Jazar
1701
There are different snapshot screens that are based on your choices. It’s minor but relevant.
I kept the genophage in place in my game and let’s just say the Krogans weren’t hugging their babies.
In that case I stand corrected didn’t read many stuff after ending the game I missed that was common knowledge. But original video was pretty misleading because not hints were given that the relays were reparable.
Were they always upfront about that or were they just responding to criticism? that the endings were no happy enough? because that fact makes every ending a really happy ending no matter what.
I think no relays for many years is a more interesting ending but willing to accept a vision were everything is back together in a couple of years.
They weren’t upfront in the original videos that destroying the relays didn’t annihilate 99% of all life in the galaxy either, though that was the Chekov’s Gun they fired that had been set on the table after the Arrival DLC in ME2.
I think they wanted the relays gone but with an uplifting sense of “free to forge their own destiny!”, but the writers had painted themselves into a corner. A lot of the fluff in codex entries quite explicitly explained why conventional space travel between systems is very difficult and the Mass Relays were so inviting; it is a major plot point in ME1 about how previous cycles are decapitated during Reaper invasions.
So once the writers realized that the tone they were reaching for was nonsensical due to what had been written before, they had to retcon the Mass Relay destruction in a clumsy manner.
To me the part on earth were the reapers either go away or are destroyed and everyone is celebrating was enough for me to think that only the relays were destroyed not all life. Also never thought the they were going to starve to death on sol just though that very interesting and difficult challenges were ahead to rebuild the galaxy. But an ambiguous ending leaves a lot to the imagination of every one, and that’s not a bad thing.
Even if i prefer the no relays ending I hope they are just explaining there vision and not retroactively changing it.
The painful irony of the Mass Relay destruction was that the entire reason they had a Mass Relay be destroyed in Arrival was to setup the endgame of ME3, otherwise people would get pissed off because right there in the wiki entry for Mass Relays it says they are virtually indestructible. UHHHHH until Shepard or some scientist figures out they can be. This is why the retcon is even more stupid than having them be destroyed.
I dont much care that bioware changed the ending— or at least I dont feel it was any major victory for anyone— but what is with this contrarian garbage like the original set of endings were any good at all? They were inconsistent with the themes of the game, totally hackneyed, and came out of nowhere.
Let me explain: if mass effect 3 had one ending, something similar to the refusal ending but without some entirely arbitrary dues ex machina way out of it, I would’ve been satisfied. “No matter how hard you work, the reapers win, the crucible is not enough, but your contributions get passed on so the next cycle can triumph.”
I’m sure most everyone would have really hated that ending, but I wouldve been ok with it, because while it invalidates the sense of control you thought you had, it does so in an artistic way, not in a “pick a color” way. It could have been a heartbreaking but heroic moment when shepard realizes that he’s not going to be the one to end the cycle, but keeps fighting anyway.
I just dont understand people defending the endings or defending artistic license here. You cant have the last 1% of something as long as mass effect veer off in an completely new direction, that is just terrible, terrible writing. Especially if that direction isnt an artistic statement, but just an arbitrary set of choices stolen from the original dues ex and the worst matrix movie. The original set of endings are just bad storytelling. Like, horrendously bad storytelling. Arthur Conan Doyle retconned sherlock holmes after public outcry— Mass effect’s last 15 minutes are not some inviolable artistic statement.
So yeah, the new endings arent perfect, they dont make chicken salad out of chicken shit, whatever. But to claim that there was any merit to the original set of endings, to infer that the enders were wrong to be upset— either you dont understand storytelling, or (more likely) you didnt invest as much time and money as some people did into the franchise, and you dont understand why the end of a videogame matters to them.
…that out of the way, I was mostly satisfied with the endings I’ve seen so far—control and refusal. I just watched them on youtube though. Just by giving shepard a set of questions to ask the star child, an argument, it improves the endings by magnitudes. Just by giving the player control to not chose one of the three buttons it at least makes it seem like Shepard is being shuttled into a set of unfair choices, rather than the player.
Still not good, still bad writing, but now it’s more of a specialized complaint and less of an obvious example of time constraints, laziness, and bad writing.
Yea. This ending brings the game to a 7 overall. It’s a horrible deus ex machina inside a plot device, but it’s not the “WTF” the original ending is. There might be 3 ME games when fans discuss in it a decade, after all.
It still dosn’t give me any confidence, given DA2 and KOTOR, in Bioware games (they’ve gone a LONG way from their “automatic buy” period), though. It still isn’t what was promised, sadly.
Just out of idle curiosity, have you played the game yet Starlight?
I have something like 80 hours of game footage sitting here, which I edited. Much of it is on YouTube, under the name of my employer on this.
Where’s yours?
What does this mean? Is that a yes or a no?
And yours? Well? Where’s the ranting against people watching the new endings on youtube? How can people understand them, after all…
Personally, I’d advise calming down and stop frothing over the conspiracy theories. Given, you know, my attitude towards the ending is far from unusual.
Dawn “Starlight” Falcon doesn’t need to play something to understand it. That’s why he’s the most respected poster on this board, by far.
Quaro
1715
He’s saying not only did he play it, there’s 80+ hours of him playing it on youtube.
It is not my intention to dogpile on you, Starlight, just to get a sense of how seriously I should take your opinion on this matter. And I have my answer, so carry on.
BobM
1717
I don’t get how we could have misconstrued the mass relays being destroyed. What the hell is going on in the cutscene after the credits if the mass relays weren’t destroyed and NOT rebuilt? Old dude is telling his kid “we don’t know what life is out there on every planet” etc. Makes no sense if the mass relays are rebuilt and everyone is travelling the stars again.
How dare you challenge Bioware’s artistic vision!
I’m just telling you what Bioware is saying. Personaly, I believed that they retconned a number of things, including this, due to the outcry. But according to Bioware, they changed nothing about the ending, they amplified and clarified.
blah
1720
He is completely off his rocker. First off, he keeps working from this premise that the original endings were no worse than any other games and that the quality of writing is equivalent to the rest of series up to that point. Does anyone else actually believe that to be the case? Even people who don’t hate the endings can see the endings were rushed and not of a quality of the rest of the game.
On top of that it was wasn’t the gamers who were “shameful” and “did very real damage” to the series, it was Bioware, or at least the two guys at Bioware who decided to hijack the last 30 minutes of the games story. I still think Starchild is ridiculous and the endings are horrible, but had they released these new endings with the game instead of the original endings I think the uproar would have been minimal. And as far as being “intentionally ambiguous” that’s just laughable, they weren’t intentionally ambiguous, they were just full of gaping fucking plot holes that made no sense. Obviously the story was so “ambiguous” even Bioware didn’t know what the hell was going on because not only did they fill in many of these plot holes, but they retconned quite a bit with these new endings.
