149 réponses à ce sujet

[Dead_Meat357]

Dendio1 wrote...

The other games in the trilogy led us to believe that with the right decisions we could get a happy ending. ME2 had a perfect ending if you figured out how to pull it off. ME1 also had a good ending with no real losses aside from virmire.

Lots of lives are lost in ME1 and ME2, but you end with hope for a better future. The ending to ME3 is the opposite. It leaves you with a sense of total despair.

[PsyrenY]

Dead_Meat357 wrote...

Lots of lives are lost in ME1 and ME2, but you end with hope for a better future. The ending to ME3 is the opposite. It leaves you with a sense of total despair.

Only if you can't do math.

[a.m.p]

The Night Mammoth wrote...

a.m.p wrote...

Naugi wrote...

a.m.p wrote...

Because it's Garrus' world and because that mission was done very well.
Same goes for Thessia. And Tuchanka. And everywhere else. The connection of the players to the ME universe should not be underestimated, it's actually one of the main reasons people love it so much.

But only because its Garrus' world. Likewise, we care about Thessia because of Liara and Tuchanka because of Wrex / Grunt. We would not care about 'Planet abcdefgh' where nobody we know lives. The meaning comes from the characters we love, not the universe itself or the galaxy, and happy endings come from what happens to us and our friends, not the fate of random planets or even the galaxy as a whole.

I'd argue against that, because I personally care about the universe too, but I know that a lot of people do focus only on the characters. That's why I'm saying that an epilogue acknowledging the loss through the eyes of the characters would turn any ending bittersweet. You don't have to kill people to evoke a sense of sadness.

Imagine Liara returning to Thessia or Garrus to Palaven. Picture them and us through them seeing the smoking ruins that were their homes. Would that still be disney happy for you?

What are you even trying to argue? That it wouldn't be a disney happy ending?

No sh*t? 

Mass Effect was never going to have a happy ever after ending with rainbows and sparkles. No one wants that. No one is arguing that it would happen in your hypothetical situation. 

A lot of people are saying that a 'happy' ending is one where the characters survive to rebuild, possibly with Shepard, and we get to see it. That's 'happy', but it's also bittersweet. The two need not be exclusive. 

 

Then I misunderstood you, because we agree on that.
My general point is that this was the kind of bittersweet the me3 ending needed - not the 'distant future, some kind of life goes on' bittersweet.

[a.m.p]

Optimystic_X wrote...

Dead_Meat357 wrote...

Lots of lives are lost in ME1 and ME2, but you end with hope for a better future. The ending to ME3 is the opposite. It leaves you with a sense of total despair.

Only if you can't do math.

Math, sadly is not enough. It also requires some significant engineering ***-pulls, which I performed in the thread that is linked in that post. You don't go anywhere before you solve a number of huge problems, and how solvable they are with Earth and all other homeworlds isolated and in the condition the reapers left them in - is debatable.
And then there's stargazer. But I think we already had that discussion in my thread.

Modifié par a.m.p, 19 avril 2012 - 06:31 .

[translationninja]

I think OP was more down the line of STFU about people just don't like that they don't get a Disney ending, which is an utterly silly and infantile argument to make.

They say you can't handle deep dark endings, mmmhmmmm:

[tjc2]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

I think people consider it a happy ending in the same way that many aren't concerned with what effect stopping the cycle has on the future: the players aren't emotionally connected to the faceless statistics on Earth, Thessia, Palaven, and so forth.

Many posters have stated that they just want to know if Shepard reunites with his/her LI, how the squad is doing and so forth. I don't think it's fair to understate their perspective of what is a happy ending simply because of the other, external consequences of the war.

I think the number who are concerned about just the Squad or the LI are few and I think even those people are more upset with the lack of logic way the LI and Sqaud story gets tied up in the ending.

The essential part of any IP set in space is the ability to travel not just FTL, but orders of magnitude above FTL (the galaxy is over 100k light years in diameter, think Earth to Rannoch). Given what we know about the Mass Relays I think most people felt after the end of ME3 that the ME IP was over and in the future games would be a complete Retcon of the Universe. Obviously the developers can rub a little space magic and create new relays or their equivalent, but in the current ending it feels like everything will have changed.

[The Night Mammoth]

[quote]a.m.p wrote...

[/quote]
Then I misunderstood you, because we agree on that.
My general point is that this was the kind of bittersweet the me3 ending needed - not the 'distant future, some kind of life goes on' bittersweet.

[/quote]

It should always have been bittersweet, with varying ratios of bitter to sweet depending on your preparations throughout the game. 

Right now, my idiot lazy brother can achieve the same thing as I can on a bare-bones playthrough, when I gather as much Assets as possible, keep everyone alive during the Suicide Mission, and bump my GR up to 100%. There's no variation, it's all just bitter with only the tiniest most insignificant amount of sweet.

[firebreather19]

Shepard isn't Shepard anymore. Shepard has ceased to be a human being and has become a symbol. The most disappointing part of this is people are completely overlooking Shepard's mental state, because even though we play as Shepard and identify with him/her we can't understand being revived with uncertain technology, or the concept of whether we still are who we are, or if we even have a place after this war because by then a good percentage of your life experiences involves making difficult, sometimes damning sometimes saving, decisions that only resonate with us when it involves individual characters but knowing full well if it were an actual situation we couldn't handle it. Shepard is a destroyer of worlds, maybe a savior in some eyes or devil in others, but there are aspects of him or her never of choosing: Shepard kills many, many beings and will make the choice to sacrifice others for the cause if necessary. Batarians, Alliance or Council, Ashley or Kaiden. How do you get in that mind? You can't. There will always be a disconnect between the character and us. Shepard will never be ours.

[Kunari801]

Abreu Road wrote...

You know why most people played and loved Mass Effect?

Characters. Tali, Garrus, Wrex and so many others. What we got in the ending? Everyone you care about is dead or stranded on Sol System or Jungle Planet. The lack of closure for the most important part of the Mass Effect universe, it's characters, is an insult.

^- That! As Mordin said in his speech before curing the genophage. The galaxy is too big to personalize, so you need a scale we can relate to. For Mordin it was his nephew, but for my Shepard it's my "Family" and that's my crew and my friends.

As much as I'd like to tell the kid to ****-off, it's the closure I want now more than fixing the brats illogical reasoning.

For me it wasn't so much if my Shepard lived or not, I was willing to sacrifice to save my "Family" it's just none of the endings (as is) gives me that feeling. If they change the ends to show me my Family will be fine, then I'd consider that a "happy" ending.

[aj2070]

nhcre8tv1 wrote...

Showing the fact the everyone died would probably outweigh the happy in my eyes if they're was one. But then again, I don't really care for a happy ending, just one that fits.

I think I have said this since seeing the "buy DLC" message after my first playthrough.

[The Night Mammoth]

tjc2 wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

I think people consider it a happy ending in the same way that many aren't concerned with what effect stopping the cycle has on the future: the players aren't emotionally connected to the faceless statistics on Earth, Thessia, Palaven, and so forth.

Many posters have stated that they just want to know if Shepard reunites with his/her LI, how the squad is doing and so forth. I don't think it's fair to understate their perspective of what is a happy ending simply because of the other, external consequences of the war.

I think the number who are concerned about just the Squad or the LI are few and I think even those people are more upset with the lack of logic way the LI and Sqaud story gets tied up in the ending.

Few? Sorry, but that's pretty hard to believe. 

I think the vast majority of people are connected in some way to the characters we encounter, and this cycle as a whole. 

Basically, people went into ME3 with a mind that they would save civilization as we know it, likely by sacrificing Shepard. 

The latter part is true, although incredibly forced and stupid, but the former is simply absent from the game. 

The finale ends up being about the entirety of existence instead the core set of characters and species we came to know. 

[Njald]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

I think people consider it a happy ending in the same way that many aren't concerned with what effect stopping the cycle has on the future: the players aren't emotionally connected to the faceless statistics on Earth, Thessia, Palaven, and so forth.

Many posters have stated that they just want to know if Shepard reunites with his/her LI, how the squad is doing and so forth. I don't think it's fair to understate their perspective of what is a happy ending simply because of the other, external consequences of the war.

 
 
Very true. And how could the player be expected to sympathize with numbers? The player is constantly murderizing his/her way through the galaxy in 3 games and people die form all kinds of stupid things. We only care about the races when we make the mental connection "dead Quarians= every Quarian I've talked to will be dead..." 
The people on Earth is pretty much nothing more than Anderson in the players mind. I bet most players care more about Krogan,Quarian,Geth etc than they do for the anonymous people on Earth.
One of the few poignant questions at PAX was about the Citadel, is everyone inside it dead?  Not because we care about the 13,2 million inhabitants per se. We care about the people we last saw in there.
 
I think this is only natural for a game and a narrative that doesn't understand that is a pretty poor one.

Modifié par Njald, 19 avril 2012 - 06:51 .

[PsyrenY]

a.m.p wrote...

Math, sadly is not enough. It also requires some significant engineering ***-pulls, which I performed in the thread that is linked in that post. You don't go anywhere before you solve a number of huge problems, and how solvable they are with Earth and all other homeworlds isolated and in the condition the reapers left them in - is debatable.
And then there's stargazer. But I think we already had that discussion in my thread.

I read your post in that thread, including the spreadsheet you linked, and I don't consider it an "asspull" at all. By your own calculations, which rely on the technologically worst ending (Destroy) - using just current-gen tech (no RT improvements), you can FTL to any homeworld save Rannoch in less than a decade, +/- a few years for drive discharge.

And that's before we take Weekes' statements, like the Citadel food stores on the Ward arms being intact regardless of ending chosen, into account.

So while you're right in a sense (it takes both math, and optimism) I don't consider that a major additional cost save for the terminally pessimistic, and nothing was going to cheer them up anyway, so I couldn't care less.

[The Night Mammoth]

firebreather19 wrote...

Shepard isn't Shepard anymore. Shepard has ceased to be a human being and has become a symbol. The most disappointing part of this is people are completely overlooking Shepard's mental state, because even though we play as Shepard and identify with him/her we can't understand being revived with uncertain technology, or the concept of whether we still are who we are, or if we even have a place after this war because by then a good percentage of your life experiences involves making difficult, sometimes damning sometimes saving, decisions that only resonate with us when it involves individual characters but knowing full well if it were an actual situation we couldn't handle it. Shepard is a destroyer of worlds, maybe a savior in some eyes or devil in others, but there are aspects of him or her never of choosing: Shepard kills many, many beings and will make the choice to sacrifice others for the cause if necessary. Batarians, Alliance or Council, Ashley or Kaiden. How do you get in that mind? You can't. There will always be a disconnect between the character and us. Shepard will never be ours.

Wrong!

Sorry, but it's me who's making the decisions, I'm directing Shepard. His worries are my worries, his hopes are my hopes, his motivations are my motivations. Within the context of the story, obviously. 

[a.m.p]

Optimystic_X wrote...

a.m.p wrote...

Math, sadly is not enough. It also requires some significant engineering ***-pulls, which I performed in the thread that is linked in that post. You don't go anywhere before you solve a number of huge problems, and how solvable they are with Earth and all other homeworlds isolated and in the condition the reapers left them in - is debatable.
And then there's stargazer. But I think we already had that discussion in my thread.

I read your post in that thread, including the spreadsheet you linked, and I don't consider it an "asspull" at all. By your own calculations, which rely on the technologically worst ending (Destroy) - using just current-gen tech (no RT improvements), you can FTL to any homeworld save Rannoch in less than a decade, +/- a few years for drive discharge.

And that's before we take Weekes' statements, like the Citadel food stores on the Ward arms being intact regardless of ending chosen, into account.

So while you're right in a sense (it takes both math, and optimism) I don't consider that a major additional cost save for the terminally pessimistic, and nothing was going to cheer them up anyway, so I couldn't care less.

See, the thing about that thread is that I arrived at all these numbers and conclusions after digging into the depth of the codex, staring at the galaxy map for hours, making spreadsheets and discussing it with people who know way more about ME than I do. As an attempt to show that even with the current endings the heavily implied dark age scenario does not have to happen and that there is a way out. That was before the post-PAX rumors about how everything is going to be fine.

If the endings were always meant to communicate the rebuilding and not the rebooting - I shouldn't have had to do spreadsheets. People shouldn't have had to shout for a month on the forum for Bioware to agree that okay, we'll rebuild the universe.

To return to the topic of this thread - you don't need extra symbolism to make an end of a war meaningful. It already is. You don't have to destroy the relays make it bittersweet. People who want an ending with a bit more hope (and logic, ideally) aren't asking for sunshine and unicorns, or an easy victory with no cost to it.

Modifié par a.m.p, 19 avril 2012 - 07:16 .

[PsyrenY]

a.m.p wrote...

See, the thing about that thread is that I arrived at all these numbers and conclusions after digging into the depth of the codex, staring at the galaxy map for hours, making spreadsheets and discussing it with people who know way more about ME than I do. As an attempt to show that even with the current endings the heavily implied dark age scenario does not have to happen and that there is a way out. That was before the post-PAX rumors about how everything is going to be fine.

If the endings were always meant to communicate the rebuilding and not the rebooting - I shouldn't have had to do spreadsheets. People shouldn't have had to shout for a month on the forum for Bioware to agree that okay, we'll rebuild the universe.

I agree with you, and further agree that Hold the Line et al. were necessary at the time. But with that crisis averted, and Weekes etc. answering questions, and free clarification DLC in the works and finding more than enough wiggle-room just in the regular codex (no RT upgrades) to avert the dark ages - with all of that now in our favor, I find it really hard to sympathize with the people who are STILL crying and prophesying eternal doom, especially the ones being extremely rude to any dev that dares show their face here to do it.

(Note: not you.)

Modifié par Optimystic_X, 19 avril 2012 - 07:33 .

[a.m.p]

Optimystic_X wrote...

I agree with you, and further agree that Hold the Line et al. were necessary at the time. But with that crisis averted, and Weekes etc. answering questions, and free clarification DLC in the works and finding more than enough wiggle-room just in the regular codex (no RT upgrades) to avert the dark ages - with all of that now in our favor, I find it really hard to sympathize with the people who are STILL crying and prophesying eternal doom, especially the ones being extremely rude to any dev that dares show their face here to do it.

(Note: not you.)

The problem might have something to do with the fact that the only official thing we've heard so far - it's a DLC that clarifies the ending, everything else is back-and-forth PR for the most part. We don't have a section in that FAQ that says: "Will the relay destruction be followed by a thousand year long dark age? No. We'd never do such a thing to our universe".

(I prefer to consider the lack of definitive statements a good sign that perhaps feedback is still being gathered and the final decision on how much to change/add hasn't been made yet).

Also there is the fact that salvaging the universe itself fixes only one of the four really big problems that break the ending. The others remain. The ending will still be broken. But there are relatively easy ways to make it even less broken, which is why I personally am still here.

[PsyrenY]

How "broken" the ending is is subjective. I have no problem with starkid (I would actually have a bigger problem with the Catalyst just working as advertised with no twist at all), nor do I have a problem with the three choices. Shepard could have been a bit more argumentative but I can easily envision how the AI would be intractable regardless.

As far as receiving no word, yeah it would be nice if we got regular updates or some more questions answered but I'm ultimately fine with that too.

[Bantz]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

I think people consider it a happy ending in the same way that many aren't concerned with what effect stopping the cycle has on the future: the players aren't emotionally connected to the faceless statistics on Earth, Thessia, Palaven, and so forth.

Many posters have stated that they just want to know if Shepard reunites with his/her LI, how the squad is doing and so forth. I don't think it's fair to understate their perspective of what is a happy ending simply because of the other, external consequences of the war.

Good point.
The problem I think Bioware (or the two guys that apparently wrote the ending) created for themselves for me is I was never conditioned to give a rats ass about those people on thessia/palaven or whatever. Outside of the fact that it made my friends sad.

Mass effect to me was built around the adventures of shep and his crew in their attempts to beat the reapers. So to have an ending that has as little to do with shep and his crew and their attempt to beat the reapres was a poorly written ending. And don't give me that "you beat the reapers" bull**** we didn't beat the reapers, we didn't "retake earth" space brat let us win.

And as to a happy ending. You are making the same mistake most people (especially the idiot game reviewer people) have made. You are mistaking "happy" for "disney". No one wants hacket to say

"Shep, shep you there? You did it shep. the Reapers are all destroyed. Your crew, Anderson and the vast majority of the fleet you gathered are unharmed. And guess what? Remember Alenko? Ya the dude that died on virmire. Son of a **** just showed up. Little underweight but he's alright. Oh and Your girlfriend just found out she's pregnant, your mom says hi and the Cubs finally won the world series."

But would it be so terrible if shep had found a way to defeat the reapers and manages to escape, being badly injured in the process. He reaches the beam and gets back to earth just before the citadel explosion. He lands injured and bloody but is found by his crew and nursed back to health. We see Shep who was the hero the galaxy rallied around to defeat the greatest threat ever, become the icon they rally  around as they rebuild from the devistation of war. The galaxy is still jacked up, billions or more are still dead some races (the batarians) are likely all dead except a few stragglers. You've still had the death of friends.

Oh and this ending should have been HARD AS **** TO GET.

[Naugi]

a.m.p wrote...

Imagine Liara returning to Thessia or Garrus to Palaven. Picture them and us through them seeing the smoking ruins that were their homes. Would that still be disney happy for you?

I'm not a supporter of Disney happy. I would however love the above scenes you describe. An ending like that is fine for me, there's hope in survival and the chance to rebuild, bittersweet maybe, but an ending, a conclusion, closure, all good.

[RinuCZ]

Vox Draco wrote...
And to add to all of this, we are forced to meet the one who claims himself responsible for all these atrocities, and ...listen to his horrific reasons for this biggest crime since the big-bang, and all our hero Shepard does is...nothing. All she says is...nothing...and all we, the players, can do is...nothing. Nothing but do what the kid forces upon us, and this current ending gives us nothing but more grief, sorrow and a feeling of hopelesness...

This is exactly my biggest issue. It's like shaking hands with Saren in the end of ME1 and agree with whatever he presents to you as a solution. The ME3 ending is far cry from "a courageous, heroic closure", to put it in OP's words.

[ed87]

Have you guys seen Saving Private Ryan?

[a.m.p]

Optimystic_X wrote...

How "broken" the ending is is subjective. I have no problem with starkid (I would actually have a bigger problem with the Catalyst just working as advertised with no twist at all), nor do I have a problem with the three choices. Shepard could have been a bit more argumentative but I can easily envision how the AI would be intractable regardless.

Which makes you the lucky five percent who happened to see eye to eye with whomever wrote the ending. Which in turn brings us into the slippery territory of what should a game developer do in a situation like this. I don't know the answer to that question, I don't think anyone does including Bioware themselves.
I can only hope there's a better compromise than trying to clarify something that falls apart at any attempt to logically analyze it.

[Zing Freelancer]

streamlock wrote...

A common theme I see reoccuring is the what if "happy/unhappy/bitter" argument on ME3's ending.  

From an overarching standpoint, I don't see the rational on this argument.

Lets say, for the sake of argument that the crucible was non-funtional and the allied fleets/sheppard defeats the reapers, somehow, someway.

Earth is trashed.  Every major city and industrial center is wrecked.  God knows how much of the population is dead, dying, or being rendered into reaper mush.  Her colonies are trashed.  Her fleets are shadow of thier former glory.  The amount of eezo released in the final battle would afflict the children of the survivors with horrific birth defects (some minor fraction would be biotic)

Thesia is wrecked.
Palavian is wrecked
Who knows about the Selarian homeworld.
The entire galactic infrastructure crushed.

Just about the entire galaxy is a post apocolyptic wasteland.  Billions, maybe trillions dead.

No matter what happened at the end, this is an undeniable reprecussion of the reaper invasion.  It's a war story.  War sucks.  Even in the most rainbow and unicorn filled ending fans have come up with would not change this.

In short, lay off the happy ending BS.  Wanting a couragous, heroic closure for the protoganist and thier team/LI, (living or dead) over the pseudo imagary interpretationalist Greek tradegedy crap that was delivered is not asking for a 'happy' ending. 

The happy ending debate is a non-issue.  Unless war torn wastelands is your idea of happy times.  In which case, stay the hell away from politics, and us.

Just tell me, did Garrus survive?

[lillitheris]

I'll mention once again that this happy/sad theme is what I address via sacrifice in http://social.biowar.../index/11289479.

Please help flesh that out.