Xelv88 wrote...
Hello ME community,
Before I begin, I’m sorry this post turned out longer than I
intended. Please feel free to skip it if
you don’t want to read it, I won’t hold it against you.
Like many of you, I’ve been reading these posts since early
in the movement, sympathizing and finding some comfort in similar experiences. Also like many others, this will be my first
post on these forums. I wasn’t
originally going to bother re-posting sentiments others had expressed better
than I could, but I’d like to take a moment to stress an angle that seems to
not be as common concerning the issue at hand.
First, as some brief background context, I am not exactly a
supporter of the “video game player entitlement” movement. When the “day one DLC” rage spilled onto the
internet, I was one of the people who lined up against it. It’s Bioware’s game, they can decide what’s
core and what’s peripheral, even if you disagree. To extrapolate this more generally, I do
indeed believe in an artist’s right to make his art whatever he wants. An author can kill off a character I loved in
an epic novel series – I’ll be upset and probably disagree that it was the best
thing for the book, but that’s the author’s vision. George Lucas wants to weaken Darth Vader’s
character in his latest round of movie refinement? Hey, I think it’s ridiculous, but it’s his
creation to ruin. Bioware wanted to make
their second installment in a great series (DA) more of a personal focus that
inherently requires too much content recycling?
Clearly they don’t understand what their fans want, but hey, they are
entitled to make their game the way they want to.
For all those examples, it’s OK in my mind because there’s a
pretty big separation from the creators of art/entertainment and the partakers. As a video game player, I’m inherently on the
outside – I’m invited to experience the end result, think of it what I will,
and move one.
Mass Effect was different.
And not only because unlike the other examples I truly felt invited into
the experience as opposed to simply being on the outside looking in. No, the troubling situation of this game’s
ending goes beyond the rich universe and the compelling characters that drew me
in. It goes beyond how they allowed us
to make the series our own with decisions big and small, only to have so much
choice removed at the end.
What really makes this whole situation a betrayal is the
fact that they knew us. Bioware not only listened to the community its
masterpiece had formed, but they actively listened to its feedback and
incorporated it into the game.
Did I need to hear three “calibrations” jokes in the first
10 minutes of having Garrus onboard the Normandy? No more than I needed a bro-tastic excursion
with everyone’s favorite sharpshooter that prominently featured one of the
community’s favorite memes, but you damned well better believe I loved it. We didn’t need the community’s fantasy EDI/Joker romance to be brought
to life in an almost too-cliché, yet oh-so-amusing, way; nor did we need a
Conrad cameo making light of one of Bioware’s more perplexing bugs from
ME2. None of this was necessary. But they knew we would smile, so they put it
in.
But it’s more than just fan pandering that showed me how
well Bioware understood me. My favorite
example is my Shepard’s conclusion of the Geth/Quarian conflict. They knew my Shepard would want to save the
Geth and the Quarians both. They knew I’d
let Legion do his upload. They knew my
heart would race as the upload ticked up, with Tali’s desperate pleas making me
doubt if I was going to be able to fix it all in the end after all. They knew I’d smile with pride as my Shepard
shouted down centuries of hatred with pure Paragon conviction, saving the day
at the last minute. And they knew my
heart strings would be pulled with Legion’s final “Keelah se’lai”. Bioware played me like a fiddle, because they
knew me.
And it wasn’t just that one instance; it was every damn part
of this near-perfect game. Looking back
it’s almost painful to see how perfectly the writers nailed it every step of
the way. And in that last, brilliantly
crafted forward operations base area, as every conversation created a lasting
memory, I defy you to tell me that Bioware didn’t understand what its
community, what I wanted out of this
game.
That is why the ending they gave us constitutes more than
just something for overly-entitled fans to whine about. Hell, I’ll be honest, I even kind of like the
“indoctrination theory” take on the ending, it makes for a decently thought-provoking
and subtle-ish end to a sci-fi epic.
That is entirely beside the
point. You cannot know your fans as well
as the rest of the game proves and not know the ending we wanted. Bioware, you cared about us enough to make
the whole game a perfect walk between pure fan-service and a wonderful
manifestation of your own artistic vision.
You cared, damn it – we can tell.
And then at the last minute, you stopped caring and decided to give us something
you clearly really liked, but that you knew
we wouldn’t. You knew many of us wanted
to choose hope, fulfilling victory at great cost, and a self-determined future
for this beloved universe you let us craft with you. And you just didn’t care. That's why this happens to hurt the community, and fans like myself, more than you might expect.
You see, Bioware, it’s not the ending itself that makes this
such a big deal for us. It’s that you clearly
knew the kind of ending we would want, knew how much it meant to us, and you decided to deny it. It’s that simple.
And if any Bioware employee should actually read this,
please know this:
I will not forget how close you let me come to having a truly memorable video game experience years in the making, only to stop caring about your fans at the final
moment.
And I WILL hold the line.
Welcome to the fleet, report to Admiral Hackett for debriefing. Vote in the poll and give to the charity if you can (links in my sig)
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