. What does it say about all the idealistic utopias that usually have these laws if you can’t figure out how to talk to people without doing a colonialism?
Similarly, a common occurrence is that if a writer doesn’t want to deal with the implications of a given technology in their setting, they just say it was outlawed after some catastrophe. And often this is meant to be reasonable. Gene modification, nanotechnology, and Artificial Intelligence are common targets.
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Outlawing whole fields of scientific research is the move of a reactionary dictatorship, not a reasonable course of action because it’s “too dangerous”. People say that crap about everything. “We need to outlaw steam engines because tanks were invented”. Idc how scary you make the catastrophe.
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This would not work. You would not be able to successfully ban a potentially powerful technology and enforce that. As soon as someone decides to invent it anyway, Pandora’s Box is open, and you either start developing your own or lose to the people who make it. As soon as it’s proven possible, even destroying all the research won’t prevent people from looking into how to rediscover it independently. Yeah yeah suspension of disbelief but why suspend disbelief for a plot I hate?
One reason I loved Mass Effect is because, spotty as the ending was, the main theme of the story was that the attempts to prevent the invention of sentient AI was a fool’s errand and we need a different solution. And even if you can just destroy all machine life and start over, 1) people will invent it again and 2) that’s still genocide.
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Generally, I agree with you, but that is not the main theme of Mass effect at all, it was barely even a thing in Mass Effect until Mass effect 3 when the lead writer suddenly decided to toss out the “Eezo use increases entropy in the Galaxy” plotline and replaced it with the “We create AI to wipe out all organic life in the galaxy to prevent them from creating AI that will wipe themselves out” idiot plot because someone on the internet guessed the original plot. If anything is a theme of Mass effect, it is that the mistakes of the past constraints the present and shapes the future, and the ways people either seek to overcome it to shape a better future, or fall prey to it to perpetuate it, not this technology repression thing that wasn’t even in Mass effect until 5 minutes before the game ended.
I have zero recollection of this plot point. Though I’m glad they ditched it. “This new technology that enables miraculous things is secretly bad and causing the apocalypse” is usually not very good a trope either. It’s meant to be an allegory for fossil fuels but usually they don’t provide a green energy alterative or anything like that, they just make it so everyone has to stop using it. Primativist undertones are a huge dealbreaker to me. Most tropes I dislike I can just deal with unless they get really bad, but I get the slightest whiff of primitivism and I leave.
As for the AI thing, it was present since day 1 with the Quarians and Geth, where trying to kill them because they grew too intelligent is the only reason there was even a problem.
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There was a minor subplot in ME2 involving Tali investigating that solar system that has the star going prematurely supernova, and also the Geth are there doing something with it.
And that’s the thing, it isn’t just a ham-fisted allegory for fossil fuels, the entire Mass relay/reaper system was designed as a countermeasure to it. The idea is
“Widespread, unchecked Eezo use causes dark matter to build up and shortens the lifespan of the galaxy by creating black holes”
therefore
“Reapers create mass relay system to allow interstellar travel without requiring that every ship bigger than a cutter needs its own massive eezo core”
but this still increases entropy in the galaxy, therefore
“We cull the galactic population of advanced civilizations every 50k years to allow for the maximum amount of intelligent life to emerge, reach their prime, and get recorded over the lifespan of the galaxy”
The entire reaper thing is based on this dynamic, taking the “extending the lifespan of the galaxy and allowing as many lifeforms within it the opportunity to develop and advance is the ultimate good” to its logical extreme. It explains so many things that were built up over the course of the series, like the Human reaper at the end of ME2, which leads to each reaper essentially being an amalgation and record of every notable civilization that existed within the galaxy.
But then of course the lead writer threw a fit over someone guessing the plot before release, and we end up with the complete idiocy of “we kill you to prevent you from creating artificial intelligence that will kill you” (despite one of the possible resolutions of the geth-quarian subplot being reconciliation, proving that organic and artificial life forms can in fact learn to live in harmony with each other and don’t neccesarily lead to eradication) that makes no sense and forever ruined the franchise.
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I’m not gonna defend the actual ending but this being the original plot doesn’t really inspire confidence in what could have been, ngl. Like, what would the solution be? Given that the ending pre-extended cut had all interstellar travel shut down forever, I feel like they were planning something like that and that would suck ass.
The latter doesn’t refute the former.
Another thing for my original point is that a lot of stories do the whole dilemma about how a technology has all this great potential but also a lot of ethical questions and possible problems, so it’s just better to never invent the technology in the first place. “All of these problems are caused by this technology or this resource existing causes problems when people fight over it so just set society back! Or just don’t invent the technology! I am very intelligent.”
Not only do I think just shutting down whole fields of technology and science because of this would be a disaster if we could do it but we can’t do it. Trying to do that has never actually worked. You aren’t going to get all of humanity to agree to not invent something. “It would be so much better if we could wait until society was ready for this technology.” Yeah and if my grandma had wheels, she’d be a wagon* and that would be pretty cool. Saying “just get rid of our technology to solve the problem” is like saying “just graft wheels to your grandmother to replace your car”. Can we get an idea with some bearing on reality please?
*This is an actual idiom in some parts of the world for “this hypothetical has no bearing on the situation”.
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And that’s my whole point, Mass effect doesn’t take that route. The mass relay system is an effective way of reducing the use of Eezo while still allowing for interstellar travel. It’s just the reapers who take it too far optimizing for the greatest good possible. It’s not “Don’t use Eezo ever” and more “We probably shouldn’t use so much eezo that the entire milky way becomes a massive black hole”.
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Wouldn’t the entropy increase eventually become a problem no matter what?
Kinda yeah but at that point you’re basically fighting the heat death of the universe so.
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Yeah it just seems depressing.
Been playing New Vegas again this past week, am I love New Vegas, I very much think it lives up to the hype, I have far more positive things to say about it than negative but no work is perfect and this is a thread about criticism and I noticed two issues in my playthrough I figured I’d mention.
The first I suspect is the product of the time restraints leading to inconsistencies and is mostly just unfortunate:
Veronica’s quest is infamous for having endings that are bittersweet at best. Now that’s something I usually don’t take to but that’s not my complaint. See, the ending where she sticks with the Brotherhood has her spending her days researching promising technologies that she knows the Brotherhood, in its increasing isolationism and obsession with its codex rules about safeguarding existing technology, will refuse to pursue.
Thing is that the isolationism aspect can go on the mend with a truce with the NCR and an end to the lockdown, which feels like it should affect this epilogue. Like yeah from a watsonian perspective, it makes sense that it would take long enough for the status quo to change that she would not live to see it but from a doyleist perspective it feels tonally inconsistent with the rest of the game where your actions have a much more significant impact on the status quo. I feel it would make more sense thematically for this to have some kind of impact.
I also just think that the argument that it’s always more realistic for a slow, gradual shift in the status quo is kinda annoying because we see massive, sudden shifts in stuff that’s been the status quo for way longer than the Brotherhood has even been around let alone in this predicament in real life all the time, for better or worse. You could have it go either way.
Now part of my grievance with this is that there’s a significant contingent of the fanbase that have some truly infuriating takes on what the Brotherhood was supposed to be like that often tie into their ideas about the franchise’s overall political leanings. I saw someone I otherwise greatly respect when it comes to media analysis reblog a post about how the Brotherhood was meant to be a doomed, decaying relic of a bygone age and their resurgence in the later installments was a backpedal and I just do not agree with that take at all. Even if that was the plan, I’d hate it. For all the misgivings I have with the later entries, that’s not one of them. I actually have the opposite critique, that they weren’t willing to change enough in 4 and their stance as the hardline anti-synth path was too set in stone to preserve the tradeoff in the conflict with the other factions but none of the others were interesting enough to make me chose them over the legacy faction I already like.
A lot of times this take is informed by confirmation bias. The criticisms of American politics and society the series is based on convinces a lot of people who hate America itself and want it gone (the Brotherhood is a remnant of the US Military) that the series always endorsed their views and that it’s all Bethesda’s fault we’re moving away from that but only the Wildcard ending really enables that viewpoint, and not to the extent that they like to think. They love to cite the original creators and their vision but the original creators signed off on the stuff in the show. This series was never what they thought it was.
I can’t help but resent the Brotherhood’s portrayal in NV for enabling this nonsense.
My other issue is with Ranger Chief Hanlon’s arc and how it’s an example of trying to fit a square peg in a round hole when it comes to political commentary. Now, Fallout has always been political, I like it for its political commentary and historical parallels. Thing is that no story can touch on everything effectively and it really feels to me like whoever came up with this quest really wanted to add parallels to the war in Afghanistan to the NCR’s efforts in the Mojave, specifically when he says that even if they could beat the Legion, he doesn’t know how they’d ever be able to pull out (exact words) of the Mojave. That phrasing is what makes me think that this parallel was what they were going for, but even without the analogy it doesn’t make sense.
Thing is that the NCR in the Mojave already HAS a historical parallel to American expansion into the west and that has a key difference to American foreign intervention that makes this guy seem like an idiot.
What do you mean “pull out”? What is this guy going on about how they may never be able to pull out? Where did that come from? My brother in Christ, this is a frontier! You’re annexing this place! It’s one thing for him to oppose THAT, and he does do that in the ending where he lives, but here he acts like he doesn’t know that annexing the Mojave is the plan, or that it’s some conspiracy the higher-ups are planning without admitting it publicly.
But it isn’t. They’ve said it. Openly and publicly. They ran a prison out here. They have multiple settlements that are officially incorporated, like, with citizenship and voting and taxes. I straight up asked them to annex Primm and they instantly said yes. Like, the only issues were logistical, it was not some political controversy to suggest it. A sergeant said “you’re NCR now” and apparently that was easy to make official. Saying “we’ll never be able to pull out of the Mojave after we beat the Legion” is like saying “we’ll never be able to pull out of the midwestern territories even if we beat the CSA”. It’s fine if you WANT that to be the plan but you’re acting like it already was and everyone already knows this is meant to be permanent. Is this guy senile?
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Something I’ve been noticing popping up more recently, but I really don’t like it when writers use tonal indicator as a crutch for their choices/choice descriptions.
To be clear, I have nothing against tonal indicators in general; I usually don’t turn them on when I play a game, but I acknowledge that some people might need them, and there are situations where meta indicators are kind of unavoidable (like when you want to indicate that a specific choice will completely block off a romance path or something). I’m fine with that. What I don’t like is when a series of choices could be written out with a bit more detail to give more clarity, but instead the author decides to use the bare minimum description and then just slap a tonal indicator at the end so the audience is the one who has to figure out wtf they even meant/are trying to convey with that.
To illustrate what I mean, I’m fine with this:
*fake_choice
# I give him a slow, sensual smile as I pointedly look him over. ❤
# I bare my teeth at him, vicious and defensive, in a semblance of a smile. ❌
# I smile brightly at him, my expression shifting into a friendly grin in response. 😊
But this bugs the shit out of me:
*fake_choice
# I smile at him. ❤
# I smile at him. ❌
# I smile at him. 😊
I don’t know, it just feels lazy. And most of the time, it just makes things more confusing for me when I’m trying to roleplay a character. Because I’ll pick an option thinking a character will be… I don’t know, defensive or standoffish, and then the next page they’ll suddenly snap at the other character I’m talking to, completely going against what I was picturing in my mind and what the choice hinted could happen.
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I’ve been noticing that more and more HGs have been keeping all of their achievements hidden lately. I assume that’s to avoid spoilers, but I’m used to looking into those to get a feel for what sort of game it is and what kind of stuff you can do, so keeping them hidden is really annoying.
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It’s not common but I have also seen cases where your character is predefined in a certain way, but they ask you WHY you feel a certain way or do a certain thing. I get that it may seem like a fair compromise if you can’t make the plot work without those things but imo it actually just makes your lack of agency all the more prominent. I tried that Guardians Vs. Psion game and the first two decisions are during a general’s speech and they’re “why do you listen to your teammate when she tells you to behave during the speech?” and “why do you dislike the general?” I don’t get to disobey my teammate, and I can’t even decide whether I’m annoyed or not, the game just assumes I’ll instantly hate the guy when there’s nothing particularly annoying about his speech and I know nothing else about him. It’s uninspired but the reactions suggest it’s condescending or patronizing or out of touch. Is it? I don’t know, I just got here, I’ve heard four sentences and have no idea whether they’re actually out of touch with the reality of hero work or whatever because we haven’t DONE anything yet and I STILL should be allowed to have my own opinion.
Like, I don’t care if it turns out this guy is like, a notorious warmonger or whatever, give me a reason to feel something before you make my character feel it, preferably let me actually decide.
I ah… didn’t play for long.
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I actually really like it. It helps me create my character, and it prevents me from playing as a certain type of character only to find out that it doesn’t make sense for what’s going on. Like, in Fallen Hero we get to decide how we feel about being a villain. I like that, since it helps explain why the sad, broken character I made is still being a villain.
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Ok but there I know from the title what’s happening, and the synopsis. Not applicable in my example.