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KamikazeCanuck wrote:And both the most overused and missused term on the interent of all time award goes to "Mary Sue".

BTW Mary Sue works for video games and one could argue cannot be avoided in this entertainment form.
Fortunately Mary Sue has now come to mean: "Thing I don't like".

Exactly, originally i thought it was just a useless character that constantly required being saved, mainly from people misusing the term. Having a non mary sue character would be weirds, you would be a regular soldier out of thousands in a battle for instance with no advantage over the enemy (enemy's in a shooter for example would outflank you/snipe you/ use cover effectivley, also if you got shot you would die instead of just "getting better")

@KC: Don't feel bad about buying DA. I bought it twice thanks to people very articulately defending it on this forum and others. I figured maybe I just hadn't given it enough of a chance, something like when I played Morrowind for the first time. As it turns out, the game just isn't for me. And EA are a bunch of dicks.

Gibbsey wrote:

KamikazeCanuck wrote:And both the most overused and missused term on the interent of all time award goes to "Mary Sue".

BTW Mary Sue works for video games and one could argue cannot be avoided in this entertainment form.
Fortunately Mary Sue has now come to mean: "Thing I don't like".

Exactly, originally i thought it was just a useless character that constantly required being saved, mainly from people misusing the term. Having a non mary sue character would be weirds, you would be a regular soldier out of thousands in a battle for instance with no advantage over the enemy (enemy's in a shooter for example would outflank you/snipe you/ use cover effectivley, also if you got shot you would die instead of just "getting better")

No a mary sue is a character who is seemingly perfect and doesn't afraid of anything.

I really recommend The Internet go out and actually read the story "Mary Sue". It's only like 4 sentences long and I'm sure it can be found somewhere on the interwebs.

I'd say Shepherd is a good example of a Mary Sue. I don't think that's what's wrong with ME2.

Manchu wrote:@KC: Don't feel bad about buying DA. I bought it twice thanks to people very articulately defending it on this forum and others. I figured maybe I just hadn't given it enough of a chance, something like when I played Morrowind for the first time. As it turns out, the game just isn't for me. And EA are a bunch of dicks.

It's y'know, it's ok I guess. It has some pretty boring combat and dungeon crawling but there's no doubt that it was made by Bioware B-Team.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Manchu wrote:I'd say Shepherd is a good example of a Mary Sue. I don't think that's what's wrong with ME2.

What protangonist in a video game is not!?

corpsesarefun wrote:

Gibbsey wrote:

KamikazeCanuck wrote:And both the most overused and missused term on the interent of all time award goes to "Mary Sue".

BTW Mary Sue works for video games and one could argue cannot be avoided in this entertainment form.
Fortunately Mary Sue has now come to mean: "Thing I don't like".

Exactly, originally i thought it was just a useless character that constantly required being saved, mainly from people misusing the term. Having a non mary sue character would be weirds, you would be a regular soldier out of thousands in a battle for instance with no advantage over the enemy (enemy's in a shooter for example would outflank you/snipe you/ use cover effectivley, also if you got shot you would die instead of just "getting better")

No a mary sue is a character who is seemingly perfect and doesn't afraid of anything.

wikipedia, infallible guardian of all knowledge wrote:Typically, this refers to a character accused of being overly idealized or having other traits traditionally associated with fan fiction "Mary Sues", such as being "special" by having a gratuitously tragic past, unrealistic skills, or a seeming inability for the character to do wrong

also I doesn't afraid of anything (isnt that a meme or something? i've heard that before somewhere...)

On topic:

Well I think RPGs finally kicked the bucket:

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2011/01/18/final-fantasy-xiii-2-coming-to-ps3-next-winter/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=FFX132_011811

As bad as FF X-2 and XIII was I have low expectations for this one.

Of course Sqaure Enix delayed Deus Ex: Human Revolution after the outrage caused by Final Fantasy XIII. Maybe they learned their lesson. If XIII-2 is a great game, I may go back and try XIII again.

Off topic:
Also the biggest Mary Sue characters are Anita Blake, Bella Swan, and the Master Chief. They are perfect and nothing bad can happen to them directly. Usually the author or character designer lives through the character to fill their own inadequacies. I wouldn't say the main character from Dragons Age is quite a Mary Sue, but pretty damn close. Especially if you take the human Noble path. The whole family and kingdom thinh kind of discounts Mary Sue characteristics. However if you do not count the opening story, then yeah the main character is a Mary Sue.

Anti-Mary Sue characters: Pretty much anyone from Heavy Rain.

Lord Scythican wrote:On topic:

Well I think RPGs finally kicked the bucket:

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2011/01/18/final-fantasy-xiii-2-coming-to-ps3-next-winter/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=FFX132_011811

As bad as FF X-2 and XIII was I have low expectations for this one.

Of course Sqaure Enix delayed Deus Ex: Human Revolution after the outrage caused by Final Fantasy XIII. Maybe they learned their lesson. If XIII-2 is a great game, I may go back and try XIII again.

Off topic:
Also the biggest Mary Sue characters are Anita Blake, Bella Swan, and the Master Chief. They are perfect and nothing bad can happen to them directly. Usually the author or character designer lives through the character to fill their own inadequacies. I wouldn't say the main character from Dragons Age is quite a Mary Sue, but pretty damn close. Especially if you take the human Noble path. The whole family and kingdom thinh kind of discounts Mary Sue characteristics. However if you do not count the opening story, then yeah the main character is a Mary Sue.

Anti-Mary Sue characters: Pretty much anyone from Heavy Rain.

Yeah, to bad that game was boring as hell, thus making mary sues more interesting for me ^^

^^

*Press X to "Jason"!

It would be nice to have a heavy rain style setting and story but without the bs control system.

Soladrin wrote:

Lord Scythican wrote:On topic:

Well I think RPGs finally kicked the bucket:

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2011/01/18/final-fantasy-xiii-2-coming-to-ps3-next-winter/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=FFX132_011811

As bad as FF X-2 and XIII was I have low expectations for this one.

Of course Sqaure Enix delayed Deus Ex: Human Revolution after the outrage caused by Final Fantasy XIII. Maybe they learned their lesson. If XIII-2 is a great game, I may go back and try XIII again.

Off topic:
Also the biggest Mary Sue characters are Anita Blake, Bella Swan, and the Master Chief. They are perfect and nothing bad can happen to them directly. Usually the author or character designer lives through the character to fill their own inadequacies. I wouldn't say the main character from Dragons Age is quite a Mary Sue, but pretty damn close. Especially if you take the human Noble path. The whole family and kingdom thinh kind of discounts Mary Sue characteristics. However if you do not count the opening story, then yeah the main character is a Mary Sue.

Anti-Mary Sue characters: Pretty much anyone from Heavy Rain.

Yeah, to bad that game was boring as hell, thus making mary sues more interesting for me ^^

Never thought we'd actually agree on something Soladrin.

Manchu wrote:Wow, lots to read since I last posted here.

First: Melissa, the Istari are not some "elite defense force." That glosses over -- well, totally misses -- the essential point. Don't worry, however, Saruman made a similar mistake.

Second: ME1 was a pretty great game. It wasn't great because the graphics or gameplay were good -- those were both recycled from previous iterations of BioWare titles. ME1 was great because of its visual design, narrative setting, and plot. ME2 did not improve on any of these qualities and often didn't even meet the (admittedly high) bar set by its predecessor. Nearly every "level" was visually boring. The main plot lacked both imagination and coherence. Most disappointingly, I felt short-changed by the companion quests. It's not to say that ME2 was crap. We can set the internet hyperbole aside. It's still head's and shoulders above most of what's out there. But it's no ME1 and it's certainly nowhere near as good as a Bethesda game, IMO.

@MDS: Try Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars for interesting hard scifi.

Where was the great visual design in ME1? How was the narrative good? It was the same Bioware storyline that they've been using since BG. You can predict the ending an hour into the game.

Manchu wrote:Wow, lots to read since I last posted here.

Second: ME1 was a pretty great game. It wasn't great because the graphics or gameplay were good -- those were both recycled from previous iterations of BioWare titles. ME1 was great because of its visual design, narrative setting, and plot. ME2 did not improve on any of these qualities and often didn't even meet the (admittedly high) bar set by its predecessor. Nearly every "level" was visually boring. The main plot lacked both imagination and coherence. Most disappointingly, I felt short-changed by the companion quests. It's not to say that ME2 was crap. We can set the internet hyperbole aside. It's still head's and shoulders above most of what's out there. But it's no ME1 and it's certainly nowhere near as good as a Bethesda game, IMO.

I have some mixed feelings about ME2 too. I will say right now that the ME2 is one of my favorite games of all time however I'll copy and paste a review I did from elsewhere here:

"Mass Effect 2 (Collector's Edition)

April 8, 2010 - Well no one can ever accuse Bioware of not listening to its fans. The Canadian company has literally responded to every single criticism ever levelled at Mass Effect 1. They’ve made a ton of changes and quite frankly: I'm not sure I like any of them. Yes, ME1 was very "RPGey" but if the fans of ME1 didn't like RPGs they wouldn't have played it in the first place let alone declared one of their favourite games of all time. Not to mention come back and buy the sequel.

Apparently people didn't like the Mako, which I thought was the coolest vehicle ever. Well are you happy now? Now you can scan planets from orbit in what feels like a tedious task assigned to you at work. When it's all said and done you'll feel like you've spent more time doing that than everything else in the game combined! I don't know if it’s true or not but it certainly feels like it. Can anyone say that was more fun than driving around in an incredibly robust APC than can be dropped from orbit, is armed with both a cannon and anti-personal guns, shields and even thrusters for righting itself and jumping!?

I'll admit that the massive amount of items that you could accumulate in ME1 could be a bit confusing. Seemed like you were acquiring a new gun every 5 minutes but they've taken it the other way too far. Now you have almost no inventory. You don't buy new armour and guns a la an RPG but find them lying on the ground. Or even worse download them. Don't get me wrong: I think the free DLC that comes with "The Cerberus Network" is the greatest thing ever and hope that all the other Developers out there take notice and adopt a similar system to curb the reselling/rebuying/used game market but it makes it so that you can get all the best weapons right off the bat. Not very RPG like. I think you should have to make your DLC weapons (which are cool) with all those damn resources I’ve been scanning for!

Although there was a lot of “stuff” to accrue back in the day at least it was all done automatically. Much like an old fashioned turn-based JRPG like Final Fantasy you just did some fighting and at the end you got some money and stuff. Now you have to run around looking for money on the wall and hacking people’s computers. I kept thinking “why am I literally breaking into someone’s apartment, hacking their PC, and stealing like $1000 from them?” Does this seem like something a SPECTRE busy trying to save the galaxy would do to you?

Speaking of which, and this one is more story related than gameplay, what happened to being a SPECTRE? I really enjoyed the universe created in ME1 and the balance between being a Human patriot and a good Citadel soldier. I don’t care much for working for Cerberus: a known terrorist organization and Private military company. Although the Illusive Man is a great character I just didn’t find it as interesting as reporting directly to The Citadel Council the actual ruling government of the Galaxy.

Anyways, there’s a dozen other little things that I could go on about that bugged me like the fact I now have to run around gathering clips off the ground as if I where playing Doom but I don’t want it to seem as if I don’t actually like the game. This is still one of the best games out there. The combat is much improved and very intense (if you play on some of the harder difficulties) and there’s really no comparison between the new side quests and the old. All the side quests in ME2 feel fresh and different as opposed to ME1 where it was unbearable boilerplate.

But what makes Mass Effect Mass Effect is Characters, Story and Dialogue. The story in this middle chapter is ok but the characters are some of the best you’re going to find anywhere. TV and big screen motion pictures wish they could have character development half this good. Even the so called “extras” have more personality than most of the crap you see on TV these days. I remember feeling genuinely sad for a Krogan while eavesdropping on a conversation he was having with a friend about how he thinks he’s sired a son but will never know him because his world has been turned into a culturally devastated dystopia by a bioweapon. That brought the Genophage home for me more than any full text back story. At that’s just one of many conversations that take place throughout the game.

The word ‘revolutionary” gets thrown around a lot in the video game industry but what Bioware is attempting here: letting you create a character and have every decision you make have profound consequences for the length of an entire trilogy really is revolutionary. And quite frankly they don’t get enough credit for it. "



So in summary I liked it equally as much as ME1. They fixed some stuff they broke some stuff, but they're both great games.

Melissia wrote:If hard sci-fi only uses science as we know it today, then to me there is no such thing as hard sci-fi.

Excellent point. Someone also brought up the wishy washy science of Star Trek. While I agree it's a show that defines techno-babble it also has its props that have actually become real life inventions. Not the whole warp engine part of course but stuff like communicators (cellphones) or datapads (Ipad et al).

Just imagine a SF writer explaining the functioning of an Ipad with it's touch screen in the 60's. That would be laughed of as soft sf immediately. Or think of an LCD screen. "Wait, you're telling me this screen thingy would use some kind of 'liquid' crystal matrix that can be realigned by electrical current? Son, have you been smoking crack?"

Sci Fi inspires imagination and the drive to strive for things that haven't been invented. Yet.

Back to RPG's. I'd love a Secret of Mana-esque kind of game again. Playable solo or with others through the net or sitting beside you on the couch. I have 2 younger brothers, SoM was a godsend for us.

BAWTRM wrote:

Melissia wrote:If hard sci-fi only uses science as we know it today, then to me there is no such thing as hard sci-fi.

Excellent point. Someone also brought up the wishy washy science of Star Trek. While I agree it's a show that defines techno-babble it also has its props that have actually become real life inventions. Not the whole warp engine part of course but stuff like communicators (cellphones) or datapads (Ipad et al).

Just imagine a SF writer explaining the functioning of an Ipad with it's touch screen in the 60's. That would be laughed of as soft sf immediately. Or think of an LCD screen. "Wait, you're telling me this screen thingy would use some kind of 'liquid' crystal matrix that can be realigned by electrical current? Son, have you been smoking crack?"

Sci Fi inspires imagination and the drive to strive for things that haven't been invented. Yet.

Back to RPG's. I'd love a Secret of Mana-esque kind of game again. Playable solo or with others through the net or sitting beside you on the couch. I have 2 younger brothers, SoM was a godsend for us.

Melissia misunderstands me. Hard scifi doesn't break the laws of physics as we understand them. IE, no FTL, no telepaths (or biotics), things of that nature. It explores potential future discoveries within the realm of plausability. If I knew that the definition of hard scifi was unknown here I wouldn't have brought it up.

It's not simply the mass effect fields and eezo that make Mass Effect soft scifi. It's the relatively one dimensional alien species. Krogans really, really, REALLY like fighting. Turians are all disciplined soldiers who fail economics forever. Volus are only good at trade. Assari mate with everyone to somehow expand their gene pool and mating with each other is frowned upon for some odd reason, even thoug there are only a dozen or so other races even worth mating with.... Salarians are intelligent and live much shorter lives than humans, but for some reason a short lifespan is only considered to be a human advantage...

Humans are the only race clever enough to use carriers, use VI to support their military, and in just 3 decades they've become a galactic power. All the other council races have been on the galactic stage for 500+ years and yet they haven't developed their forces much more than the Alliance has...

I like Mass Effect, I think Mass Effect 2 is the best game ever made, but putting it up some sort of pedestal of scientific brilliance is laughable.

Back on topic: RPGs are a dying breed. Final Fantasy XIII-2 will killl them completely.

Amaya wrote:Hard scifi doesn't break the laws of physics as we understand them. IE, no FTL, no telepaths (or biotics), things of that nature. It explores potential future discoveries within the realm of plausability.

40k is hard Sci-Fi?

Railguns... are now real and just as nasty.
Bolters... are just fully automatic grenade launchers.

EDIT - I'm personally disappointed with computer/electronic RPGs. It is my favorite type of game. However, tabletop-RPGs certainly aren't dying...

@The Bringer: I thought table-top rpgs were dying until I got as copy of Pathfinder. I really like that game, I just need to find a group willing to play it.

Lord Scythican wrote:@The Bringer: I thought table-top rpgs were dying until I got as copy of Pathfinder. I really like that game, I just need to find a group willing to play it.

Savage Worlds is a good and simple system. There are a couple home-made systems I enjoy, and I also like D&D and the Star Wars version of it.

But either way, those RPGs never decline, unless you lose a good GM.

Amaya wrote:Hard scifi doesn't break the laws of physics as we understand them. IE, no FTL, no telepaths (or biotics), things of that nature. It explores potential future discoveries within the realm of plausability.

I disagree. Telepaths, Biotics, Psychics, they may actually be in the cards farther down the line. Just a gut feeling I have.

Amaya wrote:If I knew that the definition of hard scifi was unknown here I wouldn't have brought it up.

I know the definition of hard science fiction, I just don't agree that it's that strict.

Hard sci-fi is merely a story which prefers to have a stronger basis in reality-- it doesn't have to have a total basis in reality, but anything that breaks current science needs to be plausible in doing so. Soft sci-fi prefers to go with rule of cool and suspension of disbelief, and can hand-wave things based off of these two, or have weird outcomes that vary depending on plot more than science.

It's really all that simple. There's no black or white in the subject.

By that definition, would you then consider Jules-Verne hard-science fiction?

The Bringer wrote:By that definition, would you then consider Jules-Verne hard-science fiction?

Which book?

That would be a "no" for journey to the center of the earth

There's so many of them...

From earth to the moon
Twenty thousand leagues under the sea

I'm blanking currently... there probably some better examples than those.

I don't recall them enough to categorize them. But I would consider, for example, Battletech to be mostly hard hard sci-fi. There's only one true break from current science in the Kearny-Fuschida drive system that allows for interstellar travel and communication. The rest is within the realm of plausibility, with most of the fantastic items simply being advanced materials (the "muscles" of the mechs, for example, are bundles electro-reactive cables mimicking human muscles, and we have already found some electro-reactive materials in our time).

Meanwhile, 40k is soft science, because it works on rule of cool, and entirely rule of cool. If something is cool, they'll make it work somehow.

Melissia wrote:

Amaya wrote:If I knew that the definition of hard scifi was unknown here I wouldn't have brought it up.

I know the definition of hard science fiction, I just don't agree that it's that strict.

Hard sci-fi is merely a story which prefers to have a stronger basis in reality-- it doesn't have to have a total basis in reality, but anything that breaks current science needs to be plausible in doing so. Soft sci-fi prefers to go with rule of cool and suspension of disbelief, and can hand-wave things based off of these two, or have weird outcomes that vary depending on plot more than science.

It's really all that simple. There's no black or white in the subject.

And having a magical element to explain away artificial gravity, FTL, Biotics, is not plausible science.

*sigh*

Neither is any space travel in any sci-fi book ever

Amaya wrote:And having a magical element to explain away artificial gravity, FTL, Biotics, is not plausible science.

Then there is no such thing as hard science fiction.

Humanity discovering an element, compound, or state of matter which allows a massive advance in technology is hardly implausible science.

We've already done that a few hundred times in our history.

Gibbsey wrote:*sigh*

Neither is any space travel in any sci-fi book ever

So aside from the silly monoliths and giant space fetus, 2001 isn't plausible?

@Melissia, you continue to ignore examples and descriptions of hard SciFi. You ignore the 'planet of hat' species and inconsistent logic in Mass Effect. Apparently anything that isn't a sweeping galactic drama with dozens of alien species and super psionic freaks isn't science fiction to you.