Mass Effect 3
- Thread starter Ghengis_John
- Start date
Jaxel
Administrator
What I mean by typical tropes of bad sci-fi... I mean bullshit mythos. Bad sci-fi tends to have overly complicated plots, with political twist after political twist that simply don't make sense. And in order to shoehorn those "twists" in, they make characters do unrealistic or uncharacteristic actions. The best sci-fi stories actually have very simple plots... Battlestar Galactica, very simple. Stargate Atlantis, very simple. The original Star Wars trilogy, very simple.
Ghengis_John
[13] Hero
Nah. I loved mass effect from the first. Going back to create my infiltrator's play through though the combat was definitely better in mass effect 2. In that regard number one felt like a slog. But you can't beat the original for an introduction to the mass effect universe. For that matter... I don't even know if you talk to any Hanar in mass effect 2.
Some of us like things complicated. Looking at the real world from current events to human history, nothing is ever simple. While simple parables of good and evil make nice fables, sometimes you want something to sink your intellectual teeth into. For that matter, you shouldn't confuse mythos with plot. Bladerunner had a really simple plot, but between new technologies, future wars, a replicant uprising and the explanation of the societal structure a complicated enough mythos to fill up a series of novels.
The Landslide
[13] Hero
Yeah, I understand that too. That is also improved greatly in ME2, but of course it's still there. It is hard to find good writing anywhere, and nearly impossible to find good writing in the brutal combination of sci-fi and action/shooter video game. It's the kiss of death.
Just take my word that not only is ME2 an immense improvement on ME1, it's also one of the best WRPGs I've played in a while.
Jaxel
Administrator
I think you misunderstand. I LOVE intellectual plots; in fact most of my friends think I'm a little too stuck up about senseless movies without them (such as the shit Expendables or Inglorius Basterds). The problem is that complicated =/= intellectual. More often than not, complicated is at the EXPENSE of intellect; they are artificially made complicated through the stupid actions of characters. Characters that don't act human, don't follow their "character", or straight up have ambiguous motives that make little to no sense. This is the problem with most sci-fi.
For example, lets take a look at Stargate Universe (I hated the first half of the first season because of these very issues, but they cleaned it up very well after the 10th episode). In an episode, their ship is out of control and flying into a sun. So because they see their inevitable end, they put a few of their most important people (and a few more, through lottery) onto a space pod with supplies and stuff to colonize a planet and survive on their own, while everyone else heads to their doom, including a character named Dr. Rush. As it turns out, the ship was flying into the sun on purpose, and it uses the sun's power to refuel.
So at the end of the episode, they are talking about the result and how Dr. Rush excluded himself from the lottery and that was an act of benevolence. So someone says "maybe Dr. Rush knew the ship was going to refuel from the start?". And of course, everyone looks around at each other thinking to themselves, "yeah, that could be true, he is a dick after all". And you can tell from the way the show is directed, that the creators of the show wanted the viewer to think this too. But WTF? What is the motivation of this? Dr. Rush sacrifices some of the most important people on the ship, including some scientists and the ship's medic, as well as a ton of supplies... for what? Spite?
Shit like that doesn't make sense, and the creators of these shitty stories expect the viewers to just take it at face value thinking, "yeah, he's a dick". But myself, who likes to judge genuine actions you expect from normal people just could not accept it. Dr. Rush is the ONLY realist on the show, and its the reason why everyone thinks he's a dick. Because he's logical and he's always looking out for himself. Everything Dr. Rush does on the show is to extend his OWN life. And sacrificing the people on this space pod is totally against that basic ideal of this character. The sad part is, I feel that almost no one except myself questioned this... and people like this shitty sci-fi.
Another thing I hate about sci-fi is leadership. You guys have heard this from me for many years now, ever since the SC3 days... but what makes a good leader? Do you think Captain Janeway from Star Trek Voyager was a good leader? Ask a female Star Trek fan who they think the best captain was, and most of them will say Janeway. Why? Because she's female? She was a terrible leader, who flip flopped her ideals and couldn't make the hard decisions. It's her fault the Voyager was in such a shit predicament in the first place, because she couldn't do what needed to be done.
Colonel Young from Stargate Universe is another example of an extremely poor leader (at least during the first season). I mean to the point where MacGuyver is yelling at him during one episode for being a shitty leader. A leader makes the hard decisions; it doesn't even have to be the right/moral decision, but a decision must be made. By the end of the series, every episode starts with a subordinate saying to him "You are a good leader"; as if the creators of the show are trying to convince the viewer that its true. Say it enough, and people will believe it.
This is a fundamental problem with the sci-fi genre, writers and directors believe they can do anything because its "science fiction" and the viewers will accept it. Overly complicated plots, and political intrigue that don't actually have any logical merit tend to bog down even the more simple of sci-fi stories. They can simply create mythos and people are forces to accept them as fact. Just look at Star Wars... a senate would never WILLINGLY give up it's power to supreme dictator (emperor). Political power corrupts, and trying to shoehorn something different into your story is just bad sci-fi.