So, having spent the time to play through and reflect on it a bit more, I'm still very unsatisfied with these endings.
Overall, my problem is that, the original endings felt like they were written by a completely different team for a completely different game and thrown in 5 minutes before the game needed to go out to get printed on disks. In many ways this was true, it was a poorly executed copy-paste job of the 12 year old Deus Ex endings, Control AI/Destroy AI/Merge with AI, in the same Blue/Red/Green color coding. The problem was that DeusEx actually built up to those endings and each outcome had a substantially different ending, while ME3's amounted to a color filter on some explosions and a green flashing shader effect for one choice and a half second "breath" scene for another, with absolutely nothing about the endings taking anything you did into account aside from which "A,B,C" door you chose.
Now, obviously there was intense reaction to this, people immediately got upset. The problem with the ending (really just one, calling it plural "endings" is a bit of misnomer) is threefold. First, it was poorly executed and very obviously rushed. Second was that nothing about the endings fit the thematic paradigm or narrative buildip of the trilogy up to that point, they failed the artistic intent of the entire series up to that point. Third, they weren't just bad, they were *wrong*, they were not the endings for an action Space Opera but rather a Kubrik-esque drama that had no place ina Space Opera.
They were the wrong endings for this game, like ending Return of the Jedi with a scene where Luke tried to leave the Death Star as it explodes after redeeming Vader-Returned-As-Anakin and the shuttle tells him "I can't do that Dave" and then cuts to black.
Now Bioware eventually came out and said, hey, for you guys that want more clarity and closure, we'll do something about it. The problem is that clarity and closure were only part of the problem, with the core issues being that nothing about the ending fits the plot or genre.
So, having played thruogh the Extended Cut, what did we get?
Not a whole lot.
We get an epilogue (which was definitely needed) and some closure of *some* plotholes, however by and large the core issues remain.
What really bothers me is that Bioware went out of it's way to preserve everything shown in the original ending, saying "we arent' changing the ending", and explaining that the EC is there for "clarity" for us stupid folk who obviously didn't get it. Then to do that they really do flat out change a whole bunch of stuff in order for any of it to make sense, as there's no way anyone would have gotten a lot of what was put in without the EC.
Stuff like "oh hey, we medivac the squad out and joker is told to head for a rendevous point, so that's how your squad got away and why joker was leaving you behind!"
But...nothing of that was in the original end in any way, not one hint. There was nothing to miss, these are flat out additions and changes.
Changes like, mere meters from the citadel beam, with two Reapers sitting there actively firing, the Normandy manages to make it to your location from a battle in orbit in about as long as it take Shepard to turn around, and you have this long goodbye scene with your LI, again no more than maybe a couple hundred meters from an objective vital to the galaxy's survival in an open area with Reapers actively firing main weaponry and butchering everyone who tries to get into the portal. Rather awkward.
Then, somehow there's some sort of rendevous the fleet planned for when the catalyst went off, despite not having any idea what it did or how it worked or what would happen and with the battle for earth still in the balance? Just "hey, it worked, lets get out of here!", then of course it's changed so that Joker doesnt' crash and Normandy is not shown going down in flames, but somehow ends up on some random jungle planet. Again, rather awkward.
Then, oh hey, the mass relays don't actually completely explode, just the little rings. BIG change there.
While decently executed this time, things like the above feel like they were very obviously forced and made up specifically to support what happened in the original ending, despite really very plainly *CHANGING* these events.
So what we ended up with was a very forced attempt at maintaining the semblance of the original endings at all costs, despite really actually changing them quite a bit (just not enough to actually make them fit the game properly). The whole thing feels like it was an exercise in Bioware's part of not wanting to give in simply for it's own sake and stick doggedly to the orignal, awful, ending, for no discernable reason. They clearly very much changed things, just not what would have actually mattered.
ME3 thus ends up with endings that, had the been the original, would have bypassed much of the rage but ended up on a rather mediocre note, three months late, instead of endings that really would have returned the ME series as a work of fiction-par-excellence amongst video games, because *SOMEONE* feels that changing the endings, no matter how inappropriate to something else, was just not something they could or should do no matter what, but to make the original ending options make *any* sense, they still had to change them. So we get changed endings, but just enough so that a couple gaping plotholes are closed.
With that effort and investment, I'm boggled as to why they didn't just put in an ending fitting a Space Opera, a simple "Shepard goes out in a blaze of glory, activiating the citadel with his/her dying breath and disabling the reapers as the combined fleets kill them off" or some-such. Expected yes, but that's sorta the point. Putting in some 'artsy/unepxected' ending like the one they did wasn't exactly original or fitting either.
TL;DR Extended cut changes a whole bunch of things...in order not to change anything, and still ends up not really making a whole lot of sense and feels contrived and forced, the same effort could have been applied to put out a much better ending than finding ways to unsuccesfully salvage the original DeusEx copy/past job.
Modifié par Vaktathi, 28 juin 2012 - 03:36 .
Retour en haut
