221 réponses à ce sujet

[Kataphrut94]

There are a few games people play which manage to pull off bleakness and depressing quite well. Shadow of the Colossus, Silent Hill 2, Bioshock and the recent Journey are just a few examples.

Going by those standards, I wouldn't call Mass Effect 3 bleak. It's as grim as a game about galactic slaughter of all organic life by a race of genocidal monsters can be, but it's fairly bright aside from the odd moment of poignance, like the death of Mordin or the fall of Thessia. There was a much bigger focus on humour than the previous games with all the cute background references, and characters like EDI, James and Joker were pretty much comic relief 90% of the time.

When all is said and done, it's still a pretty uplifting game despite the painfulness of Shepard's final moments. Depending on your choices you can create a bright future for the krogan, save the hanar and drell homeworld from being wiped out, end the war between the geth and quarians peacefully, convince the last remaining Prothean that his life is worth living, share a final moment with Thane on his deathbed, and then gut the bastard responsible like a fish on your omniblade. At the end, you've got the surviving races rebuilding, with the Reapers either destroyed for good, under the control of a benevolent AI or at peace with the newly synthesised galaxy.

At least that's the intention. Based on all the brouhaha, it's pretty clear the execution was lacking, but hey, everyone makes mistakes.

[Bfler]

bobobo878 wrote...

Yeah, ME3's ending was a lot of things, but I wouldn't really call it depressing. 

I would say, if you play the game with the expectation that he clearly survives or dies as hero in a blaze of glory it is depressing.

[Ferah84]

Kataphrut94 wrote...

When all is said and done, it's still a pretty uplifting game despite the painfulness of Shepard's final moments. Depending on your choices you can create a bright future for the krogan, save the hanar and drell homeworld from being wiped out, end the war between the geth and quarians peacefully, convince the last remaining Prothean that his life is worth living, share a final moment with Thane on his deathbed, and then gut the bastard responsible like a fish on your omniblade. At the end, you've got the surviving races rebuilding, with the Reapers either destroyed for good, under the control of a benevolent AI or at peace with the newly synthesised galaxy.
.

Thanks for putting that in perspective  It was hard to see that at first but I think that's what I generally take from the game now after watching the EC. I wouldn't say I feel depressed playing the game again (depressed is a strong word) I've played through about three times and have accepted Shepard's fate to be honest, its just when I started playing Leviathan recently it got me thinking; would this really make any difference? Would there be any hope for this Shepard? Of course I didn't think it would change or add much to the ending and this is probably why I felt like I was playing zombie-Shepard in a way. I've only played Leviathan once though so hopefully when I play it again next time, that feeling will have passed (I'm almost sure it will).

[Oilking72]

8 pages, eh? Well, I do play games for enjoyment and I did. I'm really not sure what kind of person I'd be if I let a game actually depress me.

[clarkusdarkus]

Cainne Chapel wrote...

clarkusdarkus wrote...

Mass Effect 3 was a big dissapointment and i didnt enjoy it, i then played Dragons Dogma and enjoyed it immensly with no expectations.....

Make of that what you will but i Play games to enjoy and Mass effect 3 took itself to a level outside of gaming and what it entails......twitter crap, apps i didnt care for, comics, no end boss as its too videogamey etc etc......When a developer says silly things like " too videogamey " for a videogame then there wasnt much hope for ME3.

So you're saying you played a game with no expectations and enjoyed it, but went into a game WITH expectations and didnt.  Intriguing

Oddly enough Dogma was a great game, but if it had been made by BW oh the backlash they would have received....

and all that stuff, Twitter, Books, comics, started after ME1, so you cant hold taht against 3.  Also people said the "Boss" fight in two was lame and hamfisted as well ya know.

Just goes to show that "fans" dont always know what they want exactly, but have no problems complaining about it

By expectation i mean as in keeping with the same level of enjoyment as ME1/2....... and i dont remember anyone being killed off on twitter in ME1/2? so i can hold that against it......they also didnt need an ending to be rectified, we can go back & forth all day debating whats good or not in ME1/2/3......i actually didnt mind the boss fight in 2, at least there was a boss fight......oh i forgot ME3 is too much of a videogame to include a boss fight in an RPG...

And since when did you speak for me genius? i know exactly what i want and got that enjoyment ( title of the thread is about enjoyment) with ME1/2 hence i didnt go on the forums, ME3 was crap hence me complaining.

Go be a white knight elsewhere

Modifié par clarkusdarkus, 03 septembre 2012 - 09:40 .

[Menagra]

Bioware: "We want to make players have a strong emotional response to our games. To move them to tears would be a success"

Nintendo: "We've been doing that for ages. We made sure the computer controlled opponent could zoom in at end of Mario Kart even if they were laps behind during the N64 generation. We ensured Peach was incredibly over powered to make players feel inadequate at the end of every Mario game. We've been making players cry, whine and have fits for years. It's relatively easy."

Bioware: "Easy? How?" 

Nintendo: " You need a character like Peach who has ridiculously illogical power. Make players believe the ending is achievable in one way, and then use that powerful character to make them either feel inadequate, question the point of all their efforts, or realize it's impossible for them to win. Then they will realize they can't possibly have the ending they wanted. This will surely depress, anger or shock them. Thus inducing a strong emotional reaction."^_^

Bioware: (writing) "Ok, an incredibly powerful character...":huh:

Nintendo: "Yes, and its' best that the character seems helpless throughout the game, but reveals itself to be the apex of all power, forcing the character into a certain change of plot. They have to feel they have control until the ending and until that character reveals it's power. Then you pull out the rug from under them, inducing an emotional reaction.":wizard:

Bioware: (writes everything down) "Ok, I think we'll give it a try.":)

Nintendo: "Great! Let me know how that works out for you!";)

[Enter Spring 2012]

Bioware: "Oh no! They had a strong emotional reaction all right! They're raving mad! They're all over the forums and the internet! They're sending us cupcakes as threats to change the ending! They even raised thousands of dollars for charity! They had a strong emotional response all right! But they don't appreciate the Art! I have to either please the fans or destroy my vision. And if I please the fans I'll have to do it for free."

Nintendo: "Just give them a slideshow with a monologue, it'll take an intern maybe a week to make. You don't have to give the fans much of anything and they'll lap it up. Trust me, they'll come around.";)

Bioware: "Wait, haven't you been in a steady decline? Experiencing more and more quarters of disappointing sales?":blink:

Nintendo: (curls up into a ball and starts swaying back and forth) "The fans will come around! They will I tell you! They will!":devil:

Modifié par infraredman, 03 septembre 2012 - 09:40 .

[blacqout]

If replay 40 hour video games for a ten minute closing sequence, something is more off. Entertainment is about the journey, and if you enjoy the 39 hours before the ending, it's a worthwhile way to spend your time.

For me, there is much to like about the way Mass Effect 3 finishes. Martin Sheen's performance as the Illusive Man reached new heights during that final encounter, and the dialogue in general was very well written with many memorable lines from Shepard and Anderson as well as TIM.

The conversation with Anderson that takes place shortly afterwards is another highlight, and the view... oh the view.

Between the extended cut and Leviathan (which worked amazingly well to retroactively foreshadow Shepard's final choice) the scene with the Catalyst is now also a highlight for me. I do feel that even without the DLC, the Catalyst is foreshadowed in ME3 through conversations with Javik and the Prothean computer encountered on Thessia... but the link wasn't quite strong enough.

I will replay the game again and have a lot of fun doing so.

Modifié par blacqout, 03 septembre 2012 - 09:57 .

[LilLino]

People are forcing the depression on themselves in every ending.

Destroy?
Omg we'll never rebuild synthetics and if we do they kill us all. Then after Leviathan: Leviathans will rise and mind-rape us all (. Hackett says Relays will be rebuilt, but I say it's impossible so now I'm depressed. Oh and Shepard surely dies! I don't care about Shepard lives cutscene! So depressing!

Control? Omg Shepard will become insane(despite the thing it's not Shepard but an AI built in his image) and kill us all! Leviathans will control the reapers and kill us all too! Plus the music sounds so evil to me, I'm so depressed right now.

Synthesis? Omg everyone is mind-raped. Everything is so good&peaceful it's actually bad&evil. I also don't like green, so depressing.

Refuse? I didn't win? But I thought that not believing everyone else was a great idea! Isn't this what RPG is about? Me so depressed I played MP for 6 hours I should have won!!!!! ((

What I mean, endings as they are now are bittersweet and not depressing. I agree that pre-EC there was so little information given and we were shown nothing but destruction.
But now? We see life going on, we see everything being rebuilt. We see Shep surviving destroy, his memories and morality surviving control. We see eternal peace synthesis offers ( No I don't like synthesis).

[Hrothdane]

I don't mind a bittersweet or sad ending as long as: 1. It fits the tone and themes of the story and 2. It provides catharsis, as all good tragedy should.

The ending of ME3 satisfied neither of those criteria for me.

[Isichar]

LilLino wrote...

People are forcing the depression on themselves in every ending.

Well thats one way to look at opinions that differ from your own.

[Tronar]

Ferah84 wrote...
How does everyone else feel? Do you still feel enthusiastic about playing ME3 after knowing how it ends?

P.S. Just so you know I'm not trying to kick up a fuss about the endings again. I just want to know if people still enjoy playing their Shepards as they did the first time round

No, I don't feel enthusiastic about playing ME3 again at all.
I played through ME1 and ME2 several times with different characters and playstyles. I bought all the DLCs and I enjoyed every playthrough.

So far I've only done one playthrough with ME3. After 5 months and the announcement of the Leviathan DLC I was able to motivate myself to try another playthrough again and just started importing my Renegade Insanity Shepard from ME2 into ME3 and so far made it to Mars. But it just isn't the same fun anymore.

And since the DLC won't change the ending, completing another playthrough just to see the explosion in a different color does not motivate me either. So to date I haven't bought the Leviathan DLC.

And here is my take on the different endings you can choose, I've already posted in another place.
I don't like any of the endings and this hasn't changed because of Leviathan DLC so far.

Destroy destroys everything I have achieved with the Geth and the Quarians and confirms Starbrat's twisted version of logic (kill all Organics through Synthetics so they can't kill themselves by creating Synthetics someday).

Synthesis is forcing my will on all the sentient beings in the entire galaxy without leaving them a choice.

Control is pure hybris, confirming the Illusive man was right all along and making Shepard the new Starbrat.

And refusal is a bad joke and feels like just giving up. It's even negating the effort made by all beings in the Galaxy to build the Crucible and break out of the cycle.

No, thank you! Whatever I choose, it violates everything the ME Universe and Shepard stood for: plurality, peace between different races, the importance of choice for sentient beings and never giving up, no matter how bad it looks.

P.S.: Any ending that has to resort to "Deus Ex Machina" is bad writing in my opinion. Starbrat is a perfect example why the big majority of people won't like an ending using that narrative technique.

Modifié par Tronar, 03 septembre 2012 - 10:18 .

[nhcre8tv1]

Oilking72 wrote...

8 pages, eh? Well, I do play games for enjoyment and I did. I'm really not sure what kind of person I'd be if I let a game actually depress me.

It means the writing was either pretty legit or despairingly terrible.

[robertthebard]

clarkusdarkus wrote...

Cainne Chapel wrote...

clarkusdarkus wrote...

Mass Effect 3 was a big dissapointment and i didnt enjoy it, i then played Dragons Dogma and enjoyed it immensly with no expectations.....

Make of that what you will but i Play games to enjoy and Mass effect 3 took itself to a level outside of gaming and what it entails......twitter crap, apps i didnt care for, comics, no end boss as its too videogamey etc etc......When a developer says silly things like " too videogamey " for a videogame then there wasnt much hope for ME3.

So you're saying you played a game with no expectations and enjoyed it, but went into a game WITH expectations and didnt.  Intriguing

Oddly enough Dogma was a great game, but if it had been made by BW oh the backlash they would have received....

and all that stuff, Twitter, Books, comics, started after ME1, so you cant hold taht against 3.  Also people said the "Boss" fight in two was lame and hamfisted as well ya know.

Just goes to show that "fans" dont always know what they want exactly, but have no problems complaining about it

By expectation i mean as in keeping with the same level of enjoyment as ME1/2....... and i dont remember anyone being killed off on twitter in ME1/2? so i can hold that against it......they also didnt need an ending to be rectified, we can go back & forth all day debating whats good or not in ME1/2/3......i actually didnt mind the boss fight in 2, at least there was a boss fight......oh i forgot ME3 is too much of a videogame to include a boss fight in an RPG...

And since when did you speak for me genius? i know exactly what i want and got that enjoyment ( title of the thread is about enjoyment) with ME1/2 hence i didnt go on the forums, ME3 was crap hence me complaining.

Go be a white knight elsewhere

You know, I pointed this very fact out in a different conversation, and was told how full of crap I was, and how that idea needed to be killed off.  I wonder what that poster would say now?

OT:  I expected to have fun in ME 3.  Hell, I didn't buy ME 1 until after ME 3 was released, and the crapstorm was running rampant.  I never looked, because, quite frankly, I don't play shooters as a rule.  I played 1 a couple of times, liked it, played 2, liked it, played 3, and liked it right up until I got nuked by Harbinger, and lived.  Sorry, but as far as I'm concerned, if you routinely play past this point, I don't see how you can complain about the endings.  I've seen all the rationalization and justification for accepting the DeM, see it in regards to accepting the Lazarus Project's DeM of "if you have enough credits you can buy a soul back from the Void" too.  Neither is any less a DeM.  Yet people will routinely overlook this to complain about the DeM of the endings.

[Tasker]

At the end of ME1 I was "**** yeah. Bring it on!"
At the end of ME2 I was "Take that ****es!"
At the end of ME3 I was "WTF?!"

[NM_Che56]

The gaming community is a hotbed of contradictions: one minute they want realism and fantasy the next. Lol

[robertthebard]

Master Che wrote...

The gaming community is a hotbed of contradictions: one minute they want realism and fantasy the next. Lol

Lol, I just saw exactly this in another thread:  Could you name war that ended like ME3? Is it a victory when opposing leader (responsible for genocide) let you choose one of outcomes he provides? Yes Shepard ended the Reaper threat but he didn't win victory over them. Then what was the story about?
Poster's name withheld to protect the innocent.

[Calibrations Expert]

Snoopy1955 wrote...

BeefheartSpud wrote...

With my all the investment in my Shepard and the supporting characters, I found the ending (even with the EC) a depressing, enthusiasm-sapping player experience, not a depressing/bittersweet end that was nevertheless a cathartic, entertaining player experience. The difference between the two is the difference between ME3 vs. Red Dead Redemption (as was mentioned earlier ) or the original Fallout ending. Dark, sad, grim, etc. entertainment content is perfectly valid for me, as long as the player/viewer experience doesn't make me feel like I wasted my time being invested, as ME3's ending did. There are a number of reasons why this happened from a narrative/interaction perspective, but that's the bottomline.

So your issue isn't that Sheppard had to die to save the galaxy, but instead are focused on the fact that sparing the Rachnai queen at the end of ME1 didn't appear to change anything at all about the ending of ME3 compared to if you had killed her.

Now that, I can understand.

Personally, I think the ending would have been good 'nuff if The rachni Queen, Kal Reager, the biotic kid from Jack's trust mission, Morinth, and the Human Reaper amounted to anything. Then at least I'd have a reason to replay, but I don't.

There are 3 places in the game where choices play out. Tuchanka, the Citadel Coup, and Rannoch. Then there's the end which gives you a choice that aren't effected by previous ones whatsoever.

Those 3 choice missions would have been fine if they influenced the ending in any way. Now I just watch youtube to see Tuchanka outcome 1, 2 3, Citadel with X person dead and Y person alive, Rannoch outcome 1,2,3, and then ending 1, 2, and 3. No point in wasting my time on another playthrough to have the exact same thing happend again.

[Wowky]

In response to the title question: People aren't "supposed" to play games for any particular reason IMO. Personally, I play them for entertainment and being "sucked in". That can happen in many, many ways, including utterly depressing, soul-crushing ones (e.g., Heavy Rain) or light-hearted, fun ones (e.g., Sam & Max Hit The Road)

[Krunjar]

Sad is happy for deep people.

I get that sometimes u just wanna be happy happy though and lateley all too few well told stories are willing to follow this line.

Its a problem il grant you.

Modifié par Krunjar, 03 septembre 2012 - 01:49 .

[ld1449]

LilLino wrote...

People are forcing the depression on themselves in every ending.

Destroy?
Omg we'll never rebuild synthetics and if we do they kill us all. Then after Leviathan: Leviathans will rise and mind-rape us all (. Hackett says Relays will be rebuilt, but I say it's impossible so now I'm depressed. Oh and Shepard surely dies! I don't care about Shepard lives cutscene! So depressing!

Control? Omg Shepard will become insane(despite the thing it's not Shepard but an AI built in his image) and kill us all! Leviathans will control the reapers and kill us all too! Plus the music sounds so evil to me, I'm so depressed right now.

Synthesis? Omg everyone is mind-raped. Everything is so good&peaceful it's actually bad&evil. I also don't like green, so depressing.

Refuse? I didn't win? But I thought that not believing everyone else was a great idea! Isn't this what RPG is about? Me so depressed I played MP for 6 hours I should have won!!!!! ((

What I mean, endings as they are now are bittersweet and not depressing. I agree that pre-EC there was so little information given and we were shown nothing but destruction.
But now? We see life going on, we see everything being rebuilt. We see Shep surviving destroy, his memories and morality surviving control. We see eternal peace synthesis offers ( No I don't like synthesis).

They're not forcing depression on themselves. They're taking what has been given and following the trail of circumstancial evidence to its most logical conclusion.

Destruction was the only one that people seemed to believe was "the best" ending because it stopped the reapers and now the galaxy could go on with life as intended.

Then Leviathan came in.

The only reason the Leviathan's are hiding is due to fear of the Reapers killing the last of them. Once you eliminate the giant robot cuttlefish from the equation, the organic cuttlefish will naturally want to go back to being top dog rather than corral feeders on some water world.

Control, Shep is an AI and that's precisely everyone's point. Due to the inevitability of Metagame thinking that will come into this since its "open to interpretation" lets look at all the AI's that have stayed infallibly loyal to organics in sci-fi history.

Sky-net

Hal (2001 space oddisey)

The AI from Portal

Mendicant Bias

343 guilty spark

The AI from the FIRST MASS EFFECT GAME. You know the one. The one that was gonna blow himself up on the Citadel.

And lets not forget the Catalyst himself. He flat out states that the conflict is an "innevitability" meaning that it will ALWAYS happen.

And synthesis. Synthesis is just flat out stupid, even if you're a complete social innept and can't predict that MAYBE, just MAYBE people wouldn't be so happy and content to work with the giant skyscrapers that were trying to kill them not long ago and that turned that nice guy Jimmy from down the road into a drooling, glowy eyed mech zombie.

[Thore2k10]

hmm, not sure why, but i lack the motivation to play any game of the me series for like 6 months now.

if all you can think about this "game of choices" is, that you dont have any choice whatsoever to alter this depressing/nonsensical ending, then all the fun is taken away from it.

[AlanC9]

ld1449 wrote...

Control, Shep is an AI and that's precisely everyone's point. Due to the inevitability of Metagame thinking that will come into this since its "open to interpretation" lets look at all the AI's that have stayed infallibly loyal to organics in sci-fi history.

Of course, there's actually a long list of AIs that did stay infallibly loyal to humans, going back to pretty much every one of Asimov's robots -  Elvex is arguably an exception. The best recent model for the Sheplyst would probably be Peter Hamilton's Sentient Intelligence.

[ld1449]

AlanC9 wrote...

ld1449 wrote...

Control, Shep is an AI and that's precisely everyone's point. Due to the inevitability of Metagame thinking that will come into this since its "open to interpretation" lets look at all the AI's that have stayed infallibly loyal to organics in sci-fi history.

Of course, there's actually a long list of AIs that did stay infallibly loyal to humans, going back to pretty much every one of Asimov's robots -  Elvex is arguably an exception. The best recent model for the Sheplyst would probably be Peter Hamilton's Sentient Intelligence.

The difference being that those AI in most instances did not have anything approaching absolute power. The portal AI did, or at least it gave me the impression of believing itself omnipotent, Skynet controled the worlds military and nuclear warhead silos, Mendicant Bias had ultimate power over the forerunners military, 343 guilty spark was in charge of an entire ring world and wanted to be again, Hal was the one ultimately in charge of the space station they resided on.

Whenever in sci-fi people give AI ultimate control, over anything, thats when the AI is proven (or demonstrated) to go rampant.

Even thinking back to I robot the same thing happened there with the core AI hub thing.

It happens on most Sci-fi pieces and even Pseudo sci-fi pieces like Eagle Eye.

That's why people only see future problems in the control ending. Maybe not tomorrow, or a year from now, or even ten, but somewhere down the road, most likely within Grunt and Liara's lifetimes the harvest will begin again.

[AlanC9]

ld1449 wrote...

Even thinking back to I robot the same thing happened there with the core AI hub thing.

Asimov didn't write the movie, you know. What he did write was R. Daneel Olivaw running human society from behind the scenes for millennia, and doing it benevolently. And again, theres the SI, which could do pretty much whatever it wanted to the Commonwealth

But if you want to say that there are an awful lot of threatening fictional AIs with power in media, then sure. Writers like telling that kind of story.