Let's get started, shall we?
Turn the Star-Child scene from absurd to awesome by using the Indoctrination Theory we've made for you.The biggest complaint your fans have is that the final five minutes of the game is absurd. It's disjointed, it doesn't fit within the ME universe, and it simply feels like a non-sequitor tacked on at the last minute because you didn't have enough time to finish the ending you really wanted to do.
Fortunately, your wonderful fans have solved this problem for you, because you already did most of the hard work for us. You have
hints and clues of Shepard's subtle indoctrination all throughout the game, finally culminating in what many of your gamers assumed to be the obvious truth: the final fifteen minutes of the game were a hallucination sparked by Harbinger trying to indoctrinate Shepard.
If you're not familiar with the theory, you should be. It's all over the internet. Green option means you were indoctrinated (with the same lie used on Saren). Blue option means you were indoctrinated (with the same lie used on TIM). Red option with low EMS means you rejected the indoctrination, but were killed out in the real world because your ground forces were too weak to protect the Conduit while they looked for you. Red option with high EMS means you rejected the indoctrination attempt, and your ground military found you and rescued you after you woke up.
After that, you just have to give us the real ending.
Make our War Assets really matter.I love the war assets concept. I think it's brilliant. I think it's an elegant way to handle a massive amount of tiny little things all adding up into a giant force. The problem is that right now, there is absolutely zero indication to the user what their war assets were actually good for. Even if they go online and look it up, it still makes zero sense. Why does my army strength change the effects of the non-sequitor space magic? Isn't red space magic going to destroy earth whether I have ten ships in orbit or fifty? It just doesn't make sense.
Instead, you need to use the War Assets in a way that makes sense. Obviously, the "perfect world" solution would be to actually show each individual asset in action, or to even let us decide where each asset is assigned (this was awesome, in the final battle of Dragon Age: Origins). But obviously, there is way, way more content in ME3 than in DA:O. And that's fine. We're not expecting that much out of you.
We just need to know that that cumulative number really makes a difference. Personally, I liked my idea of using the War Asset rating to establish time limits and difficulty levels for the final boss - but you'll see that in a little bit when I post my fanfic.
Give us an epilogue slideshow, exactly how you did it in Dragon Age: Origins.We already saw the conclusions of a lot of story arcs throughout the course of the game. You don't have to give us a lot more closure in terms of content: it's just a psychological thing. We need to have that catharsis at the very end of the game, as credits are rolling, so that we can see that all of our choices had a real impact.
"Show, don't tell" is a great rule, but only if you show us
everything. That's obviously impractical here. A slideshow will be fine. One slide for each race/species, one for each surviving squadmate and major NPC, and maybe a couple for any of the more prominent minor NPCs (Aria, Kelly Chambers, Conrad Verner).
Give us a funeral scene, so we can see exactly who lived and who died.This was one of the most frustrating things for a lot of people, besides the ridiculous ending. Not knowing everyone's fate was very difficult to deal with. Sure, you want to leave a little bit of mystery, but there's a point where you're giving out so little information it's ridiculous. You can't possibly have expected people to be satisfied with what you gave us.
Leave our galaxy in a state where it can be reasonably repaired.Sacrifice is one thing. Cities can be rebuilt. Heroes can be remembered. Cultures can regrow.
I'm even okay with the destruction of the Citadel. Sure, it was one of the coolest structures in the franchise, but it's not the defining element of the Mass Effect universe. Personally, I'd rather spend my time on Omega.
The destruction of the Mass Relays - even if you ignore the fact that their energy release should have wiped out the entire star system - is not something we can rebuild. It took the Protheans, at the peak of their evolution and technological prowess, an exorberant amount of time, money, and research to build a *single* uni-directional relay. Given the state of our galaxy in the current ending, there's a good chance we'd slip into a technological and industrial dark age for so long that we'd forget the relays ever existed - let alone start rebuilding them.
Success should be an option, even if we have to work our asses off for it.In my opinion, Mass Effect 2 did this wonderfully. Failure was a very real option, but so was success. If you had a perfect gameplan, and you put a massive amount of work into it, you could walk off of that Collector ship with minimal losses to the people you cared about most: yourself and your squadmates.
I know sacrifice is an important theme, and if people need to die for meaningful reasons (Mordin for the genophage, Thane to protect the Council), that's fine. But don't go around killing people just for the sake of killing them. Every single one of the endings currently in ME3, if interpreted literally, feels like a forced failure. There's a difference between giving the player a hard choice (do I want to sacrifice the Sol system to save the rest of the galaxy?) and making every choice feel like an abysmal defeat.
Forced failure is not fun.It's one thing to fail because I messed up. But when I am doomed to fail, it makes it very hard to really care about what I'm doing.
Shepard should die in almost all situations. His story was built for sacrifice. But it should not be impossible for him to live, with a near-perfectly-played game, even if it requires us to go back and play every single side-quest of ME1/ME2.
ExampleEarlier this week, I wrote up an example of what I'd like to see in a fanfic/prediction. It was
well-received on Reddit, so I figure I'll share it here. Enjoy.
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First, the current "endings"
are canon, and remain in the game. They simply aren't what they seem to be. The only change to them is we ditch the Normandy crash and the jungle scene, because those simply don't make any sense, even in the context of a hallucination.
If you pick blue/green, or if your EMS is low, everything stays the same. That's how the game ends for you, and you're left scratching your head.
If you pick red and your EMS is high, these events happen after the "rubble" scene.
Part 1 - London: Wake UpAnderson sees you struggling to get up and runs over to help you. He tells you that you've been out for about an hour, and that Hammer team has set up a perimeter around the beam while search parties looked for you. He says that after the laser knocked you out, Harbinger's lights turned bright green and blue, and he stopped attacking. Shortly before you woke up, Harbinger's lights turned red and he started shaking violently, then flew away.
You meet up with your squadmates, and fight off reaper ground forces to get to the medbay, during which time you will explain that you had a vision after the blast, and you think it was indoctrination. You have a tense conversation with your squad, and ask them if they have what it takes to kill you, if it comes down to that.
Before they can answer, you're interrupted by Hackett over the radio.
"Good job with the Citadel, Hammer Team - the arms are opening."
Shepard replies, "We aren't in the Citadel, Hackett. Something's not right."
Hackett barks, "Well then you'd better get in there and figure out what's going on, Commander, because the Crucible is almost in position and we can't hold off the Reapers for long."
Harbinger swoops back down to Earth. The horn blares, and you can feel him raping your mind. The dark tendrils you had during the TIM vision reappear. You yell at Joker for some sort of backup. The Normandy swoops in and lays down heavy fire just as Harbinger is starting to shoop-da-woop, causing Harbinger to retreat. You, your squad, and Anderson use the opportunity to run into the portal. "Time to find out what's really on the other side," you say.
Part 2 - Inside the Keepers' LairInside, you find yourself in a Keeper tunnel, just like in the vision, but there are no human bodies. Instead, you find dead Keepers, a couple of dead husks, and a single dead Cerberus soldier, who appears to be mutated or partially husked. Your squadmates point out the disfiguration. "Something's not right."
You proceed to the end of the tunnel, and open the door. It opens up to a massive room similar to the circular chasm from the indoctrination vision, but filled with Cerberus lab equipment, Cerberus soldiers, and holding cells containing Reaper units - very similar to the lab equipment on Sanctuary. At the far end of the room, TIM appears to be fiddling with a console.
"Shepard, good. I'm glad you could finally join us."
"When you blew up my lab on Sanctuary, we lost a lot of valuable data. Fortunately, the Reapers have been kind enough to provide us with a new base of operations. You see, they want to see humanity succeed as much as I do."
"Unfortunately, it appears that we were wrong about the Citadel. It may be part of the Catalyst, but it is not the only missing piece. We should be able to activate the Crucible from here, but it simply isn't responding. I'm beginning to think we might need you for that."
Shepard enters dialogue with TIM, and begins to suspect that the reason he can't activate the Crucible is because he is indoctrinated. Why else would the reapers bring him here? They don't want to be controlled - they're using TIM to stop Shepard from reaching the Crucible controls.
A renegade conversation leads to a fight. The paragon conversation seems to have an effect on TIM, and he slowly starts to admit he's indoctrinated and pulls his pistol to his own head, but he snaps out of it and orders his men to attack. As the fight begins, he retreats to a glass safe room overlooking the lab, dodging a few shots from Shepard along the way.
You, Anderson, and your squad start wiping out the Cerberus forces in the room. As the fight progresses, TIM begins opening up the containment cells, releasing Reaper forces who begin attacking you alongside the Cerberus troops, including a new type of unit: the mutated Cerberus soldier, like you saw out in the Keeper hallway.
While you are fighting, TIM tries to argue with you, rationalizing his experiments here, claiming that he was too close to controlling the Reapers to give up now. You try to explain that the Reapers are just using him, but he stutters and stammers, refusing to accept it.
Part 3 - The Final BattleAs the last few containment cells open up and you're down to just a few remaining enemy forces, a short cutscene begins. TIM seems to finally crack. He admits indoctrination, just like Matriarch Benezia on Noveria.
He tells you that the Crucible is a failsafe designed with a unique trigger: a test of will against indoctrination. The Catalyst is someone who can resist that indoctrination.
The Reapers are mindbanks of one of the very first spacefaring species in our galaxy, their solution to overpopulation. When the ancient species was building the reapers, some of their scientists felt that their plan to farm/harvest new life to sustain their own race was wrong, and designed a weapon that exploited the Reapers' indoctrination code, so that once a race had evolved with the readiness to face the Reapers and a will strong enough to resist indoctrination, they would be able to fight for their place in the galaxy.
TIM starts to spasm, choking and distorting in unnatural shapes. When he finally stops, he stands up slowly, his eyes glowing red, and speaks to you in Harbinger's voice.
"You have resisted us, but this one is ours. We will direct your demise *personally*."
In an explosion of flesh and steel, the illusive man bursts into a mechanical monstrosity. The final battle commences.
You are given a time limit based on your effective military score. If time runs out, you see a cutscene showing the reapers overwhelming your allied space forces, killing a race/fleet. One of the reapers fires a beam towards the crucible that kills one of the squadmates you have with you. The timer restarts, but is much shorter this time. If you fail again, another race/fleet is overwhelmed, and Anderson and your other squadmate are beamed. The timer restarts one last time, faster still. If that one fails, the reapers completely overwhelm the crucible. Game over.
As the fight starts, radio chatter from Hammer Team tells you that some Reaper forces are breaking through and jumping into the warp beam. The final battle alternates between fighting the mutated IM and fighting waves of reaper forces coming in from the hallway behind you. The better your EMS, the less often you get Reaper waves behind you.
Part 4 - The CrucibleAfter you defeat the Harbinger-controlled Illusive Man, you get more radio orders from Hackett.
"Shepard, whatever you're doing in there, you need to hurry up. We can't hold these Reapers back much longer!"
Shepard races up to the terminal. It appears similar to the Prothean beacon from ME1, but is definitely not Prothean technology. He touches it.
A bright flash of light. Time appears to stop. You look around, in awe of the sight before you: ships and reapers frozen in space, lasers and torpedoes hanging motionless between them. Your squadmates tending to an injured Anderson behind you.
At this point in time, the "indoctrination trial" begins.
A voice similar to a reapers, but more patient and eloquent, perhaps female-sounding, will start to question the major decisions you've made over the course of the trilogy: from the Virmire incident to the Collector Base, to how you handled the Genophage and Quarian/Geth situation. It will try to convince you that you chose incorrectly, that you are a failure, that your race doesn't deserve to live because of the weakness you've shown.
If too many of the decisions you made are indefensible, or if your reputation is too low to select enough confident answers, you fail the indoctrination trial, and the Crucible misfires, killing you, Anderson, and your squad, blowing up the citadel, and only leaving some of the reapers alive. Two fleets/races are killed trying to finish off the remaining reapers, and you don't get the satisfaction of the Harbinger interrupt for beating the trial, seen below.The hologram of the child from your vision appears. He speaks to you using Harbinger's voice.
"You... it cannot be you. We are superior. We are infinite. You are an accident. We are the epitome of evolution. We are eternal. How did you resist us? We-"
Renegade and Paragon interrupts both show up on screen. Shepard interrupts Harbinger with a kickass catchphrase, then presses a button on the console device. A subtle ripple bursts out from the console, like a gust of wind.
Cutscene. With time still frozen, as if in a dream, an explosion of white light pulses out from the Crucible. The explosion moves slowly, beautifully, and as it hits each reaper, you hear the sound of metal wrenching and twisting in near-silent agony. A shot of London shows the white light slowly washing over Reaper ground forces. As it hits each husk, its lights change to white, and they spark and fizzle.
The wave of light reaches the Relay. Its lights turn white, and it beams the energy out, just like in the previous visions. Pull out to the galaxy, we see the wave spreading through the mass relays, just like in each of the previous cutscenes, covering the entire galaxy. The camera cuts back to the room with Shepard, either looking out the window at the battle, still frozen in time (if he survived the Crucible), or unconscious on the ground (if he failed the Crucible).
Part 5 - ConclusionAnd suddenly, everything comes back to life. The reapers explode in glorious unison. The Reaper ground forces vaporize all at once, soldiers begin cheering. We see cutscenes inside various ships that you've gathered for your armada, and Hackett calls over the radio - "You did it! Whatever you just did in there worked, Shepard. You're... you're a god damned hero."
If Shepard is still alive, he gives a speech over the radio. "We all did it. Together."
A memorial/funeral service for those who died is shown, with face placards for any of Shepard's teammates or significant NPCs who died. Thane, Mordin, Ashley/Kaidan. Many of the rest are shown in the crowd, to let the player know they're still alive.
Cut to black, credits. As the credits roll, we get a Dragon Age style epilogue slideshow, showing how each race/character still alive spends the next couple of years rebuilding or causing trouble, based on the bigger decisions you made.
After the credits roll, if Shepard has a LI, we see them standing side by side in an appropriate location (Rannoch for Tali, Thessia for Liara, etc.). If not, we see Shepard looking out over the ruins of Vancouver. Either way, Anderson walks over. "It's a hell of a thing you've done, son. What will you do now?"
Cut to black. Title menu.
Modifié par bwFex, 17 mars 2012 - 05:42 .
Retour en haut
Don't talk at all. Which I didn't like. I wish I had another option, like talking about Mordin's death since it recently happened, or discuss having the dream. Too many times, it's "follow the emotional path" or "skip it". You're not given another alternative.
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