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[EricHVela]

Duane Webb: Co-director of Production at BioWare. Franchise Project Manager for Mass Effect.

He is referring to this article.
My Mass Effect 3 Ending Lasted 34 Hours. It Was Wonderful.

The article essentially says that ME3 is one long goodbye to everyone and everything in Mass Effect.




I see several problems with that:
The manner that the game forces closure upon the players is more akin to shoving an unwanted guest out of one's home. You're unwelcome. Goodbye.

Sure. It's their prerogative. It's their home. We're just guests that seem to have overstayed our welcome somehow despite us accepting their invitation and cover charge to enter. At least, that's how it feels.





A game that is only a game ending is an incomplete game. This might actually be true since the game punishes players with lower TMS if they do not import saved games from the previous ones.

An ending-only episode sometimes works with novels and other media, but in that same vein, people typically do not enjoy reading only the final "goodbye" novel. For a game where some pro-reviewer raved that new players should start being a fan with ME3, this method makes little sense.

ME2 was able to stand alone. It had to. PS3 players didn't get a chance at ME1. Most games are able to stand on their own. As such, they have beginnings and endings each.

If ME3 is just one long ending, it's missing the rest of the game.





Now, they say players didn't reach closure and are releasing some cinematic content to achieve that. If a game was one long goodbye, players getting closure is likely not the problem. The Krogan's story: closure. Mordin's story: closure. Thane's story: closure. Udina and the council: closure. Geth and Quarians: closure. Prothean legacy: closure. Love Interest: closure. Friends: closure. Closure is everywhere.

Starkid and after: Do you really think that closure is going to solve this?





That article goes on to make a rather unfortunate comparison:

People play Super Mario to win. People play Tetris to see how long they can play before they lose. Sadly, Totilo trends ME3 to the latter. A plot/story-driven game is not supposed to be an endurance contest that always ends in a loss.

Totilo says that the whole point of the Mass Effect series is to keep as many friends alive as possible, grinding through ME3 to do it. Here, I thought Mass Effect was about the battle against the Reapers. Even if Totilo is correct, no matter what you do -- even if you endure grinding your TMS*GR=EMS -- you save, at most, only 3 of your friends.




If Totilo "gets it", then it seems to me that Totilo gets that a plot-driven game that is one long ending where the player must endurance grind in order to fail less is a good game.

I don't get that.

Modifié par ReggarBlane, 11 mai 2012 - 06:38 .

[Xellith]

If nobody can "get" your art - then you failed hard as an artist.

Modifié par Xellith, 11 mai 2012 - 06:36 .

[Ingvarr Stormbird]

Yeah, I've totally seen this coming.
Saying that "The whole ME3 was a giant ending! And it was affected by choices, so nobody lied, and everybody got it different"
Ok, can I get my third part of the trilogy then?

That's just cheap cheating.

Modifié par Ingvarr Stormbird, 11 mai 2012 - 06:39 .

[Blind2Society]

Xellith wrote...

If nobody can "get" your art - then you failed hard as an artist.

This

[Wabajakka]

Ugh... I'm sorry there's a huge difference between "The Final Chapter/Episode" of a story and the actual conclusion to one.

[Sayantsi]

cop out.

[Jenonax]

That's a cheap shot, really.

Return of the King wasn't one long goodbye. Deathly Hallows wasn't. Amber Spyglass wasn't. The last part of a trilogy ties everything together but still has to follow basic narrative structure. The whole thing is not a denoument because guess what, it would be BORING!

Sorry, but this guy needs to go back to Writing 101. I have never heard something so silly from someone who's company is supposed to be leaders in interactive storytelling.

[frylock23]

Even the ending must have an end. And they didn't give my ending an end, at least not one that made any sense.

And I didn't get any sense that the suicuide mission of ME2 was the entire climax of the series and ME3 was all falling action to use the narrative structure. If that's not the case, then where exactly was the climax of the series? Or is the series that Reaper's story all along? If that's true than is the climax where they finally successfully invade and all of ME3 is just the sad final death throes of the species of this time?

No matter how you spin it. It's a narrative structure fail, or a story that BioWare never quite actually told us.

Modifié par frylock23, 11 mai 2012 - 06:44 .

[Raiil]

Xellith wrote...

If nobody can "get" your art - then you failed hard as an artist.

Pretty much. If the vast majority says 'what the hell', something has gone wrong, and it would be pretty asanine to assume that it's the general population being too stupid to get it.

[Luder09]

The goodbyes were sad, because I sensed that Shepard would be the one incapable of saying hello again. She would die. But these other characters would live on because of her and me.

Can I get this copy of the game? I don't have a friggan clue what happened to my friends/squaddies, some landed on a planet for some inexplicable reason and as for the rest.......?

[Taboo]

It's all starting to fall into place..........

They keep tying nooses when they do this......

Why?

[ImmovableMover]

As I commented on that article itself -

"I think of my car as a Porsche but that doesn't make it a Porsche and you can think of the entire game as "The ending to Mass effect 3" but that, also, doesn't make it so. ****, it doesn't even make sense; You can think of Mass Effect 3 as the end to the Mass effect series, but you can't think of Mass Effect 3 as the ending to Mass effect 3...That's like considering the Soup at the start of your meal "The Desert". We have words to describe specific things for a reason, You can't **** around with definitions to try and make some faux-intellectual point.

It seems that no one can properly defend the ending without, at some point, trying to dismiss it or ignore it as a distinctive section in the story. This article dismisses the ending by putting the entire game under the umbrella of "The ending", failing to (or simply not wanting to) see any distinction between the 30 hours of Mass Effect 3 and the contested final section of Mass effect 3 (you know, the bit most people accurately call "the ending").

If you breezed through the final 15 minutes, thinking of it as only a tiny percentage of a day long ending then I'm not surprised you don't mind it. But the rest of us who have engaged our brains, looked at it critically and aren't going to jump through mental hoops just to say it wasn't bad are still pretty unhappy with it."

[hwf]

Well Mr. Webb's got a personal stake in how Mass Effect 3 turned out so obviously he's got some pent up frustration to deal thanks to us; the consumer.

I don't think you need to analyze Totilo's article too much - Webb just wants to state that "ME3 as a whole is the ending".
While it's true it doesn't take anything away from the massive outcry people had over the last 15 minutes of the game though!

[antares_sublight]

BW totally doesn't care about what anyone says. They love the ending and think it's flawless.

Comments like this are pushing me over the edge of never buying anything more from BioWare.

[Thorn Harvestar]

Taboo-XX wrote...

It's all starting to fall into place..........

They keep tying nooses when they do this......

Why?

Keep in mind, back in March he tweeted:

"Saw #21JumpStreet last night - funny movie but we didn't like the ending. Who can I send cupcakes to?"

[jstme]

Hmm. they could save a lot of effort and go with something like this.
Wrex: Shepard.
Sheprard: Wrex.
Shepard: I came to say goodbye.
Wrex: Bye.
Repeat for all the characters and planets/space stations.
By the way, i noticed that lots of people who like the ending, choose synthesis. Inckluding the writer of the article.

[Deltoran]

Lol, they just can't keep from shooting themselves in the proverbial PR foot can they? Yet another of the 'they just didn't get it' statements defending the ending. *Sigh* EC will be interesting if they're taking this approach.

[Talogrungi]

If I'm honest, I can sort of understand the argument that the entire game was an ending to the series. The game delivered SOME satisfying conclusions (the Geth/Quarian conflict and the Genophage) .. but it doesn't change that the ending (or the end of the ending; whatever you want to call it) failed hard.

Oh, and a bit of irreverent word-play shenanigans; if the entire game was an ending, then Bioware isn't allowed to add ANY DLC since doing so would change "the ending" .. and that would be compromising their artistic integrity.

Modifié par Talogrungi, 11 mai 2012 - 06:52 .

[aj2070]

Xellith wrote...

If nobody can "get" your art - then you failed hard as an artist.

This is also communication 101; if you have to "clarify" what you said, then you weren't clear in the first place.

The other problem with this "the entire game was the ending" defense is it flies completly in the face of what Casey Hudson, David Silverman, Mike Gamble <shudder>, and others have said about Mass Effect 3 being "the best place to jump into the story".  Who would ever tell somebody to start a book in the last 20 pages?

Modifié par aj2070, 11 mai 2012 - 06:56 .

[KingNothing125]

Who the heck is Duane Webb and why should I care?

[wantedman dan]

I quit reading after "My Shepard synthesized..."

Sorry, not gonna listen to how you forced your eugenics on the entire galaxy.

[CELL55]

Well yeah, up until Reaper Kid, there was plenty of closure. Heck, you even made post-battle plans with your best friends when you were back on Earth. If the game had just ended with Anderson and you looking out at Earth from the Crucible, it would have been great. They wouldn't need to show an epilogue; we had already talked that out at home base on Earth.

The problem of course, is the Reaper Kid. With that short segment, everything is blown wide open again. Nothing is certain, no one has any idea just what the Nine Hells is going on.

All that closure gets ripped apart, because without the Mass Relays, all of your post battle plans are now impossible. With you dead, all of your post battle plans are now impossible. With one of three colors chosen, the situation has radically changed in a way that we are not shown, and your post battle plans are now irrelevant.

[Hihoshi101]

Tetris really? I play Tetris to get a high score, not to lose. I also have a preconceived notion that I will eventual fail. It does not require 30+ hours of my life or 200+ if you include extra play through of the first two games with a preconceived notion I will/can be victorious. Also you lose Tetris because YOU make a mistake not because you are forced into it...WTF?

... also I recall that a trilogy is three distinct stories woven together to form a larger whole so the refer to the whole game a 'the end' would be an even larger betrayal then giving us a short crappy ending they couldn't quite figure out or IT.

[Hellfire257]

Articles like that are the reason I keep clear of Kotaku.

[Mcfly616]

I've seen the same excuse from.pro-enders....ME3 is one big ending, therefore it covers everything.....


I'm sorry, but that is a terrible excuse......and even if ME3 were just one big ending, its ALL UNDONE BY IT'S OWN ENDING LOL

Not only does it render every choice you've made throughout the series useless, it renders ME3 useless.....yay we cured the genophage.....but I doesn't matter.....yay we united Turians, salarians, and.Krogan.....just to kill everything.....



Idiots