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[PA Comic] Friday, March 16, 2012 - The Delicious Invasion
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And yet...
The saying does go, if you can't attack the point, attack the person.
That's the part that is incomprehensible to me. Bioware was able to do everything exceptionally well up until the very final part of the game. And then...this. How were they able to make the entire series so well, but then just flop over at the bottom of the ninth like that? All they had to do was continue what they were doing and rake it across the goal, and the series would have rocketed to legendary status.
Instead... Well, it's still going to be legendary status, but I don't think in the intended way...
Edit: What I mean is that if you find 99 out of 100 PA strips funny, but not this one, because it's a strawman or something, odds are that you have no problem when they "strawmanned" something you don't care about personally.
Except the last 10 minutes were terrible, and basically destroy everything the game had built up to. I didn't want a happy ending honestly, but I wanted an ending that made sense and showed me the reward for my efforts.
In the sense that you've been playing through a game series for five years waiting for this conclusion and have collectively dropped probably north of two hundred bucks on it over time and actually gave a shit about the characters and the story and are tired of being belittled and disregarded and personally insulted repeatedly from multiple gaming "journalism" and media outlets...
...yes you can say that a person is too close the issue to really find this comic that funny.
Really, the core problem is there's been lots of bitching about Mass Effect 3 for months even though its only been out two weeks. People complaining about multiplayer existing, people complaining about DLC being available on day one, people complaining because there are on disc assets for javik even though the dlc includes 600+ mb of content. When the rage goes from one thing to another, you can't expect people who don't share your cause to think "oh okay, this one has a good point"
Most of the time that Mike and Jerry basically editorialize via their comic to attack people instead of their argument, it's not exactly their comedic best even if I don't care about or agree with the people they're attacking.
These are usually strips that are motivated by Mike picking fights with people on the internet.
How can I not expect that from the journalists though? That's their job. To research the issues that affect their community/demographic and provide articles. Even if they disagree they should be informed on the issue and know it's not some BS complaint (though I don't agree the previous complaints were entirely unfounded). They most of all should not be attacking their readership on a personal level. If they honestly disagree they should be defending the ending on its own merits if it truly has any and be capable of showing WHY they liked it. This is not the case.
What's strange to me is that FO3's ending was terrible (worse than ME3) because it clearly had been set up in such a way because they ran out of time. That seemed to get less flak than ME3, whose ending did not seem rushed but instead seems designed to provoke arguments.
Which is which nowadays? I can't even tell anymore. One day they claim to be gaming journalists the next they say they are just bloggers.
They're journalists when they want the esteem of being respected as journalists, they're just bloggers when they don't want to hold themselves up to journalistic standards or ethics.
You're damn right I'm close to the issue, I loved this game series!
I don't mind the comic, it illustrates how oblivious people are as to the real reason the fans don't like the ending. I'm not really arguing against the comic, I'm arguing against the horrible ending.
I dunno. I loved the original Bard's Tale trilogy, but the third game had a pretty WTF ending.
Of course, that was when the only place to complain about it was the local BBS, so it was just me & a couple of friends talking about how it could have been done better.
They could have just
Which is... that's wanting the birthday cake. The end of the story was
Which is a really stupid way to end a story, especially when the game developers stated on multiple occasions that your decisions would have a huge impact on the end of the game.
1) It would be great to see a 4th Panel on today's strip.
2) I would be very interested to read Jerry's review of the published version of "Wise Man's Fear", as I found it a weaker sequel.
We'll have to wait for the post, but I get the feeling the comic is intentionally facetious. I think the ending was poorly handled, but I also think the comic is amusing if not taken as a serious argument.
I agree about the content/people dichotomy in this "discussion" though.
The problem I have with this is that written science fiction has moved on from this kind of thinking for some very good reasons.
The new wave focused on extrapolating on the social consequences of change. This made the fiction meatier but tended to go off the rails due to the period's fixation with transcendence through psychotropics.
Cyberpunk had a similar social focus to the new wave but gave up on transcendence, replacing it with simply escaping oppression.
Now we don't have a strong movement that is purely science fiction, as the speculative fiction genre has moved toward the more fantastical (not that that kind of stuff didn't already exist). But things that still fall into science fiction follow these themes. There's post-cyberpunk. There's new space opera.
The thing about these modern forms is they generally don't end a character story with transcendence and Big Ideas. That's because modern authors (edit: except Rudy Rucker) recognize that stuff sucks as a plot resolution. It's why genre fiction has, historically, often been spoken of as a ghetto.
Transcendentalism is lazy and unsatisfying. Big ideas are great, but they don't make a story without characters. Saying "and then this amazing thing happened" does not resolve a story. "This amazing thing happened and here's how it affected everyone" does.
The substance of the ending isn't a problem, in my view. Would I have liked more? Yes. But that's because I love mass effect and I always wanted more of it. I was sad at the end not because of the content, but because Shepard was firing her gun for the last time and I'd never be spending another moment directing her actions in a way I haven't already. I still know what state I left the galaxy in. I would take more scenes in the ending. But that's the thing: I am always going to want more Mass Effect.
I can agree that the actions of the Normandy and crew at the last moment are a little head scratchy. But it doesn't tarnish my feelings about the game and series in general. (and it's easy enough for me to hand wave away as "Hackett ordered the Normandy away after the crucible didn't fire"
No man, the real issue is 'turn the reapers (and everyone else) into ice cream'. That is the problem I have. And Gabe obviously didn't have that problem because that's the choice he made. But it would have been nice, over the content of three games, that they make 'everyone turns into ice cream' into something that's hinted at, or struggled with, or even mentioned once. But it never is. It's just the 'happy' ending they throw at the end: We're all ice cream now! Yaaaaaay!
For me that is the absolute worst ending, because it has zero context. How can you weigh the consequences of a choice that makes no sense? Telling people "Becoming ice cream will make everyone happy, forevermore!" is the way they decided to contextualize it. But surely everyone can agree that simply stating that something is the best thing ever without giving any other information about that thing, is terrible writing.
Origin ID: jazzmess
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That's an insanely pretentious way to end a trilogy that's never even hinted at caring about bigger ideas or philosophical questions. It just does not fit with the tone at all.
Again, I think the comic is funny. I can hear Anderson and it's hilarious.
As for the ending, I got the same one Gabe did. My problem with it was it felt like
And, yes, I wanted to see exposition on social consequences.
I certainly don't want happy ending DLC though.
Most of the people, when clarifying the deus ex machina comment, say that
And I didn't see anything wrong with the Normandy's part in the end cutscene, on my first playthrough.
If I had to guess, I'd say that part of the end was made for the purpose of use in the worst possible ending, and then they decided it looked too cool to only get used once.
I love the Gamefront article. I think it captures the essence of the major criticisms quite well. I also largely agree with you, Pony.
(With the caveat that, from my personal perspective, most of the debate has been charitable from both sides, and I'm cautious about painting large groups of people with the same brush. It's really just a handful of comments from high-profile writers that I've found objectionable beyond a level of respectful disagreement.)
Also, Forbes has run a series of opinion pieces by Dave Thier and Paul Tassi that all voice similar criticisms. I also particularly liked Eric Kain's piece dissecting the 'gamer entitlement' meme (here).
This is from Forbes for chrissakes, not some fanfic tumblr with a readership of 20.
I don't see how somebody could read the Gamefront article and the Forbes articles and come to the conclusion that all the critics wanted was an icecream-and-cake ending.
Don't worry, the flotilla has 800,000 tons of turian chocolate.
Mordin's death to put right what was once wrong in curing the genophage was both sad and rewarding. In my game there was no other option as far as I was concerned. I couldn't betray my good friend Wrex, a friend who would follow me to hell, just to make some shady back room deal with the salarians. Had it been his brother because I foolishly killed (or was forced to kill) Wrex way back in the beginning on Virmire then no, I wouldn't have felt bad lying about curing the genophage, and I would have been disappointed to have Mordin die for that. For me, watching Mordin work while the shard burns down while singing "scientist salarian" to himself just about brought a tear to my eye.
Being able to bring peace between the quarians and the geth was another good moment. Will the peace last? Maybe. Legion "dies" sort of, but we're shown a machine that became alive and ultimately chose to give up its life for the greater good. Again depending on choices made along the way one may feel differently about Legion's fate, or even killed him in what effectively would be the genocide of the geth. Either choice had its consequences, but provided I could I saved them both (and I did) to ensure both sides would be there to fight the Reapers as allies. Artificial life siding with organic life to fight another artificial life (plus EDI's own self-revelations) should have meant something to the endgame.
Seeing and speaking to Thane in his final days in the hospital was cool, as were all my encounters with those that survived the previous two games. But when Thane showed up to fight Kai Lang? Epic. The choices I made resulted in Thane showing up to kick some ass. He ultimately dies from a combination of his wounds and terminal illness, but like Mordin it was a good end. The other cameos were nice to see Miranda, Jacob, and Jack, back in action. The Jack and Joker dialog was funny and heartwarming. Of course, if you failed to save the academy in time then Jack will be back, which is tragic, yet it fits perfectly.
And then the final push comes. My squad and I fight valiantly alongside literally the rest of the galaxy that I worked hard to bring to bear in full force. An ending full of inconsistencies, plot holes, and straight up WTF is shoehorned in as if it were copied directly from Deus Ex (June 2000) with updated graphics. No matter what, I find it highly unlikely that Shepard would ultimately assist the reapers. Why would Joker suddenly run from the fight? How did he know the mass relay was about to self destruct and manage to make it there before the Citadel did its thing? How did anyone in my squad even get back onboard when they were all down on Earth fighting? Liara was with me during the run to the beam with ol' Harby firing lasers of doom at everyone, and somehow she is suddenly back on the Normandy running away to crash land on some unknown jungle planet? Nothing in the ending is even remotely believable if you actually played the game in its entirety.
I suppose maybe if you're the kind of gamer that only plays through the critical path, ignores the side quests, and quickly blows through dialog that the ending makes sense to you. I can't fathom that it does if you've played the previous installments to their full extents multiple times.
Also, I wish more of the discussion on the ending could be like this. Less demanding it be changed and more hypothesizing on what the galaxy does now
Controlling the iceacream is what the IM wanted, but you don't control the icecream, it controls you, that's what (nearly) three Mass Effect games taught me.
Destroying the icecream is the least evil of all the endings despite possibly resulting in a galactic genocide worse than anything the icecream could have accomplished.
Bravo Shepard you arse, should have just shot herself.
I also agree with everything Pony is saying insofar as I am able having not played ME3 yet and viewing all this furor over the ending with a great mixture of emotions.
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My issue with the ending isn't it being "happy" it's the fact that it DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE!
Ending Spoilers
And going, "well that's what the creators wanted to do so deal with it" is not a valid explanation.