Firstly, Bioware, thank you for all your hard work these past eight years, and for making all my time with Mass Effect truly special. By playing the Mass Effect games I have discovered things about myself I didn't even realise were there. That is the mark of a talented story teller, and that's why I appeal to you to give ME3 a proper ending.
Bioware, you already have 627 pages of thread response to the ending, 95% of it being negative. There is a message here trying to tell you something. The ending to Mass Effect 3 does not work. It is not really an ending at all. In fact, it is an ending in title only. A valid ending to any story takes into consideration all the key events that have happened up until that point, and tries to make sense of them, at the most basic of levels.
To the fans : notice how we don't even have to make sense of every event in the game, we just need to make sense of the main ones. Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2 pulled this off beautifully. In Mass Effect 1 you make the decision whether or not to save the Citadel Council, who form the basis for diplomatic stability throughout the galaxy. That's a big deal in the Mass Effect universe, and rightly enough Bioware acknowledged how big a deal it was by exploring the consequences of that decision in depth. Either humanity joins the council and earns the respect of the enitre galaxy, or assumes a stance of control and domination. Either way we get closure - a definite result that summarises the key events, and hence an effective ending. In Mass Effect 2, you are rewarded for your efforts to form relationships with the main characters in terms of who survives the suicide mission. Not only that, you are presented with yet another pivotal choice that will further define your character. Blow up the Collector base or keep it for the Illusive Man, who is clearly evil? Such outcomes in both games provide closure to the stories of each and preserve the mechanic of player choice, the most important part of the Mass Effect franchise and the reason it became so popular in the first place.
Lets imagine it's 2007 and Mass Effect 1 has just released, but without the dialogue wheel, without any player choice, without the codex, without any galaxy map to explore. You never get to decide how events pan out or how people react to you. In fact, you get to talk to no one. Now all you are left with are the main cut scenes and the shooting parts. Would people still have bought it? The answer is probably no. People did not buy the game because the shooting looked like fun. If we wanted to shoot things, we could have bought Gears of War instead. As it stands Gears of War is one of my least favourite gaming franchises that everyone else loves. But that's fine. It reasserts why Mass Effect was so loved and faithfully supported to begin with. We bought the game because we wanted to be immersed in a sci-fi story, in which we could choose what to say, and thus shape the outcome of the story itself. And by shaping the outcome of the story, that meant shaping the outcome of the ending as well, because a story follows a very simple structure:
BEGINNING -> MIDDLE -> END
Both ME1 and ME2 follow this structure, and they are 2 of the best games in history.
ME3, unfortunately follows this structure:
BEGINNING -> MIDDLE -> AN ENDLESS LIST OF QUESTIONS THAT CAN NEVER BE FULLY ANSWERED
Why can these questions never be answered? It's because the ending itself completely disregards Mass Effect's original genre and previously established physical limitations. It also completely disregards the subsequent events that have transpired not just in ME1 and ME2, but in ME3 itself!
Examples?
1. The catalyst says "The created will always rebel against their creators..."
Eh....no. In Liara's own words (my wife; so much for the little blue children. I'm still feeling pretty distraught)
"Shepard that isn't true!"
I just proved it isn't true by allying the Quarians with the Geth, a "creator vs created" conflict. EDI is an artificial intelligence, yet during ME3 she commits to preserving the lives of myself and my crew mates "to the death." If anything, the complete polar opposite statement is true, the creators will always rebel against their created, as proven during my journey through the Geth consensus on Rannoch, where the Quarians are shown to initiate the Geth war, not the Geth. The evidence is already there, that organics and synthetics would actually prefer to live in peace with one another. Wasn't this one of the key ideals I had been fighting for since I spoke to Legion in ME2? All three endings therefore disregard these subsequent events and cannot therefore function as valid endings to ME3 or the entire trilogy.
2. I can control the Reapers but I will die in the process
No where in the mass effect universe is it even hinted that an organic being can ever transfer his/her consciousness to a machine, die during the process, yet somehow still maintain control of that machine.
Such an idea would make more sense in the fanatsy genre, not in science fiction, where the basic laws of science still need to be abided by. There is no scientific evidence for ghosts. Hence we do not see ghosts appearing in Mass Effect 3 Or do we?????????
The control ending disregards the previously established laws of the Mass Effect universe, and hence it cannot be considered a valid ending to any Mass Effect game. I'm sorry, but this is what happens when you create a franchise, or a fictional universe. You must abide by the laws of that universe! Otherwise you are no longer in that said universe - you are subconsciously trying to create an entirely new franchise or universe, not conclude an existing one. Which is what Bioware should do, because it says "Mass Effect 3" on the game box, not "Mass Effect 3 with Ghosts, Magical Beams of Light and Other Fantastical Elements, Five Minutes Before the Suppossed Ending, Which is not Really an Ending, But the Point at Which the Credits Roll"
3. If I'm on the Crucible when I choose the destroy option, and I die during the process, how do I end up back on Earth?
We have previously established in the Mass Effect universe that even Shepard cannot survive a re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere, or any atmosphere for that matter, even with his N7 armor on. This makes sense. In the real world objects entering Earth's atmosphere tend to burn up, and burning up is bad news for organics. Shepard is organic. Mass Effect is science fiction, not fantasy. Hence if Shepard dies on the Crucible, he cannot wake up on Earth. It violates cause and effect, a fundamental law of everything. If X is after Y then Y cannot be after X. A law that Mass Effect has always abided by...until now it would seem.
Hence the destroy option is not a valid ending to ME3, in the genre of science fiction, unless it is all an indoctrination dream, in which case this is a false ending, unprecedented in any work of fiction, and Bioware/EA are in a lot of trouble.
I could go on forever. The number of narrative plot-holes and canonical inconsistincies is astounding. What's even more astounding is that Bioware are actually trying to defend this mess which is clearly a creation of unfeasible deadlines and funding restrictions attributed to EA. I'm also worried by these claims made by Bioware that Mass Effect is a work of art, and hence you can either take the endings as they are or leave them. This is probably the worst thing you could ever say in this kind of situation. Let me tell you why.
Art and design are two sides of the same coin. People always get them confused. Artists often work alongside designers and some people can work as combination of the two. What it boils down to is this:
An artist presents you with a piece of artwork that reflects their personality and is completely unique. If you like it, you then buy this unique piece of artwork for a lot of money. Artists never brainstorm ideas. If they do they're not artists; they're designers.
A designer creates and develops ideas that shape a final product which then fulfills a number of objective goals. This product is then sold to customers, promising to solve the problems it says it does. The resulting profit is fed back to the design team as salaries and bonuses. Designers always brainstorm. If they don't their designs tend to be bad, because they won't fulfill the goals, or solve the problem.
Mass Effect falls nicely into the design category. There is artwork involved, but it is there to communicate things to the player not to express personality. Mass Effect is full of visual cues that say "this is a vehicle," "this is a door," "this is a spaceship," "this is an asari" etc etc. And nowhere can you tell what person did the artwork for what. It all looks like it was done by the same person. In fact, a lot of it looks like it was done by Syd Mead, but Syd Mead never worked on Mass Effect. This is the mark of an excellent design team. They have tricked us into thinking this world is real, when it is not, and that's incredible. The team at Bioware would have brainstormed ideas for Mass Effect in a design document such as:
1. The player must have a choice in what they say and do
2. This will take the form of a dialogue wheel, where the player can choose paragon or renegade
3. The players can use pistols, assault rifles, sniper rifles and shotguns to shoot enemies
4. The players will have a squad and they will be able to give commands to them
etc etc
And thus Mass Effect is a work of design. A good design meets the design goals which must be the demands of the consumer. Bioware did this in ME1 and ME2 and 90% of ME3. But what were the consumer demads for mass effect 3?
1. My choices in ME1 and ME2 need to matter from beginning to end. (They do not)
2. The ending must make sense in relation to the previously established universe in ME1 and ME2 (They don't)
3. I must have closure with the characters I have grown to love. What happened to them? (There is no closure)
Mass Effect 3 is starting to fail as a good work of design. Designs go wrong all the time. It's nothing to be ashamed of. What matters is that if a design goes wrong you fix it, and you fix it quickly before consumer demand (fan demand) drops to zero.
What Bioware have actually done is much worse than the mistake itself. They are trying to pass off the design flaws in ME3's story as "artistic vision."
"With the Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut we think we have struck a good balance in delivering the answers players are looking for while maintaining the team's artistic vision for the end of this story arc in the Mass Effect universe." Ray Muzyka
No. No no no no no. Mass Effect is a work of design. Not art. Please don't try and suddenly mix the two together.
Remember how artists only make money after they present the full artwork? There's a reason. Artwork has intrinsic value. Design does not. You only buy a design because it promises to fulfill the design goals, like Bioware promised that your choices would matter in ME3 from beginning to suppossed end. But they don't, so now Bioware are trying to pass off their failing design as a work of art. But if that's true, haven't I just been tricked into buying something I thought was a piece of design, but is actually a piece of artwork with an intrinsic value?
There is a word that describes this method of tricking. It's called stealing. Bioware, if you are listening, please. You are losing your die hard fans. People who were behind you since KOTOR are losing faith in your company. Please don't ignore them. You can change the ending, and you should. Not many people get that chance. It's nothing to be ashamed of doing. Please do not try and clarify the current one. We don't care if it takes another year to make or another 2 years and we have to pay for it. I personally would pay £100 to have a proper ending with full character closure and narrative cohesion. I know you can do it! You just did it for 90% of ME3, and your fans deserve a choice. It's what the Mass Effect franchise is all about.
Good luck
A very dedicated fan
Modifié par SP2219, 09 avril 2012 - 01:25 .
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