1781

Nope, still don’t get it. Does Ebert review games?

And I only, as I said at the time, worked interactively with someone playing through the game, played most of the missions to get the alternate morality choices captured on video, etc.

I DIDN’T play the end sequence after watching the primary review go through it. It’s not like the thing’s meaningfully interactive, after all. You’re arguing that reviewing and playing are different activities.

Have fun with that argument.

OK, watch: You have to do the latter (play a game) to do the former (review it). You’re right, that was fun!

1782

Today I have read another POV of the story in some random forum.

The dude argued that the catalist is just a machine following some dumb program created by the original stupid ancient race that killed themselves with machines, and started the whole thing. This dumb race of squids started the cycles and cyberized themselves in the process.

I kind of like that idea, that the whole thing is stupid, just programming in a machine. And that can be stopped like you stop a bad program corrupting data.

This has the side effect of removing all the junior philosopher random bits, It make the story smaller, by making it less about “the nature of natural and artificial life”, and more about “bad things happen to good people, but a hero can fix things right”. I normally like philosophy, but here we get some curve balls like “artificial life will kill his creators”, that is a fully hateable idea. I kind of see where this luddite “articial life kill people”. It comes from conservative worldviews. I hate it wen is done in sci-fi ,but there normally is well written, here is just some stupid idea is thrown at you and you can’t even disagree in-character.

… until now. The reject end perhaps allow to imagine is not something final that you have to accept.

1783

I still can’t understand where some people can’t see the difference in quality of writing between 95% of the game, and the original last 5%. And, to a lesser extent, the EC version of the ending.

Yes, the whole series is typical Sci Fi tripe. Leaps of logic abound. But that’s true for pretty much all Sci Fi entries, be they movies, TV shows, books, or games. But the better ones at least are somewhat consistent with their logic once they get going. And for 99% of the trilogy, this was mostly true (few misteps here and there, certainly). Sure, there were plot holes here and there (ME2 - if Reapers all look like the race they were ‘built’ on, why do all the current ones look alike?). And there were complaints about them. But they were to some extent scattered and not game killing.

Then along comes ME3 - one of the better constructed stories I can think of, tying together most of your decisions - small and large - from the last two games together. Tragedy, triumphs, it was just a (relatively) great Sci Fi story. Then, the the Star Child hits, and two things happen.

  1. Plot holes stacked on plot holes. How did your two crewmates end back up on the Normandy? Why did the Normandy leave? How did Hackett know you made it inside, since the last report he got said no one made it? And a ton of others. Yes, a plot hole here or there you can live with and make something up to cover it to your satisfaction. But there were just so many of them that it spoke to just rushed, sloppy writing. For the most part, the EC fixed these.
  2. A complete turn around on the internal logic/flow of the game. The Star Child basically boils down the entire franchise into the ‘problem’ of synthetics always destroying organics. Which would be fine - except that the major conflict between synthetics and organtics in the series, the Quarian and Geth, had hints in ME2 that perhaps the conflict could end in coexistence. And in ME3, if you played your cards right, you could actually bring that about. And, of course, EDI. Now we get to the end and find out what the series has been all about, and you never bring that up? You don’t point out the flaw in the Star Child’s logic? That’s not a plot hole - that’s completely ignoring something you spent a good part of the last two games working towards, and quite possibly succeeding in. This is just not something that happened up to that point in the series, and even with most the big plot holes fixed, this is still in place. Say what you will about the standard tripe of Sci Fi cliches that Star Wars is - and I won’t argue - but those movies never did this (comment directed towards original trilogy only).

This, at least to me, is what people were/are pissed about. It’s not whether the writing was any worse (or not) than what came before (I still say worse, given all the plot holes in the original endign), but the pull-out-their-ass ending that completely ignores what you spent two games doing. And people wouldn’t have been that upset if they hadn’t spent 99% of the series crafting a universe and story that made you care about these people to begin with. So maybe it’s not about ‘good’ or ‘bad’ writing. 99% of the series was ‘effective’ writing. It got you to care about the people in the story like few other games or series had before. And then spent the last 1% ignoring the previous 99%.

The ending flows much better. At least, according to the story, things that happen make sense. But that doesn’t excuse the story shift that ignored the logic set down before.

And I still want to know how nobody found Sheppard in a rubble pile somewhere in all those future slides of rebuliding the Citidel and London.

1784

Maybe I’m not as critical about the whole thing but I don’t think a few brief moments in time of EDI and Geth not going psycho killer on people means that civilization has cracked the “created rebelling against the creators” point. You may have made peace, but that doesn’t guarantee it will last.

1785

I generally agree with Tom, in that the series is largely sophomoric sci-fi light story. I never had issue with that. I actually enjoyed it because of that light but deep interwoven events story telling theme, and the ending was largely ok.

Except, I also agree with both of ChiTownBluesFan key points as being relevant, and I think it was something that was prudent for Bioware to address.

• The radical shift in story logic and theme. It’s out of the blue in the original ending and game. I spent a lot of time making peace with the AI’s in the game, and the game never gave me the opportunity to respond to that. I assume from Tom’s style of play that never surfaced for him as a part of the narrative he built, so he never saw it as a issue.
• Also really agree on the lack of coherent story telling at the end. maybe you can call it plot holes, maybe yuo can can attempt to characterize it as sophisticated story telling (which comes out of the blue at the end, up to this point the narrative is clear and linear, and suddenly jumps to semi abstract). For me it creates a jarring experiences, generating questions players on how your two crewmates end back up on the Normandy , running from energy wave, is a narrative leap without context, This and several other 'plot holes" for lack of a better defintion that are jarring and disrupt enjoyment at the end seem quite reasonable as issues for me.
• I would add i was slightly disappointed that Bioware kept insisting that our choices would have repercussions on how the game ended. Sure the relationship aspects really did, but the actual end of the game didn’t. I supposed you can call that creative license, so I’m just mildly disappointed, and won’t get all rowdy about it.

I’d like to feel that my concerns are grounded it salient and reasonable critiques. I think what bothers me is Tom’s assertion that my concerns have no reasonable grounds and thus can only be dismissed. That I likely suffer from either an exaggerated sense of entitlement, an EA hater, a troll, or (I think if I understand that last comment correctly) deluded myself with unrealistic expectations.

I can acknowledge and see that ME3 played a certain way and/or perceived expectations could mitigate points 1 and 3 for him. I’m disappointed that Tom as a normally a good and insightful reviewer can’t fathom that for others players might see these points as a potential notable issue. On point 2, I suppose Bioware could have adopted the bizarre artistic story telling style that French movies often baffle me with, not sure why that sudden shift into abstract storytelling mode at the end of the game wouldn’t raise at least a yellow flag for Tom.

1786

In column A there is a large group of people who don’t like the ending and think it degrades the franchise, and a modest group of people who are OK or apathetic with it and don’t get why the response is so vocal.

In column B there is a tiny, mostly imagined group of people who think that they are “entitled” to a better ending and Bioware is duty-bound to deliver it and EA is scum or whatever. There is also a tiny, mostly imagined group of people who think that anyone who even criticizes the ending is acting “entitled” or disrespecting some “artistic integrity” or are just dumb or whatever.

It always seems to me that the groups in column A are arguing with each other, but they each think they’re arguing with a group in column B. Everyone’s sort of interpreting everybody else in the least charitable light. Welcome to the internet, I guess?

Anyway, FWIW 90% of my problems with the ending could have been resolved by just having less shooty-shooty and more talky-talky to flesh things out and have things be less abrupt and give things time to settle. The DLC thus improves things, but at this point I kind of stopped caring because I’m one of those “jumped the shark back in ME2” fellers anyway.

1787

Then address it. Don’t leave it hanging out there. At the point in time of the whole Star Kid thing, there wasn’t a synthetic race at war with their creators (in my storyline, anyway). You don’t think Shepard might have, you know, mentioned that? Even if you dismiss it as above, it’s still addressed. It’s not left hanging as it is now.

Again, I think the EC is a huge improvement over the original. I’m still disappointed in the shift in the overall story. Not enough that I would have been particularly pissed about it if this had been in the original game, but disappointed none the less.

That being said - if some of the theories floating around out there about the ‘probable’ upcoming DLC are true - my mind can still change. But even if, somehow, future DLCs give us the possibility of an ending that finally makes me fairly happy (assuming I want to pay for it, of course), it won’t remove this issue from the current ending. And it’s really the only issue I still have with the storyline, and something that could have been addressed/dismissed/whatever what another 2-3 lines of dialog.

1788

Going back to this:

I don’t know if Bioware ever said or intended these things. I won’t hold them to it. But John Walker thought along these lines in his WIT at RPS (emphasis added):

They’ve maintained their integrity and their vision, they’ve stuck to the ending they wanted to tell…
If that’s true, it lessens the idea that Mass Effect is a story simulator. That’s what I called it in my review of ME3. (I was criticizing the weak choice and consequence system.) But as davidf points out, right at the end Bioware took back the story and told it the way they wanted to.

It always annoyed me how people praised the interactive storytelling more than I thought it deserved. That’s because the spell was broken for me and all I could see were the decision tables and limited choices Bioware laid out for me. Too bad for me. But misery loves company, and I think a few more people now will be skeptical about whether the personalized storytelling mechanics are really as impressive as they’re made out to be.

1789

And, apparently, a pointless failed ninja edit as I already quoted you. How many snerks is that worth?

1790

They’ve maintained their integrity and their vision, they’ve stuck to the ending they wanted to tell…

But they didn’t. Along with clarifying certain aspects they completely retconned others. Either their “vision” changed or it was never their vision in the first place.

1791

Not at all, Brad. It seems to me that you sincerely think the people who hated the ME3 ending are idiots. I just don’t understand where that’s coming from, and I’d like to.

1792

In so far as I understand the “lol u mad?” meme, it seems that it gets deployed by someone trolling in order to point out that their sparring partner has gotten emotionally invested in the argument, and that it is silly to get upset about something so trivial. Is that it? If so, that’s not at all what I meant.

Caring about games is why we’re all here - I think they’re worth caring about. I don’t think you or anyone else here is silly or foolish for caring about games in general or a particular game.

If it is useful, I can go back and dredge up specific examples, but what I’m interested in is what is it about ME3 and the current situation that makes the folks who hated the ending so objectionable. I’ve noticed in your posts, but also Brad’s and to a lesser extent Denny’s a certain contempt for folks complaining about the ending. It is a bit surprising to me as disagreements about games and their endings is sort of bread and butter for gaming discussions. So what is it about the folks who hated the ending that makes them not just wrong, but somehow bad or deficient or fools?

Now that I’ve read the bit on the Qt3 home page:

They’ve done very real damage to a series they supposedly loved, out of all proportion with their complaints. It’s shameful how they’ve hijacked Mass Effect on so many levels: as a story, as a franchise, and even just as a darn good standalone game about an alien invasion. But I’m mostly disappointed that Electronic Arts legitimized their complaints with this DLC.

Is it that these folks are insincere fools, who in their misguided passion have actually hurt a game you really enjoyed, and in their foolish way caused the publisher to damage the integrity of a ‘darn good’ game? Is it that the fan reaction has damaged the game (or perhaps future games)? Perhaps the way some film folks find focus groups (and the sometimes changed endings) to be anathema?

I get my gaming media from reading Edge and these boards, so maybe there’s been some outrageous fan behavior that I’m just unaware of. But what makes these folks different from the fans trying to bring back their favorite unjustifiably cancelled TV program (Firefly, etc.) or grousing about how the ending of Lost or Battlestar Galactica was terrible/nonsensical?

1793

Well, Tom, I can’t speak for anyone else, but the only reference point I have, me, myself and I, and the posters on this forum, don’t seem to match up with your explanations

  1. The exaggerated sense of entitlement that comes with playing three games that sold people a bill of goods about player agency, and kept up a steady stream of content between releases.

I hated the ending but I didn’t insist that Bioware do anything. If I had my druthers, I wanted a change, but I didn’t post on any forum that they owed me a new ending. So no entitlement here. Disappointment, yes, “exaggerated” entitlement, no. And while I’ve seen a significant number of this forum disappointed with the endings, I haven’t see many of them demanding a new ending either.

  1. It’s EA. Everyone hates EA because it’s so easy to do.

Sorry, that’s not me either. I generally don’t care about publishers, I care more about the game itself. Yeah, a publisher may do some crappy things, but if they make a good/great game, I’ll buy it. To me good games are rare enough as it is that I don’t want to miss one because a crappy company put it out.

I’ll also note as a counterpoint here, that while “everyone hates EA”, I could just as easily argue “everyone loves Bioware”. That developer has a great “mass” (hehehe) of fans, and it is just as likely that any “hatred” of EA is offset by love of Bioware. Indeed, I suspect most fans see Bioware as the real source of Mass Effect, not EA. It is just as likely that some/many fans gave them a pass on the ending because they are Bioware.

  1. A handful of very loud people driving a big band wagon, basically creating their own narrative about the game and bouncing it around in their echo chamber.

I’m not certain how you can make this claim without any real numbers to back it up. Just anecdotally, from the people I see here in this thread and in another site I visit, there does seem to be a fairly significant number of people who really don’t like the ending, who think is pretty bad. It doesn’t seem to be just a few “loud” people. Even now in this thread, we’ve had other people who had not expressed an opinion previously chiming in also stating that they thought the ending was bad. It does not seem limited to a small, loud group.

I’ve also seen a fair number of polls at different sites and they all indicate a significant number of people didn’t like the ending. While they weren’t scientific and while I also believe that people upset with the ending would tend to vote in these polls more than those who were happy, these polls are all very consistent in their results. And even if you discounted their results, reducing those unhappy with the ending by half, or two thirds, you still end up with a significant portion of the fanbase not being happy. I don’t think you can discount the numbers as easily as you try to.

  1. Writing is starting to matter more to people now that videogames are doing a better job of showcasing good writing.

Is Writing that much better now? Compared to when? Fallout 3 came out 3 1/2 years ago. KOTOR 2 came out 7 years ago. Has writing improved so much since that time? I can’t tell that writing/story telling has gotten that much better. Most of it seems to be on the level of the Mass Effect series. On what basis do you say that story telling is better? If writing is really that much better you should be able to provide a long list of RPG’s with better writing than the Mass Effect series, right?

So all in all I have to say I disagree with your reasoning here.

1794

I’m still waiting for the Mass Effect 1 Extended Ending DLC. I never wanted to kill Saren, I wanted to join him! Bioware stole my story! I was indoctrinated from the beginning. before it was cool.

1795

So, if I’m reading you right, you like the ending because you thought the rest was thrash and thought the tonal change was refreshing? I can understand that, but the other side of that coin is that if you liked that young adult, obvious derivative space opera, the tonal and thematic shift is really jarring.

The ending of a good story is the conceit. It’s where you drive home the ideas and themes. All this ending drove home is that Bioware doesn’t understand what they created, or storytelling.

Richard Cobbett has a nice piece on eurogamer on the expanded ending, which I agree wholeheartedly with, especially these bits:

Synthesis on the other hand is just embarrassing. It’s an already thematically problematic ending, now promoted to an insanely naive utopia. One of the ME3 ending’s major problems was its attempt to cast the series’ sweep as organics vs. synthetics, despite that ship having sailed with the introduction of EDI and interactions with Legion’s part of the geth.

    Are there problems? Sure. Will giving everyone glowing green eyes put an  end to all hostilities and usher in a new era of peace? Hah. Putting  aside questions of what exactly combining humans and synthetics actually  means in the first place, the Mass Effect universe is one of constant  internal strife and dickery. The [I]geth[/I] can't keep up a united front, never mind the krogan and other squishy organics. 

  This ending is BioWare at its most pandering and staggeringly  disappointing. As with the Star Child, it smacks of simply not  understanding its own franchise's foundations. The game which put you in  the middle of the final struggle between geth and quarians has no  business ending on a universe full of rainbow-farting cyborgs. 

  The warmth of Mass Effect may come from different species transcending  their differences and coming together, but that doesn't mean questing  for homogeneity. Even assuming it works, it's a betrayal of everything  that makes this universe interesting. The fact that you unlock this  happy-clappy inanity through nothing more than having a high score at  the end - there's still absolutely no narrative link between it and your  preparation - is simply one final insult.
1796

Oh, absolutely. It also has a lot to do with how much importance people put in the ending. One of the marks of an Ender – or at least an otherwise reasonable person who loses all sense of perspective as he’s gnashing his teeth about Star Children and explosion colors and whatnot – is to maintain that the entire experience of all three Mass Effects is somehow lessened because he didn’t like the ending.

I loved Bioshock. I hated the ending on so many levels, particularly in terms of gameplay and tonal shift and how it betrayed the characters and the world. I still love Bioshock.

-Tom
1797

Grifman, it’s kind of hard to have a conversation when you’re going to pretend I was answering a question you didn’t ask. Here’s what you wrote:

If you were asking me why you had a different reaction to Mass Effect 3 than you did to KOTOR 2 and Fallout 3, I wouldn’t have had anything to say because I can’t read your mind. But that’s not what you asked. Instead, I offered you a few reasons off the top of my head about why I thought the overall situation was different. I didn’t intend to speak for you.

Furthermore, you mentioned you don’t have any awareness of the issue beyond the people here on this forum.

99% of the people discussing the issue on Qt3 are far more reasonable than the people who’ve driven the narrative about Mass Effect 3. I’d go so far to say their reaction is on par with their reaction to Fallout 3 and KOTOR2. But when you ask me about the fan reaction and then confess you have no awareness of it, maybe you should widen your frame of reference a bit before telling me I’m wrong.

 -Tom
1798

Well, I guess I would like examples. What makes you think I find it objectionable that someone would hate the ending of Mass Effect 3? As I’ve said time and time again, I have no problem with someone hating the ending.

-Tom

1799

I’ve never understood how people can say this.

One of the main reasons I take issue with the stuff near the end—if not the reason—is that Bioware crafted such characters that I thought they deserved better. I may not like the ending, but it’s hard for me to recall a cast in a game of recent memory that I enjoyed spending time with as much as the motley band that made up the Mass Effect universe.

(It’s probably why the second game, despite its faults, is the high point of the series for me: it has the best characterization and is arguably nothing but a bunch of character vignettes strung together with a slapdash and paper-thin plot.)

I’m looking forward to playing through the trilogy again once the ME3 DLC is complete.

1800

Thanks for pointing that out. Very good article and I have to say that I agree. Except for that last paragraph.