831 réponses à ce sujet

[bhaalchild22]

Bump for great justice!
OP your fanfic is the way I imagined the end to happen. I don't understand why writers think they need to be super smart about their stories and tell something that is going to blow minds. Simple is usually better. Honestly what is wrong with the simple Hollywood ending? We got one in ME1 and you could get one in ME2. The ending in 3 was such a slap in the face and a complete 180 from the direction of the entire series up until that point.
Bioware needs to read your fanfic and do that. No other way to fix the ending IMO.

Hold the Line!

[Eternalsteelfan]

bhaalchild22 wrote...

Bump for great justice!
OP your fanfic is the way I imagined the end to happen. I don't understand why writers think they need to be super smart about their stories and tell something that is going to blow minds. Simple is usually better. Honestly what is wrong with the simple Hollywood ending? We got one in ME1 and you could get one in ME2. The ending in 3 was such a slap in the face and a complete 180 from the direction of the entire series up until that point.
Bioware needs to read your fanfic and do that. No other way to fix the ending IMO.

Hold the Line!

"Art is the elimination of the unnecessary", this is as true for stories as any other art. Personally, it's a mantra for me and something that has been greatly emphasized by the screenwriters that taught me. It's about being economical with the story and subtracting as much as you can while preserving what is important and pushes the story forward.

[Mighty_BOB_cnc]

bhaalchild22 wrote...

slap in the face

People say that too much around here and it's getting stale.  Start mixing it up with other colorful phrases like "punch to the gut" or "Knife in the back."

[Navywife64]

Bump

[Foxcat]

OP I agree with your post 100%.  It is clear you understand story-telling far better than those responsible for ME3's ending.  I hope Bioware sees this and takes this constructive criticism to heart.  That said I would add one thing...



0. Remedy visual/graphical/auditory inconsistencies leading up to the beam and after entering the citadel

--Trees appearing from thin air
--Confusing radio chatter indicating failure of anyone to make it to the beam
--Anderon's appearing in front of Shepard despite entering after
--Mysterious/unexplained appearance of TIM
--Black/liquid smoke indicitive of indoctrination and TIM's seeming ability to control Shepard (if they did not intend for there to be indoctrination)
--Squad members not following Shepard towards the beam
--Unlimited ammo
--Not being able to move away from the colored platforms once reaching a certain minimum distance

[quote]

1.

From Anderson's death and Hackett's call that nothing is happening with the Crucible:

Shepard collapses against the control panel - it whirs and lights up with activity. Shepard weakly pulls his head up then backs away - a display of immeasureable data fills the vantage point of Earth. Amidst the constantly flickering and cycling data, one constant: a blueprint-like image of Harbinger. Shephard, perhaps do to the cipher, seems to understand.

The player is able to investigate some of the data through Shepard and learns:

• The Crucible isn't a weapon but a beacon attuned to recieve and transmit the collective history of every cycle that has been Reaped. (Beacon/cipher bookend with original Mass Effect) (transmission contained in dark energy?)
• Every cycle completed their own Crucible which recorded their war against the Reapers and inevitable defeat / where they went wrong.
• No previous cycle had ever been able to unify all of their diverse spacefaring races under one banner against the Reapers in time. (Reinforcement of Javik statement in regards to the Protheans and the theme of unification and cooperation against a universal enemy)
• Passed down through every cycle and every completion of the Crucible is the information necessary for defeating the Reapers: "The Catalyst" is Harbinger, the original Reaper and de facto leader who resided over the creation of every Reaper and exerts it's will over all of them (indoctrination writ large?)

After finding this information, Harbinger enters. It attempts to finish off Shephard while mocking him. Still critically wounded, Shepard must avoid the laser and make his way to whatever may consititue an exit beam.

2.

Shephard's injured squadmates and the small remnants of Hammer have made their way down to the Citadel beam; Shepard is transported in front of them with the beam closing behind him. He radios Hackett and fills him in on the situation: Harbinger must be destroyed at all costs. Hackett informs Shephard that Harbinger is headed back down for another attack before giving the order for all allied forces to focus on Harbinger. (Bookend with Mass Effect and Sovereign)

3.

The fleets are hammered by Reapers as they break off their current attacks and bring all their guns to bear on Harbinger.

4.

Harbinger's shields withstand the impacts as it reenters the atmosphere and descends towards Shepard. The Normandy, Destiny Acension (If it survived Mass Effect), and a handful of other ships follow.

5.

From high above, Harbinger begins raining fire down on Shepard and Hammer. The player must survive as every shot bringers Harbinger closer. The better the player's EMS the shorter the battle, eventually Harbinger is overcome: if the Destiny Ascension is present, it sacrifices itself to deal the damaging blow, otherwise, the Normandy makes the final attack with an EMS check; failure results in the Normandy's destruction with Joker flying into Harbinger to bring it down, success sees the Normander crash land safely.

Harbinger is irreparably damaged and crashes into the city with a large explosion and shockwave, leaving it lying in a massive crater with a radius of barren land. (Harbinger's antagonistic vendetta against Shepard provided a unique opening that left it more vulnerable than in any previous cycle)

6.

After a moment of victory with Hammer and his squadmates, Shepard sees off in the distance that Harbinger is still functioning.

7.

Most of the allied fleets are in ruins, the Reapers' victory is at hand. Hackett's ship and what's left of his forces try to hold off the Reapers.

8.

Shepard is radioed by Hackett that Harbinger is still moving down there but the fleet is helpless to finish it. A desperate plan is hatched: a Thanix missile battery from Hammer has survived but Harbinger's weakpoint is protected from fire inside the crater; the battery is rigged to explode and someone must drive it into the crater while resisting the still active Reaper's indoctrination attempts.

It's a one-way trip and the player must choose either Shepard, Liara, Garrus, or VS for the sacrifice. (Each volunteer and Liara is always alive up to this point so the player always has at least one alternative). The chosen character recieves a send off from the others.

9.

The chosen character drives across the decimated plain as Harbinger tries to indoctrinate them. If Shepard, the player can choose dialogue responses to Harbinger, otherwise the chosen alternative responds uniquely to it's attempts. With sufficiently low EMS, an alternative to Shepard can fail, becoming indoctrinated and detonating the missiles prematurely - bad ending.

Success sees the payload delivered and the chosen character sacrificing his or her self. Harbinger is finished in a dramatic explosion.

10.

Above, in space, Harbinger's influence wanes: most Reapers, products and engines of genocide for untold cycles, begin to exhibit free will and, recognizing themselves as monstrosities, turn on each other to break the cycle once and for all (reinforcement of synthetics as living, free beings with a "soul", organic components reject Harbinger). Some of the oldest and largest Reapers stay true to Harbinger's motives and resist but are overcome by the others. The Reapers have destroyed themselves, with a scarce independent few peacefully departing for unknown destinations, they are free.

11.

Visual epilogue; character, race, and location fates determined by player choices throughout the series with EMS factored into survival.

[/quote]


Updated: point 6

Updated: Genophage error, thanks Weskerr

Updated: Alternative Ending
[/quote]

[Mighty_BOB_cnc]

Foxcat wrote...

--Unlimited ammo

Supposedly that was so you couldn't run out of ammo and then complain to BioWare "How did Shep shoot Anderson/TIM if I just ran out of ammo?"

[Tallestra]

Really liked the your ending. Love the idea that free will was the deciding factor. Because for me, free will was the most important thing Shepard stands for, and the main theme of the entire series.

[Devils-DIVISION]

I really love this OP. I find myself agreeing with you in every point.
Thank you, and let's hope BW read this too!

[jumpingkaede]

Just read your ending OP. Another one added to the mind-canon ending list.

[Eternalsteelfan]

Tallestra wrote...

Really liked the your ending. Love the idea that free will was the deciding factor. Because for me, free will was the most important thing Shepard stands for, and the main theme of the entire series.

I think it's like that for a lot of people.

[Menalaos1971]

Updated: Alternative Ending

I like it.

[PrimalGecko]

This post completely rewrote the ending for me. Needless to say, I love it. Like many others in this thread, I sincerely hope BioWare takes the OPs ideas and runs with it.

[nomoredruggs]

Menalaos1971 wrote...

Updated: Alternative Ending

I like it.

So much more fulfilling than the actual ending.

[Eternalsteelfan]

One shameful bump.

Give me something to come back to and read in the morning.

[dbl219]

Another bump for ya.

[lookingglassmind]

This is an absolutely fantastic thread. Great connections and correlations -- many of its concepts and possibilities are being discussed in depth on a sister-site, and I am inviting the OP and all of the contributors to this thread to join in the discussion over there!

I represent a website created by the original contributors of the Indoctrination Theory (Byne, lookingglassmind,
BlackDragonBane) on the BSN. Called Theorycrafting HUB, it is a site purely dedicated to theory and philosophy in gaming and other story-telling mediums. As such, I feel as though this thread (and those stating their opinions against its premise) perfectly expemplifies the focus of our site.

http://w11.zetaboard.../forum/3225589/

We created the website in order to act as a more intellectual, leisurely, slow-paced mirror to the BSN -- we saw that many quality posts and threads were being buried due to the heavy traffic load of the BSN.

We are looking for intelligent, controversial opinions -- that are willing to explore concepts and theory -- to contribute to our growing community. Many of the posters that have responded to this thread and to the OP himself/herself exactly represent the type of individuals we are hoping to include in our celebration of gaming theory!

From the team at Theorycrafting HUB: we sincerely hope that you will consider our invitation to join our community, and add all of your excellent thoughts to the information already gathered there. Bring your brilliance to help Theorycrafting HUB grow and become established in the gaming community!

Sincerely,

lookingglassmind

Modifié par lookingglassmind, 01 avril 2012 - 01:39 .

[SuperVulcan]

Very well done, I hope the developers have read and considered your points, OP.

[GeeMunkey]

I like this idea, particularly a choice of who deals the final blow on Harbinger. It kind of reminds me of the end of Dragon Age: Origins, where it didn't have to be the warden, but it could have been Alistair who slew the Archdemon. While I admit I expect a bittersweet ending to what has been a phenomenal story, I still believe we as players should at least have the option of a happy ending for Shepard and his/her LI. After all, if there had been no way to save the warden (Morrigan's ritual) would we have loved DA: Origins as much?

[hecksard]

@OP

Well, it's nice is to read some longer thoughts about the game's ending, and I agree with the overall sentiment completely.  You rightly dismiss tropes as being blunt (though amusing) instruments of analysis: " Stories are usually divergent enough from other stories that generalizing aspects of them with tropes rarely do them justice and are ambigous enough that what tropes a story actually uses are debatable"  This seems clear enough - abstractions are unhelpful when dealing with messy realities. But I don't quite see how you can go from this straight to the hoary old chestnut: "almost all stories follow a pretty standard plotline".  This kind of formula is just where tired old cliches go to die and be mulched into Reaper-goo. Hollywood, we're looking at you.

And let's face it: when it comes to sprawling space operas in fiction, messy open-endedness, dangling threads and unresolved hand-wavery are the norm rather than the exception.  It seems to come with the territory - story spreading like weeds in twisted, tangled knots, horizontally rather than vertically, accumulating through detail, texture and atmosphere over years across loosely-related works. Concepts of beginnings, middles and ends and linear action often seem a bit pointless in this genre context ... just look at the Revelation Space saga to which Mass Effect gives more than just a passing nod (Reapers = Inhibitors).  That also just ... fizzles out ... in crushing cosmic nihilism.

On another point: Shepard doesn't have any tragic flaws or make tragic mistakes, you say? Well, that depends on what you understand by tragedy. Certainly Shepard is blind to the truth about the Reapers, and mistakenly believes that he can control his fate (to the point of murderous ruthlessnsess if you play him that way), until the moment of peripeteia - when he realizes that he's completely at the mercy of capricious forces and TIM was right after all (or so he says). This is the very essence of Greek tragedy, which has no concept of a "tragic role" that must be "fulfilled" through "sacrifice" or "redemption", as in the example you give of Mordin.  That's the whole point about the feelings of pity & fear evoked by, say, Oedipus - who doesn't die of course, this isn't obligatory either. It's something that contemporary audiences still find very difficult to grasp about Greek tragedies: there is *no* redemption or justice in them at all beyond what the gods or fates allow, and human agency means nothing at all within their narratives.  So in some ways, the current ending is a perfectly fine example of 'pure' tragedy, just not one that's very palatable to us anymore.

Anyways, my main point for posting is to draw attention to the other incredibly rich and detailed attempt here at "Rewriting the final mission" that I only recently stumbled upon:

http://social.biowar...5/index/9893822

I like this one because it manages to stay within the logic of game ending as given, is driven by multilayered action rather than through the type of linear info dump + Reaper showdown that we've already seen before, and is sprawling and messy in a good way. See what you think.

Modifié par hecksard, 01 avril 2012 - 07:55 .

[Eternalsteelfan]

hecksard wrote...

@OP

Well, it's nice is to read some longer thoughts about the game's ending, and I agree with the overall sentiment completely.  You rightly dismiss tropes as being blunt (though amusing) instruments of analysis: " Stories are usually divergent enough from other stories that generalizing aspects of them with tropes rarely do them justice and are ambigous enough that what tropes a story actually uses are debatable"  This seems clear enough - abstractions are unhelpful when dealing with messy realities. But I don't quite see how you can go from this straight to the hoary old chestnut: "almost all stories follow a pretty standard plotline".  This kind of formula is just where tired old cliches go to die and be mulched into Reaper-goo. Hollywood, we're looking at you.

And let's face it: when it comes to sprawling space operas in fiction, messy open-endedness, dangling threads and unresolved hand-wavery are the norm rather than the exception.  It seems to come with the territory - story spreading like weeds in twisted, tangled knots, horizontally rather than vertically, accumulating through detail, texture and atmosphere over years across loosely-related works. Concepts of beginnings, middles and ends and linear action often seem a bit pointless in this genre context ... just look at the Revelation Space saga to which Mass Effect gives more than just a passing nod (Reapers = Inhibitors).  That also just ... fizzles out ... in crushing cosmic nihilism.

On another point: Shepard doesn't have any tragic flaws or make tragic mistakes, you say? Well, that depends on what you understand by tragedy. Certainly Shepard is blind to the truth about the Reapers, and mistakenly believes that he can control his fate (to the point of murderous ruthlessnsess if you play him that way), until the moment of peripeteia - when he realizes that he's completely at the mercy of capricious forces and TIM was right after all (or so he says). This is the very essence of Greek tragedy, which has no concept of a "tragic role" that must be "fulfilled" through "sacrifice" or "redemption", as in the example you give of Mordin.  That's the whole point about the feelings of pity & fear evoked by, say, Oedipus - who doesn't die of course, this isn't obligatory either. It's something that contemporary audiences still find very difficult to grasp about Greek tragedies: there is *no* redemption or justice in them at all beyond what the gods or fates allow, and human agency means nothing at all within their narratives.  So in some ways, the current ending is a perfectly fine example of 'pure' tragedy, just not one that's very palatable to us anymore.

Anyways, my main point for posting is to draw attention to the other incredibly rich and detailed attempt here at "Rewriting the final mission" that I only recently stumbled upon:

http://social.biowar...5/index/9893822

I like this one because it manages to stay within the logic of game ending as given, is driven by multilayered action rather than through the type of linear info dump + Reaper showdown that we've already seen before, and is sprawling and messy in a good way. See what you think.

Tropes aren't formulas, they are generalizations and categorizations. It's very chic to say screw Hollywood, but it's not just Hollywood that follows conventions of storytelling; read a book, watch a television series, play a video game, or watch an independent film. The point stands that the Mass Effect trilogy is a conventional story for 100+ hours.

As for tragedy; we see Oedipus make his tragic mistake and can easily recognize him as a tragic figure, early on we know his fate and the conflict of the story is Oedipus fighting against his destiny. Sheperd and what you claim is his flaw or mistake is a bit of a reach and not something necessarily read from the story told, unlike Oedipus' story; kind of a shoehorn job to fit your analogy.

In regards to palate, that's the reality of storytelling. Whether or not greek tragedy is appealing to modern audiences(it isn't) isn't important, what's important is telling a story that pleases and fulfills the audience's wants or needs on some level, even if it's someway they didn't anticipate. Bottom line, you are creating a story for an audience, not yourself, otherwise it's just mental masturbation.

[JasonShepard]

OP: Thank you. Partly for finding an ending that solved the whole "Reapers are unbeatable, but we need to beat them" issue that the game series has had hanging over it since day one. Partly for giving a good breakdown of what people disliked about the ending. And partly for being nice and polite throughout.

Had I been writing something similar, I probably would have gone into more detail about why we have no reason to trust a word that comes out of the Catalyst's mouth (How do we know that we aren't just being offered 3 excellent ways to kill ourselves?)

I like how your 'fanfic' ending meshes well with the rest of the plot so far, and I agree that the final confrontation of the series should have been against something other than a copy of Saren. I really wanted a chance to give Harbinger what for, and your ending would have been perfect for that.



You know, thinking about all this, maybe we should have started discussions about ME3's endings this time last year, long before the writers had set anything in stone. It probably would have helped them to get some idea of our expectations on how they should deal with the unbeatable foe...

[Eternalsteelfan]

JasonShepard wrote...

OP: Thank you. Partly for finding an ending that solved the whole "Reapers are unbeatable, but we need to beat them" issue that the game series has had hanging over it since day one. Partly for giving a good breakdown of what people disliked about the ending. And partly for being nice and polite throughout.

Had I been writing something similar, I probably would have gone into more detail about why we have no reason to trust a word that comes out of the Catalyst's mouth (How do we know that we aren't just being offered 3 excellent ways to kill ourselves?)

I like how your 'fanfic' ending meshes well with the rest of the plot so far, and I agree that the final confrontation of the series should have been against something other than a copy of Saren. I really wanted a chance to give Harbinger what for, and your ending would have been perfect for that.



You know, thinking about all this, maybe we should have started discussions about ME3's endings this time last year, long before the writers had set anything in stone. It probably would have helped them to get some idea of our expectations on how they should deal with the unbeatable foe...

From what I've seen, the expectations of fans are fairly standard for an epic, predictable. I suppose we didn't have these discussions before hand because no one really expected such a poor showing from Bioware.

[JasonShepard]

Eternalsteelfan wrote...

From what I've seen, the expectations of fans are fairly standard for an epic, predictable. I suppose we didn't have these discussions before hand because no one really expected such a poor showing from Bioware.

Fair enough. I'm just kinda wishing we could have now. But hey, its the past, and the past ain't changing... (At least, not until someone invents a time-machine and risks creating a paradox, probably ripping the universe in half...)

[Mahrac]

I would also have Javik as a posibility to drive the missles in, but other than that this is very articulate and just good.

[Kreid]

I liked your ending deconstruction, and I agree with you in most everything, kudos.

Didn't like your alternate ending much, some neat ideas there but it's a little too by-the-book. 

Modifié par Creid-X, 01 avril 2012 - 09:39 .