23455 réponses à ce sujet

[alfiejr]

Sorry the ending was really bad, I was hoping that Shephard somehow survive after all the turmoil and adversities he went through. Seriously he deserved better than the choices given in the end.

But I have to put my hands up this is probably one of the best games that I've ever played certainly the best trilogy ever. Though it's unfortunate that it's spoiled by a pretty wretched ending.

[jackalman12]

Also you.must think your fans are idiots to think we would sceptically a Deus Ex Machina seriously that just cheap.

[Valk72]

chemiclord wrote...

Deus Ex Machina: God from the Machine. I know exactly what it means.

The Catalyst is not that. That's kinda like saying the Admin of a computer network is a "god." The Catalyst makes no claims of godhood. It's an architect, a designer, a programmer, if you will. That's EXACTLY what it says it is. It is an AI designed to guide the Reapers in their programmed purpose. That's it. Nothing more.  It makes no claims to the contrary.

You are the ones ascribing godhood to it.  The problem is yours.

... I have no words... no words...

[chemiclord]

I'm sorry. We clearly disagree on this point. I do not see the "god from the machine" you do. I do not see any particular element of deus ex machina in this character, either its literal definition or it's more modern interpretation.  If you wish to try and explain what you think I missed, I invite you to do so.

Modifié par chemiclord, 07 avril 2012 - 01:04 .

[LiarasShield]

well even if we can't get our perfect ending I guess that is what fanfiction is for www.fanfiction.net

[chemiclord]

StillOverrated wrote...

chemiclord wrote...

The choices you make didn't matter at the very end?  Welcome to reality folks.  All the little things you do often don't add up to s*** when all is said and done.  it might suck, but it is what it is.

I also pretty much ignored everything Hudson had to say.  He's more salesman than writer at this point, and he was gonna say anything to stir up more interest and sales.  He would have told IGN that there was free cake at the end of the game if he thought people would buy it.  Hell, he probably forgot everything he said in that interview five minutes after he said it... and so did I.  In one ear and out the other, and thus, his empty promises didn't particularly irk me... because I knew they were empty to begin with.

Doesn't make it any less wrong. Of course we're gonna demand he gives us what he promised. Besides, your decisions mattering was the whole selling point of the Mass Effect series. Or any BW game for that matter. Had they stuck with that, they'd probably have a whole lot less ****ing and moaning about their so-called artistic ending directly lifted from Deus Ex and a whole lot more players enthusiastically discussing and comparing their radically different endings.
Why change it now to force-feed us some bull**** that self-sacrifice is the only way to end a story? That smells extremely ****ing Mary Sue-ish to me.
"Yeah, let's give Shepard a tragic death to pull at the player's heartstrings and make them cry. Then let's use his carcass on the next Mass series game. Who's gonna care, anyway?"

chemiclord wrote...
tl;dr version; Clarification on several key points is all I need, and theoretically the Extended Cut could provide.

I'm not holding my breath here. It's probably just gonna be them telling us how awesome they are and how stupid we are for pointing out the massive plotholes.

If that is what it turns out to be, then yes, it'll be equally terrible and it will be time for me to leave Bioware as a customer for good.

As for the rest; I guess I've reached the point where I'm completely desensitized to the grand claims of advertising.  I shouldn't say you have no right to be angry, just explaining why I am not.

[Valk72]

chemiclord wrote...

I'm sorry. We clearly disagree on this point. I do not see the "god from the machine" you do. I do not see any particular element of deus ex machina in this character.  If you wish to try and explain what I missed, I invite you to do so.

The Catalyst and the Crucible at the end of Mass Effect 3.
Though their existence and purpose had been either foreshadowed or
known throughout the game, their true nature and abilities seem to come
out of nowhere. The Catalyst is actually the Reaper's master AI,
and explains how the Crucible has the power to not only destroy the
Reapers, but also take control of them, or merge synthetic and organic
life into a hybrid creation. The manner in which these options play out - by firing a beam through the Mass Relay network and destroying the Mass Relays - also contradicts a lot of established (in-universe) science.

From the site Tv Trope.

[StillOverrated]

chemiclord wrote...

I'm sorry. We clearly disagree on this point. I do not see the "god from the machine" you do. I do not see any particular element of deus ex machina in this character.  If you wish to try and explain what I missed, I invite you to do so.

Look, even if you don't see it as a deus ex machina, the thing is essentially a Reaper off button that comes out of nowhere and just hands Shepard three different suicide options. Not only does it negate everythig you've done so far it arguably negates Shepard as the protagonist. He/she didn't win by his/her own hand. He/she won because he/she was handed a Reaper off-button that somehow appeared there after Shepard enters the room. In the end, the selling point of the game, the thing that made people buy it and the one thing that set it apart from other RPGs, is no more.

Also, "Yeah, I control the Reapers but somehow I can't control them after you enter the room, so you'll have to sacrifice yourself to make them go away. Self-sacrifice makes the story deep, right?"

[stellap20]

So nobody knows what they talked about for an hour at PAX. Forget the ending for a minute what did they actually talk about?

[Hexley UK]

Bioware watch and get it - www.youtube.com/watch

[ElementL09]

No your not listening, while the ending was confusing, clarification could have come way before wasting development time on DLC to explain what just happened.

[jeweledleah]

to quote a friend who just finished ME3 less then an hour ago.

This reminds me of the commentary for the movie Dodgeball. Vince Vaughn said they played with the idea of letting the ****s win at the end of the film, as social commentary that not all endings are happy. "Then, we remembered this was basically a dick-and-fart -joke movie, and backed the underdogs, instead. Much better that way."

I'm not saying one shouldn't go for the "artsy" ending in a game, but...let's face it: ME3 is more like a summer blockbuster than an art house film. As such, the endings don't really "fit."

@ Stellap20 - they unveiled the new multiplayer DLC and did some chatting about general story points of ME3.

[chemiclord]

Valk72 wrote...

chemiclord wrote...

I'm sorry. We clearly disagree on this point. I do not see the "god from the machine" you do. I do not see any particular element of deus ex machina in this character.  If you wish to try and explain what I missed, I invite you to do so.

The Catalyst and the Crucible at the end of Mass Effect 3.
Though their existence and purpose had been either foreshadowed or
known throughout the game, their true nature and abilities seem to come
out of nowhere. The Catalyst is actually the Reaper's master AI,
and explains how the Crucible has the power to not only destroy the
Reapers, but also take control of them, or merge synthetic and organic
life into a hybrid creation. The manner in which these options play out - by firing a beam through the Mass Relay network and destroying the Mass Relays - also contradicts a lot of established (in-universe) science.

From the site Tv Trope.

Here's the problem I am having.  The true nature of these things came out of nowhere because that's pretty much the only way they could have come from.  Every time the Catalyst is mentioned, it is with the qualifier of "we have no idea what this is or what it does."

By the definition that quote presents, ANYTHING the Catalyst would have appeared as would have been a Deus Ex Machina, because what it did was NEVER explained until the end.  I'm not sure that really is the intent of the definition.  Deus Ex Machina, as I have had it taught to me, is the appearance of a literary device that comes with no forewarning, no foreshadowing, and completely resolves or advances events with little explanation.

An example for me would be Necron from Final Fantasy IX.

The Catalyst may have been poorly written (I think it was), or you may not have liked how it was made manifest (I am not particularly bothered), but I'm not sure that the Catalyst really fits the intent of the definition.  "It just sucks and doesn't fit the story as I saw it" seems like a perfectly reasonable criticism to me.

I suppose I could just be arguing semantics at this point, and it really isn't worth bickering over, because I don't want to say you have no right to not like the "Starchild."  If that is how it came across, I apologize.

StillOverrated wrote...

chemiclord wrote...

I'm sorry. We clearly disagree on this point. I do not see the "god from the machine" you do. I do not see any particular element of deus ex machina in this character.  If you wish to try and explain what I missed, I invite you to do so.

Look, even if you don't see it as a deus ex machina, the thing is essentially a Reaper off button that comes out of nowhere and just hands Shepard three different suicide options. Not only does it negate everythig you've done so far it arguably negates Shepard as the protagonist. He/she didn't win by his/her own hand. He/she won because he/she was handed a Reaper off-button that somehow appeared there after Shepard enters the room. In the end, the selling point of the game, the thing that made people buy it and the one thing that set it apart from other RPGs, is no more.

Also, "Yeah, I control the Reapers but somehow I can't control them after you enter the room, so you'll have to sacrifice yourself to make them go away. Self-sacrifice makes the story deep, right?"

Okay, I guess I don't get what a better alternative here was.

The entire theme I saw was that there was no way even the combined might of the galaxy could defeat the Reapers in conventional war.  This theme plays out repeatedly to me.  It took damn near every available ship in the galaxy to take out Sovereign.  It took damn near the entire Quarian fleet to stop a single Reaper Destroyer (ya know... one of the LITTLE ones).  Much more sophisticated societies had already fallen to these things in the past.  Rejecting the Catalyst entirely (like I read suggested as an option for Shepard) would lead to utter defeat and the annihilation of everything Shepard was trying to save.  I can see why Bioware wouldn't even present that as a choice.

They needed an unconventional option, which the Crucible was.  The entire story narrows down inherently from that.  The way this story was written (I would argue from the start of ME1) only really allows for ONE option... to destroy the Reapers at any cost.  Bioware then tries to tack on two other options at the end... the value of which is debateable, and in my opinion poorly executed.

I ask what other options should have, or even could have, been given?  The common complaint is that the game up until the ending was great.  Well, the story, as far as I can see, leads inexorably to that "stairway to heaven" that is the source of the complaints.

The anger over what Casey Hudson spouted is understandable.  I'm just not sure how it was even POSSIBLE to back up his claims based on how the story played out. 

Modifié par chemiclord, 07 avril 2012 - 01:36 .

[chemiclord]

Double post, please ignore.

Modifié par chemiclord, 07 avril 2012 - 01:35 .

[Valk72]

chemiclord wrote...

By the definition that quote presents, ANYTHING the Catalyst would have appeared as would have been a Deus Ex Machina, because what it did was NEVER explained until the end.  I'm not sure that really is the intent of the definition. 

The Catalyst, hell the crucible tooo,  come out of nowhere without any explication. It wasn't even hinted in the previous game. That is the definition of a Deus-Ex-Machina.

Modifié par Valk72, 07 avril 2012 - 01:38 .

[StillOverrated]

chemiclord wrote...

StillOverrated wrote...

chemiclord wrote...

I'm sorry. We clearly disagree on this point. I do not see the "god from the machine" you do. I do not see any particular element of deus ex machina in this character.  If you wish to try and explain what I missed, I invite you to do so.

Look, even if you don't see it as a deus ex machina, the thing is essentially a Reaper off button that comes out of nowhere and just hands Shepard three different suicide options. Not only does it negate everythig you've done so far it arguably negates Shepard as the protagonist. He/she didn't win by his/her own hand. He/she won because he/she was handed a Reaper off-button that somehow appeared there after Shepard enters the room. In the end, the selling point of the game, the thing that made people buy it and the one thing that set it apart from other RPGs, is no more.

Also, "Yeah, I control the Reapers but somehow I can't control them after you enter the room, so you'll have to sacrifice yourself to make them go away. Self-sacrifice makes the story deep, right?"

Okay, I guess I don't get what a better alternative here was.

The entire theme I saw was that there was no way even the combined might of the galaxy could defeat the Reapers in conventional war.  This theme plays out repeatedly to me.  It took damn near every available ship in the galaxy to take out Sovereign.  It took damn near the entire Quarian fleet to stop a single Reaper Destroyer (ya know... one of the LITTLE ones).  Much more sophisticated societies had already fallen to these things in the past.  Rejecting the Catalyst entirely (like I read suggested as an option for Shepard) would lead to utter defeat and the annihilation of everything Shepard was trying to save.  I can see why Bioware wouldn't even present that as a choice.

They needed an unconventional option, which the Crucible was.  The entire story narrows down inherently from that.  The way this story was written (I would argue from the start of ME1) only really allows for ONE option... to destroy the Reapers at any cost.  Bioware then tries to tack on two other options at the end... the value of which is debateable, and in my opinion poorly executed.

I ask what other options should have, or even could have, been given?  The common complaint is that the game up until the ending was great.  Well, the story, as far as I can see, leads inexorably to that "stairway to heaven" that is the source of the complaints.

A better alternative would have been making the crucible what everyone originallky thought it was: A superweapon; probably a failsafe whoever created the Reapers made in case they got out of control and decided that, I don't know, all life in the Galaxy should be wiped out since they would inevitably end up doing the same ****** mistake over and over and deserved no chance to do it.
I'm no writer. Hell, I can't write my way out of a paperback (get it?) but this sounds a hell of a lot better than some Reaperkid just up and telling Shepard "Go die over there. I'm gonna wait until you do so I can hack your vertebral implants all the way up to your brain so the devs can turn the franchise into a nineties Rob Liefeld comic."

chemiclord wrote...
The anger over what Casey Hudson spouted is understandable.  I'm
just not sure how it was even POSSIBLE to back up his claims based on
how the story played out.

Wish I had the ability to see the future.

[chemiclord]

Valk72 wrote...

chemiclord wrote...

By the definition that quote presents, ANYTHING the Catalyst would have appeared as would have been a Deus Ex Machina, because what it did was NEVER explained until the end.  I'm not sure that really is the intent of the definition. 

The Catalyst, hell the crucible tooo,  come out of nowhere without any explication. It wasn't even hinted in the previous game. That is the definition of a Deus-Ex-Machina.

And that's a problem... how?  I mean, if that's the case, all plot events in a sequence of books that aren't hinted at in the book prior would be Deus Ex Machina.  That's an awfully broad brush to paint with.

StillOverrated wrote...
A better alternative would have been making the crucible what everyone originallky thought it was: A superweapon; probably a failsafe whoever created the Reapers made in case they got out of control and decided that, I don't know, all life in the Galaxy should be wiped out since they would inevitably end up doing the same ****** mistake over and over and deserved no chance to do it. 
I'm no writer. Hell, I can't write my way out of a paperback (get it?) but this sounds a hell of a lot better than some Reaperkid just up and telling Shepard "Go die over there. I'm gonna wait until you do so I can hack your vertebral implants all the way up to your brain so the devs can turn the franchise into a nineties Rob Liefeld comic."

Well, I am working off the premise that the ending as presented was not ever going to be changed.  Hell, if I could rewrite the entire ending, I would, if only because the execution of it was incredibly crappy.  I haven't given much thought on what I would do completely differently if I had the keys to the car. 

The way I would have handled the Catalyst as it currently is would be to make it as condescending and dismissive as the Reapers it supposedly directs.  I mean, supposedly the reasons for what the Reapers do is so complex that these limited organic brains can't possibly comprehend it... and then the Catalyst takes five minutes to explain it.

Make the Catalyst just as much of a dick.  "I'm not going to explain myself to you.  I don't HAVE to explain myself to you.  I have the experiences of millions of years and thousands of cycles that your insignificant little ball of flesh you call a brain cannot possibly fully grasp.  I have told you what you can do.  You can either choose one, or you can ignore me and watch as the 'combined might of the galaxy" is ripped to shreds by the Reapers and starts the cycle anew.  THAT is your choice.  Be grateful I am giving it to you at all."

Modifié par chemiclord, 07 avril 2012 - 02:05 .

[Well]

StillOverrated wrote...

chemiclord wrote...

StillOverrated wrote...

chemiclord wrote...

I'm sorry. We clearly disagree on this point. I do not see the "god from the machine" you do. I do not see any particular element of deus ex machina in this character.  If you wish to try and explain what I missed, I invite you to do so.

Look, even if you don't see it as a deus ex machina, the thing is essentially a Reaper off button that comes out of nowhere and just hands Shepard three different suicide options. Not only does it negate everythig you've done so far it arguably negates Shepard as the protagonist. He/she didn't win by his/her own hand. He/she won because he/she was handed a Reaper off-button that somehow appeared there after Shepard enters the room. In the end, the selling point of the game, the thing that made people buy it and the one thing that set it apart from other RPGs, is no more.

Also, "Yeah, I control the Reapers but somehow I can't control them after you enter the room, so you'll have to sacrifice yourself to make them go away. Self-sacrifice makes the story deep, right?"

Okay, I guess I don't get what a better alternative here was.

The entire theme I saw was that there was no way even the combined might of the galaxy could defeat the Reapers in conventional war.  This theme plays out repeatedly to me.  It took damn near every available ship in the galaxy to take out Sovereign.  It took damn near the entire Quarian fleet to stop a single Reaper Destroyer (ya know... one of the LITTLE ones).  Much more sophisticated societies had already fallen to these things in the past.  Rejecting the Catalyst entirely (like I read suggested as an option for Shepard) would lead to utter defeat and the annihilation of everything Shepard was trying to save.  I can see why Bioware wouldn't even present that as a choice.

They needed an unconventional option, which the Crucible was.  The entire story narrows down inherently from that.  The way this story was written (I would argue from the start of ME1) only really allows for ONE option... to destroy the Reapers at any cost.  Bioware then tries to tack on two other options at the end... the value of which is debateable, and in my opinion poorly executed.

I ask what other options should have, or even could have, been given?  The common complaint is that the game up until the ending was great.  Well, the story, as far as I can see, leads inexorably to that "stairway to heaven" that is the source of the complaints.

A better alternative would have been making the crucible what everyone originallky thought it was: A superweapon; probably a failsafe whoever created the Reapers made in case they got out of control and decided that, I don't know, all life in the Galaxy should be wiped out since they would inevitably end up doing the same ****** mistake over and over and deserved no chance to do it.
I'm no writer. Hell, I can't write my way out of a paperback (get it?) but this sounds a hell of a lot better than some Reaperkid just up and telling Shepard "Go die over there. I'm gonna wait until you do so I can hack your vertebral implants all the way up to your brain so the devs can turn the franchise into a nineties Rob Liefeld comic."

chemiclord wrote...
The anger over what Casey Hudson spouted is understandable.  I'm
just not sure how it was even POSSIBLE to back up his claims based on
how the story played out.

Wish I had the ability to see the future.

Works for me.I wish the CYA  DLC would have it.It won't.Oh well.

[Evelfa]

Maybe this isn't the forefront of everyone's ideas for improving the game... But one of the things I love is the in depth development of the various races.

I loved finally seeing the female/male counterparts of the various races in mass effect 2 & 3, but I was a little disappointed that there were no female Turians, seeing as there were female Salarians that only make up 10% of the Salarian population I found this a bit strange. What with all the mention of Garrus's family I was expecting to see something unfold with his dad and sister.

Also after getting the Turian support it ended up only being worth about 500 or something like that? Although a lot of their fleet is probably off protecting Palaven, considering that the Turians have the largest fleet of the citadel fleet and the most dreadnoughts of any race I thought that the Turians would pack in a punch more like the Krogan or Geth.

So I'd like to see some DLC that includes Garrus's family that could rally more Turian support (giving more or less depending on whether Garrus survived the suicide mission or not).

Also the character interaction in this game was friggin awesome! Characters being in different places on the Normandy and getting shore leave on the citadel, loved it!

[Dragonseye1138]

A Deus ex Machina in post-modern terminology is a magical plot device that appears at exactly the right moment to handwave away all concerns and issues with the story and make everything better. An example would be a dead character magically appears at the climax of the hopeless final battle to save the day with no explanation or a severely nonsensical explanation ("I was beamed out at the last moment!") The Catalyst is a Deus ex Machina. It just appears to explain everything (which it doesn't) and then hands Shepard three magical buttons to end the war.

The Crucible is a MacGuffin. A magical in-story device, tool, or object that does SOMETHING to make everything better, but no one has any idea what it is or what it actually does. They just accept that it does something and let it go at that. ME3 actually uses this mechanic to its own advantage (You are repeatedly told the Crucible will do something, but nobody knows what. That's called "Hanging a Lantern"). As a side note, if you wanted to stretch it far enough, the One Ring is a MacGuffin, just a very well written one.

I'll forgive the MacGuffin, because if it's well written it can actually work and not detract from the story (see: Lord of the Rings), but the Deus ex Machina is just pure nonsense and almost always is. I'm not saying that every Deus ex Machina is nonsense, Star Trek uses the mechanic quite well actually, but in most cases it simply doesn't work and is usually used to reach a resolution when the writer couldn't come up with anything better. Given everything that Mass Effect accomplished as a franchise, the starchild is simply insulting because we KNOW that Bioware can do better--they have done better, and that fact only adds to the confusion and unrest concerning the ending.

tl;dr, Bioware either got lazy or had a serious case of writer's block at crunch time.

[StillOverrated]

chemiclord wrote...

StillOverrated wrote...
A better alternative would have been making the crucible what everyone originallky thought it was: A superweapon; probably a failsafe whoever created the Reapers made in case they got out of control and decided that, I don't know, all life in the Galaxy should be wiped out since they would inevitably end up doing the same ****** mistake over and over and deserved no chance to do it. 
I'm no writer. Hell, I can't write my way out of a paperback (get it?) but this sounds a hell of a lot better than some Reaperkid just up and telling Shepard "Go die over there. I'm gonna wait until you do so I can hack your vertebral implants all the way up to your brain so the devs can turn the franchise into a nineties Rob Liefeld comic."

Well, I am working off the premise that the ending as presented was not ever going to be changed.  Hell, if I could rewrite the entire ending, I would, if only because the execution of it was incredibly crappy.  I haven't given much thought on what I would do completely differently if I had the keys to the car. 

In that casethey could just swallow their pride and use the Indoctrination Theory, if only to make the whole Catalyst bit be one of Shep's bad dream, which they already said they wouldn't do.

Come on!Fans hand them a solution on a silver platter (even if it has some plotholes, they're not nearly as many, not by a long shot) and they just refuse to use it? 

If they're afraid people will chew them out for withholding the real ending, they should just release a formal statement saying something along the lines of "Yeah. This is not what we had planned in the first place, but it's the best we can do to reach a compromise. We get to "preserve our artistic integrity" and you get rid of some of your plotholes, plus you get some proof that we're listening. And we're making this a DLC instead of a patch so that whoever DID like the original ending and doesn't want it changed doesn't HAVE to change it. Now go enjoy your discussion of the wildly different endings you got and be happy. See you in DA3."

[Vexia2070]

fix the ending, lose the kid. make my choices count or I and my money are gone. Gone to will be every person I know who shows an interest in gaming because I will tell them how badly you treated your customers.

End of story

[chkchkchk]

Dear Bioware:

At least make sure the whole writing team gets to work on this extended cut.