Bioware: The most epic trolls since Andy Kaufman.Valok said:
Continuing their legacy of questions without answers.Aircross said:
Mass Effect 3 Director Addresses Ending Controversy
- Thread starter Earnest Cavalli
- Start date
Does Bioware not get why people are upset? It's not because Shepard died or sacrificed him/herself; it's because the ending made no sense, came out of left field and offers no closure or any sign that Shepard's sacrifice meant anything beyond that puking Stargazer nonsense that talked about characters we don't know or care about.
To Hudson,
I understand completely on what your intentions were with the ending, you just failed at even meeting those intentions. I have no problems with killing off Sheppard, however it was the incredibly lack of thought put into the final three choices.
You can take over the reapers
Kill all Synthetics (EDI, and Geth included)
Or take freewill away from EVERYONE and merge Biological and Synthetics.
So where is the morally good choice? When your choices are God like power, Commit mass Genocide, or play evil God and subvert everyone's freewill in merging life? None of them are bittersweet, it isn't even bitter, its down right evil. You want everyone to live with their decisions yet it doesn't matter how good or bad your were, there is no way future generations will look at what you did as a good thing calling you "The Shepard"
Failing to understand these things and saying that you are listening to the players isn't the problem. What you need to do is explain yourself. The ending was so detached to how I played my Shepard, you didn't leave anything that was in character. Example, I brought peace to the Geth and the Quarians after 300 years of war through painful negotiations to make sure all secured their freewill their Soul, but you want me to forsake this? By killing the Geth and proving the Reapers right, or after all that work taking away the freewill of not just the Geth and the Quarians, but of everyone and merging them?!
You can't honestly believe that the Protheans built a machine that would allow them to merge with Synthetics! At what point did you think this was a good idea? I can see the Promethean killing all Synthetics, they obviously hated them, but what the hell is with the other one? Then again their empire was dying they needed this weapon ASAP I bet it wouldn't of taken as long if the Protheans didn't dick around making it multi-fuctionable. All they neded was a ,Our world is ending here is the "PUSH TO KILL REAPERS NOW BUTTON!"
In the end you just didn't explain anything to justify your choices. What people need you to do is justify yourself, not pussyfoot around the issue. Why were these 3 choices made? This isn't rocket science, and because you made these choices, you are now suffering for your actions, and instead of manning up like you ask us to do with Shepard, you are sitting there staring at the options and only pressing the "Avoid" button that will not continue on with the story.
All I ask is for Bioware and you Mr. Hudson to explain why you made these choices, how do you justify them making any sense, How is ANY OF THIS allowing a player to stay in character in making these 3 very evil actions.
From,
Common Sense
I understand completely on what your intentions were with the ending, you just failed at even meeting those intentions. I have no problems with killing off Sheppard, however it was the incredibly lack of thought put into the final three choices.
You can take over the reapers
Kill all Synthetics (EDI, and Geth included)
Or take freewill away from EVERYONE and merge Biological and Synthetics.
So where is the morally good choice? When your choices are God like power, Commit mass Genocide, or play evil God and subvert everyone's freewill in merging life? None of them are bittersweet, it isn't even bitter, its down right evil. You want everyone to live with their decisions yet it doesn't matter how good or bad your were, there is no way future generations will look at what you did as a good thing calling you "The Shepard"
Failing to understand these things and saying that you are listening to the players isn't the problem. What you need to do is explain yourself. The ending was so detached to how I played my Shepard, you didn't leave anything that was in character. Example, I brought peace to the Geth and the Quarians after 300 years of war through painful negotiations to make sure all secured their freewill their Soul, but you want me to forsake this? By killing the Geth and proving the Reapers right, or after all that work taking away the freewill of not just the Geth and the Quarians, but of everyone and merging them?!
You can't honestly believe that the Protheans built a machine that would allow them to merge with Synthetics! At what point did you think this was a good idea? I can see the Promethean killing all Synthetics, they obviously hated them, but what the hell is with the other one? Then again their empire was dying they needed this weapon ASAP I bet it wouldn't of taken as long if the Protheans didn't dick around making it multi-fuctionable. All they neded was a ,Our world is ending here is the "PUSH TO KILL REAPERS NOW BUTTON!"
In the end you just didn't explain anything to justify your choices. What people need you to do is justify yourself, not pussyfoot around the issue. Why were these 3 choices made? This isn't rocket science, and because you made these choices, you are now suffering for your actions, and instead of manning up like you ask us to do with Shepard, you are sitting there staring at the options and only pressing the "Avoid" button that will not continue on with the story.
All I ask is for Bioware and you Mr. Hudson to explain why you made these choices, how do you justify them making any sense, How is ANY OF THIS allowing a player to stay in character in making these 3 very evil actions.
From,
Common Sense
To me it wasn't that it was a bitter sweet ending that bothered me, its the fact that it made no sense, had little to no connection with what happened in the past games and was generally unfullfilling.
An ending that ended with the relays destroyed wouldn't bother me if it made sense. Hell, considering how bad things were a bittersweet, self sacrificing half win was what I expected. But I expected something like the end of the second game; a hard fought, barely won war for survival with terrible consequences. Not...a colored explosion of plot convenience that solves everything with zero effort. IN FACT https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QT4IUepvrU1pfv_B95oQj0H84DlCTUmzQ_uQh1voTUs/preview?pli=1&sle=true goes into insane detail about how literally none of this makes any sense.
An ending that ended with the relays destroyed wouldn't bother me if it made sense. Hell, considering how bad things were a bittersweet, self sacrificing half win was what I expected. But I expected something like the end of the second game; a hard fought, barely won war for survival with terrible consequences. Not...a colored explosion of plot convenience that solves everything with zero effort. IN FACT https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QT4IUepvrU1pfv_B95oQj0H84DlCTUmzQ_uQh1voTUs/preview?pli=1&sle=true goes into insane detail about how literally none of this makes any sense.
Okay, how about this. Some asshole leaked the true ending earlier, the one about the expansion of dark energy. Bioware saw this and went, "Shit, what do we do now? Our totally awesome ending is now screwed!" This caused them to rush a crappy ending that they hoped would cause controversy in order to boost sales, giving them time to actually finish making the plot. Personally, I don't like the ending, I don't hate it, but Bioware is too good to end one of their best game series like this. I believe they're going to fix it.
In response to the article "being heard" apparently isn't enough seeing as the lack of solid committment to fix things on part of Bioware shows. Right now they seem to be making excuses, trying to hide behind the critical response they received from professional review sources. Without commenting with the integrity of the entire review system, you will notice that few if any of those reviews said anything about the ending at all, and with something like this it should have figured into the analysis. Perhaps the reviewers were "too busy to play the entire game" as many will point out frequently, or maybe it's a matter of professional reviews being in many (but not all) cases bought and paid for.
I notice Bioware doesn't comment on how the game was getting 0 reviews on the day of release after leaks. A lot of people were groaning about review bombing, but now that we see this ending, it's not easy to just dismiss that as not being valid...
Basically, this is a time for commitment, not for a bit of evasive "you have been heard" PR.
If Bioware is going to fix I think what we need... and what they need as well even if they might not realize it, is a near-immediate annoucement that this ending is not going to stand and it will be replaced.
The reason why Bioware needs this, and not just angry fans, is that in a few months tops people are going to be done with Mass Effect 3. We've got games coming up in the next few months like "Diablo 3" that carry a HUGE fan base which overlaps with that of ME3, as well the new "Secret World" MMO which will at least be looked at for a month or two before we know if it will live or die (while interesting, I have not seen anything that convinces me it will be the exception to the short MMO lifecycle). The bottom line is that if Bioware procrastinates over the desician people will have moved on from ME3 even if they decide to fix it. While things will seem to die down, when the next big Bioware game comes out people will be looking at it and remembering the two big misses that were "Dragon Age 2" and ME3, and at this point it is likely to hurt them. The annoucement now will at least get people's attention and eyes on the project, and people preparing to put time aside for it, rather than needing to drop everything to see the "fix" for a game a company danced around dismissively for months.
I'll also be painfully blunt, if Bioware wants to release more ME3 DLC, I'm not buying any of it until they fix these endings as DLC or otherwise. I'm not kidding either, I was seriously slotted off with DA2 and how it turned out and I didn't buy the expansions for it as a result (and I'm guessing others did not as well, given the cancellation of the most recent expansion). I did however support "Origins" and ME2 by investing in DLC. If this last "Dragon Age 2" expansion was supposed to be an "after the ending" piece like "Awakenings" too little too late, the way "Dragon Age 2" turned out (and part of it was the ending) left me so irked that I didn't care about the other stuff, if the intent was to fix or expand on the ending "ie what happens after the game ends", that should have been done first if Bioware wanted me to buy anything.
I notice Bioware doesn't comment on how the game was getting 0 reviews on the day of release after leaks. A lot of people were groaning about review bombing, but now that we see this ending, it's not easy to just dismiss that as not being valid...
Basically, this is a time for commitment, not for a bit of evasive "you have been heard" PR.
If Bioware is going to fix I think what we need... and what they need as well even if they might not realize it, is a near-immediate annoucement that this ending is not going to stand and it will be replaced.
The reason why Bioware needs this, and not just angry fans, is that in a few months tops people are going to be done with Mass Effect 3. We've got games coming up in the next few months like "Diablo 3" that carry a HUGE fan base which overlaps with that of ME3, as well the new "Secret World" MMO which will at least be looked at for a month or two before we know if it will live or die (while interesting, I have not seen anything that convinces me it will be the exception to the short MMO lifecycle). The bottom line is that if Bioware procrastinates over the desician people will have moved on from ME3 even if they decide to fix it. While things will seem to die down, when the next big Bioware game comes out people will be looking at it and remembering the two big misses that were "Dragon Age 2" and ME3, and at this point it is likely to hurt them. The annoucement now will at least get people's attention and eyes on the project, and people preparing to put time aside for it, rather than needing to drop everything to see the "fix" for a game a company danced around dismissively for months.
I'll also be painfully blunt, if Bioware wants to release more ME3 DLC, I'm not buying any of it until they fix these endings as DLC or otherwise. I'm not kidding either, I was seriously slotted off with DA2 and how it turned out and I didn't buy the expansions for it as a result (and I'm guessing others did not as well, given the cancellation of the most recent expansion). I did however support "Origins" and ME2 by investing in DLC. If this last "Dragon Age 2" expansion was supposed to be an "after the ending" piece like "Awakenings" too little too late, the way "Dragon Age 2" turned out (and part of it was the ending) left me so irked that I didn't care about the other stuff, if the intent was to fix or expand on the ending "ie what happens after the game ends", that should have been done first if Bioware wanted me to buy anything.
mild spoilers belowjamjar said:
Well, not really, since there really haven't been many consequences of his choices which has been an issue since ME1 where seemingly big desicians like letting the council live or die wound up having minimal effect on how things played out. Heck, you didn't even get to really decide who was going to represent Earth since Udina winds up taking over even if you specifically decided to NOT put him in charge... which kind of burns given what happens in ME3.
In the end all your choices came down to influacing your War Assets, if you did something in one of the previous games you could get a few more points added to your War Asset totals which gave you a better chance of being able to get the "best" turn out with the "Destroy All Reapers" option paired with a surviving Shepard. There was little more to it than that. Irregardless of what you decided you wind up in the same place, faced with the three options in the "Ending O' Tron" which are then given degrees by your Assets.
Decided to save the Rachni in ME1? That pretty much enables you to score an extra 100 War Asset points in ME3, other than that it has no real effect on the eventual ending.
To be fair, this game was intended to be a spiritual successor to "Knight Of The Old Republic" it's basically like a Star Wars game, but set in a differant universe. It's supposed to more or less be high fantasy, featuring bigger than life heroes in a space enviroment. An "artsy" ending doesn't work with that, it's not that kind of a game, and was never intended to be, this isn't "2001, a Space Odyssey" or it's sequel. In the end this type of a game should have ended with the final show down between our bigger than life hero (Shepard, who makes Horatio Hornblower and James T. Kirk together seem humble in their accomplishments at this point) and his enemies (especially Harbinger) which ends with the salvation of the universe. Campy it is, but that's the kind of game it was supposed to be. The ending they picked would have worked better in a differant kind of game/storyline.
Now before you (or anyone) jumps on the comparison, Bioware itself mentioned this series as a spiritual successor to KotOR, and if you followed the original "Mass Effect" there was a lot of comparisons between it and Star Wars for that reason. Even Yahtzee made jokes about this, accidently calling SPECTRE agents Jedi for example as both were basically enforcers for a galactic governing body that operated outside of normal channels (and a lot of parallels were drawn by people between a lot of things, but always good naturedly because Bioware admitted what they were doing pretty much from the very beginning).
The issue isn't that the ending is too deep, or goes over anyone's head, it's a matter of the ending just not working for this game, it's universe, and this story. Pretty much everyone understood the ending, heck if anything people read too deeply into it rather than "missing the point", people are upset because it does not work as the finale for this trilogy.
it's nice to know that spoilers are now legit news on certifiable cites. Ranting aside I haven't played mass-effect since the first game, money for me really tight at this point in time so this is luxury I will have to do with out until I get job.
Onto the game it it's self I have heard that it's had a deus ex machina ending with cop-outs, re-sets or whatever. Here is the thing as fellow writer or at least novice one, get the hell over it. The people that wrote the story for this game wrote for themselves to share a story with their fans, not the other way around.
The creators are not here to appease, give you hand-*** or pleasure you. Yes I have been pi**ed off at game endings before but at least the creators did what they wanted to do and suffered who back-lash like this. I remember the huge amount of butt-hurt over the mc dying in fallout 3 but it fit in with the story.
So to make it up to the fans Bethesda released a DLC to appease the fans so they got their happy ending which was fine but not necessary in anyway. Most of you need to learn about bitter sweet endings or sad endings do yourself a favor by watching more Asian drama or media. Hell end of evangelion is perfect example that life isn't always fair
Onto the game it it's self I have heard that it's had a deus ex machina ending with cop-outs, re-sets or whatever. Here is the thing as fellow writer or at least novice one, get the hell over it. The people that wrote the story for this game wrote for themselves to share a story with their fans, not the other way around.
The creators are not here to appease, give you hand-*** or pleasure you. Yes I have been pi**ed off at game endings before but at least the creators did what they wanted to do and suffered who back-lash like this. I remember the huge amount of butt-hurt over the mc dying in fallout 3 but it fit in with the story.
So to make it up to the fans Bethesda released a DLC to appease the fans so they got their happy ending which was fine but not necessary in anyway. Most of you need to learn about bitter sweet endings or sad endings do yourself a favor by watching more Asian drama or media. Hell end of evangelion is perfect example that life isn't always fair
To all you people whining because you were "promised" better for the ending:
Whining about being promised that I could be the black team instead of the red in checkers didn't make my sister let me be the black team when I was a kid.
Whining about being promised a chocolate cake instead of a marble cake for my tenth birthday didn't end with my dad running out for a new cake.
Whining about being promised that a college degree would make finding a job easier didn't make businesses start knocking down my door and offering me any kind of job.
Life is full of disappointments and broken promises. Sit back and wait for the DLC. Unless you're one of those people who don't think you should have to pay for the hard work that goes in to that stuff, in which case, sit back and wait for the next game that doesn't 100% live up to the hype to come out.
Honestly, did you expect anyone involved in this game, whose jobs depend on selling a whole crap ton of copies, to say "Yeah, the game's gonna rock pretty hard, but we kinda dropped the ball on the ending..." Part of PR is lying. You act like your product is the greatest product ever released. It was like that back when swindlers were selling snake oil out of a horse drawn carriage, and it's still like that for every sports team in existence at the start of a new season.
In short: Grow up. That is all.
EDIT: Clearly I need to stop posting on the boards that late. A response is in the works that I'll put in a different post, so if you're planning on ripping me a new one based on this, take a look on down the line for that first.
Whining about being promised that I could be the black team instead of the red in checkers didn't make my sister let me be the black team when I was a kid.
Whining about being promised a chocolate cake instead of a marble cake for my tenth birthday didn't end with my dad running out for a new cake.
Whining about being promised that a college degree would make finding a job easier didn't make businesses start knocking down my door and offering me any kind of job.
Life is full of disappointments and broken promises. Sit back and wait for the DLC. Unless you're one of those people who don't think you should have to pay for the hard work that goes in to that stuff, in which case, sit back and wait for the next game that doesn't 100% live up to the hype to come out.
Honestly, did you expect anyone involved in this game, whose jobs depend on selling a whole crap ton of copies, to say "Yeah, the game's gonna rock pretty hard, but we kinda dropped the ball on the ending..." Part of PR is lying. You act like your product is the greatest product ever released. It was like that back when swindlers were selling snake oil out of a horse drawn carriage, and it's still like that for every sports team in existence at the start of a new season.
In short: Grow up. That is all.
EDIT: Clearly I need to stop posting on the boards that late. A response is in the works that I'll put in a different post, so if you're planning on ripping me a new one based on this, take a look on down the line for that first.
You know what would really be nice, for starters? A statement that went like "Guys, we screwed up. We believed the ending we delivered was the best possible way to bring the trilogy to a closure. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Now that we know the vast majority of you felt disappointed about the ending, we'll sit down, crunch our numbers and get back to you in a few to see what we can do about this."
And stop trying to justify the ending, there's no way I believe this all played out "as intended".
And stop trying to justify the ending, there's no way I believe this all played out "as intended".
That's a brilliant attitude there, buddy. Complaining about other people complaining, and finishing off with a nice ironic "Grow up". Maybe you should take your own advice... Keep living the dream mate, you're an inspiration to us all!freakydan said:
On-topic; Hudson didn't "address" the ending controversy. He completely goddamn sidestepped it. The title of this article should be "Mass Effect 3 Director completely sidesteps ending controversy with bullshit PR-speak".
This.Zeel said:
Peter Molyneux must have slipped something in Casey Hudson's morning coffee, because the man is just as immature as that child patronizing you with the three identical-choice endings.
Can I just go on record as to say I don't think the endings need to be changed I just think maybe you could add more of an actual epilogue to them. My whole issue with the endings is simply the lack of closure. I don't think it'd be much to ask if you just threw up some image with some text explaining what happened to various characters, what the state of the galaxy would be, how the universe is rebuilding? Maybe throw in some narration if you want.
Just there were so many questions left unanswered and when completing an entire story arc I think it's fair to expect some much desired answers to lay everything to rest.
Just there were so many questions left unanswered and when completing an entire story arc I think it's fair to expect some much desired answers to lay everything to rest.
That's possibly the worst method of storytelling I've ever heard. It amounts to "A bunch of big things happen, and then the ending happens completely independently of those things."Casey Hudson said:
Look at how ME2's endgame worked out: the actions you made throughout the game, practically from start to finish, determine whether or not Shepard and company make it out alive. Characters whose loyalty you didn't earn might not die, but other people whose loyalty you did earn might suffer as a consequence. Essentially, the foresight you put into the mission actually affected the mission. You either planned it well and got to watch (and play) a brilliant plan going off without a hitch, or you missed key details and people died for it.
But this wasn't a bittersweet ending: it was the mother of all implied holocausts with a side order of plot holes.Casey Hudson said:
And even then, what's the point of forcing players to make "agonizing decisions" if it's all just going to accumulate in one massive agonizing decision? All the sacrifices, sadistic choices, and moral dilemmas were supposed to make the ultimate resolution (if players earned it) that much more satisfying. As it stands, some of the most loved figures in the series died so that Shepard could, no matter what ending is picked, destroy the universe as we know it.
So, the ME3 endgame...spoilers, obviously:Casey Hudson said:
Shepard is dead. Pretty much no matter what, unless you opt for the 'genocide of the machines' ending. The most charismatic man in the galaxy, who made water run uphill, is dead, and in doing so, he made the Reapers go away and blew up the mass relays.
The mass relays exploded...each of which presumably detonated with the same force as the one that was just broken in Arrival, which looked like a sun going supernova. So let's be conservative and guess that a few billion died there.
Wrex and a few million krogan are stranded in Sol. The best future for Tuchanka is cut off from the bulk of the krogan race, who likely aren't bound by the genophage any more. On the bright side, maybe they won't create another nuclear winter with all the WMDs they canonically started to break out when the Reapers invaded, at least now that they've awakened a nightmarish death-worm big enough to crush a Reaper to death.
Victus and a few million turians are also stranded in Sol. That's basically the government and military of Palaven, cut off from Palaven. They share a problem with...
Tali and a few million quarians are also stranded in Sol. Like the turians, they don't eat the same food that humans and krogan do. In fact, human food is essentially poison to them. So they're stranded like everyone else, except everything they didn't bring along themselves will be about as safe to ingest as Draino. And Tali will presumably die, never having done more than setting foot on her homeworld.
A few million geth are around, too, and Rannoch is probably the best-off world thus far. But simultaneously, they'll be coping with the new development that is complete sentience on an individual basis, and with the inevitable issues that come from being a purely synthetic race in an overpopulated solar system alongside millions of organics who remember them as the ones who frequently helped the Reapers a few years back.
The asari...well, their world is screwed already. And now it's faced with the biggest humanitarian crisis in galactic history, and nobody will be there to help them.
The crew of the Normandy is stranded on a lush jungle planet with no way of getting off world. And in sci-fi, 'lush jungle planet' is just a way of making a deathworld into a viable tourist attraction. I expected that if they don't starve to death within a few months, they'll be devoured by thresher maws. Because there are always thresher maws.
Oh, and virtually everyone has Reaper corpses everywhere, and if canon has taught us anything, it's that dead Reaper are more dangerous that live Reapers, because creeping insanity is a lot harder to detect than screaming laser death.
I haven't really finished Mass Effect 3 so I haven't seen the famous ending, but dude, if you made a decision, have the integrity to stick to it. I'll have to see the ending before confirming this, but basically... I think you have to be a pussy to change your work based on fan reaction!