2801

Did anyone here do two complete playthroughs, one with Leviathon/Ashes/Extended and one Vanilla, and prefer Vanilla?

2802

PC Gamer GOTY. Surprising. After all the brouhaha never thought it would win any GOTY awards. Great stuff!

2803

It wasn’t so much an accusation, not meant to be one, so much as a possible explanation as to why Bioware might bother to respond and why they might not want fans to just walk away… maybe it’s volume. That’s assuming, a big assumption I know, it was a business decision, not an emotional one. The mights, maybes, we’ll see is a clear indication I don’t know how many were unhappy or happy or just indifferent. I am making assumptions as to why this outcry was different enough from others that a company responded and now it’s in all the look back at 2012 moments lists. I don’t think it was a small number, but it could have been.

I reserve irrational, inordinate, stupid, idiotic kind of labels for people who basically attack other people with no real cause or clearly defined wanted outcome because it’s dismissive. The rape this bitch crowd, clear example, so no, our definitions do not match which is what i expected, but that’s fine.

I think these petitions were misguided, not because they demanded something, but because I am not sure they know what they wanted or what was possible to get. You can’t undo what was already done. The experience is gone, let down already happened. Consumers demanding things from businesses that these businesses are unwilling or unable to give is not a new concept or unique this industry. Therefore, I don’t treat it as irrational. There probably isn’t a known author on this planet who hasn’t had fans write them about likes or dislikes and demands about their literary choices. That comes with the territory.

Yeah I saw it. I think his opinion is stemming from something you said about young adult fiction earlier. I’ve seen that remark from others too, but it’s not one I am running with.

2804

True, but he mentions the ending doesn’t he. And he didn’t like it, but he liked the rest of the game more than he disliked the ending, doesn’t change the dislike. There really isn’t any fault with that approach though, so good for him for explaining his choice. Notice how most the reviews didn’t really mention the ending initially, and now it seems unlikely this game will ever be mentioned, in the near future, and not have that ending discussed.

2805

Finally, someone writing about parts of the game that aren’t just the ending.

That was the great irony of the Mass Effect series for me. I spent the first two games wondering what everyone saw in the poor combat (oops, I played a Soldier), transparent choices (mostly grind-investments), and largely weak cast (with a couple standouts, including Shepard). In Mass Effect 3 I finally enjoyed the combat (for various reasons) and the universe (back to the Reapers). I wrote a review where at last I felt like I had deconstructed the series to the point where at least I didn’t need to wonder what everyone saw in the rest of it. It was published at the exact moment the entire Internet forgot all that stuff and started to obsess over the ending. They now hated the series for the “wrong” reason!

I kind of felt like Wile E. Coyote. Mass Effect still trolled me in the end.

2806

See, the thing is - I mostly agree with you here…but I think the ending of Mass Effect 3 -does- represent the sort of “rock solid” quality issue you mention above. Or at least it does in part. There are elements of the ending that I object to because I feel they’re tonally jarring, or don’t fit what’s been presented in the game to date, true enough. But then there’s the part where the warscore - a mechanic that’s been central to the game - did not have any visible payoff in the game or any intuitive impact on the ending(s). (AFAIK - and this may have changed with the DLC - a very high warscore adds one very brief cutscene suggesting that Shepard may have survived, in one of the three endings, and a low warscore prevents you from picking certain ending options, and that’s about it, no?) I also feel that a three way choice that’s not affected by your play prior to that moment (except apparently by low warscore) as the sole arbiter of which ending you get is a copout here and was a copout in both Deus Ex and Deus Ex: Human Revolution. And the ending cutscenes themselves were a) nearly identical with the exception of the one depicting the end of the battle, the color of the explosion, and the appearance of the crew emerging from the Normandy, b) potentially violated continuity, and c) were exceedingly brief and uninformative as to the full aftermath of your decision.

Now, I’m assuming these things didn’t bother you particularly, but surely we can at least agree that the warscore didn’t really go anywhere, the ending was in fact a three way decision unencumbered by one’s past decisions, and the things I noted about the post-choice cutscenes are true in at least the basic framework?

2807

Well, fair enough. But you were making assumptions about how many people I thought were upset about the ending. You said it was probably more than I thought. So in the spirit of fair play, let me tell you how low I think that number actually is.

I frankly don’t care about how many people are upset about the ending in terms of saying to their friends “the ending of ME3 sucked” the same way they might say “the ending of Lost sucked”. Which is what I think characterizes many of the people in this thread. I hated the ending of Bioshock but there wasn’t a chance in hell I wasn’t going to play Bioshock 2 when it came out. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that’s probably how most people in this thread feel about Mass Effect. Yeah, yeah, we know, Murbella. Vast majority this, overwhelming numbers that, we get it.

But let’s get down to brass tacks and talk about how many people were upset enough that there’s a risk they will walk away from Mass Effect 4.

Let’s start with a number we know, because it’s important to compare it to the number we don’t know. How many copies of Mass Effect 3 were sold? It’s about 4 million worldwide.

Now compare that to highest number of petition signers you can find. There are 13,248 at the site that, as near as I can tell, was most widely passed around and had the lowest barrier to entry (i.e. you didn’t need a Facebook account, for instance). Let’s go ahead and round off to the nearest 15,000. Then let’s double it, just to be safe. Let’s say 30,000 people are vocal enough to be done forever with Mass Effect. Let’s even give them the benefit of the doubt, unlike the people who signed the We Won’t Buy Call of Duty Without Dedicated Servers petition on Steam and then have Modern Warfare 3 on their “recently played” list.

That’s the highest I think the number goes, and I’m being foolishly generous. 30,000 people not interested in Mass Effect 4, leaving 3,970,000 potential Mass Effect 4 customers, plus whatever EA can scare up with marketing between now and, say, 2015.

So why did EA respond the way they responded? Because 30,000 is a big number? Are they worried about 30,000 people, most of whom will forget the whole thing once they’re done deafening each other in their echo chambers?

The answer isn’t the number. The answer is the volume, as you suggested. These people are loud. The reason this outcry is different is because it’s so loud, and the reason it’s so loud is because it’s enabled by a bunch of idiot sheep on social media. Yep, idiot sheep. Anyone who signs a petition asking that the creators of a work of entertainment change the ending is an idiot who – to quote Grifman’s accusations elsewhere in this thread – doesn’t understand story telling [sic].

You’re free to not like the ending. I’m cool with that. I even understand it. But to expect that EA should change the game after the fact because you’re unhappy is the height of asinine gamer entitlement and I sincerely wish EA had the guts to tell those people to talk a long walk off a short pier. But EA, a publicly traded company, is as cautious as a publicly traded company should be. Hence a downloadable narrative patch to tide people over until the 30,000 idiots shut up and forget. It’s absolutely a business decision in response to volume.

The more important response, the one we should be worried about, is far more rigorous focus grouping and second guessing when it comes to endings. The goal won’t be better written endings, mind you. It will be safer endings. Traditional endings. Endings that no one can really object to. Enjoy them. Because if you think the ending of Mass Effect 3 merits the noise made by people who wanted to be part of something called “Retake Mass Effect”, you deserve what you get from here on out.

-Tom

2808

You are right, they don’t bother me especially, and I will agree that the warscore isn’t very central to much of anything, which also didn’t bother me too much.

So, the three way ending. It’s a little off-putting, absolutely. Not a lot of catharsis there. You talk down an ancient alien AI and eventually make one of three incredibly critical decisions (well, four, if you count the recent ending DLC addition) that was somewhat divorced from all your efforts in the games leading up to that point. All points I concede. But this bothers you, and a whole lot of other people, more than it bothers me. I think that particular discussion about what we like and don’t like has been covered in detail, let’s step past that.

I’ll ask a simple question, and it’s an honest one, not a snarky sucker punch: what did you expect the ending to be? I don’t necessarily mean in the details, I mean in kind of an aggregate way. Let me tell you what I thought would happen, by way of explanation. I always figured something huge and universe-changing was going to happen, even miraculous maybe. After I played the first ME, I suspected the ultimate solution would be destruction of all the mass relays. Subsequent games pointed out that while that would slow them all down greatly, it didn’t really solve any problems. But something on that level, I figured.

When I heard this Catalyst thing was going to be involved, I kind of thought it would be a superweapon. Or maybe a supervirus that reapers had no defense against. Anyway, something cheesy. So when I got to the end and found there was an actual entity directing all this, I kind of perked up. I thought this might go some kind of Captain Kirk “outsmart the supercomputer” thing, and I’d be ok with that.

But after playing through the ending, I arrived at the conclusion that the Catalyst was insane. Or the AI equivalent. Because it really thought the best possible solution to an “inevitable” organic vs synthetic conflict was harvesting all organic genetic material to reseed later, once all higher life forms had been destroyed. And those three choices? Kind of bullshit, right? Control is right out, if the reapers have proven anything through the series it’s that they are masters of control, and I don’t like leaving those damn things lying around unattended. I don’t like Synthesis. Enidigm may think it’s the best shot but it’s playing god, smashing together two of your favorite toys because you think it will make one awesome one. I just don’t see it.

So I went with Destroy. Nuke it from orbit, since it’s the only way to something something. It’s not perfect, the Catalyst made sure of that, since it would destroy allies and entire races potentially (although the ending DLC kind of fudges that, too) but, again, insane.

And I’m ok with it, really. It felt like the natural progression of what I started back in the first game. A lot of chaotic stuff happened at the end, some of it I didn’t fully understand, but I expect some chaos with all the stuff going on. I don’t really need to see Wrex and Garrus pat each other on the back. We won, I was there.

So when I ask what you expected, I mean did you just want more cutscene info reflecting your choices? Do you think much would have changed materially? Personally, I do agree that Bioware overpromised and underdelivered with the whole “your choices matter” thing, but they actually got a whole hell of a lot right. I saw friendships develop, made friends and enemies, returned to places I had seen before. It felt really cool. I do think the rachni got shortchanged, and I think there was a missed opportunity making the Illusive Man go full-on villain, but in balance I felt like the journey was worthwhile. But you don’t, or at least, you wish something had been different. Within the constraints of budget and practicality (not making ME3 ten disks) what should have been there that wasn’t? Rewrite the ending, I am curious.

2809

Personally, I expected all my choices throughout the game to be incorporated in the games ending somehow. You know, like Bioware has done before in its games (Dragon Age comes to mind).

Its what they more or less said would happen with all the “Your choices matters” marketing the game series has had, or at least alluded to would happen.

Someone earlier quoted one of the developers saying just that, which is what ultimately lead me to believe that Bioware took the easy way out, instead of doing catch-up with three games and all the choices people had made during the games and just made 3 different choices, regardless of what you have done beforehand.

Oh - I just remembered - Tom asked earlier when this kind of retconning had happened before, and a somewhat famous example comes to mind immediatly - Sherlock Holmes Death and the later revising of it to “oh, I just faked that”, due to angry readers.

2810

So that mocked up Animal House ending was what you were looking for in an ending?

2811

I’m not sure whether you are serious or just dismissive, but none of those take into account my choices?

2812

Jesus, are people still discussing this? Oh, well.

It was a bad end. I didn’t like the explanation of the Reapers, or the solution to it, it felt unsatisfying, artificial, arbitrary, phony, silly, deus ex machine-y; and the themes didn’t resonate with me.

Imo the final battle lacked epciness, I hoped for something more of payoff to all the game reuniting forces all over the galaxy for the big standoff.

The specific endings felt unconnected to the rest of the story. Your choices and paths weren’t respected, but I can’t be surprised of that, Bioware has never been very good in that respect, it always has offered choices that were too binary, too corseted in specific predetermined paths, and lots of times they fell guilty of giving fake choices or dialogs that seems they give the player some freedom… but it’s all an illusion.

2813

So on the one side, I guess if you think the ME3 ending was a result of a daring and ambitious artistic vision by the writers then patching anything is backing down to the lowest common denominator. We’ve hit Idiocracy and all future content will be Ow My Ballz and game endings will be outsourced to polls on NeoGaf. I guess I would agree if that were the case, but where you see that, I see a slapped together cutscene sloppily recolored to create three ‘unique’ endings, not as a result of an artistic vision but because the game had to meet ship date somehow and something had to go. “Oh shit we forgot about Synthesis. Can you load up that cutscene and give them glowing eyes? PERFECT.” That’s what it felt like on the other side.

“So what did you expect?” Animal House ending? Really? You need everything spelled out?

I think I was expecting something like Alpha Protocol or Dragon Age 1. They both had a ton of unique content derived from player behavior. And smooth… you’d think the ending was fairly fixed until you talked with other people and compared, and were like, “Wait, you fought who in the final fights? Scarlett did what? How is that possible?”

Or even in ME3 itself, parts close to the ending like Tali’s suicide were good.

I for one would have loved if you could side with the Reaper’s and decide to give them Earth for the greater good, like in the original storyline.

2814

I did not and would not have expected EA or Bioware to change the ending, if they sincerely thought that that was the best possible ending to Mass Effect 3. But I very much doubt that they did (I can’t imagine anyone thinking that, honestly), and refusing to address an issue with the game when presented with it, while frequently understandable, is nothing to do with “guts”.

Also, there are a range of ways the quality of the ending could contribute to damaging EA/Bioware’s sales without going so far as “will never buy Mass Effect 4 or another Bioware game ever again”. For my part, I’ve been sufficiently disappointed by their design decisions in ME2, DA2, and with the late game of ME3 that my confidence in Bioware no longer supports an automatic preorder on every new game they make. Doesn’t mean I won’t play them - I probably will continue to do so unless their next couple of games really drop the ball - but there’s a big difference between preorder price and “a year down the line on a big sale” in terms of revenue.

2815

Well, firstly, I just want to reiterate that I do feel like the journey was very much worthwhile. My issues with ME3’s ending(s) are just that, my issues with the ending(s). But in short: I was expecting either a single ending determined by my warscore as to how costly the (inevitable) victory was with an overview of how I left the galaxy in the aftermath of the Reaper War that accounted for most of my major choices and maybe a few minor ones. Or if there was a late game ending choice, I expected it to come in crucial, naturally flowing decisions, possibly made confronting the Illusive Man, and reflecting my prior experiences in the game. I expected my chosen party to be with me in the end. I expected my recruitment of the races and how I chose to go about it to make the invasion of Earth change in dynamic ways. I was expecting the Catalyst to be some sort of superweapon as pitched, but have last minute unforeseen consequences. And though I would have preferred a different ending sequence in general, when I hit the Anderson/Illusive Man encounter, I was really expecting to have Shepard struggle valiantly to the control panel and either die on the spot or manage to activate the Catalyst and then die.

2816

You seem to think that the people who complained numbered “30,000” and that was the sole reason for EA changing the ending. Your insinuation is that everyone else was ok with the ending. But you can’t prove that the other “3,970,000” customers or potential customers were satisfied with the ending any more than someone can prove that they weren’t. Not everyone who was dissatisfied went out and posted it continuously on a forum, or signed a petition or marched in the street.

I believe that many of us were underwhelmed by the failure of the ending to take into account player choices or even remain consistent with the universe that had been presented to us over the course of three games, but we didn’t talk about it incessantly. But that general feeling of dissatifaction was conveyed to Bioware. In my case, my friend works at EA/Bioware and we were discussing the ending. I told him why I thought it was such a let-down and I know that was conveyed in a team meeting a few days later. So EA didn’t react just for 30,000 people, they reacted because there a general dissatisfaction with their ending, which included the vocal people, the press and even general feedback from people like me who wasn’t one of the “idiots” who signed an online petition. If you think that number who were upset at the ending was limited to 30,000, you’re incorrect.

Going forward, I’ve mentally noted that after the ME3 ending and Dragon Age II debacle I could no longer “trust” EA/Bioware to release good products worthy of my prerelease dollars. As malkav11 said above, Bioware RPGs have become a wait-and-see purchase rather earning their prerelease pricing and that will imact the revenue they receive from me.

2817

His point is you can’t make claims that “most people” disliked the ending when there is no evidence to actually support that position. Judging by the internet you’d think there was a “general dissatisfaction” with Two and a Half Men, but until Charlie Sheen left it was the most successful show on television. Judging by the internet you’d think Snakes on a Plane or Serenity were going to be the biggest blockbusters ever, but they were both did poorly at the box office. The only concrete numbers we do have for dissatisfaction cover a tiny minority of the game’s players. The fact that they think they speak for everyone is a big part of the problem.

Oh, and while you bring up the press, I think you’ll find most professional critics did not hate the ending. Many of them liked it, in fact and made their case on various podcasts at the time. The one Arthur Gies organized with Adam Sessler was particularly good.

It was really just the videogame fan bloggers at Forbes.com who basically made their careers by being the only writers out there willing to mirror the anger of the Mass Effect Enders. Everyone on NeoGAF at the time was like “finally, a mainstream site that gets it!” not realizing that anyone can post on Forbes.com and there is zero editorial oversight and those guys were simply trading on the unearned gravitas of the Forbes brand and telling an angry mob what they want to hear for the clicks.

2818

Related, but not your point: my theory about this was that they all rushed through review copies and weren’t aware that the endings were largely the same for everyone. Since Mass Effect is a story simulator, it’s hard to tell how the game would look for someone else**. I’m sure when they all found out, some still liked it and some now disliked it. What they wrote in review copies doesn’t tell us much.

I wrote a review just as the controversy started. But I barely mentioned it because I didn’t give a shit one way or the other. I had more important things to talk about that series.

** I couldn’t decide if this was good or bad. It just felt weird the way they did it.

2819

I don’t have much time to detate this and it’s not in my nature, so I’ll say a few words and be off to work.

Your assumption that it was “just the videogame fan bloggers at Forbes.com” isn’t accurate. I don’t even know who those people are. I do remember reading PC Gamer and them talking about the ending being a mixed bag. I don’t visit many gaming sites, but I remember also seeing it a few other places.

While I agree that you can’t make the assumption that “most gamers” disliked the ending, the converse is true. You can’t claim that most gamers liked it or were even satisfied by it. In a country where barely half the people show up to vote, the fact that “only” 30,000 people signed some online petition to change the ending doesn’t mean that the dissatisfaction was limited to that small group.

What we do know is that it doesn’t have a great Metacritic score from the users, nor a good Amazon score and that shortly after ME3 was released users on the Consumerist voted EA the worst company in America. I’m sure that if I were to be more involved in the gaming community, I would find additional instances of people not liking the ending beyond just a simple petition. If the dissatisfaction was limited to that small vocal minority, they were certainly very motivated across many websites and platforms. However, it’s extremely reasonable to think that the dissatisfaction with the ending goes far beyond just that very vocal minority. In fact, it’s pretty unreasonable to think that the dissatisfaction was limited to that very vocal group.

In conclusion, I suppose I make “idiot” 30,001, even though I didn’t sign any petitions, march in the street or hold a hunger strike to protest the ending. In that regard, it would also be very easy to find idiot 30,002, 30,003, etc. But can you find any evidence that even 30,000 liked the ending (and the sales numbers won’t tell you that)?

2820

FYI, there was a lot more than that, that wanted a changed ending. On facebook the people wanting it was reaching 65,000.

I was disappointed as well. I just wasn’t as rabid as some fans. I’m one of those people that will wait for the reviews on Mass Effect 4 before I buy. Previously I would have pre ordered the special edition. My son completed the game prior to me, and declared the game sucked and Bioware was dead. Which he renewed rant when the doctors left Bioware.