Here's my take on things.
The vast majority of the game is, without a doubt, amazing. I laughed, I cried, I shouted in exultation at the sheer awesomeness of the things that were happening in the world that I had come to care so much for. From the amazing character development, to the voice acting, the challenge, the visuals, the music, the sound, the sheer breadth and depth of the story, I was enthralled. It was a rollercoaster that I didn't ever want to get off of, and when I was forced to – by such silly things as real life – my mind was always on getting back to the game and just seeing what would happen next.
I was a little disappointed by the whole “crucible” idea from when I heard about it on Mars, but I understand the corner that the writers had painted themselves into and that there would need to be some kind of major miracle to beat the simple problems of scale: Treaties limit council races to X dreadnaughts, one reaper can easily trash Y dreadnaughts, there are Z reapers coming to harvest/destroy/whatever the galaxy... wait, crap, even if we gathered every ship and gave them all really big guns, they still couldn't stop them conventionally. I think it could have been better-handled, but you know what, it's okay, I can work with that. It rankled a little, but in the grand scheme of things, it didn't really break my suspension of disbelief that much. Everything else was awesome, and it was nice having a unifying point for all the non-military folks we ended up working with. Things are still pretty bloody awesome.
Then I got to the end.
The ending to this series felt like a betrayal, on so many different levels. I had expected to be vaguely sad that the story was over – that's typical of any amazing work – but satisfied and grinning like an idiot after going on such an amazing ride. Instead, it left such a sour note in my mouth that I'm starting to wish I hadn't played, because it's really hard not to let the ending ruin the entire experience for me.
First off, it's a betrayal of one of the central themes behind the entire series: The idea that your choices matter. One of the huge things that was promised for the third game, and that until the very end was was lived up to more spectacularly than I could have ever imagined, was the idea that every big or little thing you did mattered and would be noticed by people. You see it all over the place: Fail to finish a side quest, and it'll slightly affect the outcome of the story because your cruisers don't have enough engineers. It's part of what made the world so interesting, and made so many of us fans follow the series with passion. When every choice we make is rendered irrelevant, in the finale of the series for god's sake, it feels like a stab wound. Instead of getting to see how things play out – do the Quarians and the Geth get along, if they were convinced? What happens to the Krogan? Will the Asari and Turians rebuild? What will change in galactic governance now that the Citadel is relocated and/or blown up? – we are given no answers. The red ending precludes any answers from coming, the blue ending opens up a whole new can of worms with no answers whatsoever, and the green ending takes the galaxy in a completely new direction that would make more sense at the end of a bloody fairy tale! And nothing you did before that point means a damn.
Second, it betrays our expectation of the tone of the game. Mass Effect 2 was billed as the “darker sequel” to the first game, with more shades of gray and consequences for idealism and ruthlessness alike. By and large, it carried through on this: The game was darker. There wasn't a nice and happy solution to every problem. When a few people asked whether the third game would follow the trend, it was said that the game would be funnier, but serious as well. And it was – I laughed myself silly when I walked in on some of the conversations the crew members had, or at some of the deadpan humor. I was also incredibly impressed with how well the ramifications of an entire galaxy embroiled in conflict was hammered home. And then the ending comes, in which we almost invariably end up dead (but not really, or something), separated from our loved one (who is somehow on board the Normandy fleeing the Sol system, despite having been on the planet's surface not half an hour before, and also somehow managing to escape getting fried by the reaper super laser despite everyone else getting melted horribly), with absolutely zero chance of ever seeing Shepard again.
I really don't see “dead, or dead, or permanently separated from every single person you've ever known or cared about” as a “good ending” in any way, shape, or form. It's like they were really confused on how to deal with the “ascendance” part of the hero's journey.
Third, and this is the part that hurts most – we don't have closure on our story. It's bad enough having an ending that's a non sequitor and out of theme with the rest of the series. It's worse not being able to really pick the outcome that we want, and having all the individuality of our characters tossed away like useless rubbish. But the worst part is that everything is thrown away, and then we're denied the decency of an epilogue that at least explains how the people and characters we've followed for nearly a decade deal with the sudden radical change! Oh, and no, a silhouette of a father and son after the credits on some alien world talking about our character as though it were in the distant past does not count.
Do they hold a funeral? Is there a Dr. Bronner's “ALL ONE” cosmic shepard in the Green ending, or what? Hell, for that matter, why do the Reapers even leave? In the red ending, do all the Quarians and Turians starve to death before mass relays can be rebuilt, or is there enough on the liveships? What happened to everyone else in the ground war? In the blue ending, does Shepard still exist, and if so, can people talk to him/her?
In short,
what happens? *deep breath*
I pray that the team isn't split up already, the writers on other projects and the voice actors off doing different work. It would be a terrible tragedy to end something so great like... this.
Modifié par Phydeaux314, 08 mars 2012 - 12:20 .
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