Could Bioware be pulling a Nier with the next Mass Effect?
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You said: "They cared so little they released the extended cut." I took that as sarcasm which was saying:jehk said:
"They cared enough to release the extended cut."
Ok, so they care enough to try to "formally explain" their bad ending to everyone who complained about it. That doesn't mean they care enough to actually address the problems that the ending had, the whole "choice A, B, C" thing.
They wanted to make their ending memorable, it just so happened that it was made bad in the process.
1. A Man sells Man B some pantsjehk said:
2. The pants are uncomfortable so Man B tells Man A to fix the pants
3. In response Man A decides to give him a belt.
4. The belt solves nothing and the pants are still uncomfortable, but Man A insists that the pants are fine.
I don't need Bioware to change the ending to show that they care. I'd like them to acknowledge that their ending was poorly written. But that's just me.
That doesn't mean they didn't listen.Devoneaux said:
I listen to everything my daughter says. That doesn't mean I do everything she asks and she doesn't always get her way.
She's only one person. BioWare is a rather large group of people.
These kinds of generalizations are silly.
In my opinion there is still a way to make a great Mass Effect game AND fix the ending at the same time: Time Travel. In Mass Effect 4 you get sent back in time by science and take control of Shepard at the beginning of Mass Effect 1. Then you go through all three games with the knowledge of what happens next. You can rewrite history and make a new ending that can be whatever you want. Not sure if that's pulling a Nier, but man it would be cool.
Listen in this case means "acknowledge and respond to appropriately." Not "listen and half-ass things without acknowledging the problem".jehk said:
What I see there is 13% chose ME3, hardly enough to for it to be a majority considering you can mash any two of the ones ranking #2(The Walking Dead) to #8 (Far Cry 3), and get a result higher than #1.jehk said:
OT: I really think Pulling an Elder Scrolls would be the easiest out for Mass Effect, making that-which-must-not-be-named either irrelevant or so far in the past that it's only mentioned in the broadest of terms.
Some people wanted something else, sure - but originally some of the most frequent questions were things like "How did the squad get back on the Normandy?", "Why did Joker fly away?" and "Does everyone die on the new planet?"Devoneaux said:
The people who were asking those questions did have their questions answered by the EC. Is everyone happy? No, obviously not - but you can't pretend that they didn't address a good number of questions and concerns.
people seem to think that it's impossible for them, to make a straight up sequal that can work with the endings, I disagree
mostly due to the fact that if you think about it, it's just a few changes in dialogue and maybe a few aesthetic changes here and there, 90 percent of the content could remain relatively the same through all three endings, assuming that this is new, original content that doesn't necessarily rely on events from the previous games, like going to planets untouched in the first three games
and when they have to revisit places and concepts, they don't need to change much, Destroy ending: everything a little bit shabby, plus no geth, Control Ending: everything is clean and orderly, you see the occasional Reaper patrolling the skies, Synthesis: same as Control, but everyone has green eyes, maybe make this ending have more advanced equipment available to you
in terms of the survival of the Geth and the effect the Reapers' survival could have on galactic defense, it could cause complications but if they make the game big enough and varied enough, I think they could pull it off
mostly due to the fact that if you think about it, it's just a few changes in dialogue and maybe a few aesthetic changes here and there, 90 percent of the content could remain relatively the same through all three endings, assuming that this is new, original content that doesn't necessarily rely on events from the previous games, like going to planets untouched in the first three games
and when they have to revisit places and concepts, they don't need to change much, Destroy ending: everything a little bit shabby, plus no geth, Control Ending: everything is clean and orderly, you see the occasional Reaper patrolling the skies, Synthesis: same as Control, but everyone has green eyes, maybe make this ending have more advanced equipment available to you
in terms of the survival of the Geth and the effect the Reapers' survival could have on galactic defense, it could cause complications but if they make the game big enough and varied enough, I think they could pull it off
This is one of the more logical options and something I told my friends when we were talking about ME after 3 came out.omicron1 said:
By setting a new Mass Effect in the far future they can easily remove some of the big parts of the original trilogy and start with a relatively clean slate. Major plot points can be fudged a bit as the fog of time has crept in, though this depends on how far into the future you go. By setting the game, say, two thousand years after ME3 one can make a lot of things blurry as hell. In fact, make the current Council ambitious and actively suppressing history for personal gain. That itself can be worked into a more local and relatable plot involving crime, corruption, etc. The player gets caught up in it all somehow thus having a more humble origin than Shepard who was a seasoned soldier at ME's start. With Council corruption some of the main antagonists could even be Specters. Nothing about saving the galaxy but stopping only a handful of people, thus making it a smaller threat in a way. I could go into more detail but I'll just leave it at this for now and its only one idea me and my mates have be bouncing around.
Again, setting it in the far future frees the designers from many constraints the original trilogy could bring. Hell it could even be a simple matter of relevance for the characters in game. "Oh, the Reapers. Yeah...that was what, 2000 years ago? Why bring that up?", etc.
Putting the world-changing concepts of synthesis and whether or not the Reapers are still around aside, they'd still have to account for the potential extinction of the Geth and Quarians, as well as the fallout with the Krogan depending on the Genophage outcomes.I Max95 said:
I'd rather Bioware start with a clean slate. Let them create something without having to accommodate for variables.
I don't really see them 'pulling a Nier' as you put it.
At most... I'd say they might pull a Legacy of Kain.
Let me explain...
In the original game, Blood Omen 1, back when they thought it was the only game they were going to make out of this, they gave the player one of two choices... Either A) sacrifice themselves to restore the world's balance, or B) Refuse the sacrifice and doom the world to an eternity of decay.
Ending B. turned out to be the canon ending... and they, arguably, retconned A so that it would have actually resulted in a far worse state of things than B. (don't worry, they fully justify it within the context of the series... did I mention that this is a series about time travel and vampires? And... proper vampires, by the way, not the Twilight imitation brand)
Point is, the Legacy of Kain series was a rare series in which the first game's 'bad ending' was canon, and they rolled with its consequences and spent the rest of the series having the two main characters at first trying to prevent it from happening (they quickly give up on that), and later trying to fix or at least mitigate the damage that ending B entailed. (Did I mention that Simon Templeman and the late Tony Jay are in this series?)
So, basically, what I see happening is that Bioware will pick one of ME3's endings as cannon and go with that, and explore its consequences. This approach would be much more manageable from a writer's perspective.
Either that... or they'll pull an Invisible War (the often maligned sequel to Deus Ex), which sort of had all of the original's endings happening at the same time... at least partially in each case. Not saying this approach won't work, but as Invisible War proved... its tricky to get it right without pissing off a lot of fans.
Ideally though?
I'd like to see a game that either takes place in the universe's far future or far past.
As in... either A) playing as the relatively distant inheritors of the universe... or a previous race that fell to the Reapers, like the Protheans or one even older that we haven't met yet.
EDIT:
Actually, THE IDEAL situation is if Bioware handed their universe over to someone else... like say... Obsidian, who have repeatedly proven they can write much deeper, more interesting stories than Bioware can. Bioware may good with dialogue... but when it comes to writing... Obsidian's better at everything else involved in telling a story.
At most... I'd say they might pull a Legacy of Kain.
Let me explain...
In the original game, Blood Omen 1, back when they thought it was the only game they were going to make out of this, they gave the player one of two choices... Either A) sacrifice themselves to restore the world's balance, or B) Refuse the sacrifice and doom the world to an eternity of decay.
Ending B. turned out to be the canon ending... and they, arguably, retconned A so that it would have actually resulted in a far worse state of things than B. (don't worry, they fully justify it within the context of the series... did I mention that this is a series about time travel and vampires? And... proper vampires, by the way, not the Twilight imitation brand)
Point is, the Legacy of Kain series was a rare series in which the first game's 'bad ending' was canon, and they rolled with its consequences and spent the rest of the series having the two main characters at first trying to prevent it from happening (they quickly give up on that), and later trying to fix or at least mitigate the damage that ending B entailed. (Did I mention that Simon Templeman and the late Tony Jay are in this series?)
So, basically, what I see happening is that Bioware will pick one of ME3's endings as cannon and go with that, and explore its consequences. This approach would be much more manageable from a writer's perspective.
Either that... or they'll pull an Invisible War (the often maligned sequel to Deus Ex), which sort of had all of the original's endings happening at the same time... at least partially in each case. Not saying this approach won't work, but as Invisible War proved... its tricky to get it right without pissing off a lot of fans.
Ideally though?
I'd like to see a game that either takes place in the universe's far future or far past.
As in... either A) playing as the relatively distant inheritors of the universe... or a previous race that fell to the Reapers, like the Protheans or one even older that we haven't met yet.
EDIT:
Actually, THE IDEAL situation is if Bioware handed their universe over to someone else... like say... Obsidian, who have repeatedly proven they can write much deeper, more interesting stories than Bioware can. Bioware may good with dialogue... but when it comes to writing... Obsidian's better at everything else involved in telling a story.
No.
EA isn't that smart to have this as it's original plan. The next ME will be set in the past, or ignore the ending cluster-fuck.
EA isn't that smart to have this as it's original plan. The next ME will be set in the past, or ignore the ending cluster-fuck.
And even that is ignoring the fact that in synthesis and control the reapers share all the knowledge of the races that lived before them (rewatching all of them it turns out this is not explicitly stated in control, but I have no reason to not believe Space Jesus Shepard would share the knowledge), causing a cultural and scientific Renaissance of unimaginable size. There is no way to move forward in Mass Effect other than resorting to head cannon.Mikejames said:
yeah, but those variables are exactly what everyone is so upset about, ask a begrudged Mass Effect fan one thing they hated about the ending, and often they will say that their "choices didn't matter" making an entire game centered around exploring the galaxy crafted by Shepard's decisions would fix that problem.Mikejames said:
I imagine the next game will be something like ME2, a crew of mostly new characters exploring the galaxy and facing a threat significantly smaller than usual, not involving destruction on a galactic scale. imagine if the Geth or the Quarians were already dead when ME2 comes around, enough would change for it to matter, but not enough to fundamentally alter the experience
and about the Reapers, I'll admit I don't actually know much about what exactly happened in the ending regarding that, but Bioware could spin that to their advantage and give an explaination that works for a new game, for example, the Reapers remain alive, but don't directly involve themselves in anything to make sure they don't start another war, only coming out to fight threats on a galactic scale
synthesis well, I think we're all a little confused by that one, the only thing that makes it different from the Control ending appears to be that everyone now has green eyes, and are smarter somehow