Maze1125 said:
Uszi said:
I can say this objectively by pointing to the criteria by which we judge such things.
Yes, if you redefine the word "objective" to mean "judged by commonly agreed criteria" then you can claim that ME3 is "objectively bad" and, at the very least, have a coherent sentence.
No, I don't have to redefine anything. When I began this discussion, I used the definition from the dictionary.
What do you think objective means?
I would recommend using one of these fine dictionary definitions:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/objective
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/objective
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/objective
https://www.google.com/search?q=objective+definition&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US
fficial&client=firefox-a
If you are judging something "according to commonly agreed criteria" then you are not judging it based purely on feelings but on an established measure, and thus you are being objective rather than subjective. This is a totally unmodified usage of our language.
BreakfastMan said:
We have 1 non-arbitrary measure that measures one aspect of a story, the integrity of the plot as a whole. This is fine for measuring that one aspect of that story, but does not provide a good measure of that story as a whole. Measuring the quality of other aspects of a story depend on subjective measures.
No, we don't have just 1 non-arbitrary measure. We have many, such as:
Deus ex machina
Continuity errors
Thematic inconsistencies
Failure to establish setting
Failure to foreshadow important events
The unfired Chekhov's gun
Retcons
Magical MacGuffins
etc, etc, etc.
None of these examples of bad writing is arbitrary. These are problems that have been demonstrated through time and example to weaken narratives, and to the extent that you have more of these problems or rely too heavily on them without an adequate reason for doing so, you have done an objectively poorer job than if you had none of these problems or could at least account for them within your narrative. It's not like sloppy writing is considered sloppy just because some elite critics have opinions on the issue. Its because the more of this crap you shovel into a narrative, the harder it becomes to read/watch/understand.
The idea that critics sit around and
only discuss plot holes is incorrect. You could disprove the notion by reading any literary or film critique.
Now, you continue to mention these absolutist arguments which I have never made. My guess is that when I say something is "objectively bad," you are misreading this as me assuming things are either good or bad. This is not what I meant. I simply meant I can use objective measures by taking examples of flawed narrative, game design, etc from the ending of Mass Effect 3, and use these in an evidence based argument that demonstrates that the ending is bad according to our non-arbitrary conventions of what makes a bad narrative.
Are there things that are worse than the ME3 ending? Certainly. It is not simply lumped into a category of things that have the property "badness."
There is no only bad / only good dichotomy.
The lack of this dichotomy does not make the continuum of good to bad "subjective," especially if you are using an evidence based argument to explain why one things falls on one point of the continuum, and the next thing falls on a separate point.