I am going to jump immediately into my response to the latest press release from EA concerning their annoncement of "Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut".
[color=rgb(255, 0, 0)">TL]red[/color] below.
Electronic Arts wrote...
BioWare, a Label of Electronic Arts Inc. announced Mass Effect™ 3: Extended Cut, a downloadable content pack that will expand upon the events at the end of the critically acclaimed Action RPG. Through additional cinematic sequences and epilogue scenes, the Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut will give fans seeking further clarity to the ending of Mass Effect 3 deeper insights into how their personal journey concludes.
This first statement alone proves that EA Games and BioWare did not listen, as they promised they would, to the feedback that we gave them. There are countless threads on this forum alone, demonstrating what our issues were with the endings.
Very few of us wanted clarification. The vast majority of us stated... Very... Clearly... That clarifying the ending would be like polishing a turd, and would not fix the broken ending that we were given. What we wanted was an ending that makes sense.
I will again re-iterate. BioWare and EA have not listened to a word we have said.
Coming this summer, the Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut will be available for download on the Xbox 360® videogame and entertainment system, PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system and PC for no extra charge*.
This carefully-crafted PR statement is essentially giving us something we didn't actually ask for, and is parading it around as being free, as if you're doing us a favour.
You are not.
“We are all incredibly proud of Mass Effect 3 and the work done by Casey Hudson and team,” said Dr. Ray Muzyka, Co-Founder of BioWare and General Manager of EA’s BioWare Label.
Well I'm glad you are proud of what you have created, because right up until the last 5 minutes of the game, it was good. Then you had to go ruin it with a broken ending.
But I don't like this being shoved in our faces every 5 minutes in a PR statement.
“Since launch, we have had time to listen to the feedback from our most passionate fans and we are responding. With the Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut we think we have struck a good balance in delivering the answers players are looking for while maintaining the team’s artistic vision for the end of this story arc in the Mass Effect universe.”
I'm getting really sick and tired of the "Artistic vision", "Artistic integrity", and "Artistic direction" arguments.
This is a commercial product, created to make money for EA. Don't pretend otherwise... Ever. Whether the story itelf was something that the developers and the writers actually wanted to tell or not, the end result is a product, sold for money, to people who are interested in buying it. Many people have made comments about other "artists" (be they writers, film-makers, and game developers) changing their works in order to satisfy their consumers, and they have made valid points. Stop ignoring them.
Casey Hudson, Executive Producer of the Mass Effect series added, “We have reprioritized our post-launch development efforts to provide the fans who want more closure
Wait... What do you mean MORE closure? We never got ANY closure to begin with... Not a little bit.
Words and sentences have meaning for a purpose. I find it rather dishonest that you would try to paint this situation to mean something it actually doesn't.
-with even more context and clarity to the ending of the game, in a way that will feel more personalized for each player.”
This section is lengthy. TL;DR sections have therefore been included.
Two points:
1: Context and clarity. Even more? Well anything is "even more" than none at all. The ending was a travesty. I still remember the statements about "bittersweet" endings, and they weren't true in the least. Destroying an entire universe by taking away the only effective form of transportation is like destroying the infrastructure of, e.g. The United Kingdom, and is not bitter-sweet in the least. There are some 66-70 million people living here. If you suddenly destroyed the infrastructure by dropping a series of nuclear bombs across key areas of the country, you would lose maybe 1-2 million in the explosions, another 5-7 million in the nuclear fallout, and another 50-60 million through the loss of infrastructure (that being the destruction of the roads, the pipelines for gas and water, the electrical lines carrying power etc) that would result.
It may have been true in our past that we could survive without these things, but now our society and infrastructure has developed to a size and sophistication where these things are essential... And this is also the case for the Mass Relays in the Mass Effect universe. Destroying them has not only stranded people where they aren't near their homes (and this is true for practically every species - they have people all across the galaxy), but it has cut off essential supply lines for as long as it takes to build new Mass Relays, and frankly, no-one (at least according to the Codex) knows how to build a relay from scratch. FTL using eezo drives takes far too long (centuries to get from Earth to Rannoch for example).
[b][color=rgb(255, 0, 0)">TL]: Eliminating infrastructure such that the vast majority of people remaining after the fact will die out as a consequence is not bitter-sweet. It's bitter. Providing context for this bitterness doesn't change this horrific outcome.[/color]
2: Personalization. This is only one aspect of our complaints, and would be a welcome addressing of our complaint in this area if not for the statements I have already mentioned about the destruction of the ME universe. What difference does it make to personalize the destruction of the universe? What difference does it make to tell the story of how the Quarians and the Geth made peace (or one or the other was wiped out) if the Geth were just going to be wiped out in the destroy "ending" anyway? What difference does it make in the ending where all the Mass Relays are destroyed and only the Geth have any chance of surviving (assuming Control and Synthesis)?
In the end, you can personalise the ending any way you like, and the only differences that will mean anything is in how your characters react. Are you going to remove the Normandy crash scene altogether? Because there's no justifiable reason for Joker to suddenly decide to bail out of a fight, committing treason, picking up his squadmates (who would never have abandoned Earth or Shepard to begin with) in the process, before making an FTL jump to "somewhere", then "somehow" crash-land on a planet, despite apparently being in an FTL jump while being pursued by a shock-wave of "some kind", which was powerful enough to rip off the engines and the wings, while "somehow" leaving the hull intact enough to get to the planet safely without the damaged portions of the ship burning up in the atmosphere due to lack of re-entry heat protection.
And are you going to "clarify" the reason why everyone looks so damned happy to be stepping off of a ship onto an unknown jungle planet in the middle of nowhere, with no hope of ever returning home, and no idea what happened to their commander, and with the possibility that one of those crew members is Shep's love interest, who should have been at the very least worried for his or her sake?
[b][color=rgb(255, 0, 0)">TL]: A lot of things make absolutely no sense in their current state, such that clarification and personalisation won't make a damned bit of difference. The only way to resolve these issues is to make actual changes to the narrative at these points such that these out-of-context, out-of-universe events don't actually happen. [/color]But according to this vague PR statement, we're not going to get that.
The Mass Effect franchise is one of the most highly decorated series in the history of games, having earned over 250 awards from critics around the world.
Thank you for re-iterating again the "awards" and "look at how great we are, praise be us" nonsense that doesn't mean a thing when compared to what people who actually bought the game think, and when our concerns haven't actually been addressed at all.
Mass Effect 3 launched last month to universal critical acclaim-
No, I'm sorry, but that is an out-and-out lie. A lot of those people who purchased (as in bought and paid for, myself included) the game did not greet it with acclaim. I certainly did not. The game was good, the beginning and middle of the story were fine, and the gameplay mechanics were passable and did not detract from the story... But acclaim was never universal.
-receiving over 75 perfect scores.
See TL;DR below if necessary.
Yes, from "critics" like IGN and other gaming sites, whose revenue comes from being given future titles to examine and play-test. This fact influences the scores they give to games given they have to continue to please the game publishers enough that they'll give them future titles to review. I imagine that the vast majority of these "perfect" scores were given by people who have never completed the game... And that's significant.
When you compare it to users who have actually played and completed the game, the critique is far from universal acclaim, and even taking into account some of the unfairly-negative panning due to the inclusion of same-gender romances (for example), those reviews which are based on the story itself, and take into account how it ends, are far from "universal" acclaim.
I grow tired of you singing your own praises all the time while you steadfastly refuse to acknowledge our ACTUAL concerns about the game's ending, and I imagine I am not alone in this.
I said it in my previous letter to Ray, and I'll say it again here.
Stop pissing on our heads and telling us it's raining. It's insulting.
[b][color=rgb(255, 0, 0)">TL] Game site scores are meaningles next to the opinions of those who actually purchase and play the game. Inflating your own egos won't change this fact.[/color]
The rest of the announcement has been chopped as it's pointers to other information sites and is therefore not relevant.
Modifié par FS3D, 05 avril 2012 - 04:29 .
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