5087 réponses à ce sujet

[robertthebard]

3DandBeyond wrote...

robertthebard wrote...

I won't disagree with this, with the addendum that, for me, with the planting of Liara's Time Capsules, although I'll never know one way or the other, I can go down with the hope that they do find them in time, and do manage to rally their galaxy and win.  I felt like I spent the first two thirds of the series beating my head against the wall rallying the galaxy, until all of a sudden, the boogeyman is at the door, then it's "That's our plan?".

Oh yes.  I really want to know how many people started the series with ME1 (or at any point) and said they hoped the ending would be a conversation with a little boy about what it all means.

Whatever the feelings on ME2, there's a real sense you are going to do something big and difficult and you do that.  You even have these moments where you can really mess things up (crew members die because you don't reach them in time on the Collector's base) and you wonder how to fix that.  You can also go and get the IFF too early and really mess up a lot of things.  I know that some have criticized ME2 for being more about making friends of your teammates in doing their loyalty missions, but as I see it this is a core part of the story-it is the story.  It's just set against fighting some big bad guys, but for all that that matters the reapers could be pirates that are trying to take over the galaxy.  It only matters that there's a foe to fight.  Everyone Shepard meets is tormented by something and Shepard changes that.  That might mean a person finds some peace with what they've done or even dies, but no one's left unchanged by the meeting.  But, it comes down to the player making the decision and Shepard acting it out.

You do still have the idea that all these things/people were brought together for a purpose and that it's a race to save all.  But the writers made the focus of the game too small.  It's the galaxy, no it's Earth, no it's London, no it's the "citadel" hidden room.  Likewise the foes started to get pared down.  It's some unknown scary big threat with a lot of helpers, no it's a big scary threat with a big force, no it's a lot of horde minions that are fairly easy to kill, no it's one glowing kid that you need to discuss the meaning of life with.

I have a feeling that if this were a game about WWII, we'd start off working to get allies to come together to fight a common foe and save the world where there are many fields of battle.  Then we'd end up running into an apartment building in Tallahassee Florida, to talk to Hitler.  We'd end up agreeing with him that we need to pick one of his choices (not ours)  to get the allies to stop fighting each other because he was only fighting us to keep us from fighting each other.  After that we'd skip away together.

Ha ha, I'd almost pay to see that.

[ScriptBabe]

Terrific article. I had written a number of similar musings on my blog melindasnodgrass.com, but coming at it as a screenwriter/novelist. Ultimately it's about the contract we make with the reader/viewer/player, and unfortunately Bioware/EA broke that contract to deliver what they promised at the beginning.

[3DandBeyond]

ScriptBabe wrote...

Terrific article. I had written a number of similar musings on my blog melindasnodgrass.com, but coming at it as a screenwriter/novelist. Ultimately it's about the contract we make with the reader/viewer/player, and unfortunately Bioware/EA broke that contract to deliver what they promised at the beginning.

Not that you need me to tell you this, but there was another thread about you and your blog-love your blog by the way as well as The Measure of a Man.  I consistently think about this in relation to such discussions and did so when Legion asked if he had a soul.  He had one well before he asked the question because he was never an "it" to me.  Nor was EDI even before she walked on 2 legs.

They do need your help here and if not you, those like you and the professor.  That they ignore this is to their discredit.

[subtle kirjava]

I love this professor. Said just about everything I was thinking.

[3DandBeyond]

subtle kirjava wrote...

I love this professor. Said just about everything I was thinking.

Exactly!

[SHARXTREME]

BTW where is dreyfish these days?

[3DandBeyond]

SHARXTREME wrote...

BTW where is dreyfish these days?

Comes here every so often to add to the discussion.

[vallore]

3DandBeyond and SHARXTREME, very interesting posts.

3DandBeyond wrote...



.........

I have seen movies, read books where the main character died and I cried everytime I thought about it and I loved every minute and all of that ending.  I've even said that my favorite tv series ending of all time was for "Six Feet Under" and that is at once the saddest and yet most satisfying ending I have yet to see.  It was even uplifting because it was in character and it gave context and meaning to the lives of the show's characters.  Tragic things happen in that ending, but it is so well done and so fitting an end for all those people I cared about that I can't think of one single other ending that would have been more appropriate.

..........

Indeed; a tragic ending, when appropriate to a story, can be very rewarding. I can’t help but think of Bladerunner: Roy Batty’s death, (the replicant leader).

There we had meaning and beauty. In his last moments, Roy transcends his own goals; his desperate struggle for his own life becomes love for all life, even for the life of the one that, moments ago, was his enemy. And the film could do that so well because it was so fitting, the last piece of the puzzle that was that character.

But Shepard’s? No; to start with, death was something that did not fit her well, not as they wrote the character.

She was ever the indomitable spirit that never breaks, the one ship that braves the worse storms and always returns to port. You cannot write such character’s death casually. It must have meaning, it must be necessary, it must both heroic and epic, and it must be on the player’s own terms.
And it was neither of that.

While some characters are meant to die, as Roy Batty, others like Kirk or Shepard are meant to live. It is what best fits them: the authors made them into the “living” avatars of victory. You cannot kill such characters in a satisfying way without making their deaths into an undisputed victory. And that includes even the choice of death.

SHARXTREME wrote...


Yes, indeed.
And you are right in other points as well. As I have mentioned too, the very ending was played by Bioware, not by player. From the moment of the charge at the beam, player lost all control over the vast, complicated world constructed from players decisions, and entered ultimately limited microcosm of Bioware's ending "vision".
They could even pull the "Skyline's" ending completely. Catalyst could suck Shepard's brain out and turn to red or blue(renegade or paragon) or techno-green (if you were in the middle).
Then, at the climax of synthesis ending, Catalyst would visit your love interest, for example Liara, and say: Now off to make some blue babies.

....

Skyline... yes, I remember; that film’s ending felt completely pointless, forced...and they want to make more, apparently...

In regard with player control, I agree. Especially in the vanilla endings, (for me) after the lift, the game strips the player of almost all control over Shepard.(But even in the EC what the player can do remains uncharacteristically limited, this time not so much in the number dialogue options but in the nature of those).

Originally, I felt as if I was no longer a participant, but simply the audience. This was not my Shepard; it was the author’s Shepard, ( even so, strangely unrecognizable in character and temperament), to the point I even asked myself why did they bother to ask me to make the final decision, as I had no part in the mini-“debate” with the catalyst anyway.

The EC manages to attenuate this feeling of alienation in relation to Shepard, but it only could do so much. Since they didn’t change the nature of the dialogue with the Catalyst, we are still forced to be mostly out of character.

But, thinking of it, the lost of player agency is something that is becoming increasingly a problem with Bioware’s games. First paraphrases took direct control from the player in choosing what her character would say, then auto-dialogue increased the loss of control, and finally the player practically relegated to the role of passive audience in ME3 ending. It feels almost as if the player became an obstacle to be circumvented instead of the co-storyteller of old.

[drayfish]

@ vallore: Great posts. I completely agree. It really captures that weird nether-space that the ending fell into for me. In the effort to not be too 'videogamey' they sacrificed player agency; and in trying to invalidate any one conclusion they intentionally soured all of the possible victories, utterly failing to deliver a satisfying narrative endpoint at all. Exactly as you say, both my Shepard and I (with the controller laying slack in my hand), were left feeling screwed. The whole journey was proved to be just the lead up to flipping some arbitrary switch that the enemy designed for its own ends.
 
As SHARXTREME put it so well:
 

Players victory is not possible because Bioware didn't want the player to play the ending, they wanted to convey some sort of twisted limited message or to destroy their franchise.

...Wow. So deep, Bioware.  Thanks for that.
 
And it's not as if you can't have a genuinely bittersweet ending where the 'lose' scenario isn't a narratively crippling downer. Dragon Age: Origins showed that there is room for several different endings, some loaded with moral compromise, some with complete virtue, some with shades of grey, some with borderline-maniacal self-interest. And we've already spoken of it, but the ending of Red Dead Redemption is not all bunnies and unicorns; it was thematically consistent and wholly in keeping with the remainder of the game.
 
I think if they were so desperate to go for martyrdom with Shepard (which, in their clumsy crucifixion iconographic they make clear was precisely their goal), that death should at least represent something elemental of the character herself – her vision of the world and why that perspective is important to articulate, fundamental enough to sacrifice oneself to. Otherwise she really is just another body to throw onto a pile. At present the only visions that are validated are the hard-core Renegade options, meaning that unless you played Shepard in a specific, morally compromised way, you are expressly informed at the end that you played it wrong. We are told in the final moments: you wouldn't be feeling this way if you had just agreed to not care about this stuff earlier on.
 
And I definitely don't think it's enough to just show 'Hey, it's okay, everything turned out great!' in the epilogue slides. Those gear-grinding narrative retrofits are just fortunate after-effects, and depend entirely upon lazy meta-gaming knowledge from the writers. At the moment that Shepard died she was being compelled to act in accordance with her enemy, subscribing to their beliefs, and thereby forgoing everything that she had learnt from her friends and experience along the way to that point.  She is forced to give up on the unity that she spent three games trying to foster in service of a decision made for everyone in utter isolation from those it would go on to effect forever. 
 
At present I subscribe to that lovely image that robertthebard laid out, that by Refusing the Catamaran's plan, and fighting on to at least slightly weaken the hoard, the next cycle of life found Liara's Time Capsules and defeated the Reapers through conventional means. But I really resent that as a player I have to 'imagine' a happy ending, have to legitimately force myself to ignore the messages (in tweets and in-game) that Bioware has offered for their conclusion, while a hypothetical someone who sees no problem at all with some of the most vile hate-crimes in human history gets to enjoy the ending without compromise, feeling no ripple of doubt at all as they see their values validated by Shepard's final action alive.
 
That was not the message of inclusivity and virtue I had thought I was playing toward for three games. As you say so wonderfully 3DandBeyond:
 

I know that some have criticized ME2 for being more about making friends of your teammates in doing their loyalty missions, but as I see it this is a core part of the story-it is the story. It's just set against fighting some big bad guys, but for all that that matters the reapers could be pirates that are trying to take over the galaxy. It only matters that there's a foe to fight. Everyone Shepard meets is tormented by something and Shepard changes that. That might mean a person finds some peace with what they've done or even dies, but no one's left unchanged by the meeting. But, it comes down to the player making the decision and Shepard acting it out.

I would have loved if this had remained true through to the endpoint, but for some reason the writers decided to jettison these principles and themes for some kind of rote ethical dilemma that has nothing to do with the material that led to its pronouncement. 
 
 
 
Also, @ scriptbabe (Melinda): thank you for the kind words, but more so for writing some exceptionally great material yourself. ...I am attempting not to geek out right now (hold it together, dray, keep your cool...), but 'Measure of a Man' was a perfect mediation for many of the themes of 'life' that were so clumsily (and tragically) mishandled in the Mass Effect conclusion. Thank you for showing such eloquence and elegance in your work.

Modifié par drayfish, 24 juillet 2012 - 01:46 .

[3DandBeyond]

vallore wrote...


But Shepard’s? No; to start with, death was something that did not fit her well, not as they wrote the character.

She was ever the indomitable spirit that never breaks, the one ship that braves the worse storms and always returns to port. You cannot write such character’s death casually. It must have meaning, it must be necessary, it must both heroic and epic, and it must be on the player’s own terms.
And it was neither of that.

Snipped because this is a beautiful sentiment.....love the rest as well though.

Actually life could have fit her much better than even any meaningful death.  Considering the galaxy is a mess, people are hurting, and they need a rallying point, someone who embodies hope.  Hackett said it about Shepard--this is the sentiment if not the words...Shepard is a person that could lead people into hell. Well, who would you want leading a broken and beaten galaxy?  I don't mean as even some type of authoritative leader, but I mean someone who is there to lead people to rebuild and to live again even when they don't maybe even want to.

Look at what Shepard quite literally did in ME2.  Every single one of those people had given up living in one way or another.  Jack was a human shell, lacking any emotion but rage.  Grunt had never been alive before, nor had Legion, and Thane was dying but had all but left the "world" behind in his mind.  Everyone Shepard touched, changed.  Bailey, Aria, the list is never-ending.  Ok, that might take a certain type of Shepard, a paragon, but then there should have been a paragon ending.  I was so touched at meeting Helena Blakely in ME2 when I played the xbox version (originally couldn't play ME1 as I had PS3 only) of ME1 and then ME2.  My Shepard let her live and she became a social worker.  I was touched at meeting Shiala in ME2 who my Shepard had saved from the Thorian.  And the list goes on.

In a partly destroyed galaxy a living Shepard is exactly what was needed to make a lot of people want to go on.  A dead one wouldn't do that and especially not one living or dead that killed all geth and EDI.

[Tallestra]

 We all understand that BW writers wanted to present us morally hard not black and white choices. And somehow they equaled mature and dark. And while at certain points in the game they succeeded, they failed in the end. Even if you accept that it’s great that choices are “dark mature” they actually aren’t. Because each ending (except refuse) is actually happy. We are forced to compromise with evil, choose lesser of them, but we have never faced the consequences of our actions, we never paid the price. In destroy we never even get to face the fact that we committed genocide, the game conveniently forgets about synthetics. Why not add some dark themes to final slides. In control some sinister foreboding where Shreaper solves a conflict between some races by using reapers. In destroy Joker crying over lifeless EDI. Or in Synthesis some news report about epidemic of strange suicides after forced synthesis. But no, all we get is peace and friendship, only rainbows are missing.

I loved that in Witcher, another game with mature themes you can either choose one of the sides in conflict, or stay neutral, and then in the end whatever you choose is thrown into your face, so that you can really feel that your choice does have a consequence. That’s how making hard choices should be presented.

And all this for me is still senseless, because I agree with these who refuse to accept Catalyst reasoning.  This topic is the only reason I still visit BW forums. I really wish that some of the writer would come here to discuss and to defend their vision of the story. I think all of the participants here demonstrated that they are intelligent and calm people and are capable of mature dialog with opponents.

Actually, I played recently DA2 and there we already have similar questionable choices without facing the real consequences of the said choices. You are either forced to accept act of senseless killing of innocents for some noble goal, or have to commit essential ethnic cleansing. And of course, you are conveniently not seeing it the morally questionable parts. If you choose Templar you just kill mages that are evil, you do not get to see that Templars actually are killing children, which is the whole point of annulment act. And if you choose mages you just protect them, instead of let’s say witnessing some of them turning abominations and killing innocent people while you can’t stop them because they are your allies. Now, that would make your choice hard and real, if you really want your choices be grim dark.

Modifié par Tallestra, 24 juillet 2012 - 10:18 .

[GodSentinelOmega]

The shrinking of the ME3 narrative bubble as mentioned above i must say really defines the slide of the game from epic battle for survival to what actually feels like playing a motion comic.

Yes you can still move the character a bit, but you're not exploring or fighting anymore. You're just moving to the next semi cutscene. The beam run really is just cutscene, run in a mostly straight line to next cutscene. I still.can't quite wrap my head around not having any final battles with the antaganists in a videogame because it was to videogamey?

One major shift in the game for me that threw me started with your arrival on earth at Andersons base. The very first thing your told, not shown, and told by Major Coates no less, is that Shepard has become a beacon of hope for the troops. That they consider him to be a hero and that having him there with gives them the strength to fight on.

From then on, despite Shepard not addressing the the combined fleet that he assembled, i kept waiting for him to address the entire ground force. Every conversation i had with my squadmates (despite the literally phoned in chats with the wasted ME2 crew) i kept waiting for the rallying speech to the united human/turian/asari/quraian/geth/merc etc forces. Then suddenly its just me chatting to the squad. Just the ME3 squad. Followed by the beginning of the final push that shows the united forces of . . . Humans arriving in makos and Kadiaks? Then one scene of some krogan and asari attacking a destroyer with . . . biotics and small arms before being inevitably being vaped.

That just felt so jarring, so forced, so disconnected from the talk from Hackett and Anderson of Shepard being 'The Tip of the Spear'. The guy/girl who people will follow to hell and back, and now i'm just some grubt with a gun and some friends who i have evacuated at the first sign of danger to them?

Also, whoever brought up skyline (Valore?) i think the way that ending of ripping all hope away from the characters, and then have a freeze-frame ish credits sequence that implies that one of the taken humans may live on in the alien body to make people speculate is very much the same in how out of nowhere and abrupt it is to what bioware did. An ending that doesn't end. Questions given the most sweeping and ambiguous answers possible. If they decide to answer them at all. And headcanon for everyone. Although in the case of skyline, how can they continue that story? Didn't we lose and get conquered and processed. The human race ceasing to exist?

So mass effect 3 goes from action scifi to motion comic.

And Valore, i heartily agree. Death does not suit shepard the way bioware wrote it.

And lastly, i was thinking about noble sacrifice. Four spring to mind along with DA origins.
Spocks choice to to save the Enterprise in ST2 even the doing so is fatal.
Gorge Kirk in the new trek film choosing to fly the dying Kelvin in a suicide run to deflect attention away from the fleeing shuttles because the autopilot fails
Another piloted suicide run, this time from the live action Space Battleship Yamato. The may not have been a masterpiece but it knew how to do a last stand. While evacuating everyone, Kodai rams the ship into the enemy, firing the blocked main gun to take them out before they kill the earth.
And lastly, John Crichtons near sacrifice at the end of Farscape Peacekeeper Wars. Nearly dying in order to close the ever expanding wormhole after ensuring peace in the galaxy.

Dying to save others is usually a choice to give your life to save others. And although bioware glowstick implies you don't have to take his green red or blue pills. The alternative to death/godhood, death,eugenics and death (maybe?) in the rubble of somewhere. Is death. As attested by this thread, no nobility or sacrifice lives in those choices.

Modifié par GodSentinelOmega, 25 juillet 2012 - 10:10 .

[Jassu1979]

The thing is: you can not only detect the jarring incongruencies between the endings and the rest of the series, but also the discrepancy between what the writers probably intended and what they actually ended up with.

The edited version of the "Normandy crash-landing"-scene shows all too clearly that it *was* originally intended to be the conclusion: the remaining heroes are stranded on a paradisical planet in the middle of nowhere, smile at the sunset, and cut to black. This was supposed to be the high note, the glimmer of hope at the end of a mostly tragic ending - and it failed spectacularly.

The same goes for the ham-fisted "theology" inherent to the Synthesis ending, which seems to be the writers' favourite conclusion. Having Shepard play the part of a sacrificial space Jesus whose death redeems the universe from the stain of original sin, pardon, organic chaos...
It was supposed to be intensely heroic and selfless, but it did not come across that way, and not only because it did not fit the setting at all.

[3DandBeyond]

As I see it the ending of the story was made senselessly and gratuitously grim and dark and I don't see a happy one among the bunch for reasons we've gone over time and again. I believe this is because that is what they originally wanted the galaxy to be afterwards. Mac Walters in an interview (it's on youtube) said prior to ME3's release that there was no point in releasing post ME3 DLC because the galaxy was a wasteland. They never meant for anyone to live.

In their Final Hours app, they have a story flow chart that says the crucible creates a galactic dark ages. But then when people actually played the endings and realized that galaxy was messed up beyond repair they went on twitter and retconned all this. But I think that created a problem for them because the choices lead to some pretty demented ideas of what they now want people to think of as utopia.

I cannot fathom how they could have strayed so far from so many truly awesome messages that exist within the games and then give us what we got. I recently did go back and play ME2 and Legion's loyalty mission and the message there is so contrary to what both control and synthesis (especially) do that you'd have to purposely ignore it to say those are great choices. The true geth as opposed to the heretic geth preferred to achieve what knowledge they got rather than have it handed to them. And Shepard asks why they'd care how they got knowledge and Legion references what Sovereign says about people being directed upon a path by the reapers to only gain the knowledge they wanted them to have. And that's a cautionary statement that's repeatedly used.

[3DandBeyond]

I think there's some certain rules as I see it that you don't break without good reason and in ME3 they are broken right and left for no real reason. Shakespeare, I believe, said, "to thine own self be true" and I think this is relevant in talking about all this. Writers have to keep characters true to themselves, keep the story true to the whole melieu created within, and yes they must be true to themselves as well. I think ME3 shows that none of this happened.

Shepard as the main character and protagonist is made to compromise in ways that are at once artificial and gratuitous. And that's because the ending and the choices are not true to the ME stories. Then within all that is a new character that adopts the role of the catalyst (a foreshadowed concept with no intent shown to lead us to or hint at its real nature. The star kid, his existence, his ideas, his origin, and his very basis for being is also not true to the ME stories.

I also do not believe the writers remained at all true to the ME story as a whole nor even to themselves and I have 2 video links (I referred to them in a previous post) that bear that out. The intent of the original endings was to basically lay waste to the galaxy. It was clear to fans. Mac Walters had written the Arrival (demoralizing all on its own) and had shown us all one reason why this was so. I've also stated what was said in BW's behind the scenes app, the Final Hours-the crucible was to create a galactic dark ages. B follows A. When fans started discussing this and said it was depressing BW went on twitter and tried to tell people there that the galaxy was OK.

Below are 2 videos.

The first is a pre-release (Feb) interview with Mac Walters where he says the galaxy is a wasteland after the events of ME3.

The second is the EC announcement interview with Walters and Hudson where they both say they NEVER intended anyone to think the galaxy was a dark place after the events of ME3.

To thine own self be true. I think that also means in order to do this you must be true to fans who bought and bought into that melieu you created.

In both videos the relevant parts start at about 1:25

http://www.youtube.c...m3Vnt5zxI#t=77s

Modifié par 3DandBeyond, 25 juillet 2012 - 01:59 .

[MrFob]

Sorry for my absence of late. I was ... busy.

Anyway, came back to post a quote:

You have hope, more than you know.

-- The Catalyst (ironically)



I am just gonna leave this here.

Modifié par MrFob, 27 juillet 2012 - 12:51 .

[vallore]

Great posts, everyone! It is great to return to this thread. 

drayfish wrote...



 .........
 
I
think if they were so desperate to go for martyrdom with Shepard  (which, in their clumsy crucifixion iconographic they make clear was  precisely their goal), that death should at least represent something  elemental of the character herself – her vision of the world and why that perspective is important to articulate, fundamental enough to sacrifice oneself to. Otherwise  she really is just another body to throw onto a pile. At present the  only visions that are validated are the hard-core Renegade options,  meaning that unless you played Shepard in a specific, morally
compromised way, you are expressly informed at the end that you played  it wrong. We are told in the final moments: you wouldn't be feeling this way if you had just agreed to not care about this stuff earlier on.
 
And I definitely don't think it's enough to just show 'Hey, it's okay,  everything turned out great!' in the epilogue slides. Those  gear-grinding narrative retrofits are just fortunate after-effects, and  depend entirely upon lazy meta-gaming knowledge from the writers. At the moment that Shepard died she was being compelled to act in accordance  with her enemy, subscribing to their beliefs, and thereby forgoing  everything that she had learnt from her friends and experience along the way to that point.  She is forced to give up on the unity that she  spent three games trying to foster in service of a decision made for  everyone in utter isolation from those it would go on to effect
forever. 
 
At present I subscribe to that lovely image that  robertthebard laid out, that by Refusing the Catamaran's plan, and
fighting on to at least slightly weaken the hoard, the next cycle of  life found Liara's Time Capsules and defeated the Reapers through  conventional means. But I really resent that as a player I have to  'imagine' a happy ending, have to legitimately force myself to ignore the messages (in tweets and in-game) that Bioware has  offered for their conclusion, while a hypothetical someone who sees no  problem at all with some of the most vile hate-crimes in human history  gets to enjoy the ending without compromise, feeling no ripple of doubt  at all as they see their values validated by Shepard's final action alive.

Yes, indeed; the ending betrays the  expectations of many a player as we are denied the chance to play our
Shepard. It is even ironic that, up to ME3, there were voices  complaining how ME consistently rewarded the paragon’s road over the  renegade one. The ending did far more than a U turn; it didn’t just  favour one over the other, as you so eloquently put, it almost  completely ignored any but the most extreme renegades; (at least if the  player opts to actually role play).

I cannot help but feel that  this was not intended as, even in ME3, the writers go to the trouble to ask the player how they want to focus their story:

The Defence  Comity asks us how to win the war, and we can either point that the key  is Union or we can say it is to make any Sacrifice that it’s required.  And again, during Shepard’s last speech, we can reinstate one or  another.

Like the” Court room” and “detention” signs at the  beginning of ME3, (if I remember them correctly), I believe these may be leftovers of the original intention of the writers. A time were a trial and a more complex ending was planned. And all of this suggests to me  that the writers were forced to cut half of what they wanted to do with  the endings right there. It suggests that, had they time and resources,  they would have offered a very, very different solution. But then, if  they had the time and resources, if they were not creatively exhausted  from an intense development cycle, (as I assume they were),would they  even have created these endings?

3DandBeyond wrote...

Actually life could have fit her much better than even any meaningful death.  Considering the galaxy is a mess, people are hurting, and they need a  rallying point, someone who embodies hope. Hackett said it about  Shepard--this is the sentiment if not the words...Shepard is a person  that could lead people into hell. Well, who would you want leading a
broken and beaten galaxy? I don't mean as even some type of  authoritative leader, but I mean someone who is there to lead people to  rebuild and to live again even when they don't maybe even want to.

Look at what Shepard quite literally did in ME2. Every single one of those  people had given up living in one way or another. Jack was a human shell, lacking any emotion but rage. Grunt had never been alive before, nor had Legion, and Thane was dying but had all but left the "world"  behind in his mind. Everyone Shepard touched, changed. Bailey, Aria,  the list is never-ending. Ok, that might take a certain type of  Shepard, a paragon, but then there should have been a paragon ending. I was so touched at meeting Helena Blakely in ME2 when I played the xbox  version (originally couldn't play ME1 as I had PS3 only) of ME1 and then ME2. My Shepard let her live and she became a social worker. I was  touched at meeting Shiala in ME2 who my Shepard had saved from the  Thorian. And the list goes on.

In a partly destroyed galaxy a  living Shepard is exactly what was needed to make a lot of people want  to go on. A dead one wouldn't do that and especially not one living or  dead that killed all geth and EDI.

Oh,  absolutely! Shepard surviving was the natural path to take, imo, most  especially due to the nature of the character. That is why I think that  if the writers desired to make Shepard’s death a strong possibility,  that they would have need to be especially careful with the way to  implement it; they narrative would need to feel a natural consequence of what had previously happened, and it would need to be powerful and  engaging; the player would need to feel in control, and the cause to  such a reversal of natural expectation would need to still fit
unambiguously into Shepard’s personal themes of defiance and hope. Very much the opposite of what happened.

But enough of death!

Returning to Shepard surviving; oh yes! Shepard could certainly still  have a role to play in the galaxy after the end of the war. In the  aftermath chaos caused by the war there would be:

Scarcity of  resources, bands of pirates preying upon the survivors, opportunistic  warlords trying to carve their own domains, the return of old conflicts  between species, born out of the desperation caused by the precarious
situation of the survivors... all of that framed by the microcosm that  is Shepard’s little band of brothers-in-arms, to give a face to the  worries of the galaxy, (in a way that Bioware showed us they can achieve so skilfully), and that is not even going into the possibility of  exploring Shepards own psyche.

Is she still up to it? Is she the driven women she was before? Her great cause is over and the Galaxy
still didn’t learn the lesson. How will she react to it?

Perhaps some Shepard still would be like her usual self, but others could have  the opportunity to explore the limits of her human condition; the  weariness caused by the realization of an endless struggle, and a desire for change... and all of this would be great;a chance to say farewell  to our Shepard, to see her move but also for continuity if we wanted it.

As a poem from a movie goes, (I shamelessly changed it for my proposes):

Once more into the fray
Into the last good fight I'll ever know
Live and die on this day
for tomorrow may show another way

Modifié par vallore, 25 juillet 2012 - 02:55 .

[vallore]

GodSentinelOmega wrote...

........

Also, whoever brought up skyline (Valore?)
.....

Not I. The merit is of SHARXTREME.

......

And lastly, i was thinking about noble sacrifice. Four spring to mind along with DA origins.
Spocks choice to to save the Enterprise in ST2 even the doing so is fatal.
Gorge Kirk in the new trek film choosing to fly the dying Kelvin in a suicide run to deflect attention away from the fleeing shuttles because the autopilot fails
Another piloted suicide run, this time from the live action Space Battleship Yamato. The may not have been a masterpiece but it knew how to do a last stand. While evacuating everyone, Kodai rams the ship into the enemy, firing the blocked main gun to take them out before they kill the earth.
And lastly, John Crichtons near sacrifice at the end of Farscape Peacekeeper Wars. Nearly dying in order to close the ever expanding wormhole after ensuring peace in the galaxy.

Dying to save others is usually a choice to give your life to save others. And although bioware glowstick implies you don't have to take his green red or blue pills. The alternative to death/godhood, death,eugenics and death (maybe?) in the rubble of somewhere. Is death. As attested by this thread, no nobility or sacrifice lives in those choices.

Good points! DA:O in particular, is an example I much appreciate myself, as it is not only in a game, it is also the creation of Bioware. I never tire of praising the Ultimate sacrifice in that game. My first warden took it, as the only option that fitted that character, and while they could have ended the game with the death of the warden and of the archdeamon, by adding the funeral scene they transcended a good ending into a truly memorable one. Sometimes, walking the extra mile  definitely makes all the difference in the world.

[3DandBeyond]

I believe one of the most accurate comparisons that I have as yet found comes from a look at 2001: A Space Odyssey. In the book, Arthur C. Clarke saw the beings that seeded the universe with monoliths for evolutionary advancement as beings that had evolved from being organic to biomechanical and then pure energy. They saw themselves as helping other races evolve. Stanley Kubrick wanted the ending to be more open to interpretation, with some context, but he invited speculation and saw it as at least partly ambiguous.

In the ME3 ending and even in the contradictory statements made by devs there is a real corollary between the visuals, story, and Kubrick's and Clarke's view of 2001, book and movie.

Modifié par 3DandBeyond, 25 juillet 2012 - 04:47 .

[vallore]

3DandBeyond wrote...

I believe the most accurate comparison that I have as yet found comes from a look at 2001: A Space Odyssey. In the book, Arthur C. Clarke saw the beings that seeded the universe with monoliths for evolutionary advancement as beings that had evolved from being organic to biomechanical and then pure energy. They saw themselves as helping other races evolve. Stanley Kubrick wanted the ending to be more open to interpretation, with some context, but he invited speculation and saw it as at least partly ambiguous.

In the ME3 ending and even in the contradictory statements made by devs there is a real corollary between the visuals, story, and Kubrick's and Clarke's view of 2001, book and movie.

Good point. Interestingly, if I’m remembering right, Kubrick’s ending was the least liked part of the film; the bit that many people complained about. Personally I felt that, while ambiguity was to be expected in that movie, Kubrick overdid it in the last scene. It wasn’t necessary that much. In that regard I prefer Clarke’s original ending, as being more thematically fitting for the story. Still, it was a stunning movie.

However, both the movie and the book had a benefit that ME lacked, unfortunately: continuity.

The mystery of the monolith was the initial story arc to be presented and also the last to be concluded. With Bowman and Hal conflict solved, the return to the monolith question felt natural, and invited the audience to explore what was to come. In ME case, however, the crucible mystery was of a different nature and didn’t invite questions about who we are, or what we may become, (as the monolith does). The catalyst problem was therefore not a return but an abrupt change.

Modifié par vallore, 25 juillet 2012 - 04:51 .

[3DandBeyond]

vallore wrote...

3DandBeyond wrote...

I believe the most accurate comparison that I have as yet found comes from a look at 2001: A Space Odyssey. In the book, Arthur C. Clarke saw the beings that seeded the universe with monoliths for evolutionary advancement as beings that had evolved from being organic to biomechanical and then pure energy. They saw themselves as helping other races evolve. Stanley Kubrick wanted the ending to be more open to interpretation, with some context, but he invited speculation and saw it as at least partly ambiguous.

In the ME3 ending and even in the contradictory statements made by devs there is a real corollary between the visuals, story, and Kubrick's and Clarke's view of 2001, book and movie.

Good point. Interestingly, if I’m remembering right, Kubrick’s ending was the least liked part of the film; the bit that many people complained about. Personally I felt that, while ambiguity was to be expected in that movie, Kubrick overdid it in the last scene. It wasn’t necessary that much. In that regard I prefer Clarke’s original ending, as being more thematically fitting for the story. Still, it was a stunning movie.

However, both the movie and the book had a benefit that ME lacked, unfortunately: continuity.

The mystery of the monolith was the initial story arc to be presented and also the last to be concluded. With Bowman and Hal conflict solved, the return to the monolith question felt natural, and invited the audience to explore what was to come. In ME case, however, the crucible mystery was of a different nature and didn’t invite questions about who we are, or what we may become, (as the monolith does). The catalyst problem was therefore not a return but an abrupt change.

Oh yes, depending on your view, but I was pretty young when I saw it and it was a family even for us at the time.  It opened in prime venues and all and I can say fully that we didn't just love it at all .  It was cool due to the visuals, but just too  "much" if you know what I mean. 

There was some continuity with the monolith, but I know the whole star child thing was lost to me as a kid.  I thought maybe it was rebirth and that's one thing Kubrick wanted it to be seen as.  But all along you did get the idea of the whole thing being some kind of interplay of the primitive and evolution and all that.  The movie was never something at the end that it wasn't at the beginning, if that makes sense.  So, I agree there was no change within it.  You see technological things and you see apes and the monolith and you get it that there was intervention all along and that in Hal, tech is kind of rebelling and so on.

In ME, it's like a toss up at the end.  Someone took out some flash cards that had movie and story names on them, threw them up in the air and picked the ones that landed words-up.  You can view the Babylon 5 chaos/order ending and parts of it are in ME3's ending.  Then look at the Deus ex (2000) game and see elements from that.  2001 plays a part.  The Matrix as well.  And even The Princess Bride with the stargazer telling a story at the end. 

I think the star kid would be infinitely better if he started going full on Princess Bride mode. 
Star Kid, "I can't compete with you physically, and you're no match for my brains." 
Shepard, "You're that smart?"
Star Kid, "Let me put it this way: Have you ever heard of Plato? Aristotle? Socrates?
Shepard, "Yes."
Star Kid, "Morons."

For the full effect, refer to the full dialogue between Vizzini and The Man In Black, here:

http://en.wikiquote....ss_Bride_(film)


I would so rather the reapers were rodents of unusual size because even that would make more sense at the end than fully sentient, autonomous, and yet mindless, controlled monsters, er pets.

[GodSentinelOmega]

Thanks Valore. And so i properly acknowledge Sharxtremes Skyline reference.

And 3danbeyond, your Princess Bride quote needs only one addition.

Shepard(to starkid) My name is Commander Shepard, you kill my galaxy! Prepare to DIE!

[3DandBeyond]

GodSentinelOmega wrote...

Thanks Valore. And so i properly acknowledge Sharxtremes Skyline reference.

And 3danbeyond, your Princess Bride quote needs only one addition.

Shepard(to starkid) My name is Commander Shepard, you kill my galaxy! Prepare to DIE!

Oh yes...Inigo Montoya deserves a better ending.

[drayfish]

@ 3DandBeyond:

I had no idea about that material in the Final Hours app. That is – to say the least – extraordinary. All this time I've been entertaining the thought that Bioware didn't actually mean to suggest such a dire, morally bankrupt ending, and only stubbornly doubled down on it when their 'artistic integrity' was questioned. But a 'wasteland'? That's how they wanted us to leave this universe? Good lord.
 
I'm not sure which I find worse: that they were too blind to what their fiction was communicating to appreciate it's impact; or that they really did want to troll their players with abject physical and ethical destruction.

Modifié par drayfish, 26 juillet 2012 - 12:14 .

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

drayfish wrote...

@ 3DandBeyond:

I had no idea about that material in the Final Hours app. That is – to say the least – extraordinary. All this time I've been entertaining the thought that Bioware didn't actually mean to suggest such a dire, morally bankrupt ending, and only stubbornly doubled down on it when their 'artistic integrity' was questioned. But a 'wasteland'? That's how they wanted us to leave this universe? Good lord.
 
I'm not sure which I find worse: that they were too blind to what their fiction was communicating to appreciate it's impact; or that they really did want to troll their players with abject physical and ethical destruction.

Both are equally revolting. Like I've said. They can head canon my money for the DLC and DA3. I'm just here daily to remind them of that. I'm retired.