642 réponses à ce sujet

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

@ OP - you said hearing legends about "the guy who sacrificed himself" is better than hearing legends about "the guy who lived and disappeared." Really? Why do you say that?

[ElitePinecone]

Blackrising wrote...

It's a matter of how that emotional connection makes you feel. I felt emotionally connected to Lee and Clementine and the ending made me incredibly sad, but it was a good kind of sad. It was an emotional kind of sad that makes me remember the game fondly.

ME3 was a punch in the gut and made me feel sad in a very bad way. Kind of angry sad. The kind of sad that makes me grimace when thinking back on Mass Effect and prevents me from replaying any of the games. DA:O's Ultimate Sacrifice ending would have made me feel the same (though not quite as bad) if it had been the only ending. But since it wasn't and I managed to craft an (almost) perfectly happy ending in my second playthrough, everything was a-okay.

I mean, don't get me wrong, tragic endings are absolutely fine. If they're not the only possibility there is.

Agree with all of this. It's actually quite interesting to compare The Walking Dead to ME3, and more specifically the way people reacted to their tragic endings - TWD's is generally considered a masterpiece, and ME3.... less so.

Part of me thinks that TWD was more successful in this sense because the tragedy followed the plausible rules of its own game world - if you get bitten, you're toast, and it's not that hard to get bitten - and because the game had done such a good job up to that point of showing us that nobody was safe, ever. 

Where I think ME3 blindsided people was that, before the ending, super-dark tragedy was more often than not an optional outcome. If the game didn't outright show Shepard triumphing over everything, there was at least a pathway to lessen the negative consequences. Rather than being edgy or subversive, overturning that narrative convention for the ending just looked abrupt and, some people thought, "unfair". 

And as I mentioned above, I think the fact that ME3's last ten minutes or so made *absolutely no sense* didn't really enamour people to accepting the tragedy as an artistic accomplishment - particularly when the reason for making a sacrifice wasn't ever explained properly. There was no "if you get bitten, you're toast" moment - only "here's three different coloured beams, shoot/run into them for some reason". 

[KaiserShep]

sH0tgUn jUliA wrote...

@ OP - you said hearing legends about "the guy who sacrificed himself" is better than hearing legends about "the guy who lived and disappeared." Really? Why do you say that?

I blame religion for this obsession with dying for everyone else, like how Santa died for his elves sins.

[Lotion Soronarr]

AnnJuly wrote...

I hate tragic endings with passion.
Especially in RPG games and especially when there is no other options.
I have enough of this sh*t in real life, thx.
So, yep, I want good old boring medal ceremony and celebration party, sorry to all "artistic integrity" fans.

Staying true to the original idea is "artistic integrity", regardless what that idea is. So if the original idea is sunshine, rainbow and medals, then that is artistic integrity.

Why do you equate that with tragic endings? There is no connection there.


***

cell55 wrote...
The important thing here, as Sylvius points out, is choice.
If the story must necesarily be
tragic, then it can not also be a choice-and-consequences driven RPG.
Tragedy can be an option, but it must never be the only one.

Wrong. That is a non-sequitur.

Driving the final outcome and consequences to be EXACTLY what you want them to be has nothing to do with making choices and facing the consequences.

Choice of action is not the same as choice of ending, and it's exactly what every single complainer so far has been whining about.

The game can present you with a million choices that impact how you go trough the world and how the world around you reacts and how your presence impacts poeple and areas. BUT, the nding not being what you want and it's suddenly "NO CHOICES!!!!"


I hope all pathc or choices in DA:I end up with the PC coming to some dark castle/cave, and upon the defeat of the big bad, it collapses. The world is safe, but rocks fall, everybody dies.
:devil:

[Fast Jimmy]

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

I hope all pathc or choices in DA:I end up with the PC coming to some dark castle/cave, and upon the defeat of the big bad, it collapses. The world is safe, but rocks fall, everybody dies.
:devil:

So, basically, NWN 2?

[ElitePinecone]

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

Choice of action is not the same as choice of ending, and it's exactly what every single complainer so far has been whining about.

The game can present you with a million choices that impact how you go trough the world and how the world around you reacts and how your presence impacts poeple and areas. BUT, the nding not being what you want and it's suddenly "NO CHOICES!!!!"

I don't really agree with this, at all.

Bioware have produced numerous games where the ending is significantly affected by the player's decisions - KoTOR, Jade Empire, Mass Effect 2, and Dragon Age: Origins come to mind. In those cases, there's a clear relationship between something the player chose, and the ending they received. Most often, there's significantly more than one ending, if you look at Origins' Landsmeet outcomes or squadmate deaths in ME2.

When people complained about endings not having choices, it was because they very literally had no choices. Hawke fights Merideth and Orsino for bizarre reasons no matter their prior actions. Priority: Earth plays out identically for every single player of Mass Effect 3, and until the Extended Cut the *shown* results of each ending choice were nearly identical too. 

Choice of action can mean a choice of ending, when there's diversity in the endings to begin with, and when they change based on player decisions. I don't think this is at all an issue of players wanting a certain kind of ending - rather, an expectation that there's even a multitude of endings to begin with. Some people might be bitter about the overly tragic nature of something like ME3, but anecdotally I heard far more complaints that the ending in the game was static and largely unaffected by anything we'd done over three games.

Asking for the ability to make a choice is not the same thing as asking for a specific choice, after all.

[Mistress9Nine]

I love bittersweet endings, not the completely tragic ones where everyone dies and the world is destroyed, but bittersweet ones. I liked that Leandra's death was forced on us in DA2. You could try as hard as you wanted but you lost your own mother, even if you managed to kill a monsterous murderer. I'm OK with that kind of tragedy.

[wright1978]

KaiserShep wrote...

Dean_the_Young wrote...

And if that floats your boat, by all means. Me? I think such endings create cop-outs. I prefer Kaidan vs. Ashley to the suicide mission.

The suicide mission probably would have been a bit better if it was impossible to save absolutely everyone, though I would not really consider its completion a tragic ending. Poor Jacob. He'd never make it out alive.

The 'hold the line' segment always screamed the moment that at least one squadmate should have died for me.

[Lotion Soronarr]

ElitePinecone wrote...

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

Choice of action is not the same as choice of ending, and it's exactly what every single complainer so far has been whining about.

The game can present you with a million choices that impact how you go trough the world and how the world around you reacts and how your presence impacts poeple and areas. BUT, the nding not being what you want and it's suddenly "NO CHOICES!!!!"

I don't really agree with this, at all.

Bioware have produced numerous games where the ending is significantly affected by the player's decisions - KoTOR, Jade Empire, Mass Effect 2, and Dragon Age: Origins come to mind. In those cases, there's a clear relationship between something the player chose, and the ending they received. Most often, there's significantly more than one ending, if you look at Origins' Landsmeet outcomes or squadmate deaths in ME2.

And those differences in ending don't have anything to do with the PC living or not. Or any specific aspect of the story.

Endings affected by player decision. What does that mean?

Consider Fallout.
Let's for the sake of argument that you always die by blowing up the mutant base. The bomb goes off immediately and you die together with the big bad.

Would you still not get vastly different endings depending on what you did?
The world you leave behind would be in vastly different states and the epilogues would be very different.

There is only one thing that would stay the same, and it's precisely that one thing that gets peoples panties in a twist.

[CELL55]

ElitePinecone wrote...

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

Driving the final outcome
and consequences to be EXACTLY what you want them to be has nothing to do
with making choices and facing the consequences.

Choice of action is not the same as choice of ending, and it's exactly what every single complainer so far has been whining about.

The game can present you with a million choices that impact how you go trough the world and how the world around you reacts and how your presence impacts poeple and areas. BUT, the nding not being what you want and it's suddenly "NO CHOICES!!!!"

I don't really agree with this, at all.

*Snip*

Asking for the ability to make a choice is not the same thing as asking for a specific choice, after all.

This pretty much sums it up. I don't ask for any specific ending, but if my choices don't affect that ending in any meaningful way, the n what was the point in making them? A choice-and-consequences driven RPG needs both choices and consequences following from those choices or else it's going to feel completely arbitrary, IMO.

[CELL55]

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

And those differences in ending don't have anything to do with the PC living or not. Or any specific aspect of the story.

Endings affected by player decision. What does that mean?

Consider Fallout.
Let's for the sake of argument that you always die by blowing up the mutant base. The bomb goes off immediately and you die together with the big bad.

Would you still not get vastly different endings depending on what you did?
The world you leave behind would be in vastly different states and the epilogues would be very different.

There is only one thing that would stay the same, and it's precisely that one thing that gets peoples panties in a twist.

Why MUST the PC blow himself up? I prefered the Ultimate Sacrifice ending in DAO, so my PC dying isn't the issue, it's the sudden lack of choice in an otherwise choice-driven game. Removing options just at the end is arbitrary.

[Reznore57]

Not too fond of "tragic" , just for tragic's sake.
For example , I thought the idea of the relays getting out of order in ME3 was brilliant.
It was a bit tragic (well the whole blowing up supernova style was silly), but for me it was nice.
It meant change , a galaxy being able to rebuild in the future , independant from Reaper Tech.
Sadly all the rest was well...bad.So it didn't work.

In The Walking Dead , (great game) , I had problem with the ending.It seems it worked for everybody ...but I got annoyed pretty fast.The whole long slow goodbyes ... it just took the whole picture .My common sense was screaming this isn't the time and this isn't the place to get all teary eyed , you stupid p.c.How Lee managed to not get Clementine killed in the last episode is still a wonder.

So I can deal with tragedy, losses (well I'm touchy about companions' death.But my pc and other npcs can die , it's fine)...But I just hate the whole bleak there's no hope here humanity is doomed and bad , life sucks kind of forced message.
In books , movies , games ...it just makes me angry.

[Fast Jimmy]

Talking about Fallout is a very different conversation, though. The Vault Dweller is king of blank slates. There is no personality tracking, no chance to emote, no real sense of being a character is really elaborated on at all except in the choices you make in the world. Therefore, in that instance, killing the main character would do nothing, since the main character is pretty ancillary to the entire experience. The game is all about the world and how your choices affected it.

That's why Fallout's endings skimp on details about the Vault Dweller and focus its endings on the rest of the world. Heck, the game gives you so much choice, you don't even necessarily beat the game when you blow up the mutant base (you could still need to find a Water Chip if you went directly to the base, for instance). That is why I think many people seriously disliked Fallout 3's endings - because the game tried to make it a character story, trying to find your dad, wind up making an ultimate sacrifice, etc.,... but then neglecting the world and the choices, which are always the focus in Fallout games.


A series like DA or ME focus too much on the main character and their companions for them to make "and everyone died a heroic death" something that is used much, let alone on a frequent basis.

[ziloe]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

I am not trying to sound condescending, I simply don't understand why people take the position that a happy ending somehow takes something away from a sad ending.

Why do people continue to argue against it? I have heard the what by not the why.

It is the (personal) perspective that their character and playthrough is subpar... you didn't win/weren't as successful/whatever. It's personal, much like how the death of your character is perceived by you as not being a happy ending and seems to take away from the game experience for you. By extension, I'm sure there are probably some that do not understand your perspective and preferences, either. It's two sides of the same coin, really; people are different and have different preferences.

The notion of subpar/suboptimal comes from the idea of, at least on my playthroughs, I am actively trying to come away from all encounters flawlessly.  If that is my goal, and I do not achieve it though it was possible, then it's possible for my mind to conclude "you didn't do as well as you could have."  (note, I don't really feel this way anymore... Thane died on my ME2 playthrough and I stuck with that.  Having said that I still felt that a "suicide mission" where everyone survives simply as a result of "playing the entire game" wasn't the best way of doing that)


Additionally, there is also the notion that everything working out in a rather bleak situation comes off as implausible (i.e. why I tend to not be a fan of Hollywood endings).

Personally, it's not so much that my player didn't win. If my character makes a sacrifice for the good of everyone else, allow me to see that. That was the problem with the ME series. After years of playing the series and having it stop abruptly because Joker crashed out in the middle of nowhere, it appeared that there was no hope. Having the mass relays explode also meant Shepard's actions only endangered every species who fought for his/her planet's aid, being that they were now trapped there.

I'm all for a bittersweet ending, but that wasn't bittersweet. It was just plain bitter. Every character I loved, disappearing so that some old guy I didn't care about, could tell his kid a thousand years later: Yeah, it's a legend now. We made it.

I rewatched Enemy of the State last night, it's a great movie. It's a good ending too,and it doesn't solve all the problems either, but I'm okay with that. The issues still exist even if in smaller doses, but what mattered was that Will Smith and his family were okay. That they could live to another day, feeling safer, even if only for a brief moment. 

After a trilogy like ME, being left in the dark with the ending in an attempt to create some water cooler discussions, is not a good thing. It was okay in ME2, but don't do that for a conclusion to everything that is Shepard and his/her crew. And the same could be said for Inquisition too. If my character saves everyone in an awesome sacrifice, or even gets away safely, allow me to see his/her crew, even if in the smallest of ways like we did with the references to character's futures in Origins.

The ending to Legend of Dragoon comes to mind, or even that of FF9. Both endings displaying something bittersweet, rather than outright good or bad. When I'm finished a game, it's a time to sit back, listen to the music and reminisce about all the amazing times we've had. I don't want to be jumping out of my chair going "WTF!" like I did
several times for Game of Thrones Red Wedding or the end of the first season's second last episode.

[wright1978]

Don't agree with stripping away the possiblility of protaganist surviving choice of action anymore than i'd want to be presented with a series of actions that all equally fail to defeat the antagonist etc.

[sassyJacen]

The ending should depend on our choises.
happy, bittersweet, evil, tragic, shocking. I want em all!!!
agree with eluvianix.

[Redbelle]

@Ziloe

FF9 ended with the main theif character making an entrance and proclaiming his love for Dagger.

It had some bittersweetness to it. But it ended on a high.

And when it comes to a BioWare game, I think BW have developed their games to a point that players ought to be able to expect a gamut of endings in the same way conversation encoutners can swing from angelic to blood soaked mayhem.

This isn't about entitlement. It's about Bioware demonstrating in ME2 that they can pull this kind of thing off and make it look good. Because as a company..... they've grown and their game content has grown in how they deliver it to theur audience.

Bioware innovation in how they tell a story led to great expectation that ME3's ending simply didn't meet. Like they'd run out of time and had to pull something together at the last second.

This does not mean that they cannot take what they have done in past games, and build on it in the future. If Bioware games allow the player to face different consequences from their actions then the ending is by far the most important part of the game. Where the journey dictates the destiantion that is a mystery until you arrive at the end.

Modifié par Redbelle, 03 février 2014 - 01:23 .

[Dean_the_Young]

ElitePinecone wrote...

Lotion Soronnar wrote...

Choice of action is not the same as choice of ending, and it's exactly what every single complainer so far has been whining about.

The game can present you with a million choices that impact how you go trough the world and how the world around you reacts and how your presence impacts poeple and areas. BUT, the nding not being what you want and it's suddenly "NO CHOICES!!!!"

I don't really agree with this, at all.

Bioware have produced numerous games where the ending is significantly affected by the player's decisions - KoTOR, Jade Empire, Mass Effect 2, and Dragon Age: Origins come to mind. In those cases, there's a clear relationship between something the player chose, and the ending they received. Most often, there's significantly more than one ending, if you look at Origins' Landsmeet outcomes or squadmate deaths in ME2.

Decisions, or decision? As far as ending content goes (cutscenes), all of those games have one primary choice, sometimes with a smaller supplementary choice, which tends to be at the extreme end of the game and completely separate from everything you've done to that point. In KoTOR, there's the Light Side and Dark Side endings, with Bastilla's survival being an optional bell and whistle that doesn't change the ending unless we really want to expand what an ending consists of.

It's very, very rare for a Bioware game to change any of its end-game content based on prior decisions. KoTOR is the notable exception for its Light/Dark endgame (which is still mostly the same), but Jade Empire, ME1, ME2, DAO, and DA2- in other words pretty much everything of the last decade- still takes the players through the same levels with the same content regardless of previous choices. Not even the much heralded Suicide Mission of ME2 actually changes if people die... unless you get the extremely hard to get, uncanonical, total-wipe. Even DAO offers only extremely miniscule changes to the end-game, amounting to the type of NPCs available for summoning on the battlefield: every arc ally in DAO is completely irrelevant and substantially identical to its counterpart for all narrative and level purposes going forward.

When people complained about endings not having choices, it was because they very literally had no choices. Hawke fights Merideth and Orsino for bizarre reasons no matter their prior actions. Priority: Earth plays out identically for every single player of Mass Effect 3, and until the Extended Cut the *shown* results of each ending choice were nearly identical too. 

This is a rather strange line of argument, since not only are you comparing apples and oranges (boss fights and level selection, rather than narrative outcomes), you're comparing apples and oranges that all the other games you listed are also guilty of to heavy degrees. The biggest offenders for your charge that I can think of are, well, ME1 and ME2: both points of no return play out identical boss fights, level advancement, and ending states despite all previous choices. ME1 makes no changes whatsoever, and ME2's companion deaths provide... a very superficial cutscene difference of maybe 15 seconds total, a handful of minor dialogue variations that don't even acknowledge who died, and still the exact same level content up to and including level progression, boss fight, and the binary ending choice.

Really, ME3 should be the gold star for the ME trilogy for reflecting choices: not only does it offer more endings (trinary versus binary), carries and reflects choices throughout the game far more than either of its compadres and far more than most Bioware games which make no attempt at all.


I'm also not sure why you see a lack of epilogue slides as a lack of difference in ending states. Sure, I enjoy them more, but was there any doubt from the narrative and foreshadowing used in their respective arcs that the fate and character of the Krogan would be going in different directions depending on genophage and Wrex, Wreave, and Eve? 

Do we really need an epilogue slide with a different picture to acknowledge the implications of the endings on the genophage arc? Or that Destroy would fare badly for the Geth? Or that, hey, destroying synthetics (including Reapers) is different from becoming the Reaper overlord is different from the dice throw that is Synthesis?

I would say no.But then, I don't think RPGs need ending slides to communicate differences after the ending, if the game itself already foreshadows that in the game itself.

Choice of action can mean a choice of ending, when there's diversity in the endings to begin with, and when they change based on player decisions. I don't think this is at all an issue of players wanting a certain kind of ending - rather, an expectation that there's even a multitude of endings to begin with. Some people might be bitter about the overly tragic nature of something like ME3, but anecdotally I heard far more complaints that the ending in the game was static and largely unaffected by anything we'd done over three games.

Asking for the ability to make a choice is not the same thing as asking for a specific choice, after all.

Sure. But in this case, it's the desire for MEHEM rather than a lack of diversity, since ME3's unique offense is that it has exceptionally unhappy endings rather than an exceptional lack of them.

As far as player influence, ME3's standard is significantly higher than most bioware games. This isn't subjective: this is something we can actually look at.

You get a higher number of base choices (three-way choice , rather than the usual bipolar of ME1/ME2/DAO/DA2).

The availability of these endings depends on past player choices, rather than being given to the player regardless of previous choices. The player may only see one, which is dictated by yet another previous player choice (Collector Base), and unlocking more is a reflection of player involvement and interaction.

The primary ending choices have in and of themselves degrees of success, again reflecting previous player choices and involvement. The high-EMS/low-EMS differences in Destroy and Control are a reflection of player choices.

If a person considers potential character deaths as a distinction for end states (ie, deaths in the suicide mission make for a different ending), then ME3 has that covered as well. Not only did ME3 spend far more time in the game covering or reflecting such differences in major and minor quests (both Genophage and Rannoch arcs, as well as major side-quests like Grissom Academy or Indoctrinated Hanar), but ME3 would technically keep all the previous life/death differentiations of the previous games. Who's alive, and who's dead, is even more variable come ME3 than before.

And I'll also throw in that while the War Asset system left a lot to be desired for some people (no cutscenes, for example), it did offer a means for previous small choices choices to have more of an impact on the end-game than in pretty much any other Bioware game of note. Sure, it's in aggregate- but it's still more of a distinction, opening up second and third ending options and determining degrees of success, than the rest, where side quests stopped impacting your finale when their gold was used to buy armor or their xp helped raise your last level.


On paper, ME3's ending is heads and shoulders above pretty much any other recent Bioware game, and most games to note. The difference is emotional impact, not a lack of player involvement in influencing it.

Modifié par Dean_the_Young, 03 février 2014 - 01:37 .

[ziloe]

Redbelle wrote...

@Ziloe

FF9 ended with the main theif character making an entrance and proclaiming his love for Dagger.

It had some bittersweetness to it. But it ended on a high.

And when it comes to a BioWare game, I think BW have developed their games to a point that players ought to be able to expect a gamut of endings in the same way conversation encoutners can swing from angelic to blood soaked mayhem.

This isn't about entitlement. It's about Bioware demonstrating in ME2 that they can pull this kind of thing off and make it look good. Because as a company..... they've grown and their game content has grown in how they deliver it to theur audience.

Bioware innovation in how they tell a story led to great expectation that ME3's ending simply didn't meet. Like they'd run out of time and had to pull something together at the last second.

This does not mean that they cannot take what they have done in past games, and build on it in the future. If Bioware games allow the player to face different consequences from their actions then the ending is by far the most important part of the game. Where the journey dictates the destiantion that is a mystery until you arrive at the end.

Well of course the bit with Zidane was the biggest part, but don't forget all the other characters they showed off and what they were doing now that everything was better once again.

This is not to suggest that Bioware isn't capable. They did a beautiful job with how DA:O finished up. But I think people expected to see that again in the conclusion of ME. So yes, I agree that it felt rushed and even moreso, an attempt at being artistic while avoiding any and all player decision. You have no idea how happy it made me to be able to turn down the starchild, when they redid the ending.

But even better, I would have been perfectly okay with Shepard and Anderson looking out at that battle, believing they've failed and having that last dialogue. And depending on what we did all throughout that trilogy, we either watched our army win or lose. The protheans lost because they isolated themselves. And wasn't that the point? To show that when we came together, we could overcome anything? That beautiful moment dashed away by the instance of some starchild we barely knew anything about.

Modifié par ziloe, 03 février 2014 - 01:44 .

[JCAP]

sH0tgUn jUliA wrote...

@ OP - you said hearing legends about "the guy who sacrificed himself" is better than hearing legends about "the guy who lived and disappeared." Really? Why do you say that?

Because they already did that with the 2 previous PC's.

[Dean_the_Young]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

Talking about Fallout is a very different conversation, though. The Vault Dweller is king of blank slates. There is no personality tracking, no chance to emote, no real sense of being a character is really elaborated on at all except in the choices you make in the world. Therefore, in that instance, killing the main character would do nothing, since the main character is pretty ancillary to the entire experience. The game is all about the world and how your choices affected it.

That's why Fallout's endings skimp on details about the Vault Dweller and focus its endings on the rest of the world. Heck, the game gives you so much choice, you don't even necessarily beat the game when you blow up the mutant base (you could still need to find a Water Chip if you went directly to the base, for instance). That is why I think many people seriously disliked Fallout 3's endings - because the game tried to make it a character story, trying to find your dad, wind up making an ultimate sacrifice, etc.,... but then neglecting the world and the choices, which are always the focus in Fallout games.


A series like DA or ME focus too much on the main character and their companions for them to make "and everyone died a heroic death" something that is used much, let alone on a frequent basis.

One of the internal contradictions I've felt has existed in Bioware games is the friction between wanting a blank slate protagonist (ie, someone with no recognized or identifiable nuance, and thus free to express a wider range of positions and build their own charcter) and the emphasis on building ties between the companions and the protagonist. Players seem to really like being friends with an awesome group of people with virtually unconditional affection/ties with the protagonist.

Or, in another context- people love dem love interests, who are as much in love with Pure and Proper ParaShep as they would be banging MegaDusch ReneShep.

(True story: I know someone who swore off of Bioware romances when they realized they shared a favored LI with a total a-hole. After realizing that love makes you blind to the terrible character perception of video game LI's, they swore off any further RPG romance until those LI's have better standards.)


There's always a tradeoff between the costs and benefits between defined protagonist characterizations (Shepard with the guilt dreams) and blank-slate (Fallout protagonists), but companion interaction is probably one of those areas where the companion content works better (or is easier?) when assuming a certain sort of characterization of the PC. While this can lead to the canon-buddy (Garrus, Liara) when the game pretends to still be having a blank slate protagonists, it also helps build more informal/implicit connections between the player (character) and the NPCs of interest which makes things like Love Interests and Romance Arcs work.

Bleh. That's not coming out well, but there's a point behind that.

[ElitePinecone]

Redbelle wrote...

This isn't about entitlement. It's about Bioware demonstrating in ME2 that they can pull this kind of thing off and make it look good. Because as a company..... they've grown and their game content has grown in how they deliver it to theur audience.

Bioware innovation in how they tell a story led to great expectation that ME3's ending simply didn't meet. Like they'd run out of time and had to pull something together at the last second.

I think this may have indeed been what happened, unfortunately. There are several references in an early version of the ME3 script to allocating resources for teams Sword and Hammer, and at least one indication that Miranda (among other characters, I guess) could've been available to use in the end-game, in some form. Given how Priority: Earth ended up looking and playing, I wouldn't be surprised if the original intention was for a much grander level.

Plus, they were only writing everything from the confronation with TIM onwards from about November 2011 - it wasn't planned for years previously, as Ray Muzyka tried to suggest before launch. 

In a sense I can understand why the team wouldn't want to tackle something with Suicide Mission-level of complexity again, but given how much polish was applied to basically every other area of the game, it was pretty disappointing that things were so linear at that point. 

[Dean_the_Young]

What, in particular, is complex about the Suicide Mission? Narratively speaking, that is?

The Suicide Mission's content: it's presented obstacles and progression isn't changed by the previous missions. The only thing that is changed is the success/fail of various character checks due to loyalty, which factors in the behind-the-scenes math.

But, whether a companion lives or dies... what changes? Not the level itself- the only thing is that you can't select the companion going forward. The death cutscenes are very, very small- I hesitate to say 'cheap', but that comes to mind. The later dialogue is very broad and doesn't distinguish between people who die, or how many. The boss, the final choice, the final cinematics- these don't change at all.

About the extent of the changes is a few lines of dialogue with TIM, and the presence of coffin(s) and possible crewmates in the hold when Shepard gets the data pad. That's really, really minor, and nothing in particular is carried forward by it in the context of ME2 itself: you lose the companions on the ship, but aside from a single post-mission dialogue there's no post-game content for them either past the cuddle-romance button.

That's pretty much superficial differences in the narrative. How are these equal or more to the outputs of ME3?


If we're going to talk about how well the Suicide Mission worked, let's actually look at how it worked. It made people happy- okay. But the way it made people happy has very little to do with the claims and criticisms about it vis-a-vis ME3 that people are offering.

[ElitePinecone]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

On paper, ME3's ending is heads and shoulders above pretty much any other recent Bioware game, and most games to note. The difference is emotional impact, not a lack of player involvement in influencing it.

Hm. I take a rather big issue with the idea that War Assets are at all an adequate mechanism to translate player decsions into ending states, though. Only in the most abstract sense could you say that making any *specific* choice impacted the way the game ended (Collector Base aside, I suppose). And as Allan was talking about earlier in this thread, being able to fill your meter with multiplayer characters rather undermines the importance of even making those choices. It's extremely unfulfilling that the results of three games boils down to a numerical value, particularly when those values don't actually reflect anything beyond an arbitrary number needed for each ending.

ME2's system felt far more inclusive of the player in its decision-making. Decisions before and during the Suicide Mission had weight to them, and *felt* meaningful. 

Perhaps this is fundamentally a question of different tastes and perceptions - but I was struck by how bland Priority; Earth was compared to the finale of its predecessor, and how little reflection there was of anything we'd done as unique players for the last hundred hours or so. It also has to be said that the expectations resting on ME3, as the finale of a trilogy, were probably higher than any of Bioware's previous games to date. 

[Dean_the_Young]

ElitePinecone wrote...

Dean_the_Young wrote...

On paper, ME3's ending is heads and shoulders above pretty much any other recent Bioware game, and most games to note. The difference is emotional impact, not a lack of player involvement in influencing it.

Hm. I take a rather big issue with the idea that War Assets are at all an adequate mechanism to translate player decsions into ending states, though. Only in the most abstract sense could you say that making any *specific* choice impacted the way the game ended (Collector Base aside, I suppose). And as Allan was talking about earlier in this thread, being able to fill your meter with multiplayer characters rather undermines the importance of even making those choices. It's extremely unfulfilling that the results of three games boils down to a numerical value, particularly when those values don't actually reflect anything beyond an arbitrary number needed for each ending.

Well, let's look at the alternatives. Compare the
aggregate impacts of War Assets with, well, any other Bioware game. The
impact of the normal Bioware sidequest towards the ending is... XP
and/or credits/items to help you get there. That's it.

War
Assets work like that as well, since Shepard gets other rewards as well,
and War Assets also provide an actual way to both acknowledge and list
how these assets help. This also serves as a lore exposition device,
meaning war assets serve more purposes.

You can feel free to feel
it's insufficient... but this should be tempered by expectations (minor
assets may be impossible to reflect), and by comparison to other
Bioware and RPG games. It's not like the RPG standard is huge cutscene differences or narrative divergences: the equivalent to the summoning of different allies in DAO is the equivalent fleet scenes in ME3 and some of the NPCs here and there (like Wrex/Wreave for Krogan, or STG), and the equivalent for minor choices is that most never get reflected at all. Like in ME2.

ME2's system felt far more inclusive of the player in its decision-making. Decisions before and during the Suicide Mission had weight to them, and *felt* meaningful. 

Sure. And if it's an emotional impact, let's just be honest about it. Emotions are emotions, and I'm never going to tell you your feeling is wrong. It's your feeling, and it should inform you.

When you start trying to justify your emotional state by tying it to a supporting argument about, say, RPG choices being involved, however- that's something that can be looked at and analyzed. The inputs of the Suicide Mission aren't previous decision-making past 'did you do loyalty missions' or 'did you buy this in a store.' Those are completionist checks, not least because there is only two loyalty missions in which an RPG choice can even fail to gain loyalty. Inside the loyalty mission you have specialist selection- but that, to, isn't based on previous decisions. You are welcome to your own opinions, but not your own facts to support them.

Nor should you want to- after all, if you don't understand the facts behind your feelings, how will you be able to advocate what sort of factors Bioware should or should not revisit? ME3 had far more prior impacts factored into the ending than ME2. You preferred ME2. If you tell Bioware 'I want more meaningful decisions before the finale', then they're going to be looking far more towards ME3 (where prior decisions impacted the availability and possible outcomes) than ME2 (where no prior decisions affected the plot outcomes, and immediate choices at the start/during the mission had superficial differences).

That won't get you what you want. Saying 'I want a happy ending like ME2', besides the virtue of being honest, is far more likely to get you that ending like ME2.

Perhaps this is fundamentally a question of different tastes and perceptions - but I was struck by how bland Priority; Earth was compared to the finale of its predecessor, and how little reflection there was of anything we'd done as unique players for the last hundred hours or so. It also has to be said that the expectations resting on ME3, as the finale of a trilogy, were probably higher than any of Bioware's previous games to date.

I'd agree with the visual bland, but that had nothing to do with the RPG reflections and everything to do with that they wanted an aescetic emphasizing the hopelessness of the situation. Dark clouds, city ruins, and night are pretty much Da Way to do it, but that's irrelevant to reflecting previous choices. It's not like the ME2 finale did much with previous choices as you carried forward- it was all in the tone the player carried with them. ME2's finale, for reasons entirely unrelated to RPG carryover, was about going beyond the limits of known space to an exotic location. A spectacular visual vista made sense. ME3's finale, again for reasons entirely unrelated to RPG carryover, was about going back home to something familiar and trying to finish a hopeless fight. Aescetic, dimmed.

This is why it's important to identify the proper cause and effect. If you make a factually incorrect link (such as thinking ME2 was grand because prior RPG choices were reflected: they weren't) and ignore the actual mechanics at play (how the Crucible choices are presented), you're going to have a hard time identifying things that would actually benefit you in the way you want.

Modifié par Dean_the_Young, 03 février 2014 - 02:50 .