What's funny is that the Conduit is actually the closest thing the series has to a MacGuffin, and Vigil's datafile is the closest thing the series has to a literal DEM. All in ME1, the trilogy's origin.
Ha, yeah the series kinda goes ****** up after Ilos and the suspension of disbelief really kicks in. There could be a reason for this. But.... probably not. and just more BioWare rieting skillzzzz
Wow. I blame BioWare but lets be clear here. EA rushes devs to put out lackluster, unfinished games to meet deadlines. ME3 should have been delayed again until summer or even fall of 2012. But oh no, EA had already put up with one delay and they made BioWare release it march.
The same thing happened with DICE. Patrick Bach asked EA if they could delay BF4 tell sometime in Q1 of 2014, but EA had to have their game out before CoD... And look what happened.
Sim City is another shinning example of EA douchebaggery.
EA sucks nut. But.... I do blame BioWare, and mostly Hudson and Walters for the narrative issues of ME3.
As opposed to what?
I dunno, taking feedback to heart and actually adding more options to the endings
besides "Frak you! Rocks fall, everyone dies!"
Gotta disagree with this.
They were pretty much clubbing us over the head with the dream sequences that Shep was going to die. That and several references from Anderson and Hackett about Shep having died before. If you didn't know that Shepard was going to die in the end, I submit that the player wasn't paying attention.
No, just no. this is a massive stretch. how you get you are going to die from some bizarre dream sequences that tell you nothing is beyond me. And how one could conclude they were going to die from comments by the other guys you quote is way out there as well. Well after the fact when you DO die you can make a stretch and look at those things but the vast majority of people would not be taking those cues.
If their intent was to strongly foreshadow Shepards death then they did a poor job of it.
The biggest mistake with the ending, putting the forced sacrifice aside. Was totally trivializing the enemy you had been fighting against for 3 games. From big bad scary sovereign to big bad scarey harbinger to some little kid lecturing you and then saying, oh well I guess you beat us so now you get to pick how things turn out. A horrible way to flatten out your accomplishments of the previous games.
In a game series that is successful story wise but more importantly character wise they totally dropped the ball on dealing with characters that mattered in the series, the old good bye scenes didn't do any justice to characters and the epilogue of the old man and the kid was not great either.
The ending of the series was lousy because it should have had at least one 'happy ending' possibility ala DA but if they were adamant about the sacrifice line, make the person feel like they are going out a hero not some schlep.
If their intent was to strongly foreshadow Shepards death then they did a poor job of it.
Given Shepard dies at the very start of ME2 and immediately comes back to life in the next scene doesn't help either. Just invokes the trope Death is Cheap, it doesn't get taken seriously anymore.
Although given ME2 and ME3, I don't think I want to leave Mac alone with my protagonists anymore. 
Mass Effect 3 is the greatest written game of all time with the greatest ending ever written. It puts Spec Ops The Line, Ken Levine's work, Last of Us, and all other games to shame in terms of writing. Earnest Hemingway himself couldn't have written a better more fulfilling ending that the masterminds of Hudson and Walters.
Joke: Why did the chicken cross the road?
Hemingway's answer: To die. In the rain.
Joke: Why did the chicken cross the road?
Hemingway's answer: To die. In the rain.
His nihilistic world view knew no limits, lol.
@Turian
I got more of a laugh out of that than I should've.
At least EA has cooled down a bit. Now Ubisoft are the ones earning everyone's ire.
Although given ME2 and ME3, I don't think I want to leave Mac alone with my protagonists anymore.
What makes you think Mac was responsible for Shepard's railroaded death and Cerberus cooperation in ME2?
Most intriguingly of all, Karpyshyn mentioned a discarded plot idea for the beginning of Mass Effect 2 that sounds similar to what Walters and the Mass Effect 3 team eventually chose for the trilogy's ending (er, spoilers):
"There was some ideas that maybe Shepard gets his essence transferred into some kind of machine, becoming a cyborg and becoming a bridge between synthetics and organics - which is a theme that does play up in the game," Karpyshyn concluded. "At one point we thought, maybe that's how he survives into Mass Effect 2."
http://www.eurogamer...-trilogy-ending
What makes you think Mac was responsible for Shepard's railroaded death and Cerberus cooperation in ME2?
Two games he was lead writer on led to the railroaded death of the protagonist.
I dunno, taking feedback to heart and actually adding more options to the endings
besides "Frak you! Rocks fall, everyone dies!"
I really don't think to many of us knew that going into the third game of the series that Shepard's outcome could possibly end in his death. It was kind of expected for him to. From my perspective I wasn't stunned when he supposedly died since I always pick destroy and it is never confirmed one way or another. Had the ending been written differently and Shepard's last scene would of been sitting next to Anderson talking about the best seats in the house it would of made more sense. It would of been more believable and understandable at that point.
Where it all goes south is the whole with the catalyst scene because it comes straight from left field. Literally out of no where. And by the time you wade through all the psychobabble that the catalyst is saying and you shoot the tube and the credits roll you were left with a total sense of what the heck just happened here. At least I was. Even with the finest most beautiful piece of scene stealing music ever written for a video game playing during that scene "An End once an for all" couldn't force me to feel sad or to try and appreciate the scene which was written. I really didn't feel sad or felt heroic at all. Mainly just confused at what I just saw.
Would you prefer for them to visualize the rocks falling?
I'd prefer more and more varied options. Not a middle finger from the writers.
Also, the ending is yet another great example of Maccguffin and Deus Ex machina tropes, it's like they directly copied and pasted it out of creative writing 101 for High School class.
Even a high school creative writing class discourages the use of Deus Ex Machina. At least, mine did...
On a related note, I will always feel that the writers of ME 3 should have listened to the Wachowksi Brothers' brilliant presentation at the end of The Matrix: Path of Neo. It not only explained why the ending of the Matrix trilogy made sense, it also explained why they would never, in a million years, subject someone playing a video game to that ending.
This takes you straight to The Wachowski Brothers' Presentation which happens at 23m36s.
Edit: To paraphrase the brothers, "While martyrdom works great for a movie, in an action video game, the Jesus thing is, well... lame. Really lame."
And remember, these guys were changing an ending that they had literally been planning since the first draft of the first script of the Matrix, and which they serviced constantly throughout all three movies. Which didn't change the fact that it didn't work for a video game, and they had the integrity to know that, and "sacrifice" their ending to make a better video game.
Two games he was lead writer on led to the railroaded death of the protagonist.
Co-lead writer, and Mac came aboard after a lot of the plot for ME2 was already fleshed out.
Walters: Yeah, so the way it worked was Mass Effect 1 I was the Senior Writer, he was the Lead Writer. We had about 4 or 5 writers maybe. Mass Effect 2 we knew early on he was wanting to try something different, go somewhere else, so I was kind of being "groomed" as it were to take over as lead. Then about halfway through the project he went down to Austin to start work there, and I took over as Lead there. Then on on Mass Effect 3 I am the Lead on it. So we did the halfway through handshake and that was it.
http://www.newsarama...game-comic.html
EA is love, EA is life.
I'd prefer more and more varied options. Not a middle finger from the writers.
That's what happens when you want what a story wasn't intended to produce.
Perhaps they really should have shown this cycle being thoroughly extinguished harvested in the refusal ending.
That's what happens when you want what a story wasn't intended to produce.
And this is what happens when they pull sh-...stuff... like that with their audience
And this is what happens when they pull sh-...stuff... like that with their audience
What precisely did they "pull" here? They explained X would happen, and X happens under those circumstances. Done deal.
They've been "pulling" these kinds of railroaded, sacrificial, limited-option endings since the beginning of the series.
There are more and more ways that every ending across the trilogy could have played out better.
What precisely did they "pull" here?
Forced, railroaded death of the protagonist (among other things). Isn't that what this thread is about?
No, it wouldn't have completely fixed teh game, not even mostly. But the backlash would have been much, much less. Of that I have little doubt. A happy ending covers a multitude of sins.
Forced, railroaded death of the protagonist (among other things). Isn't that what this thread is about?
Yes, it's about the "grief" players felt for Commander Shepard having to sacrifice themselves for a worthy cause, for definitively dying if you choose two of the ending options. Shepard's been railroaded from the beginning, though, but we've been down that path before.
Why does Shepard have to walk towards the tube shooting to activate it when standing from a distance would get the same result?
Why does Shepard have to walk towards the tube shooting to activate it when standing from a distance would get the same result?
Aside from it taking a lot of close-ranged firepower to get the tube to pop? http://tvtropes.org/.../NotAfraidToDie
Why does Shepard have to walk towards the tube shooting to activate it when standing from a distance would get the same result?
Because it's a worthy cause.
Duh
Yes, it's about the "grief" players felt for Commander Shepard having to sacrifice themselves for a worthy cause, for definitively dying if you choose two of the ending options. Shepard's been railroaded from the beginning, though, but we've been down that path before.
RGB casts a great deal of doubt on the "worthiness" of the ending.
And while Shepard has been railroaded into dying before. This one sticks, which p*sses people off.
Why does Shepard have to walk towards the tube shooting to activate it when standing from a distance would get the same result?
Why wasn't it just an off switch? 
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