The Angry One wrote...
hoodaticus wrote...
nategator wrote...
I remember when the endings were first presented, a big criticism was that to buy Synthesis or Control you had to end up believing the star child when everything in the game suggested that synthetics and organics could live peaceably.
So Leviathan is a way for Bioware to say, yes, you were supposed to take star child at his word when he said in general, organic and synthetic conflict is inevitable. There may be exceptions, and maybe even another way, but generally the status quo is a Battlestar-esque cycle of violence. Leviathan provides the details of why an organic race would have developed anything capable of creating the reapers.
Sorry, this isn't good enough.
Before, we have to take spacebaby at it's word. Now we... have to take Leviathan at it's word.
How is that any better? Take the word of the leader of the Reapers, or take the word of the unrepentant space c'thulu creator of the Reapers who also happens to use bizarre, self-destructive non-logic?
I'm not going to believe a crackpot's assertions because another crackpot backs it up. Moreover events that occured billions of years ago have no bearing on the present day, which completely contradicts their viewpoints.
Well, you don't *have* to take Leviathan at his word either, you can choose refuse and lose the current cycle.
My point is that in the OC ending all the player had to make the 3 endings paltible was exposition by the star child. The big criticism was that it seemed to break the narrative since all of Shepard's actions in Mass Effect 3 were demonstrating that synthetics and organics could live peacefully without the need of genocide (destroy), genetic tampering (synthesis), or dictatorship (control). So the player felt betrayed by Bioware -- they were forced to believe their enemy's conclusion that despite all the game's evidence to the contrary, war between organics and synthetics was inevitable without a dramatic change.
What Leviathan and to a limited extent, From Ashes, DLC do is try to give the player more evidence to frame the 3 choices in the EC ending. Instead of merely forcing the player to "trust" the antagonist, the player has other sources of evidence to say that the default scenario in organics & synthetics is war.
Whether Bioware has done this sufficiently or whether the endings are too different from the main series narrative in Mass Effect 2 & 3 to be palpable are open to criticism. BUT, and this is a big BUT, with the EC DLC and the Leviathan DLC, the criticism moves from technical (the endings make no sense because there are too many plot holes and was not sufficiently developed) to artistic. If your criticism is technical, then I think you can make an argument that Bioware should go back and fix the ending. But if the criticism is artistic, then the author should be allowed to tell the story he wants to tell. Otherwise, what you are really saying is that you want Bioware to carebear the ending for you but still include enough violence, supporting character deaths, and T&A so that you can call the game "mature" and on the same level artistically as movies, television, and novels.
All in all, if you don't like Bioware's storytelling then exercise your right to free speech and write your own stories, make your own games, etc. It's a free country and there are not nearly enough story-drive RPGs in the market.
Oh, and by the way, I still didn't care for Bioware's endings. The EC was far better than the OC, mostly because the OC endings didn't make a lick of sense and were not properly developed. However, the EC and the Leviathan DLC do at least make the 3 endings choices sensible and that's about as much as we can hope for at this stage.
Hopefully Dragon Age 3 and Mass Effect 4 are better written then their predecessors
Modifié par nategator, 09 septembre 2012 - 10:27 .
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