RickH
2881
Okay, you win. You did not ACTUALLY use the word garbage. A purportedly skilled professional writer cannot understand how describing something as “pedestrian” “conventional” and “embarrassing” could ever be analogized to a quality of lacking value, like, say, trash.
But it ends here, since we are having neither a cordial or entertaining interaction. One could even call it a bunch of garbage. BUT NOT LITERAL GARBAGE. JUST FIGURATIVE.
There’s interesting discussions to be had about Mass Effect 3. And we have had many of them. But I hate it when the discussions get so bogged down in technicalities of whether or not someone used a particular word or whether or not the majority of the people are disappointed with the ending or not.
Who cares? Why is it in any way relevant to YOUR opinion whether it is supported by the majority of people who played the game? Just go into why you, in particular, were disappointed by or loved about the ending. Why is there a need for validation in the hordes either way?
Anyway, I do think there is a way of doing the ending that they wanted to do, but with much better execution. I went into the game hoping that Mass Effect 3 would be a long story that eventually lead to a victory for the Reapers. But the way they did it in the original ending? They didn’t earn it. It was an emotional mess after the scene where Shepard and Anderson are sitting there dying (it was great up to that point). And the plot holes made it feel soooo sloppy and unsatisfying.
One thing I want to address though is malkav’s idea that the score should have been more relevant to the ending. I’m still open to both possibilities on that. On the one hand, every major decision you made, going all the way back to Mass Effect 1, got tied into that Galactic readiness score. So you’re right, it does make sense that the score should then be used in a major and obvious way to show the player the result of how the score has an impact.
On the other hand, I felt that just the existence of the score was somewhat enough for me. It was this nebulous idea made concrete and drilled down into a number. How ready are we to fight the un-winnable war? We’re THIS ready. Ok, the number just grew, so now we’re even more ready. And now we’re more ready than we were before. Just the act of adding to that number was, in a way, a satisfying mechanic for me that made me feel like every decision I was making was relevant to the bigger picture. Do you know what I mean malkav? I didn’t necessarily need to be shown the relevance, because I already got satisfaction from the act of making the number bigger. I know that sounds silly when I write it down, but it’s sort of like this abstract concept being tied to a concrete number sort of translated itself back into an abstract concept in my head. Adding to the score made me feel better about the decisions in the game because I imagined in that final battle that the bigger number I generated was leading to more fights being won somewhere, and I didn’t necessarily need to see that in action. It would have been nice to see it in action, but it wasn’t necessary.
Again, I can take or leave the mechanic. I didn’t need it to be there, and I didn’t have any specific thing I wanted it to do. That said, it seemed logical that it would have some sort of impact on the story with gradations based on how well you did, especially since it was widely reputed (I think Bioware even said so, although I could be wrong) to determine which ending you got and whether that ending was a happy one. It doesn’t. In the most generous possible interpretation, it slightly modifies endings that are functionally identical in presentation if not necessarily implied consequences. So slightly that I would be hard pressed to describe a distinction for two of the three possible ending choices. I believe I also read that low warscore may lock out one or more of the arbitrary ending paths, and if that’s the case, it does so based on no discernable narrative justification or logic. What’s the point of even including it if that’s how it’s going to be used? It’d certainly have saved them the whole “omg the multiplayer we didn’t ask for will be forced on our singleplayer game” kerfuffle (which was of course hugely overblown even before it turned out that the warscore was basically meaningless, but oh well). It would also have saved a lot of people a lot of planet scanning (did anyone actually like that bit?).
It’s a meaningless number, though. I get that that works for some people psychologically, but I’m not one of them. I only cared about raising it at all because the game led me to believe it would impact the narrative of the ongoing war effort in a way it simply never did.
Pogo had a great line in the Far Cry 3 thread a few months ago after someone started into him about who said what:
I had no intention of arguing with a pedant.
Of course we’ve all heard that word thrown around many times on Internet forums. But like XKCD’s famous comic, it stuck with me as a reminder to recognize what is happening, and then choose to leave it be. I don’t always do a good job at that.
(I’m also ignoring the fact that Pogo continued arguing in this example, because that ruins the point I’m trying to make.)
The war effort thing is a failed idea because it is not emotionally engaging in the least.
What makes you feel like your actions matter more:
- You save a krogan dreadnaught, it gives you +10 points. you now have 10,910
- You save a krogan dreadnaught, in the last battle you see it fighting in the sky overhead and as a result of its presence, a reaper boss starts with less health due to being damaged by it.
And no surprises here folks, Tom “give me open world rpgs without any story or give me death” Chick thinks the dialog and story in bioware games are horrible, but no, don’t get the wrong idea, he doesn’t dislike bioware games or the mass effect trilogy.
You know, I disagree with a great deal of what Tom has to say on the ending, but really, if the man says he does or doesn’t like something - and he’s said explicitly that he liked (I think maybe he even said loved) Mass Effect 3, not to mention multiple other Bioware games and other RPGs in that general vein like Alpha Protocol - who are you to gainsay him?
Because it is the gaming version of “I have black friends” when used by someone that otherwise acts racist.
Actions speak louder than words, and in this case, the actions are everything else he has said other than “i like bioware and me3.”
I respect his opinion to not like story based rpgs as everyone has their own tastes, but claiming otherwise and then blasting a game for being story based comes off as disingenuous in my humble opinion.
Malkav11, my understanding is that you will not get all of the infamous “red/green/blue” options at the end of the game unless your battle readiness number is high enough. I can’t verify that, and for all I know that was patched out with the updated ending DLC, but at one time it was reported to be true. So when I say the battle readiness figure did something, that’s what I refer to.
Scuzz
2891
That is how I understood it as well. In fact I remember reading that unless you did some of the multi-player stuff you wouldn’t have a high enough number. Well, I did no multi-player, had 5 characters die and I got all three options.
Classy.
Awesome.
I don’t often say this to people, but in your case I’ll make an exception: you’re an idiot. Again, for the record, I like some story-based RPGs. Mass Effect 3 is one of them.
-Tom
We discussed collectibles on the Qt3 podcast this week, and it occurs to me now that I consider the warscore in Mass Effect 3 as a sort of marker for narrative collectibles, not unlike the homestead missions in Assassin’s Creed 3 or the audiologs in a Bioshock game.
Of course, I had the luxury of first playing Mass Effect 3 before it came out, and I had no idea what the warscore did or didn’t do. I think I was hoping for something along the lines of the Dragon Age’s finale, where your story decisions let you use units from the different factions in the last boss battle. So I guess I was disappointed in the ending after all, but not for the usual reason* and not to a degree that it impacted the game overall.
-Tom
- as if there is any such thing
Right, that’s my understanding as well, although like you I have not verified that personally. And so, yes, technically it does something. But why does it do that? Even if you accept the three-way ending choice as narratively legitimate (which I don’t), it makes no sense as far as I can tell for the warscore to constrain that particular choice, nor is there any dialogue or in-game indication (again, AFAIK) that it’s doing so or why it constrains the particular options it does. And I just don’t think the explicit payoff of that choice differs enough between options to make it meaningful that you’re denied one or more of them (especially if you don’t know that’s happening, which sounds like is how it works). Like I say, if you’re willing to extrapolate from the very minimal information those ending cutscenes provide, the long term narrative implications of the different routes are no doubt significant. But at that point we’re making stuff up that Bioware may or may not have intended.
It doesn’t make a great deal of sense that opening endings with the catalyst should be constrained by your war effort score, but it’s not been an issue with me on either of my playthroughs since I am fairly completionist by nature. But maybe it’s the reason behind my completionist ways that makes this bother me very little - I just really wanted to see what was going on everywhere that I could, the actual numeric value of the battle readiness didn’t mean too much to me. I don’t worry too much about the legitimacy of the mechanic if it’s fairly unobtrusive, and I wasn’t trouble by any function of the war effort number, so it gets a pass from me.
And if collectibles were brought up in the podcast, I really need to dig into that one. I’m a sucker for collectibles. And if it’s a collectible I can review at my leisure, like model ships on the Normandy or paintings in the villa in Assassin’s Creed 2 or souvenirs I pick up along the way in Bully, so much the better.
red_guy
2896
In the extended cut, the “low score” ending is beautiful and haunting, apart from space brat’s endless yapping. Major spoilers to follow for something completionists will never see.
Many people you know have died.
Your pilot goes out in a great ball of fire.
The intergalactic phonebooth in London has nobody to connect to. I had done one “save a friend” mission, so Jack was there.
On the way to the beam, your team mates are crushed by a falling tank.
Space brat gives you one option - to activate the Destroy beam, and burn Earth to a cinder as collateral damage. You see the flames devouring the planet.
And it does that because, thanks to your low score, the Crucible is only half finished, and lacks calibration (or control/synthesis circuitry). Made sense to me.
The Normandy is seen on its lush green planet. The door never opens.
Buy DLC!
How did the Normandy get to the lush green planet if there’s no one to open the door? Did the lone person in the ship die during the landing?
I would call the warscore mechanic extremely obtrusive because everything in the game mucks around with it, and an entire subset of gameplay (the planet scanning) has no other purpose.
I don’t understand your perspective. The warscore derives from the more or less every mission you undertake during the game, which makes it a function of just playing the game. You could easily get through the entire game paying it no heed whatsoever. How is that obtrusive?
RickH
2900
I don’t know about obtrusive, but it felt a bit too “spreadsheety” to me. Find a thing, get a tick in a box. That is par for the course when it comes to planet scanning, but other things, like the loyalty of a spec ops team, felt thrown down a numbers hole. Poor player feedback, if I had to quantify it in a gameplay way.
