By Joshua Gillin, tbt* columnist
In Print: Thursday, March 29, 2012
sorry, this should go in ME3, Chris, if you could be so kind.
PS It's great "you're Listening" now but why weren't you "Asking" before?
“Wait, you mean this was it? You’re joking, right? What about all those other choices I made that were oh-so-important?”
Spoiler alert: If you haven't completed the 30-plus hours of Mass Effect 3 and witnessed the ending of the series, please don't read on. No angry emails if you do anyway.There have been a lot of embarrassing moments in video game history. The Great Crash of 1983. The Super Mario Bros.
movie. The Atari Jaguar. PlayStation Home. But few will come close to
the quagmire in which BioWare finds itself after the colossal disaster
that is the ending of its marquee title, Mass Effect 3.Yes folks, it's that bad.I
didn't feel this way immediately, but many others did. The grand finale
of more than 100 hours of gameplay stretching across three titles
resulted in one of three color-coded, marginally distinguishable
cutscenes, apparently taking little, if any advantage of the intricate
and complex dialogue tree system that made the series so revolutionary
and enjoyable. At first I was mildly disappointed with such a pat
ending, and decided the true climax of the game was the confrontation
that took place prior to the final choice offered to Commander Shepard.
The buildup to the decision that would ultimately end the story was a
grand, entertaining spectacle, almost granting clemency to the final 1
percent of the title that wasn't up to par. Upon reflection, it is a
colossal failure, and the only explanation is bad writing or bad product
planning. Or both.There were the usual rumors that Electronic
Arts had rushed BioWare through the process. There have been whispers
that both publisher and developer made decisions to excise entire
storylines from the game to sell as downloadable content later. Imagine
buying a book with the best chapters torn out, or watching a movie with
entire scenes vital to the plot deleted, only to be sold to you two
months later. With the ending of Mass Effect 3 so apparently
disjointed and nonsensical, it can only be the case that the ending was
either altered or rushed into oblivion. And fans have noticed.The uproar has been so loud, BioWare co-founder Ray Muzyka addressed the issue in a blog post last week."I personally believe Mass Effect 3
is the best work we've yet created. So, it's incredibly painful to
receive feedback from our core fans that the game's endings were not up
to their expectations," he wrote. "This is an issue we care about
deeply, and we will respond to it in a fair and timely way. We're
already working hard to do that."He went on to say the company is
listening to tweets, Facebook posts, chat forums, emails and so on, and
will take into account any and every criticism. That's important when
you're talking about a game that sold almost 1 million units in its
first 24 hours on the market."Building on their research, Exec
Producer Casey Hudson and the team are hard at work on a number of game
content initiatives that will help answer the questions, providing more
clarity for those seeking further closure to their journey. You'll hear
more on this in April," Muzyka wrote. "We're working hard to maintain
the right balance between the artistic integrity of the original story
while addressing the fan feedback we've received. This is in addition to
our existing plan to continue providing new Mass Effect content and new full games, so rest assured that your journey in the Mass Effect universe can, and will, continue."So
what they're saying, popular thinking prevails, is that so many people
complained, they just may release a new ending to the game. Talk about
your interactive medium. There has been some hew and cry on the
blogosphere that art should stand on its own merits, and BioWare
shouldn't bend to the will of its fans simply because those gamers
didn't like how the game ended. But BioWare seems to have an ace in the
hole: The Indoctrination Theory.YouTube user Acavayos has
stitched together an amazingly well-produced video explaining that the
finale of the game — in which a Reaper gruesomely injures Shepard, who
then boards the Citadel only to face down the Illusive Man and then be
forced to choose whether to control the Reapers, destroy all synthetic
life or merge all synthetic and organic creatures in the galaxy — is all
a mental battle in which Shepard fights Reaper indoctrination, and the
true ending has yet to be revealed. The choice presented to the gamer is
unsettling and nuanced on its own, but Acavayos takes it to a new level
(watch the video at youtu.be/ythY_GkEBck).This wild speculation,
which is so well-conceived and defended it almost seems like it's been
planted by BioWare, gives the developers the out they desperately need.
So many gamers have now seen this and support this idea, they could
release DLC with a new ending and claim they had that planned all along —
unless, of course, that truly is what they had planned all along. While
this would be an astonishingly crass way to treat loyal fans — "Didn't
like the ending? Just kidding! That will be $10, please." — it would be a
damn sight better than the way they closed out what could have been one
of the best trilogies in all of sci-fi, in any medium. It won't
however, repair what is easily a dark moment in gaming. Whether EA
forced a change in the storyline to milk DLC sales or BioWare truly
packaged and published such a lackluster resolution, the makers of Mass Effect 3 have
their own suicide mission to undertake: Either change the ending and
admit the game as released was only 99 percent complete, or accept the
fact that your core audience thinks you're a pack of idiots.Well, there's probably nothing they can do about that last one, in any case.— Joshua Gillin writes about video games and entertainment news for tbt*. Feel free to challenge his opinions at jgillin@tampabay.com.
[Last modified: Mar 29, 2012 03:58 PM]
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Modifié par YuniSticksitDeep, 30 mars 2012 - 05:16 .
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