1470 réponses à ce sujet

[Iakus]

Morlath wrote...

I wonder if video games are the only medium where an ending to a story is considered "broken" and needs "fixing"...

More to the point. It says something about video gamers that they think they've got a right to demand people change their own creations because of the "broken" ending.

Nope.  It's been happening for over a century

[Iakus]

dreamgazer wrote...

SpamBot2000 wrote...

Or they could maybe try fixing the ending, for realz this time.

Who are they going to choose to satisfy, though, and who's to say the ending they spend their resources on will be received any better? Look at all the different camps and their ideals of how to "fix" or "maintain" the ending.  That's what they're walking into if they decide to craft a different ending.

Multiple endings for multiple characters.  Isn't that the point of being given choices?

[PinkysPain]

iakus wrote...
Nope.  It's been happening for over a century

Nice to see sometimes the grim derp crowd loses.

[Archonsg]

@morlath

Would you consider errors breaking the player's immersion or his/her suspension of disbelieve to be "broken"? 

If not why, since such errors are of technical nature in narrative and structure to a story.

Modifié par Archonsg, 09 mai 2013 - 03:35 .

[JamesFaith]

iakus wrote...


Multiple endings for multiple characters.  Isn't that the point of being given choices?

Not necessarily. These choices can be used for altering story itself with fixed endings, f.e. Deux Ex 1.

[dreamgazer]

PinkysPain wrote...

iakus wrote...
Nope.  It's been happening for over a century

Nice to see sometimes the grim derp crowd loses.

The "grim derp crowd"? Seriously?

Anyway:

Wikipedia wrote ...

George Orwell wrote, "Psychologically the latter part of Great Expectations is about the best thing Dickens ever did," but, like John Forster and several early 20th-century writers, including George Bernard Shaw, felt that the original ending was more consistent with the draft, as well as the natural working out of the tale. Modern literary criticism is split over the matter.

[Iakus]

dreamgazer wrote...

The "grim derp crowd"? Seriously?

Anyway:

Wikipedia wrote ...

George Orwell wrote, "Psychologically the latter part of Great Expectations is about the best thing Dickens ever did," but, like John Forster and several early 20th-century writers, including George Bernard Shaw, felt that the original ending was more consistent with the draft, as well as the natural working out of the tale. Modern literary criticism is split over the matter.

And opinions here aren't?

[TheProtheans]

Well closure is also one, but you seemed to have that one firmly covered.

[Mastone]

Morlath wrote...

jstme wrote...

How many optional chapters to a book did you buy after book was released? Zero... 
Did you buy 15min long expansions to movies after watching the original? Nope...
Video games are the only medium where content can be released even after the original was released. So broken things CAN actually be fixed.
And consumers have every right to demand things to be changed. Creators have every right to ignore those demands.
It is really easy to understand unless you consider that calling yourself an artist suddenly casts some sort of immunity spell resulting in green wave that can magically simultaneously block all critique all other the galaxy. 

- Authors are actually asked to write small novellas for anthology books and they tend write smaller side stories for their main series. An "extra chapter" to the main story arch if you will. And yes, I've bought some of these.

- Ever heard of a Director's Cut for a film? Movies can get released with extra scenes that were removed during the production of the original.

And there is a very big difference between something that is actually broken and something that either doesn't work from a story telling standpoint or is just extremely unpopular. An unpopular ending is not a broken ending, an story twist that you don't like is not a broken story.

What's easy to understand is people using their dislike for the ending as a way of attacking Bioware with attacks that, quite frankly, have nothing to do with the issue at hand.

Majority of BSN - Dislikes/hates the ending of ME3.

This does not make ME3 broken as a story.

Have you played all the games?
Well if you understand what you have played in ME1 and to a lesser extend ME2, you will come to the conclusion that ME3 is broken..it tries to be everything it is not.
ME1 was all about choices and how they affected the unfolding of the story, even with ME2 which was much less in terms of storytelling, gave you the player a miljon difefrent ways to tackle any situation who you killed.spared which you saved which you let die and so on...ME3 ended it all with canon breaking contradictoryelements  which were totally out of place in the ME universe.
I can't speak for everyone, but I am not attacking Bioware because I want to, but because they are f*cking up everything that made them great in teh first place ..its not only Masss Effect either, they failed with Dragon Age2, Knights of the old republic online should never have been done ( which I stated on numerous occasions all around the net way before they did it) and in the end they failed with Mass Effect 3..

Now I already hear some fanboy/girl screaming that a true Bioware fan will keep supporting them, well I am saying that a true Bioware fan tells them the truth and tells them that they are slipping if not fallen already and also tell them the following:
-Fire Casey Hudson and everyone that was responsible, I have nothing against him or anyone responsible, but I think they have lost their credibility and if they are in charge of developing the new game it will not send out a message to the world at large that Bioware understands
- Hire better writers, I don't care if it is Mac or Drew but I feel that anyone that is responsible for making the story as it stands now should never be able to work again in this field
- Hire new game programmers, who are able to facilitate a breathing world instead of this corridor shooter crap we have endured, but also for the fact that since KOTOR1 the core RPG game mechanic is unchanged
- Hire new lead artists and get rid of people who are there for too long and allow for some fresh people to come in
- Get some filmgrade concept artists in, preferably people who are responsible for the starwars conceptart, these people are amazingly talented.
- Consult people who have endured war so you can portray reactions of characters at a more believeable level.
My grandparents for instance hated germans and when they came to our beaches in the summer and asked for directions they always pointed them the wrong way, I am not defending what they did and I am happy to say that in general the dutch population have no grudge towards Germans anymore, but I find it strange that all these races  who are at one point or another where at war with each other  all got along very nice most of the time, in a realistic universe there would be a lot more conflict and ME lacked that depth.

[dreamgazer]

iakus wrote...

dreamgazer wrote...

The "grim derp crowd"? Seriously?

Anyway:

Wikipedia wrote ...

George Orwell wrote, "Psychologically the latter part of Great Expectations is about the best thing Dickens ever did," but, like John Forster and several early 20th-century writers, including George Bernard Shaw, felt that the original ending was more consistent with the draft, as well as the natural working out of the tale. Modern literary criticism is split over the matter.

And opinions here aren't?

No, they are.  That's the point.

[Morlath]

Archonsg wrote...

@morlath

Would you consider errors breaking the player's immersion or his/her suspension of disbelieve to be "broken"? 

If not why, since such errors are of technical nature in narrative and structure to a story.

I see that as creative and execution issues.

People are using the terms broken and fixed as if Bioware could have come along with a metaphorical spanner and worked on the game until it was better (which needed to be done with some of the really bad graphic errors). Bad writing and/or bad execution of a creative idea takes a lot more work and is far from as easy as the "this is broke, fix it" metality tries to portray.

So I suppose it's more the attitude that I'm annoyed at than anything else.

[crimzontearz]

Also this kinda gets me

"we learned our lesson
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
But we categorically refuse to implement it in ME3, sorry"


Dafuq?

[Iakus]

dreamgazer wrote...

No, they are.  That's the point.

I thought the point was supplying alternate, "happier" endings is nothing new, and even famous writers have done so in the past.  And in formats far more restrictive than video games.

[Chashan]

iakus wrote...

Morlath wrote...

I wonder if video games are the only medium where an ending to a story is considered "broken" and needs "fixing"...

More to the point. It says something about video gamers that they think they've got a right to demand people change their own creations because of the "broken" ending.

Nope.  It's been happening for over a century

Not just since the 1800s...

Compare, quoth unquoth Wikipedia synopsis of various versions of Orpheus and Eurydike from antiquity (telling parts bolded by me for emphasis):

Eurydice was the wife of Orpheus, who loved her dearly; on their wedding day, he played joyful songs as his bride danced through the meadow. One day, a satyr
saw and pursued Eurydice, who stepped on a viper, dying instantly.
Distraught, Orpheus played and sang so mournfully that all the nymphs
and deities wept and told him to travel to the Underworld to retrieve her, which he gladly did. After his music softened the hearts of Hades and Persephone, his singing so sweet that even the Erinyes wept, he was allowed to take her back to the world of the living. In another version, Orpheus played his lyre to put Cerberus,
the guardian of Hades, to sleep, after which Eurydice was allowed to
return with Orpheus to the world of the living. Either way, the
condition was attached that he must walk in front of her and not look
back until both had reached the upper world. Soon he began to doubt that
she was there, however, and that Hades had deceived him. Just as he
reached the portals of Hades
and daylight, he turned around to gaze on her face, and because
Eurydice had not yet crossed the threshold, she vanished back into the
Underworld. When Orpheus later was killed by the Maenads at the orders of Dionysus, his soul ended up in the Underworld where he was reunited with Eurydice.

The story in this form belongs to the time of Virgil, who first introduces the name of Aristaeus and the tragic outcome. Other ancient writers, however, speak of Orpheus' visit to the underworld in a more negative light; according to Phaedrus in Plato's Symposium, the infernal deities only "presented an apparition" of Eurydice to him. Ovid says that Eurydice's death was not caused by fleeing from Aristaeus, but by dancing with naiads
on her wedding day. In fact, Plato's representation of Orpheus is that
of a coward; instead of choosing to die in order to be with the one he
loved, instead, he mocked the deities by trying to go to Hades to get
her back alive. Since his love was not "true" — meaning he was not
willing to die for it — he was punished by the dieties, first by giving him only the apparition of his former wife in the underworld, and then by being killed by women.

To 18th century opera Orfeo ed Euridice (for brevity, only synopsis of act 3):

Act 3


On the way out of Hades, Euridice is delighted to be returning to earth, but Orfeo, remembering the condition related by Amore in Act I, lets go of her hand and refusing to look at her, does not explain
anything to her. She does not understand his action and reproaches him,
but he must suffer in silence [...]. Euridice takes this to be a sign that
he no longer loves her, and refuses to continue, concluding that death
would be preferable. She sings of her grief at Orfeo's supposed
infidelity in the aria [...]. Unable to take any more,
Orfeo turns and looks at Euridice; again, she dies. Orfeo sings of his
grief[...]
Orfeo decides he will kill himself to join Euridice in Hades, but
Amore returns to stop him[...]. In reward
for Orfeo's continued love, Amore returns Euridice to life, and she and
Orfeo are reunited. After a four-movement ballet, all sing in praise of
Amore[...].

So no, changing certain stories and source-material has been an integral part of 'art' since ancient times - see the different versions of the myth in ancient times alone, with different philosophies and moral values underlying them.


Given how preceding entries of the series were wrapped up, asking for the variety of finales to include the option of something in the more reconciliatory spirit also found in other games by BW themselves truly was not too much to ask for, nor too complicated.



After all (Spoiler)



Resurrecting the Water Dragon in Jade Empire did not blow up the Imperial City either, did it. Which hardly served to the story's detriment.



(End Spoiler)

Modifié par Chashan, 09 mai 2013 - 03:59 .

[dreamgazer]

New endings don't grow on trees, folks.

[TheProtheans]

The Mad Hanar wrote...

TheProtheans wrote...

Well closure is also one, but you seemed to have that one firmly covered.

So can we agree that Bioware at least understands at least one of the complaints about the ending? :innocent:

Even that is a mixed bag, I can only picture them  thinking we want a happy ending.
No they don't understand it fully.

[AngryFrozenWater]

If lessons are supposed to be learned then it didn't come from the attachment to the characters. To hell with closure. It's about a good story. It could have been one, but Shepard's death (in 2) and the ending (of 3) prevented that. On top of that our actions in the games would have consequences. So many players had several saves of the first two games in all kinds of varieties, only to be surprised by the ABC ending in 3 - an ending which was promised we would certainly not get. Ghehe.

[Astralify]

ConanTheLeader wrote...

The directors cut was them learning from their mistakes and it was a great ending, people just moan that a galaxy wide war could not have a disney ending where everyone lives.

I wanted logical, narratively cohesive and thematically cohesive ending shaped by my choices.  And people wanting closure for the characters after spending 5 years in this universe is NOT whining for a "disney ending".  It's a matter of repsect to the franchise and to the players/fans/customers who were invested in the product.

The "directors cut" (EC) didn't fix anything except giving a finished look to the original rushed/unfinished hack-job of an ending. It was nothing more but a damage control to calm the pissed majority of the fans and for EAware to come out as the good guys in front of the press.

And after this interview, I don't think they've learned anything. They keep making the same mistake.

Modifié par Astralify, 09 mai 2013 - 04:34 .

[spockjedi]

Hey, there's no way they can write an ending worse than that of Return of the Jedi, right?

If ME3 had an ending like that of Return of the Jedi, the uproar wouldn't happen. At least we saw the villains dead, the protagonist alive with his morale intact, no Diabolus ex Machina, a happy reunion and hopes for galactic peace. Oh, and Lucas didn't put an ending message urging us to buy an extended edition or something.

[dreamgazer]

There are a lot of great films listed as being guilty of Diabolus ex Machina on TVTropes. I suppose that means Mass Effect 3 is as good as Vertigo, Z, and The Wages of Fear, huh?

[spockjedi]

Never watched Vertigo, Z, or The Wages of Fear, sorry. Can you tell me if theirs demon were handled as badly as the CatalyStalin was?

Modifié par spockjedi, 09 mai 2013 - 05:38 .

[dreamgazer]

spockjedi wrote...

Never watched Vertigo, Z, or The Wages of Fear, sorry. Can you tell me if theirs demon were handled as badly as the CatalyStalin was?

Well, if they're guilty of the same trope, they must be, right?

(And please, do yourself a favor and watch all three of those films.)