270 réponses à ce sujet

[Darth Death]

There's no closure, but speculation. That's why you've theories like IT still around to keep fan's insanity moderated.

[TheRealJayDee]

Cobalt2113 wrote...

The fact that it is ambiguous does not make it bad in and of itself.

It's like the ending to Cowboy Bebop. Which is awesome.

Yeah, no. It is in way similar to the ambigous ending of Cowboy Bebop. Thing is, in CB the ambiguity of the ending was done well, it was a fitting and satisfying conclusion to the story. Like you said - pretty awesome. 

'twas not awesome in ME3.

[alsonamedbort]

I'm confused--you made a whole big thread a few weeks back stating that, post-EC, it was clear that Shepard was dead. If that's really true, then the breath scene shouldnt make a difference at all. Yet here is this new thread.

[PanzerGr3nadier]

Answer to OPs question; Sequel.

[Jadebaby]

PanzerGr3nadier wrote...

Answer to OPs question; Sequel.

If they canonize destroy through a sequel, that would ****** other ending people off more than if it was IT, me thinks.

alsonamedbort wrote...

I'm confused--you made a whole big thread a few weeks back stating that, post-EC, it was clear that Shepard was dead. If that's really true, then the breath scene shouldnt make a difference at all. Yet here is this new thread.

That thread was my personal opinion of how impossible it would be for Shepard to survive a kilometre wide explosion.

This thread is asking WHY Shepard received no love via a lack of closure to her character and story. Regardless of whether s/he lives or dies in that 'scene'. I find it completely sub-par to her story and and a finger to us fans who had been heavily immersed in their Sheaprds.

I'd also like to point out that we were never engrossed into Shepard's character because we had to make stuff up and fill in blanks along the way. I don't see why the ending should be any different.

People going "omgGoodCoZtheYLeTmeHeaDcAnoNStuFF!" is just rubbish.

They could still SHOW that Shepard survived and got rescued without having to ruin ANY of your tantasies of how Shepard and your LI bang if they retire together.

[Jadebaby]

PanzerGr3nadier wrote...

Answer to OPs question; Sequel.

Also, it worked for Halo because it was a linear storyline.

Mass Effect, not so much...

[Iakus]

Jade8aby88 wrote...
They could still SHOW that Shepard survived and got rescued without having to ruin ANY of your tantasies of how Shepard and your LI bang if they retire together.

QFT.

Nobody's fantasies would have been ruined if they showed Shepard surviving (not just "alive")

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

Jassu1979 wrote...

Jade8aby88 wrote...

No, it happened at the end to bring suspense to the ending, that.is.it.

It's more of an easter egg than an actual scene.

Hell the file is a video file, not even in-game animation.

Exactly! 

And may I comment on just how little sense the "Normandy Memorial"-scene makes in the context of the Destroy ending?

If the crew know that Admiral Anderson is dead - then how can they NOT know that Shepard survived? And if they know that Shepard survived, why exactly are they preparing to hang up that plaque, anyway? "Oh, wait, I've got a sudden hunch that we ought not to hang it up, anyway!"
That whole scene is entirely nonsensical on a very basic story-telling level.

You know this is another plot hole. How do they even know Anderson is dead? Unless they found his body on the ground before the beam with all those who got blasted.

Please notice that Admiral Anderson was on the Citadel without a scratch on him. If everyone was gone. The entire team was gone, as Coates said, how did Anderson follow Shepard up the beam, and get to the panel before Shepard?

This is a plot hole large enough to fly a reaper capital ship through. So my question is did Shepard even make it up to the Citadel? Is Shepard buried under rubble somewhere in London near the beam? The end sequence plays out too much like the dream sequences. It's more like a nightmare from which I just can't seem to wake up.

And we wonder why people have looked at Indoctrination Theory, and others. The ending is so poorly written starting at the final assault that people are just grasping at straws to make sense out of something that makes no sense.

* both Shepard and Anderson should have been listed as MIA if both were on the Citadel.

* however since Anderson was known as dead by the Normandy means that Anderson wasn't on the Citadel.

* so how was the fate of Shepard known by the Normandy crew?

None of it makes any sense. The ending makes no sense at all. The EC doesn't hold a candle to Broken Steel. All the endings except high ems destroy get closure. Why is that? Is it because the game isn't finished? No. Bad writing and the lack of guts to actually say "survived" in the story itself.

[Yakko77]

If they gave destroy a proper ending then there'd be little or no reason to chose their "preferred" Synthesis ending with all its artsy artistic integrity and all that rot.

For me, the goal of the series was to ultimately destroy the Reapers. Ever since you saw Sovereign for the first time it was the point of the game to beat him and any and all of his buddies. Then Star Brat happened....

[V-rcingetorix]

EDIT: my network must have glitched, I couldn't see this post and rewrote it below. Apologies for the double post.

Modifié par V-rcingetorix, 13 août 2012 - 09:35 .

[MegaSovereign]

Jonata wrote...

My opinion is that Destroy represents fighting violence with violence. And violence always has a price... even if Shepard will eventually be found and people who played Mass Effect for the romance have that hint, they BioWare couldn't (and probably do not wanted to) picture Destroy as a "Rainbow & Unicorns" ending because it isn't.

As I said, violence has a price, and that price is a permanently scarred Shepard, breathing under the rubble of his own decision. He saved the Galaxy at the highest price possible, his own morality. Destroy is a bittersweet ending and wasn't supposed to be "what the fans wanted" IMO, because that's not the way people write stories. 

This.

Also Bioware wanted people to headcanon what happens to Shepard after the breath scene since not everyone wants the same thing to happen to Shepard.

[V-rcingetorix]

I found a great video by Extra Credits, link: penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/amnesia-and-story-structure

Summarized, it divides games into 3 acts, beginning, middle and end AKA standard life (against which the rest of the game is measured), call to arms/prep, final conflict.

Act 2 is the main part of most games, and Act 1 just sets the stage. Act 3 is the closer.

ME3 has a great Act 2, a good Act 1, and a bad Act 3. Think about it; writers created different Shepard backstories, diversified those changes over three games and parleyed those changes-upon-changes into a galaxy-wide cohesive alliance.

Then, after writing all that backstory and journey (with excellent path variables altering individual experiences), there is practically no finale. A five minute conversation concludes about a hundred hours worth of individual story with suicide, suicide or suicide (or a breath if EMS is high enough).

If the general numbers are correct (5 minutes of CKG, 100 hours of gametime) then that ratio is 1:1,200. For every single minute of Final Scene you played 1,200 minutes of gaming. And you still don't know what happened to Shepard in the detail given (by BioWare) in the beginning and middle.

Were we supposed to head-canon Shepards beginning? Head canon the fights/choices Shepard makes in the mid-game? No. Why is this change made only at the end?

EDIT: clarity

Modifié par V-rcingetorix, 13 août 2012 - 09:41 .

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

@V-rcingetorix Because Bioware forgot what this was. They took the entire story too seriously. If you look at the script it's comic book stuff. It's not "Citizen Kane". It's "Arnold Schwarzenegger" movie stuff. The script is cheesy. It's chock full of one liners which if delivered properly will have you cracking up, especially with the proper renegade interrupts.

The premise of the plot is pretty ridiculous as well. You've got an action hero, Commander Shepard, who has survived insurmountable odds, and has even survived death, now coming back to unite the galaxy to take on the biggest enemy yet: the reapers. And (s)he's back and badder than ever with the biggest gun ever -- in a story filled with space magic, lots of shooting, Kai Leng, and Cerberus, and of course reapers.

And where they went wrong was with vent boy, bad dreams, and other **** that just didn't make any sense. They should have just stuck with what was working: action and a comic book script.

And then the ending....... now they decided it was going to be a depressing work of art worthy of being a depressing French film for the Cannes film festival? Holy ****! WTF? And after fan outrage they issue the EC and insist on keeping it that way? Holy ****! WTF? again.

What's up with Casper? He suddenly appears mysteriously resembling vent boy, and offers Synthesis. Walters wants to blow up the galaxy because he's out of ideas and is in the midst of Canadian winter seasonal depression so cannot come up with a decent ending or any ending for that matter except "it's a wasteland."

But apparently one person who is on the dev team working on the destroy ending is taking Prozac and thinks the endings are too bleak and suggests offering a glimmer of hope so we got the breath scene because any more would have been too uplifting because everyone else was too depressed to believe any more would have been possible.

This is what happens when people take a video game story with a ridiculous plot and a cheesy comic book script and themselves too seriously. Think what the ending would have been like if Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez had done it. Fantastic and ridiculous.

[chemiclord]

V-rcingetorix wrote...

Were we supposed to head-canon Shepards beginning? Head canon the fights/choices Shepard makes in the mid-game? No. Why is this change made only at the end?

Long story:  Bioware wants Shepard's story (if not the entire Mass Effect IP) to end.  They wanted to burn the entire setting to the ground so that EA wouldn't be able to drag out sequel after sequel.  They wanted Shepard flat out dead.  But they also knew that an ending where Shepard cannot possibly live would set off a white hot inferno of rage from the fanbase (that inferno manifested ANYWAY, but for a largely different reason), so in ONE ending, they give you the barest details possible that he might have lived through it.

They don't want to give you details because they don't want to encourage "one more story."

[sparkyo42]

chemiclord wrote...

V-rcingetorix wrote...

Were we supposed to head-canon Shepards beginning? Head canon the fights/choices Shepard makes in the mid-game? No. Why is this change made only at the end?

Long story:  Bioware wants Shepard's story (if not the entire Mass Effect IP) to end.  They wanted to burn the entire setting to the ground so that EA wouldn't be able to drag out sequel after sequel.  They wanted Shepard flat out dead.  But they also knew that an ending where Shepard cannot possibly live would set off a white hot inferno of rage from the fanbase (that inferno manifested ANYWAY, but for a largely different reason), so in ONE ending, they give you the barest details possible that he might have lived through it.

They don't want to give you details because they don't want to encourage "one more story."

Except this attitudde has consequences for the rest of their products. Why invest anytime/money/effort into a game when the Developer may or may not decide to tell you to head Canon it.

We all could have done that for ME3 and saved ourselves money and effort, and rage for some. Will DA 3 adopt the same view of things?

[chemiclord]

sparkyo42 wrote...

Except this attitudde has consequences for the rest of their products. Why invest anytime/money/effort into a game when the Developer may or may not decide to tell you to head Canon it.

We all could have done that for ME3 and saved ourselves money and effort, and rage for some. Will DA 3 adopt the same view of things?

Who knows?  Maybe they want to keep making Dragon Age games.  Maybe they don't.

It's a difficult conundrum for a creator though; when they want to stop something that fans want to see continue.  Do you keep producing something that you don't have the heart to do anymore?  At some point, you have to draw a line, even if fans don't like it.

Part of the reason creators have been adopting this "torch and run" method of wrapping up a series is because it doesn't seem like fans really respect a creator's desire to stop.  Publishers see this, and start putting pressure on said creators to continue as well, and since publishers tend to have legal control of the IP, it puts creators in a VERY tough spot.

A) Cave and do something that you really don't want to do anymore.

Quit and watch the publisher hand your creation off to someone else.

C) Burn it all to the ground so that (A) and ( can't happen... although even then that doesn't always work.

I can certainly understand why creators would choose ©, even if I personally would not.

Modifié par chemiclord, 14 août 2012 - 04:08 .

[sparkyo42]

chemiclord wrote...

sparkyo42 wrote...

Except this attitudde has consequences for the rest of their products. Why invest anytime/money/effort into a game when the Developer may or may not decide to tell you to head Canon it.

We all could have done that for ME3 and saved ourselves money and effort, and rage for some. Will DA 3 adopt the same view of things?

Who knows?  Maybe they want to keep making Dragon Age games.  Maybe they don't.

It's a difficult conundrum for a creator though; when they want to stop something that fans want to see continue.  Do you keep producing something that you don't have the heart to do anymore?  At some point, you have to draw a line, even if fans don't like it.

Part of the reason creators have been adopting this "torch and run" method of wrapping up a series is because it doesn't seem like fans really respect a creator's desire to stop.  Publishers see this, and start putting pressure on said creators to continue as well, and since publishers tend to have legal control of the IP, it puts creators in a VERY tough spot.

A) Cave and do something that you really don't want to do anymore.

Quit and watch the publisher hand your creation off to someone else.

C) Burn it all to the ground so that (A) and ( can't happen... although even then that doesn't always work.

I can certainly understand why creators would choose ©, even if I personally would not.

And yet they still want to play in the ME universe by their own admission, how many posts have been about prequals for example? ( and only have TOR and DA as well for signature brands)

I understand you point, I just don't agree with it, and think that better endings could have been produced even if it was still meant to end Shepards story (though I would argue the crass buy more DLC popup undermines the Torch and Run).

My question is though if a studio becomes known for torching its work, then this has reprecussions for the rest of it's work, which in the end is self defeating. How much goodwill has Bioware burnt through in this that will be hard to replace/restore. Would the heads of Bioware signed off on this approach?

"Never descibe to malice what can be descibed to stupidity".

I just think they messed up and dug in their heels when confronted with the complaints.

Modifié par sparkyo42, 14 août 2012 - 04:45 .

[Esquin]

There is nothing wrong with the breath scene in the destroy ending and if it had been added alongside a proper, branching, awesome ending like we were promised no one would care about it.

It's a great scene, and provides the perfect level of speculation.

[Iakus]

sparkyo42 wrote...

My question is though if a studio becomes known for torching its work, then this has reprecussions for the rest of it's work, which in the end is self defeating. How much goodwill has Bioware burnt through in this that will be hard to replace/restore. Would the heads of Bioware signed off on this approach?

This leads to a related question:

How are we supposed to enjoy any Bioware product now that they've made it clear they can take our characters away at any time and curbstomp them?   How are we supposed to believe them when they say these are "our Shepards (or Hawkes, or whatever name comes in a future game) when we may end uponce again  watching helplessly as they burn at the game's conclusion?

I'd be very curious to see how they respond to that one.

[Iakus]

Esquin wrote...

There is nothing wrong with the breath scene in the destroy ending and if it had been added alongside a proper, branching, awesome ending like we were promised no one would care about it.

It's a great scene, and provides the perfect level of speculation.

The only way that scene would have been "perfect" is if it  was done while Shepard was being worked on by Alliance medics, followed immediately bu a voice saying  "Admrial Hackett.  We found Shepard.  He/She's alive"

Preferably followed up by the memorial scene, interrupted (while the LI hesitates) by Hackett contacting the Normandy with the news.

Modifié par iakus, 14 août 2012 - 05:11 .

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

The thing is that a publisher can order something called a RETCON and things change anyway because in the end this is a business.

[Father_Jerusalem]

I find it to be very difficult to deal with people who take a totalitarian black/white stance like "I will NEVER... (fill in the blank)".

That kind of mindset is not conducive to discussions or compromises.

For instance: If BioWare DID give you what you're asking for, would you stop asking the question then? If so, then your statement is a lie. If not, then there's no possible way to deal with you as you've gone so far past the point of reasonability as to be absurd.

[Father_Jerusalem]

iakus wrote...

sparkyo42 wrote...

My question is though if a studio becomes known for torching its work, then this has reprecussions for the rest of it's work, which in the end is self defeating. How much goodwill has Bioware burnt through in this that will be hard to replace/restore. Would the heads of Bioware signed off on this approach?

This leads to a related question:

How are we supposed to enjoy any Bioware product now that they've made it clear they can take our characters away at any time and curbstomp them?   How are we supposed to believe them when they say these are "our Shepards (or Hawkes, or whatever name comes in a future game) when we may end uponce again  watching helplessly as they burn at the game's conclusion?

I'd be very curious to see how they respond to that one.

It's not your character. It's BioWare's character that they're allowing you to play.

If it truly TRULY was your character... I could have agreed with Saren in ME1. I could have turned down becoming a Specter. I could have shot Udina in the face. I could have not worked with Cerberus in ME2. I could have been the filling in a Jack/Shepard/Miranda sandwich. I could have let the mercenaries kill Garrus for s's and g's. 

It was always BioWare's character, and BioWare's story. Every game has been that way. If this is news to you, then... boy, I don't know.