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[BatmanPWNS]

DecCylonus wrote...

BatmanPWNS wrote...

But Star War and Halo put ME3 story to shame...........

ROFL!

Star Wars, where the fate of the galaxy hinges on a 9 year old boy winning a NASCAR race?

Star Wars, where the most powerful Jedi ever is a whiney teenage brat and we're supposed to be shocked when he falls and becomes Darth Vader?

Star Wars, where the most powerful empire in galactic history is defeated by a race of two foot tall teddy bears with stoneage technolgoy? A race that appears in the last 45 minutes of a six movie series and is the key to victory, which sounds a lot like criticisms of the Catalyst and Crucible.

Halo, where the main character has no emotions and doesn't even have a face?

Halo, with its hamfisted attempts to portray aliens as warmonger religious fanatics, misusing and misunderstanding every term known to the world's relgions?

Halo, where one cyborg with an assault rifle has to literally travel up the butt of the Flood to solve the galaxy's problems?

Mass Effect may not be in the pantheon of great literature, but it's better than Star Wars or Halo.

Well if we gonna off the negative then we gotta mention:

Starkid
Biotics- How the hell can they go on for so long?
Where the main character has no emotions except for a little kid. Yeah, great hero. /SARCASM
The solution to stopping war between synthetics and organics is to make another synthetic? LOL, make sense, right?
The faith of everyone relies on making a DEM which was never mentioned before. Excellent writing.
Bringing a dead man/woman back to life, LOL. WTF was that?

Yeah, don't see how ME puts those to shames.

[Xilizhra]

Where the main character has no emotions except for a little kid. Yeah, great hero.

Clearly you didn't pay attention to Thessia. Or much of the rest of the game.

[BatmanPWNS]

The Mad Hanar wrote...

Xilizhra wrote...

The Mad Hanar wrote...

bleetman wrote...

The Mad Hanar wrote...

Then again DA:O did force you to kill off your character at the end unless you wanted to have sex with a crazy witch.

No it didn't.

Really? What other option did you have other than sending Allistar to do it?

Sending Loghain to do it.

Huh, never knew that.

Either way, Morrigan gets laid or you die. That's your options.

You forgot that Alistair and Loghain can sacrifice themself too and you walk free from it.

[bleetman]

The Mad Hanar wrote...

Either way, Morrigan gets laid or you die. That's your options.

No, they're not. You can reject Morrigan's offer and have Alistair or Loghain sacrifice themselves, both of whom are fine with doing so.

[Xilizhra]

The Mad Hanar wrote...

Xilizhra wrote...

The Mad Hanar wrote...

bleetman wrote...

The Mad Hanar wrote...

Then again DA:O did force you to kill off your character at the end unless you wanted to have sex with a crazy witch.

No it didn't.

Really? What other option did you have other than sending Allistar to do it?

Sending Loghain to do it.

Huh, never knew that.

Either way, Morrigan gets laid or you die. That's your options.

I see no problem with this.

That said... I consider the costs of the ME3 endings a bit on the arbitrary and annoying side.  I don't mind all three of them being there, but I believe all of them should look a bit better. Allowing Destroy to not kill off the synthetics would probably allow a bunch of people to feel less bitter at Synthesis.

[Baa Baa]

DecCylonus wrote...
Halo, where the main character has no emotions and doesn't even have a face?

You're kidding me right?
As if Commander Shepard is a dynamic protagonist either?

[DecCylonus]

Baa Baa wrote...

DecCylonus wrote...
Halo, where the main character has no emotions and doesn't even have a face?

You're kidding me right?
As if Commander Shepard is a dynamic protagonist either?

Well, Shepard is less emotional than, say, Edward Cullen. And I'm more than fine with that. But Shepard is far more dynamic than Master Chief, whose emotions range from "unlock my frozen armor" to "let's kill them."

[wright1978]

Ieldra2 wrote...

@OP and others:
I do not agree. The "standard formula" would have been predictable and boring. To a large degree, the flaws in ME3 lie all in the execution and in not finding the right balance, not the concepts:

Autodialogue: is a good way to make scenes flow, but the half dozen or so scenes where Shepard is out of character because of it ruins the whole concept, and the way it makes writers avoid controversial issues where they'd have to write a forked dialogue reduces character depth. ME1 could have used more of it, ME2 had the balance about right and ME3 went overboard.

Dreams: it makes sense that Shepard has nightmares. However, the writers shouldn't have tried to give anything shown there a personal face since no Shepard can be said to canonically have a personal stake in the fate of anyone who died. Or, if it absolutely had to be a specific person, make it one connected to important events in Shepard's story. For me, Lilith from Horizon (the one you see dissolving at the CB in ME2) would have worked far better, since I really wished I could have saved her. Death by random attack, that doesn't work.

Open Endings: the openness is OK to some degree since none of us wanted their headcanons destroyed by the endings. However, the ending was so vague that there was literally no firm ground from which to speculate from, and the things that were *not* open painted a depressing picture.

Themes and symbolism: Those were ok as well. Only in some cases, they were not rooted firmly enough (sometimes not at all) in in-world logic. Thus, we perceive Mordin's sacrifice as valid and believable but Shepard's as making no sense.

@Katosu:
Yes, I agree that would have a great way to root the dreams in Shepard's character as established by roleplaying!

I'll agree with you that the execution of the endings was appalling but conceptually the choices themselves were interesting excluding the mechanism( idiotic introduction of the catalyst). However i will say a traditional ending would likely have been simpler to execute and come across as less of a failure than the one they delivered. I doubt i would have had an issue with a suicide mission on a grand scale.

There were far more than half  a dozen occasions where auto-dialogue breached across player characterisation. To me that is unacceptable. Auto-dialogue should be the aid to scenes flowing but dialogue choice the master rather than dialogue choice becoming the servant of flowing scenes.

Dreams were just stupid and poorly implemented because the kid made no sense as a character Shep would care about. At the very  least there should be ways to avoid the dreams in the form of renegade interrupt or the like. The only way i can play them is to switch off my speakers for the 1st time ever in my ME gaming history.

I have no problem with open endings leaving room for head canon as long as the endings are varied in sacrifice/rewards/consequences and give me enough closure so that when i'm picking up the baton i don't feel like i'vebeen dumped in a lightless cave without a torch.  I dislike the desperate attempts they made to railroad shep's death too and refusal to honour the one lives scenario properly but EC did make changeover less abrupt.

[Baa Baa]

DecCylonus wrote...

Baa Baa wrote...

DecCylonus wrote...
Halo, where the main character has no emotions and doesn't even have a face?

You're kidding me right?
As if Commander Shepard is a dynamic protagonist either?

Well, Shepard is less emotional than, say, Edward Cullen. And I'm more than fine with that. But Shepard is far more dynamic than Master Chief, whose emotions range from "unlock my frozen armor" to "let's kill them."

He's been a super soldier since he was like 7.
I think Chief was done better though because they made his lack of emotion a positive; it makes him seem professional and badass.
Shepard's lack of emotion made him seem awkward and at times alien to the player. At least that's how I felt.

[Kamfrenchie]

ME3 failed because it devited from ME fomula.

If you've been doing"classic" for 80% of the story, having the last 20% be completely different in style is a bad idea.

Had ME alwas been about nonsense like the catalyst, there would be no uproar, because there would be a continuity.

[Cartims]

I didn't like ME3...if you did I am happy for you. What's the big deal. some like, some dislike WTF.

[Baa Baa]

Kamfrenchie wrote...

ME3 failed because it devited from ME fomula.

If you've been doing"classic" for 80% of the story, having the last 20% be completely different in style is a bad idea.

Had ME alwas been about nonsense like the catalyst, there would be no uproar, because there would be a continuity.

This.
I don't have a problem with BioWare trying something different (probably why I loved ME2 so much), but ME3 felt too far off for me.
Like you said it lost some continuity.

[DecCylonus]

Baa Baa wrote...

DecCylonus wrote...

Baa Baa wrote...

DecCylonus wrote...
Halo, where the main character has no emotions and doesn't even have a face?

You're kidding me right?
As if Commander Shepard is a dynamic protagonist either?

Well, Shepard is less emotional than, say, Edward Cullen. And I'm more than fine with that. But Shepard is far more dynamic than Master Chief, whose emotions range from "unlock my frozen armor" to "let's kill them."

He's been a super soldier since he was like 7.
I think Chief was done better though because they made his lack of emotion a positive; it makes him seem professional and badass.
Shepard's lack of emotion made him seem awkward and at times alien to the player. At least that's how I felt.

You're entitled to your feelings about the characterizations of both Shepard and Master Chief. However, you have to admit that a character who has no emotions, regardless of the reason, isn't very challenging to write. The bar for writing an emotional character is higher, and even higher when you let the player make dialogue choices for the character. Saying Bungie did a better job with a one dimensional character than Bioware did with a three dimensional one isn't much of a comparison.

[Baa Baa]

I don't really think ME3 failed if you look at it from a commercial point of view or critical. Both of those it excelled in. I think it failed as a conclusion of a trilogy though. It feels out of place and doesn't "come full circle" like most trilogies should (Dark Knight for example).

[Memnon]

DuckSoup wrote...

Stornskar wrote...

I don't recall the forums being ablaze in anger at the endings of Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate 2, NWN, KOTOR, ME1, ME2 ...

For a start, you misquoted me. I never said that. I quoted someone elses post and agreed with it. 

And he makes an absolutely valid point. Bioware were not going to win which ever way they played this, because so many were demanding so much from them that they had to make a choice. Now, sadly for those who don't like the game or the endings, that choice didn't work out in their favour. But hey, guess what? That's life. We can't all get what we want.

And boy am I sick to death of seeing the same discussions. You people need to move on. 

Apologies for misquoting you, I tried to remove some of the wall of quote text.

In either case, I disagree with his point - I've been on the forums for BG, BG2, and NWN (pre BSN days), for all the ME games, KOTOR, etc. I don't remember ever seeing anyone complain that the endings were simplistic, or unoriginal, or whatever. There were some complaints, there always are with every game, but I've never seen anything quite like the firestorm that the ME3 endings caused.

And I'm sick to death of being told to move on - I love Bioware and I love the ME franchise, and I'm going to keep posting here because I believe (emphasis on I, as in my opinion) that they need to do a serious azimuth check.

Modifié par Stornskar, 23 août 2012 - 02:31 .

[Mathias]

Baa Baa wrote...

I don't really think ME3 failed if you look at it from a commercial point of view or critical. Both of those it excelled in. I think it failed as a conclusion of a trilogy though. It feels out of place and doesn't "come full circle" like most trilogies should (Dark Knight for example).

Yeah but define critical. It's really no secret in this day and age that "professional" critics and journalists can be very biased and bought off. Mass Effect 3 was one of those cases where the opinion of professional critics had little weight to it. But what did have weight to it was the overwhelming amount of negative responses by the players, which at the end of they day are the people you want to appeal to the most. Receiveing 9/10s and 10/10s for your game seems like an empty victory when the actual people for the most part hated or were disappointed in what you did.

This is why I consider Mass Effect 3 to be a critical failure, because it's the player's opinion that counts, not the critics.

[Baa Baa]

DecCylonus wrote...

Baa Baa wrote...

DecCylonus wrote...

Baa Baa wrote...

DecCylonus wrote...
Halo, where the main character has no emotions and doesn't even have a face?

You're kidding me right?
As if Commander Shepard is a dynamic protagonist either?

Well, Shepard is less emotional than, say, Edward Cullen. And I'm more than fine with that. But Shepard is far more dynamic than Master Chief, whose emotions range from "unlock my frozen armor" to "let's kill them."

He's been a super soldier since he was like 7.
I think Chief was done better though because they made his lack of emotion a positive; it makes him seem professional and badass.
Shepard's lack of emotion made him seem awkward and at times alien to the player. At least that's how I felt.

You're entitled to your feelings about the characterizations of both Shepard and Master Chief. However, you have to admit that a character who has no emotions, regardless of the reason, isn't very challenging to write. The bar for writing an emotional character is higher, and even higher when you let the player make dialogue choices for the character. Saying Bungie did a better job with a one dimensional character than Bioware did with a three dimensional one isn't much of a comparison.

True.
It's up to personal preference which character you'd prefer, and writing a RPG character would certainly be harder than writing a first person shooter character who rarely talks. But in comparisons to other RPGs I don't really care for Shep either, in Deus Ex HR and Witcher 2 I felt I had something in common or liked the character. For Mass Effect a lot of the time I wish I could role play some one else.
And both those characters don't show very much emotion either.
EDIT: I can forgive Mass Effect for making a protagonist I don't care much about though since ME has more of a supporting character focus (something that all the RPG games I listed don't focus on much).
And, just curious, what did you think of the Arbiter as a character in Halo 2? If you played it.

Modifié par Baa Baa, 23 août 2012 - 02:45 .

[Tonymac]

I think the endings were trash for several reasons - mostly that they did NOT hire writers worth more than 10 cents. No joke. The storyline sucked. It was uninspired, hurried, and atrocious.

Forcing players into the paths of serving the Reapers was pretty lame. Forcing the players to kill EDI and the Geth in order to win was pretty evil. I don't play video games to lose. Bioware seems to enjoy the "in your face, you are going to have to die" attitude. I play Shepard, not Jesus. Do not Martyr me or force me into that role. I find it highly insulting.

Building the Crucible was a bad move. Right off of jump street the story went bad. The little stories and missions were all very good - the overall story was completely inexcusable. Forcing the players to use Reaper tech and appease the Reapers was the thing that sealed the deal for me. Essentially, I have to build them a big battery. Then - the Resapers, who consider organics to be insect like scum, will all bow to my decisions because I fed them a big duracell. Does this sound pretty bad to you too?

Its infantile. Its bad writing. They should have stuck with the writers that brought us ME1.

[Baa Baa]

Mdoggy1214 wrote...

Baa Baa wrote...

I don't really think ME3 failed if you look at it from a commercial point of view or critical. Both of those it excelled in. I think it failed as a conclusion of a trilogy though. It feels out of place and doesn't "come full circle" like most trilogies should (Dark Knight for example).

Yeah but define critical. It's really no secret in this day and age that "professional" critics and journalists can be very biased and bought off. Mass Effect 3 was one of those cases where the opinion of professional critics had little weight to it. But what did have weight to it was the overwhelming amount of negative responses by the players, which at the end of they day are the people you want to appeal to the most. Receiveing 9/10s and 10/10s for your game seems like an empty victory when the actual people for the most part hated or were disappointed in what you did.

This is why I consider Mass Effect 3 to be a critical failure, because it's the player's opinion that counts, not the critics.

I meant as in professional critics who were possibly biased and or didn't even finish the game.
I didn't mean from fan critical perspective. Because then it would be a failure like you said.

[garf]

ioannisdenton wrote...

liggy002 wrote...

They just tried too hard with the ending and it simply didn't work.

.... if only.
they did not try at all i think. the original ending was very very embarassing. No closure , arbitrary events and nonsence all over the place.

In the end I think that's the entire problem, 6 months later. look at my memories of game play and read the endless analysis here and I think I see pattern. They skimped on anything that looked like more work. a larger crew would have been great but that would have meant more dialogue scripts and more voice acting. Missions that were more than fly in and scan would have been great but guess what (more work) The ending (note the singular) appears rushed and like they bypassed quality review...

the entire game reeks of "F---k It, just get it done. good enough"

ultimately I believe that is the root of so many problems.  possibly even the the 'tunnel vision' about the endings.

[l7986]

to bad the dreams couldnt of been of Shepards past. One of the ways I would have loved to see.
1st dream
Colonist backround- Shepards parents blaming him for the batarians killing them and Talitha from ME1 asking why he let the batarians take her.
Earthborn- Face of a random person Shepard killed so he could be able to afford so food.
Spacer- Dreams of his father getting spaced or they could of had Hannah Shepard in the 2nd fleet and she gets reaped. Meh not really sure on that one
2nd dream
War Hero- Shepard's friends that died in the blitz accusing him of cowardice
Ruthless- People shepard led to their death and the batarians he massacred torturing an avatar of him while he watches
Sole Survivor- Relive Akuze only with his close friends like Garrus Liara and Tali being killed there.
3rd dream with LI would be a mix of the first two
Random person Shepard kills would be LI while having voices in the backround from said LI's family yelling at him. Mix and match something like that.

[Baa Baa]

l7986 wrote...

to bad the dreams couldnt of been of Shepards past. One of the ways I would have loved to see.
1st dream
Colonist backround- Shepards parents blaming him for the batarians killing them and Talitha from ME1 asking why he let the batarians take her.
Earthborn- Face of a random person Shepard killed so he could be able to afford so food.
Spacer- Dreams of his father getting spaced or they could of had Hannah Shepard in the 2nd fleet and she gets reaped. Meh not really sure on that one
2nd dream
War Hero- Shepard's friends that died in the blitz accusing him of cowardice
Ruthless- People shepard led to their death and the batarians he massacred torturing an avatar of him while he watches
Sole Survivor- Relive Akuze only with his close friends like Garrus Liara and Tali being killed there.
3rd dream with LI would be a mix of the first two
Random person Shepard kills would be LI while having voices in the backround from said LI's family yelling at him. Mix and match something like that.

That would have been great, personally the Talitha part from ME1 was my favorite part of the game because it gave us some insight on Shepard's past.