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[Talhydras]

An important further point about open endings.

In most cases, the audience of a book has had to imagine the narrative unfolding for 100% of the story. The author's skill with adjectives will probably help you figure out how things are generally supposed to look, but most of the heavy lifting when it comes to visualizing a particular scene from a story is going to be done by the reader.

This is something that's fundamentally different in visual media. While this may sound like a put-down, visual media is easier to process because a ton of the imagination's already been done for you. Your brain doesn't have to create the environment, the author's already done that and displayed it for you to see (The Matrix is kind of a deconstruction of this).

The experience of an open-ended story, therefore, changes a great deal depending on the medium through which you're getting it. If it's a book, it's easy for you to close the back cover and get down to trying to figure out how it made you feel and what you thought happened because you've been doing that from page one, sentence one. If it's a Mass Effect game, you've been acting and reacting to what you're presented with ever since you clicked 'New Game' in ME1 and had to decide if ______ Shepard had a second X chromosome or not. Rarely, up until the last part of the last game, are you supposed to be sitting there figuring out what the hell just happened because you saw it, heard it, and probably took a dialogue choice to make it happen.

Put another way, for me the joy of Mass Effect was never in the contemplation of what had just transpired but in the active experience of the adventures. Mass Effect never looked to the future with any other sentiment then "The Reapers are Coming". That's pretty much the final line of Shep's at the end of ME1 and ME2. What Mass Effect did do was focus with perfect precision on putting you in the moment.

[GreyLycanTrope]

Nice find, thanks for posting.

[MinatheBrat]

Thanks for posting. Good article.

This quote by Abercrombie made me nervous:

"I think the problems started well before the ending," he explains. "The Illusive Man went from fascinating power behind the throne in Mass Effect 2 to tedious blathering villain in Mass Effect 3, for instance. The third game was more gung ho, more morally simplistic, more... cheesy than the second....
"I'm not sure how a bit of DLC can make the difference for Mass Effect 3. If the spike on the top of the skyscraper is wonky because the foundation is wonky, a new spike ain't going to fix it."

I'm worried that he's right. I'm hoping the EC is fantastic. I want  it to be fantastic,  but maybe a Director's Cut of the entire game might have been a better idea.

Modifié par MinatheBrat, 28 mai 2012 - 03:00 .

[The Edge]

Great article!

[Raynulf]

MinatheBrat wrote...
I'm worried that he's right. I'm hoping the EC is fantastic. I want  it to be fantastic,  but maybe a Director's Cut of the entire game might have been a better idea.

Ditto.

I posted something similar in the official "suggestions" thread some time ago: DLC in the usual form that merely adds to the game was unlikely to do much to really fix the issues with the game, it requires either a Director's Cut, or to jump on the IT bandwagon to 'undo' the ending and hope people can simply ignore the lesser faults.

The problem is that a Director's Cut style DLC would be hard to sell to the customers as paid-DLC and harder to sell to the shareholders as free-DLC.

[Shardik1]

I got into ME with 2,  I recently finished 3 and just bought 1,  (SPOILER ALERT)






The Joy is taken out of it knowing that everyone in the Citadel is going to die.  And that major charactors are ****s.  Fine if Shepard dies, but come on.  Give us a bit of a break here.

[Reptilian Rob]

I would pay premium dollars to hear anyone at Bioware back their ending up in light of all these complaints, both by fans and by professionals.

As of right now ME3 is just glorified high school fan fiction, written by the lowly dork in class who never really grasped the true meaning of story telling.

[Bongo506]

covertdrizzt wrote...

ReXspec wrote...

jules_vern18 wrote...

Best line in the article:

"By the time you get to the end of a hundred and fifty hours of gameplay, you shouldn't need things explained. You shouldn't be watching with furrowed brow thinking wha? You shouldn't be thinking at all. You should be feeling it."

This... A MILLION F*CKING TIMES THIS

yes a zillion times

x17

[Reptilian Rob]

Bongo506 wrote...

covertdrizzt wrote...

ReXspec wrote...

jules_vern18 wrote...

Best line in the article:

"By the time you get to the end of a hundred and fifty hours of gameplay, you shouldn't need things explained. You shouldn't be watching with furrowed brow thinking wha? You shouldn't be thinking at all. You should be feeling it."

This... A MILLION F*CKING TIMES THIS

yes a zillion times

x17

An x17 you say!?

[RocketManSR2]

"there needs to be some form of emotional pay-off for all those people who stuck with the over-arching story from day one. When it comes to a huge game like Mass Effect 3, to have an ending which negates any of the travails of the player is a mean-spirited and lazy thing to do."

Bingo. BioWare,

[Destructorlio]

Reptilian Rob wrote...

I would pay premium dollars to hear anyone at Bioware back their ending up in light of all these complaints, both by fans and by professionals.

As of right now ME3 is just glorified high school fan fiction, written by the lowly dork in class who never really grasped the true meaning of story telling.

Er... unless IT is true... in which case it will have done something that has never been achieved in any other form of fiction.

[QuantumSheep13]

Destructorlio wrote...

Reptilian Rob wrote...

I would pay premium dollars to hear anyone at Bioware back their ending up in light of all these complaints, both by fans and by professionals.

As of right now ME3 is just glorified high school fan fiction, written by the lowly dork in class who never really grasped the true meaning of story telling.

Er... unless IT is true... in which case it will have done something that has never been achieved in any other form of fiction.

Yeah, the ending wouldn't just be complete s**t if IT is true...It'd be complete s**t and also be a dream/hallucination, so technically it wouldn't be an ending at all. So that would mean Bioware sold us an unfinished product. Fantastic.

Modifié par QuantumSheep13, 28 mai 2012 - 04:12 .

[Reptilian Rob]

Destructorlio wrote...

Reptilian Rob wrote...

I would pay premium dollars to hear anyone at Bioware back their ending up in light of all these complaints, both by fans and by professionals.

As of right now ME3 is just glorified high school fan fiction, written by the lowly dork in class who never really grasped the true meaning of story telling.

Er... unless IT is true... in which case it will have done something that has never been achieved in any other form of fiction.

As much as I would love to see that happen...

Yeah, fat chance. 

[CDRSkyShepard]

OhDihBot wrote...

There were zero moments in ME3 that were cheesier than the "Human Reaper" reveal in ME2. That moment really knocked the game down a bit, IMO -- especially since BW didn't do an adequate job of explaining why they were creating a Human Reaper in the first place (i.e. to take over Sovereign's role in activating the Citadel relay to usher in the Reaper invasion).

I always thought they were gonna explain why the Reapers were so set on creating the human Reaper early (maybe because Shepard scared them more sh*tless than they cared to admit) in ME3. That never happened. They could have worked the entirety of ME2's storyline in much better than they did. The way 3 worked, ME2 was just a side distraction that got Shepard into trouble. There should have been more to the Collector abductions to the Reapers' overall plans that made stopping them worth it even though they were only targeting one species. Like I said, they could've done it and done it well, but they basically just dropped that whole plotline save for TIM having parts of the human Reaper no matter if you destroyed or kept  the base in ME2...which was just totally silly.

ME3 dropped a lot of things from the previous games. It was just a disappointment all around with the exception of the Genophage and Rannoch arcs (large arcs, but probably only about half of the game itself). If you ask me, the Crucible was way cheesier than the proto-Reaper by a long shot, especially when you consider that they could've actually done something to explain the proto-Reaper. The Crucible was just a huge magic "off button" that we weren't supposed to get. Doesn't get much cheesier than that.

[hangmans tree]

If it turns out as I think and this article seems to go inline with my predictions, I think I'll drop the ME franchise altogether.
IMHO "clarification DLC" wont change much, just expand on my frustration and will extinguish all hope for ME3s redemption. Ascension. Whatever.

[Necrotron]

The problem is they, like many, are analyzing this as a story, not a video game.

Video games as a genre have a very intimate attachment to their players. You are the character in a video game, and thus, your investment in what happens to that character is immensely higher than any other story medium.

[Necrotron]

hangmans tree wrote...

If it turns out as I think and this article seems to go inline with my predictions, I think I'll drop the ME franchise altogether.
IMHO "clarification DLC" wont change much, just expand on my frustration and will extinguish all hope for ME3s redemption. Ascension. Whatever.

Plenty saw that as soon as they read the 'extended cut DLC' FAQ, hence the many, many 'I'm done with you forever Bioware!' posts that day.   It is a reinvention of the story they wanted to convey, which, by most accounts I read here, people will still hate.

Their FAQ guidelines don't really leave much room to not disappoint a lot of people.  But those who were merely upset by the lack of clarity and closure will be happy, at least.

[Montana]

Mr Abercrombie, you da man.

Anyone who hasn't read his books should, that man can write complex, entertaining, mature and exciting fantasy!

Really good read OP, thx for the link.

[WolfyZA]

Do you think BW might reveal something at E3?

[RocketManSR2]

WolfyZA wrote...

Do you think BW might reveal something at E3?

This was posted by Chris Priestly on Twitter:

"People keep asking me, so to be clear: No, there will be no ME3 Extended Cut preview, video, announce, etc at E3."

I'm sure they'll be more than happy to talk to no end about any upcoming MP content, though.

twitter.com/#!/BioEvilChris

That's his Twitter account. It was posted 6 hours ago.

Modifié par RocketManSR2, 28 mai 2012 - 09:14 .