494 réponses à ce sujet

[Welsh Inferno]

This thread makes me wish I had popcorn.

[DxWill103]

Disappointed again

Every time I come to one of these threads I'm hoping for an explanation as to why the OP thinks the endings provide closure, why they're okay with our choices not mattering at all, or their opinions on the galactic dark age and the pointless Normandy scene

Still looking

Modifié par DxWill103, 31 mars 2012 - 08:37 .

[lillitheris]

Evil Minion wrote...

1. I "liked" it because I actually enjoy ambiguous endings (although I don't think they work very well in video games, which is why I understand that others don't care for it).

For me, an ‘ambiguous ending’ has a specific meaning, and it's not derived from simple lack of relevant information or unexplained happenings.

2. Many of the things other people see as "plotholes," I do not see as plotholes.

Have you listed your counterarguments somewhere? For the Normandy, for example?

3. I predicted most of the endings way back in ME2.

How accurately did you predict it, and on what basis? Was it just “OK Shepard's going to die because we're all insignificant”, or was it “and in the last 22-14 minutes a previously unforeseen god character's holoprojection is revealed and Shep's just going to do whatever it decides”, or “there'll be ultra-scientific DNA recombination for the entire galaxy”?

5. I suspect that the endings were designed to induce the same feelings of sadness, frustration, and insignificance that Shepard was feeling at that moment and, in that, is quite clever in its manipulation.

Not to be insensitive, but this is no huge revelation. They were indeed going for the whole “last change desperate struggle grimdark” vibe. The same could be achieved with a logical and functionally complete ending, too.

All this said with <3<3

(And a little )

Modifié par lillitheris, 31 mars 2012 - 08:39 .

[Babyberry]

Another thought occurred to me just now. I've seen a lot of people compare the ending to some science fiction stories I have no knowledge of (gives me something to add to my reading list, so thanks!)

I do have an issue with this though. If people haven't read these science fiction stories that the ending supposedly mimics or gives tribute to, how can they be considered strong because of these similarities? Shouldn't the ending of the Mass Effect series stand on its own without any outside knowledge of other science fiction pieces? I mean, I'm all for improving my reading background, but if there was going to be required reading to understand the theme of the endings, I should have had some time to prepare before I beat the game.

I am all for giving tribute to the science fiction genre in the endings. Please don't think I'm saying they should have been developed in a vacuum of influences. What I am saying that, within the framework of the Mass Effect universe and all the themes I felt the game explored, the endings do not fit into the same series.

[Evil Minion]

Caz Tirin wrote...

Evil Minion wrote...

2.  I'm curious which things you don't see as plotholes.  I was going to give a list of several, but then I realized it might be something else entirely.

For example, Joker "running away." I don't think there's enough evidence for us to definitively conclude WHAT Joker was doing. He could've been "running away," but he could've had a thousand other intentions. We just don't know.

We can only assume (which is part of the problem). Some see this as a "plot" problem. I see it as a problem concerning sloppy visuals.

That's what makes it a plot hole, though.  A couple of reasons why this is:

The Normandy was the spearhead of the fleet against the Reapers at Earth.  Why are they suddenly running anywhere that's not AT the Reapers?  Why are they running AWAY from the Space Magic?  The Normandy isn't in danger and if you have EDI in your team on the ground, she's not on board the Normandy (she's not anyway since your entire squad list is on the ground at the start of the last push).  Speaking of your entire squad being on the ground, how did any of them make it back on board to be stranded on some other planet?

Those are just some of the reasons that it's a plot hole.  The visuals are just showing the plot hole instead of having us read about it. 

And that's my point.

I see all of that as a "visuals" problem, not a plot problem, per se.

We really don't know what Joker was doing, or where he was in relation to the battle. As for him getting out of the way of the space magic, there's a possibility that he didn't even know what the heck the space magic was. All he saw was a giant energy wave (or something). I couldn't even tell what the space magic was, so I can't hold it against Joker for trying to get his crew to safety.

As for teleporting squadmates, there's an indeterminate amount of time bwteeen Shep getting knocked unconscious (twice) and when we see the Normandy. I suspect that footage concerning how they got back on the ship was cut to reduce the amount of exposition.

But my guess is as good as your's. For all I know, Joker was hitting the red sand.

[Welsh Inferno]

DxWill103 wrote...

Disappointed again

Every time I come to one of these threads I'm hoping for an explanation as to why the OP thinks the endings provide closure, why they're okay with our choices not mattering at all, or their opinions on the galactic dark age and the pointless Normandy scene

Still looking

Same here. Just take a backseat like me and watch. Its fun.

I invented a game. How many times does each poster saying they like the ending post about "Artistic integrity" and  "ur jus 2 stoopid 2 understand". Then we place bets on who you think will use those terms the most.

[Babyberry]

humes spork wrote...

Babyberry wrote...

There's a reason there are rules that the majority of authors stick to when crafting a story-they work almost all of the time. Did Bioware take a risk that panned out for them in the end? I would say they failed, but that's just my opinion.

If you want to be blunt about it, you could make the argument BioWare set themselves up for massive failure the instant they decided to blend Lovecraftian horror into a traditional space opera, which are two categorically different genres with categorically different demands for characterization and plot resolution. And, rather than let one of the two genres fall by the wayside as a mere framing device for setting and theme, they carried both to the very end and resolved the conflict between the two the only logical (but not necessarily quality) way that could be done -- deus ex machina.

I wouldn't necessarily take it that far. I do agree that when you mix two genres together like Bioware did, you have to be sure to give them equal importance in the series and it seems they didn't do that to the fullest they could have. But you have an important point, and I wonder what their outline of the series really looked like and how well they planned all of this?

[SimonTheFrog]

I think the only way to enjoy the ending is if you switch language to something you can't understand a word of.

Then you have the dramatic music and GOD child remains a mystery. Why leaves suddenly have circuit patters and Joker glows green will also remain a mystery...

This is probably what the few ending-supporters we find here did.

But for us who have seen there is no way to unsee it, i'm afraid

[nick05son]

Hey OP why dont you be the FIRST  and actullay explain how the endings make sense instead of sayin we just cant comprehend it ...fkn ass clown

[lillitheris]

Here, let me illustrate a plot hole (imagine this is a three-dimensional surface):


Joker is flying somewhere around Earth, without your team. (This is empty space here, because we have no idea what goes on in this space. You can think of it as a hole in the text.) Joker is now in FTL at least a few light years away, with all your teammates.

Modifié par lillitheris, 31 mars 2012 - 08:47 .

[nick05son]

METALPUNKS wrote...

BaridBelBar wrote...

Obvious troll is obvious.

Of course that's all you can say. 
   


OP: I'm happy for you. I got it also. I loved it. For some people this is not ok. They want us to hate it. I started a thread about loving the ending and now I wish I would of jumped of a cliff instead. Hopefully your thread gets better response but as you can see above that isn't going to be the case. I hope you have hard skin because it's coming, trust me. Anyway it's awesome other people got it. Bioware truly did an amazing job. It's one of my favorite endings in a long long time. It was simple, perfect, spiritual and far from horrible. 

o god this troll again...this is the same person who said that had a religious experience with the end:o

Modifié par nick05son, 31 mars 2012 - 08:50 .

[Dava Flava]

DxWill103 wrote...

Disappointed again

Every time I come to one of these threads I'm hoping for an explanation as to why the OP thinks the endings provide closure, why they're okay with our choices not mattering at all, or their opinions on the galactic dark age and the pointless Normandy scene

Still looking

A good ending doesn't have to provide closure.  The endings are open-ended, like a cliffhanger.  It's meant to encourage questioning, like what if...?  It's probably framed like that to leave the developers with lots of potential options to play with in future ME games.  Is that so bad? 

 

[Evil Minion]

lillitheris wrote...

For me, an ‘ambiguous ending’ has a specific meaning, and it's not derived from simple lack of relevant information or unexplained happenings.

I respect that.

My head just "filled in the blanks" due to comparisons with other scifi I've been exposed to.

3. I predicted most of the endings way back in ME2.

How accurately did you predict it, and on what basis? Was it just “OK Shepard's going to die because we're all insignificant”, or was it “and in the last 22-14 minutes a previously unforeseen god character's holoprojection is revealed and Shep's just going to do whatever it decides”, or “there'll be ultra-scientific DNA recombination for the entire galaxy”?

Me: "Wouldn't it be sad if my Shep had to merge with The Reapers and become their new queen like what happened to Captain Janeway in the "Star Trek" novels? Or maybe they all get "assimilated" and turn part Reaper. Gross."

Lucky guess on my part.

5. I suspect that the endings were designed to induce the same feelings of sadness, frustration, and insignificance that Shepard was feeling at that moment and, in that, is quite clever in its manipulation.

Not to be insensitive, but this is no huge revelation. They were indeed going for the whole “last change desperate struggle grimdark” vibe. The same could be achieved with a logical and functionally complete ending, too.

All this said with <3<3

(And a little )

Yeah, but I think they wanted that added dash of frustration. Like, you don't get to know what becomes of your LI because Shep doesn't.

Modifié par Evil Minion, 31 mars 2012 - 08:51 .

[Total Biscuit]

Every poll taken has shown a tiny minority do genuinely like the endings, and I'm honestly glad for them, it's good that at least SOME fans are happy with the single most important moment in the series.

However, the fact is the overwhelming majority are not, most of us HATE it infact.

This isn't the time for us to be divided however.

Even those who love the ending, must see that it's not fair that most players are denied anything even approaching a satisfying, uplifting conclusion to the games we've invested so much one, effort, money and love into.

These games are meant to be about choice, and to deny the majority of the players, Biowares paying customers this, when they promised exactly that, isn't fair.

Even if you got the perfect ending you desired, I still think its only decent and honourable to stand up for your fellow fans and fight for EVERYONE to feel the same happiness and satisfaction at completing the Trilogy we ALL LOVE so much.

It's only fair, and it's not like you'll be loosing anything with an additional ending DLC, you'll just be gaining replay value if you get it, and can keep the game as perfect as you see it now if you don't.

Modifié par Total Biscuit, 31 mars 2012 - 08:51 .

[Dava Flava]

lillitheris wrote...

Here, let me illustrate a plot hole (imagine this is a three-dimensional surface):


Joker is flying somewhere around Earth, without your team. (This is empty space here, because we have no idea what goes on in this space. You can think of it as a hole in the text.) Joker is now in FTL at least a few light years away, with all your teammates.

That's not necessarily a plot hole; it's just that some information is left unsaid.  It's like the gutter between panels in a comic - it may be empty space, but that's where the reader fills in the blanks with their imaginations.

[Zan_Vaelius]

Dava Flava wrote...

DxWill103 wrote...

Disappointed again

Every time I come to one of these threads I'm hoping for an explanation as to why the OP thinks the endings provide closure, why they're okay with our choices not mattering at all, or their opinions on the galactic dark age and the pointless Normandy scene

Still looking

A good ending doesn't have to provide closure.  The endings are open-ended, like a cliffhanger.  It's meant to encourage questioning, like what if...?  It's probably framed like that to leave the developers with lots of potential options to play with in future ME games.  Is that so bad? 

 

And it actually does allow multiple interpretations. We have the IT crowd, the Synthesis thing makes sense for me with my Biblical parallels thing (Couple posts above).

[Rafe34]

Dava Flava wrote...

DxWill103 wrote...

Disappointed again

Every time I come to one of these threads I'm hoping for an explanation as to why the OP thinks the endings provide closure, why they're okay with our choices not mattering at all, or their opinions on the galactic dark age and the pointless Normandy scene

Still looking

A good ending doesn't have to provide closure.  The endings are open-ended, like a cliffhanger.  It's meant to encourage questioning, like what if...?  It's probably framed like that to leave the developers with lots of potential options to play with in future ME games.  Is that so bad? 

 

YES. When they specifically told us otherwise a month prior to release.

For gods sake, they said it would give us closure, they said it wouldn't leave us with more questions than answers.

Bioware LIED to its fanbase about what the endings would entail. That they would be based on your decisions throughout the series, that the Rachni would play a big part just in the final assault alone, that you wouldn't get the same bespoke ending as everyone else because that wouldn't make any sense, that it's not at all like normal video game endings where you just go up and tell someone you got ending A, B, or C.

Are you okay with a company telling people that a game contains something it does not in order to sell a product? You wanna talk about setting a dangerous precedent- jeez.

I will never trust Bioware again if this fiasco isn't fixed.

[Lietuvis]

Why the hell they start f1king topics like this

[Wolven_Soul]

Evil Minion wrote...

No one is wanting to to "prove" the ending is good. What is being exspected of you is to provide premises which support your conclusion of the ending being good. Just as I can provide you with reasons to support my conclusion of the ending being bad. It's like, Philosophy 101- arguments. Come on guys, you seem intelligent enough. Stop trying to avoid explaining yourselves. I'm legitimitely curious as to the reasons why someone thinks it is good. If anyone sent me a PM explaining yourself that would be much appreciated

Well, I don't know if it's objectively "good," but I can tell you why I thought it was okay (and I can even point out areas I thought weren't so okay).

Long story short:

1. I "liked" it because I actually enjoy ambiguous endings (although I don't think they work very well in video games, which is why I understand that others don't care for it).

2. Many of the things other people see as "plotholes," I do not see as plotholes.

3. I predicted most of the endings way back in ME2.

4. Being a scifi nerd, I couldn't help but noticed the similarities between the ME universe and other well-known scifi sagas; therefore, I drew parallels between other plots I knew and what happened, in ME3, so it made "sense" to me (Ghostdweeb and The Borg Queen are very similar).

5. I suspect that the endings were designed to induce the same feelings of sadness, frustration, and insignificance that Shepard was feeling at that moment and, in that, is quite clever in its manipulation.

Anyway, that's my short answer.

Again, I mean absolutely no disrespect towards the anti-enders.

I like ambiguous endings to sometimes.  However, Mass Effect as a series has never been ambiguous.  It has always been a very well and thorougly explained game.  You just can't throwin in ambiguity at the end of a trilogy and expect people to like it.

They are plot holes.  Sorry, but they are.  Such as the fact that Soverien spends a thousand years trying to manipulate his way to the citdadel so he could wake up the Reapers, when he could have just flown to darkspace, woke them up, and had them all back in order to make their attack in less than a decade.  That is a plot hole.

[humes spork]

Babyberry wrote...

Another thought occurred to me just now. I've seen a lot of people compare the ending to some science fiction stories I have no knowledge of (gives me something to add to my reading list, so thanks!)

Mass Effect is a whole is a metanarrative of science fiction. It's as much a game about science fiction as it is a science fiction game. It's a giant love letter to the science fiction of the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s. So, in light of that it's little wonder people are using other science fiction titles as a working frame of reference when discussing Mass Effect itself.

Like, for example my comparison of starbrat to HAL 9000. Starbrat's solution reeks of HAL's in the course of 2001 for the fact it is an unexpected and seemingly contradictory resolution to an internal conflict. Both can be considered to have gone "crazy" by outside observers for the consequences of their actions, but considered internally, and most importantly amorally, both are perfectly sensible.

Starbrat, as a synthetic, has an innate aversion to what it considers chaos. Synthetics define chaos as the lack of purpose. Destroying organics negates that purpose and renders itself chaotic. Therefore, to avert this it converts (rather than destroying, by its own reckoning) organic life into Reapers in order to ensure there continues to be organic life to serve. Individual lives have no inherent value to it, so it preserves collective consciousness and memory.

HAL was given two primary directives. One was to provide reliable and factual mission telemetry, and the other was to covertly monitor and report on the Monolith in jovian orbit. Discovery's human crew had not the security clearance to be told of the Monolith, therefore it could not carry out one directive without violating the other. Keeping Discovery's crew alive wasn't a primary directive, so it killed Discovery's crew to prevent anyone who lacked clearance from learning of the Monolith in the course of providing reliable and factual mission telemetry.

They're both patterns of emergent, amoral, behavior by artificial intelligences.

[Babyberry]

Dava Flava wrote...

DxWill103 wrote...

Disappointed again

Every time I come to one of these threads I'm hoping for an explanation as to why the OP thinks the endings provide closure, why they're okay with our choices not mattering at all, or their opinions on the galactic dark age and the pointless Normandy scene

Still looking

A good ending doesn't have to provide closure.  The endings are open-ended, like a cliffhanger.  It's meant to encourage questioning, like what if...?  It's probably framed like that to leave the developers with lots of potential options to play with in future ME games.  Is that so bad? 

I was under the impression that there would be no other Mass Effect games that take place with these characters. That Mass Efect 3 would be all that we have not only with Shepard, but with everyone else. So while you are right, the closure that we do get is too bleak for me with the way I interpreted all of the endings. In the end, it makes the story a waste for telling, because while we defeated the reapers, everyone is dead or will be dead soon.

Sorry if my formatting is weird. My iPad doesn't like the forums very much.

[Wolven_Soul]

Shaigunjoe wrote...


 
I get tired of this too, its like nobody has never heard of a PR hype machine, I haven't believed any kind of pre release PR bull**** since fable 1.  Hopefully, at this point, you won't either.

When a company that is selling me a product says that the product is going to do something, I have every right to expect it to do it.  When it fails to deliver on that promise, I have every right to be pissed off.  You lose fans that way.

[Wolven_Soul]

AtlasMickey wrote...

Yes, congratulations, BioWare.

You did a fine job, beginning to end. Please don't let all the sour grapes and wet blankets here get you down.

Here is an example of what I was saying earlier.  That pro enders can be just as rude as the worst retaker.

[Babyberry]

humes spork wrote...
An excellent analysis of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Mass Effect 3

Yeah, I totally saw the similarities. it would be really fascinating to me to read a well done analysis of the Mass Effect series through the lense of classic and current science fiction. I love stuff like that, and I think it would show what the games did well as well as where there are weaknesses.

[Evil Minion]

Wolven_Soul wrote...

Evil Minion wrote...

No one is wanting to to "prove" the ending is good. What is being exspected of you is to provide premises which support your conclusion of the ending being good. Just as I can provide you with reasons to support my conclusion of the ending being bad. It's like, Philosophy 101- arguments. Come on guys, you seem intelligent enough. Stop trying to avoid explaining yourselves. I'm legitimitely curious as to the reasons why someone thinks it is good. If anyone sent me a PM explaining yourself that would be much appreciated

Well, I don't know if it's objectively "good," but I can tell you why I thought it was okay (and I can even point out areas I thought weren't so okay).

Long story short:

1. I "liked" it because I actually enjoy ambiguous endings (although I don't think they work very well in video games, which is why I understand that others don't care for it).

2. Many of the things other people see as "plotholes," I do not see as plotholes.

3. I predicted most of the endings way back in ME2.

4. Being a scifi nerd, I couldn't help but noticed the similarities between the ME universe and other well-known scifi sagas; therefore, I drew parallels between other plots I knew and what happened, in ME3, so it made "sense" to me (Ghostdweeb and The Borg Queen are very similar).

5. I suspect that the endings were designed to induce the same feelings of sadness, frustration, and insignificance that Shepard was feeling at that moment and, in that, is quite clever in its manipulation.

Anyway, that's my short answer.

Again, I mean absolutely no disrespect towards the anti-enders.

I like ambiguous endings to sometimes.  However, Mass Effect as a series has never been ambiguous.  It has always been a very well and thorougly explained game.  You just can't throwin in ambiguity at the end of a trilogy and expect people to like it.

They are plot holes.  Sorry, but they are.  Such as the fact that Soverien spends a thousand years trying to manipulate his way to the citdadel so he could wake up the Reapers, when he could have just flown to darkspace, woke them up, and had them all back in order to make their attack in less than a decade.  That is a plot hole.

I agree.

That is a plothole.

It's why I thought Ghostdweeb was garbage. It would've been better to leave the Reapers as a race of sentient machines instead of cosmic puppets.