3161

Pogue: I honestly don’t see a difference between ME3 and KOTORII, at least in terms of the state of their relative endings. I guess the developer circumstances are obviously different. Certainly we know KOTORII had some wacky development issues at the end, and while some issues have been alluded to w/r/t ME3 (that whole Penny Arcade forum post), we don’t know for sure.

So why the - heh - backlash against the ME3 backlash, but no backlash against the KOTORII backlash?

3162

Pretty sure I just explained that.

3163

So there are three main differences of opinions between the groups it appears…

[ol]
[li]In a story, if the ending is horrible, how much does that affect your enjoyment of the whole?[/li][li]If an element in a story is really bad and/or missing, is it ok for the company to change it?[/li][li]Is it ok for fans to complain about the overall quality of the story, or specific flaws in it?[/li][/ol]

Personally i don’t understand how anyone could read a book or watch a movie and not care about the end.

#2 mainly comes down to if you think of the story as a central feature that can/should be patched if flawed, just like if you’re getting a ctd, that should be fixed.

#3 comes down to the fact that certain posters in this thread keep saying the same bullshit line “You can say you don’t like the ending, but you can’t say that you dislike it because it is of low quality/flawed.” I’ve seen this line repeated so many times by a few people. It is almost amusing how hypocritical it is (“you’re ok to have an opinion, but fuck you if you have an opinion i don’t approve of”), but i’m not really surprised anymore.

I don’t really understand the artistic vision crap personally. What about a developer’s vision for gameplay that sucks? Does their vision defend crappy gameplay?

Jeffd: It is massive trolling for the most part. While not everyone who posted in this thread about liking the original ending or being upset about the changes is a troll, a couple of the more prominent supporters have clearly been trolling this thread for the past couple years.

I can’t count how many times they’ve pulled the old “oh you support schools, well i don’t believe we should support child molesters” random redirection trick. The one where you argue against position X even though everyone is talking about position Y.

I also can’t figure out why Pogue seems to think that if a company makes a mistake or treats their customer wrong, they are going to admit it, if they can get away with it. Yes, there are exceptions, but they are rare and tend to be smaller companies that are closer to their customers.

3164

Ironically, I think that’s sort of a proof that the rest of the game is so good. People are pissed because the rest of the game is so good. If the rest of the game was mediocre, not many people would care about the ending. But they did such a great job with the first 98% of the game, it somehow makes the last 2% worse when (IMO) it wasn’t up to the standards of the rest of the game.

3165

Agree completely. Mass Effect is my favorite franchise of all time and the ending was a big let down. They dropped the ball. I had imported saves from ME1 on and I just dont feel like my choices made a difference at all in the end.

3166

You are abso-fucking-lutely amazing, Murbella. You continue to create arguments that no one has put forward in order to valiantly strike them down. And completely misunderstand my arguments on even the most basic level. Repeatedly, which is key here, because you’ve found my internet weakness: I reach my don’t-give-a-fuck level really quickly. I never win arguments because of it. But I have a reasonable blood pressure level, so win/win right? You have fun with whatever it is you’re doing, would you call it a discussion? Hell if I can recognize it as such.

3167

You mean like ALL the games out there including the much-lauded Walking Dead?

3168

Yep. If the series was not good up to that end point, no one would care. There are a lot of terrible game out there with terrible ends. Dropping the ball at the end, yes that was going to sting. It’s not the first trilogy to end poorly though. Movies do it all the time, and guess what, a lot of conversation about movies like The Matrix still winds up starting with oh that was a great movie… but then they did those other two movies and that ending.

3169

I was going to call you an idiot for not knowing how calendars worked, but I see this thread has been going for as long as ME3 has been announced. So I’ll just call you an idiot for being an idiot.

-Tom
3170

While I agree with the basic premise of what you’re saying, there’s more to it than that. There have been plenty of good games – many far better than any ME game in my opinion – with bad endings: KOTOR, Bioshock, and Far Cry 2, for example. None of which resulted in a situation even remotely like this. People have cared about weak endings to good stories for a long time. But this reaction is unique and you can’t attribute it solely – or even significantly, I’d argue – to the level of quality of ME3.

I think it has more to do with people buying into the smoke and mirrors that they were making their own story, and deciding how everything was going to turn out. They had been catered to for literally years with the promise that every decision would have some repercussion or personalized consequence. I suspect a lot of the furor is that even though Mass Effect 3 played to that beautifully as an overall game, the final fifteen minutes had no interest in that approach. At that point, after coming so far, I suspect a lot of people had been so thoroughly conditioned by the narrative framework that they didn’t want Bioware to tell them an ending. And my gut instinct is that it has less to do with any quality issue than it has to do with the loss of control. I don’t mean to insult anyone, but my guess is that the average Mass Effect player – like the average videogame player – wouldn’t know good writing if it bit him in the ass.

But maybe that’s too much psychoanalysis. I figure it’s as good a theory as “Mass Effect 3 was so good that people were angry the end wasn’t as good”. :)

-Tom
3171

Even though I see where you’re coming from, this kind of posts isn’t really helping anything Tom, and I’m pretty sure it goes right against the guidelines you set for your own forum…

3172

The writters only made one final. Then made 2 others pretend finals by changing the colour of a explosion.

The writters tried to create the illusion of freeedom. But It was easy for the players to discover that it was a cheap trick (using youtube, or reloading a savegame and choosing the other option).

Different people reacted in different ways to this. Most people had a negative reaction. Internet has amplified the negative opinion, and is a cavern where echo’s never die. You can still find people talking about this on the internet, on internet forums… It somewhat surprise me, but yea… humm.

3173

There are plenty of games out there, including from Bioware, that alter the ending based on decisions you made throughout the game. There is every reason to expect that Mass Effect 3, coming as it does from a series where that kind of responsiveness to your decisions has been a major selling point, would do likewise.

3174

I think that’s an overstatement. Mass Effect 3 is a good game, but that’s about as far as it goes.

The first 98 percent of the game has an absolutely broken quest system, an animation set that is not up to the standard established by the first two Mass Effects, and suffers from poor, repetitive design in which the developers seemingly forgot you can end a mission without a desperate holdout sequence.

It’s more likely people eagerly overlooked Mass Effect 3’s flaws because they liked the story and its characters. You know, willful blinders and all.

3175

He’s never claimed that he was hacked. In fact he’s never said anything about this issue as far as I’m aware. Hudson claimed he talked to Weekes and then said “it’s an imposter” and that’s all that was said. It’s a bullshit PR move to both keep Weekes job and try to keep everyone thinking the team is on the same page as far as the ending is concerned.

As for the second bold section, you’ve asked on multiple occasions about seeing a single post from a Bioware developer being dissatisfied or claiming things weren’t the same for the ending as the rest of the game. It was delivered, and now you are claiming “so what?”.

Way the move the goal posts!

And can you guys quit being so fucking melodramatic about what happened here? Players didn’t “strong arm” anyone. This isn’t the first time someone has made a petition, it’s just the first time a company went soft and paid attention. All this woe is me stuff about Bioware or the constant lamenting about the future of gaming is nonsense. Nothing is going to change in gaming because of this, it isn’t the end of the world.

I hated the ending, but I didn’t want it changed…most people didn’t. The fact they did it is why we are still talking about it now. Instead of people just venting and moving on both sides are unhappy. If you guys are going to be upset with anyone it should be Bioware. Either there were enough dissatisfied customers that Bioware felt it was necessary to change the ending, or there weren’t and they caved for no reason. Either situation puts the onus directly on them, not the gamers.

KotoR’s ending isn’t as bad as ME3’s IMO, I’d rather have an abrupt “the end” than what I saw. If you are talking about KotoR 2, well, that’s just because the Obsidian fans are just as bad as the ME3 petition signers, just in the other direction. And Bioshock and Far Cry 2 don’t have near the fan following at Mass Effect. No one is writing FC fan fiction or reading Far Cry books, and Bioshock, while good, was forgotten about pretty quickly after most people played it. As far as IP’s go Mass Effect is far larger and more encompassing than any of those you mentioned.

3176

I was going to point out that the Crysis 2 novelization was written by Peter Watts who is awesome, except then I remembered that Crysis and Far Cry aren’t the same thing! So instead I’m pointing out what I was going to point out which is mostly a way for me to point out that Peter Watts is awesome and you should read his books if you like sci-fi.

3177

Well, I liked the ending. There, I said it.

I imported the save game from ME2, which itself was imported from ME1. I bought all of the expansions and add-ons. I played a goody goody two shoes most of the way through. I saved every last team member at the end of Mass Effect 2, and found them all again in Mass Effect 3. I brought peace and harmony everywhere I went. I visited every planet in the galaxy so I entered the final battle with all resources.

All throughout ME3, the mood is bleak. The story prepares you to expect a bad ending, or at best, a Pyrrhic ending, and it delivered. The ending was bittersweet, but it was a definite ENDING. I really enjoyed it. I had the “synthesis” ending, which I’ve been told was not available in the original version of the game. If that’s the case, I can understand all the complaining.

3178

The synthesis ending is available in the original game. I haven’t finished the extended/fixed ending DLC yet, but this was the ending i got first in ME3.

3179

Well, then I’m at a loss.

3180

You can’t see the forest for the trees. But you know, you do have a point. You did in fact find a purported post by someone who may have been a writer on Mass Effect 3. We’ll just let it slide that the post has been disavowed and just go ahead and give you an internet point. Good job sir!

So let’s move on to the next step - what exactly have you proven? Did you understand why I was looking for public acquiescence on the part of Bioware that they were fixing what they considered to be a busted aspect of their game by releasing the extended ending? Never mind that Murbella can’t grasp this question, can you? And can you tell me why a single post by a single writer expressing dissatisfaction with being excluded from participating in the ending might not be exactly what I asked for?