591 réponses à ce sujet

[Wulfram]

I think more people would have been OK with heroic sacrifice thing if they'd been sure about the "heroic" bit.

Problem was, none of the choices came off as heroic. Destroy has the obvious issue of wiping out an entire species of allies. Control meant adopting the course Shepard has spent the entire game saying is dangerous and stupid. And Synthesis (to many people) came off as a horrible violation on a galactic scale.

So there's a feeling that Shepard's lost not just life, but also integrity. And a doubt that the outcome was worthwhile.

The EC might have fixed that. But it's hard to sensibly assess it, because it's always tainted by being a second try.

[The Elder King]

Lennard Testarossa wrote...

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.

Strabrat took some lesson from the Maker and Flemeth for learning space magic. True story.

[fchopin]

Lennard Testarossa wrote...

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.

If DA3 act 3 makes sense to you and you call it an ending then i completely disagree with you.
 
ME3 endings make perfect sense to me as all endings mean you have failed unless you pick destroy so i don't need an explanation for synthesis.

[The Elder King]

Wulfram wrote...

I think more people would have been OK with heroic sacrifice thing if they'd been sure about the "heroic" bit.

Problem was, none of the choices came off as heroic. Destroy has the obvious issue of wiping out an entire species of allies. Control meant adopting the course Shepard has spent the entire game saying is dangerous and stupid. And Synthesis (to many people) came off as a horrible violation on a galactic scale.

That's untrue. Shepard isn't controlling the Reapers, which is what TIM wanted. Shepard didn't merge with the Reapers. Shepard dies in Control. His opinions, his values, his history formed the mindset that the new AI will have. But Shepard isn't controlling the Reapers. The AI isn't Shepard. It might have the same values and opinions of Shepard, but the way it'll act is the way an AI with Shepard's thoughts, values and opinions would act. Not the way Shepard (a human) will act.
Control is vastly different from what TIM wanted.

[The Elder King]

fchopin wrote...

Lennard Testarossa wrote...

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.

If DA3 act 3 makes sense to you and you call it an ending then i completely disagree with you.
 
ME3 endings make perfect sense to me as all endings mean you have failed unless you pick destroy so i don't need an explanation for synthesis.

Lennard probably doesn't consider Act 3 as the DA2's endings. He might consider DA2's ending the final moments of the game after Meredith's death, which don't present any plotholes or problems.

[jillabender]

As has often been pointed out, players have very different ideas about what constitutes "meaningful choice." I don't think there are any hard and fast rules about what makes a choice feel meaningful in a story or game, but I do have some thoughts on the subject.

Personally, I think that a choice can be meaningful whether or not a "good" result is possible. Even if there's no way for a character to get the result he or she would want in a particular situation, the choice can still drive the story, and it can still say something interesting about the character. The choice doesn't even need to have a huge impact on the world at large, necessarily – it can be meaningful because of the way the character grows or changes as a person as a result of making it.

I would argue that many of the choices in DA2 had a lot of interesting potential, but I think that potential was undermined by the fact that Hawke never seemed to show any real anxiety about how his or her choices would turn out.

I found the quest "All that Remains" satisfying, even though there was no way for Hawke to save Leandra, because Hawke actually had something important to lose. If there had been more moments where I felt that Hawke really had something personal at stake, I would have been more invested in the story.

Modifié par jillabender, 29 octobre 2012 - 02:52 .

[Wulfram]

hhh89 wrote...

That's untrue. Shepard isn't controlling the Reapers, which is what TIM wanted. Shepard didn't merge with the Reapers. Shepard dies in Control. His opinions, his values, his history formed the mindset that the new AI will have. But Shepard isn't controlling the Reapers. The AI isn't Shepard. It might have the same values and opinions of Shepard, but the way it'll act is the way an AI with Shepard's thoughts, values and opinions would act. Not the way Shepard (a human) will act.
Control is vastly different from what TIM wanted.

It's referred to as Control when TIM talks about it, and of course there's the whole "so the illusive man was right after all" line from Shepard.  Even if you think it's distinct, that's not how it's presented in the game and that's not how it feels.

I mean, logically the fact that TIM thought something was a good idea doesn't actually disqualify it from actually being a good idea.  But from a narrative standpoint the association with the bad guys and their atrocities, as well as the seemingly hubristic nature, makes it feel like a choice that should end up backfiring massively.

(Also, we could have a fun philosophical discussing about whether something with my thoughts, values and opinions would really count as not being me, but this isn't the forum)

[The Elder King]

Wulfram wrote...



It's referred to as Control when TIM talks about it, and of course there's the whole "so the illusive man was right after all" line from Shepard.  Even if you think it's distinct, that's not how it's presented in the game and that's not how it feels.

I mean, logically the fact that TIM thought something was a good idea doesn't actually disqualify it from actually being a good idea.  But from a narrative standpoint the association with the bad guys and their atrocities, as well as the seemingly hubristic nature, makes it feel like a choice that should end up backfiring massively.

(Also, we could have a fun philosophical discussing about whether something with my thoughts, values and opinions would really count as not being me, but this isn't the forum)

I know how the game presented Control to be what TIM wanted, but I doubt that TIM wanted to die and his process being absorbed in a new AI. He wanted to put the Reapers under human's control. The Starbrat said that Shepard would die, and a new AI would be formed. So a humanity (or a human) isn't in control of the Reapers (though this would be based on our different opinions about the topic you presented in the bolded part).
Though in the case of RenControl, there are high chances that the choice will backfire (but even in this case, there's no show of a human supremacist belief in the AI).
About the bolded part, I agree, it's not the right place to have this discussion.

Modifié par hhh89, 28 octobre 2012 - 10:45 .

[Vicious]

Wow it turned into another Mass Effect thread. Mass Effect 3 did it's best to bludgeon you over the head with the fact that no matter how badass Shepard was and the things he's accomplished, he is just as capable of getting vaporized by Harbinger's beam as anyone else.

His heroics brought together every species of the galaxy to fight, something that had never been done before. If this is rendered meaningless to you because of spacekid, then sadly Bioware's only failure was not fanwanking Shepard saves the day! Look at Liara with her baby bump! etc. And i'm glad they didn't.


Also disagree. Bringing it back to Dragon Age, the whole Eamon/redcliffe situation got choice A) Kinda sucks [mother sacrifing herself], Choice Really sucks [having to kill the brave little kid] or C) Awesome everyone lives happily ever after.

Dragon Age fails when it calls itself dark fantasy and then presents 'choices' like that, where only someone who is A) Experimenting, or Roleplaying a psychotic douche would pick options A and B.

Modifié par Vicious, 28 octobre 2012 - 10:46 .

[Direwolf0294]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

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).

I haven't really been following this thread, so I may be taking what you've said out of context and not really understanding what you mean (if so, sorry about that) but I have to disagree with this assessment.

When an story point happens in an RPG that's a direct result of what you've done rather than a scripted event I find it much more meaningful and interesting. In ME2's ending if a crew member died it was because I'd done something wrong and hadn't been able to save them, not because the writters had just decided to kill them off as part of the set story. When I first played through ME2 I did lose crew during the ending and the knowledge that I could have saved them if only I'd done things differently, done things better, made the whole thing more emotional and when I played through the game a second time I was much more emotionally invested in what was going on than I had been the first time because I was determined to save my crew.

When a character dies and it's outside my control, like Ash or Kaiden in ME1 or your mother in DA2, it sucks and is sad but it's not my fault. I couldn't have changed it no matter how hard I tried. If someone dies and I could have stopped it though it makes the whole story just so much more personal and compelling.

Personally, that's what I think RPGs should be aiming for. Rather than having a set event where you play Sophie's choice with two characters it's better if they can both die or both live based on actions you've taken throughout the game that lead up to that point.

When a players choices actually matter like that I think it makes the game just so much better. It's that more tragic and gut wrenching when you fail but it's also that much more rewarding when you succeed and manage to pull things off successfully.

[Vicious]

  In ME2's ending if a crew member died it was because I'd done something wrong and hadn't been able to save them, not because the writters had just decided to kill them off as part of the set story

Bioware has brought up the problems with this view. Example:

it was originally intended that you could save Hawke's mother in DA2 through a specific series of events. This was removed because Bioware thought "Well if we give them the chance then EVERYONE will take it and all the work we did into making the tragic moment will be pointless when people will just reload over and over till they get the 'perfect' resolution.


And they were right. People don't want dark fantasy. They don't want Lovecraftian cosmicism in their space fantasy.

They want Star Wars, Red Vs. Blue. Ewoks dancing at the end.

At least if BSN is any indicator.

Modifié par Vicious, 28 octobre 2012 - 10:50 .

[Mark of the Dragon]

I personaly believe that the game should have endings with different fates for our main character. Nothing should ever turn out perfect that is not reasonable. However I think having an ending where the hero lives, ends up with his LI, and goes on living his life should be possible... but at a cost. Maybe it costs others there lives or something else but the player should lose something: other companionsm, etc.

On the other hand I think the player should be able to act for the greater good as well even if things turn out bad for him. Im ok with the player dying as long as our sacrifice seems worth it. I have mentioned many times that I would like to see a bitter sweet ending that forces the protagonist to leave behing his LI and everything he knew, for some reason, because it was better for the greater good. Or the hero defeats the big evil but gets trapped in the fade or something becasue of it.

Bittersweet is good if implemented well. I prefer it to happy endings. But in games like DAO and Dragon Age I believe that there should be different endings with slightly different outcomes based off our choices.

Modifié par Mark of the Dragon, 28 octobre 2012 - 10:50 .

[Iakus]

[quote]Allan Schumacher wrote...

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.[/quote]

Sorry, I may be projecting frustrations on you that I'm seeing in other posts.  If so, I apologize

It seems that whenever the topic comes up with the player having a degree of agency in the price paid for a "bittersweet" outcome, people invariably read "wants no bad outcome" which is not the case at all.  It's simply what it s says on the tin:  the ability to barter over the price.  And perhaps redirect the damage.

That's where the "demand for a best ending" came from.  The idea that we want to have all choices be like Redcliffe.  Or a consequence-free Dark Ritual with every choice.  That's not what we (or I, at least) want.  

I admit I'm one of those people who thinks what was done to Shepard in ME3 was absolutely awful, it has turned me off the Mass Effect franchise entirely to think that was considered an acceptable ending.  And my greatest fear (along with integral multiplayer) for DA3 is that something l ike that will be repeated.  Each ending already had it's own benefits and drawbacks, there was absolutely no reason to force Shepard's death into all of them as well.

I will also say I found PS:T to be a unique game I have yet to see truly duplicated.

[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. [/quote]

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.[/quote][/quote]

It goes to the idea of player control.  The Warden doesn't have to take th eblow and die.  Someone else could do so instead.  Or the Dark Ritual could be done instead.  A price had to be paid.  But the player had a degree of agency in who paid the price and how.  The player had a degree of control over the situation.

[Vicious]

Each ending already had it's own benefits and drawbacks, there was absolutely no reason to force Shepard's death into all of them as well.

He only dies in one ending. It was a question of WHAT ARE YOU WILLING TO SACRIFICE? Which apparently either flew over people's heads or was too much for a video game.

Ending A) Sacrifice your humanity, live forever.
Ending Sacrifice others, possibly yourself, but finish the fight.
Ending C) Make the ultimate sacrifice for everyone, including your enemies.
Ending D) Sacrifice nothing, lose everything.

 It goes to the idea of player control.

Absolutely, but unless it's at the END of a game, people can [and will] simply reload over and over until they get the best choice available. And if all those choices suck they'll whine to no end.

Either way people will miss out on content that hard work goes into, because let's face it, unless we are roleplaying a certian way, we are gamers who like getting things perfect.


Look how much whining there was in DA2 over lack of a third choice at the end of Act 3, yet no one can agree with what that third choice would be.

Modifié par Vicious, 28 octobre 2012 - 10:59 .

[Ozida]

Vicious wrote...
Ending A) Sacrifice your humanity, live forever.
Ending Sacrifice others, possibly yourself, but finish the fight.
Ending C) Make the ultimate sacrifice for everyone, including your enemies.
Ending D) Sacrifice nothing, lose everything.

OMG, this is epic. I think I will put it on my quote board next to "Artisitc integirty" piece. The "best" chpoice you can give to your players. <_<

[Vandicus]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

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.

I would divide the groups into major factions, one faction expected a dramatic universe shaking final decision(the people who claim "All 3 endings are the same"), one faction that wanted more closure(the people who wanted the EC scenes), another faction that wanted a happy ending(shepard survives without wiping out allies and/or happily ever after with LI), and a final faction that had issues with the ending on a narrative level(proposing Indoctrination Theory to address plot holes and the fundamental problem with suddenly presenting more attractive alternatives to the protagonist's main goal).


After the dramatic final conversation with TIM, I was rather disappointed when presented with TIM's choice and Saren's choice(arguably Synthesis is Saren's route of assimilating living and synthetic culture, and is physically represented by his personal transformation) and told that they were better options. In directly contradicting the protagonist's stance during the moral debate with TIM it seemed like the writers had either originally intended to write a different ending or theme for ME3 in general, or that they were confused about what they were trying to tell the audience. I found ME3 to be an odd mix of superior writing(Mordin on Tuchanka) and poor writing(Cerberus), or at the very ending, the debate with TIM(which I found to be very tense and far better than ME1's talks with Saren) vs the conversation with the Catalyst(which wasn't bad in the sense that it was a deus ex machina, the character was foreshadowed, but in that the options he presented were largely incongruous with the narrative).

Maybe if Cerberus hadn't become "The Enemy" in such an extreme way in ME3, control and synthesis wouldn't have been so jarring to me. The player isn't really given an option to side with Cerberus(one which I would not have taken anyways, but was notable by its absence) or pursue and consider alternatives with the Reapers until the final conversation with the Catalsyt. The obligatory theme(since the player doesn't really have an option to take a pro-Cerberus/pro-Control route for most of the game) is Anderson's "Them or us". To contradict a theme and stance that the game forces the player to adopt through the entire game, is well, poor writing.

[Dave of Canada]

Let's take a basic look at Redcliffe, it's entire premise and how it failed at creating a difficult decision. When you're initially presented with the Redcliffe, you're told that Connor has temporairly regained control and you've got to pick how to deal with him:

• You kill Connor.
• You kill Isolde.
• You go to the Circle.

Plenty of reasons to do all three and avoid all three, though it's interesting of note that the third option has no consequences unlike the previous two, something which makes it the superior decision in the long run. The game's written to imply that things might go bad but it never does, leaving many players with the ultimate satisfaction of "I WIN".

This reaction makes me groan hard, it's less about caring about the narrative and the themes which the scene were trying to portray and more about celebrating how you "won" with little regard to the actual writing. The other two decisions--which make the player feel uncomfortable--serve their purpose but are unfortunately invalidated as no-one will bother to take it among the "happy ending" crowd.

"WELL IF YOU WANT TO BE DARK AND EDGY, IGNORE IT" doesn't work as an argument, my character can ignore it but I--as a player--cannot and this leads to me feeling nothing but failure, a reaction which you shouldn't feel as a player.

This was especially worse in the Mass Effect series, where the Renegade alternative would often be invalidated by the Paragon option and resulted in useless sacrifices which made you hated by everyone for no reason. The only time which the Paragon player was forced to do a decision which didn't yield significant better results was the ending (which, surprise, is hated for not being "happy").

The fact that people dismiss you winning over the Reapers and freeing the galaxy from them forever simply because the protagonist dies (or if you picked Destroy pre-EC, wouldn't reunite with their LI) simply goes to show me how many people simply don't care about bittersweet writing because they don't understand it.

Any "make choices lead to a good ending" demands simply asks for the player to have the option to print out a cheat-sheet which will make them not feel any drama at all, something which a lot of people did when they found out Alistair won't marry their non-Human Warden and ditches them.

You're supposed to feel uncomfortable, you're supposed to dislike that you didn't get the ending you wanted. That's the entire point of bittersweet, you won but with cost. A victory without cost feels empty, neglectful of the true realities and horrors which people might be forced to experience to achieve their victory.

Modifié par Dave of Canada, 28 octobre 2012 - 11:10 .

[Iakus]

Vicious wrote...

 It goes to the idea of player control.

Absolutely, but unless it's at the END of a game, people can [and will] simply reload over and over until they get the best choice available. And if all those choices suck they'll whine to no end.

Either way people will miss out on content that hard work goes into, because let's face it, unless we are roleplaying a certian way, we are gamers who like getting things perfect.


Look how much whining there was in DA2 over lack of a third choice at the end of Act 3, yet no one can agree with what that third choice would be.

And again, I ask, "what is the best outcome" ?  How many times do you reload to get the best chocie in the Virmire situation?  What's the best choice in dealing with the elves and werewolves in "Nature of the Beast"?  How about the Anvil of the Void?  These are the choices I want.  Choices with different outcomes, not just different (or even the same, as in ME3) levels of suck.

The problem with the lack of a third choice in DA2 is because neither side was portrayed in much of a positive light by the end.  With  no side to root for, a lot of players were stuck in Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy  plenty of reasons to not like a given faction, precious few to be sympathetic.

[Vandicus]

iakus wrote...

Vicious wrote...

 It goes to the idea of player control.

Absolutely, but unless it's at the END of a game, people can [and will] simply reload over and over until they get the best choice available. And if all those choices suck they'll whine to no end.

Either way people will miss out on content that hard work goes into, because let's face it, unless we are roleplaying a certian way, we are gamers who like getting things perfect.


Look how much whining there was in DA2 over lack of a third choice at the end of Act 3, yet no one can agree with what that third choice would be.

And again, I ask, "what is the best outcome" ?  How many times do you reload to get the best chocie in the Virmire situation?  What's the best choice in dealing with the elves and werewolves in "Nature of the Beast"?  How about the Anvil of the Void?  These are the choices I want.  Choices with different outcomes, not just different (or even the same, as in ME3) levels of suck.

The problem with the lack of a third choice in DA2 is because neither side was portrayed in much of a positive light by the end.  With  no side to root for, a lot of players were stuck in Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy  plenty of reasons to not like a given faction, precious few to be sympathetic.

Virmire does not have an objectively best choice.

Elves and werewolves would be curing the curse, Zathrian dies, but both the now human werewolves and elves survive.

Anvil of the Void qualifies for ambiguous.

The decisions in ME3 did not have "the same levels of suck." One where a close person to you dies but saves a race, is radically different from choosing to convince that friend not to make a heroic sacrifice. (Genophage on Tuchanka and several other scenes in the game had parallels to the ending regarding personal sacrifice vs the greater good)

The endings for ME3 likewise reflect different levels of personal sacrifice to help others(minimalist vs giving up one's humanity vs life).

[Kyle Kabanya]

Bittersweet endings are nice, I'll admit that, but something has to lead up to it, something has to make it truly epic. There has to be a loss in some way, but make it cause of the players actions, not because you just want to have someone die.

ME3's ending would have been fine if the decisions that Shepard made would affect his outcome as well as others, giving the choice of surviving, dying for others, dying because he failed, ect. Everything ended the same, which didn't make it bittersweet, because the final outcome was inevitably the same in every equation of decisions.

Origins had a bittersweet ending with someone dying for the salvation of others, but also had the choice for someone else to do it, or everyone could survive. That's was a great ending becuase it had the whole spectrum of sad, happy, and bittersweet.

DA2 was bad also, because everything came down to one or the either side. You couldn't side with the Templars but stick up for Mages, or fight along side MAges, but justify the Templars actions, everything was one extreme or the other.

[Vicious]

edited for nonsensicality.

Modifié par Vicious, 28 octobre 2012 - 11:19 .

[Wulfram]

Vicious wrote...

He only dies in one ending. It was a question of WHAT ARE YOU WILLING TO SACRIFICE? Which apparently either flew over people's heads or was too much for a video game.

It's not that this question flew over peoples heads, it's that it was submerged in other issues.  Like "will Control work?" and "WTH is Synthesis?".  As well as less in character issues about the quality of the writing.

(And, though it's quite debatable, the game tells you he dies in Control, and pre EC he died in Destroy without playing MP)

Modifié par Wulfram, 28 octobre 2012 - 11:18 .

[Nerevar-as]

hhh89 wrote...

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!

I see your point, but to me is Gandalf taking the One Ring.

[Dave of Canada]

iakus wrote...

And again, I ask, "what is the best outcome" ?

The outcome which invalidates all the others on a narrative level and dismisses many of themes presented.

How many times do you reload to get the best chocie in the Virmire situation?

None. Completionism and exploring does that for me by my own.

What's the best choice in dealing with the elves and werewolves in "Nature of the Beast"?

A persuade check which pretty much everyone has the option available to them. Screw thinking and arguing about which side should live or die, save both! Also somehow results in the elves becoming better people.

How about the Anvil of the Void?

One of the good decisions because there's no way out. You either potentially condemn the dwarves to extinction but keep your code of ethics or potentially find the dwarven people's salvation but allow countless horrors to be done. Valid reasons to do both and many discussions to be had.

These are the choices I want.  Choices with different outcomes, not just different (or even the same, as in ME3) levels of suck.

What? You don't like picking your poison?

With  no side to root for, a lot of players were stuck in Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy  plenty of reasons to not like a given faction, precious few to be sympathetic.

But that's kind of the point of Dragon Age 2's finale, Hawke was always the victim of fate which placed them in the wrong place at the wrong time, you could very well play Hawke in the finale as not caring very much about the conflict which engulfed their life since their birth.