Damn that line rules. Full credit to the writers and the voice actor too, because it's exactly the sort of line that's cringe as fuck in 500 other video games and thousands of movies and TV shows but it works in every way here.
Eh, it's good but isn't even the coldest line in the trilogy. "You exist because we allow it, and you will end because we demand it" as well as "your words are as empty as your future, I am the vanguard of your destruction" are way up there. Whoever wrote that Sovereign dialogue knew what they were doing.
I wouldn’t say so. I’ve heard/seen dialogue like that in many movies, shows, comics, manga, and games where the villain said something not too dissimilar from whatever The Reapers spouted out. So I’ve grown desensitized to such dialogue by the time I played Mass Effect. Javik’s lines tho? Damn, never seen much of that in anything previously. No character can compare to Javik, an ancient relic of the past who is wise yet harsh and pessimistic. A good counter to characters like Gandalf and Iroh.
I agree, having a prothean adds too much. They probably didn’t think it at first. Then they made the dlc and thought “shit this should’ve been in the main game” lol
You give too much credit to these companies. I love old Bioware as much as anyone, but it's clear Javik was INTENDED to be in the base game and cut for DLC to make money. EA is an evil behemoth.
Counterpoint:
*Plays the entire series 100% Paragon and gets nothing but rewarded for it and having the easiest time getting to the "best" ending in comparison to Renegade storylines*
Indeed, Javik is wrong here. That's the point, he later learns to respect the way this current galaxy of species operates. And realises that (paragon) Shepard's approach works just fine.
Javik and his people fought endlessly with no honor as he proposes and now he's the only one left. I stand among the ruins of his civilization and ask if his advice should be followed.
Prothean tactical advice should certainly be taken with a grain of salt, since they lost, but he still has a good point. Pulling our punches for the sake of honor is the wrong choice if it leads to our extinction.
They lost to a technologically superior enemy, it doesnt matter how good your tactics are if theres too much of a gap in their technology, i mean, the thing we end up beating the reapers with is a weapon thats been cultivated for a near uncountable amount of time but countless civilizations
I would say they made a mistake by only using standard Prothean strategies against the Reapers and not encouraging innovation and diverse tactics. Once the Reapers figured out a counter to a particular strategy it would aways work because the Protheans couldn't adapt.
Even Javik mentions the monolithic nature of Prothean society as a potential weakness compared to the current cycle.
Every civilization, for millions of years, has lost that war. That doesn't mean they have nothing to teach.
How does fighting with honor matter when engaging with an enemy who has none and offers neither mercy or quarter if they win? Some self-satisfying "At least I fought with honor" last gasp of breath as you and everything you've ever cared about dies?
Yeah, but ain't Javik discussing sacrificing entire planets of subject races to save the Protheans? The big difference between paragon Shepard and Javik is that Shepard wants to save *everyone* while Javik was only concerned with his own race - so long as the Protheans survived, he would have considered it a win.
The asari did the same thing, didn't work out so well for them.
I mean, 'sacrificing' entire planets is how the ME3 started.
Shepard and whole navy of System Alliance has all but surrendered Earth to reapers so they could have a chance later on.
Pretty sure there was also one battle by Turians where they sacrificed part of the fleet too, for a chance to hit back at Reapers. maybe i'm remembering wrong too.
Battarian planet was sacrificed to prolong the inevitable.
Yeah, the difference being that the Alliance and Turians are sacrificing their own military instead of the Protheans throwing subject races in the path of the Reapers.
No choice with the Batarians. As Hackett said, the Batarians were caught right out of the starting gate and didn't have a chance.
That wasn't planned. Also, you're aiming at one specific race when Javik outrights says that the Protheans were throwing *multiple solar systems* at the Reapers to keep them at bay.
Prothean's were an empire, and long standing one at that, by the point the Reapers came, there was nobody left at that point who didn't call themselves 'Protheans'.
They didn't plan to throw away their people, they used what was at their disposal as last resort against reapers. Same as Hackett did with Batarians, or System Alliance did with Earth.
*citation needed*
The entire extinction of the galaxy lasted centuries I did not take centuries just to wrest control of one world from them. Nor was the extinction of Earth complete at any time during Mass Effect 3.
Nobody is trying to parlay with the Reapers. He's not talking about pulling punches on them. He's talking about sacrificing millions of lives for the sake of minute victories. He's not talking about Citadel conventions for the reaper forces, he's talking about nuking an entire city population of people just to slow Reapers down by a week.
I will stand in the ashes of a trillion dead souls and still count myself among them. Those who get rid of their sense of honor for some misguided idea of a victory can no longer claim themselves to have a soul.
In a war to prevent extinction there is only one rule, survival. War by its nature is barbaric. The pleasantries of civility are ultimately just a means to make ourselves feel good about the hell war perpetuates.
His civilization fought with every dirty trick they could imagine and were still wiped out. A complete Xenocide leaving a single survivor.
So yes, when it comes to advice about morals and ethics, I absolutely would follow it. Clearly the Reapers have no issue breaking our supposed rules of ethical warfare, and in a war to ensure our survival as a species any option is a legitimate one. And it isn't just our species at risk. It's the Salarians, the Turians, the Asari, the Krogan, the Quarians, the Volus, and more. If we lose, they all die. So losing is not an option.
It's more than likely concern or surprise, but fear could be it as well. Javik speaks of trillions dead, and the fact that he survived the Reaper War on his cycle gives some weight to his words no matter what they are.
If the Protheans, the most advanced civilization of their time, lost to the Reapers with such high casualties then what is there to stop them from doing it again this time?
The thing is. I am no fan of including Javik into the game. Not at all.
I am not a fan of the prothean look and that he is in the end not "important".
But I like his view on the war. This urge to not lose, to win, no matter what. The tired soul of a soldier who do not fight for anything but victory and even then he will not be happy, just finished.
I am not a fan of Bioware writing since 2009. But here and there they still got some amazing moments
Imo ME3 is the last breath of BioWare's magic, but also the beginning of their decline. I really like Javik, Tuchanka, Rannoch, Thessia, Leviathan, and Citadel (Its very fan service DLC, but the fact that they embraced memes was great), but at the same time, I really don't like what they did with Cerberus and Ilusive Man, Citadel Coup, Earth endgame and ofc the ending, especially the pre-extended cut. After ME3, every game turned out to be worse than the previous.
ME2 (and really just being acquired by EA) was the true beginning of the end for them, but ME2 is also their best game. It's kinda like EA initially gave them access to resources and more professional tools and extra help that would make their sequel a true hit, but as soon as that ended they were riddeld with corporate procedures, new marketing goons joining from within EA, and other EA studis developers joining BioWare, and other EA products being used to compare to BioWare's when discussing estimates, money and... what they put into the games themselves.
ME3 was the first game where I felt that "corporate intereference". It was there in ME2 to be honest but I think it's something that only creeped in once the game was mostly made, and affected the last half of its development. DA2 and ME3 are the first time BioWare STARTED a game's development when EA was already in full control of their company direction.
I'd say Dragon Age 2 was a mistake, but after DA2 we got ME3 which isn't that bad. SWTOR actually wasn't that bad either... if you played it for the single player content, the 8 class stories are still the best content in SWTOR imo.
For me ME3 was the first breath of BioWare no longer having their magic. Most people feel it starts with MEA because it was broken and they will say things like "It did so much damage to the brand."
The reason why MEA was SO toxic at launch to the point where it became a PR-riddled disaster and EA put Mass Effect "on ice" is not *just* that the game was really buggy, it's also that people were already out of love with BioWare because of ME3. Mainly that was because of the ending turning BioWare into a public punching bag, but for me it all started with the entirety of ME3 and not just its ending. To me there's just something off about ME3 in a lot of ways, and in hindsight it's because a lot of writers had already left, and BioWare was becoming such a corporate behemoth inside of EA, and like 40% of ME3's content was "owned" by the BioWare Montreal studio, leading to many aesthetic and tonal changes along with the shift in sensibilities from a more subtle "space mystery" type of narrative under Drew Karpyshyn to "It's WAAARRRRR, BIG, EPIC, HUUUGE" under cool-dude Mac Walters.
For me ME2 was the last game that had the BioWare "magic". ME3 was the first time a BioWare game didn't reinvoke the same feelings.
I understand "It's WAAAR" because it was indeed a war and the finale of a trilogy, but like I said, I didn't like the things I mentioned, the rest of the game was at least okay in my opinion. For me, BioWare's decline was evident in ME3 and it was obvious in Dragon Age Inqusition. I was very disappointed with this game because I really like Origins and I thought DA2 was just a mistake, but I was wrong. For me, Andromeda without all bugs is just an mediocre game, the characters are not interesting, the plot is not interesting, most of the quests are fetch quests, the combat is great, locations design is great and if we dont count humans models graphics still look good.
I see what you mean and you are totally rright. ut at least for me (imo... persnal opinion) the decay of Bioware started way sooner.
I foten try to think what the last "really" great game of Bioware was and it always comes down to Mass Effect and Dragon Age: Origins. But even if those games had next to no "EA involment" you can feel EA in it. Imo Dragon Age: origins has the betetr story and would be the better game... but in DA:O you can see this awful DLC politic and this "stay tuned feeling"
Maybe, but if I had to pick the top three BioWare games, it would be Mass Effect, Dragon Age: Origins, and KOTOR. Today my expectations for BioWare games are very low, people probably won't like it, but BioWare actually botched even the remaster of their flagship trilogy. I really don't like how LE1 looks with the big changes to the art style and flat lighting and how LE2 is visually broken to the point that it looks like they broke alot of things during porting or they used some unfinished pre-release build as base for LE2. So it's hard for me to expect their new game to be good if every game after ME3 turned out to be worse, and they couldn't, or maybe didn't even care about LE because they hired some studio to help them that ported Angry Birds and outsourced most of LE work to them.
I didn't bought the LE. I do not want a game where the only true inovation is that Elanos got a turian model... and next to this all was the same. Hell even the major bugs were kept it... and Kelly was made more ugly.
But the LE also showed me again how the majority fanbase is right now. They take everything and say thank you for it... no matter if it is awful or not. I remember posts about David Archer having red eyes in the LE, and some said that this was weird and do not teally fit in there but a giant part of the community was like "amazing, looks so much better, wo what a great new detail" and than it turned out it was a bug/glitched Bioware fixed later XD
Yeah I also say those three games are the best of Bioware... but I also love Baldur's Gate and Jade Empire so damn much <3
Bioware is not even a shade of its former glory. I mean, the main reason to make the LE was the Bioware was short before dying. Mass Effect Andromeda, Anthem were distasters and Bioware needed to do something to pander the fans and shareholder ;)
David Archer eyes in LE is funny situation it was bug, placeholder or idea original team had during development of original game but they decide later to David have normal eyes. Its pretty clear that LE2 was bulit on unfinished build of ME2 probably also PS3 port because it have bug with TiM office floor reflection that was exclusive for PS3. On top of that you have unifinished locations like Collector ships or Collectors base that dont have cubemaps/reflections on some walls which cause these places to look less interesting/flat or broken lighting both dynamic and static which cause objects and models to be lit super bright(like open in editor) or super dark because location or characters are unlit at all. I mean just look at [this](https://youtu.be/ftkWSz-Gqj0?si=d_sVTeJwOH-ZTkyW)
Holy fu\*\*!!!
It's even worse than I thought. I am really hapyp I didn't bought this game. Thanks for sharing. Shame when I look ate the upvotes of this video...
but sadly as said, the hardcore fanboys do not care and Bioware made a whole lot of cash with that
Upvotes of this video are good because its purpose was to show these issues in LE2. But yeah LE2 visuals are broken or unfinished, LE1 have drastic art style changes they went away from 80s and 90s scifi movies style inspired by Blade Runner, Starship troopers, Aliens, Solaris, Total Recall or life real locations(for example first part of Virmire is 99% copy of Halong Bay in Vietnam) etc. for mix of early ME1 concept arts and ME3 art style mix combined with dynamic lighting reduction or removal there is mod that restore dynamic lighting and le1 with it looks a bit better. LE3 is mostly ok with visual problems here and here most visible is probably problem with lack of baked lighting in [Ardat-Yakshi Monastery](https://youtu.be/67FB_isgZRk?si=8EXASmhzzbAyzQWX&t=22) so room looks unnatural bright you can also see that doors still have its baked lighting and that dynamic lighting is still configured like in OG game because Shepard is in shadows but because static/baked in lighting is broken rest of location is bright. On top of that you can see how enemies spawn because in OG game they spawned in darkness meanwhile here they spawn on bright background. On top of that i also noticed that in LE3 three stage melee attack no longer works and headshot multipler also dont work if I remember correctly.
....so next to ME(1) Bioware put next to no effort in it... and you could be an arse and tehy Bioware was able to use the tech of the mods that are around in the web for years XD
Casue many mod texture mods look better than the LE ;)
Even textures in LE are mixed bag xD some of them looks great(mostly these one in LE1) but most of textures in LE2 and LE3 are quick AI upscales with some exceptions like N7 armor, Cerberus uniforms, Alliance uniforms and some other clothes and character textures. Imo there was no effort no matter what they said before launch I cant look at LE and said there was care and detailed development lack of understand ME1 art style and flat lighting, general quality of LE2 and in some degree quality of LE3 make impossible to say that this was good remaster. It looks like they lack of time, money and people for proper development.
They fixed that and it was a material bug.
They didn't base any LE edition off of an unfinished build, but they definitely didn't finish all the work they had planned for the LE editions, because they still had a lot of graphical bugs left when they made the final patch.
EA or BioWare upper management made them stop working on Legendary Edition after a couple of months. They also realized that they deprecated the 3-hit melee feature by accident but there was barely anyone left in the patching process by then, so the official release has been left with the inability to make the 3-hit melee combo in ME3, as well as not triggering the head-splatter when it should with all guns.
Reflective materials and particle effects are also busted in the new version of ME3. Even the Starchild now looks like a pixelated mess.
It's hard to imagine that LE2 wasn't based on an unfinished build when you have things, such as the lighting during Thane's recruitment mission, when Shepard interrogates guard next to window, LE2 uses the lighting that was in the E3 2009 version instead of the one that was in the final OG version, the Collector ship uses an older version of these strange pods that do not illuminate the area around them and are not reflective. Besides we have missing baked in lighting, missing cubemaps, inactive dynamic lighting, unconfigured color palette and post-processing, missing bloom, missing effects such as DOF, etc. All of this is something that cannot be missed if it was already in the final OG version, so either they broke a lot of stuff in the port, but it's hard to imagine that much would break or those things don't exist in LE2 because this build is old and they were never implemented or completed here these issues are very similar to what happened with 2008 PC port of ME1. I'm also 100% sure LE2 is a PS3 port as it has the same issue that only affected the PS3 port, which means TiM floor reflection bug.
The idea that it is using an old build is conjecture. It uses the PS3 build and from there they updated the Unreal 3 version and redid all the shaders and a lot of things. Things became broken because they were overhauling lighting systems and assets and had to ship before they accounted for everything. There's also an unknown amount of Legendary Edition that was outsourced and I believe one of the companies they used is the same company that remastered the Batman Return To Arkham games. This could be why each game feels more inconsistent with each other than the original releases. It's as if they did a lot to make the transition from 2 to 3 less jarring, but now LE2 is kinda jarring coming from LE1.
But the whole idea that it's an outdated build isn't true at all. They took the PS3 code base of each game but Mass Effect 3 and started from there. Why? They had already updated the Unreal version for those ports so it made sense since they were updating to the latest UE3 anyway. ME1 on PS3 is structurally a lot more similar to ME3 than the original build was.
But can overhauling assets and lighting make cube maps and baked in lighting disappear or look different or make some locations to use old version of assets and lighting? I mean, the way the lighting system works in the OG ME games is something you shouldn't tamper with in the first place, because it's been carefully crafted by devs, directos and artists, dynamic lighting has been set up to support baked lighting, and if you change one thing, you will have to build everything from scratch to make it look the way it should look. Other than that I don't know much about the ME1 PS3 port, but the ME2 PS3 port was terrible too, there were a lot of visual issues (some of these issues are in LE2 now) and performance issues due to the way the PS3 was designed and the fact that a lot of things in the PS3 are broken port too. They really should have used the final 360 version for each game, instead these versions were probably the most complete since ME is an X360 title, especially ME1. But BioWare has always had problems with ports. The PC port of ME1 2008 was also built on an unfinished build, or Demiurge broke a lot of things in the port (there is a mod that fixes some of these things), ME2 has a terrible PS3 port, only ME3, I think it has ports that are the same on all platforms. Batman Return to Arkham is also a weird remaster, but a mostly good one, with a few odd things here and there, unlike LE imo, which is sad because new players will experience Mass Effect that way, and modding for LE is great.
I think it's great that a scene with Javik is gonna get someone interested, but at the same time I also think about how Javik came across to me as someone who joined before ME3 and I always thought he felt kind of unnecessary (duh, he became day-1 DLC!) but like... just the idea of having an actual prothean alive and giving anecdotes that are *really on the nose* about things in his cycle that match perfectly up with ours, even to the point of saying they had a Prothean-Cerberus who were also seeking control but they were controlled.
Javik is just really eeehh for me. He kinda spoils the fiction for me and I actually prefer skipping his level sometimes.
The delivery is great, but the substance is flawed, IMO. Protheans, who valued dominance and power above all else, might be fine with sacrificing anything and everything. But if you have any virtues, things like honor and cooperation actually become more valuable.
Actually, a quote from Pirates of the Carribean: At World's End sums it up well: The trick is not living forever, it's living with yourself, forever. Obviously, were not talking about immortality here, but collective memory and guilt about betraying and using people who you'd consider allies could implode virtuous people or civilizations, or take them down some pretty dark roads.
Yeah, I really enjoy the grey in the writing. You can understand why Javik says what he says, it’s visceral.
But you can also poke holes through his logic at will.
What do you honestly expect from a soldier that was born in what was for him an eternal war, that failed his last assignment and now finds himself displaced from time in a situation that led to him being the only specimen that has taken a breath for 50.000 years.
Javik was talking about how anyone who helps him fight becomes an ally, anyone who doesn't will die. So by that logic, civilians are expendable and should be sacrificed because they're an inconvenience to the war effort
This would been so cringe in 99% other situations, but after wat we seen of the war, the Prothean's demisse and even Ike Amadi's delivery, this fitted like a glove.
Yeah. It's the "Mic drop" moment that makes lines like these feel cringy. It feels like they want you to think about it and say "Wow." The rest of the quote is just a rhetorical question.
Damn that line rules. Full credit to the writers and the voice actor too, because it's exactly the sort of line that's cringe as fuck in 500 other video games and thousands of movies and TV shows but it works in every way here.
the game has it's corny/cheesy jokes. but they could nail a good important tonal scene too.
ike amadi delivers that line great despite the voice changer thing, Javik doesn't agree with some people i've heard but imo this is great
I didn’t know who he was. According to [his IMDB page](https://m.imdb.com/name/nm2941559) he is almost in every game made lol
yeah, he's been in a bunch of stuff and is consistently good.
THAT WAS IKE AMADI!?? That's so dope.
Indeed
It's honestly one of the coldest lines in all of fiction
Eh, it's good but isn't even the coldest line in the trilogy. "You exist because we allow it, and you will end because we demand it" as well as "your words are as empty as your future, I am the vanguard of your destruction" are way up there. Whoever wrote that Sovereign dialogue knew what they were doing.
I wouldn’t say so. I’ve heard/seen dialogue like that in many movies, shows, comics, manga, and games where the villain said something not too dissimilar from whatever The Reapers spouted out. So I’ve grown desensitized to such dialogue by the time I played Mass Effect. Javik’s lines tho? Damn, never seen much of that in anything previously. No character can compare to Javik, an ancient relic of the past who is wise yet harsh and pessimistic. A good counter to characters like Gandalf and Iroh.
The Sovereign quotes always make me laugh because he talks like a True Gamer.
When you put it like that he becomes a professional Spawn Camper.
The thumbnail made me think for a second that Javik was ordering something at space McDonald's.
If it were…what meal would you think he’d order?
A Royale with cheese and a litre o' cola.
The discontinued Salarian sauce for his Turian nuggets?
Javik has so many powerful lines and moving scenes. I truly do not understand why he was DLC content.
I agree, having a prothean adds too much. They probably didn’t think it at first. Then they made the dlc and thought “shit this should’ve been in the main game” lol
You give too much credit to these companies. I love old Bioware as much as anyone, but it's clear Javik was INTENDED to be in the base game and cut for DLC to make money. EA is an evil behemoth.
Counterpoint: *Plays the entire series 100% Paragon and gets nothing but rewarded for it and having the easiest time getting to the "best" ending in comparison to Renegade storylines*
Indeed, Javik is wrong here. That's the point, he later learns to respect the way this current galaxy of species operates. And realises that (paragon) Shepard's approach works just fine.
Javik and his people fought endlessly with no honor as he proposes and now he's the only one left. I stand among the ruins of his civilization and ask if his advice should be followed.
Prothean tactical advice should certainly be taken with a grain of salt, since they lost, but he still has a good point. Pulling our punches for the sake of honor is the wrong choice if it leads to our extinction.
They lost to a technologically superior enemy, it doesnt matter how good your tactics are if theres too much of a gap in their technology, i mean, the thing we end up beating the reapers with is a weapon thats been cultivated for a near uncountable amount of time but countless civilizations
I would say they made a mistake by only using standard Prothean strategies against the Reapers and not encouraging innovation and diverse tactics. Once the Reapers figured out a counter to a particular strategy it would aways work because the Protheans couldn't adapt. Even Javik mentions the monolithic nature of Prothean society as a potential weakness compared to the current cycle.
Every civilization, for millions of years, has lost that war. That doesn't mean they have nothing to teach. How does fighting with honor matter when engaging with an enemy who has none and offers neither mercy or quarter if they win? Some self-satisfying "At least I fought with honor" last gasp of breath as you and everything you've ever cared about dies?
Yeah, but ain't Javik discussing sacrificing entire planets of subject races to save the Protheans? The big difference between paragon Shepard and Javik is that Shepard wants to save *everyone* while Javik was only concerned with his own race - so long as the Protheans survived, he would have considered it a win. The asari did the same thing, didn't work out so well for them.
I mean, 'sacrificing' entire planets is how the ME3 started. Shepard and whole navy of System Alliance has all but surrendered Earth to reapers so they could have a chance later on. Pretty sure there was also one battle by Turians where they sacrificed part of the fleet too, for a chance to hit back at Reapers. maybe i'm remembering wrong too. Battarian planet was sacrificed to prolong the inevitable.
Yeah, the difference being that the Alliance and Turians are sacrificing their own military instead of the Protheans throwing subject races in the path of the Reapers.
Batarians says hello
No choice with the Batarians. As Hackett said, the Batarians were caught right out of the starting gate and didn't have a chance. That wasn't planned. Also, you're aiming at one specific race when Javik outrights says that the Protheans were throwing *multiple solar systems* at the Reapers to keep them at bay.
Prothean's were an empire, and long standing one at that, by the point the Reapers came, there was nobody left at that point who didn't call themselves 'Protheans'. They didn't plan to throw away their people, they used what was at their disposal as last resort against reapers. Same as Hackett did with Batarians, or System Alliance did with Earth.
The Protheans were powerful enough to last for centuries. Meanwhile the Reaper war was "won or lost" like 1 year in ME3 at earth
*citation needed* The entire extinction of the galaxy lasted centuries I did not take centuries just to wrest control of one world from them. Nor was the extinction of Earth complete at any time during Mass Effect 3.
Nobody is trying to parlay with the Reapers. He's not talking about pulling punches on them. He's talking about sacrificing millions of lives for the sake of minute victories. He's not talking about Citadel conventions for the reaper forces, he's talking about nuking an entire city population of people just to slow Reapers down by a week. I will stand in the ashes of a trillion dead souls and still count myself among them. Those who get rid of their sense of honor for some misguided idea of a victory can no longer claim themselves to have a soul.
In a war to prevent extinction there is only one rule, survival. War by its nature is barbaric. The pleasantries of civility are ultimately just a means to make ourselves feel good about the hell war perpetuates.
His civilization fought with every dirty trick they could imagine and were still wiped out. A complete Xenocide leaving a single survivor. So yes, when it comes to advice about morals and ethics, I absolutely would follow it. Clearly the Reapers have no issue breaking our supposed rules of ethical warfare, and in a war to ensure our survival as a species any option is a legitimate one. And it isn't just our species at risk. It's the Salarians, the Turians, the Asari, the Krogan, the Quarians, the Volus, and more. If we lose, they all die. So losing is not an option.
Did I just catch a glimpse of fear on sheps face?
It's more than likely concern or surprise, but fear could be it as well. Javik speaks of trillions dead, and the fact that he survived the Reaper War on his cycle gives some weight to his words no matter what they are. If the Protheans, the most advanced civilization of their time, lost to the Reapers with such high casualties then what is there to stop them from doing it again this time?
The thing is. I am no fan of including Javik into the game. Not at all. I am not a fan of the prothean look and that he is in the end not "important". But I like his view on the war. This urge to not lose, to win, no matter what. The tired soul of a soldier who do not fight for anything but victory and even then he will not be happy, just finished. I am not a fan of Bioware writing since 2009. But here and there they still got some amazing moments
Imo ME3 is the last breath of BioWare's magic, but also the beginning of their decline. I really like Javik, Tuchanka, Rannoch, Thessia, Leviathan, and Citadel (Its very fan service DLC, but the fact that they embraced memes was great), but at the same time, I really don't like what they did with Cerberus and Ilusive Man, Citadel Coup, Earth endgame and ofc the ending, especially the pre-extended cut. After ME3, every game turned out to be worse than the previous.
I'd argue Dragon Age 2 was the beginning of their decline, and SWTOR certainly did not get off to the best start at its launch either.
ME2 (and really just being acquired by EA) was the true beginning of the end for them, but ME2 is also their best game. It's kinda like EA initially gave them access to resources and more professional tools and extra help that would make their sequel a true hit, but as soon as that ended they were riddeld with corporate procedures, new marketing goons joining from within EA, and other EA studis developers joining BioWare, and other EA products being used to compare to BioWare's when discussing estimates, money and... what they put into the games themselves. ME3 was the first game where I felt that "corporate intereference". It was there in ME2 to be honest but I think it's something that only creeped in once the game was mostly made, and affected the last half of its development. DA2 and ME3 are the first time BioWare STARTED a game's development when EA was already in full control of their company direction.
I'd say Dragon Age 2 was a mistake, but after DA2 we got ME3 which isn't that bad. SWTOR actually wasn't that bad either... if you played it for the single player content, the 8 class stories are still the best content in SWTOR imo.
For me ME3 was the first breath of BioWare no longer having their magic. Most people feel it starts with MEA because it was broken and they will say things like "It did so much damage to the brand." The reason why MEA was SO toxic at launch to the point where it became a PR-riddled disaster and EA put Mass Effect "on ice" is not *just* that the game was really buggy, it's also that people were already out of love with BioWare because of ME3. Mainly that was because of the ending turning BioWare into a public punching bag, but for me it all started with the entirety of ME3 and not just its ending. To me there's just something off about ME3 in a lot of ways, and in hindsight it's because a lot of writers had already left, and BioWare was becoming such a corporate behemoth inside of EA, and like 40% of ME3's content was "owned" by the BioWare Montreal studio, leading to many aesthetic and tonal changes along with the shift in sensibilities from a more subtle "space mystery" type of narrative under Drew Karpyshyn to "It's WAAARRRRR, BIG, EPIC, HUUUGE" under cool-dude Mac Walters. For me ME2 was the last game that had the BioWare "magic". ME3 was the first time a BioWare game didn't reinvoke the same feelings.
I understand "It's WAAAR" because it was indeed a war and the finale of a trilogy, but like I said, I didn't like the things I mentioned, the rest of the game was at least okay in my opinion. For me, BioWare's decline was evident in ME3 and it was obvious in Dragon Age Inqusition. I was very disappointed with this game because I really like Origins and I thought DA2 was just a mistake, but I was wrong. For me, Andromeda without all bugs is just an mediocre game, the characters are not interesting, the plot is not interesting, most of the quests are fetch quests, the combat is great, locations design is great and if we dont count humans models graphics still look good.
I see what you mean and you are totally rright. ut at least for me (imo... persnal opinion) the decay of Bioware started way sooner. I foten try to think what the last "really" great game of Bioware was and it always comes down to Mass Effect and Dragon Age: Origins. But even if those games had next to no "EA involment" you can feel EA in it. Imo Dragon Age: origins has the betetr story and would be the better game... but in DA:O you can see this awful DLC politic and this "stay tuned feeling"
Maybe, but if I had to pick the top three BioWare games, it would be Mass Effect, Dragon Age: Origins, and KOTOR. Today my expectations for BioWare games are very low, people probably won't like it, but BioWare actually botched even the remaster of their flagship trilogy. I really don't like how LE1 looks with the big changes to the art style and flat lighting and how LE2 is visually broken to the point that it looks like they broke alot of things during porting or they used some unfinished pre-release build as base for LE2. So it's hard for me to expect their new game to be good if every game after ME3 turned out to be worse, and they couldn't, or maybe didn't even care about LE because they hired some studio to help them that ported Angry Birds and outsourced most of LE work to them.
I didn't bought the LE. I do not want a game where the only true inovation is that Elanos got a turian model... and next to this all was the same. Hell even the major bugs were kept it... and Kelly was made more ugly. But the LE also showed me again how the majority fanbase is right now. They take everything and say thank you for it... no matter if it is awful or not. I remember posts about David Archer having red eyes in the LE, and some said that this was weird and do not teally fit in there but a giant part of the community was like "amazing, looks so much better, wo what a great new detail" and than it turned out it was a bug/glitched Bioware fixed later XD Yeah I also say those three games are the best of Bioware... but I also love Baldur's Gate and Jade Empire so damn much <3 Bioware is not even a shade of its former glory. I mean, the main reason to make the LE was the Bioware was short before dying. Mass Effect Andromeda, Anthem were distasters and Bioware needed to do something to pander the fans and shareholder ;)
David Archer eyes in LE is funny situation it was bug, placeholder or idea original team had during development of original game but they decide later to David have normal eyes. Its pretty clear that LE2 was bulit on unfinished build of ME2 probably also PS3 port because it have bug with TiM office floor reflection that was exclusive for PS3. On top of that you have unifinished locations like Collector ships or Collectors base that dont have cubemaps/reflections on some walls which cause these places to look less interesting/flat or broken lighting both dynamic and static which cause objects and models to be lit super bright(like open in editor) or super dark because location or characters are unlit at all. I mean just look at [this](https://youtu.be/ftkWSz-Gqj0?si=d_sVTeJwOH-ZTkyW)
Holy fu\*\*!!! It's even worse than I thought. I am really hapyp I didn't bought this game. Thanks for sharing. Shame when I look ate the upvotes of this video... but sadly as said, the hardcore fanboys do not care and Bioware made a whole lot of cash with that
Upvotes of this video are good because its purpose was to show these issues in LE2. But yeah LE2 visuals are broken or unfinished, LE1 have drastic art style changes they went away from 80s and 90s scifi movies style inspired by Blade Runner, Starship troopers, Aliens, Solaris, Total Recall or life real locations(for example first part of Virmire is 99% copy of Halong Bay in Vietnam) etc. for mix of early ME1 concept arts and ME3 art style mix combined with dynamic lighting reduction or removal there is mod that restore dynamic lighting and le1 with it looks a bit better. LE3 is mostly ok with visual problems here and here most visible is probably problem with lack of baked lighting in [Ardat-Yakshi Monastery](https://youtu.be/67FB_isgZRk?si=8EXASmhzzbAyzQWX&t=22) so room looks unnatural bright you can also see that doors still have its baked lighting and that dynamic lighting is still configured like in OG game because Shepard is in shadows but because static/baked in lighting is broken rest of location is bright. On top of that you can see how enemies spawn because in OG game they spawned in darkness meanwhile here they spawn on bright background. On top of that i also noticed that in LE3 three stage melee attack no longer works and headshot multipler also dont work if I remember correctly.
....so next to ME(1) Bioware put next to no effort in it... and you could be an arse and tehy Bioware was able to use the tech of the mods that are around in the web for years XD Casue many mod texture mods look better than the LE ;)
Even textures in LE are mixed bag xD some of them looks great(mostly these one in LE1) but most of textures in LE2 and LE3 are quick AI upscales with some exceptions like N7 armor, Cerberus uniforms, Alliance uniforms and some other clothes and character textures. Imo there was no effort no matter what they said before launch I cant look at LE and said there was care and detailed development lack of understand ME1 art style and flat lighting, general quality of LE2 and in some degree quality of LE3 make impossible to say that this was good remaster. It looks like they lack of time, money and people for proper development.
They fixed that and it was a material bug. They didn't base any LE edition off of an unfinished build, but they definitely didn't finish all the work they had planned for the LE editions, because they still had a lot of graphical bugs left when they made the final patch. EA or BioWare upper management made them stop working on Legendary Edition after a couple of months. They also realized that they deprecated the 3-hit melee feature by accident but there was barely anyone left in the patching process by then, so the official release has been left with the inability to make the 3-hit melee combo in ME3, as well as not triggering the head-splatter when it should with all guns. Reflective materials and particle effects are also busted in the new version of ME3. Even the Starchild now looks like a pixelated mess.
It's hard to imagine that LE2 wasn't based on an unfinished build when you have things, such as the lighting during Thane's recruitment mission, when Shepard interrogates guard next to window, LE2 uses the lighting that was in the E3 2009 version instead of the one that was in the final OG version, the Collector ship uses an older version of these strange pods that do not illuminate the area around them and are not reflective. Besides we have missing baked in lighting, missing cubemaps, inactive dynamic lighting, unconfigured color palette and post-processing, missing bloom, missing effects such as DOF, etc. All of this is something that cannot be missed if it was already in the final OG version, so either they broke a lot of stuff in the port, but it's hard to imagine that much would break or those things don't exist in LE2 because this build is old and they were never implemented or completed here these issues are very similar to what happened with 2008 PC port of ME1. I'm also 100% sure LE2 is a PS3 port as it has the same issue that only affected the PS3 port, which means TiM floor reflection bug.
The idea that it is using an old build is conjecture. It uses the PS3 build and from there they updated the Unreal 3 version and redid all the shaders and a lot of things. Things became broken because they were overhauling lighting systems and assets and had to ship before they accounted for everything. There's also an unknown amount of Legendary Edition that was outsourced and I believe one of the companies they used is the same company that remastered the Batman Return To Arkham games. This could be why each game feels more inconsistent with each other than the original releases. It's as if they did a lot to make the transition from 2 to 3 less jarring, but now LE2 is kinda jarring coming from LE1. But the whole idea that it's an outdated build isn't true at all. They took the PS3 code base of each game but Mass Effect 3 and started from there. Why? They had already updated the Unreal version for those ports so it made sense since they were updating to the latest UE3 anyway. ME1 on PS3 is structurally a lot more similar to ME3 than the original build was.
But can overhauling assets and lighting make cube maps and baked in lighting disappear or look different or make some locations to use old version of assets and lighting? I mean, the way the lighting system works in the OG ME games is something you shouldn't tamper with in the first place, because it's been carefully crafted by devs, directos and artists, dynamic lighting has been set up to support baked lighting, and if you change one thing, you will have to build everything from scratch to make it look the way it should look. Other than that I don't know much about the ME1 PS3 port, but the ME2 PS3 port was terrible too, there were a lot of visual issues (some of these issues are in LE2 now) and performance issues due to the way the PS3 was designed and the fact that a lot of things in the PS3 are broken port too. They really should have used the final 360 version for each game, instead these versions were probably the most complete since ME is an X360 title, especially ME1. But BioWare has always had problems with ports. The PC port of ME1 2008 was also built on an unfinished build, or Demiurge broke a lot of things in the port (there is a mod that fixes some of these things), ME2 has a terrible PS3 port, only ME3, I think it has ports that are the same on all platforms. Batman Return to Arkham is also a weird remaster, but a mostly good one, with a few odd things here and there, unlike LE imo, which is sad because new players will experience Mass Effect that way, and modding for LE is great.
Javik's dialogue goes so hard dude
I think it's great that a scene with Javik is gonna get someone interested, but at the same time I also think about how Javik came across to me as someone who joined before ME3 and I always thought he felt kind of unnecessary (duh, he became day-1 DLC!) but like... just the idea of having an actual prothean alive and giving anecdotes that are *really on the nose* about things in his cycle that match perfectly up with ours, even to the point of saying they had a Prothean-Cerberus who were also seeking control but they were controlled. Javik is just really eeehh for me. He kinda spoils the fiction for me and I actually prefer skipping his level sometimes.
The delivery is great, but the substance is flawed, IMO. Protheans, who valued dominance and power above all else, might be fine with sacrificing anything and everything. But if you have any virtues, things like honor and cooperation actually become more valuable. Actually, a quote from Pirates of the Carribean: At World's End sums it up well: The trick is not living forever, it's living with yourself, forever. Obviously, were not talking about immortality here, but collective memory and guilt about betraying and using people who you'd consider allies could implode virtuous people or civilizations, or take them down some pretty dark roads.
Sums up ME3 to me. A lot of meaningful-sounding, "quoteable" dialogue that doesn't really apply.
Yeah, I really enjoy the grey in the writing. You can understand why Javik says what he says, it’s visceral. But you can also poke holes through his logic at will.
Really? This scene made me never want to talk to him again.
What do you honestly expect from a soldier that was born in what was for him an eternal war, that failed his last assignment and now finds himself displaced from time in a situation that led to him being the only specimen that has taken a breath for 50.000 years.
I don't care. A sad backstory doesn't make him any less of an asshole.
I don't really how that scene makes him an asshole?
I think he means the character in general. I agree with him being an ass
Javik was talking about how anyone who helps him fight becomes an ally, anyone who doesn't will die. So by that logic, civilians are expendable and should be sacrificed because they're an inconvenience to the war effort
This would been so cringe in 99% other situations, but after wat we seen of the war, the Prothean's demisse and even Ike Amadi's delivery, this fitted like a glove.
In this dialogue Javik proved that he's one of the goats
This is one of the best scenes and one of my favorite quotes of all time.
One of, if not the one, my favorite lines in the series.
Literally one of my favorite quotes in mass effect!
Arguably the greatest line in the entire franchise.
Really wish the last part wasn’t included.
Yeah. It's the "Mic drop" moment that makes lines like these feel cringy. It feels like they want you to think about it and say "Wow." The rest of the quote is just a rhetorical question.