Trentest0 wrote...
When people complain about the ending online, to their friends , and in general, I feel like it's hard to properly identify what it is exactly that makes it bad.
I've found that there are several camps, or rather two sides of a scale that people lean toward.
Left Side: People who wanted a happy or positive ending (now arguably fixed with Extended Cut)
Right Side: People who felt that the Ending betrayed the tagline of the game, "Your Choices Matter", and that the tone of the ending in terms of positivity does not matter.
Is this a fair identification? What kind of person is more prominent? Do you lean one way or the other? I'd like to know.
Actually, you haven't totally nailed it at all. There are several camps on either side of the equation of those who are at least satisfied with the endings and those that are totally not.
On the one side if we must take sides (though we're all fans and should be "respected" as such) there is a wide range of full on support to just "I'm ok but don't really think this is what should have happened with the game as a whole or at the end-but I'll live with it" to the "all game endings suck so get over it" to the "I really liked it since it wasn't just some easy peasy everyone's happy ending" to the "I like pretty colors and cool sounding stuff and what the heck, I didn't like Shepard anyway" to the "I loved it"--the latter being anecdotally a minority opinion. This based as I said upon anecdotal evidence of literally thousands of posts (not just here), surveys, youtube vids, and talk in back alleys.
On the other side are those who are just not at all satisfied and/or "happy" with it all. Now that does not mean every single one of them (us) wanted some super sappy happy smiley ending-that rather came down to a bottom line of "if I can't at least have something that makes sense, with a way toward some victory we won for ourselves, with realistic epilogs of survival after abject horror, then give me something that's at least happy".
To make this clear, I wanted something that made sense and fit with the MEU Bioware created, the story and unspoken promises of the games that came before, and the also fit with dialogue they wrote and allowed me to put into Shepard's mouth. As an example, MY Shepard spoke words BW wrote that said Organics and Synthetics need not always fight. This Shepard would not just roll over and take one for the team in order to serve some idea that said Organics and Synthetics will always fight. Not the only example, but one of the core reasons I will never agree with what BW chose to do. Others are free to like it and may well have used other dialogue to support their opinions, but BW did not create an ending that fit with dialogue and the story they created and that I played.
Another way to put this is to say that yes, in many ways I did want a happier outcome--"HAPPY", no but happier yes as one possibility. This was the unwritten unspoken promise of ME1 and 2. This was what the trailers for ME3 implied--we'd retake Earth, save the galaxy, WE WOULD DO THIS. Not be given it by someone somewhere and as some ambiguous notion of what saving the galaxy by RGB really meant. Logically, we should be left with a real question mark asking what did we just do by throwing Shepard into the green beam, sending Shepard off to be Reaper Commander, or shooting the tube. What we're given are cutscenes and slides saying no matter what we did, even if we refused, we did a super good thing and butterflies will fly out and people will sing Shepard's praises forever more.
What I wanted is much different. I wanted endings that revolved around our success or failure at actually fighting the reapers. I felt it would have been just as authentic for us to fight and fail (really play the game to the end-using the controller) and even have Shepard be fighting and die after knowing the galaxy is lost and that be the end of play with an epilog that reflected that. Or, to have Shepard fight, the war be won, and then have Shepard die in sacrifice to this victory. Or, to have Shepard fight, win the war, lose friends and LI, and then real epilogs, bittersweet ones of rebuilding. Or, ultimately to have a way to win it all, save those you care about most, including Shepard and then experience a true epilog, again of rebuilding.
I wanted our actions and choices made along the way and including those at the end to determine the outcome and to be playing the game up until the end and then to watch an epilog that showed the impact of all that had happened-even one to take part in perhaps. I wanted something sensible, fitting, uplifting or even very sad given a full on loss, but I wanted at least one possible way for the people of the galaxy to win this war for themselves and to show they could be responsible for their own future and work together. I didn't want something that had to have some inane explanation helped out by DLC (Leviathan) that makes it clear the reapers exist because of idiotic organics afraid of synthetics that create a synthetic that kills organics when trying to create a synthetic to keep synthetics from killing organics.
Retour en haut
The reality of it is a 'loop' and Shep'n friends have to put a stop to it. Permit evolution to progress, or at the least, a choice of which evolution you can accept...
