BlueStorm83 wrote...
--- Yes, the Extended Cut really seems to be bringing around two reactions. One reaction, about half of the people, seem to be saying "The EC does a great job... at fixing what was wrong in the first place," and the other half seem to be saying "The EC makes things worse." I'm both camps, personally.
From a sense that the previous ending was broken, yes, the EC does fix it. The Catalyst's circular pretzel-logic is now less "I'm just bad writing" and now more "I'm a bad character who's clearly retarded." The three endings used to all be "And then Shepard blew up 95% of the inhabited galaxy and stranded the other 5% to never be able to go to space again." Now they're all "And then Shepard betrayed (Insert race, friend, morality here) and secured continued existence, miserable or abominable as it may be, for (insert survivors of Shepard's betrayal.)" The endings used to say "We don't listen to our paying customers." Now they say "We listen to our paying customers... but refuse to act upon their arguments, possibly out of arrogance, possibly out of feat that we'd lose clout in an industry."
But from the standpoint of Mass Effect 3 being a VIDEOGAME, the endings are all still a failure. Videogames should begin with some sort of a victory. A self-sacrificing hero can pull out a victory, if his sacrifice saves those he was fighting for. And we don't get that with Shepard. Throughout the game, we all get to decide what we're fighting for. We can champion all life, we can put Humanity first, we can go for unity and peace... among Organics, but screw the Toasters, they're just machines. We can find a degree in between, I suppose. Never tried a playthrough where I wanted Shep to be a friend to all Levo-protien species, but hated those filthy Dextros. But the game forces us in the end to be fighting for... well, honestly, I don't know what we're fighting for at the end. The dream scenes and the ending seem to force Shepard to be fighting out of regret and desperation. And I never got that feel from anything that "I" made Shepard say. I never got that feeling from anything that Hackett said- well, before they traveled back in time and made him whine about how only the Magic MacGuffin could save us all... by screwing us all.
--- One thing I still can't understand is people THANKING BioWare. If you go to a Restaurant, and you order a steak, and they bring you asparagus, and you argue and argue, but then a month later they bring you a cold, chewed on steak, don't thank them, slam the door in their faces.
I agree with both of your points. and yeah the EC does both fix a lot of the major issues that should have been caught in Post-Production, or Quality Control - FrecklesMcStarbrat and his Circilar-Pretzel Logic now comes across as HAL9000 insanity than just "We were Lazy" But the EC does create some new ones like how I mentioned Harby just sitting there and dosn't even try to shoot at the Normandy, or how the Relays are till heavily damaged, - okay we get a snippit that everyone made it home so they won't starve to death and die but its still going to take decades before interstella contact is restored, and we stil don't know what happened to the folks on the Citidel. What I realy realy don't like is how we keep getting Word of God on twitter about things that -should- have been in the EC.
I agree that from a Video Game sense of things there is a lack of Victory, there is no Unicorns and Rainbows ending and I knew that going in - Frankly Shep wasn't born under a lucky star. but the "End Choice" does seem to loose its narative coherence, you lose t hat sense of what your righting for and puts out more questons than answers - you don't want to cap your trilogy with "Speculation". You want to Cap your Trilogy by wraping up as much of your story threads as you can, not open dozens more on the last page. - Tolkien wrote an extra 100 pages in LOTR to wrap up his ending, The Crucible itself has been portrayed as the Weapon to end the Reapers...then in the last 5 minutes it becomes "just a power supply" so the choices being offered to you are from Freckles, Freckles is the one offering you the threee choices, not the Crucible just him and we've seen he has the insane HAL9000 Logic.
The really sad thing is BW know better than this, Baulders Gate, NWN, and Dragon Age (Origins - the Good one) so we lnow they can craft a good ending, in Origins you can even say you know what "Screw it" and cheat.
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