But before I start on that, I want to look at the reason for the upset of so many gamers at the ending. Many critics have pointed simply to the lack of a happy ending and Casey Hudson came out with the term ‘bittersweet’ ending during his response to the complaints.
This is partially true in so far as it goes, but the reason for the discord over the ending is far more complex than a lack of rainbows and candy or the fans simply not understanding the nature of the ending. Firstly the Mass Effect series has always been about choice and consequence, the extent of this is best seen between ME1 and ME2, if you create a new career in 2 instead of importing a Shepard from 1 who say, saved the council, the game world is almost unrecognisable. Choice is the first failure of ME3’s ending, there should be a bad ending, where everyone dies, they cycle continues and a cut scene of an unknown alien race digging up one of Lira’s boxes and a happy one with ‘blue babies’ and Garrus at the bar (although not with the babies that would be irresponsible parenting.) and every possible contingency in-between this is what was promised by Casey Hudson ‘16 distinct endings’ *NB * (Note attached at the bottom in response to feedback) and unique experience for every play through. This does not happen as whatever your actions you are brought back to the same fixed point. Some have said this was the point, to make the story circular, if that was the case the ending still fails to deliver on what was promised.
The next problem is that the ending fails as a piece of writing, for those with 39 minutes to spare on top of the time spent reading this:
This video sets out in depth why ME3 ending fails as a piece of writing, but for those with out 3 quarters of an hour I will paraphrase. The answer is simply the goal of creating ‘Speculation’. Happy or sad any narrative should seek to close out its story in the final act, restoring order to the disruption of narrative the story caused, the goal being let the viewer/reader/player (this applies to stories across all mediums) gain satisfaction from the time invested and provide a final resolution. Here ME3 ending fails spectacularly, it introduces a new character, it creates plot holes and questions. I won’t list them as this ground has been gone over with a backhoe, suffice to say it does not complete the story, the last gasp breath alone leaves the possibility of continuing. I have heard it compared to Lost’s Ending, The Matrix Movies or Battlestar Galactica. But against these it also fails. Let me give some examples btw Spoilers:
Battlestar Galactica: Humans resettle earth in the past, swear off technology, our civilisation arises and Baltar and No6 have a philosophical chat. I may not like this ending, but it resolves all the plot points by the simple fact they were 50,000 years ago and obviously it worked out as we’re here and shows the cycle may have continued but the conversation between the two protagonists allows the hope it will be broken this time.
The Matrix Revolutions: Neo fights Agent Smith, sacrificing himself to enable his defeat. This sacrifice ends the war, fading to a chat between the Architect and the Oracle about the peace and will it last, the Oracle’s final words, ‘As Long as it Can’
Again all the plot is resolved, the big glowy scene as the machines carry Neo away and the Oracles words are meant to convey hope and order is restored to the world, in the form of peace between the machines and humans.
Now a totally different example, Shakespeare was the ultimate story teller and his stories would always end with clear defined resolution happy or sad it always had an end as an example:
Romeo and Juliet: Romeo and Juliet kill themselves as a result of listening to the priests plan (usually a bad call in Shakespeare) the Montagues and Capulets end their feud through the deaths of their children and the narrator does the ‘Never was there more woe that the story of Juliet and her Romeo’. Order is returned to the narrative by end of the feud which has driven the plot and the simple fact the main protagonists are dead.
Simply if Bioware honestly sought to create ‘speculation’ at the end of their trilogy it was for a reason other than concluding it. Resolution is one of the most basic mechanisms for ending a narrative and no writer could miss that.
Now to summarise, the reasons behind the fan furore over the ending, plot holes, failure of writing, lack of choice. The defence that has been claimed by Bioware and many of its supporters is that of ‘artistic integrity’. To me this is a fairly weak defence. Games may or may not be an art form, I’m undecided here, but for the purposes of this we’ll assume they are. Forbes did a piece outlining 6 basic reasons that changing the ending wouldn’t be a bad thing.
http://www.forbes.co...stic-integrity/
Basically the first thing to remember about games as an art form is that they are a commercial form of art, art for a purpose, in this case to be sold. All art for a purpose has to set its ‘integrity’ against the expectations of its patron. As an example Bioware themselves commissioned video trailer of Shepard heroically battling Reaper Forces
When they went to the company who would make the video they likely gave a list of criteria even story boards with key points like child playing, Shepard looking heroic, big battle etc. How would Bioware of reacted if they had instead received a trailer of Shepard and Harbinger having a tea party while husks served the biscuits and poured and were informed by the production company this is what we’ve decided to make and it would violate our artistic integrity to change it. Bioware would have sued them back to the Stone Age. This is a silly and extreme example, but the point applies, in its own marketing Bioware set expectations of its audience, its consumers and patrons and it failed to deliver on those promises. Matching the Patrons expectations is nothing new in Art, or the electronic media. Look at any Painting of Queen Elizabeth the First and you will see a attractive woman with flowing Red hair. This does not match the reality of accounts of the time who described her as balding with wooden teeth. Commissioned art must always be balanced with the expectations of the consumer!
Next we come to the question of precedent. That changing the ending will establish a precedent that popular opinion can cause changes to art and this will undermine gaming as an art form. Firstly is that really such a bad thing, with communications technology of the level commonly available today, shouldn’t popular democratic opinion have as much sway in the field of art as it does anywhere else? Secondly the question of precedent simply isn’t true. Art for commission ie to be sold has long made changes to key plot points in response to its audience, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle originally intended to end Sherlock Holmes adventures at the Reinbach Falls. But due to popular demand for a return of the great detective, Holmes was revealed to of survived eventually retiring to tend bees. Novels and serialisations, in Sir Arthur’s time a very new medium survived as an art form, why shouldn’t gaming today? Unless you have no faith in its place as art, I’m sure games will survive as art as well. Oh and for a more contemporary example, Fallout 3 developers Bethesda re-worked the ending of Fallout 3 in response to a much smaller out cry and it enhanced the game, not diminished it adding new depth and allowing you to see the consequences of your final choice (purify or poison the water).
http://www.pcgamer.c...-writers-think/
this interview of games developers shows a Bethesda does not fear feedback but welcomes it, ‘Games should take advantage of feedback … Our goal is to entertain our players. No one knows more about what they consider “fun” than the player themselves’ Chris Avellone
http://www.cinemable...Poor-41023.html
Feedback and popular outcry are not something to fear in art but something to be embraced and built on what has caused more harm to the art form here has been Bioware’s handling of the situation. Or more accurately, their total failure to handle the situation.
Atghunter posted a good summation of the PR techniques used I have not been able to fine the original, but here is a repost of his main points http://social.biowar...ndex/10084349/1
Basically Bioware have relied on traditional PR techniques of denial, deflection and obfuscation. This has made the situation far worse than it might over wise have been, we live in a very media aware and technologically savvy age and people simply recognize the techniques now, mainly as they have appeared in many high profile political scandals from Berlusconi’s fall from grace to the UK cash ‘for questions’ and ‘expenses’ scandals. These and many other stories have left a wide highly aware population base who recognize these techniques and are simply further angered by them.
Furthermore some of the less sensitive comments by the likes of Casey Hudson, “I didn’t want the game to be forgettable, and even right down to the sort of polarizing reaction that the ends have had with people–debating what the endings mean.” http://www.cinemable...able-40432.html
have simply come over as incredibly self gratifying in the face of a lot of displeasure with a product which in Chris Avellone’s words was meant to be “fun” and ending this particular comment with a plug for Multiplayer DLC simply comes over as crass.
Now we come to the reasons for the critical reaction to the popular movement for a new ending. First off the Retake Mass Effect 3 movement is almost unprecedented, although groups have formed over various causes before, never has one been so united, well organized or media aware. At time of typing the Facebook page has 59,491 members. Pervious campaigns, even successful ones like the campaign to make a 5th season of Farscape (resulting in the 4 hour mini series Peacekeeper Wars) were no where near as united with numerous different groups of a few hundred to a couple of thousand members a piece. This central focus of a fan group has to my mind allow the critics a single target for any venom they have (and that’s a fair bit considering their profession) and also realized some of their worst fears. To look at the reaction from the professional gaming media I’ll divide them into two rough groups. Firstly ‘The Gatekeepers’ and secondly the ‘Dependents’ and their separate motivations ( A third group, the reactionaries appeared at the start of the Ending Crisis, pointing to the gay content as a reason for the fan contempt of the game, but they quickly disappeared as the reaction became clearly galvanized against the ending specifically and remained civil, cordial and constructive.)
So The Gatekeepers for many years in all forms of media and art a small self appointed group of critics decided what was good and what was not, they took on the roll of ‘gatekeeper’ passing on to the ill informed masses what was good, high culture and what was the low culture of the masses. Despite his ranting, ‘sweary’ style Ben Croshaw (Yatzhee) is a good example of this, his article linked below:
http://www.escapistm...-Gets-An-Ending
The New Yorker’s response in Mass Defect is also a good example:
http://www.newyorker...fects-fans.html
These responses are not so much aimed at the game but at the fan reaction, what the New Yorkers Taylor Clark claims as, “calls to change it after the fact is merely to allow a poisonous strain of thought to run rampant. Too often, mainstream game developers bow to the whims of their least sophisticated”
And as Ben Croshaw says, “it would set a horrible precedent if they're serious about actually changing the ending in line with some kind of democratically agreed upon alternative… but sooner or later the ****heads of the world are just going to have to accept that there are people who know better than them”
Both of these writers should remember what I was taught in conflict resolution training, if you have to result to insults in an argument, you’ve already lost.
Oddly in his Halo 3 review Croshaw can be quoted saying, “Nothing I can say will stop Microsoft making enough money to buy Switzerland and reinforcing the notion that all gamers want is brightly coloured dross with the depth of a spoon.”
http://www.escapistm...uation/8-Halo-3
Apparently, when complaining about elements of a story and its lack of complexity, this is only valid when the criticism comes from Croshaw himself.
But I digress, the Gatekeepers argument basically runs that we, the masses don’t know what is good for us and if art were to change based on what the populace wanted would lead to the barbarians crashing down the gates, the fall of Rome, doom to culture to the lowest common denominator etc. They are not worried about the ending per say, Croshaw in Zero punctuation has criticized many games called for changes to endings and generally everything the fans of ME3 have in this case. But it is okay for him as he has been elevated by the escapist as a gatekeeper of taste so he knows better than the rest of us. (For those wanting examples of Croshaw’s statements, I won’t link them, but the To Human and Dues Ex: Human Revolutions reviews spring to mind as examples) What they are worried about in truth is that they will no longer be required as with the social media and internet at large you can find out opinions, information, reviews on a movie, book or game without ever relying on a ‘professional critic’ this is discussed far more in depth in this article:
http://hypocriteread...h-of-the-critic
The second group, The Dependents have a much more direct stake in the events of ME3, members of the games industry, IGN and PennyArcade leap out to me here. IGN in particular has been very critical of the fan base, Colin Moriarty’s video as case in point and more recently Jessica Chobot’s Blog referring to the fans as ‘Entitled Whiners’ in her blog (although she apologized and retracted it.) That phrase is interesting and I’ll come back to it. This group while probably not directly in the pay of the games industry certainly gain enough perks to make any break extremely problematic. Games companies advertise products on their sites and in their magazines, space which is sold at a premium and more than likely makes up the bulk of their income (I am basing this on the News Print industry here, which see advertising space as the bulk of their income, assuming every paper sold will be read by 3 people and selling advert space on that basis.) The fact that an IGN employee Chobot herself appears in ME3 as a character instantly calls into question their integrity and journalistic impartiality.
http://www.ign.com/b...i-always-say-it
As you’ll notice that link leads to a blank page with nothing but a link to an apology due to the severity of the reaction, I’ll also include Colin Moriarty’s video for the sake of completeness:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqgRP5_YKu0
I’ll be totally honest here; one of the dislikes is mine.
What is consistent in both these groups and the anti-fan campaign as a whole is they tend to be long on rhetoric and very short on fact, explaining why the gamers are wrong to demand a new ending but providing very little empirical of philosophical evidence as to why this should be. While by contract the fans have used well reasoned, thought out and researched blogs, posts, emails and article. Look at almost anything written by Forbes on the issue. Not necessarily fans themselves but they have done the research and found little evidence to support Biowares position. Then compare those articles with something on IGN or The Escapist, you’ll see the difference in debating style. It’s an old technique in an argument, when your short on facts, be long on rhetoric and hope no one notices the difference.
What is also interesting is the use of the terms ‘Entitled’ and ‘Whiners’ Chobot said this before her apology and I have seen the phrase on a number of blogs, posts and tweets. What strikes me as odd is its recurrence by seemingly unrelated people in a variety of mediums and individuals with close ties to Bioware. Neither are terms in especially common every day use and yet they pop up again and again. One might almost think that a PR division somewhere was trying to run counter posts and discredit the fans and their reaction presenting them as a minority… but that would be a pretty cynical thing to think, its not like the media handling techniques have led us to a place where we’d think that of Bioware, or EA… oh wait… hmmmmmmmm.
*NB* It was pointed out to me by a poster AlanC9 that Casey Hudon may not of made the '16 endings' comment. I have been unable to corroborate this statment with a link attributing it to him, so I'm adding this note onto the end of my post with a comment made by Casey Hudson I can corroborate. This quote illustrates the same point, the link below will take you to the context of the original interview.
http://www.gameinfor...PostPageIndex=2
" because we have the ability to build the endings out in a way that we don’t have to worry about eventually tying them back together somewhere... That means the endings can be a lot more different. At this point we’re taking into account so many decisions that you’ve made as a player and reflecting a lot of that stuff. It’s not even in any way like the traditional game endings, where you can say how many endings there are or whether you got ending A, B, or C."
This statment clearly sets the expectations of the consumer/player/fan/gamer/patron and would appear not to match what is presented at the end of the game
Modifié par maddlarkin, 04 avril 2012 - 05:44 .
Retour en haut
