BioWare Announces Free DLC To Add More To the Mass Effect 3 Endings 235
An anonymous reader writes "The battle between angry fans and BioWare has been raging since the game's release over several issues, with the biggest being the disappointing ending. BioWare have stuck to their guns and stated that they won't make a new ending, but will release free DLC to add clarity to the existing ones."
Completely change the ending. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Completely change the ending. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's where you are wrong. It was never about 'liking' the ending - to have a 'Shepherd rides off into the sunset happily ever after' ending would be terrible, as it doesn't fit the games. It's about an ending that gives you closure, shows you what happened after and how the choices you made affected the world. That's what they are adding, and they are doing it right in that way.
An ending you don't like is a fact of any work - be it a book, film or game. An ending that doesn't fulfill is another thing, and that's what people have a problem with. It's the rough equivalent of Sam and Frodo getting to Mt. Doom and it just ending as the ring falls in. Sure, you know it ended, you know the main thing, but all of the little stuff surrounding it, the characters you got invested in, the places and events you cared about, you want to know how it all mattered in the end.
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It was never about 'liking' the ending
Some people seem to think they're speaking for everyone. For some people, it was the endings that were the problem. Some people didn't want galactic civilization ruined. Others might have wanted a happy ending. Still others might have liked the current endings.
Re:Completely change the ending. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Completely change the ending. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm just talking about why there was such an uproar.
Well, I can't say why the uproar reached this magnitude, but the fact is that the ending is broken more then a few ways. It's not just that it doesn't give closure or answers all the questions, it's that it is lazy (i.e. color swap) and doesn't even make any sense on a very basic levels, it has characters showing up in places without explanation for how they got there and no time for them to have gone there. So it's not just bad, it's broken, which especially considering that the rest of the game and the rest of the series is perfectly fine is just a little weird.
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Yes all of what you are saying as well as the fact that the ending breaks with a lot of previously established canon content. For example, the protheans re-engineered the keepers which delayed the reaper invasion, how could that matter when the citadel itself is the sentient overlord of the reapers?
Arrival also establishes that the destruction of a relay is really bad news for every living being in the same star system.
And exactly how would destroying all synthetics prevent the galaxy f
That and it also totally changes the story (Score:5, Informative)
*SPOILER ALERT*
So the over arching story in the ME universe is, of course, "Stop the Reapers, save the galaxy." That's what the major theme is. Even when you think it has deviated, it in fact hasn't. The Reapers are the baddies, we don't know why and maybe we can't even understand (Sovereign says it is beyond our comprehension). also a big motivation behind this is the connection to the characters in the game. It features a lot of sitting and talking, and the reason is you get to know and care about your characters.
Then, in the last 10 minutes of the game, in 14 lines of dialogue, all that is changed. Now we are supposed to accept, from a character we've never met, that the Reapers aren't evil, and that we can't stop them or save the galaxy really, we just have to make a completely out of context choice. We are now supposed to make a decision about the value of organic and synthetic life, something that has never been part of the series.
Now such a change could happen validly in a story. You can have something going one way and then change... but not in the last 14 lines. This shit would have needed to happen shortly after ME3 started, you discover that all along your goal was the wrong one or a false one or whatever. You have time to come to terms with that, learn about it, and then work towards the new goal. That is valid in story telling. Not just completely changing shit right before the end.
Also there's the fact that you feel that absolutely everything you've done amounts to precisely nothing.
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So the over arching story in the ME universe is, of course, "Stop the Reapers, save the galaxy.
[...]
Then, in the last 10 minutes of the game, in 14 lines of dialogue, all that is changed. Now we are supposed to accept, from a character we've never met, that the Reapers aren't evil, and that we can't stop them or save the galaxy really, we just have to make a completely out of context choice.
Except: That's not true.
We have the choice to stop the Reapers, even destroy them.
And yes, that comes at a terrible price (destruction of the mass relays), but did you really think it would come cheap?
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One of dozens of gaping flaws with the end is that Shepard is no longer the protagonist, that role is assume by the star child deus ex machine, who was introduced 5 minutes previous with 14 whole lines of dialog
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Also there's the fact that you feel that absolutely everything you've done amounts to precisely nothing.
Hay, some of call that a "rewarding career". *Sob*
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Some people seem to think they're speaking for everyone. For some people, it was the endings that were the problem. Some people didn't want galactic civilization ruined. Others might have wanted a happy ending. Still others might have liked the current endings.
And amongst those people, there's a lot of nuance in the position - don't generalize just to feel superior. "Dark and angsty" is not profound, and in a lot of cases is just lazy writing.
Re:Completely change the ending. (Score:4, Informative)
Dude, posting spoilers so soon, not cool :( You kinda ruined it for me now.
That's OK. Bioware and EA would have ruined it for you later.
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It's the rough equivalent of Sam and Frodo getting to Mt. Doom and it just ending as the ring falls in.
SPOILER ALERT!
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EA strangles another once great studio (Score:5, Insightful)
And the only response from BioWare is typical PR spin, with wonderful PR phrases such as "we value our fans" and "artistic integrity".
Re:EA strangles another once great studio (Score:5, Interesting)
You take one of the most popular, loved, masked characters. She was in all three episodes, and there have been numerous speculations on what she could possibly look like. Entire threads with hundreds of posts were just discussing what lies under that mask of hers.... and in the end? It's just a poorly photoshopped stock photo they found on google and bought for 10 bucks.
Bioware is beyond redemption.
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Not Google, DeviantArt.
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To be perfectly honest, I never understood the hatred over this. What did people really expect? Was BioWare supposed to hire some well known supermodel to be Tali or something?
I've been pretty upset with ME3 with the rest of them but this particular instance just feels like people are now just looking for any way they can to rag on Bioware for the game.
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I'd heard another major complaint about that photo was that it's a plot hole-- the last time the quarians were able to safely live on a planet without their suits was a thousand years ago.
I figured that there were too many people expecting a sexy secret, but I however was hoping they wouldn't just make the quarians into purple humans. It was bad enough the asari looked almost exactly like humans. I would have liked quarians to be very alien looking in some way, and perhaps in particular Tali's appearance n
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To be fair, it's very strongly implied that different races see Asari as ideal female versions of themselves.
Re:EA strangles another once great studio (Score:4, Insightful)
They could have, at the very least, made the photo's hands match the character model.
They took the picture, and 'shopped out the ring and pinky fingers. Only when you look at a quarian's hands, they have a thumb, a finger, a large gap, and another finger. Like chopping out the middle and ring finger.
It was just half-assed and stupid. Make the face look like the voice actress. Or something. Something other than a stock photo with lens flare and poor 'shopping.
Re:EA strangles another once great studio (Score:5, Insightful)
This surprises anyone?
For some reason, software companies feel that spaghetti wrapped in duct tape, (and in the case of game software), and that rough plots that are abrasive to the senses are "good enough", as long as they can "ship early!"
Nobody takes pride in their work or product anymore when it comes to software, except for independent hobby programmers.
It seems any time that *money!!* gets involved, quality slips, integrity dries up, and the bullshit gets deep. Really, it is just as much the public's insatiable desire for "WANT NAOW!" As it is the greed that feeds on it at fault.
We can't stop EA from being stupid assholes that ruin franchises and abuse studios. What we can do is control our side of the demand chain, and make their antics unprofitable.
The way to send EA the message is to buy their games used for 20$, and post pictures of the receipt on their forums as proof as part of the signature. If not their forum, any other forums you post at will do. Be sure the signature explains why you did this.
This is WORSE than not buying the game. Your making use of their support services actually COSTS them money, that will NEVER receive payment from you for. Hit them in the wallet, where it hurts the most.
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Am one of those guys who touched a game pad for the first time at the age of 5 and knew from then that it gave birth to a fated passion. But if I, one dude who enjoys roguelikes and complicated storylines, boycotts a company, there will be a hundred more 12 years old kids who will happily buy the next Cawadooty because it got all kinds of tacticool weapons and flashy achievements.
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That is why you post the reciept, and a short explanation why you bought it used.
There is a marketing saying: for every customer you satisfy, he tells 5 friends. For every customer you screw over, he tells 15.
The internet let's you show your displeasure, and the proof of the pudding to potentially millions.
There is no question about your legal purchase. There is no grounds to say you are a pirate. In fact, if you pay full price at gamestop for used, and post the reciept, the "you are a greedy cheepskate" a
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One small nitpick:
I don't think there is a credible and overwhelming demand from the users for an early release, as much as there is a credible and overwhelming demand from the beancounters and Board of Directors to release as early as practical (without screwing it up too badly... obviously they time that metric wrong on occasion).
I mean, it doesn't have to have the timeline of DNF (oh, Lordy...) but the primary rule should be that, like the old wine commercial, no game is released before its time.
Get the
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Oh, I agree. Their "think of all the money we will save by NOT PAYING PEOPLE by rushing development ahead 6 months! Uwee hee hee!" Antics are the biggest offender.
But our complacentness about just blithely accepting this as status quo is what prompts them to think they will get away with it.
Make that decision cost them money. Each and every time. It is the only way to reign in that madness.
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The way to send EA the message is to buy their games used for 20$
No, the way to send EA a message is to not buy their games at all. There is plenty of shit to do, and plenty of other games to play. You don't need any of EA's games.
Unfortunately, gamers have about 0 resolve when it comes to 'sending a message' to some entity that sucks.
--Jeremy
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The biggest insult is, the ending was obviously rushed, but they had PLEANTY of time to tack on a shitty multiplayer function.
Except the multiplayer isn't shitty (unless you're having network problems or you can't play shooters).
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This will end up very much damaging Bioware though (as it probably should). I mean, they will still sell games, but I'm very sure that I'll be waiting till player reviews hit before thinking about buying them.
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To be totally fair, EA doesn't do this stuff out of malice. EA's acquisitions fail because their executives are miserably incompetent.
Basically this is what happens: some manager plays a game made by a beloved studio or minor competitor, and they get all starry-eyed about the amazing things the studio could do with some extra money. EA buys them, and it works fine for a little while. Then, some executive realizes that their subsidiary's games are really profitable, so they order the subsidiary to expand and
Re:EA strangles another once great studio (Score:5, Insightful)
just because you can whine really loud it doesn't mean you can dictate to a game developer how to make their games.
Why ever not? They make a consumer product, the consumers don't like it. They either fix it, or the consumers go else where with their money next time.
Works just fine. We're not talking about fine art here. EA can keep their "artistic integrity", but no one has to buy it; that also is a perfectly fine conclusion to this story. Outside of the fact that people won't give them money again, no one is forcing them to change their ending, or make their game in a certain way. They are free to make the worlds crappiest game, and I'm free to never give them money again.
I'm not one to talk though, since EA has been on my shit-list for a long time (over a decade now). I always think twice before giving them money, and generally wait for the first month of player reviews, if the game looks really solid (more solid that anything else made by a different company). And I will never, ever, buy their DLC. Further, I'm one of the only person who never really found Mass Effect terribly fun. The first one was okay (outside of being forced to hide behind walls 90% of the time). The second one took away everything I liked about the first, so I never really gave two shits about the third one.
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I only played ME 1 and enjoyed it, but I don't understand all the raving about the characters and the choices you make. The characters felt very flat compared to the companions in DA:O.
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do you write to your favorite author and demand they change the ending to their novels just because you don't like them?
Happens all the time. Some authors actually write alternate endings as a result, to keep their fans happy. Sometimes Evangelion happens, where the budget runs out and the ending is obvious crap, and then the creators later make the ending they wanted to all along - artistic integrity lies with the creators, not the publishers rushing shit out for a quick buck after all.
Also, when you sell a wrk in a series, there is some implication that the work will be of roughly the same quality as the works that come
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Again, they don't have to rewrite it, and I don't have to give them money again. Where is the problem here? Should I be forced to give them money in the future for producing things I didn't enjoy? Are they entitled to my continued patronage?
If an author wrote a book with a horrible ending, I would probably not buy books from them again. I might also be tempted to go online and complain to potential customers, so they don't waste their money either. I do the same for faulty products, bad customer servic
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if you don't like the game make your own or buy something else.
It seems this is a false dilemma. There is a third option, and one that many people seem to be choosing: voice your criticism, and then vote with your dollar. That has a chance of actually changing something.
but bioware isn't obligated to do shit about your complaints.
This is a straw man. No one ever said they were (well, most people didn't). They will either listen or they won't. It's that simple.
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There is a third option, and one that many people seem to be choosing: voice your criticism, and then vote with your dollar.
i've been saying this in numerous other posts. in those posts i've said voice your criticism but lose the sense of entitlement. buy something else = vote with your dollar.
No one ever said they were (well, most people didn't).
there's been a huge backlash of people demanding that the ending be changed, with one going so far as to complain to the FCC.
They will either listen or they won't. It's that simple.
that's what i've been saying in response to the loud majority who want the ending changed.
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There is a third option, and one that many people seem to be choosing: voice your criticism, and then vote with your dollar.
i've been saying this in numerous other posts. in those posts i've said voice your criticism but lose the sense of entitlement. buy something else = vote with your dollar.
The problem with this is that as long as people are not painfully vocal about why they're not gonna buy the next BioWare game EA will just blame future failures on piracy, that is the thingsalways seems to work, either something is a huge success or it's all because of the pirates.
No one ever said they were (well, most people didn't).
there's been a huge backlash of people demanding that the ending be changed, with one going so far as to complain to the FCC.
People are not neccessarily complaining to the FCC to have the ending changed but because BioWare ever since the release of ME2 has hyped that because they don't have to worry about the next game the ending for ME3 is going to re
Re:EA strangles another once great studio (Score:5, Interesting)
I paid great attention to the story. I carried several characters from ME to ME3, through several playthroughs.
That was a fucking cop-out with very little expounding upon the future consequences/benefits of said action. It was too short, lacking detail, and quite obviously HASTILY DONE.
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Arkhipov did [cracked.com]. And of course on the other side of the equation are Hitler, Stalin and Mao, who's shadow still makes the world a worse place than it needs to be. But then again, imagine a world with Hitler but no Stalin, where the Nazis would have marched through a still-agrarian Russia with ease and likely won World War II.
The thing is, while most decisio
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True, but that's not the full story. No, you will probably not get very far by demanding a refund from Bioware or by threatening to force them (via lawsuit) to change the ending. But most people complaining are people who have purchased Bioware games in the past, and are likely to purchase them in the future. The company is absolutely free to alienate its user base; it's the
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George Lucas succumbed to himself, just like Mac Walters succumbed to himself ... the idiots in question are the writers ... who paid fuck all attention to what their audience wanted.
The majority of the ME3 "idiot" audience wanted a simple feel good ending ... if they had listened to them we wouldn't have had this mess ...
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Real life indeed is tragic ... exactly why the majority of people don't want that shit in their entertainment. As for DEEP, that's just an excuse to not have to fabricate an internally consistent story and introduce needless complexity while letting the audience try to paper over the holes. (Want to bet the epilogue just concentrates on the rest of the crew and leaves the clusterfuck near Earth without closure?) Which is of course bad enough in and of itself, but doing it 15 minutes before the end makes it
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Sometimes they do get lucky and churn out a hit despite their money driven process, most of the time they produce something that hits enough high points to pay back development costs with some profit, an
Re:EA strangles another once great studio (Score:4, Insightful)
just because you can whine really loud it doesn't mean you can dictate to a game developer how to make their games.
No one is saying that Bioware is forced to make anything. What they're saying is that they're displeased with what Bioware did make, and that they would like Bioware to fix it. It's Bioware's call after that.
You know, voting with your wallet? I'm really tired of people who think criticism is bad/giving your opinion is bad. Neither equates to thinking you have the ability to force someone to do what you want.
Re:EA strangles another once great studio (Score:5, Insightful)
just because you can whine really loud it doesn't mean you can dictate to a game developer how to make their games. anyone who thinks the difference in endings is the cut scene color wasn't paying attention to the story at all.
I don't have a problem with the endings not being different enough (although I do have a problem with the difference to the endings essentially boiling down to a last second decision. You should be locked down to an ending based on choices you've made throughout the series).
What I do have a problem with is the lack of a satisfactory ending. Hollywood has historically placed happy endings everywhere they don't belong. People understandably complained about this because when you stick a happy ending on, for example, The Count of Monte Cristo, you just removed the entire moral lesson intended in the novel. Unfortunately, the result of this backlash is that people now think that emotionally complex endings where not everything works out in the end is "artistic" and we should just plop that everywhere. That's the exact same thing Hollywood has been doing with the happy endings, except that you're wrapping everything up with a bow of a different, sadder color.
The ending of a story needs to fit a story. For Edmond Dantes, he needs to accomplish his revenge masterfully, destroy all of his enemies exactly as he planned, only to find his life empty when all is said and done. For Shepard (s)he needs to do what (s)he's always done: beat all the fucking odds and accomplish the mission. If you're playing a Shepard that has sacrificed much along the way via the renegade route, that means a lot of bodies pave the way to final awesomeness. If you've been playing the game by taking the time to save kittens from trees, that means absolutely everything works out, synthetics are saved, organics are saved, the cycle is ended, and the mass relays are intact to usher in a new era of collaboration in the galaxy. Why? Because that's what your audience has invested all this time to achieve. Mass Effect isn't some literary masterpiece, it's an escapist reality where you get to be a badass. It's an action story in a sci-fi world. You don't play the game because you want to know how it ends, you play for the journey, and it better end exactly where you were planning to take that journey.
That's how the other two games operated, and maybe you want to pretend that wrapping a story that had absolutely no depth to it in an ambiguous ending increases the artistic value of the thing, but the rest of us see it as a cop-out and a bait and switch ploy. Those of us who just wanted to shut our brains off for a few hours were forced to turn them back on, and once you turn your brain on to try to figure out what the hell just happened you start asking questions such as *WHY WAS THE NORMANDY INSIDE A MASS EFFECT FIELD IN THE MIDDLE OF THE BATTLE FOR EARTH?* Not only is the ending NOT the artistic masterpiece EA is claiming it is, but it's poorly thought out and cliched.
Re:EA strangles another once great studio (Score:5, Insightful)
*WHY WAS THE NORMANDY INSIDE A MASS EFFECT FIELD IN THE MIDDLE OF THE BATTLE FOR EARTH?*
And in my case, WTF is Garrus doing on board the Normandy doing a mass relay jump when a couple of minutes ago he was running for his life alongside me trying to avoid getting blown away by a Reaper on the final attack? And where the hell did the Illusive Man come from?
And after some 120+ hours game time, it comes down to some deus ex machina responsible for the whole business? I could have shot some power conduit back in Mass Effect 1 and saved us all the trouble?
I can live with an unhappy ending - my shepard giving up her life, anderson's life, even that of everyone on the Normandy to save the galaxy and stop the reapers fits with the story - giving up everything for the mission. But at least have some consequences to my prior actions. It didn't matter one goddamn how well or poorly I did in the build up to retaking earth in single player, it makes basically no difference. If I'd spammed multiplayer to get my 'readiness' rating up higher than its possible to in single player, I'd get a few seconds clip of N7 armour moving, and that's it. No impact upon how many reapers there are, how hard the final missions are, whether my companions live or die at the end. Nuttin.
Worse than that, the final scenes have no relevence or are barely related to any of the game I've just played, or the two predecessors. When my final suicide mission companions somehow end up on the Normandy heading out the Mass Relay when last I saw the ship was deep in the fighting, trying to buy me time... What the hell?? And when you've just stranded millions of aliens in earth orbit due to the destruction of the Relays, you only zoom in on stories told about the Sheppur some time in the future on the planet the Normandy crashed on?
I didn't need a HAPPY ending (though having the happiness relate to how hard I freaking worked or not would be nice) - as said, making a final ultimate sacrifice having said my goodbyes fits - but after the amount of time we've all put in to get here, I thought they'd at least put a bit more effort into having them make SENSE instead of the same weird ending upon your final choice amounting to a button which chooses which colour explosions you get.
It feels like the outsourced the ending to the same guy who came up with the one for Deus Ex: HR. At least with that it was only one game, instead of a series conclusion we've been waiting since 2007 for.
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Not to mention the many other literacy taboos of adding another character as the ultimate faceless boss in the last minute of the game. The original Mass Effect did this brilliantly, you spent a lot of time learning about reapers and what they are capable of before being introduced to the fact that there's one currently in the game. But in Mass Effect 3 they just plop some kid out of a dream sequence?
Then there's the whole destruction of the Mass Relay bit. I just spent some 50 hours saving entire species l
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"just because you can whine really loud it doesn't mean you can dictate to a game developer how to make their games. "
When you make a bad game you should be called on your shit. People had expectatinos of what to expect from the story, they weren't expecting happy fair fairy land ending but they did want an ending that made fucking sense to the awesome universe that was created with ME.
It doesn't help that most gamers are braindead and couldn't even begin to detect that the games story was already butchere
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lol you're proof most gamers are braindead. No wonder you posted AC. You just confirmed it with your contortions.
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just play the game and then say that it's not tacked on.
retake earth? how about run like a pussy and come back for a stomping and quickie ending produced separately from the rest of the game littered with plot holes and pulling _magic_ card out?
I mean, the endings would be SOMEWHAT better if they didn't include the pre-rendered vids at all! they're so obviously done totally detached from even knowing what use they were going for that they could have been used for a dozen other "explanations" for the end. co
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Bullshit. http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/355/index/10056886 [bioware.com] explains, what was promised / advertised. They clearly did not deliver what was promised.
And don't give me that artistic freedom-bullshit. Artistic freedom is a constitutional right in Germany, barring the censoring of titles like Natural Born Killers, so I value this right. BUT - and this is important, this right does not stand alone. There are other rights. If you order a country side painting and get a city with no green in it, then you
Re:EA strangles another once great studio (Score:4, Insightful)
Just because the ending that you made up in your head can be massively different than what they showed us doesn't mean that's what actually happened.
What they gave us made no sense and provided no closure on top of that. Your entire squad just leaves you alone to take on the reaper forces by yourself? Harbinger just leaves you to do whatever you want and flies off to get a cup of coffee? Everyone lives at the end anyway, but you're stuck on Earth and your squad is stuck on some random jungle planet including the two that were with you at the end? EDI survives the destroy option? The fuck?
If you honestly think that ME3 had a legit ending then you must have seen something completely different than what was on my disk.
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Clearly Harbinger flew off to shoot some heroin because he became overwhelmed with the utter ennui of his Reaper existence.
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Go to youtube and search for 'indoctrination theory'. You'll see what AC is talking about.
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Being the story vs being told a story... (Score:5, Insightful)
...the distinction is clearly not important to EA or what's left of Bioware. I can honestly say that given this news, I have -zero- desire to play the series again as-is. This was a journey best not taken at all, and it has made me reflect on all the time I've wasted playing games in general. If I am being told a narrative, then it should do so - if I am part of the narrative, don't yank the control of it from me at the end because you don't like the possibility I will chose something you don't want to do. Also, you don't go all 'werewolf' and torch everything in the end - it makes people's investment a fruitless one. Until game makers figure that out, I am done with 'interactive fiction' titles - ESPECIALLY from these two.
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I have -zero- desire to play the series again as-is.
Nor do I. I was a little annoyed by some of the choices that were made for me in Mass Effect 3 since I did not load a save (because I had reformatted my hard drive); however, prior to finishing Mass Effect 3, I was planning on going back and replaying the whole series from the beginning so that I could get the outcomes that I wanted. After getting to the crapping ending of the series, ALL desire to replay ANY of the Mass Effect games died. I had even planned to buy the DLCs that had come out after I had fin
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What about fallout 1-2? The ending was pretty specific as to what exactly you did in each town....
free until april 2014!! (Score:2)
Read the fine print. What the hell are they going to do, start charging extra for it after 2 years?
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So if you buy it after the price drops to a low level, you'll have to stay with the crappy ending.
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That is, unless I'm blind and missed where to download it?
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This [masseffectsaves.com] lets you get saves for ME1, while this [masseffect2saves.com] does the same for ME2. I know you can get these onto a 360 with some work, but I don't know about the PS3.
But that's what you get for running with a console - your flexibility to work around publisher idiocy such as you mention is significantly reduced.
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that's when the online authentication servers for their fucked up drm go offline....
Seems obvious to me (Score:3)
Most people never finish these games and they know it, so why spend a lot of time on a great ending? For return customers? HAH! when you're the only game in town, you don't need to worry.
The second part is they really only care about the first couple months of the user experience. They put just enough effort into the game so they can still make high volume sales before anyone has a chance to get the shitty parts where they "duct taped" stuff on. By the time anyone figures it out, they've already made a ton of cash on it.
I just quit buying the new titles until they are a year or so old.
I'll settle for a Dallas fix (Score:2)
It's not the storytelling of the ending per se, (Score:5, Insightful)
...it's the way the ending was implemented.
Battle Readiness high or low? Doesn't matter, same cutscene.
Geth or Quarians alive? Doesn't matter, same cutscene.
Rachni queen alive or dead? Doesn't matter, same cutscene.
Renegade or Paragon? Doesn't matter, same cutscene.
Regardless of plot holes and deux ex machina, what pissed me off was that the last 10 minutes of the game was antithetical to the way the entire series - hundreds of hours of playtime - functioned up to that point. The whole frickin' point of Mass Effect was that your choices mattered but ultimately they just didn't. And the fact that choosing control, destroy or synthesize only ended up changing the color of the explosions (okay plants had circuit boards in their leaves if you chose synthesize) was a fart in a bathtub.
I had a Paragon save and a Renegade save from Mass Effect 2 and played the Paragon first. There is no incentive whatsoever to play the Renegade save. I'm not even interested in any DLC because it's all pointless.
And to make it worse (Score:2)
It wasn't as though they just had all that forced out of them by EA completely. ME3 had plenty of good implementation in it. You had story lines that differed depending on who was alive coming in to ME3, and the choices you made. You could have some real different experiences and outcomes.
Like man was the Tuchanka mission beautiful. If both main characters had died in previous series (and probably not coincidentally both were easier ones to lose) it could be kinda shitty, you really felt compelled to take t
Indeed (Score:2)
A MUCH better way to handle the 3 endings would have been
1) you are paragon/renegade indicate which ending is openned (blue/green para ; red/green/renegade)
2) who you let alive as species and the battle readiness indicate whether you get the basic ending of your type (red/blue) or ALSO the green one. Or whatever.
But an ABC choice at the end ? That was.... Pi
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At the end of ME2, you have the choice of either blowing up the collector base, or releasing a "pulse" which kills everyone inside it but keeps the base itself operational for "investigation" of the tech etc.
The video was pretty much the same, but your discussions with the Elusive Man are quite different.
The ending was bad, but... (Score:4, Funny)
The ending to Mass Effect 3 was nowhere NEAR as annoying as all the whining about it.
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Annoying?
I haven't even played ME (any part), but I would like to heartily thank Bioware for providing an epic drama for teh internets. Lulz were had, a great many of them!
The ending was fine (Score:3, Interesting)
Should say "whether or not the ending is disappointing" rather than "the disappointing ending," because I wasn't disappointed by it. I felt it was a perfectly fine ending to the trilogy, and a very large number of people feel the same way as me. The difference is that those of us who enjoyed the ending aren't necessarily going to be vocal about it, whereas the goal of those who dislike it is to make as loud of a shout as possible so they can try and get their way. As much as people think they want a different ending (by and large they want a hollywood ending as opposed to the artistic ending, which is what their real problem with it is), sacrificing the integrity of the art for the sake of consumer demand is a far worse crime in my opinion.
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Should say "whether or not the ending is disappointing" rather than "the disappointing ending," because I wasn't disappointed by it. I felt it was a perfectly fine ending to the trilogy, and a very large number of people feel the same way as me. The difference is that those of us who enjoyed the ending aren't necessarily going to be vocal about it, whereas the goal of those who dislike it is to make as loud of a shout as possible so they can try and get their way. As much as people think they want a different ending (by and large they want a hollywood ending as opposed to the artistic ending, which is what their real problem with it is), sacrificing the integrity of the art for the sake of consumer demand is a far worse crime in my opinion.
How about everyone here who like the ending be vocal about it. Explain to the rest of us why you think the ending was in any way good. I am genuinely interested why you think crap tastes good.
No shit (Score:4, Interesting)
I have seen many good deconstructions of why the ending is a bad one from a literary point of view, cinematic, story telling, logical, and so on. There are tons of faults and I've seen them talked about at great length and with solid backing.
Everyone who says they liked it can't seem to elaborate. It was just "a good ending and you people are morons for hating it." Personally I think the reason id they fall in to one (or maybe more) of three categories:
1) Bioware fanboys. They think everything Bioware does is great and thus this must be great. A Stockholm Syndrome of sorts. They defend it because the need to feel that Bioware has done right be the series and didn't fuck it up, not because that is deep down how they feel. Their defense is reflexive.
2) Emo kids and wannabe ITGs. I've seen this with regards to movies and shit where people claim to hate "happy endings" and so on and act like the more things suck the better it is. They believe "dark" means "good". Of course they are usually fooling only themselves and you find if you examine the things they like, there are plenty of happy endings in it. They just play tough, or are pulling the emo crap.
3) People who don't really give a shit about RPGs. For them Mass Effect was just a shootie like Doom with more talking. They space through cutscenes, ignore dialogue, and so on. They are all about the action. So they have no real investment in the story at all, and thus the ending is fine. "Oh hey I blew a bunch of shit up! Go me! Good ending!"
I would think if the ending was truly so good, at least one person would be able to provide a competent defense as to why. Showing the things that were done well in terms of telling the story, providing closure, and all those kind of things an ending is supposed to do. That they can't well that tells me a lot right there.
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Or maybe the people who liked it (or at least didn't hate it enough to be a whiny little bitch about it) enjoyed getting there more than the destination. I may not have been happy about the way it ended, but I can take a fucking step back and enjoy the series without discounting the whole thing cause the last minutes didn't jive with what I thought should happen.
Endings can destroy a good story. This is especially so when the story is told in the form of a video game. If you spend hundreds of hours in a story, you expect all your work to have value. Mass Effect 3 invalidates the whole point of your journey. In the game, you are trying to save galactic civilization from the jaws of death. By the end of the game, what you accomplish is saving a tiny blip in comparison. The destruction of the Mass Effect relays alone will cause galactic civilization to be crippled for
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Translation (Score:2)
Translation:
EA believes we've spent enough money on an ending. We're getting dinged on fan review sites like Metacritic so we're going to throw another bandaid on it for as little cost as possible.
"Artistic Integrity" is bullshit. (Score:2)
Everyone who is going on trying to defend the ending and BioWare's laziness is missing the point. If I go to an art gallery, I want artistic integrity. If I buy a game, I want entertainment. It's not that the two can't overlap, it's that the place to express your inner postmodernist isn't at the end of a mainstream entertainment product where you promise the players (and they are players, not participants in your interactive art project) that their choices matter only to say "haha, I lied" at the end and
About god damn time (Score:2)
The best ending mechanic for RPGs is the fallout method.
They had single image and short voice over for EVERY major quest. How hard is it to knock out 40 or 20-30 second voice overs along with maybe 15 still images? Easy. Do that.
Mass Effect players tweaked their games endlessly to get a perfect ending across THREE games one into the next all culminating at that final point.
And after all that it turns out that all that tweaks was totally wasted. Why import the ME2 game into ME3 if ME3 won't do anything cool
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Yeah, they didn't explain anything. The whole "we kill everyone and jam their mutilated corpses into a tube where it is sucked like a milkshake into some groteseque genocidal machine... to SAVE YOU!"...
Really really dumb. Apparently they switched writers at some point which is always a really bad sign.
I don't know... I think these projects should start with an ACTUAL author that actually writes for the subject. And then just have him bust out an outline for the whole series. Ideally, have him write the dial
One of my biggest letdowns... (Score:2)
A definite plot hole and lack that will certainly get no help from this DLC is the fact that there was no fighting within the Citadel at the end. The endgame of ME1 established that the Reapers don't have any sort of 'kill switch' to clear the Citadel, and it's a huge city with a large population and a well-trained defense force (well-equipped, too, if you do certain side missions). They might have taken the indefensible central tower easily enough as in ME1, in order to close everything up, but taking th
Really? who gives a shit (Score:2)
Brown shooter of the year didnt bother to flush out story and will now charge stupid fanboi's for appropriate ending found free on troll forums.
Indoctrination Theory (Score:3)
If you search for 'Indoctrination Theory' on youtube, you'll find a 20 minute video that addresses the plot holes and stuff that just makes no sense at all. It not only changes the ending, it changes how I looked at the game.
But if it's true—and it might very well be—then BioWare failed at ending presentation, because it was too subtle for most of us to figure it out without referencing a video on youtube.
I'm on my second playthrough, and I've decided that the Geth are the thing that makes the least sense in the game. Why do Geth ships have hallways and railings? Consoles to type at? Guards? Why bother with any of that stuff? And the 'renegade' options near the end of that mission-line are stupid. They present a false dichotomy. You can be a renegade, but not only do you throw away a potential war resource, but they're no danger at all to the Quarians if you pick the paragon options. It's infuriating.
(Disclosure: I worked for BioWare for many years. I do not work for BioWare or EA anymore.)
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Really? You can't even be bothered to read the title of the article? Here, let me quote it for you:
BioWare Announces Free DLC To Add More To the Mass Effect 3 Endings
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Are you sure? I, like pretty much everyone else I've read with criticism about the ending, don't care if the ending is happy or not: it's been made clear through all three games that Shep is willing to go as far as is needed, including sacrificing him/herself, to protect the galaxy.
Yes, it'd be nice to have Shep knocking back beers with Garrus, raising little blue children with Liara, or settling down with Tali in her house on Rannoch...but that's not why fans are mad -- they're mad because the ending makes
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Every game that you love is going to have a disappointing ending, because it is... an ending.
Not true. I have read/watched/played plenty of book/TV/movie/games series that I loved but was not disappointed by the ending. Don't get me wrong, I was disappointed that they were ending but I was not disappointed by the ending. What does disappointed and infuriate me is bad or non-existent endings. The creators and story-tellers need to have some pride in their work and actually make a ending worthy of the series.