Biotic Sage wrote...
Eternalsteelfan wrote...
Biotic Sage wrote...
Rawgrim wrote...
Biotic Sage wrote...
Dragon Age: Origins had a great classic RPG ending. The text consequences were interesting, but would have been an awful decision in cinematic storytelling.
Mass Effect 3 went beyond that. It had a cinematic, emotionally poignant ending, but still gave us a climactic choice.
In terms of storytelling, ME3 exceeds DA:O.
This is true. But this also makes ME3 an interactive movie, rather than a roleplaying game.
Exactly! That's exactly what Mass Effect always has been. And it is amazing, pioneering interactive cinema. They give you just enough influence to flavor it how you want, but the framework of the narrative will always stay the same. Shepard becoming a legend and defeating the Reapers.
The level of interaction/cinematics, game vs. movie is debatable but not the issue. The narrative is amazing, I think Mass Effect 3 is one of the greatest games ever made. It's just so unfortunate that after Bioware was able to create such an amazing and immersive story that they failed to deliver an ending worthy neither of it nor the time and emotion we so eagerly invested in it as an audience.
The longer the story, the more the audience becomes invested in it, the more closure the audience needs.
That's why they not only gave you the most amazing interactions with your love interest and crew, but they also gave us an encore farewell to all of our friends we had come to care about in London as you walked through the ruins of the city. That was the closure. That's when my Shepard said goodbye and knew that all bets were off from that point forward, that anyone could and probably will die in the coming moments.
As for closure for the plot, that was when the Reapers were stopped and the Cycle was broken. That was Shepard's goal throughout the series, and he accomplished it. How much closure do people need?
Again, what we are saying is largely in agreement but you are missing important parts of what I'm trying to say. Again, I'll state I loved the game and narrative of it right up to the end and I'll emphasize that I think the goodbyes on Earth are absolutely brilliant.
The issues are mostly with the jarring introduction of the god-child, the ending choices being something of a universe reset switch (and our lack of choice in the matter with all 3 being almost completely the same save for the unseen implications) that diminishes everything we did in previous games and earlier in the game, and the unknown fate of everyone and everything. The closure we get on Earth is thrown out the window by the upheaval caused by the Crucible.
A father or mother tells their child a story, the child says "And then what happens". It's just in our nature; we don't want stories, especially good ones, to end, but they have to, and when they do we need closure, we need to feel like maybe this story is over but their lives are going on somewhere out there. This is why we have "...and they lived happily every after", it's not just about a happy ending or a sad ending, it's the "ever after" that we so desire.
In Mass Effect 3 there is everything a good story needs, the obstacles are overcome, the destination is reached, everything comes together but then all of a sudden everything is turned upside down, everything we've come to terms with, everything we've worked for, all the closure we found on Earth, even accepting Shepherd's death, it's all thrown out the window by one choice that changes everything, even the setting itself. All of this, and only in the last few minutes when the story is supposed to reach resolution.
We were deprived of our "ever after".
Modifié par Eternalsteelfan, 10 mars 2012 - 02:37 .
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