7052 réponses à ce sujet

[KingNewbs]

I don't mind the bleak endings, but I do mind not being able to find a way to NOT blow up all the mass relays. As Anderson says to the Illusive Man, there is always another way.

That said, the Indoctrination Theory is so good, so clever and so supremely creative. If it turns out not to be true, please don't ever tell us... just pretend that was the idea all along. And make it happen.

[sagefic]

I want to see the ending live up to its potential.

I'm pretty much convinced of the Indoctrination Theory. <--If that's true, the ending is nothing short of amazing. It's some of the most interesting, relevant, and punch-you-in-the-gut RPG gameplay I've ever seen, and frankly. I applaud the writing team for it.

However, whether I would ever want to play the game again would largely depend on what happens with DLC going forward. IF this is simply the start of the big battle, if it was simply the point at which Shepard had to beat the Reapers on the battlefield of the mind before taking them on in the flesh (or shielded plating or whatever the repaers are made of), then that ending was a risky move, but would totally pay off. If the 'end' is simply the landing on the Normandy beaches (is it too much to hope there is some significance to that name?), then we know the best - and the worst - of the war is yet to come.

But all that depends on Shepard being the continued protagonist.

As I see it, if the end of ME3 is truly the last we see of Shepard, if it's, say, not until the next game that another hero arises on the battlefields of London and continues what Shepard started, well then, okay, yeah, that might be realistic. That person might even be a nice guy or gal or asari or drell and good for them for saving us all. But for me at least, and I imagine for a lot of other people, too, that would make ME3 and all the previous series virtually un-replayable. 

I can see how it could be interesting to play a DLC as one of the squaddies - someone else at another place on the field, however, in my mind, that's what multiplayer is for. Shepard's story was so compelling that if it ends on the battlefield in the rubble, even if she managed to break free in her mind before she takes her last breaths, well, I can appreciate the existential cry against the universe and all that jazz, but I'm not going to bother to replay the game in that case.

If the story continues with Shepard breaking free of indoctrination, then the ending was beyond worth it and I can't wait to see what's next. While there are particular points I could nitpick, the one giant 'We need this' that I can name right now is that we need to see Shepard break free of the StarChild's lies and take the fight to the Reapers at last.

Modifié par sagequeen, 18 mars 2012 - 05:09 .

[Mbednar]

I appreciate the fact that this thread exists and seems to be monitored by Bio ware employees.

Criticisms

~ War Assets boil down to an arbitrary number that has little effect other than changing some of the fleet cinematics slightly.

~ Nothing in the ending seems to reflect the choices made throughout the game.

~ Shepard simply accepting the choices laid out before him by the Catalyst is very out of character.  Throughout the series, he has been portrayed as a manifestion of Chaos and Rebellion against the Order of the Reapers.  In the most crucial of times, he blindly follows their will.

~ The motive for the Reapers' harvesting of species is poor.  It also goes against the entire theme of the Quarian/Geth chapter of the game.  I wouldn't have a problem with this if Shepard had a chance to speak up and argue with the Catalyst's logic.

~ All of the endings are virtually the same, with the exception of the color of the explosion at the end.

~ The destruction of the Relays.  Does it destroy every system containing one?  I will assume so since the Normandy was fleeing the Sol System in the end.  If so, it feels like an incredibly hollow victory (Earth being destroyed).  If not, then why was the Normandy by the relay?  Plus the Turian and Quarians in the fleet will die within days without food.  I doubt their FTL drive could get them home in time.

~ Where was the final confrontaion with Harbinger.  He was built up through the last two games and didn't even play a substantial role.

Honestly I don't know what happened in the last two minutes of the game.  Up until Shepard goes up the elevator to meet the Catalyst, the game is phenomenal.  The way the Thane and Mordin death scenes were handled were beautiful.  Bioware is superb at creating a character driven story. 

However, the ending to this game was sloppy and I am sorry to say, lazy.  I have no problem with a tragic ending.  But it simply felt like a forced ending with no choice or goal which led to the same hollow outcome.  I honestly hope there are Bioware employees reading this thread and reflecting on it.  This game would be a gem were it not blemished by the ending. 

Some kind of action needs to be taken.  Some people have even gone so far as to write new endings for the game.  I know that many of the ideas expressed on these forums can be implemented though DLCs or patches, and I sincerely hope that Bioware and its people are giving it some serious consideration.

Modifié par Mbednar, 18 mars 2012 - 05:18 .

[tsnyder2388]

Okay, I've read tons of these posts, and I can agree with a lot, but not all. My perspective is a little scewed, however. *Sigh... I played a lot of D&D growing up, and that was my big appeal to the ME world. It felt like Bioware was a dungeon-master of sorts, and, as some of you surely know, a DM only has a handful of scenarios planned out depending on your actions. All the way up to the end, it felt like they'd thought of everything. Tons of action to keep my violent side passified, a leveling system to give my individual Sheps a sense of difference and an expansive level of choices to feel like I was the one dictating the world around me. Literally, around ME, not the game. They achieved something that many devs don't these days, and made it feel as if you could sink into the world. As if we needed to send some probes out to Pluto and start thawing the Sol Relay!
...Then came the godchild. That would be the D&D equivalent to a crap monologue from the DM, followed by, "I'm going home now and getting a girlfriend. No more role-play for you, and I want my cape back!" Nothing in the previous entries felt forced. All decisions felt as if they were necessary, whereas the end was just, "This is what it is. Thanks for coming up here, now go die for nothing." Clear back to the first game, I anticipated my Renegade Shep dying, but not with such a fizzle. I expected it to be as epic as any scene could be, and I certainly expected some semblance of feedback on how he had touched the universe. Will Jack go back to being a psycho? Will Tali get her house? Will Joker get some robo-******? Of course, there's much more important things to touch on, but you get the point.
I feel as if, at the very least, 45 minutes of dialogue, give or take, were missing from the end. Don't get me wrong... The hundreds of hours of my life I've pantered away on this game series has been something I babble about at nausium to everyone I know and I'm grateful. However, a story is only as good as it's ending. I just want some answers, some conclusion. I don't need multiplayer maps or new guns, just some dialogue. That's it. Keep the Citadel Kiddie, if you must, but also pay notice to the indoctrination theory, because it's nearly flawless. I must say, If I personally just saw one of my close friends get shot down after the battle Shepard faced, I wouldn't let some little shiny kid push me around (*insert Twilight joke here*)! So, Bioware, our digital dungeon masters, make this right and give us a true ending, not something that seems forced that you dreamed up while staring at some Skittles on a rainy day. Other than that, thanks for the good times!

[Zix13]

Lehna wrote...

acidic-ph0 wrote...

Amdnro wrote...

SaintlPatrick wrote...

http://i.imgur.com/JhtqY.jpg

This is PERFECT! Support

A VERY helpful graphic! I support this too!

Same here. I guess everyone was expecting these kind of endings.

Ya... That`s the kind of thing I was expecting. Some emphasis in the wrong places imo but that sort of cause-effect relationship between what armies you gathered and the final battle... as opposed to it not mattering at all.

[Ghost of a Messiah]

There's no reason to end Shep's story... He kills the reapers here, great but their are more galaxies out there with infinite possibilities... If the reapers fail in our galaxy and there are more in other galaxies we'd definitely viewed as threats. But if you are going to kill the greatest hero our Galaxy has ever seen then I'd rather see everyone fight to the last man. If extinction is inevitable Then show it in a final war cry in sheer defiance. Make the reaper fleet shake or at the very least beet the crap out of Harbinger.

[knight5923]

I'm sure, with 102 pages of posts, this thread has probably already brought up most of the problems I have with the ending;
The choices and actions not really appearing to have any significant effect on the ending.
The Mass Relay destruction, stranding and likely killing millions.
The deus ex machina starchild.

But really, I think most of the problems can be traced to a single issue: The man standing there, at the ending, isn't the Shepard we all know and love. The Shepard who never gives up, and can always find another alternative. A Shepard who isn't bullied into anything, and stands up for the downtrodden, organic or synthetic. Where Shepard should have confronted the catalyst, and found another way, he instead submitted to this bizarre kid. He just gives up, doesn't even bother to find a more fitting solution. I don't know who that was standing there at the ending, but it certainly wasn't Shepard.

[jarrettwold]

There is a quick flaw, just in a cosmological way that the Reaper argument plays out. I was thinking about this today when I was toying around with my keeper retcon.

Civilizations tend to burn out early either from mutual self annihilation, destruction of habitat,natural or man made disasters or one race attacking another. Fermi's paradox exists early on, more so than later. It's much more likely for a civilization like ours to be destroyed by a space rock or a gamma ray burst pointed the wrong way. But, even if we get to the point where we can war with aliens we're likely not going to do much damage to the galaxy other than smashing an asteroid into a planet. Asteroid impacts happen all the time on a galactic timescale, life or no life.

Ignore the synthetics vs organics argument.

The scary thing with Reapers is that when you get to a scale where you can wipe out life every 50,000 years you're toying with very powerful things to accomplish that. When you start waging war at that timescale and with that amount of power you're capable of destroying solar systems, and galaxies. That's when that oppressively dark, malevolent argument of Sovereign and Harbinger starts ringing true.

"You will die because we can't trust you"

The United States, and various other countries do their level headed best to prevent other countries from developing or deploying nuclear weapons. We are perfectly willing to attack them, to cripple them to prevent them from attaining those weapons before they get them. Extrapolate that out to a universe like Mass Effect, where you can travel faster than light, create weapons that astound and move around the universe at will.

The Reapers (and since the keepers are old enough) have seen races that have tried to grow up and play with the big toys so to speak. Over the course of millions of years, some have probably come close at times, to defeating them. They've also likely seen the mess when someone has created or played with a big toy and done something destructive like destroy a galaxy. Each time they adjust, and evolve themselves and destroy. There's no reason to trust us, either. There's no reason for them to listen, reason or argue with us. So the "we are order brought to chaos" bit, is applicable.

So we move to the question of why the keepers are still around. They're uplifted, they've been around just as long as the reapers have. What makes them unique to that equation. What agreement did they come to with the reapers? Or what forced peace was brokered. The keepers at that point are just as malevolent in their silence as the reapers are in their destruction. They stand by and let the cycle continue. They've reached the same conclusion, that every so often the slate of species that reach technological sophistication need to be wiped out to provide order on a cosmological scale.

Anyhow, the more I think about it the ending just made the wrong argument. It's never been about synthetics vs organics. It's been about maintaining the universe, keeping the garden of eden around long enough so everyone can enjoy it but not threaten it.

Modifié par jarrettwold, 18 mars 2012 - 05:42 .

[adastra35]

 Almost forgot - bring back the dialogue between Anderson and Shepard about Shepard having a family one day! Too touching to leave out.

[Amschel]

It's pretty obvious that bioware wanted the ending to be somewhat open for interpretation, but the purpose of the reapers is what they should have left for us to discuss. Leaving us wondering where the heck this child A.I. came from and why Joker is flying off with my ship away from the battle while some how managing to pick up all of my crew just makes be frustrated.

It is too late for this now but I wish they left the reapers motives as a mystery allowing us to discuss just what the heck they were all about. Then they could have focused more on the consequences of our choices through out the three games. Showing the devastation if we were not prepared enough, or the survivors celebrating and beginning to rebuild if we were. And really giving some effort in what came of our companions that we grew so attached to, other then crash landing on some random jungle planet were they probably lived out the rest of their days struggling to survive and then dieing out.

As for what I would like to see.... I understand that we will probably not see an entire retcon of this ending and replaced by another. But I would be happy with some added choice like being able to refuse the three that are handed to Shepard to witch he/she seems to blindly accept.I would also like to see the whole Joker running away part changed, at least to make room for some more sensical closure for our beloved companions.

Over all I still love the Mass Effect series and I am grateful to Bioware for working so hard on this epic. I just wish it did not come down to an ending that demoralized me from playing through the game again. Although I am pleasantly surprised with how the multiplayer turned out and am still playing. I want to support Bioware and their creations, I just can't support them on an ending that seems like they just didn't try. And yes i realize they probably put a lot of effort and thought into the ending, it just doesn't seem like it.

Anyway I just wanted to chime in with my position and show my support for the take back mass effect movement.

Modifié par Amschel, 18 mars 2012 - 05:43 .

[BelleDreamer7]

Jessica,

     The writing was beautiful. The animations were okay, I liked the movement of Shepard better in ME2. The priority missions were fantastic. The threading of Sanctuary and the news feeds through the game were excellent. The interactions and personal relationships were beautiful.

     The things to improve would be the side missions. I didn't mind scanning planets to complete the missions but there was no follow up like in ME2 where Shepard could speak to the person they were presenting an item to. Instead there was a little blurb that was more like DA2 which was one of the few things I didn't like.

     The endings were too cookie cutter. I purposely made different choices through my various play throughs to see how they would affect my ME3 ending. I had heard that there were to be multiple endings and I wanted to see as many as I could. I was going to raise the war assets no matter what, but my allies and what not were debatable. I did so many things in hopes that my decisions would give me different endings. Instead I found that I was being funnelled into a three choice ending where the two most obvious endings weren't there. The whole point of the Catalyst was to keep organic life from being destroyed by destroying the most advanced life before it could rage war with synthetics, when EDI and the Geth are possible allies, was a major plot hole. It was hideously ironic that Shepard had to make one of three choices and never argue with the Catalyst about its failed logic. When the whole Catalyst scene was playing I was waiting for a discussion option to argue that EDI is a trusted friend and the geth were making life better for the Quarians. Instead Shepard just went with the three ideas and never said anything more than "You don't understand us." Seeing as Shepard has been able to talk two villians into killing themselves, they couldn't argue for that last scene was just bad writing.

     The final cut scene with the Normandy was just insulting to players. I have heard so many people complaining about why the Normandy was jumping, how they were surviving on an alien planet, how people in the final party were on the ship, and other things that I have to wonder how it made it through the editing process. If my Shepards must die and cannot do anything to save their galaxy and live, then tell me how my companions were doing after Shepard's sacrifice. I was actually betting on a Dragon Age Origins style of ending. Maybe stills of the companions in their lives after the Reapers, if they survived, and a paragraph or something explaining how they were doing.

     I'll be honest, I wanted various endings for my Shepards. I want one to live and have a happily ever after ending with her LI. I want one to die, not in the malicious way but the heroic self-sacrifice way. I want to see the various endings like from DAO where the LI mourns or rejoices, but there is nothing to be said. We know nothing about how anyone does and that was unsatisfying. It really felt like ME3 went out with a whimper and not the fireworks explosion the fans were waiting for.

Thank you and may you realize that we want to keep playing, but with the selection deserved at the end of a franchise such as this.

[Mbednar]

knight5923 wrote...

But really, I think most of the problems can be traced to a single issue: The man standing there, at the ending, isn't the Shepard we all know and love. The Shepard who never gives up, and can always find another alternative. A Shepard who isn't bullied into anything, and stands up for the downtrodden, organic or synthetic. Where Shepard should have confronted the catalyst, and found another way, he instead submitted to this bizarre kid. He just gives up, doesn't even bother to find a more fitting solution. I don't know who that was standing there at the ending, but it certainly wasn't Shepard.

I know I already said it in my post, but you have stated it very well.  This is also why a part of me hopes that the Indroctrination theory is correct.  That our hero will wake up and fight against the current instead of being washed away by it.  That they will release a DLC with some magical ending to fix this.  However, I have a bad feeling that our complaints will be swept under the rug.

Modifié par Mbednar, 18 mars 2012 - 05:51 .

[refuse81]

Disregarding the 'puzzling' ending the game's biggest problem is the journal.

- You pick up missions without noticing sometimes, which makes it hard to know who to talk to without running around the entire area to look for the person since you don't know who you overheard to get it.

- It's often hard to know where you need to go to complete a mission, the descriptions can be really vague.

- You don't know if you have completed the missions. It's pretty hard to know because the journal isn't tracking mission status. There's no "Reaper Tech: Acquired" or anything attached to the mission. You know it's bad when you need to use wordpad to organize missions.

- You get missions that can't be completed at the time, and missions that can no longer be completed aren't removed.

- If you miss an artefact in a combat mission you can buy it from the Spectre Shop... But there's a bug that forces you to leave the Embassy area before the game registers that you have the artefact in question, causing you to run around like a fool looking for the person to give it to.

- Completing most of the Journal missions is boring. Scanning the entire galaxy is not fun.

I find it weird the current system managed to go gold.

In short: Clarify our mission acquisitions, Make it easier to know where to go, Have the journal track mission status, Remove missions that can't be finished, mark quests that can not yet be finished with another color, fix the mission artefact purchase bug, more combat or mystery oriented missions. 

Modifié par refuse81, 18 mars 2012 - 05:52 .

[NightHawkIL]

Most of my concerns have already been voiced, but I would like to add something a little different:

I would like to have a true motivation for the reapers revealed. An enemy with no cause is boring to me. I may have been ok having not been given any info at all at first, but now that the current ending gave us this ridiculous 'robots killing us so robots don't kill us' ending, I need something to over wright it with. I need a better reason than that hanging around in the back of my mind if I'm going to take any new ending seriously.

There are a number of motivations that would have much fewer plot holes. Here are three options in no particular order:

Originally the reapers were supposed to be working to prevent the spread of dark energy, hence all the references in ME2. The idea was scrapped after a script leak. That would be a fine motivation to bring back.

A second one would be that they simply want to prevent anything from becoming more advanced than they are, and yet keep some organics alive after each cycle so that they can use them to continue to improve themselves.

Third, they could believe they are gods - playing a role of directing evolution along the paths they believe are superior. They could be doing this to either; 1) create the a supreme form of life, which they might see as their duty as gods, or 2) simply be directing evolution to create creatures they can harvest to enrich their own knowledge or form.

[Creston918]

Alright, I'll throw in my 2 cents.

If Shepard dies, Shepard dies. It's a drama after all, and having the main character die seems to be in vogue right now, so that's fine. But have it MEAN something. After your main character dies, there should be an ending where you see what an impact his/her life had on the companions and on the people in the galaxy overall. Shepard (likely) SAVED THE GALAXY. Do we want to see a few minutes of people remembering Shepard; mourning at a statue to Shepard; seeing the Council award Shepard the highest honor possible posthumously? {sarcasm} Nah, who'd want that? {/sarcasm.}

And stop changing the internal workings of your own universe and try to stay consistent.
"LOLZ THE COLORED BALLS BLOWZ UP THE GATES AND ITS ALL PRETTY AND STUFF! DUR!"

http://i.imgur.com/e1fZt.jpg

Thanks for wiping out every planet I visited in ME3 with your ending.

It's like you guys hired Brannon freaking Braga to write the ending for you.

[leafyFresh]

It would totally make my day if they ran with the indoc. theory and produced a more dynamic and full set of endings.

I don't think it's "common sense" that producing more ending dlc (free or non free, i dont care) that is in line with indoc. theory is a bad idea.

[AloraStarr]

     I haven't posted on the BioWare forums in years, but would like to start by saying BioWare is hands down my favorite game developer out there. Games like KotOR and Jade Empire really cemented my love for gaming with their amazing story lines and personal interactions with characters. The Mass Effect franchise was no exception, I picked up ME3 the day it came out.

     My only complaint at first was wanting more dialogue with the Normandy crew, but then again I would have happily stood around talking to them for hours.  I was thoroughly impressed with the game and couldn't wait for each oppertunity to play. That all changed after beating it. Not only have I not touched it since, but I haven't been so dissappointed in a game since KotOR 2 (I know BioWare wasn't involved in that one, to my knowledge is was passed to Obsidian so BioWare could work on JE.).  

     I wasn't expecting a happy ending. After the conversation about the bar in heaven (I played FemShep with Garrus as her LI) I envisioned Shepard and Garrus breathing their last breath side by side after activating the Catalyst and watching the Reapers start to crumble. Perhaps it could have been followed by a quick cut scene of Shepard and Garrus spotting eachother from accross the room of a bar on a tropical planet as their eyes locked and they shared a smile or something to that effect. THAT would have been 'bittersweet'. Not the options (all of them pretty much dooming everyone left trapped on and orbiting Earth) that were presented by the sudden appearance of the kid and his apparently indisputable 'logic'. 

     To be honest, I would have prefered it if the game ended right after Shepard activated the console. She and Anderson were at least together and knew their sacrifices had meant something. It wouldn't have been what I wanted, but it would have been better than the random events that followed:

1) The strange (was he supposed to be a VI?) kid that was either a manifestation of Shepard's most traumatic recent memory or he was never real to begin with. I always found it odd that none of the soldiers on the shuttle at the begining of the game bothered to help the little boy climb up before taking off, maybe he was in Shepard's mind all along. But not being able to really argue with him was unShepard-like.

2) There being choices that supposedly mean Shepard doesn't die... nope, she's just stranded on an exploded Citadel alone and in desperate need of medical attention with no way of returning to Earth. She'll be fine. 

3) Why is the crew back on the Normandy and nowhere near Earth? Shepard couldn't have been knocked out on the ground at the beam for that long. Even if her companions thought she was dead after getting hit by the Reaper, I doubt they would have left before the battle ended. They would have gotten to that beam to finish what Shepard started or died trying. And is it just me, or did Joker and Garrus look almost cheerful after crashing on the random planet?

4) Each option at the end of the game makes Shepard's efforts meaningless. Uniting warring races only to strand them on a planet with already limited recourses would do nothing but cause more wars over food and territory. The Turians and Quarians would starve to death on Earth since they can't eat human food.

5) I thought relays blowing up destroyed all nearby planets. So wouldn't that mean nearly all planets in the galaxy would be destroyed?

Up until the very end, ME3 was a truly wonderful game that more than met my expectations. Now, to be honest, I would be wary of playing another BioWare RPG for fear of being sucked in then let down. I really hope to see DLC to fix this issue, because the rest of the series was just amazing. Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I hope it doesn't sound unappreciative. Like many have said, we wouldn't be so upset about the ending if we didn't love the series to begin with! <3

[SearchXDestroy]

leafyFresh wrote...

It would totally make my day if they ran with the indoc. theory and produced a more dynamic and full set of endings.

I don't think it's "common sense" that producing more ending dlc (free or non free, i dont care) that is in line with indoc. theory is a bad idea.

I dont care about the indoc. theory, hell im happy for them to leave the endings they have in place, but what i would like to see is a hell of alot more choices, and concsequences for our endings - like i was promised since the day i picked up mass effect 1 

[Devlin88]

To put it in a nutshell, we don't want a franchise that we have spent years playing, making decisions, shaping the ME universe how we all, all to be moot points. It gets to the point that no matter what you do, it is all the same in the end. I have a complete paragon file & a complete renegade file, both started from ME1, isn't there something wrong when you play the game in the complete opposite way but they still all end up in the same place.

Not to mention that there was absolutely no closure to the game what so ever, just a tonne of questions, and seeing as this is supposedly the end of shepherds story, its not the time to leave more questions, it's time to wrap everything up. Heck, I would have preferred those epilogue text box things we got and the end of dragon age, eg: "Tali returned home to her homeworld rannoch where she was deemed a hero by her people & along with the get, created a new and prosperous future for both races".

[Denora]

I'll restate what many others have already undoubted said:
I do wish for something to be done with the ending, and allow me to clarify
Although I personally prefer the happy ending, I wouldn't mind so much if there was epiloge detailing the aftermath. I also wouldn't mind the cliffhanger if it wasn't already stated that Mass Effect 3 is the last of Shepard's story, I understand more is coming but it was stated that the ending would resolve all questions and the current one created alot more endings then it awnsered, at least to me.

The ending is my only real concern, always some other matters but nothing that stops Mass Effect 3 from being the best game of the trilogy and on of the best games I've ever played.(in my opinion).

Always some other matters, I guess I'll list them since your asking.

There was also some inconsistancies regarding Liara as an LI during some dialog, it seemed to bounce between just friends and a romance.

Ashley seems to really lack much dialog after the citadel attack if your not romancing her (though the hangover scene was hilarious!)

I was also dissapointed by not showing Tali's face on Rannoch, also the photoshop job of her picture was rather lazy. If I had to choose how get a good Tali with a low budget I'd make a community contest and ask for Fan Art, best one gets in the game and a mention in the Credits. Consider; only few minutes of work, community involvment, and guaranteed good art.  Some of the Fan Art I've seen is astounding.

Lastly there are a couple random bugs; between Eva being unkillable sometimes, the targeting laser on Rannoch would freeze up on me at times, and also I would get stuck next to joker unable to move (Seems like a minor collision detection error).

That's all I could think of, I hope it helps. Thanks again for the amazing game, it's a masterpiece.

[Alexander Kogan]

adastra35 wrote...

 Almost forgot - bring back the dialogue between Anderson and Shepard about Shepard having a family one day! Too touching to leave out.

^
THIS!

Bring that back too!

And watch this for further inspiration
V

Modifié par Alexander Kogan, 18 mars 2012 - 06:07 .

[trexmaster78]

It's been said before but read this :
http://www.gamefront...fans-are-right/

It's just so damn right on everything that's wrong about the endings that you should just hire the guy to rewrite the endings.

[MarginalBeast]

I don't know what you guys are planning to do, but I suppose I should chip in my two cents.

About the endings:

-There should be a variety in tone. If this is really supposed to be our story, then let us decide how happy or tragic we want it to end. I'm not saying everything needs to be rainbows and sunshine, as some amount of realism should be present. But just look at things like Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. They had happy endings, and is anyone complaining about it? Did those endings betray the sacrifices and challenges that the characters endured along the way? No! They provided a proper conclusion to those stories and left the viewer satisfied! There is nothing wrong with happy endings. Let's say hypothetically that Shepard beat the Reapers the conventional, predictable way: the Crucible worked as planned, the Reapers died, and nothing happened to the mass relays or to the geth/EDI. That would be a happy ending, but Earth/Thessia/Palaven/etc would still be in shambles. Mordin would still be dead. Legion would still be gone. There would still be suffering, the sacrifices wouldn't disappear, but at the same time the player would actually feel like he or she accomplished something and saved the galaxy like a big damn hero. And hell, give us bittersweet and sad endings too! Variety is the spice of life, and you will please the most amount of people that way. Provide sad endings, definitely, but also let the people who just want Shepard to save the galaxy and reunite with his/her LI do so; I think both Shepard AND the player deserve that much after 3 games of effort. As things are now, myself and most other people I know just felt upset and empty after finishing the game.

-Let our choices actually matter. As things are right now, when it all comes down to it, your War Assets are just numbers. Oh, you saved the Rachni Queen? That's nice, but she never actually shows up to help in the end. Oh, you got Aria's mercs to help? That's nice, but like the Rachni, you never actually see them in action. No offense, but no one really cares about what they did during the game if they can't see their choices play out in the end. After the "fleets reporting in" cutscene, the ending sequence is basically exactly the same for everyone. Jack and her students don't burst onto the scene to help Shepard out of a tight spot, the Krogan troops don't show up and take out a wave of Brutes for you, Kirrahe doesn't Hold The Line, etc. In the end, these War Assets will really still just be numbers, but they will mean something to the player if we get extra scenes. Getting to see our decisions put into action via cutscenes/gameplay would have been amazing! Everyone would have had some kind of role to play. Think of the suicide mission from ME2, just on a much bigger scale. THAT'S what the last mission of one of the most beloved game trilogies ever should have been like, in my opinion.

-Don't be so weird. Okay, I guess you guys were trying to be unique and creative with the AI child stuff, but I just don't think it worked. It came out of nowhere, brought up more questions than it answered, and most importantly did not fit the tone of the series at all! Mass Effect is NOT 2001: A Space Odyssey. I signed up for a fun blockbuster space opera like Star Wars, not something that was going to try and go all deep and mystical on me at the very end. I get that we're already suspending our disbelief in the first place, as we must for all sci-fi, but the ending of ME3 just crossed the line and felt out of place. Plus, Shepard just numbly went along with everything instead of really challenging the AI child. I don't care how tired and broken she was by that point, she's Commander Shepard. She (or he) should have refused to go along with the kid's nonsensical reasoning and found another, better way to defeat the Reapers. This series was all about beating the odds, doing the impossible, and never giving up hope even in the darkest hour. All of those themes were thrown out the window in the end, which is really what I think most people have a problem with. These endings don't fit the series and don't make sense. They're also all basically the same. The mass relays are destroyed, Shepard is (probably) dead, the Normandy is stranded on a weird planet, etc. Sure there are slight variations, such as how badly Earth is hit, but even those variations don't matter because we don't KNOW how they really affect anything! All we get is a silly cutscene of the Normandy crash and then the old man and the child at the very end. Which brings me to my next point...

-Provide closure after everything is said and done. How does the galactic community rebuild itself? What exactly happened to the Citadel? If you cured the genophage, are Wrex and Eve able to keep everything under control or do the krogans go back to their old ways? If you didn't cure it, how is krogan society coping? How are things on Rannoch? Is there even anyone ON Rannoch, since the mass relays were apparently destroyed while the quarians were in Sol? Are the asari receiving backlash for that beacon they were hiding? How are our friends and squadmates doing individually? Why did the Normandy crash on that planet? Does Garrus ever see his family again? What is Chakwas up to? Does Liara keep in touch with her father? How are Ashley/Kaidan handling the Spectre gig? If Shepard and his/her LI ever see each other again, how are they spending their lives? Even without a LI, what the hell is Shepard doing now assuming he/she survived? The fates of the characters--especially with the endings being what they are--are a complete mystery to us. That isn't what we want. We want closure, we want to know what they're doing with their lives now that the Reaper invasion is over. You don't even need to give us cutscenes for all of these. Just slides of text, ala Dragon Age: Origins, would be completely acceptable. But we need something!



About the rest of the game:
(I know it's too late to actually change any of this, but I figured I'd leave feedback anyway)

-I loved the game, at least the priority missions, but it felt incomplete. I felt like there needed to be more priority missions, for one thing. Why couldn't we have gone to Kahje to get the Hanar's help instead of just a tiny sidequest with Kasumi? This game would have been a great opportunity for the less-popular races like the Hanar, Volus, and Elcor to shine in their own way. Instead we barely get to talk to any and the only way in which they relate to the plot is via scanning missions. Considering that this is the last game and that everyone in the galaxy is fighting the biggest war of their lives, the "lesser" races should have had much more important roles. Instead, they actually became less prominent as the series went on. That shouldn't happen!

-Some squadmates were pointless in the grand scheme of things. Garrus, for example. I love him, his dialogue was wonderful, his romance was excellent and he's a great friend even when he's not a LI. BUT, he didn't really do anything beyond his initial appearance. And even then he didn't really serve any important purpose besides replacing Liara and fighting with you. He didn't get his own side mission in the game, he didn't have a paragon vs renegade character development arc like in ME1 and 2. In fact, our interactions with him in the previous games had ZERO affect on anything in ME3. His dialogue is pretty much exactly the same no matter how you influenced him, and Sidonis makes no appearance whatsoever if you saved him. Aside from Garrus, Vega and the Virmire survivor felt pointless as well. After he crashes that shuttle in the beginning, Vega doesn't do anything of importance. He's just there. For a character that can't be killed, that feels like such a waste. Ashley and Kaidan also serve no real purpose. They get injured, spend half the game in the hospital, and then have a brief skirmish with Shepard during the Cerberus coup (which still would have played out very similarly even without them). Then they either join the Normandy and do nothing, or they stay behind and do nothing. The entire plot would HARDLY be any different if they never existed. Their new Spectre status doesn't even matter. Meanwhile Liara, Tali (even though she could be dead!), and EDI all have important roles during priority missions and feel important to the story in some way. Javik I can forgive being unimportant since he's a DLC character.  I would prefer that he wasn't a DLC character in the first place and had a much bigger role in the story, but that's a whole 'nother can of worms that I don't feel like opening.

-The treatment of some NPCs was pretty dismal. Emily Wong gets killed on Twitter? Shiala only sends you an e-mail? Kal'Reegar DIES in an E-MAIL, even though there was an entire chain of Geth/Quarian missions that he could have been a part of? And we don't get to talk to Tali about it at all? No Gianna Parisini? If you really lacked the resources to properly integrate these characters, then maybe you shouldn't have wasted any on Diana Allers, whom nobody cared about and pretty much added nothing to the game.

-The child that Shepard keeps dreaming about felt forced. Shepard has seen so much horror and death already, why does one kid that they met for 2 minutes cause so much trauma? I loved talking with other characters about Shepard's own problems and emotional state, which made her feel like a realistic human being. But a seasoned Commander having recurring dreams about one particular little boy that she didn't really know, despite the fact that she's probably seen plenty of kids die before, just felt off.

-The Citadel was...boring. Aside from the dates and meetings with your crew, and a few shops, it was disappointing. You don't get to explore it anymore, all you do is walk into an elevator and click some buttons. As interesting as the ambient conversations were, there STILL should have been a larger variety of NPCs that you could actually interact with. Half the fun of Mass Effect is taking a break from the fighting and just walking around the hub worlds, taking in the atmosphere and talking to various people. ME1 and ME2 managed to do this, but ME3 fell flat. I understand that the Reapers were invading, but the galaxy is huge and invasions apparently last a long time. There HAD to be at least a few places besides the Citadel that weren't under attack, places that we could explore just like the good ol' days. Instead we were stuck with a watered-down Citadel and that was it.

-Speaking of exploration, the first Mass Effect is still the best in that regard. Not necessarily the barren random planets you could visit, but the main missions. No matter where you were or what mission you were on, you felt like you were in a real enviroment that you could walk around and explore and find people to talk with. Mass Effect 2 took some of that away, and by the time we got to Mass Effect 3 it was pretty much completely gone. Every mission involves making your way through a complete linear path and killing enemies along the way. Story-wise, the priority missions in ME3 were great, and the combat was a lot of fun. But the exploration was lacking.

-Kai Leng wasn't a very good character. I'm still not sure if he was supposed to be ridiculous and campy or if he just ended up that way. I mean, that childish neener-neener e-mail he sends you after Thessia? And his eloquent "Shut up!!" after Shepard insults him during their final fight? Really?

-No female turians.

-The various bits of dialogue referencing Shepard's history were nice, but I wanted more. If not a sidequest ala ME1, then at least a conversation about it with one of the squadmates. Apparently Spacer Shepards got to talk to Garrus about their mom, briefly, but Earthborns and Colonists sure didn't  get anything as far as I know. Sole Survivors STILL never got the chance to yell at TIM about it Akuze!


Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Mass Effect 3 immensely until the very end. There were a lot of things about it I liked, but I haven't mentioned most of them because I feel like the cons are a more prominent concern right now.

All in all, I just feel like the game needed...more. More of everything. I know that you didn't have unlimited resources to build this game, but maybe 2 years just wasn't enough time to get everything in. Plenty of other companies spend years and years on their games in order to make sure that they're as great as they can be, and it shows. I wish BioWare would have done the same with Mass Effect 3. It ended up being a great game, but it could have been an amazing one even with just another year of development. Maybe EA wouldn't let you, I don't know, but either way it's unfortunate.

If you actually read all of this, I really appreciate it and I hope you take all of this fan feedback into consideration.

Modifié par MarginalBeast, 18 mars 2012 - 06:12 .