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[spirosz]

Ryoten wrote...

txgoldrush wrote...

And no, I lost trust in Bioware's fans.

Bioware's fans seem to only want Bioware to use the same formula, to play it safe, to have the most populist story elements, and to not have to make tough decisions.

Bioware does NOT have to give you everything you want. They do NOT have to make RPGs all the time. They do NOT have to follow the same formula.

In fact, they handled the Extended Cut well, they laid down the line, saying that they cannot and will not please everybody. You either like it or you don't...deal with it.

The only one stuck in a bubble is you, because you refuse to accept what anyone else says about BioWare as a permissable excuse.   You think that you are the advocat, the messiah, the judge jurry and executioner for what bioware is and isnt.  Anyone who disagress with you is wrong.  You are just a mirror of the community because you do exactly what you claim the community does only in defense of bioware and not against it.  But this in fact makes you worse.  Why?

Because you're SO loyal, that BioWare could literally sell you a horrible piece of junk (and they have with DA2), and you would smile and see it as the gentle caress of biowares hands on your balls.  The majority has spoken, and the fans see the game as worse then its predicessors.  And no "buy into bribe" magazine is going to change that.  Innovation?  please.  Because Kai Leng was such a philisophical and innovative new enemy added to the game, am i right? 

If BioWare told you the sky was red, would you believe them?  I bet you would.


txgoldrush = http://www.urbandict...erm=egotistical

^so true, rofl.  Oh no, I don't like the product, I must be a troll and a hater.  

[Darth Garrus]

There's something I can't get past. Why is so rarely mentioned that not only ME3's ending is horrible, but is also an ipsis literis copy of the ending of "Deus Ex"??? But what worked on that game backfired awfully in the ME context.

So, yes. If even some of the writers thought the ending was awful, why would I have to bow down and say amen to anything with the bw logo? It sucked. The game was drastically cut short, and that is something some apologists don't mention either. It's not just the ending. But how the game ends abruptly! And it is an obvious problem. Something obvious unfinished and rushed. You cannot get around that! It's not just a "writer's decision", like the ending of Monty Python's Holy Grail. It's bizarrely cut short. And it feels like it.

Why the hell BW never came forward and admitted that, and saved their faces with the formerly loyal paying customers (aka fans), is beyond me. DA and ME3 had major problems, and that should not be left without criticism and worry from the paying customers (aka fans).

[elitecom]

What's sort of funny with ME3, is that while the game made me personally loose "trust" in Bioware, it also made the founders Greg and Ray loose their "trust" in Bioware.

[txgoldrush]

drayfish wrote...

Ninja Stan wrote...

This kinda leads to another question that I'm reticent to ask, but it's related:

This kind of sentiment is brought up quite a bit, and more power to you for doing so. But for people who claim to be huge fans who had faith in the company and trusted them to release product that you wouldn't be disappointed in, sometimes all it takes is one bad product to make you change your mind.

I know I won't get a complete answer right now, but if the next Mass Effect game does what the marketing claims, is as good as the hype says it is, receives many top marks, and is said by fans to be pretty darn good, would that be enough to change your mind and restore that trust you once had? Would ME3 (and maybe DA2, if you lean that way) then be seen as statistical anomalies in BioWare's gameography, or has the trust been well and truly severed and each good, worthy game becomes but a stepping stone to restoring that faith?

@Ninja Stan's several questions:

Considering the substantial, and rather worrying cognitive dissonance many fans (myself included) perceived between the numerous pre-release promises and what was actually delivered; considering the disparity between the near-universally gushing review scores and what actually appeared in the game (the bugs, the narrative railroading, the utterly required multiplayer despite repeated assurances to the contrary, and the muddled, obscure ending – almost none of which was addressed in reviewer analysis); and taking into account the near industry-wide condemnation of any fans who dared voice their displeasure at the game; I would argue that the confidence you place in any future alignment between the press and customer satisfaction is a little fantastical. 

I have many issues with Bioware and Mass Effect 3 (which I will get to in a moment), but a good deal of other worrying issues extend into the 'games journalism' field itself, and the uncomfortable relationship that developers such as Bioware have with those people who should be holding publishers to greater account. The fact that your equation for future player satisfaction still relies upon some alignment between review scores and player experience, without anyone actually bothering to examine and correct what created such a glaring discrepancy this time around, suggests that very little – if indeed nothing – has been learned from this experience.

As for Bioware itself, although I am not sure I would categorise the sensation as the 'destruction' of some blind 'trust' I had in the company (they are, after all, a business, and I a consumer), what I did have faith in was a certain standard of product – both mechanically and narratively. Previous to ME3, every Bioware game I had played impressed me as a work of depth and expanse. Characters were well-rounded, plots (for the limitations of an RPG structure) were branching and surprising, design and programming were impeccable, all of which created an immersive world that the player could invest in. From the freedom to explore of ME1, to the multiplicity of choice and backstory and endgame in Dragon Age: Origins, to the depth of character and emotional resonance of ME2. There seemed to be a ratio of developer care to player investment that always suggested this was a team that would not cynically rush a product to market.

And so, what rather shocked me at first about ME3 was the lack of polish. 

As I said, one of the traits of Bioware games I had put faith in was a level of presentational and structural finesse.  It probably goes without saying at this point that I had (and have) not played Dragon Age 2 – so when I started ME3, the animation glitches, face import failure, and frequent dismissals of major choices from the previous games rather took me by surprise. It struck me as the kind of rushed work I attributed to other developers – not Bioware.

That the game was suddenly dismissing major decisions from the previous games (who was councillor; the death of the Racchni; the Collector Base; Shepard's entire character backstory, etc), a central component of the RPG elements continuously touted by Bioware to be at the centre of this experience for half a decade; that the game was suddenly dictating who the character of Shepard was to me, contrary to my personal input (she cares so much about 'random kid in the universe' that she will be haunted by him in naff dreams; she loved Kaiden and lamented his death, apparently); that the game severely truncated the speech options and had whole swaths of uninterrupted auto-dialogue; that it stripped away legitimate side-missions in favour of obscure, unfulfilling fetch-quests and a wholly linear narrative with little to no variation in level progression – all indicated that this game operated very differently from those that had come before it. Indeed, this was so evident that despite the frequent narrative call-backs presented, it was difficult to align this with the two games that had preceded it; with the exceptions of the Genophage arc and a good portion of the Rannoch missions, this entry seemed streamlined and narrowed to the point of losing all of the qualities that define a reactive, immersive Mass Effect experience entirely.  (That there was an 'Action mode' only cemented this feeling further.)

But all of this only disappointed me. What horrified me was the ending. 

And I am not talking about the cut corners, the deus ex machina, the illogical narrative leaps that needed to be spackled over in the EC, or the ham-fistedly on the nose religious metaphor of Shepard's sacrifice. I am talking about the moment in which it was made clear that Bioware – I presume in some misguided attempt to load an artless gravitas into the final decision tree – advocated the application of either an act of genocide, eugenic purgation, or becoming a totalitarian god. 

And it is not enough to argue, as some people have, that 'the player did not have to do any of those things – they were choices', because the game was engineered so that it could only be completed if one of those choices was made. The conflict of the entire Mass Effect sage has been about racial conflict – metaphorically presented in the violence between synthetic and organic – and the only way to end it is to employ one of three war crimes. There is no way to work together, no way to have faith in your fellow allies, no way to talk the enemy of the game down from their intolerant hate-screed. You just have to do what they ask: exterminate a race of beings because their lives are worth less than yours; ascend to the arrogant position of an unstoppably dictatorial monster; or mutate every life in the universe to have the same DNA - because that's the only way to 'peace'.

Bioware decided to use their trilogy to send a nihilistic message about to futility of struggle and hope: you can't win by believing in stupid things like diversity and inclusivity. War can only be overcome by being the one to employ the war crime for your agenda (whatever that might be). Bigotry can only be overcome by forcing your will upon others: wiping them out, forcing them to get along, or violating them to become all genetically the same.

I have literally never seen a more horrifying message offered by a piece of popular entertainment in my life. And the fact that Bioware not only published such a hateful world-view in their fiction (perverting an otherwise hopeful and wondrous narrative in the process), but then after the fact became so aggressively protective of it – announcing themselves bewildered that fans could not appreciate their cynical vision and conceding only to expand the point they had made without explanation or compromise, has led me to believe that either Bioware is so blinded by hubris that they are incapable of actually taking responsibility for the implications of their fiction, or truly do have a vision of the world that stands fundamentally and profoundly opposed to my own. 

Either way though, it is near impossible to see that gaping fissure being overcome by a few good reviews from fans and press next time (they were hardly indicative this time around anyway). To me the company Bioware is either narcissistically blind or so filled with a need to spout angsty, intolerant drivel, that their future texts will ultimately have little I want to engage with to say anyway.

And yet, you completely once again, ignore the game's themes.

Did you ignore the conversation with Garrus about the ruthless calculus of war, where sometimes you have to sacrifice people to save even more people...that sometimes you have to let people die to achieve the success of the mission. How is firing the Crucible for Destroy a war crime? In fact, EDI stated that she would give her life to defeat the Reapers, so she could even endorse it.

Face it, the ME3 end choice is very morally grey and thematically set up to be. Yes there is things about hope, but the game also mentioned that "you can't save everyone".

[Darth Garrus]

The fallacy of the "artistic vision":

Every now and then we are faced with the fallacy of the artistic vision. That's it: a fallacy. It's rubbish of the worst kind.

If you went to watch a Goddard movie, you could see something very crazy, and he could say "tough luck" to you, because you payed to watch his artistic vision. It's what he sells, and no court would condemn him for it.

But we payed for a video-game. Something interactive, and from which we have some basis to what to expect. And we are talking about a sequel. A sequel to a saga that promised to end with the same high note that was delivered before (even if with problems). And it was simply not! There's no way around the fact that the paying customer was deceived. There are interviews, statements and whatever from the producers, writers etc, that the game wouldn't have a simple "3 colored choice". And that we would have a big conclusion with all kinds of endings.

So, the so called "artistic vision" is a big fallacy. Doesn't fit in this case at all. The only questions remaining, and honest ones, are: do you still trust BW? Did they do something to jeopardize your trust and must deal with it in a good way (towards paying customers)?

[devSin]

drayfish wrote...

It probably goes without saying at this point that I had (and have) not played Dragon Age 2

If you ever have the opportunity and the desire, I would recommend at least trying it, if you can get it for cheap (and assuming you enjoyed Origins).

A lot of the game's failures were mechanical, and although the narrative is relatively weak and the ending is viciously peremptory, I think it has some wonderful writing. It's not as refined as Origins, and I felt that actually lent it a bit of spirit that may have been missing from some of the conversations in its predecessor. I also consider the character writing to be top-notch (it can be a bit hit-or-miss, but there's some great work in there, some of the best the team has yet done).

Just don't expect it to have a strong central plot or main goal (it plays out more like 'The Life and Assorted Adventures of a Former Refugee Turned Champion' than a single story heading to a determined resolution, which is a bit regrettable, since the components are there in each of the acts to provide a stronger narrative—the threads just never really manage to come together into something cohesive), and you may actually find there's some really good content lurking beneath.

And yes, fear the map reuse, as well as comparatively rough gameplay that takes fun out of loot and inventory mechanics and reduces combat to forgettable hack-and-slash (or just drop it down to casual and let the tactics system do its thing—it will win most fights in DA2 by itself at that difficulty), along with the absence of any real sense of progression (a lot of times, it simply turns to grind, since you don't really get a feeling of advancement all that often in the game).

Modifié par devSin, 05 janvier 2013 - 12:31 .

[txgoldrush]

spirosz wrote...

Ryoten wrote...

txgoldrush wrote...

And no, I lost trust in Bioware's fans.

Bioware's fans seem to only want Bioware to use the same formula, to play it safe, to have the most populist story elements, and to not have to make tough decisions.

Bioware does NOT have to give you everything you want. They do NOT have to make RPGs all the time. They do NOT have to follow the same formula.

In fact, they handled the Extended Cut well, they laid down the line, saying that they cannot and will not please everybody. You either like it or you don't...deal with it.

The only one stuck in a bubble is you, because you refuse to accept what anyone else says about BioWare as a permissable excuse.   You think that you are the advocat, the messiah, the judge jurry and executioner for what bioware is and isnt.  Anyone who disagress with you is wrong.  You are just a mirror of the community because you do exactly what you claim the community does only in defense of bioware and not against it.  But this in fact makes you worse.  Why?

Because you're SO loyal, that BioWare could literally sell you a horrible piece of junk (and they have with DA2), and you would smile and see it as the gentle caress of biowares hands on your balls.  The majority has spoken, and the fans see the game as worse then its predicessors.  And no "buy into bribe" magazine is going to change that.  Innovation?  please.  Because Kai Leng was such a philisophical and innovative new enemy added to the game, am i right? 

If BioWare told you the sky was red, would you believe them?  I bet you would.


txgoldrush = http://www.urbandict...erm=egotistical

^so true, rofl.  Oh no, I don't like the product, I must be a troll and a hater.  

Then why are you still here, 10 months after release, talking about the game you don't like. Sounds like obsession to me.

[Zeroth Angel]

txgoldrush wrote...

And no, I lost trust in Bioware's fans.

Bioware's fans seem to only want Bioware to use the same formula, to play it safe, to have the most populist story elements, and to not have to make tough decisions.

Bioware does NOT have to give you everything you want. They do NOT have to make RPGs all the time. They do NOT have to follow the same formula.

In fact, they handled the Extended Cut well, they laid down the line, saying that they cannot and will not please everybody. You either like it or you don't...deal with it.

They tried something different with DA2, remember?

[txgoldrush]

Wimbini wrote...

txgoldrush wrote...

And no, I lost trust in Bioware's fans.

Bioware's fans seem to only want Bioware to use the same formula, to play it safe, to have the most populist story elements, and to not have to make tough decisions.

Bioware does NOT have to give you everything you want. They do NOT have to make RPGs all the time. They do NOT have to follow the same formula.

In fact, they handled the Extended Cut well, they laid down the line, saying that they cannot and will not please everybody. You either like it or you don't...deal with it.

They tried something different with DA2, remember?

and is it why it failed?

Or is it the elementary mistakes such as rushing the game out the door, recycling its environments, and the complete lack of polish that doomed the game?

[Estelindis]

It has destroyed my trust in Bioware, but not my hope.

I used to be able to expect that any Bioware game would be great and that I would finish it simultaneously satisfied and wanting more. That's not an expectation I feel I can sustain after ME3. However, excluding the souring effect of the ending and some other small parts of it, ME3 had a huge amount of excellent material. Accordingly, I still have a lot of hope for Bioware in the future.

[drayfish]

txgoldrush wrote...

And yet, you completely once again, ignore the game's themes.

Did you ignore the conversation with Garrus about the ruthless calculus of war, where sometimes you have to sacrifice people to save even more people...that sometimes you have to let people die to achieve the success of the mission. How is firing the Crucible for Destroy a war crime? In fact, EDI stated that she would give her life to defeat the Reapers, so she could even endorse it.

Face it, the ME3 end choice is very morally grey and thematically set up to be. Yes there is things about hope, but the game also mentioned that "you can't save everyone".

I remember something about a Salarian scientist saying that Shepard shouldn't touch buttons.  I guess that was a major theme too.

...No, your cherry-picked logical fallacy is quaint, but both Garrus and Javik (who you probably should have used as a better example) come to a point of hope and belief in Shepard by the game's end - not simply as someone who is willing to 'Do whatever needs to be done, damn the cost', but as an inspiring figure worth believing in.

That is after all why fleets of species are following her - not because they know they are going to get mutated, massacred, or dominated by her if she thinks its cool to do so.

Up until its cynical ending, the kind of moral relativity that you are advocating was dismissed or evolved beyond throughout the narrative.  To wave it as proof of theme now seems a little reductive.

Modifié par drayfish, 05 janvier 2013 - 12:34 .

[Neizd]

No matter how you look at this, even if it is not about the famous "ending" ME3 DOES have flaws and a lot of them. The list is long, in fact it is so long that the game can be at least rated average. ME1 had me interested. You could explore big world around you and you really could feel that the universe is vast...ME2 didn't have the same effect but Suicide mission was EPIC. When you finally went through Omega 4 relay you could feel awesome...

Then we have ME3:
- 5 years of waiting for tali face...and we got 5 minute photoshop. I don't say it's ugly, the girl is nice, but the effort they put...meh.
- Priority earth: This is bad...there should be suicide mission v2. I don't say bioware should stick to formula but this mission is empty. You shoot, shout STEEEVE, shoot, speakt to some squadmates, shoot from turret (...what was that for?!), shoot more, shoot to defend rockets, and run to be hit by mute harbringer that can't even see normandy in front of his eyes..WTF?!
- Fetch quest...
- Autodialoque
- ME2 squadmates treatment...

And there IS more...

[Zeroth Angel]

txgoldrush wrote...

Wimbini wrote...

txgoldrush wrote...

And no, I lost trust in Bioware's fans.

Bioware's fans seem to only want Bioware to use the same formula, to play it safe, to have the most populist story elements, and to not have to make tough decisions.

Bioware does NOT have to give you everything you want. They do NOT have to make RPGs all the time. They do NOT have to follow the same formula.

In fact, they handled the Extended Cut well, they laid down the line, saying that they cannot and will not please everybody. You either like it or you don't...deal with it.

They tried something different with DA2, remember?

and is it why it failed?

Or is it the elementary mistakes such as rushing the game out the door, recycling its environments, and the complete lack of polish that doomed the game?

I guess we will never know considering DA:I looks like it will go with the typical BW cliche thing.

[Estelindis]

drayfish wrote...

I remember something about a Salarian scientist saying that Shepard shouldn't touch buttons.  I guess that was a major theme too.

...No, your cherry-picked logical fallacy is quaint, but both Garrus and Javik (who you probably should have used as a better example) come to a point of hope and belief in Shepard by the game's end - not simply as someone who is willing to 'Do whatever needs to be done, damn the cost', but as an inspiring figure worth believing in.

That is after all why fleets of species are following her - not because they know they are going to get mutated, massacred, or dominated by her if she thinks its cool to do so.

Up until its cynical ending, the kind of moral relativity that you are advocating was dismissed or evolved beyond throughout the narrative.  To wave it as proof of theme now seems a little reductive.

Well said, particularly the penultimate paragraph.

[txgoldrush]

drayfish wrote...

txgoldrush wrote...

And yet, you completely once again, ignore the game's themes.

Did you ignore the conversation with Garrus about the ruthless calculus of war, where sometimes you have to sacrifice people to save even more people...that sometimes you have to let people die to achieve the success of the mission. How is firing the Crucible for Destroy a war crime? In fact, EDI stated that she would give her life to defeat the Reapers, so she could even endorse it.

Face it, the ME3 end choice is very morally grey and thematically set up to be. Yes there is things about hope, but the game also mentioned that "you can't save everyone".

I remember something about a Salarian scientist saying that Shepard shouldn't touch buttons.  I guess that was a major theme too.

...No, your cherry-picked logical fallacy is quaint, but both Garrus and Javik (who you probably should have used as a better example) come to a point of hope and belief in Shepard by the game's end - not simply as someone who is willing to 'Do whatever needs to be done, damn the cost', but as an inspiring figure worth believing in.

Tht is after all why fleets of species are following her - not because they know they are going to get mutated, massacred, or dominated by her if she thinks its cool to do so.

And yet you fail to grasp the complexity of the theme...yes, he is an inspiration of hope, but in the past, Shepard has been forced to sacrifice others to achieve victory.

He sacrificed one of his squadmates on Virmire.
He sacrificed the Batarian colony to stop the Reaper invading the Alpha Relay.
He sacrificed an entire geth server to stop attacks on the Quarians.
If you choose Koris, he leaves his crew to die.

Your fallacy is you believe its one or the other..its not. There is hope in ME3, but people lay down their lives, theirs and others, to achieve this hope.

And this is what Shepard has to do.

[Darth Garrus]

There is no sacrifice or struggle in ME3 ending. Not even from the writers to produce it. It's "Deus Ex" ending ripped off, so they could meet a deadline. Don't try to push it txgoldrush.

[Fraevar]

Ninja Stan wrote...

I may regret this, but can I ask:

What kind of "trust" did you have in BioWare before ME3?

That statements like: "We wouldn't force people into a bespoke ending that everyone gets" and "How you played your three games will all influence your conclusion" were truthful. That most of the development resources would go into making this, the base premise of this series ever since BioWare started talking about the first Mass Effect game back in 2006 a reality, so that it would satisfy.

I "trusted" that there was an overall plan for the trilogy with a beginning, middle and end, something I began to seriously doubt when Mass Effect 2 started to go out of its way to ignore the events of the first game, and introduced lame-duck plot devices like Shepard's death and the Collectors for simple sensationalism instead of actually building on the Reaper story and focusing on preparing the galaxy to fight them. All "trust" that was proven to have been misplaced by Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3.

I "trusted" BioWare's commitment to making an interconnected trilogy, not just three games where the import feature was used for minor cosmetic differences and completely ignored right at the final events of the series.

Modifié par Delerius_Jedi, 05 janvier 2013 - 12:49 .

[txgoldrush]

Darth Suetam wrote...

There is no sacrifice or struggle in ME3 ending. Not even from the writers to produce it. It's "Deus Ex" ending ripped off, so they could meet a deadline. Don't try to push it txgoldrush.

And the ignorance level of this board continues to rise.....

[SunnyTheCoolkid]

just shup up, if you dont like it then you dont like it just stop complaining, we get it

[Darth Garrus]

txgoldrush wrote...

Darth Suetam wrote...

There is no sacrifice or struggle in ME3 ending. Not even from the writers to produce it. It's "Deus Ex" ending ripped off, so they could meet a deadline. Don't try to push it txgoldrush.

And the ignorance level of this board continues to rise.....

Oh, you see what no one sees, right? And it's not a "Deus Ex" rip-off?

[drayfish]

txgoldrush wrote...

And yet you fail to grasp the complexity of the theme...yes, he is an inspiration of hope, but in the past, Shepard has been forced to sacrifice others to achieve victory.

He sacrificed one of his squadmates on Virmire.
He sacrificed the Batarian colony to stop the Reaper invading the Alpha Relay.
He sacrificed an entire geth server to stop attacks on the Quarians.
If you choose Koris, he leaves his crew to die.

Your fallacy is you believe its one or the other..its not. There is hope in ME3, but people lay down their lives, theirs and others, to achieve this hope.

And this is what Shepard has to do.

I don't think you understand what 'sacrifice' means in this context.

A character can sacrifice themself - as Kaiden or Ashley did, knowing the risks they were taking as soldiers; Shepard can sacrifice him/her self in order to end the war (as you yourself say: 'people lay down their lives...') - but 'sacrifice' takes on a whole new meaning when you start tossing others onto the fire to appease your enemy.  That kind of 'sacrifice' is more offering-up-the-virgins-to-an-angry-god kind, and has none of the nobility that you are mistakenly attributing to it.  It is a form of nihilistic bargaining that necessarily undermines the 'hope' you claim to celebrate.

In any case, you are free to think what you want (the best that can be said of the ME3 endings is that they offer you that luxury).  But I don't think it's very helpful, or speaks very profitably to your critical capacity, to swagger about on a forum declaring that people are too stupid to appreciate your headcanon.

Modifié par drayfish, 05 janvier 2013 - 12:54 .

[txgoldrush]

Darth Suetam wrote...

txgoldrush wrote...

Darth Suetam wrote...

There is no sacrifice or struggle in ME3 ending. Not even from the writers to produce it. It's "Deus Ex" ending ripped off, so they could meet a deadline. Don't try to push it txgoldrush.

And the ignorance level of this board continues to rise.....

Oh, you see what no one sees, right? And it's not a "Deus Ex" rip-off?

Other than synthesis being similiar to JC's ending in Invisble War...no

[D3V1LG0D666]

I love the whole game series i may have started with ME2 when i got it for christmas a couple years back but after i beat the campaign for the second time i noticed how much the story changed and so i went out and got ME1 to see if  it would change the story which it did and it also explained quite alot of stuff that happened in ME2 then when ME3 came out my cousin got it preorderd and i immediatly played through the campaign and i loved every bit of it ive loved all the dlc from every game so far this is my 8th play through of ME3 and the ending is still amazing

[Darth Garrus]

txgoldrush wrote...

Darth Suetam wrote...

txgoldrush wrote...

Darth Suetam wrote...

There is no sacrifice or struggle in ME3 ending. Not even from the writers to produce it. It's "Deus Ex" ending ripped off, so they could meet a deadline. Don't try to push it txgoldrush.

And the ignorance level of this board continues to rise.....

Oh, you see what no one sees, right? And it's not a "Deus Ex" rip-off?

Other than synthesis being similiar to JC's ending in Invisble War...no

Well, unless you didn't play "Deus Ex", you may be playing dumb (very, very dumb) here, but it's exactly the same ending. The same 3 choices, with just some words altered on the explanation. So, no matter how you try to provoke people, you just proved that your intentions here are just that: to provoke. You don't have a point.

[txgoldrush]

drayfish wrote...

txgoldrush wrote...

And yet you fail to grasp the complexity of the theme...yes, he is an inspiration of hope, but in the past, Shepard has been forced to sacrifice others to achieve victory.

He sacrificed one of his squadmates on Virmire.
He sacrificed the Batarian colony to stop the Reaper invading the Alpha Relay.
He sacrificed an entire geth server to stop attacks on the Quarians.
If you choose Koris, he leaves his crew to die.

Your fallacy is you believe its one or the other..its not. There is hope in ME3, but people lay down their lives, theirs and others, to achieve this hope.

And this is what Shepard has to do.

I don't think you understand what 'sacrifice' means in this context.

A character can sacrifice themself - as Kaiden or Ashley did, knowing the risks they were taking as soldiers; Shepard can sacrifice him/her self in order to end the war (as you yourself say: 'people lay down their lives...') - but 'sacrifice' takes on a whole new meaning when you start tossing others onto the fire to appease your enemy.  That kind of 'sacrifice' is more offering-up-the-virgins-to-an-angry-god kind, and has none of the nobility that you are mistakenly attributing to it.  It is a form of nihilistic bargaining that necessarily hope you claim to celebrate.

In any case, you are free to think what you want (the best that can be said of the ME3 endings is that they offer you that luxury).  But I don't think it's very helpful, or speaks very profitably to your critical capacity, to swagger about on a forum declaring that people are too stupid to appreciate your headcanon.

Wrong again.

"- but 'sacrifice' takes on a whole new meaning when you start tossing others onto the fire to appease your enemy. That kind of 'sacrifice' is more offering-up-the-virgins-to-an-angry-god kind, and has none of the nobility that you are mistakenly attributing to it. It is a form of nihilistic bargaining that necessarily hope you claim to celebrate."

And yet this kind of sacrifice is attributed to Cerberus, which both Paragon and Renegade Shep are against. The sacrifices made without regret and without feeling. Notice how Shepard and TIM are foils when it comes to sacrifice....TIM sacrifices people on the altar for his own gain without feeling and regret, while Shepard, when forced to sacrifice others, lives with it and regrets it.

Shepard regrets having to send other to harms way, he regrets and is saddened over shooting Mordin, he has to live with it...and then look at James and his decision on Fehl Prime.

It isn't headcanon, its all in the narrative. Hell, look at Vigil.....for the Protheans to suceeed at rigging the Citadel, they had to shut off pods of non essential staff, sacrifcing them to get the job done. Victory through sacrifice is a theme there too. If the Protheans did no tmake those sacrifices, the Reapers win.