252 réponses à ce sujet

[Peranor]

Reorte wrote...

You're saying that it relies on exactly the sort of things that it shouldn't need to rely on, i.e. considering out-of-game facts such as the intention of the writers for putting that scene in. If it wouldn't leave you certain in real life it shouldn't in-game either, and the reasons for your certainty involve breaking suspension of disbelief (the "let's try to forget about reality and make this our reality for some time" part of immersion). My point about a rational, enquiring mind is that such a mind will generally not simply take things at face value and always be looking for problems which suggest that things aren't as good as they seem. That should be very obvious to people who write games (admittedly they aren't the same people as the ones writing the script) because by not having such a mindset all sorts of bugs creep in. There's a whole world between probably OK and definitely OK and all we got was probably, especially when there's nothing to suggest more than wishful thinking on the LI's part either.

The point about a bit of text was that it's at about the same level of effort. It contains the required information but is hardly rewarding.

As I've said in other posts I've no desire at all to have the rest of my Shepard's life spelled out for me. That's another story, well beyond the scope of the Mass Effect trilogy. But what we've got will always leave a nagging doubt at the back of my mind that he may not have a rest of his life, seeing as there's only second-guessing authorial intent and wishful thinking to confirm there's one even though I'm 99% sure he's not dead.

Well said

[Reorte]

Mcfly616 wrote...

I liked the choice. And I am certain.

You shouldn't be. A verdict in court requires beyond reasonable doubt and this wouldn't stand up as proof of survival in court. And beyond reasonable doubt isn't the same as certain - certain means beyond any doubt at all. If any alternative explanations are possible within the scope of the game, however unlikely, then you can't be certain.

On the other hand if you're saying "Not utterly complete but good enough for me" then that's an entirely different kettle of fish. I'd still question your judgement but it would be entirely a matter of personal preference.

Modifié par Reorte, 30 septembre 2012 - 09:40 .

[Peranor]

Reorte wrote...

Mcfly616 wrote...

I liked the choice. And I am certain.

You shouldn't be. A verdict in court requires beyond reasonable doubt and this wouldn't stand up as proof of survival in court. And beyond reasonable doubt isn't the same as certain - certain means beyond any doubt at all. If any alternative explanations are possible within the scope of the game, however unlikely, then you can't be certain.

On the other hand if you're saying "Not utterly complete but good enough for me" then that's an entirely different kettle of fish. I'd still question your judgement but it would be entirely a matter of personal preference.

Especially when Bioware themselves has stated, on numerous occasions, that the 'Breath Scene' can be either or. It can be Shepard waking up or Shepard taking his dying breath. There is no certainty in that. I'm not saying he is dead either. I'm just saying that you can't be certain he is alive and you can't be certain he is dead. No more then you can be certain about the state of Schrödinger's cat.

I'm in your quantum box... maybe.

Goodnight!



Edit:

Just one more thing. Ofc you can be certain if Shepard is alive or not in you headcanon. But I'm not here for headcanon. And I'm definitely not here for symbolism either.
The writers intent is what I'm here for. And that's cleary in a 'either or' state. And that's all we're going to get. And that's what pisses me off with their, in my opinion, cop out for an ending.

Modifié par anorling, 30 septembre 2012 - 09:54 .

[Reorte]

Mcfly616 wrote...
 no....wrong again.

let me guess....you need it spelled out for you very slowly? I am not relying on ajything out of game to understand the ending. I simply stated the intent was clear. That means the point gets across on screen. The specific scenes signify his survival. It's quite obvious. Stop putting words in my mouth and/or trying to assume you know my understanding of things. Continue in with your own "doubts". I for one understand the definition of symbolism and know it when i see it right on my tv screen. Lol don't think too hard about it though

Oh, that's brilliant. You're not relying on anything then go on to talk about intent and symbolism? And then suggest that I'm not thinking?

[Selene Moonsong]

Jade8aby88 wrote...

I think it's also worth noting that Avatar is a 178 minute feature film. The Mass Effect series can be up to 100+ hours. What may be appropriate for one, isn't for the other.

Huh?

An example of an ending is an example of an ending, whether it is in a book, a movie, a comic, this game, or another game. It is still, in fact, story telling.

All stories, no matter the media, depend on and use plot devices. You cannot simply dismiss. The entire plot for a game can most crtainly fit into a movie the length of Avatar.

[CommanderVyse]

anorling wrote...

Reorte wrote...

Mcfly616 wrote...

I liked the choice. And I am certain.

You shouldn't be. A verdict in court requires beyond reasonable doubt and this wouldn't stand up as proof of survival in court. And beyond reasonable doubt isn't the same as certain - certain means beyond any doubt at all. If any alternative explanations are possible within the scope of the game, however unlikely, then you can't be certain.

On the other hand if you're saying "Not utterly complete but good enough for me" then that's an entirely different kettle of fish. I'd still question your judgement but it would be entirely a matter of personal preference.

Especially when Bioware themselves has stated, on numerous occasions, that the 'Breath Scene' can be either or. It can be Shepard waking up or Shepard taking his dying breath. There is no certainty in that. I'm not saying he is dead either. I'm just saying that you can't be certain he is alive and you can't be certain he is dead. No more then you can be certain about the state of Schrödinger's cat.

I'm in your quantum box... maybe.

Goodnight!

Quick, somebody write a thesis involving the Mass Effect and Schrödinger's Shepard!

[CommanderVyse]

Selene Moonsong wrote...

Jade8aby88 wrote...

I think it's also worth noting that Avatar is a 178 minute feature film. The Mass Effect series can be up to 100+ hours. What may be appropriate for one, isn't for the other.

Huh?

An example of an ending is an example of an ending, whether it is in a book, a movie, a comic, this game, or another game. It is still, in fact, story telling.

All stories, no matter the media, depend on and use plot devices. You cannot simply dismiss. The entire plot for a game can most crtainly fit into a movie the length of Avatar.

Expectations grow the longer something goes on. If you don't like the end of a 5 minute youtube video, you shrug and move on. It was only 5 minutes of your life. If you don't like the end of something that took hundreds of hours, how do you get that time back?

[CommanderVyse]

Selene Moonsong wrote...

Jade8aby88 wrote...

I think it's also worth noting that Avatar is a 178 minute feature film. The Mass Effect series can be up to 100+ hours. What may be appropriate for one, isn't for the other.

Huh?

An example of an ending is an example of an ending, whether it is in a book, a movie, a comic, this game, or another game. It is still, in fact, story telling.

All stories, no matter the media, depend on and use plot devices. You cannot simply dismiss. The entire plot for a game can most crtainly fit into a movie the length of Avatar.

On another note. The plot of Mass Effect might fit into a feature film but the characters do not. Backstories, friendships, personalities, all have to be condensed to please the popcorn eating crowd.

Heck, half the Mass Effect galaxy can't even fit into the game and has to be put in the Codex. Do you think they'll hand out supplemental readings at the theater?

[Mcfly616]

Reorte wrote...

Mcfly616 wrote...

I liked the choice. And I am certain.

You shouldn't be. A verdict in court requires beyond reasonable doubt and this wouldn't stand up as proof of survival in court. And beyond reasonable doubt isn't the same as certain - certain means beyond any doubt at all. If any alternative explanations are possible within the scope of the game, however unlikely, then you can't be certain.

On the other hand if you're saying "Not utterly complete but good enough for me" then that's an entirely different kettle of fish. I'd still question your judgement but it would be entirely a matter of personal preference.

this isn't the court of law. It's a videogame, and like any other story from any form of media, there is higher significance and weight put into visual symbolism. You can come to a conclusion by how something is blatantly portrayed on screen. Not so in real life. Of course in Real Life Liara would really have no way of actually knowing Shepard survived..However as it is straight up portrayed in the game, deep down, she just knows. As has been done throughout storytelling history. Its a fictional story. You can't compare it to real life on a literal level. It was signified in the direction of the scene. Nothing more. Nothing less. He's alive. Fact. Storytelling techniques are used in order to get a point across. If you choose to disregard those storytelling techniques and question the meaning of those scenes that are only attainable in 1 of 3 endings with high EMS....well, thats your prerogative. But, it doesnt make you right lol it just wasn't for you. Not your thing....

I see a lot of people here complain and say something sucks because things didn't play out how they themselves imagined them.(literally saw someone post the other day saying: "I purchased Leviathan because I wanted to get Leviathan to fight Harbinger, but nope, it sucks and is completely worthless.").....and that's the attitude that is like a cancer on this forum. "It sucks because it wasnt what I expected." People really have some ego and a lot of ignorance, to say something that isn't in their taste or of their liking, isn't good at all. Sorry.....but that's simply false.

[Peranor]

I hate, sorry, I 'dislike' the endings because i think that Bioware resorted to some kind of cop out filled with heavy doses of pseudopsychology and symbolism. And if it was one thing I didn't want for the ending it was symbolism. And it was also ridiculously pretentious.


But really Mcfly? You think it's wrong to think "it sucks because it wasn't what I expected"?

What do you expect people to think? "Oh, this ending was filled with things I'd hate to happen in the story. Boy I'm really going to enjoy this and getting served more things I don't want to happen!"
Yeah, people work that way...

Modifié par anorling, 30 septembre 2012 - 10:34 .

[DanishViking]

i just hope we get somekind of dlc, taking place abit after the event of me3...
hopefully to see a shepard that survived and more romance options & so on
leading up to a mass effect 4.

rebuilding/Romance option settle down.

the mass effect 4 game dosent have to be about shepard but
this closure would save me 3 for me.

[Iakus]

Selene Moonsong wrote...

Jade8aby88 wrote...

I think it's also worth noting that Avatar is a 178 minute feature film. The Mass Effect series can be up to 100+ hours. What may be appropriate for one, isn't for the other.

Huh?

An example of an ending is an example of an ending, whether it is in a book, a movie, a comic, this game, or another game. It is still, in fact, story telling.

All stories, no matter the media, depend on and use plot devices. You cannot simply dismiss. The entire plot for a game can most crtainly fit into a movie the length of Avatar.

The difference being, in the movie we are passive observers of Jake's adventures on Pandora.

We, however, have guided Shepard through literally dozens of hours of gampeplay where "your choices matter" across three games.

We (well, I) have far more invested in Shepard's story than with Jakes.  The fact that we have little more say in Shepard's fate than we do with Sullivan's speaks very poorly of the Mass Effect franchsie.

Modifié par iakus, 30 septembre 2012 - 10:39 .

[Reorte]

Mcfly616 wrote...

 this isn't the court of law. It's a videogame, and like any other story from any form of media, there is higher significance and weight put into visual symbolism. You can come to a conclusion by how something is blatantly portrayed on screen. Not so in real life. Of course in Real Life Liara would really have no way of actually knowing Shepard survived..However as it is straight up portrayed in the game, deep down, she just knows. As has been done throughout storytelling history. Its a fictional story. You can't compare it to real life on a literal level. It was signified in the direction of the scene. Nothing more. Nothing less. He's alive. Fact. Storytelling techniques are used in order to get a point across. If you choose to disregard those storytelling techniques and question the meaning of those scenes that are only attainable in 1 of 3 endings with high EMS....well, thats your prerogative. But, it doesnt make you right lol it just wasn't for you. Not your thing....

Sure, that's all true of course but facts are facts, whether in a game or in reality. The reason for the difference is mostly down to the fact that the consequences are infinitely more severe in real life.

The more involved I get in a story the closer it has to go to what I'd accept in reality. At any level "Deep down she just knows" fails for me because it's too much of a break from reality. My first, instinctive reaction, which is the one that largely shapes how I feel about something, is always the same to fiction as it is to reality. That's what suspension of disbelief is all about. The only difference is the extent to which I feel it and the length of time it affects me for.

The shortcuts fiction takes are only there (or should only be there) for space and pacing reasons. Ideally the message should still work for someone who's never heard a story before and is therefore unaware of the techniques and conventions. It might not be possible to achieve that but should always be an aim, and the ideal story shouldn't use them as a crutch. In any case the technique we got was "cliffhanger." It looks very similar to the type of ending where the bad guy dies but then you see a bit of movement and the words "... or is it the end?" appear on the screen. 

I see a lot of people here complain and say something sucks because things didn't play out how they themselves imagined them.(literally saw someone post the other day saying: "I purchased Leviathan because I wanted to get Leviathan to fight Harbinger, but nope, it sucks and is completely worthless.").....and that's the attitude that is like a cancer on this forum. "It sucks because it wasnt what I expected." People really have some ego and a lot of ignorance, to say something that isn't in their taste or of their liking, isn't good at all. Sorry.....but that's simply false.

I've no more time for people buying Leviathan hoping it'll have something that no-one ever claimed it was going to have than you do.

A lot of ego and ignorance is also responsible for saying that something flawed is OK because it is to their liking. The reasons it wasn't to my liking was because of failures of consistency in style, logic, and characterisation. There's nothing egocentric or ignorant in hoping for that on something that had (mostly) succeeded in delivering it previously. So to a certain extent "It sucks because it wasn't what I expected" is a completely valid complaint. If it wasn't then you're saying I shouldn't complain about it if Mass Effect had finished with a comedy musical.

[Selene Moonsong]

And I am talking about the Story in ME 3, not all the time spent on doing fed-ex missions and such that are designed for no more reason in a game than to help the player gain experience points, credits, etc (mostly game mechanics and easily truncated).

There is something less than 90 minutes of total dialogue in the game, and you do not experience all of it in a single run through the game, and many scenes would pass by much faster than a game scene with the exact same dialogue, leaving room to expand on any discussion.

At any rate, my point about the ending stands as stated.

Like so many other players, I too have hundreds of hours of play time invested in the ME series with multiple characters played all the way through from ME, through ME 2, and through ME 3 over the past few years as well and am a 'completionist' role-player.

[AlanC9]

Reorte wrote...
The shortcuts fiction takes are only there (or should only be there) for space and pacing reasons. Ideally the message should still work for someone who's never heard a story before and is therefore unaware of the techniques and conventions. It might not be possible to achieve that but should always be an aim, and the ideal story shouldn't use them as a crutch.

Even if that was realistic, I don't see why it's particularly desirable. Particularly for a studio like Bioware, who have been recycling tropes forever.

In any case the technique we got was "cliffhanger." It looks very similar to the type of ending where the bad guy dies but then you see a bit of movement and the words "... or is it the end?" appear on the screen. 

Yep. And when that trope is used, it's not  the end. Or at least, not intended to be the end. Obviously, sometimes the plug gets pulled and the guy never gets to make his shocking return.

(That's "shocking" in the Casablanca sense, of course)

Modifié par AlanC9, 30 septembre 2012 - 10:54 .

[Reorte]

AlanC9 wrote...

Reorte wrote...
The shortcuts fiction takes are only there (or should only be there) for space and pacing reasons. Ideally the message should still work for someone who's never heard a story before and is therefore unaware of the techniques and conventions. It might not be possible to achieve that but should always be an aim, and the ideal story shouldn't use them as a crutch.

Even if that was realistic, I don't see why it's particularly desirable. Particularly for a studio like Bioware, who have been recycling tropes forever.

I think I might not have explained it very well. Using tropes and well-established ideas isn't a problem; it's probably impossible to write a decent length story without them anyway. What I'm against is relying on the player's knowledge of them. So, for example, we have a man and a woman thrown together who don't get on at first - yep, nine times out of ten they get together in the end so whenever you see something similar you expect that to happen. I may be fine with that, I may not, it all depends on hundreds of things. What I would be against is not seeing them get together because the writer decided that it was strongly enough implied by the convention, assuming for some reason that I could care less whether they do or not.

Modifié par Reorte, 30 septembre 2012 - 11:16 .

[CommanderVyse]

Selene Moonsong wrote...

And I am talking about the Story in ME 3, not all the time spent on doing fed-ex missions and such that are designed for no more reason in a game than to help the player gain experience points, credits, etc (mostly game mechanics and easily truncated).

There is something less than 90 minutes of total dialogue in the game, and you do not experience all of it in a single run through the game, and many scenes would pass by much faster than a game scene with the exact same dialogue, leaving room to expand on any discussion.

At any rate, my point about the ending stands as stated.

Like so many other players, I too have hundreds of hours of play time invested in the ME series with multiple characters played all the way through from ME, through ME 2, and through ME 3 over the past few years as well and am a 'completionist' role-player.

Dialogue is not the only part of a video game or movie. How much of Avatar was spent with sweeping 3D landscape shots or riding dragons?

Watch Wall-E, there is almost no dialouge for half the movie. By your logic, all that can be fast forwarded through without impacting the plot.

Video games let you experience a world by interacting with it. They don't tell us a planet has hidden secrets, they let you roam around until you discover it. That's what makes video games special.

[Selene Moonsong]

wwinters99 wrote...

Dialogue is not the only part of a video game or movie. How much of Avatar was spent with sweeping 3D landscape shots or riding dragons?

Watch Wall-E, there is almost no dialouge for half the movie. By your logic, all that can be fast forwarded through without impacting the plot.

Video games let you experience a world by interacting with it. They don't tell us a planet has hidden secrets, they let you roam around until you discover it. That's what makes video games special.

Except that roaming panet surfaces and scavaging have nothing to with the story except in very few instances and no such roving occurs in ME 3, that happens in ME 1 and I have been talking about ME 3. 

At any rate this is going off topic and has little to do with the final breath scene.

I say the final breath scene combined with the LI's refusal to hang Sheps plaque on the memorial wall suggests that Shep does survive. 

So we will just have to agree to disagree and move on...

[Grex11]

How did a joke thread about closure for Refund Guy turn into a debate about closure for Shepard?

[Iakus]

Grex11 wrote...

How did a joke thread about closure for Refund Guy turn into a debate about closure for Shepard?

Because the breath scene, really, really p*sses off a lot of people who expected closure for living SHepards as well as dead ones.

[Mathias]

Selene Moonsong wrote...

wwinters99 wrote...

Dialogue is not the only part of a video game or movie. How much of Avatar was spent with sweeping 3D landscape shots or riding dragons?

Watch Wall-E, there is almost no dialouge for half the movie. By your logic, all that can be fast forwarded through without impacting the plot.

Video games let you experience a world by interacting with it. They don't tell us a planet has hidden secrets, they let you roam around until you discover it. That's what makes video games special.

Except that roaming panet surfaces and scavaging have nothing to with the story except in very few instances and no such roving occurs in ME 3, that happens in ME 1 and I have been talking about ME 3. 

At any rate this is going off topic and has little to do with the final breath scene.

I say the final breath scene combined with the LI's refusal to hang Sheps plaque on the memorial wall suggests that Shep does survive. 

So we will just have to agree to disagree and move on...

You know i was about to say it's nice to see someone from Bioware say Shepard is alive, but then i saw that you're a volunteer and not part of Bioware's staff. I guess that explains why you're level headed.

[Zardoc]

Selene Moonsong wrote...

Jade8aby88 wrote...

I think it's also worth noting that Avatar is a 178 minute feature film. The Mass Effect series can be up to 100+ hours. What may be appropriate for one, isn't for the other.

Huh?

An example of an ending is an example of an ending, whether it is in a book, a movie, a comic, this game, or another game. It is still, in fact, story telling.

All stories, no matter the media, depend on and use plot devices. You cannot simply dismiss. The entire plot for a game can most crtainly fit into a bad movie the length of Avatar.

Fixed that for you.

I say the final breath scene combined with the LI's refusal to hang Sheps plaque on the memorial wall suggests that Shep does survive.

Perhaps, but that is not really closure, is it.

Modifié par Zardoc, 01 octobre 2012 - 02:31 .