Thank you for Mass Effect. It is a phenomenal game. I love video games that tell a story and aim for an artistic statement. There aren't nearly enough like Mass Effect.
Like many, I found it difficult to avoid learning about the controversy over the ending before I experienced it. Certainly, that flavored my perception of the ending, but I found the ending of the series to be a triumph on most (though not all) counts:
EDITED FROM ORIGINAL FOR SPOILERS. SORRY ABOUT THAT.
1) I appreciated the moral ambiguity of the ending. I appreciate it that you didn't make it an easy, obviously "good" choice to take the most destructive path; that would've been a pretty morally horrific thing to say, given what you'd revealed to that point. It's true that there was a lot of new information at the end of the game, but I didn't find any of it to be jarring.
2) I particularly appreciate the reversal (assuming the "Indoctrination" theory is not later revealed to be the only valid interpretation of the story) in which a previously "good" answer was observed to be fearful and destructive (which it was) while it was also observed that previously villainous answers would preserve much more. The idea that good intentions mean good actions mean a good person is a pretty powerful evil, and I'd like to thank you for not making things that simple.
3) I also appreciated the amount of sacrifice required of both Shepard and the galaxy. It spoils nothing to say that honestly, if I had been able to beat the Cthulhubots with a sniper rifle and go have blue babies without further consequence for anyone, I would've felt a bit patronized. You created a world in which, for "success", the cosmic order had to fundamentally shift, and the final conflict was orders of magnitude larger than any of the impossible things Shepard had done to date. Big things should have to change to allow that, personally and on a larger scale. You followed through sensibly.
I hope it's not considered a spoiler to say that I did find the final shots of the Normandy to be jarring, as Mass Effect had never before put me in a position in which I had neither the context to parse an event literally nor any cues that I should parse it symbolically, and the fate of those I cared most was a troubling time to start. Symbolically, it works, and I've usually interpreted it that way, because you didn't give me enough to do otherwise. Since seeing it, I've come up with a few really neat ideas about what it could have literally meant, but I'd really love to hear more about what happened to my friends. And I guess it'd be cool to have more differentiation in ending cinematics (though clearly you can't actually permute every choice we've ever made into a unique cinematic; that's just not how budgets work at all.) The implication that you might "clarify" the ending is, to my mind, just what is needed: to me the ending feels fitting but incomplete. I'd like to also put in a personal plea not to do the traditional voiced-over or still-shot-text sequence of where are they now blurbs; it was pretty cool when Fallout 1 did it, but by now it really feels jarringly beneath the state of the art, and definitely beneath the storytelling of Mass Effect.
I'd finally like to offer the perspective of a former hospice nurse, in support of your team. All of the corporate and financial pressures aside, I can only imagine that the vitriol some of your fans have spewed on you in the last few weeks must be difficult at best. Watching the reaction to the ending of this game as a student of grief has been completely fascinating. I watched the discourse go from focus on the Indoctrination theory (the end didn't really happen) to vitriolic hatred to attempted (if kinda hilarious) lawsuits, and sat there internally checking off the Kubler-Ross stages of grief. Sadly, this isn't to say that your angrier fans will get over it soon; grief doesn't actually follow a timeline or schedule. Still, think about that: you actually created a video game story which people are grieving. As inappropriate as some of the more horrific parts of the backlash have been, they are (sort of) coming from a place of love for the story you told them. Take that as a triumph if you can, and thanks for listening to the aggrieved even when they occasionally lash out. Grieving people will do that, and it's not because they're immature, or bad people; it's just because they're people, faced with the perception of death/change. The game you made is truly great, and a lot of people, self included, love it to pieces.
Modifié par etgafford, 22 mars 2012 - 02:11 .
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