To me the biggest problem with Mass Effect 3 is not only the ending, it's the whole little obelisks that feel forced, that seemed to try and force you to build connections or are treated with much more input/fleshed out than the average reader/player would ever really want to know or know about.
These writer's pets, or creator's favourites are ultimately ME3's downfall, because they are present at the most glaring moments where the game is at fault, they are elements that feel alien to a highly global variable and interactive experience, and in a character-driven storyline, they are translated into characters, which I'll procceed to point out.
Nº1 Kai Leng, the antagonist of the books and what-not, Kai Leng is highly alien to anyone with less than a passing interest in anything but the games, his sudden importance in the game without any in-game foreshadowing is just a total faux pas, and yet here he is, awkwardly introduced and injected into highly climatic moments of the storyline, when he should have been nothing more than a cameo, in the most emotionally charged moments, and revelation/confrontation situations he is a placeholder for actual villains that the player would want to face in those determined moments.
They try to make you care via established well-liked characters like Anderson, that he is a big deal and relevant, when the player has no emotional invesment in you, they kill off an established well liked-character just to try and give him an actual role, the problem is coming to the closing chapters of a story a.k.a ME3, leaves little room for the introduction of new antagonists that have to compete with well-established threats, even more so, if the only reason they exist is to try and take the spotlight, Kai Leng fails at any of those and players love to hate him not because he's just that kind of character like Loghain in DA, but because he is a poor attempt at trying to pull heartstrings from a guy we're told we should care about.
Add to that he feels awfully misplaced design-wise in the game, and even in the universe's logic. A cyber-ninja fits Ninja Gaiden, it fits Metal Gear Solid, but Mass Effect? Jesus even Kasumi was eh at first, but ninja's?
Nº2 Liara T'soni Liara is the definition of a writer's pet. She was incredibly awkward/blank slated personality wise in ME1, her reedeming qualites as a character were her plot-device needs and the fact she is easily the most upfront LI, however in ME2 we see this clear attempt at trying to inject some relevance into her character, so we witness a contrived twist to make her likeable, in a semi-renegade vigilante type of model that completely dismisses what little personality she has, while tying her once again to the plot for no other reason but to make her relevant.
But I can deal, I mean only one more character to like right? Well then comes ME3, where she suddenly takes another sidestep in personality, and loses the whole vigilante/pseudo-renegade personality and becomes a much more prevalent plot device, as well as the most important confident for Shepard, not your LI's not even your best squadmates, it's Liara who gets all the importat introspective and confessions from Shepard, no matter what, you are forced into acting like you share the deepest connection to Liara, when you may even not like her, adding to this you share with her some of the most intimate/emotionally moving moments of the game when in some cases you barely can have a chit-chat with your LI's (poor ME2 romancers)
Liara serves as a plot device and as Shepard's main pillar of strength wether you like it or not, you will get thrown into moving speeches, heartfelt moments, and even almost romantic scenes when you might not even romance her, if Bioware thinks about a cannon LI you can sure as hell be certain it's Liara, I mean even if I threw the black box at her face she'd still want me to put all my memories inside.
Nº3 The Illusive Man/Cerberus Remember in ME1 who Cerberus was? A bunch of colour-swapped mooks that you ran over for quick XP, then remember when ME2 rolled in and all of a sudden they were this big shadow corp, with an anti-Shepard leader, and apparently a big ****ing deal even though they just seemed like amateur mad scientists?
I enjoy TIM, I really do, I think he invokes the best and worse of mankind in one character, as well as being the perfect counter-point to Shepard, and retaining an antagonist, mysterious facade. Well, I guess Bioware thought the same because the game that should have been about the Reapers sounded more like TIM & the other guys who show up at the end.
Not only was the already Cerberus has extensive funding and are totally badass plot kind of thin back in the end of ME2, ME3 comes around and stretches and procceeds to break the fine line between suspension of disbelief for narrative purposes to just throw logic out of the airlock.
Not only does TIM's never ending amount of resources expand, it's also passed on that they can apparently be a shadow organization that cares for only one race, but still fight off all galactic civilizations, with an elite army while every project they conduct blows in their faces time after time, and still can find a way to have tactical strikes, and be one step ahead of you, I know the man is loaded but please don't try and convince me it's not ridiculous that he can afford and get that many mooks specially after losing so many assets.
Lastly, TIM completely overshadows the series main antagonist, just because he is needed to fill in and add content between all of the major plot points diminishing his uniqueness as a character, and reaching the point of being a free-narrative-flow-maintainer card. His and Cerberus role in ME3 should have been smaller but on the large scale of things bigger, people wanted more TIM, but this way he ended up being banalized, and with that much of his mystique.
He's also responsible for introducing Kai Leng to ME3, so -1 point.
Nº4 Earth Kid/Catalawsgeuywrgz Even before the game came out there was a big issue that people took with the leaks of the ME3's plot, there was this kid that acted as a plot device that for the first time made Shepard doubt himself/herself, and apparently traumatizing her/him. This after being a war hero watching team members die, people he cared for getting shafted, and dying. It's this one kid that we are spoon fed through an entire game to try and justify Shepard's introspective self-doubt.
Not possibly killing your comrade on Virmire, sacrificing another one, not even seeing what the Collectors did, we are shoved various times during ME3 that it's this kid that made Shepard snap, now this is just ridiculous.
The whole introduction of the character before the twist was already awkward and alien, the dream sequences feel dettached from the narrative-style and the dimensions of the story and Shepard as a character, plus the writing feels really subpar in those moments as well as way too much leaning towards the melodromatic.
There's this scene that was cut from ME3 where Shepard while awaiting trials deals with his own mortality and what it meant to be revived, and how he felt about who he/she was, this was great writing this could flesh out the main character while allowing for a dialogue between the character (avatar with specific personality traits) and his conscious (the morality/personality of the character a.k.a) the player, this could have provided all the justification for self-doubt that Shepard feels upon failure, and could have worked in so many ways for scenes with LI's or even Joker after Thessia, but the writer's wanted the kid so they shoved him in, no matter how tacked on he felt, no matter how counter-flow he was.
Nº5 The Ending Oh What a Twist, I went there. No matter how much I harp on the different characters above, there's a bigger culprit in all of this mess, the true definition of a writer's pet something that only someone who wrote it and a few others can relate to, that break all narrative and theme logic of a trilogy and a story and decide at the last end that the ending for everyone's journey is something overrated, an ending to their story and a personal take on a very global moment of the game takes a whole personal and 'I want this ending to say: I own this story, I own you' route.
No matter it's redeeming values as writing (if it has any) the fact is, this ending is not the logical end to the story, it's not even the logical continuity of the 30 seconds prior, it isn't relatable, it's consequences are unforseeable and speculative, it's not open-ended it's speculation through omission and continuity/plot flaws, it is something highly cerebral and personal when it should have been something highly relatable and emotional, and that kind of ending is something only someone set on having it because it's how they want can like, something only people that want a twist with a dark and gritty atmosphere, this is the vision of forced bittersweetness, you clearly see the writer's intentions it breaks immersion to have these many things happening just because, and that's why it fails, it overrides player input and makes it an entity outside of the reader's journey.
Thank you for your time.
Modifié par Xion66, 14 avril 2012 - 05:32 .
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