279 réponses à ce sujet

[dreamgazer]

Steelcan wrote...

The intent of the scene is clearly to show Shepard's survival. If he was dead no scene would need to be shown because he is assumed dead. The breathe scene shows his survival. Making the video only to show his death would be redundant.

You are welcome to head canon Shepard's death afterwards if you are so inclined, but the intent if the scene remains the same.

That reminds me of a conversation I had once where somebody actually suggested that BioWare intended for the most difficult thing to get in the various endings, the breath scene, was a morbid confirmation of Shepard's death. 

Modifié par dreamgazer, 15 juillet 2013 - 03:40 .

[Iakus]

Steelcan wrote...

The intent of the scene is clearly to show Shepard's survival. If he was dead no scene would need to be shown because he is assumed dead. The breathe scene shows his survival. Making the video only to show his death would be redundant.

You are welcome to head canon Shepard's death afterwards if you are so inclined, but the intent if the scene remains the same.

Intent is meaningless if it's that vague or poorly done.

[Steelcan]

iakus wrote...

Steelcan wrote...

The intent of the scene is clearly to show Shepard's survival. If he was dead no scene would need to be shown because he is assumed dead. The breathe scene shows his survival. Making the video only to show his death would be redundant.

You are welcome to head canon Shepard's death afterwards if you are so inclined, but the intent if the scene remains the same.

Intent is meaningless if it's that vague or poorly done.

.  It is poorly handled, but it still serves to show Shepard's survival, the scene has no other narrative purpose.

[The Night Mammoth]

iakus wrote...

Steelcan wrote...

The intent of the scene is clearly to show Shepard's survival. If he was dead no scene would need to be shown because he is assumed dead. The breathe scene shows his survival. Making the video only to show his death would be redundant.

You are welcome to head canon Shepard's death afterwards if you are so inclined, but the intent if the scene remains the same.

Intent is meaningless if it's that vague or poorly done.

Intent is meaningless full stop. 

[Iakus]

Steelcan wrote...
 It is poorly handled, but it still serves to show Shepard's survival, the scene has no other narrative purpose.

Then it has failed in its purpose.

[dreamgazer]

iakus wrote...

Steelcan wrote...
 It is poorly handled, but it still serves to show Shepard's survival, the scene has no other narrative purpose.

Then it has failed in its purpose.

Not for me. It's flawed but workable.

[Steelcan]

iakus wrote...

Steelcan wrote...
 It is poorly handled, but it still serves to show Shepard's survival, the scene has no other narrative purpose.

Then it has failed in its purpose.

.  If you can gzther the intent of the video, despite its half assedness, it has succeded.

[teh DRUMPf!!]

 You're both wrong.

High-EMS Destroy!Shepard is not dead. He's not okay either.

He's a nugget!

[MassivelyEffective0730]

MegaSovereign wrote...

sveners wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...

iakus wrote...

Morocco Mole wrote...

ALone, badly injured, not getting up, and in a hidden part of the Citadel, where apparantly everyone but a now-Force Sensistive LI have given up on Shep.

This is just making it pointlessly dark. We all know Shepard is going to get dragged out of the rubble. Don't even delude yourself.

No, that's an accurate picture of what we are shown.  If you wnat to paint rainbows on top of it, be my guess.  Just remember it's headcanon/fanfiction/alltheotherstuffpeople saytomockMEHEM

Morocco Mole is using normal interpretation, not painting rainbows. If those scenes had been in a movie or TV show everyone would have known they meant that Shepard survived and would be rescued. Well, everyone except a few idiots.

I've never quite understood why you're using an interpretative method that doesn't have any advantages. You don't get Bio's intent for the scene right and you make yourself feel worse about the ending. What's the upside?

I don't get this. I honestly don't.

So.... Shepard lives, because Shepard lives? Yes, the gasp is probably supposed to give us a glimmer of hope, or something.. but did your brain just stop after that? "Oh a breath, thank god he/she's ok" ?

Because there is no scenario where Shepard actually gets off that hunk of spacedebris after that endgame beating, without some incredible feats of mental gymnastics.

Using an interpretative method? Jesus, he just described exactly what the game shows us. There is no interpretation there.

Shepard lives because he is shown to have survived. If you want to headcanon that the weight of the debris kills him off then that's fine.

Your comment is self-contradicting. It doesn't take "incredible feats of mental gymnastics" to interpret it that way if you yourself are saying that it's "supposed to give us a glimmer of hope."

I get the intent, but honestly, I don't like that they're only giving just a glimmer. I'd like more than a glimmer.

I think the scene would work better if you had Shepard on a hospital bed, with the LI standing over him (or her). He gasps and you see the LI clench his (or her) hand. 

Wouldn't you say that that works better?

[AlanC9]

iakus wrote...

Why did people believe the relays ruptured like in Arrival?

Why did people think the turians starved in the Sol system?

Why did people think the Normandy was stranded on the jungle planet?

It's because seeing is believing.SHow them bad stuff and bad stuff is what they'll think of.

We see the Citadel Relay finish releasing the Crucible wave without doing anything like a nova-class explosion, and we see the jungle planet conspicuously un-novaed too.. We see quarian liveships entering Sol system (unless Shepard got the quarians killed, in which case the turians do starve but it's Shepard's fault). And even a cursory familiarity with the relay system makes it hard to believe that the jungle planet is all that far off from civilization. (To actually get to an unknown isolated planet they'd have to execute at least three and probably more relay jumps; one jump to Arcturus, one from Arcturus through a primary, and at least one jump from there since there's no way a garden world at the end of a primary relay corridor  from Arcturus wouldn't have been occupied by the Alliance. These were all bad interpretations

Granted, Bio badly underestimated how much spoon-feeding their audience needs. I concur with MassivelyEffective0730 above; Bio's audience can't handle implied meanings and Bio should make everything literal and pound it home.

Modifié par AlanC9, 15 juillet 2013 - 04:33 .

[AlanC9]

sveners wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...
Morocco Mole is using normal interpretation, not painting rainbows. If those scenes had been in a movie or TV show everyone would have known they meant that Shepard survived and would be rescued. Well, everyone except a few idiots.

I don't get this. I honestly don't.

So.... Shepard lives, because Shepard lives? Yes, the gasp is probably supposed to give us a glimmer of hope, or something.. but did your brain just stop after that? "Oh a breath, thank god he/she's ok" ?

Shepard lives because the scene shows us that Shepard lives. There's no reason for that scene to exist if not to communicate that fact. Like I said, the scene is to be interpreted the way it would be interpreted in any other medium. Unless you're saying that the scene wouldn't convey that meaning in a film..

Using an interpretative method? Jesus, he just described exactly what the game shows us. There is no interpretation there.

There's no way to aviod interpretation, since they don't show us what happens to Shepard. You're interpreting it as Shep dying a little after the screen goes dark.. I'm saying that's a ludicrous interpretation. 

Have you really never seen something like this in a film or TV show? 

Modifié par AlanC9, 15 juillet 2013 - 04:32 .

[Iakus]

AlanC9 wrote...

We see the Citadel Relay finish releasing the Crucible wave without doing anything like a nova-class explosion, and we see the jungle planet conspicuously un-novaed too.. We see quarian liveships entering Sol system (unless Shepard got the quarians killed, in which case the turians do starve but it's Shepard's fault). And even a cursory familiarity with the relay system makes it hard to believe that the jungle planet is all that far off from civilization. (To actually get to an unknown isolated planet they'd have to execute at least three and probably more relay jumps; one jump to Arcturus, one from Arcturus through a primary, and at least one jump from there since there's no way a garden world at the end of a primary relay corridor  from Arcturus wouldn't have been occupied by the Alliance.

Granted, Bio badly underestimated how much sppon-feeding their audience needs.

Spoon-feeding?  Really?  Alan you surprise me, I thought you were above such pettiness.

what you so condescendingly call "spoon-feeding" I call "closure"

[AlanC9]

iakus wrote...
Spoon-feeding?  Really?  Alan you surprise me, I thought you were above such pettiness.

what you so condescendingly call "spoon-feeding" I call "closure"

Hey, I just endorsed the substance of your position; do I have to pretend to respect it too? 

[Iakus]

AlanC9 wrote...

iakus wrote...
Spoon-feeding?  Really?  Alan you surprise me, I thought you were above such pettiness.

what you so condescendingly call "spoon-feeding" I call "closure"

Hey, I just endorsed the substance of your position; do I have to pretend to respect it too? 

And you say I cast things in a negative light...

Shepard alive deserves as much spoon-feeding as Shepard dead.  If we have to watch Shepard die horribly in the endings that end in his/her death, we should see Shepard's heroic rescue in teh ones where Shepard lives.  Fair is fair.

[Eryri]

HYR 2.0 wrote...

The Reapers?

They are built upon destructive-upload.

BTW, I read some time ago about a team of scientists pursuing human immortality through this same means -- to upload the human brain into an artificial body -- shooting for completion by 2045. Not too far-fetched for 2186 sci-fi.

Fair enough. I had forgotten that plot point. Possibly because I just don't like it. The reaper's victims are melted down into sludge. The structure of their bodies is utterly destroyed in a matter of seconds, including the structure of their brains. It's this structure that encodes a person's memories and personality. Does this homogenised, person-smoothie still "remember" this information? It sounds worryingly close to homeopathy. A story can only invoke "sufficiently advanced technology" so many times, before it exhausts my reserves of suspended disbelief. They had already taken a hit with the Lazarus Project. Fortunately ME2 paid back that debt with interest by being very entertaining. Enough so that I was prepared to overlook the silliness of the Reapinator, because I was having so much fun. ME3 however, doesn't really come out in credit in that regard.

Modifié par Eryri, 15 juillet 2013 - 06:05 .

[Malchat]

AlanC9 wrote...

iakus wrote...

Why did people believe the relays ruptured like in Arrival?

Why did people think the turians starved in the Sol system?

Why did people think the Normandy was stranded on the jungle planet?

It's because seeing is believing.SHow them bad stuff and bad stuff is what they'll think of.

We see the Citadel Relay finish releasing the Crucible wave without doing anything like a nova-class explosion, and we see the jungle planet conspicuously un-novaed too.. We see quarian liveships entering Sol system (unless Shepard got the quarians killed, in which case the turians do starve but it's Shepard's fault). And even a cursory familiarity with the relay system makes it hard to believe that the jungle planet is all that far off from civilization. (To actually get to an unknown isolated planet they'd have to execute at least three and probably more relay jumps; one jump to Arcturus, one from Arcturus through a primary, and at least one jump from there since there's no way a garden world at the end of a primary relay corridor  from Arcturus wouldn't have been occupied by the Alliance. These were all bad interpretations

Granted, Bio badly underestimated how much spoon-feeding their audience needs. I concur with MassivelyEffective0730 above; Bio's audience can't handle implied meanings and Bio should make everything literal and pound it home.

Implications don't just come from the literal images that are put in front of us. Symbology and tone play a huge part in our interpretation of visual narratives.

So when the designers of ME3 deliberately put in imagery that invokes Adam and Eve and capstone their story by  flash-forwarding millenia to show how Shepard has passed into legend (on the same planet as the Garden of Eden allusion), a young child wondering about space flight as if that's something new, surely it's not that much of a stretch to assume something cataclysmic has happened to the setting as we know it?

Let's not forget the use of a lowkey piano motif while we see scenes of mass relays exploding, a musical cue that up until that moment was used as a requiem to Shepard's losses, and I'm inclined to label  the pessimism of many players as wholly understandable.

We also have some indications that at least some of the authors intended for a Galactic dark age to follow the trilogy, even though they backpedalled hard on that after the controversy.

I know this debate is utterly polarising but the idea that the ending naysayers are somehow lacking insight or a mature sense of narrative is really grating. There is more room for nuance here.

Modifié par Malchat, 15 juillet 2013 - 08:54 .

[Guy On The Moon]

Indoctrination Theory could've not only mad the endings 100x better but could've advanced video games to a level of story telling that outdoes books, movies, etc.

But noooooooooo. Bioware had 2 chances to make a great ending but even with the help of their fans they still couldn't do it. Guess "artistic integrity" is more important than the good of the people.

P.S.

Ending wasn't bad. Other media has done a lot worse. I'm satisfied with it...at least with the Destroy "choice"...

[CR121691]

I played the ending a few times and I'm not dissapointed nor depressed. Yes I would have liked some things differently but that is normal I suppose. I enjoy the game every time I play it and nothing can change that.

[FreshRevenge]

 I know for me and like others. The ending was a blow to the gut. I felt the choices were all a big "**** You'. The way they ended the story of Shepard was treated with some BS story telling. Shepard doesn't control, Shepard doesn't synthesize, Shepard doesn't destroy his allies. Shepard doesn't ****ing refuse, so the next cycle can save the day!

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

My replies in italics.

iakus wrote...

Why did people believe the relays ruptured like in Arrival?

Because Starbrat said "Releasing the energy of the Crucible will destroy the mass relays." - Original Ending. Did you not see how the relay ring shattered? Did you not see how the relay came apart and how the core of the rely blew out? This happened to every relay in the galaxy. Do you have any idea how difficult it is going to be to repair them? The entire purpose of "Arrival" was to show people what happens when a mass relay explodes.

Why did people think the turians starved in the Sol system?

Because the relays ruptured and there is no way home. They have a very long way to travel via standard FTL. The reapers destroyed all the refueling stations. Their jumps have to be made right on the money and there has to be the right kind of gas giant so they can scoop unrefined fuel and hope they have a refining vessel with them.

Why did people think the Normandy was stranded on the jungle planet?

Because it crashed on the planet and suffered hull damage. How did that get repaired sufficiently to make it spaceworthy? Or was that symbolism? Javik and Liara were to start the new Asari race.

It's because seeing is believing.SHow them bad stuff and bad stuff is what they'll think of.

Pity Bioware rectified those other three scenerios in EC, but not torso-Shepard.

Yes it is, isn't it. But this isn't the only problem I have with the game. Even if Shepard were to survive, the entire story is still the destruction of everything we've enjoyed throughout 5 years. There is nothing left. The worlds are wastelands. 400,000,000 asari died on Thessia. Earth? It's well over a billion and will get worse. The infrastructure of all the home worlds except for Rannoch are gone. The relays will take centuries to rebuild. It's a wasteland. Of course you could pick a reaper friendly ending and fix everything. That's always nice. Leave the nice friendly reapers around that everyone loves.

It's a sickening ending all the way around.

Leave Earth > Grissom > Cure Genophage (Wrex) > Coup > Lock in the LI > Take Back Omega & let Aria kill Petrovsky > Citadel DLC = End of Game. Go no further than this.

[Iakus]

sH0tgUn jUliA wrote...

My replies in italics.

iakus wrote...

Why did people believe the relays ruptured like in Arrival?

Because Starbrat said "Releasing the energy of the Crucible will destroy the mass relays." - Original Ending. Did you not see how the relay ring shattered? Did you not see how the relay came apart and how the core of the rely blew out? This happened to every relay in the galaxy. Do you have any idea how difficult it is going to be to repair them? The entire purpose of "Arrival" was to show people what happens when a mass relay explodes.

Why did people think the turians starved in the Sol system?

Because the relays ruptured and there is no way home. They have a very long way to travel via standard FTL. The reapers destroyed all the refueling stations. Their jumps have to be made right on the money and there has to be the right kind of gas giant so they can scoop unrefined fuel and hope they have a refining vessel with them.

Why did people think the Normandy was stranded on the jungle planet?

Because it crashed on the planet and suffered hull damage. How did that get repaired sufficiently to make it spaceworthy? Or was that symbolism? Javik and Liara were to start the new Asari race.

It's because seeing is believing.SHow them bad stuff and bad stuff is what they'll think of.

Pity Bioware rectified those other three scenerios in EC, but not torso-Shepard.

Yes it is, isn't it. But this isn't the only problem I have with the game. Even if Shepard were to survive, the entire story is still the destruction of everything we've enjoyed throughout 5 years. There is nothing left. The worlds are wastelands. 400,000,000 asari died on Thessia. Earth? It's well over a billion and will get worse. The infrastructure of all the home worlds except for Rannoch are gone. The relays will take centuries to rebuild. It's a wasteland. Of course you could pick a reaper friendly ending and fix everything. That's always nice. Leave the nice friendly reapers around that everyone loves.

It's a sickening ending all the way around.

Leave Earth > Grissom > Cure Genophage (Wrex) > Coup > Lock in the LI > Take Back Omega & let Aria kill Petrovsky > Citadel DLC = End of Game. Go no further than this.

Clearly you can't handle implied meanings and need everything spoon-fed to you 

[SpamBot2000]

The problem with the "Shep lives!" Easter Egg thing is very simple: People just don't trust BioWare anymore. The whole ending mess, EC included, sends out so many mixed signals that it would be shocking to find a single intent behind all of it.

The reason that kind of inhale scene works in movies etc. is that you trust there is a unified vision there. Not just some faction determined to kill the protagonist, and another adding a feeble "He lives!" scene to provide "a glimmer of hope" in order to make the grim universe-trashing more palatable. While the guys in charge still insist on this being the "End, Once and for All".

FFS, they went back on the very fate of the Universe with their "Extended Cut", all the while lying about the very thing they were doing. Why would you trust such weaselly storytellers with the fate of a character?

Modifié par SpamBot2000, 15 juillet 2013 - 06:53 .

[AlanC9]

SpamBot2000 wrote...
The reason that kind of inhale scene works in movies etc. is that you trust there is a unified vision there. Not just some faction determined to kill the protagonist, and another adding a feeble "He lives!" scene to provide "a glimmer of hope" in order to make the grim universe-trashing more palatable. While the guys in charge still insist on this being the "End, Once and for All".

Hmm... that actually makes a kind of sense for someone who shares your conspiracy-theory beliefs.

But if there's no unified vision, than in what sense can a scene even have a "meaning"? There's no authorial intent to decode; there are only  player interpretations. So how does having no unified vision result in players adopting a subjectively bad interpretation rather than a subjectively good one?

[SpamBot2000]

AlanC9 wrote...

Hmm... that actually makes a kind of sense for someone who shares your conspiracy-theory beliefs.

But if there's no unified vision, than in what sense can a scene even have a "meaning"? There's no authorial intent to decode; there are only  player interpretations. So how does having no unified vision result in players adopting a subjectively bad interpretation rather than a subjectively good one?

Please, it's hardly radical to recognize that Walters and Hudson were deliberately trying to put an end to the story of Mass Effect. They all but declared it themselves.

There being no unified vision to decode doesn't mean that one will not emerge in time. The odds were always good that they were going to be ordered to make another ME by their EA overlords. Best not be lulled into a sense of security regarding Shep's survival, when any day these guys who wanted Shep dead were going to be back to rub your nose in his/her demise.

Not to mention the frankly weird trolling BW did on the subject. Chris Priestly here, that guy at the panel suggesting it might have been his "final breath". Who does that ****?

Modifié par SpamBot2000, 15 juillet 2013 - 07:22 .