Fast Jimmy wrote...
Besides that, I am not "whining" about the ME3 endings. Do you see me stomping my feet, crying out and gnashing my teeth?
Yes actually. This post is just full of it.
![=]](https://lvlt.forum.bioware.com/public/style_emoticons/default/sideways.png)
Fast Jimmy wrote...
Concern and worry are snynonyms, dude. Being concerned about something and having a responsibility about something are two VERY different things. Please read your own original words that I was responding to instead of being disinegnous.
Besides that, I am not "whining" about the ME3 endings. Do you see me stomping my feet, crying out and gnashing my teeth? Do you see me demanding that Bioware remake them? And give me a happy ending where I can fly off into the sunset with my LI of choice? Or be able to flip the Catalyst the bird, hop into a starfighter ship and blow up all the Reaper ships with my awesome flying and shooting, fist pumping while "Joker and the Thief" blasts on the speakers? No. You see me saying none of those things.
My posts have broken down why the endings are poorly constructed and written. It points out flaws in the narrative, inconsistenices that don't add up. It also discusses the format of video game endings and why ME (especially the original endings) were terribly put together if they were attempting to foster a feeling of completion and finality for the players.
Ambiguity in whether or not you have just sentenced an entire galaxy to death or not is not good. Ambiguity in if you just condemned everyone in existence to a life of robo-mind control for all eternity is not good. Ambiguity that your character wakes up and takes a breath in a place that is scientifically impossible for them to do so unless the entire last ten minutes sequence (which was very bizarre and surreal) was all a dream is NOT GOOD.
Couple that with the fact that no previous choice made in the entire game comes into play at all beyond a number to the endings and the fact that no questions are answered about the fate of your friends, your allies or even your enemies (even the original Destroy was a little nebulous about if the Reapers were truly dead - one could say they simply looked stunned) and you can see that the lack of closure abounded everywhere.
It wasn't a design choice not to tell the player everything. It was a design choice to not tell the player ANYTHING. Every detail was so generic and unexplained that it could result in a million different explanations. And, while that may work for a Ridely Scott film like Bladerunner, where it can add to the film if there is mystery if Deckard is a replicant or not, this is a video game, a game that engages the player with choices. We are not watching the story of Shepherd. We are DEFINING the story of Shepherd. Despite dev comments prior to release, the players were not co-authors of this series ending and we were given the same bespoked endings.
No details, no closure. No closure, no catharsis. No catharsis, and people then begin to wonder what they were doing spending hundreds of hours playing a game series to begin with. That's NEVER the experience you want people to have when playing a game.
Is this everyone's experience? Of course not. But is it a very common, if not the majority's experience? Yes. Obviously so.
People can pretend the BSN is its own little micorcosm of haters of ME3, but anywhere you see the game talked about, the endings are mentioined. If not as a full-on negative, then as something that the person discussing them has to defend in some way. GI did an issue a few months back where ME3 won RPG of the year. The description of the award was nearly defensive and apologetic, as was the Editor's Note for that issue, which explained their voting process and detailing out that their votes are not bought from publishers, but are centered around debate and argument about games. This is a perfect example of the very obvious fact - the endings are good for some, neutral for others, but infuriatingly upsetting for a non-trivial group of people. So much so that everyone in the gaming community knows that bringing it up without starting a fight is like walking on eggshells.
That's not a good experience you want attached to your video game. And it is NOT because it isn't happy. It is because it is unclear and lacks any attempt to make you feel like your choices resulted in anything but the same exact thing everyone else got, except for the color of your explosions.
THAT'S what DA3 should pay attention to. Don't make your endings wide open to nothing but interpretation. Give an ending like DA:O, where there is so much variability and reflection of choice at the end, that the very next thing people want to do after beating your game is start it over so they can see how the endings play out differently based on their choices. Not make them want to throw their TV out of a window because they felt like they had just wasted huge chunks of their lives on a false promise of choice.
I am going to go ahead and assume you
did play the EC and the Leviathan DLC. In the EC a lot of these horrible terrible ambiguity is "fixed". See that's the nice thing about Bioware, they're willing to fix the mistakes they make, not something a lot of developers are willing to do these days. Not that I really though that the original ending was a mistake but we're going with the idea that your subjective ranting has some validity. Furthermore if you
did play both the EC and Leviathan I'm not really sure how you are still whining about unacceptable levels of ambiguity. The Reapers are just another rogue AI. Which was developed literally eons ago. By a race whose morality seems to have precious little in common with ours, is it then such a leap to believe their reasoning so alien to ours? And your continued argument that the only difference in the endings were "different colored explosions" is ludicrious. That's where the cinematics stopped, sure, but the EC brings the horrible terrible ambiguity-anxiety to a level on par with Origins. I know the next torrent of whining will involve the "THESE WERE DLC'S AND SHOULD HAVE BEEN INCLUDED IN THE BASE GAME!!!1111oneoneone" complaint but really that's an entirely different discussion. If you
choose to continue lecturing Bioware a unfinished project that's your biz.
As for people decrying the ending because it was ambiguous rather than because there wasn't a puppies and rainbow option... This thread seems to be a good example of the opposite. You seem to be including the puppies-and-rainbows people under the ambiguity-is-bad group that has apparently at some point chosen you as their spokesperson. Must have missed that. Maybe add it to the list of self congratulatory links in your sig. ME3 has so far sold the best of the ME series (in the time frame it's been available) implying that the game is excellent, it wins GOTY awards
because it is excellent not
despite the ending. But anyway that's not the point I wanted to make, the point I wanted to make is that a non-trivial (I liked that turn of phrase, kinda impressive sounding while being TOTALLY ambiguous) amount of people picked up ME3 while having either not played any previous ME games or just ME1/2. You see where I am going with this yes? For a non-trivial group of people the ambiguity-anxiety would never have existed. Implying that a non-trivial amount of people whining about the ending are doing so for no other reason that there wasn't a puppies-and-rainbow option. Also implying that Bioware made a highly successful game without giving free handjobs for all the hardcore loreists.
If you wanna argue that it was unacceptable levels of ambiguity that causes the continued whining (though I honestly have trouble seeing how this could be AFTER the EC and Leviathan) then fine, we'll just have to disagree. But don't pretend that even the microcosm of the hardcore fans found on BSN and other gaming sites are united in what made the ending so horrible terrible.
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