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[Ownedbacon]

arial wrote...

The real reason the ending(s) were poorly recieved is quite simple.

since the day ME3 was anounced, people started speculating on what features it would have, how the story would progress, etc.

It came to the state where No game could realisticly match what fans expected.

When the game finally came out, and it could not live up to what people were sure it would be, people looked for every possible reason to blame for their dissatisfaction.

When the final installment of a epic trilogy is overhyped and under delivered and failed to meet the standard and quality of the first two games it is poorly received. Here is a list as to why the endings and ME3 were so poorly received:

• Loading screens in ME2 told you your choices would have a massive impact on the third game.Time and time again Hudson said your choices mattered. Third game is released choices are diminished are given a choice do over in just about every instance and then seeing them reduced to a number where you never see the consequences of your actions come to fruition in the finale.
• We had a huge choice at the end of Mass Effect 2 that meant absolutely nothing to the plot and barely anything to the final ME3 score.
• The plot of ME2 and everything it was building up to is completely ignored and tossed aside and is replaced with a plot+resolution not grounded within its own lore.
• Reapers their personalities, varying appearances (see end of ME2), their tactics (see ME1), are retconned out of existence in order to turn them into puppet machines under the control of a new antagonist.
• The main antagonist of ME2 has only a cameo.
• Railroaded gameplay not taking in account various playthroughs.
• Book characters forced into game without proper introduction.
• Kai Lame set up to be an equal to Shepard but fails. Only is successful when plot armor is applied.
• Game feels like a generic shooter and plays out like one.
• Only one HUB world. The game lacks in exploration. (There could have been an Earth HUB prior to invasion to maybe get the player to care about Earth a little bit).
• Fetch-quests after eavesdropping. Would've been better if you actually personally retrieved these from the planets you scanned.
• Forced trauma on the player character, followed by pointless dreams which aren't relevant to all playthroughs some Shepard's would not be affected by this. It is supposed to be a role playing game after all.
• Earth is hardly established and is difficult to care about yet is the entire focus of the game.
• ME2 characters have cameos some worse than others.
• Priority Earth is the worst mission in game and possibly the worst in the series. It was hyped to be this. What we got was this. It should have been an improved version of the Suicide Mission making use of our war assets and the galactic army we recruited. Our choices could determine how well we do in the battle.
• After this empty mission that drags on with no music and feels like a glorified multiplayer game we are sent to an anticlimatic conversation with the Illusive Man which ends up being a rehash of Saren.
• The Crucible is absurd and nonsensical.
• Synthesis is ridiculous.
• After making "our" choice and watching a "wildly different" ending of red, blue, or green we see the galaxy becoming a wasteland. Meanwhile Joker is racing away from battle and crashes. Out of the crash comes our crew members who abandoned the fight to get to safety after leaving Shepard for dead. A possible breath scene is shown not even our own in game Shepard models.
• The credits roll and at the end of the credits we get the cliche entire series has been a story being told by a elder to a child. (the two silhouetttes of these two are identical except the kid is shrunk down slightly). After they talk about the Shepard and more stories to be told a datapad screen appears.
• The datapad screen tells us there are more stories about Shepard but only through downloadable content. So after two games and a unfinished third game we are told in order to get more out of the story we need to pay more for it. No thank you from the BioWare team for playing the series, just pay more money. Who thought that was a good idea?

tl;dr
Yeah after being told to buy more content after a relatively weak game and an abysmal ending (by Mass Effect's own standards)<sarcasm> I can safely say it was just fan expectations were too high.</sarcasm><_<

All they had to do was follow what they did for their previous games, making our choices count, and not railroading us into a generic shooter game and storyline.

[Applepie_Svk]

Bakgrind wrote...


“Mass Effect 3 is all about answering all the biggest questions in the
lore, learning about the mysteries and the Protheans and the Reapers,
being able to decide for yourself how all of these things come to an
end.”

... and he forget to mention something like all answers are in the DLCs 

The Mad Hanar wrote...

Applepie_Svk wrote...

so tl;dr...

fans are to blame here

You needed a tl;dr for the OP? 


Woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow

 just summ it for all lazy people 

Modifié par Applepie_Svk, 09 octobre 2012 - 05:02 .

[Ownedbacon]

4stringwizard wrote...

The Mad Hanar wrote...

The real reason the ending was poorly recieved was because Walters huffed some magic markers before writing it.

Three different colored magic markers.  

lmao:lol:

[daecath]

First of all, you do have a point. The endings violate expectations. But who set those expectations?

social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/355/index/10056886
"where the decisions you make completely shape your experience
and outcome"
“[The presence of the Rachni] has huge consequences in Mass
Effect 3. Even just in the final battle with the Reapers.”
“And, to be honest, you [the fans] are crafting your Mass Effect story as
much as we are anyway.”
“There are many different endings. We wouldn’t do it any other way. How
could you go through all three campaigns playing as your Shepard and
then be forced into a bespoke ending that everyone gets? But I can’t
say any more than that…”
“Every decision you've made will impact how things go. The player's also the
architect of what happens."
"you will definitely sense how they close was
because of the decisions you made and because of the decisions you
didn't make”
"And they are resolved in a way that's very different
based on what you would do in those situations.”
"because we have the ability to
build the endings out in a way that we don’t have to worry about
eventually tying them back together somewhere. This story arc is
coming to an end with this game. That means the endings can be a lot
more different. At this point we’re taking into account so many
decisions that you’ve made as a player and reflecting a lot of that
stuff. It’s not even in any way like the traditional game endings,
where you can say how many endings there are or whether you got
ending A, B, or C.....The endings have a lot more sophistication and
variety in them.”

BioWare set the expectations for us. They set them with everything they said about what the game would be.

They also set them with the previous games.
ME1 - Going up against the ultimate Specter, no way you can win. Succeed despite all odds.
ME2 - Going up against an unbeatable foe. Suicide mission. Succeed despite all odds.
ME3 - Going up against the ultimate enemy. Conventional victory is impossible.

The first two games set up Shepard as someone that takes on the impossible and succeeds despite all the odds. The third game sets up that Shepard is taking on the impossible, but when it comes time for the payoff, there isn't one. Shepard doesn't succeed, he/she follows the orders of his/her enemy and picks one of three options presented. That's not succeeding despite the odds, that's not a victory based on the choices you made, and the strength of your team, like the other two games were.

But the main reasons why the endings were poorly received is because they were poorly written, pure and simple. They violated every rule of writing good literature. The link in my signature is from a highly respected publication for authors. It lists a series of do's and don't's for writing a good ending to your story. And they violated every single one of them. Here are some of their worst crimes.

Deus ex machina - For thousands of years, anyone who knows anything about writing good literature has known you never, EVER use this. It's a cheap convention, a cop-out that says "I don't know what the f*** I'm doing, so I have to just pull something out of my ass to get me out of the corner I've written myself into."

Violates established lore - It contradicts Sovereign and Harbinger, creats new technology that is way outside the realm of what's been established, and basically contradicts the entire rest of the game. "The created will always rebel against their creators....Without us to stop it, synthetics would destroy all organics." That's the premise of the ending. And it's disproven. The geth did rebel against their creators, yes. It's already happened, and is now over. And organics are still here. Ergo, catalyst wrong. Yet you still have to go along with him.

Shepard is an idiot - Yes, by all means, let's commit suicide with no guarantee, simply because our enemy tells us to. Even though one of our enemy's greatest weapons is manipulation and lies in the form of indoctrination, and even though we've disproven his argument. You still are forced to simply kill yourself based on the word of a known liar.

Choices don't matter - none of the choices from any of the previous games, or even from this game, matter when it comes to the end. In ME2, you at least had some result of your choices. Sure, it plays out mostly the same, but if you choose not to do a certain loyalty quest, that person dies. If you choose the wrong squadmate for a function, that person dies. If you totally screw up, Shepard dies. Choices and consequences, all visible in the game. Not so in ME3. Sure, all along there are some minor differences, which is cheap, but whatever. However, the end is absolutely not impacted one way or another by any of your choices, other than as a number which gets you above a threshold to get an ending choice. You don't see the rachni fighting for you, or krogans riding dinosaurs, or geth fighting alongside quarians, or anything.

Which leads to the worst crime of all - it's unsatisfying. They could have skipped the entire three games, given you the last 10 minutes, and it would have played out exactly the same. Three games wasted with no resolution except a "which ending do you want to see?" option.

Modifié par daecath, 09 octobre 2012 - 04:58 .

[SpamBot2000]

You're mistaken, OP. They weren't 'poorly received', they were in fact POORLY CREATED.

[legion999]

Cthulhu42 wrote...

No, I'm pretty sure the ending was poorly-received because it was awful.

There's really nothing else to say but that.

[Eclipse merc]

Cthulhu42 wrote...

No, I'm pretty sure the ending was poorly-received because it was awful.

[ElementL09]

Foolsfolly wrote...

Cthulhu42 wrote...

No, I'm pretty sure the ending was poorly-received because it was awful.

This.

The EC was better but the original ending was so awful that all you could do was go take a walk and think about how much money and time you'd wasted thinking this series was worth a ****.

The EC made the ending mediocre instead of 'why even replay this?' worthy.

Its not mediocre, its more like (an analogy that alot of people use when regarding it) a polished turd, not matter how hard you polish it, its still ****.

[OMGsideboob]

Ownedbacon wrote...
[*]Earth is hardly established and is difficult to care about yet is the entire focus of the game.

Out of your complain-fest this stood out as the most laughable. You are a human being right? How is the planet you live on and the homeworld of humanity difficult to care about when sending humanity to extinction is all the Reapers have desired since you first met Saren?

How can you build upon this when turians are dying in droves to defend a MOON nearby Palaven and the Asari were seen struggling mightily to hold Thessia? (which obviously you didnt forget how Anderson felt the need to stay and lead forces "who have never held a gun in their life" to defend their homes against the Reapers themselves...)

This is by far and away one of the most hilarious comments I have seen since posting to this forum. I understand and can even agree with some of the gripes made on these forums, but this is laughable at best.

[Quething]

OMGsideboob wrote...

Ownedbacon wrote...
[*]Earth is hardly established and is difficult to care about yet is the entire focus of the game.

You are a human being right? How is the planet you live on and the homeworld of humanity difficult to care about when sending humanity to extinction is all the Reapers have desired since you first met Saren?

Not been here long? The bizarre emphasis on Earth and the lazy, inaccurate assumption that players will care about it just because "it's Earth" is one of the more longstanding and well-worn complaints about 3.

[tvman099]

People hated it because they pulled a magic Reaper killing gun out of nowhere 15 minutes into the game and changed the antagonist from the Reapers to an AI who who causes the problem it's trying to solve during the last 15.

And then rather than a solution or end to the conflict that made sense, we were forced to taste the rainbow.

Modifié par tvman099, 09 octobre 2012 - 10:43 .

[Engared]

The ending was very shoddily written. I can't say things which haven't been said before but it seemed that they threw out all the good writers and let a monkey with a type writer or an agenda bash out a couple of pages of cow-dung which they then made.

It is arguably the worst ending in history of media. Not even the Matrix 2 was as bad as this.

[Maxster_]

anorling wrote...

drayfish wrote...

I think this is a vast (and rather insulting) miss-categorisation for a lot of fans. 
 
I don't hate the endings because they are 'disappointing', or 'lacklustre' or because I was 'promised more'; I morally and intellectually reject the very clear are repulsive message that they are advancing.
 
I would have welcomed a sorrowful ending, or a clumsy ending (we've seen enough of them in popular entertainment that it's a genuine surprise[/i] when we don't get such a thing), but what Mass Effect[/i] chose to do at its conclusion was promote an amoral hypothetical that even its writers had not fully thought through. Mistaking hubris for talent they tossed an ethical hand grenade into the room and ran, destroying the themes of inclusivity and hope that they had cultivated throughout the series and leaving the fan base to bicker over 'fun' topics like whether or not it's 'genocide' to exterminate a race if you didn't really want[/i] to do it...
 
The irresponsibility and arrogance of that action is what insults me, and why I find the endings so artless and grotesque.

Heh... <_< It's quite sad when you think of it. So this is the legacy of Mass Effect? As you say, all the endings left the fans with to speculate about is fun topics like genocide, slavery and galactic DNA rape. Exiting topics that really creates a sense of unity and agreement within the community. Ethical hand granade indeed 

Well played Bioware, well played.

Do I even dare to guess what the ending to DA3 will bring? 

Agree with both.
"Ethical hand grenade" is a good term. 

[Maxster_]

Bathaius wrote...

Wrong. Most people simply expected either something uplifting, something fulfilling for their investment in the story, something that allowed one to win, or something that was similar to the suicide mission of ME2.

People would have raged about something regardless, but the massive outcry would have never happened if any of the above were accomplished (in the eyes of most people).

Yeah, i'm not find it uplifting, that  story about hopeless crushing defeat, and forced choice of 3 war crimes.

[Maxster_]

The Spamming Troll wrote...

the ending sucks.

the middle sucks.

the begining sucks.

actually the middle wasnt so bad.

good luck future fans of bioware!!!!!

Cerberus coup?

[CaIIisto]

Engared wrote...
It is arguably the worst ending in history of media. Not even the Matrix 2 was as bad as this.

A damning indictment...

....that also happens to be true.

The endings are terrible. The EC is, well, it's like giving someone an aspirin for a gunshot wound.

[GreyLycanTrope]

Bullcrap OP, my expectations weren't unreasonable. They still aren't, the only thing keeping me from enjoying ME3 is that someone decided the end should only have one tone, in addition to subverting or regressing established themes and narratives in favor of symbolism and pseudo artistic bullsh*t.

[Peranor]

Greylycantrope wrote...

Bullcrap OP, my expectations weren't unreasonable. They still aren't, the only thing keeping me from enjoying ME3 is that someone decided the end should only have one tone, in addition to subverting or regressing established themes and narratives in favor of symbolism and pseudo artistic bullsh*t.

Indeed, I hate the symbolism (and the pseudo artistic pretentious bullsh!t) during the ending. Maybe it's just me that got everying thing wrong, but the kind of symbolism we got with the endings has no place in a game like Mass Effect. A game that goes to great lengths to explain things to the players. A game with a damn codex to help explain details that isn't touched upon in the dialogue or otherwise.
Sure not everything can be fully explained, and maybe some parts nees to be left hanging or up to the player to figure out. But I feel that symbolism had no place in the ending to the game, the ending to the trilogy and the whole story...
And I don't think I'm being unreasonable to expect such. Not from a game like Mass Effect.

Modifié par anorling, 09 octobre 2012 - 12:10 .

[someone else]

arial wrote... The real reason the ending(s) were poorly recieved is quite simple

...some rapes are legitimate.

so much so I've yet to find sufficient motivation for another playthrough, leaving leviathan unopened & don't know when I might get to it.

so long tired old rehash, back to MP.   DLC Today and the arrival of the Biotic God!  Plotless coop action 4 me, and thank the goddess we don't worry about Artistic Integrity.

Modifié par someone else, 09 octobre 2012 - 12:16 .

[T-Raks]

Sorry OP, but the endings were poorly received, because they are poorly presented and an A, B or C button ending doesn't fit the story.

Still not having been briefed/not knowing how to use the crucible before we run to the Citadel beam is idiotic and is something that has to be addressed before ME3 is over IMO. That's why I hope Omega is an older crucible version, so we finally get a clue of what we are doing.

[alfaice1]

The thing that botherd me the most is that there is no way to end it the Shepard way. The choices are presented to you by the enemy overlord and you have no say about it, even if the crucible made that possible. it is still the enemy in front of you giving you his twisted logic on how things must end. And you have to give in to one of them. Ok you got refusal.
But still, I was waiting for shepard to say Joker, and Joker would do some static noise and i would go and flipp the off switch saying we got some bad conection here.

But i loved the game

[3DandBeyond]

Xilizhra wrote...

It's all from your point of view. Bittersweet? Not to me-it's all bitter and becoming an AI god. When did Shepard ever say s/he wanted to be that? Especially a paragon. And leaving the reapers alive with people goo and the thoughts of trillions of people within them-people that are in limbo, not alive and not dead. I can envision so many people being happy at seeing reapers with their family inside them flying around.

Technically, none of the Reapers have anyone's families inside of them, none who are alive, at any rate. And whether or not Shepard wanted to be an AI god is irrelevant; mine didn't even want to be a soldier until Mindoir was attacked. But then, as now, she stepped up to do what had to be done. In any case, I'm fairly sure her body could be reconstituted.

No they aren't alive (their bodies are dead and put into vats for use) because the reapers killed them.  So, it's ok if they sucked them up after they were dead, after they killed them.  Technically, they do have someone's family inside of them.  Just as Jeffrey Dahmer had someone's brother inside him after he ate hearts and things.  The ships are made out of people, so somebody's family is inside them.  Or somebody's family exists as reaper variants.

It is completely relevant what a Shepard would want-and it makes no sense that a Shepard would want to force anyone to live with the abominations that have attempted to destroy their planets, have destroyed whole colonies and have people's mental energy within them and that used their organic matter.  I think joining the military and choosing to fight to save people is a far bit different from deciding to become some unfeeling reaper god with a voice over and music that indicates the future may well become bleak.

This Shepard AI must be uploaded into the same garbage that was responsible for the kid.  Those that created the kid created whatever infrastructure he resides within.  They messed up in creating him and in creating the machines that became reapers.  So, it stands to reason that uploading Shepard into the same tech won't necessarily be a good thing.  It's like putting a new CPU into a computer with a damaged motherboard.

Modifié par 3DandBeyond, 09 octobre 2012 - 01:35 .

[Iakus]

Why were the endings so poorly received? SImple.

The Conduit at the end didn't take Shepard to the Citadel.

Turns out the beam actually takes you to the Kobyashi Maru...

[3DandBeyond]

daecath wrote...

First of all, you do have a point. The endings violate expectations. But who set those expectations?

social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/355/index/10056886
"where the decisions you make completely shape your experience
and outcome"
“[The presence of the Rachni] has huge consequences in Mass
Effect 3. Even just in the final battle with the Reapers.”
“And, to be honest, you [the fans] are crafting your Mass Effect story as
much as we are anyway.”
“There are many different endings. We wouldn’t do it any other way. How
could you go through all three campaigns playing as your Shepard and
then be forced into a bespoke ending that everyone gets? But I can’t
say any more than that…”
“Every decision you've made will impact how things go. The player's also the
architect of what happens."
"you will definitely sense how they close was
because of the decisions you made and because of the decisions you
didn't make”
"And they are resolved in a way that's very different
based on what you would do in those situations.”
"because we have the ability to
build the endings out in a way that we don’t have to worry about
eventually tying them back together somewhere. This story arc is
coming to an end with this game. That means the endings can be a lot
more different. At this point we’re taking into account so many
decisions that you’ve made as a player and reflecting a lot of that
stuff. It’s not even in any way like the traditional game endings,
where you can say how many endings there are or whether you got
ending A, B, or C.....The endings have a lot more sophistication and
variety in them.”

BioWare set the expectations for us. They set them with everything they said about what the game would be.

They also set them with the previous games.
ME1 - Going up against the ultimate Specter, no way you can win. Succeed despite all odds.
ME2 - Going up against an unbeatable foe. Suicide mission. Succeed despite all odds.
ME3 - Going up against the ultimate enemy. Conventional victory is impossible.

The first two games set up Shepard as someone that takes on the impossible and succeeds despite all the odds. The third game sets up that Shepard is taking on the impossible, but when it comes time for the payoff, there isn't one. Shepard doesn't succeed, he/she follows the orders of his/her enemy and picks one of three options presented. That's not succeeding despite the odds, that's not a victory based on the choices you made, and the strength of your team, like the other two games were.

But the main reasons why the endings were poorly received is because they were poorly written, pure and simple. They violated every rule of writing good literature. The link in my signature is from a highly respected publication for authors. It lists a series of do's and don't's for writing a good ending to your story. And they violated every single one of them. Here are some of their worst crimes.

Deus ex machina - For thousands of years, anyone who knows anything about writing good literature has known you never, EVER use this. It's a cheap convention, a cop-out that says "I don't know what the f*** I'm doing, so I have to just pull something out of my ass to get me out of the corner I've written myself into."

Violates established lore - It contradicts Sovereign and Harbinger, creats new technology that is way outside the realm of what's been established, and basically contradicts the entire rest of the game. "The created will always rebel against their creators....Without us to stop it, synthetics would destroy all organics." That's the premise of the ending. And it's disproven. The geth did rebel against their creators, yes. It's already happened, and is now over. And organics are still here. Ergo, catalyst wrong. Yet you still have to go along with him.

Shepard is an idiot - Yes, by all means, let's commit suicide with no guarantee, simply because our enemy tells us to. Even though one of our enemy's greatest weapons is manipulation and lies in the form of indoctrination, and even though we've disproven his argument. You still are forced to simply kill yourself based on the word of a known liar.

Choices don't matter - none of the choices from any of the previous games, or even from this game, matter when it comes to the end. In ME2, you at least had some result of your choices. Sure, it plays out mostly the same, but if you choose not to do a certain loyalty quest, that person dies. If you choose the wrong squadmate for a function, that person dies. If you totally screw up, Shepard dies. Choices and consequences, all visible in the game. Not so in ME3. Sure, all along there are some minor differences, which is cheap, but whatever. However, the end is absolutely not impacted one way or another by any of your choices, other than as a number which gets you above a threshold to get an ending choice. You don't see the rachni fighting for you, or krogans riding dinosaurs, or geth fighting alongside quarians, or anything.

Which leads to the worst crime of all - it's unsatisfying. They could have skipped the entire three games, given you the last 10 minutes, and it would have played out exactly the same. Three games wasted with no resolution except a "which ending do you want to see?" option.

Great post!

Expectations exist as promises.  Stories have promises internally even if BW had never made external ones.  But look at the pass people are willing to give BW for not keeping internal and external promises.

I've heard it all. 

All game endings are bad.  Really?  So we should accept that and think that's ok?  As long as they all suck (they don't), we should just give BW a pass on that?  No, not when a lot of people have thought out what really would have been some good endings (not me but others) and not when the ending was staring them in the face and all they had to do was finish it.

Hype is just hype and not meant to be believed.  Really?  Well, no.  Hype is meant to get people to pre-order games because games today live and die on pre-order, first day, and first week sales.  They use these sales numbers to sell and hype the game further to get more long-term sales.  Hype is a promise because you are basing a purchase on what they say a game will be-it also goes hand in hand with what they have previously written within previous games, especially those in a trilogy.  A promise is a promise and I don't believe you can't get out of one, but I believe you must be mature in doing so and say, we couldn't keep that promise so we did it this way for this reason.

They changed their minds.  Ok this was actually said by a BW employee recently-that they can change their minds.  Fair enough, but as I said above then be mature and talk about this.  Don't sit up in some glass tower and dare people to throw stones.  Don't tell fans they don't know what they are talking about because you never meant something to happen (the whole relay saga is based on this and bares out a real problem they have in accepting responsibility for anything they've done).

The story is theirs to tell.  Sure and I could write a tale about the beauty of rancid rotted meat and I might think it's just the most wonderful story ever, but if I ever wanted to publish it I might find that my story will have an audience of one, or maybe it would have a few fans that are people I wouldn't care to meet on the street.  This actually might hold more water if the ending was indeed their original creative work-the fact that it's not just derived from a lot of other endings, but uses whole chunks of other works means it is not their original creative work.  To be fair, yes all SF is at least partly similar to other SF, but it's one thing to create a story that features a confrontation with the antagonist at the end and another to have 3 choices that are exactly the same type as in another game that poked fun at this type of ending, Deus ex.  It's also something to have this ending pop up that has no resilient emphasis in three games as far as themes that resonate, when they are so similar to the endings of other stories where they do fit.

Fans shouldn't be allowed to change someone's IP-that's a dangerous precedent.  Garbage on top of a steaming pile of poop on top of the head of someone without knowledge of anything that exists that people buy.  Fans determine the success of everything we buy, for good and yes, sometimes for bad.  In the case of anything with a story meant for mass consumption, fans always have the final word.  Always.  If you write a book, editors, agents, publishers and critics will all tell you what they think fans will like-they get paid to do that.  Many are paid to get you to alter your content prior to a consumer ever buying it.  And the latter, the critic will often cause you (or your publisher and so on) to alter the next book you write.  And great authors have changed the endings to their works based on fan reaction.  In fact, it's been done now for centuries at least.

[Harorrd]

EA forced them to relese the game to early, hence they was forced to cut the majority of the content and sell it ass dlc