rianna wrote...
Yaldo wrote...
Feel I need to add my voice as well. I had prepared a few new sheps to start me3 with since losing most of my me1 playthroughs in a computer crash. And I was planning to start a whole lot more from the beginning of me1 after finishing me3, though you probably suspect how that panned out, not really feeling any motivation to play through it all again to end up with blue space-baby-jesus demanding I choose from 3 unacceptable options because of no reason what so ever.
Up until the end I was enjoying the game immensely, quite possibly the most enjoyably gaming experience I've had in a fair few years, continuing the emotional investment from the earlier games and adding to it, I was tearing up when Mordin sacrificed himself "Because someone else might get it wrong". I actually cared about Thane, who I found to be a bit bland and cliche in me2, Liara's timecapsule for future cycles had me sobbing. My up to that point pretty much pure paragon Fshep had to punch admiral Gerrel and throw him of my ship because I was that angry with him after returning from the geth dreadnought.
Being as we are what Terry Pratchett refers to as Pan narrans, the storytelling chimpanzee, we place a lot of weight on stories, even more so when we are as invested in them as you get after spending more than a hundred hours shaping the story with your own decisions. I suspect this is part of why it hurt so badly to have all those decisions stripped away and reduced to red/blue/green, oh and by the way the galaxy you fought to save is completely altered, and the people you care about are stranded somewhere for no apparent reason.
tl:dr like so many before me, loved the game up until the end, which soured the entire me experience.
Hello, fellow Pratchett fan! Now there's a man who knows how to write an ending! I agree that most of the anger toward the ending stems from how it simply does not mesh with the narrative we, as players, have been shaping for years. The story was changed on us and it isn't one we care to tell. That feeds into the feeling many of us have expressed that we don't want to play any part of the Mass Effect series again. The ending as it stands gives significance (or lack thereof, rather) to earlier actions in a way that subverts what we thought the story meant.
I swear, if I see one more snide comment about "entitled gamers trying to make artists change their ending" I'm going to throw my beer at the wall. My problems with this fallacious "infallible artistes have the right to make whatever they want without criticism" assumption aside, what's happening here is not standard gamer whining. Anybody who spends ten minutes actually reading this thread or the poll comments can see that. I realize it's an easy kneejerk reaction, especially for anybody who dared enjoy Dragon Age 2 and has spent a year having to hear about how supposedly terrible it is, but the differences between that fan reaction and this one are blatant.
I'm also irritated by such reverence for The Story, as if it's some kind of sacrilege to change an ending because it is so roundly despised. What century do you think this is? All art -- from writing to film to video games -- is rapidly becoming a direct collaboration of artist and audience. One of the great appeals of playing video games (at least those that value narrative as equal to or more important than shooting things) is to shape a story as it unfolds. It seems reasonable, then, that the audience has a greater stake than ever before in how a piece of art is presented. Does that mean every audience complaint is valid and must be accommodated? Of course not. But when the outcry is this loud and this focused and this anguished it should not be ignored. Artists today have the wonderful opportunity to take feedback and make changes to their work! Fighting that reality smacks of the stick-in-the-mud author insisting that only a typewriter can produce a good novel. This protest is NOT the equivalent of staging King Lear with no deaths at the end; it's the fans, as co-authors, objecting to an ending they find abhorrent. Our concerns are valid and I think Bioware should respond accordingly. Simple.
Someone remarked earlier here (or on one of the other "ending" threads - can't find it at the moment) something that bears repeating. To paraphrase:
A good author enters into an implicit contract with his/her readers. We all understand this contract at a subconscious level, because we sure know when it's been violated, but we rarely think about it on a conscious level. Similarly, because the ME trilogy is all about the story, BioWare (whether they like it or not) enters into an implicit contract with ME players.
The author (BioWare) understands that the reader is making an investment of money, time, intellect, and emotion in the story. In return, the reader trusts that the author (1) will adhere to the conventions of the genre; (2) will not change the rules in the middle of the story; (3) will provide an emotionally satisfying experience; (4) will not deceive the
reader; (5) will satisfy all expectations set earlier in the story, and (6) will provide a good (not necessarily happy, but appropriate, good quality) ending.
I think these elements of trust are even more important in an immersive, interactive product like a modern RPG, because the investment can be immense in scope and depth, and that requires a LOT of trust on the part of the gamer. Yet the attitude we see reflected by BioWare is that the story is what it is, is not subject to some democratic process, and we have no right to express concerns or criticism, even though, in the case of ME3, the writer/reader contract has been
seriously violated.
I feel this can’t be reflective of BioWare’s internal corporate values, so I see it (in geeky programmer terms because that's what I am) as a failure to understand that its external user interfaces (BSN, user support, social media, etc) don’t reflect its internal values — something I’ve often seen happen to companies after acquisitions or rapid growth periods.
I remember a time when this wasn’t the case, and hope, if the right people get the message, that BioWare can regain the trust we want to give it. Because they can do amazing, brilliant work, and have demonstrated it time and time again.
Modifié par SkaldFish, 12 mars 2012 - 04:01 .
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