Massa FX wrote...
@Dean - My thoughts with no animosity toward you or Bioware.
ME1 has one ending - Shepard gets up out of rubble and smirks knowing Sovereign and Saren are defeated. There's no RGB. There's no Vigil on the Citadel giving options. Sure, Wrex and the council deaths are possible choices, but that's not what I'm talking about. True Victory. Job well done. Shepard won. This occurs in everyone's game.
ME2 allows players to reload or replay the game if they want all squadmates to survive. Again, Shepard makes that last hurtling jump and makes it onto the Normandy, if the player makes the right decisions. Varied endings with possible deaths, but those deaths can be circumvented by choice. Did this spoil me? Not really. I could have allowed some squadmates to die, but I wanted the silver lining. I'm grateful that I could work toward total victory and have the reward (survival against a suicide mission).
ME3 - no chance for complete victory without selling your soul to the Reapers, using the galaxy as your personal science project, giving up the fight on principle, or killing an entire species and a friend. There's no chance to have true victory or happiness. None.
That's still a double/triple standard: you're counting potential deaths and the end-game decision difference as different endings on one hand, and then not applying that standard elsewhere. You aren't defining what makes a number of endings, you're just establishing which endings you liked (the ones with the most positive validation).
Note: real life is hard. If I wanted to learn a life lesson, I wouldn't turn to a videogame for it. I want to play games for entertainment. To have FUN. To be victorious and heroic. Not to feel bad, depressed, disappointed, and sad (not fun). Why can't there be a chance for a full victory against the Reapers, complete with Shepard survival (getting up out of rubble as in ME1 and making that jump to the Normandy in ME2) and sentient life survival? Why can't I desire full victory without being told I shouldn't want it because bad things happen in life?
I am fine with the RGB/Refuse as long as I know I can do something different and get that Heroic moment of total Reaper defeat and survival for Shepard, squadies, sentient life.
Because of that, I'm spoiled in some way? I disagree on that.
Sorry if I'm rambling here. I just spent most of my night on BSN instead of sleeping. 
It has that effect. (Insert smilie of your choice.)
I don't think it means you are spoiled, and I didn't intend to give that impression if I did, but it does indicate you want something that I don't. People like myself don't think a perfect ending is fun in a game like this: the issues are too weighty, the context too severe, and the contrivance too much for that Heroic moment of total victory to be enjoyable. Mass Effect 1 and 2 were heroic highs that ultimately had not even begun to address the problem of the Reapers, and having ME3 end in a Total Victory would have completely trivialized the supposed menace and power of a species that has wiped out civilizations like clockwork for times immorial. That they already had to turn the Reapers into a keystone army to do so was bad enough even as it was obvious after ME2, but going further would have been, well, not fun to me.
The nature of bitter-sweet is that the bitter contrasts and can bring out the sweet even more: the sadness of Mordin and (in my playthroughs, Eve) dying brings out the hope for the Krogan... or Wrex confronting me and having to kill two friends for what I could call the right decision makes the emotional ringer have a delicious hurt. I could argue and deny and lambast Biowre for not allowing me to totally convince Wrex that curing the genophage was the worst thing that could have occured for his people... but the fact that they didn't gave the scene more impact for me. That's why I feel the Genophage arc is one of the best written pieces in Bioware history: I could certainly pick it apart on grounds of logic or execution, but it balances costs and benefits both cerebral and emotional.
Rannoch, on the other hand, was painfully one-sided for me, to the point that the happy ending disturbs me. The Geth since ME2 were increasingly white-knighted and made excessivly sympathetic, the reason the happy ending itself isn't already a reality is presented as the fault of a few bad apples who are charicatures (all Quarian) we're supposed to not like rather than nuanced people we could respect, and by the time peace does come it's so one-sided that it disturbs me (Quarians, don't be scumbags, Geth, you don't have to change anything about yourselves). Peace on Rannoch is a Heroic High, but it never feels like I earned the Happy Ending.
It's not that I enjoy feeling depressed or bad or disappointed. No one does. But for people like me, happiness isn't ignoring the bad and pretending it doesn't exist: rather, a happy ending is one in which we power through the bad times, and push on the other side. Pretending the evils of the world can be ignorred or totally overcome isn't only not convincing, it's an invitation to more misery: it's acceptance of both the good and evil, and then pursuing the good despite the evil, that is inspiring for me. That's my happy ending.
Retour en haut
[inappropriate post removed]
