ReconTeam wrote...
I don't think anything like this is ever going to happen, but there would be a lot interesting possibilites for something set outside of the reaper business. I'd want conspiracy, betrayals, brutal galatic politics, the ability to truly work with Cerberus, etc.
Yes. I have written some thoughts in reply to you and also these ideas re: Me3 in general.
Re ReconTeam - Exactly. And what sucks is that was what was promised with ME2. For example, depending on your choices you could agree with Cerberus and believe they were doing the right and necessary thing potentially - they only should have been indoctrinated IF you gave them the collector base (and as a knock-on, only then would Dr. Eva Core be in the game and that would be the only way EDI could have a body) & If you destroyed collector base you should have had an entirely different game to play and after winning the battle with the Reapers, Cerberus could still have tried to capitalize on it and take over.
And that's just taking that key decision out and creating two paths. But at the very least those two major paths should have been there in ME3 as a result of your end decision in ME2. The problem is that BioWare thinks meeting someone you 'saved' or didn't in a previous game counts as multi-threaded plot and a return for gamer investment. It does not. I mean, this is partly a problem of listening to absolute nerds on BSN who obsess over slash fiction and the like - there is nothing wrong with the gay characters or S/S relationships in the game, it just shouldn't be part of what defines the game as a whole. Relationships with whomever should define and shape the game because that leads to differen't pathing. That is the point, not whether you/they are gay or bisexual or not - it's not the defining variable because in the end it's just a distraction and it gets boring. Gay or straight does not define the character of a relationship, that is just lazy writing, is my point.
This game should have been released in like 2014 and been the greatest game ever with massive dimensionality and hard moral choices of who lives and who dies - especially since some of them would get to live or die based on your moves in the game, rather than being dumped on by some ridiculous star-child. If you wanted mystery Casey Hudson, you should have kept it full mysterious - the implications that everything in the galaxy and the reapers were just servants of some larger organism was at it's strongest when it's a mystery - and I am speaking as a card-carrying christian here - you don't need a bullcrap x-files moment, all you need is potentiality. They could have instead asked the question: Who sent the Reapers? What happens now we beat them? Should we even wonder? Etc etc setting up the next gen of Mass Effect games which don't even have to come out for 5 years or something and that wondering is just part of the mythos of the ME universe, you don't have to answer it. Instead you got a game that was craply designed for people who never played Mass Effect before with a few tag-ons from previous characters if we did play the previous games. Well, that's not what we were sold and that's why people are pissed: WASTED POTENTIAL.
That doesn't change the combat gameplay which is deservedly lauded. I really enjoyed playing on Insanity and I think what they did with the weapons/weight/recharge time and the increased functionality of the different classes was top notch. Absolutely top notch. I really loved playing that part of the game. If you think of that as the game it is a great, fun game. But once you step back and realise that this is not what the game should have 'just' been, that's when you get pissed.
I completely agree with people that say the indoctrination theory is intentional and I equally agree that BioWare just dropped the ball. Why? Because in the end Casey Hudson is not smart enough, not anywhere near smart enough to pull off the writing required to have the ending he tried to create... he just screwed up. That is the most believeable thing, he tried to make something with a twist and failed.
And ANYWAY I personally believe the possibility of being indoctrinated and questioning yourself _should_ have been one of the THREADS of the game that you have to confront in the end - if the ending you get (with the three non-endings) was one of the key ones based on your choices through the game.
I know people are like 'Do you know how long that would have taken? Do you know how much that would have cost?' Yes... I do. And guess what they did it very lamely with SWTOR didn't they, and they got given a budget of $200,000,000 for that. Sometimes you have to make something the best and kick ass. Or otherwise you dissapoint and that is why people are angry.
That's all we are saying. In the end BioWare is the entity that promised so much more, maybe far too much more than a game could ever deliver but they promised it and did not deliver. Instead we got a really good third person shooter with a much better story than Gears of War could ever be with a broken ending. I understand why people don't get why we are complaining, because that is a GREAT FUN game. How anyone could hate that is inane really, and the thing is people don't hate that, they bought the game and played it through and most reviews by fans said they liked it but hated the ending. Well, when they say 'hated the ending' it means two things: I didn't want to abruptly stop playing this game I love especially since it ruins my ability to replay it, and secondly because this game could have been so much more. That's what people are expressing.
If BioWare figured out you could not deliver this is one game then by hokey you should have said there is going to be a mass effect 4 because the game is just too big. Guess what? People would have gone nuts and gone into even bigger anticipation! Harry Potter did it. MADE A SHEDLOAD OF MONEY. That strategy _works_. The one you chose does not. In the end, you fumbled the ball because you didn't have the guts or the creativity. THAT is why people are pissed at BioWare. The rest is just inarticulate really, but fabulously well done since a it turned rage into charity $$$.
When are companies like EA and now BioWare going to stop drinking the Kool-Aid and bring in outside consultants that can analyse these things and not regard it as a privilege to be in the room with the suits? After all, isn't that just 'indoctrination' by some rich guys? I swear I remember writing treatments for changes to CGI cutscenes in games when I was a kid and discussing why the originals are bad and posting them online and now 12-14 years later I have a MFA in this stuff and I am much better at discussing and analysing why something works or doesn't work now and I am still right. And I am so sick of watching people screw it up, it's why I stopped playing games for years until Mass Effect 2 came along and I dived back in. So I know that my thinking on this and this rambled piece of writing makes absolutely no difference at all but it doesn't change the fact that with applying different thinking to problems you get different outcomes which are so necessary and even more pertinent when applied to a game like this, even if it is an action-RPG.
I honestly believe this is part of a larger existential problem where people just want something true in their lives and as pathetic as it may seem a game nowadays can kinda do that in the same way a book potentially can. And for outsiders who play games and find involvement with a community through games in the way they might not in real life this stuff is important. It's part of why they buy the game at all and underneath everything I think thats why people are angry as hell. Maybe it just means in the end that games can't deliver on this, maybe David Jaffe is right games should just be about gameplay, after all it's why iOS makes so much money. And why Call of Duty does too, even if you hate it there isn't any further substance to it that's for sure.
These are just rambled notes, I have not structued an argument clearly enough but food for thought maybe.
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