1821

I’m with you on the whole “force of nature” aspect of the reapers, but I think they pretty much had to talk. It was a pretty big shock in the first game finding out that Sovereign was not just Saren’s spaceship, and you really needed that dialogue between Shepard and Sovereign on Virmire to sell that.

1822

Except for that conversation with Sovereign in ME1. That was a series high point.

Edit: what Pogue Mahone said. I ended up playing ME1-ME3 nearly without any gaps between them, and from “We are infinitely your betters, and you could not possibly understand our motives” to “We murder you so someone else won’t have to” was kinda jarring.

1823

I like that interpretation a lot.

1824

Maybe. But there are other ways to reveal Saren as a puppet.

I’m embarrassed to say it, but I was thinking of Halloween when I typed my original post.

1825

And if you are going to reveal why the Reapers do what they do, USE A GODDAMNED REAPER, not a hologram of Billy G. Whillickers. You want to use avatars, have Mordin for synthesis, Legion for control and who the hell ever for Destroy. Or write a better ending (shit bonerz option)

1826

This needs a petition.

1827

I finally watched “Refusal” this weekend. I was really planning on seeing the others but after that I just gave up.

I am not sure what I was expecting- I think I was expecting a lot to change knowing full well that it would not. While I do feel that after giving BW 180.00 or actually a bit more since i have 2 CE’s, I expected to be happy, sad, relieved or at least satisfied at the end. I was none of these. I was just disappointed. If that is the best that they could do after all those years and all that money, well pfft.

I am moving on, I am not playing any dlc, and I am not going to watch the rest of the “fleshed out endings”. I shall just enjoy playing Tribes until GW 2 comes out.

1828

Since you objected to my characterization of you being condescending a few days ago, I’ve been mulling it over. As best as I can tell, you don’t even know you are doing it.

When I use the word “condescending,” what I mean is that your viewpoint presumes that the people who you are addressing (“enders” in this case) simply lack sufficent knowledge and sophistication to agree with you. So you verbally pat them on the head and tell them to go play elsewhere. It’s a common enough tactic: by denying the legitimacy of the person making the argument, you’ve “won” even before you address the merits.

For example, three of the four points you listed above assume that the people who disagree with you are simply not rational people entitled to a viewpoint worth considering.

(1) “exaggerated sense of entitlement” It’s not engagement, it’s not affection for the fictional world, it’s not frustration with the denouement of a long journey. It’s entitlement, a word that indicates immaturity, selfishness, and illegitimate demands. But wait, it’s not just entitlement, it’s also exaggerated. Why take these idiots seriously?

(2) “Everyone hates EA because it’s so easy to do.” It’s not an independent judgment about the game, it’s just groupthink and bandwagoning. Since the complainers were biased against the publisher in the first place, why be surprised when they express dissatisfation? Since the criticism originates from irrational bias, there is no point to addressing it. Why take these idiots seriously?

(3) “very loud people . . . bouncing it around in their echo chamber” People in echo chambers are closed minded fools who only want to hear their own voices come back at them. Since we have already concluded they don’t want to engage in a serious discussion, there is no point to addressing the merits of their statements. Why take these idiots seriously?

(4) This one was just a bullet point. So I’ll use this space to address the “enders” trope. Associating people who disagree with you with irrational conspiracy theorists is, I must admit, a masterstroke of non-substantive verbal engagement (I can’t bring myself to call it argument). Judging from all the forum puppies barking the word in your wake, it worked like a charm. Disagreement = kook. Why take these idiots seriously?

As to the substance of your arguments, it appears to me that you are reflexively siding with the creator of the product versus the consumer. If the creator has an absolute right to tell the story he wants to tell, then the consumer is an ungrateful lout for objecting to what has been crafted. Arguing for changes in a completed work is an affront to artistic integrity and an insult to the creator. Indeed, dissatisfaction by the consumer is presumptive proof of a bold artistic statement that is unafraid of criticizm.

Personally, I don’t agree. Games, like movies, are products of mass appeal made by sprawling collaborations. Studios use focus groups and test audiences to see if the product is satisfying to mass audiences. Mass-market games need to grow up and apply the same sort of thinking rather than letting a handful of rogue writers mess up a franchise for the long term. And yes, I do think that’s a legitimate viewpoint. : P

1829

I do, in fact, think the overdramatic histrionic Enders are idiots, so that might be why it sounds like I’m being condescending to them. Your problem is that you assume I’m also lumping in people who merely don’t like the ending of Mass Effect 3. Which, as I’ve said many many times, isn’t the case.

-Tom
1830

I do think that to some extent Tom is right about the sense of entitlement. That said, I think that sense of entitlement is kinda fair and comes out of the more tangible sense of investment. It’s less “exaggerated”, and more simply commensurate with the time and money invested.

Imagine youre a mass effect super fan: you bought all the DLC, you had 3 different playthroughs so you could see everything, etc. Then imagine how youd feel when you reached the original ending. This wasnt some pure visceral shooter that was worth it for the gameplay alone— there were tedious mining minigames! So yeah, that agency/story stuff was important.

Like most people, I was frustrated with the ending, I thought it was really really bad, but I got over it. The matrix had a really bad synthesis ending too and I spend exactly zero time thinking about it. What does bother me though, is when people try and tell other people what theyre allowed to be upset about.

People didnt invest themselves into mass effect because of the tight gameplay, it was, as much as anything, the unique sense of player agency in a space opera. Moreover, people didnt invest 10 bucks and 2 hours of their lives— superfans probably invested about $300, and that’s before factoring in all the hours and replay hours, expecting divergent outcomes.

At what point are paying customers allowed to express their displeasure? $500? More?

This isnt people complaining about the arty end of the sopranos, and it’s not people complaining about the end of gears of war or something when the story is entirely superfluous. Communicated or not, it’s about what people thought they were buying vs. what they feel like they got, and the chasm in between, filled with their money and time.

Were promises made that weren’t kept? Then why is the customer wrong? Because game developers lie and exaggerate all the time? Is that fair?

Usually it’s the superfan who is first to defend a piece of art, try and halfway fanfic a better interpretation(look at indoctrination theory). Instead, it was mostly the people with the least invested who defended the original set of endings. Why is that?

1831

As far as the superfan goes once they lose… faith in something they feel a huge sense of betrayal. The most vocal critics of Bioware, especially recently are former fans.

1832

Except it wasn’t “we murder you”; it was “we reap you”. “Reaping” = harvesting or collecting. The whole point of the Reapers is that the physics of evolution inevitably lead to the domination of the galaxy by a synthetic monoculture. The Reapers were simply the first to arrive at that state. So they show up when organic life is at its cultural peak, harvest a sample for preservation, then wipe the slate clean and watch the next cycle. Meanwhile, they nip in the bud any synthetic threat to their dominance, hence the “we’re preventing chaos” angle. They’re zookeepers. Or gardeners. It may not be the ending you want, but it’s not illogical – except to the extent that all post-singularity SF gets a little wonky.

That said, I agree that the shift from “heroic space opera” to “post-singularity SF” was jarring. From a critical perspective I’m glad they did it, as it provides a nice contrast to ME1 and some fodder for discussion of the relationship between games and cinema.

1833

Well, you can certainly call it unique.

1834

I think the promise of agency is a bit overblown. The big innovation in ME1 was that they pulled back the curtain and said, ‘Look, we both know it’s a story. Your motivations are going to be determined by the plot points we introduce and the end state we’re aiming for.’ So they did away with the illusory motivational dichotomy of good/evil and replaced it with the stylistic dichotomy of paragon/renegade. The intent is clearly that you are going to end up at the same place but meanwhile you have control over the experience and the flavor of the journey.

I also think that when people complain about the lack of agency at the end of ME3, they’re really complaining about the lack of spectacle. The possible outcomes of ME3 are objectively much more divergent than ME1, where you basically just press a button to decide whether the council lives or dies. Yet everyone loved ME1 because it hit all of the space opera action movie beats so perfectly. Contrast that with ME2, which actually had lasting consequences and yet the internet conversation was dominated by complaints about points of no return and how to get the perfect outcome. Players in this genre (myself included) don’t want agency (and in fact it’s a silly term to use in this context); they want power-fantasy and a good show. If you want agency and divergent outcomes go play Tetris.

1835

See, I agree that the avatar boy was a failure, but one of execution not intent. I think it might have been cool if they had gone with the idea that the Reaper-mind wants to present an avatar that would make you amenable to dialogue, but it is so alien that it fails in some fundamentally creepy way. Like use the little boy visual but voiced by Peter Stormare. Or just have it desperately go through a bunch of impressions, that might have been funny at least.

1836

This is spot on. The familiar refrain that “the endings were all the same” has everything to do with the fact that they were visually too similar and nothing to do with the vastly different outcomes that the game is actually implying. It always struck me as a demand for more uninterrupted CGI and not additional differentiation.

1837

Yes, this was part of it. ME1 had a climactic space battle, fight through the Citadel, and a boss fight. ME2 had a “suicide mission” where your choices could impact who lived and died, then another boss fight. ME3 did have fight to get to the beam of light, and glimpses of a space battle but once you got to the Crucible, it just kind of petered out. Rather than a dramatic climax, you got an underwhelming denouement.

I was expecting a bigger, better combination of the endings of ME1 and ME2. A massive space battle in which you saw your assets play a role. Another suicide mission, not just involving your squad, but seeing attacking Krogan, Geth, Turians, etc where you again had to make decisions about use of resources, who does what Shepard once again coordinating the battle. Everything that was good about the endings of the first two games, just bigger and better.

Instead we got a clone of the ending of Deus Ex 1/2, and a poor one at that. At least the endings of DE 1/2 made sense within the context of those games and their oftentimes philosophical nature. But it was way out of left field for the Mass Effect series to end on this note, IMO.

1838

Thats not true at all.

1839

I thought there was a lot of wasted story potential regarding the Reapers’ plans for the species they were liquidating. I suspected they were inviting humanity to join their council of exalted races (albeit in liquid form), but it turned out they were basically self-important lawn mowers.

1840

There was something else that nagged me about what i why i was disappointed by the end, but reading this I was THAT’s it!!! Thanks Grifman!