Fapmaster5000 wrote...
Alright, I have a moment here to expand on my thoughts about the ending from my rapidly degrading post-chain last night. Sleep, time, and other duties have given time for the sediment in my brain to settle out, and bring "clarity" to why the EC bothers me, so very, very much.
First, these endings ARE better than what we got. The most obvious holes are patched over, the logical flaws and gameplay failures are addressed, and the endings expand on the "why" and "what next" questions raised by the original endings. These endings are appropriate, on target, and thematically consistent with a solitary vision of the ending. I still don't believe that theme and vision matches with the rest of the series, but this is an ending that I should dislike not and ending that should send me cackling away from my keyboard with black humor and sarcastic antipathy.
For those who don't know me, my reaction to "hate" is not anger, or fury. It manifests as a sudden dismissal, a "you aren't even worth my time" sneer and a string of sarcastic comments in response to every word spoken or written. I will not give you, or your progeny, the time of day. You are not worth my hate, so I make you object of derision, an un-person who produces pathetic un-things. This is probably not a healthy reaction, but it's the reaction I felt towards the EC, from the moment "we failed" was contrasted with the sunshine and rainbows of synthesis, and I had to know why I turned on it. I was relatively hopeful going in. I'd constructed threads discussing how to patch over the ending, how they might do it. The main one was "Threading the Needle", and I was correct on MANY points of the "how" they would fix it. So why did it bother me so much?
The answer is in the "why", or rather, the "where did this come from".
For some of you, you may remember a long winded and (surprisingly) emotional post I made in this thread, weeks ago, about a long-derailed campaign I had run. For those of you who are new to this thread, or simply saw the size of that post and decided "screw that", I'll break it down, quickly. I ran a long-term, story and character driven game with friends. It was reputed as one of the best games in town/college, and I took pride in it. Eventually, though, I attempted something that proved foolhardy, an "artistic" arc and ending that drove a spike into the players' hearts. The game broke down, violently, and friendships ended. I was left wondering, "What the hell just happened? That was the most ambitious and awesome thing I've ever run!"
The reply I quickly drew up, was that I'd forgotten the most important piece of the puzzle, the players. They'd been ground under by ambition and artistry, and snapped under a miserable theme and context. (Go read about it if you want to see it, it was bad.) Some reached out to me, I reached out to more, and apologies were exchanged all around, and eventually, most came back (one left town, but still tries to stay in contact). I rebooted the game, and we all learned some lessons. As the DM, the man behind the curtain, I learned the most, on how to respond better to what the players wanted, how to make a better game, and strike a better balance between my desires and the desires of the players around the table. We all have a lot more fun, because of that.
So I look at the EC, and I see shades of that, but not quite. I spent time, little money, and emotional self-analysis to meet the players in the middle, to see if from their perspective, and deliver my universe in a way that they could enjoy, to make it our story. They spent a lot of time and money, trying to explain to us why they were correct.
If I'd come to my players, or waited until they'd come to me, and then broken down, step by step, why they were simply incorrect, and the ending I'd planned was the perfect one, they'd have walked right back out, and had every right to. No one likes being treated like that, especially when they are correct in their objections. Yet, that's what Bioware did! They spent money (so much money) and time, bringing the actors in, developing cut scenes, risking their very series... to explain that we were wrong.
This is so wrong headed it makes me ill. Hubris and willful ignorance collide into a murky soup. They addressed the surface of what was wrong "oh, Joker left you because he was ordered to, but completely ignored the meat of the objections: the thematic break, the sudden, soul-crushing and inconsistent tenor of the endings. They made them mechanically better. They fixed the guts of their art, but they never confronted the chief objection that their "art" had betrayed their audience, and indeed, their own prior works.
The amount of resources, the quality of polish, only compound this. How much money did they spend, how much time was devoted, into a arrogantly informing us that we were wrong and they were right? The hubris only increases when you consider that they are gambling the possible future of their company on the idea that they do not need to address their audience, and that the problem with Mass Effect 3 was not in anything they did, but totally and completely upon our failure to understand their brilliance.
It's not in the game alone. The game alone, when held in an isolated thought bubble, only hints of this (as Hawk and jBauck were able to enjoy the game by ignoring the metatext), but when combined with the authorial intent expressed in the metatext, paints a disturbing portrait of arrogance and dismissal.
- Rejection does not solve anything. You die alone, wrong, and a coward for your principles, and you all lose.
- The next cycle uses the Crucible that you were too stupid not to.
- The next cycle uses the VERY SAME CRUCIBLE that you left behind, because the Reapers thought you, the player, was so stupid that they didn't even destroy it.
- The interview with Hudson, Walters, and Merizan was such a fapfest that it broke corporate spin records, but that was to be expected. Everyone spins. The problem was the direction of the spin. It was more "people didn't understand" and "people wanted more of our awesome". There was no acknowledgement of validity in the complaints.
This list goes on, a slew of slights and grievances, all minor on their own, but which showcase a distressing worldview.
They did not do any soul searching. There was no admission of failure, or even of culpability to the endings. The fault was entirely upon the audience, and they deigned to lowered themselves from their cloud, not to meet with us, but to dispense more of their wisdom. And why? Not to address our concerns, our concerns were below addressing,but to make the clamoring mob shut up and eat their cake. It was the noise they heard, not the words, and it was the noise they addressed, and now wait for praise.
They didn't have to do this. They went out of their way to make Reject a slap in the face. They could have just had it lose, and that would have been fine, but they colored that loss in the worst shades of "you failed" they possibly could. IF THEY WENT THROUGH THE TROUBLE OF ADDING THAT CHOICE, TO ADDRESS THOSE WHO ASKED FOR IT, WHY DID THEY THEN GO OUT OF THEIR WAY TO SPITE IT?
This boggles my mind! In their response to fan criticism, they took the hardest road: they added gameplay, in direct response to critique, but then spent their resources to deliberately make that new option not address the concerns it was ostensibly aimed towards. Then, when that proved to not be enough, they clarified in metatext that EVEN THAT WAS NOT ENOUGH, and you still lost even the point you stood upon, after you'd lost everything else, since the next cycle did what you were too dumb to do.
They changed nothing, but they spent capital, time, and reputation to do so. If they'd simply wanted to stick to their guns, they could have, should have, done that with simple interviews or metatext. "This was our story, this was our point. It may not be for everyone, but here's how and why we did it." That would have been fine. I'd have disagreed, but accepted.
Instead, they spent this vast investment, to extend the narrative and slap me across the face for not properly appreciating what they'd done. It's a betrayal of the fans, and the greater that fan's appreciation for themes and insight, the greater the power of the slap. This was the opposite of what I did with my group of friends. When they held out a hand, I took it, and we addressed the problem together. When we held out our hand, they spat in it, insulted us, and pushed us aside.
This is a story of hubris. This is a story of dismissal. The ending is appropriate. To Bioware, or at least the Mass Effect team, the lesser party must obey the greater. There is no hope, there is no compromise, no mutual respect. You accept what your given, mongrel, and enjoy it, be it starby's twisted solution or the writer's twisted expansion.
Well, good people, I reject you, both in and out of game, and while inside your playbox, you are God and the devil, able to rig the endings, you have no such say over my mind. There, I am sovereign, and I reject years of your work that I've let colonize my thoughts. I have my own thoughts, my own works. I'll stick to those. I have my own world, my own goals. I'll chase those.
I reject you, all your works, and all your empty promises.
I'm done.
ADDENDUM:
Some spare thoughts while I sip my coffee and check for errors: Only now do I truly grok to the title of this thread. Before, I hated the endings. Now I despise them, and for me, there is a difference. The original endings were incomplete, incorrectly delivered, and much of their damage was done through failure. Here, and now, we see the successful conclusion to their vision, and the only way I can describe my revulsion to it is this: A better delivered atrocity is not a better atrocity.
These are my exact thoughts as well the fact that the next cycle used the crucible is a slap in the face. I agree with everything in this post.
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