154 réponses à ce sujet

[Kunari801]

What movies, books, TV series, have successful bitter-sweet endings to you?

• Mordin's death curing the genophage.  That was a good heroic ending our Shepard's were denied.
• Babylon 5's last episode "Sleeping in Light"
• Return of the King (the movie) the book also ends well in bitter sweet sense. 

I'll think of more 

Modifié par Kunari801, 01 mai 2012 - 08:21 .

[luzburg]

i agree. blue babies where expected but not all sunshine and bunnies

[nitefyre410]

Kunari801 wrote...

What movies, books, TV series, have successful bitter-sweet endings to you?

• Mordin's death curing the genophage.  That was a good heroic ending our Shepard's were denied.
• Babylon 5's last episode "Sleeping in Light"
• Return of the King (the movie) the book also ends well in bitter sweet sense. 

I'll think of more 

  


TV Series   Buffy  Season 5&2 , Gundam 00,  Code Geass , Babylon 5,  

Movies:  Last Samurai , Lord of the Rings : the entire trilogy  

Games: So many,   Final Fantasy X stands out as one of the best , Read Dead Redemption, Halo Reach, 

[Kalundume]

Animes: Death Note, Ghost in the Shell

Movies: Last Samurai, Blade Runner, The Green Mile, Forrest Gump, Solaris (prefered book, but I liked the movie too ...), and many more...

Games: Planescape: Torment, Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy VII, some of Baldur's Gate II ToB endings (Viconia's epilogue, the characters epilogue if Child of Bhall decided to ascend), Silent Hill 2, Max Payne 2 ... and probably others if I think hard enough

[RocketManSR2]

frylock23 wrote...

You know it's funny, but I've told my husband more than once that every character in ME3 who dies - Thane, Mordin, Legion - had a more emotionally meaningful and fulfilling death than our own main character gets at the end. AND those characters get much more closure, too. We even get more resolution for the VS who gets a covo from Garrus who stands at the Memorial Wall on the Normandy and Shep references him/her in a cutscene after a dream sequence. By contrast, after our own Shepard makes what we would assume to be the ultimate sacrifice for the entire galaxy ... we get ... squat.

We get upstaged by a pack of NPCs. Our own ending should have delivered on at least the same emotional tone with the same amount of impact, and it quite soundly failed. Then, there was absolutely no resolution of any kind to go along with the complete lack of emotional meaning. It was a dual failure.

Wow. I hadn't considered that. Good grief, how could BioWare have failed so hard? Meh, I'll guess we'll probably never know. It's going to take a miracle for the EC to fix all these issues. Taboo, you have highlighted the reason I hate the ending the most. The disrespect shown for the characters that BioWare themselves so brilliantly created. They're just tossed aside and our hero forgotten about in a pile of rubble. Inspiring and uplifting! <_<

- The ending of ME3 isn't bittersweet at all. It's devoid of "sweet."

Modifié par RocketManSR2, 01 mai 2012 - 08:40 .

[TookYoCookies]

Kunari801 wrote...

What movies, books, TV series, have successful bitter-sweet endings to you?

• Mordin's death curing the genophage.  That was a good heroic ending our Shepard's were denied.
• Babylon 5's last episode "Sleeping in Light"
• Return of the King (the movie) the book also ends well in bitter sweet sense. 

I'll think of more 

 

Saving Private Ryan. Best 'bittersweet' ending ive ever seen. You see the sacrifice, and see the reward firsthand,  and the reason for the sacrifice was for the individual character, not the war effort as a whole. The film asks how would you feel risking your life for one man, in the middle of a war - where hundreds/ thousands of men deserve to go home. As you get to know Ryan, and see the reaction of Hank's characters' squad toward him, you get the feeling that 'Yea, this is worth risking my life for.'.  

The connection is made to one individual character; ME3 i think tried to make shepered have some sort of connection to the war as a whole, rather than emphasize the personal connections we already had with characters in the story. We had our versions of "private Ryan" if you will, but we didnt get the chance to save them. 

[Noelemahc]

The thing is, sure, Mass Effect has always tried to keep us abreast of the big picture. You know - politics, shmolitics, border disputes, Reapers, genophage, Reapers, red sand, people trafficking, Reapers, Collectors, and ah, yes, Reapers. Also Cerberus, hookers, ryncol, cloning, genophage, Reapers, asari dancers, Cerberus, God, geth and Reapers. Can't forget about Reapers, too.

BUT. Up until a crucial moment (mentioned slightly latorz), all of these -- yes, you read that right, ALL OF THESE -- were delivered to us in more than one way.

Cerberus? Sure, they're that rogue black ops unit that Admiral Kahoku is investigating. But they're also to blame for Akuze, the PTSD moment from Survivor Shep's backstory, and if you're not a Survivor Shep, you have Cpl. Toombs.

Reapers? Sure, you have the Prothean records, and the mythology, but you also have the Thorian.

Protheans? Yeah, the beacons, right, the tech that's supposedly theirs, but actually not, but you also have Liara and her wide-eyed idealistic view of them.

Red sand, crime rates and all the pizzaz to go with them? Just step into Chora's Den, or talk to Garrus and Wrex and Harkin.

This goes on and on, even if we discount the existance of sequels.

Why does it work? Why does it captivate? Because it is designed in the meticulously sickening way that would appeal to EVERY type of gamer. Read my digitally-enhanced full-HD cracked lips, kids: EVERY. TYPE. OF. GAMER.

You like to read? The Codex is your friend. It offers information and a challenge - it is written in-universe and is, therefore, biased and intentionally inaccurate.

You like to talk and psychoanalyze, or maybe do quests? You've got your team. Help Garrus and his duty issues, Wrex and his crisis of faith, Tali and her Pilgrimage, Ashley and her faith and sisters. Kaidan and his trauma and suffering. Each comes with an infodump that lets you in on the universe without ever touching the Codex.

You like to shoot pew-pew and all that? The unskippable cutscenes tell you the bare minimum. Two eyes good, four eyes bad, one eye worse. Combat banter reveals crucial details - do not shoot the colonists, they're enthralled! Do shoot the creepy plant zombies, they're creepy plant zombies and clearly have no plant zombie wives and plant zombie children back home to mourn them in their native creepy plant zombie religion.

You like to roleplay? Be a Do-Gooder With An Iron Fist, or a Jerk With A Heart Of Gold, or a Knight In Shining Hardsuit, or anything in between.

Yet again, alla that - just the first game.


The second game lost some of that. You got more of everything to the point that some things overlapped, conflicted or had to be retconned to make sense. I, personally, hated how Cerberus got turned from a tangentially relevant enemy suddenly became an intergalactic superpower capable of raising the kinds of money Alliance admirals nearly court-martialed us for misusing in the previous game to throw at less-than-30-percent-chances-of-success. But in exchange you got more of everything.

You got more squadmates, more love interests, more enthralling personal storylines, more epic story (which was actually no story at all, you were playing a TV series on a budget, -- one character got two episodes, introduction and personal quest, everything else was "guest starring -- but it was well-done, and people love it and hey, we got to boink Tali! That had to count for something (I know it did for me, anyway).

The problems surfaced here. Of the initial gamer types, one got alienated - the number cruncher loot hoarder munchkins that make up the bulk of RPG players got pretty much a kick to the butt and a rude gesture at the door, their seat taken by steroid and testosterone swilling TPS players which only cared that you could have a quickie with that tattooed chick who talks rudely all the time. Surprisingly enough, and counter to this logic of auditorium changeup, the sex scenes got toned down from "This is an M-rated game, innit?" to "Shh, kids are playing this game regardless of its rating!"


Aaaand then the third came out. On the surface, it was the same as the previous one. Same themes, same design choices, a few throwbacks to the first one to remind people why there's a 3 and not a 2 in the name. But inside...

Well, the Codex was still there. In fact, a huge chunk of the plot gets handed out via Codex ONLY. That should have worried some of us old-timers, but we gave it no attention, trying to see how Shepard's reconciliation with the Alliance over murdelizing a whole star syste-- wait, what? He's been let off the hook off-screen? What the hell? No trial? Just a dorky scene with people disbelieving Reapers as they descend onto Urth?

Everything is railroaded? Only thing we affect in the flow is how much we faff about in the systems - and to confuse and hide the fact that there's less faffing to be had, we now have to hide from the Reapers? In a minigame that demeans their threat as Cosmic Eldritch Abominations?

Our LIs are back! And they can argue about who gets us if we two-timed them! Cool-- wait, what? One scene at best? And even then, a real fight only if you get lucky with the combination? And if it's a ME2 LI without dextro DNA, you only get lip service at best? Oh, and if you're a girl, you're pretty much SOL?

But the missions are well-done, right? There's dramatic tension, and the ending to Tuchanka and Rannoch are so cathartic and-- yeah, that's it. Only two planets out of the five Grand Plot Missions that we do are well-written and end in believable and touching ways. Sorry, role-playing enthusiasts, no matter how hard you try, you cannot beat Kai Leng's cutscene-powered plot armour. Who cares that MGS, the game he is obviously a reject from, let you kill bosses from halfway across the level from a sniper rifle well before their fight, if you felt like it, and you wouldn't actually have to fight them then? Sorry, TPS enthusiasts, you cannot kill him in combat either, until absurdly much later in the game.

But the characters stories end well, right? Some do... most don't. You see, you do get to sorta say goodbye to them before the final fight... after which they all pack up and abandon you to deal with the crappy ending on your own while they have the luxury of crash-landing on an uncharted and possibly hostile uninhabitable planet. And you will never see them again. Not you, Shepard, you're dead in 90% cases. You, the player, the last you see or hear of them is them abandoning ship after the crash so they could stare at the sky and contemplate how well they punk'd you, you who thought they were your friends, who made you smile and cry and laugh and love for so long, you who can't even feel betrayed by this point as tears of hopeless voiceless rage drip from your face.

Oh, and there's nothing to say for the fact that after your proudly defiant Commander, who has on countless occasions stared death, pestilence, war and that fourth dude in the eye (and not only simply spat in it), bows down to a machine god of dubious nature, and probably sacrifices his life, you don't even get a "thank you note" other than vague notation in a legend some 10K years afterwards.

Where did all that attachment go? Who ate all the spaghetti of the plot threads? Who decided that breaking the "EVERY. TYPE. OF. GAMER." factor was justified? I want to see that person, I want to look them in the eye and ask "How do you live with yourself? In what universe do you exist, where "artistic integrity" somehow excludes the notion of narrative cohesion, justified rewards and CLOSURE? Would it have killed your entire family to give us closure?"

Or maybe not. He probably wouldn't talk to me anyway. I dress strangely and listen to strange music and I nearly, but not quite, got two Ph.D.'s, because I was too busy playing the first two games, they were that good. If I was playing the third instead, I would've probably become a professor by now.


Oh, and to stay on-topic: bittersweet cannot work without sweet. ME3 is mostly bitter, the only sweet we ever get happens mostly in the two well-written planets, and has little to do with the ending we get anyway.

[edisnooM]

I agree OP there really was a lack of closure for the LI, but I think that could extend to every person your Shepard has affected over the course of the Trilogy, we are left with a lot of loose threads, and none of the "answers" we were promised.

For myself I romanced Liara in ME1, stayed faithful in ME2, recommitted in LoTSB and again in the beginning of ME3. I ignored her odd lack of commitment throughout the game and finally locked in the romance with "More than Friends" (which was a bit odd all things considered).

But at the end she gets off the Normandy stands next to Joker and smiles. Smiles. She has just been stranded across the galaxy on some unknown world, the Mass Relays are destroyed, so she will conceivably never see Shepard again, but she seems completely content with how things played out.

Also she and Javik had been right behind Shepard on Earth, and while Shepard was completely torn apart by the beam, yet they step off the ship without a scratch on them.

I have read a lot of books, played a lot of games, and watched a lot of TV shows and movies. I have experienced a lot of truly awful endings, but nothing has irritated me quite like this.


And for bittersweet endings I would add Fallout 1, your character saves the world, but is sent out alone into the wasteland.

Edit: Also MGS3 was a bit bittersweet as well.

Modifié par edisnooM, 01 mai 2012 - 09:07 .

[Kunari801]

TookYoCookies wrote...

Saving Private Ryan. Best 'bittersweet' ending ive ever seen. You see the sacrifice, and see the reward firsthand,  and the reason for the sacrifice was for the individual character, not the war effort as a whole...  

WOW, prefect that is a great movie with a perfect example of a bitersweet ending. 

[Noelemahc]

Funny part is, I would've accepted "bitter" without the "sweet" if it was well-written.

Blake's Seven, awesome series that it is, ends with the protagonists first turning on each other out of crazy paranoia instilled by the villains, and then the survivors are simply gunned down. Finita. But it was in-character for everybody, in fact the only surprise was that it didn't happen much, much sooner.

But we can do bittersweet too.

Farscape: the televised narrative ends at the end of the Scarran-Sebacean War, as the protagonists mourn the dead, cherish the living and look optimistically towards the future before them.

The comicized narrative ends at the end of the Kkore Invasion, as the protagonists, what little is left of them, mourn the dead, cherish the living, count the races that have been hunted into extinction, face the harsh reality that galactic economy is not just destroyed, but also buried,the soil desecrated and the planet where it was buried demolished by the Death Star. But life still goes on, and we are shown that, too.

Transmetropolitan, crazy insane political pamphlet that it is, ends with the hero succumbing to a horrid brain disease and becoming a wreck of a man.. or rather faking it all, to get away from the pressure of being a public person again that has been pressed unto him in the beginning of the story. A truckload of people, both good and bad, died along the way, but Spider Jerusalem still gets his last laugh.

Marvel's protracted Earth X/Universe X alternate-universe meta-crossover is grimdark beyond imagination, but it, too, remains optimistic throughout. Same for the X-Men: The End, which, for all the humongous death toll, ends on an optimistic note. In fact, pretty much any X-Men story ends in a bittersweet ending, X-Men Noir being the most brutally vicious of the bunch for obvious reasons.

EVERY. SINGLE. METAL GEAR. GAME. Had a bittersweet ending. I would trump that, every single Hideo Kojima game has a bittersweet ending. Go on, check, I'm waiting.
Metal Gear? Good luck, you saved the world and got the girl, but you had to kill your entire unit to do it.
Metal Gear 2? Good luck,you saved the world and got the girl, but you had to kill your father to do it.
Metal Gear Solid? Good luck, you saved the world and got the girl/guy, but you may have had to let a girl die, had to kill your entire replacement unit, your brother and by the way, you're not your father's son, you're his clone, welcome to having a limited lifespan.
Metal Gear Solid 2? Good luck, you saved the world and got your pregnant girlfriend back, but you had to kill your father figure to do it, she was just an agent assigned to monitor you and how much of her love is genuine remains to be ascertained, some of the bad guys escaped, the Really Bad Guys didn't even enter the picture, oh, and your entire life was a lie. Tough noogies.
Metal Gear Solid 3? Good luck, you saved the world and got a medal, but you had to kill your mother figure, your beloved was a Chinese spy, you lost an eye, and all of the crap you just went through was an aftershock of backroom politicking done just to steal a crapload of money.
Metal Gear Solid 4? I'm not gonna write this one out, I do not have all day. It's more bitter than bittersweet, even with the wedding and the world-saving.
Metal Gear AC!D? Good luck, you saved the world and cleared your name, but you have lost your sense of identity and you may not be actually Solid Snake.
Metal Gear AC!D2? Good luck, you saved the world and got your friends off the hook, but you are not Solid Snake, you're his clone. A clone of a clone? Real good lifespan prospects there, dude.
Metal Gear Ghost Babel? Good luck, you saved the world and got the girl, but you die offscreen once the credits end. NO. MATTER. WHAT.
Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker? Good luck, you saved the world and amassed a giant army and got a nukular walking robot. But to do it, you had to screw over half of Latin America, your best friend (and possibly lover) is a spy working against you that you keep close to control what your enemies learn of you, and you are effectively a PNG in your own country now.

Snatcher? Good luck, you saved Japan frm killer robots masquerading as humans and you and your wife had got your memories back... only to learn that you two designed and created these robots. Have fun going to Moscow, nuclear wasteland that it is now, to find and destroy the automated central production facility.

I could go on for days =)

Modifié par Noelemahc, 01 mai 2012 - 09:20 .

[TookYoCookies]

nitefyre410 wrote...


Games: So many,   Final Fantasy X stands out as one of the best , Read Dead Redemption, Halo Reach, 

 

I ABSOLUTELY LOVED Red Dead's, and Halo Reach's ending.. You know your going to die, but they give you the chance to go out - FIGHTING. Opening the barn door with dead eye, painting 6 head shots in red dead.. Awww man, that was so f*cking epic. The feeling as your going towards that door, OooO it was like injecting you into a classic bad ass western movie

Same thing with Reach, you knew you were going to die, but you had the chance to fight for as long as you could, and had that bad ass ending cinematic.. ahh man forgot about that. Good times.

[nitefyre410]

Noelemahc wrote...
*snip of epic awesome* 

 

Metal gear defiinatly... which boogles my mind how many people just rag on it for no reason. 

Still when one looks up the word bittersweet one sees but one definition... Gundam. 

Seriously, I laugh, cheered, cried, jumped out my chair.. 

Modifié par nitefyre410, 01 mai 2012 - 09:35 .

[Ab_Normal]

May have missed it, but I haven't seen Dragon Age: Origins' Ultimate Sacrifice ending mentioned. Bittersweet, with CLOSURE. Gosh, wonder which studio did that one....

[Noelemahc]

Someone mentioned Code Geass up above. Now that's a bittersweet ending to end all bittersweet endings. A Thanatos Gambit is a rare beast in any story, but one done to achieve world peace? Brilliant and sad and tear-jerking, like the rest of the series.

The TV Series "The Lost Room" was actually bittersweet in its ending. The protagonist saved his daughter and solved the issues with most of the supernatural stuff... but he had to give up his humanity to achieve it. As we've seen with the Occupant before, he will never age, he will never die, and he will outlast his daughter unless someone else takes his place - and it's implied that can only happen if he's killed. Ouch.

[sistersafetypin]

I agree. It seems people mistake Shepard's survival and the want for her/him to see her LI again as a rainbows and ponies ending. However, it's not that at all. Shepard was fighting a war for survival of a sentient beings and many, many people died. For that, one simply has to look at the Thessia, Palaven, and Earth.

Shepard's survival would have simply been the little bit of hope the galaxy needed to start the rebuilding process

[nitefyre410]

Noelemahc wrote...

Someone mentioned Code Geass up above. Now that's a bittersweet ending to end all bittersweet endings. A Thanatos Gambit is a rare beast in any story, but one done to achieve world peace? Brilliant and sad and tear-jerking, like the rest of the series.

The TV Series "The Lost Room" was actually bittersweet in its ending. The protagonist saved his daughter and solved the issues with most of the supernatural stuff... but he had to give up his humanity to achieve it. As we've seen with the Occupant before, he will never age, he will never die, and he will outlast his daughter unless someone else takes his place - and it's implied that can only happen if he's killed. Ouch.

  


Unfortunately  I doubt Bioware is skilled enough the pull that off, though I think I may  make the Control Ending into a Thantos Gambit in the end which is what I was expecting from the TIM... 

[M2S SOLID JOSH]

my idea for a bitter-sweet ending would be shepards death and after the war u see a cutscene of the funeral ( kinda like dragon age but more in depth ) with all races, companions and LI there with a monolouge afterwards. maybe a little extra scene differing with between LI's, liara with a kid, tali on her homeworld thinking of shepard, ghost shep walking up to ghost thane or something. of course i would still want my happy ending but if there was a bitsweet ending like this it would be awesome. also- bioware please play mgs4 to see how u end a series

[RedTail F22]

Another good read. Dont know how Bioware forgot this. Its sad that they did. I hope the EC will fix this.

[Peranor]

You should consider sending all of your collected topics to Bioware Taboo-xx
And not via tweets or email. Send them the old fashioned way. Print them out and let the mailman deliver them

I don't know why. But i've got it in my head that it carries more weight then email and such. Silly, i know


Oh, and I love your posts in this thread as well Noelemahc! Well writen and spot on.

[Taboo]

anorling wrote...

You should consider sending all of your collected topics to Bioware Taboo-xx
And not via tweets or email. Send them the old fashioned way. Print them out and let the mailman deliver them

I don't know why. But i've got it in my head that it carries more weight then email and such. Silly, i know


Oh, and I love your posts in this thread as well Noelemahc! Well writen and spot on.

I already sent them ALL the data in the first four topics I created which equaled.........fifteen pages?

Maybe I'll do it one last time.

[nitefyre410]

 Gundam 00 Ending... SPOILERS.  

One of my favoriate Bittersweet endings though on surface it does not look it but  having watched  the whole series.  You know that the bittersweet part comes from a innonce lost type deal

especially for Saji and Louise... talking about a childhoods end.    

Setsuna: Even if you cannot read this letter, I want to entrust you my feelings. You were forced to fight in The Republic of the Krugis when you were still a child. You only knew how to live in a battlefield, even so you feel the same way as me when it comes to looking for peace. Even if we understood each other... why couldn't we walk the same path? You use force to eradicate the conflicts on this world... If that were possible, then, where would your happiness be? You carry the sins and you fight even if you end up wounded. I doesn't matter how many times I think about it, your way of life is too painful. Sharing the happiness you have with others, and in exchange that the others do the same with you... I think that's the way that will lead us to true peace. This is why you should take your own happiness... Setsuna, I pray that you find your own happiness.[/i] 

 

For those who don't want it spoiled  and the crazy this?  This is bittersweet with out anyone dying.

Modifié par nitefyre410, 02 mai 2012 - 01:16 .

[Peranor]

Taboo-XX wrote...

anorling wrote...

You should consider sending all of your collected topics to Bioware Taboo-xx
And not via tweets or email. Send them the old fashioned way. Print them out and let the mailman deliver them

I don't know why. But i've got it in my head that it carries more weight then email and such. Silly, i know


Oh, and I love your posts in this thread as well Noelemahc! Well writen and spot on.

I already sent them ALL the data in the first four topics I created which equaled.........fifteen pages?

Maybe I'll do it one last time.

Sounds good. Now lets hope they open and read the letters as well =)

[parrmi22]

I love the Bob Dylan reference.

[Kunari801]

Taboo-XX wrote...

anorling wrote...

You should consider sending all of your collected topics to Bioware Taboo-xx
And not via tweets or email. Send them the old fashioned way. Print them out and let the mailman deliver them

I don't know why. But i've got it in my head that it carries more weight then email and such. Silly, i know


Oh, and I love your posts in this thread as well Noelemahc! Well writen and spot on.

I already sent them ALL the data in the first four topics I created which equaled.........fifteen pages?

Maybe I'll do it one last time.   

If the twitter was right, they are in production now.  So I hope they've taken your threads to heart, I find them some of the best threads on this forum.  

I'm trying to keep my wish-list for the EC somewhat grounded I'm still hopeful as I've made, and seen from others, suggestions that take the current endings and expland them into a tollerable ending.  

Modifié par Kunari801, 02 mai 2012 - 02:44 .