858 réponses à ce sujet

[zarnk567]

crappyjazzy wrote...

firebreather19 wrote...

This is getting ridiculous. I thought I was reaching too deep with my thoughts about the Catalyst, but at some point you need to take a step back, realize its a video game, and just move on. It's a story...take what you can from it, and continue. I took from it that not all decisions we make will have obvious consequences, and just because things don't always turn out the way we want doesn't mean we should ever stop fighting.

Greatest. Game. Ever.

Agree.  I've played lots of great games, and I am starting to feel that this is likely the best ever.

..... this game is good, but no where near the best game ever even without the ending.....

Modifié par zarnk567, 19 avril 2012 - 07:08 .

[crappyjazzy]

Swisspease wrote...

Read the article, still don't like the endings. Not because I'm not intelligent enough to "get" them since I do have a college degree in Biology, but because they were horribly done. If a video game company expects their customers to have to know things like that are posted in the article then they will not be around long because they are shrinking their own customer base.

I am also starting to agree with what you've said in your last sentence.

[Coachdongwiffle]

the article is wrong. one of the first things it says is that the ending has been forshadowed since the begging but it's pretty well documented that this was not the original ending.

[Brian.V3]

The thing I'm getting from this thread is... You don't understand so please read this so you may at least grasp at what the ending was getting at and maybe then you will stop hating it.

I think this has been pointed out by someone from this thread or another but this is nearly identical to the people trying to propagate the Indoc Theory all over the web. Rationalize and go in depth at the meaning of the ending. Let's just keep it at people like the ending and people didn't like the ending. Get over your little crusade. You won't convince people who dislike the ending in this forum to like it or "understand" it just cause you want them to stop bashing the game. It's part of the internet and if you don't like it I suggest finding a different place. It is very common to see this type of thing whether you like it or not.

I am content with the ending because I personally understand what they go through but I will not say I am happy with it. I have my reasons and I'll stick with it.

[Flextt]

Shaigunjoe wrote...

Carlthestrange wrote...

Its a game. Its not supposed to be rocket science. I'll stick to my guns and hope for a better ending.

I appreciate the sentiment, but I think it's this kind of mentality that is holding video games back as a medium.  The subjects they carry throughout the series and the ending (ethics and conscience, AI and creator/createe relationsships,xenocide) are each deep enough that a college degree can be obtained in each respective field, however to appreciate and comment on the issues presented only requires a very top level view of things.

It is interesting to see so many people complain about the synthesis ending, I'm surprised nobody seems to worry as much about the real work going toward reaching a technical singularity in modern society.

I think the medium is hold back by the half-assedness of most developers...
1. They create sequels rather than new IPs
2. Developing processes are streamlined and there is a high emphasis on shooters and strict develop schedules
3. The attempt of employing highly interesting themes with almost zero groundwork. Of course, the blog author is right. The Kardashev scale is applicable, among other major influences, but the average gamer, and I consider myself to be a fairly invested gamer and to be well-educated, has seldom a vast knowledge of common sci-fi themes and astronomy. If I would at least get a hint in ME 3, I could inform myself.

While the blog entry put the ending in a new perspective for me, I still hold Bioware in contempt for the ****ty preparation they did.

[robarcool]

sp0ck 06 wrote...

lillitheris wrote...

Yeah, we get it. We're not too dumb to understand what they changed their story to attempt to say at the last minute. That's not the problem with the ending. Sorry.

This is listed in the pro-ending compendium, by the way. You might find other interesting reading there.

I know its listed there, so is my take on the endings.  But I really believe if people read this article it might at least make the ending bearable.  I honestly just want to help people, I'm not trying to prove anything.

Help with what? We aren't so mentally challenged that we don't understand the ending and we need someone to hold our hand to show us the bright light that the ending is supposed to be, only that it is half baked unreasonable junk.

[TonViper]

Here's a quote from the article:

When people complain about all of their choices throughout the 3 games having been for nought, I ask them what they’d been doing throughout the whole of Mass Effect 3. Here’s what one guy said:

I got maximum EMS, I did every mission, thinking, hoping that it would make a difference as my choices actually made changes within the narrative, but then the ending hits you like a tonne of bricks, not in an emotional way of narrative, but more in the way that you’ve just realised, this whole series, you’ve performed these choices, all for nothing because Bioeware and EA decided not to give it a proper send – off

There’s the problem right there: he’d played the whole game just to rack up points and forgot that all the major issues in the story were resolved during the last game – not at the end. He’d forgotten that Shepard cured the genophage, gave the Geth individualism and souls and established peace between them and the Quarians, gave the Rachni and Krogans inclusion on the Citadel, found Joker his dream girlfriend, turned Kolyat away from Thane’s lifestyle (much to his relief – one of my favorite scenes), earned vengeance for a living Prothean, and heck, even had his ass saved once by a much-refined Conrad Verner.

All this could not have possibly happened in the ending sequence. It would have been a several-hour-long barely-interactive movie – and that would not have been an appropriate use of the game medium. The last 5 minutes of the game is really the ending of the reaper story, not the ending of everything in Mass Effect. And as far as the reaper story goes, I believe it was a satisfying ending.

I think the author is missing the point himself a bit there. No matter what you do, you are given a generic choice between the same three endings that don't even reference what you've accomplished throughout the game.

Shepard isn't given the opportunity to weigh for and against the choices based on all he's accomplished through three games.

I would have much rather had that we were given no manual choice in the end but instead had the ending chosen for us based on how we resolved the main plotlines all throughout the three games.

That would have been awesome. Especially if instead of the three template endings we go, we'd have a liquid transition between the states based on any number of variables.

Modifié par TonViper, 19 avril 2012 - 07:16 .

[Malordus]

firebreather19 wrote...

This is getting ridiculous. I thought I was reaching too deep with my thoughts about the Catalyst, but at some point you need to take a step back, realize its a video game, and just move on. It's a story...take what you can from it, and continue. I took from it that not all decisions we make will have obvious consequences, and just because things don't always turn out the way we want doesn't mean we should ever stop fighting.

Greatest. Game. Ever.

Yes - it is a story. And every story must make sense and end in a way that does not cheat the reader. This isn't something that was fabricated, this is a golden rule of story-telling. Never cheat the reader. The ending did just that.
I for one could not glean anything worth taking away; because the ending made no sense.

[Jackal7713]

LucasShark wrote...

This ending is worthless, period. It violates the very themes and design choices of ME1 and 2, end of story.

This is what I'm saying. I comprehend the ending, I don't need reviewers or Bioware to tell me that it needs clarification, and its so insulting when people say so.

  ME3's ending kills the story. Accept that this is my opinion, stop trying to change my mind, because its not going to happen in your life time.

[Thornne]

I tried to read it, but for the most part the article is full of illogical arguments like this:

The ending is very strongly foreshadowed throughout the whole series, but to see it, you need to be aware of the some of the rather esoteric theories and hypotheses in astrobiology being discussed in the past few years by the likes of Michio Kaku and Stephen Hawking. Bioware may have been able to make the ending more poignant and emotional if it had elaborated on the concepts for the people who aren’t aware of them.

The first sentence here is nonsense. If the ending is "very strongly foreshadowed" then the player should not be required to know "esoteric theories and hypotheses in astrobiology" to understand it.

The ending may indeed be foreshadoweded for those with this esoteric knowledge.  For everyone without this esoteric knowledge, it is not foreshadowed at all.

I don't believe the intended demographic for the Mass Effect series is the handful of people versed in "esoteric theories and hypotheses in astrobiology."  So the real conclusion from this paragraph, IMO, is that the ending is not appropriate for the ME franchise at all.

[solarom]

Malordus wrote...
You, sir, I applaud. Took the words right out of my mouth. I will add one other thought to this.

Story. ME is a digital book. Game yes, but it also tells a very compelling, gripping tale of characters we have grown to love. It is a story - and as such, is subject to the very same rules as any other book. In fact, being Sci-fi, it is subject to more; namely the laws of physics etc but as you touch on this above I wont go into it.

One of the single-biggest no-no's is 'cheating' the reader. Never should this be done - if a book does, it has failed and deserves to be thrown in the bin. Sadly, ME3 did just this. It cheated the player - because the ending made no sense. I will say what has been said now many times: we should not need to have any familiarity with Astrobiology on ANY level to understand the ending, and to suggest in any shape that it is required is a failure.

And going back to story and one of it's core components; characters - we have spent 100 hours with the likes of Garrus, Tali, Ashley, Wrex etc etc etc, and they see fit to leave us with, in some cases, not even a few seconds of cinematic to explain their fate? Totally unacceptable.

To the OP and anyone who thinks it is acceptable for Bioware to leave the ending so incomprehensible as to require further reading and study, I present an example:

Imagine picking up the last book in a great series, getting to the end and saying 'Hmm, that made no sense at all.' You then put it face-down, and discover the following embossed on the back cover:

'Please read X, Y and Z to understand how this story ended.'

I'd be pretty peeved, wouldn't you?

Thank you, and the only reason I haven't addressed the issues you’ve mentioned is because the article's main point of interest is the author's attempt to make sense of the ending's chosen themes with scientific reasoning. But of course I agree with you as well, for an epic pop (I don't mean it in a degrading way, I mean appealing to a large audience) space opera to change gears so suddenly - well, that needs to be immaculately executed in order to work. Given that, I don't think it's that much of a surprise that when we're suddenly faced with a necessity to replace our current motivation and love for our friends with an all-encompassing regard for organic life and its future in the universe, we feel... thrown out of the momentum. From the narrative standpoint, this moment was handled sloppily and with no regard for the players' empathy toward the story. Someone wrote their ending. Well, good for them, I guess.

TLDR: If you need a pages-long article to explain a shift in the narrative, the shift wasn't very good.

Modifié par solarom, 19 avril 2012 - 07:17 .

[Flextt]

I think the major disconnect is the fact that Bioware wanted to tell a good story and tie up major issues while in the end making players face the futility of singularities. It was a bad experience for me at least.

[Babyberry]

sp0ck 06 wrote...

 If you hated/disliked/didn't understand/were let down by the ending, read this editorial.

http://galacticpillo...ffect-3-ending/

It really might make you look differently at not just the ending but the whole of ME3.  If you want to love the conclusion to the series but just can't, please give this a read.  It's long but worth it.  

Okay, I'm willing to admit there is some good discussion here, but the first part of the article really threw me off. Yes, I can understand that there are scientific ideas that can allude to the way ME3 ended, but I disagree that there was enough information in the game to warrent this. I should not have to read a bunch of scientific theory before playing this game in order to "get" the ending--if the information isn't presented in the game in a way that makes everything make sense, then it has failed.

If there is going to be required outside reading to understand the endings in order for me to like them (let alone accept them), I should have been told about it before I played the game. I was invested enough beforehand to actually do it. But now? There is no way.

[farhansdisplayname]

sp0ck 06 wrote...

 If you hated/disliked/didn't understand/were let down by the ending, read this editorial.

http://galacticpillo...ffect-3-ending/

It really might make you look differently at not just the ending but the whole of ME3.  If you want to love the conclusion to the series but just can't, please give this a read.  It's long but worth it.  

The fact that I need to read a long essay, watch a long video on YouTube to enjoy/understand the ending... Ya, no thanks.

[chuckles471]

"The Catalyst and Reapers’ intentions are explained so quickly that anyone not familiar with the astrobiology by which the ending was inspired would find it daunting and confusing at best, meaningless at worst."

Fail.

The author quotes people Hawking, Kaku, Sagan etc who are well know publicly because they are good at explaining ideas without trying to be confusing or talking down to people. Something the author clearly doesn't see the irony in.

All I see in this article is "I am smarter than you because i've been on wikipedia, nananananananan". (not dissing wikipedia, got me through Uni. lol)

[Lookout1390]

firebreather19 wrote...

This is getting ridiculous. I thought I was reaching too deep with my thoughts about the Catalyst, but at some point you need to take a step back, realize its a video game, and just move on. It's a story...take what you can from it, and continue. I took from it that not all decisions we make will have obvious consequences, and just because things don't always turn out the way we want doesn't mean we should ever stop fighting.

Greatest. Game. Ever.

I don't think it was that great even excluding the ending.

Dumbed down dialogue

More focus on TPS-style fighting and combat

Even more steps away from RPG features

I'm not a graphics ****, but even I can see when something was lazily done/rushed. I tried to ignore these things but when I got to the ending, I couldn't anymore.

Now don't go and assume I hate the entire game now. Tuchanka/Rannoch missions were done very well. But everything after Geth/Quarian chapter, just starts to go down hill for me.

[zarnk567]

Lookout1390 wrote...

firebreather19 wrote...

This is getting ridiculous. I thought I was reaching too deep with my thoughts about the Catalyst, but at some point you need to take a step back, realize its a video game, and just move on. It's a story...take what you can from it, and continue. I took from it that not all decisions we make will have obvious consequences, and just because things don't always turn out the way we want doesn't mean we should ever stop fighting.

Greatest. Game. Ever.

I don't think it was that great even excluding the ending.

Dumbed down dialogue

More focus on TPS-style fighting and combat

Even more steps away from RPG features

I'm not a graphics ****, but even I can see when something was lazily done/rushed. I tried to ignore these things but when I got to the ending, I couldn't anymore.

Now don't go and assume I hate the entire game now. Tuchanka/Rannoch missions were done very well. But everything after Geth/Quarian chapter, just starts to go down hill for me.

@ Lookout1390 I feel the same

[EagleScoutDJB]

I've only read a vary little bit so far and this feels like just another you didn't like the ending because your to stupid argument, or a really bad joke.

[Segameister]

MattFini wrote...

Because it wasn't necessary to "grasp" the whole of 1 or 2, and 95% of 3. And that is going to fly over the heads of the majority of people playing the game.

Yes, ME consists of some hard science fiction (crossed with more space opera-y fantasy) but when you're essentially saying you need to take classes to "understand" how we should've seen this coming it's a narrative failure. 

Agreed, one of the article's main premises is that the poor ending ruined things.  Not because of what they said, but because of what wasn't said and the animation choices made for the ending cutscene.  It was a poorly executed ending.

He also pees on the indoctrination theory, which is a worse ending than the current ones.  I'd rather see the world end due to a godboy versus it being a dream ending.  Good going! 

I've done two 'it was all a dream' bits as a fan.  Once on tv, and once in a book series.  I promptly recycled the book series, I didn't even want to give them away, nobody should have to put up with that junk.  I think the IT is more of a desperate effort by the fan base to grab hold of something that could help them hope for a better ending.

In the end all this discussion does is to reinforce my decision to wait and see what they give us for the extended cut.   I'll consider the extended edition as the final product and then decide whether I continue as a fan.

[Pelle6666]

If you need an article this long to get the fanbase to understand the ending of this trilogy then you've been doing it wrong. To have an ending that actually makes sense to everyone and that deliberately answers the questions that we have is basic storytelling and no extra explanation should be needed after concluding a series of this magnitude. We didn't need it after ME1 and we didn't need it after ME2 so why do we need it now? They simply failed.

Modifié par Pelle6666, 19 avril 2012 - 07:22 .

[recentio]

A well-told story wouldn't require a player to read a lengthy and independent article outside of the game in order to be persuaded that the major theme of the bulk of the game is not in fact the major theme of the game and instead a minor theme of a small segment of the game is for some reason supposed to be taken more seriously so that it will be universally, magically recognized by all as the major theme of the game during the final scene.

That is an idiotic premise. No wonder it didn't work for the general audience.

I'm not going to do assigned homework readings for my entertainment to make sense. That's ludicrous. It should make sense right from the get go like all properly crafted stories do.

[Segameister]

Coachdongwiffle wrote...

the article is wrong. one of the first things it says is that the ending has been forshadowed since the begging but it's pretty well documented that this was not the original ending.

Agreed that argument is a stretch.  ME1's conversion between Shep and Sovereign suggests the reapers are the enemy, they've set us all up to come and exterminate us once every 50 years.  The godboy concept isn't even an abstract thought back then.

[Melicamp]

Wow. That article is... obtuse. It actually argues at one point that a procession of species, entirely separated from each other by extinction events, who have at the absolute limits of their understanding the level of knowledge required to terraform or create antimatter, could somehow build between them the Crucible ...with no information on what the Catalyst is, or the technology they're building.

If you'll excuse me, I'm off to build a time machine out of modern day tech to be powered by a thing I've never seen, heard of, or even conceived of the existence of. That'll definitely work according to this article's logic.

And according to the article's argument the Crucible is a technology that is the equal of one from a civilization that is capable of time manipulation. And they'd do this with almost zero understanding of the device they're building? Not buying it.

It's like handing a toddler a broken computer and expecting them to fix it. No matter how many toddlers you add, they'd still fail, because not only do they lack the knowledge, but it is entirely beyond their understanding anyway. The reason I use a toddler rather than a monkey in this example, is because there is the possibility for the child to grow up and fix the computer, but instead a Reaper kills them before they're out of nappies. And then another toddler gets put down by the computer. No matter how many times this happens no progress will ever be made. This is not an evolutionary process, where the machine gets closer to the purpose it's required for, because there's nothing guiding the random things the toddler might do. In this scenario, entropy far outweighs the capacity for design by error.

It's akin to saying that in Star Trek it would be possible for Star Fleet to build a machine that could somehow mimic Q. The whole premise is entirely laughable.

Modifié par Melicamp, 19 avril 2012 - 07:29 .

[Alamar2078]

I read through the article and the article didn't really tell me anything new or anything I wasn't already aware of.

Honestly folks that don't like the ending aren't "dumb". I would venture to guess many SciFi fans are familiar with all of the above in the article in question.

My personal problem with the ending wasn't even addressed [in a reasonable fashion] by the article. I think BW deliberately misled fans with their pre-release statements / hype. While I believe an artist / company / etc. [in general] has a right to do what they want with their products once they start making specific statements about the game they are morally and ethically bound to constrain their artistic endeavors to conform to their statements.

At least once the game had gone "feature complete" or at least "gold" any prior statements made should be clarified.

Note: The author had an obvious axe to grind. A more balanced article would have been more convincing. Nobody likes being called unethical or "the bringer of the end to art as we know it" or other totally rediculous things.

[akenn312]

I don't know I've just come to accept it is the spoiled egg ending that it is. I understand this writers passion and I think this might be exactly what Hudson was going for...but it's not that I cannot get the concept of the ending or I am thinking "Duh what happened? Basically it just comes down to it all feels wrong to me. I've played 2 play-throughs to see if I could warm up to the ending even keeping in mind the organics vs. synthetics forshadowing, and other pro ending theories and basically at the end I just go through the motions pick destroy and still feel empty about it wishing things were created differently. I still have a lack of closure feeling and hate the way characters suddenly disappear, dislike the way Sheppard easily just says "uh"huh...maybe" to all of this with the Catylist ect.

I relate this to some of the artwork critiques when I was in art school in college. My peers would put up the artwork and basically say "voila" isn't it great? They would explain all the meanings and try to get us to understand their vision, but still it was just that. We just didn't like the painting. We wanted to like it, but also everyone in the classroom has the same feeling of dislike possibly that piece of art just might not have been good. Sure there were some people that loved to poo on anything, but if it was a majority you couldn't disagree that the artwork needed some fixing or teaking. I am trying to give this a chance but I still feel that the best way to save the franchise is possibly to change it one day if people still feel the same after the DLC.

Modifié par akenn312, 19 avril 2012 - 08:12 .