I've been a customer for well over a decade, and I've spent a large amount of time and money on your products over the years. I've also sung your praises to all of my gaming friends throughout this time and created new fans of your products over the years.
To call the conclusion to Mass Effect 3 "disappointing" would be a massive understatement. Many people have voiced their dislike, nay hatred, of the way the ending was handeled more eloquently than I can, but I'm going to throw my hat in the ring anyway.
1. Total removel of agency from the player.
The game has to walk a line between linear story and player choice - I understand that - but for the past five years, as a player, I've taken partial ownership in the story within the options my character has. It is *completely* counter to the character of Shephard, whether you played him/her as a paragon of moral justice, or a renegade sociopath, to simply take this starboy's plattitudes at face value without challenging the assertions presented for him. If nothign else, there needed to be a 4th option: Do nothing and let the battle play out.
I accept games are art - I love that fact - but by building your PR for the series on player choice and free agency, and allowing the sheer number of ways that we as players can affect the story, hell, the galaxy, you've given us partial ownership in the story and the characterization of our Shepard. You can't just remove all of that at the very end with some binary decision that's completely counter to Shepard's character regardless of how he was played.
2. The product not delivering on promises
"As Mass Effect 3 is the end of the planned trilogy, the developers are not constrained by thenecessity of allowing the story to diverge, yet also continue into the next chapter. This will result in a story that diverges into wildly different conclusions based on the players actions in the first two chapters." - Casey Hudson
"We wouldn't do it any other way. How could you go through all three campaigns playing as your Shepard and then be forced itno a bespoke ending that everyone gets?" and "Whether you're hapy or angry at the ending, know this: it is an ending. Bioware will not do a "Lost" and leave fans with more questions than answers after finishing the game," - Mike Gamble
Not much more needs to be said here. None of the different endings differ in any meaningful, substantive way, depending on how you played the first two games, your decisions, who lived, who died, and what sacrifices where made. And we were told time and again that this would not be the case - that we would get wildly different experiences based on our decisions over a five year epic arc that we all took part in.
Whether this was a lie or biting off more than you could chew doesn't really matter. Promises were made. Big promises, and they never materialized.
3. Never seeing the fruits of our labor
As players, we all busted our asses picking up war assets from around the galaxy, and we got nothing to show for it beyond an arbitrary number rating that determined nothing apart from what art asset got repurposed at the end in a slightly different way.
This is a testament to how much I've enjoyed your products, Bioware, and how much I've come to expect from you. I expected to see all those assets I went after to show up in the final battle, and to make a difference - much in the way that the ship upgrades made a difference in ME2 - they weren't necessary for an ending, but everyone was better off for them.
How amazing would it have been to have Quarians fighting desperately and about to have their fleet obliterated, but if you managed to save the Geth as well, their assets swoop in at the 11th hour and save the Quarians from extinction, which then paves the way toward other assets working with each other, closer to victory, or at least a desperate last stand. And assets that you missed? Their absence would be felt as well - if X asset wasn't in place, then Y would happen which would lead to Z getting killed or destroyed. You see where I'm going with this.
How compelling would that have been? No, more than that - how much in line with the spirit of the franchise and what we've been spoon-fed for the past five years would that have been? Perfectly.
4. The Rest
I'm not even going to spend much time on all the loopholes, or the dumbfoundingly silly argument of "We kill all organics every 50,000 years so they won't be killed by synthetics." Lots of people have already brought those (accurate) arguments to light.
We don't need a sunshine and rainbows ending (though there SHOULD be one possible, even if it's incredibly hard to get, since the entire series has been about player choice). What we do need is an ending that makes sense and respects all that came before it, both in terms of the hard work of the writers, and the time and money invested by the players. The ending as it currently stands is a banal travesty.
I love your games, with only a few exceptions, and I'm not the kind of guy that normally takes to a forum to voice my dislike of X or Y. I'm actually surprised that I'm sitting down here writing this right now - so for every letter you get from someone like me, I can almost guarantee you there's at least a thousand others who feel the same way but haven't felt the need to sit down at the keyboard.
You may not consider this "constructive criticism." It's blunt, but civil criticism, and that's how I want it to be. And know that I'm going to be monitoring your company, its relationship with the community, and its actions over the following weeks and months very carefully to determine whether I continue being a consumer of your products, and whether or not I decide to actively tell my friends and my friends friends to continue buying your products or not.
Enjoy the rest of your weekend.
Modifié par Reuptake, 25 mars 2012 - 02:11 .
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