Retsam19 said:
Therumancer said:
Shamus, I think your analysis of this is deeply flawed because it considers some fringe components to be serious "sides" of the discussion and omits perhaps the most important part of this entire thing:
The most important part of the ME3 fiasco is that Bioware made specific promises about the ending of the game and what it would include. Bioware made it clear with direct statements that Mass Effect 3 would both answer all the outstanding questions and would NOT include a simple "choose A B or C ending". Bioware proceeded to put in a "choose A B or C" ending anyway, what's more many of the biggest questions in the series were not answered. Bioware released an app that was "behind the scenes" of ME3 and in that app they had the devs saying "well, we decided not to answer a lot of the big questions because they work better as mysteries and give us material for later games in the franchise". Add to this some leaked information about how Bioware actually had no plans for the ending until late in the process, and how what they did was inspired by an adolescent fan whose fan-letter got taped to a director's door, and you can see why there was a riot.
Umm, do you have statistical analysis on hand to say which parts of the discussion are "fringe" and which ones are "serious"? Or are you just picking the parts that you think are "most important" and saying the article is flawed for not happening to mention the one issue you care most about?
And then you launch into how the most important problem is that they broke some promises that they made in some press statements? I'm going to make my own unfounded statistical statement and say that the VAST majority of players of Mass Effect 3 didn't read BioWares press statements or otherwise follow information about the development of the game, so, yeah, I find the idea that this is somehow the "most important part" a bit funny.
No, and I really don't need one having followed the issue and that's something that comes up more often than just about anything else involving the ending, and has also inspired stunts like a bunch of cupcakes with "A B C" (otherwise all the same) being mailed to their offices. It's also apparently a big part of why a lot of people who started out defending Bioware, like Jim Sterling, seem to have taken the other side, the whole thing basically being a generally shitty thing to do when you consider everything. Or at least I'm guessing that's a big part of why he did given that he spends tons of time railing against this kind of behavior in the games industry.
But yes, game developer promises are a big deal when people buy a game because of what they have been told was in the game, especially when they find out later, that the company never had any intention of keeping those promises.
I mean it's fine that you don't like my point, but you should really leave it at that. As I've been following this pretty much since day #1 and watched how much things exploded when Bioware's statements in their behind the scenes app were revealed, and have been listening to the arguments, this is ultimately a big factor in just about everything. Unless of course your defending Bioware at which point the defense usually comes down to "Well, they lied in press statements and you should just accept that because it's the way it is. It's your fault for believing what they said."
The thing that makes "the line" fairly unique is that it's being held against Bioware, and isn't a few different viewpoints all pretty much taking at each other. Sure that DOES happen, but at the end of the day even after years everyone is united against Bioware, and there are some points on which pretty much everyone agrees.
The true test of "the line" however will be when ME4 comes out, and whether or not it maintains enough "membership" and fire to tank the game through not buying it if Bioware doesn't change the ME3 ending, via the intro of ME4 if nothing else. This being done even if it's a great game, since really the gameplay and such has always been secondary to the central point.
Now the fringes within this are people who say go after ME3 in it's entirety as opposed to saying "it was a great game except for the ending which must change and better conform to the promises made" which is where "The Line" stands. That crowd are those who for example attack the writing because of the space ninja, or how ME3 took that character which didn't fit into the plot and had him kick Shepard's butt to escape in direct defiance of the outcome of a fight you just had with him (which is something a lot of games have done the equivalent of, but was new, and kind of annoying for ME3). People are far more divided on things like that. Then you of course go back to the whole Prothean thing and the day #1 DLC to get that story-centric squadmate. Some people have been pushing to force EA to refund the cost of DLC that should have been part of the game to begin with, that's another fringe position even if lots of people have been upset about that one.
Your of course free to disagree with me, but I still maintain that the issue of ME3 cannot be fairly raised or analyzed without the promises made by Bioware, and the direct statement that they game would not have a "choose A B or C" type ending when that is exactly what they decided to put into the game. The fact that none of the endings are satisfying to fans simply compounds the basic problem, along with the fact that for a game where "decisions matter" nothing you did up until that point, including things that directly undermine the whole point of what happened, mattered one way or another, which of course was again counter to what was said about the game and it's ending.
Of course along with that comes the simple point that Bioware by it's own admission apparently rushed the whole ending of the game out. While it's a point you hear less frequently, a lot of people point out that the whole ending sequence of the game is a joke, not just the star child part. This is of course starting with the fact that a lot of what you do during the game is to obtain, develop, and prepare resources for the inevitable final battle. A number of the key choices in the game also directly involve Citadel security. This has lead to comments that it was messed up that The Citadel is magically overrun at the end of the game no matter what defenses it had, and the resources you gathered mean nothing in the end except perhaps one mild scene showing Shepard breathing on a pile of rubble. Reading the flavor text, background, etc.. as a lot of people pointed out by the time of the final battle the good guys are supposed to be using technology equal to that of the Reapers, indeed a lot of it is Reaper tech, something they have not faced before. What's more knowing what's coming they have developed things that no other species has ever used on them before, meaning that by definition the Reapers should not in control of the battlefield due to not having been able to predict what they would be facing. If you read the flavor text of some things you recover, by the time of the final battle ships should be carrying things like singularity missiles (ie missiles that create a black hole at the point of impact). If you did your job well, the Reapers should not have ever been able to just sweep in and take The Citadel, and the entire space battle should have been very different, as opposed to more or less seeing the Reapers ignoring stuff thrown at them and ripping alliance ships to pieces... as the good guys would have been firing back with a lot of their own guns, and missiles dragging them into special anomalies and stuff. It should have been god awful nasty in both directions, and of course the whole point was that if you gathered up/developed enough of this stuff it probably should have been a reaper massacre.... while brought up less often, the point here being that it's not just the final ending selection, the entire climax of the game pretty much disregards everything else you've done up until that point. Your sitting here going "oh hey wow, our ships are now carrying singularity warheads, that's going to be bad news for the reapers" or whatever and feel like you've accomplished something... and nope... the good guys get massacred, Shepard gets sucked up in a beam, and meets Star Child. Less people complain about the whole sequence of events being garbage, but that's another point that's out there.