ITT plotlines in games that got introduced and went nowhere

ITT plotlines in games that got introduced and went nowhere

Believe it or not, that was going to be the original ending of ME3. But the devs left, and the ending got leaked, so they had to rush something out of the filthy asses of nu-Bioware

Was Tali's mission the only major reference to dark energy? I know there were online theories about it before they talked about what the original ending was going to be, but I don't recall it actually being a major subplot in things.

Tali's mission was meant to be a hint nudge-nudge and plant seeds for the third game. But yeah, I think her logs and the mission where you first find her were the only part mentioning the dying stars

Man I wish they'd stuck with the dark energy plotline instead of going for yet another fucking Be Nice To Your Robots plot. If I recall, it was going to turn out that the rise in the use of Eezo and biotics was increasing the amount of dark energy in the universe, accelerating entropy. So the Reapers built the Mass Relays to cut down on organics using Eezo to travel around and then invaded when galactic civilisations hit critical mass.

ME's writing, gameplay, music and tone got gutted in 2 and 3. If dark matter was going to be a plot point it was in some earlier draft before a bunch of their staff left after the EA buyout.

That actually sounds like a coherent story, what a shame.

Also fits with the series title, Mass Effect.

someone alter our timeline plz

Bioware doesn't get bought by EA or succumb to the California mind-virus, they make games that actually take time and adhere to their fanbases and EA gets dissolved with no Bioware to milk

your favorite non Bioware game doesn't exist anymore

Now what?

No can do, buddy. A change like that erases my waifu, and I just cannot allow that to happen. Sorry.

ME2 wasn't that bad because ME1's writer was still there. ME3's writing is complete dogshit though

That would still be very stupid and bring up questions like "why don't the Reapers mine all the Eezo out and chunk it into the sun" even if the structural issues were addressed.

Because on a timescale of hundreds of thousands to millions of years, more Eezo is just going to be formed via natural geological processes. Surely you don't believe that every element in existence just popped into existence out of a vacuum?

That still saves them millions if not billions of years of civilizations not using eezo instead of having to do a cycle every fifty thousand.

You are vastly underestimating the size of the milky way

She's kinda cute and retarded looking at the same time maybe its the fetal alcohol syndrome face

The dark energy plotline had a lot to do with biotics too iirc, but they stopped really treating biotics as special in ME2 so I guess it wouldn't have worked for the big finale

It's also why they were preserving species, as they in dark space were working on a solution and each cycle added a new perspective because a new reaper from a new species was added. It's why they wanted humanity, 2 drops a lot of hints that humanity being so adaptable isn't the norm, so they were chosen as the next and probably last reaper because the implication was this cycle would be the last. .

If Reapers can afford to build relays across the galaxy and maintain the cycle of millions of years, they can afford to run a mining program that digs out existing eezo and resets billions of years of natural formation processes that has already passed.

If you recall, there aren't that many relays compared to the number of stars in the galaxy, again, you are severely underestimating the size of the milky way, and that's one galaxy out of countless more the reapers were implied to also be overseeing. Just take the L dude.

There aren't that many explored systems by the Council, but there are still plenty more relays they didn't open. And if the Reapers can oversee galaxies, they can mine them out as well, nothing stops them.

Yet again, you are massively underestimating how big a galaxy is. It's simply easier to manage organics in cycles, doubly so since it's their main means of "reproduction".

if the Reapers can oversee galaxies, they can mine them out as well, nothing stops them

Thats like saying because we have satellites that tell us where faggots and third-worlders live, we can strip mine mountains and the Earth's core for resources.

I wish the original Mass Effect trilogy got more games rather than 3. It felt too short.

Be Nice To Your Robots

Shepard already ended the fucking war with the Geth. Did the writers completely forget that plot point?
This explanation is on par with picrel at how terrible it is

If you think on timescales long enough to worry about the entropy, you wouldn't do what's simple, you'd do what solves the problem as much as possible.
If we regularly killed everyone in the third world and built mountain-sized installations, yes, I would say that.

Look at it this way, you could spend a couple centuries killing nearly all intelligent life in a galaxy every 50k or so years, or you could spend tens of millions of years of sustained effort waging a futile war mining every last gram of Eezo in the entire observable universe KNOWING more is just going to pop up even as you're mining it. You are retarded.

They didn't, the problem is that in those days, Rogue AI plots were very, very popular with writers. More so than in the 80s and 90s when computers really started taking off.

People weren't wrong when the ending sucked massive balls

I enjoyed fighting on earth, was feeling a little homesick

Rogue AI plots have been a thing since the 50's and 60's, earlier even. You had stories of men building automations or magic artifacts meant to simulate life and aid in human convenience and they kill their creators and go on a rampage. They just feel lazy now because all the AI's do is:

go rogue

decide to kill creators

even if they succeed the cycle will repeat when they have to make new machines to imitate the old forms of life and find new places to pillage

I really enjoyed when the Reapers invaded Earth. That somber theme, humanity forced to fight and flee their homeworld, I just think that Mass Effect with Shepard as a MC could have lasted longer and that 3 games for a threat that wiped out countless cycles was a little rushed.

I never said they didn't exist, I said these were periods in which their popularity hit peaks

I have to say, these past few days with ME threads were pretty comfy. I even started replaying ME1 and god, you can feel the passion behind the game. Such a shame that only Bioware did the space exploration RPG with alien squadmates and romances. It has been a honor anons.

ME3 was distilled slop from frame 1

It wasn't forgotten about. The original devs left the project and the leftovers came up with some bullshit last minute.

They couldn't come up with anything better than press the RGB button?

To be honest I would definitely have sex with Tali, weird I know but just saying

By that point people were playing ME because it felt like Gears of War, not because they wanted an extensive world with codex entries and roleplaying elements with stats.

It felt too short because its structure was fucked. ME1 was basically all setup and hinting, then ME2 went through a largely pointless timeskip and sidequest, and ME3 had to rush to tie up the plot threads and shit out an ending. Had all three games been focused on the same plot, it would've been fine.

More games wouldn't make the Reapers any less than an impossibly powerful foe that needs a Deus Ex for the players to have a good ending.
ME has issues in the storytelling department not in the pacing department.

Honestly, I personally think that the crucible wasn't even needed. Just the fact that the whole galaxy plus the Leviathans fought together should have been enough to defeatthe reapers .

That's just the power of friendship which is "fine" but just as stupid. The Reapers were made up to be too grand for whatever to defeat them to not feel really really stupid.
Lovecraft doesn't write stories with happy endings for a very specific reason, the point of the stories is that there are things grander and greater than our ability to deal with them.
The Reapers are specifically meant to be Lovecraftian in aesthetic and implication but put into an action space opera.

(1/2)
You're a fucking retard. The ONLY reason you act like this is a "le plotline that was meant to le continue" is because you were told so. Just by playing the games, there's no reason to believe it was any more relevant than the other thousand sidequests you complete across the trilogy. And even then, why don't you bring up the fact neither Drew Karpyshyn nor Chris L'Etoile were on board anymore with it by the time ME3 was in development? Or how it would've been a fucking worse storyline to pursue?

that was going to be the original ending of ME3

There was no "original ending". They had no idea what they were doing during ME1. Or ME2 really.

the devs left

Drew was working on SWTOR

and the ending got leaked

The leaked ending was THE SAME ONE WE GOT. THE LEAK IS OUT THERE. YOU CAN FUCKING READ IT YOURSELF AND CHECK IT OUT. Fuck, why are people always this goddamn stupid

(2/2)
Dark Energy was more retarded than what we got. I know people don't like to actually fucking think things through, but it would've been:

Reapers realize mass effect fields and biotics are leading to the death of the whole universe so they leave all sorts of mass effect tools around for every future civilization to build off of

to hasten the effect

they don't tell anyone anything about it and no one realizes it

then every 50k years they harvest all sorts of advanced civilizations then disappear so that even if anyone was solving the problem, it's halted and forgotten

and the premise had it reach the point where *time was actually running out*. Several hundred thousands of millions of years and they thought harvesting the most advanced civilizations would solve the problem

reset everything to solve a problem that they don't explain, facilitate to occur, and do nothing themselves to solve

So say what you will about the Crucible but at least it didn't establish *the entire fucking UNIVERSE* as running out of time before its ultimate destruction because the Reapers allowed untold millennia of mass effect use

Shepard already ended the fucking war with the Geth

Every time. Why would a billion cycles be proved wrong by making peace for a weekend?

3 has more roleplaying or stats than 2 doe? As in, objectively

the Reapers reap because overusing Mass Effect fields will kill the galaxy

is a better idea in concept than

the Reapers reap because robots would kill all organic life otherwise

only problem with this idea - why leave all the Mass Effect technology lying around? destroy it all and then you only have to come back once the new civilizations discover it themselves. then your cycles take 500k years, not 50k

It would've been a trillion times better than what we have gotten. All it needed was a few more weeks in the editor's room for it to be polished. Remember, destroy, control and synthesize weren't originally in the ending, they had to be patched in due to fan backlash. Whether or not the endings we got were from leaks, OG writers leaving, or what have you, it's clear as the sun that they had no fucking clue how to end it. And I refuse to believe these are the same people who gave us the world and history of ME1

so they leave all sorts of mass effect tools around for every future civilization to build off of

Mass Relays presumably require less Eezo than every single ship flitting around the galaxy over vast distances relying on their primitive ME drives

to hasten the effect

The above reduces the effect

they don't tell anyone anything about it and no one realizes it

Nobody would care if they did because of the organic tendency to kick the can down the road on long term problems, "Don't worry about it, someone else down the line will figure it out, just worry about the green line going up for now."

then every 50k years they harvest all sorts of advanced civilizations then disappear so that even if anyone was solving the problem, it's halted and forgotten

Assuming the Reapers themselves aren't working on the problem and using the civilizations they harvest as data points, processing power and fresh perspective to do so

and the premise had it reach the point where *time was actually running out*. Several hundred thousands of millions of years and they thought harvesting the most advanced civilizations would solve the problem

This is just narrative tension, otherwise there's no game

reset everything to solve a problem that they don't explain, facilitate to occur, and do nothing themselves to solve

That we ever saw because the plot changed midway through the series

The Crucible wasn't the problem, it was the mystical fucking star child AI and everything boiling down to "Whoopsie, we made rogue robots that go around killing everything again! :)" As if it were a fresh and original idea.

Shepard already ended the fucking war with the Geth

How does that negate anything when the conflict already happened. It was only resolved, if that, when the threat of extinction was present and Mary Sue Space Jesus was around. The geth genocided 99% of the quarian race. It already happened, that cannot be debated. Resolution doesn’t negate something that's already majorly transpired. Not exactly a convincing scenario.

The AI child's whole argument was that the Reapers exist because of the war on machines, yet Shepard already resolved that problem. Not to mention that the whole conversation boils down to "To save, we have to kill you" a plot that was bashed and mocked on I Robot, and maybe other terrible movies/books long before Mass Effect

They could've gone all in on Mary Sue Space Jesus and have the Reapers go "well, you did have the synthetics genocide a race, but nobody has managed to negotiate peace before from that position", and the ending isn't beating the Reapers or any of that other faggy shit, it's Shepard's decisions accumulating to where the Reapers are willing to give this cycle a bit more time to maybe figure shit out. Bring the theme of conversations and big decisions full circle by negotiating with the lovecraftian machine gods for another shot.

The reapers could also just not leave and remain as overlords in every system, telling organics about the dangers of mass effect fields. They have indoctrination, so it would work.

This plot hole applies to the plot we got, too. After the reapers establish dominance for the first time, they rule. They can just force organics to not make more AI.

The geth genocided 99% of the quarian race

It pisses me off to no end that we can never bring this up in ME3. They try so fucking hard to make the geth into misunderstood future doctors and swept their killing of children under the rug.

Do you think Hitler would've been redeemed in the eyes of the public if he had Shepard as his spokesman?

It's fine. Win them over for the fight against the Reapers and then press the big red button at the end

it's clear as the sun that they had no fucking clue how to end it

Neither did they during the development of either 1 or 2. The Crucible still doesn't establish not the galaxy, but the entire UNIVERSE as a whole has run out of time and is just about to implode in its totality because the Reapers didn't figure out a fix for quadrillions of years while still letting lesser races use mass effect relays to such a degree Shepard's cycle is the very last or second to last one that can ever exist before all things end, and there's no way to believe that ending would be "better" because there's a sidequest in a previous game that talks about it once

presumably

So you're writing for the writers

reduces the effect

Using mass effect reduces mass effect? Could've fooled me

"nobody would care if the single most technologically advanced race capable of subjugating everyone else came in and told the lesser races "hi we're the Reapers and we're trying to prevent the heat death of the universe, we're gonna lead you and help out k?"

k

Assuming the Reapers themselves aren't working on the problem

Writing for the writers

processing power and fresh perspective

fresh perspective

Zillions of years
Zillions of cycles
THE ENTIRE KNOWN UNIVERSE HAS RUN OUT OF TIME AND IS ABOUT TO IMPLODE
But yeah "fresh perspective"

This is just narrative tension

This is the creation of the singular most serious narrative implication you can ever write for a story. You cannot handwave away the fact it established the ME universe as being near the brink of the absolute ceasing of existence. 50k-ish years postShepard at best, a universe that would've lasted untold quadrillions of years more was about to END

That we ever saw

Sovereign doesn't explain anything, Harbinger talks like a tryhard CoD kid, protheans weren't told anything, Shepard's cycle isn't told anything. No, the Reapers never explained their shit doomed the entire universe's existence because of it

yet Shepard already resolved that problem

How the fuck does Shepard stop organics from creating synthetics and how did he stop the geth killing 99% of quarians?

It's not a ME3 thing, we only know that number from one line from a 2007 book. ME1 doesn't establish it, MR2 doesn't establish it, ME3 doesn't establish it. People know it's a fact because others like me keep bringing it up, but the games never ever tell you the extent to which the Morning War led to quarian's near-extinction

Seems like you fundamentally misunderstand the dark energy plot. I'll summarise it for you.

Mass effect fields make dark energy or dark matter

Nearby stars have their lives accelerated by it.

That's it. It's not leading to the collapse of the universe. It's making stars age faster, which if left unchecked would turn the milky way into an uninhabitable mess of dying and exploding stars.

The AI child's whole argument was that the Reapers exist because of the war on machines

The Reapers exist because the Leviathans realized Step 1: Organics in time created synthetic slaves who developed consciousness and rebelled, leading to the destruction of said organics and/or synthetics. As a race that used organics as slaves themselves, they developed an AI to find out why this kept happening no matter how many times they could realistically stop it by force. This last thing is what Shepard does: if things ran their course without exterior help from a main character, the geth would genocide the quarians as they've already mostly done. Anyway the Intelligence figures out technological singularity is the cleanest answer. Organics resist. Intelligence realizes Step 1 is about to happen. Follows programming and wipes the slate clean, knowing that a different set of sentient life will evolve and they might be different. Start back at one.

yet Shepard already resolved that problem

Anon's point stands: how does making peace for a weekend over a single race that already killed 99% of the other one prove the pattern going over countless cycles wrong?

the ending isn't beating the Reapers

Gay, finish what you started. Press the big red button, blow the toasters to kingdom come.

I think they do. The numbers are definitely in the codex, and Tali will tell you about it. We're told a lot that the migrant fleet is like 17 million quarians. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that going from multiple planets of people to 17 mil means a 99% reduction of population, which would inevitably include millions of killed children, elderly and non-combatants.

Also, I really should double check this some day, but I recall from my renegade run that you can call out Legion on the quarian genocide in ME2. He gets a little pissed and begrudgingly admits that the geth killed more creators than necessary.

So you're writing for the writers

As are you assuming things about a dropped plot thread to defend the worse one that took its place

Using mass effect reduces mass effect?

Don't be deliberately obtuse

Because someone has to break the cycle at some point. If the cycle continuous on going without a single break, then genocide is the only end. I'm not saying they should start hugging and kissing each other's cheeks, but at the very least, they should throw down their arms and establish a change, a starting point
For the love of god people, how the did MGQ had a more mature take on this concept than the dozen of these AAA games

I bet you anything that if Mac Walters was the guy who came up with the dark energy plot people would’ve been saying “phew that’s a bullet dodged right there” because it isn’t about the idea it is about sports team logic

Literally who?

Haestrom was just the early indication of every star out there following suit and dying

every sun out there, everything, dying out

"That's it. It's not leading to the collapse of the universe"

turn the milky way into an uninhabitable mess of dying and exploding stars

"That's it. It's not leading to the collapse of the universe"

If anything, every other galaxy would be more advanced than ours because they wouldn't have been harvested for zillions of cycles every 50k years. So either they were left alone and contributed to the issue, they were left alone and figured out a way around it which would make the Reapers retarded, or they are also culled by the Reapers whenever they're not working on the Milky Way which brings us back to square one

the worse one

But what we got was better if only because Dark Energy was *that* damn bad?

Don't be deliberately obtuse

I'll accept the concession

My dad

I see, you're just a faggot baiting for (You)s, have one more on the house

Because someone has to break the cycle at some point

But that's assuming what Shepard can pull on Rannoch never happened in any previous cycle. That organics and synthetics were never friends for a few years, yet it never lasted. Give it 20 years, give it 200, conflict still arose. It's like saying humans can never ever kill each other again because WW2 ended or the Cold War didn't lead to us nuking each other. Point remains, the issue isn't that war itself exists but that it exists between organics and synthetics. If organics kill organics who cares, organics still win and keep on living. If synthetics kill organics, there goes the supermagical goo that creates new Reapers

You're just trolling.

they are machines, just have them be programmed wrong or taking an old order the wrong way, it's not hard to go around. you could solve the problem by talking to them because you're the first one that truly bothered to understand them. which would tie into how the first game was a quest for knowledge and it was your knowledge that made you special and important

imagine an ending choice that is like "surrender humanity to the reapers and solve the problem" or "fuck the reapers up, but now you are aware of a bigger problem that may have no solution anymore and you just wasted countless cycles of sactifices for your own immediate survival"

just have them be programmed wrong or taking an old order the wrong way

That's literally how it works in the final game. The Leviathans didn't expect the Harvesting to happen, yet allowed it in their hubris as the apex race of the galaxy. People seem to miss that point or not remember the DLC.

shit writer would've written shit even with a good idea

that's how it works

These threads are especially funny when you know Drew didn't really mind 3's ending

Who's drew?

yes that's why i presented it as a possible reason why they don't just remove all eezo or something. that or eezo is just constantly forming and can't really be disposed off.
i still think dark energy was a better motivation than "oh it's robots killing humans so they don't get killed by robots"

No, I meant anons would shit on the mere idea if they thought Walters came up with it because people act on NPC patterns

Drew's nuts

i know what you meant i'm saying that it's kinda normal not trusting a writer you dislike with a potentially good idea, you og post isn't the own you think it is

gottem

But there you are again going from "a good idea" to a "potentially good idea". I'm saying that unlike now, people would say the mere idea itself regardless of posterior writing would've been bad just because of the name behind it even if both endings were the same as what we got

anon, if anyone is on a team that is you

Dark Energy was stupid because it made humans out to be the ultimate saviors even though the entire ending revolved around biotics use (Drew's own words, "the Reapers kept wiping out organic life because organics keep evolving to the state where they would use biotics and dark energy and that caused an entropic effect that would hasten the end of the universe") when the asari would've been better suited for it and humans learned to use biotics less than 25 years ago. It was retardedly human-centric moreso than the final game for no good reason. At least in the final game it's still retarded but you can say Harbinger wanted to focus on Earth's destruction because he was personally butthurt with Shepard BTFOing Sovereign and the Collectors

Given fucking nobody replied to the OP with actual examples and this turned into a stealth Mass Effect thread, here's mine: PARIAH from Prototype, went nowhere in Prototype 2

?

that's not a plotline, it's a guess

AAAIIIIIEEEEEEEE

Fuck off, humans are the main character of the universe in every conceivable way, spare us your misanthropy.

The way ME1 introduced humans as an up and coming race that everyone is concerned about was well written. I liked the political conversations with Anderson, about how we need to balance our own interests against what the Council wanted. On top of that was the individual attitudes of the council races. The bad blood with the turians, the volus being miffed at how much sway humanity gained in 2 decades, the Salarians noting our relative impatience. It was quiet a nice universe that they built up.

Why couldn't I use the Crucible to wipe out what was left of the Batarians?

there was no good Mass Effect past 1
change my mind

1 sucked ass, 2 is where the series peaked
Change MY mind

1 didn't have female turians

There wasn't enough time to expand the design, that said, hopefully you convinced the last of the batarians to join in the attack and the reapers managed to mop them up before the crucible fired.

So you're writing for the writers

Stop parroting shit like fucking npc.

this pistol doesn't have a thermal clip

absolute nothingburger storywise

worst combat out of all 3

fair enough.

I will take the control ending and point all the reapers at the batarian fleet before making the reapers fly into the sun

t. TIM

I hope we get a batarian squadmate in ME4. It's hilarious how they're the one race the writers consistently portrayed as irredeemably one-note evil for the memes

Zaeed was supposed to be Batarian but of course they changed that

No need to fret, I already accepted the concession two hours ago

People hoping he was (which would've definitely been better) doesn't mean he was meant to be one in development. There's absolutely nothing on that. Just like when people misremember and believe early in development Shepard was meant to be resurrected by geth instead of Cerberus. Never happened either.

I hope we get a batarian squadmate in ME4 and he's an absolute complete piece of shit like every other batarian we meet. We'll work through his dialogue and his personal quests and nothing will change, no big reveals, he's just a massive asshole like every other batarian

Why would I change your mind over an objective truth?

based

That's just what the krogan squaddies have been like, though. What I want is a male quarian with a geth program in his suit. They'd be two characters in one and you'd speak to both simultaneously.

muh trooncession

Reddit is this way, faggot.

You're the one with trannies living rent free in your head

They'd be two characters in one

Where have I seen that before