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[CulturalGeekGirl]

drayfish wrote...

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

Every other story I've encountered that succesfully uses this kind of meta-text has given hints earlier that this was the direction they were traveling... whether it is establishing the narrator as unreliable from the start, referencing unknown works of non-existant scholars, or simply self-referentially footnoting until the cows get bored. There needs to be a hint, early on, that we are going on a different kind of journey.

This is why I don't buy most of the meta-textual interpretations of this particular ending. From the start, Mass Effect has been dripping with pull-you-in, win-you-over, break-your-heart sincerity. I love metatextual narratives that encourage you to engage with the nature of the medium they're in, but Mass Effect has never been one of those, and I actually really respect their sincerity level.

Absolutely. That's why I find the ending so jarring now that I am starting to read it in that way. Given the depth of sincerity and investment that the three games have asked from the audience, and repeatedly rewarded, this kind of break would be a complete violation of a firmly established relationship, and should never have been attempted.  I'm just finding it hard to discount the manifest dialogue wheel and the literally glowing deus ex machina. Again, the writers have never shown themselves to be this unaware of the ramifications of their material before now.

As you say, Calvino's novel is the perfect example for how to do it properly, as it indicates to you through it's very title the experience he is evoking, carries you through it on every page, and then ends (NOT-REALLY-A-SPOILER ALERT) as a textual kiss between fiction and audience, lovingly elevating the act of reading to a romantic embrace.

Mass Effect was the evocation of a universe in which we were invited to live. Telling us at the final moments (if indeed that is what they were trying to allude to) that it was also a game undermines that imaginative projection in a disturbing, self-immolating way.

Damn it.

Ok, I literally stopped by my apartment to walk my roomate's dog, and I've got to leave in five minutes... but of COURSE I refresh the thread, and of COURSE this response is here. And now, if I don't write a response, it's gonna be sitting in my head all night.

To put it as quickly as I can... I think their goal was not to say "this is just a game," instead they were trying to strip everything away but the core of the experience... it's just that they were wrong about what the core of the experience was.

I think they were sitting in a room and the ending felt broken and they thought "ok, what can we get rid of to get rid of the badness? What parts are absolutely necessary? What is the core of the game?" And they decided that it was about Shepard LEARNING something and then having to make a CHOICE that would produce an EFFECT.  What would Shepard be making a choice about? Why, the most important conflict in the game: ORGANICS VS. SYNTHETICS.

Learning, conflict, volition, effect.

They thought that by reducing the game to just that, they'd capture its spirit. Instead, they cut away everything that gave it soul.

That's my theory, anyway. Maybe I'm wrong.

Edit: those CAPSLOCKS are not meant to be condescending, I just use them for bold when I'm in a hurry.

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 02 juin 2012 - 02:01 .

[KitaSaturnyne]

Good lord, people. I step out to pick up my Max Payne 3 PC Special Edition pre-order (PC, baby! WOOOOO!), and you guys get all asplody all over the thread.

I don't have anything to add to drayfish and CGG's meta-text discussion. I wish I did.

Welcome, alleyd. You needn't have any courage to post here, everyone's words are welcome at anytime.

@Mani Mani

You know what I miss? When CTRL+ALT+DEL would freaking shut Windows down. That's what I miss.

[LeTtotheC]

Re London: I wonder if Anderson is from the East side or West Side of Town, Or North or South of the River?
On a cockney Rhyming Slang there's translation that might acuse B/W of being a bit of a bubble with the ending (I don't mean Greek, there's another meaning that may be amusing. Anyone interested in the translation please PM me)

I'm tossing it up between Brixton for the growing up in the rough side of town, or Kingston Upon Thames, because it's a beautiful part of the city*.  Especially during the summer time, pint in hand, as you watch the sunset over the Thames.  Bliss.  

*Plus it's near Richmond Park, and who the heck doesn't want to save the deer of Richmond Park?

[delta_vee]

 Thread goes asplodey, and (luckily) for once I have little to add. Wonderful.

@alleyd

Welcome to the party. 'Twas a good read.

I'm more of a Clash man, myself, but I certainly agree with your meaning. If nothing else has come of this smoking wreck, the breadth and depth of useful, valid, interesting criticism it has provoked (here and elsewhere), not only of this game, but of all games and the very concept of games, has been heartening to say the least. I'm hoping in the long run we will see a flourishing of new works spurred on by this one, if only to prove it wrong.

@drayfish

Excellent textwall, as always.

I haven't read Calvino. My current gold standard for metatext is House of Leaves - and again, the nature of the text is made apparent, well, not immediately (if ever) - but it certainly establishes that it's something along that spectrum rather immediately.

Not to diminish your metatextual musings (which are certainly as interesting as I've come to expect), but I think it's more indicative of the lengths, the contortions, the frantic grasps we make to understand this untenable, inscrutable ontology.

It seems as though I'm the only one without a headcanon, though. I have no rewrites of the scene in my head. No extension of what came after. I haven't been able to selectively ignore (or convince myself sufficiently of the unreality of) any part of it. I simply...disconnected. After a period of anger and confusion and all the rest, of course - but fundamentally I no longer connect to the game(s) as I once did. No amount of mental reorganization or critical analysis has been able to restore that link.

Like frypan, I'm somewhat hesitant to engage with new games. I have a metric ton of them sitting on my hard drive, ready to delve into. I just haven't been able to play them. (Except Dark Souls. Drink.) With a weekend spread before me, I think I'll make myself try, just to prove ME3 hasn't damaged anything permanently.

@frypan

"Meta" is just one prefix amongst many, and perfectly usable with any word which the concept could be seen to apply to. If your lecturer had a problem with it, I'd be inclined to check them for membership in Dinosauria.

@CGG

"Learning, conflict, volition, effect." That does seem compelling as a mechanic, doesn't it? But you're right, it's not really the distillation of Mass Effect, which to me at least is far more...accumulative, in all four categories - and all four are more continuous over the course of the game than any single dialogue node could allow.

@Kita

Lemme know how MP3 is. I keep getting mixed feelings from people, and I'm perched perilously on the fence.

Modifié par delta_vee, 02 juin 2012 - 03:24 .

[edisnooM]

@KitaSaturnyne

Ah yes, the good old days. Before we got all these new fangled transparent windows, and LCD screens. Kids these days don't know how good they have it.

In my day we had to carry CRT monitors on our backs, uphill both ways, in the snow, without shoes. :-)


On the topic of gaming, I have spent most of my game time since beating ME3 playing Multiplayer and Team Fortress 2, and I mucked about in Skyrim for a couple hours. Nothing that really requires much of a commitment.

However Arkham City just got a new DLC that looks very good and I think I will be purchasing it. And I think that if punching out thugs as the GD Batman doesn't get you back in a gaming mood, nothing will. :-)

[KitaSaturnyne]

@Mani Mani

Well, to be fair, we had it pretty good back then too. Remember when Ultima games came out with encyclopedias disguised as instruction manuals? So much fiction, so many memories. Wing Commander came on a teeny floppy disk, but had Claw Marks and a whole bunch of other reference material. Wh... what is this salty discharge?!

@delta_vee

I shall. I don't know that I'll be a tie-breaking vote for you or anything, but I'll let you know my thoughts.

[edisnooM]

@KitaSaturnyne

Yeah I guess there were good things too, but it's fun to yell crankily at the kids on the lawn.

[JadedLibertine]

alleyd wrote...

 Re London: I wonder if Anderson is from the East side or West Side of Town, Or North or South of the River?
On a cockney Rhyming Slang there's translation that might acuse B/W of being a bit of a bubble with the ending (I don't mean Greek, there's another meaning that may be amusing. Anyone interested in the translation please PM me)

I like to imagine Anderson is an Edmonton boy. 

[Woodstock-TC]

btw the claim regarding "artistic integrity" is such a cheap joke.
Check this article (in german but you can google translate, or browse through the picture) how many of the big and even artful movies got a changed ending

http://einestages.sp...am_schluss.html

to name some:
pretty woman,
Rambo,
Natural Born Killers,
I Am Legend,
Fatal Attraction,
Evil Dead,
Blade Runner,
Butterfly Effect,
28 Days Later,
The Omen,
Clerks,
Dawn of the Dead,
etc... etc..

to claim Artistic Integrity just shows the rather amusing, adolescent state of the Gaming Industry.

Modifié par Woodstock-TC, 02 juin 2012 - 04:34 .

[Jassu1979]

Woodstock-TC wrote...

btw the claim regarding "artistic integrity" is such a cheap joke.
Check this article (in german but you can google translate, or browse through the picture) how many of the big and even artful movies got a changed ending

http://einestages.sp...am_schluss.html

to name some:
pretty woman,
Rambo,
Natural Born Killers,
I Am Legend,
Fatal Attraction,
Evil Dead,
Blade Runner,
Butterfly Effect,
28 Days Later,
The Omen,
Clerks,
Dawn of the Dead,
etc... etc..

to claim Artistic Integrity just shows the rather amusing, adolescent state of the Gaming Industry.

In all fairness, many of these last-minute changes did not exactly improve the corresponding films, and were either based on studio mandates (Blade Runner) or utterly inane test audiences (I am Legend).

[Woodstock-TC]

Jassu1979 wrote...

In all fairness, many of these last-minute changes did not exactly improve the corresponding films, and were either based on studio mandates (Blade Runner) or utterly inane test audiences (I am Legend).

 

neithed did I made any comment about better/worse. (i agree with you regarding the titles btw) Its about professionalism in a similar environment and potential target audience. Moviemakers tend to be a little longer around and had their lessons. (a tlitle such as ME is never being created 'just for the art sake')
If i´d have to take an example, the original ending of clerks is pretty much inline with the ME ending. In this case he simply had no clue how to write a meaningful ending and decided to kill them all. Lots of speculation

Modifié par Woodstock-TC, 02 juin 2012 - 05:06 .

[Sable Phoenix]

I don't have anything substantive to add at the moment, I just wanted to say, welcome to the thread, alleyd. You have no cause to be nervous, I'm already impressed with what I've read from you. And Woodstock-TC, I love that avatar. Very inventive screenshot to depict Shepard's iconic status

Hm... that gives me an idea... >goes back to muttering creepily in the corner<.

Modifié par Sable Phoenix, 02 juin 2012 - 08:57 .

[FamilyManFirst]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...
I think they were sitting in a room and the ending felt broken and they thought "ok, what can we get rid of to get rid of the badness? What parts are absolutely necessary? What is the core of the game?" And they decided that it was about Shepard LEARNING something and then having to make a CHOICE that would produce an EFFECT.  What would Shepard be making a choice about? Why, the most important conflict in the game: ORGANICS VS. SYNTHETICS.

Learning, conflict, volition, effect.

They thought that by reducing the game to just that, they'd capture its spirit. Instead, they cut away everything that gave it soul.

That's my theory, anyway. Maybe I'm wrong.

Except, I never got the impression that the most important conflict in the game was organics vs. synthetics.  Even the Reapers never struck me as being synthetic, they were always some kind of synthetic/organic hybrid.  The big, obvious conflict was the Reapers vs. all other races in the galaxy, organic and synthetic.  That's one of the reasons why the ending is so jarring to me; they took this old, secondary plotline from ME1, Geth (synthetic) vs. organics, and elevated it to the Big Problem Facing The Galaxy.

That's the biggest reason why I have strong reservations about the author of the post that claims that Casey Hudson and Mac Walters wrote the ending by themselves.  The author is suspected to be Patrick Weekes, as he had posted under that username before, but he denies it.  Moreover, the post describes the three central themes of ME3 as Galactic Alliances, Friends, and Organics vs. Synthetics.  That last item is just wrong to me ... where in ME3 is there any conflict between organics and synthetics save in the Priority: Rannoch mission?  Even there, half the players resolve the conflict.  I would think that Patrick Weekes would know better.  Then again, I would have expected all of the ME writers to know better, but clearly I'm wrong there.

At any rate, regarding the meta-textual discussion, it occurred to me this morning: wouldn't any mistake that broke the 4th wall tend to support that notion, whether it was intended or not?  I still have trouble giving the writers enough credit to have been trying something that subtle.

[CulturalGeekGirl]

My whole "the most important conflict" thing was supposed to be slightly sarcastic. I don't actually think the most important conflict in the game is organics vs. synthetics, but that's what some devs have claimed it is, so that was my theory about why they picked it.

A few quick notes about this idea before I go back to my game-of-thrones-themed baking endeavor:

I have no doubt that organics vs. synthetics was intended to be a major theme of the series... the problem, I think, is that both good design and good writing considerably weakened that plot point. This is something I've seen happen in team writing sessions all the time: one of the writers on a team has an idea for a conflict, and another writer writes that conflict, and the conflict doesn't turn out to have the "feel" that the original writer had for their idea.

Now, there are two ways this can go: the original "idea man" can say "Ah, I really wanted organics and synthetics to seem like they were constantly at each others throats and that war between them was inevitable, but that's not what's coming through so far, so let's evolve the idea of our narrative to fit with these new ideas."

Or, the original "idea man" can try to bring the newer story that doesn't match his original conception back in the direction of that original conceit. This happens a lot if the original idea person is, say, a showrunner, or the original creator of a long-running IP.

I'd also like to note that this isn't about power trips, or a negative judgment of showrunners or creators. A lot of the time, they're right... sometimes a junior writer comes back with something that seriously does not fit with the IP. Stewarding a universe in that way is no easy task, but I think that, in the case of Mass Effect, they made the wrong call.

I think that may be what happened here, but this is just a guess, based on little more than intuition and a few war stories I have from friends in the TV writing industry.

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 03 juin 2012 - 03:14 .

[Seijin8]

That makes sense, and it ties into something mentioned earlier about how teams sometimes don't gel right, despire having all the right parts. In a lot of ways, a work like ME must be harder to write well than a novel or similar single-author story.

And plenty of individual authors still drop the ball on things like this.

Thanks once again for the insight, CulturalGeekGirl. Have a cookie, you've earned it!

(And I am hellacurious... "Game of Thrones-themed baking?")

[Jassu1979]

I don't think the whole team failed here, and I doubt that the writers who were in charge of Tuchanka and Rannoch were also responsible for the disastrous final five minutes. I don't know whether the rumours about two guys "soloing" the finale without any team feedback are correct. What I do know, however, is that the ending does not mesh at all with what is established throughout the games - including considerable portions of ME3.
I doubt that a person who wrote the Consensus-mission and conjured up a peace between the quarians and the geth would end up claiming: "the created will always rebel against the creators".
I doubt that a person who let both Mordin and Legion voice their distaste for the reapers' "gifts" and instant technological progress could end up advocating synthesis as the ultimate solution to galactic conflict.

[drayfish]

Jassu1979 wrote...
 
What I do know, however, is that the ending does not mesh at all with what is established throughout the games - including considerable portions of ME3.
I doubt that a person who wrote the Consensus-mission and conjured up a peace between the quarians and the geth would end up claiming: "the created will always rebel against the creators".
I doubt that a person who let both Mordin and Legion voice their distaste for the reapers' "gifts" and instant technological progress could end up advocating synthesis as the ultimate solution to galactic conflict.

@ Jassu1979: Indeed. In a similar sense, I remember in my play all of the affirmations of teamwork that were repeatedly expressed (and welcomingly received) throughout – much of which seemed to be jettisoned after the truncated farewells to the surviving crewmembers and the final push through London.
 
I loved the scene with Garrus up on the catwalks of the Presidium, not only because of the playfully reckless quality that it illuminated in that friendship one last time, but for the reminder that he would always be by my side, no matter what. I wish I could remember the actual dialogue, but the paraphrase is Shepard and Garrus agreeing that your friends are the ones who are willing to stand beside you as you stare into the darkest abyss. They won't leave your side. They'll fight on with you in spite of the odds. 
 
And I felt that acutely the whole way through the game ...until the narrative arbitrarily shot he and everyone else I loved off to another planet with no justification, while I was dissolved, 'sploded or electro-fried ... or (if I worked really, really hard) bled out in a pile of rubble. Yay. 
 
Much as CulturalGeekGirl has expressed earlier in the thread (with her Butch and Sundance conclusion: Shepard and Garrus leaping into an unknown wild green yonder), I found the absence of a companion in those final moments to be quite disconcerting. And it's hard to see how all of those reiterations of fellowship could have been devised by the same team of writers that stranded Shepard entirely alone.
 
(Personally, that's why I have been quite stirred by the alternate ending being offered by Koobismo based around the curious aberration of Marauder Shield's. There is a tenacity and bond to the characters and their struggle in this version of events that was missing from the final moments of the canon narrative...)

Modifié par drayfish, 03 juin 2012 - 10:47 .

[Seijin8]

Agreed wholeheartedly about Koobismo's Marauder Shields comic, which has more than enough artistic integrity to show the BW devs how it ought to be done.

[edisnooM]

And the audio versions of the comics are quite impressive as well, some of the voices seem pretty dang close to the originals.

[CARL_DF90]

Whoa, what? Audio versions of the comics?

[Jorji Costava]

Looks like I'm late to the party once again. If you'll excuse my tardiness, I just want to add this to the earlier discussions on meta-texutality (lots of meta-textuality for everyone!). I'm not sure if the developers were deliberately making efforts to break the fourth wall, but I do think they took themselves to be doing something that was subversive, of their own conventions and perhaps of video game conventions generally (recall Casey Hudson's comment that a final boss fight would be too "videogamey").

In particular, I think they really wanted the big final choice at the end to transcend their own paragon/renegade system. The final choice, which will decide the fate of the galaxy for all time hence, is so complex and so nuanced that we can't classify any of the options as purely paragon or purely renegade, because that would be too vulgar. It's commonplace to think that if you're doing something really "deep," then it's beyond classification, and I think that's what the developers wanted to do here. This could explain for instance, why we see Anderson choosing the red option and the Illusive Man choosing the blue option - "See, we're inverting your normal understanding of the paragon/renegade system by dissociating the colors with what they normally connote." It may also explain why the final cutscenes were all so similar; if they were too different from each other, it might be easier to single out one choice as the uniquely 'correct' choice, and I think the developers wanted to avoid sanctioning one choice as the right one (it didn't hurt that having such similar cutscenes saved a lot of time, money and resources). That might also explain why control and synthesis can only be unlocked with higher EMS, but the 'breath' scene can only be unlocked with the destroy option, which might otherwise just be considered the worst one.

To me, the idea that the final choice goes beyond the normal boundaries of the paragon/renegade system isn't bad in concept. I think we mostly agree that it didn't work for a lot of reasons, partly because the content of the choices is so off-putting given what most players have already experienced, and partly because instead of actually making the choice that complex and interesting, they took the easier route of simply not giving us any information about the options to make an informed choice. If you don't know what grabbing those rods or jumping into that beam actually does, it's hard to know that what it does is better or worse than the alternatives.

[CARL_DF90]

I think that would be giving them too much credit.

[GoblinSapper]

The excellent literary criticisms that arise from threads such as these are the fuel for my dislike of IT, which outright denies there ever was or will be a problem and covers it's ears going la la la bioware gonna fix it. Instead, we ought to be examining and learning, but to do that we must first understand that a problem exists.

[CARL_DF90]

I wouldn't write off the IT just yet, but that is another conversation for another thread.