Mass Effect 3

[Quaro]

Out of curiosity: would anyone have objected to Obsidian patching in a more extensive ending to KOTORII, after the fact?

Also in general: it’s pretty well accepted that developers often release games in unfinished states. Is it such a hard lift to imagine that the story might be one of the things they left unfinished?

The bizarre hostility to adding on to a game’s ending as opposed to changing other aspects of a game really perplexes me! Especially given that the additional content is entirely optional.

It would be been pretty great if public outcry pressured Lucasarts into giving Obsidian extra time and resources for a second pass at that ending.

Perhaps in a few years when many ME 3 devs have moved on, someone can bump this thread when they start talking. Were the devs scrambling to finish the ending because EA had to hit the launch window? Or were they pressured by EA into compromising their original vision by changing it after the game came out?

[jeffd]

That’s because you apparently have no problem with a handful of angry self-entitled fans hijacking the narrative of the Mass Effect games. But you’re right that it could have been worse. I couldn’t care less about some expanded optional ending I’ll never play. What I mind is that EA listened to those yahoos.

But by all means, let’s start out round umpteen of the same conversation with a misrepresentation of each other’s opinions! We can draw this out for at least a few more months to tide us over until Dragon Age 3.

 -Tom

What the hell? I’ll be honest, I’ve read and re-read my post and I have no idea how we go from me being perplexed about the hostility displayed on the part of you and Pogue Mahone to your post. I don’t even know who’s representing whose opinion!

[jeffd]

I so wish public outcry had pressured KOTOR II’s publisher into giving Obsidian the time and resourced they needed for a second pass at that ending.

Perhaps in a few years when many ME 3 devs have moved on, someone can bump this thread when they start talking. Were the devs scrambling to finish the ending because EA had to hit the launch window? Or were they pressured by EA into compromising their original vision by changing it after the game came out?

There is sort of an interesting parallel here. Maybe it’s because KOTORII wasn’t nearly as big a game as ME3, but it seems like the genuine consensus w.r.t. KOTORII is that man that ending sucked, I wish Obsidian had a chance to do it properly. On the other hand, with MEIII where the (IMO just about as shitty) ending was (for better or for worse) expanded upon, you’ve got this amazing backlash against it. I really don’t get why it’s a big deal!

[Nesrie]

Oh, absolutely. It is by no means a perfectly analogous situation. I just keep seeing folks talking as if changing an ending to a significant work of literature had never been done before, and that’s not accurate.

Note that there is still lots of academic debate over whether Dickens should have done so and whether the new ending improved the work or not.

I’m not trying to weigh in one way or the other on the merits of Bioware changing the ME3 ending. I’ve stayed out of that particular fight so far, and plan to keep it that way. :)

Amazingly enough, the publishing industry did not collapse under the weight of good endings and end all depth and creativity as we know it either. Heated debate over change… who would have thought. Must have been had a lot of Enders back them, should have silenced them… clearly.

[RickH]

Given they are making a new ME game, I can’t see any ending beyond ‘destroy’ being explored further.

My gut tells me that will end up being the “official” ending for further storytelling purposes. Synthesis would be a bit too weird unless the natural consequences of such a dramatic change are completely ignored, and then what’s the point? Circuit traces on EVERYTHING? Bleah.

[RickH]

That’s because you apparently have no problem with a handful of angry self-entitled fans hijacking the narrative of the Mass Effect games. But you’re right that it could have been worse. I couldn’t care less about some expanded optional ending I’ll never play. What I mind is that EA listened to those yahoos.

Except the narrative didn’t actually change. No story beats were harmed in the making of the DLC.

I honestly can’t think of any explanation for your barely contained contempt for the complainers. I thought it was a misguided attachment to the auteur theory, which seemed odd since it was a corporate work-for-hire. Then I thought it was a distaste for revisionism, but now I think it’s just a reflexive contempt for the mass consumer.

If the masses like it, it’s inherently suspect. Even worse would be to allow the masses any degree of authorship or input into the creative process. That would irreversibly taint any work.

But what the hell do I know, it’s your pathology, not mine. I have my own hot buttons, and struggle to maintain the self-awareness not to overreact when they are struck.

[malkav11]

Hey, if you’re going to take everything you read from PR at face value, I have no desire to disabuse you of that. By the way, did you hear that THQ is restructuring, Age of Empires Online is a thriving RTS, and Qualcomm’s keynote at CES fired up consumers? Because until I hear “evidence to the contrary”, that’s totally how it all went down!

 -Tom

Funny you should mention that, because it’s pretty easy to look at all three of those situations and see that that’s nonsense. Whereas it’s pretty easy to look at the complaints of fans re: Mass Effect 3’s ending and see that if those fans were really “hijacking the narrative” the Extended Cut DLC would look very different.

[jeffd]

My gut tells me that will end up being the “official” ending for further storytelling purposes. Synthesis would be a bit too weird unless the natural consequences of such a dramatic change are completely ignored, and then what’s the point? Circuit traces on EVERYTHING? Bleah.

I agree; I’m guessing we’ll get some destroy++ where certain synthetics managed to attain plot immunity.

[Murbella]

At the start of mass effect 4, the player will return as Shepard From The Future bringing news to humanity that the reapers were actually humanity from the future, running from the coming of The Destroyers who can travel through time using human blood. The player, with the help of the illusive man, will then need to convince all of the different alien species to unite, assemble a team and take on this new threat.

Also, with the mass gates destroyed, it takes longer to get everywhere, but with shepard’s personal time warping abilities he can freeze time for everything but the normandy, making it appear to get places instantly as far as the outside world(s) are concerned.

[divedivedive]

The mass relays aren’t destroyed, not as of the release of the extended ending DLC. Let’s hear it for progress!

[tomchick]

You guys are reading me too literally when I’m talking about ME3 fans “hijacking the narrative”, which is my bad for not being more careful with the word narrative. I’m using it the way folks might talk about the narrative of a Presidential campaign, or the narrative of Lance Armstrong’s career, or the narrative of Snow White and the Huntsman being about K. Stew sleeping with the director. I mean it in the sense that Mass Effect 3 is, to many people, the game with the bad ending.

Pretty much everything that Bioware has achieved has been upstaged by the furor over the ending. That’s what I mean by hijacking the narrative. You may now resume your indignant sputtering.

-Tom

[tomchick]

The mass relays aren’t destroyed, not as of the release of the extended ending DLC. Let’s hear it for progress!

Wait, what? Is that true or am I missing an inside joke? I was taking at face value what folks here were saying about the ending not being changed. In my game, all the systems were essentially cut off from each other. Does that happen differently in different endings, or did the DLC really change that?

-Tom

[divedivedive]

New content added by the new ending DLC. There’s additional V.O. by that Pumpkinhead guy that tells you the relays are damaged but repairable. The consequences of victory are drastically reduced.

[Quaro]

The cut scene of them exploding is less explodey if your readiness is above some threshold.

Though think about moving the Normandy on the map - you travel between many many stars without the relays, just using your engine, fast enough that it apparently doesn’t matter much. I was always kinda confused why the relays were such a big deal. The Reapers made them to force civilizations to develop along certain paths but they mainly seem to be a convenience mass transit at the high tech point the story takes place.

[Rock8man]

Wait, what? Is that true or am I missing an inside joke? I was taking at face value what folks here were saying about the ending not being changed. In my game, all the systems were essentially cut off from each other. Does that happen differently in different endings, or did the DLC really change that?

-Tom

In forum posts, they said that the original 3 colored endings were never intended to show the Mass Relay gates being destroyed, just that they didn’t work anymore. In other words, they never intended for the gates to be destroyed like they were in the Mass Effect 2 DLC that was released right before Mass Effect 3 came out: the one in which Shepard destroyed a Mass Effect Relay and as a result destroyed a whole star system, including everyone who lived there, in order to delay the arrival of the Reapers.

Anyway, they didn’t mean for players to interpret the relays no longer working as “all the relays were destroyed, therefore every star system that used to have a relay has no life left on it, including Earth and all the other major planets you visited throughout the series”.

So in the extended DLC, they just clarified that the gates did not go up in system-ending explosions, that’s all.

[tomchick]

Ugh, that’s horrible. So that’s what “fans” wanted? Specifics on the extent of the damage to the replays?

That’s a perfect example of what happens when you explain stuff rather than imply it. Bioware gave me an ending with just enough ambiguity that I was able to come to some pretty cool and meaningful conclusions on my own, and if I cared enough about the game, I might have had a great time discussing those conclusions with other players, comparing interpretations. I even wondered if entire systems had been destroyed, and I felt it was a pretty brave choice to leave me wondering that, much like someone would wonder if all contact had been cut off because the relays were gone.

So fans not only hijacked the narrative of the games as a whole, but they did this to the internal narrative of the series? Did Bioware explain this in forum posts before the furor that lead to the Extended DLC, or after?

 -Tom

[tomchick]

Though think about moving the Normandy on the map - you travel between many many stars without the relays, just using your engine, fast enough that it apparently doesn’t matter much. I was always kinda confused why the relays were such a big deal. The Reapers made them to force civilizations to develop along certain paths but they mainly seem to be a convenience mass transit at the high tech point the story takes place.

I thought the fuel limit offered an explanation around that. Basically, you could move around within a certain range, but to go beyond that, you needed the mass relays.

Frankly, I always thought the ship travel stuff in the entire series was dopey beyond belief, and a real liability for a space opera. But it always seemed to me the mass relays earned their keep, story-wise.

-Tom

[Quaro]

If I were in charge and going to choose a canonical ending to follow up sequels, I’d go with relays destroyed but FTL still works because the relays never actually felt like they were doing anything anyway. They still have FTL radios and cruise ships that apparently travel between stars in a day, that’s a better scale fit for the engines and NPC limits that Bioware uses anyway, where they have to reduce entire planets to a handful of rooms.

There’s no way EA would let bioware writers annihilate every system the player had ever visited which is what would be implied if the relays exploding did that. Sequels and more DLC, must have them. Also no game of the year editions.

[divedivedive]

There is sort of an interesting parallel here. Maybe it’s because KOTORII wasn’t nearly as big a game as ME3, but it seems like the genuine consensus w.r.t. KOTORII is that man that ending sucked, I wish Obsidian had a chance to do it properly. On the other hand, with MEIII where the (IMO just about as shitty) ending was (for better or for worse) expanded upon, you’ve got this amazing backlash against it. I really don’t get why it’s a big deal!

You know, I read your point about aggression, and I was just about to write that sure, I could fairly be accused of not counting to ten before hitting the Post button. But then I read this post above and I was sorely tempted to scrap it and write something that you probably would have construed as unpleasant. So how about I just split the difference and ask you calmly for your honest answer - do you truly see no difference between KotOR 2 and ME3, and why the response to both might be different?

[Brad_Grenz]

Ugh, that’s horrible. So that’s what “fans” wanted? Specifics on the extent of the damage to the replays?

That’s a perfect example of what happens when you explain stuff rather than imply it. Bioware gave me an ending with just enough ambiguity that I was able to come to some pretty cool and meaningful conclusions on my own, and if I cared enough about the game, I might have had a great time discussing those conclusions with other players, comparing interpretations. I even wondered if entire systems had been destroyed, and I felt it was a pretty brave choice to leave me wondering that, much like someone would wonder if all contact had been cut off because the relays were gone.

Yeah, that’s the stuff I was talking about when I said the new ending nerfs all the consequences of the original. In addition to making sure everyone knows the relays are gonna be back, they show the Normandy repaired and taking off from the planet where it crash landed. The original ending strongly implied that the post-credit tag with Buzz Aldrin was supposed to be the decedents of the Normandy’s crew on that same planet many generation on, in a universe forever changed by the loss of the relays. It was both more thematically appropriate, and a far more interesting state to leave the universe in, and all of it was paved over to satisfy the Enders who were more worried about whether the Turians in the fleet would starve, because “Turians can’t eat Earth food!”

Not that they weren’t livid about the mass relays as well. You’d think these dogged defenders of “Good Storytelling” would recognize the relays as machines of oppression and realize their destruction as thematically appropriate and narratively necessary. But apparently mass relays were too central to the game series and they couldn’t comprehend their loss. But if that’s true, I guess I wondering where all the Halo Hallowers have been hiding for the last decade.