683 réponses à ce sujet

[Disciple888]

itt pro-enders ignoring this thread like the plague because it shoots down their whole "entitlement" bs

[bti79]

He actually did say "victory" .. lol .. that's an epic failure to describe ME3.

[Taritu]

Dakota Strider wrote...

What I find really hard to believe, is that there were no voices inside Bioware that knew what was going on, and did not speak out, about the travesty about to be perpetrated on the company's fans. Nobody said "This is wrong, it will alienate our base"? Not a single "The hell with the deadline, we cannot put out this product after what we promised, after what our fans are expecting" ? The whole company followed along?

I've been on the inside when stuff goes down like this (not in gaming, mind you).  There were probably a couple.  They got shut down hard, after damaging their careers.

I remember once, giving two lists during a business reorg: one was "things that must be done".  The other "things that must not be done."  I am not joking, when I said that this company (a large multinational) flipped the lists.  I was beyond livid, but there was nothing to be done.  (Well, I quit sometime later, partly as a result of that mess.)

[Ibn_Shisha]

I like how these 2 are STILL ON THE WEBSITE!!!!

“Experience the beginning, middle, and end of an emotional story unlike any other, where the decisions you make completely shape your experience and outcome.”
"Along the way, your choices drive powerful outcomes, including relationships with key characters, the fate of entire civilizations, and even radically different ending scenarios."

(bold emphasis added by me).

Modifié par Ibn_Shisha, 03 avril 2012 - 11:54 .

[Aquilas]

Look, Casey didn't forget what he said--he panicked.  He looked at all the branches and sequels players could create in their individual stories, discovered how much work incorporating multiplayer involved, looked at the release deadline, realized he needed another year to honor his promises...and balked. And I say balked as in making an illegal move after starting his pitch.

What rankles me most about this is how stupid he thinks we are. He thought he could pull this stunt and we wouldn't notice, or that if we did notice, we'd give him a pass. I keep hearing how smart Casey is--man, given this debacle, one he created, I question that claim.  I question it most sincerely.

Modifié par Aquilas, 03 avril 2012 - 12:12 .

[Baronesa]

Ibn_Shisha wrote...

I like how these 2 are STILL ON THE WEBSITE!!!!

“Experience the beginning, middle, and end of an emotional story unlike any other, where the decisions you make completely shape your experience and outcome.”
"Along the way, your choices drive powerful outcomes, including relationships with key characters, the fate of entire civilizations, and even radically different ending scenarios."

(bold emphasis added by me).

Stop it.... stop it...

This  hurts  me

[Samuel_Valkyrie]

Casey, Casey...the fact that you look like Sylar does NOT help you, but damn, I really want him to justify his actions. You cannot do this, and expect there to be no fallout from this.

As it is, I'm done with Bioware. When they release a proper Endings DLC, I might buy some more, but until then, I have no more interest in Bioware's material.

[SandMan2012]

CaWBenSkywalker wrote...

ahandsomeshark wrote...

“In Mass Effect 3, you know you need to take back Earth, but the path to victory is less clear at the outset. You won’t just find some long-lost Reaper “off” button; says Hudson”


oh this hurts me. What date is that magazine by the way. I wanna see if I still have it.

May 2011.
Issue 217 if you want more details.

Wait so then what is this "Crucible"?!? Speculation for everyone!

(just had to re-read the article too...how sad)

[Mixxer5]

I know it's crazy what I will write know... But isn't that weird that EVERYTHING that was told about game before was a lie? It's simply disappointing, replaying doesn't make sense... Maybe they'll release giant DLC with longer story, good ending and so on. It's worst game Bioware ever made...

[Iwillbeback]

He wasn't lying, he just talks funny.
Everything that he says plot-wise is untrue, so if he says one thing then it isn't true and he didn't mean it that way.

[Applepie_Svk]

You know when on of the first interwiev came out we could aslo see something like: you won´t be able save every race, you will need to maintain reputation with species and sometimes you will need make a hard decisions.

Yea at least we have hard decisions, which turns as pointless in the end of game :D:D:D

[Lionel Ou]

~/ Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies /~

[katamuro]

It seems someone really f*cked up. I remember that article and yeah that exactly what we wanted. so where did it go? EA moneyhole? some fat cats pocket? by now i am very dissapointed in EA, Bioware and most of all in Casey Hudson. The promises he broke and his statements after the fact just seem to be like he went and sold out.

[Raynulf]

....

You just reminded me. I have that issue sitting on the bookshelf.

It is almost artistic in how drapes, sadly and impotently from atop its perch of grade A science fiction, filled with broken promises and unanswered questions....

[nullobject]

Eain wrote...

Omanisat wrote...

From a section entitled THE PLAN:
 
“In Mass Effect 3, you know you need to take back Earth, but the path to victory is less clear at the outset. You won’t just find some long-lost Reaper “off” button; says Hudson”

It's May 2011. Bioware sits around the table. The game is due to release in Q4 of that year, and they realise they still don't have any clue where to go. Hudson is running around giving interviews, which are nothing more than elaborations on game concepts. But the game press doesn't know that. The gamers don't know that. All we know is that Bioware is a company that knows what's up, so when they talk about stuff its legit.

Except it wasn't. At this point there was still no story, no direction. There were gameplay enhancements I'm sure. Other minute things. Also concept art, storyboards of specific missions. Maybe they were working on the Tuchanka and Rannoch archs at this point, without really knowing where those fit into the main story. But Casey didn't care. He was running around promising people the world anyway.
 

From a section called OLD CONFLICTS, NEW ALLIES:
 
“Don’t expect to win the loyalty of the galaxy by simply completing a series of fetch quests,”

Eventually they decided that the easiest way to make the players feel like their decisions mattered is to create a system in which their decisions throughout the past award them points, and a certain amount of points need to be accumulated for the final battle. Alright so... how about new decisions then? Do those award us points too? The decision is made that they do, and while everyone is at it they figure that they may just aswell weave sidequesting into this system.

But they don't have the time to create more maps, more planets. They're already running short. So they're reducing the exploration concept to an "escape the reapers" minigame, and sidequests become nothing more than a bleep on the galaxy map that you have to pick up and return to the Citadel. It's not ideal, but since Bioware is so short on time, they have to. Combined with the Reaper chasing addition, the developers hope that their inability to create something more elaborate is properly masked.

Casey's statements are starting to contradict reality at this point. You do win the loyalty of the galaxy through fetch quests, since it's either that or playing multiplayer if you want to get sufficient points for the final battle. By now Bioware has likely also decided that the best way to resolve the plot is to have the galaxy build a reaper off-button. Why not tie that in to the GAW system aswell? So they do.
 

This is a text block entitled MASS EFFECT MEETS MULTIPLAYER?
 
“When the teaser for Mass Effect 3 first released, rumours were swirling that the project was actually a multiplayer title set in the Mass Effect universe. Those rumours turned out to be false, but it got many gamers thinking about how a multiplayer component would fit into the Mass Effect trilogy. Rest assured, the team has thought about this, too. “As a single-player experience, and just as a world that people want to immerse themselves in and share, we’ve been trying to think of a way that makes sense for people to experience Mass Effect with their friends,” says executive producer Casey Hudson. “We haven’t yet come up with a way to do that, so we don’t have anything to announce at this time. But, obviously, multiplayer is something we want to do more of in the future as a company.”

Bioware has a second studio that's been working on an FPS multiplayer title in the ME universe. In the absence of proper sidequests, why not substitute that with coop combat scenarios? Six maps with three different factions of enemies and a character levelling system. It gets produced with great haste as the deadline for release has been extended but time is still short. Where in ME2 you landed on worlds and completed objectives, in ME3 you now do the same with friends. It's fun, it's entertaining. This is the only part of ME3 that worked out, and the only part that doesn't directly contradict what Casey's been telling us.

This is where Ray and Greg thank God on their bare knees for EA's funding. Without it, they would not have had a second studio and they would not have had the manpower to create a multiplayer aspect. Without it, ME3 would have been a total flop.
 

In a section called BEYOND THE TRILOGY:
 
“… part of what you’re trying to do is save the universe so you can live in it. That’s part of the promise, I think, for any great IP. It has to be a world worth saving… I think Mass Effect has that quality to it. If you get rid of the Reapers and win that, wouldn’t it be amazing to just live on the Citadel or just take a ship to Omega? That makes sense.”
 

Later iterations of the story killed this remark. Remember, Casey was going off concepts here. Ideas. But time didn't allow for the execution of these ideas, and so the only solution was to blow everything up and pave the way for more moneymakers in a homogenous universe thats the same for everyone. Of course the guys at Bio would've liked to given us a vastly divergent amount of endings. But remember that in May 2011 they still don't have a clue as to what's happening with the story. By the time the truth starts to sink in, Bioware realises that they just don't have the room they need to take player choice into account anymore.

The final segment of the game gets rushed out. Tuchanka and Rannoch were good, as those have been in development since before finalising the main story arc. But after resolving the Quarian vs Geth conflict, the game takes a nosedive and becomes a linear corridor shooter that's basically just Gears of War in space. There is no divergence from any path here, no visible consequence of player choice in previous games. We fight and we fight and we fight through one pre-determined mission after another, until eventually we meet the Spacekid who offers us our preferred flavour of Space Magic.

By now it's blatantly evident that it is Space Magic, not only because it makes no sense within the universe, but also because Bioware really had no time left to actually explain sutff. Space Magic was the only thing that would suit. But in doing so, they completely destroyed the integrity of their narrative.

In hindsight, who's to blame? EA or Bioware? Both, I'm sure. EA for killing their developers with ridiculous deadlines. Bioware for still not knowing what the hell they were doing as late as May 2011. ME3 is the only possible result from these two disasters converging into one.

Sounds spot on, with the exception that I'm not sure how much EA is to blame - it's not like Bioware only realized that the final episode of their trilogy needed a story and game design once they completed ME2. You would think they'd have planned it out back during ME1 pre-production (and according to Dr Muzyka, they did).

Basically you just wrote a more fleshed out version of Individuation Theory (which attempts only to explain the story issues)

[SamJH90]

I wonder what ME3 will be remembered as a few years from now. The whole ending situation is just a farce now with this on top of everything else. What a joke!

[jds1bio]

I would also like to point out how this thread has not only maintained almost 20 pages of completely civil conversation, but also where so many people have expressed almost the exact same level and type of displeasure. Just in case anyone popping in here is wondering about the validity of all this.

[Raynulf]

SamJH90 wrote...

I wonder what ME3 will be remembered as a few years from now. The whole ending situation is just a farce now with this on top of everything else. What a joke!

It should have been remembered as a triumph of interactive storytelling and one of the most predominant examples of science fiction of its time.

Sadly, it will more likely be remembered for the narrative failure of the ending(s), and the pretentious reaction of most of the gaming media. (On that topic, although I'm by no means a Jim Sterling fan... kudos to him and his professional conscience for actually looking at the issue and appologise for earlier, unjustified snark).


And there in lies the core of much of our frustration: Most of us love Bioware and their products, we want this game to be brilliant, we want it to be an IP we come back to and spend more money on for DLC to support a company that has produced so many good titles. It just... isn't. And that is sad.

[felipejiraya]

I still think there's a catch behind all this.

Maybe it's blind faith but I don't see how they can botch the game this bad.

[TudorWolf]

This stuff is ridiculous. What the hell happened during the last year that made all those statements patently untrue in the final product?

It's this stuff that makes me scoff at all that "artistic integrity" nonsense they keep hiding behind. Because all the evidence suggests the ME3 they released is not what they had actually envisioned at all

[Bleachrude]

Actually I don't have a problem with those statements..To me, it sounds like they had a great plan but actually executing it was the problem...

Given the time of the issue, they were still in development time (if you read the article, the Rannoch and the Tuchanka missions seems the same).

The probably had this big idea where each race would be structured like Tuchanka/Rannoch. You have one big mission but a couple of side missions which affect the main mission and decisions from past ME games would influence whatever big decision you were to do... .

Then reality came to the door namely that not only is the game nearing its budget BUT also nearing time....they already had 6 months extension and needed to wrap it up so things got compressed.

EA gets a lot of grief but EA is a publicly held company and HAS to show its stockholders revenue for cost otherwise they will ALL be looking for jobs so hoestly, I'm not angry or disappointed,

Just realistic about it...

[Ieldra]

Samuel_Valkyrie wrote...
Casey, Casey...the fact that you look like Sylar does NOT help you...

So I wasn't the only one who made that association....

[jds1bio]

Bleachrude wrote...

Actually I don't have a problem with those statements..To me, it sounds like they had a great plan but actually executing it was the problem...

Given the time of the issue, they were still in development time (if you read the article, the Rannoch and the Tuchanka missions seems the same).

The probably had this big idea where each race would be structured like Tuchanka/Rannoch. You have one big mission but a couple of side missions which affect the main mission and decisions from past ME games would influence whatever big decision you were to do... .

Then reality came to the door namely that not only is the game nearing its budget BUT also nearing time....they already had 6 months extension and needed to wrap it up so things got compressed.

EA gets a lot of grief but EA is a publicly held company and HAS to show its stockholders revenue for cost otherwise they will ALL be looking for jobs so hoestly, I'm not angry or disappointed,

Just realistic about it...

Read the January interview then, you might think differently after that.