591 réponses à ce sujet

[TEWR]

Dave of Canada wrote...

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.

Redcliffe wouldn't have been nearly as "happy" if you could actually earn that happy ending. Say, by having the townsfolk equipped with decent arms and armor by way of Owen, recruit Lloyd, Berwick, Dwyn and his men, boost the morale of everyone, use the oil in the store, and spare Jowan.

And lose no men during the fight itself -- which is hard, as Lloyd often goes out charging against the corpses with naught but a dagger in hand.

Then you hear about how while you were gone, the possessed Connor started attacking by creating more corpses, but the townsfolk prevailed because A) they weren't as numerous, they were experienced by now, and C) Jowan was assisting them.

And depending on if you did or did not do those things and if you've saved the Circle already, the results might be slightly different. Not so different to warrant importing over, but different enough to feel like your actions -- or lack thereof -- changed how the game played out.

Still, one might argue that the option itself is still bittersweet in a way, but not ideally so. The town's faced corpses for many nights now, often having more and more people die and be brought back. The castle's soldiers are gone at best and dead at worst. Eamon's still on his deathbed, barely clinging to life.

And when you save Connor without anything bad happening during your trek away from the village, you have accomplished something at a price. Just a price that happened long before you arrived.

Which might strain the connection said price holds over you.

[TheJediSaint]

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?

At least for me, the problem that I had with destroy was that it felt arbitrary.  It felt like having to kill the Geth and EDI were tacked on just to make destroy less applealing.

And as mentioned before, the Crucible itself does not appear to be internally consistent.   For example, it can alter organic matter to make it partically synthetic without any apparent harm.   At the same time, it's not capable of distigusihing between Reaper and non-reaper sythetics.

Modifié par TheJediSaint, 29 octobre 2012 - 05:04 .

[Ghidorah14]

I hate endings that are dark/bleak/sad for the sake of being dark/bleak/sad.

That's why I love DAO's endings. You have different levels of "saves the day" and honestly, whats wrong with "shallow hero-fantasy wish-fullfilment?"

Maybe I enjoy playing the hero who saves the day. Maybe I enjoy happy endings.

I dunno, I guess I'm crazy for wanting things to turn out well for all the awesome characters BioWare wrote into the story.

[Bfler]

Maybe in case of the ME3 destroy ending, we should be able to win with help of the Leviathans.
They should have shown Shepard really alive, not only the breath scene, deleted the sacrifice of EDI and Geth but instead of the breath scene you see a scene with the Leviathans.
So people have their victory, but the prize is, that you set free the creators of the Reapers and former slaver race of the galaxy, what means an uncertain future.
I think that would be an acceptable end, the equivalent of the dark ritual.

Modifié par Bfler, 29 octobre 2012 - 06:32 .

[Lotion Soronarr]

Dave of Canada wrote...

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.

There is a cure for this problem (2 of htem actually).

One is randomized results. You go to the Circle and once you arrive a dice is rolled to determine what happens in Redcliffe (with different odds depending on what you did).
If you prepared the Redcliffe guard and knights, chances are better that things won't go wrong, or if they do the consequences would be milder.
Either way, you wouldn't know untill you got back from Redcliffe. Don't like the result? Too bad.
You can make the result static one rolled (so reloading won't help) or not. In which case oyu have to replay Broken Circle to get the ending you want. And even then it's not a guarantee.

OR you can have the dice rolled at the start of the game.

OR you can have only an ironman mode of play. No save, no save-scumming.

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").

Agreed.

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.

QFT.

[Lotion Soronarr]

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.

And ironicly, TIMs idea is better.

[zsom]

No! Just no! please stop trying to impose your preferences on everyone else. I and _many_ others actually liked the fact that ME3 managed to pull off a more mature story and didn't go back to the fairytale land of most video games. A (good!) bittersweet story is always better than generic rpg save the world variant because it will feel more realistic. If the odds are so against you then it will always feel cheep if you do end up winning everything. The problems with the ME3 endings came from a different source, at least for me, but I suspect also for a lot of other players.

[Lotion Soronarr]

EntropicAngel wrote...
It sounds like you're letting your metagaming get in the way of your RPing, Dave.

My last two DA:O character have not gone to the circle, because they haven't gone to the Circle yet at all.

Please, don't start blaming this on the Paragons again. Real paragons don't care about the result, they do the action for moral reasons.

But overall I think your point is sound. And I agree.

R: Dont' press that bottun you fool!
P: But I must! My moral code dictates that I do it!
R: You will destroy the entire universe if you press it! Waht kind of a f***-up moral code are you following anyway? Don't do it!
P: *presses the bottun* Yay! I'm morally superior to everyone!
R: *facepalms*

[Lotion Soronarr]

Xilizhra wrote...

What's ideal, to me, is a choice between endings that are equally happy, but for different reasons for different people. I.e. a more successful choice between the mages and Chantry, perhaps, in DA3. That way, there won't be a "clearly superior" choice, but the outcome can still be good nonetheless.

Hah.
Good luck with that.

Also, what endings you get depends on what kind of story you want to tell.

[Iron_JG]

Fun thread, this.

I have to ask, though, are people misusing the term, "happy ending"? In ME3, the entire game is phenomenally bleak. You watch entire worlds burn, entire civilizations reduced to all but ashes. Arguably more people die in that game than die in any other story I can think of. The game worked its ass off to connect you to the magnitude of loss that Shepard could not prevent. Shepard's 'impossible' mission wasn't to beat the Reapers and save everyone. It was to beat the Reapers and save *anything* at all. I don't think people have connected to the story enough if they say, "oh, the Normandy crew all survived, so everything's fine." 

Of course I acknowledge that fiction must make us weigh some lives more than others -- of course you should care about Garrus or Liara more than nameless Turians and Asaris. But good fiction should also stay with you, and send the imagination drifting off from the epilogue. That was, to me, the major problem with the original ME3 endings. Shepard had made dozens of profound choices over the series, any of which could have led to horribly bad things. This was even true of a total Paragon playthrough. It would be totally obvious and logical for a history of war to repeat itself if you resurrect the rachni and cure the krogan. If the end game confirmed that Paragon Shep's good intentions sent the galaxy into civil war after the Reapers, that would not have been a "happy ending" even if Shep and the LI survived. Better realized endings could have given players a truer measure of whether they achieved a desirable outcome or not.

What "pro-bittersweet" people are arguing for, then, is for loss and pain to be more immediate and personal for the protagonist. However, the problem with heroes, generally, is that they are very capable people. The closer a loss is, the more likely it is to be perceived as within that character's control. There's the problem with a scripted game with a linear core: almost every player goes, "*my* protagonist is special and could have dodged/defeated the tragedy the plot forces on him." Maybe, maybe not.

I think there's a balance to be had in allowing a range of mostly happy to mostly tragic endings. Many players do enjoy seeing how the 'wrong' choices play out. (Some people's ME2 personal canon has certain characters dying in the suicide mission, for instance.) Other players want to end the game feeling their character made a positive difference. This isn't a bad, unrealistic or immature expectation. A hero should be able to make the world better -- and have a shot at surviving their adventures. Again, there's a balance. Storytelling requires tension, meaning the hero has be both empowered and vulnerable.

The trick is having a good mix of mandatory and optional losses logical enough to get the player's buy-in. I also think DA3 should make some optional losses indirectly decide subsequent losses. That improves replayability and role-playing, giving the protagonist a say on who's worth saving. People would have liked Hawke more, I bet, if you could choose to save one sibling, or if both siblings died, your mom survived, and similar trade-offs.

Long story short, I think the DA3 protagonist should be able to save a lot of people, but not everybody, and end the game nudging Thedas a little closer to the 'right' path, however they define it. "Hawke with 20 percent more agency" would be fine. A lot of this will take care of itself if the endings aren't shortchanged. Hopefully Bioware's seen enough of that in ME3 and DA2 (to a lesser extent).

Modifié par Iron_JG, 29 octobre 2012 - 07:48 .

[Lotion Soronarr]

ElitePinecone wrote...
The issue for me (at least) is that the Crucible is incongruous with the universe, it's a gigantic plot-important missile of space magic that drives the narrative for the first 95% of the game then completely controls it in the last 5%. Apart from making no sense, it just feels immensely contrived.

The reapers themselves make no snse and are amde EXTREEMLY Stupid in ME3.

Really? The Citadel is their heart and they let their intended victims crawl all over it? It's like superman handing over kryptonite to his enemies.
Leaving a back door... for no sensible reason.
Letting Shepard escape Earth...for no reason
Completely retarded battle strategies...for no reason.

[Foolsfolly]

zsom wrote...

No! Just no! please stop trying to impose your preferences on everyone else. I and _many_ others actually liked the fact that ME3 managed to pull off a more mature story and didn't go back to the fairytale land of most video games. A (good!) bittersweet story is always better than generic rpg save the world variant because it will feel more realistic. If the odds are so against you then it will always feel cheep if you do end up winning everything. The problems with the ME3 endings came from a different source, at least for me, but I suspect also for a lot of other players.

God walked out of the machine and said your choices don't matter, forget about what happened to anyone you've spent 7 years knowing, now here's your choices Red, Blue, or Green. Then the Normandy shows up running somehow, the relays are destroyed, intergalactic civilization is doomed, and the same ending cutscenes play with different colored energy. Then after the credits Buzz Aldrin sleeps through some cring inducing lines, my sweet. And you're politiely told to buy more DLC.

That's the more mature ending ME3 offers?

Or the how about the one they released months later in which any of the three arbitary choices given at the end divorced from the rest of the game or choices you've made all results in the same happy ending? Where any choice you pick has no consquences (except the new refuse which means you picked the choice where everyone dies). This is despite the fact that there ARE consquences we're told such as the death of all synthetics in the Destroy ending but the EC never shows negative impacts to your choices only the happy sunshine endings to your choice.

No. If their other games are fairy tales I'd rather they continue to tell fairy tales like Dragon Age: Origins where your character or your likely best friend dies to save the world... or you sleep with a witch to create what could be some god that will bite the world in the ass... or not. We have no idea what the ramifactions of that is and all because the Warden/Player could not sacrifice themselves for the greater good.

[Lotion Soronarr]

Foolsfolly wrote...

zsom wrote...

No! Just no! please stop trying to impose your preferences on everyone else. I and _many_ others actually liked the fact that ME3 managed to pull off a more mature story and didn't go back to the fairytale land of most video games. A (good!) bittersweet story is always better than generic rpg save the world variant because it will feel more realistic. If the odds are so against you then it will always feel cheep if you do end up winning everything. The problems with the ME3 endings came from a different source, at least for me, but I suspect also for a lot of other players.

God walked out of the machine and said your choices don't matter, forget about what happened to anyone you've spent 7 years knowing, now here's your choices Red, Blue, or Green. Then the Normandy shows up running somehow, the relays are destroyed, intergalactic civilization is doomed, and the same ending cutscenes play with different colored energy. Then after the credits Buzz Aldrin sleeps through some cring inducing lines, my sweet. And you're politiely told to buy more DLC.

That's the more mature ending ME3 offers?

You're previous choices not mattering that much makes sense actually, given the power of the reapers.

Gathering sheer military might (what the player has been doing in all the missions) is not enough to beat them. That has been said and reinforced.
So weather you recruited the Geth or the Quarians really shouldn't have an big impact on the overall victory.

Ironicly, Sheps pervious choices not mattering much in the end make sense for ME.

It's pointless to compare ME and DA, as they are different universes. Different circumstances, different.. everything.

[Foolsfolly]

You're previous choices not mattering that much makes sense actually, given the power of the reapers.

It's a story about stopping the Reapers. How powerful they are makes no difference. The story will call for their defeat. So being a video game and an RPG it damn well should have been a victory built on your choices. Not because some third party appears out of nowhere giving you three endings for no reason other than the fact that you're speaking to it. Seriously, that's the Catalyst's logic here. It says no one else has gotten this far so it's just giving Shepard these choices for no other reason. Shepard... who has lost a lot of blood and would have died down there next to Anderson had the Catalyst not interfered and then this cycle would have ended in the Reaper's victory.

I mean Shepard didn't even walk into the room with the Catalyst on their own power!

That's like saying the Blight shouldn't have been stopped because there were tens of thousands of darkspawn and only a few thousand Fereldens to stand against them. Only the game wouldn't recognize the army you gathered and then the Architect shows up right before you fight the Archdemon saying "You could kill the archdemon but the mindless darkspawn would rove rampant for years on the surface murdering and corrupting everything they touch. Spilling over into every country they walk to. Or you could drink this potion and merge with the Archdemon's soul to control the Blight for your own ends. Or you could merge all life in Thedas with the darkspawn, it is the perfect solution."

Not particularly satisfying is it? Nor is it deep. It's just... kinda stupid. And very Neo meets the Architect from Matrix 2 feely.

Not a feeling you should want to emulate.

Modifié par Foolsfolly, 29 octobre 2012 - 10:09 .

[fchopin]

Bfler wrote...

Maybe in case of the ME3 destroy ending, we should be able to win with help of the Leviathans.

Leviathans are not our friends, they are the enemy.

[The Elder King]

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

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.

And ironicly, TIMs idea is better.

For humanity, yes, in both cases, since the AI will probably consider humanity as the rest of species in the galaxy. For the galaxy, I'd say ParaControl isn't that much a threat (though the risk is always present, because I believe that the AI would apply Shepard's values as an AI would, and not as an organic/human), and that RenControl present huge risk of having the AI acting as a tyrant.

[Ianamus]

I do think that one of the major flaws of mass Effect 3's ending was the need to shoehorn in Shepards death and general depressiveness where it doesn't fit. They give us a huge deus ex Machina device that can destroy all the reapers or control them all at once, which would theoretically mean the Reapers can be destroyed with minimal loss of life, but for some random reason all of the ways of activating it involve Shepard killing him/herself. It never really makes any sense why. Why couldnt there just be a switch or something? Who would create a machine that can only function if the person using it kills themselves? 

And then of course we have the Normandy's random, unexplained and completely stupid crashing in the original endings. It's as though the writers just went "Shepard dying isn't sad and emotional enough on it's own- let's get the Normandy and all the other characters stranded somewhere random when the relay's are destroyed, even though it makes absolutely no sense at all". honestly, Mass Effect 3 shows that a shoehorned in sad ending can be even worse than a shoehorned in happy ending. 

And to all of those people who scoff at the whole "happy ending" thing: It is actually really important for an ending/ movie/ series to have at least some "happy" elements to it, or else this happens. In Mass Effect 3's endings case it was so needlessly depressing that I just stopped caring about the entire series completely. Despite being a huge Mass Effect fan who loved the games to death I now have such little interest that I haven't even looked up what these "leviathans" that people keep talking about actually are, and to be honest I just don't care anymore. 

Modifié par EJ107, 29 octobre 2012 - 11:02 .

[Foolsfolly]

EJ107 wrote...

I do think that one of the major flaws of mass Effect 3's ending was the need to shoehorn in Shepards death and general depressiveness where it doesn't fit. They give us a huge deus ex Machina device that can destroy all the reapers or control them all at once, which would theoretically mean the Reapers can be destroyed with minimal loss of life, but for some random reason all of the ways of activating it involve Shepard killing him/herself. It never really makes any sense why. Why couldnt there just be a switch or something? Who would create a machine that can only function if the person using it kills themselves? 

And then of course we have the Normandy's random, unexplained and completely stupid crashing in the original endings. It's as though the writers just went "Shepard dying isn't sad and emotional enough on it's own- let's get the Normandy and all the other characters stranded somewhere random when the relay's are destroyed, even though it makes absolutely no sense at all". honestly, Mass Effect 3 shows that a shoehorned in sad ending can be even worse than a shoehorned in happy ending. 

And to all of those people who scoff at the whole "happy ending" thing: It is actually really important for an ending/ movie/ series to have at least some "happy" elements to it, or else this happens. In Mass Effect 3's endings case it was so needlessly depressing that I just stopped caring about the entire series completely. Despite being a huge Mass Effect fan who loved the games to death I now have such little interest that I haven't even looked up what these "leviathans" that people keep talking about actually are, and to be honest I just don't care anymore. 

Clicked on the tvtropes link... damn now I'm stuck there. But this bit reminds me of DA2's ending:

Meaningful conflict is the soul of drama.
Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy occurs when a conflict exists
that simply lacks any reason for the audience to give a damn about how
it is resolved. This is often because the setting is extremely but
meaninglessly Darker and Edgier,
and all sides are abhorrently, equally evil- or at least, far enough
gone that any difference between the two is splitting hairs.

Crazy blood mage abomination or idol crazed zealot bent on slaughtering everyone?

...really felt like splitting hairs to me. And in fact is part of the reason I really don't care about the Templar/Mage arguement in DA2.

[CELL55]

Can we stop talking about the ME3 ending? I still kinda find it hard to forget that the final boss of the epic space opera was a programming error that talked our character into committing suicide. Bringing this up in the DA3 forum probably isn't going to make things any better. If Bioware hasn't learned to never do anything that even remotely resembles the ending of ME3 by now, then I doubt they are capable of learning it now based on anything we here have to say.

[Xilizhra]

Crazy blood mage abomination or idol crazed zealot bent on slaughtering everyone?

Actually, he wasn't truly any of those until the very end, and even then it was only because the developers wanted another boss fight, so I tend to not hold it against him.

[Foolsfolly]

Xilizhra wrote...

Crazy blood mage abomination or idol crazed zealot bent on slaughtering everyone?

Actually, he wasn't truly any of those until the very end, and even then it was only because the developers wanted another boss fight, so I tend to not hold it against him.

My emotions cannot tell why a designer decided to make someone a boss fight or not. All my emotions can do is rage at the idea that not only did Grace call me a Templar supporter when I never supported them but the guy I backed tried to eat me. Which proved (right when it mattered most) that he was exactly what Meredith said mages were.

Modifié par Foolsfolly, 29 octobre 2012 - 11:16 .

[Xilizhra]

Foolsfolly wrote...

Xilizhra wrote...

Crazy blood mage abomination or idol crazed zealot bent on slaughtering everyone?

Actually, he wasn't truly any of those until the very end, and even then it was only because the developers wanted another boss fight, so I tend to not hold it against him.

My emotions cannot tell why a designer decided to make someone a boss fight or not. All my emotions can do is rage at the idea that not only did Grace call me a Templar supporter when I never supported them but the guy I backed tried to eat me. Which proved (right when it mattered most) that he was exactly what Meredith said mages were.

It was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Those don't count. And even at the end, the most he was guilty of was despair, as opposed to Meredith's bigotry/bloodlust (reflected by most other templars, really).

[Foolsfolly]

Xilizhra wrote...

It was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Those don't count. And even at the end, the most he was guilty of was despair, as opposed to Meredith's bigotry/bloodlust (reflected by most other templars, really).

Still not different enough for me personally. And that's not even touching the whole Quintin thing which wasn't something I heard until the second playthrough.

Also why we're on this subject I felt the same lack of caring with the Architect vs the Mother. The guy controlling the darkspawn that he ordered to attack Vigil's Keep and slaughter the Wardens (which went exactly as the Architect foresaw, I must remind you all). Or the gal controlling the darkspawn that she ordered to attack Vigil's Keep and Amaranthine?

I mean... really? I guess the Mother's insane while the Architect is at best a well-intentioned monster... but splitting hairs again, right?

[The Elder King]

DA2 portrayed both sides in a way that would make me almost impossible picking a side. Instead of choosing the side which I consider better or more worthy of the PC's aid, I have to find which side is worst, and then choose the another. The only reason I was able to make a choice in DA2 was because the Circle was "innocent", since Anders acted alone and the Circe was never involved with Anders.
I want that the sided in DA3 are "grey": no side should be right or wrong. Leave to the player the interpretation of which side is right and which side is wrong.

[Sidney]

Ghidorah14 wrote...

I hate endings that are dark/bleak/sad for the sake of being dark/bleak/sad.

That's why I love DAO's endings. You have different levels of "saves the day" and honestly, whats wrong with "shallow hero-fantasy wish-fullfilment?"

Maybe I enjoy playing the hero who saves the day. Maybe I enjoy happy endings.

I dunno, I guess I'm crazy for wanting things to turn out well for all the awesome characters BioWare wrote into the story.

...but of course for many ANY ending that is dark is done so just "to be dark".

I don't always need dark but I loved the fact that I didn't "win" in DA2. One man against a tide he can't control. I thought I did win in ME3 but pelnty of people see that as a loss - silly me I saved trillions from extinction and I thought I'd done good.