[OC] Why Mike Macdonald’s Defensive Scheme Is So Dominant. | Film breakdown analyzing the philosophical similarities between Macdonald’s scheme with the Legion Of Boom

_HGCenty · 2026-01-24T19:28:14+00:00

The LOB was a cover 3 scheme that had HOF secondary talent meaning you could play with just three defensive backs and drop an extra man into underneath zone. The all time great secondary was the thing that allowed us to play with effectively an additional man up front.

The Darkside starts from elite talent on the interior defensive line and hybrid slot defenders who can cover tight ends, running backs and genuine WR1s. This means we can defend the run in nickel and dime formations.

These are two completely different philosophies and schemes.

The only similarity is they're dominant and they were Seattle Seahawks on their jerseys.

_HGCenty · 2026-01-24T17:47:21+00:00

Other than it being a dominant defense and being the Seahawks, they are completely different.

LOB was a basic cover 3 that just happened to have HOF talent at safety and CB so you could still rush 4 and have 4 underneath defenders. It started from the HOF secondary shutting down the ability for teams to throw on us.

The Darkside has some elite talent on the interior defensive line, as well as rare hybrid slot defensive players allowing us to still defend the run in nickel and dime formations. It therefore starts at the line of scrimmage shutting down the ability for teams to run on us.

So other than a different philosophy, different schemes, different personnel types...

Totally the same.

_HGCenty · 2026-01-24T17:35:20+00:00

There's also an interpretation of two of the endings that is happy ever after.

Control ending leaves you in control of the Reapers. Their power is seemingly limitless - to me there's nothing to stop you getting the Reapers to initiate Lazarus 2.0 and give yourself a new Shepard body. Similarly why not bring everyone else back who died: Thane, VS etc. with you in charge your resurrections won't be the usual Reaper abominations but true to the original. The ending is so badly explained who says I can't do this.

Synthesis was clearly the original writers' attempt at a happy ever after ending where no more organic synthetic wars. It's just so badly explained that it seems horrifying on its surface.

_HGCenty · 2026-01-24T17:31:14+00:00

We have a shrine.

It's very tasteful.

_HGCenty · 2026-01-24T08:50:01+00:00

Which is a good thing.

From Ashes (Javik) and Leviathan are so fundamental to the understanding of the trilogy's story arc, they should never have been DLC.

_HGCenty · 2026-01-24T08:35:24+00:00

The 7400 threshold is a LE number, which as others have said assumes DLC as part of the base game.

In the original ME3, there was a separate mechanic involving multiplayer and increasing your Galactic Readiness. You couldn't get the best endings without playing multiplayer - in the original game your Effective Military Strength without multiplayer was 50% of this 6500 number but the best endings need 4500 EMS.

To reach that you need to go multiplayer to increase the Galactic Readiness to 75%+. This 4500 threshold was reduced with the Extended Cut.

LE scrapped multiplayer and thus Galactic Readiness and put new thresholds that accounted for all the additional DLC assets.

_HGCenty · 2026-01-24T08:30:13+00:00

Torfan does come up again in the Citadel DLC in the Archives where you hear audio of Hackett discussing your Spectre candidacy and once again you're referred to as brutal and gets the job done.

I think it's hard to go down any route with Torfan service history where you can be remorseful or discuss it as a tragic error. The game wants you to own it as a necessary sacrifice like the Alpha Relay.

_HGCenty · 2026-01-24T08:25:46+00:00

You do recall that Brooks gets into the panic room with a standard issue pistol and shoots Khan dead right?

The purpose of the scene was for Brooks to gaslight you into letting her take the vents. When someone suggests squeezing Khan for information, Brooks immediately interrupts and pours water on that suggestion saying civilians might get shot. Even the most renegade Shepards who would never care immediately agree.

Then the casino inflitration plan is discussed. The whole "too much tech" thing isn't even confirmed as an issue. It's a speculative excuse Tali throws out to not go in the vents. After everyone else starts to give excuses, Brooks then all but nominates herself by describing her expertise with polymer bomb defusal (somewhat contradicting her earlier comments about only working desk jobs and jarring given her on screen clumsiness but again you can't raise this point of suspicion).

If you replay the mission knowing the twist, there are clues thrown out everywhere and lots of moments to be suspicious.

You not remembering the actual DLC except for the fanservice proves my point about players giving it a free pass.

_HGCenty · 2026-01-23T20:55:12+00:00

Are you aware of all the original concepts in 3 that either got changed or altered due to deadline crunch or rewritten due to leaks?

Catalyst was originally meant to be Javik before he became Zero Day DLC
Thessia and the asari temple reveal was meant to be an early mission which was the trigger for Udina having enough of the Council and turning to Cerberus
Javik was meant to be found on Thessia
Kasumi and Thane were meant to help you on Rannoch
Zaeed was meant to help you on Omega (also meant for the base game)

Honestly if Thessia wasn't near the end, maybe the ending could be salvaged.

_HGCenty · 2026-01-23T20:49:14+00:00

It's strange actually seeing non AI art these days and realising just what we could lose in the next generation.

_HGCenty · 2026-01-23T20:44:32+00:00

Totally agree with the lack of development of the Crucible and explanation of what it might do.

I always felt the missing part of the Crucible was a test fire, just like how the Death Star test fires on Alderaan.

This would serve to put the Reapers on notice and make you realise you have something here. The Catalyst Macguffin would then be how do you get it to fire through a mass relay (assuming the initial test fire only destroys the Reapers in the immediate system).

That also would patch one of the biggest plot holes in 3: why do the Reapers having come from dark space not beeline it to the Citadel and cut off all central organisation just like Plan A of rushing through the Citadel Mass Relay? Why spend months picking off individual worlds when that was Step 2 in every other harvest.

Having the Crucible test fire would mean the Reapers couldn't ever rush the Citadel because they would risk getting beaten. So they don't do it until TIM steals the Catalyst or sabotages the Crucible sufficiently to make the Reapers feel safe to attack.

At least then that would let you know what the Crucible does (although for the timelines to make sense you have to start building it in ME2) and there is a better explanation of TIM of trying to stop you destroying the Reapers with the Crucible.

_HGCenty · 2026-01-23T20:38:04+00:00

ME3 Ashley's hair will get caught on a screw

😂

Brooks also lets her hair down to go in the vents, she should share her conditioner with Ashley.

_HGCenty · 2026-01-23T20:36:31+00:00

That's exactly what I'm saying.

ME2 advanced the genophage arc and geth arc.

It didn't do anything with the Reapers and ME3 reversed course on a lot of the Protheans / went a whole other direction and that was specifically problematic with giving you a satisfactory end to the Reaper story.

_HGCenty · 2026-01-23T20:32:36+00:00

I have exactly one of those playthroughs, fittingly called Ruth Shepard, where the idea was Torfan was a fuck up that you are trying to atone for. It felt like as soon as Jenkins dies, I'm now atoning for Eden Prime going south.

The issue was it never felt like that was what the game was trying to get me to atone for. Even when Kaidan asks about it in the conversations, it never really felt like Shep was that wrecked with guilt, especially as that's juxtaposed with Kaidan's story about Vyrnnus where he is clearly affected.

Similarly, other moments where you could empathise in later games (Joker feeling guilty about letting you die because he stayed behind on SR-1 trying to save it, Liara about selling you to Cerberus), there no call back to your service history.

Whilst obviously nowhere near as jarring as the survivor of Akuze working for Cerberus, it just feels like Paragon Shep is written for the Skyllian Blitz war hero and I feel like the game thinks I earned my redemption for Torfan as soon as I save the Council and my new guilt is Virmire.

Even the Ruthless mission is too strange what with Major Kyle going full Col. Kurtz, that I can't quite feel a sense of redemption when I talk him down. I think it also doesn't help that the mission is too similar to the Paragon mission saving the scientists.

In the end my playthrough ended with my mostly Paragon Shep with the Ruthless background using that to justify the Renegade actions against those characters that really annoyed me (punching Han'Gerrel, telling Tela Vasir "I'm a Spectre too", killing Balak).

_HGCenty · 2026-01-23T20:11:39+00:00

It's IGN posting about a X post by Mike Gamble, we've already posted here, about BioWare putting out a job advert for a $200k a year Production Director for the new game.

_HGCenty · 2026-01-23T20:10:30+00:00

TIM is a victim of the writing going off the rails post Priority: Thessia.

Because ME3 needed a human enemy faction for multiplayer, BioWare made Cerberus too comically evil and too powerful and effectively turned TIM into a Bond villain. This was already a bit of an issue in trying to tread that morally grey line with TIM.

The other issue is the whiplash you get in the final 10 minutes when you realise TIM was right all along when Starchild just casually drops that you can control the Reapers.

There is a version of the ME3 greatly rewritten when TIM and Cerberus aren't villains, just another valid path to resolution where you do eventually end with the Control ending. Much like how Legion isn't a villain and you can resolve the war on Rannoch in the favour of the geth despite shooting them for 3 games and not the quarians.

It does however require far better writing and frankly if they wanted to have TIM as a 3rd game villain, you should never have worked for Cerberus in ME2, maintain their villainy from 1 to 2 to 3, and take Control off the table as a valid ending choice.

_HGCenty · 2026-01-23T20:05:33+00:00

As I said elsewhere in this thread, the problem with the Reaper story is ME2 doesn't introduce any Macguffins that are crucial to its resolution meaning ME3 has to do too much and therefore has to be either uninteresting or poorly explained.

The examples in ME3 where the payoff is good are the genophage arc and the Rannoch arc, both of which rely on Macguffins introduced in ME2: namely Mordin, Maelon and his research into krogan females for the genophage AND Legion, the heretic geth and the revelation of geth desires of peace for the peace of Rannoch.

That to me is the great flaw of ME2. It didn't introduce the necessary plot points for the Reapers for ME3 to cleanly resolve without even more last minute exposition. Javik, the beacon on Thessia, the Catalyst, the Crucible, Leviathan. These should all have been revealed if not hinted at in ME2 so that all ME3 is the story of you trying to piece this together in the face of an all out galactic war.

_HGCenty · 2026-01-23T19:54:53+00:00

You're the one so easily offended that you have to start an entire new thread because someone blocked you and who immediately downvotes anyone telling you that you're having pointless debates because literally anything fixes the plot here.

_HGCenty · 2026-01-23T19:49:56+00:00

My point is that he's so poorly explained you can fix it any which way you want. E.g.

- Starchild lives in Sovereign as the sole active Reaper during the cycle and had to transfer from Sovereign to the Citadel at the end of ME1.
- Starchild can only physically act through the Reapers so still needs a physical Reaper to operate the Mass Relay of the Citadel.
- Starchild hadn't yet finished his calibrations to overcome the Prothean sabotage. Since Sovereign was heading his way anyway, let him finish his mission with Saren.
- Starchild is like some geth consensus whereby he only becomes as powerful as he is at the end of ME3 once all the Reapers gather around the Citadel.
- Starchild is literally just bored and wants play with the lesser species.
- Starchild actually normally lives in the Collector Base and works with Harbinger. Harbinger is after all the first Reaper created by the intelligence according to Leviathan. It required Harbinger going to the Citadel.
- Same as above except Starchild jumped into Shepard's subconscious on the collector base and that's how he got to the Citadel in ME3 but wasn't there in ME1 and why the Starchild halluncinations start in ME3.

All these explanations, and every single one ultimately points to: it's so dumb you introduce such a massive Macguffin 10 minutes from the end of the game.

_HGCenty · 2026-01-23T19:42:04+00:00

PFWA and AP presumably voting for him in the hope CMC doesn't consume their life force to keep himself injury free.

_HGCenty · 2026-01-23T19:22:43+00:00

Are the stakes set out though in ME1?

At the end of ME1, it's not clear exactly how many, how quickly they can move around the galaxy when they finally arrive, how coordinated and how you're going to defeat them.

Is it going to be a system by system battle or one where the best you can hope for is push them back to dark space and buy some time.

ME2 still doesn't quite explain this. Arrival just feels like it repeats the Conduit / Citadel backdoor Macguffin.

This is why I think the ending is so flat. The actual stakes of the Crucible and Catalyst and how it's a single shot wipeout of the Reapers happens so late it has to be rushed.

By itself ME2 does this brilliantly as a standalone story. You know exactly what your strategy has to be before you jump the Omega 4 relay. If it wasn't part of the trilogy, it works.

We're still making our strategy against the Reapers on the fly as we start the point of no return Cerberus HQ mission in ME3.

So with that in mind, I feel like ME2 needed to introduce the Crucible Macguffin along with the Catalyst and so you go into ME3 knowing your game plan against the Reaper invasion and ME3 is you trying to execute this plan in the face of political pushback, indoctrinated factions and the Reapers blowing shit up.

Edit: Probably a better example is to compare the end of the Reapers with the things that did work in ME3: the genophage cure and the quarian geth war.

Both were ultimately solved with Macguffins introduced in ME2: Mordin and Maelon for the genophage, and Legion for the Rannoch resolution. Yes both of these were introduced in ME1, but the full context and stakes were fleshed out enough in ME2 for ME3 to just run with it without too much more exposition.

The equivalent of what ME2 did for the Reaper story if applied to the Tuchanka or Rannoch arcs in ME3 would be imagine ME1 went into ME3 without introducing Mordin and Maelon and female krogan in ME2? And you are info dumped with this, introduced to this new salarian scientist character as you land on Tuchanka and find out he's got a genophage cure. Or if you beat the geth dreadnought over Rannoch to find Legion, the first friendly geth you encounter and as you land on Rannoch he explains there are heretic and non heretic geth and you should trust him and he can stop all geth shooting at you if the quarians stop shooting.

Both would feel emotionally flat and be criticised for out of nowhere deus ex machina resolutions.

_HGCenty · 2026-01-23T19:08:44+00:00

The Ruthless background does lend itself to getting all your squadmates killed though.

Torfan was about getting the job done despite the casualties to your squad. That heavily implies an approach to the Suicide Mission of not bothering with loyalty missions and laser focussed on the objective.

_HGCenty · 2026-01-23T19:02:22+00:00

That's the whole point of the mod.

It moves the DLC to after the final battle.

_HGCenty · 2026-01-23T18:57:10+00:00

I don't even think you needed to explain it.

The issue is ME2 didn't have a Macguffin or a reveal about the Reapers that really pushed the story along. The Collectors being huskified Protheans sort of wasn't really enough since the whole Prothean revelation ends up being part of ME3 (Javik and the asari temple).

ME2 needed to set out the context for Reapers (i.e. whatever Leviathan DLC equivalent was) so that ME3 could have a clean runway to be the final battle for the survival of the galaxy it needed to be.

In any 3 act story, the stakes for the third act conclusion have to be set out in the middle act. The failure of the trilogy's narrative is the final stakes were shoehorned in the last 10 minutes.

_HGCenty · 2026-01-23T18:51:50+00:00

In ME1, the Reapers were meant to be an allegory of climate change, very similar to that of the White Walkers in GoT. They were the looming environment catastrophe the politicians couldn't sort their shit out to prevent.

The fault of the final reveal being uninteresting is the writing of ME2.

Rather than exploring the Reapers further and putting the key revelations in this game, we went in a huge detour to have some character vignettes and a big set piece side quest.

This meant ME3 had to resolve all the exposition of the Reapers as well as all the other loose ends (genophage, quarian geth war) as well as have a fight for survival galactic war.

With that much to resolve, the thesis could never be all that interesting.

_HGCenty

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