Malchat wrote...
LinksOcarina wrote...
The entire trilogy will be remembered ten, twenty, thirty years from now, and will have the same level of curiosity, resepect, and discussion as any zelda or mario game out there. I guarentee we will be talking about, playing, and remembering Mass Effect like its the next Ocarina of Time.
I believe the execution of the ending and the backlash are forever linked. Is this fair? Maybe not... but considering the way people talk about/report on, say, Lost, Battlestar Galactica, Happy Days or the Star Wars prequels, it seems fan outrage can shape the public's longterm perception quite a bit.
Bioware seems to share your optimism however, firm in their resolve to never discuss their intentions and artistic choices and emphasizing the game's commercial and critical success repeatedly (and occasionally marginalizing the backlash.)
If Mass Effect has its place in gaming history, I think it'll be because of pioneering cinematic storytelling and its inclusive attitude to gender and sexuality, still a sad rarity in AAA gaming. Their willingness to address the ending backlash with free content is also one for the history books. These accomplshments aside, I sincerely doubt ME's finale will be retroactively celebrated in the future... unless, by some miracle, the next ME reframes it in the context of a larger story.
It will also be other moments of memory, dymanic storytelling and thematical symbolism being other parts to look for.
Fan outrage is a silly concept to me. I recently watched episode one of star wars, it holds up well as a movie and is honestly more entertaining than the other two prequel movies. It aged over time to be more akin to the original stories, and it takes a different perception over time to maybe see it that way. I don't know.
The way fans talk about stuff like Lost, like Battlestar, its true many will bash and berate it, but it really should be others shaping their opinions on things, new people never playing the games before. There was this
lovely blog dicussing someone playing all three titles back to back for the first time, after beating them seperately. This paragraph hits it home for me, really.
I discussed this briefly with Daniel over the forums, but the Mass Effect series is very emotional. You invest so much time in learning the personalities of other characters as you get to know them, you explore strange, brilliant and imaginative worlds and cultures and you do so much for the galaxy, or yourself if you choose such a path. That's the beauty of the series; while it is Shepard's story, it's essentially your story. My playthrough may be considered boring to some or even most, but to me it felt right and it was the story I wanted to hear. The people around you, the galaxy itself and the overall storyline takes new shape and form depending on your actions and decisions. Seeing it all come to a close, seeing it all finish, seeing an end to Shepard's journey, to your journey, it's very emotional.
I think the ending will be a part of the discussion, I think it was also designed to be a part of the discussion as well. We can criticize and speculate all we want, but we still talk about it. Through this, it does breathe life into the series in a new way, one that does give it intellectual, artistic, even commercial merit as a title. I know I can name well loved games this generation, but I don't see any having a long-standing impact as much as Mass Effect did. It is something unique in of itself if it's already in a category like Lost and Battlestar Galactica, anyway.
Modifié par LinksOcarina, 07 décembre 2013 - 05:21 .
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