282 réponses à ce sujet

[GroverA125]

Dreogan wrote...

JK Rowling is a damn good storyteller. To even compare Bioware's craft to Rowling is metaphorically spitting in her face.

You see, Rowling originally intended for Mr. Potter to die during the final few chapters of the book, in a justifiable and understandable way, but she understood that the fanbase wouldn't be able to take it and as such, decided to write a different end to what she originally intended. And what did this result in?

One of the most memorable and well-done book/film series out there. With people who have been told about the endings still reading/watching it to the end.

Bioware went their own way, not looking at the fact that they were clearly going to p**s off a large amount of the community unnecessary and making their own ending in such a way that they pleased. What did they get?

Mass hate, many unsatisfied customers, an insane amount of resistance, and companies offering full refunds for the game and many players telling not only bad word of the game, but also telling their friends NOT to buy it at all, not matter how much they love the game. People told of the ending not continuing to play at all.

FAIL.

Modifié par GroverA125, 02 avril 2012 - 08:41 .

[Madmoe77]

tenojitsu wrote...

Phydeaux314 wrote...

Well... let's be fair. The writing in mass effect IS really good, with a couple of exceptions. If it was terrible, we wouldn't care about it so much.

It's is really good (for the most part), for a video game. Video game writers have the luxury of having their stories reinforced by visuals and music to help tell the story, as well as voice actors who speak the written words with different emphasis, tone, feelings, and emotions.

I'm sorry, but the writing is just one of the many aspects that make a video game story work. Novel authors have only the words they carefully choose to tell their stories. BioWare's writing is not really good. It is really good for a video game.

^this

[Hogge87]

Dreogan wrote...

JK Rowling is a damn good storyteller. To even compare Bioware's craft to Rowling is metaphorically spitting in her face.

I don't think so at all.
BW have done an excellent job with the storytelling. That's why ME3 is the first game I've preordered since... Zelda: Twilight Princess.
BW messed up the ending and the reason we're pissed off about the ending is that they quite simply made us care. I bought Far Cry 2 and thought the ending was WAY worse than ME3. But I don't moan about that, because they messed up so many other things with that game, that it's more a game you poke fun at for being bad. For FC2 to be any good, the developers would have to redo literally everything.


We are posting complaints against ME3 because we do like it.

[Ieldra]

johnbonhamatron wrote...

I believe in two simple tenets.

1/ Video games are art.

2/ Art can be changed.

See? It's simple to reconcile, if you really try.

Very good. I agree with the first, and the second has been proven by history.

[daecath]

"If computer games are art, than I fully endorse the author of the
artwork to have a statement about what they believe should happen," Mr.
Barnett said, according to a video posted on the site of tech-news
publication The Verge. "Just as J.K. Rowling can end her books and say,
"That is the end of Harry Potter.' I don't think she should be forced to
make another one," Mr. Barnett said.

I agree, but there's a problem with that, especially for a game like Mass Effect.

http://thatguywithth...eo-games-as-art
In a speech given at the opening of the Smithsonian's exhibit on the art of video games, Chris Melissinos (http://en.wikipedia....hris_Melissinos) got it right. Yes it is Bioware's game, yes they are the author, but we the player are also authors alongside them. Therefore, our criticism should be taken into account.


"It's the difference between wanting the ending to be changed to be
something consistent with the narrative ... to something specific," he
said. "It changes their tone from concerned fans to a list of demands."

No matter what it does, BioWare won't please everybody, Mr. Nichols
said, adding "I wonder if the "Retake Mass Effect' fans are prepared for
that or whether they will burn out their own cause."

Of course BioWare won't be able to please everybody. No one can. Everyone has their own ideas of what they want to see, and it would take them several thousand years to program each and every option that everyone wants. But they can satisfy most people. I think for the most part, those calling for a change agree on the basic core issues. Fix the plot holes. Make our choices matter. And for many of us, we want an ending that reflects the hard work we've put in to get there. We want an ending that shows us succeeding against all odds and allows for a happy ending, just like the other two games had. That's a major core theme.

At that point it's up to BioWare to figure out how to do all that, to create the story they want to tell after taking those criticisms into account. I've written a full script for how I think the endings should work. But I don't want them to use it. Because it is their story, and because seeing the story unfold as I progress is one of the things I like about these types of game.

[Ieldra]

Hogge87 wrote...
We are posting complaints against ME3 because we do like it.

Of course we do. 99% of it anyway. But to use the quote from the OP, the ending is not consistent with the narrative. It appears disconnected from what has come before, goes against themes established while playing through the trilogy. Also the game makes does its best to make us beiieve we can save something we care about. And then we can't.

[Nathan_41]

The Angry One wrote...

"You can't please everyone, so let's settle for pleasing the absolute minimum amount of people!"

I don't get this argument.

[Elyiia]

You can't please everyone

Funnily enough, Bioware has the option to please the most amount of people possible with MULTIPLE endings.

[pharsti]

Off course they wont please everyone, quite a few people want the ending entirely changed, that wont happen, yet another group wants the nonsense of the IT to be true, that wont happen either.

At best theyll add some scenes to try to plug some plotholes (i want to see them accomplish such a feat) and maybe epilogues based on our choices, at least thats what i expect from "clarification and closure"..... and id live with that.

[Madmoe77]

xsdob wrote...

Greed1914 wrote...

xsdob wrote...

Also, I'm seeing the video games are not art crowd rear it's head here.

So I have to ask, since video games don't count because they rely on visual and audio effects as well as writing, do films qualify as art to you? because most of the world already sees them as art and they aren't any different than games.

Also, about interactivity, you have to turn the pages or move the cursor to read a book, you can't just not interact with it and expect to be able to read it. By your own definition books do not count as art because they involve participation by another person. And films, once made into home viewing formats such as television or streaming or dvd's require and allow interaction to view them, mostly using a mouse or remote control.

So books and films are not art, music has control mechanisms that allows interactivity from the listener so that also doesn't count, so all that's really left is traditional pre-renniscance art, statues and paintings and that's about it.

So all forms of media, by the thought process that an art form that requires audience participation and interaction to view, are not art. Funny, i thought people would be more embracing of the first art form that allows the viewers to be a part of it.

Oh well, I guess it's worth sacrificing video games getting the respect they deserve from people and setting artistic media back to the pre-radio era if it means getting the last 5 minutes of a fantastic and phenomenal game changed.

I'm not sure you quite understand what people have been saying.  Games are both art and product.  While they do involve massive amounts of creative input, they are also produced on a large scale by corporations. 

As for interactivity, nobody was saying that games were any more or less artistic based on interactivity.  About the only one making that argument would be Roger Ebert who doesn't see games as art precisely because they are interactive.

Also, flipping a page or plessing play on your remote is passive.  You press play and the story progresses in only one way.  You turn a page, same thing.  

To your point of mass production and sale, all art are reproduced and sold to the public, do these diminish the value of the artwork in question?

I own a copy of the godfather and a 2001 space odessy, are these films now considered to not be art anymore bacause copies were made for the public to buy and own?

I have beethovens 5th symphony on my ipod, does the fact that I was able to buy it from a producer for purley profit driven goals make the piece less worthy of being called art?

I have been thinking of buying a copy of the fellowship of the rings at my school to see what tolkiens works are really like, does this diminish the books artistic value, the fact that I may purchase it and that it was made as a means to make money form consumers?

Or how about a monalisa poster, or a statue of david one foot tall replica, are these tools for money making really a means to justify not considering these works of art art anymore?

Just because something was made for profit does not make it any less art, the entire sistine chapel was just a job Michealangelo and a handful of other people did cause getting a commission from the church meant a very large amount of cash curtisy of the chatholic church.

Being made for profit incnetives has nothing to do with artistic value. Art is a work that appeals to a sensory part of the human brain and is meant to convey a story, message, viewpoint, or any other narrative thought. Art is also something that can be changed by the artist hand, this is artistic integrity, the artist hand is the one who changes the art, not the commissioner's had, meaning the commissioner can't snatch the brush out of the painters hand after he's done and smear paint all over the piece cause he wanted to, that is what integrity protects from.

And if anyone tries to tell you that artistic integrity is anything other than that, or that it means that art can't be changed by people demands, than they are filled with bull****. Unless fans are demanding that they be allowed into the studio to over see and correct everything about the ending instead of bioware, than artistic integrity is not theratened in the least. So I don't want to see anyone claim that I'm jsut trying to protect the endings, they should be changed, but games should still be considered art.

1) On the two movies you listed they have multiple versions available for purchase. Pandering to the consumer. 

2) Beethoven's work was performed in many different pitches and represented countless times over in other music genres changing both his original writing to fit the audience and out of admiration for his work. He also died long before the current consumer generation we lived in. But a musician often alters their work upon feedback. 

3) Tolkien struggled with many of his works and aggressively worked hard to preserve the integrity of his own lore. Tolkien falls under the category of being also dead before consumer age. His reaction can't be supported only speculated. 

4) Leonardo had no idea his work would become a poster. In the two versions of Mona Lisa had took an extended length of time finishing the piece. Was rejected on the first. He graciously tried again for a more respectful representation of the piece, as the first was a nude. Michelangelo hated working on the Sistine Chapel and was forced to finish it. The undertaking took 15 years because he hated it. The church leadership literally beat him to get him to finish the work as he wanted to finish a tomb for the past Pope. He protested by painted the church authority being fisted in The Judegment wall. Hardly fits your comparison that an artist won't change their work. 

Sorry but your argument is bull****! To quote you. I work as an artist everyday and I have reworked so many pieces to make a patron happy it isn't funny. Sometimes they don't like the accent color. Sometimes they ask you to repaint their body with someone else's. I stopped nude drawings and paintings just for that reason. People need to lie. There is no artistic integrity when you are producing work for general consumption. I am sorry. Take Garth Brooks (I hate country music) but he went some strange route by taking on another persona and ruined his career. I think it was called Chris Gaines-his alter ego lol. It was so absurd. 

[RenascentAnt1]

Miss Mowcher, a dwarf character from Dickens' book, Great Expectations, was based on a real life person, who wrote and complained to Dickens about how she was portrayed. In response (this was a time in which Dickens' work was written in series of installments), Dickens completely re-wrote Miss Mowcher's character in the next installment....

Yet another example in which the artist/writer revises their work according to feedback.

Modifié par RenascentAnt1, 02 avril 2012 - 09:25 .

[cgvhjb]

To be fair if J.K Rowling ended Harry Potter on a note as sour and awful as Mass Effect 3's ending you bet she would consider changing that if she had any interest at all in selling another book at any point in the future.

Also as others have said before video games especially RPG's like Mass Effect 3 are not like normal mediums associated with "art". If you go and see an artistic film you sit and watch a narrative for 2 hours or so and have no say at all in what happens, if you go to a gallery and observe a painting you're passively viewing the piece to interpret what the artist meant to convey, a classical piece of music is the same, as is a great work of literature ect ect. Games however where you're actively involved in directing the story and shaping the conclusion are something entirely different. With the inclusion of choice the artistic merit of said game starts moving away from the realm of complete developer control to become a partnership between the developer and player in which certain tools are provided for the player to roughly shape their own story. So I imagine you can see how this quickly becomes an issue of promises not upheld. It's reasonable for players who purchased a product marketed and sold on the premise of "choice" to be offered a reasonable expectation of that at the conclusion of the game and sadly Bioware in no way provided an acceptable amount of that in the ending of Mass Effect 3.

So really this whole "artistic merit" is sort of flawed to begin with, players are too involved in the shaping of the story for this to be considered a completely artistic venture, it's more like a very loose partnership with certain expectations and if those aren't well met well... I'd say one side has a right to be upset.

Also as a reference, here's a quote provided by producer Mike Gamble prior to release, "There are many different endings. We wouldn’t do it any other way. How could you go through all three campaigns playing as your Shepard and then be forced into a bespoke ending that everyone gets? But I can’t say any more than that" (which is EXACTLY what we got) - http://www.360magazine.co.uk/interview/mass-effect-3-has-many-different-endings/

Modifié par cgvhjb, 02 avril 2012 - 09:47 .

[Rob_K1]

One thing that was said in the OP is right though:

Whatever they do, they can't make everyone happy.

[Militarized]

If not anyone else, Paul Barnett knows how to overhype his product to have it fall flat on it's face.

I'm not sure if it was him or not but moving away from what Warhammer Online was supposed to be to what it became was a bad move on his/their part. Maybe he should take a hint as well.

[Subject Alpha]

Can't really compare a game, an interactive medium, to a book. Also, why can't book endings be changed? JK Rowling did it.
COUGHCOUGHSHERLOCKHOLMESCOUGH

[Elyiia]

Rob_K1 wrote...

One thing that was said in the OP is right though:

Whatever they do, they can't make everyone happy.

You can't make everyone happy, but you can make the majority happy considering there's supposed to be multiple endings.

[fchopin]

What i want to see is a better explanation on what really happens with the 3 different endings.

For example if you have 1500 EMS and you choose the destroy option does the Earth and other planets in other solar systems get destroyed?

If you have 3000 EMS and you choose the destroy option does the Earth and other planets in other solar systems get destroyed?

If you have 4000 EMS and you choose the destroy option does the Earth and other planets in other solar systems get destroyed?

The same with the other options you choose and also what happens to Normandy and how do our teammates end up with Joker.

[jahaa]

Just be patient. We will see in a few days what happens.

[Enichan]

I'd take an ending where Shepard dies, the reapers win, everyone goes down fighting, and the cycle continues, to be won due to the efforts of this one over the current ending. So I'm amused at the thought that Retake Mass Effect as a whole is about wanting a happy ending.

[nikki191]

bioware spent 3 games telling you you were creating your shepards story and at the end of ME3 they took that away it became bioware story and biowares shepard

[VaddixBell]

I hate this whole comparison to other mediums such as movies and books and bringing up the argument about the creator's vision. Videogames are not movies, they're not books, they're videogames. They shouldn't be compared to them at all.

When a TV show or film ends badly, that's the way they intended on ending it. They didn't intend on selling the last 10 minutes of the TV show to customers later on for £10, that's why they shouldn't be compared when the ending of ME3 is considered.

I'm pretty sure Bioware and/or EA intended this and that's why they should be held accountable. Even if this was their vision, it is just a lazy trope to introduce a new character in the last few minutes with God like power, it's lazy and not consistent with the narrative thus far.

[bboynexus]

Totally agreed, Vaddix.

[MikeC99]

OK - points I'd like to make on two three issues that seemed to get raised as if they are credos.

(1) "Artistic 'merit' is antithesis of audience feedback/ control."
Let's be really clear. As a writer one of the central tenets is : get serious and comprehensive feedback at least three times at the significant points in developing, writing the body of work, and finalising it. Anyone who either doesn't or does and ignores the feedback is foolish. One in a hundred times a very good writer might get away with it. This does not mean the writer has to do whatever the feedback says, but you had better be damned sure that you address all the issues raised, even if the end result is to not change a thing. At least in your head you need to go through the process of clearly and logically rebutting the feedback. This can only help the creative process and in the end produce a better product.

(2) "Once it's done it's done. As it's art, to alter it would degrade the artist and /or the specific art form and /or "art" as a concept embodying the purity inherent in creation" - or any variant on how this is expressed.
This is a conceit. This has more to do with the artist than the 'art' itself. Creating art is like having a child. Any artist who truly believes in what she/he wants to achieve wants it to be the very best it can be - for the sake of the art, not for his/ her own sake. As a parent, I want what's best for my children - for their sakes; not what best reflects on me. Anyone who is more concerned in how the art reflects on themselves than on the nature (ie quality) of the art itself is guilty of self interest and pride over-riding the artistic endeavour - both its jouney and final product. I'll certainly own up to falling for this one myself at times. It's a very human and understandable thing: but it's wrong thinking, and eventually any good artist gets through it and pursues the real goal - the quality of the art itself.

Thinking through these together, there is a logic that artists want feedback, positive and negative, as it betters their craft. In the end, what the art product ends up being is totally in the control of the artist. Absolutely. But 'art' by its very nature, is created for an audience. Anything purported to be 'art' that an 'artist' claims was not created with an audience in mind ... well, let's just say make sure you are wearing the biggest doubters hat you can find.


(3) Fans, opinions, and 'rights'.
Any one who has done Facilitation and Communication 1.1 knows
(i) first decide who your audience is;
(ii) cut the cloth of your message to suit them.
(iii) actively engage your audience, and make sure you are clear as to whether you are communicating (one way - no audience participation); liasing (audience part is more passive than active); or consulting (audience participation is more active than passive);
(iv) listen to your audience;
(vi) make sure your audience knows they are being listened to by specifically addressing their issues;
(vii) allow the emotions of the audience to vent, but control the process so that the issues remain the focus;
(viii) listen to your audience some more;
(ix) at all times make it clear what you are doing, and when you have finished doing what you made clear you were going to do, tell the audience what it was that you've just done.

At any of these points, if your audience says you failed to deliver, see points (iv) and (viii) above.

If you reach an impasse, restate your position as clearly as you can, acknowledge that you understand and accept the validity of the audience to have that view point (NB this is NOT the same as agreeing to the point - it is acknowledging the right of the audience to have that viewpoint), state clearly what actions you are taking (including finalising actions eg "Let's agree to disagree and move on."), then do what you said you were going to do.

I am not offering any judgement call in this on either Bioware or the fans/ gamers/ audience. I just am sick to death of dogma being trotted out as logical argument and irrefutable creed.

cheers
MikeC

Yes - I have an opinion - as anyone who looks at the banner below can see. One of the reasons I put it there was as an issue of transparency. Don't even get me started on THAT one!

Modifié par MikeC99, 02 avril 2012 - 10:59 .