648 réponses à ce sujet

[Spartas Husky]

TheRealJayDee wrote...

iakus wrote...

Don't forget claiming the that it was just "confusion" about the ending.  It couldn't possibly be that, yes, we understood the endings just fine and were repulsed by them.  Nope, the audience simply didn't get it.

To be fair - some of us also imagined we had genuine problems with the ending because we juuuuust couldn't let go of Shepard and Mass Effect.

Thats because the hero not dying is a core theme of Mass Effect. Wether some like me didn't want to let go or not is irrelevant. The Immortal hero, like fellowship, like Individuality, like Impossible odds being overwhelmed through cooperation are also core themes of the series. Is not our fault through 2.5 games they rewarded our efforts against impossible odds.

If the train of thought was that there is a problem with "costumers" for not letting go of the character, they why not kill shepard in the suicide mission? That was a blind jump if there was ever one.

We dont know if there is a reaper fleet at the other side, we dont know if we will go into a black hole, we dont know opposition or technology. As hackett stated one, that was "the" definition of a suicide mission.

Yet we were rewaded yet again with the survival of the hero if we put in the "effort".

[chemiclord]

To be fair - some of us also imagined we had genuine problems with the ending because we juuuuust couldn't let go of Shepard and Mass Effect.

Judging from the amount of posts saying they won't support a ME without Shepard and demand that he be the protagonist in ME4... uh yeah... I think that IS still a pretty big problem.

And yes, there WERE a lot of people who jumped to the worst case scenario with what was presented out of nothing but spite and bitterness, refusing to accept any more positive conclusion.

Just because the statements made by Bioware might not have applied to you doesn't mean they were false or excuses.

Modifié par chemiclord, 02 avril 2013 - 12:40 .

[Spartas Husky]

Yeah after over and over the main protagonist who is identified with being unrealistically unlucky and again and again we are rewarded with his or her survival lets just kill him because is realistic...

[chemiclord]

Spartas Husky wrote...
If the train of thought was that there is a problem with "costumers" for not letting go of the character, they why not kill shepard in the suicide mission? That was a blind jump if there was ever one.

The issue I have is the idea that either side has much of a "problem" at all.

There are fans who are HELLBENT on being insulted by anything that Bioware tries to say.  They rip words or phrases out of context to create disparaging memes... any additional content is spit on as "not enough" and "a slap to the face."  They come here every day, not for insight, but to get worked up further and keep their froth at a peak level.

Then there is Bioware who use those inconsolable (and dare I say "entitled") ****s as an excuse to not face anything resembling difficult questions.

If both sides could just get over themselves, repeat to themselves, "Ya know, the other side isn't TRYING to hurt me", perhaps some constructive discourse could follow.

[TheRealJayDee]

chemiclord wrote...

Judging from the amount of posts saying they won't support a ME without Shepard and demand that he be the protagonist in ME4... uh yeah... I think that IS still a pretty big problem.

And yes, there WERE a lot of people who jumped to the worst case scenario with what was presented out of nothing but spite and bitterness, refusing to accept any more positive conclusion.

Just because the statements made by Bioware might not have applied to you doesn't mean they were false or excuses.

Ah, well, that might be true. Then again, although I don't want Shepard back, I can totally understand why people would - he was a rather neat protagonist and his story didn't have a very satisfying conclusion.

As for Bioware's statements not applying to me - after not really having read or heard any statement that does apply to me (and others with similar views) for over a year now and instead being lumped together with all sorts of unreasonable folks... yeah, whatever. I tried and tried and tried to make reasonable and constructive contributions to a neccessary discussion Bioware sadly refused to partake in. Now I've finally reached a stage of not giving a **** anymore.

[GreyLycanTrope]

TheRealJayDee wrote...
I tried and tried and tried to make reasonable and constructive contributions to a neccessary discussion Bioware sadly refused to partake in. Now I've finally reached a stage of not giving a **** anymore.

Welcome to the club.

[drayfish]

Spartas Husky wrote...

TheRealJayDee wrote...

iakus wrote...

Don't forget claiming the that it was just "confusion" about the ending.  It couldn't possibly be that, yes, we understood the endings just fine and were repulsed by them.  Nope, the audience simply didn't get it.

To be fair - some of us also imagined we had genuine problems with the ending because we juuuuust couldn't let go of Shepard and Mass Effect.

Thats because the hero not dying is a core theme of Mass Effect. Wether some like me didn't want to let go or not is irrelevant. The Immortal hero, like fellowship, like Individuality, like Impossible odds being overwhelmed through cooperation are also core themes of the series. Is not our fault through 2.5 games they rewarded our efforts against impossible odds.

If the train of thought was that there is a problem with "costumers" for not letting go of the character, they why not kill shepard in the suicide mission? That was a blind jump if there was ever one.

We dont know if there is a reaper fleet at the other side, we dont know if we will go into a black hole, we dont know opposition or technology. As hackett stated one, that was "the" definition of a suicide mission.

Yet we were rewaded yet again with the survival of the hero if we put in the "effort".

Personally, I'm not sure if I'd go so far as to say that the hero not dying is a central theme of Mass Effect, but I do agree that it was completely unnecessary as depicted, utterly tonally jarring, and just a cheap means of trying to elicit an unearned emotional reaction - again fundamentally misjudging 'gratuitous emotional manipulation' with 'pathos'.

There is no catharsis offered by slaughtering Shepard at the end of Mass Effect 3 (or rather, by headlocking the player into surrendering Shepard to be willingly massacred in order to serve the enemy's goals), it's just a gauche, pretentious and fundamentally misunderstood theft of a whole tradition of messianic motifs.  Note the way that Shepard hurls him/her self into the green beam with arms splayed like a cross, dying to give others life?  ...Real subtle, Bioware.

But by jamming this sacrificial trope onto a tale in which Shepard is shown to be dying in order to prove true a hateful notion of racial intolerance (different cultures can't live together in peace unless we force them to against their will), it becomes a grotesque bastardisation of the image's original poetry and grace.

(Also, once Shepard had already died and been brought back at the beginning of ME2, and gone on to defy the surety of a 'suicide mission', killing him/her again was rather arbitrary.  To me, if Bioware were really married to the idea of a tragic, literally self-sacrificial endpoint they rather shot themselves in the foot narratively as soon the words 'Lazarus Project' were mentioned.)

It should also be mentioned that an 'Epic' story in no way requires such death and loss (and an 'Epic' was, after all, what Bioware were shooting for, as evidenced in that naff Stargazer epilogue)...

I have blathered about how unwarranted this cheap death is, and how unjustified it is in the tradition of Epic literature, elsewhere (http://drayfish.word...endings-matter/), but suffice it to say, it's not a requirement in the great majority of ancient texts that the hero must give their life (certainly not to such a contradictory, arbitrary resolution).  Indeed, that is more of a Elizabethan tragedy motif - but Shepard is not a tragically flawed hero, whose foibles bring him/her down.

The story can't even be categorised as a successful endorsement of nihilism (despite this being what the text ultimately embraces), because the EC went out of its way to so glowingly celebrate each of the results of Shepard's war-crime choices as happy-happy joy making glee...  So in any conceivable way, Shepard's death is needlessly cheapened (indeed, almost mocked) by the narrative structure that Bioware ham-fistedly tried to wrangle it into. 

I'm sure that they intended the easter egg of Shepard being buried under rubble and taking a breath to be a secret, tantalising sign of hope for the player, but in reality it just ends up being a revealing metaphor for how they decided to treat the character in his/her last moments: another piece of garbage to be thrown in the trash.

Modifié par drayfish, 02 avril 2013 - 01:38 .

[RedBeardJim]

chemiclord wrote...

Archonsg wrote...

The ardat-yakshi issue is one that doesn't really stand up to a logic test.
If they needed could only use ardat-yakshi to make Banshees, how is it that the numbers of ardat-yakshi jumped to such numbers between the time Samara spoke of this to you, to the present day where hundreds - thousands of these things can be made from one single monastery.

If there wasn't only 3, did Samara lie, how could she lie, or be so incompetent to the point of not knowing how many ardat-yakshi there actually are given her oath and reason for being a Justicar.

Personally I think that its MP interfering with SP.
They needed a reason for hordes of Banshees.

Well, that might simply be an issue of odd wording.  If you take the context of the discussion as limited to only Samara's daughters, she's simply saying that she has three daughters, and all of them are ardat-yakshi.  She's likely not saying anything about the actual number of ardat-yakshi in the galaxy at all.

When Shep asks how many children Samara has, she says, "Three. And three Ardat-Yakshi are in existence today. It is as it sounds." There's not a lot that context can do to obfuscate that. It's a straightforward continuity error, especially seeing as how in ME3 her other two daughters are at the monastery with multiple other A-Y's.

[chemiclord]

RedBeardJim wrote...

chemiclord wrote...

Archonsg wrote...

The ardat-yakshi issue is one that doesn't really stand up to a logic test.
If they needed could only use ardat-yakshi to make Banshees, how is it that the numbers of ardat-yakshi jumped to such numbers between the time Samara spoke of this to you, to the present day where hundreds - thousands of these things can be made from one single monastery.

If there wasn't only 3, did Samara lie, how could she lie, or be so incompetent to the point of not knowing how many ardat-yakshi there actually are given her oath and reason for being a Justicar.

Personally I think that its MP interfering with SP.
They needed a reason for hordes of Banshees.

Well, that might simply be an issue of odd wording.  If you take the context of the discussion as limited to only Samara's daughters, she's simply saying that she has three daughters, and all of them are ardat-yakshi.  She's likely not saying anything about the actual number of ardat-yakshi in the galaxy at all.

When Shep asks how many children Samara has, she says, "Three. And three Ardat-Yakshi are in existence today. It is as it sounds." There's not a lot that context can do to obfuscate that. It's a straightforward continuity error, especially seeing as how in ME3 her other two daughters are at the monastery with multiple other A-Y's.

Not really.  All it could be saying is.  "I have three daughters.  Three daughters are ardat-yakshi."  It's a fairly archaic turn of phrase, but that's all it has to mean.

[RedBeardJim]

chemiclord wrote...

RedBeardJim wrote...

chemiclord wrote...

Archonsg wrote...

The ardat-yakshi issue is one that doesn't really stand up to a logic test.
If they needed could only use ardat-yakshi to make Banshees, how is it that the numbers of ardat-yakshi jumped to such numbers between the time Samara spoke of this to you, to the present day where hundreds - thousands of these things can be made from one single monastery.

If there wasn't only 3, did Samara lie, how could she lie, or be so incompetent to the point of not knowing how many ardat-yakshi there actually are given her oath and reason for being a Justicar.

Personally I think that its MP interfering with SP.
They needed a reason for hordes of Banshees.

Well, that might simply be an issue of odd wording.  If you take the context of the discussion as limited to only Samara's daughters, she's simply saying that she has three daughters, and all of them are ardat-yakshi.  She's likely not saying anything about the actual number of ardat-yakshi in the galaxy at all.

When Shep asks how many children Samara has, she says, "Three. And three Ardat-Yakshi are in existence today. It is as it sounds." There's not a lot that context can do to obfuscate that. It's a straightforward continuity error, especially seeing as how in ME3 her other two daughters are at the monastery with multiple other A-Y's.

Not really.  All it could be saying is.  "I have three daughters.  Three daughters are ardat-yakshi."  It's a fairly archaic turn of phrase, but that's all it has to mean.

Yeah, except earlier in the conversation she says "As far as I know, only three exist today. Two chose a life of seclusion. The third ran." This is before the "they're my kids" reveal, when she's just talking about AY's in general.

[ScriptBabe]

Bravo, Drayfish, I second everything you said. And now I'm going to go check out your blog post. God knows mine is filled with hair tearing posts about the ending of this game.  Endings matter.  The journey is not enough.   Both Lost and Battlestar Galactica were ultimately ruined by their endings.  Because ultimately it's all about keeping your promises to your reader/viewer/player.

Modifié par ScriptBabe, 02 avril 2013 - 02:25 .

[David7204]

Okay, most of that's true, but I can't imagine Shepard not dying for a low EMS playthrough.

[ScriptBabe]

Great blog entry, Drayfish. Really enjoyed reading it.  Interesting that we both went to the same place -- The Odyssey.  I can't remember if I brought it up on this thread or another one but it was foremost in my mind.

Modifié par ScriptBabe, 02 avril 2013 - 02:31 .

[Wayning_Star]

drayfish wrote...

Spartas Husky wrote...

TheRealJayDee wrote...

iakus wrote...

Don't forget claiming the that it was just "confusion" about the ending.  It couldn't possibly be that, yes, we understood the endings just fine and were repulsed by them.  Nope, the audience simply didn't get it.

To be fair - some of us also imagined we had genuine problems with the ending because we juuuuust couldn't let go of Shepard and Mass Effect.

Thats because the hero not dying is a core theme of Mass Effect. Wether some like me didn't want to let go or not is irrelevant. The Immortal hero, like fellowship, like Individuality, like Impossible odds being overwhelmed through cooperation are also core themes of the series. Is not our fault through 2.5 games they rewarded our efforts against impossible odds.

If the train of thought was that there is a problem with "costumers" for not letting go of the character, they why not kill shepard in the suicide mission? That was a blind jump if there was ever one.

We dont know if there is a reaper fleet at the other side, we dont know if we will go into a black hole, we dont know opposition or technology. As hackett stated one, that was "the" definition of a suicide mission.

Yet we were rewaded yet again with the survival of the hero if we put in the "effort".

Personally, I'm not sure if I'd go so far as to say that the hero not dying is a central theme of Mass Effect, but I do agree that it was completely unnecessary as depicted, utterly tonally jarring, and just a cheap means of trying to elicit an unearned emotional reaction - again fundamentally misjudging 'gratuitous emotional manipulation' with 'pathos'.

There is no catharsis offered by slaughtering Shepard at the end of Mass Effect 3 (or rather, by headlocking the player into surrendering Shepard to be willingly massacred in order to serve the enemy's goals), it's just a gauche, pretentious and fundamentally misunderstood theft of a whole tradition of messianic motifs.  Note the way that Shepard hurls him/her self into the green beam with arms splayed like a cross, dying to give others life?  ...Real subtle, Bioware.

But by jamming this sacrificial trope onto a tale in which Shepard is shown to be dying in order to prove true a hateful notion of racial intolerance (different cultures can't live together in peace unless we force them to against their will), it becomes a grotesque bastardisation of the image's original poetry and grace.

(Also, once Shepard had already died and been brought back at the beginning of ME2, and gone on to defy the surety of a 'suicide mission', killing him/her again was rather arbitrary.  To me, if Bioware were really married to the idea of a tragic, literally self-sacrificial endpoint they rather shot themselves in the foot narratively as soon the words 'Lazarus Project' were mentioned.)

It should also be mentioned that an 'Epic' story in no way requires such death and loss (and an 'Epic' was, after all, what Bioware were shooting for, as evidenced in that naff Stargazer epilogue)...

I have blathered about how unwarranted this cheap death is, and how unjustified it is in the tradition of Epic literature, elsewhere (http://drayfish.word...endings-matter/), but suffice it to say, it's not a requirement in the great majority of ancient texts that the hero must give their life (certainly not to such a contradictory, arbitrary resolution).  Indeed, that is more of a Elizabethan tragedy motif - but Shepard is not a tragically flawed hero, whose foibles bring him/her down.

The story can't even be categorised as a successful endorsement of nihilism (despite this being what the text ultimately embraces), because the EC went out of its way to so glowingly celebrate each of the results of Shepard's war-crime choices as happy-happy joy making glee...  So in any conceivable way, Shepard's death is needlessly cheapened (indeed, almost mocked) by the narrative structure that Bioware ham-fistedly tried to wrangle it into. 

I'm sure that they intended the easter egg of Shepard being buried under rubble and taking a breath to be a secret, tantalising sign of hope for the player, but in reality it just ends up being a revealing metaphor for how they decided to treat the character in his/her last moments: another piece of garbage to be thrown in the trash.

this stuff is way too advanced for general VG audience, why discuss stuff that doesn't apply, even IF it's applicable to your assessment?

Treat a character in a space video game? Trust me, the basis of existence isn't being threatened by it.. Nor are the sanity of any given philosophers..they're already pretty much nuts. Part of the job description.

Modifié par Wayning_Star, 02 avril 2013 - 02:39 .

[drayfish]

ScriptBabe wrote...

Bravo, Drayfish, I second everything you said. And now I'm going to go check out your blog post. God knows mine is filled with hair tearing posts about the ending of this game.  Endings matter.  The journey is not enough.   Both Lost and Battlestar Galactica were ultimately ruined by their endings.  Because ultimately it's all about keeping your promises to your reader/viewer/player.

Thank you, ScriptBabe, very kind.

And I must say, I've read all of your blogs on the issue, and heartily agree with them all.  Even - if I'm honest - with your recent flashes of sympathy for those who (perhaps unknowingly) damned the franchise with their hubris.*




* And yes, you'll find many a frothbag rant about the game on my blog (indeed, writing a reaction to Mass Effect 3 is what got the whole thing started in the first place..)  But there's also a petulent dig at LOST too.  So I'm an all-inclusive malcontent.

[ScriptBabe]

I was talking about promises. Let me use an example from television. I don't know how many of you watched Heroes. I watched the first season (I do rather suspect they had copies of George's and my Wild Card series on their shelves, but I still enjoyed it. ) That being said -- what was the promise they made? Not that stuff about the Cheerleader. The fundamental promise was that all these disperate people with differing abilities would come together at the end, join forces and defeat a villain whose power was to rob them of the very thing that made them special and who embodied all their powers. He was incredibly powerful. It was going to require teamwork to defeat him. As we got down to the final three or so episodes I began to get a very bad feeling about this, and sure enough the final episode was a trainwreck. Everyone ran around uselessly. The cop got shot, Nova Boy couldn't control his nuke power, and then Hiro stuck the bad guy with the pointy end. I literally threw a pillow at the television. Then to add insult to injury (based on what I read) when the second season began nobody stayed dead -- not the bad guy, not nuke boy, no one. So not only was the ending terrible the journey didn't matter either since nothing had been accomplished through 22 episodes of television.  Mass Effect made me a promise that through loyalty, friendship and unity I and my companions would defeat a overwhelmingly powerful enemy.  They broke the promise.

Modifié par ScriptBabe, 02 avril 2013 - 02:40 .

[Wayning_Star]

drayfish wrote...

ScriptBabe wrote...

Bravo, Drayfish, I second everything you said. And now I'm going to go check out your blog post. God knows mine is filled with hair tearing posts about the ending of this game.  Endings matter.  The journey is not enough.   Both Lost and Battlestar Galactica were ultimately ruined by their endings.  Because ultimately it's all about keeping your promises to your reader/viewer/player.

Thank you, ScriptBabe, very kind.

And I must say, I've read all of your blogs on the issue, and heartily agree with them all.  Even - if I'm honest - with your recent flashes of sympathy for those who (perhaps unknowingly) damned the franchise with their hubris.*




* And yes, you'll find many a frothbag rant about the game on my blog (indeed, writing a reaction to Mass Effect 3 is what got the whole thing started in the first place..)  But there's also a petulent dig at LOST too.  So I'm an all-inclusive malcontent.

hubris...lol good one

Modifié par Wayning_Star, 02 avril 2013 - 02:41 .

[ScriptBabe]

drayfish wrote...

ScriptBabe wrote...

Bravo, Drayfish, I second everything you said. And now I'm going to go check out your blog post. God knows mine is filled with hair tearing posts about the ending of this game.  Endings matter.  The journey is not enough.   Both Lost and Battlestar Galactica were ultimately ruined by their endings.  Because ultimately it's all about keeping your promises to your reader/viewer/player.

Thank you, ScriptBabe, very kind.

And I must say, I've read all of your blogs on the issue, and heartily agree with them all.  Even - if I'm honest - with your recent flashes of sympathy for those who (perhaps unknowingly) damned the franchise with their hubris.*




* And yes, you'll find many a frothbag rant about the game on my blog (indeed, writing a reaction to Mass Effect 3 is what got the whole thing started in the first place..)  But there's also a petulent dig at LOST too.  So I'm an all-inclusive malcontent.

Thank you back, and I love the phrase.  We should form the club of All-Inclusive Malcontents.  

[Wayning_Star]

are the philosopher beings gone yet? They scare me..

[drayfish]

Wayning_Star wrote...

this stuff is way too advances for general VG audience, why discuss stuff that doesn't apply, even IF it's applicable to your assessment?

Treat a character in a space video game? Trust me, the basis of existence isn't being threatened by it.. Nor are the sanity of any given philosophers..they're already pretty much nuts. Part of the job description.

I'm sorry to say, but this post makes me extremely disheartened, if (and I hope I'm not) I am reading you correctly.

Are you seriously suggesting that videogames are too 'low brow' of a medium to be spoken of in the same context as the rich tradition of narrative and theme that is human expression?  Because if so, I'm not sure I even know where to begin in responding to that...

Whether you think that they are successful at doing so or not, videogames tap into innumerable traditions of narrative and visual art.  Games like Deus Ex stem directly from cyberpunk narratives that trace their roots all the way back through Frankenstein and Prometheus (a point Human Revolution recently made quite explicit); games like Red Dead Redemption tap into and reconstruct Greek myth in profound and telling ways (go back and play it again and keep an ear out for the amount of times characters reference The Iliad, or pay attention to the direct, telling parallel to Odysseus' journey to return to his son Telemachus, and John's journey to return to his son).  Hell, even The Legend of Zelda knowingly takes up cues from fairytale and heroic myth.

Games are extensions of humanity's natural, evolving expansion of narrative through fiction, film, television, graphic novels, offering expansive stages upon which to create more interactive, immersive explorations of all of those fundamental tropes and motifs that are hardwired into our psyches from the very first moment our elders tell us stories to lull us to sleep.

Of course they reiterate, re-contextualise and reinvent the familiar.  They are an organic expression of our creation and play, and at our very core, that is everything that makes us human.

[ScriptBabe]

Wayning_Star wrote...

are the philosopher beings gone yet? They scare me..

I thought you were joking.  I hadn't seen your earlier post.  I think these games have huge value.  I think they are a fundamentally new form of entertainment, and have the potential to be considered art.  And maybe elevating the discussion is what we should be doing.  As long as companies can dismiss players as whining children there isn't going to be any effort to achieve a higher standard.

Modifié par ScriptBabe, 02 avril 2013 - 03:10 .

[IntelligentME3Fanboy]

April 2013

[tevix]

@Scriptbabe

Seconded, though I would dare argue many already consider games a form of art.

inb4 fix

If anyone fixes this with "artistic vision/artistic integrity" I will give your profile a dirty look.

[XxDarkTimexX]

- Songlian - wrote...

I think the fanbase overreacted. Yeah, the ending had plot holes and it's kinda messy, but everyone on BSN acted like BioWare set their mother on fire. I think that reaction was absurd, and what's even more baffling is that people still hold onto it after a year or so.

I'm grateful for the EC ending and I realize it was done to please the angry fans, which is a very positive aspect of this entire revolt thing, but as far as I'm concerned, I have no beef with the Mass Effect team. It was a great ride until that fated ending, and nobody's perfect after all.

True, if Bioware would have admitted then at least the fan base would have understand and shut up about it until the dlc came out, after all it takes a real man to admit that they were wrong. Look at Bethesda, Rock star, Valve, and other companies have admitted in the past what they did was a mistake. Even if Bioware admitted and the fan base still didn't shut up then it only proves one thing that people are greedy. That’s just my opinion. Here’s a tip for Bioware in the future “stand by what you love (fan base) and not what you hate”.    

[XxDarkTimexX]

XxDarkTimexX wrote...

- Songlian - wrote...

I think the fanbase overreacted. Yeah, the ending had plot holes and it's kinda messy, but everyone on BSN acted like BioWare set their mother on fire. I think that reaction was absurd, and what's even more baffling is that people still hold onto it after a year or so.

I'm grateful for the EC ending and I realize it was done to please the angry fans, which is a very positive aspect of this entire revolt thing, but as far as I'm concerned, I have no beef with the Mass Effect team. It was a great ride until that fated ending, and nobody's perfect after all.

True, if Bioware would have admitted then at least the fan base would have understand and shut up about it until the dlc came out, after all it takes a real man to admit that they were wrong. Look at Bethesda, Rock star, Valve, and other companies have admitted in the past what they did was a mistake. Even if Bioware admitted and the fan base still didn't shut up then it only proves one thing that people are greedy. That’s just my opinion. Here’s a tip for Bioware in the future “stand by what you love (fan base) and not what you hate”. If you write a story then make it to be the best one you have never done.