sir.rutthed said:
I really hope they don't change it. I haven't played it yet, but I don't think it's possible to maintain artistic integrity if they go back and rework their work just because a bunch of people don't like it.
Well, understand that something being "art" has it's dark side, there is a stereotype about people defending garbage as artwork to avoid criticism for a reason, and ME3 pretty much shows that the industry was quick to try and use "Art" as a shield to try and excuse the inexcuable.
Let me be blunt, just being art does not make something good, art can still be crap, and there is nothing wrong with calling crap what it is. Also many artists have modified their work given reception.
A point to consider here is that with things like movies if they slot people off to this degree people will demand their money back, and they will get it. Defending a crap movie as Art doesn't mean that mass refunds aren't going to destroy it. In the case of "Mass Effect" it's not like people can get their money back, and they spend way more than what a ticket cost.
Likewise when looking at things like a Gallery show, you see the artwork, and they decide if your going to buy it, or pay to support the artist. They don't hand you a box for $60 and you risk it being anything from a masterwork to a laquered piece of cow dung with a fork stuck in the top and a yellow "M" painted on the side.
Art does not put someone beyond criticism. What's more one has to remember that this is not REALLY an artistic issue, that's just the shield being used. This is purely about out of control greed. "Mass Effect" was intended to be a trilogy, but along the way EA/Bioware decided they wanted to turn it into a franchise. This ending is transparently set up to be a "do nothing" occurance since there is no way to even tell if these events really took place (as many people have argued), basically a desician to NOT end the game by putting in some art-seeming BS that doesn't fit with the rest of the game so they could hopefully spin it into more money with future installments and drag out actually resolving the central storyline. This DOES influance what people think, especially when you look at what Bioware promised for an ending, and what they actually delivered, which is at the root of the legal aspect of things (and as much as people call it silly, false advertising is false advertising, and the game industry should not be beyond such criticism).
There are a lot of reasons so many people are POed about this... and for those who read this far let me tell you one other thing: I called this last year. It didn't go down exactly as I expected but when I saw what happened with "Dragon Age 2" I predicted Bioware was on a bad path and that things were NOT going to go well with "Mass Effect 3". People overlooked a crap ending (and crap game design which was an issue that doesn't apply to ME3 to the same extent, given it's intent to be a shooter) because it was Bioware and every company can miss occasionally, but now with ME3 we're seeing an attitude that they can get away with this as the whole "do nothing" ending is in many ways very similar to that of DA2 and probably intended for similar reasons which have nothing to do with art despite art being used as a shield.
It also angers me to an extent (adding to the fire) to see a guy this high up in Bioware sitting there talking about professional reviews and the high scores as a sort of defense, yet the integrity of those same reviews has been in question for years now (heavily discussed here on The Escapist and in various articles). When you see an ending like this and high marks accross the board, that's not a defense, that's a sign that either the reviwers were bought or didn't do their job properly and play the game through. Bioware's people would do better to simply not mention that point, because using it as a defense is just going to make people like me even angrier. The bottom line is that while good PR and reviews can help with public perception, there is a level of sheer suck at which that backfires. Rather than a defense of Bioware, I see those professional reviews to be a reason to be more critical of the reviewers who gave this game high marks and their integrity, than a sign that I, and millions of other gamers are wrong.
