So NOT cowtowing is seen as antagonistic?

 

I'm pretty sure you've ranted about it before, but damn it sure is a shame that, between ME1 and 2, the Terminus Systems changed from a loose coalition of Council-independent "nations," to Aria, her playground on Omega, and the Blood Pack, Blue Suns, and Eclipse.

It would be better if there were more planets introduced like Zorya (the planet that Zaeed's loyalty mission took place on), where the governing body pretty much was the Blue Suns. Maybe something to show that those gangbangers were a legitimate power instead of fodder. But god, then we get stupid shit like the Blue Suns' leader being Vido fuck up Santiago.

 

While Aria is awesome, I agree. Barring Shepard in ME3 she is the single most powerful being in the Universe. We were promised a Delphi League-esque thing, but got All mighty Aria and the 3 stooges.

 

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8949791/1/Mass-Effect-The-First-War


This is a guilty pleasure fic. It's human wank to the max. There is an OC gary-stu, who while not having a hugely prominent role like most gary-stus still is a 'perfect' character. Yet I can't stop reading it for all the bad ass moments. It reads like a political/philosophical text on humanities relationship to war.

Yet as I said, for some bizarre reason I still like this story.

The guy already has a sequel in the works. Of the self-contained pro-human fics though, I think this one is quite good.

So on a regular library scale: 2.5/5

On a guilty pleasure scale? 4.5/5.

 

iirc Mass Effect: The First War still has Shepard in it, though he's only played a small part so far. Other stories don't include Shepard and it makes me lose interest.

I really like reading about the first contact scenarios, but I want to see Shepard too. Any recs?

 

None that I've seen. They all suck. Again, the Halo ME fic looked like it was going to be a great first contact fic, but balls got dropped extremely hard when the actual contact happened.

I'm extremely tempted to write a short drabble that is nothing 'but' the first contact encounter. Do it some justice.

Would any of you be interested?

 

Interested, in what, reading it? Brainstorming?

Define doing some justice, then we'll talk.

Which pattern of first contact would you use?

 

The sequel to The First War, called the Saltorian War features Shepard as a much more prominent character. The Saltorian War is following a lot of his younger years it seems in relation to this new version of humanity. Quite frankly he becomes even more badass in my mind because of it.

 

Both, I suppose.

Doing an accurate and realistic portrayal of a first contact scenario between humanity and an alien species from the Mass Effect universe, that doesn't descend into Mary Sue wankery or dickwaving.

To keep things from being simple and 'cheating,' I'd say no Asari allowed for the initial contact. If you wanted it to be peaceful, you could go for Salarians, maybe some Turians as well. That way, it can be more interesting, as the two sides are forced to attempt to communicate without being able to actually speak to each other.

Or you could throw a curve ball and make the first species they meet be the Batarians. Or even the Geth. The Geth could be very interesting.

You'd also have to decide if you wanted to keep this totally within Mass Effect canon, or if this was 'another' humanity.

So tech level, contact location, who they contact, and what humanity this is are all questions that need to be answered.

There's no reason to limit it to merely one scenario, either. If we're just doing a short, we could do a series of shorts that cover multiple possible scenarios. Unconnected, but working on the similar vein of the theme of first contact.

Honestly, I'm kind of a fan of it being accidential. Space is a really big place. It's entirely possible for entire galactic civilizations to exist in your back yard without you realizing it. This is especially true of the Mass Effect universe, where Mass Relays are the only dependable means of moving large distances across the galaxy.

If the Council walks into this prepared, they're going to send elite Turians with really big guns, Asari diplomats, Salarian scientists, probably a Specter or two. And that's no fun. We know how that would turn out.

It's must more interesting to me if it's some prospector or scavenger group who runs into them, or some scientific survey on a documented but unexplored planet that happens to bump into a human astronaut doing the same thing they're doing.

I can just imagine some sort of accident that leaves both parties stranded on this relatively unexplored alien world, and they can't talk to each other, but they have no choice but to try and communicate and work together, because between the two of them they have enough bits to make a working ship; it's just neither group could figure out enough to do it alone. So you have these two groups that are forced to deal with and work together with aliens they can't talk to and didn't know existed to try and get off of some backwater primeval jungle world before they run out of food or get killed by the wildlife.

You could make a mini-fic out of that. It could be really fun.

 

We should probably move to some other forum and thread if this keeps expanding.

Batarians were done in Renegade Reinterpretations, though arguably, it is not a story, much more of a timeline of events. (RR)

There was, heh, First Contact, which had a very reasonable and fun first meet up scenario, even if it cheated with asari soon afterwards and went somewhere very much less readable in a few more chapters. (FC)

Also, for all it's weirdness and further slightly better than average developlment, I ended up liking The Meek Shall Inherit the Galaxy. (TMSITG)


All these three mentions have an interesting, different than canon premise of the meet up, and set up a scene for further changes down the line.

They start getting stale as these changes are being attempted to introduce. With the possible exclusion for RR, which fails in other areas.


It is, probably, what you are trying to preach here - a story that is in and of itself complete, but deals with the first contact scenario. Using only the bit that most first contact stories handle well and forgoing the bit where they fail, in my opinion, is a bad idea that just sounds good. (It could be done right, though. Many bad things can be written to be good.)


We (the readers) enjoy these kind of different plays on the scenario precisely because of the changes it brings.


I chose the three examples, because I think a good first contact story should excel in three major points.

First, it should have an interesting set up for the first contact, something that reads differently. FC has that bit. It's the contact that happens earlier, and it focuses on the some parts you mention (if cheating a bit with asari), where humans and aliens meet without planning, and without shots fired instantly, trying to do whatever possible without mucking it up from both sides.

Most first contact stories focus on the different outcome on the war with turians, and that has gotten stale to the point of a dead horse. Here, FC shines. In it's first couple of chapters, it is a better story than most others are. Sadly, there's a third chapter.

Second, it must have characters we recognize, since reading about a bunch of OC's is less engaging in and of itself. At the very least, there's Ashley's father, and at the top of including everything includable, there is Hanna Shephard and Admiral Hacket - as used in TMSITG.

Although, there are quite a few alien characters that could be involved due to their lifespans allowing them to. (Wrex or Javik are the first ones that spring to mind and they would ruin everything.)


Third, and this is where your short story concept lacks, a first contact story has to show us what will happen, answer at least partially to the question about the future. At best, it would show us entirely different path, and explain why it would happen so. It would dwell into the butterflies, and at it's best, it would explain how and why the possible experience of the game-plots would change. This is the area RR has plunged into and even if it failed at being a story, the changes were enough to carry the weight.

Still, even at short stories, you should leave the different path wide open.


In conclusion, I still have loads to say on the matter, and I think the main issue to debate on is finding the correct balance. Not of the two meeting forces in terms of power, but rather of the three elements I mentioned.



As for the last part, very Enemy Mine of you to suggest it. It could work as a potential scenario, even if I'd be doubtful it would be a perfect choice. Granted, it would be an unique one in the ME first contact scenario forest.



On Geth, I think Roarian has done Geth, though. Something like that, at least. Well, almost that, since the Geth were/are yet to appear on the version I know. So... potentially, he will have done that. Maybe.



Anyway, This post is getting away from me, though, so I might continue on another time, say, when I'm not at work.

If someone is planning to write something on first contact scenarios in ME, I'm up for some brainstorming, just try to catch me on my lax schedule of peeking into irc, or create a group or thread or pm's or something.

 

Completely forgot about this series! Essentially it's First Contact occurring between the Quarians and Humanity. The thing that makes it different, is that the Quarians arrive during the middle of the Second World War and appear to side with Germany.


https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8213106/1/Uplifted

Summary: Desperate for an end to the exile, now in its forty seventh year, the quarian Admiralty Board decides on one last audacious plan to help them destroy the geth. However, January 1942 in occupied Russia might not be the best place for first contact with humanity...

 

I disagree completely. The entire reason most first contact fics flounder beyond a certain point is because they stop being interesting. Beyond a certain point of measured aftermath, nobody is interested in hearing about what happens next, because all the interesting things are going to happen twenty to fifty years later, i.e. when Mass Effect starts.

You can make a story about humans having first contact, and you can make a story about what happens once things get settled down. But no one cares or is interested in the things that happen in between.

There's a gap in the timeline between humanity meeting the rest of the galaxy and "the cool shit happening" that is significant enough that you can't make much of a story to bridge the gap. To use your own point, it is not that it cannot be done, but it is difficult to do well, few to no examples of it being done well can be provided, and it's arguably not worth the time involved.

I would rather have a story twenty chapters long that devotes each couple of chapters to a different and unconnected first contact scenario than have a single first contact story twenty chapters long that starts shitting it's pants past chapter thirteen because we're run out of things to talk about and we're still at least ten years away in-universe from believably shoving Shepard into the thick of hunting down Saren.

Half the reason Renegade Reinterpretation failed as a story is because it kept trying to extrapolate further and further out, and eventually everything that happened stopped being something you could relate to. Granted, the other reason is because Fool is the edgiest fucking edgelord to ever don a fedora and trenchcoat, he decided to 'tell' the 'story' like he was writing a timeline report on historical events that happened a hundred years ago, and he wrote the majority of the fic after snorting his own farts for inspiration, but the other reason is because it tried to keep going long past the point where it should have ended, and started floundering as a result.

Unless you're willing to deviate massively from established canon and create events to fill the void in the story, you aren't going to be able to surmount that wall. It can be done, but not by anyone who is writing a story "for the sake of the first contact scenario." The story would have to start at first contact but exist for another purpose, with the first contact scenario being nothing more than a stepping stone to reach that purpose.

I'm talking about fics that fall into the former category, not the latter.

 

Ah, but that kinda was my point. We want to see the future. Just not the one that authors want to show.

Not the immediate aftermath, which drags on, but rather, we want to see Shepard, and how the whole thing impacts her.

This is why the stories fail, not because they show us the future, but rather because they don't show us the future of our characters, of Shepard.

If they show us not the future we want to see, but rather choose to delve into the territory of "we know how this would end" and delay Shepard, they do stop being interesting.

I think the only one that reached Shepard era and was good, was our Agayek's X-com crossover. That said, I think I'm going to have to reread it since I've remembered of it's existence.

EDIT: Here, let's move to Fanfiction Discussion.

 

Hey guys, Bioware has issued a survey to learn more on the fans' expectations.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-07-15-bioware-surveys-fans-for-mass-effect-4-input

 

Bioware just put out a survey basically asking what we want from Mass Effect 4 and I was wondering what people actually do want from it.

For me its the story, I think they have an opportunity to steer away from the soldier type character. With the ending where all the Mass Relays are destroyed we could play as a Salarian scientist sent out with a team of his choosing to go out and try and fix the major relays.

This way we can visit different planets and alien cultures where we'll have to convince them to help and come back to the fold to those who have gotten used to being alone and don't want to be part of the whole galactic civilizations again. Reclaim vital planets or resources, hunt for other alternatives to travel.

Hopefully the main character should be an alien or we should have the choice to choose an alien as our character.

 

Retcon ME3? Except Tuchanka. And Rannoch.

 

I did the survey a few minutes ago, but I have to wonder how much impact this survey will actually have on the game. They asked only a few questions, and not all of them were even related to ME4.

Well, for the one question that actually seemed to matter I chose 'story' as the point having the highest impact on me.

 

They didn't even ask if we wanted the characters to matter as a major factor of the game.

That whole survey is a matryoshka doll of bad omens.

"Do you or do you not working for the gaming industry or are you a gaming journalist?"

Fucking subtle, Bioware.

 

Here's my whole thought process I posted somewhere else about Mass Effect "4":

"Hmmm.....I liked the Mass Effect series...I really did. But what made that series great was the story. Gameplay was fun and the world created was amazing, but I feel like it is finished. My reasoning?

Firstly, the story of Mass Effect had the largest threat I had seen up until that point. That sense of enemies who were eternal and unbeatable is going to be nearly impossible to rival. Anything else will feel cheap in comparison. If you have things occur in Shepard's part of the Galaxy or focus on SHepard, you are left with so many variables and such. Also as I said, it would be nearly impossible to have an enemy worse than the Reapers. All the high intensity risk is over.

Secondly, I have heard rumors about this just taking place in a completely different galaxy. It might follow the same rules and such...but if it is in an entirely different place (where it would not makse sense to have a human race and highly unlikely to meet any of the races we know), then why even call it Mass Effect?

The only option I could see making any sense would be a prequel. Which in my personal opinion I dislike. In a prequel you already know what is going to happen and it destroys all sense of risk. Your character won't be able to do anything as great as Shepard did...etc.

Just my thoughts. If Bioware can really wow me though and explain a story direction that is enjoyable/makes sense, consider me an almost definite buy."

 

Why call it Mass Effect if it takes place in a different galaxy? Because of money, obviously. The same reason why movie theaters are full of sequels, remakes and adaptions. Name recognition boosts sales.

But I suspect that it will not be in a different galaxy. They won't dare. They will reuse the same alien races, maybe even some of the same characters. This is a business and they want high sales. It's the only reason why they would make Mass Effect 4 instead of creating a new original game setting.

On the survey, I wrote in characterization as an important part of the series. I actually didn't like the story in the 2nd and 3rd game. It was full of plot holes and felt like a cheap way to get the characters from one action set piece to the next.