Is dismissive contempt really what you’d like to bring to this discussion?
The issue that I see is twofold:
- The quality of the execution of the ME3 ending and
- The actual story content told by the ME3 ending.
The argument that Brad and Pogue are making, as I understand it, is that they read people complaining about 1. as actually being upset about 2. and somehow disguising their argument. Brad and Pogue liked both 1. and 2. and are a bit put off about the rewriting of 2.
Your argument, as I’m able to understand it, is that 98% of ME3 was quality trash (ie young adult space opera), and hey, the whole genre is trash, so “you mad bro?” It seems you are also somewhat disappointed at the death of the video game auteur (ie rewriting 2.)
My experience was that 1. and 2. were both poor, in that the ending wasn’t at all satisfying or coherent with the previous 98% of ME3 (point 2.), and, let’s face it, different color space rings and an ending mechanic ripped from Deus Ex 3 (which in turn pulled from the original Deus Ex) wasn’t exactly how I expected a major young adult space opera to end (point 1.) Like Silent Hill 2, I would have been perfectly happy to have whatever final ending be triggered by how I played the previous 100+ hours.
As I mentioned above, I think you can both 1. dislike the quality of the game/storytelling and 2. dislike the content of the ending. My issue with ME3 was both. How is this not owning my reaction to the game?
It is interesting, isn’t it? I can only observe my own experience, but my reaction to the ending was so negative I can’t really look on the story in a positive way. I think it speaks on the one hand to the power of endings in terms of storytelling. How the story ends affects the whole experience of the story, from trick endings that make you rethink the whole story to movies that end with heroism or tragedy. How the struggle ends has a powerful effect on how you regard the story. I’m thinking about the ending(s) of Blade Runner - it feels like a very different movie depending on how it ends. (In fairness, the different cuts don’t just change the ending.)
The slapdash nature of the technical ending made it somehow worse for me (and maybe that’s better with the redone ending stuff, I wouldn’t know). A little bit like getting to the end of Twin Peaks, or Battlestar, or other stories where you realize that you were working harder at it than the folks behind the curtain.
But didn’t you get a great ending the first time? A fitting coda to a great game? How does the redone ending diminish that?
Nesrie
2723
EA wasn’t forced to do anything. The industry isn’t forced to go down one particular path either. They took a risk, and the risk might not have paid off with this game, this franchise, maybe not their genre of choice. It has nothing to do loudmouths, it has to do with whether or not EA thought they could get more money, sell more products, doing what one group wanted or another, both were verbal, very verbal. They made a choice you evidently don’t like but still a choice.
Okay. If that was the story ending, then it should have ended there. But it didn’t.
Tom’s burning hatred for any RPG that dares to have any sort of story component is legendary.
The difference here is that Dragon Age 2 was not a continuation of the Warden’s story. It was a new story about a different person in a different part of that game universe, with a few cameos from the first game and a little bit of background altering depending on your choices there. It sounds like Dragon Age III might decide that actually both stories are key to setting up its particular narrative and sort of retroactively make them into a trilogy, but Mass Effect was pitched as such from the first, and a huge selling point for both ME2 and 3 was that you were continuing Shepard’s adventures and they would reflect your personal custom version of events. Obviously we’re not talking grand sweeping changes because of the logistical difficulty of setting things up that way, but the cumulative effect is pretty impressive, IMHO. Especially if you never go back and play a different path (which would reveal the shallowness of the changes more pointedly). Unfortunately, the ending of Mass Effect 3 isn’t influenced in any mechanical way by anything you’ve done previously, and to me that feels like a betrayal of the design.
Grifman
2727
It doesn’t work for me because it was executed so poorly and illogically. I don’t have a problem with a “downer” ending so to speak but how the story was executed. Seeing the ending as a preview of the future doesn’t help the poor end game story telling. My complaint wasn’t so much the direction of the ending but how it was executed. A lot of it just was inconsistent with the story so far, what we knew of the characters and their motivations, and seemed thrown together without much thought.
Grifman
2728
Physician heal thyself, as the implication so far as been that those not happy with the ending are “wrong” and were wrong to complain about it.
Someone was telling you a story. You got to pick branching paths that tricked you into thinking it was your own story, but the fundamental fact that you were being told a story never changed. Just because you didn’t like the way the story ended didn’t make anyone “wrong”.
That’s been the implication all along. People were wrong to complain about that they didn’t like the ending.
Brad’s entirely right that you guys* have now forced EA – and probably other publishers – into a focus group approach rather than a storytelling approach. You deserve what you get from now on.
That sounds great to me. Again, I’ll say the problem wasn’t the ending per se but how it was executed. If it prevents another Mass Effect 3 crappy type ending, I’ll be pretty happy. If a focus group can help a publisher see that their ending doesn’t make much sense, has gaps of logic, ignores things established prior in the game, then more power to them. It will make games better, IMO.
Grifman
2729
I don’t get your line of thinking. You’ve never read a book, seen a movie, that you liked up until the ending, which you thought was bad? I have and I can see such an experience did mess up my enjoyment. You don’t seem to understand story telling. A story is not just a set of self contained events - those events lead to something - thats why books and movies have these things called “endings”. And endings matter - if they didn’t there wouldn’t need to have them.
How does that happen? Look, everything ends badly. One day you’ll have a massive coronary on the toilet. Does that make losing your virginity to the cute blonde in the back of a VW a waste of time? Your game was a journey. But you focus on the last step.
You can’t compare life’s events to story telling. The fact that you do show that you don’t understand the latter.
Oh good, we’re back to the “understand story telling” part of the controversy. Pretty soon someone will be citing Joseph Campbell as if the Hero’s Journey was some kind of rule.
To some of the arguments being made, it’s what the discussion deserves.
Speaking of dismissive contempt? :) I don’t know about you, but I have no problem with describing something as “young adult” without implying it’s trash. I presume you’ve read The Hobbit? You’re also conveniently ignoring that I really liked Mass Effect 3.
My argument – well, part of it, as this is a pretty big issue that we’ve all beaten to death variously – is that the ending of the Mass Effect saga isn’t just the 15 minutes that people have kvetched loudly about, often mischaracterizing it as the choice between colored beams that somehow invalidated or didn’t sufficiently acknowledge all the hundreds of choices they’d made along the way. The ending of the Mass Effect saga is the entirety of Mass Effect 3.
-Tom
Care to show me where I’ve said that? Or even implied it? I have no problem with people complaining about the endings of videogames. I do it myself, often and sometimes loudly.
-Tom
Legendary, in the sense that it doesn’t exist?
Xenoblade Chronicles, Borderlands 2, Mass Effect 3, and something called Story Nexus were all on the lists of my favorite games this year. I regard The Witcher 2 as one of the finest RPGs ever made. You have no idea what you’re talking about.
-Tom
I almost missed this:
Dude. Nothing personal, and I swear I’m not saying this just to be a dick, but you’re exactly the kind of person who I want to have nothing whatsoever to do with how videogame stories are written.
-Tom
Of course you can. I think I’ve been pretty clear that everyone has a right to their reaction to any game. You don’t like the way the game ending. Well and good. You seem to have a lot of fellow travelers. But you don’t seem to be content with that - it’s necessary to say that the ending is actually bad, that it lacks quality, that it’s nonsensical, what have you. I dispute this, for reason I explained above.
Absolutely, how the story ends affects how you look back on things. But completely ruin the experiences that came before? I can’t even imagine that. I’ve seen movies with pretty bad endings - most horror movies seem to only come in that flavor. But I don’t think I’ve ever thought to myself, that completely ruined the experience for me. I wish I had never seen that. I find this a foreign concept.
I don’t believe I have ever used the word “great” to describe ME3’s ending, but yes, it’s fair to say I think it’s a fitting coda. The fact that Bioware felt the need to rewrite it because of complaints strikes me as kind of despressing, honestly.
Nesrie
2737
You might need to avoid television and movies too because there have been several that altered their endings as a result of poor reception. This is not unique to this industry.
I thought Borderlands had a worse ending, but they never promised anything about choices and a good story. They did have some humorous writing though.
Mass Effect series DID have choices and did have a good story. Unfortunately for some people, they have their own idea of what “good” is. Hence all the complaints to the Consumer Bureau, the threatened lawsuits and just overall vocal whining and moaning.
Nesrie
2739
Good is subjective. The point isn’t whether or not I think the ending was good or bad. The point is when you sell story and choices as paramount, that is what you are going to have to answer to, good or ill. Other games with worse endings get a pass because they didn’t pump themselves as story story story, choice choice choice for years… all in one franchise, all leading to a single ending point.
The pedestal Bioware is being held accountable to was their own making. They set themselves up, and it’s not about right or wrong. It’s about whether or not you still have the fanbase that will continue pay for your craft after three games now may have done a lot of damage to years of building up a following. Love the ending all you like, that doesn’t change the damage done. You don’t get decide if someone else will pay, on release day 60 dollars for their next title. You don’t get to decide whether or not DA 3 or any other game released by Bioware has any number of reviews, and the comments are all asking sure, but how is the ending. That’s not a bell you unring.
I find it fascinating that you say this, Nesrie, for a couple of reasons.
First, do you really feel that Bioware pumped up the games as leading up to a “single point”? Can you tell me about how or when they’ve done this? I didn’t really follow the marketing of the game beyond how it was sold as the end of the trilogy. I find it surprising that they supposedly claimed it was all going to come down to “a single ending point”, particularly given how much of Mass Effect 3 was spent resolving threads from the previous games.
Second, why should other games get a pass? For instance, I am bitterly disappointed with the ending of Bioshock and I don’t feel it deserves any sort of pass. If anything, it deserves to be held to a higher standard because the writing was so good.
But most importantly, I disagree because I think games have been playing up “story story story choice choice choice” (as you call it) for as long as they’ve been around. Particularly RPGs. I don’t see the Mass Effect trilogy as fundamentally different from, say, the King’s Quest or Leisure Suit Larry games in terms of how they weave stories in the context of players making choices. Bioware’s games are certainly more elaborate, and they pretend to react to choice more frequently, but RPGs have been doing this for as long as they’ve been around. I just don’t understand this idea that the Mass Effect games somehow promise something different from, say, the Ultima games.
-Tom
