I actually do have to wonder how a game with such a large team could make such a mistake, why did no one say "Um... guys this might be a bad idea..." during development and if someone did say that, why did no one listen.
Mass Effect 3 - Endings
Débuté par
Ravanofdarkness
, mars 06 2012 12:02
Retour en haut
#877
Posté 09 mars 2012 - 05:56
Parker Stephenson
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And I really hope bioware is getting more crap from us ME loving gamers then just our forum discussions, but more importantly I hope they read these and realize something must e done because it seems everyone is disappointed not just a few BUT EVERYONE
#878
Posté 09 mars 2012 - 05:58
Parker Stephenson
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TheShinySword wrote...
I actually do have to wonder how a game with such a large team could make such a mistake, why did no one say "Um... guys this might be a bad idea..." during development and if someone did say that, why did no one listen.
That's exactly what I'm thinking is how can you drop the ball this bad and on top of that after the credits try and make a trilogy be transformed into a story from an old man... It's not cool
#879
Posté 09 mars 2012 - 06:00
tausra
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Just remember these are the same people who think DA2 was a great game. I hope for an ending change, but I am not holding my breath. This is the second time I've been trolled by BioWare, there won't be a third.
#880
Posté 09 mars 2012 - 06:00
Ironsandshrew
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- 127 messages
I didn't want to believe everything I had heard about the endings but now I know that its true I am extremely disappointed in the end of ME3 which up to that point was shaping up to be one of my favorite games ever, I honestly dont care about a lot of the underlying story those endings are trying to convey, I just wanted a happy ending for my Shepard that I have put hundreds of hours into. For me video games are a release all I wanted was a way for my Shepard to just go off into the sunset with his/her love interest, There is enough b.s. and crappy things in the world I didn't want my favorite game franchise to end the same way. I hope I'm wrong and Bioware has some crazy dlc in mind to reunite the full crew of the Normandy, but I can't help feel betrayed by this series.
#881
Posté 09 mars 2012 - 06:03
Russmandarin
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Heldenbrand wrote...
The theme of this series has never been about synthetic life versus organic life; that was contained solely within a subplot found between the Quarians and the Geth. In this capacity it was addressed beautifully providing the player the choice to make that determination to answer the question: do we have a soul?
The theme to Mass Effect, from the very start, has been that through unity and perseverance they can survive. The Paragon options generally bring this unity through diplomacy, whereas Renegade does it through force or deceit. If Shepard is our extension and avatar through humanity, then our other crew members represent the various Council races. Asari, Turian, Salarian, Krogan, and Quarian, even Geth; we care about their races because of these crew members and through them we witness their plights and struggles. Through our actions in the series we can doom not only the crew member, but often times their very civilizations.
In the ending all the choices we have made or effort we have put forth in the previous two games means absolutely nothing. As described by so many others here, the entirety of the series can be broken down into three choices; three choices that do not reflect the character I have created or how hard the races fought to survive. They worked as one not only to escape death, but to preserve their way of life. One way or another all that has been lost in those three choices presented to us.
Paragon or Renegade it doesn't matter, we're not upset at the Renegade ending or the Paragon ending; we're upset because we have neither. We do not see the consequences of the decisions we made in the game or in the prior, we only see the consequences of a single choice. It breaks down the very thing that made Mass Effect special to us; narrative choice and impact of our decisions. This horrific ending could haven been tolerated in Mass Effect 2, because we knew more was coming, but at the end of Shepard's story it is agonizing to us that we have wasted hundreds of hours and years playing and waiting.
This sums up so many of my problems with the endings. Your options aren't even limited to how you played the game. You can make sweeping decisions that effect the galaxy and all of them appear wholly out of character with how anyone played the game.
Bioware has stuck itself in a situation where every game after this has to deal with these reprucusions and they all suck the same way.
#882
Posté 09 mars 2012 - 06:03
Outreach117
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(I had posted this in my own thread, now defunct, and per some advice of fellow BSN users I am reposting here)
As I type these words, a barely contained fury and a deep sadness course through my veins like a poison, burning from my heart to my fingertips. It is as if a member of my family just was killed and the murderer was given an executive pardon with no justice or damages paid. I pride myself on being a very reasonable man, possessing a more than fair sense of judgment, loyal to a fault, and tolerant of most things that would send any other person into a very justifiable rampage. With that said, I am somewhere between utterly depressed and raging mad with the ending of what was perhaps the greatest science fiction trilogies and franchises to have ever graced the gaming community, Mass Effect 3, and in good conscience cannot keep my thoughts to myself. Perhaps this sniffer full of brandy will dull my thoughts by the time I am done writing this article.
Hell, for anyone who's like me who on many nights looked up to see the brightly twinkling stars of the Orion Constellation and silently ponder, "What's out there, and are they looking up at me? What are they like? Will I ever see them? Will we be the best of friends or the worst of enemies?", the story of Mass Effect was a godsend of an epic undertaking that I have no doubt made the likes of Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke and Frank Herbert universally raise a glass to toast in salutation and respect from the afterlife, while George Lucas cries himself to sleep every night into his Jar-Jar Binks pillow. I can remember a time barely a decade ago when it seemed like science fiction as a whole was a dying idea. Star Trek had just been taken off the air permanently for the first time in almost 15 years, Star Wars fanboys rampaged on internet forums after watching their beloved universe melt in front of their very eyes, and with the likes of Halo still well in its infancy, the future of the science fiction genre seemed bleak, very bleak. Even the concept of space itself and mankind’s manifest destiny to see what was out there seemed in jeopardy as many of my fellow countrymen, indeed citizens of the world, shed tears watching the burning remnants of Columbia fall from the sky and uttered prayers that those seven brave souls would find peace in the afterlife. Many said that space was too dangerous, irrelevant and simply too expensive in not only the cost of money, but the precious costs of life, and that pointless daydreams of adventure on this new frontier were a costly distraction from the harsh realities of a world plagued by terrorism, social unrest, disease and violence. Sheesh, is it any wonder why more than a few of us would like nothing more to get off this rock? I would give all that I own for the opportunity, and I would be hard-pressed to even look back (or down if you insist) because so many don’t even look up in wonder anymore.
Fast forward a few years and the painful conclusion of the Star Wars having been completed and a distant memory, a complete reboot of Star Trek with a fresh perspective in the making, and Halo providing to the younger generations what Star Trek and 2001: A Space Odyssey were to me and my parents respectively. Best of all, the shuttles were flying again, and mankind seemed to have regained a sense of focus and creative imagination that had appeared lost, or perhaps had simply been overtaxed. I confess my introduction to the original Mass Effect was entirely by chance. On a rather inconspicuous day in 2007, a random popup advertisement on a website that I was browsing appeared, and for no other reason than it just seemed interesting, I clicked it. To say that I found the concept interesting and the story compelling was an understatement, and in fairly short order I had already zipped down to the local Best Buy, grabbed my copy and was eagerly playing through the single player story.
Mind you that this was hardly my first experience with a Bioware RPG, I had known the name well back from when they had created KOTOR, one of the few pieces of Star Wars lore that I found not only palatable but outright enjoyable. Still, for me at the time the company was an unknown relatively speaking, unlike Valve or Blizzard, and I could tell that they hadn’t had much experience with the first person shooter aspect, and it showed in the game mechanics. The controls were clunky, the combat was anything but balanced, my Shepard had the grace of an aging elephant covered in Astroglide on a smoothly polished linoleum floor, and I won’t even dignify the handling characteristics of the Mako vehicle we were supposed to use for planetary exploration. Yet, despite these shortcomings, there was something alluring about the entire universe, something special, a certain type of magic that many writers and imaginaries that possess vastly superior writing and orating ability over me work their entire lives for, and only a few ever reach them. You know some of them, I gave you the short list in my second paragraph.
To Bioware’s credit, when it came time for Mass Effect 2, almost all of those criticisms were faithfully addressed either in the game proper, or in DLC. Most game developers talk about listening to their fans and responding to their customer base, some do or do just enough to sate the vocal minority that we all know and universally hate, but true to their word they did. Shepard now moved smoothly, the shooter aspects felt much more like a shooter, more balanced game mechanics blah blah blah, all the cosmetic crap that everyone flaunts around in the newest game, without ever actually giving all that eye candy a solid foundation to build on, a great story. What they kept and absolutely expanded on was the mind-staggering story and universe that you got to play in. Mass Effect rapidly gained popularity and what had been at least initially an oddball RPG that nerds chattered about while huddled in a basement hyped up on Mountain Dew, now was commonplace. Books and other forms of merchandise could be found stacked by the dozens at the bookstore, and walking around town in my N7 hoodie, hardly two blocks could be passed without someone stopping me and saying, “you play Mass Effect? What’s your Shepard like? Did you save Wrex or not?” Bioware had struck a chord, a very personal chord. The way that you could make your Shepard, as good or evil as he or she may be, to be literally your avatar in the game. From changing appearances, to dialog choices, you felt like you really were Commander Shepard. We all felt special, and each of our characters were special. Created by tireless efforts from the artisans, programmers and developers up in Edmonton, to the hundreds of hours that any player of Mass Effect would have gladly invested in making that literal extension of themselves seem more real. As far as I’m concerned, my Shepard is as much a part of me as my right hand. In short, Bioware created a universe that while most of us will probably never fly any higher than a jetliner cruises, we could get out and explore the galaxy and be there, not simply watch from afar with envy.
To say that the stakes were high, the expectations higher, and the excitement foaming at its rabid mouth for the epic conclusion to this juggernaut of a series was a gross understatement. Eternal wait though it may have been, launch night on March 5th 2012 came, and I along with the faithful, huddled outside our local Gamestop to see how this story would end. From the first surreal nightmare sequence right after escaping earth and the Reapers destroying everything in sight, I collapsed back into my chair, my 360 controller limply in my hands feeling like it had the weight of a brick, as I commented to nobody in particular on the obvious that was unfolding before my very eyes, “this **** just got serious.” Heh, oh man was I ever naïve. That was the first of many, from Ashley’s near death experience, Thane’s noble sacrifice, running about the Geth consciousness (which my dear friend Joe probably had about a 45 minute long orgasm playing), and watching Grunt kicking some very serious ass among many, many others that could easily take up the length of this commentary turned term paper that I have somehow managed to write. The total gameplay was easily longer than the first two games and all associated DLC combined by a considerable amount. The mechanics, improvements and balance all entirely improved and what they had been promised from day 1, and all of it centered and focused on the one event that we all knew was coming from the first game almost 5 years prior, stop the Reapers. The gameplay was everything Bioware promised. I felt without a shadow of a doubt that even Escapist Magazine’s own Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw, the utterly insatiable game critic who may as well be nicknamed “the Cat” for his penchant for finding even the smallest flaw and toying with it incessantly, would finally be wowed and shut the hell up for once and appreciate the beauty for what it is.
All this makes what I’m about to say and have put off saying until this point, just that much harder. The endings are a complete cop-out. They are as palatable as a dinner plate of cockroaches, as insulting as a public slap to the face in front of all your friends and family, and sting even more brutally. There is no “good” ending. Period. Shepard, my Shepard that I spent the last 5 years crafting and obsessing over, making him a part of me, simply ceases to exist, ripped from me more surely than a stray leaf is torn from a tree in the blowing winds of fall and seemingly as uncaring to boot. Perhaps the biggest pill to swallow that I find myself choking on, is the one thing I had always flaunted as the centerpiece of Mass Effect what made my Shepard as unique to me as we are to each other, and that is that none of the decisions I made up until that point seemingly mattered. A huge point that I always made about the game universe that nobody else up until this point had ever done, was letting your decisions, actions and consequences carry from one game to another, each providing a unique experience. Tragically, none of those decisions would have the slightest effect on the ending. Aside from a slight change in the color the Reapers make when you may either control them, kill them or merge synthetic and organic together, the endings are by and large the same. After that in all three the Normandy, your ever faithful mount, crashes on an unknown world where you see a couple survivors and that’s it, credits roll. No epilogue, no final goodbye, no finding out what happens afterwards. Do the Krogan and Turians get along after the war with the genophage wiped out, not even counting the whole Geth/Quarian situation, that’s been festering just as long and anyone who knows me understands that Tali is by far my favorite character. Oh and using a damn placeholder for the picture that lets us see what’s actually under the helmet as opposed to putting in some actual effort, like what so many of my fellow fans have done on places like DeviantArt, was simply too tall an order to fill.
The last 3 minutes utterly killed and destroyed a part of me that was years in the making, and the worst part is Bioware seems utterly unapologetic about it. My only hope, my slim hope, is that Bioware might release some DLC a la Fallout 3: Broken Steel style to completely change this bastardization of a conclusion. I have some hope, the game did make an autosave right before the final mission that you revert to after the credits roll so that DLC could be easily integrated, but I’m not hopeful. Right now, my eyes see wasted effort, my mind can think of only negative thoughts, and my heart feels only pain. I think I’ll log off now and do something else that had an infinitely more satisfying conclusion, perhaps the final episode of the Sopranos and Battlestar Galactica. 343 Industries, you are my only hope now and you can wake me any time cause I’m wanting to be needed at this moment.
As I type these words, a barely contained fury and a deep sadness course through my veins like a poison, burning from my heart to my fingertips. It is as if a member of my family just was killed and the murderer was given an executive pardon with no justice or damages paid. I pride myself on being a very reasonable man, possessing a more than fair sense of judgment, loyal to a fault, and tolerant of most things that would send any other person into a very justifiable rampage. With that said, I am somewhere between utterly depressed and raging mad with the ending of what was perhaps the greatest science fiction trilogies and franchises to have ever graced the gaming community, Mass Effect 3, and in good conscience cannot keep my thoughts to myself. Perhaps this sniffer full of brandy will dull my thoughts by the time I am done writing this article.
Hell, for anyone who's like me who on many nights looked up to see the brightly twinkling stars of the Orion Constellation and silently ponder, "What's out there, and are they looking up at me? What are they like? Will I ever see them? Will we be the best of friends or the worst of enemies?", the story of Mass Effect was a godsend of an epic undertaking that I have no doubt made the likes of Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke and Frank Herbert universally raise a glass to toast in salutation and respect from the afterlife, while George Lucas cries himself to sleep every night into his Jar-Jar Binks pillow. I can remember a time barely a decade ago when it seemed like science fiction as a whole was a dying idea. Star Trek had just been taken off the air permanently for the first time in almost 15 years, Star Wars fanboys rampaged on internet forums after watching their beloved universe melt in front of their very eyes, and with the likes of Halo still well in its infancy, the future of the science fiction genre seemed bleak, very bleak. Even the concept of space itself and mankind’s manifest destiny to see what was out there seemed in jeopardy as many of my fellow countrymen, indeed citizens of the world, shed tears watching the burning remnants of Columbia fall from the sky and uttered prayers that those seven brave souls would find peace in the afterlife. Many said that space was too dangerous, irrelevant and simply too expensive in not only the cost of money, but the precious costs of life, and that pointless daydreams of adventure on this new frontier were a costly distraction from the harsh realities of a world plagued by terrorism, social unrest, disease and violence. Sheesh, is it any wonder why more than a few of us would like nothing more to get off this rock? I would give all that I own for the opportunity, and I would be hard-pressed to even look back (or down if you insist) because so many don’t even look up in wonder anymore.
Fast forward a few years and the painful conclusion of the Star Wars having been completed and a distant memory, a complete reboot of Star Trek with a fresh perspective in the making, and Halo providing to the younger generations what Star Trek and 2001: A Space Odyssey were to me and my parents respectively. Best of all, the shuttles were flying again, and mankind seemed to have regained a sense of focus and creative imagination that had appeared lost, or perhaps had simply been overtaxed. I confess my introduction to the original Mass Effect was entirely by chance. On a rather inconspicuous day in 2007, a random popup advertisement on a website that I was browsing appeared, and for no other reason than it just seemed interesting, I clicked it. To say that I found the concept interesting and the story compelling was an understatement, and in fairly short order I had already zipped down to the local Best Buy, grabbed my copy and was eagerly playing through the single player story.
Mind you that this was hardly my first experience with a Bioware RPG, I had known the name well back from when they had created KOTOR, one of the few pieces of Star Wars lore that I found not only palatable but outright enjoyable. Still, for me at the time the company was an unknown relatively speaking, unlike Valve or Blizzard, and I could tell that they hadn’t had much experience with the first person shooter aspect, and it showed in the game mechanics. The controls were clunky, the combat was anything but balanced, my Shepard had the grace of an aging elephant covered in Astroglide on a smoothly polished linoleum floor, and I won’t even dignify the handling characteristics of the Mako vehicle we were supposed to use for planetary exploration. Yet, despite these shortcomings, there was something alluring about the entire universe, something special, a certain type of magic that many writers and imaginaries that possess vastly superior writing and orating ability over me work their entire lives for, and only a few ever reach them. You know some of them, I gave you the short list in my second paragraph.
To Bioware’s credit, when it came time for Mass Effect 2, almost all of those criticisms were faithfully addressed either in the game proper, or in DLC. Most game developers talk about listening to their fans and responding to their customer base, some do or do just enough to sate the vocal minority that we all know and universally hate, but true to their word they did. Shepard now moved smoothly, the shooter aspects felt much more like a shooter, more balanced game mechanics blah blah blah, all the cosmetic crap that everyone flaunts around in the newest game, without ever actually giving all that eye candy a solid foundation to build on, a great story. What they kept and absolutely expanded on was the mind-staggering story and universe that you got to play in. Mass Effect rapidly gained popularity and what had been at least initially an oddball RPG that nerds chattered about while huddled in a basement hyped up on Mountain Dew, now was commonplace. Books and other forms of merchandise could be found stacked by the dozens at the bookstore, and walking around town in my N7 hoodie, hardly two blocks could be passed without someone stopping me and saying, “you play Mass Effect? What’s your Shepard like? Did you save Wrex or not?” Bioware had struck a chord, a very personal chord. The way that you could make your Shepard, as good or evil as he or she may be, to be literally your avatar in the game. From changing appearances, to dialog choices, you felt like you really were Commander Shepard. We all felt special, and each of our characters were special. Created by tireless efforts from the artisans, programmers and developers up in Edmonton, to the hundreds of hours that any player of Mass Effect would have gladly invested in making that literal extension of themselves seem more real. As far as I’m concerned, my Shepard is as much a part of me as my right hand. In short, Bioware created a universe that while most of us will probably never fly any higher than a jetliner cruises, we could get out and explore the galaxy and be there, not simply watch from afar with envy.
To say that the stakes were high, the expectations higher, and the excitement foaming at its rabid mouth for the epic conclusion to this juggernaut of a series was a gross understatement. Eternal wait though it may have been, launch night on March 5th 2012 came, and I along with the faithful, huddled outside our local Gamestop to see how this story would end. From the first surreal nightmare sequence right after escaping earth and the Reapers destroying everything in sight, I collapsed back into my chair, my 360 controller limply in my hands feeling like it had the weight of a brick, as I commented to nobody in particular on the obvious that was unfolding before my very eyes, “this **** just got serious.” Heh, oh man was I ever naïve. That was the first of many, from Ashley’s near death experience, Thane’s noble sacrifice, running about the Geth consciousness (which my dear friend Joe probably had about a 45 minute long orgasm playing), and watching Grunt kicking some very serious ass among many, many others that could easily take up the length of this commentary turned term paper that I have somehow managed to write. The total gameplay was easily longer than the first two games and all associated DLC combined by a considerable amount. The mechanics, improvements and balance all entirely improved and what they had been promised from day 1, and all of it centered and focused on the one event that we all knew was coming from the first game almost 5 years prior, stop the Reapers. The gameplay was everything Bioware promised. I felt without a shadow of a doubt that even Escapist Magazine’s own Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw, the utterly insatiable game critic who may as well be nicknamed “the Cat” for his penchant for finding even the smallest flaw and toying with it incessantly, would finally be wowed and shut the hell up for once and appreciate the beauty for what it is.
All this makes what I’m about to say and have put off saying until this point, just that much harder. The endings are a complete cop-out. They are as palatable as a dinner plate of cockroaches, as insulting as a public slap to the face in front of all your friends and family, and sting even more brutally. There is no “good” ending. Period. Shepard, my Shepard that I spent the last 5 years crafting and obsessing over, making him a part of me, simply ceases to exist, ripped from me more surely than a stray leaf is torn from a tree in the blowing winds of fall and seemingly as uncaring to boot. Perhaps the biggest pill to swallow that I find myself choking on, is the one thing I had always flaunted as the centerpiece of Mass Effect what made my Shepard as unique to me as we are to each other, and that is that none of the decisions I made up until that point seemingly mattered. A huge point that I always made about the game universe that nobody else up until this point had ever done, was letting your decisions, actions and consequences carry from one game to another, each providing a unique experience. Tragically, none of those decisions would have the slightest effect on the ending. Aside from a slight change in the color the Reapers make when you may either control them, kill them or merge synthetic and organic together, the endings are by and large the same. After that in all three the Normandy, your ever faithful mount, crashes on an unknown world where you see a couple survivors and that’s it, credits roll. No epilogue, no final goodbye, no finding out what happens afterwards. Do the Krogan and Turians get along after the war with the genophage wiped out, not even counting the whole Geth/Quarian situation, that’s been festering just as long and anyone who knows me understands that Tali is by far my favorite character. Oh and using a damn placeholder for the picture that lets us see what’s actually under the helmet as opposed to putting in some actual effort, like what so many of my fellow fans have done on places like DeviantArt, was simply too tall an order to fill.
The last 3 minutes utterly killed and destroyed a part of me that was years in the making, and the worst part is Bioware seems utterly unapologetic about it. My only hope, my slim hope, is that Bioware might release some DLC a la Fallout 3: Broken Steel style to completely change this bastardization of a conclusion. I have some hope, the game did make an autosave right before the final mission that you revert to after the credits roll so that DLC could be easily integrated, but I’m not hopeful. Right now, my eyes see wasted effort, my mind can think of only negative thoughts, and my heart feels only pain. I think I’ll log off now and do something else that had an infinitely more satisfying conclusion, perhaps the final episode of the Sopranos and Battlestar Galactica. 343 Industries, you are my only hope now and you can wake me any time cause I’m wanting to be needed at this moment.
#883
Posté 09 mars 2012 - 06:05
Pandora
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- Members
- 95 messages
I gave Bioware the benefit of the doubt with the endings. I thought maybe a fanboy/fangirl was being to harsh on the ending. When I beat the game last night, I was definitely in that consensus. What happened? I wanted to be with my LI and know the fates of my other comrades but no let's end it like this. Follow ME1 and ME2 as your background to do further endings. I really wanted to see more choices used from the previous games to have a direct impact for the ending.
P.S. I loathe forced multiplayer
P.S. I loathe forced multiplayer
#884
Posté 09 mars 2012 - 06:06
Aran Linvail
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- Members
- 543 messages
My only Question to Bioware is this : WHY ? The game is great , funny moments , emocional moments and in the very end :
All you did in Ma1 Ma2 and Ma 3 , all your hard work to make YOUR Shepard = NULL
All the sacrifices you and your friends made , from Ash/Kainden in Virmire to Mordin , Legion and Thane = NULL
All the War Assets and support you get , all you hardwork to unite the Galaxy = NULL
All time you invested in your friends and LI = NULL
Why ? So i can choose a color in the end ?
All you did in Ma1 Ma2 and Ma 3 , all your hard work to make YOUR Shepard = NULL
All the sacrifices you and your friends made , from Ash/Kainden in Virmire to Mordin , Legion and Thane = NULL
All the War Assets and support you get , all you hardwork to unite the Galaxy = NULL
All time you invested in your friends and LI = NULL
Why ? So i can choose a color in the end ?
#885
Posté 09 mars 2012 - 06:08
HiExplosivz
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- Members
- 1 messages
This is unforgivable. I was annoyed when it happened in Deus Ex, I was crushed when it happened in ME3. This invalidated everything I have done. I just want to add my voice to the call for a fix to this disaster of an ending. I had faith Bioware...
#886
Posté 09 mars 2012 - 06:09
Parker Stephenson
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- Members
- 93 messages
Entreri10 your not alone on this feeling, I've never been so dramatically effected like this by any other game or even any other type of entertainment, I feel like they took a knife and drove it straight through everyone heart in this game, that was at the part where shepard got hit by the beam, then it felt as if bioware continued to kick us while we were done then finished us off with a curbstomp of an ending to such an amazing game which just emotionally killed all ME fans, it's just not right especially after they promised the gaming community that all your questions will be answered, and as someone else stated there is enough bad out in our real world, so it's nice to have an escape to a paradise where good wins versus evil and the character lives without the sacrifice
#887
Posté 09 mars 2012 - 06:12
novaseeker
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- Members
- 183 messages
Heldenbrand wrote...
The theme of this series has never been about synthetic life versus organic life; that was contained solely within a subplot found between the Quarians and the Geth. In this capacity it was addressed beautifully providing the player the choice to make that determination to answer the question: do we have a soul?
The theme to Mass Effect, from the very start, has been that through unity and perseverance they can survive. The Paragon options generally bring this unity through diplomacy, whereas Renegade does it through force or deceit. If Shepard is our extension and avatar through humanity, then our other crew members represent the various Council races. Asari, Turian, Salarian, Krogan, and Quarian, even Geth; we care about their races because of these crew members and through them we witness their plights and struggles. Through our actions in the series we can doom not only the crew member, but often times their very civilizations.
I agree, in general.
I suspect BioWare would say that the overall theme was Reapers vs Galaxy, which is synthetic vs (mostly) organic life, writ large. The trouble with that is that this way of looking at the overarching struggle doesn't present itself until very late in ME3 as a main theme. It isn't developed in the earlier games much at all (those who are straining can find snippets here and there suggesting this or that, but that does not constitute anything close to adequate groundwork for this kind of "big theme" to emerge rather suddenly at the 11th hour of the series. Up until then the struggle with the Reapers is portrayed as "everyone against these Reaper monsters who want to kill us" and not some kind of philosophical/Kurzweil thing about singularity and the compatibility of organic and synthetic life and so on. As you say the only place where this is explored to any significant degree is with respect to the Quarians and Geth, and even there the writing steers one away from drawing parallels with the Reapers (certainly Legion's conversations in ME2 tend this way). Overall the theme of the game is one of heroic struggle against a seemingly invincible adversary bent on destroying all life ... and that becomes, at 11:59 in the game, a phiosophical question about the singularity and organic vs synthetic life forms. There just isn't anything close to enough of a foundation for that theme, which is why it's so jarring. It's out of step with the rest of the series. It isn't "surprising" as much as it is sloppy. If they wanted this to be the main theme, then they should have made it the main theme regarding the Reapers much earlier in the series -- springing it at the last minute is shoddy writing and plot design, charitably speaking.
In the ending all the choices we have made or effort we have put forth in the previous two games means absolutely nothing. As described by so many others here, the entirety of the series can be broken down into three choices; three choices that do not reflect the character I have created or how hard the races fought to survive. They worked as one not only to escape death, but to preserve their way of life. One way or another all that has been lost in those three choices presented to us.
Paragon or Renegade it doesn't matter, we're not upset at the Renegade ending or the Paragon ending; we're upset because we have neither. We do not see the consequences of the decisions we made in the game or in the prior, we only see the consequences of a single choice. It breaks down the very thing that made Mass Effect special to us; narrative choice and impact of our decisions. This horrific ending could haven been tolerated in Mass Effect 2, because we knew more was coming, but at the end of Shepard's story it is agonizing to us that we have wasted hundreds of hours and years playing and waiting.
Exactly. This is why it has the feel of a big troll, really. Here you have an entire game built around the concept that decisions matter and have substantially different, palpably different, outcomes to them, and are in your control (decisions, not consequences), and at the end you find that all of that was really crap -- it was a joke. In reality your choices didn't matter, you were just being trolled by the developers and the writers. The real message of Mass Effect, in the end, seems to be that your choices don't matter much, that a Deus Ex Machina controls substantially everything and you really have very few real choices, and that the earlier part of the game was an elaborate way of getting this fundamentally nihilistic message across in a particularly jarring way, by means of contrast with the ending. Of course, I don't think that was the intention. I suspect the intention was to try to be "edgy" and "cool" and "post-modern" and "contemporary" and all that jazz, but this failed utterly because the entire concept of the game was, again until 11:59, based on heroic struggle where one's decisions and actions have palpable consequences (good and bad, depending on your choices) -- playing the bait and switch at 11:59 by means of the cheapest plot ploy in the book (the instant conjouring of a Deus Ex Machina, and probably the worst appearance of one in the history of the genre) just doesn't work. And that's regardless of whether you want a light ending or a grimdark one. The whole setup of the plot for the entire series was not consonant with those ending choices -- it simply doesn't fit together at all, and it feels very cheap because of the Deus Ex Machina used at the key point in the entire series. As a result, ME2, to me, feels like a much more epic game than ME3 does -- they ruined it at the end, alas. Tried to get too cute and "hip" with the plot and ending up being cheap and discordant and deeply unstaisfying for most players.
#888
Posté 09 mars 2012 - 06:12
zer0netgain
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Niraven wrote...
The whole damn point of this story was that organics weren't going to resign themselves to some predetermined fate. Shepard told Saren, Sovereign, Harbinger, and The Illusive Man to go to hell, that they would determine their own fates. But then some Toddler God comes in and is like, "lol I own you" and she buys it without question? Why did they even need Sovereign to activate the Citadel if Toddler God was there? Not only did this new angle not make sense, it felt cheap.
Presuming you don't write in the idea that the catalyst was not so much a consiciousness but a recording that played in the event anyone ever got far enough to do what Sheppard was attempting to do....
As much as "predetermined fate" is concered, sometimes that's all you get. The catalyst offers 2 basic choices...destroy the Reapers or take control of them. The third option (which to me seems like a bit of a secret ending), offers a hope that perhaps without the Reapers, life will grow and evolve without the inevitable organic/synthetic bad outcome the Reapers were created to avert.
I'm not sure what other options you could put into the game. The technology of the Reapers was the key to controling or destroying them. That being the case, what you could do with it was predetermined by its creators.
#889
Guest_QuadDamage85_*
Posté 09 mars 2012 - 06:14
Guest_QuadDamage85_*
Guest_QuadDamage85_*
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What I don't understand is why everyone wants Bioware to release DLC for something that should have been done correctly in the first place. This whole concept of downloadable content has ruined gaming. Back when expanions were the method of extending the story, you could at least get half of the original games gameplay time. Now, with this DLC which is largely a rip off, you get an hour of game play for 1/5 of the price of the original (give or take). I truly do wonder why humans settle for subpar bull****. You pay outrageous prices for gasoline, food, healthcare and other NECESSITIES, and continue to allow the top 1% hoard all your money.
#890
Posté 09 mars 2012 - 06:16
Parker Stephenson
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Just doesn't make sense though why in any Of the choices the mass relays must be destroyed, you fight so hard to save the galaxy but in the end your only fighting to save the sol system itself and it's not like they tell you what happened to palaven or thessia or any other alien home world for tht matter, just horrible bioware just horrible....
#891
Posté 09 mars 2012 - 06:17
Beras
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Let's not turn this to an Occupy movement. It's just we've accepted the fact that the only way to get some decent endings or closure would be to pay for it.
God knows EA won't let Bioware give it out for free.
God knows EA won't let Bioware give it out for free.
#892
Posté 09 mars 2012 - 06:17
Valk72
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TheShinySword wrote...
I actually do have to wonder how a game with such a large team could make such a mistake, why did no one say "Um... guys this might be a bad idea..." during development and if someone did say that, why did no one listen.
Yep, i don't understand that too, escpecially when they say they want to appeal to the largest fanbase possible. It's impossible to do with only this three endings.
#893
Posté 09 mars 2012 - 06:17
Eumerin
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tausra wrote...
Just remember these are the same people who think DA2 was a great game. I hope for an ending change, but I am not holding my breath. This is the second time I've been trolled by BioWare, there won't be a third.
I liked DA2.
I do NOT like ME3. In fact, I dislike it so strongly, that I'm suddenly finding myself very unlikely to purchase DA3 when it comes out - and I own every single RPG that Bioware has released on the PC and consoles.
The difference between DA2 and ME3 is that DA2 telegraphed practically right from the start what was going to happen. DA2's plot essentially ends with a massive train wreck for the city of Kirkwall, but that impending wreck is telegraphed practically from the start of the First Year segment. You may not be able to stop the wreck, but the game makes certain that you know it's coming.
ME3, on the other hand, suddenly changes everything around at the last instant. It's like Final Fantasy IX, which introduced a final ultimate big bad that you'd never even heard of before as the final battle of the game. No lead-up. No real hints (there were one or two quick comments suggesting a puppetmaster for the Reapers, but they sounded more like sequel hooks when you initially heard them; kind of like all of the hints regarding Dark Matter in ME2). Just an out of the blue "Fooled you! Here's the real big bad!"
#894
Posté 09 mars 2012 - 06:18
bpzrn
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Parker Stephenson wrote...
TheShinySword wrote...
I actually do have to wonder how a game with such a large team could make such a mistake, why did no one say "Um... guys this might be a bad idea..." during development and if someone did say that, why did no one listen.
That's exactly what I'm thinking is how can you drop the ball this bad and on top of that after the credits try and make a trilogy be transformed into a story from an old man... It's not cool
agree
#895
Posté 09 mars 2012 - 06:23
Parker Stephenson
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The only way for EA/Bioware would ever release any DLC or expansions for the game for free is if all of the ME gaming community managed to sue them on grounds that they didn't uphold there end of the service technically the base game price is $60 anything + was extra but you'd have to show evidence of this to the court system, or else get every Bioware/EA gamer to boycott all of there games and cause them to economically decline
Modifié par Parker Stephenson, 09 mars 2012 - 06:24 .
#896
Posté 09 mars 2012 - 06:24
KerrJMF
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Just adding my discontent to the fray. ME3 was, by far (IMO), the best game of the series. And the endings ruined it all. There is zero replay value now. No matter how you make decision, who you romance, you'll either be dead or alive and permanently separated from the characters Bioware worked so hard to develop and induce emotional attachment.
First person to mod a new ending gets my endless gratitude. Hell, I'd be happy having it end with Shepard and Anderson looking into space (and deleting that whole crackfic shot of the Joker inexplicably hitting a mass relay when he and the crew were circling earth to destroy a Reaper not five minutes prior). Then at least we can pretend that there's a chance that Shepard reunited with her/his LI. (Speaking of which, Garrus is on the ground with me. I get quasi-killed by the Reaper laser. Suddenly, Garrus is on the crashing Normandy going through a relay. So, Joker picked him up at the Reaper site and high-tailed it to a relay...I give up.
First person to mod a new ending gets my endless gratitude. Hell, I'd be happy having it end with Shepard and Anderson looking into space (and deleting that whole crackfic shot of the Joker inexplicably hitting a mass relay when he and the crew were circling earth to destroy a Reaper not five minutes prior). Then at least we can pretend that there's a chance that Shepard reunited with her/his LI. (Speaking of which, Garrus is on the ground with me. I get quasi-killed by the Reaper laser. Suddenly, Garrus is on the crashing Normandy going through a relay. So, Joker picked him up at the Reaper site and high-tailed it to a relay...I give up.
#897
Posté 09 mars 2012 - 06:24
Dragoni89
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All those that like DA2 and defended it rigoursly. I just pointed the, towards the sales and they went silent. I will do the same for ME3.
#898
Posté 09 mars 2012 - 06:25
Outreach117
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Eumerin wrote...
tausra wrote...
Just remember these are the same people who think DA2 was a great game. I hope for an ending change, but I am not holding my breath. This is the second time I've been trolled by BioWare, there won't be a third.
I liked DA2.
I do NOT like ME3. In fact, I dislike it so strongly, that I'm suddenly finding myself very unlikely to purchase DA3 when it comes out - and I own every single RPG that Bioware has released on the PC and consoles.
The difference between DA2 and ME3 is that DA2 telegraphed practically right from the start what was going to happen. DA2's plot essentially ends with a massive train wreck for the city of Kirkwall, but that impending wreck is telegraphed practically from the start of the First Year segment. You may not be able to stop the wreck, but the game makes certain that you know it's coming.
ME3, on the other hand, suddenly changes everything around at the last instant. It's like Final Fantasy IX, which introduced a final ultimate big bad that you'd never even heard of before as the final battle of the game. No lead-up. No real hints (there were one or two quick comments suggesting a puppetmaster for the Reapers, but they sounded more like sequel hooks when you initially heard them; kind of like all of the hints regarding Dark Matter in ME2). Just an out of the blue "Fooled you! Here's the real big bad!"
I'll agree with you on those points. DA2 was comparable to ME2 insofar as position in the story. It was the end of the series, just some additional storyline to add depth to the whole universe for the conclusion in DA3. I can't say I was dissatisfied with the ending in DA2 because we knew it wasn't the end of the DA series, unlike ME3 which is the end of Shepard. We all just wanted to see Shepard go out better and there be more conclusion to the story, an epilogue like what we got in DA:O and any of the Fallout games made to date. Instead the relays are all destroyed, regardless of choice, which essentially destroys the entire premise and driving engine of the ME universe and we don't even get get to see a glimpse of the consequences or conclusion of the decisions we made. Even the ones that we knew we would eventually face as far back as ME1 with the genophage and Geth/Quarian, we just woke up to find the spot next to us on the bed cold without even so much as a note on the nightstand.
#899
Posté 09 mars 2012 - 06:26
Triceratops
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I half expected the camera to pan way out and show us that the galaxy was in a snow globe being held by an autistic boy after the credits. That wouldn't have been any better but at least I would have laughed.
#900
Posté 09 mars 2012 - 06:28
comrade gando
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If this was a movie, like a 3 part trilogy (kinda is that now but a game), the audience would be booing right now, straight up.
