101103 réponses à ce sujet

[Chatboy 91]

I’ve been a bit silent these past few days, mostly just distracting myself from this mess while catching the occasional bit of news. But then I saw the new blog post, and I had to respond.

First of all, stop grasping at your artistic integrity BioWare. It isn’t there anymore, for a few reasons I will outline. There are a few issues surrounding this ending, but one of the most glaring is the poor construction of it. The community has pointed out a multitude of plot holes, and logical fallacies that thus far, have been completely ignored. The team may be “poring over everything they can find about reactions to the game…” but thus far, we have not received any explanation, or recognition for these issues. From an artistic stand point, I think it’s safe to say any proper writer would level a very harsh critique on this ending; especially considering the previous promises and statements that were issued leading up to release day.

Secondly, taking a quick read over the article I see a certain phrase being thrown around: “constructive criticism”. I also noticed the phrase: “…become destructive rather than constructive”. At this point, I would say your artistic integrity, has been completely thrown out the window. All great artists, especially in the medium of video games, and digital art in general, understand and accept all forms of criticism. There is no distinction between, “constructive” and “destructive” criticism. I know how tempting it is to fall into this trap. As a 3D artist myself, I’ve used the same defense before, much to my amateur chagrin. However, you cannot throw out a mountain of criticism simply because it isn’t “constructive” enough. That is not being a proper artist in this medium. I fully understand that “flaming” should be completely intolerable. However, in my experience of this movement, I have seen little to no personal attacks, only criticism that by definition is constructive.

I don’t know what your plans are BioWare. As a huge fan of the Mass Effect series, and your work in general, I hope you can come to some sort of understanding. While gaming critics may be lauding Mass Effect 3 as one of the greatest games of all time, as you stated, “…loyal fans are passionately expressing their displeasure about how their game concluded…” While proper reviews from gaming critics are all fine and dandy, at the end of the day, the biggest opinion that matters is not the opinion offered by a critic who sped through the game to get a review out. Your loyal fans are the ones who should be determining your “net pride”.

In the meantime, I’ll just keep holding the line with my fellow comrades.


I read that there's an official thread from Dr. Ray somewhere? If you guys could point me in the right direction, I would love to post this there.

EDIT: Also, I just want to say how proud of you guys I am. Over 2000 pages in this one thread, AND $76 000 (!) donated to Child's Play. Regardless of how this turns out, I'm proud to of held the line with this awesome group.

Modifié par Chatboy 91, 21 mars 2012 - 07:12 .

[Darth Garrus]

chosen_trekie wrote...

I think we should be prepared to comprimise. I for one would be satisfied with an explanation as long it made sense. Would I prefere a new ending? Yes, but in the end I would be satisfied with a good explanation. That's my opinion, take it for what its worth.

Hold the Line.

I don't need an explanation. Explaining the end, IMO, is worst than doing nothing. If you want a ending that leaves all the doors opened (too many, and in a bad way, pseudo-intelectual), the endings were enough. Giving the endings the series deserved would be the right thing to do (and I'm not even talking about fans deserving it). But explaining would be calling everyone stupid.

Or would be like explaining a joke. If you have to do that...

[Ohpus]

Jere85 wrote...

People... stop complaining about him being vague please, he has to be in order to keep up with whatever they are planning, at least he's saying something, and what he says is positive news, i would call it a win at any day, its all we could ask for after getting the silent treatment for so long. Seriously take what you can get, stop being greedy.

Thanks Ray, you da man!

Don't know if you and I were reading the same release. But he really was not saying anything at all.

"We are listening"
"Reviewer say we are great."

Doesn't mean anything.

[TSC_1]

Mulberry wrote...

http://www.reddit.co..._dr_ray_muzyka/
Patrick Weekes (bioware writer) posted this on Penny Arcade and then deleted it:

*Snip*

Could you repost the full reddit link, please? That one is incorrect.

[TamiBx]

milkymcmilkerson wrote...

So, I take it that most people here wouldn't settle for a compromise, where the ME team stays true to the ending that they believe works for the series they've been developing for years while still finding a way to address the concerns of those of us who are disappointed with the ending?

Because, IMO, it's probably not going to go down any other way.

How are they even going to do that...? A video? Official statement? That doesn't sound good...

And honestly, they could've addressed this a week ago...<_<

[milkymcmilkerson]

Darth Suetam wrote...

chosen_trekie wrote...

I think we should be prepared to comprimise. I for one would be satisfied with an explanation as long it made sense. Would I prefere a new ending? Yes, but in the end I would be satisfied with a good explanation. That's my opinion, take it for what its worth.

Hold the Line.

I don't need an explanation. Explaining the end, IMO, is worst than doing nothing. If you want a ending that leaves all the doors opened (too many, and in a bad way, pseudo-intelectual), the endings were enough. Giving the endings the series deserved would be the right thing to do (and I'm not even talking about fans deserving it). But explaining would be calling everyone stupid.

Or would be like explaining a joke. If you have to do that...

I wouldn't say that the endings themselves leave the doors open. They're pretty final. Disappointing, but final. It's all the plot holes at the end that are leaving things open ended. If those were filled then the endings would be complete. Not good, mind you, but complete.

[Hobbs1975]

Mulberry wrote...

http://www.reddit.co..._dr_ray_muzyka/
Patrick Weekes (bioware writer) posted this on Penny Arcade and then deleted it:

Is there any way to verify that was actually him and that he really said that?  Because, wow.

[Alikan]

milkymcmilkerson wrote...

So, I take it that most people here wouldn't settle for a compromise, where the ME team stays true to the ending that they believe works for the series they've been developing for years while still finding a way to address the concerns of those of us who are disappointed with the ending?

Because, IMO, it's probably not going to go down any other way.

Personally i do not think it will end up any other way either.

If they actually think the end they did works for the series i am baffled though. Not even going to go deep into the outright lies about wildly various endings and it not boiling down to choicing A, b, c either.

Bioware just dropped the ball hard, just like they did with over ambition on DA2 and then having to make it a rushjob (which they even confessed to later on. Of course not until the main sales period was over but still...)

[WvStolzing]

Hobbs1975 wrote...

Mulberry wrote...

http://www.reddit.co..._dr_ray_muzyka/
Patrick Weekes (bioware writer) posted this on Penny Arcade and then deleted it:

Is there any way to verify that was actually him and that he really said that?  Because, wow.

What did he say?

[Aedera]

Mulberry wrote...

http://www.reddit.co..._dr_ray_muzyka/
Patrick Weekes (bioware writer) posted this on Penny Arcade and then deleted it:


"I have nothing to do with the ending beyond a) having argued successfully a long time ago that we needed a chance to say goodbye to our squad, having argued successfully that Cortez shouldn't automatically die in that shuttle crash, and c) having written Tali's goodbye bit, as well as a couple of the holo-goodbyes for people I wrote (Mordin, Kasumi, Jack, etc). 
No other writer did, either, except for our lead. This was entirely the work of our lead and Casey himself, sitting in a room and going through draft after draft. 
And honestly, it kind of shows. 
Every other mission in the game had to be held up to the rest of the writing team, and the writing team then picked it apart and made suggestions and pointed out the parts that made no sense. This mission? Casey and our lead deciding that they didn't need to be peer-reviewe.d 
And again, it shows. 
If you'd asked me the themes of Mass Effect 3, I'd break them down as: Galactic Alliances Friends Organics versus Synthetics 
In my personal opinion, the first two got a perfunctory nod. We did get a goodbye to our friends, but it was in a scene that was divorced from the gameplay -- a deliberate "nothing happens here" area with one turret thrown in for no reason I really understand, except possibly to obfuscate the "nothing happens here"-ness. The best missions in our game are the ones in which the gameplay and the narrative reinforce each other. The end of the Genophage campaign exemplifies that for me -- every line of dialog is showing you both sides of the krogan, be they horrible brutes or proud warriors; the art shows both their bombed-out wasteland and the beautiful world they once had and could have again; the combat shows the terror of the Reapers as well as a blatant reminder of the rachni, which threatened the galaxy and had to be stopped by the krogan last time. Every line of code in that mission is on target with the overall message. 
The endgame doesn't have that. I wanted to see banshees attacking you, and then have asari gunships zoom in and blow them away. I wanted to see a wave of rachni ravagers come around a corner only to be met by a wall of krogan roaring a battle cry. Here's the horror the Reapers inflicted upon each race, and here's the army that you, Commander Shepard, made out of every race in the galaxy to fight them. 
I personally thought that the Illusive Man conversation was about twice as long as it needed to be -- something that I've been told in my peer reviews of my missions and made edits on, but again, this is a conversation no writer but the lead ever saw until it was already recorded. I did love Anderson's goodbye. 
For me, Anderson's goodbye is where it ended. The stuff with the Catalyst just... You have to understand. Casey is really smart and really analytical. And the problem is that when he's not checked, he will assume that other people are like him, and will really appreciate an almost completely unemotional intellectual ending. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it. 
And then, just to be a dick... what was SUPPOSED to happen was that, say you picked "Destroy the Reapers". When you did that, the system was SUPPOSED to look at your score, and then you'd show a cutscene of Earth that was either: 
a) Very high score: Earth obviously damaged, but woo victory  Medium score: Earth takes a bunch of damage from the Crucible activation. Like dropping a bomb on an already war-ravaged city. Uh, well, maybe not LIKE that as much as, uh, THAT. c) Low score: Earth is a cinderblock, all life on it completely wiped out 
I have NO IDEA why these different cutscenes aren't in there. As far as I know, they were never cut. Maybe they were cut for budget reasons at the last minute. I don't know. But holy crap, yeah, I can see how incredibly disappointing it'd be to hear of all the different ending possibilities and have it break down to "which color is stuff glowing?" Or maybe they ARE in, but they're too subtle to really see obvious differences, and again, that's... yeah. 
Okay, that's a lot to have written for something that's gonna go away in an hour. 
I still teared up at the ending myself, but really, I was tearing up for the quick flashbacks to old friends and the death of Anderson. I wasn't tearing up over making a choice that, as it turned out, didn't have enough cutscene differentiation on it. 
And to be clear, I don't even really wish Shepard had gotten a ride-off-into-sunset ending. I was honestly okay with Shepard sacrificing himself. I just expected it to be for something with more obvious differentiation, and a stronger tie to the core themes -- all three of them."

[Aedera]

Meant to add wow to that post but can't from my iPhone.

[BigglesFlysAgain]

Hobbs1975 wrote...

Mulberry wrote...

http://www.reddit.co..._dr_ray_muzyka/
Patrick Weekes (bioware writer) posted this on Penny Arcade and then deleted it:

Is there any way to verify that was actually him and that he really said that?  Because, wow.

Well thats certainly one to copy and paste so they can't get rid of it

[TamiBx]

 What I think Bioware doesn't understand is that we are not holding the line only because of the plot holes. Most of us are also here because we got no other option besides the three colors that lead to the same ending (basically) and no epilogue. 
I think they're just thinking we don't get the ending...<_<

[Capeo]

Mulberry wrote...

http://www.reddit.co..._dr_ray_muzyka/
Patrick Weekes (bioware writer) posted this on Penny Arcade and then deleted it:


"I have nothing to do with the ending beyond a) having argued successfully a long time ago that we needed a chance to say goodbye to our squad, having argued successfully that Cortez shouldn't automatically die in that shuttle crash, and c) having written Tali's goodbye bit, as well as a couple of the holo-goodbyes for people I wrote (Mordin, Kasumi, Jack, etc). 
No other writer did, either, except for our lead. This was entirely the work of our lead and Casey himself, sitting in a room and going through draft after draft. 
And honestly, it kind of shows. 
Every other mission in the game had to be held up to the rest of the writing team, and the writing team then picked it apart and made suggestions and pointed out the parts that made no sense. This mission? Casey and our lead deciding that they didn't need to be peer-reviewe.d 
And again, it shows. 
If you'd asked me the themes of Mass Effect 3, I'd break them down as: Galactic Alliances Friends Organics versus Synthetics 
In my personal opinion, the first two got a perfunctory nod. We did get a goodbye to our friends, but it was in a scene that was divorced from the gameplay -- a deliberate "nothing happens here" area with one turret thrown in for no reason I really understand, except possibly to obfuscate the "nothing happens here"-ness. The best missions in our game are the ones in which the gameplay and the narrative reinforce each other. The end of the Genophage campaign exemplifies that for me -- every line of dialog is showing you both sides of the krogan, be they horrible brutes or proud warriors; the art shows both their bombed-out wasteland and the beautiful world they once had and could have again; the combat shows the terror of the Reapers as well as a blatant reminder of the rachni, which threatened the galaxy and had to be stopped by the krogan last time. Every line of code in that mission is on target with the overall message. 
The endgame doesn't have that. I wanted to see banshees attacking you, and then have asari gunships zoom in and blow them away. I wanted to see a wave of rachni ravagers come around a corner only to be met by a wall of krogan roaring a battle cry. Here's the horror the Reapers inflicted upon each race, and here's the army that you, Commander Shepard, made out of every race in the galaxy to fight them. 
I personally thought that the Illusive Man conversation was about twice as long as it needed to be -- something that I've been told in my peer reviews of my missions and made edits on, but again, this is a conversation no writer but the lead ever saw until it was already recorded. I did love Anderson's goodbye. 
For me, Anderson's goodbye is where it ended. The stuff with the Catalyst just... You have to understand. Casey is really smart and really analytical. And the problem is that when he's not checked, he will assume that other people are like him, and will really appreciate an almost completely unemotional intellectual ending. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it. 
And then, just to be a dick... what was SUPPOSED to happen was that, say you picked "Destroy the Reapers". When you did that, the system was SUPPOSED to look at your score, and then you'd show a cutscene of Earth that was either: 
a) Very high score: Earth obviously damaged, but woo victory  Medium score: Earth takes a bunch of damage from the Crucible activation. Like dropping a bomb on an already war-ravaged city. Uh, well, maybe not LIKE that as much as, uh, THAT. c) Low score: Earth is a cinderblock, all life on it completely wiped out 
I have NO IDEA why these different cutscenes aren't in there. As far as I know, they were never cut. Maybe they were cut for budget reasons at the last minute. I don't know. But holy crap, yeah, I can see how incredibly disappointing it'd be to hear of all the different ending possibilities and have it break down to "which color is stuff glowing?" Or maybe they ARE in, but they're too subtle to really see obvious differences, and again, that's... yeah. 
Okay, that's a lot to have written for something that's gonna go away in an hour. 
I still teared up at the ending myself, but really, I was tearing up for the quick flashbacks to old friends and the death of Anderson. I wasn't tearing up over making a choice that, as it turned out, didn't have enough cutscene differentiation on it. 
And to be clear, I don't even really wish Shepard had gotten a ride-off-into-sunset ending. I was honestly okay with Shepard sacrificing himself. I just expected it to be for something with more obvious differentiation, and a stronger tie to the core themes -- all three of them."

Wow.  So the ending was purely Hudson with barely any input from the team.

[Yuoaman]

"@asenza We are adding new content that is being created specifically to address the passionate outcry of our fans. That is news."

Well hello there, @masseffect.

[Cybermortis]

Pabloskie wrote...

Darth Suetam wrote...

I think it was a good thing to hear from Dr. Muzyka. It's a good sign, even if it doesn't make anything official.

 

I agree. Having Muzyka adressing us (though not RetakeME3 directly) basically legitimizes the movement. This is not a victory by any means but I was never expected that this issue was going to be resolved so easily.

By having a co-funder of Bioware make a statement like that (aknowledgment of a problem, discontent, disconnect, etc), all the negative coverage we have gotten from some areas of the media, basically looses all their amunition to keep attacking us, IMO anyways.

We have got their attention and we need to keep doing what we have been doing. 

Stay Civil and Hold the Line.

I'd agree, you don't call in one of your biggest guns unless you know you have a very serious problem on your hands.

The statement means little by itself, it doesn't commit BW to do anything they were not already planning to do. Of course the fact that the press IS taking this as 'Bioware will change the ending'  will make it harder to BW not to do something - especially since this is now in the mainstream press, who really don't like feeling as if they have been made to look like fools.

I' m guessing that this PR 'counter-attack' is a sign that BW is trying to buy themselves time before they issue a direct statement one way or another - although it seems increasingly likely that they will have little choice but to do something. The poll about what we want from the ending is interesting, and I'm not sure if this is another PR tactic to reinforce the 'we are listening' line. Or if it is there because they have narrowed their options down to those three options and are simply trying to work out exactly which of those options is most likely to work.

*Shrugs*

I'll give Bioware the beniefit of the doubt and assume the latter for now.

[Chatboy 91]

Mulberry wrote...

http://www.reddit.co..._dr_ray_muzyka/
Patrick Weekes (bioware writer) posted this on Penny Arcade and then deleted it:
snip

If he actually said that... well that would pretty much confirm my theory. There seems to be a huge disconnect between the ending and the rest of the game. This would make perfect sense.

[mulder1199]

how would (most) everybody feel about 'breathe' dlc.....you tell starchild to effoff, or you just got that ending through the choice you picked, you fight the fight some of your choices are reflected and you get a few varied endings with LI, etc....


sorry this picks up from the shep breathing shot....

Modifié par mulder1199, 21 mars 2012 - 07:16 .

[Capeo]

Great find, Mulberry.

[Neezoy]

Chatboy 91 wrote...

*snip*

Great post! I agree completely.

And here:

social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/323/index/10385157/1

[StarGateGod]

Aedera wrote...

Mulberry wrote...

http://www.reddit.co..._dr_ray_muzyka/
Patrick Weekes (bioware writer) posted this on Penny Arcade and then deleted it:


"I have nothing to do with the ending beyond a) having argued successfully a long time ago that we needed a chance to say goodbye to our squad, having argued successfully that Cortez shouldn't automatically die in that shuttle crash, and c) having written Tali's goodbye bit, as well as a couple of the holo-goodbyes for people I wrote (Mordin, Kasumi, Jack, etc). 
No other writer did, either, except for our lead. This was entirely the work of our lead and Casey himself, sitting in a room and going through draft after draft. 
And honestly, it kind of shows. 
Every other mission in the game had to be held up to the rest of the writing team, and the writing team then picked it apart and made suggestions and pointed out the parts that made no sense. This mission? Casey and our lead deciding that they didn't need to be peer-reviewe.d 
And again, it shows. 
If you'd asked me the themes of Mass Effect 3, I'd break them down as: Galactic Alliances Friends Organics versus Synthetics 
In my personal opinion, the first two got a perfunctory nod. We did get a goodbye to our friends, but it was in a scene that was divorced from the gameplay -- a deliberate "nothing happens here" area with one turret thrown in for no reason I really understand, except possibly to obfuscate the "nothing happens here"-ness. The best missions in our game are the ones in which the gameplay and the narrative reinforce each other. The end of the Genophage campaign exemplifies that for me -- every line of dialog is showing you both sides of the krogan, be they horrible brutes or proud warriors; the art shows both their bombed-out wasteland and the beautiful world they once had and could have again; the combat shows the terror of the Reapers as well as a blatant reminder of the rachni, which threatened the galaxy and had to be stopped by the krogan last time. Every line of code in that mission is on target with the overall message. 
The endgame doesn't have that. I wanted to see banshees attacking you, and then have asari gunships zoom in and blow them away. I wanted to see a wave of rachni ravagers come around a corner only to be met by a wall of krogan roaring a battle cry. Here's the horror the Reapers inflicted upon each race, and here's the army that you, Commander Shepard, made out of every race in the galaxy to fight them. 
I personally thought that the Illusive Man conversation was about twice as long as it needed to be -- something that I've been told in my peer reviews of my missions and made edits on, but again, this is a conversation no writer but the lead ever saw until it was already recorded. I did love Anderson's goodbye. 
For me, Anderson's goodbye is where it ended. The stuff with the Catalyst just... You have to understand. Casey is really smart and really analytical. And the problem is that when he's not checked, he will assume that other people are like him, and will really appreciate an almost completely unemotional intellectual ending. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it. 
And then, just to be a dick... what was SUPPOSED to happen was that, say you picked "Destroy the Reapers". When you did that, the system was SUPPOSED to look at your score, and then you'd show a cutscene of Earth that was either: 
a) Very high score: Earth obviously damaged, but woo victory  Medium score: Earth takes a bunch of damage from the Crucible activation. Like dropping a bomb on an already war-ravaged city. Uh, well, maybe not LIKE that as much as, uh, THAT. c) Low score: Earth is a cinderblock, all life on it completely wiped out 
I have NO IDEA why these different cutscenes aren't in there. As far as I know, they were never cut. Maybe they were cut for budget reasons at the last minute. I don't know. But holy crap, yeah, I can see how incredibly disappointing it'd be to hear of all the different ending possibilities and have it break down to "which color is stuff glowing?" Or maybe they ARE in, but they're too subtle to really see obvious differences, and again, that's... yeah. 
Okay, that's a lot to have written for something that's gonna go away in an hour. 
I still teared up at the ending myself, but really, I was tearing up for the quick flashbacks to old friends and the death of Anderson. I wasn't tearing up over making a choice that, as it turned out, didn't have enough cutscene differentiation on it. 
And to be clear, I don't even really wish Shepard had gotten a ride-off-into-sunset ending. I was honestly okay with Shepard sacrificing himself. I just expected it to be for something with more obvious differentiation, and a stronger tie to the core themes -- all three of them."

wow if thats true

[Tasker]

Rays post was just him trying to do a bit of damage control.

The only way to unpiss off the fanbase and gain any semblance of goodwill back will be to scrap the abortion of a discrace of a clieched farce of an ending, and give us the ending that we were sodding promised in the first place. ( And preferably Mac Walters won't be alowed anywhere near it and it'll be given to Patrick. )

Modifié par Orkboy, 21 mars 2012 - 07:23 .

[Thrawn81]

they dont change anything m8s!

[TSC_1]

Hobbs1975 wrote...

Mulberry wrote...

http://www.reddit.co..._dr_ray_muzyka/
Patrick Weekes (bioware writer) posted this on Penny Arcade and then deleted it:

Is there any way to verify that was actually him and that he really said that?  Because, wow.

Exactly. I want the original link so more people can read it.