407 réponses à ce sujet

[Dean_the_Young]

CanadAvenger wrote...

I hate the ending because it betrays everything the story was about in the first two games. None of your decisions that you've made over 100 hours of game time ago matter at all, and you're stuck with making 3 choices (sorry, 16) that you can hardly call a victory.

The choices mattered in the game, though. Unless you demand dialogue slides, why should they dictate an ending scenario that has to be simple enough to incorporate all variables regardless? And if it were epilogue slides, then it's not the actual ending but the post-ending.

You already had your consequences. You had more consequences in ME3 than the previous two games put together.


And yes, the survival of the galaxy over the Reapers can still be called a victory.

The endings don't make any sense especially when compared to the rest of the series, and they leave such enormous plot holes it's not even funny.

The only one or real signficance is how people got on the Normandy/why it was FTL away. And even the second part is just unexplained, rather than a plot hole. 'Space magic' or 'last-minute exposition device', while annoying to some, is neither a plot hole nor unknown to the Mass Effect (the Cypher/Vigil/Reapers-are-made-from-people, Asari, etc.).

There wasn't enough options for endings either. Should we have been railroaded to a happy ending, like we were railroaded into screwing over the galaxy? No, but the option should have been there. As said in another thread: "Shepard is not a tragic hero" - we deserve the option of a happy ending.

You deserve a quality ending, but happy? Not so much. You are not entitled to little blue babies/turian babies/whateve race your love interest is babies in a 'good' ending.

[jb1983]

IntoTheDarkness wrote...








there a poll where 80% of people voted they disliked the ending because it wasn't a happy ending.

Really? I personally love bad endings because they are hard to come by. 95% of holliwood movies and 99% of games are good endings. Do we need more on the list?

On the other side, I agree the ending doesn't really make much sense to me.

What's your thoughts?

Both. But here's what everyone is missing:

Some people wanted a dark ending. Others wanted a happy ending. Who should win out on this one? Well the answer is simple - both. In a game where we're told that choices matter and that multiple endings are possible, then there should be a wide range of gameplay endings taylored to your choices. Thus, some people should be posting videos of a happy ending, while those of us who like dark endings would laugh at them, call them Disney kids, and point to our dark endings. In the end, the debate would be over which ending is better and why.

As it is now, we're left debating our favorite color. 

[Zardoc]

Both, though even the best case scenario wouldn't be a happy ending.

[Talogrungi]

My issue with the ending was twofold:

1. The inclusion of the starchild (Harry Plothole) and his space magic.
2. Paragon/Renegade morality was completely ignored.

[ZLurps]

I would like to have ending that makes sense.

[ADelusiveMan]

Both

[Dean_the_Young]

NovinhaShepard wrote...

This is amazing, and illustrates, just as Lambchops says, exactly how the endings could go, in traditional-style, beautiful Bioware endings variety that appropriately reflects player choice. Instead, Bioware ripped that from us, in true Big Brother, capitalist style, because they are effing lazy.

Seriously, this just made me even more pissed.

The thing is, though, is that with epilogue slides that amount to 'and most the races at Earth made a long jorney home' and 'species X began to rebuild/was screwed under the leadership of Y for reason Z', you'd have that. It's already there, just not given to you: "And the Krogan flew back to Tuchanka, where Eve was guiding them, and Eve mitigated Wreave's aggression/worked with Wrex to start a golden age of cultural reform.'



There are a lot of complains people have about the ending: that it wasn't happy, that it wasn't distinguished, and that it didn't set out the post-war in detail. Prior choices in the game would only affect the post-war details, but those are a post-ending aspect that depends largely on either a post-victory party, or epilogue slides, as the medium.

[Iakus]

 Both

There were no options for endings, good ones or for bad ones.

And the option we did get made no sense.

[jules_vern18]

IntoTheDarkness wrote...


there a poll where 80% of people voted they disliked the ending because it wasn't a happy ending.

Really? I personally love bad endings because they are hard to come by. 95% of holliwood movies and 99% of games are good endings. Do we need more on the list?

On the other side, I agree the ending doesn't really make much sense to me.

What's your thoughts?

I think that poll reflects that most players would have just liked a happy ending available to them.  The previous two ME games have allowed to the player to shape the ending - to make it "their" ending - by making certain choices.  Mass effect 3 gives all players the same 3 nearly identical endings no matter what choices they make.

Yes, I want a happy ending.  And a sad earth-loses ending.  And a sacrifice-shep-to-save-the-galaxy ending.  I'm fine with there also being an ambiguous ending, a devestatingly demoralizing ending, and a series of true bittersweet endings.  I want an ending where Shep loses all of his/her friends, and an ending where s/he can save them all.  I want to see an ending where you can completely defeat impossible odds...and an ending where you are totally crushed by them.

So when you see players vote for a "happy" ending, that doesn't mean that's the only ending they want - that would be just as bad as, say, getting shoehorned into 3 lousy endings where a space-brat you've never met before forces you to commit Hari Kari.  What we're asking for - or at least what I'm asking for - is simply to shape the ending ourselves...just like we were able to do in ME2.

[RazorrX]

Actually if you consider that after the reaper blast the game handles like you are in a dream, you can not use any ability nor medigel and your pistol has unlimited ammo, etc. coupled with the last scene of shep lying on the ground and a gasp from his/her body if you had enough war assets - I think the actual ending of the game is that the Reapers won. NOTHING you did had lasting meaning because you died before making it to the Citadel. The Reapers finished this cycle.

This is also supported by a statement made by Mac Walters to the effect of the state of the game after the ending is "a vast wasteland".

[Dean_the_Young]

jb1983 wrote...


Both. But here's what everyone is missing:

Some people wanted a dark ending. Others wanted a happy ending. Who should win out on this one? Well the answer is simple - both. In a game where we're told that choices matter and that multiple endings are possible, then there should be a wide range of gameplay endings taylored to your choices. Thus, some people should be posting videos of a happy ending, while those of us who like dark endings would laugh at them, call them Disney kids, and point to our dark endings. In the end, the debate would be over which ending is better and why.

Here's the argument against that, though:

Validation.


This has gone hand-in-hand with the P/R debate, as well as the flaws of the Collector Base mission. When an ideal ending can be reached by ideal decisions (Paragon feel-good for feel-good utopianism, when stretched to the extreme), you lose the justification for doing any other option because it amounts to 'I want to feel bad for its own sake' rather than 'I feel bad, but it was for the best.' In the Suicide Mission, it was so easy in many respects that many people felt that they had to sabotage themselves to have the drama of loss: you could kill someone, yes, but having to make the choice for Garrus to die explicitly so that Garrus would die robbed you of the drama you were trying to instill.

This is why the general conceit of 'purely voluntary character deaths' usually fails: people dieing is a failure when we can avoid it. We lose content. We have little to nothing to show for it, because the exact same benefits happen for the better route. Why let the Council die, when Sovereign won't win regardless and the new Council is no different in role or effect? Why keep the Collector Base, when Cerberus will get the same tech regardless?



When utopian and jaded routes exist in parallel, the virtues of the Hard Choices become meaningless for the people who would otherwise do them. Instead of paying a cost for a benefit, you can increasingly get all the benefits for none of the cost. You begin to create a dominant path, which is more or less makes the inferior paths a moral or effective failure on the player's part.

This is why distinction of varied costs, rather than the absence of costs, are the key to truly good alternatives. If there was an option of 'everyone lives, the relays are saved, Shepard comes home to little blue babies', compared to 'galactic civilization is dead, you are dead,' then there'd be no reason to choose the other one. There is no validation to suppor the people not seeking utopianism.


This is why the scripted endings were superior in many respects: not because Shepard lived and had endless sex with the love interest, but because the effects were both good and bad in different ways. Destroy was freedom, but the loss of galactic civilization. Control was without freedom, but the relays were preserved. You might have one you favored, but you could favor the other one for different reasons.

As it is now, we're left debating our favorite color. 

Well, some people would like to debate the significance of the colors in the potential post-war, just like we spent hundreds of threads on the blue or red explosions of the Collector Base. Oddly enough, that choices was even more irrelevant.

[jb1983]

jules_vern18 wrote...

IntoTheDarkness wrote...


there a poll where 80% of people voted they disliked the ending because it wasn't a happy ending.

Really? I personally love bad endings because they are hard to come by. 95% of holliwood movies and 99% of games are good endings. Do we need more on the list?

On the other side, I agree the ending doesn't really make much sense to me.

What's your thoughts?

I think that poll reflects that most players would have just liked a happy ending available to them.  The previous two ME games have allowed to the player to shape the ending - to make it "their" ending - by making certain choices.  Mass effect 3 gives all players the same 3 nearly identical endings no matter what choices they make.

Yes, I want a happy ending.  And a sad earth-loses ending.  And a sacrifice-shep-to-save-the-galaxy ending.  I'm fine with there also being an ambiguous ending, a devestatingly demoralizing ending, and a series of true bittersweet endings.  I want an ending where Shep loses all of his/her friends, and an ending where s/he can save them all.  I want to see an ending where you can completely defeat impossible odds...and an ending where you are totally crushed by them.

So when you see players vote for a "happy" ending, that doesn't mean that's the only ending they want - that would be just as bad as, say, getting shoehorned into 3 lousy endings where a space-brat you've never met before forces you to commit Hari Kari.  What we're asking for - or at least what I'm asking for - is simply to shape the ending ourselves...just like we were able to do in ME2.

Exactly. In ME2 I did everything to keep my squad safe and go for the "happy ending." My second playthrough I did everything I could to end up with the "bad ending." 

I was pleased with both. I was hoping for the same thing with ME3. But nope. 

[jb1983]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

jb1983 wrote...


Both. But here's what everyone is missing:

Some people wanted a dark ending. Others wanted a happy ending. Who should win out on this one? Well the answer is simple - both. In a game where we're told that choices matter and that multiple endings are possible, then there should be a wide range of gameplay endings taylored to your choices. Thus, some people should be posting videos of a happy ending, while those of us who like dark endings would laugh at them, call them Disney kids, and point to our dark endings. In the end, the debate would be over which ending is better and why.

Here's the argument against that, though:

Validation.


This has gone hand-in-hand with the P/R debate, as well as the flaws of the Collector Base mission. When an ideal ending can be reached by ideal decisions (Paragon feel-good for feel-good utopianism, when stretched to the extreme), you lose the justification for doing any other option because it amounts to 'I want to feel bad for its own sake' rather than 'I feel bad, but it was for the best.' In the Suicide Mission, it was so easy in many respects that many people felt that they had to sabotage themselves to have the drama of loss: you could kill someone, yes, but having to make the choice for Garrus to die explicitly so that Garrus would die robbed you of the drama you were trying to instill.

This is why the general conceit of 'purely voluntary character deaths' usually fails: people dieing is a failure when we can avoid it. We lose content. We have little to nothing to show for it, because the exact same benefits happen for the better route. Why let the Council die, when Sovereign won't win regardless and the new Council is no different in role or effect? Why keep the Collector Base, when Cerberus will get the same tech regardless?



When utopian and jaded routes exist in parallel, the virtues of the Hard Choices become meaningless for the people who would otherwise do them. Instead of paying a cost for a benefit, you can increasingly get all the benefits for none of the cost. You begin to create a dominant path, which is more or less makes the inferior paths a moral or effective failure on the player's part.

This is why distinction of varied costs, rather than the absence of costs, are the key to truly good alternatives. If there was an option of 'everyone lives, the relays are saved, Shepard comes home to little blue babies', compared to 'galactic civilization is dead, you are dead,' then there'd be no reason to choose the other one. There is no validation to suppor the people not seeking utopianism.


This is why the scripted endings were superior in many respects: not because Shepard lived and had endless sex with the love interest, but because the effects were both good and bad in different ways. Destroy was freedom, but the loss of galactic civilization. Control was without freedom, but the relays were preserved. You might have one you favored, but you could favor the other one for different reasons.

As it is now, we're left debating our favorite color. 

Well, some people would like to debate the significance of the colors in the potential post-war, just like we spent hundreds of threads on the blue or red explosions of the Collector Base. Oddly enough, that choices was even more irrelevant.

No, there isn't an argument against it. When you build a game on choices, you need to have multiple endings. I get what you're trying to say, but you're wrong. You can come to multiple endings through deliberate choices and still enjoy them. It doesn't take away the joy. 

For instance, to get the happy ending you could still have to make sacrifices. The problem is you're thinking that, "Oh, to get the happy ending you must have to do paragon choices." Not necessarily - the writers could take a consequentialist approach and say that only the most selfish decisions get you a happy ending. I.E. you end up having to kill Mordin yourself if you want to live in the end. Thus, you get a nice ending, but you had to make some gut-wrenching decisions to do so. 

Everything you're saying only works if we take one approach to writing. But the approach you're suggesting is a cliched approach. 

Regardless, in the end, there's only one ending with three different colors. 

[Versus Omnibus]

We're not mad that we didn't get a "happy ending". We're mad because we didn't have any real choice or see how our choices affected the galaxy afterwards.

[jb1983]

[original content deleted]

original post finally showed up

Modifié par jb1983, 18 mars 2012 - 05:39 .

[In Exile]

Dean_the_Young wrote...
And yes, the survival of the galaxy over the Reapers can still be called a victory.

You mean, doing the thing the Reapers were going to do anyway is beating them? 

[LadyofRivendell]

I dislike it because it's not conclusive, it doesn't wrap things up, it leaves me with an empty feeling, there are too many plotholes, your squadmates act out of character, and there aren't any OPTIONS for a happy ending.

"Happy ending" is such a misleading term. Most of us don't want a perfectly happy ending, we just want Shepard to live, preferably with most of the squad and our LIs.

[tanuki]

I hate it because it was no happy ending, because it made no sense and because there was no choice.

[teknoarcanist]

I hate it because it's idiotic.

[TheOptimist]

I'm going to go with both.

[kalerab]

I am perfectly fine with sort of unhappy ending, but major two things that bothers me are

1, one ending in 3 colors instead of having several endings which would be result of our choices. Happy or not, I dont care as long as what I did during 100 hours of 3 games gameplay matters. A lot.

2, it makes no sense. Pulling deus ex machina is cheap and degrates writer. And it offers no closure, even in form of text like in DA:O.

as long as there two things would be fixed I would be satisfied. Unfortunatelly they werent. As for the happy I believe that people are pissed because they do not have OPTION to have variety od endings which, yes, includes also happy one.

[Swinns]

Can't it be both?

[JMA22TB]

We hate it because it's totally out of character.

It doesn't reflect your choices, puts the whole galaxy in dire straits, leaves the audience with ten times more questions than answers, and I think the worst part is hinting that it didn't really happen with the gasp scene and popping up a "play more and get some DLC" screen.

If it didn't really happen why end it like that? Why does Shepard screw the galaxy over, if it did happen, in every situation? Why doesn't Harbinger, the de facto leader of the Reapers, not have any dialogue? Why is it not possible, with all your work, to have a bittersweet ending? Or a good ending? Why does your squad abandon you when they were right next to you? Why didn't the Illusive Man use the signal he obtained from Henry Lawson? 

This wasn't a good cliffhanger, didn't have any sense of conclusion, and if it was intended to be a conclusion is too vague and ridiculous to be taken seriously.

[Dean_the_Young]

In Exile wrote...

Dean_the_Young wrote...
And yes, the survival of the galaxy over the Reapers can still be called a victory.

You mean, doing the thing the Reapers were going to do anyway is beating them? 

No, not least because we didn't do that.

[Divitiacus]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

NovinhaShepard wrote...

This is amazing, and illustrates, just as Lambchops says, exactly how the endings could go, in traditional-style, beautiful Bioware endings variety that appropriately reflects player choice. Instead, Bioware ripped that from us, in true Big Brother, capitalist style, because they are effing lazy.

Seriously, this just made me even more pissed.

The thing is, though, is that with epilogue slides that amount to 'and most the races at Earth made a long jorney home' and 'species X began to rebuild/was screwed under the leadership of Y for reason Z', you'd have that. It's already there, just not given to you: "And the Krogan flew back to Tuchanka, where Eve was guiding them, and Eve mitigated Wreave's aggression/worked with Wrex to start a golden age of cultural reform.'



There are a lot of complains people have about the ending: that it wasn't happy, that it wasn't distinguished, and that it didn't set out the post-war in detail. Prior choices in the game would only affect the post-war details, but those are a post-ending aspect that depends largely on either a post-victory party, or epilogue slides, as the medium.

Oh, and how does that happen with no Mass Relays? It's more like "And the species of the galaxy all died a slow agonizing death due to scarce resources. The end!"