Malkav11, if you go back over my argument I believe that at no point have I tried to ascribe any motives or perceptions behind your opinion of the end of ME3, nor that of anyone else’s for that matter. I don’t and can’t know, not particularly care. It’s enough to me that you dislike the ending, that’s easy to understand. What I don’t get is why it needs to be anything more than that. You played three games, built up some serious expectations that clearly were not met. You’re upset and dissatisfied with the end result. But that does not necessarily equal bad writing, mishandled plotting, or rushed product. That’s my claim. You can talk all day about how much you hate the ending. Tell me how badly Bioware botched the ending and just gave up or threw together an ending, and you will be wrong.
Unlike the people inordinately upset about the ending of Mass Effect 3, I’m making no assumptions about the number of people upset about the ending of Mass Effect 3.
-Tom
RickH
2783
Clearly, we disagree about the mechanics and craft. In my estimation the ending (specifically the star child pick one of three sequence) was indeed botched from a storytelling perspective because it was thematically inconsistent with the prior game. Why would you have spent so much time reconciling synthetics and organics only to have then ending demand that you abandon everything you learned?
Mechanically, I again refer to the synced endings video. There was no substantive difference to the endings, and no explanation of the consequences and impact of what is represented as a significant choice. In my opinion it was lazy at best, contemptuous of the audience at worst. I refuse to believe it was an artistic choice worthy of deference. You of course are free to disagree.
A side note, PM, you do know that “chickenshit” (unlike other fecal references) is almost always used in the context of an accusation of cowardice? That may be the source of the conflict.
No, that’s how I respond to specious appeals to authority.
All right fine, let’s say we do. But then why does your anger over the ending of Mass Effect 3 require some dereliction of duty on Bioware’s part? Why do you believe they compromised somehow? Is it that hard to believe that this was the ending they wanted? And that it just didn’t work for you?
Why is everyone so fast to jump on the idea that Bioware just ran out of time or energy or just dropped the ball somehow on the ending? I actually don’t find it thematically inconsistent with anything that happened prior. That’s not to say it doesn’t introduce new ideas, but I don’t have a problem with that in itself. I don’t like all the ideas, either – I don’t understand why they felt the need to throw a space ninja into the mix, but oh well. You can’t always bat a thousand.[/QUOTE]
It was chosen deliberately. I believe that people falling back on claims of Bioware somehow deliberately or negligently sabotaging the ending are abdicating their own responsibility in how they approach a game. That’s why I suggested Jonathan Crane own his opinion. Most of you don’t like the game. That’s all there has to be. If someone from Bioware shows up here and says, you know Pogue, we really did half-ass that ending, I don’t know what we were thinking, then I’ll step down. But all I’ve seen so far is that this is what they wanted, this is what they went with, and it’s what they ultimately abandoned when the hue and cry was too much.
No, you’ve simply told me that my experience of the game’s ending is wrong. Because the ending I experienced was botched. It was bad writing, mishandled plotting, all of that. I don’t know if it was rushed - it seems odd and unlikely that Bioware, with the sort of budget and reputation that they have, would have had to rush any part of what is at this point their flagship product, so I doubt it. But it certainly feels that way. (And it very likely was what Bioware intended. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t bad.)
Fine dude, you keep arguing with the Pogue in your head. I’m out.
Nesrie
2788
I don’t know why you have to constantly discredit people who disagree with you by describing emotions you don’t share with other people as somehow unreasonable. Fans reacted. Bioware reacted. ME3, for now, is going to be known as a top 2012 controversy. Maybe, just maybe they don’t want all those fans to walk away from the company. Anyway, this has been argued to death. Any damage done or not done will show up later when they try to sell their games short a few of their personnel and maybe to a more skeptical crowd.
What? Where did I do that? As I’ve said many times over, I have no problem with someone not liking the ending of Mass Effect 3.
-Tom
RickH
2790
I think it was compromised because of the craft that had been demonstrated in just about everything before it. There was a level of detail in the storytelling in prior arcs that simply was not present at the end. That, and I recall that the ending was created by a subset of the full ME writing staff in secret, hardly the thing to do when there is a consensus as to how to proceed.
That said, I’m still crabby about the why the hell the Collectors were making a human-shaped Reaper in ME2 but then all reapers were the same bug shape in ME3. Makes me wonder how much interference the EA acquisition created in the artistic choices.
Nesrie
2791
What do you think the word inordinately actually means?
I’m arguing with the words you yourself wrote. If you meant something different than what you wrote, by all means, do tell. I know how frustrating it can be when someone argues with a point that you’re not making. And believe it or not, I know how to separate my disliking something from my belief that it is badly crafted. I can’t say as I have a problem per se with the basic premise of Mass Effect 3’s (original)ending or the ramifications thereof. I do think they badly botched the execution, I think they probably should have changed some stuff prior to the ending if that was the premise they were going to go with, and I think the game as it stands would better support other premises that might have been more satisfying. But “the catalyst is actually the sentience behind the reapers and you have to destroy all the reapertech (mass relays included) as part and parcel of getting rid of them” are not as such bad ideas.
Quaro
2793
I concede that if the end of ME 3 had been the Contra Boss from ME 2 I would have disliked it even more.
Do you deny that some people are inordinately upset about the ending of Mass Effect 3? Is that what this is about? You think all the people saying crazy things – some of them in this thread – aren’t unreasonable and therefore the term “inordinate” has no place in this discussion?
I guess that would explain it.
-Tom
I liked the synthesis ending of ME3 after playing through ME1-3 again with the ending DLC. Everybody becomes SHODAN. I can dig it.
Nesrie
2796
Actually I think it’s matter of definition. And like most good debates, lack of clear definitions make it difficult to know if you are even on the same page.
Irrational responses to this include the deep troll caves, I hate using the word troll, but this is the group that screams death and personal harm and, if you are a woman, rape to anyone that disagrees with them. Then there is probably a group out there that wants Bioware to burn… and this company and the people working there certainly did not commit evil acts of any kind, so that’s beyond ridiculous. -> this is not an all inclusive list by the way.
So no, I don’t deny it, I just don’t know our definitions on what is rational and what is not are the same.
I’m out of words. The sentence you quoted makes complete sense to me, but you pull a different meaning from it. I have tried explaining this several different ways in this thread, but it’s not coming together. But I’ll give it one more go.
I have a few rhetorical hair triggers, I guess you could say. I have a real problem with people claiming that objective truth exists in areas where there is none. For example, I always get irritated with the bizarre crowd that shows up on the front page comments when Tom posts a review that doesn’t fit into some accepted normal range. Halo 4’s one star review being an example. These people believe that there is a golden mean, and that reviews will naturally hew toward that number until we have a pure numerical value that represents the worth of that game. Now I don’t know where this idea comes from, but it really irritates me. And I always try to ask them, why? How could this true value exist, when it’s just an average of a bunch of numbers dreamed up by guys who play way too many video games and ingest way too much caffeine?
Nice digression, you’re thinking. But it has bearing, because what I think you and several other people are doing is holding out this abstract value, let’s call it “quality”, as if it were separate and apart from the game itself. Mass Effect was always working toward it over the course of three games. And it came so close! only to trip at the finish line. What I’m saying is, this value of quality isn’t so rock solid. It can be, sure. They could have turned in something with unfinished polygons, spelling errors, characters that behaved irrationally, whatever. But in this case, Bioware tried something different, really different. And it pissed a bunch of people off. I don’t think the ending was a drastic drop in quality anymore than I think the ending of 2001 was a drastic drop in quality. But it was a fairly dramatic shift in tone and presentation, also like 2001. I went along with it, you didn’t. That would be the long and short of it from my perspective.
What i think is unreasonable is that certain posters in this thread have declared that any question of the quality of the ending or whether the end was rushed are unreasonable and without merit, just because…
I could see this being more… acceptable if it was the majority view, but it isn’t (now whether the majority is correct in this situation is a completely separate issue).
What is even worse is that one of the people doing this appears to have the opinion that it is ok that the ending had crappy writing because the whole game, and indeed all bioware games (ok the all part is possibly me reading too much in to it so maybe that isn’t true), have crappy writing.
In any event, THIS review mirrors my opinions nearly exactly, including the progression of facial expressions.
Nesrie, you accused me of underestimating how many people didn’t like the ending of Mass Effect 3. I responded that unlike people who are inordinately upset – you can go back in this thread and find Murbella claiming that the “vast majority” of fans disliked the game, for instance – I have no idea how many people didn’t like the ending*.
You then accused me of “constantly discrediting people who disagree with [me]…by calling them unreasonable”.
I don’t see how that follows. Unless you think that people who make assumptions about data they don’t have shouldn’t be discredited.
-Tom
- I do know that you can find idiotic “Take Back Mass Effect 3” petitions with as many as 15,000 signatures on Facebook and whatnot. Yep, idiotic. I think it’s idiotic to sign a petition demanding that Bioware rewrite the ending of the game to suit your demands for better writing quality (ha!), or less ambiguity, or more closure, or whatever stupid demands they feel the need to level at Bioware. And I’m guessing – guessing, mind you, so I’m open to evidence to the contrary! – most of those people bought DLC for Mass Effect 3 and will buy Dragon Age 3 as soon as it comes out.
EDIT: Oh man, that is too awesome. You only have to look at the post above mind to see Murbella’s creative use of data about majorities! Hey Murbella, tell me more about how I hate RPGs with stories!
