989 réponses à ce sujet

[Iakus]

I think Weekes figured out the main problem quite precisely. If Shepard was seen coming out of rubble with a smirk on his face and then looking into the sunset over a dead/allied Reaper hugging his love interest there would not've been Retake Mass Effect. The majority would've got over it, like they did when they were forced to work with Cerberus in ME2. Shepard's death emphasized those other problems.

"Getting over it" is probably a good way to phrase it.  The endings still would have sucked, for a variety of reasons.  But the emotional groin-kick of watching your Shepard burn for those endings would at least have been absent.

[Iakus]

I didn't think the battle was incoherent; it was fairly straightforward and you had a clear objective (why the reapers didn't take the Citadel sooner is neither here or there in this respect). What it lacked was that feeling of epic-ness. You were facing the bulk of the reapers' might, but it didn't quite feel that way. Perhaps this has a lot to do with the less than stellar level design. And then of course, there's the less than satisfying beam run, where Shepard was, yet again, slave to the cut scene. It should have been all or nothing. If you get hit, you die, but you can make it. If any or both of your squad members get hit, they'd also die and be irretrievable. I'd have everyone else on the ground get destroyed so that it's only you or the three of you up there. But I guess if wishes were red sand we'd all be f***ed up.

They were using WWI tactics in the 23rd century.  Against an alien invason!

[Obadiah]

But he says it in a way that seems intent on invalidating all of the other complaints that people had. He basically said "it wasn't a bad ending people just weren't prepared for it" which completely and unfairly seeks to invalidate all the complaints about the catalyst and the actual ending.
...

I think Mr. Weekes, and a lot of the devs, was really just trying to understand what was going on with the fans. Criticisms of the story are fine and all, but nothing in this game deserved a "backlash" - something more, heh, emotional was clearly at work.

One thing I remember a lot of was a sense that "Betrayal!" and "Bioware did this to me!" from the forums. I don't know what to say about that, other than I never could take it seriously.

[angol fear]

I think Mr. Weekes, and a lot of the devs, was really just trying to understand what was going on with the fans. Criticisms of the story are fine and all, but nothing in this game deserved a "backlash" - something more, heh, emotional was clearly at work.

One thing I remember a lot of was a sense that "Betrayal!" and "Bioware did this to me!" from the forums. I don't know what to say about that, other than I never could take it seriously.

 

Agree. There's a difference between "I didn't like the ending because..." and "The ending sucks, Bioware ruined my life, Bioware didn't understand what Mass Effect is about, it's bad writing...". 

When people are talking about satisfaction they aren't doing constructive criticism : satisfaction is an emotional response to something. To get satisfaction, fitting expectations is the only thing needed. But writing isn't about trying to satisfy. People can try to justify their feeling with arguments, the starting point isn't good to make a "valid" criticism. Feeling is a part of criticism, not the starting point.

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

But perception is reality. We are not machines. An emotional response is still valid. The story in ME3 was an emotional rollercoaster, and to have it end the way it did IMO was just cruel.

[SporkFu]

But perception is reality. We are not machines. An emotional response is still valid. The story in ME3 was an emotional rollercoaster, and to have it end the way it did IMO was just cruel.

The endings didn't really upset me as much as many many others, but I do tend to agree with this. Looking back on it, after some time has passed and so many playthroughs, ME3 had so many ups and downs that it really should've ended on a high note. I know that if it had, I would've sat back, took a deep breath and said, "holy sh*t that was awesome."

[angol fear]

But perception is reality. We are not machines. An emotional response is still valid. The story in ME3 was an emotional rollercoaster, and to have it end the way it did IMO was just cruel.

 

Perception is perception. An emotional response is valid as an emotional response, not as a criticism. You want to reduce the game to your first impression, you can do it but it will never be a constructive criticism.

[sveners]

Perception is perception. An emotional response is valid as an emotional response, not as a criticism. You want to reduce the game to your first impression, you can do it but it will never be a constructive criticism.

 

Perception is reality. What we perceive is our reality. Even if what we perceive is somehow false, it will still be our reality.

 

This is basic philosophy.

[angol fear]

Perception is reality. What we perceive is our reality. Even if what we perceive is somehow false, it will still be our reality.

 

This is basic philosophy.

 

it's our reality, yes I agree with that and yes that's basic philosophy. But that wasn't my point when I was answering her.

[dlux]

2.5 years and they still miss the point. Color me unsurprised.

Fans: The game SUCKED, especially the atrocious ending.

 

2.5 years pass...

 

BioWare: Fans were upset because Shepard died.

 

[StarcloudSWG]

To be specific, the emotional reaction that Mac Walters and Casey Hudson managed to provoke is exactly the same reaction that you get when a really close game of sports between two teams that have heavily invested fans... suddenly ends with a third team that doesn't even play the same sport is given the win.

 

And the referee team responds to the heavy criticism by saying, basically, "You're just spoiled fans. They're athletes too!"

 

What Bioware did with this ending is completely ignore the themes of the story *as had been developed* through the series, and substitute the themes as written in the margin notes of a design document that had been discarded during the development of the first game.

 

They laid the groundwork for an ending that celebrated victory through diversity and strength through difference.. and then ended the game by focusing on a secondary theme as interpreted by a poorly programmed AI.

 

Basically, they didn't write the ending to the story they'd actually written. They wrote the ending to a different story. If it had ended with Shepard and Anderson watching Earth while the Crucible fired.. that was the natural ending to the story. That was it.

 

Instead, Mac and Casey took subthemes that they hadn't really touched on, i.e. synthetics vs organics and the 'supposed' inevitability of one destroying the other, and made that the ending. Before you say 'but the Reapers!' let me remind you the Reapers aren't 'really' synthetics according to Bioware's writing. They're some kind of synthesis of organic and synthetic. So yeah.. machines vs people? Not actually the primary conflict.

[CronoDragoon]

Fans: The game SUCKED, especially the atrocious ending.

 

Laughably wrong. Go visit the ME3 review thread and educate yourself.

[crawfs]

I think Mr. Weekes, and a lot of the devs, was really just trying to understand what was going on with the fans. Criticisms of the story are fine and all, but nothing in this game deserved a "backlash" - something more, heh, emotional was clearly at work.

One thing I remember a lot of was a sense that "Betrayal!" and "Bioware did this to me!" from the forums. I don't know what to say about that, other than I never could take it seriously.

 

 

Well obviously, but that happens in every community, for every valid criticism there will be ten extremely exaggerating or upset fans. That being said it's been more than two years, in that time you'd think they'd have been able to filter out the exaggerations from the legitimate criticisms

[Linkenski]

I just realized that I've probably just been arguing about why the ending sucked from a literary pov only. Yeah, I do agree that Shepard dying in almost every ending and the limited impact of choice makes the ending awful from a strictly game play perspective. But when it also completely fails as a story, I think that's where the biggest problem lies.

[PinkysPain]

Do these guys even remember what player agency means? It's always an illusion, but when you give player paths which they truly feel compelled to take they will suspend disbelief .... when all they can do is stare at the screen in disbelief, well you've lost it.

 

When I have to sacrifice my PC at the end of the game series where the one constant was victory despite all odds I want to do it for true victory ... to protect those dear to me, to trample over the plans of those who oppose me. Not to pick between genocide, body/mind-r***, enslavement  at the behest of my enemy. To then give us refusal and twitter that the next cycle uses the crucible any way proves they are simply not interested in agency.

 

People like Weekes and Gamble either don't have a clue ... or hate us, or both.

[Linkenski]

I completely understand players felt ME3's endgame lacked player agency, because it really does. It has nothing that's comparable to ME2's final mission where you're commanding your units to do certain objectives and stuff, when ME3 has war assets that, from the beginning, seemed to foreshadow a final warfare in which you got to see all your gathered forces fight alongside. It does so in the very boring CGI fleet battle sequence before the actual final mission, but it feels like it could go much deeper than that, and if it weren't for the 1,5 year dev cycle, you can bet Bioware would've gone deeper.

But even so I've also thought people overrated player agency often. A friend of mine thought it was a missed opportunity that you couldn't join Saren on Virmire in ME1 and I was always like "why the hell would you want that?!"

[dlux]

Laughably wrong. Go visit the ME3 review thread and educate yourself.

Not this BS again. 

 

Try googling "Mass Effect 3 Shitstorm" so that you can educate yourself. It might help you with your denial trip. Have fun.

[Iakus]

Do these guys even remember what player agency means? It's always an illusion, but when you give player paths which they truly feel compelled to take they will suspend disbelief .... when all they can do is stare at the screen in disbelief, well you've lost it.

 

When I have to sacrifice my PC at the end of the game series where the one constant was victory despite all odds I want to do it for true victory ... to protect those dear to me, to trample over the plans of those who oppose me. Not to pick between genocide, body/mind-r***, enslavement  at the behest of my enemy. To then give us refusal and twitter that the next cycle uses the crucible any way proves they are simply not interested in agency.

 

People like Weekes and Gamble either don't have a clue ... or hate us, or both.

 

What really happens is that the story-maker proves a successful “sub-creator.”  He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter.  Inside it, what he relates is “true”: it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside.  The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed.  You are then out in the Primary World again, looking at the little abortive Secondary World from outside.  If you are obliged, by kindliness or circumstance, to stay, then disbelief must be suspended (or stifled), otherwise listening and looking would become intolerable.  But this suspension of disbelief is a substitute for the genuine thing, a subterfuge we use when condescending to games or make-believe, or when trying (more or less willingly) to find what virtue we can in the work of an art that has for us failed.

 

J R R Tolkien

[Linkenski]

Well, I wouldn't say I actually cared for Shepard as a character that much. They tried to characterize him a lot in ME3 so he wasn't a complete brick by adding more autodialogue and removing player agency etc. but I felt like his "Icon status" was even more jarring since he was a real character, and I felt like he was a bit of a mary sue with all the times squadmates would go "I don't know how you do it Shepard" and "None of this would've happened without you". It was just a bit too much flattery and all that, but I still felt sad killing him off in ME3 because he was MY character, and I was sad to see my PC get killed.

 

I can't really sympathise with everyone wanting Shepard back in the next Mass Effect though. I've certainly had enough of Commander Shepard but I thought he was awesome as a PC even if the third game railroaded him too much into a character I didn't quite like as much.

[ImaginaryMatter]

Well, I wouldn't say I actually cared for Shepard as a character that much. They tried to characterize him a lot in ME3 so he wasn't a complete brick by adding more autodialogue and removing player agency etc. but I felt like his "Icon status" was even more jarring since he was a real character, and I felt like he was a bit of a mary sue with all the times squadmates would go "I don't know how you do it Shepard" and "None of this would've happened without you". It was just a bit too much flattery and all that, but I still felt sad killing him off in ME3 because he was MY character, and I was sad to see my PC get killed.

 

I can't really sympathise with everyone wanting Shepard back in the next Mass Effect though. I've certainly had enough of Commander Shepard but I thought he was awesome as a PC even if the third game railroaded him too much into a character I didn't quite like as much.

 

I was fine with Shepard being a brick. His importance to the story was being my avatar, not a character. Part of the problem I had with ME3 is that the sudden rush to build up all this characterization felt like just putting paint on that brick. To me it felt shallow and forced. I'm equally fine with brick characters or well realized ones but the writers have to stick with one or the other. In ME3, I think Shepard is the worst of both worlds. He lacks the depth and complexity of a fleshed out character but the choices are often binary and feel superficial compared to the terribly railroaded ones.

 

There's also that Mary Sue problem and how the galaxy increasing starts revolving not around not around that giant black hole in the middle but Commander Bullet Hose. It's something that's bothered me ever since the opening scene in ME2 with Miranda and TIM (if Shepard dies, humanity might well follow? Shepard isn't space Jesus you two! He's just an ashole who got mind probed by an ancient alien artifact!).

[Obadiah]

...
Wipe out the Geth? You've proven synthetics can be beaten.
Wipe out the Quarians? Great, now you're working with the Geth, co-operation is possible.
Geth-Quarian peace? Co-operation is definitely possible.

There is another way to look at what happened at Rannoch.

Without the intervention of the Reapers, the Quarians wipe out the Geth. Then, without the intervention of Shepard, the Geth, the created, wipe out the Quarians, the creators. The story just as easily shows one further instance of the conflict between Synthetics and Organics described by the Catalyst, an instance that without outside intervention to moderate it, will wipe out one side or the other.

The big problem is that the Catalyst basically doesn't want any of these cultures to have the chance to 'grow up.' The Catalyst's argument also applies to parents and children.
...

To paraphrase something I heard recently, and make the Catalyst even more unlike-able, the Catalyst gave up on us and wrote us off.

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

Shepard as a brick was okay, but Shepard in ME3 was okay, too, because that was the way I was leaning to playing her anyway.... except for the stupid dreams. Maybe throw in some chain smoking, and heavy drinking. She did some bad sh*t in ME1 and 2, and was now trying to leave the galaxy a better place. Then that ending....

[Iakus]

I'll take Shepard as a brick if he can at lesat be my brick.  Unlike ME3 where I was told "You can have the Blue Shepard or you can have the Red Shepard"

 

Ideally, we should have had options where we could decide how Shepard feels in a given situation.

[themikefest]

Shepard as a brick was okay, but Shepard in ME3 was okay, too, because that was the way I was leaning to playing her anyway.... except for the stupid dreams. Maybe throw in some chain smoking, and heavy drinking. She did some bad sh*t in ME1 and 2, and was now trying to leave the galaxy a better place. Then that ending....

After my first playthrough, I imagined my femshep at a Led Zeppelin concert enjoying herself instead of dreaming about a kid who said you can't help me at the beginning

 

 

The brick part I don't mine. My femshep I play as a ruthless b*t*h in ME1/ME2. But along comes ME3, and she has to say and do things that don't fit her character. Bioware removed my femshep and put in femshep's stunt double. But I keep forgetting, ME3 is the third game and its the best place to start a trilogy.