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[PA Comic] Friday, March 16, 2012 - The Delicious Invasion

GethGeth LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
edited March 2012 in The Penny Arcade Hub
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Posts

  • EncEnc A Fool with Compassion Pronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered User regular
    And then he gets a Citadel Pony Ride.

  • DurkhanusDurkhanus Commander Registered User regular
    What? I have to post all over again?

  • akodoreignakodoreign Registered User new member
    Honestly is this the ending you think a vast majority of us want. Most of us would be happy with a DA:O style ending where it recaps what happens to each of the crew. Also We do not want the weakest type of ending in the world. One that Greeks used because they were just starting to Invent plays 5000 years ago.
    ("god out of the machine"; plural: dei ex machina) is a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem is suddenly and abruptly solved with the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability, or object.

  • ArcSynArcSyn Registered User regular
    Thank you for cleaning up those posts.. That was quite ridiculous.

    I would also like to see Reaper Ice Cream a featured flavor at my local place this summer. :)

    4dm3dwuxq302.png
  • DonnictonDonnicton Registered User regular
    akodoreign wrote: »
    Honestly is this the ending you think a vast majority of us want. Most of us would be happy with a DA:O style ending where it recaps what happens to each of the crew. Also We do not want the weakest type of ending in the world. One that Greeks used because they were just starting to Invent plays 5000 years ago.
    ("god out of the machine"; plural: dei ex machina) is a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem is suddenly and abruptly solved with the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability, or object.

    (Fortunately I was able to save this from cache before the Geth invasion was halted.)

    Or better yet, whatever ending the players decide to achieve based on their past actions.
    If I wanted to end ME2 with everyone surviving and living to go on happy adventuretimes down the road, I got to do that.

    If I wanted it to be a tragic story where most of Shep's friends from ME1 and 2 don't make it through the suicide mission, I could do that too.

    Hell, If I wanted to be a royally incompetent Shepard and literally suicide so hard at the end of ME2 that I manage to end the trilogy on a sequel, I could even do that.

    In this game, the very end doesn't even finish with particular relevance to what you did except for the basic idea of the Crucible.

    The glowlevator brings you up and then holokid tells you "go ahead, pick any ending you want and we'll show you a palette swapped FMV followed by a stock photo of Wintersun's Starchild album cover."

    I personally not so much puzzled that it's not a perfect ending as how lazy an ending it is. Considering how much attention to detail Bioware likes to put into their games, I can't comprehend how this could have happened when you have a company that would even include details like this(note: this occurs if you don't do the Grissom Academy mission):

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPJj8efNskM

    As posted by another user, this kind of drives the point home:
    x7sck4

  • Dark Raven XDark Raven X Laugh hard, run fast, be kindRegistered User regular
    edited March 2012
    Not actually played ME3 yet, but from how one possible ending was described to me, the Ice Cream Reaper thing didn't sound like too vast a stretch.

    Dark Raven X on
    Oh brilliant
  • ZoneaterZoneater Registered User new member
    I said this in the previous spam-o post, but I think a Reaper Ice Cream Cone t-shirt would sell like hotcakes. Or ice cream cones. I, for one, would buy it in a heartbeat.

  • CorehealerCorehealer The Apothecary The softer edge of the universe.Registered User regular
    edited March 2012
    Between the Day 1 DLC fiasco and this supposedly horrible ending thing, I'm glad I decided to wait until the game goes on sale with an edition that contains all the DLC before I finish the saga. I absolutely loved the first two, but after watching Bioware make a lacklustre sequel to Dragon Age and dump ungodly amounts of time and resources into an MMO that was basically WoW from four years ago, I was worried that something was going to come along and screw up this amazing series.

    I really feel bad for everyone who paid full price for disappointment. I can't comment on if Tycho was right or wrong in his sentiment that the ending makes more sense if you've read science fiction, but it does come off as pretentious. Plenty of Mass Effect fans probably love science fiction in general and have read plenty of it and are still disappointed with the ending, perhaps moreso because it doesn't live up to the standards of other sci-fi series endings.

    It's just an objective nightmare, really.

    Corehealer on
    488W936.png
  • DarkewolfeDarkewolfe Registered User regular
    Disclaimer: I didn't play past ME:1. I just can't play all the games that I want to, unfortunately.

    Thpoilerth?
    Reading about the ending of ME3, though, sounds amazing to me. I love everything about it. I think this is a great, classic sci-fi story. It's exactly like every sci-fi book or movie, where you've spent the last 300 pages/two hours getting familiar with characters, their relationships, their motivation, and then in the last 10 minutes they're running out of oxygen, trapped on an asteroid with a space alien, hurtling into the sun, Aerosmith is singing and the last remaining crewman detonates the bomb that will save untold billions who have always been offscreen. It's sci-fi existentialism, where in the long-run of the "outside world" the actions of the characters have only culminated in a singular event, and the importance of the relationships and events that took place while we were watching exists only for itself.

    Sheperd has permanently affected what will occur in the next cycles. In the long run of the universe, which is what the last bit of cinematic is about, the only choice Sheperd really had was: what will I do as regards future life and this cycle of reaping. All the game up to that point had been about the interpersonal relationships and characters, but none of that shit matters. Life as everyone knows it is ending. Maybe there'll be more life later. For now, Sheperd can give the gift of hope (or not) in a couple ways to future generations.

    So all the game up to that point has let you play out your little sandbox fantasy with your people. The last 10 minutes are a reminder that in the face of all the progress of the universe, that shit barely matters.

    So, is everyone basically just pissed off that the final cinematic doesn't highlight their characters, when they got all of that in everything leading up to it? That there's a bigger story to tell than which character kissed which?

    What is this I don't even.
  • RMS OceanicRMS Oceanic Registered User regular
    This is the second best ending to a game that involves cake. :P

  • raetinraetin Registered User new member
    Meh, not funny. Not even what I want out of the ending. More insulting than anything. Not that I expect PA to care.

  • BylakBylak Registered User new member
    When people complain that they'd rather see a "good ending" for ME3 it doesn't necessarily mean that what they want is a "happy ending".

    With that being said, this ending is sure a lot better than the actual ending we got in ME3!

    (dammit my original post on this was lost, it sounded a lot better too)

  • DurkhanusDurkhanus Commander Registered User regular
    Pouters don't get any cake.

  • DonnictonDonnicton Registered User regular
    Durkhanus wrote: »
    Pouters don't get any cake.

    You don't want Krogan cake. The food Krogans eat will strip your intestines.

  • GONG-00GONG-00 Registered User regular
    Reaper Ice Cream Cone = A Waffle cone filled with yesterday's soft serve strawberry ice cream, dipped in chocolate, and frozen until a new batch of strawberry ice cream is made?

    “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
    Law and Order ≠ Justice
    xu257gunns6e.png
  • AsiinaAsiina ... WaterlooRegistered User regular
    raetin wrote: »
    Meh, not funny. Not even what I want out of the ending. More insulting than anything. Not that I expect PA to care.

    Yeah, my original post was lost, but basically this.

    More sites who completely miss the point of what people want to the point of being insulting, now in comic form!

  • ShadowhopeShadowhope Baa. Registered User regular
    What, another thread on this? Heh.

    Anyhow, the problem is not that the ending is unhappy. I'll put the problem in really general terms, but I'll throw spoiler tags on anyways:
    Shepard's crew, people who have literally followed Shepard into a Hell analog in ME2, abandon Shepard at the last moment without explanation. Shepard, whose single most defining characteristic through the series has been her refusal to give in to anything except her own honor and/or good sense, mutely agrees to the Reapers ideas in the end without challenging or questioning them. And in the end, the choices you've made throughout the past three games are irrelevant.

    I'm fine with an ending that isn't happy. Most people complaining are not looking for a happy ending. It's a desire for a thematically appropriate ending that is in keeping with the rest of the series.
    For me, the thing that pisses me off the most is that 95% of the resources are already in game for the best ending that any gaming series ever had. After the conversation with the Illusive Man, you give either no conversation with Anderson, the in-game conversation with Anderson, or the extended conversation if you've essentially maxed out your Reputation. Then you show Anderson dead, Shepard slowly dying alone but smiling in victory, the Crucible docking, and then going off to destroy the Reapers. If your EMS is below 3000, the Reapers die, the relays are destroyed, and Earth is destroyed. If your EMS is above 3000 but below 4000, the Reapers die, earth is destroyed, and the relays are intact. If you're above 5000, the Reapers die, but Earth and the relays are intact. It basically comes down to how well the fleet was able to build the device and protect it. In all endings, Shepard dies. There's basically everything you need to make that ending with existing resources, and it would have given Shepard a great ending.

    If all that comes across as wanting puppies and unicorns, so be it.

    Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
  • PonyPony Registered User regular
    Asiina wrote: »
    raetin wrote: »
    Meh, not funny. Not even what I want out of the ending. More insulting than anything. Not that I expect PA to care.

    Yeah, my original post was lost, but basically this.

    More sites who completely miss the point of what people want to the point of being insulting, now in comic form!

    Yeah. I think it's really disingenuous to just portray anyone who hated the ending as whiners who wanted a "happy ending" with ice cream and cake.

    Like, I expect that kind of viewpoint from Mike, it's pretty consistent with the sort of views on things he espouses.

    But I'm disappointed that, as a writer, Jerry is doing the thing he's doing here.

  • spool32spool32 Contrary Library Registered User, Transition Team regular
    Well, I expected an entirely different sort of "happy ending" joke!

  • DonnictonDonnicton Registered User regular
    spool32 wrote: »
    Well, I expected an entirely different sort of "happy ending" joke!

    That still includes the Krogan. :winky:

  • AustralopitenicoAustralopitenico Registered User regular
    Still better than the actual ending. Apart from that I can only say:

    Nahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnahnah STRAWMAAAAAN, strawmaaaan.

  • Twenty SidedTwenty Sided Registered User regular
    edited March 2012
    Darkewolfe wrote: »
    Disclaimer: I didn't play past ME:1. I just can't play all the games that I want to, unfortunately.

    Thpoilerth?
    Reading about the ending of ME3, though, sounds amazing to me. I love everything about it. I think this is a great, classic sci-fi story. It's exactly like every sci-fi book or movie, where you've spent the last 300 pages/two hours getting familiar with characters, their relationships, their motivation, and then in the last 10 minutes they're running out of oxygen, trapped on an asteroid with a space alien, hurtling into the sun, Aerosmith is singing and the last remaining crewman detonates the bomb that will save untold billions who have always been offscreen. It's sci-fi existentialism, where in the long-run of the "outside world" the actions of the characters have only culminated in a singular event, and the importance of the relationships and events that took place while we were watching exists only for itself.

    Sheperd has permanently affected what will occur in the next cycles. In the long run of the universe, which is what the last bit of cinematic is about, the only choice Sheperd really had was: what will I do as regards future life and this cycle of reaping. All the game up to that point had been about the interpersonal relationships and characters, but none of that shit matters. Life as everyone knows it is ending. Maybe there'll be more life later. For now, Sheperd can give the gift of hope (or not) in a couple ways to future generations.

    So all the game up to that point has let you play out your little sandbox fantasy with your people. The last 10 minutes are a reminder that in the face of all the progress of the universe, that shit barely matters.

    So, is everyone basically just pissed off that the final cinematic doesn't highlight their characters, when they got all of that in everything leading up to it? That there's a bigger story to tell than which character kissed which?

    I'm actually that guy that wished Chris Avellone and Obsidian had been the guys to inherit Bioware's RPG throne post Black Isle. I'm not that guy who thinks Bioware can-do-no-wrong and I can actually view everything they do without the rose-tinted glasses.

    Everything you said encapsulates the problem I have with their games. They're trying to balance a fantasy travelogue that explores a setting filled with personal dramas and political conflict . . . and staple a high-minded epic on top of it. I have to say that they're far better at the former and total crap at the latter. Because their attempts at the latter are cheesy.

    Saving the world is not more important who Shepherd decided to kiss. The idea that the former is more valid storytelling because it's perceived to be "highbrow" annoys me to no end. It's simply not true. The saving-the-world plot is just lazy, sterile and un-engaging. It tries to raise-the-stakes in a bullshit way. But no matter how you try it's just not the same thing as deciding whether the race of psychopathic Klingons really deserve to live after all.

    Playing Mass Effect 1, I had the dreadful premonition that they weren't going to be able to deliver very well on the Reaper storyline. There's no way they could hype-up a "save the galaxy/world/all life" plot and actually deliver a climax that has even the same gravitas as . . . say . . . the existential crisis of the Krogan genophage. Then Mass Effect 2 had the Giant Terminator. I mean, if you thought Mass Effect 3 was going to somehow wrap this up gracefully, I can only laugh at you.

    It's the same problem I had with Dragon Age. The whole Darkspawn invasion didn't actually seem like the story they wanted to tell. It was just a kludgy plot device. Nearly any other kind of plot device would've worked better (e.g. REVENGE FOR YOUR MENTOR).

    If anything, everything I've read in this thread indicates that the Reaper storyline wasn't really the core engagement of the Mass Effect games. And Mass Effect would have been a much better game if they just embraced the pulp and simply made it "The Marvelous Adventures of Space Captain Shepard." Watch him teach the meaning of love to alien wimmenz.

    Twenty Sided on
  • HopefullyClassyHopefullyClassy Registered User new member
    edited March 2012
    Wow missed the point much, I was disappointed with the ending I wanted it changed as a fan I can ask if it can be done, we are not talking about a book or a movie (well they did patch up that bioware book right?) to be changed its a video game a medium flexible enough that it can do it a lot of people are also willing to pay for it. :winky:

    I'm glad Gabe like it, but majority of fans didn't and I had to sign in just to post this, I thought Penny-Arcade's reaction to the current issue would be different if not less severe more neutral. But I'm tired of explaining myself so I'm going to quote Forbes :P
    Colin also glosses over entirely the fact that players had been led to believe that the choices they made in all three games would affect the outcome of the final chapter. The one resounding complaint over Mass Effect 3 is that gamers feel as though their choices made no difference. That unique Commander Shepard was not so unique after all.


    Veering quickly away from Mass Effect altogether, Colin drums up the notion of gamer “entitlement.” Games are cheaper now than ever before, he argues – which, when you adjust for inflation, is pretty much true. But the notion that angry or disappointed fans are displaying a sense of “entitlement” is deeply misguided, and perhaps unique to the gaming industry – a myth perpetuated by the industry and, apparently, by many journalists who cover the industry. Consumers who purchase your goods or services are not acting like they’re “entitled” to something that they have no right to. This implies that they did nothing to deserve their frustration and have no right to complain. It’s a term that in this usage is interchangeable with “spoiled.”

    It’s also completely wrong-headed.

    Colin says that there’s a “proper” way to complain, but he never really says what that is beyond not buying games or DLC that you don’t like. That’s fine advice, as far as it goes, but I’m not sure why it’s “proper” whereas asking for a new ending is the act of a bunch of selfish children stomping their feet.

    What Colin is really saying is that gamers have no investment in the games they play and love (or hate.) It’s the same attitude you hear in politics when someone says “If you don’t love America, why don’t you go somewhere else?”

    But gamers really do have investment in their games – often more than in television, a medium where you hear plenty of discontent from fans (yet no television reviewers, to my knowledge, calling the fans “entitled.”) Gamers are often involved in modding games after release, often with the blessing of the developers. New texture packs, characters, or maps are common in games like Skyrim or Valve’s catalogue.

    The relationship between gamer and developer, and across the entire community, is a social and participatory relationship. Gamers may not work on the actual development of a title like Mass Effect 3, but they’ve invested their time and money and support into that franchise and there is no one “proper” way to complain about the ending. Nor are angry fans merely “entitled” or “spoiled” simply for angrily voicing their concerns or asking for a new ending.

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/03/13/mass-effect-3-and-the-pernicious-myth-of-gamer-entitlement/

    keep note also games like Witcher 2's endings was also altered due to fan reaction it's really up to the developers... Now bioware renegade or paragon take your pick

    HopefullyClassy on
  • DarkewolfeDarkewolfe Registered User regular
    Shadowhope wrote: »
    What, another thread on this? Heh.

    Anyhow, the problem is not that the ending is unhappy. I'll put the problem in really general terms, but I'll throw spoiler tags on anyways:
    Shepard's crew, people who have literally followed Shepard into a Hell analog in ME2, abandon Shepard at the last moment without explanation. Shepard, whose single most defining characteristic through the series has been her refusal to give in to anything except her own honor and/or good sense, mutely agrees to the Reapers ideas in the end without challenging or questioning them. And in the end, the choices you've made throughout the past three games are irrelevant.

    I'm fine with an ending that isn't happy. Most people complaining are not looking for a happy ending. It's a desire for a thematically appropriate ending that is in keeping with the rest of the series.
    For me, the thing that pisses me off the most is that 95% of the resources are already in game for the best ending that any gaming series ever had. After the conversation with the Illusive Man, you give either no conversation with Anderson, the in-game conversation with Anderson, or the extended conversation if you've essentially maxed out your Reputation. Then you show Anderson dead, Shepard slowly dying alone but smiling in victory, the Crucible docking, and then going off to destroy the Reapers. If your EMS is below 3000, the Reapers die, the relays are destroyed, and Earth is destroyed. If your EMS is above 3000 but below 4000, the Reapers die, earth is destroyed, and the relays are intact. If you're above 5000, the Reapers die, but Earth and the relays are intact. It basically comes down to how well the fleet was able to build the device and protect it. In all endings, Shepard dies. There's basically everything you need to make that ending with existing resources, and it would have given Shepard a great ending.

    If all that comes across as wanting puppies and unicorns, so be it.

    I'm still taking the approach that the game designers' final plot theme was, "Fuck you, you can make decisions all you want and they're relevant to your personal story, but in the grand scheme of things they're pretty meaningless. The universe is a big place, and if you can make any influence at all on that, it's pretty amazing, but the minutae of your story are pretty irrelevant."

    What is this I don't even.
  • DonnictonDonnicton Registered User regular
    And Mass Effect would have been a much better game if they just embraced the pulp and simply made it "The Marvelous Adventures of Space Captain Shepard." Watch him teach the meaning of love to alien wimmenz.

    Isn't that exactly what Kevin McCullough and Martha MacCallum(lolfoxnews) thought the first Mass Effect game was, and railed against it in an anti-video game crusade(so much so that PA did a strip about it), until they both admitted that they never actually played the game?

  • AsiinaAsiina ... WaterlooRegistered User regular
    Darkewolfe wrote: »
    Disclaimer: I didn't play past ME:1. I just can't play all the games that I want to, unfortunately.

    Thpoilerth?
    So, is everyone basically just pissed off that the final cinematic doesn't highlight their characters, when they got all of that in everything leading up to it? That there's a bigger story to tell than which character kissed which?

    Nope!
    They're pissed because in addition to not finding out what happens to any of their characters, your choice of actions all completely fuck over the galaxy just as bad as the reapers do, but Shepard goes along with it anyway.

    They're pissed that parts of the ending just make zero sense in regards to the parts that come just before it. There are several complete 180s.

    They're pissed that they were promised many different endings that are dependent on their choices. They were promised this by the developers all the way through including in interviews a week before release.

    So please get off your high horse in thinking that people who are annoyed are simply just not versed in sci-fi storytelling and that this is what we should have expected from the start. Especially when we were specifically told that this wouldn't be the case.

  • Twenty SidedTwenty Sided Registered User regular
    edited March 2012
    Donnicton wrote: »
    And Mass Effect would have been a much better game if they just embraced the pulp and simply made it "The Marvelous Adventures of Space Captain Shepard." Watch him teach the meaning of love to alien wimmenz.

    Isn't that exactly what Kevin McCullough and Martha MacCallum(lolfoxnews) thought the first Mass Effect game was, and railed against it in an anti-video game crusade(so much so that PA did a strip about it), until they both admitted that they never actually played the game?
    There's a difference between paying an homage to Kirk and smut, good sir.

    Ahhh who are we kidding? It's all smut anyway. There's a reason these things are rated "M."

    Twenty Sided on
  • TravanTravan Registered User regular
    Dammit, I was all set on giving this one a pass. Now with the entire internet losing its collective shit over the ending I'm interested again.

    Gamertag- Travan7838


  • AsiinaAsiina ... WaterlooRegistered User regular
    edited March 2012
    Darkewolfe wrote: »
    I'm still taking the approach that the game designers' final plot theme was, "Fuck you, you can make decisions all you want and they're relevant to your personal story, but in the grand scheme of things they're pretty meaningless. The universe is a big place, and if you can make any influence at all on that, it's pretty amazing, but the minutae of your story are pretty irrelevant."

    Except throughout the whole game the choices you're making aren't "be nice or punch this reporter" or "who do I want to bang"
    They're things like end a 300 year war by either uniting two races or letting one of them be destroyed, and deciding whether a civilization is going to be sterilized or giving them a cure that will save them all.

    These aren't purely personal choices, you are already making galaxy-altering decisions. The scope is very different than the original Mass Effect, so if you aren't going to play ME3 then maybe you shouldn't comment on its content.

    Asiina on
  • CambiataCambiata Commander Shepard The likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered User regular
    The funny thing is, one of the things I'd really like is for the magical bullshit ending to be removed from the game. The 'reapers turn into ice cream' ending. The ending Gabe choose. :lol:

    "excuse my French
    But fuck you — no, fuck y'all, that's as blunt as it gets"
    - Kendrick Lamar, "The Blacker the Berry"
  • Twenty SidedTwenty Sided Registered User regular
    I for one, have seen too many awkwardly abrupt endings in games. I just cannot manufacture outrage over something like this.

    You might recall this game called Indigo Prophecy.

  • HopefullyClassyHopefullyClassy Registered User new member
    edited March 2012
    I for one, have seen too many awkwardly abrupt endings in games. I just cannot manufacture outrage over something like this.

    You might recall this game called Indigo Prophecy.

    But it never had that many of a user base and this game spanned 2 sequels...

    Agreed though it all went down hill fast when it went scifi from a psychological thriller

    HopefullyClassy on
  • HeisenbergHeisenberg Registered User regular
    I for one, have seen too many awkwardly abrupt endings in games. I just cannot manufacture outrage over something like this.

    You might recall this game called Indigo Prophecy.

    Oh my god that game was a mess. The me3 ending was perfect compared to the last third of that trainwreck.

  • PonyPony Registered User regular
    There are certainly games that have had way, way worse trainwreck bad endings than ME3

    Indigo Prophecy is a perfect example of a game whose ending was pure "what the fuck is this"

    But, I don't know that there's a series that has comparably fucked up five years of build-up over the course of three god damn games

    That's the part that makes it the most galling. Deus Ex: HR's endings are terrible, too, but you weren't playing Jensen over the course of three games in a five year span, carrying all your decisions and emotional investment forward.

  • HeisenbergHeisenberg Registered User regular
    Agreed

  • -Tal-Tal Registered User regular
    I would buy this DLC

    PNk1Ml4.png
  • ImAFckingDragnImAFckingDragn Registered User regular
    edited March 2012
    The game was so good, so amazing... Why did they have to give it such a bad ending?

    And just as an FYI, I have no problem with unhappy endings. In the original Dragon Age: Origins game, I gave my character's life to beat the darkspawn and it was amazing!

    I've already explained my problem with the ending a ton, if you want a good argument as to why the ending is bad, visit the link below...

    http://www.gamefront.com/mass-effect-3-ending-hatred-5-reasons-the-fans-are-right

    ImAFckingDragn on
  • DarkewolfeDarkewolfe Registered User regular
    The game was so good, so amazing... Why did they have to give it such a bad ending?

    And just as an FYI, I have no problem with unhappy endings. In the original Dragon Age: Origins game, I gave my character's life to beat the darkspawn and it was amazing!

    Look, I have a ton of gripes with this ending, but I'm not going to sit here and list them again. If you want a good list of them look here...

    http://www.gamefront.com/mass-effect-3-end...-fans-are-right

    How do you respond to the argument that ME3 is the ending to the series, and so you got lots of ending relevant to your decisions, you just didn't like the last 10 minutes of cinematic?

    I mean, in any game we can take the ending to "and then they all got old and died and none of their shit really mattered too much." This one takes it to
    And then life as we know it got old and died, and none of their shit really mattered too much.

    You still got everything you wanted up till that last 10 minutes, and that last 10 minutes finished out the final big theme.

    What is this I don't even.
  • OtisWildOtisWild Registered User regular
    edited March 2012
    Shadowhope wrote: »
    Anyhow, the problem is not that the ending is unhappy. I'll put the problem in really general terms, but I'll throw spoiler tags on anyways:
    Shepard's crew, people who have literally followed Shepard into a Hell analog in ME2, abandon Shepard at the last moment without explanation. Shepard, whose single most defining characteristic through the series has been her refusal to give in to anything except her own honor and/or good sense, mutely agrees to the Reapers ideas in the end without challenging or questioning them. And in the end, the choices you've made throughout the past three games are irrelevant.
    Seems to me that the conclusion of the Shadow War in Babylon 5 would have been a good way to go.. "Get the HELL out of our galaxy!"

    OtisWild on
  • PonyPony Registered User regular
    Also, once again, it really bothers me how intellectually dishonest most conversations about the ending are in most places.

    The people who hate the ending are attacking the ending itself, the writing of it, it's messages, etc. etc.

    You get articles like that Gamefront one linked to above which point-for-point explain what was wrong with the ending and why they hate it.

    I don't really see people with any kind of volume making attacks against people who like the ending, like "If you like this ending clearly you are an idiot" or anything. I'm not seeing those kinds of articles, I'm not seeing people post giant rants blaming fans for liking the ending.

    Yet, conversely, you have articles like the one Colin Moriarty at IGN or Ben Kuchera at PA Report have done, essentially attacking people who hate the ending and questioning them personally. Instead of trying to defend the ending on its own merits, they resort to basically insults, calling people entitled whiners who don't understand real sci-fi and just want happy endings with ice cream and cake.

    This is what this PA comic is doing too, and it's dishonest and lazy. Gabe's newspost earlier this week tried to address people's actual criticisms with the ending, but it was still full of attacking the people, not the argument.

    I think it's pretty telling when one side is critical of the material, and the other side is critical of the people.

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