The Citadel is really big in this game. It's bigger than it's ever been, in terms of stuff to do
No, it seems like a really accurate description of the Citadel in Mass Effect 3.
The wards reference was tossed out there by the person writing the article, not anyone from Bioware. And the Bioware quote referenced the amount of content not physical space.
Is the amount of content that much more though? I mean, seriously, because I don't know. It might be, but it seems a bit less than ME1, which I'm playing right now. Is he talking about random stuff that you find being returned to random people in the Citadel? That seems like the majority of the content and, while it's all very standard RPG stuff (i.e. I'm not being critical), it didn't make it seem like there was that much more "to do" in the Citadel itself... I mean compared to ME1 at least.
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
You're not asking it to be changed in the next model, you're asking that the creator change the current model to suit you, no matter if anyone else is okay with that model. Since when are you entitled to make decisions like that? You didn't build the car.
The writers and developers are entitled to make that decision. I'm just politely asking them to consider it.
Frankly, if they just rewrote the ending allowing all the writers to have input on it, instead of just Casey Hudson and Mac Walters, I'd be fine with that, whatever they came up with. That's what they should have done in the first place.
Cambiata on
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
No matter how politely you're asking them to consider it, you're still politely suggesting to the creator of a work that you personally were dissatisfied with his work and that they should change their work to satisfy you personally.
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
No matter how politely you're asking them to consider it, you're still politely suggesting to the creator of a work that you personally were dissatisfied with his work and that they should change their work to satisfy you personally.
That's the way proofreading works, too. This is not a bad thing.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
The Citadel is really big in this game. It's bigger than it's ever been, in terms of stuff to do
No, it seems like a really accurate description of the Citadel in Mass Effect 3.
The wards reference was tossed out there by the person writing the article, not anyone from Bioware. And the Bioware quote referenced the amount of content not physical space.
Is the amount of content that much more though? I mean, seriously, because I don't know. It might be, but it seems a bit less than ME1, which I'm playing right now. Is he talking about random stuff that you find being returned to random people in the Citadel? That seems like the majority of the content and, while it's all very standard RPG stuff (i.e. I'm not being critical), it didn't make it seem like there was that much more "to do" in the Citadel itself... I mean compared to ME1 at least.
ME1 Citadel is definitely the 'biggest' of any of the Citadel content. We get two clubs, Shira's place, Council meeting space, huge atrium area with shops on either side, embassies with more than just the human embassy, c-sec, and med area.
ME3 Citadel is one club, one open shop area (much smaller than the huge courtyard-like space of ME1), One area for the human embassy only, with C-sec and the Spectre office in the same spot (about the same size as the area with the human, elcor, and volus embassies in ME1), a med area (this one is larger than it was in ME1), and the docks area. In terms of space, and what is actually in that space, ME1 is much larger.
In terms of quests, I did get the feeling that ME3 had about as many Citadel quests as ME1 did. But the ME1 quests actually had conversations going with the quests... so essentially, even the quests 'felt' bigger, even if the number of quests is about the same.
So on the face of it, I don't think you can really say that the ME3 Citadel is as big as the ME1 Citadel, in any sense. It is larger than the ME2 Citadel, which is maybe what he meant to say, if we're being charitable.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
Sherlock Holmes was a series of penny-novels sold to the functionally illiterate of the time. And the ending wasn't changed, merely ignored to make more novels because nothing else Doyle was writing was selling.
It's not unprecedented, it's shockingly entitled. Gamers are throwing a shitfit because they didn't get exactly what they wanted, which they can't seem to agree on, either.
You know, it's remarkable how you completely ignored the thrust of my argument, which is that there should be no real difference between demanding gameplay changes (something done all the time) and demanding story changes. By your argument, both are a "creative work", and thus I should be sneered at for requesting that, say, Bethesda add more companion functionality to FO3 or Black Hole implement town screens in HoMM VI because those are creative works, and how dare I speak out against a creative work which I feel violates the spirit of a beloved franchise; it's the creator's property, and if I don't like something they've done with a beloved series, then it's just not for me and I should go screw off.
That's how focus groups for TV and movies work too. Various parties "politely suggest" that creators change content all the time.
Also, this. You're acting like this is some unheard-of thing, asking a creator to change their content based on fan reaction. Guess what? It happens all the time in every industry. Get off your high horse.
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
So again, it's a product. You value it as an object with which to entertain yourself, rather than as an expression of a point of view.
Is that really how you view proofreading? As far as I know, there aren't any writers who don't put there work before, at the very least, an editor before going to print. Even people who self-publish will pay an editor to do that.
It's not about it being a 'product', as much as it is about having another set of eyes looking at something that the author might have missed in terms of plot holes, continuity and the like. Someone in one of the threads, I don't remember who, said something to the effect that peer review can turn shit into gold. Also, that there are no 'good' or 'bad' ideas, but the presentation of those ideas does matter.
I guess it boils down to the fact that I don't believe that Every Art is Sacred and that proofreading and peer review can really shore up the weaknesses in a bad script/novel what have you. I think the biggest problem with, say, George Lucas' later works is his refusal to look to any opinion other than his own; his refusal to have anyone around him that disagrees with him. Having a huge insurmountable ego that refuses all outside input only works if you really are a one of a kind genius, and there really aren't many of those around.
Cambiata on
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
No matter how politely you're asking them to consider it, you're still politely suggesting to the creator of a work that you personally were dissatisfied with his work and that they should change their work to satisfy you personally.
Except there's quite a huge sense of community here. Perhaps I was dissatisfied with it personally, but so dissatisfied that I felt, "this cannot be just me," and lo and behold, I check on the Internet and - well - you know. There are a lot of things about the game that do not satisfy me personally, but I don't mention them because I'm pretty sure I'm one of the only ones.
Example - I wish the dialogue was more natural rather than sort of standard Hollywood line spouting, but that's just because I love those type of movies, like Primer for example. Also, throughout the series, the fact that there are likely thousands of languages spoken throughout the galaxy is not even brought up. Not just handwaved away with something like "oh, universal translator Omni-tools," not even mentioned or dealt with (other than a few token Quarian words). But whatever, I know pretty much everyone is not going to care about this at all, so I'm not going to start a petition, or even start a forum topic about it.
However, re: the ending of ME3, I haven't seen one person make any serious change request that sounded like a "personal" individual issue. I'm sure there are some - those that go "I don't care what anyone else thinks, I didn't like Shepard's armor color at the end. Change it, Bioware!" - but almost everyone here and the BioWare forums and elsewhere are talking about change or even just additional exposition because they feel (with the support of all these other people) that there is something objectively missing.
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
edited March 2012
You know, I take back what I said about having a huge insurmountable ego. I don't actually think that works for anyone creatively. The one of a kind geniuses deserve that name precisely because they know which outside input to listen to, and which to reject. They don't just automatically reject all outside input.
The thing about peer review, proofreading, listening to other people's ideas in art, etc. is that those things actually work to make the whole better. Especially in a collaborative project like Mass Effect where there has never been just one voice as the creative impetus behind it. People often marvel at how a studio like Pixar can make masterpiece after masterpiece (aside from the rare clunker like the Cars franchise), and you can find the answer by doing a little research into the company: Everything that someone does for a film there is reviewed by the whole team. The whole team will watch a scene, then talk about it, then tear it apart. The result: gold.
Saying that you simply cannot question an artist because ART OMG is not a good argument. And it's certainly not a position of success for a creator. That's not to say that there isn't the other side of it where an artist never speaks with his own voice because he listens too much to other people. But there is a balance between those two things. Simply not allowing any criticism of art is ludicrous.
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"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
edited March 2012
Incidentally, Retake Mass Effect has earned nearly 65k for Child's Play at this point. That's over 10k per day it's been up. If they can keep up that rate, they'll have over 300k by the end.
Cambiata on
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
Alright, here's my suggestion and why I think it will fall through.
Make a new ending that all the dissatisfied people will be happy with.
Why it will fall through:
There isn't one reason why people are dissatisfied, nor what they wanted out of the ending. Most everyone seems to be attacking the last moments as if theirs was the only opinion on why the ending failed. Meanwhile, everyone else is attacking it from entirely different standpoints. There's too many different reasons why people are dissatisfied and all highly personal to their story or their sense of "what makes sense". It wont apply across the board.
Also, Broken Steel is a terrible example. It was a single game in a universe where you, as the protagonist, don't have much of an impact beyond your immediate area in the terms of future games. Broken Steel just made it possible for a nameless character with little long term story impact to continue to live a bit longer. Other games may reference the events in previous titles but it has nothing to do with you or your choices, and even not playing the previous games is as much as having played it.
Mass Effect 3 isn't Fall Out 3, and the comparison lessens Mass Effect 3.
The Citadel is really big in this game. It's bigger than it's ever been, in terms of stuff to do
No, it seems like a really accurate description of the Citadel in Mass Effect 3.
The wards reference was tossed out there by the person writing the article, not anyone from Bioware. And the Bioware quote referenced the amount of content not physical space.
Is the amount of content that much more though? I mean, seriously, because I don't know. It might be, but it seems a bit less than ME1, which I'm playing right now. Is he talking about random stuff that you find being returned to random people in the Citadel? That seems like the majority of the content and, while it's all very standard RPG stuff (i.e. I'm not being critical), it didn't make it seem like there was that much more "to do" in the Citadel itself... I mean compared to ME1 at least.
There's a ton of stuff to do on the Citadel in ME3 even beyond the random "return X" ME 1 made the low amount of actual content in the Citadel seem large by making more space. Meanwhile I can go back to the citadel after completing each mission in ME3 and find over a half-dozen new missions, conversations with companions, or people I met in previous games to get in contact with again. In ME1 the Citadel was very much a two-shot quest hub. ME3 has the citadel full of people, conflicts, and packs every square inch with more relevance than any of the previous games.
As to the petition. It's good to see them doing some good, but their concept is fairly off, and is a good example of asking for an ending that is already there or is not called for at this time. Mostly it seems to want to shut off the Mass Effect universe and close the doors to the next game prematurely.
* A major concept of the Mass Effect games is that your choices significantly affect the outcome of the story
If the game didn't give you a choice at the last moment of the game, would anyone have been happy?
* Another major concept of the Mass Effect games is success in the face of seemingly impossible odds
No, no it's not. You could have died in Mass Effect 1 or Mass Effect 2. You could have ended up killing any of a dozen people just to get to Mass Effect 3, either on Virmire or in the Suicide Mission. The game is not about success in the face of impossible odds, since the beginning it's about the nature of sacrifice and exploring the themes associated with facing impossible odds.
However, we also believe that the currently available endings to the series:
......
* Do not provide a sense of closure with regard to the universe and characters we have become attached to
* Do not provide an explanation of events up to the ending which maintains consistency with the overall story
These last two are because wrapping everything up in a neat package leads to the next Mass Effect being a shell of what it could have been.
There's no sense of closure to the universe because the universe and the characters we know are not going away. It's simply time for Shepard to step down. You can only have someone cheat death so many times before it becomes meaningless. And while a video game is not the best example of not doing this, eventually if the character continues to cheat death and beat everyone, you end up with yet another Master Chief game, and oh look Kraots is killing everyone yet again, oh joy.
The universe isn't done with yet, so wrapping it up in Mass Effect 3 is premature, as is the events leading up to the end. Because each Mass Effect game has begun with the basic questions that ran through the entirety of the previous ones. It's what leads you to the next story, the next game, it's called a cliffhanger.
The thing about art is that just because someone knows how to make art, and just because someone has done so in the past, does not mean that they can intuitively create good art every time they do so. Yes, an author should not change every line that someone says doesn't work for them, but they should sit back and examine why they said that, and whether the author can see their point and whether it has validity. Perhaps they can even bring it before the eyes of another person to get their opinion and develop a more nuanced sense of what does and doesn't work on that line. 10 people, 100 people, each one brings more insight into whether something works. This is not some arcane concept. This is what you are taught in your first writing class in grade 7: peer review.
The problem, from all what I've heard on the internet and the alleged statements of the Final Hours app, is that the peer review process for the ending barely existed. While what we got may have been called the "final draft", compared to the number of eyes and the amount of work that went into the scenes before it, it was not. I think it's showing, because people have gone on to raise nearly $70k in an act of sheer revulsion to the ending. Some people like it, yes, absolutely. The writers at Bioware are not terrible, and even if they go down a wrong path they are talented enough that what they create will always have an appeal to someone. With more work, more eyes, more review, what they produced could have been better though.
The most important thing a creative person needs to be able to do is kill their babies. There are going to be some ideas that you really fucking love. You will bend over backwards to make those particular ideas fit because you love them so much, instead of sometimes asking "With how hard I'm trying to make these ideas work, are they actually appropriate?". Having no one challenge you on this front, having no one step up to stop the echo chamber of your head reverberating on itself and asserting certain ideas, will lead to things like the Star Wars prequals.
All of Mass Effect 3, up to that point, was written by a team, and then it was written by just two guys. The difference shows.
What about the people who like the ending? If this is about making people happy with the ending, how will changing it effect them?
If the ending was changed and Shepard survived, would that make the people who feel he/she had to die happy, or will it turn it into another Halo, where the sole main character in the series survives yet again to do everything over and over and save the world yet again with no real impetus due to the inability of it's creators to kill it off? Or into another God of War where the next big thing in the cosmos rears it's head and yet again the main character kills it and everything else threatening them?
What about those of us who are eagerly anticipating having those hanging questions answered in the next installment as we have for two games now? Will it make the people who aren't chiming in because they feel no impetus to change the game any better off?
In all this claim of "doing this for everyone", and "Making Mass Effect better", no one is asking the people who are satisfied, and there's no accounting for them except to argue them down.
I like how you ignored the two of us who called you out for being flat out wrong in your previous post.
also, unless I'm mistaken, they don't plan on making any games in the ME timeline past ME3. So saying "look, it didn't explain everything because they wanted a hook for the next game" is just nonsensical.
The reason it didn't explain anything was because it two people decided it was going to be that way (contradicting previous statements they had made) and didn't let/listen to anyone telling them it was a bad idea.
I like how you ignored the two of us who called you out for being flat out wrong in your previous post.
Actually I just don't read every single post on here. And the posts you're apparently mentioning are not declaring me flat out wrong, merely saying that I'm wrong on one aspect of my post. Even then I can easily prove that I am correct. See below
Um, yes they were. The ending cutscene for the light shooting through the relays literally just changes color. The exact same thing happens in all 6 variants (3 destroy, 2 control and synth) of the ending
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPelM2hwhJA
Actually it doesn't. The destroy and synergy endings specifically show the mass relays exploding, while choosing to control the reapers only shows the relay firing a beam and that's it. The scene with the Relay exploding is conspicuously absent from that ending, also missing is the scene of the Citadel releasing it's energy. Implying that the relays were still intact, if somewhat damaged, and certainly didn't explode catastrophically. In fact, without replaying to get a different ending or specifically going out and hitting the spoiler videos you would have no idea that the Relays exploded in any ending at all. Even then it's possible that it was only a single relay that exploded after releasing transferring the energy, purely speculation of course. Past that there's the fact that the citadel itself acts as a sort of Mass Relay which goes all the way back to the very first game where you had to stop the Keepers from using it as such.
also, unless I'm mistaken, they don't plan on making any games in the ME timeline past ME3. So saying "look, it didn't explain everything because they wanted a hook for the next game" is just nonsensical.
With Mass Effect 3, BioWare's writers don't have to worry as much about continuing the story in a future game - future Mass Effect titles are almost certainly on the cards, but Shepard's role is coming to an end. "We have the ability to build the endings out in a way that we don't have to worry about eventually tying them back together somewhere," Hudson explained.
"This story arc is coming to an end with this game. That means the endings can be a lot more different. At this point we're taking into account so many decisions that you've made as a player and reflecting a lot of that stuff. It's not even in any way like the traditional game endings, where you can say how many endings there are or whether you got ending A, B, or C.
"It's more like there are some really obvious things that are different and then lots and lots of smaller things, lots of things about who lives and who dies, civilizations that rose and fell, all the way down to individual characters. That becomes the state of where you left your galaxy. The endings have a lot more sophistication and variety in them."
And this entire article about how the Mass Effect games will continue to be made and tie back into Mass Effect 3's ending.
The reason it didn't explain anything was because it two people decided it was going to be that way (contradicting previous statements they had made) and didn't let/listen to anyone telling them it was a bad idea.
You know, I'm seeing this mentioned and well, for one it doesn't make any difference if it was two writers or a dozen writers. The concept of Peer Review is all well and good in some circumstances, but tends to make things bland in the long run. There are a lot of well respected writers who made their decisions and stood by them despite the reactions from fans or their peer review. If Harper Lee, H.P. Lovecraft, J.R.R Tolkein or any of a number of other writers had bowed the the criticism brought forth both after their publications and during their readings with other people, would we be better off? Would the story?
The way TV and Movies are made has been brought up, but I wouldn't want a video game company to ever take cues from those bland showings. Who wants another episodic video game or yet another over the top special effects film, or one that rehashes the simplest stories out there over and over and over?
Also I'm not sure where it's coming from. Is there an article or admission from Bioware about this? Any dissatisfied writers at Bioware blogging about how they never got the chance to input their perspective on the final moments or would have done it differently? Are these writers and the creative direction being singled out just because they are the known names?
And...yeah, that whole "contradicting previous statements they made" is seemingly based off of this quote:
"This story arc is coming to an end with this game. That means the endings can be a lot more different. At this point we're taking into account so many decisions that you've made as a player and reflecting a lot of that stuff. It's not even in any way like the traditional game endings, where you can say how many endings there are or whether you got ending A, B, or C.
While the full quote is this (Emphasis: me):
"This story arc is coming to an end with this game. That means the endings can be a lot more different. At this point we're taking into account so many decisions that you've made as a player and reflecting a lot of that stuff. It's not even in any way like the traditional game endings, where you can say how many endings there are or whether you got ending A, B, or C.
"It's more like there are some really obvious things that are different and then lots and lots of smaller things, lots of things about who lives and who dies, civilizations that rose and fell, all the way down to individual characters. That becomes the state of where you left your galaxy. The endings have a lot more sophistication and variety in them."
They were saying what I've been repeating. That the ending is not a five minutes long movie, but the state of the universe as it was left by you.
I don't want to suggest anything sinister, but it's disconcerting how the quote is butchered to make it seem like it's saying something completely different, and often delivered with the most important part left out.
@The_Tuninator: The Forbes article is pretty cutting to both sides actually. While it certainly didn't side one way or the other it's more of a think piece than a full article, as it simply drops two sides of an argument and ends with a question. While it does present the case of the angry gamers, it also eagerly described them as nothing more than fickle and rabid soccer fans:
Of course, if would definitely have to release a new ending as DLC, fans would definitely have to pay for it, and they would definitely get angry about that. As we’ve seen throughout the development cycle, Mass Effect fans are a fickle lot: like sports fans who love their franchise but hate everyone actually involved with it. Mass Effect has ended up a little bit like Star Wars: fans have turned their ravenous obsession with the game world against its makers, feeling betrayed and hurt for their trust in Bioware.
I wouldn't turn on every other gaming news site, just because a few gaming columnists want to voice their opinions as they do every day.
You know, I take back what I said about having a huge insurmountable ego. I don't actually think that works for anyone creatively. The one of a kind geniuses deserve that name precisely because they know which outside input to listen to, and which to reject. They don't just automatically reject all outside input.
The thing about peer review, proofreading, listening to other people's ideas in art, etc. is that those things actually work to make the whole better. Especially in a collaborative project like Mass Effect where there has never been just one voice as the creative impetus behind it. People often marvel at how a studio like Pixar can make masterpiece after masterpiece (aside from the rare clunker like the Cars franchise), and you can find the answer by doing a little research into the company: Everything that someone does for a film there is reviewed by the whole team. The whole team will watch a scene, then talk about it, then tear it apart. The result: gold.
Saying that you simply cannot question an artist because ART OMG is not a good argument. And it's certainly not a position of success for a creator. That's not to say that there isn't the other side of it where an artist never speaks with his own voice because he listens too much to other people. But there is a balance between those two things. Simply not allowing any criticism of art is ludicrous.
I'm not sure why I'm still reading through all this stuff, but there is, to my mind, a pretty key difference between all of those things that are being suggested (proofreading, focus groups, etc) and wanting the ending to ME3 changed. In those examples, the creators were in the process of refining their work prior to release and asked for your input.
This is just walking up to a guy in an art gallery and saying "this painting I bought of yours is pretty good except for this part in the corner, which is shit. You should change it." Even when done in a well meaning and polite way, it's not really surprising that some people see that as entitled behavior.
You know, I'm seeing this mentioned and well, for one it doesn't make any difference if it was two writers or a dozen writers. The concept of Peer Review is all well and good in some circumstances, but tends to make things bland in the long run. There are a lot of well respected writers who made their decisions and stood by them despite the reactions from fans or their peer review. If Harper Lee, H.P. Lovecraft, J.R.R Tolkein or any of a number of other writers had bowed the the criticism brought forth both after their publications and during their readings with other people, would we be better off? Would the story?
There's plenty of evidence to suggest that J.R.R. Tolkien presented his work to his friends (like C.S. Lewis) for critiques and suggestions. So yes, I would say that LOTR is better for that. I don't know about H.P. Lovecraft or Harper Lee, but it's a pretty standard thing to bring your writing to someone who isn't immersed in it in order to make it better. Proofreading and editing are not remotely new concepts or shockingly arrogant things to suggest. Not really sure why anyone is upset or enraged that the majority thinks the ending would have been better for them.
Also I'm not sure where it's coming from. Is there an article or admission from Bioware about this? Any dissatisfied writers at Bioware blogging about how they never got the chance to input their perspective on the final moments or would have done it differently? Are these writers and the creative direction being singled out just because they are the known names?
No one currently working at Bioware has remarked in a way intended to be shared with video game journalists (ie, via blog and the like). That doesn't mean they haven't commented privately, however. As you can imagine - hypothetically, of course! - if one of the writers had said something, on these boards perhaps, then those of us who like that writer wouldn't spread it around because we wouldn't want he or she to get fired.
If you need 'proof' that only Casey Hudson and Mac Walters did the ending solo and kept the ending a secret from the other writers, my understanding is that this is confirmed in the 'Final Hours' app which is available on iTunes for Apple devices.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
You know, I take back what I said about having a huge insurmountable ego. I don't actually think that works for anyone creatively. The one of a kind geniuses deserve that name precisely because they know which outside input to listen to, and which to reject. They don't just automatically reject all outside input.
The thing about peer review, proofreading, listening to other people's ideas in art, etc. is that those things actually work to make the whole better. Especially in a collaborative project like Mass Effect where there has never been just one voice as the creative impetus behind it. People often marvel at how a studio like Pixar can make masterpiece after masterpiece (aside from the rare clunker like the Cars franchise), and you can find the answer by doing a little research into the company: Everything that someone does for a film there is reviewed by the whole team. The whole team will watch a scene, then talk about it, then tear it apart. The result: gold.
Saying that you simply cannot question an artist because ART OMG is not a good argument. And it's certainly not a position of success for a creator. That's not to say that there isn't the other side of it where an artist never speaks with his own voice because he listens too much to other people. But there is a balance between those two things. Simply not allowing any criticism of art is ludicrous.
I'm not sure why I'm still reading through all this stuff, but there is, to my mind, a pretty key difference between all of those things that are being suggested (proofreading, focus groups, etc) and wanting the ending to ME3 changed. In those examples, the creators were in the process of refining their work prior to release and asked for your input.
This is just walking up to a guy in an art gallery and saying "this painting I bought of yours is pretty good except for this part in the corner, which is shit. You should change it." Even when done in a well meaning and polite way, it's not really surprising that some people see that as entitled behavior.
Supposing I commissioned a piece of artwork. Supposing after it was created, I liked the painting except for a sharpied-in smilie face in the corner. It wouldn't be out of the question at that point for me to say to the artist I commissioned, "this is 99% fantastic, but that sharpie smilie just ruins the whole thing. Fix it, please."
People seem to think that art doesn't have an audience, or that it should never consider the audience, that art should float in the ether and any criticism of it is sacrilegious. If nobody wants to look at your art except you, then you've got a lovely hobby there, which I'm sure keeps your blood pressure down and all... but how meaningful is it if you're the only one who wants to see it?
Art, especially video game art, does have a financial side and always has. Nobody is demanding anything from Bioware. People are making heartfelt requests, which Bioware can ignore or address. But the likelihood is, if Bioware doesn't listen to the criticisms of the ending and do something about it, then a lot of people will stop buying games from Bioware. Certainly, a lot less people are willing to buy DLC for Mass Effect 3 right now. And if they can't make a profit from their games, then they can't continue making them. That's the cold, hard fact. Like it or not.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
Besides all that: My real complaint is that the entire Bioware writing team didn't get to peer review the ending. Not that I didn't get to peer review it. To me the best outcome of the Retake Mass Effect campaign is that the writing of the ending gets the peer review it was lacking, by the team who created the rest of the near-perfect game. They don't even have to change the ideas in the ending. Just present them in a way that gives catharsis instead of... nothing.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
You know, I'm seeing this mentioned and well, for one it doesn't make any difference if it was two writers or a dozen writers. The concept of Peer Review is all well and good in some circumstances, but tends to make things bland in the long run. There are a lot of well respected writers who made their decisions and stood by them despite the reactions from fans or their peer review. If Harper Lee, H.P. Lovecraft, J.R.R Tolkein or any of a number of other writers had bowed the the criticism brought forth both after their publications and during their readings with other people, would we be better off? Would the story?
There's plenty of evidence to suggest that J.R.R. Tolkien presented his work to his friends (like C.S. Lewis) for critiques and suggestions. So yes, I would say that LOTR is better for that. I don't know about H.P. Lovecraft or Harper Lee, but it's a pretty standard thing to bring your writing to someone who isn't immersed in it in order to make it better. Proofreading and editing are not remotely new concepts or shockingly arrogant things to suggest. Not really sure why anyone is upset or enraged that the majority thinks the ending would have been better for them.
Maybe a better read through of what I said would be in line. While I do admit that they had readings and took some suggestions, I also pointed out that it was the endings that many people were critical of in both their peer reviews and the time after their first publication. While they fielded suggestions about the themes or events within the story, the core structure of the story, including the endings were what they refused to change.
The suggestions being brought forth aren't just that the ending be changed, but the entire tone and content there-in be changed, which changes the entire game itself due to that context.
Also I'm not sure where it's coming from. Is there an article or admission from Bioware about this? Any dissatisfied writers at Bioware blogging about how they never got the chance to input their perspective on the final moments or would have done it differently? Are these writers and the creative direction being singled out just because they are the known names?
No one currently working at Bioware has remarked in a way intended to be shared with video game journalists (ie, via blog and the like). That doesn't mean they haven't commented privately, however. As you can imagine - hypothetically, of course! - if one of the writers had said something, on these boards perhaps, then those of us who like that writer wouldn't spread it around because we wouldn't want he or she to get fired.
If you need 'proof' that only Casey Hudson and Mac Walters did the ending solo and kept the ending a secret from the other writers, my understanding is that this is confirmed in the 'Final Hours' app which is available on iTunes for Apple devices.
Which makes it difficult to argue the point without going out and spending $500 on an iPad.
Based off of the sterling context that has been popping up in regards to directly quoting people and then referring back to those butchered servings of quotation, I really have little to suggest that the assumptions based on the Final Hour app are any better or that anyone in Bioware, peer review or not, would have done anything the least but different.
The suggestion seems to stem from two people apparently writing it, and suggests that either the writing or the ending is not supported by the rest of the team. To this I see little evidence except a constant stream of two quotes that are actually the same quote with the meat cut out, the hinted suggestion that someone may or may not have given some unverifiable, and unreproducible proof that the team is dissatisfied, and an App that may or may not be yet again taken entirely out of context with only smidgens of references to facts brought forth and then repeated ad-nauseum.
Dedwrekka on
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
Actually it doesn't. The destroy and synergy endings specifically show the mass relays exploding, while choosing to control the reapers only shows the relay firing a beam and that's it. The scene with the Relay exploding is conspicuously absent from that ending, also missing is the scene of the Citadel releasing it's energy. Implying that the relays were still intact, if somewhat damaged, and certainly didn't explode catastrophically. In fact, without replaying to get a different ending or specifically going out and hitting the spoiler videos you would have no idea that the Relays exploded in any ending at all. Even then it's possible that it was only a single relay that exploded after releasing transferring the energy, purely speculation of course. Past that there's the fact that the citadel itself acts as a sort of Mass Relay which goes all the way back to the very first game where you had to stop the Keepers from using it as such.
And now you, yourself, are pointing out a continuity error in the ending. Bravo.
Because you see,
Catalyst specifically says, at the end of telling you what choices you have thanks to the crucible, that "Releasing the energy of the crucible will destroy the mass relays." Not they may destroy them, they will.
So two seconds after telling us one thing, you're saying that the cutscene they created actually showed something completely different.
Would you say this is something that should be fixed, as in 'the game has a bug that needs to be addressed' type of way? Or is asking Bioware to fix bugs massively entitled, too? :P
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
Actually it doesn't. The destroy and synergy endings specifically show the mass relays exploding, while choosing to control the reapers only shows the relay firing a beam and that's it. The scene with the Relay exploding is conspicuously absent from that ending, also missing is the scene of the Citadel releasing it's energy. Implying that the relays were still intact, if somewhat damaged, and certainly didn't explode catastrophically. In fact, without replaying to get a different ending or specifically going out and hitting the spoiler videos you would have no idea that the Relays exploded in any ending at all. Even then it's possible that it was only a single relay that exploded after releasing transferring the energy, purely speculation of course. Past that there's the fact that the citadel itself acts as a sort of Mass Relay which goes all the way back to the very first game where you had to stop the Keepers from using it as such.
And now you, yourself, are pointing out a continuity error in the ending. Bravo.
Because you see,
Catalyst specifically says, at the end of telling you what choices you have thanks to the crucible, that "Releasing the energy of the crucible will destroy the mass relays." Not they may destroy them, they will.
So two seconds after telling us one thing, you're saying that the cutscene they created actually showed something completely different.
Would you say this is something that should be fixed, as in 'the game has a bug that needs to be addressed' type of way? Or is asking Bioware to fix bugs massively entitled, too? :P
Ummm...no. I'll point you back to something I said in there:
Actually it doesn't. The destroy and synergy endings specifically show the mass relays exploding, while choosing to control the reapers only shows the relay firing a beam and that's it. The scene with the Relay exploding is conspicuously absent from that ending, also missing is the scene of the Citadel releasing it's energy. Implying that the relays were still intact, if somewhat damaged, and certainly didn't explode catastrophically. In fact, without replaying to get a different ending or specifically going out and hitting the spoiler videos you would have no idea that the Relays exploded in any ending at all. Even then it's possible that it was only a single relay that exploded after releasing transferring the energy, purely speculation of course. Past that there's the fact that the citadel itself acts as a sort of Mass Relay which goes all the way back to the very first game where you had to stop the Keepers from using it as such.
The scene with the Relay exploding is conspicuously absent from that ending, also missing is the scene of the Citadel releasing it's energy. Implying that the relays were still intact, if somewhat damaged, and certainly didn't explode catastrophically.
The citadel did not release it's energy when you chose to control the reapers, that is why the relays did not explode. The idea that all the relays did not explode in any other endings is purely speculation on my part as I noted.
"The endings have a lot more sophistication and variety in them."
I mean, whenever I've heard anyone ever talk about the "ending" to a game (especially RPGs), it has always meant the part after you complete playing. In other words, the word "ending" has a more specific meaning as a gaming term than the general meaning in the English language. This concept (that both Jerry and Mike talked about and has been alluded to by Dedwrekka) that saying the "ending" to a game is the entire game (because other games preceded it as part of a trilogy)? I have never heard of it.
My RPG experience includes all the Final Fantasies to 7 (and 9), a couple Elder Scrolls, ME obviously, and a bunch of others (basically been involved since the late 80s) and this concept is new to me. If anyone else has heard of developers talking about the "ending" of their game as an entire game, my friends and I have missed it completely.
I'm serious. Is this a thing now? Because if it is, then fine. But if not, Casey et al should have probably clarified what they meant by "the endings" as the term has a pretty established definition at this point, and if deviating from that definition, clarification is necessary to get across your meaning.
"The endings have a lot more sophistication and variety in them."
I mean, whenever I've heard anyone ever talk about the "ending" to a game (especially RPGs), it has always meant the part after you complete playing. In other words, the word "ending" has a more specific meaning as a gaming term than the general meaning in the English language. This concept (that both Jerry and Mike talked about and has been alluded to by Dedwrekka) that saying the "ending" to a game is the entire game (because other games preceded it as part of a trilogy)? I have never heard of it.
My RPG experience includes all the Final Fantasies to 7 (and 9), a couple Elder Scrolls, ME obviously, and a bunch of others (basically been involved since the late 80s) and this concept is new to me. If anyone else has heard of developers talking about the "ending" of their game as an entire game, my friends and I have missed it completely.
I'm serious. Is this a thing now? Because if it is, then fine. But if not, Casey et al should have probably clarified what they meant by "the endings" as the term has a pretty established definition at this point, and if deviating from that definition, clarification is necessary to get across your meaning.
*Facepalm*
"This story arc is coming to an end with this game. That means the endings can be a lot more different. At this point we're taking into account so many decisions that you've made as a player and reflecting a lot of that stuff. It's not even in any way like the traditional game endings, where you can say how many endings there are or whether you got ending A, B, or C.
"It's more like there are some really obvious things that are different and then lots and lots of smaller things, lots of things about who lives and who dies, civilizations that rose and fell, all the way down to individual characters. That becomes the state of where you left your galaxy. The endings have a lot more sophistication and variety in them."
They did, it's all right there from the same quote you're using, just one sentence back.
Also, Mass Effect 1 and 2 had the same concept, because both left the setting in a precarious situation, largely based on your decisions, which later had an effect on the next game. So, yeah. The last moments not being the ending is predicated by the other titles in the series. It's also used in the Elder Scrolls games to a large extent, as well as Fable. It's largely the idea that what happened at the last quest was not the end, and that the world is a very very different place if you didn't do certain things or chose to take a different path on them. Dragon Age used this largely, and even the sections left out of the slideshow in Origins had an effect on the world you played in as experienced to some extents in DA2.
Final Fantasy is a terrible example because you are rarely making decisions rather than continuing a story that is already written for you. In that kind of game, the last quest is the end, and nothing you did made any difference to the story.
Going all the way back to Mass Effect 1, did you save the council or let them die. Who died on Virmire. Did end up having the fight and kill Wrex? This has a big effect on how the next two titles feel and their gameplay and ties into the ending without necessarily being mentioned in the final moments (though the Council part was). In addition to that, there's the overarching question of "did you die" at the end of all the games. If you died at the end of Mass Effect 1, I can guarantee Mass Effects 2 and 3 felt very different to you.
Actually Mass Effect 2 officially ended not after the collector base "ending" but after the DLC pack Arrival, which leads directly to your circumstances at the beginning of Mass Effect 3 whether you played through Arrival or not.
You know, I take back what I said about having a huge insurmountable ego. I don't actually think that works for anyone creatively. The one of a kind geniuses deserve that name precisely because they know which outside input to listen to, and which to reject. They don't just automatically reject all outside input.
The thing about peer review, proofreading, listening to other people's ideas in art, etc. is that those things actually work to make the whole better. Especially in a collaborative project like Mass Effect where there has never been just one voice as the creative impetus behind it. People often marvel at how a studio like Pixar can make masterpiece after masterpiece (aside from the rare clunker like the Cars franchise), and you can find the answer by doing a little research into the company: Everything that someone does for a film there is reviewed by the whole team. The whole team will watch a scene, then talk about it, then tear it apart. The result: gold.
Saying that you simply cannot question an artist because ART OMG is not a good argument. And it's certainly not a position of success for a creator. That's not to say that there isn't the other side of it where an artist never speaks with his own voice because he listens too much to other people. But there is a balance between those two things. Simply not allowing any criticism of art is ludicrous.
I'm not sure why I'm still reading through all this stuff, but there is, to my mind, a pretty key difference between all of those things that are being suggested (proofreading, focus groups, etc) and wanting the ending to ME3 changed. In those examples, the creators were in the process of refining their work prior to release and asked for your input.
This is just walking up to a guy in an art gallery and saying "this painting I bought of yours is pretty good except for this part in the corner, which is shit. You should change it." Even when done in a well meaning and polite way, it's not really surprising that some people see that as entitled behavior.
Supposing I commissioned a piece of artwork. Supposing after it was created, I liked the painting except for a sharpied-in smilie face in the corner. It wouldn't be out of the question at that point for me to say to the artist I commissioned, "this is 99% fantastic, but that sharpie smilie just ruins the whole thing. Fix it, please."
People seem to think that art doesn't have an audience, or that it should never consider the audience, that art should float in the ether and any criticism of it is sacrilegious. If nobody wants to look at your art except you, then you've got a lovely hobby there, which I'm sure keeps your blood pressure down and all... but how meaningful is it if you're the only one who wants to see it?
Art, especially video game art, does have a financial side and always has. Nobody is demanding anything from Bioware. People are making heartfelt requests, which Bioware can ignore or address. But the likelihood is, if Bioware doesn't listen to the criticisms of the ending and do something about it, then a lot of people will stop buying games from Bioware. Certainly, a lot less people are willing to buy DLC for Mass Effect 3 right now. And if they can't make a profit from their games, then they can't continue making them. That's the cold, hard fact. Like it or not.
Except, you didn't commission this piece. A commissioned piece would mean that you hired Bioware to make a game just for you. In that instance, you do have complete authority over the final piece. This is you purchasing one of a billion commercial prints of the original work. Any authority granted to you by the money you have given is diluted to the point of being completely negligible. The creator didn't make it specifically for you.
Which is not to say that critiquing of the work is bad or should be outlawed. That is ridiculous. However, there is a difference between critiquing a work and asking for that work to be changed. The former is available to anyone simply by experiencing the work. No one can or should stop you from forming opinions. The latter presumes that you are in a position to tell the creators how things should be, that they aren't perfectly happy with how things turned out given the circumstances (time, money, whatever), and that they even want to spend one more second working on this piece instead of turning to the next piece of work they want to do.
"I don't think this bit works very well."
vs.
"I don't think this bit works very well. I want you to fix it."
I am also very skeptical that people will stop buying from them. People like to say that they will boycott X on the internet, but it doesn't seem to translate into action very often. Soon as the next big blockbuster installment in the Mass Effect universe rolls around, the same people will still be lining up to purchase it.
Fans are essentially asking for the ending(s) to be changed for what amounts to a choose your own space adventure video game. Video games are changed all the time through patches, mods, and DLC. So does this really have to some slippery-slope argument about artistic integrity or gamer "entitlement" (which is such an incredibly silly concept anyway)? Why does "I'd like you to fix it" have to be some "YOU SHALL NOT PASS" boarder on what is tactful and what isn't? Video games are fixed constantly.
I mean if they do change it they are going to charge us for the damn thing anyway, so go go free market.
Actually it doesn't. The destroy and synergy endings specifically show the mass relays exploding, while choosing to control the reapers only shows the relay firing a beam and that's it. The scene with the Relay exploding is conspicuously absent from that ending, also missing is the scene of the Citadel releasing it's energy. Implying that the relays were still intact, if somewhat damaged, and certainly didn't explode catastrophically. In fact, without replaying to get a different ending or specifically going out and hitting the spoiler videos you would have no idea that the Relays exploded in any ending at all. Even then it's possible that it was only a single relay that exploded after releasing transferring the energy, purely speculation of course. Past that there's the fact that the citadel itself acts as a sort of Mass Relay which goes all the way back to the very first game where you had to stop the Keepers from using it as such.
And now you, yourself, are pointing out a continuity error in the ending. Bravo.
Because you see,
Catalyst specifically says, at the end of telling you what choices you have thanks to the crucible, that "Releasing the energy of the crucible will destroy the mass relays." Not they may destroy them, they will.
So two seconds after telling us one thing, you're saying that the cutscene they created actually showed something completely different.
Would you say this is something that should be fixed, as in 'the game has a bug that needs to be addressed' type of way? Or is asking Bioware to fix bugs massively entitled, too? :P
Ummm...no. I'll point you back to something I said in there:
Actually it doesn't. The destroy and synergy endings specifically show the mass relays exploding, while choosing to control the reapers only shows the relay firing a beam and that's it. The scene with the Relay exploding is conspicuously absent from that ending, also missing is the scene of the Citadel releasing it's energy. Implying that the relays were still intact, if somewhat damaged, and certainly didn't explode catastrophically. In fact, without replaying to get a different ending or specifically going out and hitting the spoiler videos you would have no idea that the Relays exploded in any ending at all. Even then it's possible that it was only a single relay that exploded after releasing transferring the energy, purely speculation of course. Past that there's the fact that the citadel itself acts as a sort of Mass Relay which goes all the way back to the very first game where you had to stop the Keepers from using it as such.
The scene with the Relay exploding is conspicuously absent from that ending, also missing is the scene of the Citadel releasing it's energy. Implying that the relays were still intact, if somewhat damaged, and certainly didn't explode catastrophically.
The citadel did not release it's energy when you chose to control the reapers, that is why the relays did not explode. The idea that all the relays did not explode in any other endings is purely speculation on my part as I noted.
So, which is it? The relays didn't blow, or the catalyst is contradicted less than 2 minutes after he tells you what will happen?
Fans are essentially asking for the ending(s) to be changed for what amounts to a choose your own space adventure video game. Video games are changed all the time through patches, mods, and DLC. So does this really have to some slippery-slope argument about artistic integrity or gamer "entitlement" (which is such an incredibly silly concept anyway)? Why does "I'd like you to fix it" have to be some "YOU SHALL NOT PASS" boarder on what is tactful and what isn't? Video games are fixed constantly.
I mean if they do change it they are going to charge us for the damn thing anyway, so go go free market.
Well, for one, not many on either side would agree with describing the game with the fairly insulting moniker of "choose your own space adventure game", as both sides seem to agree that the game is, on a whole, an absolutely amazing and stunning piece of work. Currently in the discussion, at least here, both sides of the disagreement freely use the word "art" to describe it, and I don't think that's an accident. There's a level of care, emotion and choice in the games that makes a big impact on a lot of people.
While video games are "fixed" constantly it's usually the regards to graphical glitches, bugs, or things that are part of the actual gameplay, not the story. Even DLC and studio produced mods rarely go so far as the change the ending of the game.
Broken Steel of course did this slightly, but then the main character in that game is more of a throw-away analog for the player and we certainly have less invested in them than we do for someone like Commander Shepard. In that case it's a nameless character who serves less to drive the narrative of the world than to complete the latest installment and story within that setting. In the Mass Effect series you shape not just the story of the game, but the entire story of the universe. It's the different between a story that's within the setting and a story that is the setting.
That's not a tangent it's inimical to understanding both sides of the argument, because, thanks to some excellent narrative story telling, both sides of the argument have a lot emotionally invested in the game and the setting of the Mass Effect universe.
"This story arc is coming to an end with this game. That means the endings can be a lot more different. At this point we're taking into account so many decisions that you've made as a player and reflecting a lot of that stuff. It's not even in any way like the traditional game endings, where you can say how many endings there are or whether you got ending A, B, or C.
"It's more like there are some really obvious things that are different and then lots and lots of smaller things, lots of things about who lives and who dies, civilizations that rose and fell, all the way down to individual characters. That becomes the state of where you left your galaxy. The endings have a lot more sophistication and variety in them."
They did, it's all right there from the same quote you're using, just one sentence back.
*Facepalm*
Haha, thank you for including that quote from one sentence back, because it elucidates exactly what I'm saying well. Casey is clearly using the classic gaming definition of "ending" here because he tells us that the "story arc is coming to an end" (using the generic definition of end) and then saying the word "endings" which refer to the specific gaming concept, the very thing we are all discussing here. If you want to redefine what he's saying here (I'm not saying you are), then fine, but I promise you this is how we are all interpreting these quotes, because they have a long precedent of meaning in the gaming community.
Certainly each game has different ways in which it treats this concept, and many different ways in which it deals with choices the player makes. All that is a moot point, though:
Also, Mass Effect 1 and 2 had the same concept, because both left the setting in a precarious situation, largely based on your decisions, which later had an effect on the next game. So, yeah. The last moments not being the ending is predicated by the other titles in the series. It's also used in the Elder Scrolls games to a large extent, as well as Fable. It's largely the idea that what happened at the last quest was not the end, and that the world is a very very different place if you didn't do certain things or chose to take a different path on them. Dragon Age used this largely, and even the sections left out of the slideshow in Origins had an effect on the world you played in as experienced to some extents in DA2.
Final Fantasy is a terrible example because you are rarely making decisions rather than continuing a story that is already written for you. In that kind of game, the last quest is the end, and nothing you did made any difference to the story.
Certainly this term "ending" sometimes has less of a meaning/impact when the game allows you to just continue doing quests etc after the conclusion of the main storyline, like ME2 and Skyrim. But when explaining the "ending" to someone else who asked about it, you would still try to encapsulate the last moments of the story in your explanation. Saying, "well, pretty much the whole game and everything you did was the ending" means nothing to the person asking.
If you were to ask me what the "ending" to ME1 was, I would say "well, there's a scene with Anderson and Udina, and the dialogue is a bit different depending on what you did with the council, and you pick who is going to be the human councilor." For ME2, "you have a conversation with the Illusive Man about the Collector base, and then you go back to your ship and you can still do some quests." I even might talk about the whole Collector base mission, if the person had time. Or like you said, "you destroy this mass relay to delay the Reaper's invasion and kill thousands of batarians." What you did in the game absolutely affects these explanations but we wouldn't call all those actions "the ending."
For ME3, you can either look at it two ways, right? Either 1) the final cinematic/Citadel part is the "ending" or 2) everything you did and the way you left the galaxy is the "ending."
For 1) I don't need to discuss the lack of satisfaction further. See every other thing written about this. If you like it, then great. I'm not here to try to ruin your ME3 experience.
For 2) If the whole way I left the galaxy is the "ending" then... how did I leave the galaxy? I know about it up until the final run to Harbinger's beam. Then... I have no idea. That last event is so momentous that it radically changes every thing I have done up until that point.
So that's the huge problem. I kinda liked the Star Child, even though he had essentially no precedent. I kinda liked how there was this potential for everything to change via this massive device designed by thousands of civilizations, and I was intrigued by the bleakness of the consequences of using it. But after I do use it, I would love to know a bit more about what happened. About how my specific choices throughout all 3 games shaped the galaxy even after this cataclysmic event of course, but even more about this event itself. I'm left with... much too little.
Fans are essentially asking for the ending(s) to be changed for what amounts to a choose your own space adventure video game. Video games are changed all the time through patches, mods, and DLC. So does this really have to some slippery-slope argument about artistic integrity or gamer "entitlement" (which is such an incredibly silly concept anyway)? Why does "I'd like you to fix it" have to be some "YOU SHALL NOT PASS" boarder on what is tactful and what isn't? Video games are fixed constantly.
I mean if they do change it they are going to charge us for the damn thing anyway, so go go free market.
What is tactful will change very much based on the person perceiving it. I'm just saying that the two are not equivalent (critiquing and asking for modifications). There is a distinction, and hence, a line there. Some people will take umbrage when it is crossed. Either because it was crossed at all, or because of the manner in which it was crossed. The latter is exacerbated by this whole thing taking place on the internet where conversation is devoid of nuance.
Actually it doesn't. The destroy and synergy endings specifically show the mass relays exploding, while choosing to control the reapers only shows the relay firing a beam and that's it. The scene with the Relay exploding is conspicuously absent from that ending, also missing is the scene of the Citadel releasing it's energy. Implying that the relays were still intact, if somewhat damaged, and certainly didn't explode catastrophically. In fact, without replaying to get a different ending or specifically going out and hitting the spoiler videos you would have no idea that the Relays exploded in any ending at all. Even then it's possible that it was only a single relay that exploded after releasing transferring the energy, purely speculation of course. Past that there's the fact that the citadel itself acts as a sort of Mass Relay which goes all the way back to the very first game where you had to stop the Keepers from using it as such.
And now you, yourself, are pointing out a continuity error in the ending. Bravo.
Because you see,
Catalyst specifically says, at the end of telling you what choices you have thanks to the crucible, that "Releasing the energy of the crucible will destroy the mass relays." Not they may destroy them, they will.
So two seconds after telling us one thing, you're saying that the cutscene they created actually showed something completely different.
Would you say this is something that should be fixed, as in 'the game has a bug that needs to be addressed' type of way? Or is asking Bioware to fix bugs massively entitled, too? :P
Ummm...no. I'll point you back to something I said in there:
Actually it doesn't. The destroy and synergy endings specifically show the mass relays exploding, while choosing to control the reapers only shows the relay firing a beam and that's it. The scene with the Relay exploding is conspicuously absent from that ending, also missing is the scene of the Citadel releasing it's energy. Implying that the relays were still intact, if somewhat damaged, and certainly didn't explode catastrophically. In fact, without replaying to get a different ending or specifically going out and hitting the spoiler videos you would have no idea that the Relays exploded in any ending at all. Even then it's possible that it was only a single relay that exploded after releasing transferring the energy, purely speculation of course. Past that there's the fact that the citadel itself acts as a sort of Mass Relay which goes all the way back to the very first game where you had to stop the Keepers from using it as such.
The scene with the Relay exploding is conspicuously absent from that ending, also missing is the scene of the Citadel releasing it's energy. Implying that the relays were still intact, if somewhat damaged, and certainly didn't explode catastrophically.
The citadel did not release it's energy when you chose to control the reapers, that is why the relays did not explode. The idea that all the relays did not explode in any other endings is purely speculation on my part as I noted.
So, which is it? The relays didn't blow, or the catalyst is contradicted less than 2 minutes after he tells you what will happen?
It tells you that releasing the citadel's energy will destroy the relays. Controling the reapers does not end up releasing it's energy. Relays are not destroyed.
Alternatively, killing the reapers or synthesizing with the energy releases the energy. Energy is released. Relays are destroyed. Just as the catalyst said.
It's not a plot hole. Just there's two endings (the control endings) where the energy is simply not released.
And...yeah, the endings may be "same-y" but they're different.
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
Actually it doesn't. The destroy and synergy endings specifically show the mass relays exploding, while choosing to control the reapers only shows the relay firing a beam and that's it. The scene with the Relay exploding is conspicuously absent from that ending, also missing is the scene of the Citadel releasing it's energy. Implying that the relays were still intact, if somewhat damaged, and certainly didn't explode catastrophically. In fact, without replaying to get a different ending or specifically going out and hitting the spoiler videos you would have no idea that the Relays exploded in any ending at all. Even then it's possible that it was only a single relay that exploded after releasing transferring the energy, purely speculation of course. Past that there's the fact that the citadel itself acts as a sort of Mass Relay which goes all the way back to the very first game where you had to stop the Keepers from using it as such.
And now you, yourself, are pointing out a continuity error in the ending. Bravo.
Because you see,
Catalyst specifically says, at the end of telling you what choices you have thanks to the crucible, that "Releasing the energy of the crucible will destroy the mass relays." Not they may destroy them, they will.
So two seconds after telling us one thing, you're saying that the cutscene they created actually showed something completely different.
Would you say this is something that should be fixed, as in 'the game has a bug that needs to be addressed' type of way? Or is asking Bioware to fix bugs massively entitled, too? :P
Ummm...no. I'll point you back to something I said in there:
Actually it doesn't. The destroy and synergy endings specifically show the mass relays exploding, while choosing to control the reapers only shows the relay firing a beam and that's it. The scene with the Relay exploding is conspicuously absent from that ending, also missing is the scene of the Citadel releasing it's energy. Implying that the relays were still intact, if somewhat damaged, and certainly didn't explode catastrophically. In fact, without replaying to get a different ending or specifically going out and hitting the spoiler videos you would have no idea that the Relays exploded in any ending at all. Even then it's possible that it was only a single relay that exploded after releasing transferring the energy, purely speculation of course. Past that there's the fact that the citadel itself acts as a sort of Mass Relay which goes all the way back to the very first game where you had to stop the Keepers from using it as such.
The scene with the Relay exploding is conspicuously absent from that ending, also missing is the scene of the Citadel releasing it's energy. Implying that the relays were still intact, if somewhat damaged, and certainly didn't explode catastrophically.
The citadel did not release it's energy when you chose to control the reapers, that is why the relays did not explode. The idea that all the relays did not explode in any other endings is purely speculation on my part as I noted.
So, which is it? The relays didn't blow, or the catalyst is contradicted less than 2 minutes after he tells you what will happen?
It tells you that releasing the citadel's energy will destroy the relays. Controling the reapers does not end up releasing it's energy. Relays are not destroyed.
Alternatively, killing the reapers or synthesizing with the energy releases the energy. Energy is released. Relays are destroyed. Just as the catalyst said.
It's not a plot hole. Just there's two endings (the control endings) where the energy is simply not released.
And...yeah, the endings may be "same-y" but they're different.
Except that visually
We see the crucible being "fired" (releasing it's energy) in all three endings. No matter what you decide, you're firing the crucible to make an outcome.
I mean you can fill in the hole with whatever fan fiction you want, but the hole is still there in the actual narrative.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
If they didn't blow, they should have made it clear. You can see rings stop spinning and multiple smaller explosions happen on the charon relay during the control ending, even though it doesn't have the explosion sequence like the other two endings do.
Which could be because they didn't blow but Bioware was lazy and reused the ending footage for all three, and further compounded the problem by not making anything the catalyst says clear. If we had, say, a way to ask him what exactly will happen when we do any of the 3 things so maybe the choices would make more sense instead of causing giant plot holes, maybe people wouldn't be so upset at the ending
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
If they didn't blow, they should have made it clear. You can see rings stop spinning and multiple smaller explosions happen on the charon relay during the control ending, even though it doesn't have the explosion sequence like the other two endings do.
Which could be because they didn't blow but Bioware was lazy and reused the ending footage for all three, and further compounded the problem by not making anything the catalyst says clear. If we had, say, a way to ask him what exactly will happen when we do any of the 3 things so maybe the choices would make more sense instead of causing giant plot holes, maybe people wouldn't be so upset at the ending
Exactly. Even if you're completely correct, Dedwrekka,
The ending isn't sufficiently clear to absolutely support your assertion. Based on what the kid actually says, at the beginning visual we have of the mass relay, the game is communicating that the mass relay was destroyed.
Or you can take a magnifying glass to it and say that the 2 seconds of cut footage mean they weren't destroyed. But then what the godchild says is incorrect. Either way, the narrative is weak because it fails to make clear what is happening there.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
edited March 2012
Here's a brief rundown of the issues most people are having with the ending. Yeah, one of his complaints is that it should have had one of the possible choices be a happy (or happier) ending, and I disagree with that. But that doesn't negate the other things he mentions, which are valid. This is what a majority of people upset about the ending are complaining about; it's not that every single person has a different idea about what is wrong. Those that think there is something wrong tend to agree with most of these points.
What makes me sad is that the ending could have been a lot better even keeping the same events. Hudson dropped the ball. I don't care how good he thought his idea was, he should have gotten peer review. This kind of thing is important, and could have prevented a lot of the problems with the ending. If what we got was simply presented better, with some fleshing out and the continuity issues taken care of, I would have been fine with it, even if thematically it's not really the kind of ending I want. Like, it's fine if this was his artistic vision to close out the trilogy, but he was sloppy, and didn't do what he had to do to make sure his ending lived up to the quality of presentation the rest of the game offered. I honestly hope that he has less power the next time he works on a project, because he needs oversight and shouldn't have been allowed to bypass the creative process that no one else got to. I will now be more wary of any project he is attached to as a lead, when before I would pretty much blindly buy any Bioware game day 1.
As an aside, I just beat ME2 with a different character tonight, and replying the suicide mission just makes me more disappointed at how war assets ended up.
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Yes, because "gamers" are this hive mind that always acts as one. Stop being a disingenuous cock.
Is the amount of content that much more though? I mean, seriously, because I don't know. It might be, but it seems a bit less than ME1, which I'm playing right now. Is he talking about random stuff that you find being returned to random people in the Citadel? That seems like the majority of the content and, while it's all very standard RPG stuff (i.e. I'm not being critical), it didn't make it seem like there was that much more "to do" in the Citadel itself... I mean compared to ME1 at least.
Actually, all of them did. Even the Ice Cream Reapers utopia ending did. All endings are the same in that respect.
The writers and developers are entitled to make that decision. I'm just politely asking them to consider it.
Frankly, if they just rewrote the ending allowing all the writers to have input on it, instead of just Casey Hudson and Mac Walters, I'd be fine with that, whatever they came up with. That's what they should have done in the first place.
That's the way proofreading works, too. This is not a bad thing.
ME1 Citadel is definitely the 'biggest' of any of the Citadel content. We get two clubs, Shira's place, Council meeting space, huge atrium area with shops on either side, embassies with more than just the human embassy, c-sec, and med area.
ME3 Citadel is one club, one open shop area (much smaller than the huge courtyard-like space of ME1), One area for the human embassy only, with C-sec and the Spectre office in the same spot (about the same size as the area with the human, elcor, and volus embassies in ME1), a med area (this one is larger than it was in ME1), and the docks area. In terms of space, and what is actually in that space, ME1 is much larger.
In terms of quests, I did get the feeling that ME3 had about as many Citadel quests as ME1 did. But the ME1 quests actually had conversations going with the quests... so essentially, even the quests 'felt' bigger, even if the number of quests is about the same.
So on the face of it, I don't think you can really say that the ME3 Citadel is as big as the ME1 Citadel, in any sense. It is larger than the ME2 Citadel, which is maybe what he meant to say, if we're being charitable.
You know, it's remarkable how you completely ignored the thrust of my argument, which is that there should be no real difference between demanding gameplay changes (something done all the time) and demanding story changes. By your argument, both are a "creative work", and thus I should be sneered at for requesting that, say, Bethesda add more companion functionality to FO3 or Black Hole implement town screens in HoMM VI because those are creative works, and how dare I speak out against a creative work which I feel violates the spirit of a beloved franchise; it's the creator's property, and if I don't like something they've done with a beloved series, then it's just not for me and I should go screw off.
Care to rebut that? I'm waiting.
Also, this. You're acting like this is some unheard-of thing, asking a creator to change their content based on fan reaction. Guess what? It happens all the time in every industry. Get off your high horse.
Is that really how you view proofreading? As far as I know, there aren't any writers who don't put there work before, at the very least, an editor before going to print. Even people who self-publish will pay an editor to do that.
It's not about it being a 'product', as much as it is about having another set of eyes looking at something that the author might have missed in terms of plot holes, continuity and the like. Someone in one of the threads, I don't remember who, said something to the effect that peer review can turn shit into gold. Also, that there are no 'good' or 'bad' ideas, but the presentation of those ideas does matter.
I guess it boils down to the fact that I don't believe that Every Art is Sacred and that proofreading and peer review can really shore up the weaknesses in a bad script/novel what have you. I think the biggest problem with, say, George Lucas' later works is his refusal to look to any opinion other than his own; his refusal to have anyone around him that disagrees with him. Having a huge insurmountable ego that refuses all outside input only works if you really are a one of a kind genius, and there really aren't many of those around.
Except there's quite a huge sense of community here. Perhaps I was dissatisfied with it personally, but so dissatisfied that I felt, "this cannot be just me," and lo and behold, I check on the Internet and - well - you know. There are a lot of things about the game that do not satisfy me personally, but I don't mention them because I'm pretty sure I'm one of the only ones.
Example - I wish the dialogue was more natural rather than sort of standard Hollywood line spouting, but that's just because I love those type of movies, like Primer for example. Also, throughout the series, the fact that there are likely thousands of languages spoken throughout the galaxy is not even brought up. Not just handwaved away with something like "oh, universal translator Omni-tools," not even mentioned or dealt with (other than a few token Quarian words). But whatever, I know pretty much everyone is not going to care about this at all, so I'm not going to start a petition, or even start a forum topic about it.
However, re: the ending of ME3, I haven't seen one person make any serious change request that sounded like a "personal" individual issue. I'm sure there are some - those that go "I don't care what anyone else thinks, I didn't like Shepard's armor color at the end. Change it, Bioware!" - but almost everyone here and the BioWare forums and elsewhere are talking about change or even just additional exposition because they feel (with the support of all these other people) that there is something objectively missing.
The thing about peer review, proofreading, listening to other people's ideas in art, etc. is that those things actually work to make the whole better. Especially in a collaborative project like Mass Effect where there has never been just one voice as the creative impetus behind it. People often marvel at how a studio like Pixar can make masterpiece after masterpiece (aside from the rare clunker like the Cars franchise), and you can find the answer by doing a little research into the company: Everything that someone does for a film there is reviewed by the whole team. The whole team will watch a scene, then talk about it, then tear it apart. The result: gold.
Saying that you simply cannot question an artist because ART OMG is not a good argument. And it's certainly not a position of success for a creator. That's not to say that there isn't the other side of it where an artist never speaks with his own voice because he listens too much to other people. But there is a balance between those two things. Simply not allowing any criticism of art is ludicrous.
Make a new ending that all the dissatisfied people will be happy with.
Why it will fall through:
There isn't one reason why people are dissatisfied, nor what they wanted out of the ending. Most everyone seems to be attacking the last moments as if theirs was the only opinion on why the ending failed. Meanwhile, everyone else is attacking it from entirely different standpoints. There's too many different reasons why people are dissatisfied and all highly personal to their story or their sense of "what makes sense". It wont apply across the board.
Also, Broken Steel is a terrible example. It was a single game in a universe where you, as the protagonist, don't have much of an impact beyond your immediate area in the terms of future games. Broken Steel just made it possible for a nameless character with little long term story impact to continue to live a bit longer. Other games may reference the events in previous titles but it has nothing to do with you or your choices, and even not playing the previous games is as much as having played it.
Mass Effect 3 isn't Fall Out 3, and the comparison lessens Mass Effect 3.
As to the petition. It's good to see them doing some good, but their concept is fairly off, and is a good example of asking for an ending that is already there or is not called for at this time. Mostly it seems to want to shut off the Mass Effect universe and close the doors to the next game prematurely.
If the game didn't give you a choice at the last moment of the game, would anyone have been happy? No, no it's not. You could have died in Mass Effect 1 or Mass Effect 2. You could have ended up killing any of a dozen people just to get to Mass Effect 3, either on Virmire or in the Suicide Mission. The game is not about success in the face of impossible odds, since the beginning it's about the nature of sacrifice and exploring the themes associated with facing impossible odds.
These last two are because wrapping everything up in a neat package leads to the next Mass Effect being a shell of what it could have been.
There's no sense of closure to the universe because the universe and the characters we know are not going away. It's simply time for Shepard to step down. You can only have someone cheat death so many times before it becomes meaningless. And while a video game is not the best example of not doing this, eventually if the character continues to cheat death and beat everyone, you end up with yet another Master Chief game, and oh look Kraots is killing everyone yet again, oh joy.
The universe isn't done with yet, so wrapping it up in Mass Effect 3 is premature, as is the events leading up to the end. Because each Mass Effect game has begun with the basic questions that ran through the entirety of the previous ones. It's what leads you to the next story, the next game, it's called a cliffhanger.
The problem, from all what I've heard on the internet and the alleged statements of the Final Hours app, is that the peer review process for the ending barely existed. While what we got may have been called the "final draft", compared to the number of eyes and the amount of work that went into the scenes before it, it was not. I think it's showing, because people have gone on to raise nearly $70k in an act of sheer revulsion to the ending. Some people like it, yes, absolutely. The writers at Bioware are not terrible, and even if they go down a wrong path they are talented enough that what they create will always have an appeal to someone. With more work, more eyes, more review, what they produced could have been better though.
The most important thing a creative person needs to be able to do is kill their babies. There are going to be some ideas that you really fucking love. You will bend over backwards to make those particular ideas fit because you love them so much, instead of sometimes asking "With how hard I'm trying to make these ideas work, are they actually appropriate?". Having no one challenge you on this front, having no one step up to stop the echo chamber of your head reverberating on itself and asserting certain ideas, will lead to things like the Star Wars prequals.
All of Mass Effect 3, up to that point, was written by a team, and then it was written by just two guys. The difference shows.
In all this claim of "doing this for everyone", and "Making Mass Effect better", no one is asking the people who are satisfied, and there's no accounting for them except to argue them down.
also, unless I'm mistaken, they don't plan on making any games in the ME timeline past ME3. So saying "look, it didn't explain everything because they wanted a hook for the next game" is just nonsensical.
The reason it didn't explain anything was because it two people decided it was going to be that way (contradicting previous statements they had made) and didn't let/listen to anyone telling them it was a bad idea.
Actually it doesn't. The destroy and synergy endings specifically show the mass relays exploding, while choosing to control the reapers only shows the relay firing a beam and that's it. The scene with the Relay exploding is conspicuously absent from that ending, also missing is the scene of the Citadel releasing it's energy. Implying that the relays were still intact, if somewhat damaged, and certainly didn't explode catastrophically. In fact, without replaying to get a different ending or specifically going out and hitting the spoiler videos you would have no idea that the Relays exploded in any ending at all. Even then it's possible that it was only a single relay that exploded after releasing transferring the energy, purely speculation of course. Past that there's the fact that the citadel itself acts as a sort of Mass Relay which goes all the way back to the very first game where you had to stop the Keepers from using it as such.
As to that there's this:
And this entire article about how the Mass Effect games will continue to be made and tie back into Mass Effect 3's ending.
You know, I'm seeing this mentioned and well, for one it doesn't make any difference if it was two writers or a dozen writers. The concept of Peer Review is all well and good in some circumstances, but tends to make things bland in the long run. There are a lot of well respected writers who made their decisions and stood by them despite the reactions from fans or their peer review. If Harper Lee, H.P. Lovecraft, J.R.R Tolkein or any of a number of other writers had bowed the the criticism brought forth both after their publications and during their readings with other people, would we be better off? Would the story?
The way TV and Movies are made has been brought up, but I wouldn't want a video game company to ever take cues from those bland showings. Who wants another episodic video game or yet another over the top special effects film, or one that rehashes the simplest stories out there over and over and over?
Also I'm not sure where it's coming from. Is there an article or admission from Bioware about this? Any dissatisfied writers at Bioware blogging about how they never got the chance to input their perspective on the final moments or would have done it differently? Are these writers and the creative direction being singled out just because they are the known names?
And...yeah, that whole "contradicting previous statements they made" is seemingly based off of this quote:
While the full quote is this (Emphasis: me):
They were saying what I've been repeating. That the ending is not a five minutes long movie, but the state of the universe as it was left by you.
I don't want to suggest anything sinister, but it's disconcerting how the quote is butchered to make it seem like it's saying something completely different, and often delivered with the most important part left out.
@The_Tuninator: The Forbes article is pretty cutting to both sides actually. While it certainly didn't side one way or the other it's more of a think piece than a full article, as it simply drops two sides of an argument and ends with a question. While it does present the case of the angry gamers, it also eagerly described them as nothing more than fickle and rabid soccer fans: I wouldn't turn on every other gaming news site, just because a few gaming columnists want to voice their opinions as they do every day.
I'm not sure why I'm still reading through all this stuff, but there is, to my mind, a pretty key difference between all of those things that are being suggested (proofreading, focus groups, etc) and wanting the ending to ME3 changed. In those examples, the creators were in the process of refining their work prior to release and asked for your input.
This is just walking up to a guy in an art gallery and saying "this painting I bought of yours is pretty good except for this part in the corner, which is shit. You should change it." Even when done in a well meaning and polite way, it's not really surprising that some people see that as entitled behavior.
There's plenty of evidence to suggest that J.R.R. Tolkien presented his work to his friends (like C.S. Lewis) for critiques and suggestions. So yes, I would say that LOTR is better for that. I don't know about H.P. Lovecraft or Harper Lee, but it's a pretty standard thing to bring your writing to someone who isn't immersed in it in order to make it better. Proofreading and editing are not remotely new concepts or shockingly arrogant things to suggest. Not really sure why anyone is upset or enraged that the majority thinks the ending would have been better for them.
No one currently working at Bioware has remarked in a way intended to be shared with video game journalists (ie, via blog and the like). That doesn't mean they haven't commented privately, however. As you can imagine - hypothetically, of course! - if one of the writers had said something, on these boards perhaps, then those of us who like that writer wouldn't spread it around because we wouldn't want he or she to get fired.
If you need 'proof' that only Casey Hudson and Mac Walters did the ending solo and kept the ending a secret from the other writers, my understanding is that this is confirmed in the 'Final Hours' app which is available on iTunes for Apple devices.
Supposing I commissioned a piece of artwork. Supposing after it was created, I liked the painting except for a sharpied-in smilie face in the corner. It wouldn't be out of the question at that point for me to say to the artist I commissioned, "this is 99% fantastic, but that sharpie smilie just ruins the whole thing. Fix it, please."
People seem to think that art doesn't have an audience, or that it should never consider the audience, that art should float in the ether and any criticism of it is sacrilegious. If nobody wants to look at your art except you, then you've got a lovely hobby there, which I'm sure keeps your blood pressure down and all... but how meaningful is it if you're the only one who wants to see it?
Art, especially video game art, does have a financial side and always has. Nobody is demanding anything from Bioware. People are making heartfelt requests, which Bioware can ignore or address. But the likelihood is, if Bioware doesn't listen to the criticisms of the ending and do something about it, then a lot of people will stop buying games from Bioware. Certainly, a lot less people are willing to buy DLC for Mass Effect 3 right now. And if they can't make a profit from their games, then they can't continue making them. That's the cold, hard fact. Like it or not.
Maybe a better read through of what I said would be in line. While I do admit that they had readings and took some suggestions, I also pointed out that it was the endings that many people were critical of in both their peer reviews and the time after their first publication. While they fielded suggestions about the themes or events within the story, the core structure of the story, including the endings were what they refused to change.
The suggestions being brought forth aren't just that the ending be changed, but the entire tone and content there-in be changed, which changes the entire game itself due to that context.
Which makes it difficult to argue the point without going out and spending $500 on an iPad.
Based off of the sterling context that has been popping up in regards to directly quoting people and then referring back to those butchered servings of quotation, I really have little to suggest that the assumptions based on the Final Hour app are any better or that anyone in Bioware, peer review or not, would have done anything the least but different.
The suggestion seems to stem from two people apparently writing it, and suggests that either the writing or the ending is not supported by the rest of the team. To this I see little evidence except a constant stream of two quotes that are actually the same quote with the meat cut out, the hinted suggestion that someone may or may not have given some unverifiable, and unreproducible proof that the team is dissatisfied, and an App that may or may not be yet again taken entirely out of context with only smidgens of references to facts brought forth and then repeated ad-nauseum.
And now you, yourself, are pointing out a continuity error in the ending. Bravo.
Because you see,
So two seconds after telling us one thing, you're saying that the cutscene they created actually showed something completely different.
Would you say this is something that should be fixed, as in 'the game has a bug that needs to be addressed' type of way? Or is asking Bioware to fix bugs massively entitled, too? :P
Ummm...no. I'll point you back to something I said in there:
The citadel did not release it's energy when you chose to control the reapers, that is why the relays did not explode. The idea that all the relays did not explode in any other endings is purely speculation on my part as I noted.
I mean, whenever I've heard anyone ever talk about the "ending" to a game (especially RPGs), it has always meant the part after you complete playing. In other words, the word "ending" has a more specific meaning as a gaming term than the general meaning in the English language. This concept (that both Jerry and Mike talked about and has been alluded to by Dedwrekka) that saying the "ending" to a game is the entire game (because other games preceded it as part of a trilogy)? I have never heard of it.
My RPG experience includes all the Final Fantasies to 7 (and 9), a couple Elder Scrolls, ME obviously, and a bunch of others (basically been involved since the late 80s) and this concept is new to me. If anyone else has heard of developers talking about the "ending" of their game as an entire game, my friends and I have missed it completely.
I'm serious. Is this a thing now? Because if it is, then fine. But if not, Casey et al should have probably clarified what they meant by "the endings" as the term has a pretty established definition at this point, and if deviating from that definition, clarification is necessary to get across your meaning.
*Facepalm*
They did, it's all right there from the same quote you're using, just one sentence back.
Also, Mass Effect 1 and 2 had the same concept, because both left the setting in a precarious situation, largely based on your decisions, which later had an effect on the next game. So, yeah. The last moments not being the ending is predicated by the other titles in the series. It's also used in the Elder Scrolls games to a large extent, as well as Fable. It's largely the idea that what happened at the last quest was not the end, and that the world is a very very different place if you didn't do certain things or chose to take a different path on them. Dragon Age used this largely, and even the sections left out of the slideshow in Origins had an effect on the world you played in as experienced to some extents in DA2.
Final Fantasy is a terrible example because you are rarely making decisions rather than continuing a story that is already written for you. In that kind of game, the last quest is the end, and nothing you did made any difference to the story.
Actually Mass Effect 2 officially ended not after the collector base "ending" but after the DLC pack Arrival, which leads directly to your circumstances at the beginning of Mass Effect 3 whether you played through Arrival or not.
Except, you didn't commission this piece. A commissioned piece would mean that you hired Bioware to make a game just for you. In that instance, you do have complete authority over the final piece. This is you purchasing one of a billion commercial prints of the original work. Any authority granted to you by the money you have given is diluted to the point of being completely negligible. The creator didn't make it specifically for you.
Which is not to say that critiquing of the work is bad or should be outlawed. That is ridiculous. However, there is a difference between critiquing a work and asking for that work to be changed. The former is available to anyone simply by experiencing the work. No one can or should stop you from forming opinions. The latter presumes that you are in a position to tell the creators how things should be, that they aren't perfectly happy with how things turned out given the circumstances (time, money, whatever), and that they even want to spend one more second working on this piece instead of turning to the next piece of work they want to do.
"I don't think this bit works very well."
vs.
"I don't think this bit works very well. I want you to fix it."
I am also very skeptical that people will stop buying from them. People like to say that they will boycott X on the internet, but it doesn't seem to translate into action very often. Soon as the next big blockbuster installment in the Mass Effect universe rolls around, the same people will still be lining up to purchase it.
I mean if they do change it they are going to charge us for the damn thing anyway, so go go free market.
Well, for one, not many on either side would agree with describing the game with the fairly insulting moniker of "choose your own space adventure game", as both sides seem to agree that the game is, on a whole, an absolutely amazing and stunning piece of work. Currently in the discussion, at least here, both sides of the disagreement freely use the word "art" to describe it, and I don't think that's an accident. There's a level of care, emotion and choice in the games that makes a big impact on a lot of people.
While video games are "fixed" constantly it's usually the regards to graphical glitches, bugs, or things that are part of the actual gameplay, not the story. Even DLC and studio produced mods rarely go so far as the change the ending of the game.
Broken Steel of course did this slightly, but then the main character in that game is more of a throw-away analog for the player and we certainly have less invested in them than we do for someone like Commander Shepard. In that case it's a nameless character who serves less to drive the narrative of the world than to complete the latest installment and story within that setting. In the Mass Effect series you shape not just the story of the game, but the entire story of the universe. It's the different between a story that's within the setting and a story that is the setting.
That's not a tangent it's inimical to understanding both sides of the argument, because, thanks to some excellent narrative story telling, both sides of the argument have a lot emotionally invested in the game and the setting of the Mass Effect universe.
*Facepalm*
Haha, thank you for including that quote from one sentence back, because it elucidates exactly what I'm saying well. Casey is clearly using the classic gaming definition of "ending" here because he tells us that the "story arc is coming to an end" (using the generic definition of end) and then saying the word "endings" which refer to the specific gaming concept, the very thing we are all discussing here. If you want to redefine what he's saying here (I'm not saying you are), then fine, but I promise you this is how we are all interpreting these quotes, because they have a long precedent of meaning in the gaming community.
Certainly each game has different ways in which it treats this concept, and many different ways in which it deals with choices the player makes. All that is a moot point, though:
Certainly this term "ending" sometimes has less of a meaning/impact when the game allows you to just continue doing quests etc after the conclusion of the main storyline, like ME2 and Skyrim. But when explaining the "ending" to someone else who asked about it, you would still try to encapsulate the last moments of the story in your explanation. Saying, "well, pretty much the whole game and everything you did was the ending" means nothing to the person asking.
For ME3, you can either look at it two ways, right? Either 1) the final cinematic/Citadel part is the "ending" or 2) everything you did and the way you left the galaxy is the "ending."
For 1) I don't need to discuss the lack of satisfaction further. See every other thing written about this. If you like it, then great. I'm not here to try to ruin your ME3 experience.
For 2) If the whole way I left the galaxy is the "ending" then... how did I leave the galaxy? I know about it up until the final run to Harbinger's beam. Then... I have no idea. That last event is so momentous that it radically changes every thing I have done up until that point.
So that's the huge problem. I kinda liked the Star Child, even though he had essentially no precedent. I kinda liked how there was this potential for everything to change via this massive device designed by thousands of civilizations, and I was intrigued by the bleakness of the consequences of using it. But after I do use it, I would love to know a bit more about what happened. About how my specific choices throughout all 3 games shaped the galaxy even after this cataclysmic event of course, but even more about this event itself. I'm left with... much too little.
What is tactful will change very much based on the person perceiving it. I'm just saying that the two are not equivalent (critiquing and asking for modifications). There is a distinction, and hence, a line there. Some people will take umbrage when it is crossed. Either because it was crossed at all, or because of the manner in which it was crossed. The latter is exacerbated by this whole thing taking place on the internet where conversation is devoid of nuance.
Alternatively, killing the reapers or synthesizing with the energy releases the energy. Energy is released. Relays are destroyed. Just as the catalyst said.
It's not a plot hole. Just there's two endings (the control endings) where the energy is simply not released.
And...yeah, the endings may be "same-y" but they're different.
Except that visually
I mean you can fill in the hole with whatever fan fiction you want, but the hole is still there in the actual narrative.
Which could be because they didn't blow but Bioware was lazy and reused the ending footage for all three, and further compounded the problem by not making anything the catalyst says clear. If we had, say, a way to ask him what exactly will happen when we do any of the 3 things so maybe the choices would make more sense instead of causing giant plot holes, maybe people wouldn't be so upset at the ending
Exactly. Even if you're completely correct, Dedwrekka,
Or you can take a magnifying glass to it and say that the 2 seconds of cut footage mean they weren't destroyed. But then what the godchild says is incorrect. Either way, the narrative is weak because it fails to make clear what is happening there.
Spoilers for the ending
As an aside, I just beat ME2 with a different character tonight, and replying the suicide mission just makes me more disappointed at how war assets ended up.
My Let's Play Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC2go70QLfwGq-hW4nvUqmog