As a fan of the 40k setting, I do not. A lot of shared universes have their share of crap, and I would sooner excise it from my headcanon than respect an author for making stupid decisions.
I agree. There’s a different between having the right to do something, and actually doing it right. Shared universes in particular are susceptible to this, because quite often the people doing one section don’t communicate the themes and ideas well to another.
Mass Effect 2, for instance.
Mass Effect isn’t a shared universe.
Every video game is a shared universe, unless it was actually created by just one or two people. And no A-list title in decades has been made so.
Yeah, but that’s true of… almost everything that’s not a book (and even some of those) from the past 20 years. I’d say that if you maintain a consistent lead writer or group of lead writers that have creative control over the story, it counts as “not shared.” It’s only when you get into comic book land of “every 6 months some new guy gets 100% creative control over storyline decisions” that you get into the wackiness of “shared universes.”
Isn’t that what went wrong with Mass Effect? ME1, part of ME2 and the novels had Drew Karpyshyn as the head writer, and they were good. Part of ME2, ME3 and Deception were written by others, and they sucked horribly.
Most people are not going to replay the game for the storylines when it requires repeating 80% or so of the content. The personal story is a small fraction of the leveling process, I personally got a 50 a 41 and a 32 and simply couldn’t force myself slog through the same content any more.
The fact that you don’t like the implications of a logical, self-consistent principle doesn’t mean it’s wrong.
Except that right in ME2 you started getting incresingly nonsensical bull. I saw almost all the plot twists coming a mile away… except for the final one which still makes no sense.
When people talk about shared universe, they’re usually talking about something like Spiderman, where “depending on the writer” he has this or that power or this or that personality. Most TV shows and games have multiple writers, yes, but they’re at the same time and they fall under a generally consistent “story bible” that is maintained by a single lead writer (or a committee for some shows). This is essentially a single-writer universe since they have veto power and do consistency checks, it’s just that it’s economically and temporally infeasible to write it all themselves. It doesn’t share the “depending on whether we’re talking about 1996 Spiderman, 1998 Spiderman, or 1998 Spiderman’s cameo in a Thor comic” that we get when most people talk about “shared universes” which is a lot more of a “Wild West” where any writer can write and thing they damn well please, where it doesn’t have to be consistent with one person’s vision or really any “story bible” aside from basic guidelines.
Sure, semantically it’s a shared universe, but these large team productions don’t maintain the same qualities that what is traditionally called a “shared universe” medium typically share. You can go ahead and call all video games, movies, and TV shared universes despite the fact that they generally operate under a shared vision, but it really hides the differences between that kind of “shared medium” and the kind of “shared medium” like the Star Wars expanded universe or the Marvel universe that people normally mean when they use the term.
Since I am treating it as essentially eight single player games, I do wonder what I will do when I finish them all but at my current rate that may not be for a year from now.
Count up all the people who worked on Mass Effect series just with regards to plot events alone.
So? Jragon’s description is right on. You have totally mangled the concept of a “shared universe.” Your definition is not how the phrase is used anywhere else. You are wrong, please deal with it.
Thats quite true
There are also two separate factions to play with different non-story quests, so you could get two characters to 50 without repeating a single mission if you want to.
It’s fine if you don’t care for the game, everyone has different tastes in MMOs. But it’s silly to complain that SWTOR doesn’t have enough content only three months after launch when you can’t possibly have seen it all yet (and by your own admission, haven’t).
I know exactly what the concept means. I’m saying it logically and consistently applies. The Mass Effect series has had numerous writers who quote clearly didn’t agree on some fundamentals, despite having a very short run.
Being small is no bar to being divided.
Do you even realize that games have directors just like films and that all story are ultimately the decision of one person? I repeat… YOU. ARE. WRONG.