291 réponses à ce sujet

[chemiclord]

3DandBeyond wrote...

In Destroy, we get a main character that has no idea what is going to happen and then we don't really know what did happen.  Shepard torso has no idea which friends are alive nor do they know whether Shepard is.  That's the ambiguity.  It isn't only about what the player knows, but it is about what the people we cared about in these games, know at the end.  They don't get closure and are forever stuck apart from each other. 

And you are absolutely right, and it's a major failing of the ending as presented even now.  There's very little closure for a cast of characters that had become the game's defining element.

But I do wish to note that you seem to have had very little ambiguity as to the intent of the breath scene.  On that score (what it was trying to do), it succeeds.  There's a lot about that piece of drivel of a conclusion that doesn't even come close.

Modifié par chemiclord, 09 janvier 2013 - 03:13 .

[RocketManSR2]

chemiclord wrote...

RocketManSR2 wrote...

A voiceover of a team finding him would give me a positive place to begin my headcanon. As the scene is now, I'll put the pieces together. Badly injured, unconcious but breathing, no rescue team, and the Normandy isn't anywhere near the Sol system.

R.I.P. Shepard

And this is where I take Bioware's answer.  "You want to be miserable?  Go ahead and be miserable."  I'm done trying to convince you otherwise.

You want to think it's not enough for your personal opinion... that's fine.  But there's no logical reason to decide they put that scene in there to say, "and then he died."  There's not.  If the goal was ambiguity, that scene wouldn't be there at all.  It would have ended with whatever LI you had not putting Shepard's name on the wall.

BioWare blaming the fanbase for their own failings. classy. I have no indication that Shepard will survive. I'm just doing what you said to do in #3 and putting the pieces together. Those were the only pieces to work with, the only ones BioWare provided. The Normandy will return to the Sol system to find that Shepard is dead because help did not reach him. The LI will end up placing Shepard's name on the wall. Having them pause the first time doesn't mean s***. They have hope that he/she is alive, but will get smacked by reality when they learn the truth. I'm headcanoning based on what BioWare showed me, nothing more.

Modifié par RocketManSR2, 09 janvier 2013 - 03:19 .

[3DandBeyond]

crimzontearz wrote...


people did not need a customized scene, just the knowledge for CERTAIN that shepard survives!

come on for ****'s sake

remember the ZILLIONS of threads beofre arrival showed up about ME2? "Hey what is your shepard going to do between ME2 and 3?" Bioware never gave us post ending scenes for ME2 and everyone was god damn ****ING peachy with that because we knew all these imaginary possibilities we were dreaming up which are, in an RPG, the product of player agency and not the storytellers decisions, were possibile as our characters were irrefutably ALIVE

all we needed was goddamn closure and the certainty he survives in THAT ending

but no, here is to pissing people off because, apparently, it is good business, artistically sound and just plain ****ING fun

I absolutely agree and yet that was said by BW on twitter.  I believe it was Mike Gamble, but could have that wrong, but I definitely know it was a dev.  Also, what was said just prior to that was again about a reunion type scene (that they took to mean meant we all wanted to watch everyone grow old together and not the very small one that would have worked like even MEHEM)-what was said was that Bioware never knew people wanted that.  Out and out laughable.  This from the same people that said when saying they'd release an EC, that people were upset because this was the end of Shepard's story arc.  Does the gasp scene fit with that?  First off, it wasn't true-people for the most part could accept at some point ending Shepard's story arc and would be sad, but if the ending of it was handled well, they'd feel good about it all and it would be bittersweet to say goodbye to Shep.

The gasp scene does not allow us to do that.  You surely don't get overjoyed to say goodbye if all you get to see is the skin flying off of a dying Shepard.  And, a torso that gasps in rubble is not something to say goodbye to.  Every goodbye scene in real life and in the movies shows that people want to see the face of the person they are leaving-drive off in a car with your parents waving goodbye on their front porch, and kids crane their necks for one last face to face look and wave to grandma and grandpa.  That's how you say goodbye.

For fans of ME, people that cared a lot about the characters and Shepard, it does matter to see that at last Shepard has a chance for some glimpse of happiness, after sacrificing so much, and trying so hard.  And Shepard deserved to know that his/her friends and/or LI were ok, too.

[3DandBeyond]

chemiclord wrote...

3DandBeyond wrote...

In Destroy, we get a main character that has no idea what is going to happen and then we don't really know what did happen.  Shepard torso has no idea which friends are alive nor do they know whether Shepard is.  That's the ambiguity.  It isn't only about what the player knows, but it is about what the people we cared about in these games, know at the end.  They don't get closure and are forever stuck apart from each other. 

And you are absolutely right, and it's a major failing of the ending as presented even now.  There's very little closure for a cast of characters that had become the game's defining element.

But I do wish to note that you seem to have had very little ambiguity as to the intent of the breath scene.  On that score (what it was trying to do), it succeeds.  There's a lot about that piece of drivel of a conclusion that doesn't even come close.

I have to head canon that it is not ambiguous because my feelings and my wishes carry me there.  It's cognitive dissonance.  I am shown one thing but choose to believe something else because that's where my hopes carry me, not what logic tells me.  Even so, I don't find it at all satisfying.  It still leaves open that gap between Shepard and friends.  They remain forever apart, neither knowing the other's fate.  That is why the ambiguity hurts.

The explanation for destroy cannot help you to conclude Shepard will live or die.  The explosion shows s/he must die.  The torso neither confirms or refutes any of this.  Nor does the LI hope.  My wishes fill the void, but they are not reality.  And in a visual medium, reality is what we are shown unless ambiguity is too great.  So, based on what I want to happen, I choose to see the gasp as Shepard alive.  But it has no basis in logic.  And that's why it fails.  There should be at least some reason to believe one thing or the other-something that overcomes what logic dictates.  A grand gesture.

Logically, I believe they intentionally wanted that gasp to be as ambiguous as hell because they really were hung up on trying for a Kubrick-esque type ending.  They play around too much and had often said they wanted this to be like Star Wars was to movies and I think they got too afraid of not being taken seriously.  Remember that if viewed in order Star Wars ends with a reunion of all, the living and the dead.  I think they backed off of that and then they could not see any other way to do it, so they thought it would be cute to tell people to end it themselves in their heads.

[in it for the lolz]

Seems like the money EA gave to IGN is finally drying up.

[3DandBeyond]

RocketManSR2 wrote...

BioWare blaming the fanbase for their own failings. classy. I have no indication that Shepard will survive. I'm just doing what you said to do in #3 and putting the pieces together. Those were the only pieces to work with, the only ones BioWare provided. The Normandy will return to the Sol system to find that Shepard is dead because help did not reach him. The LI will end up placing Shepard's name on the wall. Having them pause the first time doesn't mean s***. They have hope that he/she is alive, but will get smacked by reality when they learn the truth. I'm headcanoning based on what BioWare showed me, nothing more.

But it was not just done here-BW put the blame on fans for misunderstanding the impact of the relays being destroyed in the original endings.  They straight up said the galaxy would be a wasteland post-ME3 so no DLC would be planned that would take place after the ending.  That was in Feb. just prior to release.  They had the Arrival as DLC for ME2, that showed what would happen to a star system.  They have a codex entry that says a ruptured relay would ruin terrestrial worlds (where organic life exists) in a star system.  Their app, the Final Hours said the crucible would create a galactic dark ages.  That all means that originally the galaxy was meant to be basically destroyed by the exploding relays in the original endings.  But then that's not what BW showed.  The Normandy crash scene was ridiculed because of that, as was the gasp.  From what BW had shown and said, everyone would/should die, including the torso.  Then, they went to twitter to start retconning what the game showed.  The explosions weren't that big (does not change the codex entry about ruined terrestrial worlds).

The EC got released and in the release day announcement, the devs said they did not understand why fans thought the original endings meant the galaxy would be destroyed and that they never meant that to happen.  So, it was the fans that made it all up.  Fans were to blame.  So now they created things to merely try and explain that the galaxy is ok, not destroyed, even though the relays were damaged.  But they still look ruptured, and no one every deleted the codex entry that says a ruptured relay would ruin terrestrial worlds.  But it's a fan problem.

[3DandBeyond]

in it for the lolz wrote...

Seems like the money EA gave to IGN is finally drying up.

The main IGN site featured reviews of Leviathan and Omega, created by their employees.  They didn't love them.  In fact, they used words like, meh and pointless.  I think it may well have more to do with IGN being involved in helping to sell games they review, but not getting any money from DLC.  IGN has links to Game Stop which are very likely subsidized and poor reviews don't sell games.

[Wayning_Star]

Note to self: BSN = micromanagment system.

file under answers to the known universe.

[WhiteKnyght]

crimzontearz wrote...

http://www.ign.com/b...erly-end-a-game


I am speechless

really, I was not expecting this from IGN.....and I did not think I would ever say this but thank god other people are opening their eyes 

It's from one person at IGN, not the whole company.

It's also a load of crap. Mass Effect 3's endings were thematically widely different. That people cant get over the fact that the Crucible can only fire off in one way is petty and childish. It was going to be used no matter what, and it's firing is not the ending itself, the future Shepard chooses is.

Mass Effect 3 has seven endings before Extended Cut, and only a metagamer would be able to even notice the Crucible scene's similarity, and Bioware has stated numerous times as well that they don't make their games to suit metagamers' tastes. They make them for the experience, starting at the beginning and working your way to the end, not for someone who's gonna watch a youtube video of all the variants playing side-by-side and then ****** and moan about it..

[RocketManSR2]

3DandBeyond wrote...

There should be at least some reason to believe one thing or the other-something that overcomes what logic dictates.

Exactly, I'm just going by what I can see and the information that is actually presented to me. The explosion I can headcanon away, maybe the chamber where Shepard was had Reaper-level shields/armor or something. The rubble scene I just can't. I see no help for a seriously wounded Shepard anywhere in the vicinity. In a state like that, medical attention has mere minutes to be started in order for the patient to survive. Shepard can look forward to a slow, cold, lonely death.

Modifié par RocketManSR2, 09 janvier 2013 - 04:32 .

[Benchpress610]

3DandBeyond wrote...

in it for the lolz wrote...

Seems like the money EA gave to IGN is finally drying up.

The main IGN site featured reviews of Leviathan and Omega, created by their employees.  They didn't love them.  In fact, they used words like, meh and pointless.  I think it may well have more to do with IGN being involved in helping to sell games they review, but not getting any money from DLC.  IGN has links to Game Stop which are very likely subsidized and poor reviews don't sell games.

Guess they used up all the mileage they got by giving Chobot a role in the game…pathetic

[Wayning_Star]

I'm Commander Shepard and I promote the ME trilogy on the BSN.

(sorry, it just 'slipped out'..)

[crimzontearz]

The Grey Nayr wrote...

crimzontearz wrote...

http://www.ign.com/b...erly-end-a-game


I am speechless

really, I was not expecting this from IGN.....and I did not think I would ever say this but thank god other people are opening their eyes 

It's from one person at IGN, not the whole company.

It's also a load of crap. Mass Effect 3's endings were thematically widely different. That people cant get over the fact that the Crucible can only fire off in one way is petty and childish. It was going to be used no matter what, and it's firing is not the ending itself, the future Shepard chooses is.

Mass Effect 3 has seven endings before Extended Cut, and only a metagamer would be able to even notice the Crucible scene's similarity, and Bioware has stated numerous times as well that they don't make their games to suit metagamers' tastes. They make them for the experience, starting at the beginning and working your way to the end, not for someone who's gonna watch a youtube video of all the variants playing side-by-side and then ****** and moan about it..

ssssssssoooooooooooooo much wrong here.

if the idea is to make a game replayable then not just metagamers would notice the similarities but anyone who made a second playthrough to make different choices

furthermore about the bolded part. Sure, they may have (I would love a direct quote tho) but they did fail as my experience was completely ruined when they told me to start headcanoning the survival of my own character

[3DandBeyond]

The Grey Nayr wrote...

crimzontearz wrote...

http://www.ign.com/b...erly-end-a-game


I am speechless

really, I was not expecting this from IGN.....and I did not think I would ever say this but thank god other people are opening their eyes 

It's from one person at IGN, not the whole company.

It's also a load of crap. Mass Effect 3's endings were thematically widely different. That people cant get over the fact that the Crucible can only fire off in one way is petty and childish. It was going to be used no matter what, and it's firing is not the ending itself, the future Shepard chooses is.

Mass Effect 3 has seven endings before Extended Cut, and only a metagamer would be able to even notice the Crucible scene's similarity, and Bioware has stated numerous times as well that they don't make their games to suit metagamers' tastes. They make them for the experience, starting at the beginning and working your way to the end, not for someone who's gonna watch a youtube video of all the variants playing side-by-side and then ****** and moan about it..

Yet you have to metagame the endings that exist in order to even think Shepard made a halfway decent decision since Shepard has no reason be make one of these choices.  It's a crap shoot, random pick if anything, just to get it all over.

ME3's endings are not thematically related to the actual themes of the game, except in that they are thematically the opposite of what many people know their Shepard would do or consider doing.

It's not childish and petty to believe that the crucible would have been more logical of a thing if it actually did what people thought it would do.  It's terribly stupid to think that Shepard, after saying it would be a mistake to use the crucible without knowing what it did, then does just that.  There is no proof, nor any way of knowing that what the kid says it will do, is what it will do.  And that is also nothing like what people thought it would do.  It's also the most illogical of things that could exist based upon some plans that were suddenly found.  The plans indicate that whoever created them knew about the kid, his existence and his substance.  Who did?  Leviathan-they didn't make the plans.  Shepard certainly didn't.  And no one else knew about him.  The Protheans did not-they thought the catalyst (wherever that information came from) was the citadel or they determined the crucible would fit the citadel somehow and then called it the catalyst.

Examine the whole thing and you cannot say it makes sense-it is childish and ridiculous as it is.  Who decided it would work with the citadel?  And to do what?  To what?  It's a mess.

If someone just randomly decided to create something to get rid of the reapers, they would build a weapon.  If they met Sovereign or Harbinger, they'd believe the reapers were autonomous killers who didn't want them to know what they were doing or why.  They could theorize that the citadel works in conjunction with the relays so it would use them to spread some sort of energy that would affect the reapers-shut them down, weaken their shields, whatever.  But there's no way to go from there to believe someone would know they needed to adapt it to alter the programming of an AI that is controlling the reapers, when no one knew he existed, and certainly no one would know what his programming was.

It's like telling someone to create a computer peripheral to fit into some unknown connector and to serve an unknown purpose using an unknown process.  How could you do that? 

Nobody besides Shepard and Leviathan knew the kid existed (the AI existed).  And he does not seem to make his presence known unless the crucible is complete or mostly complete and at the citadel.


Your last point is really funny.  People don't have to watch youtube to experience the similarities.  They can play the game.  The endings are there.  The game's endings do fail in meta-gaming, but many people actually remember the game and stories within all 3 games, feel the endings fail in a roleplaying way as well.  A renegade would not jump at the chance to die just because-a renegade would tell the AI to go to hell.  A paragon made decisions and choices that cannot be reconciled with any of this. 

And 3 choices that are shades of awful and that are only based on EMS, is a horrid way to end a game.  BW doesn't want you to meta-game, eh?  Well, in my game BW told my Shepard that she could win this thing, the forces were pushing reapers back, her chances of winning were even.  My Shep was told she had a lot of assets and then in true meta-gaming fashion, she was told that she had more than enough EMS to do something, but how would anyone know what the minimum EMS needed is, and why if not meta-gaming would MP matter to what my Shepard knows, what I'm roleplaying?  What God being is telling my Shepard on her war assets screen what minimum EMS is needed, minimum to do what?  That's not roleplaying at all. 

In fact, the game is constantly telling you to metagame.  Do the fetch quests and you've got too many tiny reapers chasing you, well you need to go do a mission and come back-how do you role play that?  In what real world would that make sense?  You see on the Galaxy Map in the CIC that a lot of these systems seem to be reaper-controlled, so why the hell haven't they found these assets or why haven't these assets run away? 

The choices at the end or the highest form of metagaming, because there is nothing in the description of any of them that would lead any person to conclude that Shepard is doing anything Shepard should do.  A freaking choice.  Yeah, that's how to win a war that was all about people coming together to try and save themselves.  And, not just any choice, but one based upon what the enemy says, that comes from some unknown place, using an unknown object, created and adapted using some unknown knowledge gained from who knows where and how. 

Choices that are achieved using some unknown method and that will do some unknown thing using the big unknown thing that coordinates with three unknown things and that sprang from a change made to a previously unknown being.  Yeah, roleplay that.  Try not to metagame how Synthesis is able to fully integrate tech into the DNA of every organic thing in the galaxy-using what tech?  And that Synthetics will all gain full understanding of organics (that no longer will exist) from somewhere and never think that a rational person would ask how the hell all that can happen.

Modifié par 3DandBeyond, 09 janvier 2013 - 04:34 .

[Iakus]

3DandBeyond wrote...

Either go big or go home is exactly to the point.  There's something you learn when learning how to write stories.  They are exaggerated events and must be so, to attract attention and to evoke emotion.  That's because the reader or viewer or player must overcome a reasonable sense of disbelief.  So you have to make the story, the actions, big or they don't resonate.  If they force someone to make too many different imaginary connections (overcome too many obstacles) to just plain "feel" them, then they fail.  No one wants to continually watch a story about two people having a minor disagreement over whose car to drive to the store.  So the conflict is big and exaggerated.  It's more exciting and tense if the viewer knows there's a bomb under one car.

At the end of ME3, the game slows to a crawl-right where the excitement should really be building, the tension should be palpable.  And the kid pops up and nausea-you get to talk through to the end.  It'd be ok if there was some type of big debate, a war of wills or ideas, even.  But it's a session of Shepard asking questions and getting half-baked answers and not really questioning them.  Destroy is a real good example of that-the kid uses a lot of words and he actually explains very little.  Who knows what this means?  I know what it's supposed to mean based on slide shows, but still it makes no sense and the kid doesn't say anything that the slides show.  Then, there's that psychic hotline connection the LI or friend has.  Liara, I can understand since that's kind of how it could work if she was the LI or even a friend who'd done the mind probe thing. 

And beyond that, that ending lacked the exaggerated nature that Synthesis and Control had (also that Refuse had).  We get the in your face scenes of Shepard clearly dying in Synthesis and Control, and we get a huge powerful speech in Refuse, that leaves no doubt as to what the main character is willing to do and will do in making a "choice". 

In Destroy, we get a main character that has no idea what is going to happen and then we don't really know what did happen.  Shepard torso has no idea which friends are alive nor do they know whether Shepard is.  That's the ambiguity.  It isn't only about what the player knows, but it is about what the people we cared about in these games, know at the end.  They don't get closure and are forever stuck apart from each other. 

Seriously, professional writers didn't get this?

[dreamgazer]

iakus wrote...

Seriously, professional writers didn't get this?

Well, the rules that 3DandBeyond asserted are far from universal, but it looks like the Mass Effect writers didn't evaluate their target audience properly. 

[Iakus]

dreamgazer wrote...

iakus wrote...

Seriously, professional writers didn't get this?

Well, the rules that 3DandBeyond asserted are far from universal, but it looks like the Mass Effect writers didn't evaluate their target audience properly. 

That's...putting it rather mildly....

[dreamgazer]

iakus wrote...

dreamgazer wrote...

iakus wrote...

Seriously, professional writers didn't get this?

Well, the rules that 3DandBeyond asserted are far from universal, but it looks like the Mass Effect writers didn't evaluate their target audience properly. 

That's...putting it rather mildly....

Perhaps. I'm sure they've learned a lesson or two about what needs to satisfy when going forward, and who they're talking to.

[Someone With Mass]

One of their biggest mistakes was putting in several lines of dialogues that hinted at the fact that Shepard would do something like kill all the Reapers, retire and then live on a beach somewhere while making an ass-load of money of all the movies the rest of the galaxy will make about him or just keep on doing what he's good at.

I know it has happened in other fiction before where it doesn't go as planned, but here, it seems like such a dick move. Like them promising something positive, something that they know plenty of players would want, only to smack them in the face and laugh as they're doing the opposite.

Not to mention that it would have saved them a lot of trouble if they hadn't done that.

Needed more time? Well, you know what they say.

Modifié par Someone With Mass, 09 janvier 2013 - 05:54 .

[ABCoLD]

First off, heeheehee, nugget, IGN.

Beyond that, it's not that good a game, and most people know it. Sadly Mass Effect games are going to see a SHARP slide into the COD franchise model as the games' multiplayer components continue to be played and make money. As that side of the game makes more money then you'll see less and less production time and money spent on the single player experience.

[Fawx9]

chemiclord wrote...

crimzontearz wrote...

do you not see that as a sign that he was told to stop advocating that?

No, because it makes little logical sense to reach that conclusion.  One off-handed comment that had every sign of trolling to get some dander up doesn't change the (admittedly sparse) evidence to the contrary.  Bioware may have run with it... but it felt to me that they were more giving up trying to convince fans otherwise.  "You want to believe we put in a scene of him breathing to just say 'and then he died?'  Fine.  You go ahead and do that.  We really don't give a **** anymore.  Go be miserable."

Question, did Ottway die or live at the end of The Grey?

The final scene of that movie is remarkbably close to ME3 destory yet everyone in their right mind has no hope for that poor man. So why is it any leap of the imagination that the same thought process would occur with the ME3 scene?

The Grey Ending

PS: This is my headcanon ending style for Refuse. I hate that they made Shepard just stand there an look like an idiot. At least show them going out fighting.

Modifié par Fawx9, 09 janvier 2013 - 06:00 .

[crimzontearz]

Someone With Mass wrote...

One of their biggest mistakes was putting in several lines of dialogues that hinted at the fact that Shepard would do something like kill all the Reapers, retire and then live on a beach somewhere while making an ass-load of money of all the movies the rest of the galaxy will make about him or just keep on doing what he's good at.

I know it has happened in other fiction before where it doesn't go as planned, but here, it seems like such a dick move. Like them promising something positive, something that they know plenty of players would want, only to smack them in the face and laugh as they're doing the opposite.

Not to mention that it would have saved them a lot of trouble if they hadn't done that.

Needed more time? Well, you know what they say.

uh....a single slider would have done it for me....really ONE slider of Shepard alive and holding Liara + blue baby / holding hands with Miranda/ cruising with Steve .. ..whatever just a slide to say he **** Ing lives for certain

[crimzontearz]

Fawx9 wrote...

chemiclord wrote...

crimzontearz wrote...

do you not see that as a sign that he was told to stop advocating that?

No, because it makes little logical sense to reach that conclusion.  One off-handed comment that had every sign of trolling to get some dander up doesn't change the (admittedly sparse) evidence to the contrary.  Bioware may have run with it... but it felt to me that they were more giving up trying to convince fans otherwise.  "You want to believe we put in a scene of him breathing to just say 'and then he died?'  Fine.  You go ahead and do that.  We really don't give a **** anymore.  Go be miserable."

Question, did Ottway die or live at the end of The Grey?

The final scene of that movie is remarkbably close to ME3 destory yet everyone in their right mind has no hope for that poor man. So why is it any leap of the imagination that the same thought process would occur with the ME3 scene?

The Grey Ending

wanted to watch it, heard about the ending, said **** it and never watched it nor I plan to

[dreamgazer]

ABCoLD wrote...

Beyond that, it's not that good a game, and most people know it.

They do?

[Someone With Mass]

crimzontearz wrote...
uh....a single slider would have done it for me....really ONE slider of Shepard alive and holding Liara + blue baby / holding hands with Miranda/ cruising with Steve .. ..whatever just a slide to say he **** Ing lives for certain

Sure. I'd actually accept something like that, simply to break up the sad tone and make the whole thing actually feel like a victory instead of making me think "I united the galaxy and solved almost every major internal struggle between several races for THIS?"