Ninja Stan wrote...
This comes up often in discussions about the ending, but I'm not certain precisely where or how BioWare ever treated the community "consdescendingly." Is this a legitimate complaint, or is it, like the "artistic integrity" argument, a misinterpretation of certain comments used to justify people's anger and frustration?
Actually, I think it is a combination of two things. The artistic integrity comment, which for various reasons rubbed people the wrong way (again, for perhaps the first time, it felt like the devs were saying it was less about telling the story we all wanted, and them trying to save face and say 'look! It's not so bad! See?') is one factor. On it's own though, that wasn't what did it. Again, that kind of rubbed people the wrong way, and that was how a lot of people took it, right or not.
But what REALLY set that feeling a lot of us got of them saying 'we're sticking to our guns and if you don't like it, tough' was the new Refuse ending. Look, I don't know what the dev's thoughts were when they decided to implement that ending. For all anyone knows, it might of just been them expanding on the 'bad end' of Shepard not doing anything and the Crucible getting destroyed. But even if it wasn't malevolent, this is again indicative of the disconnect from what we're asking for and what we were given, and this is a major problem. Let me illustrate why.
Leading up to the EC, we were told flat out there would be no new endings. There would be expansions on what was given. Most of us weren't happy, but we went along with. The majority of us, however, very vocally advocated for a new ending, a fourth ending where we tell the Catalyst to get stuffed, where if we had enough War Assets we could fight and win without the Crucible. This would have been far more in keeping with the original theme of the game, which was victory though sacrifice. If you did everything right, got the geth, cured the genophage, got the Salarians by saving the Councilor, made all the right decisions and everyone was fighiting this fight with you, we wanted that to matter, we really hoped you would see why we wanted that so badly. We didn't want to blow up EDI and the geth. We didn't want to melt away to become the new Catalyst. We didn't want to fuse organics with the Reapers. We wanted our choices to matter, for our faith and our good decisions to matter. We wanted to shout down the Catalyst, to tell him he was wrong, that we proved organics and Synthetics could cooperate, as shown by EDI's love for Jeff and Legion and Tali's bonding, ect.
So, when a lot of us fired up the EC, we got to the point where we were poking holes in the Catalyst's offered decisions, and when the option to finally say "I reject these choices!" comes up, we were ecstatic! I was flippin' over the moon. I saw that and was like 'this is it, they swallowed their pride, they gave us what we wanted against all odds, I can tell this little brat to go burn in hell, Legion's sacrifice wasn't for nothing, the Illusive man was wrong, and I don't have to indoctrinate and huskify the entire Milky Way to accept peace.' I hit that option, Shepard gave a badass 'screw you' speech to the Catalyst, and...
And Game Over. It was just a really fancy game over screen.
I don't know what the intentions behind adding refuse were. It may really have been as innocous as simply adding a fancy 'bad end'. But when you step back and look at it, it feels so much more like a collossal '**** you' from the people who wrote it, it feels like a tremendous slap in the face. So many of us wanted a refusal option, and for victory in that way to be possible, to make that enormous sacrifice and for it to be worth it in the end. But it wasn't. Given the line about artistic integrity and Bioware taking our feedback, this just felt like spite. It felt like "yeah, we're listening to your feedback, we know you wanted to refuse and to win that way by having enough war assets and by making all the right choices, but it's never gonna happen, it's our way or the high way, so pick your poison and deal with it, it's our story, not yours."
Is that assessment true? Is it fair? I don't know. On the recieving end, that what I can tell you it feels like. It feels like whoever wrote that was taking the thing we love most about the Bioware team, your willingness to listen to our feedback, and was twisting into something to spite us. It felt like we were being mocked. Was it perhaps unrealistic to expect a new ending where we could win without the Catalyst? Maybe. But I do think, after all our feedback and critique, all our pleading to end the game on an actual high note, to reject the Catalyst's 'problem,' and for it to be rewarded with a (admittedly well crafted) game over screen just... really, really hurt. Maybe it was just a big 'screw you, deal with it,' from the devs. I honestly don't think it was. I certainly hope it wasn't. But I hope, looking at it from our perspective, you can understand why we might feel that way. So when people say they feel Bioware is being condescending to them, this, I think, is where it stems from. A combination of things, culminating in Artistic Integrity combined with Refuse.
I hope that helps you understand the problem a little better.
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