Massa FX wrote...
@Dean_the_Young I'm OK with some peeps feeling good about the ending. But, I don't share that sentiment. For me a "typical" Bioware ME ending would have been like ME1 (one ending - positive outcome) or ME2's (varied endings with chance for positive outcome).
I disagree with... well, pretty much every part of that categorization. Not offensively, but just I don't see that as an objective breakdown.
Let's start by the description of the outcomes. Did ME1 only have one ending? The final choice, while it never amounted to much, was by far the largest political-world shaping change in the galaxy before the Crucible. While Sovereign died regardless (just like the Collectors died regardless and Cerberus was left with the keys to study what was left), who was in control of the center of galactic politics was something that could have been incredibly important: the established Council, versus a Human-dominated Council, could have changed the fate of the galaxy in any number of ways. It didn't, and the writers decided it was too big and pretty much neutered it, but it could have.
But, hey, Sovereign died regardless. The endings were turned into de facto the same thing. So... how does ME2 count as varied endings? The number of companions you have survive? ME1 had that in Wrex. The Collectors die regardless, ME2 shares the same sort of color-coded explosion graphic, and what amounts to the difference is... not much, so long as you're a completionist in ME3. You get some dialogue change, but we see no distinguished capabilities for Cerberus, no apparent usage of the intact Collector base over scavenged remnants, and all of ME2 leads to the exact same starting position of ME3. So if ME1 counted as a single ending, I'm not seeing how ME2 would qualify as multiple endings (except, if you're interested in non-canon, Shepard's death).
And as for 'typical' Bioware endings... I'm not sure ME1 and ME2 could be said to apply, but not ME3. Baldur's Gate was before my time, I admit, but let's consider KOTOR, Jade Empire, or even DAO. None of them were designed with the same concept of the ME trilogy's firt two: though Dragon Age would become a franchise in its own right, it isn't a trilogy and it never had the design considerations of the endings of ME1 and ME2, in which the sequel must be able to directly follow regardless. As a result, they had pretty incompatible ending states for the purpose of a direct sequel: Jade Empire's Open Palm vs. Closed Fist vs. Bad End endings, KOTOR's Light Side vs. Dark Side, and DAO's many 'fate of nations' decisions. Dragon Age escaped the Big Decisions and Ending State of DAO by promptly fleeing Ferelden, but ME1 and ME2 had to be Shepard's Story, and thus have their endings be pretty restrained. If 'very varied, incompatible ending states' were to be considered 'typical Bioware endings', then the one that comes closest would be ME3.
For continuity and "fun" factor alone, I think I'd have put up a some serious arguments to the idea of RGB, no real good choices, and the catalyst emergence which doesn't follow ME's established endgame norm.
A hologram appearing at the eleventh hour to provide key exposition and a means to resolution isn't a ME end-game norm? Vigil would be surprised to hear about. So would TIM when he called to give you the Collector Base choice.
I kid, a little, but other than the difference in self-indentification Vigil and the Catalyst serve pretty similar narrative roles. Vigil doesn't set up the Destiny Ascension decision directly, but he is pretty much a deus ex exposition dump with the key to saving the day that turns out to be a Moral Delimma.
Continuity doesn't need to be a factor with the finale of the trilogy (indeed, most Bioware games don't bother: they simply avoid the problems by changing the setting to make choices minor or establish assumed canons), and 'fun' is a very relative metric. I consider the differences fun, and I would have had even more fun had large parts of the community shared my interest and wished to talk about how they thought End State A, B, or C would develop.
As for 'no real good choices', that's a loaded and highly subjective phrase if there was one. It's pretty apparent across ME3 that Bioware was going for hard choices: hard choices don't exist if there's one real good choice. I'd argue, and given their movement away from it I suspect the writers would agree, that most of the ME2 moral delimmas were weakened by the prevalence of Persuasion 'outs': there was such a fixation in having a happy 'best' outcome that the others simply became irrelevant by contrast once the metaknowledge seeped in. Why bother with prioritizing Zaeed's loyalty in pursuing Vido, if you can save the innocents and still kill Vido (albeit not in person) and still get Zaeed's loyalty by Paragon persuasion? Where does the delimma in Tali's loyalty go if you can keep her loyal AND not be exiled AND advance Geth/Quarian peace with a persuasion out? What was the point of the Thane loyalty mission choice over the hostage politician if there was a glaring Paragon interrupt to get the best of both options right before it?
Real good choices don't improve moral delimmas: they sabotage them. The reason the Collector Base decision spawned thousands of pages of discussion before ME3 and Tali's loyalty mission didn't is because the Collector Base decision was less of a freebie: if you ignored that there was never going to be a severe consequence for throwing the base away, it made an excellent dispute between the relative risk/reward of studying Collector technology and having an ambiguous ally. You could have a view on it, whether it be that Cerberus couldn't be trusted with the technology or that it was too rare an opportunity to pass on, but both options had merits to believe in.
This discussion and heightened interest only exists when the question is actually complicated, and nothing de-conflicts of a delimma quicker than offering either a demonstratably 'better' outcome (there is no risk to the galaxy in saving the Council, the primary argument against doing so, because Sovereign will be defeated regardless), or by offering an alternative resolution that carries no costs (leaving the Demon-possessed Connor at Redcliffe to get the help of the mages).
The reason why MEHEM is a fanfic-mod and was never going to be the ending is because it's almost all benefit without the cost. There's a reason besides the symbolism/AI-solidarity that Destroy would destroy the Geth and EDI: because collateral damage is the consequence that keeps it from being an ideal victory, and makes you look at the other alternatives. After so much dialogue in which Shepard expresses skepticism of Control, and the heavy ambiguity and lack of Reaper destruction in Synthesis, what basis would players have besides nich-interests or curiosity to NOT choose Destroy if it only killed the Reapers?
By carrying a drawback (the death of sympathetic character and faction), people's priorities will lead them to give a more serious look at options that would otherwise be less attractive. The potential corruptive effects and previous narrative dismissals of Control are now weighed against what 'acceptable casualties' would be. Synthesis allows you to avoid the collateral damage AND the personal risk of corruption at Reaper tech AND offers a solution to someone else's perceived problem, but it's so ambiguous that there's a lot of uncertainty over it.
While the benefits and consequences don't have to be what Bioware decided to go with*, the concept of pluses AND minuses are key to making a balanced moral delimma. 'No Good Options' doesn't guarantee a delimma will be good, but creating vastly preferable options makes the alternatives meaningless and weak.
And, well, attempting and developing this balance is pretty typical in Bioware writing. It's definitely a hallmark of the Dragon Age writing: David Gaider's propensity towards bitter-sweet rather than just sweet is famous, and definitely comes out in the Old God Baby/Sacrifice implications for DAO, as well as a number of the main quests. Mass Effect has also been developing and maturing as a series across the franchise: every required Big Decision in ME1 amounted to 'kill this person (Renegade) or spare them (Paragon)', with a far greater expansion and moral complexity coming in parts of the sequels (namely the Genophage arc). Bioware has gradually stepped away from binary good/bad decisions in terms of setup (Jade Empire's poor morality system) and consequence (ME2's import consequences), and while they certainly can be said to stumble here and there it's definitely typical of them to try.
You mentioned that you nodded and accepted the ending. Well... I cried... not in a good way. I cried whenever I thought about the endings for days afterward. Not the reaction I think Dev's wanted. I wonder if Dev's are OK with "acceptance" vs "ecstatically happy" reaction. EC didn't help.
Which reaction do you think they'd want from players: Acceptance or Ecstatic Happiness?
f they wanted Ecstatic Happiness, they'd have made ME3 closer to ME2 (in which Shepard was never forced to accept any significant costs or setbacks, and the game was engineered around a goal of no losses) rather than ME1 (in which Shepard suffering setbacks and losing people was an intended part of the drama). ME2 is the structural and tonal outlier in the series: ME3 is often accused of it simply because ME2 seems like the progression rather than the exception.
'Triumph through hardship' is probably the reaction they were looking for, and I'd say that in my acceptence and other feelings they succeded. They wanted victory with costs that would matter to people: not pretend costs of the faceless masses, who cares about them, but costs that the player would feel because those costs mattered to them.
But where they probably intended but failed for you is that the ending is intended to be
optimistic: despite the losses, despite the devastation,
you have won. There's a very unsubtle reason why the Normandy crash scene takes place on a lush, life-filled world with the crew members, still alive, climb out of the damaged Normandy and look at a rising sun, and that's because it is the Dawn of the New Day. The night is over, the danger has passed, and people can and will rebuild.
Life will go on. Ecstatic Happiness is a goal a developer can have, but it isn't the superior or best one by any means. Dragon Age Origins embraces this by embracing the bitter and the sweet. You don't have to die, but it always comes at a cost: the Old God Baby is an uncertainty that can fill you with unease, or a companion you may view with great affection may die. The best of all, of course, comes to those who romanced Alistair, refused Morrigan's offer, and then took Alistair to the tower... I know for a fact that it sent some people to tears for days, and that was very deliberate.
In all honesty, I think ME2 did a disservice for people by making it a point to have Ecstatic Happiness as an option at almost any given point. Not only did it step away from the more somber strengths of ME1, it established a frankly unrealistic expectation in people for ME3, in which a 'Everyone Important Lives Suicide Mission Perfect Victory' was never a plausible scenario. ME2 tried to be edgy and it largely failed: it glorified the Ideal Outcome, ignorred the idea of costs, and got people so addicted to the Heroic High that when Shepard went back to the original point of being something less than an unstoppable Mary Sue, withdrawal hit.
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I think the pre-sales of BioWare's next game will be a better indicator of how the fans feel about the company.
. We had lots of threads about it, going into great detail about what the exact issues were, and one after one they got locked because of "ongoing investigations" (not an exact quote). There was the infamous stickied thread by a dev about it. Lots of things were going on, little of it felt constructive. In the end the whole thing was quietly fixed via the EC, and with that it was just over. To this day I don't think it was ever adequately ackknowledged and commented on (I'm not even talking about some kind of aoplogy), and I feel kind of stupid about it all. We have, I believe, pretty much exactly one kind of apologetic response from a dev, and that was in the form of a private meassage to a fellow forumite.
