wintercoat said:
The pathetic nature of these rehashed arguments is actually more funny to me than the comic.
[sub][sub]Moo! [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9iIgQN5uZE][/sub][/sub]
Mass Effect 3: The movement
- Thread starter The Wooster
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The pathetic nature of these rehashed arguments is actually more funny to me than the comic.
[sub][sub]Moo! [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9iIgQN5uZE][/sub][/sub]
You're making fun of Retake Mass Effect?!?! RRRRRAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!
Oh, wait, no. I have a sense of humor. Great comic, as per the usual.
Oh, wait, no. I have a sense of humor. Great comic, as per the usual.
Oh look. Another failed attempt at slandering gamers for being more critical than the gaming press.
I hope this is entirely fictional. If there really is a "Happy Ending for a Happy Ending" movement out there, I might have to give up gaming entirely.
I don't think that's what they mean. The endings boil down toBreakfastMan said:
"reapers go away" or "reapers combine with organics".
As a side note, who the hell thought boil down to, was a good phrase. Its habit for me to use it, but I don't get it.
Grey, the problem here is that most of the journalists involved in this tend to entirely overlook the issues involved when they take the "disagree" stance. I can't say that I've ever seen anyone in the media really address the issues of Bioware's promises and/or what was said in the interviews that were outed in their $3 ending app. For that matter those in the gaming media who do agree with "The Line" tend to overlook it as well. The basic perception being that this is so black and white given Bioware's own words that there is no valid position that can justify agreeing with what Bioware did here, though it's understandable that someone in the media who is already taking the other side can't exactly come out and say that a company being run by EA is a group of liars in no uncertain terms.
I know how it looks, but this issue involves so many fronts that it's crazy, it goes well beyond the ending itself, and into sub-issues like how the gaming media is generally dependant on money from the people it's supposed to be watchdogging.
Your a dedicated humourist for the most part, so you tend to get a pass, that reviewers don't, even when you take a "side" to be funny. Compared to say "Penny Arcade" who get a ton of fire nowadays because of things like PAX, which makes them a lot of money and generates a lot of prestige, and is largely dependant on the good will and support of the industry... something that taints them more when they take a side in defense of a company like EA.
I know how it looks, but this issue involves so many fronts that it's crazy, it goes well beyond the ending itself, and into sub-issues like how the gaming media is generally dependant on money from the people it's supposed to be watchdogging.
Your a dedicated humourist for the most part, so you tend to get a pass, that reviewers don't, even when you take a "side" to be funny. Compared to say "Penny Arcade" who get a ton of fire nowadays because of things like PAX, which makes them a lot of money and generates a lot of prestige, and is largely dependant on the good will and support of the industry... something that taints them more when they take a side in defense of a company like EA.
I don't get this movement. Why is this so important? I played all games, I got the same shitty, illogical ending with no closure, but I have much bigger problems than this, like the fact that my master's degree is less than useless, it's actually stopping me from getting a high school level job. So much money and so much labor went towards it and I'm worse off than before i went to the university.
P.S. I know what some people would say, I didn't get a useless degree like philosophy, I got a master's in Architecture. It was one of the best paid jobs with less qualified people than there were job openings when I started. Now you get less than minimal pay with no job security and no contract if you have a relative in the firm. I have no such relatives.
P.P.S. Anyway, the ending was shite, but even though I was so invested I'm not going to pay for cupcakes or some other bullshit, I'm just not going to buy any of their products. Bioware had one good thing- narrative, now they have nothing!
P.S. I know what some people would say, I didn't get a useless degree like philosophy, I got a master's in Architecture. It was one of the best paid jobs with less qualified people than there were job openings when I started. Now you get less than minimal pay with no job security and no contract if you have a relative in the firm. I have no such relatives.
P.P.S. Anyway, the ending was shite, but even though I was so invested I'm not going to pay for cupcakes or some other bullshit, I'm just not going to buy any of their products. Bioware had one good thing- narrative, now they have nothing!
Seems equally intellectually dishonest than calling everyone that disagrees with a game's ending "entitled", so I don't think you can cry foul hereGrey Carter said:
Yep, you're a typical defender of it. Indeed, George W. Bush'es "youre either with us, or with the terrorists" had more thought behind how the bioware crybabies made their point.
Quite simply, if you call people that disagree with a company "entitled", being accused of being viral marketing guys is pretty much what you deserve, considering "entitled" is pretty much a corporate strategy to downplay critics. If you copy that strategy and aren't paid for it, calling you being paid for it is actually thinking better of you than you are, because it's accusing you of doing it for a reason, not hzsr being stupid and just buying a rather transparent corporate PR move hook, line, and sinker.
Quite simply, nobody but very stupid people and PR departments of companies call critics "entitled". It doesn't matter what company it is, the moment "entitled" is brought out, you know someone is either being very stupid, has been bought, or both.
At this point I don't think anyone cares about the ending being changed or not anymore.
We just need to make it clear that the last 10-20 minutes of ME3 were poorly written and poorly implemented (c'mon, you finish an action game based on player decisions with like a 5 minute WALK with no player interaction???), and whoever was in charge of that should feel really bad for failing as a storyteller and an artist.
The rest of the game is good though, so people in charge of doing it should be proud of themselves.
And I am sure that these were separate teams, given the scale of ME3 production.
We just need to make it clear that the last 10-20 minutes of ME3 were poorly written and poorly implemented (c'mon, you finish an action game based on player decisions with like a 5 minute WALK with no player interaction???), and whoever was in charge of that should feel really bad for failing as a storyteller and an artist.
The rest of the game is good though, so people in charge of doing it should be proud of themselves.
And I am sure that these were separate teams, given the scale of ME3 production.
The whole ME3 debacle has boiled down to circle-jerking fans spouting bile against circle-jerking journalists that also spew bile. Very few individuals on either side of the argument have made any worthwhile commentary that supports their stance without mocking the other side.
Though, and you are free to call it confirmation bias on my behalf, the few fans who have made useful commentary have been able to successfully disect and critique the reasons why the ending is bad. The only non-derrogatory commentary I've seen from journalist only harp about how we shouldn't feel entitled to change art and how it sets "a negative precedent". I've yet to see a journalist break down the ending and explain why it's not a fantastic example of horrible literary execution.
I can't think of a single movie I've seen or book I've read that has committed the flaws ME3 has at the very end and has managed to be a successful film or publication.
Though, and you are free to call it confirmation bias on my behalf, the few fans who have made useful commentary have been able to successfully disect and critique the reasons why the ending is bad. The only non-derrogatory commentary I've seen from journalist only harp about how we shouldn't feel entitled to change art and how it sets "a negative precedent". I've yet to see a journalist break down the ending and explain why it's not a fantastic example of horrible literary execution.
I can't think of a single movie I've seen or book I've read that has committed the flaws ME3 has at the very end and has managed to be a successful film or publication.
Picking dialogue options and shooting bots however is to playing like developing the single player Battlefield campaing to developing. Why don't take:Grey Carter said:
Then i can't see how your argument that the players are Ringo can stand as a generalization. I can say that most of my videogaming highlights are in social gaming, either doing a perfect score in Dance Dance Revolution, being at progression guilds at WoW or doing arena/BGs there, etc. Edit: It doesn't mean that a kind of videogames is superior to any other, I just tend to appreciate interactive gameplay based videogames that can be art at the hands of the right player to narrative ones.
That said, i don't agree with the poster you quoted for different reasons. Playing ME 3 a year later is indeed cheaper, but you will miss too much IMO to be worth waiting, the multiplayer for starters.
At first, this notion was absurd to me, but I understand how the outcry can be interpreted this way. The ME3 ending was not a creative experiment. It was a rushed hack job. It's closer to being the "safe option" than anything. But Bioware is known for their attempts at creative narratives and if a developer isn't sufficiently aware of this issue, they could misunderstand the outrage as something condemning experimentation.Grey Carter said:
I would hope the lesson is that the ending of a game is not where you cut corners, as is the industry norm right now.LetalisK said:
This is one of the funniest things I've read in a few days. You've started to make the argument that writing is a secondary issue, since it's up to the audience to fill in the blanks where the writer leaves blanks. If game studios followed this sort of logic, it would be quite acceptable for a game studio to cut the amount of writers in half and either leave the rest of the team the same, or maybe add a few more animators to make the game look pretty.Phlakes said:
So.
Why is it up to the audience to explain what appear to be issues that don't fit into the accepted laws and rules of the Mass Effect universe? These aren't like the "white beam" that transports people up to the Citadel; there is more than enough in the Mass Effect laws and rules that make this plausible. (There is a miniature mass relay in the Citadel as of Mass Effect 1. The animation for moving through mass relays has a bright blue or orange light, so it is not unreasonable to explain it as a form of mass relay which goes up to the Citadel) That is something that is plausible with what we know already. The game didn't need to come out and explicitly say that.
But some of the points that Abedeus brings up don't have reasonable explanations, and in fact some of them are directly contradictory to the laws and rules we know of already. Adjusting those laws is perfectly fine - but they need an explanation. Laws and rules of Mass Effect say that destroying a Relay creates what is compared to a Supernova, and destroys the solar system it is in. We don't know that this has been changed with the ending - we make that assumption. We have nothing in the Mass Effect laws and rules to back it up. We don't know how Joker managed to pick up some of the crew members who were on Earth, or why. We don't know why he is fleeing, and why he has left the Sol system. We don't know why part of Shepherds crew consents to flee with Joker, or if they had any choice in the matter. None of Shepherds crew has given indication that they would do anything but die for Shepherd, and yet they are fleeing Earth and the Sol system entirely. These are just a few of the issues that are certainly plausible, but it is weak storytelling to leave the reasons for this up to the audience.
We do know that Joker can survive a crash landing of the Normandy with minor injuries; in ME2, the ship crashes on the Collector base and Joker is able to fly and I believe there is a cut scene where he is out there shooting at Collectors as Shepherd flees the Collector base. The logic of the Reapers is annoying, but it isn't nearly as bad as it's made out to be; semi-organic Reapers destroy the most advanced races in order to ensure that they do not create full synthetics which would reach the conclusion that all organic life must be destroyed before it destroys synthetic life. I'm not a fan of this logic, but I do think it makes enough sense that I don't regularly cite it as a problem with the ending. (What's annoying is that there is an obvious counter-argument that is ignored (Geth-Quarian, EDI-Joker) even when both are able to be used.) Dropping the Dark Energy plot is annoying but was not developed in ME2 as anything but a reason for Tali to be somewhere dangerous.
tl;dr - Why is it up to the audience to explain why the game appears to break its own rules and laws, and not up to the writers to explain why they are breaking their own rules?
