201 réponses à ce sujet

[pro5]

Arbitrary reading for developers / writers, and for those few who've tricked themselves into "liking" the current endings.

 Reasons why the ending is so disappointing:

* No matter what you choose, it feels like a failure (MOST IMPORTANT, imho)
The players have been following a story and fighting the reapers for 3 games. We have watched characters who are close friends die and cities on Earth and other planets burn to the Reapers, resulting in deaths of millions innocent lives. All that time, we carried on because the game had us believe it all would mean something in the end, there is still hope. But when we get to the end, we are greeted by "something" that admits to controlling the Reapers ("The Reapers are my solution. I control them."). This thing gives us 3 arbitrary choices and we are forced to take one of them. Why... why on earth would Shepard even believe anything this Reaper abomination says??? It casually says that various options will control the reapers, wipe out all synthetics, or (OMG..) re-write the genetic code of every creature in the galaxy. And I'm just expected to take its word that everything will be ok and be happy with it? Are we supposed to accept placing the fate of every species in the galaxy and everyone we care about at the mercy of this Reaper Mastermind?
Hell, no.
Also there's the part where with all Mass Relays destroyed, and not enough knowledge to build new ones, the galactic civilization is effectively finished. Galactic economies (what's left of them) all inevitably collapse / regress, countless people (including Shepard's alien friends) are stranded on foreign worlds with no way to get to their homes. And the poor Sol system, apparently, now must sustain trillions of alien soldiers who've come to fight the final battle here. Including the Quarians, and Salarians and Turians, who "cannot even eat the same food" (implying Earth food would not be suitable for at least one of them either). Is this the victory we were fighting for and sacrificed our Shepard's life for? Really?

* It contradicts the established ME1 canon
So, the thing controlling the Reapers is part of the Citadel. In that case, why would the Reapers need to leave one of their own (Sovereign) behind in the galaxy to monitor the "state of galactic civilization" and trigger the sending of the signal to dark space? What was the whole ME1 plot about? No explanation is given whatsoever.
(+ other plot holes listed in other threads, I'm too tired to look for them all...)

* Your decisions throughout the game (and the whole trilogy) have no impact on the ending you get.
The only thing (aside from the hidden ending where Shepard on the Citadel apparently survives... after we see the Citadel explode and crumble... no further comment) that seems to affect what ending you get is EMS (Effective Military Strength) value. You can unite the galaxy by saving the krogan and brokering peace between the Geth and the Quarians, you can seemingly doom the galaxy by making the worst playthrough ever - but in the end, your choices will be the same if you have gathered enough EMS when you reach the end. This is not what you promised us, Bioware.

* All endings look virtually the same.
Somewhat tied to the previous point, and deeper philosophical meanings in the choices aside, the endings are the same brief  cinematic with different colors of the "pulse" explosion and minor details. Not much incentive to replay the game to reach other endings.

* The part where the Normandy is shown flying through the relay for some reason.
Last thing we know from the game, the Normandy was fighting for Earth with the fleet. Why would Joker suddenly abandon Earth and Shepard and flee? Just because he saw a strangely colored pulse emanating from the Crucible and got a bad feeling in his gut? It makes no sense. No explanation is given whatsoever.

* No real answers to all the questions about the Reapers.
This is the end, or so we were led to believe. We expected to to be able to learn something about the mysterious enemy we've been fighting. Instead we got several sentences from the Catalyst informing us that we're idiots and have been wrong in our assumptions all along. We are here to save all organic life, rejoice. Run along now and pick one of those 3 choices. Don't bother me while I'm enjoying this epic show of the galactic battle overhead.

* No exposition on what happens to our favorite characters
ME's focus (and its best part, like other Bioware games) has always been on characters. Everyone has their favourites. We've followed them through 3 amazing games (yes, I count ME3 as amazing, up until the Catalyst shows up and ruins everything). This is the end of the series, and time to say goodbye to our friends and LIs. The scene leading up to the final assault where my Shepard was slowly walking up to Anderson and speaking and saying goodbye to all his comrades along the way was AWESOME. But it's not enough. We need to see what happens to them as result of our choices. As it stands, we can only assume 2 of our final squadmates are wiped out by Harbinger's beam - until we miraculously see onf of them walking off the Normandy, totally unharmed. What happens to the rest of them is apparently "details lost to history", not important enough to be remembered by the Stargazer.

Bottom line:

Bioware, people are complaining so much because you've done a hell of a job getting people emotionally invested in the game - which is a great success. This game deserves a better ending, we know you can do better than this. Please, do not let us down in this way.


These videos sum the most important bits up pretty well:
Mass Effect 3 Ending: Tasteful, Understated Nerdrage
Mass Effect 3 Ending and Why We Hate It!
10 Reasons We Hate Mass Effect 3's Ending



*EDIT*: We now have official responses:
Casey Hudson (March 17): http://social.biowar...index/10089946 
Ray Muzyka (March 21): http://blog.bioware....012/03/21/4108/

Modifié par pro5, 28 mars 2012 - 05:38 .

[Violet]

yep

[Craven1138]

http://social.biowar...5/index/9749689

[ragecage559]

Totally wrong, we are just spoiled, entitled, brats. We have no use for logical things like this.

[Xenbus]

Don't forget how in ME1 sovereign says that reapers are the pinnacle of evolution in the galaxy. So the synthesis choice literally means that you make every living thing in the galaxy into a reaper, in what ever shape its biological body was. (Not even going to get into how that would work with shear genetic complexity of life. We'll go with space magic I guess)

[Gibb_Shepard]

Pretty much. I especially agree with your first point.

[Darkslayer557]

I thought the ending i got was great. I watched enough good movies to know that an ending that tells you everything what happened isn't the best.

[Craven1138]

It's not about being told everything. It's about previous choices making diffrence and having various choices.

[fropas]

Craven1138 wrote...

It's not about being told everything. It's about previous choices making diffrence and having various choices.

Actually I want to know everything about the reapers, and I feel ripped off since most of my questions, about them, never got any answers .

[KingNothing125]

Darkslayer557 wrote...

I thought the ending i got was great. I watched enough good movies to know that an ending that tells you everything what happened isn't the best.

What movies are those? Jack and Jill? Dude, Where's My Car?

[Silasqtx]

The first point lacks something: hard work. You exceptionally pointed out that all endings resemble some kind of failure, but the game lacks two important outcomes: Reaper victory (Control/Merge are kinda Reaper Victory, tho) and a "difficult but satisfying outcome" (read: awesome victory)

[rma2110]

The lack of an epilogue is what bugs me. I want to know how Shepard's decisions affected the races. What kind of legacy did our hero leave behind? Do the Geth turn on their Quarian creators? What happens to the Krogan if you cure the genophage? Do the racchni remain peaceful? How do all the races deal with the loss of the Mass Relays? So many questions spinning in my head.

Modifié par rma2110, 12 mars 2012 - 09:16 .

[VileIntent]

I agree, also where is the epic fight with Harbringer? Why was it a simple destroyer guarding the citadel beam. Why not Harbringer?
To be honest I felt like the games set release date was the issue. They made the date and then failed to get it out properly. Was EA behind this bioware?

[Genome852]

Because they're all highly depressing and Mass Effect has never been a very "dark themed" series... until the last few minutes of ME3.

ME1 and ME2 endings were both pretty "happy" if you played Paragon. ME3 ending there is only sadness.

[Umbrellamage]

BringBackNihlus wrote...

You pretty much nailed everything.

Too bad we're all entitled, and think we deserve and ending with some closure and the ability to have a truly "good" ending. How dare us!

More like how dare us entitled brats to actually expect bioware delivers on half of its promises.

Sure I knew 17 unique endings was way too many, as dev speak goes it's usually half, if that.  So I thought, ok 6 unique endings makes sense maybe with some variations, 6 is reasonable for the finale.  The shock to learn it's 1 ending with 3 variations and a bonus cutscene.

[Karathossen]

The current endings don't make sense. It just doesn't work, plain and simple. Unless their intention was to completely destroy the universe and the characters they spent three games and metric butt-tons of other media creating... In which case I'm just sad they wanted to do that, and will move on. But only once they actually acknowledge this somehow.

If they intend to keep this universe rolling, and intend to create more Mass Effect games: This has to be undone or at least elaborated upon so we know how the hell anyone is meant to survive after the Reaper war. The current endings open up tons of questions and are riddled with plotholes - something no writer or game dev worth his salt would or indeed should accept in his/her own creation.

Bioware reacted to errors in a ME book by saying they would get them fixed, because it was so blatantly obvious that the stuff in the book didn't work with the lore of the ME universe. Fans called those errors out and they said they'd get them worked out.

I quote from community coordinator Chris Priestly ( http://social.biowar...index/9150901/1 )

Mass Effect fans have been asking for a comment on recent concerns over Mass Effect: Deception. We have been listening and have the below response on the issue.

The teams at Del Rey and BioWare would like to extend our sincerest apologies to the Mass Effect fans for any errors and oversights made in the recent novel Mass Effect: Deception.  We are currently working on a number of changes that will appear in future editions of the novel. 

We would like to thank all Mass Effect fans for their passion and dedication to this ever-growing world, and assure them that we are listening and taking this matter very seriously.

These endings don't work with the lore of the ME universe - unless the writers' plan was to destroy the entire universe. Why is it acceptable? Fans are calling Bioware out on the errors in these endings. Why? As the quote says - Passion and dedication to the ever-growing world of Mass Effect.

Modifié par Karathossen, 12 mars 2012 - 09:22 .

[asilarae]

I might be in the minority, but I could have accepted the four endings (yeah, four) if some things had been changed. I will now list those thing in convenient list order.

1) No star child. Bad star child. Bad voice actor. No cookie.

2) The four endings are four separate endings that depend entirely on your decisions. If you did enough things that you alienated the galaxy, the reapers take over. If you make one type of decision, you can choose instead to control the reapers. If you make another, synthesis. A third, and destruction is your option. Not three of them for one play through and the fourth if you basically don't play enough.

3) No Normandy sequence. It didn't really add anything--I've yet to hear anyone who even liked to the endings defend it--and it raised far too many questions.

4) More differences in the endings than just a colour change.

It actually takes out more than it adds, so expecting the four endings to look different isn't asking that much, from a developer's standpoint. Then Bioware tells the story they wish to tell and the fans are... er, well... close to being happy than they are now.

Edit: this still wouldn't be what I, personally, was hoping for, but it gives the player some different choices and feels more like an RPG.  Closer to being what people expected, yeah?

Modifié par asilarae, 12 mars 2012 - 09:26 .

[MadMatt910]

Coudl just revert to the orignal dark energy endings. Much more sense and it does wreck establish canon

[Dreogan]

The end of Mass Effect 3 conclusively disproves every single bullet point listed.

Because space god and sparkling lights compel more than reason.

[Maj.Pain007]

In my opinion it minimizes everything you did leading up to that point. Especially with no epilogue to speak of there was no closure at all. The ending didn't feel like anything like Mass Effect in previous games it felt wrong.

[dyeowart]

The whole explanation for the extinction cycle was simply not supported by anything in the games that I can remember.

Other than the reapers none of the synthetics ingame ever showed any inclination to want to exterminate organic life (maybe in DLC? but if the ending makes no sense without DLC...). All but the heretic geth (being manipulated by a reaper) didn't even show any *hostility* towards organic life - they fought purely in self defense (going so far as to deliberately let the quarians retreat safely etc) and left everyone else alone.

That's not to say that it's necessarily false or not, but the geth or some synthetic really should have been portrayed in a different way in ME2/ME3 for this to make any sense. There's simply no nonreaper synthetic antagonists, so a one liner to the equivalent of "reapers reap because synthetics will wipe out organics otherwise" doesn't really make sense. Basically add [citation needed] to 95% of what the ghost child (wtf there by the way?) says.

Destroying the relay network is kind of apocalyptic as well (doesn't this destroy almost every populated system and starve/isolate anyone left - particularly in sol?), but endings don't have to be happy I guess. The plotholes are far more annoying.

[mattahraw]

Well said op, I love the game, and the general idea of the ending would work if it was better executed. I felt every single bullet point of yours when the credits suddenly rolled.


Bonus bullet point: No boss battle. Mass Effect has always had boss battles. Where was the boss battle to end all boss battles? Why build up Harbinger in one game and then have him virtually disappear in another?

The final boss of the game was a friggin slow motion marauder.

[Last Hearth]

I think the key is that every one of the 3 options felt like a defeat, that's the main problem.

I could live with Shepard dying to ensure a victory over the Reapers, it would have been sad but heroic and epic. But none of the option felt like winning, they all felt like "pick how you'll lose", because victory to me at the minimum requires the preservation of the galactic community (requires Mass Relays) and each of the races that Shepard helped can begin rebuilding their society.

As is, you have every one trapped in the Solar System, with no way to get home. No means to rebuild. That's what leaves a bitter taste in ones mouth, and what ruins the series. Even playing as Shepard beating Sovereign in ME becomes tainted because I can never get the sense of triumphing over overwhelming odds back again, because I know in the end Shepard loses.

Modifié par Last Hearth, 12 mars 2012 - 09:50 .

[mattahraw]

Also, all along during development we were repeatedly told that since it was the last game, there were no constrictions about having to lead into another title, hence the endings could wildly diverge depending on all your choices.

But all we got was a 5 minute cutscene that is virtually the same except for minor details.

I really love the game. I do. But the ending left me so unsatisfied. Feels like it has spoiled the trilogy for me.

*sigh*