518 réponses à ce sujet

[Giantdeathrobot]

I think there were 3 main reasons the ending were reviled (not speaking for everyone, just from what I've gathered). This takes the EC into account, as the pre-EC ending was just unbelievably bad it cannot be defended IMO;

1. It abruptly changes the conflict of the series 10 minutes before the end. Beforehand, there was asbolutely only one goal; defeat the Reapers, as in stop them from eating everyone. preferably by destruction if Hackett and company have it their way. This was enforced in chats with the Illusive Man; there were no times where the player would be OK with his idea of control. Indeed it was presented as a pretty despicable thing (via Horizon). You could also blame auto-dialogue for this, but that's a can of worms I'm not willing to open here. But i digress; the point is, suddendly, the goal is no longer about killing the reapers, it's about choosing a ''solution'' to a ''conflict'' the player may not even recognize exists (organics vs synthetics) or may even have already solved in their mind, via Rannoch. And this conflict appears forced upon you by none other than the entity that controls the Reapers itself! Talk about a complete thematic 180. I've got nothing against twist ending, but the good ones fit into the narrative, and the Catalyst most definitely doesn't for a lot of people.

2. It makes little sense. Now, let's be honest, Mass Effect was never exactly hard sci-fi, what with the Thorian, biotics, Lazarus project, et all. But mostly it was handwaved/explained away via in-universe technobabble that stayed relatively coherent most of the time. There wasn't a Star Wars-y situation where the only explanation was ''The Force did it, deal with it''. But the Crucible is on another level entirely for a lot of people. Destroy kills the Reapers and... the Geth? Eh? What? Why? How? Oh, Ok, Reaper Code does it, fine. Then the Geth fall under God!Shepard's influence in Control, right?... They don't? What shoddy excuse of a firing mechanism is that? How is it that it can discriminate in Control, but not in Destroy? And Synthesis... Shepard jumps into a beam, which causes every single being in the entire galaxy to instantly become some vague organic-synthetic glowing thingie without any sort of side-effects or consequences beyond, apparently, peace and love? I mean, Destroy can be reasoned as a Reaper-off button, Control as a change in administrator via electricity for the dramatic effect, but Synthesis is nothing less than God-like magic, well above and beyond pseudo-science stuff like the titular Mass Effect. The sheer logistics are simply mind-boggling.

On the other hand, I do think an anti-Reaper plot device was all but inevitable given how invincible Bioware made the Reapers in ME1, and how ME2 did absolutely nothing to advance the Reaper plot arc whatsoever. So it was bound to be a jarring ''push the button and reapers die'' affair, since they wrote themselves into that corner. But they could still have gone out of it gracefully, instead of crashing down into the ocean of arbitrary and borderline absurd ''hard choices''.

3. Lack of closure, as in ''what happene to all my choices?''. Now, I realize they can't have the consequence of every single choice in the game on-screen, that would take a silly amount of work. But ''Speculations for everyone!'' can only carry your ending so far. Unless you headcanon the hell out of your chosen color ending, most players were left with more questions than answers, which may be fine for more ''artistic'' works (for lack of a better term) but came across as simple laziness when dealing with a 100+ hours trilogy involving hundreds of characters and many civilizations. Now, in the EC we got slides which were nice, but the ending speeches were incredibly vague and non-committal. Destroy killed the Reapers and now we're in peace. The End. Control made the Reapers Shepard's pets and now the galaxy is a good place/a dictatorship. The End. Synthesis made everyone into vague hybrids, and everyone has loved each other ever after. The End. I'm exagerating but that's the gist of it. We got no details on the post-Destroy world (which would be very interesting; what did the Genophage cure do? How about humanity having lost much of its power? What of the Geth-Quarian confli... oh wait, hijacked by the ending). Synthesis is the worst offender; we basically have to take Bioware's word for it that everything is well now that everyone was forcibly changed into an hybrid, which has some... interesting implications indeed.

So even if you do think the game has sufficient closure, for many there are still issues 1 and 2 to contend with. The EC focused on giving more closure (which was desperately needed; who wants an implied dark age as the only solution?) and aided issue 2 a little, but did nothing for issue 1.

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

iakus wrote...

sH0tgUn jUliA wrote...

You get to the point after Thessia where you start looking at the end, and you start looking at the details. The fun of writing the story is over. You now have face the reality of what Drew set up. It's a mess. It's a frakking mess. How do we end this? Picture a squad of 12 having gotten by the last of the opposition now going to the panel to open the Citadel and it's a pretty long walk. And you're writing squad banter. You're talking about the journey and all of the stuff that you've done, all of it leading up to this moment, and it really dawns on you that you really can't beat them conventionally because of indoctrination. And the conversation starts going down that route. Then the conversation starts poking fun at the plot and how ridiculous the entire thing was. Now you've got to end it. You're idea of what this thing was supposed to do just changed. You just want it to end. The Crucible docks. Tali is there. She's playing with the control panel and a panel drops down with a button on it: "Press to Blow Up Reapers". Tali says "Who wants to do the honors?"   Javik says. "I will."  Hits button. Reapers blow up.  THE END. = stupid. This is what you were left with.

And in the end, the stupid ending you just described is still miles better than what we got

And that is absolutely the sad part. My FF actually ended this way.

Shepard kept looking for a way to defeat the reapers and I thought we had one. I thought we had this thing wired and the reapers were going to be toast come sun down, but I kept this thing in the plot and kept using it as a punching bag the entire time just for lolz, and I diminished Hackett's role to supervising its construction. Well Shepard got stuck with the mission. The mission took three chapters, and ended with this. Liara brought up something about the clean up crews getting indoctrinated, and that's when it hit. Shepard said "This never ends, does it? Why the hell did we even bother? We'll win this war only to have everything start up again because our crews got indoctrinated cleaning up the mess in space of the 'dead' reapers orbiting the planets or the ones that are 'dead' on the planets. Basically, we're f*****."

The other suggestion I read that had the boss fight from hell didn't address indoctrination. That was the problem I was confronting when I came to the end in my FF. Thank you Drew Karpyshyn.

And that's why I had to do what I had to do with the project, iakus.

[shingara]

@shotgun julia dont wanna nitpick but isnt it stated in lore that the control signal is controlled by harbringer and any corpse reapers just become dormant beacons like the atrifacts the leviathons use. so under those lore rules killing harbringer would infact stop the signal. Mind you that was until they put the stupid kid in the mix.

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

not to my knowledge. find it for me and show me the link.

[shingara]

well i looked but it seems that its all been retconed out, i know for a fact it used tobe lore but meh as it was established in 1 with sovy and 2 with the collectors and that iff thing. But i suppose its just another case of walters re writing what mass effect is.

[AndyAK79]

 

Kel Riever wrote...

Now you took this to being a jerk level so really, you are undermining your own so called desire to have a debate.  If you actually want to have a debate, google modernistic closure and you'll see there's not some 'Oxford standard definition of it'

What I really feel is you have no desire to consider an opposing point of view, despite starting this thread.  Nor do you really want to consider anything but your own point of view.  And that fuels your need to be insulting.  Really, what happens here is you should step up and note what I am saying isn't because I can't understand your point of view, but because there are legitimate points to debate.

But you're falling into the trap of being condescending whereas I have no time for that.  At least I do but for the people who put this game together which is well within my rights as a person who bought the game.  I'll never come down on someone for liking something that isn't the best thing ever, that's personal taste.  But you aren't even being objective anymore, despite the attempt that you are.

Twelve monkeys and Inception were finished and ended.  And did not achieve closure because simply put, you are left to figure out the end for yourself, and they were done well in that regard.  That is not closure.  To say otherwise is as narrow a point of view as you accuse me of having and no you aren't going by the definition of anything in the English language either, but something simply subjective.

I can't really see you claiming any convincing argument at this point, at least not on the basis of anything intellectual.  Moving on now.  Go ahead and have some last words if you must.

You seem to have taken this very personally which was (genuinely) not my intent. The moderators seem to at least partially agree with you, and I humbly aquiesce to their wisdom. I wholeheartedly and unreservedly apologise for any offense caused.

My point, put as delicately as I can, is that I couldn't really discuss what you said because:

• You had misunderstood the very nature of the quotation I used.
• You were disagreeing with the world's foremost authority on the English language.

I make no comment on your intelligence, but did think you had a bit of a facepalm moment of the sort we are all guilty, from time to time. I felt it was essential to clear up the misunderstanding before our discussion could really move forward. 

I do not, and cannot, agree with your assessment of the films your refer to, and don't feel I am narrowing the definition. You are placing conditions on the concept of closure that are not inherent in the word - namely that nothing can be left up to the audience. I can find no reason why this should be a condition for closure and, as I said, felt that the central narrative of both films was resolved.

Apologies again for any ill feeling.

Modifié par AndyAK79, 17 octobre 2013 - 08:22 .

[AndyAK79]

In regards to complaints about the catalyst,  I think that there is a valid issue here. It is perhaps a diversion from the central issue but my views are as follows:

The appearance of the catalyst in the form of a child - whilst not strictly speaking a Deus Ex Machina as is often suggested - is sudden and the foreshadowing very limited.

The Catalyst and its form are, in essence, a narrative device for explaining the final choice. It is difficult to imagine any other way of presenting the exposition without further plot contrivance (after all, who could have sufficient knowledge of the catalyst to understand its function?). Whilst in a film or a book this would have been perhaps fatal, an interactive medium makes the exposition necessary.

As a result, if the catalyst was not entirely satisfactory in a dramatic sense, I felt that its inclusion was an acceptable compromise between dramatic sensibility and practical necessity.

Modifié par AndyAK79, 17 octobre 2013 - 08:20 .

[AndyAK79]

shingara wrote...

well i looked but it seems that its all been retconed out, i know for a fact it used tobe lore but meh as it was established in 1 with sovy and 2 with the collectors and that iff thing. But i suppose its just another case of walters re writing what mass effect is.

I think it moderately more likely that you made a mistake,as opposed to the suggestion that someone re-wrote all the in game refferences and deleted the evidence from public forums.

Modifié par AndyAK79, 17 octobre 2013 - 08:22 .

[shodiswe]

The EC brings closure for the Universe.

It didn't make the end gameplay and storytelling that much better though.

[Kel Riever]

Allright AndyAK79, all water under the bridge then. My apologies as well if offense was taken by any of my replies.

Here, let's get back to the point. Closure as defined from whatever I can see online is defined, but subjective. The pop definition seems to be how a person feels at the end...did they feel that the piece had closure? Now I COULD understand that closure, in a certain sense, could be used to define something like 12 Monkeys or Inception. For me, personally, I just would have to understand how it is defined distinctly from ending. There's a completion to the story but those stories leave the viewer wondering about the characters. In a good way.

How about going with that, I find the ending(s) of ME3 leave the viewer wondering about the character in a bad way, whether it could be called closure or not. And not to belabor a point but I think that is because the logic of what happens is flawed and left no choice that was satisfying in its completion.

Edited to prevent a tl;dr.  Here's teh definition from OED that makes the most sense:

"A sense of resolution or conclusion at the end of an artistic work."

It isn't OED's fault and sorry for bringing that modernistic closure thing in.  It confuses things.  Okay, so that's what I am saying I do not believe ME3 or Inception or 12 Monkeys or No Country For Old Men achieves....but purposely in all cases.  It is just that I find the lack of resolution or conclusion in 12 Monkeys and Inception decent.

Modifié par Kel Riever, 17 octobre 2013 - 02:34 .

[AndyAK79]

I guess the thing about open endings is you bring your own personality into the interpretation. I'm a 'glass half full' person. I got a sense of 'everything's gonna' be alright' from the endings; especially destroy, with the realisation Shepard survived. I can see how with a different viewpoint you could look at the ending and go 'Wow. We are stuffed now.'

[CronoDragoon]

Spoilers below for FF7, Tactics, and Last of Us.

I'd define closure based on 3 points:

1. The "problem" is resolved. (Plot: check)
2. Character arcs are completed. (Characters: check)
3. Important questions about the state of the universe are answered. (Not check)

The third one is where I think some discussion comes into play. What does it mean? I don't think it means that EVERYTHING must be answered, however I do think that certain questions are important enough such that if they are not answered I won't feel satisfied.

Examples: Does humanity get wiped out by Holy at the end of FFVII? How am I supposed to know how to feel about what Final Fantasy VII is trying to say about the relationship between the planet and humans if it's possible that either the planet killed all humans are did not? For there to be closure I think this is necessary information. This is an example of a game where closure was lacking.

Final Fantasy Tactics, on the other hand, has an ending where the question of whether or not the MC or ANY of the protagonist characters survived is not answered (I believe they all died) and yet I feel there is sufficient closure. The Lucavi are defeated (#1) Ramza sacrificed himself to kill them, Delita is king but his wife hated what he did enough to try and kill him, leaving him feeling empty and nihilistic (#2) and there are no out-standing questions about the state of the world.

Similarly, in the Last of Us, the problem is resolved (the problem in this game is getting Ellie to the Fireflies, not curing humanity, in my opinion) the character arcs are completed (Joel is not willing to sacrifice someone he loves for the greater good, Ellie would have sacrificed herself but Joel prevented this) and you have a reasonable idea about the state of the world (barring the actual existence of others like Ellie, humanity will die out unless she is genetically able to pass on her immunity, the way Siona did in the Dune books).

[CronoDragoon]

So how does this relate to Mass Effect? Well, I actually believe ME3 covers 1 and 2 quite well. If you don't believe Shepard gets closure at the end of ME3, then the point of your Shepard's character arc must have been whether or not he lives or dies. I can only say it wasn't for me.

That the fate of the Normandy is left in the air is actually something I'd put in category 3, along with the allied forces after the relays explode. What is the state of the galaxy?

Accordingly my wishes for the EC were mostly practical. Normandy? Relays exploding leaving everyone isolated? Geth/EDI killed for no apparent reason? This is probably why I like the EC so much: it did a lot for category 3.

[AndyAK79]

CronoDragoon wrote...

I'd define closure based on 3 points:

1. The "problem" is resolved. (Plot: check)
2. Character arcs are completed. (Characters: check)
3. Important questions about the state of the universe are answered. (Not check)

The problem with an awful lot of these arguments is that they rely on very specific definitions of closure - definitions that are designed specifically to support the argument of the author. The constraints placed on the definition of closure above are extremely specific; no conventional definition of closure would include these conditions.

Any one of the examples above would count as closure under a conventional definition. The example above needs all three.

[CronoDragoon]

AndyAK79 wrote...
The problem with an awful lot of these arguments is that they rely on very specific definitions of closure

Specificity is not a detriment, and often a benefit, to analytical conversation. Much better than dictionary definitions of something so vague and broad they might as well be meaningless. Would you care to discuss the actual viability of my conditions?

definitions that are designed specifically to support the argument of the author.

Please explain what my argument is to which I created a retro-fitted closure definition. I think you'll find I made points and counterpoints to the idea that "ME3 lacked closure" in my post on ME3.

The constraints placed on the definition of closure above are extremely specific; no conventional definition of closure would include these conditions.

That is because conventional definitions - such as those from official dictionaries - need to be as broad as possible to encompass the ubiquitous, more specific and conditonal definitions. You'll find that essays on the subject tend to gravitate towards specificity.

Any one of the examples above would count as closure under a conventional definition. The example above needs all three.

Yes, it does. It's also more useful than a conventional definition because it attempts to identify causes instead of symptoms. "Closure is a sense of resolution or completion" is like saying "he's sick because he has a fever." Definitions such as mine attempt to explain why one may feel or not feel closure.

Modifié par CronoDragoon, 17 octobre 2013 - 05:32 .

[Reorte]

AndyAK79 wrote...

I guess the thing about open endings is you bring your own personality into the interpretation. I'm a 'glass half full' person. I got a sense of 'everything's gonna' be alright' from the endings; especially destroy, with the realisation Shepard survived. I can see how with a different viewpoint you could look at the ending and go 'Wow. We are stuffed now.'

The EC endings gave that impression but that's not the issue (IMO). The issue is that they didn't place that future in front of the player (who plays from Shepard's perspective). That disconnect immediately makes it hard to find closure. By shoving it off into headcanon territory it changes from visiting a great restaurant to reading a review of it and imagining going there.

[AndyAK79]

CronoDragoon wrote...

Specificity is not a detriment, and often a benefit, to analytical conversation. Much better than dictionary definitions of something so vague and broad they might as well be meaningless. Would you care to discuss the actual viability of my conditions?

I don't agree with your conditions, so I'm hardly going to discuss the viability of them. You are asking me to discuss the subject entirely on your terms, based on arbitrary conditions of your choosing. You claim the dictionary definition is so broad as to be meaningless, so instead you impose your own definition that suits your own views on what closure should be. What if everyone provided conflicting views of closure? Would this be a benefit to analytical conversation? Who's views do we base the discussion on?

Please explain what my argument is to which I created a retro-fitted closure definition. I think you'll find I made points and counterpoints to the idea that "ME3 lacked closure" in my post on ME3.

Yes, based on a definition you yourself supplied. Your entire previous post was argued according to constraints you provided. I can't discuss my view on the ending with you because you have created a definition that does not allow for the validity of my views.

[AndyAK79]

Reorte wrote...

AndyAK79 wrote...

I guess the thing about open endings is you bring your own personality into the interpretation. I'm a 'glass half full' person. I got a sense of 'everything's gonna' be alright' from the endings; especially destroy, with the realisation Shepard survived. I can see how with a different viewpoint you could look at the ending and go 'Wow. We are stuffed now.'

The EC endings gave that impression but that's not the issue (IMO). The issue is that they didn't place that future in front of the player (who plays from Shepard's perspective). That disconnect immediately makes it hard to find closure. By shoving it off into headcanon territory it changes from visiting a great restaurant to reading a review of it and imagining going there.

The story has to end somewhere. How much further into the future - beyond the events of the main story - do you want the resolution to go? Five minutes? A day? A year? A decade? Even then you would not know what happened afterward. Why would any of these periods (or any other period of time) be a better cut off point than the one given?

In ME3 the characters' stories, as well as the story of the wider universe, end when the main plot does (with some eiplogue nodding to the future in the EC). This seems to me a logical and satisfactory place to end the narrative. This is, I think inarguably, narrative convention across all story-telling mediums. In fact I find myself unable, off the top of my head, to think of a single example that breaks this convention.

To use your own example, you aren't reading a review of a great restaurant and imagining going there, you are visiting a great restaurant and wanting to stay for eight hours after you've finished your meal.

Modifié par AndyAK79, 18 octobre 2013 - 08:19 .

[CronoDragoon]

AndyAK79 wrote...

I don't agree with your conditions, so I'm hardly going to discuss the viability of them. You are asking me to discuss the subject entirely on your terms, based on arbitrary conditions of your choosing.

What? No, by asking to discuss their viability I want to discuss why these conditions are either appropriate or not. I am asking why you feel they are too arbitrary to be useful. I initially posted my conditions so people could discuss them. Do they fit? Are there more conditions needed? Less? I'm not asking you to discuss anything on my terms, I'm asking you to discuss my terms and determine whether they can effectively be used to identify proper closure.

And yes, conflicting definitions and viewpoints are very useful for analytical arguments.

Yes, based on a definition you yourself supplied. Your entire previous post was argued according to constraints you provided. I can't discuss my view on the ending with you because you have created a definition that does not allow for the validity of my views.

So we discuss why we have different ideas on what closure means. Different ideas about terms doesn't mean we can't discuss. It means that we can't identify what has closure and what doesn't if we don't agree on what closure is, which is the entire point of me offering a definition: to see if we can hammer out a common ground so we can discuss ME3's closure. Discussing whether something has closure or not is MEANINGLESS if we don't agree what the word means, so that's what I was trying to accomplish.

Modifié par CronoDragoon, 18 octobre 2013 - 01:58 .