1638 réponses à ce sujet

[ImaginaryMatter]

This is always a strange topic for me to discuss. But let me start by saying that the above quote from Mac Walters, taken from NowGamer* surprises me, to say the least. Everything Mac Walters expresses there is what I felt the game failed to do, when it came to respecting diversity among the playerbase.

 

I was very disappointed when the game came out, hate is too strong a word, but I definately was left with a sense of disbelief that they could ship something in that state. ME3 was a game of issues, the textures and general level of polish were way below that of previous games, for example. A telltale sign of BioWare working frantically to beat the clock even in spite of pushing back the launch day by three months.

 

I've always held the belief that it's not just the content, but the way it's presented that caused the backlash. I personally found the content to be of incredibly poor quality, it was contrived, nonsensical and directly contradicted so much of what had come before in the series, both literally and thematically. A good example is them equating choosing Destroy to wanting to/needing to eliminate all synthetics. In ME2, Legion specifically mentions that the Geth rejected using the Reapers' technology because it lessened them as a species, since they wouldn't attain the advancements on their own. If you destroy the Collector base, Legion also directly comments on this, saying that Shepard has more in common with the Geth outlook on the advancement of life than she might think. This starts to go downhill in ME3 when a lot of Reaper tech is deliberately left unexplained in order to utilize quasi-mysticism instead. "Direct personality dissemination required." stands out there, as it really makes no sense. Plus, utilizing the Reaper technology at all does seem to run counter to Legion's position in ME2. But, I digress.

 

ME1 and ME2 were games where there was a central core of mandatory plot elements, but the way the player chose to experience these were always left more open through the dialogue wheel. Commander Shepard's personality became a reflection of the player's way of viewing the Mass Effect universe. My real issue with the ending, and sadly most of ME3, is that rather than respecting that Commander Shepard can have widely different personalities, based on player choice, BioWare forced the character, and thusly the player down one (or two if you view Renegade seperately) pre-determined paths. The fact that so much of ME3 cannot diverge from the rails it's on, is why I think so many people reacted so strongly. I also think this is where the sense of betrayal comes from, in some cases, since BioWare repeatedly stated the importance of respecting different player choices, but in the end completely abandoned those ideas when the credits rolled.

 

I had about six different Commander Shepards that I took through ME2. To date, I have only imported two of those into ME3, and I don't really see a point in doing so. I'm not angry or hateful, but I am really disappointed that what could have been a triumph of interactive storytelling ended up falling victim to so many AAA gamedesign traps.

 

*http://www.nowgamer....me_endings.html

 

I have many of the similar sentiments.

[SDW]

Answer to OP: Never hated Mass Effect. Was unhappy with the ending though. Today, Mass Effect is a thing of my past - seems like a good idea since what soured things up is never going to be changed anymore- that I sometimes get drawn back into. Best to not visit the forum and topics like this (didn't read any replies to not dredge up those feelings of old again), although interest in topics discussed here has really diminished. Not sure whether I will buy the next installment. 

[AlanC9]

A good example is them equating choosing Destroy to wanting to/needing to eliminate all synthetics.

This isn't really coherent with the rest of your thesis, is it? "Want" and "need" have nothing to do with what Destroy does, right? At least not Shepard's wants or needs. I though the point was that the choices presented don't have anything to do with what your Shepards want or need.

[Fraevar]

This isn't really coherent with the rest of your thesis, is it? "Want" and "need" have nothing to do with what Destroy does, right? At least not Shepard's wants or needs. I though the point was that the choices presented don't have anything to do with what your Shepards want or need.

For clarification, when I played the game, I found that Destroy was simply framed as the "evil" or "Renegade" option, both in terms of color and the aforementioned statement that it will eliminate all synthetic life. That simplicity is what broke it for me, I thought it rendered all the diversity that ME2 and ME3 had already established vis a vis synthetic life quite meaningless.

[katamuro]

The problem with all the endings is that the blue and green ones are coloured more friendly compared to the red one. Red is nearly always bad or evil. Green was supposed to be the middle choice but in reality it is some kind of crazy, very forceful method of forcing everybody to be techno-hippies. blue seems to be the paragon path but why did then Illusive man want to do it. The clash in between what you saw in the game before and what you get offered at the end is the most jarring experience in my mind in the entire game. Its just weird how those choices while presented by other people(Saren-green, Illusive Man-blue) seem to be the bad choices but the one seemingly good choice presented to you by Anderson ends up like the bad one. 

[Hadeedak]

Part of why I love the concept of the endings is that there's not a real clearcut good or bad, or even paragon or renegade. As much as I like teasing the destroyers by saying it's totally the renegade choice (kill the synthetics! Wreck the tech! But hey, Shepard lives!), it's not. It may be more pragmatic, and certainly the safest choice. I like that it's a lot more complicated than "Kill council, y/n?" or "Use tech, y/n?".

 

So yeah, just calling Destroy the bad choice (or just assuming it's good because Anderson said it was) is overly simplistic. 

[wanako]

to anwser the OP: Not the whole game, just the last 15 minutes of it. Could the rest of the game have been better? Hell yeah!

 

Oh well, nothing MEHEM can't fix.

PC MASTER RACE. lol.

[N0rke]

The concept of the ending itself doesn't bother me so much, even if I wish it was a different ending entirely, it's that no matter what you do you can't achieve a perfect ending. Even when Shepard does everything 'right' you still have to choose between sacrificing yourself and leave your friends/LI behind or killing off an entire species and EDI to stay alive. The Mass Effect series has always been good about being able to play your cards right to get feel good things to happen, and yet in the last 15 minutes of the game they dropped the ball when it mattered most.

[AlanC9]

For clarification, when I played the game, I found that Destroy was simply framed as the "evil" or "Renegade" option, both in terms of color and the aforementioned statement that it will eliminate all synthetic life. That simplicity is what broke it for me, I thought it rendered all the diversity that ME2 and ME3 had already established vis a vis synthetic life quite meaningless.

 

Maybe it is the Renegade option? We've had long arguments about that here; I don't think the P/R scheme rewards such analysis myself.

 

I don't quite follow what's wrong with Shepard having evil destructive choices available. Gunning down the Feros colonists is kind of silly since the gas grenades take them out fine, but you can do it.

[RZIBARA]

I never hated Mass Effect 3 to begin with. Sure it has its flaws, but it was still a great game, better than most I've played too.

[ImaginaryMatter]

Maybe it is the Renegade option? We've had long arguments about that here; I don't think the P/R scheme rewards such analysis myself.

 

I don't quite follow what's wrong with Shepard having evil destructive choices available. Gunning down the Feros colonists is kind of silly since the gas grenades take them out fine, but you can do it.

 

I always thought the only Renegade thing about Destroy is that it is activated by shooting at something.

[Nightwriter]

I still hate the "people who didn't like the ending wanted sunshine and ponies" proponents. Does that count.

 

MAY HAIRY TRUCKERS FART ON YOUR CEREAL, MALIFECARUM.

 

YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL.

 

NOT THAT STUFF WAY ON TOP OF THE FRIDGE YOU DON'T EAT UNTIL YOU'RE OUT OF YOUR FAVORITE.

[AlanC9]

Because I believe thought should precede action.  And thinking about these endings through would have (should have, at least) had them realize these endings would not have gone over well.  

 

Heck when I first heard rumors about these endings, I dismissed them as exaggerations.  "No way Bioware would have pulled that stunt" I thought "There'd be riots" Of course it turned out the rumors, if anything, understated things.

 

THus I believe thinking things through in the first place would have resulted in different endings.  Or at the very least, I wider range of endings.

 

Oh, and fyi, your persistent use of such terms as "pound the intended meaning into every viewer's head" is getting tiresome.  Yes I know we're not all as clever as you and need things spelled out, possibly with a bouncing ball so we call follow along.  But it really comes off as condescending.

 

Wait a minute. My impression has always been that you actually do know what the scene means, but  that you sometimes pretend to believe that Shepard's survival is in doubt for rhetorical purposes. Anyway, we've seen an awful lot of interpretations here which Bio didn't intend and which should never have been taken seriously by anybody; one of the EC's jobs was killing lots of them off. Not enough of them, regrettably. The concept of leaving stuff up for interpretation is unworkable.

 

As for the substance, you've got two assumptions here which bear looking into.

 

The first is that your moral-acceptability issue really is responsible for a lot of the backlash. Maybe so; it's functionally a subset of the "ME games have always had an optimal outcome available, and the ME3 final choice should have followed suit" argument, and that argument does have a bunch of proponents here. I suppose we could start analyzing posts.

 

The second assumption is that more thought would have revealed anything to Bio's writers. I don't see that happening. I do agree that ME is a series that pretends to be about hard choices while really being about avoiding them. But I don't see any evidence that Bio's writers knew that, and I don't see any way for them to figure that out without more data. The only way to get that data was to release ME3.

[Garrus is my Shepard]

I recently played through the trilogy again with all of the DLC installed, and I will say, Mass Effect 3 feels like a much more complete game now. When it first came out, I would have rated the vanilla game a 6/10. Now that all of the DLC has been released I would rate it at a 8.5-9/10.

 

I've still got my problems with the ending, but that was two years ago and I like the Extended Cut well enough. I'm over it now. It's still my favorite video game series ever.

[Fraevar]

I always thought the only Renegade thing about Destroy is that it is activated by shooting at something.

See that's what also strikes me as odd. It's presented as Renegade through the color usage, but it's only that arbitrarily tacked-on element of it *somehow* meaning the death of all synthetic life that makes it "evil" to me. That's why I have such issues with it, I simply can't find a way to establish any logic to it, with the information the series offers.

[Invisible Man]

I also thought that shooting at the tubes was more likely to disable the crucible, than to fire the damn thing up. I mean really.

[AlanC9]

See that's what also strikes me as odd. It's presented as Renegade through the color usage, but it's only that arbitrarily tacked-on element of it *somehow* meaning the death of all synthetic life that makes it "evil" to me. That's why I have such issues with it, I simply can't find a way to establish any logic to it, with the information the series offers.

 

Well, sure; what makes something a Renegade action is often the collateral damage it causes, to the extent that ME morality is coherent at all.. Take away the collateral damage and that action wouldn't be Renegade anymore.

 

Not quite sure what you mean by the italed here. Just that we don't know how the Crucible works?

[Bob from Accounting]

Well, sure; what makes something a Renegade action is often the collateral damage it causes, to the extent that ME morality is coherent at all.. Take away the collateral damage and that action wouldn't be Renegade anymore.

Not really.

[AlanC9]

An actual argument there would be nice.

[Bob from Accounting]

Simply consider the Renegade choices of the series. Being rude and hostile to squadmates. Pushing for human domination. Exterminating the Rachni. Dooming the krogan. Are these unfortunate collateral side effects? No. They're effects Shepard and the player actively promoted and pushed for.

[Reorte]

See that's what also strikes me as odd. It's presented as Renegade through the color usage, but it's only that arbitrarily tacked-on element of it *somehow* meaning the death of all synthetic life that makes it "evil" to me. That's why I have such issues with it, I simply can't find a way to establish any logic to it, with the information the series offers.

The "colour" element bothers me - do we have to assume that everything coloured red is Renegade and everything blue Paragon? Sometimes they're just the colours that they happen to be. In any case the only other example I can think of in the entire trilogy where the colour wasn't just part of the UI is the star behind TIM at the end of ME2. It's not as if Garrus' default outfit means he's a Paragon.

[Reorte]

Simply consider the Renegade choices of the series. Being rude and hostile to squadmates. Pushing for human domination. Exterminating the Rachni. Dooming the krogan. Are these unfortunate collateral side effects? No. They're effects Shepard and the player actively promoted and pushed for.

There's the big difference between Renegade choices and what happens in Destroy, unless you're arguing it from the point of view of wiping out the Reapers (but IMO that's not really any different from all the mooks a Shepard of any shade guns down without a second thought).

[voteDC]

I don't hate the game but I do look back at it and think it wasted so much potential.

Things such as the ruined Journal, the eavesdropping side quests, the comedy animations, etc. It was as if they stopped at some point and just said "that'll do".

My big issue however is that the story is quite often treated as just an inconvenience to all the awesome pew-pew action. The rachni choice for example is laughable. The reference to the meeting in ME1, if you released the queen, is forced into dialogue obviously written for those who had started with ME2.

One of the big annoyances about the endings were their execution. They told me that those three choices would have massively different repercussions and then showed me three near identical cinematic endings. The Extended Cut fixed a great deal of that but it just raises the question of how they thought the shipped ones were acceptable. Don't tell me things will be different but then show me that they aren't.

There are great moments in Mass Effect 3 but I just don't feel as if they formed a great whole.

[Iakus]

Wait a minute. My impression has always been that you actually do know what the scene means, but  that you sometimes pretend to believe that Shepard's survival is in doubt for rhetorical purposes. Anyway, we've seen an awful lot of interpretations here which Bio didn't intend and which should never have been taken seriously by anybody; one of the EC's jobs was killing lots of them off. Not enough of them, regrettably. The concept of leaving stuff up for interpretation is unworkable.

 

As for the substance, you've got two assumptions here which bear looking into.

 

The first is that your moral-acceptability issue really is responsible for a lot of the backlash. Maybe so; it's functionally a subset of the "ME games have always had an optimal outcome available, and the ME3 final choice should have followed suit" argument, and that argument does have a bunch of proponents here. I suppose we could start analyzing posts.

 

The second assumption is that more thought would have revealed anything to Bio's writers. I don't see that happening. I do agree that ME is a series that pretends to be about hard choices while really being about avoiding them. But I don't see any evidence that Bio's writers knew that, and I don't see any way for them to figure that out without more data. The only way to get that data was to release ME3.

I wasn't referring to the breath scene in particular.  But yes, I do know what that scene means, as do you.

 

However, unlike you, I also see how difficult it can be to interpret the scene that way.  I have to actively focus on what the writers were trying to convey in the breath scene.  As I do not regard the scene as hopeful or uplifting at all.  That they did not see fit to alter that scene at all in a DLC designed to provide "clarity and closure' certainly shows how little they regarded player opinion.

 

My point was that even I, a nobody on a gaming forum who only had secondhand information about these endings knew there would be riots over this.  I would have thought professional writers and developers would have been even more cognizant of the repercussions.

 

 

In addition, you seem to be falling into the "Disney trap" here. You are assuming that what I (and everyone else who doesn't like the endings)  want is a no-consequences ending.  You know perfectly well that is not the case.  And I think you are smart enough to realize there is a vast, vast middle ground between no consequences and what we got.  It's not a matter of having an optimal outcome where everything falls perfectly into place.  It's about finding balance between the outcome and the price.

 

I don't want to spend ten grand on a tv doesn't mean I want a free tv.

[Argolas]

Yes.