591 réponses à ce sujet

[Pzykozis]

barbara2012 wrote...

the last post (lotion and Pzykozis) show me that this interesting topic is finish to me. Here are the sick trollers in action ZZZZzzzzz

I'm sorry I have humour to go with my seriousness. I shall refrain from doing such at all future junctures.

@Medhia Nox you're arguement sits ill with me, you sound like if you discourage your mother you want her to act as a puppet to your command and stop doing what shes doing, is your mother not supposed to be an individual with all her own thoughts and feelings, just because you've told someone you don't agree with what they're doing, do you expect them to simply stop and aquiesce to everything you say?

Of course I always encouraged her and didn't think if I discouraged her she'd stop she'd just not be very happy with me she's her own person and with her own needs and desires my expressing dislike is not the word of god. I'm happy that she couldn't be saved it made it more important no mattter what you did you lost it's an important lesson and emotionally powerful because of its unexpectedness. Shame the frankenmum scene was kinda hamstrung by stuff but in terms of concept it was one of the best moments in the franchise so far.

Edit: @Filament Well aye, a good happy ending that fits the story is better than a poor and random tragic ending preference wise though I tend to go with the bleak.

Modifié par Pzykozis, 28 octobre 2012 - 08:49 .

[Allan Schumacher]

Medhia Nox wrote...

@Allen Schumacher: I'm not sure I understand how what I'm saying doesn't apply.

I thought that - by encouraging her - I had doomed her. Isn't this a choice that seems "most optimal" - which "would" have turned out bad if there was any actual choice?

If you're referring to the illusion of choice, then we're discussing different things.

Every choice in an RPG game is truly made with "too little information" - games are simply not capable of providing even the sensory input of a tabletop RPG.

I think you're taking the statement a bit too literally.

I'm not sure you're approaching this in a "learning" mentality.

It seems to be that you're telling us that we're simply incapable of understanding truly interesting choices.

Your two choices ARE interesting - but I would suggest having.

- Sacrifice yourself and everyone is saved.

- Sacrifice some other and save yourself.

- Choose to sacrifice yourself - but through a series of previously made game choices - manage to survive.

- Choose to sacrifice others to save yourself - but through a series of previusly made choices - still die.

Would be a FAR better series of choices.

And barring "too many options" - I believe my additions are superior - because in them are already contained many more potential outcomes.

It's important to note that my choices were a response to someone else giving me choices.  Of course more interesting choices are better.  As for your examples, it depends entirely on the series of previously made game choices, but I agree.

If the game choices are "do a completionist playthrough and do the obvious" like Mass Effect 2, then it's less interesting (I think that everyone being able to survive the suicide mission is boring).

If you're paying the price somewhere along the line, with genuine consequences and difficult options prior to the end of the game, and in doing so that can enable you to survive, then a price is still paid.

[Allan Schumacher]

WhiteThunder wrote...

Again, it's funny that people think that most of the outcry against the Mass Effect endings is because they're "dark" or "edgy."  They aren't.  They're just really, really poorly written with no thematic relevance to the series as a whole,

As someone that followed and talked with vast amounts of people regarding this, I'd just like to say there is nothing close to consensus over why people found the endings to ME3 disappointing.


If you were to ask me, based on my experiences interacting with the fan base, reading comments here, on other boards, twitter, etc. the most common area of disappointment was that Shepard dosen't end up with his/her love interest.  The second one I saw most frequently was that there's no way for Shepard to survive.

There's a reason why people were up in arms about the "best" ending requiring galactic readiness above 50%.  There's a reason why people would consider that the "best" ending.

[mousestalker]

I've said my piece on this before, but I don't really care about the specifics and tone as long as there are meaningful choices and that the consequences flow logically out of the choice.

If I choose badly, based upon inadequate information, then that's life. But the results of that choice shouldn't be soft pedaled or made meaningless. If I pick Harrowmount (which, imo is the wrong choice) because he seems nicer (he is nicer, actually) than Bhelen, then what happens to the dwarves in end cards is partly my responsibility. Don't take that away.

I'd relish more consequences than fewer and would very much like to have for them to be more meaningful. If I face Loghain at the Landsmeet, I can spare him or not. If Alistair fights him, then Loghain dies. There's plenty of information available in game to make it clear that is what will happen.

As for the tone, I'm content with whatever fits the story at the time. Assuming a fifty hour game (please let it be longer), then the tone ought to shift with both comic and tragic episodes. A uniform tone throughout would be monotonous.

[Iakus]

[quote]Allan Schumacher wrote...

[quote]iakus wrote...

I keep seeing this and I keep wondering where this is coming from.  Where is this "supbar ending"?  Where is this "better one"?[/quote]

It's come up several times in this thread.  One example I can think of off the top of my head is the idea that some fans had that there should have been a way to defeat the reapers without requiring the Crucible.[/quote]

Sorry, I wasn't clear.  I mean, where is the demand for a "best ending" for DA3?  What I'm mostly seeing is a request for not forcing so much tragedy on the player, to not require the protaginist to die/wreck thier life to save the city/nation/world.
[quote]


[quote]I'm not talking about better or worse.  I'm talking about different.  I'm talking about finding an ending you can live with.  About not having to pay the same price everyone else has to pay to fit some universal concept of "bittersweet".  Just because one person wants their protagoinist to have a viking funeral, why should mine suffer the same fate?  Maybe a different price would fit their story better.[/quote]
I like choice in games.  But I'm not a fan of "the narrative goes specifically the way that I want to all the time."  Sometimes, the character is in a spot that just isn't ideal.  Putting me into a spot where I can always perfectly solve the problem at no cost aside from time (because spending time in a game you enjoy is typically not a cost...) works sometimes, but sometimes it's just not possible either and your character is going to need to persevere through that.[/quote]

And I'm not arguing for an "ideal" outcome all the time.  I'm arguing that when a nonideal outcome is inevitable, the player should have a voice in what price ends up getting paid. 

[quote]
[quote]Again I ask:  which DAO outcome is the subpar one?
[/quote]

All of the outcomes at Redcliffe barring using the circle.  The only saving grace of it is that it's written in a way that players may choose something else because they believe that going to the circle will have an actual consequence.
[/quote][/quote]

Again I wasn't clear.  I was referring to the endings.  The Warden can live.  Or the Warden can die.  Which is subpar?*

*Yes, I know the Dark Ritual is considered too Disney by many. 

Modifié par iakus, 28 octobre 2012 - 09:07 .

[Lotion Soronarr]

WhiteThunder wrote...
Again, it's funny that people think that most of the outcry against the Mass Effect endings is because they're "dark" or "edgy."  They aren't.  They're just really, really poorly written with no thematic relevance to the series as a whole,

Really now?
I'd say quite the opposite.

The "theme" of a work of fiction can be quite subjective sometimes.

[Allan Schumacher]

Sorry, I wasn't clear. I mean, where is the demand for a "best ending" for DA3? What I'm mostly seeing is a request for not forcing so much tragedy on the player, to not require the protaginist to die/wreck thier life to save the city/nation/world.

Lets just stop here for a second, since I'm not sure where you thought I was responding to any type of "demand" for the best ending for DA3.
Conversations are fluid, and this all flows back into the idea of do gamers just want choices in games, or do they want to more authoritatively direct the conversation. I actually responded to Foolsfolly (who was responding to me who was responding to you, wheee). Which is fine, that happens on forums all the time. But when you say something like this, you are insinuating that the discussion was about something else entirely so you'll have to excuse me if I was continuing on the dialogue about what level of control should the game player have on the actual narrative and not responding to any sort of demands about people wanting "ideal" endings in DA3 (though you'll find people making such demands in this very thread).

Some of the best RPGs ever (PST) don't allow the player to really direct the narrative, even though the game offers plenty of choice.


In which case, we seem to be discussing different things at this point.

Again I wasn't clear. I was referring to the endings. The Warden can live. Or the Warden can die. Which is subpar?*

*Yes, I know the Dark Ritual is considered too Disney by many.

I have no particular issue with DAO's ending. Although you recognize that there are people that do. I'm not sure why you're curious about this, however.

[Blastback]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

You are dead and everyone is saved.
You are alive and everyone is saved.
Which one would you choose?.. If hero's death is the only condition to achieving some peace... then it's a crappy hero if yiu ask me.

If I have the choice, of course I choose to stay alive and save everyone. It's hardly a choice at all. Why would my character ostensibly choose to suicide himself if he knows of a way to accomplish his objectives without doing so?

If the choice becomes:

Sacrifice yourself and everyone is saved
Sacrifice some others in order to save yourself

Then the choice becomes much more interesting.

Which is fine.  Part of the reason that folks like me hate Destroy in ME3 though is that it isn't some others, but an entire species.  That's way to much. 


ultimatly, the player needs to feel like they have accomplished something.  In DA2, the only time I did was at the end of act 2.  ME3, it felt like it was simply the Reapers/writers handing you a way to win but requiring a sacrifice to do it.  Utterly unfulilling. 

[Allan Schumacher]

Which is fine. Part of the reason that folks like me hate Destroy in ME3 though is that it isn't some others, but an entire species. That's way to much.

How much is way too much? How do we measure that? Why shouldn't it happen?

[Blastback]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Which is fine. Part of the reason that folks like me hate Destroy in ME3 though is that it isn't some others, but an entire species. That's way to much.

How much is way too much? How do we measure that? Why shouldn't it happen?

It becomes another no choice at all for me.  It's one thing to choose say, Shepard vs EDI.  Okay, you or one of your closest allies.  Shep vs several major characters, heck even the Normandy, okay.  But then to choose to willingly destroy an entire race of your allies, who have been presented as victims of circumstace,  to me that stops being sacrifice and becomes genocide.

[Ozida]

 This is going to be a long post, so please bear with me... 

I do not think most people get difference between meangfull endings and "endings must be grim in order to be fun". I always rememeber Fallout 2 types of endings. If you think about it, none of them were happy or sad. They were just consequences of your actions within the game. For example, you have chosen to upgrade a reactor in one little town thinking that this is going to help people to live better. And in the end you learn that because of upgrade you have made that city became so advanced that their neighbours atackted them fearing the competition. The city you have tried to save got ruined. Is it a bad/ bittersweet ending? No. Neither it is a happy ending. It is just a result of what you did.

Same thing would happen if you have played Arcanum. It was more polar than Fallout 2, I must admit, but it also showed results of your actions within a world. Nothing was tied out with you character (it didn't matter much if your protagonist lived or died), but it was affected by your choices.

Talking about.... no, I am not going to talk about ME3. I am fed up with it!.. Talking about some theoretical game where everythin comes down to THE Hero only sounds soooo cliche to me to be honest. It is not even about happy/depressing endings, it's about "the chosen one" that makes me thick. This is a typical American dream of one man who saved them all. I do not want my protagonist to be The Savior of the world, I do not want one single person to pick fate of others or make choices that will control major aspects of story. I want my PC affect those apects to a point when there are consequences.

If I can survive making s mess with the rest of the world, it's vene better. 

Modifié par Ozida, 28 octobre 2012 - 09:40 .

[Sylvianus]

Allan Schumacher wrote...
If you were to ask me, based on my experiences interacting with the fan base, reading comments here, on other boards, twitter, etc. the most common area of disappointment was that Shepard dosen't end up with his/her love interest.  The second one I saw most frequently was that there's no way for Shepard to survive.

Not to mention we didn't know what happened to the races, all people we cared about and the relays which were destroyed before the EC. ( Absolutely upsetting since it was the link that built the galactic community, it was the point of Mass effect. Without the relays there is nothing. ) Honestly, that was like Bioware wanted to destroy its franchise for whatever reason that crossed its mind.

No way this ending could please to many people.

Modifié par Sylvianus, 28 octobre 2012 - 09:48 .

[Allan Schumacher]

Blastback wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Which is fine. Part of the reason that folks like me hate Destroy in ME3 though is that it isn't some others, but an entire species. That's way to much.

How much is way too much? How do we measure that? Why shouldn't it happen?

It becomes another no choice at all for me.  It's one thing to choose say, Shepard vs EDI.  Okay, you or one of your closest allies.  Shep vs several major characters, heck even the Normandy, okay.  But then to choose to willingly destroy an entire race of your allies, who have been presented as victims of circumstace,  to me that stops being sacrifice and becomes genocide.

I'd rather not turn this into a discussion regarding genocide (since I feel the term is misused anyways).

To be direct though, that you find this cost too high is what makes it interesting to me.  If everyone agreed that the cost was low and ultimately worth it, then it starts to become the obvious choice.  Obviously not everyone feels the cost is too high (I don't), but I see some that felt that the other choices were the best ones and that's what I found interesting about the discussions about the ending.

[Nerevar-as]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Which is fine. Part of the reason that folks like me hate Destroy in ME3 though is that it isn't some others, but an entire species. That's way to much.

How much is way too much? How do we measure that? Why shouldn't it happen?

When you try to make players believe a machine can do something as complicated as Synthesis (which goes much more into religion than science or even magic), any other limit is too much and forced. Genociding all AIs galaxy-wide just seems a contrived excuse so that people wouldn´t automatically choose Destroy.

And did you really wonder why people thought Destroy and Shepard surviving was the best ending? With the implications both Control and Synthesis have?

[Pedrak]

Nerevar-as wrote...

And did you really wonder why people thought Destroy and Shepard surviving was the best ending? With the implications both Control and Synthesis have?

Incidentally, I've always thought any other choice than Destroy requires some amount of metagaming. Meaning that a player might choose it in a game, because he knows (Indoctrination theory notwithstanding ) that developers wouldn't try to cheat and misdirect you in the final choice, and offer one acceptable solution and two traps.

A real Shepard in that situation I can't imagine trusting that mysterious Reaper-connected AI (who says that controlling the Reapers or tampering with everybody's DNA will turn out to be OK) and choosing anything else than Destroy, to get rid of Reapers as he had always planned to do.

Modifié par Pedrak, 28 octobre 2012 - 10:01 .

[fchopin]

I have no problem if the endings are bitter sweet or whatever, what is important is that they make sense.
I consider the DA2 endings as completely moronic so i don't want to play another game with such an ending but the ME3 endings are fine by me as the destroy ending does the job.

For DAO the endings are fine but i think Bioware should have included another ending to kill Morigan in the end if the god child idea was accepted so both Alistair and the warden could have survived without the godchild.

Modifié par fchopin, 28 octobre 2012 - 10:01 .

[Lennard Testarossa]

fchopin wrote...
I have no problem if the endings are bitter sweet or whatever, what is important is that they make sense.
I consider the DA2 endings as completely moronic so i don't want to play another game with such an ending but the ME3 endings are fine by me as the destroy ending does the job.

So DA2's ending made no sense, but ME3's ending did...

...wat?

[fchopin]

Lennard Testarossa wrote...
So DA2's ending made no sense, but ME3's ending did...

Yes you understood correctly.

[The Elder King]

Nerevar-as wrote...



When you try to make players believe a machine can do something as complicated as Synthesis (which goes much more into religion than science or even magic), any other limit is too much and forced. Genociding all AIs galaxy-wide just seems a contrived excuse so that people wouldn´t automatically choose Destroy.

And did you really wonder why people thought Destroy and Shepard surviving was the best ending? With the implications both Control and Synthesis have?

Meh, considering strictly the choices, Control and Destroy are on the same levels for me. Considering the epilogues added in the EC, I prefer Control. Paragon Shepard AI ftw!

[The Elder King]

fchopin wrote...

Lennard Testarossa wrote...
So DA2's ending made no sense, but ME3's ending did...

Yes you understood correctly.

I fail to see how the endings were moronic or made no sense in DA2. I find the part of the game after the side choice moronic, though.

Modifié par hhh89, 28 octobre 2012 - 10:06 .

[fchopin]

hhh89 wrote...

fchopin wrote...

Lennard Testarossa wrote...
So DA2's ending made no sense, but ME3's ending did...

Yes you understood correctly.

I fail to see how the endings were moronic or made no sense in DA2. I find the part of the game after the side choice moronic, though.

If you find that moronic that means you agree with me as that is the ending.

Modifié par fchopin, 28 octobre 2012 - 10:08 .

[highcastle]

Allan Schumacher wrote...
If I have the choice, of course I choose to stay alive and save everyone. It's hardly a choice at all. Why would my character ostensibly choose to suicide himself if he knows of a way to accomplish his objectives without doing so?

If the choice becomes:

Sacrifice yourself and everyone is saved
Sacrifice some others in order to save yourself

Then the choice becomes much more interesting.

I just wanted to chime in to add that this sort of choice is most interesting to me, too, and I think it can apply to more than just endgame scenarios. Obviously not with the whole hero dying part (since that would make the rest of the game a bit hard to handle, I'm sure), but there should absolutely be some moral ambiguity for side quests.

I'm thinking primarily of the Redcliffe quest in DAO. When I first played it, I didn't realize I could go to the Circle. The fact that my PC had to choose between saving Connor and saving Isolde was very striking to me. And then when I realized you could save everyone, well it wasn't a choice at all. If, however, you'd come back to Redcliffe to found Teagan dead while trying and failing to restrain Connor, that would have been more interesting. At least there would have been a price.

I know the devs have said before they don't want to punish people unfairly for trying to do the right thing, but I do think some quests shouldn't have a universally acknowledged "right" answer.

[Lennard Testarossa]

DA2's ending may not have been very satisfying, but it had no major plotholes. It made sense.

ME3's ending however...don't even get me started on that whole synthesis thing.

[The Elder King]

fchopin wrote...

hhh89 wrote...

fchopin wrote...

Lennard Testarossa wrote...
So DA2's ending made no sense, but ME3's ending did...

Yes you understood correctly.

I fail to see how the endings were moronic or made no sense in DA2. I find the part of the game after the side choice moronic, though.

If you find that moronic that means you agree with me as that is the ending.

The endings, for me, is the part of the game after Hawke defeated Meredith and escape/become Viscount, the end of Varric and Cassandra's conversation, and Cassandra and Leliana's "debriefing". I don't consider that part very good, but I don't think it was moronic. I don't understand why Viscount Hawke left Kirkwall, but that's because there's a mistery about it, and I can't say if it makes sense until Bioware will explain why Hawke left Kirkwall.
The part before Meredith's defeat and after the side choice, I find it moronic. If you include that part in the endings, then I agree with you