One Last look at Mass Effect 3.

Savo

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The window for Bioware to make it up to the fans is long gone. ME3 is becoming old news with all the other high-profile games coming out. Bioware/EA put themselves in an extremely difficult situation that was almost impossible to escape. They can go on all day about how they have "Artistic Integrity", but it's painfully obvious it was thrown together at the last possible moment with the smallest budget possible.

What broke my heart was how stubborn Bioware was after in the following weeks after all went down. That was the time for an intelligent dialogue with the fans about what went wrong and why the ending was the way it was. All we got were some vague statements and the half-hearted Extended Cut a few months later. At this point, I can't see a way it can ever realistically be fixed.
 

spartandude

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MrDelicious said:
I'm still annoyed at multiplayer too, I should not have to play multiplayer to fix up my single player.
didnt you hear, NObody ever buys single player only games anymore, and if an EA executive says it then it must be true.
 

Tsun Tzu

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Akratus said:
The indoctrination theory is born of denial. It just leaves us with a non-ending.

If you want to wrap around the incomprehensible minds of the bioware writers I would suggest this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiN8gL40d84
It really is the best 'last look' at mass effect. And he's done ME2 and DA2 as well.
...Is that Graham from LoadingReadyRun? The guy sounds exactly like him. o_O


Ahem. On topic, I still haven't been able to replay the game, nor have I purchased any of the DLC. Oddly enough, since that debacle, I've been having a ***** of a time finishing games. Dishonored and Borderlands 2 are still waiting for me to wrap up.

I'm honestly just disappointed. I shouldn't be thinking "I could write this better" when I'm talking about a Bioware game. I never would have imagined I'd even be typing that sentence a few years ago.
 

MrDelicious

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spartandude said:
MrDelicious said:
I'm still annoyed at multiplayer too, I should not have to play multiplayer to fix up my single player.
didnt you hear, NObody ever buys single player only games anymore, and if an EA executive says it then it must be true.
I believe this is what you were referring to: http://www.destructoid.com/ea-boss-proudly-refuses-to-publish-single-player-games-234402.phtml
 

Erttheking

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I'll just share my own views on ME3. The ending sucked, the extended cut sucked, and the last time I checked the retake ME3 ending didn't destroy artistic integrity in the industry.

Aeonxan said:
Mass Effect 3 is my favorite game of all time. To me it is perfect. I loved the ending. For the people that didn't like the ending, you just didn't understand it. You had an ending that you wanted, and you're just mad that you didn't get it.
Please, tell me what I didn't understand, because I'm pretty sure I understand the ending pretty clearly. It was lazy.
 
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MrDelicious said:
I believe this is what you were referring to: http://www.destructoid.com/ea-boss-proudly-refuses-to-publish-single-player-games-234402.phtml
Well, Gibeau is a huge idiot. To me he is worse than Riccitiello. Riccitiello is just somewhat ignorant and quite greedy, but Gibeau is not just ignorant and greedy, he is also smug and arrogantly convinced that he is some sort of hotshot genius who knows what the people want.
 

Nimcha

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I'm willing to bet my life on the fact that this won't be the last ME3 thread!
 

Uszi

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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:eek: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.
 

Uszi

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erttheking said:
I'll just share my own views on ME3. The ending sucked, the extended cut sucked, and the last time I checked the retake ME3 ending didn't destroy artistic integrity in the industry.
It's interesting, in the past few months, there's been a bunch of fan edit endings which make more sense and have the same poignancy as the existing mess that shipped in the game. An array of endings, really.

There's even a fan made "Mass Effect Happy Ending Mod" for PC. It's cheese, and it still doesn't really make sense, in my opinion: I don't really buy any ending where Shepard gets evacuated from the citadel as good, but it's certainly better than the star child ending, namely because in the mod the story Bioware had been telling for 2.9 games doesn't explode in a Hudson/Walters masturbatory shit storm of contrivances and inconsistencies.


LostGryphon said:
Ahem. On topic, I still haven't been able to replay the game, nor have I purchased any of the DLC. Oddly enough, since that debacle, I've been having a ***** of a time finishing games. Dishonored and Borderlands 2 are still waiting for me to wrap up.

I'm honestly just disappointed. I shouldn't be thinking "I could write this better" when I'm talking about a Bioware game. I never would have imagined I'd even be typing that sentence a few years ago.
Welcome to the club! Far Cry 3 is the first game it looks like I'm actually going to finish since then. I haven't been back to Mass Effect since april, and like I stated before in the thread, I was like, one of those ME nuts that got every piece of DLC for ME1 and ME2, and had a dozen save files ready for ME3 when it came out.

Sentiment isn't just you or me, saw this a few times in this thread.
 

deathbydeath

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I actually felt a kind of smug satisfaction at seeing what happened with ME3. I was disillusioned as fuck after the pissed-on potential people refer to as Mass Effect 2, and I was honestly saying that it was only a matter of time before Bioware did something so stupid that nobody at all could deny it. While Mass Effect 3 wasn't exactly it, it came surprisingly close given the time passed between Bioware's first "bad rpg"/ME2 and it's release. I still haven't bought it, and probably never will.

I still stand by my statement, though, that Bioware is going to nuke themselves in the foot with some stupid decision, refuse to admit they were wrong, and have EA quietly liquidate them out of existence. Better fate than they deserve, if you ask me.
 

BreakfastMan

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Uszi said:
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.
You can use some objective measures, yes. But, in order to comment on the quality of the entire thing, not just individual parts of the whole, you have to use subjective measures, making the measurement itself subjective (since you cannot provide a measurement of the quality without using subjective measures).
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.
Not what I was arguing; if you look back at previous posts, I believe I have outlined my stance fairly clearly. In this same post, I have outlined my stance fairly clearly.
 

Tsun Tzu

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Uszi said:
Welcome to the club! Far Cry 3 is the first game it looks like I'm actually going to finish since then. I haven't been back to Mass Effect since april, and like I stated before in the thread, I was like, one of those ME nuts that got every piece of DLC for ME1 and ME2, and had a dozen save files ready for ME3 when it came out.

Sentiment isn't just you or me, saw this a few times in this thread.
Interesting. I agree with you on all points.

I just recently finished Far Cry 3, actually. I forgot to mention that it was the first game I could bring myself to finish in months. Part of me wants to go back and replay ME1 and ME2, but it's just difficult.
 

QtheMuse

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After all is said and done ME3 wasn't the best ending to the series that there could of been, but it wasn't the worst either. The extended cut makes it better, if they released it with the extended cut endings there would of been much less of a backlash than there is and was. But hindsight is 20/20 and after playing it with all of the DLC that was released its a fun game with good voice acting and a nice story. The fact bioware took time to put out a free extended cut is good enough to repair their reputation in my eyes. I just hope Dragon Age 3 is good enough to redeem them in the eyes of everyone else.

Also vocal minority and all that jazz.
 

pandorum

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What I never understood about the crucible, is how its found with no real back story just wow weapon lets build it. If we need a magical Fuck you weapon, why not of tried something different, why not try to get to dark space to see what they(reapers) were hiding and finding a weapon that the first race built. Built too destroy anything in its wake but it draws its power from the planets it is used on, destroying them in the process, better than some space child bullshit. Plus it ties in the derelict reaper from ME2 explaining what killed it. You could make it out to be so powerful by explaining that that reaper was caught just slightly by the blast and that a full on shot would of vaporised the reaper turning him into space dust.
 

AlexLoxate

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Akratus said:
Kopikatsu said:
I'm extremely disappointed that the Indoctrination theory wasn't what they went with. I mean...Bioware actually went and set everything up so perfectly...

The indoctrination theory is born of denial. It just leaves us with a non-ending.

If you want to wrap around the incomprehensible minds of the bioware writers I would suggest this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiN8gL40d84
It really is the best 'last look' at mass effect. And he's done ME2 and DA2 as well.
This guy analyzed the whole series pretty well. I like his videos.