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[Taboo]

 I've been mulling over what critics have been saying about Mass Effect and the inherent PR statement surrounding them in the past few days and have slowly become incredibly dissatisfied with critics as a result.. In this topic I'll discuss how I feel about criticism of art in general and what I think it means for Mass Effect.

What criticism should be, and how current  criticism is failing.

I've seen words like "beautiful" and "inspiring" tossed around lately to describe the endings to Mass Effect and could not be more puzzled by these weasel words. First and foremost I find the usage of such words to be very lackluster. What does it mean to be beautiful and inspiring? I have yet to see any critic explain their rationale behind this and have yet to hear anyone explain to me how the ending is inspiring. Unfortunatly this is a common trend in criticism today, words are handed out as praise without much clarification as to why. This is a troubling factor for me, as I find myself more and more disgruntled by the fact that people cannot appear lucid when writing things.

Example:

This (insert product here) is a rush of blood to the head!

This is not a criticism or praise, this is a statement used to describe how you yourself reacted to something. Using your own reactions as a selling point is not criticism, it is an incredibly shallow selling point.

Granted, you might argue that a critic is supposed to share his opinion but I cannot help but feel that simply using the words of seventy or so reviewers to make a general assesment of quality is incredibly disingenuous. I don't really care what the critics have to say, my opinion is my own and I won't let others create my opinion for me.

Example II

Roger Ebert gives it four stars.

Again, this is an opinion being used to sell something, not express overall quality. It doesn't contain a quality assesment of the film, it offers opinion. One person should not be allowed to govern how good something is. I love Roger Ebert, but I won't let his reviews cement a bias in my mind.

The Sword cuts both ways.

Unfortunatly the content of criticism goes both ways here. I have found much of the criticism of Mass Effect 3's ending to be very lackluster. Your ending sucks because it only has three colors is not a valid criticism it is an incredibly strange reaction to a rather baffling ending.

What I would like to see and I'm sure Bioware does to are more concrete examples of what is wrong with the endings such as the abandonment of previous thematic material and overtly simplistic symbolic metaphors.

tl;dr

Please don't use critics as an excuse to sell your product.
Please come up with better criticism for the game.