384 réponses à ce sujet

[eddieoctane]

If we are supposed to use our imaginations, then why purchase a game in the first place? Why not craft the entire adventure in our minds and keep our money? Oh wait, EA and BioWare want our money. So we should only imagine details when they deliver a product that isn't as advertised and fails to meet consumer expectations.

Screw that. If I'm going to pay for another Mass Effect installment of any kind, I shouldn't have to imagine the resolution of the entire plot. If that's going to be company policy, though, I'll gladly keep my cash an imagine an entire adventure myself. I'm sure I can dig up some action figures out of my basement.

[Pheonix57]

I have a vast imagination, but I didn't spend several hundred dollars on a series to have to "imagine" my own ending after the fact.

[CDR David Shepard]

Pheonix57 wrote...

I have a vast imagination, but I didn't spend several hundred dollars on a series to have to "imagine" my own ending after the fact.

So you honestly only spent the "several hundred dollars" on the ending and not the journey throughout the whole trilogy?

[Podge 90]

CDR David Shepard wrote...

Pheonix57 wrote...

I have a vast imagination, but I didn't spend several hundred dollars on a series to have to "imagine" my own ending after the fact.

So you honestly only spent the "several hundred dollars" on the ending and not the journey throughout the whole trilogy?

What a spectacularly ignorant statement.

[inko1nsiderate]

GimmeDaGun wrote...


It's simple. Nowadays people (especially the young ones) do not read books anymore (and I'm not talking about pulp and trash fiction books, eg.:Star Wars, Harry Potter, Stephen King etc. -they are good in their own terms, but far from being real books). People also got used to take everything pre-digested (if it makes sense) in detail. They tend to lose themselves in tiny details and can't stand the fact that there are things that happen off the screen or that there are things are not explained in detail. They overanalyze things and they want to see everything (of course in the way they want it). This is the modern digital age. It harms imagination and intellectual capacity in many ways. It makes people intellectually and emotionally lazy and numb in some cases. 

Plus add the emotional attachment (in some cases way over the top and pathologycal) and obsession some feel for the series. 

The problem I see with the overanalysis is that it is often poorly done.  If you don't give basic conscensions for storytelling, rip apart a series for something all storytellers engage in, and focus entirely on technical details of the game itself, you may be overanaylzing but you're really just making a poor analysis.  You aren't making a good faith attempt to actually analyze the body of work.  And then there are things like IT, which strike me as putting deep meaning into artifacts of game development (granted, I do this too).

Though I realized that people like the OP is discribing actually exist the moment I saw someone very emotionally arguing that we needed cutscenes of Garrus's dad.  Just hearing Garrus's dad made it off of Palaven wasn't enough, we had to see it and know that he was safe and things turned out ok.  If we didn't, then obviously he died a horrible horrible death, being eaten alive by Swarmers

[Tootles FTW]

CDR David Shepard wrote...

Pheonix57 wrote...

I have a vast imagination, but I didn't spend several hundred dollars on a series to have to "imagine" my own ending after the fact.

So you honestly only spent the "several hundred dollars" on the ending and not the journey throughout the whole trilogy?

Would good sex still be good sex if it ends with a donkey punch?  Debatable, but I guarantee the day after you wouldn't be talking about the "journey" portion with your friends.

[GreyLycanTrope]

Tootles FTW wrote...

My imagination doesn't charge me $60.

[EDIT] Oh, wait, I bought the Collector's Edition.  So, $80.

We should charge them, let's forward the imagination fee to Bioware .

[AresKeith]

Greylycantrope wrote...

Tootles FTW wrote...

My imagination doesn't charge me $60.

[EDIT] Oh, wait, I bought the Collector's Edition.  So, $80.

We should charge them, let's forward the imagination fee to Bioware .

Have them give us $40 back since we have imaginate the ending lol

[CDR David Shepard]

Tootles FTW wrote...

CDR David Shepard wrote...

Pheonix57 wrote...

I have a vast imagination, but I didn't spend several hundred dollars on a series to have to "imagine" my own ending after the fact.

So you honestly only spent the "several hundred dollars" on the ending and not the journey throughout the whole trilogy?

Would good sex still be good sex if it ends with a donkey punch?  Debatable, but I guarantee the day after you wouldn't be talking about the "journey" portion with your friends.

Haha...well that's just a bad analogy...

...we're talking about weeks and weeks (years if you played ME1 when it first came out) of arguably amazing sex...followed by what you describe as a "donkey punch" on the final night.

Seriously though...I can see your point...and granted...I loved the series...endings and all...

...but I think the journey alone is and should be worth the "several hundred dollars" the person spends on the series. (though I only bought the three games myself)

Modifié par CDR David Shepard, 22 octobre 2012 - 05:30 .

[crimzontearz]

CDR David Shepard wrote...

Tootles FTW wrote...

CDR David Shepard wrote...

Pheonix57 wrote...

I have a vast imagination, but I didn't spend several hundred dollars on a series to have to "imagine" my own ending after the fact.

So you honestly only spent the "several hundred dollars" on the ending and not the journey throughout the whole trilogy?

Would good sex still be good sex if it ends with a donkey punch?  Debatable, but I guarantee the day after you wouldn't be talking about the "journey" portion with your friends.

Haha...well that's just a bad analogy...

...we're talking about weeks and weeks (years if you played ME1 when it first came out) of arguably amazing sex...followed by what you describe as a "donkey punch" on the final night.

Seriously though...I can see your point...and granted...I loved the series...endings and all...

...but I think the journey alone is and should be worth the "several hundred dollars" the person spends on the series. (though I only bought the three games myself)

I heard the Titanic had a lovely journey


 
No really...totally worth the drowning

[Fawx9]

CDR David Shepard wrote...

Pheonix57 wrote...

I have a vast imagination, but I didn't spend several hundred dollars on a series to have to "imagine" my own ending after the fact.

So you honestly only spent the "several hundred dollars" on the ending and not the journey throughout the whole trilogy?

Why have the star kid then, we could have just cut to black with shepard and anderson.

Or maybe we shouldn't have even had the final conflict with TIM, you could cut it as soon as you go up the beam and imagine what happens.

Or you could cut it as soon as you started the run and imagine how the final conflict turns out.

Or...

It's called finishing a character's story. Sure an author go "IMAGINE" but it risks being a horrible ending to certain series. Especially this one where you want to know what happened to the characters around you and the world you left behind.

The EC should have been something like DA:O post battle ceremonies. There was no good reason why characters, after 3 games, shouldn't get a proper send off.

[inko1nsiderate]

eddieoctane wrote...

If we are supposed to use our imaginations, then why purchase a game in the first place? Why not craft the entire adventure in our minds and keep our money? Oh wait, EA and BioWare want our money. So we should only imagine details when they deliver a product that isn't as advertised and fails to meet consumer expectations.

Screw that. If I'm going to pay for another Mass Effect installment of any kind, I shouldn't have to imagine the resolution of the entire plot. If that's going to be company policy, though, I'll gladly keep my cash an imagine an entire adventure myself. I'm sure I can dig up some action figures out of my basement.

I'm not trying to be an ass here, as I legitimately feel bad that you spent a load of cash on a product you feel failed to deliver to your bare minimum expectations and ruined a story universe that you have a strong attachment too.  Yes, the expectation of video games is that the ending and fate of the characters is often clear cut and resolved in some sort of slide show (in RPGs), and it isn't unreasonable to expect this from a video game.  I just feel that if we want video games to become something that is taken seriously, that some old paradigms of concrete endings in which the writers tell you everything that has happened with an epilogue voice over might have to change.  I'm not even sure if they were an actually good way of doing things to begin with.  Just look at LoTR.  We don't really know Frodo's fate, as he essentially sails into the unknown, but whatever happens to the characters we imagine the best for them (or if you are cruel you can imagine some horrible things as well).  So obviously some amount of open endedness can be well received by fans.  Clearly, this is subjective.  If you like the open ended nature of the finale or not, it all comes down to personal preference, and I'm not going to say someone is wrong because they prefer more linear and self-contained stories.

The idea is that the game sets up events, characters, and stages your imagination so that you don't need a slide show of every last possible variation or character you cared about, but you are  enabled to imagine the future of the story universe based on what you thought the characters would do, or who you thought your Shepard was, and the way the story concluded.  This is where the original ending faltered, as it didn't clearly show victory over the Reapers.  I think you have to visually establish that there is some form of victory over the Reapers before you go into the open-endedness, and I suppose this was the intended purpose of the Stargazer scene, though it would be preferable to see the Reapers die/fly-off before you roll credits and then see evidence that victory was actually acheived.

If the writers gave you a set of canned endings, some might be complaining because they aren't something 'my Shepard' would do.  What if I want my Destroy Shepard to die, but at least say goodbye to Liara before she finally dies?  What if I want my Destroy Shepard to live, but go into a spiral of PTSD and self-destruction now that her singular focus is gone?  What if my Paragon Shepard cannot live with his actions and offs himself?

I made Shepard my character, I don't really want some writer sauntering in and presenting a limited view on my character.  Isn't that precisely why people complain about autodialogue?  I think what Bioware tried to do was give you a great gaming experience, where they do limit the options Shepard has in the game for technical reasons, but then open it up to give more than just lipservice to the idea that 'Shepard is your Shepard'.  Like Yahtzee says, most games are shaped like an eye with a fixed starting and end point.  I think what Bioware tried to do was have a fixed starting point, have some divergence through the series (with choke points at ME1 and ME2 beginning + ending and ME3 beginning), limit some of the choices in the game itself to make it tractable, but instead of reeling it back in after some final choice (like most games) just let the story wildly diverge as players reclaim full control of their Shepard.  In this view of the ending, then Bioware took a big risk: yes they might not be able to provide the ending everyone wanted, but they were able to give full creative control of Shepard and the MEU over to the player.  How do you think the universe would end up because of the actions presented in game?  Isn't that far better than getting some cheesy slide show giving you snipets of what happened with 'some say that was the beginning of his story, others say it was the end... no one says it was the middle'?  Then again, what kind of ending speaks to you really comes down to personal preference.

Modifié par inko1nsiderate, 22 octobre 2012 - 05:44 .

[Tootles FTW]

CDR David Shepard wrote...

Haha...well that's just a bad analogy...

...we're talking about weeks and weeks (years if you played ME1 when it first came out) of arguably amazing sex...followed by what you describe as a "donkey punch" on the final night.

Seriously though...I can see your point...and granted...I loved the series...endings and all...

...but I think the journey alone is and should be worth the "several hundred dollars" the person spends on the series. (though I only bought the three games myself)

And I so rarely get to use "donkey punch" in an analogy. 

My point, wrapped in snark, was that the ending to ME3 (and I'm talking pre-EC) was so awful that it retroactively ruined the entire series.  It made all of Shepard's efforts moot when based upon what was displayed in-game (the relays blowing up, Normandy crashing) all of allies were stranded forever & ever.

Apparently I was supposed to use *~*MY IMAGINATION *~* to realize that what was very clearly shown...didn't actually happen as shown?  The EC fixes a lot of my issues, honestly, but this doesn't change the fact that Bioware refuses to acknowledge - they retconned a large portion of the ending from the vanilla game to allow some sort of sense of victory.  Before EC, yes, the journey was ruined.

[Fawx9]

inko1nsiderate wrote...

GimmeDaGun wrote...


It's simple. Nowadays people (especially the young ones) do not read books anymore (and I'm not talking about pulp and trash fiction books, eg.:Star Wars, Harry Potter, Stephen King etc. -they are good in their own terms, but far from being real books). People also got used to take everything pre-digested (if it makes sense) in detail. They tend to lose themselves in tiny details and can't stand the fact that there are things that happen off the screen or that there are things are not explained in detail. They overanalyze things and they want to see everything (of course in the way they want it). This is the modern digital age. It harms imagination and intellectual capacity in many ways. It makes people intellectually and emotionally lazy and numb in some cases. 

Plus add the emotional attachment (in some cases way over the top and pathologycal) and obsession some feel for the series. 

The problem I see with the overanalysis is that it is often poorly done.  If you don't give basic conscensions for storytelling, rip apart a series for something all storytellers engage in, and focus entirely on technical details of the game itself, you may be overanaylzing but you're really just making a poor analysis.  You aren't making a good faith attempt to actually analyze the body of work.  And then there are things like IT, which strike me as putting deep meaning into artifacts of game development (granted, I do this too).

Though I realized that people like the OP is discribing actually exist the moment I saw someone very emotionally arguing that we needed cutscenes of Garrus's dad.  Just hearing Garrus's dad made it off of Palaven wasn't enough, we had to see it and know that he was safe and things turned out ok.  If we didn't, then obviously he died a horrible horrible death, being eaten alive by Swarmers

This may only be relevant in the post EC era.

The OE were complete garbage, and why things like IT were developed in the first place.

When all we were left with was colour swaps and next to no context, you can't fault people for analyzing what was there to try and make some sense of it. (Machine DNA, really?).

[StarcloudSWG]

Even those of us who do read books (and a lot of them in my case) easily spotted that the problem with the ending was that it was *incomplete* and *didn't fit the narrative structure of the series.*

If you read a novel, you read about what happens to the characters in the novel. That's the *basis* to imagine anything additional. If the author leaves something unclear, or takes a sharp left turn into a different story genre, you, the reader, are left confused and wondering what the hell happened, and unlikely to pick up another novel by that writer ever again.

Casey Hudson and Mac Walters took a sharp left turn at the end. And then left the story unfinished. They are, in short, *bad story writers* whose failure was made much more visible by the scale of the project.

Casey wanted Space Horror and Transhumanism as the solution to it. Unfortunately, Mass Effect is Military Space Opera. Slapping a Transhumanist/'Ascension' ending onto a Military Space Opera story is just as jarring as putting an "Everyone Dies" ending onto Disney's Cinderella.

[CDR David Shepard]

Tootles FTW wrote...

CDR David Shepard wrote...

Haha...well that's just a bad analogy...

...we're talking about weeks and weeks (years if you played ME1 when it first came out) of arguably amazing sex...followed by what you describe as a "donkey punch" on the final night.

Seriously though...I can see your point...and granted...I loved the series...endings and all...

...but I think the journey alone is and should be worth the "several hundred dollars" the person spends on the series. (though I only bought the three games myself)

And I so rarely get to use "donkey punch" in an analogy. 

My point, wrapped in snark, was that the ending to ME3 (and I'm talking pre-EC) was so awful that it retroactively ruined the entire series.  It made all of Shepard's efforts moot when based upon what was displayed in-game (the relays blowing up, Normandy crashing) all of allies were stranded forever & ever.

Apparently I was supposed to use *~*MY IMAGINATION *~* to realize that what was very clearly shown...didn't actually happen as shown?  The EC fixes a lot of my issues, honestly, but this doesn't change the fact that Bioware refuses to acknowledge - they retconned a large portion of the ending from the vanilla game to allow some sort of sense of victory.  Before EC, yes, the journey was ruined.

I see what you're saying...

...but I will admit that I believe this is a "shortsighted" way of viewing Shepards accomplishments.

Granted...I definitely wanted the same thing. I wanted Shepards friends and all the characters I grew attached to survive and live great lives and all that...

However, Shepard's real accomplishment is that he stopped the reapers completely. The galactic civilizations 50,000 years from then...100,000 years from then...150,000 years from then...and so on...

...have Shepard to thank for them...even if they don't know it at that point. Shepard's main purpose wasn't just to save his friends and loved ones from harm...it was to save present and future civilizations by ending a cycle that has went on for so long...

To trivialize this by saying that you didn't get to see Shepards friends live happily ever after and saying his accomplishment meant nothing because of this is "shortsighted".

...but I do get your point.

Modifié par CDR David Shepard, 22 octobre 2012 - 05:51 .

[Fawx9]

inko1nsiderate wrote...

eddieoctane wrote...

If we are supposed to use our imaginations, then why purchase a game in the first place? Why not craft the entire adventure in our minds and keep our money? Oh wait, EA and BioWare want our money. So we should only imagine details when they deliver a product that isn't as advertised and fails to meet consumer expectations.

Screw that. If I'm going to pay for another Mass Effect installment of any kind, I shouldn't have to imagine the resolution of the entire plot. If that's going to be company policy, though, I'll gladly keep my cash an imagine an entire adventure myself. I'm sure I can dig up some action figures out of my basement.

I'm not trying to be an ass here, as I legitimately feel bad that you spent a load of cash on a product you feel failed to deliver to your bare minimum expectations and ruined a story universe that you have a strong attachment too.  Yes, the expectation of video games is that the ending and fate of the characters is often clear cut and resolved in some sort of slide show (in RPGs), and it isn't unreasonable to expect this from a video game.  I just feel that if we want video games to become something that is taken seriously, that some old paradigms of concrete endings in which the writers tell you everything that has happened with an epilogue voice over might have to change.  I'm not even sure if they were an actually good way of doing things to begin with.  Just look at LoTR.  We don't really know Frodo's fate, as he essentially sails into the unknown, but whatever happens to the characters we imagine the best for them (or if you are cruel you can imagine some horrible things as well).  So obviously some amount of open endedness can be well received by fans.  Clearly, this is subjective.  If you like the open ended nature of the finale or not, it all comes down to personal preference, and I'm not going to say someone is wrong because they prefer more linear and self-contained stories.

Wait did you just compare LoTR's ending, where you knew where every character went and what was next for them, to ME3, where you only see them standing at wall then generic pictures of the galaxy rebuilding?

You've got to be kidding me.

While I doubt we needed multiple chapters like LoTR did to tie things off, we could have at least used something to give context and detail what happened post colourful explosion to the characters and places we knew.

Modifié par Fawx9, 22 octobre 2012 - 05:48 .

[Iakus]

inko1nsiderate wrote...

eddieoctane wrote...

If we are supposed to use our imaginations, then why purchase a game in the first place? Why not craft the entire adventure in our minds and keep our money? Oh wait, EA and BioWare want our money. So we should only imagine details when they deliver a product that isn't as advertised and fails to meet consumer expectations.

Screw that. If I'm going to pay for another Mass Effect installment of any kind, I shouldn't have to imagine the resolution of the entire plot. If that's going to be company policy, though, I'll gladly keep my cash an imagine an entire adventure myself. I'm sure I can dig up some action figures out of my basement.

I'm not trying to be an ass here, as I legitimately feel bad that you spent a load of cash on a product you feel failed to deliver to your bare minimum expectations and ruined a story universe that you have a strong attachment too.  Yes, the expectation of video games is that the ending and fate of the characters is often clear cut and resolved in some sort of slide show (in RPGs), and it isn't unreasonable to expect this from a video game.  I just feel that if we want video games to become something that is taken seriously, that some old paradigms of concrete endings in which the writers tell you everything that has happened with an epilogue voice over might have to change.  I'm not even sure if they were an actually good way of doing things to begin with.  Just look at LoTR.  We don't really know Frodo's fate, as he essentially sails into the unknown, but whatever happens to the characters we imagine the best for them (or if you are cruel you can imagine some horrible things as well).  So obviously some amount of open endedness can be well received by fans.  Clearly, this is subjective.  If you like the open ended nature of the finale or not, it all comes down to personal preference, and I'm not going to say someone is wrong because they prefer more linear and self-contained stories.

The idea is that the game sets up events, characters, and stages your imagination so that you don't need a slide show of every last possible variation or character you cared about, but you are  enabled to imagine the future of the story universe based on what you thought the characters would do, or who you thought your Shepard was, and the way the story concluded.  This is where the original ending faltered, as it didn't clearly show victory over the Reapers.  I think you have to visually establish that there is some form of victory over the Reapers before you go into the open-endedness, and I suppose this was the intended purpose of the Stargazer scene, though it would be preferable to see the Reapers die/fly-off before you roll credits and then see evidence that victory was actually acheived.

If the writers gave you a set of canned endings, some might be complaining because they aren't something 'my Shepard' would do.  What if I want my Destroy Shepard to die, but at least say goodbye to Liara before she finally dies?  What if I want my Destroy Shepard to live, but go into a spiral of PTSD and self-destruction now that her singular focus is gone?  What if my Paragon Shepard cannot live with his actions and offs himself?

I made Shepard my character, I don't really want some writer sauntering in and presenting a limited view on my character.  Isn't that precisely why people complain about autodialogue?  I think what Bioware tried to do was give you a great gaming experience, where they do limit the options Shepard has in the game for technical reasons, but then open it up to give more than just lipservice to the idea that 'Shepard is your Shepard'.  Like Yahtzee says, most games are shaped like an eye with a fixed starting and end point.  I think what Bioware tried to do was have a fixed starting point, have some divergence through the series (with choke points at ME1 and ME2 beginning + ending and ME3 beginning), limit some of the choices in the game itself to make it tractable, but instead of reeling it back in after some final choice (like most games) just let the story wildly diverge as players reclaim full control of their Shepard.  In this view of the ending, then Bioware took a big risk: yes they might not be able to provide the ending everyone wanted, but they were able to give full creative control of Shepard and the MEU over to the player.  How do you think the universe would end up because of the actions presented in game?  Isn't that far better than getting some cheesy slide show giving you snipets of what happened with 'some say that was the beginning of his story, others say it was the end... no one says it was the middle'?  Then again, what kind of ending speaks to you really comes down to personal preference.

DAO if the Warden lives, can have numerous conversations with followers and npcs you met throughout the game, and can talk about "what happens next"

Shepard, regardless of what you want to happen, if left gasping, alone and injured, in a pile of rubble.  it's hard for me, at least, for Shepard to survive the next hour, let alone til rescue arrives.  There's too little to build on

[Twinzam.V]

crimzontearz wrote...

CDR David Shepard wrote...

Tootles FTW wrote...

CDR David Shepard wrote...

Pheonix57 wrote...

I have a vast imagination, but I didn't spend several hundred dollars on a series to have to "imagine" my own ending after the fact.

So you honestly only spent the "several hundred dollars" on the ending and not the journey throughout the whole trilogy?

Would good sex still be good sex if it ends with a donkey punch?  Debatable, but I guarantee the day after you wouldn't be talking about the "journey" portion with your friends.

Haha...well that's just a bad analogy...

...we're talking about weeks and weeks (years if you played ME1 when it first came out) of arguably amazing sex...followed by what you describe as a "donkey punch" on the final night.

Seriously though...I can see your point...and granted...I loved the series...endings and all...

...but I think the journey alone is and should be worth the "several hundred dollars" the person spends on the series. (though I only bought the three games myself)

I heard the Titanic had a lovely journey


 
No really...totally worth the drowning

While people where drowning and freezing to death in the cold waters.

"Totally worth it man. Best trip evegurrggglllle......." (Used my imagination. Didnt need to pay money for it.)

Modifié par Twinzam.V, 22 octobre 2012 - 06:03 .

[CDR David Shepard]

iakus wrote...

DAO if the Warden lives, can have numerous conversations with followers and npcs you met throughout the game, and can talk about "what happens next"

Shepard, regardless of what you want to happen, if left gasping, alone and injured, in a pile of rubble.  it's hard for me, at least, for Shepard to survive the next hour, let alone til rescue arrives.  There's too little to build on

Yes...but the Warden only lives if they sleep with/or talk their friend into sleeping with a witch to create a new god of untold power.

Also...Shepard "dies" saving the galaxy and future civilizations by completely ending the reaper cycle...while the Warden only stops that Blight.

DA:O was one game with an expansion if your Warden lived.

Mass Effect was three games.

So while the Warden can survive the first game and talk to people during the aftermath and then be used in the expansion...

Shepard survives the first game...to be used in the second game...and if they survive the second game...they can be used for the third game to completely end the main threat.

So I think ME beats DA:O on what the main character can do if they survive...

[OdanUrr]

Yate wrote...

Why is everyone upset that we didn't get more cutscenes of Shepard's allies?

I for one am not asking for more cutscenes. I want to see my allies fight alongside me in actual gameplay.

[Arxduke]

I'm dissapointed because, we talk to Jacob, Garrus and tons of others making promises of returning and going to a beach and watching vids with Garrus, visiting a bar in Rio with Jacob and so much more that we miss out on.

And of course the brutal and blunt end to our connection with our LI's, I mean, with Kaidan you learn a lot about his family and in the end you never know what happened to them, if Kaidan got to see them again. Admiral Hackett? Commander Bailey? the Councilors? Who the eff knows what happened to them.

There is simply no closure, and although many of us are forced to use our imaginations, it's just not the same. It's not real or official or on record. I just feel like a fanboy dreaming up some unreal reality which cost me money. <_<

Modifié par Arxduke, 22 octobre 2012 - 06:14 .

[Zooter]

Big time cop out. How could you justify not giving closure to your main protagonist. We have played as Shepard for three games. But at the end of the game none of it ever mattered cause they just tell you to imagine your own ending. I thought they said we were gonna get closure? Oh well, I guess I'm gonna have to deal with it.

Modifié par Zooter, 22 octobre 2012 - 06:08 .

[Yate]

SOOOO much butthurt in this thread...