sunsetspawn said:
I can't get enough of this dirty subject.
Everybody needs to realize that there is a silent percentage (majority minority whatever) of people out there that thought the game was stupid, but never actually registered on a board to complain. I only have one RPG playing friend IRL and a few times at work we've discussed the stupidity of ME3's ending. He's not foaming at the mouth over it, but he also didn't purchase any DLC and isn't planning on future Bioware purchases (I just forced him to borrow DA:OA and he didn't seem excited). He's married with a real life and I'm a single, game playing douche bag, so while he's busy picking out curtains and having dinner with in-laws I'm on message boards bitching and moaning about shit that doesn't matter one iota IRL. So ladies, this obsessive psychotic is available, and if I'm this passionate about shitty writing in a video game you can just imagine my attention to detail when picking out presents.
And there's also a segment of fans, and I know one personally, "IRL", who refuse to engage in any sort of discussion about this. I'm talking about someone like me (and maybe you) who was a full on Mass Effect nut, who was totally invested, but who hasn't been back since April, hasn't bought any DLC, etc. The difference is this person still thinks the ending was fantastic because they "didn't want a happy ending," but refuse to acknowledge the flaws in the ending or make an explanation for why this ending is still "good" despite the laundry list of faults.
It strikes me as an attempt to assuage cognitive dissonance, and I'm reminded of him when I'm talking to people who are defending the endings. He wants to like ME3, so he won't admit its flaws to himself. Maybe I'm starting to sound unreasonable, but I think you need to at least be able to explain why the faults don't ruin the ending for you if you claim you like it. And, I'll accept, "I don't care about the faults," as a reasonably good explanation, but I don't even usually get this. Instead I get people ducking out of the conversation or a refusal to even acknowledge the faults exist.
Or, at least, this was back in April. Honestly, this thread is the first time I've revisited any of this in months. I swear.
sunsetspawn said:
Look, this entire series is full of unfired guns of Chekhov, many of which should have been fired. Apparently the Leviathan of Dis was addressed in a DLC, but it doesn't count if your Chekhov gun is fired after the main story arc is over, and this game didn't earn the right to have its DLC purchased anyway. There were a number of planets that had suitable plot devices in ME1&2, and every one was abandoned because ghost kid.
Can't agree more. Look, if the game shipped in a certain state, an extension that accounts for the that state after the fact doesn't change the original release. I'm still going to judge based on the original effort. John Steinbeck wrote "East of Eden" as his masterpiece, but it was received as a flawed novel. If Steinbeck sold the "East of Eden Companion Guide" which fixed a problem in the novel, the original novel is still subject to criticism on that point.
sunsetspawn said:
Remember, Drew Karpyshyn was only lead writer on Mass Effect 1. He was demoted for 2 and wasn't even present on 3. His ideas were abandoned because business. Often when someone is given an "artistic" project to finish they think they can outdo the originator, but if you look at his credits, Mac Walters really hasn't done much in the way of storytelling while Drew has not only written books omgz, but was the lead writer for KOTOR, which is generally considered just as good a work of fiction as Mass Effect 1.
The version of the Dark Energy story that I've heard, which I've heard was Kapyshyn's [http://www.strategyinformer.com/news/17086/mass-effect-writer-drew-karpyshyn-reveals-original-mass-effect-3-endings] I still am not huge on. The reapers trying to prevent the spread of Dark Energy, and somehow humans are the way to do it. So let them reap or try to fix the problem on our own, etc. I might be biased against this view because of my Biology background -- this idea of human "genetic" diversity is factually wrong. We aren't genetically diverse, at all. In fact there's a lot of evidence, genetically, that our species experienced a genetic bottle neck 70,000 years ago. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck#Humans] You share, on average, 99.5% - 99.9% of your alleles with completely unrelated individuals, including pygmies in the Amazon. So I'd have appreciated it if we could have kept this woo out of ME2 entirely.
Look, the Reapers should just be genocidal galactic imperialists that don't want to share the Galaxy with anyone else. But maybe also supremely lazy so they look for shit and new innovations to steal from Organic civilizations, which are developing along the lines they desire (Sovereign said this in ME1), or maybe they need indoctrinated slaves to do oil changes and tune ups every 50,000 years. The Reapers then time their invasion for that balancing point where it will be most profitable for them but before galactic civilization is able to really defend itself. I mean, they don't need a complex reason for being hostile. They're just Lovecraftian dicks.
Anyway this means, over the course of the games, that Shephard could delay the invasion (agin, via the events of ME1) to a point where conventional victory is possible via a united galaxy and you don't even need a MacGuffin to win. Or use the Dark Energy Chekhov's gun as your MacGuffin to beat the reapers via some sort of Klendagon super weapon. Or whatever. Or, shit, spend more than 3 seconds coming up with something that isn't as nonsensical or divorced from the rest of the story and universe as the ending as it existed in the final version of ME3.
sunsetspawn said:
If you take a step back and look at how bad the main stories in ME2&3 really were, then the monumental fuckup at the end doesn't seem as crazy. But isn't this just a symptom of the current gaming industry?
Let's go back to the unfired guns though, the quick and dirty was to fix this debacle is to go IT theory, THEN, after Shepard wakes up in front of the beam while the Reapers are still attacking, we go to the Crucible.
The Crucible - An omnidirectional FTL mass accelerator cannon that can use the Citadel's connection to the mass relays to target and track hostiles within the proximity of the relay network. With the Citadel's massive mass relay core capable of being used to create zero mass conduits across hundreds of thousands of light years, the nearly complete annihilation of the Reapers could occur within a matter of hours.
The codex specifically mentions that the Reapers FTL technology (which all species FTL is based on) has specific safeguards designed to circumvent FTL collisions and that some species had attempted bypassing these safeguards so FTL ramming could be used as a method of attack. Taken a step further, these bypassed safeguards could allow for the construction of FTL weapons, which would strike with immeasurable force and likely be unstoppable by any kinetic barriers regardless of the size of the projectile.
In this way the ending would actually be using something that was setup during the course of the third game. And if they made the Klendagon weapon a previous cycle's flawed Crucible attempt then THAT would be an even better Chekhov Gun.
Which could just leave us with dark energy or Reapers off the relay network for future games.
Of course, this ending itself would be better if we could go back and start changing things from the beginning of ME2.
Agreed.
And the thing is, as much as anyone complains about ME2, I still like it better than the ending to ME3. I like the Reaper T2 better than the Catalyst. At least there's something in the story that sets up a confrontation with the Reaper T2, and at least we complete the goal we set out to complete in the beginning of the game.