Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut is not victory.

[Something Amyss]

Mass Effect 3 doesn't need an Extended Cut.

It needs a Renegade Version [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highlander_II:_The_Quickening#Home_video_releases].

Highlander didn't go far enough. >.>

However, "Renegade" edition sounds cool in Mass Effect terms.

Good lord. This is why they never should have done anything. Do one thing and after that it is take take take. Seriously, the amount of effort you people have put into this could have been better spent solving something serious. At this point the rage is just making you all look retarded.

Are you seriously arguing a slippery slope?

 

[Something Amyss]

Yes it's not really helping the credibility of those campaigning against the ending when the majority of people talk about how there's not enough closure, or that the endings are too bleak. It was a literary disaster is more like it. And that hasn't been brought up nearly enough.

HAH! The captcha says: Tight lipped.

Except most people didn't complain that the eneding was bleak, they did one of the other two things, including the claim you say wasn't made enough.

It's the "you're entitled" group that makes most of the claims that people want a happier ending.

Most people want what was promised, and ending that makes sense, or closure. These are FAR more common complaints.

It's clear we're not going to see 1 and 2 here, and even 3 is kind of shaky. We'll have to wait and see if this properly closes everything up; they forgot about everything once, and I have a hard time they're going to be able to explain space magic, discontinuity, and the sudden development of transporter technology and maintain the ending (which they've stated). So I doubt any of the real claims are going to be addressed. And I know the "happy ending" strawman will not be addressed.

 

[daveman247]

Are you seriously arguing a slippery slope?

I dont see whats so slippery about it. Just my take.

At this point i just want the subject to die in a hole.

 

[Thammuz]

What did you expect? Honestly.

They would've lost their face completely if they actually knuckled under and changed the ending outright, they were never even thinking to do that.

Best we could've hoped for was a last renegade/paragon option to let the battle make its course, but everything else was, CLEARLY, going to stay.

Plotholes included.

I'm not happy with this, but then again what were they supposed to do? If they did cave, the rest of the industry's foot would've lodged itself so far up their collective ass they would've felt the heel rubbing the back of their throat. It was the only logical outcome. Honestly ,at least we will get a semi-decent ending cinematic. And i doubt anyone will seriously consider buying any DLC to further enrich the experience leading up to the shitty ending nobody likes, so the market has spoken on that.

Let's just hope Bioware employees start running and creating new companies soon, so EA will only have a meaningless brand name in their hands, for them to completely run into the ground.

And on the subject of indoctrination theory, I want to get something off my chest:

You people sound like those FF8 fans that couldn't accept that, yeah, final fantasy often makes no sense, and came up with that pipedream of an explanation about how Squall clearly dies during the assassination attempt and the rest of the plot if actually just him delirious in the moments before his death. That is retarded, and so is indoctrination theory.

"But it is consistent and it would explain the plotholes and blahblahblah!" You know what also explains all of those? Stupidity. Kerpyshyn was booted off the project, he was the only one with a shred of an idea on how to end the series, Hudson decided he was going to make his masterpiece and fuck what anyone else thought and voilà, the perfect storm of stupid. Humans are hardwired to see patterns, regardless of there actually being patterns to see.

I understand that it is more comfortable an idea, dealing with a brilliant trickster rather than an honest fool, but NOBODY woul go to those lenghts to fuck with the public, especially when they've got that big a shitstorm on their hands.

And even if it turns out that indoctrination theory is right, i will bet my ass and that of anyone who happens to be in the same room as me at the time the DLC comes out that they adopted it after you people came up with it. Which they will not do, because it's even worse than Shamalayan's shitty twist endings.

They made a shitty ending because they couldn't be arsed to do a proper one. There is no great plan. Deal with it.

 

[Shadowkire]

This whole thing says more about the fans of the series than the company that made it. We saw this occur earlier in the year when the Mass Effect book was released and there was a petition to change various lore issues that were discovered.

Contributing to fandom does not inherently provide the consumer with creative rights to a given product. This is especially true of "art forms" which, I think, most Mass Effect fans would argue the video game is aspiring towards. Consumerism simply provides the ability to consume the product.

If you don't like the product, the only recourse you have is to ask for a refund.

This basic fact is altogether missing in the hive-mind that encapsulates the Mass Effect fan base.

Or maybe the fans hadn't given up on BioWare just yet and were saying "We don't like what you gave us for the amount we spent on it, we would appreciate it if changes were made to make things better."

One thing you anti-fan whiners always miss is that if most of the fans get refund/stop buying BioWare games BW will go out of business. Then not only will we have a bad game and maybe missed out on a few good games but we would lose one of the few RPG developers in the market. The fans were trying to create a situation where everyone wins, instead of your crap solution of everyone losing.

 

[fozzy360]

Oh look, more whining about Mass Effect 3's ending.
Can't you guys just get the fuck over it already? You didn't like the ending to a game, that's unfortunate. Now move on with your lives. If trying to get the ending of a game change seriously means that much to you. You need to get your priorities straight and ***** about something that matters.

Like bitching about people bitching about Mass Effect 3. If you don't like a thread/topic, stay the hell out of it and go donate money for some starving childeren.

Stating how pathetic the fans are about the ending isn't the same as nonstop bitching about how I didn't like the enidng of a game on a forum, and demanding DLC to fix that.

So you are calling me and thousands of others pathetic for wanting to have something changed? You are such a condescending prick. Do you also go and insult other people at rallies/protests? Even though the Mass Effect movement has a few unreasonable nutters (which movement doesn't), there are plenty of legitimate grievances and protesting is the best way to air those grievances.

Again, if you don't like these kind of things, go and play Mass Effect 3, enjoy it and leave the nay-saying to the nay-sayers.

I never stated that you, specifically are pathetic. But this entire ME3 ending outrage is pathetic.

If it bothers you so much, then why keep replying? Why do you continue to find yourself in these discussions to tell people off about something they've invested themselves in? Aren't you wasting your own energies to find these threads and let your mind be heard while knowing that anything you say isn't going to matter to the people you're trying to antagonize? Telling people to move on when you refuse to move on yourself from this whole thing is so damn hypocritical. Why don't you get over it?

OT: No, this isn't a victory. At least, not by the sound of it. It seems more like a move to placate the fans than actually going back and examining why it is that the ending is so damn bad. At this point, I just don't care any more. This whole thing just rubbed me the wrong way, and now, I simply do not care about the franchise (outside of ME1) or Bioware. There's plenty of other games coming out that seem much more interesting, and I'd rather just get excited about those. I do still hope, however, that Bioware can still fix both the game and the trust they once had with the fanbase, but I'm not holding my breath.

 

[DSK-]

Pretty much my response when I read the press release.

 

[Shadowkire]

Somehow the relay network can be rebuilt in some endings - whilst to rebuild it you would have to go to the locations of each Relay, which would take over 20 years to do.
Somehow the Normandy crew manages to find civilization.
Somehow nobody starves to death.
I'm just... Eh. I don't see them doing this without space magic, or without having the epilogue a significant amount of time later.

Nobody starves to death because things aren't nearly as bleak for the super fleet as people think:
Unless the Quarians lost most of their liveships(garden ships) they can feed themselves. I don't think Earth's farmland is in that bad of shape because the Reapers focused mostly on population centers. The Quarians are really really good at sustaining a large population without a planet, so they can help everyone else.

The Normandy crew doesn't have to look for civilization. The Normandy was making a relay jump and then crashed on a world that humans can live on, chances are there is a colony on that planet.

Considering most systems that had relays or need relays are inhabited nobody has to spend 20 years going anywhere. As for how they do it: remember the communication system the Alliance put into the SR2 that allowed Shepard to communicate with anyone in the galaxy in realtime? I think they can make another.

 

[Shadowkire]

Oooooh, okay. I missed the point then. You know, considering how Bioware has shown how they can change certain aspects of the game depending on choices you made, I wonder how difficult it would be for them to change lots of minor details(ie small parts of conversations) in a sequel to support the ending you chose to explain the overarching "Reapers are gone" theme.

I suspect they will take a page out of their playbook, either the KotOR 2 page or the ME3 page:

KotOR 2: At some point early in the game someone ends up talking about that time the Reapers nearly killed everyone and you end up 'picking' your chosen ending in a conversation.

ME3: Instead of going with any possible outcome, like Earth being destroyed, they decide Earth survives and blah blah blah.

 

[Animyr]

If you ask me, the ME3 ending is flawed at a fundamental level and additional exposition and elaboration could very well make things worse.

We'll wait and see, but trying to work around the ending is just shooting yourself in the foot IMO. There are too many basic things wrong with it besides the plot holes.

 

[Joccaren]

Nobody starves to death because things aren't nearly as bleak for the super fleet as people think:
Unless the Quarians lost most of their liveships(garden ships) they can feed themselves. I don't think Earth's farmland is in that bad of shape because the Reapers focused mostly on population centers. The Quarians are really really good at sustaining a large population without a planet, so they can help everyone else.

Codex states Quarian Liveships were left at Rannoch. Don't ask my why they jump in in the cutscene - I don't know. However, seeing the size of them, they are big, slow, easy targets for the Reapers. However, I am willing to grant Quarian/Turian non starvation. They are the two that will get out of this Ok on the food side.
Now: Asari. They can't eat Quarian/Turian food. Earth is quite literally in flames - entire continents are made of fire ATM [Check the cutscene - behind the Reaper fleet the entirety of I believe America is in flames. Maybe Euro-Africa]. Did the Reapers focus on population centres? Yes. Does that mean farmland survived? Not so much. A lot of potential farmland will have been developed into urban areas pre the invasion, and out of the rest of the planet - forests, jungles and other such areas would likely take up a reasonable amount of the undamaged land. Could Earth produce food? Maybe. Could it produce enough for the 300,000,000 humans on it, the remainder of the systems Alliance fleet, the Asari, the Salarians, the Batarians and the Krogan? I wouldn't hedge my bets on it.

The Normandy crew doesn't have to look for civilization. The Normandy was making a relay jump and then on a world that humans can live on, chances are there is a colony on that planet.

2 things.
1: Not in Relay Transit. Relay Transit is almost instantaneous, and the cutscene goes on far too long for that to happen. The effects around the ship also resemble FTL travel more than Relay travel.
2: Chances are, there isn't a colony on that planet. Many places - like Virmire - would have been left alone due to political turmoil, and many others still wouldn't have been found. Statistically speaking less than 1% of the Galaxy has been explored in ME. The odds are vastly in favour of them landing on an unknown world.

Considering most systems that had relays or need relays are inhabited nobody has to spend 20 years going anywhere. As for how they do it: remember the communication system the Alliance put into the SR2 that allowed Shepard to communicate with anyone in the galaxy in realtime? I think they can make another.

There are a few problems with this:
1. Quantum Entanglement doesn't work that way. Not only is it difficult to create and maintain an entangled pair, but how would you entangle two communicators on opposite ends of the Galaxy?
2. Who is going to be able to build more relays? You would need a ton of Eezo, a lot of knowledge that the galaxy doesn't have and then the other additional resources needed to build one as well. Odds are, ports that are abundant with Eezo AND have good manufacturing centres would be able to make more Relays. To get them to the other side of the galaxy though... problematic. That is a 20+ year journey.
3. Nowhere near most systems with Relays were inhabited. Hell, we hadn't even opened up most Relays. As said, 99% of the galaxy is unexplored. The council put limits on activating new Relays after finding the Rachni when they went round activating them all. Humans trying to reactivate a Relay led to the First Contact War. Now, most systems that would need a relay put in them would be inhabited - but a large number of them would not be self sustained. Many are either stations, industrial or mining colonies, or Residential colonies that rely on farming colonies for food. That food is now cut off. Yet more starving people, and dead, starved people can't rebuild a Relay.

 

[Kahunaburger]

On the other hand, moving on from Mass Effect 3 and donating to the Wasteland 2 kickstarter is victory.

 

[SajuukKhar]

On the other hand, moving on from Mass Effect 3 and donating to the Wasteland 2 kickstarter is victory.

Anything Chris Avellone works on is good.

However we must hope his presence doesn't make the game a buggy unplayable mess much like...... every game he has ever worked on ever.

He may not be the direct source but buggy games are drawn to him. It is the cancer that kills the good plots the games he works on have.

 

[Kahunaburger]

On the other hand, moving on from Mass Effect 3 and donating to the Wasteland 2 kickstarter is victory.

Anything Chris Avellone works on is good.

However we must hope his presence doesn't make the game a buggy unplayable mess much like...... every game he has ever worked on ever.

He may not be the direct source but buggy games are drawn to him. It is the cancer that kills the good plots the games he works on have.

To misquote Shigeru Miyamoto, a buggy game is eventually patched. A bad game is bad forever.

 

[SajuukKhar]

To misquote Shigeru Miyamoto, a buggy game is eventually patched. A bad game is bad forever.

If only New Vegas was patched to fix its bugs, or Alpha Protocol, or NWN2, or KOTOR 2.

But unfortunately they are still buggy messes that require fan patches to work even most of the time.

 

[distortedreality]

Deus Ex and it's diverse three endings begat Invisible War. It can be done, doesn't mean it will be good. I always thought that they would make more games in the Mass Effect universe but not directly relating to the trilogy.

Wait, you're kidding, right? Mass Effect 3's endings follow the same formula as Deus Ex. Choose Control, Integrate, or Destroy(A, B, or C), your previous choices don't matter for shit, enjoy a tiny chunk of unique cutscene that lasts less time than it takes me to piss(Bioware went the "extra mile" and padded each ending with a few more minutes of copy/paste since theirs was even shorter) and then sit back and bask in the glorious rushed bullshit you were just handed because the developer ran out of time and/or money. The only reason Deus Ex gets away with this, and continues to get away with this, is because it was sadly the best we had at the time.

My point was merely that three different endings do not prevent a "sequel" being made. Deus Ex had three "canon" endings, all three were neutered and crammed into the sequel's "canon". They could do the same to Mass Effect. (Or maybe not, I'm speculating because I haven't played ME3)

Oooooh, okay. I missed the point then. You know, considering how Bioware has shown how they can change certain aspects of the game depending on choices you made, I wonder how difficult it would be for them to change lots of minor details(ie small parts of conversations) in a sequel to support the ending you chose to explain the overarching "Reapers are gone" theme.

And speaking of Deus EX,didn't the prequel have a better ending?

Nooooooooo.

HR was worse regarding endings than the original.

OT - what sucks about all this the most is that this forum is probably going to continue along in this vein until well after the DLC is released.

 

[Kahunaburger]

To misquote Shigeru Miyamoto, a buggy game is eventually patched. A bad game is bad forever.

If only New Vegas was patched to fix its bugs, or Alpha Protocol, or NWN2, or KOTOR 2.

But unfortunately they are still buggy messes that require fan patches to work even most of the time.

And the fan patches solve the remaining problems that most people never encounter anyway. Game is then even more fun to play. See also: Elder Scrolls, The.

 

[Kingjackl]

Why does it have to be about 'victory'? The 'retake Mass Effect' business isn't a war, it's a very loud, very organised temper tantrum. Bioware had NO obligation to address any of these complaints, and yet they were still good enough to come out with free-of-charge DLC that attempts to address the fans complaints without completely changing the ending, which would have been expensive, time-consuming and impractical. The biggest problem with the ME3 endings was that they were rushed and badly presented, and Bioware have made it clear those are the issues they're willing to fix. Which is really more than any of the screaming howler monkeys calling themselves Mass Effect fans deserve.

 

[SajuukKhar]

And the fan patches solve the remaining problems that most people never encounter anyway. Game is then even more fun to play. See also: Elder Scrolls, The.

Well Bethesda is actually attempting to fix Skyrim, they have put out more bug fixing patches for it then they did Fallout 3, Oblivion AND Morrowind combined.

 

[Ihniwid]

This whole thing says more about the fans of the series than the company that made it. We saw this occur earlier in the year when the Mass Effect book was released and there was a petition to change various lore issues that were discovered.

Contributing to fandom does not inherently provide the consumer with creative rights to a given product. This is especially true of "art forms" which, I think, most Mass Effect fans would argue the video game is aspiring towards. Consumerism simply provides the ability to consume the product.

If you don't like the product, the only recourse you have is to ask for a refund.

This basic fact is altogether missing in the hive-mind that encapsulates the Mass Effect fan base.

Or maybe the fans hadn't given up on BioWare just yet and were saying "We don't like what you gave us for the amount we spent on it, we would appreciate it if changes were made to make things better."

One thing you anti-fan whiners always miss is that if most of the fans get refund/stop buying BioWare games BW will go out of business. Then not only will we have a bad game and maybe missed out on a few good games but we would lose one of the few RPG developers in the market. The fans were trying to create a situation where everyone wins, instead of your crap solution of everyone losing.

Well, I think my first question is what you meant by "anti-fan whiners." Do you mean an anti-fan who also whines, or an individual who is against fans who happen to whine?

But I digress... The way consumerism (and the overarching framework of capitalism) works is pretty simple. If the fans stopped purchasing products from Bioware on the basis that the company did not take the story line or plot elements seriously enough, then yes, Bioware "could potentially" go out of business. From what I understand, however, the game sold very well, even by modest estimates of gross sales to date. So... there's that.

Your, umm, conclusion that the fans are trying to save Bioware from some sort of possible corruption or bankruptcy does not make any sense. The fans simply want something they did not get. It's a purely selfish request and has nothing to do with saving Bioware from financial or public ruin.