Stanley Woo wrote...
Not doing what you want us to do, and not agreeing with our decisions, does not mean we have stopped listening. It is possible to completely disagree with you while still taking your feedback into account.
If you don't give the fans what they want, you aren't taking their feed back into account. Simply seeing the words appear on screen and taking no action is worse than not listening. It gives some people the feeling of hope that you might eventually give them what they wanted which was a satisfying conclusion to an epic story. This is a product that is being sold to customers. The customers are angry because what they got is less than they were led to believe they would get and what they saw in the last few minutes of the game was jarring and traumatic. Sounds dramatic doesn't it? It is the truth. When the players are so emotionally invested in a story which has been so personalized up to this point, and we are left with no good choices and no positive outcome, the fans can't help but feeling betrayed, outraged and in some cases even ripped off.
While I think it's important to believe in the product you are making, and you should enjoy making it, at some point a story grows beyond it's creators. It isn't about what you want anymore. It's not about artistic integrity or even your vision of how it should be. The game series has transcended all of that whether you wanted it to or not. While you are the content provider, it is important to be sensitive to the emotional investment the players have in it. They are after all paying customers. When they aren't getting what they felt like they paid for, you need to address that.
Now ask everyone here about what it would honestly take to satisfy them at a minimum and you will get a different answer from each person who replies to the thread and potentially more than one response. It's unlikely you'd be able to collect data that's not skewed in some form or fashion so providing something that would change the overall consensus on the endings, at least among those who vehemently despise the ending, is difficult. I can appreciate endings are hard to write.
But the attitude of "We are proud of the work we've done" and "we won't change our artistic vision" and drawing a line in the sand of not really changing the ending is never going to lead to anything but negative feedback. You do realize that? Yeah the descision is BioWare's no one denies that. But you've failed to truly grasp the real reasons why we are upset and nothing BioWare has said to date gives us any hope or the slightest impression you guys are actually listening to our grievences. This is why you see so many similar threads and so much rage on these forums. Until we actually get the sense that you actually care enough to take action, and that action will be meaningful and worth the effort, expect threads like this one to continue to pop up daily.
I'm going to tell you now, that clarity which doesn't change the ending, probably won't cut it. We didn't as a general rule like the endings at all. The entire catalyst deus ex machina batch of sad ass endings which seemingly leave no potential for sequels
(and no, prequels do not count) down the line just doesn't sit well with us.
Short version of what needs to be addressed:
1.) Deus Ex Machina plot devices like the Catalyst and Crucibal are well below the standards of quality presented in the bulk of the game and the series as a whole. This is not indiciative of BioWare's typical writing capabilities. You guys went a new direction which seems incongruent with material presented so far. It's out of place and out of character. It's annoying and we just didn't like it. Frankly all of it needs to go out the airlock.
(Javik has great ideas for dealing with things like this.) 2.) Happy endings. Why not have these as an option? The fact is Americans do not generally like sad endings. Especially not for something we actually care about. What was even worse than seeing Shepard die, was seeing the Normandy destroyed (AGAIN) and seeing the crew stranded and screwed over. You also have to realize here that the Normandy has been our Shepard's home for the last two games and it is a character unto itself. It's loss seems pointless, wasteful and it's as sad for some of us as losing any other characters.
3.) The galaxy seems worse off than it might have been if we had let the Reapers do what they do. We need to know that there is indeed a bright future for all races and worlds we fought to save. It takes more than statements like "no one is going to starve and the relays can be rebuilt one millenia or so later to satisfy this.
Will the upcoming DLC address these problems? Items 2 and 3 seem reasonable to address and in fact fan story boards and edits of existing endings with story boards seem to show that these are indeed fixable without too much effort. That first item is hard to deal with. Especially given the plot holes, incongruence with the rest of the series etc.
For me personally, I'd almost rather see indoctrination theory proven right, give you the benefit of the doubt for creating it and then forgive you for giving us an incomplete story. Of course that means you have to set things right with DLC or give us an ME4 in which we really do take back Earth and get rid of the Reapers without some Deus Ex Machina plot device. In fact cut scenes in the trailers show that Reapers can be damaged by conventional fire. Albeit needing a great deal of resources and coordination of fleets to do so. Let the forces we have gathered do the job they were brought there to do.
I'd rather see a massive death toll and people prevail through sheer determination and will to survive, and the ending be based on your war assets and strength of military forces with the Relays intact as this would leave real hope for a bright tomorrow even though the overall tone of the game is grim. It's all very simple and workable.
Hell I'd love it if the crucibal didn't do anything at all. It's just a device so massive in scope that it would take an entire united galaxy to build it and bringing people together was it's true purpose. Sounds like a Hallmark card, but it's better than Star Child. (And requires less changes to the game to fix.)
Oh well I'm done with my tangent.
Modifié par Dead_Meat357, 13 avril 2012 - 05:20 .
Ce sujet est fermé
Retour en haut
